oh, yeah, sure.

meme. sit, sitting on their lap. / @youmaythinkyouknowme.

     consider: a wizard enters a storefront, wand drawn. moments later, the windows burst outward. flames lick at the edges of the newly exposed opening. accounts vary, fingers are pointed. swiftly, the culprit is identified. an underage witch in possession of a muggle invention (a lighter), thoughtlessly sparking it in the northwest corner. 

     some cases are not so easily unraveled. some take minutes, some take months. sometimes graves will burn his way through the work like an ember taking a wheat field (or a stray spark against a shelf filled with newsprint). at times, the fire is nothing but white ash, smoke that clouds the eyes. more often he sits for hours, eyes bleary, neck aching.

     correlation does not often imply causation. sometimes it does. 

     the hour is late-- he is late. a sweep of warm air trails down his neck, and he can sense the exact moment she slips into his home (through the downstairs window and heedless of the key he’d left for her in the foyer, the wordless invitation that remains where it has been for weeks). she trips the wards, but they do not repel her. 

     the causation: he’s left her waiting. 

     the correlation: she offers the courtesy of a tantalizing distraction. 

     lilly constantine clears his desk and straddles his lap in the same fell swoop. a snap of her fingers, skirts hiked up to mid-thigh from the way her thighs cage his. the papers flutter around them like falling leaves. he doesn’t apologize. she’s a vision in plunging emerald green, skin aglow and hair untamed. vicious and vital. his hands graze her bared skin, and he feels the minute shudder that runs through her. ‘ i wasn’t finished with that. ’ 

     ‘ yeah? ’ he hums, noncommittal and more than willing to see this through. her eyebrows hike up, her thighs squeeze, and he thinks she might be trying to punish him. he doesn’t think he minds. ‘ doesn’t look that way to me. in fact, ’ her hands are at his jaw, clawed nails a very real threat. ‘ i could think of two or twenty better ways to spend your time. y’know, like the ones we’d planned. ’ 

@bugdown​​, call.

there’s a challenge in here. underneath the dull blush and nearly undetectable nervous twitch of his mouth, there is a challenge for don as real as the day is long.

         ‘ oh, donny, ’ he says to him, to the soundstage whose emptiness could swallow them whole if they aren’t careful. ‘ you couldn’t kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy bit. ’

     insincere to a fault, emphasized with a wagging finger, he scoffs. ‘ oh, aren’t you a hit. you might even get half a column with bailey. ’ 

     his laugh is a harsh thing, almost mean, but he aims it nowhere near cosmo. (mean, rather, at the expense of a singular leading lady, a name starting with l and ending with a.) but here-- this is the thing about anger: it loosens the tongue just as easily as liquor. ‘ you, i wouldn’t mind. ’ he says it quick, sets a firm hand on cosmo’s shoulder for reassurance, and continues just as quickly before he can think better of it. before he can think of it at all, really. 

     ‘ a tarantula, i’m sure you heard. at least with you i’d stand a chance of enjoying it. ’ 

meme. surprise, being found without an article of clothing. / @timetear​. 

     chell remembers the rough and tumble of their escape. 

     she carries the marks to show for it, how couldn’t she? she is reminded daily, glimpses of the faint streaks of white and silver inlaid against her tan skin. and it isn’t that she minds them, really. most of them are topical. what’s more, she can read them as easily as binary, can recall every single failing, every single misstep that brought her here. in appearance alone, and all this time later, they seem as painless as a wash of errant freckles. 

     and it’s true, for the most part.

     the prosthetics, however, were never meant to be worn long-term. they were designed for temporary wear, to be undone and redone each time she reached the relaxation vault. glados’ directive had always been fluid, shifting to suit their own evolving whims. discomfort meant nothing if there was still use to be made of her. 

     she does not mind the latticework of incision scars left behind, necessarily, but there are days when her muscles ache and her bones seem to click and grind like long-neglected machinery. it is on those days that she leans her weight against walls, against railings, against the ever-solid and ever-warmth of wheatley. 

     oftentimes wheatley is the one to wake first, consistent and punctual. the only variance comes from chell’s own sleep cycle, as it is inconsistent and only mostly punctual. she prefers to wake second, to his careful entrances in her doorway. it is sometimes easier to resolve her limitations when she does not have to face them in the first place. 

     today, she wakes first. 

     when she swings her legs off her bed and stands, the pain greets her as a dull throb. she knows that it will grow sharper if she ignores it, knows that she will be worse for pushing it, and she is resigned to the knowledge that they won’t be exploring the wreckage of the laboratory. she knows she doesn’t need to leave her room, knows that wheatley will make his entrance eventually, but she has always been a stubborn thing. 

     when she reaches his door, she looks before she knocks. 

     he is already awake, blinking away the dregs of his buffering cycle, and, for a brief moment, unaware of her presence. it’s a rare occurrence for her to see him like this, and rarer still is his state of undress. he’s turned at an angle that leaves much of his backside revealed to her, a pale expanse of skin that contrasts sharply with the navy blue trousers that sit at his waist. 

     she forgets, sometimes, how completely unmarred he is. unblemished and unscarred, he is devoid of any lingering proof of their time below. she knows his processors are an incredible thing, unbelievably advanced technology in a compartment no larger than one’s fist. she can only imagine how detailed his memories must be, even without a visual roadmap of his own to remind him. and she wonders -- but then he’s pivoted, twisted to face her with the bright flash of a smile, and she has no time linger on her thoughts. 

     i think we deserve a morning off, she tells him, leaning heavily against his doorframe. maybe even an evening, too.

@bugdown​ | declan

          SHE’S GRABBING HIS ARM, tugging him into his studio with the strength she probably shouldn’t have for a woman her size, and shutting the door with a little more force than she probably needs too. it takes about two seconds for her to then shove him onto a stool and cup one side of his face with her left hand, armed with a wet handkerchief in her right.

❛ you need — stop fidgeting — you need to stop getting into fights. ❜

          her movements are sharper than normal, and somehow worry bends her brows as she avoids his gaze.

❛ please, stop. what if i’m not here to break it up next time? what if you get hurt and i can’t help you? ❜

     the studio is as bare as it’s ever been. even filled to the brim with streaked canvases, it is an array of colors turned inward by his heavy hand. they rest against walls, unloved, unseen, with only the slatted framework on display. it’s a bad place, with a bad landlord (and his bad wife), and he’s always going to put himself into a position to embrace what else the city can lash out with. after all, a routine is a routine. what else can he do but endure? 

     declan is still dizzy, the dregs of a long night and its abrupt end still folded into his head, and he does not realize he’s been seated until he makes it his intention to sit back down. it is only then that the world comes back into unfortunate focus. almost a respite, the cloth she offers up is cool against his heated skin, even when the pressure sets too firmly into the budding bruises. more importantly, and most distracting, the bright gleam of her heart spills out in her beautiful scowl. he cannot help but stare. 

     much like his reintroduction to gravity, declan doesn’t hear her until she’s finished speaking, and it is another moment longer until his throat unsticks. 

     and when it does ---

     ‘ then i would manage. ’ his hands rise, fingers sweeping to encircle a loose hold on her wrists. he ducks in closer, spine bowing, until she would be forced to regard him or abandon him. ‘ and i would ache. and hurt. and i would circle back here-- maybe i would sit. here. and, if i’m being honest, maybe i would feel, ’ gentle, he flexes his fingers in their twin grips. ‘ particularly sorry for myself. ’ 

   hope county has a way of attracting characters of all kinds, including those he wouldn’t suspect it to. for example, people afraid of horses and other large wildlife. “smooth moves?” deacon’s brow furrows beneath the brim of his hat, head tilting to the side in the semblance of a dog. “it’s not going to jump if you move too fast. it’s a horse, sir, not a bull.”

     as he excuses himself to a careful distance, benny does a poor job of biting down the subsequent scoff. ‘ yeah, that’s close. ’ he has a tone, here. disbelieving and a little sharp around the edges. it’s nothing personal. forced to squint from the shine of the sun, his eyes flicker between deacon and the horse.