#this got...long

[bonesbuckleup]

i'm rereading like a hinge, like a wing and i'm morbidly curious about jason in this au. does he go to ethiopia/die in this universe? if not i'm curious what his future looks like. if he does, i wonder how his death would affect tim and bruce since tim joined the family early

First! Thank you for reading and rereading!

So. Fun fact. I set out to write the Like a Hinge sequel focusing on Dick and Tim having some shenanigans, but then Jason more or less kicked in the door and took it over completely. There are still Dick and Tim shenanigans...but there's also a lot of Jason stuff directly related to the answers to your questions. Meaning, I'm not gonna go too in depth answering this, but here's the shorter version! Some spoilers for the follow up fic if I ever get it finished and posted so if you're not interested in that don't read under the cut:

Everything with Garzonas happened a little over a year before Hinge

Jason had a ticket and a bag packed and was about to go, but his flight was delayed, and also Dick stayed on planet. Dick ends up talking him out of going, among other things.

Aka, along with me messing with their canon ages and many other little tweaks, Dick being home is where the timeline split and Jason did not go and didn't meet Sheila and did not die.

I have no plans on killing Jason, because I don't like killing characters as a general rule. However, kind of like taking away Tim's primary motivation of 'I need to save Batman', it does raise a lot of questions for how future!Jason operates if we take away Hood's primary motivation of 'I died and it changed nothing.' I think a lot of writers tend to think of Robin!Jason and Hood!Jason as two incredibly distinct characters, like they aren't the same person, and there is something to be said for that...but.

But.

The thing is, I really think that "Robin is Magic" Jason and "I'm the guy who can do what Batman can't" Jason can and should coexist in a grown/growing Jason who didn't die. He's 16/17 in this AU. He's figuring out his moral code. He's figuring out what kind of person he is going to be. And, while I don't think a Jason-who-didn't-die would go full Hood and end up with heads in a duffel bag, I do really, really think he still ends up leaning in that direction. It's just not as extreme. Because something that's intrinsic to Jason's character in any universe is that he's a real-world response and challenge to Bruce's rigid moral code in a way that Dick, Tim, Steph, Damian, etc are not.

(Also, like, the thing with trauma, big trauma like dying and coming back and realizing it was meaningless, is that it makes you feel like a different person...but you're still you. Jason doesn't become Hood because of pit madness or insanity or impulse. He becomes Hood because those seeds and the foundation of that worldview were kind of already there.

For me, it all comes down to those lines from Under the Red Hood: "Ignoring what he's done in the past. Blindly, stupidly disregarding the entire graveyards he's filled, the thousands who have suffered, the friends he's crippled. You know, I thought... I thought I'd be the last person you'd ever let him hurt. If it had been you that he beat to a bloody pulp, if he had taken you from this world, I would've done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil, death-worshiping garbage and then send him off to hell!"

That's not Red Hood talking. That's all Jason. Because yeah, Robin's magic. But sometimes magic is doing the things that no one else can do, especially when some motherfucker messes with your family.)

[lovecolibri]

SaL anon here friend and feeling better after the 5a finale (thanks for the pep talk!!!) so that means it song time and I think all things considered now is the perfect time go revisit Earth. So aside from the references to natural disasters that are part of Buck and Eddie's lives, and the appropriate "til the sirens sound I'm safe" line, this song feels like a good representation of these boys now, hiding/pushing down feelings, repressing trauma, though something new could be on the other side.

*deep sigh* I absolutely HAVE to make a masterlist post because I know we have talked about Earth. I know we have. But do you think I can find it anywhere? No. No I cannot. 🙄🙄🙄 So I’m going to apologize if anything here ends up being repetitive from when we did this one for Malex, but I’m thinking in this case I’ll be okay because this song has very different vibes for me on the Malex front vs the Buddie front. 

ANYWAY, I’m so glad you’re feeling better and the pep talk helped! It’s our first Monday of hiatus (😭😭😭) and I’m so glad the fandom is being totally normal about this. By that, I mean that everyone is absolutely unhinged and making wrench memes and yelling at Oliver to explain what TF he’s talking about and I love that for us. 

Okay, so as much as I was looking forward to going into the hiatus on a higher note and maybe having a “January White” Eddie discussion (maybe next year?), I am...a little excited about all the angsty songs we’ll get to talk about so I can’t be TOO upset. And this is a great start! Not too angsty and hopeless, which I think we’ve all had enough of for now this season, but not overly cheerful so it matches the tone of where we are now. And whooo boy if these lyrics aren’t Eddie Diaz right now (though I feel Like Buck’s turn is coming in 5x11)!

i dig ’til my shovel tells a secret, swear to the earth that i will keep it, brush off the dirt and let my change of heart occur.

sold soon after the appraisal, the hammer struck the auction table louder than anything i’ve ever heard.

Okay, so this part is really hitting me in my Eddie Begins feels. Like, Eddie has these moments of “big” trauma that reveal the secret traumas of his life (feeling like he’s always failing-his parents, Shannon, Chris, like he’s not good enough, like he can’t trust his instincts or make good decisions etc) and he has these “oh” moments that those “big” traumas dig up about how really not okay he is, but instead of dealing with these realizations, he just....shoves it all back down and locks it away, only acknowledging as much as he needs to in order to adjust his parenting and not have Chris turn out like him. (Spoiler alert, this is....not working)

fault lines tremble underneath my glass house. but I put it out of my mind long enough to call it courage to live without a lifeline. i bend the definition of faith to exonerate my blind eye. “’til the sirens sound, i’m safe.”

Oof oof oof. This is what we have been seeing since the shooting. That gunshot was the thing that triggered those fault lines and I find it....interesting, that it comes up right after Eddie has been helping Buck to process his childhood trauma. He so gently and insistently validates Buck’s feelings while just...totally ignoring that his own feelings about his own parental/abandonment/not good enough for them to stay trauma (”if that’s how you feel? How they made you feel?”) is also valid. Glass house much, Eddie? But as always, there is another emergency, another person who needs help, another homework assignment or parent teacher conference for Chris, another friend in need, so he puts it out of his mind and pretends that he’s doing the right thing and just moving on. Like turning a blind eye is the same as acknowledging and moving past something. And I am feeling some kind of way about “’til the sirens sound, i’m safe” because Eddie has been falling apart since that shot rang out and we saw him jumping back into the job but repeatedly struggling on calls. Because at this point it’s all sirens all the time and nothing is safe anymore.

meanwhile, my family’s taking shelter. the sparks send the fire down the wire, a countdown begins, until the dynamite gives in.

the echo, as wide as the equator, travels through a world of built up anger- too late to pull itself together now.

I am in my “Fight Club Arc” feelings about this verse. Like, Eddie. My dude. My guy. *siiiiiigh*. He may have been struggling before but he has kinda been falling apart since Shannon died and the tsunami hit and he nearly lost everything. I know there are...divisive feelings about the fight club arc but I don’t mind it because it makes so much sense to me. A man who has been taught his whole life that the only feelings and emotions men are allowed to show are basically fuck or fight? A man like that losing someone he loved once but that he was still angry at and never got closure? A man like that doing everything in his power to be gentle and soft and understanding with his son which he thinks means hiding those “uglier” emotions? And then “losing” the one person he might have felt safe discussing those more difficult emotions with so he could process them? Because that person is going through something too but Eddie is drowning and he doesn’t have his best friend and he feels like he’s failing his son and it’s all just so much? That is a man who is a powder keg and knows it, so he did something he thought would mitigate the collateral damage. But fun fact! You can’t fuck or fight your way out of stuff like this, and no matter how you try to hide it, those closest to you will eventually get hit with some of the blowback.

fault lines tremble underneath my glass house. but i put it out of my mind long enough to call it courage to live without a lifeline. i bend the definition of faith to exonerate my blind eye. “’til the sirens sound, i’m safe.”

I am still in awe of the Eddie reveal in 5x10 because it felt a bit like it came out of nowhere during the episode when it starting hinting he was going to leave the 118, but it didn’t. Not really. Those fault lines have been opening up bigger and bigger cracks all season and Eddie has been pushing through, and pushing through, and living without that lifeline and he is officially out of rope. (Also, not to make this about a different SaL song, Two, interesting fact! A lot of parents can mistype as enneagram type 2′s because so much of who they are is wrapped up in being a caregiver to their child, and even more so for parents of disabled children, or single parents. And Eddie is both of those with additional things heaped on top of Christopher’s little shoulders such as “absent military parent who came home injured”, and “traumatic parental separation, brief reunion, then traumatic parental death”, and “traumatic near-death experience”, and most recently “nearly another traumatic parental death”, and that’s not even counting how Chris must have felt about all the times Buck has been injured! So Eddie defaulting hard into making everything about Chris without putting his own oxygen mask on first is...not unexpected but also not something that’s going to be sustainable in the long term. I cannot wait to dig deeper into that one with you because whooo boy is that going to be A Lot for both Eddie AND Buck.) 

there was an earthquake. there was an avalanche of change. we were so afraid, we cried ourselves a hurricane. there were floods, tidal waves over us, so we folded our hands and prayed. like a domino, these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape.

So of course this is going to make us all think of the various natural disasters we see in the show all the time, but I think it’s important to note how the unpredictability of life and those strong emotions that come with those life changing moments can feel like incontrollable natural disasters. They can feel like everything is cracking and buried and flooded and burned to the ground but out of all that chaos and change, a new world can take shape. And Eddie can’t see it now, he’s still in the middle of all the upheaval, but I think we things settle down and he’s doing his therapy (good god, get that man into therapy!), and he’s unraveling everything, he’s going to find that the old world that crumbled was making way for something new and beautiful and something without those hidden fault lines underneath. He’s going to find that he already has everything he ever wanted, but he has to actually do the work and reach out and grab it.

fault lines tremble underneath my glass house. but i put it out of my mind long enough to call it courage to live without a lifeline. i bend the definition of faith to exonerate my blind eye. “’til the sirens sound, i’m safe.”

I usually lump the last repeated chorus in with the last verse or the bridge, but I’m feeling like this chorus is going to fit Buck pretty soon when we come back from the hiatus and I cannot wait. Because as much as Eddie has been cracking all season, so has Buck. And it’s in a different way, but we are seeing the fissures in the way he tries to put in a transfer (pushing as a way of begging his family to tell him not to go), and the relationship he’s in that has him falling into old, self-destructive habits (isolating, chasing after people because he thinks he’s not good enough, repressing and hiding his true feelings etc). And OOF if “long enough to call it courage to live without a lifeline” isn’t just the most Buck line of all. Because that’s what he tries to play it off as. Courage. And people call him “reckless”, and “indestructible” and “invincible”, and Eddie, only Eddie, sees it for what it is. Expendable. And I think Eddie leaving has some interesting potentials. I know we are all chanting for a Divorce Era 2.0 storyline with upset!Buck this time because season 5 is a warped season 3 mirror and I am all on board for that, but I’m thinking of what Oliver said that he’s going to struggle but he’s going to have to “get used” to being without his partner. I’m thinking maybe we get early days without Eddie, then a flashforward, but I’m not sure if Buck is going to break before or after. Either way, I can’t wait to see it. I can’t wait for both of them to let out all the hurt and anger and sorrow and everything and then start building their new world. Together.

[ladystarks]

Book Jonsa prompt-Sansa meets Ghost again 💕

Sansa begins shivering in earnest after dark falls, but she cannot stop moving--either Petyr’s army or the Boltons will find her if she does, and Sansa isn’t sure which outcome she fears more. The cold seems to sink into her bones, frozen and deadly, but she forces herself to keep rushing forward. She’s only a few miles outside Winterfell, and though she’d never been one for the wolfswood the way Arya or her brothers had been, Sansa remembers where they’d kept a hunting cabin. If only she can get there for the night, hide until the battle between the Vale and Winterfell is over--

She will be found eventually. Petyr will know she’s missing soon, and he will send men after her, men with hounds that will sniff her out, no matter how much snow falls to mask her scent. He will find her and force her to marry him, and then he will take Winterfell and her father’s seat, and Sansa will not be able to stop him, no matter how far she runs. 

She shivers more violently, feels under her furs for the handle of the knife she’d taken from the man who’d fallen asleep watching her. She won’t let it come to that. She won’t be a pawn for Winterfell, never again. She will die first. 

Her bravery, so strong when she’d slipped from the tent, wavers. She might die anyway, in this horrible cold. 

Her teeth are chattering so loudly that at first Sansa does not hear the snap of branches behind her until the sound is almost upon her. She trips over the cold, wet ground, her caught between wildly scrambling for the knife and stopping the fall. 

Her wrist throbs from the impact, and she’s so frozen that Sansa almost gives up right there. She could never win against Petyr, or Joffrey, or any man that wanted her. This escape was doomed from the start, wasn’t it? No use in fighting.

You’re Ned Stark’s daughter, a voice tells her, very much like Arya’s. You can’t stop fighting.

The noise is right behind her now. Quiet, breathing. Sansa braces her elbow on the ground, grips the knife, and rolls to face the danger.

Her heart stutters in her chest. It’s so dark that at first she can barely distinguish the white fur from the snowy trees, but then the wolf is above her, towering and terrifying. For a moment, Sansa thinks she’s about to be die.

She sees his eyes then, red and glinting in the dark. An albino direwolf. 

“Ghost,” she breathes. The knife slips from her fingers. “Ghost, it’s you.”

Gods, will he remember her? It’s been so long, years since she’s seen him, since she’s lost Lady, but Sansa cannot hold her terror inside her any longer.  

She feels the hot rasp of his tongue against her face. Lady used to lick her as well, and Sansa begins to cry with the memory of it. She buries her fingers in his fur, presses her face into the warmth of his ruff. It’s only when Ghost gets off of her--and he’s almost as tall as her--and she straightens that she realizes what his being here means.

“Is Jon here?” she whispers, as if he can give her an answer. “Ghost, is that why you’re here? Can you take me to him?”

The direwolf’s red eyes give nothing away, and he pants silently. Sansa’s strength saps away--she almost sits down in the cold again, when he turns and stalks forward, in the direction she’d been running towards before.

She must be following him for an hour, frozen and chattering, before she spots the first of the tents. It’s dark, and they have lit no cookfires that she can see, so her eyes must adjust before she can see the rows and rows of tents, the men silently standing guard. She can barely make out a Manderly mermaid flag, the Umber giant, the Mormont bear. Her knees nearly buckle when she realizes what this is.

A Northern Army, hidden in the woods. Waiting for the Boltons and the Knights of the Vale to fight one another before sweeping in and taking Winterfell back. Taking her home back. 

Ghost nudges her hand with his nose. Sansa can hear the murmur of men realizing she is there, the guards coming to attention and approaching. It is only the presence of Ghost that keeps them from seizing her, but a voice rises from the back. She can’t make out the words, only the rumble of it--something familiar in sound--before a figure marches forward through the bodies.

“My Lord,” a man says, “the intruder appeared out of the woods. The wolf--”

“It’s no intruder,” the voice says, and it’s Jon’s voice, grown up and deep. She cannot see his face well, but he is taller than she remembers, and already the tears threaten to slide down her cold face. He is within reach in moments, and Sansa’s head is buried in his chest, her fingers grasping at his back. 

It’s a long moment before he speaks, voice choked. She can feel the vibration of his words through his chest. “If you’ll bring me a light, Lord Umber, you’ll see that Sansa Stark has come back to us.”

[singingend]

naughty stuff below..

inuart is a total bottom, he doesn’t know how to to take initiative unless told to. but he’s horrible at it. he’s better at being pegged or eaten out. he’s also super sensitive and tends to blush easily but also concerns about his partner feelings on the matter. he’ll do anything his partner wants and doesn’t know how to say no though.

[castintothepod]

Hello! For the ask game, if you're still doing it~

Leslie: 3, 18, 21, 27

Philotes: 19, 26, 35, 54

Leslie:

3. Orientation and Relationship status (single, taken (by who?)), (crush? (on who))? Fucking gay ass home of sexual and in love & relationship with Cutter (because I'm equally gay at and need to project). Also has a massive crush on my friend's OC Jackie and they have a thing going on. Leslie doesn't label themself but they sure do have 2 hands

18. Have any special keepsakes? They have this very old fuzzy coat they've had forever and practically lives in at times (despite the Florida heat, idk how they do it). It's the only thing they kept from the family home and has kept them warm and safe for years and countless journeys. High-key sentimental value plus it makes them look fancy, a win for all

21. Fave food(s) and drink(?) Cucumber. Don't ask me why, I have no explanation. They do have a cucumber garden thry tend to tho. Coffee drinker (derogatory), enjoys cold brew

27. Whats their family like? Who's in it? What's their relationship with them? Uuuh well, short story is that they don't really have a family anymore. A bit longer story is they do have a close group of friends they still see from time to time and concidertheir found family. All this - and more! - is unlockable in their ~Tragic Backstory~

Phil:

19. Hobbies: Sewing! And everything creative and crafty. She loves creating stuff and use her hands to form and set free whatever he holds in her imagination. Also enjoys singing and testing the limitations of his body by doing fun physical activities like cartwheeling

26. Guilty pleaures: This might sound weird but; standing in the shower, pretending to shower. No water, no soap, just the vague feel of being able to do it. Maybe adds a hologram of rain or something for flavour. No clothes ofc, for authenticity. Sometimes he's been walked in on and asked what the hell is going on, but in reality he just want as much of the human experience she can manage to create for herself

35. What are they like as a friend? Very caring and can and will attempt to help you with everything if needed/asked. Very affectionate too, but it takes a while for her to warm up and accept said affection in return. He cares a lot for his friends and in big dosages it can get a little overwhelming at times (the helpfulness is a lot of his core programming, cannot change dis😔). Trying her best to work on boundaries along with the rest of the crew tho! Will fuck you up if you hurt her firends tho, don't be fooled

54.  What does character want, and what do they need? To be happy

[treeofcups]

Have you thought any on the guest characters daemons, like Nila or Keg or Calianna?

I think I had a little bit about Nila in Caduceus’s section, but since I’m too lazy to go check: Nila has a field mouse! I mentioned it in this post, but basically, firbolgs aren’t born with daemons, and many of them don’t really see the need for one. Some of them though, like Nila and Caduceus, will happen across an animal that they connect with in some way. In Caduceus’s case, it was a puppy who wandered into the graveyard, and in Nila’s case, it was a field mouse she encountered in the middle of a blizzard. She was still fairly new to the druidic arts at the time, so when it started to snow she didn’t start heading home right away, and before she knew it she couldn’t even see through the snow. Looking for shelter, she found a stand of trees that offered a little protection, and started piling up snow around herself. While she was digging, she found a field mouse, half-buried and nearly frozen. She tucked it inside her robe, and talked to it through the night to stay awake. In the morning, the mouse stayed with her as she traveled home, and eventually it became her daemon.

Calianna has a lovely sleek black snake daemon. He’s a shy noodle who spends most of his time hiding in her hair and encouraging her to talk to people. The cultists who raised them were probably thrilled that Cali had a serpent daemon, but honestly, he’s just as gentle and sweet as she is.

I really should have anticipated an ask about Keg, because ever since I decided that dwarves and gnomes make their daemons I’ve been thinking “but what about Keg though?” In the books there was that whole subplot with the armored bears, and I love the idea of something like that on a larger scale, with lots of different kinds of souls and daemons. See, for Rissa I had in mind that she has this necklace, with little bits and charms and things, and she’s been adding to it and changing it and messing with it ever since she was little. Rissa’s father, well, he makes fantastic little machines, lots of them! Why limit yourself? Norda, the dwarven lawmaster in Trostenwald, she has her armor, which is the very traditional dwarf thing to do. Not everyone has that, of course. It would be silly for tailors or charcoal burners or fishermen to go around in clanking plate mail all day just so they can be close to their soul, but most people have something at least. 

Keg uses the fact that a lot of people (not all, but enough) find it difficult to read someone if they don’t have a little animal emoting next to them all the time. People usually see dwarf+armor+big weapons and automatically assume she’s more dangerous than they are. Obviously this ends up biting her in the ass, but please still consider young Keg realizing that as long as she keeps a mostly straight face, no one really notices how scared she is.

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

I can’t stop thinking about how incredible a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)/Lord Jim (1965) double feature would be

You start with the relatively lighthearted 20k Leagues: fun music, imaginative visuals, an adorable trained seal, and two Serious Actors in not-so-serious secondary roles.  This is prime popcorn-inhaling material.  James Mason and Paul Lukas provide the real emotional gravitas at the center of the film; although Disneyfied, angst still manages to abound amid questions of revenge and redemption.  James Mason’s voice echoes around you as the Nautilus’ spire slowly sinks below the waves, the score swells, the film ends...

Then you clean up your popcorn bowls and put in Lord Jim.  It opens with waves crashing over a ship at sea as Jack Hawkins’ voice tells of “a nameless man who would prefer to live and die unknown.”  The titular Jim fucks up royally and almost instantly, and he spends the rest of the film trying to attain personal redemption: or rather, to prove himself a hero rather than a coward.  This film is unapologetically angsty and introspective, a good complement to and continuation of the dark undertones of the first film.  Along the way, we run into some familiar faces: Paul Lukas, now eleven years older than when he played Aronnax, plays the fatherly, melancholy merchant Stein in what should have been an award-winning performance.  Nearly two hours into the film, who else should emerge but James Mason, playing a deliciously perceptive antagonist to Jim’s would-be hero.  Here is no misguided idealist like Nemo, but a dry cynic who nevertheless seems to comprehend exactly what Jim is putting himself through.  Though I won’t spoil anything, the two films’ endings are oddly similar in tone despite very different circumstances.

It’d be a little over four and a half hours’ worth of gorgeous Technicolor angst with hints of swashbuckling, god-tier acting, and scores that will make you sob.  This has been extremely niche, on-brand film recommendations with Wendy.

[honeylikewords]

How about just he's protective cause his past and he wants to make sure she's safe? Is that ok?

Sure, I don’t see anything objectionable there!

I should specify that for this one, I wrote it in the vein of dealing with Santi’s very definite PTSD following the events that transpired in the film. In my headcanon, Santi lives somewhere in the U.S., now, and has lived there for a few years, and none of Lorea’s men have ever figured out anything about what took place, much less been able to find him, but Santi still experiences bouts of paranoia, increased tension, and anxiety about his worst-case-scenario fears and the guilt he has regarding Redfly’s passing.

As such, this piece does deal with some of the pieces of the PTSD puzzle in Santi’s life, and I wanted to include that as a potential content warning for anyone who might get a little stressed about it. There are also mentions of guns and weapons, just as a follow-up warning about the content.

So, TL;DR: Content Warning: Discussions of PTSD, mentions of paranoia, anxiety, violence, guns, and weapons. Nothing explicit or detailed, but mentioned in passing in regards to the concerns of a veteran adjusting to civilian life. 

It’s going to be okay, I promise! (Since we all know I don’t do dreadful angst). While it does center on the difficult topic of love and relationships with a partner who is dealing with trauma and the associated stress, there is hope, love, and compassion at the heart of it. So, in the end, it will be alright!

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Santi’s worked in a difficult, frightening field since he was a young man. Well over a decade spent in the service of the U.S. Army and then three years deep in the Colombian police has taught him to be tense, cautious, vigilant. He sleeps with one eye open, as the saying goes, long after he’s left the live fire behind, and there’s only so much he can do to curb that natural inclination towards tension. But things only get more complicated once he’s no longer alone in his life, and he has to factor in a whole new set of variables; namely, his beloved.

Santi is naturally a caring, protective person, wanting to keep those he loves safe, and keep even those he hardly knows as safe from harm as he can. He believes it’s his duty to serve others in that capacity. He wants to keep the goodness of the world protected, and is willing to put himself on the front lines, quite literally, for that reason. But now that he has her– this precious, singular life, delicate and so unlike himself– he becomes even more careful, more protective, determined to keep her and her, in particular, the safest of all.

He hovers around her more than he does anyone else, more than perhaps is usual for a common man commonly in love. He stands close and watchful, his body a shield against the world, sometimes hunching his shoulders so that he covers her and diminishes the visibility of either of their faces, thus warding off wandering eyes. Santi keeps his head ducked low in public as his eyes scan around, watching the bodies and posture of the people around them, anxiously awaiting the attack he’s so paranoid will take her from him. He paces around his bedroom at night, thinking every rustle in the bushes outside his apartment is some assailant in the dark, ready to pull her from his hands.

Santi checks and double checks the locks on the front door. He specifically bought a car with a key fob that could start the ignition from a distance so that he can stand a safe ways away, start the car, and see if someone put in a bomb. At every place they go, Santi needs a seat where he has eyes on the exits and entrances: he needs to be able to see a door, or he cannot relax. Santi sometimes, on his worst days, won’t feel comfortable with either of them eating food he hasn’t seen be prepared or prepared himself, and therefore just outright cannot do restaurants without getting panicky. 

He doesn’t like taking Ubers or Lyfts, and specifically asks his sweetheart to not use those systems because he worries so much about what might happen. “If you need a ride, you can always call me,” he reminds her. It’s not that he wants to control where she goes– far from it– but rather that he has horrible visions in his head of her being kidnapped by some hypothetical hitman sent by the last vestiges of Lorea’s army, sent in disguise as her driver in order to destroy Santi’s life by targeting the one thing that has come to matter most to him: her.

Even then, when he does drive her, he drives defensively, sometimes putting his hand out towards the passenger side car door and using his arm as a shield over her chest when he stops short, or if a car comes speeding out of nowhere. He refuses to let anyone else take the wheel– never does he snap at her about it, but always firmly, politely, sweetly, but strongly decline her offer to drive him– because he just can’t, can’t, can’t feel safe unless he knows he’s controlling the vehicle. 

Santi still owns guns, and he hates that. He hates that he has a gun safe in his apartment. He despises the two guns in there (a handgun and pistol), and wishes beyond all other wishes that he could finally let himself get rid of them. But he can’t: he’s still, even now, a soldier, needing to always be prepared for when the shit hits the fan.

Naturally, he’s licensed and safe to have them, educated and instructed and well-versed in the safe use and maintenance of them, but knowing they’re there makes him feel like more of a secret monster than he knows how to express. 

He tells his sweetheart about them so that she isn’t horrified or surprised– better to meet it up front, he tells himself– but does not take them out of the safe, nor show them to her. Instead, he shows her his certifications and training documentation, his legal permissions to own, carry, and use them. He shows her the registration on each weapon and carefully explains that he has never, ever drawn his weapon unnecessarily, and never will.

“I promise you,” he tells her, holding her hands tight, “That those… things will not come out of that safe unless it is the direst, absolutely necessitated situation on earth. I swear on everything that I am. You don’t have to be scared.”

He does the same thing with the combat knives he still keeps around. He doesn’t draw them from their protective sheath, doesn’t flash them at her, but merely informs her where they are, shows her that he is safe to use them, and reassures her that they will never, ever be used unless there is an actual, dangerous, life-or-death scenario playing out.

But for him, the fact that he keeps the knives is damning, in some capacity. He thinks about it every time he drives himself to and from work; he’ll cast a glance at the glovebox on his right side and think about the bowie knife inside, think about how it sits mere inches of reinforced plastic away from his sweetheart every time she rides shotgun with him, think about how he wishes he wasn’t still only able to sleep if he knows he has an accessible means of self-defense nearby.

And oh, god, his sleep. He’s better, now, after a few years, but he still has trouble, and he can’t sleep with his back to the door or window. He specifically chose his apartment because the bedroom had no windows, and he could face the door easily with his back to the wall. At night, when she sleeps over, Santi silently guides her into the one of the only two positions he feels safe in: either her pressed between his back and the wall, with his front facing the door, or his back pressed to the wall as he cradles her and faces the door. He needs to be the first line of defense if anything comes through that door, needs to be able to wake up, jump to the ready, and cover his sweetheart from whatever could be lurking out there.

Sometimes, when he dreams, she can see his face screwing up as if in pain, his breathing coming in too short, too hard, too shallow, and his arms will clench around her, cleaving her close. He clings onto her as he buries his face into her skin and grips her too tight to be mistaken for a simple hug: he’s having those dreams again. The ones where she’s being taken from him. All she can do is rub at his shoulders and whisper in his ear, tell him she’s here, she loves him, she’s safe.

Of course, she notices this overflow of fear in Santi’s life. It’s not something anyone could miss; the way he seems to clench up any time someone stands too close to them in public, the way his arm always presses her close and his hand grips into her side, as if he’s going to yank her down into a bomb-cover pose at any moment. He feels, at times, to be more like a bodyguard than a boyfriend. And it worries her.

She talks to him about it at length. Anyone in a committed relationship would have to talk about this at some point, but especially for her, there’s this need to comfort him, help him, be present with him. There is a real need to have frank and earnest discussions about what he needs and what they have to do for each other if they want this to work, and, by God, do they both want it to work.

By now, she knows about his previous work– no solid details, of course, because so much of it is still considered sensitive information under Federal protection– but she doesn’t really know about those tragic final days in Colombia. She doesn’t know about what really happened, just bits and pieces: it was his last mission, he tells her, and he lost a good friend because of a bad, bad mistake he, himself, made.

“I don’t think I could let myself do that again,” he tells her one night as he sits on the end of the bed and holds her hand after a long, exhausting talk about this particular beast of a burden he carries. 

He feels so big, but yet so small, far away from her even as she feels his skin against hers. 

“I couldn’t let myself be the reason someone else I love gets hurt. I can’t be selfish like that again.”

“Santi–”

“A-and I’ve done everything I can,” he interjects, his eyes focused on the carpet, brows furrowing, “To ensure nothing else happens. I know they haven’t followed me here. I know they can’t find me. I know none of them know about me, or about you, or–”

“Santiago Garcia.” 

Santi looks up from the floor and meets her gaze, part steel, part sheepishness. 

“It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”

Her hand rises and she cups his cheek, fingers grazing over the protrusion of his strong cheekbone. He watches her face as her eyes follow the path of her fingers over his sunlit skin, over his grey-black beard, over his bitten and chapped lips, over the bridge of his proud, broad nose. She’s stroking his face, just the way he’s fallen in love with, trying to calm him, and he’s hardly even paying attention to the actual sensation of her fingers, but rather watching her face as she touches him.

He watches her explore him, watches her sensate with him. He studies the little flickers of her eyes, the tide-like motion of her lips, the alternation of her breaths between her mouth and her nose. He watches the woman he loves reach out and love him back, and everything else fades away to background noise, just for a minute.

When she’s done mapping that familiar route over the expanse of his face, her eyes come back to his, and he feels her intentions as clearly as if she’d spoken them. He leans forward and puts his forehead to hers, closing his eyes and taking in a deep breath.

“I love you,” he says, the words clean-cut, clear, chosen.

“I love you,” she replies. 

It is not an echo. It is a response. Chosen, just as his words were.

“And I want to keep you safe.”

“I know that.”

“So… please let me, you know, at least do some of my things. If just for my own peace of mind. It doesn’t have to be everything. And I don’t want to control you. But I just breathe a little easier when I feel like I know what’s going on.”

“Okay,” she whispers, putting a hand on his face and rubbing her nails at the thickest part of his short sideburns, grazing the silver hairs that mingle with his dark curls. “It’s okay to do some of it– the driving, the door-watching, if that’s what you need– but… safely. Just remember that it’s my job to help you as much as it is yours to help me, right?”

“Yeah,” chuckles Santi, brushing the tip of his nose against hers, butting their heads softly. “You keep me safe, too, you know. You do.”

She kisses his jaw as he says that and nods, smiling against his skin.

“It’s not going to be easy,” she mumbles into his cheek, “But I’ll be here. We’ll be safe, we’ll go slow. I’ll protect you and you protect me, and we can work on making that a less scary thing for you.”

“I just… don’t want to lose you,” he breathes. 

“You won’t. You can’t. I’m stuck on you, whether you like it or not; I’m going to be here to help you, okay?”

“Like it or not,” Santi mimes back, rolling his eyes playfully. “As if I don’t like having this beautiful–”

He takes a moment to peck her cheek.

“–Sweet–” 

Another peck, on her other cheek.

“–Very, very kind girl–” 

A last, warm, long peck on the lips.

“–Doting on my nervous old ass.”

She smiles at him and kisses the creases around his eyes, hands passing through his dark, salt-and-pepper curls. They hold each other close in tight hugs, squeezing hard, as if each squeeze is a beat of morse code to tell the other the unspoken depths of their love. I am here, the squeezes seem to spell. I am still here.

It’s a long journey ahead of them. There is no need to describe how hard it will be. It will not be a journey that ends with a magical cure and a happily ever after with no caveats, no mistakes, no difficulties. But it’s still a journey that is worth it. They’re worth it. 

They keep each other safe in all the ways those who truly love each other do; physically guarding one another, emotionally protecting the other from pain, soothing what aches come with the nature of being human, supporting each other in their mental strife. And it’s all worth it. 

Love is worth that effort.