#And then after fixing time you see he looks THE SAME except with a palette change | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jokertrap-ran · 3 years

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(光与夜之恋 Light and Night) Osborn’s 5✩ Inspiration: Black VS Black [黑色对峙] Date Translation (END 6: Heart-throb)

“Do you really think that I think there’s no helping you?”

*Light and Night Master-list | Osborn’s Personal Masterlist *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Join the Light & Night Discord (＾▽＾)~ ♪ *This 5✩ Inspiration has 6 Endings!! *Osborn’s tag will be #For Night, For Freedom *Requested by anon! You can check my on-going requests and more here!

✥ Choice: Heart-throb [心动] ★Night★

The cat caused an incident! What should I do?

⊹ Check the fallen model ⊹

I didn’t think too much about it, instead, hurrying over to where the car model had fallen.

I picked it up and inspected the damages.

There was a long crack in the middle and several parts had broken off, scattering compartments all over the floor.

MC: Can this… still be saved…?

Just as I was thinking of how to break this bad news to Osborn, his low voice sounded from behind.

Osborn: What a big commotion.

Osborn: What? Did Mitt get into an accident?

I steeled myself and stopped covering the scene of the “car accident” that had occurred. I got up and handed him the car model that I held.

MC: The “culprit” knocked this car model down and fled.

Osborn frowned, reaching me in a couple of long strides.

He took the model and turned it around a couple of times, observing it with an indifferent look on his face.

MC: Is it too damaged to fix?

Osborn: I can just send it for repairs over the next few days. Let's go look for the cat first.

He calmly placed the broken car model back onto the shelf, taking a “let’s talk about this later” stance.

This model had been placed together with many other car models that looked new, pristine, and without a scratch. Not to mention, the glistening trophy that had been right next to it. A wild guess entered my mind.

MC: Do all the car models here hold some sort of commemorative meaning?

Osborn: Hm? Why do you ask?

MC: I mean, if they are some sort of special memento to you, then they should have been subjected to routine maintenance, right?

MC: If so, then you should also have the tools for it along with any part replacements, yes?

Thoughtfulness slipped into his eyes.

Osborn: You want to help me fix it?

MC: Yeah! That cat was just spooked real bad, and it wouldn’t do us any good if it got a bigger fright the next time and reacted even worse to it if we continued chasing after it.

MC: So, why don’t we leave the cat hunt for later and fix the car model back up first?

MC: Plus, I’m pretty dexterous with my hands. Wanna give me a chance to show you my prowess?

He raised an eyebrow, his pale green eyes glinting.

Osborn: Okay. Here's your time to shine.

Osborn stretched his arms over my head. For a while, all I could see was his broad chest. I felt my breath hitch.

Then, he suddenly lowered his head. His face was incredibly close to mine.

The scent of black cedar assaulted my nose. I blinked. My brain was lagging.

MC: Oh, okay.

Osborn: Take it.

My gaze slid to his hand. Turns out that he’d just been fetching the toolbox that had been in the cabinet above the display shelves.

Osborn: I'm waiting.

I took the toolbox from him and opened it.

I was greeted by a multitude of components in all shapes and sizes. Some of the tools in it were similar to the ones I used when making my designs, but there were also some that I’d never seen before.

I picked up a tool that looked like a cross between a pen and a knife, looking to Osborn for advice.

MC: What's this?

Osborn: An exacto knife. It’s used to cut off excess parts of the joints when required.

MC: Mmhm, okay. I've remembered it.

Osborn: This is a cutting plier, screw sanders, tweezers...

Osborn picked out a couple more tools from within the box and introduced them to me.

Osborn: Anything else you can't recognize?

MC: Not for now.

Osborn: Okay. Then let's remove the damaged compartments first.

MC: Okay.

First, we used a screwdriver to remove the damaged compartments. Then, we replaced them with brand-new spare parts.

This race car model was really different from those being sold out in the market. It was made with exquisite craftsmanship, and its internal makings were far more complicated than I'd initially thought.

When it was time to add colours to it, Osborn prepared the required paints and set them out in measured portions onto the palette with ease and finesse. He smoothly handed me a brush.

Osborn: Do you know how to touch up the paintwork?

I hesitated.

MC: I've painted outfit designs before for design needs, but I'm sure it's completely different from actually painting a model.

MC: I don't know if it works the same…

Osborn: See my demonstration first then.

He dipped his brush into the red paint, carefully painting it onto the model. It came out very uniform and smoothly layered.

I'd stared at him, watching him do it a couple more times. But, no matter how much I watched the same process, I couldn't quite grasp it. Even if I tried mimicking his actions, my paintwork always turned out patchy and uneven.

Osborn laughed, placing his hand over mine and directing the brush I held.

He directed my brush, guiding me on how I should be painting the compartment with a focused look on his face.

It was all serious and business, except… My focus was inevitably drawn towards his movements and breaths.

Osborn: Get it?

MC: Mmhm...

I tried my hardest to remember the way he did it and followed suit. The end result was much smoother than what I'd been accomplishing before.

After the finishing touches were in place, I raised the model and showed it to him.

MC: Like… this? This should be done now, right?

Osborn: Not bad. You've got standard.

My spirits soared at having received such direct praise from him.

MC: Since I'm such an apt learner, how about enlisting my help again the next time you make another model of a race car?

Osborn slightly raised a brow as he contemplated my paint-stained hands.

Osborn: I'll think about it.

MC: Does this even need to be considered?

MC: I'm pretty quick to pick up hands-on skills, not just fixing up models of racing cars! So I'm a fast learner no matter what it is!

MC: You can test me again if you don't believe me!

Just as I was boasting about my assets in an attempt to make myself appeal to him, Osborn's calloused fingers suddenly brushed against my cheek.

The rough texture of the pads of his fingers made my heart skip a beat.

MC: What's wrong?

Osborn: You got something on your face.

I doubtfully touched my face. Suddenly, I pulled my hand away to find my fingers stained with red paint.

Astonished, I look at Osborn's hands, only to find even more red paint on them…

MC: Don't tell me you drew something on it!!

Osborn: What gives?

MC: Hey! You're biting the hand that feeds!

Osborn: Whatever do you mean by that?

Osborn: I'm just adding some blush and colour to your face. Makes you prettier.

I was taken aback, nonetheless.

MC: Okay. Then, I'll add some colour to your cheeks for you!

Osborn: Whoa, hey! Easy!

MC: Nothing you say now is gonna stop me!

I swiftly picked up the brush and dipped it into the paint set out onto the palette, rushing straight for his face.

Osborn quickly reared back, but I subconsciously followed right after his retreat.

And this was how I toppled him down to the ground with him doing nothing to defend himself.

Osborn was astonished. He'd attempted to get back up, only for my other hand to immediately dart out to pin him down by the shoulder.

MC: No moving!

Surprise flashed through his eyes, as his usual impish smile crawled its way back up his face.

Osborn: Wow, what an aggressor.

MC: That's right. Now's my time to retaliate!

MC: No use trying to escape!

I circled the air with the brush, purposefully observing his face to make my mark.

MC: Hmm, what do you want me to draw on you?

Osborn seemingly accepted the fact that he was going to be an inevitable victim of mine since I already had him "pinned" down. He folded his arms behind his head, giving my question some serious thought.

Osborn: An air drawing?

MC: Dream on!

Osborn: Mercy, please. I beg you.

MC: It's too late to be begging me for mercy.

MC: Hmph. Just watch me improvise on the spot~

Just as I was rummaging through my brain for a glimmer of inspiration, a light bulb suddenly lit in my head.

I had an image now: Mitt as it was fleeing.

❖☆———————————★❖

I leaned down, supporting myself on Osborn's shoulder.

Following the curve of his jaw, I applied colour to his skin, drawing a colourful cat.

Osborn had his guard down, seemingly content to watch me work my "artistic talents" with him as the canvas.

The surroundings lapsed into silence.

I was drawing it on with such rapt concentration, yet I was still able to notice his long black lashes and hear his familiar steady breathing ever so clearly. I could somewhat feel the slight rise and fall of his chest.

I vaguely registered our close proximity to each other. My heart seemed unable to settle with the fact that we were so close to each other that our breaths intermingled, clamouring loudly within my chest.

I blinked twice, finishing off the last stroke before getting up and putting some distance between us.

❖☆———————————★❖

Osborn: Done?

I nodded.

Osborn: What do you think of your work of art?

Huh? Is he asking me to rate my own work?

I quickly gave him a once over, only to realize that I'd been distracted at the end, so it'd turned out a little funky. I nearly laughed at it right then and there.

MC: Ahem. I think it's not bad! You've got a big kitty on you now!

He waggled his brows, lazily raising his body halfway back up. His features were suddenly enlarged before my eyes once more as he leaned closer.

Osborn: Happy now?

MC: Mmhm… Pretty happy.

Osborn: Then let me tell you something that'll make you even happier.

He moved even closer, his words gently flowing with the air, wrapping themselves around my ears.

I shuddered as a scalding heat started creeping up my neck.

MC: ...What is it?

Osborn: The other kitty's right behind you.

Mitt: Meow~ Meow~

The last of his words were drowned out by the sudden meowing that sounded.

I snapped out of the trance of the moment, much to my embarrassment. Mitt had actually slinked behind me somehow without my knowing!

MC: Right, we should hurry and catch it before it gets up to no good again!

I quickly climbed off Osborn, flushing red as I fled.

A light chuckle sounded behind me in response.

❖☆———————————★❖

By the time we found Mitt, it was already sprawled out beside the TV cabinet with its paws stuck underneath, fiddling with something in the gap.

Recalling the layout of his living room, I quietly tip-toed and whispered my idea into Osborn’s ear.

MC: I’ll take left, you take right. We’ll pincer it.

Osborn: It’s already here, so there’s no need to go through so much trouble.

MC: Huh?

Osborn: Just wait and see.

Osborn took a couple of long strides forwards in the direction of the cat.

I followed after him, quietly approaching the black cat. However, my attention was suddenly caught by the photo frame that the cat had just been playing with.

Picking up the frame, I carefully observed it…

In the picture were Osborn and a couple of familiar-looking teammates. They’d all had an arm around each other’s shoulder, beaming as they held the same trophy.

Their faces all look much younger… Is this a photo from years ago?

The race car in the background had a red and white body with an orange rear spoiler, similar to the car model that Mitt had batted off its perch earlier.

MC: Don’t tell me… Was that car model made based on this race car?

I was lost in thought when a sudden meow broke my train of thought.

Osborn: Still wanna run?

❖☆———————————★❖

I raised my head to see Osborn with both arms raised, gently holding up the cat in question.

The bright and warm sunlight shone in through the window, carefully outlining his chiselled side-profile and the contours of his muscles.

Although Mitt had already been caught, it still glared daggers at Osborn. It was as if a cat and a human were engaged in a silent battle with each other.

After a while, Mitt seemed to register the fact that it’d lost, meowing pitifully in that soft cry once more.

❖☆———————————★❖

Osborn: Oh? You know how to beg for mercy now, don’t you?

Osborn carried Mitt to the little corner we’d set up for it. Mitt seemingly gave up on the game of chase, lowering its head to eat the cat food that we’d prepared for it since the very beginning.

Watching it eat its food so obediently, I couldn’t help but kneel down and stroke its round head.

Mitt cast a doubtful glance at me, but turned its head, indulging nuzzling itself into my palm.

MC: !

MC: I touched it! How cute…

Osborn: You’re that excited from just being able to touch it?

MC: Yeah. It looked so naughty that I thought I wouldn’t be able to touch it today.

Osborn: It’ll come running up to you for a lick or two so long as you have food.

MC: Then I MUST let it try the wet cat food! Maybe it’ll get closer to me!

I sped towards the sofa and picked up the packet of wet cat food, purposely waving it before its nose.

It couldn’t resist the offered temptation after all. Its soft fluffy paws batted at my wrist as it opened its mouth and cried its pleas.

MC: Okay, okay. Any more and you’ll end up a piggy.

I recalled something after putting away the remaining food. I picked up the photo frame that I’d set down earlier and handed it to Osborn.

MC: Oh, yeah. By the way, this was the photo frame that Mitt was batting with under the TV cabinet earlier. I don’t know where you normally display it.

He took the photo frame from me and glanced at it.

MC: And on that note, I realized that the car in the background looks very similar to the model we just pieced back together. Are they the same?

Osborn: Oh. The model was made according to this race car.

Suddenly, I recalled having seen the highlights of all his races before.

The year and month in which he’d won his first racing championship seemingly coincided with the time that this photo was taken.

My guess had tumbled out of my lips before I could stop it.

MC: Is this the car you drove when you won your first championship?

He quirked a brow.

Osborn: Why, you know me so well.

MC: Then… Is that car model something of a memento from that race?

Osborn: You can say that.

MC: I heard somewhere before that that car’s engine had to be changed out every two races. It shouldn’t be in use anymore, right?

Osborn: The engine exploded on me during that race, so it was only my companion once.

Osborn spoke lightly of it, but thinking of how exciting and terrifying it must have been back then, I couldn’t help but feel my heart sink a little.

MC: I’m glad the car model’s alright. Otherwise, it’d be such a pity for such a meaningful memento to get damaged like that.

Osborn: So I should thank you properly. Is that it?

MC: Huh? Thank me?

He chuckled lightly, his eyes sliding from the photo to my face. He had a slightly flippant look on his face.

Osborn: Weren’t you the one who made that car model more meaningful?

MC: ……

I was taken aback for a bit. I looked at him in surprise, only to find his gaze calm and gentle. There was a smile glimmering within his eyes.

Osborn: You were pretty clever when fixing the model. Why so stupefied now?

As his words sank in, I felt my heart flutter as I realized what he’d meant by having made it more “meaningful”. Something seemed to have filled my heart. It was a little flustering, yet also a little sweet.

I worried my lip and gathered my courage together before looking up to meet his eyes.

MC: Then, that makes me happier now…

MC: Although I didn’t get the chance to sit in on the race of your first championship and cheer you on…

MC: I was still able to piece the model back together and play a part in that precious moment of memory.

Inexplicable emotions surfaced in Osborn’s eyes, and in the next second, his big hand ruffled my hair with a vengeance.

Osborn: There’s really no helping you, is there?

I shyly ducked my head, but I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from rising.

At this moment, the sun had enveloped us both within its warmth.

The cat quietly ate by our feet, letting out a purr of satisfaction every once in a while.

Slowly but surely, unspeakable feelings started to bloom and spread within the confines of my heart.

I hope, from the deepest points of my heart, that time would always be eternally frozen in this beautiful moment.

⊹ ˚✩ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ∘◦ ✥ ◦∘ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ✩˚ ⊹

✥ Choose your Ending:

END 1 | Choice: Do Nothing [都不做]

END 2 +3 + 4 | Choice: Call Out [呼唤] ⊹Speak⊹

END 5 | Choice: Listen [倾听] ❖ASMR

END 6 | Choice: Heart-throb [心动] ★Night★

❖☆————— ⊹ For Night, For Freedom⊹ —————★❖

Previous Part: (Prologue)

#光与夜之恋 #Light and Night #Otome #Translations #Tencent #萧逸 #Osborn #For Night For Freedom #黑色对峙 #Black VS Black

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spencersawkward · 3 years

Note

omg i’m so glad u have a tumblr!! ur literally my fav mgg fic author ❤️ i’m a hoe for that man can u do sleeping together for the first time with like an age gap or something spicy lmao

hi omg thank you 😊 that literally means the world to me! also thank you for requesting one of my fave things to write haha i love first-time-having-sex-together tropes. happy reading!

summary: reader is an artist who needs some inspiration, preferably from her new boyfriend.

content warnings: unprotected penetrative sex, age gap, creampie, a little breeding kink, oral (male receiving), kind of Dom!Matthew vibes, dirty talk, praise kink with a hint of degradation as well (not super prominent).

word count: 4.4k

relationship: Fem!Reader/Matthew

masterlist

I straighten up and bend backward a bit to relieve the pressure on my spine. my hair is falling out of the knot on my head and I push a stray piece behind my ear, placing the wooden paintbrush between my teeth. aside from the warm, mellifluous tones pouring from the speakers, the apartment is silent.

I've hit a creative wall, it seems. every time I've tried to paint this week, I find myself standing above a stretched canvas with nothing but a frown and crossed arms. even little details feel wrong to add; the empty space is taunting me. it doesn't help that my thoughts have been flooded with memories and fantasies of Matthew. we've been on a couple dates now, sweet outings that leave me fluttery inside. I remember the words he says, the shape of his smile and the curve of his jaw, like they've been been in my mind forever. he's elusive, however, and hasn't initiated anything sexual with me. I think he's afraid of coming on too strong. there's a considerable age gap between us, but I don't care. I want him all the time-- whenever I'm at work, or trying to paint, all I can think of is how good it would feel to have those strong, veined hands on me.

christ.

before I can lose my courage, I text him. if anything can inspire me, it's his presence. likely, he's at work and won't be able to respond or come over, but it's worth a shot.

I'm just sliding my phone into my back pocket when the response comes in. a smile spreads over my face; he'll be over in half an hour. in the meantime, I'll sweep the background with shades that remind me of him: rich, emerald greens, honeyed tones that reminisce of his eyes. he'll pop against any backdrop.

I'm bent furiously over my work when he tells me he's arrived, and my heart thuds in my chest. even after hanging out several times, the butterflies are as alive as ever. they flood my stomach while I buzz him into the building.

"hi." he greets me when I open the door, curls messy. he must have just come from work.

"hi, Matthew." I smile up at him. his gaze travels over my face, my body, taking in my appearance for a moment.

"you look lovely." he says it genuinely, despite the fact that I'm literally wearing a paint t-shirt under a pair of rummaged overalls. I forgot to fix my hair, too.

"thanks." I blush, about to turn away when he bends down and presses a gentle kiss to my lips. it's the first time he's said hello that way, and part of me flushes with the knowledge that he's attracted to me right now.

"now," he looks around my apartment as I step back to let him in. "what can I help you with?"

"I have a small favor to ask." I spin the paintbrush between my index and third fingers, reaching out to take his wrist and pull him towards the couch.

"anything," he replies, then sees my setup. "is this your studio?"

"slash living room." I chuckle. Matthew sits on the soft cushions before staring up at me. I don't miss his pupils dilating as they travel over the shape of my body. instead of allowing myself get distracted, I gesture to the wet paint on my canvas. "I need you to model for me."

"like, be your muse?" he beams at the notion, incredibly pleased with himself. I like this about Matthew; although he can be self-deprecating and doesn't take himself too seriously, he appreciates my admiration.

"oh, hush." I giggle. he laughs, reclining on the couch now that he knows why I invited him over.

"how do you want me to pose, Picasso?"

"well, let me re-orient myself." I hold up a hand, grab the abandoned easel, and try to get everything set up. he never takes his eyes off me.

"why were you painting on the floor?" he asks, slightly amused. I jerk my head toward him, narrow my eyes.

"it's my process."

"no judgement." he holds up his hands in surrender. I place the canvas carefully on the easel so that he can't see my work, then gather up my paints, palette, and brushes. there's a moment of pure silence when I frown as I glance between his face and the chasm of space awaiting its representation.

"you look tired." I observe. he lets out a sound that resembles a laugh.

"I am."

"how long did you sleep last night?" I ask as I start painting, focusing on the shape and planes of his face. if I don't get the composition exactly correct, I'll have to throw the whole thing out.

"three hours." he says this like it's normal. my eyebrows shoot up.

"three hours? why?"

"I had to work on lines." he shrugs.

"don't move." I order. he suppresses a grin.

"my sincerest apologies."

"uh huh," I dip my brush into a pale skin shade that I've mixed to match his pigment. "you need to get more sleep."

we continue on like this for a while, making light conversation while I get down the basics of my portrait. I can't handle anything that requires more than a fraction of my attention while doing this, and he seems to appreciate my concentration.

that said, it's beyond difficult to focus when he stares at me like every movement is magical, something he wants to memorize. I feel pliable under his watch, a little bit like a doll. he could bend me every which way, ask me to do anything, and I would give in. and who could blame me?

my thoughts slip into darkened territories, and the hue of my cheeks must do the same, because he gets this mischievous smile on his face that I can't ignore.

"what are you thinking about?" he asks softly.

"hm?" I turn to him. "oh, nothing."

"really?" his brows lift in that intimidating, delightfully entertained way that sets my skin on fire.

"I..." I trail off, wondering if I should give into the chaos in my mind. the thoughts that slash through my psyche whenever I see the width of his shoulders, the fit of his shirt. "I should have asked you to pose nude."

Matthew blushes-- actually blushes-- when I say this, his head dropping momentarily as a grin takes over his features. when he lifts his gaze to mine again, there's a different look in his eyes.

"yeah?"

"mhmm." no taking it back now. "I think that would be too distracting, though."

"how so?" the corner of his mouth tugs up.

"you know why." I avert my attention, only once flitting back to him. his tongue darts out over his lips and he holds contact.

"say it." he dares me. the tone of it, slightly dominant, makes my stomach flip. quietly, I swallow the lump in my throat.

"I have trouble keeping my hands to myself."

we stare at each other, words finding and dying on tongues in the silence.

at this point, my painting has been somewhat abandoned. brushstrokes sit unaccompanied by actual structure, except for the general godly shape of his face, and I'm clenching the utensil between my fingers as if to channel the sexual tension elsewhere.

"is that right?" he notes my absolute stillness and stands up, walking toward me in a relaxed, confident gait. all I can do is look up at him when he stands before me. the top button of his shirt is undone, and I can see the smooth skin beneath, each of the other buttons awaiting my fingertips.

"yes." the word is messy. he runs his index finger over the shell of my ear, bends down, whispers so low that the phrase almost gets lost in the air.

"me too."

he plants a gentle kiss on my jaw, hand reaching tentatively to rest on my waist. I can feel the caution in his actions, the worry he has about pressuring me. I'm cognizant of every breath he takes, especially the hitch when I give into myself and kiss him.

his mouth is warm and soft. the tension twists and knots between our bodies, roiling in the empty space as we resist the energy still. but I don't want to resist. I know that I want this, and he seems to want it just as much.

"Matthew." I pull away, his teeth tugging gently on my bottom lip.

"what is it?" his eyes, dark, search mine. my pulse quickens beneath my skin.

"I want to be with you."

"you are with me." he chuckles lightly, glancing at my features. the full circles of my eyes, the bloom of pink spreading over my cheekbones.

"no," I shake my head. "I mean... I want to be with you."

"you want to have sex?" he asks, clarifying. I nod eagerly, though he frowns a bit. "are you sure?"

"do you not want to?" I try to keep the disappointment out of my face. maybe I misread the situation. the most we've done is make out on his couch and once in an Uber on the way back from our first date. but there's a sweet, burning sensation whenever I see him, something I want to dive into. I want him; I've wanted him since the moment we met.

"of course I want to," he says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world. relief loosens my chest. "I just don't want you to regret anything."

"I couldn't ever regret this." my eyes travel over his frame, over the little scar beneath his chin. he angles my face up to examine my features. there's a smirk on his face.

"then what are we waiting for?" his hands move to encircle my waist, tugging me to him like I'm something long-awaited, like he needs my weight against his. our lips meet again, my head tilting as we kiss deeply, my fingers twining in his soft hair. I'm standing on my tiptoes as I do it, and one of his hands reaches down to squeeze my ass. he grunts as my pelvis moves against the quickly-forming hard-on in his pants. I can feel it against my stomach as he ruts against me just slightly. I smirk.

"sit on the couch again." I whisper when I pull away. he's holding my face with one hand, staring into my eyes with the kind of dominance that tells me he knows exactly what to do. but I appreciate that he follows my request, pulling my hips toward him as he backs up and sinks onto the cushions. he sits, awaiting my next move. when I sink onto my knees and settle between his legs, he bites hard on his lip. I don't move at first, willing to draw out this beautiful moment when he's watching with undivided attention.

"what are you doing down there, sweetheart?" he feigns innocence when I give him my doe eyes. I run slender fingers over the erection in his pants, his quickened breath an indicator of just how needy he secretly is. I revel in it.

my free hand wraps around his upper thigh, digging my nails in slightly. he's so gorgeous, and the tension of his muscles beneath me is enough to break my resistance. I start to palm him through the fabric, torturing slowly while he runs fingers through my hair and tries not to buck up against my touch. I finally get around to undoing the button on his pants. he waits impatiently. I tug them down his legs, lingering on the waistband of his boxers. when they come down as well, another kind of knot forms in my tummy. he's perfect.

"oh my god." he throws his head back when his dick hits his stomach, the pleasure of releasing it its own sensation.

"hm?" I wonder aloud, wrapping my hand around the base and starting to slowly pump him. he raises his head to look at me.

"you're just... doing so well." he breathes. I grin at how easily I've got him; I was worried about being too shy or him being more experienced, but he's greedy for me. I love the power I have right now.

I surprise him by flattening my tongue against the underside of his cock, dragging it up over the throbbing vein and pausing at the top. I let him stare at me with my mouth hovering over him, the head resting on the tip of my tongue. he moans when I begin to kitten lick the precum that leaks out, grip tightening in my hair as it comes out of the ponytail I made earlier. the veins in his arm clench as I sink slowly onto him. my cheeks hollow. his jaw drops open, dewy skin catching the light, as I start to suck on him.

"fuck..." he trails off. I begin to bob up and down, doing tricks with my tongue and swirling around the head, savoring every single second. his desperate touch, the way he bucks his hips up involuntarily when I try to take him to the hilt, all of it causes me to moan. vibrations draw out sinful noises from him as well, those heavenly sounds that he litters with my name. my hands rest on his thighs at first, then move up to rest on the warm, taut skin of his abdomen. I crave every centimeter of his skin, his contact, especially when I can feel the rushed rise and fall of his panting. I give him full use of my throat, sliding over him and moaning with every tug of my hair. he mutters profanities, praises me, struggles to keep his eyes open just to see me peek up at him from beneath my lashes. his expression tells me he's got plans for me.

"if you don't stop, I'm gonna cum, baby." he groans, smoothly tugging me off of him. there's a slight popping sound and I settle onto my knees, staring up at him. the smile on my face is unmistakable. I love that I can do this to him. I grip his legs and pull myself up into his lap, drawing myself across him just before his erection, glancing down at it. his hands rub over the tops of my thighs, tracing over the curve of my hips and resting on my ass. I start to roll my body down, my lips finding his throat as I suck and bite. my tongue licks over his Adam's apple and he shudders, drawing me closer so that my stomach brushes his cock.

"stop teasing." he starts to undo the straps of my overalls, chuckling a bit to himself as they fall easily. I blush.

"pretty sexy." I joke. Matthew suddenly grabs my chin, holds me in place so that I look him dead in the eyes.

"you're perfect." he smiles admiringly, then toys with the hem of my t-shirt. I reach down, pull it off and toss it somewhere in the room. I'm not wearing a bra, and Matthew slides his hands up my waist, ribcage, pausing just below my tits. when I grab his fingers and place them over me, his dick twitches.

"excited?" I smirk. his fingertips seem to have a mind of their own as they begin to toy with my nipples, the pad of his thumbs teasing me. I sigh, chest pushing out towards him desperately. he holds my body like he's worried I'll crumble, but also in a way that connotes a deep longing. something spilling over.

"can I take you to the bedroom?" he asks me breathlessly, one of his hands leaving my chest to stroke his own cock. the sight makes me groan helplessly while I grip his shoulders and grind against his lap. he picks up the pace for himself. "I can't wait any longer."

I nod eagerly, gasping when he stops touching himself to pull up his pants, hoist me up into his arms, and stand, carrying me with surprising ease down the hallway of my apartment. I point him to the correct room and he laughs when we get inside.

"you're messy." he laughs, although I'm not sure if he means the scattered papers around my bedroom or the whine that issues from my throat as I reach for his clothed dick while I'm pressed to him. it's sitting against my navel and I want to see his undone expressions.

I ignore the playful comment; he lays me down gingerly on the bed, straightening up to gaze at my figure before I push the rest of the overalls down my legs and cast them off. he lets out a giggle as I pout at the work I have to put into getting naked.

"stop laughing..." I blush, smiling. but I'm giggling too. he grazes the inside of my thigh, unable to keep from touching me while I discard my panties.

"I'm sorry." he laughs in a way that shows he isn't sorry at all, but the soft kiss he plants on my lips tells me it's all endearing to him. I wrinkle my nose slightly. for the first time being naked around him, I feel surprisingly comfortable. he watches me with a quiet adoration, like I've spun sugar and gold between my fingers. unable to contain myself anymore, I grab fistfuls of his shirt and undo the rest of the buttons. every second that his skin isn't against mine is a new kind of torture. it comes off easily and then the pants come off, too, until we're just staring at each other.

"do you still wanna do this?" he speaks carefully with me. I don't know where to look-- at his perfect chest, stomach, the purplish bruises already forming across his throat, or his enraptured face. it's almost overwhelming, and the waves of desire crash over me, hindering my words.

"yes," I nod. "yes, yes, yes." the word keeps falling from my lips even as he crawls on top of me, burying his nose into my collarbone and kissing feverishly. one hand supports his arm beside my head while the other reaches down to part my legs. I sigh at the cool air that's interrupted by his dick rubbing over my folds. he starts to grind down, drawing out every second of foreplay while I try to catch my breath. my eyes tilt to the ceiling, fluttering shut. I bask in every sensation. his warmth, his weight, all of it presses down.

"do we need a condom?" he asks softly, his cock throbbing against my center.

"birth control." I shake my head. he nods against my skin, allows me to tangle my fingers in his curls. "I'm clean."

"me too." I reply. he grabs my hip and yanks it towards him, pulling his chest away to straighten while he lines himself up at my entrance. he's concentrating on the place where our bodies meet, eyes full of lust when they peek up at mine.

"tell me if you need me to stop." he says softly.

"okay." I can't think of anything else. every cell of my existence is consumed with thoughts of impatience, and when he slides into me, my thighs tense and my mouth drops open.

"Matthew... oh my god." my voice is more like a mewl, in shock as my walls squeeze around him like they're trying to reject the sudden pressure between my legs. his jaw clenches, sinking into me until he reaches about halfway.

he lets out a surprising groan, leans down to kiss my shoulder as he finds a sweet spot. our chests are pressed together and, judging by the way he wraps an arm around my waist and lifts my torso to his, he likes the feeling.

we stay there a moment, him trying not to hurt me. but then I lift my pelvis up, trying to take more, and he inhales sharply.

"do something," I beg him quietly. "please."

I feel his lips curl into a smile and he pulls his face up to see my expressions. his hips push forward, my body sliding up the bed with the force. he watches my eyes roll back, my ribcage expand, my face overcome by pleasure. his gaze is unrelenting with lips slightly parted as he begins to thrust in and out of me.

I'm already a panting, moaning mess beneath him. he touches his nose to mine, swallowing each other's breaths while he moves.

"is this how you want it, baby?" he smirks, getting lost in his own lust. I nod and he gently turns my face to his. "tell me what you want."

"more." I sigh, hips again raising to meet the thrusts that are growing more forceful each time. my nails drag up his back, the nape of his neck, tangling in his hair and tugging at the ends. he sinks his teeth into my neck lightly and moans. I wrap my legs around his torso.

"such a pretty girl..." he growls in my ear. his grip on the sheets tightens when I clench myself around him, drawing him impossibly closer to my core. I can't help the helpless moans spilling out of me. I'm insatiable right now, scratching at his shoulders until I'm sure I'll leave red marks. he groans lasciviously at the clawing, ramming into me with an unrelenting voracity.

"oh my god," I yelp, back arching as he hits my g-spot. "right there, Matthew." my pleas fall on receptive ears: he holds me tighter to his chest and pounds into me.

"you like getting fucked by older men?" he whispers dirty things in my ear and I nod quickly, hardly able to speak through the ungodly sounds escaping my mouth. I cling to him and he lets me, treating every limb like it belongs to him.

"yes-- fuck, yes." I moan, almost sliding out of his grip from how hard he goes.

"you can take it," he breathes out, fingertips digging into my ribs while he holds me up. he's leaving marks that won't go away for a while, remnants of the full power of his desire. I want more, writhing and using my limited mobility to grind against him. he chuckles darkly over my skin. "look at you."

"Matthew, I'm gonna--" I gasp when he slams into me particularly hard. "I'm gonna cum."

"good." he shudders slightly, that attitude showing again. he reaches his hand up a moment to run through my hair. "cum on me, princess."

my lips part and I try to gulp down air, but it's impossible with the way he's holding my attention. the thing about Matthew is that he's so sweet and gentle that whenever he looks at me like I'm a plaything, it shocks my insides. they turn to jelly, eager to please and quick to satisfy. he switches so easily with me, and he doesn't even need to request my submission. I give it more than willingly.

"fuck me..." I pant out, feeling my pussy start to clench over and over around him. my orgasm fuzzies the edges of my vision, creeping up my spine until it's arched. "oh fuck-- Matthew!" I practically scream while my frame gives out. I'm shuddering, crying out at the absolute euphoria wracking my body.

"scream my name, baby." he groans, his own orgasms approaching quickly. the fluttering of my cunt around him is causing the vein in his forehead to throb. he rocks into me, the headboard knocking into the wall while he nears the edge. "such a good girl for me."

I nod and meet his thrusts with my hips while I ride out my orgasm, inadvertently finding myself wound up again. the pleasure of his fingers when they reach between our bodies to rub my clit causes me to buck into him, whining mercifully while he gets me off again.

"oh--" he sucks in a breath when I squeeze, keeping him here with me. "you feel so good."

he starts to lose control, hips juddering to get as deep as he can get.

"can I fill you up, baby?"

"yes." I reply immediately. he smiles a little, lifting me up more so that he can hold me under my ass while he pounds into me so deeply, I can feel his dick brushing my cervix.

"oh my god," he moans, the sound desperate as I feel him twitch and spill inside of me. he keeps pushing as though to keep his cum within me, panting over my skin. "such a tight little cunt."

the circles on my clit, combined with the sinful things he continues to say, cause me to whimper and climax all over again. I moan his name, absorbed in the warmth of his seed in my stomach.

"you want more?" he slows his thrusts but pleasures me through my orgasm while I nod helplessly.

"I'll cum in you again tonight." he promises, taking my shaking, weak form as a sign to withdraw. both of us wince at the sensitivity until he lays me back down on the bed so gently, it makes me question if what we just did was real.

neither of us speaks for a moment, trying to regain our composure as he rolls down onto the mattress beside me. I stare up at the ceiling, feeling him drip between my thighs.

"that was..." he turns his head to gauge my reaction. I don't even bother to hide the satisfied grin on my face.

"amazing."

"yeah?" he rolls over onto his side and places one large hand on my stomach. his touch makes me bloom.

"mhmm." I hum. his face is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, a beautiful sight that makes me want to kiss him all over again. I didn't know it was possible to feel this way for someone so quickly.

"can I get you anything?" he smiles. I don't say anything at first, only reach out to cup his face in my hands and pull him to me for a chaste peck.

"no, thank you." I rub my nose with his. "I'm gonna take a shower and make something to eat if you want to join me."

"definitely." he examines my features once more as if to assess damage. but there's only pure joy painted across my face. "are you sure I didn't go too hard on you?"

"you can go harder tonight." I tease.

"what about your painting?" he suddenly recalls the project lying in the living room.

"rain check." I shrug. he laughs, wraps an arm around my waist.

"alright, then."

#matthew gray gubler #mgg #criminal minds #smut #mgg smut #one shot #first time #artist #spencer reid

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captainderyn · 3 years

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22. From the 101 ways to say I love you ♡

Thank you so much for the ask @elveny ! I was very excited to take on this prompt for Ryn and Garrus lol.

(This is cross posted on AO3 (CaptainDeryn) )

Prompt 22: "Let me fix your hair."

Ryn didn’t make a habit of looking fancy.

She already put in enough effort every day putting on her armor and dealing with the stress of one mission after another. In the off chance she got a day to relax, she wasn’t going to waste precious time and energy on looks.

If she could get away with sweatpants and a crop top, her hair thrown up into a messy bun, then she damn well would. It didn’t matter where she was going: if they could handle Commander Shepard in her armor, then they could handle her in these civvies.

Maybe, if others were lucky, she would put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Maybe a sweater if she was feeling crazy.

The rare exception she made was for Garrus. For him, and for their planned date with two full days of shore leave, she dug through her meager clothes she had with her on the Normandy to pull out something exceptional.

Garrus, she decided, as she wrestled herself into something far beyond what she usually considered acceptable for off-duty, was the luckiest of all aboard the Normandy.

Together they’d decided their date night was going to treat the other right. In reality, they’d both suggested the same upscale restaurant when they’d been brainstorming ideas. Supposedly it had the best view on the Citadel, and if Shepard gave away all the cards in her hand: she wanted the chance to see Garrus clean up nice without the stress of a formal gathering.

Of course, after some bickering back and forth about who was treating who right, they’d settled on splitting the check fifty-fifty. And most likely getting one of the food vendors on the lower levels, the real best food on the Citadel, as the night wore on.

Ryn made a face at herself in the mirror as she finished her eyeliner. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had the chance to willingly put on a full face of makeup and her eyeliner showed it. If she wiped off her attempt one more time no amount of concealer would hide the red blotchiness that would stain her pale skin.

Good enough, she decided, doing one final inspection in the mirror.

A full face of makeup was probably a strong word. She was too rusty to do anything too exuberant and she hated hiding her freckles too much to cake on enough foundation to hide the realities of being an N7 and fighting a war on her skin.

She’d managed a smokey black and gold look to make the grey of her eyes pop and piercing and put on a dark red lip without too many makeup wipe casualties to fix mistakes, that was a win in her book.

There were, of course, a few bruises from their last mission to hide on her face from where she’d so elegantly cracked her helmet into a rock in a graceless throw from a biotic. They weren’t perfectly covered, but she hoped they would be good enough in the harsh lighting of the Citadel to avoid any questions.

The real struggle was figuring out what to do with her hair. Her go to hairstyles were down and messy, a messy bun, or a messy ponytail. The most refined thing she’d done with her hair over the last year since Saren was put it in a bun that fit Alliance marine regulations.

She’d spent far too long after her shower laying on her bed in a towel scrolling the extranet for inspiration. She’d finally settled on something she figured was within her rusty skill set.

As she’s taken a curling wand and elastic bands to her hair, she’d missed the days when she was in her twenties and going out every few nights, where her makeup and hairstyling skills had become second nature.

Now, at thirty-two with more combat tours than nights out under her belt recently, she was thrilled with the simple curled half up-half down look she pulled off.

She didn’t look too shabby, and she gave herself a confidence boosting smile and thumbs up.

All she had to do tonight was be a civilian.

She pulled her black heels on and called Garrus up to her quarters. It was better than roaming around the ship looking for him and dealing with the rabblerousing of her crew. While she’d gone through the attempted effort of painting her nails, another luxury she hadn’t had in a long time, she didn’t want to show them off by flipping off her crew.

It didn’t take long for Garrus to knock on her door, and she let him in, stepping back to admire him.

Blatantly so, not trying to hide the way her eyes roamed.

He did in fact, clean up quite nice.

Quite nice indeed.

She hummed in approval, eyes drifting over the well fitted trousers and dark navy shirt that hugged his body. He had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the shirt unbuttoned at his collar.

Garrus gave her a charming smile as he walked up to her, eyes also roving across her body in turn.

She would be lying if she said she hadn’t dressed to get a reaction. Where was the fun in wearing the same old business-formal black and red dress she wore for formal functions? The whole point of tonight was to be civilians.

And this dress certainly was not in regs.

While the dress was floor length, both sides were slit up to her hipbone, revealing a scandalous amount of her skin. The dress had sleeves yes, but the neckline dipped down to below her breasts.

And Ryn had spent far too long finagling the dress so that she wouldn’t accidentally reveal them to the public. The potential headlines had tormented her for the entire time she’d been getting ready. Not that Garrus needed to know that.

Garrus leaned down to kiss her, innocent enough, but his hands ran up her hips, catching at the slit fabric and pulling it up. He made a noise somewhere between excitement and surprise and pulled back enough to look at her again.

“Is this a human’s way of seducing?” he asked in amusement.

“Perhaps,” Ryn shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest to accentuate the lack of fabric there. Turians, of course, would not have the same reaction as humans to her show, but that didn’t matter. Too much confidence was coursing through her veins to really care. She was reveling too much in her own self-image to particularly care about his reaction. “Is it working?”

“Oh, there are multiple things about you right now that are working.” There was still a slight rumbling chuckle in Garrus’ words, and she shot him a look, “You want something.”

She contemplated and then gave him a wicked smile, “I want you to kiss me.”

Garrus’ hands curled more tightly around her hips. A small thrill went through her as he ducked his head, pausing just before their mouths met, “Do you?” his breath whispered across her skin and goosebumps prickled on her arms.

Breath catching, she licked her lower lip, “I really do.”

She reaped the energy that she sowed as her back connected with the cold glass of the wall length fish tank and Garrus’ mouth met hers in a fiery kiss. His hands pressed her back against the tank and a gleeful laugh broke from her between breaths at the thrill that went through her.

She draped her arms across his shoulders, her hands resting against the back of his neck and pulled him closer.

They could miss dinner; she really didn’t mind if they missed dinner.

A date night in was as much of a date night.

Garrus gave her one last long kiss and went to move back. Ryn caught him, her arms tightening around his shoulders, and yanked him right back for another kiss.

He laughed, the sound bright and merry in her ears before he wrestled himself away. When her grabby hands went for him again, he grabbed her wrists, and pinned them above her head.

From the sly grin he gave her, it was entirely intentional. Ryn squirmed against his grip.

“You are causing trouble.” His attempted sternness failed to meet its mark.

Ryn looked him up and down once, “Yeah.” she agreed. Then offered him a sweet smile, “You should join me in causing it.”

Garrus’ head dipped with a sigh that was more a breathy laugh and released her. He took a step towards the door and motioned for her to follow, giving a low chuckle as she stuck her lower lip out in a pout,

“We already have a reservation. At least let me treat you to food and drinks before I…treat you to other things.”

He made a face as he stumbled, as if he cringed at the words that slipped from his mouth. Ryn gave a bright, full bodied laugh and hooked her arm into his.

“We will treat each other.” she corrected, kissing his cheek. Without her heels she was nearly as tall as Garrus. Wearing them, she was just a smidge above eye-to-eye with him.

She led him out the door, tossing a coy glance over her shoulder, “Besides, I want to flaunt a little bit. Put aside being Commander Shepard for a while.”

Garrus tugged her to a stop just before she slipped through the doorway, pulling her back to face him. With a gentle touch he brushed away strands of red hair that had fallen across her forehead and reached up to tighten the ponytail that kept half her hair up.

“Stop squirming,” he chastised, “and let me fix your hair.”

“I’m excited.” Ryn complained, beaming up at him, “I can’t help it.”

Garrus shook his head at her with a laugh and slipped his hand into hers, finally leading her out the door and to the Normandy’s elevator. As the elevator shuttled them to the command deck, Garrus’ eyes didn’t leave her.

“You look stunning, Ryn.” he said, and she couldn’t help the blood that rushed to her cheeks.

The view from the topmost level of the restaurant might well be the best view on the Citadel, Ryn decided during dinner.

Their table was a simple, dark wood two-person table. Above them patio lights glimmered with warm light. It was beautiful, but the real awe began when she looked up.

From between the arms of the Citadel, space swirled above them. Stars blinked in massive swaths, dark black of far space and near space blending together like paint on an artist’s palette. It was mesmerizing and the same call to be among the stars that had drawn her to the Alliance tugged in her chest.

As beautiful as the view was, it couldn’t hold her attention for long. Garrus kept too much of it in the way the light caught in the planes of his face and the way his hand stayed on her thigh. In the way their conversation was easier than breathing and her laughter fell from her like renewing spring rain.

They dined on fancy food and fine drinks until the call of the night swept them up and brought them to the lower levels of the Citadel. Where they walked arm in arm, orders from one of the food trucks in their hands until they found a bench to sit on.

Where Ryn took off her heels and let out a sigh of relief as her aching feet thanked her. Garrus swept up her legs and set them across his lap, laughing along with her when she almost slipped off the bench.

Until the wild urges of the night took over and they were swept to their feet by the strings of music slipping from the restaurants and clubs all around them and danced in the courtyard. Not the sort of elegant dancing or the feral dancing of a club, but simply moving together and moving to the music.

Until their laughter created their own music and Garrus’ hands were cupping her face and hers were looped around his shoulders. Until he leaned in to kiss her and she leaned into it. Until his hands slid into their hair he had so carefully fixed and tousled it with his touch.

Until their unabashed joy underneath the whorls of stars became the best view on the Citadel.

#captainderyn writes #mass effect #mass effect fanfiction #femshep x garrus #shakarian #garrus vakarian #femshep #commander shepard #oc: Ryn Shepard #otp: Keep Me Grounded #looks like this is a Ryn/Garrus blog now sorry guys #I've written more fanfic for them in the past 3 months than in the past two years of any other fic combined #i think this is the most fic I've written since delavairess and I parted ways #and it feels WONDERFUL

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flamaflavio · 3 years

Text

Let's talk about Italian hair!

There's a lot of Italians with straight hair so I really don't understand why so many Americans believe that Romano and Veneziano with curly hair are supposed to be the most accurate version?? I will talk a bit about hair.

Small disclaimer: I'm not talking about anyone in particular, this is for those who believe that an Italian character to be accurate has to have curly dark hair.

Now, back to Hetalia:

I live in Campania (South Italy) and I can say that curly hair in my city is pretty common. Wavy hair even more, but not as much as straight hair. My friend @j-crna-zvijezda who is also from Campania told me that (approximately) half of the people they know have curly OR wavy hair and the other half straight hair. And it's the same for my friend @elelloletee who lives in Salento (the heel of the boot). On the other hand my friends from North Italy told me that almost all of their friends have straight hair. Obviously there people with wavy hair but curly hair isn't as common as in the South! My Genoese friend @hws-cernunnos told me that her classmates were so shocked when they had a classmate with curly hair that they kept asking her questions about her hair for months. I tried to search online and all Italian articles and blogs I found on this topic agreed that in Italy straight hair are more common than curly hair, especially in the North. This shows that saying that curly hair are more common is just a stereotype!

Is Romano with curly hair accurate? Yes! Is Romano with wavy hair accurate? Yes! Is Romano with straight hair accurate? Yes!

All three hairstyles are accurate for Romano. Yeah, ALL of them. So if you give Romano curly hair because you find it cute it's okay!! If you do it because you believe it's "more accurate" or because someone told you that most S.Italians have curly hair, I'm happy to see that you have good intentions, but you're just following a stereotype, not real life! The canon designs are already accurate, there's nothing wrong with them, so there's no need to try to fix them. It's okay to change them a little for your own headcanons but please remember that "all Italians have curly hair" is a stereotype!!

Let me explain why I love all the Italian characters designs:

Canon Romano has dark straight hair and he is accurate because here straight hair are AS COMMON as non-straight hair. "Would he be as accurate if he had curly or wavy hair?" Yes!! "Are light brown or blonde hair accurate for Romano?" Not really. Surprisingly the only "correct" stereotype I can think of is that MOST of us have dark hair. I wouldn't mind if Himaruya gave us a S.Italian character with light brown hair because there are light haired S.Italians (my best friend and her family are blonde, for example) but Romano is literally South Italy and the majority of us have either black or dark brown hair so it's better if you don't change his hair colour! (For those who are into 2Ptalia don't worry there's nothing wrong with blonde Flavio because it's just an AU lol.)

Canon Veneziano has straight light brown or blonde / almost reddish hair. Is he accurate? Yes he is! His design is really good! Light straight hair are more common in the North than in the South! "Would it still be accurate if he had darker hair?" Yes! Any hair colour can work for the personification of North Italy!! I personally prefer his canon hair colour because I've never seen an Italian character with this hair and it surprised me in a positive way. So if you want to follow 100% his canon design too I would recommend you to be careful to not make it "too red" because red hair isn't common, but to give him light brown (or blonde) hair with red highlights instead! The colour is called "Venetian blonde" and it's really pretty and can work for his hair. After all his name is Veneziano and looking at the most recent canon art I think this is what Himaruya wants to do with his hair :). "Would it still be accurate if he had curly hair?" Yes, but not completely. As I said there are N. Italians with curly hair but they aren't the majority. I believe straight or maybe wavy hair are better for the personification of North Italy. So it's okay if you give him curly hair if you like it!! Just please don't say you're doing it because "Italians have curly hair".

Canon Genoa (he's N. Italian) has straight hair on the top and cute curls at the bottom, the colour is unknown. I love his design! His hair is perfect! A lot of Italians have this weird "straight at the top, wavy at the bottom" type of hair (me as well!) which is why I'm so in love with him! And any hair colour except red can work for him just like Veneziano.

Canon Seborga has completely red straight hair. Like I said red hair isn't that accurate to represent the whole population but 1) we're tired of seeing Italians in foreign media always represented in the same way. Italian hair come in all colours so it's possible for us to have red or blonde hair!! And 2) Seborga is just a micronation with 300 people so even just 3 red hairs there makes 1% of the population. And 3) he isn't supposed to represent the whole country he just happens to be Italian. So don't worry about us being misrepresented by him, we're happy the way he is! Red haired people (especially women) have it bad in Italy so a good character representing red haired Italians is perfect! I've never seen anyone in the Italian fandom complain about his design so <3

(extra) most people don't know about Canon Littorio but she's an Italian war ship with blonde hair and blue eyes. I'm not sure if I should count her as an Italian character, but if she is I really like her! She's just a ship so just like Seborga she doesn't represent the whole Italian population she just happened to be Italian and there are some Italians with blonde hair and blue eyes, so why can't she have this colour palette?

So what I wanted to say is that you are free to change their designs a bit if you like it!! Just one thing: if you want to be accurate don't follow stereotypes, if you want to follow stereotypes because you like them (it isn't necessarily a bad thing!) don't claim you're being "more accurate than the original" because you're accidentally spreading misinformation. I've seen a lot of Americans really believing that Italians with natural straight hair or blonde Italians don't exist :/.

I don't want you to misunderstand this post so I'll explain it one last time: I'm not saying that changing designs is bad!! You can do it and I do it too sometimes!! All I'm saying is that if you change them to be more accurate, but you accidentally follow a stereotype, it's harmful.

"Romano should have curly hair because he's Italian" is misinformation ❌

"I headcanon Romano with curly hair because I can relate more/because he's cuter this way" is good! 👍

Talking about hair headcanons I headcanon that Romano used to have curly hair when he was a child but it got straight growing up :)

#hetalia #aph italy #aph romano #hws italy #hws romano #aph genoa #aph seborga #hws seborga #long post #hope you don't misunderstand #this is coming from someone with really dark wavy hair #we arent all like this

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unbridgeabledistances · 3 years

Text

kings of the southside: CHAPTER 2

The storefronts on the block were different now— fragile minimalist displays and organic coffee shops uprooting the aged wooden bar signs with peeling paint and bullet holes— but against all odds, and with everyone else moving on, he and Mickey had decided to stay.

(a canon divergent fic in which ian and mickey stay on the southside and take over the alibi)

read chapter 2 here on ao3, or below the cut! (see notes on ao3 for various credits)

The end of the first weekend of them running the Alibi came quickly, and with it came Mickey’s focus being pulled in a million goddamn directions; they still had to unpack all of their shit upstairs, still had to figure out inventory and restock the bar and balance the books. Between all of the swirling and circling tasks Mickey felt like his head was going to explode, a sharp shift after the smooth waters of doing fuck-all for the past few months before the weed security business took off and he’d been forced to snap back into business mode.

Ian had bounced back from that first Saturday night of running the bar, the slump relaxing and fading out of his shoulders, and he was chipper as ever all Sunday afternoon, constantly grabbing at Mickey’s waist and singing fucking songs in his ear as they brushed elbows while pouring beers beside each other at the bar. As always, Ian fucking sunshine Gallagher’s mood seemed to have some sort of trickle-down effect on Mickey on Sunday, despite Mickey’s best efforts to not be a love-crazed loon. So even though they had a million things to do for Ian’s 80s night bullshit and Mickey had every reason to be stressed, he found himself fucking whistling when he rinsed the dishes behind the bar on Sunday night, and Tommy started giving him shit— and Mickey realized that he didn’t think there was a time he’d remembered whistling, ever, in his goddamn life.

He couldn’t really help it; Ian was radiating this new, breezy energy that Mickey still hadn’t had the time to feel the past few months, with all the bullshit going on with Terry and his family next door that set his teeth on edge— but now Ian was melting into their new life, acting settled, acting like he didn’t have a goddamn care in the world and everything was all figured out. And Mickey started to realize, in the fuzzy back corners of his brain, that maybe, just maybe— he could start to feel that way about their new gig at the Alibi and their new place, too.

They didn’t have to run from anything anymore.

Mickey practically couldn’t believe his ears the other week when Ian had willingly accepted custody of the Alibi with a too-relaxed air of nonchalance, with a well, maybe Mick and I could take it off your hands, on one of their final days scarfing down sugary cereal in the late hours of the morning in the Gallagher house kitchen. There was no way Gallagher was being serious about this— Ian was always talking about going somewhere, about being something bigger than he was, so there was no way he was offering to Kev that they would take over his dump of a bar. Except he definitely was— and for a sharp and splintering instant Mickey was worried Ian was saying this for him; that once again, he was holding Ian Gallagher back.

But Mickey had felt Ian’s warm palm resting on his leg under the kitchen table— and he’d seen the warmth, that fucking warmth that always heated Mickey’s insides, as Ian turned to him with his eyebrows raised in a question, in a wordless proposition— and once again it struck Mickey like a goddamn lightning bolt just how much Ian Gallagher loved him, if he looked this blissed out about the prospect of living in a shitty Southside apartment and running an even shittier bar with Mickey Milkovich for the rest of his days.

Mickey knew part of Ian doing this was for him, after all the Westside bullshit that Mickey had resisted at every turn. Mickey knew he’d lost his shit when he made that yuppie poodle lady rip their lease to shreds, but could anyone blame him? The few hours they’d spent at the apartment complex made Mickey feel like he was going to crawl out of his fucking skin, like the glares of everyone he passed by in the too-clean, air-freshened hallways made him itch from the inside out. There was no fucking way he could stay in a place like that. But he was going to try, if Ian wanted.

But with a simple sentence, with a simple maybe Mick and I could take it off your hands spoken into the dusty kitchen of the Gallagher house, Mickey was saved. This Alibi plan pulled them both above water, gave them both a shore to rest on— and now they were finally, finally on the same fucking page, after figuratively (and literally) butting heads about the future for so long.

So now they were here, and they were doing it, and it was scary as fuck. Mickey had never lived in a place so quiet, a small space so devoid of the press of other people screeching and fighting and leaving trails of clutter, and he knew that Ian hadn’t either; both of their childhood homes were always crawling with various drunks or Russian prostitutes or batshit crazy relatives, and the silence of their too-small studio, in the morning hours before the bar was opened downstairs, was deafening.

Mickey could feel his jaw start to clench as he laid twisted in the sheets on Monday morning, when Ian had gone for a run and Mickey was left in the apartment alone for an hour and it was quiet, too quiet— but instantly the boisterous noise of the Southside streets had started to flow just outside the open window, a cacophony of honking horns and shouted slurs and gunshots, and the trickling in of the sounds tickled Mickey’s scalp, and reminded him that he was still rooted— he was still home.

And then Ian came clomping up the stairs like a sweaty monster after his run and tackled Mickey into the mattress, flopping onto him like a fucking Saint Bernard—and Mickey remembered why they did this, why this was good for both of them.

Against every single one of Mickey’s instincts, against everything he’d always known— he was going to let himself have this.

Ian’s brows were furrowed, a pressed series of creases narrowed in focus, as he stared at the paint swatches with a too-sharp glare.

“Mick, I really don’t see the fucking difference between Charcoal Gray and Burnt Ember.”

Mickey huffed, snatching the series of paint swatches out of his hand. “Nevermind then. You’ve got no eye for this shit, Gallagher. Charcoal Gray has cool undertones, Burnt Ember has a warmer vibe. We’ve definitely gotta go with Burnt Ember, the lighting in this place is shit and I wanna make sure the kitchen has a good ambiance.”

Ian’s lips curved into a smile of disbelief, rolling his eyes. Annoying motherfucker. “They both look like gray to me.”

Mickey flashed a grin in reply, then swatted Ian’s chest with the remaining paint swatches he was holding. “It’s a good thing you’re good at manual labor. If we wanna have this place painted by Wednesday, we’ve gotta get moving.”

“On it. Lip’s coming by with the paint for the main room and the wallpaper stuff, too.”

And just then, there was a gentle tap at the door. “Ey, it’s me and Liam.”

Ian bounded across the room to pull the paint-chipped door open. “Speak of the devil.”

Lip strode into their shithole apartment carrying cans of paint and a wrench clenched between his fingers, Liam trailing behind him.

“Damn. It’s only been two days and I already forgot what a dump this place is.”

Ian shoved Lip’s shoulder. “Fuck you. If you can renovate our shitty house, fixing this place up should be a piece of cake.”

Mickey noticed Liam scanning the room— in a fit of annoyance the other morning, with the bright fucking sun streaming in because they hadn’t gotten curtains yet with the bar pulling focus downstairs, Mickey had sliced a black trashbag and pinned it to the window as a makeshift curtain. Liam’s eyes lingered on the hanging trashbag, and he raised a judgmental eyebrow at Mickey.

“Love what you’ve done with the place.”

Ian chuckled. “Yeah, Mick’s a real interior designer.”

Liam just sighed. “You guys need all the help you can get.”

Mickey’s brows furrowed. “Fuck you both. That was a temporary solution.” He walked over to the kitchen to grab a bottle of beer, just so he had something to do.

Ian grinned again, then reached out to ruffle Liam’s hair. “How’s the new place, superstar?”

Liam shrugged nonchalantly. “I like it. I just hung up all of my posters. Added a bit of vibrancy to the color palette that Tami chose to paint my room.”

Ian smirked, and nodded a head towards Mickey, who was standing by the fridge and fumbling with his beer bottle. “You should talk to Mickey about color palettes—we’ve been arguing for the last half hour about what shade of gray to paint the kitchen. Something about cool and warm undertones?”

Liam turned to examine the kitchenette in the back of the studio, hand on his hips. “Definitely warm undertones in a small space like this, unless you get some updated light fixtures.

Ian grinned. “Damn. Guess I really do have two interior designers in my family.”

Liam smiled back, his eyes lighting up. “You need any other advice? Mickey, I’d love to hear what unified aesthetic you’re aiming for with the décor.”

The rest of the afternoon was filled with the rhythm of smooth paint rollers sliding against the wall, the old radio in the corner of the room (that had probably been there for decades) turned to a low hum— Liam and Lip helped them shuffle through their belongings in the trash bags, moving the mattress to the center of the room and not even bothering to cover the already-stained hardwood floors with a drop cloth before they coated the studio’s walls in thick layers of paint.

Mickey and Liam were tackling the kitchen, priming the walls in a comfortable silence. Frank’s death had hit Liam pretty hard, and Mickey could only imagine how fucked up it was, to have all the heaviness and all those complicated clumps of emotion that came with Terry dying inside you when you were only a kid— losing a shitty father was almost harder than losing a good one.

But Liam seemed enthusiastic about helping with the renovation efforts— he covered the walls dutifully in multiple coats of primer, ran to the corner store to pick up canned pints of “Burnt Ember,” and even offered Mickey advice on various wallpaper swatches for a feature wall in the studio (which Mickey actually appreciated, because he was still learning all this shit and fuck if he knew what a “feature wall” was or how to make it look good). Liam also gave his review of the various pieces of furniture Mickey had circled in an Ikea catalogue with a black Sharpie. Mickey was flipping through the catalogue, Liam methodically painting a final coat of paint in the kitchen beside him in a comfortable silence, when Mickey tuned in to Lip and Ian’s conversation from where they were painting in the main room.

“So, you guys are really doing this shit, huh? Running the Alibi?”

Ian paused, presumably taking a sip of his beer. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we?”

“Don’t know, man. The neighborhood’s changing. My bet is the crowds’ll get thinner and thinner.” Lip paused, ripping a paper towel to wipe his hands. “You sure that you and Mick have thought this through?”

Mickey tried to hold back an audible scoff from the kitchen. There were a number of things he could’ve yelled from the other room— for starters, when in the last 12 months had fucking Phillip Gallagher thought anything through— but he decided to hold his tongue, listening for Ian’s reply.

“Jesus, Lip. Yes. We’re already living in the place, not gonna give it up now.”

A pause.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, asshole.”

Mickey could hear Lip twisting open the soda can he’d been drinking from.

“I don’t know, man. It’s my job to care about this shit, isn’t it? I thought Fiona taking over the laundromat was a bad idea, and she still did it anyways.”

Ian gave a soft chuckle. “Yeah.”

The soft tempo of the paint rollers on the wall continued.

“You sure this is what you wanna do with your life?”

Mickey felt that twist in his stomach again— the ice cold one, the feeling of fear that always sunk into his bones in moments like this, when he knew other people saw what he saw: that Ian Gallagher was far, far too good for him, and that all Mickey doing was ensnaring him in the dirty streets of the Southside and holding him back, when everyone else was moving on with their lives into gentrified apartment complexes.

But he’d heard the smile in Ian’s voice as he replied.

“Absolutely.”

Finally, after a long fucking day, Lip and Liam had left the creaky apartment— the place was looking pretty good, the kitchen and the main room both painted, and Lip had even been able to do a bit of work on the plumbing and fixed the leaky sputter of the upstairs bathroom faucet (he had also tried to convince Ian to install some sort of fucking backsplash thing in the kitchen, a multi-day project that they’d both resisted). Now, with Lip and Liam out the door, he and Ian were ready to crash. Mickey strode across the room and opened all the windows as wide as they could possibly go, trying to dispel all the paint fumes and let in gusts of humid summer air so they could collapse on the mattress. They probably could’ve crashed at one of the other Gallaghers’ places for the night if they felt suffocated by the fumes— but for now the light evening breeze was quickly drying the paint, circulating the almost-too-small room.

Across the room Ian flopped onto the mattress, a ridiculous streak of gray paint smeared across his forehead. Mickey smirked, and crawled into bed next to him, sitting so his legs were pressed against Ian’s upper torso.

“I can’t wait to get a fucking bedframe,” Ian breathed out—his face buried in the pillow, his eyelids drooping. “And a new mattress. Not this shitty one with stains all over it.”

“Oh yeah?” Mickey smirked, reaching a hand over to card through Ian’s hair.

“Mm.” Ian hummed happily in reply as he kept his eyes closed, probably starting to drift off to sleep.

While was probably a horrible idea— at the very least, Ian should change out of his paint-streaked clothes and wash his fucking face. There were flecks of paint all over his face and in his hair, mingling and dried in his copper curls, from when he and Mickey had gotten into a moderate paint-splattering war like a couple of teenage boys when they were trying to paint the living room walls later in the day. He prodded Ian in his side, who was now laying curled beside him with a dreamy fucking smile on his face.

“Hey. Mumbles. Get the fuck up. You’re gonna fall asleep with that toxic shit all over your face.”

Ian yawned, his nose crinkling. “Don’t care,” he said into the pillow.

“C’mon, Ian.”

And all at once Ian’s eyes were open, and he was crawling his way on top of Mickey, boxing him in with his arms on both sides of Mickey’s head. Mickey felt a gust of air whoosh out of his lungs in surprise—and in an instant he was reminded of when they used to live at the Milkovich house, in his shitty bedroom with far too many bad memories for Ian’s presence to completely tip the scale and outweigh them with the good ones, when Ian would be laying sleepy beside him and they’d get into little wrestling matches and tussles like this, with grips of hair and breathed out “C’mere, army!”s. There was the same energy buzzing between them in this moment—but god, they were so fucking different than they’d been then. They were fuller, more solid; Ian was measured in a way that still made Mickey’s toes curl when he looked at him and compared him to the scrawny and glassy-eyed teenager that he’d been, to the hollow frame he’d been on the worst days when Mickey placed a hand on a too-cold ribcage curled under thin blankets and run a hand through his hair and whispered “please,” trying to will the light back into Ian’s eyes.

But that light was there all the goddamn time now— and it was there right now as Ian dipped down and kissed at Mickey’s neck, Mickey breathing out as a no-longer-sleepy Ian made his way downward.

He guessed Ian could probably just shower all the dried paint out of his hair tomorrow morning.

Tuesday was a blur of getting ready for Ian’s idea to host fucking 80s night, and getting ready for Franny to stay— Mickey had thought the extent of Ian’s plan for this party thing was going to just be playing some tunes and charging a little extra for beers, but apparently Ian wanted to go all out. He’d had Debbie make some sort of poster with a colorful font and stapled them all over random bulletin boards and telephone poles on the Southside, and posted a bunch of shit on her Instagram (which had a weirdly large following because of her whole “hot handywoman” thing, which was still a complete fucking mystery to Mickey). Mickey wasn’t sure that Ian’s plan of throwing a party at their random Southside bar on a Friday night was going to fix all of their financial problems— but hey, if they needed cash then they needed cash. And while Mickey’s preferred way of procuring cash was heading down to the local corner store with a gun stowed at his waistband, for once in his life he was trying to do this shit right. So maybe his goody-two-shoes husband was making him soft (he definitely, definitely fucking was)— but when his jackass ginger giant of a husband looked at him with fucking puppy dog eyes and asked him to go along with this plan, instead of Mickey’s not-quite-joking suggestions that they just rob the bodega two doors over instead to fix all of the Alibi’s money problems, there really wasn’t much that Mickey could do about it.

He and Ian were wiping the bar, Mickey mentally running through the list of shit they had to order to prep for Friday’s crowd, when their phone screens both illuminated with text messages on the bartop.

Debbie (2:34 PM): everyone make sure to post the 80s night flyer on ur socials!!!!

Lip (2:34 PM): What the fuck are socials

Debbie (2:35 PM): 🙄

Debbie (2:35 PM): u aren’t an old man, phillip. instagram, twitter, even facebook for dinosaurs like u🦖

Liam (2:35 PM): 👍👍 Already posted.

Liam (2:36 PM): But I don’t know how useful advertising to a bunch of 11 year olds will be…

Carl (2:36 PM): me and a bunch of the boys r gonna roll through- get ready to rage motherfuckers!!!

Ian (2:37 PM): ❤️❤️

Ian (2:37 PM): Thanks for all your help Debs

Mickey rolled his eyes. “Sappy motherfucker.”

He decided to reply to the groupchat in the way that he knew best:

Mickey (2:37 PM): 🖕

Mickey remembered the first day that he’d been initiated into the Gallagher family group chat, nearly a week after returning from their “honeymoon” in the dingy motel that smelled like mildew and cigarette smoke— he and Ian had been back at the Gallagher house for about a week, sleeping in most long lazy mornings and getting up to… various activities. It was one of those lazy mornings in bed when Ian had gotten decidedly distracted from said activities by the series of notifications that were lighting up Mickey’s phone on the nightstand from the groupchat Gallagher Fam:

Debbie (11:34 AM): the jonas brothers are playing upstairs. everybody take cover

Lip (11:34 AM): Thank god I don’t live there anymore

Debbie (11:35 AM): also welcome to the group chat mickey xoxo

Liam (11:35 AM): Noise-cancelling headphones are on. An excellent investment

Carl (11:35 AM): i’m just seeking shelter & keeping it real in the basement 😎

Mickey had never been part of a fucking family group chat before—he’d barely been involved in any group chats, since the extent of his smartphone use before prison was nonexistent, and he’d relied on burner phones to do all of Terry’s shady bidding after he got out of jail up until the wedding. He’d used some of their wedding cash to get himself an iPhone—even though he barely fucking knew how to use it half the time, except for shitty multiplayer games he and Ian liked to mess around with— but he’d barely had an excuse to text anyone except Sandy about various wedding logistics, and obviously Ian.

But now he was crashing with Ian’s family, and he and Ian were fucking married, and he was a part of this shit for real— it was group chat official. Which strangely felt all the more real, even though Mickey already had a fucking ring on his finger. And he’d never tell a fucking soul, not even Ian, but it made something warm pool in his stomach— to have siblings to fucking banter with about who ate the last of the potato chips, or who could pick Franny up from school, or whining about whoever was making too much noise, in the same ways he and Mandy and his brother used to get on each other’s fucking nerves.

Ian smiled down at his phone at Mickey’s reply to Debbie’s nudge about the posters. “Excellent contribution. Thanks for showing Debs how grateful you are.”

Mickey brought his emoji to life and flipped Ian off. “You’re welcome.”

Ian bit at his thumbnail, looking down at his phone. “Debbie says she can get us a karaoke machine for Friday. That might be kind of fun, right?”

Mickey rolled his eyes. “Whatever you think, man. It’s your idea.”

Ian started tapping away at his phone, and Mickey turned back to tidying the bar, the rows and columns of those fucking black binders from the Alibi’s storeroom still lingering in the murky corners of his mind. He didn’t want to blow too much money on this shit— he had no idea how much a karaoke machine costed, but it probably wasn’t cheap. Why the fuck couldn’t they just steal one? Mickey gritted his teeth. He could crunch numbers any day, could make enough bank to stay afloat— but something about this, about running a fully legit business, was making him start to feel like he was being pulled underwater.

Mickey stayed tense the rest of the day, feeling like a bundle of fucking nerves without really knowing why— there was just so much going on, between moving and painting and Ian’s nervous excitement at planning this event bullshit. They’d both stumbled through the slow day at the bar, and now were collapsed in bed for the evening; Mickey was scrolling through various furniture store websites, weighing their options, while Ian was curled next to him, talking about something in a low voice that Mickey wasn’t really paying attention to.

“Sorry, what?”

Ian breathed out and smirked. “Nevermind. You weren’t listening.”

Mickey scrubbed a hand down his face. “Sorry, man. Just distracted.”

“Why’re you distracted?”

“Just thinking about all this shit. Furniture shopping, unpacking, whatever.”

Ian smiled. “Yeah? We can probably just pick stuff out when we go in person, we don’t have to overthink it.”

Mickey blew out a breath. “Yeah. Guess so.” He stretched his arms over his head— when the fuck did his shoulders get so tight?

“You ready for bed?”

“Yeah. I’ll grab the light.”

Mickey stood to pull the string for the bare lightbulb hanging directly above them, then thudded onto his stomach on the mattress. Immediately he heard Ian rustling under the sheets, moving closer to him, and eventually lifting on his arms to hover over Mickey’s back.

“The fuck’re you doing?”

“Relax, Mick. Just take a deep breath. Lemme take care of you.”

Mickey blew a breath out of his mouth into the pillow. “Not in the mood right now, Ian. I’m fucking exhausted.”

“Not like that— just lemme make your shoulders hurt less, at least.”

Mickey could feel Ian’s hot breath on the back of his neck as Ian settled, sitting back on Mickey’s upper thighs and leaning over him. He ran his hands along Mickey’s upper shoulders, delicately rubbing his thumbs up and down near his spine and trying to work at the permanent knots there.

“R’you giving me a fucking massage?” Mickey mumbled the words into the pillow, letting his eyelids droop. It did feel pretty fucking good, if he was being honest—the tension was draining from where he’d been holding it in his shoulders all week long, absorbing the impact of all the changes swirling around them and trying to keep them both afloat.

“Mm.” Ian hummed in reply, working his hands down to Mickey’s lower back and digging his thumbs in right where there were bundles of dull pain. Mickey almost flinched—not because it hurt, really, but because Ian’s fingertips gliding across his skin felt so fucking good.

He remembered the first 17 years of his life, the years when he’d been touch-starved without even realizing it, when the only touches his nerve-endings knew were high-impact beat downs and fists connecting with his jawbone. Milkoviches didn’t fucking hug, aside from a casual slap on the shoulder or side-hug when one of them was released from juvie—and even after he and Ian got together it took fucking forever to know what being held, what being gently touched, felt like. Those first few times when Ian had dragged his fingers over Mickey’s hipbones when they were fucking made Mickey nearly shudder, his nerve endings sparking like goddamn fireworks; and he couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. It was like his body was going on alert, like there was an invader breaching and he was always used to bracing for impact; but despite himself, all Mickey wanted was more— all he wanted was to press his cheek to Gallagher’s fucking jawbone and just keep it there and breathe in the scent of him, absorbing the warmth of his skin.

He still wasn’t totally used to this shit, the luxury of a warm body next to his after those years in a narrow prison cot, and on the run— but as he drifted off to sleep, his shoulders now unclenched and Ian’s warm, sturdy limbs circled around him, he thanked god, if god even did fucking exist anyways, that living in the shitty apartment over the Alibi was where he ended up in his life right now, with Ian by his side.

The next evening, just as the sun was setting pink outside the windows and Mickey was finishing up organizing everything behind the bar, Debbie towed Franny into the main room of the Alibi, wearing some sort of pink frilly shirt and carrying a kid-sized backpack with her pajamas and toothbrush inside.

“Thanks for watching Franny tonight, you guys are the best!” Debbie had barely set foot in the door before she was out it again and letting it swing shut behind her. Seconds later, Mickey could hear the distinct roaring of a too-expensive car engine coming from the street outside the bar.

Ian peered out the front window to inspected Heidi’s ride. “Jesus. It’s some sort of Ferrari convertible.” He scooped up Franny’s backpack from the floor, slinging the comically small bag onto his broad shoulders as he crouched to give Franny a hug. “Hey Fran, it’s so good to see you!”

“I missed you, Uncle Ian!” Franny enthusiastically squeezed Ian back.

Ian pressed a peck to the top of her head. “Missed you too. We’ve gotta have a talk with your mommy when she gets back about child road safety. That Ferrari was noticeably lacking a car seat.”

“Uncle Mickey!!!” Franny nearly squealed as she spotted Mickey behind the bar, running up and trying to jump up onto a stool so she could reach him. Ian laughed and lifted Franny so she was perched on a stool, her legs dangling as she reached forward. Mickey reached out an arm to fist-bump Franny, the best he could do with the bartop between them.

“Hey there, Little Red. Missed ya.”

Franny immediately looked Mickey up and down, like she was assessing if he’d changed at all since she last saw him. Her brows furrowed—then finally she spoke.

“Uncle Mickey, I have a question.”

Mickey reached across the bar to ruffle her hair. “What’s up, kid?”

She paused. “Can I rip the sleeves off my shirt too, like you?”

Mickey chuckled in surprise. He was wearing one of his flannel tank-tops with the arms ripped off—a white trash summer look in every way. “Let’s see what we can do. I think Uncle Ian’s got some old shirts packed upstairs that we can mess around with.”

Luckily, the bar was totally empty for the evening, aside from their three or four regulars— so Ian and Franny got to go upstairs and play dress-up while Mickey dealt with shit at the bar for an hour or so, deciding they’d close early so they could pay attention to Franny.

“Hey, Mick! We’ve got a surprise for you.” Ian’s voice wafted down from the back stairway that led up to the apartment.

“What’s up?”

“One sec. Stay downstairs.” Mickey could hear two sets of pattering footsteps coming down the staircase—and Franny dashed into the room, wearing a very baggy white tank top that reached her knees and an oversized flannel with the sleeves ripped off, an exact replica of Mickey’s outfit.

“Look, Uncle Mickey! I have an outfit like you! Now we can play liquor store robbery.” She looked at him seriously—then her face contorted, her brows furrowed and her lip sticking out in a face that Ian had taken to calling the “Milkovich scowl,” a trait that Franny had adopted in her many hours of playing “robbers” in the backyard with Mickey with her fake guns he’d gotten her for her birthday.

“Gimme all of your money!”

Mickey chuckled, and threw his hands up in surrender. “You got me, Wonder Woman.”

Ian walked towards the bar, lifting Franny up so she was perched on the countertop. “You like Franny’s new look? She was pretty insistent about wearing the tank top too.”

But Franny was still peering over at Mickey, like something had caught her eye.

“Uncle Mickey, can I have drawings on my fingers too? Like you? All the real robbers on TV have those.”

This time it was Ian who was laughing. “Oh my god. Debbie’s gonna kill us. If Franny gets knuckle tattoos by the time she’s seventeen, I’m blaming you.”

Mickey rolled his eyes. “Ain’t nothing wrong with family tradition. Fuck you.”

Ian tapped his fingers on the counter. “Wait, I have an idea. Franny, wait here.” Ian rushed upstairs, and came back down holding the black Sharpie that had Mickey had been using to circle pictures in the Ikea catalogue.

“Here, hold out your hand Fran.”

Franny held out her hand for Ian to hold—and he started to draw blocky letters between each of her knuckles. When he finished, he held Franny’s hand up for Mickey to see the doodled serifs, smiling sheepishly.

“L T T L R E D ♡”

Mickey grinned. “Now you’re a real robber, Rockstar.” Franny looked at her hands and smiled contentedly, running her thumb over the letters.

“L. T. T. L. I know all these letters. They’re different from Uncle Mickey’s. Mommy said his say ‘fuck.’”

Ian snorted. “Yeah, you get your own special letters Franny. They say ‘little red.’”

Franny beamed. “That’s what Uncle Mickey calls me!”

“You got it, kiddo.”

The rest of the afternoon involved many rounds of playing “liquor store robbery,” and Ian lifting up Franny to “help” behind the bar by pulling the lever of the beer tap— and by the early evening, when even fucking Kermit and Tommy had gone, Ian had the idea to make a fort out of the leftover empty inventory boxes, and Franny had repeatedly busted through the tower of boxes and shouted “Put your hands in the air!” as she pretended to blow up fictional liquor store walls.

Now it was late and they were all upstairs—Franny had crashed after dinnertime, after bouncing on the bed with a sugar high from the Poptarts Mickey had snuck her after dinner (to supplement some bullshit pasta thing that Ian had forced Mickey to feed her, even though he never remembered wanting to eat that shit when he was five— he practically lived on Honey Buns and pork rinds from the nearby gas station).

They still didn’t have furniture, and at one point they’d perched on the mattress so Mickey could show Franny videos of monster trucks on his phone— and now Franny was totally passed out against Mickey’s chest, breathing those raspy, loud breaths kids make when they’re deeply asleep.

Ian came in the room from the semi-divided wall of the kitchen, wiping his hands after finishing rinsing the dishes (two plates, and a bowl that Franny ate from because they’d only swiped two of everything from the Gallagher house last week); and Mickey saw Ian’s lips curve upward in a knowing smile as he noticed Franny curled in the bedsheets, half-leaning on Mickey’s chest. Franny and Mickey were smack in the middle of the mattress, taking up most of the room; but Ian crouched to sit on the edge of the mattress beside Mickey, hooking his chin on Mickey’s shoulder casually as he peered over at Franny, still wearing her oversized flannel and smudged knuckle tattoos.

“Guess our babysitting duties are over.” He breathed out, trying not to unsettle Franny’s steady breathing. “Hope we didn’t corrupt her too much.”

Mickey scoffed. “Debbie’s dating someone who’s more of a fuck-up than we’ll ever be. Don’t think the ball’s really in our court on that one.”

“Fair.”

Franny scrunched her nose in her sleep, sighing out heavily before nestling deeper into the bedsheets.

“I kinda missed her, man.”

Mickey was surprised by the words as he heard them coming out of his mouth— they were true, but he hadn’t even voiced them to himself until now. As shitty as he’d always been with kids, he had to admit that goofing around with Franny was pretty fucking fun.

Ian smiled from where his mouth was pressed against Mickey’s shoulder. “Yeah. Me too.”

There was a silence, the room filled with the soft sound of Franny’s steady breathing. And then:

“Maybe… we’ll have a kid of our own sometime.”

Immediately, Mickey felt his gut lurch. It wasn’t like they hadn’t talked about this shit—they definitely had, in the abstract moments before the wedding; before everything blew up in their face and the pandemic took hold and any thought of kids was pushed way, way to the sidelines. And it wasn’t like Mickey was avoiding the topic— but he wasn’t exactly bringing it up, either, and neither was Ian.

Mickey thought back to that moment before the wedding, back to the hushed “you want kids?” Ian had placed between them— and how in that moment Mickey had known how much Ian wanted kids, how much Ian constantly cared for other people, how his voice got all soft and mushy around the edges in the vicinity of a baby. He knew how much Ian wanted this— but even broaching the topic made Mickey’s muscles start to clench.

Mickey tried to keep his cool—even though he felt the tides starting to roll inside of him, threatening to pull him under.

“I’d be a shitty dad, man.”

Ian’s head pulled away from where it had been nestled against the crook of Mickey’s neck—and Mickey turned his head to meet Ian’s piercing gaze.

“No you wouldn’t.” Ian’s voice was soft, surprised.

Mickey swallowed. “What if I like. Beat it. Or—” he cut himself off, knowing his voice was starting to waver.

Ian’s voice was firm when he replied. “You won’t. You’re great with Franny.” Ian paused.” “You were great with Yev.”

And there it was—the other fucking elephant in the room, beside all of Mickey’s other daddy issues; the fact that Mickey already was a father, was forced to be a father against his own will, giving him some sort of complex that he didn’t even have the energy to dig into about the potential of scooping up some kid to raise with Ian…. when there was already one out there with his gene pool that he didn’t want, that he couldn’t want, whose existence was forced onto him at gunpoint and who he didn’t have the strength to take care of.

Mickey felt Ian’s hand, feather light, tracing down his side— pulling him out of the current of his internal monologue. Ian’s hand hooked around his hip; a touch to root him, giving Mickey solid ground to hold on to.

“Hey.”

“What.”

“You’re gonna be a great dad.”

Mickey swallowed down the lump in his throat—and with it he tried to swallow down whatever bullshit was holding him back from letting himself have this. He thought about Ian—despite all his own reservations, he knew Ian must be having the same type of feelings about all of this shit; Ian was the one who had stolen Yev, who had worked so hard to get himself to the person he was today—a stable place where he was allowed to dream about being a parent, allowed to dream about shit like this.

“I hate this.”

Mickey didn’t really know what he was referring to in particular as he said the words—he hated all of this, he hated the churning emotions inside him. He felt so fucking uncomfortable—but that was always the first thing he felt, wasn’t it, when there was something deeper inside? It was the first thing he’d felt when he started to fall for Ian, when he started to realize he much preferred scrawny redheads to the busty figures with long hair; the pushing and heaving of no no no from somewhere in his ribcage, because he knew how much letting himself have this was going to hurt, how much shit he was going to have to wade through.

But he’d fucking done it—and look where he was now: Ian curled against his back, their fucking niece sound asleep beside him.

“Hey.” Ian’s voice was soft, nearly tickling Mickey’s ears. “There’s no rush for any of this shit. I’m just talking about… big picture. Eventually. When we’ve got all our shit settled.”

There it was again—that word, the one Ian had been saying all the time lately, the one that had been radiating out of his pores. Settled.

Mickey clearing his throat, trying to dispel the huskiness he knew would be there when he spoke. “Yeah. Maybe someday.”

He looked down at his hands. He knew that saying that wasn’t enough— Ian had to know how much he meant it.

“I— I wanna give you that shit. Someday.”

Mickey knew that was still an inadequate expression of everything he was feeling, of how much he wished he could just race carefreely into making fucking forts and playing dress-up with a kid of their own; but he also knew that for tonight, Ian understood. He knew in the way Ian pressed a kiss to the corner of his jaw, and said into the silence of the room:

“You’re so fucking good at taking care of people, Mick.”

Mickey let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. They were going to do this—someday.

“You know… now that we’ve got our own place.” Ian’s voice trailed off.

Mickey raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Well— we could be good millennials and start with a dog. Y’know, as a practice run. Get your fucking Milkovich pit bulls or whatever.”

Mickey instantly felt whatever remaining tense energy that had been clinging to him dissipate. He felt a grin creep onto his face. “Hell yeah. I’m in.”

Ian pecked his shoulder. “Cool. We can check out shelters sometime next week.”

Mickey shook his head, still smiling in relief. “A pit bull, I can handle. We’re gonna treat her like a fucking princess. Who needs kids anyways?”

Ian smiled back. “The first step in starting our own Southside family.”

Mickey’s insides instantly got warm and gushy at the words— and again, it was that mix of no no no and you don’t deserve this alongside something deeper, something more solid. He tried to do what Ian always told him to do, in the moments that he felt like this: he forced a breath in, forced himself to expand his ribcage. He forced himself to think:

You deserve this.

The next day had been uneventful, other than Franny’s tearful goodbye— and now it was the early afternoon on Friday, far too early for any sort of rush. Once again only Tommy and fucking Kermit were seated at the bar, but today he and Ian were barely paying attention to them, despite Tommy’s halfhearted attempts to drag Mickey into some sort of bullshit banter (as much as Tommy said he preferred silence at the bar, everyone knew that was a lie. Why the fuck else would be have been coming here every day for the last eleven years?).

Today, Ian had dragged a chalkboard out from the clutter of the dingy back closet of the Alibi, a sandwich board meant to be placed on the curb to promote the bar that looked like it had hardly been used. Ian continued to shuffle through the various boxes in the back room, making a shit ton of noise, until he finally found whatever else he’d been looking for.

“Aha!”

He held up a bent cardboard box of multicolor sidewalk chalk— half empty, and half broken, but it would get the job done.

He strode over to the bar, laying the chalkboard on it— then turned to Mickey, folding his arms in front of him.

“Alright, bartender extraordinaire. What drinks should we make for 80s night?”

Mickey rolled his eyes, puffing out a breath. “I don’t fucking know. Most of the guys who come in on Fridays just drink beer. We don’t gotta overcomplicate shit.”

Ian pressed his lips together, contemplative and looking down at the blank canvas of the chalkboard. “I’m not saying we should force out the regulars, because that’s definitely not what we’re going for with the event— but it’d be nice to have a couple of new things, in case the new people in the neighborhood do some by. Nothing too fancy or frilly or whatever.”

Ian dug in the cardboard box, plucking out a piece of chalk.

“And we should make our own signature drinks anyways, since we’re taking over the place. Make our mark on the Alibi.” He grinned. “Got any fun drink name ideas?”

Mickey rolled his eyes again, and felt the corners of his lips turn upwards in an amused smile against his will, thawing. “I don’t fuckin’ know.”

Ian continued smiling. “How about… the Milkovich Mojito.”

Mickey puffed out a breath of air, shoving Ian in the chest and furrowing his brows. “No fucking way.”

Ian just waggled his eyebrows. “C’mon, we own the place. It’ll just be a mojito with a shit ton of rum, only enough for someone with Milkovich-level tolerance. People will think it’s funny.”

Mickey felt his eyebrows lift upwards a bit, and he could see from the expression on Ian’s face that he’d lost this one. “Fine.”

Ian smirked, penciling in “Milkovich Mojito” on the chalkboard and drawing a little design around it. Mickey forgot how good Ian was at this— at the little details like this, at making shit look nice.

Ian rose from where he was hunched over the chalkboard when his masterpiece was completed, hands on his hips. “Alright. What else?”

Mickey shrugged. “I don’t know. How about ‘just fucking beer’?”

Ian laughed, and a warm feeling pooled in Mickey’s stomach despite himself. “Yeah. We should spell that out on the menu, so people know that’s our standard.” He leaned to write “JUST FUCKING BEER” on the chalkboard, drawing a little cartoon beer stein with foam on the top next to it. Mickey reached out, smudging a bit of the chalk of the drawing to annoy Ian, just because he could.

Ian swatted his arm away. “Hey! No touching the masterpiece.” He drew over the part Mickey smudged as best he could, biting his lip in concentration. Fuckin’ dork.

Ian stood tall again, admiring the finished product. “There. One more?”

Mickey shrugged again, feeling utterly out of ideas. He could balance a budget, sure, but he was useless with all the creative shit like this.

Ian bit his lip again, thinking. “What’re even mixed drinks people like? Sex on the beach?”

Mickey smirked. “There ain’t a lot of beaches in Chicago, man.”

Ian rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I guess it’s more like ‘sex behind a dumpster.’ Or ‘sex on your twin bed at your family’s house.’”

Mickey grinned, catching Ian’s drift. “Sex in the dugouts.”

Ian laughed, then made a little gesture with his hands like inspiration had struck. “Mick, I think we have our final drink name.” He turned to write it on the chalkboard.

“What the fuck are we gonna put in it? Just a fuckin’ lukewarm beer?”

Ian smirked, looking off dreamily. “Ah, memories.”

Mickey prodded him in the sternum. “You’re a fucking sap.” He shoved Ian over. “Here, let me write this one.” He took the chalk from Ian’s hand. “No peeking.”

He scratched on the chalkboard for a moment, then stood back to reveal his work. “Ta-da.”

In scratchy handwriting, not unlike the “STAY THE FUCK OUT” sign that used to be taped to his door, read “SEX IN THE DUGOUTS”—and next to it was two drawings, of a cartoon dick and two stick figures fucking doggy-style.

Ian grinned wide. “It’s perfect. Definitely captures the vibe of the new owners.”

Mickey just smiled back.

It was 6 p.m. now, and the bar was just about ready—Ian had compulsively swept the floor during the lull in the afternoon, even though it would be dirtied and scuffed within seconds of the usual Friday blue-collar crowd streaming in through the doors, and Mickey was perched on a stool at the end of the bar, laboring over his playlist. He usually didn’t overthink this shit— he’d included all the classics, from Bon Jovi to Queen to fucking Cyndi Lauper, but there was something so public about he and Ian running this thing now, and about throwing a loud event to proclaim it, that make Mickey’s stomach start to do somersaults for some reason as the first huddled crowd of Southsiders shuffled their way in through the door.

The bar did look good— Ian had got some sort of lighting gels to put over the lamps in the Alibi, and the room’s lighting was tinted a suave blue color, making the small space feel a little hipper, a little cooler, while still retaining its comforting dingy feel. It almost reminded Mickey of the soft, colorful lighting in that random Westside bar they’d gotten engaged in, with the shitty overpriced beer and the sparkly fucking lights when they’d watched that god-awful harp band with Barry or whatever the fuck his name was— but the lighting here looked cooler, more deliberate, and cast a calculated glow across the room that added to the vibe. The bass was thrumming low through the speakers Ian had rented from somewhere— right now it was just playing some mellow Joy Division song as people continued streaming into the bar.

Ian had crept upstairs at some point, probably to change out of whatever sweaty t-shirt he’d been wearing all day; and Mickey saw a flash of red hair emerging from the stairway now, turning the corner to stride into the dark room.

“Hey! Oh my god, it’s great to see you guys!”

Immediately Ian was swept away by some group of people in their mid-twenties near the swinging door that led to the back of the bar, who were chattering away about how they’d seen the poster on Debbie’s Instagram or some shit. Mickey assumed they were some people Ian had known when he’d been locked up, one of the unfamiliar faces from their wedding that got involved with Ian’s “Gay Jesus” bullshit—and as much as Mickey knew Ian’s relationship with those figures from a very different time in his life was complicated to say the least, it was nice to see Ian leaning comfortably against the bar, chatting away with someone that wasn’t him or Lip— chatting with friends. Looking settled.

Mickey smirked, knowing his gaze was lingering for too long when Ian locked eyes with him from across the bar, tilting his head towards the stairway. Giving Mickey a chance to go upstairs, to freshen up, to take a deep breath if he wanted to.

Fuck it. Mickey strode across the bar, heading upstairs to the quiet sanctuary of the studio and its fresh-painted walls. He shuffled through the various shirts and baggy jeans that were now in their designated-clothes-pile in the corner of the room, at least until they got a dresser and hangers and all that shit. He decided to peel off his sweaty tank top and change into a blue Hawaiian-print shirt, the one he’d swiped from the laundry room at the yuppie fucking Westside apartment complex before he’d burned that bridge, to amp himself up and fit the vibe downstairs. The shirt was only a little bit creased from being shoved in a pile in the corner of the room, which felt like a bonus— and Mickey smoothed a hand through his hair and fixed the collar of the shirt as he caught his own eye in the cracked bathroom mirror. There weren’t lots of times Mickey really gave a shit about what he wore—he and Ian pretty much lived in tank tops and boxers at home, and tank tops and denim at the bar especially on hot fucking days like these ones— but he had to admit that it did feel pretty nice to put on a shirt with a collar, a shirt with bright colors and patterns on it that, fuck it, he knew made his eyes pop—just because he wanted to have fun, just because he could.

He ruffled his hair one last time, then clomped back down the back staircase towards the light chatter swirling in the room below. Immediately he noticed the line at the bar starting to grow, and walked with intention over to behind the bar to start taking orders from a mixed sea of regulars and younger, new faces.

“Looking pretty festive there, Mick.”

Mickey held up a middle finger to where Tommy was seated on his usual stool. “Fuck you. I look hot and you know it.”

“You definitely do.” Ian slid behind him, speaking low into Mickey’s ear and his hands gliding to bracket Mickey’s waist for a moment as he shuffled by to pass a beer to a customer, then walked to the end of the bar and start to take more orders without a glance back. Mickey felt his neck flush red, just for a second— Ian was always just saying shit like that, about how good Mickey was, whenever he looked nice. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.

After a few hours the party was fully humming, and both he and Ian could barely glance up from the bar because of how many people were streaming through and placing their orders. Courtesy of Debbie, a karaoke machine was up and running in the corner of the room, the speakers blasting a series of poppy instrumentals across the small space—and as much as Mickey hated to admit it, he had to say that this event bullshit was actually a pretty fucking good idea. There were a handful of new faces in the crowd, a bunch of fucking millennials with man-buns and Ray-Bans and brimmed hats; but most of the crowd was the typical neighborhood crew, blue-collar workers with beer guts who were dropping slightly more money than their usual tab on an extra beer, and walking sloshed to the corner of the room to serenade their buddies with “Livin’ on a Prayer” (which made Ian stare across the bar at Mickey with a knowing smile between pouring drink orders).

At some point in the evening Debbie rolled in with a group of people from some gay bar she’d been pregaming her evening at, and Carl came by with some of his cop buddies; and all in all, the place had all the makings of a good fucking party. Which meant they were making good cash—beyond the wads of bills left on the bartop as tips, all the millennial jokers filtering through the space were surprisingly biting on the overpriced cocktails Ian had concocted, and they were racking up a good profit as the night went on.

Maybe they could fucking run this place after all.

Right now, a very sloshed Debbie was singing on the karaoke machine in the corner, belting out the final verse of “I Will Always Love You” and practically eye-fucking her new Grand Theft Auto girlfriend— an image that Mickey was trying not to pay attention to at all costs as he scanned the room, trying to mentally calculate just how well they’d done for the night. There’d been a good crowd streaming in for hours— and now the numbers were finally dwindling, and at last he and Ian could finally slow their pace for a bit, instead of being pulled in a million goddamn directions to wipe up beer spills or clear tables or refill the ice cubes in the freezer.

“Heeeyyyyy everyone! Listen up!” Debbie’s muffled voice took over the fade of the final chords of the song, her mouth a little too close to the microphone and making it screech as she spoke out to the crowd in the bar. “I just wanna say a shoutout to Ian and Mickey for taking over the Alibi! And for being the heroes that kept this place alive!” She teetered slightly. “Southside forever!”

Mickey scowled, and locked eyes with an amused Ian across the bar. “Control your fucking sister, man.”

Ian shrugged. “Eh. She’s the one that helped plan half this shit. Let Debs have some fun.”

Debbie pointed a finger over to where Ian and Mickey were standing behind the bar. “Everyone give them a round of applause! C’mon, they deserve it! C’mon!”

There were a couple of chuckles from the crowd, at Debbie’s deeply inebriated state as she tried to put the microphone back in its stand and drag herself away from the small TV showing song lyrics— but then, one by one, people at the bar started to clap— regulars, random newcomers, and even Tommy gave a little whoop as the cheers grew louder and louder and started to erupt.

Mickey just rolled his eyes, but Ian straightened his spine and smiled as he addressed the crowd. “Couldn’t have done it without all of you guys!” He wiped his hands with a towel, and went back to wiping down the bar as the applause settled.

Just then, Debbie turned and fumbled to grab the microphone once more. “Wait! Ian, Mickey! Come up here and sing a song.”

If Mickey thought he was scowling the first time Debbie had stumbled her way into the mic, now he was on a whole different level. He flashed a glance to Ian, and saw the sappy grin starting to grow on his face, like it always did when Ian had some dumbass idea. Jesus Christ.

Mickey needed to pump the brakes on this one fast. “No fucking way, Gallagher.”

Ian stepped closer to Mickey, reaching a placating hand onto his elbow. “C’mon, Mick. It’ll be fun.” Ian raised his eyebrows— and his stupid fucking eyes were shining again, doing that fucking thing where Mickey could feel in his bones that Ian was so ridiculously happy that they got to do sappy, mundane shit like this together…

Mickey blew out a breath. “I gotta do a shot or some shit before we do this.”

Ian’s grin grew ten sizes as he dropped the towel hanging from his shoulder onto the bar and swiftly turned to pour Mickey a shot of Jameson. Mickey’s frown deepened as he lifted his head back to pour the liquid fire down the back of his throat, bracing himself for battle; of course his stupid fucking American-Idol-wannabe husband couldn’t resist a call to do goddamn karaoke. Mickey blamed himself—he should’ve known Ian anywhere in the 1-mile radius of a karaoke machine would inevitably be a recipe for disaster.

Ian strode past the length of the bar and toward the corner of the Alibi where the illuminated screen of the karaoke machine was sitting there waiting— Mickey trudged behind him, shooting a glance at where Tommy and Kermit were seated on their regular stools.

“You two are in charge of the bar for 2 fucking minutes. Don’t fuck this up.” Kermit raised his hands in surrender, and Tommy just raised an eyebrow.

Ian was already punching at the little arrows on the machine. “What song d’you wanna do?”

“I could give less than a fuck, man. This is your fucking idea.”

Ian just flashed him a grin as he scrolled through the preselected song options. “Here, let’s do this one.”

He handed Mickey a microphone, and reached over to grab the second mic from Debbie’s hand (who was now successfully being corralled back to a booth by Heidi).

Instantly, the techno intro rhythms to the song began—and Ian started bobbing his head, causing the onlookers at the bar to laugh and one person to whistle. Mickey just shoved his upper arm.

“I fucking hate you so much.”

Ian just raised his eyebrows, and in a very off-key voice, started to sing:

“You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar

When I met you

I picked you out, I shook up and turned you around

Turned you into someone new”

Mickey felt his heart thudding in his chest—and fuck that. He owned the fucking bar, he could fucking sing with his goddamn husband if he wanted to. Fuck whatever everyone else was thinking.

So when the first verse ended, and quickly streamed into the second, Mickey clutched the microphone and half-spoke, half-sang the illuminated words on the screen:

“Now five years later on you’ve got the world at your feet

Success has been so easy for you

But don’t forget it’s me who put you where you are now

And I can put you back down too”

Ian’s grin was splitting across his face— and once again Mickey had to reach out and prod him in the chest.

“Stop looking so fucking sappy!”

Ian just held the microphone in both of his hands, and playfully started to sing the chorus:

“Don't

Don't you want me?

You know I can't believe it

When I hear that you won't see me”

He looked over at Mickey, raising his eyebrows. “C’mon, Mick!”

Fuck it.

Mickey swallowed down whatever lingering… feelings were happening about all of this shit, and let the people watching them melt away, fading into the hazy blue lighting— because fuck all those assholes, anyways. He and Ian had been through way too much shit in the main room of the Alibi for Mickey to be afraid of doing fucking karaoke right now; he’d literally come out to his dad in these four walls. He’d had his face bashed in the moment he decided right here, rooted in this same spot on the scuffed hardwood floors, that he would do fucking anything to always be by Ian Gallagher’s side. So he squeezed his eyes shut, just for a second— and pretended it was just him and Ian, singing fucking Lady Gaga in their bathroom as they brushed their teeth (which, yes, they had been prone to do since Chromatica came out, fucking sue him)— and let himself actually sing, deep from his gut in the same goofy, lighthearted way that Ian was doing along with him:

“Don’t you want me baby?

Don’t you want me? Oh!

Don’t you want me baby?

Don’t you want me? Oh!”

Ian’s face was slightly flushed, still grinning from ear to ear, his eyes shining as he bobbed his head along with the music— and as they both finished singing the chorus, everyone in the bar started to lose their shit. Everyone was clapping and whistling; even some of the old regulars Mickey had pegged as homophobes a long time ago were cracking smiles through their scraggly beards and clapping their hands together.

When the song finally ended, Ian took a dramatic bow— then he took Mickey’s hand, clasping it and raising it over their heads. The applause and cheers erupted from the crowd, and someone yelled out:

“Let’s hear it for the new owners!”

After that, for the rest of the night Mickey loosened the fuck up— and maybe it was the couple of shots in his system, or maybe it was the fact that there weren’t that many people in the bar now at all except for a thin crowd of familiar faces— but he was feeling happy and warm as he milled through the crowd picking up empty glasses. At some point Debbie switched up the playlist to more dance-y stuff, causing her and Heidi to start spinning in the middle of the room, and a couple others to push the bar tables to the side and follow suit.

And now, people were dancing—and some random middle-aged neighborhood lady grabbed Mickey by the wrist, a smile on her face, to come dance with them—and usually Mickey would scowl and say “Fuck no” to dancing with some random fucking stranger in a situation like this, but he was feeling the blood rushing through his veins, feeling fucking settled—so for just this once, he decided to dance like a fucking goof in his Hawaiian shirt with the random lady for a while, til he locked eyes with where Ian was standing across the bar.

And maybe they were supposed to be paying attention, because they were still the ones running the fucking bar— but all Mickey wanted to do in that moment was walk across the room and press himself closer, closer, and reach his hand up to the side of Ian’s neck, and drag him to lean down to just the right height to press their lips together, to feel the warmth between them.

So that’s what he did, in the midst of the whirring of their neighbors and strangers in the Alibi around them.

We don’t have to run anymore.

#finally finished!!!#not rly proofread lol #yes it is almost 10k oops #i am actually rly proud of completing this chap i hope u enjoy #i love u all so so much i cannot get over how many amazing hcs i feel lucky to have included in this!#gallavich #gallavich fic #shameless #shameless fic #gallavich fanfiction #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich #lip gallagher #liam gallagher #ian and mickey #ian x mickey #ixm

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yourkimjaejin · 3 years

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Moxy with the NCT 127

The long awaited post for me!!!! Here is a closer look at Moxy’s relationships with the members of 127. Enjoy!!! ~ Author Izzy

Moxy x Taeil

Taeil was always nice Moxy. Treating her kindness and respect but never getting to close. Anytime he wanted to, it seemed like Johnny and Doyoung had everything under control

So Taeil decided to be her silent support. During her first two promotions with 127, Taeil would always keep a close eye on her. Eventually, he began to be able to tell when Moxy needed someone. And when she did he was there.

Taeil became her emotional support oppa. Whenever she needed quiet cuddle time, she went to him. Mainly because he never told anyone. The real reason: Haechan was right. Taeil is a perfect cuddle buddy.

As she got more comfortable with her position within 127, Moxy visited Taeil a little less but she knew that her oppa’s arms were open for her always

These two constantly trade edm songs with each other. When the rest of the members are out, they’ll blast music and have their own party in the dorms.

He knows Moxy doesn’t like chocolate so if he makes a dessert with chocolate in it, he’ll make a special one for her with white chocolate

Moxy x Johnny

Johnny is Moxy’s dad. No ifs, ands or buts. He is her father.

With Moxy having her own room, Johnny makes a habit out of coming in and checking on her. He also drags her out to get sunlight every couple of days.

Johnny: You will not sit here and become a vampire. Let’s go!

Moxy: But I’m allergic to sun..

When Johnny was doing NCT Night Night, Moxy came to watch in studio. Usually falling asleep to Johnny and Jaehyun’s voices

Whenever he buys her clothes, he refuses to buy her any black clothing. Claiming she need to expand her color palette

Johnny has a job a Moxy’s Bodyguard #1. He sits or stands one place down from her to keep an eye on her. In airports, she remains in his eyesight's at all times.

Moxy x Taeyong

For some time, Taeyong and Moxy didn’t have a relationship. She didn’t get to know him. He didn’t get to know her. In an effort to take care of the other (at the time) nine members, Moxy just flew under the radar.

After an interview gone wrong, Taeyong made the decision to pay more attention to the younger girl

Taeyong was impressed by her talent, all aspects of it. So he began to help with her rapping and dancing.

Taeyong was the first member to notice her non-eating habits. To rectify that, he started keeping small snacks he knew she liked with him

Taeyong loves to run his fingers thru her hair. During vlives, he’ll pull her in front of him and start twisting and tangling her hair

These two are always bouncing ideas off of each other. Moxy’s very in touch with her feelings she knows exactly what she needs to do to express those feelings in a song and that really helps Taeyong when he gets stuck with lyrics.

Moxy x Yuta

Yuta is the second member of the silent supporters. Yuta keeps Moxy safe using his body. If the group is walking thru a crown, Yuta keeps Moxy in his sights at all times. If they’re on a sidewalk, Yuta makes sure she walks on the inside even if she’s not walking with him

These two love to watch anime together. As of right now, they are in the midst of a Fairy Tail rewatch. Whenever they have time, they catch a couple episodes

He is the only person Moxy could do no wrong with. The only hyung who will let Moxy do what she wants. If Moxy sneaks out to get some fries, Yuta causes the distraction

Yuta always encourages Moxy to dress in more girly clothing. He knows how much she enjoys it but never feels confident enough to wear it. So he’s tries to help her overcome that

Moxy x Doyoung

(I love this gif!!)

If Johnny is the dad, Doyoung is the mom.

He looks after her all the time. Doyoung was always scolding both her and the other members for not really getting to know each other.

Doyoung helped her a lot to break out of her shell. He even accompanied her to practice her gymnastics in Korea for the first time

Doyoung found out about Moxy’s terrible eating habits in the worst way possible. From then on, he made it his personal mission to make sure she eats

During Doyoung and Moxy’s early time with NCT, Moxy would have a hard time sleeping so Doyoung left his door open to her. Most of the time, She ended up in his room before morning

Doyoung does not like for Moxy to show a lot of skin around other male idols outside of NCT. There are plenty of clips where Doyoung will cover Moxy’s legs and shoulders with the closest blanket or jacket

If Doyoung is having trouble with dance moves, he’ll pull her aside for help

Moxy x Jaehyun

Jaehyun is the third silent supporter Moxy has. Fans can catch him fixing her clothes, moving her hair into the correct place and softly catching her attention to check on her.

Moxy has a tendency to space out. During those moments, Jaehyun usually grabs her hand and rubs his thumb on the top of her hand in small circle until she snaps out of it

Jaehyun always guides her off stage. He’s a tensy bit scared of her walking in heels and possibly slipping and falling

Moxy likes singing with Jaehyun. Around the dorm, the two will start singing and (without talking) harmonizing

Moxy x Jungwoo

Jungwoo and Moxy were close from the get-go. Moxy helped Jungwoo find his place within 127 and he’s always thankful to her. The other members of 127 are just a bit jealous of how close the two became in such a short time

Moxy and Jungwoo flirt.....alot! There is literally no boundaries between them. When Moxy lived in the 127 dorm she would steal his clothes all the time.

When on stage, they might as well be attached at the hip. Fans will see them gravitating towards each other like magnets. At fansigns, Jungwoo will tell the fans to checkup on his girl two spaces down

Jungwoo is the only person who will ever see Moxy freak over other kpop groups. She would rather appear indifferent to everyone else. Jungwoo was only other member to figure out Moxy had a crush on Mark from Got7

Moxy x Mark

M squared didn’t have any sort of relationship until recently. For most of their shared career, they were just members in the same band.

Early on, K-fans made many comparisons between the two 99 liners. Both were from countries outside of Korea. Both were exceptional at rap, dance and singing. In most title tracks, you can bet Mark and Moxy are gonna have a rap verse where they go line for line

Many fans called Moxy a mixture of Taeyong and Mark. Those comments got to him. And because Mark didn’t talk to her, she didn’t talk to him. This all came to a head when SuperM was just starting.

Mark should have been happy. Happy to have his raps all to himself. But he found himself missing Moxy’s energy. Her hype affected him so much stage. It made go even harder with every word.

When Mark finally got back for Superhuman promotions, Mark finally started to make a effort to befriend Moxy. While the two are getting closer, Mark is still at the bottom of her relationships within 127

Moxy x Haechan

Different from Mark, Haechan and Moxy grew close fast. At first, he saw her like Haechan see’s Taeil. The quiet member who just the right person to break them out of their shell. And that he did

Haechan would always crash into her room like a hurricane, kick everyone out and steal Moxy for the rest of the day

They love learning old and new kpop dances together. These two are a walking random play dance challenge.

During the summer fight, Donghyuck would stow away in Moxy’s room. The hyungs wouldn’t hear any noise coming so they would check on them almost every thirty minutes just to make sure the two were ok.

Moxy is one of the only members who is privy to Donghyuck in a down mood. “You never have to front with me. You got me?”

Moxy and NCT Dream

Moxy is their noona and don’t you forget it.

Moxy adores Renjun’s energy. His aura never fails to make her feel safe and calm. Moxy and Renjun have little dates where they just sit in his room and watch YouTube theory videos

Jeno likes to workout with Moxy but she will only join if he’s going to a gym. Moxy refuses to ride bikes across half of Korea

Just like Johnny does with Moxy, she drags Jaemin out of his room for some outside time whenever its been awhile since they’ve seen the sun

Every third Thursday of the month, mochenji get together at chenle’s house and have a sleepover. Private time between the maknae’s and their favorite noona

Moxy and WayV

Hendery, Xiaojun and Yangyang love to tease Moxy about her bias on Ten. They flood her text message with pictures of him. They make little comments that make her blush in front of him.

Ten thinks its Moxy’s crush is adorable. He found out a while ago (I mean Moxy isn’t subtle.....). The only person Ten told was Kun. Ten loves to buy things for her just to see her eyes light up

You can’t put Moxy in the same room as Lucas cause she will literally pass out from laughing too much

Back in their trainee days, Kun would accompany Moxy to the train station to get home. One time, it was really late and Kun walked her all the way home. Kun became her grandmother favorite NCT member that day.

Winwin and Moxy found common ground in the tricking Winwin did (i.e. the front flip in fire truck) Winwin loved going to her gymnastics practice and practicing flips with her.

Moxy and NCT U

Shotaro is her shy Japanese child and if anything hurts him, Moxy would burn Korea to the ground.

Other SM trainees tried to scare him by warning him about Moxy’s “Bad Attitude”. Telling him that he would never get her help or advice. Shotaro not knowing any better steered clear.

One day, Moxy found him struggling with his Korean lessons and She immediately sat down with and helps him. Breaking everything down slowly. She even called Yuta to help because she only knew a tiny bit of Japanese. Ever since, Moxy has protected Shotaro.

Sungchan loves to flirt with his Noona but all he gets in return is a swat on the arm. Truly, Sungchan loves being around Moxy. She took the time to introduce him to the other members and let him cling to her while he was getting used to being thrown into such a well known group

Moxy loves to take care of Sungchan and Shotaro. She’ll buy them food and The members of 12 were shocked to see how easy it was for the new members to drag Moxy out of the house

#nct #nct 127 #nct dream #wayv #NCT AG #NCT AG.Moxy #NCT AG.Info #nct female member #nct female unit #nct female addition #kpop addition #kpop!au #kpop!oc #kpop!addition #kpop!fakegroup

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the-witch-and-her-husbands · 3 years

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The Wedding

‘Since it’s such a lovely afternoon, shall we walk to the wedding reception? Just you and me.’ Alan smiled warmly as he held out his hand to his beloved, his bride.

The vows had been said not ten minutes previous that had pronounced them as man and wife. Never had words been more heartfelt.

Marriage IS a sacred union between husband and wife and shall remain unbroken. It is the basis of a stable and loving relationship and is a joining of two hearts, bodies and souls, on these points both of them were in complete agreement.

They’d stood facing one another, hands joined together while they grinned like exited children, utterly delighted with themselves and the day. They’d made their solemn declarations, and agreed to be wedded spouses in the holy estate of matrimony: loving, comforting, honouring, obey, serving, and keeping only unto the other, as long as they both shall live.

He’d looked so handsome, so earnest as he’d gripped her hands in his to repeat the words of the heartfelt vow. It had taken her breath away, indeed, she’d almost felt faint. But he was there, holding onto her tightly, and she knew then that he would cherish her forever.

As well as using the traditional service and plighting their troth, they had added an extra postscript: ‘I vow to love you. And no matter what challenges might carry us apart, I vow I will always find a way back to you. I resolve that loving you will be my daily mission, always and forever.’

And then it had been time for the rings, an unbroken symbol of the everlasting love and commitment between man and wife, an outward sign of lifelong vows and promises.

Their hands had only shook a little as he carefully placed the ring on her finger. ‘I give you this ring as a symbol of our marriage and as a token of my love, trust and commitment. I promise to care for you above all others, to give you my love, friendship and support and to respect and cherish you throughout our lives together. With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’

She’d done the same to him, and thus they had bound themselves to one another before all others and for all time.

The Minister had smiled widely as he concluded the ceremony. ‘What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. With the power vested in me by God and the law of this country, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.’

Then Alan had kissed her, kissed her with all of the passion of a young bridegroom tasting the lips of his bride for the very first time.

Realising he was waiting for an answer, she shook herself inwardly, allowing her thoughts to come back to the present. After all, she didn’t wish to miss a minute of their special day. ‘Well…okay.’ Jilomena returned the smile as she held out her hand for him to take.

As he took her hand in his, he looked at her, really looked at her as if it was the first time he was seeing her beauty.

She was wearing a modest ivory gown of fine silk, with a scooped neckline and a tea-length hem that was slightly longer in the back. The gown was finely cut, skimming over her curves without clinging. Her hair was in a half updo, a sparkling silver tiara nestled into her strands. Her makeup had been modestly applied, a neutral palette that enhanced her features without looking like she was wearing much at all, except for a natural glow of happiness from within. Delicately manicured nails, in a light shade of pink known as Leading Lady that she’d been unable to resist - after all, she was to be his leading lady from that day forward - held a delicate bouquet of pink roses.

She thought he looked incredibly dashing. They’d chosen red, the colour of passion, as the main colour theme for the day, so his morning suit consisted of a red tie and handkerchief with white waistcoat, a black jacket with tails, and grey striped trousers. He was attired with a white boutinerre to complete the look.

He guided her to a nearby bridge, and then they began to walk across it. Hand in hand, still dressed in their attire from the ceremony. As they walked, he mused to himself that it was a shame that they’d have to go to the reception, that he couldn’t spend the afternoon strolling along holding the hand of the woman he loved, just the two of them.

After they’d crossed to the other side, he paused to look at her. It was obvious that it was a look of love an adoration, the way his eyes were shining as he took her in.

‘Alan…’ She was overcome with emotion in that moment. A trembling hand reached up to touch his face.

‘I love you, Jil.’ And with those simple words, he put his hands on her waist and bent his head to claim her lips in a kiss.

Her arms wound around his neck as she returned the kiss with every ounce of passion she could muster, heart overflowing with love for this man.

Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! It is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken…

With the words of the Sonnet that had been read during the ceremony replaying in her head, she realised that this really was the man she would love for the rest of her life, and beyond.

And with that thought, she smiled into the kiss.

#drabble #v:Dancing In the Dark

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rosecorcoranwrites · 3 years

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Klaus, El Dorado, and The Liar Revealed

Mediocrity vs. Cliches

Around this time last year, when we were young, innocent, and oblivious of the horrors of 2020, people in internet circles were loosing their minds over a movie called Klaus. You have probably never heard of it, but if you had, it would have been by stumbling across it on Netflix or from hearing a YouTube reviewer singing it's praises.

The main reason people loved it was that it was traditionally animated. In fact, it's director, Sergio Pablos, worked on several Disney Renaissance films, and it shows. The animation is gorgeous. The character designs are stylized and unique. What I found the most pleasing was the color palette, which I would describe as pastel watercolor. The film is set in the Far North, and the dour scenes feel cold and depressing while the heartfelt scenes look warm and cozy. The film was a visual delight.

The story? Eh, it was ok.

The reviewers I watched tended to focus on the beautiful return-to-form animation that we rarely see in the days of 3-D animated films while not noticing, or ignoring, that the story was kind of blah. It was a typical "rich-kid-layabout will get cutoff if he doesn't prove himself", with a heaping helping of "The Liar Revealed", which is one of the most annoying tropes in the history of narrative, but we'll get to that later. There's also a subplot that's basically the Hatfields and McCoys, and a randomly villainous matriarch who decides to keep being the villain because... conflict, I guess? Sure, there were a few original ideas—mostly involving Klaus's wife and the couple's struggle with having children—but overall nothing to write home about. The "feelsy" moments were unearned; I felt nothing.

Now, you'll notice that in the previous paragraph, I described many cliches, but I would not describe Klaus as cliche. I would describe it as mediocre. As I said, it was an ok story, but only ok. The problem was that it took its cliches and painted by numbers, which is why it could never rise above mediocrity. A film that knows how to play with cliches—not even necessarily subverting them, but just getting creative with them—can rise to greater heights.

Cliches as Genre: Road to El Dorado

Let's look at another gorgeously 2-D animated film: The Road to El Dorado. This film, too, is rife with cliches: Europeans being mistaken for gods by a non-western civilization, a witch doctor (basically), going native, the Leyenda Negra, and so on. It also features the cliche of two scoundrels going on what is basically a buddy-comedy adventure. The thing about many of these cliches is that they are part of the genre. That genre is as general as "Adventure fiction", where it's not unusual to encounter witch doctors and native tribes and such, and as precise as "Road to" comedies of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, which El Dorado is unarguably a pastiche of. Simply read the "running gags" section about these films on Wikipedia and you have a blueprint for El Dorado.

And that's the point. El Dorado follows a number of cliches because those are staples of its genre. Cliches, contrary to popular opinion, are not only not an automatic flaw in, but are often essential to, a work, especially when those cliches are what make a story a recognizable example of the genre in question.

El Dorado, however, plays with it's cliches. Most notably, it portrays the natives as normal human beings, which, lets be honest, a lot of old-timey adventure fiction didn't do. Miguel, one of the two main characters, sees the beauty of the culture he and Tulio, the other lead, find themselves in. The "white men mistaken for gods" trope is also played with in that the chief of the tribe figures out rather quickly (or possibly always knew) that Miguel and Tulio are just normal men like himself.

Thankfully, the film never strays into noble-savage territory, which lesser stories stumble into in their attempt to make up for the racism of the past. The natives have personalities, flaws, and vices. Chel, the female lead, is a floozy and a thief who happily joins the con that Miguel and Tulio are pulling, which she sees through immediately. Tzekel-Kan, a priest of a human-sacrifice-loving religion, is not only a zealot, but also a murderer, in that he sacrifices his own assistant to summon up a Jaguar spirit to hunt down the two false gods (yeah, that happens. Seriously, if you haven't seen this movie, you're missing out!). The characters, both white and POC, are fleshed out and three dimensional.

Finally, there is the story itself, and it's conclusion. Let's compare it to Klaus.

Conclusions

For those who never saw it, Klaus ends with a Liar Revealed scene where the scheme of the main character, Jesper, is revealed, and all his friends frown at him despite him obviously having changed by that point. Then a chase scene happens so Jesper can prove he's really changed, then a reveal that there was no good reason for the chase scene to have happened, then the main character is forgiven for his honestly-not-that-bad previous lies.

The whole story boils down to rich-kid learns a lesson and opens his heart, giving up his richness for the true treasure of generosity. Unfortunately, a lot of that was derailed by the weird Hatfields-McCoys subplot, which felt cartoonish next to the heartfelt-ness the rest of the film was trying (and maybe failing...) to achieve. It felt forced, in that the film needed that subplot so the chase could happen, and they only needed that so the Liar Revealed could make up for his Revealed Lies. Bleh.

El Dorado was more organic. Miguel and Tulio, by the last third of the film, have grudgingly decided to go their separate ways, with Miguel deciding to stay in El Dorado (the city), which he has fallen in love with, and Tulio and Chel going off with a shipful of gold that they presumably sail back to Spain ("And buy Spain!"). These are not happy conclusions, as it means a break in their inseparable friendship.

But then, Cortez, the Big Bad, shows up! Note, unlike the Hatfield-McCoys in Klaus, he is introduced in the beginning of the film as an actual threat, and has an understandable goal: conquest and gold. Miguel and Tulio, knowing this, decide he has to be stopped. That's when Tulio—the objectively more greedy, in-it-for-himself, not-gone-native of the pair—realizes that the only way to save the city is to crash his boat into the columns at the city entrance. It's a good plan, but will mean that he has to sacrifice what he wants: gold. But he makes the sacrifice, because he has become more that just a guy lying about being a god for money.

But then the boat isn't going to make it fast enough because the sail is stuck! It's gonna crash, and not in the way they wanted! Miguel, who had fallen in love with El Dorado and was willing to part ways with his friend and treasure to stay there, as to ride out on his horse and jump onto the mast to unfurl the sail. He knows the ship will then whoosh towards the columns and the only entrance to his beloved city with be destroyed, stopping Cortez, but also blocking him from the city forever. But he makes the sacrifice, because he cares enough about the people in El Dorado to let them go, and enough about his friend to not let him smack into the columns and die.

The Liar Revealed: Why It's Bad

Those were the conclusions to each movie, but not the conclusion to this blog. We still haven't discussed why the liar revealed is so lame, and how to fix it.

First, what is it? Basically, Main Character lies about something—his motives, his identity, etc.—for a large chunk of the story, then somewhere around the third act, his lie is revealed! Usually, this means that all the other characters turn their back on him, literally and figuratively, because they can't imagine how he could do something so terrible. Then, he does something to prove his mettle and his heart, and then everyone forgives him.

And I hate it. I hate it for three particular reasons.

First, it is just a different version of the thing that happens in romcoms where the main couple should declare their love for each other, but because the writer wouldn't know what to do at that point, they introduce a stupid misunderstanding that could be cleared up in two seconds if the leads talked like grown-ups. The Liar Revealed is that stupid, tired trope, but for kids.

Second, the lie is sometimes understandable, or not even that bad. In Klaus, Jesper claimed to be trying to spread hope and good cheer by sending kids presents, but in reality, he was trying to rack up the number of packages/letters he sent to prove to his dad he wasn't a useless layabout. How... despicable? Is it though? And can't he do both? He literally did, and he could have said so, except that the movie pulled a romcom and he got seperated from his friends before being able to explain that it started out mercenary and then quickly grew into the real deal. Even if it hadn't, though, like... is wanting to prove that your not a gutless layabout a bad thing? I don't get it.

Third is when the lie might be bad, but it's too late to care. In A Bug's Life, the colony learns that the so called warriors that Flik brought them are actually circus performers, so they have a reason to be miffed. Then again, they learn this on the eave of the day the grasshoppers will come to murder them all, and as Flik says, his bird doohickey will work. Not only does the colony have no reason to doubt this, they have no better options. Get all frowny and turn your backs on him after you lose the battle tomorrow, cause you have no time for such romcom drama tonight.

The Liar Revealed: When It's Good

Now, just because the Liar Revealed is awful doesn't mean that we can't keep having liars who eventually prove that they've changed in our fiction. But we don't have to follow the same tired trope.

For example, Over the Hedge has the Liar of RJ the Raccoon be Revealed, but saves the fallout between him and the other animals for a later action sequence, with hilarious results. Watch Schaffrillas Productions's video “Why Over the Hedge is Surprisingly Good” for a more detailed explanation of how this trope is dealt with in this film.

Or we have Tangled, where Eugene, by rights, should follow the Liar Revealed trajectory. He starts off scruffy and selfish, then slowly falls for Rapunzel and her good and pure outlook on life. He goes to give the Stabbington brothers the swiped crown that he no longer desires, but gets conked on the head by Gothel, who tells Rapunzel that he left with it cause he was just using her. We have a misunderstanding; we have a Rapunzel sadly walking away from the "liar"; we have the trappings of the last act of a romcom. But then, the real liar is revealed: Mother Gothel! And as soon as Rapunzel knows this, she never doubts Eugene, because that would be boring and nonsensical.

Finally, we have Road to El Dorado, with two liars, Miguel and Tulio, who are pretending to be gods to get wealth and adventure. They change over the course of the film to care about something more. They prove this change in a climactic scene We have all of the Liar Revealed, except for the reveal. There is no scene where everyone in the city frown and turns their backs, because that's not needed. The story isn't about the characters earning the forgiveness of the community like in Klaus, or proving themselves like in A Bug's Life. It's about two dudes who are scoundrelly friends going on an adventure, becoming a little less scoundrelly, and remaining friends. In the end, they both gave up what they wanted, but that's ok, because they have each other. Is it cliche? You bet! But that's way better than being mediocre.

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starlightkun · 4 years

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featherbrain ; ayakashi ❧ jeno [one]

❧ word count: 13.4k

❧ warnings: some violence, cursing

❧ extra info: heavily based off yet another otome game, ayakashi: romance reborn ; bc of this, all the lore used in here is inspired by/based on/taken from the lore of the game, not the actual lore of traditional ayakashi/yokai stories

❧ DISCLAIMER: some aspects of plot and character traits are directly lifted from the otome game ayakashi: romance reborn and utilized in the character equivalents in this story; the base lore, plot, and characters were heavily inspired by the game, but it has all been transformed into my own story. there are no spoilers for the game by reading this series

⤷ prologue* ⤷ next

*you need to read the prologue before reading any of the individual routes

The following week passed without incident, just your normal schedule. The only real change that had happened was that you and Taeyong visited Lenticular Café every day, helping with the clean-up efforts. Some things had to be done by contractors—such as fixing the pipes and flooring Sicheng had burst to restrain Jeno and create the wall of water—but you two helped with whatever you could. Jeno had come by as well to help with the heavy pieces of junk removal, and Sicheng and Yuta dropped by a couple times each as well when they were able to.

This time when you and Taeyong pushed open the brand-new door to Lenticular Café, a smiling Johnny greeted you, beckoning you over to where he was sitting on the floor, papers and binders spread out around him. Not a single table had been spared that night.

You plopped yourself down beside him, Taeyong on your other side. Some of the pages were color palettes, others were stock pictures of tables, chairs, and upholstery.

“I need some interior design help, little lady,” Johnny gestured to the pages.

“You’re not just going to get the same stuff you had before?” You asked, picking up a couple of the color palette pages, eyes hungrily scanning them.

“We’ve been needing a change around here, and what better time than now?” He said, looking at you fondly. “Not to mention that I don’t think I’ve seen you look this excited for anything in the time I’ve known you. That’s reason enough for me.”

He was right about that. You couldn’t fight the eager grin taking over your face, or your eyes lighting up as they greedily took in all the options laid out before you.

It was finally the weekend again, about two weeks after the Wraith attack. You were planning on spending your entire Saturday at Lenticular Café, starting at five in the morning; some of the new furniture was set to arrive that afternoon, and Johnny wanted to finish up the last of the painting work before then. He had also promised breakfast and lunch to whoever came by to help out. That offer would definitely attract most of your little group.

Bagels and various spreads were the promised breakfast, and when you and Taeyong arrived, others were already there, munching on their own food. You let Johnny and Yuta give you hugs before you grabbed your own bagel, settling into the friendly conversation floating around everyone.

Renjun told you all the unfortunate series of events that was his and Johnny’s morning—they lived together in the space above the café—which included Johnny literally falling out of bed, Renjun slipping in the shower, and the both of them forgetting payment for the bagels, making Renjun run all the way back home for his wallet. Which was a mile away from the bagel shop. He’d just finished relaying that to everybody when the door opened again, and your entire group turned to look at the newcomer.

“Who would’ve thought that featherbrain would be up this early?” Taeyong called out at Jeno.

Except Jeno wasn’t alone. Entering right behind him was Jaemin. Normally, you’d be ecstatic to see your best friend, especially since you hadn’t seen him off-campus in the past two weeks. But this meant that there could be no Ayakashi talk today, no casual existence or mention of all the Ayakashi in the room, and nobody could use their powers to help out.

The usual plan was for Jeno to use his powers to do any heavy lifting, Sicheng helped to wash the floors, Yuta would heal up any injuries sustained—usually from improper use of tools or just general stupidity.

The blinds were always shut, allowing everyone to relax into something between their human form and their true form: Jeno’s wings were usually out, Renjun and Sicheng’s eyes were their true colors, Taeyong’s ears came out. If Johnny happened to bring out some beer later in the day, some of his tattoos would appear, and Yuta’s ears and tails would be visible as well. One time, vodka had been brought out, and they’d somehow convinced Sicheng to take a couple shots, making a patch of iridescent ocean blue scales surface on his cheek.

None of that could happen today.

Jaemin’s eyes scanned the menagerie in front of him until they landed on you. Immediately, he made a beeline for you, wrapping his arms around you tightly. With a half-eaten bagel in your hand, you stumbled back a couple steps from Taeyong and Yuta, your friend’s hug a bit more powerful than usual today.

“Hey, NaNa,” you patted his back, looking over his shoulder at Sicheng and Renjun pointedly.

Immediately, they blinked, and their eyes returned to their natural colors. Thankfully, they were the only ones not entirely in their human form. If anybody else had been out of it, those changes would’ve been a lot more noticeable.

Jaemin let go of you and wedged himself between you and Taeyong, much to the Nekomata’s displeasure. You had to shoot Taeyong a warning look to behave over this apparent slight to him before you looked to Jeno in bewilderment. Why the hell did he bring Jaemin today?

Your human friend was looking at the group with bright eyes and a wide smile, “Hi!”

The group was quiet, half staring at Jaemin and the other half glaring at Jeno. Jaemin was unfazed, explaining his presence, “When I saw that Jeno was getting up so early today, I had to ask what he was doing. He told me about how the café had been ruined in a burglary, and I insisted on coming and helping out too!”

So that was the story Jeno had crafted, and now all of you had to follow along with. Great. You couldn’t stand lying to your best friend. The last time you’d lied to Jaemin was when you had taken his heart-shaped pencil topper in sixth grade and said that you didn’t. When he found it in your pencil case the next day, you broke down crying. Admittedly, you weren’t eleven anymore, but you still didn’t like lying to Jaemin any more than you did back then.

And of course Jaemin would offer to help, he was a genuinely nice and helpful person. Sometimes annoyingly so.

“Thank you, Jaemin,” Johnny broke the group’s silence, beaming at your friend, then gesturing to the food. “Bagel?”

“Sure, thanks!”

Thankfully, he didn’t seem like he was going to address Taeyong calling Jeno ‘featherbrain’ when they walked in. Or he hadn’t heard. Either way, one less thing to lie to Jaemin about.

And so, with great reluctance and resentment, your group finished up breakfast and got to work.

Most of the painting left was in the office and the kitchens, the two rooms that had been the most well-preserved. You took to Johnny’s office with your can of plum purple paint and roller. Jaemin wasn’t far behind you, watching nervously as you stood on a ladder to reach the top of the walls.

“You’ve been hanging around Jeno a lot lately,” Jaemin declared, and when you looked down at him, his arms were crossed, and the smallest hint of a pout was on his lips.

“Is my NaNa jealous?” You cooed at him teasingly, hoping you could dissuade him from looking for an actual reason.

“Just wondering what’s going on with you two.”

“Nothing, Jaemin.”

“Did something happen in the café while I was gone? Did you get hurt? Like… trauma bonding or something?”

At the clear emotional distress in your friend’s voice, you put your painting supplies down on the tray attached to the ladder and climbed down to address him eye-to-eye, fighting your inner discomfort at lying to him, “No, bub, nothing like that. When he took me home, we were able to chat and… we started getting along.”

“Okay, cool!” his face immediately lit back up and you pulled you into a tight hug. You were just happy to have avoided disaster. “I love my friends being friends. Oh, all three of us can hang out now!”

“Oh, yay.”

The truck delivering some of the furniture pulled up in the back alley right after the group returned from the lunch Johnny had treated you all to. You could see everyone’s disgruntlement at having to physically lift them all by hand rather than letting Jeno take care of it magically. It was the booth seats and tables as well as a couple large central tables today, with the delivery man informing you all that the smaller ones and the chairs would arrive tomorrow.

After everything had all been unloaded haphazardly in the alleyway and the man drove away, you held open the brand-new back door wide for the guys to start carrying the furniture in. It was a long process maneuvering all the tables and people through the hallway to the front of the restaurant. You assisted in directing them as to where everything was supposed to go, according to your own floorplan you’d drawn up while determining all the interior decorating pieces.

Johnny, Yuta, Sicheng, and Jaemin had just set down a table together when the Domeki let out a distinct grunt.

“Are you okay, Johnny?” You asked him, noticing that he was holding his back.

“Guess the old man really did throw out his back. Just not how Renjun predicted it,” Yuta snickered.

“I’m not much older than you, Yuta,” Johnny warned, wincing a bit.

“Take a break, Johnny,” you grabbed his arm insistently. “I think Renjun would kill you if you got injured and he had to run the whole place himself.”

“Alright, alright,” he relented, letting you guide him over to the only seating available in the café, a stool that had previously resided in the kitchen.

You helped him shrug his jacket off, feeling a strange lump in the front pocket. Curiously, you pulled the object out. It was a small leather pouch, no bigger than your finger. A crimson string was tied tightly around it, and something was inside.

“Johnny, what's this?” You questioned, holding it in the palm of your hand so he could see.

Your friend looked around the café for a moment. All the other guys had gone back into the alley to get ready to bring in the largest table, leaving just the two of you at the front of the café, right around where Renjun’s host stand would be.

At the lack of people, he seemed satisfied enough to say, “That is—was the protective charm I had over the café.”

“Was?”

“All the power's gone from it.”

“Why don’t you make another one?”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t make this one. An old Onmyoji friend of mine did. Now it’s nothing more than a keepsake,” he admitted, plucking it from your hand and tucking it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” you apologized, although you weren’t quite sure for what. For taking something from his jacket without asking? For it not working anymore? For accidentally bringing up the Onmyoji friend that had caused Johnny’s face to cloud with such sadness?

Johnny waved away your worries, “It’s alright, little lady. I like that you’re curious.”

“When I get my powers, I’ll make you another one.”

“Thanks,” he smiled softly.

You’d barely returned the gesture when you heard a sudden thud and yells coming from the hallway. Dashing over to where the other six men were, you heard them all groaning and cursing. You frantically did a cursory look to see if any of them were injured before you saw what they were hollering about. There was a hole in the wall. The wall you’d just painted the day before.

Before you could even question what’d happened, Yuta was going off, “What the fuck, Jeno? How the hell did you manage to fall asleep carrying a fucking table? Now there’s a giant hole in the damn wall, too!”

Jeno’s eyes were half-lidded behind his glasses, and he did seem tired, more-so than usual. He was completely unaffected by Yuta’s heated words, slumping back against the wall. Everyone’s faces were pink from the effort of carrying the huge table, especially the Tengu’s.

“Here, I’ll help,” you offered, nudging Jeno out of the way. “Go get a glass of water or something, Jeno. Okay?”

He didn’t reply in the slightest, simply shuffling out of the hallway. Hooking your fingers under the tabletop, you lifted when Sicheng had yelled out the order, cautiously carrying the heavy table with the others. After setting it down in the center of the café, you double-checked your layout for the last couple tables that needed to be brought in.

While Jaemin, Renjun, Sicheng, and Yuta went to get them, you turned your focus back on Jeno. He had plopped himself down on the floor by the door, leaning back against the wall with the bill of his baseball cap hung low over his eyes.

You squatted down in front of him, “Are you okay, Jeno?”

He brought his chin up to look at you with a scowl, “Fine. Just tired.”

You weren’t going to let his unpleasant disposition dissuade you this time, “Yuta said you fell asleep carrying a table. That doesn’t sound fine.”

The Tengu seemed about ready to snap back when his eyes fluttered shut and his head lolled to the side.

“Jeno? Jeno?” You called his name out, gently shaking his shoulder as your heart rate rose anxiously.

“Let him sleep, Y/N,” Johnny’s voice was above you, hand ruffling your hair.

You looked up at your other friend with some concern. Johnny answered your wordless question, “He’s fine. Like he said, he’s really tired. Probably from all the lifting we made him do yesterday. Our powers are physically draining as well, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”

“Okay,” you accepted the Domeki’s reasoning, standing back up and stepping away from Jeno.

Once the last two tables were in, the entire group—save for the still napping Jeno—let out a unanimous groan of relief. It was early afternoon, and one-by-one everyone started dismissing themselves.

“I’ll be heading out, bye guys!” Yuta gave everyone a cheery wave.

Sicheng was next, “I’ve got a couple projects to do. Need anything else from me, Johnny?”

“Nope, you’re good to go, thanks,” Johnny sent him off with a wave as well.

“I’m going to run some errands,” Renjun announced as well.

“Did you see my additions to the grocery list?”

“Unfortunately.”

Jaemin approached the figure of Jeno slumped against the front wall, “I’m going to take him back to the apartment.”

“Do you want some help?” You offered, to which he snorted.

“It’s not like I’m going to carry him; he’s going to walk on his own two legs.”

With that, he started shaking Jeno’s shoulders, calling out to him, “Hey! Jeno! Lee Jeno! Wake up, we’re going home! Dude! Come on! Wake up!”

Jeno grumbled, squinting at his roommate in dissatisfaction before closing his eyes again.

“Oh no you don’t!” Jaemin took hold of Jeno’s arm and started pulling him up insistently.

Finally, the man gave in, yanking his limb away from his roommate and standing up by himself. Jaemin still reattached himself to his friend, taking his arm in a much gentler grasp this time.

“You coming, Y/N? We can do something after dropping Jeno off,” Jaemin asked.

Knowing that you still had Taeyong to worry about, you shook your head, “Wish I could, but I’ve got a whole to-do list in my apartment today.”

“Alrighty, just let me know if you want help with any of it.”

“I will, thanks.”

He gave the remaining three of you a cheerful wave, “Bye guys!”

“So what are you going to be doing now, Johnny?” You questioned the café owner.

“Fixing up the wall,” he gestured to the hole. “And then taking a nap.”

“How’s your back feel?”

“Like nothing ever happened.”

You were happy to hear that, “Good. We’re going to head out, have a good nap!”

“Thanks for your help, little lady. You too, Taeyong.”

After you and Taeyong had given him your goodbyes, you left the café together, your destination being your apartment.

You were back at Lenticular Café again, this time for the second shipment of furniture. Johnny had just gotten the call that it was on its way, and you were relaxing in a booth with Taeyong and Renjun. Not everybody could make it today, but you didn’t mind, it was primarily just chairs.

“They’ll be here in about ten minutes,” Johnny informed everyone after hanging up the phone.

“It’s all really coming together,” you commented, looking around the restaurant to appreciate it. Not much in the way of décor had been done, but even just the colors of the walls and upholstery of the booths brought a pleased smile to your face.

“With a big thanks to you, little lady.”

Hearing the familiar click of the door handle opening, you turned to see who was arriving. Jeno was walking in, already glowering at you, “Jaemin told me how happy he is that you and I are friends now?”

“Well hello to you too, Jeno,” you scoffed, crossing your arms. “I know, you hate people thinking you’re my friend. But he was asking why we were hanging out so much, and I couldn’t exactly tell him we were doing secret Ayakashi stuff.”

“You told him we were hanging out?”

“No! You didn’t?”

“Of course not!”

Both of you paused, still glaring at the other.

“Is your Snap Map on?”

He didn’t answer.

“Lee Jeno,” you took a deep breath not to absolutely seethe at him. “Do you have your fucking Snap Map location on?”

“Yes,” he mumbled.

“That’s why! If you don’t want him to know when we're together anymore, turn it off.”

“He’d only know if you had yours on too!”

“If we both turn them off, that’d be suspicious.”

Jeno grumbled something you couldn’t distinguish as he pulled his phone out, tapping it a few times before turning it back off.

“He probably thought you two were fucking,” Renjun announced dryly.

“Oh my God,” you groaned, leaning your elbows forward on the table and rubbing your face in frustration. “This is the worst thing to happen since this Ayakashi shit started.”

“This is the worst thing?” Johnny asked you incredulously. “Not being attacked by Wraiths multiple times?”

“Your priorities are way off,” the Satori snorted with a shake of his head.

“Well, today should go a lot faster with you here, Jeno,” the Domeki said cheerfully.

The Tengu mumbled something unintelligible as he flopped down at another booth, “Wake me up when we’re doing shit.”

“I’ve never met anybody nearly that sleepy,” you shook your head. “Is it a Tengu thing?”

Renjun shook his head, “No, I think it’s just him. But I’ve only met a couple Tengus before.”

The both of you looked at Johnny, hoping for an explanation from him. He rubbed at the back of his neck, “Ah, yeah, just a Jeno thing.”

Impatiently drumming your fingers along the table, you were intensely lost in your head. Tonight was the first night of ‘patrols’ that Sicheng had recommended you all do. The idea was for you all to split up into pairs or threes and take a route through the city, making sure that the Wraiths were behaving and nothing suspicious was happening.

“Shouldn’t the instrument brothers be helping out?” Renjun asked with a scowl and crossed arms.

“I didn’t ask them,” Johnny shook his head at his coarse employee.

“Why not? They’re old and super powerful, right?”

“Jungwoo hasn’t left the shrine in a long time.”

“So?”

Yuta interrupted them, “We’ll be just fine with the seven of us.”

Renjun huffed, having nothing else to say, apparently.

“What’s on your mind, little lady?” Johnny questioned, leaning over the booth table to muss up your hair.

“Oh, nothing specific,” you intentionally tried to lighten your voice as you fixed your hair. “Just thinking, you know?”

“You shouldn’t be nervous,” Sicheng tried to encourage you. “Speaking of, since Y/N doesn’t have her powers yet, I was thinking that she should be in one of the groups of three, or at least paired up with Jeno or I. Make sure she has someone powerful with her.”

“She can go with pretty kitty and I,” Yuta offered.

Taeyong retorted, “No way—”

“I’ll go with Jeno,” you announced, breaking through your friends’ bickering.

The Tengu wasn’t there yet, he was the last one you all were waiting for. So he couldn’t say no.

“Okay,” the Mizuchi dragon nodded to this, right as the front door opened.

Jeno strode over to your group, baseball cap and glasses discarded for tonight.

Sicheng nodded to him, bringing out a printed-up map of the surrounding areas of the city, “Alright, now that everybody’s here, let’s go over partners and routes.”

While you had been able to choose your partner, it seemed like Sicheng was setting the others up. Him and Johnny were together, with poor Renjun being stuck between Yuta and Taeyong. Hopefully they’d bicker less without you around.

Everybody split up outside Lenticular Café, routes plugged into your phones. You kept a wary eye on the receding figures of Taeyong, Yuta, and Renjun for as long as you could before returning your focus to your own patrolling with Jeno.

It had rained earlier that day, small puddles splashing underfoot as you walked along with Jeno. As soon as you had turned a corner and were out of earshot of the others, you blurted out something that had been on your mind, “Yuta thought you would’ve killed me that night in the café, if I had tried to help Renjun.”

“He’s right,” Jeno answered without hesitation.

That definitely shut you up. You expected denial, ridicule for believing such a thing, really anything but that. Your chest was tight as you realized that you had just volunteered to be alone with a man who had essentially just told you he had no problem killing you.

The two of you were silent as you continued on your route. You were mostly unsure of what you should exactly be looking for. If the Wraiths were in their human forms, there was no way that you’d be able to tell. So you only had Jeno to rely on for sensing them. And at that moment, you didn’t have a whole lot of trust in him.

Jeno suddenly thrust an arm out in front of you, halting your steps. He looked around warily, eyes landing on a dark alley across the street from you all. Of course the scary evil Wraiths had to be in the dark scary alley. The street was empty, your route having taken you into a rather deserted area of town.

Looking both ways, Jeno sprinted across the empty street, and you quietly followed behind him. As you got closer to the alley, you could hear voices drifting out.

“Yeah, so we’ve gotta—” The man suddenly stopped, pausing before his oddly familiar voice became sinister, “Wait, you feel that?”

“Yes,” another voice agreed, and you swore you’d heard that one before somewhere. “Ayakashi and… something else. What is that? Not a human.”

Their voices were getting closer, your anxiety flaring up. Jeno looked over his shoulder at you, taking a small step back from the alley. Following his lead, you backed up as well, both your pairs of eyes focused on where the two Wraiths were.

“Do you think it’s her? The one he’s been having us keep an eye on?” The second Wraith questioned.

“Maybe. But you know our orders.”

“Do I?”

Well that didn’t sound good. And Jeno seemed to have the same feeling as you, glancing back over his shoulder to you.

“Go!” He hissed as quiet as possible, barely audible to you.

You couldn’t really argue in that moment, remembering what Renjun had said in the café. Without your powers, you were just going to get in the way. But you still felt uneasy about leaving Jeno behind. And yet your feet had made up their mind, slapping against the ground as you fled the scene.

“Hey, looks like we were right!” One of the Wraiths announced with delight, voice much too clear to still be in the alley. The sounds of your feet pounding on the pavement must have drawn their attention.

“Ooh, it’s the Tengu,” the other said with fake amazement.

Ducking behind a corner, you peered back for a moment. Jeno’s wings were out, blocking your view of the Wraiths. Inky black feathers rippled as he stood his ground, facing off with them, but not making a move to attack yet. Hopefully this would end peacefully, that they’d leave him alone. Sicheng had emphasized that you weren’t to instigate or start a fight with them. Only defend yourselves.

“What’d you do with your friend, Tengu?”

“I’m alone,” Jeno replied calmly.

“Then who did we hear running away?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

The other sneered at him this time, “Do you think we’re stupid?”

Jeno didn’t respond, still coolly staring down the Wraiths.

“Don’t think we’ve forgotten about the café, Tengu.”

That’s where you’d head their voices before. They were the belligerent customers-turned-Wraiths that Jeno had thrown a table at in the café. And you had a sinking feeling that they weren’t going to let bygones be bygones.

“We’re not supposed to touch your friend, but you, Tengu, are fair game.”

The first Wraith had barely spit that out when you heard a flap of wings. Looking up, you saw Jeno hovering above the two black clouds of fog that were the Wraiths. They lunged up towards him, but he smoothly avoided them. The Wraiths made another dash at him, which he elegantly did an aerial spin away from. Despite his constantly sleepy disposition, Jeno seemed fully aware of what was going on around him right then as he turned and twirled out of their reach.

“That’s it?” Jeno said as he hovered, hand covering his mouth as he yawned.

As his eyes squeezed shut with his yawn, your blood ran cold as you saw one of the Wraiths moving behind him. You begged your body to do something, anything to warn him. Just as his name was forming on your lips—a cry of warning—the Wraiths both descended on him.

Jeno tumbled down to the ground, clearly caught off-guard in that moment. One of the Wraiths had somehow acquired a random wooden pallet that had been discarded in the alleyway, and sent it flying at Jeno. He sent it in the direction of the other Wraith with a rather disinterested flick of his wrist. The Wraith dodged it.

As you watched on, you felt yourself entranced by their red orbs once again. Hauntingly familiar to you. And not just because you’ve encountered Wraiths twice now. This familiarity echoed deep within you, sending a shiver up your spine. Even though you knew their focus was on Jeno, you still felt like they were staring directly at you, watching you.

Jeno ducked out of the way of a trashcan projectile, drawing the fight back out of the alley and onto the visible sidewalk. A mailbox was suddenly ripped from the ground and became mobile, sailing right at one of the Wraiths. It struck the Wraith but didn’t dissipate it like before. Instead, it seemed more enraged.

The Tengu took another step back from the Wraiths, foot stepping down from the sidewalk and onto the street. With horror, you heard the sound of a car engine motoring down a nearby road, and prayed that it wasn’t moving your way.

But it was, the shape barely visible without its headlights on. There were no streetlights either, the only light provided by the moon, which was barely a sliver in the sky.

Then you were running, running for Jeno as the car barreled right for him.

“Car!” You yelled out to him through burning lungs.

His focus snapped from the Wraiths to you instead, confusion on his features. He either hadn’t understood what you said, or why you had said it. Either way, he was about the get ran over by a not-very-small truck.

You were still yelling at him as you sprinted, “Car! Car! Get out of the damn street! Car!”

Jeno seemed to finally understand what you had said, only taking a split-second to look at the approaching vehicle before diving out of the street and onto the sidewalk. And with barely enough time, as the driver had looked up right then, swerving out of the way of where Jeno had previous been, long honk following. You finally reached Jeno, kneeling down beside him as he tried to pick himself up from the position he had thrown himself into.

He had enough wits about him to disappear his wings as the driver of the car jogged up to the two of you, “Holy shit, are you guys okay?”

“Yeah, just a scrape or two,” Jeno grunted as he stood up, shaking off your helping hands.

“What were you doing in the street, dude?”

“Not paying attention, obviously.”

“Why were you driving at night without headlights?” You questioned the driver, finally getting a good look at his face beneath his sweater hood in the dim light. “Mark?”

“Oh hey, Y/N,” your classmate’s eyes were the same circular shape as his glasses as he regarded you with great surprise. “I didn’t even realize it was you with all the adrenaline and shit.”

“Yeah, me neither,” you agreed, your concern for Jeno earlier clouding your mind from even recognizing the driver’s voice.

“Sorry about that again, my headlights are broken. I’ve been meaning to get them fixed but, you know the starving college student life.”

Jeno was regarding Mark with narrowed eyes and thinly-laced suspicion, his voice monotonous as he replied, “Yeah, we do. Nobody got hurt, so it’s all good. See you.”

He pivoted on his heel away from the other man, but Mark’s next words stopped him in his tracks, “I’ll give you guys a ride to wherever you were going. Please, I feel really bad about this.”

Looking around, the Wraiths had disappeared in the chaos, and without even glancing at the time, you knew it was almost time for your patrol to be over anyway. You were sure that Jeno would leap at the chance to get off his feet and get a free ride instead of walking.

Instead, he was practically glaring at Mark as he rejected the kind offer, “We’re fine walking. Come on, Y/N.”

You were absolutely bewildered, giving Mark an apologetic look as you slowly moved to follow the Tengu. Mark simply gave you an understanding smile and farewell wave in return. Mouthing a ‘sorry, thanks’ to him, you lightly jogged to catch up with Jeno, who was speed-walking away from the scene.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Lee Jeno?” You hissed at him, hurrying your own pace to keep up with him.

“I hope you get your powers really fucking soon, for my sake,” the Tengu groaned, back to his usual unpleasant demeanor.

You took a deep breath to get a hold on your anger, not wanting to go with your immediate reaction of defense and mutual spite. As levelly as you could, you said, “Jeno, what was that?”

“Is he your friend?”

“Kind of; we sit together in Lit, and we’ve gotten lunch at the dining hall a couple times,” you answered, confused as to why he felt the need to gather that information.

Jeno shook his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “We’ve still got a patrol to finish up.”

“I think the others would understand us not finishing the patrol.”

As he continued his fast pace down the sidewalk, you couldn’t bring yourself to argue with him. But the entire encounter you just had with the Wraiths was changing your perspective of the Tengu. He put your safety first, keeping you away from the Wraiths and their attention on him rather than you. And you weren’t so scared anymore.

“Jeno.”

“Hm?”

You hurried ahead of him and turned around, walking backwards to stick a finger in his direction with a pointed look on your face, “You and I are going to be friends.”

“What?” He stopped in his tracks, glaring at you, “Why?”

“Because Jaemin thinks we are.”

“So?”

“I can’t lie to Jaemin.”

“You seemed pretty good at it at the café.”

“Because you put me in a situation where I had to!” You argued, trying to control the boiling of your blood.

Jeno was silent for a moment before he sighed, eyes cast aside as he bitterly agreed, “I don’t like lying to him either.”

“Good,” you nodded soundly, continuing on. “Then we should be friends.”

“Fine.”

Silence.

“We’re almost done, right?”

“Yeah, just another mile or so to where it ends at my apartment building,” you informed him after taking another look at the map. “Then we have to report in the group chat.”

“I’ll make the report,” he declared, and you couldn’t conceal your surprise at Jeno actually offering to do more work and spend any more time than necessary not sleeping.

You wanted to insist on doing it yourself, but in that moment, it seemed like there was no room for arguing with him. With a resigned sigh, you accepted, “Okay, thanks, Jeno.”

“What are friends for?”

The smile on his face didn’t reach his eyes, the slight pep in his tone feeling disingenuous. You nodded, giving him your own half-hearted one, worry settling on your features after breaking eye contact.

Tucked into the corner of your couch later that night with the sounds of Taeyong rustling around in your kitchen, you read everybody’s reports in the group chat.

[renjun: tweedle dee and tweedle dum weren’t as insufferable as they usually are. we passed a few wraiths here and there but they didn’t cause us any trouble]

[yuta: what did you just call me?]

[renjun: tweedle dee]

You giggled at his nicknames for Yuta and Taeyong, glancing up at your own half of the pair who was leaving your kitchen with stuffed cheeks.

[yuta: omg should i get pretty kitty and i matching shirts?]

[sicheng: Johnny and I completed our route at 10:14 PM. There was a strong presence of wraiths on 4th street. Despite exchanging some words with them, there was no escalation into a physical altercation and we left the scene peacefully.]

Sicheng’s very formal report brought a fond smile to your face, thoroughly enjoying the diverseness of your friends’ mannerisms. Taeyong plopped down beside you, turning into his cat form to curl up on the couch beside you, warm body pressed against your leg.

[jeno: we ran into the two wraiths from the café, they remembered me. y/n and i both got out fine]

That was it? He wasn’t going to bring up any specifics about the fight, or the fact that it ended because he almost got hit by a car, and that you knew who was driving the car, too?

“What’s wrong, Y/N?” Taeyong questioned.

Your disgruntlement must have been present on your face, and you forced your expression to relax out the of the frown and furrowed brows you had just then.

“Nothing, Taeyong, just thinking,” you shook off his worries, rubbing behind his ears in an attempt to distract him from the subject. “The guys sent in their reports from our patrol tonight.”

“What did Yuta and Renjun say about ours?”

“Renjun did the report. He said you guys saw a couple Wraiths but nothing really happened.”

Taeyong seemed content with this, flopping over onto his back to give you access to his much softer belly fur.

As you gently pet him, you added with some humor in your voice, “He also called you and Yuta Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.”

He rolled back onto his front, ears turning back angrily, “I’m going to scratch that Satori’s green eye out next time I see him.”

“Oh shush, I think the fact that he gave you guys nicknames is cute,” you dismissed his anger, offering a hand back out, which he immediately rubbed his forehead against, clearly deciding that head rubs were much more important than Renjun and Yuta. And you decided to leave it at that instead of bringing up Yuta’s joking plan of buying them matching shirts.

Several days later, a knock came at your front door, and you leapt up from your couch, “Coming!”

Turning back to Taeyong, who was perched on the arm of your couch in cat form, you reached out to rub his face, “I’ll see you later, bud. Don’t eat my Goldfish please, you have your own food.”

He simply mrowed in response, leaning into your affectionate touch. You tucked your phone into your pocket and moved to your door. Opening it, you greeted your friend with a smile, “Hey, NaNa!”

You were surprised to see two figures in your hallway. Jeno was with Jaemin as well, a yawn already coming from his mouth.

“Where’s Tama?” Jaemin demanded, and you quickly squeezed into the hallway and slammed your door shut.

“You are not harassing him today,” you declared, locking your door behind you.

“I don’t harass him, I love him!”

“The feeling is not mutual.”

“Anyway, I figured you wouldn’t mind me bringing Jeno along, right?”

Right, Jaemin thought that you and Jeno were hanging out and on better terms.

“Oh, yeah. Hey, Jeno.”

Jeno rolled his eyes, “Hey.”

“Let’s go!” Jaemin said excitedly, leading the way to the stairwell.

Today, Jaemin had invited you out to a fair that had come into town, proclaiming that it had been too long since you guys had been to one. You were pretty sure the last time was just a month or two ago, but you couldn’t exactly argue with the offer. It sounded like fun. Good, wholesome, human fun. A nice break from Ayakashi and Wraiths and Onmyoji. Or so you thought, until Jaemin had of course dragged along his Ayakashi roommate.

The fair was on the outskirts of town, a large clearing not too far from Jungwoo and Sungchan’s shrine, actually. You briefly wondered if they would visit the fair as well, since it was so close to their home.

After buying your tickets, Jaemin hooked an arm around both yours and Jeno’s necks, pulling you closer to him as he was practically vibrating with excitement, “We haven’t all hung out like this since we met! You guys remember that?”

Of course you remembered that day.

It was a rather dreary and cold January day, you and Jaemin had just a few days left of your winter break before your last semester of grade school started up, and your friend had insisted on taking a walk together at a park by your houses. When you neared the tree you planned to sit down under, you spotted someone laying at the base of the trunk. At first, the both of you thought it was a homeless person, but as you got even closer, you saw that it was a boy who looked around your age, taking a nap. As you scoffed and wondered how somebody could possibly be sleeping outside in this weather, Jaemin was approaching the boy. You begged Jaemin to just leave the kid alone, but your friend ignored you and instead gently shook the sleeping boy’s shoulder. When he didn’t stir, Jaemin pressed two fingers to his jugular to check for a pulse. It was then that the boy suddenly woke up, sending Jaemin falling onto his ass in the snow in surprise. Jaemin was unfazed, laughing at himself and standing back up, introducing the both of you to the boy who you would learn was Lee Jeno. Jaemin invited him to join the both of you for hot chocolate that day and kept in contact with him for the rest of your school year, eventually convincing him to apply to same college as you two and be his roommate.

“We all got lunch together the other day,” Jeno grumbled.

“A lunch that was interrupted by that fight! That doesn’t count!”

“Yeah, it’s been a while, NaNa,” you agreed brightly, not wanting to kill Jaemin’s overflowing joy at his friends supposedly being friends.

“What should we do first? A ride? Games?”

“No games,” you snorted. “You suck at those.”

“Hey!”

“You do suck,” Jeno echoed, much to your surprise. Maybe he was actually going to own up to your agreement to be friends for Jaemin’s sake.

Jaemin was anything but fazed by this, “Oh! That stuffed cat’s so cute!”

Exchanging a glance with Jeno, the two of you followed him over to the ring toss. The first few tosses of the colorful rings, Jaemin entirely missed the peg. Like you said, he sucked, there’d be no way he’d win anything.

As his nose wrinkled up in frustration, he threw another blue ring. It was looking like another miss when it suddenly changed directions, landing on the peg for the highest points. And the next one he threw landed there too. The attendant at the game watched on with wide eyes. A movement was in the bottom of your periphery, and you glanced down. It was Jeno’s fingers, twitching in just the slightest, but definitely moving in time with the ring as Jaemin threw them. When he’d gotten through all the rings, Jaemin had accumulated enough points to get the cat he had been longing for.

The teenager working the booth seemed to hesitate for a moment, but probably wasn’t getting paid enough to give a shit about this suspicious player, and gave him the prize.

Jaemin squeezed the plush to his chest tightly, “It looks like Tama, doesn’t it?”

He was right, the cat plushie had white fur and big blue eyes, just like the cat form of your Nekomata.

“Now you can harass that instead of my cat,” you said pointedly, trying to conceal your amusement at how obsessed your friend was with your cat that wasn’t actually a cat and was really a fully-grown man.

“Never! Now come on, let’s go on a ride!”

You were tired.

Who wouldn’t be tired after being pulled around a fair for four hours by Na Jaemin? In that moment, you sympathized with Jeno’s yawn, your own following after his.

“Lunch break?” Jaemin offered, having some consideration for the state you and Jeno were in.

“Please,” you agreed desperately. “Water too.”

“On it!”

Turning to Jeno, you couldn’t find him for a moment, until you caught sight of a sleeping figure on a nearby bench. And you honestly couldn’t blame him this time. If just existing tired him out, keeping up with Jaemin at a fair must have left him completely exhausted.

“I’ll get him a hot dog,” Jaemin shrugged, motioning towards the line for a food vendor. “Stand in line with me?”

“Sure,” you said, much to the complaint of your burning legs.

As you half-stood and half-leaned on Jaemin in the long line, you clutched the plush he’d won closer to your chest. He’d let you hold it, but not before letting you know that it was his Tama plush and it was going home with him, not you. You didn’t argue, of course. You had your own real ‘Tama’ at home.

“You’re tired,” your friend commented, tapping your arm to let you know that the two of you were going to shuffle up in the line.

Once you had, you resumed your leaning against him, eyes fluttering open and shut, “Mm, just a little.”

“Go sit with Jeno, I’ll be good here by myself.”

“No, no, I’m staying with you. Besides, Jeno’s taking up the whole bench anyway.”

He chuckled, “Push him off of it.”

“You’re right.”

“Hey,” he caught your attention as you went to leave the line.

Turning back around, you looked at him attentively, waiting for his next words.

“I really am glad you two are friends, you know.”

You felt your chest twinge just a bit, “I’m glad that you’re glad.”

A cool breeze tickled your face, countered by the warm tea you were sipping on. You were visiting Jungwoo like you’d promised, your visits typically consisting of having tea with the old Ayakashi and listening to his stories from the seemingly hundreds of years he’s lived. Right now, he had just told you a rather embarrassing story of Johnny when he was young—apparently Jungwoo had known his family since Johnny’s dad’s birth—and you were struggling not to spill your tea as you chuckled.

The rustling of grass outside the shrine caught your attention, and you just figured that it was Sungchan returning from his trip into town. Taking another sip of your tea, you glanced over at the approaching figure, surprised at who it was.

Jeno was at the shrine, his black wings out, typical glasses and baseball cap on as well. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, he regarded you with a rather emotionless face.

“Oh, you’re here,” he shifted his weight from one leg to another as Jungwoo went to stand up.

“Excuse me, Lady Onmyoji—”

You were getting used to Jungwoo’s title for you, having finally given up on him calling you by your actual name.

“No, Jungwoo, it’s fine,” Jeno stopped him from doing whatever he was about to do. “Never mind. Just… forget I was here.”

Jungwoo looked at him with surprise, “Are you sure, my friend?”

The Tengu didn’t answer him, but you guessed that was enough, as Jungwoo’s light smile returned.

“Very well. Would you like to join the Lady Onymoji and I for tea?”

“No, no, I’ve got somewhere to be,” he declined, glancing at his phone. “Yeah, Jaemin just texted me so…”

And with that, he disappeared back out of the shrine.

“That was strange,” you commented, still looking off in the direction he had left in. “Why’d he come all the way out here?”

Jungwoo didn’t respond, and when you looked back at him, he was dropping a sugar cube into his cup with intense focus, seemingly not aware of you.

“Jungwoo,” you went to get the Tsukumo-gami’s attention. “Why was Jeno here?”

“I am an apothecary as well, some of our friends come to me for help with their ailments.”

“What’s wrong with Jeno?”

Jungwoo held out a sugar cube between the dainty silver tongs, “Sugar, Lady Onmyoji?”

Now you were definitely sure he was trying to avoid this conversation. But it wasn’t really your place to pry into Jeno’s health, and with a resigned sigh, you held your teacup out to him, “Yes, please.”

Your friend dropped it in, and with a swirling mind, you blankly watched the block of sugar dissolve into the heat of your tea. With your mind still on Jeno, you suddenly remembered your first patrol, and his lack of proper reporting of it, and that reminded you of something you wanted to ask Jungwoo.

“Can I tell you something, Jungwoo?”

“Of course.”

“You can’t tell anybody about it, I just need to talk about it to someone.”

“I do not have very many people to tell aside from my brother. And if I did, I would not.”

“Okay, so we’ve all been going on these patrols at night, they were Sicheng’s idea. Just to kind of keep an eye on the city and the Wraiths around town. The very first one we went on a couple weeks ago, Jeno and I were paired up. We ran into a couple Wraiths that had attacked the café before, the ones that he had dissipated. And they said something weird.”

Jungwoo was listening with rapt attention, and at your pause, gestured for you to continue.

“When they were talking about me, they said something about being ordered to keep an eye on me, and that they weren’t allowed to hurt me.”

Your friend sighed and set his teacup down, “It is as I feared.”

“What, Jungwoo? What’s happening?”

“Someone is controlling the Wraiths.”

“Who would—”

“Another Onmyoji. A very powerful one. I am not sure for what purpose they have assumed power over the Wraiths of the city, but no matter their intention, this will only lead them down a terrible path.”

Your blood ran cold. There was another Onmyoji in the city who wanted to keep an eye on you. Why? You could only assume the worst.

Jungwoo spoke again, “When is the next meeting?”

“Uh, we have another round of patrols tonight,” you checked the time on your phone, not missing his eyes fixating on the screen. “In just a few hours.”

“I will come with you.”

You were stunned, eyes widening and mouth slightly agape. Johnny had said that Jungwoo hadn’t left the shrine in a very long time, seemingly insinuating that he didn’t want to. He had modern clothes, but from what you could tell, it was Sungchan who would go down into town and do his clothes shopping for him.

And yet there was a determination in the Ayakashi’s eyes as he knelt, beginning to clean up the tea set, “I will join you when you depart, Lady Onmyoji.”

“Are you sure, Jungwoo?”

“Yes, I believe now is the time to give up my hermit life. I know that Johnny did not ask for my or my brother’s assistance on your patrols because he did not want to pull me from the shrine. But everything must come to an end and start something anew.”

Jungwoo hurried further into the shrine, and you warily followed him through the open rooms.

“Where are you meeting?”

“Johnny’s café. Lenticular Café.”

He found a note pad and scrawled something with a pen on the top sheet, ripping it off. Deftly tossing it up in the air, it took the shape of an origami butterfly, and flew out of the shrine.

“I sent word to my brother. He is down in the town as well, he will meet us at Johnny’s café once he has finished his business there.”

“Uh, well I’m not going right to the café since it isn’t time yet, so I guess you can hang in my apartment with Taeyong and I until then.”

“You are very kind, Lady Onmyoji.”

At your apartment, you worked to unlock the door as Jungwoo took in the marvels of modern-day apartment buildings. Not like yours was all that fancy, but even just electrical lighting seemed to be a miracle to him. It really had been a while since he’d been out of the shrine.

“Sungchan would describe the advancements humans have made to me, but it is much more brilliant in person,” Jungwoo admitted, keeping his gentle hold on your elbow that he’d had since the beginning of your descent from the shrine.

“Now you get see them in person. I think my microwave will blow your mind.”

Letting him into your apartment, you flicked the lights on. Taeyong was waiting for you on the coffee table, but immediately changed into his human form when he realized who was with you.

“Oh, it’s the flute guy,” Taeyong looked at him, head tilted curiously. “I thought he never left the shrine.”

“Our current situation calls for it, I am afraid,” Jungwoo informed him, releasing your arm as you went to drop your schoolbag on your coffee table; you’d gone to the shrine right after your classes earlier. “It is very good to see again, Taeyong.”

“What’s our current situation, exactly? Are you coming on patrol tonight?”

“Yes, I will be joining your patrol tonight.”

You plopped down on your couch, pulling your laptop out from your bag, “I have some homework to submit before we go out. Jungwoo, help yourself to human food or water. Taeyong, eat your cat food, I need to go human food shopping tomorrow.”

Opening it up, you let your Ayakashi friends’ conversation fade into the background as you quickly opened up your online homework center. Of course your Chemistry professor had assigned homework due by midnight tonight. And you couldn’t exactly tell her that you couldn’t do it because you had to go on a patrol around the city to make sure the evil Wraiths were behaving.

As you went to do the first problem, you were aware of Jungwoo sitting beside you, peering over your shoulder curiously.

“Hey, Jungwoo,” you gave him a side glance. “Uh, this is a laptop. A computer. Okay, I don’t how much about technology you know.”

“Sungchan has told me some things about the… world wide web.”

“Yeah, I’m using it right now to do my Chem homework.”

“Jungwoo,” Taeyong got the Tsukumo-gami’s attention, and when you both looked at him, he had the TV remote in his hand. “Check this out.”

And when he turned the TV on, your friend’s attention was immediately turned to that instead. Giving a thankful nod to the Nekomata, you were able to now truly focus on your assignment.

With one arm in Jungwoo’s gentle grasp and Taeyong’s own protectively around your shoulders, you were sure that the three of you were garnering some interested looks as you walked down the streets. It wasn’t too weird, but the three of you were also taking up almost the entire sidewalk. Finally, you turned onto Bell Street. Gently shaking your two Ayakashi off, you opened the lilac purple door of Lenticular Café, the delightful bell above the door tinkling as you did so. It had been the finishing touch of your redesign of the restaurant.

Unsurprisingly, Johnny, Renjun, and Sicheng were already there; Johnny and Renjun literally lived there, and Sicheng was never late to a patrol.

“Jungwoo?” Johnny’s surprise was clear as he greeted his friend.

“Yes, Y/N’s visit today gave me reason to leave the shrine,” he confirmed.

“I told you we should’ve just asked him!” Renjun snapped at the Domeki.

“No, this isn’t a good thing, Renjun,” Johnny hissed at him. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, Jungwoo. But the fact that he’s left the shrine means that something very bad is happening.”

Jungwoo sadly agreed, “I am afraid you are correct, my friend. My presence is a bad omen here.”

“What’s happening, Jungwoo?” Sicheng spoke up.

“I have already told the Lady Onmyoji, but I would like to wait for everybody to be here before I explain.”

“The others should be here in a couple minutes.”

“I requested that my brother join as well, I hope that is alright with everyone.”

Jeno, Sungchan, and Yuta arrived within minutes of each other, and with everyone settled around a center table—your group now just too big to fit in a booth—Jungwoo began addressing the group.

“I am glad to be here with all of you, however the circumstances regarding my brother and I’s departure from the shrine and arrival into your town are not pleasant ones. You are all clearly aware of the increasing Wraith issue, as evidenced by your patrols. I believe that I know the reason why this is happening. While it is true that the Lady Onmyoji’s presence had initially drawn them in, I now have reason to suspect that the Wraiths are being controlled by another Onmyoji in this city.”

Jeno was just a few seats away from you, his focus suddenly snapping to you accusatorily. You looked away, pretending not to notice his nearly furious gaze on you. He had never explicitly told you not to tell anybody about that night, but his report in the group chat had made it clear enough that his intentions were for nobody else to know the details of it.

“What reason, exactly?” Renjun questioned from between Johnny and Yuta.

You held your breath as you waited for Jungwoo to respond.

“I have been ruminating on what the Lady Onmyoji had told me the first night we met and came to this conclusion during our afternoon tea.”

He remembered the promise you’d asked him accept earlier. You lightly let out your breath, resuming your normal breathing as everybody seemed to accept this reasoning. Except Jeno, who was now regarding both you and Jungwoo with suspicion.

“So what should we do?” Yuta asked. “Question any Wraiths we see?”

“No,” Jungwoo shook his head. “Those with knowledge have the advantage. We should keep the other Onmyoji from learning that we know of them and their control over the Wraiths for as long as possible. Continue your patrols as usual. I believe the Onmyoji may be able to see through the Wraiths, so be wary of that. My brother and I will assist wherever you ask.”

When you looked over to Sungchan, he was nodding in agreement to his brother’s words. Even without discussing it previously, he was ready to go along with and trust Jungwoo’s decision.

“Alright,” Sicheng stood, offering his seat to Jungwoo as he then took over standing at the head of the table. “First, a thank you to Jungwoo and Sungchan for joining us. Now, here’s the groups for tonight: Taeyong and Johnny; Renjun, Jeno, and Yuta; Y/N and I. Jungwoo and Sungchan, you two can partner up yourselves or each join a pair.”

“I would like to accompany you and the Lady Onmyoji, if you do not mind,” Jungwoo requested.

“That’s fine with me. Y/N?”

“Yeah, of course!”

“Looks like you’re with us, Sungchan,” Johnny smiled brightly at the other Tsukumo-gami.

Sungchan didn’t seem thrilled, but simply responded to the Domeki with a short nod.

Sicheng took over the conversation again, bringing out his phone, “Okay, I’m sending the routes in the group chat right now.”

Phones around the table dinged, and you scrolled until you found the one the Mizuchi dragon had made for the two of you. It seemed to overlap slightly with Jeno’s group towards the end, you realized as you briefly glanced over the other two routes.

“Everyone be safe. Remember: don't engage first, only use your powers in self-defense, and don’t expose the supernatural to ordinary passerby.”

At Sicheng’s final words, the group stood up, splitting off into your smaller trios for the night. You walked just behind Sicheng, with Jungwoo once again on your arm. He was never this touchy at the shrine, and you figured that the unfamiliar sights of the town were making him slightly anxious, so you let it slide.

“How long has it been since you’ve been in town, Jungwoo?” You questioned your friend, still amused by how he so eagerly looked around at everything in awe.

“I have lost count of the years… far too many. I think the last time I was down was when I was invited to see Johnny after he was born. He was a very cute kid, you know. More eyes than he knew what to do with.”

You exchanged a look with Sicheng, “And uh, how old is Johnny?”

Sicheng said thoughtfully, “He’s a few decades older than me. Probably around a hundred, if I had to guess.”

“Only a few decades…” your head was spinning. “Then how old are you, Sicheng?”

“Individual years stop mattering at this point.”

“Holy shit, you guys are all old men, not just Johnny.”

“Ayakashi have different lifespans than humans. And even different kind of Ayakashi have different lifespans,” Jungwoo explained. “Satoris’ are closer to humans, while some of the very first Tsukumo-gami from thousands of years ago are still around.”

“Oh my god, really?”

“Yes. Some have adapted to modern times, however most of the older ones of my kind have reclused themselves like I.”

Your night was beginning to come to a close, just a couple minutes from your apartment. With that, you suddenly realized, “Oh, Jungwoo! Where are you and Sungchan going to—”

A loud yell cut you off, and you whipped around to look for the source of it. The Ayakashi with you were also on alert. It came again, followed by a cry of pain. The sound of someone running met your ears, followed by someone yelling out all your names.

“Sicheng! Jungwoo! Y/N!”

It was Renjun, jade green eye glimmering as he desperately ran towards you guys. He was clearly disheveled, and for a brief moment you were caught off-guard by the fact that he was wearing clothes he hadn’t left the café in—his waiter uniform had become an elegant magenta long sleeve and deep indigo cloak that fluttered out behind him—and he also had a pistol in his hand.

“Wraiths! Jeno, he— and Yuta—”

“Where?” Sicheng demanded, eyes a flaming blue and scales appearing across his cheek and arms. His own clothes changed, now replaced by something resembling a karate gi except deep cerulean in color, black and teal appearing in fine detail along the material.

“This way,” Renjun took off again, the Mizuchi dragon right on his heels.

“Come, Lady Onmyoji,” Jungwoo secured your hand in his tightly before following behind the other two Ayakashi. Your eyes widened as you took in your other friend’s costume change as well; Jungwoo’s modern clothes supplied to him by his brother were no more, a rather ancient-looking silken yukata of a brilliant pastel green color with sakura blossoms all around it having took their place.

Turning down streets, the voices and groans were coming closer. And you immediately knew where Renjun was taking you. On the corner of the street was an abandoned fast food restaurant, the windows all boarded up and parking lot deserted. It was barely lit by a streetlight with one burnt out bulb, the remaining three dimmed or flickering. How appropriately spooky. You couldn’t even see either one of your friends, too many Wraiths blocking your vision with their dark forms. A swirling mass of them all around a central point, presumably your two missing friends.

“There’s even more of them,” Renjun declared. “And I don’t…”

Sicheng didn’t acknowledge the Satori, immediately whipping his arm out, looking as if he were throwing a baseball. A stream of water shot forth from behind the restaurant, slamming into the Wraiths. A hole opened up for a split-second, and Yuta tumbled out from within.

“Yuta!” You called out to him, letting go of Jungwoo’s hand to run towards him.

The kitsune met you halfway, stumbling into your arms. But your worry was still on the missing Tengu.

“Where’s Jeno?” You asked, squeezing onto Yuta’s forearms desperately.

He didn’t answer, eyes transfixed on the terrifying conglomeration of Wraiths.

“Yuta!” You yelled out his name, shaking his arms. “Yuta! Where’s Jeno?”

But you already knew, your heart dropping from your chest. Turning back to the scene behind you, you saw the other three Ayakashi working to break through the wall of Wraiths. Sicheng was sending powerful attacks of water against them, but this time they weren’t caught off-guard like before. Renjun was firing individual shots at the outer edges of the mass.

“Cover your ears!” Jungwoo warned everybody, and you released Yuta’s arms to do so, slapping your hands over your ears.

He brought a thin wooden flute up to his lips, and you saw the massive form begin to tremble, individual Wraiths now visible as small cracks and spaces between them opened up. You were able to see just a glimpse of Jeno, on his knees and writhing in terrible pain.

Jungwoo must have seen it too, halting his song and putting his flute back into his pocket, “I cannot play my song without also harming Jeno.”

Sicheng brought a column of water up and slammed it down onto the top of the mass instead this time.

“Every time I hit them, they just reform,” the Mizuchi dragon shook his head, but sent another concentrated attack.

Renjun cocked his pistol, but didn’t fire, “If I keep shooting, I might end up hitting Jeno.”

You were useless. Absolutely fucking useless. But you had an idea anyway.

“I have a plan. And don’t argue with me, please trust me,” you spoke up. “Jungwoo, you play your song just long enough to weaken them for Sicheng to hit them again. Sicheng, I know this means you won’t be able to cover your ears but I’m begging you. And once we get another opening, I’ll go in.”

“You can’t do that, idiot!” Renjun yelled out, and despite his harsh words, you knew it was out of concern for you.

“I said don’t argue with me!”

Jungwoo, looking rather forlorn, brought his flute back up to his lips, “Very well, Lady Onmyoji.”

“I’m ready when you are, Jungwoo,” Sicheng agreed, hand opened up to the skies as a huge column of water was at the ready.

Then a pair of arms were around your waist, and you struggled against the owner, “Yuta! Let me go!”

“No.”

“Yuta! What the fuck are you doing?” You continued struggling, not wanting to hurt your friend. “I can do this! I’m trying to help Jeno, what the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Yuta held steadfast, voice right beside your ear as he calmly said, “I agreed to help you, Y/N. Not my brother’s killer.”

Your struggling stopped, arms going limp as your head spun at his words. You were shocked out of your stupor by Jeno quite literally flying right by you. And not by the power of his own wings.

The Tengu’s flight was abruptly stopped by his body smacking into the side of the building with a sickening thud.

“Let me go!” You roared, finally losing your patience and throwing your fist back. It impacted with something on Yuta’s face, and he loosened his grip on you enough for you to escape.

Making a break for Jeno, you were aware of your other three friends following you. In your peripheral, you could see their backs to you, protecting you and Jeno as they faced down the Wraiths.

“Jeno?” You called his name out, rolling him over onto his side. “Jeno, come on.”

The sounds of your friends fending off the Wraiths met your ears as you desperately tried to get Jeno to respond to you. Finally, he groaned, eyes fluttering open.

“Oh thank god. Come on, don’t fall asleep on us now, Tengu,” you warned him.

“Y/N,” he grunted.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m right here, Jeno.”

“No, Y/N,” he firmly shook his head, grabbing it in pain. “Wraiths…”

You whipped your head around, blood freezing when you saw that none of your friends were there anymore. They were all scattered through the parking lot, struggling to get onto their own two feet.

Now you were fed up.

“Why can’t you leave us alone?” You cried out, staring directly into the glowing orbs of the central Wraith. Your ice-cold blood was now a boiling current as you continued, addressing the Onmyoji controlling them, “Whoever you are, looking in on me and fucking up my friends, just piss off!”

A white-hot fireball of energy roared through your system. It burst forth from you, expanding as it covered the entire parking lot. You couldn’t see through it, screwing your eyes shut against the painfully bright light. When light was no longer pouring through your eyelids, you cautiously opened them up in narrow slits. Upon seeing no remnants of the mysterious light or the Wraiths, you let out a shaky sigh.

“Holy shit, Y/N,” said an awestruck voice from behind you, and you turned your attention back to Jeno.

“Jen…o? You—you okay?” You asked, gritting your teeth against the searing pain enveloping your being in that moment.

You completely missed his response, darkness overtaking your vision quickly.

“I can feel the power radiating off of her…”

“I get it, I owe you $20 now, Johnny.”

“That’s not what I meant, Renjun. This isn’t good.”

“Weren’t you the one who kept trying to awaken her powers?”

“I didn’t realize she was this powerful.”

“That ogre said she was the most powerful one in like a million years or something.”

“A millennium, Taeyong, that’s a thousand years, not a million.”

“Johnny’s right. If the Wraiths were drawn to her before when her powers were dormant, just the awakening of them earlier will bring them in hordes. Ones that don’t have directions not to hurt her.”

The voices of your friends floated to your ears, the content worrying enough. But you couldn’t really care much about them when your head was pounding. You groaned, shifting around on whatever you were lying on.

“Oh, you waking up, Y/N?” A familiar voice questioned from your side.

“Head hurts,” you were barely able to mumble.

“I’ll get you some ibuprofen.”

The owner of the voice’s name suddenly came to you, “Jeno.”

“Yeah?”

Squinting your eyes open, you saw that you were in your bed at your apartment, Jeno standing in your room. You noticed that he winced and grabbed at his side a little as he turned to face you. Now able to see his face, you spotted some cuts and scrapes with half-assed attempts to patch them up.

“You really got fucked up, Jeno.”

He chuckled softly, “You look like shit too, Y/N.”

“Is that Y/N?” Taeyong’s voice yelped from your living room.

The thundering of feet came closer until the white-haired Nekomata was in your room. Jeno barely managed to catch him before he flung himself at you, “Woah, Taeyong, she just woke up, slow down.”

“Hey, little lady, good to see those bright eyes again,” Johnny smiled down at you, coming to stand at your bedside.

Sicheng, Renjun, Jungwoo, and Sungchan were in your room as well.

“Hey, guys,” you greeted them all, moving to try to sit up, but a sharp pain in your head incapacitated you again.

“Oh, ibuprofen!” Jeno disappeared from the room, freeing Taeyong up to switch into a cat and leap up onto your bed with you.

He hesitantly pressed up against your side, tail flicking anxiously. You gave his back a couple reassuring pats.

“You did well tonight, Lady Onmyoji,” Jungwoo nodded kindly to you.

“Yeah, you finally got your powers,” Renjun masked his pride with a fake scoff.

With a frown, you realized that someone was missing, “Where’s Yuta?”

Hesitant looks were exchanged among your friends. None of them had answered when Jeno came back in, water in one hand and pills in the other.

“Your medicine cabinet is a mess,” he informed you, depositing the tablets into your open palm and helping you bring the glass to your lips.

You glared at him, unable to return his snark with a mouthful of water. After knocking back the pills, you let yourself sink back into your pillows.

“So I’m really an Onmyoji now, huh?”

“You’ve always been an Onmyoji,” Johnny pointed out.

“Yeah, but now I’ve actually got my powers, you know?”

Jeno added humorously, “And a sick new tat.”

“What?” You looked at him in confusion.

“Let’s show her, guys.”

With differing levels of enthusiasm—or lack thereof—five of your friends turned and pulled down the back of their collars, revealing a matching symbol across the backs of their necks.

Sicheng, Jungwoo, Johnny, Renjun, and Jeno each had an intricate lotus blossom on their skin in the exact same place. Your eyes widened as they turned back around.

“What were those?”

“Bond marks. You’ve got one too,” Sicheng informed you, and your hand instinctually went to the back of your neck.

“Really? Let me see! Someone take a picture.”

“Can’t really do that,” Renjun said.

“Why not?”

“Bond marks don’t normally show up in pictures. They’re also not usually visible to non-supernatural beings during most situations.”

“They’re visible to other Ayakashi, Wraiths, and Onmyoji most of the time,” Johnny continued the explanation. “The only time they can be photographed is when they’re visible to ordinary humans.”

“When’s that?”

“Situations we wouldn’t typically have ordinary humans around for.”

Jungwoo spoke this time, “When we are in battle form, Lady Onmyoji. That is when they are visible to all.”

“Battle form… was that the weird clothes you guys were wearing earlier?” You thought back to your friends’ mysterious costume changes from earlier, and how they were all in normal clothes once again.

“I don’t think mine is that weird,” Renjun turned his nose up, clearly a bit miffed at your judgment of his battle form attire.

“You have a cape,” you retorted. “Yours is probably the most ridiculous.”

Still wanting to see your mark, you swung your legs over the edge of your bed. Your friends started fussing over you, and you shook them off, “I’m fine, I can walk a few feet to my bathroom. I wanna see the mark.”

On hesitant feet, you shuffled out of your bedroom to your bathroom right next to it in the hallway. You rifled through your drawer for a second before securing a small handheld mirror. Hopping up onto your bathroom counter with your back to your large vanity mirror, you then held up the smaller mirror, tilting and turning until you had the right angle.

And there it was, your own lotus blossom on the back of your neck, exactly matching your friends.’

“So what are these, exactly?” You questioned the guys who all were either in the doorway of your bathroom or right outside it in the hallway.

“An Onmyoji will have five uh… ‘perfect-fit’ Ayakashi, I guess is a way to put it?” Jeno started off, brow furrowed as he was seemingly trying to figure out the right way to explain it.

Sicheng took over, “True Ayakashi is the term used mostly. Onmyoji can use the powers of any willing Ayakashi, but their own five True Ayakashi will render the most power to them.”

“And it looks like you’ve got all five of yours right here!” Johnny said cheerily, throwing his arms around Jungwoo and Sicheng’s shoulders.

“The marks are only activated once the Onmyoji’s powers have awoken, so nobody really knew we were all connected like this until tonight in the parking lot.”

“What does it say about us that our spiritual bond or whatever was activated in an abandoned fast food parking lot?” You snorted, bringing the small mirror up to look at the mark again, fingers gracing over the delicate petals of the blossom.

“That we’re cheap and trashy?” Renjun suggested, making you chuckle.

Putting the mirror back down, you slid off your bathroom counter and started shooing the guys out of your way so you could get through them to your kitchen. It was still dark outside, and you finally saw the time, almost midnight. Your head was still throbbing, but more importantly, your stomach was growling.

“I don’t have enough food for everybody,” you admitted as you opened your pantry.

“We should be heading out anyway, leave you to rest,” Johnny reassured you, looking pointedly at the Satori.

“Don’t look at me like that, I wasn’t about to disagree with you, old man.”

“Come on, Jungwoo, Sungchan.”

“Are you taking them back to the shrine?” You questioned, following them as they started towards your door.

Jungwoo answered your question, “Since I am one of your Ayakashi, Lady Onmyoji, we concluded that it is best for me to remain close to you. Johnny has so kindly offered a place for my brother and I to stay.”

“I go where Jungwoo goes,” Sungchan said before you could question why he was staying as well.

“Okay, well, thank you, guys. All of you,” you saw them off at your front door.

“Rest well, Lady Onmyoji,” Jungwoo gave your forearm a gentle squeeze.

Johnny was next up, “What time do your classes start tomorrow?”

“I have a 9 am.”

“Skip it. You deserve to sleep in,” he patted your head.

“Seriously, idiot, sleep tomorrow,” Renjun mumbled, his ears a light pink despite his harsh words. “You’ll be useless if you don’t.”

Sungchan gave you a short nod, “Bye.”

“See you guys,” you waved to them all, watching as they started towards your stairwell.

Before you could close the door, Sicheng was there, “I have to go as well, I’m opening the store for your parents tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Sicheng.”

“You did good tonight, Y/N. Like the others said, get some sleep, don’t push yourself too hard the next couple days.”

“I won’t. Bye.”

“Bye.”

And that left you with Taeyong and Jeno. Turning back around, you were expecting Jeno to be the next to leave. However, your eyes landed on your couch, where a sleeping Jeno laid. Of course he fell asleep. And for once, you really didn’t feel any annoyance over it. Instead, there was a strange pull at your chest as you watch his own rise up and down.

Remembering that his own wounds seemed to be thrown to the wayside earlier, you went to your medicine cabinet. Jeno was right, it was a mess, but you couldn’t worry too much about that right then. With almost everyone gone, you could feel the pain in your head receding. The ibuprofen was kicking in.

“I’ll kick him out,” Taeyong announced, in his human form as he started to approach the sleeping Tengu.

“Leave him, Taeyong,” you chastised him. “He can sleep here, I don’t mind.”

While your Nekomata didn’t seem too thrilled about this, he still obeyed, watching you with interest as you carried a damp paper towel and box of bandaids over to the couch. Jeno was taking up most of the couch, so you plopped yourself and your supplies down on the floor in front of it. Taeyong in his cat form joined you, head tilted to continue observing you.

You first took the damp paper towel to the dried blood on his face, probably originating from the split cheek he had. He breathed in sharply but stayed asleep. Despite it having started scabbing over already, you still gently applied a bandaid to it to protect it from the sun and the elements. There were a few scrapes over his arms, and you maneuvered his limbs about as gently as you could to clean them up and apply bandaids where necessary.

Next was going to be more difficult. He had winced and grabbed his side earlier, so you suspected some kind of abdominal injury. You just hoped it wasn’t a broken rib, that wasn’t something you could attend to in your living room.

Gingerly, you grabbed the hem of the side of his t-shirt and lifted it up the slightest, until you could just glimpse at his ribs. A bruise here and there but they were small, not testifying to any serious damage. The other side was the same, and you decided to just offer up an ice pack to him in the morning.

Despite having taken care of all his injuries that you could, you couldn’t bring yourself to leave him just yet.

“He didn’t leave your side the whole time,” Taeyong’s quiet voice startled you for a moment.

Looking down at your cat, you continued listening to him, “Renjun came and found the rest of us and took us to the parking lot. Jeno was sitting against the wall, holding you. You looked like you were dead. But all the power that was coming from you, we knew you weren’t. It took a couple of us to carry you to your apartment, we would all rotate out. Except Jeno. You weren’t out for too long, but he was with you the whole time in your room.”

You weren’t sure what to do with this information, but your gaze turned back to Jeno, whose face was just a few inches from yours as he slept. That tugging was at your chest again, and you let out a shaky sigh.

“Where was Yuta?”

“I don’t know, I didn't see foxface when we got there. I was too focused on you to really notice or care why at the moment. You should probably ask Sicheng or Jungwoo.”

“Thank you, Taeyong,” you rubbed behind his ear before standing back up, moving to put all your first aid stuff back into your warzone of a medicine cabinet.

“Are you going to bed now?”

“Yeah, once I get some food in me. And turn off my alarm. There is no fucking way I’m going to Calc tomorrow.”

With a full stomach and no alarm to wake you up later, you gave Jeno’s resting form a single look before flicking your lights off and retreating to your bedroom. Taeyong was already in his cat form, waiting for you on one of your pillows. Curling up under your blankets, you were quick to fall asleep again, the trials of the day washing away as you slipped away into your dreams.

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#s: ayakashi #a: jeno #jeno #lee jeno #nct #nct dream #nct imagine #nct imagines #nct dream imagine #nct dream imagines #text #mine #writing #*100 #ge: fluff #a: featherbrain

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bestworstcase · 4 years

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a comprehensive guide to zhan tiri’s lore or, it’s not that confusing or contradictory, i promise

first things first: if you are somebody who pays attention to creator interviews and you are interested in canonical zhan tiri lore, i want you to gather up everything you’ve ever heard chris say about zhan tiri and erase it from of your brain. i know he’s made statements regarding his interpretation of her backstory but this post was made by death of the author gang and we are interested ONLY in what is stated and shown in the text itself. meaning belongs to the viewers, and creator interpretation is irrelevant.

ready? let’s go!

who or what is zhan tiri?

zhan tiri’s first appearance in coronan history occurred thousands of years ago; in plus est en vous, rapunzel specifies two thousand, but every other mention of zhan tiri as a historical figure is “eons” or “millennia,” and the most objective source we have—the plus est flashback—is marked “thousands of years ago.”

there is no direct evidence to suggest that she existed prior to this, but i think there is enough circumstantial support for this theory to conclude that she did: namely, the existence of idols and other religious iconography associated with her name. my reasoning here is as follows:

the plus est en vous flashback shows demanitus banishing zhan tiri to the lost realm. this makes it—give or take a few years—the last point in time when zhan tiri would have been free and thus able to make any lasting cultural impact.

it follows that any relevant historical artifacts we see must predate the plus est flashback, as they represent a time when zhan tiri had a significant enough cultural impact to fuel their creation.

moreover, though sugracha and tromus are the only disciples of zhan tiri who directly appear in the series, it is implied that there are many more:

Lord Demanitus was in a constant battle with Zhan Tiri and his brethren. Over the years, Demanitus captured many of the evil spirits and held them prisoner in that chamber. (S1, Painter’s Block)

much of the coronan folklore concerning the demanitus-zhan tiri relationship is... wrong, but due to sugracha’s verifiable imprisonment in the demanitus chamber, i feel it reasonable to conclude that this tidbit is correct in that there are, or at least were, other disciples held inside the demanitus chamber. and, as with the historical artifacts associated with zhan tiri, it is logical to conclude that whatever cult produced these disciples predated the plus est flashback.

so, we’ve established the historical artifacts and iconography associated with zhan tiri came before the plus est flashback, but what exactly does that entail, and what does it tell us about zhan tiri’s true nature?

icons of zhan tiri: an overview

#1: janus point

janus point is a henge, and based on the iconography—the ram’s head symbol is plastered all over the jardinière and the henge pillars—it appears to be a site dedicated specifically to zhan tiri. the same symbol also appears on the seal in which sugracha’s spirit was trapped inside the demanitus chamber and is unique in that the muzzle appears to corkscrew.

the appearance of the henge evokes a quasi-religious flavor, and in who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, rapunzel refers to the site as a “mystical ground.” at the very least, this is a ritual site that was heavily associated with zhan tiri, and it would not be much of a stretch to conclude she was outright worshipped here.

#2: the spire idol

this artifact appears in both the keeper of the spire and race to the spire. it’s a small stone idol kept in the spire’s... gatehouse, for lack of a better term, and it depicts the basic ram-headed hulking demon zhan tiri. nothing is said about it in either episode.

#3: the tree of zhan tiri

there is zhan tiri iconography all over this tree.

the stone ram’s head over the entrance...

...the bas-relief in the first chamber...

...more ram’s heads over all the interior archways and the scroll shelves...

...and a return of the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head from janus point on the altar for this glorious oversized flytrap.

#4: the shell house

tromus’s shrine gives us yet another variation on the ram’s head symbol as well as another full-body idol and also, though i didn’t get a screenshot of it because it’s hard to see with the way tumblr resizes images, a little ram’s head symbol on the clasp of his robes.

so where did this imagery come from?

with the exception of the spire idol, there is evidence to suggest that zhan tiri herself had direct influence over the design of all this iconography.

janus point seems to have held some importance to zhan tiri herself; when she appears to varian in cassandra’s revenge, she surrounds herself with pieces of it and superimposes her own head on top of the tree.

further, the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head reoccurs at the great tree, which is unique among the sites associated with her in that we know zhan tiri actually resided there for what sounds like a significant amount of time; according to the legend adira shares, the great tree was zhan tiri’s “stronghold.”

this means that it’s plausible that either (a) zhan tiri herself shaped the symbols on display in the tree, or (b) they were modeled after her by her contemporaries. the interesting thing about this, there are four distinct variations on the ram’s head symbol inside the tree: 1) long, thick snout with elongated horns; 2) angular, no snout, short horns, 3) corkscrew-snouted, and 4) humanlike skull with ram horns.

and likewise, the iconography inside the shell house was created by someone we know to have been a contemporary of zhan tiri’s; tromus was one of the students of demanitus who turned against him to join zhan tiri instead, and it is logical to assume that he did, in fact, see zhan tiri in the flesh at some point—and his ram’s head design is yet again different.

this begs the question: if all five of these designs were modeled on zhan tiri herself, why is there such variety in the basic shape? i believe this is a strong point in favor of considering zhan tiri a shapeshifter who chose and stuck with a single general form for long periods of time but casually and frequently modified the smaller details. and in fact, we do see her do this in season three, with the most notable occurrence being. this:

so, we have concluded that:

zhan tiri’s historical iconography predates the plus est flashback, and

accurately represented her physical appearance from that time

from this, the only reasonable conclusion is that zhan tiri is a shapeshifter, who spent a considerable amount of time in the giant, ram-headed demon form depicted in all of her pre-demanitus iconography.

but she’s human in the plus est flashback!

in the series, human characters are designed with a wide diversity of shapes and sizes, but their color palettes stay within the range of realism, with natural skin tones and eye/hair colors. zhan tiri is... not like that.

she may be human-shaped, but her color palette sits drastically outside the norms the series has established for human characters; her skin is dead white, her hair is a dull lilac color, her eyes are bright purple with a circle of gold around the pupils. none of these are natural human colors.

there is precedent in the series for marked changes in appearance and coloration as a result of meddling with magical forces: when cassandra claims the moonstone, it turns her hair and eyes bright blue and gives her an unhealthy-looking pallor. rapunzel’s hair, likewise, turns gold due to the sundrop’s influence. thus, taking this in isolation, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility to conclude that zhan tiri, too, has had her appearance altered by whatever magical nonsense she’s been mucking around with.

however, if we look at this design in the context of the conclusions we’ve already drawn about her historical iconography and what that tells us about her true nature, i think a much simpler and more plausible explanation is that zhan tiri, being a shapeshifter, donned this humanlike form in order to get closer to demanitus. there could be any number of reasons for doing so—considering demanitus’s fixation on seeking the drops for the right reasons, i would imagine creating some distance from the malevolent monster form in order to gain his trust would have played a role in this decision.

five final points in favor of shapeshifting

#1: zhan tiri in the lost realm

we see in plus est en vous that the lost realm causes absurd magical mutations in people who are trapped there. varian theorizes that these mutations could become irreversible if they stay in the lost realm for long enough, but given that they are all freed shortly thereafter and the changes revert, there is no concrete evidence for or against this theory.

still, this raises an interesting question: if the lost realm mutates anyone who enters it, and if these changes become irreversible after long periods of time what would happen if a shapeshifter was trapped there for thousands of years?

when zhan tiri escapes from the lost realm, she isn’t all that different in appearance from when she entered it. she’s much smaller. her hairstyle has changed a bit. she lost the bag at some point. but that’s... really it. it’s a much less drastic alteration than we see happening with the coronans, who are shown transforming into objects and animals, with their bodies distorted, or with pieces of themselves becoming detached and floating away. and these changes also serve her manipulation of cass by making her appear small, weak, and harmless, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for zhan tiri to have chosen this form for herself.

i think it is reasonable to assume that zhan tiri, being a shapeshifter herself, was able to, if not outright resist whatever magic in the lost realm causes these mutations, at least “fix” them as they happened. her brief appearance in painter’s block supports the idea that she retained the ability to shapeshift while inside the lost realm, since she appears there as the ram-headed demon.

#2: her shapeshifting disciples

both tromus and sugracha are able to appear human, and sugracha states that she can take “many forms” in painter’s block. though it’s never explained where they got this power, it is reasonable to conclude that they received it from zhan tiri—she is their master, and the implication very much seems to be that it was she who gave them their creepy green spirit form of immortality.

and, if zhan tiri is handing out powers of shapeshifting to her minions, it follows that she must be capable of shapeshifting herself, too.

#3: gremlin zhan tiri’s demonic shadow

this shows up in cassandra’s revenge and plus est en vous and seems to straightforwardly suggest that zhan tiri’s true nature is closer to the ram-headed demon, with the humanlike form being more of a disguise.

#4: we see her shapeshift in plus est en vous.

she briefly loses her grip on the humanlike nature of the gremlin form when rapunzel blasts her with the sundrop, as i noted above. and later—once she has the drops in hand and the gremlin form has no further use to her—she sheds it altogether to return to yet another variation on the ram-headed demon, albeit one that looks more... monkey than ram:

#5: and finally, zhan tiri herself says so

in race to the spire:

I believe Cassandra promised us a proper introduction, but she failed to deliver, didn’t she? Frankly, I’m surprised you hadn’t guessed who I am—seeing as how we’ve already met, in a way. You see, over the centuries, I’ve taken the form of whatever suits my needs: a warlock, a demon... even a blizzard.

she also portrays herself as the ram-headed demon in the vision she gives to cassandra in once a handmaiden:

now... zhan tiri is a liar, and if these were statements given in isolation of any supporting evidence, i would be skeptical. however, when all the evidence in the text points toward zhan tiri being a shapeshifting entity as the most logical explanation for everything we see of her throughout the series, i’m inclined to take her corroborating statements as a factual confirmation.

in conclusion: zhan tiri is, and has always been, a shapeshifter. if she has a “true” form, the evidence points toward it being the large, ram-headed, tentacled demon, while the humanlike shape(s) we see in season three are forms she assumed to ingratiate herself to demanitus and, later, cassandra.

what’s the timeline with her and lord demanitus?

time in this series is fuzzy. this applies not only to zhan tiri and demanitus, but to every historical event discussed by the characters and the timespans covered by each season, where the only time markers are the lantern festivals that celebrate rapunzel’s nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first birthdays and a few throwaway lines about the passage of months. thus, there is no way to say with absolute certainly when any specific event in zhan tiri’s backstory occurred chronologically. we have to do our best to arrange the events we know about in an order that is logical.

this is complicated by the fact that we know demanitus fudged some of the details to make himself look better to rapunzel and eugene: he obscured the fact that he and zhan tiri were working partners for an unknown length of time. this verifiable lie of omission casts a patina of doubt over everything else he says regarding their shared past, but it also accounts for discrepancies between what we see and what we’re told.

as always in unreliable narrator situations, what we see has far more weight than what we’re told. with this in mind, there are three tiers of trustworthiness in the information we are given about zhan tiri’s past: most trustworthy are the flashbacks and things we see with our own eyes; in the middle are the accounts of zhan tiri’s contemporaries—demanitus and the disciples; and at the bottom are the folk legends recounted by xavier and adira.

so what do we see?

#1: zhan tiri and demanitus searched for the drops together

just how this arrangement came to be is unclear, but i think we can glean some interesting information from the plus est flashback.

DEMANITUS: Zhan Tiri! This is your last warning! Give up this foolish quest for power.

ZHAN TIRI: This quest for the sundrop and moonstone was both of ours.

DEMANITUS: It was, until you made it about something darker. You made it all about gaining power for yourself! You turned your back on what was right!

ZHAN TIRI: And you turned your back on me. As long as I live, I will never stop until I have that power!

DEMANITUS: I know.

[He activates the portal to the Lost Realm.]

ZHAN TIRI: This is far from over! I will have that power, and when I do, I will destroy your beloved Corona! I promise you!

[The portal closes.]

DEMANITUS: I had no choice, Vigor. I had to send her to the Lost Realm.

this suggests a couple things.

first, the working relationship between demanitus and zhan tiri broke down because her selfish desire for power clashed with his idealism. demanitus didn’t want the power of the combined sundrop and moonstone for himself; he wanted to reunite them in the service of a cause he believed to be right. zhan tiri, by contrast, was interested solely in acquiring that power for herself—but given how demanitus reacted when he learned this, it seems obvious that he didn’t know that about zhan tiri until later in their relationship.

in other words, there was some level of deceit on her part involved with their partnership from the very beginning. she hid her true motives from him; she may also have hidden her true nature from him. i think there is support both for and against the latter point: in the present day, demanitus describes zhan tiri as “a warlock”—a word zhan tiri uses as an example of her duplicitous shapeshifting—but he also describes her as being “from another realm”—suggesting he knew her to be something otherworldly or inhuman.

i tend to fall on the side of demanitus knowing her basic nature while they were contemporaries, but believing she shared his more noble motivations at first, but i think a strong argument could be made in favor of him believing her to be human from the start and only discovering her true nature later.

second, demanitus appears to have cared for zhan tiri far more than she cared for him. in the flashback, she’s angry at his betrayal, but her focus is on her desire for the power of the sundrop and moonstone. by contrast, demanitus gives her plenty of warning and chances to turn away from her dark path, pleads with her to “give up” her selfish motivations, and expresses clear regret after her refusal forces him to banish her to the lost realm.

this, again, supports the interpretation that zhan tiri manipulated or used demanitus to further her own goals, just as she would later do with cassandra, rather than this being a true partnership that broke down as a result of differing goals. she doesn’t care about him any more than she cared about cass.

#2: zhan tiri’s behavior in season three

season three firmly establishes zhan tiri as a skilled manipulator who does not care about anyone or anything besides herself and her pursuit of her own power. i won’t get into the weeds with this—if you want to read a breakdown of (some) of zhan tiri’s manipulation of cass in season three, i wrote a post about once a handmaiden here—because for our purposes, we just need to understand that the basic character of zhan tiri as we see her in the present should inform our interpretation of her behavior in the past.

in other words, i think it is safe to assume that zhan tiri applied similar techniques and principles of manipulation to demanitus as we see her do to cassandra in the present; to wit, she would have sought to make him emotionally dependent on her by exploiting whatever vulnerabilities she could find and presenting herself to him as a trustworthy friend and kindred spirit.

#3: she is not close to her disciples

once she is freed, zhan tiri never so much as mentions tromus or sugracha again. moreover, it is unclear how much personal information they actually know about her: in painter’s block, sugracha refers to zhan tiri as “he,” which could indicate one of several things:

zhan tiri is female, but her disciples don’t know her well enough for assumptions they made about her gender based on the appearance of the ram-headed demon form to have been corrected, or

zhan tiri doesn’t subscribe to human conceptualizations of gender, and both “she” and “he” are acceptable pronouns because the gendered connotations of both are equally irrelevant.

i, personally, prefer the second explanation, but the first is tenuously supported by how little zhan tiri cares for her disciples.

what do her contemporaries say?

lord demanitus’s telling of his conflict with zhan tiri is as follows:

Millennia ago, a mysterious event in the heavens divided an ancient power in two. The sundrop and moonstone fell to the earth. Three of my pupils and I researched the legend of the sundrop and moonstone, two elements that longed to reunite. We searched, but alas could not find them.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones looking. My pupils betrayed me, and summoned my old nemesis, Zhan Tiri: a warlock from another realm, bent on destruction. It took all of my powers to banish the evil from our world.

I knew the research I had written about the sundrop and moonstone was valuable. Dangerous, in evil hands. So I tore the scroll and hid the pieces...

this exposition also shows us the identities of the three pupils who turned against demanitus and joined zhan tiri instead: sugracha, tromus, and gothel.

their identities are all confirmed outside of this sequence: sugracha and tromus appear as loyal servants of zhan tiri, and in a tale of two sisters, rapunzel and cassandra discover gothel’s research on the sundrop flower, including a piece that is an obvious attempt to recreate the demanitus scroll, indicating that gothel was indeed his student at one time:

though it appears that gothel abandoned zhan tiri as well once she found the sundrop flower, as she hoarded its power for herself rather than seeking to use it to free her former master from the lost realm.

now... because demanitus leaves out the part of this story that would involve admitting he worked with zhan tiri before she became his “nemesis,” we can’t say with any certainty when this business with his traitorous pupils freeing her happened—or, indeed, if it actually happened that way at all. it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that the three disciples could have been pupils of both demanitus and zhan tiri, who stuck with zhan tiri after demanitus betrayed her and banished her to the lost realm.

my personal belief is that demanitus gathered his pupils to help him continue the search for the sundrop and moonstone after the flashback in plus est, only for them to be lured away by zhan tiri (perhaps via communication in dreams or visions, as cassandra’s revenge establishes that she’s capable of entering people’s dreams whilst trapped in the lost realm) and free her by reactivating the portal—thus shifting demanitus’s focus from “find the sundrop and moonstone” to “put the demon back in her prison and clean up this mess.”

however, this is all very up for personal interpretation, because demanitus’s version of events is verifiably deceptive and thus cannot be taken as hard fact.

and what do the folk legends say?

#1: the blizzard

Eons ago, an evil warlock, Zhan Tiri, had a deep hatred for Corona, and cast a spell which caused a blizzard to sweep across the land. The storm destroyed everything in its path. All would have been lost, had it not been for the ancient engineer and inventor, Lord Demanitus.

Using both magic and science, Demanitus built a massive subterranean machine deep in the Coronan mountains. This mighty device had the ability to change the direction of the wind, and it pushed the flurries out to the sea. The day was saved. Zhan Tiri had indeed been defeated. But some say the curse of the storm lives on, and is simply waiting to strike again...

we know that the basic event described here really happened, because the demanitus device does exist in the location indicated by the legend and works just as described. the details may have been glossed over or elaborated on over the centuries, but we know it is accurate in the essentials.

until recently, i put the events described in this legend immediately before the plus est flashback, to account for the snow on the ground during the flashback, but over the course of writing this post i have actually changed my own mind, and i now think that zhan tiri’s blizzard occurred when the disciples freed her from the lost realm for the first time. why? well, the imagery used to illustrate xavier’s telling of the blizzard legend is directly echoed by the imagery used to illustrate zhan tiri’s release in demanitus’s account in lost and found:

queen for a day.

and lost and found.

the color palettes here are identical, and in both, zhan tiri is depicted as the ram-headed demon, in almost the same pose, rising out of the mountains—which fits with both the location of the demanitus device and the possibility that she created (or became) the blizzard immediately after being released from the portal in the coronan mountains. moreover, her hatred of corona is based on her hatred of demanitus and her vengeful desire to destroy everything he loves, which would logically be stronger after he successfully imprisoned her once.

#2: the great tree

Millennia ago, this tree was once a sentient being, a force for good. But it was corrupted by the evil sorcerer [Zhan Tiri] to destroy any who approached it. It was Zhan Tiri’s stronghold. Inside it, he was invincible. But Lord Demanitus put a stop to the tree’s magic using an enchanted spear.

as with xavier’s blizzard legend, the fact of the spear’s existence and the behavior of the great tree itself once the spear is removed proves the basic accuracy of this legend.

the difficulty hear lies with pinpointing when all this occurred. unlike the blizzard, there are no contextual clues to suggest where this conflict at the great tree may lie in the general timeline, so any conclusions we draw must be based on speculation. the only thing we know for sure is that zhan tiri’s residence in the great tree ended during demanitus’s lifetime, which puts a hard stop in it at about two thousand years ago.

my theory is that zhan tiri corrupted and resided in the great tree long before demanitus’s time. adira calls it her stronghold, and as discussed in the first section, the great tree has the greatest variety and frequency of zhan tiri iconography of any location in the series. one of the symbols inside the great tree is even found thousands of miles away at janus point—the corkscrew-snouted ram’s head—which draws a possible line of influence from the tree to janus point. taken together, all of this suggests a long period of time during which the great tree was zhan tiri’s tree.

and as for when it entered into the conflict between demanitus and zhan tiri, i believe there are two possibilities:

demanitus knew of zhan tiri’s use of the great tree as a fortress, and she allowed him inside while they were collaborating in their search for the drops. she likely hid the violent nature of its defenses from him for a while; then she either let her guard down and allowed him to glimpse more of the truth, or the tree as attacked and he inadvertently witnessed a brutal massacre. either way, this is what clued him in to her ulterior motives, and he crafted the spear to destroy the tree’s magic—and it is this betrayal that zhan tiri references in the plus est flashback when she says “you turned your back on me.”

zhan tiri had been using the great tree as a home for many years without the aggressive kill-anyone-who-enters security measures, allowing it to function as a library or house of research. this may have been how she and demanitus encountered each other in the first place, and would go a long way to explaining why demanitus trusted her initially. it wasn’t until demanitus turned against her and imprisoned her in the lost realm, and her subsequent release by his pupils, that she became enraged and turned the great tree into an indiscriminate killing machine and demanitus forged his magical spear to stop her.

i think both options are equally plausible, and since there isn’t any direct evidence one way or another, this is another case for personal interpretation and preference to really come into play.

so, to sum up...

at some point around two thousand years ago, lord demanitus encountered zhan tiri, and she persuaded him to trust her and work with her to find the mythical sundrop and moonstone. she was most likely just using him the whole time, while he grew to care for her but became so uncomfortable with her violent methods and selfish motivations that he felt he had no choice to imprison her in the lost realm.

his pupils—whom he either once shared with zhan tiri, or gathered after the breakdown of his relationship with zhan tiri—turned against him, and either took her side in the conflict, or successfully freed her from the lost realm. i think the latter explanation(s) fit better with the information we are given.

the blizzard discussed in queen for a day most likely happened after the plus est flashback and her subsequent release by the disciples.

the conflict at the great tree most likely occurred either right before or at some point after the plus est flashback and her subsequent release, but it is plausible to assume that by this point she had been residing in the great tree for a considerable amount of time prior to working with demanitus.

demanitus defeated zhan tiri and her disciples, imprisoned her in the lost realm, imprisoned most if not all of her disciples in the demanitus chamber, destroyed the portal to the lost realm so she couldn’t easily be brought back, and transferred his soul into the immortal body of a monkey so he could spend the next two thousand years as a... watchman of sorts, over the drops, probably with the hope that he could step in to prevent zhan tiri’s release if necessary.

#rta #tts #zhan tiri #demanitus #w h e w

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