#i can’t take time off work right now unfortunately because i quite literally can’t afford it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ac3id · 4 years

Text

The Artist and His Majesty| 18+

𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒶𝓇𝓉𝒾𝓈𝓉 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓂𝒶𝒿𝑒𝓈𝓉𝓎 0 / 5 | fantasy au.

chapter i , chapter ii

pairings: yandere! emperor! shigaraki x female! reader.

warnings: [series] dubcon, exhibitionism, size difference, degradation, masturbation, bondage, reader is also kind of delusional, death, violence (not on reader). (there are more but i can’t think right now.]

↪ for chapter 0: none !!

summary: you come to the big city in hopes of starting your career as an artist but things take a shocking turn when you’re recruited as the court painter for the royal palace.

↪ for chapter 0: a strange man approaches you, offering to buy your painting to which you oblige. little do you know that it kicks of a series of unfortunate events ending with you being trapped in shigaraki tomura’s clutches forever.

wordcount.

a/n: finally !! i started this series. high-key inspired by these two dresses in my wardrobe and @ana-list‘s this drawing ! seriously it’s literally everything. also thank you once again for proof reading this @the-grimm-writer !

taglist: @shigaraki-is-my-master, @deathmemeiverse, @n4dhii, @bat-eclecticwolfbouquet-love, @mstssister, @nereida19, @prince-zukohere [dm to be added/ removed.]

“That’s a beautiful painting,” a rough, scruffy voice calls out, jerking you away from your daydreams. Your grip around the color canvas resting in your arms tightens as you glance behind your shoulder to see a well-built man standing right behind you. He’s tall and a lot older than you, he has short grey hair which falls right before his eyebrows along beautiful, matching grey eyes. A cigar hangs lazily from his lips as he occasionally huffs on it, blowing clouds of smoke out his mouth. He’s dressed in expensive robes, a choice of style only people better off could afford. You can’t help exachaning a covetous glance between his expensive suit and your sloppy, knee-length, light green dress. “Thank you.” you murmur shoving him an appreciative look, hoping he’d leave you alone. When you come to the city to complete your studies in art, you mother, father, family and friends had warned you about men like these. Rich, snobby men who liked to lure in young, naive girls. Whispering praises of how they are the most unique on the planet so they pull their guard down form them to take advantage of the helpless beings.

“Can I take a better look? It’s the Emperor, is it not? Your painting. ” You hesitate before turning back to him. Not a lot of people had seen the King to be. He lived humbly in his castle, trying his best to not indulge in the affairs of the common people. “ Yes,” you hold up the slightly small canvas (courtesy of you being broke the entire week and not being able to save up to buy a bigger canvas). To even get an idea of Shigaraki Tomura, you had to go through many people. Not a lot of people had seen his face, he had always kept it hidden under a mask. No one knew why he did so but the many conspiracy throes suggested it was something to do with his personal grief.

You had heard many stories about him. Some made him look like a spoiled brat with a demeaning, ignorant personality who didn’t care for others and as the rumors said: self destructive habits which lead him to tear the skin of his own neck down whenever he got anxious or frustrated.

Others portrayed him as a strong, confident man and a reliable leader who cared for his comrades. You did not know which one of the two personas brought him your attention but you couldn’t complain. Tomura had caught you under a spell, and despite never meeting him (and knowing full well you never would), you were still ready to sacrifice your life for him. He was your King even before he had taken his crown, to you he looked like a shining bright light ready to enlighten you. To you, he was a god. And as years passed by, he grew from a caterpillar into a cocoon which was ready to burst open as a butterfly into the beautiful, mysterious world. And it was happening today, Prince Tomura Shigaraki’s Coronation ceremony. After the passing of All For One, it was his turn to take the crown and fulfill his duty as the ruler of the nation

The entire city was busy, bustling with people. Families, friends and everyone in between gathered around the huge castle walls as they waited for the ceremony to begin. They waited patiently, filled with excitement and joy as they waited to catch a glimpse of the new great King. You were among them. You had come down to the centre of the city with your friends, waiting alongside many to catch a glimpse of the new ruler. The painting which nestled in your hand was something you were hoping to sell today, to a shop or anyone who wants to have it. It was a beautiful painting which had taken you several days to complete, and dare you say it, you were quite proud of it. From all the things you had heard about Tomura, you had managed to sketch him decently. Long white, wavy hair reaching till his shoulder, skin white as snow. He sat proudly on his throne wearing a cape with his vermillion eyes peering through your soul. His face was scarcely detailed as you did not have much idea about it but he still looked ethereal. With little scars running both his eyes and a comparatively larger one on his right. Chapped lips with even more scars running over them wildly, he was not conventionally attractive. No one would call him a pretty boy yet there was something more, something alluring which attracted you to him. His beauty was rare, not in the grasp of many but if it was grasped and held close to the heart, it was hard to let go off. And you found him attractive, very attractive.

The man took a good look at your painting, examining it carefully and for a second you really thought he had seen the mysterious Prince. “It’s quite similar to him,” he sends you a friendly grin and you notice a tooth from his front missing, leaving an uncomfortable gap. “Have you seen him before?” he asked and you shake your head, no. He gives you an amused expression, “I must say, you are very talented, miss…?” you complete your name with a nervous smile. “And you are?” you ask.

You realised that you were getting a little too comfortable with the stranger and it could be a really bad decision but you can’t help but give him the benefit of the doubt as he behaves like a gentleman you can find yourself to trust. “Kagero Okuta but I like to go by Giran,” he says with a lop-sided grin. Giran, you’ve heard the name before but cannot recall where and how. It sounds so familiar but you just can’t grasp it, he looked wealthy so you assumed he was a Noble and that made you even more curious as to why he was speaking to you.

“What are you planning to do with that painting?” he asks, diving a closer look and admiring its features. “I must say, you’ve got it quite accurate but,” you stiffen, your hands growing cold as your heartbeat picks up. You realized your painting must have some complications, drawing a man you had never seen before purely out of your interpretation was a hard and a bold task to do. But to have someone who had actually seen the King for himself pinpoint your mistakes sent a rush of anxiety through your veins.

“He’s not that bony.” He completes and you gulp nervously, looking down at your painting in disappointment. Your eyes are filled with disappointment, all of the time and effort you spent making the piece all for it go in vain just because you missed a small detail. Giran notices your remorse and speaks up, “But that’s quite alright. He looked just like that until a while ago,” he hadn’t meant to offend or hurt you. He still believed your painting was the most beautiful thing he had seen all day.

“What do you mean?” you ponder, giving him a perplexed look. He leans in closer to you as if to tell a secret, “let’s say the King has been working out behind closed doors.” you blink in confusion. It was a strange thing to say, exactly how well did this man know the Emperor? Who was it that you were talking?

“Who are you?” you can’t help but question, bewildered by such a character. Giran says nothing. He just stares at you with his lips curled into a snappy smirk, holding his cigar between his lips. He was not going to tell you anything. Without wasting time, he quickly changes the topic. “What are you going to do with that painting?” he repeats, his voice growing impatient.

“I am planning to sell it,” you feel a bit taken back. The friendly aura which had Giran had now disappeared for a reason you could not conclude. “Sell it? To whom?” the intruding nature of his tone starts to make you uncomfortable, there’s nothing more you want to do other than get far away from him. Yet you still find yourself answering him, “To anyone who wants it.” he hums at your response, his eyes holding a mocking glint. “Wouldn’t you like to give it to the Emperor himself?” you frown, was he mocking you?

“That’s well...impossible.” you reply, stretching your neck awkwardly. “To you, maybe.”

You stop yourself from rolling your eyes, this man was really testing your patience. A part of you tells you to ignore him and walk away but as he reaches into his coat and pulls out a bag of coins worth much more than you could ever earn in a month, he has you hooked yet again.

“Hey, let me buy that painting, would yer’?”

“What is the problem now?” Giran takes a seat around the round table. It was late after the Coronation ceremony and the Royal palace was already facing problems. Giran was disappointed but definitely not surprised. After all, he was their personal problem solver and broker. “It’s not that big of a deal.” A curt and hard reply cut him off.

“It actually is, Shigaraki Tomura.” a voice speaks, coming from a man dressed in a black suit with a long, flowy robe covering his entire body. He stands taller than the other two men in the as his head is replaced with a wisp of smoke. He was none other than the trusted and talented magician of the Royal family. With eccentric features and an ability to wield strange magic, nobody knew where he came from. There were many rumors about him; that he was once a normal, handsome man cursed by a witch that turned him into a hideous monster or he simply was a ghost. “What is it, Kurogiri?” Giran rephrases his question, directing it to the other man. “We need a new painter,-”

“Servant.” Shigaraki corrected. He stood in front of the giant windows glancing over his city as his men talked about hiring a new painter for the castle. He couldn’t care less about such tedious tasks, he had his focus set on greater things like expanding his territory, taking back stolen land.

“What happened to Mr. Kyo?” Giran asked, Shigaraki rolled his eyes at the mention of the name and clicked his tongue, “His Majesty eliminated him.” Giran stops himself from laughing out loud. He was certain once Shigaraki would take over the throne incidents like so would double the instant. But he was expecting it to happen so soon. “And why was that?”

“He was breathing too loud, like you are right now.”

A cold silence broke over the room as Giran counted his breath. Kurogiri looked nervously at Shigaraki who still had his back turned to them. The longer the pause grew, the dreadful the atmosphere became. Shigaraki’s threat strung the air loud and clear and Giran was afraid to speak again. “What we are asking for is that-,” Kurogiri started in a calm, slow tone easing the tension in the room. “-we need a new court painter. Do you have any names?”

The murderous sent in the air magically disappeared as a grin stretched across Giran’s face.

“Aren’t you in luck?” He says, running a hand through his hair before taking a puff out of his cigar. “Does that mean you know someone?” Kurogiri questioned. Giran hummed, “You see, I met this beautiful painter today. She’s extremely talented and I know for a fact she will love working for the castle.”

“What’s the name?” growing impatient, Shigaraki asks. “Oh, it was,” Giran pauses for a moment to recall.

“Ah yes, Y/N L/N.”

1K notes · View notes

bookofmirth · 3 years

Note

I saw your recent response to an anon where you mentioned the drama that occurred the other day based around bookprofessor’s post. Obviously you don’t have to respond to this or publish it if you do not wish but I just wanted to bring up that while it is important to focus on the real life issues at hand, the OP was hypocritical in her post which is why people were getting upset. She was preaching against ableism while simultaneously flaunting her IQ and degree which is a form of ableism. She was speaking out against racism while ending her post using the racial slur “cracker” when talking about the possibly Caucasian Twitter elriels.

Obviously she had some important points but it was completely overshadowed by her participation in the hate speech and prejudice that she was speaking out against.

This does not in any way justify the nasty messages she received but on the same hand, I do not blame anyone that called her out for her hypocrisy. I hope you can understand why her post was so negatively received and how flawed it was. My hope is that one day everyone can just ignore the negativity, report those who are being racist/prejudiced in any way, and block those who are just being loud and who you don’t wish to see content from. But unfortunately I do not see that happening any time soon.

There are a few things I want to address in this because I think it's a good moment for the fandom to step back and reflect on how we treat one another, how we react to such issues, and how we behave moving forward.

First off, thanks for explaining your point of view without being antagonistic. I do think that everyone's emotional reactions to the post were valid. I do NOT think their responses, in terms of words and actions, were valid. Now before I move forward, I want to clarify that when I use the word "you", I am referring to anyone who may have had the response I am describing - not you personally, anon. Also please don’t freak out about how long this is, as a majority of it is a response to the fandom in general, not you in particular.

What was - and wasn’t - said in the original post

In this post, there were completely valid criticisms of the way that people in this fandom behave, and it wasn’t “generalizing” a certain group, it was literal, actual proof of things that had been said, by multiple people. I’m not going to get too into what Alyssa argued because her critiques of those tweets was flawless. The original post had very valid criticisms of what was happening on Twitter. Alyssa exposed the actually racist, homophobic, and imperialistic underpinnings of those tweets.

However, a lot of people are stuck on the bits before and after those critiques. @bookprofessor apologized for different aspects of her post in a few different asks. There were perhaps better ways that some of those things could have been phrased, some things that could have been left out. And she apologized. People can accept that apology or not but we can’t act like it didn’t happen. Like she didn’t reflect and learn to do better.

However, the people she was calling out have not done the same thing, and if anything, comments that focus more on Alyssa’s tone than why she wrote the post in the first place lets those people off the hook.

On cracker - Using the word "cracker" is not racist in the same way that using racial slurs against POC is. Is it prejudiced? Yes. But you cannot say that it is the same thing when that is demonstrably untrue, given centuries of oppressive history. No one has been oppressed for being white. Those are not the same. Reverse racism is not a thing because a white person punching down on POC is NOT AT ALL the same thing as a POC punching up at white people. The actions look the same, but the impact is so unequal it’s not even funny.

Racism is a systemic, institutionalized problem. It is not defined by individual actions, though those actions can either support or challenge racism. When someone calls a white person a cracker, there isn’t centuries of oppression giving power to and reinforcing that statement. That is not a “gotcha” moment.

Saying “I have x IQ” or “I have X degrees” is not ableist. I’m sorry to whoever told you it was ableist (again, not you specifically anon but people who had read the “aw shucks guys” vagueblogs about it), but it’s not. Those are facts. I have no idea what my IQ is, but I have five degrees from institutions of higher education. Me saying that is in no way ableist.

Often, people mention those things to be elitist, yes. Sometimes, they can be used to say “hey I know more about this than you”. They can be used in a way that tries to make themselves feel superior. I suspect that this is the impression that a lot of people got of the post. However, there is a fine line between saying “hey that’s elitist” and professing anti intellectualism. Which is perhaps a side issue so I’ll let that go for now.

Another reason that people mention their degrees or qualifications is to establish their background knowledge and credibility. If I were to say “hey y’all I have two MA degrees” (which is true) I am not being ableist! It is a fact! It is factual! And I worked my ass off for those, I will be in student loan debt until I die for those, I have every right to mention them if I want to, and often I do so in order to establish my credibility, to explain the position I am coming from. And my prior knowledge of these topics is relevant when we are talking about literature since that’s what my degrees were on - literature and linguistics. That is why Alyssa mentioned her background, though she did pair it with comments about other people, for which she has apologized.

My final point about this is that I 1000% understand feeling insecure or less than because of educational attainment. I dropped out of high school. I had a complex about that for a long, long time. But I also know that if I took offense at someone else saying they had a PhD, then that offense is about me, not them. Someone else’s inferiority complex is not reason for people to pretend to be less than they are.

If those two comments are what overshadowed the bigger, more important issue for a lot of the readers of that post, then y’all allowed them to overshadow those more important issues. I am 99% sure that someone right now is reading this and thinking “but Leslie, it was the way that she said it!” Boy have I got some news for you!

How we react

This next section is not specific to this ask; instead, it is a discussion of how the fandom responded. If it were only one person who had said “but her tone” then I wouldn’t need to make this point. The fact that multiple people are exhibiting the behavior explained below is what makes this a cultural problem within the acotar fandom.

The main argument I saw on the post itself, and indeed any time I see people bring up how nasty Twitter can be, is that “it was a joke” and “that’s how stan Twitter works”.

No.

Those responses were quite useful for this post, though! So buckle up everyone, because I am going to talk about gaslighting, racism, respectability politics, and tone policing. While I understand that some people might have taken personal offense to what was said, there is a much bigger issue at stake that has nothing to do with individual feelings, and everything to do with ensuring that POC stay silenced and white supremacy is upheld.

Back to the “but it’s a joke” thing. Thanks for gaslighting! Great example of that, person I’m not going to tag! Gaslighting is when you make someone question their experiences, when you try to make them think “wait, did I really feel that way? Is my feeling about that valid? Do I need to re-evaluate my response to this?? Am I blowing this out of proportion???” And saying “it’s just a joke” is a perfect way to do that. Did I say something accidentally sexist? It’s just a joke, nbd! Now you’re the problem, because you didn’t understand my joke and laugh!!!

Saying “it’s a joke” or “oh they are old/young/ignorant, they will learn” is not a good response to... anything. It takes the responsibility off the people who are doing the harm, and putting it onto the people who were hurt. And in this case, anyone who read those tweets and found them harmful (which should be everyone?) is completely valid. You aren’t lesser for being angry or emotional or for seeing a problem where other people saw a joke. The people who see those things as acceptable jokes are the ones in the wrong.

This is a tactic that is used against women all the time. Any time a woman is sexually harassed at work or online, for example, and she gets upset about it, and someone chimes in with “oh they weren’t serious, can’t you take a joke?” So you can imagine what this is like for women of color.

It is a very, very common tactic for people of color to be silenced via tone policing and respectability politics. Tone policing and respectability politics are very closely related, especially in this context. The idea is that if Alyssa had just written that post in just the right way, it would have been more palatable to white people, and therefore okay to write. The idea that if she had tried to be “understanding” or “see it from their perspective” or understand that it’s “just a joke” are all ways to silence and de-legitimize any accurate, valid criticisms that were made of those tweets. It effectively re-routes the conversation away from the real issues, and to the person trying to bring them up. It’s essentially an ad hominem attack in disguise.

We see respectability politics in media when people of color who act or dress or speak like white people are afforded more respect. Or any time that a person of color is pulled over and people say, “well if they had just done what the police officer asked...” There is a pervasive idea that if people just “act” properly, aka if you act white, then the police won’t feel antagonized and try to kill arrest you. If we are nice enough, meek enough, smile enough, etc. then we will be accepted.

When we tone police, we refuse to allow marginalized people the right to be angry. We say that "hey, we can only have this discussion if you leave emotion, which you rightfully feel, at the door, and we can only continue this discussion if you behave in a way that makes me feel comfortable." But guess what? It isn’t about you! These discussions are often highly uncomfortable. There is no nice way to tell someone they are being racist. And yet somehow, that is the ever-moving goalpost. It seems reasonable, right? “Just be civil, be nice, don’t insult each other!” And there is that. But those criteria change constantly, to the point where anyone (white) at any time can say “WHOA WHOA THIS IS MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE???” Then we find ourselves at zero, and suddenly the focus of attention has shifted away from the actual problem.

Before we go further, I want to say this: people have a right to be angry. They do not need to make their anger palatable or tasteful for the consumption of others (read: white people).

We saw this last summer, and I’m not sure how the message didn’t get across. But people are rightfully angry about racism. They are angry about the murder of people of color by police, they are angry about lack of quality education, or clean water, of centuries of oppression that have led to this very moment when all of that ceases to matter because a white woman’s feelings got hurt one time.

And that is what pisses me off so much. There is no way in this world that we could criticize tweets like those that everyone would agree with, and that everyone would “approve” of, that would be “nice” enough and yet still be impactful and make the authors of those tweets understand the gravity of what they have done.

The least we can do is allow one another to express our anger, our outrage, because it’s highly likely that those people know exactly what the fuck they are doing, and they do not fucking care. By criticizing a woman of color for the way in which she chose to engage with this topic, we are avoiding the issue and letting the people in those tweets off the hook.

There were many responses to that post that were positive, that agreed with Alyssa. There are a ton of people who disagree with those tweets, who find them disgusting, who understand exactly how and why they are problematic. That should be what we are talking about. Getting to the core of the argument, on that post or any about racism or other problematic behavior in fandom, requires getting past our own egos. It requires us to be able to step back, say “hm this thing is frustrating but there is a bigger picture here”. It’s not easy, and I recognize that.

The fact that it is a common tactic though? To say “hey this hurt me personally and so I’m going to ignore any valid points you made?” That feeds directly into centuries of white supremacy because it, once again, silences POC and makes them try to play a losing game. And they will always lose, because no matter how hard they try to play the white game, the goalposts are constantly shifting. So you know what? Fuck the game, and fuck respectability politics, and fuck tone policing and “uwu be nice guys” because when it comes to things like racism and sexism, I don’t expect the people who deserve to be criticized to be nice. In fact, trying to be nice only serves to fuck POC over in the end.

Indeed, in response to that post, certain blogs have taken the opportunity to position themselves as “the nice ones” or “the ones who would never” or “uwu let’s be nice guys” while completely ignoring the fact that a woman of color was attacked for calling out racism. And yes - that was the point of her post. People getting hung up on mentions of her degree are (intentionally or not, it doesn’t matter) completely obfuscating the fact that that is not what her post was about, which was to call out disgusting behavior. idk how many words the post actually was, but essentially, people are focusing on 5% of it to the detriment of the 95% that was actually really important shit. These types of vagueblog posts about the issue fall into exactly what I am talking about - these are people who have decided to look at this issue, see how Alyssa (and anyone else who dares speak up) has approached it, and intentionally try to act like they are “better” because they can be “rational” and “kind”. Newsflash, if you don’t have something to be angry about, then being “nice” about racism isn’t that much of a flex. If it didn’t bother you, then congratulations. That doesn’t make you better than people it did bother. You just got lucky this time, and decided to use that to your advantage to look like the good guy.

I am not saying that all calls for peace are doing this. Obviously it’s what we all want. This is the worst I have seen this fandom in the 4+ years I’ve been here. But we cannot have that by ignoring the real problems and pretending that if we are all just nice to each other, then we will solve racism and sexism and all bullying in the fandom will stop.

So combining all of this - the gaslighting, the tone policing, and what do you get? You get a fandom that refuses to actually engage critically with its own problems and take accountability for them. You get a fandom that decides that it’s easier to be distracted by this one mean comment over here than it is to engage in the fact that you know what, the culture in this fandom has actually turned incredibly disgusting and a lot of people are just okay with it. You’ve got a fandom that is using the tools of white supremacy to avoid the discussions that should actually be taking place. Maybe people don’t realize that that’s what they are doing. But if someone still thinks that after reading this post, then godspeed my friend, I hope you enjoy Twitter.

Okay so my last thing I want to say is that I didn’t come to all of this knowledge fresh from the womb. I do a lot of work, in my personal life and my professional life, to be better. So here is a list of books that I have found particularly helpful:

How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America also by Ibram X. Kendi

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (side note, I was kinda meh about this one but the chapter “White Women’s Tears” is particularly helpful)

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

I’m not going to talk specifically about Alyssa’s post anymore, but if anyone wants to continue talking about these broader issues going on in the fandom, I am game. (I really should be grading papers though, so it might take a bit.)

#cw racism #acotar #acosf #acotar fandom #fandom wank #fandom things #this is the long post i mentioned earlier #i will link it in my meta post

140 notes · View notes

celestialrry · 3 years

Text

a little jealousy never hurt anybody, right?

6.7k

HIIHIHI this was requested by the lovely @angelsuestyles (their ask is in my recent posts!) ALSOOOO THANK YOU FOR 222 BILLION FOLLOWERS (∩˃o˂∩)♡ (not really but 222 :0 !!! I love all of you guys!! thank you, it literally means so much to me <<<<<333333)

edit: I forgot to put this in here when I first posted but this IN NO WAY is hating on Camille at all (she's literally so hot PLS! she just inspired harry’s 2nd album so she worked for the story) and you guys shouldn’t hate on her either!!!

summary: Y/N and Harry are idiots.

warnings: cursing, mentions of alcohol and illusions to a boner ¨̮ ( I think that’s it...)

Y/N regrets quite a few things.

Like that time when she took her senior photo and didn’t realize the small bit of concealer she had blended under her eyes would flash back so much. Or when she was being introduced to a set of twins and even though she had been completely sober that night, accidentally ended up kissing the both of them, not realizing who was who (she didn’t even remember who she wanted to kiss in the first place). And of course, she regrets somehow being able to put a check in one of those super specific love-cliche boxes.

It really wasn’t her fault for falling for Harry. How could she not? Ever since he asked her to join him on his sophomore tour after she played some guitar for his album, she knew there was no way to crawl out of the hole that had just been dug. All thanks to her her friend Sarah, who introduced the two at her intimate birthday party, just months before Harry started producing and writing for Fine Line.

When an “Oh, shit! You’ll have t’show me sometime!” erupted from Harry after Sarah mentioned Y/N played guitar and even partnered with Mitch on a few projects of his own (that unfortunately, not even after Y/N’s begging, would never be released to the world), Y/N was sure that she would never end up showing Harry, and he was just being sweet. But when a few days later, Harry texted her explaining how he got her number from Sarah and asking if she could get together so he could hear her play, Y/N realized he had been serious, and well, the rest was history.

Harry had insisted she play for a track, then one became a few, then a few became practically the entire album, and soon Harry was talking about how “sick” it would be if she went on tour with them, and after arranging things with her uni and taking a leave from her job, she was ready.

Tour had no shortage of interesting moments, from the time Harry almost broke his ankle during rehearsal and tripping on the microphone wire (why he insisted it have a wire, Y/N had no idea) to Mitch getting really drunk after one show and blabbering on and on about British culture and how different it was from American culture, and YN was sure she’d never seen or heard him talk this much, but no one was complaining.

Y/N had found some sort of companionship in everyone on tour. Sarah had always been like a big sister to her, and the protective instinct really kicked in when they were in a different country, Y/N noticed. Charlotte was pretty new, just like Y/N was and they bonded quite fast over that, and their love for fashion they could never afford. Adam was more open and bubbly, and he took Y/N in like one of his own kids. She truly didn’t think being 23 was so different than everyone else being in their late 20′s and early 30′s but after being treated like a fragile puppy, she noticed that no one else felt the same as her-- she really wasn’t complaining though, it just meant she had all eyes looking out for her, and she kind of needed that to be honest.

Mitch practically became her older brother, and although he was a bit closed off and shy when they first met (which was a few weeks before Y/N met Harry) eventually he was joking around with just her, and teaching her new things on the electric guitar she hadn’t known before.

Finally, Harry. It would be an understatement to say Y/N and Harry got really close, really fast. He was always really good at making friends, but with Y/N it seemed they became great friends in a heartbeat. He opened up about almost everything, fame, missing home, his heartbreaks, his accomplishments, and everything in-between. Y/N did the same, told him how paying for uni was an absolute bitch (to which he offered to pay and she immediately turned him down), how her parent’s divorce impacted her own relationships (Harry had nodded in agreement with that), and about how being on this tour changed her life. By week 2 of tour, the two had become so close, even the fans had picked up on it just during their banter and contact during shows.

“They’re ‘shipping’ you guys,” Mitch had said, taking a sip of water backstage as everyone was gathered in the band’s dressing room. Harry was still getting dressed and ready, so it was everyone but him. “It’s quite cute, honestly.”

Y/N’s brow raised in confusion. “What- why? We act normal like we always do.” She pointed out, firm in her statement. A snort from Charlotte made Y/N turn her head to the strawberry-blonde and gape. “What? Do we- do we not act normal?” She asked, looking around at everyone, now flushing out of embarrassment. “You two act like you’re dating sometimes, love,” Sarah pointed out. “It’s nothing to worry about though, he’s just really affectionate, friends or partners, and we can tell you do too, so it’s inevitable that someone will mistake you guys for a couple.”

“Mistake who for a couple?” A familiar voice asked, and everyone’s gaze wandered over to the door where Harry had walked in with his billowing dress shirt, and dress pants for the night. “You and Y/N.” Adam said, and Y/N’s head had snapped towards him to give him a death stare, but before her eyes could burn into his skull, her attention was dragged away by an arm draping across her shoulders and the dip of the couch next to her. She turned to look at him, and he gave her a soft smiled before squeezing her shoulder with his hand. “Makes sense, s’like we’re practically married.”

“I’m waiting on a proposal.” Y/N said with a grin, and Harry smirked, pulling her in closer towards his body. “You’ll get one soon, pet, don’t worry.” The conversation had then shifted to Mitch and Sarah who were literally work-wife and husband, not yet anyways, but everyone knew he would ask her soon enough. Y/N always like this before shows, happy. Not that preforming and the adrenaline rush afterwards wasn’t enough, but everyone was always together, and she liked that a lot.

She also liked how Harry’s arm had slid down from her shoulders to her waist and how his fingers splayed across her hip, how they gently squeezed, and how his thumb mindlessly ran up down across her skin. It wasn’t an overstatement to say that stayed on her mind the entire night.

。:°ஐ

Harry was always positively buzzing after a show. His narcissistic side loved it when everyone’s attention was on him for hours at a time, screaming his name and shouting their declarations of love. He loved to be told how talented he was, how handsome he was, and how funny he was, it was safe to say he had a bit of a praise kink, if he’s being honest. But if it was even possible, he loved hearing it all from Y/N even more than the thousands of people in the crowd. He told himself many times that it was just because she cared about him, and he cared about her, and hearing praise from someone he knows and respects (not that he didn’t respect his fans) was just so much more fulfilling.

So after every show when he’d rush offstage with he rest of his band, his attention always went to Y/N, waiting for her praise, and he always got it. He, of course, complimented her back, and watching her smile was more than enough to keep him happy the rest of the night. This night had gone the same as all the others, an amazing show, running offstage, and hugs and kisses being thrown around like a beach ball at a rave. “That was awesome H, your whale seems to get better every time.” Y/N had commented, and he had attempted helplessly to keep his cheeks from flushing. “I’ve just got strong lungs, pet. Could never compare to your guitar playing though, the real star of the show. Don’t tell Mitch I said that.”

She waved off his compliment and laughed, pulling him into a soft hug with a soft kiss on the cheek that he was still thinking about when they made their way to a bar for the night. He couldn’t take it off of his mind, not even when there was a pretty blonde in front of him, her hand running flirtatiously over his arm and her smile as blinding as the sun had been earlier.

Of course she was pretty, there was no way to deny it, she just wasn’t as pretty as Y/N. No one was, not after he’d laid eyes on her and began using her beauty to determine everyone else’s attractiveness.

So when his attention from the woman in front of him fades, he’s looking around for the familiar face that he can’t enough of. He meets Y/N’s eyes and immediately her own dart back to Charlotte, biting the inside of her cheek and praying he didn’t catch her staring at him with envy.

Envy of the girl in front of him, who go to express her attraction towards Harry without hiding it, and not worrying about if he feels the same way or not, because of course he finds the girl in front of him attractive, who wouldn’t?

It’s then, that Y/N starts to pity herself, physically and romantically. The partners she’s had before always seemed way too good for her, and she had never been the one to end it. To say that destroyed her self-confidence in the long run would be an understatement.

It wasn’t like she needed a partner to make her confident, no, she was perfectly capable of doing that on her own, but for the first time in a long, long time, Harry made Y/N feel really good about herself. Good about her personality, her humor, everything, because if someone she looked up to that much, if a man like Harry Styles wants to be friends with her? She thinks it just meant she was doing everything right.

So Y/N, in short, was jealous. So jealous and wound up by Harry showing attraction towards that girl, that everyone else seemed to notice she was a bit off. “Y/N, you okay?” Mitch asked from across the booth, his thick brows twisted in concern. “Hm?” She looked up from the wooden table beneath her to see everyone, sans Harry, looking at her with the most pitiful eyes she had ever seen, and god, did she feel disgusted. Disgusted that she had fallen so hard for a man she could never have, that everyone around her noticed and felt bad for her.

“I’m fine, but I think m’gonna call it a night. I’m pretty tired after today’s show.” She said with a tight-lipped smile, hoping it would convince everyone that she was okay. Of course it didn’t though and Adam caught on. “Funny, I was about to say the same. I can’t stay up late like I used to anymore, wanna catch a taxi back?” He asked, and Y/N nodded with a real smile this time, albeit the fact it was small, because she really didn’t want to go back to the hotel alone, and Adam always knew what to say.

Sarah and Mitch slid out of the booth to let Adam out, and Y/N simply stood up on her side because she had the outside seat. Harry was supposed to sit next to her on the edge, but seeing as he went to the bar to grab everyone another round and then ended up talking to someone else, that didn’t happen. She slipped on her light beige coat and grabbed her purse, slinging it on her shoulder as Adam put on his jacket as well. When Y/N looked to the bar where she had last seen Harry, he was still standing there animately talking to the woman in front of him, dimples prominent in his rosy cheeks, and all she could do was hope he didn’t notice the two of them slip out as they made their way to the door.

Alas, Y/N could never be that lucky.

“Hey! Where are y’guys going?”

Y/N and Adam turned around at the sound of his voice and that was when Adam went in full protective mode, slinging his arm around Y/N’s shoulders and pulling her in closer. She made a note in her head to thank him immensely when they escaped this bar.

“Heading out for the night, we’re both pretty pooped.” Adam explained, eyes darting from Y/N to Harry who now stood in front of them, his own eyes darting from Y/N to Adam then back to the girl who was now avoiding eye contact at all costs.

“Oh, alright then. Are- Y/N are you okay?” He asked softly and only then did her eyes meet his own. “Yes, I’m fine. I feel like such a baby when I’m around you guys.” She joked, her lips curling into a small smile.

Adam chuckled at that and so did Harry, but Y/N could tell the curly headed one was still concerned. “Well we gotta catch a cab, so…” She trailed off, her thumb poking back to the door.

“O-okay,” Harry nodded. “Get back safe, yeah? Have a good night.” He said in parting and Y/N and Adam both nodded, wishing him the same before turning back around and pushing through the door. Harry watched the two of them leave, and his stomach bounced around in an odd way.

The cold air whipped across the duo’s faces, and and Adam rubbed Y/N’s shoulder comfortingly as he hailed a cab. They didn’t talk until they were settled in the back and Adam told the driver the destination. “Wanna tell me what’s up? Cause I’m not gonna bother you anymore when we get to the hotel.”

She smiled at him and scoffed a bit before trilling her lips, a soft noise releasing from her mouth at the movement. “Um,” She began, running her hands through her hair. “I’m pretty sure you already know.”

At her words, Adam just raised a brow at her. “What? You guys all looked at me like someone just killed my puppy back there!” She defended, raising her hands. “Okay, fine, fine. It won’t help if you keep all your emotions bottled in though, you know?”

“Yeah,” She sighed. “I know.”

After getting back up to her room, doing her nightly routine (which really was just her washing her face, brushing her teeth, and changing into the t-shirt Harry gave her a few weeks ago and her Spongebob decorated fluffy pajama shorts that she got in college as a joke but really ended up being her favorite item of clothing she owned, other than Harry’s shirt, of course) she slipped into bed and began scrolling on her phone.

Only what felt like 15 minutes later, a knock on her door broke Y/N out of the trance she was in and she sighed a bit, pulling the covers back and grumbling as she made her way to the door, annoyed at whoever was behind it-oh.

Harry looked at her as she swung the door open for him and he immediately grinned. “Hi, love.”She could never stay mad at him. “Hey, H.” She smiled at him, still a bit confused. “What’s up?” He ran a hand thorough his hair and retained eye contact with her, before speaking.

“Sleepover?”

She nodded and let him in, and immediately he went to her suitcase without a word, pulling out some her biggest sweatpants and stripping to his boxers, slipping the joggers on and keeping his shirt off. Y/N suddenly was reminded of all of Harry’s tattoos she knew none of the meanings behind.

Sleepovers were common with the two of them, and they always occurred in Harry’s suite, Y/N on the way too comfortable couch, and Harry guiltily on the bed even though she insisted she take the couch because “We can’t have your back hurting when you preform!” And he couldn’t say no when she also said “Please?” and looked at him with those soft eyes.

So now it was a bit different, being in her room, because 1, there was only one bed that they would both consequently end up sleeping on, and 2, Y/N and Harry’s feelings had both developed a bit further than friendly (although neither knew about the other’s).

She hesitantly crawled back into her bed and patted at the area right beside her, which Harry quickly traveled over to, lifting his side of the comforter and pulling it over the both of them while Y/N leaned over to the night-stand and grabbed the T.V. remote. She plopped back into the pillows and started scrolling through random channels, trying to find a decent movie for the two of them to fall asleep to.

All the while, Harry was attempting to look at the T.V. but the light was shining on her face in a way that just made her look so pretty, not that she wasn’t always pretty, but she seemed to always look the best when she was in her natural state, no makeup, no nice clothes, it was just all so domestic and the feeling overwhelmed him when he realized he wanted to be the one to see her like this every night.

Her eyes darted from the T.V. over to her right where Harry was curled up in the covers, and she could feel the burn of his eyes on her. Now that really didn’t help with her insecurities, and as she continued switching through the channels she found herself burying under the covers more and more. Soon, she landed on a stupid rom-com that she’s seen a few times before but she never really knows what it’s about because her attention gets easily dragged away from it.

She puts the remote back on the table and flips back around to be face to face with Harry, who was now looking at her with furrowed brows. “Why’re you burying yourself under the covers?” He asked with a frown, and she lulled her head away from him then back, biting the inside of her cheek. “M’just a bit cold.”

His brows raised because he knew full well it wasn’t cold at all in this room, in fact it was quite hot, but he didn’t want to deal with her lying and thinking she could get away with it, so he pulled the covers off of himself, which actually cooled him off a good amount and piled them all on top of her. “Hey!” She cried out, muffled by the fabric on top of her. “M’hot, so I figured you could have my covers.”

He heard a bit of grumbling and the covers were flung off of the bed entirely in a few seconds, Y/N sitting up and leaning on her arms breathing a bit heavy and turning to Harry with a stink in her eye. He just flashed his signature cheeky grin and she grabbed her pillow and hit him over the head before placing it back and pulling the sheets over her body.

“Ow! You fucker.”

。:°ஐ

Harry was sure about a lot of the things he did.

Like when One Direction split up, he didn’t remain in constant contact with the boys, and while it was difficult at first, they all needed a break, and it just made it so much better when they met up to hang out again. Or when him and Camille both decided it was for the best that they break up and they remain friends to this day. And of course, he was sure about bringing Y/N on tour.

She was possibly one of the best people he had ever worked with, and one of the best friends he’s ever had. He was sure about getting close with her, and he was sure about keeping her close. Only, now keeping her close meant keeping her arms length apart, because if he got any closer he wouldn’t be able to handle being with her any closer than a few little touches and hugs and cheek and forehead kisses, not when he couldn’t have her.

So it was safe to say when he opened his eyes the next morning with Y/N flung over him, her leg between his own, her arm wrapped around his chest with her face pressed into the junction of his shoulder and neck, and her warm soft breaths hitting his bare skin, making goosebumps pimple, he freaked out. 1, because friends did NOT cuddle like this, and 2, the close contact was making his chest clench and his lower abdomen heat up.

He let out a shaky breath and thanked his lucky stars Y/N was a deep sleeper, and slowly slid out from under her, ignoring how his arms were wrapped around her and his hands were touching her bare skin where her shirt (his shirt really, and that just made it about a billion times worse) had ridden up in the night. As he was pulling his torso from her body after getting his legs out, she let out a whine and her grip on his back tightened.

His heart beat wildly fast, so fast he wouldn’t be surprised if he looked down and saw it moving through his skin, and he stilled, terrified that she was awake. A few minutes went by, and she didn’t stir anymore, so after chalking her movements up to a dreaming Y/N, he moved a hand and gently took her soft hand off of his bare skin, letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Finally he’s out of bed, and slipping on the clothes he wore the night before, folding the sweats he borrowed and putting them back in her suitcase. He grabs his phone off the other side table Y/N never used and reaches her door, making the terrible mistake of looking back. Y/N’s face is smushed into the pillow he put under her head, her lips sightly open as she slept and her arms now curled around the pillow Harry had used last night, and he would swear on his mum’s life that she was breathing in his scent if not for the fact that he was certain she didn’t like him the way he liked her, and he didn’t want to barter his mum’s life on something so uncertain.

His chest clenched for what felt like the billionth time this morning and even if he didn’t know it then, he had already decided that he couldn’t handle this anymore, whatever this was, and began to push the sleeping girl out of his mind and heart, in order to save himself from future heartbreak.

。:°ஐ

When Y/N woke up, her bed was empty, and she had never felt akin to a bed until that morning.

。:°ஐ

The last time Harry really spoke to Y/N was the night he slept over.

It had been a little over a month since then, and she was trying really hard not to let it get to her, but seeing as Harry interacted just fine with everyone else, and his problem seemed to be with just Y/N, she couldn’t help the nagging feeling that she had somehow scared him off.

A week after he slept over, the only times he spoke to her were for performances and work-related things, and her mind had been swarming with questions. Did she say something about him, or to him while she was sleeping? Sure, she had a dream about him, but it wasn’t anything dirty (although that had happened a few times before), they were just at a carnival and there was a ride in which they got to fly, it was quite fun. Did she cuddle him too much? Sure she could be really touchy when she’s tired, but so can Harry if his wandering hands (only in appropriate places) when they had movie nights were anything to go by.

So her questions went unanswered, and her attempts to speak with him were fruitfully ignored, whether that be he pretends he didn’t hear her the first time, or if he excuses himself before answering because he had to talk to someone about something.

Everyone else in the band noticed, and Y/N didn’t know it, but everyone at tried to talk to Harry about it at least once. Adam mentioned how Y/N and Harry seemed to have drifted apart and Harry only hummed in agreement, making it obvious he didn’t want to talk about it. Charlotte had asked Harry if he was doing okay, to which he responded “Of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?” And she didn’t feel like it was her place to tell him that Y/N had come to her crying about Harry’s actions, or lack thereof, towards her and she didn’t know what was wrong. Sarah was blunt with Harry, telling him how it was obvious Y/N and him weren’t speaking and asking what had happened to which Harry shrugged it off and told her that “people grow apart”, and it wasn’t anything personal. Mitch had tried to the same, to no avail, despite being even more blunt than everyone else.

And that led them here, 15 minutes before Harry’s second, and last night in L.A. on his tour before they head to New York. He was quite looking forward to it, excited to see the few friends who couldn’t make it the night before. It was easy, going out with people after the performance, not having to think about Y/N as he drinks the night away.

He looked in the mirror in front of him, patting the invisible dust off of his pearl adorned blazer and pants, the wife-beater under his coat so thin his tattoos could be traced. Usually after he was dressed he would pop into the band’s dressing room just to shake off the nerves beforehand, but he stopped doing that after he began to push himself away from Y/N. There would be no where else to sit but next to her, and that didn’t help his overwhelming need to hold her. So instead, he made his way to the couch in his room, relaxing for the few minutes he had.

Y/N on the other hand was sitting in the dressing room with Sarah, Mitch, Charlotte, and Adam, all conversing about how ready they were, the energy in L.A. the night before had been off the charts, and they were more than excited to feel it again. All Y/N could think about, however, was that this just meant there was one more show to play, then tour would be over, and there would be no more reason to be in Harry’s band. Not when he clearly didn’t want to be friends with her anymore, and she thinks this is the worst she’s ever felt in a long, long time.

。:°ஐ

The first part of the show goes really well. Harry is hyping up the audience, and everyone is smiling. “She” was the next song they were to play after Harry stopped interacting with the audience and Y/N was excited. It was one of her favorite songs to play, and she loved just stopping and listening when Mitch did his solo. He usually did the more detailed guitar work, while Y/N worked with the backing chords.

“Alright, the next song we’ll be playing is “She”, let’s make sure not to get Mitch’s ego too high afterwards though.” Harry had laughed into the mic, walking back to the stand and clicking the mic into place. Then, it began. It was good, it really was, until Y/N noticed that Harry had faltered a bit in the chorus, and her eyes followed his own to the blonde hair in the VIP section. It was her, Camille, the muse behind this entire album. Her heart stuttered as she noticed he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was gorgeous, prettier than all of the pictures she’s seen.

And Harry was looking only at her in the crowd. It was then, that Y/N started to go a bit haywire. He began to sing the chorus, and she guesses her fingers held the pick a bit tighter, and strummed bit harder, because after 10 seconds of playing she realized she could no longer hear his voice. Almost immediately did she soften the strumming and look up to see Harry turn to face her, confusion and anger, maybe, written all across his face. She ignores it and continues to play until the song is over. She’s not listening when the crowd cheers, but she regrets tuning in when Harry introduces the next song on the set list, how he says that it’s possibly one of his favorites, and meet’s his ex’s eyes when he starts to play Cherry.

It’s then that Y/N breaks. She keeps her eyes down, and her strumming quiet, just incase she falters (which she does about 2 times), and when her mouth moves up to sing the backing vocals she realizes that her eyes are welling up and her throat is closing in. She closes her mouth and continues to play the guitar, missing Harry’s look back at her, and the rest of the band’s attempt to conceal the fact that she had stopped singing in the middle of the verse.

The rest of the show goes on, and her tears are held back when they all wave goodbye, and when they rush offstage, and when Harry’s hand brushes her arm that she’s sure was a mistake (it wasn’t), and they continue to be held back until she bursts into the unisex restroom just a mere 20 feet away from the dressing rooms. She locks herself in a stall and sits on the closed toilet seat, shaking hands covering her face as she chokes on her sobs, knowing she would never be enough for Harry, thinking about how he want’s nothing to do with her, and how big of a mistake she made going on tour with them, because if she didn’t, then she wouldn’t have fallen in love with Harry, and she wouldn’t be feeling this way.

What feels like hours, but was actually just 15 minutes of her crying all the tears she could cry, she decided it was better to mope in her own hotel room rather than in a public place where anyone could walk in. She steps out of the stall and doesn’t bother looking in the mirror, only washes her hands, then rinses her face, patting it dry with a cheap brown paper towel. She crumples it up and tosses it in the trashcan, walking out of the restroom to see Harry outside of his dressing room, his arms wrapped around Camille in an intimate embrace.

Intruding would be a good word to describe how she felt right then, and quickly did she speed walk the other way, trying not to let any more tears fall as she opens the door to the bands dressing room to see Sarah and Mitch packing up her things. One look at her was all it took to break the dam that held her tears, and she covered her mouth with her hand, her head falling down and her other arm wrapping around her stomach, maybe it would make things better.

Sarah quickly hands Mitch Y/N’s bag that held her sweats, sweatshirt, purse, and phone she brought to the venue, and takes the girl into a much needed embrace. She cried into Sarahs chest for a bit, snotty apologies from Y/N that Sarah waved off, insisting it was okay, and that she would be okay.

After calming her down a bit and receiving a hug from Mitch, she takes her bag and walks into one of the privacy divider boxes, changing into the clothes she would wear tomorrow on the flight, and tonight to sleep in. Mitch and Sarah lead her out of the venue with all of their arms locked, and bring her to the car, the hotel, and lastly her room.

“We’re right next door, if you need anything. Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?” Sarah asked, biting her lip in anxiousness. Y/N shook her head, her puffy eyes hurting from the movement. “No, I’m gonna be okay. Thank you- um, can-can you not tell anyone? I just-”

“Of course we won’t tell anyone,” Mitch interrupts her, making sure she won’t start crying again, because if there’s something he wants least, it’s to see her cry. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning, okay?”

Y/N nods, and they all hug and part with declarations of love and goodnight’s.

。:°ஐ

Harry just arrived at the hotel after a quick late dinner with Camille at her flat, catching up and eating some really good Chinese take-out. It was always good seeing her, they weren’t super close anymore of course, she had a new boyfriend now, he was there too actually, a really fine lad that he thinks Camille deserves, but he enjoyed getting to see her with no bad-blood.

So the night was going good, other than Y/N’s weird guitar mishap and her faltering voice during the show, that he couldn’t stop thinking about.

Well, it was going good, until Mitch called him after Harry sent him a text talking about how he was back at the hotel, and told him that he was really stupid. Told Harry that Y/N seemed really hurt earlier, and how he thinks that Harry ignoring her caught up to her. Of course, Mitch knew it was partially untrue, but to remain loyal to Y/N he couldn’t tell Harry why she was so upset, and exactly how upset Y/N really was.

Upon hearing this, Harry’s mood deflated and he rushed to Y/N’s hotel room, knocking a few times with a soft “It’s me, Harry.” through the door. Y/N heard it, but there was no way in hell she would open the door for him, so she feigned sleep and hoped he wouldn’t attempt to wake her up. “Are you awake, love?” No answer. “Pet?” No answer. “Okay, well, I just wanted to talk to you, um, but we can do that tomorrow, I-um, I’m sorry.”

He left, after that, leaving her to curl up in her covers alone, tears leaking from her eyes.

The next morning was anything but fun, they were to wake up at 6 and catch the 7:30 AM flight from L.A. to New York. Of course, everyone one in the band and a few others got first class, while the rest of the crew rode on Harry’s rented private jet, to hold all the equipment that wasn’t provided at the venue.

So this meant that Y/N and Harry would have to be stuck in the same cabin of a plane together for about 5 and a half hours. Luckily they weren’t designated to sit next to each other, but Harry had other plans.

He switched tickets with a hesitant Charlotte and got the aisle seat, where Y/N would have the window seat. He got on first, and got settled in, biting his lip in nerves, he wasn’t really sure how he would be able to explain away all of his actions to her, but he knew that he had to, he didn’t want to loose Y/N.

Y/N stepped onto the plane, flashing a fake smile at the flight attendant who obviously noticed her puffy eyes and frowning face. Her eyes darted from the row number and seat letter to the ones on the top of the cabin, and when she found the matching pair of seats, there he was, in all his sweatpants-sweatshirt covered glory.

Her mouth opened to tell him she didn’t want to sit next to him, but when he looked up at her with a soft smile, all she could do was close her lips and sigh, squeezing past him to plop down in the seat with the window.

He didn’t try to speak to her, and she did the same, but he really wanted to. Wanted to ask her how she was, what she had been doing when they stopped talking (or when he stopped talking to her), if her Mom was still working at the job she wanted to quit or if she finally did it, if she still wanted to get a cat when tour was over, but he just couldn’t.

He had no idea where to even start, does he talk to her, then hope the conversation will lead to a place where he can apologize, or does he just apologize straight up, but have no explanation as to why he hurt her in the first place.

The internal battle lasted until they landed, when they got off the plane, traveled to the hotel, and when they went to their respective suites.

Y/N considered herself lucky that Harry had decided to not speak to her on the flight. That wouldn’t have given her an option to opt out of the conversation, and she knew he was smarter than that. She didn’t know however, that when she opened the door to her hotel room after a hasty knock, expecting another member of the band, that Harry would be standing in front of it, his eyes widened in anxiety.

“Wh-”

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, interrupting her and walking past her into her room that she hadn’t invited him into. “I’m so sorry for ignoring you, and-and not talking to you when you tried to talk to me. You didn’t deserve it, I’m sorry.”

Her brows raised in surprise and she shut the door behind him, staying near the entrance. As her mouth opened to accept the apology, her mind raced through how she had been feeling the past month and instead she said, “It’s been a fucking month Harry, I-I thought everything was fine, and then one day you just decided to cut me out?”

“I know,” He stepped closer to her, guilt rushing through him. “I know, it was stupid of me, and I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t even know what to say. You wouldn’t even look at me on the flight and I-“

He was interrupted by her walking up and pushing her finger against his chest. “I wouldn’t talk to you?” She scoffed, tears brimming her eyes. “I-what did you expect after you pushed me away for a month, no warning, no reason-”

“Of course I had a reason!” Harry raised his voice, eyes watery as well. “I fucking love you! That’s why, and-and we were getting too close than friends should, and I couldn’t handle not being with you.”

Silence.

“Fuck, Y/N I’m so sorry-mmph!”

His apology was silenced by her lips on his, and his eyes widened as he realized what was happening. They fluttered closed, and his arms wrapped around her torso, while her hands were placed on his cheeks and wowthiswasreallyhappeningandhewasn’tdreamingwashedreamingnohewasn’t-

Y/N pulled away with a deep breath in and laughed a bit, her forehead resting against his. “If you didn’t catch on with that, I love you too.”

Harry laughed and cheekily grinned, pulling her even closer than she was before. “Really? I’m not sure I got it, can you help me understand a bit more?”

She swatted his chest and kissed him once more. “Cheeky bastard.”

#stillcantbelieveharrywonagrammy #stillsadaboutpostponedtour #itswhateverthough #harry styles #harry styles one shot #harry styles imagine #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #mitch is my favorite person

303 notes · View notes

timelesslords · 3 years

Text

baby, just say yes

Read on Ao3

Summary:

“Okay, then. Marry me.”

Annabeth waited a beat before rolling over to stare at him. His face was dead serious, but Annabeth still thought he might be messing with her.

“What?” she asked. It seemed the safest thing to say.

“Marry me.” he said, again, simply.

Annabeth never appreciated New Rome as much as she did on Sunday mornings.

They didn’t have class, homework could wait until later, there was no chance of a monster attack, and, best of all, Annabeth didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to slip out of the Poseidon cabin before anyone noticed she had spent the night. She and Percy could just lounge around together and be lazy for half the day, before one of them finally got up and made breakfast.

It was starting to get a little late, but Annabeth couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed. It was comfortable and Percy was there. Plus, they were deep into a discussion about the architecture of the city, which only made Annabeth happier and more unwilling to move.

There was one temple in particular that Annabeth had only seen photos of, but it looked incredible. It was Juno’s, which was unfortunate, because Annabeth would really love to sketch the ceilings for her design class.

“We should go see it,” Percy said, “It sounds amazing.”

“I wish,” Annabeth sighed, “But Juno loves to torture me. Nobody can go in unless they’re married.”

“Okay, then. Marry me.”

Annabeth waited a beat before rolling over to stare at him. His face was dead serious, but Annabeth still thought he might be messing with her.

“What?” she asked. It seemed the safest thing to say.

“Marry me.” he said, again, simply.

“Are you being serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

“Uhh, I don’t know,” Annabeth said sarcastically, starting to count out reasons on her fingers, “We’re barely 21, we’re not even done with college, we’ve barely even lived together—”

“We’ve known each other since we were 12, college is dumb, and we’ve made it two months living together and we’ve barely had any problems, so—” Percy said, folding each of Annabeth’s fingers down with each rebuttal.

“College is not dumb.” Annabeth countered. It was his weakest argument, but unfortunately it was also her lamest reason.

“Okay, fine, college isn’t dumb,” Percy said, waving his hand dismissively, “but waiting to get married because we’re still in college is dumb. It’s not like we haven’t experienced the real world or whatever, we’ve been doing that since we were kids.”

“Yeah, but that real world is different than like, being an adult, with a real job and a real apartment and bills and—”

“How could that be harder than fighting in two wars and literally crawling through hell?” Percy asked, only he was grinning now, because he knew he had her. She hit him with a pillow in retaliation, and he laughed.

“You’re impossible,” she said, trying to sound mad, but it wouldn’t quite come out angry.

“You just don’t like that I’m out-logicing you,” Percy said, a little smug.

“You are not out-logicing me,” Annabeth huffed.

“Okay, give me one good reason why we shouldn’t get married, then,” he said. That dead-serious look was back on his face. Annabeth would have preferred him to be smug.

“Well, first of all, you don’t have a ring. What kind of lame proposal is that?” Annabeth said, knowing she was just stalling for time.

“Who says I don’t have a ring?” Percy asked, straight-faced. The look on Annabeth’s face must have been extraordinarily panicked, because he sighed, looking defeated.

“I don’t actually have a ring ‘Beth. You can put off your heart attack.”

“Oh thank gods,” Annabeth sighed, covering her eyes with her hands. That really would have been too much too soon.

“But I can get you a ring, so that’s really a non-issue,” Percy continued, undeterred, “Next reason.”

“Everyone’ll think I’m pregnant,” Annabeth grumbled, hands still over her eyes. That made Percy laugh.

“They’ll just assume that we’re crazy for each other and also madly in love,” Percy said.

“And also that you knocked me up,” Annabeth added, moving her hands to her forehead and looking over at Percy.

“In which case it would be my fault, and we would share the embarrassment equally,” Percy said easily, grinning.

“That’s not even how it works,” Annabeth complained, “It would be way more embarrassing for me. Even though it's not true.”

“We can print ‘Annabeth is not pregnant’ on the wedding invitations,” Percy said, because it was his turn to make her laugh.

“Yeah, that’ll shut up the rumors,” Annabeth said, trying to ignore how the thought of wedding invitations made her stomach turn.

“Okay, I concede that pregnancy rumors are at least half-way a valid reason. But I’m going to need at least one more,” Percy said.

“At least?” Annabeth protested, “Is my potential humiliation not enough for you?”

“Mm. Not quite. I’m sharing at least 25% of the embarrassment, so it cancels out a bit.”

Annabeth wanted to argue that 25% was too high a percent, but he had chosen the number well. It was, to Annabeth’s calculations, fairly accurate.

“Why can’t we just wait?” Annabeth asked. She hadn’t meant for the words to come out as seriously as they did, but she saw Percy’s expression shift from joking to sincere anyways.

“If you want to wait, we can wait. Forget I brought it up”

She knew he meant it, and she was really tempted to take up his offer and forget about it. They had talked about marriage before, in an abstract way, and Annabeth hadn’t exactly been opposed, but he’d never asked straight up either. She had been clear that she wanted to be with him for the rest of their lives, but they’d never discussed a timeline for when they wanted to do things.

But it had slipped out so easily, and so sincerely. He really did want this. The least Annabeth could do was talk about it with him.

“But you don’t want to wait,” Annabeth said, rolling onto her side to face him more directly. Percy shrugged with one shoulder.

“I love you. I want to be with you forever. Why wait?”

“If you want to be with me forever, why do it at all?” Annabeth asked. Percy frowned, little lines appearing between his eyebrows.

“What do you mean?”

Annabeth hesitated, unsure how to put her feelings to words. Marriage had always given her a kind of weird feeling, nervous and a little repulsed. She was sure a psychologist would have a field day digging up why, but she didn’t really care to know. It was only the prospect of doing it with Percy specifically that made it tolerable to her at all.

“I love you,” she started, slowly, “And I want to be with you forever. But why do we have to put this weird stipulation on it? Why can’t we just be with each other?”

“We could. I’ll be with you however you want to be with me,” Percy said, reaching out, and brushing a stray curl behind her ear. Annabeth tried not to sink too much into his touch. She couldn’t afford to be distracted now.

“But you want to get married,” Annabeth protested.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Why?”

To Annabeth’s relief, he didn’t look at her like it was a weird question. It would have been fair, it was a weird question. But he could tell what she was asking, what she was really asking.

“I dunno, I can’t really explain it,” Percy admitted, “I guess I just want to make that promise to you, that I’ll always love you and always be there for you, sick or healthy and rich or poor, or whatever the words are.”

Annabeth couldn’t help but laugh a little at the end of his statement, and his own lips turned up in a smile.

“You’ve already promised me all that, though,” Annabeth said.

“Yeah, but this time it’s official. Something bigger than just you and me,” Percy said.

And maybe that was it; the wrinkle that wouldn’t let her just dive in and say yes and get married at 21 like every other lovesick young adult. Promises. Because a promise made was just a potential promise broken and the more official it became, whether in a prophecy and a knife or a ceremony in front of all their friends, the worse the fallout would be.

“What’s wrong with just promising it to ourselves?” Annabeth asked.

“Nothing at all.”

“But you really want this,” Annabeth sighed.

“Don’t say you’ll do it just because I want to do it,” Percy said.

“But you really want it?” Annabeth asked. Percy took a second to answer, biting his lower lip the way he did when he was really nervous.

“Yeah. I really want it,” he admitted.

Annabeth studied his face, every earnest line marking his expression, right up to the crinkles in the corners of his sea-green eyes.

She tried to imagine being married to him, really tried. Not just in an abstract sense, but what it would look like, what it would feel like. To her surprise, it didn’t seem that different from what they had now. Maybe even better, in some ways.

They were already so much more than boyfriend and girlfriend, they had been for a long while. Soulmates was a cheesy word, but she did honestly and truly believe Percy was hers. And while the thought of actually getting married was a little horrifying still, the thought of being married to him was a little exciting. Having people understand, at least a little bit, what they meant to each other made her feel warm inside.

And he wouldn’t break his promises to her. He was the only one who had kept every single one, and a stupid piece of paper at city hall wasn’t going to change that.

“Okay,” Annabeth sighed, finally.

“Okay?” he asked, a hopeful smile creeping onto his face.

“Okay, I’ll marry you, you dumb idiot,” she said, unable to keep a smile off her face either.

Before she could continue, he leaned over and kissed her. She could feel how happy he was through his lips, and it was supremely difficult to break away, but she knew she had to or she would get lost and her stipulations would slip out of her mind, never to be seen again.

“I have demands, though,” Annabeth said, finally pulling back. Percy laughed, loud and earnest.

“I would expect nothing less.”

“I don’t want a big wedding. Actually, I don’t want a wedding at all,” Annabeth said, trying to suppress the shudder that crept up on her at the thought.

“Easy. We can elope. Next,” Percy said.

“Really?” Annabeth asked. She had thought that might be a bigger deal to him, but he just shrugged.

“I want to be married to you, it doesn’t matter to me how we do it.”

“Even if I say I wanna go to Vegas and get it done with an Elvis impersonator?” Annabeth asked, only half joking.

“Can we really?” Percy asked, his eyes flashing with excitement.

“Maybe? If we— okay, no, I have more demands, put a pin in the Elvis thing.”

“I’ve pinned it,” Percy promised.

“Okay. I don’t want a stupid gaudy ring, it's not practical, and diamonds are unethical anyways,” Annabeth continued. Percy nodded.

“No diamonds, got it.”

“I want to keep my last name, or hyphenate or something. And if I do change it I want to wait until we’re done with school.” Annabeth said. She was a little nervous about this one, but it didn’t seem to bother Percy.

“We could both hyphenate,” Percy suggested, “Jackson-Chase has a nice ring to it.”

“Chase-Jackson sounds better, but we can deal with the details of that later,” Annabeth said, waving her hand.

“Okay, I’m putting a pin in hyphenation order. Next.”

“I don’t want to send announcements or anything. People can find out when they find out,” Annabeth said.

“Okay, but we have to at least call my mom and Paul,” Percy said. Honestly it was impressive he had gotten so far without even a small amendment to her asks. “And Piper is going to be really pissed if you keep it a secret from her.”

“We can call your parents,” Annabeth promised.

“And Piper?” Percy asked, raising an eyebrow. But the thought of telling her best friend besides Percy was getting less cringe-inducing by the minute. Annabeth actually felt herself getting excited about Piper’s potential reaction. She would absolutely freak out in the best way possible.

“She can be our witness. If you’re cool with that,” Annabeth said. Percy grinned.

“That sounds great.”

“Even if I ask her to make it as irreverent as possible?” Annabeth asked.

“We’re getting married in front of Elvis, I’m not sure how it gets more irreverent than that.” Percy said.

“We put a pin in Elvis,” Annabeth corrected, “But I’m positive Piper can somehow make it even more irreverent if she puts her mind to it.”

“Never thought I’d know an Aphrodite kid so willing to ruin a wedding,” Percy said fondly. Then an excited look flashed across his face.

“Plus, she won’t be able to stop herself from talking about it, and then we won’t have to tell anyone.” he added. He sounded so triumphant Annabeth had to laugh.

“You’re right, that’s perfect. So, when are we doing this?”

The smile on Percy’s face faltered slightly.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Because we really really don’t have to.”

Annabeth hesitated slightly. In truth the idea still scared her a little, even with Percy’s promises that they could do it in the most goofy, non-traditional way possible. But his insistence that he would stand by her with or without getting married was the thing convincing her. If she asked him to drop it now, he would, and he wouldn’t bring it up again, even though it was a big deal to him.

And really, it wouldn’t be such a big deal to Annabeth as long as they didn’t make it feel so official. Breaking a promise you made in front of an Elvis impersonator felt much less disastrous than breaking a promise you made at city hall. But it didn’t even matter, because Percy would never break that promise anyways, no matter where he made it.

“I want to be with you. And you want to be with me,” Annabeth said, “It’s a little weird for me, but if you want to do it, I’m down.”

“Okay. Cool,” Percy said, letting himself smile again. It was so radiant it just about chased away every last shred of lingering doubt Annabeth had. Not to mention the few added advantages to being married that had popped into her mind in the last few minutes.

“Plus, we’ll get a better tax refund,” Annabeth added, and Percy collapsed into laughter.

“I love you so much, I don’t even care that you’re marrying me for the tax benefits,” Percy said, rolling over and kissing her again. Annabeth let this one last longer, let herself sink into it.

“We’re getting married,” Annabeth said breathlessly, when they finally separated.

“We’re getting married,” Percy agreed, grinning.

So, maybe the institution of marriage was weird and a little sexist in origin and reminded Annabeth of old prophecies and old promises. But that was in the past. Percy was the future, her future, and wanted to have every single moment possible with him.

They were going to go to Vegas, and hire a random guy dressed as a 50s rockstar off the street and have Piper make the whole thing as ridiculous as possible. And then they were going to live the rest of their lives together, maybe as the Jackson-Chases, (or if she had her way the Chase-Jacksons), and she would finally have a word to describe Percy besides “boyfriend” which had been woefully inadequate for years.

Plus, her rebate next year was going to be awesome.

Annabeth grinned. Maybe marriage wasn’t so bad after all.

#trying a new posting format just for funsies #percabeth #percabeth fic #percabeth oneshot #Annabeth chase #percy jackson #percy x annabeth #percabeth fluff #annabeth x percy #proposal fic #if Annabeth seems OOC it's because I'm ✨projecting✨#i wrote this completely forgetting about her something permanent thing i was just focusing on the abandonment issues lmao #i think this is a reasonable interpretation though? idk lol #my fic

161 notes · View notes

lilover131 · 3 years

Text

Chapter 55 Thoughts

It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to actually write down my reactions and thoughts about a chapter, but after a agonizing 3 month wait for a new chapter, I had a lot of time to think about a lot of things. The final day was certainly the most difficult, and I slept horribly trying to wait for this chapter to come out (it’d be nice if companies could regularly list like....a release time on a certain date so people aren’t literally refreshing the page every 5 minutes to see if it’s up. Or at least have some consistency!). My lack of sleep and constant thoughts about CCS though did manage to stir another CCS related dream, which I will talk about in a separate post.

But hot damn was this chapter worth the wait! It certainly wasn’t what I expected, but it was really great in a lot of ways!

ANYWAYS, I’ve rambled enough. My thoughts on this chapter are below the cut!

So I will start off by praising the hell out of Sakura for her quick thinking in using SIEGE. That was definitely a wow moment for me and really shows her growth as a magic user and as a person honestly. This action not only spoke to her skill but also to how quick thinking she is in such an uncertain situation. Surely, having never had any reason to doubt Kaito or question his abilities before, It is almost unbelievable that she managed to think of that and do that in the mere seconds she had to respond after Syaoran made his accusation of Kaito. I’ve noticed as of late that her instincts in particular seem to be really really on point. She starting to trust herself and her feelings, and because of this, she is able to act without hesitation, and I have a feeling that is going to be extremely vital later on.

Sakura starts off by asking the real important questions and things I would ask myself in her shoes having just met another magic user, especially one with unclear intentions like Kaito. She seemed like she was studying him to gauge him and the reasons for his actions or what he might do. What intrigues me about this part is she first asks him if he knows about her being able to use cards. He answers with a simple “Yes”. But when she asks about if he knows about Syaoran, his answer is far less simple, and that might potentially be telling. Kaito stated that he knows Syaoran to be a “extremely gifted sorcerer” and “the next head of the Li clan”. Now, perhaps I’m overthinking this, but he could have just answered ‘yes’ like he did with Sakura, but instead he listed specific details about him that shows Sakura he has done his research and knows a lot about him. Now, we already knew that he had this information of course, but why does he want Sakura to know this in that moment? I’m fascinated by this and what he was trying to tell Sakura by telling her he had this sort of knowledge. Additionally, why is it that when it pertains to Syaoran, Kaito behaves so much differently than he does with anyone else? I’ll probably delve into that in another post, but I have some theories on that.

After making this statement, Sakura and Kaito exchange some meaningful looks, though it’s unclear what the both of them are thinking in that moment. Sakura turns to look back at Akiho and Syaoran and appears nervous, like she’s concerned about something (I have a theory to that as well, but I’ll leave that for another time). Then, Sakura mentions Momo and asks where she went, indicating that she has not forgotten about the other person around earlier. Sakura seems to really be evaluating her situation with these questions she’s asking, but unbeknownst to her, Momo has been cut off from her tv drama and is pouting in the mansion. hahahaha!

Momo, while upset that she can’t see what’s going on anymore, praises Sakura for her for her quick thinking and mentions that neither she or Akiho’s mother accurately predicted how powerful Sakura would become. The implications of this are unknown as it is unclear what they are trying to stop to begin with.

The scene changes back to Kaito and Sakura’s ‘standoff’, and Kaito states that Sakura cannot stay hidden in SIEGE’s field forever. I believe he was trying to stir a reaction and speed things up as probably the longer he has his time spell up, the more it affects his body, so he cannot afford to waste any more time. In what appears to be his way of showing desperation (at least in my opinion), he points his staff in Syaoran’s direction and threatens Sakura by stating that “He will make the first move” if she won’t. My jaw dropped a this, and though I don’t believe he actually had any intentions of hurting Syaoran, just the implications and threat of it was enough to make my blood boil. Lmao.

BUT ONCE AGAIN, SAKURA IS QUEEN and reacts ridiculously fast to protect her man and uses one of her newest cards, TRANSFER, to switch places with Kaito and....well...she put him in a box. Hahahaha!! Seeing Kaito all crammed in that small space inside of SIEGE was honestly so satisfying and it was nice to see him on the losing side for once. I can’t imagine he was happy about it either. He’s used to things going his way, and in this particular venture, it has been anything but.

However, this unfortunately also becomes Sakura’s downfall. By switching places with him, she put herself out of the protection she had before and was now affected by Kaito’s time magic. She managed to take a few steps, running towards Syaoran, before she ultimately was stopped. Kaito makes mention of her progress. When you think about it, she’s gone from being able to move a pinky to moving as far as she did this time, so it’s a significant growth.

He goes on to talk, though it’s unclear if Sakura could hear him at all, about a phrase Akiho had learned in her Japanese dictionary one time about “growing leaps and bounds”. He seemed lost in a memory where Akiho spoke of how she wished to improve her Japanese so she could become even better friends with Sakura and the others, and how happy she looked when she spoke of this. Honestly, this sentiment from Akiho is super relatable and resonated with me. I am fortunate to have so many friends in so many different parts of the world, and I absolutely love learning about their cultures and words of their native language so that I can become closer to them. But what also makes this moment so meaningful is that in this particular moment, Kaito is thinking about Akiho and her smile. One may wonder “Why is he saying this right now?”, but it really does display how much Akiho is on his mind and how much he cares about her and his reasons for doing all of this.

Shortly after saying this, he seems to be in pain again, showing once again the deterioration of his body the more he uses time magic, and it seems clear that he really is getting closer to his own demise. He even says as much when he pleads to Sakura to please make the card he needs soon, before he runs out of time. I don’t think he’s necessarily displaying a will to live or anything yet, but more a “I have to get this done before I perish, or it will all be for nothing”.

Disappointingly, time is rewound once again, and he takes it back to before he and Akiho decided on a location for their outing. @meimi-haneoka mentioned this, and I agree with her, but he could have rewound to any point in time and could have completely undone their entire day, but he chose to still have that outing with her anyways. It was a conscious choice he made, though he quite casually made sure they changed the choice of location (for obvious reasons). Lmao!!!

Now we get to the really exciting part. So after Kaito rewound time, I gave a big sigh and thought “Well, here we go again”, but something was very different this time. Sakura’s serious expression standing in her hallway said it all, and she suddenly grabbed her phone from her purse and called Syaoran, saying “We need to talk. It’s important”.

So Syaoran, being the most adorable worried boyfriend he is, runs into her house literally in the next panel and immediately asks if Sakura is okay. I can imagine that he probably ran the entire way to her house too, and it’s just so wholesome I can’t even. It’s crazy how well CLAMP shows the strength of their love just through small actions like these, and it really is a work of art with its subtleties.

Kero and Suppi have not been told why Sakura’s behaving so seriously, as she was waiting for Syaoran to get there first, but soon enough she tells them all at once about how she remembers using SIEGE at the botanical garden. This understandably confuses Syaoran, since in his mind they haven’t even gone there yet. But, she goes on to explain that she remembers using SIEGE, but more importantly that she remembers seeing Kaito using magic. This is HUGE. Not only is this progress (have we finally gotten out of rewind hell?), but this means that Sakura likely will not be nearly as affected by any time magic in the future. And if Kaito cannot make her forget about him using magic, that makes every action he does in the future very precarious. It’s unclear what the implications are of this revelation, but it’s going to entirely change how she reacts around Kaito, perhaps how she reacts around Akiho, and the dialogue she has with Syaoran. Syaoran should theoretically be able to talk to her now about Kaito and what he’s done so far and what they know, and I’m so so curious to see what Sakura will do with this knowledge. Will she be upset? Will she be mad? Certainly she won’t be happy to know that Kaito’s been forcibly keeping Syaoran silent, but Sakura is a forgiving person in nature, so it’s hard to say what she’ll do.

Anyways, this chapter was incredible and I cannot wait to see how this develops from now on. I have a feeling things are going to get real intense here soon now that Kaito can’t control things like he’s been doing a majority of the series. Things are definitely different now, and honestly it’s about fucking time.

#cardcaptor sakura #clear card #chapter 55 #spoilers #chrissy talks a lot #theories #analyzation #summary #thoughts #kaito #sakura #syaoran #akiho #momo #manga #clamp

27 notes · View notes

mingkily · 3 years

Text

｡☆✼★━ “friends with benefits” | s.mg ━★✼☆｡

navigation

starring: mingi x reader

fsk-0: fluff | language

volume: 5.5k words

vip access: @midnightseonghwa & @treasure-hwa & @barsformars !

“shit!”, you cursed, “shit, shit, shit!”

several other people were looking at you concernedly, but you paid them no mind, instead desperately tried to fix your hair because you’d managed to entirely ruin the hairstyle by accidentally pulling out one single hairpin, and now your incredible amounts of hair were going wild, something that wasn’t at all possible considering your texture, because while straight hair being left unstyled or put in a basic ponytail might look cute and endearing your curls very much did not, not after the stylist had brushed them - you’d look much like you managed to get a severe electric shock, something that wasn’t exactly the desired look to represent your school at one of the more prestigious dancing events in your area.

“can i like… help you?”, one brave soul dared to approach you, and this guy had balls, you had to admit, because even though you were technically just any other dancer everyone in the team knew about your fire, especially when you were angry. and looking up you knew that he must have known that, too, because he was your team’s vice captain, mingi, but maybe he hoped this position would get him mercy. it wouldn’t.

“unless you can fix my hair, you could help by leaving me alone”, you hissed, anger seeping out through every pore, but he just smiled at you in a way he hoped would be calming or reassuring, and then did something you had not at all expected.

“i could try? i can’t make promises, but we’re up in ten and the stylists are who knows where, so i’m all you got”, joking to hide his own annoyance at your stylists just having run off when this had very much been a possibility, and also annoyed that your hairstyle had been so easy to ruin when you were supposed to dance, something that everyone with a little common sense knew required people to move, and quite a lot at that.

“fine. i hope you know if i'm ruining the school's reputation because of a bad hairstyle i'm taking you down with me.”

you really did have fire, but mingi found it weirdly endearing - both of you were well aware of the height difference, yet here you were threatening him if he messed up your hair. and from the way you sounded he didn't even doubt that you'd manage to go through with that threat.

"i'll try my best. now stay still, we don't have too long left", starting to remove all the pins and whatnot from your hair in record speed because he'd need a clean canvas, so to say, and then his hands were in your hair and it didn't at all feel professional, you highly doubted that it would look professional, either, but he was right, he was all you got right now. so you just let him do his thing, hoping he'd get done before you needed to go on stage.

“two minutes!”, one of your teammates told you in a slight stage of panic, but right after that the tall vice captain seemed satisfied with his work, telling you: “try to shake your head, like, really hard, so we know it's going to work even when you're dancing.”

you did as asked and to your surprise it did hold up, much better than your stylists' attempts at a hairstyle ever had, theirs leaving you constantly scared that your hair would suddenly explode into a mess of curls as an unplanned special effect because you could feel the hair move along with every little movement; that wasn't the case with whatever he had done. your hair felt cemented into place, and while the tug at the roots was a little uncomfortable it was nothing you wouldn't be able to deal with. in fact, you preferred this over the constant fear that came without the tug at your roots.

“how's it look?”, he asked both you and the teammates, them approving before you turned to look for yourself.

it wasn't anything fancy, but it looked as professional as could be considering it was a hairstyle created in the span of maybe seven minutes by a layman, a bun that looked like it was a casual, loose one but that you could feel very much wasn't, and if you said that you'd wanted to make the two main centres (which, funnily enough, were mingi and you, him because he was vice captain and the actual captain was more of a trainer and organiser than part of the performing team and you because the fire you had when you were angry was a fire you shared when dancing and really no one else even wanted the main centre position, not when it came to competitions) look rather casual in terms of styling maybe you'd be able to pretend it was on purpose.

and it survived the entire performance, it felt like it hadn’t moved at all, leaving you able to give your all even with your upper body for the very first time ever since you started performing and your school had decided to give you stylists because you’d finally managed to be prestigious enough for that. you were happy that you could afford the stylists, even though it was only one for hair and one for makeup for the entire team, but they apparently had never had to deal with curls before, and most definitely not with thick, waist-length curls, as proven by the fact that they insisted on brushing your hair out every single performance, no matter how often you told them that that wouldn’t exactly make anything better.

after the performance, while you were waiting for the other teams to finish, mingi came up to you, and the two of you started talking at the same time.

“was dancing like that okay for you?”

“can you do my hair from now on?”

then both of you burst out laughing, the tall boy being the first to speak again.

“i take that as a yes?”, he asked you with a slightly teasing grin.

you rolled your eyes at him, but you were still grinning anyway, and then nodded your head wildly in confirmation, the bun still staying right where it was supposed to be.

“literally i’ve never felt this good during any performance. i usually try not to move my head too much because i can just feel my hair waiting to explode into everyone’s faces, but today was… heaven.”

maybe you were being a little dramatic, but your hair and the lack of expressiveness of your upper body that came with having to be careful so you wouldn’t obscure several people’s view with your unreasonable amounts of hair had actually made you dislike public performances or competitions, and being able to perform without holding back had been a nice change, one you weren’t sure you were willing to give up on again. so you asked him, again: “can you do my hair from now on? i’d do whatever it takes and if that should be the issue i’ll deal with the stylists too, just please”, so much desperation in your voice that he was about to start laughing, but then he remembered the amounts of hair he’d had to fit into the bun and stopped himself because if that did explode on stage he could see how it would be quite… unfortunate, and how feeling like it constantly might added unnecessary stress during every performance, which were already stressful enough. maybe that was why he agreed, or maybe he just liked how soft your hair had been.

“i mean, i can try? but i guess uh, i should probably practice before the next public thing, just so we can be sure it works?”

that was a good point, but after a few seconds’ thought you’d found a solution.

“you can do it after dance practice? if you have time, i mean. i usually stay longer to practice a few times by myself anyway, so we’d see if it holds up without risking anything for anyone but me.”

mingi didn’t even need to think about it before agreeing, smiling at you happily because even while he didn’t really know you yet - you barely ever talked, and if you did you only did so during dance practice and about dancing - he always loved making new friends, and it wasn’t too unlikely that he’d manage to befriend you if he got to be your personal hairstylist from now on.

first, however, you had to see if he had genuine skills when it came to taming your hair or if that one time had been sheer luck, which you did a few days later after group dance practice, when you as promised stayed longer so you could go through the choreo a few times by yourself again, having enough space and time to really do all movements, as slow and as spread out as you needed, because you’d found that it was easier to do them right in the team when you’d perfected them by yourself first, without having to take care that you wouldn’t accidentally kick anyone in the face.

“wait, your hair looks super different today”, your vice captain told you once you freed your hair from the constricts you had put it in before team practice, and you rolled your eyes, not at him but at the lady that insisted she had to brush your hair to style it when that really only made it worse.

“yeah, i didn’t brush it. makes it easier to handle.”

mingi nodded in understanding (though he really didn’t understand, because the most he’d ever dealt with on his own head was straight hair but styled to look voluminous and wavy rather than like limp noodles), examining his new canvas before asking: “do you have hair bands or something?”

at that you went over to your bag, rummaging in the front pocket and pulling out scrunchies, regular ties, those spiral hair ties that had started becoming popular, bobby pins and hairpins and the tall boy was left staring in wonder at just how many different kinds of hair taming products you carried with you on the daily.

“go wild. i have a brush too, if you really need it, but i’d rather you didn’t.”

“got it”, and with that he sat down next to your bag, patting the space in front of him so he’d have good access to your hair without having to move all your things around, trying carefully to twist your hair into different shapes just to see what might look good before he’d figure out if the laws of physics would allow for that to work.

“tell me if it hurts, okay?”, he told you quietly before looking at the - to him - huge array of different hair ties, a little overwhelmed and very inexperienced when it came to knowing in what way they differed from each other except for looks, so he asked your advice.

“which ones should i use? or are they all equally good or..?”, an open question so you could tell him whatever there was to know, which you did, and eventually he managed to replicate the bun that had made you so happy during the performance, and that made you so happy now, too, because it held up for the entire practice, a practice mingi joined because he wanted to see if he’d done okay and because he was curious and because he wanted to confirm next week’s hair styling appointment.

“you’re really good”, was the first thing he told you once you were done dancing, a comment that made you feel a little shy and flustered because if anything he was a really good dancer, and apparently really good at sensing when people were embarrassed, too, because he immediately continued: “and seems like i’ve figured out some magic trick for your hair. can i join again next week?”

you weren’t at all opposed, but worried a little that he didn’t actually want to, was just doing this to enhance the team’s performance as a vice captain should, so you wanted to be sure you weren’t wasting his time with your horrible hair that you were thinking of chopping off anyway because it was annoying.

“only if you have the time and if you really want to. i’m probably going to cut my hair soon anyway, i could just do it a little earlier and then the problem’s gone.”

as much as he knew he didn’t have any say in what you did with your hair, that thought made him just the tiniest bit sad, just because he’d found quite some enjoyment in doing your hair - it was soft, it was pretty, he liked your curls and you had a lot of it for him to style. so to think that he’d have to give up on his new hobby so soon again wasn’t exactly a thought he liked, and if there was any way he’d be able to prolong your makeover just a little longer he’d take it.

“no, i actually like it. your hair’s really soft too”, embarrassed as soon as he’d said that because you were acquaintances at most, yet here he was telling you that you had soft hair. at least he hadn’t told you that it smelled nice, because if he had he’d probably have to change schools.

in an attempt to distract from what he perceived to be a mess-up he then curiously inquired: “why do you want to cut it?”

you sighed out in a mixture of frustration and annoyance and resignation; you didn’t actually want to cut it, but you’d grown tired of having to take care of it, so cutting was really the only other option if you didn’t want a large dirty mess on your head.

“it’s just so much work, just brushing and washing and all that. takes ages and i don’t want to spend hours a week making sure i look acceptable, even though i really like my long hair. but that’s how it is sometimes”, a small, bitter smile on your face at that last sentence.

mingi’s inner monologue was one big chain of don’t embarrass yourself don’t embarrass yourself, but of course he failed.

“i mean, as i said, i like doing things with your hair. you could hire me as your stylist, so you wouldn’t have to take care of it and i’d get to play with it some more. win-win?”

then, because you didn’t immediately reply, were somewhat dumbfounded at his offer, he continued rambling.

“i wouldn’t wash it of course, that’d be weird, but i could brush it sometimes in school or i could learn how to braid or something, and then i’d actually be able to style your hair different ways for the performances and all, and-”

“you really wouldn’t mind?”, you tried to make sure, not because you didn’t enjoy the idea but because you didn’t want him to feel weird, since you were still well aware of the fact that him doing your hair when you barely even knew each other wasn’t exactly the most natural way for things to go. but you’d be lying if you said that you didn’t love having people do your hair for you, both because it meant less work for you and because you just really liked how it felt.

“i really wouldn’t mind. if it’s fine with you, i mean. if it’s not weird.”

it was obvious that both of you were embarrassed, but in a way that was what made you believe him; he wouldn’t be embarrassed if he didn’t think he was being weird by genuinely wanting to do things with your hair. so your bitter smile turned into a genuine one as you accepted his proposal, mingi smiling, too, and that was how you found yourselves in the weird relationship you were in now.

the label that fit best would probably be friends with benefits, because much like with friends with benefits the two of you had become close first after the benefits were added. the only difference was that your benefits weren’t sex, they were him playing with your hair at any chance he got. he really liked it, you were able to tell after maybe two weeks of being slightly awkward still, and by now the two of you regularly alternated between sitting with your friends or his during lunch because neither of you wanted to waste time that could be spent with his hands in your hair, both friend groups quite surprised at the sudden addition, but everyone got along well so it wasn’t a problem.

“i really didn’t expect you to have this much hair”, was one of the first things mingi had told you once your little agreement had come to be, you chuckling because that didn’t even surprise you - you usually kept it up or had it braided or really just anything to control it just because that was so much easier. but now that he was regularly running his hands through your mane it was revealed regularly to not only him but also people at school just how much hair you actually had. and while you didn’t know about your fellow students you could tell your by now rather good friend was delighted.

he’d surprised you when one day he’d gotten out a brush from his own bag rather than using the one you always carried with you, and surprised you even more when you realised that it was one of the fancy curl detangling brushes that you’d never cared enough to buy, surprised both because he’d spent his own money to get you a brush and because he’d obviously spent time researching your hair type to know what kind of brush was good for curls like yours.

“you really didn’t have to, mingi”, you told him when he started brushing your hair with his newest acquisition, feeling a little guilty because part of you was still convinced he secretly hated having slid into the position of your personal hair stylist, but he gave your head a reassuring pat.

“i know, but maybe i’ll get to brush your hair twice a week now.”

and how were you to say no to that, really? he was so gentle whenever he brushed your hair, had much more mercy with your scalp than you did, had learned how to do different kinds of braids and updos so even when your hair looked like it had exploded he managed to make it look good until you’d wash it again and it would return to its original state, so of course you gave in, the wide smile on his face more of a reward than even the fact that he’d now spend even more time with his hands in your hair.

it wasn’t like that was the only kind of affection the two of you had started displaying, though, a couple weeks after that first period of being awkward had ended, him regularly pulling you into his arms or his lap by now because the closer he was to you the easier access to your hair he had, and he’d found that your hands were equally as soft as your hair that one time you’d repositioned his hands positioning a hair band, your small palms on top of his much bigger hands and he was about to melt because your hands were so soft and small and warm and now he’d be unable to stop himself from holding your hands unless you told him not to do that.

which you never did, though, so handholding was added to the benefits of your friendship, as was cuddling, neither of you uncomfortable with incredible amounts of pda because really, it couldn’t get weirder than how this friendship had started out, so in a way it felt like you were way past being embarrassed about anything. he was sweet, he made sure to never make you uncomfortable or hurt you, and spending time with him was incredibly fun, sometimes practicing your dance routines together but more often just watching movies or going on picnics or other low-key things like that.

maybe all that should have been enough to make mingi realise that he had developed feelings for you at some point, but it wasn’t, the realisation hitting when one of your friends spotted a bug in his hair during lunch and you moved to carefully removed it, having your hands in his hair rather than vice versa for the very first time, and you were both delighted and offended.

“you never told me your hair is so soft!”, you told him accusingly, a sheepish grin and the words “sorry, i didn’t even realise it is” your reply, and then you caused his brain to entirely crash because you pulled your knees up on the bench, then moved your body so you were decently kneeling next to him, your body pressed to his side and your chest way too close to his face while you rubbed your cheek against his hair, enjoying this new experience of you being the one to play with someone’s hair for once while your incredibly overwhelmed best friend was determined to look straight ahead and straight ahead only, because he knew if he were to turn his head toward you he’d faint or cry or both.

he’d probably never been more relieved than when you dropped down to your butt next to him, though his brain did buffer a little again when you moved into his lap. it wasn’t even like you didn’t usually do that, but now in this situation it was a little much for his poor hormones, you in his lap with your face in the crook of his neck and if he didn’t have your hair to play with this would probably be the death of him. and when you whined out: “why are you so perfect, it’s not fair! you’re perfect boyfriend material. you’re funny and pretty and you’re kind and you smell good and now you even have soft hair, can you give the rest of us a chance?” he knew he was done for, because the butterflies in his stomach weren’t the kind of butterflies you were supposed to get around someone you only saw as a friend.

he didn’t tell you, though, was scared of making you uncomfortable and was scared of getting his heart broken and was convinced it was just a small crush anyway so there was no need to, especially when you were such an important part of the dance team and awkward tension between the two of you would affect the entire team and every performance. so he stayed silent, determined to ignore his feelings until they went away by themselves.

then, however, you brought him a shampoo, blueberry because you figured that was a rather neutral scent for a guy and you hadn’t wanted to get one of those three-in-one shampoos, mingi looking at the bottle wide-eyed and surprised because he hadn’t expected that even when he’d gotten you some shampoo in the past as well, along with hair accessories whose purchase he excused with “i mean, in the end it is me who gets to use them, it just happens to be on your head”, and because this wasn’t technically anything odd you got insecure about the fact that this technically was “girl shampoo”, even though you found the distinction stupid and useless.

“sorry, i should’ve guessed you won’t like that. i just heard that those hair ass and balls shampoos” - with which you meant the typical three-in-one shampoos - “aren’t actually good for the hair so i figured this might be better, but it’s technically women’s so of course it’s not really good either, i kind of just wanted to get you a little something because you always get me so much and-”

your anxious rambling would probably have continued for another hour if he hadn’t interrupted you, hands enveloping yours that still clung to the shampoo anxiously, trying to smile in a way that would seem reassuring to you too, rather than mocking which you probably assumed would be the case.

“thank you, really”, voice soft and appreciative and you finally calmed down a little, “but are you saying i can’t use this on my ass and balls?”

he hoped that joke would make you smile again, and it did, such a beautiful smile that he really wanted to kiss you right now, but he wasn’t going to. not when he really couldn’t be sure you felt the same.

what he was going to do was confess to you, though, just because he might explode if he didn’t, so now it was his turn to be nervous.

“uh, but also, i kind of… probably have a crush on you. just so you know.”

that most definitely was unexpected, and you wouldn’t be able to give him the reply he was hoping for either, your smile falling a little because you didn’t want to hurt him but knew that no matter how kindly you reacted it would hurt at least a little.

“mingi, i’m sorry”, you started, “i really am”, enough to let him know that you didn’t reciprocate, but at least you were being nice about it, weren’t making fun of him for thinking you might ever care about him that way.

“no, it’s okay”, he tried to reassure, even though it didn’t really feel okay in that moment. but he knew it would be once a little time had passed.

“i didn’t really think you’d like me back anyway. but are we still friends? or would i be making things weird?”

his hands had fallen from yours by now, his eyes trained on the shampoo bottle so he wouldn’t have to look at your face, anxiety replacing the blood in his veins as he waited for your reply that he half expected to be you telling him to leave you alone from now on, no matter how close you’d been up till now. for some reason he was convinced this was going to ruin your friendship, was scared of that until you grabbed one of his hands with your free one, trying to get him to look at you again with that so he’d see that there was no negative emotion except for maybe guilt between the two of you.

“you’re not making anything weird, i promise. and if you want we could like… go on dates too? and see where that takes us. if that wouldn’t make things unnecessarily hard for you, i mean.”

that most definitely got mingi’s attention, his head jolting up to stare at you in disbelief. were you implying that you’d maybe be willing to give him a chance?

“wait, you… mean that? really?”, hopeful but still scared, because he was putting his heart out in the open right now and he couldn’t know how you were going to treat it. yes, by now he’d found out that the fire you held when you danced or were angry was never used against the people you cared about, was only used to protect them, he’d found out that you were the softest, sweetest, kindest person once you’d warmed up to someone, but maybe what he was most scared of was that he’d lost his spot among your friends now. that he’d been demoted to dance team vice captain again, an acquaintance at best. that would be much worse than the rejection.

but that wasn’t the case. you weren’t sure if he even had it in him to do something that would genuinely make you want to cut him out of your life. you did want to give him a chance, even when you didn’t really reciprocate his crush right now, because he actually was perfect boyfriend material, was gentle and understanding and you knew that even if you’d end up never reciprocating he’d still be just as sweet to you. but you didn’t want to reject him right away, or at least not fully, wanted to give both him and yourself the option to maybe eventually date; sure, your answer right now wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either. your heart was saying maybe. so, in a way, you wanted to offer yourself a free trial period to tip your uncertain feelings over to either “we’re just friends” or “there’s something more there”.

“yeah, i mean that. if it’s fine with you. i don’t want you to get hurt if it doesn’t end up the way you hoped.”

to your tall, sweet best friend any chance was better than no chance, even if he wouldn’t manage to win your heart, because at least he’d tried. at least he wouldn’t have to beat himself up over the fact that he’d never actually tried winning your heart. but now that you’d told him that you’d be willing to give it a try he was going to do all he could to woo you, starting with complimenting you whenever he could, about everything, about your smile and your eyes and your hands and your outfit and your laugh and your passion and your hair and-

really, you were convinced that if he were to paint your fingernails he’d probably tell you he’d never seen prettier fingernails ever before in his life.

it was cute, though, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t like it, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t find it adorable how he’d get so flustered whenever he’d compliment you but would do it anyway. would always get you small gifts, too. most of the time it wasn’t even anything fancy, more often than not he’d spent at most a thousand won on whatever he got, but that made it even more endearing. you’d never expected to swoon over a rock that glimmered in the sunlight, or some random black rubber that he gave you as a ring (and then drew on, smiling proudly at his creation), or over a pokémon sticker from his childhood collection that he owned in triplicate - or now in duplicate, you guessed - because it had been his favourite pokémon back then, but you did. these weren’t no-brainer gifts, you were able to tell he really put thought into them, and they were absolutely adorable.

with mingi going all out like this it was impossible not to fall in love with him, really, though you still hadn’t figured out how to let him know because while it was obvious that his feelings for you hadn’t changed you were shy to tell him that yours had, had no idea how to even start that conversation in the first place. you didn’t exactly go up to him randomly and say: “yo, mingi, i actually wanna date you now.” you couldn’t do that.

so you continued as you’d grown used to, being best friends except now you were also going on dates, but it actually was a regular best friends thing that gave you the opportunity to update him on how you felt, the regular private dance practice after your team’s one where mingi would wait for you and do your hair before you’d start dancing, and then un-style your hair once you were done, except today he was feeling particularly affectionate, holding you close to his chest as he untied your hair and then, with all the confidence he’d been able to gather while you’d been dancing: “i kind of want to kiss your neck right now. you smell really nice”, something you were half convinced was a lie because all you could smell was your sweat, but you weren’t going to call him out for that when he’d offered you an opportunity to confess on a silver plate.

“why don’t you then?”, nervous but somewhat excited at the prospect, and before he was able to change his mind or be too anxious about it the tall sweetheart pressed a small kiss to the juncture between neck and shoulder, another one first when you hadn’t moved away at all, careful and shy because with every little peck he was convinced you’d suddenly push him away and decide that it was actually weird and gross, but that didn’t happen, and it was actually him who decided to push you away slightly because he noticed you were starting to get cold, still drenched in sweat but no longer moving so of course you’d start freezing sooner or later.

“you should take a shower, i don’t want you to get sick. i’ll wait here”, a nervous smile because he wasn’t sure if you’d let him do that again after your shower or if this had been a one time thing, but he got his answer when you smiled back, nervous, too, and asked: “can i get a kiss to my mouth first so we can make it official?”

his answer was an obvious one and his smile when you came back from the shower and grabbed his hand brighter than you’d ever seen.

52 notes · View notes

onecanonlife · 3 years

Text

careful son (you got dreamer's plans)

Wilbur gasps back to life with mud between his fingers and rain in his eyes.

Wilbur was dead. Now, he is not. He can't say that he's particularly happy about it.

Unfortunately, the server is still as tumultuous as ever, even with Dream locked away, so it seems that his involvement in things isn't a matter of if, but when.

(Alternatively: the prodigal son returns, and a broken family finally begins to heal. If, that is, the egg doesn't get them all killed first.)

Chapter Word Count: 8,205

Chapter Warnings: swearing, referenced past suic.ide

Chapter Summary: In which Wilbur tries very hard to hold a productive meeting, and does not quite succeed.

(masterpost w/ ao3 links)

(first chapter) (previous chapter) (next chapter)

Chapter Seventeen: ‘til the work is done

In retrospect, it’s not his best idea. He seems to be full of those, lately. Not-great ideas. This one is foolish simply for the fact that he is already tired, and gifting energy to Schlatt is a strain on his already depleted reserves. It takes about twenty minutes for him to get dizzy, and another two after that before spots start drifting across his vision, and at that point, he has to admit defeat, cutting himself off mid-sentence and breaking their connection. Schlatt swears as he loses his tangibility.

“Fuck, that felt weird,” he says. “What the fuck was that, why’d you stop?”

He wets his lips. It takes longer than it should for the words to formulate.

“I told you, we’re essentially sharing a lifeforce, Schlatt,” he says. “There’s only so much I can give you.”

Schlatt starts hovering in the air again, regarding him with a dark stare. And then, his expression clears.

“Oh, I see, so you’re being a dumbass,” he says, and Wilbur wants to protest, but he can’t get a word in edgewise. “Why the fuck are you giving me shit you can’t afford to lose, then? Jesus Christ, Wilbur, would you sit down?”

“There isn’t time for that,” he replies. “I’ve spent too long up here already. I need to go and meet with the others.”

Schlatt stares at him for a long moment. He’s not sure why. And when he speaks, his voice is—strange.

“I was right about you,” he says. “You really don’t change. Not when it comes to yourself. You’re just as stupid and self-destructive as you always have been. And now that coating of paint you try to put on over it? That’s flaking off. The only question is how many people you’re going to bring down with you this time.” He shakes his head, and his eyes narrow, expression hovering somewhere between a dark satisfaction and something else, something difficult to interpret. “You’re wearing yourself thin. I see it, everyone else can probably see it. But you can’t. Or you do, but you can’t accept it.”

(you put on a smile for the masses an upbeat tone for your friends but you’re a sinking ship and you know it, and you think it might be easier to let yourself drown even though you know you won’t, because you cannot allow yourself to fail because you are leader you are president and this is everything you fought for so it is a fault in you if you cannot handle it so you push through you make yourself and you scream into your pillow and cry yourself to sleep because at the end of the day your self-loathing clings to you like cobwebs and secondhand smoke)

He inhales.

“I don’t see how me needing to have a meeting with everyone else has led you to that conclusion,” he says, tone frosty, “but you can think what you want. And besides, you can hardly talk. We’ve had a conversation like this already.”

He turns on his heel, letting his coat flare out behind him; though, it’s still damp, so the motion isn’t nearly as satisfying as it usually is. But Schlatt follows along with him, and he grits his teeth, letting each of his footfalls resound with purpose, with confidence that he is struggling to truly find.

This was definitely a bad idea. Engaging with Schlatt always is. He should know this by now, should know that a welcome distraction can turn unwelcome at the drop of a hat.

“I never said that I was any better,” Schlatt says, “but that’s the difference between you and me, Wilbur. I know exactly what I am. You don’t know who the fuck you are, so you hide behind labels because that makes it easier for you to think about.”

(general president exile villain and round and round it goes and there is truth to his words because he scrambles for stability scrambles to fit the old roles but the fact of the matter is that he is something new and he is floundering because for all that he wants to be better he has never known how so it’s casting a coin in a wishing well and hoping)

“I know exactly who I am for the moment,” he says, “and that’s someone who’s going to get rid of the fucking Egg and pummel Dream’s face into the ground. For now, that’s more than good enough.”

He gets to the stairs again, and takes them two at a time on his way down.

“Fine, then, just don’t come crying to me later,” Schlatt says. “So, what’s the deal with Dream anyway? How the fuck did he get out of prison?”

That actually gives him pause for a second.

“I’m not actually sure,” he says. “A question for the warden.” One that he does intend to ask, if only to know how, exactly, Dream made what was supposed to be a secure prison seem like child’s play to escape. Was he waiting for the right moment all along? He’s not sure he likes the implications of that,

(especially since he deemed the right moment to be after Wilbur’s return, during the implementation of a plan that he helped to form, and it sickens him that he might have played any role in Dream’s decision making, that he might have led everyone into these circumstances, eyes wide open but blind all the same)

but it would make sense, considering everything that he’s learned, considering what he now knows of the rot that’s woven itself into Dream’s very being. The corruption that lends him power.

“How much have you even been here for?” he continues, glancing at the ghost out of the corner of his eye. “Do you have any idea what’s been going on, or have you just been fucking around since the last time I saw you?” When you ran away from Tubbo, he does not say, and he wonders if Schlatt catches it anyway.

There is a beat, and then, “I—know that Dream’s out,” Schlatt says, the words reluctant, and he suppresses a bark of laughter.

“So, you know jack shit,” he says.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You know jack shit,” he repeats. “That’s fine. Stick around, I’m sure you’ll get caught up to speed.”

“Oh, great, yeah, that’s exactly what I want, hanging around you chumps some more,” Schlatt mutters. “What a good time. God, I need a drink. Or you know what, I’d settle for a fucking protein shake. You got any of those around?”

He doesn’t respond. It takes some effort, but anything he could say would only rile him up further, and any indication of actually, you do not need a drink, and I am going to make sure that you don’t get one literally ever is sure to set him off, which is exactly what he doesn’t need right now. So he lets Schlatt complain as he backtracks to the entrance hall, and then to the throne room where he assumes everyone else is.

His assumptions are proved correct the moment he draws close enough to hear everyone’s voices. Talking over each other, tones fluctuating. It sounds anything but peaceful.

Eret has moved their throne aside, he notes as he stops in the doorway. Most of the room is now taken up by a large wooden table, clearly meant to be a place for meeting. He appreciates the gesture, or would, if anyone seemed to be using it. His eyes find Techno and Phil first, next to a cluster of torches; Techno is still wringing water from his hair, looking very put out, but his posture is tense, on guard, and Phil looks about the same, even as he helps Ranboo get the last of his armor off without flicking himself with water.

(it is easy to forget that his family is among enemies there, that at least a few of these people would like to see them dead)

He finds Fundy next. He’s standing by himself, ears flat against his skull, and every now and then he twitches toward Eret. But the main spectacle in the room is the ongoing argument, and he narrows his eyes, trying to pick out the participants and their stances. There’s Quackity—and that’s an interesting scar on his face, though with what he knows of the man’s combat ability, or lack thereof, he was bound to gain an injury like that sooner or later, with the server being what it is—shouting at Sam, who looks like hell, frankly, and Puffy next to Sam trying to defend him, maybe, and Sapnap by Quackity’s side trying to calm him, and then there’s Eret, who appears to be trying to mediate with little success.

“—don’t fucking care,” Quackity is saying, and he sounds near-hysterical, words spat out at a record pace, even for him, “I do not fucking care what the rules were, I do not fucking care, just, fuck, Puffy, stop trying to defend him, if he’d kept Dream locked up like he was supposed to, like his job was, like we all trusted him to, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place, just, I don’t fucking understand how you could’ve let that happen, Sam, I don’t—”

He keeps going, and at the same time, Eret’s voice overlaps—“We’ve been through this already, Quackity, and I don’t see how this is helping.”—with Puffy’s—“You’re the one who needs to fucking stop, it wasn’t his fault, so stop yelling at him!”—and Sapnap’s—“C’mon, Q, please, I know, but you think tearing into each other is gonna help right now?”—and Sam himself is just standing there, taking it, eyes dull.

On the other side of the room, Tommy and Tubbo appear in the opposing set of doors and draw up short, Tubbo placing his hand on Tommy’s shoulder to pull him back, face settling into what might be resignation. This isn’t the first time, then.

Schlatt whistles. “Damn,” he says. “Something about this is familiar.”

“I do not want to know that,” he replies, eyeing Quackity. “Don’t tell me anything about your relationship, I categorically do not want to know.”

“Wait, what the fuck do you think I’m talking about—”

He meets Techno’s gaze. Techno raises an eyebrow, pointedly squeezes his hair with a towel, and inclines his head, as if to say, You deal with this. He glares back, trying to convey, Fuck off, I am not in charge of corralling these fuckers, and Techno rolls his eyes, the arsehole, because of course, he knows that that’s a damn lie, and actually, he kind of has put himself in charge of corralling these fuckers.

(something about this is familiar indeed, and these could be earlier days if he takes a step back and squints, looks at them all through blurry vision, and this could be a nation risen up around a drug van if he tilts his head just right, and he could be in charge of leading them, because the original members are all here, him and Tommy and Tubbo and Fundy and Eret all here, except the arguments are sharper and lined with more desperation than any of their original squabbles, before the war became real, before everything, before it all fell apart for the first time, before it was never meant to be, and he can lead, can pretend that it is all like it was then, but it would be unwise, perhaps, to forget that it is not like then at all)

So he steps further inside, notes with some displeasure the way that no one has marked his presence yet, and says, as loud as he can, “What the fuck are you all shouting at each other for, then?”

Quackity cuts off abruptly, which solves eighty percent of the noise problem, and Puffy stops after he does, which solves another fifteen percent. Quackity wheels toward him, not quite shocked, but still surprised, perhaps.

“Holy shit,” he says. “They said you were back, but—wow, Wilbur, you’re looking good. For a dead guy, I mean.”

“Thank you, Quackity,” he says, nodding. He strides up to the table, though he doesn’t sit, and splays his hands against it. It would probably be more picturesque if he weren’t still dripping a bit, but he made his choice to forgo towels and that’s the hill he’s dying on, apparently. “You’re also looking good. It’s nice to see you.”

“Tell him he looks sexy,” Schlatt suggests, and with a great amount of fortitude, he ignores him.

“So,” he continues, “is any of this arguing actually something that needs to be happening right now? Or can we move on to arguing about different things?”

Quackity’s face twists. “I’d say we do need to be arguing about it, actually,” he says. “Look, Wilbur, I know you—you left a while ago, right, so you’ve missed a lot, so I’m not sure how much about this you know. But Sam was supposed to be in charge of the prison. He had one job, and that was to keep Dream in his cell. And now look at where we are. So, yeah, I’d say it’s something that needs to be happening.”

(people keep saying that, that he left, and that’s not quite right, because leaving is slinging a bag over one shoulder and waving goodbye and leaving implies going somewhere when he wanted to go nowhere at all, and leaving is a sanitary way to phrase the desperate exit he made and perhaps they don’t know better or perhaps they do but don’t want to confront it but either way something in him recoils whenever they say he left because that is not the word is not the word at all and if they’re going to bring it up he wishes that they would actually bring it up rather than dance all around it dance in quicksteps that serve nothing)

“I agree that it’s important,” he says. “I would like Sam to explain what happened. But I also don’t see that recriminations are where we need to be directing our energy at the moment. Considering that what’s done is done” —He meets Quackity’s gaze as steadily as he can, meets his gaze and brings all the weight of their history to bear, from the debate floor to the podium and the stage to the dark caverns of the rebellion— “and going through all of the ways that everyone in this room has fucked everyone else over hardly seems like the best use of our time.”

He knows the statement won’t land like it should. He knows that he of all people has no right to ask for this. But the longer he stands here, the more aware he is of all the bad blood in this room, the more aware he is that this particular group of people is like a powder keg set to explode, that they could all turn on each other and do Dream’s job for him at a poorly placed jab or threat. The air is thick with the complicated web that binds them all.

(betrayals and lives taken and homes destroyed and even the bedrock of a once stable foundation shaken and torn up)

“Well, that’s kind of a convenient stance to take,” Quackity shoots back, and it’s precisely the response he expected “considering what you did.”

“I’m aware,” he says, drowning out the way that Tommy audibly starts to protest. “I think my point still stands, though. Unless you really think now is the time to air out everyone’s dirty laundry. I’m sure Dream would find it entertaining, at least.”

(the words taste like ash and he feels like a hypocrite but he can’t let them see how off balance he is can’t let them know because a leader is needed and he could step aside and let someone else take the position but that has always been a weakness of his, his need for control, so even when the control is slipping he grasps it with both hands and hangs on to it with all his worth whether it’s wise or not because someone needs to lead and he does not trust himself but he trusts others even less and he has always been one to take on the responsibility even when he ought not to even when)

Quackity breathes in and out, eyes narrow.

“Alright,” he says. “No, you’re right.” He steps up to the table as well, pulling out a chair for himself, though he doesn’t yet sit. He also, Wilbur notes, does not apologize to Sam, but that’s not a requirement, even though the way Puffy is glaring suggests that she would like it to be.

“Wait,” someone says, and Wilbur starts, looking to—George, and how did he not realize George was here, too? Perhaps because he’s been quiet. Quieter than the norm, though he can’t say that he’s ever known George all that well. Or perhaps it’s just a surprise to see him around. “Is he in charge?” George continues. “Why is he in charge?” He sounds genuinely confused more than upset, but he still feels his hackles raise.

(he is placing himself in this position and it feels natural and right and feels wrong and unsteady like his footing is slipping like he’s on the edge of the cliff face and below the rockslide is starting but he can do this, he can, he can lead this, it’s just one meeting and he can do it because if not him then who else will and he can do it)

“I’m not ‘in charge,’” he

(lies? he doesn’t know doesn’t know)

says. “I’m just trying to get a meeting started. We’re all here, aren’t we?”

“Everyone we were able to find is in this room,” Eret says softly, and then, to everyone else. “And I agree with Wilbur. We need to plan out our next move. And seeing as a meeting table has been provided—” They gesture, rather pointedly, and Puffy is the first to nod, pulling out a seat and all but collapsing into it, running a hand through her hair. Sam is next, and then Tommy and Tubbo enter fully, situating themselves directly to his right. Phil is the next to approach, followed by Techno and Ranboo, and he does not miss the way Quackity’s eyes track Techno’s movements.

Before long, it’s just him and Quackity standing. A concession might be needed here, or at least, a show of one; he doesn’t actually want to cause too much conflict with the man, if it can be avoided, not right this second, so he tilts his head slightly and sits in a chair of his own, though carefully, so as not to slump into it. Sitting seems to make him realize just how tired he still is, and the urge to let himself sag is strong. But the ploy works; Quackity seats himself, Sapnap on one side and George on the other, and really, this has to be one of the strangest collections of allies to have ever existed.

It reminds him of the final days of the rebellion, a little bit. The way that so many flocked to their banner to depose Schlatt. It’s difficult to look back on, but that aspect of it, at least, is not entirely tainted. There was a sense of camaraderie among them that is not quite present here, but he doesn’t miss it for himself; in those days, too, he held himself apart, struggling to resolve himself to what he was going to do, knowing too well that the traitor they all feared existed was him.

But there’s people here who weren’t here then. And people here then who are missing now.

“Who couldn’t be found?” he asks, and it is Puffy who answers first.

“Niki,” she says, and his heart skips several beats, unprepared for that answer, though its truth is undeniable. “I tried, but we only had so much time, and I have no idea where she’s been staying these days. There also wasn’t time to get to Foolish, but he lives a long way out, so he’s probably fine.”

It is a struggle not to react outwardly. Niki. He hadn’t even thought to—

No. Now isn’t the time.

(even though he wronged her, too, wronged her as he wronged everyone else and she deserved so much better than what he could give her and she is a dear friend so dear that even Ghostbur always remembered her but it seems that in the midst of everything else he might have failed her again and she deserves a thousand apologies and all the atonement he can offer but now he may never get that chance, may never and now is not the time to focus on it but oh gods Niki)

“Jack Manifold, too,” Tubbo chimes in. “He was staying in Snowchester, but I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Karl’s gone,” Quackity says. “But he does that a lot, so that might not necessarily mean anything.” His voice is too strained to be causal, and Wilbur has to make an effort not to react to that, too, though for an entirely different reason. He’s not sure how much Quackity knows. Not sure how much he should say, if anything at all.

(but he has seen Karl bargain with a god has seen the universe cling to him has seen the way he sidesteps in and out of reality and through time to the places inbetween and he would not have thought it of Karl of all people but perhaps that is the point)

“Hannah,” Sam offers, and nothing else. It’s not a name he knows.

“That might be everybody, though,” Sapnap says. “Alyssa and Callahan are long gone, and people like Vikkstar and Lazar haven’t been around for a while, now. Or, wait, actually, I have no idea where Hbomb is.”

“And there’s Purpled, too,” George says around a yawn. “No clue what he’s been up to these days, but he was always pretty close to Punz.”

“Oh, yeah, and the vines were all over his UFO,” Puffy agrees. “Um, and we might want to add Skeppy onto that. I have no clue where he is, but I’d be surprised if he weren’t Team Egg, since Bad is.”

There is a moment of silence.

“Is that actually everybody, then?” George says. “That’s more people than I thought.”

“It could be worse,” Phil says. His head is tilted back, eyes tracing the ceiling, though Wilbur knows him better than to think he’s actually relaxed. “We know about Dream, and BadBoyHalo, Antfrost, Ponk, and Punz. It’s a maybe on Niki, Jack Manifold, Hbomb, Skeppy, Karl—”

“Not Karl,” Quackity insists, and Wilbur is inclined to agree with that much, at least, even while Phil presses on.

“—Purpled, and—Hannah, did you say? And possibly Foolish, since we don’t know, but I’m inclined to agree with Puffy that he’s probably alright. So absolute worst-case scenario, that’s twelve, maybe thirteen people we’re up against. Pretty even odds.”

Phil’s definition of even odds, he thinks, is slightly skewed.

“Yeah, except you’re forgetting that the Egg is a demon. Dreamon, whatever. And Dream is also a demon, kind of,” Sapnap says. “That doesn’t sound even to me.”

“He’s still homeless,” Techno murmurs.

“The fuck does it matter if he’s homeless?” Quackity snaps, and then visibly quails when Technoblade looks at him, even though it’s also obvious that he’s trying not to. History there that he’s not privy to, perhaps, and he’s hardly going to bring it up right now.

“Well, I mean, we’ve already—” Fundy tries to speak up, but he’s drowned out by about four other people trying to weigh in on whether Dream’s homelessness has any bearing on the conversation, and Wilbur takes a second to frown at Techno for the hornet’s nest he’s kicked up, and by that time, Puffy’s speaking again.

(it’s fine, it’s still under control, he has this under control, it’s fine, and so what if he’s running on too few hours of sleep and so what if he wants to set his head down on the table and stay there, because he’s not about to actually do that, and it’s fine, he’s fine, it’s all fine)

“What about you guys?” she says, and everyone else falls quieter. “You were looking for dreamon-related stuff, right? Did you find anything? Honestly, we weren’t sure that you guys would be back this soon.”

“Is that where you went?” Schlatt asks. “How the fuck did that lead to you antagonizing a god?”

He ignores him, still. It’s the only option, really. “We went through as many of the stronghold’s” —There are several exclamations at that, at the fact that they know where one of the server’s strongholds is, as well as a sigh from Phil, no doubt an objection to spreading that tidbit around, but he continues— “books as we could, but we didn’t find anything. I did attempt to provoke a god into helping us, so we’ll see if that pans out at all, but I wouldn’t call it a wasted trip. I also managed to confirm for sure that the Egg is a dreamon, but I think we pretty much knew that.”

There is another moment of complete silence.

“I’m sorry, you did what now?” Quackity asks, and from where he’s drifting behind him, Schlatt starts cackling, loud and extremely irritating, a wheezy undertone to it that makes no sense considering that he does not need to breathe.

“I attempted to provoke a god into helping us,” he repeats. “I’m not sure whether I succeeded or not—in the helping area, at least. They were very provoked. But—” He pauses, considering. It’s always a tricky game, figuring out what to say and what to keep close to the chest, but this case is harder than most. “Actually, Sapnap and George, I’d like to ask, were you aware that Dream is a god? Or was a god?”

He is predicting the chaos that erupts after that, all exclamations and incoherent sounds, most of them some variation on either “What?” or “Fuck!” or some combination of both. But he keeps his gaze flickering between George and Sapnap, measuring their reactions. George’s face goes blank—shock, he thinks, rather than the expression of someone being caught out. And Sapnap’s jaw drops slightly.

“Dream’s not a god,” he says, and his voice overrides everyone else’s. “Dream’s not—there’s no way he could’ve kept that from us. Absolutely no way.”

“He’s not now,” he agrees. “He separated himself from the vast majority of his power, somehow, when he realized he’d be corrupted by the remnants of the dreamon. But he was one. I’m sure of that much. He may have hidden it from you, but I am certain of it.”

Sapnap’s face reddens.

“Aw, I think you hurt his feelings, Wilbur,” Schlatt says.

“Dream’s not a god,” Sapnap says again. “He’s not.”

“Even if he is, what does it matter?” Fundy says suddenly. “Especially if he’s not one now. It’s the dreamons that we have to deal with. The Egg, and whatever’s left in Dream. So if we don’t have anything that can take care of that, then what the fuck is all of this for? We have nothing.”

“Weird time for the kid to grow a spine,” Schlatt comments, and he’s ignoring him, he’s ignoring him, even though the vitriol in his son’s voice hits like a knife driven through stitches, back into a wound not yet healed. Fundy’s not looking at him, and the avoidance only makes it worse.

(it is directed at you it has to be it has to be that it is directed at you and it hurts hurts hurts and there is no one to blame but yourself and it hurts and you’re so tired and you have to stay in control but it hurts)

A hand touches his. He glances down to find that he’s clenched them, that his knuckles are white and his palms are stinging from the bite of his fingernails in his flesh, and Tommy has placed his hand on his, watching him. It is an effort to relax even a little bit, but for Tommy’s sake, he manages it.

Tubbo clears his throat. “What Fundy is getting at, I think, is that even with the stuff that me and Fundy have, it won’t be enough to kill them. Maybe we could banish the Egg, but apparently the exorcism we used on Dream wasn’t entirely effective, so we can’t be sure of that much. So maybe we’re not quite at square one, still, but we haven’t gotten that far. And if we can’t beat the dreamons, we can’t beat the Egg. Since the Egg is a dreamon.” He shrugs. “We’ve managed to keep it out. And as long as none of us break the enchantments from the inside, we should be fine to hold out here. But in the way of attacks, we don’t have much.”

“Great,” Quackity says. “So where the fuck does that leave us, then?”

He narrows his eyes at the table, attempting to collect his thoughts, and then looks back up. “I think we’re getting a bit off track,” he says. “Sam, is there anything that you can remember from the moment that Dream broke out that you think might be relevant?”

He tries to keep his voice, if not gentle, then at least free of blame, perhaps because he sees what Quackity apparently doesn’t; there is nothing he could say that would assign more fault than Sam has already assigned to himself. His eyes are dark, shadowed, and what skin is visible above the lines of his mask is pale and gaunt. It’s only been two days, little though that seems possible, but Sam appears as though he hasn’t eaten or slept for a week. Frankly, Wilbur hopes that he’s not planning to join in the fight that is sure to be on the horizon; he hardly looks as if he could effectively wield a sword. He is a far cry from the confident, stoic warden he met in the prison a few weeks ago.

“I don’t know,” Sam says, voice half a moan. “I think—I didn’t go in his cell. I know that for sure. I’d have no reason to. I didn’t go in, and the lava wasn’t lowered, so somehow, he escaped despite that. Which doesn’t make any sense, since the prison was designed to cut people off from any extraneous powers that they might otherwise have access to, and that includes admin abilities.” He stops for a second. The table has fallen silent again, though this time, there is a certain anticipation to it, a horror. Even Quackity looks considering rather than outraged. “I didn’t see him coming. He stabbed right through my armor. And I don’t—maybe it’s related to the demon thing. Or maybe—Wilbur, you said he was a god?”

His voice rises in pitch on the last sentence, cracks a bit on the last word, and Wilbur is suddenly reminded that Sam, like Sapnap and George, has known Dream for a very long time. Known Dream for a very long time and somehow, not known this.

“He was,” he says. “I don’t know how much of that power he still has. Not much, I’d imagine, but in combination with demonic corruption, perhaps that doesn’t matter. And in any case, it’s not something you would have known to plan for.”

“Wait,” Schlatt says, “is that why he could see me? Wilbur, what does it mean that he could see me? Does that mean something?”

He blinks. That—might actually be a good point. One that he hasn’t thought about in some time, though where he fits that into the mess of puzzle pieces spread out before him, he has no idea.

“So we’re back to square one there as well,” Phil says.

“Then I’ll reiterate, where the fuck does this leave us?” Quackity says. “We’ve been doing a whole lot of talking here, but not a whole lot of actual planning. Does anybody actually have an idea of what to do, or are we going around in circles?”

“I don’t see you offering much of anything either,” Eret points out.

“Yeah, ‘cause I don’t know what the fuck is happening!” Quackity shoots back. “At least I can admit that instead of yanking everyone around pretending like I know what I’m doing!”

That is a barb, probably, but Quackity isn’t even looking at him, is glaring at Eret, and this is about to erupt into another argument, and he thinks he’s going to allow it to, because even laying out all the information available to them isn’t getting them anywhere, and even if he had the ability to impose control over the room, there is still a part of him that whispers, that cries out that he does not have the right, and any moment now they will decide that punishing him for his crimes should be higher on the list of priorities, especially if he tries to step back into his old role, and—he’s not nearly as over this as he hoped he was, is he?

(he forgot how to trust a long time ago and perhaps these fears are baseless but that makes them no less potent and he forgot how to trust a long time ago he cannot trust them he cannot and he holds none of his former power not even that which was rightfully his he holds none of it and he cannot trust)

(he can control this he can lead but)

(but he)

(he’s supposed to be)

(a question, one that you do not want to confront: were you ever in control?)

So he lets them. He lets them talk over each other. Even Tommy joins in after a moment, after a sideways glance and another squeeze of his hand, and he can’t even pay attention to what everyone is saying.

It is difficult to keep his shoulders erect. There is a weight trying to bring his head down to his chest. It’s just an argument, and he can hardly expect anything less from these people, so bitter have the tides of history turned between them all, but it feels like a failure on his part, and his thoughts are fracturing again, flying beyond his grasp.

“Wil,” Phil murmurs next to him, but he just shakes his head.

“Yeah, this is going great,” Schlatt says. “Good job with the meeting. Y’know, when I was in charge, I didn’t let any of this happen. I ruled with an iron first. People listened to me. They respected me.”

“And then you died in a drug van,” he says, “from a heart attack, surrounded by people who hated you.”

This gets him an extraordinarily strange glance from Phil, but no one else is paying attention. He can’t keep track of who is snapping at who, but they’re all snapping at each other. In a way, Schlatt is right; the peace lasted, what, ten minutes at most?

Schlatt is silent.

Fundy is looking at him, too. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t want to read the expression on his face. He doesn’t want—

“Wait,” Schlatt says suddenly, “wait, fuck, do you feel that?” He sounds genuinely alarmed, for once, and after a second, Wilbur feels it too, feels

(the air in the room alight and alive and their voices waver in and out of tune with the underlying melody and the regard lies heavily on them all and the universe is always there is always with you in the back of your mind but it is leaning in closer leaning in over your shoulder and you feel)

the way the atmosphere shifts. His ears fill with white noise. Everyone is still arguing, and they need to stop, but he can’t force the words out. Beside him, Phil jolts. Tommy grips his hand tighter. He doesn’t know if they’re saying anything, can’t hear anything past the ringing.

(a realization, dim and far too late: he really should have tried to get some more sleep)

Schlatt curses. He can hear that, for some reason, loud and clear. And then, he becomes aware of the tether again, aware that the tether is being pulled, is being yanked on, a burst of energy departing from him, energy that he’s fairly sure he might not actually have to give, and—

“Hey, could you all just shut up for two fucking seconds?” Schlatt says, voice almost causal, strong, no longer echoing, and the static clears from his mind and ears, and the room is once again quiet. His hands have begun to shake, and the tether is pulling on his heart, he thinks. He doesn’t have to turn to know that Schlatt stands behind his chair, solid as anything.

His heart is literally fluttering. That might not be good.

“What,” Quackity says, “the fuck.”

And he doesn’t say anything else. Because the god appears, then, hovering over the meeting table, cloak fluttering without wind, twin halos circling their head, and it’s interesting, that he can see those now without straining his mind. The space under their hood no longer appears full of shadows, but rather of the universe itself, a darkness that is not empty, starstuff swirling just out of view.

“Oh, shit, that actually is a god,” Schlatt mutters.

He hears the humming. It bolsters him, a bit, boosts his flagging strength. He takes in a deep breath, and his heart calms, steadies.

He focuses.

“Is hovering over tables the only way you know how to make an entrance?” he asks.

The god’s hood swings his way.

“I asked the universe,” they say. “The universe did not refuse.”

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” Quackity is muttering under his breath. Eret is staring, jaw slack. Puffy has grabbed onto Sam’s arm. The reactions on his side of the table are less pronounced; Phil and Ranboo have seen the god before, Techno is not one to be impressed without what he considers due reason, and Tommy refuses to be cowed on general principle, though he does hear him and Tubbo both let out a, “Holy shit,” under their breaths, almost in unison.

But Sapnap has risen to his feet, eyes wide.

And George says, “Dream?” His voice does not waver. He sounds curious, confused. Perhaps hopeful.

The god actually seems to still, the motion of their cloak dying down as they turn away from Wilbur and toward the other side of the table.

“Once,” they say, and Wilbur is surprised that they’re answering at all, to be honest. “No longer.” They pause. “He loved you. May yet still, under the corruption that has taken him. I am sorry.”

The god does not know human emotions. The god is not a person in their own right, not really; they are built of the power of a god and little else. But somehow, Wilbur almost believes that they mean it.

Sapnap makes a gasping sound, like air tried to escape his lungs but got caught in his throat. George has sat up straighter in his seat, his whole body leaning toward where the god is hovering. His hands rest on the table, palms facing upward, as if in invitation.

If it is one, the god does not take it.

(DreamXD, Karl called the god, DreamXD, Dream XD, Dream Xed, Dream crossed out, Dream but not, and perhaps this is the cruelest thing he could have done to these two, inviting a facsimile of their friend to hover in front of them, a reminder of what they lost and are not likely to ever have again, because this god could never hope to replace the man that Wilbur remembers from the beginning, the Dream that used to be and will likely never be again)

“I asked the universe,” the god says again, and turns back toward him. “The universe did not refuse. The universe sees you, and the universe would reply.” They pause, allowing that declaration to simmer in the air for a moment. Their voice echoes, and he can hear in that echo the overlay of the song, the tune, the notes that the stars hum reverberating in the world’s atoms. “If I alone were strong enough to exorcise this corruption, he would have done so when we were whole. But you have met with the universe, and the universe would aid me, so that I might aid you.”

His attention is fixed on them. But in his peripheral vision, he sees Sapnap slump back into his seat, face contorted.

(yes, this is the cruelest thing he could have done, bringing their dearest friend’s mirror reflection here)

“And what—” He stops. Wets his lips. His mouth is dry. “And what aid would that be?”

The folds of their cloak stir. A hand emerges, and the hand, too, is darkness-that-is-the-universe, and it is not connected to any arm that he can see. Their fingers splay wide, and then dropping from the air and onto the table, there are two swords. On first glance, they seem to have been forged from diamonds, sparkling blue in the throne room’s flickering firelight, but there are runes crawling up and down the blades and hilts, runes that seem to squirm and dance and shift.

And the runes are lit with starlight. He’s not sure that anyone else can see it. But he knows.

(the runes hum)

“The void is not so easily subsumed,” the god says, “and it is from the void that the corruption comes. But the void is part of the universe even as it exists outside of the universe. Corruption can be destroyed.” The hand gestures to the swords, now lying beneath them on the table. “With great effort, but the universe has joined me in it. These are the result.”

“I’ve never seen runes like those before,” Tubbo breathes, eyes wide. He leans forward, apparently overcoming his wariness. “These can—these can kill a dreamon? Like, actually?”

“The blow must be lethal,” the god says. “But the corruption can be destroyed. You asked me for help. This is all I can offer you.”

“It’s far better than nothing,” he says, and pauses, just to hear the hum, now coming from multiple sources, the swords and the god alike. “Thank you.”

“Do not fail,” the god says, and under any other circumstance, Wilbur might laugh at the words, so stereotypical, like something out of a television show. Do not fail. As if he plans to, as if he would without this prompting. “Do not allow this to be in vain.”

The world folds around them. The air compresses. Just as they appeared, they are vanish again, the only sign of their presence the swords that still glimmer before them all. The atmosphere lightens, the sensation of being watched easing away, like storm clouds dissipating. The god is truly gone, then, and staring at the blades, he’s not sure what to feel. He supposes that he hoped for more, somehow, hoped that the god would have the power to solve the issue for them, that if he could just persuade them to act then their troubles would go away. But it makes sense that they can’t; if the god’s power were enough to destroy a dreamon, then Dream wouldn’t have been possessed in the first place, and none of this would be happening at all.

This is the second best thing. The universe itself has interceded.

(and it’s such a strange thought is something that he never would have thought plausible because the universe does not interfere the universe watches and waits but he has been there in the cradle of the cosmos and felt them watching heard them whisper the stars and the space between and they watch but they watch with love and the universe has not fixed their problems has not made them magically disappear but it has given the means to do it themselves and upon further reflection that is like the universe that is very like the universe and perhaps what it has given them is hope)

“Well, that was enlightnin’,” Techno drawls. “So glad we got all of that cleared up. Can I have one of those fancy swords, or do we need to have a whole argument about this, too?”

“Why the fuck are you being so calm about this?” Quackity says. “Why the fuck—what the fuck even was—and you!” He stands, the motion quick and sharp, and he throws an accusing finger in his—no, in Schlatt’s direction, because the god is gone and he can feel his heart fluttering again, his energy tugged away from him at a rate that should perhaps be considered alarming, and he can sense Schlatt’s presence behind him, solid and breathing. “How are you here, you’re dead, you are so fucking dead, I ate your fucking heart that’s how dead you are, I literally own your, your leg bones, I have your femurs, how are you here, and can you just die again, right now?”

“Aw, did you miss me, honey bear?” Schlatt says.

“No, I hate your fucking guts, I hate you so fucking much, you are—” And he keeps going, and Sapnap has shaken himself out of his stupor enough to glare daggers at—shit, at his fiance’s ex-husband, and that’s a bit messy, isn’t it? And absolutely no one at the table appears pleased that Schlatt is here, even though several people seem to be too focused on absorbing what’s just happened with the literal god to be too concerned at the sudden reappearance of a former dictator, but Quackity continues and Schlatt eggs him on, and Tubbo is a few seats down, swiveled in his chair and staring at Schlatt with an expression that’s impossible to determine

(but that he doesn’t like, doesn’t like the mix of hope and fear and want and disgust, doesn’t like it at all)

and it’s all too much, and his chest hurts. Like it’s too tight. Like his lungs aren’t inflating.

(Schlatt died of a heart attack hated and alone even surrounded as he was he was alone and he died of a heart attack of a)

He glances around the table one last time, hoping for some indication that somebody, anybody, wants this conversation to get back on track. Instead, his gaze lands on Fundy, who is watching Schlatt with shock and open anticipation but very little anger, and somehow, that is what does it, what sends everything boiling over, the fact that his son is looking at Schlatt with a more welcoming expression than he greeted him with.

(and he deserves it he deserves it he knows but)

He never had control here. He has to face that.

He yanks at the tether, pulls with what little strength he has left, and the flow of energy halts, and Schlatt goes translucent mid-sentence.

“Just to be transparent, the bastard’s always around,” he says into the silence, rising from his seat, blinking black spots from his vision. His own voice sounds distant, but clear, at least. “But he literally has to draw from my lifeforce to do that, so that’s enough for now, I think. Please direct your complaints to the empty air rather than me, as I have very little say in where he decides to go poking around, and I probably agree with all of your objections to his general everything in any case.” He leans against the table, and tries not to make it obvious that that’s what’s keeping him upright. “I suggest we conclude our discussion for now, and come back in a few hours to actually formulate a plan based on our new resources.”

He gives it a second, but only waits for one person—Puffy, he thinks, though his vision is swimming—to nod, hesitantly, before turning on his heel and leaving the room. Going anywhere. Anywhere else.

(you lost control of them and you’re losing control of yourself and how long until you have to admit that you never had control in the first place that you claim to be better but don’t even know what that means that the paint really is scraping off and once it’s all gone there will be no more lying to yourself and then where will you be, Wilbur, where will you be)

No one stops him. A few people call out. Schlatt—sounding irritated, but that’s tough; he’s going to have to deal with it—and Tommy, and Phil.

He took a few minutes before the meeting began. To compose himself, to relax. That didn’t work, so he’ll take a few hours. And then get back to it. There’s no choice otherwise, after all. No real rest until this nightmare is over with, whenever that may be.

He ignores the voice that whispers that he’s not going to make it that far. He’s pushed through times like this before.

He can do it again.

16 notes · View notes

pagesoflauren · 3 years

Text

Henry Cavill Vampire Anthology: Memories Bring Back Memories...

darkish!vampire!Napoleon Solo x reader

Warnings: not-fully-fleshed-out vampire lore, vampire-typical violence, angst, pseudo-blackmailing, mentions of trauma/parental neglect

A/N: So, played around with an idea and based it on this creepypasta. I had also read a fic with this idea with Harry Styles, but I can’t find it anymore. I hope y’all enjoy this 🤞🏽

Your eyes sting when you first open them, the sight of the bright hospital lights making your pupils constrict painfully.

You’re connected to various machines through tubes attached to your arms. You can hear the steady rhythm on the heart rate monitor grow increasingly faster as you fail to get your bearings.

Somewhere in your subconscious you know you shouldn’t move so violently, but you do. Your arms thrash and tug at wires, causing the wheels on the machines to roll across the tile floor.

Cool hands press against your hot skin. Your muscles move to cringe away from the shock until you look into the face of the person.

It’s a man; a beautiful stranger with blue eyes and perfect features.

You must be dead.

“Relax, darling,” he soothes you, the prosody of his voice a little sing-songy compared to others you’ve spoken to. You don’t know anyone who speaks the way he does.

“Who are you?”

He looks so pained, his eyebrows coming together and moving upwards. His eyes drift down for a moment as he appears to collect his thoughts before meeting yours again. He runs his knuckles against your cheek. His touch is so unfamiliar that you lean away from it, though he acts as if he’s done this a million times before.

“You’ll remember soon.”

A lie, but you don’t need to know that.

“I’ll get the nurse.”

He reaches over to the space next to your head. The button clicks when he presses it and a white light above it turns on.

He takes in the wild look in your eyes as you take in your surroundings, looking at spots behind him before scanning the rest of the room. Your breathing slows, as shown by your chest slowing but also by the audible sound of your lungs shrinking as your ribs close around them.

He finds such beauty in the way your body moves in sync, how your heartbeat also loses speed. Your body temperature goes down, some of your warmth disappearing from him.

You’re quite perfect, aren’t you?

Though, he made you this way.

You foolishly let your guard down while walking home and unfortunately crossed paths with him on the verge of a literal mental breakdown.

Mortals use that term to describe when they’re under excessive amounts of stress and lose all sensibility.

His kind uses it when their minds follow their bodies: dead. When their brains lose their mental vigor, they turn to humans to fulfill their needs.

Most people don’t survive an attack from those like him. They are drained of their very essence. Everything that made them who they are, the experiences that shaped their beliefs, the emotions that arise when they navigate the world… is all stolen away in a few moments with a bite at the back of the neck.

Others, like you, come out in better shape. A little disoriented, more recent memories lost but still many intact ones. Enough to allow you to still function, only less effectively than before.

You were an easy target. Napoleon was ready to empty your little head and leave you a slump on the street. But your memories intrigued him.

Your mother. Your father. A second man he can assume is a step-father. An empty road at night illuminated by passing headlights. Dingy living in the city you’re currently in, riddled with rats and flies. Tables filled with food while your stomach grumbled, seedy customers that grabbed your retracting hands, shady characters you pass on the way back home from work.

Napoleon knows that life. On the run in strange cities, sneaking around, avoiding an entire task force created especially for him. He knows women. He’s certain he’s met every single type of them in the long time he’s been alive and has been around long enough to have met each type twice.

There’s one type of woman he actively tries to avoid, though. The type of woman that led to his heart shattered on the floor when it was still beating: the ones who need him; the helpless kind.

That’s exactly what you were. It was clear there were things you were ready to forget. You needed a clean slate. He could help you rebuild your mental health, give you beautiful memories to hold on to.

You needed him.

The nurses were saying you had a case of memory loss from when you fell and hit your head, but your boyfriend was there to take care of you. He had all the paperwork filled out because he was the one that took you to the hospital three days ago.

You were knocked out for three days.

It overwhelmed you, but they reassured you he was your emergency contact.

As such, after all the tests and brain scans, you were given into his care. His embrace felt foreign, but you didn’t protest when he insisted you take his hand as you walked to his car together.

You twiddled your thumbs as he drove through a city you swore you have never seen before. You have an overwhelming sense of deja vu, something that rings a faint bell when you see a certain street corner or the unlit neon sign of a restaurant. It sounds when you pass a dilapidated apartment building with chipping paint and a rusty fire escape. You can conjure an image of what a unit inside would look like, hear the creaks of the floor, or the failing stovetop as you try to boil water.

His house is out of the city, on a quiet street straight out of a magazine. The inside is neat and it almost puts you off. You don’t feel at home here.

“How are you feeling, darling? You need a rest?”

“I think so. I-I don’t remember anything, it’s a lot to be in here.”

A gentle hand lays on your shoulder, turning you to a corridor. “Last door on the right. I’ll make you some tea.”

Tea? Do you like tea? You can’t remember…

You’re startled by the light tap on your bottom that makes you stumble forward. When you look back at him, he’s heading towards the kitchen.

The bedroom is fairly simple, with blue checkered covers you could expect from a man your boyfriend’s age.

Taking a look around, you find your makeup on a vanity by the window. There are two sets of drawers and you assume the one next to the vanity is yours.

Sirens are going off in your head now. There are no bells of recollection.

You go into the bathroom, sliding the glass door of the shower cubicle open.

It was the nicest shower you had ever seen, with a dark blue backsplash and five different showerheads. On the floor, you find products that are far out of your budget. They were the luxury items you saw in the drugstore that you would only hope to afford one day.

You pick up the bottle of shampoo. It’s heavier than you expect, brand new.

“Darling?” his voice calls into the bedroom. You hear the teacup rattle on a saucer as his footsteps draw closer. “Ah, there you are.”

You put the bottle down and turn to face him. His large frame fills the doorframe as he leans against it, the cup and saucer looking so delicate in his large hand.

“Why can’t I remember anything?” It comes out as a whine, but you can’t hold in your frustration. Surely, you’d have some memory of this.

“You fell pretty hard, darling. I was very distressed,” he explains, placing your drink on the counter next to the sink.

“But I really don’t remember anything. This house, the bedroom, the shower...I don’t even remember you…or what I called you.”

“Napoleon,” he supplies. “You always called me by my first name.”

You didn’t know his name until now. All the other women he’s known called him by other names, aliases. His name is reserved for his mother.

And now you.

“It’s so much, Napoleon.” He sees panic return to your eyes. It’s the same look you had when he grabbed you on the street. You clutched at the arm that constricted around your neck, breathing weak utterances of “please” over and over again.

“Maybe...maybe I could go somewhere, just for a few days. And if I rest, just, outside of here, I’ll have a clear mind and can remember…”

He looks down and sighs. He pushes off the doorframe and takes short, careful steps toward you.

“Darling, I hate to tell you this,” he begins, tucking your hair behind your ears. His palms cradle your jaw, tilting your head back so you can look up at him. “But your memories won’t come back.”

You blink rapidly in disbelief, shaking your head as much as you can. “But...but the nurses said--”

“The nurses don’t know what they were talking about,” he says gently.

You say nothing, staring into his beautiful face, searching for answers.

“You won’t get your memories back because I have them.”

“What does that mean?”

“Does your neck hurt?”

Icy fingers touch the back of your neck, a jolt of pain shooting down your spine and your knees buckle. You clutch at his shirt to keep yourself standing.

“Ah, it does.” He smiles, prominent pointed teeth glinting in the bathroom light. “Because that’s where I bit you. And I have all your memories, darling. Apart from the few that are still bouncing around that pretty head of yours.”

You push him away as best you can, which isn’t very much, and back away. The glass door rattles as you come in contact with it, trying to create more space between your bodies.

“You...you can’t be--that can’t be true. That’s impossible.”

A bite on your neck? Something you’ll never get back?

Vampires feed on blood, not memories…

“You came to this city to escape your broken family. Your father abandoned you. Your step-father didn’t care for you. Your mother was so blinded by love to see how you were neglected.”

The bells again. Bells are better than sirens, but not this time.

“No.” You refuse to listen.

“I’m here to keep you safe. You need someone to keep you safe. And you need someone to rebuild that little memory of yours.”

The gears click in your head. You have happy memories of you and your mom. No man was there. He could be lying.

But how could you know with certainty?

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

“I don’t know, darling,” he says, stepping towards you again. He leans down, pressing his nose to yours in an Eskimo kiss. “Guess you’ll just have to stick around and find out.”

Permatag: @caffiend-queen @fckdeusername @lou-la-lou @bangtan-serendipity @stargazingfangirl18 @lovemarvelousfics @rainbowkisses31 @richonne4life @damnndeanndamnn @meetmeatyourworst @tinyplanet-explorer @vivien-1211 @unknownmystery22 @nerdygirl8203 @xoxabs88xox @mariaenchanted @gotnofucks

HCVA Tag: @october505

Peeps I hope are interested: @searchforanotherway @threeminutesoflife @sapphirescrolls

#henry cavill #henry cavill au #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x you #napoleon solo #napoleon solo x reader #napoleon solo x you #napoleon solo au #The Man from UNCLE AU #The Man from UNCLE fic #The Man from UNCLE #The Man from UNCLE (2015)#tmfu fic #tmfu fanfic #Henry Cavill Vampire Anthology #ficsofpagesoflauren

78 notes · View notes

leomitchellart · 4 years

Text

So… about this latest Inktober controversy….

Time to begrudgingly chuck in my two penneth… (Remeber you can always press “J” to skip this post altogether)

As most of you may or may not know, Alphonso Dunn released a Youtube video wherein he publicly accused Jake Parker, and creator of the Inktober challenge, of plagiarising his book. Both of these men are public figures, artists specialising in pen & ink. In the video Dunn looks at the preview pages and flip through footage of Parker’s “Inktober All Year Round” and says they draw many similarities in the illustrations, language and layout that he used in his own book, “Pen & Ink Drawing”. Parker’s book was set to this month. Hense why Dunn only used footage and not a physical copy.

Since the video’s release, the art community has been very spilt down the middle. The book’s publisher has halted the launch of Parker’s book until the matter can be investigated. Even DeviantArt cancelled their own Inktober event thing (I’ll admit I don’t keep up with these things DA keeps doing). Parker has since released a statement in the matter. Now it’s up to the courts to decide what’s happening next. The video itself is an hour long, but it’s crucial to see it yourself.

People are, understandably, outraged after seeing it. This seems like a shitty thing to rip-off Dunn - not to mention stupid. Since Dunn is the more popular pen & ink artist with more social media followers and name recognition. Many have called to boycott inktober and condemn Parker. I’ll admit, I was right alongside them at first, at least for feeling outraged. The similarities are there. But if YMS’s Kimba video has taught me anything, it’s that, even if an accusation of plagiarism may be obvious at a cursory glance, sometimes it’s important to take a more critical eye and do more research to learn that things aren’t as cut and dry as they first seem. If there’s a lesson I can take away from the internet as a whole, it’s that no one thinks about the consequences of mob mentality.

The most common defence of Parker is that because they’re both books about pen and ink drawing, then they’re inevitably going to be similar. I’ll admit that, when you pick-up so many art books, a lot of them will cover the same basic grounds of materials, tutorials, strokes, techniques etc. The parts about rendering textures on spheres and cubes isnt new. Look up “texture study” and you’ll see so many examples of artists rendering these kinds of things digitally. I’ve also noticed a common theme of people more formally educated in art pointing out how none of these are original. Everything down to the steps and illustrations are things they’ve learned from years ago. Since I'm a pen & ink artist, inspired by my love of comics, I have quite a few books about inking: Dunn’s included. I own both his books and still highly recommend them. I didn't even preorder Parker’s book. Ironically because I didn't think it could offer anything new that my other books hadn’t already.

While Ethan Becker took the time to cross-examine Dunn and Parker’s books with several others, there weren’t many of the ones I actually owned. So I looked to my shelves to see what I could find. Books like:

“The Art of Comic Book Inking” by Gary Martin & Steve Rude

“How Comics Work” by Dave Gibbons & Tim Pilcher

“The DC Comics guide to Inking Comics” by Klaus Janson

“Making Comics” by Scott McCloud

“Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics”

I’m sure there’s plenty more examples out there. I was planning to go through all of these and take pictures. But ultimately that’s not the core point of these post. Plus it would’ve taken WAY too long and this post itself, is long enough.

Of course, none of the them are 100% close to Dunn’s in the way they’re displayed. Not as close as Parker’s could be considered. That being said, I know Dunn is trying to claim that he invented these techniques. The nucleus of the issue is how similar they are in terms of order and how these pages are displayed. Some I can chock-up to standard practice, while others seem more coincidental.

If there’s one thing I’m adamant about, it’s that I think that Dunn should’ve messaged Parker first before making the accusation public. Some try to dispute that this would've made it easier for Dunn to be “silenced”, whatever that means; but that sounds a bit conspiratorial to me. Ideally, you confront him about it in private, if he makes any threats or blows you off, get your lawyer on the phone and then make the video. Not only is it the more civil thing to do - but it’s the smarter thing to do. This is a serious legal matter, not just internet drama. While I’m sure Dunn had no intention of tearing Parker down or getting a mob onto him, that’s unfortunately what’s happened. A backlash both from the general artisan community and several companies. Wherein it was left to Parker himself to make this an official legal matter. If Parker’s found not guilty, then this could easily leave the gate open for him to sue Dunn for damages, loss of revenue, defamation of character or whatever else, should he see fit. As could the publishers, given how this affected their sales. Companies responded to the accusation of the video alone, before an investigation could be launched. Sure, it wouldn't be “acting the bigger man” but he’d be well within his right to do it. Dunn showed that Jake has mentioned him before, shown admiration for his career and referenced him in other posts. If it comes to light in court, that Dunn is even cited as an inspiration or source in the book itself, then it’s case closed.

Then there’s the other possibility that Parker might not have done this on his own, but that he has a team behind the book. If that’s the case, the most I can accuse Parker of is being a hack. I worry Dunn has kneecapped himself for just how badly he’s handled this situation. Made worse by him not having an actual physical copy to assess and just had footage of preview pages to go on. So far, the circumstances don’t seem on his favour.

I don’t think ill of Dunn. I do think he believes he’s been wronged and no malice in his intentions. I just think he’s made some critical errors on how to handled this. As for Parker himself, I couldn't give a donkey’s doo-dah about him. I’m sure you could accuse me of playing devil’s advocate earlier, but to me, he was the guy who released the annual prompt list. If it really does turn out that he’s a plagiarist and had malicious intent, then fuck ‘im. I never regarded him as an inspiration of mine or paid much attention to him outside of that. It was the community that made Inktober what it is. I’ve never met Parker. Maybe he’s a cool guy? Maybe he’s a bellend? I don’t know.

Granted this isn't the first time Parker has proved himself to be a controversial figure: - Last year people were upset about him trademarking (not copywriting, as many have erroneously claimed) the word “Inktober” and some artists were stopped from selling their related work or zines. Parker would issue a statement: claiming the takedowns were a mistake of “overzealous lawyers” and it’s just a matter of the logo being trademarked. People can sell their Inktober works and even mention they are Inktober-related. Just not use the official logo. On the one hand, from a business standpoint, I get it. It’s the bare minimum you need to do to protect your IP, especially when you have a store. BUT, like most people, I don’t like how, what’s intended as a community challenge, has slowly become more of a brand associated with one man. Hardly a surprise it left a bad taste in so many people’s mouths. But, since it doesn't actually effect anyone’s ability to take part in the challenge, outside of personal principle, I went ahead with it the previous year.

- The year before, when asked if one can do Inktober digitally, Parker said the following:

I know some are still bitter about that, but speaking as someone who inks traditionally and digitally, this came across as needless whinging and blowing things out of proportion. Claiming that Jake had derided digital artists and said they were invalid etc etc. Take it from me, challenging yourself to try out different methods to ink traditionally can greatly improve the work you do digitally. It’s like how learning traditional fundamentals of art can still be applied to digital. Plus he never said “No.” he just gave valid reasons about how it makes it a different experience. That said, if you’re someone who can’t afford any kind of inking equipment or pens and only have a selected application to draw on - then none of this applies to you. Just the aforementioned few who took it upon themselves to get angry over nothing. Recently I’ve heard from subscribers of his newsletter that he’s now embraced the idea of people doing inktober digitally, to the point of selling digital brushes for inktober. I’m sure some will call this “backsliding” or “money grubbing” because people aren’t allowed to change their minds or update their statements.

For weeks I’ve been torn on what to do, not being able to solidify one stance over another. One minute I thought #JusticeForAlphonsoDunn then I wonder “Wait maybe I should look again?” to “But wait, those are way too similar!” Having splinters in my arse from sitting on the fence for so long. The longer this went on, however, I began to realise that I can’t take one stance over another. This case is far too muddy and complicated. I don’t have enough sufficient knowledge or evidence. Nor do any of you. We literally only have Dunn’s video to go on. While it’s a good start, it’s not enough to be taken 100% as gospel when it’s the only thing to hand.

As previously mentioned, a lot of artists have decided to not take part in Inktober at all, or follow different prompt lists. That’s completely fine. A lot of them are based around a specific theme: halloween, kinky stuff, bears, transformers, OCs, Disney or whatever. That has massive appeal. I just can’d do it myself. I prefer the focus on random words, rather than all centred on a single subject; allowing me to be creative with my ideas and execution. I actually did try to make a list of my own random words. Problem is, I worried that because I was choosing my own, I might be subconsciously bias towards certain prompts and not truly challenging myself. Even narrowing down my options was taking too long. In the end…. I’ve decided to just do the official prompts again this year.

For me, that’s what it ultimately came down to. TIME. It’s the middle of September. I can’t afford to wait for the court case to be settled. No other prominent artists I respect have released their own prompt lists. I know there’s been some shitty people who are condemning this choice. Attacking others, accusing them of supporting plagiarism, looking to block anyone who does the official prompts. Even trying to make this a racial issue. Just…. no.

If someone doesn’t want to take part in Inktober, that’s fine. If someone wants to do the official prompts, that’s fine. If someone wants to do their own prompts, that’s fine.

Don’t go around aggressively making snap judgements or accusing people of taking a side. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable. This has been a shit year, let people enjoy something.

If you look at this situation and it makes you feel angry, and you don’t feel comfortable in taking part in a challenge because of it’s creator. I get that, I literally get that. It’s why I haven't done Mermay. And please don’t mention Pinktober, I’m aware of it, but given his insta video on the subject and the things he said, I quickly came to the conclusion that I can’t take this person seriously. I’m sure this might make me seem hypocritical, but how this differs, if only for me, is the sheer amount Inktober means to me. It’s more than a simple challenge. Inktober's the one thing I’ve been most excited about all year. As it was ruined for me in 2019, when I lost my home and I didn't get to complete every prompt. (Long story, I’m okay now). As we all know, 2020, has been an AWFUL year. We’ve got to take whatever joy we can. As I’ve looked longer at the official prompts, I found ideas I’m really excited for.

Once I started to really dedicate myself to it, it became a massive event. I hype myself up as I prepare for the busy month. Buy in supplies, clean the house and workspace, cook and freeze meals in bulk to save time, printing off a sheet that allows me to jot down ideas as I plan ahead. Then once it’s done, after so much work, it makes the reward all the sweeter: Ordering a takeaway, celebrating a great halloween night and still rocking those vibes throughout November. Feeling proud of myself for doing it and seeing myself improve my technique, discipline and earning a few lie-ins to make up for the sleep I lost working. I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas. That said, don’t think that there’s something wrong with you when you understandably can’t dedicate that amount time for a simple art challenge. If anything that’s plenty of reason to why you’re smarter than me. You have a life and don’t push yourself too much.

Now, I need to crack on with the preparations. If you want to boycott Jake Parker, just not buying any of his products should be enough. Doing the inktober challenge doesn't bring attention to him, as I doubt most people even know him as the creator, nor does it even line his pockets. I just hate how cancel culture can do such serious damage like this and then try and put pressure on others to act accordingly without even doing any research themselves.

As long as you’re not harassing anybody. Just do what YOU want to do. That’s fine.

#Inktober #Inktober 2020 #My two penneth #Jake Parker #alphonso dunn

100 notes · View notes

jefpoo421 · 3 years

Text

Character in Review: The Once-ler

The Once-ler from The Lorax movie, especially the young man of a Once-ler which you see in the past scenarios, is really cute and adorable. He wants to earn money, so he departs from his family farm to find materials for his so-called Thneed invention that could do a million uses. After he finds a valley rich of trees, bears, birds, and fish, he can't help but exploit the trees for their tufts, to make his Thneed, despite helpless ranting from the Lorax who speaks for the trees. But after five or so years, all the trees have disappeared and the animals go away, too. So then, up to the end of his days, the Once-ler feels shame in what he has done to the environment and lives as an introverted recluse in his "Lerkim" on top of his abandoned store.

Read on to learn more about this breakout character when the movie first came out in 2012, and even made a fandom of its own.

(repost from a mini-blog)

SHELTER AND TALENT

The Once-ler lives with his family in a white house on a farm, before departing. When he moves to the valley, he sets up a yellow tent that supposedly looks like a tiny cottage. The tent has a green roof, with an outhouse to the right. It has been implied that the Once-ler also likes to eat marshmallows, because you can see him packing in two large bags of marshmallow into his wagon cart. He also knows how to knit, and also to cook and flip pancakes way up high while singing, “Pancake, the pancake,” then manages to pull off many dozens of those pancakes to share to the animals and the Lorax.

PERSONALITY

He is somewhat clumsy, dorky, sympathetic, an average 20-year-old farmer boy. And that voice? It's so cute and dorky. I have quite made impressions of Ed Helms's voice. I even tried to belt out the Once-ler's songs in this voice.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

He has a thin body, babyface, a round button nose, long eyelashes (like Nermal, the annoying kitten from Garfield), some light freckles and black swept-up hair. His attractive, swept to the left hairstyle is perfectly topped with a fedora. But, if you want to draw the Once-ler as faithful as the movie, it's really going to be inconsistent because you can't decide which size and position his nose should be. To get matters straight, his innocent blue eyes make him cute and handsome.

ATTIRE

His three outfits that you see all in the movie are creative; the work outfit, the sleepwear, and his entrepreneur outfit.

Work outfit

When you first see the Once-ler in his past, you see him clad in a fedora, gray vest over a white shirt, striped gray pants and shoes. The white shirt has long sleeves which are rolled up to the middle of his forearm. He also wears green work gloves which the inner and bottom are colored beige. Enough said. But, how do they have striped gray denim pants in the 1970-somethings, you want to know? We know that vest and long-sleeved shirt combos have existed in the retro past and beyond. But look at his pair shoes. They are pretty much plain and dusty. They could have been hand-me-downs from his not-seen father. Why the same work outfit every time he gets out of his cottage? Is it because his family cannot afford clothes so they give him a limited wardrobe? You think about that. Next, when you see the Once-ler unloading his wagon, it is implied that he wears heart-print boxer shorts underneath his pants. Talk about throwing underwear to an unfortunate bear's head!

Sleepwear

When the Once-ler goes to bed, he wears blue pajamas with yellow bunny patterns on them. We have seen that color design before; in the film Despicable Me, on Agnes's pajamas! Although, Agnes's has teddy bear heads instead of rabbits. Talk about an unoriginal sleepwear design! Maybe the creators were lazy and decided to throw in Agnes's sleepwear pattern to the Once-ler. Now, let me get this thing straight. Does this mean that Agnes is distantly related to the Once-ler? Did the Once-ler buy his pajamas from the same clothing shop as Agnes's? By the way, the Once-ler's pajamas has five white button with a collar that is also white so that you can take them off easily. The only complaint about Once-ler's pajamas is that the pattern is copied from Agnes's. Everything else about it is fine.

Greed-ler outfit

The Once-ler's green business outfit is introduced right in the beginning of the musical number, "How Bad Can I Be." It's so shockingly flashy. What's impressing is that he wears green gloves that go up to his shoulders. Creative for a character adapted from a 1971 rhymed picture book. The green striped coat over the white shirt with the large collar, has long coattails, along with a red Truffula tuft stuck on to his right lapel. There are two gold buttons that hold the coat together, and a gold chain under it. The black necktie with the green stripes means business. The coat is paired with a pair of black pants and shoes, along with a tall black top hat that has a green trim along it. The Once-ler continues to wear this flashy outfit after the last Truffula tree has been felled.

Guitar

He also carries along a gray electric guitar with him, which is smashed by some little girl after a failed attempt to advertise the Thneed. Later, the guitar is repaired with duct tape that disappears at the very beginning of the Once-ler’s villainous musical number which I mentioned before on the last paragraph that I wrote and composed (It was an animation blunder, mind you). That guitar was soon replaced by a better and cooler red electric guitar, which with a strum of it, can literally topple down a hundred trees.

MULE AND FAMILY

His gray mule, Melvin, pulls his wagon vehicle across many places, but also moves it slowly, taking days, until Melvin alerts the Once-ler to show him something that he would like. Melvin also likes to eat Truffula Fruit, as shown when the Lorax feeds him that fruit. When the Once-ler’s company falls apart and the environment is polluted and dirtied, Melvin goes along with the animals on their way out in order to find a better and safer habitat to live in.

His mother, Isabella Once-ler (That is what the Lorax fans call her), is blonde and has a red hairclip on top of her poufy curled up hair. She wears a lavender polka-dot long-sleeved shirt and a boa which looks like a red dog. I think the dog has been slaughtered to make the boa. Isabella also wears glasses which frames are colored blue, and are oval. A long skirt and gray boots complete the look. Now then, the Once-ler’s uncle, Ubb is as short as Aloysius O’Hare and wears all black even donning a bowler hat, while his aunt, Grizelda is very fat, has ginger hair shaped like two crescents, and wears a purple dress with a beret decorated with a white feather. The Once-ler’s twin brothers, Brett and Chet Once-ler, both wear red shirts and blue overalls that have one strap loose. They are also mischievous and tease the Once-ler himself. They think that a bear is a football and throw it way far. They are bald, just like their uncle. The Once-ler family, overall, like to be quick and lazy and does not like his way of just harvesting the Truffula tufts, because it is very inconvenient and also very slow.

#once-ler #once ler #onceler #the once-ler #lorax #the lorax #review #essay #analysis #recap

9 notes · View notes

aenwoedbeannaa · 4 years

Text

Talking to Horses | Geralt x Reader

Summary: You work at a small inn in a middle of nowhere village in Novigrad. Your job consists mostly of serving travelers – the only people that come to this god-forsaken place – but you manage to find a way to spend most of your time in the stables. One night, while you’re holed up there talking to your horse, a new stranger arrives; but you recognize him from the traveling bard, Jaskier’s, songs immediately – the famous Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.

Word Count: 2,533

Warnings: None; this is literally just the fluffiest fluff.

Notes: I promise I’ll get back to my series soon; but it’s been a busy week and I’m sad and right now I just want to write Geralt fluff lol.

* * *

It is growing late, and you are still in the barn, as usual. You don’t mind, though. You much prefer it here than in the stuffy inn. No matter how rude the customer, their horses were always nice enough. You keep your own horse here, as well – a mare named Immi. She is a sweet little thing, though she's quite skittish and will do almost nothing without getting a treat first, but you don’t mind much. It is rare that you have the opportunity to travel, and the roads around your little village are safe enough.

You are surprised when Immi’s ears prick up slightly, the way that they do when a visitor approaches the stables. Of course, travelers came in at all hours of the day, but it wasn’t too often when one showed up extremely late at night. Relatively unbothered, you continue brushing her speckled fur, waiting for the loud crunch of the stablemaster’s boots on the ground. Honestly, no one could possibly walk as loudly as that man.

So, you are surprised when you hear the sound of approaching hooves and soft, barely perceptible footsteps. Curious, you peek your head out from the stall to see a white-haired stranger leading a horse gently by the reins. You’ve never seen him here before – but again, that is not unusual. Most people who pass through here once don’t have much reason to pass through again. It is a painfully boring town. What makes this one stand out, however, are the two swords slung across his back.

However, between the white hair and the two swords, the mysterious stranger suddenly becomes far less mysterious – at least as far as his identity goes. The chances of someone matching his exact description seem relatively unlikely. Even from a distance, you can tell that he is huge, all muscle. Hard to find any ordinary human who looks like that; doubly as hard to find any ordinary human who looks like that and happens to have long white hair and two swords on his back. So, you are pretty positive you are correct.

As he draws closer, you lean back on the open door to Immi’s stall, arms crossed across your chest and head cocked slightly to one side.

“You’re Geralt of Rivia.” You say it as a statement, not a question. You are very rarely wrong, and unafraid to embrace that. Mamma used to scold you for being brash, and you’d been called arrogant and brazen by a few of the passing travelers – but it doesn't bother you much.

“And you better not start singing that damn song.”

You smirk, kicking open the free stall across from Immi’s with a scuffed leather boot, “No ‘hello’?” you ask, shaking your head. “Not even a nice ‘and you are?”

The Witcher doesn’t seem particularly amused, but he takes the bait anyway.

“Hello,” he says, exaggerating and speaking the words exactly how you’d spoken them, “And you are?” Mrs. Leigh, who owns the inn, constantly tells you that you shouldn’t pester the guests, but there is a slight tug at the corner of the Witcher’s lips that tells you he isn’t particularly irritated. And anyway, you don’t listen to much of what Mrs. Leigh says or you’d die of boredom.

“Y/N,” you say before adding sarcastically, “Of Novigrad.”

“Pleasure,” he says absentmindedly as he begins getting his horse settled.

You could easily get back to your work, but in such a boring village, you’ve got to take advantage of any entertainment while you can, so you lean against the door, peering at his horse, which you can tell is clearly taken very good care of.

“What’s your horse’s name?”

“Roach.”

“Interesting name for a horse,” you say, watching him remove the saddle.

Immi, likely feeling betrayed because you have turned your attention from the mare for more than a minute, whinnies and lightly stomps one hoof.

“Immi!” you scold her in the gentle way you always do, turning and walking back to her stall.

You are slightly surprised to hear the Witcher speak again, “Is she yours?”

You nod, pulling an apple from your back, which you left hanging on a nail on the door. At seeing it, Immi huffs and looks at you with wide, begging eyes.

“She is,” you say, rather proudly. It is not a wealthy village, and most young women working as barmaids and stable hands cannot afford horses of their own. Of course, you didn’t actually buy her – one of the Leigh’s mares had a baby, four years ago now. It was the year your mother died of plague when it hit the village, and you’d already been working for Mrs. Leigh for three years by then and they knew your affinity for working in the stables. They told you she was yours, and suddenly life seemed a little less dull.

You hold the apple up to her snout, and she quickly devours the whole thing.

“You always feed her human food?” The Witcher’s voice is closer now; you turn to see that he’s standing outside the stall he’s set Roach up in. You get the sense that he’s appraising you, his yellow eyes settled on yours, one eyebrow raised as Immi chomps loudly behind you, finishing the treat.

You cross your arms, fully facing him now, staring right back. “Yes, I do,” you say, “And before you ask, of course I talk to her.”

At that, the Witcher laughs, but he doesn’t seem to be mocking you. You narrow your eyes slightly, questioning.

“I talk to my horse, too,” he admits. “Roach is great to talk to, because he doesn’t talk back.”

You grin, face flushing slightly at the warm gleam in the Witcher’s yellow eyes. “Exactly. No unwanted advice, no ordering me around, no demanding a third cup of ale when she’s already piss drunk.”

“So, you work in the inn, too?”

You nod in response, “Yep. Unfortunately, we don’t get enough travelers through here to make much money as a stable hand. We make our money the way every other inn does; selling overpriced ale to travelers who don’t have any other options.”

“It's even worse in the cities,” the Witcher responds. “Plenty of options, but all overpriced.”

“Hm,” you shrug, “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been to one of the big cities. But humans are the same everywhere, I guess.”

“You’re right about that,” he says, looking somewhat lost in thought.

“Still,” you muse as you grab your bag and shut the door to Immi’s stall, “I’d like to see them.”

You sigh, looking past the Witcher and out into the field outside, the starlit road beyond it. “The cities, I mean. Just... Seems a waste, to spend a whole life here.” Now you’re just rambling – another thing Mamma used to tell you not to do, especially with strangers – but you can’t help it. “Must be fun, to be a Witcher; you’ve probably seen all sorts of places.”

The Witcher gives you a wry smile, “And all sorts of monsters.”

“Eh,” you respond quickly, following him out of the stables and towards the inn, “You don’t have to travel to see monsters.” He stops walking for a moment and cocks his head in thought, looking down at you.

“You’re right again,” he says.

“You should meet Mr. Allen,” you say with your voice lowered, “He’s the mayor and he’s hear most every night, drinking Mrs. Leigh out of house and home, yelling at everyone, and—well, never mind—but his poor wife, though.” You shudder, thinking about his roaming eyes and careless hands, but you snap out of it quickly enough.

“Ah, suppose it is fitting. Shit mayor for a shit town.”

Once you reach the entrance, you push open the door, the Witcher following behind you. You turn to him, whispering under your breath, “Guy in the back corner.” He raises his eyebrows and goes, to your surprise, to sit at the table right in front of Mr. Allen’s. Not a choice that you would have advised, but likely to be an entertaining one.

“Please tell me you were not harassing that man out in the stables,” Mrs. Leigh says as you head behind the counter, filling up a few earthenware tankards to drop at the tables that your boss has wasted no time pointing to.

“Me?” you ask, with fake innocence.

“Y/N, honestly. We need the business.”

Grabbing as may tankards as possible – an impressive five – you glance back at your boss and roll your eyes. “Please,” you say with a smirk, “I’m half the reason these guys buy as much alcohol as they do.” A little flirting does wonders, and gods know Mrs. Leigh isn’t going to do it.

You drop off three tankards at one table; a thankfully quiet one. There are two women, one of whom you can tell from her painfully beautiful features must be half-elf. There’s one man with them, lanky and quiet. Probably the human’s brother, if you had to guess.

The other two mugs of ale were, of course, for Mayor Allen. He must have just arrived, then.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says with a hideous smile as you set them down. You just mumble some form of no problem as you walk off. He doesn’t pay, so there’s no point in flirting with him. Besides, the Witcher’s table is next, and you cannot deny that you are dying to talk to him.

Putting on your usual flirty smile, you head over to his table, leaning on the old wood. For some reason, though, the flirtatious nature that usually comes easy to you feels a little bit different – like you actually care what this stranger thinks about you. You decide to put it down to the fact that he is famous, and famous people rarely pass through the village.

“Can I get you anything?” you ask, smile faltering slightly, but only for a moment.

The Witcher looks at you, yellow eyes locking on yours. “Two mugs of ale, please,” his lips curve into a smirk, “And your company.” You quirk an eyebrow, feeling your cheeks redden once again.

Before you have to disappoint him – and mainly yourself – by telling him that you can’t just sit down at work, he places a handful of gold pieces on the table. Definitely enough to cover the two beers, and as much as you’d bring in for the night.

“Coming right up,” you say, throwing him a glance over your shoulder as you carry the coins over to the counter.

“You’re welcome,” you say, admittedly rather arrogantly as you set the coins down on the counter next to Mrs. Leigh. She watches you with somewhat horrified eyes as you round the counter to fill up to mugs of ale.

“This is not a brothel,” she says pointedly, glancing from you and across the room at the white-haired Witcher.

“And I’d charge more for a night than that,” you retort, glancing down at the coins still on the table.

Mrs. Leigh does not respond as you grab the two mugs and head back to the Witcher’s table.

“Your ale,” you say, sliding it over to him, “And my excellent company,” you add with an impish grin, sitting down across from him. “Though, to be honest, you seem more like the Sit and Drink Alone type,” you say, studying him.

“You aren’t wrong there,” he says, but his yellow eyes hint that he very much does not want to sit and drink alone tonight. Well, that and the fact that he asked you to sit with him.

“Then why ask me to disturb your blessed silence?” you ask, genuinely curious.

“Because,” he says, pausing to take a draught of ale, “I find you interesting.”

You nearly choke on your ale when you laugh. Out of all of the interesting creatures and people the Witcher meets, you cannot fathom why he would find you in particular interesting.

“Oh, come on,” he said, shaking his head. “You walk around like you own this place. Don’t pretend to be the shy type.”

You blush again, looking down at your cup and taking a swig before you look back up at him. Thankfully, you can blame the flush on your cheeks on the ale. “Oh, come on,” you quip back, “You’ve been in plenty of inns, I’m sure. It’s all part of business.”

Geralt eyes you curiously and shrugs. Then silence settles over the two of you, somehow ringing louder in your ears than the rowdy crowd of the crowded pub.

Finally, he speaks.

“Actually, I have a proposition.”

Your head shoots up, eyes wide as you stare at him. Maybe the gold was for what Mrs. Leigh insinuated. And while the Witcher was, without a doubt, the most attractive man you’d ever seen, Mrs. Leigh was right – this was not a brothel, and you were not… Well, that was not your profession.

“Don’t worry, it’s not about that.”

You breathe a sigh of relief, and slight disappointment, but now you are incredibly curious. What could this Witcher want from you?

“I’m not travelling far,” he explains, “And I have a high suspicion that the haunting I am investigating has little to do with dangerous spirits and everything to do with humans being humans.”

Your mouth falls open, hardly able to believe what you are hearing, and unable to form any words.

“You said you wanted to see some of the world, and I take it you can ride,” he says.

“I—well, yes, I do want to… But, I mean, I have to wor—”

“It’s a decent contract. You can half of it.”

“I mean,” you begin, “I… I couldn’t take the coin!”

“You’re not taking it, you’re doing a job,” the Witcher points out. “I can’t watch Roach all the time.”

You consider his words for a few moments before your face breaks out into a wide smile.

* * *

You are bursting with excitement as you head out of your back room, pack full of your most precious personal items, of which there are relatively few. As promised, Geralt is already out in the stable, saddling Roach.

“Good morning,” he says, that same deep, gravely voice you’d grown familiar with last night as the two of you stayed up talking until far too late.

“Good morning!” you greet him, heading over to saddle Immi, despite her somewhat confused whinnies. You rarely rode out this early. But she didn’t seem to mind all that much, as you handed her another apple from your pack.

“Hm,” Geralt says, eying you, “Cheery.”

“Not a morning person?” you ask him.

“No particular feelings about any time of day,” he says with a shrug.

You lead Immi out of the stables behind Geralt and Roach, still somewhat mystified by the man.

“Ah yes,” you say after a moment, “I hear you Witchers don’t have emotions.”

At those words, Geralt turns around to face you, only a few inches between you. “Now there, dear Y/N, you are wrong.”

The look on his face has your stomach filled with butterflies as the two of you ride off side-by-side into the early morning light.

***

Taglist: @divaroze @fairytale07 @geeksareunique @jesseswartzwelder @unnamedmaincharacter @lazilyscentedwerewolf @evyiione @valkyriepuff

#geralt of rivia x reader #geralt x reader #one shot #geralt one shot #fluff #geralt fluff #the witcher fanfication #geralt fanfiction #the witcher fluff

936 notes · View notes

lochrannn · 3 years

Link

Warnings: Sexual Content (M Rating)

Characters: Lila Pitts; Diego Hargreeves; Allison Hargreeves; Klaus Hargreeves; Hargreeves Siblings (background)

Relationship: Lila Pitts/Diego Hargreeves

Roommates AU; Fake Marriage; Slow Burn; Mutual Pining; Emotional H/C

Chapter 7/9

Leaving his apartment actually helps.

Diego’s not sure how long he’s been out but he thinks he spent at least thirty minutes at an all out run and he’s out of breath and his muscles are burning pleasingly, but he feels a lot more settled and about ready for sleep as he jogs back towards his bed.

He’s just passing a children’s playground when he spots a figure through the chain link fence sitting on one of the swings, gently swaying back and forth.

“Fuck!” he says out loud and then makes his way over.

“Oh hey!” says Lila with mild enthusiasm when she finally looks up at him as he’s just arriving right in front of her.

Diego’s heart is beating in his throat at the realization that she didn’t even notice him approaching and he could have been anybody. This may not be an incredibly dangerous neighborhood, but it is three in the morning, she’s a woman sitting all on her own in a dark and secluded playground, and he doesn’t actually need to be a detective to work out that she’s completely shitfaced.

Diego tries to reign in the anger that is usually his initial response to intense worry and fear. She’s a grown woman and she’s entitled to make her own bad decisions, and he’s overstepped on this sort of thing with her before, but when she just slowly blinks at him and then looks back down at the bottle of champagne that she’s loosely holding in the hand that’s not gripping on to the swing’s chain, barely keeping herself upright, Diego asks, in a tone that’s meant to be even but comes out pretty tetchy even to his own ears, “What are you doing out here?”

“Oh, you know, I got married today… just celebrating on my own, I guess,” Lila answers, lifting her bottle a little in explanation, but not looking up at him again. She’s doing a remarkable job of not slurring her words, he’ll give her that, but they do come out a little too slowly, far too deliberate, which confirms his suspicion that she is definitely pretty drunk.

“Uh huh…” Diego responds. He’s completely uncertain of what to make of the mood she’s in. The fact that her response to getting married to him is to completely numb herself with champagne certainly gives him pause, but he swallows down the lump in his throat, now’s not the time to wallow, and instead he asks, “D’you think you might wanna do that back home instead of out here in a fucking playground?”

Lila looks up at him with an odd clarity to her for a second before she takes a swig from her mostly empty bottle and says, “Nah, I’m good!”

Diego can’t suppress the noise of frustration that escapes him. “Lila! I’m not leaving you here all on your own in the middle of the god forsaken night! You’re gonna get robbed or murdered and then they’re gonna suspect me of marrying and then killing you for your money, and I really can’t afford to go to jail right now, so come the fuck back home with me!”

“Pfff, stop being so overdramatic, Diego, I’m not going to get murdered. And I’m not going anywhere in these heels, I tell you, I’ll just sleep here on this swing!” She closes her eyes and then wobbles precariously as she presses her face against the chain holding one side of the swing up.

Diego is very rapidly losing what is left of his patience.

“Also, may I point out,” Lila mumbles in her drowsy state, “that you did in fact marry me for my money— eeeeeeh!” she squeals, as Diego lifts her up – one arm behind her shoulders, the other behind her knees. Her bottle clatters to the ground and starts spilling the remaining champagne, and somewhere at the back of his brain Diego thinks he probably shouldn’t leave it lying around on a playground, but at the same time he’s also dealing with an armful of slightly flailing, very indignant fake wife (he knows intellectually that she’s not his fake wife, but his actual wife, but Diego can’t think too hard about that, because it causes all sorts of tumultuous feelings to twist in his gut).

Though Lila immediately wrapps her arms around his neck, she’s clearly not particularly pleased because she begins to argue as Diego starts making his way out of the playground, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m taking you home,” Diego growls, trudging along the sidewalk, a little amazed at how easy Lila is to carry. She’s almost larger than life so much of the time and even when they’d slept together, she gave as good as she got, Diego has up until this moment forgotten just how tiny she is, and his heart almost stops again at how vulnerable she was, what could have happened to her if he hadn’t come across her completely by accident. Diego sucks in a breath to try and calm the sudden wash of useless fear.

“That’s quite presumptuous!” Lila retorts, and Diego doesn’t need to look at her to know there’s an annoyed line between her eyebrows. In fact, he doesn’t think he can even look at her right now, not with the way her face is currently only inches away from his.

“We’re literally fucking married, Lila!” he scoffs. He’s not sure why he says it, but Diego thinks he might be going slightly insane with the whole situation.

“And you think that entitles you to something, now?” Lila asks in genuine disbelief and Diego suddenly feels way too exhausted for this conversation. “Yeah, I think it entitles me to making sure you don’t die of hypothermia, alcohol poisoning, or murder!”

There’s a long pause and then Lila grumbles, “Whatever,” and leans against his shoulder, apparently also overcome by tiredness.

And Diego is overwhelmed at how quickly his anger at her reckless and bratty behavior dissipates and is replaced with a much sharper feeling that digs its way almost painfully into his chest, when Lila tucks her face into the crook of his neck and promptly falls asleep.

Lila is almost completely still as he carries her back home and it gives his overwrought and exhausted brain time to contemplate how unhappy she seems to be with the situation and how that makes him feel in turn, and on top of that he even manages to feel a little guilty about the fact that the feeling of her warmth and weight against him does significantly settle his nerves, despite himself.

Diego’s always known that he’s not great with feelings. He usually feels too much of them and is never quite able to tell the people around him what that means and so he’s gotten quite used to not doing so. And even though earlier he contemplated telling Lilla, he realizes he can’t add another burden to the pile of shit she’s dealing with, especially not while she’s struggling to stay in the country of her choice and has to rely on him for her only solution.

Carrying Lila becomes a little bit difficult when Diego tries to unlock the front door. He ends up jostling her, attempting to wiggle the key into the lock with the hand that’s also holding on to her knees and Lila stirs but doesn’t wake fully, just snuffles adorably and cuddles closer to him, arms tightening in some kind of reflex to stop herself from falling.

Diego tries to concentrate on anything else, getting the door open, not slamming it, when closing it, because his neighbors would probably not appreciate the noise in the early hours of the morning, and then he makes his way straight towards her room so he can put her down on her bed.

He sets her down gently and then struggles to find the will to pull her arms away from his neck so for only a moment he allows himself to sit down on the bed with her and very gently put his arms around her in a hug. He’s not sure whether it’s to comfort Lila or himself.

“See, had no trouble getting home!” Lila mumbles into his neck and Diego scoffs at that, but it’s more out of genuine amusement than derision and he gives her one last squeeze before letting go and laying her against the bed gently. This time around Lila does let go and immediately buries her face into the pillow, and though her face scrunches up and he knows it’s only a matter of minutes before she’ll start drooling onto the covers with the way her mouth is half open, he can’t help thinking that she does look absolutely breathtaking.

Diego makes sure that her short red dress hasn’t ridden up her thigh indecently high and then gets to work on her sandals. Once he’s got them off, he finds a blanket on a small armchair in the corner of the room and covers Lila with it as she’s lying on top of her sheets and is fast asleep again, so he doesn’t want to wake her.

When he leaves her to it and closes the door behind him with a soft click, hoping to at least get a couple of hours of sleep himself before he has to get up for work later in the morning again, Diego lets out a long breath. He tries to convince himself that maybe it will take a few weeks, but he can get over this, get over Lila, but a niggling voice at the back of his mind points out that he’s never felt a sense of devotion for anyone quite like this before and that he is quite certainly in much bigger trouble than he’s letting himself believe.

Lila gets the hangover she deserves after drinking a bottle and a half of champagne, but is, unfortunately, not granted the luxury of forgetting what she got up to.

She remembers her evening and her night in vivid detail but from a perspective of a powerless operator, sitting somewhere in her skull, able to look out of her eyes and watch herself make an absolute nuisance of herself, but unable at the time to do anything about it.

She remembers feeling sorry for herself because she was in this situation in the first place, a thirty year old trust fund baby with no perspective in life, no family to speak of and while other women her age nave their lives together and are getting married and having babies, she just paid her roommate who she also happens to have a pretty bad crush on – no point in trying to kid herself about that anymore – to marry her for a green card. What a fuck up she truly is.

And then, wallowing in her misery as a selfish part of her even felt angry with Diego for just abandoning her on their wedding day – what a silly notion, seeing as this is a business arrangement between the two of them – she went out to buy some dinner for herself and instead brought home two bottles of champagne “to celebrate”, started dancing around to sad music the more intoxicated she got, and in the end feeling like she had to leave the flat or she would go absolutely stir crazy.

She obviously didn’t get very far, and she has no sense of how much time she spent sitting on that swing before Diego came to get her.

Lila feels desperately embarrassed. He must be so annoyed with her and thanking his lucky stars that he’s only married to her for the money and not actually stuck with the a fuck up like her. She could tell he tried to remain civil with her last night, mostly even indulging her, but he was clearly angry and she’d only goaded him further, out of some sense of righteous annoyance of her own. But in hindsight, she can’t blame him, he’s honestly been trying his best with her, gone above and beyond to support her efforts for a visa, and she can’t even keep it together for a single day.

Well, at least he’ll get a break from her, Lila muses as she pulls her cover over her head, trying to block out the little bit of light that’s filtering in through her curtains, because there’s no way she’s going to face him in this state. But once she’s recovered, feels a bit more like a human again, she’ll apologise and make sure he understands just how grateful she is for his help. It’s not his fault she’s developed some distracting feelings for him and he certainly doesn’t deserve her anger and frustration for not reciprocating feelings he knows absolutely nothing about.

And so Lila spends her day in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, half imagining and half dreaming about strong arms holding her close to a solid, warm body, and soft lips pressing gentle kisses to the spot just behind her ear.

A day and a half later they meet in the kitchen and it’s predictably awkward.

Lila tries to apologise for her behaviour but Diego just waves it away, says he understands that she’s having a hard time, and though that’s not quite what she wanted to say and part of her thinks he deserves a real apology, she also doesn’t particularly enjoy reflecting on her own behaviour and jumps at the opportunity to move on when Diego promptly changes the subject.

“I talked to a friend at my gym, Rodriguez. His wife isn’t a citizen either and he gave me some tips for the visa process,” Diego explains.

“Oh yeah?” Lila’s interest is piqued, because she still hasn’t quite worked out what that whole interview thing entails and she’s finally getting an inkling that Diego didn’t actually know much more beyond the fact that there is an interview.

“Yeah! So, he said it’s different for everybody but that he’d talk to his wife and they’d put a list together of the questions they remembered being asked. He said some of them were…” Diego looks down at the counter and starts scraping off an imaginary bit of dirt with his finger nail, “a bit personal… So, uhm, we’re gonna have to prepare for those.”

“I think we already did...” Lila mumbles under her breath.

“What was that?” Diego asks.

“Eh, nothing!” she rushes out, she didn’t actually mean to say that out loud even if he couldn’t hear her. “So, interview, okay, what else?”

“Yeah, uh, Rodriguez said this doesn’t happen too often and it didn’t happen to them, but there is a chance of an agent coming to inspect our apartment unannounced, so I thought maybe we should move some things around. You know, bring some of your things into my room, put some clothes of mine into your closet, just make sure it doesn’t look like we live in separate rooms. We can always say we’re keeping yours for guests,” Diego explains with a shrug.

“Okay, yeah, that sounds sensible,” Lila muses and starts worrying the nail on her thumb between her teeth because despite the fact that Diego seems to have a pretty decent handle on the situation, the whole idea of the interview process is making her nervous.

“You’re not really into this, are you?” Diego asks tentatively, and when Lila looks up at him his expression is one of concern, eyebrows drawn together, he’s lowered his head to try and get closer to level with her, and for a moment the tenderness in his eyes leaves her speechless.

“Yeah, I get it!” he goes on and then smiles slightly, “Hey, what are you doing the day after tomorrow? Are you working?” he asks.

“Uh, no?” Lila answers, hesitating a bit because the sudden change of the subject has her somewhat confused.

“I thought maybe we could take a drive to the shore, bring Ben’s camera and fill the film with some honeymoon photos. It’ll be too cold to go swimming, but the forecast seems like it should be pretty mild and sunny.” Diego suggests and, it seems without thinking, he reaches out and just very gently pulls on her wrist, so she stops biting her nail and instead lets her hand drop uselessly to her side.

“Yeah, okay…” Lila answers. She’s not sure why she’s not that enthusiastic about the idea. It’s not that she thinks she wouldn’t have a great time, in fact she thinks it could be kind of wonderful, spending a day driving to the seaside with Diego and taking a walk along the beach, maybe getting some ice cream. She wonders to herself whether the pang in her belly comes from the fact that actually she’d love a beach date with Diego, only she desperately wishes it wasn’t fake.

#otp: just be gentle #lila pitts #diego hargreeves #dielila #diego x lila #diego/lila #tua #the umbrella academy #fanfic #ongoing fic

4 notes · View notes

saltlampsasuke · 4 years

Text

Unfortunately, You Are Exhibiting Symptoms of Falling in Love: Part 1

Having your long-term boyfriend cheat on you is pretty bad, but you're lucky enough to have a rich, pro-hero best friend who lets you move in with him until you get a new apartment. Except lockdown happens. And you can't look for a new apartment anymore, and you can't go anywhere anymore, and neither can your best friend, and you think you might be falling a little bit in love with him. Or maybe you've been in love with him all along.

The story of how it takes a nationwide lockdown for you and Bakugou Katsuki to finally get together.

warnings: Coronavirus mention, abusive relationship mention

wordcount: 2,978

I’m so excited to share the first part of my story, and I hope that you enjoy!

It was at times like these you were thankful that Bakugou Katsuki was your best friend. At times like these, he was the only one you could call. No matter what, as long as he was physically able to, he would always pick up the phone. Many people thought of him as brash, overconfident, a bit (or more) rude, and maybe that was a little bit true. Still, he wasn’t half as bad as he had been when you first met him in high school, and you liked to think that the years you’d spent at his side were part of the reason he had softened a bit.

Of course, now that you were both settled into your careers, him as the now number-two pro hero, and you as his loyal support tech, he wasn’t quite so angry all the time. Time had somewhat settled his fiery attitude, though you knew the fire would never burn out completely. Sometimes, you think to yourself that no matter what happens, he’ll always have something to prove. But if he didn’t he wouldn’t be your best friend. And you like him the way that he is: loyal, honest to a fault, firm in his conviction to protect the world, and the only man you would think of calling after you walk in on your boyfriend of two years plowing into a random girl on your shared apartment bed.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You had been working late nights for the past week to fix up a piece of gear for Bakugou. It had been giving you a bit of trouble, but finally you had finished it, early in the afternoon to boot, so you had decided to head home and surprise your boyfriend. You knew you had been neglecting him lately, so you decided to make it up to him by cooking him his favorite dinner. Things were going to be different now. You had been getting too caught up in making gear lately, and you hadn’t been spending as much time with your loved ones as you wanted. But now spring was beginning. You could feel it in the warm breeze that chased you home. It was time for you to rededicate yourself to the people in your life. Gear could always be fixed, and it was more important to show the people you loved how much you loved them, starting with Takumi.

You hummed a simple melody as you neared your and Takumi’s apartment, growing more excited the closer you got. It was a Friday, which meant he had to stay late at work, so you would have plenty of time to cook before he got home. He was going to be so surprised, you thought to yourself, carefully unlocking the apartment door while balancing your recently-purchased groceries. You set them gently on the counter. As you glanced around your apartment, you noticed a few odd things. A pair of keys lying on the kitchen counter, both yours and Takumi’s house slipper missing from their place next to the doormat, and the faint sound of music coming from your bedroom. Was he already home? Perhaps he, too, had gotten out of work early and was also planning to surprise you. After all, you had the whole weekend ahead of yourselves. Even if he had planned something else for dinner, you could still surprise him by being home so early. You crept towards your bedroom, closer to the music, a song you recognized. Yes, that was definitely off of your sex playlist. And there was something else you could hear, quieter, but definitely audible. Your boyfriend was moaning. Was he so wound up thinking about you coming home he just couldn’t stand to wait? He would be so surprised to see you live and in person. You pushed open the door to see what you were nowhere close to expecting.

The man you lived with, the man you had loved for two years, had a girl pushed into your bed, her own moans smothered by your pillows as your boyfriend took her from behind. For a moment, you were speechless. Neither of them realized you were there, eyes away from the door and too caught up in the ecstasy of each other’s bodies to realize your entrance. You could hear the song on the playlist coming to an end. In the silence between one song and the next, you finally found the courage to speak.

“Care to explain, Takumi?” you said to the man who would soon be your ex-boyfriend. He paused in shock, almost unable to believe you were actually standing before him. Quickly, he grabbed a pillow from out under the girl he was fucking and held it over his body. You laughed derisively.

“Why bother hiding? It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.” You could see the gears in his brain turning rapidly, trying to churn out an excuse, any excuse.

“Baby, I promise this isn’t what it looks like,” he said nervously. The girl on the bed, who had been sitting confusedly, finally spoke.

“Baby? Is this your girlfriend?” she asked angrily. Takumi’s eyes darted nervously back and forth between you and the naked woman, before he slowly nodded.

“You have got to be kidding me.” She sat up proudly and looked you in the eyes. “I swear to god I had no idea he was in a relationship. I would never do that to another woman. God, I can’t believe I actually slept with a piece of shit like you!” she yelled at Takumi.

Your eyes grew wider at her words. You would have almost preferred if they had been in love, maybe then you could have justified it to yourself, but the implications of her words were clear. How many other random girls had there been?

“Listen, I know I messed up, but you have to hear me out,” pleaded Takumi to you. The girl in the bed snorted.

“What does she have to hear? How you told me you just got out of a relationship with your ex who was both clingy and never around enough? How much you were glad that you finally left her? How you were finally looking to meet a girl who could actually commit to a relationship? You’re human garbage.” The girl hurriedly put her clothes back on and headed out the door, but not before turning to you once more. “I’m so sorry that this happened to you. You better ruin him.” You nodded at her in respect. You wished you had her strength, but right now you wanted to do nothing more than to sit down and cry. Your whole apartment felt like it had been tainted. You turned to Takumi.

“Get out. I can’t even look at you right now,” you said, trying not to betray the tears in your eyes. He at least had his pants back on as he walked over towards you, arms outstretched.

“I promise she meant nothing. You’re the only woman for me. Please baby, don’t let this come between us. I love you,” he pleaded. You couldn’t believe him. He had the audacity to tell you that you were the only one for him when you had just caught him in bed with another woman?

“I’m asking you to leave, Takumi. There’s nothing you could have to say that I would want to hear.” You paced back and forth nervously, hoping to god that he would leave of his own volition. You had no idea how to make him leave if he didn’t want to, and you certainly didn’t want to be the one kicked out when you had done nothing wrong but love the wrong man. Of course, it was already sinking in that you would have to move out. Takumi may have been a cheating bastard, but he was also a rich bastard, and there was no way you could afford the nice apartment you two had shared for the last six months by yourself. Besides, you didn’t think you could look at the apartment the same ever again. Was she the first woman he used to defile your bed? Had the same countertops you had made him dinner on been violated? Could you ever feel truly clean in that shower again? Moving out wasn’t a question, it was a necessity. But Takumi wasn’t moving now.

“This is my apartment too, goddamn it. I’ll stay if I want to stay. You won’t even listen to me!” he yelled, waving his arms in the air angrily.

“I literally just caught you cheating on me! Why should I have to listen to anything you have to say?” you asked, your voice now filled with anger as well.

“God, this is so typical. You never want to pay any attention to anything I do. I wouldn’t have had to sleep with her if you actually fucking talked to me. But no, you’re always too busy for me, working at your stupid job on some dumb gadget that nobody cares about. Maybe if you had actually acted like a girlfriend this wouldn’t have happened. It’s not like you needed to fucking work with me around anyway. I never understood why you didn’t quit when you moved in.” You looked at Takumi again, but it felt like you were looking at a completely different person than the man you had once loved.

Did he really feel that your job was worthless? He had always been patient and kind about how your work schedule shifted based on customer need. It’s not like you were working all the time either, you had just been working later for the past weeks because Bakugou had literally shattered his gauntlets in a fight and was forced to use his spares. He was the number two hero. He saved peoples’ lives, and in fixing his gear, you felt that you saved them as well, at least indirectly. Takumi had never shown an inkling of these feelings before. Didn’t he support your work? You didn’t even know where to begin, completely bewildered and barely able to respond. All of this was so much, in so little time, coming completely out of nowhere.

“I save lives with my work, Takumi. Don’t you remember how Bakugou had to use the grappling hook I made him when he ran out of energy to sustain his power 100 feet up? He would have died. I love my job. I love helping the people who protect our lives. I just like having a job! There’s nothing wrong with that!” you said desperately.

“Your job is to be my girlfriend! How do you think it makes me feel when I come home late at night and I have to order takeout because you’re holed up in your workshop making another useless metal hunk for your precious Bakugou! You know, I bet you were hooking up with him this whole time. There’s no way you were really at work all those nights. You’re just at fault as me. I would never have slept with her if you acted like a woman is supposed to!” You snapped, no longer able to tolerate Takumi’s words, and refusing to take the blame for his actions.

“I am allowed to have a job. I am allowed to have a life outside of being with you. I have no obligation to cook, clean, or act a certain way for you. And I am asking you, for the last time, to get out of the apartment,” you spoke coldly. Perhaps your tone of voice finally got through to him, because he finally snapped his mouth shut, pulled on a hoodie, grabbed his keys, and left.

“Fine,” he spat. “Clearly you need some time to calm down and think. I can give that to you. I’m going to the lakehouse for a few days. When I come back you better have fixed this fucking attitude problem. I know what I did wasn’t right, and I’m going to make it up to you but you can’t even listen to reason right now so I’ll let you have some time to yourself. This isn’t over.” He finally stepped outside and closed the door. You sank to the floor, laughing hysterically, before starting to sob. What had he expected to happen, that you would apologize to him for forcing him to cheat on you? You couldn’t believe him. Although, as you sat and calmed yourself down, the more you thought about your relationship with Takumi, the worse he seemed.

You touched the necklace around your neck, remembering how he had refused to ever let you take it off, blowing up the one time you had tried to get it professionally cleaned after an incident in the workshop. The makeup class he had signed you up for as a “present”, because he wanted you to “unlock your inner beauty”. The way he hated your male coworkers, and got upset whenever you mentioned them. Most of all, the way he hated Bakugou. It had always upset you how the two most important people in your life had never gotten along, but you thought you had loved them both enough to survive their distaste for each other. Had Takumi always been so controlling? You couldn’t believe it had taken you this long to see it. What would have happened if you had married him? There was only one thing you could do right now. You pulled out your phone and called Bakugou. He picked up after the third ring, just like you knew he would.

“What the hell do you want, shitty woman? If it’s about the fixed gauntlets they’re fucking fine. You know I wouldn’t have you fix them if I didn’t know you would do a good job. Why the hell are you bothering me while I’m on patrol? Don’t you have that loser boyfriend to bother?” he asked. You cracked a small smile. Classic Bakugou. You could easily hear that under all that bluster he was happy to hear from you. You hadn’t been seeing him as much, probably because of Takumi, and you knew that though he would never say it, he had missed you.

“Hey Bakugou,” you spoke slowly and nervously. “Sorry to bother you, but…” Bakugou quickly cut you off.

“Are you sick or something, dumbass? You sound gross.” Translation: Are you ok? You sound upset.

“I, um, well, I, here’s the thing,” you stammered, trying to find the words to tell Bakugou what had happened without him blowing up.

“Spit it out, shitty woman. You know how to fucking talk.” You took a deep breath.

“Takumi was cheating on me. I just found out. He left and he said he’s going to be gone for a few days but he wants to talk when he gets back. I’m leaving him, and I think I need to move out.” After you managed to spill out the events of the past few minutes, you heard only heavy breathing on the other end of the line. “Bakugou?”

“Ok. Start packing whatever you want to take with you. I’ll be there soon,” he said. You knew he was trying to stay calm for you, but you could hear the crackle and pop of his quirk through the phone. He must have been really angry. He had progressed a lot since his angry high school days where you had to design special muffling gloves for him, because he couldn’t control his quirk when he got angry. Now, you only heard that sound when he was about to absolutely destroy someone.

“Wait, Bakugou. I can’t just move out of here immediately.”

“Yes you can,” he responded.

“I don’t have any way to pack up all my stuff, or move it, and I definitely don’t have anywhere to move to. There’s no way I can just leave.” What was he thinking?

“I don’t care. I’ll call Shitty hair, or a moving company, or buy a fucking truck to put all your shit on. You don’t have to stay there.” You knew he would do it, too. You had always been proud to make your own money, something you were realizing Takumi had never seemed to like, so you didn’t want to rely on someone else to buy you something, but this was different. This was Bakugou. You knew he was only doing this because he wanted to, and he wouldn’t expect anything in return.

“Ok, but all of that means nothing if I don’t have anywhere to move the stuff to. What am I supposed to do, live out of my car?” You could hear Bakugou snort derisively through the phone.

“Are you fucking stupid? You’ll move in with me, of course. For the first time in a long time, you heard hesitation in your best friend’s voice. “Unless, you don’t want to? I can get you a hotel or something while we figure out an apartment, but you know I have a spare room. And, fuck, I don’t know, you wouldn’t be the shittiest roommate in the world, and I know…” You decided to cut him off to spare him any further misery.

“I’d be more than happy to move in with you, Bakugou,” you said softly, hearing him breathe a sigh of relief through the phone. “Thank you.”

“Don’t fucking mention it. Seriously, don’t mention it. Just start packing your shit. I gotta go call out of patrol.” With that, he hung up.

You had always said that you didn’t know what you’d do without him as your friend, and you felt that way now more than ever. Who else but Bakugou Katsuki would do all this for you? One phone call, and he was already dropping everything to come help you. That man was nothing if not devoted to his friends.

#bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou x reader #pro hero bakugou #katsuki x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #mha #mha x reader #bnha x reader #bnha #my hero academia #bnha imagines #bnha x you #ive been procrastinating #I'm so excited to post this but I really need to work on my final

203 notes · View notes

archetypal-archivist · 3 years

Text

Sky’s Limit- Hermitcraft- Worldbuilding

Heyo! This was the product of a plot bunny I got while watching the newest animated music video by Porter Robinson, and it features pretty much all the hermits. Long into the distant future, there is a city of gleaming white and technological marvels. Electricity is entirely clean, its people are always happy, and life- as it has always done- goes on. However, for all it seems like a utopia, there is one facet that may seem out of place. The city is truly, utterly silent. Sure, there are voices and happy chatter, laughter on street corners and children running in the streets. But there is no hum, no electric buzz that most crafters of the past would have been familiar with. There is no redstone. For indeed, the red dust is entirely illegal and those who work with it are relegated to the city’s dark underbelly. And not all of them are happy to be there. It is in this city, the city of Sky’s Limit, that I have dropped our hermits. Time will tell what happens next.

----

A story in which the world has been… purified. Think skyblock, portrayed as a world of natural wonder, soft angles and high rises that scrape the clouds above, all in shimmering shades of pearlescent white. The only noise is the rushing of the wind through the grass far, far below and the distant echo of passing conversation and laughter. There are no cars, no chatter of coms, no hissing creepers or vroomping, thieving endermen. Just peace. And sometimes, if you listen carefully enough, the flapping of wings as the most blessed of the city’s inhabitants fly overhead, the celebrity darlings and envy of everyone below. For some of the hermits, life is good. Bdubs, Xisuma, Grian, and Jevin are all upper nobility. Xisuma and Grian are some of the lucky few with wings (bee and bird respectively for X and G), while Jevin is blessed simply for being sky blue and transparent- and a being so like the sky must surely be worthy of high ranking. Surely. Xisuma is an administrator of the city, one of those who keep track of the nitty-gritty bits, like how much food each sector goes through a month, the efficiency of the watering systems in the fields, etc. Grian is just a straight up celebrity darling, beloved by the people for his pranks and personality. Late at night, he runs a TV talk show. Jevin has a seat on the city governance, one of thirteen “elected” chancellors. Bdubs is another chancellor, low-key the one in charge, as it was his idea to create a city of white, one that ran on clean energy and lawfulness, who drew up the first blueprint and built much of the city himself. It’s said that there’s no corner of it he isn’t aware of, no part that he didn’t have a hand in designing. While this isn’t quite the case, one thing is certain- BDubs certainly has “designs” and they are very grand indeed. After these hermits fall the ones who are upper to middle class. Stress is a well-trusted doctor in the city’s finest hospital. She believes in the system that saved her life so long ago with all her heart and does her best to keep the city and its people running as best as they possibly can. Compassion and lawful goodness fall into the same boat for Stress, which can sometimes end poorly for criminals who go to her for medical care, thinking that surely a doctor as kind as Stress would never turn away someone, even if they have broken the law. What they forget is that becoming a doctor takes a spine of steel, and Stress has gone one step above the rest- she has a spine of chrome, and she will do what she must to keep her city running strong. (Incidentally, that chrome spine of hers? Not hyperbole, an “accident” at 6 made sure of that.) Vintagebeef runs a butcher shop and is mid to low ranking. He serves the best sandwiches in the city, as attested to by his best customers, Rendog and Falsesymmetry. Rendog is a happy go lucky reporter who spends equal time chasing skirts as he does chasing his next scoop. False is a beat cop, one of the best, and she’s gone viral at least once for dumping criminals who think that just because she's a girl that means she can’t fight. She’s particularly embarrassed (and a bit proud) of the video of her literally picking up a criminal and dumping him the nearest trash chute. Welsknight, the unfortunate garbage man, was quite unhappy to have to remove the criminal from the chute, as for all of False’s strength, she wasn’t quite strong enough to pry the man loose again. He now low-key follows False around to clean up all of her messes as while the media at large is quite fond of her feats, the local infrastructure isn’t. Somehow, he always ends up at the right place at the right time. Scar is a bit down on his luck, but overall is doing pretty well for himself. He’s one of the architects for the city, was in fact famous for a time for creating a specific style of sheer white skyscraper that allowed for more solar panels to be placed along its side. However, 2 years later and people are starting to realize that for some reason, his buildings aren’t as efficient as they ought to be and his designs have since fallen out of favor. Rendog had taken great joy running his name through the muck, unfortunately, as a man’s got to eat and for all the Scar is a nice guy, a renowned architect falling from grace makes for quite the scoop. The two don’t like each other much, but they’ve actually seen each other’s faces. Anyway, Scar has been living off of his savings, hoping that someone up top would care enough about him to fix the issue and find out what went wrong. After 2 years of nothing, however, he has realized that if he ever wants to figure out the mystery of his buildings’ lack of efficiency, he’ll need to find out himself. Little does he know, Keralis, the architect that replaced him, has been doing quite well for himself and the last thing he wants is to lose his position to the guy he had replaced. While a generally nice guy, Keralis has had a taste of the high life and now there’s no going back. He knows what Scar is up to, and is quite… invested in keeping the status quo. No. Matter. What. Joe Hills runs a bookstore. A completely normal bookstore. Yes, really officer, I promise. Just like how XB, his best friend and right hand man, employee of the month, every month, is entirely average in every way and has never done anything wrong in his life, ever. There is one more among the hermits who has wings- Etho. Or rather, had. Etho had his wings cut off for undisclosed crimes against the city and now works in a toy shop on the outskirts of town. He’s thoroughly mysterious and always looks tired, but his toys and trinkets business does surprisingly well and he always seems happy, behind that mask of his. The only hint that this isn’t quite the case is the tightness around his eyes. A secret? When they told him that the pain would never stop, that awful night when they burnt his wings off? He didn’t believe them. (Oh god, the way it smelled.) He really, really should have.

You’ve heard about the shining white walls, the perfect healthcare, the love the people hold for the city and the rigor with which they defend it. The quiet, the peace, the wonderful golden silence found in its streets and reflecting from its windows. Even the light seems quieter there. If you’re smart, you may have picked up that something isn’t quite right with the city, that 2/3s of our cast seems to be missing. You’d be right, almost. Mumbo, Cub. Cleo? They aren’t missing- they’re hiding. And they have very good reason to do so.

The city’s name is Sky’s Limit, and it is built on a foundation of marble and hard, cold law. It is a city of white… and black. And lurking in its shadows are all those that do not belong, those whose colors do not fit, those who can’t afford the brilliant marble towers or the plastic smiles popularized by the rich and famous. It is a city choked into silence by its secrets and one thing it cannot abide is the humming electric whine of redstone. And those who practice it are criminals in the eyes of the law, to be persecuted to its fullest extent and often, even beyond. Even to the grave, if needs must or the council orders such. And BDubs is so very, very fond of his restful, quiet beauty sleep. Not everyone agrees with these laws however, and brewing in the black, sunless shadows of the city’s underbelly are those determined to see the city shine red. Zedaph is the closest to legal of the underground hermits- he has to be when he has two more mouths to feed, Tango and Impulse. Although the latter two are redstone geniuses and do well in making food stretch and and make their ramshackle rented apartment livable, it is Zedaph alone who fake any marketable skills. While Impulse and Tango do their best to keep the lights on and use redstone wiring to steal power from the city’s solar- and wind-powered electrical grid, Zedaph peddles the doodads and toys he makes to the poorest children of the city. Many of them still contain some measure of redstone, as it's nigh-impossible to ignore its thrumming call entirely if you are born to do the stuff, but his target audience is usually too young, too uneducated, and too scared of the law to recognize it or say anything about it. And if a bit of redstone Impulse or Tango put together can help someone make it another day, and Zedaph can make it look passably legal? Well, some of the poorest housewives and mothers can look the other way The trio are happy together, but making ends meet is hard and with summer coming, resources are soon to be harder to get than ever. (A city of light and pure white? Things start to heat up fast, and water becomes more precious than ever. And with summer coming, it means less water gathering in puddles and drain pipes in the city, and thus less water for the underground redstoners and hybrids to tap into.) Little does Zedaph know, however, he’s caught the attention of another toymaker in the city. In addition to this, Tango is getting restless, frustrated with the trio’s lot in life. Even under normal circumstances he can’t sit still, and being cooped up inside all the time because his glowing red eyes give him away as being both a hybrid and really in tune with redstone? It sucks. A lot. Impulse tries to keep his buddy distracted, but there’s only so much he can do, and now, Tango has been disappearing at odd hours, frequently when he and Zedaph are trying to sleep, and coming back with an odd look in his eyes. Just a few days ago he had found the remains of a charred pamphlet in their dumpster out back. Something is coming to head, and Impulse isn’t sure he’s going to like the outcome. Not that he’d ever mention the mounting tension to Zedaph, of course. His buddy has enough to worry about. ZombieCleo… runs a speakeasy/burlesque show underneath Joe’s bookstore. She has his full approval of course, and they’re fast friends under the merits of he’s one of the only decent men she’s ever met. It helps that he’s hardcore aro-ace and has no interest in her or her girls. Cleo, being a zombie hybrid, knows all too well about the tough life being a hybrid is and how it can make people turn to awful things just to make ends meet. She knows that doing sex work is the last thing her girls want to be doing, not that they have a choice, and she does her best to do right by them. She protects her workers viciously, and if any of her patrons try to treat her girls too roughly, or try to skip out on payment? Well, being a hybrid comes with a few perks and a nice pair of teeth and nails is all part of the package. Coincidentally, Joe is awfully good at hiding a body. Doc is perhaps the most down on his luck of the hermits. As both a redstoner and an obvious hybrid, he can’t find work, he can’t find anyone willing to rent to him, he can barely even find food enough to eat. He’s resorted to petty theft and squatting, and if it wasn’t for his ruthless determination that this city would not be the death of him, he would have laid down and given up long ago. Not even the occasional rendezvous with the local garbage cans is enough to deter him (courtesy of the local beat cop. That woman has no right to be as strong as she is). It’s on one such day, trying to pry himself out of yet another trashcan far too small for him, that Doc finally gets his lucky break. The old man to whom the trashcan belongs to comes out, hoping to dispose of his waste for evening, and instead finds the creeper hybrid there, cursing up a storm and angry enough to kill. The sight would almost be threatening to TFC if, you know, he hadn’t seen worse and the hybrid in question looked like he hadn’t had a good meal for years. TFC invites Doc inside after helping to pry him loose, and Doc, while suspicious, accepts. TFC low key makes Doc move in with him and treats the man well, seeing as the poor hybrid reacts to every little thing as if he had never seen kindness. TFC also begins to tell stories to Doc about the time before the city was built, before redstone was outlawed and hybrids were looked down upon as lesser beings. And Doc, utterly enchanted by the concept, begins to have… ideas. Iskall was in the same position as Doc for a while, but they too get their lucky break. They get picked up by Mumbo Jumbo and is introduced to the Cotillion, the rebel group who are out to shake the city to its very foundations and bring about an age of redstone dominance. Mumbo and the hundreds of people under him plan on breaking the social order and instating redstoners and hybrids as the top dogs, and Iskall finds themself shocked that the rebels seem to have the organization and resources to actually do it. Mumbo is witty and charismatic, seemingly always having a plan and a silver-tongued speech to go with it. He also installs Iskall as second in command, much to their shock. Time will tell if the Cotillion is going to succeed. Cub is living in one of Scar’s buildings, along with many other redstoners. Just... Not entirely legally.

This is pretty much the end of the world-building section, I’ll come out with a post on the general plot as soon as I can. TBC :)

#hermitcraft #fanfiction #my writing #minecraft #sky's limit au #world building

10 notes · View notes