#all i ever seem to do lately is miss people. blegh

[racingmiku2018]

hrgrhrge i shouldve gone to sleep hours ago

#racing! #ive once again hit the point in the night where im like #psychic beaming useless 'i love yous' and 'i miss yous' to people i dont talk to anymore #useless bc ill never get replies. lol #theres reasons we dont talk anymore obviously #they hurt less now. the spaces they left are less jagged and more smoothed out #i kept worrying at the sharp edges until they got worn to a nice polished finish #even so. i miss you. i love you. i hope youre well #all of u #i hope theres a world where we still talk frequently. i hope were all still happy and healthy there #all i ever seem to do lately is miss people. blegh #at thisbpoint ive missed people for longer than ive known them and thats an odd feeling #i wonder if v misses me at all. i miss him sometimes #i hope hes doing well and having fun every day. its probably all i can do for him now #we havent talked in years #that wound feels fresher than it should. maybe it didnt heal up as fast since i knew him longest

[cheeriecherry]

Birds Of A Feather [4/7]

Hawks x Fem!Reader

Warnings: some swearing, a kiss

Part 4/7

By the end of the week, you’re walking into Hawks’ penthouse with nothing but a duffel bag of clothes. Most of your stuff had been moved to storage, but you’d told him you’d bring your own sheets, blankets, and pillows for the couch. He’d stared at you like you’d grown a second head.

He’d then gone on a tangent about how he had guest rooms, obviously, and how his sheets would be softer than yours. He’s probably not wrong, with his 1200 thread count egyptian cotton, but the way he says it ruffles you a bit. You don’t mention it, though. You don’t want to give him any kind of reason to kick you out.

“Hey chickadee, you gonna stand in the entrance all night, or are you gonna come in?”

You snap out of your stupor when Hawks calls to you, and continue lugging your things through the door.

The inside of the penthouse is beautiful; tastefully decorated (probably professionally), and it’s spacious rough that you could spread your wings out fully. The doorways are wider than average, likely catering to your boss’ specific needs. The entire place is gorgeous, immaculate even, and any person in their right mind would kill to live here.

You kind of detest it.

“I had some people come in this afternoon and set up the guest suite for you,” he says, kicking off his boots and flopping onto the couch. “They also brought some of your uniforms in from the agency, so you can change here. You won’t have to go in so early.”

“Thank you,” you tell him, and you mean it. Personal opinions aside, he’s let you into his home out of kindness. You’ll not soon disrespect that.

“Ah, you’re standing and staring again. Are you that impressed with the place?”

You snap back to attention for a second time, and hike your bag further up your shoulder. “I-it’s not that!” you try to explain, “I was just expecting something...different?”

Hawks sits up on the couch. “Whadya mean?”

“I dunno.” You shrug. “More lived in, I guess? Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful here, especially the balcony, but it’s also very...what’s the word…”

“Mature and charming?” he tries, but you shake your head.

He offers a few more suggestions, things like ‘perfect’ and ‘homey’ and ‘colourful’, each word hitting further and further from your mark.

Then it comes to you. “Monotone and sterile!” you nearly shout, your success momentarily quieting your desire to be polite. “It’s like it’s fresh out of a magazine, or a model home. Don’t take it the wrong way, Boss, I’m not hating on your tastes, but if I’m gonna be staying here indefinitely, I’m gonna have to add some personal touches.” You remember your manners. “If that’s okay…”

You worry that you may have offended him, with the way he’s looking at you, but a smile slowly spreads across his face, his eyes sparkling.

“Finally,” he sighs, “someone who speaks their damn mind.”

“Eh?”

“Do you know how many of the people I’ve invited here tell me ‘how beautiful’ it is?” He adjusts his wings and settles comfortably back into the couch. “All of them. Every single one. And look, I’m grateful that I’ve got this place, but it’s just a house. No sentimentality, no memories...just a space.”

“Well...it’s polite to not insult someone’s home when they invite you over…” you mumble, the severity of your outburst making your face heat up.

“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe they’re all schmoozing and hoping to get on my good side.”

The bitterness in his tone doesn’t go unnoticed by you, but you decide to leave it be. He should be free to be himself in his own home, and not have to put up any kind of front. You hoped he’d supply you the same courtesy, when you inevitably would wake up on the wrong side of the bed some mornings.

“Anyways,” he flips the TV on and tosses the remote to the side, “it’s late. You should probably unpack your stuff before you’re too tired.”

“Yeah…” you realize how wiped out you are as the weariness starts to settle in. “I’ve got tomorrow off though, so...if I wake up on time, I’ll bring you curry.”

You can hear him cheering as you walk down the hall to the guest room, and you smile. You’ll never understand his love for chicken, even though his enthusiasm boosted your confidence.

The room is spacious and airy, and has a beautiful view of the city. The bed itself is probably big enough to hold three people, and you’re silently grateful that your wings won’t be hanging on the floor while you sleep anymore. 

You set your bag down by the door, and flop face first onto the mattress. God, it was the most plush thing you’d ever had the pleasure to lay on.

“I’ll unpack tomorrow,” you mumble, sinking further into the sheets and, eventually, sleep.

In the distance, you hear Hawks snoring.

----

You wake up the next day to sunlight hitting your face. It’s bright, and annoying, and too warm, and your bed really wants you to keep sleeping but you don’t think you can.

You sit up.

You can feel that your hair is a disheveled mess, and your tongue feels gummy and sour.

“Blegh.”

You (regrettably) roll out of bed and make your way to the bathroom to fix your morning vibes, checking the time along the way. Ten is later than you would have liked to wake up, but you suppose you really needed the sleep. And you did, surprisingly, feel more rested than you had in months.

It’s ten thirty by the time you’re done in the washroom, overall energy more put together and presentable, and you waste no time heading for the kitchen.

The kitchen which is...painfully under-stocked. A couple of condiments and wilting vegetables in the fridge...some frozen meat in the freezer...a bag of rice under the sink, for some reason, and...a completely full spice rack, every bottle unopened.

You knew your boss didn’t spend a lot of time at home, but this was just sad. 

You make a mental note to go shopping later.

Thankfully he seems to have the necessary ingredients for chicken curry, which you’re happy about. It means you won’t have to brave the store just yet.

Bit by bit, you pull out what you need in order to cook, only sitting down when you have a moment to spare as the rice cooks.

‘Hey Boss, I’m making curry for lunch. Want me to bring you some?’

You send him a text. It’s still fairly early, and you know he has his meetings in the morning, so you doubt that he’ll get back to you before-

Your phone buzzes.

‘Chickadee, you sure know the way to my heart. I’ll leave my office window open.’

You send him a thumbs up emoji.

----

Once the food is finished, you pack it up into two containers, opting to leave the rest in the pot for now. You made lots, enough to get several meals out of it, just in case Hawks pulled his ‘too busy to cook’ excuse when trying to convince you to order take-out.

It doesn’t take long to fly to the agency, the skies much clearer than the roads. The city itself seems relatively calm, no sounds of explosions or screaming. There is a distant plume of dark smoke on the horizon, though…

But there were other heroes in the area. You wouldn’t be missed if you didn’t show up for one disaster...right?

But then you land in the window of your boss’ office, and your worry spikes. The room is empty, door closed, lights off, paperwork strewn about on the desk...like he’d run off in a hurry.

You pull your phone out and send him a text.

‘Lemme know if something came up. I brought lunch, but I can put it away for later. Stay safe!

-Chickadee’

He doesn’t reply, but that’s expected if he’s dealing with some kind of crisis. Maybe you should have headed to whatever disaster you’d seen earlier...if it was bad enough to call on your boss, it must be a pretty dire situation. Maybe he could use an extra pair of wings?

You sigh and take a seat beside the window, staring out at the city skyline. The black smoke across the way has turned to a dusty grey colour, a much less threatening hue, and one that bode well for any possible fires.

He’ll be fine, you decide, with other heroes undoubtedly on the scene. By the time you’d get there, whatever was happening would be dealt with.

You pull out your phone to scroll through the news while you eat.

Nothing urgent appears on the screen, nothing to incline that you were needed somewhere, nothing to say extra help was needed. Just day-old stories, gossip columns, the occasional media review. You do startle a little when a new article pops up that’s focused around your boss. You click on it, expecting to see some kind of haggard scene...but you only laugh.

“Hawks, most eligible bachelor in Japan, off the market?” You scroll further into the article to see what kind of nonsense the reporters have come up with this time.

What you don’t expect, is to find pictures of yourself littering the page. Pictures of you and Hawks together. On patrol, talking over lunch at a cafe he took you to one time, walking into his agency side by side, and -most recently- the two of you landing on his balcony.

You’re slightly panicked, and very, very flustered. Had he seen the column? God, he was probably used to it, though, being as popular as he was. All he had to do was look at someone and the media would start crying wolf, which in your opinion, was stupid.

Still, the more you read the article, the more you find it has some good points. You two did spend a lot of time together, more than he did with any of his other friends. But that’s all you are. Friends. Friends, and completely platonic roommates.

You weren’t sure why that made your heart sink so much.

So you copied the link to the article and sent it to him, typing a quick ‘lol’ afterwards. At the very least, he might get a laugh out of it.

----

You finish eating in record time, scarfing down a portion and a half of curry. It was lonely, sitting in Hawks’ office by yourself. You wondered if he ever felt like that when he was up here on his own. He was too busy for most things, too fast for his own good. Did that include friendships? He made time for you when he could, but you understood the busy and demanding life of a hero...other people might not.

You...understood.

The dull ache that you’ve felt in your chest for the past year returns, suddenly. The sadness and grief, the emptiness and all-encompassing tiredness, the big overhanging question of ‘what’s even the point?’. The point of being a hero, the point of suffering for the people who love you and hate you and who don’t even know you.

“Shit,” you sigh, your head and shoulders hanging low, wing dragging against the floor.

Hawks had brightened your life up so much these last few months. He’d brought the smile back to your face, the joy back to flying. You missed him when he was gone, worried for him when he was off on missions, fuck, you even cooked him lunch of your day off just so you could spend time together.

You were head over heels for him, and so totally screwed.

----

Hawks doesn’t return home until late that night. Far past your usual bedtime, but you’re far too distressed to sleep. If you hadn’t had your earlier revelation, you’d have chalked it up to ‘being worried’. But now?

Now that you knew you had feelings for him, all your thoughts were clouded. You were concerned because you liked him. You hung out with him because you liked him. Everything was because you liked him!

It was fucking with you a bit.

“What are you still doing up?” his voice sounds from the front entryway, startling you bad enough that you almost fall off the couch.

Your wide eyes snap to him, immediately taking him in. He’s worse for wear, that’s for sure. His uniform is singed in places, and you’re pretty sure the scuff on his neck is a burn. Most notably are his wings. Or lack thereof. 

Featherless red nubs is a more accurate description.

“You look like shit,” you say, keeping the air about you casual.

He makes his way over to you and finds a seat on the couch adjacent, wincing as he sits a little too quickly.

“Thanks, chickadee. You always know what to say to make me feel better.”

Your face heats up. “I-I just mean! Long day?”

He groans, letting his head fall back against the cushions. You’re vaguely aware that he’s started talking, but the only thing you can pay attention to is the narrow column of his exposed throat, and how badly you wanted to lean over and press your lips against it.

You snap out of your daze when he nudges you with his foot.

“I feel like I’m talking to a wall,” you quips, devoid of any malice.

“Sorry,” you mumble, “what were you saying?”

“I was saying that we should hang out now that I’ve got a few days off. Kick our feet up, instead of culminating in a stuffy office.”

You shake your head. “As much as I’d love to, I still have work. Remember? I was already off today, I can’t miss more days.”

He whines, looking at you with sad puppy eyes. “It’ll be boring here by myself. You make the day more fun.”

“Hawks, I can’t-”

“Keigo.”

You perk up. “Huh?”

He rearranges himself on the couch so he can look at you more comfortably. “My name is Takami Keigo. Call me Keigo when it’s just us, okay?”

You consider it. “Why not Takami? That’s polite here, right? To use the surname?”

He nods. “Unless you’re close with the person. Family, good friends, the like.”

Your wings puff up, fully betraying the fact that you’re pleased he considers you a ‘good friend’. It doesn’t go unnoticed, and a teasing grin spreads across Haw-Keigo’s face.

“See? You waaaaant to. Say it with me: Kei-”

“Keigo.”

You don’t miss the way his cheeks tinge pink.

“You got it. And now, since we’re on a first name basis, I’m asking you to take a few days off to hang out with me.”

You’re exasperated.

“C’mon chickadee.”

“No.”

“Pleeeeease?”

“No!”

“Y/N…”

“No, Keigo.”

“Alright then. Now, as your boss, I’m officially giving you three days off.”

“You can’t just do that!”

“I can!”

“Hawks!”

“Keigo.”

“Sorry. Keigo!”

His expression is cheeky as you go back and forth for a while, and he’s unrelenting even as you gently beat him with a couch pillow.

It eventually morphs into a small war, the two of you chasing each other around the apartment, wielding whatever cushions you can get your hands on. You eventually end up tripping over the coffee table, shouting as you smack your foot and fall into an ungraceful heap on your back. Keigo wastes no time pouncing on you and pinning your arms beside your head.

Your wings are splayed out on either side of you, and he’s careful not to kneel on them. Even with your foot throbbing the way it is, he knows you could easily get away if you tried. But you don’t struggle. Instead you lay there quietly, out of breath, eyes locked on his. He can feel the warmth creeping up his neck, and you can see the redness returning to his cheeks.

“I...saw the article you sent to me today,” he begins, voice low. “I’m sorry they brought you into it.”

“I don’t mind,” you admit, “I just worry it might be detrimental to you. Some of your fans will be pissed.”

“Seriously?” He sits up on your chest, releasing your wrists. “You’re not online much, are you. Most of my fans ship us.”

“The hell does that mean?”

He laughs, soft of melodious. “It means that they like the idea of us. As a couple.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?” you wonder.

“No? Why would it?”

You avert your gaze from him, your insecurities and doubts creeping in under the scrutiny of his golden eyes. “I...guess you could just...do better, is all.”

“Chickadee...Y/N, look at me.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and shake your head. You feel very exposed laid out on the carpet, and you wish you’d never said anything.

A warm hand cups your cheek. “C’mon, sweetheart. Let me see those pretty eyes.”

You’re so flustered you don’t know what to do with yourself. Your heart is beating rapidly against your ribcage, and you’re positive he can see your embarrassment when you finally do as he asks.

But he only smiles gently at you, leaning down to rest his forehead against yours.

“Listen to me, and listen well. You’re the best I can do. You bring out everything good in me, and make me forget the bad. You make me happy.”

“Keigo-”

He shushes you by bringing your lips together.

#hawks x reader #takami keigo x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #winged reader au

[gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights]

Rating: G

Summary: When Marinette has to cook for her family reunion, Adrien offers to help. Only one problem: he has no idea how to cook. With Plagg's help, Adrien proposes a Disney-inspired solution that will either keep him from making a fool of himself, or backfire terribly. (Spoiler alert: it backfires terribly.) A university-aged Adrinette reveal fic.

Word Count: 6437

XXX

“Plagg, what am I going to do?  I don’t know how to cook!”  Adrien pulled at his hair as he paced circles around his apartment.

Plagg, meanwhile, lazily hovered with his paws crossed behind his head.  “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you tried to swoop in like some kind of superhero.”

“I am a superhero.”  Not that it mattered, because his superpower was destruction. Maybe his Lady would’ve been able to help Marinette cook dinner for her family reunion, but Adrien was … well.  Even though the cat miraculous didn’t actually make him more disaster prone, he had enough bad luck in the kitchen on his own.  He’d survived on spaghetti and takeout since moving into his own apartment this semester.

“Why don’t you just tell her you can’t do it?  Something came up.  You fell headfirst into a pool of cream cheese.  You got zapped by an akuma and all your hair fell out.”

“That hasn’t happened in at least a month.  Besides, I can’t flake out on Marinette.  She needs me.”  He stood up straighter.

“What she needs is someone who won’t turn soup into an explosive.  What about your friend Alya?  Isn’t her mom some kind of chef?”

“She’s out of town for Christmas.  Nino too, or I’d ask him to help me.”  Did he know anyone else who could teach him how to cook in one night?  Kagami was back in Japan, Chloe wouldn’t touch an oven to save her life, Luka was on tour with XY… Ladybug was pretty much his only friend still in town.  She would probably be willing to teach him, but on their last patrol she’d mentioned she’d be busy the next few days with her own plans.

“You need to get some more friends, kid.”

“It’s kind of late for that,” Adrien murmured.  Too many people in his classes were more interested in the Gabriel name than in him.  Besides, he might not have made a lot of new friends, but he’d gotten much closer to Marinette and his old friends now that he had more control over his schedule.  

“Well, as your very first and best friend—”

“Chloe was technically my first friend.”

Plagg glared.  “As your first and best friend, I will help you for the low low price of two wheels of Camembert.”

Adrien stopped pacing.  He only realized he’d ended up in the bathroom when he caught a glimpse of his reflection.

“Wait.  You know how to cook?”

Plagg scoffed.  “I’ve been alive since the dawn of time.  I’ve picked up a thing or two.”

Adrien raised an eyebrow.  “You also thought that my blender was a jet tub for kwamis.”

“Okay, so you humans have invented some fancy new gadgets since I was last out, big deal.  I still know more about cooking than you.”

Unfortunately, he was probably right.

“Alright.  Deal.”  Adrien held out a finger, and he and Plagg shook on it.

“Alright, loverboy, let’s get cooking.”

XXX

“No, not like that!  What are you trying to do, knock someone out with that thing?”

“At least I wouldn’t do it with the smell!”  Adrien instinctively waved the frying pan in front of his nose, and the burned remnants of roux glopped out onto the tile.

“Coward.  It’ll taste good once you put it all together.”

Adrien wasn’t convinced.  But then again, he hadn’t followed Plagg’s instructions exactly.  Plagg never gave him quite enough time to pour the ingredients in the pan or measure the spices with the little spoons.  

“I wish you’d be able to help me while I’m there.”  Adrien sighed.  “I’m going to forget all of this as soon as I leave.”

“You can’t be good at everything, I guess.”  Plagg shrugged.  “You can still always call your girlfriend and say you gave up.”

“She’s a good friend.  We’ve been over this.”  He’d promised not to call Marinette ‘just a friend’ on the grounds that she deserved better than that.  But she still wasn’t his girlfriend.  Which was fine, so why did his stomach sink slightly?  Probably just nervousness about the task ahead of him.  

“And I’m not giving up.  What if you just … hid in my hair and whispered advice?”

Plagg tapped his chin.  “Maybe if you wear a hat …” A grin suddenly split his tiny face.  “Hey, what if you wore that ug—uh, that beret Ladybug gave you?  You know, from your fan club?”

“Great idea!”  Adrien bolted out of the bathroom and towards his closet.  He wore the hat every once in a while—its ridiculous energy was too good to leave hidden like it had been in lycée.  He made a special point of wearing it to every meeting with his dad, though he did feel a little bit nervous of wearing it around Marinette.  She was in their university’s design program; she’d probably think it was tacky.

Oh well.  He’d probably been tackier around her before.

“You sure you’ll fit in here?”  Adrien squinted at the underside of the beret before pulling it over his hair.

“Looks cozy enough to me.”  Plagg slipped under, and Adrien felt him shuffle around. Unfortunately, his voice was too muffled for Adrien to make out after that.

“Plagg?”

“Blegh.”  The kwami scrambled back out and scraped his tongue with his paws.  “Your hair tastes like shampoo.  I can’t talk without getting a mouthful of it.”

“Guess that isn’t going to work …” He pursed his lips as he adjusted the beret.  “It’s too bad real life isn’t like Ratatouille. You could just tug on my hair and do all the cooking for me.”

Unless …?

“Oh no, don’t give me that look.”  Plagg crossed his arms.  “That’s just a movie.  Though it would be nice to show you what it feels like to get dragged around for a change …”

“It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”  Adrien didn’t really think it would work either, but Plagg was magic.  

“Fine.  But I’m upping my price to three wheels.”

Plagg slipped back under the beret, and Adrien felt a tugging sensation on his scalp.  But nothing seemed to happen.

“Guess that was a pretty dumb idea,” he admitted sheepishly.

Then green light crackled from his ring.  

His arms flung into the air.

“Ack!  Plagg, did you do that?”  

Adrien heard a muffled cackle from under the hat.  Then his legs started walking towards the refrigerator.

“Okay, so this is … working?  This is working!”

Plagg missed a few times before guiding his hand to pull open the fridge.  Of course, his next step was to reach for a wedge of Camembert and hold it up to his head.

“The sweet taste of victory,” Plagg said while popping out to swallow the wedge whole.

“More like the rotten taste of old cheese.”

But Adrien still grinned.  However Plagg had pulled off his puppeteer trick, Adrien wasn’t going to make a fool of himself tomorrow.

XXX

“Adrien!”  Marinette threw her arms around him as soon as she opened the door.  “Thank goodness you’re here. My parents just called and they got a last-minute order and—eep!”  She sprung back, her eyes wide as she stared at his beret.

“Come on, it’s not that bad.”  He rubbed the back of his neck, trying not to feel embarrassed.  Marinette wouldn’t judge him based on what he wore.  “It was an old gift.  I like that it drives my father crazy.”

Plus, Ladybug had hand-delivered it, but she probably didn’t care about that.

“W-well then, it’s perfect.”  She grinned too wide.  “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a hat before.”

“You’ve definitely—”

“Anyway, no time for that!  There’s only five hours before Uncle Wang gets here. Nonna is already at my parent’s, and my other grandma and grandpa are coming for the first time since Mom moved here.  Not to mention fourteen of my cousins I’ve never met and their parents!”  Marinette rushed towards the small kitchen, which was already full of steaming pots and used pans. She threw on her pink oven mitts and pulled a tray of golden-brown pastries out of the oven.

Adrien swallowed.  Marinette’s kitchen might look like a war zone, but she clearly knew what she was doing.  What if he just got in the way?

“How did you end up in charge of the food?”  he asked while throwing on a mint-green apron from inside the pantry door.  Her great-uncle was a world-class chef, and her parents owned a bakery.  Her grandpa Rolland had even taught mice how to bake.  

“I’m not in charge.  I just need to help a little since Uncle Wang is running late, and the reunion starts tonight, and Grandpa won’t bake anything in bulk because ‘that’s not how it’s done’’—she used a gruff imitation of his voice—“and my parents have so much bakery work to do. I’m just trying to do what I can.”

She sighed as she stirred a pot of wonton soup.  “Unfortunately, I can’t do a lot.”

“What are you talking about?  It looks like you could feed an army with all this.”  

He carefully dodged Marinette as she scrambled in a drawer for a fork.  She tested the rice noodles boiling behind the soup, then grimaced and slumped against the counter, fork nearly slipping from her fingers. Her hair was falling out of her bun, and flour smudged her pink apron, contrasting with the splatters of dark sauce.

“I hope so.  There’s just … so much to live up to, you know?  Everyone on both sides of my family cooks.  And now I have to merge styles from two different cultures in a way that will please everyone …”

Her gaze swept across the counter, where dumplings and quiches, brothy soups and thin crêpes—even ratatouille, ironically—lay in various stages of completion. The savory and sweet fragrances somehow melded together in harmony.

“I know I can’t understand how hard that must be. About trying to bridge two different sides of your family, I mean.  But you’re amazing, Marinette.” He stepped closer to her and brushed a streak of flour off of her cheek. “You’ve already worked so hard on all this; I can’t see how anyone wouldn’t love it.  May I?”

He gestured to a spoon sitting in one of the soups, and she nodded.  He raised it to his lips and sipped the tangy broth.  A bit of crunchy bamboo shoot added texture to the savory liquid.  He didn’t want to eat too much—it was for her family, not him—but if it weren’t for that, he could’ve downed the whole bowl.  He could practically taste the love and care she’d put into it.

“See? Amazing.”  He grinned.  “Just like the rest of the food we’re going to make.”

At least, the food she made would be amazing.  He just hoped that what he made with Plagg’s help would be edible.  And not offend her family.

Her lips parted before curving into a smile.  “Right.  Thank you, Adrien.”

She paused, staring for a moment, until one of the shallow pots started bubbling over.

“Ack!  The filling!”

She rushed to switch off the burner and remove the lid before sighing loudly.  “I think it’s still alright.  Now I just need to fold this into the dough …”

“Can I help with that?”  he asked, feeling like a rock in the middle of a river as Marinette flowed between the cooking stations around him.

“Huh?  Oh—um, why don’t you work on filling the crêpes instead?  This baozi is a Chinese dish, and it’s my first time making it by myself.  Not that I don’t appreciate the offer!  You were so sweet to come at all, and—”

“Marinette.”  He squeezed her shoulder gently, wishing he could relieve some ot the tension there.  “I’ll do the crêpes.” 

She let out a breath.  “Thanks.  I was going to do a pear-hazelnut filling, if you’re okay with that?  The pears are in the bottom right drawer of the fridge, and the hazelnuts are on the middle shelf in the panty.  All the spices are up there.”  She pointed to the cabinet above the sink.

“Sounds perfect,” he said with the fake confidence he usually saved for his modeling jobs.

Before he could ask for a recipe, she went back to work, leaving him to his own devices in front of a stack of unfilled crêpes.  A mixture of the rich smells and his own nerves started to turn his stomach.

“Are you ready, Plagg?”  he whispered, adjusting his beret.

In response, his scalp twinged, and then his hand rose and formed a thumbs-up.

“Well, here we go.”  He cracked his knuckles.  

He rinsed out a pan that it looked like Marinette had previously used for some kind of stir fry.  That wouldn’t be a problem, would it?  It looked like every other pan in the apartment was in use already.  

Marinette didn’t stop to correct him.  Then again, she seemed to be in ten places at once, adding spices and stirring and adjusting dials and rummaging through cupboards, all in between filling her baozi.  Watching her work was so mesmerizing it was almost too easy to ignore his own job.

Until Plagg started tugging his hair again, anyway.

This is going to be weird, he thought while Plagg directed his hands to chop the pears.  He was pretty sure he could’ve done that himself—he didn’t want his kwami chopping off one of his fingers.  But resisting at this point would just increase his chances of accidentally getting stabbed.

Besides, Plagg was fast. He diced the five pears in the time it probably would’ve taken Adrien to cut up one.  Granted, he also left a juicy mess on the counter, but it sounded like they were on too much of a deadline to worry about that.

Plagg tossed them into the pan, cores and all.  Adrien frowned at that.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he muttered.

“What?”  Marinette asked from where she was stretching out dough.

“Um, nothing!  I just, uh, talk to myself while I cook.”

“Oh, me too.  I was just trying not to do it in front of you.  You know, in case I sounded crazy.”  She laughed, seeming to release a little bit of tension. “I think I picked it up from my mom.  She always says the steps out loud as she does them so she doesn’t forget which one she’s on.”

He smiled at the image of her doing this with Mrs. Cheng.  “Did you cook with your mom a lot?”

“I don’t think I’d say a lot.  I was pretty busy in lycée, and I didn’t appreciate her culture as much as I do now.  I wish I would’ve learned more.”

“It looks like you learned a lot if you can put all this together.”

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.  “Thanks.  That means a lot.”

He retrieved the hazelnuts and tossed them into the pan.  She still had her back to him, the baozi taking up most of her attention.  Should he ask her to check his work so far?  Plagg didn’t hesitate to nab some spices from the high cabinet and start sprinkling them into the pan.

“Wait—not that one!” he hissed, trying to drop the shaker that read chili powder before Plagg could add it.

“Adrien?  Is something wrong?”

He spun, quickly shoving the container behind his back.  “No!  Everything’s just peachy—er, pear-y.”

She giggled at his joke, even though it had to be one of his lamest puns yet.

“Okay, but you can let me know if you need help.  Sorry I just kind of threw you into this.”  Her arm gently brushed his as she dialed back the heat on the noodles.  “Um—is there a reason you’re holding chili powder?” 

“I was just moving it so I could reach the, uh…”

Plagg helpfully directed his arm towards a different spice.

“... garlic salt?”

Marinette blinked, and he hastily shoved the garlic salt back, selecting cinnamon instead.  He should’ve known that trusting the kwami who liked eating rotten cheese would be a mistake.

“You’re so funny, Adrien.”  She laughed again.  “But, um, you might want to double check your pears.  I think some of those still have the cores in them.”

His face flushed.  Thanks a lot, Plagg.

He picked out the cores with a pair of tongs, hoping that his kwami wouldn’t try to take over again.  Adrien might be bad at cooking, but at least he wasn’t going to try and poison Marinette’s family.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much idea of what to do next.  He’d turned the burner on high, and the pears were starting to sizzle.  How did nuts cook?  That didn’t make a lot of sense to him.  He probably needed something liquidy to go with them, right?

Aaaand the pears already smelled like they were burning.  He quickly flipped back the knob while he searched for something to turn into a sauce.  Milk?  That would make it nice and creamy, right?

He grabbed the half-gallon from the fridge and splashed a bit into the pan.  Drops splattered the counter, and he winced.

That was when Plagg again decided to take over.  Adrien grit his teeth as he selected the block of muenster from the cheese drawer.  That definitely didn’t belong in the crêpe filling, but Adrien couldn’t get him to stop without making a scene in front of Marinette.  Who would then wonder why he was yelling at himself, and either think he was insane or find out his secret identity.  Both of which would be unacceptable.

He growled, hoping Plagg would get the message.  If he did, he didn’t show it.  At least Marinette didn’t hear over her own soft humming.

The sliced cheese went into the pan, plopping wetly in the milk.  Maybe the finished product would surprise him, and cheese and pears would create a tasty sweet-savory combo, and Marinette would be super impressed by his originality, and she’d invite him over to cook with him again, and they’d make a cute romantic dinner together …

He banished that daydream before he could think too much of it.

By that point Plagg was using his arm to whisk the milk and melting cheese together.  The pears and hazelnuts had settled to the bottom of the pan.  He frowned as the whisk failed to unstick them.

“This isn’t working,” he said under his breath.  “We might need to start over.”

He swore he could hear Plagg’s irritated sigh.  But the kwami jerked the pan up, taking it towards the sink.

“Hey, what are you—Plagg!”  he shouted before he could stop himself.

Plagg dropped the pan in the sink, spraying hot milk-cheese-pear slime all over the backsplash.  And all over Adrien’s apron.  

And, most importantly, all over his face.

“Adrien!”  Marinette dropped her unfinished dumpling back on the counter.  Filling spilled out as she rushed to his side.  “Are you okay?  What happened?”

He hurriedly tried to splash cold water on his face, but spilled it more down his shirt than anything.  She offered him a damp hand towel, which was much more helpful.

“I’m so sorry.”  His face still burned, but not from the hot food.

“It’s okay!  Accidents happen—trust me, I would know.”  She smiled before her eyes widened.  “Oh no, your beret!”

“What?”  He slapped his hands to his head, prompting a tiny yelp from Plagg.  So he was still there.  Under his hat.  Which was still on his head. Phew.

“It’s got milk on it.” Marinette reached up like she intended to take it off.

“No!”  he shouted, and she stepped back, startled.

“S-sorry!  I just thought I’d help you clean it off, since it seems so, um, important to you.”

“I like it with the milk on it.  It adds, uh, character?”

He heard Plagg snicker from beneath the beret.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”  she asked.  “If you need to take a break, or, um, get a new shirt … n-not that I want you to take off your shirt!  Uh—forget I said that.”

She shook her head, and more strands fell out of her bun.

He frowned down at his shirt.  Unfortunately, the splatter had made it under his apron, and his shirt was pretty gross.  He even felt a slimy pear sliding down under his collar.

“I’m okay,” he said.  “Finishing all the food for your reunion is more important.”

“No, don’t worry.  I can handle it.  Just having you here to keep me from freaking out has helped more than you know.”

She took the towel back from him with a smile.  Frankly, he was still surprised she wasn’t angry with him.  He’d come to help, and all he’d done so far was waste her time.

“I’m really not bothering you?”  he asked, rubbing the back of his neck.  Bad idea.  His hands were still a bit wet and sticky.

“You could never bother me, Adrien.”  Her cheeks pinked before she turned back to fiddle with the soup.  

“Really?  I thought …”  He bit his lip, remembering how many times he’d startled Marinette before.  How many times he’d seemed to make her uncomfortable, or awkward, or … he wasn’t really sure what.  There had always been something keeping them apart, no matter how close they became.

Maybe it’s just your little crush, Plagg would’ve teased.  Thankfully, he wasn’t going to talk while trapped under the beret.

“Thought what?”  she asked once she’d added some seasonings to the soup.  

“I thought I’d be your last pick for cooking help,” he said, which wasn’t quite a lie.  “I didn’t want to tell you, but I … well, I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

Best to just admit it now, rather than after he’d ruined her family reunion.  

Marinette blinked before covering her mouth.  “I’m so sorry.  I should’ve known you probably never cooked at your house.  And here I am just asking you to throw together a crêpe filling!”

“It’s okay!  I’m the one who’s sorry.  I should’ve told you, I just … I wanted to impress you.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted that much.  He was sure he heard Plagg laughing from under his hat.

“You … wanted to impress … me?”  She pointed to herself, as if there was anyone else in the kitchen he might have been talking about.

“Is that really so surprising?”

“Uh—yeah, actually.” Marinette stared at him like he’d grown a second head.  Plagg hadn’t peeked out, had he?  “I might be able to cook, but you’re good at everything.  Fencing, basketball, Mandarin—which took me ages to get halfway decent at—not to mention you’re drop-dead gorgeous—”

His heart stopped.  Her eyes nearly bulged out of her head.  

“I mean—you’re a model; of course you’re gorgeous!  It’s literally your job.  I bet people call you gorgeous all the time.” 

“Not when I’m covered in slimy food, though.”  He grinned.  She thought he was drop-dead gorgeous!  Maybe he hadn’t made too much of a mess after all.

“Well—you would be a lot more gorgeous if you took off that stupid beret!”  She pointed at his head.

“W-what?”  He pulled it down over his ears.  “This is my emotional support beret.  I can’t take it off or I’ll cry.”

“Why did you have to pick that one, though?  It’s so—I don’t know!” She gestured vaguely.  “It looks like a fourteen-year-old made it!”

He pouted at her.  “Hey, be nice.  It was probably fashionable in Brazil at the time.”

It did look pretty silly, but that was its appeal.  Fashion-savvy Marinette probably wouldn’t understand that.

“R-right.  In Brazil.”  She shook her head.  “Why do you like it though?”

He blushed.  Aside from spitting in the face of the Gabriel brand, it also reminded him of the day Ladybug had appeared in his room.  That serendipitous event had never happened before or since.

“How embarrassing does it sound if I say my old crush delivered it to me?”

“Your—your crush?”  She blinked.  “But then—you had a crush on Ladybug?”

The soup started bubbling again, but she made no move to quiet it.

“Of course I have a crush on Ladybug.  I’m pretty sure all of Paris has a crush on—wait, how did you know Ladybug was the one to deliver it?”

Marinette’s face went pale.  “I—um, well, I … I think the soup is burning!”

She rushed to stir it again, but Adrien caught her hand.

“Wait, Marinette, please.”  His heart beat faster.  He’d never told anyone about Ladybug’s visit.  She hadn’t been surprised when he mentioned Brazil, either.

But what could he say?  Come out and ask her if she was Ladybug?  That would be too good to be true, right?  Marinette couldn’t be Ladybug; he’d seen them together once.  But he’d pulled crazy stunts to protect his identity too.

She bit her lip, but didn’t pull her hand from his.  

“I can’t answer that question, Adrien.”

It wasn’t a confirmation.  But it wasn’t a denial either.

It had been five years.  Five years, and he still didn’t know who his partner was.  If she was here, in front of him, after all this time …

… he’d still respect her choice not to tell him.  As much as it hurt, he’d do it.

“Alright.”  He sighed.  “I get it.”

An uncomfortable silence pushed between them, punctured only by the bubbling soup and beeping oven.  The first batch of Marinette’s baozi was done; she removed them without speaking.

Why couldn’t they go back to five minutes ago, when she’d called him gorgeous?  He was already thrilled to hear Marinette say that.  But if she was his Lady too?  He’d melt just like that cheese in the pan.

It was going to drive him crazy if he thought about it too long.  He turned on the faucet, hoping that the loud water would drown out his thoughts as he did the dishes.  At least that was one task he could accomplish without ruining any more of Marinette’s food.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, barely audible over the running tap.

“What for?”  He was the one pushing the boundaries between them.  If she was even Ladybug at all.  Maybe he’d managed to misinterpret everything, but he couldn’t see how.

“For not being honest with you.  I wish I could, I swear.”  Her hands squeezed her dough, and it oozed out between her fingers.

“I’m sure you have your reasons,” he said with resignation.  Ladybug was the Guardian.  She couldn’t risk revealing her identity.  Even if it felt unfair, he should be used to it by now.

But before, you didn’t think Ladybug was one of your best friends.

Even more than that, if he was honest with himself.  He’d wanted to be closer to Marinette for a  long time now.  What if he was just deluding himself with wishful thinking?

“I wish I didn’t, sometimes,” she murmured.

He switched off the faucet and turned to face her.  Maybe some things needed to stay secret, but not everything.

“Marinette?”  He swallowed.

She looked up from where she’d been absently rolling the dough again.  So much for not wasting her time.

“Y-yeah?”

He didn’t expect to confess to her while standing in her kitchen, with Plagg hiding under his old beret, with his clothes covered in the ruined crêpe filling.  But it was important, and if he could finally admit it to himself, the least he could do was admit it to her.

“I don’t just have a crush on Ladybug.”

“You—you don’t?”  

Was it just his imagination, or did she deflate a little?

“She’s still very important to me.  I know she always will be.  But I’ve come to realize how important you are to me, too.”  He watched her face as he spoke, but her wide eyes were impossible to read.  Hopefully he wasn’t ruining everything with what he was about to say.

“I like you, Marinette.  As more than a friend.  And I would never want to make you uncomfortable.  All I’ve ever wanted is to be closer to you.”

For a moment, her face didn’t change.  She just stood there, staring blankly, like someone had pressed a pause button.  He would’ve thought Bunnyx had stopped time to reset his screw-up if it weren’t for the soup continuing to boil over.

“Marinette?”  he prodded, his stomach beginning to bubble as nervously as that soup.  

She jumped.  “Yes, I—comfort you me make—yike lou—”

A stream of incoherent noises followed that.  Oh no, he’d broken her!  Why couldn’t Plagg have taken over and stopped him from talking?  

“—ugh!  I thought I dopped stewing this years ago!”  She dropped her burning face into her hands.

Adrien reached out to touch her shoulder and then thought better of it.  His arm fell limply to his side.

“I’m so sorry.  You can just forget I said anything.  I’ll—I’ll let you finish up the food and get out of your way—”

“No!”  She waved her hands, startling him so bad he stepped back—and slipped in a puddle of spilled dishwater.

“Adrien!”  She caught the front of his apron as he fell, but that just meant she was pulled down on top of him.

He yelped as his head cracked against the linoleum.  At least she landed on his chest, his arms cradling her.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry—AAAAAH!”

“What, what!?”  He sat up as she scrambled off of him.

That was when he caught sight of the striped beret lying in the puddle next to him.

Oh no.

Plagg laughed nervously from where he was tangled in Adrien’s hair.  “Hey, Pigtails.”

“Chat?”  Marinette smacked her hands to her cheeks.  “You’re—you’re Chat Noir?” 

“Surprise!”  Plagg wasn’t in Adrien’s line of sight, but he could hear the grin in his kwami’s voice.

“Where’s Bunnyx when you need her?”  Adrien groaned.  Not only was his confession a total bust, but he also ended up giving away his most important secret.

And he still didn’t know for sure that she was Ladybug.

“You’re Chat Noir.”  Marinette plopped down into the puddle beside him.  “Adrien is Chat Noir.”

“Yeah, yeah, we got that,” Plagg said.  “Are you gonna put the poor kid out of his misery or not?”

“Huh?”  She blinked.

“He’s in love with you.  Hopelessly, stupidly in love with you.  He loves you almost as much as I love cheese.”

That was a pretty big point in favor of Marinette being Ladybug. He guessed he should count himself lucky, but that also meant he’d just slipped and fallen in dirty dishwater in front of not only Marinette, but Ladybug.

He closed his eyes.  “Plagg, please let me die in peace.”  

“... Adrien?”

He felt her breath fan over his face, and his eyes back snapped open.

Her gray-blue eyes were hovering right above him.  Well, he had said he wanted to be closer to her.

“Y-yeah?”

“Please don’t die,” she said softly.  Her hand came up to cradle the side of his face—or maybe she was just trying to make sure he hadn’t bruised himself. “I l-love you too.”

Every one of his brain cells fizzled out.  She.  Loved him?

“I think I am dead.”  He smiled, reaching his arms around her.  “I’m pretty sure I just went to heaven.”

Her face flushed.  “You’re always going to be that cheesy, aren’t you?”

“Are you really surprised, Princess?”

“No.”  She leaned in, brushing her nose against his.  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Ew, gross.”  Plagg gagged.  “This isn’t the kind of cheese I signed up for.”

“You’re the one who said she should put me out of my misery.”

“Yeah, well I think you both need to put this food out of its misery.  The soup’s burning.”

Marinette sprung up, eyes wide.  “Oh no!  We still have to get everything ready!  And the crêpe filling isn’t done and I haven’t finished the baozi—” 

“It’s okay!  We can still get it all done … somehow.”  Adrien winced as he stood up.  Now they were both covered in a mix of dishwater and crêpe filling.  “Just keep Plagg away from it all.  He’s the reason I ruined the pears.  Oh, and he’s the reason I was wearing that beret, too.”

She went back to work as if nothing had changed between them.  It was honestly kind of amazing how quickly she had the noodles and soup under control, like she hadn’t just been freaking out moments before.  

“He’s got as awful taste in fashion as he does in food?”  she asked.

“No—well, probably, but that’s not important.  The beret was to hide him so he could help me cook.  Like in Ratatouille.”

She blinked.  “That works?”

“It would work better if my kwami knew how to cook, but yeah.”

“Hmm …”  She tapped her lips—lips he would hopefully be able to kiss once all this was taken care of, he thought with a giddy grin—before snapping her fingers.  “That’s it!  I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before!”

“What’s it?  Wait—Marinette, where are you going?”

“You’ll see!”  She winked before disappearing behind her bedroom door.

He gave the soup a careful stir while waiting for her to come back.

“You’re welcome.”  Plagg crossed his arms and smirked irritatingly.

“For what?” Adrien scowled.  “All you did was give away my identity and embarrass me in front of the love of my life!”

“Love of your life?”  Marinette appeared behind him.

He nearly knocked over the pot of soup.  It was what he deserved for startling her so much back in lycée, he guessed.

Plagg snickered.  “Bold words coming from the guy who called her a good friend earlier.”

“She is a good friend!  And the love of my life!  She’s Ladybug, Plagg!”

He pointed to the giant red-and-black egg in Marinette’s arms.  The Miracle Box.  She was Ladybug!

“You didn’t know that when you said it five seconds ago,” Plagg pointed out.

“Yeah, well—I guessed it,” he huffed.  

It had been the only answer that made sense.  And it was true.  Hopefully he could blame the tears pricking his eyes on the onion in the soup.  If not, though, crying over his amazing partner (who loved him!) was probably still the least embarrassing thing he’d done today.

Tikki poked her head out of a cookie jar.  By now he’d been startled so many times that her presence hardly registered.

“Don’t worry, Adrien.  Marinette has said way more embarrassing stuff than that.”

“Which we won’t repeat in front of him,” Marinette said dangerously.

His head was still spinning from all the revelations.  Of course, he wasn’t too surprised—who else but Marinette was amazing enough to be Ladybug?—but it was still a lot to take in at once.

“While I definitely want to hear about that later, what’s the Miracle Box out for?  Is there a kwami of cooking?  Or do you think Sass could give us a Second Chance on all this mess?”  he asked, trying to bring his focus back to the problem at hand.

“What you said about Plagg gave me an idea.”  She punched in a code on the spots, and the egg cracked open to reveal the miraculouses.  “He might not know how to cook, but I’m sure some of the other kwamis do.  And if not, I’m sure they can follow directions.”

“Great idea, Marinette!”  Tikki clapped.  “Wayzz and Pollen are pretty good at cooking, from what I remember.  Orikko is too, but you shouldn’t cook chicken in front of him.”

“Makes sense.”  Adrien nodded before turning to Marinette.  “You think they’ll be enough to make up for how badly I messed up?”

“Of course they will.  We’re Ladybug and Chat Noir; there’s no mess we can’t fix.”  She smiled as she equipped the bracelet and hair comb, then passed the Miracle Box to him.  “Have Tikki help you pick out a few more kwamis.  Together we’ll get this done in time. I know it.”

Relief washed over him, and he smiled back.

“As you wish, My Lady.”

XXX

“You’re sure I won’t be intruding?”  Adrien asked as they pulled up to her parents’ bakery.

“Of course not.  There’s no way my family would leave out my boyfriend.”  She shifted her tupperware to her other arm and reached up to adjust his (newly cleaned) beret.  “Even if he has terrible fashion sense.”

“It’s a Marinette original!  There’s nothing more fashionable than that!”

“An original from when I was fourteen!”  she pouted.

“It’s too late, Bugaboo. I’m never taking it off.”  He kissed her forehead.

“I’ll make you a new one.  Anything would be better than mixing lacy hearts and stripes.”

“I guess that’s fair.  But I’ll still treasure this one forever.”

She rolled her eyes affectionately as she pushed open the bakery door.

Not long after, Adrien, Marinette, and her family were settled around the dining room table, a feast of French and Chinese cuisine in front of them. The two sides of her family mingled, mixing as seamlessly as the dishes.  Rolland was deep in conversation with Wang about traditional cooking techniques in France versus China.  Gina (who’d insisted he just call ‘Grandma’) was regaling two of Marinette’s cousins with tales from her travels.  More of her younger cousins ran around the table, barefoot soles slapping against the hardwood floor, their hands occasionally reaching up to snag a dumpling or croissant.  It was a tight fit, but Adrien didn’t mind.  He was thrilled to be included at all.

While they ate dinner, he kept catching her looking at the hat.  But every time she did, he’d make eye contact with her, and then she’d blush and smile bright enough that it was worth every glare.

“So, what are you up to these days, son?”  Tom asked over his bowl of wonton soup.

Son.  Already, Marinette’s parents felt more like family than his own.  He would love to be part of her family for as long as she would let him.

Hopefully forever.

“Oh, not much.”  He put an arm around Marinette.  “Just learning how to cook from your amazing daughter.”

He winked, and she blushed again.  Red was her color in and out of the suit, it seemed.

“He needs all the help he can get.  You should’ve seen what he almost put in the crêpes today.”

Tom laughed.  “Well, it looks like it all turned out perfect.  Thanks for your help, both of you.”

Under the table, Adrien and Marinette shared a fistbump.  This wasn’t the first adventure they tackled together, and it wouldn’t be the last.

#miraculous ladybug #fic tag #adrinette #adrienette #reveal #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #tali writes #ml

[deeeelightfuldee]

Are you better at cooking dinners or making cakes/biscuits/sweets? baking definitely. I want to get more comfortable cooking.

Have you ever cut someone else’s hair? yes. I used to be pretty good at doing my brothers hair-- even the fading. But I’m sure I’ve forgotten it all by now.

Who was the last guest in your house and what were they staying for? probably my sister or my nephews.

How many long term relationships have you been in? blegh. not many. Whenever I’d know that it didnt have long term potential, id drop it. no sense dragging out the inevitable.

Do you sleep with all the lights out, or do you leave a lamp or even the television on? so for the longest time I kept my room super dark. I slept well. once miller died and kile broke my heart, I couldn’t sleep without the tv playing. I needed to hear something calming and voices talking so I wouldn’t be left with my thoughts. I still can’t turn it off.

Who is one person you have forgiven, but still have not “forgotten” what they have done? i think its easy to say “forgive and forget” but the reality is that once we have endured trauma we don’t easily forget. I think its kind of unrealistic. I’m trying to forgive kile but thats going to take.. i dont know how long. As for what it was... it was just betrayal.. lying. for six+ years. lots of laughing at me. 

Are you a fan of Lana Del Rey? I like some of her songs.

Do you know your blood type? o+

Do you know your mother’s birthday? Yes. its coming up. 

Have you ever been pregnant? I dont think so. I was really late after my assault but who knows.

How old were you when you first went on a plane? like 7ish

Have you ever had to take out a loan for anything? Yeah, student loans. 15k feels so daunting right now.

Are both of your blood parents still in your life? One is. My mom.

When was the last time you went apple picking? highschool maybe?

Someone asked you what you wanted, what would you say? money.. or a trip.

Have you ever been drunk at school or work? definitely not. 

How many bedrooms are in your house? four. 

Are you smart about computers? I know some stuff.

Have you ever played Just Dance for Wii? oh heck’n yeah

Do you own a Xbox 360? I had one from my brother for a little while but I traded it for the gamecube since Kile was going to send me one of the 15 he had lol. That didn’t end up happening, but its OK i really dont need more gaming.

Would you ever do a sex tape for a million dollars? oooooooo.. probably not.

So, do you need a nap? all day is full of naps to try and get over this.

What would you rather be doing? school

What sport are you the best at? maybe volleyball or swimming

Do you have a little sister? What’s her name? Nope, im the baby. 

Do you complain a lot? no, i try not to. I find complaining to be the most unattractive and yet common human trait and while there are definitely situations worthy of complaining, most of the time it just makes a situation worse than it actually was.

Would you rather go to an authentic haunted house or an ancient temple? temple

Do you like fruity or minty gum? definitely minty

Are you looking forward to any day of this month? i was really looking forward to Kile’s birthday on monday, but since we arent talking anymore then there is no joy in that. all the other special dates have been ruined by covid.

Have you ever gotten detention? Nope. homeschoolers and detention arent a thing. 

Is there a traumatic event that you’ve experienced that’s changed your life? oh sure. heartbreak, deaths, assaults, etc.

Do you buy a majority of your clothes from a certain store, or do you just pick out items of clothing you could see yourself wearing, not caring about the store it came from? no, i can’t be super picky because not every store carries clothing long enough for me.

Have any of the artists you’re fond of released new albums recently? i havent got a clue

Would you ever keep your favorite animal as a pet? I mean I’m very fond of cats & dogs

Ever cried so much you threw up? this is what happened the whole 2-3 weeks following finding out about Kile.

Who is your best guy friend? I suppose now that would be Nathan

What do you two do when you hang out? drives, game nights, get food/drinks, or just talk.

What is a movie that you thought you would hate but you ended up loving? Her

Do you even like horror movies? not particularly. I’ll watch them if someone else wants to but its not my preference.

Do you live in the country? i live in the suburbs i suppose.

What is your favorite accent? Some southern and British accents. <same ... i have no idea how I made the font like this.

Have you ever had a boyfriend your parents didn’t like? Not that I can think of.

Do you drink Pepsi or Coke? diet coke

What do you plan to do on your 21st birthday? my family celebrated during the day and then I think nathan took me out on the town

Do you have any person in your family with an addiction to beer? nope.

Do you take a lot of pictures? man. this question is hard. I used to love taking pictures of myself. I had much more self confidence and some of it was because kile LOVED my selfies -- or so he said. and I just had so much fun doing that. Since the heartbreak, I’ve maybe taken 10 selfies. I just don’t have any self confidence in my looks anymore. its so different now. most of my pictures now are of other people or scenery.

What kind of face wash do you use? cerave when I want to. otherwise i use water and a very particular type of fabric. 

Does drama always seem to follow you? No, i dont think so.

Does anybody in your family race? like cars? running? no.

Are you closer to your mom or dad? My mom.

How much money did you used to get from the ”tooth fairy?” I think i got it like 2x and it was a dollar.

Do you have a laptop or desktop? Laptop.

Do you like your parents? i love my mom.

Do you secretly like someone? No.

Would you ever date your best male friend? I don’t see any romantic feelings developing between nathan and I

What are you currently listening to? I have gilmore girls on.

Do you want to be single? oooof. Um. I am torn on this subject. On the one hand, i really am ready to be loved, held, protected, cared for, etc. I love the idea of building a life together with someone and us both protecting our unit. I miss supporting, cherishing, loving on someone. Yet on the other hand, im fine being single. I have so much insecurity about myself lately that I dk that anyone else needs to deal with that baggage. Idk

Did you go out or stay in last night? I stayed in. ill be staying in for some time.

Have you pretended to like someone? romantically, no. professionally, yes.

How is your heart lately? Sad. heavy. 

Are you wearing socks? not at the moment. 

What do people call you? Di, diana, dee, ana, di-nan-na, dine-uh, deenah.

Do you get stressed out easily? no, I really dont

Have you ever been taken to the emergency room in an ambulance? yes

What is wrong with you right now? im sick. im heartbroken.

Do you own something from Hot Topic? not that I know of. if I do, it’d be from like middle school. I never shopped there but people tended to give gifts from there.

Would you rather sleep with someone else or alone? Alone. maybe I havent found the right sort of person to share a bed with.

Do you still talk to the person you last made out with? No.

Have you ever seen your best friend cry? Yes, several times. 

Did you get any compliments today? No.

Have you ever gone to a beach? many many many times.

What would you say if someone asked you to get high right now? not my thing. at all.

Do you believe that everything happens for a reason? Yes.

Have you ever done volunteer work just because you wanted to? Yes.

Do you have long nails? they are healthy length. I want to grow them out a bit more. 

Do you like the gender you are? Yeah.

Do you generally look nice in photos? Not anymore

Have you ever had a stick insect as a pet? no haha

What colour are your father’s eyes? Blue.

If I handed you a concert ticket right now, who would you want to be the performer? uhhhhm, blue october

Would you ever get into a long distance relationship? maybe not anymore. 

What’s your favorite hot beverage? hot chocolate from dunkin

Did you ever play an instrument? If so what? i did. no comment.

Would you rather carve pumpkins or wrap presents? oooooohhhhhhhhh man i love both.

Do you think you’re important? I mean i offer some importance to this world but eh.

What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received? Hmm no idea.

Have you been diagnosed with any mental disorders? no

Have you ever moved to another state or country? If so, how did it feel to be new? No.

Do you know how to properly eat food with chopsticks? Nope.

What was the first thing you ate today? I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday

If you could spend the day, doing absolutely anything, with anyone, anywhere, what would it be like? for the longest time it was to spend the day driving aimlessly and getting food and talking about everything and nothing with Kile. now, its just.. idunno. blank.

If I were to ask you how you are doing, and you were only able to answer completely honestly, what would come out? I’m not doing well.

What is the one thing that you have been avoiding that you should do? There’s a few things related to school.

Is there anything that you wish you could take back? not really, no.

What, in your mind, could make you truly happy? this whole covid nonsense going away, heartbreak to soothe, and my miller back.

If you could change one conversation in your life, what would you say differently? Would it have REALLY made any difference? i dont know. 

When is the next time you’ll change your hairstyle? Will you color it? I just changed it up so itll be a bit.

Do people normally say you’re a fast typist, or are you rather slow? Fast.

Have you ever been considered the ‘smartest person in school?’ yes. several times.

How many drugs are in your system? lol lots of meds rn to kick this. usually none.

What’s on your schedule for tomorrow? the same as today.

Do you currently have any bite marks/hickeys on your body? No. i dont like the idea of bite marks but hickeys were fun for a time. in not visible areas tho.

Do you call anyone baby? Not anymore.

What’s your current mood? Bleh.

What were you doing before filling out this survey? Watching gilmore girls

How late did you stay up last night? I took PM meds at i wanna say 8? maybe 7? I don’t remember.

When was the last time you cried really hard? its been a few weeks since ive cried about Kile. I’m in the numb stage.

Is your hair longer than your shoulders? hahahahahahah

[cheemerthelizard]

Crusader of Life (Kakyoin x Reader) Chapter 9

Road trip! You and the rest of the crusaders are on their way to Egypt, but because of the plane incident, have to travel by road. Not ideal, but better than nothing. But will you ever catch a break from these constant Stand attacks?

After another encounter with an enemy Stand, on the road, of all places, and having to get a change in vehicles, the group of six had finally come to a stop in a small town, covered in fog.

"This is a nice little town," Joseph said. "Sure, it's a bit foggy, but that's alright."

"I'm not so sure," you replied. "I always get really bad feelings in foggy towns like these."

“You’re just paranoid,” Polnareff consoled you. “I’m sure this is a perfectly safe place!”

“Yeah...” last time you were paranoid like this, everything turned out to be all right, with Fredrick becoming your friend, too. “I wonder how he’s doing at the art contest,” you accidentally said your thoughts out loud.

“Hm?” Polnareff asked.

“Oh, nothing,” you quickly covered up. “I just think out loud sometimes without realizing it.”

Polnareff nodded, and left it at that. “Anyway, we need to find a hotel to stay at.”

“I’ll ask the man over there,” Avdol said. As soon as he approached the man, he started talking in a language you weren’t familiar with. Probably the main language in Pakistan. Even though you weren’t the one talking to him, that guy really creeped you out. Not in the way that the people from Calcutta did, no, but the way he just stood there, and did almost nothing. The most he’d done so far was flip his sign from open to closed. Something just felt... off about him. In fact, when Avdol was done asking his question, the man answered very quickly and briefly, then turned around and went inside.

“He said he didn’t know,” Avdol reported back to the group. You turned back to look at him, and could’ve sworn you saw beetles crawling around on the back of his neck. You shivered a bit in disgust, then went back to the conversation with the others.

“Maybe we should ask someone else,” Joseph suggested. “After all, that man seemed kind of rude.”

“Guys, I really think there’s something else going on,” you shuddered, trying to hide the terror in your voice.

“I’m sure it’s just because of the fog,” Joseph tried to comfort you. “Maybe this town is just weirder than the others we’ve been to.”

“I’ll go ask that man over there about a hotel,” Avdol said. He walked over and started speaking a foreign language again. This time, however, when he tried asking again, and even nudged the guy, he came running back. “That man is dead!” he exclaimed. In an instant, everyone ran to the scene.

“W-why did he die with so much fear on his face?” Polnareff stuttered.

“Look!” Kakyoin pointed out. “He was holding a gun!”

“And look,” Joseph added, “it’s still smoking!”

“Why is everybody else just turning a blind eye?” you asked.

“I’ll go ask that woman over there to call the police,” Kakyoin said as he frantically ran within her hearing range.

“Now do you believe me?” you asked the group. “Now do you believe that there’s more to this town than it being quiet?”

“Perhaps she’s right,” Avdol nodded. “This is really strange.”

Kakyoin returned to the group. “I asked her to call the police, but I doubt she really will. There’s something going on we don’t know about.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say this whole time!”

“Good grief, (Y/N),” Jotaro grumbled. “Nobody’s disbelieved you.”

“Look at his neck!” Joseph said, beckoning the three of you to come closer. “It’s a large hole, the size of a 10 yen coin!”

“That’s... not natural.” Each and every time someone found something new, it made you want to vomit even more. “There’s no blood pouring out.”

“I guess since he’s already dead, we should uncover any other injuries,” Avdol commented. “Avert your eyes, (Y/N). You’ve already been far too uncomfortable to be able to take this.”

So they had been noticing. Something about that made you feel both better and worse. Either way, Kakyoin let you stuff your face into the side of his uniform as you heard a jacket come off, and a collective gasp from the crew.

“T-those holes are everywhere!” Joseph exclaimed. Kakyoin must have felt you gag, because his reassuring arm draped over your shoulder.

“Hey, there’s a reason we hid (Y/N)’s face, is there not?” Kakyoin practically scolded Joseph.

“Right, right, my bad,” Joseph apologized.

“The chances that there’s a Stand user nearby just grew,” Jotaro scowled.

Really? Just now? The man, from what you saw before, and from what you heard, had large holes in him everywhere, with no blood gushing out. Surely the blood couldn’t have all exited by five minutes, and even if it did, the streets would be flooded with it. They’re just now suggesting the possibility of an enemy Stand?

“Come on, everyone!” Joseph exclaimed. “Let’s get out of here!” He looked like he was going to hop into a car, but for some reason, he was jumping into a gate. A gate with very sharp tops, as well. What has gotten into Mr. Joestar? He almost killed himself!

“I swear, the car was right there!” he said over and over. “Didn’t you see it?”

“Mr. Joestar, the car is right over there,” Kakyoin answered. As Joseph’s eyes averted over, there was an old woman walking up, very slowly. Her wrinkles bagged down everything on her face, from her forehead to her chin. She was also pretty short. You were convinced she couldn’t have been over 5 feet, or even reached there.

“You all look very tired,” the woman told your group with a smile on her face. “If you’d like, you can stay at my hotel. It’s a little bed and breakfast at the far end of town.”

“Finally, a normal person!” Polnareff laughed.

“That sounds nice,” Joseph answered.

For you, tons of red flags were going off. A single normal person, in a town that you were sure was run by a Stand? There was no way this was just a nice old lady.

“I guess we could stay for now,” Avdol said. He looked back at you. Something in his eyes told you he was just as suspicious, but that you two had to play it cool for now.

“Yeah, we’d love to stay tonight,” you beamed.

“Excellent!” the little old lady chimed. “I always love seeing new faces around here! Come on, I’ll show you to where it is!”

As she showed you the way to the hotel, you and Avdol dragged in the back.

“We need to keep a close eye on her,” Avdol ordered.

“Got it.”

You and the others entered the hotel, put your names in, and went to your separate rooms. Each person got their own room, but you all gathered in Joseph’s for the time being. Except for Polnareff. He needed to go to the bathroom.

“So we can all agree this woman is very suspicious, right?” Kakyoin asked. The rest of you nodded.

“I think the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on is Polnareff,” Avdol added.

“He never knows what’s going on, though,” you giggled.

“Well, to be sure, we could always use my Hermit Purple to get information on the enemy,” Joseph suggested. “In fact, there’s a TV right here.”

“Well, I’m getting tired,” you yawned.

“Tired?” Jotaro asked. “It’s only about 3:00.”

“We slept in the car last night. I don’t sleep well in anything that isn’t a bed. Mr. Joestar, you mind if I take a nap in your bed? I don’t trust that woman, and don’t want to be separated from you guys.”

“Go right ahead,” Joseph answered you. “Just make sure to wake up before we all go to bed.”

“You got it.”

After that, you went right to sleep.

“(Y/N).”

“(Y/N)!”

You cracked open your eyes, and found your mother looking at you.

“(Y/N), you’re going to be late for school!” Your mother called. “It’s already seven!” 

Groggily, you got up from your bed. “I had the weirdest dream. I was going on a trip to Egypt to defeat a vampire who was hurting an old man’s daughter.” 

“That is a strange dream,” your mother said. “What’s even stranger is that it’s not a dream.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“Honey, this is the dream world. You just fell asleep, didn’t you?” 

“I... I did, but-“

”But, you miss your parents.” Your mother came to kiss you on the forehead. “So I summoned myself to enter your dream, so you could see them again.” 

“Ace?!” 

Your mother giggled a bit, before she transformed back into your Stand. “Your emotions were getting too strong to keep in again,” she said. “And that longing feeling of misery was creeping up on you.” 

“You still sound like Mom.” 

“I know, it’s kind of creepy. But that’s not the point. The point is, you had so much sadness in you from missing your parents that I was summoned before you went to bed. Since anything can happen in a dream world, I transformed into your mother. It feels nice, being able to talk, actually.” 

“Thanks, Ace,” you said quietly. “Can... can you turn back into my mother? Please?” 

“My pleasure,” Ace nodded, and shapeshifted back to that familiar face. 

“Wait, this is a dream,” you interrupted the hugs you were getting. 

“Yup.” 

“I can do anything I want, right?” 

“Probably.” 

“So I can fly.” 

“Yeah.” 

Immediately, you jumped from the bed and stayed floating in the air. You moved around a bit, turning different directions. It was like swimming, but it was way cooler. 

“(Y/N), wake up.“

“(Y/N), we have to go.”

You opened your eyes, and saw Kakyoin staring at you.

“(Y/N), we’ve got to get out of here. The fog was the Stand.”

“What?” You were still in your dazed form of sleep.

“The fog made this place look like a small town. Take a look outside.”

You rose from the bed, and looked outside. Sure enough, there was no more town, but instead, a cemetery.

“You licked the toilet?!” Joseph’s voice came from downstairs. It sounded happy. He was laughing hysterically.

You shivered. “Blegh. Who licked the toilet?”

“Polnareff. Turns out all of our hunches were right.”

“The old lady? She made Polnareff lick her toilet?”

“Yeah.”

You couldn’t help but feel a snicker rise from your throat. “Well, I’m ready, let’s go.”

“Hey! Hol Horse stole our car!” Polnareff called from outside. “Get back here!”

You laughed a bit. “Well, looks like we might be stuck here a while.”

Kakyoin laughed with you. “I guess so.”

#kakyoin #noriaki kakyoin #kakyoin noriaki #kakyoin x reader #noriaki kakyoin x reader #kakyoin noriaki x reader #crusader of life #stardust crusaders #jjba #jjba x reader #jojo #jojo x reader #jojo's bizarre adventure #jojo's bizarre adventure x reader

[lavender-hemlock]

Aw.. Shit, here we go again. (Questions below the cut because I’m not an asshole like the below.) 

@kazexvoss

Get To Know Me Uncomfortably Well

1. What is you middle name?

Marie

2. How old are you?

23

3. When is your birthday?

October 7th

4. What is your zodiac sign?

Libra

5. What is your favorite color?

Burgundy

6. What’s your lucky number?

7

7. Do you have any pets?

One dog

8. Where are you from?

The US-Tragedy-A

9. How tall are you?

Hahaha.. 5′.  10. What shoe size are you?

Size 6

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

Probably over ten.. and more than half are boots. 

12. What was your last dream about? Asked by breaking-from-grace

13. What talents do you have?

I guess I have a talent for my empathy, art, and writing? Not sure what merits as a talent without being overzealous. 

14. Are you psychic in any way?

I’ve been called a witch because of intuition for emotions of others? Or being scary close to presuming things. 

Sadly can’t bend any spoons, stay tuned. 

15. Favorite song?

Toooo many. Music is too vast to pick just one, but I’ve been listening to Day Dreaming - Jack & Jack a lot lately. 

16. Favorite movie?

Probably the Phantom of the Opera version with Gerard Butler. 

17. Who would be your ideal partner?

Someone who is capable of respecting the flow of my energy. When I need space, when I’m all for being close. It isn’t that I’m picky or moody, but I know what I need and also don’t need them being worried when I’m just being quiet and reading a book. It’s just a mutual respect and understanding. 

Ya feel? 

18. Do you want children?

Yeah. Which is weird to think about. I’m not in any rush. 

19. Do you want a church wedding?

I think it is right for me to pursue it, but kinda no. I want a venue probably really low key done up in lights, curtains, and simplicity that doesn’t need a huge budget. Its about the bond, right? 

20. Are you religious?

Yep, I am a christian. 

21. Have you ever been to the hospital?

I have! I had a piggy bank get knocked on top of my head when I was little and my mom rushed me to the hospital. I think that was the first time I saw stars. Only time though!

22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law?

Yeeeeap. 

23. Have you ever met any celebrities?

Yes! I’ve been fortunate to meet a few bands and also see the cast of Fast and the Furious. I got to go on set for the 5th movie! I was lucky. 

24. Baths or showers?

Showers. 

25. What color socks are you wearing?

Black. I hate this question. I’m looking at only one person rn. 

26. Have you ever been famous?

Kinda? Yet I think famous in this way is very subjective? I had my old (and first) RP community for like eleven years. Its not fun when everyone knows your name, I’ll tell you that. You get put on a pedestal or get called terrible things if you don’t respond. It was a whack time. I don’t miss it. I was just famous for the designs I would put for the community and being like a “veteran” member with tons of “powers” (community bling). Blegh. 

27. Would you like to be a big celebrity?

Nope. I admire those that do great things and gain that attention for the work they have put in, but its a double sword. Everyone knows your business and looks at you. Seems like a ant under a magnifying glass analogy.  

28. What type of music do you like?

I like a lot of pop/alternative. I listen to generally everything except some heavy techno/bass stuff isn’t really for me. 

29. Have you ever been skinny dipping?

Nope, don’t plan to. What if a snake bit my ass? How do I explain that to a doctor. 

30. How many pillows do you sleep with?

3!

31. What position do you usually sleep in?

I have to pick one!?

32. How big is your house?

It’s modest. 

33. What do you typically have for breakfast? Asked by Caewen!

34. Have you ever fired a gun?

Yes! I have been trained to use one strictly for defense over the home. What a sad world. 

35. Have you ever tried archery?

No, but I wish!

36. Favorite clean word?

Cleaaaan? 

37. Favorite swear word?

Fuck. 

38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep?

Hahahaha 72 hours. I like sleep. 

39. Do you have any scars? Asked by Sangria-Fangs!

40. Have you ever had a secret admirer?

Yeah! It’s.. okay. Kind of creeps me out tbh. 

41. Are you a good liar?

No. I would psych myself out. 

42. Are you a good judge of character?

Yeah. It took a lot of fuck-ups to figure that out!

43. Can you do any other accents other than your own?

Poorly. All of them. 

44. Do you have a strong accent?

No.

45. What is your favorite accent?

Gosh. British or Australian. 

46. What is your personality type?

INFJ. 

47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing?

Boots! 

48. Can you curl your tongue? Cries. Asked by Caewen. 

49. Are you an innie or an outie?

Innie. This is weird. 

50. Left or right handed?

Right handed!

51. Are you scared of spiders?

Don’t @ me. 

52. Favorite food?

Snow crab.

53. Favorite foreign food?

Italian. 

54. Are you a clean or messy person?

SO fresh and SO clean ~

55. Most used phrased?

”I dare everyday.” She says before she does something stupid. 

56. Most used word?

Ye. 

57. How long does it take for you to get ready?

Anywhere from 5 minutes to over 30 minutes. There is no inbetween in this. 

58. Do you have much of an ego?

Either the biggest in the room or the smallest. There is no inbetween. 

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops?

BITE. 

60. Do you talk to yourself?

When I’m trying to focus really hard. 

61. Do you sing to yourself?

Only to myself, yes. In my car and forgetting there’s someone in the car next to me? yes. 

62. Are you a good singer?

I’d like to think so. 

63. Biggest Fear?

Snakes. 

64. Are you a gossip?

No, but I’ll discuss, not spread. 

65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? Asked by Hingan-Fox!

66. Do you like long or short hair?

I like both!

67. Can you name all 50 states of America?

Unfortunately. 

68. Favorite school subject?

Literature. 

69. Extrovert or Introvert?

Kinda inbetween. Ask me on a random day, it may be one or the other. 

70. Have you ever been scuba diving?

No but it sounds cool!

71. What makes you nervous?

Confrontation. 

72. Are you scared of the dark?

Kinda. 

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes?

It depends on the thing. If its not my place, I won’t. If they’re ignorant, it depends if its worth it. If they deserve it- passionately. 

74. Are you ticklish?

I will stab you. 

75. Have you ever started a rumor?

Nope

76. Have you ever been in a position of authority?

Yep!

77. Have you ever drank underage?

Yeeeap. 

78. Have you ever done drugs?

Mary Jane. 

79. Who was your first real crush?

A boy in kindergarten who drew me cards everyday and left them in my desk each morning. ; ; 

80. How many piercings do you have?

None! Needles and I do not work out. 

81. Can you roll your Rs? 

I can’t even curl my tongue and now I get this question. 

82. How fast can you type?

90 WPM average. 

83. How fast can you run?

Fast as fuck boi. I’m just memeing now, aren’t I? Just trying to get through this. I don’t think anyone will get this far. 

84. What color is your hair?

Dark brown!

85. What color is your eyes?

Green-blueishhhh. Depends on the day/lighting. 

86. What are you allergic to?

Wax and bees. 

87. Do you keep a journal?

I used to until someone read it lol. 

88. What do your parents do?

Work? 

89. Do you like your age?

I kinda have to? 

90. What makes you angry? Asked by Caewen! Oo boy. 

91. Do you like your own name?

Yeah, I’d say its just fine. It’s mine.

92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they?

Jace and Claire. 

93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child?

Happy with either.

94. What are you strengths?

Empathy, understanding.

95. What are your weaknesses?

Patience (depends), Failure. 

96. How did you get your name?

They said they just shouted it out until they figured they could say it everyday for the rest of my life and not get tired of it- and the meaning is pretty. 

97. Were your ancestors royalty?

I don’t think so. Never looked into it. 

98. Do you have any scars? Asked by Sangria-Fangs!

99. Color of your bedspread?

White.

100. Color of your room?

White, greys. I like snow and furs and lights. 

Now, after all that- I am clearly no bitch @kazexvoss. Do yours. 

#TAPROMPTS #HUFF #This was fun but lengthy #clearly i am EFFICENT #and a perfectionist #and the best healer

[late-stagechosen]

So on my rewatch, I found a website called Anime Dao has Digimon 02 original audio, streaming, and I'm taping it, because a smartphone is my only concession to the 21st century (I live in a place reminiscent of my childhood, intentionally so)

Anyway, so my hearing loss is worst in the higher end of the speech range.

Even though my neighbours do it, I won't turn things up loud enough to disturb the neighbours, and I also live in the downtown of a very...lively city, and closing the window doesn't shut out as much noise as one would think.

Holy heck, I cannot hear half of what Miyako says. Also when the Digimon are in their little head forms, I have trouble there, too.

And that reminds me, I'm playing Ken as having not insignificant hearing loss from all the screams and explosions of the Digital World, both when he was conquering and enslaving, and afterward, when he overcame the Dark Seed and was taking down towers and stuff.

Really, any of the 02 Chosen could be candidates for this (I actually don't know about Adventure. I jumped aboard because of stuff I later found out Konaka was writing in 02, and Adventure never really seemed like something I'd get into going back and looking at) They're close quarters with a lot of things that could cause hearing damage.

Hearing damage just doesn't get a whole lot of representation in fiction. And gets so little love in the real world where not being able to hear someone never gets a response better than annoyance. And nowadays, closed-captions are no longer worth anyone's time, and they all use the same thing YouTube does, and I honestly gave up on worrying about having a modern-enough TV (never mind that only English and Spanish language TV even gets closed captioning in the US in the first place, so I'm not completely covered anyway)

And also, affordable hearing aids for a music lover? Blegh. If you thought early smartphone speakers sounded bad, you've not heard the half of it.

I don't know about modern closed captioning in Japan, although one can generally assume "standards higher than American" on most things. (Except decadent breakfast foods... America has that market cornered) (This does also vary by area, as to be expected in such a huge country. The SF Bay Area is second only to Hawaii in progressiveness, both above 2019's federal bar in a LOT of countries, LDP-ruled Japan included)

But frankly, anything else I enumerated, Ken probably struggles with. Although it's a lot easier to hear a high-pitched voice from a real person in front of me. English and Spanish, I drop words, but I have no problem carrying on a conversation with an excited two year old in Japanese. So since Miyako's real life to him, and I'm playing Ken as Yamato Japanese, native speaker, he likely has no problem. (Your highs are the first thing to go in hearing loss)

(Also, this blog defaults to age 21, so she's assumed 22 if she's a third party. Estrogen doesn't cause a vocal change, but having an adult sized body does somewhat)

He would drop words over the phone. Same as Japanese animation. No readable lips, coming through a speaker (no, not the same problem as mondegreens)

Most hard of hearing people prefer texts, although in Japan, your carrier gives you an e-mail address tied to your phone, so people either use that or apps like Line instead of the base SMS app we use in America. (That's all I can say because I left Japan in the first half of the '90s)

But, either way, written is better than phone.

So when Ken is actually talking to someone as a late teen or later, when this technology got big, he's more likely to message you back and forth that stay on the phone for hours on end. (Even if he really wants to be face-to-face with you, you have to ask for that because he's afraid of imposing his awful self, because he has less self-worth than rotten bean sprouts)

He has actually picked up a bit of JSL, but...see, again, it would be asking someone to do something for *his* sake.

With most people, he'll sort of pretend he heard the whole thing if it seems feasible. I think most people with some hearing left do this with strangers or when it's more of a bother to ask than fake it. But Ken would probably take to heart the treatment hearing impaired people get as *he's a problem* (exactly how you get treated, but I know that's a "them" problem. Ken doesn't)

He doesn't expect anyone to learn how to communicate with him better, he doesn't turn things loud enough to hear (he probably won't put on a record when you're over because he doesn't want to impose music you probably don't like [eyeroll])

(How to get my muse to marry your muse: one day, just start talking in JSL and not have any other reason to learn it than him www He doesn't exactly keep it secret that he studies it in a world of... Facegood? www he just doesn't expect anyone else to)

He can hear the teacher in a classroom. Lecture hall, dodgy. Toukyou streets? He's gonna miss things.

His hearing loss is both ears, fairly even.

Will it decline further with age/wear? He's not sure--hence learning sign.

I default here to assuming "once a chosen, always a chosen," so I don't assume an end to his adventures/role in the Digital World. The epilogue went one way, and then I saw a trailer for either Tri or Kizuna last week where Agumon was asking Taichi if they'd have to separate because Taichi was gonna be an adult soon, and he said no, but the narration was saying it was their last adventure, and I don't like that, so I'm rolling with lifetime appointment here.

I will say, no way Wormmon can sign effectively. If you don't know, you really need fingers. I don't see having ten legs being an effective stand-in.

The point is, there's always potential for more hearing damage, even if damage doesn't snowball with age. Not that it's ever not a good idea to acquire a new language.

NHK has free resources to learn many languages, including JSL. Ken has copies. There's also a guy as of 2018 posting JSL teaching videos (and he's from my province!) on YouTube. This is an extra resource of Ken's since he can mail order stuff and take community college classes and all that because he's not in a whole another country. So by the time those videos come out, they're vocabulary expanders, which seems like what they're meant to be.

(I want to learn to sign in my native as well as ASL)

I feel like this would dovetail nicely with his eventually going into nursing.

But yeah, Ken's hearing impaired because representation. And there's my full thing on it.

#about muse #musings #hearing impaired mun #hearing impaired muse #long post

[iamwhelmed]

Win One, Have Two: Chapter 1

Hey hey hey, guys! It’s Book Two! Now, I hope I can have each chapter ready on time each week, but know I will always try my best! This story has been my favorite one yet to write <3

Here it is on AO3 and Fanfiction.net!

Summary: With Isaac gone and Ed sent away to train, the club struggles to find some sense of normalcy, but so do Suzy and Collin-- and the rest of the school; the monster attack on Mayview Middle has some interesting consequences. Isaac, meanwhile, struggles to atone for betraying his loved ones, and the mission is not without difficult and pain, not that he was expecting any less. It's just more than he counted on.

“...Just Home and Love! it's hard to guess

Which of the two were best to gain; Home without Love is bitterness; Love without Home is often pain. No! each alone will seldom do; Somehow they travel hand and glove: If you win one you must have two, Both Home and Love...”

- Home and Love by Robert William Service

It was a grudge, but it was small, and even in all its feral glory, it was easy to catch. Isabel watched as it flicked its tail in irritation, little claws tapping about the bubble she'd formed around it, running in circles like a hamster in a cage. Part of her wanted to keep it, because it had a tiny face like a squirrel and a bushy round tail like a rabbit with a tummy as round as it was fluffy, but it would be frowned upon and she knew that. Besides, how was she to keep it home? It clearly wanted little to do with her and Dimitri, even as they bent to the forest floor and set the little guy free. It didn't so much as wiggle its nose at them before it was off with two other spirits equally as small and cute, presumably its family.

"There" she stood up and wiped the sweat from her brow. The hike up the grassy hill was more difficult than it would have been had she not been expending so much spectral energy. Dimitri raised a hand and high-fived her, turning on the way back to the clubroom. It was a half an hour walk, but it'd be easier the second time around. "It's nice to have you back!"

"Glad to be back" he grinned that sly way he always did, behind lidded eyes that seemed to be up to no good, which Dimitri certainly was. "Think we mighta spared that poor creature a real but-kicking back there. Had Max not accidentally stepped on its paw-"

"Hey!" They both jumped at the grainy voice in the walkie-talkie she'd nearly forgotten they'd had. "I had an arm full of books and it picked the wrong time to cross the hall!"

"Quite frankly you're lucky it didn't bite you." Dimitri snickered, one finger scratching his top lip.

There was a pause, and then: "Do… can spirits have rabies?"

Isabel tossed her head back and cackled, holding her sides and leaning into Dimitri, whose shoulders were trembling as he stifled his own bout of laughter.

"Good job, children!" Spender's voice was over the walkie talkie then, though Max's disturbed musings carried on in the background, faintly dying out as Spender was taller and the talkie was well above his mouth at that point. "Return to the clubroom so we can call it a day. Stay safe."

Max blinked up at Spender, who set the talkie aside on his desk, looking a little too pleased for his liking. He got it, he guessed, it'd been a month, but it still didn't sit well with him, and he was having a hard time seeing the world continue turning as though nothing had ever happened. Sure, there was a heaviness over the student- and teacher- body, and he felt that in the air and saw it in the wide, dull eyes of his peers, but nobody lost sleep because they felt like he did. "Does that happen often?" Spender hummed, smiling at Max, taking a seat, one hand reaching for a red pen, likely to grade tests. Max sat up from where he'd taken to slouching, propping himself up on the armrest. "How often do we take care of spirits and they don't end up in a tool?"

Spender tilted his head, smile softening in the way any adult's would when they were about to explain something they didn't think a child was ready to hear. "Well, it's more rare than one would hope, but not rare enough to make us the bad guys or anything!"

Silence fell over the room, companionable, at least more than it had been when he first started seeing shades and human-spirit-mad hybrids.

Max cocked an eyebrow. "That sounds like something a bad guy would say."

"I heard it."

Spender's smile flattened, and Max could almost see a level of exhaustion, even behind his glasses, but he turned away to mark off papers before Max could really catch a glimpse of it. He sighed and leaned further into the couch, crossing his arms over his chest and hoping that his hat hid his eyes, because he might have been projecting.

"We should arrange another search party this weekend." Spender's voice was perfectly level, like he'd rehearsed it thousands of times. "I want to be perfectly certain we've covered the entire forest."

Max nodded, then mumbled "Yeah."

He couldn't exactly tell him Isaac wasn't in Mayview anymore. It'd raise too many questions, questions he knew he couldn't-- wouldn't-- answer.

He plopped on the couch, legs splayed across Zoey's lap against her many (many, many, many) complaints, and took the remote in one lazy hand. Even the weight of that was a burden on his arms, which felt like dumbbells for some odd reason, and he guessed it was because he hadn't been sleeping well. He wasn't quite awake all hours of the early morning, but he more often than not awoke periodically, maybe two or three times, a night.

He yawned. All he wanted to do was kick back, watch some TV- if he ever managed to find a channel he felt like watching-- and nap at his sister's expense. She was hitting his calves, but softly, enough to let him know she didn't want his feet on her, just not enough to actually, ya know, hurt him or have much of an effect at all. Then again, she was, like, seven; he doubted she could if she wanted to.

Nature? Boring. Paranormal? Extra boring. Sports? Max squinted. Nah.

He flipped through channel after channel, taking a moment each time to decide whether or not he wanted to kill his brain to the screams of a horror movie or the equally as grating screams of reality TV. He was starting to wonder if he really wanted to watch anything. Max yawned again and stretched, pressing the down button on the remote.

"In other recent news…" Blegh. Local news station. No, definitely not. He raised his hand to cut to a different channel, but a flash of orange caught his attention. "Missing child Isaac O'Connor is yet to be found." Zoey yelped as he swung his legs to the floor, leaning forward, edged to the front of the couch, turning the volume up as high as he could take it. The woman on screen shuffled her papers, chestnut hair bouncing over her shoulders as she turned to her partner. "Now, after forty-eight hours, the likelihood of catching the culprit drops significantly, right?"

Zoey frowned, lips pursing. "They haven't found him yet?

"Yes, Jan, it does, and unfortunately for this kid, it's been a month." The man, tall, dark, soft instead of brooding, set his forearm on the newsdesk. "Now, that's not to say there's no hope. There have been missing kid cases that have lasted years and they turned up."

Max swallowed hard. He shouldn't have been worried so much. It wasn't like Isaac had been kidnapped or something equally as horrific. Max knew he'd left of his own volition. To do what though? Doorman wouldn't tell him, wouldn't say a word, and that scared him like nothing else.

"Now, Mark, in a situation like this, what is the probability that this kid is alive?"

His heart dropped. Zoey leaned forward with him, crossing her legs and adjusting to lay more comfortably on the cushions. "Not likely."

Max punched her in the arm, harder than usual. She yelped and rubbed at the sore spot, nose scrunching up.

"I wonder what happened to that boy…" His dad moved into the room, hulling a large basket of laundry into the living room. He balanced on one leg, shutting the laundry room door behind him. Had his interest not been elsewhere, Max might have been impressed all of the clothes still looked their regular non-shrunken size. He'd been more careful about that lately, about everything. He plopped down on the couch, setting the basket down at his feet, and looked at the screen as he reached for the first piece of unfolded laundry. "Hey, Max, that boy was your friend, wasn't he?"

Was? Wasn't? The past tense did nothing to settle the growing pit of unease sifting through his stomach. His hand tightened around the remote. He couldn't meet his dad's eyes. "Uh, something like that…"

"Hah!" Pinning people was fun, Ed had decided, especially when they were older and weren't expecting him to knock them over like speeding locomotive. The kid below him had three years on him at Hashimoto's dojo, at least, and wasn't looking too pleased about his abdomen being under Ed's knee if the red of his face and the blood vessel threatening to pop at his temple were any indication. Ed gave his best grin as consolation, peeling back at Hashimoto's order.

"Finish. Well done, Ed." It wasn't rare to see the old man smile, but it was certainly contagious. The corners of his mustache-- because you couldn't very well see his upper lip-- would lift, and the crease of his brows, usually furrowed in concern, would have a lightness that matched his amused eyes.

Ed rubbed the back of his neck, tittering to himself. He still wasn't used to receiving praise. The whole be an effective student thing was still shiny and new to him. "Well, it's 'cause I have something to fight for!" His smile dropped. "Also I had, like, a lot of soda before the match, like, so much soda. My bladder is about to combust."

"Aw!" Another student, who'd won the sparring match before his, a small but beefy girl who stood as tall as his waist (counting the volume of her pigtails) took a water bottle from the mini fridge one of the older kids had set at the foot of the staircase. (Hashimoto had been originally against the installation of such a cumbersome-- his words-- appliance, and now accepted it with grudging assent). She readjusted the white towel around her neck with one hand and smiled his way. "That's cute! Who is she?"

"Isabel!" He'd answered before he'd taken the flowers and hearts in her eyes into account, before he realized exactly what he was answering to. "She's my best friend!"

"Yeah," she hummed and let her head fall back to take a few large gulps of her water, then shook her head like a wet sweaty dog and went for the staircase. "That's how my dad fell for my mom, too."

He froze, and if his cheeks hadn't already been flushed from the workout, they would have been as red as Isabel's aura, anyway. He rubbed desperately at either side of his face, trying in vain to wipe away the evidence. "I-I'm not in love with her!"

The other student giggled and carried her weight up the stairs. "Not yet, maybe."

They'd been out on the streets of Mayview, in every district imaginable, he was sure, since school let out, and it would have been longer had the Vice Principal not caught Suzy snooping around near the front entrance during lunch. Collin sighed, moving his arms and the papers in them so that the pile wouldn't hit the ground and go flying in the wind. She'd kill him, and he knew it. "Hey, um, quick question?"

"Yeah?"

"What the flip is this actually accomplishing?" He motioned to the poster she was currently hammering into a telephone pole, trying not to pay attention to the face he knew was plastered to each one. Isaac's face. Under big bold text that read "Missing", like it wasn't already all over the news. Isaac's parents had money- a lot of it, and they were putting it into action. That's why Suzy, in all of her rare good intentions, wasn't really accomplishing anything. Well, one of the reasons. Suzy ignored him, and he took another breath and continued. "Max said he's not even in Mayview anymore. How is this helping anyone?"

She didn't respond again, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek to keep from making another remark. She never made any sense, no matter how hard he tried to unravel the mess that was the bane of his considerably short existence. He didn't even know why he tried anymore, let alone why he took the challenge in the first place. He fixed the pile of missing posters in his arms again, pressing one palm up on the bottom of the stack, but still felt some pieces sliding out of his grip regardless. He went to say something again, but Suzy chose then to finish her handwork and admire it.

"Fall break is coming up, right?"

"Huh? I, uh, I guess--"

"And other people have families outside of Mayview that they may be visiting," She gestured to the missing poster, hanging, though crooked. "Thus, posters."

"Suzy--!"

"There's a chance that somebody could see him. Not everybody watches the local news, Collin!"

He opened his mouth to argue with her, but for once? He sighed. It wasn't worth it. Suzy hadn't been so passionate about something important, something personal, in a long time. Somebody, eventually, might rip it from her, but he would not be the one to tear up her sole force for good. She continued on her way down the sidewalk, seemingly unaware of the setting sun drifting over the horizon and kissing their chance to make curfew goodbye. "Suzy, stop."

She whipped around, arms crossed, cheeks puffed, like a child throwing a tantrum. "Why?"

He fixed the papers in his arms again, but it was less about convenience and more about her attention. He smiled and held them up a little higher. "We should probably print more of these."

He didn't enjoy doing it, in fact it went against his moral code in some aspect, probably, maybe. Isaac reached up from the side of the trashcan, fingers gracing the food tray that the tall, skinny, lanky man beside him was disposing of. His attention was away for the moment, eyes latched to his newborn daughter who was sitting-- er, standing-- a few feet away on the table he'd taken for his wife and child. His wife, as attentive as a mother had to be, might have noticed Isaac slinking around a trash bin, or the hand he reached to the piece of bread sitting atop the otherwise devoured plates of food; she was too busy holding their toddler, keeping her wobbling legs steady in the face of a potential fall from a table top only a few feet off the ground. Both parents laughed, one urging the other to hurry and record it, because their baby was going to be a dancer and they were sure of it. Isaac took the bread in a shaking hand, then bolted down the windowless side of the restaurant before the man could notice his uneaten bread had somehow disappeared.

Sometimes he wondered if Doorman would be mad at him, if the way he'd gone about feeding himself the last month was, in any way, an act of aggression. Probably. Maybe. He tried not to think about it. He took a bite of it as he sat himself under the roof of a bus stop, lounging and spreading his legs out so he was more comfortable. It wasn't like he'd taken it from a plate not-yet finished. The bread would have been tossed anyway. Even so... Isaac exhaled, leaning back, settling his head, watching each passing car in his peripheral.

He didn't know where he was, what time it was-- aside from the stars going on for yards and miles and lightyears over his head-- or the month, week, day. It didn't really matter. There was no timeline for his mission, and no end to it, not a foreseeable one, anyway. He swallowed the first bite. Stale. He looked down at it and shrugged. He wasn't expecting much else. That was the way life on the road worked. He was surprised nobody had caught him yet, tried to drag him back to his home, not that anybody would have known where that was. He didn't try to buy things, and the baths he took were often in fast food joint sinks a little past midnight, so it wasn't like he'd had a lot of interaction with any adult that might have their suspicions about the dirty thirteen-year-old roaming around the country on his own. He wondered how far he was, sometimes, not often, but he never let himself linger on it. Distance, like how long he'd been gone, didn't matter. He wouldn't be coming home.

There was a scream, a squeal, something not quite human fighting something also probably not human. Isaac sighed and stuffed the rest of the bread in his pocket for later. He had something to atone for.

#Paranatural #pnat #Isaac O'Connor #Maxwell Puckett #Isabel Guerra #Edward Burger #Dimitri Danger #Richard Spender #The Monster Trilogy #WOHT

[skywailer]

✉️ + i love this idea of yours! followed initially bc of your amazing headcanon for dramione (literally squealed, it was so good) but you also have great content and fics. A+. as for me, I love the ocean, all things ancient greece or rome related, horses, sleeping, and the colour of fresh grass or leaves that are just starting to open in the spring. i've been told that I can be very manipulative, that I have a smirk that rivals a Malfoy, but for me family and friends are always first

Thank you so much!  Plan to make more head canons once I’m out of this rut.  Speaking of which, sorry for the late reply!!!  I’ve been feeling… well, “blegh” these past few days and knew that wouldn’t do for these OC/HCs.  But at last, here it is!  Thanks again, and hope you like it. :)

how you got your Hogwarts acceptance letter: you come from a dignified family of purebloods who have a love of classical music (and honestly, classical anything.  Your family estate is practically an interactive museum), and that summer you were to be formally introduced to the orchestra- Vivaldi in Summer.  You were young, and the dress you had to put on that night was heavy for summer (everything besides a good pair of shorts and a tank top was too heavy, too clingy in the lovely weather) - but it did funny things when you twirled around, so you didn’t care too much.  Besides, your parents promised pastries would be handed out before the concert.  So, it couldn’t be too bad.   It really wasn’t bad at all.  You had fully stuffed yourself that night before seating, and realized that the love for string instruments and crescendos ran in the family.  You loved the emotion of it, and how the orchestra seemed to move in waves as they played- especially the string section with their flowing bows.  It was at a moment of peace within the piece, of soft crooning from the strings and whispers from the winds that a change in the air occurred- like something was fanning air just above your head (which was nice, if a little cold in an already freezing concert hall).  There was a movement of wings, light and graceful - which fit in quite perfectly with the song.  You looked up just as something cream and square flickered to and fro - like a baton keeping rhythm, and you spotted the leaving of a soft brown owl just before the falling envelope dropped onto your face.  When you eventually plucked it off your face to read it, there it was: your long-awaited invitation to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  Like it was said before, the night out really wasn’t bad at all.

head canons about your trip on the Hogwarts Express: the journey to just the train platform was quite eventful, seeing as you hadn’t slept a wink the night before.  Enter images of you nearly driving your suitcases into innocent bystanders at Kings Cross Station, nearly falling asleep at the wheel of your cart, and almost knocking your owl into incoming train traffic.  Thankfully, you were with friends and one of them seized your cart away from you before you could try and walk through the pillar between 8 and 9, instead of 9 and 10.  You’d stayed awake most of the previous night thinking of where you would sit to get the best views, if you should sit with old friends or try to make new ones, and if you should pack something light to read- or listen to.  When you got onto the train, and sat down in an empty cabin, you forced your eyes open and mouth into a smile for those to enter.  And then the sound of the train’s steam snuck into your ears.  The cushion felt awfully comfortable.  The heavy breakfast in your stomach was warm and filling…  You woke up when the train lurched to a stop at Hogsmeade.

what happened when you went head-to-head hat with the sorting hat: despite coming from a prestigious pureblood family, you didn’t feel any pressure to be sorted into a particular house that night.  There were two houses your parents guessed at, you guessed at, and seemed to be the ones your closest childhood friends were sorted into: ravenclaw and slytherin.  On the one hand, the academia and curiosity of the ravenclaw house intrigued you, and felt mind-opening, and promising for your own academic future.  Yet, on the other, the steel determination of slytherins, as well as their loyalty to those closest to them, and deep history of that house was such a snug fit for you.  In the end, for you, it was a matter of how many of your friends would you be able to group up with, and spend long nights studying, or not studying, in a shared common room.  A majority of your friends, by the last, had been sorted into slytherin.  When you sat on the stool, there was a look of sheer willpower.  When the sorting hat was put upon your head, and it started rummaging through your head- you plastered every known image and concept of slytherin character at the forefront of your thoughts.  Which was quite slytherin of you, really.  The sorting hat knew it, too.  You always loved green, and it looks good on you.

who’s your squad: You hang out with a mix of ravenclaw and slytherin personalities, including Padma, Pansy and Theo, but you have a close ring of friends that you’ve had since you were little and continue to have at Hogwarts (and Beauxbatons, from your family’s summer stays in France).  A majority of these friends are slytherins too, with a dash of ravenclaw and hufflepuff.  You admire Hermione Granger from a distance, loathe her for checking out books before you could get your hands on them, and definitely mooch off the Weasleys for Molly’s homemade pies, which she sends to family and friends during Christmas time - and you made sure to get one, too.  Fred and George Weasley are good stress relievers, and you absolutely… haven’t.. you know, suggested people they should prank, or anything like that.

general first-year shenanigans you were up to while Harry was being Harry:

once you overslept horribly, and in your rush to eat something quick and get to class- you accidentally drank a glass of firewhiskey a housemate left in the common room (it was the party the night before that had kept you up later than you would’ve wanted, but you couldn’t get them to shut up).  … You were tipsy during Potions.  Threw up on Professor Snape.  Detention was a nightmare, but you made sure to drag in the idiot who brought firewhiskey into the dorm.  Detention was a much worse nightmare for him.  You made sure of that.

during your free time, you’d volunteer to look after the horses on campus, even during the winter season when help is needed most (you made sure to bundle up and practically waddle your way to the stables).

you once read about thestrals and sometimes tracked them in the forest, even if you couldn’t - and hoped not to - see them.  Sometimes you met with Luna out there, and she’d describe them to you, guide you to feed them.

despite being a first-year, you were able to smooth-talk Madam Pince into giving you full-access to the library, specifically the restricted section.  For research, into the classic texts of magic, of course.  Purely academic. 

you continue to help Madam Pince with the daily ins and outs of the library, in exchange for extended loan periods and an extremely lenient clause on eating in the library (you’re the only one who gets away with munching away with a book in hand).

she doesn’t even mind it when you fall asleep and drool on the tables.  

no one really understands how you got into Madam Pince’s good graces, but since you are people ask favors of you, and you get to reap quite a few benefits from this glorious arrangement.

you once snuck into the kitchen in the middle of the night to get first dibs on christmas pastries.

you got caught.  You’re not very good at sneaking around.

but you’re very good at keeping out of detention, ever since that first and only experience.  In exchange for sweets, you told mythological stories about roman and greek gods to the house elves. 

this arrangement has continued, with a new story every Sunday for a new flavor of cake, made just for you.  Eventually, you started bringing some cake back for your friends.

Some.

you missed home so much, and being on the seaside, that you tried to enchant sand on the lake, to make a pseudo-beach.  Consequently, you ended up getting into a non-verbal argument with the Giant Squid. 

there was a lot of squid arm-waving and sand-throwing.

you won the battle, but not the war- you were still plucking sand out of your hair on the year-end ride home.

#in-the-maple-leaf #mail #hp;hc #hp #OC HC #my writing

[celepom]

Was Tagged by @magically-strange

1. Coke or Pepsi: I don’t drink soda. But I guess if given a choice I’d pick Coke. Pepsi is too sweet for me 2: Disney or Dreamworks: They’re both good for different reasons. I think Dreamworks has given me more personally meaningful stories as of late though. Dreamworks experiments more than Disney does which can lead to both good and bad, but a lot of times Disney feels...safe. 3: Coffee or tea: Neither. I can’t drink coffee and people have tried to find me a Tea I’ll like but it all just tastes like grass juice to me. BLEGH. 4: Books or movies: Books. Always books. It takes me a lot of mental effort to sit down and watch something whereas I can pick up a book at the drop of a hat. 5: Windows or Mac: Windows.   6: DC or Marvel: Marvel. I haven’t really read much DC stuff (core universe) since the New 52 started years back. But at the same time I haven’t had a lot of money lately to buy many comics at all so I cut back a lot on Marvel too. 7: Xbox or Playstation: Playstation. The only Xbox I ever had was the original and it was probably the console I played the least. 8: Dragon Age or Mass Effect: I’ve never played either. I watched a roommate play through Dragon Age once though. Watched her go half-insane trying to Romance Fenris 9: Night owl or early riser: Night owl to the point where it becomes morning (oops) 10: Cards or chess: Chess when I was younger, but cards now that I’m older. 11: Chocolate or vanilla: Both. I’ve really started liking cooking with vanilla lately though. 12: Vans or Converse: I...don’t know the difference? Are we talking about vehicles or shoes? 13: Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash, or Adaar: Uhm? 14: Fluff or angst: Fluff, but angst is good too so long as it isn’t RELENTLESS.. 15: Beach or forest: Forest! I miss living in the mountains and being surrounded by vast wilderness! 16: Dogs or Cats: Cats. 17: Clear skies or rain: Rain - make it a thunderstorm. 18: Cooking or eating out: I rarely ever eat out - saves money. 19: Spicy food or mild food: Mild, I am a pansy 20: Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: Neither? 21: Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot (and no the winter coats and AC’s are not an option): A little too cold. At least then I can function. I am WORTHLESS when it’s hot 22: If you could have a superpower, what would it be: Shapeshifting! 23: Animation or live action: Animation. I like the artistry of it. 24: Paragon or renegade: Paragon - I never seem to be able to play evil storylines. I feel terrible. 25: Baths or showers: Showers. 26: Team Cap or Team Ironman: I haven’t seen Civil War so I dunno 27: Fantasy or Sci-Fi: MIX EM TOGETHER IN A BLENDER AND ADD A BIT OF HORROR! LET’S MAKE THIS FUN!! 28: Do you have three or four favourite quotes, if so what are they? If not do you think you will in future? “Life isn’t about weathering the storm, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” (Can’t think of any others atm. This one is what I try to live by though.) 29: Youtube or Netflix: Youtube. I don’t have Netflix at the moment. 30. Classic Disney, Disney Renaissance, or Modern Disney?  Either classic or Renaissance. Because while a lot of the classics may not have been commercial successes I LOVED THEM as a kid. But my favourites now are probably Roger Rabbit, BatB, Mulan and Tarzan 31. What would you tell your younger self?   You’re gonna survive - this isn’t normal and you’re gonna get out of it.

32. If you could change one thing about the world around you, what would it be? That education was more freely available, I feel like that could solve a lot of problems.

33. Make music or listen to music? Listen, since I’m not much of a musician.

34.  Slow burn or Oneshot?: Depends on what I’m in the mood for/how much time I have!

#Tagged #About Me