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arvandus · 4 years

Text

Touch (Pt. 8)

Pairing: Dabi x Fem!Reader

WARNINGS: 18+ only please! Drug abuse/withdrawal, adult language/themes, heavy angst, past trauma/abuse, anxiety/panic attacks, PTSD, fluff, pining, slow burn, eventual emotional SMUT. *please pay attention to the chapter tags as these warnings will apply at different times*

Synopsis: When you first joined the LOV to lend your healing quirk, Dabi terrified you. Not interested in attachments, he wanted to keep it that way. That is, until he needs your help. (Slow burn, soft Dabi).

Chapter warning: Another long chapter, clocking in at 10k words and 27 pages. First half is a bit heavy, so... Trigger warnings: physical abuse, verbal abuse, childhood trauma flashbacks

Chapter Songs: When The Truth Hunts You Down by Sam Tinnesz/Make It Rain by Ed Sheeran

Part 1 Part 7

Artwork credit to @hellowon31 on Twitter (https://twitter.com/hellowon31)

Part 8 - Memories

Dabi stared at his desk, now positioned in front of his bedroom door. He did it as soon as he’d returned to his room and swallowed the pills you had given him. He wasn’t sure what to expect for the evening, but whatever happened, he wanted to make it through it without leaving his room.

That was a decision he had made before he even showed up at your door with dinner, as evidenced by the plastic bags currently occupying the surface of his makeshift barricade. Ramen wasn’t the only thing he’d gotten while he was out. The bags were filled with a variety of items - more snacks, a pack of cigarettes, electrolyte drinks, over the counter medicines. Anything and everything he could think of was in those bags, the collection curated from multiple experiences of past detoxes. Granted, this wasn’t a full detox, but that just made it that much harder to anticipate what exactly his experience was going to be.

Next to the lineup of bags was a bottle of high-end whiskey and a far less fancy plastic cup. That part wasn’t exactly planned… it was a last-minute decision, swiped from the bar downstairs after he’d returned from his shopping spree. He knew you wouldn’t be happy about it; no doubt you’d grill him on the risks of mixing alcohol and drugs. But it was his safety net without the risk of leaving his room in search of something stronger.

The night dragged by slowly, painfully. Every inch of Dabi was restless and aching. His scarred legs screamed a discordant song through his veins, muffled under the influence of the pills you had given him. The aches he still felt were just annoying enough to make sleep impossible, despite the exhaustion that pulled at him. There was no comfortable position, nothing to ease the physical stress.

Still, the pain was bearable. Your treatment was working.

It had its limits, though. Despite the pills you’d given him, he was still functioning on an opioid withdrawal. A jittery energy consumed him, forcing his leg to beat like a jackhammer, while his mind raced. Dabi could never stay in one spot for long, switching between his bed to his desk chair, to his bed again. Sitting. Lying down. Standing. Sitting again. It hadn’t taken him long to break into his cigarettes, dragging long puffs into his lungs to ease his tattered nerves. It helped to ease the physical distress, but his mind continued to jump from thought to thought, no longer encumbered by a drug-filled haze.

The headache relief you’d provided him was proving to be a double-edged sword, allowing his sporadic thoughts to come through clearer without the sharp, throbbing ache as a distraction. Your conversation hung over Dabi like a vengeful ghost. He tried to run from it, distracting himself with various forms of entertainment on his phone. Music videos, books, TV shows, memes…

Did you like memes? Of course, you did. Who didn’t?

Damn it, there you were again, in his brain.

He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about you.

But he did anyway. Obsessively.

It wasn’t long before Dabi was sitting on his bed, his phone forgotten in his hand while his mind turned over every nuance of what was said, every detail of body language. It honed in on the fear in your eyes, the way you had wrapped your arms around yourself, the way you had frozen against his harsh tone. His mind chewed on it like a dog with a bone, a dog he couldn’t fucking train.

It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t fucking matter.

So, you were scared of him. That was to be expected. It wasn’t like he needed you to like him. This was all temporary anyway.

So, he had grabbed you. Big deal. It wasn’t like he really hurt you, right? It could have been so much worse.

The thoughts the did little to comfort him, his new-found conscience finding little of value in his weak excuses. The guilt sat in him like a stone, too heavy for him to move.

It mattered. It mattered a lot.

And he hated it.

Dabi still couldn’t remember actually grabbing you, but his mind filled in the blank space regardless, taking what he could remember and embellishing it into a brightly colored oil painting. It hung front and center in the castle of his mind, joining the tapestry of memories that wrapped around Dabi like a cage. And from it, it forced him to follow the threads of his life, drawing parallels to past wrongs, to things said and things done…

…To things better left buried.

“I hate you.”

The words echoed in Dabi’s mind, an old memory with his voice attached. Young, hot-headed, angry. He closed his eyes tight, resting the bridge of his nose on his interlaced fingers as he tried not to remember. He didn’t want to remember. But his mind was freed now, healing from the poison he’d been feeding himself for years, and it didn’t give a fuck what he wanted or didn’t want.

“This is all your fault.”

So, this is where his mind wanted to start first. He knew this memory, and he knew where it would eventually lead.

The memory came into focus with such clarity that it was as if he were there again. He could see her, clear as if she were there in person, white hair framing broken eyes as wet tears trailed down her hollow, pale cheeks. He could see himself too, younger, around thirteen years old, with red, wild hair like his father, his blue eyes filled with angry tears.

He watched, a prisoner in his own mind, as the memory unfolded before him.

His head hung low as his eyes stared ahead of himself, unfocused. Why? Why was this happening to him? His father’s harsh words wrapped around him like chains, restricting him, choking him, forcing him into submission.

‘YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A FAILED EXPERIMENT.’

Why was he cast aside so easily, as if he didn’t MATTER?

His father promised. He PROMISED that he’d help him become a hero. He’d trained every day, no matter how hard his father pushed him, no matter how much his quirk burned him. His father had called it the cost of greatness. It was all meant to mold him, to beat the weakness out of him and make him stronger, to prepare him for the greatest test of his life, the UA entrance exams. It was the ONLY path to becoming a pro hero. Not just any pro hero, but the BEST. His father insisted on it.

But now, with less than a year before he would apply, his father abandoned him.

“I tried so hard, mom. I did everything he ever asked, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much he… he…”

His mother wrapped her arms around him, holding him close. “I’m so sorry Touya.”

His voice shook with the force of suppressed sobs. “If I’d been strong enough… if I was more like him, then maybe he’d have been proud of me. Maybe… maybe he would have wanted me.”

“Touya…” his mother whispered consolingly.

He stared at his bandaged hands, watching through blurred vision as his tears broke free and fell onto the strips of cloth. They soaked in, exposing the red blood beneath. He stared at it.

His fathers voice echoed in his mind. ‘You’re WEAK! Just like your mother!’

Tainted blood.

HER blood.

His father was right.

Touya’s pain transformed into anger. “This is all your fault.” He whispered.

Her embrace vanished as his words smacked her. Her eyes began to fill with tears. “What…?”

“This is all your fault!” He repeated, pinning his angry eyes on her tear-filled ones. “I HATE YOU!”

Dabi rubbed at the bridge of his nose, unable to get his mother’s facial expression out of his head. He had been such an idiot. A young, stupid kid. He’d destroyed her with those words. Maybe… maybe that was the start. The first crack in her mental fragility.

Her face faded away, and now he was in an office. His father’s office.

“I’m going to apply to UA.” He announced.

His father looked up at him from the newspaper he was reading. “No you’re not. I forbid it.”

“You may have given up on me, but I haven’t.” Touya said stubbornly.

Enji put the newspaper down. “If I thought you were capable of getting into UA, then we would be training right now instead of having this conversation.”

“But dad-“

“I FORBID IT!” He shouted as orange flames erupted along his face and shoulders. “I’ll not have you bring shame on the Todoroki name all for a childish dream.”

“It’s NOT a childish dream!” Touya shouted.

Dabi scoffed at the memory, noting his father’s hypocrisy about “childish dreams.” He knew the rest of this story… He’d applied behind his father’s back and failed the exam. His father was furious.

As if summoned, the memory burst forth, tying together with the previous.

He lay in the hospital bed at the UA Health Center, wrapped in bandages, nursing his failure. He’d lost control of his emotions during the exam, consumed by anger and a desperate desire to prove his father wrong. In turn, he lost control of his quirk. Not only had he injured himself with his recklessness, but he’d accidentally injured two other applicants with his wild flames – an automatic disqualification.

The school nurse, Recovery Girl, was treating the other’s wounds first, and then she would treat his.

Or so he thought.

Just as she was about to use her quirk to rapidly heal some of his injuries, his father burst through the door in a cloud of barely contained rage.

“Don’t treat him.” He ordered.

“Excuse me?” She replied.

Touya stared at his father, realization starting to dawn on him. He wouldn’t...

Enji narrowed his eyes. “I said don’t treat him.”

“But Mr. Todoroki, if I don’t use my quirk to help him then he’ll be left with scars. Worse than the ones he already has.”

“I know.”

“It will take him many weeks to heal. He may feel pain for the rest of his life.”

“He must suffer the consequences of his actions.”

“But sir, if I may-“

“You may not!”

“…very well, sir.” She mumbled. She left the room, muttering her disapproval under her breath.

After she was gone, a cold fear gripped Touya as his father stared at him with fury in his eyes. He waited for his father’s barrage of insults and accusations, waited for the lecturing on family honor and being a ‘man.’

But the attacks never came. Instead, his father cooled his expression, fixing him with a cold, emotionless glare. “You brought this on yourself.” He turned on his heel to leave, but paused to glance at him over his shoulder. “Remember this day, Touya.” Then he left.

Tears streaked down Touya’s face as he sobbed alone. No one could hear him. No one came.

Dabi stood up and made his way to his desk, pulling out another cigarette before sitting down in the metal chair. He lit the cigarette with the blue flame dancing on his finger and took a long drag of it as his free hand slowly spun the whiskey bottle in circles in front of him.

He didn’t want to think about this. Any of this. There was no fucking point to it, nothing to be gained. It only brought up the same pain he’d lived with for years, the pain he’d learned to ignore in place of vengeance.

He wanted to drink the entire bottle. He wanted to move his desk aside and seek you out, have you turn off his emotions like you’d done before. He could do it… the desk wasn’t really going to stop him.

But it served as a reminder. A reminder of what he had committed himself to. Why did he decide to go through with this? What the hell was he thinking?

He thought of you. He thought of the past few days. And once again, he was back on his thread of memories, following the tapestry down to its source.

The source of what?

He wasn’t sure. But it was as if someone had strapped him down and was forcing his eyes open. It wouldn’t stop. His thoughts continued unfettered, memories organizing with a clarity he hadn’t felt in years.

Touya sat alone in his room watching the rain pour outside as he nursed a black eye. Outside his second-story window, his father trained in the courtyard with his youngest brother. His quirk had manifested earlier that day – a perfect combination of fire and ice. Enji had been ecstatic.

Touya had punched the wall in anger.

Now he sat here, alone, watching his father train his replacement.

His replacement.

No wonder his father had abandoned him when Shouto was born. He was placing all of his chips on him once he realized that Touya’s body would never be able to handle his quirk.

A knock at the door interrupted his brooding, and his mother stepped in, disappointment already on her face.

“I heard you got in another fight today.” She said, as she closed the door behind her.

“They were picking on Natsuo.” He said. “I couldn’t just let that happen.”

“They’re talking about expelling you.”

He looked away from her, his eyes looking back out the window. “So what.” He replied. If anything, he welcomed it. Anything to thwart his father’s plans of making him go to college and get a business degree, only to work under his father’s thumb at his agency for the rest of his life.

“You can’t keep doing this, Touya.” She said, concern heavy in her voice.

“Doing what?” He looked back at her.

“Destroying your life like this.”

He glared at her accusation. “I didn’t destroy my life.” He looked away, watching the courtyard again. “He did.”

His mother walked over to join him at the window. A gust of wind blasted raindrops onto the glass. Outside, Shouto’s flames died away on his skin as he collapsed to his hands and knees. Enji grabbed him by his small arm, forcing him back up to his feet. She watched it with a sadness in her eyes.

“He’s too young.” She said quietly.

Jealousy soaked into Touya’s heart. “And I wasn’t?”

His words stabbed her, and she hung her head in guilt. “I’m sorry, Touya. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

Now he was confused. “Like what?”

She didn’t respond, and he looked at her to see her eyes glazed over in silent introspection. She’d mentally retreated within herself, to a place that Touya couldn’t follow. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her do this. If anything, it was happening more frequently lately. Normally, when this happened he wouldn’t press it, allowing her to escape within herself, to protect whatever part of her she felt needed protecting.

But now her words trapped him, and his heart began to pound at their unspoken meaning. “LIKE. WHAT? How was it supposed to happen??”

His words cut through her mental isolation, and she stared distantly at the floor as her eyes began to brim with tears.

“If only one of the others had been strong enough… of only I’d given them better quirks…” the tears broke free, landing on the hard floor. “Then maybe… maybe you wouldn’t have had to suffer so long. I’m so sorry, Touya. It’s all my fault. Everything is all my fault.” She covered her face in her hands.

Given them better quirks? Who?

His body went cold. Suddenly he was outside of himself, watching the history of his life fly by.

The birth of Fuyumi. Then came Natsuo.

Now Shouto.

Touya did the math in his head. He was 17 now. Fuyumi was 14, and Natsuo was 9. Shouto was 5. A four-year gap between each of them.

He’d always thought that his siblings came along as a natural process of a growing family, born from love despite his father’s harsh, obsessive nature. Why else would Rei have stayed with him all these years? But the age gaps were too uncanny, too similar. It was just enough time for each of their quirks to manifest.

Shouto wasn’t the only one who was intended as a replacement.

Which meant his father had given up on him long before he’d ever let on.

Touya’s chest heaved, as his world was up-ended. “It was all a lie…”

The intensity of his tone forced his mother to come back to the present, her hands falling from her face to stare at him. “What?”

“It was all a lie!” he repeated, his voice raising. “All these years…”

He stood up and began pacing his room, his hand in his red hair. “Tell me it’s not true.” He demanded. “I already knew that Shouto was meant to replace me. But Natsuo?” He paused and stared at his mother.

She looked way shamefully.

His breaths began to come out in ragged gasps as he fought the tears coming to his eyes.

“Fuyumi?”

“No, not Fuyumi. Not initially, at least.”

Right. Because his quirk had just manifested when she was born. His father didn’t know yet how weak and limited his body was; he’d still believed it was something that could be worked past, that it was something Touya could control. Which meant that Fuyumi was wanted. Lucky her. No wonder his father seemed to favor her over everyone else.

He sat on his bed, his head in his hands. “What the FUCK.”

All these years, he’d assumed his father had believed in him, and only gave up on him right before he was set to apply to UA. Even then, he’d thought that his father only abandoned him as a way to protect Touya from hurting himself, or even worse, killing himself. That was why his father hadn’t let him get healed back then, right? That was the lesson he was supposed to learn? To accept his weakness and take his mortality seriously? Sure, there was the whole thing about ruining the family’s reputation, but he’d always hoped that deep down, there was more to it than that. There had to be.

But no. None of it was true. It was all about HIM. His father and his stupid, obsessive goal to beat All Might, even if it was only through his progeny. Touya was nothing but a tool to him, a means to an end. And when he couldn’t meet his father’s needs, he became nothing more than a contingency plan. In the meantime, his father kept trying to make the perfect hero. The perfect quirk.

And he’d finally succeeded.

Touya stared at his scarred hands. “Did… did he ever even love me?” The words fell from his mouth, a forbidden, broken whisper.

His mother’s arms were around him then, cradling him to her chest. “Of course, he loves you. I swear it.”

The warmth of her embrace made him turn his attention on her, and suddenly a revelation hit him, cutting into him like a thousand knives. His body went rigid, his eyes wide.

“You knew.” He whispered. He forced her arms off of him and stood up, towering over her with his height. She took a step back, her eyes wide. “You knew and you never told me.”

He turned his back to her, unable to look at her.

“Touya, please...” she begged, her voice quivering.

He didn’t want to hear it. There was nothing she could say that could fix this. His father was one thing… he’d accepted that he was an abusive, shitty father. But his mother? His mother who he’d confided in? His mother who was supposed to protect him? His mother… who he trusted? Why didn’t she ever tell him?

The betrayal was too much. It cut too deep. His entire childhood was a lie, years wasted by those who were supposed to love and support him.

Disgust filled him. He wanted her gone. Out of his room, out of his life.

“Touya!” she said desperately. She reached out to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, an attempt at bridging the growing chasm between them.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” He shouted.

Flames erupted across his body, uncontrolled, as his arm shoved her away from him. She stumbled back with such force that she collided into the wall before slumping down against it. She didn’t get up. Instead, she sat there with her knees drawn up like a child, her body wracked with sobs.

He stared at her, horrified, as his blue flames died away on his skin. He wanted to go to her, to reach out and help her, apologies falling frantically from his lips. He took a cautious step forward, one hand outstretched towards her. But she shied away from him, her arms wrapping protectively around her head.

“No! Enji, please!”

Her words stopped him in his tracks. Slowly, he lowered his hand and stared in stunned silence as his mother babbled incoherent apologies. Something shattered within himself, sinking away to leave a hollowness in its place.

He ran.

Dabi was drowning, as the weight of his past washed over him, choking him.

That was the longest one yet. And the most painful. It ripped at the exposed tender places in his heart, places he’d thought were long-since dead.

Dabi’s vision blurred and he wiped at his nose. This was what he did. He lashed out, hurting those close to him, those who didn’t deserve it. It was the same with you. It was who he was, it was who he was made to be. It’d only be a matter of time before it happened again.

He lifted his cigarette to take another puff but stopped when he realized that it had burned down to the filter, leaving a trail of ash in its wake on the desk.

He unpacked another cigarette and lit it. His hand began to unscrew the whiskey bottle.

She had avoided him after that, and he avoided her. It wasn’t long after that rainy day that his mother had her mental breakdown, scalding Shouto in an attempt to burn away the image of her husband. Or was she trying to burn away the image of Touya? Was there even a difference in her mind?

The news had shocked him, and he ran as fast as his legs could take him. He burst into Enji’s office, forcing himself into his father’s presence.

“Where is she?” Touya demanded, his chest heaving from exertion.

Enji frowned at the intrusion, looking up from his paperwork at his desk. He was dressed professionally, in a white button-up shirt with a blue tie.

“Who?” He demanded.

Touya clenched his jaw so tight his teeth ground together. God, did he hate him…

“My mother. You know, your wife. The one you knock up every four years and the ignore.”

Enji menacingly rose from his chair, his blue eyes carrying the threat of violence within them. He towered over Touya, his presence casting a shadow from the wall sconces behind him.

“You watch your tone with me, boy.” Enji said coldly. “I will not be disrespected in my own house.”

Touya knew if he pushed it, he’d never get what he came here for. So, he sucked up his anger and pride, bowing deep in apology. “Yes, sir.” Touya muttered with downcast eyes. “Forgive me. I just want to know where she is.”

Enji paused for a moment, staring down at his son before returning to his seat and picking up his pen. “She’s been admitted to the Musutafu Mental Institution.” He replied as he marked his paper.

A pause filled the space before Touya asked his next question. “Can I see her?”

“No.”

Touya’s breath stopped, his mind unable to wrap around the simple word that fell like a judge’s gavel. His father’s answer was cold and final, said with such heartless ease. He stared in disbelief.

He thought he had time to mend things, to finally overcome his cowardice and atone for his actions. But there was no atoning now. He’d lost her. Tears began to sting in the corners of his eyes, but he fought them back; his father always hated it when he cried.

“So that’s it…? She’s gone?”

“It was for the best.” Enji replied. “She attacked my son, almost made him useless. Now I can train him without her interfering.”

“Is that all you care about?” The words fell from Touya’s mouth before he could stop them, covered in bitterness.

Enji’s pen stopped scribbling. An agonizing ten seconds passed before he set it down and looked up at Touya, pinning him with his sharp eyes, dark eyebrows pulled down into an angry frown. “Excuse me?”

Touya steeled himself against his father’s wrath as the rage he’d been keeping to himself burst forth against its creator.

“Is that all you care about?” he repeated. “Your wife is in a mental institution and your son is scarred for life, but all you can think about is surpassing All Might?”

Enji pinned him with a look that was almost akin to pity. “How small-minded you are. This was always your problem, Touya. Your mother too. You both lacked vision, an inability to see the bigger picture. That was why you were never able to push past your limits. But Shouto… Shouto will be different.”

Enji’s accusations made Touya’s lips curl into a snarl. “Do you even hear yourself?” he spat. “No wonder she went crazy. She wasn’t attacking Shouto, she was attacking you! This is all your fault, and you don’t even care. You’re a shit father, and a worse husband.”

The pity in his father’s eyes turned to ice, and the man quietly set his pen down before standing up from his desk. “Shouto said the same thing.” He grumbled. “I excused it coming from him, because he’s young and doesn’t understand yet. But you… you should know better.” He loosened his tie and began to unbutton the cuffs of his sleeves. “I’ve been too lenient on you. It looks like there are some lessons I still have yet to teach you.”

Touya took a step back at the obvious gesture.

Enji stared down at him in disgust. “Look at you. Already scared. You’re just as pathetic as before.”

Touya went into a defensive stance, his blue flames igniting across his skin.

His father scowled. “You dare raise your flames against me, boy?” His own flames erupted along his body. “Very well. If you’re going to talk like a man and fight like a man, then you will learn to accept your consequences like a man.”

Dabi took a drag of his new cigarette, already burned halfway from neglect. He inhaled deeply, wanting the toxic fumes to fill the gaping hole in his chest. It didn’t.

He picked up the now-open whiskey bottle and poured it to the halfway point of the plastic cup. There was no ice to chill it, but it would have to do. He took a swig, letting the fiery taste coat his tongue, burning away the taste of ash.

Enji had taken him outside into the courtyard, where he received the worst beating he’d ever gotten. His father’s blows lacked the restraint he typically exercised, fueled by a dark rage. It had left Touya gagging and coughing, crumpled on the floor in a heap. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to move, it hurt to think.

The beating may have been five minutes or it may have been five hours. He couldn’t really tell. All he did know was that no one came. Just like all the times before, no one came to say something, to stop him, even though the sound of their conflict shook the Todoroki grounds, incinerating nearby bushes and damaging the exposed framework of the surrounding buildings. And after his father had left, removing his tie and his shirt to clean the blood from them, Touya had laid there alone in the dirt, staring up at the cold, lifeless, star-studded night sky as an unforgiving universe stared back. He wanted to die.

It felt like eternity had passed before two sets of hands gently grabbed him and helped him up, each of his arms going around familiar shoulders. His siblings had finally come for him, now that his father was out of sight and they knew they were safe from his wrath. They had helped Touya to his bed, where Fuyumi tended to his wounds in silence and Natsuo sat beside her, his mouth pressed into a thin, angry line.

Dabi took another couple of decent gulps of his whiskey, resisting the urge to down the entire contents and pour another cup. How much did he pour? Four shots worth? Five? He needed it to kick in. If he was going to be forced to relive every bad memory he ever had, then he’d be here all night.

His body was worn down, his spirit tired. He really didn’t want to feel anymore.

But the alcohol wasn’t working fast enough; his brain wouldn’t stop.

It was late at night, the moon high in the sky, the air cold with the hint of rain as clouds rolled in from the distance. It had been a few days since Touya’s beating, but despite his sister’s protests, he decided to leave the confines of his room and take a walk on the family compound.

That was how he ended up here, six feet away from the training room. The light was off, but he could hear the sound of fists hitting, and every now and then the room would light up with bright orange flame. But there was no lecturing, no young voice crying. Touya knew Shouto wasn’t in there this time. He was still in bed, recovering from the burn his mother had inflicted. Enji was furious, pacing the grounds like an angry bear, snapping at staff and family and locking himself away in his training room to work out his frustrations, constantly striving for a goal he’d never be able to achieve.

Touya inwardly scoffed. If anyone should be admitted to a mental institution, it should be his father. The man was literally driven insane by his inability to surpass All Might. But of course, that would never happen. His father was the number two hero. He was “untouchable.” There was no one brave enough or strong enough to make that man face his own demons. It made Touya curl his nose up at the hypocrisy.

An odd silence drew Touya out of his thoughts. The sounds of fists impacting dummies and training equipment had stopped, the flames no longer bathing the ground in light through the open door. Then he heard it – an unfamiliar sound, one he’d never heard before. He furrowed his brow in confusion and inched closer to the open door before risking a peek inside.

The moonlight spilled in just enough for him to see the hulking form of his father, sitting on the floor with his head in his hands. His great shoulders shook, and finally Touya realized the sound he was hearing.

His father was crying.

Disgust filled Touya, sour and bitter. For all of his father’s posturing, for all of his grandiose lectures about strength and commitment, here he was, sobbing like a baby. And for what? For his inability to reach his dreams, while his family fell apart around him?

Or was he crying FOR his family?

Touya pushed the possibility away, burying it deep, deep down where he refused to give the idea any chance of blooming into a belief.

No. This man didn’t feel for his family. He wasn’t ALLOWED to feel for his family. He was the reason his family was as broken as it was, every single one of them able to tie their scars back to him and his selfish actions.

Touya hated him.

And yet he loved him. How fucked up was that? He could feel it in his irrational urge to go to him and offer support, a support he’d never once received. And that just made him hate him more, because despite all that his father had done to him, Touya still fucking cared.

His father wasn’t worthy of it. He didn’t deserve Touya’s love, or his mother’s love, or anyone’s love for that matter.

And he certainly didn’t deserve to cry.

Touya fled. He fled from his feelings, he fled from his fears, taking only his righteous anger with him and riding it like a hellhound. He ran as fast as he could, ignoring the pain that sliced through him from his father’s abuse. His lungs burned. His ribs ached. As he ran, his thoughts followed, chasing him and swooping on him like a flock of crows, pecking at his sanity.

He ended up in an abandoned warehouse, a quarter mile from his house, across the railroad tracks that marked the separation of ritzy upper-class life and industrial city complexes. He fell to his knees, his palms landing hard on the dirt-strewn floor inside the old building, as sobs ripped lose from his throat, harsh and painful.

He hated him. He hated him more than anything. How could he have ever idolized him? How could he have ever loved him? His father was selfish. He was destructive. He was cruel. And now his father cried like a baby, as if he were a victim in all of this.

He wasn’t a victim. And he certainly wasn’t a hero.

What kind of hero saved civilians while simultaneously destroying his family behind closed doors? That wasn’t a hero. It was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And it was devouring his family. His helpless, innocent family.

They deserved justice. They deserved saving. Where was hero society in all of this? Lining his father’s pockets, placing him on a pedestal to be worshipped. His father always preached about Touya accepting the consequences of his actions. So where were Enji’s consequences?

As long as his father continued to reign supreme, his family would never be safe. His family would never heal. His mother would never recover. Natsuo would never be freed of his anger. Shouto would never get to decide who he is and who he wants to be. Fuyumi would be weighed down by her obligation to her family, foregoing her own dreams to take care of them all.

His father needed to be gone. Permanently. Only then would his family be safe. Only then would they be free.

But Touya… Touya would never be free. He understood that now, even as his hatred and anger consumed him. He was just like his father, a proverbial chip-off-the-old-block. He’d managed to take all the worst parts of him and make them a part of himself. His obsessive nature, his anger, his jealousy… his violence. He could feel it in his blood.

If his family wasn’t safe with Enji, then what made Touya any different? He’d already played a hand in his mother’s mental demise. How could he be sure he wouldn’t hurt the rest as tie went on?

He was just like his father.

He hated his father.

He hated himself.

He wanted to die.

So then, who better to take on the Behemoth? Who better than his father’s son, the monster he’d made?

Touya had to kill Endeavor. He had to kill his father. His father, who he couldn’t even beat in a fight. He was stupid. A fool. But there were no other options. No other paths to justice. And Touya was tired of waiting for justice.

Touya’s sob turned into a dry laugh. Was this what it meant to be heroic? To bear the weight of this responsibility, even if it cost him his soul? Even if it killed him?

His dry laugh grew into a series of laughs, wild and hysterical, as tears ran down his face, while the reality of what he was committing to tore him asunder. As he heaved and coughed, a heat began to overtake him, building so quickly that by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. Searing, blue flames blasted out of him in such magnitude and such intensity that the windows of the abandoned warehouse exploded, glass shards melting from the intense heat as they rained down. The flames roared outward, reaching for the night sky through the now-glassless windows, groping and writhing, their fierceness never waning.

Touya couldn’t stop it. The flames scorched through him and consumed him, the sound of it raging in his ears, his body devoured by agony as his quirk ate at him, destroying him from the inside out. Above him, the heat of the flames began to melt the structural metal beams.

But his hysterical laughter and tears couldn’t stop, even as smoke left his scorched lungs with each exhale and his mouth tasted ash. A screeching sound filled the space, the sound of metal bending and breaking. The beams gave way, the roof caving in as destruction rained down around him, silencing his laughter.

…..

Nothing but bright blue fire and broken remains filled his vision. Slowly, a dark form began to take shape amongst the flames, tall and towering. It was him. He’d come for him.

The flames parted, and he saw himself as he was now: black hair, dark scars, staples glinting in the firelight. The sound of a funeral bell tolled and his mouth opened, forming a single word. A name.

A gentle knock caused the image to begin to fade away like mist, even as the funeral bells still rang in Dabi’s ears.

“Dabi?” He knew that voice. It was you.

Groggily, Dabi opened his eyes to find himself still in his chair at his desk, his head resting on his arm. His forgotten cup of whiskey sat unmoved, inches from his fingers. It was a dream. He’d fallen asleep.

Another knock at the door, slightly louder, made him sit up.

“...Dabi?” you called again.

“Yeah.” He grumbled. He rubbed at his face. “Yeah, yeah.”

His body felt stiff and his neck had a horrible kink in it. He checked the time on his phone. 5:45am. Why in God’s name were you up so early? And why were you knocking on his door?

He stood up and stretched his back, and that was when he felt it – a sharp itching pain that ran along his spine, chased by the agony in his legs. It was worse than he remembered it being before he’d passed out. Your quirk was starting to wear off.

It looked like you were right on time.

He grabbed the end of his metal desk with one hand and pulled, dragging it slowly away from the door. The sound was grating, like nails on a chalkboard. If people weren’t awake before, they definitely were now.

As if on cue, three harsh bangs resonated from the wall next him. “What the hell, Dabi???” Spinner’s voice yelled through the wall. “People are trying to sleep!”

“Bite me.” Dabi snapped back before opening the door for you, and stared, giving you an obvious once-over. You were completely dressed, in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, as if you’d been up for hours. Dark circles framed your tired eyes. “Hey, doll.” He greeted.

Your heart did a flip before you even knew what hit you, leaving you standing there like a deer in headlights. It’d been a cool minute since he’d called you that; you didn’t realize how much you’d grown attached to it.

It took you a moment to realize that he was holding the door open for you, inviting you in. Once you were across the threshold, Dabi closed the door behind you.

“Sorry… did I wake you?” You asked, as your eyes took in the room. His desk was haphazardly pulled away from the door, covered in plastic bags. The room stank of cigarette smoke and alcohol. A bottle of whiskey sat incriminatingly on the desk, some of its contents missing. You picked up the bottle and stared at it before pinning Dabi with a glare. You knew he knew better. For someone who was so experienced with drugs, he certainly did do some stupid shit.

“Really?” you scolded.

“Don’t start with me.” Dabi grumbled as he rubbed at his neck. He pulled out an electrolyte drink and downed its contents, wiping his mouth with his hand once it was empty. “There, you happy?” He moved on to a bag of chips, crunching loudly as he chewed in annoyance.

Normally, you would have been more diplomatic, navigated the waters a little bit more when you saw them getting choppy. But you slept like shit again last night, waking up repeatedly from bad dreams only to worry about this idiot while he decided to try to self-medicate by drinking his problems away.

“Don’t get mad at me for calling you out on your bullshit.” You replied. “If you act like an idiot, then I’m gonna treat you like one.”

“How’s it look up there on your high horse?” Dabi retorted.

“What?”

“It must be exhausting being so fucking perfect. Makes everyone else around you look like such fucking failures.” He turned his angry eyes away from you as he sat down on the end of his bed, running a hand through his messy black hair.

His words slapped you, and you stared at him for a long moment, taking in the sight of him. His eyes looked tired, his cheeks sallow. His hair looked tangled and unwashed. When was the last time he took a shower? His hand kept rubbing at his neck, no doubt nursing a sore spot. He must have fallen asleep at his desk after a rough night. You recalled the night you’d helped him through his withdrawal, and the breakdown it had culminated in. No doubt he was up all night battling his inner demons. Alone. Without your help this time. Guilt soaked through your frustration.

“I’m sorry.” You muttered. “You’re right, I shouldn’t judge. It’s just…” You sat down in his desk chair. “I’m trying so hard to help you. And… well…”

“What?” Dabi prodded. “You think I’m not trying?”

Your eyes fell on the desk, which sat askew in his room, and the bags full of various items that were obviously intended to help Dabi get through the night. “No…” you replied. “I know you are. I just wish you took better care of yourself.”

“I take care of myself just fine.”

Your brow furrowed. “I mean it, Dabi.” You rubbed at your face tiredly, letting your fatigue finally show. “I’m worrying about you, probably more than I should. I’m pushing my body to its limits, I can’t sleep, and when I do, I dream about you. Then I wake up, and I worry even more because I can never be entirely sure that you’re okay.”

You felt your body flush with heat at your sudden confession, and you looked at your hands in embarrassment. You weren’t supposed to say that. You weren’t supposed to say any of that. Stupid, no-good, tired, foggy brain.

A shit-eating grin spread across Dabi’s face, his eyes lighting up in amusement. “You dream about me, eh?”

“Shut up.” You grumbled. You grabbed a crumpled-up napkin and threw it at Dabi’s head. It fell pitifully to the floor, three feet from where he sat.

Dabi stared at the failed attack and gave a laugh. “That was pathetic.”

You tried to suppress a grin. “I said shut up. God, you’re such a brat.”

A moment of silence passed between the two of you before Dabi finally spoke. “Gotta solution to your problem… Stop worrying so much.”

You gave a small half-smirk. “Sorry, not gonna happen.” You replied. “I worry about my friends. That’s just how I am.”

Something did a flip in Dabi’s chest, and he averted his eyes. “Friends, huh? You don’t even know me.”

“I know you better today than I did a few days ago…”

He gave a dry laugh. You weren’t wrong…

“If we’re not friends when this is all over, then I will be greatly offended.” You teased. “Besides… like your company.”

Dabi stared at you like you grew a second head. You liked his company? For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why. Most of the time you’d spent together so far was him either feeling like shit or being an asshole.

But he liked your company too even though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, and for the moment he didn’t feel like fighting it. He’d argue with himself later over it for sure, but for right now… he enjoyed feeling your presence, enjoyed how your words wrapped around him like a warm blanket, safe and secure. His memories still sat upon his shoulders, lurking like crows, but they were silent for now, and he was pretty sure that it had something to do with you being here.

Your voice broke through his thoughts. “Let’s change your bandage. Are you okay waiting until I’m done treating you to get your pills?”

“Why, are you punishing me for drinking?” he replied. It took you a moment before you caught on that he was teasing.

You grinned and raised an eyebrow at him. “No, but now that you mention it, we should probably wait until after we’re done since I don’t know how long ago it was that you drank.”

Dabi narrowed his eyes at you suspiciously. Now you were just doing this on purpose…

You sat behind him on the bed and began unpacking your materials while he removed his shirt. When you removed his bandage, you stared at the healing burn for a moment.

“How’s it look?” He asked, glancing back at you over his shoulder.

“It’s healing okay, but it’s still going to take some time until you don’t need the bandages.”

Regardless of the status of his burn, he still needed to see you twice a day for your quirk treatment and pills. It was exhausting, and you were grateful that so far the others only returned with minor injuries. But that could change at any moment, and you needed to be able to handle it; otherwise, Shigaraki would start to question your value.

You could only hope that your seller could find a way to expedite Dabi’s medication. And your own too. You’d counted what you had left before you’d arrived, and you were getting low. Dangerously low. You could get through today and tomorrow morning, but if you didn’t have your refills by then…

You tried not to think about it.

You changed his bandages easily and began applying your quirk to his scarred skin just as you’d done the night before. When you adjusted your position to handle the scars on his front half, the fear crept up again. But this time, you were able to wrangle it successfully, only hesitating for a moment before you continued. You broke the silence with words, a helpful distraction from your increasing discomfort and wandering thoughts.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” You commented.

He eyed you for a moment, waiting for another lecture. But it never came and when your eyes met his in a quick glance, there was no judgment in them.

“Only once in a while.” He replied.

You read between the lines of his answer. “Does it help?”

“A little.”

Silence fell again as you became increasingly focused on your quirk. Your back was itching painfully again, and your heightened senses were making the light in the room seem far too bright. Still, your fingers traced along his neck, taking special care to make sure no space was left untouched. Dabi watched your face, inches from his own. That was when he noticed it. Something was wrong. Your smile was gone, your lips now pressed into a firm line. You took your breaths in through your nose, and your brows were pulled together as you focused. Your hands were starting to shake. Were you scared again? Or was it something else?

Just as your hands began to reach his face, he grabbed your hands in his own and pulled back slightly out of your reach. “Stop.”

Your eyes focused on him. “What? Why?”

“Your quirk. Does it hurt?” his tone was stern.

You stared at him, your expression caught like a deer in headlights before looking away abashedly.

“Yeah, sort of.” You replied.

Dabi held your hands, as he waited for a better answer than what you gave him.

Finally, you slowly pulled our hands out of his grasp, his touch leaving electricity on your skin, and sat on the bed next to him with your hands clasped together.

“So, you know how when I use my quirk, it numbs your pain?” Dabi waited silently for you to continue. “It sort of has an opposite effect on me. The more I use it, the more heightened my senses become. And if I use my quirk too much, then it becomes… uncomfortable.”

Dabi stared at his hands as you spoke, his brow pulled down into a dark frown. All this time… he knew you were pushing yourself to your limits; hell, you even said so earlier. But he had assumed it just caused fatigue. He never knew that it caused you pain. How had he never noticed? How many times had you treated him?

How much did you use your quirk on the first night of his withdrawal? How far did you really push yourself?

A car alarm went off outside of his open window, and your hands immediately flew up to cover your ears against the assault, your heart pounding. Once the pain and panic dissipated, you lowered your hands, embarrassment hot in your blood. It was the first time Dabi saw this part of you, and it made you feel weak and vulnerable.

“Sorry.” You mumbled.

Dabi hated those words. He especially hated hearing them from you. What the hell did you have to be sorry about? Anger bubbled in him, old and familiar. But he forced it down, aware of what his anger did to you as the memories flitted across his mind like a warning.

“It’s fine.” Dabi replied, keeping his voice even.

Dabi’s mind began turning over this new piece of information, fitting the missing puzzle piece into what little he did have. He became acutely aware of how little he really knew about you.

“Is that what those drugs are for?” he asked.

You paused for a moment, contemplating if you should spin your truth to fit his theory. But it didn’t feel right. Earlier you said you considered him a friend. Did you keep secrets from friends?

How much did you really trust him? How much did he trust you?

He was already trusting you more than you were, letting you help him through something very personal. You’d seen him vulnerable far more than he’d seen you vulnerable. So how would he feel if he learned you were keeping the truth from him?

You wondered how he’d react. If anyone would understand the pain you went through, it’d be him. If anything, it might make the two of you closer. You couldn’t deny that the idea of that resonated with an unspoken need within you.

“Sort of.” You replied, as you fiddled with the hem of your shirt. “I can’t use them for my sensory overload. It’d take too many to really have an impact, and I’d probably O.D. if I tried.”

“So, what are they for?”

Wow. He really wanted to know.

Your heart pounded in your chest, as your words got stuck somewhere between your mouth and your insecurity. It’d been so long since you’d talked about it, since you’d acknowledged it with another person. What if he laughed? After all, how ridiculous did you look complaining about a single scar compared to Dabi?? Or worse, what if he didn’t care at all?

But he’d asked, and now he was waiting for an answer.

The words still wouldn’t come, so you positioned yourself with your back facing him and lifted your shirt slightly, exposing the damaged flesh beneath.

Dabi’s eyes widened. He knew a burn scar when he saw one. And not just any burn scar. There was a pattern to it, a story in its twisted, marred flesh. This was done by a quirk. It spread across your lower back, the edge of it dipping beneath the hem of your pants. His hand began to reach out, fingers twitching with the urge to touch it, as if his touch could take the hateful mark off of you. But he caught himself, his fingers inches from your skin, and clenched his hand into a tight fist.

A long, heavy silence begin to fill the space between you while a thousand questions perched on the edge of his lips as he grappled with this new information and the emotions that erupted from it.

The silence dragged on, and you lowered your shirt, as heart-pounding anxiety smothered you. It filled the dark spaces in you, the weak places where confidence had abandoned you. It settled into a could dread that made you unable to turn around and face him. Why wasn’t he saying anything? You squeezed your eyes closed as tears pricked at the corners.

Did you make a mistake? You shouldn’t have shown him. You should have just brushed it off or lied when you had the chance.

Tears began to slip down your cheeks, and you struggled to stop them. But they wouldn’t stop, and you wiped away at them angrily, sniffling as you struggled to contain yourself.

The sound of your distress snapped Dabi out of his obsessive thoughts. You were crying. Why?

Was it something he said? But he didn’t say anything.

Was it something he did? But he didn’t do anything.

What the hell was he supposed to do? He had no words of comfort, and he certainly couldn’t hold you, not without crossing a boundary he’d set for himself. You had called him a friend. How did friends comfort each other? He had no fucking clue.

He scratched at his head awkwardly before standing up. He bit his cheek from the pain in his legs. Your pills had worn off, and they were in desperate need of attention. But he forced it into submission, instead making his way to his desk to retrieve a clean napkin and handing it to you.

The small gesture seemed to help, as you gave a small chuckle and accepted the gift, wiping at your eyes as you averted your tear-stained face from him.

“I’m sorry.” You said with a sheepish laugh.

There was that fucking phrase again.

“Don’t be.” He replied.

That answer seemed to help, too. You finally turned to face him, a sheepish smile on your face.

“I know guys typically freak out when they see a girl cry.” You commented. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

Your emotional reaction embarrassed you, and now you were struggling to save face.

“It’s fine.” He grabbed the bag of chips from earlier and grabbed a couple for himself before holding the bag out to you in offering. You shook your head, keeping your eyes on your lap.

“It’s just… it’s been a long time since I’ve shared this with anyone.” You tried to explain. Not entirely truthful, but not entirely a lie either.

“I shouldn’t have asked.” He replied.

“No, it’s fine.” You replied. “I understand why you wanted to know.”

Silence followed for a moment, filled only by the sound of Dabi’s crunching. It grated on your ears, but you didn’t want to say anything, glad that he was at least eating something. Instead, you tried to cover the noise of his chips with your voice.

“It doesn’t hurt all the time…” you explained. “Only when my quirk gets overused. That’s what the pills are for.”

“What about your sensory overload?” Dabi asked.

You were grateful that the conversation was progressing forward, leaving your mini breakdown in the past.

“Usually it’s a matter of reducing exposure. Turning off lights, quieting noises, that kind of thing.” You replied.

As you spoke, Dabi watched you. He watched the way you never seemed to look up from your lap for very long, your eyes avoiding the light of his lamp. Your shoulders were hunched against the cold (or was it the pain?), and he recalled how the car alarm before had made you cover your ears.

He grabbed another chip as his mind analyzed all the things that he’d missed before. As soon as it crunched under his teeth, he saw your hands squeeze tightly on the hem of your shirt before loosening again.

He stared at the bag, before holding it up to you. “This bothers you?” he asked.

You averted your eyes, embarrassed. “Just a little.”

He slowly put the bag down on the desk, careful not to have it crinkle too loudly. “Why didn’t you say something?”

You shrugged. He scowled. Then, he stood up with a wince, and closed his open window, drawing the curtains closed to block the brightening daylight. As he walked back to sit on the bed next to you, he turned off his lamp, plunging the room into darkness that faded to a comfortable dim light once your eyes had adjusted to the change, morning light seeping into the room at an acceptable level.

You could feel the relief immediately, and you stared at him, bewildered not just by his kindness, but by his awareness. Was he really paying attention to you that closely? It made your blood rush in your ears and your heart do somersaults.

“Thank you.” You said softly.

“It’s not a big deal.” He replied as he leaned back and stared at the light dancing on the ceiling. It was the least he could do, he thought. This discomfort you were feeling was because of him, after all. Besides, after all you’d done for him – were still doing for him – he figured you’d earned a little bit of kindness in return.

But only for you.

Dammit.

He really was a lost cause.

“I’m feeling better now…” you said. “I can finish treating your scars.”

“It’s fine.” Dabi lied.

You stood up and faced him. “Let me at least treat your legs. I wasn’t able to get to them last night.”

“I said it’s fine.”

“Dabi…” he looked at you and was met with a knowing look on your face. “Trust me. I know my limits. Besides, this is literally my job.”

Dabi frowned at you. “No, your job is to treat injuries, not help drug addicts.”

“My job is to make sure everyone is able to function to the best of their ability.” You countered. You crossed your arms with a smug look. “Don’t make me go tell Shigaraki that you’re being a bad patient.”

He scowled and looked away. You took that as a surrender and sent him into the bathroom to change into shorts to make your job easier. When he came back out, he was still frowning.

“You play dirty.” He complained. “And not in a fun way.”

You grinned but didn’t respond as you focused on running your hands along his scarred legs, starting at above the knee. By the time you were done, your quirk was riding the brink, your back on fire again. But you gritted your teeth and bore it, even as sweat beaded across your face.

You went to your bag and began to rummage through it, wincing as you bent over. Your back was facing Dabi, your butt in the air, and he couldn’t help but appreciate the view. A subtle smirk tugged at his lips. But the grin was short lived; it fell as soon as you stood up, holding the familiar pill bottle in your hand.

“No.” Dabi said adamantly.

“Give me a break.” You replied, as you opened the container. “What other options do we have?”

You held out the three pills towards him, but he stared at them. “I can’t take these.” He said.

You took his hand in yours and placed the pills into his palm, closing his fingers over them. “You can, and you will.” You replied. “Besides, it’s temporary, remember?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but a ding sounded within the room that made you nearly jump out of your skin with your sensitive hearing. You clumsily pulled your phone out of your bag and opened up your text messages. Your eyes lit up, and a smile spread across your face before you put the phone away in your bag.

“Good news,” you said. “Looks like the refills for my pills will be ready for pickup tomorrow.”

“What about mine?” Dabi asked.

Your expression fell slightly. “He didn’t mention them, so I’m guessing they’re not ready yet.”

“Well that fucking sucks.”

“It’s not all bad… once I get my refill, there will be enough for both of us. I asked him to double up the pills so there’d be enough. Then I can really start treating you properly until your pills arrive. See? I told you it’d be temporary…”

Dabi looked up at your happy face and couldn’t deny the relief he felt knowing you weren’t going to be hurting yourself for him for much longer. “Fine.” He replied. He swallowed the pills before he could change his mind.

You picked up your bag with another wince and made your way to the door. Dabi stood up to follow you, relishing in the painless effort of walking. He felt like he could run.

Before you opened his door, you half-turned to him. “Get some more rest.” You wrinkled your nose at him. “And maybe take a shower. And brush your teeth.”

Dabi rolled his eyes. “Yes, mom.”

After you left, he paused for a moment before sniffing his armpit. He didn’t really smell that bad… did he?

________________________________

Part 9

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#dabi #dabi x reader #dabi x you #mha #bnha #touch #dabi touch #soft dabi #angst #TW: verbal abuse #TW: physical abuse #TW: abuse #TW: childhood trauma #tw: alcohol

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amy-issen · 3 years

Audio

ok so here it is!! i spent the last week solely making and listening to this playlist like i was POSSESED because this ship is lovely and deserved a nice playlist! if anyone wants to know why i picked each song, i’m going to ramble about it extensively in the read more, so check that out if you want! hope you enjoy it! also thanks again to @birbwell for letting me use her art for the cover!

i divided this playlist in a few sections so let’s start with the first one (section one: first meeting/pining) i. in the rain - joe hisaishi i wanted to start with a short instrumental track to set the mood, and i looooove howl’s moving castle score, so i had to pick this one! the fact that it has rain in the title also helps to reference how their relationship began! ii. with every breath i take - frank sinatra “every breath that I take is a prayer that i’ll make you mine” my sister is a big sinatra/jazz fan (and also a yakuza fan) so she helped me with picking a few of the songs here! this one is very romantic, elegant and beautiful and i thought it fit the mood (and it’s what i think tachibana listens to in his free time lmao).

iii. gold rush - taylor swift “what must it be like to grow up that beautiful? with your hair falling into place like dominoes my mind turns your life into folklore i can't dare to dream about you anymore” this one is my FAVORITE song on this playlist, and one of the first i picked because this song just fits them like a glove. it’s basically pining 101, and i love that what taylor said this song is about “daydreaming about someone then snapping out of it.” i feel like the first part could be from tachibana’s perspective and the second one from kiryu’s (also giving a bit of a glimpse into the future, with the mention of a coastal town they’ll never find together) iv. first love/late spring - mitski “so please, hurry, leave me, i can't breathe please don't say you love me mune ga hachikire-sōde (my heart seems like it’s going to burst)” this one was another song i picked very early on because i love mitski, and i needed to include her here. i just wanted something to symbolize the trust that tachibana and kiryu have to share to work together, and the feelings that emerge from it, if that makes any sense. i don’t think this has a specific perspective, because i feel like this could work from both kiryu’s and tachibana’s (mostly kiryu though) v. real estate - adam melchor “every time I wonder how i'd carry on without you i'm runnin' out of real estate tryna make all the right moves i don't wanna hesitate i would bet the house on you “ do you UNDERSTAND how satisfying it was to find a song named real estate for them?? come ooon. ok that’s not all of my reasoning for it but it’s like. most of it, lmao another song i felt was about trust and feelings. (also a bit of a glimpse into the future, because i’m sad) vi. i get a kick out of you - ella fitzgerald “i get no kick from champagne mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all so tell me why should it be true that i get a kick out of you?” another one my sister recommended. i originally was gonna go with sinatra’s version of this, but i love this one and it just wouldn’t leave my brain. again, one from mostly tachibana’s perspective, get this man to sing this on karaoke night right now. vii. like real people do - hozier “i will not ask you where you came from i would not ask and neither would you honey, just put your sweet lips on my lips we could just kiss like real people do” this is one of my all time favorites from hozier and, again, it just fit perfectly. tachibana and kiryu have both lived some very... troubled lives so far, and while they’re depending on this trust they have in eachother, none of them really care to know about what they’ve done or who they are. this is mostly from kiryu’s perspective, specially with this metaphor of being rescued/dug up from the earth with the whole being found in the rain and saved by tachibana and his poor driving skills. viii. delicate - taylor swift “this ain't for the best my reputation's never been worse, so you must like me for me... we can't make any promises now, can we, babe? but you can make me a drink” y’all are going to have to forgive me for picking TWO taylor swift songs but COME OOOON this is another one that i picked early on because i could draw so many parallels between the lyrics and things that they both said in that car scene on chapter 9 (mostly tachibana though) and i kept harassing my sister with screenshots to prove my point and i’m gonna do it again

ANYWAYS i’ve made my case, and now we enter the second section of the playlist at last ( section 2: actual romantic/fluffy songs because this is a ship playlist) i. good old-fashioned lover boy - queen “dining at the ritz we'll meet at nine (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 o'clock) precisely i will pay the bill, you taste the wine driving back in style in my saloon will do quite nicely just take me back to yours that will be fine” is this a bit of a cliché? yes. did i want to include it because it’s very cute and i’d like to imagine kiryu and tachibana having a nice date night with no people trying to kill them all the time? also yes. i love this song.

ii. stay with me/mayonaka no door - miki matsuraba “you in your gray jacket with that oh-so-familiar coffee stain just as you always are the two of us reflect in the window display stay with me knocking on midnight's door i beg you not to go home tonight” (translated lyrics) is anyone not obsessed with this song lately? this is the only song here i’m blaming tiktok for making me listen to it lol. in any way, this song is deceptive because it sounds really happy but is actually quite melancholic. i thought it fit their relationship well, and it seemed like a good addition to the playlist with it’s 80′s city pop vibes.

iii. on melancholy hill - gorillaz (covered by matt forbes) “just looking out on the day of another dream where you can't get what you want, but you can get me so let's set out to sea, love 'cause you are my medicine when you're close to me" this is a gorillaz song but i went with this cover because it fit the feeling of the playlist a little better. another song that i just love very deeply and i thought fit the sentiment of kiryu being like “hey i know we have Big problems and you’re very sad in the moment but i’m here for you” iv. (i love you) for sentimental reasons - nat king cole "i think of you every morning dream of you every night darling, i'm never lonely whenever you are in sight" surprisingly, not one that my sister recommended, but one i found for myself while looking for quiet romantic songs. i feel like this is tachibana's reply to kiryu being there for him and helping him. plus, idk i just wanted to imagine them slow dancing to this. v. positions - ariana grande (covered by travis atreo) "perfect, perfect you're too good to be true but I get tired of runnin', fuck it now, i’m runnin' with you" i picked this cover because i felt like using ariana's one would be a little goofy for this section lmao, but i really like this song and how it's about commitment and doing everything to make a relationship work. i just wanted to throw some sexy vibes before this playlist delved into depressing stuff. also if you telling me tachibana wouldn't absolute body a tiktok set to this song you're lying to yourself. (section 3: oh no this is getting sad) i. forever - labrinth "i'll live forever" i love everything labrinth makes, the euphoria soundtrack lives in my mind rent free and this is my favorite one. this barely has any lyrics so, again, mostly a track i picked for its intrumentals and feeling overall. mostly preparing you for the sad stuff ahead. ii. hong kong - gorillaz "you swallow me i'm a pill on your tongue here on the nineteenth floor the neon lights make me calm" this is my favorite gorillaz song, by FAR, and i think it's introspective vibe really fits tachibana's character. not really a song about relationship but i really wanted to include it because it's just such a GORGEOUS song. iii. fragments - severon another instrumental track! this one i stole from a playlist my sister made for a fic i wrote last year. again. sad vibes. iv. sign of the times - harry styles (covered by LANY) "remember everything will be alright we can meet again somewhere somewhere far away from here" i loved the synth-y vibe this cover had, while still keeping this song's sad "our lives are dangerous and i'm about to die" vibes. i mostly wanted to evoke the vibe from the scene where tachibana agrees to go with lao gui after kiryu gets shot. just really sad all around. v. so close - jon mclaughlin "we're so close to reaching that famous happy end almost believing this one's not pretend let's go on dreaming though we know we are so close, so close, and still so far" me? picking a song from disney's enchanted??? for a playlist??? it's more likely than you think. idk this song just gives me that vibe of being so close to being happy and together, almost reminiscing and wondering what could have been. but it just... won't happen. vi. as the world caves in - matt maltese "yes, it's you i welcome death with as the world, as the world caves in" oops, yes, i had to go there. just couldn't resist including this song, and i feel like it's really self-explanatory. vii. places we won't walk - bruno major "neon lights shine bold and bright buildings grow to dizzy heights people come alive at night in places we won't walk" again, i feel like this song speaks for itself. a bit of a meditation on kiryu's perspective on things that could have happened, things they would have done, that kiryu will just have to do alone from now on. viii. carry me out - mitski "i drive when it rains at night, when it rains, i drive and the headlight spirits they lead me down the styx so black it shines and carry me out carry me out"

possibly the saddest and the most powerful song in this playlist, because i just had to put a mitski song again. the image of kiryu carrying tachibana's body is just constantly in my mind when i listen to this, but i could also see this song being from the perspective of tachibana's spirit. ix. arms tonite - mother mother "i died in your arms tonight i slipped through into the afterlife it was nice" lmao this felt a bit like a cruel joke to include, but i didn't want this playlist to end TOO depressingly. it's a nod to tachibana dying in kiryu's arms, sure, but also it's romantic and possibly a little hopeful (tachibana lives au!!! orpheus and eurydice au!!! fuck it, idk!!) xi. everybody wants to rule the world - tears for fears "there's a room where the light won't find you holding hands while the walls come tumbling down when they do, i'll be right behind you so glad we've almost made it so sad they had to fade it everybody wants to rule the world" not a recommendation from my sister, but it is her favorite song, and she was happy that i included it. another 80's bop with sad lyrics! i feel like this is a lovely summary of their story together and it feels like a nice little bow to wrap up the playlist. i hope you enjoyed my long ass explanations! i might add songs later (or make an entire second playlist altogether for the fic i'm writing rn, but let's not get ahead of ourselves)

#tachikiryu #yakuza #ryu ga gotoku #kazuma kiryu #tetsu tachibana #playlist #audio #THIS IS SUCH A LONG POST I CAN'T BELIEVE I WROTE ALL THIS ARRRRGH #praying this shows up in the tags lmao

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twdmusicboxmystery · 3 years

Text

10x21: Details

Okay, let’s talk details. And most of these will just back up what I’ve already said about these sequences being callbacks to Grady and leaving Beth behind, as well as foreshadows of finding her again.

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x21. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

Carol and Dog:

Of course Dog goes with Carol and I noticed that when she gets back to Alexandria, she says, “let’s get you home.” So, home theme, and it’s especially potent because Dog = Beth.

She says to Dog, “For the record, I didn’t need an apology for him.” It’s the ‘for the record’ part that caught my attention, not only because Beth mentioned records at Grady, but Negan said the exact same thing to Daryl about Carol several episodes ago. “For the record, I don’t think she’s coming back.” So, it’s something of a theme.

She tells Jerry the story of the Stone Soup, which to me parallels Rick’s “Rock in the Road” story, which we’ve always thought was about Beth. (X). And I’m not sure how exactly to interpret the rock in either story, but biblically Christ = the rock. So, there’s that.

We see her fixing the solar panels as well. Because of the sunlight angle, that could represent Beth. I’m actually seeing a lot of symbolism here for both Carol fixing Beth in some way and Beth fixing Carol. So, I think this has to do with the template for the future. I think the two of them will come together again, as they did at Grady, and they’ll both be kind of a mess at that point and need to help each other through some stuff. I’ll talk about it in more detail later when I do another forecasting post.

When Dog starts chasing the rat and Carol runs to see what’s happening, he knocks over a lamp. Lamp Theory. And the cord of the lamp has been gnawed on by the rat. So can you see how all these symbols kind of interlock?

When Dog chases the rat and knocks over the pot, Carol has a serious/Sirius mention. She says, “This is serious. We need that food.”

Now, for the record, I think food shortages are going to continue to be a thing, and Beth and the CRM will be the answer to needed resources, so both sides of that sentence are important.

She makes a trap to catch the rat, which I talked about yesterday. Then she goes out looking for more ingredients for the soup. While out there, we see a dragonfly, a blue butterfly, and a spider. All three of those are important symbols.

They all represent some form of transformation, wisdom, renewal, and fertility.

It’s probably important that Carol uses Leah’s knife to fix the solar panels. Again, just more Beth symbols on top of Beth symbols.

@frangipanilove also pointed out that it’s important that the instant she can’t see the rat anymore, the power goes out. See how that works? Rat (Beth) is unseen and suddenly no sun power.

Carol also says at this part, “there will be more sun tomorrow, right?” That’s super important. Sun = Beth. And ever since AOW, I’ve thought the “tomorrow” theme pointed to the CRM war. So again, just more evidence that this is both a callback and a foreshadow of what will happen with Beth and CRM.

As I said yesterday, Dog watching over Carol as she sleeps = Beth watching over Carol while she’s unconscious at Grady. She also says to Dog, “You miss him, don’t you?” Which is exactly what Beth asked Daryl about Merle in Still.

And then of course she destroys the wall. The next day, Jerry comes to see her, and we get lots of interesting references. There’s the poker, poker face reference. He says, “caring…yeah that’s a problem,” which we’re connecting to Beth’s famous line, “when you care about people, hurt is just part of the package.”

Jerry also says, “2+2=Eureka.” Now, Eureka is an expression which means “a cry of joy or satisfaction when one finds or discovers something.” We’re hoping the 2+2 is a reference to episode 22, and the discovery is that Beth is alive. *fingers crossed*

The song that plays, No Worries by Amateur Blond, has references to dogs in it. And it keeps saying “Oh, oh, oh.”

Of course Daryl returns, Rat gets free, and I especially love how Dog runs to Daryl. Cuz, you know, Dog = Beth. :D

One other thing @frangipanilove brought to my attention. The scarf Carol has in this episode can be linked to the scarf she wore in S3. They actually look very similar. Remember that at the prison, when T-Dog died and Lori gave birth to Judith, Carol was wearing a scarf over her head. Daryl found it with blood on it, which led him to assume she was dead. They even created a grave for her. But of course he found her (after finding her knife, btw) soon after and she lived.

It’s just a little too coincidental that this can be connected to a death fake out in season 3, and there’s a major knife exchange going on in the same episode.

Daryl and Bike:

Okay, so I talked a lot about Daryl yesterday and how Bike = Beth. The part where he gets under the car is really interesting. I’m not entirely satisfied with how to interpret it yet, but I do think it represents leaving Beth behind and stuff that happened during the missing 17 days.

You could call Daryl’s behavior here destructive. I mean, he crawled under a precariously perched car. And that could represent his depression, to the point of self-harm, after losing Beth. He does find the part he needs in the 3rd car (rule of threes). And that car was somewhat hidden at first.

He didn’t see it until he’d already reached and checked the first two cars. So, that could represent looking for Beth’s body but there’s an unseen element he isn’t aware of at first. It also parallels the “third man” theory. (X).

When he gets back to the bike, he suddenly realizes he gave the knife to Carol and he needs it. His huge, Rambo knife is just too big to get it into the crevices of the bike to attach the new part.

I think this is important for the future story line as well. After the spinoff starts, when he and Carol part ways, he’ll give her something and realize he needs it later on. It’s when he goes looking for this part that he’ll run into the CRM and Beth.

I also noticed kind of a cute little parallel here. When he realizes he doesn’t have the knife and he needs it, he sort of does this thing where he brushes his hair out of his face. He did a similar thing in Consumed.

I just remember a lot of people commenting on how adorable it was. So I thought I’d point it out here as well.

So then he goes looking of Beth, er, I mean a new knife. I talked about a lot of this yesterday: the Beth walker, his limp, the dry river bed, etc. It’s important that he finds the knife with military walkers (probably the CRM). I can’t help but wonder if letting walker fall into the ravine represents him letting one of their communities get overrun with walkers or something.

I also REALLY want to connect it to when the group did this in Them. In that scene, Rick was almost bitten. Daryl came running up at the last minute and helped him, but I think it’s significant that they were doing the exact same thing there that we see Daryl doing here. I’m thinking it represents something about maybe him finding Rick with the CRM and helping him in some way, or something. Again, just speculating about future storylines here.

But he finds the knife he needs and goes back to the bike. And two more military walkers come at him. Yes, two. You may have missed that, as I and my fellow theorists both did the first time. But one is coming at him from ahead of the bike, down the tracks.

The other is coming at him from his right side. You can tell because he turns his head to look at it.

Couple of things here. Part of the reason it only seems like one is that they show it weird. We only see him killing the one straight ahead, not the one to the side. I’m sure there’s some symbolism in that, but I honestly have no idea what it is.

But here’s an interesting thing. He finds a second knife on that second walker. It doesn’t do a close up on the second knife, so it’s easy to miss. But there are actually 2 knives.

Not entirely sure how to interpret that, but remember that in Still, there were two knives. First, Daryl gave Beth his, but between rooms in the golf club, she found her bone-handled one that she always carried after that, and gave his back to him. So it might just represent Beth and Daryl and their 2 knives.

He also finds military rations (food) on one of them. As I said yesterday, I think TF is going to get to the point where they desperately need resources. Where food is scarce and even water becomes undrinkable. It will be part of the CRM plot. So I think him finding food on military walkers hints at that. They will need the CRM’s resources to survive.

The other thing I’m curious about is what he says. He says, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” To me, that’s a weird reaction. There are walkers all over the place in these woods. And neither of these two are a massive, immediate threat to him. So his reaction doesn’t make tons of sense. But again, I’m sure it has something to do with a future storyline that simply isn’t clear here yet.

Also, the walker he takes the knife from is missing his leg/foot. That’s part of the missing foot/shoe symbolism, and just proves in my mind that this is symbolic of something to do with Beth.

He then sets to fixing his bike. But it takes a while and it’s dark before he finishes. This was super cool and something I missed the first time through. While fixing it, he hears a wolf howl. And they draw attention to it by having Daryl turn his head toward it, as thought acknowledging it.

Plus, the captions say it’s a wolf, not a dog or a coyote. So, this is wolf symbolism. And I think what they’re trying to say her is that when Daryl finds and “fixes” Beth, the wolf symbolism will be in play. I’ll talk more about what the means and how it MIGHT manifest in coming days.

Finally, he gets the bike fixed and started and heads back.

@wdway, as usual with her eagle eyes, noticed something about this shot. In the sky above him, we see three stars. They look suspiciously like the “spoon” portion of the Little Dipper. And guys, at this distant, stars wouldn’t even register on camera, which means they were put in purposely with a computer. Daryl is riding toward the spoon/star/Sirius symbol. Just saying.

The only other thing I noticed (other than all the stuff I talked about yesterday, anyway) is that there is some missing time here. Daryl fixes his bike at night and we see him drive off into the darkness, but by the time he gets back and talks to Carol, it’s late afternoon or early evening, and he’s talking about going to bed. I don’t know if he could have gone out far enough for it to take him that long to get back. Of course, maybe he just looked some more the next day and didn’t come back right away. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But it’s something I noticed.

So, yeah. I think that’s all the details I have. Anyone notice anything I missed?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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butterflies-dragons · 4 years

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Hi. You said in your Jon and women meta that Lyanna is a combination of both Sansa and Arya. Can you give her parallels with both girls?

Hello Anon,

Yes this past week I’ve said that Lyanna Stark was a mixture of the Stark Sisters.

I also said that I always thought that the Sansa from the original outline was very similar to Lyanna Stark:

Now ¿How marrying the heir of the Iron Throne/King of the 7K is supposed to be an act of dubious loyalty? Because GRRM has stated that in high nobility there is no marriage without the Lord Father of the bride’s blessing. Furthermore, from the wedding the bride belongs to her husband’s house, that’s all the fuzz with the cloaking ceremony, going from the maiden’s cloak to your husband’s cloak. You left your paternal house to belong with your husbands house. Sansa’s loyalty was with her husband, and more important, Sansa’s love and loyalty was with her baby boy. So, how choosing his baby over her paternal house could be seem as an act of dubious loyalty then? And even if she wanted to come back to her paternal family, does she really get a chance without the risk of being captured, separated from her baby, accused of treason and executed, leaving her baby boy motherless?

Oh I get it, there was an enmity between Starks and Lannisters. So, Or Joffrey abducted Sansa? Or Sansa eloped to marry Joffrey? How very Shakespearean of you George! This is Romeo and Juliet all over again. Or even better, this is Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark oll over again.

Original Outline Sansa was Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and mother of the heir to the Iron Throne.

It is implied by the fandom that this Sansa dies because the outline says that Jaime dethrones and kills Joffrey and “everyone ahead of him in the line of succession” (Sansa’s baby). Well, Sansa was not in the line of succession, but it’s probable that Jaime had to kill her to get to her baby boy, which reminds me of Elia Martell & her babies’ tragic and devastating deaths.

And landing more on the subject, I said that: Arya and Sansa play different roles in Jon’s life: Sansa is the distant half sister, the archetype of the princess in the tower, that he thinks he would never get. While Arya is the closest sister, the comfortable presence of a girl with less feminine inclinations. And both of them resemblance different aspects of Lyanna Stark. While Arya got Lyanna’s spirit and physical features, Sansa Stark got the less known romantic nature of Lyanna, after all, Lyanna cried while listening Rhaegar playing the harp, eloped with him, bore him a son, found herself trapped in a tower, and unwillingly caused the death of her father and older brother. Like a Lady in a sad and beautiful song.

We can draw parallels between Lyanna and her two nieces, but there are also parallels shared by the three of these She-wolves of Winterfell. Let’s see:

LYANNA & ARYA

Appearance:

“You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her." "Lyanna was beautiful," Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya. "She was," Eddard Stark agreed, "beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time." —AGOT - Arya II

Carrying a sword:

"Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. —AGOT - Arya II

The wolf-blood:

“Arya, you have a wildness in you, child. The wolf blood, my father would call it. Lyanna had a touch of it."—AGOT - Arya II

"She was," Eddard Stark agreed, "beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time." —AGOT - Arya II

This willfulness of yours, the running off, the angry words, the disobedience … at home, these were only the summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter soon upon us, that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing up." —AGOT - Arya II

Punching annoying brothers & friends:

Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. The girl was the older and taller of the two. Arya! Bran thought eagerly, as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beating him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hard that his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. "You be quiet, stupid," the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. "It's just water. Do you want Old Nan to hear and run tell Father?" She knelt and pulled her brother from the pool, but before she got him out again, the two of them were gone. — ADWD - Bran III

When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb's leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. "You stupid," she told him, "you scared the baby," but Jon and Robb just laughed and laughed, and pretty soon Bran and Arya were laughing too. —AGOT - Arya IV

The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying she poured wine over his head. —ASOS - Bran II

"My lady?" Ned looked embarrassed. "I'm Edric Dayne, the . . . the Lord of Starfall." Behind them, Gendry groaned. "Lords and ladies," he proclaimed in a disgusted tone. Arya plucked a withered crabapple off a passing branch and whipped it at him, bouncing it off his thick bull head. "Ow," he said. "That hurt." He felt the skin above his eye. "What kind of lady throws crabapples at people?" "The bad kind," said Arya, suddenly contrite. She turned back to Ned. "I'm sorry I didn't know who you were. My lord." —ASOS - Arya VIII

Half-horses:

"You ride like a northman, milady," Harwin said when he'd drawn them to a halt. "Your aunt was the same. Lady Lyanna. But my father was master of horse, remember." —ASOS - Arya III

Horses … the boy was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard's daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself. —ADWD - Reek III

"Brandon was fostered at Barrowton with old Lord Dustin, the father of the one I'd later wed, but he spent most of his time riding the Rills. He loved to ride. His little sister took after him in that. A pair of centaurs, those two. —ADWD - The Turncloak

This is a contrast with Sansa: "I hate riding," Sansa said fervently. "All it does is get you soiled and dusty and sore." —AGOT - Sansa I

LYANNA & SANSA

Beauty:

Both Lyanna and Sansa are considered beautiful:

Lyanna:

"She [Lyanna] was," Eddard Stark agreed, "beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time." —AGOT - Arya II

Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride. —AGOT - Eddard I

"The maid's a fair one," Osha said. —AGOT - Bran VII

The northern girl had a wild beauty, as he recalled. —ADWD - Epilogue

Sansa:

Sansa’s needlework was exquisite. Everyone said so. “Sansa’s work is as pretty as she is.”

Sansa had the grace to blush. She blushed prettily. She did everything prettily.

Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa had gotten their mother’s fine high cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys.

“I saw Sansa at the court, the day Tyrion told me his terms. She looked most beautiful, my lady. Perhaps a, a bit wan. Drawn, as it were.”

Men would say she had my look, but she will grow into a woman far more beautiful than I ever was.

“You are very beautiful, my lady,” the seamstress said when she was dressed.

Ser Kevan told her she was beautiful, Jalabhar Xho said something she did not understand in the Summer Tongue, and Lord Redwyne wished her many fat children and long years of joy.

"Ser Ossifer speaks truly, you are the most beautiful maid in all the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Had we known such beauty awaited us at the Gates, we would have flown,” Ser Roland said. Though his words were addressed to Myranda Royce, he smiled at Alayne as he said them.

Inner Strength:

"You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert," Ned told him. "You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath”. —AGOT - Eddard VII

My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel. —ASOS - Sansa V

Pleading Ned to protect part of themselves:

He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once. —AGOT - Eddard IV

Lyanna was pleading to her brother Ned to protect her son, while Sansa was pleading to her father Ned to protect her direwolf, Lady, part of Sansa’s soul. Later, Ned regretted failing Sansa...

Knights & Queens of Love and Beauty:

Lyanna was a Mystery Knight AND was crowned Queen of Love and Beauty at the Tourney of Harrenhal.

Lyanna as the Knight of the Laughing Tree:

But late on the afternoon of that second day, as the shadows grew long, a mystery knight appeared in the lists. Bran nodded sagely. [...] “It was the little crannogman, I bet.” “No one knew,” said Meera, “but the mystery knight was short of stature, and clad in ill-fitting armor made up of bits and pieces. The device upon his shield was a heart tree of the old gods, a white weirwood with a laughing red face.” [...] “Whoever he was, the old gods gave strength to his arm. The porcupine knight fell first, then the pitchfork knight, and lastly the knight of the two towers. None were well loved, so the common folk cheered lustily for the Knight of the Laughing Tree, as the new champion soon was called.” —ASOS - Bran II

Lyanna as the Queen of love and beauty. Rhaegar wearing rubies (red) gave her a crown of winter roses (blue):

The Targaryen prince armored all in black. On his breastplate was the three-headed dragon of his House, wrought all in rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight. —AGOT - Eddard I

Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty's laurel in Lyanna's lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost. —AGOT - Eddard XV

Sansa attended the Tourney of the Hand at Kings Landing, met Petyr Baelish who told her that Catelyn was his Queen of Love and Beauty, and received a (red) rose from Ser Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers, who was wearing an armor adorned with sapphires (blue). During the second day of the tourney, Sansa wore the red rose in her hair:

"Your mother was my queen of beauty once," the man said quietly. His breath smelled of mint. "You have her hair." His fingers brushed against her cheek as he stroked one auburn lock. Quite abruptly he turned and walked away. —AGOT - Sansa II

When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and he heard Sansa's fervent whisper, "Oh, he's so beautiful." Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots. The commons realized in the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires; a gasp went up from a thousand throats. Across the boy's shoulders his cloak hung heavy. It was woven of forget-me-nots, real ones, hundreds of fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen cape. —AGOT - Eddard VII

Her eyes were only for Ser Loras. When the white horse stopped in front of her, she thought her heart would burst. To the other maidens he had given white roses, but the one he plucked for her was red. "Sweet lady," he said, "no victory is half so beautiful as you." Sansa took the flower timidly, struck dumb by his gallantry. His hair was a mass of lazy brown curls, his eyes like liquid gold. She inhaled the sweet fragrance of the rose and sat clutching it long after Ser Loras had ridden off. —AGOT - Sansa II

The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his arm. "Father, don't let Ser Gregor hurt him," she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her yesterday. Jory had told him about that as well. —AGOT - Eddard VII

At this point in the Books, Sansa, as Alayne Stone, is organizing a Tourney to elect the members of Robert Arryn personal guard, named the Brotherhood of the Winged Knights. As the daughter of Petyr Baelish, Lord Protector of the Vale, Alayne Stone could be crowned as the Queen of Love and Beauty.

This is a contrast with Arya who thinks tourneys are stupid: "I don't care about their stupid tourney." —AGOT - Arya II

Failed betrothal to a Baratheon:

Both Lyanna and Sansa were betrothed with a Baratheon, Lyanna with Robert and Sansa with Joffrey:

If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done. —AGOT - Eddard I

There is also this parallel between Jenny of Oldstones, Lyanna & Sansa [I wrote about it here]:

Note the parallels between Duncan Targaryen, his betrothed Baratheon and Jenny of Oldstones & Rhaegar Targaryen, Lyanna Stark and her betrothed Robert Baratheon: A Targaryen prince breaking an engagement with a member of House Baratheon that then originates a rebellion.

And this: Sansa was betrothed with Joffrey “Baratheon” and the engagement was broken in the middle of a war with Robb Stark leading an army against King Joffrey, and Jon almost breaking his vows to join Robb’s army to avenge Ned’s death and rescue their sisters. All of which makes me think about these parallels: Sansa being a hostage in King’s Landing & Lyanna’s “abduction”, Ned’s death & Rickard’s death, Robb’s death & Brandon’s death. And that leaves Jon to possibly play the role of Ned Stark in the future.

Basically if Jon and Sansa happens, they will parallel two stories: Rhaegar and Lyanna, a Targaryen/Stark couple; and Ned and Cat, a Stark/Tully couple.

And right now in the Books, Sansa Stark, under the disguise of Alayne Stone, is betrothed with a Robert-like young man: Harry Hardyn.

The Rose of Winterfell:

This is the tale:

According to free folk legend, Lord Brandon Stark, the liege of the north, once called Bael a coward. To take revenge for this affront and prove his courage, Bael climbed the Wall, took the kingsroad, and entered Winterfell under the guise of a singer named Sygerrik of Skagos. ("Sygerrik" means "deceiver" in the Old Tongue.) There, he sang until midnight for the lord.

Impressed by his skills as a singer, Lord Stark asked Bael what he wanted as a reward, but he requested only the most beautiful flower blooming in Winterfell's gardens. As the blue winter roses were just blooming, Brandon Stark presented him with one. The following morning, the maiden daughter of Lord Stark had disappeared, his only child, and in her bed was the blue winter rose.

Lord Brandon sent the members of the Night's Watch looking for them beyond the Wall, but they never found Bael or the girl. The Stark line was on the verge of extinction, when one day the girl was back in her room, holding in her arms an infant: they had actually never left Winterfell, staying hidden in the crypts. Bael's bastard with Brandon's daughter became the new Lord Stark.

Thirty years later, Bael was King-Beyond-the-Wall and led the wildlings' army south, and he had to fight his own son at the Frozen Ford. There, incapable of killing his own blood, he let himself be killed by Lord Stark. His son brought back Bael's head to Winterfell, and his mother who had loved the bard, seeing the trophy, killed herself by leaping from the top of a tower. The son was eventually slain by the Boltons.

[Source]

Ygritte told this story to Jon in ACOK - Jon VI, and it resembles Jon’s own story: Bael/Rhaegar (both harp players/bards) abducting/eloping Brandon's daughter/Lyanna, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell’. Immediately after this chapter, comes ACOK - Sansa IV, where she flowered for the first time, next chapter is Jon again. (Jon-Sansa-Jon).

Also take note that Sansa was “abducted” by Petyr Baelish, a known deceiver, whose surname has a resemblance with the name Bael.

Ladies of Winterfell

Lyanna’s and Lady’s bones are buried at Winterfell, what makes them literally Ladies of Winterfell:

"She was more beautiful than that," the king said after a silence. His eyes lingered on Lyanna's face, as if he could will her back to life. Finally he rose, made awkward by his weight. "Ah, damn it, Ned, did you have to bury her in a place like this?" His voice was hoarse with remembered grief. "She deserved more than darkness …" "She was a Stark of Winterfell," Ned said quietly. "This is her place." —AGOT - Eddard I

Shortly, Jory brought him Ice. When it was over, he said, “Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury her at Winterfell.” “All that way?” Jory said, astonished. “All that way,” Ned affirmed. “The Lannister woman shall never have this skin.” —AGOT - Eddard III

Bran felt all cold inside. "She lost her wolf," he said, weakly, remembering the day when four of his father's guardsmen had returned from the south with Lady's bones. Summer and Grey Wind and Shaggydog had begun to howl before they crossed the drawbridge, in voices drawn and desolate. Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned. —AGOT - Bran VI

I wrote about this before:

Now, back to Lady’s death. We know that this event is a turning point in Sansa’s arc, but other than that, the paragraphs leading to the direwolf’s execution are laden with symbolism and foreshadowing, not only for Sansa, but for Ned as well.

During the “trial”, Ned decides that he will take Lady’s life himself, in order to avoid having a butcher like Ilyn Payne do the execution. Then, before he struck, he pronounced her name in the same fashion Robb and Jon called the name of their direwolves before they both died. This for me foreshadows Ned’s own death. Also, before Lady’s death, Ned pleads King Robert to change his decision on putting down the direwolf, appealing to the memory of Lyanna, the woman Robert loved. Similarly, before Ned’s execution at the steps of the Sept of Baelor, Sansa pleads King Joffrey to spare her father’s life, appealing to the love he has for her. As we know, both pleas fell on deaf ears and both Lady and Ned lost their lives; bringing the story full circle, as Ilyn Payne himself cut off Ned’s head.

Another interesting thing is that before Lady’s death we have direct and indirect references to Lyanna Stark. We have the direct reference when Ned appealed to the love Robert Baratheon bore Lyanna, in order to save Lady’s life, and the indirect one when he ordered Jory to choose four men to return Lady’s body to the north, to bury her in Winterfell. This order Ned gave to his men alludes to his own decision to take Lyanna’s body to Winterfell to be buried in the crypts, after her demise, brought on by her doomed love affair with Rhaegar Targaryen.

Dubious Loyalty?

Both Lyanna and Sansa got infatuated by Golden Princes: Rhaegar Targaryen and Joffrey Baratheon, and because of that they both unintentionally played a part in the deaths of their fathers and older brothers, Rickard and Brandon & Ned and Robb. They both also ended trapped in towers regretting their doomed romances.

As I mentioned before, I always thought that the Sansa from the original outline was very similar to Lyanna Stark. That Sansa was described as member of dubious loyalty for her family; but while Lyanna is glorified by the fandom, both Outline Sansa and Asoiaf Sansa are unfairly vilified for committing the same actions that Lyanna did.

Also, as it was pointed out before, Rickard Stark and Catelyn Stark both saw their firstborn sons murdered in front of them, while convinced that their daughters were far away being raped and abused by cruel princes, and then were brutally murdered themselves.

Dead before their time:

"She [Lyanna] was," Eddard Stark agreed, "beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time." —AGOT - Arya II

And so many others were missing. Where had the rest of them gone? Sansa wondered. Vainly, she searched for friendly faces. Not one of them would meet her eyes. It was as if she had become a ghost, dead before her time. —A Game Of Thrones, Sansa V

Lyanna and Lady (part of Sansa’s soul) both died in the south, before their time.

Lyanna’s ghost has haunted Cersei: Cersei wanted to marry Rhaegar but ended married with Robert. Both Rhaegar and Robert loved Lyanna.

Lady is mentioned in the Books as a “shade”, a synonym for ghost. And after Ned’s death, Sansa became a ghost at the Red Keep’s court.

And to finish this section, here some gifsets that illustrate some of the Lyanna & Sansa parallels that were mentioned:

Sansa Stark and Lyanna Stark + parallels

Pleading

She-wolves of Winterfell

Beautiful, Captivating Child-Women

Hidden Metal ft. hair parallels

Broken ‘Baratheon’ Engagements ft. more hair parallels

Fair Maidens

LYANNA & ARYA & SANSA

The wolf-blood:

I have already mentioned this aspect of Lyanna and Arya above, but Sansa has the wolf-blood too. It’s subtle, but it’s there:

"I've never seen an aurochs," Sansa said, feeding a piece of bacon to Lady under the table. The direwolf took it from her hand, as delicate as a queen. Septa Mordane sniffed in disapproval. "A noble lady does not feed dogs at her table," she said, breaking off another piece of comb and letting the honey drip down onto her bread. "She's not a dog, she's a direwolf," Sansa pointed out as Lady licked her fingers with a rough tongue. "Anyway, Father said we could keep them with us if we want." The septa was not appeased. "You're a good girl, Sansa, but I do vow, when it comes to that creature you're as willful as your sister Arya." She scowled. "And where is Arya this morning?" —AGOT - Sansa I

"It won't be so bad, Sansa," Arya said. "We're going to sail on a galley. It will be an adventure, and then we'll be with Bran and Robb again, and Old Nan and Hodor and the rest." She touched her on the arm. "Hodor!" Sansa yelled. "You ought to marry Hodor, you're just like him, stupid and hairy and ugly!" She wrenched away from her sister's hand, stormed into her bedchamber, and barred the door behind her. —AGOT - Sansa III

Jeyne yawned. "Are there any lemon cakes?" Sansa did not like being interrupted, but she had to admit, lemon cakes sounded more interesting than most of what had gone on in the throne room. "Let's see," she said. The kitchen yielded no lemon cakes, but they did find half of a cold strawberry pie, and that was almost as good. They ate it on the tower steps, giggling and gossiping and sharing secrets, and Sansa went to bed that night feeling almost as wicked as Arya. —AGOT - Sansa III

After my name day feast, I'm going to raise a host and kill your brother myself. That's what I'll give you, Lady Sansa. Your brother's head." A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, "Maybe my brother will give me your head." —AGOT - Sansa VI

Knights protect the innocent:

Lyanna, as herself and as the Knight of the Laughing Tree, defended Howland Reed, a bannerman of House Stark:

"None offered a name, but he marked their faces well so he could revenge himself upon them later. They shoved him down every time he tried to rise, and kicked him when he curled up on the ground. But then they heard a roar. 'That's my father's man you're kicking,' howled the she-wolf." "A wolf on four legs, or two?" "Two," said Meera. "The she-wolf laid into the squires with a tourney sword, scattering them all. The crannogman was bruised and bloodied, so she took him back to her lair to clean his cuts and bind them up with linen. There he met her pack brothers: the wild wolf who led them, the quiet wolf beside him, and the pup who was youngest of the four.

(...)

“Whoever he was, the old gods gave strength to his arm. The porcupine knight fell first, then the pitchfork knight, and lastly the knight of the two towers. None were well loved, so the common folk cheered lustily for the Knight of the Laughing Tree, as the new champion soon was called.” —ASOS - Bran II

Arya defended Mycah, the butcher’s boy:

Mycah shook his head. "It's only a stick, m'lord. It's not no sword, it's only a stick." "And you're only a butcher's boy, and no knight." Joffrey lifted Lion's Tooth and laid its point on Mycah's cheek below the eye, as the butcher's boy stood trembling. "That was my lady's sister you were hitting, do you know that?" A bright bud of blood blossomed where his sword pressed into Mycah's flesh, and a slow red line trickled down the boy's cheek. "Stop it!" Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick. Sansa was afraid. "Arya, you stay out of this." "I won't hurt him … much," Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the butcher's boy. Arya went for him. Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya swung with both hands. There was a loud crack as the wood split against the back of the prince's head, and then everything happened at once before Sansa's horrified eyes. — AGOT - Sansa I

Sansa, as a lady armored with her courtesy and wits, defended a defenestrated knight turned fool:

The king stood. "A cask from the cellars! I'll see him drowned in it." Sansa heard herself gasp. "No, you can't." Joffrey turned his head. "What did you say?" Sansa could not believe she had spoken. Was she mad? To tell him no in front of half the court? She hadn't meant to say anything, only . . . Ser Dontos was drunk and silly and useless, but he meant no harm. "Did you say I can't? Did you?" "Please," Sansa said, "I only meant . . . it would be ill luck, Your Grace . . . to, to kill a man on your name day." "You're lying," Joffrey said. "I ought to drown you with him, if you care for him so much." "I don't care for him, Your Grace." The words tumbled out desperately. "Drown him or have his head off, only . . . kill him on the morrow, if you like, but please . . . not today, not on your name day. I couldn't bear for you to have ill luck . . . terrible luck, even for kings, the singers all say so . . ." Joffrey scowled. He knew she was lying, she could see it. He would make her bleed for this. "The girl speaks truly," the Hound rasped. "What a man sows on his name day, he reaps throughout the year." His voice was flat, as if he did not care a whit whether the king believed him or no. Could it be true? Sansa had not known. It was just something she'd said, desperate to avoid punishment. Unhappy, Joffrey shifted in his seat and flicked his fingers at Ser Dontos. "Take him away. I'll have him killed on the morrow, the fool." "He is," Sansa said. "A fool. You're so clever, to see it. He's better fitted to be a fool than a knight, isn't he? You ought to dress him in motley and make him clown for you. He doesn't deserve the mercy of a quick death." The king studied her a moment. "Perhaps you're not so stupid as Mother says." He raised his voice. "Did you hear my lady, Dontos? From this day on, you're my new fool. You can sleep with Moon Boy and dress in motley." —ACOK - Sansa I

She-Wolves of Winterfell:

Lyanna and Arya are often referred as She-Wolves in the Books, but in a very subtle and poetical way, Sansa is referred as a She-Wolf too:

He smiled at her. "Now, wolf girl, if you can put a name to me as well, then I must concede that you are truly our Hand's daughter." —AGOT - Sansa I

"I forgot, you've been hiding under a rock. The northern girl. Winterfell's daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head." —ASOS - Arya XIII

"May the Father judge him justly," murmured a septon. "The dwarf's wife did the murder with him," swore an archer in Lord Rowan's livery. "Afterward, she vanished from the hall in a puff of brimstone, and a ghostly direwolf was seen prowling the Red Keep, blood dripping from his jaws." —ASOS - Jaime VII

"Your Grace has forgotten the Lady Sansa," said Pycelle. The queen bristled. "I most certainly have not forgotten that little she-wolf." She refused to say the girl's name. "I ought to have shown her to the black cells as the daughter of a traitor, but instead I made her part of mine own household. She shared my hearth and hall, played with my own children. I fed her, dressed her, tried to make her a little less ignorant about the world, and how did she repay me for my kindness? She helped murder my son. —AFFC - Cersei IV

What a kick-ass reputation: Sansa, the wolf that killed King Joffrey!

Fond of Flowers:

Lyanna, Arya and Sansa are linked with flowers:

Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was … fond of flowers." —A Game Of Thrones - Eddard I

None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father. Sansa kept hoping he would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn lady she was supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her and thanked her for the flowers. That just made her worse. Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison kisses, and Arya got a rash on her arms. —AGOT - Sansa I

It was enough that she could walk in the yard, pick flowers in Myrcella's garden, and visit the sept to pray for her father. Sometimes she prayed in the godswood as well, since the Starks kept the old gods. —AGOT - Sansa V

"Do you require guarding?" Marillion said lightly. "I am composing a new song, you should know. A song so sweet and sad it will melt even your frozen heart. 'The Roadside Rose,' I mean to call it. About a baseborn girl so beautiful she bewitched every man who laid eyes upon her." — ASOS - Sansa VII

Songs:

While Arya likes songs about heroes and adventures:

Arya named hers after some old witch queen in the songs. —Bran II - AGOT

She could stay with Hot Pie, or maybe Lord Beric would find her there. Anguy would teach her to use a bow, and she could ride with Gendry and be an outlaw, like Wenda the White Fawn in the songs. —ASOS - Arya XII

Lyanna and Sansa are linked with singers and romantic songs and stories that move them to cry.

As I said before, the story about Bael the Bard and the Rose of Winterfell resembles Jon’s own story: Bael/Rhaegar (both harp players/bards) abducting/eloping Brandon's daughter/Lyanna, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell’. Sansa is also linked with this story, as was explained above.

The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle. —ASOS - Bran II

Later, while Sansa was off listening to a troupe of singers perform the complex round of interwoven ballads called the “Dance of the Dragons,” [sung in High Valyrian] Ned inspected the bruise himself. “I hope Forel is not being too hard on you,” he said. —AGOT - Eddard VII

She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her favorite books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed love for his brother’s queen. —AGOT - Sansa IV

After the meal had been cleared away, many of the guests asked leave to go to the sept. Cersei graciously granted their request. Lady Tanda and her daughters were among those who fled. For those who remained, a singer was brought forth to fill the hall with the sweet music of the high harp. He sang of Jonquil and Florian, of Prince Aemon the Dragonknight and his love for his brother's queen, of Nymeria's ten thousand ships. They were beautiful songs, but terribly sad. Several of the women began to weep, and Sansa felt her own eyes growing moist. —ACOK - Sansa VI

So the singer played for her, so soft and sad that Arya only heard snatches of the words, though the tune was half-familiar. Sansa would know it, I bet. Her sister had known all the songs, and she could even play a little, and sing so sweetly. All I could ever do was shout the words.—A Storm of Swords - Arya IV

Once, when she was just a little girl, a wandering singer had stayed with them at Winterfell for half a year. An old man he was, with white hair and windburnt cheeks, but he sang of knights and quests and ladies fair, and Sansa had cried bitter tears when he left them, and begged her father not to let him go. “The man has played us every song he knows thrice over,” Lord Eddard told her gently. “I cannot keep him here against his will. You need not weep, though. I promise you, other singers will come.” They hadn’t, though, not for a year or more. Sansa had prayed to the Seven in their sept and old gods of the heart tree, asking them to bring the old man back, or better still to send another singer, young and handsome. But the gods never answered, and the halls of Winterfell stayed silent. But that was when she was a little girl, and foolish. She was a maiden now, three-and-ten and flowered. All her nights were full of song, and by day she prayed for silence. —A Feast for Crows - Sansa I

This is a contrast with Arya who thinks love songs are stupid: Another stupid love song. Lanna was always begging the singer to play her stupid love songs. —AFFC - Cat Of The Canals

So there you have it. There is more to say, but I think I covered the basics.

Thanks for your message.

#anon ask #sansa stark #arya stark #lyanna stark

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jasonrae117 · 4 years

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This is my first post on Tumblr. I have an ongoing story on fanfiction but I felt like trying something new. I was heavily inspired by @flyingkiki because timrae is too good of a pairing and there needs to be more stories. This is my contribution. I will be using songs throughout since its a band au but only this first chapter will have the whole song typed out. Furthermore all songs in this story exist in our world but for sake of my storytelling some will be "written" as originals by the character while others still belong to their respective artist which I will note.

For part one:

1.Dear Society- Madison Beer (As is)

2. Ribs - Lorde (As is)

3. Like That - Bea Miller and Aurora (Intended as band original)

4. COPYCAT - Billie Eilish (intended as band original)

Bad Idea, Good Intentions

Part 1

Tim wondered why he found himself at a club on this Saturday night. Him and his friends had just graduated with their bachelor's degree in their respective fields and they convinced him to celebrate with them at this club.

By 'friends' he meant primarily his best friend Connor. The other two guys were more of Connor's friends than his but Tim knew them well enough to consider them his too. However, Connor had called him the day before and practically begged Tim to come. Apparently there was this new band that he knew the drummer and this was their highest profile gig yet and Connor wanted to support his friend by bringing whoever he could. Tim reluctantly agreed, feeling like he should get out more and spend time with his friends outside of college.

Tim already felt like this was a bad idea when he walked into a packed club with flashing lights, a fully stocked bar, and a large stage.

"Tim! You made it!" Connor walked over to him and gave him a one armed hug as the other was occupied holding a half empty pint of beer.

Tim smiled at his long time best friend. "Of course buddy, I keep my promises."

Connor dragged him over to the bar where their other friends Garfield and Garth were sitting. Both greeted him with cheers and hugs.

"Dude, this place is fucking great! So many hot girls!"

"Good God Gar, can you keep it in your pants for one freaking night?" Garth shoved the blond playfully and took a sip of his drink.

"What can I say, the ladies love me. I just wish your stupid band played something easier to dance to." Gar crossed his arms and glared at the stage where the four person band was performing.

"This is your friend's band?" Tim directed at Connor.

"Yeah, this is Nevermore! Wally West is the drummer. Jinx is on bass, Argent is keyboard, and Raven is the lead singer and guitarist." He pointed to each of the members.

"What the hell kind of names are those. That Raven girl already has a creepy vibe and she chooses a name like that? What's with the Edgar Allan Poe obsession?" Garfield looked bewildered and shook his head.

"I'm shocked you even know who that is. But dude, it's just their stage names."

Tim looked back to Connor wanting to know more about the band that made him come here. "What are their real names?"

"I don't know." Connor shrugged.

"Are they single?" Garth had asked grinning.

"I don't know about the other two, but don't even try with Jinx, that's Wally's girl."

The guys entered a discussion about Connor's and Wally's friendship and what his stage name was. Tim heard it was something like Kid Flash but he wasn't paying too much attention. He was focused on the band onstage.

The song sounded familiar but Tim wasn't big on music. Each member seemed to have their unique style and color but they all worked well together. Wally was wearing yellows, Jinx wore black and hot pink striped knee high socks with a short leather skirt and black mesh top. Her hair was dyed entirely bubble gum pink and wrapped up in two space buns. Argent had black hair with red highlights running through it and an all black outfit with a studded leather jacket. The lead singer, Raven, really caught his eye. She has a short purple bob that fell to just below her chin.

Her outfit is what really had his mind stopping. She had on a black long sleeved ribbed shirt with a large keyhole neckline, showing off the tops of her full breasts, which was tucked into royal blue shorts that seemed to be barely long enough to even be classified as shorts with frayed edges. Her legs were encased in black fishnet stocking ending in a chunky heeled combat boot. Tim liked to think of himself as a gentleman that Alfred would be proud of but...the woman was hot. She had an hourglass figure but probably the best set of legs and ass he's ever seen. She was almost unreal how incredible she looked.

The banter of his friends regained his attention as the band switched to another song.

"Hey fellas, let's go hit the floor, this song is much better!" Garth and Connor finished their drinks and placed them on the bar agreeing to Garfield's request. They looked to Tim when he didn't move.

"You guys go ahead, I'll be there in a second. I haven't even gotten a single drink in."

Connor threw an arm around him. "That's what happens when you arrive late." He ruffled his hair a bit. "Alright man, we'll try to find a spot close to the stage. See you there."

With that his friends mingled within the crowd. Tim turned to the bar and ordered a bourbon on the rocks, he wasn't great in heavily social settings like this so he needed to calm his mind a bit. As he waited, his focus returned to the band.

They were actually really good. While he was slightly confused since their music was slower than he expected, the songs themselves were great. The lead singer had a lower voice of an alto but in the next song they started, it was clear she had a wider range. It was smooth when it needed to be but raspy and gritty, adding to the unique sound. The other girls added to the dynamic with their higher notes and he found he really liked it.

The slow beat of their next song reverberated around the bar, drawing everyone in, particularly Tim. He moved from his spot at the countertop to one of the metal standing tables that was currently unoccupied. It stood to the mid-right of the stage with a small gathering of dancing patrons between him and the stage. He gently placed his hand that held the almost empty glass of bourbon on the surface of the table as he leaned into it.

The lead singer Raven, he recalled from Gar's description earlier, slowly grasped the microphone. One delicate hand curled around the mic while the other laid gently in the supporting pole. Her almost raspy voice fluttered through the speakers.

Don't be cautious, don't be kind

You committed, I'm your crime

The low octave sounded almost sensual and her hand slid down the pole in time with the held note.

Push my button anytime

You got your finger on the trigger, but your trigger finger's mine

Her left hand formed into the shape of a gun and as she 'pulled the trigger' she collapsed her hand save for her single index finger that she spun slowly in a circle. Tim grinned at the small gesture representing being wrapped around one's finger and he couldn't pull his eyes away from how delicate and smooth her hands were. Even from the distance he sat she looked flawless.

Silver dollar, golden flame

Dirty water, poison rain

Perfect murder, take your aim

I don't belong to anyone, but everybody knows my name

Raven removed the microphone from the stand with her left hand and held onto the pole with the other as she slid down to a squat. On the beat she pulsed up and down to the next lyrics.

By the way, you've been uninvited

'Cause all you say are all the same things I did

Tim swallowed, eyes having never left her body he watched as the muscles in her legs contract and saw how her amazing ass peeked out slightly more from her bottoms. The routine had certainly taken a turn to a sexual nature and he couldn't help being turned on by the attractive lead singer. Her voice seemed to just purr in his ear. She rose to her feet again as she began the chorus.

Copycat trying to cop my manner

Watch your back when you can't watch mine

Copycat trying to cop my glamour

Why so sad, bunny, you can't have mine?

Did she just make eye contact with him? Holy shit, she definitely did. And was that a smirk? Was he drooling? Tim wiped at his mouth to confirm that he did not embarrass himself. He shook his head a bit to rid himself of the ridiculous idea that she could pick him out in the growing crowd. Many more patrons, especially the male ones, drew in closer and he found that he only had a small space around his table left. No way she looked directly at him.

Call me calloused, call me cold

You're italic, I'm in bold

She sauntered to the right side of the stage before flipping around and doing a body roll on "italic" followed by a deeper and more exaggerated one on "bold" where she popped her ass out more. There was a cheer from almost all the guys in the building and a flurry of whistles.

Call me cocky, watch your tone

You better love me, 'cause you're just a clone

Was Time seeing right? He could have sworn she winked at him as she strutted to his side of the stage. He knew he wasn't imagining things when she deliberately pointed at him accusingly while swaying her hips. Damn it was hot in here. He knocked the rest of his drink back hoping to steady his thrumming heart.

The chorus repeated with her returning to center stage and moving the stand off to the side. She dropped to the floor and threw her legs over the side where some of the guys tried to touch her before a bouncer pushed them back. As she finished the chorus she swung her legs back onstage but pivoted so she was parallel to the edge. One leg straightened while the upstage leg was bent.

I would hate to see you go

Hate to be the one that told you so

You just crossed the line

You've run out of time

Raven brought her upper body down flat with such ease and no doubt incredible core control. She gracefully placed an arm above her head as it turned to look out at the audience all keeping in time with the now soft melody of the song.

so sorry, now you know

Sorry I'm the one that told you so

On the extended note she curled back up and hugged her knees briefly before sitting up and resting her ass on her heels. Tim was not only impressed with her fluidity and the hot choreography, but the range she held in her vocals. He was starting to think this wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, sorry

Raven bowed her head and sang softly into the mic looking like she was praying for their forgiveness. The music silenced for a beat before she snapped her head up with a devious glint in her eyes, a small curl to the side of her lips, and a quirked brow.

Sike

She got up to her knees and swayed back nearly to the former sitting position before thrusting forward again on each beat.

By the way, you've been uninvited

'Cause all you say are all the same things I did...

...you can't have mine?

She had risen to her feet again through a combination of swaying hips and body rolls. She retrieved the mic stand again and returned the mic to its post before the last lyric and ended the song in the same pose she started with.

At the song's last note the crowd erupted in applause, whistling, and to Tim's displeasure, sexual comments from some of the more rowdy and drunk guys. The band bowed and waved before thanking the owner and the audience and retreated off stage.

His earlier worry about the band playing songs inappropriate to the occasion was thrown out the window because all parts of him thoroughly enjoyed their last song. He wouldn't dare say that to anyone but damn him if it wasn't true. That lead singer was just so gorgeous and had such a unique and fantastic voice, this must be every guy's fantasy. It was his now but who was he kidding, she must have a boyfriend. Wait...but didn't she wink at him? No, it was all an act. God he needed another drink.

Tim made his way back to the bar and ordered another bourbon on the rocks. He paid his tab and leaned on the bar, replaying the movements of Raven's body. He felt a little shameful for not watching the other bandmates as the whole song was performed well, but she was too captivating. Probably why she was the lead singer.

A pat on the shoulder interrupted him from his non-stop overthinking and he turned to see the smiling faces of the friends he came here with. The friends he had completely forgotten about until now.

"Dude where the hell did you go? We had a great spot just left of center stage! There were a ton of hot girls dancing with us!" Gar waved his arms around almost smacking Garth and Connor. The two just shaking their heads and laughing.

"Not to mention a great view of the performance." Connor nudged Tim and an almost wistful look came across his eyes. Tim swallowed hard again.

"And what a performance that was. Shit that lead singer has a great body." Garth swung his arm around Gar's shoulder.

"And voice." Tim coughed and immediately took another sip of his drink realizing that it didn't help.

Garfield chuckled. "Who was listening to the music when she worked that ass like that. She probably got ninety percent of the guys in here hard by the first chorus."

"And you said she was creepy." Connor poked Gar in his chest.

He held his hands up defensively. "Hey, that was before I knew she could get down like that! I mean her name is the bird of death, a bad omen. The other girls' names are kinda hot."

"Raven is just her stage name." Tim interjected. He didn't know why he felt like defending her, he quite literally didn't know her at all and this was typical Garfield behavior.

"Woah chill Tim. Got the hots for the lead singer? Wouldn't be the only one. Do you think she's single?" Garth lightly pushed his shoulder and took a seat next to him at the bar, flagging the bartender down. The other two looked at Connor who seemed to have the most information on the girl.

He head flicked back and forth between the two men staring at him before he understood their eager silence. "Look, I don't actually know that much about her. I just know about the fake names and mostly about Jinx. Wally doesn't really talk about the other two and I don't ask."

Garfield groaned. "Why the hell not? Your friend is the drummer for a hot girl band and you don't ask about their relationship status, or what their real names are?"

"No I don't because that's weird and I'm sure he's told me their names, I just don't remember right now. Not like you'd have a shot with them." The three men laughed at Garfield's expense and he crossed his arms and pouted.

"I don't see a line of girls wanting to dance with you Kent."

"It doesn't bother me all that much Logan. Plus, I came here to support my friend not hook up with some random chick."

"Ugh you guys are all lame. I'm heading back out there. This band is playing music more my speed." Gar grounded out and spun on his heel, disappearing into the sea of bodies.

"Good job Con, you made him all grumpy. Now I gotta calm him down." Garth grabbed his beer and followed his friend.

Tim was now reminded of why he was hesitant to come tonight. He wasn't the best of friends with Garth and Garfield and he came solely because of the desperate plea of Connor. He looked over to the stage and saw the main band playing their hearts out, music blaring over the speakers in an uptempo beat. Although it was more along the lines of typical club music, he found he preferred the darker melodies of Nevermore.

"Yo buddy! Where'd that big brain of yours disappear to?" Connor waved his hand in front of his face dizzying him for a second. Tim reached and snatched Connor's arm to stop him and dropped it once his motion stilled.

"Sorry, I was just trying to remember something. How are you doing? Enjoying yourself?"

"Yeah it's great. Awesome way to celebrate getting our degrees. I wish I had someone a little more special with me though, better company than those two numbskulls. How'd they graduate anyhow?" Connor took the seat the Garth vacated and spun facing the bar.

"Well, shockingly, Garth is actually pretty smart and Gar just copies off him when he can. He certainly didn't graduate magna cum laude." The two shared a laugh, lightening the mood once more. "You'll get that someone soon. Why don't you go back out there and see if she's there?"

"I feel like my soulmate isn't dancing in a club right now. I wouldn't be if my good friend wasn't playing for a big audience tonight."

"Fair enough. His band was really good. Do they play often?"

"At smaller venues yeah. I'm sure they'll be playing more here though, if any of the guys have anything to say about it." Connor smiled as if replaying a fond memory. "What do you think about Raven and Argent?"

"They're cool, great voices and Argent is amazing on the keyboard. How she keeps track of all the sounds is beyond me."

Connor let out a lighthearted chuckle. "I meant as attractive women, not their talents. Dork."

"Oh, yeah they're attractive."

"Wow, you're just not into this dude talk are you?" Connor swiveled to face him.

"I'm sorry, what am I supposed to say? I'm not going to sit here and objectify them." Tim looked seriously into his glass. It wasn't his intention to ruin the fun but he wasn't a fan of talking about his romantic interests, it felt too personal even though Connor was his best friend.

"Sorry Tim. I didn't mean to offend you, just dumb guy stuff. I guess I've been hanging out with Gar squared too much." He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. Damn Tim really had a way with being a downer.

"Nah, it's all good. I think I'm just constantly in my head too much. Gotta be professional all the time and all that jazz."

"Yeah man, well I'm gonna check on those idiots. Try to relax and have fun." Connor stood up and began to move before Tim stopped him.

"For what it's worth, I think Raven is the hottest. Her voice is positively sinful." Tim smirked at him and Connor's eyes widened as if Tim had spilt some highly classified secret.

"There you go man! Hey maybe I can see if Wally can hook us up with a meet and greet." He winked and came back toward Tim to clap him on the shoulder. He started walking backwards toward the mass of people dancing to the music while pointing at Tim and sending him a knowing wink again. Tim just shook his head and laughed.

#tim drake #Raven #timrae #band au #robrae #bad idea good intention #first post #hopefully this isn't awful #thanks #teen titans

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roadtohell · 4 years

Text

@mynamesdrstuff thank you ur brain is so big, i had like 10 moments of revelation while writing this

A Labour of Love- or, How to Write a Song That Makes Me Want to Lie Facedown On The Floor

Four decades separates the respective rises of singer-songwriters Hozier and Bruce Springsteen, nearly as large as the gap between the worlds in which their public images reside. According to popular myth, the former is the tall, near-ethereal Bog Man, half in this life and half in the next, who rose from a fae-inhabited woodland after 1000 years of slumber to find he was able only to mourn his lost love through song; the other is the Boss, a hardy yet compassionate working-class hero permanently streaked with the blood and sweat of a marathon shift, toiling endlessly alongside the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking, earth-quaking, booty-shaking, Viagra-taking*, love-making, legendary E Street Band. The domains of fen and factory may appear to be irreconcilable, but in reality the musicians have many things in common:

Broadly speaking, they both create wildly variable mixes of folk and rock, often with particularly strong Irish and African-American influences.

Their lyrics are poetic and commonly reflect on social issues with a progressive voice.

Songs about romantic relationships typically portray them as complex and difficult but remain respectful, sometimes near worshipful, of women.

Their characters yearn, long, pine and crave more often than not.

They both really like to use religious imagery.

They enjoy and return notable amounts of wlw love.

Representative of many of these are Hozier’s “Work Song” and Springsteen’s “Maria’s Bed”, two songs with close thematic parallels. Each is ostensibly told from the perspective of an exhausted labourer who dreams of returning to his lover. In a twist, however, “Work Song” is a melancholic love story, while the upbeat “Maria’s Bed” is a subtle tale of death; the opposing moods are complex reflections of these underlying narratives. These songs have Hozier and Springsteen skilfully intertwine the concepts of love, death, freedom and spirituality, creating two deeply moving portrayals of desire** that never fail to eviscerate the listener after 10pm.

Though the songs differ in overall lyrical structure, the similarities in narrative are evident from the first few lines:

Boys, workin' on empty / Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat? / I just think about my baby / I'm so full of love I could barely eat

Been on a barbed wire highway forty days and nights / I ain’t complaining, it’s my job and it suits me right / I got a sweet soul fever rushing round my head / I’m gonna sleep tonight in Maria’s bed

The audience can gather that each character works in a harsh environment where they are exposed to the elements. Their work is likely in manual labour, but the details are skimmed over because the narrators don’t particularly want to think about the details. Pushed to their limits, each instead copes by preoccupying himself with thoughts of his lover, though it makes him literally lovesick.

I’d never want once from the cherry tree / ‘Cause my baby’s sweet as can be / She gives me toothaches just from kissing me

She gives me candy-stick kisses ‘neath a wolf-dog moon / A sweet breath and she’ll take you, mister, to the upper room

The worker recalls his lover’s kisses as being vibrantly sweet, sweeter than nature. So, too, is her company- in contrast to the grim situation he is currently in, she is something to be savoured. Sugar cravings, an innate biological compulsion, come to mind; his hankering for her is likewise deep-seated and out of his control.

The reason for such devotion, the narrator reveals, is that she saved his life at a time when he had already resigned himself to death. He believes he was undeserving of such a deed; Hozier describes “three days on a drunken sin… she never asked me once about the wrong I did,” while Springsteen’s character recounts being “burned by angels, sold wings of lead / then I fell in the roses and sweet salvation of Maria’s bed”. In other words, his state of ruin was at least partially self-made, and her care seemed completely inexplicable. He eagerly returns her love, perhaps feeling that it’s the least he owes- but he still doesn’t quite understand where it came from.

True to both songwriters’ styles, these lines are direct allusions to the idea of redemption in Christianity: God sheltering a faithful person from the literally hellish consequences of their wrongdoing, through no merit of their own. However, the worker is notably dismissive of traditional doctrine:

My babe would never fret none / About what my hands and my body done / If the Lord don’t forgive me / I’d still have my baby and my babe would have me

I’ve been out in the desert, yeah, doing my time / Searching through the dust for fool’s gold, looking for a sign / Holy man says “hold on, brother, there’s a light up ahead” / Ain’t nothing like the light that shines on me in Maria’s bed

His faith rests not in God but on his lover; she is his religion now. Her act of grace already gave him a new, better life- he doesn’t need biblical promises when her love is tantamount to anything heaven might offer. This implication conveys a staggering depth of feeling, particularly to a religiously raised listener. Spirituality is, at its core, emotional; combined with the values and customs of religion, it is a force that can exert incredible influence over a person. The worker doesn’t reject spirituality itself- it’s an intrinsic part of him- but he has put all that power in the hands of the one he adores. It may make him vulnerable to her (that’s love!), but he is certain that she will give him the strength he needs.

Theological redemption also has close ties with death, as its benefits aren’t meant to be reaped on earth. Instead, the love, glory and freedom that are promised are relegated to the afterlife. Historically, the presumed ecstasy of achieving this gave death a sexual connotation; after all, if a lover could take the spiritual place of God, then perhaps sex could take the role of death as a gateway to paradise, far away from a life of pain. Work Song embraces this analogy, explicitly linking spiritual fulfilment to the pleasure of sexual intimacy:

When I was kissing on my baby / And she put her love down, soft and sweet / In the low lamplight, I was free / Heaven and hell were words to me

The equally suggestive Maria’s Bed allows the audience to draw similar conclusions, but it accomplishes this using a far less serious method: regular mentions of the titular bed, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. Yet this light-hearted sauciness is something of a misdirection. It’s easy to gloss over the song’s references to water, but they are strong hints that support an alternative reading: Maria is not a woman, but a river***. The story, from this perspective, then becomes much more sombre- the worker is a dying or suicidal man who wishes to have his body laid at the bottom of a river that provided for him in life, and whose real desire is for the peace he hopes to find there in death.

Got on my dead man’s suit and smiling skull ring / Lucky graveyard boots and a song to sing / I keep my heart in my work, my troubles in my head / And I keep my soul in Maria’s bed

This darker interpretation arguably makes more sense than the face-value love story, as it resolves some figures of speech that otherwise seem out of place. Even so, the more obvious reading is no less meaningful****; in fact, the coexistence of these narratives is what makes Maria’s Bed an almost perfect thematic inverse to Work Song.

When my time comes around / Lay me gently in the cold dark earth / No grave can hold my body down / I’ll crawl home to her

Hozier uses the finality of death to illustrate the strength of a man’s desire for love- his narrator embraces his own passing as he is certain not even the most permanent of barriers can keep him from his lover. Springsteen, through the personification of the river, uses the language of romance to demonstrate how fervently a man might desire death- his narrator embraces his demise because it offers a reprieve from life, just like a lover would.

All that said, no amount of lyrical analysis will reveal the clearest point of contrast the songs have: their music.

Work Song primarily draws from blues and folk music, both of which have roots in historical work songs used to coordinate physical tasks as well as boost morale. Reflecting this musical heritage, instrumentation is fairly simple, with the steady rhythm of claps and piano chords punctuating hard. It is slow and heartfelt, almost mournful; though there’s no mention of time frame, the audience has the sense that the worker still has a long way to go before he can return to his lover. This notion comes largely from the song’s circular structure. By ending with the same music it opened with, its story is also implied to finish at its beginning: with the men hard at work in the “burning heat”, and no true relief in sight. This is furthered by having little development over the course of the song- though iterations of the chorus are more intense than the verses, the arrangements underlying both sections barely change. The worker, it seems, is never quite far enough from his reality of hard labour, and never close enough to home.

On the other hand, Maria’s Bed is relentlessly optimistic, driven by a strong forward momentum. Where most modern songs have their choruses as their most powerful feature, here the wordless refrain (“hey hey, la la la li li li li”) acts more like a transition between verses, keeping the story moving. The jaunty fiddles that fade out are quite different to the introductory guitar and organ, suggesting the worker’s situation has developed for the better. In addition, the orchestration builds continually, only briefly pulling back before the music culminates in an extended musical outro. Many of the instruments work in counterpoint, each additional layer contributing to an air of an unrestrained joy that is further spurred on by Springsteen’s high hums and whoops. The linear musical direction and overall impression of good cowboy fun results in the feeling that, unlike the singer of Work Song, the narrator is already on his way to his heart’s desire- though, in light of the lyrics, what this actually means is somewhat ambiguous. Are those final echoes him moving out of earshot… or his ghost ascending to the “upper room” of heaven?

We may not know for sure how either of these stories end, but we can feel the aching hope for something better. This longing is an emotional line that runs all the way through both Springsteen and Hozier’s work, though it never seems to get old. Combined with explorations of love, faith, life, death- that’s why we return to their music again and again; they are experts at playing on old motifs and universal themes in new and creative ways, their crafted melodies and narratives touching wild and industrial hearts alike.

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* I am legally obligated to include all these adjectives.

** Maria’s Bed seems to be sadly obscure even among fans; the one and only online forum discussion I have seen about the song refers to it as “not that deep”. Having written this whole essay- if Springsteen himself said that to me, I’d laugh in his face.

*** A random internet comment I can’t find anymore backs me up on this. It even specified that it was about the Santa Maria River in California, as quoted “from Bruce”. Obviously an infallible source 😊

**** It’s important that “[drinking] the cool clear waters” can totally be the description of oral sex you thought it was.

#hozier #bruce springsteen #maria's bed #work song #mynamesdrstuff #mine #this is so tonally inconsistent skjhsakd #literally have not written an essay in 3 years so #@anyone who reads this... thank u and best of luck #send me your address so i can visit you and explain my passions

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coffeestainedpoems · 4 years

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Hello, I have a theory!

It is very much half cooked and I haven't thought it through enough to find loopholes but-

I feel like the songs: the 1, this is me trying, Betty, august, seven and Cardigan all involve the three same people.

James, Betty (who are childhood best friends) Inez (this *can* be a reach but I'm just believing that James mentioned the girl he ditched Betty for in 'betty', because honestly why would Taylor randomly mention an unrelated name?)

I believe this is the timeline:

It starts with Betty and James and the song seven. This song is from when James and Betty are kids- quite obviously, about Betty falling in love with James who has an abusive father (explains the 'chosen family' references in 'Cardigan' and 'the 1', both girls implying in both songs that they could be James' chosen family, alluding the lack of a "natural" one, or abandonment)

It's about Betty's desperation to save James from the haunted house he lives in (a child's way of reasoning a mad and angry father)

The girl in the song is Betty, and the kid she's in love with- James. A song about their childhood of sweet teas and tree climbing. This also explains how Betty is "the 1" for James. She's always loved him as she's always 'known' him.

Next I think 'august' happens.

A slip up. James' upbringing doesn't make it hard to believe that he can have commitment issues, the kind of thing he has with Betty can scare him into stepping back. Which can also lead into him distracting himself from the fact that he's 'dreaming' about his best friend he has just started kissing in 'dive bars' and his car. Which can lead into a summer fling.

I love, love, love this song because Taylor has captured the awkward, lovely, confusing teenage love be so beautifully it makes me cry.

Inez knows James isn't 'hers' but when you're young all you're trying to find is your self worth, and so the juvenile thought of having someone who is "someone else's" can seem very appealing.

Lyrical easter eggs/ parallels

"Salt air, and the rust on your door, I never needed anything more, whispers of " are you sure?" "never have I ever before"

This clearly tells us this thing started in summer with party games- Never have I ever the ultimate American fling starter.

"your back beneath the sun, wishing I could write my name on it, will you call when you're back at school, I remember thinking I had you"

Homegirl's starting to catch feelings, which i feel like wasn't the intentention she started this with. Also school reference.

"For me, it was enough, to live for the hope of it all, canceled plans just in case you'd call, and say, "meet me behind the mall"

Full disclosure: this isn't a fling for her anymore, she knows he doesn't love her, but she's too far gone to care.

"Remember when I pulled up and said "get in the car""

Inez took the big step™ and James had the absolute audacity to call her a "figment of his worst intentions"- men deserve zero (0) rights.

Now we move onto " this is me trying"

This song describes James' thoughts after 'august'. This fits very well with 'Cardigan', obviously, this is James picking up the courage to go back to Betty. This is him facing his fears.

Lyrical easter eggs/ parallels:

"I didn't know if you'd care if I came back. I have a lot of regrets about that"

Having a hard time believing someone can care about you even after you fuck up? Welcome to the damaged kids club, James.

"I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere, fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here"

Such clever lyricism, uff, so here James is telling us how he over thought himself a new reality because when he found love and friendship in the same person and- it felt too good to be true. But here is now, following his classmates to a party. At Betty's house.

"And it's hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound. It's hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you"

Need I explain? HE'S LOOKING FOR BETTY. He's also drunk now (explains the huge emotion shift in between Betty and this song)

Cardigan (Betty's POV)

This is Betty after first learning about the rumours, because Inez isn't trying to keep quiet about her and James' summer fling, like, at all (and why should she?) What I like here is how Betty is more upset at James and not Inez, because it might be the more smart and sensible response to someone cheating on you, but it is not a common response that women have in many films and other media formats, they instead start attacking the woman their SO cheats with them on, totally absolving their SO of any malice, which is just plain absurd to me (and Taylor too now, started with BTR now we HERE)

Lyrical Easter eggs/ parallels:

"I knew you, leaving like a father"

This I think is the biggest and most hurtful sentence Betty says to James, that he's become like his father. And it is so hurtful because it is true.

"A friend to all is a friend to none, chase two girls, lose the one"

Throughout the song we get a certain silent anger emanating from Betty, and rightfully so. I love how Betty attacks James in this song lol.

"But I knew you, playing hide-and-seek"

"You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleedin"

These can be parallels to "Seven", alluding to childhood activities (drawing on each other, hide and seek). And Betty knowing James before anyone. More than anyone.

"To kiss in cars and downtown bars was all we needed"

Parallel with "Betty"

Next we have : BETTY

This song is in James' POV, after "this is me trying", he's at Betty's party and now he's drunk. Which is why this whole song seems like something James is rambling, a little comical, which would be weird considering that he cheated on Betty-

Easter eggs/parallels:

"You heard the rumors from Inez, you can't believe a word she says, most times, but this time it was true"

Okay why is Inez being slandered, I don't like this.

"I was walking home on broken cobblestones"

Parallel with "cardigan"

"Just thinking of you when she pulled up like, figment of my worst intentions, she said "James, get in, let's drive"

Parallel with "august"

"Yeah, I showed up at your party, will you have me? Will you love me? Will you kiss me on the porch, in front of all your stupid friends?"

Parallel with "cardigan"

"Standing in your cardigan, kissin' in my car again"

Parallel with "cardigan"

So he gets her back, they start kissing again. Also remember this is a very public patch up, he's showed up at her porch, in front of her "stupid" friends. Inez must've been there too, since they go to the same school

And it ends with "the 1"

This song is Inez thinking what could've have been if she was "the one" for James and how some greatest love stories are never written.

easter eggs in lyrics/ parallels

"I had this dream you're doing cool shit, having adventures on your own. You meet some woman on the internet and take her home"

She's dreaming of James choosing a relative stranger (which Inez is, if you look at it with Betty's eyes) to take home.

Also that he's alone. No best friend.

"I, I, I persist and resist the temptation to ask you, if one thing had been different would everything be different today?"

I see this as parallel with "Cardigan" because in that song Betty says James will be always a part of her what ifs- and he is, just Inez's now.

"In my defense, I have none, for digging up the grave another time".

Ines apologizing for bringing this up again.

" We were something, don't you think so, Rosé flowing with your chosen family, and it would've been sweet, if it could've been me"

Parallel to "seven", she's saying they could've had their own family. Own James actually liked.

#thistookmehourslol #taylor swift #folklore #the1 #betty #august #thisismetrying #seven #cardigan

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clericbyers · 5 years

Note

Can season 4 starts with Will making out with a guy in his bedroom (kind of like the mileven one) but they don't show us his face and then Joyce knocks at the door and Will starts panicking and shoves the guy into the closet. After a brief conversation with Joyce, Will close the door and opens the closet and there he is, Mike Wheeler smiling, with messy black hair, pink cheeks and puffy red lips waiting for Will to take him by the shirt and start kissing him again.

ooh mygodd OH MYGODDD

okay so like, episode starts off with landscape shots of the Byers’ new town, maybe the “Welcome to ___” sign is included as a parallel to show that this is very much not Hawkins. The sign isn’t spray painted, it looks clean and new, and this town is vibrant yet calm in a way Hawkins never was and never could be. The shot pans to a mailbox much like we had in 1x01 with the Wheelers and the mailbox reads “The Byers Residence.” Inside, we see El and Jonathan in the living room listening to music together as they sit on the floor and lean their backs against the couch. Jonathan is chatting about the song playing and El cocks her head but watches his hands and nods along before sifting through more of his records. She picks up a sleeve with bright colors and shows it to Jonathan, who perks and then starts laughing but we never know what about exactly as the camera moves on to where Joyce is setting up the dining table. There’s five forks in her hand despite the Byers family being four people and she’s humming lightly to herself as she starts platting the table with her freshly cooked meal. Joyce looks happier, less stressed with a healthier flush to her face as she moves about the room. She’s dancing a little to the music Jonathan is playing for El, mouthing some of the lyrics as she places the fifth plate down. Joyce scans her handiwork and then steps into the living room, watching Jonathan and El with a warm smile.

“Dinner is ready,” she interrupts with a softness, “is Will still in his room?”

El nods distractedly, still searching through Jonathan’s record collection. “He’s been in there all day.”

“I can go get him,” starts Jonathan but Joyce waves him off with a shake of her head.

“You two clean up a little and then sit yourselves for dinner; I’ll get him.”

El and Jonathan start cleaning up, still talking about music together, and Joyce takes a moment to take in their closeness, which allows the camera to off the trio to the hallway for a hallway shot. There’s music coming from this direction too, similar to classic rock Jonathan was sharing with El. Will’s muffled voice carries through the hallway and the camera switches to inside his room, where he’s rolling his eyes, obviously facing someone but the camera only shows Will’s face. His cheeks are flushed, hair ruffled and messy but in a way reminiscent of purposeful mishandling rather than just-woke-up bedhead. Will’s eyes flutter shut and he leans in while grabbing at someone’s face, murmuring something unintelligible that makes the other person laugh. His hand blocks enough view of the face of whoever he’s kissing (and the person’s hoodie is doing a good job covering the rest), but it’s Will’s left hand at that, the one with the calculator watch on his wrist.

A larger hand overlays Will’s and he kinda steps back from where they were standing in the middle of the room until his back hits his desk and then he pulls himself up so the angle is more straight ahead. The other person is muttering something between kisses and it makes Will pull him in closer by the collar of his hoodie and then suddenly the sound of knocking echoes through the room. With a quickness, Will shoves at the other person, clambers off the desk, yells, “give me a sec, Mom!”, and then scrambles to stuff the guy into his closet with a hushed apology.

Will straightens his clothes and hair as best he can and then opens the door trying to look like he hadn’t just had his tongue down someone’s throat ten seconds ago. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Dinner’s done; Jonathan and El are just waiting up on you.” Joyce takes in Will’s appearance and frowns. “Were you sleeping?”

“Huh?” Will rubs at his neck. “No. No, I was up. I was drawing.” He motions vaguely to his desk where papers are scattered from when he scrambled off the surface. “I’ll be there in a minute then.”

Joyce smiles and starts to walk away, but then quickly turns back to Will. “I forgot to double check if one of your school friends is coming over. I thought you said you’d have a guest over tonight. I already prepared a plate if so.”

Will shrugs, rubbing at his arms as he crosses them. He looks distracted, brows furrowed as if contemplating what he should say next. Joyce cocks her head. “Is that a no? I’m sure Jonathan wouldn’t mind splitting the plate.”

“No! I mean, yeah, I have a school friend. He’s in the bathroom right now. Probably will be out in a second.” Will smiles as innocently as he can without it seeming like too much of a cover up. “I’ll wait for him so he isn’t all confused and we’ll make our way over, yeah?”

“Okay then.”

When Joyce leaves, Will closes his door and leans against it with a heavy sigh, rubbing his hands down his face as he groans. He perks when he remembers he had stuffed that dude in his closest and rushes over to open the door, raising his eyebrows as he spots someone half-tangled in his hoodie, arms raised and crossed in the sleeves of the garment as he struggles to take it off.

“What are you doing?” Will reaches out to help peel off the hoodie, which leaves an argyle sweater underneath. “I still don’t know why you wanted to wear a hoodie over your sweater. It’s winter, yeah, but we have heaters in this house, you know.”

The guy shakes his head and hangs his head down as he starts rearranging his floppy hair. A calculator watch rests on his right wrist. The camera pans to Will, who is watching with amusement and fondness written all over his face. He reaches out and then the camera switches to Will’s hand reaching up to cup a pink flushed freckled cheek.

“Yeah,” a familiar voice starts and the camera pans up until Mike Wheeler’s face is shown in full, “but the hoodie makes me feel like you’re hugging me and I like that. Keeps me extra wam.” Mike bites his bottom lip and then ducks down to steal a kiss which Will accepts easily. “Didn’t your mom say something about a school friend?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I meet them?”

Will pulls away and tosses his hoodie toward his bed. “It’s you, doofus. You’re technically a school friend.”

“You could have just told Mrs. Byers I snuck in and stayed over all day.”

“First, you did not ‘sneak’ in; El invited you in while Mom was out.” Will plays with the collar of Mike’s sweater. “Second, I panicked a bit, alright? She would have been asking so many questions about why she didn’t know you were visiting all day, asking if everything was okay with you and Nancy and Mrs. Wheeler, or even me at that.”

“You say that like she’s still not gonna ask when she sees me at your side in a couple minutes.”

Will leans up to press a kiss to Mike’s cheek. “Yeah, but at least at dinner I’ll have you, El, and Jonathan as means to move the conversation.”

#anon #yams answers #yams writes #otp: palaric #i keep writing everything BUT what i mean to #this is peak me

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starlight-ascension · 4 years

Text

My friend who live sent the reactions to Fresh is now watching Heartcatch. I have been waiting months for this and I bet you have too.

For episodes 31 through 34, I will be doing the direct, unedited copy-paste that I did when I posted the reactions to Setsuna’s arc.

☾━━━━༺☾❀☽༻━━━━☽ ☾━━━━༺☾❀☽༻━━━━☽ ☾━━━━༺☾❀☽༻━━━━☽

EPISODE 31

Imma watch episode 31 now

Well, this is an exciting start!

WOOP!!!!

Cure Blossom: "Your withered heart flower has been used! Return to your former self!" Desertrian: *confusion*

"Same thing, over and over again!" Is this lampshading or--

Welp, that's the end of that fight. New record for earliest time in an episode for a fight to end! Unless I'm forgetting some older episodes that also started with a fight and finished quickly. But I THINK that this one is a new record.

"A flower can be this beautiful?" 0_0

Ooooh, is this showing possibility for redemption???? don't answer that

Theme song time!

Fly on the tree

Oh, hey Yuri!!

caught "Yuri-san" when overhearing (and not looking at of course) the title [context: when she started fresh, i advised her to close her eyes when the title card pops up because of spoiler titles being very common]

So these flowers are called amaryllis. They really are nice aren't they

Ooh, echoing footsteps. And dang, won't even let the fairies so much as touch her now

Aw, Potpourri doesn't look too happy about the rejected hug

"We can't procrastinate until the last second like what happened to summer homework." Learned her lesson with that and hung onto it. Good for her. Wish I could say the same for myself, but... :-/

they have their heads hung with their faces cast in shadow

Oh! :-D :-D Well that's awesome!

"Let's have Momoka-san come as a special guest!" Are...are you guys sure about that? Welp, okay. Wait she's gonna ask Yuri too????

I mean...she's not wrong

This should be interesting

Wait, who's THIS

They have glowy glasses

"Mr. 2nd place"? 2nd place in what?

Saintani. Interesting how if you take out the "I"s and the first "N" you get Satan XD Oh dang that guys is a fast typer

Next test?

The shiny wobbly eyes from Yuri after Tsubomi says the theme is "A New Myself"

...Look at all the staaarrrs (*o*) (*o*) (*o*)

OH FRICK

HOLY FRICK HOLY FRICK

Talking to Dune again. Hmm.

"I've got them in my palms already." You liar.

"Maybe I should go on a journey?" Ooooh, a journey? THIS should be good

*both her teammates look at her* *Cobraja's face mask cleanly peels off*"What's wrong with you?" "Is it love? But you can't fall in love with me. I'm too pretty for you."

Oh hello Dark Precure. Haven't seen YOU in awhile...

Dark Bracelet?

"When you use this, the Desertrian will turn dark, bad, and violent immediately." What????????

JFKHNFIONGIJORGNWRJKNWRJGBERNJGKLRBNGJKISBNINJUKBGWRJLGHWRJOGBHJOGRWNBGOIWRBGIOFNHJRKLGNSFJKGBNSWOGIRUWBNEOUINGRWBRWGIOWRBGORUWBGOUJRWUGBNERJBGURWNJGNRWGJRWLBNJORWGHNRWIJGRWNG

SASORINA, NO!!!!1!

D~= D~= D~= D~= D~=

Wait, Yuri...LOST her Heart Flower???

Oh...

"But do you want your fairy to stay like this?" Stay like...what... Wait, is she talking about...

Yeah. I'm sure if she can start to heal again it'll come back.

*sings like Gumball and Darwin* Do do do do do!` Commercial break!

Well THAT was a mood whiplash

They're out in their pajamas? XD and Itsuki's fully dressed and bright-eyed without hairs sticking out or anything

Mm. Yeah. Maybe give her a bit of time.

XD fairies inching along the ground like caterpillars XD XD XD XD XD XD

Saintani's exaggerated "NAAAANIIII?!?!?!?!" XD XD XD XD XD !!

"I'm losing my conviction..." Okay, the way he sounds just...sad, saying this, not even frustrated or anything. Hmm. And Sasorina's walking up.

Yuri?

!!!!

Well frick she got him. And this time she has the Dark Bracelet...

Transformation time!

YEAH! WOOP! YEAAAH!

"A loser should just give up. Just accept that and go crazy." FRICK NO THEY SHOULDN'T! Y--wait, I'm realizing this could be like a parallel? To Yuri? Because Sasorina called her a loser reminding her of the fight she lost? And if Saintani shouldn't give up just because he keeps losing than Yuri shouldn't give up either and--

But, like, also the thing he keeps "losing" at is...studying? And as satisfying as it must be to come in first there, though second does mean he still came ahead of lots and lots of people, competing isn't really the point of studying, is it? the point is to learn and stuff. Right?

Yessss Blossom! Preach!

Oh no

No, no, NO--

NO !!!!!!

STOP STOP STOP

There's gotta be SOME way to stop this before it's too late--!!!!

REHIOGBHRWIOGWHRBGIOURWBGOIURW

GHWRJOIGBRWOUGBHROUGRWBNGJRWNGIJRWNGJWONGWIOGHEWIONGRWEOGNWR

WHAT ARE THE FAIRIES DOING

Come on guys, come on, you can get out of those things...

YES!!!! Y E S ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

"So annoying, the bonds of Precure! I'll defeat you next time!" she says as she hangs upside down in a tree

"Someone said this in my dream. 'What's important is climbing right back up when you're down, a strong heart.'" she's right you know. And you could take that advice yourself Yuri.

Wait, SPINACH?

Twerk-and-poop time

Chartreuse. Nice.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 ToT ToT ToT ToT ToT ToT ToT !!!!!!

end theme!

EPISODE 32

And we start with Cure Blossom and Cure Marine punching evil monkeys! And Cure Sunshine exploding them! WOO!!!

What...what is going ON

It looks totally EPIC but like WHAT is going ON =~O

HNDUFOBEWIOGBRWIOGBRNGJOLNOUGSJKLBGSIOBRWIOGWBJWHBRWJUHWEOIHWUOHWIOGHWOUGHNHJSBJKDSNUJBUGRWBGOIUWBGRWIOJNDSJKGBSNDJHKGNSGUIWBGUIWGEWUREWOUGBHJFKBNSJKSBDG

SERIOUSLY FLASH BACK RIGHT NOW

Wait was this a vision her grandma had of the future darkest moment in the climax before they save everything?

Why we zooming in on her necklace

Theme song time!

Gotta wonder what Sabaaku's face looks like under that mask...

Coppe-sama is large and fluffy <3

Hmm. Yeah, keeping on fighting Desertrians under the effects of the Dark Bracelet could be challenging to say the very least. And the stakes have definitely been raised.

"And then we remembered that Cure Flower had some really awesome powers!" OOOOH like what!

Heartcatch Mirage? What is THAT

"It's a mysterious item that gives the Precure unlimited power."

Unlimited power...mm. In my experience with media that sort of things doesn't come without some kind of price...

Oh wow I was hoping we'd get a glimpse of what she looked like as Cure Flower

Dune was a menacing-looking dark glowing giant with long flowing hair a claw fingers and stuff? The small glimpses of him we've seen had him looking like a teenager. Maybe this is him at full power and he's currently not at full power?

Oh wOw

Precure Palace?

I'm a little uneasy about this idea, but the Desert Messengers ARE getting stronger and there don't seem to be any other options.

A terrible test? Ohhh THIS should be good... OOOOH ENCHANTED TREE DOOR

Yes, go with them Yuri!

(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*)(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"The palace of Dune, the King of the Desert Messengers, draws near." What ??

(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The place is really beautiful

Welp, transformation time I guess

I remember it took me awhile at first to stop expecting them to say "freshly picked" before their cure names

Treasure hunt

"It's too high up!" Y'all can give yourself glowy capes that make you fly, remember? If you fall you can just do that... except for Yuri I mean... *awkward pause* wELP imma just keep watching

Wha-- Ohhh it's the Heart Tree!

"Just like that time." Huh?

"The Heart Tree comes to watch over the test to receive the Heartcatch Mirage." Ohhh. Cool! I wondered why it was here.

Flashback!...Oh... Oh wow...The inside of the palace is pretty too

HDJSHFJRHGEJORJUGH That's...not really her, is it

Defeat her?

*sings like Gumball and Darwin* Do do do do do! Commercial break!

You've got this, guys!

So there WERE generations of precure before Cure Flower (I forget if we'd learned this for certain already or not, only that there were none between Cure Flower and Cure Moonlight)

"I do not wish to fight you too, Tsubomi, even if this is only a test." </3 <3

Him? Who's--? *jaw drops at the sight of the rose petals* =~O =~O =~O =~O =~O =~O !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Harsh way of saying it...but I mean, she's not wrong.

And, I have wondered why he appears like this. Why he has the rose-petal powers and everything.

Yeah, why IS he here in the Precure palace... And they seriously call him "mysterious hot guy" or "hot guy"

You can do this, guys!!!!

*pours more goldfish crackers* YES GO GO YOU CAN DO IT

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

YES YES YES YEAH

WOOP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Coppe-sama! I knew they were magical doppelgangers of some kind

wait WHAT IT WAS COPPE-SAMA THE WHOLE TIME NDJSLFHDSJFHJUBURHJURHGJUHJUHRUJHHJKDLSHFIOW

"Another lost love"? Somecreature who looked exactly like your grandpa?

=~D

*sings* You gOtta take the UpgrAyAyAyAyADE! Gotta take the UpgrAyAyAyADE--

(*O*)(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought I saw something like this in the eyecatch...

Yeah! She could! (and she will if the opening and the eyecatch are anything to go off of)

*screams into pillow*

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

*collapses backward grinning ear to ear and laughing*

☾EPISODE 33☽

Cool start

Flashback!

"I...I didn't do much to help you." I mean, you're part of the reason they actually ended up going to do this...

"You girls overcame the test with your strong bonds of friendship." Mm. Yeah. True. They did that together themselves without her help.

"So very different from I, who fought alone."

Are you sure it's impossible? I mean, it's okay if you're not READY yet either way but like, IS it?

"Use it and see my Heart Flower!" Ohhhh, right, that

Oh...

Cologne? THAT'S her fairy's name?

Wait, was that Cologne talking just now??????

Theme song time!

How did her dad know about the Heart Tree though...

Upperclassman? They have school? I mean, I probably shouldn't be surprised... And Cologne's voice did sound older and less cutesy, if that was Cologne earlier

Where WAS Cologne then...also how did Cure Moonlight know Shypre and Coffret

=~O

NO NO DON'T TELL ME HE--???

D~= D~= D~= D~= D~= D~= D~=

*sobs*

*sobs rainbows when Erika hugs Yuri and they all tell her they heard about Cologne and all* ToT ToT ToT ToT ToT ToT <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

"We want to bring back your Heart Flower! One more time!" "We want to be the source of your power!" *crying rainbows all over the place*

Ooh, they designed clothes for Yuri? Let's see 'em! Ooooh! :-D

Oh hey Coppe-sama

GLOWY HEART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They all drop down and Potpourri's the only one who doesn't know when to stop and just hits the ground XD

What happened?

Oh hey there's Dark Precure

IT'S GLOWINGGGG

*sings like Gumball and Darwin* Do do do do do! Commercial break!

Among the cacti

Cologne!!!

So they call the container of Heart Seeds the Heart Pot. For some reason I can't help but think of... Chamber pots

"Tell Cologne your feelings"?

That sound...

Aaaand yyep it's Dark Precure

It stopped glowing?

Transformation time!

"Where is Tsukkikage Yuri?" Ho ho ho, wouldn't YOU like to know

"Too bad! She's not here anymore!"

Cologne! :-D

He's a ghost

"Thanks to Cure Blossom and Cure Marine gathering the Heart Seeds, I can stay like this"

It wasn't your fault, Yuri ;^; </3 <3 <3

"You've been working too hard by yourself"

OHHHHHHH ='-O So there was a point when Cure Moonlight WAS offered the option of having teammates but she didn't think she needed them... And she was so, so wrong

ToT ToT ToT ToT ToT <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 </3 <3 <3

"You didn't want to hurt anyone. You only wanted to take the pain yourself."

=~O =~O =~O !!! ToT ToT ToT ToT </3 <3 </3 <3 </3 <3

"Accept yourself, Moonlight. Accept your kindness and our sympathies towards your partners." *sobbing rainbows all over the place*

So she CAN be a precure again now?? ='~D ='~D ='~D Do iiiiiiiiit

OH FRICK

Totally forgot in the midst of that feelsfest

YEEESSS GO GIRLS DO IT FOR YURI

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I LOVE THE SHINING POWER FORTISSIMO

VDSHFVGSYFBEVWIUJERHGOIERJGEIGHJIOGHJRIOGEHRNIERHGJLKSHNIKG

D~= !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do it Yuri!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*)

(*O*)(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*)(*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) (*O*) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TRANSFORMATION TIME TRANSFORMATION TIME

HEART SEED RESTORED!!!!!!!!!!!

YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS THIS TRANSFORMATION SCENE IS EPIC!!!!

THEY'RE GONNA END IT LIKE THAT????

next episode NOW

EPISODE 34

And we start by replaying that awesomeness!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I just held down the E key for almost the whole henshin

Skip the theme song

Guess we're getting to THAT part of the series now

The expression on Dark Precure's face as it cuts back and forth between closeups like that is PRICELESS

This extended flashback of THAT day is just...wow

Seriously though in present day I absolutely LOVE seeing Dark Precure be this SHOOK XD You didn't think you actually just killed her now did you

YEEEEEEEESSSSS GO GO GO GO GO

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WOOWOOWOOWOOYEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Oh hey these three are here now

WOOHOOOOOOOO

Cure Moonglight effortlessly slapping his cards away with one hand like that YES

HOLY FRICK HOLY FRICK

This entire fight so far has been HDSOUNOIUJRGPIBOUBFNJKLNGRIGBNRWOUGBWRGOUHRWNFGJKSNGJKSNGHIOERJLWHSFOJNSAKLFNWSJKLGNSJKLFSHGJRWLOBHRWIOGNRWJKLGDNSJKNGIOWRBGNRWIOGBNRWIORNBSGIORWBIWRKGBNRWILRWNGIKWNGIOHNRW and it looks like it's only getting started

"The Dark Bracelet isn't just for powering up Desertrians. They also give us power!" Yyyeah, I guessed that after seeing Cobraja use it like that without having a Desertrian in this fight

Sasorina used mega-braid of power! Kumojacky used insta-sword! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I love the clashing good guy bad guy power explosions!!!

"A beautiful one like you, Sunshine, is most fit to be my partner." *le disgust*

CRITICAL HIT

D~= !!!!!!!

MORE critical hits!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SILVER FORTE WAVE VS DARK FORTE WAVE YES YES YES YES

"Dark Precure! Why do you hate me so?!" I was kinda wondering about that too. She does seem to have some serious vendetta against Cure Moonlight specifically.

"You are...You are me, that's why!" ...What????????????????????

"As long as you remain the moon's light, I remain the moon's darkness!" "When darkness swallows the light, the moon becomes one!" That answers and raises questions at the same time

You've got this, Moonlight! Get up!

Ooooh, is that gonna be a catchphrase??

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GO GO GO GO GO YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THIS IS TOTALLY EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

*sings like Gumabll and Darwin sped up* Dododododo!Commercialbreak!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

what? What's THIS?...Dark Precure? There was this purpley glow going up around her and then she fell over and fizzled lightning? ...Is that just what it's like when she's beaten?

Oh hey Sabaaku

"You're Dark Precure's..." Dark Precure's what? Dad? Creator? Pet mongoose?

Cure Blossom!!

*shakes head in disapproval at Sasorina* I was so enjoying the possibility of a heel-face-turn imminent for you. But, welp...

WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOWOOWOOWOO

HA HAAAA YYYES XD

Kumojacky's attack exploding in his face so he flies into the water fountain

XD WOOP

GO CURE MOONLIGHT GO YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

XD And now the other cures finish it off!

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's official... ...the gang's all here.

WOOP

The sun rises and all the water is gold now...

This isn't a school day, right? 'Cause y'all got no sleep all night...

Her heart flower's already reviving!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 (-: (-: (-:

What just happened? He's still there, right? Just can't be seen now...

"You are a true crybaby, you know?" XD

the others crying too <3 :'-)

Yep. That was definitely a lot

I'm...gonna guess there's a yes coming for Yuri being their fashion model

Yep!

"Who do you think I am! I can tell her measurements without even taking them!" Wait, really?

XD Erika scuttling around like a crab

While Yuri stands there with a poker face

SHE DID IT?

End theme!

#long post

2 notes · View notes

ravenvsfox · 5 years

Text

rockband chapter 5 babey 😈🤘🏻

Neil tilts a record out of the stacks, and the sun catches the sleek surface and shows him his reflection.

“You’re not even in the right section,” Kevin calls. He’s two rows away flipping through rock-punk CDs, looking exhilarated when they fall towards him like dominoes.

The whole store is no bigger than a spacious bedroom, and the shop front is all boxy windows, letting in honeycombs of late-afternoon light. Kevin’s never looked so relaxed, dragging his fingers along the spines of albums, inspecting the equipment behind the till, smiling and chatting with the owner.

“There is no right section,” he mutters, sliding the album back into its slot. “It’s all music.”

“Right,” Kevin says. Neil glances up and finds him unexpectedly close, mouth pursed reluctantly with amusement. “Except we’re not here for all music.”

“What are we actually here for again?” Neil asks, distracted. He can see Andrew waiting outside with his back to them and his arms crossed, serious and stock-still as a bodyguard.

“Inspiration.”

Neil watches Kevin’s face. The crease that’s usually between his brows is only suggestion now, a slouchy, un-tensed line. He’s tolerable like this, Neil thinks, almost impressive, choosing music to feed his creativity.

“You love it here,” Neil accuses. “This is a vacation for you.”

Kevin scoffs. “Like you’re not the same.”

Neil shrugs. There’s an upright piano on the wall and he wants to squeeze the keys in his hands like fingers in a crowd. The sound of voices and tires on asphalt from outside spreads like frosting over the crumbling drumbeat from the stereo. The rusting brown of the wallpaper behind the counter looks almost orange with the full force of the sun on it.

He could live and die in a place like this, head down, hands full of bright new music and dark classics, never in silence, never alone.

"Come look at this,” Kevin says. Neil follows him to the far corner of the shop where there are picked-over alternative CDs and peeling tape labels. He plucks an album from the stack and wiggles it at Neil. “Old school Ausreißer.”

Neil squints at the cover art. “You look like a bad metal band.” The original four are caught in the middle of a set, dressed in all black under a red spotlight, mid-howl. The word Ausreißer is so stylized that it’s almost illegible.

Kevin rolls his eyes and puts the CD back in its slot. “Things change. When we found you you looked like you were on day ten of a bender.”

“I can go back to that, if it’s the look you’re going for. Wouldn’t want to stand out in a band full of junkies and burnouts.”

“Funny,” Kevin says flatly. “Just bring that smart mouth to song writing.” He gathers his little stack of music and a clear box of sturdy picks, and drops them on the front counter to be checked out.

Neil hesitates, swaddled in the darkest, warmest corner of the store, reluctant to splash back out into the cold. He can already see how it will play out: Andrew’s silence and Kevin’s focus, the way they take up so much of the sidewalk that Neil has to fall in behind them or walk in the gutter, the drive home like a never-ending commute to nowhere at all.

He’s listless without a stage, and Kevin won’t let him forget that he’s not a natural born songwriter. He’s waiting for inspiration like that second raindrop after you swear you felt the first one.

His eyes wander and catch on a lurid red flier stapled to the bulletin board above the stacks, and he does a double-take. Foxes. Township Auditorium. Friday, January 25th.

“Dan’s group is playing this Friday?” Neil wonders aloud, and Kevin looks at him over his shoulder, handing bills off to the cashier.

“Oh yeah, the Township gig. I think they’re hanging out in town for a week or so, too.”

“We should go.” He thinks of the way the girls had laughed about their public personas and plastic recognition. He wants to hear them for real, as magnetic and driven as they were at Abby’s, assuring him that they do pop like he’s never heard in his life.

“Waste of time,” Kevin says, accepting his bag with one of his frozen, ken doll smiles and making towards the exit.

“We’re not touring right now,” Neil argues, catching up. “We can take two hours off from the new album.”

“We can,” Kevin says, “but we shouldn’t.”

“And yet you find the time to drink six hours a day.”

“The creative process looks different on everyone,” he grits. They push out into the sunlight and Andrew looks vaguely in their direction, his face chapped from the wind.

“Great. Mine looks like going to local concerts and supporting our label, and you know full fucking well that Wymack would agree with me.” They start walking, Neil leading them in a frantic triangle down main street. Andrew doesn’t ask or care about what they’re arguing over, which is why Neil tells him, “I want to go to the Foxes concert on Friday.”

“Then go,” he says. He’d been chain-smoking while Neil and Kevin were in the shop, and he looks irritable and sick. His pallor has been almost bruised lately, like something’s wringing him out and leaving marks behind.

Neil flips Kevin off and walks further ahead of the group, buoyed by the opportunity to be part of an audience again. He loves the silky anonymity and sway of the crowd almost as much as being doused in lights and held up by a mic stand.

Kevin’s still talking about accountability and wasted talent, but he’s lost his audience.

Neil reaches the van first, parallel parked at a wicked angle. He waits for the muted click of the unlock button, then climbs into the passenger seat. There’s a parking ticket folded over the windshield wipers and Andrew sets them going so that it flutters down onto the street.

“It’s not going to be the same in the crowd as it is onstage,” Kevin says calmly from the backseat.

Neil turns his head. “I know.”

“The fans know who you are now, and I’m not sure you’re ready for what that actually looks like.”

“I’m pretty good at blending in,” Neil says, eyes narrowed.

“You’re not,” Andrew says, pulling jerkily out of the spot without looking and nearly catching a hyundai by the nose. “You’re loud.” Car horns blare on all sides like a chorus of agreement.

“You draw attention,” Kevin agrees grimly. “I’d rather you stick it out in the studio where you can’t get into trouble. And Wymack would agree with me about that.”

Neil watches pedestrians swarm and cars criss-cross beyond the window. “So what, I join a band and now I’m on full-time house arrest?”

“Shouldn’t you be used to keeping your head down, runaway?” Andrew taunts. His hands flash as he makes a left turn, ink spelling yes over no over yes. Neil gives him a look.

“You’re not talking about staying on the move, you’re talking about hiding. And in my experience, your problems catch up with you when you sit and wait for them to go away.”

“I’m not talking about your fucked up past,” Kevin says irritably. “If you want to stumble into the nearest concert, you can, but if you misrepresent us or pull some stupid shit to distract from the set, Wymack will kick your ass. If Dan doesn’t get there first.”

“Don’t worry Kevin,” Andrew says, glancing away from the road to fix Neil with a cool, knowing look. “He has winning impulse control. Right Neil?”

Neil clenches his teeth and ignores him. “I realize that you don’t trust me, but I need you to understand that I don’t care. I’m not going to stay in the cage until you figure out if you’re ready to unlock it or not. I’m not going to live that way anymore.”

“You’re on a team now, and you have to care,” Kevin argues.

Neil scoffs. “Tell that to Andrew.”

Kevin looks pained. “He’s—“

“What? An exception? I’d love to know why I’m held to a higher standard than the person with concealed weapons and an unreliable drug dependency,” Neil says, fuming. Andrew pumps the brakes so that Neil topples forward into the dashboard, then he’s thrown back again when they accelerate. He grips the headrest and seethes, “you’re fucking psychotic.”

“You—“ Kevin starts.

“Kevin,” Andrew says, toneless, barely there, and Kevin stops short. Neil recognizes that easy power, that tongue-biting obedience.

They collapse into strained silence, Andrew looking infuriatingly tranquil, the air around Kevin vibrating with how badly he wants to speak.

Neil thinks about the corner of the music store and that old album, an Ausreißer from back when Neil was still lost in between hotel rooms, when his mother was alive, and she could change the course of his life with just the tips of her fingers. He thinks, things can be so easy and so ugly at the same time.

They get out at Palmetto, Neil wrenching doors closed behind him, trying to feel like he has a raft to himself for once, like he’s not always sharing, feeling for someone else’s shifting weight.

Nicky’s spread between two chairs when he gets to the studio, and Neil’s relieved to see the easy smile on his face. It fractures when he gets a good look at him.

“Oh no. Was it unbearable? I thought music shopping would mellow Kevin out, at least.”

“It was fine,” Neil says, rolling a chair towards the table where they left all of their notes and stray music. He sweeps everything off the table, feeling a vindictive shock when it all settles on the floor; every dangling idea, stagnating chord progression, and experimental piece of garbage.

“Yeah, you seem fine,” Nicky says sarcastically.

“Better,” Neil says, rummaging in the heaps of wasted work until his hand closes around a discarded pen. “I’m inspired.”

_____

The dye burns cold on his scalp. He paints the wispy place above his ears, and tucks it up into the rest of the gummy mess. There’s a dark streak on the porcelain of the sink, and he rubs it with one gloved finger.

Someone knocks at the door, and Neil reaches behind himself to open it. There’s a beat, and a flutter of movement, and then his eyes meet Andrew’s in the mirror.

“Brown,” Andrew remarks.

“You wanted me to tone it down,” Neil says, focusing on smothering his auburn roots and pointedly ignoring the rest of his reflection.

“Don’t put Kevin’s words in my mouth.”

Neil meets his eyes again. “What do you want?”

Andrew doesn’t reply for a long moment, and then he starts to peel down his armbands. It’s like watching a snake shed its skin, and Neil’s so startled to see it happening that he turns around to watch him directly.

He’s expecting the thatch of scars, but it still knocks the wind out of him to see them, tender pinks and whites that nudge all the way up to the ink on his wrists and hands.

Andrew plucks the brush out of Neil’s limp hand and scoops up a mound of colour that looks black in the weak light.

“Head down.”

Neil complies, chin towards his chest, and feels Andrew smooth the dye from just below his ear up into the coil of loose, wet hair. He can feel the damp heat from Andrew’s bare wrists, smothered for most of the day.

“Who put you in a cage?” Andrew asks, and the hair on Neil’s neck stands up.

“What—“

“You said: I’m not going to stay in the cage until you figure out if you’re ready to unlock it. I’m not going to live that way anymore.” He says it robotically, like an automated recording.

“I know what I said,” Neil snaps, starting to look up, but Andrew grips his neck and steers his head down again.

“Then you should be able to explain what you meant. Without lying to me.”

Andrew’s initiating one of their trades, he realizes, baring a secret and nodding at Neil do to the same. He closes his eyes, flinching when the brush makes sudden contact with his neck.

“My mother.” It’s an easier answer than the reality--a web of injustice too thick to see through. A childhood spent escaping from one cell block to another.

The brush stops midway through a glide towards his hairline. “She hurt you?” Andrew asks, low.

“It’s not that simple.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You know better than anyone that protecting someone can get bloody. Our circumstances weren’t--they were never good enough for us to have a decent relationship. But she kept us moving.”

A bare hand curls in his hair, and Neil’s eyes open. His breath catches when he recognizes the hateful look on Andrew’s face.

“Did she hit you, yes or no?”

Neil swallows thickly, trying to focus on the feeling of Andrew’s hand against his scalp. “Yes.” The hand tightens painfully. “But she’s dead now. My parents are dead.” He doesn’t know what drives him to say such a hasty, partial truth, like it has any bearing on the way it felt to be forced to the ground and pinned until his arm broke. Death gets rid of the person, not the memory.

Andrew’s hand drops altogether. He moves into the space at Neil’s side, hip to hip, and rinses his hand under the tap. “If she was beating you, she wasn’t protecting you.”

“You don’t understand what people are capable of when they’re struggling to survive.”

Andrew steps slowly and lethally into Neil’s space. “Yes, I do,” he says, nearly whispering. Neil’s eyes hitch down to his destroyed wrists.

He nods, and Andrew backs off. He feels a strange, remote disappointment watching him move away, like climbing out of a roller coaster and watching it take off without him.

“We’re not keeping you locked up,” Andrew says. “We do not own you.”

Neil shakes his head a little, running a hand over his hair under the guise of checking for dry patches, trying to reclaim the tingling, grounding feeling of Andrew’s fingers.

“Contractually, you do.”

“You’re with us,” Andrew says, “until the second someone abuses your contract, then you leave. We both know you could outrun me if you really wanted to.”

“Maybe,” Neil says, on the blunt edge of a smile. “But you might be able to outlast me.”

Andrew looks at him in the mirror for a long while. “You’re disgustingly stubborn,” he says. “And dense. I wouldn’t count on my ability to put up with you for that long.”

Neil shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I won’t leave. We have a deal.”

“I just told you—“

“Not the contract. You and I have a deal. And I’m not ready to give it up,” Neil says, and he means it. The tenuous promise of protection, the give and take, the lure of the stage. He’s only grown more and more obsessed with the whole thing.

Andrew wavers. He reaches for his discarded armbands, and takes his time rolling them back up. Neil feels a painful rush of recognition at seeing his scars swallowed up, and he reaches out impulsively to hold him by the wrist. Andrew’s fingers are still ruddy with dye.

“This isn’t a cage. You’re nothing like—it’s nothing like my mother.”

At Abby’s, he’d told Andrew he reminded him of home, the most nightmarish insult he could lay his hands upon. And for a jarring second, Andrew’s commanding relationship with the band had looked like the dynamic between himself and his mother, ceaseless authority meeting senseless devotion. He’s been stupid enough to mistake Andrew’s promises for Mary Hatford’s threats.

At length, Andrew tugs, and Neil lets go of him.

Long after he’s gone, and Neil’s hair is washed out and limp, wet brown, he can still feel the raised scars underneath the fabric of the armband, and beneath that, a curiously rabbiting pulse.

______

And “monster” does not begin

to cover bolts and stitches in my skin

sinew held with safety pins

but you made me

the creature not the man, right?

but this lab coat’s fitting pretty tight

and if you’re living out of spite

are you a person or a feeling,

and would it hurt to look at you directly?

gunshots speak louder than words

but the warning shots you heard

don’t work for people who’d prefer

to die than to live on their knees--

“It needs workshopping,” Kevin says, tossing the notebook onto the coffee table.

“I think it’s great, Neil,” Nicky says. “The Frankenstein stuff is cool, our fans eat that shit up.”

Neil shrugs, and he gathers his notes back up from the table, out of reach from prying eyes. They’re assembled in a loose square in the living room, with Andrew at the window, a cigarette burning delicately between two fingers.

“You call yourselves the monsters so— I don’t know.”

“It works,” Kevin sniffs. “They’ll get it. They’ll like it.” It’s a more generous response than he was expecting, and he knows it’s the most approval Kevin can bring himself to show. “How soon can you match it musically?” he asks Andrew.

“I already have a melody,” Neil interrupts. He stands, walks over to the keyboard Kevin insists they always keep on hand, and presses the ‘on’ button. “It’s not very complex,” he says, walking his right hand over a couple of keys until the power catches up and the notes start to voice.

He plays the song through once, low arpeggiated chords and a sustained, high tenor line. He sings when he can’t help it, crooning until it gets too high to sing softly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Andrew’s fingers drumming against the windowsill.

“You’re right,” Aaron says when it’s finished. “It’s not very complex.”

“Downer,” Nicky accuses. “It’s just keys right now, we can amp it up.”

“Is it worth it?” Aaron complains.

“Yes,” Andrew says, leaning over to put his cigarette out in the ashtray balanced on the arm of the couch. They all look at him expectantly, and he gets up, grabs the music directly out of Neil’s hands, and disappears into his room with it.

“Well that’s a good sign,” Nicky says, bemused. “Guess we’re going to that concert, Neil.” When Kevin opens his mouth to protest, Nicky says, “Wymack signed off on it. Plus we’re making headway on the b-side tracks, and Andrew’s actually working.”

“I’m not going,” Kevin says, crossing his arms.

“Me neither,” Aaron says. “Allison will have our balls if we pull focus from her.”

“So we won’t,” Nicky says. He ropes Neil in by the shoulder and tousles his newly dark hair. “No one will even know we’re there.”

______

Later, Nicky sends Neil to ask for the car keys, and he finds himself standing in the dusk outside Andrew’s room, delaying the inevitable confrontation.

Andrew comes out before he can knock, wearing boots and a black baseball cap, keys clenched in his fist. They nearly collide, and Neil staggers back a step.

“You’re coming with us?” he asks dumbly.

“You and Nicky can’t be trusted alone,” he says. It’s an insult, but it hits Neil like warm water from a shower-head, like relief.

“Did Kevin ask you to do this?” Neil asks, but Andrew ignores him, brushing past into the living room, then the entryway. Nicky pushes off from the back of the couch where he’s been waiting, looking back and forth between the two of them nervously.

“We’re all going?”

“Apparently,” Neil replies.

“Cool. Weird. Shotgun.”

“Neil’s sitting in the front,” Andrew says, cranking the screen door open.

“Family really means, like, nothing to you when Neil’s around—“ Nicky’s saying as he follows Andrew out into the night.

Neil breathes out, lacing his shoes and listening to Nicky chatter circles around Andrew, who is steady and silent, already fixed in the driver’s seat.

He’s been picturing the Foxes concert as that same ambiguous darkness from before he joined the band, skulking in the back of bars and hoping to be caught. Now he imagines Andrew and Nicky propping him up like brackets, a drink he actually paid for, the hair-raising knowledge of what it feels like on the other side of the performance.

Wind shivers through the front door and underneath Neil’s collar. He jams his hands into his jacket pockets—the leather already stiff and unyielding from the cold—squares his shoulders, and opens the door.

______

They’re smuggled in through a door backstage, already late. Nicky clings to Neil’s sleeve so tightly that it pulls down over his hand.

Renee comes to greet them, as unnervingly pleasant as the last time he’d seen her. Neil keeps expecting her even-keeled demeanour to clash against Andrew’s like icebergs meeting, but they only seem to thaw around one another.

Andrew greets her, and she knocks her knuckles into his hand and smiles.

“I’m glad you guys came. Don’t tell her I told you, but Allison’s raring to show off.”

“I bet she is, competitive bitch,” Nicky says good-naturedly. “All you foxes are such a handful.”

Renee seems to be considering whether or not he’s joking when Dan appears at her elbow. “Walk in the park compared to your lot,” she says, smiling sharply. Her eyes flit to Neil and she softens. “Still doing okay, Neil?”

“She means, have we ruined your life,” Andrew says in German.

“Quick, tell her how saintly we are,” Nicky says.

“And lie?” Neil asks in exaggerated German, as if scandalized. “I’m fine,” he says to Dan. “Excited to see a Foxes set.”

It’s a bigger venue than he’s used to, and the energy is intimidating, people whisking past them and calling instructions to one another.

Her smile quirks, and she lets her arm drape around Renee’s neck. “We’ll try our best to impress, then. As usual.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nicky says. “You’re a big deal, we get it. Don’t you have warm-ups to do?”

Dan snorts. “Time off is making you a little mean, Hemmick. You better watch him, monster.”

Andrew stares blankly back at her, and Nicky says, “you try living with Kevin 24 hours a day and tell me how personable you’re feeling.”

Dan winces. “Point.” Someone ducks close and whispers in her ear, and her face flickers through several shades of confusion and annoyance. “Okay, shit. One of Allison’s pegs came loose and her tuning is all over the place. Sound check’s in five, and Matt’s on the wrong side of drunk, but um. The show must go on, I guess.”

Renee ducks out from under Dan’s arm, excusing herself, and Dan squeezes Neil’s shoulder in parting. “See you out there. Try not to get into trouble.”

“Yeah right,” Nicky says, and she aims a kick at his shin. He falls back a step, laughing, as she jogs after Renee. “Hey, rock and roll, Dan,” he calls. “Or whatever it is you guys do.”

He’s still beaming when he loops his arm with Neil’s and steers them towards the door. Neil looks anxiously back at Andrew, but he’s a step behind them as usual.

They wait for a lull in passersby, and then they’re out in the thick of the crowd, pushing conspicuously from the front of the stage to the side of the room. Eyes linger on them and narrow, and his throat starts to constrict until he feels Andrew’s hand thread into the shirt under his jacket, keeping him tethered.

Nicky can’t resist dancing a little to the opener, as obvious as they already are, and he bobs through the aisles, shooting furtive looks back at Neil to see if he’s enjoying himself. The band on stage is too high energy for their low energy song, jumping and twisting to a half-time rhythm.

Andrew’s hand tightens at the small of his back, and Neil glances back to see him eyeing the thrashing drummer with distaste.

“I thought you didn’t care about technique,” Neil tells him over the music, and Andrew tears his eyes away. He’s frowning, and Neil relishes that off-guard little furrow of emotion.

“I don’t,” Andrew says, “I also don’t listen to bad music if I can help it.”

“Guess we must be pretty good, then,” Neil says.

“I didn’t say that.”

“No,” Neil agrees. “You didn’t.” He knows that it’s true, though. Somewhere past the layers and layers of bandages that Andrew wears, there must be raw flesh. It’s just that Neil can’t tell if he’s healing or rotting underneath it all.

They come to a stop close to the stairs up into the stands, and Nicky gestures at an empty patch halfway up. Most of the crowd is standing already, chaotic, but they climb up into the mess and find their seats, Nicky on the inside and Andrew in the aisle, with Neil sandwiched in-between.

“Our fans are louder,” Nicky leans over to say smugly.

“That’s because they’re trying to keep up with you,” Neil says. “Decibel for decibel.”

“Fuck you,” Nicky laughs. His eyes are bright, and he grips the seat in front of him to get the leverage to see through the masses.

They ride the energy of the crowd to the end of the song, and then the group is hollering goodbyes and filing offstage, and people start to sit down or escape to concession. Nicky relaxes back into his seat and pinches Neil for his opinion.

“I don’t think we missed much,” Neil says.

Nicky shrugs. “Yeah, but we were like that once. You got to skip Ausreißer’s adolescence, Neil, you lucky shit. It was not pretty.”

“Kevin showed me your first album,” he tells him.

“Oh, Jesus,” Nicky groans. “Those were dark times. I used to wear leather biker gloves on stage, like a tool.” He rustles in his inner jacket pocket and produces his flask. “Drink to forget?”

Andrew reaches across to pluck it from his hand before anyone can drink. He unscrews the cap and points it at Nicky. “I know you’re already fucked, Nicky.”

He scoffs, making a messy grab for it that Andrew dodges. “Hardly.”

Andrew swallows a generous shots worth, then passes the flask to Neil. This is familiar by now, sharing space and booze and drugs as a means to an end. They get drunk like they’re grappling down a cliff-face together, connected by rope.

Neil hesitates. There are strangers on all sides and the sick smell of sweat and beer in the air, but there’s something about his back to the wall and a concert ahead that he trusts. This is how he spent the years after his mother’s death, anonymous and drunk, losing control in measured doses like taking medication.

He drinks, the mouthpiece still wet from Andrew’s mouth, and screws his face up at the tartness of the flavour—a salty, lemony vodka. Nicky tries to steal the flask halfway through his sip, so Neil pushes him away by the face.

He and Andrew share the rest of the liquor, and he puts the back of his hand to his face to feel it warming up. It’s a relief, to feel his edges shaved off. It’s like he’s less defined this way, less likely to be recognized.

Stagehands are fiddling with amps onstage and taping wires down, and the buzz of the crowd is suddenly deafening.

“What’s the deal with Renee?” he hears himself asking.

“What d’you mean?” Nicky asks.

“You like her,” Neil guesses, jabbing Andrew with the base of the flask to get his attention. “But she’s nothing like you.”

“She’s one of us,” Andrew says.

“But she’s not, though,” Neil says, half-frustrated and half gawking at his own lack of composure. He wants his curiosity back inside where it can fester and wonder in circles and die. “I thought Wymack only took in strays. Charity cases.”

“You have met her twice,” Andrew says coldly. “How well do you think you can judge a person’s character in that time?”

“Pretty well,” Neil says grimly. He thinks of the cross around her neck and the prim lace of her collar, attention-grabbing hair offset by dark, serious eyes. He saw Matt’s track marks and Allison’s rage before Dan had even whispered their stories to him, but he can’t read anything on sweet, prim Renee.

“Lucky she doesn’t care what anyone thinks,” Nicky interjects. “She’s waiting to be judged by God, I think. Everyone else’s opinions are just… noise.”

He can’t imagine anyone who was really like them believing in God like that, but he bites his tongue.

“Little orphan Neil Josten gets in some trouble and he thinks he knows what rock bottom looks like,” Andrew muses, and Neil’s stomach sinks. “You haven’t even hit it yet.” He looks unfocused, and it occurs to Neil that he might have taken something before they left.

“You’re right,” Neil says. “But you promised that you’d be there when I do,” he reminds him.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Nicky asks. “Neil?”

“Neil?” someone else says, and Neil looks over to see a woman and a couple of scruffy looking dudes frozen halfway up the stairs. His eyes drop to the shortest of the two, who’s wearing elbow-length armbands identical to Andrew’s. “Andrew! Nicky! Oh my god,” he says.

Nicky puts on a winning smile. “Hey!”

“I can’t believe you’re here—like, for real, there were rumours, but—oh my god— “

“He’s completely obsessed with you,” the woman gushes.

“Katie,” he hisses, and his friend shakes him good-naturedly by the shoulders.

“He’s afraid to say it, but—“

“Fuck off—“

“—every single album—“

“That’s very cute,” Nicky interrupts, cocking a flirtatious grin at the guy who’s holding his own cheeks, dismayed.

“We couldn’t believe you were just, like, changing your sound completely,” the taller guy says. “But Neil, man, I see why they’d take a chance for a voice like yours. It’s sick, dude.”

“Thanks,” Neil says stiffly.

“He’s not used to being recognized, yet,” Nicky says apologetically. “You’re taking his fan virginity.”

They titter, and the woman says, “we’re honoured.” She nudges her friend and widens her eyes meaningfully.

“We can’t really hang out though, sorry guys. Low profile tonight,” Nicky says. His smile is less believable by the second.

“Totally,” they chorus.

“I just quickly want to say, Andrew,” the first guy starts, breathless. “I know you get this all the time, but your lyrics saved my life. I couldn’t believe someone understood me like that, and—and you’re my--you inspire--I mean. I’m sorry, I’m so tongue-tied, I—“

“I didn’t write them for you,” Andrew says.

The fan’s face crumples. Nicky looks at Neil, panicked, and then he forces a loud, incongruous laugh.

“Wow, good one,” Nicky says. “He doesn’t mean it, obviously.”

“Don’t I?” Andrew says.

“We appreciate it,” Neil interrupts. “But we can’t talk anymore.“

“Right, sorry, I’m so—“

They urge one another up the stairs, apologizing and thanking them, the one guy looking on the verge of tears through the bars of his friends’ arms, until they disappear up to the next level of seats.

“You could’ve pretended to be human,” Nicky hisses as soon as they’re gone.

“They call us monsters,” Andrew says. “What do they expect?”

Nicky groans. “Please can we have fun, and not ruin anyone else’s night, especially our fans? People are gonna egg our car.”

Neil’s stomach squirms, and he crosses his arms over it. There could be well-meaning, invasive people like that everywhere, and now he’s tipsy and angry and stuck.

The house lights go down a few minutes later, and the whole crowd sucks in a collective breath before they plunge headfirst into cheering.

Neil’s arms loosen. Nicky stands up at his side, hooting, and everyone follows suit, craning towards the stage, wanting to be the first thing the band sees.

Dan comes out first, waving with both hands, and Matt follows, winking at the crowd and sliding his guitar over his head. Allison and Renee emerge from either side of the stage, Allison towering in high heels and glowing under the lights. Renee’s hair is wild, and her face is different, tongue caught in her teeth, almost cocky.

They fit behind their instruments like joints cracking into place, and they play their first chord in perfect unison, all of them operating different parts of the same body.

The crowd roars their approval. Neil sits upright. He’s surprised to feel Andrew standing up beside him, stepping into the aisle to watch. He follows without thinking.

The jangling, bopping drum line doesn’t wait for the strings to catch up, and Renee doesn’t need to watch to see that they’re following her. Her wrists are supple, and she’s lost to the music like she’s been playing for hours and not seconds.

The room goes up in flames when Dan starts singing, like the fans are all hungry, dry wood, and she’s a spark. She works the microphone free from its stand and starts running with it.

“Fucking excellent, right,” Nicky shouts, and Neil nods, mesmerized. The crowd moves together even separated by sections and rows of seats.

It’s nothing like an Ausreißer concert, where boiling blood turns into wine, and everyone turns their desperate faces up to the stage like they’re waiting to be healed. Foxes sing like they’re in love and they fought for it.

Neil can admit that they’re as musically proficient as the monsters, too, making up for lack of technical flair with a complete understanding of their sound.

Matt smiles dopily down at his guitar and then at Dan, like he can’t decide which deserves his attention more. When she floats towards him, he gets springy with it, teasing her with guitar licks, carving shapes into her oaky voice. Allison’s hand goes protectively to her tuning pegs whenever she has a break in the music, but her bass is rich and in tune.

They do an old-fashioned crescendo like it’s a classical piece, and Dan is almost conducting, hitting the air when Renee smashes the cymbals, gesturing for more when Allison starts a slippery solo, so fast that she laughs and tosses her hair, exhilarated.

Neil makes a hurt noise that gets swallowed in the din, but Andrew looks at him anyway. Neil looks back, studying his wide black pupils and wondering why he only bothers to pay attention when he’s stoned.

He remembers the wide eyes of the kid with the armbands, the agony of his disappointment, and he forces himself to look back out at the band.

One song finishes and another climbs on its back. People move and mill out of their seats towards the stage. He feels like he’s seeing double, like he’s watching a long pilgrimage that’s somehow been condensed or played back.

The first break in the music, Dan laughs her way out of the song, takes a swig of wine, and says “how was that?” into the mic, pointing out towards the place where the monsters are standing. Nicky puts two fingers to his mouth and whistles.

Her stage presence is unparalleled. She’s funny and a little hard on her audience, begging them to sing louder, drive her offstage if they can. Neil can see why she’s in charge, unofficially. She paces circles around the stage like she’s boosting morale. She barely needs the microphone to be heard.

They topple back into their set without warning, a trust fall of a count-in where Renee bangs out a few warning shots and everyone’s hands fly to their instruments.

Somewhere in the thicket of fans, Neil hears someone call, “Andrew!” He sees an incongruous flash, turned towards the audience and not the stage.

“Nicky, Nicky Hemmick! Nicky, over here—“

“Andrew,” Neil starts.

“We love you, Neil,” someone screams.

“Don’t—“

Neil’s jostled down a stair, and Andrew yanks him back up.

“Ignore them,” Andrew says viciously.

“Yeah,” Nicky agrees, but he’s clearly rattled. “What are they gonna do?”

Neil struggles to get his bearings. A few of them are still shouting, recording them with their phones or fighting their way through the crowd towards them. Nicky motions for them to stop, but a few people get close enough to beg for autographs or snap blurry photos of themselves with the band members in the background. He wonders if it was the fans from before, upset enough to tip off the whole crowd to their seat numbers.

“Bet you didn’t think we were this famous, huh?” Nicky jokes nervously.

Andrew has no problem with shoving people away, and Nicky frantically apologizes as many times as he can before he just starts shaking his head. Neil is forced painfully into Nicky’s side, and he can hear people in their row restlessly asking what’s going on.

Most of the audience is oblivious, still focused on Foxes’ raucous energy, but the three of them are surrounded for another ten minutes before people start to get frustrated enough to give up. The rest of them are shoulder-tapped by security, and the throng dwindles to nothing.

“You okay?” Nicky asks. Neil nods, but when he blinks he can still see pinholes of light from camera flashes. He knows that the photos will end up online where anyone can see him as he is right now, and they can guess at his habits or zero in on his location if they want to.

He’s been reckless for a long time, but standing pooled in stage lights feels entirely, chokingly different from wading down into the crowd and feeling the attention slither around him like seaweed.

Andrew crushes a hand to the back of his neck, and Neil inhales all at once.

“Kinda ironic that crowds freak you out so much when you sing for one every night,” Nicky says. He’s standing half in front of Neil, eclipsing the concert still unfolding in the background.

“It’s not the crowd.” Neil shakes his head to clear it. “It’s—they all know who I am.”

‘They think they do,” Nicky corrects firmly, fingers curling into Neil’s arms. The harpy tattoo peers out from under his sheer sleeve, a monster in a veil.

“They want to,” Andrew says, gaze tossed out to the back of the venue. His face is so blank and washed out under the lights that it’s like it’s been chemically stripped of colour. “You’ve caught their attention.”

Neil pulls free from Nicky’s arms and sits heavily in his seat. “I don’t want it.”

“You might not have a choice,” Nicky says, sitting next to him, smothering the distance Neil keeps trying and failing to cultivate.

“You always have a choice,” Andrew says, and when Neil looks up at him, he’s holding out his right hand with its painted yes. Neil accepts it gingerly, and Andrew drags him to his feet.

They watch the rest of the concert from backstage.

Andrew sits propped up on an amp, and Nicky alternates between trying to get the band’s attention from the wings, and mimicking Matt’s solos with vigorous air guitar. Neil suspects he’s trying to get him to laugh.

Neil has enough distance now to feel stupid about locking up during such a minor incident and proving Kevin right. The crowd has already forgotten them, or never knew they were there. The show goes on.

They’re coming up on their encore performance when Neil feels a buzzing at his hip.

He fishes an unfamiliar cellphone out of his pocket and stares uncomprehendingly at the message lingering on screen, sent from a number he doesn’t recognize.

A neat little ’60’ and nothing else.

#neil sure is mistaken about many things #the foxhole court #andreil #tfc fanfic #aftg #rockband au #mine #abuse tw #alcohol tw #self harm tw #this chapter did not want to exit my mind and I'm sorry about that #peep the love letter to dan wilds halfway through this klhgjfhdfgsf

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