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nejibaby · 3 years

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Small Details

Pairings: Neji x Y/N

Summary: Neji was a man of few words, even more so with you, and when he sees you with Naruto in a compromising position, he has troubles expressing himself.

Word Count: 3.2k

A/N: And I finally managed to finish this! It took me so long! Today, I offer you a flustered Neji... 👀 I hope y’all enjoy it because I may or may not have melted after writing this 😚

✨Photo taken from this post by @yul-is-sparkling ✨

Naruto was finally back after two years of training with Jiraiya. Being one of his closest friends, you were excited to meet him and to see for yourself how much he’s grown.

Naturally, you challenged him to a duel the first time you saw him again. It was kind of your thing with Naruto — competing with each other on who’s faster, stronger, better in ninjutsu, anything really. Mainly because Sasuke, who he often referred to as his rival, would rarely indulge him with such things, and you did. You were both competitive like that.

In no time, you were both alone on the training grounds. You could already tell how drastic his improvements were within the start of the battle.

You were in awe at how the Legendary Sannins could bring out the best in their apprentices. But despite not being trained by them, that didn’t mean you were lagging behind.

In those two years when Sasuke seeked Orochimaru for power, Naruto trained under Jiraiya, and Sakura learned from Tsunade, you were the only one in Team 7 who remained under the supervision of Kakashi sensei.

Kakashi sensei may not be a Legendary Sannin, but he was a formidable shinobi — one of the best during his generation even. However, truthfully, he infuriated you at first, not because of how late he always was — you were pretty used to it to the point that you don’t question him anymore about his whereabouts and he stopped coming up with excuses as to why he was late — but because there were times when he was too laidback.

Sure, there were moments when he was hands-on: teaching you different jutsus, lecturing you about certain concepts, informing you on what you should always look out for, drilling your body past exhaustion, and the like. But more often than not he would be saying something like, “Find it out yourself” or “I can’t exactly tell you how” as he leisurely sits on a tree branch while reading the stupid Icha Icha books.

You were dumbfounded and furious at first but when your initial annoyance subsided and you had adjusted to his teaching style, you flourished.

That’s why you could take on Naruto even after his training with Jiraiya.

What started as a serious duel between you and Naruto was reduced to playful banter the longer the fight dragged on. At one point, both of you would just tease each other while throwing kicks and punches halfheartedly.

Both of you had your guards down. That was a mistake on your part, because just as Naruto aimed to kick your face and you bent over backwards to dodge it, you slipped. You lost your footing all because of a rock situated near your right foot.

It was a rookie mistake.

Naruto was quick to notice that you were falling so he immediately grabbed ahold of your hand. The problem was he failed to pull you back up. So you ended up falling down with him. And somehow, he ended up with his arms on the sides of your head so he wouldn’t crush you as you were underneath him.

You were both shocked. You were just blinking at each other. It took awhile for the two of you to gather your bearings. When you did, you both immediately laughed out loud. Naruto moved his body so he was lying next to you as you both continued laughing your hearts out.

“What the hell was that, Naruto?!” You feigned exasperation. “You wouldn’t be able to save a fly if you tried.”

“At least I wasn’t the one making rookie mistakes like that,” Naruto shot back. “Plus I tried to help, that’s what matters.”

You snorted. “Yeah, right. You could’ve at least focused your chakra on your soles so we didn’t fall!”

“And you could’ve paid attention to your surroundings, Y/N!”

You bickered with each other as you stood up and helped Naruto get up. What the two of you didn’t know was that your boyfriend Neji had watched the whole incident.

Neji wasn’t really the type to get jealous. He’s a very understanding boyfriend. He’s aware that you and Naruto have been best friends even before he met you. He even knew about Naruto’s feelings for Sakura. However, any sane person wouldn’t want to see his significant other beneath someone else, right? Granted, it was an accident, but still… It was such a compromising position to find you in.

He made his appearance as you playfully punched Naruto in the gut.

You instantly noticed him approaching. Your smile widened even more at the sight of your boyfriend. “Neji!” You called, skipping your way towards him. You would’ve tackled him in a hug if Naruto wasn’t around.

He maintained his stoic expression as he greeted, “Y/N. Naruto.”

“Oi Neji, it’s been a while,” Naruto waved.

Neji only gave a curt nod in response.

You asked, “What are you doing here, Neji?” but just as you ended your question, the answer immediately clicked on your mind. “Oh my god, I’m sorry I forgot!”

Over your excitement of Naruto’s arrival, you forgot that it was a Tuesday. Tuesdays were your lunch dates and sparring sessions with Neji.

“It’s okay.”

“Hold on.” you told him and then faced Naruto. “Gotta go, Naruto! Bye!” you said as you grabbed Neji’s hand out of habit.

Neji flushed, not exactly expecting your action, but you didn’t notice because it was something that you’re used to doing, although not in the presence of someone else.

“See you later!” Naruto waved.

When Naruto was out of sight, you dropped Neji’s hand unconsciously. “Sorry, I forgot about lunch. What time is it? Have you eaten?” You asked Neji.

He quickly responded and told you he hasn’t eaten anything yet.

“Well then, let’s go. I’m starving.”

Neji and you walked side by side out of the training grounds.

“So…” you started saying.

Neji stared at you. “Hm?”

“How was your day, baby?”

He cleared his throat and looked away almost instantly. Very rarely would one find Neji flustered, but calling him “baby” always worked. He wasn’t quite used to the endearment and every time you addressed him as such with tenderness laced in your voice, he would blush. You use it all the time just to see his cheeks tinted pink. It was a cute sight.

“What’s wrong?” You playfully asked while trying to get into his line of vision.

He refused to meet your gaze until he regained his composure. When he did, he told you — in an impassive manner — what he had done in the morning before he went out looking for you.

Despite his expressionless face and his rather hushed tone, you listened intently to the words he was saying, the smile on your lips never leaving your face. Neji was a man of few words even until now that you were together so you made sure you paid attention every time he spoke, not wanting his words to go to waste.

He wouldn’t admit it to you but he loved that about you. You would remember even the little details of his stories, which in itself was a big deal considering you tend to forget a lot of things. You treasured his words, sentences, thoughts, ideas and plans, and kept them enclosed in your memory.

Neji loved that you focused on him. You made him feel like he was important and worthy, and that he mattered, in a completely different way than the others’ view of him.

The others only saw him as important because he was an asset both to the Hyuga clan and to Konoha. He only mattered to them because he has the strength and ability to protect them.

But you didn’t see him that way. You saw him as his own person — a man with a brilliant mind, a great moral compass, and a heart of gold. This was further confirmed when you told him that if his circumstances were different — if he was not a Hyuga or even a shinobi — you’d still fall in love with him as long as his character remained the same.

He knew you love him, there was no doubt about that. It was known; it was an irrefutable truth, an indisputable fact. But why did seeing you with Naruto trigger his insecurities that you had previously put to rest?

His mind was reeling, but he tried his hardest to be in the moment with you.

The thing was, he might have misread you a little. Because the attention that you gave him wasn’t solely focused on his words. In actuality, it extended to his actions and mannerisms as well.

This was how you knew that there was something that was bothering Neji today.

Unwelcome thoughts swarmed his mind, leading him to absentmindedly reach out to you. He was walking beside you closer than usual, with his hand on your lower back. While there was no doubt that he was listening to you when it was your turn to tell him about your day with Naruto, he had a faraway, vacant look on his face.

You may have missed the presence of a rock a while ago, but you certainly wouldn’t miss these small details about Neji.

These might come across as something normal for other people, but for someone like you who dedicated a lot of time admiring and memorizing every little detail of the certain Hyuga boy, it was easy to tell that something was on his mind from the way he was taking up a portion of your personal space. Almost as if his own restrictions were non-existent.

Normally, it would’ve been easier to confront him about it, but you were a shinobi, and if there’s something you learned from Kakashi sensei, it was that you have to gather more intel before actually making a move.

But you could only think of one way to confirm if there was something bothering your partner, and it was through his hair.

On regular days, Neji wouldn’t allow anyone to touch his hair, including you. But when there was something that was bothering him, or if he had a particularly rough day, he wouldn’t mind it if you threaded your fingers through his hair. In fact, he wouldn’t admit it, but he preferred it if you did that. It was something that calmed him down.

So while you continued telling him how your day went, you subtly angled your body towards him. Then you tentatively reached for the tips of his hair with your hand that was closest to him. You managed to grab a few strands of his hair between your thumb and index finger. You twisted them between your fingers.

You looked up to him to check if he was bothered by it, but it seemed like he didn’t mind at all. This certainly meant that his mind was elsewhere, despite the fact that he was nodding in the right parts of your speech and even correcting you when you used the wrong word to describe something.

You retracted your hand after coming up with your conclusion. You even stopped talking as you were thinking of what could’ve happened for him to be this distracted. Neji didn’t even notice you stopped talking mid sentence.

Somehow this just felt different from the times he was frustrated or anxious before, and quite frankly, you were worried.

By the time you had both placed orders and seated in a random restaurant, you decided to confront your partner. “So, Neji, baby, are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

He choked on nothing after hearing your question. Was he really that easy to read? Or was it easy just because it was you reading him?

He cleared his throat and feigned ignorance, “What are y-you talking about?”

You opted to give him a pointed look instead of a verbal response.

He didn’t stare back, looking anywhere but you. Most times, Neji would face you head on until you conceded; with you, he was comfortable being stubborn and unyielding because it came without repercussions. But today, he wasn’t up for the challenge. And if you looked more closely, he was once again sporting a faint color on his cheeks.

You waited a moment for him to answer, or at least to look back, but it was to no avail. With a sigh, you said, with the softest tone you could muster partnered with a reassuring smile, “Would you let me know when you’re ready, at least?”

Surprisingly, Neji looked at you then. “It’s nothing… It’s just… something silly.”

You gently grabbed a hold of his hand. “Don’t tell me it’s silly, I know it isn’t if it bothers you, baby. You don’t have to tell me now if you aren’t comfortable yet, hmm? Just know I’ll be here to listen to you.” You gave him a genuine smile and a small squeeze to his hand before letting go.

Neji’s eyes hadn’t strayed from then onwards. He had to admit sometimes he would forget how incredibly kindhearted you were, even more so when it came to him. You always made sure he was comfortable. You never forced him into doing or saying things that he wasn’t ready to do or say. You allowed him to make his own decisions and respected them, something that rarely came from being a subordinate of Konoha and a member of the branch family of the Hyuga clan.

Life as a shinobi was sometimes constricting, but you were his breather from all that.

It was your turn to be bashful from his stare. You could feel your face warming up from the unexpected, scrutinizing gaze. “Neji, stop it.”

“What?”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Stop being beautiful, then.”

The words that came out of Neji’s lips startled you. It wasn’t everyday he would actually use words to tell you you’re beautiful. The way he expressed his appreciation to your beauty would come in the form of fluttering kisses or gentle brushes on your body parts — coincidentally, or not, on parts where you feel the most insecure about.

Fortunately for you, the food came at the right moment, since you weren’t exactly sure how to respond to his unexpected compliment. You both ate in silence then, occasionally peeking at each other — almost like how it was when you first started dating each other.

When you were done with lunch, you expected to take the route towards the training grounds like you both usually did, but Neji’s hand has taken solace on your back once again and this time with intent to guide you to a different direction.

You were confused but you followed anyway. “Where are we going?”

“To my place.” A pause. “Is that fine with you?”

“Sure” was all you could say. Admittedly, you were quite tired from the duel you had with Naruto earlier and you didn’t really have enough energy to spar with Neji, considering he never went easy on you.

By the time you had entered his place, he graciously offered his couch to you, as if sensing your exhaustion. You immediately plopped down on his couch after setting aside your footwear by his front door.

“Tired?”

“Very,” you mumbled.

He handed you a glass of water, knowing you weren’t quite fond of tea. He sat down beside you just as you thanked him and sipped on your drink.

Setting aside the glass, you leaned back on the couch, only to be welcomed by Neji’s arms. A small smile automatically crept into your lips from the gesture. You snuggled into him as a reflex.

It was moments like this with Neji that you treasured most. While you enjoyed tagging around with him and the rest of Team Guy on missions, you preferred spending time with him peacefully like this, without the imminent threat of danger looming over your heads. It was rather a rare occurrence, after all, for two shinobis like you both were.

Neji was first to break the comfortable silence. “I saw you with Naruto a while ago.”

“You did? When?” You excitedly asked while trying to pull away from his embrace to look directly to his face. But for some reason, he kept you in place, your cheek pressed to his neck. “Did you see me kick his ass? Like literally.”

“Yes,” he answered flatly. It was a response that sounded so… dry. Usually when you both talked about Naruto, there would be a fondness from his tone. “But… I also saw something else…” he trailed off.

You raked your mind, trying to remember what had happened earlier. Then the memory of falling down flashed on your mind, and suddenly you felt embarrassed for Neji having to witness such a mistake. “Oh no!” You jumped out of his grasp, startling him in the process. “You saw me fall down! That’s so embarrassing!” You covered your face with your palms.

“Well, yes… but—”

You snapped your head at the tone he used. He didn’t sound like he was going to tease you for your mistake, in fact, it kind of sounded like he was worried.

“I’m fine though, if you’re worried,” you offered, assuming he thought you got hurt from the fall.

“I’m glad you are not hurt,” he said. Not long after you noticed him visibly gulping.

You could tell there was something else in his mind, and whatever it was, you had a feeling it might’ve been the thing that was bothering him a while ago. You tried to come up with guesses as to what it could’ve been. As you recalled how the conversation started and considered how he was acting, a plausible answer popped into your mind.

“Are you perhaps… jealous?” You hesitantly asked. He was the first one to initiate this conversation so you were assuming he was ready to talk about it. Despite that though, you didn’t want to force him to talk so you carefully and reluctantly asked him. He was always allowed to drop the topic if he wasn’t comfortable and he knew that.

Neji cleared his throat as soon as the words left your mouth all the while avoiding to meet your eyes once again. “Maybe,” he almost inaudibly said.

You were surprised by his answer. It wasn’t always that Neji got jealous. The only time he was was when a stranger was blatantly hitting on you in front of him while you were on a mission together.

“It did not sit right with me seeing you in an… inappropriate position with someone else.” He explained. The tone he used sounded like the one he used with the Hokage when he was taking responsibility for something that went horribly wrong on a mission.

“Don’t make it sound like it’s wrong,” you said softly as you cupped his face. “You don’t have to feel guilty about feeling jealous. Your feelings are valid.”

The gentleness and warmth in your voice made his heart flutter. If this was a conversation with someone else, he was sure he was going to get teased for feeling this way, but it was with you, and you had always been different.

“I love you, Neji,” you said before you kissed his lips.

It was amazing how the three words you used that preceded his name could easily wipe out the jealousy that had brewed inside him. This was another testament of how well you knew Neji — not only did you know the small details about him, but you also know the right words to ease his worries.

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cockroachmotherfucker10 · 4 years

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PRIDEFALL UPDATE: real or fake?

What is Pridefall?

Operation Pridefall, also known as Project Pridefall or simply Pridefall, refers to an attack planned by /pol/ (a political discussion board on the anonymous website 4chan) for all of June, AKA Pride month. The original 4chan thread, which has since been deleted, was primarily focused on “redpilling,” i.e. spreading queerphobic propaganda to make people question the LGBTQ+ community. However, now that it has spread outside 4chan, there are threats of harassing, doxxing, and outing queer people (especially minors) on social media, spamming gore and rape videos in private messages and Pride tags, and even kidnapping, assaulting, or killing queer people in real life.

Specific targets include Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and dating apps. The goal is to go after smaller accounts so the queerphobia isn’t lost in the comments.

Is Pridefall real?

Yes and no.

I searched “pridefall” on 4chan last night. Apparently any new threads on it are being deleted, and anytime someone mentions it, everyone calls them slurs and says no one is doing it.

However, Pridefall is gaining some traction on Instagram--I have seen it for myself. I don’t have TikTok or any dating apps, but I’ve heard that some people are spamming homophobia on TikTok. As for Twitter, I only looked briefly, but I saw some Pridefall accounts there, as well as a lot of warnings and blocklists from people who are worried about it.

I’ve also heard that there have been a few Reddit and Discord raids, and that there is an Operation Pridefall Discord server (someone who spied on them says they have been banned on Discord as well as a platform called Riot before, so very few people are left on the Discord server now).

What do you think, Lia?

This is not coming from 4chan. No one on 4chan is interested anymore.

Most likely, people outside of 4chan heard about it and decided to take matters into their own hands.

The original 4chan thread wanted to make Pridefall “normie-palatable” by avoiding Nazi imagery or other overt unpleasantness, but I have seen a LOT of both on Instagram. This reinforces my belief that 4chan isn’t doing this.

A lot of the people behind this are young, or at least unsophisticated. Most of the Pridefall accounts on Instagram engage in very childish trolling, and one of them said they were a minor. Some of the threats I’ve seen are so outlandish that I can only imagine they came from a fairly young person.

My guess? Most of these people are around 13-19.

There are also very few of them and some of them probably have multiple accounts. Anti-Pridefall accounts outnumber them by far.

However, on Instagram I’ve seen Pridefall accounts following each other and commenting on each other’s posts, so there may be a few groups working together.

A lot of this shit is going to get deleted. I know Instagram is working through reports very slowly right now because they have fewer people available due to COVID-19, but most of the worst accounts I saw last night were deleted by this morning. I saw some more accounts deleted today.

Most, if not all, of these Pridefallers are just trying to scare us. Because they’re probably quite young, there’s very few of them, their accounts keep getting deleted, and law enforcement can track online activity, there is no way they have the balls or resources needed to coordinate major attacks.

There is a very, very slight chance this could spill over into real life, but as long as you practice basic online safety, you will be fine.

That being said, if you are threatened or doxxed by a Pridefall account, PLEASE contact the police. Better safe than sorry.

I do think that the threat of being doxxed or outed is more real than the threat of being attacked. I have already seen one Pridefall account who posted a trans boy’s address on Instagram (he is okay, he posted recently) and another who posted someone else’s address.

There is little chance this will last throughout Pride month. Apparently the goal is for Pridefall to worsen until the end of June, but given that this is most likely just some vastly outnumbered teenage trolls who are bored in quarantine, I seriously doubt they’ll be able to stay interested for a whole month.

This might not be as big on Tumblr. Tumblr is a lot more anonymous than, say, Instagram, which will hopefully deter would-be doxxers. It’s also known to be a highly liberal and queer-friendly site, so any Pridefaller with half a brain cell should know that A) their content is sure to be outnumbered and reported (only us Tumblr users know how bad staff is at deleting questionable stuff), and B) anyone with the original goal of “redpilling” is sure to fail here. Plus, I only remember seeing few, if any, mentions of Tumblr on Pridefall planning threads.

Still, expect to see some Pridefall activity here. Unsurprisingly, not all of these Pridefallers have half a brain cell. Some of them will definitely be unable to resist the lure of a community as openly queer as Tumblr, and we’ve all seen or heard about doxxing, harassment, gore, Nazis, and queerphobes on here. Also, 4chan has historically had some beef with Tumblr, so young teenage boys who idolize 4chan may target us for that reason.

How can I stay safe?

If you have any social media accounts where you A) have posted identifying personal information, and B) are openly supportive of the LGBTQ+ community (especially if you’re queer yourself), put them on private for June. Any other accounts are probably fine to stay public.

If you need a private Tumblr, you can make a password-protected secondary account and only share the password with mutuals you trust.

It is probably okay to be openly queer on a private account (e.g. have pronouns/rainbow emojis in your Instagram bio), since a private account is not likely to be doxxed. But if you want to be extra careful, remove queer identifiers from anything that is publicly visible.

Use Pridefall blocklists. They’re all over Instagram and Twitter. I may repost some here.

Report any Pridefall accounts you see. This is VERY important because this is how we can actually get rid of Pridefall content.

DON’T RESPOND TO ANY PRIDEFALLERS WHO PERSONALLY INTERACT WITH YOU. I know it’s tempting to give a snarky reply, but if they message you, comment on your post, etc, just block them. Seriously, don’t feed the trolls. It's exactly what they want.

Make sure your password game is strong. Use a different password for every site (I know, I know, it sucks), and use passwordmeter.com to test their strength. Write them all down on a piece of paper.

Make sure your username game is strong. Don’t use the same username for multiple sites, and avoid putting personal information in your username, such as your name or birthday.

Do NOT open random links!! Pridefallers could message you links that will give you viruses or track your IP address.

Don’t accept DMs or follows from people you don’t know. Pridefall accounts don’t always look like Pridefall accounts. Some of them are undercover.

Use a VPN. This is probably a little overkill unless you’re particularly at risk of being doxxed, but it will hide your IP address.

Be careful who you interact with. A lot of queer people on Instagram are DMing Pridefall accounts or commenting on their posts, but this could make you a target. As helpful as anti-Pridefall accounts are, you might even be targeted for following those.

Be wary of Pride tags. Unfortunately, a lot of Pridefall accounts plan to infiltrate tags commonly used by queer creators during Pride month. Use discretion when looking for queer content.

Be safe IRL. Lock your doors, lock your windows, be aware of your surroundings, don’t walk alone in poorly lit places, know basic self-defense, etc. Again, I absolutely do not think people will be attacked in real life, but you should be doing this shit all the time, not just in June. Thanks to COVID-19, you’re safer inside anyway!!

Make yourself hard to dox. Even though I have a very unusual first name (it's not really Lia), I am extremely hard to find online. I just went into an incognito browser window and searched my first and last name in quotation marks, but I didn’t find myself until page 4 of Google (and that result wasn’t even posted by me). I’m only half as careful as I could be, but here’s some of the things I do:

-I never use a picture of myself as my profile pic, except for Facebook and Instagram, which are both on the highest privacy settings possible.

-If I post identifying information on a public account (my college, my age, etc), I use a pseudonym or my first name only.

-On Instagram, I only use my first name, and I used special characters to type it, so you won’t find me if you search my name.

-On Facebook, I only accept friend requests from people I know. Most, if not all, of my Instagram followers are IRL friends, friends of IRL friends, and trusted Internet friends.

-If I’m really being paranoid, I’ll make a brand-new email account to sign up for a site. That way, my accounts aren’t all linked through one email address.

-Before I post a picture online, I delete the EXIF data with verexif.com, since EXIF data can hold GPS coordinates.

🌈 Stay safe, everyone.

You will not be harmed. You will be okay. Like cockroaches, we are survivors, and we will get through this!! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

-Mod Lia

#mod lia #og post #og post cmf #pridefall #operation pridefall #pride fall #pride #pride month #lgbt #lgbtq #gay #safety #psa #please reblog #pride 2020 #lgbtqia #lgbt pride

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rax-writes · 3 years

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Family Man

Fandom: MCU Pairing: Baron Helmut Zemo x OC [basically a reader insert, because the OC’s physical description isn’t addressed or anything, she just has a name] Warnings: None Notes: A Sokovian woman named Irina Molnár was born with the ability to teleport, and in time, she encounters the only man to gain her trust enough to show him. It just so happens that the man in question is the criminal mastermind Helmut Zemo. // So, as I said, it’s an OC but still basically a reader insert; don’t let the OC part deter you if you prefer x reader fics. It just worked better for me on the writing end to use a name, and I have an aversion to using “Y/N,” so I just threw in a pretty name. // TL;DR: Zemo as a dad just kills me & I wanted him to get a second chance at a family.

“I will assist you to the utmost of my ability, on one condition.”

“You’re in no position to be making demands, Zemo.”

“This is both for my own benefit, and yours, I assure you.”

If someone had asked Irina ten years ago where she thought she’d be at this point in life, her answer would have been incredibly far from accurate, for nothing could have predicted the path her life took.

Not that her life had been normal to begin with, being that she was born with the ability to teleport. Sokovia was not exactly a progressive country in the late 1980’s, so her parents had endlessly instructed her to conceal her ability, warning her of the countless dangers of her power being known to others. Her parents were so protective of her that when she teleported as a reflex at age thirteen, after walking along the sidewalk of main street in Novi Grad and a driver fell asleep at the wheel and headed straight for her, they packed up and moved to Russia in the middle of the night. Yet again, the same thing happened at age eighteen, when she was caught up in a hostage situation in a bank and the perpetrator caught her calling the police. Just as he aimed his gun at her and pulled the trigger, she disappeared. Irina and her parents fled to Germany in the dead of night less than twenty-four hours later, and she knew then that she needed to suppress her powers no matter what, being that her father was elderly, and her mother was too ill for them to ever travel again.

So, Irina settled into a normal life in Munich. She worked various odd jobs over the years to support her parents, made and lost a few friends, dated here and there. Her father passed when she was twenty-two, and two years later, her mother joined him. When living in the house where both her parents passed in their sleep became too unbearable, she packed up and moved to Berlin, getting a job at a high-security prison there. Less than a year after she began working there, a newcomer arrived: an inmate by the name of Helmut Zemo.

Being that he knew so much about HYDRA, from his extensive research on them, the American organization SHIELD wished to know more about them. A few psychiatrists and some professional interrogators tried for the first couple months, but they got nothing – quite literally, as he refused to utter a single word to any of them. Irina’s boss knew that she was Sokovian just like Zemo, so she was asked to extract any and all valuable information she could from the new prisoner.

Zemo was an intimidating man; calm, cool, and collected at all times, with eyes like a hawk that bore into Irina’s very soul each time he looked at her. She spent two months talking with him every other day, trying anything and everything she could to get him to talk, but he remained silent. At first, she tried asking him questions outright, but he wouldn’t ever say a word – just stare at her with those cold, calculating eyes. So, Irina changed her approach; they would chat idly in Sokovian to build rapport via their shared mother tongue, or she would ramble about her day, what book she was currently reading, her favorite movies, dates she went on. Those topics got him talking, chatting with her about the miscellaneous subjects she brought up, and both she and her supervisors took it as a good sign. She found that they shared similarities in terms of the loss of their families, and how the destruction of Sokovia hurt them both. Despite how frequently they spoke, he still never revealed anything of importance. After two months, her boss had a few interrogation experts give her some training, so she tried their tactics for another month, but she still got nowhere with him.

Three months after Irina began trying to get intel from Zemo, she sat down in the chair outside his cell, and huffed out a sigh.

“I’m afraid this will be my last visit, Zemo.”

“Why?” His voice held surprise, and a tinge of sadness.

“As you know, they assigned me to visit you for the sake of getting information from you. I’ve been consistently empty-handed over the past four months, so they’re giving up, assigning me back to regular patrol duty.”

“Will I still see you?”

“No. They’re moving me to the women’s side of the prison next week.”

Zemo simply stared at the ground in silence, hands clasped in his lap. Irina allowed the silence to linger for several minutes, then pulled something from her bag, unlocked the small opening on the side of his cell where guards gave him meals, slid the item through, and locked it shut again. He eyed it for a moment before standing and retrieving it, sitting back down on the bed as he looked at it.

“It’s that book I told you about last month, the one you said sounded interesting. Consider it a parting gift.”

He still said nothing, gaze locked on the book cover. Irina cleared her throat and stood, putting her bag on her shoulder as she looked to Zemo one last time.

“It has been nice getting to know you, Zemo. Take care of yourself.”

As Irina pulled open the door to leave, Zemo’s voice called out, “Wait!” She turned to face him and found that he was standing, clenching and unclenching his jaw as if he were thinking, before stating, “Tell your superiors that I will give them one piece of information on HYDRA every two months if you will have lunch with me twice each week.”

Irina’s brows raised in surprise, but she nodded in understanding. “I’ll pass the message along, Zemo.”

“Please… call me Helmut.”

The higher-ups were more than happy to agree to his terms, as long as Irina was okay with them as well, since it involved her. But she wasn't stupid. She told them that it felt like quite an undertaking to agree to such a thing, she had been considering looking for another job in the near future, etcetera. Naturally, they offered to double her pay to persuade her to commit to the arrangement, and it was then that she agreed. In truth, it was no skin off Irina’s nose to do it in the first place. As deranged as it was, Zemo had become her friend, her only friend, and she quite enjoyed talking with him. And even more deranged – bordering psychotic, really – she had developed a bit of a crush on him, finding him to be dangerously handsome and intelligent, so she certainly had no quarrels with agreeing to spend time with him.

Time seemed to fly when Irina began her twice weekly visits to Zemo. She found herself eagerly awaiting their lunches, and she always stayed longer than necessary. She would have rather eaten glass than admit it, but she frequently put a bit more effort into her hair and makeup on the days she would be seeing him.

God, I’m fucking pathetic, Irina thought to herself at least once a week, and yet it never stopped her.

It was another few months later when he said something that made her stomach drop to the pits of hell, and a cold sweat to break out on her skin.

“I know who you are, you know. I have since you first introduced yourself. Irina Molnár, the disappearing girl – at least, that’s what the headlines called you. I remember reading about it when I was a teenager, but the story was forgotten within a week.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Irina replied, but Zemo could hear the quiver in her voice.

“My apologies, I did not mean to make you uncomfortable. I have no intention of mentioning it to anyone besides you. I have simply been wondering… were the rumors true? Can you really just disappear into thin air?”

When Irina hesitated, he added, “Irina, no one would believe me if I told them, and even if they did, they would have no way to prove it. Besides, we have been acquainted for nearly a year now. You are my only solace in this living hell. I would have gone mad had you not came into my life. I would never do anything to risk you harm.”

She exhaled slowly, and looked at the ground when she said, “It’s not ‘disappearing.’ It’s teleporting.”

Zemo leaned forward in his seat, visibly invested in her confession.

“I’ve been able to do it since I was four. Scared my parents half to death when I suddenly appeared before their eyes, having been across the house mere seconds before. I learned to control it pretty quickly, but that day in Sokovia… I was only ten years old, and a car was coming right at me, full speed, so I panicked. I teleported home right before it crushed me, and it would have been a non-issue if my classmate hadn’t been a few feet away and saw the whole thing. He ran his mouth to the press about my identity, so we had to leave.”

“That was why you moved to Russia, not because your father got a job there,” Zemo realized, remembering when you initially told him about your move and falsified the reasoning.

“Yes. It happened again there, when someone shot at me. No one who was around at the time knew my name, so it never made it to the press, but my parents were overly cautious, so we fled to Germany. I’ve not done it since, besides in the comfort of my own home.”

“Show me.”

“You say stupid things for such a brilliant man, Helmut,” Irina said, nodding toward the camera in the corner of the room.

“After you get home tonight, teleport into my cell.”

“Did you miss what I said about the camera, or…?”

“The camera does not have a view of my bed. It only reaches the middle of my cell, not the very back of it where the bed is,” Zemo pointed out, and Irina realized that he was right. She had been in the camera room several times; the camera there did indeed only show the room and half of his cell, never the bed.

“I’ll think about it.”

Zemo smiled brightly, looking excited, like a little kid about to see a magic trick. That alone was enough to motivate Irina to do it, just for the opportunity to see that smile again. So, when she got home that night, she changed into a flowy, deep green sundress, touched up her makeup and hair, strapped on a nice pair of sandals, and then stood in her living room, hyping herself up to take such a risk.

There was a chance that she would get caught. Teleporting in front of anyone was always a risk, no matter what, her parents had always told her. But then that damned, dashing smile crossed Irina's mind, and before she had time to second-guess herself, she was standing at the foot of Zemo’s bed.

The book he’d been reading flew out of his hands as he practically jumped out of his skin, falling to the ground with a loud whack, and he pressed a palm to his chest as he tried to calm his erratic breathing.

“We really should have scheduled a specific time for your arrival,” he muttered, and Irina laughed softly. Thankfully, the cameras had no sound, but if a guard were passing by outside, they may have heard her. When he caught his breath a moment later, Zemo sat up in the bed, letting his legs hang off the edge as he patted the spot beside him. Irina took a seat, crossing her legs and leaning back on her hands.

“So, you were telling the truth. You can actually teleport,” Zemo observed, eyeing her with amusement and interest before he bombarded her with questions. “Can you teleport anywhere in the world? Are there parameters for your distance or location? How long does it take you to travel from one place to another? What does it feel like?”

“I can teleport anywhere I’ve been to or seen photographs of. I cannot do it blindly. The distance nor location does not matter, as long as I have seen my destination before. And it feels like… a slight tingling sensation, all over my body, but it only lasts until I arrive, which takes about a half second.”

“Fascinating,” Zemo whispered. He licked his lips before asking, “Are you capable of teleporting another individual along with you?”

Irina frowned at him. “I’m not breaking you out of prison, Helmut.”

“I didn’t ask that.”

“No, but you were alluding to it,” she countered, and he shrugged. “I can teleport another individual, but only over small distances. Each time I’ve tried, the most distance I’ve gotten with another person has been about ten yards.”

“Perhaps with practice, you could go further.”

“I practiced for years, and ten yards seems to be the true limit. Besides, the only others who have ever known about my ability were my parents, and since they’re gone, I have no test subjects.”

Zemo nodded solemnly, then asked, “What about teleporting repeatedly, in ten yard increments?”

“Tried that. Can only do it about three times before I’m too drained to do it again. Teleporting back-to-back with another person takes a lot of energy,” Irina answered, then added, “And again, even if I could, I am not breaking you out.”

“I am merely interested in your mutation, that is all,” Zemo retorted. Irina shot him a look that said ‘Really?’ so he relented with, “Perhaps also because I wanted to know if you could break me out, but that’s neither here nor there.”

"That's what I thought."

It was another month before either party made a move. They were sitting on Zemo’s bed, side by side, as Irina told him about her day at work, and the man who'd tried hitting on her in the grocery store earlier that evening.

"He thought he was very Rico Suave, but his execution was a nightmare."

"How so?"

"Well, for starters, he followed me around for nearly ten minutes while he worked up the courage to say something. He waited until I walked past him and greeted me with 'Hey, sexy lady.'"

"Oh no," Zemo said, grinning as he looked genuinely amused at this man's poor tactics, although his amusement was contingent upon whether or not Irina was actually interested in him. The way she poked fun at the man indicated a lack of interest, therefore, he was enjoying her tale.

"Oh yes. He then asked if it hurt when I fell from heaven, which is the most overused line in the book, yet he said it with such confidence. And then – get this – he leaned onto what he thought was a shelf, but it was actually a stacked display of cans, which toppled over and sent a hundred soup cans flying down the aisle."

Zemo chuckled, prompting Irina to continue.

"He played it off by saying that my beauty is just so distracting that he didn't even realize what he was doing, and then asked for my phone number."

"Did you give it to him?"

"Absolutely not," Irina said, laughing softly and shaking her head. Zemo was momentarily entranced by the way her beautiful hair fell around her face, and the sound of her laugh.

"Why not?"

"Not my type."

"What is your ‘type’?"

Irina leaned back on the wall behind her, looking up at the ceiling as she thought carefully. "Confidence, but not cockiness. Intelligence. Wit. Sarcastic senses of humor. Men with a sense of passion to them; some kind of fire and gusto about something, whether it be their work, art, music." She looked over at Zemo then, and allowed her gaze to travel slowly up and down his form. "Currently, my type seems to be men I can't have."

Zemo eyed her carefully, allowing himself to absorb her words fully for several moments. She was describing him – he just knew it. Or, he was too blinded by hopefulness and desire to realize that she wasn’t, but he figured there was only one way to find out. So, he leaned forward, closing the gap between them, and pressed his lips to hers.

Irina hesitated for half a second, surprised by his actions, but she recovered quickly and kissed him back. It was gentle, sweet, and explorative, both parties simply enjoying it while it lasts. Neither had any idea how long it lasted, as time stood still. Zemo was the first to pull away, eyes scanning Irina’s face as he looked at her with sheer adoration, as well as a touch of nervousness.

"I understand if you wish for me to never do that again, and I understand if you'd prefer to never see me again. But please know that I did not do that out of blind lust, or anything other fleeting emotion. I did it because my heart has yearned for you every day since first meeting you, and finally having you here next to me, where I can touch you… it was genuinely unbearable to hold myself back from kissing you. I have not felt anything like this since losing my wife, and I did not think my heart was capable of ever feeling it again. But you proved me wrong. I know I am risking an end to the only true human contact I have while trapped inside this cell, which truly frightens me, but the unyielding desire to tell you that I love you overpowers that fear."

Irina stared at him in shock for a few moments, before leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes. She exhaled slowly as she collected her thoughts before speaking. "Helmut… I love you, too, but I don't know how this would even work. You're never getting out of here. How can we have any kind of relationship when you're locked in a cell for the rest of your days?"

"We will make it work, my darling," Zemo said, sitting up straighter and turning to face her. "I will ensure that we mimic a true relationship as much as possible. I cannot wine and dine you as I would like to do, but I can easily bribe the guards to have lavish meals brought here for us to share on evenings such as these. I cannot take you out for birthdays or anniversaries, but I will ensure that you are showered with gifts on those days. My angel, I cannot give you a normal life, but I can promise to endlessly strive to make you happy."

Irina stared deeply into his eyes for what felt like an eternity, and she saw nothing but genuity, longing, and adoration there. She could feel the sincerity in his words, feel how desperately he wished for her to agree to his proposal. She was no fool; she knew that their relationship would be a struggle, and she knew that it would never be any resemblance of normal. But she also knew that he made her heart soar in a way no other man ever had, and that she would die feeling like she missed out on something incredible if she walked away from Zemo now.

“Okay,” Irina whispered, mostly to herself, before repeating it in a stronger, more self-assured voice. “Okay.”

For a man who always knew what to say, Zemo was at a loss for words, overcome with joy. He simply cupped her cheek and kissed her, far more passionately than before, allowing his triumphant and ecstatic feeling to flow through the kiss. Irina gripped the front of his sweatshirt in her fists, melting into him, before wrapping her arms around his neck as his free hand moved to rest on the curve of her waist.

Ages had passed by the time they broke apart, foreheads resting against each other as they fought to catch their breaths. Irina was the first to break the comfortable silence they created, laughing quietly in disbelief at the events that had just transpired. Zemo followed suit, a deep, velvety chuckle bubbling up from his chest. He pressed another kiss to her lips before leaning back and looking at her. They gazed at each other in sheer contented bliss for a few moments more, before Irina became the first to speak.

“I love you, Helmut.”

“And I love you, darling.”

---------------

The sound of the front door opening caused Irina to immediately look up from the book she'd been reading. She frowned, then stood and headed for the door as quickly as possible, calling out, "Nikolai! You know better than to open that door, young man!" When she reached the entryway, she stopped dead in her tracks.

There stood Helmut, wearing the softest, sweetest smile she'd ever seen as he opened his arms to her. She hesitated a moment, unsure whether or not it was real, before he murmured, "Hello, my love." His voice – that alluring raspy undertone, and the gentleness it took on as he spoke to her – broke Irina from her trance, and she ran to him and into his arms, careful of her rounded belly.

Zemo stroked her hair and held her, and her arms around his neck gripped him like a vice, to the point that it hurt a little, but he'd never tell her that. A small sob fell from Irina's lips before she even realized she'd started crying, and he whispered sweet nothings in her ear in Sokovian to soothe her, about how much he loved her and how happy he was to see her. When her crying quieted down a bit, he pulled away to kiss her, a kiss full of love and longing. When he broke the kiss a few moments later, she stroked his cheek lovingly, and he wiped the stray tears from her eyes.

"How are you here? What happened?" Irina asked, and only then did she notice the two men standing awkwardly by the doorway, their faces a mixture of suspicion and surprise. "Who are they?"

"They are the men who helped me escape. James was previously known as the Winter Soldier, and Sam is currently known as the Falcon, an Avenger."

Irina raised an eyebrow at him. "But… you… the Avengers… the Winter Soldier…."

"I know, I know. I am just as surprised as you are, but they need me for something, something very important."

"The Flag Smashers? I saw them on the news. They have Super Soldiers somehow."

"Yes, darling, exactly right. We'll find them, defeat them, and I'll be back before you know it."

Irina understood the implication of his words. He'd be back, but whether that would be in her home or in his cell was yet to be determined. But she knew him. She knew that he would not take his newfound freedom as a one-time opportunity. A storm of thoughts about what that would mean for them flashed through her mind, but Zemo’s hands on her stomach snapped her out of it.

"How is our daughter?" he asked, gently rubbing Irina’s baby bump, a bright smile blooming when the child inside kicked at his hands, as she always did. She had only been in existence for seven months, and she wasn't even born yet, but she already favored him over her mother.

"She's good, she's been moving around a lot today, as if she knew her Daddy was coming," Irina replied, earning a grin from Zemo. "The doctors told me this morning that her heartbeat is strong and she appears to be the picture of health."

"Good, good. And what about –"

"DADDY!" a tiny voice bellowed from down the hall, and they turned to see a small boy running full speed toward Zemo. Irina stepped back to allow him a clear passageway, smiling as Helmut crouched down to meet him, enveloping the boy in an embrace as he collided with his father's chest.

"Nikolai, I've missed you," Zemo stated, rubbing the boy's back as he stood, still holding his son. Irina caught the way her husband's voice wavered when he said that, and she laid a comforting hand on his back.

"I've missed you too, Daddy. Are you living with me and Mommy now?" Nikolai asked, leaning back in his father's arms to gaze at him with excitement plain on his face. Zemo gave him a smile, but Irina could see the sadness in it, knowing the future was uncertain.

"Not quite, buddy. Just here for a visit," Zemo replied, and Irina rubbed his back comfortingly before pressing a kiss to their son's temple.

Their family time was interrupted by Sam clearing his throat loudly, and when Zemo turned to face him, his smile faded.

"Sorry to interrupt, but Zemo, you've got some explaining to do, and not much time to do it. Don't forget we're on borrowed time here."

"Right," Zemo confirmed, then exhaled slowly. "James, Sam, this is my wife Irina and our son Nikolai…. He is five, and Irina is seven months along."

Confusion washed over both men's faces, and they exchanged a glance before the other, James, was the first to speak.

"But… you've been in prison for eight years. Have you been escaping every few years and no one's noticed?"

"I have not left my cell in eight years, consecutively. But my wife is capable of getting into my cell as often as we wish."

"So, what? You've just been having conjugal visits all the damn time? And the prison staff green-lit that?" Sam asked.

"No, not exactly," Zemo answered, then glanced at Irina. They shared a look before she explained further.

"I can teleport. I met Helmut when I was tasked with extrapolating information about HYDRA from him, and he refused to share anything unless the prison staff agreed to let him meet with me twice a week, just to chat, in which case he'd give them tidbits of information bi-monthly. They agreed, and before long, I revealed my ability to him. I'd visit him in his cell occasionally, because the cameras only show half of it. Over time, well… we fell in love. Nikolai came a few years later, and now…" Irina trailed off, then rubbed a hand over her pregnant belly.

"Why didn't you ever bust him out?" James asked.

"I can only teleport small distances with another person, and I can only do it twice at the most, so we'd have never made it off the grounds."

James and Sam were silent for a moment, absorbing the information they'd been given. Sam was the first to break the silence.

"Zemo, you said this little pitstop would benefit me and Bucky. But it's not like she can go with us," he said, sounding a bit irritated as he gestured towards Irina’s stomach. "So what the hell was the point?"

"It does benefit you. You now possess the knowledge that a teleporter exists. Congratulations," Zemo said dryly, then looked at his wife and son for a moment, before returning his attention to the men. "Sam, the point was that I lost my family when Sokovia was destroyed, and the family I have now has only ever seen me inside a prison cell. I wanted my son to have at least one memory of his father in his home with him."

James – no, Bucky, apparently – and Sam exchanged a look, before Bucky sighed and looked to Zemo.

"You have one hour. Sam and I will be guarding the exits, so don't try to escape. If you do…." He trailed off after glancing at Nikolai. "Let's just say it won't be pretty."

True to their word, Sam and Bucky remained stationed outside the home, one out front and one out back. Zemo milked that hour as much as possible, spending most of it in his son’s room with him and Irina, listening intently to Nikolai tell him all about what’s been going on at school, his favorite shows, the trip he took to the zoo the day before with Irina, etc.. He even told Zemo about each and every one of his toys, simply enjoying talking to his dad, and although Zemo was the one to send almost every one to him, therefore he already knew about them, he didn’t mention that. He simply listened intently as his son spoke, enjoying the quality time with him, exchanging smiles and occasional kisses with Irina. She showed him the nursery she’d been working on for their daughter, and he finished putting together the crib she’d started, Nikolai happily handing him parts and screws as needed. Zemo also moved the dresser and changing table to where she’d wanted them but couldn’t move them herself, then they settled into the living room shortly before the hour was up.

Sam and Bucky reentered the house to find the family sitting around the coffee table, playing a game of Jenga. They stood silently in the doorway to the living room, watching as Nikolai carefully drew a block from the tower before placing it back on the top with a triumphant look on his little face. Zemo commended his concentration, then drew a block himself, although he intentionally wiggled it a little so that the tower came toppling down.

“I won! Daddy, I won!”

“Yes, you did, my son. Excellent job,” Zemo said warmly, then glanced at Sam and Bucky before scooping the boy up into a tight hug. “Daddy has to go now, but I will see you again soon.”

“Do you have to go?”

“I’m afraid so. But I need you to promise me something before I leave. Take care of your mom for me, will you?”

“I will, I promise.”

“Good boy,” Zemo said with a smile, then kissed Nikolai’s forehead and set him down. Zemo stood and helped Irina stand up, hugging her tightly as he buried his face into her neck. Quietly, so that no one but her could hear, he said, “I will not be going back to prison unless there is no other way, but know that yours and our children’s safety is my utmost concern.”

“I know, Helmut,” Irina whispered back, and he pressed a long, lingering kiss to her lips. “I love you.”

“I love you, my angel,” Zemo murmured against her lips, then stooped down to hug his son again. “And I love you, Nikolai.”

“I love you, too, Daddy,” the boy responded, and the way his voice quivered as he choked back tears broke his parents’ hearts into a million pieces. Reluctantly, Zemo let him go and he wrapped his arms around his mother’s leg, resting his head against her as he sniffled and she rubbed his back.

“Be safe, sweetheart,” Irina commanded.

Zemo nodded to her before walking over to join Sam and Bucky. With one last heartbroken look at his family, he left, closing the door behind him as he let out a shaky breath. He didn’t meet the other men’s eyes as he walked over to the car, and after they all piled in, they drove in silence to the airport, off to their next stop in Madripoor.

---------------

@henrysmorgan @clints-lucky-arrow @therenlover

#apologies to therenlover if you dislike being tagged; you mentioned some dad!Zemo stuff recently so it made me think to tag you #if you'd rather not be tagged in anything just let me know; i won't be at all offended!#also the same goes for you Mack #Chase you don't get a choice bc you catalyzed my love for Zemo + you're my best friend so you are obligated to deal with me #zemo #helmut zemo #baron helmut zemo #zemo x reader #zemo fan fiction #zemo fan fic #zemo fanfic #zemo fanfiction #baron zemo #baron zemo x reader #baron zemo fan fiction #baron zemo fan fic #baron zemo fanfiction #baron zemo fanfic #baron zemo fic #baron helmut zemo x reader #baron helmut zemo fan fiction #baron helmut zemo fan fic #baron helmut zemo fanfiction #baron helmut zemo fanfic #baron helmut zemo fic #helmut zemo fanfiction #helmut zemo x reader #helmut zemo fan fiction #helmut zemo fanfic #helmut zemo fan fic

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popurikat · 3 years

Text

Trying to make sense of parts of Future (Mystery Skulls)

Since my last analysis went so well I thought I’d make this post as well, especially because Future really did confuse me and I know others might be lost as well; so lets discuss this together! It will be lengthy as I am basically spewing my thoughts out right on the videos immediate release date (there will be a read more option after my first thought to avoid long positng). Well first things first, I wanna address that I've been curious about what kind of spirit Arthur's arm could be (since I am not too well acquainted with any canon on its background part at least) and I think I have concluded that the closest thing to it could be is a Tenome; which is a Yochai that possesses a man's body and moves the eyes to the palms. "found lurking in cemeteries, hands outstretched, as if he has only recently lost his vision and is searching for something. Get close enough, and you’ll find out in quick succession that a) he’s not blind, but looking with eyes embedded in his hands, and b) what he’s looking for is a snack." (fyi, most of my mythos information is coming from Wiki just as a heads up)

And sure enough he found a great source for his hunger. Something he has been EYEING since the start. Which now leads me to my next points on the video...

At first watch I was convinced that each strand found on Mystery’s heart represented a singular soul bond, I thought that blue was for Vivi, Green was for the hand, pink for Lewis, purple for Shiro, Yellow for Lance, Orange for Arthur, and black and white were unknown. Which, didn’t settle right for me. SO I went in and re-watched the clip a couple more times and saw this:

Vivi’s (blue created after she got hurt) and Shiro’s (white created after she died) strands were connected to the strands located next to them. A start and an end. Mystery’s promise to Vivi to stay at her side for generations as he was spared upon prior defeat of Mushi. And then of course we have the promise of power and sustenance for Shrio as they held a symbiotic relationship for most of their lives that was only severed due to an interference. These double strands of fate are especially clearer in the scene with Shiro in Future. As the black strand gets clearer the more she gets injured or emotionally hurt, it eventually leads to the leak of the white strand on her death. Meaning; Black/white=Shiro; Purple/Pink=Lewis; Blue/Green: Vivi; and Orange/Yellow: Arthur. And why am I inclined to believe Lewis and Arthur are apart of Mystery’s heart? Well that's because those two were the only ones fully streaming before Vivi’s and Shiro’s appeared. We know that Arthur lost an arm to Mystery and discovered his identity (ergo losing most of his trust in him) insinuating both strands to arise early on of his color scheme, as well as with Lewis’ death occurring under the protection of Mystery when they were grouped and having his soul go restless/ in pain. It wouldn’t make sense to add family members or side characters not included in the mainline story to this grouping unless they would play an important role in the finale, which isn’t likely since we have only one more video left as Ben stated it was going to be a 5 video series. I am also inclined to believe each person has two strands because of Kitsune lore: “ Kitsune keep their promises and strive to repay any favor. Occasionally a kitsune attaches itself to a person or household. They follow their word of honor. They become self-destructive if they break a promise, and when someone else breaks a promise, they become deadly enemies.” Plus, It would make sense as to why in this short battle Mystery sprouted his last 3 tails when it came to Vivi and Shiro and how their connections affect his power. (more on this in a bit) But, furthermore; if anyone else notices, the Band-Aids on the heart are also remotely located on the sections of Vivi’s and Shiro’s strands specifically because for both, Mystery has vowed to protect them and has failed.

Now then lets talk about a few things on Mystery’s ultimate form shall we? The final form of a Kitsune, its celestial form as shown here is called a Tenko. (yes I am aware of the Kumiho, but that is a fully evil, flesh eating, 9 tailed fox that specialize in illusions and well Mystery has never been portrayed as human). The Tenko makes even more sense when taken into consideration that Mystery’s third eye (typically a form of wisdom connected to overpowering the mortality of ones self) opens. So how was this done in such a short amount of time? “Kitsune do not accept aid from those who are not willing. they do not ask for help, and as such, most aid must come from another's initiative. Kitsune are emotional and very vengeful. Kitsune will lose their temper at the slightest provocation. Once someone has earned a kitsune's enmity, the kitsune will begin enacting revenge that can become quite extreme. On the other hand, those who have earned a kitsune's trust and loyalty will see a friendship that can last through many trials. Freedom is very important to the kitsune. They do not accept being forced into something they do not wish, and do not like being bound or trapped. Doing so weakens the kitsune.” Mystery as we know is very much controlled by his emotions, going head first into things constantly based on reaction and his inability to control his power under distress. His tails arose in the fight sequence every time he fulfilled his oath AND used 100% of his form/power. Therefore, his tails grew because he wasn’t holding back anymore, not his grievances, not his appearance, nor his hesitance in his evident distress of being bound to two entities that both required his aid. My last note on these images comes from a tumblr user’s reverse audio clipping (https://nebulous-rain.tumblr.com/post/633555549749952512/ok-so-yknow-that-one-reversed-part-of-future). The rewind of the clip of Mystery’s transformation plays “When I’m With You”, which yes, cool a possible Easter egg to the next song! BUT what is this song about? Let me just bring up the first line of the song: “You got me hanging by a THREAD...I wish I could turn back time...I wish I could rewind life...” and before the chorus “I’m gonna make it right”. We know that this can refer to rectifying the wrongs of Lewis’ death, but more accurately to do so we need to defeat the evil inside this mutt that is pulling the strings of this whole fiasco. And this might just be the intro portion of the next mystery skulls mind you as we’ve also gotten many false starts with the previous two videos where hellbent used “every note” and future used “enemies” alongside the main song. BUT WE HAVE TWO YEARS ANYWAY, WHY BABBLE ON ABOUT THIS. LETS MOVE ON!

Hearts in this series have not been just for identifying the dead or for aesthetic purposes, they are the life force of each powerful legend. I am actually surprised to see Shiro have a heart as she started off as a creation from Mystery and therefore her lifeforce is just his blood and without it she is nothing. I am curious about her color pallet though, her heart is purple and pink. Lewis’ is gold/yellow with touches of orange. And Mystery’s is just red, but it has a mix of everyone’s essence within it to keep it tied and whole. Shiro’s could be colored this way in reference to Lewis’ aid to help find her creator; which would explain why Mystery surrounds himself by color as he required outside help and how Lewis’ heart is yellow in reference to how recently Arthur helped him remember his friends/hidden memories. One thing we have learned about hearts is that they can be broken repeatedly and can be ripped apart from the body, but they can be repaired too through resolution/hope. Lewis restored his heart in hellbent by using Vivi’s flower petals and finding hope that he will get revenge, only for his heart to be repaired again through Arthur’s touch. Shiro may have withered away, but her heart is essentially not broken, she’d need Mystery to restore it as it was flung into space (and that again relies on Mystery finding his sanity and finding it in himself to even bring her back). And as for Mystery himself, he’s gonna need the whole gang to reach out to him to extract the parasite within and restore balance. I really want to know more about the heart properties and how they give their users their powers as well Vivi is able to summon her strength through a material connection (bat) that function in its own way as the vessel a heart does since its connecting her to her ancestry.

NOW to finalize, I offer you two queries:

WHO IS ARTHURS HAND REACHING FOR!? I know it seems like Mystery, but that would be counter productive for the hand demon if he has Arthur interfering with his control. Is it still after Lewis as we’ve seen previous times where his arm acts up only in Lewis’ presence and when specifically other “magic” is at play? If so, is the goal to ward off Lewis and Vivi from defeating Mystery? Is Arthur gonna use the arm to find his own power as we’ve seen when he is able to momentarily cease control of it he kinda ruins anything electrical he touches and well, electricity is currently running rampant in there.

and lastly, I am really curious how touch sensitive hearts are, We know that even the smallest of brushes can detect memory/links to the person holding it (as seen with how Shiro managed to get soul flowers in hellbent), but the fact that Lewis was so in touch with the feeling of Arthur EVEN THOUGH ARTHUR GRABBED HIS HEART THROUGH HIS METAL HAND MIND YOU!, that he still managed to feel the disturbance instantly. So my question is, is the touch sensitivity reliant on how close someone is to someone? I would like to say yes cause when Shiro touched his heart he didn’t react instantly, he felt her rummaging his memories and was awoken, but he didn’t kick her butt by fully reforming until after she had long since stepped on his heart and then forced the memory of Mystery to arise. But yeah, its a nice little detail.

Either way, thanks for reading! Feel free to add on, comment, or even dm me about more Mystery Skulls information and theories! Love to hear them!

#Mystery Skulls #MSA #mystery skulls animated #future #MSA future #Mystery skulls animated future #Lewis #Lewis Pepper #arthur #arthur kingsmen #Vivi #vivi yukino #Shiro #Shiromori #???#Arthur's arm #Mystery #theories #theory

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love-hatred-stuff · 3 years

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Villain's girl } Im Changkyun [monsta x]

genre: royal/soldier au, vampire au

warning(s): mentions of war(indirect), kind of kidnapping

word count: 1.9k

He, he was perfect, but I just wasn't ready to get involved with him.

I knew I would regret it because we needed each other. But he just hurt me too much. No, actually I really didn't care about myself. Still, I ran away from him again, probably the most unnecessary decision of my life. The only thing that stood in my way was my fear of the gilding of his life. I simply wasn't worth it, was I?

before:...

I was lying on a green meadow that was on a mountain. Hundreds of Lisianthus flowers had grown next to me. I loved them, their scent, their colors and also their sizes. They had a calm effect on me because I had known them since my short childhood.

I've been looking after myself since I was ten years old. My parents? Probably dead. They had left me for a reason unknown to me, but I hadn't thought about it for a long time, because it had racked my mind for the next thirteen years after they disappeared.

Now I was lying here and as far as I knew it was my birthday that day. I couldn't exactly remember that date, but I had celebrated it over and over again on the same day for a long time.

It wasn't a big deal to me as it wouldn't change anything in my life but I was finally eighteen.

The sun had just started to rise, but I wanted to start the day like this, with a quiet hour on my favorite meadow in the morning sun that smiled at me. Unfortunately she was the only one who did that.

Often times I would lie there all night and watch the stars. I was more than lonely, for many years I hadn't met anyone except soldiers who attacked and burned villages, as well as my house eight years ago.

I lost my parents, my house, my food and everything else I owned. Even if it wasn't much, my already small property shrunk even more. But I had to take it for what I was, what I was trying to do.

Despite my health, which had kept up well, I had thoughts of suicide several times. Jumping off a cliff is, eating any branches and herbs. And after a few temptations, I gave up. I couldn't do that to myself yet.

As slowly as possible, I got up to look for something to eat. I didn't really liked to go hunting because I was very fond of animals and hated to hurt them, so I mostly ate berries or mushrooms.

Except once a week, I took my bow with arrow to get me a hearty meal.

When I finally got up on my two legs, I ran and went to my hut, which I had built a long time ago from branches and bushes.

I was there in no time, but something bothered me. Everything was still in its place, but I could make out a musty smell of smoke, which made me cringe.

I looked around silently and indeed, about half a mile away, a huge gray cloud was making its way through the trees.

My heart pounded alarm and without thinking twice, I sprinted in the opposite direction from which the possible fire was coming.

At the moment I didn't care about my growling stomach, nor my hut.

After a while of running I could hear voices in the direction I was walking towards.

I slowly walked slowly in order to be able to listen to every sound, no matter how small. But suddenly a soldier was standing in front of me who looked at me with a grin. I was wearing only a thin, white, yet dirty dress that hung airily up to my knees.

Uncomfortable, that's how I felt. I had never had closer contact with men, how could I (?).

"Well, who do we have here?" The soldier mockingly said.

I just widened my eyes, not to mention my mouth, which had been open since I saw him.

After a short time, more and more soldiers came and looked at me, but I was frozen. People were so fascinating but at the same time so nauseating. The soldier, who was still grinning stupidly at me, stepped closer and grabbed my hand.

"The little one must have forgotten how to speak. But she is breathtakingly beautiful. Take a look at her, guys!" He asked his men to examine me too, which is why they all took a few steps closer.

"Hey!" I heard it from not far away, in the woods.

The one whose voice it was now also ran towards me, which made me take some steps back.

"Don't touch her! She's an innocent one!" The soldier who was now standing in my immediate vicinity.

Fortunately for me, he now attracted the attention that had been on me. He pushed the others away from me, who then stumbled backwards. Then he grabbed my wrist and I felt a heat rise in me instantly, it was a completely new feeling.

I looked into a prominent face with defined cheekbones, which made him look very masculine to me. He looked like someone that could be royal, naturally beautiful.

He looked at me out of his intense brown eyes in which I could have lost myself in, in a matter of seconds.

He raised his hand, pushed a strand of hair out of my face and touched my cheek in the process. All I could do was to stay still like a statue and admire his figure.

His dark black hair that was a little messed up and some strands also graced his face.

A cold but pleasant shiver ran down my spine from his touch. I was fascinated by his looks, it seemed like he looked like a friendly devil. Although his features seemed absolutely flawless, he radiated a dark aura. I couldn't see it but I could sense it. He also had broad shoulders from which two muscular arms protruded. He was looking like a God next to me.

"She really is quite acceptable. Nevertheless, she has to come with me." He pulled me by the arm to the horses, which were not far away at a campsite.

Damn. I should have run faster, now I have to go with them if I don't get a chance to get out of here. I blamed myself silently.

The men were in the majority and clearly superior to me.

The Soldier's grin was quite strong and even when we were already in one of the tents, he was still holding onto my arm tightly. After we I hissed in pain.

Besides all that, I was still totally in shock as it was my first close contact with people in many years.

Suddenly he stopped and took a close look at my body, me not really thinking anything, because I first had to get used to people's behavior and body language.

With his gaze he stopped where he had gripped me tightly to probably prevent me from running away, but slowly the pressure got too big and hurt. Immediately he let go, but he took a closer look at the now yellow spots that adorned my arm.

They weren't the only wounds I had, I kept getting injured and accordingly had blood wounds or scratches all over the place. We were alone in the tent and he finally broke the silence.

"Who did this to you?" He asked, pointing to my wounds, like the blood stain on my dress, over my stomach. At first I didn't know what he meant but then I understood. He meant if I had been hurt by someone else.

"Nobody." I answered clearly and looked up into his wonderful eyes that flashed at me.

"What's your name?" Was his next question.

"Y/n. I think." I guessed to myself.

My name had never been relevant, but I still had vague memories from my childhood and how I was often addressed by that name back then. In the other moment, his gaze softened. He put a strand behind my ear again, as he had earlier. My attention went to his full lips which he twisted into a small grin.

“You are beautiful, Y/n. You will be mine I promise it. Nobody's going to get you." He said with determination.

What did he say? Was that just a compliment? If so, then they sound really nice, but actually I didn't really know what they meant to me. Although I could speak his language fluently and had a good vocabulary to choose from, I wasn't up to date.

"What do you mean?" I was taught to ask when you didn't understand someone, so I did just that.

"Means that we will take you to the palace where you can be sold." He suddenly changed his face and removed his hand from my cheek where it had lingered for a moment.

He had just changed his mind from one second to the other. He wanted me to be his and complimented me, so what now? Now he just wanted to drag me along and let me get sold? Great, I probably wouldn't find a way out on all these soldiers.

"But, to whom should I be sold?" If it was to my advantage I would accept it, then I would no longer be alone and would finally be among people who were equal to me.

"To some rich snob." He simply replied.

I was surprised at his sudden change of heart, but it was the chance for me to finally escape this hole. It had made me sink deeper and deeper until that point. I was redeemed.

"You have to change. We'll stay here one more night before we leave." He stepped away from me and took a white dress down from a kind of drawer, to give it to me afterwards.

A little baffled, I stood there and took the soft fabric towards me. It was soft and embroidered with small flowers.

"Thanks, where should I change and where should I sleep?" I asked briefly.

"Change here. There's a bed back there, behind the curtain. You will sleep with me, I don’t want you to run away." He answered less summarily.

Only after a short moment I could understand what he wanted from me. He was still standing right in front of my feet and looking down at me.

"So I'm supposed to change here and now?" I asked with disbelief in my voice.

"Yes, you should." He persisted.

I suspected he wouldn't give in, so I told him to at least turn around. Then he innocently raised his hands to shoulder height and obeyed my request. When he let his hands fall again, I pushed my dirty dress off my body, which meant that I stood in front of him, completely bare for a moment. Fortunately, he was standing with his back turned to me. But even if not, I would probably have obeyed, because I didn't know whether I corresponded to the typical image of women and had never had unpleasant situations like this before. That's why I never had a reason to be ashamed of my body. But as I stood in front of him I realized how important it actually was to be able to see someone like that.

I quickly slipped into the fresh dress, which clung to my thin body and my delicate curves. It actually looked very pretty, but I could hardly judge it because I still had no taste for fashion.

"You can turn around." I wanted to point out, but my words got stuck in my throat when I noticed that he had already turned around.

I had focused on my dress the whole time and trusted it. Obviously this was a mistake.

-to be continued-

#changkyun #monsta x #monsta x i.m #monsta x au #royal au #vampire au #monsta x smut

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petri808 · 3 years

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1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

Inukag AU

More and more the déjà vu moments started coming to Kagome, mostly smaller memories, but they were adding up. She’d taken the doctor’s advice and kept a small notebook in her purse in case a new one popped up. For example, she knew Inuyasha’s favorite food was ramen because she’d been told as much, but one day as she shopped in the supermarket and saw one of the brands on the shelf, her hand immediately reached out for it. Kagome placed it in her basket without a second thought until two aisles away it finally hit her— it wasn’t a flavor she liked. Sure enough, when she saw Inuyasha that afternoon he confirmed it was the brand and flavor he always bought.

Speaking of recall, Kagome had met Ms. Tanaka at a small cafe one Saturday and they sat at a table for four hours chatting. Kagome had been nervous about going. What would she say since she couldn’t remember anything about the job or company, but Ms. Tanaka was such a bubbly feisty person those anxieties had melted away within the first few minutes. She was brought up to speed on how the company was doing… along with the gossip or drama one might find in a close knit office like they had. So, and so just started dating, bought a new car, complaining about in-laws, news about children, etc. Kagome recognized the name of one child mentioned from when the coworker had taken maternity leave. It felt weird to now be told the child had started preschool, but she was just happy to have remembered the person at all. It was a good day with more to come because Ms. Tanaka invited her to a birthday party the following week at the office for one of their closest co-workers. Apparently, they were nicknamed the trio at work because they always took their lunches together. Their cubicles were next to each other so day in and day out they’d became each other’s family away from home.

“Hi, everyone.” Kagome smiled and waved even though her nerves were on edge. Ms. Tanaka wanted it to be a surprise, so she had no idea what the reaction would be… and it certainly wasn’t this!

A loud scream came from the other side of the room that left her startled. At first Kagome couldn’t see who or where it had come from over all the cubicles, but the next thing she knew she’d almost been tackled to the ground by a hug. It was the birthday girl, Ms. Fukuda.

“Oh, my Kami you came!” Fukuda pulled back her hands still gripped to Kagome’s shoulders. “Why didn’t anyone tell me you were coming??”

“Tanaka wanted it be a surprise,” Kagome squeaked back.

“Well, this is definitely the best birthday gift I could’ve received!— Even if you don’t remember me.”

Kagome flinched a little, her cheeks heating up. “I’m sorry, I don’t, but I’m hoping being here will stimulate something.”

“No need to be sorry,” the woman hugged her again. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, but let’s see if we can’t jog those memories!” Ms. Fukuda took Kagome’s hand and started dragging her deeper into the crowd. “Everyone! Look who’s here!”

Kagome stayed close to Tanaka and Fukuda throughout the visit, though the longer she stayed the more comfortable she became. There was tons of food to eat and desserts that left her full. People joked around, teasing Fukuda over a few gag gifts, but all in good fun. Kagome couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard. Everyone was so nice and accommodating, never making her feel bad that she couldn’t remember them. Quite the contrary. The office staff talked and talked, bringing up story after story from the last few years. They seemed determined to play a role in helping Kagome to redeem her lost memories. Most of the staff were there when she’d started and so they had a lot of tales to tell.

“You had such a hard time with the ten-key machine,” Ms. Fukuda laughed. “I remember thinking oh kami, this young girl is gonna give me gray hair!”

Kagome chuckled. “And you weren’t quiet about pointing it out to me. Said I’ll have to cover the cost of hair dye if it did.”

The room full of laughter suddenly went silent as everyone turned to Kagome. Only a few gasps breaking the stillness to leave her utterly concerned. “Did I say something wrong?” Kagome questioned.

Ms. Fukuda broke the silence. “Y-You really remember that?”

“Remember…” Kagome repeated in confusion. All she did was comment— “Oh! Yeah, I guess I did…”

Fukuda squealed as she hugged onto Kagome. “Oh, my Kami! You remembered!”

“I-I remembered!” Tears began to stream down Kagome’s cheeks at how naturally the memories came back to her. “It took me a couple of months, but I got it down.”

“You did,” Ms. Fukuda whose own tears made their way to the scene, and Ms. Tanaka had joined in the hug. “And now you’re faster than me,” she snorted a laugh.

“Y-Yeah,” Kagome hiccupped a laugh too.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the room as everyone watched the friends sharing in such a beautiful moment. As the trio pulled apart, wiping away their tear stained faces, with the biggest smiles planted on them. Ms. Fukuda took Kagome’s hand a final time before letting go. “This truly was the best birthday gift, and I can’t wait for you come back to work.”

“Me, too.”

The party went on for a couple more hours, and by 4pm that afternoon it was winding down. Some office workers were tidying up, packing up leftovers or cleaning up any messes, while others went back to finishing up any company business that needed to be completed that day. A few core individuals such as the trio stayed chatting quietly around the cubicles. There was more than one conversation taking place, so Kagome ever eager to learn what she could did her best to stay engaged. Listening here and chiming in there. But then a name two cubicles away caught her attention.

‘Yura?’ Kagome wondered, who was this person and why was the name stirring up such a wave of anger and pain inside of her? The conversation she overheard seemed meaningless, just something about they were glad the person wasn’t there anymore. Okay, so that meant Yura was a former employee of the company. One person commented that they’d seen her at a new job in a department store selling makeup and the other responded with a scoffing sound, that it was a good fit for such a two-faced bitch. Well, obviously she wasn’t the only person who’d had an issue with this Yura woman. But who was she to her??

In order to figure it out, Kagome tapped on Ms. Tanaka’s shoulder to gain her attention. She whispered her question. “Who is Yura? Mr. Yoshida and Mr. Miyahira are talking about her.”

“Oh…” Ms. Tanaka looked warily at Ms. Fukuda before addressing Kagome’s question. “Are you sure you want to know? It, um… won’t be a very good memory.”

So, Yura was attached to an unhappy event in her life after all and her friends reaction’s just confirmed the initial feelings she’d felt. Kagome swallowed hard, would it be worth dredging up an unhappy memory or should she leave it buried away. It wasn’t the easiest decision to make, but if the woman’s name had triggered such a strong reaction, it must’ve played a significant role.

“J-Just tell me a little bit about her, maybe about when she’d worked here.”

Ms. Tanaka went first. “Okay. Well, um, she was here for about a year, and no one really liked her because she was rude and thought she was better than everyone else… but, when it came to you, Yura just had a real fixation on making your life miserable.”

“We didn’t know the real reason behind it all until the end,” added Ms. Fukuda. “At first, it was petty, childish things like stealing your lunch from the break room or leaving mean notes on your desk. But then it started to escalate and after several complaints to management, they finally fired her— You basically told the manager if they didn’t then you’d quit.”

“They chose you, and that’s what’s important.” Tanaka finished.

“But what do you mean the real reason behind it? Behind what?” Kagome asked.

Kagome’s question must’ve gave her two friends a real dilemma because they grew silent and hesitant to answer it. “Please? We’ve come this far you might as well just tell me.”

“It turned out that Yura was acting that way towards you because, she’s close friends with Inuyasha’s ex…”

“Oh…” Kagome’s eyes widened. “That’s right…” she sat back as the emotions took control. Kikyo was still a vague concept for her with only the bits and pieces she’d been able to put together, but the mention of the woman in conjunction with Yura brought on a flashback. “The cafe. They’d confronted me at a cafe on my lunch break…” Tears had welled up in Kagome’s eyes, but a sensation of anger was making her body tremble at the memory. “That’s what made me give management an ultimatum because it was just going to far.”

As the tears broke free, Kagome’s friends pulled together into a hug. Don’t cry! It’s okay! It was the past! Oh, please don’t be sad Kagome! She’s gone now, it’s gonna be okay! Once she was able to get the tears under control and convince them she’d be okay, they dropped the subject. But despite cheering Kagome up, the bitter feelings just wouldn’t go away. They sat in her gut stirring and brooding, knowing there was more to the story that she just couldn’t remember and that alone was frustrating. According to her friend’s, this incident happened just eight months before her accident, so it wasn’t ancient history. Had it contributed to the fight? It wasn’t beyond belief to think it had or at least added to the frustrations that led up to it.

When Inuyasha picked Kagome up from her workplace, he tried to make small talk. How’d it go? Did you have fun? She answered them in order, how it started out great and everyone was so nice and supportive, telling her stories and answering questions. Then she told him about blurting out a comment because she’d remembered the event.

“That’s awesome, babe!” Inuyasha squeezed her shoulder. “Your memories are coming back faster now!”

“Yeah, about that…” Kagome quieted as she fiddled with her fingers in her lap. “There was something else that was triggered, a… not so great memory.”

“Oh?” He turned briefly to check on her before returning his eyes to the road. “Are you okay? Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Um… well there was a woman that used to work there that I didn’t get along with…”

“That’s surprising.”

“Yeah, she um— Her name was Yura. But the reason we didn’t get along was because she’s a friend of your ex-girlfriend.”

Kagome instantly saw Inuyasha’s grip tighten on the steering wheel and the whites of his knuckles glaringly apparent. Clearly just the mention of Kikyo was enough to trigger an intense reaction.

She cleared her drying throat. “The company fired Yura about 8 months before the accident after she and Kikyo harassed me at a cafe during my lunch break.”

“You never told me about that. Kagome, why—”Inuyasha stopped mid-sentence as he felt his anger rise. He took a deep breath then lowered his tone. “Why didn’t you tell me about something that bad?”

“I’m not surprised…” she mumbled under her breath. She’d had an inkling that she’d never told him. “I think it was because I didn’t think you’d listen.”

“Of course, I would have listened! They were harassing you!”

“Look, Inuyasha, I don’t remember everything, but clearly there was a reason I didn’t tell you and based on everything you’ve told me yourself you weren’t listening! So, how can you even tell me you would have, when obviously you weren’t back then! You have no right to hold it against me now!”

“Kagome this is different, it affected your job and there were witnesses—”

“Oh?! So, because you’d believe the witnesses you would have believed me?! I don’t remember, but maybe there were other times there were witnesses and you didn’t listen— I DON’T KNOW THAT!”

“That’s not what I meant! I would have listened to you if you’d told me! You should have told me!”

“You know, I really thought you’d be different but if you still can’t admit about what drove me to leave that night, then I… I don’t know anymore…”

“That’s not fair…”

“J-just get me home! I-I just wanna go home Inuyasha! I can’t talk to you right now! There’s so much I can’t remember and since you admitted you hadn’t listened before, there’s nothing more to say.”

“Please Kagome—”

“Just stop. I’m done talking.” She’d had enough.

Her mind was spinning from all the gaps she couldn’t fill and the anger at his words. How could he deny it now when that’s one of the things he’d admitted to from the beginning. The last few minutes of the drive went by in silence and as soon as they reached the Higurashi residence, Kagome got out without a second look. All their months of hard work were now left behind with the slam of a car door and she had no idea how to salvage it.

#inukag #inukag au #inukag fan fiction #inukag fan fic #inuyasha #kagome higurashi #inuyasha x kagome #angst with happy ending #ch 9 #missing memories

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mammonprotectionsquad · 3 years

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Heeey remember when I said I was tempted to write a little something about the "What if Vandy and MC already dated before the RFA and Mint Eye thing"?

Well... I did write a lil something for it xD

Unpleasant surprises

Vanderwood x Reader

It was supposed to be a calmer day. Only a quick check up on the brat, before Vanderwood would be able to take care of his own stuff. But of course life had a different plan for him.

Maybe it was karma? Yeah, it most definitely was for all the shit he'd done, while working for the agency.

"You want me to do what now? Why would I do that?", he huffed at Seven, who was aiming a shit eating grin at him.

"Because I'm worried about their safety. And I can't do my job, when I am constantly checking the CCTV."

"You motherf-", he cut himself off to take a deep breath.

And he hated that the kid actually had a good argument for it as well. No doubt he'd thought it through before.

Still displeased about it all, he grumbled quietly as he slumped into the chair and looked at the screen. Which was showing nothing but an empty hallway.

He was just about to complain about how useless it was to watch the screen, when a door opened and someone came into view.

For a moment, he couldn't do anything but stare. Watching how the person waved at the camera and then disappeared in an elevator.

Apparently he had been wrong by thinking that the day couldn't have potentially gotten any worse for him. But it just did.

Wordlessly he grabbed his phone and went straight into the kitchen, to get some distance to the hacker. Ignoring the confused look he got for it.

At the same time he already pressed his phone to his ear, a hand running through his hair.

Please, someone tell him it was only a stupid joke on him...

It didn't take long for you to pick up and as happy as you sounded about his call, there was something important to discuss.

"Hey, how-"

"Would you mind explaining yourself?", he cut you off. Voice calm and collected.

"... Explain myself for what?", you asked, clearly confused.

"Why the hell is Seven watching you over a security camera? In a building that's very clearly not where you live?"

There was a moment of silence, before your nervous laugh reached his ear.

"Ah, you see... It's quite the funny story."

"Let's hear it. I'm dying to laugh."

"Don't get mad when I tell you?"

Your voice was so small and thanks to the soft spot he had for you, he sighed and his own voice got a bit gentler.

"I'll try. But I can't promise anything."

And so you began talking. About the message you got, regarding someone needing help to return a lost phone. You'd been wary at first, but wanted to help out, so you went to the apartment and suddenly found yourself involved with the RFA.

The entire time Vanderwood listened quietly. Fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. You couldn't be serious... Seven probably just found out about you and managed to involve you in one of his stupid pranks. That had to be the explanation. Not you actually going to a place some stranger sent you the address of.

"Seriously?", he eventually asked after a moment of silence.

"Yeah?"

"How many times have I told you not to trust anyone? You never know who could want to harm you. And how did those strange messages not raise any red flags for you?!" Before he knew it, he'd raised his voice. Not up to a yelling level, but your decisions had managed to irritate him quite a lot.

Here he was, trying to keep you as safe as he possibly could, because of his selfish decision to give in to your stubborn persistency of wanting to date him, God knows why. And what did you do? Followed a stranger's instructions, someone who clearly hacked into your phone, to go to a random apartment. In order to help return "a lost phone"?!

"I know... But the person really sounded sincere. I was careful when I went there, okay?"

"It could've easily been a trap! Lure you in, capture you and do God knows what to you! What if-"

"Nothing like that happened, though. I'm completely unharmed. Besides, I knew things would be semi fine when I saw Seven was in that chatroom. You've told me enough to know things couldn't be too bad when he's involved."

Vanderwood knew you were trying to comfort him, make him calm down again. But saying that things would be fine because 707 was there? He couldn't help but scoff about that. The kid meant nothing but trouble. The situation you were in was pretty much proof for it.

Still he took a couple deep breaths.

"You're way too nice for this world, sweetheart..."

"So you keep telling me", you chuckled. The sound actually managing to make the corners of his lips twitch up ever so slightly.

"Listen. I'm really fine, okay? I just have to stay here until the party in a little over a week. Besides, Seven already said that his "maid" would be watching over me as well~"

You were teasing him. Because you knew how much he hated to be referred to as the brat's maid. Since that's not at all what he was. Still your playfulness helped ease the tension in his body a little more.

"Tell me where the apartment is. I'll make sure to properly check in on you, every now and then."

"About that... You see, V and Seven said the address is confidential, because of all the information kept here regarding the party guests, etc."

"You're kidding me..."

Oh, he was this close to beating the shit out of the redhead. There was no doubt in his mind that it was somehow connected to him. Because a hacker? They usually went after other hackers. Besides, why else would someone try to get to a charity group in that kind of way? Something really wasn't right.

Though before he had the chance to only take one step, you spoke up again.

"I know what you plan on doing, babe... Don't. I trust Seven, and especially you, that you won't even let it get as far as something happening to me here. I'll be fine."

He still didn't like the confidential thing one bit... It seemed way too fishy, in his opinion.

"The second you feel unsafe, you tell me the damn address, okay? I don't care what Seven or that V guy said. You feel like something isn't right, I'll come and get you immediately. Got it?"

"Got it. Now try and calm down a bit, okay? For me. Maybe call me again later, when you have the time? I'd love to fall asleep talking to you, when I already can't sleep next to you."

He could basically hear the smile in your voice.

"I will. Now take care, alright? No more trusting any strangers!"

You said your goodbyes and after pushing his phone into his pocket, he took his time preparing some coffee. Not necessarily because he needed to drink it, but more because he was still very much tempted to punch someone and needed more time to calm down enough to face the redhead again.

Damn, that all really was a mess...

With the cup in hand, he returned to the PC setup, immediately being met by big, curious eyes. Something that was enough to let him know Seven had heard at least some of the conversation with you.

Still, he decided to say nothing for now. Instead sinking back into the chair to look back at the screen, which showed the security footage of the empty hallway.

"Seven."

"Yes, Mary?~"

The brunette threw the hacker a glare that immediately made him swallow thickly. Knowing that if he said anything stupid now, he'd be in very big trouble. And potentially in some sort of pain.

"If anything happens to them, I don't care how minor, I will personally end your life. Am I making myself clear?"

"Crystal clear..."

Leaning back in his chair, he took a sip of the coffee. Trying to wrap his mind around all the things that were suddenly dropped on him.

Was he happy about any of it? Fuck no. Would he have preferred to immediately get you out of there? You bet.

But at the same time he was at least able to keep an eye on you. And watching the security feed made him see you a couple more times a day than he'd usually do. A small win, but better than nothing.

Masterlist

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#mysme #mystic messenger #mystic messenger mc #mysme mc #vanderwood #mystic messenger vanderwood #mysme vanderwood #mary vanderwood 3rd #vanderwood x mc #vanderwood x reader #mystic messenger oneshot #mystic messenger fanfic #mystic messenger reader insert #my writing

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ahopelessromantic · 4 years

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Pizza Guys and Drug Dealers ➳ S. Reid

Pairing: Spencer x Reader

Word count: 1,2k

Warnings: none

Spencer starts disappearing after work, so naturally, the team starts to get worried.

“Reid, you up for a burger?“ Distractedly, Spencer looked up from his desk. “Huh?”, he asked, then shook his head once he understood the question. “Oh sorry, no. I gotta go.” Before anyone could even say anything else, he was out of the bullpen, leaving behind a very confused team. “Not to sound mean or anything, but since when does pretty boy have somewhere to be in the evenings?” JJ shrugged. “No idea. Maybe another cinema festival?”

“There you are.” You sighed with a wide smile upon seeing Spencer standing in front of your door. He pulled you into a long kiss that sent shivers down your spine. “I missed you.” He mumbled quietly after pulling away, leaning his forehead against yours. You grinned and kissed him again while closing your apartment door behind the two of you. “I missed you more. That’s why you have to make a very important decision now, Doctor Reid. Do you want to eat dinner first or”, you cleared your throat, “Check out the bedroom?” He looked at you with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “I think I’ll go with the latter.” “Oh really?” You returned his gaze with a smirk that resembled the one on his face. “How surprising.”

Nights like these were amazing. Spencer was as much of an amazing partner in bed as out of it, and there was nothing you loved more than giggly post-sex cuddles on your couch. Each of you had a reheated plate of food in your laps, more feeding each other than anything else. Spencer was counting down fun facts about the most random of topics and all you could do was laugh, basking in his presence. He had been an unexpected addition to your life, one that had taken you by storm and captured your heart before you had even had the time to look for your head. You had stumbled into Spencer at the museum you worked at, and from then on he had come there every week until he had mustered up the courage to ask you out. Four weeks of amazing dates later you had asked him to be your boyfriend, and ever since then the two of you were going strong. It was hard sometimes, the worries you had to go through every time he was away on a case, but he always made it up to you by showing up at your doorstep with a souvenir from whatever city he had been in. The whirlwind that had been the start of your relationship was beginning to calm down, but the feelings you had for him weren’t disappearing. With each passing day, a bigger part of you was starting to get convinced that he was the one.

“Spencer, do you think you could take some of my paperwork today?” Emily asked as nicely as possible even though she already knew that he normally loved some extra paperwork. But no, today, for the first time since she had started working at the BAU, Reid looked at her with an apologetic expression. “Sorry, I can’t. I have to, uh… go water my plants.” And with that he was gone, leaving behind a confused team once more. “Okay, can anyone of you remember the last time they saw Reid outside of working hours?” Prentiss asked and only got shaking heads as a response. “Nope.”, Morgan said, crossing his arms. “He has been kind of distant, hasn’t he? Normally he’s the last of us to have any plans.” “I’m only surprised it took us this long to realise. When was the last time he came out with us for a drink?” JJ widened her eyes. “Months? Honestly feels like a year.” “Okay, all of you, into the conference room. I wanna know what he’s up to.” All of them agreed immediately, Garcia joining them not even five minutes later. “Babygirl, can you see where he’s always off to?” Penelope returned her best friends gaze with a conflicted look. “Of course I can. But I feel bad about tracking him, don’t you guys?” “Pen, what if he’s doing drugs again? I already feel bad about not noticing his behaviour much earlier.” Emily mused. “Alright.”, the analyst sighed. “But if he finds out, it wasn’t me okay?” Within just a few clicks Garcia had found an address. “This is where he goes the most besides his own apartment. Do with that information what you want, I’m out.” Morgan typed in the address on his phone. “Looks like it’s an apartment building.” JJ nodded, chewing on her lower lip. “Okay, I think only one of us should go. So he doesn’t feel like we’re ambushing him, right?” “Makes sense.”, Emily agreed. “Alright, you guys go home. I’ll go there and update you tomorrow.” Morgan nodded at all of them as a goodbye and left for the garage. After typing the address into his navigation system he got going, a weird feeling rising in his stomach. What if Reid really was doing something stupid again? But then again, he hadn’t been acting any differently during work, just always left as soon as he could. Arrived in front of the apartment building he took a deep breath, trying to hype himself up. Garcia had been able to find out which apartment he went to from his phone data, and once he found it, he rang the doorbell. He had expected many things, a drug dealer, a psychiatrist maybe, but what he really hadn’t been expecting was coming face to face with a girl dressed in nothing but an oversized shirt. You squinted, mustering the man in front of you. “You don’t look like the pizza guy.” He looked just as clueless as you. “And you don’t look like a drug dealer.” “What?!” You gasped, only now starting to feel uncomfortable in your basically undressed state. “Of course I’m not a drug dealer!” You hissed. You watched him scan you from head to toes again, realisation suddenly dawning on the man’s features. “Wait, is that Spencer’s shirt?” You only felt more confused by the minute. “Uh… yeah?” A bride grin grew across the stranger’s face. “Oh man, I am so sorry to barge in here like that. I’m Derek Morgan.” Still absolutely not knowing what the hell was going on you shook his hand. Thankfully, in that moment, Spencer had decided to join you at your doorstep. “Honey, what’s taking so long with the-“ He stopped in his tracks upon seeing the man. “Morgan?! What are you doing here?” Morgan just chuckled and shook his head. “Just checking in, I’m leaving already. But you have some explaining to do tomorrow, my man.” Still chuckling the stranger disappeared down the hallway, leaving the two of you alone again. You looked between the still open door and your boyfriend. “Spence, what just happened?” He buried his face in his hands. “That was Derek Morgan, one of my co-workers.” You felt your chin drop. Holy shit, this was absolutely not how you had planned to meet any of his team members. And of course, it was only now that you recalled one of his co-workers being named Morgan. “They’re never going to let me live this down.” Spencer whined, a blush spreading across his cheeks. You chuckled and placed your hand on his back. “But hey, at least I wasn’t a drug dealer, right?” He sent you a murderous glance, and you laughed. You couldn’t wait for him to get back from work tomorrow.

#requested #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #spencer x reader #mgg #Matthew gray gubler #Matthew gray gubler x reader #BAU #BAU Team #BAU x Reader #derek morgan #criminal minds #criminal minds oneshot

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sumrallmind · 2 years

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So. I ended up making a lot of notes when reading Act 1. Let’s not beat around the bush, a lot of my thoughts are not focused on Act 1. This kinda ballooned to HS in general. Reading through it kept reminding me of other things, things that would appear later, things that would be dropped. Influences from other works, the foreshadowing, the retcons, the Retcon Powers retcons, things I somewhat knew that were planned then changes and I just. Kept going on and on in my notes and had to get myself to just write one line comments to expand on. And this is only Act 1. 250ish pages. And look, even me talking about my note taking is going on and on.

Okay, obviously I’m going to add a cut. If anyone remembers my Jem Reviews from a few years ago (or my LiS essays) you know I’m a bit of a windbag and will go on forever about a thing. But, one last comment before the cut.

I decided to use the Unofficial Homestuck Collection’s Replay Reading mode instead of Archival reading mode. Archival Mode would be like how you’d read it on Viz’s site, whereas Replay mode replicates what it would have been like to read it live. For me, that’s important. The comic has a different feel reading it live. I suppose in retrospect it's minor, I’m not limiting myself to a schedule based on upload time so I will miss out on waiting for an upload and being surprised about the number of pages like back in the day. Plus the pauses. Huss had said the comic was always meant for archival reading but seeing how things in past pages get changed because of future actions not yet decided at the time of their instead of seeing them just laying around is. I dunno. More appealing to me? No being spoiled about password pages or random arms or oil. It changes the experience, it changes the comic.

Also expect more long meandering sentences that have trouble getting to the point below the cut. Spoilers for most of Homestuck. Also i didnt really review this or edit this after the fact. Double also i cant guarantee the accuracy of my memory of some things.

I struggled a bit trying to decide how I wanted to organize the reread posts. Make sections? Highlight specific things? General impressions?

**I decided to go through my notes chronologically and expand on things that need it. For the most part, these are my notes as I read the pages. Maybe I’ll move stuff around to logical places i dunno

As I started the comic I remembered that Huss once said they pretty much have the entire comic in their head at all times. That's a lot. I guess that's what helped them with the callbacks and references to things. I wonder how much was influenced by the forum. My influence was small, being mostly in the Vriska Quarantine threads, with a little activity in general chat and IDE (which was never an acronym. It was a misspelling.). But it does make me wonder how Huss was able to tie so much together. Did a HS bible eventually get made? Was it given to the people making the post canon content? WAs Huss lying about not having extensive notes or their own notebook about the comic? Does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

I miss the forums. I want an annotated homestuck pointing at things that were influenced by it. Heck maybe it is in this archive and i just haven't gotten to it yet. That would be cool.

So we begin the comic on April 13th. A completely arbitrary date with no meaning. It just happens to be the date Huss started the comic after the Beta proved untenable. Could have been May. Could have been April 11. It's just a number.

More importantly, we start the comic off with naming our hero with a reference to TSO, Zoosmells. Because it is early in the comic, we are still having commands come from the readers. Based on just the newsposts up until the end of Act 1, user commands are still broadly accepted and implemented. So with user commands we get Zoosmell, we get John Egbert, we get memeic things like retrieve arms, and we also move a cake for John? Did that ever get addressed? I’m pretty sure we, the MSPA readers, are shown and referenced multiple times, but was it outright stated we were the floating cursor hand?

This is also where we get our first introduction page and the first hint about the amount of text that will be in this work. Homestuck can switch between wordy, verbose captions that evoke different emotions and thoughts and can all be a simple acknowledgement that John wants to shit on a desk.

But more than just showing us a lot of words, it gives us a quick rundown of our character. We get a vague enough sense of them to know how they'd initially react to things and their initial interests. For a comic you expect to be not as long, you want to get all the info out there as soon as possible. As a game parody, you want the player to know enough to get into the role. I think it’s also a self assessment of sorts? By the character? But yeah, quick way to know the character, well down and all we need at the moment.

After this bit and some memeic commands we get introduced to the other major player in Act 1, the SYLLADEX er, Sylladex. All Caps was a thing in early gaming. The sylladex and CAPTCHALOGUEing and Fetch Modus stuff is a shotgun blast of reference to how all these different games have all these different ways to grab/use items and somewhat on how commands are inputted. The fact that it's complicated is the point. The abstraction of picking up items, especially items much too heavy to carry, is played with a lot here. John is told to use or put down an item and is confused. It is fun and silly. Plus, it shows how big of a nerd (affectionate) huss is about programming and programming languages.

Hey why do john use nails for poster?

So in John’s room we get some things that, at the time, are not important. They are cute little things that don’t mean anything right now. They are not planned to mean anything. They are not given any importance outside of HaHa. The comic has a lot of these and Hussie’s writing style, keeping everything in their head all at once, and wooden square hole into steel triskaidecagon peg attitude makes them the most important things in the comics.

For real, several times I wrote in my notes ““This is a throwaway line. It isn’t important. It comes back later and affects the plot in a major way. It’s impact minimal and probably didn’t have to come back

Nothing is more important than this throwaway line”.

It keeps hapenin bro.

When the comic was updating and I was reading it live, I came up with a term I used to describe these things. Chekov’s Macguffin. Now wait, I hear you mutter, that doesn't make sense. It doesn’t. Anyways Checkov’s Macguffin. You have these retconned foreshadows that in retrospect are important but don’t add or remove anything to the comic by their inclusion or removal. Huss had said they had a few things in mind when starting the comic but like, so much is added on a whim or due to fandom influence. Things that in the moment you go “oooooh, he killed everyone because Huss was poking fun at people wanting to see hero mode” but reading archivaly you go “wait odd i guess I see where this comes from?” and then even later you go “oh here is the reasoning explained.” I’m rambling here because it's hard to describe. As far as i know, not much of this comic was plotted out beforehand. Everything was shoved into place in ways that make sense sorta but eh? I dunno? Chekov’s Macguffin. It makes no sense. It makes all the sense. Every unimportant thing is critical and the most important thing.

So here is a quick shot of things in Act 1 I remember coming back.

Little Monsters poster: Foreshadows Trolls look. At this point the trolls aren’t literal trolls so this is more about John being a huge dork. Also maybe secret dream world. Oh and apple juice.

CON-AIR: Man i dunno how to even start with this. Bunny in this Act for sure. Deep Impact - forshadowing or just a dumb refference that got exanded into stardom? (hint i think huss later says its planned foreshadowing) Failure to Launch poster: Pokes fun at the beta being cannned for the comic as we know it. Also about a dude Stuck at Home (sorta.) (oh and i guess all the shipping shit that came later i dunno) Face-Off: referencing having two selves / someone with your face who isn’t you (maybe the guardian swap? I think huss said that was planned from the start too) throwable bit - apple juice: it’s here because of the little monster. Also, need for some Dave stuff. throwaway line - book that could kill a cat if you dropped it: It does. voice controlling you line: a fun game mechanic point fun at and also a future plot point. Betty Crocker: Mentioned only because of maker of cake mix. Graduates into high importance.

Sacred Urn: probably meant as a cheeky PS callback that could be used later by the players? Peanut Allergy: i'm like 97% sure this was only ever a cheeky joke but Pesterchum handles: They are DNA code thing except John. I don’t remember if this was intentional or just happened. I wanna lean on No. In-universe mspa midnight crew: a Shout Out to the donations. I don’t remember when but a MSPA Forum Adventure had the Midnight Crew and got a shout out in the intermission (i think thats when it was). It was removed later, I think when it hit the books or the Viz site? I hope the Unofficial Archive has all that info there are no throwaway bits. everything is important. everything can be thrown away. nothing has permanence or importance.

Another side of this would be foreshadowing meant more as rugpull. Like the TYPHEUS browser being mentioned specifically, priming the user to look for Rose’s browser without having to be told. We put importance on this because the comic does, I believe moreso in Act 2. But, it ultimately isn’t. In what would be considered a normal game Sburb yeah, this would be something neat to indicate what the heroes would deal with. While there is something to it, it won't be the way we think.

Hey you know what also fits this theme? Cosmic Number. The comic started on 4:13. John logs on at 4:13. The countdown starts at 4:13. The open wifi is 413. It keeps hapening bro. While there was the 413 references before the countdown, for me the timer is where it became a Cosmic Number within the comic. After this we are meant to look for more of the reference and think about what it could mean. We would also get 612, 1025, and 11 11 11. There are many times when events coincidentally correspond with those numbers. The length of an act, the length of a pause, 4 kids age 13, 12 trolls age 6, a event happening on a day and Huss saying “didnt plan it, still cool tho”. It keeps happening, bro.

Let's go back to pretending I’m covering things chronologically and not as things happen to come to mind, ya?

John’s computer shows us their ghost obsession with the homemade slimer background, and we also realize John has a fake slimer ghost shirt. We also see hints about some programming languages the kids use. ^cake ( carrot cake) and ~ath (til death). ~ath will come back but I don’t think ^cake would. Most importantly, the ChatPesterLogs.

The bulk of the writing for the majority of the comic is done through these logs. Direct person to person communication is not done through abstract like in the previous adventures, it is text. Instant Messaging txt. Throughout the Pesterlogs we learn about our other players and their preferred typing colors. You get a decent feel for each of them, except maybe Jade. Dave will go off and start rambling about a subject, trying to be cool and funny and likes things only ironically. Rose is kinda spooky and proper and also kinda rambles about things, but uses more and longer words than Dave. The other things we learn in the Pesterlogs in Act 1 is a little bit of family stuff, where Rose seems to have a little resentment about Dad and John not seeming to appearacite genuine family love, whereas John seems to feel a bit smothered. Bro we don’t know as much about.

Oh yeah, I know, I remember that some people talked about how they or friends only read the captions and never opened the logs or watched the flashs. That must be so confusing, but they said it's still readable. I dunno about all that tho.

Sometimes the colors can clash and make it hard to read. I remember peeps talking about that as well.

Speaking of the other kids, let's take a moment to talk about the Bunny. How do I live without you, I want to know. This one of the things Huss did have an idea in mind before starting, it was intentional that the bunny would travel between all of the kids and make its way back to John. This tells us that at the very left least, Weird Time Shit had been a consideration from the very start. Was the non-standard game always a thing? I suppose so, since Guardian Swap was always planned as well. It’s hard to say with Huss.

After the rest of the home shenanigans, prankster strifes, and data managements, we finally get Sburb Client and Server installed. Suburban Jungle plays as a lot of things get loaded in by the game. Most importantly, we have a new controller and new cursor. This also marks the change from mostly Adventure Game parody to add Building Sim to the mix. We get some fun stuff with Rose expanding the house, playing with the toilet, and the great moment of “tell me you can see me. Tell me what is wrong with this picture”. Along with that we get a bunch of highly specific items that’ll be used later for fun stuff. I enjoy the jokes and gags Huss puts in here. I know Act 1 drags for some people but much like JJBA, I think it’s worth going through all the parts.

Let’s finish this off by saying I genuinely enjoy Huss’s writing and Huss’s turn of phrase. There is something delightful in how they arrange phrases. It creates a lot of evocative imagery and makes things feel bigger than they are. It’s pleasant.

I think future retrospect posts may be more summary and recap than this one. I had a lot more HS thoughts in my head than I thought I would. I can’t say this won’t end up being a lie but I feel like that until maybe act 4, things will be more about the contents of the act than jumping off points for rambles.

#Roxy reads mspa #homestuck #well this ballooned out of control

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mandoalorian · 3 years

Text

Sugar and Spice [Maxwell Lord x Reader] - Chapter 3

Summary: When you are evicted from your apartment by your toxic ex boyfriend and have no place to go, who do you turn to? Alone in the city as the countdown to Christmas begins, you find yourself applying for a job as the assistant of the world’s biggest entrepreneur; Maxwell Lord. Little do you know, he has other intentions for you. No doubt about it, this Christmas will truly be like no other.

Word count: 4k

Warnings: Eventual smut, mentions of a previous verbally abusive relationship, typical 80s misogyny (but very little of it), mentions of food and drink, alcohol consumption. This is a sugardaddy x sugarbaby fic soooo… a daddy k!nk too oops.

But in this chapter - more tension and also male and female masturbation

Author’s note: Chapter 3 wheyyy! I'm super sick at the minute, but nevertheless I hope my illness isn't reflected in this piece of writing. Yikes. I hope everyone is enjoying so far! Remember if you wanted to be added to my taglist feel free to let me know!

MASTERLIST | SUBMIT REQUESTS

PREVIOUS - CHAPTER THREE - NEXT

The rain drops pelted heavy against your skin as the cool winter ambience sent a shiver down your spine. Once dismissed by Maxwell Lord, you practically raced out of the building. The contrast between the heat you felt in his presence and the December air was immeasurable. You took a big gasp of air, letting rain drops fall on your face and soak through your clothes. You stood there in the middle of the busy street trying to process what just happened.

You had been successful. Your elaborate plan had worked out and you had gotten the job. Only, it was unlike anything you had ever done before. Maxwell told you to expect a call sometime tomorrow and before you left, he made sure you were comfortable with the prospect of his job offer. First things first— tell Tristan the good news. Hopefully then, he would let you stay in your apartment a little while longer.

Before you could grab a ride from a cabbie, the doorman tapped you on the shoulder. "Ms Minerva?" His tone was completely different than earlier, more polite and friendly. "Ma'am? Mr Lord has requested his driver take you home. He didn't want you to get wet in the rain but," the doorman looked you up and down. "I see you're already drenched from this God foresaken rain. I’m Andreas, by the way."

Maxwell had asked his own, personal driver to take you home? You felt butterflies erupt in your stomach from his kind gesture, but you worried about the authenticity of it. How genuine was he? Maxwell Lord was someone who built up his reputation and business on lies and false hope.

"Oh really, that's quite alright," you dismissed the offer. "I can just get a cab."

Andreas put his hand out, halting you from walking away. "I'm afraid Mr Lord insists." He told you, taking out a sleek black umbrella and opening it up. He held it above you, protecting you from the rain.

"Could you tell Mr Lord that I'm grateful for his offer, but I can make my own way home?" You said through gritted teeth.

"I'm afraid not," Andreas said with a short shake of his head. "Whatever Mr Lord wants, Mr Lord gets."

So that's how it was going to be.

Before you could reply, a black limousine with tinted windows pulled up on the road in front of you. A few passer-bys on the street, hands full of their Christmas shopping, shot you a strange glance as you slipped into the car. Andreas shut the door behind you and suddenly you found yourself sitting in a car that probably had more worth than your entire life’s savings.

The seats were sleek and black leather, the floor was carpeted and you spotted a small ice cooler by your sofa seat. You carefully clicked it open and examined the insides. It was just various bottles of alcohol- mostly spirits. You couldn’t help but smile as you continued to explore the limousine.

Upon meeting him, Maxwell Lord was not what you expected, but now you had found the perfect opportunity to learn more about him. You spotted a velveteen box nailed to the floor so you opened it up and found a variety of odd things. It was like a rich man’s junk drawer. Everything from gold fountain pens, jewellery, condoms, multiple checkbooks were mixed inside this box. Nosily, you scurried through it all, taking out the occasional item and examining it closer. You couldn’t believe it. You had never met someone who was just able to leave such expensive items lying around in a random box inside their own limousine.

This whole experience felt like a fever dream.

The lights in the limousine were dimmed and so you searched around for a switch or button of some kind to brighten the interior of the car. Your fingers tapped into a switch and rainbow disco lights flickered on, illuminating the limousine multi-colour. It looked more like a party bus. You didn't even realise the driver had already got into the car and as he turned on the ignition and began to drive, you jolted and fell back at the sudden force, into the plush leather seat. You scrambled to belt yourself up and compose yourself.

"Ma'am, where will I be taking you?" the driver called from the front of the limousine, as he tried to navigate through the busy Christmas roads of DC. You yelled your address back to him and he made a brief sound of acknowledgement.

After a few moments of sitting in still silence, despite the rainbow disco lights beginning to give you a headache, you heard a buzzing noise. You scrambled around in your seat, looking for where the noise originated from, when you found a phone nailed to the wall of the limo. Maxwell Lord’s limo had its own carphone! Of course it did.

Your eyes widened when you realised it was ringing and you contemplated answering it. It could be anyone! It could be someone important or a business related matter. It could be private. Thoughts raced through your mind as the phone continued to buzz.

"Are you going to get that?" The driver called out again.

You took a deep breath and took the phone off the hook, nudging it between your ear and your neck. "H-hello?" you asked, your finger anxiously twirling in the wire connecting the phone and the dock.

"Apologies for calling so early on, I usually wait a few days before calling back my female suitors," you weren't sure if your heart rate eased or increased when you heard Maxwell's voice. His voice sounded easy-going, and you were sure you even heard him chuckle slightly at his own remark. "I trust you weren't made uncomfortable by Andreas insisting you got a ride home."

"I have to admit, Mr Lord, I don't usually get into cars with strangers." you huffed, squeezing your eyes tight shut.

"Smart," Maxwell replied quickly. "So why did you this time?" His voice was dark and had a lulling undertone. He sounded similar to when he saw you during the interview earlier on, and the memory made that familiar heat erupt once more in your stomach.

You struggled to find your words. "I- I uhm-" you weren't exactly sure why you had agreed to Andreas. You would've never agreed to such a proposition before. But this is what Maxwell Lord wanted. And you didn't dare want to disappoint Maxwell Lord. You didn't understand because you didn't even know the man— nor did you have any care about him whatsoever prior to your meeting today. But since you exchanged those words in his office, you had been feeling a certain kind of way. "I trust you." you admitted with a defeated sigh. It was true. You trusted a man you had barely even spent half-an-hour with. You trusted a man who built his business on lying to the people of the world.

On the other end of the line, Maxwell was smiling to himself. His feet were on his desk and he was nursing a glass of his favourite whiskey. He could never tell you, but he craved to hear your voice again. He was already thinking about the next time he could see you. He put the glass down on his desk and with his free hand, palmed at his hardening manhood.

"I'm glad," Maxwell replied smoothly. "Trust is going to be very important in our kind of arrangement." There was a beat. "Speaking of which, would you owe me the pleasure in accompanying me to dinner tomorrow night?"

"D-dinner?" you blurted out, feeling your cheeks heat up. Dinner with Maxwell Lord— this is not how you thought today would go. Sitting in a limousine and being asked out by the cover boy of Forbes magazine.

"I know a really nice restaurant by the river. Black-tie dress code type thing." His voice was like silk. It was getting hot in the limousine. You needed air. The thought of him taking you out for dinner at a restaurant, having a nice meal and enjoying his company felt like a dream. Then you were hit with the reality of your financial situation.

"Oh Mr Lord, I'm sure it's lovely but I don't think I can afford-"

"I think you're forgetting the terms of our arrangement darling," Maxwell snickered on the other end of the line. It was true— you had. For a moment you thought it would be a normal date. But this wasn't a relationship. He was right, it was an arrangement. "What I have, is yours. You are to want for nothing."

There was something romantic about his sentiment, you once again found yourself forgetting the true nature of his words. "Well then," you gulped."Dinner sounds great."

Maxwell's smile grew wider. "And then back to my place." his invitation sounded more like a command than a question, and the authority in his voice was enough to get your panties wet. You pursed your lips together to suppress a moan at the thought of going back to his house. You wondered what it would be like. Would your arrangement commence tomorrow night?

"I'd really like that." you let out a shaky exhale. Your hand dropped in between your legs and you slowly began to touch yourself through the thick material of your denim jeans. You ached to get home and take them off. There was something that felt so naughty about getting off in the car of a man you had just met. Especially when that man was Maxwell Lord.

Maxwell felt the same. He had intended to take you back to his place to go through a contract and discuss the specifics of your arrangement— but if the night led to something else, he certainly wouldn't be opposed. You were driving him wild; like no other woman had ever. He unzipped his pants and slipped his hand under his boxer shorts, slowly beginning to pump his length while holding the phone in the crook of his neck.

"You- you have something pretty to wear?" he asked, trying to remain as composed as possible.

"Maybe, maybe just my little black dress." you whispered in response, pressing your forehead against the cold window to try and release some tension.

Your description left much to the imagination, but Maxwell wasn't complaining. He wondered about the black dress: how short it was, exactly? How did it fit you? Did it accentuate his favourite parts of your body? Maxwell's eyes fluttered shut as he carried on stroking his length, a small grunt escaping his lips. It didn't go unnoticed by you.

"I'll have my driver pick you up tomorrow evening," Maxwell hummed. "6pm."

You couldn't even reply— he already put the phone down. Maxwell slouched back into his chair and worked at his already hard length. His thumb swept the precum that beaded at his tip and he continued pumping, wishing that the wetness around him was from your mouth as you devoured him.

He imagined your pretty lips suck him and his cock began to throb in his hands. He imagined having to push your hair out of the way so he could get a good look of your face whilst you took him in your mouth. He imagined your eyes wide and your cheeks hollowed as you fit him inside of you. He wanted to fuck your mouth, wanted to make you gag and have your saliva make a mess all over him.

Maxwell gasped as he spilt his seed all over his tailored suit pants. He kept his sensitive cock in his hand for a few moments after, feeling it soften. He wanted to soften inside of you. Already, he was enamoured by you. Desperate to feel your touch, your wetness. Desperate to hear your screams of pleasure.

When you got home, you had planned on seeing Tristan, alerting him of the good news. New job. Then maybe, he'd let you live in your apartment just a little bit longer until you could afford rent. You decided he could wait until tomorrow. Hurrying into your small flat you locked yourself in the bathroom and turned on the shower.

You discarded your clothes, letting them pool into a puddle on the floor. In your frenzy, you had forgotten to open a window, so the steam from the hot water warmed your skin and small beads of sweat drew along your collarbones and chest as you ran your hands over your body. You bit your lip, hard, remembering the image of Maxwell's hands in the office which you had so carefully ingrained into your head.

You thought about his thick hands squeezing your tits, the pad of his thumb rubbing over your nipples and pinching hard enough to make you squeal. You wondered how his touch felt. You imagined him rough, and ruthless, but since meeting him today, and the way he diverted all your expectations, you wondered if he would have any surprises up his sleeve for your time in the bedroom. You let your fingers gently trace the skin of your stomach, a feather light touch that tickled slightly. You closed your eyes, imagining the wealthy CEO stood behind you, arms wrapped around your naked body and planting sloppy wet kisses into the crook of your neck.

With complete certainty, neither you or Maxwell could stop thinking about each other. Maxwell wanted to call you over in the dead of night when he couldn't sleep. His body ached for you. He felt a neediness that he had never felt before. Of course he could just call one of his assistants. He paid them enough, they would be able to come over and satisfy him (to some extent), but the problem was, they weren't you.

You had done something to him, and now nobody else could even begin to compare to you. You consumed his every thought. Maxwell had once almost married a rival CEO. He was meant to be in love with her but… the feelings were not the same as this. The feelings he felt for you were far beyond lust, but he couldn't put his finger on what exactly they were. He cursed himself, feeling frustrated. This wasn't him. But he was completely and utterly whipped on you.

And you weren't much different. You swore you were in love with Tristan. You had been in an on and off relationship with him for two years but once again, the feelings you had for him were so different to the feelings you now possessed for Maxwell. It was indescribable. You wrecked your room, trying to find the perfect shoes and accessories to wear with your promised little black dress. You wanted to be perfect. You wanted to look perfect. And it was all for Maxwell.

He had you whipped, and you hated him for it.

You lived your life wanting to only impress yourself. You didn't think twice about the way men felt about you. It never mattered. But this was Maxwell Lord. Everything was just different.

So when your 'date' finally came around, you were both equally bursting with anticipation.

When you slid in the back of the limousine, Maxwell couldn't keep his eyes from you. His gaze was glued onto your amazing figure which he loved so much, and the way your little black dress clung to your body and accentuated all your perfections. Your little diamond earrings sparkled under the car's dim light and there was something so beautiful about the simplicity of it.

Truth be told, Maxwell Lord was nervous. He didn't date. He couldn't remember the last time he went on a proper date (he wasn't even sure if you classed this outing as a date). He wasn't one for relationships either. Hell, a woman could count herself lucky if she lasted a week with him. He liked the spontinuity of fucking different women, no strings attached. Throwing them away like garbage the second he got bored. He had the power to do that. It was just the way he was and he had no intentions of that changing.

Although, maybe his intentions were slowly changing and he hadn't yet realised. You offered him the kindest smile he had ever seen, your eyes glistening like jewels. And oh, he felt his cheeks warm up. He leaned over to the window on his side and pressed his face against it, the cool winter air calming his nerves. When your fingers graced the material of his tailored suit pants, just over his thigh, he swore his heart stopped.

"You look nice." you beamed at him, your heart blooming when he finally turned and his brown eyes met yours. You didn't expect Maxwell Lord to disappoint, in any sense, but especially not when it came to fashion. The power suit he was wearing was practically dripping in wealth, and you were almost certain every inch of him was wearing designer names from his suit jacket to his gold cufflinks in his shirt.

"So do you." Maxwell returned the compliment, gawking as he took in your exquisite form. You felt your cheeks heat up under his gaze and you awkwardly looked down at your match black heels, scraping them against the carpeted floor of the limousine. "That dress- I saw it in Louis Vuitton last year?" Maxwell pointed out and you looked down, reacquainting yourself with the outfit you had chosen to wear.

"This? Oh no no," you chuckled earnestly. "I got this from the thrift store for seven dollars like a month ago."

You regretted those words as soon as they left your lips. You did not just admit to Maxwell Lord that you had bought the dress he had been so enthralled in, from the moment you entered the limo, second hand. To your surprise, he gave you a toothy grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling in delight and that adorable little dimple appearing in his left cheek.

"We're here," he announced as the driver pulled up on the side of the road. You gazed out the window in awe. The whole street was lit up in gold Christmas fairy lights, and the restaurant that Maxwell had selected, was highlighted with tinsel and a huge Christmas tree in the front window.

"Wow," you couldn't help but whisper at the gorgeous view. You hadn't even realised Maxwell had already slipped out the car and opened your side door for you. He held his hand out for you, and of course you grabbed it. His hands were soft and warm… he definitely moisturized. He helped you out of the limo and shut the door behind you, sliding an arm around your waist as he guided you into the restaurant.

"Be careful not to slip on the black ice." he warned as he helped you slowly walk in your heels. Still hand in hand, you looked up at him with the biggest smile. You hadn't felt a happiness like this in a long time. He didn't look at you back, instead of focusing on successfully navigating inside the restaurant without falling over.

The restaurant was empty. Not a soul in sight. Your eyes snapped to Maxwell, waiting for him to give you an explanation. He caught on, offering you a small and understanding nod.

"I rented the restaurant out." He explained, raising an eyebrow as he examined his surroundings. Your gaze followed his as you took in the merrily strung Christmas lights and the beautifully decorated tree by the front bay window.

"Why would you do that?" You quizzed him.

"You never know who is sitting among us," he explained. "Journalists, paparazzi, crazed fans."

Ah, there it was. The part about Maxwell you had completely forgotten about. He was famous. Everyone in the world knew who he was and if you had known anything about Maxwell before meeting him, it was that the tabloids loved to pry into his personal life. So, you were somewhat understanding. But that didn't stop the devastating feeling of your heart sinking into your chest. He wanted to hide you. It made sense, I mean, you had only just met and you were only his sugar baby, but it still hurt. You done your best to ignore the strange feelings and told yourself you could still have a good night with him. But the thoughts didn't escape your mind.

You and Maxwell were ushered to a seat by a lit fireplace and passed menus by a beaming waiter. "Can I get you a drink while you decide on what to eat?" he asked with an enthusiastic smile.

"Just a bottle of your finest champagne with two glasses," Maxwell replied, not even looking at the waiter but flicking his wrist and gesturing for him to scurry away. The waiter left both of you in a frenzy, and you couldn't help but giggle. "Is something funny?" Maxwell prompted you, raising an eyebrow. You pursed your lips again but shook your head 'no'. Maxwell's eyes flicked back down to the menu and you burst into another fit of giggles. "Seriously, what is it?" Maxwell asked sternly and you straightened your posture, taking a deep breath and trying to compose yourself.

"That poor waiter looked so afraid of you." You admitted quietly. Maxwell shrugged his shoulders like it was no big deal.

"A lot of people are afraid of me."

"Why?" you beckoned, leaning closer to him.

Maxwell hesitated and put his menu down. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"A lot of people used to be afraid of my mother," Maxwell admitted. "I'm afraid I'm going to end up like her."

"Why were they afraid of your mother?" you questioned him, thanking the waiter as he promptly brought you the two glasses and bottle of ice cold champagne. You began to pour it out.

"She was so cold. Bitter… heartless…" Maxwell scowled, quickly taking a glass of champagne and downing it in one quick gulp. "I worry that, maybe, others perceive me in the same light as they perceive my mother."

"That they think you're cold, bitter and heartless?" you quizzed, and Maxwell winced at your words. He didn't reply, instead buried his gaze into the cream coloured table cloth.

You extended your arms and reached out, taking hold of his soft ring clad hands. Maxwell's breathing hitched under your touch. You noticed the way his hands were considerably larger than yours but even still, you rubbed comforting circles into his skin with your thumb. He interlocked his fingers with yours and you offered him a warm smile. "I don't think you're cold, bitter and heartless."

Maxwell sighed. "You don't know me."

"I see the warmth in your eyes," you whispered. "I know there's more to you than meets the eye."

Taglist: if you want to be added let me know! (if your name is crossed out it means I can't tag you)

December Magic: @kiwi-the-first @100layersofdaddyissues @mrschiltoncat @honeymandos @thisisthe-wayson @this-cat-is-dea @blonde2bomshell

Permanent: @goth-topic @supernaturalgirl @phoenixhalliwell @ah-callie @luvzoria @stardust-galaxies @wickedfrsgrl

#maxwell lord #maxwell lord x reader #maxwell lord smut #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal smut #max lord #max lord smut #max lord x reader #december magic

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op-peccatori · 4 years

Text

Hopefully, Yours (part 2) | MLQC Victor

Fandom: Mr Love Queen’s Choice

Pairing: Victor/Fem!Reader

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 8326

Summary: It took some cake, a friend, and some impulsive behaviour, but they got there. (part 2 of Hopefully, Yours)

Warnings/Tags: making out, language, my cheeseball antics

a/n: I was afraid of opening this doc at one point because every time I did I added more words to it ;; Also accidentally deleted the first draft, so I hope I didn’t leave anything out for this one.

[video]

After Hours | Victor and Y/n

200, 280 views • Feb 8th, 2020

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JTV ✓

1.19M subscribers

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5100 comments

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somsom 5 minutes ago

They’re both so nice. Victor’s always made out to be this heartless CEO, so it’s nice to see this side of him :)

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tooktiktook 7 minutes ago

hmmmMMM

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cheribb 15 minutes ago

their eyes said more than enough <3 <3

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saltqueen 16 minutes ago

what i wouldn’t give to have someone look that soft over me

⌨⌨⌨

Victor eyed the cheerful grin splitting Jason’s face, just a little uneasy in his seat.

While having eager eyes on him was not an unfamiliar experience, he’d never been in a position where he was expected to talk about his feelings on camera. Not that he was about to confess in front of the entire crew of the show, but when it came to you the lines always got a little too blurry for his comfort.

He got a little too eager.

“Just be nice,” Jason had instructed gently, and Victor steeled himself.

They started, quite predictably, by asking him about his ideal type. Resisting the urge to scoff, he tried to stick to the script he’d worked on with Goldman, who had insisted on being present for today’s shoot. Not that Victor was complaining; it wasn’t exactly part of the job description, but Goldman had been enthusiastic, which Victor could appreciate and would certainly reward.

Goldman had also spent most of yesterday handling the public relations department in his absence, preparing them for his appearance on the show. A tentative plan would be sent to him by tomorrow morning. He had faith in them, believing that they would be able to make this look good for him.

“Someone who works hard,” he answered, knowing you would laugh at that. “Who can be themselves around me, someone I can be myself around. Someone...kind.”

The times you’ve spent in Souvenir flit through his mind, some quiet and some full of bright-eyed chatter.

“You’ve known Y/n for some time, right?” the interviewer asked. She looked nice, but he’d been on the block long enough to know that even the kindest faces can often hide the sharpest teeth.

“Yes.”

“What do you think of her?”

“She’s a very kind person,” he said easily. “One of the most hard-working and inspiring people I’ve ever met.”

You would surely gape like a fool after seeing this. It was a little embarrassing, but Victor was determined to leave your image shiny after this. He would not have any words of his twisted to give you a bad name. If it got even a fraction of his feelings across, well, that was a bonus he wouldn’t mind having. The intimate setting of the ferris wheel had seemed to help some, but his admittedly indirect confession didn’t reach you as he had hoped.

God, but his father would love this.

“Did you have fun on your date?”

“It was lovely.” They tacked on another question and he nodded. “I...yes, I’d love to do it again.”

It was a little curt, but he didn’t really get what Goldman had meant by ‘nod tenderly with a far-off look.’

What would you think of that?

The interviewer raised a brow, her smile widening. “Let’s get to it, then. How do you feel about her?”

For some bizarre reason, the first thing that had come to his mind at this question was his inexplicable need to check your social idea every day. And the way his heart beats just a little faster when you’ve posted a new picture. How, in moments of weakness, he’d given in and saved a few to his phone. Even a mental reminder of it made him a little hot under the collar.

There were many things he couldn’t even begin to try and explain when it came to you.

Really, the list is endless.

Victor’s current favourite was the video you’d uploaded of eating the tiramisu he’d cooked. He watches it at the end of a bad day and just like that, he feels a little better.

“I think anyone who ends up with her would be the luckiest person in the world,” he said honestly. “She’s beautiful in every single way.”

The last three words were supposed to have stayed in his head, but saying them felt natural. Goldman seemed to approve, shooting him a discreet thumbs up.

When you walk in, sleep-deprived and grumpy but trying to hide it, thinking he won’t catch on as if he isn’t running sharp eyes over every inch of your face. When the first sip of your coffee is too eager, leaving your tongue burnt and him with a pressing need to soothe it with his own. When you eat too much sugar and complain about a stomach-ache; he scolds you for it, but his arms are left straining with the need to wrap themselves around you.

He cherished these moments and wanted every single one all to himself.

She makes me greedy.

“Would you want to be that person?”

Victor laughed, light and incredulous.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

“I guess time will have to answer that question for us,” he said, the ghost of a smile on his lips, leaving it at just the right note to keep viewers hanging—right along with him.

lightscameranaps ✓ @jasonp

Hope y’all enjoyed the episode! #HopefullyYours

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bandanaman @headaccs

@jasonp sooo really sorry about this but we’re kinda dying over here

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raspberrydream @berryberry

@headaccs Victor’s acc is still private. Maybe there’s something there?

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srirachafire @hotsauce

@berryberry But Y/n’s isn’t private, and there’s nothing there. Give it up guys, they’re just friends.

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bandanaman @headaccs

@hotsauce bruh that look?? was not friendship

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raspberrydream @berryberry

@hotsauce those words?? were not friendship

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srirachafire @hotsauce

@headaccs @berryberry you two?? are hopeless romantics

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lightscameranaps ✓ @jasonp

@headaccs honestly? me too D:

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bandanaman @headaccs

@jasonp !!!!!! asdfgdvsd

Closing your Moments and the entire thread discussing the episode, you flop back down onto your mattress. Reaching for your newest plushy, you hug it tight, perhaps a tad too aggressively.

It’s odd. You struggle between the visceral sort of pleasure that comes from a job well done—because the response is terrific—and the trembling nerves that come from watching yourself on a date with Victor.

Watching the episode had been harder than you had expected; you hadn’t quite been expecting the way Victor was looking at you—the intense gaze was a little too convincing, and watching it from the audience’s perspective was flustering.

You spent most of it trying to suppress the inconvenient surges of hope, telling yourself it wasn’t real.

There really was nothing to know. The ferris wheel shot had ended there because you had nothing to say to Victor’s answer. You don’t know if he was referring to his past or his present, but the look in his eyes made it clear: his feelings were still there. Instead of pressing him, you chose to stay quiet, exhaustion clear in your face and sinking deep into your bones.

Victor had seemed to understand and maybe even appreciate it, probably not wanting to discuss it either, and only insisted on dropping you home. The ride to your place had been mostly silent, but you had tried to ask him his thoughts on the day and the shoot. He kept his answers concise, appearing a little distracted, which was so unlike him it made you wonder if he regretted opening up.

You’d spent the entire ride trying to quell the delicate little thing trembling in your chest.

The next video started while you were lost in your thoughts, and it happens to be your individual parts. Curious, you lean in, wincing slightly at the way you were fidgeting.

And then they switch to Victor. You both had to wear the outfits from the date for these, but you still weren't quite expecting the impact his voice alone would have on you.

And as always, those fierce eyes have you freezing in place.

“Let’s get to it, then. How do you feel about her?”

He looks unfazed by the question. Of course, they go over the questions with you beforehand, but you still remember how nervous you’d felt when asked how you felt about him; Victor’s eyes flick towards the camera, filled with intent, as if addressing you—and you close the laptop with a snap, your throat tight.

You don’t have to watch that right away.

You had been very careful about what to say, how to act, channeling your inner-Victor to adopt a marble-smooth expression. Say nice things about him? Easy, you didn’t even have to make anything up. Imply just enough to keep people guessing.

Keep your unwanted feelings to yourself.

Palm coming to rest over your heart, pressing down as if it would alleviate the ache there, you try to sort through your thoughts. You never really thought there was a chance, but to hear it confirmed was a blow you weren’t prepared for.

It’s ridiculous to feel so insecure, you think. You feel like you lost a competition you had never even had the chance to compete in. And over an unnamed, mysterious figure? So silly!

But another part of your mind says it’s okay to feel this way, that it’s only natural. You’ve had such strong feelings for Victor for so long. And all of these feelings, the good and the bad, are yours; the wounds of your heart, the light in your laughter. Fighting them would only make you suffer. The love and the hurt are part of you, both important in their own right.

Knowing all of that doesn’t make it easier, though.

After all, Victor had alluded to his feelings on camera, to your face. Knowing him, he would never do that unless he was sure about the person.

“This fucking sucks,” you admit out loud, and at the heels of your words come the tears. Because, to make it even worse, people really seem to think it’s you.

You can’t blame them, because even you had been taken in by his soft looks. Anyone watching would believe he’s smitten with you. Good for the show, terrible for you.

You’re not strong enough to reply to them, to tell them you aren’t that fortunate, and have been hoping Victor, or someone from his team, would put a stop to it.

But there hasn’t been any word from them and you curse out loud at the fact that he expects you to do something about it. As if there’s any more emphasis needed, your phone vibrates. Unlocking it with a miserable sigh, you scroll down quickly.

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Minor [19:40]: am I watching this right? Boss, are you dating the CEO? PLS SAY NO

Chik [20:21]: You bitch. When were you going to tell me you snagged THAT? So I was right back then, ha! Anyway, you two are adorbs. The puppy eyes are disgusting. I’m proud of you.

Chik [20:22]: also...deets. Now. I’ll even throw in a please!!!

Lucien [20:40]: Well, now. I seem to have missed out on quite the opportunity.

Kiro [20:45]: I wish you’d invited me. But I guess it wouldn’t have mattered. I hope he makes you happy, Miss Chips! He better, or else ;P

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Frowning at the texts you scroll back up, hoping, hoping, hoping, and at the sight of the name that always sits at the tip of your tongue, you curl up tighter.

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Victor [21: 05]: Are you okay?

Y/N [21:20]: I’m fine. Moments seems to be blowing up, haha. Did you watch the episode?

Victor [21: 20]: Yes.

Victor [21: 21]: Did you?

‎

You pause at that, looking guiltily at your laptop. You had, sort of. Fighting off your own thoughts had taken up most of your attention. Resolving to watch it again—a clear display of previously dormant masochistic tendencies, roused by Victor— and actually pay attention this time, you turn back to the screen.

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Y/N [21:22]: Yeah, but not the individual parts. It was nice, they made it seem so real! But we’re going to have to say something to let them know there’s nothing like that.

‎

You wait anxiously for a reply, a part of you clearly suffering from delusion hoping he’d oppose that. When there’s no text from him for a few minutes, you plug your phone in to charge and get out of bed, heading for a quick shower before you get something to eat.

Heartbreak hasn't been enough to curb your appetite, and you feel more than ready to let dessert have the chance to make you feel better.

Who needs Victor when you have cake, right?

Just as you’re halfway through cutting a slice of the cake Jason—well, his team—had sent as thanks, trying to keep your thoughts away from the bottle of wine you‘ve got tucked away, your doorbell rings, breaking the melancholic silence of your apartment. A part of you wants to roll your eyes at your dramatics, while the other feels you have the right to wallow for as long as you need to.

The irrational side of you stirs once more, conjuring thoughts of Victor rushing over, and you peep through the hole with a wildly thumping heart.

Lucien’s serene smile chases those thoughts away, and you open the door with a sheepish grin.

He looks a little tired, his dark bangs ruffled; unlike his usual sharp appearance, he looks impossibly soft in his barn red sweater and comfortable looking track pants. He’s also got a folder tucked under one arm.

“Hi!”

“Sorry to drop by so late,” he greets you, his warm eyes bringing you a little comfort instantly. “But you mentioned you’d be working on Miracle Finder tomorrow and I wanted you to have the chance to go over my remarks before that.”

“Lucien! Thank you,” you insist, waving away his apology. “Would you like to come in? I’ve got cake.”

He searches your face for a moment, and his eyes narrow the slightest bit. You feel a little self-conscious in your over-sized sweatshirt and shorts, but it’s not like he hasn’t seen you in various states of disarray before.

“Can’t really say no to that. Let me get my laptop,” he finally agrees. You wait at the door as he gets it, before leading him in. But you notice his curious, inquisitive looks, so subtle and so Lucien, as he toes off his shoes.

“Everything okay?” You reach for another plate, cutting a second slice as Lucien takes a seat at the table.

“Yes, of course. It’s just,” he hesitates, and there’s that odd scrutiny again. “I wasn’t expecting you to be alone.”

“On a Sunday evening?” The first bite of the cake tastes like sweet comfort over the taste of despondency, and you send a silent thanks to Jason. “I spent the day napping.”

“Well, after the show I just watched,” he says, quite slyly in your opinion. “I wasn’t even sure if you’d be home.”

“I didn’t know you were interested in dating shows.” You’re aware your tone is more than a little petulant, but Lucien only laughs around a mouthful of the cake.

“I am if you’re in one,” he retorts. “This is quite nice, by the way.”

“The director, Jason sent it. And, honestly, it wasn’t planned. We were supposed to have Kai and Hollow on, but they ended up clashing horribly. Jason asked me and Victor was around, so…” you trail off, uncomfortable.

“Is that why you texted me that day?” He seems to have remembered your message, and you wince slightly. You had texted him later with an apology, but hadn’t really expected him to cotton on. He doesn't look mad, just expectant.

“Well, yes, but Jason wanted, he wanted Victor.” Stumbling over your words, heat suffuses your skin as you flounder for a moment.

Lucien watches you with the eyes of a fox and the understanding of a good friend. “Just Jason?”

“Huh?”

“Was it just Jason who wanted Victor?” he asks, tilting his head as your mouth purses.

No, no, of course it wasn’t. You stare down at your half-eaten cake, the other half of it beginning to churn in your stomach. His small, soft smiles. His scent. His rants on street food and the way he dragged you away from food that would ‘absolutely make you ill, you absolute dummy’ as Jason resigned himself to having to cut all of that out. It all comes back in a rush, your head left feeling heavy.

And then it feels the weight of a hand, as Lucien reaches over to pat it gently. “Never mind. Why don’t you get your organizer and we can go over tomorrow’s episode?”

Relieved, grateful and slightly emotional over his silent acceptance, you rush to your bedroom to find your notebook and laptop, barely catching the light of your phone screen before it went black. Unplugging and checking it as you exited the room with your materials in hand, your train of thought comes to a screeching halt.

‎‎

Victor [21:59]: Do you really believe that?

Victor (2 missed calls)

Victor [22:15]: Y/n.

Victor [22:16]: ...Did you fall asleep?

Victor [22:18]: Dummy. Goodnight.

‎‎

Unwilling to delve into what his first text means, you shift your thick planner in your arms and type a quick reply.

‎‎

Y/N [22:19]: Hi! Sorry. I went to get something to eat and then Lucien dropped by. We’re going to get to work haha ^^

Victor [22:19]: …

‎‎

You wait for a whole minute before Lucien calls for you, and let your hand fall, phone locked, with a sigh.

Well, at least he’ll be happy to hear you’re working hard.

Sinking into familiar, engaging discussions with Lucien is easy. Even with the thoughts of Victor looming at the back of your mind, you straighten out a plan for the shoot. Lucien listens to your input carefully, adding his own notes as you squint at yours. His voice, familiar and soothing, lulls you, distracting you from yourself for a short while.

Before you know it, it’s eleven and you’ve got a fantastic plan in hand.

“I’m sorry I kept you so late,” you say for the second time in a minute, and he gives you an exasperated look. “And thank you.”

“I’ve told you, there’s no need for all that between us,” Lucien repeats, crossing one long leg over the other as he adopts a thoughtful look. “However, perhaps you could satisfy my curiosity regarding one thing.”

“What is it?”

You were prepared for a philosophical question. What he comes up with is, in your opinion, way more difficult to answer.

“Why aren’t you with Victor?” he asks seriously. You blink, uncomprehending.

“Like, right now?”

“Right now, or in general. I didn’t think he would just...let you be,” Lucien mutters the last part under his breath, but you still catch it. He continues to say something about possessive bastards, but you’re not touching that.

“I think you’ve misunderstood,” you say, slowly, with a nervous laugh, shoulders hunching a little. “All of that was just for the camera. Victor and I aren’t like that.”

“But you have feelings for him,” Lucien points out, cutting straight to the heart of the matter and yours. Really, this is almost cruel. Lucien turns to face you fully as you sigh and sink back into the couch.

“I do.” It’s the first time you’ve admitted it out loud. Sure, some of the people in your life have had an idea, but you’ve never said it. Lucien seems like a good person to start with. “But he doesn’t feel the same way, so.”

And you’ve never said that out loud either. It hurts, as you put it out into the universe. As if shying away from it before would have increased your chances.

Lucien looks at you oddly. “Did he say that? Because the way he looks at you says otherwise. It’s quite embarrassing.”

You feel heat creeping up the back of your neck.

“I’ve never told him how I feel,” you mumble, pressing the side of your cheek into the soft fabric, hoping it would swallow you up.

“Then how do you know how he feels?” Lucien continues to probe, and you exhale forcefully because it’s so clear to you; why isn’t it ever as clear to everyone else?

And Lucien is supposed to be your smart friend!

‘Well, there’s also someone else in his life but I can’t exactly say that.’

“Because it’s Victor,” you declare with an emphatic sweep of your hands, hoping it would somehow get your point across, that it would explain how unattainable he is. Just as you do, two things happen successively.

One: Lucien looks at you as if he wants to boink you on the head or laugh really loudly. He does neither, but his mouth twitches violently.

And two: there’s a series of loud, heavy knocks on your door, before the culprit seems to remember you have a doorbell and rings that instead. It only rings once, but you can sense that the person is still there.

Exchanging alarmed looks with Lucien, you rise to your feet and shuffle towards the door.

“Let me,” Lucien murmurs, stopping you before you can reach the entrance, and steps forward to look through the peephole. His only reaction is a quick, sharp exhale before he steps back to unlock the door.

Without telling you who was just knocking at your door like a maniac.

“Wait, who i-” the words fall away with your panicked thoughts, as Lucien opens the door to reveal your uninvited visitor.

It really is Victor this time, with his chest heaving as if he’d run up the stairs. Victor, with his inky hair pushed back carelessly, in dark grey sweats and a light grey t-shirt and indoor slippers.

Victor, with a furious look in his eyes as he pushes past Lucien, who looks a little too entertained in the face of such ire.

“Sorry to intrude on your cosy evening,” he says, after a short pause, through clenched teeth. You stare at him in disbelief, unable to form actual words at the moment. It feels as if a concentrated storm itself has swept into your living room, ready to swallow you up.

Of course, a part of you would be more than okay with that. Even with that knife-sharp glint in his eyes, you can’t help but want to throw yourself at it, let it graze the softest parts of you, in an emotional variation of bloodletting.

Sometimes you surprise yourself with the things you think.

Maybe you should’ve changed into nicer pyjamas after all, damn it.

“Victor? What-is everything okay?” You look him over carefully, seeing no visible signs of injury. The stony look on his face, however, keeps you from coming too close. What could you possibly have done now?

Swiftly, you run through a list of work-related tasks. Nope. Nothing. You’ve been sure to give it your all this week just so Victor wouldn’t feel the need to call you.

Even now, though, something under your skin starts buzzing, as it always does when his entire attention is on you.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t everything be okay?” he says mutinously, crossing his arms over his chest. Okay, you’re sensing more than a little hostility here.

And, because life is unfair, bitchy is also a good look on Victor.

“Well,” you draw out, looking past him at Lucien, who shrugs lightly. Victor frowns at the exchange. He levels a downright lethal glare at Lucien, who tilts his head in clear interest. Kinda hot, but you should probably keep that to yourself lest you push Victor to the point of spitting fire. “It’s...late...and you’re here…?”

That has his mouth doing that little spasm it does when he’s pissed. “And I notice I’m not the only one. What, is it just me who’s barred from coming to your place this late?”

“Well, n-no,” you stammer, looking once more at Lucien who seems content to watch and be unhelpful. “But Lucien was just here to talk about tomorrow’s episode.”

Why are you here?

The question seems to hang in the air, unsaid yet clear.

Victor says nothing, standing tall in your living room like an indignant matron. You feel helpless, confused, elated and increasingly offended because of the implication in his words that only catches up to you now.

You pick the path of offense.

“But what, exactly, did you think Lucien was doing here?” you ask, your tone turning decidedly cooler. He returns your glare. Behind him, you see Lucien trying to hide a smile. “You seem to be under the impression that I make it a habit of entertaining people in my evenings?”

Victor blinks at that, arms coming loose, and you hold up a hand.

“And even if I did want to have friends over at night,” you say loudly, through gritted teeth. “What business is it of yours?”

“It’s inappropriate,” he insists.

“No, what’s inappropriate is you coming into my house and telling me who I should, or should not, be spending time with, regardless of the time.” Much to your frustration, you find yourself blinking back tears as your voice cracks towards the end.

Victor deflates at that, the ice in his expression melting in the face of your furious tears; Lucien, concern clear on his face, takes a step towards you. Your eyes squeeze shut, as if that would hide you from them; anger and embarrassment war within you at not only crying in front of Victor, but to have a quiet Lucien witnessing this ridiculous drama.

Where did your peaceful day go?

You hear footsteps, hesitant and barely audible, come closer, feel the heat from a body as it nears yours.

“I’m sorry. I’ll leave.” It’s Victor.

Your eyes snap open to the sight of his back, your feet carrying you forward without the aid of your thoughts, a hand curling loosely into his t-shirt.

Leave? Just like that?

He stops in his tracks, looking back down at you in surprise. You’re not sure what he sees as you keep your eyes fixed on his shoulder, but it makes him sigh softly.

A thumb wipes under your eyes, gentle, and strong arms wrap around you carefully, pulling you into an—unreasonably broad, you think—chest; his comforting scent envelopes you, pulling you back from the edge.

It’s frustrating. You want to yell at him for barging in like a lunatic. But you don’t want him to leave. You want to sink into his steady embrace and allow the solace it brings.

With your face pressed to his t-shirt, you miss the way he looks back at Lucien, who nods and turns to leave, but not before holding Victor’s gaze for a moment longer—you don’t see the warmth drain from his face, the vicious warning warning clear in his eyes.

Victor pulls you closer, nodding once.

If Lucien’s answering smile is a touch more resigned than amused, neither of them can really acknowledge it.

You try to pull back when you hear the door close gently, but Victor cards a hand through your hair and you slump back into his embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, stroking your hair, with a gentle hesitance uncharacteristic for the decisive man. “That was...extremely inappropriate of me. I should not have done that. I can leave. I should.”

He should. But neither of you move. His heart beats a little faster, the sound clearer the longer your ear remains pressed into his chest.

With cotton in your mouth, your mind totally mush with the knowledge that Victor’s hugging you, and with the little voice yelling that he does not get to hold you after driving you to tears—it takes you a moment to form a response.

But you can’t resist. “So what you’re saying is you made an impulsive decision.”

The soft motions of his hand pause before he huffs into your hair. There’s no other response, and it makes you smile a little.

“Why did you?” you finally ask. Victor quite visibly lost his cool. While he did seem to have something against Lucien, this was a bit much. You hadn’t been aware that the hostility ran this deep.

He tucks your head under his chin, the arm around your waist tightening, and as the anger subsides, your face begins to heat up as you realize how intimate this is. But Victor seems content to stay like this, and your heart hammers when you feel something brush the crown of your head.

“Dummy,” he mutters, and yes, his words are slightly muffled by your hair, and you feel the urge to stick your head in the refrigerator. “You had that guy over this late at night. Do you really need to ask?”

“It’s just Lucien,” you respond, and this time he lets you pull your head away to look at you with abject disbelief.

“Just? There’s no just with that guy.” He seems serious, so you swallow the laughter bubbling up.

“Lucien is a dear friend,” you assure him. “You were really that worried about it?”

“Worried,” Victor repeats, staring at you. Your confusion is clear in your face, as the feeling that you’re missing something creeps in. “Worried. Yes. I was worried.”

You nod encouragingly, and take a quick step back when he laughs. It isn’t one of his airy laughs, that escapes him when he finds something funny. It’s low, almost strangled—and then he steps forward, expression melting into sheer intent.

When he speaks, his voice is a full octave lower and it scrambles your brains with shameful ease.

“Since he was the one you considered over me for our date that day. Yes, I suppose I was worried,” he muses, matching every unsteady step you take backwards with one towards you. You refrain from pointing out that it was for a show, and all too soon, the back of the sofa hits your hips and Victor looms over you.

You tuck the part about him knowing you wanted to ask Lucien first away for later. Victor, his soothing scent, the heat from his breath, his tempestuous gaze—your senses flood with him.

“Y-yeah. But you didn’t need to be, he always helps us out,” you point out confusedly, and he gives you a familiar, unimpressed look that brings a small, and odd, measure of relief.

“What kind of a person would I be,” he says, and your stomach swoops as he leans over you, hands resting on the top of the sofa as you lean back. “If I let dangerous men like him think they have a chance with you?”

“Dangerous? He’s…” The rest of his words catch up and you can’t think, tongue struggling to form coherent speech. “Not...dangerous?”

“Too dangerous,” he murmurs, lips brushing over your temple. Something in the back of your throat trembles. “Even if I don’t have the right, I…”

He doesn’t continue.

Holding your breath, you count to five before releasing it, pulse beating an anticipatory beat in your veins. “Why should anyone think they don’t have a chance with me?”

You know he hasn’t, but with how everything in you stills after asking that question, you wonder if he stopped time.

You’re not sure if it’s the right question to have asked, or the worst.

But it gives him pause, and when the tip of your tongue slips out to wet your lips, his eyes slide down to your mouth. A large hand slides up your spine to rest at the back of your head, your skin erupting with goosebumps at the touch.

Your lips part on the softest sound and it makes something rumble in his chest, quiet but clear with how close he is.

It gives you what you’ve been dreaming of—Victor’s lips falling over yours, soft, with a rushed breath and fervent eyes, something desperate at the edge of it. Everything goes quiet, with only your blood pounding in your ears. It feels as if every inch of you is awake in a tingly sort of way, your thoughts deserting you at the way he looks at you, ready to devour.

There’s hunger in his eyes, and you feel faint when it hits you.

It’s also his answer, you realize, mouth opening to say something, anything, and he pulls you back, kissing you fiercely. Something in you caves, spilling into your blood, setting it alight with a burst of sparking desire.

Victor kisses with his entire body, like he does everything else: controlling every inch of it, sweeping your mind clean, licking into your mouth with the determination that drives his every action, to conquer.

But you’ve been determined to match him since the day you first met him, all too eager to push back and clash. You don’t mind the clack of teeth, the lack of rhythm, and Victor only presses in harder as your arms slide over his shoulders, fingers weaving into his hair. Your tongue is a sly thing that licks along his, your mouth a clever warm weapon that sucks at it, and he unravels.

Hands that were so careful lose their caution as they dig into the sides of your hips, slinking down and hooking around your thighs as he lifts you up, your legs wrapping around his waist.

“You’re not stopping me,” he rasps against your lips, almost questioning, pupils blown wide. He looks so good you might just lose your mind, and this is after a kiss.

Taking a page out of his book, you kiss him again.

He carries you around the sofa—with a strength you’ll be sure to admire deeply once you’ve regained the ability to form thoughts—even as he sucks bruises into the delicate skin of your neck, sitting down with you sinking into his lap.

You’re shivering, you realize, at this sudden fulfilment of a desperate, impossible wish. Your knees press into the sides of his thighs as Victor kisses the corners of your mouth, the curve of your upper lip, the plush, swollen jut of your lower lip—and you feel deliriously drunk.

He watches you carefully.

“Oh,” you say, half-slurring, kissed stupid. “That’s why.”

“Hm,” he agrees, nuzzling the side of your face. His eyes are bright, his arms a grounding touch around your back. “No one should think they get to have this.”

“No one but you?” It’s meant to be clever, sharper, but it comes out shy instead. He nips at the shell of your ear, and you can’t bring yourself to be mad about it.

“If you allow it,” he confirms. He presses his lips to the soft skin behind your ear.

Something swells within you, sweet, sudden and threatening to dissolve you into tears. It breaks open, everything you’ve worked so hard to suppress spilling out like hoarded treasure out of a box now too small to hold it.

“I like you.” It comes out in a rush, and you slap your hands over your face. This time, his low chuckle rings clear in your ears. But when your breath hitches on a sob, his grip on you tightens, lips finding your forehead. “I really like you. So much. I have for a while. At the fair, all of it, I wasn’t...wasn’t acting.”

“What, and you thought I was?” He looks a little offended when you take a peek at his face. But the sight of his ruffled hair and kissed-puffy lips sends a hot, thrilled jolt through you, and you have to restrain yourself from pouncing. “I have many skills. Acting, admittedly, is not one of them.”

“I thought maybe it was a hidden passion or something,” you mutter, trying to repress a wet laugh at the withering look he gives you, gentle hands wiping at your eyes. “What, you were great!”

“Nope. That was all real,” he declares, pulling you in to rest against him, your head on his shoulder. You feel a little awkward, but that’s mostly outweighed by how much you want to stay here. “...well, maybe I was a little…”

“Nicer than usual?” you offer, and he huffs into your hair. “Cheesy, like you binge-read several romance novels the night before?”

“Cheesy?” He protests, and you laugh with warmth building and rushing through you. “I thought you liked all that.”

“I do.” This time, the kiss he presses into the crown of your head is firmer.

“Then I’ll do it.” You look up at him, a little enchanted, a little bewildered, but the former wins out as the corners of his mouth curl up. “Every silly thing you want to do. Oh, and I really like you too.” It’s almost a scoff, but the tremor in his voice and the flush that spreads across his skin speaks his truth.

“Really?” you ask, your grin a little mad and ridiculously beatific. It feels unreal, the joy and relief spreading through you; he pecks the tip of your nose.

“Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?” Victor asks, and the solemn sincerity in his voice prompts you to deliver a loud, smacking kiss to his cheek, just because you can. To your unending joy, the lobes of his ears are almost impossibly red.

“Never,” you assure him, peppering more kisses over his skin, fascinating by the sight of him pinkening. A thought strikes you, dampening your rising spirits. “I thought...thought there was someone else.”

He makes a soft, surprised noise in his throat, disbelief winning out over the tenderness for a moment. “Who?”

“I don’t know!” You press your face into the side of his neck, inhaling his comforting scent, hoping it would help with the remnants of hurt. “Some mystery goddess.”

He’s quiet as you nuzzle his rapidly warming skin, feeling the first hints of sheer mortification settle in at the way your voice just cracked. He whispers something.

“Sorry?”

Victor clears his throat. “Just you.” He buries his nose in your hair before you have the chance to lean back like you want to. “It’s only ever been you.”

Not expecting the sincere confession, it feels as if the breath was punched out of you. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

He toys with a strand of your hair, curling it absently around a finger. “I didn’t want to overstep. And to make you feel like you had to reciprocate.”

You stay silent, sensing that he has more to say, even though you want nothing more than to wrap yourself around him and never let go.

“I’ll admit that I feared you would feel pressured to be with me. And that would...I would rather see you happy with someone else, than see you miserable with me.”

“I could never be miserable with you,” you protest at once, feeling almost offended by the mere suggestion.

“I’m not...I know I can be difficult.” The words fall out in a rushed exhale, as if he wants to get them out before they can be swallowed; you feel weak with the force of your emotions. “But I can try for you. I did that day. I wanted you to relax, to have fun, like you do with your friends. I didn’t want you to be so...cautious.”

It’s true, you realize guiltily, that there are times where you can’t completely relax in Victor’s company. Those are the days where your feelings sit a little heavier in your stomach, when his words strike a little sharper. The thought of disappointing him, of doing something not to his taste, of judgment, held you back.

But the day of the fair had been different. He met you halfway, maybe even more than that, and never said a word of complaint. You’d assumed that had been for the camera, though.

“Please,” he says with a roll of his eyes, and you realize you’d said that out loud. “No, that was…” He lowers his gaze, long lashes fanning over the tops of his cheekbones. “That was to show you that you can have fun with me too. I...like you. The way you are. Every bit. The determined, unyielding parts.”

You stare at him.

“The hurting, unsure parts,” he says, a little quieter. “The silly, ridiculously cute parts—don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what,” you ask, your overworked mind trying to process his words, knowing your smile is probably embarrassingly dopey.

He scowls at you. “Just be yourself with me. Dummy is fine.”

“Victor,” you exclaim all of a sudden, startling him. “How am I supposed to stay standing in the face of you saying things like that?”

He rolls his eyes again. “First of all, you’re sitting right now, and I don’t plan to let you move for a while.” Predictably, you feel a little lightheaded at that. “And as for the future...then don’t try to stand, dummy. You can just rest here.” He pulls your head to rest on his shoulder, patting it firmly.

“I’m going to die,” you say with absolute certainty into his shoulder. “I can’t survive this.”

“You have to,” he mutters dryly, tucking you more firmly against him. “Haven’t you seen the discussions? Our ‘love story’ can’t end in your death, too many would be left devastated.”

“Including you?” The look you direct at him is positively vulpine, and he snorts, pushing your head back down. Bully.

The titillated fluttering in your stomach makes you smile.

“...I can’t become a widower before we even get married,” he says solemnly, and you can nearly feel the blood drain from your face as you rear back.

The corners of his mouth twitch with something like mischief, and the smack you deliver to his bicep is perfectly justified.

The undoubtedly chiselled muscle you feel very briefly will also require further rumination once you’re alone.

He’s cracking marriage jokes, no doubt referring to the few comments gushing about a secret wedding. An hour ago, you had been under the impression that he was madly in love with some mystery figure.

Like a bird just freed, your heart flutters at the thought of him having feelings for you.

“Say it again.”

To his credit, he doesn’t do you the disservice of pretending he doesn’t know what you’re asking for. He clears his throat, eyes flicking to the side before finding their way back to yours.

“I like you,” he says, a little lower, a lot deeper. “Dummy.”

You wish you could see what your face was doing, because it makes his eyes go really, really soft. Now that you aren’t weighed down by the frantic need to hide your feelings from one of the most astute people you’ve ever met, you feel like you could float away the way you’ve seen Gavin do, just from how free and happy you feel.

“Just for the record,” you say quietly. “I like you the way you are too.”

“Hm?”

“Even when you’re being a jerk.” He tweaks your ear lightly, rolling his eyes when you giggle. Your heart beats a harsh beat as you try to come up with the right words. “But you’re also the best man I know. When you have it together, and when you don’t—I’ll be there for you. Always.” The way he’s always been there for you.

He kisses the tip of your nose, his pretty eyes a little shinier than before.

“We should aim for a real date first.” He sounds decisive, and a little hoarse.

“...I have a list of places I thought would be good for our first date,” you admit, eyes still locked with his despite your shy admission. He looks pleased, always happy when you take the initiative, and you watch his mouth do that tender thing for a second before leaning in for a swift kiss, catching his lower lip between your teeth as you pull away.

“Good.” His head falls back onto the sofa as your lips trail down his neck curiously, mouthing at the slope of his adam’s apple. Just because you can. “Send it to me.”

“Good,” you murmur, breath hitching in your throat as his hands curl over your waist, skimming the hem of your sweatshirt. “We’re doing this, then.”

“Most definitely.” With how throaty his voice has gotten as you reach his clavicle, a gentle explorer, you’re not sure words will be your allies for much longer.

“Will you be my boyfriend then, Mr. CEO?” you ask playfully, tasting the words in your mouth. Victor makes a soft, content sound in his throat.

“I’m all yours,” he affirms, relishing the words in his mouth, raising his head to look at you through hooded eyes. You both know it, just a little, but saying the words brings a giddy, vulnerable sort of feeling with them. “And you…”

With no need for hope, just certainty, you rise up to kiss him softly.

“I’m yours.”

BTS:

Goldman stares at Jason in horrified disbelief, shocked by the words that had just left the director’s mouth. He glances at his boss, whose only reaction had been to cock a brow.

“Would you be open to replacing Kai?”

“I’m...not really one for such shows,” Victor says, quite delicately in Goldman’s opinion, knowing the man usually has no qualms about being savagely blunt.

“I’m aware. I just thought it would be something different, something that would let people see a different side of you,” Jason explains, still completely at ease.

Victor’s expression makes it quite clear he doesn’t care about people seeing other sides of him.

“Who’s the other participant? Did Hollow come back?” Goldman asks, curious despite himself. In his very personal opinion, which he will definitely be keeping to himself, it might be nice for Victor’s image if people saw he isn’t always heartless.

“Oh, no. She didn’t,” Jason says pleasantly. But the look in his eyes is almost hawklike as he keeps them locked on Victor. “I asked Y/n to do it instead. She agreed.”

Now, to the untrained eye, Victor gives no outward reaction to that statement.

But Goldman sees the way his brow twitches, the way his lips purse the slightest bit. He wonders if Jason, as a director with many years of experience under his belt, caught it too.

“She agreed?” Victor asks, sounding as if he doesn’t quite believe it.

“Yes,” Jason answers, suddenly distracted as he glances at his wristwatch. He sighs, a touch too dramatic to be convincing, but Goldman doesn’t think Victor cares about that. “But I understand. We wouldn’t want you to do something you’re not interested in. I have to go check on her, we’ll keep you updated.”

Something is happening here, Goldman realizes. Jason isn’t rushing out, but seems to be waiting for something.

Victor, staring at the surface of the coffee table, is struggling.

Goldman struggles too. He struggles not to roll his eyes in abject exasperation, to pray for divine patience. Why is he like this? Of course, to step into such an obvious trap surely goes against all the instincts he’s honed over the years, but none of that matters when it comes to the delicate matters of the heart!

Instead, he catches Jason’s eyes, pushing his glasses up his nose, eyes glinting.

“But who else would you ask to step in on such short notice?” Goldman asks, pointedly.

And finally, Goldman holds his breath as the ghost of a smirk passes over Jason’s mouth.

This is it.

“Oh, it shouldn’t be a problem. Y/n said she could call Professor Lucien, having already guessed Victor wouldn’t be, um, up for it. She really knows you well, huh?” Jason informs them cheerfully, and even Goldman isn’t expecting that. He thought Jason would go for the ‘who will help poor y/n’ route.

It’s obvious manipulation, and they all know it. Knowing Victor, he will stubbornly refuse to give in and suffer for it. At least, the way he’s glaring at Jason seems to indicate that.

Goldman rushes through several justifications in his head, forming a rapidly coherent argument as to why he should do it, carefully keeping ‘if you don’t want to see her with someone else, suck it up’ and ‘please, please, watching you sulk is really sad I can’t do it’ off the list.

Surely, Victor wouldn’t let the sexy professor sweep you off your feet? He’s heard the man talk, that kind of smooth talk should not be allowed and holy hell, Jason has played this really well.

“They do get along well, so it should work,” Jason muses, slathering a little more icing on his three-tier cake of clear-cut manipulation, drama, and subterfuge.

“I’ll do it.” It’s said through a tightened jaw, but it rings clear in the silence of the room. Goldman abandons his mental speech, head whipping around to stare at Victor.

“Oh?” Jason sounds genuinely surprised, as if he hadn’t been aiming for this from the start.

“Yes,” comes the answer, leaving no room for argument.

“Are you sure?” Jason asks, oddly somber, finally abandoning the pretense. So he is in possession of some morals, who would have thought?

“Give me the briefing,” Victor says, shoulders set in a firm, determined line Goldman is all too familiar with.

Jason relaxes into his seat, relief clear in his face.

And as Victor turns to him, giving him specific instructions about his outfit, cologne and flowers, determined to do this right with that familiar, besotted spark in his eye, Goldman feels warm pride trickle in.

‘We’re gonna get you the girl, boss.’

Aaaaaaand...CUT.

I know the last behind the scenes thing wasn’t really needed but I had to

Thank you for reading, I hope you liked it!

#mlqc #mlqc victor #mlqc fanfic #mr love li zeyan #mlqc li zeyan #mr love queen's choice #mr love: queen's choice #my writing #tag yourselves im lucien

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marvelfansince08love · 4 years

Text

Dream Girl

Word Count: 2546

Pairing: Oceans 8 Tammy x Fem!Reader

Prompts: 8 “You think I’m beautiful?” and 39 “ “Go fuck yourself.” “How about you fuck me yourself, you coward?!”

Warning: Happy ending, soft pining.

A/N: For anon, I hope you enjoy love! We do love some Tammy content x

Tags: @waitingfortheendtocome @natasha-danvers @saucy-sapphic @witchxaf @j-does-life @coconutlipss

Not my gif! This is Tammy’s face to R throughout this mess lmao x

Prompts 8, 39

“Guys I want to introduce you to an old friend of ours. This is Y/N.” Debbie gestures towards you as you lean confidently against the door frame of the front entrance to Lou’s warehouse apartment. You lift a hand in greeting chewing slowly on a piece of gum, you wink at the brunette stranger who you’ve seen on the big screens before who giggles in return. You can practically feel Debbie’s eye roll as Lou chuckles quietly amused by your confident nature.

“Nice to meet you all.” You address the women who are new to the group, before turning your attention to the woman who’s brown eyes stare hard at your form. “Tammy, always a pleasure.” You smirk cheekily at the blonde woman who scoffs irritably as she crosses her arms across her chest. Her brown eyes leave your own and turn accusingly to your childhood friend.

“Really? Lizzie wasn’t available to help.” She complains, while the other women look on in confusion at Tammy’s unusual cold demeanour.

“Hey! I am far better than Lizzie fucking Carpenter, thank you very much.” You retaliate, moving away from the door frame and into the living space. You hear Lou mutter under her breath ‘here we go’ before slipping away from the tense atmosphere, you notice the others follow suit apart from one who seems barely over the age of 23. The young girl seems to settle more into the sofa, slowly eating her M&M’s her eyes moving back and forth as if witnessing a tennis match.

‘Probably an accurate description’ You think amusingly, as you remember the previous arguments you’ve had with the blonde mother.

“Guys please, can we just get along for one job. I swear I feel like I’m 21 again whenever you two are in a room together.” Debbie expressed, tiredly. The con artist has always been the mediator of many spats between you and Tammy since you could remember.

If you were being honest with yourself, you don’t really know how this quarrel between you started. In fact, you and Tammy used to be best friends growing up. ‘Partners in crime’ your mothers had said, never going a day without talking or seeing one another. After the Ocean family had moved into the area, you became the warrior three rather quickly with Danny being a surrogate older brother to you both. That all seemed to change after college, you became more cocky with your grafting skills and wanted to make more money elsewhere and Debbie being the true Ocean she is couldn’t pass up the opportunity of the thrill. Tammy on the other hand grew tired of being constantly on the move and never settling down, once her boyfriend now husband came into the picture you drifted further apart. Small jabs at one another turned into full blown arguments where you wouldn’t talk for days until all communication stopped all together.

You have only seen Tammy once since that last argument that ended any piece of friendship left, her wedding day. To this day you never understood that painful feeling in your chest as you watched your childhood best friend walk down the aisle into those man's arms or how she looked at you from the head of the table as you danced with your date for the evening. You still don’t know why you invited her along instead of taking up Debbie and Lou’s offer of going as a ‘threesome’ which Tammy scolded you all for. Now you stand again in front of her, back to where you left off, arguing.

“I’m not the one who’s ego is so big, it fills up the entire building,” Tammy mutters in defence, making you laugh out loud.

“Please if your ignorance was anything to go by, I’m sure it would surpass my ego, Dream girl.” You respond back, watching as something unrecognisable passes across her face at the old nickname. You internally scold yourself at the use of the endearment. She takes a deep breath before bringing her hand forward towards you, making you raise an eyebrow in question.

“Truce? For the sake of the job.” She begrudgingly offers, keeping her hand out. You look at the well manicured hand and back up to her face before taking her hand into your own and squeezing it gently, you try to ignore the electricity that jolts through you at the feeling of having her warm hand against your skin again. You notice her squirm slightly and clear her throat before abruptly removing her hand from yours, adjusting her knee length skirt.

“Right well that settles it, I think we can move forward and get this plan going. Debs I have a few documents for you to look at.” She informs, her eyes glued to Debbie’s form as she steps away from your space. Clearly unaffected by the wave of electricity you’ve just experienced.

“Why would you care if you felt it anyway.” You scold yourself, dismissing the thought before going over to the couch and settling in ready for Debbie and Lou to give you the rundown on their latest Job as you take the offered M&M from the younger woman. Unaware of the torn brown eyes that is also questioning the same electricity feeling from across the way.

***

“You know I used to think Fencing was boring but you know what… I was right.” You tease, as you sit next to Tammy in the white van waiting for one of her contacts to meet her with the equipment. You laugh at the glare that she throws you, knowing there’s no real bite behind it.

“I’m kidding Tam, I think it’s a very important job and brings in a great income for the family. What does your husband think of you working again and bringing in more money than him?” You continue, not being able to help yourself. Her eyes stay glued to the front keeping an eye out for her guy, attempting to be unfazed by your jabbing.

“He thinks I’m working an office job at Vogue if you must know which is perfectly well considering he doesn’t live with us anymore.” She murmurs, double checking her phone for the green light to move out of our hidden spot and to the moving truck full of stolen equipment.

“Oh wow, Vogue huh? Moving up in the world of fashion there, Dream girl.” You mock, a teasing smile on your face to show her you mean nothing behind it and avoiding the sensitive topic of the husband talk. Her lips twitch slightly in gratitude before her brows furrow, her brown eyes locking on your own suddenly far more interested in you then her phone.

“Why do you still call me that?” She questions, her voice suddenly vulnerable. Now it’s your turn to frown, confused by her question.

“Call you what? Dream girl?” You shrug, unaware of the effect it still has on her. “I guess you’ve always been ‘dream girl’ to me, even if we aren’t friends like that anymore.” You confess, suddenly feeling very open to her in this small space. You watch the confliction flicker in her beautiful brown eyes waiting for her to respond.

“We aren’t friends anymore?” She whispers sadly, her eyes full of sorrow.

“Well I mean we haven’t exactly spoken to each other since your wedding day and even if we’ve had to interact like at my parents wedding anniversary party we just ended up bickering until we spent the rest of the day avoiding each other.” You mumble, feeling awkward and exposed with this new, honest topic of conversation. A soft hand lands on top of your closed fist that had formed unknowingly throughout this conversation making you relax from the tense position.

“I never meant for us to grow apart the way we did Y/N. Things just seemed to happen so fast I never took a minute to consider your feelings or how we just stopped being each other's person.” She opens up, she smiles apologetically at you as unushered tears build in her eyes that are full of regret. You sigh in defeat and turn over your hand to hold onto hers and squeeze in reassurance and comfort.

“Aww shucks, you going soft on me Tam Tam.” You joke halfheartedly, feeling uncomfortable with her choice of words knowing just how true they were. You see that perfectly arched brow rise knowing she’s caught your attempt at deflecting the subject.

“Even when I was with him I still never stopped thinking about you, ya know. What were you doing? If you were happy? I guess I was just too stubborn to pick up the phone and apologise.” She says, regret laced within her voice. Making you shake your head in dismissal.

“No Tam, if anyone was the stubborn idiot here, it was me. I missed out on so much of your life. Look at your two kids, they are already past your waist and soon will be off to college.”

“You are so dramatic.” She laughs, shoving you lightly. She bites her bottom lip contemplating her next words.

“You haven’t changed a bit, ya know. You're still that beautiful confident girl I remember.” A soft warm smile appears on your lips.

“You think I’m beautiful.”

“Oh the confident part goes unheard but the beautiful she hears loud and clear.” She teases, laughing as you wiggle your eyebrows at her suggestively. Before you can continue her phone chimes indicating our packages have arrived breaking the weird spell we had created putting an end to our conversation.

You pull away from each and adjust in your seat, an unsettling feeling settles in your chest as Tammy pulls away from the alleyway and towards your drop off location. Comfortable silence fills the van leaving you both with your thoughts.

***

“How could you be so reckless?! You were so closed to being caught, I swear one of these days you're going to end up in jail and I will only have one thing to say to you ‘I told you so’.” Tammy shouts, speeding towards you as you enter the living room with the rest of the crew.

Tammy, Rose and NineBall had stayed behind for this job, their talents needed back at base while you and the rest of the gang carried out the job elsewhere. The heist was a success but your risky slip up towards the end of the job didn’t go unnoticed by the blonde who had stayed glued to NineBall’s side watching from the screens as you effortlessly pulled off your side of the job with the exception of your slight slip up. The others scatter away towards the back room, staying clear of Tammy’s rage which has only surfaced in the last two weeks of you arriving. You throw your hands up in defence.

“Hey! I had it Tam okay. Yes it was risky but I did it. You think you can do a better job please, be my guest.” You murmur, too tired to argue loudly with her.

“Go fuck yourself, Y/N!” She spats, arms crossed in defiance.

“How about you fuck me yourself, you coward?!” You retaliate, smugly watching as her angry demeanour falters at your words. Silence fills the room, except from the light scratching on the wooden door leading to the back room indicating to the earwigs next door. You watch as her brown eyes turn dark with determination, the rest of her face stoic as she marches towards you with purpose. Before you could question her intentions, her usually delicate hands fist your shirt pulling you close as soft full lips clash hard with your own overwhelming senses. Once the initial shock is over you relax into the kiss and place the palms of your hands against her cheeks cupping her face. Before you could take it further she inches away keeping her forehead against your own as she catches her breath. “You were saying?” She whispers teasingly against your lips.

“I um, yeah. Mind if we do that again, I don’t think I quite pinpointed the flavour of your lip balm. Was that min-” Her lips cover over your own once more stopping your rambling.

Scuffling from behind Tammy causes you to stop your moment of bliss, as you both watch your friends stumble through the back door bickering quietly to one another. You clear your throat to make your presence known and watch as they freeze. Keeping an arm around Tammy’s waist you address the peeping toms and earwigs.

“You guys got somewhere to be?” You mock, as Tam giggles quietly against your shoulder trying to hide her now red cheeks.

“This is my apartment, you can’t kick me out.” Lou justifies as Debbie laughs grabbing her clothed arm and dragging her out of the room making sure the others follow.

“It’s about time they figured it out and I don’t want to be here for the aftermath. It could still go either way.” She murmurs to Lou loud enough for you both to hear making you roll your eyes are your friends ‘told you so’ attitude.

Once the group has left, you hear Tam sigh softly against your shoulder. “I think we have a lot to talk about.” She informs softly, a small content smile appearing on her face making you pull her even closer, placing a kiss to the top of her hairline.

“Later. I just want to hold and kiss you a little longer.” You confess, holding onto her just a little tighter basking in the blissful moment.

Finally

***

Later that evening as you both lay cuddled up in the guest double bed of Lou’s apartment, you whispered sweet hidden confessions to on another that haven’t been said out loud before.

“I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen Y/N. That night you picked me up from that awful date with Jefferson when he tried his luck with me. You were so angry with him and I asked if I could stay at yours so my parents wouldn’t see the state of me.. you just held me all night no bombarded questions. I watched you sleep with your arm wrapped around me, even in your sleep you were still trying to protect me.” She stops talking for a moment and looks into your eyes, holding your gaze . “I just remember thinking ‘no one is ever going to match up to my expectations because you outdone them all without realising’ but I knew that our friendship meant more and I didn’t want to ruin it.” She pauses, as she twirls your necklace that lays on your bare chest smiling softly realising it’s the one she bought you at college graduation. “You still kept this?” she whispers, her breath softly touching your neck making you shiver. You place your hand over hers stopping her movements.

“Tam, even though we lost sight of our friendship I still always thought of you. Everything I did or saw reminded me of you and how stunningly beautiful you are. I can’t seem to quit you, Dream girl. And now that I have you properly I don’t ever wanna stop.” You vow, knowing that every word spoken speaks the truth. Because you have always known that you and Tammy were more than just friends, you were just too stubborn to allow those thoughts to come to light. But now that you have her close you don't ever want to let her go.

#tammy x reader #sarah paulson x reader #oceans 8 #debbie ocean #debbie is the biggest supporter of this couple and i love it #sarah paulson #tammy #tammy is an angel

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labarboteuse · 3 years

Note

Your requests are open?! I'd love to ask for something with Babe, if you don't mind luv 🥰

Hello dear! You asked for it and here it is! Sorry it took so long. I hope you'll like it. Enjoy ! ❤️

As always, there's no disrespect towards the real men of the company. It's only based on their portrayals in the mini serie.

The scarf (Edward "Babe" Heffron x reader)

After months of trying to hide their relationship from others, Babe and the reader are finally getting busted.

Warning: coarse language

Also I’m creating a taglist, tell me in comment if you want to be added and be notified of the following ones! ☺️

Recently arrived in Germany the Company had moved to Landsberg am Lech, a town in Bavaria, and their mission had become much calmer than it had been in Bastogne and Haguenau. Everyone was enjoying the nice weather of April and went about their business while waiting for orders. Y/N had enjoyed this morning to sit quietly in a corner and write letters to her family and friends, informing them she was still alive, that she was fine and that she was now in Germany. She had then gone to the post office where Allen Vest was in charge of the mail.

“Morning Vest!” She sang in a cheerful voice as she approached the counter where she put down her letters and dragged them towards him.

“Hi Y/N, hey, that's a lot of letters for one person.”

She smiled and put her both hands on the counter, tapping the varnished wood with her fingertips. Indeed, she had taken the time to write to her parents, her sister, her uncle and a general letter addressed to her group of friends who met each time to read her letters.

“Yes, I’m enjoying this time of lull, after all we don’t know where we’re going to be sent next time.”

Allen took the letters while gently smiling at her and then went to the back of the room to classify the letters to be sent and rummaging through a pile of other letters he came back to her one in his hand.

“I thought well I saw one with your name on it.”

He reached out to her and was about to add something when the door opened sharply and Speirs appeared with his arms full of objects shining in the sunlight. As he approached the counter, Allen nodded to Y/N to make her understand he had to take care of Speirs. She smiled at him and walked out of the building with her letter in her hands. She immediately recognized the fine italicized handwriting and smiled excited to know what it was about. She walked along the buildings as she read the letter, which provoked a huge smile on her lips when she was suddenly pulled into a corner between two buildings and drawn away from prying eyes.

She began to laugh as the man who had lured her there, placed behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, came to place a kiss on her neck and put his head on her shoulder.

“I missed you so much.”

“We've literally been living together for eight months.” She laughed, placing her hands on his forearms resting on her belly.

“You know exactly what I mean.” He moaned as he put his chin on her shoulder and looked at the letter she was still holding in her hands. “What is it?”

She looked down at the letter and unfolded it to put it in front of his eyes.

“My sister announces me that she’s finally getting married! It's planned for next winter, she obviously hopes that by then it will all be over and I'll be home.” Her voice became lower and dull at the end of her sentence. Of course everyone was hoping for it, but no one really knew what tomorrow was all about and where they would be and when.

Babe tightened his clinch and kissed the top of her head.

“Are you planning to go alone?” His question caused her to pout and then she laughed.

“Are you asking me if, if all this happy mess is over, I'll ask you to come with me?” He shrugged his shoulders and had a sly smile. “We don't even know where we'll be, and let's say we go back, we'll pick up our lives where we left it off, and they probably weren't going in the same direction.” She continued.

She fell silent and stared at the letter in her hands, for the few months she have been going out with Babe she had never thought what would happen once they got home, if they got home. Babe untied his arms around her and slid his hands over her hips to make her turn to him.

“I know that wherever yours goes, I will follow it.”

Her heart clutched to his words, she had not expected him to make this kind of announcement at all, the smile on his face made her melt and she wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him tenderly and then came to put her head on his shoulder. They stayed hidden like that for a few minutes, taking advantage of finally being able to speak to each other with more than just distant smiles.

Since the Company had returned to England after the D-Day and had met the replacements Y/N and Babe had become inseparable, at last, until they started dating. They had chosen not to tell the others about it so that the others wouldn’t spend their time teasing them. They had managed to keep the secret until now, which had been difficult since they were constantly surrounded by the other men. In order to prevent them from suspecting something Y/N and Babe had to stick to the friendly relationship that the others knew about them. Nevertheless, they had always managed to slip away for a moment for a hug or a kiss, all the way to Bastogne. They had never been so far away from each other when they were closer than ever physically. Being constantly surrounded by others in the middle of the woods and sharing their foxholes with different people, they could only look at each other from a distance. At best, they sat next to each other during the few moments when everyone was together, constantly living with the frustration of, at least, not being able to touch each other's hands.

A couple of times, Babe had managed join her when she was alone, while McClung, with who she was shearing her foxhole, was going out for a ride. But it had happened only a few times, and further apart so as not to arouse suspicion. These times would had been counted on the fingers of only one hand. She too had sometimes managed to join him but unfortunately they were almost never alone. One of the only contacts they could have had without anyone questioning was when Julian was killed, she would have died of pain if she hadn't been able to comfort him, it was the only time they could hold each other without it seeming weird. After that, for several days, it had been unbearable for him not to be able to take her in his arms when it was she who started brooding. To be able to take her in his arms, to interlace her fingers with his own, to caress her cheek and whisper to her that everything would be all right. This time he had been on the verge of cracking up, because instead of his place, there was Toye. Joe was constantly near her to cheering up her moral and several times had taken her in his arms. Bill's recurring jokes about Toye flirting with Y/N were upsetting Babe, who would have wanted told his friend to shut up. Being almost always with Guarnere, he therefore constantly heard his jokes. His only comfort was the smiles and looks of Y/N to reassure him.

But now they were away from it all, they just had to take advantage of the lull that presented itself and allowed them to spend time together out of sight.

“We'd better get to the others before they wonder where we are.” She reluctantly detached herself from him. “You're leaving first?” Obviously they weren’t to be seen coming out of a corner together, that would have been the worst thing to attract attention.

He nodded and kissed her before taking a look at the street so he can get out. Y/N waited few minutes before being able to follow in his footsteps and reached the building where she was staying. Entering the building, she heard noises coming from one of the rooms of the first floor which was a big living-room and headed there. Liebgott was sitting on a chair, crossed legs on the table, was discussing with Popeye and Babe who had probably come here voluntarily to be in the same vicinity as her, which had the merit of making her smile, was leaning next to them against a piece of furniture. She joined them as Alley, Talbert, Janovec, and More arrived in the biggest racket they could make and took their places around the table.

Y/N remained standing on the other side of the table, leaning against the wall, while Babe in front of her was join by Skinny who had just arrived. Her eyes were drawn to something sticking out of Babe's pocket, her heart quickened and she tried to catch his attention with desperate glances, if he didn't notice then they were busted.

A small scarf she had given him was sticking out of his jacket pocket. She had taken with her a scarf that had belonged to her grandmother and that she had recovered when she died. She had always kept it on her ever since and had always managed to hide it so that it wouldn't be taken away like the rest of their personal belongings when she arrived in Toccoa. She valued it very highly, and when she was feeling bad, she would take it out and hold it close to her, remembering happy memories of her grandmother who she missed terribly.

The only person today for who she had been able to part with it, was someone who meant as much to her as her grandmother, Babe. She gave it to him as the most important thing for her, making him understand how much she cared for him. As they didn’t belong to the same platoon they were not always brought to be close to each other, and the scarf was like her presence to him, so that somehow they are always together. Since then he kept it preciously knowing what it meant to her.

When Babe's gaze caught hers, she tried to make him understand that the object was sticking out of his pocket by throwing looks at him and then at his pocket several times before anyone saw it, but he didn't understand and it was too late. Joe had turned his head to address him and his gaze had landed on the object of the crime. With a small laugh he gently pulled it out.

“Well, well, well, what do we have there? Isn't there something you're not telling us Babe?”

Embarrassed, he understood what she had wanted to warn him about and babbled, not knowing what to say. Y/N came to his rescue, looking surprised, she approached Joe and took the scarf of his hands.

“Eh that’s mine! Where did you find it?”

It took Babe a split second before he realized she was saving his ass and played along.

“I found it by chance on the floor this morning and I was going to bring it back to you, it must have slipped my mind in the meantime.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked sorry.

Joe looked at them suspiciously, not at all convinced, his gaze going back and forth between Y/N and Babe who unfortunately always seemed embarrassed. Feeling Joe's insistent gaze on her, she finally dropped a “What?” He squinted his eyes as if he was trying to read her soul.

“Throw out the crap that burns your lips, Joe.”

“Are you two fucking together?”

All heads turned to Y/N and Babe, some surprised, others giving the impression of having heard the biggest gossip of the century.

“No!” They both exclaimed.

“He’s like my baby brother!”

Babe flinched at her words, he knew she was just saying that to keep up appearances, but all the same, this false friendzoning was rather violent.

“So you're fucking your baby brother?” Joe continued with a smirk on his face, still not believing it for a second.

“Jeez, Joe!” She exclaimed in disgust.

Malarky arrived at that moment having only heard the end of the conversation.

“Who's fucking who?”

“Y/N is debauching Babe.” Laughed More.

“Jeez!” Malark exclaimed as he sat down, a more than amused look on his face.

“Stop it! All of you! Nobody fucks anybody!”

Babe was still silent next to her, completely uptight. The boys were laughing at their greatest embarrassment when Luz, who had heard only fragments of the conversation from the next room, arrived with a cigarette lit.

“Who's gonna have a baby?”

Which fueled the boys' hilarity, Y/N raised her hands and clenched them in fists and roared in frustration before going out cursing them. As for Babe, he didn't know what to do, if he stayed there he was going to be teased by his friends, but if he followed her he would agree with them and would grill himself.

With her cheeks on fire, Y/N left the building to get some fresh air, finding a small wall in the shade and, away from the crowd, she sat down and lit a cigarette before puffed at it when a shadow came and hid the sun from her. She raised her head, squinting because of the brightness, and reached out her arm, offering her cigarette to Luz who had just joined her. He picked it up and as he held it to his lips, sat down on the wall beside her.

“You and Babe then?” he asked with a sly smile on his lips. So her diversion hadn't worked, at least she had tried. She turned her head towards him raising an eyebrow, a slight smile on the corners of her lips as she waited for him to pull out a joke. But he didn't, instead, he took the cigarette from his lips with his right hand, and as he blew the smoke, passed his left arm around her shoulders.

“If it had been anyone else, I wouldn't have accepted it. But Heffron? I can get used to it.”

She laughed and took the cigarette from his hands and puffed at it again.

“Is this your way to give me your blessing?”

George was the person she was closest to since Toccoa. Even without the incident that had just happened, he had probably guessed what had been going on for a few months. The two had quickly went together like horse and carriage, they had found each other in their humour, and their ability to make others laugh and make jokes. George soon considered her as a little sister and she as a big brother. As soon as the replacements had arrived he saw that she and Babe had gradually grown closer and that they had probably become more than friends. He had been happy for her and continued to look after her from afar.

“So everyone knows about it? Or did you just sniff it out?” She asked, shoving him gently, which made him giggle.

“Let's say I've seen you gradually change, especially when you're with him.”

If the others probably didn't suspect anything, after the scene that just happened, they will most likely have suspicions.Y/N bit the inside of her cheek and made a grimace that made George smile and took the cigarette out of her hand.

“What are you worried about? No one will say anything, at worst they will tease you for a while before they get bored and move on.”

“That's exactly what we wanted to avoid.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You know it will be just joking, in all kindness.”

She turned her eyes towards him and he gently pushed her around, which made her smile. George was right, there wouldn't be anything mean about it, and she never doubted it, it would just make her embarrassed that everyone would turn to them and tease them every time they were in each other's presence. But as he said, it would only be temporary, the time they spend on something else.

“You're right, it wouldn't be the end of the world, and we wouldn't have to hide anymore.”

He nodded his head and winked at her.

“Listen to the voice of reason.” She guffawed what made him smile, he stood up and kissed her on the forehead before returning to the building. Y/N stayed sitting on the wall for a few minutes thinking about what George had said. She had finally agreed with herself that her fear was unjustified, the Company members were so benevolent to each other, why would they go against this relationship? Other than to tease and embarrass them, what could they possibly say? They were already spending all their time making fun of each other and joking that nothing would be different. It was out of fear of being embarrassed by the mockery of others that they had chosen to hide, when they would only be mocked among so many others. She shook her head gently as she realized that this decision had been ridiculous. To have done otherwise would surely have saved them from frustration when they had found themselves far away when they needed each other the most. They had to stop hiding, and once the others knew about it, they could enjoy each other in peace. Loud noises of voices caught her attention and she turned her head towards the group of men a few yards away. She put out her cigarette and stood up to see what was going on. Two groups had formed, one playing soccer and the other surrounding them, each one cheering for the team they stood for.

She saw Babe from afar and made her way to him. As she stood next to him, she slipped her hand into his as he turned his head towards her with a questioning look. Y/N gave him a warm smile that he returned to her. To hell with what they might say.

#band of brothers #babe heffron #edward heffron #band of brothers imagine #band of brothers request

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mooncustafer · 3 years

Text

Recover, Regroup, Roadtrip

Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in March 1989. The case is still open. Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in October 2016. The case is still open.

for @laughingpinecone /

/ @countdowntotwinpeaks‘ WONDERFULXSTRANGE 2021

“Diane, I am uncertain of the date and time, or indeed if such concepts have any meaning in this place. Nor do I have my recorder, but I find verbalizing my thoughts helps me to resist the confusion and lethargy. As for addressing my words to you, even though you’ll never hear them— well, old habits die hard.”

It pleased Wally Brando on a profound level to discover that a few pay-phones remained in Philadelphia, that reaching out was not yet the prerogative only of those who could afford a landline or a mobile. He could also have checked his email on a terminal at one of the city’s Public Libraries, and indeed, made a note to do so within the day so that he might catch up on the news of parents and former school friends. The pay phone was also blessed with both the yellow and the white pages, and the number he sought appeared under “F.” Getting transferred to Dr. Albert Rosenfield was a more complex quest, but he was persistent as well as polite, and after a few minutes he was able to speak to Dr. Rosenfield’s voice mail, if not the man himself.

He introduced himself with salutations, and was about the explain the nature of his request when a beep signalled that the allotted time had run out.

“To listen to your message, press one. To re-record your message, press two,” said the voice of the machine.

Silently cursing his volubility, Wally pressed two. This time he simplified the introduction, and asked if Dr. Rosenfield would be good enough to meet him that evening at the Morimoto Japanese restaurant not far from the FBI offices, to discuss a matter of deep concern connected, he believed, with the little town of Twin Peaks. When the beep came this time, he listened to his message and then, satisfied, hung up. The restaurant he’d named was slightly above his means, but he was meeting a friend of his godfather, and wanted to do justice to the occasion, even if the reason for it was one of peculiar anxiety to himself.

“Diane, I have tried so many times to escape— on the last attempt I really did get out into the world, but my plans, I fear, had dire repercussions for you, and to no end— my course still led me back to the Black Lodge. Some flaw in my own nature keeps trapping me in this loop; perhaps it’s what they sometimes call Saṃsāra.”

It was Agent Tammy Preston’s custom, when scraping the internet for information relevant to one or more recent cases, to check her email inbox every seven minutes— to do so every five minutes would disrupt the flow of her work, but ten-minute gaps might let something important go unanswered for too long. Just now the inbox was due another glance, and switching tabs she saw that two minutes earlier Director Bryson had replied to Tammy’s email of that morning with an invitation to come by her desk at her earliest possible convenience.

Tammy locked her screen, paused ‘Soft Fuzzy Man’ on her playlist and removed her headphones. Picking up the folder marked Missing Persons, 1989– Palmer, she slipped back into her pumps and made for Bryson’s office. The door was open but Tammy stopped at the threshold and rapped on the wall.

“Come in,” said Director Bryson, looking up from a folder. Bossa nova music played softly in the background as Tammy entered and pulled up a chair. It sometimes puzzled Tammy that apart from herself and Director Gordon Cole, no one in this particular division of the FBI seemed to have any interest in music recorded after 1979. (The first few times she’d heard ‘Du Hast’ pounding through the walls of Cole’s office, she’d wondered if this taste for metal was the result, or perhaps the cause, of his hearing loss; but after he’d joked to an unamused Agent Rosenfield about how these were difficult times and difficult times called for Dave Brubeck, she’d looked up the reference in case it was a coded message, and then the next day had overheard Gordon whistling ‘Mister Sandman,’ a song she knew primarily from an internet meme, at which point she concluded that the ear wants what it wants, regardless of demographic.)

“You told me you’d found some serious inconsistencies in the records surrounding Twin Peaks and the Palmer case?”

Tammy nodded, hesitated:

“I believe there may be inconsistencies as well in my own perceptions of the case.”

“Well now, that I find a little harder to believe.” Bryson smiled, but then her voice grew serious: “I’ve looked over the notes you made, and it confirms my own doubts about events.”

“Worse yet— the fact that I truly left the Lodge and then returned to it, will enable the beings that inhabit this place to take another twenty-five year turn in my likeness, unleashing even more evil on the world. The only thing stalling them is the doppelgänger I had MIKE make for the Jones family, but I don’t know if he’s still under the White Lodge’s protection.”

After all these months it still surprised Harry Truman there was so little physical pain, and so much boredom, to dying. Oh there’d been pain at the beginning, when he’d started treatment and had had to stop drinking; the memory of detoxing still made him shudder. But now he only felt a tiredness too huge for sleep to make any dent in it; and since he couldn’t sleep all the time, there were a great many hours during which all he could do was lie in the hospice bed or sit in one of the hospice chairs, and think.

At this point dying didn’t even sound so bad— it wasn’t like the past three decades had been all that great. He imagined going to sleep, just filling up a big bowl of silence and darkness and sinking into it, and then he felt bad for thinking that because Frank had already lost enough people without Harry lighting out too. Anyways, with the things he’d seen over the years he’d be a damn fool to think there was anything peaceful about death and whatever came after. So he’d lie awake trying to find some other topic to ponder, and that’s generally when the boredom set in.

Right now, courtesy of the nap he’d had in the afternoon after today’s treatment had left him especially exhausted, he was lying awake in the wee small hours. 3:52 am, said the clock on his bedside table beside the stack of paperbacks Frank had brought him on his visits— Harry wasn’t afraid of e-readers the way Lucy was of cellular phones, but he found the smell of paper comforting. It reminded him of the Bookhouse. The hospice tended to smell of disinfectants and sweat and soup. The food actually wasn’t as bad as the food at the hospital in Twin Peaks used to be, not that any food could be as bad as the hospital food in Twin Peaks used to be, but it made no difference to Harry, whose appetite had been gone for months. Frank always brought a slice of Norma’s pie too, carefully sealed in an old cookie tin to keep it fresh, but Harry could never manage more than a couple of bites, and they didn’t always stay down.

Being awake in the middle of the night in a hospice wasn’t as bad as being awake in the middle of the night when you were alone at home— the occasional voices or footsteps from the corridors beyond were reminders that whatever might be happening to Harry, life went on for the staff; and the lights from the city outside showed that life went on for others outside the hospice walls. When he’d first arrived, those city lights had made it hard to sleep, but now they substituted for the starry sky above Twin Peaks. There were fewer birds to watch in the city, though sparrows, pigeons or a starling sometimes lit on the ledge outside his window and peered in at him, or maybe at their own reflections. The frequent rain pattering against the glass— well, that sounded the same here as it did in a cabin.

Frank had called to tell him about Margaret Lanterman. Harry sometimes wondered if he should have stayed in Twin Peaks and died in his own home like her, instead of lingering in this hospice like the doomed heroine of some nineteenth-century novel. Or like Annie Blackburn. Or Audrey Horne.

The rain was spattering now against Harry’s window, bending the light from the Japanese stone lantern in the pocket-sized garden below. Harry couldn’t remember what the hospice building looked like from the outside, but he guessed it was similar in style to the mid-century one next door where the day-patients came for their treatments. A flash silhouetted the roofline; five seconds later came the thunder-crack. Harry settled back and closed his eyes.

Sleep pulled him into dreams of an espresso machine, like the one in the coffee place down in the lobby next to the gift shop for visitors. This machine filled a whole room, metal pipes feeding back on themselves like some kind of espressouroboros, neither steam nor coffee escaping from the grotesque contraption. Agent Cooper stood wearily before it with two empty coffee-cups. Harry was just wondering who the second cup was for, when Coop looked up and met his eyes:

“What year is this?!”

Harry sat up in bed, listened intently for two full minutes, but he didn’t hear Coop’s voice again. He sighed. Sometimes the mind pulls imaginary sounds out of the background noise. False pattern recognition or something— Coop would have known a word for it. Harry had little hope left they’d ever find Cooper, or if they did, that he’d still be the man he’d known. Yet he’d carried on, more (he told himself) out of habit than any real hope. He’d kept in touch with Agent Rosenfield, even when it meant letting him know about the cancer— not that Albert would blab the secret to anyone in Twin Peaks.

“Hello?”

“Good, you’re still alive.” Albert’s personality hadn’t mellowed with the years, exactly, but familiarity had worn the edges off his jibes.

“Shut up, Albert. So what have you found?” Albert’s calls generally came every three months, but never at nine in the morning, and he’d last spoken to Harry only two weeks back. Something important must have happened.

“Actually, Sheriff Truman, I’m the one coming to you for information.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to do investigations from a hospital bed. What can I tell you that you can’t get from other sources?”

“I need you to summarize the Laura Palmer case back in 1989, and the actions of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks at that time.”

“Albert, is this one of your damn cognitive tests? You already know—”

“We’re both too tired to argue, just humor me.”

“How detailed do you want?”

“An outline will suffice.”

Harry took a deep breath and briefly listed the finding of Laura’s body, and the living but dazed and injured Ronnette, and the arrival of Agent Dale Cooper to lead the investigation. He skimmed over the crimes of Jacques Reneault and some of the other peripheral drama that had occurred in the town around that time, noted that Leland Palmer had murdered his own daughter, albeit while not fully himself, and was beginning to recount Cooper’s temporary suspension and Windom Earle’s campaign of terror, when Albert interrupted:

“You’ve still got the unofficial version, then.”

“Unofficial?”

“According to FBI records and your colleagues at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Office, Laura Palmer is an unsolved missing-person case.”

Harry began to feel sick.

“Goddammit, Albert, you did the autopsy. I punched you and you fell across her body. You found a broken poker chip in her stomach—” Albert broke in:

“I hadn’t disclosed that detail to anybody I’ve questioned about this.” His voice was a little shaky. “Listen, Harry,” he continued. “Last Friday I was contacted by a young man wearing motorcycle leathers and talking like Jack Kerouac on quaaludes.”

“Wally.”

“Naturally I supposed him to be from your iodine-deficient neck of the woods even before he introduced himself as your godson and the offspring of those lieutenants of yours. He told me he’d come because he wasn’t sure where else to turn. Apparently he keeps in touch with his parents as he rides across the continent, but in their most recent conversation he’d noticed their memories of certain events had become confused. I was about to tell him I wasn’t the least bit surprised, when he added that he’d checked with other townsfolk, including your brother, and they all seemed to have had the same— how’d he put it? ‘The walls of their memory painted over like a childhood bedroom converted to a study.’”

”That sounds like Wally, all right.”

”Eventually he got round to explaining why he’d come to me. The message that had prompted him to call home was from Lucy; she said she’d shot a suspect who was attacking your brother Frank. She’d also mentioned some FBI agents arriving a few minutes later.”

Harry swallowed. He tried to imagine Lucy shooting anyone:

“Frank never said anything about this.”

“And when Wally called home, Andy and Lucy not only denied it had happened, they had no idea what he was talking about, not that I’d guess that to be an unusual state of affairs. Anyway, after I sent your godson away, I began to have contradictory memories myself of what Cooper had told me about the case. I remembered the poker chip after waking in the middle of the night from the worst dreams I’d had since medical school. I’ve been telling myself it was a false memory, maybe a composite of all the young female murder victims I’ve had to examine in my career, but I told myself I’d make one more phone call, just to check. And now you confirm it. Also, in my recall you knocked me across Leo Johnson’s body. Thanks for the correction. Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, glad he was already sitting on his bed.

“Now that that’s established,” said Albert’s voice on the other end of the phone: “here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: when do you remember Agent Cooper disappearing?”

“March 1989.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady, as though he was giving evidence in court. He briefly explained about the Black Lodge and Coop’s reappearance and unsettling behaviour and how he’d checked himself out of the hospital and was never heard from again. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you still there, Albert?”

“According to FBI records and, up until two days ago, my own memories: Coop disappeared this past October while driving to Odessa, Texas for a case. The last record of him was a credit-card charge at a motel just outside the city.”

“What was he investigating in Odessa?”

“Missing person. I’ve tried looking into that case, but it seems to be a dead end, especially since Coop never seems to have arrived at the diner where the man he was looking for had allegedly been running drugs.”

“Sounds like the kind of establishment where nobody’d admit anything. Maybe Coop did get to the diner.”

“Gee, you’ve cracked it Sheriff, we would never have thought of that. The diner was old-school, but not so old-school they didn’t have a security camera trained on the front counter. We went over three days worth of footage. I admit we can’t be sure he didn’t slip in through the back for some reason; but you knew Coop— can you honestly picture him entering a diner and not ordering a coffee?”

“Not the Coop I knew, but— I already told you he was acting pretty erratically just before he took off.”

Harry heard Albert sigh.

“I’ve been checking with a few of my colleagues who were involved in the original Palmer investigation. I think Gordon knows something, but being Gordon he’s saying nothing, and as loudly as possible. Denise— Director Bryson, now— remembers the unofficial version, and according to her so does Agent Preston— oh right, you never met Agent Tammy Preston, the poker-faced glamazon computer hacker— I’m not sure she was even born yet in 1989, but she was on a case in Twin Peaks in October 2016, and during the course of the subsequent paperwork, she started noticing a lot of records and statements didn’t match up, and then she realized her own memories didn’t match up. Which brings up another problem with trying to reason this out by conventional methods: something in that Salem’s Pacific-Northwest Lot of yours is rewriting memories, documents, maybe the facts themselves. But so far it’s predominantly affected the people who were on the spot this past October.” Albert’s voice rasped a little from the long phone call, and he paused to clear his throat. “Unfortunately, that also means the people most likely to remember the original version of events are people who weren’t in the Sheriff’s Office during the incident that seems to have triggered the change. At the risk of sounding like one of those bullshit shows on the History Channel, we may never know exactly what happened that night.”

“Wait, what even was the case that brought you all back in 2016?”

“That’s the problem— I’m one of the people who was there, and I only have vague and disconnected memories of a British man with a gardening glove, the chorus of Guys and Dolls, Agent Cooper leaving the room with Diane, his secretary who quit the FBI decades ago, and Gordon, and only Gordon coming back.” Albert paused again. “It goes against my personal feelings and medical opinions, but would you be willing to let me visit you in person? I’ve some vacation time and enough frequent-flyer miles that the trip will probably cost less than the long-distance charges if we continue this conversation.”

Harry opened the drawer of his bedside table and took out the key to Coop’s old hotel room:

“Yeah, come by.”

“Diane, I am currently alone. I realize that statement implies that I’m not always alone here, and indeed I sometimes have a companion, who I still think of as Laura Palmer, though I don’t know if that’s her identity anymore; I’d hoped, after my last attempt, that Laura would no longer be in this place at all. She comes and goes, or perhaps we both come and go and our orbits occasionally intersect. I’ve tried to find some pattern to it, but with no reliable way to measure time, I’ve had little success.

The last time we met she told me about a room she hadn’t seen before, all white walls, in which a dark-haired woman was contemplating a mirror with a puzzled look. I can’t help but feel this parallels my own situation.”

“Frank sent me this last month. But when I thanked him the next time he called, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.” Albert hesitated before taking the room key:

“Great Northern Hotel,” he read, turning it over. “Twin Peaks. Isn’t the front desk going to want this back?”

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s from 1989 when Coop was staying there.”

Albert’s ears stuck out more noticeably, or perhaps it was his face that was thinner. He’d spent the first part of his visit scrutinizing Harry and questioning him about his case and what the doctors were doing for it, until Harry told him to quit it or he’d run out of time to discuss Coop’s disappearance before visiting hours ended, and anyway weren’t Albert’s patients usually dead to begin with?

The trouble with the subsequent discussion was that it went in a circle— the people who’d been present for the 2016 Unknown Event had uncertain memories of what had actually happened; and the people who clearly recalled the 1989 Palmer case as a murder hadn’t been present for the Unknown Event. The one thing that seemed likely was that there was some connection between the 1989 case and the 2016 case, particularly since both had been followed by the unsolved disappearance of one Agent Dale Cooper.

“I hate to say it, Albert, but I’ve given up hope on ever finding Coop.”

“What’s hope got to do with it?” Albert asked. His tone was not sarcastic.

“Diane, I’ve decided that, if only to keep my mind occupied, I will go looking for the white room and the woman with the mirror. I’d feel happier if I had a ball of twine or some breadcrumbs to leave as a trail back to the waiting room, but I’m coming to terms with the idea that’s there’s no advantage to remaining or returning here— it’s not as if I need food or drink in this place, and I cannot be any more lost than I already am.

So far, I believe I’ve walked down five identical red-curtained hallways, and turned left five times. It therefore seems likely that I’m following a counterclockwise, roughly spiral path, although I’m uncertain if I’m proceeding inwards or outwards.”

“If this search is going to require juggling two sets of memories, then I’d better come along so you don’t get brainwashed again.”

“Sheriff Truman, if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re in a cancer hospice.”

“I just finished a round of treatments, I’ve got a couple of weeks free.” Albert snorted and Harry added: “You can monitor my health while we’re on the road.”

“I’m already thinking of your health. You’re immunocompromised, travel is too risky.”

“We’re crossing a few state lines, not going to the other side of the world.”

Albert pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. I’m driving. Which also means I get to choose the music.”

In fact, they went most of the way by plane, after Albert weighed the odds and decided five hours in a tube of recycled air would still be easier on Harry than a two-day road trip. Some of the passengers threw suspicious looks at Harry’s N95 mask, but they’d cleared it in advance with the airline, and Harry had briefly removed it when he went through TSA, and Albert was prepared to flash his FBI badge, but the flight crew were understanding.

They picked up a car at Midland International. Someone, presumably an employee of the car-rental company, had left a bundle of tourist-attraction pamphlets on the front passenger seat.

“According to these, Odessa has replicas of the Globe Theatre and Stonehenge,” Harry observed once he’d got himself settled.

“Why?” Albert asked.

“Got me there. The pamphlets don’t explain the motivation.”

Albert reached up and pulled down the car’s sunshade on Harry’s side, though the Sheriff insisted his cowboy hat was protection enough for his pale scalp:

“We’re not in the northwest where it rains every fifteen minutes,” he muttered, “and I’ve been looking up the side effects of your meds— you sunburn easily now.” Albert’s driving skirted the city, and they did not pass the Globe or Stonehenge.

The Pearblossom Motel, last recorded location of Agent Cooper, proved to be closed down. They’d noticed the papered-over windows as they pulled up, the sign unlit, not even to say NO VACANCY, but Albert got out to knock anyway. Harry watched him from the car; eventually he clambered out and slowly walked over to join him.

Albert was peering through a spot where the paper had torn away behind the window-glass. He stepped aside for Harry, and the sheriff took a look into the motel’s dim interior. He saw an ordinary, rather old-fashioned registration office, wood-grain panelling on the walls along with a few faded posters for local attractions. Rows of keys still hung on a board behind the desk, and a daily calendar read October 15, presumably the date the motel had closed, or the approximate date— Harry could imagine a concierge might not bother to keep tearing off the pages if they knew it was their last week on the job.

“I now realize that despite everything, I’ve still been harbouring hopes of finding my way back to the waiting room, hence my continual choosing of left-hand turns, as if attempting to mathematically navigate a maze. I must make a true leap of faith if intuition is to guide me, so I’ve closed my eyes and spun around several times in this corridor, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

Now that I no longer can tell which direction I’ve come from… Diane, can you hear that? Of course you can’t, I don’t really have my tape recorder. I’m going to fall silent and listen for a bit.”

There seemed little else of interest at the motel (Harry, feeling a bit silly, had even tried the Great Northern’s room key on all the doors), so they turned back towards Odessa to look for the diner Cooper had been investigating. The motel was only a mile behind when they saw, ahead of them, a tall woman walking along the highway, her fire-engine-red hair, black t-shirt and pencil skirt out of place in a locale that was rural to the point of emptiness. Albert swore under his breath.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” he told Harry. “Roll down your window, I’m pulling over.” But the woman only threw a glance at the car as it slowed, flipped them the bird, and kept walking, though she stepped gingerly and Harry noticed she was barefoot on the asphalt. Albert leant across him and stuck his head out the window:

“Diane!”

“Fuck off, guys. I’m not Diane, and whoever she is I bet she’d tell you the same.” Harry gently pushed Albert back and leant out the window himself:

“Sorry, ma’am, mistaken identity. Are you all right though? I see you’ve mislaid your shoes.”

“Looks like somebody ran off with them,” the woman answered, her tone mocking despite the tired set of her shoulders. “I haven’t been up to anything illegal, officer. Just a bit of fooling around.”

“We can give you a ride into town,” Harry offered. “If it helps, you’ll be alone in the back seat— means you can get the drop on us if you start to feel nervous.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at the offer, then abruptly barked out a laugh and opened the back door of the car, took a seat and folded her long legs in after her. “Only because I need a lift,” she insisted, rubbing her bare feet. “I knew office romances were a bad idea, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it. Nothing to do now but go home and drown my sorrows in Hallowe’en candy.”

“You’ve still got candy left over from Hallowe’en?” In the mirror above the dashboard, Harry saw Albert raise an eyebrow and the woman in the back seat frowned, insulted:

“No! I may not have a maternal bone in my body, but I’m not going to give the trick-or-treaters candy that’s a year old.”

“Ma’am,” Harry asked, thinking about the calendar back in the Pearblossom Motel office, “what date d’you think it is?”

“Mid-October,” she began. Harry saw her reach into her purse with her black-and-white nails and pull out a mobile phone. Her eyes widened at the date: “No, it’s March. The fuck?—” She ran a hand through her scarlet hair. Harry wondered if it was dyed or a wig. Perhaps she was bald too. “Must be losing it. I was so sure it was October. And it’s not like I’ve could’ve been wandering around this desert for five months.” She tapped her phone screen. “5,230 messages?!” She looked frightened now, raising her head to meet their gaze in the mirror. “Where the hell have I been? And you guys— you’re feds, aren’t you?”

“No,” Harry began.

“I am,” said Albert. “He’s not.”

“Well, can you tell me what’s going on? Or is it classified? God, it’s not aliens, is it? I always assumed alien conspiracies were bullshit to cover up real conspiracies.”

“It’s probably not aliens,” Harry answered, unable to keep doubt from his voice as he remembered Major Briggs, “but I afraid it’s not going to sound any less weird.”

“To start with, we’re in the area investigating a colleague who disappeared in October,” began Albert, “and then you turn up, apparently amnesiac since that date.”

“And with my messages unchecked since then.”

“Yes, but there’s another detail— you look exactly like a former colleague of mine who was close to our missing man. That’s why I called you Diane when I slowed down.”

“I need a smoke.”

“No.”

“Albert,” Harry interrupted, “I’ve already got cancer, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Do you want me to answer that in detail?”

“No I don’t.” Harry turned to look over his shoulder at the woman in the back: “Just roll down your window first.”

“We’ll pull over and she can step away from the car,” said Albert.

He stopped on a shoulder, and their passenger got out and lit a cigarette. Examining the packet, she called to them:

“Three left. That’s fewer than I remember having on me in October, but not by much.” Albert, meanwhile, had pulled a shopping bag from the back seat:

“You should eat something,” he said to Harry, producing a sealed cup of applesauce and a box of plastic spoons. Between rounds of treatment, Harry’s nausea receded, but his appetite was still pretty weak. “There’s saltine crackers, too.” Harry chuckled in spite of himself as he tore the foil off the applesauce:

“This all makes me feel like I’m home from school with the ‘flu.”

“You’ll have to watch Roadrunner cartoons on your own phone, I’m not paying for the data,” Albert snapped.

“I’m surprised we even get reception out here.” The red-haired woman had strolled back to the car with her cigarette, though she took care to stay downwind from Harry’s rolled-down window. “Guys, is it just me or is this highway really deserted— like, Rod-Serling-voiceover deserted?”

“We were just thinking Roadrunner cartoons.”

“Can’t be, there’s no weird rocks.” She flicked ash onto the pavement, “Though it does feel like if someone painted a tunnel entrance on a wall around here, you might be able to drive into it. If you weren’t a coyote.” She took another drag and glanced at the power lines humming above their heads. “Maybe it’s the hum from those wires that’s giving us brain cancer— oh sorry, dude.” She broke off and looked at Harry in apology.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said when he’d finished swallowing his mouthful of applesauce. “I’ve got leukaemia, not brain cancer. And the sound from those lines is unpleasant. Like the whine of mosquitoes in the woods.” As he spoke the hum intensified, becoming a loud crackle. Albert glanced up as a shadow fell over the three travellers and their car.

In the sky a dark, nebulous shape twisted, circled, formed a comma or an apostrophe, and dove towards them.

The first few grackles, out of thousands, came down on the roof and hood of the car. Harry could see one pecking at the windscreen and glaring at him with hard yellow eyes. He suddenly remembered Coop had been afraid of birds; until now, he’d never been able to imagine why. He turned and pushed open the back door as the woman dove inside the vehicle. Around them, the flock blotted out the landscape.

“Hope they don’t scratch up the finish,” Albert shouted over the sound of wing-beats, “or I’m not getting my deposit back.”

“Is this nesting season? I mean, are the grackles round here normally this—”

“Oh fuck, one got in!” came a yell from the back seat. Eardrums ringing, Harry turned to see a small black shape ricocheting around the car’s interior as the woman flailed her long, bare arms. The grackle made for the gap between Albert’s seat and headrest.

And got stuck, its beak not quite touching the back of Albert’s neck.

Harry reached for the little feathered body, thinking of how to pin the wings against the bird’s sides to avoid injury to it or the surrounding humans, but the moment his fingers touched it, it crumbled. At the same time the din outside the car ceased.

“That— that’s not natural.” Their passenger was covering her mouth with her hand. Even Albert looked shocked. Harry stared at the palmful of ash that was all that was left of the grackle.

“Let me get a sample bag,” Albert muttered. He pulled out a small clear plastic bag, and held it out while Harry poured the remains in. Then he handed him a packet of wet wipes. “You all right, Diane?” The woman in the back seat did not correct him on the name this time.

“Couple of scratches,” she said, examining her right arm. Albert passed her a mini first-aid kit. Got to give him his dues, he prepares for everything, thought Harry, adjusting the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Y’know,” he said, “This could be a good sign. In that it’s any kind of sign. There’s nothing worse than working in the dark, waiting for some hint you’re getting warmer or colder— that’s the kind of thing makes you wonder if the thing you’re looking for is even out there at all. But this—”

“Someone tipped their hand, you mean, when they tried throwing a Hitchcock movie in our faces,” Albert cut in. “But what exactly did we do to worry them?” His glance, and Harry’s, moved to the dashboard mirror’s reflection of their passenger.

“You think the birds were after me, or wanted to break up our merry band?” She raised an eyebrow. “Trouble is I know a token effort when I see one.”

“Or a warning.”

“We found the Pearblossom Motel;” Harry thought he saw the woman flinch at the name. “And then left it, to head for Odessa.”

“Are you suggesting we drive around in circles and see if they attack again?” Albert muttered.

“I think that’d be a little unfair to our passenger.” Harry turned to her: “Ma’am, I believe Albert when he says he knows you; but I also believe you when you say you don’t remember him. We can drop you anywhere you like— your call.”

“Give me a few minutes, fellas. Given all the weird shit I’ve just been through, I’ve got to think about whether I’m safer away from you two, or sticking close by. Plus I’ve got messages to check.” She took her phone out again. Without taking his eyes off the road, Albert pulled his own phone from his suit jacket, passing it to Harry:

“You’d better check mine. Maybe Tammy’s got some news—she’s been looking up everyone connected with events in Twin Peaks, but not living in the area. She even emailed some couple in Japan, though I’m still not sure what they’ve got to do with this.”

Harry peered at Albert’s phone screen, occasionally commenting if something looked to be of interest:

“Gordon’s sent a grudging OK, tells you to be careful. Also tells you to look after me. I’d always imagined he’d type in uppercase— didn’t realize it was him at first. Hm. Do you know a coroner?”

“I know lots of coroners, we get together for an annual poker tournament and lucky draw. And when I say draw…”

“Do you know a Dr. Talbot in Buckhorn?” Harry interrupted. “Autopsied a headless body last September that turned out to be Major— wait, he— is this one of those revised timeline things?”

“Not exactly.” Albert brought Harry up to date as best he could on Major Briggs’ disappearance and decades-later reappearance. “I certainly remember meeting Constance,” he added, after a pause, and cleared his throat again. “According to Tammy, I made a favourable impression on her, which is… unusual among my acquaintances, even those who share my profession. So what does she have to say?”

“Something about a wedding ring and Schrödinger’s Cat?” Harry looked at the message again. “She says Tammy spoke to her, and was going to contact you too… a gold ring they found on Briggs… sorry, in Briggs… keeps disappearing from her office’s records and the FBI’s evidence files, then coming back again?”

Albert frowned in thought as he drove: “Does it have anything engraved on it?” Harry tapped a message on the phone screen, CC-ing Constance and Tammy.

Outside the car, suburbs, or at least car dealerships and big-box stores, were beginning to sprout up along the highway.

Albert’s phone pinged and Harry read the message from Constance:

“Yes, scribbled it down last time I could find the record. This ring any (wedding) bells? TO DOUGIE, WITH LOVE, JANEY-E”

“Janey-E,” said Diane from the back seat, and Harry heard her drop her phone. Turning around he saw her wringing her hands, the nails now robin’s-egg blue. “Albert,” she gasped, “Oh, Albert, I was almost lost again.”

“I believe the change in method may have led to a breakthrough: I haven’t found any rooms leading off of the corridor I’m following, but the decor has gradually changed from black-and-white flooring and red curtains, to dark brown linoleum flooring and institutional green walls hung with large relief maps of different parts of the world. The maps appear to have been manufactured some time between 1954 and 1965, as they show North and South Vietnam as separate nations. I’m just passing the continent of Antarctica, now, and… oh. I think there might be…

Diane, I found the white room, and when I call it that, I’m not simply echoing Laura’s name for it. It was like a cross between a sanatorium and a snow cave, if a snow cave had furniture. There was a bed with white blankets and a white metal frame like a hospital bed. Audrey was sitting on one end of it, wrapped in a white bathrobe and looking at a round mirror that stood on a little white table. She turned as I entered, and her face was older, drawn and, for a moment, frightened. Then she looked at me again and relaxed, saying ‘Oh, it’s really you.’ I fear she must have met one of my nastier doppelgängers at some point.”

At Diane’s request, they stopped to eat at a fast-food chain before approaching the diner Coop had been investigating in at least one timeline.

“I’m hungry, but I’d be too nervous to eat at the place where Dale might have… well, if they’re a front for something, then the food’s either spectacular or terrible, and I’m not feeling lucky right now. I want to be someplace as bland and mundane as possible for a while, so I can regroup.”

“Well this place has a twenty-minute limit.” Albert jerked his thumb at the sign.

“That’ll do.” Diane curled up beside Harry in the booth as Albert went up to the counter to place their orders. She still wore her pencil skirt, but on on of their stops she’d purchased tennis shoes and a couple of fresh t-shirts— the one she was wearing at the moment read NOT TODAY in flowery letters. “Now he’s got two of us to worry about,” she said under her breath. Harry decided to reply:

“Someone needs to worry about him.” Diane nodded, and Harry offered his hand: “Sorry, we never did the proper introductions did we? Harry S. Truman.”

“I know.” Her expression relaxed slightly. “I see why he likes you.”

“Not sure Albert likes anybody, exactly—”

“That’s not who I was talking about.”

Albert returned with a eye-searingly-orange plastic tray:

“Mushroom burger, cheeseburger, buttered biscuit for you, Harry, because they can’t just serve toast like a real restaurant and those things they claim are bagels are made out of lies.”

“Don’t worry Albert, I’ll survive a biscuit.” Harry picked up one half of the baked item and took a bite. It wasn’t too bad, actually.

“Diane, the ring that jogged your memory—”

“My half-sister and her husband. Don’t ask me how they’d be mixed up in this though, Janey-E’s aggressively normal.”

“And her husband?”

“Never actually met him. Janey-E and I don’t talk much,” she explained. “But from her comments he’s… passively normal. Works for an insurance company, drinks too much sometimes, the whole man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit thing.”

“I’ve been talking with Audrey, or the version of her that existed in the white room. You’ll notice I use the past tense. Still sitting on the bed, she raised a finger and pointed to the mirror in front of her, saying:

‘The other me— she ran away from home, like she thought Laura had done. I’m amazed she survived her first year in the big city, but look:’

Diane, I saw Audrey searching records online, tailing suspects, testifying in civil and sometimes criminal courts. It’s a life that can make a cynic of the kindest soul, but there are situations the police don’t or can’t investigate, and those were— are, I suppose— Audrey’s bread and butter, in that mirror world. And they seem to pay well enough she can afford to do some pro bono cases.

‘I wish I were out there,’ she said, and the mirror clouded and shifted. She patted the bedspread, and I sat down beside her. ‘You know how,’ she began, ‘when you’re a kid, and you’re reading your favourite book, and a little after the halfway point, you start to think ‘I’m getting near the end of the book?’ And really, you’re not— there are pages and pages left of scenes and pictures. You’re always surprised just how much more there is. But it’s not enough to shake the feeling it’s putting off the inevitable. Dawdling before bedtime.’ She stood up suddenly, bent and kissed me on the brow. ‘Say hello to the other me, if you ever run into her.’ And then she was gone, Diane. Not in flame or fadeout, just gone.”

I look up, and Laura is beside me.

The diner, when they found it, was not what Harry’d pictured. Instead of a lonely Edward Hopper tableau, or a grimy spoon where toughs whispered to each other along the lunch counter and cast knowing glances in the direction of the men’s room, “Wispy Dreams Cafe” was a blandly cheerful donut shop, the logo rather obviously altered from that of a national chain.

“Looks like they’re under new management.” Diane observed as they got out of the car. “Or else they got tired of paying for the franchise?” The three of them made their way across the parking lot the cafe shared with the landscaping company next door. Inside, the sound of chattering customers and a hum from the coffee machine both soothed and overwhelmed. Harry steadied himself against a gleaming, cream-colored formica counter. The woman on the other side— not a fresh-faced high-school senior or a kindly-faced matron, just a woman with her hair in a ponytail and circles under her eyes, doing her best to smile— threw him a glance and Harry nodded.

“I’m ok. Albert, Diane, what do you two want?”

A couple of minutes later, they sat by the window, feigning interest in their donuts and coffee.

“Well, we’re living the cop cliché,” whispered Albert. “So, what do you think? Soulless suburban hangout, or den of villainy?”

Harry gingerly sipped the brew in his cardboard cup and eyed the other customers. You couldn’t say the place wasn’t busy; the woman at the counter had already served a family of four in the time it had taken Harry, Albert and Diane to seat themselves with their coffees, and another customer had just come in the door.

“That counter’s been installed recently. Deep-fat fryer’s been replaced too.”

“And they don’t know how to use it yet. You could wax skis with these donuts. That’s hardly a crime, though.” Diane looked around at the blue and yellow walls painted with large trompe l’oeil sprinkles. “Doesn’t seem to be anything else funny about the place— I hate to say it but this place might be legit.”

Harry watched the new customer lean in to the counter. Harry couldn’t quite make out what he was saying— presumably the man was placing his order, but it seemed to be taking a while and there was something tense in the woman’s expression. Beside him he heard Diane swear under her breath, and faster than he could turn his head, his peripheral vision took in that she was getting up. She strode towards the counter and Harry had a glimpse of the angry red scratch on her arm as he struggled to his feet.

Diane was leaning on the counter now, trying to insert herself between the customer and the worker.

“What did you just say to her?” she was asking.

“Look, I come in here all the time, we joke around. What makes you think it’s your fucking business?”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Harry loomed up behind the customer— he might have only half his usual strength but he was still a good six inches taller than the other man. Behind him, he guessed, Albert was approaching. Harry knew the agent was unwilling to use physical force and not exactly skilled at defusing situations through diplomacy, so he turned his gaze on the customer with all the quiet confidence he’d used as Sheriff. In his ear Diane hissed:

“It’s nothing to do with the case, this asshole’s just creeping on the staff.” She must’ve locked eyes with the man too, for he was staring at her now, his bland pink features shifting expression from anger to terrified fascination.

Rather an unimpressive face, thought Harry, and then, what’s Diane doing? He turned to look at her sharp, smiling profile, and saw a tear slide from her eye.

“No,” she said loudly and abruptly, and blinked hard. “Do you want us to escort him out?” she asked the woman behind the counter; but the man was already out the door and running for his car.

“Diane,” Harry whispered.

“Diane,” whispered Albert. Diane was passing one hand across her eyes.

“I could have fried him. Just now. Something wanted me to; but I just wanted him to back off.” She beamed at them as Albert held out an arm for her to steady herself. “I think I’m back to normal. Well, normal for me.”

“Are we the only two left here now?”

“I’m not even here anymore.”

“I don’t know how to get back to the waiting room.”

“It doesn’t matter, the coffee’s cold.”

Somehow, the white room has become even more featureless, despite that being both a logical and a grammatical impossibility. Only the bed, the table and Audrey’s mirror remain. A moment in the glass catches my eye, and I look to see— oh Diane, I’m so glad you escaped! I see you travelling with Albert, and… oh, Harry…

…the cafe’s fluorescent lights flickered as the background hum, noticeable since their arrival, now rose to an ear-splitting volume then died away just as suddenly. As the three of them looked on, an old-fashioned hospital bed, its steel frame painted white, materialized between the counter and the booths, replacing two unoccupied tables. At one end of it sat Agent Dale Cooper, fully dressed in his suit and tie, a look on his face of mild surprise that turned to the familiar joy as his gaze met theirs. Coop had grown older like the rest of them, sharper angles in his face, but he looked hale and well, and his eyes did not have the cruel gleam that chilled Harry’s memories of their last meeting.

“Harry,” he said, as though a quarter-century hadn’t passed. In response Harry silently doffed his cowboy hat, revealing his pallor, his naked scalp. Coop’s smiled wavered a little. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he whispered, and rose from the white bed. In the background, the cafe staff and patrons continued to chat and serve and drink and eat coffee and donuts as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on right in front of them. Albert made a hesitant noise in his throat and Coop raised his hand in that just a moment gesture he always used to make, and in that moment Harry knew his friend really was back from wherever he’d been all those years.

“Apologies for being brusque,” Coop said, “but there’s a family in Las Vegas who I’ve reason to believe are in danger right now—”

“Janey-E?” Diane asked.

“Right on the button. For personal reasons which I’ll explain later, I can’t get in touch with them myself. The Mitchell brothers might be able to help, but I don’t know how much they’ll be able to recall of our last meeting.”

“Tammy and Constance are already on it.”

“Good,” Coop looked relieved, and Harry stepped forward, shaking a little in spite of himself, and as if the motion had at last given him permission, Coop sailed forward and embraced him— very gently, as if he feared Harry might break. He’s gauging by touch how much weight I’ve lost, thought Harry, but it’s all right. He’d forgotten how warm Coop was. He became aware of Albert and Diane joining in, arms circling his shoulders and Coop’s. If I died right here and now, it’d be all right.

But this embrace was not an epitaph, or an epilogue. Outside, somewhere else in the city, was an imitation of an ancient stone monument; and a copy of an old theatre where real audiences watched real actors. Somewhere the forces that had sent the dark cloud of grackles prepared another attack, and somewhere Tammy Preston was moving to protect Janey-E and Dougie Jones. Elsewhere Audrey Horne walked the mean streets and was not herself mean. This was an interlude, but let them have it for a while.

A couple of patrons turned their heads to smile at the reunion going in their midst.

#wonderfulxstrange #@laughingpineapple #twin peaks #@laughingpinecone

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psychewithwings · 3 years

Text

The Canary Pt. 2 Todoroki x F!

hi, this is pt 2 of my Shouto Todoroki x musician!reader where its a hot mess bc its kinda a love triangle with Enji????

Listen if ya missed pt 1... its here

TW: anything on my page is 18+, fuck outta here children and get some juice... manipulative relationships, messy love situation/ love triangle, hints at abusive relationship (between reader and her ex), her ex is also a drug addict... and a criminal... if you're wondering why this is such a messy fic its inspired by my watching the show euphoria...

and lemme address this: i know enji got a redemption arc but i wanted to write him with a similar vibe to nates dad from euphoria... to explore the manipulative sides of age gap relationships or relationships with clearly unbalanced power dynamics, my portrayal of him here is not what i would deem perfectly canon but more a vessel for the plot and ideas i want to explore with this piece and the complexities within it, now... that being said... i give you a long awaited pt 2 to The Canary

You watch as Shouto opens the front door and slips away into the night. The door closes and upon hearing the latch click you realize you’d been holding your breath. You exhale long and slow, still stunned by Shouto’s vulnerability. He worries he will never be able to save himself. Yes, you very much relate to that problem. There is something about Shouto that scares you, looking at him in person, it feels like he is someone you’d known forever, that you should have memories of him but the place in your mind that they should be, is blank.

How he feels about you is still incredibly unclear. You had been very aware of how carefully he watched you during your meal, his eyes seemingly tracking each of your movements and committing them to memory. Dinner was uncomfortable, you had wanted to hide and simultaneously prove yourself to him; that you were different from his idea of who you must be considering the circumstances. You knew what he thought; that you were just some shallow girl dating his dad for the money. But that wasn’t the truth.

Maybe someday you and Shouto would learn the truth of who the other was, your pasts, desires for the future, and maybe what that feeling was that made him seem so familiar. You could easily picture yourself trying to make him laugh on a warm spring day and you smile to yourself.

“Well I’m glad to see you smiling,” Enji remarks as he sits next to you on the couch. “Shouto can be a bit harsh, I apologize…” Enji murmurs and wraps his arm around you, a protective and comforting gesture. “No, it’s okay, it’s only natural for him to feel suspicious or confused,” you console. You pull your legs onto the couch and snuggle into the cushions.“I’ll talk to him about it,” he offers but you shake your head. “No, it’s really okay, I think he’s warming up to me.” Enji raises an eyebrow at you and smiles slightly. “Shouto doesn’t warm up to others easily… or at all,” he dismisses and kisses your cheek. You look up at him and blink. “I’m not worried ‘bout it… best to just give it time,” you smile. Enji gives you a single nod before his expression falls stern. “As much as I enjoy your optimism, we need to discuss Friday, I won’t be able to go and I don’t want you going alone.” You inhale slowly and hold your breath until you can figure out the words exactly.

“Enji, I told you, I can take care of myself for a night, I don't need you to watch over me every time I do a gig.” His gaze bores into yours, eyes piercing. “And I’ve asked you nicely not to play this weekend, you’re sophisticated now, a place like the Viper Lounge should be considered beneath you.” You move away from his touch, crossing your arms. While Enji is more supportive than anyone else about your music career, he still didn’t understand. He had been a hero, a place like The Viper is considered scummy in his circle but for you it’s the holy grail of performance venues. You explain time and time again and the words are becoming dull and grey with repetition. “It’s one of the best places for someone who’s looking to get scouted to perform… and the Viper invited me, that's a big deal.” Enji shifts to face you, “I know this feels big to you but it’s just a small set in a shitty dive.”

A part of you wanted to cry hearing those words, but the tears didn’t come. Just a small, sad smile. “There’s going to be talent scouts and agents there… just to see who was selected for the line up and I’m the closing set… It's a pretty big deal.”

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Shouto walks from the house, his head filled with thoughts of you. Your smile, your voice, that ridiculous yellow guitar. Your eyes, their inquisitive nature. He thinks back to his answer to your question, “I'm afraid that no matter how many people I save, that I’ll never be able to save myself.” He sighs, he can’t remember the last time he could be so honest with someone, let alone someone who was practically a stranger… But there is something about you that seems oddly familiar, though for what reason he felt this way was unclear.

He is about halfway to his car when he feels how light his pants pocket is. His phone… he must have left it inside somewhere, maybe the kitchen? He sighs, he doesn’t want to return to the house, to have to look at you again after being so honest. He had been bold in hopes of- well he isn’t all that sure why he had said something like that so openly, all he knows is the heat is creeping to his cheeks. He takes a breath before hesitantly opening the door. He collects himself, hoping you wont be able to see his embarrassment.

“I told you, there will be plenty more opportunities and you won't have to perform in such a dump,” he hears his fathers voice. He knows that voice… Shouto opens his mouth to call out but shuts it again hearing your icy tone, “you’re not listening... Enji.” Shouto’s eyebrows raise in surprise, you’re not as childish as he first thought. In fact, it seems you’re holding your own against his father in an argument of sorts. He hears Enji laugh mockingly, “I’m not listening? What about Kai?” There’s a long pause, the sound of cicadas filling Shouto’s ears while the name Kai tumbles around his mind. He knew that name from somewhere. “What about Kai?” your voice is so low he can barely hear it. “Is he going to be there?” Enji pushes. Your voice raises slightly in aggravation, “I don't know, I don't talk to Kai, I haven’t said a word to him since the day I left.” Enji scoffs, “Really? It’s suspicious that the Viper Lounge invites you to perform when you’re almost a year out of that scene, he has connections there, what if he’s just using this “gig” as an excuse to get close to you? C’mon y/n, use your head.” Enji’s tone is viciously condescending. Shouto clenches his jaw, waiting for your reply. “I’ve thought about that possibility, but it's an event to showcase new upcoming artists and I haven’t performed there solo before, so I don’t find it totally unbelievable they would ask me.” For once Enji has no rebuttal and you take that as your cue to continue. “Kai isn’t even in the line up… and even if he was, I’m going because this is important to me, this has nothing to do with him.”

Shouto couldn’t keep standing outside listening, he had to get his phone now. He briskly steps inside and shuts the door loudly behind him. “I left my phone,” he announces as he walks through the house to the kitchen. The silence that follows his interruption makes him worry you both figured out he had been listening, though perhaps you were both just embarrassed to be caught arguing. He finds his phone by the kitchen sink and pockets it quickly, before heading back towards the door. He nods towards you both before turning his back.

“Hey Shouto?” The sound of your voice stops him in his tracks. He shifts carefully to face you and sees your eyes glinting with mischief. “You own a hero agency right?” Shouto nods, watching carefully to see where you were going with this. “I’m sure then that you would have a hero capable of a simple bodyguard job, for just this little gig I’m doing on Friday, I know it’s last minute so if you don’t have anyone… I’ll be fine.” He had to play this carefully so as not to expose himself for eavesdropping. “Where’s the gig?” “The Viper Lounge,” Enji scoffs. His father must be furious that you’ve now involved a third party. If there was something Enji Todoroki hated, it was airing his dirty laundry. Shouto was careful not to laugh… you were far smarter than he initially gave you credit for.

“I’ve performed at the Viper before… tons of times-``''You have, but only with Kai Chisaki.” Your face tells Shouto that name hits a sore spot. Hearing his whole name sparks Shouto’s memory and he realises who Kai is. Kai Chisaki, an underground rapper… face tattoos and some nasty habits that earned him a hell of a rap sheet; burglary, assault, possession of unlicensed weapons, public indecency, drug counts too high to keep track of… He’d been arrested again a few months ago, but just like the last, he was bailed out and the charges were dismissed.

“But the Viper asked me to be a part of this gig for showing off upcoming talent… Enji’s just worried for me because he can't be there and my ex has a reputation- ``''That’s putting it lightly,” Enji interrupts, “he’s scum, deserves to rot in prison.” You rub your palms on your thighs and smile gently at Shouto. “I just think the situation would be more comfortable for everyone if I had some protection… Maybe you know of someone that could watch out for me for the night?”

Shouto resists the urge to volunteer, though the temptation of hearing your voice again is overwhelming. “Tch- as if I would trust any of the foolish heroes Shouto babysits to watch after you in that cesspool…” You gaze at Enji with big doe eyes, your body turning, hands inching towards his father’s legs. “You trust Shouto don’t you?” Enji pauses, before he sighs “I do.” You give him a winning smile, “then he’ll pick someone fit for the job.” Enji’s brow creases pensively, “Shouto,” he addresses. Shouto meets his father’s eyes, his heartbeat quickening as he realises what he’s about to ask. “What are your plans Friday? Could you take her?”

Shouto pretends to consider it, but really he counts the seconds until he can agree. He didn’t really know what it was about you that made him want to go with you so badly to this gig. It’s a separate part of himself that Shouto was unfamiliar with, a part of him that wasn’t thinking but desired only to know you… or understand you? There was just something about you. That was all he knew for sure. He nods, trying his best to hide his true feelings. “I could make arrangements to accompany y/n, as long as,” he looks at you, “you’re comfortable with that.” You hold out your hands defensively and shake your head, “if you have to move things around- you’re so busy- I-I don’t wanna cause you any trouble.” Shouto dismisses your statement, “it’s not trouble, I wouldn’t agree otherwise.”

You shift uncomfortably, “as long as you’re sure…” Shouto turns towards the door, facing forward as he leaves you with these words. “It’s important to you, right? Just accept my help.” He opens the door, and holds the frame tightly. He knows he shouldn’t, he hears the chorus of voices telling him not to look back, but it's that one part of him again that takes control and turns his head. He can’t help but smile slightly seeing your expression. Mouth parted and brow raised slightly in surprise. Beautiful.

“We’ll connect about details sometime during the week,” he confirms, “see you Friday.” He hears you call out your gratitude as he closes the door and makes for his car. He slides into the driver's seat and turns on the engine and looks towards his childhood home. The light from the windows casts a glow onto the grass. He finally exhales and with each new breath he gains more clarity about the situation. He shouldn’t care about you, he can’t let himself get any closer. He would help you with this gig and go back to avoiding family dinner like the plague. Shouto leans his head back into the seat and puts the car in reverse. He tries his best to shake off these thoughts but that little devil on his shoulder keeps cackling and whispering suggestions he chooses to immediately ignore.

He pulls out of the driveway and onto the road, pushing thoughts of you away and doing his best to find another topic to think about, something to distract him from the confusion of his swirling emotions. But as much as he tries, he can’t stop thinking about you.

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