#thefvrious

[bodylcnguage]

"are you trying to make me jealous?" to haneul from two / @thefvrious

"is it working?" haneul asked as they peeked at two, a cheeky smile on their lips. they then wrapped their arms around the other's waist, smiling up at him. "they're just my boss. the only person that i have my eyes on is you."

[celestialmuses]

Closed Starter for: @thefvrious

"You're gonna die laughing. I just opened the back door for Sprocket to go pee, and he jumped straight into the snow and got the fucking shock of his year. Poor guy was definitely peeing, left a trail of it back to the door." Kirk laughed, blowing warm air on his hands. He hadn't put on a coat or anything to let his dog out, but the cold air had still been blowing in his face. He leaned over the edge of the couch, pressing his still icy hands against their cheeks. "Did you make coffee? I can make some if you just woke up."

[ofginjxints]

closed starter for @thefvrious based on 22. (x)

An outdoor wedding in Spring was always going to go either way. He wasn't the type to attend that many, but his arm was twisted. He was half attending and half looking out for trouble. The skies had opened up, though thankfully it was after the ceremony. Most people had retreated into the main building but he found himself under the gazebo. Perfect time for a smoke. He was halfway through his cigarette when someone joined him. He looked at them up and down and silently offered the pack from his pocket - regardless of whether they smoked or not - they looked like they needed one.

[likeag6s]

alfie grinned, “i’ll take it.” bodhi never failed to amuse him, and he laughed lightly. “that’s what i thought! people can be very intriguing. it’s hilarious.” his fingers carded throgh his lover’s hair, smiling as he pressed a kiss against his temple. “we are going to have an amazing time.” he mused, “come on, if we’re done with dinner then i’ll help you pack if you’d like?” / continued from here @thefvrious

[comeundcne]

𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐦 ( @thefvrious ) — 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐲 𝐛𝐨𝐱 !

large screens spread around the bar played various athletic events — hockey, college basketball, and a rerun of spring training for the mariners, but the only thing arlo cared about was the sea of people that had spilled into the bar for drinks and good times. he weaved the crowd, checking in on new faces and greeting those familiar smiles with the same boyish charm he always did.

some people recognized him as the athlete he'd once been, others looked at him like he was nothing more than a man. most nights he preferred the latter, but some nights, arlo found himself craving a couple of more seconds back on home ice. just one more game between the pipes, one more sixty-minute haul in the crease.

"excuse me," he greeted, his brown orbs landing on a group of women he was certain he hadn't seen before. he was good with faces, even better with smiles, and he knew for a fact that crooked grin shooting back at him was one he didn't recognize. "do i know you from somewhere?"

he focused in on the blonde, the one who's raspy laugh had pulled him out of his own head and in their direction. "you're..." he trailed off, like her name was going to come to him if he dragged it out long enough. it wouldn't, but he hoped like hell she'd fill the silence with the letters he was looking for.

[daggersandsparkles]

@thefvrious

The problem with anticipating something was that it made you stupid.

Nolan had known this about himself for years; had built systems specifically to counteract it, to keep the forward-moving part of his brain from eating the careful part alive. Usually it worked. Usually he was good at compartmentalising, at filing the thing that was happening later into a separate drawer and closing it and working cleanly in the present tense.

Usually he was not thinking about being called good boy for his reluctant cooperating while trying to recalibrate a live circuit.

The spark that jumped from the connection point to his ring finger was his own fault entirely. He pulled his hand back, shook it out, looked at the ceiling with the expression of a man having a very serious word with himself.

"Right," he said. "Right. Focusing now."

He focused for approximately seven minutes before he cross-wired the secondary feed and had to spend twenty minutes undoing it.

The tea break was not optional after that. He made it on the hotplate, the spark from his palm to the element automatic and practiced, muscle memory so deep it didn't require thought, and stood in the middle of the plant holding the mug in both hands and doing the thing he never normally had to do, which was deliberately slow his own nervous system down. Breathe. Clock the exits. Feel the floor under his feet. The familiar hum of the plant coming up through the concrete. The smell of metal and something faintly burnt and the particular quality of the air down here that he'd stopped noticing years ago and noticed constantly now because Dom was going to be breathing it soon.

The mug was warm. He held it until his hands stopped feeling like they belonged to someone running a different program.

Get it together, he told himself. You have work to do and you are going to do it and then he's going to walk through that door and you are going to be a functional human person who has not made three rookie errors in forty minutes.

He finished the tea. Set the mug down. Pulled his goggles down from where they'd been pushed up on his forehead and went back to work.

The plant was running hot tonight. Not dangerously — not yet — but the equipment had been working at capacity since the crisis earlier that week and the ambient temperature in the upper section had climbed to the point where working with a shirt on was a losing proposition. He'd shed it an hour ago, folded it over the railing at the base of the ladder, and promptly stopped thinking about it because there was nobody here and he had work to do.

The Lichtenberg scars caught the light when he moved. The branching patterns across his shoulders and down his arms, old and new both, fern-like and precise in the way that only things made by electricity were precise. He didn't think about them. He never thought about them while he was working. They were just part of the landscape of being him.

The thing in the upper rigging needed doing immediately. He'd been watching it for two days, a junction point thirty feet up where the secondary distribution line was running hotter than it should, the housing showing the very specific color he associated with this is about to become my emergency, and tonight it had crossed a threshold he couldn't in good conscience ignore.

Which was how he ended up thirty feet off the ground on a platform that had never been designed for a person, the original infrastructure built for maintenance access by machinery that no longer existed there, a narrow shelf of old metal grating accessible only by a ladder that complained the entire way up and delivered him onto a surface approximately the width of his shoulders. Below him, the plant. Above him, the ceiling of the old facility, close enough to feel the heat radiating off it; worse up here, significantly worse, the air thick and warm and smelling of overworked metal. Sweat at his temples, at the back of his neck, tracking down between his shoulder blades. The goggles fogging slightly at the edges and doing nothing to help with the heat.

Beside him, the junction housing, already warm to the touch through the gloves.

He worked by torchlight, clamped between his teeth, the beam steady, his hands doing what they knew how to do. The height was not the problem. He'd never had an issue with heights. The problem was the grating flexing slightly under his weight in a way that was probably fine and was definitely something he was tracking in the background at all times, and the problem was that down below, the main door was visible from where he was, and he kept not-looking at it.

He was most of the way through the repair when the housing decided it had opinions.

The arc came without warning, old failing metal throwing a spark sideways, external current hitting him from the wrong direction entirely, and his body's response to it was involuntary and immediate. Not painful, exactly. More like being grabbed suddenly. His grip slipped. His weight shifted wrong on the grating and the grating flexed and for one very specific second the situation had the feeling of something that was about to become significantly worse before it got better.

He caught himself. Both hands finding purchase, the repair half-finished, the torch still somehow between his teeth. He stayed very still for a moment, breathing through his nose, letting the involuntary charge that had spiked in response to the arc settle back down to something manageable. His shoulders were shaking slightly. Residual. Fine.

Fine, he told himself. You're fine. Don't drop anything.

He heard the door.

The particular drag of it, the way it scraped slightly on the threshold, he'd done that drag himself ten thousand times, knew the sound the way he knew his own heartbeat, and then footsteps.

He could not look down. He was holding two contacts together that needed to stay held until the housing cooled enough to seal around them, both hands occupied, torch between his teeth, perched on a surface he trusted approximately sixty percent and had no choice but to trust entirely. Sweat running down his collarbone. The goggles fogged at the edges. Still shaking slightly in the shoulders from the arc.

He took the torch out of his mouth.

"Fair warning," he said, to the room, to whoever had just come through his door, pitched loud enough to carry down through the plant's hum. "If you’re not Dom, you've got about ten seconds to reconsider your evening plans." A pause. He did not look down. He could not look down. His hands stayed exactly where they were. "I'm not in a position to come down there at the moment and I genuinely cannot guarantee your safety if you're still in this building when I am. So."

Another pause.

"If you are Dom —" and something shifted in his voice, the warning quality of it falling away into something warmer, slightly helpless, aimed directly at the door below "— watch your step on the left side of the floor. There's a patch that gets slippery when it's warm." A beat. "And I'm — " the grating flexed and he adjusted his weight, jaw tight, torch still in hand "— I'm a bit busy up here. Just give me a sec. Don't be alarmed. Everything's fine."

A pause that suggested everything was, in fact, fine.

"Mostly fine."

He held the contacts together and waited to hear which one it was.

[lithiumwolff]

Closed Starter | @thefvrious

Gus had grasped Conrad by the shoulders. Not violently but with some force holding him there. "Conrad. Listen to me. You are okay. I am here."

[theknifeinyou]

@thefvrious wanted johnny

"What do I owe the pleasure?"The doc asked, opening the door for them to enter. This wasn't normal, she went to them, and they never came to her. It was a rarity and she was hoping it wasn't because someone was dying.