“HELLO NEIGHBOR STEVE, I WOULD LIKE TO INVITE YOU TO BARBEQUE ON THE EVE OF THE BLOOD MOON. I FEEL WE GOT OFF TO A BAD START.”
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, DO YOU NOT WISH TO PARTAKE OF THE UNCLEAN FLESH-MEATS OF PIGS AND THE POLLUTED ESSENCES OF TOMATO? PERHAPS YOU ARE A CAROLINA STYLE MAN, NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“PUT THE GUN AWAY NEIGHBOR STEVE, YOU KNOW I SHALL ONLY RISE AGAIN WITH THE DAWNING OF THE MOON. WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH THIS MANY TIMES.”
“LOOK AT THIS PICTURE MY SON DREW OF YOU AND CHILD TIMMY, YOUR SON. ARE THEY NOT THE PICTURE OF PACT-MATES? THIS COULD BE YOU AND ME, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
“YOU MISSED THE UNHOLY NEXUS OF POWER THAT IS THE KEY TO MY CORPOREAL FORM, NEIGHBOR STEVE. YOU WILL NEED TO RELOAD NOW, SO I WILL GO INSIDE TO MY HELL-WIFE AND PUT YOU DOWN AS A SOLID ‘MAYBE’.“
I have the feeling that the families get along great except for Steve. Like, the wives are baking (questionable) brownies together, the kids are playing together, Antler Guy occasionally takes Son and Timmy to school (no car, just carries them in huge swinging strides through a nexus of ungoldly sights in a swirling netherworld shortcut. Sometimes they stop for McDonalds). Hell-wife gave them a potted Audrey Jr., Steve’s wife (who I now christen Sharon) gave them a begonia.
One time Steve tries throwing holy water but all Antler Guy does is thank him, saying that no, Antler Guy isn’t Catholic but it’s the thought that counts, he is so kind to water his creeping deathshade vines regardless.
For Christmas Antler Guy gives Steve a case of ammunition. To be funny/sarcastically mean Steve gets Antler Guy the world’s most hideous Christmas sweater, singing light-up reindeer included. He immediately regrets it because not only does Antler Guy love it and wears it for several months, it will never need batteries because Antler Guy powers it with his own eldritch aura.
When they come back from a holiday to Hawaii, Steve is horrified to find out Sharon bought them matching Hawaiian shirts. He is even more horrified that his wife means it that if he doesn’t wear it he will forever sleep on the couch.
I want to expand on this, since I see it’s still passing around and the ideas have grown in my brainmeats.
What drives Steve up the wall and down the other side is how… normal… everyone treats the Abominations. (Yes, that is their last name. No, it is not a joke. Son was asked his last name for the standardized testing at school, had a quick conference with Timmy, and decided that Son Abomination sounded good, “Since my dad calls your dad the Abomination anyway and we can paint it on your mailbox just like the Henderson’s did theirs!”. Antler Guy agreed and did a lovely rendition of it for the mailbox, with only a few glyphs of soul-rending terror added to keep up to snuff.)
The Great Plant Exchange went beautifully, though the Audrey Jr. (named Aubergine for the lovely shade of purple poison that drips from her fangs) is on a diet at the moment. She was in cahoots with the cat and the dog to get into the good people food and ate two frozen turkeys all herself. Now she’s restricted to the hallway table to answer the phone and the door. (Steve actually likes her, and keeps slipping her hotdogs when Sharon isn’t looking. Their door-to-door salesman rates have dropped dramatically since she changed abodes.) Hell-wife has almost gotten the begonia to bloom and say it’s first words.
The homeowner’s association just loves the Abominations. All paperwork stamped and dotted, in on time and in triplicate. Antler Guy likes filing, says it reminds him of his old job. There is a resident who spent 20 years as a lawyer and they have long, animated conversations about all sorts of things that make Steve swear to never need legal counsel.
Hell-wife joined the PTA and spearheaded a committee to fundraise in the fall with a haunted house. It was a county-wide hit, though the claims that a particularly rowdy group had been deliberately lost in a timeslip to the Outer Doors Of Chaos was firmly rebuffed. Most young people nowadays, it was agreed, just couldn’t appreciate flute music.
Antler Guy really does try to connect with Steve. The surprise birthday party was perhaps a bit much, given that most participants do not have the ability to suddenly materialize in front of the guest of honor to give them a hug. Sharon assured them that Steve normally screams on his birthday, and the remains of the cake were heartily enjoyed by all. (A plate was saved for Steve once he came down from the treehouse.)
After the Hawaii trip (which was a present for his birthday) and the Matching Shirt Ultimatum (which was Sharon’s attempt at patching things up with Antler Guy, he really was sad about the birthday screaming), Steve finally grabs his courage in both hands (plus the shotgun, which let’s face it is about as useful as a teddybear at the moment but it does comfort him) and confronts Antler Guy, about why such a group of……Abominations could possibly come to his quiet slice of suburban bliss.
“……BUT NEIGHBOR STEVE, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE.”
“No no no, I read it in a book! Don’t you have to be invited or something?!”
“WELL YES, TO THE HUMAN WORLD. BUT THIS IS NOT THE HUMAN WORLD AS YOUR THREE-DIMENSIONAL BRAIN PERCEIVES IT.”
“What the hell does that mean?!!”
“DID YOU NOT KNOW, NEIGHBOR STEVE? LEGALLY SPEAKING, ALL OF THE VASTNESS OF HUMAN SUBURBIA IS, IN FACT, A PART OF HELL.”
“……..”
“THE FLAMINGOES ARE THE BOUNDARY MARKERS. IT WAS DECIDED THAT THE FLAMING SKULLS WERE TOO KITSCHY FOR MODERN TIMES.”
Reblogging cause I kind of want more of this….
Since you asked nicely ^_^
Antler Guy, as one may have noticed, is a calm sort of fellow. In the face of human atrocities he displays a curious Zen sort of state of mind. Timmy asks Son if he’d ever seen his dad angry, and Son hasn’t. (When asked, Timmy says that yeah his dad gets mad, but it’s like the Fitz-Simmon’s chihuahua down the street- mostly high-pitched noise and occasionally TV remote chewing. Sharon replaces the poor thing every 3 months or so.) When pressed (gently, at the monthly book club, and with many cups of tea and at least one daiquiri), Hellwife admits that this comes from serving many years at his old job.
After the revelation of the nature of his neighborhood, Steve has not been overtly mean to Antler Guy. Not yet in the realm of friends, but vastly better than before. No more holy water, no more shotgun blasts. (Still the occasional jumpscare, but Antler Guy really can’t help that part.) They even occasionally share news over the fence as Antler Guy trains the creeping deathshade vines in proper oral hygiene, and Steve waters his lawn (and occasionally slips a goldfish cracker to a deathshade vine that looks particularly adorable. Aubergine has trained him well.)
Which is how Antler Guy learns about the peeping tom that’s been plaguing the adjacent streets. Apparently the pervert has been getting bolder, and rattling doors. He almost broke into one apartment, whose occupants were a single mother and her daughter, Mildred. Millie, a shy girl who is a great horror fan and firm friends with Timmy and Son, had missed school because of it.
Steve knew because Sharon had told him, on her way to deliver a tuna casserole and a double batch of brownies to the pair. (Sharon has been dubbed the unoffical mob boss of the Mother’s Mafia. She is quite pleased with this title.) He tells her to wait, confers briefly with Aubergine, and sends her along with, “Only as a loan, you know, but Auby wants to stretch her roots and she’d probably like getting all ribboned and curled anyway. Little girls still do that, right?” She has strict orders to bite anyone that makes Millie or her mother cry. (Steve is dubbed the official neighborhood marshmallow for this. The bookclub buys him a jar of marshmallow fluff in commemoration.)
He turns to look at Antler Guy, and freezes, much as a chihuahua will when faced with a hungry hellhound.
Steven makes a very ungraceful exit when space starts bending around Antler Guy’s still, unmoving form.
When Steve sees a shadowy form in his back yard when he gets up to pee that night, there’s no hesitation. He grabs the shotgun from the cabinet and peeks out the back door window.
Just in time to see a nebulous form of soul-wrenching terror engulf the man reaching for the door handle. A sliver of moonlight reveals a very familiar eyesocket. After a moment (and a sincere prayer of thanks that he had already peed, cause otherwise he’d have done it then and there) Steve opens the door. The nebulous form freezes, reality bending around the edges.
“Good. G’night then. Oh, and if Hellwife has an extra Audrey Jr. that needs a home, let me know. Millie likes Aubergine a lot but Augy’s just too big for the apartment. Dunno if they come in miniatures though.”
There are no more peeping reports. Millie brings back Aubergine and spends an entire afternoon teaching Steve the particulars of Augy’s new “hairstyle” (a gravity-defying mass of teased tendrils, ribbons, and barrettes) in between games of tag and hide-and-seek with Timmy and Son.
When Antler Guy and Hellwife present her and her mother Beatrice with a tiny Audrey Jr. (”pOOr ThinG Is a ruNT And wOn’T geT MorE Than A FooT taLL, BEa, aNd NeeDS a New FRiEnD”, assures Hellwife), both mother and child burst out crying. Millie names it Bella, after Bella Lugosi, and shows it to the excited group of boys (Steve and Augy included).
IT GOT SO MUCH BETTER!!!!
Life in a subdivision partly populated with eldritch and possibly magical (officially classified as “extra-dimensional”, for even when faced with the physics-defying nature of their new co-habitating citizens the government cannot bring itself to acknowledge them as “magic wielding hell-beasts”, as some high-ranking staff members initially suggested) goes on fairly normally.
Sure, there are a few hiccoughs. The creeping deathshade vines get a stern talking to about appropriate afternoon snacks (”NOT the Fitz-Simmon’s chihuahua, I don’t care how much he has it coming or what he excreted where, now spit it out!”), Aubergine sheds all her leaves at once and snowballs the house (but does helps sweep up afterwards), and moonrise is a good time to watch the night-gaunts fly by (but on moondark it’s best to stay inside, no matter how prettily they glow. They’re somewhat similar to fireflies, and don’t always check to see if their partner glows as well. It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if they didn’t dive mid-coitus and drop just above the ground.)
While the neighborhood in general is accepting of the Abominations, when things get to be a bit much they tend to come to Steve. Since meeting Beatrice and Millie (and the formation of the Terrifying Triad known as Millie, Son, and Timmy) Steve is the adult human male most comfortable dealing with Antler Guy on the whole street. (Sharon as U.M.B. is widely held to have, well, steel-whatever-the-hell-she-wants, and Timmy is known to run over to Antler Guy and ask for rides through “that wobbly grey place, you know, the one with the REALLY BIG alligators?”. Still, the courtesies must be observed.)
So when a writhing sparking ball of snarling terror and teeth takes up residence in the Manzo’s tool-shed, and when Animal Control refuses to come (the street is banned due to a run-in with the deathshade vines), Steve is called. Having heard the description, Steve brings Antler Guy.
When they get there, Mr. Manzo is forcibly holding the door shut. Unholy yowling is coming from inside. At a gesture from Antler Guy, Mr. Manzo leaps away, and the doors blast open.
A 150 pound ball of whimpering, flaming something hits Steve and knocks him on his ass. The whimpering, flaming something proceeds to slobber all over Steve, his shirt, his pants, and a decent portion of grass in between distressed yelps.
“GACK!”
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, ARE YOU IN DISTRESS?”
“GAAACKLEARGHSPLUH- DOWN boy, HEEL, that’s a good- Antler Guy, what is this?!”
“I BELIEVE IT IS A HELLHOUND, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
“Good grief, I didn’t know they came this big and…..and….. Guy?”
“YES NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“Is he supposed to be…..skinless?”
“YES NEIGHBOR STEVE. THIS VARIETY WAS BRED TO BE LAP DOGS. THEIR FLAME IS MOSTLY WITHOUT HEAT, AND THEY HAVE NO SKIN FOR THOSE WHO ARE ALLERGIC.”
“…….laPDOG?!”
“YES NEIGHBOR STEVE.” Antler Guy lays a hand on the hellhound, who tries to burrow further into Steve with little success. “HE APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN RECENTLY WEANED. IT WILL TAKE TIME FOR HIM TO GROW TO HIS FULL SIZE.”
“……”
“THE SMALL BREEDS GROW MORE SLOWLY.”
A vile hissing emanates from the shed. (Mr. Manzo has long since fled for the safety of his kitchen.) As Steve attempts to calm the frantic hell-puppy, Antler Guy investigates. He reaches one long hand in behind the riding lawnmower and….. winces.
“NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“Yeah- I’m right here, uh, doggie, not going anywhere- Guy?”
“I APPEAR TO HAVE AN…. ATTACHMENT.”
Steve is awed at the tiny ball of white fluff attached to one long, thin finger. He didn’t know that Antler Guy’s fingers COULD be bitten, much less by a tiny kitten.
Which is how Steve and Sharon got Clifford (”Aww c’mon Sharon, how could I pass that one up?”), and Antler Guy and Hellwife get Fluffy (”NEIGHBOR STEVE ASSURES ME IT IS A TRADITIONAL TITLE.”)
This might be the most amazing thing that ever crossed my tumblr dash
I cannot like this any more intensely by clicking again, but I can reblog for the continuations. It’s like a wonderful serial fiction that updates about as often as Sherlock. *g*
This…is everything. I would watch the shit out of this soap opera.
so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie – the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again. and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels – it’s not love, it’s control.
BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.
i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…
you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’rerealizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist
okay but consider this: a woman walks to the park every day and feeds the swans and watches them paddle gracefully around the lake, sighing to see how beautifully they swim.
finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’
and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’
and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’
and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’
and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’
the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this.
and neither the woman nor her husband are ever heard from again, though for very different reasons.
so you know the rule in fairylands where you cant eat or drink anything or you’ll have to stay there forever? does like.. .eating out/sucking dick count
holy f uck jane
its a serious question
well like, the whole thing is that you cannot have consumed anything belonging to the fey realm. so, yes, probably, you would be stuck there. the same would apply if you just straight up ate a fairy.
new question: would deepthroating count in this case even w/o swallowing
no. temporary doesn’t count, otherwise fairies would all be running about sticking their hands in your mouth to get human servants.
you gotta digest it.
so like??? if you puke afterwards?? maybe it doesn’t count?
huh! i wonder how long is enough time for it to be legit. like whatever goes through your stomach immediately condemns you no matter if you throw it up later?
Well Persephone only ate 6 seeds so she only stayed 6 months, so maybe if you spat out most of it you’d just be condemned to the occasional day “BRB got go pay the two day toll for fellating a fairy.”
“you wanna come over for the weekend?”
“oh man im so sorry i sucked some fairy dick once and now i have to keep coming back to do it again– its a long story”
“you what now”
i can hardly believe this isn’t already the plot of an Oglaf comic
now that u said it im really surprised as well
what the fuck did i just read
Why ISN’T this an Oglaf comic yet?
I’m so happy that i’m not the only person who thinks of questions like these. I love you all so much.
I’m not convinced by this, actually!
Like, this analysis treats it as a substance problem, i.e. “edible matter from fairyland has properties that, if ingested, physically prevent you from being able to return to the real world.”
But OTOH, a recurring theme throughout fairy stories is that they’re all about…rules and exchanges and agreements with really steep interest rates:
“I’ll do you this favor, but if you don’t guess my name you’ll have to give me your first-born child.”
“You’re gonna be real good at everything but when you’re 16 you’re gonna prick your finger and die.”
“You loaned me $2 for the bus when I looked like a beggar, so now here’s a literal pile of gold and shit.”
Not to mention that in Childe Rowland, one of the central “if you eat food from fairyland you’re stuck there” stories, Rowland manages to retrieve his siblings despite them all presumably having chowed down on fairy food – all it took was beating the Fairy King in a swordfight and threatening to chop his head off.
The takeaway, I think, is that the food thing a matter of implicit exchange: if you get your grub on in fairyland, you’re accepting their hospitality and eating food that they own. This means you owe them, which the fairies can magically leverage to prevent you from leaving.
(You can probably get around this by explicitly agreeing to pay for your meal before you sit down to eat. From what I remember, fairies don’t seem capable of pulling a “Haha, we had an agreement but you’re fucked anyways!” maneuver, so if they agree to let you leave they might even be forced to helpyou leave.)
Which brings us to the matter at hand: if you blow a fairy you’re doing them a favor! They owe you.
And…they’re a fairy, so if you didn’t agree to terms beforehand they might not repay you in a way that’s ultimately helpful or safe, but it certainly doesn’t seem like they’d be able to, like, pat you on the head and be like “Thanks, you’re really good at this buuuuuuut also you’re stuck here forever now.”
Instead, what seems more likely is…I dunno, showing up to your wedding years later and giving you a beautiful white horse that always comes when called, while loudly praising you as truly deserving it for giving them them simply the best oral they’ve had in years.
Or they feel obligated to show up at your house a couple days a year. So, like
“you wanna come over for the weekend?”
“oh man I’m so sorry i sucked some fairy dick once and now he always comes by over memorial day weekend and helps me out with minor home repairs.”
“you what now”
This is my favorite act of intellectual bugfuckery on this entire website, when I die I want someone to print this out and place it in my grave with me so I can cherish it forever.
Worked like a debutante’s coming out used to… (incidentally the debutante’s coming out is where we get the terminology) and so being gay or trans or what have you meant getting presented to the reigning monarch.
“Your majesty, may I present… a gay”
I would love this as a story conceit? Like, an upper class who have to engineer elaborate confections to present the younger generation of queers in the Appropriate Manner for Social Advancement.
“Have you heard about Lady Hemington’s youngest? They’ll be coming out as genderqueer!”
“Oh, poor dear Lady Hemington – so hard on the heels of the first two. She can hardly arrange a come-out until the first two have had their chance to shine…”
“And the cost of another nonbinary ball – !”
“The costume changes alone will be terribly hard to bear. But, of course, one mustn’t skimp. Not when that wretched Lucrezia Netherbottom threw such a come-out for her first.”
“Oh, I know, my dear, I know. I’m so terribly grateful that my wife was able to present our boys at Court herself – I’d simply die if the Netherbottoms had an advantage in wooing the Prince, just because Lucrezia’s quite willing to spend thousands on a French cosmetic surgeon.”
“And you’ve got that dear little daughter who’s looking quite Hard Butch, isn’t she?”
“Oh yes, we do hope it isn’t just a phase; ‘twould be such a nice change to throw a proper Lumberjane Ball…”
This past weekend, several friends and I got to talking about the King Arthur police precedural
that Fox is allegedly developing. I only mention this because over the
course of this conversation we realized that the ONLY modern-King-Arthur
television show that Fox should really be developing is a
hilarious reincarnation-based office sitcom, and now I can’t stop
thinking about it, so I am going to tell you all about this imaginary
sitcom in EXCRUCIATING DETAIL.
My imaginary workplace sitcom is about a struggling nonprofit organization and is probably written by the people who wrote Parks and Rec and Brooklyn 99. Accordingly, it stars Retta and Melissa Fumero:
as Alice and Pam, OFFICE NEMESIS battling nonprofit burnout! and each other!
….UNTIL,
in the first episode, they start having flashbacks and eventually
realize: they are the reincarnations of, respectively, King Arthur and
Lancelot, they are destined to fight evil while being devoted to each
other in an epic and legendary way, and weekly budget meetings just got
really weird!
Every episode alternates between flashbacks to
Round Table efforts to fight evil, provide justice, build a better and
more stable society, etc., and current-day office hijinks as the
nonprofit attempts to do the same, but with much more paperwork.
As
a sidenote, all the flashbacks initially have placeholder white guy
actors doing ye olde British accents and speaking forsoothly, except for
the person having the flashback, who plays themselves. Once Alice and
Pam recognize each other at the end of the first episode, however, every
flashback features Retta and Melissa Fumero talking exactly like they
would in the office while wearing shining armor.
The rest of the placeholder actors gradually get replaced by actual cast members as further reincarnation reveals occur,
including:
–
Donald Glover as the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, ladies’ man and
too-cool-for-school tech bro, who’s the only person who knows how to
keep the website running!
–
Rahul Kohli as the noble reincarnation of King Pellinore, the
development manager who is constantly questing after very worthy but
COMPLETELY UNATTAINABLE grants!
–
Yael Grobglas as the reincarnation of Sir Kay, the long-suffering and
sarcastic office business manager who must always be the one to point
out they don’t have enough money for their pet project!
–
Sandra Oh as the director’s PA, the only person who knows where
everything is and keeps the office running and everybody from murdering
each other; she of course turns out to be Guinevere!
–
and, of course, Jaime Camil as Merlin, the director of the nonprofit,
who has been gathering all the Round Table reincarnations together for
world-saving purposes all this while!
Merlin
is not reincarnated, for the record. Merlin is just Merlin. This is why
Merlin is very good at magic and WILDLY INCOMPETENT at being the
director of a nonprofit organization.
Sample episodes include:
– the episode where everyone is rushing to meet a grant deadline, with flashbacks to PREPARING FOR BATTLE AGAINST THE ROMANS
–
the team retreat episode in which Merlin insists everybody do trust falls;
in flashbacks, Merlin also insists everybody do trust falls
– the
episode in which Donald Glover has to go through ludicrous hoops to
install a new open-source software, intercut with the story of Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight
– the mid-season love triangle episode,
in which a.) the reveal of who is Guinevere, b.) the reveal that
Lancelot and Arthur were way more than good buddies, and c.) THE MOST
AWKWARD OFFICE MEETINGS YET, FOR EVERYONE
@zahnie i am kind of mad tbh bc now i keep thinking about that leverage/batman crossover and it’s ridiculous. they’re using a charity gala as a way to get into the manor. eliot immediately pegs alfred for former mi6, but he can’t figure out what the fuck bruce’s deal is. something about the way he stands or the way he watches the room or his shoulders or something. “is it not distinctive enough?” “oh, it’s distinctive as hell, i just don’t know what it is”. let’s say it’s older bruce so hardison has to get into a hacker fight with tim. sophie can’t grift bc there are too many rich people who’d recognize her in attendance. parker can’t infiltrate the catering service because they run that shit tighter than the white house (WHY is he so paranoid about his CATERERS what the HELL i’ve seen BANKS less lax about tracking employees than this) so she has to pretend to be a model. that backfires so fast because bruce is so nice and wants to know if she’s okay bc she seems uncomfortable. parker is thrilled when she discovers the house is full of secret passages but that also ends poorly when she turns a corner and bruce is standing there like “hey there, you seem lost”. he’s still wearing the tux and drinking his champagne. he helpfully guides her to the bathroom since she is having such trouble finding it. eliot has a tense standoff with alfred bc this is wayne manor alfred and that means he is like an older, british eliot who’ll shoot a motherfucker. hardison and tim get distracted playing wow together and it isn’t clear exactly how that happened. there has to be at least one scene where eliot and bruce are fighting and the rest of the team just watches instead of doing anything useful because it’s actually kind of really hot. they don’t even really hurt each other so it’s fine. probably fine. just let them keep pinning each other to the floor for a while, it’s fine. bruce has a lot of helpful critiques for nate’s plan that nate does not appreciate. the obvious thing is that they figure out he’s batman but it’s kind of funnier if they don’t and just think bruce wayne is an inexplicable bamf. they’ve all learned a valuable lesson about judging people based on appearances. bruce flirts with sophie and nate pretends not to be bitter about it but he gazes out at the gotham skyline and broods. it’s just what happens when you’re in gotham. it’s a very broodworthy skyline. make fun of batman all you want but you look out at that skyline and try not to brood. you can’t. even superman broods. i mean, he looks like he’s brooding. he’s usually trying to remember if he left the oven on because every time he decides to make himself a nice dinner a supervillain attacks and four hours later his baked ziti is charcoal. it still counts as brooding. nate never stood a chance.
“Parker, if he so much as gives you a bad feeling I want you to get the hell out of there as fast as you can.”
“What?” Parker looked back over her shoulder at the man currently adorned with three blondes, five brunettes, and a redhead. “Why?”
“Something’s not right,” Eliot said, which wasn’t an explanation at all.
“Think you can maybe give us a little more to go on than that?” Nate asked, the kind of sardonic authority that was easy to pull off when he wasn’t even in the building.
“No,” Eliot snapped. “I don’t know what the hell it is, I just know it’s bad news.” MI6 in the way he held his champagne and CIA in the way he stood and a soldier in his shoulders and Interpol in the way he looked around the room – no, CIA again – no, FBI – League of Assassins? Obviously not that, couldn’t have been that, so what exactly was it that had him wanting to grab Parker and get the hell out? If he could get closer he might be able to tell, the mezzanine might as well have been a different building entirely for all the good it did him. All forest, no trees.
“Not distinctive enough?” Hardison asked, but it wasn’t a real question.
“Too distinctive,” Eliot answered, even though he knew Hardison didn’t actually care. “I’ve just never seen it before.”
“If you’ll pardon the intrusion, sir,” said a voice not in Eliot’s ear, and he did not make it obvious how he stiffened at the address. Eliot turned, let harmless confusion and interest soften his face.
The butler, the one he’d seen before. Pennyworth. That familiar combination of MI6 and Interpol, muddied with domestic service but present all the same.
“May I have your name?” the butler asked, his hair was white but his eyes were sharp.
Mr. Pennyworth exuded serene amusement. “So sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’re not Mr. Easton.”
“Don’t try to deny it,” Sophie said in Eliot’s ear before he could respond. “He couldn’t make it so he told you to come.”
“You caught me,” Eliot said, sheepish. “Turned out he had some kind of a family thing, said I could use his invite. Didn’t think anyone’d notice if I used his name. He’ll be flattered you remember him.”
It was unclear if Pennyworth bought this story, as placid as before. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “But I’ve always made it a point to examine the guest lists personally. If there were meant to be a former green beret in attendance, I would know about it.”
Eliot was, for the most fleeting of moments, stunned.
The butler smiled. It was not kind. “The way you watch the crowd,” he explained. “It’s very distinctive.”
Eliot froze. He frowned. His brow furrowed.
If Hardison laughed any harder, he was going to hurt himself.
Is there fic out there in the Leverage fandom where Sterling has to work with the FBI and he’s going not-so-quietly insane because everyone in the FBI is utterly convinced that Parker & Hardison are actual bone fide agents? Like, they pity Sterling because they’re just so damn good that they’ve managed to sell him on their covers as con artists? They’re such good agents that they’ve managed to fool Interpol?
What if the first people to disparage “processed” food that “comes out of a machine” with “artificial chemicals” were secretly just ancient evil fae and like they can’t eat anything that touched steel or was tainted by human invention or something so they’re just trying to sabotage the world of men and return Earth to the seelie court I’m on to you little shits
Next hip diet trend:
“Food that has never crossed running water. HSSSSSSSSSS!!!!”
Imagine having braces during the apocalypse. no one can take your braces off. And you just have to accept that you’ll have braces forever.
i want a novel focused around a character with braces during the apocalypse and the entire plot of the story revolves around their search for an orthodontist who is still alive and they sort of accidentally save the world in the process
Kimchi and Justice 