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seancekitsch · 3 years

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Out of the Rain: a Marko x Reader fic

Warnings: bloodplay goes without saying bc vamp, rough sex, dirty talk, semi public sex, telepathy?? me projecting my music taste on this fic again. drug use, fast and loose use of vampire lore bc when i write i am god and u cannot stop me. also can u tell i have like…. v clear descriptions of the setting like i used to work at the place im describing but its not in california

No one had come in for hours. What's the point of staying open? You dim some of the lights in the store, which is one of three head shops in Santa Carla, but the only one open late. You're not really sure why this is the only store that stays open, why everyone else if worried about the three am walk back to their car on a weekend night. You've never seen anything of suspicion, just sometimes that biker gang watches people shuffle out. That was almost comforting, though. People didn't like those guys, so no one would make you use your switchblade if they were around.

The bright while fluorescent lights of your typical daytime ambiance faded away, and now green light bathes you in the “mood” lighting your boss thought was a good idea. The green lighting reflects off of the glass counters, shining it back at the ceiling and making everything that much more green. It fits, you think with the overall vibe of the store. The stale scent of weed, gently and miserably covered up by some nag champa incense, always burning in at least four different spots within the store. You'd long since gotten used to the smoke in your eyes. The music does everything to add to the ambiance. You always have full control of the music in the shop, usually because no one else is willing to take the night shift in Santa Carla. In fact, most of the boardwalk shops had a revolving door of night shift workers. You never got why, something clearly spooks them that does not spook you. Whether that makes you brave or stupid, you dont know. Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow pumps through the speakers in the store. But I suppose no one knows, you're my plastic fantastic lover.

The rain batters the boardwalk outside, a roar much different than the typical hustle and bustle of drunk teens, of the cliques and crews that come in and out; the few that sit and snicker in the doorway, never entering. Some too afraid to be associated with the implication of being spotted in the shop. We sell jewelry and vinyl too, you always say, when they balk at the idea of being in the same room as a bong or incense.

But then there's the other group that stands and idles in the threshold, also not entering. It's that biker gang. Four guys, a girl, a kid. Maybe he’s the brat of the girl and the one who takes himself too seriously, but maybe not. She looks too young for that. They'd been hovering around quite a bit lately, always after dark. You’d spoken to them, at least the ones that are talkative. The hair metal wannabe and the cute short one. Paul and Marko. You knew the dark haired one was Dwayne, but all he ever offered you was a curt nod and a tight lipped smile, respectful but indifferent. They're nice, not worth the spooky reputation they have. Any time it's not just you at the shop, your boss tries to spook them away. Good thing your boss isn't here tonight, because one of them is prowling around the storefront in the rain. That is, if it's not your spliff induced haze playing tricks on you.

No, one of them is out there. Without his little pack. The cute one. Marko.

You walk over to the door, which you haven't had propped open since the rain trickled in as a drizzle at the beginning of your shift. At least he had enough sense to be huddling under the awning. Fuck, he’s handsome even when he looks like a drowned rat.

“What are you doing out here?” You scrunch up your nose as you ask.

“Y’know, waiting for you to show up.” Wanted a look at that cute ass.

You blink at him. Did he really just say that?

“Okay… well, you know it's raining out there, right?”

“I might,” he offers noncommittally, eyeing the spliff still in the hand that's not holding the door. If it were anyone but him, you'd probably get fired for it.

Why is he just hanging around out here? That's hella weird. His curls are getting matted to his forehead, slick with rain, his jacket starting to look a little sad.

“C’mon in, Marko. It’s too wet out here. You’ll fuck up your jacket.” You nod towards the interior of the shop holding the door open as he passes you.

Wrong move, sweet cheeks.

“What did you say?” What did he mean, wrong move?

“I didn't say anything,” he offers nonchalantly as he thumbs at one of the tapestries on the wall. A garish mess that’s supposed to be the worm from Alice in Wonderland, but it’s distorted by a botched tie dye job of dark muddy colors. Every time you look at it, you assume one of the day workers did it.

“No, you said something.”

“Do you want me to say something?” there's both a threat and an innuendo in his tone. Maybe you do, but you just laugh, a sharp exhale through your nose, and bring the spliff to your lips again as he follows you deeper into the store.

You jump up onto the counter next to the ash tray, easy reach for each time you need to ash.

“So why are you really here?” your eyes narrow at him, kicking your sandal off on the floor where it lands a few inches from his boots. He looks uneasy in the space, like for all the wild shit you assume he’s into, he might not actually belong in it. He sways a little to the music, perfectly in tune with the rhythm. You sway along too, and suddenly he fills the space like he belongs. He just needed someone along for the ride with him.

“Do you ever come around during the day, or just at night because I’m so fun?” You’re teasing him, but it’s a nice easy feeling between you.

“Not really a sun guy,” bullshit, he would look beautiful with a tan, “but I do drag everyone here just to see you.”

“Awww, all for me? Do you have a crush, Marko?”

It’s more than that. You hear the words clearly, but his smile doesn’t move. You kick the other sandal off.

“I can hear you, I don’t know how, but I can. I bet you can hear me too.”

I can. You’re wrong about the tan thing.

You straighten up, mind clearing as you blurt out your next question. Something absolutely stupid.

“So what are you, a vampire or something?” he laughs at you, but his big toothy smile doesn't reach his eyes. No, there's something predatory, extremely dark in his eyes. Otherworldly.

How could you guess?

“Well, that for one big fucking clue.” You ash the spliff for the final time, leaving the roach in the tray. You would think you’d be more surprised, more upset that you just found out vampires were real, and that you were in the same room as one. You have to say, weirder things are probably afoot in Santa Carla. Murder capital of the world can’t all be from some rowdy teens and a ten year old.

“You do those surf nazis?” is all that leaves your mouth. You kind of hope it was. They were the fucking worst. Racist, misogynistic, destructive. You’d had to threaten them a few times to leave your store on your shift.

“The—? Oh! Surf nazis. Yeah that was us. Ate a few of them.”

“Good for you. I mean— murder. bad. But they were nazis, and now they’re dead. so…” you trail off. Not really sure what to say next, but then you keep going. Remember everything you know about Marko.

“No, no I mean, it makes sense. Right? You and the guys only hang around at night. Aren’t vampires solitary hunters though? I don’t remember Dracula being in a frat.”

“They’re my pack. We take care of each other.” He says it with such fondness and devotion.

You feel a pang of jealousy run through you. You work alone for the most part, live alone, you’ve got friends but they’re all over the place. He belongs to something.

“And you're down with this?” he’s legitimately asking. You nod. You don't really have a choice, you're down or you get eaten, but like genuinely you are down with it. If he was going to eat you, he probably would have by now. There's probably a reason they've been hanging around the store, and in your sightline while you close up. You're putting things together.

“Like really?”

“Well, you haven't made me a kebab yet.”

He shrugs, frowns.

“Could still skewer you on something.”

Laughter erupts from your lips while you roll your eyes, music to Marko’s ears. This is why he took a shine to you, it's easy to get along with you, and you're not one of his brothers.

Something heavy falls in the room, and it's not the haze of the incense. He steps towards you, big blue eyes raking over your body, but always coming back to meet your gaze. He closes the space between you, easily fitting between your thighs; the rough patches of his jacket brushing against your bare skin where your shorts ride up. He leans in, like he's about to kiss you, and against all better judgement, you're going to let him.

You're going to let him.

The record skips. He holds out his hand, more like a gentleman than a biker gang killer, and helps you off the counter.

“Hold on, let me pick out a new record,” you turn without waiting for his confirmation, not at all surprised when Marko follows hot on your heels to the back room. Your boss’ office, the record room. Whatever you wanted to call it. His hands ghost over your arms as you push past the wooden bead curtain to enter the room. You can feel his presence close enough to touch. That's it, right where I want you. There’s his voice again.

He lets you actually pick out a new record. You slide it out of the sleeve and walk it over to the player. The static buzzes and pops as the needle finds the groove.

“Ocean Rain, you heard it?” No. He shakes his head, and you can feel it as he leans into your back.

“Echo and the Bunnymen. They've got a new album coming out this year.”

You turn to face him and his fingerless leather glove clad hands cover your cheeks.

He kisses you gently, tenderly. Not at all the way you’d expect. He’s eager, kissing like there’s something to prove. He licks his way into your mouth, tongue pushing your lips apart and you let him. His arms tighten around you as you kiss, tongues now greeting each other playfully. Your tongue explores his mouth, running along each and every tooth in his mouth. Huh, no fangs, you realize, and maybe he isn't actually a vampire. As if he reads your mind (maybe he does), he pulls away.

“They're, uh, hiding,’ he nods, almost to himself more than you. You nod as well, slow and uneasy, not quite believing him, but he pulls you back into a harsh kiss, more of what you expected. His hands roam your body as yours bury themselves in his curls. Still damp, but long and beautiful just as well. He shrugs the jacket off his shoulders, and his hands only briefly leave you to throw it and his gloves somewhere else, leaving him just in a thin white tank top. His mouth leaves yours to trail lower, kissing your neck. Your pulse point. Fucking irresistable. No, that's definitely his voice. Is this the end? Could be.

“I can smell you, hot stuff,” he moans into your ear, sending shivers down your spine. You find yourself gripping onto his shoulders a little tighter, but he lets you sink. He guides you, again more gently than you thought he would; bare knees brushing the threadbare carpet floor before you plant yourself. You look up at him through your lashes and he all but bites back a groan.

“You gonna join me down here?” You lick your lips, waiting for something.

“Nah, I’m gonna let you have a head start,” there's a joke in his tone. You're learning that’s normal for him. He’s silent, or playing jester. It’ll be interesting when you let him fuck you. Shit, did he hear that?

“Quit thinkin’ so loud!” he runs an affectionate hand through your hair. “But yes, I heard you. Glad you're as eager as I am.”

That's encouraging. You take your time undoing his belt, connected to faded and soft leather chaps, not bothering to push them down his thighs before you move to the top of his jeans, teasing your fingers at the skin just above the waistline. He shudders under your touch, extremely reactive. Does he get touched like this often? Or is it just quick fucks? You don't want to think about who else he might be doing this with, focusing again on his body, and all of the offending clothing covering it. You unbutton them slowly, teasing. For a member of the undead, he seems to be out of breath under your movements. The zipper is pulled down just as slowly. You run your palms flat along the bottom of his stomach, to his hips before pushing his jeans down to around his ankles, hooking his boxers on your finger along with them. He’s beautiful, and you can help but stare. Hard, eager, and thick, greeting you with a small trimmed patch of golden blonde curls. You wrap your hand around the base.

You never expected a vampire to whimper, but that's exactly what happens when your tongue darts out of your mouth to lick the head of his cock. Quick, tentative little lick, testing the waters. Your tongue swipes across the slit at the tip of his thick member and his hands animate like you flipped a switch, rising up, going to your hair, rising up again, slamming down against the desk. Your boss’ desk. You lick a long stripe to the underside of his cock, paying close attention to the prominent vein there.

“So good, so good, oh you feel so-” he pants out, hands white knuckling the edge of the desk. Heat pools in your core, loving that he’s so vocal. Fuck, if he could just keep speaking. Your other hand moves to your shorts, sloppily and hastily undoing them and wiggling them down to your knees. You wrap your lips around the head of his cock and sink down on it, taking him as far as you can, until you couch when he hits the back of your throat.

“You look fucking beautiful like that. Please move, Please move, you’re so fucking good at this.”

You do, starting to bob your head up and down on the length of him, hollowing out your cheeks and flattening your tongue against him, cupping and massaging his balls in your hand. Your free finds itself between your legs, rubbing gently at your clit, stirred and encouraged by his praise.

“Does sucking me off get you hot and bothered?” Yesitdoes.

You keep bobbing your head, rubbing your clit, eyes trained on his until his eyes squeeze shut. His cock twitches in your mouth.

“Don't wanna- don't wanna finish in your mouth,” he’s urgent, grabbing you by the chin and pulling your mouth off of his cock. He pushes you back by your shoulders, letting you guide yourself back to lay on the rug. He pulls your loose shorts easily off your legs and settles himself between your legs, too eager to bother with removing his boots and everything.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for so long. Do you know how bad I wanted this?”

“Fuck me, Marko, dont say it. Just do it,” youre breathless under him, wanting nothing more than for him to be fucking you. He pauses.

“I dunno…” his thumb swipes up along your clit, drawing a whine from your throat, “For some reason I think you like it when I say things.”

You nod, knowing words will fail you. And he gives you what you want, lining himself up and sinking into you, groaning as he buries his head into the crook of your neck.

“Oh I knew your pussy would feel like fucking heaven,” he pants against your neck, pressing a harsh kiss to the underside of your jaw. He sets the pace quickly, unmerciful and fast, fucking hard and deep into you. His hands push up your thin tee shirt, and you can feel his sigh of relief when he gets a handful of bare breast. He doesn't have to deal with a bra tonight. You hike your knees up, opening yourself as much as you can to him, wanting him to fill you to the brim. He looks into your eyes while he fucks you, which comes as a surprise to you. Maybe it shouldn't. You wonder what it would be like to be a victim of his. Does he treat them well? Have fun with them like this? Or is he vicious? You don't know if you could picture him like that… vamped out.

“What does it feel like?”

“What?” he thrusts sharply, snapping his hips into you, making you yelp.

“To be fed on, but not to die.”

Are you serious? You hear him in your head.

YesIam. He thrusts like that again, earning an identical yelp, now coupled with your thighs squeezing him around the middle. You're close already, and he can tell.

He nods, a question; You nod, confirmation.

He pulls at the neckline of your shirt, already scooping so it doesn’t ruin, and exposes your shoulder. Somewhere non lethal. His other hand comes up to grip your jaw, covering your neck but being careful not to squeeze it. You hope he bruises your jaw, you realize. A physical way to feel him when dawn comes. He slows his pace to a rocking, grinding into you, staying deep.

Then he bites. Stars erupt behind your eyes, and it feels like your blood has turned to seltzer. Every nerve in your body is in overdrive as you moan and shake and come undone around his cock. You're the kind of girl that comes from the bite of a vampire, apparently. He doesn’t let up. You can faintly hear him moaning against the open wound in your shoulder, and you hope you taste good to him. He licks the wound a few times more, softly, carefully, like he’s trying to soothe you when he finally lets you come down from your high.

When he pulls back to let you see him, his features are gruesome, full vampire with sharp brows and cheekbones, pointed nose even that much more so almost birdlike. Fangs and bottom half of his face covered in blood.Your blood. He’s panting like an animal after the kill. But he doesn't scare you. Maybe he should, but he doesn't. It's just Marko, no matter what, and if he wanted to eat you he would have. Several times now. His hand finally releases your jaw, to wipe the blood from his face. He wipes his hand then on your face, covering you in your own blood, hot on his fingers and palm.

“Fuckin sexy,” he pants, voice deeper and distorted. His thrusts speed up, trying to find his own release as your nails dig into his back, maybe making him bleed as well. You feel the rug burn forming on your back, you feel tears in your eyes. It's never felt this good with other guys.

When he comes, he comes with a howl, buried deep inside you as he shouts and shivers then stills above you. Your chest is heaving, trying to regain yourself as his face slowly fades to normal, and he slumps down on top of you. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, near the wound he tore open, now no longer bleeding. He mouths at any bare skin he can find, lazy half kisses as he spreads more mess and blood on you. Your fingers find his curls again, winding them around your digits as you stare up at the sickly green mood lighting bathing the walls of the room.

An hour later, Marko is helping you lock up early.

He makes sure to dump out all of the ashes from spliffs and incense, makes sure the vinyl is all in its right place while you make sure the register and inventory is all in its rightful place and order.

“You’re dangerous, you know.”

“Me?” you scoff, “That rich, coming from you.”

I’d do a lot of things I’m not supposed to for you. You kinda don't want to ask him what he means by that. For some reason that feels like a conversation you shouldn't have tonight.

He leaves the store before you, holding the door open for you and letting you lock the doors. He slings an easy arm over your shoulder, not bothering to shield either of you from the rain as he steers you towards your car. You can feel the rain cleaning your face, the blood flowing away and saving you the shower you were going to take before collapsing into bed tonight.

“Where’s your bike?”

“I flew here,” he says with that devilish smile, and you're really not sure if he's joking or not. Your arm sneaks its way into his jacket and wraps around his waist, holding him close as he makes sure you get home same. Marko makes you feel calm, in a way you didn't feel before you moved to Santa Carla. How long had he been waiting to make his move? And does this mean he and his brothers would be coming around more often? Maybe being more friendly towards you. Each step towards your car feels heavy; You don't want to go home alone without him, but somehow you know he won't come with you.

“Will I see you again?”

He grabs your car keys from your hand, and sticks them in the door handle. Of course you will.

Right. You just have to be near the beach at night. You know, where you work.

He kisses you full on the mouth, holding you close and tight, like you could slip away at any second. When he finally lets you go you pull away to be met with his face, full on grinning, his eyes still closed from the kiss. He doesn't look like a killer.

Marko watches you as you pull open the door to your car and more or less throw your ass into the seat. He holds the door as he gives you one last smile, and says:

“You know, you should never invite a vampire into your life. Renders you powerless.”

And he winks.

#marko lost boys x reader #lost boys x reader #marko lost boys #my work

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boarix · 3 years

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Wraith in the Ruins: A Fallout 4 Story Part XX

Call My Name

Trigger Warnings: canon violence/gore/language/gun, drug and alcohol use.

......

Deacon and Wraith had finished placing the MILA at the construction site in Cambridge and were taking stock of ammo and equipment before heading back to Railroad HQ. Deacon was especially eager to move along as the building was tall and they were still at the top. Wraith was nonchalantly lounging in a chair with its deposed super mutant owner lying at her feet. She had no idea he was acrophobic, and he wanted to keep it that way.

“You almost ready, boss?” He kept his tone light, “You’ve been staring at you’re Pip-Boy for a few days now.”

She made a circular motion with her right hand, “I’m trying to see if there isn’t a quicker way back then there was to…” She interrupted herself by laughing, “a few days?” She smiled up at him, “You in a particular rush?”

“My rush isn’t so particular, just feels too open here. If I were a sniper I’d be there,” He pointed helpfully, “or there, or there. Isn’t this fun?”

“Okay, okay…” She continued to stare at her screen.

“Whisper, it’ll be dangerous to climb down in the dark. Which is soon…” He shuffled closer to her while purposefully dragging the soles of his sneakers, “I’m also starving. Can we stop at the Fast Food?”

She chuckled, “We have food at home.” She stood and stretched, “I think there’s a way to get over to the freeway from here. I want to go check it out real quick.”

He frowned dramatically at her, “But I’m hungry.”

She reached into her pack, grabbed a small package wrapped in cheese cloth and tossed it to him as she walked, “Here. It’s fruit leather.” She pulled one out for herself but rather than eat it she sniffed and frowned at it, “This batch is too heavy on the carrots. I miss bananas. These would have better with bananas. Or I could make chips! Mmm, banana chips.”

Distracted by her melancholy, for a brief moment he forgot his fear. Balling up the entire strip, he clowned for her by shoving it into his mouth, “Mmfp. Sfo… thereshf im brogdgg nofp wha?”

She snorted and laughed, “If you’re asking me about a bridge… kinda?”

His fear was back.

The gap between the building and the freeway was only about 6 or 7 feet. It was bridged by road sign that looked fairly secure, but to Deacon it might as well have been miles. His arms twitched up reflexively as Wraith skipped across.

“I’ve been meaning to see if there was anything good up here. Since it’s so out of the way I thought there might be an armored truck… Are ya comin’?” She leaned back in to view, eyebrows tented and lip sticking out, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’ just… how long do you suppose this has been here?”

“It’s pretty solid, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You didn’t hardly step on it.”

“You’re just as light on your feet as me. Don’t try to jump it.” When he didn’t immediately move, she offered him an out, “Or, you can just hang tight for a sec, I shouldn’t be long.”

“No, no. We’re partners; I go where you go.”

He tried to take it in two large strides, but with his vision marred by vertigo, his second step landed heavily on a rusted edge and the whole piece gave way. Wraith lunged to grab his hand, yelling his name. Swinging forward, he yelped in pain as his right hip was punctured by exposed rebar. Hearing his cry, Wraith didn’t immediately pull him up for fear of causing further damage.

“Are you hung-up? Can you free yourself?!”

“I’m… going… grragh… to try…” Though he knew it would cause a flash of intense pain, he reached up to hold her hand with both of his. He took a few deep breaths to recover. When he tried to pivot to push off with his left foot, the pain was too intense and he felt a surge of panic. “I can’t!”

“Are you cut?! I can’t … I can’t see.”

Screwing his eyes shut he tried to calm himself, “I got stabbed. It’s not super deep but this… I don’t think I’ll be able to talk my way out of this one. Ha hahaha!”

“Deacon, look up at me. You are going to be okay. I won’t let you fall. Let go with one hand and see if you… don’t shake your head!” She smiled and lowered her voice, “I’m very strong, Deacon. I promise I won’t let you fall. Trust me.”

“I…” He swallowed hard, “believe you.” Bolstered by her smile he let go and set his free hand against the girder. Screaming through the pain he brought his foot up and pushed off with both limbs. “GGGAAAARRRKKKK FREE!”

Wraith yanked him up next to her as if he were a prized catch at the end of a fishing line. He immediately dropped to the asphalt and was very noisily sick off the side of the bridge. Wraith ignored his retching but made assorted unhappy noises at the hole in his hip that was in fact very deep and bleeding a lot.

“You liar, you’re a goddamn shish kebab!” Quickly she gave him a one-two punch of Med-X and a Stimpak. When he made a small noise of protest against the painkiller she growled at him, “You hush! Being in pain slows healing.”

“And being on chemsh makes me shlow everything!” The lightning-fast med already had him stumbling over his words.

In the midst of her tying a temporary bandage, yellow-green lightning split the sky which set the Geiger counter on Wraith’s Pip-Boy to ticking madly. A rad storm was approaching fast. “Oh, for crying out loud!” Glancing around fearfully, she spotted a semi-trailer. Popping Deacon up and over her shoulder she made for the truck and set to work picking the lock.

“No, noooo NO! Danger! DANGER AGENT WHISNMPERS!”

“Yeah, yeah; ‘never open a new can of worms while cleaning up the first’. Look, I need to get you inside someplace!”

Tipped on its side, the trailer’s interior was narrow but devoid of monsters. Wraith gently lay Deacon down atop the scattered shipping tubs and glanced around for an additional light source to supplement her Pip-Boy, “Keep pressure on it, I’m going to hop back and grab some of those lanterns…” Once she returned she pulled shut the truck’s cargo door and got out her knife. However, when she turned back to Deacon he was nowhere to be seen. “Did you just… are you using a Stealth Boy?!”

“I don’t want you t’ cut my jeans!”

Blinking rapidly, she looked down at her combat knife and then back up to where his voice came from, “Deacon… you might bleed out! I’ll make you new pants!”

“Imma try to get out… OW! Huuurrgn… of them…” Failing, he phased back into view with a miserable expression on his face.

“There’s nothing wrong with showing a little leg. Or… a lot… damn, Deacon.” She made an attempt to school the worry from her face as she worked, “Looks like you’ll need to wear skirts for a while.”

“I have the calves for it.”

She couldn’t disagree, “Actually, you have better legs then me. Turn a little more on your side…”

“Why don’t you like the way you look? I think you’re pretty.”

“Well, I think you’re pretty too, Deacon. So I’ll throw that right back at you; why do you want to change your face again? Seems a more… dramatic solution than sticking on a false mustache. What’s th’ matter? Can’t grow facial hair?”

“I grow the best bneards you’d ever shee!”

“I’ll take your word for it. Anyway, I like the face you’re currently wearing.”

He was touched and even with his chem addled brain he knew the conversation was getting dangerously close to things he wasn’t sure he wanted her to know. It was time to change the subject, “What’s that? Brobzzs… Brave… Bavarian… Bob’s Best Moonshine?”

Wraith had pulled what looked like a liquor bottle out of her pack, “Oh, no. Curie gave me a lecture on how terrible alcohol is for wounds. So, I’ve been trying to carry soapy water instead. Buuuut,” She soaked a clean rag and gently wiped at his injury, “I don’t think she realizes that soap is way more rare out here then booze.”

Satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, she helped the now shivering spy into a sleeping bag and made for the door. “I’m going to go see if there is a quicker way down from here. I want to get you back to HQ and Carrington ASAP.”

“Jump down would be fastnerest.”

“You tried that already…” Her spirits sagged as she jogged along the short span of crumbling road. Then, they suddenly skyrocketed when she noticed there was a scaffolding lift on the very edge of the partially destroyed highway, “Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!”

The storm had passed so when Wraith returned she put Deacon’s pack in the sleeping bag with him and cinched the opening until only his face showed. She shouldered her own pack and then bent to pick him up as well. She had thought he was asleep until he started giggling.

“He heee; imma worm.”

“Oh, Deacon, you’re my favorite.”

……

“HANCOCK!” MacCready watched in horror the ghoul dropped to the pavement and writhed about while clutching his head. Fearing he’d been shot, the sniper pushed away from the feral citizen he’d been trying to subdue and rushed to the mayor’s side. “What?! Tell me…”

Hancock gaped; opening and closing his mouth like a fish trying to breathe air. His eyes bulged and were completely unfocused.

“She’s attacking him! Radiance!” Fahrenheit wanted nothing more than to throw herself off the balcony and rush to her father, “Pick him up or drag him if you have to but move him away from the bar!”

MacCready stooped and hooked the ghoul under the armpits while Magnolia grabbed his legs; both calling for the Watch. They only made it a few steps before multiple ferals burst from the Third Rail and charged them. The sniper dropped to a knee and set Hancock down as softly as time would allow. Telling the singer to pull Hancock toward the Memory Den he unholstered his sidearm and started an attack of his own. Aiming for their legs as he dodged their swinging arms, he lured them away. Twisting and turning, he danced just out of their reach and quickly cut them down.

“HELP ME!

Surprised by Magnolia’s desperate cry, MacCready whipped around and then stood frozen by what he saw. Hancock had lifted the singer off the ground to chest height and was viscously shaking her back and forth in the air. Like a terrier with a rat.

Thinking quickly, the young man took aim with the syringer and hit the ghoul in the neck with a dose of Pistol Whipped. The effect was almost instantaneous; Magnolia was released and the two dropped to the pavement. As he jogged toward them past the entryway to the bar, MacCready was hit by a powerful shockwave of radiation that swept him off his feet and hurled him through the window of the offices across the street.

Radiance seemed to almost float above the ground as she moved to where Hancock lay. Determined to claim him as a prize, her blazing eyes were fixed on his face. She was confused why she lost her hold on his mind and curiosity drove her to edit her own plan, act directly and leave the relative safety of the Rail. As she crouched and reached out to touch his brow, a shot rang out and she felt burning pain as a .44 bullet tore through the palm of her clawed hand.

When MacCready stepped back through the shattered glass, he was terrifying to behold: blood steamed down his face from a multitude of lacerations, and his cerulean eyes were a promise of death, “You can’t have him.”

The glowing one rose to her feet, turned up the heat and sent out another blast of energy. MacCready suddenly found himself in the midst of revived, legless ferals. They pulled themselves after him, snarling. Dodging, he continued his assault on their mistress but found that her radiation was both acting as a shield as well as healing any damage he managed to inflict. He was getting dangerously close to cursing loudly.

“MACCREADY, GET OUT OF THE WAY!” Fahrenheit had returned to the balcony, this time armed with a minigun.

Even as the gun began its spin up, Radiance decided to make a tactical retreat. Sending out a psionic call, she dashed back into the Third Rail with her few remaining minions trailing behind.

……

“Hey, Glory; think fast!”

The Railroad heavy easily caught the beer that Wraith tossed to her. “It’s cold! Where’d you get this?”

Wraith set a cooler on the floor and pulled a chair up next to where the synth was sitting, “I’ve a buddy in Goodneighbor.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

Wraith held up another and gently rocked it back and forth in Tinker Tom’s direction, “TT, come have a brewski with us!”

The Railroad engineer’s eyes lit up and he quickly walked over to them, holding both his hands up toward the booze the entire way, “Oooh, presents!” He took a swig and made several, almost inappropriate, noises of appreciation. “Well, don’t that beat all?” He smiled down at her, “Where’ve you been, Whisper? We missed you.”

She did a quick survey of the room, “Doc told me that Deacon needed some time and Hancock had mentioned a friend of his needed work so I’ve been dragging this kid around with me while I do Minutemen stuff. I see my partner isn’t here resting, like he’s supposed to be.”

Glory made an indelicate noise, “Nope. Though if Carrington catches him out, working with that injury…”

“Doc’s just itchin’ for an excuse to holler at our boy D.”

“You called?” With an almost imperceptible limp, Deacon, dressed in Gunner camo, crossed the room from the backdoor tunnel and leaned rather heavily on the center map table. He set down the sniper rifle he’d been carrying and frowned at the three of them, “Doing some day drinking, are we?”

Wraith flashed him a bright smile, “It’s gotta be five o’clock somewhere.”

“Yeah, D! Don’t be such an old lady, man.”

“You know, I briefly was an old-lady man. It worked out pretty well too.”

Glory laughed, “I admit that was a good one. No one ever suspects a little old woman. I’m surprised you didn’t keep her going longer.”

“It was hard on th’ back.”

Wraith popped her chin at his gun, “What have you been up to?”

“Now that I know that lift is stable, it’s a great spot for… observation.”

“I think someone had told me that area was a good spot for a sniper.”

“Well, whoever that mysterious stranger was they sure were brilliant as well as handsome.” He felt a flutter in his chest when Wraith smirked while giving him a toe to crown look of appraisal. She smiled into her beer and blushed slightly when she saw that he caught her and this in turn caused all matter of mental alarm bells to start shrieking at him.

NOT GOOD! VERY BAD! STOP FLIRTING!

“So what brings you in today? You want me back on deck, huh?”

“Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Yup! Fit as a fiddle.”

Glory rocked her beer back and forth at him, “That’s not what Carrington said.”

“Pfft, Carrington… I’ll have you know that I went to Amari for a second opinion and she said ‘Deacon, please leave. You are underfoot and I am too busy.’”

Wraith laughed, “You were probably in Goodneighbor the same time I was.” She paused for a second when she saw Deacon’s brow twitch. “Actually I came to let you know that I need more time. Desdemona says there’s nothing for us right now and this kid, MacCready, I think he might really need my help.”

“Yeah. Help. Right.” Deacon shouldered his rifle and turned brusquely away, “I’m going to report to Dez. See you ‘round, Whisper.”

Tom patted Wraith on the back, “Don’t take it to heart; he’s just sore he has to share you.”

……

The Minutemen had made it to Goodneighbor in record time. A temporary field hospital had been erected and several of the Dragoons, wielding Gatling guns, were stationed in and around the Third Rail. Hancock was still unconscious and MacCready was holding one of the ghoul’s hands while a medic worked on the lacerations on his face.

“You shouldn’t have to worry about scarring. The derma-fuse works really well on glass cuts like these.”

MacCready mumbled his thanks, his eyes on Hancock.

The medic tried to reassure him, “Dr. Amari says his brain looks no worse than usual… erm… I’ll make sure you have a dose of Radaway…”

“No need,” Magnolia interrupted, “he’s the Mayor’s boyfriend. I’m sure he’s on a suppressive dose of Rad-X.”

MacCready chuckled, “That’s really funny, actually.” Then, when he realized the medic hadn’t gotten the joke he rolled his eyes, “She’s kidding. Yes, I need a bag of Radaway.”

Magnolia was wearing a neck brace and had dark circles under her eyes. She sat on the ghoul’s opposite side and took his other hand in hers.

“You’re not scared of him?”

She frowned at him, “Of course not.” She smiled tenderly down at the sleeping mayor, “I owe Hancock my life. He’s protected me here for years, and I know he would never hurt me willingly.” Her face hardened, “Am I crazy or did that wretched hag go for him specifically?”

“That’s what it looked like to me. I think this whole attack was meant to secure him.”

“Why?” Fahrenheit had ducked under the tent flap and stood at the foot of Hancock’s gurney. She looked tired and worried, and it carried in her voice, “Also, no Wraith? Why would Radiance come here herself without her strongest piece? It’s a move that makes no sense.”

“Not everything is chess.” MacCready had a warning in his voice, “Wraith isn’t a queen and we aren’t all pawns!”

“I never said you were all pawns; Hancock is at the very least a knight.”

“THIS ISN’T A GAME!”

“Uuhhg, MacCready, are you yellin’ some more?” Hancock made a halfhearted attempt to sit up before collapsing back onto his pillow, “Someone catch the brand on the brahmin that stamped my head last night?”

MacCready, all but sobbing in relief, embraced the ghoul and kissed him soundly, “I had to shoot you with the syringer. It scared the sh… crap out of me!”

“You shot me? Why?” He brought a scarred hand to his forehead, massaging it as he tried to remember, “What happened? How long was I out? I remember I was holding Curtis… damn. Everything’s all backwards.”

“You’ve been unconscious for about four hours. Radiance came up through the Blue Line into the Rail. We all seem to agree that she intended to leave with you.”

“I saw Wraith!” Hancock sat up quickly, his headache momentarily forgotten, “It was just a flash but…”

“What do you mean? She was here?!” MacCready stood up and made as if to leave the tent.

Hancock waved him back down, “No. No, I saw her in… she was someplace dark… her eyes… I think I saw her when the glowing one had me.” He shook his head, wincing, “That sounds crazy, even for me.” He gave MacCready a wan smile, “I’m sorry I’m no help…”

“What does she want with you? What does she want with Wraith?” Frustration gave an edge to Fahrenheit’s voice, “If we could figure out what the hell her endgame is, we could make a more efficient counterstrategy. Wraith is in the dark? Well, so are we!”

Hancock nodded, “We need to be proactive and not reactive. Right. Call Curie. She might want adjust the dosage on Pistol Whipped and I want to brainstorm with Nicky so better call him too. Oh, and give me the names of all my people who didn’t make it or are still feral.”

……

“Are you trying to sneak up on me, Whisper?”

“Well, kinda.” Wraith sat cross-legged next to Deacon. She had gone to Railroad HQ in search of him only to find that her partner was once again AWOL. The broken freeway was the next place she checked.

“Trying to impress me?”

She stuck out her lower lip and dipped her chin, “Yeah.”

Her admission surprised him as well as stoked his ego, “Well, I’m sure with a little more practice you’ll be half again as good as me.”

She laughed, “Thanks, teach. I love what you’ve done with the place, by the way.”

Deacon had set up a small lean-to on the upper level, tagged with the railsign for “cash”, “Yeah, I’m glad I found it.” He had brought up a beach lounger and now, in an attempt to appear casual, leaned back with his arms folded behind his head, “So, what’s up?”

“I’ve gotten a really good lead on Shaun…” She paused when Deacon abruptly sat up and leaned toward her, “Hancock and I are going to look for an Institute scientist… in the Glowing Sea…”

“The Glowing…” He didn’t even bother to hide the concern on his face, “You’re taking Hancock?”

“Yeah, well, he’s…” She floundered, looking for the right words, “a ghoul.” she finished, lamely.

“He’s also not exactly Mr. Dependable.”

I should not be this jealous!

“I don’t know, Deacon; he’s been really supportive and helpful. He’s a good friend. Besides, I know how much you hate power armor. I promise I’ll share any information I get with you and Dez.”

“My hip is all healed, Whisper. I want you to know that you can depend on me too.”

Shut up! Shut up, shut up shutyourstupidmouthyoumoron!

Wraith’s forehead creased and she leaned away from him, “Oh, no! It’s not that! Hancock was with Valentine and me… he asked to go. I know I can count on you. Really!”

“Regardless of power armor, I would have gone with you to the end, into the very fires of Mordor.”

Wraith sputtered for a moment before tilting her head back and laughing, “That was just perfect! You know, I think you and Hancock would get along really well if you tried. You both like the same books, apparently.”

……

Infamy watched Radiance leave with an escort of ferals. Having firmly established where the other glowing one’s limit of irresistible influence was, Atom’s Assassin hid in the caves the host was occupying; waiting for just such an opportunity. With most of the ferals left to wander freely throughout the expansive catacombs, Wraith’s guard consisted of only one bloated glowing one and a few reavers.

“If I can pull you away…” At war with themselves, the ghoul couldn’t decide if they were there to try and rescue Wraith, or destroy her. “Hmm, what would Atom do?”

Pushing their will onto the reavers, they caused them to swarm the bloated one until the assassin could put their knife through its eye. As they turned back to Wraith they jumped involuntarily because she had stood up and begun to growl.

“You’ve smelled better, Sister Wraith.” Another choice popped into their head, “Or… you could be mine. Perhaps the Mother has chosen you to be a harbinger for Infamy!” They cackled wildly in excitement, “Ha! Ha haha! Hmm, mustn’t get carried away, now. First things first…” Filled with narcissistic confidence, they sent a blast of psionic energy at Wraith’s mind. Fully expecting her to be knocked off her feet, they were shocked and irritated when they hit a solid mental wall. “What is this? We should be well outside of mommy’s range!”

Wraith flexed her hands menacingly as her growl deepened and grew louder. Then with shocking speed she sprinted for Infamy. When the ghoul tried to sidestep away, she anticipated the movement and hit them with backhand that nearly sent them across the room. Recovering quickly, the glowing one sent their captive reavers to trip her up, giving them time to put more distance between them. Strangely, Wraith didn’t kill the attacking ferals but only pushed them down and away.

“Hmm. Mommy doesn’t want you to kill your siblings, ey? Well, that works for me. Let’s see if we can’t tear down that wall, hmm?”

For several long moments the group danced back and forth across the rocky floor. Wraith seemed tireless and occasionally she would knock the ferals down long enough to attack Infamy. Regretting having destroyed the bloated glowing one, the assassin found that their utter lack of progress was filling them with fear. It dawned on them that without the reavers, they may have already been killed.

“Damn you!” They hissed, “Damn you, you beast!”

Suddenly the ferals and Wraith looked up at the cavern ceiling and froze. They stood motionless for a few moments before they all started snarling. Then, Wraith put her hands up to either side of her helmet and cried out. Still clutching her head, she stepped away from the reavers and began groaning what sounded like a name. Infamy edged closer to try and hear.

“Hann… Hn… Han.. Hancock…”

……

“Remember, Wraith’s appearance will most likely have changed and she will undoubtedly attack us. Do your best to evade and aid MacCready in lining up his shot. If injured, fall back immediately! We cannot afford a bottleneck or blockage that may prevent access to the cages.” Danse took a deep breath, “Do not exit your power armor for any reason! Assume the radiation levels to be at lethal levels throughout the vault. You few have been chosen for your exceptional levelheadedness and steady aim. If spotted, you are to shoot the glowing one known as Radiance on sight. Do not hesitate, and shoot to terminate. There isn’t a soul here who hasn’t been saved or comforted by Wraith. Now, ARE YOU READY TO RETURN THE FAVOR? ARE YOU READY TO SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH’S SAVIOUR?!”

“WE ARE READY!”

“COMMONWEALTH HEAVY DRAGOONS, ADVANCE!”

After much deliberation and investigation it had been decided that Vault 88 was the most likely location of Radiance’s stronghold. A large Minutemen battalion, arrow headed by a small taskforce of the Dragoons, MacCready and Strong, led by Danse, stood just beyond the rim of Quincy Quarries finalizing the plan of attack. However, the operation was as much recon as it was rescue, due to the simple fact that there wasn’t a way to enter the vault without one’s presence known to the possible hostel force within.

Hancock had been furious when MacCready had told him to remain in Goodneighbor, “Like hell I’m going to sit at my bar while all of you are out here…”

“If I have to shoot you again, I will!”

A compromise was reached when Hancock agreed to hang back with the main force. Though, he watched the preparations like a hawk and made several of the Minutemen nervous. And he wasn’t the only one. Strong had taken to pacing back and forth through the encampment, swinging his super sledge, Smashy, while muttering murderous things to himself.

Hancock stood next to Preston with his arms crossed, tapping his foot irritably as Danse’s group disappeared into the cave that led to the vault’s entryway, “Not a bad speech. We sure nine of ‘em are going to be enough?”

Preston frowned at him, “Nine? There were only eight assigned including Strong.”

“Well, I know I have fewer brain cells than when I was a smoothskin, but I can still fucking count! There were eight suits!”

……

She could feel something. Something that wasn’t Radiance. Her mistress’s light shown so bright in her mind that normally that’s all that there was. But now, there was a smaller light. It annoyed her. Like the incessant whine of a mosquito just outside your window. You know that it can’t get in, but your skin crawls nonetheless.

She growled at it. It persisted.

She pushed it down and threw it away from her. It persisted.

She could feel something. And there was now a crack in her shield.

……

Infamy was furious.

They had fallen back when it became apparent that Wraith couldn’t be obtained by head-on force and when Radiance returned, they had found themselves a protected nook just outside of the danger zone. There they meditated: focusing all of their will onto one spot in Wraith’s protective barrier. And just when it seemed that they had a breakthrough, Danse’s team came stomping by.

“Never a moment’s peace!” They pulled their hood close and dimmed their light as much as possible to avoid being spotted. “So close. Well, I can’t follow them… we will see how this plays out. Dammit.”

……

The ferals seemed endless as Radiance sent wave after wave at the Dragoons. Because she had sentry ferals posted at the entrance, her response had been almost instantaneous. The group was equipped with rifles rather than Gatling guns to avoid accidentally mistaking Wraith for an enemy and mowing her down. MacCready hung back, spotting for them as much as possible in the near darkness, grinding his teeth in anxious frustration. Strong repeatedly called for Wraith, the desperate cries for his alpha echoed throughout the vault. Though it adding to the bedlam, no one shushed him.

The suits of Danse’s team were modded for melee and with Strong clearing multiple enemies with each great sweep of his hammer, conserving ammunition wasn’t their highest priority. As such they initially pushed forward with relative ease.

Well past the area that had been developed for settlers, the floor’s slope angle pitched sharply and as the taskforce descended their Geiger-counters began to tick with increasing rhythm.

Danse checked the map on his integrated Pip-Boy, “There’s a large, open area coming up. Don’t let them flank you.”

The tunnel banked ahead of them and the group could see an ominous glow from the chamber beyond. Rounding the corner they fanned out across the entrance in the face of a sea of powerful feral ghouls.

“STRONG SMELLS ALPHA!”

As if on cue, a group of charred and bloated glowing ones separated from the main host and rushed the taskforce. All but unseen, Wraith was in the center and using the brutal attack as a screen, she slipped behind the group and started ejecting cores. She got through half of them before they even realized she was there. Once she pulled MacCready’s core she threw it into the middle of the chamber, and as if it was a signal, the rest of the feral mob began its swift advance.

They hit the group hard. Not anticipating the loss of fusion cores was a crippling oversight. Literally. There was some attempt to close ranks as they fought to put a wall at their back. Danse, having more experience maneuvering in depleted cores than most, called out encouragement and direction as he reduced feral after feral into green goo with his plasma rifle.

Strong left the group; foraging ahead in an attempt to locate Radiance. Less concerned about securing Wraith, his goal was to kill the glowing one who had taken her away.

Wraith’s appearance was shocking: her fast-growing hair was already long enough to protrude from her helmet in a filth-ridden fringe and her once silver-grey armor was blackened by blood, offal and fire. Snarling viscously, she turned back to MacCready after throwing his core and hit him in the back of the knee before leaping into the air and double kicking him in the chest. As he crashed to the ground she straddled his breastplate and punched him repeatedly in the helmet.

Bringing his arms up to shield his head was all MacCready could manage, stunned and low-powered as he was. He had no way of engaging the tesla field now that his fusion core had been ejected and no hope of throwing her off let alone righting himself. As she swatted his defense away, his vision blurred and the metallic taste of his own blood blossomed on his tongue, an image of Duncan flashed in his mind.

Suddenly, Wraith was whisked away as a taskforce member grabbed her from behind and lifted her off of him, “MACCREADY, GET UP!” They struggled mightily with her as she braced her feet on their breastplate and tried to kick off. When it became apparent she couldn’t free herself that way she tried slamming the back of her head into their helmet. Shock caused them to loosen their grip enough for her to free her arms and she began pounding on theirs. Realizing that they could potentially kill her if they held on any tighter, they took her to the nearest corner and dropped her in it.

Her retaliation was savage. However, the team member still had their core and so was able to block her lower leg and knee attacks. Even as she rolled between their legs, they turned quickly enough to prevent her from ejecting their core. Adapting quickly, she leaped, grabbed their gorget and used the leverage to pull herself up and onto their shoulders. Hooking her fingers underneath the edge of their helm, she tried to remove it; pulling and twisting as if trying to unscrew the lid on a particularly stubborn jar of pickles. They reached up to grab her but she grabbed their arm instead. Then, throwing herself toward the ground, she was able to pull them off balance enough to cartwheel them over her and send them crashing to the cavern floor in an unceremonious heap.

I’M LOSING! I’M IN POWER ARMOR AND SHE’S GONNA KILL ME! FIGHTING WAS A POOR CHOICE!

“PIPPA,” her name ripped from him in anguished desperation, “PLEASE!”

She stopped mid-charge. She tilted her head slightly then brought her bloodied hands up and briefly rested her fingertips against her temples before slowly lifting her helmet.

“Oh… oh, no.”

Her face was greatly emaciated and she had large, deep scabs where her helm had rubbed her skin away. Her sunken eyes, made all the more pronounced by her now jutting cheekbones, were missing their normal inner light and flickered back in forth as she searched for something recognizable in the armored figure before her.

“Pippa, it’s me. I…” he choked on a sob, “I came back.”

“De… Deac…” Wraith stopped and crumpled to the ground; a syringe of tranquilizer protruding from the back of her neck.

……

Radiance’s self-preservation had won out. Retreating further into the connecting maze of sewer and metro tunnels, she was escorted by a dwindling pack of her ferals. Strong had got her in his sights and was on her like a bloodhound. Taskforce team members had made attempts to call him back but to no avail.

“Leave him be.” Danse waved their concerns away, “Let us hope, for Wraith’s sake, that he is more than up to the task.”

MacCready carried Wraith out of the vault but hesitated when it came to putting her in a cage, “I know I said this was a good idea…”

“If she wakes up and you’re still holding her she’ll tear your head off.” Deacon’s eyes were red rimed and there wasn’t a trace of his normal humor in his voice, “Put her in the cage or give her to me and I’ll do it.”

“You don’t get to touch her.” MacCready stared him down, “You. Left. Her.”

Hancock, unchecked tears streaming down his scarred cheeks, held his arms out, “Let me. I want to hold her first anyway.” He kissed her forehead and gripped her tightly to his chest, “It’s alright now, sunshine. She… she don’t hardly weigh nothin’.” His legs gave out and he collapsed to the earth; rocking her back and forth, sobbing.

Once secured in a cage, they used brahmin and moved Wraith to the basement of the former Peabody home. Now a fully equipped Minutemen safe house, it was far enough from settlements they were somewhat less concerned if Radiance was able to evade Strong and launch a counter assault.

Curie, with Piper acting as nurse, carefully cut Wraith out of her armor and bathed her. All the while making sad little gasps and sighs at her sores and how terribly bony she was.

“Oh, Blue…”

Curie hooked her up to IV fluids and was able to get a few bags into her before she woke up. Naturally, the first thing Wraith did was to pull the catheter from her arm and throw it away from her.

“Oh, Madame! Why must you always pull out my lines?!”

Wraith, her eyes wild and unfocused, snarled at her and rushed the bars. She pulled on them experimentally to the point where the metal groaned in protest, but when they proved immovable she stepped back and stood in the center of her cage. Her eyes dulled and she was motionless except for the occasional owlish blink.

Over the next several days her friends came to see her and each time a new person came into the room she would hiss, snarl and try the bars. The exception seemed to be Hancock. Instead of her usual violence, she tilted her head back and forth as if she was trying to see him better. She wouldn’t move closer to him nor let him touch her and MacCready yelled at him for putting his hand in her cage to try.

The only one who hadn’t been in to see her was Deacon. He had disappeared soon after Wraith was secured. Hancock was surprised and a little disappointed and MacCready felt guilty. The sharpshooter wondered aloud if his outburst had “run him off”.

“I doubt it. He’s gotta be skulking around here someplace. Heh, now he’s back we’re never gonna be fully rid of him, you feel me?”

Deacon hadn’t been by because he was hunting. Harkness’s report had contained a description of Infamy and unfortunately for the ghoul, Deacon placed 90% of Wraith’s condition squarely on their narrow shoulders. He had spotted them in the caverns of Vault 88 and again when they followed the rescue team to the safe house. He lost track of them soon after but now he stalked the haunted ruins of Quincy like a vengeful ghost.

Infamy was torn. They had very much wanted to follow Radiance but knew that, lacking the strength to resist her, they’d end up much the same as Wraith. They had followed the rescue caravan with no clear intention and retreated to the Quincy ruins to meditate. They settled themselves in the church there for some serious introspection. It dawned on them that they may have slipped from Atom’s path and been following the light of their own hubris instead, “Mustn’t stray like Marie did. Oh, no! Who is Wraith to you, hmm? Should I save her? Should I kill her? Hahahahaha!”

“Laugh while you can.” Deacon’s disembodied voice reached the ghoul a half second before his knife did. Although buried to the hilt, the strike pierced their bicep and wasn’t intended to be a killing blow. He wanted them to hurt.

Infamy instantly cranked up the heat and sent out a blast of radiation. This in turn caused Deacon’s Stealth Boy to malfunction and he phased back into view on his next attack which allowed Infamy to dodge. Dressed in a hazmat suit, he pursued them out the doors and into the street, taking several shots at them as they ducked into Guns Guns Guns, and cursing softly when he missed. Fully expecting an ambush, he ran in after them anyway. He blocked their knife attack with his own blade and shot them point blank in the shoulder. They sent out another blast that staggered him backward and pushed him off his feet. Rolling sideways, he tried to shoot them from the ground but his pistol misfired.

“Oh, what’s wrong? A little radiation got you down? Toy doesn’t work? Too bad.” They threw a knife and exalted when it stuck in Deacon’s blocking arm, “Should know better than to bring a gun to a knife fight!”

Their victory was short lived. Deacon pulled their weapon from his forearm as he vaulted to his feet and threw it right back at them. Using it as a distraction, he closed the distance between them. Easily ducking under their knife swing he slammed his fist into their ribs. They flinched backward, bringing a knee up before stomping down toward their opponent’s foot causing him to involuntarily back away.

Deacon knew he only had a few seconds before the glowing one could hit him with another pulse and he wanted to capitalize on the delay by staying close and inflicting as much damage, without killing them, as possible. As such he appeared to step into the ghoul’s roundhouse, but in a blur of fluid motion, blocked their hand down and brought the back of his hand back up and into their chin. Hard. This resulted in two things: one, their teeth to sliced into their tongue and two, they decided they didn’t want to fight him anymore.

“I gggan haave her!” Their irradiated blood flowed freely from their mouth and they could hardly speak around the ruin of their tongue, “I gan ring her ack.”

……

“ABSOLUTLY NOT!”

“NOT ON YOUR LIFE!”

“SHUT THE HELL UP!”

Danse, Preston and MacCready’s protests overlapped as they shouted at Deacon. The Railroad agent sighed and turned to Hancock, his pale blue eyes pleading.

“I think I want to stab them in the neck more than I want to…” he turned to face the glowing one directly, “How many goddamn people have you fucked over to mess with Wraith?!” He pointed at Danse, “You see him? He’s a friend of mine and you shot him in the fuckin’ face!”

Infamy’s mouth had already healed and they pouted like a child being scolded, “Oh, poo. It’s no fun to have your failures thrown back at you. Besides, I didn’t actually pull that trigger…”

Danse leveled his plasma rifle at them, “Yes, well, you damn well better believe I’ll pull this one.”

Deacon held up his hands and boldly stepped between them, “Whoa there, big dragon. We all know how tough you are.” He brought his palms together as if praying, “This could be the only way to undo what Radiance did to her. I want my friend back.” He swept his hands out to either side, including all of them, “Don’t you fellas want her back?”

Danse looked at the bandage on his arm and lowered his gun. “For the last time; it’s ‘Dragoons’. And of course we want her back. The entire commonwealth wants her back, but we have no guarantee that this villain will actually help her. There is no promise they can make that I will trust.”

“I am but a humble servant of Atom. If it is His divine will that Wraith be spared…”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear it.” MacCready put his hand on Hancock’s chest, “I can’t listen to this crap anymore. I’m gonna go and feed her and relieve the girls. Whatever you decide, I’ll follow.” He glared at Infamy as he left the room.

The ensuing argument gained volume when Piper and Curie joined in and lasted for the better part of an hour. Curie’s sticking point centered on whether or not they would be able to get an accurate reading from a memory lounger if Wraith was doped out of her mind on chems.

“We simply must learn the extent of any and all damage to her brain!”

Piper had her face in her hands, “Yeah, doc, but how are we going to do that if she’s trying to kill us the whole time?”

“I don’t want to see her strapped down, but…”

“Hell no, Garvey,” Hancock folded his arms, “the cage is bad enough.”

In the end no real decision was made beyond incarcerating Infamy and shelving the argument until Dr. Amari arrived. They radioed Fahrenheit to ask that the doctor join them and locked Atom’s Assassin in the spare cage in an outbuilding. Afterward each went to their separate corners to stew.

“Shaved th’ beard but you haven’t changed your mug yet.” Determined to not let him sneak away again, Hancock had followed Deacon outside.

“My guy’s in Boston. Hadn’t worked out a new one yet.”

“Sunglasses are off, yet yer still lying.” The ghoul took a long drag on his cigarette and blew an exceptionally large smoke ring at him, “I’m thinking you can’t bring yourself to do it.”

Deacon folded his arms and forced a smile that would have been convincing if it had reached his eyes, “Oh? Is that right? So tell me, oh enlightened one, why that is.”

He brought his hand up, index finger extended, to eye level and then slowly tilted his finger down and out to point at him, “That face belongs to someone that Wraith loves.”

Hancock might as well have shot him in the heart. He stood shocked into speechlessness.

“Now, I see that got ya.” Hancock’s eyes softened, “Things been different… well, they ain’t. You screwed yourself, son. But if she loves ya, there must be something good about ya. I gave Danse a chance and I gotta say I kinda love that kid.” He flicked his cigarette away, buffed his fingernails on his waistcoat and examined them as he continued, “You’re an asshole, but I’ll put up with ya for her sake.” He slowly brought out his knife and started juggling it; rotating and spinning around and through his fingers expertly, “You need to go and see her. Don’t try to run away again. I’ll find ya.”

Deacon stood outside on the small lawn while the sun went down. He remained until the lights in the house had been extinguished and he could hear the various snores and sighs of Wraith’s sleeping friends. He turned to leave but on his third step he stopped.

There was a lantern in the corner of the basement. Its low light cast a warm glow on the cold steel of Wraith’s cage. She had been lying in the nest of blankets she had made on the mattress they gave her, but stood up when she heard Deacon come down the stairs. She didn’t rush the now slightly bent bars, but stood and tilted her head back and forth much the same way that she did for Hancock. The bath and a few days of heartier food and clean water had done her some small amount of good and she no longer looked undead. He stared at her hair; now just long enough to curl, it appeared bronze when a ringlet caught the light.

“It’s almost like it was when you came up…” He stopped and swallowed hard before trying again, “I hate that you love me. I hate that I allowed myself to fall in love with you. I hate that I left the lean-to up on purpose, knowing that you’d find it. Knowing that you were smart enough to know what it meant. So that even though we loved each other, we would never be together. Because, how could you forgive me? But..” His breath caught as he sobbed and tears ran freely down his cheeks, “but… you did. You did. But now things were different. You thought that the tension between us was a lie. You thought that any minor flirting comment I made was just… another kind of lie. That I never imagined kissing you freely or holding you in my arms because, we were ‘just friends’. That I winced when we touched because I had Haphephobia, and not just because that I cannot allow myself to enjoy it.” He sat on the floor next to the cage and reached out to her, “Pippa, please hold my hand.”

She flinched when he said her name. And after blinking rapidly for a few minutes she open and closed her fists and then sat down facing him. She came no closer but her eyes we fixed on the bandage poking out from his sleeve.

“I thought that if I left I would stop thinking about you. But, it turns out I lie to myself more than I lie to anyone else. Harkness told me to retire, but if I can’t have you and I don’t have work then I have nothing.” He sighed deeply, climbed slowly to his feet and headed for the stairs, “Hancock was right; I screwed everything up.”

“De…”

At first he wasn’t sure he had heard her and when he turned back she was still sitting on the floor and staring at where he had been sitting, “Wishful thinking…”

“Don’t… leave...” She lifted her chin and met his eye, “Deacon… don’t… leave… me.”

......

Thank you so much for reading! Like what you read? Looking for more? Please see my master link post: pinned or under the tag Wraith in the Ruins. My ask is open for any questions/concerns/comments and I would love to hear from you. =^..^=

#wraith in the ruins #fallout 4 #fallout companions #fallout fanfic #fallout fan fic #fanfiction #hancock #john hancock #rj maccready #maccready #deacon #danse #curie #preston garvey #strong #piper wright

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tammemahl · 2 years

Text

A man of a sooty nature, a gecko and a James

“The machine sounds rather like a horse with tap shoes on its feet”, pondered James. He wasn’t far off, the mechanical clicks and clacks did sound like a well-oiled dance number performed by someone with more legs than two but less than seven. While some might interpret it as a modern drum solo, James went the tap dancing horse route. It was just that kind of day, he supposed. Picking up his bucket of tools, James moved on to the next unit. Check the gauges, wiggle the knobs to check their tension, write down the numbers on the displays. The routine was clear and well practiced, like an expertly performed tap dance by a horse. After all, he had already done it 17 times in the past hour. James was no stranger to The Machine. They had a professional sort of relationship- James would oil a knob and The Machine would pump out a few appreciative clacks. Some days James would almost call them friends, but The Machine had tried to take his belt a few days ago, so their relationship had recently soured.

It was during his 19nth unit, that something rather strange happened. While writing down 1938 from a display and remembering that this was the year that World War II had really started, James noticed something peculiar. Or someone peculiar, for that matter. It was a small man, about the size of a scrawny cat who had missed a few meals due to chasing the neighbourhood crows, with a sooty face, a nice but very tiny three piece suit and bulging eyes. The small man was looking at James from behind the sixth knob on the left. “Hello” said James, because his mother had taught him manners and he thought himself to be a gentleman. “Your shirt has a stain on it” said the sooty fellow. James thought it to be rather insulting that the man would not answer his polite greeting and instead pointed out an imperfection in his outfit. “Well I do work with The Machine and she’s in a mood today. Sneezed a bit of oil on me in the third unit.” “Why haven’t you changed your shirt then?” James did not like the tone of the man, it was how a Kebab place would answer after you had asked for no pickles, a surprised yet disapproving sort of voice. “Haven’t had the time I suppose.” The sooty fellow had nothing to answer to that. After all, James was payed by the unit, everyone knew that. And he had to get home to his Gecko Steven, who was waiting for his daily worm. While all this was happening, Steven licked his eyeball in a delicate manner, and continued a rather nice daydream about sandy beaches in Brighton. Brighton famously has no sandy beaches but Steven did not know that, because he was only a gecko and James had no heart to tell him otherwise.

Back next to The Machine, they stood in silence for a moment. There wasn’t much to say. James considered himself too polite to mention the man's sooty appearance or his choice of residence behind the sixth knob on the left or eight from the right, depending where you start counting from. The sooty man had nothing else to comment on either because James was well-kept in other aspects, his hair neat and pocket square aligned. While it was unusual to wear a pocket square in this field of work, the sooty resident didn’t want to discourage James, it was nice to see someone take this work with pride and an untimely comment could hurt his newfound acquaintances self image.

“Well, I must be off, those knobs at unit 21 aren’t going to tighten themselves!” James exclaimed with the same tone as a father slaps his knee and says “Off to work to put bread on the table!”. “I suppose they aren’t.” The knobs at unit 21 were notoriously loose, especially when the moon was full. The main theory was that they believed in astrology. While some speculated werewolves, astrology was the more prominent theory. A polite nod was exchanged and both of them continued on with their previous activities. The sooty man went back to a game of chess he had abandoned due to the sudden exchange and James went on to unit 20. He rather liked unit 20, the displays there always shined nicely in greeting and James, as always, tipped his hat to them. “Good evening dears.” He was, after all, a gentleman, and a nice greeting such as 3 displays shining should never go without a response. The display read ‘1768’ and James remembered with pride that it was the year when Turkey declared war on Russia. It was a great victory for Russia, all should remember that, one that certified Catherine as the true heir of Russia. And while all this was happening, Steven had moved on from his daydream of Brighton onto one about the sunlight in Manchester. It rarely shines in Manchester, but Steven doesn’t know that because he is only a gecko and has a relatively weak grasp on the specifics of geography. Steven licks his eyeball in a pondering manner. “Mm, worms.”

#creative writing #funny?#once again #i hope so #gecko #hitting all the marks #terry pratchett #weird #so...so very weird

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officialtitties · 7 years

Text

flashvibe/barriscowest one shot; ‘adjusting’

author: @officialtitties aka @lysswrites // (allie)

beta’d: first like 2 thirds were beta’d by @spidergweb (kait). she is so amazing!! thank you so much buddy!! you have been an immense help

summary: Cisco starts noticing some things that are off about Barry. AKA A season 3 AU, in which, barriscowest was canon in the original timeline, and Dante died in both timelines.

notes: the first in a series of connected barriscowest one shots. !! will post on ao3 when it’s been Refined more lmao (i.e edited not at 4am)

tags & triggers: implied self harm (so subtle you might miss it), angst, polyamory, flashvibe, barriscowest

wordcount: 2037

Things seem normal to begin with (Or, at least... as normal as they can be given Dante’s death) but the more Cisco interacts with Barry, the more consciously he begins to notice something is off.

It’s little things, mostly.

Like the first day Barry doesn’t have to go to work since moving in.

He makes his usual ‘guilt breakfast’ (as Cisco has to come to think of it). He attempts some clearly too-cheerful conversation. And, when the part comes that he’d usually zip off to work he turns.... speechless.

Barry’s mouth opens. Then shuts. Clearly lost for words, he compensates with a forced smile, stammering out some long-winded story about charging his phone, and flashes into his room.

Cisco’d have chalked it up to Barry being Barry if it wasn’t for the fact that he could see his charger on the kitchen bench from where he was sitting.

He considers that something is wrong again about two weeks later. Barry has just made a confession to the entirety of Team Flash: he created an alternate timeline. He went decades back in time and fucked up their world, but not for him. Not for him even though he begged and cried, and has been grieving inconsolably for almost a year. He is beside himself with hurt and confusion.

Cisco is pretty confident in expecting to get home to Barry holed up in his room, not anywhere that Cisco has to deal with him. However, he opens the door to a gush of wind so strong, the flowers by the door wilt at its mercy.

There are a pair of scissors cluttering in the sink, and fresh finger-prints on the stainless steel.

All too conveniently, Barry is nowhere in sight.

Cisco’s knuckles curl white, and his tense frame all-but-marches over to the door of Barry’s room. However, before Cisco can even contemplate which of Barry’s possessions would make the most lasting bruise if thrown angrily in his general direction, he realises Barry has left the apartment completely.

Barry’s eager avoidance is practically expected in the face of him telling Cisco about flashpoint.

But in all honesty, even if there was something a little un-barry-like about the rushed exit. Cisco’s too angry to care.

Their apartment feels empty.

Even emptier than it already felt when Cisco didn’t know why Barry was avoiding him.

It seems that whenever Cisco’s there, Barry’s not.

And though it is with out a doubt what Cisco asked for ("Barry I just need you to give me space, okay? A lot of it. Like a ‘take-notes-from-the-lightyears-of-space-stars-give-each-other’ amount of space.”), there’s a part of him that’s just tired with being angry.

So when Cisco takes a step at reconciliation, bringing up one of their in-jokes about cell-structure as he chews avidly on a gummy worm, and is met with a scrunched brow...

Well, he’s disappointed to say the least.

What should have been a huge victory for them only reminds Cisco of every reason he is mad at Barry in the first place.

An awkwardness lingers tangibly between them, as Barry realises what’s just happened. Before he can correct himself, however, Cisco up and leaves with a dismissive shake of his head.

They don’t talk for a while after that.

At least, not in a way that inspires any sort of insight into Barry’s side of things. Cisco thinks he’s done a good job at making how he feels about hearing it pretty damn clear.

But, they do see each other.

With their line of work, not to mention their living situation, it’s sort of unavoidable.

Barry hovers around him like he’s walking on egg shells. Constantly looking over to him, trying to gauge his reaction. He’s always looking to test the waters: trying to toe the line between not breaking boundaries, and not unnecessarily distancing himself from Cisco.

And despite the big part of Cisco that just wants to push Barry away, there’s a bigger part that wears down, feels like its breaking every time he does.

Even before they go out into the field, and Vibe only arrives in time to see Flash get two major organs kebabed, Cisco knew that the time for holding grudges was long past.

It takes half a second to portal them back to Star Labs.

But Barry’s already so pale, and losing a lot of blood very quickly.

He watches as Iris holds Barry’s hand, and Caitlin pulls a rusty steel bar out from his stomach.

Cisco’s chest is tight, like he can’t breathe.

He’s only just decided he’s ready to forgive Barry, and now what? He might not ever get to? In what universe is that fair?

He watches Barry writhe and sweat, eventually blacking out from the pain.

When he wakes up, Cisco is sitting by his bedside, chewing gum.

Barry shifts up, already offering a tired apology, but Cisco simply shakes his head, reaching for his hand.

The acceptance goes unspoken.

There’s a croak in Barry’s voice as he breaks the tension, his lips lifting in a nervous smile “So uh- cell structure...”

Cisco’s smile copies Barry’s, reaching his eyes in a way Barry hasn’t seen since he got back.

They get a long better after that: watching movies when they should be doing work, throwing popcorn into each others’ mouths, playing Mario Kart with Iris on weekends.

Sometimes Barry will smile so wide at him, he feels his whole chest light up at the very sight.

Cisco can’t help but wonder, though, with the way Barry acts sometimes: the longing looks, the too long touches, the nightmares.

In fact, pretty much whenever Cisco's not tossing and turning himself, he can hear Barry doing the same.

***

Things come to a head one night when Cisco wakes up from a dream. It’s one of the recurring ones he’s been having lately, about a life so close to his own he knows that it probably was.

This particular one had involved Barry and Iris holding him after Dante’s funeral. They were in an unfamiliar, but oddly homey living room.

He’d been crying into Barry’s shoulder, feeling like he could barely breathe, when Iris started running her fingers through his hair, rubbing slow, comforting circles into his arm. They were only just getting him to calm down when, very jarringly, he is woken up.

Still disorientated from the dream, Cisco doesn't quite process the loud crash, and the defeated whisper of “Fuck” that follows it. Instead, he stumbles into the living room, confused. He pulls the parts of his hair that have fallen in the front of his face behind his ear, and squints his eyes a little in order to see properly.

“Barry?” He whispers.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I’m cleaning it up, you can go back to sleep.”

It’s dark, but he can hear the shakiness in Barry’s voice, and make out the large gash on the palm of his hand.

He sighs deeply, because it’s clear something is wrong. Something bigger than a once-off, middle-of-the-night freak-out.

He grabs a paper towel from their kitchenette, twirling the paper around his hand and ripping it from the roll. Then, gestures for Barry to stand up, and move away from the broken glass:

Barry closes the few steps between them, cradling his injured hand to keep from bleeding on their tile.

He can’t seem to make eye contact, but he winces slightly as Cisco presses the towel to the cut.

“What’s wrong?”

“What? Nothing. It stung a little”

“Barry. You’re crying,”

Barry shrugs dismissively at that, wincing again as his movement chafes the cut, “Okay. It stung a lot,”

Cisco raises a disbelieving brow, which Barry can’t help but smile at when he glances up. “It’s fine, it’s just... I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Since I came back.”

“Came back?”

“From flashpoint.”

Cisco can’t seem to meet his eyes at that, he just nods at the ground, “Oh”

Barry swallows, pursing his lips to stop from crying as he looks anywhere else other than in Cisco’s direction.

“Barry,”

Barry begins hurriedly wiping at his face with his good hand, rushing to correct himself. “No, I know. I know, I’m sorry.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Cisco wants to say something to make it better but there’s nothing: he’s grabbing at straws.

“C’mere,” Cisco pulls Barry against his chest, holding him tight with one arm, as his other keeps grip on his injured hand.

Barry tightens up under the close contact before falling into it.

They stay pressed together, until Barry takes a short stuttering breath and pulls away.

“You’ve vibed it, right?”

“Huh?”

“The other timeline... the original one?” Barry looks almost guilty asking.

Cisco bites his lip, “Oh... yeah. I wasn’t gonna say anything,”

“How can you look at me?”

The hint of desperation in Barry’s voice pulls Cisco’s insides into knots. His mouth forms around words, but a silence lingers just a little too long for it to be comfortable.

There’s no denying it, the innate wrongness of everything, how Cisco had wished Barry dead more than once in the heat of initially finding out what he’d done.

“I ruined everything-” Barry continues, “even if you don’t wanna be with me. You and Iris, you were so happy. And now it’s like you were never even-”

Barry cuts himself off just before his voice breaks, pressing his lips together and looking away.

“Barr, look at me”

Barry does. A little quicker than is strictly human. His eyes are heavy with something indescribable. It makes Cisco's chest ache.

Cisco presses the paper towel a little more firmly into Barry’s hand, where the cut on his palm is healing. Then, wraps his fingers around it to keep it from trembling, never breaking eye contact.

“I’m mad at you.” He deadpans, suddenly feeling like he's let go of a tonne of bricks he's been carrying around with him for months. “I’m so fucking mad at you I can hardly stand it. You made a mistake of epic proportions, and the fact that you made that mistake for you when you couldn’t make it for me... it hurts. A lot.”

Barry seems to shrink at the words, but he doesn't look away. “But... what’s done is done. You can’t keep trying to fix it, force it back how it was. And you can’t keep beating yourself up over failing at this impossible task you’ve set for yourself... You can't keep trying to restore a reality that doesn't exist anymore.”

Barry looks down again at that, ashamed.

“It’s not gonna be like it was for you,” Cisco says, because it has to be said, but with the way Barry's trying to hide how much it hurts to hear, it feels like pushing glass up his throat, “And you’re just gonna have to live with that.”

Barry nods, still not meeting Cisco's eyes. His face is wet with silent tears, and his lips are tilted upward in a forced smile.

Cisco lets up the pressure on Barry's hand, removing the napkin to see the cut is scarring.

There’s a moment of stillness between them before Cisco walks the bloody paper-towel to the bin, and Barry goes to pick up the rest of the broken glass.

Just as the conversation seems to be over, Cisco standing with his back to the kitchen in the arch of his bedroom door, and Barry quietly cleaning the rest of the broken glass shards, Cisco speaks: “It’s... different. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t still love you, Barr. You’re my best friend." Barry tenses at the last words, but manages to school his expression enough that Cisco doesn't feel like he's said something wrong. “I love you... Even when-" He cuts himself off. Then, as if reaffirming the thought, he continues, "I love you. And...”

Cisco exhales deeply, with his entire body, as if letting go of the weight of the world. “I wanna forgive you.” He says, his hand spread gently over the doorframe, “But, if we're ever gonna move past this, you’re gonna need to figure out how to forgive yourself.”

#barriscowest #flashvibe #barrisco #barry allen #cisco ramon #lysswrites #ok lmao was gon edit this more but ive had it in drafts for months just being ignored so ur gal just gonna let this boy be free #;;#writing #&&

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yatsumeunagi · 7 years

Text

Who’s Ready for Some Zombie AU?!

Hell knows we all need some borderline blatantly sexual Lollypop Chainsaw Massacre AU bc how far down the AU rabbit hole can we possibly go?!

TD:LR I miss Hide and we’re all in the feel hole so here’s something I had in my draft book.

Hide could barely remember the last time he’d had this much fun.

The bodies of his classmates seemed to be in a lilt of calm for once in the university courtyard, which meant riling them up would be the best choice for maximum bloodshed. A shotgun round from the 3rd floor he was on would be a good idea…there were a few extra shells in his back pocket…

“I hope you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do.” Kaneki’s sharp, somewhat irate voice said, from somewhere around Hide’s middle. The head of ash-white hair prevented Kaneki’s head from glancing up at Hide’s ecstatic and maybe a little bit maniacal face of excitement, but as always he seemed to know what Hide’s expressions were anyway. Would he still be like that if Hide took out an eye? (The one left, anyway.)

“Nah, bud, I’m not.” Hide lies, and he knows Kaneki sees through it because he huffs out a sigh and blinks tiredly, a scrap of who-ever Hide had fed him hanging from his bottom lip. Kaneki ignored him in favor of sucking the scrap of skin back into his mouth, chewing quietly while Hide picked his chainsaw back up. It was a little low on oil, but it would get them home. On the way, they perhaps might even find a good, suitable body for Kaneki to inhabit for a few weeks and- speak of the devil, Hide catches a bare midriff of one of the lacrosse players from his Sociology class pawing at the window of the classroom Hide is in, face gashed and pallid and- typical of an undead person- in serious need of dental work and a shower, hoo boy. Hide always made sure to brush Kaneki’s teeth for him when he didn’t have a host body, so Kaneki one-upped this guy in that department.

Did Kaneki ever beat this guy in body strength though? Kaneki’s original body had been lost for a few years now, what, two or three? Hide had barely managed to bind his soul to his remaining head, preventing the virus from affecting the white-haired boy’s mind. Oh, the cussing out he had gotten for that. What am I supposed to do now, Hide, the other had snapped, crying- though Hide didn’t blame him for his hysteria- I’m just a fucking head now, how am I supposed to live without a body, you idiot?!

Calming him down had been a somewhat straightforward task when Hide laughed and told him they’d just have to find him a new body.

Hide’s thoughts were pulled away from his line of thought when the boy outside began to grunt excitedly, almost drawing the attention of the others- fingers just cracking the glass door and bloodied fingers digging in the shards. Best to keep him from injuring Kaneki’s soon-to be body, and if he made too much of a ruckus, others would be alerted. It would be preferable if he didn’t, so Hide could get Kaneki on a physical body for the first time in a month. (The last one had gotten run through with a stop sign pole when Kaneki had lost his balance from a rooftop. Hide had thought his guts would spill from laughing so hard at his best friend’s flailing body looking like a shish-kebab, Kaneki’s labored curses at him going ignored.)

Hide gingerly removed the chair holding the door shut so the zombie could stagger in before getting slugged in the head.

“Did you get it?” Kaneki asked, not needing an answer when the body slumped onto the floor next to them, into Kaneki’s field of view. The conspicuous six-pack, while dirty and a little torn, held his attention while Hide re-locked the door and covered the window with a tarp.

“Really, Hide?” Kaneki groaned, glaring at Hide after the blonde unhooked the other’s head from his belt and being brought to eye-level. “Out of all the people wandering around out there, you pick this meathead?” Hide only walked over to the downed male, setting Kaneki down on the metal plate his neck ended at, belthook and chain looping on one of the lecture-room’s wood desks. Hide had once called him a ‘keychain’, which had set Kaneki off, oh man, but it was worth it. So worth it.

“What, are you saying you don’t want to have an awesome, ripped body? I wish I could just eat my ass off, and just switch to a bodybuilder’s corpse when I got fat. Then I could eat all of that cup ramen and you wouldn’t be able to say shit.” Hide retorts, arranging the corpse in a way that suited his needs before pulling out a serrated knife, chipped from constant use.

“It has nothing to do with wanting, Hide.” Kaneki’s eye narrowed, the other empty socket almost gaping accusingly at the blonde in its own right, “You only picked him because you told me that one time that this guy- what, Satou, was hung as a horse.”

That got Hide’s mouth to snap shut.

“What, did you think I didn’t remember?” Kaneki taunted at the back of red ears, smirking. The smirk remained when Hide turned to grin back at him. “If you want to go find a patch of grass to roll in, just say so. I do have a mouth if nothing else.”

“Oh Ken, you’re nasty.” Hide deadpanned, starting to saw back and forth on the corpse’s neck, blood spurting and pooling under his knees. When the head came loose, Hide poked around in the arteries with a wary finger, making sure no parasites could worm into’s Kaneki’s plating, and into his head. If Hide wasn’t thorough, he would end up being eaten alive during a mentioned roll in the grass, or in his sleep by a ravenous undead Kaneki. His head was his only real tie to humanity.

The torso seemed clean, relatively well preserved- what, was this guy nipped, or- ah.

A single bite wound on the bicep, wrapped in a dirty bandage. Poor guy succumbed to the disease first, which if what Hide had heard about it was true, could be many times worse than being eaten alive. Hide replaced the bandage with a new one, for appearances if anything else. Next, gettting rid of the bloody clothes, and hell he is just as hung as Hide remembers from his brief try of the lacrosse club, and starting he can feel the resentful glare grinding into the back of his head.

“Aw, you know yours was always the best, babe~” Hide croons, ripping off the stained jersey from mottled skin to replace with a wifebeater from his pack. Kaneki doesn’t answer, a scowling blush on his face. The severed head of the guy Hide is dismantling is bothering him, so Hide runs his hand through dirty brown locks and picks up the lifeless thing, dropping it in the ‘burnables’ bin by the classroom door. His wordless ‘this guy isn’t what you think I think he is’ statement goes apparently ignored, but Hide knows he’s been forgiven.

“Besides,” Hide continues, crouching back down by the lean, but built body, running fingers through a dusting of chest hair, stretching his fingers to where it just coarsens on it’s way down, hinting at what lay beyond. “You know what I really what is in your handsome head, Kaneki. This is just a toy. A thing we should make use of to enjoy together, right?” Kaneki’s look softens into something like embarrassment, and Hide knows if they had been whole, sane and alive like they used to, Kaneki would have blushed profusely, and maybe even smacked him for saying something so crude. True enough, this relationship of their had never crossed the line to lovers until after Patient Zero. Having trust in one person besides yourself, committed to dying with each other, fighting to the end, brings out feelings you never knew you had. Being able to choose what kind of body type Kaneki had certainly made for a more interesting sex life, at the least.

#I wrote this like #8 months ago #I'm thinking on how I can expand and elaborate #but it's a hobby #you don't have to like it if you don't want to #Hidekane #hideyoshi nagachika #kaneki ken #tokyo ghoul

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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The Best Reopened Patios Where You Can Bring Your Dog (1) added to Google Docs

The Best Reopened Patios Where You Can Bring Your Dog (1)

There’s no shame in admitting we’re all far more comfortable socializing with dogs than we are with other humans. In fact, you’ve probably started speaking to your dog like an actual human during these months at home (if you hadn’t already). Weird that they never answer when you ask their opinion on the psychological underpinnings of the Air Bud franchise.

Seattle is an extremely pet-friendly city. And now that restaurants have started reopening, you might be interested in eating at one, but wouldn’t want to just desert your dog after not leaving the house for an entire quarter. So we’ve tracked down 12 patio spots that go above and beyond for your best friend (and where you can get a solid meal or a couple of drinks for yourself).

Sorry—looks like you screwed up that email address

INFATUATION NEWSLETTER Get our newest guides & reviews first,

plus more restaurant intel you won't find anywhere else. ATL ATX BOS CHI LDN LA MIA NYC PHL SF SEA DC Subscribe Smart move. Excellent information will arrive in your inbox soon. Do you have friends and family who also eat food? Enter their emails below and we’ll make sure they’re eating well. (Don’t worry, we won’t subscribe them to our newsletter - they can do that themselves.) Help Your Friends No Thanks Well done. You’re a good person. All good. We still like you. Want to quickly find restaurants on the go? Download The Infatuation app. THE SPOTS Reckless Noodle House $ $ $ $ Vietnamese , Fusion in Central District $$$$ 2519 S Jackson St

This spot in the Central District serves everything from spicy braised beef cheek noodles to pastrami fried coconut rice with chili jam. And they just reopened their patio. Maybe if your dog is on their best behavior, you’ll even sneak them a little hunk of rockfish.

Urban Family Brewing Co. $$$$ 1103 NW 52nd St

We’ve all blown off chopping potatoes on Thanksgiving to drink and watch the National Dog Show instead. Going to a brewery is the same thing, only it’s not Thanksgiving and nobody’s asking you to cut up root vegetables. Urban Family’s newest Ballard location with a massive front patio is where to go if you want to drink tasty beer, bring takeout to eat, and make passersby jealous of your cute dog.

Super Six $ $ $ $ American , Korean in Columbia City $$$$ 3714 S Hudson St

You didn’t get a dog just so you could go to brunch without them. You got a dog so you could take them to the picnic table-covered patio at Super Six and have brunch with them. This spot has Hawaiian things like pancakes with macadamia nut butter, french fries topped with kalua pork, and eggs benedict with kimchi hollandaise. There are also bottomless mimosas - but your dog can’t have any, even if they’re 21 in dog years.

Mean Sandwich $ $ $ $ Sandwiches , Deli in Ballard $$$$ 1510 NW Leary Way

So, you agreed to go on a socially-distant dog date with that person you met from the dog park. Go to Mean Sandwich, where the patio’s nice and big for your dogs. The delicious deli creations come out really fast, and their “Buon Appetito” sandwich has enough delicious brined and fried chicken cutlet to tear a little shred off and “accidentally” drop it on the floor.

Can Bar $ $ $ $ American , Bar Food in White Center $$$$ 9427 17th Ave SW

Whether you’re in the mood for a breakfast burrito and a hard cider or fish and chips with roasted jalapeño tartar, Can Bar is a great pub in White Center for a calm meal outside alongside your four-legged friend. Their patio has a bunch of spaced-out tables, a firepit, string lights, and our favorite piece of patio decor in Seattle - walls made out of different types of doors.

��Fiddler's Inn $ $ $ $ American , Bar Food , Pizza $$$$ 9219 35th Ave NE

Fiddler’s Inn Pub has the best patio you probably didn’t know about. It’s really just a bunch of umbrella-covered picnic tables in a pleasant backyard, but your pup will love anywhere they can lick artichoke dip off of concrete. Not like you’d notice, on account of being occupied with a tasty plate of nachos.

Chuck's Hop Shop $ $ $ $ Central District $$$$ 2001 E Union St

If you want to drink from a great selection of beer while getting your dog to socialize with someone other than Instacart delivery people, Chuck’s Hop Shop is a great idea. It’s part taphouse, and part convenience store where you can snack on gummy worms and chips while playing board games.

Beer Star $ $ $ $ White Center $$$$ 9801 16th Ave SW

Beer Star is pretty similar to Chuck’s, except instead of ice cream pints and Chex Mix, you can buy cheese, meats, and crackers to go with your beer. Better yet, your dog can chill near you and wait to see if you’re going to fling some salami across the picnic table. You could also grab takeout at Li’l Woody’s or Anju to eat outside too.

Bongos $ $ $ $ Caribbean in Green Lake $$$$ 6501 Aurora Ave N

Maybe you thought it would be fun to bring your dog to the beach, but found out quickly that they like to howl at the ocean. That’s not great for overall sandcastle productivity. Eating at Bongos, however, is a great consolation prize, because it’s a patio restaurant covered in sand. Your dog gets all of the fun of a beach without any open water or washed-up jellyfish blobs. And you get delicious Caribbean food like spicy shrimp, tostones, and pulled pork sandwiches.

Miri's Snack Shack $ $ $ $ Mediterranean , Middle Eastern in Ballard $$$$ 8498 Seaview Pl NW

But maybe your dog does well at the beach, and bringing them to run along the shore while you have a meal sounds like a good idea. In that case, Miri’s is perfect. They have a takeout window that sells excellent kebab wraps on homemade flatbread, hummus, virgin Piña Colada slushies, and mini dutch pancakes called poffertjes. Park yourself on a blanket very far from other humans on the sand, or you can grab one of the picnic tables just outside of Miri’s.

The Pink Door $ $ $ $ Italian in Downtown , Pike Place Market $$$$ 1919 Post Aly

As of July 23rd, this incredible Italian restaurant’s patio is open if you and your dog want to have a Lady and the Tramp moment with a bowl of spaghetti (we can’t guarantee you won’t get funny looks though). A deck full of floral tablecloths, a waterfront view, and phenomenal spinach lasagna are all things that make The Pink Door one of the best outdoor spaces in town.

Rhein Haus $ $ $ $ Bar Food , German in Capitol Hill $$$$ 912 12th Ave

For German beer and a soft pretzel that may or may not be larger than your lhasa apso, Rhein Haus is the place. The bocce court is unavailable for now, but you can still sit in their outdoor biergarten and soak up the sun, snack on meats from their new BBQ menu, and drink glass boots of lager.

The Woods $ $ $ $ American , Bar Food in Georgetown $$$$ 4700 Ohio Ave S

The Woods is a great place to bring your dog and drink beer and cider slushies. Spend a few hours here playing darts, shuffleboard, and other games while snacking on burgers, mac and cheese, or fried brussels sprout caesars from Bread & Circuses (the popular food truck that has a brick-and-mortar location in-house).

via The Infatuation Feed https://www.theinfatuation.com/seattle/guides/where-to-eat-drink-with-your-dog Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://trello.com/userhuongsen

Created July 21, 2020 at 05:42AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

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jotawakening-blog · 7 years

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8 Septober, 5A 169: Taking Back Pollnivneach

I start the day off by going back to the snake charmer— he’s in his usual place— and giving him some more coins in exchange for his secrets. Sadly, though, he’s grown tired of me and will not help: instead, he tells me to go away and charm my own damn snake. Angry, I leave and go out into the desert beside the village to find a snake. Maybe it’s the anger, but this time, the melody I come up with works perfectly, and I get a snake to leap into my basket with minimal effort! Before my danger noodle has a chance to run off, I take it up to Ali the Hag. Ali takes one look at the snake, decides she’ll name it Snuggles, and tells me its poison should be just right to deliver a slow, agonising death to Traitorous Ali. She warns me, though, that Ali might detect the poison unless I bring her one more thing: some fresh camel dung. What? Ew, that’s disgusting! Still, she won’t risk giving me the poison without the dung to hide her involvement, so it’s up to me to get some.

I figure that it can’t be too difficult: I just need to go down to the camel merchant’s place and ask him for some, right? Well, it turns out it’s very easy to start a conversation with the guy about camels, but much harder to get him to say anything about their shit. There seems to be some modesty taboo in play that makes it a wholly inappropriate topic even for a seller of camels. Or maybe his animals are just constipated and he doesn’t want anyone to know about this deficiency. Anyway, I try to broach the subject, but he immediately changes the topic to the two camels I bought from him. (I tell him they weren’t for me, but I was trying to use them to end the bandits’ feud. ‘A noble purpose for noble beasts,’ he responds.)

I venture out into the camels’ enclosure, but despite the presence of two camels there, what dung there is on the ground seems old and stale (which would support the constipation theory). Well, drat: I can either wait for a camel to take a dump or… maybe there’s a way to accelerate the process?

My mind goes back to the sign on the kebab store, the big one with the fire-breathing camel. Now, what if there’s a grain of truth to the sign and the hot sauce is really hot enough to clear out a camel’s bowels? It’s a stupid idea, but I don’t have a better one, so I go in and ask the salesman for a bottle of the ultra-spicy stuff. At first he’s reluctant to give it to me, fearing that I’ll either reverse-engineer the recipe or slip it into the drink of the town drunk, but I persuade him that why I’m after is a camel laxative, and he agrees that it should do the job very well indeed. Excellent!

I take the sauce over to the camel enclosure and dribble it liberally into their hay-filled food trough. Fortunately, the camels don’t seem to mind the spiciness when they’re ingesting the hay, but it takes mere minutes for it to shock their digestive systems into crapping all over the place. I scoop some of the dung up into a bucket that’s lying nearby and take it back to Ali the Hag, who’s finished milking Snuggles for his venom. She takes the dung from me and mixes it in with the raw snake venom, which results in a viscous red liquid. I take this over to the bar, where I figure Traitorous Ali might be hanging out (indeed, he is), wait until he gets up for a moment once again, and slip the concoction into his drink, making sure no one saw me.

I don’t stick around to watch the deed be done (it would be too suspicious, though I’m sure Traitorous Ali’s managed to piss off most of the townsfolk over the years and they really wouldn’t mind my brand of summary justice that much). Anyway, I go back to Ali the Operator, who commends my efforts and tells me I’ve earned an audience with the gang’s leader in order to discuss the group’s future plans. In fact, the leader happens to be around: Ali points me to him, a Menaphite priest with a slightly crazed look in his eye. I ask him what his plans are, expecting to hear something about the desert bandits. Instead, he reveals that what his gang is striving towards is no less than world domination! My response to that is basically ‘But you’re just a bunch of small-town bandits!’ The leader corrects me: he happens to be a high-ranking priest of Amascut, thrown out of Menaphos for attempting to murder the Pharaoh! They are here in Pollnivneach to regroup and, in time, take vengeance and claim what they call their due.

Argh, enough! Why do I keep running into these fucking religious fanatics seemingly everywhere I go? There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to draw my crossbow and level it at the leader’s chest…

But an instant before I can pull the trigger, a member of the bandit leader’s entourage leaps out at me and takes the shot, then keeps me distracted while I riddle him with bolts. This buys the Menaphite leader enough time to teleport away, yelling wildly that the world hasn’t seen the last of him or his gang! Well, I guess that’s the end of the Menaphites’ domination of Pollnivneach, but… that still doesn’t answer the question of what happened to Ali Morrisane’s cousin!

In any case, I feel like the villagers will be grateful for my dislodging of at least one of the gangs, so I go to the mayor and tell him about what’s gone down. To my surprise, though, the news that the Menaphites are no longer a force to be reckoned with doesn’t gladden him. Instead, he angrily claims that my heavy-handed actions have only made the town worse-off, by removing the one check on the ability of the desert bandits to pillage everything at their leisure. Bah— that mayor is a fool and spineless coward, but if he’s burning for me to expel the desert bandits as well, I think I can do that. They’re a virtual rabble compared to the Menaphites!

I have a simple plan to take care of them and restore order to the town. Convinced that it’s likely to work, I go and try it out. I go up to the bandit to whom I offered the camel and persuade his cowardly ass that I was on his gang’s side all along, but that I didn’t work for free, and that their leader ought to pay me for my efforts. The bandit considers this a reasonable suggestion, and gladly leads me to his boss, a grey-bearded bandit dressed in fine desert robes. He thanks me profusely and offers me a generous reward for delivering the town to his tender mercies, and is quite surprised when I turnip down and give him my ultimatum: start packing your bags, or else. ‘How the worm has turned!’ he cries, reminding me how supposedly inconsistent my recent acts of thievery and poisoning are with my bid for the moral high ground, but I don’t take the bait. ‘Get packing,’ I say.

When it comes down to brass tacks, the bandit leader proves almost as cowardly than the mayor. He threatens that he won’t leave without a fight… but rather than do his own fighting, he calls over one of his toughs to try to beat the shit out of me. It ends… poorly for the bodyguard, and two shots to the head and torso later, he lies crumpled in a heap, his adamantite scimitar splayed out of his hand. At that point, the bandit leader loses his composure and demands to cut a deal with me, sharing control of the town. I tell him he’s got no such luck, at which point he turns livid and curses me for bing such a do-gooder. ‘The villagers won’t respect you anyway!’ he yells.

It turns out he’s half-right. The villagers don’t seem too impressed by the fact that I’ve rid them of their tyrants and tell me whatever good deeds I’ve done don’t outweigh the murder and robbery I’ve committed in the process of doing them. Never mind that all they lost from my intervention was a lousy fifteen gold pieces!! The mayor, on the other hand, is thankful for restoring his authority to the proper level, and says he will make sure he doesn’t screw up again with inviting gangs into the city. Best of all, he gives me the information on the whereabouts of Ali Morrisane’s nephew that I was seeking. It would seem that the nephew (whose name, of course, is Ali) was asked by the mayor to leave town a few days back for his own protection. His fault, apparently, w as being too good a salesman, and persuading people to buy all manner of junk. All perfectly legal, but the townsfolk just got more and more angry with all the money he was making them spend on useless crap, and when he somehow managed to piss off both gangs at the same time with some deal, the mayor felt that he could no longer protect him, and sent him away. The last the mayor has heard, Ali Junior was planning to open a store, a ‘real treasure trove’, with some less-than-reputable friends of his, and he’ll be busy with that for quite some time. Well, I guess I shall have to return to Ali Morrisane empty-handed. What a fool’s errand this has been!

I feel like delivering the bad news quickly and moving on, so I hop on a carpet to Shantay Pass and head through the gate to the Al-Kharid market and Ali M’s stall. There, I deliver the news that Ali’s nephew is actually so good a merchant that they ran him out of town, but now he’s got forty people working under him and is a formidable competitor. Ali beams with pride as he hears this, and thanks me for delivering the heartening news, even if it didn’t lead to the outcome he wanted. ‘But wait a minute’, I say, ‘Something is not adding up. This nephew sounds exactly like you in so many ways, and I would not believe you had no idea he was a competitor of yours. Tell me, why did you send me to Pollnivneach in the first place? It wasn’t out of concern for the townsfolk: you’d sell your own grandmother if the price was right. Admit it: you sent me there to drum up business for your merchant friends in town. I bet they’re all working for you!’ ‘Well’, Ali replies, ‘You’re not as dumb as you seemed. And I prefer to call it ‘tourism’. Now, want to see my wares?’

Damn, if that wasn’t the strangest adventure I’ve been on in a while. Almost as strange as that dream I had about cabbages. I’m not sure I gained much from it, except a token reward of 500 gold from Ali Morrisane for removing his business from the threat of bandit extortion, and the experience of being a much more impudent thief than I’d ever dared before.

Well, it’s early afternoon and I’m in Al-Kharid. After the events of the past few days, I kind of feel like taking a break from all the high-strung adventuring… and it just so happens that the circus is in town, to let me do just that! As usual, they’re short on performers and let me in for free on the condition that I do some stunts for them!

And so I begin, with the eyes of Al-Kharid on me. The first event I participate in is the shooting event, which doesn’t go too well: I’m quite out of practice with how the event is supposed to work, and miss the target more often than I hit it— including at some distances where I really should have succeeded! Damn it all, eh? Fortunately, the magic show goes a lot better, since I let the audience guide me to do the tricks they want to see, and even if I don’t succeed at each trial, the crowd appreciates my efforts. Finally, there’s the tightrope, which goes a bit worse than the archery, mainly because I’m not confident enough to try anything really scary. Still, performing is always fun, and even though Balthasar Beauregard pays in clothes, what girl can resist having more outfits?

By the time I leave the circus, it is almost evening, and there’s not much else I’ll be able to do today save strategise and plan. And as much as I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave the desert behind and get on with the rest of the stuff in my life, the temperature of my enchanted key seemed to suggest that there might be treasure in the southwestern part of the Kharidian Desert, where I haven’t yet been. So I’m of a mind to go on a little trip in that direction and see where and what it gets me.

#runescape #journal #roleplay #feud #Pollnivneach

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choupetit · 7 years

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GOT recap: Stormborn

Airdate: 7/23/17 ; Season 7, Eps 2

Last night’s GOT served up a combo meal of reunions, first meetings, sexy hookups and an adrenaline-filled battle …yet still, I’m left wanting a bit more. It was a decent episode - didn’t love it, didn’t hate it, the most exciting part for me was that it set the scene for things to come. Let’s dive right into the recap of “Stormborn”.

Loyal-tease

It’s a dark and stormy night at Dragonstone and we get a little origin story as to how Daenerys got the kick-ass middle name Stormborn…the night she was born, there was a raging storm. Huh. It seems so obvious that I now feel a bit dumb for never having considered it.

Queen Dany is underwhelmed by her homecoming and ready to start taking back the seven kingdoms. Her team lays out the situation, noting Cersei has very little support left in Westeros, especially now that House Martell and Tyrell are on Dany’s side. Daenerys grills Varys about his loyalties to the previous rulers of the Iron Throne, noting he’s been a fickle advisor and has repeatedly conspired against those he was serving. Not to mention, he helped orchestrate hitmen to kill her while she was exiled. Varys defends his actions saying he was serving kings to the extent that he felt they served the common people, and when they failed, he turned his efforts to better candidates. Also, at the time of that whole assassin recruitment thing, he didn’t know that Dany was such a cool cat and he was just following orders. Tyrion throws in a few good words for Varys and Dany decides to pardon Varys for his past, on the condition that if he ever feels she is failing the people, he should say it to her face rather than his usual MO of secretly plotting against his ruler. She warns that if he betrays her trust, she’ll have her dragons turn him into a human shish kebab. Varys is totes down with this and happy to be an official player on Team Dany.

Next, it appears the Mother of Dragons has a visitor: Melisandre in the hizzy, y'all! The disciples of the Lord of Light have been supporting Dany for a while, so it’s a pretty safe move for Mel to visit Dany, plus, it’s a familiar place for her. Also, she truly believes that Jon Snow and Daenerys are a key to the prophecy to fight the whitewalkers, so she is hustlin’ to make this thing work. She speaks in Valerian to Dany about the “Prince who was promised”, and Missandei points out that the word for "prince" is actually gender-neutral. Could Dany be the Princess that is promised to lead all of Westeros out of the coming darkness? Melisandre may have been banished by Jon, but Dany doesn’t need to know that. Mel touches briefly on the things Jon has done up north to prep for the impending whitewalker threat. Tyrion vouches that Jon Snow is a stand-up guy and a likely ally for Queen Daenerys in her bid for the throne, since House Stark hates the Lannisters. Dany sends out a raven requesting Jon meet and bow down to her. Day-um, Jon Snow is getting all these queen pen pals lately, jonesing for his loyalty. Play on, player!

And with that, we see Jon, Sansa and Ser Davos having a powwow. Sansa worries the invitation from Daenerys is a fake, but since the letter was penned by Tyrion with a throwback to a conversation he and Jon had at the Wall, Jon thinks it’s legit. He asks Sansa for her opinion on Tyrion, since she knew him during her stay at King's Landing. Oh yeah, she used to be married to him! Not sure if Jon knows that detail. Even though Sansa thinks Tyrion is cool, she still thinks it’s too dangerous for Jon to leave, but Davos points out that dragons would be super handy if Whitewalkers ever cross the wall.

We take a quick glimpse at King’s Landing where Queen Cersei is in her throne room talking to a group of nobles and asking for support to fight Dany and her army. Some of the men are pledged to house Tyrell, which is on Dany’s side, so Cersei paints a picture of Daenerys as the boogeyman who will be sending her army to mercilessly slaughter and rape everybody in Westeros, without regard for the folks who are loyal to the Tyrells. Samwell Tarly’s dad, Randyll, is in the group and asks just how they’ll defeat three dragons. Our favorite mad inventor, Qyburn, pipes up “Yeah don’t sweat it, we’ve been working on a solution.” Omg, he created Frankenmountain…has Qyburn been creating some dragon-zombie-hybrids à la Jurassic Park in his gloomy lab?

Jaime Lannister takes Randyll Tarly aside trying to suss out whether he will be fighting for the Lannisters or the Tyrells. Jaime sweetens the pot saying he’ll make Tarly his general and once the wars are won, he can be he Warden of the South. I mean…it’s all good and well, unless Cersei loses. Randyll doesn’t make a commitment either way.

Doctor, doctor, can you help me, help me?

On to the Tarly we like best! Sam and Archmaester Marwyn are examining Ser Jorah, whose greyscale has advanced to an alarming degree. Sam says he’s seen a case - Princess Shireen - where the infection was halted, but the archmaester knocks him down a few pegs saying Sam doesn’t know anything about that case, or the circumstances or really anything about treating greyscale. Jorah’s case is beyond hope and he really just needs to be killed and put out of his misery rather than slowly waste away like the Stone Men. He gives Jorah one last day to live and get his affairs in order, and then it’s presumably Kevorkian time. When Sam offers to send word to his family, Jorah reveals his name but tells him he’s already dead to his family. Sam is taken aback when he realizes this is the son of his old Lord Commander at Castle Black.

Back at King’s Landing, Cersei and Qyburn are walking though the basement of the Red Keep, where the skulls of the deceased Targaryen dragons are stored. Turns out, that solution Qyburn has been working on is basically a giant souped-up crossbow on steroids. He gives Cersei a demo of his innovative weapon, using the largest dragon skull as a target, and it pierces the eye socket and shatters the bone. Ruh roh. Going into this season, I’ve been fearing that we are going to see a dragon die, and this scene pretty much sealed the deal that it’s gonna happen. First they came for our direwolves…and now this. Are no magical animals safe in this world???

We’re back at Dragonstone where Dany is meeting with all the key players in the war room to plot out their strategy against Cersei. Yara and Ellaria think they should just storm in, dragons a'blazing and go full scorched earth on King’s Landing. Tyrion argues this would cause unnecessary civilian casualties and Dany has no interest in being “queen of the ashes”. Lady Olenna counters that her daughter was beloved by the common folk, and it got her nowhere. Dany lays out the plan: The Greyjoys with the Martell and Tyrell armies will lay siege around Kings Landing, waiting it out till Cersei and her army run out of food. Meanwhile, they’ll send the Unsullied to Casterly Rock - home of the Lannisters, the true seat of power in Westeros.

Dany has a quick private chat with Lady Olenna, and the older woman tells her she has managed to live as long as she has by ignoring the advice of others. She suggests Dany do the same, telling her that peace is never really possible and Dany should rule like the dragon that she is. What does that mean, exactly?!

With the Unsullied shipping out the next day, Missandei pays Grey Worm a visit and the two finally admit their feelings for each other and have a hot and steamy love scene, ya know…and the guy just happens to be castrated. I’m not gonna spend too much time wondering how it’s supposed to work other than say that Missandei is getting the better deal out of this and doesn’t have to worry about birth control. Get it, girl.

Weird Science

Back at the Citadel, Sam has done some research and found a treatment for advanced greyscale. The archmaester tells him the procedure is too risky and is forbidden - the maester who discovered the cure ended up contracting and dying from greyscale. Jorah is in his room writing a letter to Daenerys. My best guess is that it’s something along the lines of: “Khaleesi, do you like me? Circle yes, no, or maybe.” There’s a knock on the door and Sam comes in with a book and some supplies, determined to try out that greyscale cure. Considering his only alternative is death, Jorah agrees to let Sam have at it - it’s incredibly painful and grody to the max as we see Sam slowly cut away at Jorah’s crusty pus-filled epidermis. This is gonna take a while so…

We turn to Arya who is enjoying lunch at the inn where her old pal Hot Pie works. He asks her if she ever met up with Brienne and then asks if she’ll be heading to Winterfell. Arya tells him there’s nothing there for her, since it’s been taken over by the Boltons. When Hot Pie reveals that’s not the case and that Jon Snow reclaimed Winterfell, Arya is stunned. Whoa, whoa, whoa!!! This changes everything - revenge can wait, she changes course and sets out for her family home. I want to get super excited for her, but every time Arya thinks she is about to meet back up with family, things go south, so I’m tempering my expectations that this will actually work out for her. I do so hope she finally has a Stark family reunion, though!

Jon Snow receives news from Samwell about the giant mound of dragon glass at Dragonstone, which seals the deal: He’s gotta go meet Dany. He tells the Northern lords he’s accepting the invite and going to get access to that dragon glass. Sansa objects to him leaving, saying it could be a trap and tells him to send an emissary instead. Everybody in the room protests his leaving but Jon can’t be talked out of it. The good news is, he’s leaving Sansa in charge. Brienne smiles with pride for her mistress and Littlefinger makes his usual scheme-y face with extra scheme sauce. Jon pays a quick visit to Ned Stark’s grave in the family mausoleum when Littlefinger pops up and tries to ingratiate himself with Jon. When Littlefinger tells Jon that he cares for Sansa, Jon goes into protective big brother mode. He roughs Littlefinger up a bit and tells him he’ll kill him if he ever touches Sansa.

Arya is making camp somewhere in the north, it’s terribly cold and you can see her breath. Her horse becomes skittish and I’m freaking out thinking it’s whitewalkers approaching - maybe they’ve managed to breach the wall already, but it’s actually a pack of wolves. Well, crap. Arya picks up her sword as the pack surrounds her and then the leader appears - a giant Direwolf…it’s Nymeria, Arya’s wolf which she sent away in order to save her from being killed by Joffrey’s guards way back in Season 1! Nice work, Nymeria, you’ve got yourself a posse!! The wolf recognizes Arya and the whole pack steps down. Arya asks Nymeria to join her on her way home to Winterfell, but the wolf just looks at her and then leaves, followed by the rest of the pack. As she watches her walk away, Arya says “It’s not you.” Does she mean the wolf, or herself? Has Arya changed so much that her wolf wants nothing to do with her? Or is it the other way around? Is it a metaphor for Arya in general - has she realized that maybe she can’t really go back to Winterfell because she can’t go back to how she used to be? Is she doomed to be a lone wolf, never to find a pack of her own??? Oh, the hidden symbolism!!

Let’s get Kraken

Moving on, we see Yara and Theon’s fleet, on their way to Sun Spear with Ellaria where they plan to pick up the Dornish army. Yara and Ellaria are below deck getting flirty, cause what else are you gonna do on the long trip? Suddenly, their ship lurches and we hear screams from above. They’re under attack by Uncle Euron and his fleet! Euron makes a crazy entrance from his ship onto theirs and mayhem ensues. Two of the Sand Snakes are killed in battle, Ellaria and her youngest daughter are captured and Euron has a tête-à-tête with Yara. He gets her in a chokehold with a knife at her throat and calls to Theon to help his sister. Paralyzed with fear, Theon stares at his sister, her eyes pleading with him to step up. “You can do this, man!” His true nature takes over as Theon goes full “Reek” and jumps overboard to save himself. Euron cackles with laughter and pulls Yara away, while Theon clings to driftwood looking up at the wreckage and carnage around him…and the credits roll.

The battle scene was intense, and my heart was pounding for sure, but I’ve gotta be honest, I didn’t really care that much about the characters involved. I mean, nobody likes the Sand Snakes, so no loss there. Ellaria is pretty annoying - and I’m sure it’ll suck when Cersei gets her revenge on her when Euron delivers her to her doorstep like a cat with a dead rat, but again, not really that sad she got captured. In the grander scheme, however, it’s bad news for Daenerys. And now that we know about Cersei’s secret dragon killing machine, it looks like things are gonna be a lot tougher for Daenerys if she ever does engage her dragons in battle over Kings Landing. Meep! I’m really going to lose it if they kill a dragon on this show. I’m thoroughly enjoying characters we all know meeting each other for the first time. Pretty sure Sam will successfully cure Jorah. It’s very cool to see Melisandre back in the picture and I’m looking forward to the big Dany and Jon meeting. Wondering if Daenerys will believe Jon and lend her help, putting her Westerosi domination plans on hold. That seems like it would be the smarter move - but of course she doesn’t know what’s up Cersei’s sleeve, so she may very well change her strategy andnsend her dragons to their doom. Looks like Arya is going to just miss Jon, but hopefully she can have a reunion with Sansa at Winterfell. I feel like she and Brienne could become besties. Anyhoo, the groundwork has been laid for some big events, so here’s hoping that next week things will really take off. See you then!

#GOTrecaps #GameOfThrones #Game of Thrones #Stormborn #Dragonstone #Jon Snow #Daenerys #Targaryen #recap #season 7

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