#anyways love this it’s fun they’re all characters shaped by the dark world they’re in. they’re so doomed by the narrative | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dr3amofagame · 3 years

Text

take a shot - dsmp!mcc fic

MCC FIC! MCC FIC! MCC FIC! To be clear, I outlined this weeks back, when teams were first announced, and I took very very little from the actual MCC itself when it came to actually writing this - all I have are the same teams, but it really exists in its own continuity outside of Real Life MCC (obviously, as it’s using the dsmp characters) and everything like that as a whole! Just to be clear :D)

The worldbuilding is also Absolutely Bullshitted start to finish, as well as any and all medical information. Rip. We’re here for a good time, not for a long or particularly accurate one - hope you guys enjoy regardless!! I had a LOT of fun writing this fic, dsmp!mcc aus my BELOVED

title obviously from win it all by derivakat

---

Michael loves MCC.

But it’s one thing to love the normal Championships and quite another when his team looks like it’s falling apart from the inside out - and as the games progress, it becomes more and more obvious that losing, this time, might not be an option.

tws: C!QUACKITY CRITICAL (sorry i promise i love him but he is NOT portrayed very nicely here, very dark portrayal of him), implied trauma, abuse, torture, panic attacks, manipulation, gaslighting, needles, hospitals, MCC-typical violence, emotional distress, prison arc, pandora’s vault themes

(16k words !! :D long boi)

Michael loves MCC.

Of course he does! It’s fucking MCC - like, who wouldn’t love it? MCC is how he met so many people, how he met Dream, that one time, the two of them teamed with Techno and Burren and winning it all - MCC is a goddamn blast and he’s thankful every time he gets the invite that he’s able to compete.

Still- it’s hard not to be a little more nervous, now.

Dream gave him an invite to his SMP right after they teamed, but it wasn’t until months later that Michael actually cashed it in. Entering the server, it became very obvious very quickly that the DreamSMP, as it’s known, isn’t quite the same as its shiny media appearance. The spawn was covered in blocks, creeper holes littering the ground. The people he passed were grey-faced, too stoic to be the same, smiling faces he remembers from only less than a year ago. The air stings of gunpowder and iron. Worst of all are The Crater, shoddily covered in glass that does nothing to hide the damage done, rending the server in two straight down to bedrock, and the Prison, looming on the horizon. Absent-mindedly, Michael rubs at his left shoulder, remembering the Warden setting the prongs of his trident against the skin in warning, just hard enough to barely draw blood. Yeah, that place is bad news.

The fact of the matter is the server is a mess. And like, okay, whatever, Michael gets it. Everyone has their issues - it’s just the DreamSMP seems to have more than most. Despite his original worries, it’s honestly not been as bad as he originally feared upon logging in; yeah, Bad and Puffy and Foolish and the rest of them are a little more trigger-happy than he might’ve expected (and he’s not going to say that Bad crying over turtles wasn’t a little startling when he first joined, but honestly he thinks Bad is just Like That.) There’s way more death than he’s really comfortable with, and Puffy keeps mentioning Bad murdering her son (Foolish? He thinks? The guy is also a literal God but like, families are weird, who’s he to judge) in a way that’s way too casual to come from anyone entirely well-adjusted, but overall his experience has been alright.

Still, he gets the feeling that nobody exactly wants the outside world to know about the issues with the place. It’s not an issue for him usually, not when his sleeping schedule is the exact opposite of most of the people he knows and he spends most of his time screwing around on the server, anyway (usually harassing the Warden until the asscrack of dawn if he’s being honest) but with MCC, with everyone watching - he’s starting to get why everyone from the SMP was so damn tense all the time, now.

Anyway- he loves MCC, he really does. But even that doesn’t stop him from wincing when he sees his team card, the names Dream and Quackity and Sapnap written in Scott’s looping handwriting. He’s not seen Sapnap at all since joining the server, has only heard a little about his place (something Kingdom, not that he was paying attention) from Foolish, and has no idea what the man has been up to. Quackity is his own unique can of worms; Michael doesn’t know exactly what’s up with him and his country, but everything he’s heard so far has sounded like nothing but bad news, casinos and schemes and a trail of wreckage following wherever he goes. And Dream-

Michael looks out his window, chewing on his lip, looking directly in the direction where he knows the prison stands, impenetrable, intimidating. Where Dream’s cell is, in line with his house, where he’s been hidden for months without a trace. Where the Warden had confronted him that one night, a dangerous gleam in his eyes, blood splattered on his boots.

There’s no real ignoring an MCC invite - not without good reason, not without the admins picking up on something being up. There’s not really a choice, here, but for Michael to duck his head down and pretend everything’s fine just like everyone else from the SMP. He directs one last glance at the prison before walking away, setting the invite on his counter. If he’s lucky, everything will turn out fine.

(He ignores the part of him that asks what’s going to happen if they’re not. No point in worrying about what hasn’t happened yet - right?)

---

Weeks pass, the tournament creeping closer, and Michael gets no alerts from his teammates on his comm. No one comes to his house to check in, say hi, not even a ‘hey, we’re kinda competing in a massive tournament in like, seven days, you ready?’ Hell, he even starts checking his goddamn mailbox for a letter or something only to come up empty-handed every time. Never mind performing well - it’ll be a miracle if their team manages to arrive at the tournament at all.

It isn’t until the day before MCC, the sun high in the sky at what must be near noon, when he finally gets a message on his comm. Michael fishes it out with a frustrated huff, seeing Quackity’s name pop up first when he manages to turn on the screen.

Quackity whispers to you: you down for some practice?

It takes a couple seconds for him to blink away his shock - out of everyone he expected to arrange practice for their team, Quackity was definitely not at the top of the list. He half-thought they would have to drag him to the tournament kicking and screaming; from what he’s heard, he’s been nothing if not devoted to his country. Shaking his head, he goes to reply; practice is practice, and their team really needs it.

You whisper to Quackity: sure. practice server?

Quackity whispers to you: yes

Pulling up his server list, Michael scrolls for the practice server, finding it and then letting the server transfer do the rest. A few nausea-inducing seconds later, he’s at the practice server spawn, standing in the middle of a neatly paved road surrounded by colorful arenas and signs.

“Michael!”

He turns; there, by the Battle Box arenas, Quackity is waving at him, already dressed in a red varsity jacket and a pair of shorts, the jacket bearing a front pocket embroidered with a rabbit and a large R stitched onto the back. He reaches behind him for a red bag, throws it his way for Michael to catch mid-air.

“Got these outfits for us last minute - hope it’s alright with you,” Quackity smiles, and Michael tries to prevent his eyes from clinging to the scar spanning the entire left side of his face. “Anyway- how are you, man? I feel like we haven’t seen each other at all on the server. How’s it been?”

“I’m good- it’s been good.” Michael opens the drawstring bag, cataloguing the contents - there’s a jacket, just like Quackity’s, a pair of shorts and sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a headband, all in varying shades of red and white. “Nice outfit- thank you. Is anyone else around?”

Quackity waves a hand behind him. “Yeah- Dream’s here. Should be coming out of the arena soon, actually.” Michael looks over behind his shoulder to where he’s pointing - there, walking down the stairs, is another figure wearing all red that must be Dream. “There he is- hey Dream! Michael’s here!”

Dream hurries down the stairs; unlike Quackity, he is wearing the sweatpants along with the same jacket, hands stuffed in his pockets. His hair is a lot longer than Michael remembers, pulled back behind his head in a ponytail, mask, as usual, fastened over his face. He settles behind Quackity, giving Michael a small wave; his hands are covered by a pair of fingerless gloves.

“Hey, Dream!” Michael grins; it’s been such a long time since he’s seen his old teammate, and despite the circumstances and everything that’s apparently happened since then, it’s still pretty damn nice to see him. “How’ve you been?”

Dream seems to freeze for a moment, before shaking his head. “Good,” he says, quiet, sounding almost breathless. Michael’s eyes go to the slivers of skin that show on either side of his face, to the slight shake to his hands.

“You alright? You look a little pale,” Michael asks, and he definitely doesn’t miss the way Dream stills at the words, muscles tensing, gaze averting to the side even with the mask - doesn’t miss how Quackity steps forward, looking Michael in the eye as he tosses a casual arm around Dream’s shoulder, smiling brightly.

“Don’t worry. This idiot has just been practicing a bit too much before you got here,” Quackity gestures with a flippant twist of his wrist, “You know how he gets. Right, Dream?”

“Um- yeah. Ha,” Dream responds just a little too late to be strictly normal, shoulders tight and nearly pulled to his ears under Quackity’s arm. “Practice- I’m a little out of shape.”

“You sure?” Dream’s breathing hitches and Quackity steps forward, just a little bit, eyes still fixed firmly on Michael’s own even as he shifts his gaze to try and look at Dream. “We can take a break if you need, Dream-”

“I’m fine!” Dream smiles with a little stuttered breath that turns into a small laugh, “It’s- uh. It’s fine. Thanks Michael, but we can practice. Not much time left to waste, you know?”

“You sure, Dream?” Quackity says, suddenly, voice soft and sincere. “I guess it has been a while since you’ve been able to practice- you sure you don’t need a break?”

Dream shakes his head firmly. “No- it’s fine. Really- where’s Sapnap? He should be coming soon, right?”

“If you say so, pal,” Quackity replies, doubt coloring his tone as he pulls out his communicator. “I told Sapnap to come, he replied a couple minutes back; he should be here soon, I think. You want to go meet him at spawn?”

Dream nods, and they begin to set out towards the center of the server, Quackity and Dream quickly taking the lead as Michael falls back. After a minute, Quackity falls into casual conversation, rambling about something as Dream nods, Michael trailing behind the two of them and adding his own input as he sees fit. Sapnap arrives soon after, and the noise level picks up even more after that, Sapnap and Quackity falling into an easy rhythm of banter and quips as they set out to practice Battle Box and Parkour Tag, carefully working their way through the different games under Dream’s tutelage and advice.

And here’s the thing- Michael isn’t stupid. Yeah, he’d hardly consider himself a top tier MCC player, and he’ll be the first to say that he’s nowhere near qualified to deal with the literal laundry list of issues that affect every member of the SMP, but even so, he’s not clueless. He’s good at looking at multiple sides of a situation, doesn’t easily give into intimidation or manipulation, and he’s observant as all hell. So when Quackity wraps his hand around Dream’s wrist, fingers wrapping all the way around until his knuckles pale, when Dream winces, muscles in his arm locking before letting it go limp, not protesting when Quackity drags him forward except in the tiny, tight expressions that flit across his face every few moments, tight and gasping and shaky at the corners - Michael notices.

“See you at the tourney, yeah?” Quackity calls to him after practice with a wink before clapping Dream on the back, Michael watching silently as the muscles of Dream’s neck pull tight, head ducking to his chest. “Good job, big guy,” he says, laughing. “Keep this up for tomorrow and we’ll be good.”

“Mmhm,” Dream mutters after a brief second, “We’re- we’re gonna win.”

“Betting on it, pal,” Quackity replies, voice light in a way that completely fails to explain Dream’s full-body flinch. “MCC, huh? Can’t fucking wait.”

“See you tomorrow, Quackity,” Michael says as he presses DreamSMP on his server list, pretending that a chill doesn’t crawl down his spine at the smile that the other man throws his way in return.

---

There’s no real easy answer.

Michael comes to that conclusion at some point in the middle of the night, restless and pumped on way too much adrenaline to go to sleep. He can’t outright antagonize Quackity, can’t let him know he knows something’s up - not when Quackity had already spent the majority of practice keeping one dark, narrowed eye on him at all times, lips pursed in a slight frown whenever he thought Michael wasn’t looking. He’s not stupid; whatever’s happening between Dream and Quackity is secret, and kept that way for a reason. His mind goes back to the brief flashes of anxiety that had moved over Dream’s face before he could react fast enough to school them back into a carefully neutral position; whatever it is, he doubts it bodes well for Dream in the slightest.

Unfortunately, his hands are pretty damn tied. He knows public opinion on the masked man in the server is overwhelmingly negative, but has no damn idea how far it extends. How many people are in on whatever’s happening in that damn prison? How many people know what would make Dream, bold and bright and recklessly confident in all of Michael’s (rather limited) memories, into someone so quiet, unimposing, nervous? His head spins with the possibilities, with the ever-present reminder to not make a fuss, let the tournament pass on, to never, ever let anyone find out what’s going on within the SMP. Should he do anything at all?

Too soon, it’s morning, and he drags himself out of bed with a groan to glare at the sun streaming through his window. Somewhere, Quackity and Dream and Sapnap are also waking up, are preparing to compete in one of the biggest damn tournaments to exist. Michael sighs, glancing over to where he’s set out his outfit, freshly pressed and waiting. Any other day, and he’d probably be fucking ecstatic. Here, he buries his head in his hands, muffling a frustrated groan against the palm of his hands.

He loves MCC, but he sure as hell doesn’t like whatever the hell is going on with the rest of his team.

Getting into the server goes smoothly enough. The outfit is comfortable and looks damn good, props to whoever made the thing, and the sight of the multicolored crowd successfully manages to tamp down some of his nerves. He busies himself with saying hi to all of the members waiting in the lobby, happy for the chance to talk to some people he hasn’t seen in ages, feels the night of anxieties wash away with every stupid joke told and burst of laughter drawn from his lungs.

They come back the moment Scott steps up in front of the lobby. “Teams, it’s time to head to your team rooms! The tournament will begin in fifteen minutes,” Scott says, expression sunny and bright, “we’re wishing you all luck for a great performance today! May the best team win!”

In a flurry of movement, they’re all whisked to their rooms for a final few minutes of preparation and morale-boosting, and Michael enters the glorified dressing room to Quackity, Dream, and Sapnap already standing there, seemingly in the middle of conversation.

“You ready to win?” Sapnap yells, and Quackity whoops, and Michael manages a small cheer of his own. They’re all visibly nervous; Quackity has scarcely stopped moving, pacing from one side of the room to the next; Sapnap is basically jumping in place where he stands. Dream stands at the very back of the room, looking tense; Michael directs a wave his way and gets a small one in return.

“Game plan, game plan,” Quackity mutters, “do we know what games we’re playing first? Dream?”

He nods at Dream, and Dream stands up straighter, mouth falling open.

“Oh- um,” he hesitates, a strand of hair flopping forwards as he tilts his head in thought. “We’ll want to save Parkour Tag and Battle Box towards the end- maybe something more high-risk at the beginning, but not first, just to boost morale,” his teeth catch on his bottom lip, “Maybe something like To Get To The Other Side? If they have that- or Build Mart, if we can get it out of the way.” He shakes his head. “If that’s alright- I mean-”

“Great,” Quackity cuts in smoothly. “Sapnap? Michael? Does that sound good to you?”

Sapnap flashes a thumbs up, and Michael nods. “Yeah, sounds great. Thanks, Dream.”

Dream’s head snaps towards him, mouth slightly open in shock. The sight of it makes Michael’s gut twist uncomfortably; there’s something about how surprised he is, at the nervous hesitancy with which he spoke that was nothing like what Michael remembers of his easy leadership in that MCC with Techno, that doesn’t sit right at all in his stomach. Even with his expression largely hidden, there’s no mistaking the clear, genuine surprise on his face at the idea of someone thanking him - Michael tries to tell himself that he’s reading too much into it as Quackity continues to speak.

“We’re going to win,” he grins, just a little too sharp at the edges, “so get out there and play like your lives depend on it, yeah?”

Sapnap cheers, and again, Michael and Dream follow. It’s not until he’s outside the door, within the clamor of screaming teams and people counting down with the timer that Michael realizes that Quackity was staring at Dream the entire time.

---

Michael curses, frustrated, when he’s knocked off a platform again, making sure to flip Krinios the bird before he falls into the Void entirely. When he makes it to the other side, Quackity and Dream are already deep in conversation - if you can call it that. Even from here, it looks worryingly one-sided.

“-were you thinking, falling off there-” Quackity’s hand is on Dream’s shoulder, Dream standing stock-still in front of him, “you better be taking this seriously, Dream.”

“Hey- sorry about that,” Michael calls with a wave, “I swear Krinios had it out for me. At least I made it across, right?”

Quackity turns, startled, and in the split-second that it takes for him to register Michael’s appearance, his expression smooths over into something friendlier, more inviting. “Michael!” He says, enthusiastic, and it’s like the anger that had filled his words just seconds before was never there at all. “Don’t- don’t worry about it, man. We all kinda dropped the ball on that one, right Dream?”

The words should be encouraging, just simple ribbing between teammates. Dream’s mask is still ducked down, facing the floor, shoulders slightly hunched in.

“Um- Sapnap did pretty good,” Dream says, quiet, “he got top ten, right?”

Michael looks over to where Sapnap is standing a little ways away, seemingly busy typing on his communicator. Quackity laughs, sharp and loud.

“True,” he punches Dream lightly on the upper arm, and Michael watches the way he freezes the second the fist makes contact with his jacket, “come on, man, you’re losing your touch. You really gonna let yourself get beat by Sapnap?” he shakes his head, still laughing as he pulls open his communicator. “Jesus- even I beat you in that last round. Watch your spot, Dream, I’m coming for you.”

“I mean,” Michael says when a second passes and it becomes clear Dream isn’t going to respond, “Dream was doing pretty well with the last two rounds, right? I thought I saw his name pretty far up there.”

Quackity takes a second before responding, again, staring at Michael oddly as he does. “That’s true,” he concedes, “hey- I was just making a joke, don’t worry. It’s all for fun, right Dream?”

His gaze goes to Dream, and automatically, Michael follows. Dream seems to startle under the attention, twitching Quackity’s direction in the awkward silence that results. Michael watches as the mask slants slightly to face Quackity, as Quackity looks back at him with an intense, unreadable expression, shoulders strangely tense. Whatever unsaid conversation that seems to pass between them is entirely lost on Michael as Dream finally responds with a sudden, almost strangled bark of laughter.

“Yeah- just jokes,” his fingers twist over one another, hands held close together in front of his body, “Though Qu- Q’s right, I- I should probably pick it up. We’re playing to win.”

A ding alerts them to the end of the round, and Michael steadies himself in preparation for the teleport to the next map. As he turns, he catches Quackity’s expression, once again, and the self-satisfied smirk on his face as he continues to look at Dream.

“Good luck,” he calls just before they enter the next round, and tries not to think too much about what he’s saying it for.

---

They manage pretty well for the rest of To Get To The Other Side, finishing with a second place overall that got cheers from Sapnap and even a slight smile from Dream. Hole in the Wall, on the other hand, has been a lot less successful - though Michael will be the first to say that it’s his fault. His practice in the last few months has been lackluster (at best) and it definitely showed in the arena.

He leans over the railing, watching Dream and Sapnap through the crowd of participants left that have yet to be knocked out by the giant walls of slime. Quackity’s standing next to him, having been similarly thrown off the platform early in the round, expression tight and lips set in a small frown, and looking at him for too long makes Michael uneasy so he looks down at the arena again. They’re in the last round, and they’re supposed to be making callouts anyway for their teammates still participating below.

Without thinking, once again, Michael looks over at Dream. Sue him, he knows the guy best and Dream has been acting odd all day, to put it lightly. Even ignoring the part of him that’s screaming that something’s wrong, that there’s something up that has everything to do with the beanie-wearing man standing besides him, it only takes a few minutes of observation to see that Dream is - for the lack of a better word - off. Michael watches as he vaults over another wall, only barely managing to bring himself to his feet in time on the other side. Dream’s movements - even to his untrained eye - have always been fluid, effortless. He jumped and vaulted and ran like gravity didn’t exist, like every physics-bending maneuver he made was as easy as breathing. Michael remembers watching him sprint over the parkour course before, time completely unmatched as he appraised each obstacle and basically flew his way through, sounding hardly even winded when he whooped loudly in victory from the top of the salmon ladder. In total contrast, Dream jerks away from the coming wall again, movements sloppy and harsh as he scrambles to the other side of the disc-shaped arena. He’s still fast, and still making jumps, but everything is strangely angled where it had once been fluid, stopping and starting suddenly, moving in bursts of speed and then skidding to sudden stops.

“WEST!” Quackity shouts, and Michael watches as Dream’s head turns jerkily at the noise before he dives out of the way of the incoming wall and manages, barely, to twist around the side. Michael winces at the tumble he takes on the opposite side, clutching his chest slightly as he stands back up again.

“North!” Michael calls, because he should probably actually help his teammates, huh, and Dream manages to move around this one better, jumping through a hole in the wall and tucking and rolling as he lands. “Nice jump- East!”

It’s an easy wall, thankfully, and both Sapnap and Dream visibly take a breath as they stand in place for the wall to pass over them. As it passes, a droning buzz comes from the speakers, and the walls below them speed up.

“South-to your right!” Michael shouts as they turn, eyes turning between all of the false walls before finally focusing on the right one, his shout echoed by a similar one from Quackity. At each one of the calls from the man besides him, Dream seems to tighten further, movements increasingly erratic as he dodges and weaves around the walls. There’s still a lot of people left - Michael follows Dream through the crowd with a frown, watching as he and Sapnap jump the next wall, Dream’s foot nearly catching on the top edge.

“West-” Dream flinches, jumping over the two-high wall at the last possible second, landing completely off-balance on the other side and falling to the ground. He scrambles to his feet, but there’s already a wall at the west edge of the platform - his head turns, still searching for the wall - Quackity yells.

“LEFT!”

Something in Dream’s movements seem to shift, even in the distance - Michael watches as he immediately, almost robotically, steps to the left at Quackity’s voice, not even jumping, not turning his head to take in his surroundings, just moving instinctually at the words, and slams into the coming wall hard enough to get flung into the middle hole in the platform. Quackity curses, fist crashing into the railing as Dream falls and the chat message shows on their communicators, and a second later he’s materialized beside them, face oddly slack and mask focused somewhere faraway.

“Shit,” Dream mutters when he seems to come back into himself, shaking his head and then turning to the two of them, still by the railing, “Dammit. Sorry, I-“

“Don’t worry about it,” Michael cuts in before Quackity can speak. “You did good.”

“I-” Dream catches Quackity’s gaze, then pushes his head away, mask facing the ground. Something about it and his raised shoulders and the dark, angry glare that Quackity directs over the railing when Michael looks back makes him shift in place, uneasy. “Could’ve done better, ha. Sorry.”

The three of them watch, silent, as Sapnap continues to compete. He manages to get pretty damn far, making it to the top three, but getting knocked off-balance by a wall and off the platform just before the timer sounds. Michael cringes back at the sound of it over the speakers, watches the other contestants settle into place, panting, in victory.

“Great job, Sapnap,” Michael shouts when he materializes in front of them, and the other two are quick to echo his sentiments. If they sound a little duller than they should be, if Quackity’s jaw seems clenched and Dream’s all coiled up like a spring, far too tense, it’s from placing lower than they wanted and slipping in the rankings, not anything else.

Keep your head down, Michael reminds himself, and everything’s gonna be fine. And if the words ring more and more hollow with every repetition, well, that’s for him to ignore and for everyone else to never, ever find out.

---

Buildmart is chosen next, which they all groan at, but at least it’s going to be out early and not left to ruin all of their scores later. Michael takes his place at his build, one third from the left side - it’s some abomination of colored glass and white concrete meant, if he is to guess, to emulate a stained glass window. He’s between Dream and Sapnap, the former positioned in front of a flower-dotted grass field with a picnic table, the latter staring down a miniature car with black concrete for tires and stone buttons for detailing. He breathes a steady breath as they await the countdown, already planning for his trip to the Colors section to grab materials for his build and the others’- Buildmart isn’t his strongest game, but it’s not his worst either, and he’s damn well going to try his best.

He skids into the portal with an armful of colored concrete and glass, spilling half of its contents inside a chest before running to his build. He pulls himself to the crafting bench to craft - he squints at his build - he needs four red glass panes and 3 yellow, right. As he brings the panes to his inventory and begins laying out the frame of the build in concrete, he looks over to Dream, who is noticeably struggling with placing the flowers in his build and getting the placements to match that of the original. He knocks away a white tulip with a muffled curse, sounding frantic as he looks back to the original, and places it again to no avail.

It seems that his struggle hasn’t only caught Michael’s attention, as the statue to the leftmost side of the room explodes in gold coins and confetti - Quackity has finished his build and is now looking at Dream with narrowed eyes. Dream places the flower again, and the build refuses to respond. Quackity’s gaze narrows further, and he opens his mouth-

“Hey Quackity!” Michael starts speaking before he’s even noticed that he’s opened his mouth, fumbling as he regains awareness of what he’s doing and tries to find a direction for his sentence to go, “do you have any concrete?”

Quackity looks at him like he’s grown a second head, which is fair, considering there’s a block of white concrete pretty obviously visible in his hand. “Um- no? Weren’t you supposed to go to Colors?”

Dream finally manages to place the tulip where it belongs, and the build between them disappears in another explosion of gold glitter. Michael laughs awkwardly.

“Sorry- haha. I got a little mixed up.” He places the last piece of white concrete, watching as his own build disappears. A little wooden cottage takes its place, made of what appears to be just oak wood and cobblestone. “Are you going to get wood? Or should I?”

“I- You get wood,” Quackity shakes his head, visibly frustrated, “And I’ll get stone. We have to hurry, we’re falling behind.”

After that, Michael finds it a little too easy - or maybe not easy, but at least tolerable, to interrupt when Quackity looks a little like he’s about to fall on the side of being angry versus just annoyed, stepping between his angry glares at Dream with a forced smile and an incessant string of annoying questions-

“Hey Quackity, do you have any spare iron?”

“Hey Quackity, I think you placed that a little too far back.”

“Hey Quackity, can you take a look to see what I placed wrong?”

It’s not perfect. It’s hardly even functional; Michael knows that Quackity has begun with the habit of directing death glares at his back whenever he thinks he’s not looking, his responses to Michael’s questions becoming more and more clipped, often paired with irritated grumbles and sighs. Sapnap, when Michael looks at him, seems largely engrossed with his own builds, but he’s also begun looking over at the two of them with a vaguely dissatisfied expression, and Dream only seems to be getting more jumpy with every frustrated growl out of Quackity’s mouth. Even Michael’s forced levity and falsely ignorant questions can’t do much against Quackity’s anger when they walk out of Buildmart dead last for the minigame, dropping their team all the way down to seventh in the overall rankings, and the tension within the team as they walk out - Quackity nearly stomping, Dream following with his hands wringing around each other and head ducked fearfully - is almost enough to make Michael scream. He looks at the scoreboard with a worried expression as he enters the Decision Dome, trying to quell the sinking feeling in his gut.

There’s still five more games to go, and he’s not sure how long they can last before something snaps.

---

Battle Box is chosen next, and they react to the game with quiet cheers and slightly grim faces. Michael’s been in enough MCCs to know that this game, of any, is crucial - after their lacking performances in the last two games, a good showing at Battle Box will be crucial to pull them back into the competition and raise morale. With Sapnap and Dream, if this were any normal game, they should be able to sweep through a good amount of the competition without much effort. As it is, though, Michael looks at the two more combat-oriented members of his team with a worried expression, the two barely even able to meet each other’s eyes. Their interactions so far have been less than promising- if they can’t hold it together for this round, well.

Michael shakes his head. They’ll do fine. They have to.

Even so, the first round only seems to confirm his concerns - they get woolrushed almost immediately, and in Dream and Sapnap’s stumbling to get to mid, nearly crashing into each other and focusing their efforts on the same player by accident, the other team manages to fill out the wool, sending them back to the spawn box even more frustrated than before.

“Amazing teamwork, guys,” Quackity snarks immediately, and Michael rolls his eyes.

“Like you did that much.”

Sapnap is still staring at Dream oddly, Dream turning his head to avoid his gaze. The two of them look largely oblivious to Quackity and his whole deal, even as Quackity whirls around to give him the stink eye.

“You didn’t do anything either, if I remember correctly,” Quackity mutters, and Michael shrugs.

“Fair.”

A ding alerts them to the round’s end, and they resign themselves to preparing for the next round. Michael picks the extra arrows from the wall, knowing that no one else will want the kit, and watches as Dream anxiously runs his hands over the crossbow.

The next round goes better, barely; Michael and Quackity end up knocked out pretty early, but Dream and Sapnap manage to kill the rest of the team soon after. He watches from the box as they fill in the wool, Dream looking awfully tense as he shears away the white wool for Sapnap to fill it with red. Quackity watches them both with a tight expression, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Michael turns away, ignoring him, going back to watching Dream and Sapnap still standing within the arena. Both of them look awkward, oddly out of step with each other - Michael’s not watched them fight much, but he knows that they have a reputation as a pair, was there for the Sky Battle round where they completely wiped through the competition. Even here, Sapnap moves forward and Dream flinches back - there’s something heavy and tense between them, lingering in the few words they’ve spoken to each other, if they’ve even spoken to each other at all, one always rushing forward too fast or following just a little too slow. They’re still brilliant fighters, almost unrivaled in hand-to-hand combat and with swords, but the faltering communication is sure to hurt them more in the future.

His worries come true just three rounds later, the two in between being narrow wins for their team, each a little more shaky than would be comfortable. Michael has found himself easing off the worst of his anxiety in verbally sparring with Quackity, jabbing at the other with offhand remarks and little needling jokes to keep his attention off the other two, especially as his glare has become more pronounced and his words more angry. Even so, nothing he does or can do will fix the odd tension between Dream and Sapnap, whose communication remains as stilted and awkward as ever.

They’re facing a stronger team, PVP wise, with Punz and Seapeekay, and Michael ends up falling in a bow duel against Jack. He watches as the Captain falls to a potion by Sapnap, then as Jack is taken out by a crossbow bolt courtesy of Dream, just before Quackity falls to a well-timed bow shot from the opposing team.

That leaves the strongest PVPers to battle it out, and Dream and Sapnap manage to team up and kill CPK - but not without taking a nasty damage potion to the face that must leave the two of them low. Michael watches Punz, booking it to mid with a crossbow, anxiously - both of them would be a oneshot with the thing, and on the condition that he takes no damage before fighting with either of them outright, he’s probably got enough health to hold out a few hits.

Sapnap pulls out a health potion, and Michael grins - that’ll be good for the two of them, and should secure them the win - only for him to gesture roughly with his sword and for Dream to stagger backwards, panic flashing over his face. He only seems to grow more fearful at the sound of glass shattering on the ground, falling backwards further - far enough to be largely out of range of health pot - and in their shock, Punz manages to catch both of them off guard and nail Sapnap with a crossbow bolt that downs him for the round before similarly dispatching Dream in two hits of his sword.

Sapnap explodes upon respawn in the box - “What was that? I had a health pot!”

“I-” Dream fumbles, face still oddly pale, “Sorry I didn’t- I- I-”

“We had that round!” Sapnap’s arms flail forward as he gestures angrily, Dream freezing further as one hand skims past his shoulder. “I can’t believe- I had a health pot! Punz was on, like, half! We could’ve killed him!”

“Easy, easy,” Quackity moves forward, putting a hand on both of their shoulders - Sapnap seems to relax immediately, while Dream, if anything, only looks more tense. “It’s time for the next round - we’ll talk about this later, alright?”

Dream nods, movements overly tense, and Quackity flashes a toothy smile his way as Sapnap moves back, still mumbling to himself. He and Quackity move to talk in the back corner, words quiet enough that Michael cannot make them out, and something sick and cold slithers over his spine. Sapnap and Quackity are fiancés, aren’t they?

Michael looks over at Dream, mask still covering his face as he looks away through the glass to the arena, shoulders still tight as Michael’s pretty sure they’ve been for as long as he’s seen him since he came onto the server. He remembers the panic that make itself obvious on his face every time Quackity came up to him, even as covered as it is, the similar- if not the same- fear that had painted his face when he respawned fresh off of the Battle Box round after Sapnap’s sword had passed a little too close to his body.

Quackity and Dream- he’s sure, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, that there’s something going on there, dark and dreadful and poisonous. Who’s to say that Sapnap isn’t involved, as well?

---

They finish Battle Box decently well, but not as well as they’d hoped, pulling them up to fifth place with a decently large gap between them and fourth. Quackity and Dream disappear immediately as the Audience Votes begin coming in, leaving Sapnap and Michael to stand awkwardly in the lobby to wait for the rest of their team to come back. Michael watches the crowd for a glimpse of Quackity and Dream, comes up empty. A sigh fizzles through his teeth as he looks up into the sky, the endless blue doing little to ease his nerves - he’s worried, even if he doesn’t want to think about it, for his teammates. For Dream.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the man is scared of Quackity, that there’s an odd sort of history there that Michael conveniently has no information about. Whatever it is, it’s left Dream unsure and uncharacteristically nervous, left the entire team floundering without proper leadership to tie them all together. Really, a part of him knows that the Championships should be the least of his concerns - if he were braver, or a little better at combat, or a little less inclined to just let things pass as they always have, then he’d be raising a fuss. Getting in the way, talking to Dream, doing something other than making backhanded compliments to Quackity that he’s sure have been doing little more than annoy the man further.

“Michael?” Sapnap comes within his line of sight, lips pressed together in a carefully put-together expression that Michael is sure will collapse the moment they’re away from others’ prying eyes, “Can we speak for a moment?”

Michael forces another easy smile to his face as he turns towards his teammate, feels a little disgusted at the amount of them he’s had to use to simply function with the rest of his team. “Sure! Where to?”

They walk at a brisk pace to the team room, Sapnap’s eyes focused forwards the entire time, not speaking. If he’s being honest, it’s a little awkward, but the lighthearted comment on his tongue to break the silence dies out the minute Sapnap closes the door and looks back at him with fierce, focused eyes boring into him.

“What’s your deal?” He hisses immediately, words pitched low even though he doesn’t really have to - there’s no one nearby, and the team rooms are decently soundproofed. Michael feels his hackles rising as Sapnap’s arms cross in front of him, eyes still focused on his own as he talks. “I’m not going to lie- I don’t know you that well, even though you’re on the SMP now, but can you quit it with Quackity already?”

“Quit what?” Michael snarks - sue him - matching Sapnap’s tone with irritation of his own.

“Don’t- you’ve been antagonizing Quackity all day,” Sapnap’s hand runs through his hair, messing up his hair and tangling it into knots, “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re kind of in the middle of a competition here? So it’d be really nice if you could save the fighting for until after we’re done?”

“Says you?” Michael can’t help the retort this time, huffing irately at the offended expression that flashes over the other’s face, “I don’t really know if you’ve noticed, but your teamwork has been a little less than stellar, today. Pot calling the kettle black, much?”

“What-” Sapnap looks confused, even through his anger, gesturing more and more wildly. “What do you even mean?”

“Oh, so are we just ignoring what just happened in Battle Box then?”

Sapnap’s eyes flash as he closes into himself again, hands gripping at his upper arms as he crosses his arms in front of his chest once again. “That- that’s different. That’s because of Dream.”

“Oh, just keep blaming it on the other guy, why don’t you?”

“No-” Sapnap shakes his head furiously. “You haven’t been on here for nearly as long, you don’t get it, Michael. Dream- he’s-,” Sapnap flails, and Michael groans at the familiar words.

“Dream’s what? I was on the team with the guy before, you know. It’s kind of the reason why he invited me in the first place?” He raises an eyebrow. “We worked together perfectly well then - am I supposed to believe that his self-proclaimed ‘best friend’ can’t do the same?”

“You don’t understand,” Sapnap repeats, expression hard and oddly far away, “Dream- he’s changed- he’s done so many terrible things. I don’t know what he’s said to convince you, but he’s bad news, man. He’s hurt- so many people.”

“Oh- you want to talk about hurting people?”

Michael isn’t quite sure what comes over him - only really realizes a white-hot flash of rage lancing through his chest, a sleepless night and half a competition’s worth of anxiety and frustration and build up combining into a sizzling spike of fury that briefly tinges his vision red.

“How about the way Dream looks like he’s about to keel over whenever anyone gets close to him? How about how he flinches back at literally every loud noise and fast movement? How about how Quackity’s been making these stupid, angry comments at him for the entire competition that make him freeze for a minute each time? Or how about when you were in Battle Box and Dream backed away from your sword like he thought you were gonna drive it through his chest?” Michael barely feels himself stepping forward with each word, jabbing his index finger into the other’s chest. “You want to talk about hurting people? How about you go talk to that fiancé of yours and then come back to talk?”

A loud, droning buzz comes over the speakers, alerting them of the end of the break. Michael steps back, face flushed in embarrassment, before the world whirls away and they’re teleported back into the Decision Dome.

He adamantly refuses to meet Sapnap’s eyes as Quackity and Dream materialize in the sector with them, Quackity’s hand clamped around Dream’s upper arm as the other man keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the floor, looking even more panicked and frozen than before the break.

“You ready to win?” Quackity laughs, and Michael watches as his hand tightens around the sleeve of Dream’s jacket, knuckles paling from the strain.

“Yeah,” Michael tries to cheer, and it feels like ash on his tongue. “Let’s do this.”

---

Survival Games ends up being picked next - Quackity and Sapnap quickly pull up to the front of the group, close enough to be within eyesight but too far to really pick up their conversation. Michael keeps an eye out for the reddish glow of their bodies as they scout the surrounding areas for chest, staying back with Dream as they look at the other side of the road. He’d be lying if he said that he didn’t feel a smug sort of satisfaction of Sapnap seemingly confronting Quackity about whatever the hell has been going on, as awkward as his whole outburst had been. As it is, some time with Dream is nice without Quackity watching over his shoulder like a hawk - he directs a small, genuine smile at the man by his side that Dream seems to do a double take at before shyly returning it with one of his own.

“There- I think I see a chest,” Michael points under a lamppost, running to the wooden box and flicking the lid upwards. He pulls out a chain chestplate that he promptly puts on himself, then throws over the iron boots to his teammate as well as a small stone axe that he’s sure Dream will make better use of. “We should probably catch up to the others - don’t want to be caught off guard while separated.”

Dream nods, and the two of them pick up the pace before finding another chest that Dream rummages through, this time, finding an iron sword that Michael takes for himself and a cake.

“You’ve been doing really well so far,” Michael says after a few minutes of quiet, words becoming more firm when Dream looks up at him with a surprised expression. “Seriously- you’ve been doing great, man.”

“Thanks,” Dream smiles, words quiet and terribly sincere, and the sinking pit in Michael’s gut returns at the tone. “Not as good as I should, though. I’ve been underperforming a lot,” he laughs a little at the words, but even to Michael’s ears it rings hollow. “It’s not over yet, though.”

“No it’s not,” Michael concedes, rearranging his inventory as they run. “But it’s good enough, man, really - just look at my rankings.”

Dream huffs. “You’ve been doing good, Michael.”

“And you’ve been doing a hell of a lot better than me,” Michael tips his head in his direction. “Give yourself some more credit, man. You’ve been playing well.”

Dream smiles again, but even now the corners of his mouth seem tight, tense. “I need to play better, though, if we want to win,” he says, matter-of-fact, analytical to a damn fault. Michael rolls his eyes, but nods to concede the point.

“Sure, but that goes for all of us, Dream,” he shakes his head. “And it’s okay if we don’t win, you know?”

“No.”

Michael turns, frowning. Dream’s tone has become oddly flat, eyes dead as he continues to stare at the pavement under their feet. He seems to be chewing on his lip anxiously, startled out of his own thoughts when he looks up to meet Michael’s gaze. “I mean- I don’t know. I really have- want to win.”

There’s something so carefully worded about the admission, quiet and scraped open and raw in the slow sincerity of the words. Michael wants to poke at it, wants to understand what’s left him so unsure of every step, what determination lies behind the words that has left desperation clinging to every shallow breath he draws. A crack of thunder on the horizon, heralding a player’s death, reminds him that now is not the time.

Keep your head down.

“Alright,” he smiles thinly, hoping that the fracturing, yawning pit of emptiness in his chest isn’t obvious in the words. “Then we’re going to win.”

---

Michael skids to a stop at the finish line, feeling the elytra deequip as he’s thrown into spectator mode. He runs his hands through his wind-tousled hair, feeling it strain against his fingers as he roughly finger-combs it back into place. Dream and Sapnap are off to the side, standing next to each other but seemingly not speaking - Michael smiles as he floats over, still shaking the adrenaline off from the race.

“Hey,” the two look up, smile in recognition, and Dream waves; there’s a small smile on his face, strained but present. “You both did really good!”

“Thanks, Michael,” Dream laughs, earnest, “I did decent, I guess- haha. Top ten at least.”

Sapnap whoops. “We’re popping off!” Michael cheers in agreement, and their efforts manage to pull Dream’s smile a little wider as he ducks his head to look away again.

“Thanks, guys.”

They watch as Quackity flies through the finish line, appearing in front of them and shaking his arms out as he gets his bearings.

“Geez- that trident,” he shakes his head, looks up. “Hey, there you guys are. How’d we do?”

“Dream got seventh,” Sapnap scrolls through his comm, looking through the rows of contestants and their times as they come in, interspersed by the occasional chat message, “And I got 10th. Michael got- 28th, I think? And you got 32nd.”

“Hmm,” Quackity hums, “What do you think, Dream? Is that good enough to pull us to Dodgebolt?”

Once again, Michael watches as Dream stiffens under the scrutiny, head ducking down and looking for all the world like he’d rather be anywhere else. “Um- I don’t know,” Dream mumbles, “I messed up a trident- fell into the void once, probably could’ve done better otherwise-” his voice trails off, tensing further as Quackity takes his usual spot by his side, jabbing an elbow none-too-lightly into his ribs.

“But you didn’t, though,” Quackity says, tone flippant, “so what do you think? With those placements- is it going to be enough?”

“Hey, we did great, man,” Michael glares at him, more forward than he’d usually be - but all he can see is the shoulder that he has pressed against Dream’s arm, the way Dream’s stood stock still since the moment he made contact, “Lay off of Dream, would you? He did great.”

“Yeah, Q,” Michael’s eyebrows raise in surprise as Sapnap chimes in from the side, rising further when Sapnap moves forward to link his arm with Quackity’s own and half-drag him away from Dream. “Chill out, man, we popped off. We’re gonna fucking win this, ok?”

Quackity’s lips press together; he’s still smiling, but there’s no mistaking the seething darkness that lingers in his narrowed eyes and furrowed eyebrows, gaze still trained on the pale off-white disk of Dream’s mask. Still, with the rest of the team against him, he’s in a losing fight and he knows it; Michael watches as he visibly backs down, rolling his shoulders back as he lets Sapnap pull him further back.

“We’re going to fucking win this,” he repeats, and Michael wonders how he manages to make the words sound so much like a threat.

---

“Sky battle,” Sapnap calls as the decision dome below them lights up in confirmation of the penultimate game, expression immediately becoming more focused as he turns back to the rest of the team. “Alright- strats, what are we thinking?”

“There’s the iron at spawn,” Dream starts, interrupted by the teleport to the Sky Battle arena, making him cut himself off comically and take a second to shake off the resulting disorientation, “And then there’s the iron in the nearby island. We gotta pick one, tower as soon as we can.”

“Got it,” Sapnap looks down, seemingly calculating, before looking up again - Michael has heard him compared to fire before, but he thinks this is the first time he’s really seen it; there’s a veritable blaze burning in his eyes as he looks at each member of the team, easily taking charge as they prepare for the first round. “Same buddy system as Survival Games - Q, stick with me, Michael, stick with Dream. I’ll tower to the next island- Dream, you good with getting the iron at spawn and crafting armor for us?”

Dream startles, before flashing a small thumbs up at the other - Sapnap smiles wider, teeth bared dangerously.

“This is our game,” he cheers, and Michael enthusiastically whoops in reply, “we’re winning this, you got that team? Let’s go!”

This, Michael thinks, is the way the games should’ve gone - they jump into action upon the start of the game, Michael watching as Dream races through both chests on the spawn island, getting the iron and jumping down cleanly with a water bucket before following Sapnap’s bridge to the other island. He tosses over a pair of leggings and boots as he lands, then takes Sapnap’s excess iron to craft the other pieces of iron for himself and Sapnap as the other man begins shooting at opposing teams. Their communication is near wordless, simple one- or two-word requests communicating all they need as they follow each other seamlessly into the main arena area, sealing off their entrance as they search the ring for other teams.

Sapnap, especially, seems to have shifted - instead of waiting for Dream to take the lead, he seems comfortable barrelling on forward on his own, trusting for Dream to follow his steps. Michael watches as the two of them easily work through the two lagging members of Orange, shooting through a gap in the wall to catch an unsuspecting Yellow player chased by the border. Michael ends up dying to an unlucky block of TNT placed on his head - curses out what appears to be Quig, bounding over to the other side of the arena, and follows Dream and Sapnap as they continue to fight their way through the competition.

It’s not perfect, for sure - Dream hesitates at a bad place a minute later, ending with Sapnap getting 2v1ed and exploding in a flash of red sparkles. Dream is similarly dispatched a few seconds after, and the three of them watch Quackity, caught in the crossfire of two other teams, before he also goes down.

“Good work, team,” Sapnap says as he appears, disoriented, in spectator mode, and they watch the remaining two teams battling in a rapidly shrinking border before Fruit falls as well, leaving Pink as the winners. “That was close- we’ve got this.” The conviction in his voice leaves no room for argument, and Michael, briefly, feels bad for anyone that stands in the way of it.

With the second round, they once again fall into rhythm without any major hiccups - someone tries to cut them off before entering the main arena, but are made quick work of by Sapnap’s relentless onslaught. As Michael watches, Dream seems to regain confidence as well, moving more to fight with Sapnap side by side instead of just playing support, tugging him back from a risky play and catching Punz in a nasty combo that does him in when he manages to slip past Sapnap.

The four of them end up in the final stand off in the middle, but end up getting caught too high up and killed by the border before they can jump down. Sapnap hisses at the narrow defeat, but the disappointment has hardly seemed to dim his determination - if anything, it seems to burn brighter.

“Last round,” he mutters, and Michael watches as Dream walks up to him, bumping him lightly with his shoulder.

“This is our game,” he says, a small smile appearing on his face, and Sapnap returns it with a fiery, blinding one of his own.

“Ours,” he says, and even just standing on the side, watching - Michael believes it.

Still, his concerns have yet to disappear - they linger in his mind as they jump into an adrenaline-filled last round, jumpy from excitement and victory just within their grasps. Dream is still more jittery than he should be, taking a second more than usual to react to fights, and his teamwork with Sapnap - while good - is still noticeably rusty. Michael’s lips thin at the memory of Dream backing away from Sapnap’s sword in Battle Box, hunched into himself, almost on the floor, with a clearly desperate edge to his expression - and no matter how he tries, he can’t quite manage to shake it off.

Unfortunately enough, the third round doesn’t bode well for them from the start - Quackity gets bowed off while bridging to the main arena, and upon entrance there they end up flanked, hard, by another team in a conflict that gets Michael killed within seconds. Sapnap and Dream book it to the other side of the arena, where they manage to work through a full team without too much trouble - but the next minute brings another half-team flying at them from the back, catching them in the middle of trying to recuperate. The two focus Dream in the middle of eating a steak, and Michael watches as Dream steps back instead of moving forward to fight, that same shade of fear making his muscles seize as he stands, stock still, watching helplessly as swords fly his way- Michael cries out, but there’s nothing he can do-

Between one blink and the next, Sapnap is standing in front of Dream, a snarl painting his features as he whirls through both players in a fury. Michael watches, awed, as his sword weaves and dances between the two attacking Dream, making quick work of them both until they’re no more than items scattered over the ground, then grabs Dream by the wrist and drags him up a nearby ladder onto the upper floor, plopping him by the wall and then backing off.

Sapnap stands back as Dream sits against the wall, breathing fast and labored, dropping to his knees with his hands in front of him, palms up, no weapons in hand. Michael watches, frantic, for the signs of any teams nearby - with Dream panicking and Sapnap’s back to the rest of the arena, they’d be easy pickings - but for once, luck seems to be on their side, because no one comes. Dream heaves a breath through his lungs, deep and shuddery - Sapnap watches, lips flat from concern, but doesn’t speak.

“You good to continue?” he asks, when Dream seems calm enough to recognize his surroundings, and Dream looks up at the words, jaw slack from shock and disorientation, before his head dips in a firm nod.

“Good,” Sapnap smiles, tight-lipped and fiercely determined, fiercely loyal, as he reaches out a hand that Dream moves to take. “Let’s go fuck them up, yeah? You and me, just like we used to.”

Michael watches, heart in his chest, as they stand together to face the rest of the competition, towering towards the middle and facing off with the remaining teams, watches as they move forwards through explosions and buckets of lava, coalescing onto the middle island, as they battle through the remaining opponents as one in a clean spiral of clashing blades and flying arrows, fighting with their backs to each other in the center of the arena. He watches as a well-placed fishing rod by Dream knocks their final opponent off the platform, leaving them in the middle, triumphant, as the only remaining team -

Watches, a brilliant, bubbling laugh in his chest as Dream and Sapnap take their spots in the middle of the arena, standing side by side as Sapnap raises Dream’s hand in victory, both laughing and cheering into the sky.

---

Their performance in Sky Battle manages to pull them to third - but second place still stands a few hundred coins away, and they watch anxiously as Parkour Tag is chosen as the last game and they are transported over the arena.

“Last game,” Sapnap calls, “We’ve got this, alright?”

He gets terse, short nods in return - it’ll be a close game, and even Michael is feeling the pressure. He breathes a soft, quiet breath through his teeth as they prepare, looking over to the opposite team as they choose their hunters and runners.

“Dream, you up to hunting first four?” Sapnap seems to be watching the effects of his words more, waiting for Dream’s agreement before moving forward, sliding into the position of leader easily when Dream seems to struggle. Dream nods and steps into the hunter’s box, lips pressed together, flat and focused, and Michael turns back to the arena to plan out his route.

Parkour, by far, is not his strong suit. It hadn’t been his strong suit during Parkour Warrior and sure as hell isn’t it now - he enjoys it well enough, but with the pressure of a hunter on him or the time creeping past and the competition standings hanging over his head like a guillotine, he’s prone to slipping up and he knows it. The map is full of dizzying, multi-colored structures and difficult jumps, the twists and turns of the arena making his head spin. Being good at parkour is more than being good at movement - it involves being able to make split-second decisions and execute them with no time to hesitate. Unfortunately, Michael isn’t particularly good at any of that, so Parkour Tag mostly just stresses him the hell out.

He sets out to the arena, listening for callouts over comms as he fumbles over the buildings. Halfway through the game, Dream’s voice comes through comms, quiet, focused.

“Gottem.”

“Nice, Dream,” Michael smiles, trying not to trip over a particularly hard jump, only to fall to being tagged in the back by the opposing team’s hunter - Ant, if he remembers right. “Sapnap and Q are still in- we’ve got this.”

Once again, each time, Dream races through the opposing team in seconds, seemingly going faster with each round. Michael has heard his reputation as a hunter before, but only now is he really appreciating the extent - the speed at which he manages to dispatch all three opponents is downright terrifying. They manage to win all four rounds, lingering around second place overall on the leaderboards, before Sapnap and Dream switch off for hunting.

With each round, Michael watches Dream in the lobby, watching as he tenses further in focus and determination and no small degree of fear, but it hadn’t been nearly as obvious in between rounds. Now, with him in the arena with Quackity and himself, Dream’s jumpiness is all that more palpable, adrenaline making him pace and jump in place from where he stands at the edge of the place. The glass lowers, and he explodes into motion, bounding on top of the nearest tower to wait for the hunter to come towards them.

Michael ends up caught first, early in the round, once again, and resolves to following Dream over the glass to watch his movements and make callouts for the hunter chasing behind him. Watching Dream move through the arena, dodging below fixtures and through tunnels and jumping from tower to tower with seemingly no regard for gravity pulling him down, it’s become all the more obvious that this is his element. He makes another hairpin turn around a pole, kicking himself up over a tower and then diving from it to a nearby building, landing on a ledge inside it, hands clutching the wall - Michael watches, quietly awed, as he outlasts the hunter, landing in small, panting breaths in the lobby.

“Great work,” he cheers, quiet, as Dream shakes off the last dregs of the adrenaline, all of them watching the leaderboard anxiously, “Just three more rounds, alright?”

The rounds that follow continue in much of the same vein - Dream, once he’s gotten started, seems near-impossible to chase down; Michael and Quackity provide support, distracting the hunter for as long as they can until they get tagged, but part of him wonders if it’s all even necessary. Dream flies from structure to structure seemingly unhindered by The Laws That Be, expression firm, if a little frantic, as he parkours his way through the arena. To their credit, the hunters chase, and several come pretty close - but Dream, worked up on adrenaline or anxiety or some twisted mix of the two, races over and around the buildings within the arena like his life depends on it.

It’s a surprisingly (if sickeningly) apt description - the skill in parkour is far from unacknowledged on Dream’s record; they all know his reputation with Parkour Warrior, all know that there are little that can match his skill as a traucer - but there’s something newly desperate in the way he runs, the muscles of his body tight and taut even in between rounds, expression permanently tight at the corners from fear. His movements, lacking in their usual fluidity, are made up with sheer speed and mad scrambles up walls that no one else seems to dare replicate. It’s concerning, even to Michael’s untrained eye, how frantic he seems the entire time, the flashes of expressions that he’ll direct towards the hunter like being caught by them will be his end, but- if anything, at least it’s effective.

Between his parkour and Sapnap’s own skill, they manage to dominate the other teams without much issue, and the bonuses from eliminating the other team first combined with Dream’s survival points each round land them a first place for the game by just a few hundred coins. The four of them watch with bated breaths for the event standings, whooping and cheering together when it shows the red rabbits in second -

“DODGEBOLT, BABY!” Quackity cheers, loudly, and the rest of them join him, laughing and screaming incoherently, “LET’S FUCKING GO!”

“LET’S FUCKING GO!” Sapnap punches the air with a loud, resolute whoop of joy, and Dream - still shaking off the jitters of his last round in Parkour Tag - soon joins in with a few cheers of his own.

Michael watches them all with a smile on his face as they cheer in victory - Dodgebolt has them against the Yellow Yaks, which will be a hard match up, but between Dream and Sapnap’s skill, if they all stay focused, they shouldn’t have any issue.

They’ve done it. They’ve made it to Dodgebolt - if they keep their heads in the game, then they should win. All he has to do is keep his head down a little longer, long enough to win them the game, long enough for them to go home with new crowns and new coins, long enough for him to go back to living his quaint little life in his quaint little house - going back to heckling the Warden at night and hanging with Bad and Puffy, working on builds and living life away from the rest and pretending that nothing is wrong. The server will go back to normal come tomorrow, and it will all be okay.

The smile slips off his face.

They’ve done it. And then they’ll go back to the SMP, and Dream might evade whatever immediate consequences come with losing, but there’s no evidence that whatever’s caused that heartstopping, devastating fear that has characterized his every move is going to stop. They’ll win, and they’ll go back to the SMP, and they’ll keep dying and fighting wars and keep pretending that the world they live in is normal; they’ll go back to the server, and Michael will go back in his house while Dream goes back into his cell directly across from it, still locked in a black box with no way in or out, no means of communication with anyone outside, locked away with the key thrown away for anything to happen with no one to know-

Michael glances over to Dream, to the tense edge of his shoulders that has never left for as long as the tournament has continued and long before. To the grey-faced, grey-eyed inhabitants of the SMP, coming to the Championships with sealed lips and a shared determination to never reveal that anything is wrong, to pretend that things are normal and move on.

Michael’s hands clench into fists at his side, then unclench, the helplessness cutting through his excitement like a splash of cold water straight through his chest. They’ll win the Championship, and then what? They’ll go back to the server, and then what?

He looks up at the sky, avoiding the eyes of the rest of his team as they are teleported to the arena. Around him, nothing comes in reply.

---

“Shit-”

Sapnap disappears in a flourish of red particles, and Michael winces as Dream picks up the arrow he left behind, biting his lip as he watches the opposite side maneuver on the ice.

Both of Dream’s shots hit true, and Michael switches to dodging over the ice as the opposing team begins to shoot. His mind is still buzzing with uncertainty, questions whirling around his skull and making his head spin, the reminder to just let things be raging against the anxiety that has wormed its way deep into his bones for the better part of the day. His performance has fallen a bit as a result, and they’re tied, 2-2, for the last round of Dodgebolt against Yellow - winner takes all.

He doesn’t know what to do. He wants to tell, but he wants to fall back into the background. He wants to make a difference, but also wants nothing more than to go on pretending that everything is fine. It would be so, so easy to move on and wash his hands of the whole affair - it’s not like anyone else will know, only himself and the guilt that he’s sure will haunt him to remind him of his failures. Is there even anything he can do? He’s no genius at combat, or parkour, or strategy- all he has are his eyes, his ability to see what the hell is happening with no means to change any of it.

An arrow whizzes towards him, too low to hit, and falls to the ice by his feet. Michael feels it plop into his inventory as he runs past it, shivering slightly from the cold or adrenaline or some mix of the two - not that he can really tell. The other team still has an arrow, the gleaming arrowhead catching the light as the person shooting - Jack, it looks like - moves it from one side to the other, looking for someone to aim. Michael lets the arrow into his hand, feeling its weight.

A sudden shock of clarity.

He staggers back and nearly trips over his own feet, feeling relief rock his body when he manages to catch his balance - his eyes rake over the rest of his team, still dodging over the ice, completely focused on the opposing side. He worries his lip between his teeth - it’s a risk. It’s a hell of a risk, and if he messes up - they’re fucked. They’re more than fucked. There’s a good chance that this does more harm than good, a good chance that it won’t do anything at all.

Michael takes a deep breath, and nocks his arrow.

With his bow pointed to the floor, he doesn’t think anyone’s noticed yet - especially the rest of his team, gazes still trained over the centerline to the other side of the arena. Michael plants his feet, raises his bow, aims - he’s standing still, too still, and he can already see Jack swinging the bow towards him from the corner of his eye, preparing to let the arrow fly directly at him. That’s fine. It doesn’t matter.

Keep your head down.

Michael lets go, and Quackity manages to turn just in time to see the arrow hit him between his eyes.

Not this time.

Michael just manages a wicked, satisfied smirk before the world disappears in a flash of red.

---

“What the hell was that?”

Michael teleports into the middle of the MCC main lobby, finding Quackity already mid-yell in front of the podium, where the Yellow Yaks have taken their places as the winners of the Championships, new, shining crowns on their heads as they greet the crowd with smiles and cheers. Michael turns to where the rest of the team has gathered in the corner, Quackity hissing angrily at Dream, curled into himself against the fence.

“I- I-”

“You lost us the fucking game, that’s what you did,” Quackity grabs him by the arm, rage painting his features as he yanks Dream closer to him, ignoring the other’s panicked yell at the proximity and flailing to get away. “What the fuck- you had both the arrows. How the fuck did you miss that?”

“Back the hell off, Quackity.”

Michael steps forward, bodily shoving Quackity out of the way - Dream’s head rises just enough for the two eyes painted on his mask to look above where they’d been hidden behind his arms, though Michael’s far too lost in his own anger to pay any mind to him at the moment. Quackity turns his furious direction towards Michael, only seeming to get angrier as he meets his eyes.

“Oh, fuck off, Michael- you-” he rakes a hand through his hair, “You fucking- we fucking lost because of you, you know that? We had that! We were going to win that, you fucker-”

“And then what, Quackity?” The words Michael had been pushing back the entire day come forth, mixed with his simmering anxiety and muffled anger that he’d been forced to push down, game after game after game, one bubbling mess of emotion underscoring his tone and making Quackity rear back, “Then you’ll go back the SMP and pretend that everything’s fine and dandy? Go back to your shiny little country with a shiny new coin, beat up Dream a few times to work off the adrenaline because, hey, it’s not like anyone else is gonna know if he’s black and blue inside of that shitstain of a prison, is that right?”

The flash of panic that makes its way over Quackity’s face is more than enough to confirm the worst of Michael’s assumptions, and the rage that has made a home in his chest only burns hotter.

“What- what the fuck did he say?” Quackity barely manages to catch onto his tone, pressing harder with narrowed eyes and a snarl, “He’s lying, you fucking idiot, that’s all he ever fucking does-”

“He’s not told me shit,” Michael presses forward, forcefully pushing Quackity away from Dream, who is cowering from both of them behind him, “But you would know a hell of a lot about that, wouldn’t you Quackity?”

“I have no fuckin’ clue what you’re on about, pal,” Quackity shakes his head, hair whipping past his eyes, “And I’d recommend you shut your fucking mouth before you go around hurling baseless accusations- I could have you sued for defamation, you know-”

“Oh, we’re talking law, now? Fine! We’ll talk legalities- how about we start with that casino of yours and work from there?”

Sapnap moves over, quiet thus far as he watched from the sidelines, and Michael watches as Quackity relaxes, minisculely, at his approach - only to tense further when Sapnap presses a hand to his shoulder, meeting his eyes with blazing eyes staring right at his.

“Q,” Sapnap says, voice uncharacteristically serious, “tell the truth, now- what did you do?”

Quackity laughs - it sounds unsure, even in Michael’s ears, “Sapnap? You can’t tell me you believe-” he waves his hands frantically, “this- this fucking asshole, now, do you hear him? He sounds- he’s literally out of his fucking mind-”

Sapnap shakes his head, firm. “Quackity, I’ll need you to cut the bullshit. What did you do?”

“He’s backing up Dream, Sapnap,” Quackity focuses his gaze on Sapnap, something creeping up in his tone, sweet and cloying despite the bitter tone, that Michael can’t quite recognize, “You know what Dream is like- he pulled the same shit with you, remember? You and George? Tommy?” He waves a hand at Dream, who ducks down further at the attention, “He hasn’t changed, man! He’s still pulling the same bullshit, still manipulating people for the hell of it- you know, the exact same thing he did to you? Don’t fall for that again, man.”

“I-” Sapnap seems to hesitate, conflict warring over his features.

“Look at me, Sap - you know what Dream’s like. He pretends to be your friend, makes up some stupid bullshit to justify his shit - Michael hasn’t been around for as long, not like the two of us, remember? He doesn’t know.” Quackity brings his hand to Sapnap’s own, ignoring Michael’s protests as he laces their fingers together, “I care about you, Sap. All of this- I’m just worried that he’ll end up manipulating you again. I’m just trying to protect you.”

“...liar.”

“What?”

Sapnap steps back, wrenching his hand out of Quackity’s own. His expression, out of what Michael can see from the sliver of his face that is facing him, is stormy with fury and no small amount of regret - Quackity steps back, unease finally beginning to flicker in the corners of his self-satisfied expression as Sapnap stares him down.

“You’re a liar, Quackity.” Sapnap draws himself up. “Now, I’m asking this for the last time- what did you do?”

Quackity’s expression stutters, falls, as Sapnap stands back next to Michael, the two of them between him and Dream. His eyes flick between their faces, then to Dream, then back again, frown deepening with every pass he makes between the three of them. Michael keeps his arms crossed in front of his chest, feeling his muscles tense with every second of silence that ticks by, Quackity seeming to grow more and more angry and tense under their scrutiny and unforgiving stances-

-a second passes, and he throws himself forward.

“Quackity!”

Michael only manages to throw himself out of the way of the man barrelling towards him just in time - too late, he realizes that he wasn’t Quackity’s intended target. He tackles Dream to the ground, pinning the taller man underneath himself onto the ground in a rough thump that seems to knock all the air out of him. Dream immediately begins to thrash aimlessly, jaw going slack in panic as Quackity levels his arm against his neck, going still as Quackity presses harder against his windpipe. Michael is only barely close enough to pick up what he says over the sound of the surrounding screaming, Sapnap rushing forward to pull Quackity off to no avail-

“-make what I did two weeks ago look like a fucking joke when we get back, going to make you wish you fucking died-”

The world explodes into white.

When Michael’s vision clears, he’s face to face to the stony face of one of the MCC admins, their status displayed by the proud red [Admin] by their nametags and the fact that they’re floating several inches off the fucking floor. He backs away, strangely winded - probably from the panic or adrenaline or yelling or, more accurately, all three, as Quackity is pulled back effortlessly by an admin, easily caging his flailing limbs with a snap of code as he is frozen into place - and Michael whoops.

“LET’S GO!”

(The arrow hits Michael in the shoulder, and he disappears in a flash of red - only instead of going to his usual place above the Dodgebolt arena, standing with the other competitors, he finds himself teleported in front of a dizzying array of screens and buttons, too many to have any idea where they connect and how they work. Michael turns to meet the faces of the MCC Admins, each one looking at him with odd, concerned expressions and furrowed brows.

“You shot your teammate,” one says - Noxite - and Michael nods to concede the point, not quite finding the words to speak. “Why?”

“If you had such a big issue with the teams, you could’ve just talked to Scott,” another one pipes up from the back, “I’m sure we could’ve worked something out.”

“I know, I know,” Michael runs his hand through his hair, both relieved at the plan working better than he could’ve ever fucking imagined and suddenly lost for words in front of the admins, each one looking at him with their full attention. Every nerve in his body rails against the scrutiny, reminds him to pretend that nothing is wrong - but it’s too late to pretend, now. It’s been too late for a long, long time.

He remembers Dream, looking away all competition, voice dead and lacking all of its former vitality - remembers Puffy, hair a little greyer from stress, grief painting her face whenever she thought anyone wasn’t looking - remembers Bad, hands still shaking despite his attempts to hide it - the prison, looming on the horizon, unbeatable, impenetrable - himself, helpless, for all this time, to do anything but watch and wait. Until now. He takes a deep breath, steels himself-

“Something’s wrong with Dream.”)

“Thank you for your information, Michael,” Noxite smiles at him, and relief throws itself through his system so fast that it makes him dizzy- “We’ll handle this from here. Good job.”

“Holy shit- when did you get time to contact the fucking admins, Michael?”

Michael ignores the clamor around him as the lobby bursts into activity and people talking over each other, each one probably trying to figure out what the hell just happened, ignores Sapnap muttering, awed, from beside him, to move towards Dream, still sprawled out over the floor. There’s an admin by him, standing by to seemingly keep the crowd away but not engaging with Dream directly, and Michael ducks by them to kneel down by Dream and meet his gaze.

“Hey,” Michael smiles, still shaking from the leftover adrenaline as he presses his hands to the ground to try and hide it, “We’ve got you. It’s over- Quackity’s gone. You’re safe now.”

“Michael?” Dream’s voice is so damn small when his head twists to look over, hair having fallen largely fallen out of his ponytail to land in wisps all around his face. “You- how-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Michael shushes him, chest twisting painfully. “It’s alright.”

“...I don’t feel so good.”

Dream coughs harshly, and Michael quickly maneuvers him to a sitting position as his shoulders shake with another one, hand flying to his mouth as he is wracked with loud, wet-sounding coughs. Concern wells up in his throat, watching as Dream shakes with more coughing, nearly choking as he curls into himself, muscles tense. After what feels like an eternity, he pulls his hand back, and Michael gasps at the sight.

“Dream-”

There’s blood, and a lot of it - mixed with the saliva in his palm, shiny and stringy over the planes of his hand, dribbling past his lips and down his chin. His teeth are similarly stained red when his mouth opens slightly, stance wobbling before he collapses altogether against Michael’s body - Michael can barely hear himself shouting for a medic as Dream heaves a rattling, wet sounding breath into his shoulder.

“Th’ts not g’d,” he mumbles, quiet, before going completely limp.

---

When you first get strong enough to go to the Nether and collect blaze rods and brew potions for the first time, the first thing that gets beaten into your head forwards, backwards, left, right, and every way in between is that health and regen aren’t a replacement for actual recovery. Instant health pots are famous for their tendency to heal everything affected to the same degree - which is bad when you have a particularly deep injury, as it’ll often finish healing it near the surface while the injury persists underneath. Regen pots tend to be better at that front, but even they cannot completely fix a serious injury - the two can only act as a temporary, emergency fix for severe wounds, often being an invaluable resource to stop the worst of the bleeding and hold everything together for long enough to bring someone to proper medical attention.

Unfortunately, when someone tries to use health pots and regens to completely bypass the time and rest needed for the body to properly heal itself and recover, what usually ends up happening is internal injuries - not completely healed by the potions alone - continue to be jostled and irritated, which can lead to further, worse, problems with internal bleeding and bones shifting out of place if they’ve been broken, which can then pierce through muscle and organ tissue - to be honest, Michael was never the best with all the medical stuff, and he’s half-sure that the horror stories he’s heard were exaggerated to beat it into his head never to be an idiot that thinks that potions can solve everything, but either way, he’s never tested his luck with the things.

Unfortunately, Dream doesn’t seem to have done the same, as the entire day’s worth of intense activity, between practices and MCC itself, were more than enough to fuck over the healing effects of whatever health potions he apparently downed before coming to the Championships. From what Michael has heard, it got a little harried after he was first brought into the hospital, but he’s apparently stabilized since - recovery will be slow, both physically and mentally, but at least he’s out of that damn prison to actually start on that path.

“Simply put, your teammate is a bit of an idiot,” Scott tells him when he finally catches him in the waiting room, hair fluffed up at the sides from where he’s evidently messed it up in Admin-related stress. “But he should be alright now, with proper medical attention and lots of rest - make sure to tell him to actually rest, will ya? No more parkouring for him - he can wait until after he’s out of the hospital to show us all how it’s done.”

Michael laughs, relief settling into his chest, “Thanks, Scott.” He directs a playfully accusing look towards the other, a grin tugging at his lips, “but you know, he’s only my teammate because you made it that way. Kinda sounds like your own fault there..”

“Oh, quiet, you.” Scott laughs- he looks stressed, and Michael feels a twinge of sympathy. The administrative side of things after his whole stunt at Dodgebolt, and then especially with what happened in the main lobby, must be an absolute nightmare. “Anyway, I need to go back - Admin meeting,” he shakes his head, already looking at his comm. “You should go see Dream, by the way. I think he’s awake.”

“Thanks for everything, Scott.”

Scott smiles at him, soft, sincere. “Go see your friend.”

He disappears in a flash of white light, teleporting away, and Michael looks at the empty space where he stood for a few seconds before standing up out of his chair to move towards the door. He hesitates at it for a second, hand on the doorknob but not yet turning it to the side - it’s suddenly awkward, without the pressure of the competition at his back and the relentless questions of what he should do. He doesn’t even know if Dream knows what happened, or if he’ll be happy with him - for all he knows, Dream was the one who started the whole ‘don’t tell the Championships what happens in the server’ deal. His teeth catch on his lip as he stands, lost in thought, at the door.

Well. Here goes nothing.

He eases the door open, getting a glimpse inside the room - it’s white, clean-looking, the smell of disinfectant heavy in the air. There’s a bed in the middle of the room, a chair on the side with his Championships clothing and what appears to be some sort of padded body armor laid over the cushions. Dream, as expected, is lying down in the bed, unmoving; for a second, Michael thinks he’s sleeping, before he suddenly twists his head over to look at him.

“Michael?”

“Hey,” Michael smiles, moving into the room and closing the door behind him. For the first time today, Dream’s face isn’t masked, a glimpse of it visible behind him on the dresser by the bed. He blinks up at him owlishly, eyes wide and green, looking even bigger combined with the hollow planes of his cheeks, overlaid by pale, slightly raised scars. “How are you feeling, man?”

“Um-” Dream tries to pull himself up, visibly struggling, and Michael rolls his eyes as he hurries over to help raise the back of the cot because you’re supposed to be resting, Dream, just let the fancy bed do its job, and settles back with an odd look on his face as Michael pulls over a chair. “Good? I think? I mean-” he flails his hands a bit, “this is weird. And I kind of hate this gown- but um. Yeah.”

“That’s fair,” Michael laughs, and Dream huffs a small laugh out of his own, settling back into his pillow. He looks strangely small, with all the layers stripped away, frail and skinny against the sheets. His skin isn’t that same paper-white shade it had been when he collapsed in the middle of the fucking lobby, but it’s still pale enough to be vaguely worrying, especially combined with the IV and other wires hooked up to him.

“Apparently, I’m dehydrated,” Dream drawls when he catches Michael staring at the IV, making a small, frustrated sound through his teeth as Michael turns to look at him, “figures, I guess, but still sucks. I hate needles.”

“Ouch,” Michael winces in sympathy, “yeah, those don’t look that fun.” Dream smiles up at him, before his expression shutters, dulls, and he looks away, not meeting his eyes. The sight of it makes Michael frown, quiet, remembering the way he’d drawn back from them all over and over again throughout the day - that fear and trauma won’t go away in a day, but it hurts all that much more to see his face as panic flashes across it and he pulls back, gaze carefully detached.

“Dream?” Michael moves closer, but is careful not to make contact, “you alright?”

“Hmm?” Dream directs another small, tight smile his way, strained at the corners as his eyes flick away to the floor once again, “yeah- I’m- I’m fine.”

Michael sighs, but decides not to push it. “Have you done anything else here, yet?”

Dream shakes his head. “No- I think that someone’s going to bring food over soon, I’m not sure. Not really hungry,” he mutters, half to himself, and Michael tamps down the concern that wells up in protest, “But we’ll see, I guess.”

“That’s good,” Michael nods, and Dream looks up at him, expression startlingly unsure.

“Um- do you know?” He wrings his hands together, eyes darting across the room nervously before flicking over Michaels’ face, and Michael tries to make himself look as calm and comfortable as possible, “I mean- do you know what’s going on with- everyone?”

Ah. Michael winces internally- he probably should’ve expected this question, but in the fallout of what happened in the lobby and Dream, you know, passing out in his arms, he ended up brushing off or ignoring a lot of the chaos that resulted. He wracks his head for snippets of information that he’d seen in his communicator and from visitors to the waiting room, including people that had been there with him that had been pulled for questioning and meetings, Tommy’s expletive-filled yelling from the lobby still ringing in his head.

“Um- I think that they’ve got a team of moderators pulled up to investigate the server, figure out what’s been going on,” Michael ticks names off on his hands, mentally going through the list of people that he’s been given information on, “They have Quackity in custody, I think, for the moment- they’re still waiting for more information on what to do with him, but they’ve got a whole MCC lobby’s worth of witnesses that saw him assault you so far, if you plan on pressing charges and stuff- um- Sapnap got pulled for questioning, nothing too major right now, I think that they’re going through the other server members that were attending the Championships for the moment.”

“Are they- putting them in jail?” Dream’s voice sounds slightly tinny despite his forced calm, arms crossed in front of him, and Michael shakes his head firmly.

“No- legal stuff between servers is weird, and I think they’re holding off on anything like that for now. Quackity’s just there at the moment because of assault charges on the MCC server - stuff in the SMP is still technically outside of their jurisdiction.” Dream visibly relaxes, and Michael smiles thinly, “It’ll be rough for a few weeks as they collect evidence and figure out what to do, but for now, they’re just focusing on recovery - giving people medical attention if they need it, lining up therapists,” he laughs, quietly, “lots of therapists.”

Dream hums, looking away. The corners of his mouth fall, eyes fluttering shut as he breathes a shuddery sigh through his lips.

“I- never wanted it to get this bad,” he opens his eyes, looking down at his hands, lip slightly trembling, “I don’t- I don’t know where it all went wrong.”

“Hey,” Michael slides closer, ducking to meet Dream’s eyes with a soft smile. “You’re not alone anymore, alright? You don’t have to fix it all by yourself. Focus on yourself, on recovering.”

Dream hesitates, breath seeming caught in his throat, wide green eyes staring into Michael’s own, before ducking his head to look away with a slight nod. Michael leans back in his chair, watching as Dream turns to the side, curling in on himself slightly with a small wince, eyes fixed on the window.

“Didn’t think I was going to see the sun again,” Dream says after a while, gaze still trained behind the glass to where the sun is slowly setting, rays of sunlight streaming past the slits in the blinds and casting glowing stripes of honey-gold throughout the room and over Dream’s face. Michael feels something cold press against the back of his throat, the quiet admission making air stutter in his lungs at the image of Dream, alone, huddled in the middle of an obsidian box for months and months and months, never knowing if he’d see anything other than the same black walls for the rest of his life.

“You’re not there, anymore. You’re safe now.”

Dream doesn’t reply, continuing to look out the window silently, breathing slowly as he moves his hand through a sunbeam, watching the way it streams between his fingers and warms his skin, seeming mesmerized by its soft glow.

“Michael?” Dream looks over, and Michael feels the air punched out of his lungs at the soft, disbelieving sincerity held within his expression, the fearful edges for once pulled back far enough for the light to catch the quiet, heartfelt appreciation gathered in the slight quirk of his lips and downward slope of his eyes. He looks away a second after, a band of light cutting across his face and landing over the bridge of his nose, smile still on his face, voice almost too quiet to make out. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Michael feels his own smile widen, looking out the window himself- it really is a beautiful sunset. “What are friends for?”

#-> my writing #my writing :D #c!Quackity critical #tw trauma #tw abuse #tw torture #tw panic attack #tw manipulation #tw gaslighting #tw needles #tw hospitals #tw emotional distress #pandora's vault #prison arc #god this was so fun #hope you all enjoy !!#long post

332 notes · View notes

divine-mistake · 3 years

Text

'till death blooms us art

Summary: You’d rather die loving him than never getting to see the sun ever again.

(“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. This number is not available. At the tone, please record your message.”)

Characters: Sam Wilson/Plus-sized Reader

Warnings: 18+ (no smut), strong language, Hanahaki AU, angst with a happy ending, weight insecurity, allusions to eating disorders, talk about death, blood, past domestic abuse and trauma, gun violence, original male character, book quotes, anxiety

Word Count: 12796

A/N: Thank you for reading! This fic won the vote during my 500 follower celebration and it's finally out now! This story has a lot of meaning for me, due to it being a bit of a metaphor for disorderly eating. I know that will make some people uncomfortable, but as someone who has struggled for a long time, I want to talk more openly about this kind of thing. Anyway, thanks so much for sticking with me and I hope you enjoy!

main masterlist | AO3 | playlist by @tripleyeeet

—STUBBORN WEEDS—

They are everywhere—covering the space of the sitting room like an overgrown garden made of glass and paint, canvas and pages torn from old waterlogged books, stained mugs filled with decaying brushes. Wanda walks through your room like it’s a maze, her fingers trailing over the air but never touching the art. She’s pretending she’s in a museum, or a gallery, or something fancier than what you could ever appear in, but a twinge of something akin to warmth stabs through your heart at the thought.

“These are incredible,” she says, not looking at you. “How do you do it?”

With a shrug, you bend down and pick up one of the canvasses from the floor, holding it out to look at it.

“I don’t know,” you lie.

White space in the shape of flowers, uneven and missing petals here and there, is outlined in streaks of paint that go every direction, in every different shade, hard edges and soft, blurred lines and covering the entirety of the canvas except for those spaces where flowers once sat, pinned to the medium.

“They are beautiful,” Wanda says.

Your nail sneaks under one of the dried chunks of acrylic and you chip it—a fleck of ultramarine blue falls from the painting.

When you turn, Wanda studies a different piece in careful hands. It’s a glass case, trimmed with shitty, shaky lines of gold you painted on a whim. But inside, between the thick panes, dried flowers painted over are encased in eternity, arranged to match their exact placements on the canvas where your brushes stroked life onto them, around them, through them. Two perfect pieces that once belonged together, separated like an act of Adam against his God.

Maybe they were meant to be together, but no one will ever know their story.

“They’re amateur,” you tell her, laughing. “I’m not much of an artist. It’s just for fun.”

She smiles at you, placing the glass piece down. “You have a talent.”

Wanda takes another turn about the room, another circuit, another spin. She looks at every piece in such focus, taking in every single detail, fingers stretching and curling as if she wants to caress the dried flowers, the dried paint, and feel their meaning. You wonder what she would say if she could read their minds—the art you’ve made. Would your pieces tell her the true meaning behind their existence? Or maybe they would laugh, or cry, or howl in pain.

But Wanda only stares, at the paintings and at you, a small smile on her face like she knows something you don’t. Like she’s keeping a secret. Is she keeping the secrets that the flowers have whispered to her when you weren’t looking?

“What inspired them?” she asks, the very tip of her nail tracing a different glass box filled with dyed petals reconstructed into a larger artificial flower, protected by its own display.

You wring your hands together. “I like flowers.”

She laughs. “That’s obvious. But what makes them special enough to paint? To—To make such lovely art out of?”

Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you place the small canvas you’d been holding back on the side table, crossing the room to your bookshelf. Your fingertip finds the spine of a hardcover book you’re too familiar with, pulling it out and into your awaiting hands. Sheets of paper, a little bent and crooked, stick out of the pages.

You crack it open, the dulling white petals of a daisy pressed flat between the crackling spine fluttering from between the black inked words, then fall to the floor at your feet.

“The Devil’s hand directs our every move,” you read. “The things we loathed become the things we love.”

Wanda stares at you as you fiddle with the book, tracing the words of the cover.

“Les Fleurs du Mal,” you say. “The Flowers of Evil.”

Gently and without word, she bows at your feet and picks up the drying daisy, cradling it in her pale hands, but you don’t have the strength to take it from her.

(“Hey there darlin’, it’s just me. I had to run some errands this morning, y’know how it is, so I’m out of the Tower right now. I was just wondering if you needed anything while I was out. Anything—really, anything at all. Even breakfast, or maybe a latte? Just a little pick-me-up. Well, give me a call back if you need anything. If not, I’ll be back soon. See ya.”)

—BETTER TOGETHER—

“Steven Grant,” you say his name like a curse, shaking your head. “This is why you spend three hours a day in the gym.”

Too busy shoving the first bite of his first hoagie into his mouth, Steve doesn’t reply. You roll your eyes, but the smile on your lips gives you away. When he’s finally swallowed, wiping crumbs from his mouth, he looks a little indignant.

“Are you calling me fat?”

“Well, you would be if you didn’t have that serum running through you.”

He frowns, brows furrowed, a little confusion on his face. “I thought it was because I work out three hours a day. And I’ll have you know—”

“—you work out six hours a day between your morning runs and training, I know, I know. I’ve heard it all before Steve.” You groan at the thought. “It’s like it’s your job.”

“It is my job. Saving the world and all that.”

“Okay, you really need to let America know that it’s giving you a complex, ‘cause if I hear one more thing about you saving the world, I think I’m going to scream.”

He shrugs, taking another gigantic bite out of his sandwich. Scraps of shredded lettuce fall out from between the buns and litter his plate. You pick at your own, pulling uneven pieces of sliced onion and stray pickles from the hoagie, content to sit and stare at it instead of eating.

Food is good. You brush the grainy crumbs of bread from your fingers. Food is good, but you just aren’t hungry. And you don’t work out three hours a day. Maybe you should start. Your body feels like a balloon with all your insides threatening to come up in a retch and choke you. Food is good. Food is good. You just have to pick up the sandwich and eat it.

Fingers shaking, you take the sub in your hand and stare at the corner where you mean to take the first bite.

“You good?”

Steve, still chewing, looks at you with concern clear in his crystal blues and it makes you put your food back down on the plate. Instead, you busy yourself with another sip of your water, nodding at him.

“Yeah. We can’t all be Steve Rogers, demolishing two hoagies in less than two seconds, y’know.” You throw in a snort, trying to sound nonchalant. “Wipe your mouth, Captain. You’ve got mayo on your cheek.”

He doesn’t, but him grabbing a napkin to embarrassedly wipe a nonexistent condiment from his face gives you enough time to pick your sandwich back up and contemplate taking the first bite. You’ve just gotta start with the first bite and the rest will go down.

But you aren’t hungry. How can you be hungry when you’re already so full? Stuffed, even. There isn’t room in your insides. All your organs are bursting. It’s so painful sometimes, the expanding of your skin to accommodate. Waves of sickness roll through you, spreading. Your stomach is stretched, bloated, filled with all the swallowed—

“What are you doin’ to my girl, huh Steve?”

The sound of his voice alone makes the ache inside of you dissipate, the nausea escapes from your throat, the anxiety twitching through your hands steadies. Your head perks up, shoulders rolling back as your entire body relaxes, and you look behind you.

And there, dressed in a tight blue polo and a pair of pants clinging to his legs like they were made for him, the very angel who blessed you, the devil who cursed you, the god of the fucking sun and everything it could ever touch, stands before you with a smile saved just for you.

Sam Wilson.

His dark eyes are piercing, like he’s trying to peel back the layers of your skin to see underneath, as he shoves his hands in his pockets and grins with all his teeth.

“Hey honey,” he says—simply and easily and not serious. Never serious.

Your lungs burn. Your mouth feels too dry to answer him.

“Oh, your girl?” Steve asks him, brows a little too furrowed to be joking. “When did she become your girl?”

Sam shrugs, walking toward the empty seat next to you, placing his hand on the back of your chair so dangerously close to your body that it makes you pull in a deep breath. His thumb could brush against the fabric of your shirt, run along the seam of your spine. And, goddamn, it should be illegal for him to look so casual and so unbothered while still looking that handsome.

Like this, you can smell the spice in his cologne, a powerful mix of something you’re sure is designed to drive you crazy.

He looks down at you, still hovering over where you sit, and throws a wink your way that brings heat to the surface of your cheeks.

“Aw, she’s always been my girl, ain’t that right? Tell him, darlin’.”

You stare at Sam for one second too long, breaking away to gaze down at your uneaten sandwich again. With every flutter that Sam sends down your stomach, the heaviness inside it seems to fade away. Your fullness is replaced by a familiar hunger—the rawness of your throat waning as a burning itch takes over. A cough is threatening to bubble up. You choke it back, smiling instead.

“He’s right, Stevie,” you say all bright and cheery again.

Steve meets your eyes with a stony gaze, unreadable, his blue eyes looking gray in the light. Beside you, Sam throws himself down in one of the chairs and pulls up to the table, hand still sitting on the back of your seat. His knees are spread a little wide, thigh resting against yours.

It’s so innocent but your brain thinks it’s so intimate. A lie. A lie.

In the end, Steve relaxes back, his eyebrows lifting as he watches the scene unfold in front of him. He tosses one of the sticky plastic menus toward Sam, nodding at it.

“Order up, man,” Steve says, his tone more neutral than you think you’ve ever heard it in regards to Sam. “But I’m not paying for yours. You’re on your own.��

At that, Sam laughs, full and robust with his face up to the ceiling. He rocks back in his chair, shaking his head, and he looks so beautiful even in the shitty sub shop that Steve drags you to for lunch every other week that it makes you ache and your lungs contract in an attempt to cough.

You swallow it back again, trying to even out your breathing. The itch in your throat is so bad that you almost pick up your sandwich to eat again, but your hand passes it up to take another few sips of your water. It’s cool, clear, refreshing—but it can’t make the tickle of the cough go away.

“So,” Sam starts once he’s finished ordering his own hoagie, “how’s that apartment hunting going? Found anything good yet?”

A frown forms, heavy, on your lips. You pick off a flaking piece of bread from your sandwich, watching it turn to crumbs underneath your fingers.

“It’s going,” you say, but anyone who ever responds to a question of how’s it going with it’s going is absolutely lying and it is absolutely not going—and maybe Sam knows that, or maybe Steve does, or hell, maybe they both do but it makes you look weak to admit that things aren’t going so well out loud.

And you—you can’t admit the truth, so it’s just better to lie about it.

You don’t want to leave the Tower.

“It’s going, huh?” Sam asks, his tone proving that he can see right through you. “You need help looking at some places or something?”

“Well—”

“You know,” he barrels through your words as if they are nothing, “I think I actually know a realtor around here. Maybe he can get you some leads on rentals or something. I could make some calls for you, honey.”

It’s not supposed to—Sam only means well, he always does, always trying to do so much for people—but it hurts to hear. Because you don’t hear him saying that he’s trying to help you out. You hear him saying he doesn’t want you around the Tower anymore.

Because, well, why would he want you there?

To him, you’re just an outsider. A girl who doesn’t belong. Someone who daydreams and doodles flowers on every surface as soon as she thinks of him. And you always think of him.

Before you can think about it, your hand flies to your mouth reflexively to hold back a cough. Instantly, Sam’s leaning closer and that damned hand of his falls soft against your back.

“You okay?”

There’s barely a moment for you to nod, signaling that you’re fine, before Steve’s got on his game face, all hard lines and furrowed brows and thin lips pressed tightly together.

“Hey,” he says, grabbing Sam’s attention. “She’s allowed to stay as long as she wants, alright? The Tower is her home now, too. So there isn’t a rush for her to find a place unless she wants to leave.”

The passion and care in Steve’s voice is strong, almost so overpowering it’s oppressive, and something rises up from within you and threatens to send salty tears careening down your cheeks if you don’t blink them away.

Sam raises his hands in front of him dramatically. “Okay, okay, I get it. I wasn’t trying to run her off or anything, just wanted to lend a hand if I could. Damn, Steve.”

Something changes at the table, then. It’s like a fog, thick and cloying, falls over the three of you and keeps you lethargic—so much so that the only words spoken in the next few awkward minutes are Sam’s thanks when the waiter brings his sandwich by.

You still haven’t even touched yours, and you hope it seems like you’re just waiting for Sam to get his, because Steve’s tearing into his second and by the looks of the mustard dripping down his fingers messily, he’ll be done any minute now.

But as you prop your head up on the table, leaning on your elbow boredly, Sam nudges his leg into yours to grab your attention. When you turn to look at him, he’s got that grin again, all pearly and white with the little crooked gap you think you could stare at forever as long as it meant he was smiling and laughing and happy.

“You gonna eat, girl?” Sam picks his sub up in his hand and gestures at you to do the same. God, he makes you dizzy just by talking. The butterflies in your belly are fighting tooth and nail against your organs, trying to take up all the space, but they aren’t really butterflies. The soft monsters in your stomach leave a taste on your tongue you can’t explain.

“Oh.” You mimic his movement and then Sam toasts his hoagie against yours with a chuckle.

“First bite,” he says, and there’s no thought in your head or balloon in your stomach and no bloated skin to make you second guess yourself.

You follow Sam, sinking your teeth into the bread of your sandwich, and its flavor explodes over your tongue just enough to take away all the bitter, floral, fragrant taste of the daisies that are building up in your stomach, their petals choking you out, downy fluttering things inside you.

(“Hey girl, it’s me. I couldn’t find you anywhere—where you at? I was coming to see if you wanted to grab a bite with me for lunch, maybe at that little Italian place you like to go to around the corner? Or maybe sushi or something? Been a while since I got to go out for lunch, so I thought I’d ask, but I guess you’re busy right now. I’ll catch you later, darlin’. Enjoy your lunch.”)

—NEW BEGINNINGS—

You’ve got to call him. You have to. You have no choice anymore.

Danny is on the other side of the locked door, his fist pounding on the wood and threatening to cave it in from the repeated force. The sound is louder than it should be, really, echoing off the tile of the bathroom you’ve barricaded yourself inside. He’s shouting above the sound.

“You fucking bitch. I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna fucking kill you. You lied to me? What else are you lying about, huh? You fucking whore. I took you in, I gave you a home, I gave you everything. Fucking fat slut—how many other guys are you sleeping with, huh?”

None, you had answered earlier when he was questioning you in your shared bedroom, his fist tight around your soft arm and squeezing so hard it made you want to scream. None.

But that wasn’t the answer Danny was looking for. And, well, once he threw you onto the ground and stomped to the dresser, clothes strewn around the room as he furiously ripped through it until he found the shiny black firearm you didn’t know he had, you were gone.

But there was only one place to go and that was the bathroom.

Now, trapped inside, you know you have no choice. You have to call him—the man from the coffee shop you’ve been going to regularly for a few months. The man who noticed the bruises Danny always left on you after a rough night. The man who pressed and pried and tried to do anything to get you to open up to him even as you refused over and over again. The man who put his number in your phone because he wanted you to call him if you ever needed him, not because he was a hero, but because he was worried about you.

You press the number two on speed dial. The phone rings.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Steve?” Your voice is nothing but a sob. “Steve, you were right.”

He doesn’t miss a beat, but you hear the rustle of clothes and a jingle of keys on the other side beyond the static, a sound that makes you almost cry with relief or hope or maybe just stress.

“Hold on,” he tells you. “FRIDAY is pulling up your address. I’ll be there as quick as I can. Are you safe?”

“Bathroom,” you’re able to mumble out from behind the waterfall of tears rushing down your face. “He’s locked out but—but I’m scared.”

“I’m on my way. He’s not going to hurt you. I promise you.”

And then Steve hangs up, and you wish he hadn’t because now you’re left all alone with just a flimsy wooden door, painted fucking white so the blood will show up real pretty when Danny kills you, between you and your boyfriend.

Well, ex-boyfriend if you get out of here alive.

“Four fucking years!” he shouts from outside. “I gave you four fucking years of my life, you stupid bitch. I put up with your dumb fat ass for four years and this is what you do? Is this love? Do you think this is love?”

You figure anything is love as long as it doesn’t look like this. The ring of bruises around your upper arm from Danny’s grasp is already turning black and blue, a sight that makes you flinch.

Honestly, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours. All the cash you were stashing should’ve been hidden better. You knew better. A shoebox up on the top shelf of the closet? Amateur. You should’ve cut a section out of one of your prized books or something. Danny never fucking reads. He probably doesn’t know how. He would’ve never found all the money if you’d stashed it there.

“Six thousand dollars!” he roars, punching the center of the door. The wood bends slightly. “How long’ve you been fucking stealing from me, huh? Fucking bitch. Stupid fucking bitch.”

And then it happens.

Danny’s fist breaks through the first layer of the door with a curse of pain falling from his lips. Then, a laugh. He’s laughing.

“I’m gonna kill you.”

He punches the door again and then his hand is through, wood splinters shattering and flying toward you, and with a scream you shield your face with your arms and duck down. You’re sitting beside the bathtub, squished against the toilet, and you scoot back as far as you can trying to wedge yourself to safety.

But there is no safety here. Danny’s bloodied fingers find the doorknob and unlock it with a click, and it’s over. It’s over. It’s fucking over.

With a kick, the door comes flying open and you’re screaming again at the top of your lungs, throat tearing itself raw. Danny’s broad frame possesses the entire room as he shoulders his way inside, his lips pulled back to show all of his teeth in a feral grin, the overhead lights catching the shine of the sleek gun he’s carrying.

You can’t even look at him. All you can do is stare at his back in the bathroom mirror hanging over the counter, your mind completely devoid of thought.

“Fuckin’ dead,” Danny says, and you don’t see him aim the gun at you. You stare in the mirror, right in the mirror and memorize the pattern of the plaid jacket he’s wearing, how the colored stripes form new colors, how the fabric all blends. It’s a pretty shirt. You bought it for him two Christmasses ago. He looks good in it.

You are going to die.

Then, suddenly, you can’t see the plaid anymore. Instead it’s a gray shirt on a much bigger body blocking out the mirror, and when you turn your head to look, Steve’s there.

Steve’s here.

He’s got Danny in a chokehold, grappling for the pistol in your boyfriend’s hand. Ex-boyfriend. Despite Steve being completely unarmed—he’s Captain America for christ’s sake, a goddamn super soldier, he doesn’t need a fucking weapon—he easily brings Danny down to his knees and onto the floor, kicking the gun away from their bodies and out of the bathroom completely.

“Fucking whore,” Danny manages to spit out, the sound strangled as Steve’s arm buckles over his neck. “You’re fucking him too, huh? I’m gonna kill you.”

“Shut up,” Steve grits through his clenched teeth, pulling Danny toward the destroyed door. “You’re done.”

They disappear from the bathroom in a tangle and thrashing of limbs. Danny curses the whole way down the stairs, struggling to break out of Steve’s grasp you presume. He’s a fighter—that’s what he always said. Dog meets dog eats dog world, he would tell you. You can’t ever trust anyone.

And, well, he certainly proved his beliefs. You had the bruises to show for it. The scars as evidence.

Sitting alone in your wrecked bathroom, still sprawled out on the tile, you stare down at your hands. The lines run deep in your palms, fingers stubby and chubby and not at all feminine. Too small to grab Danny the way he always grabbed you. Too soft with fat to deliver a good punch.

You don’t know how much time passes before a much larger hand enters your vision, slowly, like approaching a kicked mutt on the street, and when you don’t flinch, Steve lays his fingers across your palms. Apprehensively, you grab onto his hand, and he squeezes back.

Looking up, he’s crouched in front of you, the beginnings of a bruise forming on his left temple. With your free hand, you reach out and let your fingers brush over it, but Steve just smiles at you.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs.

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here,” he says, gently tugging on your hand. You hold onto him a little tighter and let him help you up off the ground, his arm immediately sliding around your waist to steady your shaky legs.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” you say. “The money I saved…”

You don’t even know what happened to it. For all you know, Danny burned the cash. Or stashed it somewhere else.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” Steve says in a soft voice. “I’m taking you back to the Tower. The police are dealing with Danny right now. Can you help me pack some clothes for you?”

And so you sat on the bed among your wrecked bedroom as Steve picked through the messy drawers that had been pulled from their dresser, some articles of clothing crumpled on the floor where Danny flung them in his mad search for your secret money stash. And the gun. You almost forgot about the gun.

Steve helps you pack, his face only a little pinker than normal when you’re shoving your intimates into the black duffle bag he fished out of his car, and then he’s helping you slip on your sneakers and guiding you out of your house.

You don’t say goodbye to it, though. That house. Even after four years, you don’t call it home. In a lot of ways, you’re happy to watch it disappear from Steve’s rearview mirror, hoping you’ll never be back.

“They’re going to love you there,” he says quietly in the silence of the car, both hands tight around the steering wheel. He glances over at you, then back at the road. “You’ll fit right in. You’ll be safe. Right at home.”

But you think Steve is a bit of an optimist. Homes, you think, are for people who are loved.

(“Hey honey, just me here. Look, I remembered you saying something about how you wanted those, what were they called, the fairy lights for your room? The ones that look like Christmas lights? I thought we could go pick some up and I’ll hang ‘em up. You’re too short to do it yourself, girl, you know that. Anyway, give me a call if you want to, or just come down to my room and get me, anytime. I’ll be waiting. Talk soon, honey.”)

—KEEPING SECRETS—

Wanda hums a tune under her breath. “I just can’t wait to get out of this place! It’s been too long. Mission after mission after bloody mission.” She sighs and starts to apply a thick coat of mascara, eyes wide as she stares in the mirror.

“Agreed,” Natasha says from somewhere behind you. The sound of her bare feet on the bathroom tile is the only warning you have before she sidles up beside you, gracefully lifting herself up onto the counter and sweeping various cosmetics aside to make room.

You’re still undressed, standing in your panties and an old t-shirt with a stretched out neck, just finishing up your eyeshadow when Nat taps a black bottle on the marble top near your fingers.

“Want me to do your eyeliner?” she asks.

A few months ago, you would have seen it as an insult—a beautiful, dangerous woman telling you in less words that your makeup looked like shit. Now you know it’s an expression of Natasha’s unending love for you. A willing act of service. A small thing she can do for you.

“Yes please.”

Natasha motions you forward, between her legs, and when she takes your face in her hand you close your eyes.

“Pretty colors,” she says, probably about your eyeshadow.

“Thanks,” you reply, and then you feel the cool wetness of liquid liner right on your lash line as she begins to paint a wing on your lid. “You always look pretty.”

“So do you.” She blows softly on your left eye. “It’s like you never need makeup, I swear. Are you even wearing foundation?”

A smile works its way onto your face. “Nope.”

From beside you, Wanda giggles.

“Slut. You’re so perfect it makes me want to scream sometimes,” Natasha says, tongue clicking her teeth as she finishes off your right eye.

All the breath seems to leave you in that moment. Like someone punched you straight in your gut, your bones like the gel shock-absorbing layer protecting your organs. Your eyes want nothing more than to shoot open, but Nat is blowing cool air over the newly formed wing and you force yourself to relax so you don’t mess everything up.

“I’m not perfect,” you tell her. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“Don’t deflect.” You hear her cap the eye liner and set it down on the counter, then her palms engulf your cheeks. Slowly, you let your eyes open, blinking gently.

She’s staring at you, eyes narrowed.

“Just because I’m beautiful doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful,” she says, simply, as if it’s just easy for her to not compare herself to anyone else. “If you’re perfect, you’re perfect. Doesn’t matter if I’m perfect, too. And that Wanda is perfect. Or that anyone is perfect.”

Natasha takes your chin in her fingers and grabs a tube of lipstick—the one she and Wanda always tell you to wear because it looks so damn good on you.

“Your beauty and your worth doesn’t come from other people.” She runs the silken rouge over your lips. “It comes from who you are, not comparisons to other people.”

And, god, you want to scream at her. You want to shout and tell her that she isn’t allowed to say that to you when she looks the way she does—slim and picturesque and every human being’s wet dream. She doesn’t get to say that you shouldn’t compare yourself, with your heavy chest and your wide hips and all your soft pockets of skin, to someone like her. To someone like Wanda. To anyone else that doesn’t need liposuction with a side of diet pills, please.

You can’t be perfect, because if you were perfect, if you were enough, you wouldn’t be dying in agony every night over someone that doesn’t look twice at your too-large stomach and your too-large thighs.

They’re just trying to make you feel better, but all it does is make you feel worse.

“Look,” you say when she’s done with your lipstick, “I get what—”

In a split second, your chest is wracked with hard coughs, lungs struggling for air. It’s choking you, your own insides, and you’re hacking and wheezing and grasping at the bathroom counter and Natasha’s hands are on your shoulders and Wanda is slapping your back in hope that it will help and someone, somewhere, is saying the word heimlich and you can taste it on your tongue like old wallpaper from the 70s, floral and disgusting and toxic and ugly.

You throw your arm over your mouth, smearing your lipstick. It doesn’t help. Natasha is looking at you, eyes wild. You’re coughing and coughing and you think you taste blood underneath the overwhelming velvet on your tongue.

They’re saying your name. Shredded petals are between your teeth.

And then you break, pushing past them to the toilet, skidding on your knees until you’re doubled over and retching. It’s all burning acid and fresh flowers. Rot and fester and earth and greenery. A pair of cool hands—Wanda’s, you think—rest upon your forehead and move your hair away from your face.

Vomit and daisies leak from your mouth until your stomach is done contracting and your insides are empty. All that’s left is your sputtering coughs that taste caustic and beautiful.

It’s getting bad.

When you finally pull away from the toilet, slumped back and wiping your mouth, the toilet is full of an explosion of crisp white and bright yellow, tinged with the faint pink of blood. Wanda is glancing back and forth between you and the unflushed toilet, horror stitched on her face.

Before Natasha approaches, a glass of tap water in hand, you lean over and flush the petals down the drain. The look you shoot Wanda is pleading, but you don’t even know what you’re asking for.

Everything on the inside hurts, burning like a pit of snakes in your belly, hissing and spitting venom and biting into you like they mean to kill you. Perhaps the daisies have grown fangs. Your lungs feel chewed.

Nat places the glass in your shaking hands, her fingers holding your own as if she knows you can’t do it yourself. She helps raise the glass to your soiled lips and you gulp the water down like it’ll flood the valley unfolding in you.

“Who is it?” she asks, her voice calm but her eyes uneasy. You nearly choke, a hand pressing against the middle of your chest as if you need to feel your lungs as they work to assure yourself of your own survival.

“What?” you barely eke out, throat thick and scratchy. One of Wanda’s hands strokes down your back and she doesn’t speak, only shakes her head.

“Who is it?” Natasha repeats.

You look away.

“God.” Wanda sniffles behind you. “How could we not have realized?”

“Because it doesn’t happen,” Nat says, shifting from crouching in front of you to sitting on her knees on the floor, a hand resting on your thigh. “I’ve never known a single person—until now, I guess—who had it. I thought it wasn’t real.”

“They tell it like a fairytale in Sokovia,” Wanda says, her words just as watery as her eyes. “A story you lull children to sleep with! But I should have seen it. We should have seen it.”

A new abundance of petals tickle the back of your throat.

“All that art,” Natasha hisses, but she isn’t looking at you. She’s glaring down at her lap.

“All the daisies,” Wanda cries. Her head drops against your shoulder. You feel the wetness of her tears.

“It’s okay,” you tell them, but your voice is too small. “It’s okay,” you say, louder this time, tasting the flowers like they are the blood of your bitten tongue.

“Who is it?” Natasha asks again, a begging in her voice you don’t think you’ve ever heard before.

“It’s okay,” you say again.

And with this, Nat’s face changes from one of concern to something of realization—like she’s been struck with a thought she never considered, like she’s seen the future.

“It’s him.” Her jaw is slack, staring at you even as Wanda looks at her with confusion etched on her visage. “You have to tell him.”

“No,” you say simply.

“This is bad,” Nat snaps, as if you don’t know it already. “This is getting bad. You need to tell him or you’re—you’re going to die.”

A laugh breaks through the bathroom, echoing. “How can I tell him? How could I ever tell him that I love him when the simple fucking fact that these flowers are growing—rooting—in my goddamn lungs is proof that he doesn’t love me the way that I love him?”

You lean back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.

“Sam Wilson doesn’t love me the way I love him,” you whisper.

The tips of Natasha’s fingers catch the tears you don’t feel streaking down your cheeks like the screaming of shooting stars, hot and bright and dying.

“It’s sort of beautiful, don’t you think?” Your nails dig into the fat flesh of your thighs, trying to puncture skin. “To make art of your own death. To make something lovely out of something so tragic.”

You can’t swallow it back this time. A cough wracks through you, jostling your bones, and you fold yourself in half as soft white petals emerge from your esophagus and choke you. You grind them against the backs of your teeth with your tongue, trying to mash them into nonexistence, but it’s not enough. You retch another wave of daisies into your awaiting hands.

Wanda calls your name and it sounds broken.

“Death like this,” you rasp, catching your breath, “is the most beautiful way to go.”

Your finger drags over one of the downy petals, a bead of blood catching on your skin and smearing across it like a brushstroke of paint, ruining it.

“Death like this is the only way I want to go.”

(“Hey beautiful, it’s me again. I heard you were going out with the girls tonight—I hope you have fun. I just wanted you to know that if you need a ride back home, or you get into trouble and need a hero, or anything, really, I’m just a phone call away. You need me and I’ll be there, ‘kay honey? I’ll be up if you need anything, at least ‘till you get home. Have fun, girl.”)

—INNOCENCE—

You’re beginning to ask yourself if the mirror lies.

It doesn’t. You know that. You’ve been trying to find the lies in it for years at this point, pinching and pulling at all the places you find are thicker than the women you see on TV, the women you see floating around the Tower, the women you’ve seen on the arms of Sam Wilson. Chubby hands caress down your soft belly, poking and prodding the skin you wish you could make disappear. The mirror never lies.

But you wish it did when you stare at yourself and all you see are the bruises beneath your eyes, the hollows in your cheeks, the drained look in your gaze. The longer you stand there, the less you recognize yourself.

You aren’t hungry anymore. You never get hungry—the flowers filling up all the space in your stomach, coughed up from your lungs and swallowed back in pieces. Perfume is what your mouth tastes like now. Perfume and iron. The vomiting hasn’t stopped since the night your secret was revealed to Natasha and Wanda.

And you’ve never looked better.

That’s the part you hate. The part where when you look in the mirror and you can see the places where those daisies have shaved you thinner. It almost makes you laugh. People say you pack on the pounds when you find love. Maybe they should try having toxic flowers take root inside of them and slowly steal their lifeforce while they watch the person they love never love them back.

It’s a slow process, this death. You wonder which will kill you first—the starvation or the suffocation.

The walk down to the gala is as equally exciting as it is dreadful. You’ve never been to a Tony Stark gala before and you’re eager to dance the night away with your friends. But you’re also exhausted.

Oh well. The makeup helps you look less like a corpse and more like a dancing queen. The dress, which you’re sure someone paid far too much money for, is part of the solution. It’s all flowy and gorgeous as if you are a Greek goddess meant to be worshipped and highlights your figure while hiding all the imperfections the mirror seemed to find.

And when you finally enter the room, classical music playing from the live band and people laughing loudly and champagne twirling about the floor for people to take, the first thing you see is him.

Grin taking up his entire face, lighting up the entire ballroom, dressed beautifully in a navy suit that makes him look utterly dashing, is Sam Wilson.

He’s surrounded by people—women who are better dressed than you are—so with a shaky breath and a pain in your lungs, you quickly turn on your heel and head toward the next familiar face.

“Woah there, doll, where you hurryin’ off to?” Bucky, hair neatly pulled back and wearing a black suit, grabs you by your waist.

“Nowhere,” you blurt. “The bar. I just got here.”

He raises a thick brow at you, a silent question, but when you choose not to answer he shrugs.

“Well I can’t refuse to escort a pretty lady, can I?” With a charming smile, he holds his elbow out to you and gestures for you to grab on. You slip your hand around his arm and grasp him tightly, shooting him a grateful smile.

“Thanks, Bucky.”

But as the two of you start dodging through the crowd of excited party-goers, on your way to the bar in the back, Bucky stops short and gets a look on his face that you’re not quite sure you can describe as mischievous, but it’s close enough to make you frown.

“Y’know what,” he says, glancing over at you with that boyish grin, “I think we should take a spin on the dance floor instead.”

“Oh no,” you tell him, eyes wide. “I can’t dance—”

He snorts. “I’ve seen you dance around the kitchen, doll.”

“I can’t dance in front of all these people.”

“Can’t is a word for losers.” Bucky closes his hand over yours, locking you to his elbow. “Don’t wanna be a loser like Stevie, do ya? Oh Buck, I can’t stop fighting, gotta teach ‘em a lesson. Oh Buck, I can’t rinse out my cereal bowl, I gotta go for a run.”

It makes you laugh, maybe a little too loud, but it eases you just enough for Bucky to pull you into the menagerie of dancing couples, and then he’s moving your hand from his arm and onto his shoulder and clasping your other in his fingers.

“There we go.” His eyes shine like the ocean sparkles under the Tower lights.

Bucky has something magic in him, you decide, after two songs of him swinging you along the floor. He has something magic that makes everything so easy, which is something so admirable after all he’s been through. He has you laughing and smiling and spinning across the room with so little effort you forget all your worries in an instant.

“See?” Bucky dips you in his arms, making you squeal with glee, collecting the stares of the people peppered around the room. “Knew you could dance, doll.”

Panting, you rest a hand on his chest, still giggling. “Only ‘cause you’re so good.”

“Song’s over, Buck,” a new, familiar voice cuts in. When you look up, Steve is standing there, eyes crinkling with his own smile. “I can’t wait for another.”

At that, Bucky rolls his eyes with such drama it has you laughing yet again.

“See? I told you. It’s all can’t this, can’t thatwith Stevie. But fine.” Bucky guides you by the waist over to Steve, passing your hand over, and then gives you one last grin with all his teeth. “I had fun, doll. Thanks for dancin’ with me.”

“Anytime,” you tell him, and then Steve’s adjusting your grip on him. The song changes from the upbeat tune Bucky was twirling you to down to a slower classical piece.

“You doing okay, sweetheart?” Steve asks, his eyes roaming over your face.

“Yeah,” you hum. “Bucky and I had a lot of fun.”

Steve’s grip at your waist tightens a little. “No, I mean in general. Are you doing alright?”

There’s worry there—in the wrinkles on his brow, the blue skies of his eyes, the curve of his lips. You know he’s staring at you and seeing everything the mirror told you. All the gaunt places. The hollow, haunted look you’re parading around. The weight you’ve been steadily losing. You know he sees it.

“I’m okay,” you tell him, and you wonder yet again if the mirror ever lies. You know you do.

Steve sways you gently, more carefully than Bucky had. Steve dances with you like you’re made of something fragile. You still don’t understand why. You don’t know why he ever looked at you and saw something important, someone to protect. Maybe it’s just how he was born to be.

“You can tell me anything,” he says, so seriously that your heart breaks a little.

You move your hand from his shoulder and up to cradle his cheek, smiling.

“I know, Steve. I know.”

And if he pulls you into him, crushes you against his chest, and holds you like that for the rest of the song, no one mentions it. Steve lets you rest your head on his shoulder and, not for the first time, you think this must be how it feels to have a family.

But then the lights in the ballroom brighten a little and a spark finds its way into the music, changing into something jazzy and fun, and someone slaps Steve on the shoulder.

“Alright Rogers, she’s ours now.”

There, dressed like she could kill a man with her heels alone, Natasha has her arms crossed over her black satin gown. Beside her, in a red, flowy dress, Wanda has her hands on Nat’s shoulders, giggling from all the bubbly you’re sure she’s consumed.

Steve pulls away from you with a chuckle, holding his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright—she’s all yours, ladies.”

With that, Natasha pounces on you, and the three of you start to shimmy the night away together.

You lose count of the songs you spend dancing with them, sweaty and out of breath and having the time of your life, before you wave them off and step out onto the outside patio where hardly anyone is loitering. You pass up a couple sitting on a bench, cuddled up in the cool air of New York, and leave a man smoking a cigarette to himself.

Instead, you find a lonely bench far away enough from the gala that you can hardly hear anything but the bass strings resounding through the building. There, you sit, and turn your head up to the stars you can’t really see anymore.

“You okay, girl?”

Startled, you whirl around to face the object of your affections, standing behind you with his hands shoved casually in his pockets. He isn’t wearing his usual smile. Just staring.

And then you taste dirt. Freshly upturned soil coated in congealing blood. You cough into your hands and hear him approach, laying a warm palm on your back as you choke the daisies down and down and down, swallowing as many as you can, the pungent taste still ripe in your mouth.

“Honey,” he calls out all smooth and sharp like whiskey. “Honey, are you okay?”

You lick the blood from your lips. Sam crouches before you, gathering your cold hands in his, looking up at you with such a fucking expression that you want to kiss him so solidly he can taste the vines growing up your throat. You want his tongue to taste the soil of your suffering—the flowers of your own doom.

“I’m worried about you,” Sam says, his dark eyes searching your face for something.

“I’m okay,” you tell him, just as you’ve been telling everyone.

“You’re not looking so good these days,” he murmurs, and you recoil.

“Wow.” The hurt in your voice is so palpable it makes you cringe. “Thanks, Samuel.”

You move to get up from the bench, heart twisting, but Sam grabs your arms and cages you there.

“I didn’t mean it like that, darlin’, you know better than that.” He gives your arms—too soft too wide too fleshy too—a squeeze of reassurance. “You’re not painting much anymore either. You think I wouldn’t notice?”

Sam holds your gaze until it’s too much and you have to break away.

“C’mon, girl. Are you even sleeping?” Sam shakes you a little. “Eating?”

The flowers of evil root in your chest. See, you know how this book ends. You don’t need to read the last page to find out. It’s just as Baudelaire wrote, you know: “My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.”

Your organs have been replaced by daisies. Sam Wilson won’t love you—not tonight, not tomorrow, and not in time.

So you shrug, forcing your lips to curl into what you think might be a smile.

“I can’t paint. I’ve got too many flowers to press,” you tell him. Sam’s visage morphs into confusion, and he shakes his head slightly. He doesn’t understand. He won’t understand.

You take his arms from your body, holding his hands for a split second, long enough to steal their warmth and imagine what it would be like to hold them every single day, and then you pick yourself up off the bench and give him a wave.

“See you inside, Sam.”

And you leave him there, confusion still frozen on his face, the gritty blood ripping shreds in your damaged throat as you swallow it again and again and again in an attempt not to taste it anymore.

(“Hey, uh, it’s Sam. I was just calling to, uh, y’know, remind you about the gala. You have a date yet? I didn't ask anyone. I, uh, I wanted to ask this girl, but uh, I ended up waiting too long and I’m a little late so… I’ll see you there, honey. Try not to kill me with your good looks tonight, you hear? Save a dance for me, baby.”)

—THE SUN AND ALL ITS STARS—

Dishware rattles into your room, signaling Nat’s arrival. By the time you gather the energy to sit up in bed, she’s already entering, a tray of food in her hands and an icy look on her face.

“Breakfast in bed,” she says monotonously.

You shift and pull your duvet up as she fits the tray over your lap. There’s not much—a sweating glass of cold water beside an amber glass of apple juice, two slices of buttered toast, and some melon she cut up.

“Thanks,” you say, voice strained and weak.

Natasha doesn’t leave, but you wish she would. She seats herself on the edge of your bed, staring you down as you sip on your water. You purse your lips in frustration, but pick up the fork and begin to poke at the fruit.

“Eat,” she says.

“I’m trying,” you grumble back. “Stop staring at me.”

Natasha throws her hands up on the air. “Well if I don’t watch you, you’ll just sit here and waste away,” she snaps. “You’re not eating, you’re not sleeping, hell, you aren’t even coming out of your room anymore. You go to work, you come home, you don’t talk to any of us. Steve says—”

“Steve doesn’t know anything!” you shout, interrupting her. As soon as you do, her eyes narrow into slits and you shut your mouth, gulping. That wasn’t what you wanted to do.

Natasha takes a deep breath. “Steve says you’re still looking for a place.” It’s eerie how calm she keeps her tone. “Leaving isn’t going to stop them, you know.”

Even now, not doing anything but staring at the food in your lap, you can taste them like a funeral home, saccharinely floral, covering the smell of death.

“I can’t stay here,” you say.

“You’re dying,” Natasha stresses. “Please. Please, I am begging, krasavitsa. I’ve not begged for much in this life. But I am begging you to please, please tell him. Tell him or consider the other option.”

Two options in the scale, tipping weights. To die or to have the roots of true love carved out of your lungs, peeled away from where they wrap around your heart.

You stab your fork into the tender flesh of the melon. It gives way so easily, letting the tines puncture it. Natasha stares at you, her gaze heavy. Your fingers fumble with the fork and it falls, clattering, to the tray of dishes.

The blood is too hard to swallow anymore—it builds up in your mouth and stains your teeth red, the petals colored pink when they fall from your lips.

“Okay,” you whisper. Maybe you don’t even say it aloud.

“Okay?” Natasha asks. You nod your head, not looking at her.

“I’ll tell him.”

It takes you hours, it feels like, to gather the courage. With all the energy you have left in your bones, muscles only satiated a little by Natasha’s breakfast, you drag yourself out of bed and to your bookshelf. It’s memorized, the place where your book sits, and you pull it out with a gentle tug of your finger.

The Flowers of Evil, its pages nearly chock-full of pressed daisies that have ejected themselves from your body, eager to find the man you love and spill all your desires to him. You thumb through it, gaze flitting over all the damn flowers that have dried in this damn book, and you close your eyes in order not to cry this time.

You press the book tight to your chest, feeling the desperate beating of your heart echo through it, and you head to Sam’s room.

The walk is long and lonely—the Tower feels empty. Devoid of people. You’re a little glad because you’re sure that anyone could see the sickness painted on your body, the illness from inside you that’s staining your outsides. It’s not anyone’s fault but your own, really. The flowers are too beautiful to supplant.

And now, you’re in front of his door, a fist raised to knock, a loud buzzing in your head that keeps saying no, no, no. But your heart, traitorous thing still hammering away in your chest, it just keeps saying yes, yes, yes, finally.

Sam Wilson doesn’t love you.

But do you have any other choice except to take a garden spade to your lungs and dig them out of your chest cavity, to destroy your ribcage and break through the mulch that makes up your nervous system? Is the only option left to die at the hands of Sam or to wither away until your decomposition will feed the very things that killed you off?

You shudder a breath and knock on the door. And you wait. And wait. And wait.

He doesn’t come. He isn’t there. He doesn’t love you.

The tears come suddenly—unexpectedly. They are hot and stricken and fast. They drip off your chin and careen down your neck and dampen the collar of your shirt and your hands are trembling, grasping your book too tightly, to even begin to wipe them away.

You don’t know why you’re crying. You already know this. Sam Wilson could never love you the way that you love him. Sam Wilson is perfection, you know. He possesses the strength of gods, he radiates love, he’s passionate about every fucking thing he does. He’s beautiful. He’s everything and you are nothing when standing next to him, but you love him. You love him.

Sam Wilson doesn’t fucking love you.

“Well,” you laugh to yourself, “I can either die a fool or live a life without you.”

I can either die in love or live my life not knowing what it feels like to be in love with you.

Something tickles your tongue. You reach between your lips and pluck it from your mouth, letting it sit upon the center of your palm. Blood drips down your arm like a river, violent and sooth.

The daisy covers your entire hand, white petals tinged with pink reaching toward your fingers. The center, all yellow florets seeming to seek out warmth, are so bright and full and so big—these are too big, they could choke anyone, anyone, they are choking you.

And like them—god, just like them, just like these daisies that grow from your lungs and destroy you from inside out—you are heliotropic. Everywhere you go, you’re focused on the sun, looking for the sun, stretching toward the sun.

You need the sun.

So you crumble the daisy in your hand, fist tight, blood still easing from between your fingers. You back away from his door, then turn and break away to head back to your room in silence.

You’d rather die loving him than never getting to see the sun ever again.

(“Hey girl, it’s me. Just calling to let you know that Steve and I got called for a mission. It looks like an emergency, wheels up in ten and all that. I wanted to catch you before we gotta go, in case you wanted to say goodbye. To Steve, I mean. Just in case. Take care of yourself while I’m gone, sweetness.”)

—FAREWELLS—

It happens faster than you think it will. You swear you have weeks, or a month at least. You swear you have time.

Four days later, your knees buckle and slam into the wooden floor beneath you, stomach contorting and contracting, balloon finally bursting. Someone is shouting your name from the common room, something is knocked over, scrambling. You barely hear it over the sound of your own vomiting.

On your hands and knees, you stare down at the lump of flowers you couldn’t swallow back. They’re coated in a mixture of soil and blood and stomach acid, but the sweet perfume scent breaks through the rest and makes you retch again. It smells so sweet. So sickly sweet. Dead people and churches.

Did churches always smell so much like blood?

There’s a hand on your shoulder. It’s pulling your hair from your face. Someone is saying something—something—something you can’t make out over the blood rushing between your ears.

You’re dying. This is it.

You collapse upon the ground, rolling onto your side, arm thrown over your mouth as if that will stop the flowers from pouring out of your body. And when you blink, trying to see through the dizziness, it’s him again.

The god of the fucking sun, your sun, mouth moving frantically as he says things you can’t hear and the little gap in his teeth that makes you feel at home when he smiles at you and his eyes, oh, Sam Wilson has eyes that set you on fire and burn you alive and you’d be happy to die like this, you’re so happy you get to die like this, so thankful that the daisies chose you, so thankful you chose him.

You were right. Death is so beautiful like this.

“It might be too late.”

Helen Cho’s heels clack on the tile of the medbay’s room as she shoos the nurse out with a wave of her hands, shaking her head. He shoots to his feet, fingers already curled into fists, and he shoves them in the pockets of his jacket to hide them.

“Too late?” It’s impossible for him to keep his voice low. “How can it be too late? What even—What’s wrong with her?”

She frowns at Sam, folding her hands together in front of her.

“It’s… rare,” she says. “Some of us didn’t think it was real, to be frank with you.”

His brow furrows. “What is it?”

“A disease caused by unrequited love,” Helen says plainly, staring straight at him. “Typically, the patient finds themselves in what is regarded to be true love, but the feelings are not returned, so they build up. It’s theorized that the stress of that creates the problem.”

Sam swallows and it tastes like vomit. “Unrequited love?”

She ignores him, continuing, “The part that is normally so hard to believe is that flowers begin to grow inside the patient, the roots puncturing their lungs and creating masses that eventually will suffocate their host.”

It’s a bag of bricks to his stomach. A super soldier punch to the gut. A bomb blown up in his face. Sam doubles over, clutching his middle, trying to breathe again. He can’t breathe at all. The flowers. The flowers.

“It seems she was swallowing them in an attempt to save herself,” Helen explains. “It’s what kept her alive much longer than she should have been. But now, I don’t know. It may be too late to save her. If she’d just said something earlier, than the surgery might have been able to stop it, but—”

“Surgery?” Sam asks, still gasping for breath. “What surgery?”

“You can extract the roots,” she tells him, glancing at the sleeping woman in the sickbed. “It’s a difficult procedure but it would have saved her. But, from the very little research we have on it, removing the roots also removes the feelings entirely. The love that the patient has disappears. They aren’t able to ever feel anything for that person ever again.”

He falls back into the plastic chair, his limbs numb. Or, at least that’s what he wants to do. But Sam doesn’t. He steadies himself, crosses his arms over his chest, plants himself so firmly there in the hospital room that he doesn’t think an earthquake can move him, and looks at her.

She’s sleeping, but she doesn’t look at peace. Her eyes, lovely things, are sunken in and it makes him so mad. Her collarbones have shadows beneath them and he feels fury wracking his own bones. And how long has it been since he’s seen her smile?

“Do the surgery,” he demands.

“You know I can’t do that without her consent,” Helen says, sighing.

“Then I’ll wait until she wakes up and get her consent,” he seethes through a locked jaw.

Helen’s face doesn’t change. “She might not wake up.”

“She will.”

Sam doesn’t get it. He understands—in a way—but he doesn’t really get it. He knows why she wouldn’t want to get a surgery like that. But he loves—he loves just as fiercely as she does, and that’s why he understands. Why he knows.

So why did the flowers pick her? Why would they pick her and not him?

Helen glances down at her feet, says nothing, and turns to exit the room. He’s left there in the silence, with the crowing of the machine keeping her alive to punctuate all his thoughts. If there is one thing he hates in the world, it’s feeling helpless.

He lowers himself in the plastic seat, leans his head back against the wall, and closes his eyes.

“You’ll wake up,” he says to her, but he can’t look at her.

Or maybe he’ll wake up and it’ll all be a dream.

There’s a soft rapping of knuckles on the door, and it opens slowly and quietly, and Sam has to lock his fingers around the arms of his chair to keep from jumping up and sending a right hook right at Steve’s face.

“How’s she doing?” Steve has the audacity to ask, has the audacity to look worried, has the audacity to pull up another plastic seat next to Sam.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he mutters under his breath, spite burning his tongue.

Steve glares at him. “Yeah, that’s why I asked. What’s your problem?”

“My problem is you, Rogers.” Now, Sam can’t help but stand, towering over the super soldier. He immediately grabs Steve’s arm and hauls him out of his chair, through the door, and out into the hallway. Steve stumbles, a hand on the wall, and Sam’s nostrils flare.

“How could you do this to her?”

“Me?” Steve sounds genuinely taken aback, but Sam doesn’t buy it. “What are you talking about? Helen told me—”

“I thought you loved her, too!”

He really did. That’s why Steve brought her to the Tower, didn’t he? That’s why they go out for lunch every other week and why Sam never gets a chance to take her out himself. Why he always makes sure to say goodbye to her before a mission, like he doesn’t want to leave her behind. He really thought Steve loved her too. If he had thought for one second that Steve didn’t love her...

“What?” Steve’s jaw slackens. “Not like that! She doesn’t—She’s not in love with me, Sam!”

He pants, unable to catch the breath that’s leaving him like a slow leak.

“Then who the hell is she in love with?”

Steve stares at him, a look that Sam can’t recognize, can’t name, in his eyes. Steve stares at him and smooths his hand down his beard, shaking his head.

“She’s in love with you,” he says, and Sam chokes.

Because all the pretty things in his world lead back to her and man, if she loved him, it would all be so perfect that he would never want to leave it. He would never want to say goodbye. He’d ask god and anyone else who would listen to grant him a deathless life so he could look at her forever, with no end in sight, because he would. He would. Sam would love her forever.

“No,” he says, a dry chuckle escaping his lips. “That can’t be true.”

“It’s true,” Steve says.

“That’s impossible.” He backs up, against the wall, holding his head in his hands and staring at the floor. “It’s impossible.”

“It’s true,” Steve repeats, staring past Sam and through the window of the medbay’s room to look at her, lying so still in her bed. “I know it is.”

“Steve, I’m in love with her,” Sam confesses, an ache in his chest. “It can’t be me. I’m in love with her. I’m so fucking in love with her.”

A heavy hand clasps his shoulder, and when Sam looks up, his breathing unsteady, Steve has a look of regret smeared all over his face.

“But does she know that?”

And, for the first time in years, Sam cries.

(“It’s me. I need to tell you something. Even if it will hurt, even if it will destroy—destroy what we have, I don’t know. But I need to tell you, baby. I need to.”)

—SINCERITY—

Sam Wilson thinks she’s starlight.

When she first arrives she’s a collection of stars and their ashes, explosions and deaths, supernovas and black holes and earthbound meteorites.

What he means by that is she’s covered in bruises but she’s so beautiful, and he wants to gather her in his arms and tell her it’s going to be okay.

Steve introduces her, and Sam tries to bite his tongue, but all his words pour out of him anyway as she holds out a hand to him and he takes it, soft and trembling, and he knows she’s special somehow. She’s special.

“You’re the prettiest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” he says, and he means it, but she ducks her head and tries to hide the little smile on her face.

Sam Wilson thinks the world of you. But even when the bruises fade, you’re still left with all the land and the water and the galaxies hidden in your eyes when he catches your gaze, and he looks at you and he swears that you’re reaching into his chest and taking his heart in your small hands and squeezing him dry. You have realms inside of you, he’s sure, all the worlds and all their wonders. But you—you look at Steve like that sometimes, and then Sam is just grateful that you even let him breathe in your general atmosphere.

He can fly, sure, but he certainly isn’t an astronaut, so this is about the closest he can get to you.

(“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. This number is not available. At the tone, please record your message.”)

—TRUE LOVE—

The first thing you see is the ceiling, hazy and sleep-filtered, but it looks just like the ceiling in that bathroom, back in Danny’s apartment, back when you thought the pain of love was bone crushing, before you knew the pain of love was slow suffocation.

It makes you stutter back to life and that sends you into a coughing fit. You can still taste them—the daisies. They taste like the rawness of sunlight.

Hand pressed against your chest, your eyes dart around the room, trying to catch your bearings. There’s an IV in your arm, the bed railings are plastic, Sam is sitting in the corner, the lights are dimmed.

Sam Wilson is sitting in the corner.

You gasp, looking at him, and he’s staring right back at you, a familiar book in his hands.

Sam Wilson is sitting beside your bed, holding The Flowers of Evil, and the look on his face is far from happy to see you. It’s not anger. And it’s not sadness. It just… is. And Sam is never “just” anything.

Even if he thinks that sometimes, like the times when he calls you and says, “It’s just me,” as if he isn’t something special, so important you can’t live without him in your life.

Well, you can’t live with him, either.

After a solid minute, Sam looks down at the book between his dark hands, and he begins to sift through the pages. He stops sometimes, lingers on the sheets of dried daisies that have been pressed, their color leaking onto the text only slightly. But then he moves forward, searching for something. You don’t know what.

“How long have you been here?” you ask, throat sore when you speak.

“How long have you been in love with me?”

Your teeth gnash together, bite into your bottom lip, worry a sore there as he doesn’t look at you. He just keeps flipping through the book as if he didn’t just thrust a dagger straight through your heart, as if it isn’t beating so fast and hard like it’s trying to stay alive. You feel like you can’t breathe and you don’t know if it’s the flowers crawling out of your lungs and trying to get to him or if it’s the fact that he knows.

You can’t answer him.

Sam stops on a page, his finger trailing over the script, and then he begins to read.

“And yet

to wine, to opium even, I prefer

the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;

and in the wasteland of desire

your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.”

“Les Fleurs du Mal,” he says, shutting the book with a thump and striking his palm with it. “Baudelaire sure had a lot to say, didn’t he?”

Your mouth is suddenly so dry. There’s a pink pitcher of water next to the bed, just like a hospital would have, and you reach weakly for it. Sam grabs it immediately, pouring you a cup, and passing it gently to you. You gulp what you can down through the straw, hardly breathing.

When you finally feel like you aren’t going to cough your lungs up into your hands again, Sam takes the cup back from you, and embarrassment is a cold shiver down your spine.

He sits back down beside you, looking straight at you. “Do you want to get the surgery?”

Your lips part to speak, but he interrupts.

“Be honest.”

Chewing your lip, you take a deep breath. “No. And I never planned on it, either.” From the corner of your eye, you see his jaw tighten.

“Why not?”

“Because what is a life without the fucking sun, Sam?” The words are spat from your mouth. “A life spent not loving you—not knowing you, not feeling you anymore—it wasn’t worth it. Because I love you, Samuel Wilson. I have loved you since the day I met you and you told me—told me I was pretty for some goddamn reason. And I’ve loved you every day since. I love everything about you and there is not a single iteration of life that I would want to live if it meant not loving you.”

This time, nothing tastes like blood. It’s all just daisies, like they’re populating your mouth, changing the way your tongue works, turning to paste in your teeth. It’s so strong that it hurts. Like you’re eating paper valentines and crying too many tears as you say goodbye to a body in a casket.

But it’s beautiful and lovely and gorgeous because you swear that, somewhere beneath it, you can taste what you think love might taste like.

Sam doesn’t speak and it hurts, but it tosses your book down on the side table and reaches into his pocket and it still hurts. He pulls out his phone. You swallow down the rising earth in your chest.

He pulls out his phone—no, it’s your phone. He turns the screen toward you and punches in your password. You furrow your brows. When did he learn your password? But it doesn’t matter, really, because he just swipes to your call log and pulls up your voicemails. And then he begins to play them.

“Hey there darlin’, it’s just me. I couldn’t find you anywhere—where you at? I thought we could go pick some up and I’ll hang ‘em up. You need me and I’ll be there, ‘kay honey? I, uh, I wanted to ask this girl, but uh, I ended up waiting too long and I’m a little late so… I’ll see you there, honey. I wanted to catch you before we gotta go, in case you wanted to say goodbye. I need to tell you something. Even if it will hurt, even if it will destroy—destroy what we have, I don’t know. I’ll catch you later, darlin’. Have fun, girl. Save a dance for me, baby. Take care of yourself while I’m gone, sweetness. But I need to tell you, baby. I need to.”

The sobs fall from the broken seal of your lips, loud and crashing, like a waterfall. Your hand, shaking and weak, comes up to try to cover your mouth, but Sam lunges forward and catches your wrist in gentle fingers.

He’s looking at you like you’re everything—and you know, you know now that you are—to him.

“You’ve been saying that this whole time?” you ask, a laugh bubbling up from your lungs. No flowers retch up your throat.

Sam smiles, lips pulling back to reveal that gap in his front teeth.

“You haven’t been listening, baby girl. I’ve been tryin’ to tell you I love you for months.”

He rests his forehead upon yours, and as close as he is, all you can smell now is the spice of his cologne. Nothing smells floral.

“I never would have thought,” you whisper. “I was sure—so sure—that you didn’t love me. I thought because of the flowers, I thought that meant for sure that you didn’t love me. I mean, why would you? Why would you ever love someone like me?”

“Honey,” he says, so softly, “you’re starlight.”

Tears flood your cheeks and Sam cups your face in his large hands, wiping them away with gentle thumbs.

Sam Wilson is sunlight. You never considered that you could be starlight.

“Why wouldn’t I love you, darlin’? You’re so good, so gorgeous, so perfect.” He laughs and it makes you laugh too, but it comes out like a sob. Your heart feels lighter. “But you’ve never considered yourself worthy of love before, have you?”

“I’m sorry,” you cry. “I’m so sorry, Sam.”

He hushes you, soothes you, smooths his palms over the planes of your face and over your hair,

“You don’t have to be sorry, baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.” He presses a warm kiss to your forehead and the memory of every single time he’s kissed your forehead like this flashes through your mind, an electric current, and you wonder how you never saw it before now.

“I love you,” you say, and this time, your lungs don’t feel as though they will burst from the pressure, the roots, the vines twined around them. You don’t feel choked by petals. You don’t taste blood in the back of your mouth.

“I know,” he says, “and if you let me, I will spend the rest of my days with you convincing you that you are worthy of love, honey. Because I’m in love with you. I’m so in love with you.”

When he presses his lips to yours, he doesn’t taste like flowers. Not like the daisies that wrote your death sentence. He tastes like golden pools of sunlight, warm and wanting. This is your heliotropism. You are a magnet for him, Sam Wilson, god of the fucking sun.

And maybe he’s phototropic, always drawn to you, moving toward your starlight.

(“Hey, it’s me. Sorry I missed your call! I’m on my way home now, and guess what? I have a surprise for you. It’s a bit ironic, but I think you’ll like it. What do you think of the name Daisy for a baby girl?”)

#sam wilson #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson x plus sized reader #plus sized reader #sam wilson angst #sam wilson fanfiction #hanahaki au #sam wilson fluff #thanks for supporting me!#divine masterlist #the flowers of evil

408 notes · View notes

shirophantomvox · 3 years

Text

Random date night with Illumi, Hisoka, and Chrollo

Hello, anon! Ask and you shall receive! This prompt is very interesting and I will try to keep it in character as much as possible. To sum this up, Hisoka would take you to an ice cream shop, a carnival, or apple orchard while Illumi would rather go to an art or historical museum. Chrollo would persuade you to attend a book reading/author signing or go hiking. Depending on who you are and what your ideal date is, I’m sure you’d find them all fun. Going to a carnival or apple orchard is my go-to since I’ve barely been because they’re all in the suburbs. These headcanons are explained much more than the others. That is why Chrollo and Illumi seem to be short, but they’re not. Also, I can’t wait for Halloween because these headcanons are going to be amazing. I am extremely sorry if there are grammar errors! Taking classes on Zoom is frustrating and now my brain has to relearn everything that I lost in 3 months! Before we get started, I have a few announcements.

This post is more laid back than my other headcanons because I tried to keep it as canon as possible.

I want to thank you all for 65 followers! It means a lot! I’m happy to see that a lot of you enjoy my writing and like it enough to follow me! I have a challenge for you! When I reach 100 followers, I will host some type of writing event here...but I need ideas. I’ve seen some pages do specials where you can send an ask and pretend like you're talking to a character and I respond with what they’d say. SEND ME IDEAS! I WILL CREDIT YOU!

I will be stepping back a little more than before. I’ll still be logged in and re-blogging but as far as writing posts like this...it may only be once or twice a week. You see, I’m in college and I’m struggling financially and I have to work on scholarships. If you all send me an ask, be patient.

Voltron posts will only be created based on asks. I will not be writing posts about VLD if no one requests them. I do not receive any feedback from it anymore and no one seems to like them.

Now, let’s get into the post.

Let's start with Illumi first.

Headcanon 1: Illumi has a secret admiration for different types of art but he specifically enjoys pop art and surrealism. He has commented on how surrealism makes his brain twist and his feelings swirl as he tries to figure out the piece and what inspires it.

He prefers not to participate in tours as he likes to digest the art at his own pace.

Headcanon 2: In his spare time, he paints on a canvas. His art style consists of both surrealism and abstract art. For a person with a dark personality, his compositions always contain bright colors and abstract techniques that leave you wondering about his TRUE personality. He is truly a good man with a bright personality but after being abused for so long, those behaviors/personalities have been shoved so far down his throat that they may not come back up.

He has a bad habit of asking you what you thought about every single piece of art you passed. The conversations were great but this is a date after all. The playful conversation slowly turns into a lecture about art. Although you loved your bf’s dictionary-like brain it also drained your energy.

One of his favorite artists is Vincent Van Gough. Although he favors surrealism, Van Gogh’s art style was mind-blowing to him. So amazed that he buys several Van Gogh t-shirts from the gift shop.

His favorite piece created by Van Gough is “Starry Night”.

He notices that you are becoming bored and decides that it is time for MORE excitement, one that you are certain to enjoy.

“Where are we going,” you ask, pretending to be interested.

“Down to the basement. We are going to have a bite to eat.”

Since Illumi rarely smiled, when he did smile it drove you wild. The anticipation of what his next move was going to be is what drove that wildness. Being a bounty hunter was thrilling already but dating a smart, badass assassin was totally out of your league but it worked out.

Headcanon 3: Illumi’s idea of being romantic is dramatically different from yours. He believes just spending time with you on the couch was enough. He is correct; but if you have the time and funds, your time together should be a little spontaneous. You insisted on dates outside of the house because his family will not stay out of your business.

“Illumi, I am too hungry for more trivia.”

He chuckles. “Don’t worry. So am I. That is why I’ve decided to take you to a wine and cheese party.”

Huh? Wine and Cheese at 3PM? That’s ok. When was there a time limit on when you can drink alcohol?

Illumi has indirectly attended parties as such when he was 15 years old. He never drank, but he watched as his mother’s friends (surprisingly) talked about business and their children. This time, you weren’t going to talk about business for once. Instead, you two were going to actually talk about what couples discuss.

Headcanon 4: When introduced to alcohol for the first time, Illumi immediately stated how he hated brown liquor. That includes Hennessy, Jack Daniels, etc. It makes him sick to his stomach. He prefers to drink Smirnoff mixed with fruity drinks like strawberry or pineapple.

He loves it when you make these drinks for him on a summer day.

Hence the title wine and cheese, you both go to a stand-up table, place your brochures down, and actually have a wonderful conversation not involving work or hunting.

Illumi smiled a few times, more than usual. Whenever he appears to be softer even around you, that is because he has mellowed out and doesn't have the overbearing weight of his family on his shoulders. You set him free.

Hisoka

According to a one-shot that another manga artist created, they expressed that Hisoka was found on the side of the road, was taken in by someone that worked at a local circus, and learned Nen in a matter of days. Hisoka’s clown look and having the skills of a magician proves that this has to be canon in some way.

Headcanon 1: Given this potential backstory, going to a carnival is his go-to every summer. He wants to take you to a circus but saves that for you as an engagement gift.

Everyone with a heart knows that whether or not you’re in a relationship or not the carnival is fun as hell! Expensive fried food, elephant ears, funnel cake, ICEE’s, rides, and stuffed animals are to die for!

Being at a carnival relaxes him so his bloodlust isn’t activated unless someone bumps into him and causes a scene.

Headcanon 2: PDA is something that Hisoka does well; he doesn’t overdo it but does it enough where people get the impression that you are a couple and aren’t “best friends”.

While completing a mission depending on how rough it may be, he insists that you tag along to see how he handles the situation. You’ve already seen his ruthlessness from Hunter’s exam but he insists.

His sense of pride gets the best of him sometimes. Sometimes his head is so big that it reminds you of a large birthday balloon.

Headcanon 3: ANYWAY, given his nature, he is very adventurous, dangerous, and courageous. If he wants to go on the Demon Drop, he’ll do it and you DO not have a choice in the matter. He’ll tease or guilt trip you into doing something that you would not like to do.

“Well, you wouldn’t want me to cling on to someone else, would you?”

“No. Of course not,” you reply.

“Let’s go then, scaredy-cat.”

As a hunter, you’ve seen worse. Why are you so afraid to go on a ride?

Headcanon 4: At apple orchards, cornfield mazes are one of his favorites. You cannot for the life of you figure out how to get out but he can. He grabs a scarecrow and scares you from behind. That annoys you but is nothing compared to later on that night.

Oh. My. God. It’s haunted house time!

“Hisoka, I’m not going in!”

“Why not? I’ll protect you.”

“Because they’re monsters and I already have to deal with one.”

It took him a second to catch on that you were talking about him.

“That’s going to bite you in the butt, kitten.”

Headcanon 5: Like Killua, Hisoka has a sweet tooth. Don’t allow his buff appearance to fool you!

He LOVES caramel apples, elephant ears, funnel cake, freshly squeezed lemonade, fudge, and cotton candy. How can this man manage to stay in shape? The world may never know.

Headcanon 6: He isn’t one to play by other people’s rules but he sets his own rules with your relationship that you both must obey. One of those rules says that neither of you can be on your phones while together.

Headcanon 7: Hisoka insists that you both wear either matching pants or matching shirts to avoid unnecessary flirtation.

He isn’t jealous but on “us time”, he doesn’t want to lose a single second.

Headcanon 8: Hisoka only jumps in when necessary. Given that you’ve passed the hunter’s exam and work as a bodyguard, he knows you can handle your business. If the person can’t take a hint, then he steps in. They almost back up immediately considering Hisoka is towering over them.

When the moon shines, you both go to the car and off to sleep in your comfy king-sized bed.

Chrollo

We all know that Chrollo loves to read! What does he specifically like to read? What Genre? Does he like to read alone or with other people?

Although Chrollo is a thief and must be hidden in the shadows, the authorities have called off the search for him for at least 3 years. Slowly but surely, he begins to find himself in the outside world again.

Chrollo once discussed a book with the Phantom Troupe when they were being transported to another place for a mission. He read “Tears of a Tiger” by Sharon M. Draper.

The reading sessions are opened with an affirmation and a reason to be thankful to be alive. He says he is thankful for the troupe, glances at you, and smiles. No one catches on to that sly face except for Phinks.

Headcanon 1: Chrollo is very silent and shy to an extent. He only associates with people he knows and trusts. You are the social butterfly at this moment.

Chrollo tags along behind you like a shy child, holding your hand while you stick out your free hand to greet everyone.

Today, the book club was going to read “Divergent”.

Headcanon 2: Although he loves to read, he hates it when others read out loud. Most people are drably read and it annoys him. After a while, he takes over. Chrollo was tense the first 30 minutes of the meeting because two cops were there but neither of them noticed it was him.

Headcanon 3: Chrollo often acts the part of the character that he is reading in the book. His tone, attitude, and emphasis on certain words keep the group engaged. He is complimented on his acting!

“Good Job, honey,” you whisper.

He responds by tightly squeezing your hand.

His tone was so impressive that the host insisted that he read for the entire night. He was ok with that because in between reads he was often distracted by a lovely pair of jeans and shoes you had on. You were into writing, so hearing others read and act out the characters helped.

Headcanon 4: In some settings, Chrollo is very braggadocious. He insisted that the group read one of your stories so you could be provided with feedback.

“We’d be delighted to view your story, y/n!”

“It will be fun!”

The book club wasn’t a stereotypical club that only consisted of soccer moms but instead consisted of men and women who were involved with a business, law enforcement, health, etc. This was an open space for everyone to relax and forget about their demanding jobs.

After the meeting, the group went to dinner at a nearby pizzeria. You all enjoyed large pizzas, beer, salads, and dessert. How could your stomach (or anyone’s stomach) hold that much?

Chrollo laughed so much that it made you question if he was your actual boyfriend or not. He even engaged in conversations with the two off-duty cops! For once, you helped Chrollo experience the greater things in life; true love, friendship, and happiness.

“Thank you,” he whispered and slyly placed a kiss on your hand. “For everything.”

139 notes · View notes

0poole · 4 years

Text

I LOVE No Straight Roads

Honestly it’s hard to keep me away from a game with great visuals and even greater character design. I knew from the INSTANT I saw these characters that I was going to love it. I just finished it because it’s (unfortunately) pretty short, and even though I cheesed the final boss through it’s very lenient death mechanics (Instant respawn at the cost of a good rank) I actually appreciated that it wasn’t a pure cake walk. I’ve yet to rematch all of the bosses, but since I had genuine trouble with the later ones I’ll hold off on that.

But who cares about gameplay, am I right? I sure as hell don’t. I would’ve bought the game no matter what the hell it was. I wanted the characters (and the music, although I realized that second) and that was it.

First of all, I love any world that is super fantastical but cheesy in its concept, ala a city powered by music, and battles between artists using music. Ideas like this only spawn from a mind that wants to create a fun atmosphere, if nothing else, and it was sure as hell fun. I genuinely love when someone goes so far into a crazy idea and doesn’t waste your time explaining it with real world logic. Wanna know how a city can be powered by music? Shut up and look at the cute virtual mermaid. Lord knows I did. Every once in a while, it does you good to just let the player/reader/viewer just revel in the idea without having to go out of your way to make things seem realistic. It’s not about “turning your brain off” or whatever, it’s picking your battles.

Also, I can seriously love a world with great background characters to it. Any game with the right situation to insert the random nobodies you find onto the streets into the art in the credits really played into the greatness of the world’s less important characters, and that’s always a good thing. It’s technically world building. But, since I always love to pick favorites, I’d have to say my favorite background character is easily Mia, the NSR infodesk assistant. It’s funny, because you can literally search “nsr characters” into Google and she’s the third image result. I love how jumpy she is when you first interact with her, since NSR probably spread the word about B2J suggesting they’re rock thugs who’d beat up anyone, so for all she knows she could die right then and there with a guitar lodged in her skull. She’s probably just some intern trying to pay for college. She don’t want trouble.

Also, I just realized that 90% of the characters in this game have the same body structure that I always love, that being having arms/legs that sort of fan out in width into relatively large hands/feet. It’s a kind of limb structure I fall into so much because it just really hits me right for some reason. I really can’t explain why.

Anyways, I gotta talk about the big boys individually:

Mayday and Zuke are an amazing duo. I’m always a sucker for a cute and crazy girl, but honestly Zuke hit so many of the right notes too. I will say it’s weird to pair the martian Zuke with the humanly-skinned Mayday, but honestly it doesn’t even matter because he looks so cool on his own. I love his weird blocky blue dreadlocks, and his weirdly shaped shirt which bares his chest in the weirdest way... And, oh my god, Mayday’s weird Spongebob background flower eyes? It’s little tidbits like that that really make me jealous. How could I have ever thought of that? It looks so perfect, and I don’t know why. And her little booty jig she does in her idle animation? Adorable. I played as her as much as was reasonable not only because I’m a filthy button masher with little strategy but also because she’s so damn cute. I can also appreciate how she has a tough-as-nails persona while still keeping a semi-girly attitude, like with her falling for 1010 and Sayu. Characters are so much better when they’re a perfect blend of characteristics, instead of being all one-note, like how Zuke is the quiet one but gets heated against DK West, and all.

Honestly the voice acting for every character is great, but I love when Mayday’s VA’s accent shows through. It’s a perfect twang to accent (consider this the only acknowledgement of a pun in this post) her snarkiness.

DJ Subatomic Supernova was going to be an easy favorite since he’s all space-themed. Also, I don’t know why I always end up liking the egotistic characters. Not in the sense that I like their egotistic-ness, but in the sense that I like everything else about them and they just so happen to also be egotistic. The same applied with Empoleon (maybe like my 2nd favorite Pokemon) and Rarity from MLP, probably among others. Either way, I’ll never not love space themes. Not to mention he’s got a funky disco theme, and I’m slowly starting to realize that I am in extreme love with techno-funk styles of music. The instant I heard his music he cemented his place into my playlists.

As for design, I still have no idea what the fuck he is. Clearly AI is at human levels in this world, but if he’s a robot why does he still have hairy legs? But, if he’s a human, is that weird orb his head? Is it just some sort of puppet which he controls from inside his giant jacket? I know I dissed explaining things realistically but I actually want to know with this guy. Even the wiki doesn’t say. Either way, he’s clearly the logical extreme of “being at the center of your own universe.” Even his jacket depicts a solar system, with his hood being the sun. Didn’t see that until I tried to draw him. I really wish this guy wasn’t so tied to his DJ stand so I could reasonably draw him without it. I don’t want to draw his hairy ass legs. It is a great touch for his design though (although I prefer his beta look with pants and long boots, another design trait I tend to gravitate to) since DJs could reasonably not wear pants, since they’re always behind a table.

Sayu is my favorite. It’s so plainly obvious. It’s weird to say that sometimes, because some characters like Sayu are so clearly engineered to be as adorable as possible, to the point where they’re basically a parody of whatever they’re supposed to be emulating, but then they do that so well that they are still likable for what they’re trying to parody. Also, even though I’ve never looked into any vocaloid superstars myself, the fact that they exist and are loved in real life is absolutely perfect to be used as a character design in a world like this. It’s so weird conceptually, but we all know it’s normal and realistic. But yeah, she’s a giga-cutie whom I’ve already drawn and I’ve listened to her theme on loop on many different occasions. Favorite character, favorite track, favorite weapon of choice (What did I say about Empoleon?), which, and I wouldn’t have noticed this myself, looks like the USB symbol you see above USB ports on computers. How crazy perfect is that?

Even apart from my unbridled love for cute monster robot(?) girls, her boss fight is probably the 2nd greatest of them all, at least conceptually. She’s just a hologram, so you can’t touch her, but you CAN disconnect the artists which control her in order to defeat her. It’s the kind of concept for a boss fight that could only work for this type of character. I’m a sucker for the cute girl that provides her voice, but I love how the animator (video editor? the yellow one) actually attacks you with a mouse and lowers the brightness of the setting once he appears. Also, the mocap guy being the deeply-voiced type but still providing the adorable movements of her body. It’s such a great combo of characters, and their little extra art in the credits makes me like them even more. I just wish we could interact with them individually.

DK West was probably one of the most interesting characters visually, especially since I knew of every other NSR member long before the game came out, but I only just heard of him closer to the release. I wasn’t sure where he was placed, but I definitely assumed his gig was the weird shadow demon we saw in the trailers. When I finally saw him in game, I was shocked to hear him speak an entirely different language most of the time, which was really cool. Also, finding out he was tied to Zuke and wasn’t strictly an NSR artist really made him more interesting. You know, if his fucking shadow clone magic didn’t make him crazy cool enough. Even though I suck at his game and am not especially fond of his raps, the visual of him rapping with this giant monster behind him and dozens of weird shadow wingmen by his side hyping him up was probably one of the coolest in the entire game. The dark way they were hyping him up too gave such a bizarre atmosphere, especially since it parallels his seemingly chill and smiley demeanor.

I definitely hope they’ll introduce new bosses as DLC in the future, and make them sort of in the same vein as DK West, where they aren’t the biggest artists ever, but they want to pick a fight with B2J. I’d kill for any extra content this game can provide.

Yinu is obviously special since she was the subject of the demo they put out for the game. Even though I knew all her bells and whistles, she and her mom still beat me a few times in the full game. Considering she’s semi-tied to story-ish spoilers I kinda want to go more into her in a separate section. It is worth considering playing the game first since it’s not hard (with the easy going deaths) and it’s short length.

1010 seriously grew on me as I learned more about them and interacted with them. I got their shtick when I first looked at them, but after seeing that animation of them touring the city on Youtube I was kinda falling for them. Then, I learned that they’re apparently repurposed navy war robots? I mean, maybe not them specifically, but it seems to heavily point in that direction, with the warship cars and “attention!”s and all. It took me a bit to get into their music too, but once I actually fought them and put their actions to the music I fell in love with it. I swear, Neon J’s weird dancing can has some of the smoothest moves in all of gaming. I don’t know whether they mocapped out those movements or got one of the greatest animators ever, but it looks so impossibly clean his part of the song gets me like 30x more hype than it would normally.

Also, their little art piece of them looking at fan mail in the credits is probably one of the most adorable things ever. Even if they’re just Neon J’s puppets, that piece of art really makes it seem like they love every one of their fans. I’m not gonna lie, I might swoon a bit too if they picked me out and gave me some special attention.

Oh yeah, and the fact that Mayday was super sad in her showstopper against them was adorable and hilarious at the same time. The little tweaks they made to the showstopper for each fight were great.

Eve just has to be Lady Gaga, right? Like, an even crazier Lady Gaga. DJSS is Daft Punk (or any artist with a helmet persona, you know what I’m talking about), Sayu is Hatsune Miku, DK West is Kanye West, Yinu is a generic child protege, 1010 is a KPop boyband (just pick one) and Eve is Lady Gaga. That’s just how things are. But, again, this is the kind of boss fight that only this type of character could provide. It’s not just surreal imagery, it’s ARTISTIC surreal imagery. The fight is so mesmerizing in every way, especially by how it starts off so slow and calm and progresses to insanity, as well as the increased emotional investment in the fight making you feel so much more into it than just “That’s the boy band. Let’s fight.” Not only does it get you more invested, but it makes her artistic persona go deeper than just “she looks weird.” She is genuinely conflicted about her relationship with Zuke, and naturally that leads her to literally split him and Mayday apart. That mechanic specifically was the coolest, although I do wish they made it more obvious when you needed to switch over to a different side. I was getting pulverized by her fight too, since there were so many things to pay attention to. Her fight was definitely the best one.

Tatiana and Spoilers:

Let’s be real with ourselves, the twist was so obvious. I do also think, though, that obvious twists aren’t bad if they’re just good reveals. At some point, a person just has experienced so many stories that “only pretty good” twists are easy to spot. It doesn’t mean that the twists are bad, it just means you yourself experienced.

I feel like her transition from rock to EDM was pretty understandable, even as a non-musician. She was so caught up in what she assumed was popular that it basically consumed her. It’s easy as an artist to want to forgo what you truly want to make in favor of what makes you popular, and clearly since her transition to EDM made her the CEO of the biggest company in the city (world?) that probably made her think she truly needed to change her outlook. Then, when she saw B2J try to bring it back, she sort of coined them as being as misguided as she was and knocked them down a peg. Plus, they were kinda being jerks about it.

It’s kinda like the Trolls sequel, where everyone pegs rock music fanatics as being too stuck up in their own heads to appreciate other types of music, which honestly seems more like the case than the alternative. When I first heard of the story of the game, I was seriously hoping they did put an asterisk on B2J’s ambitions because they were a bit sketchy from the start.

That’s kinda where I want to talk about Yinu, because she was the true turning point in what they were doing. She’s literally 9 and yet she’s getting dragged into all this BS. When she said “I hate you all” at the end of her fight, and played a somber tune on her broken piano after the fight destroyed it, you kinda got a kick in the face to realize you’re kinda being an asshole to some of them. Sure, they fight back, but they wouldn’t fight in the first place if they didn’t have to. They are just people who play music under a joint name that B2J just so happened to get in hot water with.

Then, of course, there’s Kliff, who also reeked of surprise villain, and who’s basically the embodiment of the bad side of B2J, where he just wanted to destroy for his own sake and not for the actual greater good. Once B2J realized their mistake, they backed off, but Kliff was so hard pressed to do what he planned on in the first place he wouldn’t stop. I kinda wish he got a bigger fight to his own since he’s clearly a big enough tech genius to divert a whole satellite into one specific building. Maybe the Elliecopter chase bit was his thing, but I do kind of wish he was there to fight against them too.

Even though Tatiana did kind of reform a bit quick, It’s still not too crazy to assume she could see that B2J was just misguided and the fact that they worked to revert their wrongdoings for her sake would make a pretty strong impressions. They clearly can hold their own, so it’s not like she wouldn’t want them to join NSR too.

Oh yeah, and her boss fight was clock/time themed. If there’s a theme under space that I love, it’s clocks/time.

And If I am to be respected by the internet, I must provide a negative opinion to balance out my positive one. I will say that the character model physics (like Mayday’s braids, DK West’s vest thing, Neon J’s fluffy neck thing, etc) got kinda funky at times. Especially DK West’s vest, which was completely messed up for every scene he was in... Also, even though the voices are mostly great, some lines felt a bit off. Just a bit. That good enough? Good.

But yeah anyway that’s another favorite game to add to the pile. Eventually I’m gonna have to compile a true list of my all-time favorite games/movies because I do kind of want to have a solid idea of what my all-time favorites are.

#nsr #no straight roads #bunk bed junction #dj subatomic supernova #sayu #yinu #dk west #spoilers #1010 #eve #tatiana #rambling #review #poole #etc #opinions #rant

849 notes · View notes

everlarkficexchange · 3 years

Text

Magic as Always

Written by: @alliswell21

Prompt 71: Magic of Ordinary Days AU: 1940s, Katniss is a single pregnant girl. Desperate for her daughter not to have a child out of wedlock, Mrs Everdeen contacts a priest who in turn knows a young man who just may be willing to help. Sweet, kind and shy Peeta stayed home to take care of the family farm when his beloved brother went to war to never come back. He’s always wanted a family but rural small town life gives little chance to court. He hears of Katniss’ plight and graciously offers to marry her and raise the child as his own. He does everything he can think of to make a home for Katniss and the baby. How does Katniss take it? How does their relationship develop? Will they fall in love? [submitted by anonymous]

Rating: this chapter is rated Teens and Up

Tags: Historical!AU; WWII; 1940’s Era views on marriage, sexism, pregnancy, etc; Katniss/Marvel relationship; Non-graphic Unprotected Sex; Unplanned Pregnancy; Arrange Marriage; Miscellaneous Religious views; Grief/Mourning; Canon Characters Death; OOC!Mrs.Everdeen; Somewhat OOC!Katniss; Everlark is Endgame; Other tags to be added.

Notes: Thank you Anon for this prompt. I must confess, I’ve never seen the movie ‘The Magic of Ordinary Days’ or read the book the movie is based on. I did a quick skimming on the plot of the movie and then dug up all kinds of reviews on the book, most of my plot points come from a combination of movie and book (which apparently differ only in a few parts), besides what the prompter asked for. I just really loved this prompt, and see the potential of this story, which will be a few chapters long, cross posted to AO3 and I already have a good chunk written ;) The rating will be adjusted too, because there will be explicit Everlark smut in the following chapters. Anon, I hope I don’t disappoint you, this story will be only loosely based on the source material, and adapted to fit THG characters in the narrative, I will try to stick to the main plot points as much as I can, but I’m also taking several liberties with the story. I hope you still like it though.

KPKPKPKPKPKPKPKP

Prim died on a Tuesday, after a very long, strenuous battle with poliomyelitis. My sweet little sister’s face looked as fresh as a dew drop even in death.

“Come now, Katniss,” my mother calls from the open door of the mortuary hall, where visitation took place an hour ago.

The mortician has arranged for the coffin to be taken to the cemetery and put in the ground this afternoon. There will be no graveside mourning. It’s all we could pay for, but then again the war has left everyone penniless nowadays.

A big, rotund man comes to close the coffin, and offers a curt nod.

That’s it then. The very last time I’ll ever set eyes on Primrose’s sweet face.

“Katniss,” Mother whispers, insistently. It’s probably all she can muster before breaking down in tears.

I look on at the box my sister’s body lies in, numb and heartsick. I bring my 3 middle fingers to my lips and then rise them in the air. My last salute to my beloved Little Duck. I step away from the coffin and shuffle towards mother.

Up close, I can see the deep, dark bruises under my mother’s eyes. She used to be beautiful in her youth— according to friends and old photographs— but now she just looks tired and defeated. I guess having to bury first her husband and then her 15 year old daughter, in less than a year, would have that effect on anyone.

Prim would’ve looked like our mother, with their soft blonde locks, almond shaped blue eyes and alabaster skin. She had a softer spirit though, she enjoyed music and loved animals. She always said that if she was older, she would’ve joined the Red Cross and signed up to serve as a nurse to our boys in the Pacific, like Father did… Father wasn’t a nurse though, he was a chaplain.

It’s funny to think that I inherited so much of my father, like my dark hair, gray eyes and olive skin. We both also share the same aversion to human pain and blood that moves my mother and Prim to action; but unlike Prim, my father’s calling to help the soldiers in their worst situations, passed me and went directly to my baby sister.

I sigh… Prim would’ve made a terrific army nurse, if only she hadn’t wasted in bed with that odious disease! If she had been given the chance to live, I’m sure Prim would’ve had so many boys trailing after her. She would marry at some point and have a beautiful full life.

I don’t plan on marrying and having a family. If the acute pain in my own chest wasn’t enough warning, watching my mother walk silently from the funeral home to our apartment, with her head bowed and listening to her quiet sobs at night would be enough evidence that there’s too much sorrow in losing one’s husband and children.

I think my efforts will be better spent in cultivating my mind, and getting my degree in botany, like my father always dreamed, anyway… plus, I’m not much of a looker… not like Prim at any rate.

We finally arrived at our modest home. Mother drifts ghost-like into the door, and then we both shuffle quietly into our separate bedrooms. There won’t be a meal at the table tonight, but I make sure Prim’s old tomcat gets fed and watered, and after he meows in distress at my sister’s door, I open mine, and let him strut inside my bedroom and hop into my bed. The hideous fur ball and I distrust each other, but he understands his mistress is never coming back, and he’s the last thing I have from her… so he lets me pet him and he cuddles close to my chest as I fall asleep, crying.

——————————-

Mother and I walk slowly through the busy streets of town, mostly ignoring the bustle and disarray around us. People shout, cars honk horns, a baby cries in the distance, and the few young men rush back and forth in the busy sidewalks, like they’re being lashed by invisible whips.

“We should stop by the grocer and see if we can pick up some eggs.” Says my mother, pulling her “Sugar Book” out of her handbag.

Because of the war, everything is being rationed, from sugar to shoes.

I could care less about food and clothing, though. But I still go into the shop, dutifully.

I’m so immersed in my own thoughts, I don’t see the lanky man walking towards me with his arms full of vittles.

We collide. The man’s groceries fly up in every direction, raining over me, as I sit on my rump on the floor.

My mother is nowhere to be seen. Typical.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there!” Says the man, pulling a packet of oatmeal from the floor, while extending his other hand to help me up.

“No… it’s alright, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Well, let’s agree that we’re both klutzes, and leave it at that?” The man offers.

I’m on my feet, dusting my skirt off and righting my blouse, “Sure, let’s do that.” I scowl at the skew state of my clothes and finally look up at the man.

He’s smiling down at me, and I must admit, his smile is dazzling. He’s got short brown hair, greenish-brown eyes, and a smattering of freckles over his nose. He also towers above me.

“My stars! If it isn’t Katniss Everdeen!” The young man says, unexpectedly excited.

I blink owlishly at him, and try to place his face, but I’m horrible at remembering people. Or their names.

“Marvel Quaid,” he offers genially, unfazed by my lack of response, “we went to grade school together?” He prompts, “My pa used to sell luxury goods in District One?”

“Oh, I think it’s coming back now,” I say smiling for the first time in what feels like months. “You used to throw sticks, pretending they were spears or something,” I tell him, showing that indeed, I do remember him.

Marvel scrunches his nose, “Javelins, actually. I was pretending I threw javelins. I saw a fellow doing it for the Olympics in a film, and then he won a medal for it. I thought to myself that making a victory lap with the good old American flag flapping after oneself looked like fun; well, I wanted to be a victor too!” He chuckles, then deflates. “But as everything, those dreams are gone now, crushed to dust under the weight of the war.”

As is the norm, once the war gets brought up, gloominess settles on, dampening the cheeriest of spirits.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m all too familiar with the sentiment.”

Marvel nods, grimly.

“We lost Father in France.” I’m not sure why I said it. “We put my sister in the ground last week, too.” I avert my eyes.

“Aww, geez, Kit… that’s truly awful. I’m so sorry for your loss,”

I’m mildly surprised I don’t immediately recoil at his little pet name. I guess the fact that he doesn’t sound condescending while delivering his condolences, helps.

“Oh, well, as my father would’ve said, at least their toils in this world are over. They can finally rest in peace.”

After a moment of heavy silence, Marvel shares, “I’m being shipped out tomorrow morning.”

I scowl, “Oh,” I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering how he’d manage to evade the draft for this long? Marvel is my age, 19 going on 20… boys get sent to the front lines at 18. “I… I could write to you… if you wanted?” I offer shyly.

Isn’t that what young women are being told to do, in order to keep our boys’ morale from plummeting?

Marvel grins, showing slightly crooked teeth, “That would be swell, Kit!” He stares at me for a long moment, then sighs, “I should go back to my shopping, before they miss me at home. Lord knows when will I have the chance of doing something as mundane as picking up my mother’s weekly grocery allowance.”

These days it is not only uncommon seeing men doing grocery runs, but simply seeing young, able-body men around, period. All of our boys are either in Europe or the Pacific, fighting to keep the devastation of the World war from reaching our shores.

“Well, for what is worth, I hope you get to return home safely… you know, so you can do all the boring tasks your mother tells you to do. And when I say safe, I mean, I hope you don’t run anymore into spaced out girls, like me,” I smirk.

“Oh, Kit, if only you knew how much I’ve enjoyed our accidental skirmish. It’s like a gift from above, seeing you after all these years. Your smile and the color of your eyes will forever be branded in my mind, to give me a reason to fight. To have a dream,”

I’m momentarily floored by Marvel’s florid little speech. Nobody has ever said anything nearly as sweet and gallant as that to me, and for a moment, I forget all about my dead sister and father, the war, and my own sorrow.

I avert my eyes, bashfully, as he finishes picking up his vittles off the floor.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I lean over to pick up a can of milk, and put it on top of his pile.

“I only speak the truth,” he smiles brightly.

My mother chooses to interrupt at the exact moment I bat my lashes at him, “Katniss, there you are! I’ve been waiting for you by the counter.” She shakes her head.

Marvel wobbles on his feet, rearranging his load, and then greets my mother, warmly, “Mrs. Everdeen, how nice to see you again,”

My mother eyes him, unimpressed. “Good afternoon, young man,” she answers.

“Ma’am… pardon my forwardness, but, would it be too troublesome to ask Miss Katniss to accompany a soldier about to be shipped out, to supper in the town?”

My mother narrows her eyes, distrust dripping from her voice as she speaks, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. My daughter and I are in mourning, you see,”

“Oh, this won’t be an untoward celebration of any kind, ma’am. With the war raging on, we’re all in mourning. All I ask for is one last night of normalcy, a chance to reconnect with an old grade-school mate,” he smiles, hopefully, “For old times sake?”

I’m watching my mother’s face closely, with bated breath.

“Very well,” Mother sighs, “You may ask Katniss out to dinner. But have her home by 9 sharp!”

I don’t hesitate to step up and give him directions to my apartment building in District 12.

I spend the rest of my day giddy and nervous, pressing my best Sunday suit, the gray one with the matching jacket, and polishing my only pair of leather shoes. There isn’t much I can do about my hair… the thing can’t be fashioned into the favored waves, not even putting it in curlers overnight, so I let it be.

I briefly wonder if this was all Prim’s doing? Meeting Marvel and mother’s somewhat easy aquiciscent. Prim hated seeing me sad, and constantly talked about how she’d love to help me get ready for dates with a beau. She couldn’t wait to be of courting age and date a strapping, young man herself… but of course, that would never happen for her, but she would probably still want to see me have those things.

Maybe Marvel is right, and our serendipitous encounter is a gift from above, to heal our wounds… at least for the night.

————————-

Marvel arrives at my house in his father’s car at 5:45. Riding is now such a luxury, with gasoline being rationed and all. He takes me to a quaint little dinner in the middle of town. We share malts, a greasy burger, and a small portion of fries and onion rings.

We talk about baseball:

“You’d look good in a baseball uniform, Kit! Can you still run as fast as you did in school?”

I laugh. “I’m not much for sports,” I demure, “but I’ve heard playing in one of the new teams pays alright. Anyway, I’m gonna be starting my second year of college soon. I put my studies on hold while Prim was at her worst, but now that it’s only just me and mother… I’m anxious to go back to study.”

“Wow, beautiful and smart!”

We talk about cars:

“I loved driving… but Mother sold our car when my sister took a turn for the worse. She didn’t want to at first, saying that Father saved up to buy it, and it held sentimental value to her, but I had to push to sell it. We needed the money and gas was a nightmare to come by, anyway,”

“The only reason we still have ours,” says Marvel, “is because Pa is too stubborn to let go of the things that still made him feel wealthy.” He scowls, “He’s trying to get into the ice business now, since it’s pretty much the only thing one where the raw material is plenty and relatively cheap, and there’s guarantee that people will buy the product… everyone still needs ice for their ice boxes, right?”

No one can afford luxuries anymore with every penny going out to support our boys in the battlefields.

We talk about many other subjects: his sister’s wedding; my father’s unit getting pinned and killed by Germans… We didn’t get a body to bury, but I got a medal on his behalf as his eldest child.

Marvel lets me sniffle against his chest, and then kisses my lips slowly.

I’ve never been kissed on the lips, and I feel my face heat up.

“Would you… like to take a drive with me, Kit?”

We drive all the way to the city limit. It’s exhilarating to be in a car again, and sitting at the overlook, at twilight, alone with a handsome boy, feels positively forbidden!

I’ve never done anything remotely injudicious all my life, and this whole moment feels… magical… exciting!

Tentatively, I initiated our next kiss, but he takes over in a rush of caresses and flitting touches.

“Beautiful, graceful, Kit. You have no match!”

“Marvel…” I kiss him again, not knowing how to answer his sentiments with words.

His hands are restless, groping my shoulders and elbows. “I wished he had more time! I would’ve loved to marry you before departing. I would’ve show you so much passion and love!”

“You still can show me, Marvel… you absolutely can!”

It’s all the permission he needs to dive into a frenzy. He doesn’t stop until the deed is done, and we’re a sweaty, tangled mess of limbs in the back seat of the car, only partially clothed.

A deep feeling of lethargy pours over me. My muscles are sore and heavy, and wished I could fall asleep in here.

“I intend on coming back to marry you, Katniss,” Marvel says, stretching his lanky, long legs to zip up his pants.

I sit up and start finger-combing my ruined hair, hoping my mother won’t notice the strands are extra frizzy. “Um… I guess we should after this,” I say shyly, gesturing between us.

“You could still go to college while I’m away,” he offers with magnanimity.

“You… wouldn’t mind that?” I ask incredulous, college women are so rare, unless they’re trying to become nurses or teachers. Most girls start courting right after high school and get married in the span of one to two years, and their husbands don’t normally encourage an education beyond what their wives came into the marriage with; so to hear Marvel say that wouldn’t mi d me stay in college is just about the greatest thing possible!

“My darling, Kit, I don’t want you to be one of those girls pining and wasting away for her beau. I’ll be busy at war, it’ll be unfair to keep you from occupying your own time while you wait fir my return. Go to college, my clever girl!”

I smile indulgently at him, leaning closer to slip his necktie around the collar of his shirt, “You are truly a generous, loving man,” I say.

Marvel beams, circling my waist with his arms pulling me against his body. “It’s all inspired by you, sugar plum!”

I giggle, kissing his cheek, “I’ll write to you every day!” I promise.

“That’s nice… but just so you know, I might not be able to write back right away. It’ll be a while before I get settled enough to write. But you’ll be in my thoughts every minute of every day, and that’s the honest truth! I’m serious about marrying you when I return, Kit,” he kisses me again. And then, he looks at his watch, sighing. “It’s 8:32. We should get on going, gotta keep in my future mother-in-law’s good graces!”

We share a carefree laugh, and finish tidying ourselves up to drive back to my house.

He walks me to the door, takes me in his arms, and kisses me passionately before promising he’d be back to officially ask for my hand in marriage, and for my part, I swear I’ll write to him every day until he returns home safe and sound.

But neither of us keeps our promises in the end, although I tried.

————————-

Three weeks go by and I keep my word of writing daily letters. I receive no word in return from Marvel, but think nothing of it… Europe is far and traveling by sea is tedious and time consuming; Marvel will get in touch once he’s settled down.

Another week goes by, still without news from my would-be fiancé. I still don’t worry. I’ve been busy with university, and the few other girls attending school with me keep me busy, but my heavier workload is starting to get to me.

I’m usually so tired and moody after school that socializing with my classmates becomes a chore. I barely eat supper before I’m passing out in bed, and my letters to Marvel start to get shorter and simpler with every passing day.

I skip writing one afternoon altogether, and take a long nap. Buttercup— Prim’s ugly cat— perches on my bed like a sentinel to watch me sleep. I believe he’s worried about me… stupid, clingy cat thinks I’m sick.

But the feline’s intuition proves right, because just two days later, I shoot out of bed and run into the washroom to spill every last ounce of last night supper into the toilet. I must’ve caught a bug or something!

I feel queasy and lightheaded every morning after. My appetite wanes and it seems my delicate stomach can only tolerate pears, and broth.

I visit the post office to place out my letters to Marvel almost everyday; Every time I come, the nice old mailman comments on how sweet it is to see all the young-uns holding romance strong. Marvel has yet to respond to one of my letters, so I just smile tightly and demure.

I’ve been thinking though; the longer I go without news of my supposed future husband, and despite the whirlwind night of romance with him, I start questioning my actions, my promises. I never wanted to marry before, and suddenly I was okay getting a hasty, unofficial engagement with a virtual stranger, I barely remember from grade school… maybe it’s better if Marvel never writes.

My plans on earning a college degree and finding a well paying job will go unencumbered— I’m aware women in prominent working professions are as rare as snow in July, but women’s presence in the working forces keep growing as industries need laborers to keep up producing while the men fight in the war. Educated women are almost becoming less rare.

At the two month mark since I last saw Marvel, I become weepier than usual… is to be expected in my opinion; Prim’s been gone for a little over two months and she was the only person I knew I loved. But now I’m worrying about my health on top of everything.

One morning, while I’m kneeling on the cold, hard floor in front of the toilet, feeling miserable and tired, my mother calls my name from the open door.

“Katniss, I think it’s time to get a test.” She states evenly, and then enters the room to fetch a damp washcloth to wipe my face clean. “I hope I’m wrong, but I’m afraid you may be with child,” she sighs.

I squirm. “No,” I gasp. “I— I can’t be with child. I just can’t!” But the thought has crossed my mind a few times already. “It’s not supposed to be this way!”

“I know, child,” My mother pats my head, “there’s only one way to know. Get dressed for the day, I will call the most discreet physician I know, and have him pay us a visit.”

————————-

Doctor Aurelius— a physician my mother has helped deliver babies and treat maladies with— confirms the pregnancy with a grim face.

I sit at my kitchen table numb and despondent. My mother writes a check to the doctor for his services, while talking in no so hush tones in the other room. I listen to their whole conversation, as if submerged in water.

“I blame myself for this, doctor. I should have kept a closer eye on her,”

“Don’t blame yourself Ms. Everdeen, it’s that war business bringing out all sorts of evil into the world! It’s unfortunate the rise of these cases in our community. Young ladies— from good families!— engaging in acts ought to be saved for marriage. Youth do things without thinking, guided by fear. Our boys fear they may not return from that senseless, awful war, and settle down properly, and I don’t blame them one little bit.”

“The only solace I have right now, is that my poor husband is not here to see the shame that’s fallen over our family,”

“I understand the sentiment, ma’am. There’s no telling how Preacher Everdeen would’ve taken this blow. But I’m sure things will work out as soon as young Katniss hears from the father…”

I dissolve into silent tears then. My mother escorts the doctor to the door and then there’s silence.

My pinky finger curls into the soft fabric of the table cloth, and I try to ignore the urge to vomit boiling in my stomach. There’s one thought circling mi mind: my college days are over.

——————————-

“Ah! Miss Everdeen, I have something for you.” Says the mailman as soon as I reach the desk. He smiles, but rather sadly, like he’s about to give me bad news.

I’ve come to the post office with urgent letters every day for 6 days, and he’s never looked at me this way.

The old man digs around for a moment and almost reluctantly, passes a parcel tied up in twine. An envelope is attached to the top of the parcel, and with a sinking feeling, I realized it’s a stack of my own letters.

“It came in today, miss.” Says the man, voice laced with pity. “Sorry for your loss.” He says.

At first I don’t understand what he could possibly mean by that; he’s offered his sympathies fir my dead father and sister already; it makes absolutely no sense to repeat himself randomly after so long.

Then it hits me like a ton of bricks.

I gasp, and press the parcel to my chest. “Oh no! Marvel!” I whisper. I give the man a hasty wave, thanking him, and rush out of the post office like mad.

Tears run down my cheeks, while I dash home, imagining the worst. “Poor, Marvel!” Is all I can think.

“Katniss, what’s wrong?” My mother calls, alarmed, when I rush to my bedroom, sobbing. She follows me in, and watches me tear into the envelope at the top of the stack.

I frown in confusion when I’m met with handwritten, chicken-scratch scrawl, instead of a formal missive typed in official US military stationary.

My scowl deepens as my eyes rove over the flowery vocabulary, and then I screech, “What?!”

“Katniss, what’s going on?”

I ignore my mother when she approaches to read over my shoulder; I step around her, shaking the piece of paper in my hands and stand by the window, as if sunlight will make the words change their meaning.

I smooth the creases and folds on the page over, and read out loud, “Dearest Kit, sorry it took so long to write, it’s been a wild time since we arrived and finding time to correspond with everyone back home it’s been hard.

“At times, your letters have been the sole source of light and hope in the darkness of this conflict. Is for that reason, and with a heavy heart, that I must come clean to you now. I truly meant it when I swore to come back and make you my wife, but as the Good Book says, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and love has sprouted out the most unlikely place! Kit, I’ve fallen in love and married a lovely gal here in England…”

I stop reading. He goes on talking about the why and how, but I sincerely don’t care.

“That good for nothing, virtue dasher, future crushing… liar!” My mother bleats to the ceiling, raising her palms over her head, dramatically.

I’m angry too, of course. I feel used and disposed of like a dirty rag, but my mother’s reaction is borderline hilarious. Except, it isn’t.

I’m pregnant, unmarried, and soon— once my still flat stomach starts rounding— I’ll be socially ostracized for my condition. My only saving grace was the promise of marriage that bastard Marvel had given me. But that’s gone now.

“I knew that boy was bad news the second I laid eyes on him! He never even introduced himself to me, the little weasel! This is my fault. My fault! I should’ve never allowed you to run amok with the likes of him…”

“Mother, will you please?” I nearly growl, gesturing at the open bedroom door.

She stares at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, before pursing her lips in disapproval, and stalking out of the room muttering her aggravation under her breath.

I sink into my bed with Marvel’s stupid letter crumpling in my fist. A single, hot, angry tear rolls down my face, and for the first time since finding out of its existence, I hug my midsection and address my child, “I’m so sorry for dragging you into this mess. I know you didn’t ask for a mother like me, but I’m all you got now, little one. I promise we will be alright… I’ll try not to let you down.”

———————-

My mother has been unbearable for the last two days. She cries in her room worse than when Prim died, and when she sees me, she starts lamenting my poor choice, like I’m not even standing there… as if I don’t feel discouraged enough.

I keep myself busy with my education. I will need to earn this diploma now more than ever before, and I need to do as much as I can before the baby arrives and my studies get put on hold.

In the meantime, I scout the newspapers for possible work options to sustain me and my mother. Our savings keep diminishing and the small stipend my mother got from the Army since my father passed away is becoming more insufficient by the day.

There’s a knock on the front door, and I push out my chair unhappy by the interruption.

“Afternoon Miss Katniss! Would you let your mother know she’s got a telephone call down in the lobby?” Says the building’s doorkeeper.

“Of course, thank you. She’ll be right down!”

Telephones are yet another luxury we had to give up when moved to this small place after losing my father.

I go back to my job hunt, and my mother descends to the lobby, quickly.

She returns after only 10 minutes, almost running through the door, excitedly calling my name. Tears wet her face, but her smile is so blinding, even without knowing what sort of news she’s heard to cause her such joy, I stand from the table with nervous anticipation.

“Oh, Katniss! Katniss my dear daughter, you’re saved!” She exclaims, hugging me tightly.

I’m confused. I step away from her embrace, “What do you mean?”

“It’s the best thing possible ever, I tell you! The Lord has answered all of my prayers!”

“This is all so exciting and all, mother, but… could you please share this great news already?”

My mother cups my face in her hands, and beams at me, “You need to pack your things, darling! Your father’s good friend, Reverend Undersee, has found a husband, and you are to wed, in three days time!”

—————————

Reverend Undersee and his daughter, Madge, meet me and my mother at the rinky dink bus station, in the equally tiny town my mother has banished me to.

“Katniss! How long has it been?” Says Madge, hugging me enthusiastically.

I bite my tongue to keep the acidic retort of “not long enough!” to leave my mouth.

“Welcome to Panem,” says the reverend, soberly, shaking my mother’s hand in greeting.

“Thank you, revered. We appreciate your hospitality and your understanding,” my mother responds, then gives me a pointed look and a wordless command.

I nod and mutter, “Thank you, sir. Madge,”

I scowl at a crack in the pavement, not feeling an iota of gratefulness for this charade!

Any man agreeing to this questionable union has to either be desperate, or be hiding terrible, ulterior motives to go along with all of this. Nobody in their right mind would willingly marry a girl pregnant with another man’s baby, and be happy about it… unless that’s the reason!

I shudder at the thought.

But it is a very real possibility that my intended is a simpleton, who can’t find a wife otherwise… or worse! It could be a man very advanced in age, looking for a supple, young body to leech off. Gross!

My mother had been too excited about the news that a man offered to marry me (as if I asked for, or even wanted a husband!) to bother to ask his name.

Reverend Undersee coughs daintily, clears his throat, and starts, like he’s giving a lecture at the university. “It is our Christian duty to lend a helping hand to widows and orphans in their time of needs. Same way it’s our duty to keep the memory and honor of an old friend from being dragged into the mud.”

I wince at the harsh words, and let my face fall lower, if that’s even possible.

“Well, it’s a good thing that we are all recipients of the abundant grace of the Lord, which covers multitude of faults, and it’s never hard to reach,” a deep, velvety, masculine voice cuts into my embarrassment.

I lift my eyes from the ground, to find a man striding confidently in our direction. He smiles kindly at me, his eyes fixed on my own, like I’m the only person still standing in the station.

He finally cedes our staring contest, to take in the rest of the group.

A knot forms in the pit of my stomach, because I recognize him from years past when my family used to visit this town, and I’m afraid I know exactly why he’s here.

“Good afternoon, all. I apologize for my tardiness, I had a last second detail to take care of before leaving the house,” he nods in our general direction, taking his hat off; a riot of ashy blonde curls falls onto his forehead, before bending forward to shake my mother’s hand, “I’m Peeta Mellark, at your service, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Likewise, mister Mellark,” says my mother, her lips twitch tersely, “Widow Everdeen, and this here is my daughter Katniss… your bride.”

Peeta Mellark’s baby blue eyes slip back to mine, and the left side corner of lips curls into a shy, earnest smile. “Welcome to Panem, Katniss, I’ll sure do my best, so you’d like it here.”

#alliswell21 #prompt 71 #Springtime Edition 2021 #submission

112 notes · View notes

variousqueerthings · 3 years

Text

Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Three of Three

(another massive, massive thank you to @mimsyaf )

part 1

part 2

8. Queerness and femininity and masculinity and the colour red and *record breaks*

If we spin the record aaalll the way back to this paragraph: “…looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), and men.” Reading Daniel as a repressed, bisexual boy in a society that doesn’t accept his desires it’s interesting looking at how he moves through the world of the Miyagi-verse, at how threatened other men are by him, at how obsessed they are with him.

He’s out in the symbolic woods and these large boys and men see him and decide for whatever plot reasons to come for him. And they are large and violent and attractive and apart from Johnny again, they don’t have the nebulous excuse of fighting over a girl and even that excuse dies by around the midpoint when Johnny kisses Ali just to get a rise out of Daniel. He’s not trying to “win her back,” he’s not even really looking at her. He’s just trying to get a reaction. They don’t have any of the fighters in Rocky’s excuse either of Daniel being a macho opponent.

You can read whatever subtext into TKK1 and TKK2 (which becomes especially tempting once CK confirmed that the guys he fought at seventeen have been thinking about him ever since – for thirty-five years), but TKK3 is where it’s really At in terms of obsession and lust and forbidden desires.

Silver is presented as both a handsome prince who saves Daniel and mentors him (where Miyagi is undoubtedly cast in a fatherhood role) and later on becomes twisted into a dark secret that Daniel has to keep, while he turns that thing that Daniel loves (karate, it’s… it’s karate… it’s also men, but it’s definitely karate, because karate makes him feel… things...) into an abusive, violent version of itself.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

But he’s also offering him something liberating. Whatever is going on in that nightclub scene is about something other than breaking Daniel down. Even the bloodied knuckles aren’t just about revenge. It’s about giving him something that he isn’t, in the end, willing to receive, at least not from Silver. In that roundabout, strange way of these feminine fairytales, it’s exploring hidden desires through the metaphor of karate.

Daniel wears red because it’s his colour. In the movies he wears red a lot. Often in scenes with violence in them (the beach/the hilltop in TKK1 and the date/the destruction of the dojo/the final fight in TKK2), but he also has a variety of shirts (and in TKK3 pants) that pop up all the way through the narrative. He wears a red jacket when he accepts Terry’s training, when he punches a guy in the face, and when he tries to get out of the training again (as badly as that goes).

Did anyone consciously think about red’s link to desire, obsession, and violence when they made these? Eh. But is it there symbolically? When he meets Johnny, when he fights Chozen, when he’s in emotionally fraught situations with Terry? Hell yeah.

Probably the most lust-and-violence infused red is that aforementioned punching-board-until-knuckles-bleed bit – not that I thought Terry was going to pull him in for a kiss, because I knew, logically, of course he wouldn’t right? There’s no way… is there? Or later on when Daniel punches that guy and ends up with blood all over his shirt and Terry once more grasps him, euphorically. Blood is violence. Blood is also desire. Red is Daniel’s colour, even though he doesn’t acknowledge it come Cobra Kai. (Maybe he just needs someone else - cough Johnny Lawrence cough - to inspire it in him again).

Daniel LaRusso’s narrative is exploring that most feminine of fairytale tropes: To want and be wanted by monsters and having to hide those desires.

“Maybe this time that strange churning in my stomach that feels like a mix of anticipation and fear will turn out good for me.” - Daniel’s mind.

At the end of the story, Daniel saves himself, with all of the strange mixed narratives around it, and the acknowledgement that the end of The Karate Kid Part Three isn’t satisfying and its aftermath will likely be delved into in the next season of Cobra Kai.

Nevertheless, he saves himself. Not from Silver or Kreese or Barnes, and not entirely, but he makes a decision not to give in to fear (and he continues to try and live by that decision, making it over and over again for the next thirty-five years, even when the return of Cobra Kai makes that difficult for him).

He doesn’t do it by being the strongest in the land or even through a lucky shot (although that too). He does it by refusing to be like the male antagonists that surround him, by telling them they have no power over him. The narrative isn’t just his getting lost in the forest and all the monsters he finds there, it’s about how he redefines power for himself within that forest.

He’s a man who isn’t violent, whose victories include helping out a girl whose ex-boyfriend just broke her radio, successfully doing the moves to a cultural dance he’s trying to learn, sitting with his father figure while he cries over the death of his own father, telling a girl that she’s just made her first friend, and breathing a sigh of relief that a tree that got broken has healed.

Daniel LaRusso is a good boy is the point!

Karate is a metaphor. It can turn into many things: A series of lessons learned about how to be his own man and take care of his own house, a respect for the history of the father teaching him and sharing his home and story with him, fear, desire, masculinity (and the different forms that can take).

When a tall, handsome stranger offers to teach him karate in the dark, without Daniel’s caretaker knowing how to help him, and twists that karate into something that hurts him - when he reclaims that, over and over, that means something too.

This man is fine and definitely isn’t carrying the weight of buried karate-based queer trauma - could a traumatised man do this? *stares blankly at a former tormentor as blood runs down his forehead*

9. In Conclusion Daniel Has Kissed Dudes… Symbolically… But We Can HC Literally:

So there’s Daniel and his coded feminine fairytale narrative. It’s all a series of fun coincidences.

1. Ralph Macchio is just Like That

2. Red. All the red.

3. large portion of his storyline is about lack of power. Yes, he regains that power by the end of the first and second movie through A Fight, but generally he is framed as powerless opposite these almost monstrously physically powerful boys/men. And in the third one it’s barely even about physical prowess (he’d still lose a real fight against Barnes or Silver) and more about regaining lost autonomy off the back of a manipulative, abusive relationship with an older guy.

4. The third movie in particular is narratively a mess, but if reimagined as a fairytale makes a lot of sense (because it’s secretly all about how karate is bisexuality and Daniel gets manipulated through that desire to be better at karate).

5. Queerness and femininity and themes about hidden desires that can only be approached sideways through couching those desires in symbolism: Handshake meme.

6. The fact that the more I think about it, the more feral I am for a Labyrinth AU.

7. To sum up over 5000 words of text: The inherent homoeroticism of wanting to be slammed against a locker by a bully, but extended over three movies and ever-more inventive ways of hurting pretty-boy-Daniel-LaRusso.

Johnny’s not going to be happy when he realises Daniel’s got other ex-rivals buried in his closet...

10. Some Other Stuff Aka The Laziest Referencing I’ll Ever Do