#but she actually just said 'The architecture students *work* pretty hard' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spideyspeaches · 3 years

Text

Gold Rush ↬ t.h

Gif by @parkeraul :)

A/N: I'm in love with that song 🙈 also here's my super late contribution of professor!tom 😋 cause I've been procrastinating on the wandavision au (in my defence though, it's taking a lot of brainstorming 😂) anyway here you go-

Wc: 2.6k+

Warnings: lemme know if you find one :)

Summary: He taught British History and you chastise yourself for not auditing for that subject earlier.

Pairing: Professor!Tom x Student!Reader

Masterlist || Taglist

Waking up with a start, you groan at the shrill sound of your alarm. With a sigh that was more of a grunt of annoyance, you tried to reach for your phone at the side table, hissing when you felt the corner of your elbow hit the table, pain shooting up to your shoulder.

Great, you weren't even up yet and your day was already going shitty. You just hoped that your professor won't be grumpy about you being late for the millionth time this semester.

You hated cultural architecture. You had nothing against the course, but You hated your professor with a passion and wished that you could burn your textbooks for all you cared, right in front of your teacher's eyes, watch him writhe in fear as you banished the very existence of your material.

You were being dramatic, but in your defence, your professor was an old bastard who never left an opportunity to reprimand you, going as far as letting you know how uneven your margins were on your latest project.

He wore birkenstocks with a three piece. You wouldn't trust him with your assignments.

Getting out of your dorm room was work, hard work. But you got out, brushed your teeth and wore what you hoped were presentable clothing.

"You look hungover." Your roommate, Stacy, commented, spitting in the sink as you scowled at her.

She was straightforward, outspoken and somehow managed to look like one of those Victoria secrets models that you loathed, even at seven in the morning. You hated her.

(You didn't.)

"Thanks, I hope I smell too. Want that son of a bitch- what's his name, Wilson, to suffer for giving me that C minus on my thesis." You grumbled, rubbing your hands through your hair to flat them out.

"You really hate him, don't you." She snickered, popping off her shirt. You tried not to look, not wanting to come off as a pervert, but damn, she was fit. You contemplated her words, frowning at your own reflection.

You looked disheveled, the dark eye bags under your eyes very apparent as you tried to mask them with foundation, setting your hair for the millionth time. Oh well, you were presentable enough. Sweatpants would have to do for your only class today, you could binge Netflix after this wretched class.

"I do. I hope his third wife divorces him and he loses his thermos of coffee in the subway." You said, adding your look finally before wearing your shoes.

"That's cruel, didn't know you had it in you." She snickered, patting your back and following you as you closed the door, "Well I have to go to my boring science lectures now so, see you later hun."

"Yeah, enjoy your chemistry period with your boyfriend!" You cheered sarcastically, rolling your eyes and hugging her to tell her that you were only joking. Your relationship was this, of jokes and hugs and kisses. You considered her your best friend.

Rushing towards the gates of your university, you hastily tightened your loosening hair tie, adjusting the straps of your bags. You were pretty sure you had broken your record of being late to your class. You may hate the professor, but you actually enjoyed the subject.

Wheezing as you ran past the late comers, you nodded at the receptionist, hastily signing yourself in. You would blame your clumsiness for what happened next, because one second you were fixing your sande on the foot of the fountain, and next thing you knew you were crashing into a firm body, your nose hitting the random stranger’s chest.

"I’m so sorry! I’m kinda late to class and I wasn’t looking and- whoa, ow.” You rushed your words, groaning when you felt blood rush from your head to toe, nose throbbing with double vision, a reminder of your clumsiness.

“Whoa, hey calm down, it’s okay, I wasn’t looking either.” The stranger said, his thick South Western accent snapping you out of your self pity.

You felt blood rush to your cheeks instead, not anticipating your face in a flush this early in the morning, when you got a good look at the stranger. He was good looking, in his black high turtleneck and brown checkered pants. He had a small leather satchel clutched in his hands, face looking as flushed as you felt when you realised that you had been gawking at him.

He was probably no older than his mid twenties, making you wonder what he was doing in your university. He was too old to be a student, and too young to be a professor. But then again, you wouldn't judge him for joining college late.

Right?

"S-sorry, you um, you must be really late, you should go." He stuttered, your heart fluttering at his dimpled chin and thick accent. His eyes were gleaming in the morning sun, captivating in a way that left you in awe.

"Um yeah, I am." You nodded, composing yourself, hoping that you didn't look too sleep deprived or disheveled, "where are you going, if you don't mind me asking."

"Um, the architecture wing?" He said, unconsciously stepping besides you.

"Oh, I'm going that way. Is it your first time coming here? Haven't seen you around." You asked, trying not to stare at his sharp jawline and the way the morning sun hit him just right, illuminating and accentuating his curly brown hair.

"Yeah, it's my first lecture, so um, looks like I'm late too." He smiled. It was infectious, you noticed as you mirrored his expression.

"Oh, you're a student?"

"Actually, I'm a professor. Just transferred from UCL."

So you were right, he was a professor. He looks so young though. You thought, nodding at him, your thoughts interrupted by his laugh. Looking at him with confusion, you raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, everyone says that. I started right after finishing graduation so, I guess I'm not much older than you." He smiled, kicking the small pebbles littered around the set grassy ground. It had just rained, the smell of wet ground still fresh.

"I said that out loud didn't I?" You smirked, ducking your head to hide.

"You did."

Entering the building, you realised that you hadn't asked which subject he taught, crossing your fingers and hoping that he would replace the old bastard that taught you cultural architecture.

"I forgot to ask, which lecture do you teach?" You asked, looking for your class in the end. The hallways were empty, it was way past your first lecture and all the students were already in the auditorium.

"Oh, uh, British History." He answered. You didn't let disappointment show too much on your face, smiling shyly before gesturing towards the class, "that's you."

"Oh, um thank you." He smiled, pursing his thin lips together as he walked towards the class. You could hear screaming of the students as you both neared the classroom, you still standing by the door, "I didn't get your name."

His question snapped you out of your disappointed gaze,

"Oh, it's Y/n. Y/n L/n." You said with a smile.

"Pleasure to meet you Y/n, I'm Thomas Holland, but you can call me Tom." He said awkwardly, before turning back to his class, who had yet to notice him.

"The pleasure's all mine Professor."

For the first time in your college life, you didn't feel like tearing your hair off during your lecture, your thoughts wandering around. You wanted to berate yourself for not paying attention, but your thoughts kept going there.

It was funny, how you met him not long ago and he was already taking up residence in your brain. You could not control your feelings after all. Something akin to nausea or excitement eased into your stomach when you pictured his smile, his black turtleneck that accentuated his biceps and pectorals. The little rebellious eyebrow and the tiny scar above it.

It made your heart flutter, everything seemingly seemed to stop around you. It scared you a bit, how You had managed to envision the little details of his face in your brain after such a short duration.

You didn't realise that you were smiling until you felt a nudge on your side, making you nearly jump on your seat.

"What?!" You hissed, scowling at your classmate.

"Who're you thinking about?" She asked, wiggling her eyebrows as she leaned towards you. You had known her long enough to know her name but never bothered learning, and you were too scared to ask now.

"It's none of your business." You muttered, glancing up to see your professor scowling at a student as they stood up.

"Well okay, but did you hear about the hot new professor? Apparently he's teaching British History, I regret not taking that as a subject now." She said, her cheeks flushed with excitement. You furrowed your brows, feeling a pang in your chest at the realisation that you were probably just another girl with a stupid crush on the hot professor, that there were already girls who would die to feel his touch.

"How do you know about him?" You asked, raising an eyebrow as you try to act nonchalant. You weren't being subtle, apparently, because you could see her snapping her bubblegum with a smirk, leaning forward as if trading secrets.

"You kidding right? Everyone knows about him, you got a crush on him or something?" She suggested, scooting close enough to make you squirm.

"I literally just met him, and ew, he's a professor, why would I see him that way?" You whisper, willing your heart to stop palpitating at the thought of said professor, your gut twisting in anticipation.

"I don't know girl, he's hot and young and so much better than this bastard." She sighed, leaning on her palm with a fake dreamy expression.

You went back to ignoring her after that, noticing how her notebook said 'Eloise'. At least you didn't have to ask her her name now.

Your class went surprisingly well, or maybe it was because you weren't paying attention and thinking about him again. You really needed to get a grip on yourself.

Walking out of your class, you decided to go to the cafeteria, your stomach begging for your attention.

Setting your things on a table, you took out your phone to scroll through Instagram, before switching it off and looking around the cafeteria. You didn't know what you were expecting to see, but your stomach was gurgling with hunger and nothing made sense when you were hungry.

Walking to grab something to eat, you pick up your bag, hanging it over one of your shoulders before getting in the line.

Just as you were about to turn with your bun and cup of coffee, you crashed into someone for the second time that day. Cursing your clumsiness, you heard a familiar British accent curse not very colourful words, making you stumble over as you tried to wipe off the hot coffee off his shirt.

"Hey, it's okay." He said, stopping your frantic gestures by holding your wrist with his to cease any movements.

"Professor Holland! I'm so sorry, it's like, I'm just clumsy. I have no excuse." You sighed in resignation, mentally facepalming at spilling your coffee at the hot professor.

"It's okay darling, I've had much worse spilled on me." He smirked, his hand still holding on to yours. You had started walking away from the location, and yet his hand didn't let go, "You know, I used to babysit during my college days."

"Oh, babysitting, right of course." You chuckled awkwardly, chest heaving with the sudden close proximity with the professor, dissipating the not quite PG thought that just occurred in your mind at his words..

"Sorry for-" You said in unison with him, chuckling.

"You go first." He said.

"I'm sorry for spilling coffee on You, it must have hurt and I ruined your shirt and now there's a big splotch of coffee right in the middle!" You said, circling your fingers around your palm as you walked with your back to the exit as you walked out of the cafeteria, food forgotten and him following your pace.

Before you could continue your awkward blabber, you were standing in the garden outside, leaning against a pillar with the garden in your view looking golden in the setting sun. He was standing in your view, the shadows around his jaw making it look sharp enough to cut glass.

Taking a breath, you looked up at his smiling form with confusion when he didn't answer, instead leant onto the pillar next to you.

"You were... gonna say something?" You reminded, smiling awkwardly as you fiddled with your fingers.

"Oh? Oh! Oh yes yes, You know, I was kind of disappointed that you weren't in my class, Mister Wilson talks very highly of you." He said, folding his arms on his chest, it made his biceps bulge.

"He does?" You looked at him with surprise, guilt panging in your chest when you remembered yourself bad mouthing the professor not long ago.

"Yes, says you're a bright student with a bright future." He answered, leaning his head back so that his neck was exposed, Adam's Apple bobbing as he gulped, his hair falling into place perfectly against his forehead. The arch of his neck was beautiful, tracing it with your eyeballs as you imagined which other curves of his were as beautiful, immediately dismissing those thoughts, chastising yourself for thinking such a way of a professor.

"That's… sweet of him. I've never heard him compliment me once in the two and half years I've been in his class." You chuckle, leaning your elbow on the pillar to get a better look at his side profile.

"Hmm, he says he's hard on you because he wants you to do your best..."

You stopped listening past that, your breath growing more erratic the more he talked, his smooth voice washing over you like warm honey with a squeeze of lemon. Swallowing a sudden lump in your throat, your heart leaping, leaving you nauseous and in a dream like trance.

Tom noticed immediately, noticing your slouched posture as you stared at him with a small smile, the upturn of your lips so inviting that he almost dived in, wanting to know the feeling of them what they felt like against his.

He wasn't the kind to date his students, in fact, he rarely dated after joining uni and becoming a professor.

He strictly believed that student/teacher relationships should end in only a professional non romantic set up. That was all up until he crashed into you that morning.

You had been in his mind all day, stirring him crazy as he imagined your smile, the way your eyes lit up when you talked about your subject of interest, the say your fingers fiddled with the ring you wore on your index finger.

He wondered if this feeling would last forever or become a vague memory, an attraction of hearts that didn't last but felt good till it did. If he was rushing, or if you even felt the same way.

He was smart, of course that's how he became a teacher, but he still couldn't place your feelings.

So when he saw you staring at him, his heart leaping in his throat at your adorable smile, the only logical answer his brain gave was that you liked him too. Temporary attraction or not, he wasn't one to look a gift horse in it's mouth.

Next thing he knew your lips were crashing onto his, your chest pressed against his firmly as your hands reached up to the base of his neck.

Your fingers were soft, tongue swishing against his as he opened his mouth to let you enter. His hands automatically reach for your waist, holding onto firmly as he slammed you against the pillar.

The sun was nearly down, the last of the rays hitting the garden, lighting you both up in a golden glow that left you breathless with a fire raging in your souls.

"What do you say that I audit for British history? I'd like to learn more lessons from you, Professor Holland." You said, breathless against his chest, hiding your nose against his sternum, blood rushing to your ears as his warm hand burned against the bare skin underneath your shirt.

"That would be great darling, anything to see your pretty smile every morning."

A/N: let me know what you think! :)

#tom holland x reader #professor! tom holland x reader #professor!tom holland #tom holland smut #tom holland x reader smut #tom holland x you #spideygirl writes

392 notes · View notes

biromanticbooknook · 3 years

Text

My Most Ambitious Crossover

I got bored by posting only my second gen Amazon AU, so I’ll get back to that tomorrow, but enjoy this one-shot about Chloe and Marinette creating their own trip instead of their class trip in the meantime. Can’t have you all thinking I’m a one-trick pony, can I?

“-and that’s why we think you shouldn’t go on the trip this year.” Mlle. Bustier tried to look apologetic, but it was as much her idea as the students. Between Marinette refusing to set an example and Chloe associating with her, neither of them deserved to go.

“Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid I would have to get my daddy to donate 30% of the funds like he does every year.”

“I’m just glad I don’t have to take 60% of the trip funds out of my commission profits. That will give me a much bigger budget for fabric and accessories.” Everyone blanched at the statements of the 2 girls. They were saying that they paid for 90% of the trip every year, but that couldn’t be right. They worked so hard on fundraisers every year, they must be lying about how much they contribute.

Marinette just ignored them, turning to her seatmate. “Do you think that our other friends would want to go on a trip with us? Most classes take their trips during May, so we could leave at the beginning of June and take the entire summer.”

“Nice thinking, Maribug. With fewer people, prices go down and we can afford more bang for our buck.” They walk out of the classroom, discussing who to ask and when.

The class just made a big mistake.

-----

By the time the weekend rolled around, Marinette and Chloe had their group list finalized. The people going on their trip were themselves, Luka, Kagami, Aurore, Mireille, and Marc. They got together and started brainstorming fundraisers.

Marinette started. “There are the given examples; you know, car wash, bake sale, raffle. What else?”

“We could host a show.” Luka suggested.

“Like an exhibition?” Marinette asked. “We could have you perform, Kagami do a fencing demonstration, and I could do a small fashion show, using Chloe and Marc as models. Aurore and Mireille could be our MCs.”

“To capitalize on money-making, we could sell tickets, food and drink, and merch for Luka’s solo career as well as commission spots for our resident designer.”

“That’s good.” Marinette starts scribbling in the shared notebook.

“At Le Grande Paris, we could host parties. I know days when the grand ballroom is open. We could host an auction, sell lessons and creations and stuff. We could also host a masquerade ball that we sell tickets for. We could charge for food and drink. The pools are open for private reservation quite often, we could have parties there too.” Chloe takes the notebook and starts writing down her ideas, mapping out all the resources needed while muttering.

“We could also host a carnival or a gaming tournament in the ballroom.” Kagami looked thoughtful. “I’ve never actually been to one.”

Chloe added that to the list. “Should we do anything else?”

“We could start a go-fund-me. Artists and writers do it all the time to get their creations off the ground.” Marc murmured.

“That would be great. What’s our goal for this entire endeavor?”

“Our goal, Maribug, is €45,000. That should cover travel, boarding, tours, food, and souvenirs. Whatever we don’t spend gets redistributed to the group.” Chloe supplies.

“Then that should be it. Nice job, guys!”

“My, what a whirlwind of a planning session. I hope nothing rains on our parade. I wonder weather Mlle. Bustier’s class is doing this well.” Aurore beams at them.

“Mm-hmm.” Mireille agrees with Aurore.

“Probably not. Our classmates couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. They’ll just listen to Lila that the boot will empty by itself through the toe because ‘I worked on patenting this boot’, then they’ll get mad at the boot for not doing it.” Chloe chuckles dryly.

“Be nice.” Marinette reprimands half-heartedly.

-----

Chloe immediately filed the paperwork with the school board so they could go on their trip with no safety or legal concerns. She recruited Mme. Mendeleiev and M. D'Argencourt to be their chaperones, who were more than happy to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Los Angeles, Star City, Central City, Metropolis, Gotham, New York City, and Tokyo.

They had their first fundraiser at the end of September, a pool party at Le Grande Paris. Even Mlle. Bustier’s class attended, though they didn’t know who had set it up, only that Luka was performing. They hadn’t even started their planning yet. The group made €3,041.

The next was a car wash in the middle of October. It was cool enough for a car wash to be pleasant while being warm enough that everyone was still out and about. They earned €2,632. Bustier's class was getting ice cream and listening to Lila brag.

They then had an All Hallow’s Eve bake sale, complete with candy decoration reminiscent of the American holiday. They earned €1,800.

During November, they held a carnival, with a full fall theme. It was wildly popular with families from all over Paris, earning them €6,483. It was around this time that Mlle. Bustier’s class held a bake sale, and earned €1,594. They celebrated.

Throughout the holiday season, they took advantage of peoples’ spirit. They held a raffle throughout the 12 Days of Christmas, while also holding a bake sale the day before winter break. Overall, they earned €10,749.

Over winter break, Chloe bought plane tickets and reserved tours and hotels, so all that was left was to get money for the tours and food. They were over halfway to their goal.

During January, they rented a theater, and held their exhibition. They had a crowd of fencing enthusiasts, rock music lovers, and fashion followers. They made €5,830.

They held a date auction and a masquerade to celebrate Valentine’s Day. It was amazing, and they earned €7,284.

They had checked their go-fund-me, and had found that €10,000 was there, putting them €2,819 over their goal. They were ecstatic!

They still held the gaming tournament at the end of April, but let it be free for everyone to enjoy as their celebration of reaching their goal.

-----

Mlle. Butsier’s class had made €7,000 over their 3 fundraisers, and they were pretty proud of themselves. No doubt they would be going somewhere much better than whatever Maribrat and Chloe have planned. Once the girls walked into the classroom, the class started to brag.

“We’ve finished fundraising!”

Marinette smiled and decided to be nice to them. “Cool. Where are you going?”

“We are going to New York City.”

Chloe was not as kind. “Oh, so are we! It was so hard to raise the €45,000 needed for our trip, but we did it. It was so euphoric to meet our goal. How much did you guys raise?”

“We made €7,000.” The smiles slowly slipped off the faces of the class. “What do you mean the €45,000 needed?”

“Well, we needed to cover food, travel, boarding, and tours, and that was just for the 7 of us. I can’t imagine what the budget would’ve been like for an entire class.” Her smile got an edge, like a lioness who knew she had cornered her prey.

Her classmates blanched. “What was our budget, Alya?” Rose looked towards their new class representative, hoping that she had an answer.

“We never had one.”

“Well, at least you filed the paperwork right?”

“What paperwork?”

Marinette responded this time. “The paperwork needed to go on a trip. You were supposed to submit it to the school board for approval of safety and legality. It was on page 17 of the packet I gave you at the beginning of the year. Didn’t you read it, Alya?”

“I-I-no. Lila said that was just extra work that you had given me to throw me off my game. She said you didn’t actually need to do all of that.”

“I didn’t know that Lila had more experience being a class representative than me and Marinette, the only 2 people who have ever been class representative here.” Chloe’s voice became as sharp and sweet as her smile. “Well, have fun with your trip. Marinette and I have to do last-minute checks on our arrangements.”

The class looked at the people that had carried them the previous years, and realized how much they relied on the girls. Lila was cursing herself for pushing away the only people who actually did anything in this class.

-----

The class ended up going to Disneyland Paris, and tried their best to look as upbeat as possible on their social medias. Meanwhile, The group was having the time of their lives.

They stayed in LA for 2 weeks, visiting movie sets and meeting actors. They spent another week just going on everything at Disneyland and California Adventure.

They then spent a week in Star City, touring Queen Industries and having a meet and greet with Oliver Queen and his ward, Roy Harper, who seemed to enjoy Aurore’s outgoing personality. They even saw the vigilantes.

They spent another 2 weeks in Central City, touring STAR Labs and watching the rogues try to fight the Flash family. It was the most meta-filled city in the world, and They toured a forensics lab with Bart Allen. Chloe seemed grimly pleased with seeing the bodies. She might’ve been projecting certain people onto them, not that she would ever admit it.

2 weeks in Metropolis was really fun. They toured the Daily Planet with Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Mireille was amazed by what you could do to report without having to be in front of a screen. They made a scavenger hunt of how many Supers they could find, and they found 2 different superboys. Lex Corp also gave them a tour, although it was more professional than the tour of the Daily Planet.

They spent 1 week in Gotham. They toured Wayne Enterprises and stayed out of the Bats’ way. Luka got the phone number of Tim Drake. Marinette enjoyed the inspiration that the gothic architecture brought her. There wasn’t much of a nightlife scene, considering only fools stay out after dark in Gotham.

Their 1 week in New York City was hectic. The Avengers were all at the tower when they were touring with Pepper Potts by Chloe’s request. Chloe might’ve been unofficially adopted by Tony Stark when she stood up to them and made them ‘cease their bullshit’. The Black Widow also took a liking to the girl. They also ran into these weird teens muttering about monsters when they were waiting for the elevator at the Empire State Building.

2 weeks in Tokyo. Their last stop. They visited the prestigious Ouran Academy, the host club getting Marc to come out of their shell by constantly helping boost his self-esteem. Chloe enjoyed talking business and finances with Kyoya Ootori. Kagami led them all in a traditional tea ceremony, before they all stormed the streets to try the unfamiliar street food.

Marinette ended up being unofficially adopted by 3 heroes, 2 rogues, and 5 billionaires. She was happy getting to spend 7 weeks on the road with only her closest friends.

The class was incredibly jealous of the trip their classmates took. They hoped next year they could go on a trip like that as well, but they had missed their shot.

121 notes · View notes

icecreamkink · 3 years

Text

watched all of the untamed / cql in two weeks after my friend 1 told me abt mdzs a hundred years ago and my friends 2 and 3 tried to get me into cql for like two whole years and there are.

feelings.

very first scene is a very dramatic death in the middle of nightmare battle on sith planet land . i will forget abt it in the next tenish episodes and then will be very surprised when it becomes Extremely Painful

anyway magic flying gays and possession and human sacrifice! we are off to a great start

in retrospect, chaos goblin wei wuxian must have had a blast pretending to be so cRaZy and be as disruptive as he could as mo xuanyu lbr

listen. why is fire always evil coded. cant a magic clan wear red, black and orange and have flame motif while being wholesome?

For Legal Reasons These Are Not Zombies

i wish the politics of the sect were a bit clearer, especially at the beggining when the wen clan had sm power, was wen ruohan the chief cultivator? is that why they were so slow in responding to the attacks? im v confused by the pre yiling patriarch politics

fighting in the roof by the moonlight as way of flirtiiiiiiing. as i understand this is a wuxia/xianxia trope and honestly...... thank u for ur service

slight bullying and being a nuisance in general, as a way of flirting we love to see it

wwx: if i drink on the rooftop, thats not inside the cloud recesses! hmmm check and mate :D lwj: i will fuck u up so help me god wwx: :0

i lov them

through hell or high water (quite literally) wei wuxian rem ains a trashfire gremlin till the end and i love him with my whole heart

in the pt subs wei wuxian calls jiang cheng a stubborn duck and i dearly wish that had come back

my opinions on almost every character goes from love to hate u - Hmm Me Like U - BABY. ILY. and i am Very Pleased w that. its been a while since i loved such a complete cast so much i think

no really. i WONT go into a detailed rant abt what i love about each of these characters and each of their relationships to each other. but i COULD.

some lan disciples in the loudest whisper ever: YEAH THATS THE JIN BASTARD MENG YAO HEARD THE GOT SUPER HUMILIATED BY HIS DAD LOL SURE HOPE HE DOESNT TAKE SLIGHTS TO HIS CHARACTER TO HEART

lan xichen, immediately: i must Love him

being into problematic ppl is in the Lan genetics, we come to realize

wen qing deserves so many awards for so many things but not snapping and just stabbing wen chao is at the top

that scene at lan qirens class where wwx talks about using resentful energy to fight a violent spirit. exquisite.

It establishes Good Student lan wangji, wei wuxian as curious and questioning and not afraid of taboo, lwj sees that wwx is not, in fact, a dumb ass hes just a Dumbass, shows us the audience (esp. a western audience) how shocking the idea of disrupting the dead/dying and controlling resentful energy actually is, the theoretical foreshadow arguing, everyone else like ‘shUT UP’, “and how could you ensure that the resentful energy would obey you and not hurt other?” “well i havent thought that far” and of course, lan qiren just straight up lobbing a hard object at wwx head,. chefs kiss

fellas is it gay to bother the hot rule obessessed nerd from ur school and make drawings of him with flowers in his hair and then hide gay porn in his book to antagonize him and ask him to hold ur hand and be ur friend and talk to him all the time and get him drunk and give him bunnies bc you know he likes them and give him a lantern and always want his attention and dedicate yourself to getting him to smile-

and after all of that wwx rly said oh i Admire him, aksd like yeah we all were there in high school buddy

i have Learned. caves = gay.

accidental marriage +beint physically tied together with the sacred married ribbon+ gay panic+foreshadowing+bunnies! in the cave (1)

the story abt lan yi and baoshan sanren tho. i would like to see it

early days wen bros pull my heart strings like a guqin

EVERYTHING about the lantern scene; disaster hets jiang yanli and jin zixuan; how wwx made lwj a bunny lantern. how soft and touched lwj was. wwx gleefully pointing out he was smiling and lwj IMMEDIATELY PULLING HIW SWORD ON HIM LMAO. tragically foreshadowy promises to do right by pepople, living without regrets. lwjs 'oh no do i love him??' face. just. all of it.

i have it on good acc that in the novel lwj is explicitly Repressed Gay Panicked Big Horny which is delightful and rly Adds to the performance

baby lwj is really just conceal dont feel dont let them know u have EMOTIONS (derogatory)

jiang cheng rly went "why dont.u go play with HIM if u like him so much"

jc and wwx have big BIG annoying sibling energy dont think too hard abt it or youll cry

lotus pier is soo pretty :((((((((((((((((

up until episode 13 you could think this could be a magical ancient chinese gays pride n prejudice w swords and shenanigans ................youre just not prepared for the game of thrones of it all

seriously ha ha ha i cried so much w this show my eyes genuinely swelled up . like. physically. fun timez fun timez

that being said, its hilarious that wen xu goes to cloud recesses like 'come out or ill kill all these hostages' and then DOESNT WAIT FOR AN ASWER AND KILLS THEM ALL IMMEDIATELY. do u know how blackmail works sir

would like to make it recorded that from day one i was like 'CALL A GODDAMN CULTIVATION G20 THIS ASSHOLE SECT IS LITERALLY MASSACRING YALL!!' and it took them like 3 or 4 massacres to do anything and they STILL sent their heirs into their territory LIKE

when wwx cites the gusu lan rules to wen chao tho. that rebel/attention whore/cutie pie 'look lan zhan i DID memorize the rules after all' ‘also a big fuck you to the wen sect :D :D’ sweet spot that scene achieves . delicious

all the cultivator young masters being petty af even though they are practically prisoners at the cave is hilarious and i love them

hurt and comfort + gay mistunderstandings + watsonian gay declaration music + accidental evil acquisition! at the cave (2)

its like where do i start? the fact theyre both trapped and kind of heavily injured inside an isolated cave with a murder turtle? wwx gay panicking lwj into coughing up bad blood? lwj being jealous as wwx babbles abt mianmian? telling him he shouldnt play with people and wwx saying he never played him? wwx going Oh. I See what is happening. YOU like mianmian, and lwj absolute done face ??? (iconic) wwx touching the sacred married ribbon Again? the telepathic communication? the sword? WEI WUXIAN ASKING LAN WANGJI TO SING TO HIM AS HE IS PASSING OUT AND LWJ SINGING HIM. THE SONG. HE WROTE. FOR WWX. AND THAT HE CALLED. THEIR SHIP NAME????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

they are SO insufferable pleeeeease

in the words of my friend 1 : “CQL is so gay we were all amazed how it got past the censors Ofc unfortunately it can't be novel level gay But they did their best And we love them for it”

in the theme of songs THIS OST. WUJI HAS BEEN LIVING IN MY MIND RENT FREE SINCE I FIRST HEARD IT the whole ost is so so sO beautiful.

the costuming in this is also soooo exquisite. the embroidery? the fabrics? the details? how every sect and clan has a distinct style and architecture? (also ik they based each off of dif periods in chinese history which is REALLY fucking cool) just chefs kiss

the direction too!. i enjoy the unusual camera movements and i think they give it that Vibe, also their composition is PARTICULARLY good when it comes to telling the subtext through position of camera/position of character (like nhs off to the side in scenes he at first glance doesnt need to be/ how lwj is often centered when hes Jealous Yearning at wwx being affectionate w other ppl, wwx return from burial mounds etc)

ik madam yu is like Badass Milf Check and shes not getting any mom of the year awards but im delighted at how messy she is. IMAGINE that woman on tiktok

you better have enjoyed gay cave (2) bc its Just Pain from here on out!

jiang fengmian and madame yu win the Most Dramatic Way to show they do care about each other, actually ..... ever :)

i thought jiang yanli jiang cheng and wei wuxian forcing themselves to escape yunmeng barely holding on after their parents are killed was going to be the height of pain in this show. ha.

the family dynamics in general on this showwwww, both blood/ adopted/ found families, brotherly bonds and lifelong friendships just. rly. truly. fucked me up. theyre all so important and complicated and well rounded and beautiful and tragic

and beyond being a Win For the Gays im so glad the relationships w wwx and jiang yanli/ wen qing were NOT changed from platonic bc they are so much better like that imo. like maybe if we didnt Live In A Society it wouldnt be so, but the fact wwx and others can love and value them so much and theres nothing romantic or sexual abt it is like. so refreshing. especially @ jyl, with the way he and jc are overprotective of her and shes such a nurturing/care taker figure for them, it would just not vibe as well if they made it romantic

i love that this is a story abt Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch aka Actual Satan/Boogey Man/Village With/Public Enemy Number One , my dude is literally a necromancer who only dresses in black and has evil smokey black tendrils wafting out of him, but the really edgy one is still jiang cheng, pastel purple fashion icon

and speaking of best/worst siblings wei wuxian and jiang cheng *immediately starts crying*

The Golden Core Transfer i just. no thots only tears

wen qing and wen ning putting themselves in so much danger just.... to help them. wn saving jc from wen chao. wq finding a way to get wwx to transfer his core. like thinking about the monumental work these two did to help wwx and jyl and jc... jyl trying so fucking hard to be strong and keep on moving and giver her little brothers comfort after losing everything... jiang cheng. losing his parents and his home and his ability to do anything abt it and his complete desperation and lack of self worth and turning on them with agression when he didnt realize all that they did for him ... hhhhhhhhhhhhh

me, pointing at the whole cast “i just LOVE them mom!!!”

its sad tho, that BARELY ANY of the women have like.... actual important conversations let alone relationships with each other at all in the story. and like wq and jyl have stayed at the same place for extended periods of time, where wq actively took care of her TWICE, and still! not one measly convo, nothing! ................ .𝓌ₕᵧ

everyone in this show need a good sip of Self Worth and Stop Sacrificing Yourself juice

ngl the sword flying looks very dumb

“a-cheng, please bring a-xian back.” “i will, i promise.” ;-;

the whole calling each other by the More Intimate Version of the name, first as teasing and later as true intimacy. mmmhmmm yes

untamed where everythings the same but wwx evil flute song is eoeo

related that scene when wwx comes back from the burial mounds for the first time w demonic cultivation and he acts all formal and calls lwj hanguang-jun and keeps being evasive and distant and mean and soooooo................. facetious

and how hes kind of desperately trying to keep intense lwj at bay (A FIRST) and avoiding actually talking to either of them and its all tension ughhh and then he MOCKS his and lwjs relationship, he jokes w him in this like... mean echo of their usual ~banter~ oof

and like!!! uncertain but so relieved jc who just HUGS him w no reservations for once and its not like he isnt just as worried as lwj abt wwx and what hes doing, but he chooses in that moment to enjoy getting him back first and mmhmMMMmMm yes (maybe my favorite scene in the whole show? MAYBE SO. )

highkey hurt me but also. i might be into mean wwx. i will take no criticism.

lan zhans sad eyes tho :(((((((((

on one hand i wish we could have seen what happened at the burial mounds but on the other the timeskip adds so much flair to his return so im hnnn

also i love that hes been missing for 3 months reappears kinda melancholic and bloodthirsty and knowing malign tricks and jc is like 'so. are u sad bc of lan wangji'

when ur bae survived the war but he thinks ur evil/ might be evil so you cant kiss :///

hmmm talking at the rooftop under the moonlight not mentioning everything that stands between usssss

they are the two jades of lan and we’ll be the two heroes of yunmeng is the type of line u dont even need to know whats gonna happen to know thats gonna be sad

when they fight wen ruoshan at the nightless city i thought that was the battle we see at the first ep and its not and its so easy and theyre all like ‘yayy we won go wwx!’ i was just. SCREAMS WHAT is gonna HAPPEN

so like. post burial mounds/sunshot campaign pre yiling patriarch wwx is like. ultra arrogant, ultra mocking, peak lil shit and it gave me e v e r y t h i n g i wanted

even tho having the wen prisoners at the targets at phoenix mountain and still having wwx and jzx shooting the arrows was???? so.... tone deaf

wwx: fucking w demonic energy jyl: he has never done anything wrong in his life, ever <3 <3 (mood)

the parallels between meng yao/wei wuxian (and even xue yang a bit?) are Seen and they are Valid

wwx post burial mounds: can yall SHUT UP abt the goddamn sword (suibian left the chat)

LIKE truly, we talk abt the angst and yearning with wangxian. but what abt wwx and suibian. xianbian / xianqing angst and comfort 100k

take a shot everytime someone coughs up blood

zidian is simply the coolest spiritual weapon rip to suibian and chenqing and bichen and sendou and baixa........ but tis the truth

cons: everyones families died in a nightmare war! everyones homes burned to the ground! everyone is traumatized! pros: everyone gets cooler clothes and weapons!!

wen ning and a-yuan and yanli bestest babes squad dont touch me rn

everyone: brooding and fighting wq and jyl: why dont you try some acupunture/drinking some soup and calm down huh? how abt that bitch??

showing the battle/massacre at the nightless city first was genius actually bc then everytime we have a cute scene w yunmeng bros and theyre like 'we'll be together forever! uwu' youre like oh. oh no. oh no no no.

justice vs lawfulness vs means and ends 👁

jc: stay in the right path and practice the art of the sword wx: yeah thats not gonna happen chief

my reaction to wwx renouncing to the sect politics to help the wens was just that elmo burning gif in succession

the dramatic rain. wen qing desperately calling out to wen ning. the ghosts/puppets killing the guards. how terrifying wn actually was while wwx was controlling him :( lwj goeing after him to try and stop him and then he just; he Sees him and understands him even if he cant actually do anything about it other than let them go.

“there must be somewhere in this earth we can go to :(((((((((”

"IF I HAVE TO FIGHT THEM, I'D RATHER IT BE YOU. DYING BY YOUR HANDS WOULD AT LEAST BE WORTH IT." oh my god oh my god oh my goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooddddddd

also lwjs umbrella is white w black smoke.. . . nice

yiling patriarch / demonic farming burial mounds settlement is like one of my favorite concepts. they an "EVIL" FARMING COMMUNITY LED BY THE VILLAGE WITCH COME ON

they planted TURNIPS and LOTUS FLOWERS and ONE (1) baby and made lanterns and a common hall :(((((((

wen qing and wei wuxian, baddest bitches and genius science best friends i absolutely LOVED to see it. they rly went ‘is anyone gonna sibling/project partner that’ and didnt wait for an answer

both wwx and jyl getting lotus ponds at the burial mounds and in lanling bc they miss lotus pier ;;;;;;;w

;;;;; wish jyl had actually gone into the burial mounds. we were robbed of jyl and wq meeting again and jyl meeting a-yuan and seeing the settlement and the homes and all ;w; at least jc did go, stab wounds and broken arms and all

wwx like... having thrown his whole life away to help the wens (yeah the sect leaders and jin guangshan in particular wanting his stygian tiger amulet was an Element but still) and not.... necessarily regretting it, but grappling with all of the consequences of it... becoming moody and drepressed at times, missing his family and lotus pier and his friends and probably simply missing being around people and causing trouble, extrovert that he is, lashing out at the wens and at a-yuan, just in general the whole messiness of that experience

the way the resentful energy does affect his temperament is rly nice bc its not too in your face,(i mean outside of the Shaky Hands of Rage) but like he clearly has a much lesser control on his anger and impulsivity (tall order) than both before bm and after hes ressurected

on that note A-YUAN BABIEST BABY BOY BEST BOY

lan zhan being like oh hey there wei ying fancy meeting u and our son here. just passing by u know how it is hmmmmMm and then PLOT TWIST having defied orders to go see him and being punished for it. oof;;

they habent seen each other in like? a year? and now theyre tgt 10 seconds and are already parenting a child together

also lwj rly kneels down in the snow way too much to be healthy

wwx: calm down guyssss i wont lose control of demonic cultivation omgggg . spoiler alert: he loses control of demonic cultivation

did u enjoy cute children? good bc now the Real Pain Begins

jiang yanli and jin zixuan rly out there APROPRIATING both disaster gays AND bury ur gays huh ;w;

i KNEW jin lings birthday was gonna fuck something up but the GASP that left my body when wwx lost control of wn and killed jin zixuan .. . .

im sorry and thank you aaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAaAAAAA

when wen ning and wen qing were telling wwx their plan i was saying NO NO NO NO NO NO out loud in despair

also can we talk abt how wq is definetely talking about only the both of them surrending themselves but then? everyone else just surrenders w them? IT MAKES NO SENSE LIKE WHY WOULD THEY what would be the Point

sometimes there are some pretty gaping jumps in logic and continuity that are just like ? ?

wwx: oh so when you try to murder me its justified but when i survive through dark magic and murder all of you its a "war crime"

unsurprisingly, his most feral, most spiraling moment talking to the sect leaders on the roof and attacking them and even fighting lan zhan is among my favorite scenes... its like, so painful to watch but also so thrilling (and maybe my wen bbs dying arose some resentful energy in me what can i say)

and its JUST, all they ever wanted was to do good but then... war. and trauma. and hubris.

jiang cheng on the ground clearly thorn between what to do and feel is a Mood, lets just say

i was already crying when jyl showed up, but if i wasnt-

i suffered SO MUCH through this series trying to figure out WHY jc would kill wwx. and when i understood. its somehow not as bad as i thought and also MUCH MUCH WORSE

a look into my group chat during the last flashback episodes:

SO ANYWAY. after the BLOOD BATH and RIPPING YOUR HEART OUT and FEEDING IT TO YOU the untamed goes ‘ayy back to the present!! tu du dud ud du’

literally it ends a quarter into an episode and then KEEPS GOING i had to pause and stare blankly at the ceiling for an hour

babie cultivators and detective soulmates . i do need some cute after All of That

(not that the pain is over LOL)

lwj is significantly less emotionally repressed in the present and its delightful. hes just ALL IN with wwx. and not just in the ‘i would and have killed various men and risked my reputation for you’ but also ‘ur tired here have a drink i brought it up cause i know u like it and it want you to be happy, always’

“when everyone praised me and wanted my power, you were the only one that challenged me. now that everyone hates me and wants me dead, youre the only one that stands by my side.” hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

and just filling in the blanks how lan zhan searched for him. for all of those 16 years he searched for him and was punished for it and raised a-yuan, the only survivor of the burial mounds settlement, as his own in gusu......

and jiang cheng. being the tough love uncle . having raised the yunmeng jiang clan from the rubble all alone, his whole family dead, some of it on the blame of his own brother, his siblings, his closest friends gone.......and only jin ling there needing his guidance.

THE PARALLEL BETWEEN JIN LING BEING A LIFELINE FOR JIANG CHENG AND A-YUAN FOR LAN WANGJI AFTER THE BATTLE AT THE NIGHTLESS CITY

great now i made myself sad

and like . the fact! that lwj and jc dislike each other!!. jc projects blame onto him for wwx both “leaving” him and indirectly causing their families deaths and when hes so consumed by it he makes wwx an enemy, lwj is there now? trying to protect him?? and lwj, who can never understand the pain that wwx , indirectly or not put jc through, but who was right there when jc tried to kill him and will never allow him to hurt wwx again. and how they like. in a way project blame of their tragedies onto each other while dealing with some type of survivor guilt and in their own way still loving wwx through it all??? amd in way its kind of fundamentally selfish but also tragically understandable? and like when u put it against the fact that after he disappears during the sunshot campaign they were looking for him together and fought together??

JUST. THE CHARACTERS. AND THE RELATIONSHIPS IN THIS. MAN. UGH. GOD.

and like i think thats what makes it so good? its such a sad and painful and violent story, edgy even, but its compelling bc at the center of it there are all of these relationships and different types of love and hope and. :( i love it

enough crying lets talk abt wwx sleeping at the jingshi with lwj and wearing his under garment for a minute 🙏

jin ling just has that Was Raised by JC energy tho lmao i love him

babie cultivator squad is the perfect ammount of cute and comedic relief while still bearing the weight? of the narrative in a way, both from sizhui and jin lings existences, and also. like. how do i put this. they feel hopeful? they were born after a war, they came of age at a time of relative peace, they dont hold on so closely to the resentments of their parents/father figures, they are specifically shown as more accepting and open minded. and its like.... Hope for the future

one of the ?? things i love the most is the fact that the main cast are often in situations where theyre hunted/running but they like. never wear disguises... just going around in their gorgeous expensive clan clothes and hair ornaments and distinctive spiritual weapons.... maybe w a straw hat on, just for kicks

wwx teacher 🥺🥺🥺

so this is why its called Yi City Misery huh

a-qing is such. an icon. im so sad. my girl even knew to leave xys dumb self rotting by the road but no one listens to her thats why theyre all dead or sad

her and xue yang measuring each other up was so entertaining lmao

its the funniest thing when hes like. HERES MY SAD STORY. FOR WHY IM A SADISTIC MURDERER. I BROKE MY HAND ONCE.

like ok someone broke his hand in a horrible way, and like Poverty, i get it but also like.......... that lost the brunt of a proper sob story like, 50 sadistic murders ago bby

and i love that xingchen does not entertain that for a second hes like ‘not ?????? good enough???’ and the best thing is he wasnt even like 'u hadto be the bigger person' or sth but ' well then break that dudes hand back, rip his arm off for i care, what do the rest of us have to do w anything???”

anjo sensato :(

xue yang is like..... the sexy sadistic evil version of a himbo..... a meanbo...

the fucked upness of xy’s feelings for xxc/ xxc and sl feelings for each other... like my dude literally gave his bf HIS EYES. and xy getting so attached to xxc .... the fucked up fake domesticity.... having him hurt sl..... then desperately trying to bring him back ...................... oof

song lan........... literally had his eyes AND tongue removed, his bfs eyes put in place, was almost killed, turned into a puppet by his bf unknowingly, manipulated by xy, sees his bf killing himself in despair.... and STILL finds the strenght to get up from there, and keep on traveling and helping people and attempting to fix xxcs soul.......... like, my man. damn.

wangxian looking at songxiao and seeing an Actually more painful parallel for themselves. ft. that Color Coding.

THE A-YUAN/SIZHUI REVEAL PUNCHED ME IN THE HEART but in a good way for a change

should have know that he would be the Best Boy the cute one w all the braincells

the butterfly AND the bunny lantern. i see how it is

u know is very convenient that no one can see the stark black veins on wen nings neck, ever

BAT WEN NING

wns face when lwj comes into wwx room like ‘:0 omg did u two finally get your shit together? good for you master wei good for u’

(they didnt) (yet)

DISASTER DRUNK LWJ. JUST. THRUST SOME CHICKENS TO SHOW UR RESSURECTED BAE THAT U LOVE THEM.

i have absolutely no idea WHY they gave lwj the same punishment for fighting his own sect/allies to protect the burial mounds as when they got drunk on cloud recess class days.... like? its such a ... emotional continuity error again

also is lwj gonna get an actual friend besides wwx , ever

mianmian marrying and having a family and a cute life after saying FUCK U AND UR SYSTEM TOO in a much less unhinged and dramatic way than wwx......... fills me w joy

also lol the idea that like. her husband not knowing that shes friends w satan/the boogey man/the village witch is hilarious

i love nie mingjue bc hes the resident Though Guy but also the most dramatic bitch in this show and thats Saying Something

jin ling cant have one uneventful relative can he

the fact that everyone present already knew “mo xuanyu” was wwx at the stairs is so funny, their faces are like ‘oh............ wow. that. sure is a development. shock”

in the tradition of extremely loud whispers wwx tells lwj with twelve guards standing like one meter away from them: HEY PSH LAN ZHAN PRETEND IM FORCING YOU TO STAY W ME DO IT

oh my god oh my god

the absolute Yearning on his face when he leaves wwx and a-yuan at the burial mounds and refuses to stay for dinner was already Enough but the fact?? they brought it back?? to this declaration of love?? their expressions??????? strike me dead right now just go ahead

lFor Legal Reasons We Cant Kiss but we will have a very sappy declaration of love and trust and look at each other in way that is the actualization of 💞💘💗💖💓💘💞💗💖💘💗💖💕💞

also icb all the sect leaders and guards are standing there watching them say they like like each other with a dozen swords pointing at their neck

i enjoyed the depiction of the fickle public perception and how easily it can be used to scapegoat people. when the sect leaders turn on jgy and wwx knows thats its more for convenience than anything else...

poor lxc is literally like 'oh so when YOUR problematic boyfriend gets called evil its a misunderstanding but when its MY problematic bf-'

ok like i cant get over nmj let jgy play a song that messed with his temperament at all, like maN u KNEW he might be shady wth

wwx: “hey dont say anything bad abt lan zhan hes not an arrogant dick, thats just his face.

ME ON THE OTHER HAND"

the cultivators as wwx is poking holes in their narrative is literally *nazaré meme*

"wei wuxian-!" "what did i break your leg, too?" not to be problematic but i laughed so hard

not as hard as "you dont have the rank to talk to me " tho

i Enjoy that, over the course of story, wwx sees that... theres nothing truly to Do, but move on. he saw how his arrogance and his mistakes hurt others, and hes trying to fix what he can, but he already did die for his mistakes and there are things he cant fix and that's. just how it is. even towards jgy, the narrative doesn't go gleefully and completely with "lets make THEM pay bc theyre the big bad" bc its not that simple, and it wouldn't lead anywhere but more pain...

re him and jiang cheng and the wens and kinda. isnt that what nhs did? scheming to displace jgy out of revenge more than any justice and doing so in the most painful way?

idk if that actually makes sense im truly just babbling

i thought the scene at the lotus pond would be CUTE but the context was PAIN again

jiang cheng finding out about his golden core and his conflict with wwx at the guanyin temple .... destroyed me but in a nice way kinda.... same way it destroys him look at his face oh god

and. the fact??? he sacrificed himself for wwx?? first?? and he'll probably never tell anyone much less wwx???? keeps me up at night

i havent decided if the neckbreak transition between jgy does sth super Evil or does he he does OR Does He yes he does O R does heeeee is sth i dislike or not

jin guangyao and wei wuxians most interesting parallel is that... theyve both seen 'hmm hey this system is fucked up' and wwx went 'so fuck it all i will renounce it and challenge it' and jgy went 'so fuck it i will use all of it to my advantage and manipulate it to my goals and whims'

the fact jgys mom was actually great and he loved her and his whole issue w it was more than simply being ashamed of being a bastard kinda got me ngl

never trust a dude with a fan.

nhs and jgy: the first rule to a convoluted and decades spanning violent revenge plot is to have fun and be yourself!

when a-yuan finally FINALLY remembers ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;-;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; wen ning has someone in his family back and a-yuan has someone to talk abt his wen family and wwx has him back bc he survived and lwj raised him anD HES THEIR SON. THEYRE MARRIED AND HAVE A SON. UGH.

and theyre allowed to heal. everyone is allowed to try and recover and be happy

netflix put all of the 3 endings on top of each other and it looks kinda weird actually BUT I DONT EVEN MIND :’’’’’’’’’)

the gasp that left me when lwj says ‘wei ying’ and wwx turns.........

there was also a screen with ‘thank you mxtx for creating these characters, we hope their wishes come true’ and i might. have cried then too. maybe.

that was . a ride. as is proven by this behemot of a ramble clearly i just really needed and Outlet. i am currently trying to convince dumb monkey brain to not consume the other medias of mdzs immediately bc i REALLY need to like. live. a life. and take care of real responsibilities. *longest oh boi ever*

#m.#ANYWAY #ENOUGH TALKING #THIS IS SO LONG #LOL #but whatever this is MY performative journaling i do what i want #rambling impressions abt what i watch is a thing i do now? apparently??#cql #untamed #the untamed #fun fact that chat is named 'k keeps on babbling abt the untamed' and it STILL wasnt enough #also it took me 15 episodes to realize lwj was yibo #IT WAS V SHOCKING #i did not recognize him at a l l #but in retrospect he WAS the perfect choice

51 notes · View notes

togglesbloggle · 4 years

Text

We Needed a Place to Bury Our Dead

When I came out of the closet for the first time, around the age of twenty or so, one of the first things I did was to start going to church. Not out of a rediscovered faith or anything. It’s just that I lived in a rural town, and churches were the cultural centers- student churches, retiree churches, black churches, you name it. That was as true for the gay community as it was for anyone else; there was a United Church of Christ outpost on the south end of town that acted as the center of gravity for all the queer folks in the area. There was also a proper gay bar, the only one within a hundred miles (I measured). But it wasn’t actually a good place to find people, and was sort of drowning under the weight of tourists. So if I wanted to actually meet guys in person, it was church or nothing.

I felt a little bad about it, so I talked to the pastor first to put my cards on the table and make sure that he didn’t mind a heathen showing up just for the dating scene. He was a pretty good sport about it, told me that he didn’t have a problem with my attendance as long as I made a sincere attempt to pray every now and then, and kept an open mind about waiting for an answer. I held up my end of the bargain, for what it’s worth. I never did hear back from God in unambiguous terms, but the plan worked- I found my way in to a nice circle of early-twenties gay guys. Dated some of them, although it didn’t really work out long term, and the principal benefit was just having a nice queer group of peers who kept quoting Mean Girls no matter how much I begged them to stop.

One of the more memorable days in that chapter of my life was an overnight trip to Dallas, to visit the Cathedral of Hope, possibly the largest specifically LGBT church in the world. The architecture is interesting enough; they call it a cathedral, but of course the construction is quite modern, and I was surprised by how well it worked as a synthesis of very different sensibilities. One stand-out feature of the service was that they took communion in groups of three- two parishioners and the pastor together. It’s a tradition that dates back well before the advent of legal gay marriage. Where gay or otherwise nontraditional couples lacked the full protection of law, the Cathedral of Hope made a point of incorporating a community-wide recognition of those relationships by other means. It was a beautiful thing to see.

That evening, I was wandering on my own around the grounds outside the cathedral proper, and happened to run across a graveyard of sorts. Semi-outdoors, several large walls with many slots for cremated remains. I spent some time alone with it, though I didn’t have any particular reason. Just killing time, so to speak, but in retrospect it was probably the disproportionately high volume that caught my attention, given the size of the congregation and the relative youth of the church itself.

The AIDS crisis, obviously- all those deaths in the 80s. But sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake, and I didn’t really understand what I was looking at until the local pastor sat down beside me. This was Jo Hudson, who I think has since retired. We talked at length, but the fragment of the conversation that really etched its way into my brain was when she asked-

“So, do you know why we built the cathedral?”

I, baby gay that I was, just sort of shrugged. “Why?”

“We needed a place to bury our dead.”

Like I said, I’m slow on the uptake sometimes, but by this point I’d gotten caught up to the conversation. For Jo, this place was as much the center of the Cathedral of Hope as any of the more impressive bits of architecture. An altar, of sorts- I was standing in the heart of the thing. Fully understanding that, fully digesting what that sentence meant to her, was an important part of my coming of age, and Jo wanted to make sure I understood.

The primary function of the Cathedral of Hope, and the reason it grew so large when it did, was that it provided a venue for the mourning and burial of those who were killed by HIV. Nobody else would do the job, because the plague and the politics and the moral judgment created a perfect storm of social exile that afflicted the dead as well as the living. I was too young to really see the AIDS epidemic firsthand, but only barely, and Jo absolutely wanted me to come into adulthood with that awareness, knowing what the gay community was really, actually for.

“We needed a place to bury our dead.” Meaning: They’re going to hate you so much that when you die, they will go on hating your corpse.

Like I said, I didn’t actually experience the AIDS epidemic directly, and I’m sure it was complicated and multivalent even in its horrors. Stories simplify the world, and simplicity is dangerous if you use it unwisely. But Jo was a preacher. Stories were her business, and the story of that memorial was one about how bottomless the hatred of crowds can be, and of the necessity of community in the face of that hatred. For her, that story was part of my heritage, insofar as being born different can entitle one to a heritage.

There’s a deep trauma that comes with this history as an inheritance, an awareness of how bad things can get and how tenuous the victories really are. One fact that gets under your skin is: it’s hard to mourn the dead, sometimes. It’s much too easy for us to end up the villains of this kind of story, cheering on the deaths of our enemies, convincing ourselves to feel like those deaths are a kind of justice. There’s always going to be this seductive allure in taking satisfaction in the mortality of our opponents, in bending those deaths into a kind of self-serving fable. And when we give in to that impulse, the last and most important barrier has been removed between us and true atrocity.

Political violence in the US has claimed at least three lives this week, in Oregon and Wisconsin. It’s been a clusterfuck, and it seems like things might get worse before they get better. Lots of people are bringing their own stories to those deaths, trying to make sense of them with different simplifying frameworks; it’s the only way we know how to understand things like this. But here’s what I’ll beg you for: try to mourn the dead. Try hard, as hard as you possibly can, to remember that death is an outrage and a tragedy, that the extinction of a human soul may have causes but it can never have reasons. If you fail in this, and your actions are informed by the kind of hatred or contempt that outlasts even death, then you’re going to cause wounds deeper than you can possibly imagine.

104 notes · View notes

polaristranslations · 3 years

Text

Shinobu Mustard Episode 5

036

In the end, Shinobu seemed to have given up on showing off, and thus Araragi Koyomi appeared to have lost the opportunity to show off his skills as an actor.

Once they actually met, such a contrived scheme would have been ridiculous—thinking about it, Suicidemaster was essentially sealed in the form of a little girl, too, so in terms of being a disgrace of a vampire, she was on the same level.

Incidentally, I was using vague wording like "seemed to" and "appeared to" because, along the way, the two little girls had put the humans (including the god that was formerly human) off to the side by beginning to speak in a foreign language—but what language was it, exactly?

Perhaps a language that had been used in one of the many countries that had been destroyed by "Princess Beauty"—regardless, we'd been completely left behind.

However, watching the two little girls act so cheerfully was such a pleasant sight that I couldn't get mad. It felt like the first time I was seeing Shinobu make such expressions, and from what I could tell, Suicidemaster seemed to be warmly greeting her old friend after such a long time. It was possible that some effect of the mummification remained, because she didn't seem to be able to pick herself up off of the rush mat, but her expressiveness made it clear that shew as truly glad to have reunited with Shinobu.

In a way, it was like our hard work had been rewarded—although, I suppose most of it was just me needlessly worrying.

Not to mention, you could say things had gone just as planned.

The interrogation. About the serial vampirism incident.

Assuming Shinobu hadn't forgotten about our original objective...

"They seem pretty happy, and the conversation seems to be going smoothly, so let's leave Hachikuji-chan to be the witness while we humans step away for a moment. Koyomin, come here."

"Huh? Um, no, but, Shinobu is tied to my shadow, so..."

"I set things up so that within the barrier, the two of you can act separately even while maintaining your pairing, so it's fine. Hachikuji-chan, I'll leave it to you."

"Yes, leave it to me!"

Hm? Putting aside the fact that Hachikuji had become a loyal subordinate to a person of power despite being a god, what did she mean?

We could act separately?

I wondered if I could do such a thing—wasn't it like the pairing between Shinobu and me was severed, even if it was in a limited area? And did that mean Gaen-san had anticipated from the beginning that their reunion would go well? To put up such a complex barrier—no, before that.

Regardless of whether it went well, had Gaen-san made plans for Shinobu and I to act separately from the beginning?

I didn't really understand her intentions—but, with Shinobu not introducing me to Suicidemaster as her slave, I couldn't exactly interrupt their conversation (the foreign language courses I chose were English and Spanish. Hola!), I guess I had no choice but to follow Gaen-san. Whatever Gaen-san was planning after recovering from the darkness, or mud, in the hearts of those high school girls, I had better hear about those plans—

"I would've liked it if she could have reunited with Shishirui Seishirou in the same way."

That was what Gaen-san murmured, with her words feeling more meaningful than just light conversation, as she led me through the house. And our destination ended up being Kanbaru's room—she sure knew her way around someone else's home. As expected of the onee-san who knew everything.

She was well aware of the location of her niece's room.

"If you know anything about architecture, you can pretty much tell the layout of the rooms from outside—but this is pretty awful. So, like my sister, Suruga's a messy girl, too."

However, it seemed she'd been surprised by the mess, giving her impressions in a shocked manner as she entered the room.

"I'm sorry. Normally I was supposed to have come and cleaned her room yesterday, but Higasa-chan was there, and if I went and started cleaning in front of her friend, Kanbaru would lose face."

"If that's true, then it's exceedingly mysterious why you would go out of your way to care for Suruga like that, Koyomin. Rather than just Suruga's senior, it's almost like you're her mom."

You're even more motherly than her actual mother, said Gaen-san.

I'd been described in many different ways before, but being described as motherly might be a first for me. But, being compared to the famous Gaen Tooe-san didn't exactly make me happy.

"So, what's the matter, Gaen-san? I know Hachikuji is watching over them, but Shinobu and Miss Suicidemaster—or should I say, Little Miss Suicidemaster? Well, it doesn't really matter, but I do feel a bit uneasy just leaving them on their own."

From the atmosphere around them, it didn't seem like it would suddenly turn into a scene of carnage with them saying "I came to eat you, Shinobu" and "I'll let you eat me" or anything, but I wasn't too optimistic—to get to the point, oddities were oddities because you couldn't predict what they might do in the next instant.

I wanted to return as soon as possible.

"I have two pieces of bad news," said Gaen-san.

With my life as it was, it wasn't too surprising to hear that there was no good news, but for there to be two pieces of bad news.

That was twice the sense of foreboding.

"I'll keep it short. The first is that the last missing member of the girls' basketball team, Kiseki Souwa-chan—her belongings were discovered."

"Her belongings... Just her belongings?"

"Yes. Not just her cell phone and school bag, but her school uniform, gym clothes, and basshoes. Ah, 'basshoes' means..."

"Basketball shoes. I've read 'Slam Dunk', too, so I know what it means. But... Finding only her belongings but not the girl herself...?"

I wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing that her mummy hadn't been discovered yet, but the fact that only her belongings were found was certainly bad news—or, perhaps not bad, but ominous.

In the same way you can't start a particularly pleasant story with a school bag being abandoned by the road—I could only assume that something had happened to Kiseki-chan.

"Where were they discovered? In her room, or...?"

Remembering that the second mummy, Honnou Aburi-chan, had been discovered in her room, I brought up the location that would be least discomforting for her belongings to be discovered.

"That's a good line of thought," said Gaen-san. "Where they were discovered was in the gymnasium of Naoetsu High, in a locker in the girls' locker room."

"The girls' locker room...?"

"Don't react to the thought of the girls' locker room. No need to worry, I had a female investigator perform the search."

"It wasn't like I was wondering why you hadn't sent me to perform that task."

Regardless of whether they were male or female, Gaen-san had already crossed a line at the moment she sent an outsider into the school—she was always this sort of person, I suppose.

Alternatively, perhaps there was a student currently attending Naoetsu High that held a connection to Gaen-san, like me last year—it was certainly a possibility.

"More precisely, it's the girls' locker room exclusively used by the girls' basketball team. Each member is provided with their own locker."

The girls' basketball team sure was treated favorably.

If there was stuff like that, I guess it could be pretty hard to quit.

It was all thanks to Kanbaru's achievements, and I couldn't deny that the rest of the athletic department was a bit sloppy—but, in that case, though it wasn't as good as her own room, her locker wasn't all that discomforting to find her belongings in, right?

"In the first place, even if your subordinate managed to invade the girls' locker room, how did they manage to unlock her personal locker?"

"Koyomin, the fact that you think of invading the girls' locker room as completely natural is something I love about you. The personal lockers have combination locks, you see. From the register of names that you borrowed from the previous captain—a treasure trove of personal information—I was able to deduce the combination."

Even if she didn't use her date of birth, it wasn't as important as a bank account password or anything, so I figured she'd use a number associated with her personal information—said Gaen-san, as if it was something obvious to her.

Leaking personal information was pretty scary.

"Using that same approach, I tried to crack the passwords of the cell phones owned by the first three mummies, but unfortunately, that didn't go as well."

"Well, it would certainly be more secure than a locker. Not to mention, if you get it wrong too many times, it could erase all the data inside—but, putting that aside, how should we evaluate this discovery? Isn't it normal to find one's uniform or gym clothes in their locker?"

"If it's 'uniform or gym clothes', then yes."

That was what Gaen-san said.

"But if it's 'uniform and gym clothes', then that's very strange indeed. Was Kiseki-chan going home naked when she went missing? It would be a big deal, even if she wasn't mummified."

A big deal...

Even if she revered Kanbaru, she probably wouldn't do anything like go streaking (not even Kanbaru had done that. She was all talk, no action).

"It seems unlikely she had a spare uniform or gym clothes, either. It wasn't as messy as this room, but the belongings had been stuffed in the locker pretty sloppily—as if they were getting in the way and thus disposed of."

It was possible that Kiseki-chan was just bad at keeping things in order, but there was another interpretation—the person responsible for attacking her had roughly crammed Kiseki-chan's belongings into her locker in order to hide the evidence.

Not the person responsible.

But perhaps—the demon responsible.

"Thanks to your reconnaissance, Koyomin, it ended up occurring in the opposite order, but if Kiseki Souwa-chan's mummy had been found first, stripped of all her belongings, it would have been quite an ordeal to try and identify her... In other words, it would have been quite an ordeal to try and resolve this case."

"Is it like how, in mystery novels, the culprit destroys the victim's face and fingerprints?"

When the victims were mummified, you couldn't tell the difference.

As long as there was no blood relation like with Shinobu and Suicidemaster... As long as there was no bond, unbreakable even over six hundred years.

"But it's a little strange. Why is it that they did such a shoddy cover-up job for only Kiseki-chan?"

"It wasn't shoddy, it was malicious. Her cell phone had, of course, been turned off—for items that were shoved in so roughly, the culprit was very attentive to detail. And the fact that a vampire was able to enter the school makes it extremely dangerous for the girls' basketball team."

"......"

That was true—it was an alarming situation.

Although I wasn't sure if that was something that the specialist that had entered the school in the same way should say.

"However, to do such a cover-up job, they wouldn't just need to enter the school—they'd need to be able to open Kiseki-chan's personal locker, right? It may be possible for another member of the girls' basketball team that shares the locker room with her, but I don't think an outsider vampire would have been able to open the locker, wouldn't you say?"

The suspicion on the remaining members of the girls' basketball team had already been cleared—how had that "attentive" vampire unlocked that locker?

A combination lock. A password.

How could you open and close that without breaking it?

Gaen-san's response was clear.

"They spoke with the locker's owner. They had to have heard it from her."

They had to have heard it from her.

There was no other way.

"And then, if I were to presume the reason that the cover-up job was only done for Kiseki-chan, I would arrive at a rather unpleasant conclusion, Koyomin. Basically, it would mean that the fact that we were using the mummies' belongings to identify them has been leaked."

"Ah."

"There's a high chance that our information is being exposed to the vampire."

Rather than bad news.

It was the worst possible news.

037

Despite my apprehensions about leaking the girls' personal information, there ended up being a high probability that information regarding our investigation had been leaked, which came as a shock—but the worst news was yet to come.

Earlier, I had likened the culprit's actions to destroying the victim's face or fingerprints in a mystery novel—but could you even take the fingerprints of a mummy? That was what came to mind, so I asked Gaen-san.

The response was a simple "no".

"It's just like how we can't distinguish between their faces. They're just skin and bones, after all. If we could accurately get their fingerprints, then we could've used them for cell phones with fingerprint locks, though."

That's right, in this day and age, fingerprints were also a mass of personal information in that sense, as well—however, coincidentally or otherwise, my question happened to connect to the second piece of bad news that Gaen-san wanted to convey to me by temporarily severing the pairing between Shinobu and me.

"Speaking of a mass of personal information, there's DNA analysis."

That was what Gaen-san said.

"However, we certainly wouldn't be able to do that—if we tried to analyze genes that had undergone vampirification in a hospital, that in itself would be considered a strange disease. It would turn into a panic."

"Yes, of course. That's why I've avoided going to hospitals and getting physical examinations."

"On the other hand, it doesn't mean that the analysis of vampire genes in itself is impossible. We've managed to analyze the DNA of the four mummies discovered so far, rough as it was."

"Hm? Um... What does that mean, exactly?"

"Originally, it was done for the sake of identifying whether all four of them were done in by the same culprit. Considering all the possibilities, it's not necessarily the case that the same vampire attacked all four high school girls, right? You could even come up with the theory that there were four, or perhaps even five, vampires that had visited this town."

What an insane theory.

Especially in this town, which had become overrun with monsters during the absence of a god.

"So, um, what were the results? Don't tell me..."

"Ah, to start with the conclusion, all four mummies had their blood sucked by the same vampire—they're all, so to speak, thralls of the same vampire."

It must be like a DNA test done to determine parentage.

Perhaps, as a result of corporate efforts, the world of oddities has also advanced.

Like Hitagi, who kept going to the hospital because of her symptoms from the omoshi-gani, perhaps one day oddity phenomena will end up being simply a rare disease capable of being treated.

"Then, there's no reason to change our plan of action, right?"

"Rather than not changing, at this rate we're going back to the starting point."

Gaen-san said as she folded her arms.

"The problem is that those vampire genes were a pretty close match to Suicidemaster's genes, which I collected last night."

A DNA test to determine parentage.

Gathering evidence based on corporate efforts.

"......"

That—was bad. No, it wasn't that bad, but the reason Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster had been listed as the prime suspect was primarily because of circumstantial evidence and process of elimination—the cryptic message that had been left at the scene of the crime, and the fact that she had come to this town with such perfect timing.

However, DNA analysis was a completely different beast in terms of evidence. In the modern judicial system, it was like the king of evidence, brought out as a trump card.

"That's a dangerous way of thinking about it. There are plenty of examples of DNA analysis having failed, and it's a field with plenty of room for development. Not to mention, human error is something that's unavoidable—treating it as the king of evidence could mean it ends up a hotbed for false accusations."

That was true. It was too early to decide.

Even Gaen-san had been careful enough to word it "a pretty close match"—and, even if Miss Suicidemaster and the four mummies' genes were a match, logically, the vampire genes of Shinobu or me would also be "a pretty close match".

A parent-child relationship—from Suicidemaster's perspective, I was essentially her "grandchild"... Although, right now, Shinobu and I didn't exactly have any bloodsucking abilities...

"Right, so, it's a fact that the suspicion on Suicidemaster has gotten stronger, so the implication of tonight's interrogation has changed—no matter what that little girl says, we're going to have to secure her. That's why I set up this special barrier, although I'd also like to avoid it turning into a battle if possible. Putting aside me being a pacifist, even if it may be easy to exterminate the starved, weakened Suicidemaster, I don't know how the now-cooperative Shinobu might react to that chain of events—and not knowing how Shinobu might react means not knowing how you might react, Koyomin."

"Um, I probably wouldn't—"

But I didn't exactly know myself well enough to speak at that moment. And last night, I had lost quite a lot of trust, so that would make what I said even less convincing.

"...Even if Suicidemaster, that anorexic vampire, let hunger get the better of her and started laying hands on every high school girl in the area... If we manage to return all the mummified girls back to normal, would she end up not being judged for this incident?"

In the first place, oddities couldn't be judged based on human laws. Even if I couldn't expect her to be certified harmless, couldn't we be flexible enough to let her go in secret...? Although that still left a problem that couldn't be ignored...

"Once a bear has gotten a taste of humans, you have no choice but to kill it—it depends on how much you subscribe to that opinion. In a way, Suicidemaster has been on a diet for six hundred years. Ever since you became a vampire, Koyomin, you've probably never needed to diet, but once you break a fast, you end up on an incredible rebound—you end up eating mountains and drinking oceans."

"But—"

"There's no need to rush, Koyomin. I may have started with the conclusion, but I don't want you to jump to conclusions. There's still evidence to negate the theory that Suicidemaster was responsible for the crime—even if we put aside how much of Shinobu-chan's testimony to believe, there's still the strange idea that an ancient vampire that had lived for a thousand years snuck into the girls' locker room and messed with the lockers. How probable would you say that is?"

It was as she said—and, in the same vein, the attempt to delay the discovery of the fourth mummy, Kanguu-chan, by submerging her in the reservoir was also a weird trick unbecoming of a traditional oddity.

And, under that theory (strange idea?), there was still no explanation for why Suicidemaster herself had turned into a mummy.

There was no logic to her cryptobiosis.

Nothing fit together.

While the suspicion grew stronger, the credibility faded.

In the end, the air of tension had abruptly increased, and there was still no change in the fact that we had to hear from the vampire herself—and it was as I thought that...

"My master."

From behind the sliding door that I'd closed earlier, Shinobu's voice spoke.

"Suicidemaster wants to speak with you. Will you talk with her?"

038

"I'm the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster. You may approach."

It seemed she'd managed to get up, for she was now sitting down on a stone in the rock garden of the Japanese mansion. She greeted me with quite the ghastly smile, not caring about the white clothing that had fallen open when she'd broken the seals earlier. I'd thought this earlier when they were exchanging their roar of laughter, but it seemed the characteristic smile of Shinobu, or Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, was apparently something that was inherited from her progenitor who birthed and named her.

Or perhaps, since they were both golden-haired and golden-eyed, their impressions were similar... However, though they were both little girls, though they had the same expressions, it probably wasn't just my imagination that led me to feel that she didn't resemble Shinobu all that much.

Rather than not resembling Shinobu.

I suppose you could say she resembled Shinobu from the past.

That was how easygoing and worldly this vampire had become over the past year—and Suicidemaster must have felt it as well.

"N-nice to meet you. I am Araragi Koyomi. Erm..."

How was I supposed to introduce myself?

Even though I didn't have to pretend to be a slave, it didn't mean I should be honest and explain the situation as-is—it surely wasn't just putting on airs when Shinobu had feared that I might be blown to death if she learned of the situation in which Shinobu had been sealed in my shadow and turned into a slave.

How much of it had Shinobu explained in that foreign language of hers...? In the first place, did she understand it if I introduced myself in Japanese? Judging from her own introduction, she seemed pretty proficient at it...

"I didn't live such a long life for nothing. I've learned most languages by now."

Ooh.

That was something I wanted to tell Meniko about.

"Conversing with your food is one of the fundamentals of a good meal."

...I definitely couldn't tell her about that.

And please don't say something that made you even more suspicious—even though there was some distance, Gaen-san, the administrator of the specialists, was still over there, sitting on the porch of the mansion with Hachikuji.

The value system of food, huh?

Well, even though humans can live just fine on a vegetarian diet, they still go through the trouble of raising and eating meat not "to live" but "because it tastes good", so I couldn't exactly say anything haughtily.

Taking the wrong logic would probably lead us to the conclusion that plants, living on photosynthesis with sunlight and water, lead the most ethically noble lifestyle.

But, you know, something about her character seemed chic compared to her juvenile appearance. It was pretty dashing the way she wore her white clothing like a gown or a robe, and, well, at the age of six, she wasn't that different from a boy of the same age.

The genuine vampire, the ancient vampire.

What a dandy.

With that in mind, her open white clothing seemed more like a cape than a gown or robe—the little girl held a charisma that made me want to kneel, in a way different from how I felt with "Princess Acerola".

"No need to humble yourself. I won't bite you."

What a fancy figure of speech.

On top of that, the way she said "you [kisama]" was a nice touch. I wasn't offended at all—this little girl was like a cluster of dandyism. I'd thought of myself as an expert on little girls, but it seemed there was a type like this, too.

"I called you here to give you my thanks—well, not just that, but first, my thanks."

"Th-thanks...?"

"For several things. First off, for reviving me after I'd died—and, even before that, for reviving my former thrall, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade."

I give you my thanks.

Said the little girl, bowing her head—even the way she lowered her head was cool. If she was like this in the form of a little girl, how much charisma could she have had in her heyday?

Or rather, if she so straightforwardly thanked me like this, then it felt like I was beaten to the punch—she'd splendidly gotten the drop on me.

Even though I'd approached this face-to-face meeting with suspicions in mind—and when I looked to Shinobu for help...

"Well, I've more or less told her everything."

That was her curt response.

No, rather than curt, Shinobu herself seemed to be a bit bewildered.

"However, it was a bit meaningless. I myself haven't exactly grasped the full extent of the situation. At this point, I figured it would be better to have you participate, my master, rather than just talking between us two."

At any rate, she's denied the suspicion of being the culprit behind the serial vampirism incidents, said Shinobu, as if tacking that on at the end—but was that something you should just tack on?

That's like the crux of the crux of things.

Despite my disorientation, Suicidemaster continued.

"Though she was a thrall, Princess Acerola—Kissshot—soon became manager of her own branch. She became independent from me. It's kind of uncool to come crashing in like this as if I were her guardian, but I couldn't stay in hiding when I heard a rumor that she had been exterminated in this country. I just wanted to make sure that she was okay—although she doesn't exactly look okay, but I'm glad she's still alive. In any case, I'm glad I could see her again."

"Uh-huh—"

After six hundred years of no communication, it seemed like a fitting reason for her to come see her at this timing—but with her answering my question before I could ask it, she'd beaten me to the punch again.

Two moves in a row.

That wasn't exactly fair, was it?

In any case, Suicidemaster said that she was worried about Shinobu's safety and came all the way to this country, beating her old bones, to see how she was doing.

It wasn't that she came to dine on Shinobu as gourmet food at all—

"Hmph. I'd thought you'd died, too."

Shinobu spoke bitterly, but she didn't seem all that mad about it.

If it was true that she became manager of her own branch (a phrase that surely sounded strange because she was forcing herself to use Japanese, although it probably wasn't a mistranslation), then it seemed likely that what existed between them wasn't a master-servant relationship, but a friendship.

Friends that could talk to each other and laugh together on equal terms.

Thanks to my relationship with Meniko, I can more or less understand how important that is—there's no room for doubt that I have friendships with Hanekawa, Hachikuji, and Kanbaru, but I couldn't help but feel that our friendships were tied down by love and hate, or by advantages and disadvantages, or out of the obligations of this transient world.

The best example of this would be my childhood friend, Oikura, but even if our friendship were to end, there would still be the sense that we were inextricably linked.

But the strange thing about human relations is that it's not really desirable to break off relations, like what happened with Sengoku.

"Well, that wasn't the only reason. Even though I'd learned Japanese, I had never actually been to Japan, see. So I wanted to get a look at Mount Fuji."

"What a blatant lie!"

Shinobu sounded as if she was amazed, but look—you told the same lie last year.

A parent-child relationship—a parent-child determination.

"......"

"So, I had a favor to ask of you, former thrall of the former Heartunderblade. I've already confirmed Kissshot's safety, and I'd like to go back to my hideout right about now, but I heard there's something fishy going on. So I was wondering, you think you can help me get out of this country?"

I wondered if she was thinking of the current situation as if she messed up the departure procedures for her destination. Well, that would be a pretty serious situation, too.

"'Specially since there seems to be this scary lady glaring at me," said Suicidemaster, glancing in Gaen-san's direction—but she wasn't a scary lady, but an onee-san that knew everything.

It made for quite the visualization of this interrogation.

"Oh yeah, speaking of scary ladies in this country—nah, that's not important right now. So, how about it? Former thrall of the former Heartunderblade?"

I wasn't sure about how she called me that.

I never thought that she would come ask me for help in fleeing the country... But if Gaen-san wasn't making any move to interrupt, did that mean we should continue with this clumsy conversation?

"I gotta say, I'm pretty happy. Since that 'Princess Beauty' ended up finding her ideal prince and getting her happy ending. But now that I'm here, I figured I'd take this chance to see what that prince can do—how about it? Won't you help me out for a bit?"

Won't you help me out?

Araragi-kun was weak to those words.

The tragedy of my high school years could be said to have all started with those words, and in the end, even Ougi-chan took advantage of them.

However, since then, I'd grown just a little bit (specifically, about a year)—I knew that there were things I could do and things I couldn't.

Even if my girlfriend called me a prince, I knew for sure that I wasn't one.

"Don't say something so embarrassing!"

Shinobu was acting bashful with an unusual level of excitement. What's with that casual language?

Where'd your usual character go off to?

"...A friend of Shinobu's is a friend of mine, so I'm willing to help—but before that, there's something I'd like to make clear. There's something that I absolutely need to make clear—"

She'd called it fishy, but she surely wasn't so uninvolved as to describe it like that—how should I ask this?

If she'd already denied the charges to Shinobu, then it would be pointless to ask her the same thing—should I change my approach, then?

She may have already talked to Shinobu about this, too...

"Suicidemaster. How did you end up turning into a mummy and getting buried in the dirt? An existence as great as yourself."

I didn't really know Suicidemaster well enough to describe her as a great existence (I'd only just heard of her yesterday), but as the progenitor who birthed and named the King of Oddities, it was enough to make me revere her.

Fundamentally...

"Ka ka. I can't say I know how I ended up in the dirt. I figure someone went and buried me on their own."

"Someone..."

"Turning into a mummy? That's a bit easier to explain. I haven't told Kissshot about that yet, either."

Was that so? I looked to Shinobu to confirm, and she responded, "Ah, yes, that's right." Maybe you'd gotten a bit too excited, but if you take such a lazy approach to this interrogation, which was the original goal, then that would be bothersome.

But, well, I guess it was to be expected.

As vampires, where death was a regular occurrence and life was of little importance, the question of "why were you dead" could possibly be too fundamental to be discussed.

Like her catchphrase, "Somehow or other, it seems I've died again"—or perhaps like the nickname, death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire—for Suicidemaster, dying was not at all anything major.

That was how I understood it, but.

"Despite having lived for a thousand years, that may have been the first time I died like that, as far as I can remember."

I couldn't help but react to that comment—that was pretty major.

"Wh-what do you mean? What—what was the cause of death?"

Asking the victim directly about their cause of death was what you'd only see in spirit medium-like mysteries, but as I acted that out in real life, Suicidemaster responded pompously.

"Food poisoning."

"F—food poisoning?"

"Yeah. I ate something weird. Let's see, in Japanese..."

Said Suicidemaster.

"I guess you would call that type of food, a high school girl?"

039

"I guess it was like a week ago?

"The unit of time differs from region to region, and, as an ancient vampire, it's the same to me whether it's a week ago or a thousand years ago.

"So I dunno if it was a week ago or a thousand years ago—but anyway, a week ago.

"That was when I arrived at this town. The rumored Far East island country, Japan—huh, is 'Far East island country' not a compliment?

"Either way, I think it's a big deal when things are taken too far.

"I came to check on the safety of the legend I gave rise to, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, so it was pretty hilarious that I couldn't ensure my own safety as soon as I arrived.

"Since I failed to land and shattered.

"Somehow or other, it seemed I'd died again.

"But for me, there was something that shocked me more than the fact that I died—according to the god that came out to welcome me, there'd been some kind of barrier that'd been put up.

"A barrier to protect the town.

"They say, 'Devils out! Fortune in!' as part of the traditions of this country, right? Ka ka, 'Devils out', huh—that's a pretty tough greeting for a vampire.

"But that barrier wasn't the reason I'd broken into pieces, y'know? My certain death, my thousandth, millionth, billionth, or trillionth death was self-destruction from a failed landing.

"Happens pretty often.

"I dunno if that barrier set up by that god was something that she took over from someone or whatever, but it's not anything with any offensive power—just an interfering barrier that makes you lost.

"In a sense, it's a pretty nasty barrier compared to the aggressive type of barrier which is easier to understand, but the problem is that that nastiness didn't work on me at all.

"The security.

"The metal detector at the entry gate, if you will.

"Didn't respond at all to this Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster—in other words, it didn't even take me as a threat.

"Yeah.

"It wasn't like I came into this country by breaking through a strong barrier with my tremendous power—it was because I didn't have that tremendous power that I managed to slip into this country.

"Never thought I would end up being this weak.

"Growing old sucks, huh?

"I didn't even notice it right away. Kind of a bother that I couldn't really feel the symptoms—like some old man who doesn't realize he's old. Especially when that causes problems for others.

"As I was undergoing an immigration check by that god over there, I belatedly realized what I looked like.

"I've heard rumors that Japanese people have baby faces even as they age, but the gods of this country were really this young, was what I thought, excited beyond my years to experience the exotic cultural differences. But there was something wrong.

"Compared to the young god.

"I was even younger—the tough and cool me was shorter, with a thinner torso, smaller hands, thinner arms, shorter eggs, and a lighter body.

"If there was anything that was long, it would be my hair.

"So that's what it was.

"You don't notice changes in yourself until you talk to someone else, until you use them as a mirror—and I've been living in hiding for a long time.

"Not that vampires show up in mirrors. So that wasn't good, either.

"While I was dying uncontrollably and running from vicious vampire hunters, it seemed that I was driven to the point where I couldn't maintain my perfect body, even in appearance.

"Somehow or other, it seemed I'd regressed into a younger form.

"Before worrying about Kissshot, I needed to worry about myself, first—wasn't it like I was the one on the verge of death, here?

"According to the god's meaningful navigation instructions, the legendary vampire whom I named Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade was indeed in this town, but if I were to see her in this state, I would only end up worrying her instead of renewing our old friendship."

"I had a trauma.

"A trauma of letting my once beloved thrall die after making them worry—not to mention I was also in a young form at the time.

"Ka ka.

"It's ironic that an old vampire, who has stubbornly refused to kill herself, should take on a younger form after living for so long—no matter how many thousand years I live to see history repeat itself, I don't think I want to repeat my mistakes.

"That's just me being cool, though.

"To describe it using the words of this language, it would be 'putting on airs'.

"I held pride in having lived for a thousand years—I held pride in being a progenitor that birthed and named my thrall. Saying I didn't want to worry her was just a figure of speech.

"Basically.

"I wanted to put on airs.

"I didn't want to disappoint my bud that I'd reunited with after six hundred years—I didn't want her to think, 'she's changed', but I didn't want her to think, 'she's the same as ever'.

"I just wanted her to think this.

"'That's my friend for you.'

"That was what I wanted.

"Now that we've met like this and the punch line was that we'd both taken on young forms, it's obvious how unnecessary trial and error such a thing was, but I was very serious at the time.

"Tough, cool, and serious.

"Of course, I'm making it sound like it was a crazy long time ago, but it was just a week ago—a week ago indistinguishable from a thousand years ago.

"At the very least I thought I'd come in full dress for the occasion, at least on the surface level—even if I couldn't show up in a complete form, I thought I would at least try to dress up.

"That's why.

"I made a move on the local food here.

"I bared my fangs—at a high school girl."

040

Wasn't this different from what she said earlier? Hadn't Suicidemaster denied that she was the culprit in the serial vampirism incident?

Plus, didn't she suffer from anorexia, unable to take in any other "food" after being entranced by the taste of the food known as "Princess Beauty" six hundred years ago?

Wasn't it that she turned from a mature woman into a little girl because of malnutrition, not because she got older? —Those were the question marks running through my mind.

However, I couldn't say anything.

I couldn't interject into Suicidemaster's narration—and Shinobu stayed silent as well.

What was she thinking. What was she deciding?

To stick with humans, or to stick with oddities.

Was she thinking about that?

Or perhaps, was she still believing in her friend's innocence, even after such a grand confession?

So innocently?

Though it was natural that Hachikuji, a neutral and mediating god, did not interfere here, it was a bit surprising that Gaen-san remained seated on the porch, not moving—with this confession, you would think that it would confirm Suicidemaster's guilt and allow for concrete measures to be taken immediately.

In the end, although we considered various things like if she knew about prime numbers or if she would be able to cover up a crime, but the bottom line was that it was Occam's razor and that ancient vampire was the culprit—was that just the uninteresting truth?

No matter how many question marks danced through my mind, were there any major points of doubt left before the current confession that deserved special mention? Was it right to take the results of the DNA test and the "B777Q" message as they were?

She bared her fangs at a high school girl.

For the sake of putting on airs.

Suicidemaster's nonchalant attitude as she told me that was something that was familiar to me—needless to the say, it was the same attitude that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade had during that hellish spring break that I spent.

The fact that they were both trying to make themselves look good for the other party made it sound like a fairy tale with a moral lesson, and I could see how that might be an example of like attracts like, but when it came to the similarity in their lack of guilt, it wasn't as funny.

During that spring break, that King of Oddities had no qualms about feeding on humans—she even thought that humans were born to be eaten by vampires.

The top of the food chain.

The apex, far above us.

Insensitive to the point that she didn't even consider unabashedly speaking like that insensitive—but as far as Suicidemaster was concerned, it would be not only insensitive but also suicidal to make a speech in front of us here, in the name of confession.

A suicidal act.

A vampire with suicidal tendencies.

That was also familiar to me.

It was memory fresh in my mind—it would never fade.

Even if a year or a thousand years passed, it would never fade.

Without guilt, without shame, but rather with pride—Suicidemaster continued.

041

"I went down the mountain where that god lived, and I set my sights on a high school girl walking alone at night—to be honest, anyone would do.

"They were emergency rations.

"Yeah, yeah, of course I know. That way of thinking was opportunistic—really, growing old sucks. I understand why you're silent here, Kissshot—were you disappointed at my way of thinking?

"If you ask me if I really wanted to bend my policy as a gourmet just to make myself look good, I can only say that I really did at the time.

"That's why I incurred a punishment.

"If I was going to throw away my policy anyway, I should have thrown it away completely, but I stubbornly clung to my pride as a gourmet.

"Because I still thought in my head that they were just rations for the sake of emergency, I failed to carefully inspect my food.

"I figured I'd eat noncommittally, halfheartedly, without being choosy—if I chose, it would make it seem like that food was 'special' to me, y'know?

"I didn't want that.

"But even though I didn't want that, I also didn't want to eat something reluctantly—the ideal scenario would be the food jumping in when I opened my mouth, so that I had an excuse to eat food not in accordance with my will, not measuring up to my level, and not consistent with my beliefs.

"Yes, former thrall of the former Heartunderblade. Just as you treated me to the soup from the Blood Pond Hell—I heard that's how you 'reverted' me, isn't that right? You have a complex expression on your face.

"Well, once you've tasted nectar like from six hundred years ago, you can't hope for anything better—no matter what you eat, it's bound to be tasteless.

"Once you know the best of the best, there's nothing you can do but settle for less—I knew that, but I couldn't help but still obsess over it.

"So, even it was for the sake of dressing up, if I went about choosing my food, I would inevitably compare it to 'Princess Beauty'.

"I guess it was also putting on airs to try and minimize the angle at which I bent my policy? I wonder if it's like getting old and trying to straighten out your bent back?

"Well, whatever it was, in hindsight, I didn't exactly have much respect for my food.

"In this country, you have table manners where you say 'Thanks for the meal' and 'It was delicious', right? I just don't really get those, y'see.

"There isn't a phrase that makes me less thankful than 'Thanks for the meal'... And saying 'It was delicious' is practically the opposite of delicious.

"That was what I thought.

"Just didn't understand feeling gratitude towards my food—or the idea that it's great to eat with gratitude, that it's impolite to leave leftovers, or that we shouldn't kill living things for reasons other than eating them.

"Originally, at its best, eating is supposed to be an act of toying with life—it's entertainment.

"So that's why, for me.

"Eating wasn't living.

"Eating was loving.

"At that time, I should have said 'Thanks for the meal'. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. That was what I should have done.

"Nevertheless, in an unprincipled way.

"I sank my teeth into a high school girl as if I was sampling food, like a dieter saying, 'This doesn't really count as eating, okay?'—and so I incurred a punishment.

"The result was food poisoning.

"Thanks to the poison of that high school girl.

"Somehow or other, it seemed I'd died again."

042

...Huh? What the heck?

Her story had ended so quickly that my comprehension couldn't keep up—to that heavily thematic and therefore weary downer of a story, what had the punch line been again?

Food poisoning?

Was she saying that the blood of Japanese high school girls wasn't suited to her constitution? Just like how travel guidebooks always have it written down somewhere whether or not you can drink water at your destination—whether it's soft water or hard water, unboiled water or drinking water...

Of course, there was also the simple fact that if you suddenly eat something right after starving yourself, you can get sick from it. There have been cases where people have suddenly eaten meat right after dieting, causing an upset stomach—or, in the worst-case scenario, stomach rupture—

Or perhaps.

The high school girls' poison. Mud. Murky.

Even Gaen-san, hardened by years of experience, had been brought down a notch by the murky depths of the girls' basketball team of Naoetsu High, but could that murkiness have come through in their blood, yet another mass of personal information? That's exactly what the Japanese would call, "affected by toxicity"—that murkiness.

Was it in their blood, too?

All of this was just conjecture, and it was probably a complication caused by a multitude of reasons—the explanation that should not be forgotten is that, no matter what country, what shape, what type of non-toxic food, blood or flesh, Suicidemaster's body simply could not accept any other human besides "Princess Beauty".

Rejection. Anorexia.

That in itself was fine.

That in itself, along with ethics, could be put aside for now—in that case, it would end up that Suicidemaster desiccated immediately after biting into a high school girl.

Falling into cryptobiosis.

It would end up that she turned into a mummy.

Though there was some embellishment in her talking about herself, it didn't seem like she was lying... But wasn't there something weird about that?

There were four, perhaps even five victims.

But if she turned into a mummy the very first time, then the serial nature gets cut off—the serial nature?

Serial nature?

Shinobu had said that Suicidemaster had denied being the culprit of the 'serial vampirism incidents', if I remembered correctly—but that would mean?

"...Oops. Even this onee-san that knows everything has lost her edge."

Gaen-san's voice came like a downer from where she sat.

"In this state, I won't be able to look good to my juniors. I swear I'll never call myself 'Gaen THE Know-It-All Izuko' again."

Er, it's not like you've ever called yourself by that bizarre name before.

What's with that 'THE'?

"If I was going to use as a basis the idea of turning into a mummy after failing to become a vampire, I should have kept in mind the possibility of turning into a mummy after performing the act of vampirism—I'd known about it, but examples of such are pretty valuable."

Basis [kichou] and valuable [kichou].

To that usage of homophones, our visitor from abroad raised her golden eyebrows curiously, but I felt similarly—what did she mean?

It didn't really help if you figured it out first.

Even if the cause of her mummification was food poisoning, didn't that just add to the number of mysteries?... What was going on?

At least, I understood the circumstances that led to her mummification.

There are two reasons why you want to eat something. Because you like it, and because you hate it—and there are two reasons why you don't want to eat something—because you like it, and because you hate it.

Both were wise sayings from Hachikuji Mayoi, but for that reason, that's why Suicidemaster went for whatever she could lay her hands on, without being particular or fussy about what she chose.

She went for whatever she could lay her hands on, in a manner quite unbefitting of a gourmet—not to mention, not counting her consumption as a "meal", like the wisdom of a dieter.

Well, you could say the moral to this story was that such cunning wisdom comes at a price, just like in dieting—however, the mystery of who buried Suicidemaster in the mountain after she fell victim to food poisoning and became mummified via cryptobiosis was never fully resolved.

Though I'm sure Suicidemaster herself felt like she wanted to climb into a hole, who was it that literally put that vampire that failed to suck blood underground?

Who was it that buried her alive?

"The high school girls that became mummified after failing to become vampires—the vampire that became mummified after failing in her vampirism—if I were to add one more pattern to this."

It would be a high school girl that succeeded in becoming a vampire.

That was what the administrator of the specialists said as she stood up.

"I finally understood the reason the series of crimes didn't seem to fit together—it wasn't just one vampire master. Along the way, the vampire was replaced by another."

"R—replaced?"

In mysteries—and this wasn't just limited to Ellery Queen—there were tricks that were considered fair... But I thought having multiple crimes was considered unfair?

And it wasn't like vampires were coming to this town in droves, not to mention there was the results of the DNA test that I'd just heard about—ah.

Late as it was, I finally arrived at understanding.

Upon realizing what the conclusion was, I realized it could only be that—a replacement, a substitution.

Until just the day before yesterday, I hadn't really thought about what would have happened if I had failed to become a vampire, and for some reason at some point, I had assumed that all vampirism had failed in this specific, unusual case—but of course, there was a case where that wasn't for certain.

The case where they succeeded.

The case where, even if the vampire master became a mummy as a result—the thrall was still alive and well.

In other words, if you consider that the high school girl, who was arbitrarily bitten by Suicidemaster the moment that they met, continued on to bite the other high school girls afterwards, then that resolves the strangeness of the crimes not fitting together.

It's no wonder that the DNA test resulted in a "pretty close match"—if it's a parent-child relationship or a descendant relationship, then of course the vampire genes would match.

Whether it was heaven or paradise, as a person who tasted Princess Acerola's saliva in that place, I had to say that it was extremely unnatural how lacking in etiquette it seemed for a gourmet vampire who had experienced the same taste to go on to target only the youth of Japan. But if it was a high school girl targeting other high school girls, it made perfect sense—no.

It wasn't just a high school girl targeting other high school girls.

If it was a member of the girls' basketball team targeting other members of the girls' basketball team—it made even more sense.

I could think of any number of motives—their murkiness.

Spartan training. Peer pressure. Frustration. Envy. Rivalry. Punishment. Disharmony. Collective responsibility. Discord. Suspicion. Paranoia. Injuries. Stress. Unease. Academic decline—

"Eh? But, wait just a moment, Araragi-san. Hasn't the suspicion on the girlsbas been cleared up already? Have you already forgotten my distinguished contribution as intermediary for your phone call?"

"Hachiku-jin, it would be troublesome if you went that far to take responsibility for acting as intermediary for my phone call."

True. That was true.

Using the list as a reference, Gaen-san had already confirmed the safety and innocence of every member of the girls' basketball team—on top of safeguarding each of the hundred members, they were also supervising them.

However.

There must really be something wrong with me, to not have realized until now that there was one member of the girls' basketball team that was not being supervised—Kiseki Souwa.

I'd more or less assumed that the "missing person", as Kanbaru had described it, had also fallen victim to the vampire, but even if that had been the truth.

That didn't necessarily mean that she'd been mummified.

Perhaps, she had succeeded in becoming a vampire—and perhaps, in the darkness of the night, she may be seeking revenge on her former human friends.

043

The ups and downs of realizing that the girl I'd been worried about was actually the vicious assailant of her teammates made for a bumpy ride for my weak mind, but if I were to give up everything now, I wouldn't be able to say I'd grown since my spring break at seventeen or Golden Week at eighteen.

For now, let's pretend that I'm a tough guy that can handle a full revolution on a roller coaster, and sort this out.

Kiseki Souwa.

If I remembered correctly, she was a second-year—of course, even though her name was on the list, she had already gone missing, so unlike the other members of the club, there was no confirmation of her safety. If anything, they were still out there looking for her mummy.

But they wouldn't be able to find it.

If that mummy didn't exist.

How do you account for the uniform, gym clothes, cell phone, and school bag stuffed into the personal locker in the girls' locker room of the Naoetsu High gymnasium?

If she was the one who stuffed everything into the locker herself, then breaking into the school and into the girls' locker room would be a piece of cake—she would use her own route and unlock her own door with her own hands.

If the information on our side of the investigation had been leaked, and if she knew that Gaen-san's team was out looking for Kiseki-chan's mummy, then she could have tried to disrupt the investigation by shoving those personal items into her own locker—even though there was no way to find the mummy itself because it wasn't there, by shoving the uniform and gym clothes in at the same time, the search target pretended as if the damage had already been done.

By fabricating the assumption that she had already become a mummy, she would be able to move as she pleased—and in that case, that would apply to the two living messages, or signatures, that I had asked Meniko to decipher.

"D/V/S". "F/C".

Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster, and Fan Club—those interpretations of the code were probably right on the mark, but in the end, they were just fakes set up by Kiseki-chan.

When Kiseki-chan had her blood sucked by Suicidemaster, not like a moth to a flame but a high school girl to a vampire's mouth, Suicidemaster would naturally have given her name—as she did to me, she would have given her name as "Deathtopia Virtuoso Suicidemaster".

In other words, Kiseki-chan remembered the name of the vampire that attacked her—and, assuming she was the one to bury and hide Suicidemaster's mummy in the mountains.

Her scheme was to blame her own vampiric activities on Suicidemaster.

Like a human.

As Shinobu was now, it seemed that being vampirified by Suicidemaster would lead you to "inherit" golden hair and golden eyes, so I could imagine that her appearance and atmosphere would have changed greatly from her human days.

When I was vampirified by Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, I didn't gain golden hair and golden eyes, but my body had still become rather muscular even without any training.

We'd wondered whether or not the high school girl had left the school naked with both her uniform and gym clothes being stuffed into the locker, but if Kiseki-chan did in fact bury Suicidemaster's mummy in the mountain, then that could be explained without a hitch.

The naked little girl's mummy.

Hachikuji had said that the little girl's mummy hadn't been naked from the beginning.

When she was Suicidemaster, before becoming a mummy, she naturally had to have been wearing clothes—so where did those clothes go?

If they weren't buried with her, then someone might be wearing them right now, after an adjustment to the size—someone who had buried Suicidemaster.

Taking the name of the death-prepared, death-inevitable, death-certain vampire, pretending to be her, dressing up as her, and attacking her teammates—it was possible that Kuchimoto Kyoumi, who left that dying message on her flash cards, may have fallen for the fake and left the message "B777Q", not realizing that the vampire who attacked her had been her teammate.

Or perhaps the message itself was a fake left by Kiseki-chan for the criminal investigation squad—at the very least, "F/C" was certainly that.

I couldn't imagine how it happened, but when Kiseki-chan found out that suspicion was directed at the members of the girls' basketball team, she tried to make the investigators look in a different direction.

In other words, Kanbaru Suruga's fan club.

If she was a member of the girls' basketball team, which was strongly influenced by Kanbaru, then there was no way she didn't know about this organization—although it didn't seem like she knew that the group had been disbanded without a trace.

At any rate, she tried to hide herself, hide her crime, try to pin the blame on others, make up evidence, et cetera—

All of these things were things that vampires were not likely to do, and such unnaturalness, more novel than innovative, made sense if you considered that she had just become a vampire.

Destruction of evidence, creation of an alibi, fabrication, disturbance—it was a rather human-like crime, by a vampire filled with humanity.

With this, disregarding the mummification of Suicidemaster herself, the mummification of the high school girls may not even be a failure.

In fact, I couldn't help but think that it was Kiseki-chan's revenge to put them in a half-dead state, neither alive nor dead—she could have taken the texture of Suicidemaster's mummy as reference when she was burying it.

And if I wanted to, I could take it as a good sign that she didn't want to fully kill off her friends from when she was human...

"After unraveling all the confusing parts, the problem was just a matter of order. Just like how the second and third mummies were discovered were actually attacked by the vampire third and second, Kiseki Souwa, whom we'd assumed had become the fifth mummy, was actually the first victim—no, the zeroth victim."

In other words, like this.

The order in which the mummies were discovered was:

The first mummy——Harimaze Kie

The second mummy——Honnou Aburi

The third mummy——Kuchimoto Kyoumi

(The little girl's mummy——DVS)

The fourth mummy——Kanguu Misago

The fifth mummy (assumed)——Kiseki Souwa

However, the actual order of the victims was:

The zeroth victim——Kiseki Souwa (Culprit: DVS)

(The 0.5th victim——DVS (Food poisoning))

The first victim——Harimaze Kie (Culprit: Kiseki)

The second victim——Kuchimoto Kyoumi (Culprit: Kiseki)

The third victim——Honnou Aburi (Culprit: Kiseki)

The fourth victim——Kanguu Misago (Culprit: Kiseki)

That's how it was.

Since all of the mummies were vampire mummies, there wasn't anything like an estimated time of death, so it would be hard to ascertain the time of the mummification for Kanguu-chan, who'd been submerged in the reservoir... But this was the truth behind the serial vampirism incidents that had taken place from the night before last, to last night.

"Oho, is that so. You think of some pretty clever things, both you guys and that high school girl."

Suicidemaster spoke as if she was truly impressed—although it sounded, or at least seemed to sound, like she was making fun of me.

Well, to an ancient vampire who'd seen the fall of a country firsthand, was born in a castle called the "Castle of Corpses", and bore witness to numerous wars, a discussion about five members of a high school club may seem like manual labor on a tiny, millimeter scale to her...

Moreover, while Suicidemaster was not the culprit behind the serial vampirism, she did confess to having started it all—she was the one responsible for the first bloodsucking.

Once again, a progenitor of vampires.

Like a plea bargain, she'd asked for help with the process of exiting the country, but unfortunately, this was not enough for her to get off scot-free.

It wasn't enough—but what sort of verdict would be laid down in a case like this? I didn't have the slightest idea.

Kiseki-chan had been the victim in the beginning, but if she became the main culprit afterwards—a composition in which the victim becomes the perpetrator.

"It kind of resembles Sengoku-san's case, doesn't it?" said Hachikuji.

An unnecessary comment.

"The kanji for Sengoku [千石] and Kiseki [木石] are pretty similar, too."

That one was really unnecessary.

However, Sengoku's case was different.

It wasn't nearly as close as their kanji were.

A high school girl who unexpectedly acquires vampire superpowers makes full use of her power to relieve the anger of her "past life"—if anything, it was a more serious problem than the physiological phenomenon of vampire sucking blood, which was more similar to hunger.

If I had to say it, she was exerting the fury of a vampire while maintaining her human values... If she was careless, she could meet the conditions for the "Darkness".

"It ended up not being really clear whose fault it is, right?"

Hachikuji murmured as if troubled, but it was pretty vague to begin with—it wasn't something I could do anything about by taking on all the stigma myself, like I used to do in high school.

She was too much of a stranger for me to do that.

I wasn't a politician. I couldn't work that hard for someone I didn't know.

It's not easy to help a girl you've never met, never even brushed past—a girl you have no connection with.

"We can think about the rest later, but if there's anything you need to do now..."

And, as if the composition's polarity had been reversed, the one who brought up a plan of action to this deadlocked state was none other than Shinobu.

"Don't you need to stop that vampirified high school girl, a distant little sister in my eyes? Even if the composition has been turned over on its head, what you need to do hasn't changed much, I should say."

That was true—however, the way you searched for a dried-out mummy was quite different from the way you searched for a glorious vampire with golden hair and golden eyes.

"If the King of Oddities takes charge, I'll be put out of business. So, let's say that the personnel currently assigned to search for the mummy will be assigned to search for Kiseki-chan—who do you think she'll go after next, Koyomin?"

"Eh... Um, that's, well, one of the girls' basketball team members she had strife with... right? So, if we're trying to anticipate it—"

That wasn't it.

We'd already more or less anticipated everything—all of the members that were on the list were currently under protection.

There was no way that Kiseki-chan, who somehow got information about our investigation, didn't know about that—she wouldn't make the mistake of jumping into the web herself.

"What if she just gave up on the whole revenge thing and just went home to sleep? That's what I would do."

Suicidemaster made quite the crude statement with such a serious face—at this point, I had to wonder how I even suspected that this pompous little girl was actually a highly calculating criminal.

She was not highly calculating, just loud.

"Well, it's true that Kiseki-chan is trying to avoid us. The diversionary tactics and cover-ups are evidence of that—in that case, she probably wouldn't think of attacking a girls' basketball team member even through the surveillance. To begin with, it's pretty doubtful that there's enough resentment pent up in her that she'd want to make everyone a mummy—I'm sure she had some good friends like normal," said Gaen-san.

The four people that had been discovered as mummies were either the four people that she held the deepest resentment towards, or just the four people that were the easiest targets because they happened to be returning from school alone or had a lot of openings—was it possible she'd relieved all her frustration by attacking those four people?

But I couldn't be optimistic. Rather, as a member of the investigation team, I should assume that the crime would escalate—just as an unreasonable diet leads to rebound, a teenager forced to be stoic in her club suddenly obtained superpowers like in manga, so it should escalate like an escalator—

"! This is hella dangerous, Gaen-san!"

I used a tone of voice I'd never used before—but no matter. I continued.

"Tonight, Kanbaru is having a pajama party at Higasa-chan's house with her friends!"

I was making it sound as if Kanbaru's pajama party was unhealthy, immoral, and outright reprehensible, but that wasn't the point.

It was bad, however, that the retired third-year members of Naoetsu High's girls' basketball team, the OGs of the golden generation, were all in one place, as if they'd all been rounded up.

The golden generation that could even be called.

The mastermind behind the current state of club activities.

The most fitting prey—the main dish.

12 notes · View notes

sittinginacornerihaunted · 4 years

Text

august

masterlist

pairing: spencer reid x reader

content warnings: none? i’m pretty sure

word count: 3,153

a/n: i changed the ages of spencer and reader to 26 and 20 just because i didn’t like her being 19. in case anyone gets confused :)

chapter 2

I don’t wanna look at anything else now that I saw you.

I woke up groggy and absolutely exhausted. I had gotten maybe an hour of sleep before I needed to get up and ready for my 8 am. I dragged myself from my sheets and pulled my feet one in front of the other. I made it to my closet and opted for the comfiest outfit I could manage without looking completely busted. A sweatshirt and leggings it is. I combed through my hair with my fingers and pulled it into a tight messy bun, trying my best to control the frizz that came from the sweat and humidity of the night before. I walked into the bathroom I shared with Amber, quickly brushing my teeth and performing the quickest skincare routine I could without feeling absolutely disgusting. Thank god I don’t have Criminology class today, I would not want Spencer seeing me like this. Spencer? When did I start calling him Spencer? I shook my head at the thought and threw all of my things into my backpack and made my way into the lounge area. I saw Amber’s things thrown onto the counter and the door to her room shut, hopefully she would feel okay when she woke up later. I filled up my water bottle, not before downing as much water as I could, and proceeded to shove it into the pocket on the side of my bag. Checking my watch, I ran out the door and closed it quietly so as to not wake Amber.

I bounded down the stairs and quickly walked to campus. The apartment complex where I stayed for the semester wasn’t too far from the majority of my classes, but the anxiety of possibly being late always drove me to walk at an accelerated pace. I walked past the trees and the grassy knolls that littered the campus. The atmosphere of the land combined with the old, beautiful architecture of the college buildings made it feel so… romantic. Well, that’s something to keep me distracted from this wicked hangover. Fuck, was I still a little drunk? Maybe I should’ve skipped class this morning. No matter, I was already on my way and I knew that I would’ve felt incredibly guilty if I hadn’t gone. As I briskly walked to class, I passed by other students and faculty members along the way. I got lost in thought about what they might be like. It’s incredible that we all have our own intricate and complicated lives. It’s impossible to completely understand that everyone else has a life just as complex and detailed as my own.

I finally made it to the main campus building in which my Journalism History and Cultures class would take place. I’ve never been completely sure what I wanted to major in or what I wanted my career to look like, but I randomly picked Journalism last year and I actually really love it. I’ve always known that I wanted to do something important with my life and I’ve always enjoyed writing, so I guess it just kinda made sense to me. I walked down the long hallway decorated with doors and windows and bulletin boards. I made my way to the classroom I required and pushed open the door with a deep breath. I was early, but not so early that I beat my professor there. I looked down at the ground as I made my way to the front of the room, taking a seat in the third row, as usual. I looked up and smiled at my professor to say hi and he smiled back politely. I began taking out my things and more students filed into the classroom. Before I knew it, class had started and ended in a hungover (and maybe a little drunken) haze. I took a swig from my water bottle before standing up and placing a hand on my desk to steady myself. I threw my bag onto my back and trudged out of the classroom, into the hallway, and out of the building.

The rest of the day seemed to go incredibly fast while simultaneously going excruciatingly slow. See, this is why I don’t party. I always feel like absolute shit the next morning and it affects my entire day. I wonder how Amber’s holding up. I realized I hadn’t really talked to her all day so I made my way back to our shared space in order to catch up with her. It was almost a guarantee that she would be home because during the day, she’s either in class or asleep in our apartment. I looked down at my phone to text her and ask if she wanted to do a girl’s night in, but before I could type anything I ran into something- wait, no, someone.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry I-” I began to fluster immediately before I looked up and noticed who it was that I ran into. I took a shallow breath and my eyes widened before I gained whatever composure I could. “Dr. Reid, I- I’m so sorry I was just-”

“Spencer, please, and it’s okay,” he brushed it off, “don’t worry about it.” We both stood facing each other for a moment. Why didn’t we just say our apologies and keep walking? “Um, how are you, Y/N? Did you end up getting any sleep last night? Or should I say this morning.” He laughed shyly as he spoke.

“Oh I, um, got like, maybe an hour of sleep. Coffee is a godsend, honestly,” I replied.

“Don’t I know it.” He said. I looked at him meekly, not sure what to say. He looked back into my eyes and I swear, his gaze could bore a hole through my skull. I could get lost in those eyes forever and I wouldn’t bother trying to find my way out. Y/N, stop it! I couldn’t stop it. Because as long as I looked into his eyes, he looked right back into mine. My spiraling thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his voice. “Are you okay?” He questions.

“Oh!” I jumpstart back into reality. “Yeah, I’m fine, I guess I zoned out from not getting enough sleep. I’m hoping I can catch up tonight.” I laugh and I look down, hoping that if I stare hard enough, I could bury my face into the pavement.

“That’s probably a good idea. I hope you don’t regret staying out so late though.” He says quickly, so quickly I almost missed it.

“No! I don’t, it’s just always hard the next day, you know? But it was nice to go out, for once.” I try to match his pacing, which isn’t too difficult, considering that the anxiety of the situation sped up my speech significantly.

“Yeah, I get that.” He says and we begin to just… Stare at each other again.

Not wanting to make the situation more awkward, I hear myself beginning to talk again, “Um, I should probably get home, I haven’t seen Amber all day and I want to make sure she’s still among the living, haha, um… It was nice seeing you again, Dr. Reid.” I begin walking away, in a similar fashion to last night.

“Spencer.” He corrects me.

“Spencer.” I say. I start walking away but not for long. I hear footsteps behind me, a voice yell “Y/N!” and a hand grabbed my arm. I turn around pulled by the force exerted from the hand. I’m sure I looked shocked because the hand quickly let go of me. Spencer’s face looked apologetic.

“I’m sorry, it’s just-” he rings his hands, “I was wondering if you would want my number? Um, I listed my email on the syllabus but it’s actually a lot easier to reach me through my personal cell phone, if you had questions about class or homework or… something.” He flustered through his words, why was he flustered? I’m the one who gets nervous here. His words put goosebumps along the back of my neck and the sides of my arms. I take a deep breath before answering, in hopes it would calm my nerves and steady my voice.

“Um, sure! That would actually be great because I already had a few questions about some of the material and I was going to email you but I haven’t had much time today and I guess I probably could’ve asked you now but I should probably get home so-” Is it possible for me to speak any faster?

“Y/N.” He stops me before I can embarrass myself even more. “Here, I’ll put it into your phone for you.” I pause for a beat before unlocking my phone and extending my arm to hand it to him. He types the letters and numbers necessary into my phone and I can’t help but linger on his hands. How were his hands so attractive? Is that normal? He gently hands my phone back to me and I smile and say “Thank you, Dr. Reid,” not before he looks at me expectantly and raises his eyebrows. “Um, Spencer. Thank you, Spencer.” I smile as he looks into my eyes one more time.

“You’re welcome. See you tomorrow?” He questions.

“See you tomorrow.” I confirm with a tight-lipped smile before turning and walking away. I try my hardest to walk at a normal pace, but as soon as I can be sure that he is no longer watching, I nearly sprint to my apartment.

“Amber!” I yell as I cross the threshold into the apartment’s living room and nearly slam the door shut. “Amber, are you alive?” I call out, jokingly, before I hear movement coming from her bedroom.

“Yes, I’m alive and not deaf. You’re far too loud for the morning.” She groans and rubs her eyes, walking toward me.

“Amber, it’s 3 pm.” I state bluntly.

“Are you fucking serious?” She hurtles across the room to dramatically grab my phone and confirm the time. “Goddamn it, I have so much work to do.” She rubs her face and flops onto the couch. “Whatever, I’ve waited this long to do it, I can wait a little longer.”

I look at her with what I’m sure was a ridiculous look on my face and say “Girly. You-” I stop myself before telling her what to do. She always knows what works best for her when it comes to school, so who am I to question that? “Nevermind.” I sit down, cross-legged, on the opposite side of the couch. “Hey, do you want to have a girl’s night? I was gonna text you earlier but I- um, got distracted. I could go out and grab us some snacks and we could watch Clueless? It’s on Netflix now!” She knows Clueless is my favorite movie of all time and I think I’ve forced her to watch it enough times now that it’s her favorite too. I looked at her with as innocent a face I could and she rolled her eyes and nodded.

“Okay, sure. That sounds really good actually. But only if you buy the snacks! And get me my favorite ice cream?” Her voice raises the inflection at the end of her question and now it was my turn to roll my eyes.

“Of course, dummy. I’ll head to Wawa and I’ll grab a bunch of stuff. Text me with what you want.” I bend down to kiss her on the cheek and quickly turn, grab my keys, and head out the door.

---

“So,” Amber begins as the end credits of the movie begin to roll, “Who was that hot guy you were talking to last night?”

I nearly choked on the popcorn I was eating. “What? Oh, um, it- I-”

“He seemed really into you. I could feel the tension all the way across the room.” She takes a spoonful of her pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

“I thought you were dancing with what’s-his-name across the room, how did you see what I was doing?” I try to throw her off.

“I am much more perceptive than you think, girly.” She pokes my thigh playfully. “Now, spill! The guy I was dancing with was not really anything. Once I sobered up even the slightest bit, he wasn’t that cute. Or that good of a dancer. It was a little bit of a disappointment but I don’t care, I wanna know what happened with you!” She pokes me a few more times, which I will admit, was not a bad interrogation strategy on account of I am extremely ticklish.

“Okay, okay!” I swat her hands away and secure my pint of ice cream in my lap. “He, um, he is actually my Criminology professor.”

“Excuse me? What was your Criminology professor doing at a student bar in the middle of first week parties?”

“That’s what I asked too! He said his coworker dragged him there or something. I don’t know what they were doing beforehand or why he wanted to go there, but,” I shrugged my shoulders.

“What were you guys talking about? And don’t think I forgot about you going outside with him later! I was blackout but I always remember everything.” That was true, Amber had the memory of an elephant. But like, an elephant who also has a photographic memory.

“I don’t know we were just kinda talking about nothing! I was still pretty drunk so right now, I’m just hoping what I said made sense and wasn’t too embarrassing.”

“Lame! Next time you talk to him, and I know there will be a next time because that was too interesting for there to not be a next time, I expect there to be a lot more juicy details!”

“Well, uh,” I begin again, “I actually talked to him today.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, I ran into him while I was on my way here earlier and we talked for a little bit. It was kinda awkward but I don’t know, it was weird. He gave me his number?” I say it like a question and watch Amber’s eyes widen.

“He gave you his number?” At this point, Amber was eating popcorn and looking at me like I was the movie.

“Yeah, he said it was for if I have questions about class, do you think that’s weird?”

“No, it’s cute! Wait, how old is this guy? I thought he was a student when you were talking to him last night and I can get behind a hot professor but a huge age gap and predatory behavior is not cute.” Her tone turned serious and I quickly dismissed her concerns.

“No no, he’s 26! Don’t worry about that.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “Isn’t it like, against the rules to date your professor? Not that we’re dating! And not that I was thinking about us dating! I’m sure he sticks to the rules I doubt he would ever do anything like that and it’s not like I’m one for breaking the rules I-”

“Slow down, speed racer!” She says as I try my hardest to figure out how to breathe at a normal rate “I’m pretty sure it’s not technically against the rules, but yeah, I guess it’s frowned upon and pretty taboo to date your teacher. But I mean, you two seemed to really get on last night. And it doesn’t make sense to stop something that has the potential to be great just because some people don’t think it’s ‘acceptable,’ whatever that means.”

“You think it has the potential to be great? I mean, I just met him yesterday. We barely talked, I barely know him!” I feel myself beginning to freak out a little bit.

“Hey, hey, I mean, you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want, but I know that I saw something between you too. Maybe it’s just a friendship or maybe it’s nothing! I just want you to be happy, you know that, right Y/N?” She puts her hands on my knees in an effort to comfort me. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.” I smile softly at her, “I guess I just, I don’t even know what our relationship is right now. I mean, he’s definitely attractive, I’d have to be blind to miss that. But he’s my professor, you know? I guess I’d have to be completely positive that he feels the same way for me to ever initiate something.” Amber nods her head. “You know what is kinda strange though? He insists on me calling him Spencer. Is that weird? I guess I just feel weird because I’m most comfortable calling my professors by their titles or something more formal. I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s not that big of a deal I’m sure I’m just overthinking this.”

“Hey,” Amber has always been good at comforting me. “Whatever you are feeling right now, is totally and completely valid. You know I tease you because I love you, but I seriously just want what’s best for you. You seemed really excited last night and I just want you to be happy. I expect to be updated on this regularly, okay?” She laughs and raises her eyebrows at me.

“Of course,” I giggle and spoon a mouthful of ice cream into my mouth. “Now, I think it’s time we watch Legally Blonde, huh?” Amber laughs and I grab the remote and turn the TV to the timeless classic we both adore.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Amber said about the potential of something great. Did it really seem that special to Amber? I trust her judgement, but as of right now, there’s nothing happening between me and Spencer. He’s just my professor and I’m just his student who happened to run into him twice outside of class. And who couldn’t stop staring into his eyes as he spoke. And who could barely breathe when he said my name. And who couldn’t focus when he talked because his hands moved with his words. And who now calls him Spencer, apparently. Do I even want something to happen between us? Sure, he’s handsome, like, really handsome, but he’s my professor. I’ve never really been one for dating anyways.

I take a deep breath and try to focus on the film playing in front of me. I mean, he did give me his number. That’s gotta count for something, right? I look at my phone and the clock reads 12:43 am. I take another breath and do my best to leave those thoughts for tomorrow. It’s too late to be thinking clearly anyways. I grab the blanket that was hanging on the back of the couch and throw it over mine and Amber’s laps. I relax my shoulders and melt into the couch as I let the sounds of Reese Witherspoon and Luke Wilson take over my senses.

taglist: @pumpkin-reads @haylaansmi

#m #mari writes #august #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds fanfic #cm #criminal minds

53 notes · View notes

wishingforatypewriter · 4 years

Text

Earning Credentials

Summary: In which Baatar isn’t sure if he’s Kuvira’s boyfriend, but plays the role anyway (pre-empire, but post-Zaofu).

Baatar had spent some time in Ba Sing Se when he was eighteen, though after what he’d seen during the campaign, it felt like a lifetime ago. He’d accompanied his father while he gave a series of lectures at the university’s architecture department, and then stayed behind for a summer term, studying under some of the world’s leading engineering scholars.

He didn’t remember much of the visit outside of work and endless hours holed up in the library. There had been a few nights out with his classmates, and a date or two with a dance student from the Northern Water Tribe he’d entertained to try—albeit unsuccessfully—and stop pining after his childhood crush. But it was mostly just work.

After they stabilized the city, he’d been lucky enough to find two of his former classmates, who’d become prominent civil engineers after completing their studies. He now sat alongside them in The Jasmine Dragon—which was among the first wave of establishments back up and running—sharing his plans for the reconstruction of the city.

One of them, a woman named Li Na who’d grown up in the upper ring, studied the drawings with a pensive frown. “I love the updated rail system,” she said. “The manual lines were so last century. But what happened to the rings? I only see plans for restoring the outer wall.”

“Kuvira hates the rings,” he said, recalling the sharp words she’d exchanged with the few remaining ministers in the city after she started moving the displaced lower ring residents into vacant houses in the middle ring. “Their maintenance is a drain on the public works funds and they perpetuate inequality. Any Earth Kingdom citizen should be able to move through the city freely.”

“Right on, man,” said Qi from Omashu, who he’d probably convince to join their budding corps of engineers in a month or so. “Your girlfriend has some pretty cool ideas.”

Baatar felt his ears heating up, and willed the embarrassment not to show on his face. He had made out with Kuvira a few times before they left Zaofu, and once or twice very early in the campaign, but he wasn’t quite sure that really gave him boyfriend credentials. He cleared his throat, shuffling the papers laid out on the table. “Actually, we’re really just childhood friends—”

“So she’s single, then?” Qi raised his eyebrows curiously. “I might have to—”

“No.” Baatar said this too quickly and with far too much venom for anyone at the table to miss the fact that he was steeped in likely unrequited love for her.

Li Na giggled behind her hand and Baatar wanted to evaporate like the steam wafting out of his cup. “Figure your life out, Baatar,” she said. “But let me know when you’re ready to get started. My parents are squandering the family fortune running up hotel bills in Republic City.”

Before he left the store, Baatar bought an extra oolong tea and a sweet custard bun to go, just in case she hadn’t eaten. He then got in his satomobile—one of the armored dark green jeeps he and Varrick designed for the campaign—and drove down to the lower ring. The chaos in the poorer districts had largely dissipated as Kuvira’s justice fell over the city with the winter frost, but he knew she had every intention of leaving the slums better than she found them.

He spotted Kuvira at the center of the relief stations, giving orders to the food distribution teams and directing refugees towards the medical tents. She moved with grace and precision, as though the endless work to do and decisions to be made were all part of an elaborate dance performance.

Baatar stood and watched her for a while, a smile growing on his face when she bent down to clean and bandage a cut on a little girl’s ankle because all the medics were occupied. After she was done, the girl wrapped her arms around Kuvira’s neck and stayed that way until she handed her off to Bolin. Despite the rougher elements of her personality, she’d always had a way with children. Wing and Wei adored her from the first—or they had. Until.

When there was finally a lull in the onslaught of people in need of her attention, Baatar approached her. Kuvira’s hair was unbound and hung loose down her back—more likely than not to protect her ears from the winter wind—and a few snowflakes were tangled in her long tresses and dark eyelashes. She regarded him with a subtly pleased look that sent his thoughts scattering like a sheaf of papers in an airbender training session.

He handed her the cup of tea and paper to-go bag without preamble, and her expression broadened into a full-on smile. “How did you know I skipped breakfast?”

Baatar adjusted his glasses, hoping she assumed his red face was only because of the chill. “Just probability. As a rule, you take terrible care of yourself when you’re occupied with something.”

She’d gotten this way after she was first promoted to captain of the Zaofu guard and when she became a principal dancer in his mother’s company, but now her propensity for overwork had reached new heights.

Kuvira glared at him. “The state of the Earth Kingdom—”

“Cannot be changed in the time it takes to eat something, and we both know it.”

The glare persisted, but she chose not to argue further. She fished the custard bun out of the bag and took a bite.

“What did your school friends say?” she asked after a moment, her voice laced with a hint of teasing most people wouldn’t be able to detect.

“They think it’s possible, and they’re willing to help,” he told her. “We should be able to begin work on the new roads within the week.”

Kuvira nodded. “Good. We need Ba Sing Se running normally again so it can support displaced populations from elsewhere in the northeastern region. My scouts have reported that things have gotten bad with the petty warlords who’ve taken over the mountain towns.”

Baatar could tell from the set of her jaw that she’d be unable to ignore it. Since coming to Ba Sing Se and seeing the people left most vulnerable by the power vacuum, she’d become obsessively focused on the mission. “You’re sending a team?”

“I’m leading it.”

He supposed he should have assumed that, but had still dared to hope otherwise. “When will you leave?”

“Soon,” she said. “Tomorrow, with any luck. I’m meeting with the security force at noon to discuss the logistics. We should have the plan finalized in a few hours.”

Baatar glanced at his pocket watch, noting that it was almost a quarter to twelve. “So you were going to skip lunch too?”

“Unimportant,” she said with a dismissive wave, pulling the olive green trench jacket tighter around her as the wind picked up.

“Untrue,” he retorted. “Do you want a ride back up to the base?”

“Everyone else has to walk,” she stated, drawing upon her hard-won wisdom in the realm of charismatic authority.

“Can I walk with you, then?”

“I’m sure you have something more productive that you could be doing with your time,” she said with a pointed look and a half-hidden smile. “But alright.”

Somewhere between the relief station and the base, Kuvira’s hand ended up in his, and Baatar couldn’t for the life of him tell which of them had started it.

#baavira #kuvira #baatar jr #legend of korra #lok

32 notes · View notes

tsarinastorm · 4 years

Text

AA:Ashes to Ashes-Adam Sackler/Reader-Chapter 1

Rating: Explicit, eventual Smut

This is my attempt at a slow burn, sorry if it’s bad!

Summary: You meet Jessa at AA and quickly become friends. She introduces you to her boyfriend, Adam, who it turns out you have a lot in common with. Always a girls’ girl you’ll have to choose between friendship and love.

As usual, everyone went around the room introducing themselves and explaining their issues, you instantly regretted being there but it was for the best. While not a typical addict or alcoholic, you had been mixing alcohol and Xanax, even though you knew better. It began as only drinking during social events, then it became drinking every night, then it quickly developed into drinking every night and using Xanax to sleep. Your therapist suggested going to AA groups to talk to others about your problems, and to ‘socialize.’

It was getting harder to resist the urge to drink and pop a few pills. But you did it to yourself. You had insisted on moving yourself to New York City, taking a job that was lower pay and cutting back your own hours to work on your writing. Now you did mostly contract-drafting work, and were just covering your rent, bills, and general expenses. You had to sell some of your clothes to consignment shops, and tutor some high school students for extra cash. But you thought it was worth the risk to follow your dreams. You were saving money by staying in a small studio apartment in East Village, and while it was tiny, it allowed to save some of your earnings. You were working on polishing your first manuscript to send to publishers.

Everyone concludes introducing themselves, including you, then a woman comes in late. She is a blonde with a British accent, and after taking a look around, she may be the only normal one here. Apparently she thinks the same, because she comes over to talk to you after the meeting is over.

“It’s good to not be the only pretty woman in here, and you look relatively normal.” She says and you nod your head in agreement. You say back, “Yeah some of them look like they’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”

“I’m Jessa, wanna not stay here and get hit on by that guy,” She says as she gestures towards a big man standing over to side who’s eyeing you both suspiciously. That could get weird.

That’s how you became friends with Jessa. The two of you would go grab food after each meeting, and she was pretty much an open book. You were surprised and entertained by her life stories, you told her that she should write a book, a memoir. You could tell that she put up a front to hide some inner vulnerability but who didn’t. She would talk about her former friends, then her boyfriend, named Adam, and what an ‘amazing’ connection they had. But you had never once seen him, or heard from him, he was enigma and it made you wonder about their relationship. She also said that he was her friend Hannah’s ex-boyfriend. The whole situation seemed strange to you, and you were suddenly grateful that you didn’t have that drama in your life.

********

In your third week of hanging out, when the two of you went shopping, or more specifically window shopping, she was talking about her last encounter with college. She told you that she did want to be a therapist but then she dropped out of school because it wasn’t for her. You tried to encourage her that there are other ways to help people with their lives that don’t involve school, and there were non-traditional routes.

“I just feel like I could really help other people so much but I’m not cut out for school,” Jessa says as she moves her hands dramatically while speaking. You listen before saying, “You could be a life coach or something, that stuff doesn’t usually require a degree. You just need to know how to sell yourself, find somebody to guide you in the business.”

As you take another bite of your salad, you can see that Jessa is appraising your suggestion. She pulls out a cigarette, then her eyes light up. She gets excited and exclaims, “That is a great idea! I’m so good at making people buy into my bullshit and telling them what to do!”

“Happy to help!” You say, then you start look up the process for how to be a life coach. This was a much-needed distraction from your daily life and your own stress. For some reason, you were much better about giving other people advice than following it on your own, maybe that’s why you became friends with Jessa in the first place.

***********

Then, the following week was the time she took mushrooms, accidentally this time, and called you to pick her up from the party in the Garment District. You were trying to finish the draft of a contract when she called but you considered yourself a girls’ girl and would feel guilty if something happened to her.

Before you knew it, you were making your way there. You find the address from the drop-pin she sent you. As you walked in you noticed that the party’s attendees were the hippy type, dressed in tie dye, with marijuana growing around the place, yet still fashion hippies because they had on designer duds. The apartment was in an eclectic loft, and was filled with people. It didn’t bother you, it was just tightly packed, and was making you feel claustrophobic. You try not to stare at people, just look for Jessa. A couple guys made a few off-hand comments, but you ignored them, looking for your friend. Then your eyes settle on a blonde sitting across the room.

Jessa was sitting in a corner, and you went up to her. You asked her, “Can you walk? This will be a lot easier if you can walk?”

“I can’t feel my legs. Y/N, fuck I have never felt this good.” Is her answer. Her attitude made you instantly wish you would have ignored her phone call. She should have called her boyfriend or one of her friends that wasn’t busy. Frustrated, you pick her up, she stands, and then she takes a step forward. She is mumbling about something, you place her arms over your shoulder and head out, weaving through the crowd. Once outside, you hail a cab, then Jessa decides that she won’t go and stand stubbornly outside. You really don’t have time for this, so your anger boils over.

“Fine, call your damn boyfriend or whoever else you have, because I am done!” You shout, and throw your hands in the air in an act of disgust. You mentally decide to get in the cab and go back to your apartment to resume your work. As you go to step inside the cab, you hear Jessa speak.

“Wait, Y/N, I don’t have anybody else, okay?” Jessa says, and you help get her in the cab and scoot her over so you can get in as well. She’s able to give the driver her address. As soon as you get her up the stairs which was a task in itself and to the door of her apartment, she vomits. You audibly release a sigh and step over it, and started pounding on the door. You remember that she lived with her boyfriend, and she said he should be home. You’ll wake up the whole damn building if that’s what it takes.

“Okay, okay! I hear you, loud fucker!” You heard a man yell before coming to answer the door. Your jaw drops when a man who’s built like a brick house, opens the door standing in his black briefs. He has amber eyes, black, long, wavy hair, amazing pecs, and your eyes can’t help but notice the bulge in the briefs. That must be the Adam, you were certainly not expecting him to look like that, and you feel a blush creep on your cheeks. You shield your eyes and push Jessa towards him.

“What the hell happened to her?” He demands to know from you. You didn’t like the tone, so you inform him, “Jessa went to a party, took mushrooms, and then called me to come get her. I have work to do, so I assume you can take care of her.”

He nodded in agreement, Jessa stumbled into the apartment, and you left. Now you understand why Jessa put up with him treating her like a consolation prize, and why she was willing to betray her friendship with Hannah for him. You didn’t think that you would personally do that, but you could understand it now. You also knew that you would be thinking of your friend’s boyfriend more than you wanted to.

*************************

When you were heading out of the AA meeting today with Jessa, she said that needed to grab something from her apartment first. So you follow her to her apartment, and once inside, you turn around to see Adam sitting on a yellow couch, this time he was fully clothed. Jessa heads further inside to find whatever it is that she was looking for. Adam turns to look at you, and you can feel his gaze burning through you, you decide to ignore it and admire the architecture and space in this apartment. Besides, considering your recent interaction with him, you weren’t sure you could look at him without blushing or checking out his bulge again.

You were happy that you had chosen to wear black skinny jeans, Chelsea boots and a sleeveless white top instead of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt. Adam gets up to stand beside you, and formally introduces himself, saying, “I’m Adam, thanks for taking care of Jessa that night. Sorry I was kind of an asshole.”

“I’m Y/N. It’s no problem.” You say back as your mind goes blank when his eyes meet yours. He continues holding your eyes for some time before asking, “Are you the friend from AA?”

“I am.” You answer, feeling a bit dazed. It must be equally awkward for him to know a lot about someone without actually knowing them. Or maybe he was socially awkward like you. You felt like you knew him already from hearing Jessa’s stories. He then coolly remarks, “You don’t look like an alcoholic or addict to me.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” You fire back. A person can’t just assume who’s an addict, or who’s not.Your brow furrows and your casual smile turns into a scowl. You take back any nice things about him you had thought before. What an asshole, he can’t even know you for five minutes before insulting you.

“Adam, don’t be an asshole,” Jessa chimes in as she strolls back into the room and glares at him. He finds a way to recover and explain himself. He states, “I meant it as a compliment. You look very put together and classy.”

Jessa scoffs at him and eyes him hesitantly, while you chuckle. You suppose that is a twisted compliment, and you’ve been called worse. You then feel the need to explain yourself to him and add, “Yeah well drinking and the Xanax quickly turned from happening occasionally at social events to all the time to numb myself. I got help before I hit rock bottom.”

“Good. Good for you. I started drinking as a teenager and started AA when I was seventeen. Better to catch that shit early.” He says and you listen to him contently, but before the two of you get to talk more, Jessa is rushing out the door, declaring that she’s found whatever she was here for. You shoot him a smile and wave goodbye before following Jessa out. Adam is certainly a curious man and you want to know more about him, even though it’s against your better judgment.

“Adaptations are almost never as good as the original, end of story.” You inform Ray of your opinion. You had just met Ray earlier tonight, and he seemed to be argumentative. You never backed down from a debate, so it made things interesting. You ignored the fact that Jessa wanted to set you up with Ray, he just wasn’t your type. You’re sitting on the yellow couch with Jessa and Ray. Jessa is listening to your argument while she eats yogurt, not bothered at all. Ray thinks for a moment before he makes his next move in this game of argument chess.

“There can be thoughtful adaptations.” Ray declares, taking a drink of his beer. You’re not convinced, so you counter with, “Yes but they generally lose the heart and soul of the original format.”

“Okay well I can see that I’m not going to win this.” Ray finally concedes. Good. Better for him to figure that out now. You take a drink of your water, and snack on some chips. You’ve been set up with worse guys, and as long as Ray takes the hint, maybe the two of you can be friends.

“I agree with Y/N.” Jessa confirms, and Ray just shakes his head. You smile smugly, triumphant that you’ve won the argument. Then, Adam walks through the door, looks surprised to see all of you there, continues heading into the kitchen. He gets a drink from the fridge before joining the group of you on the couch, he points at you and adds, “I agree with her, adaptations are shit!”

You smile at him, and he smiles back. You’re happy he agrees, because if not you would have to seriously question his taste, and put him the group with Ray. From what Jessa’s told you about him, he’s obviously cultured and has good taste, even though he doesn’t outwardly show it and in spite of outward eccentricity. During the movie, Ray heads out to take a phone call while Jessa goes to the restroom, leaving you alone with Adam. And you actually has butterflies in stomach just from being alone with him, you feel like you’re fourteen again. Inwardly scolding yourself for feeling this way, you keep your eyes fixed on the television screen. You don’t know what to say, so you wait for him to make a move. Or who knows, the two of you might sit in weird silence until someone walks back into the room. Luckily, you don’t have to wait long to see how it’s going to go.

“What do you do?” He asks trying to get the conversation started and end the tension in the room. He glances at you, and takes some chips from the bowl.

“I’m an attorney, but I don’t do typical court work. I do the drafting and back work. That gives me flexibility to work on my writing on the side.” You says as you take another drink from your glass, and you notice that you’re each moving towards each other subconsciously. Or consciously, who knows. Adam chuckles, then jokes by saying, “Well I don’t have good luck with writers.”

“Well I don’t have good luck with tall strangers. What do you do? You’re an actor, right?” You say back, not fazed at all by his bad joke, and you see relief wash over him. He cocks a half-smile, you admire his dimples that are now showing. And you mentally control yourself, because you cannot get a crush on your friend’s boyfriend.

“I am an actor.” He says in a drawn out voice, and you can’t tell if he did that intentionally or if he’s just nervous. He definitely doesn’t strike you as a shy, or introverted guy.

“That’s why you have strong opinions on content forms then.” You say and the two of you continue talking about books, poems, movies and music you like. You find out that you and Adam have similar, but not identical tastes. As Ray and Jessa trickle back into the conversation while Adam is asking you about your trivia talents. Adam stuns you and everyone else in the room by saying, “Fuck, you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

“You’re not too bad yourself. Brawn and brain,” You tease back as Adam tries to hide his blush, which you find adorable. You also know that you’re probably blushing too so you move your face to hide it. Then you remember that Jessa is right there and you worry you might have crossed the line. Self-consciously and slowly you scoot back over across to the other side of the couch, leaving plenty of room for Jessa, and you pat the space beside you. Jessa seems unaffected, and it seems you’re being self-conscious for nothing, she sits down. She puts her arm around your shoulder, saying, “Adam’s right. You are insanely smart, and kind. And you have fantastic skin.”

You blush and you can see Adam watching you out of the corner of your eye. Jessa moves in closer to you and starts telling you about the current state of her future life-coaching business. You listen to her as intently as you can but your thoughts wonder to Adam, then you guilt yourself because you know you shouldn’t think of him at all.

************************************************************************

Adam was walking out of Ray’s coffee shop with his typical, normal coffee. None of that fancy new age coffee that so many people drink nowadays. He’s been in a bit of downward spike lately, he knows he needs to audition for more parts and submit some of his writing to directors. He’s working on what he thinks is a lame indie film, but the pay is decent and the director is well-respected so he supposes he should suffer through the script. Though he’s considered walking out several times.

When he’s getting ready to head to the door, he sees Y/N walk in. She waves at him, and he finds himself smiling and waving back at her. She’s wearing a red sheath dress and heels, carrying a huge tote bag. How does she manage to look hot while still looking like a boss? Adam remembers that she’s an attorney so she’s probably way out of his league, and she’s Jessa’s friend. Once she gets her order, she sits a table that’s in the corner near the street, and motions for him to join her since he’s still standing by the door probably looking like an idiot.

He knows he should probably just politely decline her offer, but instead he goes to sit down across from her. He felt a connection with her the other day when they talked about books, and things they were passionate about. Adam thinks he might as well accept he’s hooked on this girl, at least to some degree. After he sits, he asks, “Are you going to work? I don’t want to distract you.”

“I’m mostly editing and listening in on video calls today. What about you? I mean I know actors and artists don’t have a normal schedule but are you working today?” She says as she takes a drink of her coffee and takes her pastry out of the bag.

“I’ve been working on this indie film and it’s very frustrating.” Adam admits before he remembers that he doesn’t really know Y/N that well, and that she probably doesn’t care about his life.

“Is it good for your reputation or at least good pay?” Y/N asks and sounds genuinely interested. Adam thinks back to the intensive conversation that he had with her a few nights ago, and knows that she gets it. She thinks about art, literature, and expression. So he opens up.

“It’s good for both. It’s just everything else about it is a shitshow. And fucking mediocre,” Adam says. Y/N then continues making her point by saying, “Well stick it out for the credit then you can be pickier about your projects.”

“That’s good advice. Thanks.” He tells her and she pulls out her laptop to get to work, when he gathers himself to leave, she stops him. “Company wouldn’t bother me…If you don’t have somewhere else to be.”

Adam sits back down, content to hang around her. He sees that she has a copy of Forster’s short stories and Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin in her bag. He can’t hold back from commenting, after all he does have a comp lit degree. He motions toward them, saying, “Interesting choices. Let me know what you think of them.”

“I like Forster’s description of sexuality and sensuality. This is my first brush with Zola though, so I’ll save my commentary when I’m better read.” She smiles and it looks like her whole face lights up. Adam can’t look away from her.

He barely knows her and yet he feels like he’s known her all of his life. He’s able to talk to her about things that he could never bring up around Jessa, and forgot what it was like to have a real connection to someone. He and Y/N sit there for hours, talking art, writing, and inspirations. He opens up about his past relationships, Y/N already knew that he dated Hannah, who was Jessa’s friend. Adam chose to leave out the part where he went back to Hannah to offer to raise her child with her. He knew how embarrassing it sounded now, and maybe Jessa had already told her that.

She opened up to him about her writing: short stories and children’s books, though she wanted to do more. She told him about how hard it was when she first moved to the city, and about the ex who got her to mix alcohol and Xanax. She talks about her dysfunctional family, and the friends she’s made in the city. When it’s time to go, Adam finds himself following her outside the shop, not wanting to separate from her.

Outside the door, he stops her to ask, “Can we do that again?”

“Sure. That is what friends do.” She says before she heads on her way. Adam’s never really had friends before but he still feels like this was more than friendship.

#adam sackler #adam sackler x reader #adam sackler fic #adam sackler x you #adam driver #hbo girls #jessa johansson

45 notes · View notes

andysbubba · 4 years

Text

𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕚 - 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖

ɪɴ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ꜱᴛᴇᴠᴇ ʀᴏɢᴇʀꜱ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴄᴏʟʟᴇɢᴇ ꜱᴛᴜᴅᴇɴᴛ. ᴀ ʙʀᴏᴋᴇ ʙᴜᴛ ᴀ ʜᴏᴛ ᴄᴏʟʟᴇɢᴇ ꜱᴛᴜᴅᴇɴᴛ. ᴀɴᴅ ᴀʀɪᴀɴᴀ ꜱᴍɪᴛʜ ɪꜱ ʀɪᴄʜ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ ʟᴏɴᴇʟʏ ᴛʜɪʀᴛʏ-ꜰᴏᴜʀ ʏᴇᴀʀ ᴏʟᴅ.

one | two

Steve was wearing his navy blue polo tucked into a pair of grey plaid pants. He was outside the restaurant at 12.57 and he didn’t see Ari’s car from yesterday anywhere.

He considered calling, but figured she’s be there soon.

He went in and smiled widely, “Hi, I’m waiting for Ariana Smith?”

The waitress smiled at him and looked through the stack of papers on the clipboard she was holding. “She isn’t here yet but you can wait at the table.”

Steve took out his phone as he followed behind the waitress. It was already 1. He took a glance outside the restaurant. There was no sign of the lady with wavy light brown hair from yesterday. He looked down at the cracked screen. There wasn’t a notification from her either.

“Shit.”

It was already 1.07 and Ari was still at her office. She got too distracted with reading some proposals that she didn’t even notice the time.

Her office was about 15 minutes away from the restaurant. She could probably rush the drive to about 8 minutes. Probably. But for fucks sake, this was New York, the traffic is practically hell on earth.

Her phone battery was borderline at 8%. Shit. She could probably make a call to Steve. Probably.

She pressed his contact as she got into her car, her phone immediately connecting to the car’s sound system.

It rang twice before he picked up.

“Steve!”

“Hey! Are you alright?”

Ari breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m so sorry, Stevie. I just got out of the office. I’ll try to get there in 10.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just drive safely.”

His voice was soft but raspy. Ari could listen to his voice all day long.

“I’ll see you soon, Steve!” She hangs up the call before she got a reply from him.

Ari was wearing a black pair of ankle pants and a long sleeved maroon sweater tucked into her pants. And she was glad she chose to wear sneakers.

She was also thankful that there was an empty lot right outside the restaurant.

The waitress led her to where Steve was already seated. And she felt extremely bad for coming half an hour late.

“Steve. Hey, I’m so sorry,”

The said man stood up as he sees her and she pulled him into a hug as soon as she was close enough. “Hey, no problem. Don’t worry about it,”

Ari settles in the chair opposite him after they pulled away. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Are you ready to order, though?”

Steve nods, “Yeah. Are you?”

“I’ll get my regular order.” Ari raises her hand and waved the waiter over.

“Good afternoon. What can I get you?”

“Hi, I’ll get the three cheese ravioli, please.” Ari smiles kindly at the man taking their order.

He turns to Steve.

“I’ll have the beef lasagna.” Steve closed the menu and passed it over to the man.

As they were waiting for the food, Steve went ahead and tried to start off the main topic. “So, what are you,” He paused and cleared his throat, “What are you actually looking for in this... agreement?”

Ari sits up straighter and slightly leaned forward, “Honestly? I want companionship and to take care of someone. I don’t really care about the sexual part of it.” She stops for a moment, “Finding the right person to have that kind of relationship with is... hard.” She looks intently at the man opposite her, “But of course, in return, I’ll give you whatever you want. Well, that is, if we share the same interests.” She smiles at the end, taking a sip of water from the glass in front of her.

Steve picks up some confidence to speak. “Well, obviously I’m a little on the financially unstable side of life.” He chuckles shortly. “And I’m also single, and I like receiving and giving attention. I do enjoy the traditional relationship thing as well, so I have no objections to everything you proposed.”

Ari looks at him, slightly surprised. “That’s it?”

Steve confidently nods.

They were interrupted by the waiter serving their meal and they both waited for him to leave before continuing.

“Then, what kind of boundaries do you have?” Ari noticed the confused look on his face. “I mean, kisses and holding hands, things like that.”

A look of realisation crossed Steve’s face. “I don’t mind any of those, honestly. So I don’t exactly have a boundary?”

“So you’re pretty alright with being and acting like a couple and all that?” Ari confirms and carefully eyed him.

Steve shrugs and nods.

“Words, Steve.” Ari frowns at him.

Steve felt... intimidated.

“I don’t mind doing that.”

Ariana nods her head and smiled softly, “Good.” Her hands picked up the fork and knife to cut into her ravioli. “We’ll see how this goes, alright? If there’s anything you’re uncomfortable with, just talk to me, Steve.”

Steve nods and cuts into his meal, “Yeah, I got it.” He trails off, “So this is like a real relationship right? Like we aren’t supposed to see other people and all that?”

“If that’s what you want, then that’s perfectly fine.” She tentatively eyed the man before continuing. “And Steve, we’ll take it slow, okay? I’ll let you control our pace and we can do this however you want it, alright?”

Steve nods with a tiny smile growing on his lips. “Okay. Will you let me take care of you?”

Hell Steve had so many questions on his mind. But seriously, who the fuck can blame him? It’s like his first time going through this kind of thing.

Ari looked back at him, a little surprised and that expression turned soft. Like she was so goddamn swooned for him. “Of course, Stevie. I’m in this as much as you are.”

“Uhhh, I noticed you’re kind of a workaholic. I don’t wanna be intrusive but I do wanna take care of you and things like that, yanno. So...” He hesitates slightly as he tries to find the right words to say.

Ari smiled softly. “I’ll try to not work overtime too often and I won’t protest if you want to pull me away from work.”

Ari knew too well that she works alot. Hell, if she had to spend all her weekends in the office, she would. She also knew that if she had someone to think about outside of work, it was going to slightly stop her from staying in the office too long.

Steve was startled that she understood what he was getting at immediately. “I didn’t expect you to agree so quickly.”

Ari laughs, “I may be a little stubborn, but I do understand where you’re coming from.”

Steve laughs along and but cleared his throat, “But how is this... thing actually gonna work?”

Ari chuckles, “I guess, I mainly want to spend my free time with you. I wouldn’t mind having you over or going on dates.” Her fingers tapped against the table, “Or cuddles and movie nights. But for the most of it, I don’t have any demands besides letting me take care if you.”

Steve sighed in relief. “And that’s pretty much it?”

Ari had that wide grin on her lips as she laughed, “Just calm down and be comfortable, love. It’s my first time doing this as well.”

Steve looked at her with shock written all over his face. “But you’re so calm.”

“You can’t see how fast my heart is beating through my chest.” She retorts jokingly.

Steve laughs, “At least we got the tough part over and done with.”

“You’re right.” She smiles. Putting her utensils down, she crossed her legs under the table and leaned back against the chair. “So, I recall you taking architecture. What are you currently working on?”

“The lecturer’s having us come up with two plans for modern homes. I already submitted one and the other is due next Tuesday.”

“What are you working with?” Ari was intrigued.

“My first plan was based on open spaces. I’m playing around with flat roofs and glass walls for the second one.” He explains before placing the piece of steak in his mouth.

“Glass the whole house or just the exterior?”

Steve lifts his shoulders and shrugs, “I dunno, I was gonna draw both out and compare which one looks better.”

“Just a tip,” She gives Steve a piece of advice, “the uglier the better.”

Steve laughs, “That’s what my lecturer said too.”

Ari mentally prepared herself and internally sighed.

“Steve.”

He looks up at her and raised his brow, “Yeah?”

“Please don’t tell me Stark’s your lecturer.”

“Professor Stark’s been my lecturer since last year. You know him?” Steve answered and questioned with confusion laced in his tone.

Ari groans. “He’s gonna have my head for going out with one of his students.”

Steve laughs. “I don’t think he’s that bad.”

“I’ve known him for almost 15 years, Stevie.” She sighs, “That man may be married but he’s still as annoying as he was in college.”

“I’ll save you if it ever comes to it.” Steve grinned.

“My knight in shining armor.” Ari pretends to awe and fan herself before winking at Steve.

They both burst out in laughter.

Steve was hunched over the table as he laughs before collecting himself and asking, “Where do you wanna go after this?”

“What do you think about ice-skating?”

“You sure I won’t end up tearing my pants?”

Ari chuckles, “We’ll get you a new pair if that happens.”

“Well then, let’s do it,” Steve grinned.

Ari was holding on to the wheel, Steve sitting in the seat beside her, when the car speaker started ringing with some ringtone.

Ari sighs, seeing it was Sam fucking Wilson. She threw Steve a guilty look and mouthed sorry. Steve nods with a smile, not really caring about it.

She pressed the green button to accept the call. “Make it quick, Wilson. I’m on a date.” Ari calls out.

“Oh, the date that caused you to cancel on the very important meeting with Banner Industries?”

“Shut up, Sam.” Ari’s cheeks were getting a little red. “What do you want?”

“I’ve got some minutes from the meeting with the R&D team for you. What should I do with them?”

“Leave them in my office. I’ll come by and take them tonight or something.”

“Alright boss. Have fun swooning over a-”

Sam’s voice was cut off as Ari clicked the red button.

“So, you cancelled a very important meeting for me?” Steve teased, eyes glinting with mischief.

She looked at him with faux disappointment, “That’s the only thing you got from that call?”

“That’s the only thing that matters to me. Oh, do you want to take those minutes now?”

“Are you sure? I don’t wanna ruin our date.” Ari clarified with him with an unsure look.

“You won’t,” He grins, “Besides, I get to see the office of a world renowned architect.”

“Well, if you say so,” She smiles, turning back to face the streets.

“Holy shit. It’s huge.” Steve was gaping at the building and he turned to Ari in awe. “Did you design this?”

“You can say that. Me, Stark, Nat and Sam came up with the whole plan.” She smiles, looking at the building with pride. She turned back to Steve, grabbing his hand and pulling him behind her, “C’mon, I’ll show you around,”

The lobby was huge. And really aesthetically designed. And there was a crap load of people inside too.

Steve wasn’t expecting that many people in the first place. What the fuck was he thinking? Walking hand in hand with a fucking talented architect in the company she owns as if he’s not just a kid in Uni.

Everyone was greeting Ari. Wide smiles, bowed heads and good evenings. And Ari returned all of it with a kind smile of her own.

But Steve was shitty nervous. His hand that was holding Ari’s felt clammy and he was disgusted with himself. And the people watching him like he was some artifact on display wasn’t helping either.

Ari felt something was wrong when they finally went into the elevator. “Stevie, are you alright?” She turned to him, eyes gazing into his so kindly.

“Yeah, yeah. A little nervous.” Steve confessed, brushing one hand through his hair.

“You did good, love.” Her hand was caressing his hair, and her touch was so soft. God.

He looks at her in awe, “I like it when you call me that.”

“Hmm?” Ari looks back at him in question.

“Stevie and love.”

The elevator door opens. Ari walked ahead and looked over her shoulder. “It fits you.”

They walked past three doors down the wide hallway. And Steve questioned the woman beside him. “Why three rooms when you only have two executives?”

Ari amusedly turned to him, “Stark didn’t tell you? He was an architect here before he went to CU.”

Professor Stark had mentioned that he was an architect. But he definitely never talked about being an architect at Skulpt Co. or for fucks sake, a freaking executive! Steve eventually realised that was why he always passionately talked about the works from Skulpt Co.

“Ari!”

Steve watched as a dark-skinned man walked towards him and Ari. He was big and muscular too.

“Sam, hey!” She greeted him with a quick hug and pulled away. “What the hell are you still doing here on a Friday?”

“I’m already leaving!” He denies, “Not all of us are workaholics like you, Ari.”

Ari rolled her eyes and playfully kicked his shin, “You and Steve are gonna have a good time together.”

Steve stood awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. He flashed a smile as Sam turned to him, “Hi.”

Sam grins, holding his hand out towards the other man, “Sam Wilson. What do you say if we ditched Ari and go grab some drinks at the bar?”

Ari sighs and chuckled, pushing Sam away, “Back off, he’s mine for today.”

Sam walks away with his back turned, laughing loudly and he waved at Ari and Steve before going back in to his office.

“So, I’m yours for today?” Steve nudged her lightly.

“And for a long time if this continues, Rogers.” She continued walking, Steve falling in step beside her as they walked towards the glass door at the end of the hallway.

“Well, here’s my second home.” She opened the door and let Steve go in first. Steve was surprised to say the least. There was a black couch and a rectangle glass table on one side. The windows were full glass and a concrete desk faced the door with a white chair behind it. The floor was concrete as well and there was a giant rectangular table off to the other side of the room. It truly looks like an architect’s office.

“It’s a little dull, isn’t it?” Ari asks as she closes the door and heads to her desk. She picked out two red folders from the mess on her desk.

“I love it, though.” Steve tells her.

“Thank you. Nat designed it, though. Said it fits me cause I’m dull and grey.” She chuckled to herself before turning to look at the digital clock on her table, “Should we go now? I don’t wanna risk meeting Sam again.””

Steve laughs, “He’s as bad as Professor Stark?”

Ari shakes his head as she steps forward and slips her arm around his. “Nope. He’s going to steal you away from me and we can’t have that when I still don’t have enough of you.”

Steve laughs with a red tint on his cheekbones. “Shall we move on with our date?”

Ari grins, “We shall.”

“Ari, why are we here?” He held on to her arm and pulled her back as she started to move towards the store.

The slightly large building loomed over the both of them.

“I saw your phone was cracked.” She shrugs.

“But I don’t need a new phone.” He protests.

“Stevie,” She held his big hand with both of hers.

Steve just knew he was gone for.

“Let me take care of you, please?”

The way she looked up at him with those brown eyes made him give in. He reluctantly followed behind as she dragged him into the Apple store.

“Stevie,”

“Yeah?”

“The 11 Pro Max is the latest one right?”

“Yeah. Wait, why?” Steve turns to her in alarm and realisation.

“Wait, Ari. No. I don’t need an iPhone 11.”

Ari winks at Steve and waved one of the Apple salesman over. “Hi! I’m getting a new phone for my boyfriend.”

The guy eagerly replies, “No problem! I’ll show you the latest phones.”

Steve reluctantly walked beside Ari and whines. “Ariiiiiiiii,” He drags with a frown.

“Steveeeeeeee,” She mocks him in reply.

“You’re the one with an iPhone 6.”

“And it’s fully functional, Steve.”

“So is mine!”

“Your screen is cracked. What if you cut your hand with the glass or something?”

“I’m already used to it.” Steve whines.

“Then just let me take care of you, Stevie.”

“I’ll only get it if you get it too,”

Ari reluctantly agrees, playfully holding her hand out for a shake, “You’re a tough man to deal with, Mr Rogers.”

The salesman interrupts them. “The 11 Pro Max is larger than 11 Pro. Both has a triple camera system.“

“The iPhone 11 though, is the same size as the 11 Pro. But it has a dual camera system instead of three.”

Ari thoughtfully turns to Steve, “Do you like it big or small, Steve?”

Ari snorts at her own words.

Steve cringed at her words and laughed. “I’m taking whatever you’re taking.”

“Steve Rogers. If I end up picking, you’ll be going home with more than a new phone.” Ari threatens.

Steve flashes a grim smile at the salesman. “We’ll get two of the 11 Pro.”

“Color?”

“Green, please.” Steve answers.

The guy nods and left, leaving Steve with Ari.

Ari smiles and reaches up and pat his head, “See, it was that easy.”

“You just spent 1 grand on a guy you only met today.”

“Technically, I met you yesterday.”

Steve sighs, “Point is, you just met me.”

Ari laughs lightly and took his hand in hers, “You’re gonna have to get used to this, Steve.”

#steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #sugar baby steve rogers #soft steve rogers #steve rogers au #steve rogers one shot #chris evans #cevans #chris evans x reader #cevans x reader #cevans fluff

22 notes · View notes