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softomi · 3 years

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Catfish

prompt: mother says to be wary of people you meet on the internet, especially since you never know who’s on the other side of the screen.

pairing: atsumu x reader

the unpaid extras: osamu, suna

general taglist: @graykageyama

Osamu liked to mess with his brother and lately he’s been planning the largest prank. It originally wasn’t supposed become a huge thing, but then Suna just kept edging him on; adding more things one by one and it just spiraled. Osamu was catfishing Atsumu with your pictures.

Now, Osamu knows that it sounds bad but technically you were in on the prank. You had never met nor even knew Atsumu, heck, you didn’t even know who Osamu was. You had been part of the prank merely through text messages and the occasional meet up with Suna.

To put it simply, Suna met you through one of his teammates; coincidentally you ended up in one of his classes and the two of you built a tiny friendship. Which was why, when Suna was thinking of the perfect person to catfish Atsumu with; your face lit up in his head.

You were the perfect candidate, exactly Atsumu’s type literally to a tee. When Suna pulled up your contact, the first thing he did was offer to pay you. Every picture you sent used for the prank, he’ll send you cash through an app and as a broke college student who needed cash fast, you agreed as long as the photos weren’t used for anything weird or sexual. He made sure to send you proof of each photo in use.

This brings it all back to dear Osamu catfishing his brother. He had created an entirely new Instagram for you, complete using your name and a cute description that him and Suna had spent two hours thinking of. They decided to even spend a few days perfecting it, posting pictures a few days apart with captions, following random groups, liking posts, essentially creating a whole new personality using your photos. Osamu had even developed a fake occupation for you; a foodie blogger to which some posts were dedicated to food reviews for restaurants Osamu deemed worthy of a post.

And when Osamu says that the prank spiraled; it fucking spiraled. Originally it started with Suna and Osamu following the account, suddenly Suna’s teammates began following the account. Osamu made the mistake of tagging Onigirl Miya in one of your photos, ultimately adding a few random people to follow the account. Suddenly after two weeks of having the account, you gained over two thousand follows.

It was no worries though, because Osamu can quickly catfish Atsumu, take down the account, and call it all good.

Safe to say, Atsumu accepted the friend request rather quickly. Osamu and Suna snicker to themselves, it took Atsumu less than five minutes to accept and he was already liking all of your photos. Not even ten minutes pass and he’s sliding into the DM’s.

The two men looking at the phone and burst into laughter. They spend five minutes cackling at Atsumu’s random ‘hey’ message that followed with a smiling emoji.

Osamu was absolutely entertained, it was hilarious that his own brother had fallen for his catfish and honestly, Osamu was ready to give up the act after three days but then Atsumu said something that just really pissed him off. He doesn’t remember what it was, he just suddenly ended up two more weeks later still having the fake Instagram account and still having Atsumu believe that he was falling in love with some girl.

Somehow the account ended up with over five thousand followers, Atsumu messages the account religiously, and Osamu for some godly reason is still managing the account three months later. It’s spiraled.

“I have a girlfriend!” Atsumu doesn’t know why his friend and brother are laughing. He’s scrolling through your Instagram, the catfish Instagram.

Osamu almost chokes on his food, “So what, have you guys gone on a date? Have you even seen her in real life?” Suna snorts into his drink, he coughs when he accidentally inhales the water sharply.

Atsumu slumps in his seat, his voice small, “No, but we talk every day and she likes me!”

Suna is coughing even harder now, tears threatening to leave his eyes to the point that he excuses himself to the bathroom. Osamu has a shit eating grin on his face, “How do you know she’s actually not some old dude catfishing you?”

“She’s not!” Atsumu stutters, “She’s real!”

“Prove it.”

Osamu was about to learn a harsh lesson about the world; the world loves to bite you in the ass when you least expect it.

Atsumu leans forward, an eerie grin on his lips, “Happily.” Atsumu whips out his phone, quickly presses a number and holds the phone to his ear. He holds a finger up to his brother, even gesturing for the returning Suna to remain quiet. The phone picks up, “Hey babe, you wanna meet me here at Onigiri Miya?” Atsumu looks at the watch on his wrist, “Twenty minutes? Perfect.”

Osamu’s believing his brother is bluffing. There was no way in hell he’d be able to somehow magically bring the catfish to life, heck, Atsumu would be a god if suddenly he could. Thirty minutes pass, Osamu is exchanging looks with Suna. It’s absolutely silent between the three.

Osamu is suddenly feeling guilty, Suna is uncomfortable to the point that he’s even texting you to make sure you weren’t actually coming, and you confirmed with him that you weren’t.

“Should we tell him?” Osamu whispers when another five minutes pass.

Suna is deadpanned, “I don’t know, we’re kind of reaching a sad territory now. Let’s just break up with him and ghost him.”

Osamu groans, “But do we want to deal with a sad Atsumu, I’ll take getting my ass kicked over him crying in my apartment.”

The door chimes and their jaws smack the floor. You walked through the door, eyes roaming the place before landing on the three huddled into the corner. Is he a fucking god? Atsumu stands from his seat, he meets you halfway, pulling you into a heartfelt kiss that has you swooning.

The closer you approach with Atsumu’s arm around your shoulder, the more they truly begin to believe that Atsumu is a god.

“Guys, this is my girlfriend.” This time it’s Atsumu who has a shit-eating grin, “Ain’t she a beauty, the pictures don’t do her justice.”

It takes everything in Osamu to not scream, “But, you said you’d never even met her before.”

Atsumu gazes into your eyes, hearts practically floating above his head, “I mean I guess technically this is our first-time meeting, right?”

You nod, a puppy like expression on your face, “I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself yet. You must be Osamu.” You point to him then your fingers drag to the other male, “Suna.”

“Oh.” Suna sits straight up, “Oh!” He catches the glint in your eyes, the conniving little minx of a look. Suna was no longer calm, “We’ve been double crossed!”

There’s screaming, fingers are being pointed at each other, Atsumu is gripping Osamu by the neck of his shirt, Suna is literally calling your phone to make sure that it’s actually you, Osamu is pulling his brother’s hair. The customers of the restaurant stare with their jaws dropped at the scene.

Everyone is squished into Osamu’s small office. Suna is sitting on the desktop, Osamu in his chair, Atsumu in the spare seat, and you lean on the arm of Atsumu’s chair. His arm dangles around your waist, pulling you to lean on him with a cheery grin.

Atsumu leans forward, taking in the expressions of the two bewildered boys, “I guess let’s start at the beginning.”

While the story technically began three months ago with Suna asking for your cooperation, the story of you and Atsumu began two months ago.

The extra cash from all the pictures you sent Suna was giving you enough to be able to go out and live a little on the weekends. Originally the bar was dead, you and your friends were tucked into the corner in a booth when a rowdy bunch of men came in. Your friends gasped having recognize them as members of a sports team and with their excitement, they must have won a game.

It didn’t affect your group that much until it came to split ways; being in your last year of university, you excused yourself, insisting that you needed to go home to finish a project. As you stood at the register, card tapping against the counter, that was when he showed up.

At this point, Atsumu had spent the past hour believing the gods were on his side. He practically walked by your table ten times just to make sure the face matched the one in his instagram’s DM. After forty minutes of the constant back and forth, your quick gazes at him walking by the table seem to do nothing. Were you unable to recognize him?

He took his shot watching you stand alone at the counter. He finishes off his drink and smoothly strides to you.

“Hey!” Atsumu leans on the counter, flashing a smile despite alcohol dripping from the side of his mouth, “Wouldn’t you consider this fate?” He gestures between the both of you.

You’re confused, shooting him a puzzled gaze, “Sorry, you must have me mistaken for someone else.” You hand the card to the worker, anxiously eyeing the male who’s increasingly invading your space.

Atsumu places a hand on the small of your back, it was something Instagram you had mentioned you liked, instead it triggered a fight or flight. Your hand makes harsh contact with his cheek, he retracts his hand immediately.

“Don’t touch me!” You bark at him, “Perv.” You’re aggressively signing the receipt, storming out of the door while other men seem to ooh at Atsumu’s situation.

“Hey!” Atsumu catches your figure outside of the bar, you’re waving a hand to catch a cab, “I think we got off on the wrong foot there.”

You don’t give him a second glance, “Look, I don’t know who you think you are.”

“Atsumu.” He stands right in front of you, blocking your sights for a cab. He’s got the widest smile on his face as he holds out a hand, “Miya Atsumu. Volleyball player. Setter for the Black Jackals.”

“Okay.” You run a hand through your hair, oddly taking his hand into a shake while eyeing him, “Miya Atsumu, volleyball player, setter for the Black Jackals.”

You step to the side, arm out still trying to catch a taxi but he blocks your way once more and he looks at you with such wonder. His eyes practically having stars coming out and his smile warm and inviting. He was wondering if you were a twin, maybe he had actually gotten the wrong person.

“You are?”

The wind is causing your hair to blow in your face, he wants to so bad to brush the strands behind your ears but the way you gave him a slap earlier makes him think that’s a bad idea. Your fingers pull your hair back, “Y/n. I don’t have a fancy title like yours but, I guess I don’t know, senior to be graduating at the university.” You sidestep him once more, “I’m just trying to catch a cab home.”

Once more he blocks your way and you look at him with defeat. He was persistent. He laughs, “Sorry, last time, but do you not know me?”

You’re still as confused as ever, “Look if you’re going to pull some cheesy line about seeing me before, it’s not going to work.”

“Wait, just hold on a second.” Atsumu pulls out his phone, his fingers are shaking as he presses onto the app. He pulls up your profile, handing you his cell phone, “This is you isn’t it?!”

Your eyes scan the social media page, your mouth falling open, there’s a hidden laugh itching in your throat. These were all the picture you had taken for Suna and somehow, you’re being shown by a stranger your fake profile.

“We’ve been messaging for like a month, I can’t believe you don’t recognize me.”

I don’t recognize you because I’m not the one talking to you.

You’re perplexed, you weren’t sure what you were supposed to do, if you told him he’s being catfished you’d lose the flow of side cash you’ve developed but if you didn’t, isn’t that just wrong. And the more you look at him from under the stars, he’s rather cute; you suddenly feel bad for slapping his face earlier.

“Do you want to get some coffee?”

Your offer sends him over the moon, he’s walking alongside you to the nearest convenience; Atsumu is rather talkative, bringing up topics of everything and anything that comes to his mind. As the two of you look over drink options in the cooler, his hands pull two cans of black coffee.

“You’re favorite right?” He holds one out to you.

Your actively smiling, biting your lower lip and wondering if you needed to play along with the role but as he stares at you with such adoring eyes, it makes your heart skip a beat just taking in the fact that he would remember something trivial over text.

“Actually.” You place the drink back, opting for a sweeter caramel macchiato, “I would say that this is my favorite.”

Atsumu quirks a brow, “Are you saying you were lying to me?” He places a hand over his heart, “And here I thought we were soulmates.”

Your hand smacks against his arm, “Shut up.”

“So what are you studying for?” Atsumu sips his drink, the two of you leaning against the windows of the convenience store. There’s a slight sway in his body and you’ve unknowingly followed his movements.

“Literature. Once I graduate, an internship is probably where I’ll start but I’m hoping I can get hired into a publishing company.” He’s comfortable to be with and you aren’t sure if it’s because he thinks he knows you or because his presence is just like that; comfortable.

Atsumu finishes off his canned beverage, “And you do that, all on top of running a foodie Instagram.”

From what you gathered on a quick skim of the account; they have your occupation as a lower level food blog; it’s rather funny. You can only nod to him, “It’s just a side hobby really.”

“Well maybe I could join you on one of your little adventures.”

You try to suppress the immense grin that wants to grow on your lips, there’s an internal battle happening of whether you should tell him or not but once again, the way he looks at you, the cute doe eyed look; it puts butterflies in your stomach.

“How about tomorrow?” He lets out a small gasp, your hands pull out your cell phone and offer it to him, “Your number?”

“I’m free for lunch, just text me when and where.”

You press the number he’s inserted into his contact; in a second his cell rings and he’s showing off his screen, “Don’t message me on Instagram though, I’m detoxing from social media for a bit. Just, text my number.”

He walks you to the curb, helping you flag down a cab, and you give him one last gleeful glance before getting into the car. As you sit, you’re quick to dial Suna’s number. You know he’s probably sleeping but the light feeling in your heart overrides his sleep schedule.

“What?” He’s groaning.

“Suna listen to me carefully. The prank that you guys are doing.” You hear a small snore, “Suna!” He jolts awake and you groan, “You know what, go back to sleep.”

“Thanks.” He hangs up immediately.

Your phone dings, Atsumu’s name pops up. Can’t wait for our date. You bite on your thumb, a smile on you before you respond.

Although having just seen him forty minutes ago, you two text back and forth. First he wondered if you arrived home safe, next he sent pictures of himself insisting it’s for you to choose for his icon, then he proceeds to narrate his way home. You wonder if you’re responding like catfish you but the more he brings up random topics, the more you forget about that stupid prank.

Wait let me call you.

Your heart beats faster, your phone lighting up with his name. You press the answer button slowly, “Hello?” You giggle.

“You’re telling me that you like spikers more than setters.” His voice is nearly screaming and you lean back on your chair laughing into the phone.

The quick research you did on his team had you watching short videos, and while you had to admit it was amazing to watch, your eyes drifted more to one of his teammates than him, “What’s his name?” You lean to look at your computer screen, “Bokuto Koutarou?”

“No!” He’s whining out into the air, “If I had known you were a spiker girl I would have changed positions.”

Your eyes catch the time on your laptop, “Woah. It’s three in the morning.” That meant you had spent over four hours total texting him and now you were on the phone with him, “What are you doing awake?”

He blows out a breath of air, “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Well.” You draw out the word, dragging your self to your bed, “I’m going to go to sleep now.” There’s a pause on the line, “Atsumu?” He hums tiredly, “Good night.”

There’s a small snore from him before he shifts around, “Good night.”

The morning light urges you awake, for a second you peak at your phone’s time and it nears ten in the morning. You’re about to throw your phone back onto the bedside table until Atsumu’s name catches your eye. For having gone to bed at three a.m. he shot you a text at seven.

Morning beautiful.

It was sweet, simple, and it made you smile; giving you the extra push to get out of bed. You stalked your own catfish page, there hadn’t seemed to be any updates so there was still time. A quick search of the internet has you picking out a random restaurant nearby and you send off a text to Atsumu about a meeting time.

You were late, pushing through the doors of the restaurant, your eyes scan the place to see him raise a hand for you. He’s dashingly handsome despite being in casual wear, you wonder if he spent time like you did just trying to pick out an outfit or if he spent forever gelling his hair as long as you tried to get your strands into the perfect waves.

“Sorry, did you wait long?” You pull into the seat in front of him.

He’s smiling and you hope to god that when you break the news to him, he’ll still smile for you, “I just got here not too long ago too.” He looks over the menu quickly, “What do you think you’ll get?”

You inspect each dish, a light hum on you as you dance around the option, “The spaghetti sounds nice.”

Atsumu tilts his head, “It has red meat in it.” You stare blankly at him, “Aren’t you allergic to red meat?”

“Oh.” You set the menu down, “Actually.” He follows your actions, you’ve become nervous at what you’re suddenly about to do, “There’s something you should know.”

“Fuck this!” Atsumu throws the napkin on the table, you jump as he harshly stands, throwing the chair back.

“Atsumu.” You stand.

“No! Don’t. Were you just messing with me then? Did Osamu tell you I was going to be at the bar last night?” Atsumu’s fist ball, “You know what, whatever.”

“Wait.” You follow him behind, “Atsumu. I’m sorry.”

He harshly turns to you, god, even in sunlight you were beautiful to him. He wants to laugh, the month he spent talking to the fake you; yeah that was all bullshit to him but honestly when he saw you last night, when he spent over four hours actually talking to you; he actually felt that maybe this could be something deeper.

“I’m really sorry, I know I should have said something right away.” You have a soft pout on you and it makes him outwardly groan.

He runs a hand through his hair, “Okay, it’s fine. I probably deserved this prank too anyways; must have pissed him off somehow.” He waves a hand, “You can just go back to doing whatever.”

Your hand pulls on his wrist, “I owe you a meal.” You bat your eyes with a cheeky grin, “If you take pictures of me, we can send them to Suna and use the money for our food.”

“Oh.” He begins to smile, “I like that idea.”

Back into Osamu’s office, Atsumu has now pulled you onto his lap, your head resting on his shoulder with arms hanging around his shoulders. The two bachelors stare at the sickly loving sight.

A lightbulb goes off in Suna’s head, “Wait! My money!”

You snort a laugh into Atsumu’s shoulder, “Hey, I earned that fair and square. You paid for goods.”

Osamu is having a staring contest with his brother, “So you two have been actually dating for two months? Why would you still message the catfish account then, why not just kick my ass when you found out?”

Atsumu taps a finger on his chin, “Well, I was just originally going to ghost you guys but then babe here and I discovered that we could fund all of our dates with Suna’s money. We even started setting aside leftover cash from our dates to plan a trip.”

You giggle, “We’re going to Disney next weekend.”

“All the pictures.” Suna whispers.

There’s an amused hum in your throat, “Honestly I’m surprised you guys didn’t figure it out. We were dropping hints in the photos.”

Indeed, the two males looked at the pictures you sent them. If they backtracked to two months ago, there wouldn’t be any hints but the closer they get to the present; it was painfully obvious. They were just too caught up in their excitement to even notice. In one photo, part of Atsumu’s shoulder and hair was just barely in the picture; another had his reflection vividly displayed in the window of the restaurant, and somehow Osamu and Suna missed the obvious Black Jackals jacket sitting on the back of the chair next to you.

The two boys were having a mental breakdown.

You shifted on Atsumu’s lap, leaning forward to tap against the top of Osamu’s phone, “Now, if you’d please deactivate the account since this whole charade is over.”

Osamu ended up not deleting the account. He set the account to private because seeing how his brother was so deeply entranced by you, Osamu had a feeling this one was going to last and he was right; on Atsumu’s wedding day, his little best-man speech had him whipping out the catfish Instagram to display on the monitor for everyone to see.

#haikyuu #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu x reader #atsumu x reader #atsumu scenarios #osamu #suna #atsumu

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kpopscenario · 3 years

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A day on the beach

Pairing: Vernon x Reader

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1.8k

Summary: You finally managed to organize the much needed day trip to the beach with your boyfriend - and some other friends who would cause some mixed feelings in Vernon.

A/N: Mentions of jealousy

A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I looked out of the window and finally saw the beach. The weather was just right- not too cold, not too hot. Just perfect not to freeze in only a bikini but also not to sweat like a pig under the sun. I was sitting on the passenger’s seat, next to my boyfriend Vernon, who always wore a content little smile on his face while concentrating on the road.

“If it takes us ten more minutes to arrive-”

“If you complain one more time, I’m gonna yeet you out of the car”, Chan groaned towards Soonyoung who was now pouting like the immature adult he was. Vernon just took a turn left and then already could drive onto the parking area.

“Look outside, we’re already here, relax”, the male next to me said in his calm voice.

Minutes later, we were ready to wander to the actual beach, with all our bags and umbrellas. It was actually hilarious how we kinda looked like we were going on a week trip with everything they insisted on taking with us. As we finally decided a spot that wasn’t in a crowded area, Chan took the towels out, I arranged the umbrellas, Vernon got himself something to drink and Soonyoung immediately got rid of his shirt. That man had been whining during the whole ride about how badly he missed the sea and being able to just lay down on the sand or play beach volleyball. It was cute how excited the pink-haired male was and it didn’t take him more than a minute to run into the waves, making us laugh. He clumsily tripped one meter inside the water- falling face first. Chan only shook his head, half ashamed for his friend, but then got undressed as well.

“Are we going in too?”

Within a minute, both Vernon and I were ready to join our clumsy clown and so we all went into the quite cold water. While Chan was very passionate about swimming (just like Vernon and Soonyoung), I was quite respectfully approaching them. Not because of the temperature, but because I was paranoid what might swim around my feet without me knowing. Luckily, they knew that and they didn’t splash me with water to rush me. Vernon was patiently waiting for me, like the gentleman and good boyfriend that he was, even asked if I wanted to hold his hand, which I then gladly took to get deeper. Meanwhile the other two were already dipping their heads underwater or splashed each other.

Although I wasn’t the biggest fan of being in the water, Vernon made sure to always be around if the other two were occupied with something else or too far away. A few minutes in, the three of them started playing with a soft ball while I preferred to watch them being all silly and excited. The sweet thing was Vernon keep checking how far I was away, or if I was comfortable - something I really appreciated him for. His supportive, caring and low-key soft personality made me feel safe in wherever we were and I loved him for that. After a while, I felt my body shivering and I bet my lips were turning purple.

“I-I think I'm gonna lay down a bit”, I explained before seeing my boyfriend approve with a nod. So I left the water and headed to our place, wanting to feel the soft towel underneath me. As soon as I was out of the ocean, I felt myself relieved, the ocean just wasn’t my thing. But lying on the towel with a book and something to drink was so much better. Therefore I did exactly that, casually watching the three friends playing or making challenges who could swim the fastest. It was clear that we all needed this day off. They hadn’t had a free fully day off in a long while, therefore it was a hell to organize this day trip. But here we were and I couldn’t have been happier.

I was on the verge of falling asleep with my open book covering my face, as someone was nudging my leg.

“Whaaat”, I whined and peeked up - only to see Chan with a grin on his face, all wet and his grey hair being stuck to his forehead.

“I was gonna get myself some ice cream, are you joining?”, before I answered, my eyes gazed towards my boyfriend. “They keep coming up with new challenges.”

Amused by them, I giggled and then got up and got my purse. The ice cream stand wasn’t too far away so I didn’t mind getting a shirt over the bikini, why should I?

“One chocolate and one strawberry please”, I ordered, already knowing that Chan would want nothing else but strawberry ice cream, it was always the same. “I still have no idea how you can actually enjoy strawberries.”

“Uh excuse me when that’s the best flavor?”, he scoffed and contently started eating (deliberately using mmmmmmmhs a million times, which made me nudge him). “Not at you coming for me when you’re ordering the most boring flavor. Chocolate- how creative.”

“Aye! I'm gonna give you a brown nose if you don’t stop disrespecting my amazing taste.”

Back on our towels, we sat next to each other and both enjoyed our ice cream. Eventually, my eyes met with Vernon’s and he waved back with a wide smile that made me giggle. Chan leaned back and supported his weight on his elbows.

“From afar, Vernon looks like a stick figure dancing in the water.”

That comment from Chan made me burst out into laughter.

“WHERE did that come from?”, still giggling, we now both observed my boyfriend who definitely looked more handsome than a fucking stick figure. But I kinda knew what Chan meant. Vernon wasn’t the one with the broadest shoulders, not that buff, event that didn’t mean he was exactly skinny. he was perfectly fit. I hit Chan’s chest nevertheless and whined. “Vernon DOESN’T look like that, mister. Just because he’s not as buff as Seungcheol? You’re not that buff either, lil boy.”

That caused Chan to sit straight.

“DON’T call me that, you dwarf. And I am buff! At least more buff than half a year ago, look!”, he then sucked in some air to appear in a more adequate position, flexing not only his broad upper body but also his arms, which indeed have gained muscle weight overtime.

“Well, okay maybe a tiny little bit. But look”, I started poking the faded outlines of abs. “still squishy here.”

Little did I know that Vernon’s expression dropped when he looked over - only to see me touching Chan’s body.

He just wanted to check what I was doing or if I got bored with him still being in the water. But apparently I had very good company.

When Vernon’s jealous, he doesn’t seem like it from the outside. He wouldn’t look too different than when he’d just woken up or when he’s bored. Just staring but being rather silent. However, he stopped playing with Soonyoung for quite a moment, his eyes fixed on me and how I giggled to things Chan were saying. What was that funny? He was very well aware that Chan had been my closest friend and that since a long time. But something in Vernon’s head told him that we were being more than just friendly right then.

“Everything okay?”, Soonyoung asked, impatient with his friend not passing the ball back but Vernon then shook the feeling off as well as possible to continue playing. He was very rarely jealous and even if he was, he mostly was mature enough to know what I was doing, or if I was doing it deliberately or accidentally. He didn’t like being jealous. You were in a strong relationship and he was proud to be my number one safe place, although Chan surely counted as one too. One side of him tried to shake it off and let me have fun with my friend, just like Vernon did with Soonyoung. But the curiosity and slightly anxious feeling of jealousy tingled in his fingertips and he kept sighing when looking over, still seeing us talking passionately, pushing each other or even laying down together.

‘What am I even jealous of’, he mumbled to himself over and over. Literally to the point where he just couldn’t keep looking over.

“Hey sorry, I need a break”, he mumbled and gave Soonyoung a pressed smile before leaving the water. He couldn’t take his eyes off us not even seeing him approaching until he was literally standing infront of my towel. Like that, he was blocking the sun for me, which made me whine.

“Step away, love”, I sat up.

With that, Vernon nodded and lied exactly next to me, on the same big towel which now didn’t leave any more space.

“Soonyoung called for you, Chan”, he said casually, rubbing his nose to not seem suspicious about lying. His friend surprisedly looked at him and then stood up.

“Alright then, see you later.”

Vernon waited until the distance was big enough to lie on his back and wrap an arm around my shoulder. This made me smile and roll towards him. He didn’t say anything for a while, not knowing if he should even mention being jealous. He literally felt unnecessarily dramatic with this feeling, especially cause it was rare for him.

“What was that?” “Huh?”

“You touching Chan, giggling and having fun.”

It took me a moment to know what he even meant, and why he was pointing it out in the first place.

“Is it bad that we were having fun?”, he sighed.

“Of course not, but...”

“Wait”, I interrupted him as I sat up and looked down at him. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous? Are you?”, now he definitely felt embarrassed about his feeling. Him hiding his face behind his hands proved the whole point, making me giggle. “Babbbyyyyyyy, no reason to get jealous of!”

“I know, I know. Ugh sorry, it’s stupid”, he groaned as he felt my weight now half on top of him as I made sure to cuddle him. Giving reassurance would be enough to calm himself down again. It always helped to kiss his shoulder and explaining the context.

“We .... uh.... he said that you looked like a stick figure in the water. So I defended you by calling him a lil boy and then, you know, he had to flex.”

That explanation already was enough to make Vernon start laughing, he could imagine the scene way too well. We were now just laying there, giggling and making fun of the situation. And like that, Vernon felt lighter.

“Thanks for not calling me a stick figure.” “I got you, baby! But it’s cute when you’re jealous.”

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conmastor · 3 years

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See I told you I’d make more...…. honestly my hyperfixation wouldn’t let me do anything else so enjoy

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Alastor: I do wanna read your fortune. I’ve got some human teeth here. *throws teeth onto the table*

Cherri: oh no

Angel: *looking at the teeth alastor threw* you’re gonna have your period in about ten minutes

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Sir pentious: I’ve often joked about sssssspreading my seed and jussssst rolling the dice of my genetic build with different women and racessss around the world

Angel: *puts down his drink* Cherri I’m fuckin sick of it. I’m so sick-

Cherri: I literally wanna set myself on fire

Angel: I’m so sick of the straight people! *covering his face*

Cherri: I’m gonna set myself on fire. Just douse myself in gasoline

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

Video: Gay men on average have more older brothers then straight men.

Angel: you know about that?

Cherri: I have an older brother

Angel: If you’re second third fourth born you’re like exponentially more likely to be gay get into it. I have an older brother, but he ain’t gay because I’m telling you he ain’t never fuck me

Cherri: *wheezing*

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

Angel: *looking in a hand held mirror doing his makeup* How come you can be a respected drag queen do it all yourself

Cherri: *holding her legs up by her feet*

Angel: *stops and looks into camera* but you can go home first on the voice and fuckin get a makeup artist follow for six years

Cherri: *dumb voice* hey angie *still in the same pose*

Angel: *stops doing his makeup and looks over at Cherri**wheezes*

Cherri: *wheezes*

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

Video: hey mom

Angel: *southern accent* I heard some kind of gay talkin goin on.

Cherri: *southern accent* the whole hallway smells like cum

Angel: *wheezes and hits his leg on the table* shit

(both can’t breath still wheezing)

Cherri: *leaning back on the couch wheezing* I can’t breath.... hahahhaa Hilary Clinton found y’all rawdoging it

Angel: *coughing and laughing**leans back and wheezes* fuck my ass

Cherri: *still laughing* I’m gonna pee on this couch

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

Cherri: do you ever kick both legs? Ever do two kicks at once?

Angel: *does a two leg kick on his couch*

Cherri: *laughs*

Angel: okay, *laying on the couch with one leg tucked under him while the other is in the air* can you green screen me floating?

Cherri: do you see a green scree? *sarcastic*

Angel: *laughing*

Cherri: then no they can’t green screen you *laughing*

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

Angel: back in Boston I was in line at dunkin donuts to get an iced coffee annndd I was behind a construction worker and he had the fattest ass I’ve ever seen in my entire life in real life in person. I started havin full body reactions almost like allergic in a good way. I started to get flushed-

Cherri: *shaking her head* where’d you bury the body? where’d you bury the body?

Angel: *wheezes* Immediately *laughing*

Cherri: the family wants to know they just need closure

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

(angel and cherri watching a video)

Cherri: he’s a trashy newyork hot

Angel: *shaking his head looking at the screen* he doesn’t shave his asshole

Cherri: *whisper* I knnnooooowwww......... he shits through a wicker basket.

Angel: *lays on the couch face down laughing*

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

Angel: when a guy has a kid its that hot potent dad nut

Cherri: *wheezing*

Angel: you know it works

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

Video: the most searched terms are mom, stepmom, and milf

Cherri: I just find it funny that step mom is hotter than mom

Angel: *laughing*

Cherri: *weird accent* I just fucked your father

Angel: *leaning on cherri laughing*

Cherri: *weird accent* if I took your clothes off do you look like your father

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

k I’m done for now :))))))

#angel dust #hazbin hotel angel dust #cherri bomb #hazbin hotel cherri bomb #hazbin hotel #there will be more to come #hazbin hotel incorrect quotes

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boundlesshart · 4 years

Text

preliminary cindered shadows thoughts and headcanons

Or: DLC truly fed me more than I fed myself today

Ok. I have watched through all of Cindered Shadows, read through the library texts, and seen the Claude/Balthus supports. I’ll keep this mostly concerning Claude and House Riegan as a whole, since they’ve gotten a lot of development.

As of right now, the information seems to be more informing than “you see this carefully created headcanon that you like? poof. gone”, which is excellent!

Spoiler warning extends to early Chapter 1 of Cindered Shadows (snippet of dialogue ten minutes into the side story, nothing story related), Basement Library contents, and the Balthus/Claude support.

Members of House Riegan

The most exciting development for me is that every immediately relevant Riegan has been named! Duke Riegan (Claude’s Grandfather) is now Oswald von Riegan (nicknamed Oswald the Old in the C support of Balthus/Claude), and Claude’s mom is now Tiana.

First off: Oswald the Old. Love it. Keeping it. I’m only now realizing that a lot of my headcanons have been restricted to the headcanon channel on our discord, so for a refresher: I hc that Duke Riegan has a Major Crest of Riegan, which has allowed him to reach 100 years of age by the time the game starts. He’s kind of shaking his cane at the youngins and being stubbornly alive in the face of Alliance nobles praying to the goddess for him to pass on finally, but his health is failing and he is unquestionably old. It reminds me a lot of “The Late Lord Frey” from ASOIAF, which refers to another ridiculously old man who people wish would die so that they can get their inheritance, only for him to be stubbornly alive (and hated, though he doesnt particularly care about that). LITERALLY hate that I compared Oswald to Walder..... LITERALLY hate that i realized that their names have similarities. Moving on quickly before I get mad.

I do miss my Shakespeare reference of Desdemona falling in love with Othello the moor, and Tiana feels a little too simple next to her brother Godfrey, but it’s fine. I’ll talk more about her later, because now we have to talk about the brand new Riegan on the block: Claudia von Riegan.

Letter to a Mysterious Noble: Lady Riegan Gives Bren a Heart Attack, Part One

I’ll start with the letter that nearly killed me:

My Beloved....

You were right. It seems he would not hesitate to divide the house. What's more, I hear he's considering taking his half of the territory and joining the Kingdom.

I can't believe he would even consider dragging another region into this, not to mention stirring up trouble over his inheritance, at a time when the Alliance desperately needs to unite. He's clearly out of his mind. Though he bears a Major Crest, and you a Minor Crest, your father was wise in his attempt to declare you his heir.

As it were, I can't help but wonder what your intentions with me are, I am drowning in letters proposing marriage to that....beast. He may share your face, but the resemblance ends there. I refuse to marry such a foul creature. If you don't come to me soon, I am going to you. Don't forget that my father's blessing could be revoked at any moment....

I will depart Derdriu at the end of the Lone Moon. You have better be prepared for my arrival. I wish to marry you beneath the Garland Moon. Why? Well, I am a woman, after all, and even I harbor dreams of being a Garland Bride. Understood? Great. Make it so.

- Claudia, Second Daughter of House Riegan

Ok. With the Claude/Balthus support it is confirmed that Claudia von Riegan is NOT Claude’s mom, which is a relief and a half because I was about to throw hands in defense of the milfdilf power couple that I made Claude’s parents to be.

Now that that is cleared up, this letter is definitely referring to the split of House Daphnel and the creation + defection of House Galatea to the Kingdom. We don’t have a date for when this happened to give more context to the letter, so I’ll leave that to a future Ingrid to decide. In lieu of that, I’ll place this at the 960s, since the Alliance would be in turmoil rebuilding and recovering from the war against Almyra, which would be a time when they desperately need to unite. It’s also a part of my Riegan timeline that isn’t getting filled up, so it works for me.

What’s more important is what is happening in this letter: Duke Riegan’s daughter, fleeing her home and all she knew for the one she loved. Very Claudemom, which is where we realize that this is the inspiration behind Claude’s name. I’ll deal with that in a second, I just want to comment on how funny it is that a Riegan lady eloping is something that has happened twice now. It’d be funny if this was a pattern..... though I can’t see it staying positive though, Riegan ladies being thought of as notoriously difficult and strong-willed, in a bad way.

I thought this was Claude’s mom because of how frank she was. Claude calls his mother a warrior goddess and a demon queen who would have laughed right alongside his dad if he got into trouble, and from this letter..... it really fits. “He’s clearly out of his mind”, “I can’t help but wonder what your intentions with me are”, calling one of her suitors (the other brother?) a “beast”, “if you don’t come to me soon, I am going to you”, and my favorite part: “You have better be prepared for my arrival. I wish to marry you beneath the Garland Moon. Why? Well, I am a woman, after all, and even I harbor dreams of being a Garland Bride. Understood? Great. Make it so.”

Very blunt. She knows what she wants and she’s going to get it. It’s pretty much confirming what I’ve been thinking about how Tiana would have approached Hairan (Claude’s dad) and captured his heart, and what I’ve been going with for Claude’s search of a partner. They know what they want. They won’t stand to marry a spineless lowlife. They want someone who can keep up with them, not walk behind them or ahead of them but beside them. Excellent content. This really made me love House Riegan.

Now. Claudia. Claude. Claude is meant to be named after Claudia. My headcanon prior to this was that Claude is a name he took on when he came to Fódlan, naming himself after Godfrey Claudius Riegan to curry favor and affection from his sentimental grandfather.

Here’s the thing: both ways have their own meanings and I love them both. The first references someone who could have been Tiana’s inspiration to leave to Almyra, a tribute to the woman who gave her courage. The second references a dead guy whose name Claude uses for his own personal gain, only for it to end up being a big part of his identity, similar to his initial view of Fódlan as a stepping stone to achieving his dreams. I’m not in the business of headcanoning deadnames. Claude’s reference of fake names after Balthus asks if he is Claude von Riegan (something along the lines of “Claude is such a common name in Fódlan, it’d be perfect for a fake name”) is definitely just to throw Balthus off, but it’s too perfect not to appropriate for my own use. My initial headcanon about Claude’s names stay: When he started transitioning he chose to go by Hafez, and when he resolved to go to Fódlan he decided to go by Claude after his recently-departed uncle.

Tiana von Riegan: Lady Riegan Gives Bren a Heart Attack, Part Two

Tiana von Riegan..... I love her. God I love her. I love that Balthus loves her and confirms that she is a hot milf on top of being a badass woman in general. Claude being like “Dude that’s my mom” was also really funny. Excellent support that goes into what is important for me. Love. Stan.

Timelinewise, I’ve put Tiana’s birth year at 1135, her graduation from the Officers Academy at 1154 (a year after Balthus was born, she was 19), and her disappearance in 1160. Reminder that Claude was born in 1162, specifically stated outside of Fódlan. Things are actually looking up for this timeline and where I placed her: Between 1154 and 1160 she is stationed at Fódlan’s Throat as one of the Goneril Valkyries, which gives me a fantastic excuse to have Holst and Balthus meet her a few times before her disappearance as stated in the support. Both of them knew her, and apparently they bawled their eyes out when they heard that she disappeared, which is hilarious but also cute???? She really was popular....

Back to the milfdilf power couple, LOVE Claude’s line when Balthus says that he wants to confess to his mom: “Is that a fact? Well, it’ll be interesting to see whether my father can kill you before my mother beats him to it”. They’re MARRIED. They LOVE EACH OTHER. I love it when Fire Emblem gives me parents that love each other and their kid.

Overall, nothing much changes besides the name. Except for this one..... “interesting” document from the Basement Library.I’m just going to be mad and confused at it so it gets their own separate section:

To Those Who Slither in the Dark: Eat My Ass

Ok, so straight up? I don’t like the whole “secret society of mole men are behind every plot point in history ever” thing. Stop it. Stop it! I hate this almost as much as I hate alternate timelines coming together. I’d rather it be people making decisions on their own be the reason why things go to shit, not secret societies of mole men. I had a feeling that the Slithers would be involved in the Leicester Alliance somehow beyond the Ordelia mess, but that didn’t mean that I wanted it.... Awful. Terrible. I’m posting this note here for posterity.

Item 51 Part 6 ...son of the Alliance's leader, Duke Oswald Riegan, has died in an accident. This follows an incident involving the previous successor, and even the knights of Seiros suspect it was at Count Gloucester's command, thought it seems to conspicuous. This is some concern that this could spark a war. With Duke Riegan gravely ill, the situation is....

At first glance it’s pretty much what it is: throwing some ambiguity at the identity of who arranged for Godfrey’s death. The one thing I’m still trying to wrap my head around is the mention of a “previous successor” before Godfrey. The only mention of Duke Riegan’s other kids is in the Alliance Nobility Register Thingy describing House Riegan, which only mentions his daughter Tiana. Timeline-wise, she is the only person that fits. I headcanoned Tiana as a crestless daughter and the last child of many throughout her father’s lifetime, so far out of sight and mind that she gladly took on risks like fighting to defend Fódlan’s Throat and eloping to Almyra because she didn’t have any duties tying her down. I don’t know what to make of this.... so I’m just going to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Claude/Balthus Support

Finally.... here is the rest of my reaction to Claude’s one new support from the DLC. I said this a lot but I’ll say it again: Love it, excellent, incredibly informative. I like it for the same reason I like Hilda’s (going into his origin), but I also like it because it’s the first time someone that can speak comments on Claude’s ambitions outside of the one cutscene after Fort Merceus. I’m very satisfied with what I got.

The official story/explanation for Claude’s origins seems to be that he was born to an offshoot of House Riegan. Now, Balthus dismisses it, but Balthus is dumb and I’m not dismissing it because it perfectly fits with my headcanon that there are a handful of people that are Riegans in name only, children of the current Duke Riegan, crestless and poor and existing only as irrelevant nobles. They would have been ignored if Duke Riegan died without an heir. Balthus sees through it immediately, but seeing that Claude thinks it’s plausible enough to use as a cover story, I think there’s some truth to it.

Claude reaction to Balthus poking into his heritage is to tell him to mind his own business, followed by saying that he’s too busy and leaving. This is so unconvincing that I’m choosing to ignore it. Come on Claude. You’re better than this.

We get a little information on Kupala, the autonomous village in the mountains close to Edmund Territory, north of the Alliance and straddling the borders of Leicester and Almyra. I’m not tooooo interested in them personally but I like Claude’s last line when he’s talking about a description of the Kupala tribe he heard in Almyra: “Don’t try to find them, people say, or you’re liable to get hexed. Or so the tale goes. That part was probably added to spice up the story a bi, but even so, they’re certainly a mysterious lot.” I headcanon that magic isn’t widely practiced in Almyra and to a point even feared (see: Claude’s pleas to not get hit by magic in his Lysithea supports). So like.... love it when my dumb headcanons get that Support.

Absolutely LOVE that someone is telling Claude that simply “breaking down the barriers”, whatever that means, won’t be easy and might result in consequences he didn’t prepare for. It’s like I possessed Balthus.... “Give me concrete details on your plan and also let me tell your mom I love her”. I also love Balthus’ line “Everything we’ve built to until now could fall to ash”, which references Claude’s death quote in CF.

#headcanon #fe3h spoilers #long as hell this took me two hours #i couldn't wait to share my thoughts

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sleepykalena · 4 years

Text

Ten Songs to Get You Through the Plague (Hallyu Edition)

How dare you all, daring me to make a list even though I declined because I said it was just a whole lotta kpop. :P

@skitzofreak, @crazy-fruit, and @funkygourmetrva-blog apparently REALLY wanna be “enlightened” or something like that so here it goes~

(under the cut because long post is long)

ON (BTS) - This song slaps, and is one of like...three(???) songs that I like from BTS. This is a straight-up fight song- it’s hesitant, a little scared, but embraces a self-professed insanity as a motivation to keep going, and that’s pretty damn inspirational (and also very Jyn, I must say. That’s been on my mind). This song and Mikrokosmos are helping me write Parka. Favorite Line(s): Can’t hold me down cuz you know I’m a fighter / 제 발로 들어온 아름다운 감옥 [translation: Carried myself into this beautiful prison] / I’m alright, bring the pain on, yeah / I’ma fight, bring the pain on, yeah

Mikrokosmos (BTS) - I love a good song that compares feelings of love and companionship to stars in a night sky. This baby got me through writing about half the chapters in Parka, and is gonna help me write the remaining 3-4 chapters before I move on to Scarf. Favorite Line(s): 어쩜 이 밤의 표정이 이토록 또 아름다운 건 / 저 별들도 불빛도 아닌 우리 때문일 거야 / You got me / 난 너를 보며 꿈을 꿔 / I got you / 칠흑 같던 밤들 속 / 서로가 본 서로의 빛 / 같은 말을 하고 있었던 거야 우린 / 가장 깊은 밤에 더 빛나는 별빛 [rough translation: It’s possible that the night is beautiful not because of the lights or stars, but because of us / You got me / I see you as I dream / I got you / in the darkest of nights / The lights we saw in each other / were saying the same thing / A starlight that shines brighter than the deepest night]

Bad Buy (Cover) (Eric Nam) - I was really uncomfortable with the idea of a female minor talking about how she’s the type to “might seduce your dad”, but under the lens of a “guy next door” in his late 20s/early 30s, it seems...more like a strange quirk than some lolita thing. But also, Eric Nam has no business being this attractive and making this super smooth cover. Seriously. No business whatsoever. *fans self* Favorite Line(s): Duh. (SERIOUSLY. That’s the favorite bit. I’m not even joking.)

Double Knot (Stray Kidz) - I heard the English version of this first and thought, “hot damn, these kids go HARD”. And then someone pointed out that they were literally singing about tying their shoelaces and now I can’t stop laughing. I actually have had this in my rotation because it helps me get in the mindset of the show I’ll be working on next (which has a similarly hilarious juxtaposition), because I hear this song and literally imagine a bunch of 13 year olds trying to act hardcore with a song as G-rated as this (I’m still laughing just thinking about it) Favorite Line(s): Dramatic cutscene every scene is the best of the best / 'Cause my life is a five star movie / I'm not done yet so / Tight-tight, go brace yourself / I tighten my double knot

HIP (Mamamoo) - This song is a huge critique on the kpop industry and their rather restrictive and fat-shamey culture, and I AM HERE FOR IT. Plus these gals are just GORGEOUS. This one got me exposed to Mamamoo and I have zero regrets. Songs like this always make me feel super empowered <3 Favorite Line(s): 논란이 돼 My fashion / 별로 신경 안 써 그저 Action / 자꾸 Click me click me 홀린 듯이 Zoom / Close up close up close up HIP 해 [localized translation: Your controversy is my fashion / I don’t care, it’s just an action / Go and click me, click me, like a stan, you zoom / close up, cuz you know I’m HIP, hey]

Regular (NCT 127) - Pretty sure this has been living in my playlist for most of 2019, and it hasn’t changed much since. Definitely makes me feel like a baller while I (used to) commute in shitty traffic, so listening to it now that I’m practicing social distancing is more about mentally taking myself to a place of normalcy than anything else. Favorite Line(s): I like shining, you be lying / I be grinding, you waste time / Know you wanna roll with me / Cause you know I put it down / When I show up, I’m the one and only, nah nah nah / Yeah, pull up in the jag / Haters gon’ be mad

Kill This Love (Blackpink) - This is also an empowerment anthem that also helped me get through my (former) commute! When you spend all this time indoors, you’re bound to overthink your life, so it’s nice to have a song remind you that you need to assess those relationships and, if the relationship is hurting you more than helping you, “kill this love”. Deffo applicable to your relationship with yourself (e.g. if you’re wallowing in negative thoughts on a detrimental level), or even with others on a platonic level. Favorite Line(s): 나 어떡해 나약한 날 견딜 수 없어 / 애써 눈물을 감춘 채 / 사랑의 숨통을 끊어야겠어 [translation: What do I do? I can’t stand being this weak / While I force myself to hide my tears / I need to bring an end to this love]

POP/STARS (K/DA) - My previous editor showed me this song at the start of this year before he left for a new show and it slaps so hard that I’m mad at how much of an earworm this is LMAOOOOOOOO (side note: has anyone noticed that I’m picking these songs based on how upbeat they help me feel since I’m stuck indoors all the time?) Favorite Line(s): Ain’t nobody bringing us / Down down down down down down / They could try but we’re gonna wear the crown / You could go another round / Round round round round round round / Wish you luck but you’re not bringing us down

Dr. BeBe (Pentagon) - The song is just really catchy. The lyrics is really possessive in a helpless kind of way, and that’s sort of the flaw with most pop songs, it’s also strangely self-aware of what it’s going through. So meta LOL Favorite Line(s): 너란 벽에 갇혀 몸부림쳐 / 상처 나도 / 벗어날 수 없는 울림 [translation: I’m stuck inside your walls / struggle to escape / and get hurt]

AND THE ONE SONG THAT ISN’T KPOP:

Godzilla (Eminem ft Juice WRLD) - Came for the two folks in Godzilla suits, stayed for the lyrical mastery. I think even my partner was shocked that I liked this song, but honestly? It goes pretty hard, it’s a bit rude and taunting, which is just the kind of salt that I sprinkle in my head. Plus it’s fun to try and get even a FRACTION of the speed that Eminem raps. Favorite Line(s): You're bringin' the killer within me outta me / You don't want to be the enemy of the demon who entered me / Or be on the receivin' end of me, what stupidity it'd be / Every bit of me's the epitome of a spitter / When I'm in the vicinity, motherfucker, you better duck / Or you finna be dead the minute you run into me / A hundred percent of you is a fifth of a percent of me / I'm 'bout to fuckin' finish you, bitch, I'm unfadable / You wanna battle, I'm available, I'm blown up like an inflatable / I'm undebatable, I'm unavoidable, I'm unevadable

Is there anyone left to tag? Making this post was exhausting, so tag yourselves if you want in LMAO

#sleepy tags #tag game #10 songs

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crowned-ladybug · 5 years

Text

Spotless

Ding dang thing needed a title bc of how long it ended up being

I’ll work on the rest tomorrow and the days after, but this is all I could do today, sorry! My writing process for now is just dragging myself through it two paragraphs at a time, but I’m working on it

Oh, it ended up with some bonding alright! Two tall idiots alone in a big house bc they’re totally not friends

OC blog is @menagerie-of-morons

Prompt: “Walk it off.”

Characters: Anraí, Marvin

Setting: Rivals AU

Word count: 2.2k

Warnings: blood, minor injury (neither in detail)

It’s only by mere coincidence that one afternoon Marvin and Anraí wind up being the only two people home. Not like Marvin cares. He doesn’t! He’s not going to interact with this weird…demon…thing…whatever Anraí is as long as he doesn’t absolutely have to, and there’s that. He might not agree with keeping such a dangerous person just loose in their house, he might not like him at all personally, but he does have plenty of experience pretending a big problem is not there, and he can definitely apply that to Anraí.

As long as Anraí stays out of his business too, they’ll do just fine.

He does have to bite his tongue when he walks into the kitchen looking for a drink and finds Anraí already there, doing…something. He doesn’t particularly care to pay any attention to what exactly he’s doing. He just breathes in, breathes out, reminds himself that the kitchen is common territory and his friends would disown him if he acted hostile towards their new resident for no reason, and he makes his way to the fridge.

When he does spare Anraí a glance, emerging from the fridge with half a carton of apricot juice, he sees what he considers immediate proof that the demon should be banned from the kitchen indefinitely. He witnesses Anraí trying to figure out how to cut an apple with quite possibly the biggest knife in the whole house. Additionally, it seems like he knows fuck all about how to safely handle anything sharper than a cucumber.

And somehow the sight of a lanky, unfairly tall and positively demonic person apparently not knowing how knives work makes Marvin laugh. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asks, laughter in his voice, and maybe it comes out a little too loud, because Anraí startles and jumps and…

…he flails the knife…

…in such a way and with such speed no one, especially not him…

…ever should.

The knife clatters to the ground as the hand that had been holding it flies to hold Anraí’s other arm instead. Anraí hisses in some definitely not at all human way, his ears pinned back against his head. His tail lashes behind him wildly, and it’s a good thing there’s nothing for him to knock over.

His arm is bleeding.

It’s like Marvin has an angel and a devil sitting on his shoulders, because his two immediate thoughts are “help him” and “what the fuck, he’s gonna get blood all over the white floor!” Which is fair, because he personally has also gotten blood on a lot of white things before and knows how stupid hard it is to get out, but still. Mean.

But the tiny angel wins, because despite everything, Marvin isn’t heartless, thank you very much. So he puts the juice box on the counter and steps closer.

Anraí doesn’t pay attention to him until he gets close, but he also doesn’t seem like he’s going to bite his arm off any second, so that’s a plus. The lashing of his tail slows to a much more leisurely sway, and slowly his ears perk up. After his initial fright it seems like he doesn’t care much for the pain as much as he does for his mild curiosity over “huh, apparently I am bleeding.”

Finally, Marvin breaks the silence. “You okay?”

Anraí immediately turns to look at him, but instead of the snarl that Marvin had expected, there’s just a stupid grin on his face. “Nah, man, look! I made a hole in my arm!”

He seems awfully cheery about it.

“Walk it off,” Marvin snorts and turns on his heal, and there’s that. He picks up his drink on the way out and just fumes to himself. Why would he ever show compassion for this? There was clearly nothing wrong! He’s just as stupidly annoying as he’d always thought!

He ignores the smug voice in the back of his mind telling him that the last time he lived in the same house with someone and insisted on calling them annoying, that someone became his boyfriend.

Marvin shuts himself in his room with his apricot juice, a pokemon game and his completely silent headphones because he has a habit of forgetting to actually turn on the music for a solid hour. He tries to drown his unwanted guilt over leaving a bleeding dumbass demon in the kitchen by grinding his whole team up for the next gym, even though he’ll only use like three pokemon to beat it.

Even if he had music going, he’d probably hear the deafening crash from down the hall.

He kicks himself off the bed while rolling his eyes, because damn it, it hasn’t even been half an hour. But alas, he has to check what the fuck is going on this time, because if Anraí destroyed someone’s stuff he should probably help him fix it.

He opens half a dozen doors before he finds the right one, because the noise was a one-time thing and sound travels weird in this house anyway. Probably thanks to all the magical augmentation and extra rooms and all that. But he finally gets to the right door and finds himself standing in the bathroom, watching Anraí trying to pick up ten things at once from the floor with only one hand, unaware of Marvin’s presence.

“What the fuck did you do this time?”

He finds it absolutely hilarious how Anraí’s tail straightens in alarm like some sort of cartoon cat’s. “Nothing!” he claims, and if the giant mess around him (no doubt originating from the open cabinet behind him) didn’t make it obvious enough that that’s a lie, his tone and volume alone definitely would do the job. He straightens and most of the stuff falls from his hand, but he just looks at them with disappointment instead of trying to catch them.

“Yeah, sure,” Marvin grins, and he steps closer but does nothing to help. This is amusing for now, so he’ll wait it out. He won’t bend his back until he needs to.

“Shut up! You can just,” he vaguely waves the single toothbrush still in his hand in Marvin’s general direction. “Fuck off or something, I don’t know. I’ll clean this up, I know you don’t wanna help.” With that, he leans back down and picks up a box of q-tips by the edge of it, and it bounces dangerously in his hand as he lifts it. His other hand is still yet to join the action, and glancing at it Marvin sees it curled against his stomach, the cut on it scabbed over already despite its size. Weird.

“Stop being a big baby,” Marvin sighs, and without leaving room for protests leans down and picks up twice as many items as Anraí could ever hope to at once. “I should probably keep you from destroying the bathroom, so here. I doubt you even know where most of these go, anyway. Or what they are.”

“You being right about any of those things means literally nothing in this argument.”

Marvin grins, and he takes the box of q-tips from him after putting away all the items in his own hands with ease. “Sounds like something someone losing the argument would say.”

They keep up the surprisingly tame banter while they clean, and they make quick work of putting away everything that’s fallen off the shelf Anraí has managed to dislodge somehow. By some miracle nothing seems to be broken either. Marvin refuses to acknowledge how much their back-and-forth reminds him of the way him, Jackie and Chase would gently bicker with each other over literally anything.

Marvin glances over the once again organised shelf one last time, but he doesn’t close the door of the cabinet. His voice sounds light, almost cheerful when he speaks, like for a moment he’d managed to forget who he’s talking to, or how much he claims he doesn’t like him. “What the fuck were you trying to do anyway?”

“…bandages?”

Marvin’s eyes immediately jump to Anraí’s injured arm, still held against his stomach for safekeeping. “Oh,” and, without thinking, he asks: “Does it hurt?”

“A bit?” he shrugs, and he genuinely doesn’t seem bothered. His whole posture looks relaxed, ears twitching to follow sounds and his tail swaying languidly behind him. Marvin assesses that he sees no signs of pain before he even realises that he’s looking for them. “I mostly just don’t want it to open again. It’s messy.”

Marvin nods. “Understandable,” and turns back towards the cabinet, and closes it. The bandages (some of them, at least) are under the sink, and he makes sure Anraí sees that as he fishes out a roll of them and unrolls a bit of it to see if it’s the right size. “Stephen will be able to do some proper shit for you when he gets home, but I can wrap it up to keep it safe until then. I’d rather not bother with tape and gauze if it’s gonna be undone in an hour or two anyway, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” Anraí nods, a little confused. On the one hand, he doesn’t trust this sudden politeness of Marvin’s. On the other hand, he welcomes it. He obediently sits on the edge of the bath tub when he’s told to and tries not to kick his feet too much. For a little while he watches as Marvin slowly wraps the bandage around his arm in silence, but it doesn’t last long. “Why are you being nice to me now?”

“Because if I let you bleed out, it’s bad for the carpet,” Marvin deadpans without looking up from his work. “Also, Jackie will murder me if I’m not at least a little nice to you.”

Anraí snorts. “I’d love to see that happen, actually.”

“Well, I don’t. Wanting to murder your partner is such a straight people thing, so…yeah, no thanks.”

Now at that, Anraí properly laughs. “I wish I could relate to that, but alas…”

“Oh, be glad you can’t!” Marvin looks up at him and grimaces and wow, he looks ridiculous. But also like someone who doesn’t want to punt his ass through the window in the next ten minutes, which is actually quite the nice change. “Straight people can be insufferable sometimes!”

“So can you…”

“You think that because you’ve never met an insufferable straight person before. When you do, you’ll be missing me!”

Anraí laughs again, and maybe he’s more giggly than the situation would warrant, but fuck it. This is the first time he feels like Marvin doesn’t utterly hate him, and maybe he’s starting to see some of what the others see in him that’s worth all this fondness they have for him. He definitely seems to have a sense of humour that lines right up with Anraí’s own when he’s not using it to snark him out of the solar system.

Staying crouched next to the tub, Marvin waits until Anraí notices that his arm is done being bandaged now.

When he does notice, his face falls in surprise for a second, but then his ears flick upwards and he grins again. “Thanks!” He stands, and that pressures Marvin to stand too because wow, he’s not going to be out-heighted by that much!

“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome,” he waves his hand through the air and heads for the door. Anraí can follow if he’d like, but he’s sure as hell not going to show any indication that maybe he wouldn’t super mind if he did. “Anyway, have you ever actually cleaned up the mess you made in the kitchen?”

“Uhh...” he trails off and doesn’t look at Marvin. His tail is suspiciously still behind his legs. “Somewhat?”

Marvin sighs. “Okay, what did you do?”

“Wiped it up? Listen, I don’t know how to handle this stuff!” he waves his hands around to emphasise whatever his point is, and his tail goes comically straight again. “It’s red and it’s dark and it’s sticky! It’s still just…smudged everywhere…”

“Okay, okay,” Marvin stands in the doorway, and now he’s clearly expecting Anraí to follow him. “Getting blood off the tiles isn’t hard, so come on, let’s do it. One day I’m gonna have to show you how to get it out of clothes though, and that’s a lot harder. I’ve gotten blood out of white underwear before, this is nothing.”

For a moment, Anraí doesn’t move to follow him. One of his ears flicks in confusion. “Were you…murdering people…in your underwear?”

“Sadly, no,” now that he thinks about it – do demons know what periods are?

“Oh, oh! Right, you humans have your…thingies,” he waves a hand in the air, and it’s clear he’s just forgetting the word. It’s also clear that apparently no, demons have very little idea of what periods are.

“Yeah, they’re bullshit,” he shrugs, and he doesn’t plan to hold up this tangent any longer. He pushes off against the doorframe and starts walking down the hallway. “Now come on!” he calls back. “Time to mop up some blood!”

“That sounds…awfully ominous.”

Marvin laughs. “Oh, it does, doesn’t it?”

#original art #original writing #original character #oc: marvin #oc: anraí #rivals au #man does it feel nice to be writing again!!!!! even if my wrists dont agree

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timeisacephalopod · 6 years

Text

Company Twitter

Random lil superfamily AU (with stony and Peter as their kid).

Tony sighs, leaning into Steve’s warmth. “We need to talk to Peter about running the company Twitter,” he says. He thought hey- Peter is young, he knows how to market to people his age, and unlike some random forty year old suburban mom of three he’ll know how to interact with the site in a way Tony’s generation just doesn’t understand. Its genius really. The problem is that Peter is a little too good at casual. Its not that SI is getting bad press, its the opposite really and people actually think its him running the Twitter account, but Peter should probably maybe not respond to people with reaction GIFs.

“What’s he doing?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow.

He has no idea how to word Peter’s weird responses. “Okay, I’ll give you an example. So someone tweeted the company talking about some difficult customer and long story short the woman was a real jackass. Peter’s response? ‘Girl, they need to throw the entire customer out’ with a trash emoji. He can’t tell people to throw customers out,” Tony says.

“If she was a jackass to the employee they should throw the whole customer out, Tony. Workers shouldn’t have to put up with verbal abuse- Peter is right. And also hilarious,” he says, laughing a little.

“Yeah, but like people like this are the minority, right? Like this doesn’t happen a lot? I still don’t think you should tell people to throw customers out.” He has a business to run, he can’t just throw people out that’s not how things go.

When Steve starts laughing, like genuinely laughing, he figures he’s wrong about the shitty customers being in the minority. “Honey I did a brief stint in an SI call center for tech support and let me tell you nine out of ten calls are irate people pissed off that they’re too goddamn stupid to figure out the phone they got for zero down and they feel entitled to an immediate solution. I had one lady tell me three minutes was too long to find a solution. Three minutes, Tony, and half that time was verifying who she was. Shitty customers are the norm and until you work customer service you just don’t get how hard that job is.”

Tony frowns, “I don’t think its that hard. I mean in a store you’re just ringing people up basically, that’s not that difficult,” he says.

Steve gives him A Look, the one he gets when Tony has said something particularly stupid and Steve wants Tony to know how stupid what he said is. “I can guarantee you will last five minutes or less in a customer service job Tony, you’re shit with people and have no patience. Emotional labour is a person you don’t know and if you aren’t good with it you can’t do customer service well,” he says.

“I think I’d do fine,” he says, nose in the air.

Steve snorts, “yeah, let me know how many people you deal with before you think Peter’s ‘throw the entire customer out’ solution is the right one,” he says, patting Tony on the head. Which, rude, and he will prove that customer service is not that hard.

Peter sits with Kate, the current supervisor of the SI store Tony decided to test his customer service skills in, eating pop corn. He happens to know her from school though she’s a few years older than him and graduated last year but he couldn’t have chosen a better person for commentary than Kate Bishop. “You know he wasn’t that bad at first,” she says wistfully as Tony quickly becomes worse at trying to deal with people.

“Its been a fast devolution,” Peter agrees. Dealing with people who generally know what they’re talking about? He’s fine with that because he’s enriching existing knowledge, but a person who has no idea what they’re talking about? He’s less good with that. He and Kate have found he’s ok at explaining things to people who don’t mind listening, but has zero patience for people who don’t know what they’re talking about and think they do. And he has even less patience for people who straight up have no clue what’s going on and a device already.

Kate nods, “but watching him tell a customer that he ran a diagnostic and the problem is a user error will forever be the highlight of me working here. I wish I could get away with that,” she says.

Peter snickers, “the look on his face when that lady asked what a home button was, though.” He’s never seen Tony look like he genuinely wanted to die before but in that moment Peter watched him pray for death.

“I think his mentally shorting out when that woman locked herself out of her StarkPad for thirty years was my favorite,” Kate says.

“Not when he got annoyed when the PoS system crashed for the third time today?” he asks. Because that’s so in his Top Ten Favorite Moments list. And its so hard to choose them when Tony’s so expressive that every time someone says something stupid he basically turns into that white guy blinking meme.

“Okay that was pretty funny, but the polyester uniform tops that,” she says.

Peter laughs, “oh my god, right? How does he not know?” And he’s spent half the day whining about it being itchy.

They turn back to watching Tony, who clearly thinks the woman he’s talking to is utterly stupid, before he shakes his head. “Okay, you know what lady- I’m just going to be honest. I don’t have enough education to deal with your brand of stupid and I have two bachelor’s degrees, four masters degrees, and seven PhDs. Do you understand how absolutely-” Kate shoves him out of the way to deal with the now pissed off lady.

“Sorry, he hasn’t had his Snickers today and its made him bitchy, he’s very fired. So if I understand correctly you’re having trouble turning the device on?” she asks quickly, clearly trying to calm the woman’s nerves.

“You can’t fire me, I’m the CEO of the company,” Tony points out.

Kate gives him a look, “honey, you might be a genius inventor but you obviously aren’t good with people or you wouldn’t have told someone you just insulted you were the CEO of the company she probably hates now and I can’t blame her,” Kate says though Peter knows its for the woman’s benefit.

“You should consider yourself lucky your employees aren’t as awful as you,” the woman says, obviously vindicated though Peter is half shocked Kate didn’t get that computer tossed at her. He’s seen Ned deal with worse and with less reason to be angry.

Twenty minutes of Tony curiously watching while earning dirty looks from the woman he insulted later he lets out a noise of disbelief so loud the whole store turns to look. “I want to die,” he mumbles and Peter was wrong, his soul didn’t die earlier, it was only wounded. It only died just now.

Steve watches Tony throw himself on the couch in obvious despair and he turns to Peter, grinning. “Did it go as badly as I think it did?” he asks.

He nods, “he made one woman straight up abandon the company and the two thousand dollar laptop she brought in,” he says, laughing.

“She didn’t know it needed to be charged,” Tony mumbles, lifeless eyes staring forward at nothing. He frowns but Peter explains.

“Okay so she was having trouble turning the computer on but she was explaining it terribly so dad’s all ‘I’m not educated enough to deal with how stupid you are’ and Kate somehow saved his ass but then it turns out the computer wasn’t turning on because it needed to be charged and for some reason this woman didn’t realize computers need to be charged and I think dad died inside, I’m worried for him,” Peter says, giving Tony a concerned look.

Steve can’t help it, he’s had to work shitty jobs where he gets asked stupid questions his whole life until meeting Tony. Its just too good not to laugh at, the CEO of a company realizing that maybe his workers are doing a difficult job and maybe they aren’t wrong for not wanting to deal with preventable bullshit. He can’t resist laughing, its just too funny. Tony turns his dead eyed stare to him and Steve lets out a loud snort. “I’m sorry baby, its just that your suffering is hilarious and chicken soup to my previously poor soul. Now do you think your workers should be able to throw customers out?” he asks and Peter frowns, confused about the context they obviously hadn’t mentioned to him.

Tony goes back to staring at nothing. “I had someone ask what the home button was, Steve. I can’t go on living with the burden of that knowledge.”

“Well honey, now you know that your workers have to live with knowledge like that all day every day and that’s not even the stupidest thing I’ve heard as far as tech questions. Do you realize its not an easy job to deal with that now?” he asks.

“I’d throw myself off a building if I had to work that job. People who don’t know computers need to be charged shouldn’t be allowed near technology,” he mumbles.

Yeah, not false really but people who have no tech ability will always buy tech and someone has to deal with them and contrary to Tony’s previous beliefs that’s pretty difficult. “Now let your workers throw out assholes since you can’t even handle people with stupid questions let alone irate customers,” Steve says.

“Oh he did that, but mostly with insults,” Peter says.

“And here he thought throwing people out was bad business,” Steve mumbles.

“Michelle told me about one time a woman got mad at her- she works in a fast food place- and a woman popped a squat, took a shit right there on the floor and flung it at them all. People are animals,” Peter says, looking haunted. Literally but Steve doesn’t mention that because Tony looks disgusted.

“There is no way people have done something like that in an SI store,” he says.

Steve snorts, “ten bucks says Florida has had something worse happen in its stores,” he says and Peter laughs.

“Everything weird happens in Florida,” he agrees. “Its America’s armpit.”

Peter sighs, “we need to ban dad from the company, I’m tired of old people tweeting the company and complaining about that time he called that woman dumb. Like yeah he was wrong but also he was right, he just shouldn’t have said it. And I can’t respond to them in meme because they don’t speak that language and I’ve issued like four apologies,” he says.

Steve laughs, shaking his head. And Tony thought Peter was the problem here. “People have tried, honey, but he’s like a cockroach- impossible to get rid of.”

“Am I going to have to do this every time he does something dumb?” he asks and Steve nods. “This is the worst job ever except maybe Michelle’s,” he mumbles.

“You get a yearly wage that’s higher than what I made for four years woking full time after I adjust for inflation, kid. And all you do is tweet and apologize when your father does what he always does. You don’t want the job I’ll take it,” he says. He knows how Twitter works and he’s sure he can talk to the youths. He manages with Peter just fine.

Peter frowns, “do you even know how to work Twitter?” he asks and Steve sighs.

“Why is it that you and Tony think I’m bad with tech, I’m not!” But they act like he’s crawled straight out of the nineteen forties or something.

“Pa, you can’t even figure out the coffee machine,” Peter says and Steve throws his hands up.

“Tony made that damn thing too complicated! Coffee is supposed to be simple but you have to hit like five hundred buttons to get the damn thing to work!”

“There are only three buttons on the machine, pa, the problem is you. Please stay away from the company Twitter, the only thing worse for SI than dad is you. I love you both but no.”

#stony #steve x tony #fanfiction #writing #alternate universe

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themurphyzone · 6 years

Text

Oneshot: Truth in Television Soaps

So, my mom watched a lot of dramas back when we used to have her Filipino channels (she has switched to streaming on the Ipad thank goodness). For my readers who have never seen a Filipino soap opera, just know there’s a lot of screaming, crying, and catfighting. The majority of dramatic moments are so overacted that it becomes hilarious.

“So, what did you think?” Heinz asked as Perry put the borrowed boxset of El Matador de Amor on the shelf. “Selena deserved so much better than Jose. He completely shirked his duties as royalty just to go bullfighting! She deserves a guy who’s actually ready for a commitment.”

Perry nodded, though privately he felt that the plot with Selena and Fernando should’ve taken a backseat to the intrigue of Esmerelda falling in love with the corrupt police chief’s son, Juan, who used the nickname El Matador when in the bullfighting ring to avoid being caught by his father.

“So then I was thinking, if this is how engaging a Spanish drama is, there’s gotta be some gold from other countries,” Heinz continued, handing Perry a brightly colored DVD case. The title was in a foreign language. There were two women, one in a wedding dress, tugging a man between them with angry looks on their faces. “I was thinking of going for Italy next, but Philippines works too. One of my neighbors ordered it, but it got delivered to my door by mistake. But hey, I’m not turning down a free opportunity to watch something I’ve never heard of before.”

Perry folded his arms.

“Sheesh, you good guys have to be so uppity about this whole stealing is wrong thing,” Heinz complained. “I’ll give it back after I watch it.”

Shaking his head, Perry grabbed the delivery information off the table and shoved it into Heinz’s hand. Then he forcefully pushed him out the door.

“Alright, I’m returning it! I’m returning it, hold your horses. Or tail. I don’t know why we even say that when there aren’t any horses around here. At least let me check the door number first,” Heinz said. “And quit shoving. That’s just rude.”

He stopped pushing, figuring that he’d better start setting a precedent for being the good guy.

Heinz checked the paper, then pointed down the hall. “Oh, it’s just two doors down. At least we don’t need the elevator. That thing is slow even on the best days.”

He knocked on the door, tapping his foot as he waited. Perry could see him mouthing numbers as an excuse to dash away if no one answered in the short timeframe Heinz was giving them.

Finally, a man in a white undershirt opened the door slightly. He didn’t bother unlatching the chain. “Oh, it’s you. The crazy neighbor,” he mumbled. “Whaddya want?”

Heinz made an indignant noise at being called a ‘crazy neighbor’, so Perry gave him a nudge to remind him of why they were there. Better to just get this done and over with.

“A DVD was delivered to my door by mistake. Something from the Philippines,” Heinz said. “I was gonna keep it for myself, but my former nemesis is now forcing me to return it cause that’s in the good guy manual. Apparently.”

“Tom? Who’s that?” a woman called from inside the apartment.

Tom paled, quickly checking over his shoulder. Then he dropped a ten dollar bill through the crack. “That money is for keeping quiet. My mother ordered that DVD, but I don’t want any of that trash anywhere near me,” he shuddered. “Take those and leave. Now.”

“Is that my DVD?” the woman asked. “I’ve been looking forward to watching it....”

“Just a salesman! It’s nothing!” Tom called to her. Then he shook his head, glaring at Heinz and Perry. “Well, get out!”

The door slammed shut.

Heinz grinned, scooping up the ten bucks triumphantly. “Wow, I guess this good guy stuff pays off. Literally! Can I get a rimshot?” he asked. “C’mon, I deserve a rimshot for that pun!”

Perry didn’t mention that the money was only a bribe. But it was definitely one of the strangest bribes he’d ever seen. While Heinz gloated over his victory as they headed back to his living room, Perry couldn’t help but wonder if the show was as bad as Tom claimed it would be.

Three hours later, they were sobbing into tissues while Angela claimed she didn’t really love Manuel, and that he was an emotional crutch while her poor family tried to scrape up enough funds to send her ailing father to the United States for a life-saving heart transplant.

“How could she say that?” Heinz cried, blowing his nose loudly. “He was loving and supportive! If she doesn’t stay him, he’ll have to go back to his arranged marriage with Emilia!”

Perry wiped away a stray tear. Sure, there was a bit more screaming than necessary, but a good chunk of the dialogue was understandable to him and didn’t require any subtitles.

Though he found Angela hard to enjoy since she kept wailing like a banshee at the drop of a hat. Her reaction to discovering that her beloved necklace was stolen was so overblown that Perry had to bite back the urge to laugh since Heinz was so invested in the story.

But Manuel’s actor was decent.

Heinz didn’t have a scheme lined up on Saturday, since they’d planned to begin the 3-part finale. Brightly colored tissue boxes covered the coffee table.

Perry figured he’d better start doing some research to find a foreign drama that wouldn’t be an emotional trainwreck. He could handle a few crying spells, but it happened so often here that he just didn’t react to it anymore.

Besides, he doubted this was healthy for Heinz.

Heinz popped the DVD into the player. Then he grabbed a tissue box and settled next to Perry on the couch. “I’m really glad Manuel gave Angela the money to cover the cost of the transplant. I mean, he may be a rich pretty boy but he’s got a heart at least. Though the guy needs to grow a spine to Emilia and her domineering mother. It’s kinda obvious they just want his money. You’d think he’d pick up on that.”

Angela was excited to finally be marrying the love of her life, while Manuel was a bit more pensive as his best friend helped him with his tuxedo. So far, eight minutes without crying and screaming. It was a new record.

“We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Manuel Jonah Salonga and Angela Mary Quinto,” the priest announced to the crowd at the church. “If there is anyone who objects to this marriage-”

“I OBJECT!” a furious woman with her hair spilling out of a messy bun stormed down the aisle, her equally severe mother behind her. They glared furiously at Angela, who quickly grew teary-eyed at having her perfect day ruined by unstoppable envy.

Heinz gasped, his hands flying to his mouth. “You go away, Emilia!” he shouted. “You always ruin the moment!”

Perry lightly smacked his leg to keep him quiet so he could hear.

“Emilia, please-”

Emilia cut Angela’s choked cry off, her face completely red with rage. “Please?” she scoffed, cruelly mocking her. Her voice rose to a fevered pitch. “Please what? Please don’t ruin my wedding! Please give me my necklace! Please don’t kiss my crush when I haven’t made a single move and have done nothing to claim him! Let’s get one thing straight here, poor, naive, precious Angela.”

Heinz and Perry were both on the edge of their seats.

Angela trembled from head to toe as Emilia approached her with a malicious smirk. “You are nothing but a lowly maid girl. Manuel only pities you.”

“That’s not true!” Manuel protested, when the mother suddenly shoved him to the ground.

“Do you really think you have a choice in the matter?” the mother hissed vehemently. “You are marrying my daughter. It was decided long ago. Boys, surround him. Don’t ruin his face.”

A group of men surrounded Manuel, completely cutting off his access to Angela.

“ANGELA! ANGELA! DON”T HURT HER! SHE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO YOU!” Manuel screeched.

“MANUEL!” Angela wailed.

Honestly, Emilia was standing on the edge of the stairs. Just push her down, Perry thought. She was completely open for an attack.

Emilia laughed. “You see? And you want to know something else?” She leaned closer to Angela so that her mouth brushed her long, black hair. “I stole the first stack of bills you peasants bent your backs to earn to send your father to the states.”

Heinz gasped. “I knew it was her! I told you so, Perry the Platypus! And you didn’t believe me! See, I can be right sometimes! Take that!” he gloated loudly. Perry threw a pillow at him to shut him up so he could hear.

Which wasn’t necessary, since Angela was now screaming loud enough to wake the entire Tri-State Area.

Angela’s face contorted in rage. “YOU ALMOST KILLED MY FATHER! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A GOLDDIGGER! YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A STUPID, JEALOUS GOLDDIGGER!”

She slapped Emilia across the face, her head turning from the force of impact.

Heinz cheered. “Yeah! Let her have it, Angela!”

Perry threw another pillow. Heinz glared at him for that one, but his attention quickly returned to the TV.

The congregation was silent. The mother’s eyes bulged out comically. “She...she dared to strike my daughter, a heiress of the Santos resort! Someone call the police!”

“YOU...YOU WENCH!” Emilia screeched, charging at Angela and knocking her down. “YOU DON’T DESERVE HIM! YOU DON’T DESERVE HIM!”

Angela and Emilia screamed and fought like wildcats, rolling across the floor as they forgot everything but beating the stuffing out of each other in their blind rage.

The choreography wasn’t the best, but Perry was more interested in who would come out on top. It had to be Angela. It just had to be.

Then Heinz blocked his view of the television, and Perry threw the final pillow at him. Heinz scowled, scooping up all the displaced pillows and dropping them on Perry. “I tolerated the first two times, but three is just too much!” he complained. “How do you like it when I turn the tables on you?”

Perry held two pillows by the corners, narrowing his eyes at the challenge.

She only wanted a soda.

Vanessa sighed as she walked past Perry and her dad, fighting in the exact same way as the two women on the television.

Secret agents were too easily impressionable.

#perryshmirtz #perry the platypus #heinz doofenshmirtz #phineas and ferb #fanfiction #oneshot

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mymadmedleyw · 2 years

Text

it's funny when you realise a parallel, during going back to an old scene, a parallel, that you were totally unaware of until now... xD

Danny (Dan's human side) was 'wasted to literal nothingness', while actually it was Phantom who could have been wasted entirely, seized to exist if the separation happens as it should have turned out. (Ref.: chp18, BOTP/11; and I'm pretty sure I noted somewhere else before too that there was no concept what will happen with Phantom after the separation but now I can't find it - awkward... 😅)

Anyway, is it just me - me and my poor brain with its delayed comprehension - that I only noticed now this parallel? Yeah, I know I should know the best what I write, but it just surprised me. Maybe unaware it was an intentional using of words during the whole time to express the two the same way? Who knows... 🤷

I really should go to the next step, instead of perfecting a certain flashback, but damn, I just love writing that scene. I haven't even passed the first third of the chapter, so yeah... 🙄 progress is good, but not enough.

(I divide the chapter structure to three parts now, to make it more followable where I am, and what should I reach: the beginning leading to the middle and drawing out the atmosphere; the middle; and the third party that leads to the end. So now, I'm somewhere in the first half of the first third... 😑)

Other thing, yesterday was Earth Hour, which we did with my sister in candlelight. It was funny, we couldn't see shit. xD But in the mere light, she tried to do some crosswords, while I did some notes about the coming chapters (I figured out how to start chp20, so it's a very big progress! I only had the concept for the middle so far).

But of course, one hour without anything electricity related was damn long, especially in the time when we usually watch something together. So, I tried to draw a bit to pass the time. Well, apparently, I can't draw anymore. xD But I'm not surprised, it was like ten years ago when I draw anything the last time. And mostly I drew anything 'normal' during elementary, and mostly compositions not people. High school spent with layouts (I studied in a architectural school, I loved it but I imagined myself more in somewhere else, so it wasn't the field were I then continued my studies). So, in short, I attempted to draw yesterday, it obviously turned out ridiculous xD like, what the hell is that... 😅

You wanted to laugh today? Now, here is the reason:

Okay, though, good things: I like the eyes, and Val's hair (not the birdnest, the hairtie part). So maybe, if I have a reference - not in the middle of Earth Hour, spent in candlelight - then it could be once turn out something not hilarious. (About hilarious... what are those fangs? 🤣🤣🤣 I can't look at it at all... 😂) (Damn, I could analyze for hours these two... 😅😄)

(Okay, to tell the truth, I just wanted to share this 'beauty' for laughing with me, the progress in writing, and my absolutely slapping realisation about an unintentional parallel. Otherwise, don't mind me, I'm just having my 'five minutes' when I don't think, just post straight what's in my mind. :D)

(Oh, and candlelight reminded me that I forgot to write the DannyMay 'candle' one last year, sooo... maybe I should write that too some time. 😄)

#my stuff

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hopeishappinessff · 6 years

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Holding Onto Hope: Chapter 16

Chris

“I don’t know what to do. It’s been almost a full week and I haven’t heard from her. I call, but her phone goes straight to voicemail. I text, but get no reply. I’ve even gone to her room, but somehow Destani always opens the door and she’s never there… I forced my way in three days in a row so that Destani could prove to me that she wasn’t just hiding, but she just… she wasn’t there. I don’t know where she is… I don’t know what to do.” I could feel myself getting light headed by the lack of oxygen entering my lungs as I rambled on without a breath in between.

My therapy session couldn’t have come at a better time this week. After the day that Hope had come to my room and found Tawny in there with my half naked ass, she’d literally disappeared from the face of the earth and I could feel myself losing my mind with each minute that ticked by without hearing from her. I knew she would avoid my calls and texts… I wasn’t expecting her to happily wanna engage in a casual conversation about what she saw, but I also wasn’t expecting her to just dip the fuck out either.

“Christopher, you’re very frantic today… you’re talking a mile a minute,” Dr. Yates spoke gently from where she sat behind her desk, “You’re overwhelmed, I know, but you’ve got to calm down.”

“I can’t!” I nearly screamed right in this woman’s face, “That girl means everything to me and I fucked up! I fucked up and now I don’t… I don’t even know if she’s still in a relationship with me or not.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself Christopher. Don’t allow the lack of communication between the two of you to force you into any assumptions. It’ll only get you further worked up and you know that one of our goals here is to learn how to respond to any situation, whether it is one provoked by your anger or one provoked by your sadness, in a calm and reasonable manner.”

I shut my eyes abruptly in the middle of her sentence. I needed to start up a slow count to perhaps forty to avoid lashing out and jumping over the desk at Dr. Yates. As much as I was beginning to warm up to her and her gentle demeanor, no one and I mean no one should ever tell me to calm down in any situation involving Hope. I wouldn’t even calm down if President Obama stood at my side and threatened me with hard time in Guantanamo Bay… Hope was my entire heart and without her, I literally felt like I couldn’t function. Sure we’d gone a few days recently without talking because I was being a dick and completely ignoring her, but in the back of my mind I always knew she was there. Now though, I knew there was a possibility that things had gone awry in the relationship and the thought alone made me wanna slit my throat.

“You’re improving significantly with your counting strategies, I see. Though it is unfortunate that I am indeed the target for your anger right now, your progress is wonderful Christopher.” I wouldn’t say it to her, but I was amazed that this lady could remain seated so serenely as I sat there boiling over like a hot pot on a stove. I could feel the inflammation of anger in my face and I’m sure she could clearly see it, but she simply sat there staring at me like a proud mother as I remained in my stance and finished my count.

Slowly prying open the eyes that no longer felt like my own, I glared across the desk at Dr. Yates. I was over the emotional stint, just that quick. He had grown tired of all the rambling of how emotionally distraught I was and he was about ready to cut this whole therapy session short.

“Chris…”

“You know, I think I’m gonna head out now and get some… fresh air.” I muttered with a smirk. Dr. Yates stared at me for a prolonged moment before calmly jotting something down in her infamous little notebook and raising her curious gaze to meet mine.

“Do you feel as though you’re… restrained and composed enough to leave this office right now?” She asked.

With my eyes still on the little notebook, I slowly nodded my head and finally locked eyes with her “Yeah… I feel restrained… and composed.”

“And you don’t feel the urge to leave this office and go searching for Sy’Diyah again?”

“I’m not gonna look for that bi… girl,” I quickly corrected myself as I felt irritation rising in the pit of my stomach, “I’m good, Doc.”

Her brows rose briefly with surprise, but Dr. Yates maintained her composure as she always does and simply sat back in her seat, scribbled a few more things in her notebook, then slid it shut and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Very well Christopher. We had about another fifteen minutes left in our session today, but if you feel as though you’ve had enough for the day I cannot force you to stay.”

“Right,” I smoothly rose from the black leather chair across from her desk and adjusted the snapback atop my head, “Thanks for the sesh. See you soon.”

And with that I turned and quickly made my way to the exit and didn’t bother sticking around to hear her dismissal. Oh how I loathed going to those fucking sessions, specifically when she was the topic of discussion. I didn’t understand what the damn obsession was with her, but that sensitive and bitch ass emotional side of me was just head over heels for the girl. Sure she was probably the most beautiful girl I’d ever been with and had by far the best pussy I’d ever slipped into, but there was no need to have my head stuck so far up her ass. Like it almost sickened me how much we were wrapped around her little finger and I was determined now more than ever to change that completely.

I had finally exited that depressing ass building and I had already made up my mind that within the next ten minutes, I was gonna find my next nut for the day. If I really wanted to, I could just stand my ass outside the building and the pussy would just waltz right up to me, but I’d left my patience back up in that stuffy ass office and I didn’t wanna wait. I moved swiftly toward the Tate Student Center where I knew nearly all the ethnic community would be hanging out. It was midday, so rather than going somewhere to grab lunch between classes niggas would often just hang out in there like it was the parking lot of a club.

I’d barely even made it within a ten-foot radius of the building before I spotted my target… only because her wide chocolate eyes were locked on me like I was her prey. The girl stood between two other chicks just outside the building where several other people lingered about. I knew I should be more careful with doing this sort of thing smack dab in the middle of the day in the public eye because word had quickly spread that I had a girlfriend and I knew it wouldn’t take people long to piece together exactly who she was, but let’s just be honest right now… who gives a fuck?

This girl kept her eyes locked on me the entire time I walked straight toward her and I couldn’t ignore the sexy smirk plastered on her cute little lips. She was bad, no lie. Her hips were the first things to catch my eye and I shook my head discreetly as thoughts of how much fun I could have gripping those thick things coursed through my mind. I could tell just by the way she stood that her ass had to be fat, but what had me nearly salivating was just how tiny her waist was in comparison to those hips. She wore her hair in these intricate little Janet Jackson braids that fell all the way to her waist line and again, I imagined just how fun they were gonna be to play with… and pull on.

“What’s up?” I said with one quick nod once I was finally up close and personal with her. Her two friends stared at me with just as much lust in their eyes as her, but I’d already made up my mind that she was who I wanted to walk away from this campus with.

“How you doing gorgeous?” She asked with the cutest giggle. With my good ole charming smirk locked into place on my already moist lips, I quickly swiped my tongue out over my lips just for the effect and glanced at both of her friends before locking eyes with her.

“Well, I’m good sweetheart… but I think I would be better if you took a ride with me.”

And just like that, I’d hooked her and reeled her in. Before I knew it, she held a firm grip on my hand and together we made our way to the student parking lot to my truck and I listened closely as she gave me seductive directions back to her apartment.

Hope

I sat on the floor in the living room with my back pressed against the couch and an assembly of books and papers all around me on the floor. I had a big exam coming up within the next week and I’d been doing nothing but burying my head in my books and notes lately to make sure I was prepared for it. Lately I’d also been swamped with assignments from several of my classes and to make matters worse… I couldn’t deny that I was dealing with a crumbling relationship. With every day that passed, I could feel myself losing the firm grip that I once had on my beautiful relationship. I didn’t know what was going on with Chris. He was drifting, that much was for sure, and I had no idea why or how to even reel him back in. I tried not to focus so much on the reality of my unfortunate situation and instead chose to immerse myself as deeply as possible into my studies.

My brows remained furrowed as I nibbled into the corner of my bottom lip and glared at the paper in my hand. I was reviewing notes for the upcoming exam and my focus was strong… so strong that I failed to notice the front door of the apartment opening and closing softly. As I lowered the paper back to the floor with my eyes still glued to it, I nearly jumped right out of my skin at the feeling of a hand against my left shoulder. Abruptly swinging around to my left, I spotted Cammie falling back into the cushions of the couch clutching at her stomach as she cackled loudly at my expense. After snatching out my ear buds, I glared at her and held a hand over my chest in an attempt to catch my breath.

“Girl,” She wheezed as she continued to laugh, “That shit was fucking hilarious! You alright?”

With a roll of my squinted eyes, I huffed and quickly reached down to pause the music still blaring from my phone “Yes I’m fine, but you scared the crap out of me Cammie.”

“Man I’m sorry, but you were looking so damn focused… I knew I would be able to get your ass good.”

I rolled my eyes once more, this time playfully as I failed to contain my own small fit of giggles. I couldn’t help but shake my head at the thought of how at ease my mind had been for the past few days around Cammie and Angel. After showing up at my own dorm room in a completely angered daze immediately following the incident with Chris and the girl in his room, Destani called an ‘emergency girls time meeting’ where she proceeded to explain what’d happened to Cammie and Angel. And after making them aware of exactly what would happen if I stuck around in my dorm room for too long, they quickly swooped in like my personal saviors and offered to take me in until I left for my dad’s for the weekend.

“Every time I see you in here, all you doing is sticking your head in some book… what are you working on anyway?” She inquired as she sat upright on the couch and curled her legs beneath her comfortably.

With a deep sigh, I glanced down at the stack of papers and books scattered in front of me on the floor and eased a hand up through my wild mane of hair “I have a test coming up in my biology class that I’ve been trying to study for.”

“Oh shit, my bad girl… I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She said.

“No, it’s okay,” I muttered as I shut my book and placed it strategically over the notes on the floor so as to not tempt myself to bury my face right back in it, “I need to take a break anyway.”

Resting my head back against the seat of the couch, I shut my eyes and crossed my arms loosely in my lap.

“Are you okay Sy?” Cammie asked in a hushed tone.

“Yeah, I’m fine… just a little tired.”

“No… I mean are you really, okay?”

Slowly easing my lids open, my eyes locked on the ceiling as my head remained back on the couch and I took a moment to truly absorb her question… was I really okay? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly what she meant at this point, but the question was more complex than she would probably ever understand.

“I don’t know Cammie.” My voice came out in less than a whisper and I didn’t know if she’d even heard me. I could feel her tugging lightly on one of my many loose curls. She curled it gently around her finger in a comforting manner and I willed myself not to fall asleep from the gesture.

“Listen Sy’Diyah, I don’t know the whole story of your relationship or what’s really going on with you and your dude, but I want you to know that you can stay here as long as you need to.” “Thanks Cammie… that really means a lot.” I said.

“Hey, maybe you can even hit up Destani and tell her to pack up some shit and come over so we can have a girls night in tonight.”

“That sounds like it would be fun, but I actually need to pack up my stuff here and head back to my dorm in a bit. Destani and I are going to my dad’s tomorrow and I need to go get ready for that.”

“Oh, well that’s good… maybe some time with your pops will make you feel a little better too. And whenever ya’ll get back we can still plan a girls night… in or out, it’s up to ya’ll.” She suggested.

“Yeah, I’ll definitely take you up on that and I’ll let Destani know,” I said with a closed lip smile, “If you’re not too busy though, would you mind taking me back to my dorm?”

“You know I got you boo. Come on, I can take you now.”

Within the next few minutes she helped me get all my belongings packed up and down to her car and eventually, we were on our way back to campus.

“My little love muffin, I missed you!” Destani screeched the moment I set foot in the room. I couldn’t contain my laughter as she bombarded me at the door and snatched me into her grasp, squeezing me tight against her chest as though she hadn’t seen me in years.

“Okay, Destani… okay, let go!” I huffed through merriment and lack of oxygen.

“My bad, I just really missed my roomie and bff!” She exclaimed as she finally released me and swiftly stepped out into the hall to help me lug the few bags I had back into the room, “How was your stay with the girls?” “It was really good. I got a lot of work and studying done and they were both so helpful and welcoming.” I said as I finally shut and locked the door.

“Well that’s good baby girl. You know the squad wasn’t about to leave you hanging while Mr. Crazy Man was running around like a chicken with its head cut off looking for your ass.” Her face had contorted into a deep scowl and she rolled her eyes as if ‘Mr. Crazy Man’ himself stood there in front of her.

With a giggle, I shook my head and made sure all of my belongings were shifted over to my side of the room before I began to gather the necessary items to take a quick shower “Was he really Dez? Did he come here?”

“Tuh, did he girl? From the night we got you outta here up until last night, the nigga has been by here banging on this door like crazy looking for you. The only reason I even opened the door for his ass was so he wouldn’t draw attention and have the RA down here investigating all the noise. And he wouldn’t just knock then ask where you were… ole boy would literally barge his way into this room every time demanding that I prove you weren’t here.”

“Wow,” I muttered, barely surprised by Chris’s obsessive behavior toward me, “That really doesn’t surprise me much though… that’s just unfortunately how he’s always been with me, since before we even got together. I even had to shut my phone off for most of the time I was at Cammie and Angel’s because he constantly called and sent me text messages.”

“Sy’Diyah what the fuck did you do to that nigga that’s got him so fucking sprung like that? Yo pussy must me molded with pure gold and topped with the world’s rarest diamond honey… shit!”

We both burst into a fit of giggles and I could even feel my cheeks warming from her blatant comment. Once I scooped up the last of my bath items, I grabbed a large towel then turned and made my way toward the restroom.

“Well I’m about to hop in the shower really quick. Hopefully he doesn’t show up.” I chuckled, with complete doubt in my mind that he would be foolish enough to come back to the room searching for me for the fifth day in a row.

“You know what, I’m not even gonna tell you not to jinx yourself on this one because I’m almost positive he’ll be here as scheduled shortly.”

I continued to laugh as I stepped into the quant restroom and shut the door behind myself, not bothering to lock the door since neither Destani or I ever saw a need to. I placed my things neatly atop the closed toilet seat and moved over to the shower to turn on the water and adjust it to my liking.

Once I was stripped down to my bare skin, I stepped into the shower and immediately shut my eyes as the warm water cascaded over the top of my head and down over my shoulders. After basking in the steamy oasis for nearly twenty minutes, I opened my eyes and swore that I could hear commotion on the other side of the door. I didn’t think much of it though and continued to wash the conditioner out of my hair. Just as I turned around to shut off the water, I nearly slipped and plopped down right on my butt when the unlocked bathroom door flew open.

“Nigga get the fuck out or I’m calling the RA and telling him to call fucking security on your ass!” Destani hollered.

A loud gasp rolled from my lips the moment the shower curtain was yanked aside, revealing a flustered Chris who stood there with wide eyes and bright rosy cheeks. His nostrils were flared and his brows were furrowed with frustration, but the moment he zoned in on my cowering naked body his entire demeanor calmed within seconds.

“Hope…” He whispered, flinching suddenly when a small fist collided with the back of his broad shoulders.

“Damnit Chris get outta here, now!!” Destani was putting up as much fight as her petite body would allow, but she was no match against the athletic build of Chris who simply turned and gently pushed her out of the doorway and shut and locked the door right in her face.

“Chris… wha… what are you doing?” I stammered as I quickly crossed my arms up over my chest, leaving no hope for my completely exposed lower half.

His eyes remained locked directly on mine though and it was only then that I noticed just how red and swollen they were… had he been crying recently?

“Hope, I’m sorry… please listen to me.” He spoke so urgently, I nearly stopped completely to actually hear him out, but I smoothly remembered that we were indeed still wedged together in this not so large bathroom space and I was indeed still standing beneath the streaming shower completely naked and soaked from head to toe.

“Chris, let me get out of here and put on some clothes…” “No, you can’t… Destani’s only gonna freak out and attack me if we leave this bathroom.” He spoke quickly and quietly just as Destani slammed a hand down against the locked door.

“Sy’Diyah, I called the RA… he’s in the café right now, but he’s on his way!” She hollered.

I couldn’t peel my eyes from Chris’s sad and exhausted stare. Without him having to utter a single word, I understood that he was hurting more than I could fully comprehend and even after what he’d done to me, as his girlfriend and the missing link to his puzzle of chaos… I knew that we couldn’t afford any additional attention in his moment of need. He needed time to break down right there in the small square of a bathroom and I needed to be all ears for him.

“Destani call him back,” I shouted over the steady pound of the water around me as I continued to stare into those distressed yet stunning pools of copper, “Tell him you were mistaken and that everything is fine.” “Sy…” She started.

“Destani… please.”

There was silence on her end and I didn’t even bother considering whether she’d taken what I said seriously and moved away from the door to call the RA back, but I didn’t care. All that mattered in that moment was my boyfriend that stood there, emotionally crumbling before my very eyes. Silently I reached forward and latched my hands onto the hem of his black hoodie and I made sure to catch the t-shirt beneath it as I began to pull it up. He didn’t ask a single question or make an attempt to stop me… he simply complied by lifting his arms while I raised the articles of clothing up over his head. I moved on to his sweats and slipped them as well as his boxer briefs down as he stepped out of his shoes until he too stood there completely naked. Gently grasping his left hand, I silently assured him that it was okay to step forward and enter the hot shower with me. And he did, slowly but surely until we finally stood face to face and the water doused his back and rained down over his shoulders.

Though he spoke volumes with his eyes alone, I knew I needed to get him to speak up soon. I eased the tips of my fingers up along his perfectly chiseled chest until I reached his neck then I stopped just below his jawline and cupped each side of his face.

“Talk to me.” I said.

“I’m sorry Hope…” He muttered and I simply nodded my head, encouraging him to continue on, “I didn’t mean to hurt you… I don’t ever mean to hurt you.” “Then why do you?”

“I…” I could sense his hesitation to go on, but I knew he harbored an answer to that question… an answer that I had no idea would eventually impact our relationship immensely.

“Talk to me… please.” I pleaded as I caressed his cheeks with the pads of my thumbs.

“You’ll judge me. I can’t handle your judgement… I can’t.” He said as he raised his hands and latched them onto my wrists.

“Stop it Charlie, that’s not true… I would never judge you.” I fussed quietly as I gently shook his head in my grasp. I shut my eyes as he suddenly tugged me forward and leaned down to mesh his forehead against my own.

“You will judge me…and I’m afraid that you’ll leave me too. I don’t want you to leave me… I can’t handle that… there is no more me if there is no you.”

The depth of his words startled me, but I maintained my composure as he held me there in his grasp. Lord, what was happening to him? This wasn’t the Chris I knew. This wasn’t the young handsome next door neighbor who I subtly fell in love with at the age of eight years old.

“I love you with everything I got Hope,” He whispered, easing his head down to my shoulder where he placed the gentlest of kisses just before dropping his face into the crook of my neck, “Promise me you’ll never leave me. Promise me that no matter what, you’ll always be by my side.”

I couldn’t ignore his light sniffles as he begged me to make him a promise that I’d vowed to keep from the moment he asked me to be his girlfriend. I pulled my hands away from his cheeks as he shifted and moved them to the back of his head. His hands had found their way down to my hips and he buried the tips of his fingers there as if holding me in place, afraid that I’d leave him again. Because we were in the shower and the water continued to drizzle down over the back of his head, I couldn’t actually feel his tears against the skin of my neck but I knew they were there.

With a sigh, I slithered the tips of my fingers through his fine hair and pulled him so close to me, my breasts meshed against his chest uncomfortably “I’m not going anywhere Charlie.”

“Promise me…” He begged urgently.

“I… I promise. I’m not going anywhere.” And there we remained… him holding onto me desperately as though I was the only piece of sanity left in his muddled life, and me gripping onto him just as tight praying that somehow if I squeezed him tight enough, I could simply take some of his pain away.

#chrisbrown #chrisbrownff #chrisbrownfanfic #jasminesanders #chrisbrownfanfiction #jasminesandersff #teambreezy #teambreezyff #fanfiction #fanfic

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lavieendonna · 6 years

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Brushwork || ArtMajor!Calum AU (Chapter 23)

Summary: An Art Major AU where Dallas - third year gawky art student at VCA - makes a deal with Calum - her cute new neighbour and project partner - and they spend the semester learning that the perfect masterpiece takes a whole lot of brushwork.

Date: 22 March 2018 Requested: honestly i should just get rid of this bit Pairing: Calum + Dallas Words: 3.9K Warnings: familial turmoils, an underwhelming coming out story, and a fuck tonne of crying. A/N: Honestly i’m not even going to apologise for this chapter. This is the Big One i’ve been waiting to write since the beginning basically so like. Please let me know what you think. This story isn’t anywhere near finished. Stay with me, & Big love xo

Ask | Masterlist | ‘Brushwork’ Spotify Playlist | Next Chapter | ‘Brushwork’ News

Chapter 23: I Felt So Unhelpful. Like, I Felt ‘Supportive Facebook Message When Everyone Finds Out Somebody Has Cancer’ Level Unhelpful.

After coming to the conclusion that Ashton was right about me needing to apologise to my sister, I didn’t really do anything about it for days – nearly a week, actually. It wasn’t that I was too proud or spiteful or anything, I was just embarrassed and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. So instead of actively seeking her out like I should have, I spent those days dancing around Polly and Calum, barely making it to any of my classes, and kind of avoiding Luke, too, even though he’d done literally nothing wrong. Turns out, I became an even shittier person after finding out that I was already a shitty person.

It took me a while, but eventually I plucked up the courage to at least text Belle. I didn’t really say much, knowing she wasn’t going to forgive me that easy. How did I know that? Because we were sisters, and I wouldn’t have forgiven anyone that easy, either. If Polly – or even Belle, for that matter – tried to pull that shit from the other night and then said ‘sorry’ through a text message, I would one hundred per cent tell them exactly where to stick that ‘sorry’ and it wouldn’t be anywhere pretty.

I asked Belle if she wanted to come over and talk. She replied around ten minutes later that she was actually already on her way over and the all of a sudden, I cared about what the apartment looked like. There were dishes everywhere, clothes strewn across the place and bits of paper and miscellaneous unfinished art pieces on the floor. I knew that Belle wouldn’t have been far away, either, so like someone had lit a fire under my ass I scrambled. I collected all of the week-old dishes across the place and washed them in the sink and, somehow, I even had enough time to dig out the vacuum cleaner that I usually forgot that I owned.

After around half an hour everything looked almost too clean, so I did what I could to reshuffle the clutter on the benches and coffee table to make it look like I hadn’t just spent those thirty minutes cleaning for my sister – of all people. She wasn’t going to give a shit what my place looked like, so I wasn’t really sure why I did. But I felt like maybe if I did this, if I could inject any kind of positivity into any space I could reach then maybe having Belle come over wouldn’t end in a total disaster. Or, at least, not as big of a disaster as the last time I saw her.

My heart practically stopped when I heard the knock on the door. It was unfamiliar; I was used to Isabelle just barging into my apartment whenever she visited. But this time I was almost convinced it wasn’t even her, just bad on the fact that the knock was so slow and hesitant. But I wasn’t expecting anybody else (not that I ever had guests that often) so it had to have been her anyway.

It was, and when I swung the door open she was a wreck. She looked like she hadn’t stopped crying since last week. Her eyes were so red and raw that I barely recognised them, her cheeks splotchy and puffy and her hair an absolute mess. She wore what looked like an attempt at normal-people clothes, but the blue flannel shirt was kind of falling off of one shoulder and one side of her jeans was rolled up significantly higher than the other above her ankles, the jandals on her feet slipped over odd socks. Seeing her like this didn’t make me feel good the way seeing Polly like this did; my heart was breaking for my sister already.

I didn’t really greet her with words, I just pulled her inside the door and enveloped her in a hug and she squeezed me so tight that I almost couldn’t breathe. But I let her. I thought back to what Ashton had said about her needing me, and it was this moment before we’d even spoken that I realised that Isabelle didn’t just need me right now – she needed me more than I needed her.

“I’m so sorry, B.” I told her quietly as she let go of me. I watched her bottom lip quiver and I thought she my cry. But she didn’t, not yet anyway.

“Me too.” She practically whispered back. She was so distracted, her eyes darting from place to place while she stood awkwardly shifting her weight from one foot to the other. If I’d seen her this way before everything that happened I would have thought she was on drugs or something. There was just something else pressing on her mind and I didn’t know how to go about getting her to open up to me.

Whenever Belle and I came together in a time of crisis, it was almost always my crisis. Belle was always the one who took care of me when I thought the world was falling apart, so having her here barely breathing in front of me was something almost entirely new for me to experience. I tried to tap into everything she’d done for me, trying to remember the process she and I went through to get out of the hole I’d dug for myself. I needed to be the strong one today, even if I had to make it up.

“Sit down.” I said, standing up taller and gesturing my sister toward the (freshly vacuumed) couch. “I’ll get us a drink.” It was literally barely ten thirty in the morning, but I found two bottles of Corona in the fridges and grabbed them anyway. Beer wasn’t going to solve any of our problems, but it sure as shit wasn’t going to make them any worse, either. Belle chuckled a little when I handed her one and we both tapped the lips of each bottle together in a toast, taking a sup before we both grimaced violently.

“I hate beer.” I somewhat coughed out, disgusted. Belle nodded in agreement while I sat down.

“Same.” She said, and then we both took another swig, our post-beer expressions not as bad this time. Belle still looked lost and sad, though, so I put my drink down on the coffee table and swivelled on the couch next to her so I could face her straight on.

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” I asked bluntly. We had to start the dreaded conversation eventually. I didn’t want to be stuck in this endless loop of purgatory with her. We were sisters – it shouldn’t have had to be like that.

“Yeah.” She said quietly taking a moment to clear her throat and take a deep breath. I gave her time and didn’t push, because forcing her to talk wasn’t going to help.

“I, um.” She started peeling at the sticker on her beet bottle. “I dropped out of law school.” Belle confessed, and I just stared at her blankly because that was not at all where I thought she was going with this, nor did I think that’s what she’d come all this way to tell me.

“I’m sorry, what?” I kind of bumbled out. Belle nodded, lips pursed and her eyes not meeting mine for longer than a second at a time.

“Yeah…” She seemed to hum out. “I, uh, dropped out of law school.”

I felt like that was a very simple statement, but I was really struggling to understand why in the hell Belle would have done something so… life-changing. My sister and I were different in almost every way, but I knew that neither of us liked change. We liked routine and did not enjoy harsh changes like dropping out of fucking law school. And besides that, she was good at it! And I thought law was something she wanted more than anything.

“Uh?!” I made a face, eyes wild and eyebrows where beyond the earth’s atmosphere. “When? And why?!”

To my complete and absolute shock, Isabelle started to laugh. She snorted, the way us James women did, and then let a giggle bubble on her chapped lips until she couldn’t stop.

“Seriously, B, what the fuck?!” I started to laugh too, and when Belle finally looked at me she was almost in tears from laughing so much.

“I tried to join the circus!” She cackled, it took me a couple of extra seconds to really catch what she’d said.

“The…circus?!” I spluttered out, and all Belle could do was laugh even more. I let out a loud snort and threw my head back, clutching my sides in a fit of amusement. Isabelle was as averted to exercise and teamwork as I was, so the idea of her doing somersaults and attempting the splits was absolutely hilarious to me.

“B, what the fuck?!” I giggled out again, wiping at my eyes while the pair of us tried as hard as we could to stop laughing.

“I–!” B tried to calm down, breathing in and out and dabbing her sleeve under her eyes, too. “It was like a year ago.” She giggled. “I’d been taking these acrobatics classes and my instructor said I was getting really good. One day the Russian circus came through so my friends and I – the other girls from the class – we all decided to go together, and D!” Belle was smiling at me, lips spread wide as she reminisced. “Dal, it was incredible.”

Belle went away for a little bit, after we’d stopped giggling enough for her to tell her story. I watched as she got lost in the memory, and part of me wished I could have been there with her to see what she was seeing. The other part of me kind of felt like I was intruding, just a little bit. I shifted, pulling my legs up on the couch so I could cross them under me.

“What happened?” I asked, prompting Belle to continue and brought her back to earth. Her expression grew sad again, and the humour in the room was long gone.

“We, uh.” She exhaled, almost like she was defeated already, and then took another swig from her drink as I did the same. “We found the manager. He didn’t speak a whole lot of English but we convinced him to let us… I dunno, audition, I guess.”

I arched my brow at my sister, still very confused as to how far along down the law school line she’d decided that she wanted to join the circus. I had so many questions, and I felt like I was fighting with myself not to interrupt. But I didn’t say anything, I just promised myself to just wait ‘til Belle was done before I did.

“I… I was going to run away with the Russian Circus.” Belle said again with a heavy sigh. “I thought that it would solve all of my problems and be a hell of a lot more fun that law school. But I wasn’t good enough. I mean, the manager said I was great and the other girls – the trapeze girls – they loved me. But I just… I wasn’t there yet. I didn’t have the experience or the years of practise they did, and the Russians didn’t have enough space to carry around dead weight, you know?”

I felt so unhelpful. Like, I felt ‘supportive Facebook message when everyone finds out somebody has cancer’ level unhelpful. I’d had no idea that Belle was struggling with anything, let alone that she was struggling with being rejected from the Russian fucking Circus. She’d been doing this all on her own and I’d done nothing to help.

“B?” I looked at my sister, just one question coming to mind as I watched her long for something she couldn’t have. “Belle, why do you want to run away?”

As if I’d said the magic words, Belle started to cry again. For real this time, her shoulders shaking and her eyes squeezed shut behind her hands that were covering her face. I wanted to reach out to her, to just hold her tight until all of the hurt that she was feeling went away. But I was wiping away my own slow tears, now, and Belle looked like she was fighting. I could feel her trembling beside me and somehow, I just knew that her fight right now was with herself, to do this one last thing on her own.

“I’m here, B.” I said to her quietly, reminding her. “Just tell me what’s wrong.” Belle sobbed, and she did for a few more moments before she could even attempt to speak again.

“Dal, I’m… I-I…” Her lip trembled again and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Whatever words she was trying to get out, they were fighting her back. It was hurting me how hard this was for her – it was hurting that my own twin sister was finding it so hard to open up like this with me. I wiped at my face again, and dragged the sleeve of my hoodie across my nose ungracefully. I should have grabbed the tissues before I sat down.

“You’re what, B?” I felt like I was begging her. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m gay!” Belle finally blurted out, panting afterwards, almost hyperventilating as if it had taken literally every last bit of energy she had to say it.

“…what?” My eyes went wide once again, though there was no comprehension in them. Belle wasn’t sobbing anymore, but she was still wiping away tears and trying to control her breathing.

“I’m gay, Dallas.” She said again. “I… I’ve been so lost trying to figure it out. And when I did I-I just…: She gave a wild shrug, looking down to her fingers. “I thought running away with the circus would just fix everything. Running away from law school could have meant… running from this a-and just being someone else.”

“But…” I paused to wipe my face again, trying as hard as I could to control the confusion I had and trying to choose my words carefully so I didn’t make this about me. Because as upset as I was that my sister was too scared to confused to tell me her life secrets, this was about her coming to terms with them herself. “Wait, what about Ashton?” I asked. “I thought…?”

Isabelle shook her head as she took another long drink from her beer, nearly finishing it.

“It… it was never about Ashton.” She said quietly, once again refusing to look at me. “I… I mean he liked me but I –” she kind of choked on her words a bit, but she coughed back the hesitation and took a deep breath. “I-I had to tell him because this was about Polly.” I blinked at my sister. She looked up me for just a second and I saw nothing but complete fear in her eyes.

“Polly?” I squeaked out, and I was a little scared now, too. Isabelle nodded but didn’t elaborate on that, just staring at me intently with watery eyes, silently willing me to put the pieces together sooner. “Why would…?” I thought backwards, going through everything that had happened. B’s confession, Ashton being allusive, B being upset that Ashton had hurt Polly…

“You like Polly.” I peeped out as the penny dropped.

Belle closed her eyes, tears trekking down her cheeks still. This was all because Belle had feelings for Polly, not Ashton. And she’d told Ashton first, instead of me, because I wasn’t there for her. She never would have had to battle this on her own if I’d just done my fucking job as her sister and just been there for her. I launched myself at my sister, throwing my arms around her neck and pulling her to me while I broke. I couldn’t stop thinking about how lonely she must have felt; how I failed her so much that she thought the solution to all of this would have been to run away with foreigners.

“I am so sorry, B!” I was telling her again, weeping into her shoulder and hugging her so tight I thought she might burst. I was trembling with apologies, the words barely audible. And Belle was holding me just as tight, both of us kind of just trying to keep each other from falling apart even more. “I didn't know, I-I! I wish you’d told me, Belle. I could’ve…!”

“There was nothing for you to do for me, D…” She whispered in my ear. I pulled back, cupping her face in my hands and forcing her to look me in the eye. He cheeks were sticky and wet but I ignored it because I needed her to look at me and believe me.

“I could have been better.” I said carefully, firmly. “I should have been better. Everything you said to me, you were right, B.” B shook her head at me again, taking my hands from her face so she could hold them in her lap.

“Everything I said to you, Dallas, came from a dark, hurting place.” She told me just as carefully. “And I’m sorry for hurting you like that, because I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, not like that.” I took one of my hands back to wipe my nose, and Belle did the same before she let out a sigh and squeezed my other hand, staring at me as if she could see something that I couldn’t.

“I’m... I’m so jealous of you, D.” She said to me quietly. I made a face of disbelief, staring at my sister like she’d sprouted a second head.

“Why?” I asked my voice thick with humour, but also disgust. Belle shrugged and offered a small smile.

“Because,” She said, and we paused so that we could twist and sit next to each other properly, Belle pulling me under her arm and hugging me to her closely. I don’t think it was so she could comfort me, it was more for herself. “Ever since we were kids, D, you’ve known exactly who you were and who you wanted to be. You’ve never been anybody but yourself.”

“But myself is a mess.” I tried to argue, but when I looked up at B she was just rolling her eyes.

“Maybe. But even when you think you’re a mess, at least you’re a hundred per cent sure that you’re a mess.” She clarified, and I just shut my mouth because she was kind of right. I’d always been more than a hundred per cent sure that I was Anxiety on Legs – I wasn’t proud of that, but it was true.

“You are – and have always been – destined for greatness, sis.” She said softly. “And if I could have half of that guaranteed for me then I’d be happy.”

“You were destined for greatness too, B.” I told her, hugging her back and hoping like hell that she could feel that I was here now and wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. “You’re destined for a different kind of greatness, but we’re going to do it together, okay?”

After a few more tears and a few more laughs and after B and I really sorted out what page we were on, we cleaned ourselves up and put on some fresh clothes. We didn’t plan on going anywhere or doing anything, but we smelt like beer and snot and it was not a good look. I help Belle untangle her hair and she helped me find the missing sweat pants she liked to borrow when she was over. Eventually we found ourselves in the kitchen cooking dinner, Belle stirring pasta over the stove while I microwave-cooked some fresh cheese sauce to go with it. Mac and Cheese was our soul food – the food that could solve all the problems and end every world war if The People let it.

“Hey D,” She asked over her shoulder while pulled the sauce out of the microwave and swore under my breath when the glass bowl burnt my fingertips to a crisp. “How’re things with Calum?”

I was hoping she wouldn’t ask. Truth was I had no idea how things were going because I hadn’t seen him in days.

“Uh.” I cleared my throat awkwardly while I mixed the half-done sauce. “It’s not, really. I haven’t really seen him.”

“Really?” She sounded sad, and I wished she wouldn’t. I spent enough of my own time being sad about missing Calum, I didn’t need her to give me The Eyes, too. “Why?”

I thought back the last time I’d spoken to Calum and grimaced at the memory.

“I uh. I kinda told him to get out of my face…”

I felt a sharp blow to my arm and I yelped.

“What the fuck would you do that for?!” Belle scolded me. I rubbed the red spot on the arm where she’d wacked me with the pasta stirrer.

“First of all, ow!” I snapped. “And second, I didn’t want him to get any more… involved. Pushing him away was just easier. He already thought that’s what I was doing so I just…” I gave a shrug, turning away from my sister so I could take a breath. “

“D, you gotta fix that.” Belle told me when I turned back to put the bowl back in the microwave. “You gotta apologise; you two were made for each other.” I snorted.

“After what he said to me? Yeah right.” I said, and I could feel the leftover anger bubbling over in my gut a little bit. Belle just gave me a look. The side-long kind that really didn’t approve.

“And you’re telling me you didn’t tell him anything that was hurtful either?” She threw at me and I opened my mouth to defend myself but I knew that she was right – as usual.

“Yeah, I know, I just…!” I sighed.

“You just what?!” B asked, thoroughly unimpressed with the way I had handled this. She was almost back to normal now, it was scary.

“Yes, I’m angry that he said I was selfish and conceited and that I pushed people away. But I’m… I-I’m mostly angry that I made him feel that way about me. I was supposed to… be different. I liked him. I do like him.”

B seemed to sigh, shifting her weight so that she could lean on the benchtop, hip popped and her hand balled at her waist.

“You need to fix this.” She told me again. “If you just explain it the way you just did and apologise for being a dick, he’ll forgive you.

“And what if he doesn’t?” I challenged. “Then what am I supposed to do?” Belle rolled her eyes at me and went back to stirring the pasta.

“He likes you, Dallas.” She said very matter-of-factly. “He’ll forgive you.”

I huffed. Just thinking about it all was making my heart race.

“I think… I think I just need to sort myself out first.” I said, and I was pretty sure I was pulling some excuse out of my ass so I could stall this much-needed apology and go a little longer avoiding Calum. “If I can just get sorted here and get in the right mind space… maybe it’ll be okay, you know?” Belle groaned.

“You are so full of shit.” She said. I wacked her this time, with my own stirring spoon and left a big white splat on her clean shirt.

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docbeige · 6 years

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BuzzFeed Unsolved Starco AU

Marco is Shane, Star is Ryan :3c

You know maybe I’ll make this a part thingie. Look at me being ambitious when I’ve never even written fanfiction before. How long will that last?

OH! It’s Star’s POV too.

Also I barely edited because it’s 2 in the morning and my face hurts.

Hope you guys like it!

“MARCO!” I called in the loudest whisper I could manage as I tried to get my coworker’s attention from across the crowded office. Miraculously, he heard me and he looked up ever so slightly, already trying to analyze why I might be calling him. He’s perfect, he’s just what the show needs.

I quickly tiptoed over to his slide-y chair and he merely shifted his gaze to my face.

“Marco!” I repeated, “I need someone to help me do this new series for the blue channel, and Janna said you were a skeptic so I think you’d be good for it.” I rambled quickly and Marco thankfully looked intrigued.

“What do you need a skeptic for?” He asked and I smiled because this must mean I got him.

“It's for the Unsolved thing I used to do with Pony Head but we got into some...issues.” I paused for a second awkwardly as my mind wandered, but then got back to the matter at hand. “We talk about murders and ghosts and fun stuff!” I clasped my hands excitedly to emphasize my statement and beamed as Marco smiled, seemingly convinced.

“Well I’m sure this old skeptic could be of service to you,” he said as he straightened an invisible tie, “when are we shooting?” he asked.

“Oh, in like, ten minutes, but it's no big, your part’s unscripted,” I checked my watch, “but we should go now anyways, so up, up, up!” I ushered him out of his chair and he hastily followed me to the room we were recording in. I loved the set for this show; it had so many spooky things, like skulls and dark lighting.

“Here we are!” I said. I excitedly showed him to his chair, I picked up my folder with my notes inside and took Marco through a visual tour. I motioned to all the creepy stuff in glee, as I was proud of the establishment. Janna and I had worked so hard getting all this stuff cheap, so I was gonna show it off.

Speaking of Janna, she smiled knowingly as she saw Marco settle into his new seat.

“Took my advice, eh?” She nudged me with her elbow. I nodded earnestly and hugged my folder to my chest as I watched Marco take in the room.

“I'm so glad you mentioned him, I forgot about his two hour rant about how the Blair Witch Project was clearly a murder mystery and that just screams Non-Believer.” I managed to stop myself from squee-ing, “It might be tough, but it’s definitely a plus to get the other perspective in the show. And Marco’s hilarious so this is gonna be great!” I finally couldn’t help it. I let out a squee.

Janna looked at me like I was a camera on The Office but I took no notice. I was too excited to get into the theories. This episode was a fun one.

Sighing, Janna brought me back down to Earth and gently pushed me in the direction of my chair and I realized I should sit down so the crew could set up the rest of the lights.

Marco turned to me with a smile and he said, “So, what are we talking about today?”

My eyes lit up with anticipation and I told him so he wouldn’t be caught off guard.

“We’re talking about the illuminati.” I said with glee.

He laughed and raised an eyebrow.

“Really? The triangle society?” He laughed again.

I felt slightly defensive, but I didn’t let it show.

“It’s not just triangles, besides I bet you don’t know where it all starts or any of the evidence for it in recent times. This is an educational show, Marco.” I said pointedly.

He smirked at me, “Oh, I’m sure I’ll learn a whole lot.”

Satisfied with his answer, I smiled again until a post-it on my folder fell into my eye line.

“Ooo! Before I forget, clear your schedule for all of thursday we’re going ghost hunting. Also we need to go to Mexico. And Kansas.” I flicked off the post-it as it had served its purpose and Marco followed it with eyes as he slowly absorbed the information.

He broke through the shock in broken sentences.

“Gh-ghost? Hunting? Why Mexico and when Mexico and, what?!” He scooched his chair closer to me and his eyes met mine and all I could see in them was confusion.

“I need you to repeat...everything you just said, but just, just pace yourself,” he said carefully.

I figured first comes first. “Thursday, can you go ghost hunting? Also, I wanted to meet with a priest, so it’ll literally be all day thursday.” I asked slowly.

He nodded dumbly before voicing his answer as well.

“Y-yeah I do Thursday.” Marco cleared his throat, erupting from his shock, “I didn’t realize you’d actually want to attempt to contact the ghosts that are clearly not real.”

I made a noise that was half offended, half confused.

“You-You can’t say definitively that ghosts don’t exist, that’s why we gotta find them.” I said matter-of-factly.

“Yes, because they are hiding and my charm will draw them out, those silly demon boys.” Marco said mockingly.

“You laugh, but you shall seeee.” I said in a spooky voice. Marco chuckled and I joined him playfully until Janna got our attention to start filming.

I carefully restacked my papers in an anchor-like way and looked to my Marco dramatically, only to be caught slightly off-guard when I noticed he had been staring at me.

A nervous laugh erupted from me awkwardly and I tried to cover it up with a falsely confident “You, uh, you ready?”

Marco backtracked from his staring almost immediately and cleared his throat, before saying “yeah, yup, totally...ready.”

“Okay.” I said, turning away from him, as a funny feeling in my stomach grew. I shook it off and yelled, “Janna!”

Janna answered my yell with a suspiciously sweet “What?” from behind the white filming line.

“We ready to, uh, to start?” I asked, noting that Marco’s demeanor was slowly shifting back to his casual self. Which got me to settle back into a more comfortable state as well.

Janna only gave a thumbs up in response and our camera guy Adam said, “Anytime you wanna start, Star.”

I nodded affirmatively and snuck a glance at Marco. He smiled at me encouragingly and so I opened my folder to start, knowing this was going to be a tricky first shoot but Marco and I would grow into this show more over time. The ghost hunting was gonna be so much fun too. And less scary since Marco would be there.

I took a deep breath and looked straight into the camera to begin.

“This week, on BuzzFeed Unsolved…”

#starco vs AU #buzzfeed unsolved #starco #starco fic #fluffly #kinda #THERES LIKE IMPLIED STARCO OKAY #part 1 #?#still dont know #docbeige

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oldscarredlove · 7 years

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AfterGone - Part 3/3

Part 1 - http://scarredlove.tumblr.com/post/158033060124/aftergone-part-13 Part 2 - http://scarredlove.tumblr.com/post/158033367624/aftergone-part-23 The Origins of AG

Swap > (Can’t remember) Fell > (Don’t know) Ink - @comyet Geno, Error > @loverofpiggies Mute > @sori4rt

—CONTINUE— According to Blueberry it’s been a lil over a month since I was first brought here to the Omega Timeline and believe me, it has been quite joyful. I enjoy hanging out with the other AUs and it’s funny to tease them, especially UnderFell since we tend to FIGHT a lot. They’d throw me a bone or I’d make one comment and then everyone stands back, at least it keeps me in shape.

Right now? I was drifting in and out of sleep one of the many love-seats, having one of my own now (or one I prefer to use at least). I’ve been sleeping a lot more, slowly trusting the others and losing the bags under my eyes, the nightmares have also been vanishing also or at least not been as terrifying as they used to be.

During my time here, I’ve gotten to know quite a bit of each AU whilst also gaining information from Blueberry. Turns out I’m the only Sans who has a claw instead of telekinesis like the rest, well, for now anyway. The main people I tend to speak more to, however, are probably UnderSwap Papyrus, Ink Sans and Mute Sans, each are quite unique to hang out with and I talk to them about different stuff.

With US Paps, we discuss my sister and my friends -and yes, it still is a touchy subject for me and I think it always will be.I do get emotional whilst talking about it, who wouldn’t? But it has kept me sane, lifting a weight off my shoulders which I never knew was there. Pap is the only one who truly knows about my AU, everyone else only knows that Chara killed everyone, they tricked me and killed themself to stop RESETS.

Ink makes me laugh, he’s been teaching me how to draw so I can put all my negativity and depression into something that isn’t self-loathing. I have to say I’m doing pretty good if I do say so myself although Ink is a master at art, welp, can’t control that. But when we’re not drawing, he talks about how he doesn’t have an AU like Error and Geno and how he’s kept himself sane. I look up to him for his humanity (although we’re the same height, heh).

Mute is a different case, since he doesn’t talk, Ink provided him with a pen and some paper, allowing him to communicate. It’s a slow conversation but I enjoy it, its rather peaceful to sit back and take a breather with a nice cup of either tea or ketchup. We talk about the other AUs and what ifs really, it’s kinda funny. CRASH I jolted up from my seat and scouted around, seeing SwapFell Sans and UnderSwap Pap in fighting stances with Blueberry looking upset. I groaned and rolled my eyes. This is getting ridiculous, I can already guess what was going on. Blueberry and Sourberry (yes, that’s his nickname) bumped into each other and Blueberry’s tacos had gotten all over Sour’s ‘battle body’, I could see the sause running down his armour and onto the floor with the rest.

I stood up and walked off, heading back to the corridor full of grey doors, to my AU. I basically spend half my time here in the Omega Timeline now, it keeps me from going mad and trust me, there have been several times when I’ve gone off the bend…

Thanks to a certain child… — I bet some of you are wondering:

“Hey, what’ja do with the souls?” “Hey, why haven’t you left the Underground?” Welp, first of all, I never left because I don’t deserve it, everyone’s dream was to go to the Human world and make peace and live among with them, I didn’t really care back then since I didn’t really care much about the humans in the first place. If we came up it was a 50-50 chance of making peace or another war would occur.

So now, with everyone dead and unable to come back when it’s now possible? I don’t think I should be allowed to go and live with them, besides, time has frozen down here so why should it be any different up there? This whole universe is basically dead now.

As for the souls… That’s much more complicated. During the…’incident’, the human and I found the souls. Since humans couldn’t absorb other human souls, they figured they’d destroy them instead rather than hand them to me. They were smarter than that because if I did have them? They’d either RESET or I’d kill them before they do anything. I would’ve been a god, or close enough to one. But there is one question I know you’re wanting to ask… “What happened to Chara’s soul?” …Fun fact: They’re still alive and kicking.

Just not in the way you think… —PAUSE— I shook the body of the human, screaming and begging them to RESET the timeline. To bring all the monsters back. To bring my friends back. My sister back.

After my voice had become a whisper and my movements became slow, I stopped and saw everything flash before my eyes, haunting me, taunting me. My thoughts only repeated one thing: what have I done?

I closed my eyes and covered my blood-coated hands over my jaw-hinges, trying to block out the image and sounds of the monsters, begging for their lives. Tears slithered and slipped over my cheekbones, my face hot from anger but my chest cold with sadness. I never should’ve gave the human what they wanted. I should’ve been more DETERMINED.

Instead I was weak. A coward.

I opened my eyes and gasped, falling off my knees and backing away in fear. The human I didn’t know, wearing blue, magenta and brown, their neck red with blood, was glowing.

I didn’t get what was going on until the light grew smaller and smaller, ending up being a circle in the middle of their chest. Their soul. A red heart came into view and floated up slowly, peacefully. I was shaking and I couldn’t stop. As soon as I saw the soul I had to make a quick decision: Capture it and lock it away somewhere or….

My movements however were quicker, I teleported to it and grabbed it, my own soul glowing weakly. I didn’t know what to do, I had the soul in my literal grip and all I could do was stare. I pulled the collar of my T-shirt lowere so my white, upside-down heart was in view and hesitantly brought it closer to my own soul, my skull sweaty with nervousness.

CRACK

I fell completely onto my back and screamed, louder then I ever had and thought that my own jaw was going to break off. It felt like my chest was burning, being scolded by the lava at Hotland. I couldn’t breathe and during my agony I couldn’t think clearly but I may or may not have screamed for my sister and everyone’s forgiveness.

The pain was something I deserved though, I’d killed everyone, believing it was for the best of everyone so the human would stop. I was wrong of course but I couldn’t turn back time. Then suddenly it all stopped, the pain quickly faded and left me gasping for air although I had no lungs like humans or some monsters.

My skull was wet with tears and sweat, my whole body was twitching and unsure if I should move, risking the chance of going through the pain again. I sat up slowly after what seemed like ten minutes, happy to discover the pain really was gone. Groaning with the achy feeling, I rubbed in between my eye-sockets and scratched my skull, yelping in pain.

What the…?

I ran my hand over the left side of my skull and felt it, a crack going around my entire head. I was unsure of why it was still in place and hadn’t fallen to the ground but I was glad it was still in it’s rightful position, I took a peak at my soul too and was again shocked.

It still had the shape of a regular monster soul but it was now red with a crack that looks similar to the one on my face on the left side of it. Tears rose up again but after closing my eyes for a minute, they were gone. I stood up and looked back at where I came from… deciding I needed to clean this whole place up from its filth.

I bet Papyrus would be proud of my cleaning. �� It’s been a week or something since that dreadful day. I hated thinking about it but what else was there to do now? All I could do was pace the whole

UnderGround, watch replays and old videos of Mettaton’s shows, Alphys’ anime collection and read his manga or train with Undyne’s non-magical weapons. I felt awful to even touch any of that stuff but I might as well make myself suffer some more. Who am I without my guilt and hatred? I can’t even remember what I was like when I was cheerful anymore.

After a few episodes of the MTT Quiz Show, my soul started to beat rapidly and before I realised it, I was on the floor, curled into a ball of pain and struggling to breathe. I heard imaginary laughter, toying with me and my sanity, I knew who it belonged to and tried to see if the human was here, my eyes landed on a being but it wasn’t a human.

It was myself.

Their cheekbones were blushing pink, their eye-sockets completely soulless and had black tear-marks running down their face and their grin… It was the scariest thing I ever saw.

My reflection giggled and crouched down to me, I scrambled to sit up and moved away, hitting the wall with a bump, they laughed harder. “This is a great show! I never thought I’d see a more pathetic look of you Sans but you proved me wrong! Congrats!” They started to clap and winked at me, I growled in anger.

“Chara.”

“Heya par’ner! See, I do keep my promises, unlike a certain someone!” They stood straight and walked toward the window. “It’s so quiet down here, so boring.

“If it’s boring, why end it?”

“Because!” They glanced at me and winked again, “it’s hilarious to see you in such a state!” They walked up to me and knelt, I pressed against the wall as much as I could. “How did it feel Sans? Killing everyone you loved? Killing everyone who depended on you to get their revenge in the previous resets?”

Those words… They were the ones that made me go off the edge… I was going mad, all my guilt and shame was making me insane. I couldn’t live on like this, I just couldn’t. What was the point anymore? I had nothing left and my life has no meaning…

Using my weakest moment to their advantage, they fully possessed me, taking over my body for an entire…. month? I had no clue how long, it seemed live forever. They sliced down the trees of the forest, they destroyed every puzzle, they tore up all the plants, wrecked Hotland and the Core and made the castle crumble to the ground, the barrier vanishing from sight.

I couldn’t wake up, didn’t wanna, what could I do to stop them? They were stronger than me and I’d always fall for their tricks.. but then we came across the Graveyard, they took pleasure at looking over the reminders of all the monsters that were slain. Then they looked at Papyrus’ grave… and their own.

I felt them weaken, like some small part of them acknowledges the fact that they are no longer alive. They never were. They materialized my claw and were ready to slice this place to nothing but rubble and splinters. It was then when I woke up, somewhere in the back of my skull, I kept telling myself to stay alive.

That I had to be DETERMINED to defeat the human.

Stay determined to defeat the human… The one thing I never did…. It felt like I was drowning, the human’s hatred was as thick and black as tar. I struggled to escape, I had to protect Papyrus and everyone! Even if it’s only their graves, their spirits must live on!

“WhAT arE YoU DoInG?” No way was I ever letting them control me again! Not after everything that had happened. We split apart, both gasping for air and balance, when I looked back at them they were staring at me with daggers. I sensed magic in use so I made sure I was quicker than them. I summoned a Gaster Blaster

I only had to hit them once. —CONTINUE— From then one, they never came back, sure I’d have my moments of anxiety and what not but that day was one I could never forget. They’re now one with me, their soul and mine are now finally in sync,and that’s why I’m happy with deciding to come back to the Omega Timeline, because they help me stay in control of my emotions, not the human.

After going to Alphys’ Lab, I’d accidentally hit a button or something and turned on his old monitor that showed footage from the cameras. I ended up watching them and found out that they were never there, it was my own mind screwing with me, meaning I’d basically went on a rampage in my own despair.

Time makes fools out of us all.

I stopped in front of Papyrus’ grave and knelt down, lifting her scarf up and over her tombstone. Whilst turning around and going back to the grey door to the Omega Timeline, I slipped on the blood-red scarf and opened the door, taking in the scene one last time. As soon as I returned, Error stood there looking both annoyed and arrogant whilst Ink looked unsure.

“AG, are you sure you wanna do this? You can’t ever-”

“Shut up, she’s letting me do my thing! Don’t spoil it for me!” Error glared at Ink. I sighed. “I’m sure Ink, I’ve thought about this for a while and this is the best solution I can think of, staying in my AU is making me ill and not to mention that it’s basically dead already.”

He groaned out of frustration. “Fine…” he leaned toward me and whispered. “Hey, how’d you even persuade Error to do this for free?”

I giggled and placed a finger over my mouth. “I don’t know what you mean!” Error’s blue threads wrapped around the door to my world, I lost my smiled instantly and watched it all unfold before me. Error looked like a child at a sweet shop, taking pleasure at destroying things.

The door shattered at the pressure of his threads, leaving a blank wall behind, he immediately walked off with a grin on his face and humming something. Ink rolled his eyes and the both of us cleaned up the mess he’d left.

I had tears going down my face, but this time it was tears of joy. I was at peace, I was finally able to move on, I shall live on for everyone. For Papyrus. —GAME OVER—

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to-dance-beneath-the-diamond-sky · 7 years

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You might not be answering since this is from a bit of an old post. Swooping Evil, Glumbumble, pixie, mooncalf and ghoul.

Okay, so first off, THANK YOU lovely anon for sending me this!!!! I love getting asks! And also THANK YOU for actually scrolling back through my blog to even see this! Cause like this is from a while ago! So this is from this Harry Potter Magical Creature Themed Ask. Alright, so here we go!

Swooping Evil: In what way are you often misunderstood?

Hmmm, I feel like I like to think that I’m just an incredibly misunderstood person *sigh* but honestly, I don’t know if that’s just me being overdramatic or if that’s actually true lol.

I’m often misunderstood by people who don’t realize that I’m being sarcastic, which is actually quite unfortunate because it causes a lot of problems.

Like, apparently I look like someone who’s very sincere/innocent (or so I’ve been told) and I come across as kind of shy and sweet (lmao I know) especially to people that I’m not close with. And, I have a very wry sense of humor, like my sarcasm is pretty subtle/dry and I say it pretty straight-faced, and I feel like my sense of humor is a bit more sophisticated/subtle (that’s what one of my therapists told me anyway) and so people don’t always get whatever joke I’m making, and then on top of that, they think I’m this sweet little goody-two-shoes innocent thing who is Sincere™ and all that, so they get all taken aback when I’m sarcastic. They either think they’ve severely offended me or they think I’m being a bitch or they just feel incredibly uncomfortable because they think I’m being honest.

And then of course, I always make everything considerably more awkward and ten times worse by trying to explain my joke and proceeding to talk myself into a giant hole (thanks anxiety).

So, an example of this is how when I was 14 I had surgery on my neck/throat and for several years I had a pretty noticeable scar across my throat. And I used to be super self conscious about it, so I’d try to joke about it anytime someone commented on it. So whenever someone asked me what the scar on my neck was, I’d look them straight in the eye and be totally nonchalant/casual and say something like “oh I got into a knife fight but it’s fine you should see the other person” or “I was kidnapped and held hostage at gun–well technically knife–point, but like it’s fine ‘cause the police killed the guy in a shootout so it’s all good.”

And let me put this in perspective, I was literally the most innocent 14 year old ever. Like, I went to an all girls school, I wore bows in my hair pretty much every day, I never wore makeup, my entire wardrobe was pink, I was a total goody two shoes, I never understood any innuendo or dirty jokes, I didn’t even know let alone talk to any boys, and I didn’t swear. Like, I was so innocent (see the photo below of 14 year old me for reference)

So it was so completely outlandish/absurd because there was no way it was true. So I’d say that as a joke because lmao have you seen me? But like, so many people legitimately believed me and got all freaked out. And eventually I told them I was being sarcastic, but it was always fun to see how fucking gullible some idiots were lol.

So yeah, my humor is often misunderstood. And that example’s pretty innocuous but other times my sarcasm has actually caused legit problems, like with people getting mad at me (one of my teammates and former roommates got offended by something I said (though she never told me what it was specifically I did to offend her so much, but I’m assuming it was something I said sarcastically that she didn’t understand and just assumed was me being rude because in all honesty I’m pretty nice to people and I go above and beyond out of my way to make sure that I don’t ever say anything offensive or that could hurt people’s feelings (since I’m an oversensitive bitch who obsessively overthinks/freaks out/worries/gets hurt by about absolutely everything, I figure that other people might be that way too so I should do my best not to hurt them (and then of course my anxiety + overthinking leads to me being overly cautious not to hurt people’s feelings or say insensitive things))) and refused to talk to me or even acknowledge my existence for almost five months, which was actually a really big fucking pain in the ass because we saw each other literally every day and there are only 15 people on the team but whatever). Wow that was long, lol sorry

Glumbumble: What’s something that makes you really melancholy?

A lot of things lol. I mean, I have a shit ton of mental illnesses/disorders, BPD and depression included, so I spend a lot of time being pretty melancholy lol. Like stupid little things trigger me. Though I guess being melancholy is different than being/feeling depressed, but honestly, I can’t really tell the difference. Because I don’t really just get a little bit sad/melancholy. I get severely depressed. I don’t experience any small emotions, everything for me is turned way up to the extreme (thank you BPD you fucking bitch). I don’t feel things a little bit, or halfway. Everything is intense. So like, if being melancholy is different than being depressed, assuming it’s less intense, then I don’t really know what it’s like because I don’t really experience it. When I’m sad, I don’t just feel melancholy/blue, I feel catatonically depressed and suicidal. So yeah. Sorry that doesn’t really answer that and that was probably waaaaay TMI.

Pixie: Do you like play tricks on people?

Not really. I mean, with my roommate/(former)best friend I always loved to sneak up on her and jump out at her. But honestly, I only did that because she legit screamed and fell out of her chair every single fucking time. And it was hilarious. But other than that, nah I’m not really a trick playing kind of person. Like, I’ll be sarcastic and play tricks on one or two of my friends by pretending that we had an assignment/test that day. But really, I only did that with one or two specific people and it was a joke that we always had because they never paid attention in class and always asked me what the homework was and saved everything until last minute and was just all around super lazy.

Mooncalf: How adorable are you?

Well. Here’s the thing. When I was a child I was absolutely adorable. Like 100% adorable, most likely the cutest child in the room. And like, not just cute looking, but apparently I was super friendly/bubbly/happy/cuddly/sweet/etc. (I say apparently because I can’t fucking remember being that way, hell I can’t even remember the majority of my childhood but that’s a whole other story, but that’s what I’ve been told by all the adults who knew me as a kid). And also, I said/did super cute things and I loved the color pink more than life and always wore bows in my hair. Like I’m not joking I was the fucking most adorable thing ever. (lol I don’t know what happened)

Allow me to prove this point.

Now please forgive me for posting so many pictures, but I like to reminisce about the fact that once upon a time I was actually cute. Like, I honestly don’t know what happened.

As for now, my current level of adorableness is in the eye of the beholder. So basically, to some, perhaps I am adorable but it truly is a question of taste lol.

Aesthetically/physically, I don’t think I am even remotely adorable. Personally, I actually think I’m pretty ugly to be honest (years of self hatred and mental illness tend to do that to you). But I guess to other people I’m probably not absolutely hideous or anything. As for general adorableness, it depends who you ask. So like, to some people perhaps my quirks/oddities are adorable but to other people I’m just crazy as fuck. I personally of the opinion that I am a complete and total loser lol.

I still love pink. And I still like wearing bows/flowers in my hair. I also have this pink piggy hat that I got in middle school that I wear during the winter (my friends all make fun of me so much, but honestly I think the hat is fucking adorable and it’s warm and I don’t care if I look stupid) So on that front, maybe I’m adorable to some people. But it could just as easily be seen as childish and stupid.

Now I have some…erm...quirks that could maybe possibly be seen as adorable in some instances. Like I have this ridiculous thing where I snort when I laugh. I personally find it unbelievably unfortunate and unattractive but several of my friends have told me it’s endearing and that the boy that falls in love with me (lol let’s be real, that’s never going to happen) will think it’s absolutely adorable. I also make the most ridiculous little cat squeaking/squealing noises when I get hurt or am surprised or when I fall down (same with the unfortunate laugh; I personally think it’s embarrassing and unattractive like no other, but I have friends who disagree). Which is another thing, I’m clumsy AF. I trip and stumble and fall a lot. I am personally of the opinion that that’s not even remotely cute, but some people have said that it’s cute/endearing.

I also get really really really distracted by fluffy animals (dogs especially) and will literally stop talking mid conversation to point out a squirrel and go say hi to it (I’m legit like the dog from UP), and I must pet every single dog/cat I see. And I will legitimately have extensive in depth conversations with dogs (I worked as a dog walker over the summer, and one time I accidentally butt-dialed my mom and left her a four and a half minute voicemail of me talking to the dog I was walking lmao)

And I get super enthusiastic about things. And when I’m excited I absolutely lose my shit. Like I get so excited I squeal and jump up and down and talk at 10,000 words a minute. When I smile when I’m super happy, I legit look like a fucking chipmunk (I’ve been told this by numerous people on numerous occasions). Sometimes when I’m super excited I get so hyper and I do a little excited happy dance and hop up and down and wave my arms because I can’t contain my excitement.

I have this awful habit of always singing/humming under my breath because I always have songs stuck in my head. And I literally cannot stop myself from singing along to songs that I like. Also I have a really good memory for song lyrics and lines/quotes, and whenever someone says something that happens to be a line from a song, I literally cannot stop myself from bursting into song and singing the song that they inadvertently quoted. (I have a particularly large repertoire of songs from broadway musicals). And I love different accents and dialects and stuff and I do them all the time, and sometimes I don’t realize that I’ve accidentally switched into some other accent mid sentence.

Basically, I’m a lot like a small child. So if you find that endearing, then you might think I’m adorable. But if not, lol I’m a fucking crazy loser. Anyways, here are some pictures from the past couple years, so you can judge yourself whether or not you think I’m adorable. As I said before, I personally am of the opinion that I am a massive nerd and I am unbelievably uncool and I literally have zero social skills and I am weird as fuck and the definition of a loser. But you can judge for yourself.

(me pretending to be all edgy and cool with my fake tat sleeve at my high school graduation party but I’m legit wearing a fucking flower crown so...)

(for no other reason than the fact that I wanted to climb a tree)

(btw all this money is from a fundraiser for the community service club, which I was co-president of, and my friend and I were counting it to see how much we raised)

Wow that was fucking long. Sorry about that lol

Ghoul: Is there something you do that really annoys people?

Oh definitely. I’m pretty sure that I’m a highly annoying person. Hell I annoy the crap out of myself most days. But the first thing that comes to mind is my ridiculously deep sleep and subsequent alarm clock paranoia. That has driven all of my past roommates nuts. Basically, I am always in a state of severe sleep deprivation because I spend waaaaayyy too much time doing my work (I’m a perfectionist + I have ADHD + OCPD + a learning disability + lots of other super fun psychiatric disorders which means that basically I don’t fucking sleep). And when I finally do sleep, I pass the fuck out. Like I’ll legitimately sleep for 32 hours straight (yes I know that’s not even remotely healthy). And the problem is that some of the medications I take make it so that I cannot sleep. So I have to take another medication so that I can actually sleep. But it knocks me the fuck out, and it makes it really hard to wake up. And the problem is that I have shit I need to wake up for, like classes, team practice, or because I have a shit ton of work to do. And I know that I’m a super heavy sleeper and I get soooo paranoid about sleeping through my alarms and missing classes/other things I need to go to (it’s happened a lot) so I set literally over 70 different alarms on my phone for when I need to wake up. I’ll start the alarms about an hour before I need to get up and have one every ten minutes, and then once it gets closer to the time that I need to wake up, I have an alarm literally every other minute. And I literally keep the alarms going for hours and hours after the time I’m supposed to wake up in case I totally slept through the first set(s) (it’s happened). And because I’m so terrified of sleeping through things, I tend to just not sleep, which of course makes it worse when I finally do sleep.

Basically where I’m going with this is that I am a fucking pain in the fucking ass. I sleep through my alarms and literally don’t even budge and they just keep going off for hours. Yeah. It’s not good. I know it’s a problem. My roommate last year, who was also my best friend, would bring out her angry man voice when my alarms started going off. Her voice would go all low and super angry and she’d say my name really loudly and I swear that would wake me up like nothing else because I was fucking terrified of her. She’d bark out my name and I’d instantly wake up and start apologizing while wildly fumbling to shut off the alarms (and then of course I’d fall back asleep the second I turned a bunch of them off and have no memory of this whatsoever because I wasn’t actually awake it was just like an unconscious stress response to her man voice and then this would happen again a few hours later when my alarms went off again). And I always apologized to her so much over this, and we’d laugh about it (when neither of us were trying to sleep) and about how her grouchy/angry man voice is so low and how I’m legitimately terrified of it. Plus she did tons of really annoying/bad shit as a roommate so she couldn’t get too mad at me. She more just got grouchy when she was trying to sleep, which is totally understandable. Plus I know I’m beyond annoying like that, and I feel awful about it, but it’s a medical problem and I can’t really help it, but I am working on it so :/

Wow this was crazy long and way more information than anyone wanted to hear, and frankly, I doubt anyone will even read this (which makes it even more absurd that I spent so fucking long writing this but whatever).

Anyways thank you for sending me this ask and sorry for taking a while to answer it and for also giving waaaaaaaaaaaay TMI on it. I hope you have a lovely day!

Lots of love,-Lia

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backseatstorytime · 7 years

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10/31/2016, 6:05pm - riding waves.

Before I begin, you might be wondering why there was a sudden jump from mid-September to Halloween. I've been thinking on it, and I decided not to write everything out in chronological order. There isn't really anything that necessitates everything to be in order, at least not here, so I figured I'd allow myself the luxury to write about whatever story felt right for the time.

If you'd want to follow the stories chronologically, I'm leaving the date and time in the title and you can sort the posts out alphanumerically. Otherwise, please do enjoy these time travel adventures, and as always, thank you endlessly for reading and for your support.

Oh, and also as always—Names, dates, times, and specific details have been modified to protect my riders' privacy. If you have reason to believe that your story is being told and you'd prefer it not to be shared, please message me and I'll be more than happy to take it down.

Jokes have an incredibly short life expectancy. While some can live for way past their lifespan, most jokes are beaten to death right out of the gates. The rise and popularity of memes, these widespread jokes that everyone manages to catch one way or the other on the internet, combined with the speed of communication and transfer via the internet allows for people to spread jokes within hours. The consequence of this, however, is that jokes get played out as quickly as they surface. Harambe, for example, was an incident so strange that it was hard not to find the overwhelming if not completely sardonic support funny. The whole #DicksOutForHarambe was so absurd that I couldn't help but find it hilarious. It was funny when the jokes started to surface, and it was funny for maybe a few weeks after the meme made its journey around the world. Past that, it started to stagnate and stale. Within a month and a half or so, Harambe became a lazy word that people would throw into a mad lib hoping it would get a cheap laugh. It's a month into 2017, and no one talks about Harambe anymore.

Jokes don't live long. They're waves in the ocean—they rise, they crash, they resurge, and they return to the gentle ebb and flow of water. Good jokes rise to unbelievable heights with an awesome impact. They die down and may have an aftershock leading into another hysterical uproar, but after a certain point, they go from being the greatest thing ever to being "so last week," so to say. Such is life; we hear, we laugh, we move on.

There's a reason why a good chunk of famous comedians are how they are—comedians are storytellers. They know the right words to use, when to pause, which phrases to inflect. Most importantly, they know exactly at what point the joke is no longer funny. They know when it's slowing down, what can keep the joke going, and when to end the joke. If jokes are waves in the oceans, comedians are the surfers. They ride, they weave through the flumes and channels, and they take control of the wave.

Obviously you don't need to be a famous comedian to know how to do this. I know a handful of people who can stretch a joke far without hitting the breaking point, but I don't think I have ever met anyone who could do that like Laurence.

I was a little wary of driving on a holiday, especially Halloween. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I figured that it was going to be a hectic evening, at least traffic-wise. I pulled over to a residential area, put on a Halloween playlist, turned my app on, and waited.

Halloween was pretty quiet. Usually I don't have to wait longer than twenty minutes to get a ping, but I was there for about half an hour before I got a call from a guy named Laurence. I drove by St. Joseph's into the TV studio district of Burbank and picked up a gentleman with a cane. He hobbled over, I got out of the car to help him, and off we went.

Laurence was an actor. He said he primarily did commercials and voiceovers, and he finished with a fairly nice gig. He lived in the heart of LA with three other housemates, and while he said he was on the border of living as a starving artist, it seemed like he was happy where he was.

Traffic was piling up, partly because of parents taking their kids to go trick or treating but mostly because of adults wanted to get out of dodge and home as soon as possible. As we drove down Alameda and we passed by a ton of kids in costumes, he told me,

"I'll let you know ahead of time, I give you full permission to run over any of these little shits if they get in our way."

There's the wave.

I laughed. I thought that things were going to end there, but he rode that wave and made the most of it.

"I mean, come on, everyone is dressed like a monster today, how am I supposed to know the difference?!" "Oh I'm sorry officer, I thought that if I drove right through that ghost, I would just phase right past it!" "I thought that kid dressed like a werewolf was roadkill!"

He was riffing off various scenarios, and something about his delivery made it never not funny. As I laughed around ten quips later, I turned on Cahuenga and Laurence rode off the wave. He told me that a left was coming up in about a mile, and he started telling me about how every single driver he's gone with would get in a left lane to prep for the left when all the lanes had a legal left turn. "It's the weirdest thing! I always tell them, 'Oh, you can use any of the lanes to turn left,' but every single one of them gets to the left!" He talked this through and I listened through it until I realized I went straight on the street I was supposed to make a left on.

"W-wait, what... wha... did you just..."

And at this point I was apologizing profusely, but Laurence started laughing.

"I literally spent the last five minutes talking about turning left! Then we get to the turn and you go everywhere but left!"

I was still apologizing between laughs, and he spent the entire time of me U-turning ragging on me.

"I mean... did I give the right direction? I was saying left, right? Left!" "Look, if you just wanted to take me off the trail and make out with me in a back alley, you could've just asked! I'm not a difficult man to please!"

He was having a good time at my expense, and honestly I was having a pretty good time, too. Laurence said not to even worry about it, that everyone makes mistakes, but he didn't fail to let me know that that was the funniest mistake he'd ever seen. As I made the U-turn and turned right, he began:

"Okay, now on the LEFT, you're going to see the freeway entrance. When you see it on your LEFT, you're going to turn LEFT. Not right, not straight, LEFT. Now, which way are you turning?" "L-left!" "YA GODDAMN RIGHT, BOY."

I was still laughing at this as he started talking about various things. We talked about Fleetwood Mac, about George Clooney as Batman, about expensive homes and how the toilets better be flushing sparkling water at the prices they're selling houses. Each time he brought up a new topic, he rode a new wave. He knew which moments to tell jokes, how to deliver and ride out jokes, and when to move on. He was so good at this that I hadn't realized an hour had passed on the trip and that we were about ten minutes away from his place. He told me,

"Alright. So we're going to be turning on Chico. Once we pass it, you're gonna see shit change. You won't see these million dollar homes and kids in costumes anymore, you're gonna be seeing chain link fences and kids who're dressing up on Halloween as lower class kids who can't afford a costume. So if you're ever looking for a place to move to, don't look past Chico. If you don't wanna get shot or mugged, don't go past Chico. If you have any shred of love for yourself, don't go past Chico. Now, what lessons have we learned today?"

"Turn left and don't go past Chico?"

"YA GODDAMN RIGHT, BOY."

We got to Chico and he started to point out where the line between Chico and the rest of LA. "Don't be fooled by that Chipotle on the street corner! Once you pass this plaza and turn, things start to look a little less clean around here."

"Oh, so is it like Haunted Mansion in Disneyland where it makes like a change from elegant to haunted?"

For the first time on the hour long car ride, Laurence went quiet.

Did I say something wrong? Was Disneyland a bad example? The silence was unnerving since we'd been nonstop talking the whole trip.

"Disneyland."

Finally, a word. But he didn't sound pleased.

"DISNEYLAND???"

Nope. Not pleased at all.

"Boy, do I look like I can afford Disneyland? You know what a guy like me gotta do to afford Disneyland?!"

And there went the last wave, rising higher and higher.

"You know how many organs I gotta sell to go to Disneyland?!" "That's why I ain't having no kids, I'm gonna have to sacrifice one of them just to get in the park!" "I'll be asking Satan, 'Ey boy, you got Venmo? What you take, cash? Check? Firstborn child?'" "You know how many virgins I gotta throw down in a volcano to afford a ticket to Disneyland?" "I ran outta virgins and I started throwing dogs down there! One of these bitches gotta be a virgin, dammit!"

He went off. His jokes were dark, unruly, and, frankly, hilarious. He rode that wave all the way home, and by the time he got out of the car, I was still laughing on the way home. Apparently he had a great time as well, because he gave me a $5 tip.

That Halloween trip has been one of my favorite trips to date. It was nonstop conversation and jokes, and I think I spent the whole trip laughing. I finished driving after that one trip simply because I wanted to end the night on a high note.

It's always rare to meet people with that innate sense of delivery and humor. I'm sure he's practiced and mastered the craft after a while, but that doesn't make it any less impressive. This has always been my go-to story when people ask about funny moments driving, and I'm glad I got to share it here.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for riding this crazy wave with me.

#life #backseat storytime #lyft #uber #lyft stories #uber stories #rideshare #driving #stories #storytelling #la #los angeles

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