Latest Posts by elpickett - Page 3

on the one hand I feel like Tommy probably should have clocked this before marrying the head communist, on the other hand I'm now just imagining their conversation that night, namely Maria discussing the fact that her brother in law has arrived with a child and then Tommy is just having a breakdown over being a communist

Blood Runs Red

a tommy miller fic where he's the more broken miller brother

Tomás Alejandro Casillas Miller had grown up well acquainted with blood: his own, Joel's, his mother's. The apocalypse hadn't changed much in that regard.

***********************************************

Rating: T

Warnings: references to Joel's suicide attempt and child loss

Relationships: Tommy / Maria, Tommy & Joel, Tommy & Sarah, Tommy & Ellie

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51550372

**********************************************

Full fic under the cut if you'd rather read things here

Tomás Alejandro Casillas Miller had grown up well acquainted with blood.

His grandfather's blood soaking the living room floor, making his parents flee their home to the USA when he was a toddler, moving to a different continent, to a country where they didn't speak the language, all to try and protect him and Joel. Tommy had never told his mother the way the blood seeping into their couch back in Chile had haunted his dreams for as long as he could remember, that it was his only memory of the home they'd left behind.

His mother's blood, loosened from her body by his father's fist when he'd had too much to drink, which had turned into his and Joel's blood by the time he was eight. He still had the scar on his arm from when the bone had gone clear through his skin when he was ten. He'd told Maria he'd been skateboarding when she'd first run her fingers over the raised mark, reminding her that 'scars are sexy, darlin',' not wanting to think too hard about how it had actually come about.

And then his father's blood, ripped from his body by a car a few short months after the broken arm (he'd often thought of the irony of his father killed by a drunk driver whilst almost definitely drink driving at the same time in a particularly nihilistic period he'd had as a teenager).

All of Joel's blood spilt trying to protect Tommy from bullies who made fun of his accent, his hair, the way he dressed. He'd switched to using Tommy then, deciding it wasn't worth Joel's blood to continue insisting that others called him Tomás. Deciding it wasn't worth more blood, even if it made him feel like a part of him was quietly dying, shedding the skin he'd grown up in.

Julia's blood, dripping down her face when she'd shown up at the Miller house when Tommy was 13, barely able to mutter the words 'I'm pregnant' to Joel before collapsing in a heap on their porch. It'd be another week until his mother had asked when Julia was going home before Julia managed to explain that she wasn't welcome at her parents' house anymore, to which his mother had pulled her into a tight hug and said she'd always wanted a daughter anyway. He'd thought it was odd then, seeing the tears drip down Joel's face as he realised he'd be a father before his nineteenth birthday, that his girlfriend (and that was a generous description of their relationship) would be living with them for the foreseeable future, that the liquid dripping down Joel's cheeks was clear and not the scarlet he had come to know so well.

The blood in the hospital room the first time he met his niece, fourteen and awkward with too long limbs, suddenly realising just how different it was going to be going forward. He'd cried then, too, realising his whole world had just realigned itself to orbit this little girl's life, and swore into her hair (already darker than his and Joel's, the curl pattern tighter) that the colour she would grow most used to wouldn't be the red he saw whenever he shut his eyes. It was a surprise to Tommy when Julia left without blood two years later, leaving behind only already signed divorce papers, an orange post note with the words 'I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry' scribbled in purple pen. It had been easier to help Joel with his bloodied knuckles than it had been to hold Sarah, sobbing her eyes out because her mother hadn't come to tuck her in at bedtime.

His own blood, then, was all he saw for the next three and a half years, getting into dumb fights at school, Joel's sighs ringing loud in his ears as he sat in the Principal's office and assured him that yes, he was Tommy's guardian (despite not being old enough to buy a beer, but it was better Joel went in to school to get him than their mother, who'd never quite managed to wrap her tongue around English), and yes, he would make sure that it didn't happen again. (It happened again). (And again). (And again).

And then the desert, the yellow sand turning a dirty rust colour from all the blood soaking into it. Tommy Miller was well accustomed to blood, yes, but he was used to it belonging to those he knew. Now everyone's blood mixed together, impossible to tell who it came from. Not that it mattered, he came to realise. The other American soldiers, those they were fighting, they all bled the same. And bleed they did. By the time Tommy came back to the US, nineteen, a veteran of Desert Storm and having seen the world in a way he had begun to think may have not been the best manner in which to do so, his hands were stained blood red whenever he looked at them. It took Sarah (four, almost almost five, so tiny and perfect and sweet, nothing like him or her grandfather or Julia, all Joel) twenty minutes to talk him down from scrubbing his hands raw when he babysat her while Joel was working late one evening, before he admitted to himself that he couldn't go on the way he was. He went back home to his tiny apartment, poured himself two fingers of the shitty whiskey he'd stolen from Joel's cupboard as payment for babysitting, and then called the therapist an army friend had given him.

The therapist never quite understood that the flashbacks and the nightmares and the dread sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach weren't from the blood, but from the fact he couldn't tell who's blood it was.

And then, again, his mother's blood. Cancer was never pretty, but Dios, was it awful. Isabella Casillas (she'd never taken her husband's name, her one act of rebellion against a husband who'd taken everything else from her) got the news from the doctor on a Tuesday, two weeks after Tommy had seen the blood she coughed into a handkerchief and she had told him it'd been happening for a while already. 'No quieres que os preocupéis' and 'necesitáis enfocar en mi nieta, estoy bien' were her repeated refrains as he and Joel hovered around the hospital bed, a six year old Sarah not fully understanding why all her free time was suddenly being spent in the hospital, but understanding the look on her father and uncle's faces. She didn't go quietly in the end, choking on the red until she slipped away. The red roses a neighbour brought over for him and Joel with a quiet 'I'm sorry for your loss' only reminded him of everything he'd lost, the colour matching the blood seeping from his palm after he'd dropped a glass and cut himself trying to pick up the pieces.

Tommy's next few years were spent working too long hours and helping Joel raise his daughter, and god, it terrified him, realising how much he could fuck her up. For all Joel's panic about not knowing what he was doing, Tommy knew he'd be fine. Joel had practically raised him, after all. He knew how to look after a child. Tommy, on the other hand, had no idea what he was doing. So he settled down (mostly), spending his free time with his niece, cleaning grazed knees from astroburn, a cut on her hand from when she tried to cook and the knife slipped. He always handled Sarah getting hurt better than Joel, too used to the way blood stained carpet and clung on under fingernails. Joel just panicked whenever his daughter was in a less than perfect state.

By the time Sarah was fourteen, Tommy had got his life mostly sorted. He still drank slightly too much, still had a tendency to go for women who he shouldn't (in his defence, she'd taken the wedding ring off before going to the bar), still tended to solve problems with his fists rather than his words. But he also had a stable job, the contracting firm he and Joel ran finally up and running mostly functionally, his own flat (not that he spent much time there), friends, and his niece. He and Sarah had always blurred the lines between being uncle and niece and siblings, Joel having raised them both in all the ways that mattered.

And then, the end of the world.

The blood flooding the jail cell as one of the other people in lockup suddenly went crazy, snarling and biting, before one of the cops finally stepped in with a bullet to the head.

The blood painting the road red as he and Joel tried desperately to get back home to Sarah, to make sure she wasn't the next person to spill their blood that night.

Sarah's blood, gushing over Joel, who was still clutching his daughter to his chest, as Tommy lifted the rifle a fraction of a second too slow to save his niece.

And Tommy saw, then, the moment Joel shattered, holding his daughter, suddenly unable to do anything. Tommy realised, in that moment, that while he'd always known the sight and smell of blood, Joel hadn't. Joel had somehow not become used to it, and had avoided the subtle comfort it gave Tommy. So Tommy watched his brother shatter in pieces, and could only stand there and think how he was a moment too slow in getting the soldiers blood to spill. A moment too slow to save his niece, the girl he'd helped Joel raise since he was still a kid himself. A moment too slow in stopping his brother becoming like him.

And then, two days later, after he'd finally persuaded Joel to bury Sarah under an old oak tree, Joel's blood, leaking from the head wound as Tommy found his brother, pistol still clutched in his hand, begging Joel to stay with him. Tommy realised, looking at Joel in that moment, that Joel had got used to blood, and decided to add his own to the river. And god, if that didn't hurt Tommy, who had watched blood spilt and never wanted more, but who had never purposely added his own to any serious degree.

In the years that followed, Tommy watched his brother become well acquainted with blood. Watched as his brother went from being kind, being patient to someone else, to someone who lived for the violence that the end of the world had brought. Tommy watched as he failed to stop Joel from turning into what he'd been since a child, since the first time he watched someone's life fade from their eyes as their life seeped out with their blood.

Soon, though, the blood stopped coming from Joel, from Tommy, became everyone else's. The Miller brothers gained a reputation as people who would do what was necessary to survive, to spill blood even when there was probably another way. It wasn't until later, much later, that Tommy looked back and realised Joel had done what he did to try and protect Tommy as best he could, to stop Tommy shattering the way he had the night he lost Sarah. What he'd missed was that Tommy had broken a long time before the end of the world.

It wasn't a surprise, really, that Tess entered their life in a flurry of red. Tommy and Joel had joined up with a larger group a year into the end of the world. They'd been heading vaguely north, following rumours that the infected were less active where it was colder, that the slowly appearing QZs were easier to slip in and out of then the QZs further south. Tommy and Joel had discovered that smuggling was an easy way to make ends meet, enough things still in houses that they didn't need to use threats of or actual violence too often. They met Tess by selling to her group - mainly ammo, some spices, some medication. She was the one to suggest they join up with their group, make use of the strength that came in numbers. Tommy had tripped over himself saying yes, dragging Joel along with him, seeing in Tess' eyes the same look that his won often had: not the haunted, emptiness of Joel's, but the resignation of someone who knew the world may have ended, but it wasn't that much worse than the world before. It was a disappointment but not a surprise to him when Tess called things off a few weeks into whatever was blossoming between them, the mirror they held up to each other showing something that neither of them wanted to look too close at. He knew he'd have called it off soon enough if she hadn't. It was even less of a surprise when he saw her slipping out of Joel's bed a few weeks later, because while Joel might make her his new purpose, his new reason for living (and Tommy tried not to be hurt by that, that he wasn't reason enough), at least Joel was the kind of broken that would hold Tess up rather than pulling her down to the ground with him as Tommy knew he would've done. And if Tommy had to clean blood off his knuckles several times over the next few weeks, if he was a little more willing to take the jobs that would inevitably end up in a hand to hand fight, well that wasn't anybody's business but his own.

By the time they got to Boston, four years later, the plans for Tess to get a flat and Tommy and Joel to share a second had morphed, quietly, into a 1 bed for Joel and Tess and a room in a shared flat for Tommy with a few of the other people they'd arrived with. They'd offered for him to share a flat with them, but he'd turned down the offer claiming he wanted independence (well, Joel had asked him to share, to which Tess had rolled her eyes and told him that if he wanted his brother involved in their sex life, then Joel should just invite Tommy into the bedroom and get on with it. Joel had frozen, not knowing how to respond, Tommy had mimed throwing up, and Tess had rolled her eyes as though her and Joel hadn't been fucking where Tommy could hear, and sometimes see, them for the last four years).

It became clear to Tommy in Boston that he and Joel had dealt with shattering very differently. Tommy was used to blood, it had always taken up a large portion of his life, but he had learnt to survive and to live despite it. He might be broken into a million shards of himself, each reflecting back a different facet of his life, but he could still function. He could pick up enough shards at once to deal with life in the apocalypse. He could smuggle with Joel and Tess and deal with the blood and also try to help people. He smuggled a lot of medicine at low prices to those who needed it in Boston, and made sure information got to the right people. He roughed up or quietly took care of FEDRA soldiers who'd gotten a little too fond of power. If there was going to be blood, he'd at least make sure it belonged to people who deserved it.

Joel however, had no idea how to handle all his shattered parts, had no idea how to function. Since losing Sarah he'd been completely adrift, smuggling only because it was a significantly easier (for some sense of the word) existence than staying in a QZ, or at least an existence with easy access to the drugs and alcohol Joel seemingly needed to function. He worked with Tess and Tommy by being the muscle, by letting Tess direct him with what to do, who's blood to spill, when and where. Joel had long since given up on the world, on trying to hold it together. It had taken his daughter from him, and for Joel, Sarah had always been his entire world. Tommy wandered sometimes if Joel even noticed the end of the world, so caught up with his grief.

Six months into Boston, Tommy met Marlene when she hired the Miller brothers and Tess to smuggle in ammunition for her fireflies. Marlene, with her whip smart mouth and her plans to try to make something good out of the end of the world. Marlene who'd definitely known Tess before (in the biblical sense of known), though neither of them had ever said anything aloud. Tommy knew what looking at an ex looked like though, he could read between the lines. Marlene with her belief that they could start fixing what FEDRA had ruined. Boston was a relatively good QZ, as they went, but FEDRA had started public executions shortly after Tommy had arrived in Boston, and it was always going to be downhill from there. Marlene had looked in Tommy's eyes, seen something just as broken as the world, and offered him a way to try and make it better. And sure, maybe Tommy didn't agree with all her methods, but when had anything ever been achieved without the loss of blood.

Six months after that, two days after a screaming match with Joel that still left him reeling, Tommy left Boston for the final time. He made sure to leave a note for Tess with details of how to get a message to him, hoping he hadn't wrecked whatever was between her and his brother by bringing up Sarah in front of Tess for the first time. Joel may have lost a daughter, but Tommy had lost the centre of his world too, and then had to watch as his brother slipped away too. Joel had never been the same after Tommy found him with blood running down his temple, had stopped being the brother Tommy had grown up with, who'd take hits so Tommy didn't. Stopped being the brother Tommy had watched pull double shifts to make sure he could cover the rent who'd go home to Sarah and help with homework even when what Joel really wanted was a whiskey and to fall straight into bed.

And so, six years after the world ended, Tommy left his brother, the only reminder of Joel the blood drying on his knuckles.

The next five years were a blur for Tommy when he looked back, a string of memories of camping in shitty, burnt out buildings, skirmishes with FEDRA, getting back into being a sniper. He'd always been good with a rifle, had some experience before Desert Storm and had come back even more comfortable with one, but over his years with the fireflies he became one of their best snipers, and saw a lot of the US he hadn't managed before. By the end of it, however, he was actively seeking a way out, somewhere to go that wasn't another QZ. Somewhere that he could do something other than cause more blood to be spilled, whether it was infected or FEDRAs or civilians who got caught in the way.

Tommy wandered, and in time, he wandered back to Austin. Back to the grave he'd somehow managed to find again, where he'd buried his niece and his brother. Back to Joel's house, mostly picked through by raiders, but who'd left the photo albums mostly intact. He took his favourites, and a leather jacket he'd spent too much money on in his twenties, and he kept wandering, heading vaguely north.

And then, Maria.

Maria, with her bright eyes and wary smile, cautious as to what he wanted (peace, to be able to sit down at a table to eat, to be able to breathe), but nevertheless willing to let him enter Jackson on probation.

Maria, with her hair piled atop her head as she laughed in the Tipsy Bison, hand curled loosely around a beer, who Tommy knew had lost a child of her own, but who still knelt down to talk to the children of Jackson when they wanted to ask questions about chickens and school lunches and what it was like before the world ended, while he flinched when one of the children walked too close to him on their way to school.

Maria, with her gentle questions as they sat on her porch swing in the evenings throughout the year, even when it was definitely too cold to be doing so, who never looked at him differently even when he confessed to everything he'd done, who simply asked him if he wanted to be taken off the patrol rota so he could focus on building things, who understood his choked ‘no’, who accepted that he needed to fight to feel like he was still breathing, still alive.

Maria, radiant in a pale yellow dress borrowed from one of the other women in Jackson, a bouquet of wildflowers in her hands, wearing a gold ring on her left hand that he'd placed there with shaking hands. Maria, his wife, who he couldn't imagine life without, who he'd never thought would consider him anything more than someone to warm her bed. Maria, laughing and smiling as he taught her to line dance how he used to do in Texas, shuddering as he whispered what he wanted to do to her in her ear in quiet, whispered Spanish until she dragged him out of their own wedding party and back to their house.

Maria, lying languid and naked in their bed, running her fingers over each and every one of his scars, kissing them each in turn as Tommy explained where he'd gotten them, before turning paler than he'd ever seen her and running into their bathroom to throw up her dinner, Tommy following close behind to pull her hair out of her face and rub her back. By three weeks later of her throwing up without anyone else getting sick, and her period not making its regularly scheduled appearance, she quietly whispered ‘I'm pregnant’ into his neck one night, and Tommy just held her tightly as she sobbed herself to sleep, tears dripping down his face as thought of the little girl he'd help raise when he was just a kid himself. It's not that they'd been trying to avoid this outcome, they just also weren't trying specifically for it, not sure how feasible it was given Maria was already in her late forties. It just turned out there was a huge difference between ‘I like the idea of having a child with you’ and ‘I’m having another child and that feels like a betrayal to their older siblings they'd never know’.

The following day, he found a large piece of slate and carefully wrote out Sarah and Kevin's names, the day they had entered their families’ lives, and the day they left them. When Maria saw it on the mantelpiece, arriving home from a council meeting, exhausted and dizzy from a complete inability to hold any food down, she had let one lone tear track down her cheek before looking her husband in the eye, stepping into his waiting arms, and saying, quiet and hesitant, less confident than Tommy had ever seen her, ‘I can't wait to be a mother again with you’.

Tommy kissed her forehead, and then her lips, and then down her neck, before scooping her up in his arms and carrying her through to the bedroom. When they were done, panting and sated, he'd kissed her stomach, traced each stretch mark with his fingers, and confessed he couldn't wait to be a parent either. Thankfully the nausea passed soon enough (long enough to freak Tommy out, Julia having only thrown up a few times in her whole pregnancy, but not long enough to slow Maria down, having spent her first pregnancy throwing up at all hours of the day and night until she was seven months pregnant), and she could go back to work, back to what made her happy.

Four months later, Joel and Ellie arrived in Jackson.

Maria had always known that Tommy was contacting Joel, and had actively found ways for him to get messages back to Boston. Had handled the situation with more delicacy and diplomacy than Tommy thought he ever could have, torn as he was between desperately missing his brother, and not thinking he could handle one more minute in this new Joel's presence. She'd encouraged Tommy to keep in contact, quietly changing his patrol shifts to go past the radio tower if he hadn't managed to get there recently enough. Since the wedding though, she'd stopped checking that Tommy was still talking to Joel. And Tommy had used that to leave longer and longer periods between his messages, terrified that one day their would be a response, a message saying ‘I need you here. Come back to Boston’, that he might have to leave the sanctuary he'd found. He'd never revealed anything about Jackson, had followed the town’s rules carefully (if you want family or friends to join you here, they agree to leave where they are before they get told anything at all, and even then, riders from Jackson would meet them at the Colorado border before they got full details of Jackson's existence), but he'd also never told Joel he was somewhere good, somewhere safe, somewhere that the broken prices of him seemed to fit back together in a way they never had before.

As it turned out, however, Maria was under the impression that Joel wasn't already with them in Jackson because he or Tess didn't want to leave Boston, not because he didn't know about Jackson. Not because Joel didn't know about her, his sister in law, the family they could've had. Tommy watched Maria as she and Tommy walked to the dining hall to get some food for Joel and Ellie, confused at her coldness when Ellie revealed herself as a QZ kid through and through, so different from the children that had grown up in the safety of Jackson. It wasn't until Tommy got back from the bar with Joel and saw Maria standing on the porch waiting for him that he understood the gravity of what was happening: he had accidentally made his wife and brother hate each other.

Tommy hadn't understood Maria's distrust of Joel, not until she explained that she had trusted his decision on Joel, and while she was irritated he hadn't told her he was barely calling back to Boston, she could handle that. What she couldn't handle, though, was that Tommy brought someone dangerous into their home. If Tommy had cut his own brother off, when family was all Tommy lived and breathed for, then she had assumed there was a good reason. A reason that it wasn't safe for her, for Jackson, to meet Joel; that Tommy had made a call based on what was best for everyone. Tommy had frozen, a lump thick in his throat, before he pulled his wife into his arms and explained that Joel wasn’t a threat any more than he was. Capable of violence, yes, but not without reason.

It wasn't until he spoke to Joel later, in the cobblers, that he realised why Joel thought Maria hated him, why he disliked the woman who made Tommy feel closer to a whole person than he ever remembered being before. Namely, Joel thought that Maria hated him for what he made Tommy do all those years, as though violence hadn't been a language Tommy had known for far longer than Joel had. Tommy’s problem with Joel had never been his methods, or the ease with which he used his body to hurt others, or the unflinching loyalty to him and Tess that had made Joel put them above everyone else left in the world. Tommy had done all the same things, made the decision to keep on like that even when they could've avoided it. Hell, Tommy had joined the fireflies, and they weren't exactly bastions of peace and limiting civilian casualties. Tommy had left Joel because he couldn't watch it all be for nothing, couldn't watch his brother die a little more each day, only Tess propping him up.

It was watching Joel have a panic attack over not being able to protect Ellie that made Tommy realise his brother was back again, the brother he'd buried with Sarah. The brother who'd cleaned his knuckles with a wet rag, called him Tomás, helped him sneak back into their home drunk and high so their mother didn't panic, waiting until she was out to yell at him. The brother he thought he'd lost, back thanks to Ellie.

Ellie, who swore and palmed her switchblade in her pocket and demanded her gun back, who was all broken pieces too, desperate to make something of her life, desperate for all the death and pain and loss not to be for nothing.

Ellie, who might be the cure to everything.

Ellie, who, if Tommy knew one thing about the Fireflies, would be dead within a month at best if they got hold of her.

Ellie, who was well on her way to becoming his niece.

Ellie, who Joel wanted him to take to the base in Colorado (not that they were still there, a small voice in the back of his head said, reminding him the scientists were moving out to Salt Lake City).

Ellie, who he was absolutely not taking to Colorado, or Salt Lake, or anywhere other than to the house across the road from his and to a warm bed and clothes that fit properly and the best damn childhood anyone could have given they were living through the end of the world.

Ellie, who had helped Joel pick up his broken pieces, and maybe, finally learn to live with them, to hold enough at once to live life despite them.

The reality was, Tommy thought, that blood was full of everyone's lives now. He'd just had a head start on seeing the crimson every time he shut his eyes, a preview of what the world would be. What that meant, though, was that he'd also had a head start on learning how to pick himself up again, to learn to live again.

And in Jackson, with his wife, and child, and brother, and niece, maybe everyone else could try catching up to him for once. Maybe he could teach them. Maybe, he could make it all worth it. (Maybe, one day, he could make Ellie see it could be worth living for too).

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End author notes!

and now Tommy gets to be an uncle again and make Joel go insane about the shit he and Ellie pull. Also Ellie definitely doesn't end up with the fireflies because genuinely why the fuck would you take the one immune person in the world and immediately try and kill them I may not be a biologist but that I am a scientist and that feels like bad practice to me. Fuck Jerry Anderson. In this universe he magically gets shot by someone and the firefly hospital mysteriously gets burnt to the ground (miller family road trip to Utah for some light recon (stealing everything the fireflies know about immunity) and a little bit of arson for a treat (burning the hospital to the ground)).

Other random things that didn't make it into the fic:

- Tommy and Marlene definitely fucked like twice and then mutually agreed to just never mention it again

- Tess did propose a threesome at one point to Tommy who laughed and told her he was down if Joel was, knowing full well that Joel was completely gone on Tess and wouldn't share her for the world

- bi Tess because I say so and I'm bi so I sensed the vibe (Anna torvs is hot)

- they tell Ellie about what they did to the fireflies, and then tell her that if they find anyone who actually has a hope in hell of making a vaccine they'll take her themselves

- Ellie still gives herself a chemical burn, but she goes to Tommy for help with the tattoo because Joel told her he had tattoos, failing to mention that Tommy's tattoo was a drink mistake that he never shows to anyone. He finds someone good who can tattoo safely and sterilely and helps pick the design and sits with Ellie the whole time

comfort food soup recipe!

this is my chicken and veggie soup that is the equivalent to a warm hug

makes like six ish portions idrk as leftovers just get eaten in my house

Ingredients

4 chicken thighs (skin on)

1 large onion

2 medium carrots

Some celery

Lots of garlic

Chicken stock (cubes are fine)

Potatoes (3 or four decently big ones)

Salt and pepper and some sort of dried or fresh herbs (dried oregano or thyme is good, as is rosemary)

optionals extras if you have them in your fridge (I put these in if stuff needs using up):

Sweet potato

Pancetta / bacon

Peppers

Beans (canellini beans or butter beans are great here)

other random fresh herbs you definitely remember buying that are definitely not dead and sad

Instructions

fry the chicken skin! start it on a low heat and a little bit of oil and then let the fat render out until you have crispy golden chicken skin. this is delicious crumbled on the soup, not that it ever gets to mine due to my partner/ housemates eating it first

cube up the chicken and add it to the hot pan with the rendered chicken fat and fry it until it's nice and golden and you have fond. don't worry if it isn't fully cooked you just want colour here, and remember to season with salt and pepper

add your diced veggies - onion, carrot and celery (aka everything but potatoes) and gently sautee in some oil and a good pinch of salt (pinch means three fingers here) until soft and the onions are translucent, making sure you scrape up the chicken fond on the bottom of the pan (about six or seven minutes depending on how much veg you have)

add you garlic and dry herbs and any other flavourings and fry for another two minutes until you can smell it

add your diced potatoes and your chicken into the veg, and mix well. then add your chicken stock until everything is covered (maybe a litre or so?) and leave to simmer for at least half an hour, and then until the potatoes are fork tender and it tastes amazing

usually the comment section of a post is a dreadful, horrifying place, but not on this post

you found a safehaven

everyone in the comments is just talking about their favorite soup

⬇️

okay but imagine everything that could've been avoided if Paul and feyd had just done this, it's not like Paul or Leto Jr. (Leto II? no idea) actually cared about their political marriages anyway

The Bene Gesserit: All these years of careful planning wasted. The Duke's child was meant to be a girl and marry Feyd-Ruatha, uniting the Houses of Harkonnen and Atriedes.

Feyd: yeah but like where's the problem?

Bene Gesserit:

Feyd: I mean I'm not gay but I'll fuck him if that will keep you all quiet for five minutes.

Paul:

Tired of the angst, now manifesting this attitude from Crowley when Aziraphale shows up next in S3:

"SuPrEmE aRcHaNgeL AzIRaPhAle"

incorrect ASOUE

incorrect ASOUE

the "you're cargo" to "it's okay, babygirl" to "it wasn't time that did it" pipeline goes so fucking crazy bro

THE LAST OF US + the collective emotional trauma it causes <3

joel you fucking liar that is your child (apologies to everyone who follows me and now gets to deal with tlou spam for the foreseeable future)

THE LAST OF US TV show 1.06 “Kin” | video game

THE LAST OF US - #It’s just deer meat

the sillies

My friends and I were discussing where the one f-bomb should be in PG-13 shows and films (kinda wild because you get many more than one in the UK's mostly equivalent 12 rating), and I brought up ATLA, and we quickly came to the conclusion that:

1) Toph definitely would be the one to swear

2) Toph off screen was swearing constantly

3) if she did it on screen once it would not be for something meaningful, she'd stub a toe or whatever her equivalent it is

Toph would've killed Ozai. She wouldn't have hesitated.

but seriously though i’m sick and tired of those masterposts that are like “here! A reference site on Greek mythology for all your needs! Look it has all fifteen Greek gods on it!” And I’m like. tHERE WERE LIKE HUNDREDS OF FIGURES IN MYTHOLOGY YOUR CRAPPY HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL BIBLIOGRAPHY SITE MEANS NOTHING TO ME 

if you want a basic outline of Greek mythology okay sure fine??? but like. if you want an extensive fucking reference site you are looking in the wrong goddamn places

as a self-declared greek mythology snob my reference site is fucking always this fucker right here. almost every single figure ever mentioned in a Greek text is on it, it has the most obscure gods, spirits, nymphs– it’s GREAT. You really wanna extend your mythological knowledge past the basic 12 and like four others? USE THEOI.  plus plus PLUS everything is cited so you can actually read the source material written about whoever it is you’re looking at.

fucking signal boost this. i’m so sick and tired of writer’s helpers blogs referring people to sites with as much information you would get from opening a third grade mythology book jesus chriiiiiist

When I was 6, I had tendon transfer surgery to finish correcting my club foot. Although I'd spent a good chunk of time in hospitals, this was the first overnight stay I'd ever had. My younger brother picked out this plushie to give to me to take with me, and it still sits beside my bed.

Todays beanie of the day is Hello Kitty (gold angel version)

half of my brain is screaming about THAT ending and the other half is playing ra ra rasputin on a loop

Omar, so sick of this bullshit, making Andhera teleport just to tell Rue how in love Hob is with them:

Endless ACOFAF

Fools in Love

Binx and Hob freak out

Calling my EDS a genetic disorder: medical, dull, depressing

Calling my EDS a family curse: whimsical, fun, suggests supernatural foul play

Unmute !

Honestly, probably the best social tip I could ever give you guys is literally just ask. Need to make a doctor's appointment but don't know how? Call the doctor's office and ask. Don't know the meaning of what someone said? Ask them. Don't understand the instructions you were given? Ask them to repeat or clarify. This has literally never failed me, no one's gotten angry, no one's refused to answer.

Even in situations where you think it might not work, I once accidentally missed a deadline to accept a job offer, so I called and asked if they could reset it and they did. Just today I called a doctor and asked how to schedule an appointment, the lady told me how, and then I did it. Didn't know if someone was being sarcastic or not, so I asked and they told me. Just ask.

everyone give it up for knickolas pterodactyl hob. rue certainly has

[id: Two digital drawings depicting a scene from A Court of Fey and Flowers; Hob, Andhera, Binx, and Rue meet in the abandoned tailor’s shop. In the first image, Andhera and Hob stand side by side, with Andhera touching the back of his neck and smiling at Hob as his stormcloud brews, and Hob standing with his hat tucked under his arm, nervously saying, “The K in K.P. stands for Knickolas.” In the second image, Rue rests their face on their claw and above their head in cursive script, surrounded by hearts and peonies, are the words, “I Love Him.” At their side, Binx looks confused, with question marks gathering around her head. /end id]

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the concept of Andhera, Hob, Binx, and Rue all being a little party trying to take down the court of wonder while the lords of the wing just fuck around is SOOOO FUNNY