#and 2 it would have taken them 5 seconds to copy paste into a search bar and find out what the monument lesbian flag is

[perpetual-stories]

Story Structures for your Next WIP

hello, hello. this post will be mostly for my notes. this is something I need in to be reminded of for my business, but it can also be very useful and beneficial for you guys as well.

everything in life has structure and storytelling is no different, so let’s dive right in :)

First off let’s just review what a story structure is :

a story is the backbone of the story, the skeleton if you will. It hold the entire story together.

the structure in which you choose your story will effectively determine how you create drama and depending on the structure you choose it should help you align your story and sequence it with the conflict, climax, and resolution.

1. Freytag's Pyramid

this first story structure i will be talking about was named after 19th century German novelist and playwright.

it is a five point structure that is based off classical Greek tragedies such as Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripedes.

Freytag's Pyramid structure consists of:

Introduction: the status quo has been established and an inciting incident occurs.

Rise or rising action: the protagonist will search and try to achieve their goal, heightening the stakes,

Climax: the protagonist can no longer go back, the point of no return if you will.

Return or fall: after the climax of the story, tension builds and the story inevitably heads towards...

Catastrophe: the main character has reached their lowest point and their greatest fears have come into fruition.

this structure is used less and less nowadays in modern storytelling mainly due to readers lack of appetite for tragic narratives.

2. The Hero's Journey

the hero's journey is a very well known and popular form of storytelling.

it is very popular in modern stories such as Star Wars, and movies in the MCU.

although the hero's journey was inspired by Joseph Campbell's concept, a Disney executive Christopher Vogler has created a simplified version:

The Ordinary World: The hero's everyday routine and life is established.

The Call of Adventure: the inciting incident.

Refusal of the Call: the hero / protagonist is hesitant or reluctant to take on the challenges.

Meeting the Mentor: the hero meets someone who will help them and prepare them for the dangers ahead.

Crossing the First Threshold: first steps out of the comfort zone are taken.

Tests, Allie, Enemies: new challenges occur, and maybe new friends or enemies.

Approach to the Inmost Cave: hero approaches goal.

The Ordeal: the hero faces their biggest challenge.

Reward (Seizing the Sword): the hero manages to get ahold of what they were after.

The Road Back: they realize that their goal was not the final hurdle, but may have actually caused a bigger problem than before.

Resurrection: a final challenge, testing them on everything they've learned.

Return with the Elixir: after succeeding they return to their old life.

the hero's journey can be applied to any genre of fiction.

3. Three Act Structure:

this structure splits the story into the 'beginning, middle and end' but with in-depth components for each act.

Act 1: Setup:

exposition: the status quo or the ordinary life is established.

inciting incident: an event sets the whole story into motion.

plot point one: the main character decided to take on the challenge head on and she crosses the threshold and the story is now progressing forward.

Act 2: Confrontation:

rising action: the stakes are clearer and the hero has started to become familiar with the new world and begins to encounter enemies, allies and tests.

midpoint: an event that derails the protagonists mission.

plot point two: the hero is tested and fails, and begins to doubt themselves.

Act 3: Resolution:

pre-climax: the hero must chose between acting or failing.

climax: they fights against the antagonist or danger one last time, but will they succeed?

Denouement: loose ends are tied up and the reader discovers the consequences of the climax, and return to ordinary life.

4. Dan Harmon's Story Circle

it surprised me to know the creator of Rick and Morty had their own variation of Campbell's hero's journey.

the benefit of Harmon's approach is that is focuses on the main character's arc.

it makes sense that he has such a successful structure, after all the show has multiple seasons, five or six seasons? i don't know not a fan of the show.

the character is in their comfort zone: also known as the status quo or ordinary life.

they want something: this is a longing and it can be brought forth by an inciting incident.

the character enters and unfamiliar situation: they must take action and do something new to pursue what they want.

adapt to it: of course there are challenges, there is struggle and begin to succeed.

they get what they want: often a false victory.

a heavy price is paid: a realization of what they wanted isn't what they needed.

back to the good old ways: they return to their familiar situation yet with a new truth.

having changed: was it for the better or worse?

i might actually make a operate post going more in depth about dan harmon's story circle.

5. Fichtean Curve:

the fichtean curve places the main character in a series of obstacles in order to achieve their goal.

this structure encourages writers to write a story packed with tension and mini-crises to keep the reader engaged.

The Rising Action

the story must start with an inciting indecent.

then a series of crisis arise.

there are often four crises.

2. The Climax:

3. Falling Action

this type of story telling structure goes very well with flash-back structured story as well as in theatre.

6. Save the Cat Beat Sheet:

this is another variation of a three act structure created by screenwriter Blake Snyder, and is praised widely by champion storytellers.

Structure for Save the Cat is as follows: (the numbers in the brackets are for the number of pages required, assuming you're writing a 110 page screenplay)

Opening Image [1]: The first shot of the film. If you’re starting a novel, this would be an opening paragraph or scene that sucks readers into the world of your story.

Set-up [1-10]. Establishing the ‘ordinary world’ of your protagonist. What does he want? What is he missing out on?

Theme Stated [5]. During the setup, hint at what your story is really about — the truth that your protagonist will discover by the end.

Catalyst [12]. The inciting incident!

Debate [12-25]. The hero refuses the call to adventure. He tries to avoid the conflict before they are forced into action.

Break into Two [25]. The protagonist makes an active choice and the journey begins in earnest.

B Story [30]. A subplot kicks in. Often romantic in nature, the protagonist’s subplot should serve to highlight the theme.

The Promise of the Premise [30-55]. Often called the ‘fun and games’ stage, this is usually a highly entertaining section where the writer delivers the goods. If you promised an exciting detective story, we’d see the detective in action. If you promised a goofy story of people falling in love, let’s go on some charmingly awkward dates.

Midpoint [55]. A plot twist occurs that ups the stakes and makes the hero’s goal harder to achieve — or makes them focus on a new, more important goal.

Bad Guys Close In [55-75]. The tension ratchets up. The hero’s obstacles become greater, his plan falls apart, and he is on the back foot.

All is Lost [75]. The hero hits rock bottom. He loses everything he’s gained so far, and things are looking bleak. The hero is overpowered by the villain; a mentor dies; our lovebirds have an argument and break up.

Dark Night of the Soul [75-85-ish]. Having just lost everything, the hero shambles around the city in a minor-key musical montage before discovering some “new information” that reveals exactly what he needs to do if he wants to take another crack at success. (This new information is often delivered through the B-Story)

Break into Three [85]. Armed with this new information, our protagonist decides to try once more!

Finale [85-110]. The hero confronts the antagonist or whatever the source of the primary conflict is. The truth that eluded him at the start of the story (established in step three and accentuated by the B Story) is now clear, allowing him to resolve their story.

Final Image [110]. A final moment or scene that crystallizes how the character has changed. It’s a reflection, in some way, of the opening image.

(all information regarding the save the cat beat sheet was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

7. Seven Point Story Structure:

this structure encourages writers to start with the at the end, with the resolution, and work their way back to the starting point.

this structure is about dramatic changes from beginning to end

The Hook. Draw readers in by explaining the protagonist’s current situation. Their state of being at the beginning of the novel should be in direct contrast to what it will be at the end of the novel.

Plot Point 1. Whether it’s a person, an idea, an inciting incident, or something else — there should be a "Call to Adventure" of sorts that sets the narrative and character development in motion.

Pinch Point 1. Things can’t be all sunshine and roses for your protagonist. Something should go wrong here that applies pressure to the main character, forcing them to step up and solve the problem.

Midpoint. A “Turning Point” wherein the main character changes from a passive force to an active force in the story. Whatever the narrative’s main conflict is, the protagonist decides to start meeting it head-on.

Pinch Point 2. The second pinch point involves another blow to the protagonist — things go even more awry than they did during the first pinch point. This might involve the passing of a mentor, the failure of a plan, the reveal of a traitor, etc.

Plot Point 2. After the calamity of Pinch Point 2, the protagonist learns that they’ve actually had the key to solving the conflict the whole time.

Resolution. The story’s primary conflict is resolved — and the character goes through the final bit of development necessary to transform them from who they were at the start of the novel.

(all information regarding the seven point story structure was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

i decided to fit all of them in one post instead of making it a two part post.

i hope you all enjoy this post and feel free to comment or reblog which structure you use the most, or if you have your own you prefer to use! please share with me!

if you find this useful feel free to reblog on instagram and tag me at perpetualstories

Follow my tumblr and instagram for more writing and grammar tips and more!

#writing #writing advice #writing tips #original writing #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writersconnection #writersofig #writersofinstagram #writings

[wisterialagoon]

For you, I'll Stay : Pt.2

Dabi is one of the top soldiers of the League of Villains. He does the dirty work and feels the stain of crime on his hands. You're an Assistant Inspector at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, resigned to records-keeping instead of doing actual fieldwork. What happens when these two become intertwined in the most prominent political event that changed the era of 1990's Tokyo Japan?

Warnings: Violence (a girl gets beat up in this chapter), gangs, eventual smut(not in this chapter tho)

Btw, in this dabi doesn't have any scars on his face!

Azabu Gardens,

Moto-Azabu 3-7-5 Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0046.

January 9, 1990, Tuesday.

The League

20:00 hours

The first rays of the morning began to creep into the premises of their mansion, illuminating the entirety of their eight-hectare complex. The lawn had been freshly mowed and the foyer had been polished to sparkling clean, as per the orders of their leader. It had been his first order of business during the general assembly with the entire brotherhood.

The soldiers were understandably taken aback at hearing him rattle off a list of things to do which were, in essence, house chores. From checking the car engines, laundering their clothes, and stocking up on groceries, the loyal members followed everything down to the very last detail, albeit with a little curiosity as to why they were doing this when they were supposed to be preparing for a major operation set later in the day.

Meanwhile the boss carried out everything as if it was business as usual. They had convened at their usual 10:00 am meeting at the solarium, exchanging data and intel regarding any updates on their framework's current phase. After making sure that everything was in order–from the time it would take to execute the operation to the time it would take for the police to arrive on scene, they called it a day and retired to their own rooms.

That was this morning.

Preparations were over and it was almost nearing midnight–time to start the show.

Everyone had gotten dressed in the same all-black attire, distinguished only by the formality of their suit and quality of the fabric. The leader had worn a two-piece suit, while the soldiers only had lightweight turtlenecks to pair with their slacks.

The cars were ready by the driveway, it's trunks loaded with a series of guns, masks and the deactivate system; and everyone had lined up at the foyer, at the foot of the grand staircase, awaiting the greeting and instructions of their boss.

"Good evening gentlemen," his voice didn't have that booming quality that most of his leaders had, but the clarity of his diction and richness of his timbre proved sufficient to command everyone's attention. He didn't need any of the pomp or fanfare that was usually associated with the league–his presence alone was enough.

There weren't many of them tonight, it was a small operation that needed only seven of their best men; even so, his under-boss, and the rest of his soldiers were waiting with bated breath at what he was about to say.

Finally standing by the newel post, he slowly slips on his leather gloves and begins to address their small unit.

"A rundown Kurogiri," he instructs his under-boss, with not so much as a glance spared his way.

"Today we initiate phase 2.1 of our framework," Kurogiri steps out of the line and proceeds to hand out a file on their operation and walkie-talkies to the soldiers. "Team A, Touya and Atsuhiro, will take care of the decoy. Team B, Himiko and Jin, will secure the target. Team C, Magne and Spinner, will deactivate the sensors and tip the police," he finishes, working his way back to his position beside their leader.

Tomura looks at him with a quirked eyebrow, expectant.

Kurogiri clears his throat. "Phase 2.2 of the framework will begin immediately after."

6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-6108, Japan.

The Takahashi Residence.

21:30 hrs.

As soon as Kurogiri parked the car in an empty lot two blocks from the site, he turned on their linked communication system and radioed to their leader that they were ready.

"Masks and Positions," Tomura instructed."Remember, one slip up will cost the entire operation."

Save for the thrumming of the engine, their leaders voice was the only thing that had cut through the nights silence.

"Yep, Tomura everyone is positioned," Kurogiri confirms, and signals to Team A that they were good to go.

As soon as they were given the signal, Touya and Atsuhiro make their way to the site, with the latter updating Tomura about their position. "Currently making my way into the Takahashi Residence along with Touya."

As they stopped to confirm that it was indeed the residence of the Minister of National Defence, their leader warns, "Keep an eye out for the security Atsuhiro," both soldiers nod their assent, replying that they located a blind spot in the houses security system and private guards.

After signalling Team B to follow, Kurogiri had set up operations control with Magne and Spinner. Just as they had gotten access into the house's security system, Tomura radios, "Kurogiri, do you copy?"

"Yes, I copy," the under-boss replies, holding the walkie-talkie in one hand and the other sifting through the nights operation file.

"Do you have a visual on the Minister and his wife?" Tomura  asks.

"Yes," he turns around to look at Magne and Spinners surveillance feed, which was focused on the master bedroom.

"They're currently separated from the decoy."

"Good." Tomura  affirms. "Magne, when Atsuhiro, Touya, Jin and Himiko are in place you'll override the security system, understand?"

"Understood!" the soldier nods while simultaneously preparing all the codes needed to deactivate the system.

"Once Touya and Atsuhiro take care of the decoy, that's when Himiko and Jin will go and search for the target," Tomura reminds, looking over at his copy of the operation file as well.

"Spinner, monitor all frequencies from a two-kilometre radius of the site. If anyone reports anything before we do then I want to hear it. If anyone is even in the middle of dialling a government or police number, I want to be the first to know, understood?"

"Gotcha boss," Spinner confirms. "The hacking system is ready to go, all lines within a two-kilometre radius is tapped as well."

21:42 hours.

After a preliminary entry into the estate, the four soldiers settle in their own entry points and radio back. "Spinner, we're in place, you can drop the security."

"Alright. You have a little over thirty minutes before the back-up security kicks in," the enthusiastic man programmes a few codes and counts backwards, "it's down in...5, 4, 3, 2, 1."

"Go." A deep voice follows, alerting the four soldiers on-site.

For a second, Team A and B thought it has been their leader who had addressed them, but immediately broke out into grins when the voice followed with, "Be careful in there guys."

''Don't worry, Kurogiri." Jin  assures, giving Himiko, Atsuhiro and Touya a thumbs up. "We've got this"

The four soldiers discreetly jump over the deactivated sensors and immediately break into action, disarming the guards and eventually knocking them unconscious by landing considerably hard blows to their neck, causing their head to snap to the side.

After slipping past the unconscious guards, Atsuhiro and Touya pry open one of the windows, climbing in quietly while Himiko and Jin wait outside.

Team A immediately proceeds to the target's room, bolting the maid's quarters from the outside after unfortunately having to knock her out as well.

The two check their copy of the house's floor plan, with Touya sending a glance to Atsuhiro before slowly opening the door into one of the mansion's bedrooms.

In the room sat 18-year old Takahashi Yua. with her back facing Atsuhiro and Touya slowly the boys made their way to her and in mere seconds Atsuhiro had his hands over Yua's mouth and held her in place.

The shocked girl could do nothing but try to thrash around and scream for help but Touya tied her hands and gagged her.

Touya then raised a fist, about to hit the girl before he was quickly stopped by Atsuhiro "Dabi, not here, let's take it outside. "

Nodding in agreement, Touya helped Atsuhiro drag the silently sobbing girl back outside from where they came from, leading to the back of the house and into the garage.

Seeing Touya and Atsuhiro leave with Yua allowed Himiko and Jin to make their way inside and find their operations primary objective, leaving Team A to deal with the girl.

"Compress, take off the gag," Touya instructed, to which Atsuhiro nodded and quickly removed the bundle of cloth that had been choking the girl.

As soon as it had been done, Touya struck her across the cheek with a force that pushed her backwards. It was a strong enough blow to leave an angry bruise but not enough to knock her out completely.

After taking stock of her figure-from her laboured breathing to her split lower lip, he delivers a few more punches to her torso and a last strike across her face. All the while, Atsuhiro hands had snaked around her arms. keeping her in place.

Finally, Touya pulled out a handkerchief that had been previously doused in ether.

He pressed it firmly to her mouth and nose. forcing her to inhale the substance which quickly knocked her out.

"Hey, you guys done in here?" Himiko skipped into the parking lot, "We've got the stuff."

"Yeah," Touya pockets the handkerchief and watches as Yua unceremoniously slumps to the floor with a dull thud.

"We're done." he drags her body to the main entrance of the parking lot, ensuring that she would be the first thing to be seen by anyone coming through the garage's main door.

"You're too brutish Touya." Atsuhiro grimaces at the bruised girl crumpled in the corner.

"Whatever, someone make the signal, we're done here." Touya gets up to leave.

6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-6108, Japan.

The Takahashi Residence.

23:00 hrs.

"Magne. I got a call from the other guys." their leader radios from where he was keeping sentinel of the entire operation.

"They're all clear, make the call."

"Got it boss, making the call now."

Magne dials the number on a burner phone expecting the line to ring a couple of times before anyone answers, as expected, on the fifth ring, a woman's voice breaks through the radio silence.

"SMPA, what is your concern?" her voice was clear. but slightly unstable. when she doesn't give her a reply, she repeats her question, louder this time.

"Kidnapping" she says, evenly distributing the stress on each syllable to feign monotony. "23:00, 6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-6108, Japan. Takahashi Yua." Magne states calmly, while she hears rapid scribbling on the other end.

Here come the textbook reactions she thinks to herself, amused.

"who is this? Where is your intel from?" she asks, an undertone of panic lacing her voice. "Hello?" she follows up when Magne

doesn't reply—to which she settles for perching the receiver directly over his mouth to make sure it picks up her heavy breathing.

Magne waited a few moments before finally hanging up.

She radios to their leader. "Alright, the phone call is done the officer will be calling for backup soon."

After checking his watch, Tomura smirks at their record. "Keigo, you ready to receive that request for backup?" Tomura asks through his walkie-talkie.

"Yeah, on patrol near the area so I should be getting that on my frequency." he affirms, shifting to a more comfortable position on the drivers seat he had convinced his partner in advance to take a leave for their shift that night, so as to ensure that he would be able to carry out his part in the operation without any hiccups.

"I'll be first on the scene when the request for backup is made."

6 Chome-10-1 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-6108, Japan.

The Takahashi Residence.

2:40 hours.

"Don't worry Ma'am, we'll find out who did this to your

daughter." Keigo assured the Ministers wife, pure concern flawlessly depicted in his facial expression. "We've done a preliminary search of the crime scene, we'll come back with updates as soon as we find anything conclusive."

"You had better catch that criminal, I want him in jail, my daughter is lying unconscious in a hospital!" she demands, hands coming up to cover her face as her body was enveloped in a series of sobs.

Keigo gave a curt nod and comforting pat to the woman's shoulder before turning around and getting back into his car to leave.

As he pulled out of the driveway, he immediately drove to a remote alley in the outskirts of the district, once he was assured that his location wouldn't be found, he made a call.

"Hello? Keigo?" their leader answered. ''What's your status?"

"Shigaraki, I just got back from the crime scene." he says, turning the police radio down and killing the car's engine.

"And?" their leader asks, undoubtedly expectant of his answer.

Keigo knew that his cover was especially pivotal for that night's operation—and that Tomura had made it clear with no uncertain terms that the success of this phase relied on his ability to herd the police where they wanted them to.

"The family doesn't suspect a thing They believe it was an attempted kidnapping" he says, waiting for their leader's response.

After a beat, their leader simply hums in affirmation and hangs up, It wasn't much—he knew that Tomura had always been a man of few words, but he also knew that he always meant whatever he said, with that in mind, he restarted the car and proceeded to drive back to their residence.

Azabu Gardens,

Moto-Azabu 3-7-5 Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0046.

January 9, 1990, Tuesday.

The League

03:00 hours.

He had stopped at the driveway, feeling no need to actually park his car since he was sure he'd be back at the station soon enough. Besides, he needed to speak with their leader immediately.

He had successfully crossed the foyer and was about to go up

the stairs when a familiar voice calls out to him "Keigoo, you're back!" The youngest member of their group, Himiko, approaches him, grinning.

"How'd it go?"

"Went well." he shrugs off his coat, and hangs his police hat over the coat stand. "Only one problem though, can you go get Shigaraki? We need to have a group meeting"

After a few minutes, everyone who had worked on the operation had gathered at their usual dining hall, with each finding their own seat at the round table.

"Everything went well with the family." After everyone had settled in, Keigo began immediately, fingers interlaced over the single file folder resting in front of him.

"But one of my subordinates is a little too close for comfort." Keigo states, instantly gaining the others' attention.

"What's his name?" Shigaraki questioned.

"Actually, it's a woman." he opens the folder, and pulls out a headshot photo.

"Her name is Miyasaki Y/N, she's the Assistant Inspector."

"A woman cop?" Touya reached for the photo then let out a snort at the subtle smile and short haircut she sported.

"So there's no problem then?" he chuckled, throwing the photo across the table for the others to see, clearly uninterested.

"Shut up Touya, you could probably get your ass kicked by this girl." Himiko quipped, earning a sharp glare from the other boy.

"I swear to god you psycho bitch, I'm gonna—" he shifts in his seat, calling out the girl, knowing full well that the mean name would provoke her.

Just as he was about to continue to prove that no girl could possibly kick his ass, he's thoroughly cut off.

"stop bickering this is serious." Keigo interrupted. "Girl cop or not, she's a threat." he declares.

He looks at them one by one and rests a brief glance at Tomura, their leader nods at him to continue. Keigo sighs, aware that he has to set the context for the rest of the group.

He had been given this role by Tomura directly so not everyone knew just what he was doing at the station or just how important his role was in their whole framework.

"she wasn't supposed to be the one who would get the police tip."

Keigo expels a deep breath, screwing his eyes shut.

"It was supposed to be her direct senior, the only other female Inspector in the agency, she usually does overtime with Miyasaki, but she changed her schedule tonight. I don't know why." again, Keigo sighs. This time, he's slouched on the dining chair, gently massaging the bridge of his nose.

The silence that follows only aggravated his frustration with himself.

He had been counting on Usagiyama Rumi, the agency's female Inspector, who he had been assigned to follow for the past few weeks.

She had the same routine ever since he "started" at the agency—time in at 7:00 am, attend meetings and facilitate cold opens throughout the day, follow-up on interrogations or meet victim's relatives and finally, time-out at midnight.

He wasn't counting on this assistant Inspector, she was an outlier, he didn't pay much attention to her other than the times that they'd cross paths at the cafeteria or when they'd get things from their adjacent locker units. He was working in the patrol and public safety unit, she was busy with comms and records-keeping.

Nonetheless, he did know everyone's business in the agency—even if he wasn't exactly tailing each and every one of them.

He knows the case assignments, he knows who had called in late and he knows why and he even knows how their chief liked his coffee down to the number of espresso shots and percentage of sugar.

"This girl is relentless." He presses on. "I've observed her at the agency—she dedicates herself to everything she does, it's borderline obsessive, even if it is something small and unimportant" he adds the latter as an afterthought, suddenly aware of all those times she stayed overtime.

"I don't like the idea of someone like that sniffing around where we don't want them to."

On his own, he just concluded that she did overtime because she wanted to kiss ass—especially given the kind of rumours going on about her, but it only dawned on him now that perhaps she was more dedicated to the job than others painted her out to be.

"Keigo's right." Kurogiri chimed in. "We should do something about her."

Silence fell for a beat, until it stretched on for a few minutes.

Everyone had exchanged glances, they knew that after Kurogiri, their leader had to have the final say.

"I agree," finally Tomura declares.

He stands up and proceeds to stand by the French window, parting open the satin drapes.

"It's time for modifications before starting phase 2.2."

"Find out why Usagiyama broke her routine. Enlist the others' help on this if you need more hands on comms." Tomura spares a glance at Magne and Spinner, at which the two people reply with nods.

"As for this new player..." their leader trails off, returning back to look at their garden and the approaching dawn.

Expectant, Keigo awaits his next orders. "I want you to keep an eye on her at the station. make sure she stays out of the way, try and befriend her if anything, I need you to throw her off our scent, okay?"

"Got it." the undercover member nods, rising from his seat.

The others follow suit, but Tomura gives follow-up instructions that stops them where they stood.

"Kurogiri, take over my 10:00 today." he announces, immediately piquing everyone's interest "Take Himiko and Jin, you'll need the extra eyes for surveillance."

After the three echo their assent, Tomura clears them, including Keigo, to leave, He adds a few reminders for Magne and Spinner to follow-up on their contracts with their current suppliers, experts and other assets before finally dismissing the two of them as well as Atsuhiro.

singled out, Touya stands by the doorway, intrigued.

"Dabi," he calls Touya by his alias, turning around to face him he then closes the distance between the two of them within five quick strides.

"I want you to pay a visit to that poor girl, make sure she's on bed rest," his voice strong and amplified by the domed ceiling and marble flooring. Touya nods. "I'll see which hospital admitted her," and moves to leave the room.

Not missing a beat. Tomura places a hand over his shoulder just as he was in the process of doing an about-turn.

"I wasn't referring to Miss. Yua.

#dabi smut #dabi hcs #touya todoroki #my hero academia #boko no hero academia #league of villains #dabi x reader #dabi x y/n #shigaraki tomura #kurogiri #jin bubaigawara #Twice #twice mha #mr compress #atsuhiro sako #bnha toga #toga himiko #magne #spinner #keigo takami #hawks

[13shapeshifters]

(Ok so this is obviously going to contain huge spoilers for the Raven King) @girlbossfarooqlane , this one goes out to you

When I first listened to the chapter at the end of the book of Cabeswater sacrificing itself to save Gansey, my first thought was that Cabeswater was creating Persephone- was making itself Persephone- to be exchanged for Ganseys life.

It might sound a bit strange in the beginning but hear me out! I have some (good, if i might say so) reasons:

The chapter I'm talking about is chapter 67 of the Raven King. In this chapter we learn quite a few things about Cabeswater, that we know to be true because it’s literally written in its perspective:

Cabeswater is made and remade all the time. It is impossibly old and always young at the same time.

Cabeswater is not quite mortal and can’t sacrifice itself for Gansey, who is quite mortal

The sacrifice has to be a life

Adam/it's magician is the one trying to convince him of saving Gansey, giving it ideas and explaining in what limited way of communication they have

The easiest way of saving Gansey would be to make a copy of him, but Cabeswater knows that that isn’t what the Others would want and Cabeswater is all about making wishes (and not-quite-wishes) come true, so that isn’t what happened

[I would, at this point, like to point out that the way the chapter reads it sounds like Cabeswater is making Gansey new: “But it might be able to refashion him into something new” but that sounds like making a copy of Gansey but since They don’t want a copy of Gansey   Cabeswater shouldn’t be able to do it (see point 5). Although it might be (probably is as far as i understood that scene?) that Cabeswater remade Gansey entirely. As in from the moment he died the first time, the moment Gansey received “a new heart” from the ley-line to save him from certain death by wasps. That moment is the reason why Gansey is a mirror like Blue, the reason why he died the moment Blue kissed him. They kept reflecting power back at each other, stronger each time, and the weaker one had to break.

But if we ignore those two or three sentences I can just continue with my theory I spent too much time on, yknow?]

Cabeswater can’t just kill itself because a) it’s not really mortal (see point 2) and b) it’s all about creation which is- as you might know- pretty much the opposite of murder

Cabeswater mentions that the life-for-a-life sacrifice would only be possible for itself if it created itself a human shape. Let’s go with this. The rest of the chapter is Cabeswater not understanding humans but trying it’s best at creating authentic life

7.1) Cabeswater has no idea how humans are supposed to be

7.2) Cabeswater is going away to create its new life

7.3) Cabeswater keeps coming back to remember what humans are like, which likely results in life that is not quite what it’s supposed to be like but it’s close enough

7.4) It takes Ganseys wonder and regret, his humanity and puts it inside the new life. I will read this as Cabeswater copy and pasting it and not outright stealing it

Cabeswater has a very calming effect on Adam

This is just a collection of facts (with a few of my comments thrown in) so now let’s get to the things we know about Persephone to start connecting them:

Persephone is described as odd due to her youthfulness being side to side with her old wisdom (taken from the Raven Boys Wiki)

She has a concept of right and wrong but it differs very strongly from the “rulebooks” of the Others

Her physical appearance is almost unnatural, especially her eyes. They are described as black, but they turn out to be every color at once. I’m 80% sure that’s biologically not possible

3.1) It could be that her physical appearance is the result of her being a psychic, but she would be the only psychic in the Raven Cycle to have an altered appearance due to her psychic-ness

Maura and Calla meeting was a coincidence (as long as you believe in coincidences, Persephone meeting them was not

Persephone seems to be a sort of mediator of Foxway, she’s pretty much the only calm presence in the books

She taught Adam despite never taking initiative

She dies while scrying

7.1) She can not only see the past, present, future through scrying, she can participate. See: the scene before the discovery of her body in Foxway. She was with Adam one second and the next one she was gone. The cashier said that she was never there. She was projecting herself

So let’s start connecting dots, shall we?

In the chapters just before Cabeswaters chapter the focus lies on Adam and Noah.

Noah's chapter focuses on his life after death and the “time is a circle” theme that has been in every book of the Raven Cycle. Noah goes “back in time” to save Gansey, it turns out he was the one to rescue Gansey, he is the one who started his search for Glendower (which is something I could maybe write another essay on ). So Noah sacrifices his life for Gansey a second time, the first time when he dies, the second time when he moves on.

Adam meanwhile is scrying, getting back his autonomy from the demon. While scrying he sees Persephone, who is dead, and she tells him to take back control. As far as i know (could research) scrying is believed to do three things:

see the past, present and future

give visions coming from the subconscious and imagination

give visions coming from gods, demons and/or spirits

It seems to me that the scrying in the Raven Cycle is based on point 1 since there are multiple occasions where the characters use scrying as a medium to locate the present location of others.

That would not, however, explain the presence of Persephone while scrying.

What Adam is doing can’t be a vision from his subconscious since he is in Cabeswater, he sees how little is left of it.

It could be argued that she too is a projection of Cabeswater, but at that point it’s too weak to do anything, much less create a whole human being while continuously being destroyed.

There is no reason for Persephone to be there, no way for her to be there. Unless she’s part of Cabeswater.

If we start at the beginning (or the end, really) it goes like this: Cabeswater is dying and Gansey saves it. Gansey died and the Others wish for him to be alive again. Cabeswater, being the wish fulfilling forest it is, does everything to do exactly that:

Cabeswater can’t kill itself and a sacrifice would only work if it created itself a human form to inhabit to be sacrificed.

We know that time is not linear, so Cabeswater goes back a few years, and it creates Persephone. It uses up the last of its power to create itself new (always remade, reborn; see facts about Cabeswater point one) and makes itself Persephone.

Persephone is an odd person with eyes that shouldn’t be and who is young yet old and who knows so much about Cabeswater and knows how to help Adam when he is having problems with communicating with Cabeswater.

She takes Adam as an apprentice despite being often described as almost never taking the initiative and as soon as she starts teaching Adam, he stopped having his anger outbursts (See facts about Cabeswater point 8, “Cabeswater has a calming effect on Adam”).

They want Gansey to live so Cabeswater makes itself a person to help his magician help the Others get to the point where they are now (without Adam they would have never gotten to the point of finding Glendower and stopping the demon). So Cabeswater/Persephone gives Adam back his eyes and hands and Adam gives back the idea to trade Cabeswater for Ganseys life in return and Gansey lives. It's a full circle.

But wait! In Facts about Cabeswater point 2 “can’t trade Cabeswaters immortal life for Ganseys mortal one” this theory would be disproven. That's the second purpose of Persephone (the first one being making sure Adam gets to be present for Ganseys death so he can give the idea):

Persephone is the life that gets taken. Her life is the one that gets sacrificed on the leyline so Gansey can live. And one might argue about her dying before Gansey did but I would like to draw attention to two things.

Persephone died while scrying, she went too far out of her own body and never returned.

Adam saw her mere minutes before Gansey died, also while scrying

So Persephone looked into the future and she stayed there, she fulfilled her role as Adams “mentor” and she fulfilled her role as sacrifice for Gansey, giving her soul (not her body) and she never returned to Foxway, dying in the process (see facts about Persephone point 7.1)

This was her purpose, this is her something more that every significant character in the Raven Cycle has.

Obviously Gansey’s quest and sacrifice, Adam’s connection to Cabeswater, Ronan’s dreams.

Noah’s sacrifice for Ganseys life, Neeve’s role in the demon's uprising and end, being the third one in the Maura-Calla party to make it a good number.

Persephone’s something more was to be a sacrifice and she knew it. In that one scene she’s talking to Adam and he asks if she can see her own death and this is her response: “Everyone sees it. Most people make themselves stop looking, though”. She dies in the chapter following this scene, so he knows exactly what she’s doing, that she is going to die and she does it willingly because the Raven Cycle is all about working toward your something more.

Persephone also knows about her origin. She knows about her “connection” to Cabeswater (her being it, really) and it gets “addressed” in the very same scene.

Here a scene:

But Persephone just said in her tiny voice, “But I see now that it could never be. You’re like me. We’re not really like the others.”

Other what? Humans?

[...]

“We’re really better in our own company,” Persephone said. “It makes it hard, sometimes, for others when they can’t understand us.”

^^^The only really “inhuman” thing about Adam is Cabeswater, which implies that Persephone also has a connection to Cabeswater (again, my point here is trying to prove that she is Cabeswater, so that would be the connection) and the talk about not being able to understand them would only prove that further since Adam and Persephones whole relationship started because of communication problems between Cabeswater and Adam.

Here’s the “short” version:

When Gansey died Cabeswater made itself Persephone (with the help of some time warping and circling and stuff) and Persephone/Cabeswater fulfilled her two purposes (it’s just one, really): To make sure that Adam gets to the point of Gansey’s death to share the idea that will save his life and to be the life that is sacrificed.

Her/It’s whole purpose was to give Gansey life and that’s exactly what happened.

#the raven cycle #the raven king #persephone trc #cabeswater #adam parrish #richard gansey

[tiramisiyu]

【未定事件簿】  Tears of Themis: Xia Yan Personal Story 4-2 Translation

Translation Masterlist | Xia Yan Masterlist | Video

Chapter 4: 4-1 / 4-2 / 4-4 / 4-5 / 4-6 / 4-7 / 4-9 / 4-10 / 4-11 / 4-12 / 4-13 / 4-14 / 4-16

Xia Yan’s Home

In the days after, Xia Yan and I worked on collecting information on other corrupt detectives as we waited for Sphinx’s investigation results.

Before heading out today, Xia Yan handed something to me.

Xia Yan: Here, I’ve made a copy of the house key for you.

Xia Yan: We’re always going around together, but having a key is still more convenient.

Xia Yan: Actually, I should’ve given you a copy on the day we reunited.

As he spoke, he handed a silver key to me.

I looked at this key that was identical to his and couldn’t help smiling.

MC: How reminiscent. We always had the same key in the past – even the keychain was the same type.

Xia Yan: Yeah, so I specially made two keychains this time. See if you like them!

Smiling, Xia Yan took out two chibi-styled pendants of me and him.

MC: Whoa, they’re so cute!

I reached out to take the Xia Yan-modeled pendant, but Xia Yan simultaneously handed me the one modeled after me.

MC: ???

Xia Yan: …

Xia Yan looked at me as I reached out for his pendant, looking somewhat hesitant.

Xia Yan: Uh, mine doesn’t really suit you.

MC: …

⊳ How does it not suit me? ⊳ I want yours

MC: How does it not suit me? I’ll definitely treasure it well, is that not fine?

 ⊳ How does it not suit me? ⊳ I want yours

MC: But I want this one… can’t I?

--

Xia Yan: That’s not what I mean.

Xia Yan: It’s just that you’ll be carrying the keychain at all times, so other people will see it easily…

MC: I don’t mind others seeing… or do you mean that you don’t want others to see?

Xia Yan: How could that be!

Xia Yan: I mean, if you want this keychain, I need to modify it.

MC: Modify? But I feel like this already looks great.

Xia Yan: Not its exterior. I need to add some functions to it.

Xia Yan: Actually, aside from being a keychain, this pendant is also an alarm.

Xia Yan pulled down the keychain based on me, and an alarm quickly resounded throughout the room.

After the display, he fixed the keychain based on me back onto the keychain.

Xia Yan: The decibel count from the alarm on this one is higher than typical alarms, and its battery endurance is also longer. Plus, it’s more durable – it’s water- and fire-resistant for a short period of time.

Xia Yan: I thought that you would want the one based on you, so I only installed an alarm onto that one.

Xia Yan: If you want “me”, I need to make some slight modifications.

MC: Okay, then I’ll leave it up to you, Great Detective Xia!

Xia Yan quickly started working on modifying the keychain alarm.

Right after he had just finished, Sphinx called.

--

Sphinx gave an overview of his investigations for the past several days in the call for us.

According to his investigation, he noticed someone that he suspected to have relations to “Oedipus”.

Xia Yan: You mean that Oedipus might have to do with this “Bedo Loan Company”?

Sphinx: Indeed. For the past few days, I’ve been investigating all the corrupt detectives, including Meng Qishan.

Sphinx: I noticed that Oedipus only had relations of benefit with corrupt detectives after a certain period in time.

Xia Yan: What period in time?

Sphinx: After I faced off with corrupt detective Qian Yi.

Note: What a name… this “Qian Yi” guy’s name literally means Money Benefit (钱益)

Xia Yan: Qian Yi? I don’t think there’s this guy listed among the resigned detectives of Stellis…

Xia Yan looked at me.

Not long ago, Xia Yan organized a list of all the Stellis detectives who had resigned in the past three years, in our search for Sphinx. However, Qian Yi was not among them.

Sphinx: I’m afraid that this is because, not long after my face-off with Qian Yi… he died.

MC: He died?!

Xia Yan: …

Sphinx: According to the police’s death report, Qian Yi died due to cardiac failure, and it was one week after I cut off communication with him.

Sphinx: Right after, Meng Qishan and other corrupt detectives were found and lured by Oedipus to find out about my plan.

Xia Yan: The timeline is indeed quite suspicious.

Sphinx: So, I went to Qian Yi’s house to investigate.

Sphinx: I noticed the same Trojan Horse virus on his computer that was in Tian Xin’s, as well as similar indications of large amounts of data being wiped.

MC: If so, Qian Yi and Oedipus really do have some sort of relationship between them.

MC: Right, Sphinx. Why did you seek out Qian Yi back then?

Sphinx: Qian Yi was a detective in name, but his actions indicated that he was more like an information broker.

Sphinx: He was skilled at using various methods to obtain different kinds of information, to sell them.

Sphinx: Sometimes, he would also use the information he had for extortion and blackmail.

Sphinx: Either he’d directly demand money, or he’d coerce the other party to agree to his requirements.

Sphinx: But his death is likely unrelated to what I found out about him.

Sphinx: I’ve verified with the victims who were harassed by Qian Yi. Up till now, none of them have received any more harassment.

MC: Is that so…

Xia Yan: If it has nothing to do with the victims back then, then the point of suspicion probably has to do with Qian Yi himself.

Xia Yan: As an information broker, his social relations would have been very complicated.

Xia Yan: I’m guessing that Qian Yi might have gotten certain information on Oedipus back then, provoking Oedipus.

Xia Yan: And due to the intersection in timelines, Oedipus thought that you, who was investigating Qian Yi, had already gotten or had a high probably of having gotten information on him.

Xia Yan: Which is why he had to find you, no matter what.

Sphinx: That’s what I was also thinking.

Sphinx: I’ve already investigated the people related to Qian Yi anew. Accept the document I’m sending.

Sphinx soon sent over a document. Xia Yan opened it on the computer.

According to Sphinx’s investigations, Qian Yi had considerably frequent business partnerships with Bedo Loan Company.

Xia Yan: Wait, I remember now. Isn’t “Bedo Loans” that trap loan company that was on the news a few months ago?

The so-called “trap loans” were a sort of criminal act that falsely used the title of “private lending” to commit fraud.

First, the victim would be induced to sign a loan agreement with a low borrowing threshold. After, they would use both gentle and forceful methods to defraud the victim of their money.

Sphinx: Yes. Qian Yi secretly tailed the debtors in these trap loans.

Sphinx: And Bedo Loan Company would violently coerce the debtors when they were unable to repay the money, using the private information Qian Yi had provided to threaten the victims.

MC: That case has already ended. If Qian Yi hadn’t gotten into an accident, he probably would’ve also been convicted, right?

Sphinx: Evidence was insufficient. Qian Yi is proficient with legal clauses and making use of legal loopholes, so he made himself seem completely innocent.

Xia Yan: …

MC: …

Sphinx: Aside from that, I found a person related with Qian Yi. Search up “Ji Xiaoyu”.

Xia Yan searched up this name according to Sphinx’s instructions and soon found a video recording.

--

[Flashback]

Stellis Suburbs

Caution tape surrounded the riverside grass. A woman’s remains, pixelated in the video, were lying on the grass, with blood mottling the area all around.

A rumble of whispers came from the crowd around, saying things like “I heard it was a car accident” and “What a pity, she was so young”.

Young Girl: Sister… sister – sister!!!

A girl hysterically cried “sister”, throwing herself on the body on the ground.

The police forcefully pulled at that girl, trying to persuade her.

Police: Miss, we understand how you feel… but please calm down. We need to do on-scene investigations.

After several minutes of wildly trying to pull out of the police’s grasp, that girl finally slid down to the ground without energy, sobbing bitterly.

Young Girl: It’s all because of me… It’s all because of me that my big sister died…

Lying prostrate, she sobbed for a good while, then suddenly straightened and grabbed onto the uniform of the police officer in front of her.

Young Girl: No, it’s also because of them! They’re all murderers! I beg you, please catch all of them!

She grabbed onto the hem of the police’s uniform, begging piteously, her sobs soundless.

[Flashback end]

--

It was obvious that the video was taken by a bystander – the camera was shaky and the image wasn’t clear enough, but the girl’s weeping made me feel irrepressibly sorrowful.

Sphinx: This girl is Ji Xiaoyu. The deceased is her older sister, Ji Xiaoqing.

As he spoke, he transferred the Ji sisters’ information to us.

The year that the older sister Ji Xiaoqing tested into university, their parents passed due to an accident. Ji Xiaoqing worked as she studied in university, all the meanwhile taking care of her little sister Ji Xiaoyu like a mother.

When little sister Ji Xiaoyu tested into university, she started working as she studied as well, trying to lighten the load on her older sister.

The two sisters had always had a good relationship, until Ji Xiaoyu entered second year, when she fell into the trap of a trap loan due to a desire to buy things.

Sphinx: After the death of older sister Ji Xiaoqing, Ji Xiaoyu came clean to the police about owing money in a trap loan, and thus being harassed and threatened by Bedo Loan Company and Qian Yi multiple times.

Sphinx: At the beginning, she did not dare tell the police or her older sister out of fear of the company. Instead, she desperately worked to return the money, but the amount owed kept growing.

Sphinx: After, Bedo Loan Company faked a court verdict, forcibly seizing the real estate that the sisters’ parents had left behind.

Sphinx: Only then did Ji Xiaoyu’s older sister, Ji Xiaoqing, find out about the full truth.

Sphinx: Ever since then, Ji Xiaoqing became absentminded for a long time and even dropped her job.

Sphinx: The police performed an autopsy on Ji Xiaoqing and noticed that the alcohol concentration in her blood severely exceeded safety standards.

MC: So Ji Xiaoqing might have been using alcohol to forget her woes, then came to the mountain road while drunk and got into the car accident…

Sphinx: That was the police’s conclusion.

As Sphinx spoke, Xia Yan searched up the aftermath reports on this traffic accident case.

Due to issues with the surveillance equipment on that road, no information could be found on the vehicle that caused the accident. The police were currently still offering rewards for anyone who provided information.

And according to Qi Xiaoyu’s accusation, the police filed the case and investigated Qian Yi and Bedo Loan Company.

Bedo Loan Company was shut down for investigation, but due to insufficient evidence, Qian Yi was released after many days of fruitless police investigation.

Xia Yan: One week after Qian Yi’s release, he died unexpectedly due to cardiac arrest.

Sphinx: At the beginning the police suspected that this had to do with Ji Xiaoyu, because she was extremely furious due to the release of Qian Yu and lost control of her emotions.

Sphinx: Though the police investigated this after and found that this was not because of Ji Xiaoyu, I noticed a violation ticket related to Ji Xiaoyu.

Sphinx sent the violation ticket over.

Xia Yan: Illegal carrying of restricted blades… the date of the violation ticket is one day before Qian Yi’s death.

Sphinx: Indeed. I did a little investigating.

Sphinx: The police who gave Ji Xiaoyu the violation ticket was the one who dealt with her sister’s car accident. He sympathized with Ji Xiaoyu greatly and feared that she would take extremes.

Sphinx: So he always secretly kept an eye on Ji Xiaoyu. The day Ji Xiaoyu bought the restricted blade, he noticed.

Sphinx: As a police officer, he had to give Ji Xiaoyu a violation ticket, but he paid the penalty fine himself, and did his best to persuade Ji Xiaoyu after.

Sphinx: When Ji Xiaoyu was suspected of being related to Qian Yi’s death, this police officer testified for her, saying that Ji Xiaoyu did not have the time to commit the crime.

Xia Yan: Even if Ji Xiaoyu has nothing to do with Qian Yi’s death, if she was following him back then, she might have noticed clues.

MC: Then let’s go find Ji Xiaoyu to get an understanding of the situation.

#Tears of Themis #tears of themis translations #xia yan #luke pearce #未定事件簿

[horansqueen]

Stuck With You - Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Things I’ll Never Say

🡪chapter 1  🡪chapter 2  🡪chapter 3  🡪chapter 4  🡪chapter 5  🡪chapter 6  🡪chapter 7  🡪chapter 8  🡪chapter 9  🡪chapter 10  🡪chapter 11 🡪chapter 12 🡪chapter 13 🡪chapter 14 🡪chapter 15 🡪chapter 16 🡪chapter 17 🡪chapter 18 🡪chapter 19 🡪chapter 20 🡪chapter 21 🡪chapter 22 🡪chapter 23 🡪chapter 24 🡪chapter 25 🡪chapter 26 🡪chapter 27 🡪chapter 28 🡪chapter 29 🡪chapter 30 🡪chapter 31 🡪chapter 32  🡪chapter 33 🡪chapter 34

College Enemies To Lovers AU

characters // masterlist // instagrams // mood board

If I could say what I want to say I'd say I want to blow you, away Be with you every night Am I squeezing you too tight If I could say what I want to see I want to see you go down On one knee Marry me today Guess, I'm wishing my life away With these things I'll never say

It don't do me any good It's just a waste of time What use is it to you What's on my mind If ain't coming out We're not going anywhere So why can't I just tell you that I care

click here to be on the update list

DEVON

                                                  I woke up with a groan and felt my head throb and ache just like it would do if I was hungover. I hadn't had a single drop even if I should have when I remembered the way I painted and for how long. I was pretty sure I had fallen asleep on the floor but when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Niall's pretty face very close to mine.

My heart jumped in my chest and my lips parted before I licked them. He was sleeping and he looked so peaceful and motionless that I started wondering if he was actually breathing. I slipped my hand under the cover to reach for his naked chest and held my breath at how warm his skin was. It was a miracle my cold hand didn't wake up up but I still waited a few seconds, trying to feel his heart beating in his chest.

Every time I looked at him, I felt something twist in my stomach. I knew he wanted us to be official and if I listened to my heart, that's what I wanted too, but risking it was so scary I couldn't find the courage to give in to his request. I thought about Henry and how he had broken me, and I thought about Abby and how Niall could break me even more. There was no was I could heal my heart if he hurt me, it would be turned to complete dust and I knew it.

I found myself jealous of the way Niall was in love with Abby, and how he would have done anything for her. I was jealous of a past relationship of the man I had refused to date and I hated myself for it. I knew it wasn't rational and that it made no sense but I couldn't help it.

Perhaps, if I had met Niall before I met Henry... maybe if he had met me before he met Abby... In that specific case, maybe we could give each other the chance and the love we both deserved. The problem was that we both went through the exact same thing, or almost, and apparently, two persons who went through the same thing can understand each other, but can't help each other. I didn't know how true that saying was but I had heard it enough to hear it echo in my head every time I wanted to love again.

I brought my hand up to his face and brushed my fingertips on his cheek so softly that I felt a shiver run in my back. One of my fingers reached his bottom lip and I felt myself tear up. I had never met in my life a man like Niall and he was slipping through my fingers because of my fears and anticipations. It was unfair, and it was stupid, but the knot in my stomach was there permanently and I couldn't make it disappear. All the feelings that came back when I saw Henry again made me remember how bad love hurts and at that exact moment, laying in bed in front of Niall, I knew it was true.

I desperately wanted to kiss him but I knew he didn't want us to do anything anymore so I just swallowed hard and got out of the bed slowly. I searched for my painting and found it on the desk in a corner of the room, sighing low. I hated it and started nibbling on my bottom lip, trying to remember that I always hated my art in the first few days after making it, and that it was normal. Besides, artists are the worst critics of their own art.

I heard Niall move in bed and turned around just in time to see him reach for a pillow and bring it against him. He let out a short whimper and it made me wonder if he would have cuddled me if I was still in bed. I shook my head, trying to push that thought away, and finally search for a pen in the room, finally finding one in one of the drawers. I sat on the couch and started scribbling a few words on a paper. I really sucked at writing songs, but I could clearly remember a melody, especially one that really touched me, and it came in handy at that moment.

When I was done, I re-read what was written on the paper and raised my nose up before sighing again and folding the sheet, putting it away in my bag. I decided to take a quick shower to take the paint off my arms and face and when I walked back in the room, Niall was awake. I stopped walking and held my breath at the sight of his naked back. It's not like I had never seen Niall only wearing boxers but perhaps knowing I'm never get to touch him again made something twist in my stomach.

"Oh, hey." he let out when he turned around. "How did you sleep?"

I wanted to tell him that I slept better than I had in a while, if only because he was with me in the same bed. When I woke up, I felt the warmth of his body emanate on mine even if we weren't touching and I loved it way too much. I couldn't tell him that it would have been even better if he was holding me all night, but I wanted to, because I felt it all over my body. I felt it so intensely that I had to swallow a lump in my throat.

"Was nice, and you?"

"Good, thanks." he said, putting on sweatpants. "Better than the floor."

I sent him a small smile that he sent back and I licked my lips. "Thanks for bringing me in bed and tucking me in, last night. I vaguely remember."

"You're welcome, Devie."

I felt my heart flutter at the nickname and I realized I'd never get over it.

"So, you're going skiing today?"

"Snowboarding, yea." he let out, searching for his stuff in his bags. "You're gonna join us downstairs in a few hours?"

I nodded quickly and pressed my lips together as I stared at him. I loved how he moved around the room like it was just a random day and we were just used tp be around each other like that. To some extent, we were, since we shared the same room on campus, but it felt slightly different at that moment, more intimate, maybe. I let my mind wander, imagining what it would be like if we ended up dating and living together. Was that what I would see in the morning before he actually went to work?

"Okay, I'm ready. I'll see you later?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Mmhm." I nodded as I imagined him walking closing to me and bending down to kiss me.

Why did I like this scenario so much it made my heartbeats accelerate? I watched him leave and when the door closed behind him, I felt extremely empty and lonely. I got up after a few minutes and walked to my painting again, running my fingertips slowly on the colors I had used. Was it crazy to start painting with light colors so early after a break up? I turned my head to look at the door, hoping it would open again as my heart thumped hard in my chest. It was Niall, I knew it. It was him that brought in me all these new emotions and I liked it so much I felt myself tear up.

Without thinking, I searched through my bag and found a few pictures I had taken. I had taken the time to develop them by myself in the college darkroom and I had loved the result. Despite myself, the lights had added a few pale yellow spots and it looked amazing. At first, I wanted to numerize them and modify them but I realized I didn't need to.

I sat in bed and looked at them carefully. There were no full faces on any of them. My favorite was one of  Niall's naked shoulder with a bit of his back and hair. We could also see the top of my head and part of my forehead in it too as I lied down beneath him, and his fingers were slipped in my hair. I had no idea why this specific shot made me feel emotional but it was strong and it made something twist in my chest.

I got up and grabbed the piece of paper I had put in my bag earlier before I walked to the desk, sitting down in front of it. Slowly and carefully, I copied the lyrics I had scribbled while Niall was asleep behind the picture, along with a few lyrics that didn't belong to me. I had taken a lot of pictures in my life, but nothing like this one. Perhaps it was only because it meant so much to me... because he meant so much to me. It actually made me want to pain that picture and I quickly grabbed a blank canvas from my stuff before grabbing a pen. I was never really good at drawing people, I felt like the human body was too complex to draw, but I decided to make an exception this time. It didn't really matter anyway. When I'd add paint, the forms wouldn't be as defined and even if I knew nothing could be better than the actual picture, I felt like not painting it would eat me up inside.

I couldn't tell how long it took me but when I didn't stop until I was done. Normally, a painting like that could take me many days to create but somehow, it had turned out the way I wanted after only a few hours. I left it on the floor and decided to finally take an other shower, if only to take the paint from my hands, arms and face. I got out and quickly dressed before checking my phone. I had no message and I raised my nose up, telling myself they were probably busy skiing but I still decided to get downstairs, to the common living room. I loved how all the couches were placed with a fireplace in the middle. The first thing that made my heart jump in my chest was a laughter. I recognized it because I had to hear it for hours on a certain night and every time, it made my heart drop in my chest. Today was no exception. My eyes roamed around and found Abby who was laughing, throwing her head back. She was still wearing her beanie and coat and when I noticed Niall was the one she was talking with, I felt nauseous. He laughed too before taking a sip of his drink and Abby moved closer, placing her hand on his arm and letting it slip down.

I swallowed hard, knowing it probably meant nothing but telling myself that if this simple gesture made me feel like that, I'd never be able to be around Niall if he was dating an other girl, especially if that girl was Abby.

I held my breath and my lips parted when Niall turned around and our eyes met. I felt myself tear up and shook my head lightly before turning on my heels and leaving. I tried to keep my tears in, knowing it was ridiculous to be sad for that, and just as I was reaching the elevator, I felt his warm hand on my arm.

"Hey, Devie, where are you going?" he asked softly as I turned around. His face changed when he saw mine and took a step closer. "Woah, what's wrong, why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying!" I let out a bit too roughly, taking a step back. "I didn't want to annoy you while you were flirting with your ex girlfriend."

"Devie, we weren't flirting." he argued. "At least, I was not."

"She was all over you." I just replied.

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. "So? That's what Abby does! Besides, you're texting with Henry and I haven't thrown a tantrum about it!"

"I'm not texting with Henry, what are you talking about?"

"You told me he messaged you when we were at my apartment!" he pointed out, making me frown.

"Yes! But I never said I answered him!" I let out a but louder. "Because I didn't!"

His face changed, his traits softened and he took a step closer. "You didn't?"

His voice was low and gentle and it calmed me instantly.

"No. I want to move on from him, I don't love him anymore."

Once again, Niall took a step closer and took his beanie off. I felt my lips curl very slightly on the light at the sight of his hair and he quickly passed his hand in it, messing it even more. He looked so pretty I felt my head tilt a bit on the right.

"If... If it makes you feel better, I don't have feelings for Abby anymore either. I can't even understand why I ever was in love with her." he added with a shrug. "Not that you really care, because you don't love me like that, right?"

I stared at him and blinked a few times, trying to decide what I was supposed to say. I could be mad at him but I loved the way he was looking at me, as if I was the only person that mattered in the world, as if he was about to jump on me to make me feel all the damn feelings he had for me inside him.

"Did I say that?" I just asked with an amused smile before licking my lip, taking a step back.

"Hey, stay with us, we were about to go out for dinner." he quickly proposed as we heard the doors of the elevator open. "You came here to spend time with your friends, right?"

My eyes roamed on him and I finally nodded. "Alright."

----

Niall was still telling me a story when we walked back in our room. It was late but neither of us really cared. I had a small talk with Louis who presented me his new girlfriend Eleanor, and I immediately liked her. Lewis was funny and the way Daxia looked at him made me happy. I tried not to give too much attention to Noah but he still bought me a drink and we had a small chat. All I wanted, though, was to be close to Niall, and I ended up scared he'd be annoyed that I followed him better than his own shadow. At some point, he had placed his hand on my thigh, moving closer to me to ask me if I wanted an other drink, but all I could think about was the fact that he was touching me.

We didn't drink too much though and when we closed the door of our room behind us, I was laughing because he was funny, and not because I was tipsy. He turned around and took a few steps back as I followed him, but when his lips curled into a cheeky smile, it made me frown.

"What do you have in mind?" I asked, unable to stop smiling.

"Are you tired?"

I frowned more but it only made his smile bigger. "Mm, no. Why?"

"Do you trust me?"

That question took me by surprise but I didn't have to ask myself the question. The answer came naturally. "Yes."

And I trusted him. I trusted him more than I trusted pretty much anyone, and it was one of the things that scared me in this relationship, whatever it was.

"Thank you." he just whispered, holding out his hand to me.

I breathed in but still slipped my palm on his and quickly, he pulled me out of the room. Instead to take the elevators, he brought me to the stairs and we ran down until the main floor, stopping abruptly in front of a door. I held my breath as Niall opened it very slowly, peeking out for a few seconds and finally holding his hand back for me. I grabbed it and he turned around to look in my eyes, bringing his finger on his lips to tell me to keep quiet. I nodded and followed him on the other side of the door until we reached a second door. He tried to open it but groaned and raised his nose up when he realized it was locked.

"Fuck."

I moved to look through the window and my lips curled when I noticed a pool. The lights of the room were off but there were a few at the bottom of the pool and the sight was great.

"I'm gonna try to steal the keys." he added, taking me out of my thoughts and making me blink.

"No wait!" I stopped him in a whisper, holding his arm. "What if you get caught?"

He sent me a small smile and his eyes roamed on my face before he shook his head. "Don't worry."

He left and I felt my hand slip from his arm. I held my breath and remained motionless as I waited for him to come back and it seemed to take forever. When he appeared again, my heart jumped in my chest, scared that it could be someone else, but he stopped right in front of me as I raised my eyebrows. A smirk quickly draw itself on his lips and he moved his hand up, showing me a  keychain with at least 20 keys on it.

"Okay, I'm impressed." I admitted low, making him chuckle.

It took him a few tries and he finally unlocked the door. We walked in slowly and when he closed the door behind us, I turned around to look at him.

"I don't have a swimsuit." I admitted, tilting my head.

"You have underwear." he chuckled, making me raise my eyebrows. "What? Nothing I haven't seen, isn't it what you said the other day?"

I pressed my lips together and moved my chin in his direction. "You, first."

He chuckled again and without hesitation, grabbed the bottom of his shirt, moving it over his head. I let my eyes travel on his chest as he worked on the button and zipper of his jeans, finally taking them off along with his socks. He looked way too good, illuminated by the soft lights in the pool, and my heart skipped a beat. I moved my gaze up until my eyes met his again and he sent me a soft smile.

"Your turn."

#niall horan #niall horan smut #niall horan fluff #niall horan fanfic #niall horan fan fic #niall horan fanfiction #niall horan fan fiction #niall horan story #niall horan writing #niall horan enemies to lovers #niall horan au #niall horan college au #niall horan uni au #my fanfics #swy

[cotncandyboifics]

A Lovely Night: Chapter 4

AO3 Link

Masterpost

Chapter 1 ~ Chapter 2 ~ Chapter 3 ~ Chapter 5 ~ Chapter 6

Pairing(s): pre-established roceit & prinxiety, anaroceit, eventual anaroloceit, eventual intruality

Word count: ~2k

Story summary: Roman's boyfriends had had a rivalry since before either of them had actually met Roman. Running a bit late to a date night, Roman accidentally gets them to start dating too.

General CW: non-detailed description of an anxiety attack, non-detailed description of physical pain, food, kissing, potentially triggering descriptions of physical bodies, swearing, caps lock, school settings, s-xual innuendos, slight description of gore(imagery), vague descriptions of anxiety, Implications of an eating disorder, fatigue, dissociation, suppression of stimming, implied heavy restriction (ED), inner monologue-style anxiety description, eating,(will be added to as I write more)

Chapter CW: Food, School setting, caps lock, (let me know if i missed anything please!)

Author notes: and so the nerd enters the snake's den... (this chapter is nothing like that, I just think Loceit is neat, ignore me being a dork)

...

Janus stepped cautiously as he looked down each aisle he passed. The shelves extended far into the room, lined with thousands upon thousands of books.

Janus appreciated that the fact that he went to Law school meant that the libraries were extremely well-funded and filled to the brim with all sorts of books. Mostly Law-related books, although there was a reasonably hefty section for recreational reading. He paced between the aisles labeled D, seeking a particular few texts mentioned by one of his professors in a lecture earlier that day.

Janus was too focused on scanning the titles and authors of the books lined before him that he didn't realize his sudden proximity to a stranger. The stranger seemed to have been doing the same, and they quite literally bumped into each other.

They were the same height, but Janus had a slightly larger build, and so on impact the other person fell entirely on their butt while Janus only stumbled backward slightly, quickly gripping the edge of a bookcase to steady himself.

"My deepest apologies. I was not looking where I was going." Janus righted himself, reaching a hand down to help the stranger up.

"I believe we were both too captivated by our searches that neither of us anticipated literally running into another person. My apologies are offered as well." The stranger took Janus' hand, and Janus had to steel himself so as not to gape.

This stranger was beautiful. His hair fell in wisps over his thick glasses, a deep raven shade. His hand felt cold when he took Janus', even through Janus' compression gloves. He had bright eyes that glinted with a childlike hunger for knowledge, all held behind a glassy calm collection. His cheeks were dotted with freckles, and his lips looked pale and soft. Janus internally cursed himself for thinking of this stranger's lips, and pressed a small smile onto his face.

"A mutual mistake, then. My name is Janus." Janus pulled the stranger to his feet, and when he didn't pull his hand away, Janus kissed his knuckles chastely. The stranger's face somehow paled and brightened at once, eyes widening as a rosy shade overtook their cheeks.

"R-right," he tried, "What, er, what were you looking for, Janus?" the stranger inquired, running his fingers through his hair to collect it a bit.

Janus tutted for a moment, trying to recall. "Ah, yes." He recited the title of the book he'd been searching for. "My critical thinking professor suggested that we read it. supposedly it shall b-"

"boost our chances on the final come end of term," the stranger completed. "I suppose we must have the same professor, because mine recommended the same." he offered a small smile, and Janus returned it, eyes lighting up a bit.

"Well dear me, I hope they still have two copies," Janus laughed a little nervously, and the two began a duel-force search for the book they both sought.

Shortly they discovered that there were, in fact, only two copies left. They conversed briefly about the nature of their shared course as they approached the front desk to check their books out.

"Well, I must be off for now," Janus sighed, straightening his capelet. He nearly completed his statement with 'I must get home to my boyfriends,' but admitting to a practical stranger that he was not only gay but also polyamorous wasn't exactly the smartest thing, in his experience. "However, I find it may be mutually beneficial if we might see each other again? Perhaps we can study together," Janus asked, almost in spite of himself. What was he doing, exactly? He didn't even know this stranger's name-

"That sounds... adequate," he pulled Janus from his conflicted thoughts. "Would you like to meet here, same time tomorrow?" he inquired, meeting Janus' eyes and pushing his glasses up in a way that Janus found far too cute.

Janus cleared his throat. "An acceptable proposal... I'm sorry dear, I'm not sure that you shared your name." Janus smiled, and the stranger gulped slightly, cheeks turning pink beneath his freckles again.

"Um... Yes. Right. Well, I'll see you tomorrow then." he brushed past Janus in a rush, but halted, seeming to realize something. He turned back to Janus, adjusting his necktie. "My apologies. My name is Logan." He spoke, frozen for a moment, before nodding to himself and turning to leave once more.

"Logan..." Janus smiled to himself. He'd thought the stranger's appearance rung a bell. "It appears I have some good news for a certain Prince of mine."

Janus sat at the dinner table with his hands folded, thumb rubbing against his gloved palm as he bit back a smile. Virgil was shoveling salad onto his plate across the table only slightly barbarically. Dinner was just starting, as Roman had texted that he'd be home shortly, and Virgil wanted to get a bit of a head start.

"What's your damage, snakey?" Virgil commented, glancing pointedly at Janus' hands. translation: I can see that you are worried, love. What can I do to help?

"I have some news for Roman," Janus started, smile on full display now, "that I think he'll find quite enticing. I'm just a bit anxious for his arrival."

"Jeez," Virgil scoffed a bit, "It's really not like you to..." Virgil stopped, finally looking up to see Janus' genuine smile, his eyes so full of feelings. Virgil's eyes widened.

"I so wish that I could tell you," Janus blurted, "But I want Roman to hear it first. Or at least, at the same time." He was still smiling, and Virgil was still dumbfounded.

"Okay..." He watched Janus warily as he scooped a forkful of salad into his mouth. Janus made a chipper noise and began serving himself as well.

They heard the front door burst open down the hall, and Janus grinned mischievously, adjusting himself in his seat a bit in his excitement. Virgil gaped at him for a second before turning his head, calling to Roman, "We're in here love," Never breaking his gaze on Janus and shoveling another large scoop of salad into his mouth. Virgil was undeniably captivated by the strange behavior his boyfriend was displaying.

Roman stomped down the hall in a bit of a frenzy. "A WEEK!" He practically shouted, washing his hands as he exclaimed, "seven entire DAYS and I haven't seen Logan even a single time!" He scoffed to himself as he dried his hands. "Do you think it possible that he'd entirely drop from the show simply because I asked him on a date!? That seems HIGHLY improbable!" Roman huffed as he sat at the head of the table, beginning to grumpily serve himself.

"It's entirely possible that his absence is due to the fact that he's currently swamped with his Law studies. Any man knows balancing your time in our program is a god's errand." Janus spoke smoothly through a smirk, and Virgil's jaw dropped.

"'a god's errand?' my love, that's hardly what that saying means," Roman consoled, not having processed the rest of Janus' words. They both looked at him after a moment, and he returned their gazes confusedly. "What?"

Virgil snapped his head toward Janus. "You met him? He goes to your school??" Virgil was in absolute awe. His face looked frozen in terror, but Roman and Janus knew by now that he was, in fact, not horrified when he made that face.

"WHAT?" Roman was suddenly leaning a little too close to Janus. "You met him? You're sure it's him? Did you speak to him? Oh you must have - I'm SURE he couldn't keep himself away from you, you devilish minx - my goodness, what HAPPENED?" Roman was falling over himself, giving Janus a pleading look through his immense grin.

"Take a breath, please my dear," Janus cooed, reaching to hold Roman's hand. "I did... run into him, yes. Judging by your... very detailed description of him, Roman, I was suspicious from the get-go. When he told me his name, I was sure." Janus spoke, clearly struggling to conceal his excitement.

"You ran into him?" Virgil repeated, still looking completely appalled. Janus chuckled.

"Yes... we both happened to be searching for the same book, an optional assigned reading for our shared critical thinking class," Roman squealed in delight. Janus continued, "We quite literally bumped into each other, and... We searched for the book together. There were only two copies left, which was..."

"Perfect," Roman whispered, stars in his eyes. Virgil had taken to staring at his plate to hide his smile.

"I do have to concede, Roman, that he is in fact... incredibly dashing." Janus kissed Roman's knuckles, and Virgil shrunk a little further into his hoodie, face thoroughly tomatoed.

"S-so did you get his number, or what?" Virgil spoke breathily after a moment.

"Ah. No, not exactly. In fact, I hardly got him to share his name." Janus conceded, but his tone remained sultry and smooth. "However. We did decide to meet again, tomorrow. At the library once more, to study together." Janus tried to keep his sly smirk but it was churning itself into a giddy smile.

Roman groaned. "You HAVE to get his number tomorrow!!!! I don't know how I'll live with myself if I can never see him again..." Roman slumped in his chair, slamming his forehead a bit clumsily on the tabletop with a soft 'ow'. Janus chuckled at him.

"All in due time my dear, all in due time. I feel it is a bit... optimistic to suspect that our bespectacled spectacle is not only attracted to men, but polyamorous, or at minimum willing to be romantically involved with a partner who is in a separate polyamorous relationship..." Janus brought his hand to his chin, tapping his pursed lips with his index finger pensively. Roman looked up to engage himself in listening to Janus more properly. "He seems rather... fragile. I feel it may be important that we take our time with him, and do our best not to... overwhelm him with bouts of affection," Janus spoke carefully, looking at Roman pointedly, who smiled sheepishly.

"Ok cool. Yeah. I get it, you guys are the only ones who get to meet our future boyfriend," Virgil commented, the foreshadowing in his words entirely unknown to himself. "Can we just eat and deal with this later, once Jannie has had the chance to talk to the guy again?" Virgil acted annoyed, but the lingering rosy shade in his cheeks was an undeniable giveaway. His boyfriends smiled at him fondly.

"I love you, Virgil," Roman blurted, looking at Virgil with a shocking tenderness that made Virgil almost nervous. Roman reached out to take Virgil's hand, who quickly accepted.

"I love you too Ro," Virgil kissed the inside of Roman's wrist, doing his best in his gay panic state to let his sincerity bleed out a bit. "So so much."

Roman blushed, gripping the hem of Virgil's hoodie and yanking him into a kiss. If Roman's grip weren't iron, Virgil would have fallen face first onto the floor between them. Janus laughed at them, smiling bright and watching as Virgil struggled to remain balanced.

#sanders sides #loceit #janus sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #prinxiety #anaroceit #anxceit #roceit #anaroloceit #logince #loginceit #tags suck :P

[literaila]

how could this ever be different?

spencer x reader 

warnings: criminal minds stuff. its not all accurate, i am not a genius.  thats it? suprising 

summary: spencer goes undercover in Las Vegas to catch an unsub. he might just catch feelings along the way...  part one: 

Blunt force trauma. 

Multiple lacerations. 

Young women. 

Different dump sites. 

The unsub had been killing women all over Las Vegas, with no specific victimology, just a bunch of different women who were in the right place at the wrong time. 

There was nothing distinctive about the unsub, nothing that made him stick out to the team. 

After a week in Vegas, a dreadful week filled with nothing but more questions and the sun. 

They were not getting anywhere. 

On the 6th day, after 10 bodies had been found total, and the unsub had stopped killing for two days, Hotch decided they couldn't be of any help, and that the case would be declared “cold” until more evidence came out. 

All of them were disappointed, angry that all of those women had died, and they couldn't do anything to avenge them. They all wanted to prevent anyone else from losing their life at the unsubs hands, but without more information, they couldn't do anything. 

They all left Nevada with sour expressions and hopeless mindsets. 

Four months later, more women had died. 

It had slowed down significantly when they had left, but one month after that, the unsub had picked up his pace, 2 women dead in the span of a week. More weeks went by, with no other signs he was still killing, and then suddenly he was killing once a week, then twice, and then during the fourth month, it had picked up so much he was killing an average of five women each day. Sometimes, multiple women a day. 

And while this provided more evidence, helped the team dig deeper into his mindset, it still wasn't enough. 

They were still sitting around the round table, still thinking. 

There wasn't enough. 

“Hotch, we aren't getting anywhere, we don't know enough about this guy.” 

Derek sighed and sat back in his chair. 

“I think we know some-” Prentiss argued, her frown plastered on her face. 

“But not enough.” Derek interrupted, his eyes were tired, and he wanted to move on to a case where they could actually save people, not a case where none of them knew what they were doing. He felt like he was holding this case on his shoulders, and until they were through with it, the weight wouldn't go away. 

There wasn't enough coffee to cure the exhaustion running around the room. 

“Do we move on again?” Hotch asked, not exactly sure what to do, they’d never had a situation quite like this one. 

They could keep working, keep searching for answers that weren't there, or they could move on, they could work on something, on someone, where they actually knew the answers. They could go home and start over again tomorrow. 

Or they could stay, exhausted, unmotivated, and keep working. 

It was clear what they all wanted to do. It was clear that the easiest answer wouldn't be the right one. 

“If only we could find some sort of pattern.” Rossi looked through his file again, looked at all the girls' history, read over the things he had already read hundreds of times. There had to be some sort of answer somewhere. 

The rest of the team copied him, all of them reading everything over and over, desperate to find something, anything. 

“Hotch we’ve been over this hundreds of times.” Derek sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was the most exhausted out of all of them, angry that they couldn't stop this guy from killing more women, angry that they couldn't save the other girl's lives. 

“I know, Morgan, but I don't think giving up is the right idea-” 

“Wait.” 

Everyone looked over to the genius interrupting, his brows were furrowed and his mouth was turned down, but they all recognized the look on his face, they could all see that he was thinking of something. 

If anyone had figured out anything, it would be Spencer. 

“It looks like it's some sort of schedule…” 

The tall man got up to walk to the whiteboard in the front of the room, he frowned as he wrote down different numbers. 

The rest of the team watched confused as he scrawled messy numbers, again and again, they were all trying to make sense of it, make sense of anything, but they aren't geniuses, and they didn't understand. 

“Reid do you mind explaining-” 

Spencer cut Derek up with a finger signaling he needed a minute. It caused a moment of laughter between the team as Derek looked startled. 

When Spencer looked back over at the other people in the room, capping the marker he was holding in his head, he smiled as if he was laughing at himself. As if he should’ve realized sooner. 

“It's a schedule- I mean, look-” he pointed at the numbers, laughing as he said it out loud for the first time, the rest of the team just stared at him, waiting for a bigger explanation. “He only kills between the hours of 6 AM and 6 PM- I mean look-” he pointed up at one of the girls “Megan Cooley was killed at 7:28 PM, Hannah Zen was killed at 5 in the morning, and all of the other girls correlate with this schedule.” 

They all stared at the board, the dots connecting, everything suddenly coming to light. It was so strange that just a small realization could change everything for them. 

“Garcia,” Spencer said, suddenly put into action. Penelope looked immediately at him, her eyes alert. “Can you find a list of Employees that work 6-6 hours in Las Vegas? It's probably as a manager, a position that doesn't allow sick days.” 

Insistent typing went on as they all stared Garcia down. There was a pinch of hope in the room, just the slightest realization that maybe they could finally start to do something. 

“There are… 48 total employees who worked on those days, who haven't taken any sick days,” Garcia said as she continued typing.

“Okay, how about employees that started working overtime a month after the case was opened?” 

A second went by, two. 

“There are 12 results,” she said, looking back up at Spencer, suddenly excited. 

Spencer thought for a moment, wondered what would stick out about their unsub. “How about someone who doesn't work under their degree? Like a manager of a store, or something like that?”

Another moment, every person in the room, waiting with anticipation, waiting for something, an answer, anything. 

“There's only one result.” 

‘Who?” 

“A Y/N Y/L/N. She works as a manager at a book shop, never takes any sick days, and has a 6-6 schedule every day.” 

It was silent for a moment. None of them knew what to say. 

“Maybe that's what we were missing,” JJ spoke up, “it's out of character for a woman, but I don't doubt that it's possible.” 

They all nodded in agreement, not wanting to start over again. 

At least this was a place to start. 

*

“Are we just going to arrest her?” 

After the discovery they had all decided to take a break, to take an hour for just themselves, to get lunch. 

Now it was back to the case. 

“We can't arrest her without any probable cause. As of now, we don't know enough about her to get a warrant.” 

A sigh ran across the room, filling all of the heads with hopelessness again. 

Until Emily spoke up, remembering something they’d done before, an idea popping into her brain. 

“What if we sent in an undercover agent?” 

She had asked Hotch, but everyone was debating it, thinking of the possibilities, the risks that could come with being that close to a murder, the past experiences. 

It could be a very bad idea, something could potentially happen to an agent, more victims could get killed, the unsub could stop killing at all.

But, it was one of the only options they had, besides waiting for more evidence to show up. 

“We sent someone in, and they get to know the unsub, they profile her behavior, gage her way of living, look for similarities. And undercover, they could get a lot more information than any of us could get by arresting her.” Emily went on, her mind running over the positives. 

Hotch sighed. He knew it wasn't something they often did, the BAU was used to getting through cases, used to arresting people immediately. But this was a special case, and he knew that it would only get worse and worse as long as they waited. 

But he wasn't sure. 

“We don't know what she's like, what if she suspects something? She could kill an agent.” He said, doubtful, stern. 

“So we send in a male agent, she isn't interested in males, she's less likely to kill them.” 

“We still don't know if she will even connect with a stranger, we don't know if she can connect with anyone. It won't be helpful if the agent can't get to know her.” 

“But, Hotch, we could still learn her schedule, we could learn about where she goes when she's not working. 

With each sentence that Emily said, they were all becoming more convinced. 

A nod went around the table, and they all looked to Hotch for confirmation. 

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, exhausted with the day, with the case, and nodded. 

Relief went around, all of them glad to finally have a plan. 

“So who do we send?” Rossi asked. 

There were dozens of agents they could send, plenty of them trained for this exact thing, but they were all looking around the room. They all knew the case best, they knew how to gage human behavior, they knew what they were supposed to look for in the unsub. 

It had to be one of them. 

“Prentiss and JJ can't go,” Derek said, looking at the two of them who looked relieved at the fact. 

‘And Hotch you can't go, you have to take care of Jack.” 

Rossi cleared his throat, his team members looked at him. “I’m taking my name out of the ballet. I’m too old for this,” he said, sending a laugh around the room. 

Derek sighed and looked at Hotch. “I don't think I’m a good choice. I’m more intimidating, and she would be more comfortable around someone her age.” 

They all silently looked to Spencer, who was looking down at his file, reading everything over again. 

It was only when Hotch cleared his throat that he looked up. 

“Reid? Are you comfortable going?” 

Spencer stared at him shocked. “Me?” he asked, his voice cracking. 

He wasn't good with people in general, and he’d never been good with girls. If they wanted to make the unsub comfortable, he was the worst option. 

“Come on kid,” Derek started, “You’re the closest to her age, you’re the most approachable. You’ll remember the most about her behavior, and you’ll learn her schedule quicker than any of us. Plus, you already know your way around Las Vegas.” 

The rest of the team nodded in agreement, while Spencer still looked terrified. 

“And plus,” Emily spoke up, hoping to convince Spencer, “She works at a bookstore.” 

Everyone but Hotch and Spencer laughed. 

Spencer was stuck. He didn't know how to talk to people, he didn't know how to get to know someone. He was only good with facts, and talking to an unsub- one that he was supposed to make comfortable -did not involve facts. 

But, he knew his team needed him, he knew that they were all stressed, that the others had taken the losses harder than he had. He knew that if he could do this if he could learn about this girl, the world would be clearer for his family. 

“Reid, I only want you to do this if you’re comfortable.” Hotch pulled Reid out of his thoughts, his eyes stern and unmoving. His voice was completely serious, and Spencer could hear hints of reassurance in his words. It was comforting to know that Hotch trusted him to make the right decision. 

Spencer took a deep breath. Reminded himself that his team trusted him too. 

“Alright. I’ll do it.” 

***

An apartment. 

They would get him an apartment. 

He would live in Las Vegas for as long as he deemed necessary. 

He would stay and he would learn everything he could about Y/N. 

He would profile her, send reports back to his team. 

He would try and talk to her. He would try to get to know her. 

He would change everything. 

He would do his job. 

He would talk to a girl. 

A girl. 

A murderer. 

A girl. He would have to talk to her. 

He would. 

A girl. 

“Hi, I’m Spencer.” 

***

reminder that this is part one, and its more of a introduction than the actual story

sorry if it sucked 

my masterlist: 

part two

#spencer reid smut #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds rp #criminal minds headcanons #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fan #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fic #mgg #mgg x reader #mgg blurb #mgg fanfiction

[is-it-art-tho]

This is Chapter 5!

Chapter 1.  Chapter 2   Chapter 3.   Chapter 4

Summary: Jason gets a visitor. It doesn't go well.

Jason tumbled through his apartment window just as the sun was starting to rise. What he’d meant to be a quick recon mission had turned into an all-out battle royale and now his whole body ached for sleep and painkillers as he shed his clothes on his way to his bedroom, leaving a trail of muddy gear in his wake.

As soon as his legs hit his bed, he let himself fall forward across it. And even though the rest of his place was slowly flooding with light, his room was still mercifully dim and cool. He nudged the door closed with the tip of his toe, grateful once again for his blackout curtains as he blocked out the light from the hall, plunging the room further into the dark.

Jason didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he finally woke up it was with a jolt, a sudden snapping open of his eyes while the rest of him remained perfectly still.

Something was wrong.

He could sense it in the air, could feel it like a prickling along the back of his neck. Without making a sound, his hand located the gun in the top drawer of his nightstand, and he moved across the room to press himself into the wall by the door.

He listened.

If he hadn’t been who he was, he might not have heard it at all – the traffic outside was noisier than whoever had broken into his apartment. But he was who he was and he did hear it, gentle footsteps moving around his living room and kitchen.

He waited for the telltale sounds of theft – appliances being shuffled, drawers opening and shutting – but there was none of that. Only quiet movements, low murmuring. Finally the footsteps grew more pronounced as they headed down the hall and paused just outside his door.

The knob twisted carefully, slowly, and Jason cocked his gun. From where he was pressed into the corner, the opening door shielded him from view as the intruder stepped in and looked around, and before they could fully turn his way, Jason had a gun pressed into their back through the fabric of a black cape.

“Replacement,” Jason said by way of greeting, his adrenaline ebbing significantly but not altogether.

“So you are alive. Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Red demanded, turning around to face him as Jason set the gun aside.

Before Jason could even answer, Red was talking to someone else, a finger to his ear. “No. He isn’t here. But I got Jason.”

Pause.

“I really don’t think–” Red Robin paused again, looking pained. “All right. No, I know. I know.” He returned his focus to Jason.

“Dick’s missing,” he explained. “It’s been three days.”

“He’s a big boy. Just because he missed family brunch once or twice doesn’t mean–”

Red Robin reached into his belt and tossed him a plastic bag. “Found it at the bottom of a storm drain. His car was abandoned, too.”

Inside the bag was Dick’s cell phone, caked in grime and smashed.

“Shit,” Jason breathed. Tossing the phone back, he slipped past Red and into the hall where his gear was still strewn haphazardly across the floor. “You trace his suit?”

“He’s not wearing it. And the comm system’s been on and off so we haven’t been able to make contact. By now he could be out of range or–” Red broke off whatever he was about to say. “Or something else.”

“Shit,” Jason said again, hopping into his pants. It was only when he was securing his belt that he noticed Red Robin fidgeting in the doorway. “You gotta piss or something?”

The younger boy stopped shifting. “Have you… heard from him?”

“Golden Boy? Yeah, we got cocktails on Tuesday.”

Red blinked at him.

“I’m kidding.” Jason tugged his gloves on and flexed his fingers a bit before finally sliding on his helmet. He was already straddling the windowsill, halfway out when he noticed Red Robin wasn’t following. “You coming or what?”

The younger boy looked physically ill now. Jason could practically hear his heart racing from across the room.

He waited.

“Where were you Halloween night?” Red asked.

Jason sighed. “Is this about that stupid party? Listen I’m sorry if I ruined your ‘theme’ or whatever but there was no way in hell I was ever gonna–”

“It’s not. It’s not about that.”

“Then why do you care where I was?”

The kid’s narrow shoulders rose and fell with a slow breath. “We’ve got you on surveillance a few blocks from where the party was that night. Around the same time Dick left. What were you doing out there?”

Jason stared, his face paling behind the helmet as the realization hit him, churned in his stomach like something rotten.

He was a suspect.

Of course, he was a suspect.

“Look,” Red began as if sensing the change in the air. “I’m just– ever since that thing happened between you two–”

“What ‘thing?’” Jason asked, pulling his leg back inside and standing. He could see now that Red Robin hadn’t come here for backup. This was an interrogation. He tugged off his helmet and tossed it onto the couch.

“I have no idea because Dick wouldn’t say anything. But it’s obvious something happened. And I just… have a few questions.”

“Is this you asking or the bat?”

“Does it make a difference?”

Yes.

“Nope.” Jason shrugged off his jacket, grateful for the distraction as a thousand different emotions clashed and swirled through him. His face felt hot, and there was a piercing ache in the center of his chest; if he hadn’t known any better, he could’ve sworn he was bleeding under his armor.

If Dick’s comments had been the blade, surely this was the twisting of the knife.

“I was trick or treating with a kid from The Yards,” he explained at last.

Red looked supremely unimpressed. “I’m being serious, Jason.”

“So am I.”

Jason looked him dead in the eyes, and whatever Red saw in the older boy’s face must have been confirmation enough, because finally he sighed, his shoulders sagging.

“I’m sorry,” Red offered miserably. “I told them it was stupid to even ask, but they thought–”

“I know what they–” Jason cut himself off before he started shouting. He sighed. “I know. Just go.”

Red looked like he was about to say something, then paused, his eyes flicking away. “Copy that,” he said, presumably to someone over the comm.

Jason stepped aside as the kid made his way to the window.

With a boot perched on the sill, Red Robin turned and said, “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t – I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.”

When Jason offered him nothing in return, Red Robin nodded as if understanding, and leapt into the night.

Jason shut the window.

____________

Red Robin cursed, peering into a grimy warehouse. Another dead end. How many freaking abandoned buildings could one city possibly have?

“He’s not here,” he said, flipping up from the window and onto the roof to scan the tops of the surrounding buildings. “Next location.”

“Okay,” Oracle said. “Just give me–”

“West Side Heights are a no-go,” Spoiler announced.

A moment later, Robin added, “The tenements on Ninth are empty, as well.”

“Huntington to Jefferson is clear.” Batman.

“Okay, okay just give me second!” Oracle shouted. Red flinched, his ear twinging as she added more calmly, “Let me think."

He could practically hear the gears in her mind working, could feel the tension crackling over the moments of silence that followed.

When Dick hadn’t come back to pick them up from the party, they hadn’t thought much of it. It wouldn’t have been wildly out of character for him to get caught up with something and lose track of time. And they’d been happy for the excuse to borrow a car to get home anyways.

Even in the days that followed, they’d all had different assumptions about what might have been going on with him. Maybe he was undercover somewhere. Maybe he’d gone radio silent for an especially challenging case. All of these things had happened before. Even so, Red Robin could see now that they – that he – should have been more alert.

Three days. It had taken him three days to notice that something was wrong.

He glanced eastward. A faint gold had begun to bleed into the clouds and dust the rooftops. Soon they’d have to stop, or at least switch to more inconspicuous means of searching. He tried not to think about all the statistics involving missing persons and the importance of the first few hours. How much time they had already lost.

Not lost. Wasted.

But now that they were actively looking, somehow it felt like things were still getting worse.

He groaned, bracing his hands on his knees as his anxiety and frustration mingled bitterly with fresh guilt. He’d expected the conversation with Jason to be awkward; he hadn’t expected it to be so… sad.

The look on Jason’s face…

“Oracle,” Batman said at last, a ripple of warning in his baritone that snapped Red Robin upright. Wallowing would have to wait.

Right now, he needed to focus.

“I know,” Oracle answered. “Red, you take the old abbey on Acreage. Spoiler, there’s an office building under construction on–”

“H-hello…?” a quavering voice interjected.

Red froze, his arm outstretched with his grapple. No one responded, and the silence that followed was so complete he almost thought his comm had shut off.

“Ora..cle?”

“Dick?” she nearly shouted. “Oh my– where are you? Are you okay?”

“I… don’t know.” Dick’s voice was hollow, almost distracted.

“Wait,” Dick said a little firmer. “Historical district. I don’t know wh–” Then he hacked and coughed, and there was the distinct sound of something splattering onto a floor.

Red Robin was already swinging through the air towards the historical district when Oracle asked, “Are you hurt?”

“I­–”

A nearby explosion sent a shockwave through the air, throwing off the arc of Red Robin’s swing and sending him careening into the side of a building. “Agh!”

He retracted the grapple, letting it pull him up the rest of the way until he was able to crawl over the lip of the roof and look around.

The bottom floor of an apartment building down the street was engulfed in flames. A moment later, another explosion went off several blocks away. And another after that, distant booms and plumes of fiery smoke billowing into the early morning sky.

“What’s going on?” Red Robin asked, sprinting towards the building closest to him. “Are you guys seeing this?”

#nightwing #red hood #jason todd #dick grayson #batman fanfic #batman fanfiction #batfam #dick grayson and jason todd #whump #batman whump #dick grayson whump #jason todd whump #nightwing whump #hurt/comfort #AllOurBrokenParts

[seagreen-meets-grey]

When Lightning Strikes Ch. 20

When your life is nothing but a cloudless sky, lightning can come and strike you so unexpectedly, you won’t even know what hit you.

Or: When Hiccup and Astrid meet, it is as if lightning strikes.

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7] [Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13] [Chapter 14] [Chapter 15] [Chapter 16] [Chapter 17] [Chapter 18] [Chapter 19]

Crossposted on ao3 and ff.net

(Last round, everyone!)

_______________

The pub wasn’t very crowded on a Wednesday night. Maybe a third of the tables and half the stools at the bar were occupied. Indie-Rock music was coming from the speakers, a backdrop to clinking glasses and pleasant conversations in seemingly countless languages.

Outside the windows, the setting sun was largely hidden behind clouds, but darkness was yet to set in. The lights in the pub were slightly dimmed to create a cozy atmosphere, accentuated by the Nordic decorations and laughter all around.

It was pleasantly warm inside, a stark contrast to the chilly air of late October, with cold winds coming in from the sea.

“Yes! Bullseye!” Astrid went to pull her three arrows out of the dartboard and accepted the two bottles of Kaldi Blonde, a local Icelandic beer, from Hiccup as he took his turn. They were standing in a corner of the pub, competing in their third game of darts. After she’d won the first two rounds, he was determined to win this one. But he would have to catch up to her first. The first arrow hit the triple twenty and he cheered, throwing her a victorious smirk.

“Don’t celebrate too soon, I’m still ahead of you!”

“Oh no, I’m going to destroy you,” he countered, squinting at the board and shifting his stance a little. With one smooth throw, the arrow landed slightly higher to the right of the first one, counting one point.

“Ha!”

He stuck out his tongue at her in response as he lined up his third throw. An excited buzz was flowing through her veins, mind completely at ease and a warm feeling in her chest – the usual for spending time with her boyfriend. She noticed him making his cute, concentrated face where he pressed his lips together and dedicated his entire focus in a single direction. Hiccup threw the arrow and for a split-second, it looked like it would hit another triple twenty, but it bounced off the first arrow and flew through the room.

She laughed at his wide-eyed expression as he scrambled after the arrow and crawled underneath a table to retrieve it.

“Did the board count that?” he asked as he poked his head out between two chairs.

“Nope,” she answered after a quick look at the electric board, “and I’m still ahead of you!”

He was grumbling something as he stood again, wiping a bit of dust off his arrow, and she was raising her bottle to her lips with a grin when she suddenly stopped mid-motion. Hiccup came to take the beers from her so she could start her turn, but then frowned at her. “What is it?”

A thought had just occurred to her, hitting her right in the chest, spreading through her entire body like electrically charged lava. She met his quizzical eyes, so green in the dimmed lights of the pub. Even after all this time, they still had the same effect on her.

“Astrid?” He briefly touched her still raised hand to get her attention and the same old spark jumped over her skin as if he was touching her for the first time. It was as if she had taken off the thick glasses that made everything look hazy – no, she realized, she’d taken them off quite some time ago, but only now had she noticed. Everything was clear all of a sudden, and she felt light, her heart jumping into her throat.

“Let’s get married,” she blurted out, a huge grin spreading on her face.

“W-what?” Hiccup was taken aback, staring at her with a slight gape.

“Let’s get married,” she repeated.

“You- But- I- Why—” he stammered, a million thoughts scurrying over his expression.

She crossed her arms. “Well, why do you think?”

He blinked, still in surprise. “You… You changed your mind? When?”

“Just now.”

Slowly, his gape morphed into a wide, blinding smile as he scooped her up in his arms and spun her around before setting her down again and holding her close, foreheads pressed together. She almost forgot about the drinks in her hand, nearly dropping the bottles. “And you’re really sure about this?”

“Yes.” Goosebumps broke out over her entire body as she looked into his eyes and saw her reflection in them mirror the unbridled joy and love building and crashing between them like a tsunami wave. Why had she taken so long to realize her fears had been stupid all along? Sure, they had come from a real place, but in this very moment, past Astrid was nothing more than a ghost fading into nothingness somewhere in the smallest corner of present Astrid.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Without breaking eye contact, she set the beers down on the next table and kissed him, long and deep, before grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the exit. “Let’s do it!”

He hesitated, stopping after a few steps. “What, you mean right now?”

“Yeah.” She furrowed her brows. “I’m sure there’s some place in Reykjavík that marries people.”

“Um… Astrid, this isn’t Vegas. You can’t just go to a nearby chapel, sign a form and get hitched.”

“You don’t know unless you go look for it.” She crossed her arms, a shadow falling over her boundless excited energy. “And then, once we find something, we can go first thing tomorrow and–”

“First thing tomorrow? I don’t think it’s that easy, hon.” He tried a smile, but it only flickered shortly before disappearing again. “Like I said, this isn’t Vegas. We’re on a completely different continent than Vegas. We can’t just go and get married.”

“Since when are you such a pessimist?”

“What? I’m not a pessimist, I’m being realistic here.”

She smiled lopsidedly. “Since when are you a realist? Where’s my there’s-no-way-we-can’t-train-the-neighbor’s-dog-to-bring-us-the-newspaper-Hiccup?”

He shrugged with one shoulder but didn’t answer, glancing right past her, not meeting her eyes. Her shoulders sagged along with her excitement. “You don’t want to.”

“I do! I really do!” he hurried to say. “But…”

“But what?” she inquired when he trailed off.

With slow steps, he reached her, taking her hands in his. “Look. Why don’t we wait until we’re back home?”

“Why? Why not go and at least scout our options? I thought you of all people would agree there.”

He took a deep breath. “Because I want you to have a chance to change your mind.”

Surprised, she took a step back. “Why would I change my mind? This was my idea!”

“I… I don’t…” He struggled to find the right words for a minute. “I don’t want you to go through with something you realize you don’t want after all, just because you made a decision and are too stubborn to admit it’s not what you want.”

“But I just said–”

“I don’t want you to regret your decision,” he said with a pressing look in his eyes that conveyed more than his words did, and she understood. She’d once made a decision she’d regretted later on – in a very similar context. Despite her initial disappointment and correlating annoyance, she felt a stream of liquid cocoa encircle her heart like a moat.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and squeezed his hands. After a moment, she felt him relax, his chin resting on her head. For his consideration alone, she wanted to drag him through the city and find at least Reykjavík’s city hall. But as much as she wanted to elope right here, right now, she could wait. Besides, they were going to be here for another two weeks, that was plenty of time she could use to change his mind.

With a small sigh, she lifted her head and pecked his cheek. “Alright. Now let me continue with destroying you at darts.”

Hours later, when they were lying in their hotel bed, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, squeezing her eyes shut until she felt dizzy, but to no avail. Not even Hiccup’s calm breathing next to her and the peaceful expression on his face were helping, and that usually lulled her to sleep like nothing else could. But not tonight.

Reaching over to the nightstand, she turned on her phone and blinked at the sudden bright light. Darkening the screen as far as possible, she typed a few key words into the search bar and spent the next hour researching. And Hiccup had been right. This wasn’t Vegas. She needed documents, not just copies but originals, and she needed time, two weeks in advance at the bare minimum. And money, too. And rings. And a warm dress and tux. And an officiant. And a place.

Now, some of those things weren’t that hard to obtain, and the costs weren’t nearly as high as she’d feared (seriously, she’d paid more for their big fridge), but she’d have to hand in all the necessary documents immediately if she wanted to make this possible. But as long as Hiccup wasn’t on board, for whatever reason, she could forget about the whole thing.

Swallowing her disappointment, she put her phone aside and turned to look at her boyfr– no, wait, fiancé! She and Hiccup were engaged now! Not with an official ring, but what did that matter? Engaged meant engaged. They both agreed to marry the other. To spend a life together, not just in practice, but in every sense of the word. Officially, legally, bindingly, finally.

The buzzing returned to her chest, and suddenly, it was easy to sink into her pillow and fall asleep. Because just as easily, she realized that time and place didn’t matter. They could always come back or travel somewhere else to get married. Hell, they could pay a few bucks to someone at the airport and take care of any legal requirements later – weren’t pilots allowed to marry people? Or did that only apply to ship captains? But before she could finish that thought, she was already out like a light.

All of her nightly deliberation, though, couldn’t stop her from not-so-coincidentally walking past a shop for wedding clothes on their stroll through the city the next day. Hiccup just shook his head with a fond smile and followed her inside. She could already look, right? And there was no way she’d wear the same dress to her second wedding.

She wasn’t usually one to enjoy shopping for clothes like other women did – if she needed something, she’d go get it, not aimlessly walk through a hundred stores without purpose – this place felt like heaven. Maybe it stemmed from her excitement, maybe it was the rows upon rows of cream and white (and the occasional black or green) that made her feel like she was surrounded by clouds. Brocade, lace, tulle, ornaments with golden or silver threads woven in, all kinds of different lengths and sizes and cuts. She felt a little overwhelmed until she figured out the system in which the dresses were hung.

While Hiccup was chatting with a sales assistant somewhere over by the tuxedo pants, she walked past a row of short summer dresses, running her fingers through the layers of fabric, marveling at the needlework that must have gone into all the fine details in the adornments.

Turning a corner, she found the section for warmer clothes. Winter dresses with long sleeves and thick layers that still managed to look delicate, matching bolero jackets, thick tights that would be invisible underneath the beautiful skirts, even light winter boots that went with certain dresses. Astrid wanted to try them all on. But quickly running the numbers in her head and converting currencies, she had to turn her back on probably half the display.

With pleasant music in the background, a small table with water, orange juice, champagne and snacks nearby, and a friendly sales woman offering her assistance, Astrid figured it was a good thing she and Hiccup didn’t have any set plans for the rest of the day.

Edda, the sales woman, greeted her with an enthusiastic energy, rubbing her hands together and asking Astrid for her preferences. Then she weaseled back and forth between the rows, picking out dress after dress, matching jackets, scarfs, shoes, shawls, fur capes and elegant ponchos. Whenever Astrid had put on one dress, Edda was already back with another.

And they were all so, so beautiful. But they either didn’t quite fit, were too expensive, or just simply weren’t her style. About half an hour into their fitting session, Hiccup was waiting for her lounging in a chair when she came out of the fitting room in a long layered dress with puffy sleeves and a high collar, not unlike Lady Diana’s dress. It had looked great on its hanger (and on Lady Di), but on Astrid? Well, when Hiccup saw her and started laughing, she just rolled her eyes with a defeated sigh and didn’t even wait for Edda to come back before peeling herself out of the monstrosity.

Two hours passed with just the blink of an eye. For a while, she didn’t even see Hiccup in-between getting in and out of dresses. She wasn’t even sure if he was still in the store, but she couldn’t blame him. She was completely drained and had stopped counting after dress number twenty. Seemed like Edda could tell because she suggested a break when Astrid refused to give up and come back another day.

Downing an entire glass of champagne in one go, she wearily wiped a hand over her face. She wanted to find a dress, the sooner the better, because then she had more ammunition to throw at Hiccup who still insisted they didn’t get married until they were back home.

She put down her empty glass and strolled through the store, side-eyeing every dress she’d tried on so far. Some of them had been really pretty. Maybe if she took them to a tailor to make some last-minute changes…?

Just for the sake of it, she took a look at the dresses with the horrendously high price tags. From within the masses, a full-length, sleeveless white silk dress with a lace collar caught her eye. It had a broad sash with intricate Celtic-Nordic ornaments woven in with golden thread. It felt impossibly soft and looked incredibly comfortable. But what was worst was that it seemed to be her exact size.

“That is beautiful,” a voice behind her said and from out of nowhere, Hiccup reappeared. He stepped closer, running a hand up and down her back.

“Yeah,” she sighed and carefully hung it back. “But way too expensive.”

“You could try it on and I’ll convince Edda that you’re meant to have it because no other person will look as beautiful in it as you.” He rested his chin on her shoulder and hugged her from behind. “Maybe she’s superstitious, too, and will believe me when I tell her you’re a goddess or a fairy in disguise and this dress can be her offering to you.”

“Solid plan, babe,” she said with a grin. “You know what? I’ll try it on for you. And for me, because it’s gorgeous and I want to.”

“That’s the spirit.” He let go of her so she could take the dress back to the fitting room.

It was perfect.

For a full minute, she marveled at her own reflection in the huge mirror. The dress fit like a second skin, as if it had been made specially for her. She ran her hands over the fabric, so soft and of such a high quality, the price almost seemed too low, even.

She pulled the curtain aside and stepped out of the room, feeling like the goddess Hiccup had offered to sell her as. And boy, did he think the same, judging by the gape and the wide eyes and the adoring smile that spread over his face following the first shock.

“Wow.” His voice was almost breathless. “I… Wow. Now I want to make you an offering, oh mighty goddess of… of…” He trailed off, at a loss for words. Astrid took pride in being the only one who could cause that in him. (Well, she and one dress. But that was it.)

“Oh, you found one!” Neither she nor Hiccup had noticed Edda come back. “Turn around, let me see.” Astrid turned for Edda, the fabric flowing around her ankles. “Wonderful, wonderful!”

“But way too much…” Astrid fingered with the price tag, already heading back to the fitting room before she could do something stupid like empty her entire savings account for this, but Edda motioned for her to wait.

“This dress is part of our next big sale. If you’re still here two weeks from now, it can be yours for a third of the price. Provided that no one else buys it before you.”

Astrid bit her lip and exchanged a glance with Hiccup. If she already couldn’t have her impromptu wedding in Iceland, she at least wanted the dress.

“I’ll take that chance,” she announced, earning approving nods from both Edda and Hiccup.

Step one: check.

But Hiccup was stubborn. The following days, she kept talking his ear off about extending their vacation and finding a way to get their documents here without traveling back first.

“Astrid, we’re in a different country,” he argued. “Let’s go home first and, when the lenses of the romantic vacation are gone, see what’s the plan then.”

“I’m not going to change my mind, Hiccup, I don’t know how often I have to say that until you believe me.”

But he was relentless. Not even her ploy to convince him by trying on the dress every time they walked past the store worked. She even found matching warm shoes and a beautiful white faux-fur coat that looked like a cape with sleeves and made her feel like a Viking queen. She also knew what she’d do with her hair, picking out a flower crown from a florist and a matching one for Hiccup the first chance she got. But he kept talking about how they could find these things in Berk or maybe have them shipped home.

The only thing they did without hesitation was buy the rings. They’d just come back from a four-day trip across the island when they walked past a jeweler’s display window. Infected with a prenuptial spirit, they spent the rest of the afternoon in a café, hunched over Hiccup’s sketchbook, before they went back to order their own personalized wedding rings. It made the whole ordeal feel absolutely final, but their time on this vacation was slowly running out and Hiccup still didn’t budge. Which was frustrating.

And then, less than a week before the sale, the dress was gone. Along with their chance to just bribe someone to marry them without all the legal necessities. She was grumpy for the entire day.

The next morning, she had sort of accepted her fate, directing her energy into making plans with Hiccup for a winter wedding and a party once they got home. It wouldn’t be as soon as she’d hoped it could happen, and much of their plans hinged on it snowing a lot, but the buzzing excitement was back in no time. And with it, her good mood.

Which is why she didn’t waste any energy on what could have been when the last day of their vacation dawned. After breakfast at the hotel, they took their rental car outside the city and spent the day at the coast, walking hand in hand along the cliffs and picnicking down at the beach sheltered in the shadow of a tall rock formation, with sandwiches, cookies and a thermos of hot tea.

They watched the sunset up by the edge of a cliff, huddled closely together on their camping chairs, listening to the waves at the bottom of the cliff, climbing and crashing back down. The wind was subsiding and the clouds were parting, and Astrid felt as if she was at the edge of the world, just her and Hiccup. It was still cold, though, and she adjusted her hat and scarf to properly cover her ears and neck. Then she reached over and took Hiccup’s gloved fingers in hers, resting their hands on the arms of the adjoined chairs. She felt him squeeze her hand and look at her from the side.

“What?”

His expression was thoughtful. “You haven’t changed your mind yet?”

She sighed in fond exasperation and leaned her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes against a low sunbeam. “No, you muttonhead. I want to marry you. That has absolutely nothing to do with us being on vacation. I don’t know how that even got into that thick skull of yours.”

For a few minutes, he was quiet. Then he pressed a kiss to her temple and hesitantly leaned his head against hers. “Too bad that it did, because we could have been married by now.”

She sat up and socked him on the arm, ignoring his yelp. “Yes, we could have been! I could also have owned my perfect wedding dress by now.” She crossed her arms and added with a low grumble, “Let’s hope the rings are really done by tomorrow morning. I don’t want to pay a shipping fee if they aren’t, they were expensive enough already.”

“Don’t worry, I checked with them this morning, we can pick them up first thing tomorrow.”

The sun had almost completely disappeared behind the horizon when she glanced back at him, absentmindedly playing with his fingers. “Did you really think I’d change my mind about you?”

He shrugged, keeping his eyes trained on the endless sea. In the now quickly dying light, it became harder to read his expression. “It’s not like I didn’t believe you when you said you were sure about it. I just...” He went quiet again, lips pressed together, but she didn’t take her eyes off him, waiting for him to continue. Then he looked at her, and in the near-darkness, his eyes were like a beacon, shining with emotions, open and raw and honest and vulnerable.

“I guess I was afraid.”

“Of what? Me changing my mind?” She frowned.

“Yeah. I mean… What if you start feeling trapped again? Like this is not the life you want?” His voice was almost a whisper, almost part of the wind grazing their cheeks, painting them red. “When you realize marrying me was the wrong decision. You said you were sure, but wasn’t that what you’d thought last time?”

Oh. Oh. So that… That was…

“Oh, Hiccup.” She enveloped him with both arms and pressed a lingering kiss to his mouth. “You could have just said that, you know. Then I could have told you way earlier that you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“I know you love me,” he continued, “but you also loved Eret and–”

“Not like this,” she interrupted him. “With Eret, everything was... easy. Pleasant. When I looked at our relationship from the outside, it made sense. But it took me a long time to figure out that I needed so much more than that. I’ve told you many times how it felt when I met you. You turned everything I thought I knew about love upside down, and about what I wanted, what I needed. The only reason I didn’t marry you way earlier is a fear I now know is irrelevant. Because I know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and only you, only ever you.”

“Hm,” he made after a minute, trying a smile, “I guess your fear rubbed off on me a little.”

“It was a real fear, but like I said, I’m over it now. Because I know exactly what I want and because I know that it will be different this time, because I have not even the tiniest of doubts about you, I never had.” She regarded him with creased brows and a suddenly tight chest. “Do you?”

He vehemently shook his head. “No. I could have married you on the spot that day, you know, in the rain. I can’t imagine ever loving anyone else like that.”

“Good, then we’re on the same page. Next time, just talk to me, you muttonhead!”

A long sigh escaped him, as if he was releasing all the tension at once that he’d felt ever since she’d announced that she wanted to marry him, for real. “I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

“I know. It’s alright.” She leaned her head on his shoulder again, a starry sky above them the only light source for miles. One of the only clouds left in the sky gave way to the moon, or rather what little was visible of it, its crescent shape resembling a thin scythe.

“Good to know you’re still on board, though,” Hiccup mumbled and by the sound of it, he was far away with his thoughts.

Astrid fumbled her phone out of her pocket with stiff fingers, pulling up a weather forecast. “Looks like it’s gonna be a clear sky tonight. Hey, maybe we’ll finally get to see the lights!” It was one of the main reasons they’d chosen Iceland as their destination, after all. And so far, the sky had never been clear enough for the real experience.

“Yes, maybe.” Hiccup rose out of his chair with a groan. “But first, we should get back to the hotel, pack our suitcases, warm up, have dinner… Maybe not in that order.”

She hummed as she followed him back to the car, carrying her folded chair over one shoulder. “I’m sure we can think of a good way or two to warm ourselves up.”

_______________

After dinner, Astrid got a call from the jeweler that they could come pick up their rings immediately, even though they were already closed – someone would still be there to lock up, waiting for them. Hiccup offered to go get the rings while Astrid kept packing up their stuff. That didn’t take very long, though, as she was a very efficient packer, so she changed into her sweatpants and lounged on the bed while video-calling Ruffnut for a while.

Her phone was leaning against the lamp on the nightstand while charging, with Astrid sitting cross-legged on the bed, braiding and un-braiding her hair without paying much attention to what she was doing.

Ruff’s grand advice was to just put the rings on their fingers and call it a day. “No one cares about your signature on a piece of paper, dude. Just call yourself Mrs. Haddock from now on, or Mrs. Hofferson-Haddock, or call him Mr. Hofferson, whatever, who cares.”

“If we just wanted it to be symbolic, we could have done it already. But we want the real, official thing. The legal thing.”

Ruff let out a loud belch, crinkling the can of cheap beer in her hand. “Why? That sounds boring.”

Astrid repeatedly combed through a thick strand of hair that had a particularly large knot in it. With a frown, she picked loose hair from her clothes. “It’s not boring. It’s binding. Besides, there’s, like, a million other things that come with legal marriage. Like sharing property. Or tax benefits.”

“Tax benefits, huh? Maybe I should get married, too. Does your fiancé have any single friends? How about that Fishlegs guy? He’s nice.”

“Absolutely not! You cannot marry Fishlegs!

“Why not?” Ruffnut whined.

“Because like you said, he’s nice, and I don’t want you corrupting him. You can have Snotlout if you want, I think he’d be a much better match for you, anyway.”

“Eh.” Ruff shrugged. “He’s a little too small for my taste, but I guess for tax benefits, he’ll do.”

Astrid heard a key turn in the door. “Okay, Ruff, I gotta go now, Hiccup’s back. We’re gonna go see the northern lights.”

“A’ight, see ya. Send ring picks!”

“Sure. Bye, Ruff.” She leaned forward to end the call before shuffling around on the bed to face Hiccup. “That took a long time. What’s in the bag?” With him, he had a huge, plain white plastic bag that was closed with a zipper.

“First of all, I got the rings,” he said while taking off his shoes and jacket, carefully setting the bag down on the floor, leaning it against the wall when it tipped over. Whatever was inside, it had no particularly distinct shape.

“And what have you got in the bag?” She stood from the bed and walked over, but Hiccup caught her hand and pulled her back into the room.

“You’re very nosy. Rings first.”

There was a small black box in his hand. Inside, on a white velvet pillow, rested two silver bands. Carefully, he took them out, placing them in her palm. Hers had a tiny blue stone inserted and on the inside, Hiccup’s initials were engraved next to blank space where the date of their wedding would go once they knew when it was. His was adorned with a dark green stone and her initials. Surrounding the stone on each ring were very fine lines that made a pattern not unlike the one on the sash of what Astrid still considered her dress, although it would never be hers now.

She turned the rings, held them up in the light, and finally slid hers on her finger. It fit like a glove. “It’s perfect.”

“It is,” Hiccup agreed and gently pulled it from her finger. “But it’s going back into the box for now.”

Suppressing a sigh as he set the box aside – she’d get to proudly wear it soon enough –, her eyes wandered back to the white mystery bag. “Now what’s with that?”

Hiccup was at the bag in one quick jump, guarding it from her. “Before you open this, I just want to tell you how hard it was for me to keep this a secret. Do you know how many times I’ve been just short of blurting it out?”

“This sounds like a rhetorical question, so I’ll just…” She made a grab for the bag, but Hiccup snatched it from her, wiggling a mock-reprimanding finger in her face.

“You’re so impatient. And don’t stick your tongue out at me, missy!” He probably read her stance right and correctly deduced she was about to wrestle him for the bag, because he took a step back and held up his hand, expression changing into a smile that made his eyes shine. “You can see this as a substitute for an engagement ring.”

Heart pounding in her chest, she accepted the bag when he handed it to her, setting it down on the bed and sliding the zipper open. A soft gasp escaped her. “But this is…”

“Your outfit for tonight.”

She looked up, finding him wringing his hands nervously. “Tonight?”

He nodded. “That is, if you’re up for it?”

“Hiccup, what are you talking about?” Her heart was still pounding. Did this mean what she thought it meant? But how? “Wait, did you plan this all along?”

“I uh… Maybe?” He flashed her a shy grin. “I told myself I’d wait until the end of our vacation to see if you changed your mind – yes, don’t look at me like that, I know I shouldn’t have worried in the first place – but I couldn’t tell you that earlier today because then the surprise would have been gone. Besides, the rings weren’t ready yet and the dress was too expensive – by the way, I had it put on layaway until the sale started, which is today, so I just picked it up, and I have your boots and cape as well in there.”

He was now in full motion, talking fast and with his entire body, “And then I had to wait for the documents to arrive because they said the copies were fine for processing but they needed the originals for legal purposes. They arrived five days ago, just in time, although actually, the certification of marital status would have had to be handed in eight weeks ago, but they made an exception in this case, but not officially, of course – I didn’t bribe anyone, I just told them our story and they loved it. I already took care of everything; whenever you were in the shower or trying on dresses or when I went to the store to sneak drinks into the hotel or remember when I insisted on sleeping in and you slept until noon? I always snuck away to make calls or hand in documents. Now all we need to do is sign the papers.”

She blinked, her mind catching up to everything that had just come out of him like the Mosárfoss waterfall. “So all my nagging these past weeks has been for nothing?”

“Actually, I’d say the opposite. It was great reassurance.”

She seriously didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or everything at once. He’d planned all this, without telling her, in case she’d change her mind about getting married, despite her constantly talking his ear off about it. It sounded incredibly stupid. But then again, he knew about her history, and she’d told him about her fear of trapping herself in an unhappy life because she thought she’d failed, somehow. He didn’t want to be the reason she ever felt like that again.

Wiping a hand over her face, she walked up to him, punched his arm and pulled him into a fierce hug. “You know, I would have been fine without a grand surprise. In fact, if you’d told me about this earlier at the cliffs, it would’ve been just as much of a surprise.”

“Hm, but I didn’t have the dress yet and it almost looked like the rings would be too late.” His arms came around her middle. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed after all if it hadn’t worked out.”

She pulled back to look at him. “How did you even get the documents?”

He shrugged with a lopsided smile. “Like everyone else would. I called your ex-husband, naturally.”

“Ah,” she chuckled. “I knew it was a good idea to keep him around, eventually he had to be good for something.”

“Yeah, well, turns out he was good for making it possible for his ex-wife to elope on vacation.” He lifted his chin and made a show out of ceremoniously clearing his throat. “So, Astrid Hofferson. Will you marry me tonight under the northern lights?”

Biting her lip to keep the glee from breaking out over her face, she turned away. “Nah, I changed my mind.”

After a beat, he groaned, “You have a very cruel sense of humor, you know that?”

“Maybe you deserve it.” Then she couldn’t hold it in anymore. She spun back around, finding Hiccup already right behind her, throwing his arms around her and lifting her from the ground. “Okay, yes, yes I will!”

After spinning her around once or twice, he put her back down and, with a barely concealed grin, shrugged and stepped to the side. “Too bad, now I’ve changed my mind.”

She grabbed the next best thing to throw at him, which was the pair of jeggings she planned on wearing on the plane tomorrow, and flung it right at him, hitting him square in the face.”Don’t you dare say that later! I will personally make sure to push you off the next cliff if you do.” She took the dress out of the bag, spreading it on the bed to make sure it wasn’t crinkled. But whoever had packed the bag had known what they were doing. Everything looked flawless.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Hiccup retaliated, “I’ll bring my parachute.”

Underneath the dress, she found the faux-fur coat and the elegant cream-colored winter boots. And at the bottom of the bag, there was a neatly folded matching suit for Hiccup. She spread everything next to the dress. “Hey, let’s go paragliding or skydiving on our honeymoon! Where do you want to go?”

He picked a strand of her hair and twirled it around his finger. “I hear Iceland’s beautiful this time of year.”

“Very funny, babe.” She pecked his cheek, then dashed over to the bathroom. “I claim the shower first, my hair takes longer!”

_______________

They were scheduled to meet with the officiator a little further than a half-hour ride outside Reykjavík. While Astrid had been singing happy tunes in the shower, Hiccup had called the wedding planning organization he’d been in contact with over the whole legal process and given them the green light for tonight.

Now they were on their way to the site, driving themselves to their own wedding, sitting in a rental jeep in winter wedding attire (the flower crown looked very cute on Hiccup), ring box stored away safely in the glove compartment. The first minutes of the drive, it wasn’t clear who was more antsy, Astrid with her jiggly legs or Hiccup with his constant blabbering.

But then he put on a playlist consisting of Coldplay, U2, Imagine Dragons, and the first two songs they ever danced to together on that rainy Sunday, and singing along to the upbeat music gave them an opportunity to lose some of their nervous energy. Hiccup explained his sentiment behind putting November Rain on the playlist, which made her reflect on how far they’d come since Dagur’s now infamous 30th birthday party.

Lowering her window a bit – not willing to risk the air stream messing up her hair, even though she was wearing it loose, with only her flower crown on top –, she sang into the early night. “It’s a beautiful daaaay! Don’t let it get away!” The concept of fears and doubts and heartbreak seemed foreign to her, the world was a magical place and she was only an hour away from making the best decision of her life so far.

Closing the window when the air rushing in became a bit too fresh, she took out her phone and sent an all-caps text to her parents: ‘CHILL THE CHAMPAGNE CAUSE I’M ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!’ For good measure, she added a string of heart emojis, stars, and a champagne bottle. She considered also adding a bride emoji, but decided to let her parents stew a little over the meaning of her message. She pictured them sitting at home on the couch, speculating– And there it was already, not five minutes later, the inquiring big question mark her father sent into the chat.

Purposefully switching her phone to airplane mode, she flung it onto the backseat and leaned forward as something in the sky caught her eye, something green and purple dancing high above. The aurora borealis. For the first time on this entire vacation, they finally got to see them for real, without thick clouds blocking the sky. She agreed with Chris Martin. This was para, para, paradise!

Their breaths came out visible in the cold air when they exited the car and walked the remaining few hundred feet to the bank of a lake. It wasn’t far from the cliffs, the sound of crashing waves a steady backdrop to the comparatively tiny waves of the lake lapping at their own shore. Hiccup grabbed her hand and she held onto his tightly.

She didn’t spot the two people waiting for them at first, too distracted by the wonderful display of dancing colors all above and mirrored on the almost still surface of the water. She understood why they’d come all the way out here. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Atali, the woman who would officiate their little ceremony, and Throk, her assistant who was setting up a few lights and a table with chairs, gave them a warm welcome and offered them both a variety of hot drinks before Atali spread the contents of a thin binder on the table. It was their documents, including a certificate that already had tomorrow’s date on it.

“We’re going to start shortly before midnight so you can say your I do’s right after the beginning of the new day,” Atali explained. Underneath the table, Hiccup gave Astrid’s hand a squeeze. “Now I need to know if you chose to change or keep your last names.” She raised her brows expectantly.

Astrid squeezed Hiccup’s hand right back. “I told him that, should we ever get married, I’d take his. So yes, I’ll change mine.” The look he gave her as Atali neatly wrote their names down on the paper made her heart skip at least a full beat. They were actually going to do this. She waited for a knot in her stomach, a nagging doubt in the back of her head, but she found nothing. She was all in.

While waiting for the time to start the ceremony, huddled together over cups of hot mead, Atali asked them to recap how they met and what made them decide to tie the knot here in Iceland. When Astrid mentioned her issues with admitting to failure, Atali told her about the Icelandic way of thinking: “Here, failure is something that receives applause. Us Icelanders will congratulate you when you fail and encourage you to try again.” It was certainly something to think about, Astrid figured.

When Hiccup wondered if many foreigners came here to get married, Atali explained, “Lots of couples find that a big traditional wedding at home isn’t for them, so they book a wedding program with us. Some then come alone, some bring up to a hundred guests.”

Astrid thought of her entire family tagging along for this and instantly knew what she preferred. Hiccup seemed to have read her mind. “It feels much more intimate like this, with just us,” he said. “Besides, we’re going to have a party with our people back home, anyway.”

She nodded. “And if not, then they’re going to throw it for us, whether we like it or not.” She looked at Hiccup with a knowing grin. “And your dad will be the first to sign up.”

“Oh shit, my dad!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t even tell them we’re doing this.”

“Don’t worry, I also just sent my parents a more or less cryptic message. They’re brooding over it right now, arguing over whether or not it means what they think it means.”

Throk laughed. “Are you planning on video-calling them afterwards? Some couples do and the reactions are usually priceless.”

Envisioning her mother’s surprise, followed by chastising questions about why nobody told her, and Hiccup’s dad’s booming, proud voice, she only briefly missed them on this important day. But Hiccup was right, it felt so much more special without anyone else around.

She was glad her coat and boots were so thick, or else she’d have felt frozen over by the time Atali asked them to stand and come over to the lake. Heart beating in her throat, she clutched Hiccup’s hand even tighter. Ever since they’d exited the car, she’d not let go of it once, using him as an anchor to keep her from succumbing to her nerves and jumping into the lake. She’d been nervous on her first wedding day, too, but for an entirely different reason.

Throk changed the angle of the light so that Atali could read her notes. The dancing colors in the sky illuminated everything else enough. Astrid stood in front of Hiccup who took her other hand as well. She noticed her fingers were cold but his were warm, and she was reminded of her physics lessons back in school, learning about electric circuits and leads and connections. Whatever power it was that connected them so strongly, she felt it flow through their hands and into her belly and chest.

Atali welcomed them again and started the ceremony. She began by citing various definitions for love and marriage and life itself, continued that she didn’t believe in the one true definition for any of those concepts. She told them stories of other couples she’d married, from every part of the world, with all kinds of different histories, who all had a different understanding of love and life. In the end, she said, true love was what the couple made of it.

“Do you want to say your own vows,” she asked, “or do you want me to directly continue with the rings?”

The lights in the sky were reflecting in Hiccup’s eyes as he regarded Astrid. “I’d like to say a few things.” He looked at their hands for a moment before meeting her eyes again, focused on nothing but her. “As a child, thunderstorms used to wake me up in the middle of the night. Even now, I sometimes wake up, expecting thunder and rain, but there’s no storm outside, it’s just you, sleeping next to me. And when you look at me, I can still feel the reverberations of the lightning bolt that struck me the moment we locked eyes for the first time. And I feel it now, too. It’s been almost two and a half years since you first told me you love me and I’m still in awe...” He paused to take a shaky breath.

“Astrid, you make me believe in myself like no one else can. Whenever I’m facing a wall or- or I’m stuck in my own mind, I can always count on you to be there. Sometimes, you don’t even need to say anything. I just have to look into your eyes and I now that everything will be okay. Without you, I’d stumble my way through life with no clue or guidance. With you, I know I’m not alone. And now, as I’m standing here with you, I don’t even feel the cold. I just feel you.”

His words were crawling underneath her skin, creating goosebumps wherever they went. She had to hold back the urge to grab him by the collar and kiss those magical lips of his senseless. When she opened her mouth to speak, everything that came out was a hoarse croak. She didn’t notice the amused smile shared between Atali and Throk as she cleared her throat and tried again.

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t always know what I’m doing. Usually, when I face a problem, I just look at it like it is and take action. It doesn’t always work out. And sometimes I make plans, but then someone comes along, makes a mess of the whole thing and makes me question everything I ever thought I wanted from my life. How could I have known that I would one day consider that the best thing that’s ever happened to me?”

She gulped. How was she the one holding back tears? But as she looked more closely, she noticed the shimmer in his eyes that told her he wasn’t faring any differently. “With you, I don’t always have to be strong. I can break and know that it’s alright. You’re my favorite person in the whole world. I love the way your mind works. I love the way you look at the world and see possibilities where other people don’t think to look. I love how you make me see things in a different light. I love how you help me be the best version of myself.”

Despite the hot pools of tears threatening to spill over, she couldn’t bring herself to tear her eyes away from him. “And I never want to miss that feeling. That’s why I’m here, with you, as I promise I will always be. No matter what life throws at us, I will always be by your side.” Her voice gave out and even if she’d wanted to say more, she wouldn’t have been able to without breaking out into sobs. Hiccup did that to her.

After giving them a minute to let their words take effect and giving them a chance to gather themselves, Atali nodded at Throk to hand over the rings. “Are you ready to go on?”

Communicating with nothing more than a look, the couple nodded. Hiccup briefly let go of one of her hands to wipe at his eyes, catching her wide-eyed smile that mirrored his own thrilled anticipation. She was glad they didn’t have a big audience for this. Then again, she doubted she’d have registered anyone else while he was looking at her like this, painting her insides technicolor with his words.

Atali motioned for Hiccup to take the first ring and solemnly asked: “Will you, Astrid Hofferson, take this man as your husband?”

“I will,” she said, firmly and honestly. He gently lifted her hand, slid the ring onto her finger and tenderly swiped his thumb over her knuckles. Atali repeated her question at Hiccup, but Astrid didn’t even hear her over the pounding in her ears, eagerly awaiting his answer.

“I will.” She ascended. When she placed the ring on his finger, she was infinitely glad he was still holding her other hand, grounding her.

“Now the only thing left for you to do is sign your marriage certificate.”

Her hand was shaking a little, but she gripped the pen tightly and set her signature right next to Hiccup’s. And when Atali took the pen from her hand, she didn’t waste another second, grabbing his collar with both hands and hurling herself into him.

Only once before had a kiss been this earth-shattering, this heart-stopping, this satisfying. Only this time, it wasn’t raining in buckets.

Atali’s laughter brought her back down to earth. “I was just about to suggest to seal this union with a kiss, but you guys seem to have it covered. Congratulations, you two!”

During the ceremony, Throk had been taking pictures with their camera. Now he took a few more with their phones while Atali sorted the documents, and then even more with only the light of the dancing colors. Astrid was in a daze, following Throk’s suggestions on autopilot. Only when he asked if they wanted to take pictures of each of them alone and Hiccup stepped a few feet away from her, she regained her sense of reality.

But she’d still lost all sense of time. At some point, Throk was apparently satisfied with the amount of photos he’d taken, only staying for one more with the four of them in it. Then he and Atali packed their equipment back into their van while Hiccup and Astrid sent pictures to their friends, first of all to Eret, and video-called their parents.

As predicted, Stoick was over the moon, proudly congratulating them. Valka did the same, just less loudly. Wilma’s first reaction was to look at Frederick and go, “See? I told you she meant something like this!” Then they launched into a discussion over their speculations and who’d predicted what with what level of certainty.

“Are we going to be like this one day?” Astrid whispered to Hiccup.

“Oh, honey, I’m afraid we already are,” he said and pecked her cheek. His lips were warm on her cold skin. Which was why they kept the call short, promising to come by once they returned to Berk.

Then they said goodbye to Atali and Throk, thanking them for everything, before walking towards the edge of the cliffs. Standing there with their arms spread wide, facing the ocean while the wind rushed in their ears, they took deep breaths and shouted into the night until they were completely out of breath.

“How are you feeling, Mrs. Haddock?” Hiccup asked a while later as they stood in a tight hug, swaying with the lights above.

“Blown through.” She felt the wind and the chill of late October to her bones. Back in the city, there were a hot shower and a bed waiting for her, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave her husband’s arms just yet.

This was a moment for eternity.

_______________

It was a loud crack of thunder that woke her.

Careful not to make too much noise, she crawled out of bed and tip-toed into the hallway, the occasional flash of lightning in the sky illuminating her path.

On her way past her parents’ bedroom, she stopped and listened, but didn’t pick up any signs that someone had heard her. Nothing from her sisters’ rooms as well. Seemed like the whole house was asleep but for her.

One hand on the railing, she carefully tip-toed down the stairs. In the living room, she slid behind the couch, pulled the curtains aside and climbed onto the windowsill. This was the best place in the house to watch storms, she’d already figured that out during the first week they’d lived here. Rain was splattering against the glass and another roll of thunder shook the sky. She loved it.

Her dad liked to tell the story of how he’d felt struck by lightning when he’d first met her mom. She thought it was cheesy. Ida thought it was romantic. But Ida found everything romantic at the moment. And Lexi didn’t even understand the concept yet. Maybe Benji would have more sense than her little sisters once he was born. But that was still a few weeks away, said her mom.

Several more flashes of lightning momentarily bathed the living room in a bright light, enough to illuminate the mess that three young kids, a dog, and a cat inevitably made throughout the day. Not to mention the dad that liked to misplace everything, especially sketchbooks. He had a lot of those.

A low whimper gained her attention and she spotted first the eyes, then the rest of the golden retriever cowering between the chairs under the table.

“Come here, Zephyr!” she whisper-shouted and the dog scurried over. She jumped onto the back of the couch, wagging her tail and burying her head under Finja’s arm. “You’re a fine guard dog, you are.” She ruffled the fur behind the dog’s ears, calming her as the wind blew a gust of rain against the window, followed by another crack of thunder.

“Fin?”

Finja’s head whipped around at the voice. Ida stuck her head around the door, long blonde hair falling into her face. In her arms, she was holding a bundle of reddish fur – her favorite comfort pet, Nuffink. Finja herself had named the cat back when she’d first learned to speak. She couldn’t remember her thought process behind the name, though.

“Can… Can I sit with you?”

Finja wordlessly waved her over. Nuffink squirmed in Ida’s hold and escaped, but Ida didn’t care, a smile lighting up her face as she quietly ran over to join her sister on the windowsill. Zephyr enjoyed the additional petting hand and eventually stopped whimpering at every crack of thunder.

“Why are you not asleep?” Finja asked.

“The storm is too loud. And you? Don’t you love storms?”

It was true, Finja did. As far as she could remember, thunderbolts and lightning had never scared her. She rather found they calmed her. But tonight, she hadn’t been able to sleep much, nerves and excitement keeping her awake. She’d just managed to fall asleep when the storm had started.

“It’s because of tomorrow, isn’t it?” Ida asked. She was smart.

Finja shrugged. “Maybe.” It was her very first day of school. And since they had moved to a bigger house in a different part of Berk, that also meant she had to go to a different school than all of her friends.

“Don’t worry, Fin, you’ll be fine. You’ll find lots of friends, you’ll see. And granny Valka and gramps live near the school, how cool is that? You can go over after school every day!” One year from now, Ida would be in school too, even though she’d be a few months younger than the other kids.

“If mom and dad allow it,” Finja mumbled, but she had to admit, it was comforting to know that part of her family was always nearby.

“And uncle Eret’s work is only one street over.”

“Really?” Her little sister wasn’t just smart, she also had an amazing sense of direction. She’d kill it in school next year.

Ida nodded and yawned, exposing all of her teeth.

“Cover your mouth,” Finja chided.

“Oops.”

“Come, let’s go back to bed.” The rain was letting up and the sound of thunder far away. Zephyr was drowsing with her head in Finja’s lap. Besides, the glowing hands of the clock on the wall told her it was the middle of the night.

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” Ida asked as she climbed back down from the windowsill. Finja suspected she only said that so Finja would sleep better, but it wasn’t like she didn’t secretly like the idea.

“Okay.”

#httyd #hiccstrid #fanfiction #hiccup haddock #astrid hofferson #when lightning strikes #modern au #a bit of angst with a dash of drama #or the other way around #maja writes #ff #fanfic #how to train your dragon

[neojeno]

I really wouldn't mind you aiding me with some tutorials love

giffing tutorial/resources

hi anon! sorry it took me so long to answer. i figured this might be helpful for others out there who have asked me similar questions, so i’ve compiled a pretty comprehensive list of tutorials/resources. idk about others but when i was new to giffing, it took me a lot of painful effort to go around and look for resources, so i’m putting it all here to make it a little easier!

i download videos using 4k video downloader. it will download very good quality 1080p videos in .mp4 format. if you’re downloading a 4k video, make sure to change the setting option to .mkv so that you get 4k and not 1080p—for obvious reasons since you want the highest quality.

i rely on kpopexciting to get .ts files — which are basically raw, very high quality video files for live performances. they are much less grainy than .mp4 versions of live performances—which are the ones you’ll see uploaded to youtube. i’ve found that 4k videos (in .mkv) are just as good quality as .ts, but obviously you will rarely see live performances in 4k, so get .ts when you can!! you can also try to find .ts files on twitter, but you may have to do a lot of digging. i wish i could recommend you twitter accounts, but the ones i used to go to have been very inactive/taken down all their drives :( but this website is really nice and updated frequently so i would recommend it!

vapoursynth links + download. the reason you would use vapoursynth is to resize your gif, while maintaining the optimal quality of the gif. if you gif without vapoursynth (.ie only using photoshop), it will still be fine, but the image quality may be grainier. also, you will definitely need vapoursynth to gif .ts files —more will be explained in the tutorial i’ve linked below. i would recommend that you have a high processing/lots of ram/newer desktop or laptop to use vapoursynth so that 1, your computer isn’t fried and 2, your vapoursynth process will go a lot faster. i am using a 2017 macbook pro for all my work, and it runs pretty well, but my laptop still gets pretty hot so just make sure you’re not running a million things in the background while using adobe products and vapoursynth lol. i used a pretty old and beat up 2011 model macbook air back then, and i will say that yes vapoursynth worked and ran on it, but it took much longer, and basically fried the laptop’s battery (aka i had to get the battery changed twice and the laptop would die randomly) but issok it was a school borrowed laptop so i didn’t feel too bad lol. im just saying this as a precaution, to preserve the health of your electronic devices!! but don’t be afraid to use vapoursynth! you should still try it at least once.

thank you to @realstraykids for this super detailed, really nice tutorial! it includes how and where to download videos, how to gif using vapoursynth, using photoshop, comparisons, coloring, and pretty much all you need to know. 10/10 would recommend

thank you to @dreamcolouring for this lifesaver!!! the best and easiest way to blur out unwanted captions/objects in your gifs. i recommend doing this step after converting your frames to video timeline and before you do sharpening and coloring. another tip i’ll add is to feather the selection you’ve made right before you click on “add vector mask” —this will make sense once you’ve read through the tutorial. feathering it will make the blurred spot less noticeable and more subtle.

i use this generator to create gradient colored captions! copy and paste your text, then select the colors you want. generate the code, and copy it. change the settings of the text editor on your post to HTML. paste the code, preview, and voila! add elements <blockquote>,<b>,<i>, etc as needed. see more on colored captions in this tutorial by @kylos​ --i believe op mentioned a different and better color generator but for some reason it won’t work for me :( hopefully it works for u! basically same idea as the previous generator i mentioned.

my own mini tutorial/workflow process of making gifs. this includes working with a .ts file, vapoursynth, photoshop, coloring, watermarking, etc. and a few of my own tips below:

if you are working with an .mp4, you do not have to make any changes to the preprocessor/denoise filters/sharpening in the resizing part of vapoursynth—it doesn’t make that big of a difference if you do. but if you are working with a .ts file, definitely do make those changes,, that’s the whole reason you have vapoursynth. with an .mp4, i like to use vapoursynth to just resize, but i don’t add any additional settings. i use smart sharpen in photoshop to sharpen it, which is pretty good on it’s own (at least in photoshop 2020!).

my rule of thumb is to do add .02 seconds when i am setting frame delay. so if when you first import the frames, they are at 0.04 seconds, i usually change them to 0.06. of course, this is my personal taste—you can make all your gifs faster or slower depending on how you want em to look.

if you are on a mac, you can screen record by pressing Command+Shift+5 (it’s a shortcut to quicktime screen recording). I only screen record for things like the beyond live concert or other live streamed events. the image quality of the screen recording, in my experience, is actually pretty good. when you gif the screen recording however, you may notice that it adds extra frames that you don’t need. by that i mean duplicate frames. you could keep the duplicate frames but that just means the size of your gif is going to be much bigger (keep in mind the limit is 8mb). in order to remove those duplicates, my only solution has been to remove them manually (by holding Command while selecting), or when you are importing the video to frames, select the option to “limit to every 2 frames”—but this method will be less precise and still not as good as manually removing frames. if you remove the duplicate frames, this means you will need to set the frame delay even slower, to make up for lost frames. in my experience, fps(frames per second) and frame delay work in conjunction. so for example, if i delete every other frame because they are duplicates,  but the starting frame delay is 0.02, i am now going to change it to something like 0.05 (so i added 0.03 seconds rather than my usual 0.02). if the duration length and the image dimensions of the gif are short/small, feel free to keep the duplicate frames in—i only delete duplicate frames in order to keep my gif under the 8mb limit. then, if you keep the duplicate frames in, continue with your standard frame delay preferences.  now that i’m writing this im realizing this might not make a lot of sense lol.. but don’t worry about it for now and if you run into trouble w screen recorded gifs then you can come back to this for reference. again, this is only my experience recording on a mac—it may be a lot different if you use a screen recording program or are on a pc.

i don’t really use .psd templates because i like to give every gif/gifset it’s own unique coloring—so i remake the coloring every time, but if you get into a rhythm it’s pretty easy. there are a lot of nice coloring tutorials out there, too! my personal coloring adjustments in order: levels, exposure, color balance, selective color (if needed), vibrance, photo filter (if needed), color lookup (i use 2strip most often and i put it on ‘color’ blending mode). don’t forget to adjust the opacities and fills of the ‘color lookup’ adjustment layer in case it’s too strong. go back to correct each adjustment layer as needed. then, when you’re done and satisfied, group all those layers, copy the group (you can do an easy command+c), and paste it onto the next gif you’re working on for easy workflow.

if for some reason you can’t see the frames when you import your layers/video, it’s likely because your ‘timeline’ window isn’t showing up. just go to the window menu on photoshop, go to the bottom and you’ll see ‘timeline.’ make sure it has a check next to it.

i recommend watermarking your gifs because a lot of people like to repost tings these days 😠 - so make sure u got your brand on it! i keep my watermark saved to my ‘libraries’ in photoshop so it’s ready when i need it. i use the blending mode ‘overlay’ and adjust the opacity, but if you don’t want to do that you can also add a stroke/shadow to your watermark/do all sorts.

tag #nctinc for your nct creations and #jenonet for your jeno creations!!

here’s my own mini tutorial (well not much of a tutorial ig more like a work process vid?): took about ten minutes including the time to search and download the video (but i didn’t record that part i trust yall know how to do that), vapoursynth, and exporting. i hope this helps somewhat! feel free to ask more questions whenever :)

keep in mind that giffing takes a lot of patience, energy, and experience—so don’t worry if it takes you a bit to figure things out or if your gifs don’t turn out the way you want them to the first time around. we all start at the same place and all run into problems. i know giffing can sound intimidating and seem like a lot of work, but i promise, once you get into a routine, giffing is going to happen in minutes—and you’ll get beautiful gifs. have fun! 😊

#anon #answered #tut #tuts #giffing tutorial #should i make a tut/resources post on gfx? not rly sure if gfx can be taught.. it's like a lottt about personal style imo lol #hope this helps! #not just for anon but for anyone

[press-x-tojason]

Giant Bomb is dead, and I care way less than I thought I would. Probably because 83% of the people who I ever cared about had already left or died, or were already relegated to reduced content roles. 

Honestly, though, the writing’s been on the wall for a bit. They haven’t had anything worthy of paying for premium in several years, and, even though they’ve had well over a year to figure out a plan for the COVID era, they maybe made it a month with their plans to have a series of streams daily. I actually managed to forget I followed them on Twitch at all, for about 4 months, because they only streamed the podcasts and the occasional former Harmonix employee (who was literally paid to make content with their games while employed at Giant Bomb, which was funny because he blocked me on Twitter for making a post, addressing no one, back in 2014, which was asking about the legitimacy of the leaked list of “games “””””journalists”””””” who had taken money from publishers for positive reviews, a list which included him and multiple then-coworkers. I didn’t follow him, he didn’t follow me. He was manually searching the keywords, because he was, and is, a prick.) solo Rock Band stream in the last 8 months or so. Even when Jeff would manage to do one of his 20 streams from home a year, it would be on his own channel. There was just no content. And they’re surprised their “pay for our unique premium content!” model failed. They always “feigned” anger at Dan for “making” them do the Mario Party Parties, and literally never promoted his and Drew’s Metal Gear series after the first game... but I bet that, when only those, UPF, and the ad-free versions of the podcasts were premium features, those two series were keeping them afloat. Well, that and the remaining goodwill they miraculously managed to hold onto for a few years after Ryan died.  Shit, I follow several people who are GB staff-adjacent, and... I can’t think of the last time they mentioned anything that happened on-site. Even the people who’ve been directly supporting them for over 10 years were out. 

But yeah, the site is super dead. They pretended in the announcements like they’re going to make a go of it still, but... you’ve got like 4 content people left, and the only one people give a shit about is Jeff. You just saw 3/4 of the side of the site that was still trying these past several months jump ship in a 3 month span. One of those was, by nearly any definition, a founding member. Of which you had already lost one, and are losing another from the main side. Jeff’s been way less active until the last week or two, probably because he heard they were leaving and was like “oops, should probably check on the ship that’s been sinking for years!” Then you have Jason “The Human Mumble” Oestricher, the charisma vacuum, whose legitimate public-facing reaction to first hearing that all but one of his GB predecessors were going to be gone. was, and I quote, “Hoo Boy.” Ben and Jan are the definition of “fine”. They would have been great, as they are today, as secondary members 8-10 years ago. But carry the site, they cannot. They’re down to, what, 5 named members now? It hasn’t been that dire since the beginning of 2009, before they hired Drew, when they hadn’t even started the P4 endurance run. You know, that surprise massive, internet-changing thing that essentially popularized the Let’s Play concept, loosening its definition and making it something that could be as personality-driven as game-driven, made simply to give them something to put on the website, beyond the rare review and, slightly later, quick look. This kinda illustrates the problem with modern Giant Bomb. When they were figuring shit out, flying by the seats of their pants, they came up with great shit, and they gave enough of a shit to make it happen. 0.000% chance they do a 10 hour Thanksgiving Kinect stream if the Kinect was new today. 0.000% chance the core members would have done an endurance run in the last 10 years if CT and Shenmue (which I haven’t watched) weren’t driven by the younger members. And you could see it in the fact that they never made a real, true mobile app. The number one thing that would have made them indispensable this past decade, an app to integrate premium features, the podcast, their video player, etc. all in one place in a mobile-friendly package, that could sync with the website... and they never even raised the idea publicly. I wonder how much of the innovation was the group think-tank of the first 5 years. Beyond Dan’s couple major contributions, I don’t think they added a single new type of content after 2012, which... still means the last 6.5 years lacked any semblance of innovation. I guess that’s a big part of why I fell off tremendously quickly after late 2014. There was just nothing new, and believe me, I was looking. I wanted reasons to stay watching. I supported them with my dollar. I believed in those brave early days. And I went back yesterday to watch the DP endurance run from VJ again. I still miss that rapport. And really, that hurt, too. Vinny moving back east, less than a year after Ryan passed... short term, it was fine. You had more people than ever to cover the gaps. But the spark was gone. The chemistry made the site. When I think of Giant Bomb, I still think of Jeff, Vinny, and Ryan, first and foremost. Those early podcasts, the NintenDownloads, the crazy tangents that everyone could seamlessly follow up on(well, except Brad, because he essentially slept through most of the podcasts, unless he was talking about the thing he did that week), the weird high-concept GOTY stuff... it wasn’t perfect, but you were entertained. You laughed. You were engaged. It never felt like you were watching them working, even though you could see the work they put in. It felt like, when they released something, you were experiencing a group of legitimate friends doing what they wanted to do anyways.(And boy have I seen enough groups do everything they can to NOT be enjoying doing that, and break up as a result due to hating the jobs that they chose to do). 

Part of me would love to make it as simple as “Ryan died, and so did the original spirit”, and... to a degree, it’s true. If you go back to any retrospective they’ve done about the founding of the site, or the podcast they recorded after Ryan passed, you can’t help but recognize that Giant Bomb never happens if these core members don’t all quit their jobs, led by Ryan,  because they respect their boss/manager, Jeff, and know he’s doing the right things(for them, for the reader/viewer, etc.) ahead of what GameSpot management wants him to do. Jeff could have been left in the wilderness, trying find a spot elsewhere, with the rumor going around between executives that Jeff wasn’t going to help them promote anything, essentially killing their revenue. He would have been done in terms of getting employed by a major site. But Ryan first, and soon after, Vinny and Brad, gave up their jobs to make this fledgling little project go. As much as the ERs brought me in and gave the impression that Jeff and Vinny were the long-standing duo, no, it was Ryan who was Jeff’s partner in crime. And, 8 years later, I can comfortably say... Giant Bomb never recovered from losing him. 

But it was so much more. Everything that set them apart slowly went away,  in time. I don’t think they’ve posted reviews for games in consecutive MONTHS since 2017; 2018 at the latest. They have done one Endurance Run in 9 years. They have not had a meaningful live event in 6 years. Unprofessional Fridays were more formulaic and lesser in volume and frequency after the major players started moving east. The lack of coordination between coasts killed the camaraderie, to the point that I think one of the last 5 true gameplay crossovers was their series of 2016-2017 PUBG shitfests. I remember when Vinny starting GBEast was supposed to be the start of a new era of content, and... it was, but not in a positive way, like it sounded. When half of each side seemed to constantly have no interest in making anything, nothing got made. But I guess that’s what happens when your second in command in one of your headquarters is just a former marketing grunt with an attitude problem, and the guy with the biggest ego on the team is the one who refuses to move to join either side, and just pushes out the most self-important drivel as a header to what were literally just copy-pasted articles from other sites every week while sitting at his desk, dreaming of the days Gawker would pay him to plagiarize political drivel instead, because that’s what really gets the soulless clicks. One of your founding members becomes depressed due to losing his two closest work friends, one for real, one to a 3000 mile separation, within a year, while the other one who is left virtually stopped playing anything but DOTA 2 for 2 years. Suddenly your most prominent personalities are the 2 new guys(one the aforementioned charisma vacuum, the other a walking mark) and your previously-mostly-off-camera producer who is best known to the wider Internet for... blinking. So, yeah, lifeless. And NOW, all you’ve got is old melancholy dad, charisma vacuum dad, and the two ADHD kids whose defining trait is that they choose to exclusively refer to their partners as “my partner” in voices that make it sound like they are embarrassed to have partners, while also talking more about what their partners are doing than what they do.  It’s confounding.

But yeah, TL:DR: RIP zombie Giant Bomb. Glad you’re finally getting taken behind the shed. It took 3 years too long, minimum.

[justicemotivators]

A Tribute to the Incredible Strength of Victims’ Families - Part 1

Ann Ming - Julie Hogg - Double Jeopardy

We should always remember the victims and their families when we talk about true crime. It’s easy to focus on the killer, or the perpetrator, trying to understand how anybody could do such things. Even so, what is sometimes more astounding is the courage and strength showed by the families of the victims. For Part 1 of these stories I want to highlight the case of the murder of Julie Hogg, and her mother’s subsequent battle against the legal system.

Julie Hogg was 22, herself a single mother of a young son. She lived in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, UK. The family was close, she would see her parents everyday. Julie’s marriage to her son’s father had recently ended. Julie had a job delivering pizzas, and she would leave her son with her loving parents when she went to work.

Her son was with her parents on a night in November 1989. The next morning, Julie’s mum, Ann Ming called Julie on her phone to wake her at 7.30. She couldn’t get through to her daughter, and began to worry. Ann drove to Julie’s house, which was locked and the curtains were drawn. There was still no answer. She asked Julie’s brother to break into the house, and he was suspicious of how tidy the house was, as the family knew Julie was quite messy. As a single mother of a three year old son, that is understandable.

Julie was reported missing, and her house was searched, but even after 5 days, they could find no clue to help the investigation. Ann Ming did not believe Julie had gone somewhere of her own accord, because she would not have left without her make up.

Julie’s son was due to move back into the house, this time with his dad, whom Julie had married. A smell was noticed coming from the bathroom. Ann, Julie’s mother, ripped off the panel below the bath, and found Julie. The forensic search apparently had not taken that step. Julie’s three-year-old son was in the house at the time of the discovery. At the post-mortem, it was discovered that she had suffered a sexual assault, but there was no clear cause of death, as her body was discovered three months after her death. The sexual assault had left some DNA from the perpetrator. This DNA belonged to Billy Dunlop. When his home was searched, they found Julie’s keys hidden, with his fingerprints on them.

At the trial, the defence spoke about her ‘promiscuity’ and tried to cast doubt on the evidence by talking about Julie having multiple sexual partners. It was also in many news articles, implying that she deserved her death because she had ‘no morals’ or that she in some way brought it on herself. It is absurd and abhorrent to be blaming a murder victim for her murder based on who she is rumoured to have been sleeping with.

The defence also suggested the keys had been planted in Dunlop’s house by the police. Of course, another absurd accusation made to cast doubt on the evidence. Juries in the UK must come to a guilty verdict only if they are sure ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that the perpetrator is guilty. The jury could not in fact come to a unanimous verdict, or even a majority verdict. The judge discharged the jury and ordered a retrial.

Again, outrageous suggestions were made at the trial, for example that she had died as the result of an accident during a sexual activity. Even if this were the case, it doesn’t explain how she came to be found under the bath, and why he hadn’t sought medical help at the time of the incident.

Billy Dunlop was acquitted of the murder of Julie Hogg, to the outrage and bewilderment of her family and the police.

Later, it was heard around the town that Billy had been bragging, talking about having killed Julie and got away with it. Unfortunately, having already been acquitted, he could not be retried for the same offence because of an old law. The law of double jeopardy. This law was created to protect powerless civilians from being repeatedly prosecuted for the same crimes, when the state was all powerful. Now the law was going to protect the guilty.

The case of Stephen Lawrence will help to change this law. He was murdered a group racist white men. They stabbed him at a bus stop in London, UK, seemingly just for being black, though the five who were arrested were not charged. The Lawrence family brought a private prosecution, which acquitted the men of the charges. A police officer and president of the SuperIntendent Association, named Brian McKenzie was troubled by this double jeopardy law, and made a speech at the SIA conference, which was attended by the Home Secretary Jack Straw. The Home Secretary is responsible for law enforcement above the police and judiciary.

The MacPherson Inquiry into the failure to convict perpetrators for the killing of Stephen Lawrence, came to the conclusion that the prosecution of this crime was affected by institutional racism, and made a further recommendation that the double jeopardy law should be changed for murder cases in which new and compelling evidence has come to light after the conclusion of the trial. After the MacPherson Inquiry, the Home Secretary went to the Law Commission to request that all changes in the recommendations from the inquiry were instated. This included changes based on the findings of institutionalised racism in the justice system, and that of the law on double jeopardy. The Law Commission is an independent organisation which reviews and reforms the laws of England and Wales.

Julie Hogg’ s killer, Billy Dunlop, was convicted of two attempted murders after Julie, an ex-partner of Dunlop’s and her new partner. In prison, he confessed to a prison guard that he had killed Julie Hogg. He still could not be retried for her murder, as the double jeopardy law had still not been reformed yet. Instead he was tried for perjury - lying under oath in court. For this, he received 6 years in prison. Ann Ming heard this man confess to killing her daughter, and told the court details of the death he had caused, and then after everything she and her family had been through to get justice for her daughter, she was understandably upset at the sentence he received. This is where Ann’s campaign to overturn the double jeopardy law begins.

She first went to see her local MP, within a few days of the perjury sentencing for Billy Dunlop. The MP Frank Cook agreed to take Ann’s letter directly to the Home Secretary. Within days, Ann Ming and her husband meet Jack Straw in London to try and convince him to change the law on double jeopardy, and not only that but to apply the changes retrospectively. In the UK law reforms are usually only applied to cases after the reform has been processed, not past cases. He told Ann that the next step would be for the case to be presented to the Law Commission for their review and reform procedure. So of course, Ann Ming went to the Law Commission herself as well. This was a woman, a mother, absolutely dedicated to finding justice for her daughter. By this time, the police officer mentioned earlier - Brian McKenzie was now advising the Home Secretary, and argued to him that the reform on double jeopardy should be made retrospective.

It wasn’t until 2002, that the new Home Secretary, David Blunkett, declared a change in the making. A ‘white paper’ was issued which details the proposed law reforms, which then has to be passed by the House of Lords, before being entered into UK law. Ann Ming was personally promised her own copy of this white paper, and on collecting it from the Home Office, she discovered that it included the recommendation to have the law act retrospectively. This was a huge achievement, that had so far taken her 13 years, and now all that was left was for it to be agreed by the House of Lords. She carried on her inspirational campaign of strength.

Ann Ming went to a conference for victims and families, and it just so happened that in the cafeteria at lunchtime, she spotted Lord Falconer, Solicitor General, sitting alone. She took her chance and approached him, retelling her case to him. He agreed with her views and arranged for her to present her case to the House of Lords. This must have been daunting, trying to convince them to reform the law and apply it retrospectively. This was Ann’s last big push, to get the law changed for her daughter and give her the possibility of a retrial for Billy Dunlop. Fortunately, a bill was announced by the Queen, which stated a retrial could occur if there was new evidence, and a Court of Appeal agreed that the evidence is compelling and may change a jury’s view on the guilt of the suspect. This still protected innocent suspects from multiple unnecessary prosecutions, while allowing a second trial in cases that warranted it, such as Julie’s.

Billy Dunlop confessed in court to Julie’s murder, and was the first person convicted after the reform of the double jeopardy law. Ann’s campaign had paid off. After 17 years, at last, she had got justice for Julie, after all her hard work. Later, Dobson and Norris, two of the five men arrested for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, were convicted of the racially aggravated murder. Many other cases have also been brought since the change to the law. See Mario Celaire, Mark Weston, Wendell Baker, Russel Bishop, Michael Weir, Irvine Watt and Surjit Chhokar in Scotland.

This post was inspired by watching Catching Britain’s Killers: The Crimes That Changed Us - series 1 episode 2 - Double Jeopardy. I found Ann’s work to be inspirational, after the brutal murder of her daughter and her determined campaigning for her justice.

Watch it on bbc iPlayer here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0009dz2/catching-britains-killers-the-crimes-that-changed-us-series-1-2-double-jeopardy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2019/42/catching-britains-killers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy

#true crime #victim #crime #uk #criminal law #victims family #investigation #forensics #Ann Ming #Julie Hogg #double jeopardy #victim blaming #victim family courage #murder #tw #trigger warning #tw murder #Stephen Lawrence #macpherson inquiry

[dracimalfoy1988292]

(ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 3 : ᴡᴀʟᴋɪᴇ ᴛᴀʟᴋɪᴇs ᴀɴᴅ sʟᴜɢs)

"This is beyond stupid," Celia muttered, leaning against the corridor wall with a cookie raised to her mouth. Not allowed to have sugar at home, the Slytherin girl savored every burst of flavor that erupted along her tastebuds. She had claimed the white chocolate macadamia nut as her favorite, the crisped bread and milky chocolate enlightening the similar feeling of warm flames and hugs.5

Macey was on her knees as she maneuvered the Bobby-pin in the locked door, rolling her eyes at the dark-haired girls pessimism. She'd insisted on picking the lock rather than casting the spell, claiming she'd seen it in a film.6

"You didn't have to come. Could've taken your cookies and left, but no, you had to stay. In fact, I believe your words were, 'I want to see the innocent puffs try breaking and entering," Macey copied, raising her voice multiple octaves.17

"I don't sound like that."

"You sure?"

"Pretty sure I don't talk like a fucking mosquito," Celia snapped, clearly annoyed.14

"Pretty sure you do."2

"Pretty sure I'm gonna smack you across the head if you don't lower your voice!" Valentine urged as she paced along the hall, keeping her eyes peeled for any professors or students who stayed awake past bed time.2

"Yeesh woman, chill. What's the plan?" Macey asks, sticking her tongue out in concentration, eyes trained on the key hole. Celia, catching Macey's eyes, moved her wand closer, the emitted light from her successful 'lumos' lighting the dull hallways.

"I've told you the plan, like, a bajillion times. We get inside, borrow what we need, then get the hell outa dodge. Pretty easy, so long we can actually get the door open," Valentine sighed, gnawing on her bottom lip anxiously.1

After she'd finished her classes hours earlier, Macey had informed her that Celia would let them borrow the cauldron as long as she was able to help, having a mutual dislike for the Marauders. And although Celia complained the whole time, Valentine didn't miss the small smile she'd adorned when being told the plan, as if happy to finally be let in on something.

"Relax, Val, I'm almost done," Macey responded calmly. She could tell she was nearly there, her fingers aching from holding the tiny hair utensils for so long. True to her word, a small click came from the door, which slowly creaked open.

"Aha!" Macey announced, jumping up.

"Shhh!"

"Shut up!"

In unison, both Celia and Valentine took liberty to quiet the enthralled girl, Celia's words slightly more harsh.

Macey ignored them, raising her palm to Celia for a high five, but the girl curled her lip and brushed past into the potions room, resulting in Macey to purse her lips, disgruntled.3

Valentine quickly took the opportunity to gently touch her hand against Macey's, congratulating her for the small achievement with a quiet high five. Her best friend smiled softly in return before following Celia into the classroom.

Valentine unwound the bag from her shoulder, approaching the counter as she searched for the ingredients needed. Slowly, to avoid excess noise, she pulled open the drawers and grabbed the lacewing flies she'd found earlier.

She laid it upright in the cloth bag before she let her cocoa-colored eyes search for the others.

"Aye, I've located the fluxweed, over," Macey spoke as if holding a walkie-talkie on the other side of the room, causing Valentine to grin at their inside joke.

Back in their second year, Valentine had informed her pureblood friend of the muggle toys, walkie-talkies, and Macey had instantly become fascinated. So that year Valentine had gifted a pair to her friend for a Christmas present, the small talking box brightly colored and small enough to fit in the pocket of their robes. They'd use them during classes they didn't share, and over summer the girls had brought them home to speak, only they learned they didn't reach long range, resulting in a summer of static.2

Unfortunately, when they'd entered their third year, they'd been caught by Filch and their toys had been confiscated, much to their dismay.

"Retrieved the lacewing flies, over," Valentine repeated with a giggle.

"What the bloody hell are you on about?" Celia hissed as she placed a finding of her own, skin of boomslang, in the bag.

He emerald green eyes skipped from the light-skinned girl to the blonde, eyes brows raised in confusion.

"Oh!" Valentine said in delight. "They're muggle toys, and when you press a tiny button, you can speak from long distances. Like a telephone- not that you'd know what that is, obviously. Sorry I'm not-,"

"A fellytone? And what's the purpose of this gadget? Who names these things, toddlers?" Celia broke off.

"A telephone. And I'm not quite sure who names them. Alexander Graham Bell, I believe- uh, not that you'd know him, either. It's actually quite funny you two aren't caught up, they're all the talk- hah, literally-,"

"You're rambling," Macey singed. "Let's talk about the muggle worlds new inventions after we commit the federal crime," she suggests, rifling through cabinet after cabinet.

"Right, sorry," Valentine quipped, only wanting to finish before getting caught. She already felt bad for taking the things to begin with.

Slipping the pouch of Horn of Bicorn into her satchel, she revised everything they'd gathered carefully.

"Let's see... fluxweed, horn of bicorn, lacewing flies," she mentally check marked the list as she completed checking the bag. "Andddd boomslang skin. We already planned to get the hair tomorrow. Perfect -wait, we need leeches. And knotgrass," Valentine cut off, rereading the list before confirming with a nod. "Yeah, we don't have leeches or the grass. Can you check the shelves to your left, Celia?"

Doing as asked, Celia rose to her tippy-toes, trying to make out the worn labels plastered to the glass jars, but she couldn't fully reach. Just as her fingertips brushed the container, a longer arm slid past and snatched it.

Celia withdrew her arm, resting back on the soles of her feet as she turned to Macey, who wore a cocky grin.9

"Knotgrass, your highness," Macey said teasingly, bowing as she handed it off to the shorter girl.42

"Dork," Celia grumbled as she took the jar, only to pass it off to Valentine, who wore a frown.

"Well, we've checked the whole room. I can't seem to find leeches anywhere. You guys?"

"Nah," Macey answered, picking dirt from beneath her nails. Celia shook her head.

"Merlins balls, of course the one thing we needed left isn't here. Now what are we supposed to do?" Valentine ushered.7

"Well, I suppose I've got an idea," Celia spoke up, her acquaintances looking to her with hopeful eyes, and Celia hoped she was right.

"There are always leeches in the Black Lake. Theo and I would sometimes stick them to random students, and it's so funny when they'd freak-," surprised at breaking her composure and cold exterior, she stopped herself.3

"There are just leeches in the Black Lake," Celia rushed out quickly, playing with the hem of her robes subconsciously.

"Right, and how do you suppose we find them?"

At Macey's questions, Celia grinned wildly, finding this the entertaining part.

"Well, it's the perfect night for a swim, innit?"

23

_______________________

"NO," CELIA FIRMLY SAID INDIGENTLY, not moving from her spot against the pillowy grass, which had slight drops of mildew on the green blades. "I proposed the idea, it's only fair I get out of this one. Besides, you wouldn't even be doing this without my help."

Valentine put her hands on her hips, knowing she'd be the one to do the dirty work. Macey had always been scared of swimming, ever since she'd been pushed into the Black Lake their first year by older Ravenclaws.1

Valentine sighed before easing her hair into a bun on the top of her head and removing her shoes, hiking up her robes as she stared into the dark water, where clumps of algae were gathered. If the moonlight hit the water just right, you could see farther through the ripples, where small creatures swimmer back and forth, tails propelling them forward.

"Right, well, let's get this over with then," she muttered, putting one foot into the murky water, but she quickly pulled it back, grimacing at the cold temperature.

"Mannn," she whined. "I'm gonna get hypothermia!"

"Stop being so dramatic," Macey said from her spot, leaning against a tree.

"Funny coming from you!" Valentine said back.

"Excuse you, I almost drowned!"

"You were in THREE FEET OF WATER!" Valentine roared. Annoyed with their arguing, Celia marched over to the blonde, extending her arms, and shoved her backwards, body hitting the surface as the water broke, shattering like ice around her. Water splashed, a few drops gathering against Celia's pearly skin and she wore a proud smile.

Valentine stood in the water, coughing up buckets of water as she frantically brushed loose hairs from her eyesight, curls matted against her forehead.

"You could've-," another choke. "You could've warned me!"

"Yeah, I could've. But I didn't," she shrugged, sitting back to the ground. "Get looking, Ariel. I don't have all night."22

Valentine grumbled under her breath as she rummaged through the water, seaweed sticking to her clothes. Cold water dampened her robes, making them heavy. She plunged her hands deeper, fingers searching along the rocks at the bottom for the feeling of leeches.

Macey and Celia watched from the shore, amused with the look on Valentine's face, but the two girls suddenly jumped up in alarm when Valentine was pulled beneath the surfer, a short scream sounding from her lips before it went silent. Their eyes pleaded with the water to return Valentine.

"Screw it," Macey said as she dived into the water, practically bellyflopping. She winced at the impact, soreness spreading through her rib cage, but she ignored it as waved her arms about, hoping to feel hair or skin.15

When she came up empty, she was ready to go back under, only for the silence to end as soon as laughter filled the atmosphere.

Combing the frizzy hair from her eyes, Macey locked eyes with Valentine, who's stood hunched over as she held her stomach, laughing so hard it hurt.

"You- you bellyflopped," she wheezed.

Macey's jaw dropped in blasphemy. Eyes narrowed, she swept her arms against the water and sent a wave upon her blonde friend.1

"You bitch! You made me jump into the Black Lake!"

This only made Valentine laugh harder. A few minutes passed before she grasped reality, heaving for air. Macey, looking pissed as ever, stared at Valentine.

"Right, sorry," Valentine said, though she clearly didn't mean it as she continued to smile. "But good news, I got some."

She raised her palms, and five leeches were attached to her fingers, all plump and black with small antennas sticking from their head.

[iwebscrapingblogs]

Which are The Best Scraping Tools For Amazon Web Data Extraction?

Web scraping is the method of extracting data from the internet. You'll usually want to analyze, evaluate, reformat, or transfer data into a worksheet after you have it.

Web extracting has numerous applications, but we'll emphasize just a couple today: obtaining service and product information from markets. Retailers utilize this information to gain a better understanding of the business and its competitors.

In reality, the benefits can be enormous. To oppose your competitor's approach, you must first understand the concept. Knowing their rates, for instance, can provide you an advantage in sales by offering a special offer or selling at low rate. Amazon is one of the most popular online shopping destinations. People use it to order groceries, books, laptops, or even hosting plan solutions daily.

Amazon has the largest database for items, reviews, retailers, and market dynamics as a prominent e-commerce site. It's a gold mine for website data scrapers.

We'll look at the top APIs for scraping Amazon data without getting prohibited. This blog will save your precious time if you're looking for the finest tool to extract data from Amazon.

Let's get started!

Reasons Behind Scraping Amazon Data

If you try to sell any product online, some of the necessary steps are:

Competitor Analysis

Enhancing Your Product And Value Proposal

Learning Market Tendencies And Manipulating Them.

By extracting amazon data, you can simply collect, compare and monitor competitive product details, such as pricing, ratings, and availability. You cannot only assess their cost management, but can also uncover amazing offers for resale.

In the blog, we are providing few web scraping tools for scraping amazon data.

Why Use Web Scraping API?

Amazon is among the biggest online stores in history. As a result, Amazon has one of the largest databases of information about customers, items, ratings, sellers, market dynamics, and even user temperament.

Before we learn the specifics of data extraction, it's worth noting that Amazon does not support internet scraping. This is because the page structure differs depending on the product categories. Simple anti-scraping techniques are in place on the website, which may prevent you from gathering the information you seek. Aside from that, Amazon can tell whether you're scraping it with a scraper. Besides that, Amazon can detect if you are scraping it with a bot and will immediately block your IP address.

Amazon Web Scraping Tools For The Job

We'll scrape using a terminal and some curl requests to get the job done as quickly as possible even without the need to create a new project for each application we test. To test out, we've chosen five promising web scraping APIs.

Let us take each of them for a test and search out which is the best web scraping tool for amazon data scraping.

1. Web Scraping API

Web Scraping API is a program that enables us to scrape any web resource. It uses a simple API to extract HTML from any web page and returns ready-to-process data. It's useful for extracting product data, processing real estate, HR, or financial data, and even tracking market data. We can get all the information we need from a specific Amazon product page using Web Scraping API.

For instance, find an exciting product on the Amazon market.

The product page seen in the image above will be scraped.

Secondly, let’s get the product’s page

URL:https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B088CZW8XC/ref=gw_uk_desk_h1_vicc_sh_cto_kif0321?pf_rd_r=RYXBGN8C757Y9BD6W38B

We will be taken to the application's dashboard after creating a new Web Scraping API account. To test the application, Web Scraping API offers a free plan with 1000 requests. For what we're going to do, that's more than enough.

We'll go to the dashboard page and click the "Use API Playground" button. We can see the complete curl command here, which will assist us in scraping the Amazon product page.

Let's copy and paste the product's URL into the URL field. The preview of the URL command on the right will alter as a result of this.

After you've finished this step, copy the curl command and copy this into a new terminal session. If you follow the above procedure, you should have something similar to this:

When we press enter, Web Scraping API will return the product's page in HTML format.

According to our results, Web Scraping API was able to successfully obtain the required information in 99.7 percent of the situations, with a success rate of 997 out of 1000 queries and a 1-second latency.

2. ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee allows you to scrape without even being blocked using both traditional and premium proxies. It concentrates on collecting all the required data for rendering websites in a real browser (Chrome). Developers and businesses can scrape without worrying about proxies or headless browsers thanks to their vast proxy pool.

Let's try scraping the same Amazon page we scraped earlier. Make a new ScrapingBee account, browse to the app's dashboard, and paste the previous URL in the URL input.

In the "Request Builder" area, click the "Copy to clipboard" button. Open a terminal window and paste the copied code and hit “ENTER”.

With this command, we'll scrape the same page on the Amazon marketplace so that we can compare the results from each API.

According to our investigation, ScrapingBee was able to correctly obtain information in 92.5 percent of the situations with a rather large latency of 6 seconds.

3. Scraper API

Web scraper API is a development tool for web scrapers or a tool that extracts any data using a simple API call. The web service will manage proxies, browsers, and CAPTCHAs, allowing developers to achieve raw HTML from any website. Furthermore, the product will achieve a balance in functionality, dependability, and use.

We'll create a fresh account on Web Scraper API and use 1000 free requests for evaluating their crawling technology, exactly like we did before. We will be forwarded to the following page once we have completed the registration process:

ScraperAPI does not appear to offer the ability to change the curl query by writing the new URL at the first sight. This isn't a large deal. We'll start a new terminal window and paste the code from the "Sample API Code" field.

As we can see, the default URL that it’s being scraped is “http:/httpbin.org/ip”. We are going to change it to the escaped version of the product’s page URL presented at the top of the section. Change the previously presented link with the following one:

The final command should look something like this:

After pressing enter, the HTML code for the product's page will be shown. Of course, you can manipulate the generated data structure with Cheerio or any other markup parser.

ScraperAPI appears to be the finest option, with a success rate of 100% and a latency of less than one second.

4. Zenscrape

Zenscrape is a web scraping API of sorts that will return the HTML of any website, allowing developers to collect data faster and efficiently. By solving Javascript rendering or CHAPTCHAs, the program will allow you to fetch the website content seamlessly and reliably.

Once we complete the registration process as before, we will be readdressed to the dashboard page.

Copy and paste the product’s page URL in the URL input.

Scroll down to the middle of a page to get the curl command we need to scrape the Amazon data. Copy it to the clipboard by clicking the “Copy to Clipboard” button, then paste it into a new terminal window. It should look like this:

Unlike other web scraping tools, the result that will be displayed would be in HTML page format.

According to our analysis, Zenscrape has a 98 percent success rate, with 98 successful requests out of 100 and a latency of 1.4 seconds. This ranks it lesser than the preceding tools, but it has one of the most intuitive and elegant user interfaces, and it gets the job done.

5. ScrapingAnt

ScrapingAnt is a web harvesting and scraping solution that offers its users a complete online gathering and scraping experience. It is a facility that manages Javascript processing, the headless browser informs the management, proxy variation and rotation, and proxy diversity and rotation. This scraping API has the high availability, dependability, and feature flexibility to meet the needs of any organization.

As before, we go through the same process, initially, create an account on Scraping Ant and make use of its 1000 free requests for scraping amazon product data.

Replace our URL in the URL input field, copy the curl command to a new terminal window, and hit ENTER.

This will yield an HTML structure that we can parse using Cheerio or another markup parser. ScrapingAnt's key features include Chrome page rendering, output preprocessing, and scraping requests with a low risk of CAPTCHA check triggering.

According to our analysis, ScrapingAnt has a success rate of 100 percent and a latency of three full seconds. Although has one of the highest success percentages on this list, the 3-second latency is a major issue when scraping a large amount of Amazon product data.

Final Thoughts

We sought to figure out what the effective tool for the occupation was during this process. We were able to examine and analyze five scrapers and discovered that the outcomes were not that dissimilar. They're all capable of getting the job done in the end. Each scraper's delay, rate of success, amount of free requests, and pricing makes a difference. When it comes to scraping Amazon data, Web Scraping API is a good choice because it has one of the smallest latency (1 second) and a near-100 percent success rate. It has a free tier for those who don't need to make a lot of requests, as well as 1000 free inquiries if you just want to play about with it.

AScrapingBee is another web scraper we certify, however, the results are unsatisfactory. We have a hard time getting the information we needed on our Amazon goods with a success rate of only 92.5 percent and a somewhat long latency.

ScraperAPI is also one of the fastest scrapers we've come across. It has better effects in the level of technical criteria, with only a 1-second delay and a 100% success rate. Its disadvantage is the user interface, which appears to be the most basic. Another flaw is the price plan, which does not have a free tier.

Zenscrape features the most user-friendly interfaces of any scraper we have evaluated. WebScrapingAPI is the only one that comes close. Zenscrape has a 1.4-second latency and a 98 percent success rate.

ScrapingAnt is the most recent scraper we tested. It's an excellent option for extracting the Amazon information we require, but it's a little slow, with such a latency of around 3 seconds and a rate of success of 100%.

Finally, when it collects Amazon product information, all of the web scrapers we examined perform admirably.

Instead of trying yourselves, we recommend contacting iWeb Scraping services for genuine amazon data scraping delivery.

We are always available to deliver the best services.

https://www.iwebscraping.com/which-are-the-best-scraping-tools-for-amazon-web-data-extraction.php

#WalmartScraping #EcommerceData #WebScraping #ScrapeWalmartData

[thirsty4theextraordinary]

Everything Burns - Chapter 9

Pairing: Ledger Joker X OC

Warnings: none

Word count: 2414 

Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 l Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9: The Fundraiser

She wasn't sure at what point that night, she had past out, but it can’t have been very long after they had got back in. It was late or rather early, the sun was just beginning to rise as they stumbled into her apartment together. Joker was giddy with happiness, he held he tightly to him and she felt better than she ever had in her life before. When she woke it was morning and to her surprise, the Joker was still there. He smiled madly at her as she removed her stiff body from the sofa and stood her make-up was sticky and it made her slightly itchy.

"I sent our home video to the news station, in no time The real batman will come running or better yet he will show us who he really is," giggled The Joker and Scarlett smiled through her yawn.

She headed off towards the bathroom to scrub her face, as she heard him switch on the TV clearly waiting for them to show his tape.

"I can't wait for the police to find the clue I left them," said the Joker giddily jumping up and down in his seat as he searched through the new channels on the TV.

"Clue" she queried.

"I may have had a little help acquiring the DNA of Commissioner Loeb, Judge Surrillo and Harvey Dent," said the Joker happily.

"Wow, impressive," said Scarlett her eyebrows raised slightly.

"I know, I am, and all this time you thought I was just ignoring you. I've been busy, sweetheart. All three are gonna die tonight. I've got connections now, Mob bosses, crooked cops, Arkham inmates, I've got quite the team now. I know where the Judge and The commissioner are gonna be but Harvey is an unknown at the moment, but once the police work out my clue, they will send a cop to Harvey and I may just tag along. I think Harvey is gonna be the most fun, so I think I'll supervise that one myself. As for the judge and the commissioner, they are already taken care of all they need is a little push" said the Joker laughing madly and Scarlett only grinned.

The phone rang and The Joker shot it a disgusted look as Scarlett answered.

"Hello" she called into the phone and The Joker looked at her strangely and so she poked her tongue out and he simply copied her.

"Hello Miss Jesterson, this is Alfred," said the British accent at the other end of the phone.

"Oh Hi Alfred how are you?" she said happily to the only other Englishman she knew in Gotham.

"I'm very good thank you for asking, I hope you are well, I'm just calling to invite you to Bruce's fund-raiser this evening for Harvey Dent. I did try to call last night but there was no answer" he said

"Oh yeah sorry, I was out last night, but a fund-raiser for Harvey Dent you say?" she said into the phone and The Joker was by her side in a second like a dog being called for dinner. He was nodding at her madly and looked as though he was about ready to snatch the phone from her hands.

"Urr yes, of course, I'll be there, I'm sure I can dig something out to wear, what time?" she said as The Joker continued to jump up and down slightly.

"It starts at 8, we will see you tonight?" said Alfred.

"Yep see you tonight, bye" she called before she hung up and the Joker burst into laughter.

"This is perfect! Now I know where Mr Dent will be" he cackled and she looked at him happily.

"And you can watch the show!"

"But you have to go as you, no Jester tonight," he said shaking his finger in front of her face and she nodded happily before she leaned forward and kissed his finger lightly, before skipping off towards the sofa, leaving him slightly bemused.

He explained his full plan to her as they sat for most of the rest of the day together. The Judge had a bomb planted in her car and the commissioner had a poisoned bottle of scotch as for Harvey the Joker felt that he needed the personal touch, and all this was to get Batman to come out and play. Scarlett wondered if The Batman knew just what he was in for. She couldn’t help but be in pure awe of Joker and just how much of genius he really was. 

Around 6 The Joker left to ready the boys and she began to ready herself, she felt like something was really going to happen tonight and the anticipation was killing her. As she dug through her wardrobe, for something to wear, she found the dress the Joker had got her from her birthday, that felt like so long ago now.

She spent the full hour and a half, getting ready, styling her hair, painting her nails and applying her make-up, when she was finished she was very pleased with the results and she called a cab. When it arrived she jumped in and headed for Bruce Wayne's penthouse. 

She thought over everything the Joker had told her and that's when it finally made sense. Why was the Joker going after Harvey more than the rest? Because Harvey was the icon of good in Gotham, he was Gotham's White Knight and if the Joker killed him then Batman was sure to show his true face. But maybe there was something to The Joker's plan, something more than just killing Harvey.

She thought about everything and that's when she finally understood, he wouldn't just kill Harvey. He would break him down, turn him against the Batman and show Gotham that deep down everyone is bad, no matter how good they seem, no one is incorruptible. That was The Joker's ultimate play.

When she arrived at Bruce's penthouse the room was already full of people chatting, causing the room to sound as though it were full of a thousand flies. The mutterings of the people were almost so distracting she didn't notice when Alfred Pennyworth approached a tray of drinks in his hand.

"Care for a drink?" he said smiling warmly at her, his rough accent not far off her own.

"Alfred how are you?" she said happily with a nod before she took a flute of champagne from the tray.

"I'm very good thank you, and yourself, we heard about your aunt," he said his face growing solemn, she had almost forgotten and so dropped her smile quickly.

"Well yes, I'm fine, we lost contact when I moved here so I hadn't seen her in a long time and she was very old. But I was rather fond of her growing up in England, she used to make the best cake" Scarlett said smiling sadly and Alfred returned the expression.

"I think I'm probably going to fly home next week sometime," she said and Alfred only nodded before a voice of a waiter called and he turned away.

"I'm being beckoned but make yourself comfortable there is food over there," he said motioning with his head with a smile before he was called again.

"Oh right bloody hell, I'm coming" he moaned before he turned his back and walked away.

Scarlett didn't know anyone there, though these people were not the type of people that Scarlett often hung around with, nor did she have any wish to associate with.

She mingled her way into a conversation and soon was laughing along with their grandiloquent jokes.

"So what is it that you do then, Scarlett?" said the woman to her right, in an overly friendly way. She knew it was a fake politeness and she despised it but she needed to keep her cool. 

"I'm a nurse practitioner at Gotham General Hospital" she replied smiling before she took a sip of her drink.

"Oh wow, that super, but I don't think I could do it myself. I think if I got vomited on I would vomit too" said another overly pretentious woman and she laughed slightly.

"Well I work on the wards so there isn't so much of that now, but I used to work in the emergency department. There it wasn't so much the vomit as the blood and guts" Scarlett said with a laugh but the others didn't seem to get her joke and looked at her strangely. Scarlett sighed and grabbed another flute of drink as the waiter passed and excused herself from the group.

The elevator doors opened and out stepped Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent. Rachel spotted Scarlett almost instantly and headed over whispering a quick word in Dent's ear, before heading over to were Scarlett stood. Scarlett smiled happily at the brunette woman, though she had never really liked Rachel. It was just something about her, she didn't know what it was, she just didn't like her. They had met when they were young, Bruce introducing the pair when they were hardly teenagers. But before she had to force pleasantries with Rachel, everyone's attention was pulled away as a helicopter began to land on the helipad outside the penthouse.

Scarlett watched as Bruce climbed out the helicopter, before helping out three tall beautiful women, he walked over to the door with one under each arm and the third following behind, Alfred held the door for him.

"I'm sorry that I'm late. I'm glad to see that you all got started without me." Bruce called as the door was shut behind him and the girls under his arms dispersed into the crowd.

"Now, where is Harvey?" Bruce began making his way through the crowd.

"Where-?" Bruce spotted Harvey and made a beeline for him.

"Harvey Dent, the man of the hour," Bruce said holding his hands out towards Harvey.

"Where's Rachel Dawes?" he said looking at the crowd again before he spotted Rachel and Scarlett stood together.

"She is my oldest friend. Come here," he said motioning for Rachel to go to him, Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and gave Scarlett a look before she headed off to meet Bruce.

"You know when Rachel first told me she was dating Harvey Dent, I had one thing to say: "The guy from those God-awful campaign commercials?" "I believe in Harvey Dent." Yeah, nice slogan, Harvey." Bruce said the crowd around Scarlett laughed in chorus.

"But it caught Rachel's attention. And then I started to pay attention to Harvey … and all that he's been doing as our new DA. And you know what? I believe in Harvey Dent. I believe that on his watch Gotham can feel a little safer, a little more optimistic. Look at this face. This is the face of Gotham's bright future. To Harvey Dent. Let's hear it for him." Said Bruce and in unison, everyone began to clap.

After that Bruce dispersed into the crowd and Scarlett moved away, not allowing Rachel to catch her in conversation again. Nor did she have much interest in talking to Bruce, after all she knew she was here simply for numbers and politeness. Having met the Joker meant that Scarlett looked at certain things differently now, and her friendship with Bruce was defiantly one of those. Was he really her friend or did he just feel sorry for her because she had no one else. But she did now, she had someone who filled her life so perfectly that all other would naturally be pushed aside. 

Bruce's house was on the top of one of Gotham's highest buildings and she peered over the edge, through the enormous glass windows that surrounded three sides of Bruce's front room. For a moment she imagined throwing herself out the window and over the edge. The wind flying through her hair, before the ground came up to meet her and then there was nothing. Her beautiful thoughts were interrupted by a voice and Scarlett turned to the man leaning on the window beside her.

"I don't think we have met, I'm Marcus," said the man and Scarlett faked a smiled.

"Scarlett" she offered her name but not her hand.

"So how do you know Harvey then?" he said making small talk, inside her head she was imagining blowing his head off but her face told none of this as her sweet smile continued.

"I don't but I went to school with Bruce," she said and the man only nodded. After all that all it really was, they went to school together, there really was nothing else the pair had in common. 

"Wow from your accent I wouldn't have known you were educated here," he said and she simply shrugged her shoulders.

"So Australia?" he asked trying to guess her accent, she resisted the urge to roll her eyes or even worse and smiled laughed slightly.

"Not quite, England," she said a fake cheery smile on her face.

"Oh well they all sound the same to me," he said and Scarlett resisted the urge to kick him through the window.

"You are stunning you know that," he said trying to change the subject, this time Scarlett did roll her eyes.

"What?! You don't believe me, I bet half the men in here agree and the other half are gay," he said with a chuckle, she didn’t bother faking a smile this time.

"Look, I'm not really here to be flirted at, in fact, I supposed to be meeting someone here a bit later on" she admitted to him, but Marcus didn't seem that broken down.

"So you are dating this guy?" he said

"No" she replied, She wasn’t sure what she and Joker had. Was it more than friendship, it certain felt like more. 

"So, what's the problem then, we are only having fun," he said raising his eyebrows at her.

"Is that what you call it?" she asked sarcasm dripping from her words.

She couldn't wait for The Joker to get here, she knew she would have to keep up her act even then but at least then there would be some entertainment.

"So can I have your number?" asked Marcus, bringing her out of her thoughts.

"Umm no," she said before she smiled kindly and wondered off past him

But she didn't get far when finally the night started getting good.

"We made it!" called an all to familiar voice.

#heath ledger #heath ledger joker #heath ledger joker x OC #heath ledger joker X original character #heath ledger x femOC #ledger joker #joker x OC #ledger joker x OC #joker #ledger joker romance #Joker romance #joker x female original character #heath ledger joker fanfic #Addicted to the joker #heath ledger joker fanfiction #ledger joker fanfic #heath ledger joker story #joker fanfiction #joker fanfic #the dark knight fanfic #the dark knight #the dark knight fanfiction #the dark knight joker #the dark knight joker x OC #oc insert #Character insert #please like and reblog

[quickspinner]

Finding Harmony - Ch 7 Harmony (end)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7

There’s quite a bit of music used in this chapter and I’ve linked the videos at the bottom, but here’s the list:

1. Aerosmith, I Don't Want to Miss a Thing (Harp Cover) by Amélie Guiboux (she has a ton of harp covers and they're all beautiful, be sure to look at her other videos; Luka's harp would probably sound considerably different, but I'm taking a little license here because it's so pretty. you can search for clarsach music on youtube if you want to hear what an actual Scottish harp sounds like, there's not a lot but there is some) 2. Chopin, Nocturne Op. 9 No 1, by Salvador Joya 3. Je Pense À Toi (original) by Amadou et Mariam 4.  Je Pense À Toi (cover) by Amar Amarni & Jasmina Petrovic

Luka surveyed his preparations critically and sighed, concluding there was really nothing left to be done. Which meant now all he had to do was sit around and wait for Marinette. He kind of hated this part, but at least tonight his phone was silent. No akuma alerts.

He took a slow breath, and then another, not quite meditating, but...centering. Reflecting. The past few months had seen their ups and downs, but he didn’t regret a second of the time he’d spent with Marinette. 

It took him hours to get to sleep that night after the gala. He was too charged up to even try to sleep in his bunk, and only long discipline (and the knowledge that his mother and sister would kill him brutally if he woke them) kept him still on the couch in the sunroom until he finally fell asleep. 

He never had wiped the lipstick off his face, which earned him at least a week of mockery from both of them. 

Neither the mockery nor the lack of sleep kept Luka from waiting outside the bakery that afternoon for their first official date. He’d never forget the look on her face when she came flying out of the door, right before she tripped and took them both down to the sidewalk (he should have been more prepared for that, but he had been too busy grinning like a loon to brace for impact). They’d walked all over Paris looking for Andre, and had a long, honest, necessary talk at the same time. 

It hadn’t stopped them from having misunderstandings and frustrations, and one horrible day where he’d lost his cool completely because he’d been scared to death watching an Akuma toss her around on the news that afternoon, without her costume. He’d never been so grateful to Chat Noir in his life as he had been when the cat finally got her out of danger at least long enough for her to transform. Ladybug finished the fight, as she always did, but Luka had been livid that Marinette had run into the fight as Marinette, and she had fired up defensively, and they had yelled at each other so hard that her parents had gently but firmly kicked him out so they could both calm down. The fight was worse since neither could tell the other what they knew, and it had taken them both days to cool off enough to talk about it. It had taken him at least a full day to admit to himself that he’d been a little unfair, because he couldn’t yell at her for the things Ladybug did, so he’d had a store of bottled up fear and frustration just waiting to spill out. It was a couple of weeks before the hurt feelings on both sides faded enough for them to be totally comfortable with each other again.

The other big issue had been her ditching him for Akuma battles. He didn’t mind, he knew she had a job to do, but Luka had, after putting a lot of thought into the phrasing, finally asked her not to give him any more false excuses. “Just tell me when you can’t tell me,” Luka told her. “Just say you have to go or whatever, I won’t push. Just please don’t make up things. Whatever it is that you’re trying to cover up, I don’t care, I trust you not to hurt me. I just...I can hear when you lie and I don’t like it.” He knew his unconditional trust confused her, but she agreed. Luka hadn’t realized how much of a strain it had been on both of them, for Marinette to come up with the excuses and him to pretend to believe them, until they stopped. It was an immense relief for them both, as it turned out.

The majority of their disagreements were small hurts, things that could be talked through and soothed and forgiven, just the normal average process of fitting two people together. Marinette was sweet, attentive, affectionate, and her confidence in his love buoyed her up when she felt down on herself. They were everything he’d dreamed they could be together. Luka knew his feelings for her were still stronger than hers for him, but he was okay with letting her feelings grow at their own pace. 

He tapped a nail painted with electric blue and black swirls on the rail with a rueful smile. If only he could get her to stop giving him things. The magnetic nail polish was an exception, her gifts were mostly small, useful things that she made herself, but it was like she couldn’t help herself. When she thought of something he might like, she had to make it for him. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate them, he loved her little gifts, it was just that things felt a bit...unequal. His mind didn’t work exactly like hers and his skills didn’t lend themselves to the sorts of gestures she made, and it left him feeling a little guilty. It wasn’t as if he felt he needed to pay her back, exactly, neither of them was keeping score, it was just...he wanted to be able to do things for her, too.

Well, it gave him an excellent excuse to make every grand, over-the-top gesture that came into his own romantic heart, and he’d given himself full permission to go completely overboard tonight. He shoved the sleeves of his blue v-neck sweater up his arms out of habit, and then winced and pulled them back down again as another breeze cut across the deck. The evening was pleasantly cool except when the wind picked up, but there was always wind on the river. Marinette had looked at him as if he’d lost his mind when he’d told her to eat dinner at home and then come to the Liberty after sundown. He’d refused to tell her anything else except that they would be out on the deck and to dress warmly. 

He was just wondering if he should have gone to the bakery to escort her when he spotted her walking down the bank.

Luka came across the gangplank to meet her. She was wearing a pink wool dress with white stockings and a white sweater, and she reminded him of one of her pink macaroons with the white lacy icing. Luka took Marinette’s hands in his and kissed her cheek softly. “You have got to be the sweetest thing in that bakery,” he told her, standing back to look at her again admiringly. 

She grinned, bouncing lightly on her toes. “I brought you something.” 

“Marinette,” he sighed, smiling affectionately.

“I know, I know,” she said, bouncing on her toes. “Please?”

“Okay.” 

She put a necklace in his hands made of knotted cord decorated with blue and black beads. Marinette pointed to what looked like a metal teardrop on the end. “I saw these online the other day - you can slide your pick in it, see, in the holder here, and then you can take it out when you need it, or you can just swap out to match whatever you’re wearing. It can actually hold a few at once, but of course you’ll only see the front one. I actually got a few of the holders to experiment with, I think I can do some really cool things, and if Jagged likes them, it could be a cool new accessory line. I was thinking about braiding one into a bracelet for Juleka, but I haven’t had time.” 

Luka took a pick out of his pocket and slipped it in the holder. “Cool,” he grinned, putting the cord over his head, and Marinette bounced in excitement at his pleasure. He kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Marinette. I love it, really.”

“I made one for me too,” she said, backing up to show him his Jagged Stone pick around her own neck, on a cord decorated with pink and white beads. “So we can match. I mean, not matchy-match, more...coordinate.”

Luka chuckled and pulled her into his arms. “What am I going to do with you?” he sighed into her hair, and she snuggled into his chest happily. 

“I don’t know,” she said cheekily. “You wouldn’t tell me.”

Luka laughed, and let go of her, sliding his hands down her arms to take hers. “You wanna find out?”

“Where’s everyone else?” she asked as they crossed onto the boat. 

“Below. They won’t bother us. The newest book in Maman’s favorite series just came out and I just happened to pick her up a copy this afternoon, so she probably won’t leave her room until sometime tomorrow, and I’ve given Juleka her privacy for this kind of thing enough times that she owes me.”

“What kind of thing is—” Marinette cut off as she caught sight of the tiny flickering candles scattered all over the unusually uncluttered stern. 

“Oh, Luka,” she breathed, revolving slowly.

“You like it?” 

“I love it, it’s so beautiful.” 

“I’m glad.” He took both her hands and guided her to the deck chair he’d set out for her. “Sit,” he said, and she sank into the chair, still looking around. One of the spool tables stood next to the chair, covered with a white cloth and decorated with a bowl (because a vase would tip over in a stiff breeze, he’d discovered the hard way) of flowers and more candles. Luka picked up a thermos that had been sitting by the table and poured hot chocolate into the waiting mug. “Something to help keep you warm.”

Marinette smiled as he handed it to her and took a sip. “Mm, it’s good,” she said, setting it the mug back on the table, knocking one of the little tea lights off in the process. Luka had to stop her from jumping up with a gasp. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he told her, smiling as he went to pick it up and show it to her. “Don’t worry, they’re battery powered. Fire is pretty much the worst thing that can happen on a boat so we can’t use real ones. They’re lighter than the real thing though so they’re easy to knock over, sorry about that.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Marinette sighed, sagging back in her chair.

Luka chuckled, kneeling in front of her chair as he set the candle back on the table. “I actually borrowed them from Juleka, she has a huge stockpile since she’s dating the most sappily romantic person on the planet. You wouldn’t believe how long she spent checking out every type of battery powered tea light she could get her hands on to find which one was the most realistic.” He shrugged. “I’m not above benefitting from all her hard work.” 

Marinette giggled, and then sighed. “You went to so much trouble,” she said, looking around. Too much trouble, he could hear her not say.

Luka put his hand on her cheek and brought her gaze back to him, thumb caressing her cheekbone softly. “If I let you spoil me your way, you have to let me spoil you mine, okay?”

Marinette smiled at him with so much affection that his heart skipped and stuttered. “I guess I can’t argue with that.” 

Luka couldn’t help himself; he leaned forward and kissed her softly. She smelled like chocolate as she leaned into him and his fingers tightened around hers. “I’m getting off track here,” he said, forehead pressed against hers, and then kissed her again when she nudged him with her nose. He groaned in weak protest when she let go of his hands to tangle her fingers in his hair, and he kissed her one more time, letting her draw him deeper. When she’d had her way with him he pulled back, taking her hands from around his neck and kissing them both together. “Please let me do this for you.”

“Okay,” she smiled. “Sorry. I’m not trying to ruin your plans.” 

“I promise that’s in my plan too,” Luka chuckled. “But later.” He reached for the table and unwrapped the plate of cookies and snacks that had been waiting there, and pressed the mug of hot chocolate back into her hands. “There’s a blanket by the chair if you get cold. If the wind picks up too much we’ll move to the sunroom, but I prefer it out here if that’s okay.”

“It’s wonderful. This is all so nice,” she sighed, taking a sip. “Mm, that really is good, you’re going to have to tell me what you put in it later.”

He licked his lips as he stood, tasting the chocolate she’d left on his lips, and took a breath, trying to get his head together. “I wanted to play something for you, if that’s okay.”

“Of course it is, I love hearing you play,” Marinette replied, cocking her head slightly in confusion. He played for her all the time, after all.

Luka smiled and went over to the chair he’d set up for himself across from her, uncovering the clarsàch he’d hidden next to it with a flourish. Marinette lit up with understanding and pleasure. He smiled at her as he sat down, glancing behind him briefly as he settled the harp in place. He’d arranged things so that she could see the dark water of the Seine and the glowing pillars of Notre Dame behind him. 

Luka turned his attention to the harp and found to his embarrassment that his hands were shaking slightly. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, centering himself.

“Are you...nervous?” Marinette asked, her voice sounding almost awed. 

“A little,” he admitted, opening his eyes to give her a lopsided smile. “I don’t usually get nerves like this but...this is the first time I’ve played this for anyone, and I really want to get it right.”

“Luka.” The way she said her name gave him shivers, softly and so full of emotion she sounded on the verge of tears, and he knew it didn’t matter how well he played, because she’d already understood and accepted his gift.

He prepared to play his best anyway.

Luka set his now steady fingers to the strings, and played. He glanced up after the first few notes for just a moment, and smiled to himself at the slight crease between her brows. She recognized the song, but hadn’t placed it yet despite the distinctive opening notes. 

Her confusion remained as he played the first verse. I could stay awake just to hear you breathing, watch you smile while you are sleeping, while you’re far away and dreaming…

He glanced up again as he reached the chorus, and caught the dawning recognition, the silent “o” her mouth made as she finally recognized it. He smiled to himself and returned his full attention to his playing.

I don’t wanna close my eyes, I don’t wanna fall asleep cause I’d miss you babe, and I don’t wanna miss a thing

No amp, no speakers, just the soft, intimate sound of the harp connecting the air between them. It wasn’t as perfect, as smooth as it would have been on his guitar, but that was okay. It wasn’t about perfection. 

“Only you would play Aerosmith on a harp,” she giggled. 

“Not true,” Luka said with a smile, setting the harp carefully aside. “I had to get the music from somewhere, after all. I’m not anywhere near ready compose my own arrangements on this thing.” He reached for her hand. “Did you like it?”

“I loved it, it was so beautiful,” she said, all humor in her voice replaced by sincerity. She pulled his hand to her and kissed it. “Thank you, Luka. This has all been so special, I’m truly touched.” 

“You’re welcome, Marinette,” he said warmly, putting his other hand over hers for a moment. Then he let go and picked up his guitar from where he had tucked it behind a crate. He strummed for a moment, and improvised a soft, warm, melting melody. Marinette relaxed back in her chair and nibbled at the plate of snacks, still sipping at her hot chocolate.

He waited until she was distracted and then slipped into the next song he had planned. Marinette looked at him with round eyes, and he grinned at her. “Is that Motzart?” she asked with her mouth full.

Luka chuckled. “Chopin, actually. Nocturne in B-Flat Minor.” 

Marinette swallowed her food and began to laugh. “You’re too much. Aerosmith on the harp and Chopin on electric guitar.” 

“Do you like it?”

“Absolutely,” she sighed, leaning back and closing her eyes as he played. He watched her with a smile on his face as he played. “That was really lovely,” she said wistfully when he finished. “Promise you’ll play it again sometime.”

“Of course, chérie, anytime you want,” he said, slipping into another improvised melody. Marinette looked at him in slight surprise. He’d never called her that before. Luka took a deep breath, stopped playing altogether and sang, “Je pense à toi, mon amour, ma bien aimée, ne m'abandonne pas, mon amour, ma chérie.” I think of you, my love, my beloved, don’t leave me, my love, my dear. Marinette’s eyes opened wide and she stared at him, a flush that wasn’t from the breeze darkening her cheeks. Luka grinned as he picked up the tune with his guitar, playing slower than it was written, and continued, “Quand je suis dans ma lit, je ne rêve qu’à toi, et quand je me réveille, je ne pense qu’à toi…” When I’m in my bed, I dream of nothing but you, and when I wake, I think of nothing but you.

She looked at him like he had two heads during the verse and chorus, and he began to feel a little nervous, but her shock melted into something else as she unconsciously leaned toward him, eyes warm. Encouraged, Luka got up and moved to kneel in front of her, still playing. “Certains t’ont promis la terre, d’autres promettent le ciel, y’en a qui t’ont promis la lune, et moi je n’ai rien que ma pauvre guitare…” Some promise you the earth, others promise you the sky, there are some who promise the moon, and me I have nothing but my poor guitar.

Marinette leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her knees as he sang softly, “Je pense à toi, mon amour, ma bien aimée, ne m'abandonne pas, mon amour, ma chérie.” The final strum faded away, and for a moment they were both motionless, lost in each others’ eyes.

“Now?” Marinette asked breathlessly. 

“Now,” Luka agreed, leaning into her as he set aside the guitar. Marinette threw her arms around him and kissed him so passionately he couldn’t remember his own name until she murmured it against his lips

Luka pulled her up from the chair and sat down on it, tugging her back down to seat her between his legs. She leaned back against him, and he bent down to pick up his guitar from the deck. He put his guitar in front of them both, reaching his long arms around her.

“Can you really play like this?” 

“We’re about to find out,” he chuckled. “You’re pretty small, I think it’ll be okay. Just scoot as close to me as you can.”

She snuggled back against him, and he nuzzled her cheek before testing his reach. It was a little awkward and her hands on his thighs were a little distracting, but he thought he could manage it. “Tell me if you get uncomfortable and we’ll move,” he murmured, and played as she snuggled close against him, leaning her head back on his shoulder. He played the peace of their hearts, the flicker of the candles, the rock of the boat on the river.

Eventually he set the guitar down and reached for the blanket next to the chair instead. He spread the blanket over them both and put his arms around Marinette’s waist. They sat, watching the stars and the lights on the water.

“This is heaven,” he said softly. Marinette giggled and he smiled, knowing what she was thinking. “Kissing you is amazing,” he told her, keeping his voice low. “Every time you touch me I get a thrill I can’t even describe. But this right here, just being quiet with you...I don’t know, it’s special. How often do you even just stop and be quiet at all, Marinette?”

“Pretty much never,” she admitted, keeping her voice soft as well. “Except...except with you.” She said it like it had never occurred to her before. “Thanks for being my quiet place, Luka.” Luka smiled up at the sky.

“Can I take your hair ties out?” he asked after a moment. 

“Hmm? Oh...sure, I guess.” 

Luka carefully pulled the ribbons from her pigtails. Then he ran his fingers through her hair from root to tip. Marinette’s eyes closed and her head tipped back, her lips parted in a quiet gasp. Luka smiled. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” he murmured, running his hands through her hair again. 

“Mmm,” Marinette sighed, melting into him. He chuckled. 

“I’m glad you like it as much as I do.” He kissed her cheek, and then sighed. “I’m going to say something and I swear it’s a compliment, but I’m not sure it’s going to come out right,” he said, a little uncharacteristic shyness in his voice. 

“I’m listening.”

“You make it hard to live in the moment.” He could feel her surprise and she waited for him to explain. “I’m not really the type of person to overthink stuff, you know? Really I probably ought to think of the future more, but I feel like it’s important to appreciate where you are right now. But sometimes with you it’s not as easy as it used to be. I can’t help thinking about all the things I want to do with you someday.” 

“Like, what kinds of things?” Marinette asked dreamily, still leaning into his touch as his fingers continued to move through her hair. 

“Like...doing just what we’re doing now, only out on the open ocean, with all the lights off so we can see the stars. Oh, you’ve never seen the sky until you’ve seen it like that, Marinette. Things like, a spring picnic up in the Alps, where the mountains just surround you and it feels like if you just jumped up in the air you’d be flying. I want you to teach me something I’ve never done before. I want us to learn something new together, something neither of us have ever done before.” He paused. “I just...I want to share things with you and I want you to share things with me.” He cringed slightly, letting his hands slip out of her hair and circle her waist. “Am I getting too heavy?”

“No,” Marinette said shyly. “Or...maybe, but I...tonight I think I like it.”

Luka hesitated. “There’s...one thing I’d kind of like to do that’s a little more achievable in the here and now.”

“Yes?”

“I’d like you to meet my friends. There’s an open mic night next week that a bunch of us were going to go to. Maybe you could come?”

Marinette was silent and he could feel her tense slightly. “Hey,” he said, nudging her temple with his nose. “Don’t go spiraling without me. Talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“What if they don’t like me?”

Luka chuckled. “What if you don’t like them?” 

“Luka.”

“I’m serious,” he said, squeezing her lightly. “Maybe they won’t like you, maybe you won’t like them. That’s okay if it happens. You don’t have to be friends with everybody. Maybe you’ll like some of them and not others. Whatever happens, it won’t change anything between us. Worst case scenario, I see them at school and when we make plans to hang out, and I keep you all to myself when we’re together, just like we’ve been doing. It’s not some kind of test you have to pass. I don’t think you have to worry too hard about it, though, I think my friends are pretty cool people and they’ll see that you’re amazing. You seem to have a pretty high tolerance for weird, so I think you’ll be able to put up with them.” 

Marinette giggled and relaxed into him. “How are you so perfect?” 

A trickle of cold went down Luka’s spine. “I’m not, Marinette,” he said softly. “If you think I am, then you need to look closer, babe.”

“I know you’re not,” Marinette said seriously. She sat forward and tried to twist so she could see him. Luka pulled her up onto his lap and she leaned on his chest, their eyes nearly level. “You’re self-conscious. You’re not always proactive enough. You don’t always say what you’re thinking because you’re afraid it won’t come out right. You worry about others to the point where you neglect yourself or overwhelm them, you take too much on yourself, and you tend to hide behind your guitar. But those are all just the other side of all the things I love about you. You’re humble, laid back, considerate, empathetic, protective, responsible, and a true artist.”

Luka couldn’t breathe as he stared at her. “Are you okay?” she asked, and he nodded numbly. He reached up to hook his hand behind her neck and pulled her gently to his mouth. She kissed him, and then pulled back to look at him again. “I love you,” she told him, soft but sure. His chest tightened and his breath came short and quick. Luka pulled her back to his trembling lips and kissed her fiercely, aware of tears gathering behind his tightly closed eyelids. He focused on kissing her senseless so she wouldn’t notice when they slipped free. Even so he felt her hands on his face, thumbs wiping them away. “I’m sorry,” she spoke against his lips. “I’m sorry I made you wait so long.”

“No,” he said between kisses. “No, no, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love you so much.” He sighed, wiping the tears away himself. “Damn, sorry.” 

Marinette bit her lip, then took a shaky breath and sang softly, “Je pense à toi, mon amour, mon bien aimé, ne m'abandonne pas, mon amour, mon chéri.” Luka’s smile threatened to split his face. He already knew she had a sweet voice, but she was shy about singing around him. It was always a treat for him when she loosened up enough to let him hear her.

“Keep going,” he murmured. Marinette sang the line again, and her voice wavered slightly when he joined in with the harmony he hadn’t been able to sing alone, but she held true to her note. “Je pense à toi, mon amour, ma bien aimée, ne m'abandonne pas, mon amour, ma chérie.”

She paused, and he sang the next line for her. Marinette nodded and they sang it together, and this time she held the melody steady as he sang the harmony. “Quand je suis dans ma lit, je ne rêve qu’à toi, et quand je me réveille, je ne pense qu’à toi…” 

Slowly, they sang through the whole song, Luka giving her the line first and then the two of them together .

Luka nudged her nose with his. “Not bad. I think we sound pretty good together.”

Marinette smiled, laying her head down on his shoulder and pressing her face into his neck. “Yeah. I think we do too.”

#quickspins #finding harmony #lukanette #i am lukanette trash i admit it #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug #ml fics #backlog