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lovebugism · 10 months

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eddie x shy!reader , she asks him on a date by giving him tickets to a concert and he thinks its a joke til she walks away feeling rejected & he realizes she’s like dead serious & goes up to her

thanks for your request! i sorta broke my own heart with this one — the one where eddie rejects you and immediately regrets it (shy!reader, hurt/comfort, 2.6k)

bug's summer fic fest ♡

Robin tells you that he’s nice. She says he won’t turn you down because he loves Mötley Crüe too much and he’s called you pretty too many times. Robin Buckley is many things — a dork, a polyglot, and your best friend, to name a few — but she’s never been a liar.

She wouldn’t lead you to the slaughter that way. She wouldn’t just let you get your heart broken. More than anything, though, she knows Eddie far better than you do — partly because she’s actually able to talk to him.

So despite your lingering worry, you swallow her words like a shot of vodka and maneuver helplessly through the bustling crowd of the Hawkins High lunchroom.

Eddie Munson sits alone at the Hellfire Club table — the smallest one in the very back corner by the large square window.

Instead of eating a real meal (even though the hamburgers might be horse meat instead of cow), the boy eats crumbled-up pretzels from a worn ziplock bag. He pinches them into his mouth blindly because his chocolate syrup gaze is trained on the well-loved book folded in his left hand.

J.R.R Tolkien’s, The Hobbit.

It makes you smile softly to yourself. You hope one day you’ll have the courage to tell him you’ve read that book so many times you could recite it in your sleep. You hope that day comes soon.

“Eddie?” you call softly to him when you reach his table. Your sweaty fingers fidget with the concert tickets you clutch between them.

He just thinks he hears his name at first. It’s barely audible over the sounds of muddled chatter in the cafeteria. He glances up from his book, not expecting anyone to be there, and gaping when he finds you standing in front of him.

His cinnamon eyes go wide. The boy blinks owlishly at you once, then flits his eyes behind you like he’s expecting to see someone there. When he doesn’t, he blinks at you again.

“Hi…” you waver with a trembling smile.

Eddie grins back, still obviously confused. “…Hi?”

“I, uh… I don’t know if you heard, but— well, obviously you heard, that’s… that’s stupid,” you laugh at yourself, shaking your head with your eyes squeezed shut. You’re already stumbling all over yourself, and you haven’t even managed a full sentence yet.

“Mötley Crüe is coming to Indianapolis in a few days, and a friend of mine was selling tickets, so I bought them. For us. Potentially. You know, if you wanted to… to go… With me.”

Your offer lingers and hangs in the air between the two of you.

A smile quirks at the right side of Eddie’s pink mouth. It isn’t a kind one, though. It looks more cynical than anything else.

His head juts back. He’s almost peering at you from the corner of his eye as though you were some suspicious thing he needed to analyze. A laugh sputters from his lips. “Did Buckley put you up to this? Is that what this is?”

Your faltering smile fades entirely. Your features crumble in disappointment.

This worse he could say is no, Robin had told you.

You hadn’t prepared yourself for this.

“…What?” you wonder, voice fragile like a wilting flower petal.

Eddie chuckles to himself. He sets the book down to give you his full attention, though you’re not sure you want it anymore. “You know, I knew she was upset about me trying to set her up with Vickie and all, but this is a… whole new low.”

“Vickie…?” you murmur through a tightening throat, brows pinched in confusion. “I don’t understand—”

“Look, sweetheart… Tell Robin that this was a real funny joke, but I’m not interested, alright?”

Your chest aches with an empty feeling. You think your heart might be breaking. “J—Joke?”

“—Actually, tell her that this was very not metal of her, and that I will get my vengeance,” Eddie says with a sardonic laugh deeply rooted in his chest. His smile looks almost like he pities you as he shakes his head, eyes twinkling with pessimism. “I’m sorry she sent you to do her dirty work, but… You should probably go now. This is, you know, the Hellfire Club table and everything, so…”

You swallow thickly, then nod.

Eddie doesn’t want you here. Eddie doesn’t want you at all.

“I’m— I’m sorry if I…” The words get caught in your throat. You clear it and blink back burning tears. “I was just… I thought that maybe—”

“Eddie!” a boyish voice calls from across the cafeteria, only halfway drowned out through all the noise. A group of guys in Hellfire shirts walk towards the table.

You take that as your cue to leave. You don’t want to burst into tears in front of your crush and all of his friends.

“I’m sorry,” is all you manage to choke out before turning on your heel and walking away.

He’d been smiling up until that point — like it was all a big joke to him — because it was.

The girl he’s been fawning over since junior year comes out of nowhere with tickets to see one of his favorite bands? That was the kind of shit he dreamt about — the kind of plan only someone as vicious as Robin Buckley could concoct to hurt his feelings. And after spending so many years being the brunt of bullies, Eddie was tired of being embarrassed.

And at first, he thought you were just a really good actor. You did look almost genuinely confused when he’d snuffed out the plan so quickly. But those wide, glassy eyes you looked at him with — he doesn’t know if a person can fake that sort of heartbreak. That looked real.

Eddie had been close to commending himself for not letting Robin win. He thought he was a genius for not allowing Buckley to use you against him. Now he knows he’s the same dumbass he's always been.

“Hey, man…” Gareth wavers as he sits at his designated seat adjacent to Eddie’s. The boy’s forlorn and faraway gaze doesn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the club. They all share looks of confusion, but the sandy-haired boy is the only one brave enough to speak up. “You okay?”

Eddie keeps his gaze trained on your figure as you maneuver through the crowd. Robin looks happy for you when you reach her, but the puppy-like excitement washes away when she notices how sad you are.

He feels like someone’s shoved a knife between his ribcage. He wonders if this is what a broken heart feels like.

“I think I screwed up,” he answers, laughing cynically at himself. “Like, big time.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, right?” Dustin jokes before popping a fry into his mouth. He laughs, but no one else joins him. “…Right?”

Eddie glares at the boy.

He cowers. “…Kidding. I was kidding.”

—————

He stews over it all day — your offer and what he said to you and how sad you looked after he said it.

He pictures your pinched brows and big, glassy eyes and his chest starts to burn a little. Everyone always thought he was some raging asshole just because he had crazy hair and a crazier taste in music. Now he feels like they were sort of right about him.

Whatever chance he had with you has surely turned to dust by now. It wouldn’t surprise him after he shrugged you off like he did. But after waging a nearly four-hour war in his mind between lunch and dismissal, he knows he has to make sure.

He has to know if he’s ruined things entirely or if there’s a glimmer of hope he can hang onto.

He comes to you at the end of the day, dripping in metaphorical blood from the mental carnage he’d endured. He stood across the hall from you for five whole minutes as he tried to come up with something to say. He walks to your locker empty-handed and just blurts, “I thought you were joking,” like a total idiot.

Through the muddled conversation in the bustling hallway, you hadn’t heard him coming. You didn’t know he was there at all until he was right next to you. Seeing someone so suddenly close to you makes you flinch — hard.

And it’s not totally Eddie’s fault. You’re jumpy and too easily frightened at times, but he can’t help but feel like he’s messing things up more than he already has.

“Oh…” you deflate with a sigh, eyes still wide and swimming with something he can’t quite place. You look like you’re almost relieved to see him. Almost.

“Sorry— shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to…” The boy stumbles over his words, then trails off when they don’t come out the way he wants. He shakes his head and finds it in himself to smile. It’s bitter, though, filled with self-abhorrence. “I wasn’t trying to scare you.”

With one hand still clutching the door of your locker, and the other gripping a stack of textbooks, you peer at him through your lashes. “I know. It’s okay. I just— I wasn’t expecting it…”

He grimaces. “Sorry…”

“’S okay,” you repeat.

“I, um, I only came in so hot ‘cause I wanted to apologize— you know, for earlier. In the lunch room,” he stammers and puts his fidgeting hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He tries to laugh, but it comes out more as an insincere puff of air. “Honestly, I thought you were joking.”

Your brows pinch. “Joking? Why would I—”

“I sorta locked Robin and Vickie in the old chemistry room in the east wing a few days ago,” he confesses, bouncing his shoulders. “Just because I know they both like each other and everything, and I thought maybe they’d finally admit it if they were alone together.”

“Okay…?”

“Well, they didn’t. And Robin was pissed. So I thought she was using you to get back at me.”

“Using me?” you echo.

“Yeah. ‘Cause I’ve kinda been into you since junior year and everything,” he admits with a nonchalant shrug. The corner of his rosy mouth quirks into a half-smile. “It’s, like, the one card Robin could use against me that would actually hurt, you know? If she did try to get me back.”

Your heart swells so much it hurts, almost — the same kind of hurt you'd felt in the lunch room earlier. It feels fiery, like someone’s taken a match to your ribcage and lit your heart aglow. But it’s different now. This is a good hurt, a happy hurt.

“Really?” you squint at him, your voice high and light. Your lips twitch like you want to smile, but you don’t let yourself — lest this all turns out to be some kind of elaborate dream. Or a joke.

“Since we had Mr. Kaminsky’s together, yeah,” Eddie affirms with a slow, confident nod. His chocolate eyes flit up to the water-stained ceiling. “Let’s see… We were learning about reproduction, and Tommy Hagan made some stupid joke about using you as a real-life model instead of the pictures in the textbook—”

“I remember,” you nod, trying not to shudder at the memory that still haunts you.

“And I told him that he was making it real obvious that he’s never seen an actual vagina before and that the one in the textbook looked a lot like his mom’s,” the boy recalls with a soft laugh. “And you looked over at me, and you smiled, and I… have been a goner ever since.”

He looks down at you again, all sheepish like he isn’t gluing your broken heart back together again. His chocolate eyes twinkle in a way you’ve never seen before. They sparkle in their softness. You have to look away before it turns you into a puddle at his feet.

You smile widely into your locker, pursing it off to the side in attempts to conceal its brightness.

“No one’s ever stuck up for me like that before,” you confess quietly after a few moments, peeking at him from the corner of your eye. “I’m pretty sure I gushed to Robin about it for days.”

“Yeah?” Eddie hums. He can feel his hopes getting too high.

“Yeah. I told her all about the pretty boy in the back of the room that finally got Tommy H. to leave me alone.”

“Oh… You think he’s pretty, huh?” the boy teases despite his pink cheeks.

You nod — made much braver by his previous admission — though you still have a little trouble looking him in the eye. You drag a notebook from your locker as you tell him, “I think he’s very pretty.”

“Well, I have it on good authority that the boy you think is pretty is super sorry for being such an asshole to you earlier,” Eddie murmurs, his nose scrunched and head tilted. “And that he’d really love to go to that concert with you— if you haven’t found some other schmuck to go with you, that is.”

Your eyes light up like a Christmas tree as you beam at him. No one’s ever looked at him that way before now.

“I’d like that,” you nod, then shrug. “I don’t think I’d wanna go with anyone else, anyway…”

“So, it’s a date?” Eddie asks, just to make sure. His raised brows disappear behind his fluffy bangs. His chin tilts to his chest as he smiles hopefully down at you.

You nod, and repeat it more softly than the loudmouth boy. “It’s a date.”

Eddie can feel himself grinning like an idiot. His cheeks ache with how wide he’s beaming at you, but he's too lovesick to stop. Like squinting into the sun, smiling every time he looks at you is muscle memory by now.

And what did a freak like him ever do to deserve a date with the freakin’ sun?

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #stranger things x reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #st drabbles #eddie spaghetti drabble #bug's summer fic fest!

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forestmossling · 6 days

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as is pretty obvious, the rockstar! eddie has not yet left the premises of my brain and will be staying there indefinitely so here’s a little something.

no upside down au, 2010s, eddie doesn’t know anyone from the party, but dustin finds out about this rockstar who writes songs about his dnd campaigns and makes tolkien references, but his music is also raw and haunting, so obviously he’s obsessed. he bothers steve about him until steve forfeits and buys them both tickets for the show in indianapolis. steve’s deaf and he hasn’t been to a concert from the point at which he lost his hearing, because he just feels weird and out of place even thinking about going to something that is so hearing-centered. he enjoys cranking up the music in his car or while he’s listening to it at home, but going to a concert always felt like taking a place from somebody who can enjoy the experience fully. robin told him it’s bullshit and tried to drag him to some venues before, but he never agreed. but well- he doesn’t trust dustin alone in a crowded venue, because he’s excitable and reckless (even though dustin’s “literally 18, god, steve, do you even fucking hear yourself-“) so he feels better going on a concert while actually fulfilling some important role.

they go, and dustin is ecstatic. steve is flabbergasted, because he didn’t expect to gain anything from this except peace of mind for dustin’s safety, but when the first song starts to play, it reverberates through his whole body. it’s not the same as the concerts he went to with his hearing still mostly intact, but he can hear the lower pitches, he can feel the beat thrumming through him, and he finds himself headbanging along with dustin by the end of the show. but because he generally just turned away when dustin was rambling about the ingenuity of the lyrics, dustin ends up spending half the concert scrambling to sign along with the lyrics as much as he can, at least on his favorite parts, because he can’t just let steve not experience the sheer “wholesomeness and coolness” of what’s going on. on some songs he just outright refuses to sign to steve, blushing, and when steve teases and prods dustin angrily admits that he’s “not going to translate to you exactly the way he wants to fuck a pretty boy”. steve laughs, but finds himself blushing too. because the frontman is scorching hot, and maybe steve wouldn’t mind finding out exactly the way he wants to fuck a pretty boy (but definitely not from dustin).

so even though his head started hurting by the end of the night from all the flashing lights on stage, even though he’s sweaty and gross and dustin is jumping around like an overexcited puppy, his hands flashing in rapid-fire speech steve doesn’t have the mental capacity to process at the moment, he finds that he enjoyed himself. that he, dare he say, would not mind going again. dustin goes ballistic at the admission and says that it’s only fair if steve takes him to another cc concert considering that dustin was too busy translating half the show too properly appreciate his first cc concert, which wouldn’t be necessary if steve “bothered to listen to him from time to time”.

afterwards, dustin posts a picture of both of them on twitter, sweaty and exhausted after the show, but both smiling wide with a caption: “took my lame brother to the cc concert yesterday!! he said “i could actually hear something, holy shit. just how loud are these guys? also, would like to know what the fuck the hot guy’s singing in the horny songs, but dustin refused to sign” which, obv i did because my brother is disgusting and i hate him actually. but now he owes me another concert because i spent most of the first one translating, so we’ll see you in *insert the nearest next city*, @corrodedcoffin-official!! thanks for the great show!!”

and eddie comes across the post purely by chance and immediately bluescreens at the sight of a preppy guy in a bright polo with exquisite fucking hair, thank you very much, hugging his toothily smiling little brother in a cc t-shirt. he never considered the issues the Deaf people can face coming to their shows before, and well, if the man wants to know exactly what eddie likes to do to pretty boys like him, it would be a shame to deny him. so he talks to the band, and they hire a sign language interpreter for the next show (and not just because eddie’s horny, okay?? he genuinely wants to let as much people as possible fully enjoy their music, fuck off, gareth-)

and when dustin and steve come to the next show and see an interpreter standing by the stage, they both fucking lose it. when dustin saw a like on his post from the official corroded coffin page, he obviously screamed bloody murder and told everyone who would (and wouldn’t) listen about it, steve just felt awkward about the hot frontman knowing the dumb shit he said, but neither of them expected anything to come of it. and now, seeing the interpreter near the stage, finally finding out the stories the group tells through their music, steve can’t help feeling mesmerized by the scene. and he doesn’t tear up about finally feeling included after being dismissed and told to deal with his shit on his own for so long, of course not.

and then, during the gap between the songs, eddie points to the interpreter: “i would like to say special thanks to amazing *insert name*, who agreed to translate our shitty music in asl so nobody could escape us. i hope dustin and his insanely hot brother can both enjoy the show properly now” he grins at the cheering audience, and steve feels himself flushing bright red all over. he can see the moment the frontman’s eyes find him in the crowd, and the guy has the gall to wink at him. dustin has ascended the mortal plane at that point and just screams incoherently while shaking steve by the arm. “and all the other deaf and hoh folks in attendance tonight, thank you for coming!” he continues smoothly, and the band slides into another song. steve just keeps staring at the stage, uncomprehending. he can vaguely recognize the slower and deeper track as one of those dustin refused to translate to him. and now, actually seeing the lyrics, he can understand why. he flushes again. it feels like his brain starts spinning in circles in his head from how hard he tries to keep his eyes on the interpreter and the frontman at the same time (the shit this munson guy does to the microphone stand with his hips has got to be illegal in at least several states). during the bridge munson finds his eyes in the crowd and obscenely licks his lips. steve dies on the spot. he can feel dustin hitting him on the arm, signing something about the way he “can’t believe your gross jock powers have worked on eddie munson” that steve barely sees from the corner of his eyes, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

and then steddie somehow meet face to face and make out, idk. the end! *jazz hands*

i’m NOT D/deaf or hoh!! if i said something dumb or inaccurate, please tell me!

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #rockstar eddie munson #deaf steve harrington #i promise it’s not me #some malevolent spirit has possessed me and forces me to dish out rockstar au steddie fic prompts #get steve harrington to be loved and appreciated agenda #dustin henderson #dustin and steve #steddie fic prompt #steddie fic #fic prompt #i love deaf/hoh steve i need more deaf/hoh steve fics #i think it was obvious but i will still clarify #cc did NOT stop hiring interpreters to their shows after eddie got into steve’s pants #now they have an asl interpreter on every show

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welcometothejianghu · 6 months

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Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 琅琊榜/Nirvana in Fire.

Nirvana in Fire is a 2015 historical series best described as either a complicated succession drama set in the premodern Chinese imperial palace, or the story of a man who didn't die a decade ago and has decided to make it everyone else's problem.

And really, I almost feel silly giving my glib little summary, because Nirvana in Fire is so well-known of a property. It's a classic for a reason, and that reason is that it's legitimately very good. This show is what happens when you adapt a solid story, get a bunch of very talented actors, and throw a huge amount of money at it. It's incredibly popular and highly acclaimed, and it earned all of the hype.

Still, while I bet there are few people adjacent to c-drama stuff who've never heard of Nirvana in Fire, I'm sure there are plenty who haven't watched it. After all, it looks like one of those slow, serious shows with a lot of ponderous talking and no joy. If that's the impression you've been given, I could imagine looking at the 54-episode commitment and saying, I don't need that in my life.

I am here to tell you you're wrong. It is a banger of a show. It's tense. It's funny. It's heartbreaking. It’s exceptionally clever. It’s jaw-droppingly stupid. It’s romantic. It’s tragic. It has smart plots and bizarre subplots. And that's not even touching the thing with the yeti.

So in case you're one of those people who's heard of Nirvana in Fire, but has put off watching it for one reason or another, I'm here with five reasons I think you should try it.

1. Epic Shit

Did you like the Lord of the Rings? More specifically, did you really like the second Peter Jackson film? Great, then you're all set for this.

I guess I could have called this Game of Thrones without the dragons, but that's not actually the vibe at all. Game of Thrones is much more sensational and salacious, with all the blood and butts and what-not. The Tolkien comparison is more apt, I think, because Nirvana in Fire is equally about as wholesome as you can get in a property where dudes are still getting stabbed all the time.

This is a show about vengeance. And yeah, justice for the fallen, sure, that's fine too. But mostly it's about a bunch of good people joining forces to make sure the bastards who did wrong pay, with their lives as necesary.

The problem, though, is that these bastards are incredibly powerful, which means that a pure brute-force approach isn't going to work. Accordingly, this quickly becomes a story about the power of smart teamwork to exact retribution on some people who can (and did!) legally get away with murder -- and our heroes are some of the people with their necks most on the line if anything goes wrong.

Don't let the Middle Earth comparison fool you into thinking this is all epic swordfights. It's not. (I mean, for one thing, as well-funded as this project is, it doesn't have Peter Jackson Money.) The vast majority of the tension in the show comes from dialogue and slow, terrible realizations. The fight scenes are almost a relief from the nail-biting intensity of intimate conversations about getting a letter from somebody's ex-wife or returning a book.

All told, the show has that incredible almost-RPG vibe of going through all the little subquests and cutscenes you find along the way to defeat the final boss. The plot carefully unravels a multi-tendriled mystery told to you by people in incredible costumes. It doesn't get much more epic than that.

(Nirvana in Fire is also a cautionary tale about how you should be very careful with who gets invited to your birthday party.)

2. A chronically ill protagonist

Okay, right in the first episode, it is established that the main character has three whole completely different names and an old nickname. I'm going to call him Mei Changsu for the duration of this rec post, but let the record show that I could just have easily gone with one of the other three.

What you learn in that same first episode is that Mei Changsu used to be a palace insider, the cocky son of a noble family, only now nearly everyone he used to know thinks he's dead. Also, he's not far off from being actually dead -- he has an unspecified terminal condition that's mostly managed, provided he stays in his little mountain hideaway with his handsome doctor bestie and doesn't return to his old stomping ground and start kicking over hornets' nests.

So guess what he's about to do.

I have to make a note of how brilliant the casting is here: Hu Ge is an action actor! He is a kickpuncher of a man! And I think it's great that you can sort of see his frustration, as well as Mei Changsu's, at having to spend the whole series wrapped in countless layers of fabric and/or lying in bed while everyone around him gets to be the badass action heroes.

Mei Changsu's not faking it, either -- he's actually dying. He expends his energy where he thinks it's necessary, and sometimes that means he has to spend the following week in bed. He's constantly frustrated with himself for what he can't do anymore. He's racing a clock, and that clock is his own failing body. If he dies, the only hope anyone here has for justice dies with him.

He gets two love interests that the show treats pretty much equally. One's a lady general who wasn't even a love interest in the book. The other's the handsome prince who was initially going to be his textual romantic partner in same book, until the author hopped genres from danmei to general historical drama. I can't even call this a love triangle, because there's no competition. He just gets a wife and a husband -- in that he gets neither, because circumstances and his own illness keep him distant from them. He lies to both of then about his condition (among other things). He wants to be with them both and knows he can't be with either. And they in turn have to learn to accept what of him they can and can't have.

(Also, Nihuang (her) and Jingyan (him) are both incredibly gorgeous, which is exactly what bisexual genius Mei Changsu deserves.)

Obviously this isn't a perfect representation of life with chronic illness, largely because Mei Changsu is an incredily wealthy man who lives in a universe with what's basically magic medicine. However, I've seen the story's treatment of him and his condition resonate with a lot of chronically ill viewers, so even with the fantasy layer on it, there's definitely something there.

3. Dave

I have already told the story of how Meng Zhi became "Dave," but long story short, he's such a Dave that I legitimately forget his character's real name. He embodies Daveness. He's The Ultimate Dave.

Dave is an excellent fighter, a loyal friend -- and a terrible liar. He's possbly the only straightforward character in the entire show. When he's asked to be duplicitous, he's comically bad at it. Dave will never do a heel turn. I was misled at first by his semi-evil facial hair, but I have seen the error of my ways. Dave is pure lawful good.

And the reason I list Dave as such a selling point is that having a Dave means you always know what's going on. This is because Dave never knows what's going on, and he has no ego about that, so he asks questions, and other characters have to explain to him what just happened, and that is how you figure out what's going on.

It's an incredibly smart move on the drama's part, because some of the (very fun) schemes are so complicated that there's no way for you, the viewer, to understand them just by watching. Without the internal monologues and omniscent narration of a book, the machinations are opaque. You need things explained -- but why would the schemers explain their schemes? Well, Dave needs some exposition, so here you go.

So if you're worried that you might be left feeling stupid by a show where so many sneaky people are hatching so many complex plans, worry not! Like the good man he is, Dave has your back.

4. A Million Amazing Antagonists

If you like bad guys, this is a show for you. This show has brilliant bad guys all the way down. It has bad guys at every turn. It has bad guys for every taste. Welcome to Big Liang's Big Bad Guy Emporium, where we guarantee you'll walk out of here with a bad guy you like, or your money back!

(And yes, this set of pictures is also to say that their costume budget was entirely well-spent.)

Without getting too far into spoilers, I will say that the basic situation underlying the whole series is this: The emperor has done a lot of bad things, and he has enlisted a bunch of people's help in hiding those bad things, so much so that many of those other people have done even more bad things the emperor didn't even know about -- and then everyone has gone to great lengths to cover those up as well. Our protagonists spend the whole series unraveling this colossal shitshow and bringing people to task for their crimes.

So really, if you're going to spend 54 episodes taking down the baddies, they've got to be baddies you love to see taken down. And these are -- in part because all of them have crystal-clear, rock-solid motivations for their actions. Nobody here is a moustache-twirling comic-book-villain baddie. They're all bad for reasons that are very understandable in their individual contexts. And not a single one of them is going to go down without a fight.

5. World's Best Mom

(Sidebar: The fact that four out of five of my reasons to watch the show are individual or groups of characters should be your strongest indicator that this is an intensely character-driven story.)

This is not a Dead Mom Show. Okay, some moms are dead, but mostly this is a Moms Are Alive And Often Cause Problems Show, which is a lot of what makes the palace drama so delicious. But there is one Good Mom who stands out above all the rest: Consort Jing.

Played with perfect grace and devastating politeness by the stunning Liu Mintao, Consort Jing is a skilled doctor and excellent baker who starts the show with a low-level status among the women of the palace. She swallows down all kinds of mistreatment because she's not in a place to oppose it -- and when she can retaliate, it must only be through soft power. She loves her jock son with all her heart, but because of both their relatively poor positions in the hierarchy, she doesn't get to see him all that much. She wants to be an asset to him, while all the time she has to fear becoming a liability.

She is also the smartest person in any room that she's in, unless she's in a room with Mei Changsu, and even then it may be a tie.

There are lots of great characters in the show that I could have highlighted here, and plenty of them are women, but Consort Jing in particular never ceases to impress me. She is trapped in a gilded cage, married to a man who [lengthy list of spoilers that are traumatic to her in particular], and held hostage by how every time she even looks like she's out of line, it puts both her and her boy in danger. She's the most vulnerable of any of our good guys. Kind of like Wang Zhi, she's got to be clever or she's dead.

Consort Jing is not part of Mei Changsu's original plan. She figures out his plan and makes herself part of it -- and entirely remotely, as she and he aren't even in the same room until episode 40 or so. She puts herself in great danger to make sure he succeeds, not because it will necessarily do her any good, but because Jingyan needs him. This woman has been captain of the Mei Changsu/Jingyan ship for like twenty years already.

Oh, and did I mention her outfits?

I love you, Consort Mom.

Are you ready to watch it yet?

Get it on Viki! Get it on YouTube! Get it on YouTube but in a different playlist! (And also maybe get it on Amazon? Not in my region, but maybe in yours.)

I will warn you that it does take off running -- I think I saw someone say it introduces nineteen characters in the first episode? I was worried that I'd be too innundated by situations and flashbacks and names to be able to follow. By the second or third episode, though, I was rolling with it. So if you feel like you're struggling at the beginning, stick with it a bit. See if you don't feel it start to click.

...Man, reading over this post has left me going, oh, but I missed that! and that! and that guy! And yeah, the truth is that there are just so many great things about the show that limiting myself to only five (and being limited to only thirty images) was tough. I'm sure that people reblogging will add their own must-see elements.

Truly, this is a show that deserves its reputation. It may not be for everyone, but if this is the kind of thing that you like, it is a shining example of that thing.

Besides, you have to love a production where everyone was clearly having just a whole lot of fun being big ol' costumed dorks.

#nirvana in fire #lang ya bang #琅琊榜 #i made this #rec post

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lesbiansforboromir · 2 months

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In a BoromirLives fanfic, Faramir must be forced to confront this line of his in particular; Whether he erred or no, of this I am sure: he died well, achieving some good thing. His face was more beautiful even than in life. It's vital to me that this is addressed. Because in Tolkien beauty is holy, they are intertwined inextricably, the holy will be beautiful.

Boromir did not live a beautiful holy life according to most, his life is not spoken of with uncomplicated worth by any but Denethor, Eomer, Theoden and Pippin (all either 'simple' or outwardly rebellious against god). But he did die a beautiful holy death, it is what most people praise him for and in Faramir's mystical dream where he sees Boromir's dead body floating down the river, this is his reaction. Boromir's corpse was more beautiful than his living body, because in death he was 'redeemed' and served his purpose in the great holy plan. He 'died well'.

This is horrifying right? It horrifies me when I read it. And I think it so concisely reveals how Faramir and many others viewed Boromir. I am essentially here to argue that this is all about piety, once again, yes I'm a one track record.

Gandalf, when hearing of Boromir's death from Aragorn, declares; It was a sore trial for such a man: a warrior, and a lord of men. Galadriel told me that he was in peril. But he escaped in the end. I am glad. It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us, if only for Boromir’s sake.

Now, what is Gandalf saying here? Boromir did not escape, he died. Does he mean he escaped corruption? Well, no, since apparently this 'escape' had something to do with Merry and Pippin and Boromir shook off the pull of the Ring long before he was sent to find them. What role did Merry and Pippin play in this 'escape'? Well, Boromir died for them, he had too, there was no other way out of that ambush. So by process of elimination the only thing the 'young hobbits' did that was 'for Boromir's sake' was... to be there so he could die for them, right?

And remember, his death did not actually save them or really help in any way, the hobbits are still taken and the Uruk-hai's downfall has nothing to do with Boromir. In fact Aragorn squandered any time Boromir might have given him to catch up to the Uruk-hai by spending hours on his funeral. So, the death alone is what is being called 'good' here, what is beautiful. Boromir dies and that is beautiful and something to be glad for, according to Gandalf and Faramir.

But why do they think this? Faramir has his 'alas for Boromir, whom I too loved' and Gandalf laments 'poor Boromir', so they have at least some pity for him. What was 'good' to them about Boromir dying? Well we all know this one don't we, it's the accepted narrative of it all, Boromir 'redeemed' himself with this deed. He tried to take the Ring, and for this crime he needed redemption that he gained through vainly giving up his life to try and save Merry and Pippin.

But, in fact, Boromir himself has a slightly different way of phrasing it. Boromir says, of his own death; ‘I tried to take the Ring from Frodo,’ [-] ‘I am sorry. I have paid.’

He paid for it. To Boromir, in this cosmic exchange, he chose wrongly and paid for the offence with his death. This wasn't redemption, it was spiritual commerce, crime and punishment. Which is a perspective that once again demonstrates Boromir's enduring lack of 'faith' or spirituality. The powers of the west and Eru may exist, but they exist to him as forces of nature, some fact of the world we all must just live with, not something that fills him with hope or brings him nobility or meaning or a 'higher purpose'. Boromir does not want to be closer to divinity, he does not want to be beautiful or noble, he wants his people to be safe.

But of course, this is entirely opposite to Faramir's perspective, and if not downright heretical then at least unfaithful. So, when alive, Boromir cannot achieve 'beauty' in Faramir's mind, because he is unfaithful. It is only when he is dead, when 'fate' draws him into this spiritually good 'end' that sees him give up his life for a holy quest, when Boromir's life is no longer defined by him but by his death, that he can be beautiful.

And bringing this all the way back around, there are two ways you could do this in a boromirlives fic. Either, Boromir comes back but he does not look like he did in Faramir's dream. He did not pay, he is still alive to define who he is and Faramir finds himself slowly drawn into this terrible psychological horror as he realises he misses his brother's death more than he missed his actual brother.

Or Faramir needs to be confronted with a brother who looks dead to him. Boromir has come back and to Faramir's eyes he looks exactly as he did in the dream, but now this corpse moves and speaks and can no longer be confined to one perfect conceptual moment. And this also horrifies him. It is for authors to decide if this is just an aspect of Faramir's perspective, or if Boromir actually 'came back wrong' as it were, he did pay but somehow he came back anyway.

#text post #boromir #faramir #erran vs tolkien

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wordbunch · 11 months

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how they care for you when you’re sick/injured but refuse to rest

a/n: requested by @tolkien-fantasy!! 💕 since i already did sth quite similar with Frodo/Sam/Merry/Pippin, this time I decided to include only the “big guys”, aka Aragorn, Boromir, Faramir, Éomer and Legolas. Also Fíli doesn't go here but I decided he will be here.☺️ I hope you enjoy, let me know your thoughts and opinions, and reblogs are always super appreciated!!!🥰🥰🥰

Aragorn: He is literally just like that, even if he’s unwell he will keep pushing, and that is exactly why he immediately notices you do it too, and decides to put a stop to it. As much as he is loving and supportive and always respects your opinions and wishes, he is not taking ‘no’ for an answer when he deems that you really need to rest and recover. Luckily for you, he’s a legendary healer, so you will probably get better relatively soon. If he’s able to give you 100% of his attention and time during your recovery, he will literally feed you if he needs to, just so that you don’t exhaust yourself even more. Also he will quickly hush you if you begin to protest and insist that you’re fine and really have things to do! Sorry, king’s orders! Not just that, he will most definitely have your favorite food made for you, so that you don’t have to lift a finger (even though you want to).

Boromir: You were both extremely busy on the day when Gondor was preparing for some big festival, and amid your errands you sprained your ankle, but you brushed it off because you wanted to personally oversee the flower arrangements. For the first and only time you were thankful not to see Boromir half the day because you knew he would make a small fuss about it immediately, so you limped on until you accidentally ended up tripping and stumbling backwards into a familiar strong chest. He looked at you suspiciously while you attempted to just brush it off as being clumsy, but he thought you looked a little bit pale and was not convinced. Before you could keep convincing him, he picked you up bridal style and carried you to your bed, having seen right through your act. Sadly he couldn’t have stayed with you the whole time as there were still some things to prepare, but he ran to you as often as he could to check if you were still resting, and to attack you with a flurry of reassuring kisses. Later in the evening he will 100% cuddle you until you both fall asleep wrapped up in each other, and he has no trouble carrying you around for days so that you don’t have to put weight on your injured leg - he enjoys doing it!

Legolas: Injuries and illnesses are not exactly something he is very familiar with, but he knows enough to be aware that they require rest and recuperation! His senses are sharp and he notices if you wince one time, and he is there in an instant. He will ask you what is wrong, what you need, etc. As much as Legolas he understands your restlessness and the constant need to be up and about, he needs you to understand that he’s worried and doesn’t want your condition to get worse. If it’s something very serious, he will immediately call Aragorn for help, but if it’s something minor, he thinks he should be able to handle it and support you through it. Before you know it, you’re not allowed to do anything under his watchful gaze but you’re bored!! No problem, though, he is more than ready to entertain you in any way he can, even if it means he has to sing you all the elvish songs since the beginning of time (and you will make good use of his promise to do that!).

Éomer: Oh that is literally his BRAND because he’s out there being unstoppable even when something is wrong - and he is not letting his beloved be like that, not on his watch! He is also the type to carry you to bed despite your protests and you being like “I’m fine!” And he is like, alright then, but even if you’re fine, that doesn’t mean you can’t get some rest! No amount of your pouting is going to make him let up. Eventually when you finally admit you’re in pain, he will fuss over you a bit and he will literally try to cook something (he feels better when he can take action) and before you know it he’s making 4 different kinds of tea at the same time and things seem a bit chaotic… When you ask whether he’s sure he doesn’t need any help, he will insist that you just go and rest and that he has everything under control. Needless to say, you didn’t get to eat/drink everything that he started making cause he failed at many things, but you appreciate the love that went into it regardless!

Faramir: He can notice that something is off within like 0.3 seconds and multiple times throughout the day he will ask how you’re feeling and if something is wrong because he can sense that something is off, but he knows you well enough to know that you’d prefer to keep going on about your day, even when in pain. And then when you almost pass out you finally admit that you’re not feeling well, and you know he will immediately drop whatever else he is doing and just focus on you as much as he can until you’re perfectly recovered. More likely than not he is immediately looking for Aragorn because he is NOT taking any risks; although you try to reassure him that it might not be necessary. He knows how to be persistent and when he gives you puppy eyes with those gorgeous teal blue eyes… you have no choice but to let him do his thing.

Fíli: When it comes to you he is a very worried person and he likes to keep an eye on you as much as he can, so it doesn't take him long to become aware that you're acting...different. He is especially fussy if you get injured, and he will push everything and everyone else aside to nurse you back to health, and it literally becomes his number one priority. Fíli won''t hesitate to be even a little bit harsh if anyone comes to bother you or ask something of you before you're 100% recovered, so sometimes you gently reprimand him for it - you feel well enough to go and keep doing things! But good luck trying to convince him!

✨ taglist my beloved ✨ @lotrnonsense @starlady66 @queenmeriadoc @entishramblings @thesolarangel @silversword7000 @friendofthefellowshipsnerdblog @averys-place @valkyriepirate @emmaarenstarr @noldorinpainter @asianbutnotjapanese @adamgetawaydriver @fenharel-enaste @ironmandeficiency @starryeyedrogue @dinofromspac3 @wisheduponastar @lady-of-imladris @frodo-cinnamonroll @unethicallypleistocene @deadlymistletoe @suncran @sillyvampireboi

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toskarin · 2 months

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forewarning that this is mostly just an observational ramble

one thing I've gathered from looking around older western fantasy otaku sites is that, presumably in large part because of the order in which things entered mainstream consciousness, sauron is talked about pretty consistently as the final boss of the lord of the rings

technically, this is true of everywhere, but I want to emphasise that it is extremely common to see younger fantasy otaku a decade or two ago use ラスボス when explaining who he is, as a primary descriptor

[before going any further on this, it probably bears mentioning that the japanese translation of lord of the rings is a bit divisive. when it comes up, it's either in the context of how impressive the translation is (skews older) or in how unreadable it is (skews younger), because it's translated into antiquity prose. apparently exceptionally so, even for a fantasy novel, so it was very much extreme nerd shit]

a big part of this is, of course, just the idea of the final boss having more awareness than tolkien at the time the movies were coming out. I imagine almost the exact same thing would happen more or less anywhere that video games hit mainstream nerd awareness before tolkien did, but there's something else that I think might have something to do with it, because if you're looking at old enough threads, you notice that not only is sauron being explained as the final boss, but this is being mentioned in contrast to morgoth not being the final boss

which seems a bit random (morgoth doesn't exactly come up enough in lotr proper to cause this confusion), if you don't know that angband, where morgoth is the final boss and sauron is just the midboss, was pretty popular with western fantasy otaku. well, popular in the way that cult classics are, but you know how it goes

with that in mind, it makes sense that it was (at one point, before tolkien was more accessible through other channels) something people called each other fake fans over

so in a kind of interesting way, namedropping sauron in fantasy otaku spaces that skewed younger (for a time) was almost equivalent to namedropping morgoth in western fantasy nerd spaces. that all kind of stops being the case once you have the peter jackson movies immediately at hand, though

there's also the fact that, because it's a little harder to read lord of the rings in japanese, someone who's casually into the book is much more likely to also go ahead and read the silmarillion, which helped rings of power get incredibly popular with older audiences in japan when it came out. as a fun side effect of all this, there's a bit more morgoth x sauron shipping around

#also should be clarified that the specific way that tolkien is translated in japanese is like #seemingly made to create a generational divide in people who have strong opinions on whether you should use kanji in western location names #same argument as always: do you translate for western sound or period-appropriate language #and its answer is a resounding 'both'

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hellfireclubmember · 2 years

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𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗱

another blurb, boyfriend!steve and dustin finding out you're a tolkien nerd. short and sweet

warning: did not proofread this at all, pls forgive some mistakes.

Pt. 2

“No, Steve. The Shire is in Middle earth.” Dustin was on the brink of no longer being excited about this.

Eddie had, yet again, made a Lord of the Rings reference. This time Steve decided it would be best to just ask what the hell everyone’s talking about. He was sick of being confused about the nerd stuff Dustin and Eddie were always talking about.

You walked into Family Video before Steve had the chance to reply. Which is a good thing considering he was about to smack Dustin.

“Hey, Stevie.” You walked toward the register and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Henderson.” You reached over and flicked his cap. “What’re my boys talking about?”

“The Shire.” Dustin sighed, remembering what the topic was before you walked in. “Your boyfriend is having trouble understanding Middle earth.”

“Yeah, and Dustin is being a jerk about it.” Steve grabbed your hand over the counter and directed you to walk around it. He flung his arm around your shoulders, kissing your forehead when you looked up at him. “Missed you, angel.”

“Missed you more.” You brought your hand up and held his. “I can explain it you by the way; I’ll definitely be a lot nicer than Dustin.”

You had never talked to Steve about Lord of the Rings. It’s not like you were consciously keeping it out of conversation, it just never really came up. You also didn’t think Steve would be thrilled to sit through a thorough explanation of the one ring.

“You read Tolkien?” Dustin’s eyebrows were scrunched up in confusion. He felt like that was information he should’ve known by now. He looked over at Steve, almost hurt that he would keep this kind of thing from him. “You knew about this and didn’t say anything? Are you ashamed that your girlfriend is a nerd?” He shook his head. “I thought you were better than that, Steve.”

“Shut up, Henderson. I didn’t know.” Steve’s eyes met yours. “Not that I’m saying you’re a nerd just ‘cause you know about this ring stuff. Well maybe you are? Is that okay to call you? What really even is a nerd?”

You watched Steve ramble on with an amused look on your face, wondering when he would finally put a stop to himself and when he didn’t you put your hand on his cheek. “Breathe, love. Nerd is okay. I am a nerd, self-proclaimed.” You watched him let out a breath.

“Right, what’s your favorite book?” Dustin snapped his fingers to get you to look back at him.

“I think Fellowship, just ‘cause it introduced a darker side to Tolkien compared to The Hobbit but The Silmarillion is a second favorite, gave us such an in depth understanding of Middle Earth.” You could visibly see the happiness grow in Dustin’s eyes as you spoke.

“Eddie’s gonna shit himself when I tell him this.”

“Oh no! Munson’s always had a little crush on you, now it’s gonna be a full blown one.” Steve rolled his eyes at the thought of the long-haired idiot making nerdy heart eyes at you.

“He does not.” You smacked your boyfriend’s shoulder.

“No, he’s totally right. Now he’s really never going to shut up about how Steve doesn’t deserve you.”

“He says that?” Steve was giving an angry pout. He slid his arms around your waist and hooked his chin over your shoulder. “Tell the freak to find his own hot nerd girlfriend.”

#stranger things fluff #steve harrington imagine #stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #stranger things x reader #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington fanfic

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mirra-kan · 5 months

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HISTORY UNPRAISED: FAITHFUL HARADRIM

«…evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in…» - J.R.R. Tolkien.

@lotr20 LOTRWEEK: Day 1: memory | history | home

Although it can also be almost any day ❤ I'm constantly thinking about Faithful people of South and East: What did they have to face? How hard their inner struggles had been? What songs did they sing and who their heroes were? We can only guess but it’s important to remember this part of the story, I believe. I'm trying to speak to others through my art and humbly remind them that: ✔ There were Faithful among peoples of South and East. ✔ There were heroes fighting and dying for the sake of better future for their children. ✔ And their role shouldn’t be lessened. And finally, let me recall a famous Aragorn’s quote:

Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.

I painted this one thinking of all the things written above. And the image wouldn't leave my mind until I portrayed it. Thus couple of lines become a "living human being", with a gray-eyed gaze. Mixed marriage? Numenorian heritage? I'll leave to your liking. Ifocus on Near Harad for now but am going to gradually make more art about Far Harad, Rhun\Khand, Numenorian expansion and all the things related to the complicated history of Middle-Earth. PS I strongly believe that different tribes of men wore different colors – not sticking to red ’n’ black hues. PPS Pardon my English - I'm not a native speaker ❤

#haradrim #lotrweek #lord of the rings #middle earth #lotr #silmarillion #artmirka #tolkien fanart #lotr fanart

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vivwritesfics · 28 days

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Shine A Light Into The Wreckage

Chapter Two - Until Next Time

Bob Floyd was many things. He was an instructor at Top Gun, a lover of Tolkien books and a huge fan of coffee. But Bob was also clumsy. That was how he bumped into the table, knocking her drink onto her notebook. He felt bad about it. Bad enough to come back time and time again, in the hopes that she would be there. And, every time, she is. Each time looking a little worse for wear. It doesn't take Bob long to realise he has to save her.

Warnings: Abusive relationship! Abusive hair pulling! Abusive slight choking! Forceful sex! Seriously don't read if you're affect by stuff like this

Series Masterlist

The feeling of guilt didn't leave Bob for the rest of the day. He couldn't stop thinking about her, thinking about whether he'd ruined some important work or sketches that meant a lot to her or something. And then he thought about the coffee he had spilt over her lap. Was it burning hot? Did she have to go to the hospital instead of back to work? God, he hoped not.

He didn't have work that day, but it didn't mean that he, Jake and Natasha weren't hanging out. Normally they wouldn't run to the cafe to get coffee on a day like this, not when they had Natasha's coffee machine so close by.

Jake offered him a cigarette as the three of them sat on the back porch. Bob took it, placing it between his lips. But he didn't light it, not yet.

"Anybody want a coffee?" Asked Natasha. She stubbed out her own cigarette and stood up.

But, before she could get to her back door, Bob was there. "I'll get them!" He said quickly. "Latte and a black coffee, right?" He asked. But he gave them no time to answer and took off, leaving through Natasha's front door.

"What the hell was that?" Jake asked as he watched Bob disappear out of the front door.

Natasha returned to the porch to sit beside her fellow pilot turned Top Gun instructor. "I seriously don't know," she said, turning to Jake, her eyebrows raised.

"You think there's a girl involved?"

"With our Baby On Board?" Asked Natasha, her eyebrows raised. "Maybe it's the cute barista, the one with the pink hair," she suggested.

Jake looked back towards the door, but Bob was long gone by now. "Should we follow him?"

She shook her head. "He's getting us coffee. We can grill him once the cup is in my hand."

***

Bob didn't light his cigarette. He placed it in his pocket as he grabbed something, a notebook, from the passenger seat of his truck.

As soon as he had the notebook tucked under his arm, Bob set off, heading to the café. There was no guarantee she'd be there. He just had to hope.

He didn't see her when he first walked in. No, he was looking for a girl in a blouse and a grey pencil skirt. He wasn’t looking for someone dressed down in a sweater and jeans, hair pulled back out of her face. He wasn't looking at the back of the cafe, was expecting her at the front.

Bob walked up to the counter. He got the black coffee, the latte, and the tea (he might have been a coffee man, but it wasn’t always his go to. Sometimes there was nothing better than a good cup of tea).

When he turned back around, his drinks in the cupholder, he finally spotted her.

The sweater was blue, knitted. The sleeves were folded at the wrists, probably too long. The legs of her jeans were too long, hiding the shoes on her feet. She was undeniably pretty, something Bob didn’t notice the first time around. But, in his defence, he was too busy fumbling. Again she had a cup full of coffee in front of a notebook with brown pages. The notebook he had ruined just days before.

When Bob approached, she didn't look up, desperately trying to read beneath the coffee stains.

For a moment, Bob didn't know what to do. He looked around and awkwardly cleared his throat.

Finally, she looked up, meeting his gaze. There was a second before she recognised him. "If you’re here to throw another coffee over me, I'm begging you find another victim."

Bob managed a weak laugh as he set his own drinks down, this time without spilling any. "Actually, that's why I'm here," he said, grabbing the notebook from under his arm. "I saw that I ruined your notebook yesterday and I'm really sorry about that. I can't get back the stuff I ruined on the pages, but I was hoping this would help. Even if just a little."

Bob held the notebook out to her, their fingers touching as she took it from him. The cover was pink, with nothing else on it. She opened the notebook to find the lined pages. It was exactly what she needed.

Placing the notebook beneath her ruined one, she looked up at Bob. "What's your name?" She asked, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in her chair.

"Robert Floyd, ma'am. But everybody calls me Bob."

"Do you wanna have a drink with me, Bob?" She asked as she picked up her mug and took a sip. She put the mug back down and licked the coffee moustache from her top lip. "Maybe then you can buy me a replacement drink."

Bob nodded. He pulled off the lid of his takeaway cup, added the sachet of milk and the sachet of sugar to his tea.

She took another long sip of her coffee. "You're an aviator, aren’t you?" She asked.

Bob couldn't help but smile at that. "Uh, yeah. I was in Top Gun last year. I'm an instructor now."

She nodded slowly. "You hang out at The Hard Deck?"

Bob gave a quick nod and stirred his steaming tea.

"Yeah, I went down there once," she said. "One of your guys flirted with me, and my boyfriend got so angry he got us kicked out." She had been smiling for most of the sentence. But, as soon as she had said it, the smile dropped from her face.

Boyfriend. Bob tried not to dwell on that. He wasn't here to get her attention in that way. No, he was here to make things right.

"Let me guess," he began. "He was tall, spoke with a Texas accent, and the name on his uniform said 'Hangman'."

Suddenly, she let out a snort. "No freaking way," she said through giggles as she looked at him. "You actually know him? That's hilarious!"

Bob couldn't help but laugh along with her. It was infectious and, as soon as he saw her face light up, Bob realised he couldn't get enough. "Yeah, that sounds like Hangman, all right," he said. All this time he had been mindlessly stirring his tea.

Bob shifted the conversation away from his friend and co-worker. "Do you come in here often?" He asked and lifted his tea to his lips.

She moved her head from side to side. Not saying no, but more like she was unsure. "I... do now," she said and finished her drink.

Bob's eyes moved to the notebooks in front of her. The one he ruined and the one that replaced it. "What were you working on? You know, before I interrupted."

When she didn't immediately reply, Bob assumed the worst. He had overstepped and she no longer wanted to sit and drink coffee with him.

She sucked in a breath, drumming her nails against the table. "Bob, did you ever have a vision for your life? You know, imagine the way you wanted to be loved, the way you wanted to love someone?" She asked, her eyes staring at the floor. If she saw when Bob slowly nodded, she didn’t indicate. "I did. But life threw curveballs my way."

She didn't say much more than that. Bob waited, his boiling tea in his hands as he looked at the disassociated look on her face. "Are you," he began, leaning forward in his seat with his arms on the table, "are you writing a romance story?"

She seemed to snap back into it, embarrassment written on her face and she sat up. That was all the confirmation Bob needed that, yes, she was writing a romance story.

"You've got to let me read it."

The look she shot at him could only be described as incredulous. "You have got to be kidding me, Bobby," she said, the corner of her lips twitching up. "I barely know you."

Suddenly, Bob was feeling brave. Maybe it was because her words sounded like an invitation. "Well, let me get you another drink and you can get to know me.”

Conversation with Bob was easy. He bought her the hazelnut latte with oat milk, just as she had asked (okay, maybe she was splurging a little) and sat in the seat opposite her, still working on his own tea. He was only too eager to talk about his life, growing up in Montana and how he had ended up in San Diego.

She listened, actually laughing when Bob attempted a joke (even if it wasn't very good). She talked back, offering up stories from her own life, making her own jokes, the kind that had him blushing red.

By the time they finished talking, their respective drinks had gone cold (the ones Bob had bought for Jake and Natasha hours before had been forgotten, already thrown in the bin).

"Crap," she said as she began putting her notebooks in her bag. "I didn't realise it had gotten so late."

"Got somewhere you need to be?" Bob asked. Because, really, he didn't want to leave this cafe, didn't want the night to end.

She shook her head. But then she stopped and gave a contemplative look. "Well, I should get going home," she said, pulling her jacket on and placing the strap of her bag over her shoulder. "But I hate walking in the dark."

"I can walk you."

He'd said it so quickly, he barely registered that he said anything at all. But he had and he couldn't take it back.

"What, so you can find out where I live?" She challenged with a teasing smile. "You're a little stalker, aren’t you, Bobby? That's how you knew I'd be here today."

There was a split second, a fraction of a split second, where anxiety took over and Bob thought she was being serious. But then she laughed and he visibly relaxed. She was teasing him, and doing a damned good job of it.

When she took his hand and pulled him out of the cafe, Bob's chest was hot. He'd known her a few hours and already there were feelings there. But she made it so easy for him. And that just simply wasn't fair (Bob knew she was a taken woman; she had told him. No matter what his feelings were, he hadn't acted on them and he wouldn't act on them. Feelings without action weren't bad, right?)

"So, why do you hate walking in the dark?" He asked as she led him to the end of the street.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Always have," she answered quickly. "When I was a kid I had these vivid, awful nightmares of getting snatched off the street in the dark and I guess I never grew out of it."

Bob nodded. It was fair enough, really. He was sure if he had nightmares as a kid that were bad enough to follow him into adulthood, he'd still be scared of the cause. "I'm scared of slugs and snails," he said suddenly, easing the slight tension in the air.

"What?" She asked before she let out a laugh. "But they're so cute!"

Bob shook his head. "They're not cute! When I was a kid I stepped on one and it exploded between my toes," he defended.

She stopped walking. "Bobby, you're gross," she said with a laugh and turned to the apartment building behind her. "Well, this is me," she said, fishing through her bag for a key. "Now you can properly stalk me."

She found the key in the very bottom of her bag. "It was nice to properly meet you, Bob," she said, the joking tone gone from her voice. "Thanks for walking me home."

"Until next time?" He offered, unable to keep hope out of his voice.

"Until next time," she echoed as walked into her apartment building.

But, before the door could shut, Bob caught it. “Wait!” He cried as she started up the stairs. He couldn't follow her, that would have been too much. “What's your name?”

“Until next time!”

Taglist: @biancathecool @not-nyasa @burningwitchprincess

#bob floyd #bob floyd imagine #bob floyd x reader #bob floyd fluff #bob floyd x you #bob floyd smut #bob floyd x reader smut #robert floyd #robert floyd imagine #robert floyd x reader #robert floyd fluff #robert floyd x you #robert floyd smut #robert floyd x reader smut #robert bob floyd #top gun #top gun bob #top gun maverick

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wild-lavender-rose · 1 year

Text

You and Legolas hiding your relationship from the Fellowship would include...

Warning: Brief mention of sex

- Intentionally walking at opposite sides of the group during the day.

- Consulting one another through looks instead of words whenever Gandalf, Gimli, Boromir, and Aragorn are debating which route to take.

- Speaking in elvish whenever the chance arises for the two of you to be alone out of Gandalf and Aragorn’s earshot.

- “You look stunning today, my love.”

- “I can hardly bear to be apart from you.” You’d breathe, glancing over at the others. “If we were to reveal our engagement, I believe that they would take it well.”

- Legolas doesn’t want your attachment to compromise the quest, his logic something you respect but don’t necessarily agree with.

- But he makes it up to you at night, after everyone has gone to sleep and the two of you have volunteered for night watch.

- Legolas takes you by the hand, leads you a little ways into the woods, and proceeds to make love to you for hours.

- Whispering apologies, kissing every inch of your skin, worshipping your body to make up for every single moment he did not touch you during the day.

- It is nothing short of an absolute miracle that the two of you have not woken anyone up.

- Furthermore, it is another miracle that nothing has attacked the rest of the Fellowship in their sleep because you and Legolas are quite distracted, to say the least.

- It isn’t until after the Fellowship loses Boromir and the hobbits that you reach your breaking point.

- You’re up to your knees in water, helping Legolas with the boats when your hands touch and everything stops.

- You look up at him, tears in your eyes, and then before you can think you’re falling into his arms.

- “Hold me, Legolas. Hold me, please.”

- Aragorn and Gimli appear on the shoreline just as Legolas kisses you long and deep.

- Gimli bursts out laughing while Aragorn simply smiles.

- Of course, they both knew the entire time.

- So did everyone else.

- Most nights it had been Aragorn and Boromir who had gotten up and taken watch after you and Legolas had snuck into the forest.

- They consider your engagement to be a breath of happiness after the journey’s sadness.

A special thank you to the anon who requested this!

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