“Are you fucking serious, Dennis.” Dennis. That’s how he knows she’s really mad.Not huckleberry or any derivative of it. Just his name, which hits harder than any jab she’s ever aimed towards him. He knew this would be a hard conversation. That’s why he put it off for so long…

“After everything I told you?” Trinity crosses her arms, closing herself off. “I thought you believed me.”

“I did-! I *do*! It just…happened…” he ends lamely.

“Seriously, out of everyone from the ED, it just had to be HIM.” She spits. Dennis can imagine every word dripping with poison, falling to the floor and sizzling through their neighbor’s ceiling.

“You could have chosen ANYONE else. Hell, I would have even preferred Dr. Robby.” She continues and that’s where Dennis feels his resolve break.

Dr. Robby, in a way, is the reason he’s in this mess. Once he left, it was like a weight was lifted and they could breath in the once stifling environment. Once Robby stopped breathing down langdon’s neck, Dennis could see the personality inside.

“I didn’t CHOOSE this,” he defends. This isn’t how he wanted this to go. It was supposed to be under control so it didn’t spiral like this. “I don’t know how to explain it to you but-“

“You fell for his tragic white guy story, that’s what happened. You believed in his stupid tragedy and his recovery and his sob story.” Trinity finishes for him. It’s not entirely wrong, but he doesn’t want her to spin it that way either. “God, you are so easy, Dennis.”

The air between them grows stale. He watches as her jaw tightens and the look behind her eyes changes. After so much time together, he can tell that she wants to take it back—or at least say it a different way but she’s not going to. Because she never does. Not at first anyway.

He exhales sharply and, without another word, grabs his keys off the side table and heads towards the door.

“Where the hell are you going?” Trinity rounds the couch and grabs him by the wrist, tighter than she meant to but still gentle enough to easily pull away.

“This isn’t how I wanted it to happen,” he confesses. “Maybe we should try again tomorrow—“

“Why, so you can run back to him? Back to his house- oh, sorry his ex wife’s house?” She bowls over his attempts to play peacemaker. “Is that what you envisioned when you got with fucking Frank Langdon, huh? He probably moved into a small apartment after the divorce. Divorce and rehab are expensive, so it only makes sense that—”

“Trinity.” Dennis interrupts. “I’m not doing this now. Not when we’re both mad.”

He grabs his wrist back sharply. “I’ll text you later”

And he leaves. Just like that. He didn’t even grab a jacket despite being constantly cold. And now the silence of the apartment washes over her and she’d like nothing more than to get rid of it. But that would be admitting defeat, admitting that her stupid huckleberry might have a point. He doesn’t, though.

Her body moves on autopilot, going to the bathroom and turning the shower as hot as possible, as if she could boil out all her feelings.

How could he do this to her? How could he hide something like this for so long too? He’s her best friend. After all these years, that little white boy wormed his way into her heart and now she’s gone and fucked it all up.

She’s toweling off when her finger hovers over Garcia’s contact. She shouldn’t. Garcia has made it clear that whatever they have is temporary.

“If you want to have sex and eat ramen in your bed, I’m your girl. But if you want to talk about this Langdon shit again, call a therapist.”

Trinity tried to brush it off but they just weren’t the same after that. So, she doesn’t call or text. Instead she finds a different contact that she’s never tried before. Not for personal reasons anyway.

‘Hey, Dr. Ellis I need an unbiased opinion.’

Lance has a side gig during the summer walking dogs, specifically difficult dogs, claiming that they can’t resist his charm. Keith does not believe this at all but he’s running out of options. Kosmo is out of his control and no one wants to watch him while he’s at work anymore.

Keith drops Kosmo off on one of his days off as a trial run, partially so the dog can get potentially used to someone new, and partially to give Lance the opportunity to back out if his “dog charm” doesn’t work.

Keith comes back after enough time has passed, expecting Lance to be as frustrated as any of Kosmo’s past sitters, but no. Lance greets him, all smiles and warmth, inviting him into his house to grab Kosmo—which is weird because that dog always jumps on him whenever he comes back from a long day.

Inside, Kosmo lies curled up on a dog bed that’s a size too small for him. He’s out like a light, snoring loudly. His unruly fur has even been brushed out. Keith can’t believe it. He’s never seen anyone tire out this dog before.

“How did you-?”

“Oh, we had a blast. He’s such a good boy, and so good at following directions, too,” Lance prattles on but Keith doesn’t pay attention to the rest. No one has ever used those words to describe Kosmo. Ever.

When he’s sure Lance is done, he asks “So, when can you start, again?”

In times of extreme distress, when he loses that self-control, Lance will isolate himself in one of the far corners of the castle so the team won’t be able to smell the stifling, heavy scent of his insecurities or weaknesses. After he recovers from his little lapses of control, Lance will sneak back and try to get rid of the lingering scent. It takes him at least a week to clear the area completely. The smell is suffocating and it blankets over every object in the room. It clings to the walls and floor like nicotine in a smoker’s house. At least pheromones don’t leave a stain like that. He still has to mop the walls though, which sucks when you’re only one person.

Viktor: Jayce. Talis. Just because YOU are bipolar and autistic it doesn’t mean you can take it out on the rest of us

Jayce and Viktor were sent on a mission to the Undercity to handle a couple of low-grade curses—why Heimerdinger sent the two of them is beyond Viktor. Jayce was plenty capable of handling this on his own. When it seemed like all was finished, a Special Grade curse traps Viktor in a barrier with unknown intentions.

“You are a difficult individual to get in contact with,” a low, distorted voice rings out. It has an almost metallic quality to it. A curse user? It’s not unlikely. But what would they want with Viktor? Sure, he might have helped Jayce develop the crystal, but hardly anyone knows that. Heimerdinger has made sure their research has stayed under wraps. Viktor stops in his tracks. The fog still obscures his vision but he whips his head around anyway. There’s still no one in sight, no silhouette in the murky air. He’s not the greatest sorcerer in their little school, but he’s sure he would have felt something enter the barrier. “What do you want?” the young Zaunite asks, keeping his voice as steady as he can. “Just to talk.”

Or, the Jujutsu Kaisen AU absolutely no one asked for

Report: First Contact - Digikitty_Writes - Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) [Archive of Our Own]

I've said this before to my friends, and I'm coming on here to say it to the people, but I think the passage of time is so interesting in Arcane. Of course, we see the main events, but never what happens in the in-between moments. We, as viewers, are never clued in on just how much time has passed between events. That, combined with some of the out of order/POV switching scenes makes Arcane so interesting for me.

I have a lot of thoughts on the entirety of season 2, but I mainly want to focus on the Perfect AU that Ekko and Heimerdinger were sent to. There's debate on what exactly happened to make this universe the most prosperous. I saw someone on Tiktok (I think? I can't remember right now) point out that Vi's death was not the only factor leading to this result. And I agree full heartedly. Her death certainly stopped the creation of hextech, therefore stopping the events of almost all of season 1.

Just to skip the rest of the preamble, what I really want to talk about is Silco's role in this and why I think the AU's success might lead back to him. This is where the stream of consciousness is coming in, but I'll try to keep it coherent.

I had originally thought the major point of divergence between the AU and our current universe was Vi's death, but this has to be wrong. Because, to my understanding, Silco still would have been producing Shimmer at this time, which would have led up to kidnapping Vander and bringing him to the warehouse in the beginning of season 1.

Of course, there's always the possibility that Silco did have Shimmer in the works, but he had no need to use it since the enforcers weren't being sent to the undercity to retrieve the crystal since they were under the impression that they had disposed of all of Jayce's research. But I digress.

Since there's no mention of Shimmer anywhere in the AU, it must go back to Silco and Vander's original fight. We know that they obviously had that fight in this universe since, when Ekko was like "didn't you two try to kill each other🤨" and Silco doesn't deny it, so the divergence must happen soon after that. It took me way too long to realize that Silco's eye is healed in the AU, which I personally interpret as the repairing of their relationship soon after. Correct me if I'm wrong, but our Silco's problem with Vander was not only the act of betrayal, but the abandonment that followed, the feeling of being left in the filthy water, feeling bacteria eat away at the injury Vander inflicted, and have it permanently disfigure him.

If their relationship is repaired well before the events of season 1, then that drastically changes things too. It's just so interesting, and the brain worms are doing their thing.