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sassiperere · 1 year

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Neon Carnival Seiyuu Talk Rough Translation!

Ei, tem uma versão em português dessa tradução, viu?

Hey guys! Neon Carnival, the Nu Carnival anniversary live, was a while ago and we had the pleasure of seeing Eiden’s seiyuu, Netoru Irakusa, and Olivine’s seiyuu, One Night Love. They bantered and answered some game related questions and it was generally a lot of fun!

My japanese is far from perfect, but I tried my best in providing a rough translation of the bit below. Please keep in mind my lack of fluency, therefore, the translation might not be extremely accurate! There’s a fair bit of guesswork through context, so please be considerate and if you spot mistakes you’re free to message me to fix them.

I refer to this translation by idololivine a lot for this. They translated from the chinese live translation of this and the host comments. Everytime I mention something the host said, it is taken directly from their translation, so please be sure to check their work out!

With that, let’s get to it!

Seiyuus come on stage in very high spirits, especially Netoru. Netoru wears a Topper mask and One Night Love wears a plague doctor mask (it’s kind of his thing, part of his persona). One Night greets the audience in Olivine’s voice and is pleased by their energetic reaction to it. Netoru repeats everything One Night says in an exaggerated impression of Olivine’s voice and mannerisms lol

One Night mentions how nice it is to see everyone with their Topper lights. Netoru questions why nobody gave him one and One Night replies with “well, why didn’t you bring your own?” Netoru then says, desperately, “NOBODY TOLD ME TO BRING ANYTHING?!” One Night says they might have gotten him mixed up with Topper himself.

Netoru greets the audience in various languages, ending with an enthusiastic hello in chinese. I felt especially close to this crowd as they cheered excitedly at a sub celebrity saying one basic word in their mother tongue (I’m from Latin America). After that, both seiyuus thank the audience, wish for everyone to have a good time and properly introduce themselves.

The host asks if they’ve ever been to Taiwan before. Netoru says that this is actually his first time leaving the country! One Night asks the audience what time they think they got up that morning and here I would like to give a shoutout to the people that raise their hands IN A HANG LOOSE like yeah dude. Yeah. EDIT: Apparently, this hand gesture means SIX in Taiwan/China WOW I would’ve never guessed!! They’re trying to guess they slept six hours! Thanks to idololivine again!

Anyway, Netoru says they got up at 5AM and went on a WALK (cute), but Netoru specifies that they didn’t go TOGETHER (god forbid anyone thinks you’re doing gay shit), it was mostly them mentioning to each other they each had places they wanted to check out and then they both went their own separate ways. They didn’t even know the other was walking around the same area lol (brave, I’d never do that in an unknown country). Netoru then mentions that everyone in Taiwan is kind and the food is tasty, there’s a lot he still wants to see but they don’t have a lot of time so he wishes he could come back someday.

Then there’s a moment of silence as the translator reminds One Night it’s his turn to speak.

One Night: “AH ………… what was the question again?”

Netoru: “??? DON’T YOU HAVE THE PROGRAMMING WITH YOU?”

AND EVEN THOUGH ONE NIGHT CHECKS HIS NOTES HE STILL NEEDS HELP FINDING WHERE THEY’RE AT I SWEAR. SMOOTH BRAIN MOMENT.

One Night: “It’s also my first time abroad. The food’s really good. When I got here, I thought ‘man, I wanna eat [dishes I don’t know]’, but now that I’ve actually eaten them I don’t really know what to do…”

The crowd starts screaming suggestions. Some yell TAPIOCA and Netoru mentions he’s had it! They do a little bit of encouraging the audience to give them more suggestions and then end with “yeah, I didn’t understand any of that” lmao. They banter a bit more about food.

QUESTION: What was your first impression of your character?

Netoru says he was really surprised to see that the clothes get ripped off as they take damage (this fucking SHOOK him, I swear, he said the same thing during the Eiden birthday QnA). Netoru does some BAAANG sound effects to exemplify what he means and One Night looks at him and goes “what was that?”, so Netoru repeats his BAANG and One Night GETS UP AND SHEDS HIS EIDEN JACKET, REVEALING HE IS ALSO WEARING THE NEON CARNIVAL COMMEMORATIVE T-SHIRT. Then Netoru gets up himself and TOUCHES ONE NIGHT’S CHEST, LIKE THAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE JUST DO.

One Night shows off the shirt again and says it looks great.

Netoru: “You wanna take your clothes off this bad?”

One Night: “No no… it’s a bit chilly here :)”

Netoru continues, saying when he got the role for Eiden he was initially nervous about playing a guy so laid back and friendly (Netoru mentioned in the Eiden birthday QnA that he’s used to playing darker, moodier characters, so he was surprised to get one that, despite his sad past, is still really optimistic). The host tells Netoru that he’s quite cheery and friendly and Netoru says he’s feeling happy to be here. Netoru ends by saying that, despite it making him nervous initially, he considers this optimism a charming point to Eiden, which One Night agrees with.

The translator asks the same of One Night and I swear the ENERGY emanating from this scene as One Night crosses his leg like a Drag Race judge about to read a competitor to filth and going “OLIVINE NEEEEEEEEE” as the translator mimics his EXACT TONE. PRICELESS STUFF.

One Night: “When I saw him for the first time, what I thought- and I imagine I share this sentiment with many of you - was ‘what the hell is that SSR outfittttt???’”

Netoru: “IS THAT- IS THAT WHY YOU WANTED TO TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF JUST NOW?”

One Night: “NO NO NO. DON’T RUIN MY IMAGE LIKE THAT.”

Netoru keeps teasing One Night, encouraging him to get naked and One Night still refuses like NO DUDE STOP IT. They eventually joke around that One Night could do that as training for his role.

One Night says that Olivine is also very endearing and kind, so he was also concerned about portraying that.

One Night: “Also… when I was recording for the main story scenes, right? I thought well, this game… this video-game… it has a lot of sex scenes, right?! So when I recorded the initial Olivine scene I… kinda overdid it. I was thinking ‘wow, how are they gonna match THAT up with Eiden-kun?’ So that was interesting” (One Night refers to the scene as “kagami no shiin” which would be “the mirror scene” but… none of Olivine’s scenes feature a mirror? So… Idk if this is slang or something…)

Netoru: “... We could try it out right now”

One Night: “Oh yeah? Can we?”

Netoru: “NO NO NO, people will get mad if we do”

QUESTION: Throughout this one year, was there any event that was especially memorable to you?

Netoru says he was really surprised about Eiden’s event (I assume he means the one that gave Eiden an SSR), because he thought it was never going to happen, so he was super happy to see it. Netoru uses a weird term I never saw that means more “the event that IMPLEMENTED Eiden”, so One Night says “What do you mean?? He’s always been there?” and Netoru responds “WELL YEAH, BUT HE WASN’T FIGHTING” and One Night concedes.

One Night then comments that he really liked the new feature to add Eiden into the home screen. Netoru asks the audience who put Eiden on their home screen (EVERYONE RAISES THEIR HAND EXCEPT ONE NIGHT? LIKE? I THOT U LIKED IT??).

Then… something I didn’t quite get happens (maybe Netoru also thought it was weird that One Night didn’t raise his hand?) and Netoru asks One Night to look up, to which he says he can’t see much because of his mask. He starts a bit where he walks around the stage looking for Eiden and acting surprised when he sees Netoru there, so Netoru says “BUT YOU COULD SEE ME UNTIL NOW?”

One Night sips a little drinky… for quite a long time. Netoru asks “damn you thirsty??” and when One Night CONTINUES drinking he starts teasing him for it, saying he must be way too free to be doing that. He APOLOGIZES to the audience for his co-star’s audacity and takes a little sippy of his own drink, which One Love takes as a sign that he must too embibe, to Netoru’s utter disbelief. One Night takes a little stroll with his drink on stage and comes back to their seats like… whassup? He comments the stage is quite large and both he and Netoru go each to one corner of the stage to wave at the audience.

When they come back, the host says “so….. let’s continue” and Netoru replies with “OH FUCK YEAH I WAS TALKING”. Netoru continues his earlier point by saying that, during this event, we got to learn about Eiden’s past and that’s why he liked it so much. As a bonus, he mentions that he’s also really curious where Rin’s story in the main story will take them (casually drops that he actually plays the game he works for).

One Night: “An event that was memorable to me…”

Netoru: “Oh, it’s cool, you don’t have to answer this one”

One Night: “??? OK FINE, THEN I WON’T”

Netoru: “Alright, let’s move on!”

Netoru apologizes profusely for this joke and One Night says he isn’t sorry enough, so Netoru gets on his knees and prostrates LOL One Night tells him to get up, he’s forgiven.

One Night mentions there’s been a looot of events, but if he were to pick, he’d probably pick the Christmas event that had just happened prior to this live.

One Night: “It’s ‘cause- ok, before I say anything: who here stans Olivine?” [people raise their green topper lights]

This next line I’m not too sure on, but I THINK he says: “I imagine you stans already thought of this but… don’t you think Olivine’s been showing less skin lately?”

Netoru: “Kinda, yeah”

One Night: “I was like WHAT?! I swear it shocked me more than the story”

QUESTION: Besides your own character, are there any other characters you like?

Netoru: “Well, you already know mine, right?”

One Night: “You don’t even have to say it”

Netoru: “It’s Topper! I want to take Topper-san home!”

One Night: “I know… I KNOW…”

Netoru comments he’s probably super warm to cuddle with in winter. One Night agrees and says he’d like to put him in his bag and take him places, hear him make little kyun kyun noises. They continue to discuss the dynamics of taking Topper around in a bag like oh my god please give these men pets.

One Night: “My favorite character? Topper.”

Netoru: “hey………”

One Night: “IT’S ‘CAUSE HE’S SOOOO CUUUTE”

Netoru: “… wanna fight?”

One Night: “Oh yeah? Wanna go?”

They get up. Netoru starts warming up and, as he turns to face his opponent, One Night has the Topper lightstick that Netoru doesn’t have on hand. It utterly defeats him as he screams “I CAN’T WIN AGAINST THAT”

One Night says that his favorites would probably be Edmond or Blade. He mentions he knows Edmond’s seiyuu, he’s done some other games with him, and that he was looking forward to seeing that seiyuu’s performance as Edmond.

Netoru: “Naughty”

One Night: “I wouldn’t really say naughty… but, well, it’s a little naughty”

(They use the word “yokaranu” here, which I NEVER heard before in my life, but jisho says it just means “bad” so I ASSUME it’s used in a more… ohhh you’re so naughty context)

One Night speaks over the translator here but it sounds like “it’s mutual” before he backtracks and yells “GUYS IT’S NOTHING SUSPICIOUS!” One Night starts poking Netoru and saying “Hey… Netoru… Stop that…” in a whiny voice. Netoru says it’s the first time One Night’s called him by his first name.

For Blade, One Night says it’s really just style, he likes characters with huge bangs that hide their eyes. Netoru points at his face and One Night says that yes, he also covers his eyes, he can’t see much of anything with his mask on.

Netoru: “Let’s make holes for the eyes”

One Night: “No, please, I can’t get a return on Amazon anymore…”

QUESTION: This one’s for Netoru. What’s the difference between top Eiden and bottom Eiden? Can you tell us how you change between the two?

One Night, in an incredibly jealous tone: TOP AND BOTTOM…. WOW HE’S THE FULL PACKAGE!

Netoru says that he doesn’t really think too hard about it? The most important aspect is [looking directly at One Night] understanding your partner’s needs.

One Night: “Understand me. Right now, understand me.” (this was… actually kinda hot? lol)

Netoru gets flustered and reiterates that what really matters is how your partner acts, it enables him to play different types of tops and bottoms (which is crazy to me because they don’t record together so like… how does he do that?).

Netoru then does a tiny bit of an example of top and bottom intonations. BIG MISTAKE, NETORU. Now One Night goes “WELL, WELL, WELL, WHAT’S THIS? GIVE US SOME MORE!”, but Netoru says people will get mad at him if he does. THE FUCKING HOST, HOWEVER, PLAYS THE ACTUAL DEVIL THERE AND EDGES HIM ON, SAYING HE WON’T GET SCOLDED, IT’S OK!! And Netoru actually DOES some more moaning as a treat LMAOO EVERYONE’S DOING A NERVOUS LAUGH ON STAGE AND ONE NIGHT’S SAYING “THIS IS GOING A BIT OFF THE RAILS?”

Netoru does some more fake moaning and One Night says they’re sounding a bit too funny. BIG MISTAKE, ONE NIGHT. Now Netoru’s ACTUALLY moaning, making the crowd go wild and you can JUST FEEL THE EMBARRASSMENT COMING OUT OF THAT PLAGUE DOCTOR MASK IN WAVES LIKE THE FRAGRANCE OF THE HERBS THEY USED TO SHOVE IN THERE BACK IN THE DAY. Netoru ends it by saying that now the audience should be able to tell the difference between top and bottom voice acting (he looks really nervous lol) and that it’s really important to understand the feelings of your partner in the scene.

QUESTION: Olivine has some… audacious scenes. Are there any scenes or lines that became especially memorable to you?

Before answering, One Night makes a point to fix Netoru’s sitting posture, saying that he’s not a child lol

One Night says he doesn’t like picking between stories but there’s definitely one that was super memorable to him: the idol event! One Night sings a bit of the chorus for Summer Dream and Netoru eggs him on like “WHAT? WHAT? CAN YOU KEEP SINGING? I CAN’T HEAR YOU??” until One Night sings THE ENTIRE CHORUS TO US THANK YOU ONE NIGHT LOVE SAMAAA BLESS BLESS BLESS

One Night says he’s never sung many character and unit songs, so he was excited to get to do it for this event. He hopes he can sing more character songs in the future (EXTREMELY wholesome answer for what the crew expected when they put this question in, I’m positive).

QUESTION: If you had to pick a character from the game to date, who would it be?

One Night: “Wait, guys, we’re gonna do it on ‘go’”

They both get up and make a show to stretch and prepare to say their answers.

Both: “Aaaaand GO: TOPPEEEEEEEER”

Netoru: “HE’S CUTE AND WON’T EVER LEAVE ME!”

QUESTION: How do you feel after this 1 year? What would you like to say to your fans here and your fans watching you live?

Netoru: “Thank you so much for everyone who stuck around for this one year. I would like to thank everyone who loves this game and everyone who’s working on the game from the bottom of my heart. I hope you’ll continue to look forward to Nu Carnival! Please keep supporting us!”

That’s… the gist of it at least. Netoru then says “I love you” in japanese, english, korean and mandarin, with an extra “thank you” in mandarin.

One Night says “I love you” in mandarin and the crowd goes WILD seriously taiwanese people I got you so fucking bad you’re all my homies.

One Night: “I’ve only managed to do these amazing things this past year because of everyone who’s been playing the game, thank you very much. I want to come back and celebrate 2, 3 years, so I hope everyone will continue to play until then and the staff will continue to create amazing stories. Please continue supporting the game, thank you very much”

(That’s the gist of it lol)

Then they both get up to do the live reading of Olivine’s scene!

If you’ve made it here, thank you! I hope my translation wasn’t TOO shoddy and that I could be helpful in anyway! Please continue to love Nu Carnival, everyone!

#neon carnival #nu carnival #neon carnival translation #netoru irakusa #one night love #eiden #olivine #nu carnival 1st anniversary #nu carnival translation #nuc eiden #nuc olivine

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sheliesshattered · 3 months

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My window to order was starting to narrow, so I finally pulled the trigger on the Captain Accreditation License prop I'd been eyeing for my Batuu Bound birthday outing coming up. It's such a silly little detail, but the reviews are filled with people talking about getting to use it in Galaxy's Edge when the Stormtroopers stop them to ask to see some identification, which sounds like a fun interaction. And like, I can make a great deal of soft kit, I can even put together my own greebles out of foam -- but laser engraving is way outside my wheelhouse and tool access.

But before I could order it, I had to come up with a bunch of info to go on it, like name, home planet, ship type, that sort of thing. I had a basic idea of what sort of character I wanted to portray with my outfit for Batuu, but filling out the info for the pilot's license really made me lock down a bunch of details, which eventually evolved into full on original character creation.

It also got me started in learning to read Aurebesh, the Star Wars transliteration alphabet, but that's a whole other rabbit hole, lol.

Character wise, I started with my absolute love of piloting the Falcon in Smuggler's Run (my desire to do so again was one of the major reasons for deciding to do this for my birthday) and my fav in the sequel movies, Benicio Del Toro's "D.J." character. (The very brief political commentary about weapons manufacturers profiting off both sides of the war, and his little "live free, don't join" axiom are just so amazing, I still cannot believe we got that in a Star Wars movie.)

I also took into account that the timeframe for Galaxy's Edge is between Ep 8 and Ep 9, in roughly 34 or 35 ABY (years after the Battle of Yavin, at the end of Ep 4), and that I want to do the lightsaber building activity at Savi's Workshop the day we visit. The Etsy listing for the license also had an interesting little note about choosing a homeworld, calling out that 'because of well-known galactic events' Alderaan would only be an option for characters over the age of 40 or so. That comment got my mental gears turning, and sent me down the path of researching the year that Disney's Batuu is set in, etc.

At that same time, I was trying out different potential hairstyles for keeping my waist-length hair controlled during a day at Disneyland while still looking Star Wars-y. I tried a couple of Rey inspired hair styles, but eventually settled on something much more like Leia's looks in Ep 5 and Ep 6, with multiple braids wrapped around the crown to form a full circle. It's easy and comfortable and will keep my hair from tangling and works well with my hooded wrap thing, so I decided that hairstyle would be part of my look, and part of my character building.

So at that point I had: pilot, politically unaffiliated, soon to own a lightsaber, emulating Princess Leia and/or Alderaanian hairstyles, and grew up mostly after the fall of the Empire and probably wouldn't remember (or only just barely remember) the destruction of Alderaan. On that last point I was splitting the difference slightly -- if I translated my real age now into the Star Wars timeline (and Galaxy's Edge being set in ~35 ABY), then I would have been roughly 8 years old when Alderaan was destroyed. But in reality, I was born shortly after Ep 5 came out, and my earliest memories of Star Wars are knowing all about the movies, playing Star Wars make-believe with other kids in the neighborhood, and being excited that Ep 4 was going to be airing on TV.

After a lot of noodling on this, while sewing or driving or trying to fall asleep, the character started to come together in my head. Her mother was born and raised on Alderaan, but around age 20 (in 2 or 3 BBY, roughly) met a dashing young pilot on a freighter passing through, fell in love, and left Alderaan to be with him. They got married and lived mostly in the hyperspace lanes for a couple years, jumping from place to place. When she found out she was pregnant, she temporarily went back to Alderaan to be with her family and have her baby there. In the last year before the Battle of Yavin, she had a baby girl she named Samæni Ray, and after a few weeks she and the baby left Alderaan to meet up with her husband again.

So none of them were on Alderaan when the Death Star targeted and destroyed the planet. In the wake of the tragedy, the Alderaanian diaspora would have pulled together all across the galaxy, trying to get word of anyone who might have survived. And then, a miracle: Princess Leia somehow survived! The princess that Samæni's mother had grown up idolizing from afar, someone similar to her in age and physical appearance (pictures of my real mother from the 1970s bear a striking resemblance to Carrie Fisher in the same time period) -- the princess that Samæni's mother had loved for as long as she could remember, she not only survived but she stepped up to lead the Resistance against the Empire!

You know those people in real life who like, collected merchandise about Princess Diana? Yeah, that's Samæni's mom, but with Princess Leia, lol.

The war to overthrow the Empire only lasted for another 5 years or so, ending with the Battle of Jakuu in 5 ABY. So I figure Samæni might have vague early childhood memories of her parents celebrating the end of the war. They weren't actively members of the Resistance, and Samæni's father was much more politically neutral, preferring to focus on his work as a freighter pilot, but as far as Samæni's mother was concerned, anything Princess Leia did was a blessing on the galaxy, so it would have been a big deal for her, both during the war and in the years after as the New Republic was established.

During those early years of the New Republic, Samæni's father's freight business continued to do well, and she mostly grew up in her family's Gozanti-class cruiser, as they moved things from one planet to the next. She learned to pilot at her father's side, eventually sat for a pilot's license exam as a young adult, and then struck out on her own. Samæni's first job as a pilot was for a company that operated light freighters as party ships, allowing those with modest disposable income to see the galaxy in style but without the expense of a yacht cruiser. (The company probably had a ridiculous tagline like: "From here to thar with an open bar!")

Since those early jobs-for-hire, Samæni saved up enough money to buy her own little light freighter and start an inport/export business in which she (and her partner Jack) go to outer rim worlds to buy antiquities, oddities, and rare objects and bring them back to an upper-middle class clientele in the core worlds and inner rim. Their current ship is a bit of an antique itself, a Kazellis-class light freighter that is flashy enough to fit in in the nicer areas of Coruscant, but hard-working and easily repairable enough to take Samæni and Jack to all those far-flung worlds with treasures to acquire. Their ship has room for some larger pieces, but most of the cargo area has been converted into full-time living quarters, since they rarely stay planet-side for very long.

Their home-port is the ecumenoplis planet of Denon, an inner-rim world that sits at the intersection of two major hyperspeed trade routes. Denon was the closest thing to a homeworld that Samæni had growing up, and her parents have since retired to the equatorial area of the planet, in a community with a lot of other retired pilots and haulers and ship mechanics. (Her father's favorite local cantina is named for the CEC catalog part number for a replacement hyperdrive lever. He and all his old pilot buddies think it is hilarious.)

Samæni's mother continues to talk about Princess Leia like they are close friends (despite never actually having met her), and keeps informed on the rise of the First Order and the resistance to it mostly because she has set up HoloNet news alerts for General Organa. But Samæni takes more after her father in that regard, doesn't particularly care about politics or taking sides in any civil war, other than how it impacts business. The destruction of the Hosnian system by the First Order's Starkiller Base is enough to push Samæni towards siding against the First Order, but she still isn't about to rush out to join the Resistance, either.

Her pilot's license lists Denon as her homeworld, and it would take some dedicated digging to find that her planet of birth is actually Alderaan. She only lived there for the first few weeks of her life, and her only memory of it is how sad it's always made her mother. The traditional hairstyles and the stories about Princess Leia are really the only parts of the culture that she inherited. Samæni has never wanted to talk about being from Alderaan with anyone, and as the Empire's successor has come to power in the last few years, it's seemed even more dangerous to let anyone outside of close friends and family know that she is technically a survivor of the last time a galactic power was going around destroying planets.

Samæni and Jack are heading to the outer rim world of Batuu to visit Dok Ondar's Den of Antiquities, and follow up on a tip about Savi's crew of 'scrap metal' gatherers, in case there's something there that might sell well on a core world. Arriving to find that both the Resistance and the First Order have a presence in Black Spire Outpost will be less than ideal, but Samæni and Jack have been to enough rough ports across the galaxy that they know how to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.

And hey, if First Order troopers stop to ask them for ID, Samæni will have a genuine pilot's license to show them. ;)

#Batuu Bounding #Star Wars original character #2024 mood #my original characters #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray #pronounced sa-MAHN-ee #the spelling was a whole thing -- I didn't want it to be a real-world name or place AND to look good written in Aurebesh #but there's an Aurebesh letter for the combined ae vowel sound that makes it 6 letters long instead of 7 #and with that spelling the only real-world thing that comes up with a google of it is an Icelandic word. I can live with that #I haven't done character building like this since I was originally preparing for Wasteland Weekend #the process is fun and I love the way that it informs the corresponding clothing/costume design #and in that sense this post is relevant to:#hooded wrap #Batuu vest #scrappy sweatshirt project #which I started yesterday but haven't taken any pictures of yet #info on that coming soon #and also relevant to the tag I was using before I decided on my character's name:#my SW/BB OC #I think it's still in my queue but there's a post I've reblogged with that tag on it #that talks about how Leia's survival of the destruction of Alderaan would have been viewed by people outside her immediate circle #that post also helped jumpstart a lot of my thinking about Samæni's parents #who no -- do not actually have names at this point. but hey it's fun to have places to continue to develop the backstory #I also want to come up with a name for Samæni and Jack's Kazellis-class ship #Jack said 'Ravencrest' half joking but I think that might stick lol

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regrettablewritings · 2 years

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There’s a lot of things I could say about The Book of Boba Fett -- mostly critical things because of how they wound up handling it. Suffice to say, Temuera Morrison and Ming Na Wen did not deserve what they got, and fans and potential fans did not deserve to be fooled the way they were.

But here we are at what is currently presumed to be the end of the limited series, and the only things to show for it are plot threads that didn’t even belong to Boba’s storyline to begin with!

I don’t feel comfortable doing an all-out rewrite; as a non-Māori/Polynesian/indigenous person of color, I feel there are just certain things I shouldn’t cross. Tem’s use of the Tuskens to bring his culture to the screen was important to members of those groups, and I personally feel that they were the most robbed in this show after it got their hopes up, only to have them quickly slashed in the very next episode.

But I still want to at least vent and get my thoughts out. Express some of the things I wish they’d focused on or could’ve potentially benefited from.

More time spent with the Tuskens. Yes, we knew that they and Boba were going to have to part ways eventually. But there was no reason it had to be like that, let alone in the very next episode after they accepted Boba as one of their own. These people taught Boba how to fight, how there was no nobility in loneliness -- give them more dignity than that! And if they have to part, why not make it so that they just had to relocate? The Pykes are clearly backstabbers, so wouldn’t it make sense that they go back on their word and try to attack the Tuskens again? When it gets too close of a call where they nearly take down the Chieftain or even the Warrior, they begrudgingly decide that they have to keep their numbers safe and leave. Boba, of course, thinks they shouldn’t and have a right to stay on their land but ultimately accepts that there aren’t as many of them left anymore: They have to preserve whomever’s left. Which leads me to the next point . . .

Why did Boba become a crime lord again? No, really. I keep forgetting. And I’m the broad who could explain away with ease what the conflicts in Batman v Superman were. If I recall correctly, Boba summed it up to Fennec that he just didn’t want to work for scummy people anymore and wanted to become his own boss. Which...Okay, look: I am not familiar with the Legends canon. I honestly am not sure if I even want to be (though, hey, it sounds like they didn’t drag my boy through the filth). But personally, that type of decision just sounds closer to something a pre-Sarlacc Pit Boba would reason: It’s impulsive, kinda blasé, and frankly just sounds like he decided it on a whim because there’s not much else to do on Tatooine. Before he gave that reason, I honestly was ready to believe that he went after the position to provide protection. Like, however he and his Tusken family parted ways, he would become determined to rule over Tatooine because the best way to change the rules is to be the one who makes them. By becoming the next daimyo, he would see to it that the less powerful of the area wouldn’t suffer. I don’t know how that would sit with people (I saw waaayyyy too many people claiming that episode 2 was too white saviory, but I also saw plenty of indigenous people claiming otherwise, but it’s ultimately not my place to confirm or deny one or the other). But that’s just what made more sense to me.

Gonna take a page from Tem’s book: Boba isn’t as big a talker. He was never particularly talkative before, why should he be different now? Yes, he’s growing as a person, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s gonna chatter a bunch and become a social butterfly. It is very possible to make an interesting episode of a show with little to no dialogue, and it wouldn’t even necessarily have to be that because eventually he does begin to interact with others.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about the Pyke Syndicate being the Big Bad. If there was a second season in the bag, then I would rather Cad Bane be this season’s main antagonist. Too tired and lazy to come up with a big enough reason, but let’s just say that he’s still hired by the Pyke Syndicate. Besides, I think he’d be all too happy to antagonize Boba and put him in his place anyway.

(At the very fucking least, INTRODUCE CAD BANE TO THE SERIES EARLIER THAN WHAT THEY DID.)

I want more of a focus on community and how there isn’t any power in solitude or looking out for yourself. I think what the finale was trying to do was give this feeling of “Look at all these people willing to fight alongside Boba because he spared them and was a good person to them!” But...I dunno, it doesn’t feel earned. Or even like that. It felt more “Randos Boba picked up like strays because the plot demanded it” than “people being seen for who they are (rejects of society, someone past their prime, people left behind in a cruel world) and thus giving their loyalty willingly.” Hell, the people from Freetown were just there because of Din, and Peli was there because she was bringing Grogu back to Din. A big thing that they sort of wasted in this show was how they failed to explore that Boba learned the importance of what it’s like to not have to be alone, and how being with others helps you learn and the rippling effect of someone impacting one’s life. Boba outright says that he’s stronger because of his experiences with the Tuskens, and it’s more or less played out that his hiring of the biker gang and Krrsantan was due to a newfound understanding and empathy towards those who found themselves chewed up and spat out in the backwater world that is Tatooine. Hell, it’s his lessons and gadderfi stick that he acquired from the Tuskens that winds up saving him after Cad insists that looking out for yourself is the only way to get by in this world. It was a satisfying moment, sure, but it needed way more buildup.

Besides, how cool would it have been if the Tuskens weren’t, you know, fucking dead and could therefore join Boba in battle? His family really never did leave him, and it further drives home the point about community and not having to face things alone.

Better fight choreography. I am still bitter that most of the good fights went to Din. Because yeah, he can fight, but we all saw what Boba could do. And if you haven’t, allow me to expose you. And mind you: THIS IS BEFORE HE GOT HIS HANDS ON A BACTA TANK. He’s probably in excruciating pain, yet he’s whaling on troopers like they stole his last nickel. But we don’t really get any of that until, like, the finale, with the closest to this instance being when he takes down Cad. We KNOW Boba can fight, but the show barely let him as far as I’m concerned.

Gonna come right out and say it: Little to no Din. Even before TBOBF premiered, that was what most people were talking about. Not the titular character finally getting canonical development on screen, not the return of an Asian woman who was quickly becoming a fan favorite, but whether or not the dude with two seasons under his belt and a third on the way would show up. And show up he did, taking over two whole episodes before we realized that this show was more like a money laundering scheme where the real money was going into The Mandalorian s3. I don’t think it would’ve been bad if part of the episode had been dedicated to him: Maybe it starts off the same as how episode 5 did, but about midway Fennec finds him and gives the whole proposition. Din learns what’s going on and is hesitant to agree because (as what is supposed to be planned in the upcoming season of Mando) he wants to find Grogu -- and he can’t exactly find him if he winds up dead. (“All the more reason to make sure you fight well,” Fennec smirks.) But he mostly agrees to it because he still hasn’t yet found the remaining members of his clan, and Boba and Fennec agree to utilize their connections to make locating them easier. But this is only if Din has to be there.

For that matter, no Grogu. It’s way too soon for Grogu. I love him and I know Lucasfilms is probably like, “We spent all this money on the puppet, we’re using him every chance we get”, but we gotta consider the timeline: It probably hasn’t even been a year, let alone half of one, since the events of season 2 of The Mandalorian. Grogu leaving at the end of the second season, only to be brought back virtually instantly in the most immediate live-action SW series that isn’t (listed as) The Mandalorian really just dampened the impact of Din’s decision for me. Like, we knew they were going to be reunited. The questions were when and how. But by that, I meant maybe some episodes would focus more on Din trying to steady himself on his own again. Make what was episode 5 part of s3 and then have much of that season be cut between Grogu learning to be a Jedi and Din trying to regain his title as a Mandalorian as the Armorer proclaimed was the proper way. Let their separation simmer. Make what happened mean something, and have Din (post-banishment) come to the acceptance that Grogu wasn’t just his child -- he was one of the reasons Din had been his happiest in a long time. Like, they didn’t make sense yet Grogu being there just made sense to him. And now nothing does because he doesn’t have his child, he doesn’t have a clan.

(Besides, if TBOBF managed to balance Din’s appearance like they proved they could with balancing Boba in Mando s2, there could’ve been a thing where, like in the finale, Boba expresses his appreciation for Din’s loyalty and vice-versa. Maybe Boba expresses that just because somebody told Din he wasn’t a Mandalorian doesn’t mean he’s not -- that that’s up to him to decide. And if he ever decides he doesn’t want to be one -- or decides to keep being one -- he’ll always have a clan there on Tatooine. Have this come back in Mando s3 where Din can acceptably have an episode about him on Boba’s turf, trying to figure out a way to reclaim his title.)

I’m torn on whether Fennec should have an arc of her own, or if this queen would just be sitting at the table, eating a roasted leg of some kind of animal with her damn feet on the table, smirking, “I don’t need an arc; I’m perfectly fine.” I really liked the idea of her infiltrating the Pyke Syndicate and nicking off members, but that could be more of a season 2 thing where Fennec goes on a solo mission against Boba’s wishes and it turns out to be a lot more hazardous than she initially thought.

I’m not necessarily against Boba and Fennec deciding that maybe being crime lords isn’t for them and they might get a lot more done by being far more hands on, because that means more adventures. But mmmmm I’m not feeling the implication of that position falling to Din. Just feels like Disney’s shoving way too many Din fingers into pies. After a point, it’s just plain invasive -- and that point was more likely than not crossed when a show that was advertised as belonging to Boba became just another season of The Mandalorian.

Girl help I wound up somewhat rewriting the show lemme shut up now --

But yeah those are my thoughts. Sorry, this post got away from me.

But anyway, those are just some of my thoughts. Make of them what you will, I’m just word vomiting what I can while it’s still on the brain.

#there was probably more but these were my most immediate thoughts #the book of boba fett #the book of boba fett spoilers #tbobf #tbobf spoilers #Star Wars #boba fett #ming na wen #temuera morrison #long post

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the-bastards-box · 3 years

Text

San leaves his AU

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

San is laying on his couch, watching one of his favorite TV series, but he can't really focus on it.

There was the signiture loud crackle of Sci's portal opening up followed by a knock at San's door not long after.

San got up and opened the door for Sci, "Hey . . ."

"Hey! Woah, you ok there bud? you're lookin a little rough tibia honest." Sci half heartedly chuckles, looking more concerned than anything.

"Yeah, yeah . . . Just didn't really sleep right . . ."

Sci frowned. "What's up?"

"Just feel nervous I guess . . . Overthinking some things a bit . . ."

"You wanna talk about it? ... And do you mind if i come in"

"yeah . . . Uh come in . . ." San let him inside. Sci nods gratefully and steps in. San closed the door behind him and sat down on the couch. Sci joined San on the couch and faced his friend, worry etched into his features.

"So what's eating you?"

"I'm just nervous that I'll see him again . . . I literally avoid going to my brother because he lives near there . . . Like he could be anywhere and i don't want to see him, it's honestly destroying me . . . Like this constant fear and stress . . . It doesn't let me sleep sometimes . . ." San sighed "Nothing here brings me happiness anymore, only our little meetings . . ."

"Oh geeze... I'm sorry... I didn't know you were having such a hard time." Sci reached out to pat San but quickly retracted his hand. He wanted to comfort him but didn't wish to trigger his sensitivities with being touched.

"it's okay i guess . . . Just have to get over this . . ."

Sci sat in silence with his hand folded in his lap.

"Honestly i wish i could just leave . . . Just for a while, take a break from this life . . ." San wrapped his arms around himself.

"I mean... you could? If you wanted you could come stay with me for a little while." Sci started sounding a little excited as he spoke. "I really wouldn't mind, and I could show you my lab." He twiddled his thumbs in his lap, looking at San with a very faint blush on his face.

"r-really? I could?" San' tone of voice is a bit excited too, he seems happy at this proposition.

"Well yeah! ...I mean, but there are some risks involved...." Sci tugged on his shirt collar.

"Like if this universe was to RESET you could get erased from the code... or there is a very small potential when traveling to get stuck in the anti-void between universes. I haven't had that happen yet... but some of the spiders that volunteered for the time that went wrong... when i managed to bring them back they'd... changed... I'm not trying to spook you though! I'm sorry, I just figure you ought to know what you're potentially getting into." Sci chuckled nervously.

San nodded slightly, he thinks for a moment, before looking at Sci, "I want to do it"

Sci's face broke into a big grin. "Oh hell yeah!" Sci looked jittery with excitement. "I haven't brought anyone back with me before! This is going to be so fun! and oh... the data I could collect from this!"

San is smiling at him, he seems happier now.

"Ok um... So! When do you wanna leave? I assume you'll wanna grab some things before we go..."

"y-yeah, uh . . . I should take some clothes, right?"

Sci chuckled, "That would definitely be a good idea. Think anything you'd take on a vacation. Here, I can even help you pack!" Sci jumped up from the couch and held a hand out to San to help him stand.

San hesitantly grabbed his hand and stood up, "you can help me if you really want"

Between the two, packing went by quickly and they both were standing outside of San's house within half an hour. San with bags in hand and Sci fiddling with his portal device, hands shaking lightly in excitement.

"You ready?" He flashes a wide grin at San.

"yeah!"

"Perhaps you would like to do the honors then?" Sci held out the device and made a grand gesture to the button that needed pushing.

San looked at Sci then pushed the button.

There was a whir and a crackle of a portal trying to start but it quickly fizzled out, leaving the two looking on in dead silence.

"Heh... T-This doesn't usually happen i swear." Sci chuckled nervously. He smacked the side of the device a couple times and pressed the button again, a portal springing to life solidly before them.

"so see you on the other side?" San is still looking at Sci.

"Hold up." Sci holds out a hand as if to stop San and kicks a rock through the portal, watching it with narrowed sockets for a second.

"Ahhhh ok yeah we're good let's go." He picks up some of San's belongings, smiles at him, and confidently walks through the portal.

San picks up the rest of his things and goes after Sci through the portal.

On the other side of the portal Sci's setting San's things on a table in a large brightly lit laboratory.

It's cluttered but organized, everything separated in respective groups. And the air was filled with the sound of machinery whirring.

Some of them were plain and boxy with flashing and blinking lights and some of tem were foreboding and alien looking and along one wall several were printing out a nonstop stream of information on paper that was neatly folding itself into piles.

"wow . . ." San is looking around, clearly amazed by what he's seeing.

Sci turns around and looks at San. "Heh yeah there's alot going on huh? Sorry it's kinda a mess right now though... I wasn't expecting company." Sci rubs the back of his skull bashfully.

"it's . . . it's amazing! this is your lab? Like seriously it's amazing" San is excited.

"Yeah, I-I mean, yeah! Thanks!" Sci chuckled, a light blush dusting his cheeks. "It is pretty cool isn't it? Want me to show you around?"

"yeah!"

"Sweet! You can just set your stuff over there... or wherever here lemme show you the most dangerous one first!!!" Sci's grin took on a slight manic edge to it in his excitement.

San put down his things and came closer to Sci.

Sci's standing by a large dark looking piece of machinery with a nozzle pointed directly into a dusty looking glass case He flicks a few switches and it whirs to life, making a loud grinding noise.

"This is a disintegrator ray! Watch this." Sci pulls out a heavy thick board and places it in the glass case with an apple and shuts the door. He looks to San to watch for his reaction and pushes the button.

The surface of the apple bubbles for a split second before imploding violently and leaving a dusty scorched indent in the board.

"No matter, physical or magical can withstand it's force!" Sci flicks it's switch off, halting the grinding noise emanating from it.

"This could kill everyone in this multiverse if it were to explode!" He said excitedly.

"wow . . ." San is clearly impressed.

"Heh yeah, right? Pretty sweet." Sci chuckled. "Let me know if you wanna try putting anything in there."

"okay" San is smiling slightly, He's clearly happy.

"And this one?" Sci bounds over to a plain looking yellow metal box with a simple red button on top. "I got super wasted one night and made it for shits and giggles. All it does is turn anything you put inside it blue for 48 hours. Probably the least dangerous thing here." Sci smiles at it fondly. "It's so dumb and pointless. I love it."

San chuckled, "sounds like fun"

Sci did this for a while, leading San around the lab, showing off different machinery, telling him all about what everything did until he got to the machinery along the back wall printing nonstop. "And these monitor the au's I've visited!"

"Oh, what do they monitor exactly?"

"The timelines, resets, fun value, number of souls in an au... how many people are takin a shit at any given moment." Sci chuckles. "Nah I'm just messin with you on that last one. It's mostly just basic stats and statistics."

San chuckled, "seems interesting"

"Heh well I think it is at least." Sci watches the machine pumping out information for a moment before turning back to San. "But, yeah... this is my lab."

"it's really amazing, how you thought of so many things, how you built them and they actually work" San is still amazed by everything he saw, He's smiling softly.

Sci blushed. "Thanks... ya really think so?"

"yeah! It's just so cool!"

Sci's face lights up even further at the complement. "Heheh thanks. I suppose you wouldn't mind helping me in here a little bit later then?"

"I wouldn't, honestly I would be glad to help you" San is blushing slightly.

"Cool. Cool. Uhmm cool. Heh sorry I'm done saying cool." Sci chuckled nervously.

San chuckled too, "so what now?"

"Well we-" Sci starts to walk towards the table of San's belongings and stumbled, tripping over his own feet.

San caught Sci, "are you okay?" His voice sounds worried.

Sci looked up at San eyes wide and his cheekbones lighting up brightly. "Ye-yeah. Heheh... I'm just falling for you." His mouth clacked shut as soon as soon as he realized he said the flirtatious pun out loud.

"I-I mean-" Sci stammered nervously.

San blushed too, an orange blush dusting his cheekbones, "I . . . i-it's okay, g-great that you're n-not hurt"

"Thanks." Sci's soul pounded in his chest... This was probably the closest he'd been to San ever... What with his haphephobia... His haphephobia!

"Oh! I'm sorry I can stand!" Sci scrambled to stand and rather clumsily got to his feet, brushing the wrinkles from his lab coat.

San nodded slightly, watching Sci to make sure that everything is okay.

"Well as I was saying we could go get you settled in for your stay." Sci continued to nervously adjust his lab coat.

"Sure"

#san #san!sans #sci #sci!sans #asks and requests are always appreciated and needed #undermine #undertale #undertale alternate universe #undertale ask blog #undertale au #ut #au #utau #utmv #skeleton ask blog #ask blog #science #science!sans #sciencetale

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chipper9906 · 3 years

Text

Heal The Cracks Within My Heart - Chapter 4: Glimpses

<- - - Previous Chapter

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR LOKI SEASON 1 EPISODE 6 ‘FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS.’

Pairings: Loki/Sylvie

Rating: General Audiences

Chapter Word Count: 9,907

Overall Word Count: 42,032 (In Progress)

Status: Multi Chapter Fic - In Progress (4/?)

Chapter Preview:

Loki was pretty sure Sylvie was making fun of him. Probably around ninety percent sure, if he had to give a figure. Or… or maybe more seventy-five… sixty-five… fifty-fifty? No, what was he thinking? He was just getting into his head, is all. Of course Sylvie was just joking around with him. Clearly he wasn’t supposed to take what she had said seriously.

…Right?

“Uh… so, just to be clear-,”

“Oh my God…” Sylvie’s drawn-out groan cut him off. “You’re supposed to be a master of lies, both in telling them and detecting them! You’re telling me you can’t pick up on a little sarcasm?”

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Sylvie was glad that Loki didn’t laugh at her comment in the self-deprecating way she had partly been expecting him to. For a few seconds, he didn’t even react at all, taking the time to absorb her answer and realize that she wasn’t lying to him – or trying to make what would have been a cruel joke. He makes no effort to hide the soft smile that hitches at his lips, eyes holding a warmth directed towards her that was almost overwhelming. There were times like these in the small moments of peace they found together where Loki bared himself to her, practically holding out his heart for her to take, and she always felt that bolt of fear that she would break it the moment she reached out for it.

Loki reaches out for her hand, and she lets him take it - lifting under her hand and pulling it up to place a tender kiss on the back of her hand. It was strange, only having used her knuckles to throw punches, and now experiencing the sensation of his lips on an area that was only used to violence.

“Thank you,” Loki said, voice brimming with genuine gratitude. His gaze rested on hers, bearing deep with an intensity that set her already over-heated skin alight.

Sylvie cleared her throat, forcing herself to break away from his gaze and pretend to brush away bits of sand and dirt that weren't actually on her clothes. Loki watched, partly in amusement but also in some confusion as she stood from the wall, only to drop back down on the floor directly in front of him.

“Teaching time,” Sylvie answers his unspoken question, crossing her legs underneath her. “Since you managed to conjure up that shirt, I’m assuming you’re up for it. Or, ‘have enough focus’ for it.”

“I… I think so,” Loki replied, pushing himself up a little straighter. “Although, I have to warn you: I’ve never actually taught anyone magic before. I’ve only ever been the, uh… the student.”

“Then we’ll both teach each other,” Sylvie offered. “I can give you some more tips for enchantment, if you’d like. In return, I want to know more about your powers. It seems our mother had a lot to teach me that I never got to learn.”

“There’s a lot,” Loki warned her.

“Examples?”

“Well, there’s conjuration, for starters,” Loki began, pushing down on his pointer finger with the finger on his other hand, counting to ‘one’. “Conjuration is… tricky. There are two main methods of conjuration I use -- one being more like ‘teleportation’ than conjuration. See, with that method, I’m simply grabbing something from a location where I know it already exists - though there’s nothing simple about it - and manifesting itself where I am. Say, for example, I had a dagger stored on some shack on the other side of this planet. I can use my magic to will the dagger to rearrange its atoms to a new location - such as in my hand.”

“Sounds easy…” Sylvie says, sounding daunted by the idea.

“Takes practice, just like any other magic,” Loki assured her. “There were a few times the item I was summoning arrived… not quite as it should. Other times I’d mess up the location completely. Ended up with the dagger materializing in my hand.”

Sylvie cringed at the image that came to her mind, still able to feel the faint sting across her palm from his dagger metaphor not long ago, knowing that doesn’t compare to the entire blade going through your palm.

“The other form of conjuration is, unfortunately, just as difficult - perhaps even more so,” Loki continues. “I’m afraid we’re rather limited to what we can conjure. Simple object mostly, that are only compromised of a few materials.

“Like clothing, and bandages, and blankets, and daggers…” Sylvie lists the items she’d seen him create from thin air.

Loki hums in confirmation. “Precisely. Bits of cloth, really. Simple weapons, such as my daggers, are possible as they’re not much more than… metal. Start adding too many parts and it gets too complicated, too complex to materialize. If there were no limits, well…” Loki cut himself off with a huff of laughter. “I could have just created a Tem-Pad whenever. Or an infinity stone. Anything.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Probably a good thing there are limits then,” Loki says with a knowing smirk.

“So… is that what you did back on Lamentis?” Sylvie asks, getting a confused frown in response. “Back when we trying to sneak onto that train headed towards the Ark. You changed your clothing to blend in with the guards?”

“Ah,” Loki realized what she was referring to. “No, that wasn’t conjuration. That would be a different power.”

“And you say you’re not a magician…”

“I prefer the term ‘Sorcerer’,” Loki corrects her. “You have the potential of these powers too, you know.”

“We’ll see,” Sylvie said, not sounding all that confident. “Come on, then - what else can you do?”

“Hmm… Well, there’s Astral Projection?”

“And what do you use that for?”

“Deceiving, mostly,” Sylvie nearly jumped out of her skin when his voice came from right beside her. She whipped around to face the direction of the voice, blinking in surprise at… Loki. Another duplicate of Loki, who looked identical to the one still sat against the wall, looking rather proud of himself for his magic.

“Sometimes gets confused with Illusion Casting - which is what I did back on Lamentis to alter the appearance of my clothing,” The other Loki faded away as the real Loki waved down at himself and - with another flash of magic - he was dressed head to toe in the deep blue guard uniform from Lamentis, ridiculous helmet and all. “Which is also what I used to create the fake dagger back on the train. And is… the same power we saw us - old us - use to trick Alioth.”

“Right…” Sylvie murmured quietly. “I’m guessing you’ve never been able to recreate the entirety of our home in an illusion?”

“Not quite,” Loki admitted. “But I can use it to alter my appearance rather convincingly.”

Loki backed up his statement by seemingly shape-shifting into a man she had never seen before, dressed in a uniform of distractedly bright blues, reds, and whites. “This pretty face belongs to one Captain Steve Rodgers - more commonly referred to as ‘Captain America’. He was one of the plucky heroes that managed to bring my army down in New York.”

There was nothing on him that Sylvie could see which would give away the illusion – no haziness to his form or fuzzy edges. There was no other word for it but to call it downright impressive. Although, her answer quickly changed to ‘creepy’ as Loki altered his appearance once more, and she came face to face with… herself. It was unsettling, to say the least, to stare back into her own eyes that technically weren’t her own, getting more and more creeped out by the minor mannerisms in her movements that Loki had managed to learn and use so quickly in his replication of her.

“Nope, too weird,” Sylvie has to look away, made all the more uncomfortable when his laughter at her discomfort comes out in her voice. “Give me back the original you.”

“As you command,” Sylvie’s grateful to hear him speak in his voice again, cautiously peeking at him out of the corner of her eye, relieved to see the face of the Loki she knows.

“Never do that again…” Sylvie asks of him, looking almost queasy at what had just happened. “It’s bad enough I have to look myself in the eyes in reflections; I'd rather not have to stare myself directly in the face, thank you.”

“You know, there was a variant of us that looked almost exactly like me back in The Void,” Loki tells her.

“And… is there any particular reason he wasn’t with the other versions of us you introduced me to?”

“Well, he was…” Loki tried to find the best way to put this. “…Rather an idiot, I suppose.”

“So, when you said exactly like you…?”

“Ouch,” Loki placed a hand dramatically over his heart. “I guess you could say he was me - if I’d never learned my lesson. There were… at least a dozen versions of us all congregated in one place, which went about as well as you could expect. A fight broke out; the alligator version of us bit off the other me’s arm-,”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Never even knew I could scream like that...”

Sylvie’s head reared back in surprise, wondering exactly how much mischief Loki had managed to get into in the short amount of time he was in the Void before she and Mobius had run into him.

“What did you want to start with?” Loki asks her, experimentally stretching out to see how much pain would blossom from his wounds. The pain is still sharp and evident, enough so for him to wince and quickly stop his stretches, but it’s bearable.

“I think it might be worth for the both of us to be able to use conjuration,” Sylvie answers. “Especially if you’re going to be insistent on throwing yourself into danger every chance you get. I’ll probably be materializing bandages in my sleep…”

“With you as my carer, I know I have nothing to worry about,” Loki counters, shooting her a cocky smile as he offers out his hand once more for her to take. She places her hand in his, though raises a brow in questioning.

“Keeping skin-to-skin contact with you helped immensely when we were sharing our powers to enchant Alioth,” Loki answers. “Thought it might help with this, too.”

Sylvie nodded, his answer making sense in her mind - along with that annoying whisper in her mind that told her she didn’t need an excuse from him to hold his hand when she knew full well that she wanted to.

“Close your eyes,” Loki instructs her, and she does so. A sense of calm washes over her the second she does, keeping her grip tight around Loki as she sinks into that still, tranquil river of peace. “You can feel your control over your magic within, can’t you? Feel the opportunities it can provide? Feel the possibilities of the known Universe under your command?”

“Yes,” Sylvie answers automatically, keeping her eyes closed firmly shut.

“Picture the object you wish to manifest. Make it as real in your mind as if it were in front of you,” Loki continues with his teaching, his voice smooth and soothing as it washes over her. “Grab hold of that magic brimming within you. Remember that it is yours to control, to bend it to your will. You need to start encouraging your magic towards that picture in your mind, manipulate it into the object you desire.”

Sylvie’s brow was creased into a deep frown as she dredged up every bit of concentration she had, focusing it all towards the task at hand. The few beads of sweat that ran down her face from her hairline were not entirely from the sweltering heat of the cave, resisting the urge to wipe the drops away.

She heard Loki’s sharp inhale of surprise, but didn’t dare look at what he was seeing just yet. She let the sound of him fade away as background noise, doing all she could to ensure her first attempts at conjuration were at least somewhat successful. Loki’s hand in hers was not of the distraction she thought it’d be, rather acting as an anchor to keep her focused whilst simultaneously providing her with a reassurance; a way of him saying ‘I believe in you’ without him actually saying it.

She didn’t know if it had worked. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to look. She knew that, chances are, her first attempt at conjuration was unlikely to end the way she was hoping to. But that didn’t mean she wanted to see that with her own eyes.

“Sylvie,” Loki’s voice doesn’t give away how he’s feeling, the tight squeeze around her wrist being the only thing that snatched some of her focus away. “Sylvie, open your eyes.”

His words mirror her own from not too long ago, and she knows they hold the same pride she felt towards him on that day, as she got to witness him branching out his magic in a way he hadn’t done before. It’s this that gets her to slowly peel her eyes open, looking down to the small space between them to see if she had managed to manifest what she had envisioned.

And… there it was. It might not have been the exact same size, and maybe the color was slightly off from what she remembers, but… it was her boat; the little model that seemed a lot bigger when she was just a child. She knows that, technically, it’s not her boat - having long been pruned by the TVA along with everything else in her life. Yet… she had made it. She had willed it back into existence.

Loki watched her silently as she gingerly picked the model boat up from the ground, cradling it in her hands as she looked to her creation. She turned the model around to get a good look from every angle, inspecting the boat thoroughly for anything that would give away it being a first-time conjurer's creation.

“Not bad, huh?” Sylvie asks him, voice thick with emotion as she holds the boat out for him to take. Loki takes the boat from her hands with great care, knowing that - whilst it was only a replica - was the only physical thing she really had from her childhood, and from the life that had been taken from her.

“Not bad at all,” Loki agrees with a smile so full of pride that it makes her heart hurt, holding out the boat like he’s inspecting it - except he only has eyes for her.

"Not sure why I chose that," Sylvie says, taking back the boat when Loki carefully offers it back to her. "It just sort of... popped into my head."

She shoots him a sheepish smile, placing the toy boat down on the ground next to her. "Okay, your turn."

"My turn?"

"With learning," Sylvie clarifies. "Anything else you want to know about enchantment? Practice it?"

"Well, yes but..." Loki started, confused. "...But practice on who?"

Sylvie raised an eyebrow at him like the answer was obvious.

"You?" Loki's voice pitched up in disbelief. "You're going to let me enchant you?"

"I'm going to let you try," Sylvie returned with a playful smirk.

Loki glanced down to her extended hand nervously, delicately taking hold of her wrist. Back when they had enchanted Alioth, it had felt more like... like Sylvie was doing most of the work. She was the one to make that bridge between themselves and Alioth, whilst he sort of... did what he could do in the background, extending out his magic towards both her and to Alioth. He hadn't been too sure what it was he was looking for, his magic reaching out and searching through the mess that was Alioth's thoughts and memories.

"It's easier to search by my emotions, rather than just randomly selecting through all my memories," Sylvie tells him. "We attach our emotions to our memories; they stick out like a post-it note atop each one. It's useful when, for example with that hunter from the TVA, where I'm trying to... manipulate their memories. I sifted through the happy memories I could find, then forced myself into her memory, trying to blend in with her life."

"Why happy memories?" Loki asks.

"Keeps them placated," Sylvie answers. "They're more likely to accept changes - such as that hunter believing she knew me back on her normal life on Earth."

"...What would happen if you used bad memories?"

"Well... It'd be like a form of torture, I suppose," Sylvie gives him a somewhat concerned look. "Not many people want to re-live their worst memories."

"Oh, believe me, I know..." Loki says bitterly, shuddering at the memory of his repeated cycling memory with Lady Sif.

“If you’ll let me, I can show you,” Sylvie offers. “Afraid you’ll have to take down the walls in your mind, though. Even I can’t get through your defenses.”

What Loki found odd was that… the idea of Sylvie searching through his head didn’t worry him. He knew he had an extensive record of memories stored up there, and he knew full well that a lot of them featured his not so finest moments. But… it’s Sylvie. If anyone were to understand the things he did and the reasons he did them, it would be her. And besides, she said she would be looking through his good memories, right?

“Go ahead,” Loki gives her permission with a small nod of his head. Sylvie removes her hand from his hand, raising her fingers up to the sides of his temple, like she had tried to do in Lamentis. As her eyes slid shut, so did his, waiting for the moment he would be thrust into his own mind to relive his memories.

He could feel her presence in his mind. She was rummaging around, carefully sorting through memory after memory. It was unsettling that he didn’t know what it was she was… feeling from him? Feeling the emotions attached to his memories? He simply didn’t know where in his life she had jumped to, and to what ‘happy memory’ she would bring to the forefront.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

Loki opened his eyes, expecting to see Sylvie sat in front of him, as she was before. Except now, he was standing upright instead of leaning against the cave wall, Sylvie stood next to him. Gone was the stifling heat, the unbearable dry air, and landscapes of nothing but sand. It had been replaced by a gentle and welcoming breeze that whistled through the trees surrounding them, soft dirt under their feet, and a perfectly reasonable temperature around them.

“Come on, Loki!” A young boy with a mop of blonde hair yells as he runs by the two of them, some of his finest clothing having been dirtied up – which would more than likely earn him a scolding once he returned home. He held a wooden sword in his hands - no more than a child’s plaything - but he held it like it was his most trusted weapon. “We need to advance before they retreat any further!”

“Thor…” Loki whispers in disbelief, the memories of this day rushing back as he watched the… well, the memory unfold.

“The cowards!” Another high-pitched, young child’s voice comes from somewhere within the trees. Loki watched as his younger self hurried over to his brother's side, he too holding a child’s weapon in his hand. Although, unlike his brother, his weapon was much smaller, thinner, and easier to conceal.

His love of daggers had started at quite a young age.

A touch against his hand distracts him for a moment, glancing down to see that Sylvie had slipped her hand into his, their fingers sliding together in a perfect fit. She watched the two children play with a warm smile, reminded of the mischief she and her Thor would get up to when not under their parent’s watchful eyes.

“You were a cute kid,” She leans closer to tell him, and before he can say or do anything in response, she looks him up and down with a criticizing eye. “What happened?”

“Oh, very funny,” Loki deadpans with a light-hearted glare. “I grew into my looks, thank you very much -- not out of them.”

“Don’t need to tell me,” Sylvie responds slyly, appreciating the way it made him close his mouth with an audible clack of teeth, looking caught between a feeling of embarrassment at her agreement, and that overly cocky sense of ‘Damn right’.

Whatever fake battle his younger self and younger brother had created in their imagination seemed to have reached its peak, the two boys ferociously swinging their wooden swords through the air and pretending it was slicing through the bodies of countless enemies. A part of Loki yearned to go back to those simpler times when his only worries were of what imaginary monsters needed to be slain, back when he was sure he would grow up defending Asgard until he breathed his last, ready to take arms against the Frost Giants if the need ever arose.

Finding out that he was one really threw a wrench into the plans…

Loki blinks, and all of a sudden he’s back in the cave, like they had never left it. The sudden shift in surroundings was disorienting, and he needed to take a second to come back to himself, and back to reality.

“That was an abrupt ending,” Loki commented, rubbing a hand against his forehead as he felt the lingering traces of Sylvie’s magic slowly dissipate.

“It was supposed to be a happy memory, you know,” Sylvie says, much to his confusion.

“What do you mean? It was a happy memory.”

“You didn’t look it,” Sylvie says, and he finds himself taken aback not only by how much he apparently put his emotions on display, but on how well Sylvie was able to pick up on it. “I don’t know what you were thinking about, but that memory certainly wouldn’t stay happy for long if you kept that train of thought up.”

She was right, and he knew it. Even now, he could already tell that the memory was tainted - no longer the pure and innocent moment captured in time that it had been.

"Now, if you don't mind, I'd rather you didn't try to manipulate my memories," Sylvie says, tapping a finger to the side of her head. "We'll just go with simple enchantment for now. Just... do the same as I did for you. Enter my memories, and show them to me. Try and find a good one, if you can."

Loki swallowed nervously, slowly raising his fingers up to her head. He knew it was no small thing that she was so willingly offering her most vulnerable side to him, giving him the opportunity to view any and all memories that she has. And yet, when he placed his fingers on the sides of her head, she did not flinch away in a desperate bid to escape him. They both once again let their eyes fall shut, and like a searching hand did Loki’s magic reach out towards her mind.

He could tell what she meant before with the whole ‘wall’ thing. Hers was just as impenetrable as his, bringing his magic to a standstill as he reaches it. There’s a moment of hesitation - although, really, it feels more like a moment where Sylvie was gathering herself together - before the wall all but crumbles away at his touch, and he delves deeper into her mind-

Too much. It was too much, all at once, surrounding him until it engulfed him. He had no idea how Sylvie was able to pick through all those different emotions when they are all just there, screaming for his attention. Disembodied voices surrounded him, and there was no chance of him making out what voices they were as they all congealed into one unidentifiable mess of noise.

Something good. That’s all he had to find, wasn’t it? Surely he can do that. He makes an effort to filter through everything around him, and the very first thing he comes across that shows even the slightest hint of being somewhat good, he grabs hold of.

And… immediately wishes he hadn’t.

To say he was shocked still was an understatement. Wherever they were was almost too dark to make out, barely able to detect that they were stood in some… shack, maybe? He didn’t know. But what he did recognize were the noises, and as soon as he heard them, he knew exactly why a memory like this would fall somewhere in the ‘good’ category. Loki could feel the intense flush across his face at the needy, breathy moans he could hear from the two bodies writhing together atop what looked like a less than comfortable bed. Then again, it wasn’t like they were using the beds for sleeping...

His mind incessantly reminded him that one of those naked figures moving on the bed was Sylvie, and he was caught off guard by the bolt of lust that shot through him whilst, simultaneously, he had to deal with a whole other mess of emotions: Shame, at witnessing such a private moment; embarrassment, at knowing he had been caught witnessing said moment by the person whose privacy he was betraying, stood by his side with an equal expression of shock. But what caught him most off guard though was the burning, overwhelming feeling of jealously that over-powered all the others, irrationally hating this unknown person. It shouldn’t be them who were allowed to run their hands across her body. It shouldn’t be them who were permitted to see every inch of her skin. It shouldn’t be them who got Sylvie to make those soft sighs of pleasure that made his mouth run dry.

He wasn’t sure if it was him or Sylvie that ripped them away from the memory. It was probably a little of both, the two of them hurriedly shoving each other out of the proverbial memory door, tripping over each other to get out.

Loki sat wide-eyed, staring un-blinkingly at Sylvie. He had ripped his hands away from her as soon as they had come back to themselves, waiting for his racing heart to calm down. They could only gape at each other for a good few seconds, neither one knowing what to say or how to react to what had just happened.

“I--I- I’d like to apologize…” Loki takes the first step, his words coming out in an awkward stumble of speech.

The pure panic on his face would usually be enough to make Sylvie laugh if she wasn’t still working through her own embarrassment. She pointedly refuses to look him in the eye, staring at a particularly interesting piece of wall behind him instead. “Suppose I should have expected that might have been a possibility…”

“I wasn’t searching for, um -- that,” Loki tries to defend himself, but it only makes his face flush brighter. “I didn’t know what memory I had found, only that it seemed to be a good one - which admittedly, it, uh… seems like it was?”

“It was… pleasant…” Sylvie forces out through the shame that wanted to keep her mouth firmly shut. “Um… how much exactly did you see?”

“Not much,” Loki answers, and it was the truth. “It was too dark to see much of anything. I mean, I knew that since it was your memory that it was… you, on that bed. But I didn’t see it was you.”

Sylvie nods, apparently accepting his answer. She clears her throat awkwardly, trying to shake off the last dregs of embarrassment that were intent on lingering. “Good. I’d rather not have that be the first time you see me like that.”

Loki’s wide-eyes stare somehow got wider, not expecting for Sylvie to bounce back from her embarrassment like… well, like that. It wasn’t exactly like he could take what she said and interpret it in any other way than what she was hinting at.

“Okay - let’s try again,” Sylvie said, giving Loki a serious case of conversational whiplash.

“I… what?”

“Enchant me again,” Sylvie clarifies, shuffling closer to him. “Only, this time, if you could spend a little extra time selecting the memory, I’d appreciate it.”

“Are you sure?” Loki asks, voice filled with anxiety as he places his fingers on her head again. “There’s every chance I could mess it up again.”

“I have faith in you,” Sylvie assures him, and it’s all he needs to hear to delve straight back into her mind.

At least he was a little bit more prepared for it this time. It still felt like he was being squeezed in on all sides by every single memory her mind had procured, but now he knew what it was like, he didn’t feel the immediate panic that had him reaching for the first good memory he could sense. Loki forced his way through, letting all the different emotions attached to each individual memory wash over him. It was disheartening to see - or more accurately, feel - just how many of her memories were bad ones. The good ones, if you could even call them that, seemed few and far between, dull in comparison to all the terrible moments she’s had to endure. Still, he trudged forward, extending his magic to its limits.

There it was. Shining bright in the darkness of everything else, tucked snuggly away in a nice, safe spot away from all the bad. He wasn’t sure if she purposefully hid it here to make this more of a challenge for him, or if it was just where it already was. Loki reaches for the memory, and the memory seems to move towards him, eager to accept his touch.

The blackness surrounding him gives way to a flash of white, momentarily blinding him. Loki raises a hand to shield his eyes, rapidly blinking as he waits for his vision to come back into focus. When it does, he can only slowly lower his hand back down, staring out to what was in front of him in disbelief.

He recognized this memory. This bright, shining, happy memory. Because… he was in it. For most looking on the outside, the memory certainly didn’t look happy, what with the giant chunks of planet moments away from smashing into them and obliterating the moon that was under their feet. Yet, there was beauty amongst all this destruction; the purples and pinks of Lamentis’s sky created an almost dream-like atmosphere, the luminous colors reflecting in the still lake they had been sat by.

He could see himself, sat on that rock with Sylvie by his side. This had been what they both thought were going to be their last moments. It had been remarkable really that, in those last moments, Sylvie didn’t hold onto any grudges – him having admittedly been the one to doom them to this fate by accidentally crushing the TemPad.

“Do you think that what makes a Loki a Loki… is the fact that we’re destined to lose?” He hears the words Sylvie had spoken to him, just as beaten-down sounding as he remembered.

“No,” His past self asserts with all the confidence he has. “We may lose. Sometimes painfully. But we don’t die. We survive. I mean, you did. You were just a child when the TVA took you, but you nearly took down the organization that claims to govern the order of time. You did it on your own. You ran rings around them. You’re amazing!”

Loki didn’t realize at first that the wave of emotions that crashed into him weren’t entirely his own. Somehow, he was simultaneously re-experiencing the emotions he himself had felt in that moment, combined with not only the emotions he was feeling in this very moment watching it all unfold, but also getting the full brunt of Sylvie’s emotions, from where he was witnessing all this from inside her head.

The strength of it nearly took him off his feet. The sense of gratitude he could feel from Sylvie, just from him saying what he had said. And there was this… this sheer adoration towards him, his chest tight as it felt like his heart stumbled over a few beats. It might have been him, it might have been Sylvie, or it might have been both of them. Either way, it was… beyond reassuring to know now, that it had been the same for her. This very moment, as he watched her reach out and place a hand on his arm… it had been the moment he began to fall for her.

Funny that it took reliving a memory for him to be slapped with the realization that right here, and right now, he had fallen completely and utterly in love with her. Deep down, he probably already knew that. In fact, it was probably obvious to many, let alone himself.

He wondered if, by some miracle, that she felt the same in that moment. Truth be told, he doesn’t know how she feels for him now. He’s not completely blind; he knows there’s some semblance of feelings there. Question was… how far did those feelings run? Were they as deep as his? Would she ever tell him?

Would he ever find the courage to tell her?

“Our Nexus Event…” Sylvie said quietly from next to him, eyes still transfixed on the memory of the two of them

It wouldn’t be too long before the ‘happy’ part of the memory was interrupted by the entrance of the TVA, their workers storming in to take them prisoner once again. Loki wasn’t too sure whether it was Sylvie’s influence on her own memory, but it seemed… slower, like she was savoring every second of it she could. He could almost feel the warmth of her memory self’s hand on his arm - the first genuine touch of kindness from her - the moment forever etched into his skin.

The end of this world, and the near end of their lives, was almost…. almost beautiful to behold. Especially now, with everything slowed down: the shards of broken-up planet hurtling towards them so slow you nearly couldn’t tell they were moving, the picture-perfect lake in front of them as still and calm as can be - quite the difference to the chaos and destruction just above their heads, waiting to rain down upon them.

“You know, I spent many nights wondering what my end would be,” Sylvie tells him. “Different scenarios that could occur. Most of them were preparation, I suppose. Trying to make escape plans for every possible thing that could go wrong. I thought that, if the day came that something did wrong, and I couldn’t find a way out of it? I tried to imagine how much of a mess my mind would be. What would I think about, as my death approached? That I failed my mission? That my life had been for nothing? Would I spend those last moments thinking of my family - or at least, what of them I can remember?”

Loki watched Sylvie as she spoke, who had yet to look away from the memory versions of themselves. Although she wasn’t looking at him, she seemed to sense he was looking at her, for she gestured with a flick of her chin for him to pay attention. Loki followed her line of sight just as she blindly reached out for him, wrapping a hand around his forearm, just below the elbow. At that same moment, the memory version of himself had slipped his arm down until his hand met Sylvie’s, the two of them latching onto one another tightly as the deadly chunk of planet that had been looming ahead crashed into the surface of Lamentis, sending a blast of heat and debris towards them.

It was then, with Sylvie’s hand still wrapped around his arm, that he heard her voice in his head. Not of her current thoughts, no, but of the thought she had in those last seconds - moments before she was certain would be the last seconds of life. What caught her off guard though, as much as it had Loki, was that she too heard his thoughts. Their last thought - or so they had thought - rang out within the memory as clearly as if they had said it out loud. And the craziest part?

It had been the same single thought.

‘Finally…I’m not alone.’

Their combined voices echoed in Loki’s head as the memory faded away, and he found himself opening his eyes back in reality. His fingers were still held against the side of her head, and he found he couldn’t take them away as Sylvie opened her eyes, immediately focusing in on him. There was such warmth to her gaze, and it took him a moment to remember how to breathe. There were times, such as the moment they had just visited, or when they shared a blanket in the void, where she had given him glimpses of that warmth. He had seen it, hiding behind a layer of wariness in her eyes, valiantly trying to fight to the surface. It seems that, in this moment of raw truth, that it had won its fight.

Gods, he never wanted her to stop looking at him like that. If he wasn’t careful, she would become an addiction - one he knows full well he won’t be able to kick.

Oh, who’s he kidding. He became hooked on every essence of her long ago.

And he didn’t mind one bit.

Loki let one of his hands drop away as the other softly grazed down the side of her face, coming to a stop at the bottom of her chin. It was a bit of an awkward angle from where they were sitting - even if Sylvie had gravitated towards him throughout their little enchantment training session - and the bending of his body as he leaned towards him had most definitely sent a twinge of pain shooting through his side. He was pretty sure that the movement had torn the wounds open again, but as he tilted her face up and their lips finally met, he decided that this was worth bleeding for.

Their kiss broke for the briefest of moments as Sylvie pushed herself up onto her knees, her hands resting on his shoulders as she swooped back down to reclaim his lips with her own. The pressure of her hands on him pushed him back into the wall, the rough and cold surface of it against his back a stark contrast to the gentleness and warmth of her lips. Loki had found a way to bring out a soft side of her that she didn’t know existed, one she thought was buried down and would cause great embarrassment if she ever let herself be seen as so weak. But with Loki, it all just… came easy. She knew that he wouldn’t see her as weak - and she was completely right. From Loki’s perspective, the fact that she was able to display such a side of herself when she’s relied on nothing but toughness and cruelness to survive filled him with a sense of pride and admiration that he hoped he was able to express with every lingering tender gaze and press of lips.

Kisses had never been much of an expression of emotion for Sylvie. They had just been part of the process – a sensation that leads to more, something to distract her. Most of the time, they were rough and hard: clashes of teeth, red and puffy lips as they make haste to get on with it before the end of the world, the taste of iron in her mouth from a bite of the lip that had been a little too hard.

It was nice, to have this with Loki. No rushing, no ‘We’re here to do a thing, so let’s get it over with’. She could just… take her time. Appreciate the way it feels to have someone touch her in a way that didn’t send her into fight or flight, savor the way he held her – not like she was fragile, but something precious. She doesn’t have to kiss him like the world's about to end. She gets to kiss him simply because she can, because it’s what she wants, because he’s what she wants, because she lo--

Whoa. That thought had almost come too easily, ready to slip into her mind like it was something of common knowledge. It’s enough of a shock that she pulls away from Loki – but then again, the burning in her lungs and the way they were both panting as they break away from one another likely meant that there would have been a pause soon anyway. Loki’s pupils were blown almost all the way out, the blue-gray of his irises nothing more than a thin ring eclipsing the black holes trapped within his eyes. Sylvie wondered if her eyes looked about the same right now – at least, if the heat searing through her veins was of any indication.

Loki’s tongue darted out across his lips, swiping away the taste of her that lingered there. His lips had turned cherry bright and glossy, which was almost tempting enough for her to dive right back in, only for her racing thoughts to be brought to a calm as Loki spoke.

“I know that you’ve spent nearly your entire life alone,” Loki began. “But… it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. I can promise you: I’ll make sure you never have to feel alone again.”

Sylvie could feel her face soften at his nervous offer. “You can’t promise that. And that’s not me saying that you might one day decide you’ve had enough of me - which is something I could see happening.”

Loki opened his mouth to strongly argue against her statement, but Sylvie continued before he could get a word out beyond the deep frown etched onto his face. “I’m saying it because… there’s a chance you might leave me, not of your own volition. The life I’ve dragged you into - especially now with so many new threats out there that we don’t even know about… someone could take you from me. In a blink, you could be gone, and… and I’d be alone again.”

“There’s always that risk,” Loki pointed out. “I mean, it’s us. You didn’t drag me into this life. I dragged myself into it when I picked up the Tesseract that landed by my feet. And If I hadn’t done that? Then my life would have ended at the hands of Thanos anyway. If I had to choose between that, and spending the rest of my life with you? Well, let’s just say it’d be the easiest decision of my life. Hel, you could give me the choice of living a life of luxury on the throne of Asgard, or slumming it with you in Apocalypse after Apocalypse, and I’d still choose this path. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter what path is laid before me. I’ll only choose the one where you walk down it beside me.”

Sylvie’s jaw clenched hard as she fought back the tears that threatened to spill over. She was almost certain that Loki was the reasoning behind around seventy percent of the number of times she’s cried in her entire life. When you’ve lived a life running from an all-powerful organization that’s chasing you for not belonging in their carefully crafted universe, it’s not all too surprising that actually feeling wanted by someone was enough to open the floodgates.

“You’re an idiot,” She croaks out in an attempt at a joke. Although, she supposed it wasn’t much of a joke. Choosing her over a life of comfort seemed like a pretty stupid decision….

“That’s likely true,” Loki agreed with a wonky smile. “But if you’ll have me, then I’ll be your idiot.”

“Hmm… Such a tempting offer…” Sylvie says, smiling through the tears that still sat in her eyes. “I’ve only gone and spent over a thousand years of my life living completely alone, doing what I can to survive. And now, here’s someone sat in front of me who’s fought by my side, helped me outsmart the TVA to achieve the one goal I had set out to accomplish, had my best interests in mind even when I couldn’t see it myself, has thrown themselves into danger numerous times to protect me, and is now the one asking if I’ll have him?”

Loki stared blankly back at Sylvie. “…Yes?”

Sylvie’s lips flattened into a straight line, unsure whether to laugh or sigh at his uncertainty. It had at least helped to lessen the burning in her eyes. “Hmm… Nah. I think I’ll keep going on my own, thanks.”

…Right?

“Uh… so, just to be clear-,”

Loki’s lips pursed into an honest to God pout, crossing his arms across his chest with an in-dignified huff. He had already known, from Mobius’s little interrogation technique, that the skill-set he possesses in making him the Trickster he’s known as is often thrown completely out the window whenever Sylvie becomes involved.

Sylvie took pity on the sulking demigod, reaching down to place a hand on his knee. Loki’s eyes darted down to her hand, then back up to her, his frown softening by just the slightest. “Listen, Loki… What I was trying to say is that...”

Sylvie stopped with a heavy sigh, shuffling around until she was side to side with him once more. She leans back against the wall as he was, letting her head fall back until it softly collided with the wall as she closed her eyes. She figured it would probably be easier to say what’s on her mind when she can’t see the way his eyes were trying to burn into her soul.

“After everything that happened… I truly didn’t know how you’d react to seeing me. You know how I said I liked to think over different scenarios in my head? Try and prepare myself for every outcome?”

Loki nodded his head, and although she couldn’t see it, she took his silence as her cue to continue. “In nearly every scenario I envisioned… it never goes as I want. Maybe the Time Door wouldn’t take me to the same TVA I placed you in. Maybe I’d be arrested or pruned before I could find you. Maybe… maybe they had already killed you,” A lump formed in her throat at that thought. “Maybe, if I did find you, you’d refuse to go through that Time Door. Maybe, once you saw me, you’d run away. Or maybe you’d run towards me, and thrust your dagger through my chest.”

“I’d never-,” Loki tries to exclaim, but Sylvie raises a hand to stop him. Obediently, he falls quiet, though his mouth was still twisted into quite the grimace.

“I ran through the argument we’d have so many times in my head,” Sylvie continues. “A lot of shouting… a lot of tears… some of them would end in another clash of swords, others… you leave. And I find myself alone again. So when…” Sylvie forces her eyes open, glancing at Loki from her side vision. “When you ran to me, I was waiting to see which of those scenarios would unfold. But you did none of them. You wrapped your arms around me, and you were… you were happy to see me. Even with what I did to you, you were just…”

“Glad to see you were okay,” Loki finished for her.

“And I still don’t know what I did to deserve that,” Sylvie confesses, the two of them turning their heads towards one another. “I hadn’t been expecting it, and… I thought that, if I somehow managed to find you and you didn’t want nothing to do with me, then… then I thought that I’d be the one that was asking you if you’d have me – not the other way around.”

Loki exhaled softly from his nose, averting his gaze down with the beginnings of a smile. “Communication doesn’t seem to be our strong point…”

“Really not a fan of… feelings,” Sylvie spat out the word like it burned her. “They’re rather messy, aren’t they?”

“Hmm. And confusing.”

“Way too confusing. I mean, really, they seem to be more trouble than they’re worth.”

“No doubt about it,” Loki agrees wholeheartedly. “They get in the way half the time. How am I supposed to make clear-headed decisions when they’re always there?”

“So we’re in agreement?” Sylvie asks. “Feelings are stupid?”

“Oh, definitely,” Loki answers with a sly grin that forces a near-identical one from Sylvie, the two of them smiling at each other in the steadily darkening cave as this planet’s day came to an end. Loki’s grin slowly softens into a gentle smile, matching the tenderness in his eyes as he looked to her. “Glad I have them, though.”

“Me too,” Sylvie utters gently, unable to look away from his eyes on hers, admiring the way they almost seemed to change color as the cave’s lighting had gradually changed with the passing of time.

“Guess that makes us both idiots.”

Sylvie snorts at that, giving his shoulder a flimsy shove, making sure not to touch anywhere near his wound. Although his eyes don’t once stop expressing that never-ending kindness he always seemed to direct towards her, even Sylvie could see the bone-deep exhaustion that had begun to dull them. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had slept properly herself, outside of the brief nap she had sneaked in on the train to the Ark on Lamentis. Loki probably hadn’t slept in… well, she didn’t know - and after days, weeks, perhaps even months of running both with and against the TVA, jumping in and out of apocalypses, facing the ruler of the sacred timeline, and now getting himself hurt fighting actual space lizards… It was downright shocking he wasn’t conked out right this second.

Even demigods had their limits, after all.

“You should get some rest,” Sylvie expresses her worry both verbally and with her expressions, her brow creasing in a frown that only a mother-hen would sport - which she certainly was not. “I’ll take first shift; keep an eye out for any more man-eating reptiles.”

“You sure that’s safe?” Loki asks. “We still don’t know whether this is an Apocalypse.”

“That’s why I’m keeping watch,” Sylvie counters. “First sign of trouble, I’ll… Well, I’ll hope that this thing still works, first of all,” She gestures to the TemPad on her hand. “Besides, there hasn’t been any evidence that this is an Apocalypse.”

“Other than the TVA not showing up,” Loki points out. “Thought they only did that when we existed within Apocalypses?”

“We still don’t know how this whole ‘multi-verse' thing works. I don’t even know what kind of universe we’re in. What if this one doesn’t even have a TVA?”

“You don’t think the other TVA’s would work out a way to jump between universes?” Loki asks. “I’m sure some of them are already getting to work on pruning all those ‘unruly timelines’…”

“Oh, just lay down and get some sleep, would you?” Sylvie all but orders him.

“Yes, ma'am…” Loki mumbled, barely avoiding another annoyed shove.

Loki shuffled down the wall until he was flat on his back, staring up at the rocky ceiling that loomed above their heads. Now, with the once glaring sun that had been peeking through the cracks long gone - and the beginnings of the night sky now having replaced it -the temperature had slowly taken a nosedive. The hard ground under his back made it especially difficult to drift off, despite his body's desperate pleas for rest.

Then, even from beyond his closed eyelids, Loki could sense a bright burst of light appearing above him. Naturally, it startles him, eyes popping open in preparation for potential danger. Instead, he feels the comforting weight of a soft, warm blanket being draped over his body. His eyes dart over to Sylvie still by his side, seeing her watching him with a knowing smile as she twirls her fingers, conjuring the blanket out of thin air that was now laid comfortably over him. Loki pinches the corner of the blanket between his thumb and fingers, inspecting the new creation. The blanket was of a similar dark green to the one he had made, but the material had a heavier weight to it, along with being made of more of a wool type of material than the silk of his own.

“You looked cold,” Sylvie jokes. “Thought I’d return the favor from last time.”

“Made a few changes, I see,” Loki notes, running a hand across the blanket. “Seems we both enjoy the same type of color scheme, though.”

“Nothing wrong with the color of yours,” Sylvie said. “But c’mon - even you have to admit that it wasn’t the snuggliest of blankets.”

“And is that what you had in mind when designing this one?” Loki’s teasing grin as he looked up to her came through in his voice. “Ideal for snuggling?”

Sylvie’s glare came out weaker than she intended, trying - and failing - to ignore the heat that had rushed to her face. “Last time I do something nice for you…”

Loki’s responding laughter at least wasn’t a mocking one, the very definition of ‘I’m laughing with you, not at you’. For what felt like the umpteenth time since she’s met him, Sylvie looked away from him with a roll of her eyes, staring out into the dense darkness of the cave.

The moonlight seeping in above could only do so much to illuminate their surrounding, and her eyes could only provide her with so much information about what they could see before it became ‘nothingness’; the shadows and outlines of the cave blending together into one deep, dark, stretch of murky black. She could almost convince herself her eyes were closed if it weren’t for what felt like little weights attached to her eyelids that were trying to force them down. Sylvie hid a yawn behind her hand, as if fighting off those yawns would convince her that she wasn’t really tired.

For once in her life, the feeling of a hand wrapping around her arm didn’t have her reaching for her sword. She glanced down to the hand, then followed the arm attached to its owner, raising an eyebrow at Loki as he peered up at her. Loki answered her questioning look by gently tugging on her arm, which… didn’t entirely answer those questions if she’s being honest.

“What… are you doing?” She asks him, glancing between his hand and his face.

“What does it look like?”

“Kind of like you’re trying to pull off my arm?”

“What? No, I’m-,” Loki cut himself with a sigh, eyes narrowing as he looked to her, weighing out his decisions. Or, more accurately, the consequences of said decisions.

He seemed to make up his mind remarkably quickly, for the next second, the tug on her arm had become much stronger. Stronger enough that, with just one pull, she found herself being pulled down, all but falling into his side. She placed a hand on his chest, ready to push herself back up and ask him what the Hel he thought he was doing, when she froze at the feel of his blanket-clad arm sliding across her back to wrap around her, pulling her close to him and wrapping them both up in the blanket she had conjured.

“You were right,” Loki’s voice rumbles in his chest under her ear. “This blanket is snugglier.”

“A little bit more warning would be appreciated,” Sylvie tries to pretend she’s annoyed by his antics, whilst at the same time tucking herself closer to his side, resting the arm that had been trapped between them on top of his chest. “I’m supposed to be keeping watch, you know.”

“And you’re more than welcome to do that,” Loki mumbled sleepily, eyes closed and sounding like he was a few seconds away from dropping off. “Just make sure you wake me up in a few hours for my shift,”

“You don’t have to-,”

“Yes, I do,” Loki asserted strongly. “You need some sleep just as much as I do. And I know you don’t like letting your guard down, but… I promise I can keep you safe.”

Not long ago, Sylvie would have scoffed at anyone that said that to her. But Loki had said he could keep her safe like he truly believed it - enough so that she believed it, too. The battle wounds he’s currently sporting from their earlier skirmish were proof of that.

Loki’s heartbeat was calm and steady under her ear, its rhythmic thumps combined with the alluring warmth of his body heat making it particularly hard to fight off the drowsiness fogging her mind. It was with great amusement that she realized that, whenever she lightly brushed her fingers against his chest, she could both feel and hear his pulse picking up, pounding just a little harder below her head before settling back down to its usual rhythm.

“It’ll be your fault if I fall asleep on watch, and we’re murdered by scavengers that sneak into the cave,” Sylvie says after a few minutes, able to tell that Loki was still awake by the way his breathing had yet to slow.

“I’ll be sure to apologize profusely in the after-life,” Loki said, his large hand covering her smaller one atop his chest. “And I’m supposed to be sleeping, you know. That’s quite difficult to do when you’re quite literally playing games with my heart.”

Sylvie chuckled gently, the weight of Loki’s hand on top of hers stopping her from continuing her little amusing experiment. “Apologies, your majesty.”

“Just you want until it’s your turn to sleep,” Loki grumbled. “We’ll see how grumpy you get when I keep interrupting your nap-time.”

“Unless you want me to spring awake with a knife to your throat, I wouldn’t advise messing with me in my sleep,” Sylvie advised him.

“Duly noted,” Loki said with a long sigh, giving her hand a quick squeeze. “I had planned on waking you up with a morning kiss - you know, like a good prince should - but if you say not to…”

Despite his tiredness making it difficult for him to do much else than lay with his eyes closed, Loki had to suppress his laughter at the long stretch of silence from Sylvie as she absorbed what he had just offered.

“...I suppose it’d be good to try and break me out of that habit..”

Loki did laugh that time, the deep rumbling of his laughter vibrating throughout his chest.

“Well, if all I have to risk is a knife to my throat to steal another kiss from you? Then that’s a risk I’m more than willing to take. I’ve done it before, after all.”

Next Chapter - - - >

#sylki #sylki fanfiction #sylki fanfic #pro sylki #loki/sylvie #lovedagger #enchantricks

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lesmismignon · 3 years

Text

replying to anon messages

In this post I shall reply to the messages that have been sitting in my inbox for a regrettably long period of time. (It is loooooong. Please click “keep reading” at your own risk.)

I’m not a very good correspondent. I’m very sorry. I never know what to say right off the bat, and then during 2019 and 2020 when I was mostly on hiatus, I would just post a chapter or two and poof back out, and on Tumblr I would browse a few things and then poof back out. I do not have a good track record with social media and online presence in general. And with real life problems (mostly due to work), at worst it was impossible to muster even the strength to write. It was maddening.

But there is something about Hellsing and its fandom that reels me back in even when I am far away. Excuse me if this sounds cheesy, but for me fandoms are like the orbit of a comet. If it is something that you loved, and will continue to love even when you are not “active” on it, you will come back to it, someday, somehow. I’ll always be grateful to Hellsing, for being an inspiration to write, for being a bridge to some of my dearest relationships, for some of the kindest messages I’ve ever received in my life.

you freed yourself for a job that was not good for you and related to toxic people (Integra-like – demanding the respect you deserve). That is badass brave – and that doesn’t become less by that fact that maybe the next job you got is not the end of the journey but still part of the way. And you are brave by sharing your work, sharing your stories revealing parts of your emotional world to the outside – that is totally bad as too. I think you can be very proud of you, really. So maybe right now, you might be in situation that does not yet make you happy in way you deserve it. But you know- there is big chance that this is part of your journey to this place – imagine, in some time from now, you may be a successful (brilliant you are already) author and in an interview you say something like “yes, back there in 2016/17 I went through some tough times, that influenced the work very much I got this price for today”. So just in case you maybe cannot see it right now yourself – please allow me to tell you – you are brave and wonderful. And re. the brave decision you mentioned – I know I am not in the position to tell you anything – but please do not do any harm to you. So, thank you so much for your work you share with the world, my life is better with it. Take care for yourself, you deserve the best. (so sorry, I am really not good with words, hope you get my point….)

Anon, this was the kindest thing you could have ever done for little 2016/17 me. Oh God. Time does fly by so fast. I want you to know that I read this message a long time ago, and it gave me strength to go on, even though I’m not sure if I am so brave, to be compared to our lady Integra >< I hope you are happy and safe, wherever you are. I hope you know how brave and wonderful *you* are. Thank you so much.

just wanted to drop by and say I love all your fanfictions! You capture Integra and Alucard's characters so well; I LOVE it. Take all the time you need updating. You deserve it. And good luck at your job! <3

Ah, I probably changed jobs like twice since then. But they have been all good and meaningful in their own ways. I really did not mean to take THIS long in updating but I hope that you enjoyed the recent updates if you are still reading, thank you so much!

Why can I not write here? I just wanted you to know I am grateful for the reading joys that are 'Snow White' and 'Satis'...

Thank you Anon! I am so glad you enjoyed them!

I LOVE SATIS SO MUCH YOUR WRITING IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND FLOWY AND IT MAKES ME CRY PLEASE KEEP UP THE BRILLIANT WORK!!

Thank you Anon! You give me too much praise, but I shall indeed try to keep it up!

Hey so please don't take this as me pressuring you but I absolutely adore Satis! Is there any chance we might know when the next update is coming in? Totally understand if not- it sounds like work is taking a lot out of you and I understand that you're writing fan fiction purely for fun but DAMN IF I DON'T WANT TO READ MORE OF YOUR FIC OMG I LOVE IT SO MUCH ASDFGHJKL!!!

I’m sorry it’s been ages! I’ll tell you my schedule(???) for this year instead! For this year of 2021 I really hope to average maybe at least 1 chapter a month but I don’t know how I’ll fare during the busy months. I hope you enjoyed the recent chapters if you are still reading!

@fierce-little-miana Can you believe that I have just noticed that I had given you any kudos for Snow White or Satis?! Sorry! Your stories are really worth all the praise we can give them. (so I corrected it) Have a nice day!

Thank you! I’m terribly sorry for this late reply. You’ve been so kind and sent so many lovely messages. Thank you again for each and every one of them!

@sinish-tem Hey sorryy for bothering you but. That ALutegra fic was AMAZING!!I LOVE IT!Amazing job sport<3

You’re not bothering me at all! Thank you old sport!

So I don't mean to rush you or be annoying or anything, but is Satis still happening? (plz plz say yes)

You’re not being annoying! I’m sorry it took so long! Yes :)

Hello! So, um, I have to ask... is Satis going to be updated? It’s just that it’s one of my absolute favorite stories by my absolute favorite author!

Thank you! I’m honored! I hope you enjoyed the recent chapters if you’re still reading!

Hi! Are you still around? Are you doing ok?

Yes, I am fine now, thank you :) I hope you are doing well, too!

@aniphine Hi! First off, I want to say that I absolutely love your writing style and am so looking forward to diving into all of your fics! I just finished Satis and it’s definitely in my Top 10 Fanfics ever, which is saying something! Thanks so much for writing it. On that note, I wanted to ask if you had plans to update it? If not, that’s totally cool - what you’ve written already is fantastic. But if so, I’d pledge my life to you in order to get a chance at reading more. 😆 Anyhoo, you’re awesome! 👋

Thank you so much! You are awesome too! I’m honored that Satis is in your top 10!!

@dontfuckingfollowmeifpornblog You still around?

I am now! Thank you!

@comixqueen Hello have I told you that I really love your Hellsing fics? ;u;/ They're among the best out there and I reread them often!

Thank you very much. That means a lot to me from you. Thank you for rereading, I’m always wary of my earlier writing but I’m glad if people still enjoy them.

I have never squealed higher than when I received the notification for the new chapter of Satis. You are a true blessing <3 thank you for your words

You are a blessing! Thank you so much!

Hello! I know you're not very active around here, but I just saw a trailer for a movie based on the letters of Vita and Virginia, and I was immediately reminded of Satis and the quotes you so expertly used in the narration, and I thought I might tell you in case you're interested in the movie (the title is literally Vita and Virginia) <3

Thank you Anon! I did see the trailer! I haven’t seen the movie yet though, but I will, eventually! I am so glad you think I did the quotes justice! It’s such a beautiful quote.

Not sure how to start this, might be a little bold, and yet; let me simply say that I am in love with your written works. In fact, so much so that I read it all again, and again. It never ceases to amaze. And as for you, the person behind it all, you do seem immensely precious as well. I hope that you have the most fantastic day, you deserve no less.

Anon, you are so very kind. Thank you so much for your lovely words. I am just an ordinary person unusually invested in a particular set of fictional characters xD and I am often late to things and a bad correspondent, but I must be doing something right if you’re sending me a message as lovely as this. Thank you again, I hope you are having fantastic days as well.

Honestly ive read your snow white fic years ago but I loved it insanely much and im about to read it again today ^.^

Thank you Anon! Ah, Snow White. I am very glad you still enjoy it. It is so old, and I wish I had the courage to edit it and spruce it up, or even update an extra or two...

Are you ever planning to continue Satis? I’m in love with that piece of work.

Thank you Anon! Yes! I hope you enjoyed the recent chapters!

My literal text to a friend of mine that's also a fan of Satis when I got the AO3 mail about the new chapter was: "NOW THEY'RE FINALLY STARTING TO BE *HAPPY* HOLIDAYS"

I am very glad I was able to bring you holiday cheer. Would it be bold of me if I say I aim to bring you non-holiday cheer as well, now? xD Thank you so much!

HEY JUST CAME HERE TO SAY I LOVE SATIS, OKAY BYYYYE

HELLO ANON! THANK YOUUUUU

#anon #reply

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lavellaned · 4 years

Text

blunt thou the lion’s paws,

Chapter Seven

Deacon is weird, she decides. But then again, she had decided that a while ago.

Sometimes, she thinks he really likes the sound of his own voice with how he’ll go on about random shit, talking just to talk. Then sometimes the man’s so quiet that she frequently forgets that he’s following her and has to catch herself before she shoots him. That isn’t helped by the fact that he has a proclivity for changing clothes near every hour.

He fidgets almost constantly. It’s common for his fingertips to drum on the surface of his thigh where his hands hang down his sides, erratically, for the most part. Or he’ll snap off a piece of a branch to flip around in his fingers to keep his hands occupied instead. At first, it made Claudia antsy, his restlessness rubbing off on her, but she eventually got used to it.

Which is also something that she didn’t expect to happen as quickly as it did. Claudia got used to his presence almost immediately. She finds it odd how easily they work off of each other, or at least, how they have so far. She’s only ever traveled with Dogmeat, and has kept mostly to herself other than that. And according to the rest of the Railroad, as well as Deacon himself, this is the first time in a while that he’s taken up a partner too. That must be it, she supposes. Two lone wanderers finding an equilibrium between them.

Ever since she officially joined the Railroad, he’s traveled with her. At first she wasn’t sure what to make about that, not sure if she could get used to dealing with another human being for more than a passing conversation. He was insistent, however, that the two of them running together would be helpful for them both. He’d move information from the rest of the Commonwealth back to HQ, and she’d have someone to watch her back.

He hasn’t left her for dead so far. So there’s that.

“You sure are… thorough. You know that?” Deacon calls from the other side of the hill. Claudia takes back her hand after digging around in the pockets of the dead raider at her feet. She shakes the stimpak taken from the body in her hand towards him as she does so.

“Not like they’ll need it anymore.” She tosses it over to him and straightens up as he catches it. He uncaps it and injects it above his hip near to where one of the raider’s bullets nicked him a little too close for comfort.

Dogmeat comes trotting back out from the outpost towards them, tail wagging. Claudia gives him a pat between the ears and the three of them descend down to the small brick building.

Shortly after being introduced to PAM, the modified assaultron sent them on a mission to clear out a spot that was deemed adequate by the predicting machine and secure it as a new safehouse. Claudia hasn’t traveled this far north since leaving the vault, but she’s had Outpost Zimonja on her radar for a time due to the raiders that now lay dead in the hills surrounding the area. Hopefully Preston will find something else to worry about now that the place is clear. Two birds, one stone.

“So, you getting used to the Railroad yet?” Deacon asks as she takes out the lantern from her pack and sets it on the edge of one of the platforms in view of the road. She nods and takes out a busted lighter. “We’re like any dysfunctional family. But with guns.” Claudia looks up at him and gives him an amused smile.

She lifts up the glass to the lantern and lights it up. Deacon reaches into his own stash of junk and grabs a stubby piece of chalk. He draws the safehouse rail sign on the bricks of the outpost.

“I dub thee Mercer,” he says to the building, finishing the roof on the rail sign. He looks around the small space, dusting his hands off. “Not too bad,” he says contemplatively, “not what I’d expect PAM to go for, but not bad.”

She huffs. “What? Expecting another underground lair?”

“Yeah, actually. PAM’s always talking about how being underground is the best way to keep operations hidden.”

“Oh.”

“But I guess there’s only so many unoccupied holes in the ground. Mole rats make for some bad roommates.”

“Speaking from experience?” she teases.

“Absolutely. Ask anyone at HQ and they’ll tell you of the time we found a colony of mole rats that understood human language. We had to work with them in order to track down a missing package. You’d be surprised at how spiteful the little bastards can be.”

That’s another thing about him. Deacon and his stories. Or more-so, the mention of his stories. The way he casually brings them up sometimes leaves her doing a double take. They range from the absurd to the mundane, and she’s still not sure which is more believable. Sometimes she thinks he just can’t help himself. But even she has to admit that, regardless of their level of genuineness, they do tend to be amusing.

Claudia chuckles and shakes her head, looking out to the horizon. “It’s almost sunrise. You wanna stay here or hike back?”

Deacon looks off to the distance, the barest amount of sunlight slipping up over the horizon glinting off his glasses. He kisses his teeth as he thinks and adjusts his rifle’s strap over his chest.

“Let’s head on back. We should make good time if we don’t run into too much trouble.”

----------

Famous last words, old man.

A trio of Gunners, a sentrybot, and a radscorpion later, they finally manage to just make it to around that old cemetery. The sun is well established in the sky by this point. Tempest’s cheek is cut open with the beginnings of a gnarly bruise around it courtesy of a Gunner with a security baton. She’ll be sporting that for a few days.

Dogmeat’s huffing and puffing like a racehorse, blood in his teeth and a catch in his step. Poor boy’s bandana got ripped up too.

Deacon’s ‘bout on the same level. Damn near twisted his ankle trying to out maneuver the giant arachnid, and barely caught himself from tumbling down a cliff doing so. He’s feeling it now, but he knows he’s really going to be feeling it tomorrow. He hopes that at least one of the mattresses at HQ will be open tonight so he doesn’t have to crash on a couch, his achy bones protesting at the very thought.

The cold autumn sun shines down, not a cloud in the sky. It’s a clear morning, visibility high, and they still got at least another hour’s hike until they make it back to the church.

Deacon picks at the leather of his rifle strap with the side of his thumb nail, teeth worrying the inside of his cheek. There’s a flap of wings off in his peripheral and he mentally kicks himself for not suggesting they stay at Mercer for the day.

He sees Tempest glance at him from time to time out of the corner of her eye. Dogmeat limply trots in the path ahead of them, nose going a mile a minute. They continue heading south for a while when Tem starts veering off course a bit.

Deacon says nothing about it, accustomed to her wandering habits, but his instincts bristle at the thought of lingering out in the daylight for any longer than they have to. He’s already spotted a few Watchers circling the sky since they left and it’s only morning.

Tempest leads them through the brush to the road, putting them in even more open space. He’s about to suggest they don’t do that, but she interrupts him before he can start.

“You wanna stop and hang for a bit?” He shrugs nonchalantly, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief.

“Sure. I’ve got a rock in my shoe and it’s been driving me crazy for the past mile.” She nods and they continue down the road a short distance.

A blue boat house along the waterway comes into view and Tempest heads towards it. Deacon readies his gun, prepared to clear out whatever else has been squatting there, but sees Tem put her gun away.

Dogmeat gallops up to the door like he’s done it a hundred times already. He waits patiently by the door for the two humans to catch up.

The windows are boarded up, a couple holes chewed through the walls patched and reinforced with plywood and cinder blocks. The house looks like every other abandoned piece of wreckage out in the Commonwealth, not a thing about it looks extraordinary. But as they near to the front porch, Deacon notices the front door and how utterly out of place it looks compared to the rest of the place.

Tempest gets to the door, Dogmeat dancing in place impatiently by her feet. She takes out the screwdriver she always has on her and shimmies it into a barely noticeable space between the door and the jamb. With it through the space, she pushes down on it sharply, the sound of something unlatching from inside the house. Tem takes the screwdriver back, stores it away, and opens the now unbarred door. Dogmeat noses his way inside, Deacon and Tem following behind him.

The inside is just about as unremarkable as the outside. There's a ratty couch which Dogmeat wastes no time hopping up on to to lick his wounds and a short coffee table off to the side. An unlit lantern sits on the table next to an unmarked cooler. There’s a mattress and a sleeping bag on the floor along the wall farthest from the door.

Tem walks in, sliding her pack off and letting it hit the ground near the archway to his left. Walking farther in, Deacon notices the leftovers of a kitchen and a dining table in the room where she walks into.

A homey, post-apocalyptic settler’s dream.

“Cozy,” he says standing off to the side.

“Better than nothing,” Tempest replies. Deacon walks into the kitchen then, pulling out one of the two chairs by the table, and all but falls into it. He just barely suppresses a groan of relief.

“It’s a pretty nice piece of real estate ya got here.”

She looks over to him, giving him a calculating side-eye, weighing her next words.

“Got a few places here and there,” she says eventually, crouching down to one to the less busted up cupboards.

Curious. But not totally unexpected.

“Hungry?” she asks over her shoulder.

“Wow, Tem, bed and breakfast? You should charge for this, could be making a fortune.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” she replies, grabbing a few things from the cupboard before closing it back up.

Tempest opens up one of the cans in her hand, releasing the smell of musty dog food that puts a little pep in Dogmeat’s step as he hops off the couch and waddles on over. She puts the open can on the ground and the mutt digs in with sloppy sounds.

She walks over to the table, placing a spread of snackage and a couple of waters on the surface before dragging her bag over to the empty chair at the head of the table where she sits down. She pulls out a crumpled pack of smokes from her back pocket, tapping one out into her hand. It finally lights when her lighter decides to cooperate and the smell of irradiated tobacco fills the air. Deacon grabs a crumpled box of Sugar Bombs while Tempest digs around in her bag, pulling out her little first aid kit.

Deacon stretches his legs out under the table, knees satisfyingly snapping as they straighten. Oh yeah, hiking around the wastes tomorrow is gonna be a bitch and a half.

He pops pieces of the dusty cereal in his mouth, watching Tem try to clean up her face, cigarette balanced casually out of the corner of her mouth as she works. She cracked open one of the cans of water and is trying to clean off the cut as best as she can. Her face is stuck in a perpetual wince as she continues putting pressure on the ever darkening bruise mottling her cheekbone.

Didn’t break the bone, at least. Could be worse.

They sit in amiable silence for a while, the waves of the water hitting the foundation of the house, making the old wood creak. He feels better with something in his system, even if it is just irradiated sugar.

“So,” Deacon says, breaking the silence while she finishes up, “this place part of the Minutemen’s employee benefits package?” She exhales a sharp breath, the closest thing to a chuckle he’s heard from her. One of her little tells he’s noticed that says she’s not so doom and gloom all the time. Tempest puts away her kit, snubbing the last of her cigarette on the bottom of her boot.

“Hardly,” she drawls. She reaches over and grabs some food for herself. Deacon’s eyes stay on her from behind his glasses.

Deacon knows she’s the General, but he knows that she doesn’t know that he knows. And because he knows that she knows that she’s the General, thinking that she knows that he doesn’t know, he knows that using what he knows and what she thinks she knows he knows he can put his new partner through her first test.

At least he thinks he knows.

Fuck, how much of these Sugar Bombs has he had?

Whatever.

He puts the near empty box of cereal on the table and pushes it out of reach from himself. He leans back in his chair, locking his fingers together behind his head.

“I’m just saying, with how much weight you’ve been pulling with those guys, you’d think they’d put it to better use than as an errand girl.”

She shrugs.

“What can I say? I’m just really jonesing for that employee of the month title,” Tempest says dryly. Deacon grins. He switches up tactics.

“Everyone was pretty surprised when news of the Minutemen started hitting the streets again.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, after their last big hooplah of expected disasters, I can’t imagine there’s that much faith put into the jolly ol’ blue boys anymore,” Deacon says casually. If there’s one thing he knows about the Minutemen, it’s that any slight against their self-imposed honor makes their self-righteous hero complexes come spitting out like a rabid dog on Jet.

She just shrugs again.

“I’d imagine.” Deacon pauses.

“I don’t know about you, but giving big power like that to little people doesn’t usually end well.”

She nods over her drink.

“Preaching to the choir.”

Hm. Alright. New tactic, then.

“But what is it you’re getting out of it? You don’t really strike me as the kind of woman to go play fetch for some farmers.”

An amused flicker lights up her eyes.

“Someone’s gotta do it. What else would I be doing instead?”

“Oh, I dunno, take up knitting, go on a vacation to New Vegas, start a neighborhood book club. You know, literally anything else.”

“Maybe I’ve already done those things.”

“Oh really? Which one? No, wait, let me guess…” he pauses for dramatic effect, “knitting,” he says finally.

“You seem very sure of that.”

“Am I wrong?”

“Maybe. How would you know that I don’t have a bookclub around somewhere?”

“It’s my job to know things.” He winks at her even though he knows she can’t see it.

“So I’ve noticed.”

A smile sneaks onto Deacon’s face as she watches him, waiting patiently to verbally parry his next move. An immovable object vs. an unstoppable force.

“Fair enough,” he says, surrendering for now. She nods a little, giving him one of her looks, and gets up to clean up the now empty can of dog food. Deacon’s eyes follow her.

-+-

Drummer Boy was on them as soon as they breached the archway to HQ.

To no one’s surprise, especially Deacon’s, it’s something to do with Augusta. The Safehouse was relatively new, implemented just before Switchboard was hit, and since then has been nothing but a series of unfortunate events, made even worse by the thin stretching of resources from HQ.

Not including the brand spankin’ new Mercer, Augusta is one of the few precious Safehouses still in the circuit. It’s been run ragged these past couple of months. Deacon has tried to talk to Des about it, that moving that many synths through one avenue will burn it out faster than they could even hope to deal with, but it was met with the same ol’ dismissal that he should just get used to.

Regardless, they sent out a dead drop and needed a couple of heavys to come take care of a few less than friendly neighbors.

Said neighbors were a troupe of raiders that had hunkered down in what used to be parts of an old strip mall. They were rooted in deep, but the two of them together cleared the place out with minimal injury.

Tempest had left Dogmeat behind at the church. Him and Tinker Tom got along like a house on fire, so Tem let the pup take a breather. They now head back to HQ to give the news to Desdemona.

“Hey, hold on a second,” Tempest says suddenly, veering off course. She heads over to the shell of a darkened diner. She tries the door, finding it locked as it jolts against the frame. Tem kneels down, getting to work on the lock. Deacon situates himself at her 6 as she does so, facing out to the dusty road beyond.

A few moments later and she stands, pushing open the now unlocked door. Deacon puts the safety of his shotgun off and follows in after her.

They creep in, shoes rolling across warped, debris-strewn linoleum. The diner is dim, what little glass still left in the windows letting in weak ash-colored light. The red plastic booths along the walls are cracked and peeling, some have been chewed through near the ground by some desperate animal dead and gone by now. Shattered light bulbs hang by sketchy looking wires and cords above the diner bar which is covered in a solid inch of dust and other non identifiable gunk that Deacon would really rather not think too much about.

The heart of the diner is empty. No wheezing of mole rats or skittering of radroaches. Tempest takes point and walks around the bar and to the kitchen in the back. Deacon hangs back, double checking before going in after her.

He hears her stomping around back there, signaling that the place is cleared. They pass each other as she exits and he enters.

The kitchen is in just as much of a mess as the rest of the place, but there’s signs of recent activity. He steps over a ratty bundle of cloth that once served as a bed roll to a handmade lantern made from an old bean can. It smells faintly of accelerant, but it hasn’t been lit in quite some time. The cabinets and shelves have been pilfered but Deacon stills checks the place for anything they could use. He goes to the back of the room to a metal door of a walk-in refrigerator. The handle sticks something fierce, making him put his entire weight down on it to get it to unlatch. He opens the door just a crack before the unfortunately familiar scent of putrefying flesh smacks him in the face. He smothers a gag into his elbow and slams the door shut as fast as he can, quickly giving up that line of investigation.

Clearing his throat and forcing any bile back down, he leaves the kitchen. Tempest is standing by one of the old jukeboxes, looking down into the dusty recesses of the machine where the names of songs and the people who sang them once sat. Her finger sits and traces small shapes on the plastic bubble case. Deacon does nothing but watch her for a heartbeat, her posture slack, her eyes unfocused.

He walks over then, purposefully stepping on a particularly crunchy part of the nuke-blasted tiled floor. She doesn’t turn to acknowledge him, but he knows she’s back to earth again from the hitch in her breath at the sound. Deacon leans on the side of the jukebox, crossing his arms across his chest.

“I’m surprised this thing’s still here, there’s a lot of good scrap in these bad boys.” He taps the top of it. “Tinker once tried to fix one up once, but it would only ever play ‘Sweet Caroline’, but like, really slowed down. Des eventually made him throw it out.”

Tem’s lip quirks up. She steps back from the jukebox and unholsters her pistol. “Watch out,” she warns, and Deacon hops back from the machine. She fires at the plastic covering, shattering the front of it into pieces. She busts the rest of it out of her way so she can reach a hand in. Most of the slots are empty except for two, and she grabs onto the remaining holotapes at the bottom, flipping them around in her hands. Any writing that may have been on them at one point has long been faded away.

“Think anything’s on them?” he asks. She shrugs.

“We’ll find out.” She stores them away in her pack.

They turn to leave, her curiosity sated for now, when a bullet whizzes between their heads and lodges into the plaster wall behind them. They drop to the ground and another shot fires into the diner, hitting an upturned table to the front of them.

Deacon and Tempest roll away from each other. Tempest gets behind an endcap booth near below the window. Deacon crouches behind the bar.

Voices float in through the windows, but he’s not sure how many are really out there.

“Come on out, little girl!” a gruff voice calls out. Raiders, he thinks, probably those that ran with the ones they just wiped out.

Deacon can see where Tem is crouched, but not much else, so he peeks around the bar. He spots the top of a mangy head of hair poking out from the bottom of the widow and pulls himself back behind cover. He quietly clears his throat.

“Who? Lil’ ol’ me?” Deacon says in as high-pitched a voice as he can manage, laying on a thick southern drawl. Tempest’s head rolls towards him, a look of visceral unbelief bugging out her features to almost cartoonish proportions.

“What the fuck?!” she mouths at him. He puts his finger to his lips.

“Yeah, come on, girlie, we just wanna talk to ya,” the same raider replies. Tempest shakes her head but gets up from her spot and sneaks down along the line of booths, staying low and out of the line of sight from the window. She creeps to the other side of the diner, out of Deacon’s line of view.

“Oh, I don’t know. My meemaw said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.” Deacon can feel Tempest’s eye roll from here. He hears steps closer to the window and the next time the raider talks, he’s talking straight into the diner.

“Don’t you worry about that, now, doll.” Deacon hears the raider hoist himself up through the window and crawl over the table. He walks closer to where Deacon hides.

Before either one of them can say anything more, gunfire splits the silence from outside. The raider spins around and makes a break for the window once more. Deacon peers around the bar once more just as the raider hauls himself back out the diner.

Deacon rushes out from cover, running to the window. He steps onto the table and grabs hold of the top of the windowsill.

“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” he shouts, swinging off of the window. The startled raider whips around and is met with the soles of Deacon’s shoes slamming into his face.

Dust billows out from under the raider as he ungracefully lands and Deacon rolls off of him, slinging his rifle off his back. Before the raider can do anything else, Deacon puts a bullet right between his eyes.

With that, the dust is settled. Tempest silently stands not too far from him, two dead raiders at her feet. He steps over to her.

Tempest watches him, face worryingly blank, and it makes him wonder whether or not he’s hit her limit already, until a light flares up in the depths of her eyes and her face breaks into a wide grin.

Her laugh is as sudden as a crack of lightning, filling up the dusty silence with rolling tenors of pure, unadulterated joy. With her head tilted up to the sky, blood drying on her face, she’s almost a complete stranger, transformed into an image completely in contrast to her death-strewn surroundings.

Deacon wonders if he should feel concerned for her wellbeing (as well as his, now that he thinks of it), but he finds that he can’t help the smile that settles onto his features. He’s not sure what he said was that funny, but her laughter is as contagious as it is foreign and it draws out a laugh of his own.

She folds in half, gasping in air between the throes of her laughter, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

“For fuckssake, Dee,” she chokes out through watery chuckles. She stands up straighter, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. Deacon remains silent, captivated by the vision in front of him.

Tempest stands up now that she’s gained some control of herself once more, tears lining the borders of her eyes. Her face is flushed, bringing to it a glow that has nothing to do with radiation for once. Her smile is a graceful curve, giving her an uncharacteristic gentleness that he’d never would have been able to picture her with before now.

He’s suddenly struck through the chest with a shard of anxiety, and he’s harshly reminded about how little he actually knows about the person in front of him, no matter how much he tries to delude himself otherwise. Danger, danger! his mind yells at him, Get out while you can! Danger and downfall with a smile!

But, damn him, if it wasn’t a sight.

#deacon x sole survivor #deacon x sosu #deacon fo4 #deacon fallout 4

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fotiathymos · 4 years

Note

do you have trans hcs for any other characters in promare? :0

I do! under cut cause im a TALKER whoops.

uhhh trigger warning that i do talk a bit about transphobia and unsupportive family.

I realize in my last post I didn’t mention it but Gueira and Meis aren’t cis!

Gueira was born intersex and doesn’t agree to calling himself cis or trans. He is proud to be intersex. (do know this is a fictional character and not all real life people who are intersex agree or disagree with calling themselves cis or trans.)

Gueira uses he/him pronouns but doesn’t strictly dress masculine. Really just a comfy clothes wearer.

Meis is trans genderfluid. Mostly uses they/them pronouns and has girl days or boy days sometimes where they can be more okay with she/her or he/him. Just leans into a mix usually. Actually doesn’t like being called Gueira’s boyfriend and rather ‘partner’. Gueira says it like a cowboy usually to make Meis giggle.

I do enjoy Ignis being an trans elder. (He is like 55 in my mind not 40 as i think canon states?) Ignis knew Galo was trans upon entering the job but of course did not out Galo to everyone. Galo isn’t secretive about being trans though. When Galo finds out Ignis is trans he cries happy tears and hugs him, making Ignis just a lil uncomfortable but not rejecting the hug.. hes got a reputation Galo.

I always had it in my head that Galo joined Burning Rescue and challenged all their thoughts on gender and etc. Considering they all grew up in a strict propaganda filled city some of them mightve just heard of terms but not thought about it too hard for..reasons. But then Galo comes into the work place being the ‘queer kid’ and wouldn’t take any bullshit. He grew up mostly by themself, discovered things on his own and does still feel that outward pressure to conform (esp with Kray, Galo is the most ‘passing as cis’ as he can be around Kray most times). So I thought mostly about everyone in BR were cis, not all of them straight but cis...bbuuutttt

Galo makes everyone question their thoughts on gender cause Galo is so open about his own and loves helping others. Galo does ‘mask’ themself sometimes and at first joining didn’t go full blown open. But one day Lucia needs a tampon and Galo had one in his bag and Lucia is like ‘um what?’ Galo goes casual and just ‘oh yeah.. i don’t need them anymore but its become habit to carry it around yaknow and you never know when it could come in handy!’

Lucia is the first to question if its okay to be non-binary lesbian, like maybe shes not entirely strictly ‘girl’. She’s loud and proud about being gay, lesbian flag above her desk, talks bout going to lesbian bars and wanting to just hold a girls hand. So she’s the first to feel okay enough to question herself gender wise.

Varys is that guy you might know in life who is just chill about everything. Galo comes out to Varys casually one day and Varys doesn’t linger on it at all. “Trans? Hell yeah! We still going out for bbq? Double hell yeah!” But he’s also a guy you never know whats going on in their head. He just remembers weirdly specific things you say sometimes and comes back at you with them later. Galo mentioned briefly that sunflowers remind him of his mother. Varys mails Galo sunflowers when Galo takes the day off on his mothers bday. Varys also randomly texts Galo ‘hey you know how youre trans, can i be like not always a man?’

Remi............................reMI UH. Remi is weird in my head. I feel hes that guy who just makes everything into a TMI or sex joke or just awkwardly flirts with everyone he becomes friendly with. Like just pushes the boundaries cause he thinks were friends now i can do this, without realizing hes over stepped them. That guy who thinks just cause your his friend now we can talk about sex casually. Hes quick to apologize when told off but still. I’m horrible I feel like Remi is that guy who’d consider him getting pegged by his girlfriend means he’s in with the lgbt crowd. He’s cis and comfortable with that and is confused by non-binary identities but won’t insult his coworkers and respect them. Eventually he’ll learn that just cause you are over 18 now, not everything in the world is related to sex. Idk if that made sense or if I threw him under the die-cis-scum buss too hard.

AND THEN THERE IS AINA.

Who... I adore. And even my head canons for her contrast and complement Galo like her story/character in the movie. So....shes trans.

We don’t get info about her family life but I’m assuming her sister raised her by herself and the parents weren’t in the picture. Aina came out to her sister right out of high school. Heris was starting college and working to provide for her and Aina. She flipped out on her and her words were ‘i dont care if youre a girl or a boy but those hormones can be pricey we dont have insurance you cant get surgery your too young, etc etc’ Unsupported in misreading the situation as an inconvenience to money and life and not the actuality of Aina just being herself and wanting to be honest about it.

Aina gets ignored as her sisters career and life revolves around a sudden job with the Foundation. But Heris has money now. And is “supportive” in giving Aina money. Pays for her HRT, doctor visits, therapy, and then eventually training to be in Burning Rescue. And Heris is adamant that Aina never, EVER tells anyone she’s trans. Sweeps up any possible info about that under the rug. Doesn’t want to be looked at with a bad eye from Foresight. What Heris feels is a safety measure for her family is what Aina sees as shame. Kinda reflecting how Heris in the movie sees that shes doing ‘all this for you, Aina’ only for it to be cruel and harmful directly to Aina.

Aina doesn’t know what drew her to Galo. He’s cute and nice and friendly. Maybe it’s a crush? He understands me and no one ever did. He respects me for me. “Youre you Aina and theres nothing wrong with that.” (I forget the exact quote) The words play in her head for the longest time. She never came out to Burning Rescue for fear, cause Heris said not to, cause its ‘inconvenient’. And suddenly Galo is loud and proud about being trans??? Should she be too??

Eventually she confides in Galo. Probably after the Parnassus events. She realizes she doesn’t have a crush and was just not use to someone being nice to her and accepting her. She eventually tells the rest of Burning Rescue. Finds out Ignis knew all along due to paperwork but just once again, Captain isn’t gonna out his team member.

And then finally during a late night movie sleepover. Galo’s like ‘you know we should hang the trans and non binary flag on the front of the station.’ Lucia goes ‘YEAH a big FUCK YOU to the Foundations normies!!!!’ Aina says ‘we should really run that past Captain first...’ Finally Ignis walks in, tilts down his sunglasses and says ‘I planned for this’ and unveils a flag that just says ‘fight the cis-tem’ and Galo and Lucia SCREAM. Only Galo knew Ignis was trans til that point..

I made a STORY damn.

I hope that wasn’t... too much... thank for reading.... ;u;/

#boop answers #boops hcs #WORDS #i gotta not look at a screen for a while im shakinG #Anonymous #boop merps

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beastars-takes · 4 years

Text

Beastars Chapter 4

Picking up where we left off...

Oh, Legosi, what’d you do, buddy.

I have to admit I went into this comic knowing maybe a little too much about where it was headed. I can’t help wondering what all this would have looked like if I’d gone in totally blind. Got to be some whiplash from thinking Legosi killed Tem, to realizing he’s just a nice weird kid, to this.

We understand very little about the universe of Beastars at the outset--it allows us to assume we know things, only to tear down those assumptions later. What does it actually mean to be an apex predator in this world? We’re only beginning to get an idea.

Starting off in a high school is a great touch because it provides this veneer of normalcy and safety--immediately punctured by Tem’s murder, and then further kicked to pieces by one chapter after another. There’s no safety here.

I want to talk more later about how great Haru is, but I love how lucid she is even here. Just...tapping his arm. Are we doing this, or what?

This moment is really reinforcing both of their worst feelings about themselves. Such a crappy meet-cute.

I think if I was going to make one real complaint about Beastars as a whole, it’d be how little exploration of Haru there is as a POV character. She’s definitely just as fucked up as Legosi is, and endures trauma after trauma. Her chapters are great, but mostly focused on bad things happening to her, or her relationship to Legosi. Even Bill’s experienced more self-actualization at this point.

There’s definitely still time, though. I am always ready for more Haru chapters.

Lots of perspective errors in here, but again--a great example of pushing beyond the comfort zone. Pages like this are the reason the newer chapters look so good.

Haru indicates throughout (internally, and in what she says) that she doesn’t care about these guys or what they think. Her thoughts when she’s grabbed by Legosi suggest that’s not entirely true, but she’s definitely incredible at projecting fearlessness. The fact that it leads to even more abuse might be a bonus for her, as much as she hates herself.

This little subplot is interesting (and very high school) because it’s not really clear how much of what Haru is accused of she actually did. Here she downplays it as “a little kiss” but we learn later from the boyfriend that they did in fact sleep together.

Haru’s such a shikse.

Mizuchi is a fun counterpart for Haru early on because they have some commonalities--they’re both ultimately acting out of feelings of powerlessness. Only where Mizuchi hurts others, Haru mostly just hurts herself.

I think it’s easy to get thrown off by her tough talk throughout this chapter, but I think she’s really run out of rope here. She has zero friends (apart from maybe Louis, who makes it clear she’s not a priority to him) and now nobody’s willing to even talk to her.

Love when Legosi turns into a black rectangle with eyes.

Should have used this power more often.

Some of these panels are so weird and impressionistic--something that can’t really be replicated in the 3D animation of the show. The show styles it in a different way that’s impressive all on its own, but the early chapters of the manga are so aggressively striking. I really hope when the show drops on English Netflix it’ll inspire people to take a look at the source material.

Size and proportion are really fluid, especially early on--his body is so huge compared to his head here. Lowkey terrifying.

And of course Paru undermines my commentary by making him super cute in the next three panels. Look at this murderous goober.

So here we are. Both of these guys have gotten through their teens stewing in self-hatred, and their self-destructive coping mechanisms are both failing simultaneously.

And then they both get a second chance.

#beastars #beastars takes #beastars spoilers #beastars liveblog #legosi #legoshi #haru #mizuchi

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turnupswritessometimes · 5 years

Text

Lavender Eyes - Glimmerdora - Ch6

Title: Lavender Eyes

Chapter: 5

Word Count: 4119

Summary: Adora’s on the football tem. Glimmer’s in band. They think they can’t stand each other, until a series of accidents forces them to open up to each other.

Note: This is also available on Archive of Our Own and it’s probably best to follow it there, as I remember to update it more. I would post a link, but then tumblr wouldn’t include it in search results.

Things had changed. But in some ways, they hadn’t changed at all, because Catra may barely be speaking to Adora, but that didn’t stop her from sitting in the passenger side of Adora’s car on Monday morning.

Adora didn’t say anything. Mainly because Beatrix was still peering out of the window and it was really none of her business what was happening at school. That was something that Catra and Adora had always managed – to lie about what was happening between them and what was happening at school. Kid drama never got taken to the adults. That meant trouble. So she kept her mouth shut and started driving.

There was a different atmosphere in the car. A tense, unsure how to step around each other atmosphere.

“You going to pinky’s again?” Catra asked. They were already halfway to school.

“Yes,” Adora said. “Probably. And don't call her that.”

“What?” Catra’s foot was up on the dash. It had never bothered Adora before. She had never allowed herself to look at just how tight Catra’s jeans were getting. “That's not the worst I could say - could call her a dy-“

“Don't. Catra. Do you even know how offensive that is?”

“Why do you even care?” She could sense narrowed eyes on her face and kept her eyes on the road, resisting not to beep the horn at the guy in front of them. He wasn’t even driving that slow. “If I didn't know better I'd say you were gay.”

Adora paused. She wanted to take the leap – because if she couldn’t trust Catra, who could she trust? “What if I was?”

“You? Please. Pretty sure Beatrix wants you to marry a doctor, have two children - a boy and a girl, naturally and live happily ever after.” Catra crossed her legs over, looking out of the window again. Adora couldn’t see her face.

“Maybe I won't marry anyone.”

“Perfect Adora not doing what mummy says?”

“Are you telling me delinquent Catra is going to do what she does say? Are you going to get married?” This was easier, Adora thought. This was teasing and banter and it was all surface level. That’s how it should be. Surface level – not deep, meaningful conversations with Bow.

Catra frowned at her, her bottom lip sticking out in a pout. “Touché.” She paused then, her eyes glancing over Adora’s face with sudden sincerity. “You’d tell me, if you were, wouldn't you?”

“You're my sister,” Adora said. “We tell each other everything.”

It wasn’t an outright lie. It had never been a lie, but it was fast becoming one.

Still, Adora reasoned to herself as she pulled into the school parking lot, Catra was being unfair too. Catra was hiding drinking and smoking and who knew what else from Adora. So it was only fair.

They had parked up when Catra put a hand out. She didn’t even look at Adora as she said, “Hey, ill take your phone. Then beatrix can't track you.

Thanks.

This is for me. So, I don't get into trouble for not going everywhere with my keeper.

They had parked up when Catra put a hand-out. She didn’t even look at Adora as she said, “Hey, I'll take your phone. Then Beatrix can't track you."

Adora blinked. Then pulled out her phone and held it out. "Thanks."

Catra took it without looking at her. "This is for me. So I don't get into trouble for not going everywhere with my keeper."

With that, she slammed the car door.

Adora waited for a full minute, her eyes on the clock built into her car. Then she climbed out too, shrugging her backpack onto her back and walking up to the school. It was clear that things had changed. She was receiving odd looks and people muttered as she walked passed. Lonnie ignored her when she opened her locker.

Then slammed it closed. Lonnie was scowling at her palm on the door, but still didn’t look at Adora.

“You gunna talk about Friday night or not?”

“I…don’t know what there is to say?”

“The band? You thanked the band? No one thanks the band-“

“They work hard and-“

“And what? It’s their hobby! That’s what they do.” Connie finally looked up, her eyes fierce.

“And we should just ignore them?”

“Yes. That’s what we do.”

“Why? Why, Lonnie?”

“Because. Because they’re annoying and pretentious and think we’re all stupid,” Lonnie said. “Because they’re all on the student council too and they don’t do shit for us. Because they’re fucking weird, Adora.”

“How are they weird?” Adora asked. They did think the football team were all stupid jocks, she knew that. But things had changed. Glimmer didn’t think that – anymore.

“Fuck, Adora.” Lonnie shook her head.

“Go on, Lonnie. Tell me.” There was an edge to Adora’s voice. She was challenging Lonnie, she realised and it made her heart race. This wasn’t a fight she wanted to have, but it wasn’t one she could avoid either. One that she could have a long time ago. Now it was harder. After sitting in a car with Glimmer and seeing those lavender eyes sparkle at her, she couldn’t ignore it.

“Because, Adora.” Lonnie leant against the locker, rolling her eyes. “They’re all lessies.”

“Oh, right,” Adora said. “Of course.”

She slammed her locker door closed and walked away. Her face was burning – with anger, she hoped. She really hoped that it looked like she was furious with Lonnie for the insinuation. Not that she felt sick. That her heart was racing because for a moment, for just a night, she had believed that it would be okay. Coming out would be okay. Maybe not.

Maybe this really was the point of no return. Now, the rest of the team was avoiding her too, shooting her confused looks. Adora had never been without friends. She had always had a clique. Since kindergarten and it scared her. If she wasn’t popular then who was she?

It played on her mind for the rest of the day. Lessons weren't so bad - she could pretend to be engrossed in Spanish or physics. It was lunch that was the real test.

For the first time in her life, Adora sat at an empty table. And maybe part of it was choice - part of it was not wanting to be sat with people who threw the terms 'lessie' and 'dyke' around. But part of it wasn't and she didn't like that part.

It was Bow who came to her rescue, carrying a tray with one hand like a waiter and a grin on his face. He sat down - like it was completely natural - like they did this everyday.

"I've thought of a solution to your problem," Bow said in the place of 'hello.' "I'm calling it Schrodinger’s lesbian."

"Schrodinger’s lesbian?" Adora echoed. She hadn't touched her own food. Her stomach was in knots.

"Just don't come out to your mum. Keep it a secret."

"Maybe I'm not a lesbian. Maybe everyone gets feelings."

"Riiight." Bow rolled his eyes. "Adora, have you ever wanted to kiss a guy?"

"No." She spoke quickly at Bow's judgemental eyebrow raise. "But that's only because I've been ear deep in my studies my whole life."

"Right, right." Bow shrugged it off, his tone casual. But then he glanced up with that smile. "And who made you want to pull yourself out of that quicksand?"

"That's different."

"Of course, it is."

"Look - I don't - it doesn't even matter, because it's not like Glimmer even-" she paused at the look on Bow's face. He was smiling at her.

"What if I told you that Glimmer told me not to say anything on that subject."

Adora frowned.

"What did Glimmer tell you not to say anything about?" Glimmer was suddenly at the table. Sitting down and giving Bow a warning glance.

"Nothing, nothing." Bow was still smiling.

"So, we're eating lunch together," Adora said.

"Is that allowed?" Glimmer asked.

"I guess so. It's not like anyone else in lining up."

"That's what happens when you stand up for the band," Glimmer said.

"Welcome to the loser's club." Bow stretched his hands out in front of him, still grinning.

"You're not losers."

"I was quoting It."

"What?"

"It."

"What's It?"

"The movie. It."

"Oh my God." Glimmer put her head in her hands. "It's like watching dumb and dumber."

“Where you see idiocy, Glimmer, I see an opportunity.” Bow leant forward. “Movie. Night. This. Evening.”

Adora looked at Glimmer. Glimmer looked back at her, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m sure Adora has better things to do with her time,” Glimmer said.

“I don’t think Adora does,” Adora said. “I think Adora would like to try a movie night.”

“On a school night?”

“Yeah.” Though her heart was pounding. A school night. Home late. No studying.

But she could do this. She could go to Glimmer’s house and watch a movie and not freak out. And she did. She managed to laugh along in the car, even though Glimmer and Bow were quoting vines and she had literally never seen a single one in her life. She managed to say hello to Glimmer’s mom, which made her smile at them from above their laptop.

“Congratulations to the football team on another outstanding victory.”

“Thanks, ma’am.”

That had made Glimmer’s mom laugh and Glimmer take Adora’s arm, rolling her eyes and muttering, “really, Adora? Do you have to be so perfect all the time?”

“Oh, I really do,” Adora said.

Glimmer turned then, a strange smile on her face that seemed to live mostly in her eyes. It brought heat to Adora’s face and she had to look away. Her stomach was still in knots, but she was determined to ignore it. It would be fine, she told herself. She did not have to study every day. In fact, she deserved a day off. She deserved to spend time with her friends.

At least, if Catra was allowed, she should be too. The thought wasn’t convincing. She wasn’t Catra – there weren’t the same rules. But she was trying – she was really trying because she wanted to be less like herself and more like Glimmer.

That was, until the movie started. Children singing a nursery rhyme that sent chills up Adora’s arms.

“Wait,” She said, too late. “Is this a horror movie?”

“Yeah.” Bow said. He had buried himself in pillows, creating a wall between himself and Adora. Which meant that she was incredibly aware of Glimmer’s arm pressed against her own.

“I’m really not into horror movies.”

“Have you ever watched one?”

“Well, no.”

“Well Adora, sometimes you have to try things to know if you like them or not.”

Adora looked at Bow. He smiled back, but his eyes were behind her. On Glimmer. He raised an eyebrow slightly and Adora scowled at him. It was better to focus on the movie than on his smug face. Or how Glimmer shifted so that she was sat better every five minutes or so. Every time she did, she nudged against Adora.

The film didn’t end up being as scary as Adora thought it would be. Not when Glimmer and Bow were making sarcastic comments all the way through, and especially not when she could smell the shampoo Glimmer had used.

And when it was over, Bow glanced at his phone and groaned, throwing himself backwards onto the pillows.

“Look at the time! And I’m so tired! I don’t know how I’ll ever make it down the street!”

“Do you want to stay here the night, Bow?” Glimmer said, with a tone that suggested she knew the answer.”

“It’s so late, Glimmer, I couldn’t bother my dads at this time of night.”

“It’s not even ten o’clock.” Adora said.

“So late.”

“You can stay too if you want,” Glimmer said. She glanced at Adora.

“Yes!” Bow was back up in an instant, an arm around Adora’s shoulder. “Best friends night! We’ll marathon the original It as well, make s’mores in the microwave-“

“It’s a school night,” Adora said. It was one thing to blow the afternoon off – but she had a sneaking suspicion she would be looking at her textbooks before she went to sleep. It was meant to help you remember it, after all.

“I’m staying.”

“Bow, half of your house is already here,” Glimmer said. She rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling.

“I also don’t have my phone with me.”

“You can use mine.” Bow was already pulling his out of his pocket.

“No – no, my mom – she doesn’t – she doesn’t answer if she doesn’t know who it is.” It was a half-lie. Generally true, but she also couldn’t risk Catra spilling the beans. Anyway, her phone was at home. By all accounts, she was too.

“It’s fine,” Glimmer said. Almost too quickly.

“Did your phone break or something?” Bow asked. “Why’d you forget it?”

Well, she wasn’t about to tell them that Beatrix had installed a tracker. That she was sneaking out and breaking the rules just by being with them.

“Yeah, just left it on the side like a dummy.” Sometimes it scared her how casually she could lie. Between her and Catra, it was easy to come up with something believable fast.

There was a pause. A horrible pause where Adora was terrified that they were about to find out. But then Glimmer nudged Adora with her elbow. “C’mon, you, I’ll drive you home.”

Adora’s stomach jumped. She tried not to let it show on her face as she stood.

“Can I hang out with your mom whilst you’re gone?” Bow asked after them.

“No.”

“Can I raid the fridge?”

“As long as you leave my chocolate.”

“Boo.”

Glimmer flipped the bird at him before she followed Adora up the staircase.

“Bow’s actually going home?” Mrs Gongjunim called from the living room. There was a documentary on as they passed.

“Ah, no,” Glimmer stuck her head around the doorframe and Adora dithered behind her. She couldn’t imagine springing something like that on a parent. A few days notice was needed, at least. “He’s staying, I’m dropping Adora back.”

Mrs Gongjunim looked around. She smiled at Adora with the air of a queen and she found herself trying to fix an awkward smile on her face back.

“Thank you for having me,” she said.

“It’s a pleasure, Adora. Though, I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave Bow alone.”

“He’s been alone here plenty of times,” Glimmer said. There was a tightness in her voice.

Mrs Gongjunim raised an eyebrow. She stood, switching off the t.v without even looking. “It’s getting late, Glimmer. Why don’t I drop Adora back?”

“Because that would be weird? She’s like half an hour away – tops.”

“Is this just because I’m your headteacher?”

“It’s because you’re my mom.” Glimmer crossed her arms.

Adora shifted her weight. An argument was brewing in the air – she could feel it. It made her tense – made her want to run. To make herself small and get out of the way. She wondered if Mrs Gongjunim would shout. If Glimmer would shout back. An image popped into her head of Glimmer with bruises that matched her eye colour.

She squeezed her eyes tight – voices buzzing around her like wasps. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening here as well – where everything was nice, clean and smelt of vanilla-

A hand touched her shoulder.

She opened her eyes to see Mrs Gongjunim looking down at her. She was smiling slightly, but there was an elegant crease in her brow that showed concern. Glimmer was stood behind her, her arms crossed as she scowled at the floor. She had blown out her cheeks slightly and it brought a cute blowfish to Adora’s mind.

“Shall I meet you in the car?” Mrs Gongjunim said. She smiled as she glanced between them. “I’ll leave you to say your goodbyes.”

That made Glimmer blush bright red. “Mom!”

But Gongjunim was laughing at her child yelling at her as she headed down the hall, fishing car keys out of a trinket dish like a Roman lady plucking grapes from a bunch.

Adora’s face was warm too. The insinuation had been heavy in Mrs Gongjunim’s voice and she cleared her throat as if that would help to dispel the awkward atmosphere.

“Thanks – for today,” Glimmer said. She pulled at the sleeve of her oversized cardigan and smiled self-consciously. She wasn’t quite meeting Adora’s eyes. “I know it must have been a struggle.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Adora tried to bluff.

Glimmer just shrugged. “It just seems like – you’re not a person to change up your schedule. It was cool that you did, for us. When we’re the reason the team ditched you.”

“Don’t make it sound like I’m doing you a favour.” Adora was surprised to find anger sprouting in her voice. “You’re doing me a favour. Just for letting me hang around you when I’m an asshole.”

“Then the pleasure was all mine.” Glimmer was really smiling now, her cheeks glowing. She glanced up at Adora, then suddenly she was throwing her arms around her. She was hugging her – tight – maybe as tightly as she had at that first game of the season. Adora couldn’t tell. It seemed much more intimate now. She could feel the shape of Glimmer’s body against hers and Adora’s arms were around Glimmer’s waist before she could think about it. Glimmer was warm. And she smelt of vanilla and pink lemonade infuser sticks. Adora hadn’t known two smells that worked so well together – that were so Glimmer.

Then the moment was over, and Glimmer was walking Adora to the door, looking only slightly better. Adora wondered if her face was still boiling – she figured it was, from the way the cold air felt against her cheeks.

She climbed into Glimmer’s mom’s car – a Honda, the most mom car imaginable, turning to see Glimmer’s silhouette at the doorway. She was leant against the doorframe, waving and smiling. Adora felt short of breath.

“You know, I used to hate you,” Glimmer’s mom seemed to be talking almost to herself as she started down the driveway. She saw Adora’s expression in the rearview mirror and laughed. “I only mean because I had to hate whoever Glimmer hated.”

“She really hated me, huh?” Adora managed to stumble out.

“You know, I could never quite figure it out. She’d curse you in one breath, then turn around and say that you had beautiful blue eyes in the next.”

Adora stopped breathing for a moment. “Oh.”

“But she doesn’t talk to me. I have to try and catch her and Bow’s conversations.”

Adora forced a laugh. “You don’t listen in?”

“I respect my daughter’s privacy,” Mrs Gongjunim said. “If there’s something she wants to tell me, she knows I’m all ears. But there’s a line. She can decide where she wants to place it.”

“Would you,” Adora paused. She took a breath. Something about this felt safe – in a mom’s car in the dark. “Would you track her phone?”

"We considered it. Just in case either of us were out late. But I'm not out very much these days and Glimmer's always with Bow, or most lately, you. I know she'll be safe if she's with someone else, and if I'm worried I can call. I trust her. That's the most important thing - trust."

"Did you swallow a parenting book, or something?" Yet Adora was picking her nails. Beatrix didn't trust her. And Adora didn't think she trusted her either. She was far more likely to call Bow or Glimmer of she needed help.

"In a way." Mrs Gongjunim smiled. "I have a degree in child psychology."

"Oh." Adora wasn't sure what to say to that. They were there. At the top of her road and she said, "I can - walk from here."

"Nonsense. I'm seeing you get through the door safely."

So Adora scrunched in her seat, as if that would stop Mrs Gongjunim realising what street they were on. She stopped outside Adora's and cut the engine.

"How long have you and Glimmer been together?" she asked.

Adora was sure that her brain had stopped circuiting. For a moment, she froze, then all of her words came out at once. "We're - we're not- dating. We're - friends. We're just - I'm not even, well I'm not sure if I'm even-"

She was getting used to the word, but she didn't want to say it in front of her headteacher. It felt like a word adults shouldn't hear. Just a teenage secret.

"I see." But Mrs Gongjunim's face was kind. She smiled at Glimmer in the orange light of the streetlamp. "Adora, if you're ever struggling, I'd be happy to talk you through some of your feelings."

"I - I don't think-" Adora broke off. There were so many awkward elements to that. How on earth could she go to her headteacher and say that she had a crush on her daughter? Not to mention the kick in her gut at the mention of it. Counselling. It made her physically recoil. No. No, counselling wasn't perfect. Counselling was admitting that she couldn't cope. And she could. She could cope. "I think that would be kind of weird. You're my best friend's mom."

"Yes, I can see why that would be an issue." There was a pause. Adora put her hand on the car door. She was itching to get out. "I'll save you the over protective talk on if you hurt my daughter, then."

Adora gave an awkward laugh - as if that was amusing - just to be polite, and climbed out the car, still muttering thank yous.

It was only when she had closed the front door as quietly as she could behind her, that she realised what she said. That Glimmer was her best friend. How did that happen?

No, she knew how. It was the car rides and the milkshakes and everything in between. But she didn't know when. Couldn't pinpoint an exact moment where she had felt like Catra wasn't her friend.

And Glimmer was, apparently. Adora's best friend, who she had a crush on. She couldn't believe the cliche of it all. And it was terrifying. It was terrifying how Glimmer's smile made her heart pound. As terrifying as a horror movie.

Yet, the horror movie that they had watched hadn't been scary at all. Adora had managed that. She remembered what Bow had said at lunch. That Glimmer had told him to shut up about it. Glimmer's mom had said Glimmer had talked about Adora's eyes.

So maybe it wasn't that scary after all.

"I don't think your mom likes me."

"I meant to tell you I like your hair like that."

Adora wondered if she should have been surprised to find Glimmer crouching on the porch roof. But it seemed so natural. That she would just be drifting off to sleep to hear a knock on her window. She had peeked through the curtains – terrified at first that it was one of the team. Then her eyes had made out Glimmer’s shape in the darkness. She had opened the window without a second thought and now they were there – just staring at each other.

"What?"

“You'd better come in," Adora whispered. "Unless you want to stay out there all night, Romeo?"

Glimmer grinned at that. She pressed a hand to her heart, the other to her forehead. "I take thee at thy word – call me but love, and I’ll be new baptis’d!"

"Ssshh!" Adora pressed a finger to her lips, but she was giggling. Giggling. Adora. The words didn't usually go together. "You'll wake my mom or Catra."

"Oh shit, wouldn't want to wake the nurse." Glimmer climbed through, sitting on the windowsill so that the night air stirred the hair on the back of her neck. “No, more like that gross-ass guy in Tempest.”

“Don’t.” But Adora was still reeling from the Shakespeare. She couldn’t quote it – not like that. “Did you leave Bow on his own?”

"Yeah, why?" Glimmer swung her legs slightly. "He's busy texting his dreamboat. I thought I'd hang out with you."

Adora sat on the end of her bed. Why was she nervous? How could she be nervous in her own home? Of Glimmer. Glimmer, who she said was her best friend.

Glimmer who wanted to hang out with her.

"Isn't Bow your best friend?" she asked. It used to make her heart pound, now she just felt curious.

"Yeah, but, hanging out with you feels," Glimmer paused, tilting her head to one side. "Different." It made Adora's breath catch. "My mom doesn't hate you."

"She seemed - I don't know, like she was giving me the third degree." Adora leant backwards on the bed and turned her lamp on. It lit the room with a soft, yellow glow. Made Glimmer look like the colours of a sunset. "Like she was a dad cocking her gun because I looked at her daughter."

Glimmer laughed aloud, then clamped a hand over her mouth when Adora shushed her. Her eyes bulged as they waited to be found out.

But there were no sounds in the hallway. Only Glimmer and Adora trying to stifle breathless laughter.

"God," Glimmer whispered. " I'm so sorry. It's better than when she was trying to get me to come out to her."

"Oh yeah?"

"She kept telling me about all these lesbians on shows that she's been watching. I think she was just googling them."

Adora wanted to laugh, but her smile faded when she went to . "At least she - cares."

Glimmer tilted her head again. She frowned, ever so slightly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean - I don't - I don't even know," Adora took a breath. She couldn't finish the sentence.

"Have we given you a case of the gay?" Glimmer was smiling about it, as if it was nothing. As if it was a perfectly good thing.

Adora smiled despite herself, as if smiling would fix things. "Maybe."

“And you don’t know how to tell your mom?” Glimmer moved, so that she was sat on the edge of the bed too.

“I don’t even know how to tell myself,” Adora whispered. She brought her knees up to her chest and realised just how plain her room was. Plain white walls, plain wooden furniture – no fairy lights or posters or anything with her name on it. No heart shaped cushions or fluffy blankets. It was like a hotel room.

“Oh, Adora.” Glimmer’s voice was soft. Her fingers brushed against Adora’s hair, pulling it back behind her ear. “You know, I did mean it earlier – and I meant to say it the other day, but I chickened out. Your hair looks good like this. You should wear it down more.”

Glimmer was close and her voice was low and her finger was still close to Adora’s ear. And yet she felt strangely calm. Her heart was still hammering out of her chest, but it seemed to be spurring her on. She thought that she was starting to connect the dots.

“That’s really not helping my case of the gays,” she whispered.

Glimmer paused. She was still smiling, but she wasn’t meeting Adora’s eyes.

“That sounds like a you problem,” Glimmer whispered back. “I can’t help being beautiful.”

“I never said that.”

“Yes, you did.”

That was when Adora remembered. It seemed like lifetimes ago that Glimmer was sat in her passenger seat, leaving glitter on the seat and scowling at Adora. Ages since she blew that kiss at her.

“I was feeling like shit that night,” Glimmer continued. She started to pick at some of the glittery nail polish coating her fingers like icing and, without even thinking about it, Adora put her hand over Glimmer’s to stop her. Her fingers looked like ivory against Glimmer’s olive skin. “And hearing you say that – well, I still didn’t like you, but it made me feel so much better about myself. And ever since then I’ve felt more – and I know this is about you and I’m making it about me, but – thank you. Thank you so much, Adora.”

And just like that, Glimmer tilted her face to the side and pressed her lips against Adora’s cheek.

She froze. Completely froze. Her hand was still on Glimmer’s and her heart was still pounding but she couldn’t move. It was as if she had been snapped in a polaroid camera and was just – stuck. She could only listen to the beating of her blood in her ears. Glimmer’s hand was warm under hers, and her breath was hot on her cheek.

“Oh, I’m – sorry,” Glimmer whispered. She pulled away, pulled her hand out from under Adora’s. “That – that doesn’t have to mean anything, if you don’t want it to. It can just be – like a gal pal’s thing, if you want.”

And it felt like taking a nosedive off of a cliff. It was the point of no return, but Adora was chasing Glimmer’s hand with her own fingers and squeezing it tight. She knew that her hands were cold – knew that she was freezing – and yet she hoped that Glimmer might share a little of her warmth. Just for a little while.

“No – I – I’d like it to mean something.”

She wished that she hadn’t turned the light on because it was suddenly hard to meet those lavender eyes.

“Oh,” Glimmer breathed. “Oh. Well then, I suppose we should…”

She trailed off, leaning back towards Adora. It had only just occurred to her that she didn’t have a lot of experience in this department – no experience in this department – and Glimmer almost certainly had more than her. What was she going to do? How was she going to manage to pull this off? She was going to have to kiss a girl – a girl she liked, and –

And Glimmer’s lips pressed against her own. It was a clumsy, awkward, partly misplaced kiss. Yet it made Adora’s mouth tingle and she liked it – liked it almost as much as she liked Glimmer – and if she could just tilt her head slightly –

A door creaked open in the hallway.

“Adora? Are you okay?”

She swore. Her hand tightened on Glimmer’s out of reflex. “She can’t find you here.”

“Right.” Glimmer was at the window in the next moment. She turned, her eyes sparkling as she looked up at Glimmer. Her cheeks were pink – pink and round and Glimmer was glowing. Adora felt the same – like she was full of fire and it was escaping through every one of her pores. “I’ll see you at school.”

She blew Adora a kiss, and then slid off the roof in the next moment.

Adora had never given much thought to Romeo and Juliet. She had only said it tonight in a throwaway joke. But now she was tempted to pick it up and read it – just read it for fun.

Only because she was pretty certain that she knew exactly how Juliet felt.

#glimmerdora #glimmer x adora #spop #she ra #she ra fanfiction #spop fanfiction #she ra netflix #princess glimmer #princess adora #turnupswrites

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notquitejiraiya · 5 years

Text

Chess [23] - {ShikaTema AU}

Hey there, it’s me, back again with a long-ass chapter.

Little right now that there’s some implied smut here (the overhyped and probably disappointing table scene). Nothing explicit or intense, just something. It’s kinda fluffy and not too thirsty. But, if that bothers you, here is your warning. I think it’s pretty tame and it’s fairly clear where that section occurs :)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

[READ / COMMENT on AO3]

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Milk, no sugar, Temari sipped on her tea slowly, staring down that the blank screen of her phone and the empty tub of reheated pasta she’d brought in. All she could do her entire lunch break was stare and hope, waiting for a buzz or a ring and for his name to pop up on the screen.

Discontented, she opened her phone again and examined the message that she had sent earlier that morning, and in turn the lack of response, and her head grew fuzzy as the smile spread across her face.

‘Hi. Thank you again for last night.’

Barely a line of text, just a simple sentence; it didn’t express at all how she really felt at this point in time. How happy she really was to have spent her evening with him and it having ended nicely; how awful she felt knowing that she was inherently letting down her boss and her integrity; how incredible it was to have him hold her in the park, kiss her outside her home, no matter how cold it was; how her desire to help him had only grown and she could do so little about it.

With a sigh she flicked off her phone and put the empty tub to the side, drawing closer the keyboard on her desk. She groaned, absentmindedly switching on the computer and resting her head in her hands.

How was she going to help him? She’s told him she had a plan, and somehow he’d believed her, but in reality she had no clue. Yes, the road block that he had to tackle before he could feel at peace with the past and what he did for people was clear—he had to understand that he wasn’t causing anyone any suffering by being upset, and that grieving was always okay. But he also had to come to terms with the passing of time, and she knew it wasn’t the man’s death that haunted him most these days. He’d told her it was his own feelings, and how he didn’t deserve to feel that way; how he didn’t deserve to cry when a woman had been left alone without her husband, and a little girl born without her father.

He had to learn, somehow, that he had every right to be sad. He had to learn that others forgive and that others understand.

But how on earth was she going to do that when the person at the heart of this all was not only a stranger to her, but had been gone almost seven years?

Her fingertips danced across the keyboard, opening the database of the practice’s clients and searching for the lady she knew would be walking through the door in five minutes, when suddenly, upon scrolling over her name she stopped.

The name appeared twice, and Temari only knew which was correct by the age in brackets beside her name, but she knew of no other lady of that name that she had seen.

“Oh,” she whispered, her eyes widening, “I can see all of them. Not just mine...”

On a whim, she hurried to type the only name that was circulating in her mind right now, immediately it flashed up: Shikamaru Nara. All of the tiny notes she’d attached to his file herself—for her viewing only, hidden from the other psychiatrists who worked here—flew up across the screen, the same name littering eight percent of the page.

Asuma Sarutobi.

So on a whim, she typed it into the database, and pressed enter with a huff watching as Shikamaru’s file vanished and was replaced with a blank page beside three depressing words:

No results found.

“Obviously,” she groaned as she backspaced and twisted her hair around her fingers, chewing on her lip. “What about…surely not…”

After taking a sip of her tea she simply typed his last name, wondering if Shikamaru was wrong - it was Asuma was a middle name or nickname, after all.

She almost didn’t search it. Why would his teacher—who sounded perfectly sound of mind from Shikamaru’s vague, but greatly understandable descriptions—have a therapist? And much more so, why specifically hers? It would have to be the most ridiculous chance if his name did appear, and even if it did there was no way for her to access his file unless she asked someone else, and just this morning she’d asked for the paperwork to sign Shikamaru out of her professional care and it was starting her down from her in-tray behind the computer. He wouldn’t be a valid excuse, she’d just look like a nosy bitch.

But what did she have to lose if she clicked enter? She could live with the same feeling of nothing again, that’s for sure.

So she did it, and to her amazement and almost her horror, she got one result.

‘Kurenai Sarutobi (née Yūhi) - 38’

Temari couldn’t stop staring, in shock mostly. Her brain whizzed and whirred hoping that maybe she’d get the courage to click on that link and view what little she was allowed to see—see if there was anything at all that linked this person to the situation she was searching for answered to.

Just as her mouse began to hover, her phone suddenly began to buzz and she jumped out of her skin, clicking the name without meaning to. With quivering fingers she lifted the phone to her ear, stunned into silence.

“Tem?”

It was him and his dumb, raspy, deep voice that sent shivers down her spine. As if this situation couldn’t get any more twisted, he just had to go and ring her now.

“Temari, are you there?”

“Yes, sorry!” she replied, forcing a laugh. “I was just looking at something. Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Shikamaru snorted down the end of the line, chuckling. “Nothing. I left my phone at Chōji’s last night—only just grabbed it. I’m on lunch.”

“So am I.”

There was a pause. Had he really just called to hear her voice? If so, as sweet as that might’ve been, Temari did have to admit she had something else on her mind right now.

“So you’re definitely okay, Shikamaru?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I meant to say thank you.”

“Well, you’re welcome.” She was so glad that this was a phone call—she could feel herself getting flustered the more he spoke. “Was that all?”

“Desperate to get rid of me, are we?” The hint of sadness seeping through the sarcasm of his tone left her feeling slightly evil. “One more thing: are you busy tonight?”

Temari winced. “I’ve not been in two nights in a row, and Kankuro will be threatening to follow me if I go out again, for sure,” she smiled, hoping he could hear the apology that she had meant to say just in her tone. Her mind was elsewhere. More precisely it was exactly where her eyes were, set on this name. “Hey, do you know a ‘Kurenai’?”

The silence on the other end was eerie, and she could hear faint babbling of other people on the street instead of him. He must’ve been smoking, and she must have stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Shikamaru?”

“Um, sorry. Yeah. Kurenai was Asuma’s wife’s name.” He cleared his throat. “Why?”

“No reason,” lied Temari, jotting down the name and address that sat on her screen, the only information provided without authorised access.

“That’s so clearly a lie, Tem.”

“It isn’t a lie,” she chirped. “Just forget I asked.”

“Coincidence’s like that don’t just happen...”

“Shikamaru, are you busy Saturday?”

His deep laugh echoed down the phone. “Don’t try and steer me away from the subject, Tem, I—”

“I said,” she spat, toning up the harshness a little to much, “are you busy Saturday?”

“Saturday?”

“Saturday,” she repeated. “I’m pretty sure Kankuro is spending the weekend with his girlfriend at her place, so he won’t be around.” She carefully set her pen down and nibbled on her thumbnail nervously as she continued. “I thought maybe you’d want to meet my other brother?”

“The non-Kankuro one, right?”

“Yes, the one that you spoke to on the phone.”

Again, Shikamaru paused, but not nearly for as long this time. “I don’t know,” he finally said, his monotone voice firmly back. “I mean, I’ll see you but—”

“Okay,” she rushed. “No, then. Don’t worry.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to meet him, I just—”

“It’s fine,” she spat. “We can just do something else.” Temari’s eyes fell to her lap. “If you actually want to.”

“Of course I want to.”

Five words and her spirits lifted instantly. It didn’t make her feel any less of an idiot, but she definitely felt her efforts weren’t totally futile. As she stared down at her notebook and the name and address scrawled on the page, her mind flew from side to side with the craziest of ideas—something that he knew she would hate, something he would never agree to in a million years, just like she’d lied to him about already deciding to do.

Instantly, her mind was made up.

“I’ve got a plan for us,” she smirked, hoping he wouldn’t hear the mischief lingering in her tone. “Secret plan, but a plan. You don’t have to think.” She quickly searched the address she’d written down on the internet, and frowned. “Can you drive?”

She could hear him blow near the microphone what she assumed was smoke. “Uh-huh.”

“Do you have a car?”

“No.”

Shit, she thought. “Do your parents have one?”

“They do. Why?”

Shikamaru was getting suspicious of her—she could tell—so, in the sweetest voice she could muster without sounding ridiculous, Temari made her final play; asked her final question: “Can you borrow it on Saturday?”

“Sure.”

That was too easy.

“I’ve, um…” She heard rustling on the other end and a bell jingle. “I’ve got to go.”

Temari stretched a smile across her face. “Okay. Shall I text you later?”

“If you want to,” he chuckled, unbothered. “Go for it.”

Mixed messages, dumb-ass, she pondered. Good job I know what you’re like by now.

“Right,” he added, the word loaded with finality. “See you later.”

She almost whispered through her smile into the microphone. “Bye.”

“Yeah, bye.”

When the line went dead, Temari could barely believe the situation was real. Here she was with the name and address of the woman who Shikamaru felt so obliged to help and ashamed of himself that he never actually did; the person who might actually help him see that there’s good in the world, and show him how people can let things go and that they understand. She knew it would be intruding on personal space, but she knew it had to be worth a shot. Worst case scenario: if the woman turned out to be really rude and horrible, they could take away from the experience that she probably didn’t deserve the help he offered her.

But what else seemed surreal was Shikamaru. When he joked with her and listened to her, she couldn’t help but picture the obnoxious young man she’d first met, so skinny and scrawny she couldn’t believe he was an adult. After just under one month he’d come so far; he looked so much healthier as though he’d eaten more and better, and generally had a much healthier attitude as far as she could tell. But Temari couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t her efforts as his psychiatrist that had made much of a difference to that. What was affecting him, helping him, seemed to be what she’d done for him as a friend, or whatever she was to him now.

Helping people in whatever way was good, she knew that deep down, but she couldn’t do this with everybody or else she’d wear herself out. She had become a therapist to help everyone, lots of people, and she had to do it the right way.

It was time to put aside all her thoughts of Shikamaru Nara when she was in this room.

So, vowing to finally adhere to her professionalism, she clicked shut the file of Kurenai Sarutobi and quickly skimmed the page of the lady about to walk through her door. She tore the page with the info she’d jotted down from her notebook and slipped it into her bag, knowing that she had all the time in the world to figure the logistics of that out in her own time.

She reached behind her computer and signed the papers to end his time as her patient, and it was if something clicked in her brain as she slid the paperwork into her out-tray. Each hour, from now on, was totally dedicated to whoever was on that couch and not some lanky, handsome genius smoking outside of the florist.

Just in time, Temari slid her phone in her bag, and a gentle rapping on the door told her to lunch was definitely over.

“Hi!” she called out. “Come on in!”

~~~

“I’m leaving,” Shikamaru called out to Ino upstairs, stashing his apron behind the counter on the shop floor. “Chuck me my coat!”

“Get your own coat!”

“Ino, it’s pissing it down outside! Give me my coat!”

After a short moment of waiting, the coat tumbled down the stairs and he smiled. “Thanks,” he said, grabbed the coat and throwing it on. “See you later.”

If she did reply, he didn’t wait around to listen; he was out of that door as quickly as he could be. It wasn’t that he was desperate to be in the rain, or even that he was desperate for the cigarette that he habitually slotted between his lips, but after a long day, as soon as the clock struck four-thirty, he was ready for fresh air to hit his face. Plus, he couldn’t be roped into closing up shop again.

As he hurried to light his cigarette, Shikamaru just so happened to glance up and across the street, curious if his favourite overprotective carpenter was mulling around by the window as he had been on Shikamaru’s lunch break. And, as if by magic, there he was, raking his hands through his brown hair and looking straight into his eyes.

Upon finally lighting his smoke and puffing out a large cloud into the cold air, Shikamaru shot the man a subtle smile, raising his hand—half-arsed—in recognition.

As with Ino, he didn’t wait around to see his response—he wasn’t sure he wanted to—but he new two things instantly as he started walking along the pavement. The first was that he wished he’d taken up Temari’s offer to meet Gaara, knowing how pissed Kankuro would inevitably be and how amusing it would be for him, if a little scary. The second was more important for this precise moment; his coat had no hood or waterproofing, and it really was pissing it down.

Shikamaru rooted around the inside pocket of his coat with his spare hand, never sacrificing a moment of extra warmth that each drag of his cigarette gave him over that task, and searched for loose change which he was sure he’d accumulated over time. He pulled out a monstrous four-pound-sixty.

Enough to get me home, he noted, shoving it into the pocket of his jeans and continuing his walk to the bus stop.

By the time he got to the bus stop, the cigarette he desperately clung to was on it’s last legs, and he put the tube to rest under his foot as he fell back onto the seat of the shelter. In his pocket, his phone buzzed, and he slowly pried it out from his pocket, rolling his eyes.

Ino: ‘U sure walk slow for some1 in the rain x’

‘I’ll paint that window black one day, Ino.’

Shaking his head, he quickly checked Temari’s number, something deep in his gut wishing that any second his phone would buzz in his hands and he could hear her voice again. He felt stupid for it, but he couldn’t help himself typing a pathetic ‘Hello’ and staring it, unsent in his message box.

“Hey, kid!”

His head shot up, and right there stood the bus and a red-faced old man at the wheel, leaning toward him.

“You getting on or what?”

Sheepishly, Shikamaru hauled himself up and onto the bus, emptying the change into the drivers hand and shoving his phone and the ticket he received into his inside pocket when he flopped back into his seat near the front. His fingertips brushed against the silver lighter that always loomed in that pocket, and a shiver, as if he hadn’t expected it, made stuck the hairs on the back of his neck on end as he enveloped it in his palm carefully.

When he took it from his pocket, he examined it as he always did; running his thumb along every smooth edge, across the curved top and flicking it open. For a second he stared at the place from which the flame should burst from—a flame he had never dared to ignite—but all too soon, as though he wasn’t controlling his own hand, the young man flicked it shut once again.

Click. Pause. Click. Pause. Click. Pause.

Countless times he had sat in his garden and stared at that lighter, lifeless and unlit, and felt it burn his hand until he could look at it no longer. Sometimes he’d even been unable to look at it, but despite that he’d never go anywhere without it in his pocket. He had to; most of the time it was more of a comfort blanket to him than anything he’d ever owned, and in any moment of unease he reached for it without thinking, which always lead to the same repetitive pattern.

Click. Pause. Click. Pause. Click. Pause.

He wasn’t sure that anyone really understood what it meant to him to own it or why it was so precious to him, and as he sat on that bus seat he was sure the noise was bothering countless people. At the same time, however, he didn’t care. What had triggered his need to fiddle with it’s lid he wasn’t sure, but the action certainly accompanied the slightly uncomfortable feeling in his chest. Admittedly, it was probably nerves as to why Temari had been so vague earlier, and why she’d asked about the things she did, the person she did…

He felt his shoulders tightening as he remembered her sad face, and as the bus came to a stop Shikamaru opened the lighter one final time. Asuma, he thought to himself, I’m so sorry…

“Shikamaru? Shikamaru Nara?”

Click.

The voice was so soft he’d barely managed to recognise it, but as he lifted his head with the lighter shut firmly and tight in his fist, the was no denying it. He gulped and hopped to his feet without thinking, his eyes too permanently set on the woman before him and the little pair of legs that hid behind hers.

This is a cruel joke, universe, he thought as he stared down into the eyes of Kurenai Sarutobi, rife with mixed emotion and clearly as unsettled as he was. The little hand she gripped in her own left him speechless, and his mouth fell open as the little girl peered around her mother and up at him.

Quietly, as she tugged on Kurenai’s sleeve, she whispered, “Mummy, who’s that?” But her mother was equally as speechless as the young man before them. Her eyes fell down to the lighter in his hands and she sighed, her lips parting slowly.

He knew what she was about to say, and there was no in way he could stomach it.

With too much haste Shikamaru shoved the lighter back into his pocket and, mouth moving silently as it tried to form any word whatsoever, he slipped passed her, shaking his head sadly.

 “S’cuse me!” he called to the driver. “Hello, can I get off please?”

“This isn’t your stop, son,” the older gent laughed. “Your ticket says—”

“Please.”

The driver frowned at him as he fumbled for the button to open the door, and Shikamaru shot him a thankful look as he hurried off the bus and into the rain. He wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck and chewed on his bottom lip as each freezing cold droplet smacked him in the face. Moments ago fingering the lighter in his pocket was calming, a charm if you will, and yet in the last few minutes he’d felt like throwing it in every bin he sped past as he walked. He didn’t deserve it.

The little girl, he thought to himself. That little girl…

All these years he had been right: he really was too much of a coward to face a seven-year-old.

The old man was right—his stop was nowhere near here—and it was so wet he could barley function. And, worst of all, he was alone, and he knew himself too well—he’s had too many therapists—to deny that the one thing he couldn’t be was alone right now. But where was he? Almost nothing was familiar except for one huge tree he could see at the end of the street ahead—that tree was at the end of the road of her practice.

“No,” he told himself bitterly. “You can’t burden her with this. She isn’t your therapist anymore, asshole.”

But he had to! His entire body compelled him to, as though his mind wasn’t the boss of him anymore and it couldn’t decide when he took a step or whether he edged closer to the road’s edge. It was his gut that was in charge now—a complete anomaly in his boring, repetitive life—and it was going to drag him to Temari whether he wanted it to or not. Somehow, he knew what he needed. Screw enjoying the silence, and screw burdening his ex-therapist with all of his crap, she was also important to him; a friend at the very least.

If he had to choose the rush that came with seeing and listening to Temari, whether he told her the truth or not, or the inevitable feeling that would drown him if he went home and hid away in his room, the choice was obvious.

He’d drowned himself in his sorrows, or swallowed them down, too many times to count. It was his turn to be selfish.

Despite the cold his cheeks grew hot, a concoction of hot tears and embarrassment flooding them. He drew to a halt, his feet landing in a puddle. Each droplet of water pelted into his eyes, blinding him, and it forced him to look down. Just out of interest he checked the time, and it was only four-fifty. Shikamaru knew from experience that her last session lasted until five, and with any luck she would still be in that room; with an extra heap of luck on top of that, if he ran, he could make it there in ten minutes.

Then he simply had to hope that the fifteen pennies he had left in the pocket of his jeans was enough to convince the lady at reception to let him through to her.

~~~

Temari wasn’t ready for the door to fling open as she started packing her bag. And when she turned around to tell whoever it was that she would do whatever they wanted from her tomorrow, she definitely wasn’t prepared for this.

He stood before her, dripping from head to toe with windburned cheeks as he struggled to catch his breath. Somehow he looked like he’d been chased, but by what she couldn’t even begin to imagine. For a moment she suspected Kankuro, but as she looked properly she could see the bloodshot nature of his eyes, and her heart began to pound faster and faster.

There was a puddle developing on the wooden floor he stood on underneath his boots, but he didn’t seem to care. Chest expanding and contracting rapidly, Shikamaru flashed her an impossibly believable smile and couldn’t take his eyes off of her, as if his life depended on it.

For all she knew about him, maybe it did.

“Shikamaru?” she gasped, immediately dropping her bag into her desk chair. “What’s wrong—what’re you doing here?”

He blinked rapidly and rubbed his eyes, wiping some of the water away.

“You’re soaking wet!”

“I’m fine,” he sighed, throwing his sopping wet coat off onto the couch with a thud. Even his awful flowery uniform was stuck to him and despite the desire to stare below his neck, Temari watched his eyes closely. “Busy day?”

“Yeah…I was, er, just going home,” she stumbled, trying not to smile and ending up gaping. Something was wrong here; she couldn’t forget that. “You can’t be here, you know?”

“I know.”

“They know you’re not my patient anymore. How on earth did you get in here?”

He bit on his lip, unwinding his scarf from around his neck; ten shades darker from the rain. He looked like he’d been crying, but she didn’t know if that was just the rain. “I said it was urgent and the lady at reception said she was just about to go home. I don’t think she could be bothered to stop me.”

Temari still couldn’t close her mouth. “What the hell are you doing here?” Quickly she sped towards him and put her hands on his shoulders. “You aren’t feeling really low again, are you? If you are you’ve got to tell me.”

He shook his head, but it didn’t hide the red around his eyes. “I thought I was,” he lied, “but to be honest I just wanted to see you.”

“I said I’d see you on Saturday.”

“Saturday isn’t now.” He blushed as one of his hands held hers against his shoulder as he turned his head, looking out of the window. “Can we shut that?”

“Why?” Temari grew a little rigid and stepped backwards, never taking her gaze from him. Carefully she pulled the binds down and cocked her head to one side.. “You’re not paranoid now, too, are you?”

Shikamaru’s face contorted into the most wonderful smile she had ever seen. “Temari?”

“Yeah?” Her cheeks flushed, just knowing he had a smile like that for her.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.”

It was as though, in a matter of seconds, his eyes changed and he sped towards her before she could think to say anything else. His hands captured her waist as he crashed his lips into hers, taking the spark that ignited in her eyes the closer he grew as his permission, and she did nothing but granted it. Temari’s arms flew around his neck and hooked themselves firmly in place. It was so full of rough, passionate urgency, especially on his part, that she barely noticed herself climbing onto her tip toes, desperate to be closer to him.

Neither of them, now that they’d felt it, could bear to lose the genuine, harsh passion and stack of feelings this brought. Stopping wasn’t an option—neither did they want it to be.

Temari weaved her fingers through the edge of his hairline until her composure began to vanish, and she started to tug gently on tiny handfuls. She could feel herself melting at his every time his hands traced up and down hers sides gently, from the top of her torso to her lower hip. His fingertips lingered at her hips, almost but never quite hooking underneath the waistband of her skirt on their way.

The more she pulled at his hair and absentmindedly ground her hipbones against him, the more the need for her grew inside him. Without thinking he let his hands run down her thighs and lifted her, and to his surprise her long legs tightened around his waist.

Suddenly could feel it all at once—all of him and the desire that had been building for so long in full force, and her heart pounded faster in her chest with the same want that rampaged through his eyes.

“Put me on the table,” she commanded through the kisses. “Right fucking now.”

Without hesitation, Shikamaru did as he was told and immediately his thumb teased open the top button of her blouse.

“You’re a tease, Nara,” she whispered, her hands shamelessly pulling at the collar of his shirt.

“I try to be.”

“Shut up and take my damn shirt off, flower boy.”

In seconds the buttons were undone and her shirt at their feet, and the sudden hit of cold air felt like nothing under his hot breath. Shikamaru followed in hot pursuit, undoing only a few buttons before throwing the ghastly floral shirt to the ground.

As stared at what he was luck enough to have before him, Shikamaru’s heartbeat quickened. He felt almost like he was going to faint as she grabbed his shoulders in her soft hands, her cheeks growing redder by the second from the heat and anticipation. The darkness of the room didn’t matter; the little light from the lamplight was enough to illuminate her for him, and the radiance that shone from behind her eyes stopped him dead for a moment. He began retrace his steps, even more delicately touching her sides than before, lingering longer on her lower abdomen and ribs than she last remembered.

Although, it easily could’ve been her impatience taking hold of her once more.

“Tem, can—”

“Don’t,” interrupted Temari, her impatience and lust driving her body. “Don’t you dare—just do it.”

He reached round back and fiddled with the clasp of her bra, desperate to dispose of the cloth that blocked what his hands desired, all the while too greedy to break their kiss again. Shikamaru couldn’t help it. He wanted every breathe to be taken with her, touching her, holding her close. As he finally set free the clasp and threw the final garment to the floor, he pressed himself right against the table, feeling Temari’s arms tighten around his neck as one of his hands finally took hold of what it wanted.

“How’s this,” he mumbled into their kiss, “for unethical?”

Temari didn’t even bother humouring him with an answer, simply unhooking her arms from his neck and letting them travel down his chest as he chewed on her lip, fighting back gentle moaned. She could feel his body relax and quiver the lower her fingertips grazed, and the broken breaths he took were too much for her to handle. Reluctantly he let her lip loose from his teeth and Temari let out a soft hum.

And with that she just let him. She let his hands roam, his lips pepper her jawline until she pushed him down her neck. She allowed his fingertips to pull at the hem on her skirt, ride it up and push her back. With every movement he made, she felt important. In no way was this the slow and sensual situation she’d mulled over in her mind last night, full of kind words and affection—it didn’t need to be. It was raw, it was real and it was them, exactly how she wanted it to be.

Never in his life had Shikamaru wanted something so much—someone so much—as when he pulled away from the kisses he placed across her abdomen to look down at her on that table. And when she sat up and her hands tore through the fastener of his jeans, he, too, had no objection. Nor could he object when her legs flew around his waist once again and he felt at once her exact feelings.

Temari couldn’t handle the way his breath danced against her neck, and how his deep moans fluttered to her ear. Even how his hair fell free and caressed her bare skin drove her crazier with every motion he made.

And Shikamaru certainly couldn’t take the way she said his name, almost silently, or the way her fingernails scratched at his back desperately.

It was like nothing either of them had felt before. They didn’t need to go slow, and they didn’t need to rush. As they continued, scaling higher and higher toward their moments of ecstasy, neither of them even patient enough to fully undress, the pair felt liberated. A weight of frustration finally reaching the point at which it could drop, crash, and release it’s havoc upon the both of them. And they were not going to stop it.

Over this desk they had spoken for the very first time, and now over this desk they explored one another in the way they had so hungrily hoped for, over and over and over again…

~~~

Shikamaru’s knees quivered as he buried his face in her neck, the both of them grinning ear to ear as they struggled for breath. He could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his now, the gentler touch of her fingertips weaving through his hairline, and he pulled back to look into her eyes.

Blushing, Temari felt somewhat starstruck, and cupped his cheeks with her hands, now sheer with sweat rather than the depressing layer of rain and tears he’d walked in wearing. Her forehead pressed against his and she found herself giggling, adjusting her position on the table, closer to the edge. Even now—no, especially now—she felt compelled to be as close to him as she possibly could, and Shikamaru didn’t seem to object.

As he smiled, he zipped up his jeans and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, chuckling softly. Much to her dismay he left the table and grabbed her blouse, throwing it her way before shuffling back towards her. Examining her scruffy hair and the red marks that littered her collarbones made his eyes narrow, lips shifting into a smirk.

“Pleased with yourself, flower boy?” mused Temari, blushing as she rushed to cover her torso.

He shrugged, reached for her hips and pulling them toward him off of the table. “You could say that.”

“I thought you said you’d never had a girlfriend.”

“I haven’t,” he sighed. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Oh. Right.” Her tone of bitter jealousy was remarkable—it took all his strength not to laugh. “Well, you unfortunately do.”

“Unfortunately?”

Temari replicated his mischievous grin and pressed a soft kiss on his lips. “I’m kidding.”

“Of course you are.” He returned the kiss. “You really are so fucking beautiful.”

“I know,” she giggled, her hands flush against his bare chest, and Shikamaru couldn’t help but take a step back, smiling.

He leaned down to grab his sopping wet uniform and groaned, his whole body whizzing with the adrenaline. From the way his top lip curved she knew whatever followed would be accidentally condescending, and yet waited until his mouth was open, ready to speak, to butt in by shuffling off of her desk.

“I’m glad you came,” she said feebly, doing up the final few buttons of her blouse and adjusting her skirt.

“As am I.”

Temari nodded. “I didn’t really want to wait until Saturday for you to kiss me again.”

“Neither did I.”

Oh, the little smile on his face; why was it so stupidly perfect?

As he stood, watching her hair flutter and her curves sway as she strolled closer to him, straight into his arms, Shikamaru couldn’t ignore how stunning the woman before him truly way. Of course he already knew that—since he’d stepped through the door he’d thought it was perfectly clear that’s how he viewed her—but as she looked up into his eyes he knew it was more than that.

There was only so much you could dwell on someone’s physical beauty until it grew a bore—Shikamaru knew that from every week-long crush he’d had at school—and here stood his perfect example of a woman, whose eyes dug deep into him and urged him to be himself. With her, he felt calmer, and until she pulled him closer and buried her face into his bare neck, Shikamaru had forgotten all about his ordeal before arriving as though her presence wiped his memory. But now, as her fingers traced patterns on his skin, something compelled him, urged him to be honest with her.

She knew he was down, he could tell, and he hardly wanted to lie to her face.

“Tem?”

She hummed gently into his collarbone.

“I saw her today. On the bus.”

“Who?”

“Kurenai, and her daughter.” He took a deep breath and it rushed out, staggered. “She recognised me.”

“Did you speak to her?”

With a shake of his head, a humourless laugh escaped his throat. “Yeah, right. As if I’ve got the guts to do that.”

“What do you think she thinks of you? Surely you don’t think she hates you, Shikamaru.”

He grunted, burying his face in his hair. “I can’t say I’m itching to talk about it, Temari.”

“You brought it up.”

“I know,” he sighed, shaking his head. “I just thought I’d tell you.”

“You don’t have to feel obliged to tell me everything anymore.”

“I don’t feel obliged. I want to.”

Slowly Temari pulled away so she was at arms distance from him. Her lips curved up into a sad smile. “Then you’ve got to be open.” She watched as his eyes grew narrower and sadder by the second and she took his hands, squeezing them gently. He was so handsome; it was a shame he was burdened by such sadness. “We don’t have to talk about it right now,” she added.”

Shikamaru looked grateful and squeezed her hands in return in three short bursts before letting go, reaching up to fix his hair back into a slightly less messy ponytail. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“But you’ve got to remember something,” said Temari, biting on her lip as she walked back to the—now violated—desk to find her phone. “You’ve got to love, or—at the very least—accept yourself in here…” She pointed at her temple. “Nothing will come easily until then.”

She could see in his eyes that he was ready to pick apart what she meant like that, but Temari wasn’t ready to answer any questions. She herself wasn’t sure what she meant by that, and sadly she knew she wouldn’t have an answer to him if he did part his lips any say anything to her. The way she felt about him was so complex, and he was generally so confusing, that she wasn’t able to peg it down even in her own mind. No words could describe the jumble of want, admiration and pity that swelled when she looked into his dark eyes or that pensive expression. After what they’d just done what was she meant to say? She adored him, undeniably, but she wasn’t sure that was what was good for him.

Maybe, for now, keeping that quiet would be the best thing for him.

“Put your shirt on,” she mumbled before he could speak, forcing a smile. “I’ll call you a cab.”

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