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maybedefinitely404 · 3 years

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For You Became My Lighthouse

Genre: angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort

Pairing: romantic Prinxiety

Content: food/wine, Patton and Logan offscreen, anxiety attacks, argument, crying, fear of breakup.

Word count: 4k

Note: Not proofread. We die like men. Also part two is coming soon~

5:24

It definitely wasn’t every day that Virgil spent the early evening dancing around the kitchen while making dinner. But today was no ordinary day, and he was just too damn excited to stay still.

Figaro sat on the floor in the bedroom doorway, licking his paws and glaring disdainfully at the speaker system that had disrupted his nap. Virgil spotted the dark cat and grinned, dancing over to scoop him up. He hummed along to the music, bopping the disgruntled cat to the beat (much to his chagrin). Once upon a dream, Figaro might have fought tooth and nail at being used as a dance partner, but living with Roman for years had worn down his resolve. And after Virgil had entered their lives, he’d completely given up fighting their excuses for attention. Instead, the cat just yawned and went limp.

“Aw, did I wake you up, Figgy?”

The cat did not answer.

Virgil let him hop from his arms onto his scratching tower and went back to slicing spinach on the counter, humming along to the music. He wanted it louder, loud enough that it numbed the excited tremble in his hands and drowned out his internal butterflies, but he wasn’t in the mood to deal with noise complaints. Again.

Instead, he opened the drawer in front of him and ran his fingers over the small box he’d placed in there hours ago. As he’d done countless times since, he opened the lid to make sure that the ring inside was still there, still perfectly centered and shining as brightly as it had been when he’d picked it up earlier that morning.

Roman would never expect him to propose. Ask anyone who knew them and they’d agree that the romantic, outgoing, type-to-propose in their relationship wasn’t Virgil. Plus, he’d dropped no hints. Any time he met with Logan to plan, or went to the jewelers, and the million other things he’d had to do before this, he’d chalked it up to ‘having a bad day’ or ‘needing time alone’.

He felt… a little bad, knowing in the recent months many of Roman’s attempts at dates had been turned down, only half the time due to actual bad days. But it would all be worth it in the end. The plan was to start with dinner; the meal they’d had on their first real date, followed by Virgil suggesting a walk. As they put on their jackets, he’d sneak the ring box into his pocket, and innocently lead them past a cafe for dessert, “coincidentally” the spot where Roman had asked Virgil to move in with him. Finally, the park, strung up with fairy lights and electric candles Logan and Patton had set up just before. It was their perfect mix of solitude and ‘extra’. Virgil would propose, and Roman would hopefully say yes, and everything would be perfect and amazing and-

The oven timer beeped. There was fifteen minutes left for the dough to set; time to make the filling for the ravioli. But he’d barely started cooking the spinach when his phone chimed, alerting him of a text.

Hey V, dinner and a movie tonight? You can choose.

Virgil bit his lip and sighed, thumbs hovering over the keyboard for a second. As old as the excuse was getting, he needed to side step Roman’s plans one more time. Just one last time.

not feeling well. anxietys been all over the place. sry.

He laid the phone back on the counter and returned his attention to the frying pan, flipping the greens and watching them wilt slowly. One eye on that, he pulled out his other ingredients from the fridge. He’d rather be ahead of schedule than behind.

Ding ding.

Yeah, shocker. What else is new.

Virgil felt his heart drop. That wasn’t… at all in character for his boyfriend. Yeah, he’d used the excuse more often lately, but was it that much? He stared at his phone, hardly breathing, trying to think of some way to answer that, when a burnt smell reached his nose.

“Shit,” He hissed, trading his phone for a spatula and turning the spinach once more. It was just on the brink of being overdone, just the edges turning a tad too dark, but nothing he couldn’t save. He scraped the pan’s contents into a bowl to cool and dumped it in the sink. The hiss and steam of the hot pan in water made him wince (he’d been told a million times it was bad, but he couldn’t recall why), but he left it on the bottom of the sink to fill and soak. Scrubbing dried spinach off it tomorrow would really put a damper on the ‘recently engaged’ mood.

“Mrow?”

Virgil shut off the water and turned to the trill, cursing when he realized Figaro had abandoned his tower in favor of sniffing the food on the counter.

“Figgy, no! Get down!” He plucked him away from the bowl just as he looked ready to pounce inside, much to the cat’s annoyance. “You would just spit it out, you big baby. Don’t look at me like that.” It probably wasn’t safe to keep cooking with the cat around anyways, so he went to their room and left him on their bed with a soft order to behave. Figaro blinked once at him with indignation before the door was closed, and Virgil hurriedly pulled out his phone.

Real mature, not answering.

Virgil took a deep breath to push down the rising anxiety. He’s… probably just playing around, right? It’s probably meant in a lighthearted way but he was just misinterpreting the text harshly. It’s not malicious. Right?

sry, put figgy away

He paused for a moment, before shooting another quick text.

ur not actually mad right?

The typing bubble appeared.

And went away.

And popped up again.

And vanished.

That was enough confirmation to get Virgil’s heart pounding, all hope that Roman was just fooling around out the window. He was typing again, and this bubble was staying for longer, but now it was too long to be a simple affirmation.

I don’t know, Virgil. You used to actually contribute to this relationship, and now I’m the only one really trying. We barely ever go out, for like a couple months now. You always dodge my plans. I miss the old you, because right now I feel like I barely know you. I’m getting sick of it.

Now Virgil properly couldn’t breathe. That sounded like the beginning, if not the entirety, of a breakup if he ever heard one. Fuck. Fuck! Fuck his stupid ideas, his stupid plans, fuck all of it. This is his fault, and Roman’s about to dump him, because he took his overdramatic proposal too far and it was about to end their relationship.

I’ll be home late.

Okay, that wasn’t… a breakup? Unless, of course, he was going to do it in person, and needed time to plan how it was going to go.

Cognitive distortions, is that what Logan had called them? Magnifying? Is that what was happening right now? There was a solid chance that Logan would agree with him, say that he wasn’t actually sure what Roman planned, and it would probably be okay, but it was very hard to be objective when he was in the middle of it.

how late?

Another deep breath. He placed the phone next to his mixing bowl, screen up so he would be sure to see the notification, and absentmindedly added in the ingredients he’d pulled from the fridge earlier. Shit, did they have thyme?

Of course they did, he’d gone shopping for all the ingredients like two days ago. He needed to get out of his own head.

The final timer went off, signaling the dough was ready to be used. Before he unwrapped the ball and got his hands covered in the stuff, he checked the lock screen on his phone. Nothing.

It was fine, it was fine.

Rolling out the pasta into one thin sheet took far more effort than he would have thought, and it took embarrassingly long before he was able to lay it out on the big ice cube tray he was using in place of an actual ravioli mold. He checked his phone. Nothing.

Once he got the hang of filling the molds without making a huge mess, it was actually an easy process. He finished three and a half trays-worth before running out of dough and filling simultaneously, but that’s more than enough for the two of them. No answer yet.

ro?

He set a pot on the stove full of water but didn’t turn it on; it would just be one less thing to do when he was ready to cook the ravioli. For now, he placed the pasta in the fridge so it didn’t dry up. Roman generally got home from work at six, which he had prepared for, except on late rehearsal days when he was held back an extra hour. That’s what Virgil consciously chose to believe; he meant he’d be home late because it was a longer day. He wasn’t answering now because he was on stage. Technically it all made sense, but it wasn’t enough to relieve the icy grip around Virgil’s lungs.

romans gonna be late. push back an hour?

Logan sent back a thumbs up followed by his ‘-Logan’ sign off. Virgil sent a quick apology but didn’t bother to check the response when his phone lit up, focusing back on his plate of raw ravioli.

So, at five to seven, he’d boil the pasta and warm up the tomato sauce. It had been finished that morning and had been waiting in the fridge all day, because Virgil was a firm believer that it would taste better having had time to sit. Plus, he’d been excited, and had needed something to do with his hands.

But now he needs something to do with his hands again, but instead of excitement, it’s a tingling discomfort spreading through his limbs and curling in his stomach. Convinced that there was nothing else in the kitchen he could do, he untied the apron and pulled it over his head, pleased at the stark black button up he’d successfully kept flour-free. The satisfaction doesn’t last for long.

Now that he’d acknowledged his shirt, it was impossible to ignore the way it wrapped far too tight around his neck. It’s fine, he thought as he unbuttoned the top button, I still look okay.

He may as well set the table. Patton, similar to Roman in regards to going above and beyond, had insisted Virgil go all out for the dinner. Stark white table cloth, silverware set perfectly next to the plates, and a tall, white candle as the centrepiece. Virgil had cringed a bit at the idea, but after being assured that Roman would love it, he’d reluctantly agreed. It wasn’t his style but, well, the night wasn’t supposed to be about him, no really.

Watching TV did nothing to relieve the knot of uneasiness in his stomach, even when he unrolled his weighted blanket from the side basket and huddled into it. It brought a calm familiarity with it, and if he concentrated hard enough, he could pretend that someone was holding him. Patton’s soothing words, or Logan’s gravity, or Roman’s warmth or Roman’s safety or Roman’s gentleness or Roman-

6:53

Time to throw in the ravioli. He shut off the television, he hadn’t been watching it anyways, and turned the water on to boil. As it heated, he scuttled back to the table, some of his excitement returning. Sure, things had been tense on the phone, but Roman would be home any minute, and the rest of the night could go as planned. He pulls a small crinkle out of the white fabric and recenters the candle, stepping back to admire his work. It’s okay. If Roman had done it, it would probably look better, but who cared. It was fine.

7:01

Virgil sighed, looking over his final creation once again. A part of him was cringing with the cheesiness of it all; the lit candle, food already plated, a bottle of wine fresh from the fridge. Getting a new wine may have been too much of a giveaway, so the feature was a half finished bottle from their last date… a few months ago. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure if it would pair well. He didn’t even like wine. But it was Roman’s favorite, so it would have to do.

He’d bitten three nails down to the nub by the time he figured he could add the tomato sauce over top. Roman was never later than seven, so the pasta wouldn’t even have the time to get soggy.

In a combination of unfortunate events unlike any Virgil had experienced before, the tomato sauce bubbled the moment he grabbed the handle, dozens of pinpricks of heat burning his hands. He yelped and dropped the saucepan in favor of grabbing his scalded hand, jumping back as the pot hit the side of the counter and sent tomato sauce flying directly into the open drawer next to it. In his search for a match to light the candle, he’d left open the drawer containing the ring box, and in moments, the velvety exterior was coated in a fresh layer of marinara.

“Fuck!” Virgil shouted.

Heat be damned, he grabbed the box from the steaming puddle around it and rushed it to the sink. Running it under water would just be asking for the situation to be worse so he tried to scrape off the mess with a dishcloth. Was this even salvageable?

No, it turned out. The white velvet had stained a shitty orange in a way he definitely couldn’t play off as the original color, and even though the interior (or god forbid the ring) hadn’t been touched, he found himself trying to fight off tears. This wasn’t fucking going well, and now…

7:28

Roman was never this late, not without telling him. Virgil checked his phone and, nope, only the previous message from Logan and a newer one, asking if they could set up yet. He sent a quick:

no, hes not home yet

Panicking was not a move he wanted to make right now, despite how his brain was trying to convince him otherwise. Roman was probably stuck in traffic, right? And Virgil was always getting on him for texting and driving, so that could be why he hadn’t said anything. Sure, the route from the theatre to their house was barely ever busy, and yeah, it was way too late for there to be real holdups, but there was a first time for everything.

He made quick work of cleaning up the disaster of marinara sauce, surprised that a decent amount was salvageable. Apparently in his panic he’d righted the pot before it had all spilled, so there was maybe just enough for the meals. The inside of the drawer was a stained, orange, mess, and the area under the burners was caked in dried sauce, and that was just too much work for right now. He slammed the drawer shut and threw a towel over the element. Out of sight, out of… well, not out of mind, but maybe it would take a backseat on ‘worries for the night’.

Might as well get a head start on dishes, he thought, since the thought of texting Roman is daunting and his whole body is aching for something to do. One second more of standing still and he may very well have combusted. He couldn’t even summon up the will to turn on music, the mood from before totally vanquished. If he could just get that burnt pan done, perhaps the tension in his chest would ease up a bit.

But he cleaned the pan, and the rest of the dishes, and scrubbed the sink, and Roman still wasn’t home. At some point when he’d decided to just finish all of the dirty cookware he’d rolled up his sleeves, which he quickly lowered and rebuttoned around his wrists. The dishes were drying; nothing left to do there.

He swallowed thickly. How was the shirt still too tight around his throat?

Virgil unbuttoned the next one down, hoping to ease the ball of fear in his throat. It didn’t help.

The food was lukewarm, at that point. It was still edible. It was microwaveable. It was fine. Again, the thought crossed his mind to text Roman, but what if he was driving? He might check it and get pulled over, and that would not help the uneasiness in their relationship right now. What if the phone’s light distracted him and he got into a car accident? He couldn’t lose Roman, not when their last words had been so strained, and it would be his fault on top? Not a chance. He’d be home any second now. He had to be.

Virgil quickly found himself under his weighted blanket once more, watching whatever sitcom was on with dissociated interest, arms wrapped around his waist in a vice grip and feet bouncing under the covers. This time, though, the television worked less as a distraction and more as grating noise in his skull and he muted it, but that didn't stop the sudden stream of noise. Water was running through the pipes under him, some of his neighbors were shouting, and the fridge was humming and the lights overhead were buzzing and it’s all so loud-

His sound blocking headphones were also in the basket next to the couch and he shoved them over his ears. The world went quiet except for the sounds of his shaky breathing; breathe in, and out, and in, and out…

8:07

With the thick padding over his ears, the only sound he could hear was his breathing. It was somewhat reminiscent of Darth Vader’s, seeming far too loud, but also a steady foundation for him to ground on. Without the outside distraction, it was far easier to focus on his breaths, to slow them down, to get into a rhythm of long inhales and longer exhales. Bit by bit, the swarm of butterflies that had clasped around his heart gave way, allowing the anxiety to morph into numb sadness.

If Roman had come home on time, would they be in the park already? Would they be engaged? Maybe they’d already be back home, sharing the news to their families. Roman would probably already be gushing about wedding ideas as Virgil nodded along in amusement. They probably could have convinced Patton and Logan to come home too, and they could have had a great rest of the evening, finishing the bottle of wine and reliving the past and…

Were they even going to get engaged at this point?

He fumbled for his phone and sent a text to Logan.

plans off. sry

The headphones were overly effective in silencing the world, now amplifying his thoughts too much, so he slid them off. He took a deep breath, the sound now camouflaged in the rest of the apartment’s noise. A lump formed in his throat as he took in the arrangement of the dining room, and the more he pushed it down, the harder it was to stem the tears that were steadily filling his eyes.

Virgil didn’t like feeling helpless, but that was all he felt at that moment.

Fuck.

Without forethought, he rubbed at his eyes, and instantly froze.

He drooped his head with a sigh that bordered on a groan, reluctantly lowering his hands from his face. Mixed in with his intercepted tears were the smudged remains of his makeup smeared across the web of his hands.

Might as well; everything else went to shit anyways.

Usually, Virgil didn’t spend more than a minute removing his makeup. But that day, he spent an inordinate amount of time scraping off every streak of color until his face felt raw, watching his hard work be erased. He’d spent forever getting it perfect.

Even after he finished, he couldn’t get himself to move. That familiar weight of anxiety was settling again into the pit of his stomach as rushes of adrenaline, but he found it impossible to tear his eyes away from the mirror. As he stared into his own eyes, he vaguely remembered reading somewhere that looking at yourself in low lighting could trick one’s brain, causing the face to morph into something totally different, oftentimes not human; monstrous. Something about the brain trying to find faces everywhere, and creating them where it can’t see one properly.

This didn’t happen to Virgil.

All he saw in the mirror was someone who had messed up his hope for a future.

Huh. So maybe a ‘monster’ wasn’t too far off.

He laughed humorlessly and finally flicked off the bathroom switch, reentering the living room. The candle was still burning strong on the table, a good half way down. Virgil blew it out.

9:12

The state of apathy Virgil had sunken into was violently replaced with sharp anxiety when he finally bothered to check his phone, realizing it was past nine o’clock. Once more he considered asking Roman if everything was okay (heh, as if anything was okay) but he was quickly reminded why he hadn’t in the first place. Light distracts a driving Roman, bad things happen, it’s all his fault…

Instead, he replied to Logan’s response.

Why? Virgil, what happened?

-Logan

we had a fight

His feet led him by their own will, pulling him to the wall so he could flip off the lights, dousing the apartment in darkness. Using the light from his phone screen, he stumbled to their room- or was it just Roman’s now? Would he have to move out? Oh god… where was he going to live?- ignoring Figaro’s mewls for pets.

What did this fight regard?

-Logan

idk. a bunch of stuff.

He stripped out of his formal shirt, hands shaking so bad he could barely undo the buttons, and exchanged it for his favorite hoodie. It may be too hot to sleep in, but he felt the need for comfort more than he was concerned about heat.

Virgil dropped onto the bed next to the clothes, finally relenting to Figaro’s complaining and stroking down his back. In the stillness of a silent apartment, it was suddenly harder than ever to not completely break down. At least he wiped off his makeup.

This was over dinner?

-Logan

no. over text. he never came home.

He allowed the first tears to fall.

Maybe this had all been building up for a while and Virgil had just been too dumb to see the signs. Was this the night he lost everything? Would the one person he never grew tired of, the only person he had truly loved, leave him? He didn’t know what he’d do without Roman and somehow, he didn’t think he’d have a hope of ever finding someone like him again.

The tremors and blurry vision made it difficult to type.

i think romans going to break up with me

It took barely half a second after it sent for his phone to start ringing, Logan’s name showing up on the caller ID.

Later, Virgil wouldn’t even remember pressing the answer button. The moment he heard Logan’s voice over the phone, his unusually concerned voice overlapping with Patton’s questions, the dam broke. He sobbed his way through an explanation the night, the text messages they’d swapped, and his snowball of anxiety.

To no surprise, the two on the other line immediately offered to come over, but Virgil declined. There was still the tiniest part of him, the littlest hope, that Roman was still going to walk through that door any second. If (when, when, when) he came home, they would need to talk, and it would complicate matters if Logan and Patton were there.

When he eventually yawned in the middle of a sentence, he was encouraged to go to bed. He really didn’t need to be convinced; he was more than ready for this evening to be over. After promises that he’ll update them first thing in the morning, and multiple reminders that Patton loved him, he was left alone in the apartment once again.

He curled into a ball on his side of the bed and cried himself to sleep.

Part two HERE!

#lywrites #sanderssides #sanderssidesfanfiction #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #angst #angst with a happy ending #hurt/comfort #virgil sanders #roman sanders #romantic prinxiety #prinxiety

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goldenkookietae · 4 years

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The Book Fortress Tumbles

BTS One shot

Pairing: Boyfriend!Taehyung x reader

Word count: 3,643 words

Warnings: Smut, strong language, sir!kink, dom!tae, teeny tiny bit of angst

Summary: Your exams are starting soon and you’re beyond stressed. You’re trying not to let that show but it all comes bursting out when your boyfriend Taehyung tries to get you to relax. When you realise your mistake, the only thing you can do, is apologise to him. Just not with words.

A/N: My college just announced that our exams will be held starting from 18th September. That’s too less time to mug up the entirety of the semester syllabus. Sigh. This one shot is reflecting my current situation (minus a Taehyung and dedication towards exams). I accidentally posted this when it was half finished lol, I panicked all the time I was taking it down xD.

Disclaimer: This story is an AU fanfiction that I have created using the names of the members of BTS. I do not claim any ownership over the members of BTS. The plot and the personalities of the characters are entirely my own.

Do not plagiarize my work and do not repost.

Moodboard

*I do not claim ownership over any of the pictures. They are credited to their original owners.

“Y/N~” Taehyung sang, skipping up to the study table, a pile of books hiding the person behind from view.

A faint “yes” was whispered softly from behind the walls of what seemed like a book fortress. Taehyung knew that the queen in this fort had probably not even looked up from her current preoccupation.

But somehow, as the “boyfriend”, he had a few special privileges. Somehow he could pull her to cuddle with him when she had an exam the day next, somehow he could wake her up in the middle of the night and still get her to cook for him, somehow he could steal her ice cream after having his and get her to find him rather cute.

Okay, maybe the last two aren’t true. Those are the things I’d do for her. He thought. Either way, whatever the consequences might be, he felt deprived, almost jealous of bound pages and thick covers.

She had told him a month before, on a day that Taehyung now marked as a blue day in his life, that her exams were coming up and that she’d have to focus on her studies. That she’d have to give her attention to her text books instead of her handsome boyfriend. And the second her exams would be done, they could do whatever he pleased.

Oh, the many many things Taehyung had in mind for everything that pleased him. On top of the list was her name in bold, underlined, Y/N. Y/N had been scanning her books so intently throughout this whole month, it seemed as though she was studying the instructions to defuse a bomb that was seconds from exploding. He hardly saw her around the house, only between the times she came outside to refill her snack jar or water bottle or for her meals. It got to the point where she hadn’t even realised that Taehyung had shifted to her apartment and had been staying with her throughout.

It was funny because they’d share the same bed and wake up inside a warm blanket burrito. Even if she had realised, she hadn’t said a word and Taehyung was more than happy with that. Staying back at his place while she was like this was close to being on an entirely different planet with no forms of communication.

He had picked up a lot of hobbies to distract himself, he played more video games, ate a lot of food, tried cooking (which surprisingly went okay), cleaned her house to make sure she was always comfortable and sometimes worked overtime because everything else was simply boring. But at times when she hadn’t noticed he’d pursue another wonderful hobby. Since Y/N wasn’t really bothered about what Taehyung was up to, he unashamedly spent his time staring at her. She wasn’t even dressed to impress these days, putting on the first thing she reached in her cupboard before sitting down to study.

But she loved being comfortable. And Taehyung noticed how she’d always pick the shortest shorts she had, ones that barely covered the globe of her ass. He would’ve loved those clothes on her every damn day, only if he wasn’t restricted to staying a mile away so she could ‘focus’ and almost suffering from blue balls.

“Y/N~” he whined yet again, choosing to cross over to other side of the fort and poking the bookworm. His plan for the night was to at least get some attention. He had been deprived of it for more than a month, it had reached the point where he would be in an existential crisis from lack of affection.

He would respect all her restrictions, he was being so good at keeping his carnal desires at bay (even if his hand was no match), he hadn’t complained when she finished her food early and left him alone to eat his portion, and definitely didn’t bother her for falling asleep on top of her books. He somehow felt proud of being that boyfriend, the one who’d bring her meals and would carry her back to bed when she’d fallen asleep.

But he just hoped that this, whatever it was, probably a test from the gods, would soon come to an end. And that Y/N would then jump onto his lap and kiss the living daylights out of him to tell him that he passed with flying colours.

All he wanted was a little bit of cuddling that night. The exams were still a week away and she could spare that much for him, couldn’t she?

He poked her again. One last time. And when that earned him nothing more but hummed ‘yes’, he knew it had come down to war. He extended his hands to her waist, caressing the soft flesh before taking on a different turn.

“Taehyungie! Stop!” Y/N hollered, jerking so suddenly that the central defense of her fort broke and tumbled to the ground in all the glory of crumpled and dog eared pages.

All that didn’t bother Taehyung as he tickled her sides, not caring about the curses leaving her mouth at that instant. If he paid any attention, then it would definitely turn him hard.

He picked her up effortlessly, carrying her over to the bed and placing her down. He climbed on top of her slowly, licking his lips as his face leveled with hers.

“Let’s just cuddle for tonight Y/N. You’ve been overworking yourself and it’s okay to take some time off to relieve stress. Relax for today, okay?” Taehyung muttered soothingly, rubbing her arms to warm her skin.

“Or maybe we can do something else to relieve your stress?” He chuckled trying to lighten the passive expression on Y/N’s face but it only made it more poignant. Before he could say anything else, the anxiety all came onto Y/N at once, making her snap.

“Taehyung stop! This is not a joke. My entire career depends on these exams and you’re treating it like a joke! Stop it!” Y/N exclaimed and Taehyung went still.

He knew she didn’t mean that and she knew that her career was as important to Taehyung as it was to her. He was looking out for her simply. She knew this too.

Sighing, Taehyung slid off her and stood next to the bed.

“Your career is important Y/N, I know that. It is to me too. But you’re taking too much pressure. You need a stress buster once in a while. Maybe this was not the best way and I’m sorry about that but maybe we can watch a movie tonight or-” Taehyung kept thinking of more things but Y/N cut him off.

“No. I am not under pressure. I do not need a stress buster. All I need to do is study and revise like I was already doing.” Y/N said as she looked at Taehyung pointedly, before sliding off the bed and sitting down at her desk.

“Alright. Let me know if you need anything.” Taehyung gulped. When she didn’t respond, he sighed and left the room as quietly as he could.

Y/N felt bad. When Taehyung had jumped onto her, all her focus flew out of her mind and she finally realised why she had been fidgety all week. Even when Taehyung had offered it to her on a silver platter, she’d refused like a total idiot and was now facing the consequences. From the corner of her eyes, she watched Taehyung through the slightly open door of her room. She could see him laying on the couch, his long legs spread out before him invitingly, his tongue sticking out and jaw flexing as he concentrated on playing the game.

As her eyes slid down, she focused on his hands, his long fingers working the joystick easily, the veins on his arms straining against his skin. Oh, she knew very well what all she wanted him to work with those fingers. The thought made her close her eyes and bite her lip, and she mindlessly clenched her thighs together.

She considered walking up to him right then, but the thought of coming back to him after she’d sent him away so strongly seemed too embarrassing. If that were to happen, Taehyung would never let go of the incident and would tease her about it forever.

In a desperate attempt to calm herself, she turned back to her books, revising topics again and again but still feeling as though she was reading them for the first time ever. Her eyes slid over to her water bottle as she recited the words she’d just read to herself again.

Tae’s thicker than that. She thought looking over the bottle and imagining a different view in front of her.

“What are you doing, you idiot?” she whispered, realising that her hands were now around the bottle, and she was fisting it with a well known need. Sighing she stood up, knowing she had no choice.

She slipped out of her room, trying not to close the door too hard. Walking straight to her boyfriend, she stood in front of the TV, blocking his view while facing him.

Taehyung looked up at her in confusion, and frowned when the sound of his avatar dying echoed behind her. But as soon as Y/N slid to her knees before him, his lips twisted into a smirk. In a second he threw the joystick in his hand to the side and leaned back into the couch making himself comfortable and pushing his legs closer towards her.

When Y/N bit her lip and stared at him hungrily, he raised an eyebrow.

You just gonna sit there or do something? I’m waiting.

It was so easy to understand everything about him after they’d been together for so long and she didn’t want to disappoint him now. Quickly, her hands unbuttoned his skin tight jeans and unzipped them, while Taehyung simply snuggled deeper into the couch as though waiting for a show about to go down.

Well, something was going down alright. That thing being Y/N.

She struggled to pull off the jeans, huffing every time her strength wasn’t enough, and Taehyung made no effort to help her out. Normally, Taehyung would be praising her throughout, but at the moment her only reward was the delicious view of his thick thighs.

Without wasting a second, Y/N pulled his boxer briefs down to his knees, then to his ankles and her face narrowly missed getting hit by his cock. After more than a month of sexual frustration, her mouth drooled as she laid eyes on his thick, huge cock, veins straining against the length as it stood hard and proud. She was a fool, comparing a stupid water bottle to the masterpiece in front of her.

He was already hard, and Y/N thought he must have been for quite some time through the evening. She’d done that. And she must be the one to fix it.

“Go on darling, suck me off.” Taehyung murmured bringing his fingers to her chin for a moment, tilting her face up and then letting go.

“Yes, sir.” Y/N whispered before taking him into her mouth fully, too hasty and needy to tease him at that point. She flattened her tongue against the smooth skin of his cock, lathering it with her saliva and tasting the salty tang of his precum. As her mouth grew full, she took him as far as she could go, stopping before her gag reflex could hit her and then looking up at Taehyung.

“Fuck. You’re going to kill me with those eyes.” Taehyung grunted, biting his lip harshly and never taking his eyes off Y/N. The sight of her kneeling before him, her mouth full of his cock and her pretty eyes looking at him so innocently - it was too much. His hand raised above his head, gripping the top edge of the couch for support as his jaw slacked and eyes closed.

As he prepared to relax, his eyes snapped open when Y/N picked up speed suddenly and sucked him faster, bobbing her head up and down his length, using her hands to jerk him where she couldn’t take him into her mouth. His eyes threatened to close as hot pleasure shot through him, but he managed to keep them open and fixed them onto Y/N’s eyes. While she sucked him off, he could see the way her hands slid down her body, no doubt seeking for her own pleasure.

But Taehyung was having none of that.

“The only place your hands are allowed to be are on my cock. Understood babygirl?” He glared, and he was surprised that he managed to keep the tremble out of his voice.

Y/N let out something between a whine and a hum, making Taehyung’s eyes roll back into his head. Nevertheless, he felt her figure move and he knew she’d obeyed him.

Straining his eyes to open, he saw her holding her hands behind her back and sucking his cock like her life depended on it. He shifted his hand from his side to her hair, gripping the roots above her neck and momentarily pulling her off of his throbbing member.

“Use your words girl.” He growled, clutching onto her hair tighter and bringing her closer so the head of his cock touched her lips. Y/N let out a soft sigh at the pain, enjoying it more than she should.

“Yes, sir.” she gulped, and immediately Taehyung pushed her back onto him, using the grip on her hair to guide her downward till her nose brushed his skin. Y/N gagged and swallowed, and the sensation made Taehyung’s thighs clench in pleasure.

Y/N didn’t miss that, she kept swallowing and moaning, the soft vibrations of her mouth against his cock, making him climb higher and higher to the edge of his release. And when Taehyung felt her soft hands shift from behind her to massage his balls, his hips jerked and he knew he was close. With three long thrusts into her pretty mouth, Taehyung came with a loud grunt, shooting strings of white hot cum into Y/N’s mouth which she swallowed hungrily.

Taehyung laid there for a few minutes, taking deep breaths to normalise his thundering heart. He peeked open an eye to look at Y/N and groaned when he saw her sitting on her knees with her hands on her lap. So obedient.

He leaned forward and held her chin with his hands, tilting up her face and bringing it close to his. His cum glistened on her lips and the thin layer of sweat on her forehead made it look like her skin was glowing.

“That was a very nice apology, babygirl.” He cooed, pecking Y/N’s lips softly. With his thumb, he scooped up a drop of his cum that had dripped onto her chin and pushed it into her mouth, immediately feeling her tongue swirl around his finger.

“And that is forgiveness.” He muttered, cupping her neck and pressing his lips to hers, swiping his tongue against the soft flesh and tasting himself. For Taehyung, it had all been a plan to get attention, and he got more than he had asked for, but if Y/N couldn’t get her release then there was no point.

Y/N felt Taehyung’s hands slowly slide down her skin, coming to rest at her hips where he held her tight. As she deepened the kiss and pushed her tongue into his mouth, he pulled her up and placed her onto his thighs, his cock slipping against the thin material of her shorts.

Her mouth tipped open against his, and she pressed herself onto him, grinding up and down while Taehyung nipped at her skin. When Taehyung cupped her between her thighs she let out a strangled gasp. The sound had woken something primal in Taehyung and he growled against her skin, biting down on the skin above her breast.

It had been so long since they’d done anything together, so long since Y/N had touched herself, that she knew she wouldn’t be able to last long. Taehyung would get his hands on her clit and she’d fall apart and that’s exactly what she needed. More than she had imagined.

Stripping off their clothes was a hasty blur, their mouths never leaving each other’s skin, kissing, nipping, biting, licking and sucking. Taehyung’s hands slid down to Y/N’s now bare heat, groaning at how slick and wet Y/N was.

“You didn’t want to say no to me, did you babygirl? Look at how wet you are.” He murmured, pressing and circling his thumb on her clit making her whimper. She whimpered helplessly when he pushed one long finger into her making her cling to him for support. When his finger curled inside her, she felt a familiar knot of pleasure and she blushed, embarrassed that she was going to come as fast as the time she’d lost her virginity. Too damn fast. She hid her face in the crook of Taehyung’s shoulder, biting down on the tanned skin as his fingers pushed her towards the edge relentlessly.

As Taehyung continued finger fucking her, his mouth was occupied with her breasts, sucking them and littering the skin with deep purple marks.

“Cum for me, Y/N. Cum on my fingers. Fuck.” He rasped, his teeth pulling at her pebbled nipple and Y/N came all over his fingers, letting out a loud cry and clutching tighter onto his shoulders.

Y/N relaxed against Taehyung’s shoulders, sucking deep breaths to compensate for all the breath Taehyung had knocked out of her with his talented fingers. Taehyung kept his eyes on her heat, pulling his fingers out of her and dragging his tongue over them with a loud a moan.

“So sweet. I missed this.” Taehyung said softly, his eyes closing to savour her taste on his tongue, licking his fingers in a manner to leave no drop untasted.

Just when Y/N had opened her mouth to speak, she jolted in surprise when Taehyung’s cock slid into her, stretching her walls as he reached all the way till he bottomed out. His eyes slowly turned to her, hooded with lust and a glint in his eye that she knew all too well.

This is payback for surprising me earlier.

“Fuck, you’re so tight. You’re squeezing me.” Taehyung groaned, and Y/N’s eyes fluttered shut. She couldn’t comprehend words at that moment, her tongue tied with being sensitive and the way Taehyung was rocking his hips into hers.

“You’re still on birth control right?” Taheyung asked through gritted teeth, struggling to pause his movements before his mind spiraled out of control.

“Yes, just please, Tae-” Y/N whined, unable to finish her sentence as Taehyung pulled out and thrust into her. Sitting flush on his lap, Y/N could feel the length of his cock reach into her deeper than ever. With the little energy she had, she raised her hips and pushed herself back onto him at the exact moment that Taehyung thrust upwards.

“Tae!” she moaned, biting her lip so hard she drew blood, a hand coming up to squeeze her breast as the other clutched onto Taehyung’s thigh to make sure she wouldn’t fall off. Taehyung didn’t give her a second to breathe, setting a rhythm, driving deeper and harder into her each time. She knew it was all the built up tension over a month of inactivity and she wasn’t complaining even when her body shook with over stimulation.

Y/N eventually leaned into him, letting him guide her the way he wanted and she loved it. Gripping the soft flesh of her ass he made her ride him, driving her up and down on his cock and getting high on the sounds of their skins slapping together and the way Y/N’s tits bounced right in front of his face.

Despite her usual vocal self, Y/N felt her voice disappear, every word she tried to form dispersing into mewls and whimpers.

Touch me there. She tried to tell him, a moan and a curse leaving her mouth instead, making her frustrated with the building tension. She moved her hand in search of Taehyung’s, sighing almost immediately when his fingers were on her on her clit, rubbing and pinching the bundle of nerves.

Y/N’s orgasm crashed through her with high pitched moan, shattering any coherent sense left in her and numbing her senses where the only thing she felt was the hot seed that Taehyung had shot inside her, his groans muffled by the heavy daze of her mind. It was too much to handle.

“We’re out of practise.” She managed to whisper finally, her voice hoarse and tired. Taehyung chuckled at that, watching Y/N’s chest heave with every breath and syncing it to his own breathing. His thumb rubbed soothing circles onto her skin and he pressed a chaste kiss on her bare shoulder.

“Let’s get you cleaned up baby.” Taehyung murmured, softly carding his hands through Y/N’s hair. All the exhaustion she had been feeling caught up to her, what with the tension of qualifying her exams, of meeting everyone’s expectations and the intense overwhelming pleasure she had just experienced.

Her lids dropped slowly, the only thing keeping her awake being the soft brush of cloth against her skin which she assumed was Taehyung cleaning her up. When her back hit the soft mattress and Taehyung’s warmth pressed against her skin, she could barely keep herself from crashing into sleep.

“Sleep Y/N.” Taehyung whispered against her hair, kissing her temple softly and pulling her to him. “Stop making me worry all the time. And don’t you worry either. You’ll do great. And you’ll make us all proud.” He finished, pressing more kisses against her hair and pulling her closer into his chest.

“I love you.”

With those words of reassurance, Y/N smiled just before she drifted off to sleep.

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#tae smut #taehyung smut #smut!taehyung #taehyung #taehyung x reader #bts kim taehyung #kim taehyung #bts taehyung #bts taehyung x reader #kim taehyung x reader #BTS v #btsv #bts one shot #taehyung one shot #tae oneshot #taehyung fanfic #bangtan boys #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan

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avengerscompound · 4 years

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Catch and Release - 5

Catch and Release: A Captain America Fanfic

Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers x F!Reader

Word Count: 3289

Rating: E

Square filled: @star-spangled-bingo - Steve's Apartment

Warnings: Smut (MMF, oral and vaginal sex, overstimulation)

Synopsis: When you overexert yourself on a mission with Steve and Bucky, the boys admit to having fantasies that involve you. Fantasies that you share. But with one Super Soldier needs intimacy and the other is still dealing with being touch starved, exploring those desires without anyone catching feelings is a little tricky.

Chapter 5: Lying in Wait

You knocked on the door to the apartment that Steve and Bucky shared. They'd asked you around for dinner, which meant dinner and experimenting with their sexuality, and you were more than a little excited. The dice game had gone over really well and for a couple of days after they would each come and tell you about what parts they liked the most. You knew that they’d want to take it further and try more things. Especially given Steve hadn’t technically gone ‘all the way’ with you.

You were very excited too. This whole thing had not at all been what you’d expected. The whole idea of a down and dirty three-way that was all about sex and just getting that release at the hands of the two super soldiers was definitely one that you’d visited alone a lot of times. Somehow this was even better. Steve and Bucky were such good friends, and this arrangement you’d come to was both exciting and safe all at once. They might be finding out more about themselves, but this was your opportunity to find out more about yourself too.

Steve answered and greeted you with a kiss on the cheek. It was funny really, you’d seen him on and off all day, but that was Cap. Steve was a whole different person in a lot of ways and so even though you’d only seen him half an hour ago, this was the first time you were seeing him all day. “Come in,” he said as he held the door open for you.

“I bought wine.” You said holding up the bottle of merlot you’d ‘stolen’ from Tony’s cellar.

“Trying to get us drunk are you?” He asked taking it from you.

You chuckled and followed through the apartment to the table. Their place was a weird mix of old and new. There was a blue velvet wingback couch sitting next to a black leather recliner that had speakers in the headrest. An old cabinet style record player sat next to a large flat-screen TV and had a PS4 sitting on top of it. A set of nesting tables sat in front of the couch and each one was littered with art supplies and Steve’s shield was propped up against the couch.

The walls were decorated with artwork of vintage motorcycles and photos of family and friends. One entire wall was boxed shelving, and each shell was full of books and vinyls. There was no clear theme to any of it. A boxed set of Harry Potter novels sat next to books on military tactics. The Wizard of Oz series was there in its entirety but each volume was sitting on a different shelf. The Wizard of Oz was next to a book on guided meditation. Ozma of Oz was beside some vintage Captain America comic books.

Bucky was in the kitchen cooking. He had his hair pulled back and a floral apron on. The kitchen itself was quite modern and clean compared to the living room. The benchtops were black granite and the fittings were all brushed chrome. Bucky smiled when he saw you and came over and kissed your cheek. “Everything is nearly ready.” He said.

“It smells so good,” you said. “And you look amazing.”

He pinched your hip and went back to his cooking. “Steve, did you put your shit away?”

“Yes,” Steve lied, going straight to the coffee tables and bundling up the art supplies.

“That means your shield too,” Bucky said.

“It’s away,” Steve said. He shoved the drawings and pencils into one of the gaps on the bookshelf before grabbing his shield and shoving it into the hall cupboard.

You chuckled and took down some wine glasses. “It doesn’t matter how much time has passed, I will never get over the fact that he’s the messy one.”

“He’s always been the messy one,” Bucky said. “Drives me crazy.”

“Can I help at all?” You asked as you poured out three glasses.

“There’s a salad in the fridge. You think you can take it out to the table?”

The table was already partially set. The plates and silverware were out, as was a loaf of crusty bread. You took the salad out and by the time you were sitting with Steve and taking your first sip from your wine glass Bucky was bringing out a serving platter piled high with risotto.

“So,” you said, as you all started filling your plates. “What shall we do tonight?”

“Oh, uh…” Steve said, almost dropping his fork. “We thought dinner and if you wanted we could watch a movie…”

“Really? That’s what you want to do?” You teased.

“He’s being polite because he doesn’t want you to feel pressured to do anything,” Bucky said.

“Oh, I know.” You said playfully, putting your hand on Steve’s.

“I just want to make sure you know that your friendship is important to me too,” Steve said, giving your hand a squeeze. “I don’t want to put the sex above that.”

Bucky smiled and leaned over the table and kissed him. Not that you could blame him. You could practically feel your heart swell up. When Bucky sat back in his chair, Steve looked a little love-struck himself.

“Then we should hang out as friends sometime,” you said as everyone started eating. “Like we used to. But I am wearing really expensive lingerie and I’d really like to show you it.”

“And I would definitely like to see it,” Bucky said.

“We were talking about just…” Steve stopped mid-sentence and froze like he had forgotten the word he was looking for. “You know… normal.”

You and Bucky looked at each other and bit back laughter. “Ah yes, normal threesome style, Stevie. Just the way everyone who has threesomes does it.”

Steve looked at Bucky deadpan. “You know what I mean.”

“Well, yeah. I do ‘cause we talked about it before.” Bucky teased. “What he means is because part of this is him getting to do some things he hasn’t done before, we’d like to focus on you and it just be…”

“... vanilla guy on girl sex.” You finished.

“That’s the one,” Bucky said tapping his forehead.

“Gonna run the train,” you said and took a sip of your wine. “Nice.”

“Is that okay?” Steve asked.

“More than.” You said. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, anything,” Steve answered.

“And just to be clear here, I’m talking to Cap. Not Steve.” You added.

“Oh,” Steve said, his posture stiffening. “What is it?”

“No,” Bucky groaned. “Don’t invoke the Captain in here.”

“Just for a second. I promise.” You said. “What happens if the others find out about what we’re doing?”

Steve’s jaw tensed and twitched at the corners as he thought. “I don’t think we should go around bragging about it,” he said. “But this is our personal business We aren’t breaking any rules. If the find out, they find out.”

“Besides, if Tasha doesn’t already suspect, then I don’t think that’s Natasha and we better find out where the real Natasha is,” Bucky added.

You laughed and nodded. “True. You know if Tony finds out he’s going to give you hell for it.”

“What’s new?” Steve said with a small shrug. “Besides, like he can talk.”

“Also valid.” You said. “Alright. I just wanted to make sure. I agree. I don’t want to go telling … well anyone, but like Bucky said, Nat figures this shit out, and I don’t want to be lying to our friends.”

Steve reached over and rubbed your arm. “I would never ask you to do that. You aren’t our dirty little secret. You’re our friend.”

“God, Steve. Saying all the right things tonight. I’m gonna fuck your brains out.” You said.

“And I’ve got second,” Bucky added, reaching over and taking Steve’s hand.

The three of you finished up dinner and cleaned up together. Steve had been right. The three of you needed to nurture the friendship too. This was how this started after all.

When the kitchen was practically sparkling Steve came up behind Bucky and wrapped his arms around his waist and kissed his neck. Bucky closed his eyes and hummed softly. He held out his hand to you and you took it and let him pull you into his arms.

His eyes opened and he blinked slowly, as he gazed down at you. “Ready, darlin’?”

You smiled up at him as Steve’s arm snaked around you and he pressed his large hand to the middle of your back. “As I’ll ever be.”

Bucky leaned in and ghosted his lips over yours. You reached up and tangled your hands in his hair and pulled him into a hungry kiss. Steve kissed and nipped at Bucky’s throat as the two of you kissed and pulled you a little tighter against Bucky. You could feel Bucky start to harden against you and you pulled back with a quiet gasp.

“Bedroom?” He asked.

“Bedroom.” You agreed and Bucky put an arm around each of you and the three of you made your way down to the bedroom.

The room was painted sage, with gray trim. The floor to ceiling windows on the far side looked out over the East River and beyond that, Brooklyn. There were more shelves against one wall, though they mostly held little knick-knacks. Things like a signed baseball, a Build-a-Bear dressed as Captain America, and model spaceships - the kind you built yourself. Next to it was an antique drafting table with more art supplies and sketches littering it. There were framed prints on the one bare wall above the bed, each one held different black and white photographs of the New York skyline over the years.

The bed was a king and had been made. A crocheted quilt in dark red and white lay folded in half at the foot over the gunmetal quilt. The bedside table on the left was clean and neat with a digital alarm clock, a dock for a Stark phone a worn copy of Dune. There was also a basket with condoms and lube, the same as you had set up when they’d come to your place. You wondered if he’d decided to steal the idea from you. You couldn’t imagine that they were still using protection like that with each other. The bedside table on the right was a mess of water bottles, notebooks, dog eared novels, colognes, and random scraps of paper.

You looked around as you unzipped your dress. Bucky and Steve began to undress too. “I’ve never seen your room before.”

“So many firsts tonight,” Bucky said playfully.

“Your bed is big enough to fit us three and Thor too.” You said dropping your dress and revealing the black lace push up bra and thong you were wearing.

The two men looked you over like hungry wolves. “Two super soldiers not enough for you,” Bucky teased, stalking over to you and hooking his arm around your waist. “You gotta include a god too?”

“Hey, I’ve been single for ages. Let me have my fantasies.” You joked, as he pulled you to him and lifted you, carrying you to the bed and dropping you on the mattress.

You lay back and arched your back as both Steve and Bucky crawled up with you. Both had taken their shirts and shoes off, but while Steve was down to his boxers, Bucky was still in his jeans. “You’re giving us ours, if you want to share yours with us, we’ll see what we can do.” Steve rumbled as he kissed your neck and collarbone. His hand ran down between your breasts and over your stomach, making your skin break out in goosebumps.

Bucky kissed the other side of your neck and tangled his hand in your hair. “Threesomes are the most common fantasy you know?” You half moaned. “And they’re more common to have the older you get.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Steve asked as he moved his hand to your cunt and he slowly began to palm it.

You moaned pushing up against his hand. “It was in a documentary. You guys are over a hundred. So bringing Thor in would be good for you.”

Steve snorted while Bucky broke down laughing. “We’ll keep that in mind, dork.” Bucky teased and kissed you.

As you kissed, Steve kissed lower. He paused at your breasts and sucked and bit at your nipples through your bra. You reached behind you and unhooked it Steve slid it down and pulled your nipple into his mouth. Bucky joined him at your other breast and they both sucked and bit your breasts as Steve’s hand slipped into your panties and he started to finger your clit. You moaned and squeezed your legs around his hand as you writhed under them.

Steve moved down lower, pushing your legs apart and pulling your panties down. He nuzzled at your cunt and flattened his tongue running it up your folds. You put your feet on his shoulders and pushed your hips up into his mouth. Bucky’s hand caressed your throat as he continued to suck and bite at your beasts.

The sounds you made got louder and louder as Steve became more and more focused. You could tell he hadn’t done this before, but the way he moved was almost like watching him in the field. He’d stop and cock his head to the side while his tongue flicked over your clit or his fingers moved inside of you, when you moaned just the way he wanted, he’d focus on what he’d just done.

As they brought your apart with just their hands and mouths, they kept touching each other too. Stroking each other’s backs or legs. While you moaned and bucked, your orgasm right there on the brink, they held hands.

Steve corkscrewed his wrist and sucked hard on your clit and you came, arching hard up off the mattress and crying out. “Fuck, yes!”

Steve sat up, a proud little smile on his glistening lips. Bucky got up on his knees and kissed him hungrily. You wrapped your legs around Steve and began to grind against his erection as you unfastened Bucky’s jeans. Bucky pushed Steve’s boxers down and began to stroke his cock and Steve groaned into Bucky’s lips, his cock jumping in Bucky’s hand and leaking precum onto your pussy as you rubbed against him.

Bucky broke the kiss and began to nuzzle at Steve’s neck. “You gonna fuck her, Stevie?” He whispered.

Steve groaned and grabbed your thighs. “Yeah, Buck. I want to.”

“She’s so wet and warm, Steve,” Bucky whispered as he grabbed a condom. “You’re gonna really like it.”

Steve closed his eyes and caressed his fingers over your stomach and cunt. You reached up and cradled his jaw as Bucky rolled the condom down over his shaft. Steve looked down at you, his blue eyes blown out with lust. With a snap of his hips, he sunk deep into you.

You both gasped and you arched back as he lifted your hips up to him. Bucky kissed Steve again before leaning down and sucking on your breasts against. His metal fingers went to your clit and rubbed it as Steve started to slowly rut his hips against you, each thrust accompanied by a roll, so it felt like he was touching every part of you.

You felt like a live wire. All your nerves were raw and stimulated as they made you the center of attention. Steve fucked you slow and deep, filling you completely. You gripped his wrists and rolled your hips with him. Pleasure swirled through, starting in your breasts and cunt and meeting in your core. It pressed down on you and radiated out until it was all you knew and all you wanted to know. Your core clenched and you came hard, bucking up under them.

Steve was far from close though. He picked up his pace, fucking you harder and a little more erratically. Bucky began to massage the base of his cock and balls while his thumb rubbed your clit. He switched from one breast to the next, keeping you right on the edge as Steve fucked you.

Steve’s eyes stayed locked with yours and his jaw tensed. You jerked up suddenly as another orgasm tore through you, and with a hard snap of his hips, he came.

Bucky sat back as you relaxed down panting and Steve slipped from within you. “How’re you doing there, darlin’?” He asked as he ran his hands up Steve’s chest.

Steve kissed Bucky’s neck and got up, removing his condom and tossing it out. “Really good, Buck,” you hummed. “You gonna fuck me?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Bucky replied, grabbing one of the condoms and sheathing himself. You sat up and stretched a little and Bucky sat opposite you. You climbed into his lap and lowered yourself down onto his cock. As you began to bounce on his cock Steve moved up behind you and sat with his legs on either side of you and Bucky. He kissed your neck and ran his hands over the two of you. Caressing skin. Pinching nipples. He rubbed your clit and massaged Bucky’s base.

You and Bucky kissed as you moved as one. Your lips moved from lips to neck and back again and the sounds of your moans combined with each other’s and filled the room.

Sweat began to bead your skin as heat flowed through your veins, burning you up from the inside out. Steve hardened against your back as you moved. You began to feel fuzzy and high. Steve’s fingers worked your clit as you bounced faster and faster. It wasn’t long before you came again, and Bucky broke the kiss with a strained groan, gritting his teeth as he tried not to be dragged along with you. It was no use though, his hips jerked and he came just after you.

You stayed joined, slowly rolling your hips as his cock emptied. Steve ghosted his lips up the side of your neck and nipped at your earlobe. “You up for more?” He said in a soft growl.

“Mmm… I could go again.” You hummed.

Three and a half hours the three of you spent switching from one to the other, the only break you got was to rehydrate. By the time you called defeat you wondered if you were ever going to learn your lesson about trying to keep up with the two super soldiers.

You lay panting on the mattress as Bucky and Steve both lay back, the sweat running down their chests in rivulets. You cunt ached and your legs felt weak. You had a vague feeling like you should get up and pee. Get dressed. Go home. You didn’t think you’d even be able to get up. You could barely even think straight. It was all soft-focused.

You struggled up too sitting and blinked around the room.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” Steve asked, putting his hand on your hip.

“Gotta go home,” you mumbled.

“You’re exhausted. Just stay.” Steve reassured you.

“Yeah, darlin’, you liked cuddling with us when we were camping,” Bucky added.

“If I sleepover, then they’ll know.” You tried to reason.

Steve sat up and kissed your shoulder, wrapping his arms around your waist. “So they know. We’re adults, we can do what we want. Now lie down, you’re exhausted.”

You let yourself collapse back down, unable to think of one possible argument. They both wrapped you in their arms and you were asleep before the blanket was even pulled over you.

// NEXT

#SSB2020 #steve rogers #bucky barnes #steve rogers x reader #bucky barnes x reader #stucky #steve rogers x bucky barnes #stucky x reader #steve rogers x reader x bucky barnes #captain america fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #reader insert #smut #catch and release #lying in wait

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stereksecretsanta · 5 years

Text

Merry Christmas, @everchanginginks!

AN: My very first Sterek fic and my first published proper fanfic in like four years! Very exciting. This is a Sterek Secret Santa 2k18 gift for the incomparable everchanginginks, so I hope I have done everything she could ever want in this.

Within: Fluff, There Was Only One Bed, friends to lovers, and magic!Stiles, which is 4/5 of the prompts I was given! If I had 10k to work with I could have encompassed the fifth of enemies to lovers, but we do what we can. I'm already WELL OVER the 5k limit I am so sorry SSS it just happened like that orz

Read on AO3

******

Wędrowiec

Hey -SS

What -DH

What’s your address. The loft. -SS

Why do you need it -DH

Well I can’t just ask the postal service “hey what zip code are Derek Hale’s eyebrows” -SS

I mean I could but it wouldn’t get me anywhere -SS

Why do you need it -DH

I’m going to be in Michigan for Christmas so I can’t be there on the 25th to give you your present so I wanted to send it to you, if you must know -SS

You don’t have to get me anything -DH

Well you embarrassed me by getting me a way-too-nice present last year so yeah I actually kind of do. We have spending limits for a reason!!!!!!!!!!!!! -SS

That wasn’t a Christmas gift, and your laptop was nearing meltdown. We need you technologically capable to keep the packs safe and up to date. It was a necessity. It just happened to be around Christmas -DH

My Christmas gift was within the spending limits. That was the laptop case. -DH

Why are you going to Michigan? -DH

My mom’s family wants to see us again, apparently they’ve gotten over the spat happened between my uncles and my dad and they want us all together -SS

Really I think it’s because they figure it’s my grandfather’s last Christmas so they want us to pretend that everything’s fine for his sake -SS

I’m sorry to hear that -DH

Oh I don’t really give a fuck it’s just free food and free gossip about my cousins as far as I’m concerned -SS

I’ll just be bored to tears because they don’t have any fuckin technology. Just a frozen ass lake and a frozen ass town in a frozen ass state. How do they survive in a house with NO WIFI?!??!?!! -SS

Guess you’ll just have to die, then -DH

The typing indicator went up for a few seconds before a full half a minute’s pause, then Derek’s ringtone played as Stiles was now calling him. It was Derek’s preferred method of communication anyway, tone was completely lacking over text and he kind of needed some sort of cue to figure out what people meant.

“That was a fffucking meme you’re so full of shit when you pretend not to know what I’m talking about!!!” Stiles was trying to sound some form of mad, but there was way too much of a smile in his voice. “So full of shit. Fuck you.” Stiles’ verbiage towards Derek had gotten crasser and somehow even more confrontational since he’d gone off to college, but paradoxically more affectionate.

“Mhmm.” Derek didn’t give him much to go off of, but figured that Stiles had something else to talk about with him rather than just to whine about his alleged meme knowledge. Honestly, he’d just heard Isaac say it once and it garnered a positive reaction from others, so he filed it away for later use.

That wasn’t exactly what Stiles was hoping for, but he wasn’t going to let something as trivial as Derek’s resistance to banter stop him from talking. “So what are your plans for Christmas?” He still hadn’t gotten that address out of him, but if Derek had plans to be somewhere, he wanted to find out what.

“Nothing.”

Stiles stopped in his pace around his room, “Wait, nothing? What about Cora ‘n Erica ‘n Boyd ‘n Isaac ‘n Scott?” he listed off the people Derek was close enough to be around without too much annoyance in either direction.

“Cora’s down in Peru with her old pack, she’s pretty excited for their plans there, and it didn’t come with an invite, I figured I’d let her be. It’s…” He trailed off, grateful that Stiles held his tongue so he could find his words. “We’re siblings, but those six years of thinking the other dead and her pack being hundreds of miles away, we’re just not that close. I’ll call her on Christmas and I’ve sent her a couple things, it’s enough. Boyd and Erica are visiting Boyd’s grandmother in South Carolina, since his mom got a nice Christmas bonus in her paycheck.”

“Christmas bonus, huh.” Stiles’ tone was completely not buying the story.

“Christmas bonus.” Derek reaffirmed, not addressing Stiles’ suspicions in the least. It’s not that he was wrong, but Boyd was the hardest to convince to accept his financial support, so he had to resort to more sneaky measures to help him out. “And Scott and Isaac are with Ms. McCall.”

“Which also didn’t come with an invite.” Stiles filled the blank for him. It prickled at him that everyone just forgot Derek, even the ones staying in the area. “Hell, man, if I knew you got fucked over like that I’d have stayed, screw the free food ‘n everything, but we already said we’d go. I could have made you watch all of the Christmas movies that you missed out on living under a rock. And my famous hot chocolate.”

“Your famous hot chocolate, which is powdered hot chocolate mix made with whole milk, a Lindt truffle at the bottom, and a half a can of whipped cream?”

Stiles glared at the phone like the screen had personally insulted him, his ancestors, and the entirety of the Power Rangers all in one sentence. “Who told you.”

Derek was smiling despite the topic being how alone he was on the holiday. “Lydia warned me of the sugarbomb.”

“Traitor.” Stiles had an idea in his head. “Hey…..I’m gonna be bored as hell over in Michigan, and it won’t be much fun without technology, you wanna come with? You can convince them that I actually have friends and you won’t be listening to the pipes clanging in that loft all by yourself.”

“I couldn’t impose on-“

“Fuck that, they’re my family and they barely like me anyway, they’ll love you and that way I’ll at least have someone I can talk to aside from my dad, who’ll probably be bickering with my uncles, and my grandfather, who mostly speaks Polish and is about as social as a wombat.”

Derek squinted at the simile. He had to ask, even if it was stupid. “How social are wombats, exactly?”

“Hell if I know.”

Derek thought for a moment. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to at least have somewhere to go instead of staring at empty walls. “Check with them if they’re alright with you bringing someone you want to kill half the time, and if they say yes, I’ll pay my way and get a hotel.”

“No, no no, you’re staying in the house. They have a pretty big house, they got it decades and decades ago and it’s right on the lake, it’s really nice. I haven’t been there since I was…” Stiles counted on his fingers for a few seconds before giving up and ballparking it. “…Like twelve but yeah. I’ll tell ‘em I’m bringing a friend, I’m sure they’ll be fine with it. Should be grateful my fine ass will even be showing up at all.”

Derek rolled his eyes only part of the way. “See what they say, but don’t push. I won’t die if I’m on my own for Christmas.”

“Yeah but I might if I’m bored for too long out there.”

“I guess harassing me is entertainment.” He could concede that as Stiles’ motivation, it was easier than accepting a invitation offered out of guilt to bother his family by intruding on their Christmas

“Ever since I trespassed on your property, it’s been my favorite pastime.”

“Talk to you later, Stiles.” Derek wanted the conversation over before Stiles got too wrapped up in the parley and didn’t start asking, which was a basic courtesy before bringing someone they didn’t even know all the way there to stay in their house and eat their food and intrude on their family Christmas. He didn’t have high hopes, but even just the offer was enough to make him feel a little less alone.

*~*

Stiles was still blinking in shock at being awake at the ungodly hour that he was awake at, sitting in San Francisco Airport, when his father put a coffee in his hand. John was making something that was as close to small talk as Derek could get as they waited for the plane at the gate. How the both of them could stand to be so conscious before 7am was beyond him. How dare they. Didn’t they know that 5:55 am was a fake time of day and that being awoken at 3 in the morning was tantamount to a Geneva convention violation?!?

“Nhghhhgngh.” Stiles mumbled in response, shaking hands lifting the cup to his face and putting all of his faith in muscle memory to navigate the rest of it. It worked well enough, liquid went down the right tube and not down his shirt.

“C’mon, get that down so you can cram Dramamine in your face and when you wake up we’ll be in O’Hare.” John’s tone of voice was surprisingly warm and sincere despite a sentence which could easily be condescending. Maybe it was the whole Christmas spirit getting through to him, or maybe it was that Stiles was way too groggy to backsass him at this hour of the day and he was enjoying it as much as he could.

They got Stiles upright enough to get him on the plane and negotiated seating, Derek wanted on the aisle for easy escape from a compacted tube full of a ton of people and noise and smells and recycled air, which John couldn’t fault him for, and given that Stiles was going to be unconscious shortly, it was better he was on the window, so Stiles was next to Derek on the two seat side and John across the aisle from them.

Derek figured Stiles would just curl up on the window and fall asleep and he could read on his tablet in peace, so it was a mild surprise that Stiles, buckled in and half gone already, leaned on his shoulder and nuzzled in, breathing steadied and as comfortable as anything.

John leaned over to check on his son, and though wildly perplexed, he leaned back and decided that as long as Derek wasn’t strangling his kid for touching him, it was fine by him.

*~*

The arrival to Gerald Ford Airport in Michigan was, to say the least, a wakeup call for the youngest of the trio’d travelers.

“Jesus fucking Christ, oh my god, why is it so cold?” He asked as the pilot announced that the temperature in Grand Rapids was a balmy twenty-five with flurries all day. Barbaric.

“Stiles, you know it’s gonna be like, ten degrees and windstorms in Michigan the whole week, right?” Derek’s eyebrow rose at the double hoodies and vest Stiles was sporting, that Stiles had not taken out anything warmer from his luggage. That wouldn’t be nearly enough for wind straight from Canada’s frozen wastelands. Derek had done his research into where he’d be heading before packing his luggage, you know, like an adult.

“This is what I got!” Stiles shrugged, a California native that did his schooling in D.C. and Virginia, where neither place got REAL snow on the regular.

“Well, as it turns out, I expected as much.” Derek pulled out his carry-on duffle and extracted three coats, one light brown, one navy, and one black. He handed the brown to John in the middle of their row, and the navy across to Stiles. “Figured you guys wouldn’t have remembered how cold it gets in real northern places.” He said as he shrugged the black coat on himself, a slave to aesthetics.

“Hell, Derek, you didn’t have to…“ John did have a halfway warm enough coat, it wasn’t- oh, it was actually pretty nice. “How much was this?” He’d be really weirded out if Derek was dropping stacks on him and his son, he was already confused at the gift of a laptop the previous year, it’s not like he couldn’t afford a laptop for his son. He couldn’t have afforded the one Derek got him, but he didn’t want to be upstaged in taking care of Stiles. The other kids could take advantage of Derek’s money all they wanted, but the Stilinskis had pride. They didn’t accept charity from rich boy werewolves.

“Not nearly enough for either of you to worry about it.” Derek said, sliding his sunglasses on and leaning back, not interested in carrying on the conversation any longer.

John, unable to turn down the gift but weirded out by Derek both anticipating this need at all, actually going to the trouble to getting these, and sacrificing space in his carry on to bring them on the plane all for this specific scene along with buying him gifts, pulled it on all the same. What a fucking drama queen. “Thanks, Derek.”

Stiles had rolled his eyes at yet another extravagant present from Derek that was way too much to accept but he was trapped by it, since he did desperately need it and couldn’t say no. Well, he’d saved Derek from being the saddest bastard in all of California on Christmas, so maybe this was recompense. “It’s not like I can’t warm myself up.” He grumbled. Heat spells were elementary on the roster of the things any spark worth his salt would know. And Stiles was the saltiest of all.

“Yeah, Stiles, go ahead and slightly set yourself on fire through the whole week.” Derek’s deadpan delivery could easily be mistaken for sincerity, which did well enough to disguise the fact that he was actually really impressed that Stiles had been getting far enough with his magic to do some interesting and sometimes even useful things. “You’ll be our Yule Log. Very seasonal self-immolation.”

John expected Stiles to look pissed at that level of smack-talk, but Stiles looked oddly gratified by the response, like getting Derek to make fun of him was his goal all along.

“Such a good alpha provider, takes such good care of us. Thaaaank you Dereeeek.”

There might have been just a twitch of a smile at the corner of Derek’s mouth, but it could have just been a trick of the lights as cabin prepared for landing.

*~*

Stiles was giving Derek a rundown of the family members he’d have to keep straight while there, cousins and uncles and aunts and people that were peripheral to the family but close enough to be considered part of the group, the bits and pieces of them that he’d pulled together. He hadn’t seen them in a decade, so much of what he knew was informed by Facebook posts and a few Instagram bits that let him know who was who and look at least a little less like he didn’t remember jack shit about his cousins. Which he did, just they were also around 8-14 so it’s been a while, alright? Some of ‘em had gone to college, some of ‘em got jobs, hell, one of ‘em was married with a kid. Wild.

“Shortlist of the important family to know: Nelia, grandpa’s wife. My grandmother died a few years after my mom, but Nelia’s a pretty nice woman, she’s got a really thick accent so if you don’t understand what she’s saying you can ask one of us to translate, we all speak Polish to some degree.”

“I don’t.” John added, at the driver’s seat of the rented car. Derek would rent a car in town, they figured that arriving together would be easier, and then no one was alone for the ride from the airport to the family house.

“Well, Dad doesn’t, but there you go, you and him can be awkward together when we talk shit about you guys, it’ll be great.” Stiles was in the passenger seat, texting people at lightning speed about how this was going to be the most hilarious week of his life and it was all because Derek was going to have to be exposed to a TRADITIONAL FAMILY CHRISTMAS. Did you pack Benadryl? -ER

Why? -SS

For when he breaks out in hives from people expressing genuine emotion around him -ER

“Then there’s Grandpa, I call him the Polish term for it, Dziadek, you’re probably best off with Mr. Gajos. I think I’ve heard a grand total of ten words out of him my whole life, so you don’t have to worry much about him.”

Derek’s eyes were fixed on something in the distance, and casually added, “He’s who you’re named after, right?”

Stiles went stiff and turned around to look at Derek. “Who told you.” Much less humorous than the previous inquisition about the hot chocolate, he seemed properly displeased about it.

Derek only mildly smiled and made no other answer. Stiles made an aggravated noise but wasn’t going to try and interrogate Derek. He continued his familial explanation but sounded much more irritated at everyone in it. “Then there are my cousins, there are a bunch and some new ones I’ve never met, but you pretty much only have to know Nika, who’s two years older than me. She’s the only one that sort of kept in touch and therefore the only one I care about. The uncles are …well you don’t care, and I bet they won’t mess with you much. Now, the whole drama with them, Dad, if you wanna take the lead on explaining why we haven’t talked to ‘em in over a decade.”

John gave Stiles a meaningful glance, but didn’t explain it. “Well, after Claudia died, I had a hard time of it for a while. They thought that I should have handled her, and Stiles, differently than I did.” Derek realized the glance was begging Stiles not to ask John to air his most closely guarded shames right in front of Derek, who signed up for a little getaway and not to hear all their most private secrets.

“They were firm believers that ADHD was cured by beatings and were annoyed that I was a bit of a holy terror.” Stiles translated.

John grimaced a little. “They wanted to take Stiles in, raise him properly. I admit I wasn’t perfect. They weren’t right to say it, but I understand why they did.”

Derek could connect the dots laid out before him. They saw John as a useless drunk and Stiles as a neglected brat and thought they could do better. “So now you’re talking again?” He asked, desperate to save John from further agonies.

“Enough that they didn’t threaten to play family politics chess and try to make Stiles’ grandparents chose which children they liked better this year.”

“We did alright on our own.” Stiles declared with a defiant smile, clearly not about to entertain the notion of understanding their position whatsoever.

It was hard for Derek to wrap his head around a family fracturing so easily like that, Hale lines ran so deep that even someone as gone as Peter could find his way back in Derek’s heart if he worked for it. To cut someone off so cleanly on either side was alien to him. But it wasn’t his family, and frankly none of his business anyway.

*~*

They stood outside of a surprisingly expansive house on the edge of Silver Lake on the western side of the Michigan mitten, the gray sky above their heads threatening to dump yet more snow on them as they waited for someone to reach the door. Derek could hear a collection of heartbeats and voices within. Two of them old, one arrhythmic. A couple more adults, a few younger voices, a decent family gathering. There was apple, rum, cinnamon, nutmeg in the air, someone made mulled cider. It was only the 22nd, this was just a small contingent perhaps, or at least not held to the same importance as Christmas Eve.

The door opened, and a short, stout woman with steel curls and a smile that felt like home stood in the doorway to welcome them. “Mieczyslaaaw!“ She reached forward and pulled him down to kiss both of his cheeks and hug him tightly. She hadn’t seen him since they all attended the funeral of their grandmother. As a longtime family friend in the area, it was an easy transition for the family to absorb Nelia in the fold. “Oh, my sweet child. Look at you, how you’ve grown. My love.” She ushered him inside to embrace John as well, but paused a little in surprise when she saw Derek. “Nelia, this is my friend Derek.” Stiles said, looking almost proud to bring home such a fine friend to his step-grandmother. Almost as if he was proving to everyone that he wasn’t a complete social pariah, that he had people who liked him enough to come all the way out to Michigan with him. Nelia looked surprised at the man before her, but to her credit recovered quickly, holding a hand out for him to shake. “So nice to meet you, Derek. Please, come in.” For all of Stiles’ warning of an accent, it really wasn’t that bad. Clearly not her first language, but perfectly understandable. Though Derek had taught himself Polish when you are very rich you have a fair bit of time on your hands, he knew that he could only tell Stiles that he could speak it once, and he was saving that card for later. Unless Nelia was struggling on something, he’d keep his fluency to himself. She pulled him in with a hand on his shoulder as well, closing the door to the cold.

The house was warm and alive, a strong furnace and people comfortable staying there. Derek was able to pick up on more than the others and could hear a side conversation between two men.

“Your other grandson and John are here.” An adult man, a husky voice, probably a smoker, speaking quietly in a distant room. There were footsteps coming towards the Stilinskis and Derek at the door, but the voice stayed put. Whoever was talking wasn’t moving a muscle to meet them.

“Good! Good. I want to see them. It’s been too long.” The responding voice was hoarse, stilted slightly, and far older. It almost reminded Derek of Vito Corleone, a man assured of his position as patriarch.Who wouldn’t have his opinion questioned.

"It’s a disgrace.”

"I have tolerated the insult of your war against them long enough. Silence.” An authoritative end to a conversation, before a creak of wheels coming toward them.

Stiles was going through family, stiff handshakes with the assorted uncles, trying to communicate through grip and direct eye contact that he knew precisely what they said about him and his dad, and that given the opportunity, he’d fight them. He then had to give hugs of varying sincerity with the cousins. The ones he knew from his childhood he could embrace with genuine emotion, the ones he’d never met was more of an uncomfortable formality, performed for the sake of appearances. Once finished, he saw his grandfather for the first time in years. It was a lance through his heart to see the once tall man reduced to a withered shadow in a wheelchair. “Hi Dziadek.” He said, bending down to put an arm around him.

“Oh, Mischief.” The older man put shaking hands around Stiles’ face. “You look so much like Claudia.”

Stiles nodded sadly as his grandfather patted his face and let him return to full height again. Mentions of his mother didn’t hurt as much as they used to, but he didn’t remember her face as much as the others did, it seemed. When he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see a ghost looking out like the others could.

Derek was awkwardly explaining who he was to some people there who also seemed confused, when the cousin he saw Nelia talking to earlier took his arm. “Derek, we were under the impression when Stiles said he was bringing a friend that you’d be a girlfriend.” She finally explained outright.

Derek blinked a few times and was grateful for all the years of keeping a straight face under pressure to now not give any sign of a reaction. He put his thoughts into a response after a moment’s recovery. “That does explain why Nelia was confused. I’m just a friend who didn’t have plans for Christmas and Stiles offered. If it’s a problem at all I could absolutely stay some-“

“Oh, no, staying here is fine.” The girl saved him from talking. “I’m Nika, by the way.” She fixed him with an odd look that he’d seen sometimes in Stiles, a sort of curious, searching look that a raptor might give while wondering if something was prey or a toy. “Just that originally, when you were a girlfriend, you’d have been staying in my room and Stiles was with my brother. But that’s clearly not going to be a thing. So you and my brother will be switching, so you’re with Stiles and my brother’s with me. He had to go move his stuff. You and Stiles should come up and see the room, I think we have some things to discuss.”

She was tossing around so many red flags in Derek’s head she could be a one person color guard. He didn’t know what the hell she was, but there was something very very very wrong with this whole situation. He might not have an intuitive evil detector like Stiles’ spidey sense, but he had a healthy dose of paranoia, and it was telling him that there was all kinds of trouble about to occur. Maybe she was going to ritually sacrifice them up there. Maybe this was the Polish Get Out. Wyjść. It was a little catchy.

The adults had started passing around drinks and returned to their original conversations, and Nika made some excuse about room arrangements and putting luggage up to drag Stiles away from the grandparents glad to be reunited with their prodigal grandson.

Stiles peeled away from them and caught the Am I Going To Be Flayed Alive look in Derek’s big green stupidly pretty eyes and almost laughed. “Relax, Ice Man, you’re fine.” He clapped him on the shoulder as they went outside to get the suitcases from the car. “It’s Nika. She’s my absolute fave cousin, and if something happened to her or she meant any kind of ill will, I’d know. Trust me. She’s fine.”

Nika lead them upstairs to a small room with a full size bed, dark blue walls, no decorations but a nightstand and rug. Hadn’t been lived in for months, given the dead air in the room. “So, Stiles. How about you tell me when your spark woke, and why you brought a werewolf all the way over here.”

Stiles choked on either air or an immediate response, either way he sounded like an ostrich getting throttled. Derek wasn’t making out much better mentally, but he only raised his eyebrows.

Nika smiled as she sat on the bed. “Come on, Stiles, where’d you think you got the gift from? Aunt Claudia never used her talents much, but she was one of us.” She picked up the candle on the nightstand and blew on the wick, a flame lighting to fill the room with some warmth. “I’ve never met a werewolf before, but you were sensing shit like Legolas out there, Derek, it wasn’t too subtle, and a set of ears and or nose like that, out of Beacon Hills aka Werewolf Wonderland?”

“More like nightmareland.” Stiles snorted. “So, holy shit, like five revelations at once and I wanna come back to like….all of them, but…uh….how many of ‘em know, downstairs?!” He asked, shocking Derek by asking an actually relevant, useful question.

“The three brothers know their mother and their sister were “”””out there”””” and that you’re insane and I’m a lost cause. Dziadek knew that Babcia was a superstitious woman and that the wild comes through sometimes. Oh, sorry Derek, Dziadek and Babcia are grandfather and grandmother respectively.” Nika explained. “Babcia did small things, mostly stuff with herbs and intent, like thumping a car engine and telling it to run, or aggressively sweeping bad energy out of the house, or putting bundles above doorways to keep evil intent out. Even the mistletoe around the house was hers.” She set the candle back onto the nightstand, the fire flickering with the movement. “Werewolves are very family oriented, in general, it’s unusual to break away from the family to join another entirely alien one for a holiday like Christmas. I’m just curious.”

“He’s way too nice and let his pack totally forget about him.” Stiles wasn’t remotely afraid of being as bitter about it as Derek tried to deny that he felt.

Nika digested the statement for a moment and gave them a vague smile. “Maybe not all of them.” She got up and left the room as if that would give her the last word. Clearly, she didn’t recall from her childhood who Stiles was, as he followed her as quickly as his gazelle legs could with an indignant “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?”

*~*

Stiles had been so wrapped up in realizing that there was a whole family history of witchery that he’d completely missed out on the fact that Derek and him were actually now supposed to share a bed until it was one in the morning and he finally arrived in the room. To find Derek sitting on his suitcase reading. “Hey, thought you came up here a while ago.”

“I did, but…” Derek half winced and locked his tablet. “We only got the one bed, and..”

“Bro, you used to live in the burned-out husk of your family’s old house I am not about to buy that you’re such a snob that you can’t share a bed for a few nights.” Stiles yanked his shirt off and tossed it in the vague direction of his suitcase. “It’s just a few nights and I even have sleep pants if you wanna go all no homo on me.”

“What? No, n- that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean.” The belt careened through the air in an ark as Stiles continued the process.

Derek was going to have to talk quickly if he wanted to get out anything. “I can’t sleep next to people.”

“What? Why?” Stiles paused, button of his jeans undone.

Derek was looking at a particularly fascinating piece of lint on the ground. “Just never works out right. I didn’t want to just disappear on you, so I was waiting for you to get back before I went to find a hotel or crash on the couch.”

“No, why. I wanna know why.”

Derek contemplated crawling out of the window to escape Stiles’ eyes, which even in the low light of the room burned into his skull. “I just can’t, alright?”

“Nope. Not alright. Fess up.”

“I’m a sleep cuddler.” Derek said it so quickly and refused to look up no matter what Stiles did.

Stiles was quiet for a few odd moments while he had a face odyssey. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Derek could feel the blush on his face and was actively willing it to go away forever. “Ever since I was a kid, if there’s someone next to me I always end up wrapped around ‘em. It’s not conscious, it just happens. So.”

“Jesus tittyfuckin’ Christ, Derek I thought it was something serious. I’m not gonna die if you give me a lil hug. Don’t be so dramatic.” Stiles finally flung his jeans off and crawled under the covers, the little tone of his phone plugging in to charge playing as he settled in. “G’night, Der.” He mumbled sleepily.

Derek had no choice. If Stiles told anyone about this, they’d never find his body. Whose body would go missing was up for debate.

*~*

Derek was a filthy liar when he tried to say it didn’t work out, and he knew it. He slept better than he had in months that night. When he awoke, Stiles was playing some mobile game, and Derek was spooning him pretty hardcore, legs tangled and an arm over his stomach. He moved away the instant he came to consciousness again. “Sorry.” He mumbled, only the ghosts of vowels in the slurred word.

“Hell, if it was a problem I’d have crawled out, but uh, you don’t get too much sleep and seeing as you knocked out for a solid nine hours there, I thought it best to let you wake up on your own.” Stiles was all nonchalance, but Derek could hear something like omission from his words. It’s not that he was wrong, it was just adjacent to the truth.

“Who told you I don’t sleep?”

“The fact that you text me back about Edda translations at three in the morning on Tuesday nights tells me that you’re not sleeping much. Now c’mon, we missed the breakfast train but if we make puppy eyes at Nelia enough she’ll probably cave and feed us. Or smack us lightly and call us lazy. One of the two.”

*~*

“Stiles, your friend is so handsome, how does he not have a girlfriend?” Nelia asked, perfectly comfortable to talk all kinds of terrible things as Derek was helping fold pierogi with Nika and Stiles. “He’d make a fine husband. He should find a good wife.”

Stiles gawked for a second, and had no clue how to respond. This would in no way stop him from doing so anyway. “He’s had a difficult time for a while, he’s helping his family right now, college, supporting them.” Stiles’ Polish was pretty rusty, he hadn’t been practicing much in the last several years.

“He has children?”

“No. Not exactly. More friends that he kind of brought inside because no one was helping them right.”

“Hmm. Nika, he’s handsome, isn’t he?”

Nika did not want to get dragged into this conversation. “Very, but it isn’t nice to talk about people in front of them.”

Nelia went to check on the uncles as they were all apparently having a slight discussion with John on the front lawn and was fully prepared to drag each of them back in by their ear and give them a firm education on the meaning of Christmas. This of course left the cousins and Derek all alone in the kitchen, the others of the family dispersed for their individual amusements.

“So, Stiles, are you…..and Derek….?”

Stiles blinked, sealing the dough around the potato and onion. “Are we what”

“Boyfriends.” She said it like it wasn’t kind of a bombshell of a word to utter.

“Nooo.” Flour and bits of dough scattered as he waved his hands to emphasize how NO that was. Absolutely not. Had she even seen Derek? He was so out of his league it physically and emotionally pained him. “ No. We’re just friends. Truly.”

“Okay, okay, I was just wondering. I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

“I’m not gay.”

“I didn’t ask if you were.”

“You were asking a little bit.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“Derek’s also not gay”

“I wasn’t asking!”

“But he does have terrible….choice in women. Every time he gets a girlfriend she tries to kill us.”

That was enough of that. Derek had developed some thick skin about the litany of traumas he’d incurred and would give Stiles a little leave to talk shit about Jennifer, but that was taking it a little more casually than he’d like. “That’s a little mean, Stiles.” He said in perfect Polish.

Stiles turned so many colors that there was a risk he might burst a blood vessel. He fled before anyone could grab hold of him and make him accountable for his actions. Nika at least muttered an apology before scurrying off.

Derek wondered if his deep-seated need to be dramatic may contrasting with his desire to not be such a colossal dick to people he actually liked.

*~*

Stiles successfully avoided Derek by busying himself with everything possible for the rest of the day, but of course, after the day, must come the night, and thus the sleep. In the same bed. With the guy he brutally insulted and exposed just hours ago. Fuck.

Maybe if Derek was already asleep he could just curl up in the closet and evaporate entirely before anyone noticed he existed. Fuck. Why did this have to happen. Why did he have to open his big stupid mouth and say the stupidest thing that he’d ever uttered in his life.

He didn’t see light coming from under the door as he went, but knew that Derek would wake up if the doorknob made even the slightest sound. He rubbed his hands enough to warm the bony fingers and waved his hand slowly around the doorframe, collecting the sound from that space before snatching it all. Just long enough to open it silently.

When he saw Derek sitting up in bed with just the candle on the nightstand and his tablet in hand, Stiles had half a thought to make a run for it. But Derek had already looked up with a raised eyebrow. There was no escaping.

“How’d you do that that quietly?” Derek asked, not addressing the parade of elephants doing the merengue in the room.

“I, uh, didn’t want to wake you up. So I just took the sound away from it.” Stiles answered, stepping inside and looking pointedly away from anywhere near the bed.

Derek locked his tablet and set it aside. “That’s pretty impressive.” Was all he said in reply, but it was gushing praise given who it was coming from.

Stiles couldn’t stand it anymore. “Derek I am so sorry I said that, I never should have even thought it, I just-“ his words were running on top of each other and he felt like King Trashbag of the proud nation of Shitfriendia.

“Relax.”

Stiles hated being told to relax by anyone, but he had to be very nice to Derek for the rest of their concurrent lives and there was something so calm about the way Derek said it that made it less insulting. He hazarded a glance up, but Derek wasn’t wearing a shirt and even in the low light of the room he could see chest hair and he had to look away immediately or he might die.

“You have a family member who understands you on a level none of the rest of us do. She’s becoming a fast friend and you’re very comfortable with her. It wasn’t the nicest thing to say,” and it was pretty damn private, but Derek was trying to make Stiles feel better so he wouldn’t bring it up, “but I know you didn’t mean to hurt me by it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” This was probably the most adult conversation that either of them had ever engaged in, it was frankly shocking. Derek had called Boyd to help process his emotions and figure out what to say in a way that was a little more level headed than he might have done on his own.

Stiles nodded, knowing that Derek wouldn’t appreciate further self-flagellation from him and that he just would have to accept being a terrible person for the rest of his life. When he crawled into bed, he lied awake, staring at the wall across from his face and mulled it over and over. He could hear Derek’s breathing settle as he fell asleep, and an hour later a couple wiggles and there was a nose pressing against his neck and a hand over his stomach. Stiles sighed at the warm heat against him, and finally could fall asleep.

*~*

Nelia checked the codfish in the oven, monitoring the temperature carefully. “Still not ready. Mieczyslaw, could you help set the table, please?” She asked, setting some rolled napkins and a handful of forks onto the table.

It was Christmas Eve, and the whole family was sitting down soon for Wigilia, the main feast. Usually eaten before going to Midnight Mass, beginning at around eleven and finishing at midnight proper. Despite its importance, the grandparents had not gone since the grandfather had been confined to his wheelchair and their local church loved its beautiful stone steps so much. As a religious building that was remarkably old, it was exempt from the ADA act requiring public buildings to be wheelchair accessible.

They still held the meal, though Nelia and the older Mieczyslaw went to bed and the others of the family were encouraged to go and say their prayers for them. The young children were kept at home with the grandparents to watch them and make sure no one got out of their bed to try and catch Santa Claus.

Stiles was carrying various accoutrements from the fridge and counters to the table, and counted the place settings. Exactly enough for everyone, though this alerted him. “Wait, Nelia, we’re missing one. The spot for the wanderer.”

In many other cultures, an empty place setting at a family meal might be in remembrance of someone who had passed, or who could not be present at the table due to extenuating circumstances. It meant that something was missing, and some wanted to honor that with a missing place for them at the table. However, in Polish tradition at Wigilia, there is an empty place setting for an unexpected guest, or wanderer. A wędrowiec.

Nelia gave Stiles a meaningful look, one that he couldn’t decipher. He was so used to these kinds of looks being paired with massive eyebrows and kaleidoscope green eyes that trying to do it for other people was more difficult. “Think on it.” She said, slicing challah bread into a basket and wrapping the napkin over it to keep them warm.

Stiles puzzled and puzzled til his puzzler was sore, then it dawned on him. He wondered why it hadn’t before. “Derek.”

Nelia chuckled as she started slicing a loaf of challah bread. “Such a smart boy you are, Mieczyslaw.” Bringing a friend who had nowhere else to go so soon beforehand was certainly an unexpected traveler, though she didn’t know that Derek had been a wanderer for much longer than just that winter.

*~*

As John wasn’t Catholic, Stiles hadn’t even been Confirmed, and Derek didn’t want to go without Stiles, they all hung back while the others went off to the Midnight Mass. Since they knew that with kiddos younger than eight, Christmas begins absurdly early for everyone, they went to bed after seeing everyone off for the church about 20 minutes from the house.

Stiles lied awake, waiting for Derek to properly fall asleep so he’d get that heavy warm weight against him, that even though it’d only been a few nights, he found it hard to fall asleep without that. He loved the excuse they both got for it, this unconscious habit, but he hoped, he wished that Derek wasn’t regretting that he woke up with an armful of Stiles.

But he didn’t. He lay there for a few hours before getting out of bed and leaving the room. Stiles thought he was going to the bathroom or something, but after ten whole awful minutes of not having Derek next to him, he had to investigate. Checking his phone, the screen said 11:57PM. The whole gang of adults would be out at Mass for a while yet, the service had barely just started and apparently the priest loved his speechifying when the whole congregation was actually there for once during the year as his captive audience.

Stiles crept downstairs looking for his friend, finding Derek in the kitchen, watching a mug rotate in the microwave. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

Derek glanced up. He’d heard Stiles coming down, but he didn’t really see the need to react beforehand. It’s not like his mom had caught him with his hand in the cookie jar or anything. “Kind of. And I wanted to set out some of the things I got for the kids who don’t have as much money as the others. Went out when you were trying to avoid me with their parents to make sure none of the kids felt left out.”

“Santa’s Lil Helper, huh?”

Derek pondered it. “A little. And it’s a Hale tradition. Or more, it’s a Derek Hale tradition, since I’m pretty much the one who spearheaded it.”

“What did your family used to do for Christmas?” They were speaking in hushed tones so as not to wake anyone up, but in the warm light of the kitchen Christmas lights, and the soft look of Derek in a beat-up tee and plaid sweatpants, he felt sentimental enough to ask.

“Christmas was always a little funny in the Hale house.” Derek admitted, stopping the microwave a moment before the chime would go off. “We didn’t do Santa Claus.”

“Did you do Santa Claws?” Stiles mimed some claws and fangs, knowing he’d earn an eyeroll at best.

Derek did not disappoint. “No, just a couple presents from Mom and Dad, and aunts and uncles would be later. They didn’t want us getting spoiled or thinking Santa loved us more because he gave us all kinds of stuff. But we didn’t open anything until at least noon.”

“Parents liked their sleep?” Stiles definitely remembered a firm ALL PRESENTS WILL BE REPLACED WITH CHORES AND BRUSSELS SPROUTS IF THIS DOOR IS OPENED BEFORE 8:00 AM rule on Christmas morning. Of course, Stiles was jumping on his bed with excitement at five in the morning, anyway.

Derek shook his head, and his phone started vibrating in his pocket. Stiles squinted, who would be calling Derek at midnight? Moreover, why was Derek actually taking the call??

He stepped outside onto the porch, little snow drifts from their actual white Christmas shuffling aside for him with his mug. Stiles saw the bag of Lindt truffles and a little chocolate powder dust on the counter- that sonuvabitch made HIS secret recipe. Wait. WHAT.

Derek stepped back in a few minutes later with half a smile on his face.

“Who was that?” Stiles had to ask.

“Cora.”

“What’d she want?”

Derek looked mildly embarrassed. “As of,” he looked at his watch, which read 12:08AM “…five minutes ago, I’m thirty years old.”

Stiles’ jaw dropped just a bit as his mind whirled. “It’s your birthday!?” he hissed, needing to aggressively shout but not able to wake the kids.

Derek almost winced. “Yeah.”

“Well….happy birthday!” Shit. Shit shit shit. HE’D KNOWN DEREK FOR EIGHT YEARS AND HE NEVER KNEW THIS WAS HIS BIRTHDAY. Stiles had to go find his King Trashbag of Shitfriendia crown again and sit on his dumpster pile.

“I don’t like people knowing. It’s an awkward day to have a birthday.” Derek sipped his cocoa, clearly uncomfortable.

Stiles didn’t know how to deal with this. “So…is that why you guys didn’t do Christmas until the afternoon?” He felt like he was playing minesweeper, except he didn’t get to see the warning numbers.

“Yeah.” He looked down into the mug, it was easier to talk about things if he didn’t have to watch the face journey of sympathy on people’s faces when he talked about his family. But he missed them on his birthday especially, and he wanted to talk about it. And out of anyone, he wanted to talk to Stiles about it. He knew, at least to some degree, the feeling of empty spaces in your memories. “My mom used to wake me up at 12:03 to tell me happy birthday and bring me in the kitchen. She’d have a present on there that was a birthday present only. From her. She was the alpha, so it was…pretty much impossible to actually ever get her alone. Always busy with the whole pack, worrying about everyone else, worrying about…” He trailed off. Christmas was always such a hectic time for everyone, so much noise and stress and busy rushing everywhere. “So it was nice, to have that little moment with just her.”

Silence fell between them for a few moments. Stiles didn’t know what to do with himself. Then he realized; his present to Derek was bizarrely perfect. “Hold on. Hold right here.” He stole up to his room and came back down with a wrapped present, the tape shoddily put on. He thrust the box out to Derek, looking way too happy with himself. “Happy birthday, big guy.”

Derek looked between Stiles and the box a few times, but took it and quietly unstuck the tape to slide the box out and open it. “You fucking dick.” He laughed as he pulled out a sweater that said “BIRTHDAY BOY” on it, with a hideous looking Jesus. A true ugly Christmas sweater, with a bday twist.

Stiles was grinning like a loon as Derek pulled the sweater on over his tee, that amused glint in Derek’s eyes where Stiles’ idiot sense of humor hit him perfectly. He picked up his mug again, and felt that it’d turned cold. “Can I get a warm-up?”

Stiles could have just poked the mug in Derek’s hands, or even just pointed at it. But Stiles wrapped his hands around it, his hands glowing a little as the liquid heated within, and Derek’s cold hand too.

Derek’s eyebrow quirked slightly. “Thanks.” He took a sip. “Can y’do whipped cream too?”

Stiles stifled a snorted laugh poorly, but didn’t step back away.

Derek set the mug back onto the table and looked at Stiles for another quiet moment, this one much less tense. Without looking up, he broke the silence with “I swear to God if there’s mistletoe up there right n-mmf!”

Stiles had closed the gap to kiss him, his hands holding Derek’s face as he nearly crushed their noses together. They eventually managed to tilt their heads properly so it was less of a frantic smush and more of a proper kiss.

When they finally broke so Stiles could breathe, Derek had a smile on his face, one that didn’t leave in half a second. “So, is there any?”

Stiles was able to stifle that stupid laugh better. “C’mon, lets get those presents out there for them. They’ll be back eventually.”

They put some Christmas movies on the TV as they sorted the presents into neat piles for each family so everyone could sit with their group. They were on the couch, writing out the tags on each one, making sure that the way all the Santas were written exactly the same and all of the names were spelled exactly correct. Stealing kisses every once in a while devolved slowly over the course of one of the Rankin and Bass animated movies to Stiles pressing Derek into the couch, making out like a couple of teenagers with the Christmas spirit in them.

John was trudging downstairs to see if Santa had left any of those shortbread cookies, but heard something odd from the family room. He was about to investigate, but heard something that sounded very distinctly like a Stiles happy noise, and decided to have a coughing fit and remind those two that they were not only not alone in this abode, but that the assorted parents and cousins would be returning soon and unless Stiles wanted to come out to the family in the most aggressive way possible, they better take it upstairs.

Derek managed to blush harder than Stiles did, but both had received the message, and put away the tags and pens before retreating to their room sheepishly. But they knew that John had probably seen this coming, and wasn’t going to judge them for it.

When they crawled into bed, Stiles didn’t have to wait to feel that arm around him, the press of heat against him, safe and warm. Derek kissed the back of his neck, and he could feel the smile against his skin.

Derek heard the family come back from the Midnight Mass downstairs, doing their best to tiptoe through and not wake up anyone.

“Ah ah ah! Mistletoe!” one of the aunts cooed, before a smack of a kiss.

“Who puts mistletoe in the middle of the kitchen.” Grumbled someone who was not getting themselves a Christmas kiss, bah humbug and all that.

The last voice was Nika. “Babcia always said there’s magic in a kitchen.”

#everchanginginks #stereksanta18 #*fic18 #*gifts18

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fresh-outta-jams · 6 years

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The Man of My Dreams

The Man of My Dreams Yoongi x Reader Soulmate AU

Author: Admin Mo Sequel to So Far Away (Link in Masterlist) Word Count: 2.3k Warnings: Soulmate Fluffff

Since you and Yoongi had met in person, not all that much had changed between you. When you were dreaming, you talked and hung out, and in person, it was the same, but without the talking. Yoongi had been working his ass off to learn ASL so you didn’t have to write everything out all the time, and he was getting good at reading your lips too. He didn’t try to make a big show of it, because he wasn’t that kind of person, but you noticed his improvement without him having to say anything.

When you were together in person, you spent a lot of time working on music. Oftentimes, he would pull you into his lap in the Genius Lab, strap some headphones on your head, and have you pick out what was slightly off. You were good at that. Other times, you would pluck out impromptu duets and giggle at the spontaneous chaos of the keys, clashing until you found a blend that worked.

The boys noticed a shift in his demeanor when he was around you. He was softer, lighter, not necessarily all that different, but different enough for them to notice. It happened to them too, when they were with their soulmates. There was something about the chemistry two members of a soul bond shared, something irreplaceable and unbreakable. No matter how many times the adults in your lives had described it to you, none of their explanations could compare to the feeling of it. There were no words to describe how close you felt to him, but maybe it was partially because you had known him for a few years prior to meeting him in real life.

As soon as the two of you could find time in your busy, busy schedules, Yoongi pulled some strings and arranged for a little trip.

By the time the day came for your vacation, you hadn’t seen Yoongi in real life in at least a few months. You were seriously craving his warmth, his arms around you, his voice in your ear. And what better place to satisfy your needs than in the happiest place on earth?

Destination: Disney World.

When you landed at the airport, you were looking for a driver with a sign with your name on it. Instead, you found a familiar face and a head of brightly colored hair. Rainbow.

(Y/N) “Rainbow” Garcia was Hoseok’s soulmate. She had the same name as you, so she had taken on the name “Rainbow” so the boys could tell you apart.

“Hey girl,” Rainbow smiled, pulling you in for a hug. You had already met her once for the TwoHearts Awards, and you and the other BTS soulmates had a group chat. It was lit. “You ready to get our Disney on?”

You nodded and gave her a thumbs-up. She handed you a pair of Minnie Mouse ears and you put them on. She too was wearing ears, but instead of the classic black ears with the red and white bow, hers were iridescent rainbow colors. You expected no less from her, to be honest.

“Those are from Yoongi. They’re meeting us at the hotel. But don’t worry, my playlist is lit. It’ll be a fun drive.”

And indeed it was. The two of you spent the entirety of the ride jamming out to your soulmates’ music, specifically, their mixtapes. With a healthy dose of BTS sprinkled in for good measure, of course.

The hotel you were staying in was the Art of Animation Resort, and immediately, the room you were in was perfect. It was Little Mermaid themed. You had latched onto Ariel for obvious reasons, given your shared lack of voice but love of music, so the movie held a special place in your heart.

You turned on the TV to find (surprise!) Disney movies and shows. Not that you were complaining. There was a reason you had taken Yoongi here in your dreams. Maybe it was the hope those movies had or the promise of magic and wishes granted, but you loved everything about what they stood for.

After waiting for a little while longer, you slipped into the bathroom (the shower looked like Ariel’s Grotto!) and changed into a t-shirt that said “a sea witch stole my voice”, adjusting your newly blue hair in the mirror. Yoongi had only seen it in pictures, but told you he was blown away as always. Your followers on Twitter, of course, had put up pictures of him with blue hair for the side-by-side comparison. The internet had spoken: you were officially couple goals.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, there was a knock at the door. Rainbow opened it and you walked out of the bathroom.

“There’s my rainbow girl!” Hobi exclaimed, taking Rainbow in his arms and spinning her around like he did every time they saw each other.

Yoongi came in after, a smile slowly creeping across his lips as he neared you. Reaching out, he twirled a strand of your blue hair around his finger. “The blue looks nice. And so do you.” Simple and sweet, as was everything about your relationship. He gently pulled you forward and kissed your forehead.

It didn’t take too long to get out into the parks, riding the bus to the Magic Kingdom. Yoongi held your hand tight, his thumb grazing over the back of it gently. He seemed nervous, you noticed. Quieter than usual. But then he would look over at you and all of his anxiety seemed to melt away into that beautiful smile. And yes, Yoongi looked adorable in his Mickey ears.

You put up a picture of the two of you on the bus, Yoongi’s head resting on your shoulder and his arm around your waist. In flooded the likes and comments. Rainbow made sure to have Hobi get a pic of you and her in front of the castle, pinkies interlocked and Minnie ears equipped. It was like the best double-date ever.

After riding Splash Mountain and getting absolutely soaked, which felt nice in the heat, hitting Haunted Mansion and listening to Hobi scream for ten minutes straight, and riding Pirates of the Caribbean, you took a break for Dole Whip, a magical blend of pineapple and vanilla ice cream. Yoongi reached across the table and took your hand, his thumb rubbing your knuckles. He had so much love in his warm brown eyes and it just filled you with warmth in that way unique to soulmates. You had never felt this way about anyone.

When your cup was empty, he threw it away for you and then came back, slipping his hand into yours as soon as you stood up from the table.

“Where do we want to go next?” Rainbow opened up her map of the park. “We still haven’t hit Tomorrowland.”

You held up your hand and signed “E-P-C-O-T?”

“Ooooooooh yessss,” Rainbow agreed.

“What’s in Epcot?” Hobi asked.

“The world’s showcase.” Rainbow lit up thinking about it. “They have like a bunch of buildings that represent a bunch of countries around the world.”

“It’s really cool.” You signed. Yoongi snaked an arm around your hips, a hand settling on the fabric of your jean shorts.

“Then we should go.”

After walking around the whole world in a few hours, you went back to the Magic Kingdom to ride the teacups, Small World (which resulted in Hobi singing the song for at least an hour after), and the Little Mermaid ride. You met some characters (caption: We took Happy and Sleepy to meet Snow White!), caught the parade, watched the fireworks, and went back to the hotel room.

Yoongi sat in your bed while you showered, his laptop sitting in his lap and headphones over his ears while he worked on mixing some beats and layering some harmonies. But as soon as the bathroom door opened, he closed the computer, turning his full attention on his beautiful soulmate. He watched as you walked over to the bed, your blue hair thrown into a messy braid.

“You are so beautiful, jagi.” His voice was low, already slipping into sleep. He truly loved being able to spend the night with you. And he hoped that someday soon, it would be an every night thing.

“Says the most handsome man in the world.” You signed, making him smirk and reach out for you. Moments later, you were in his arms and loving every second of it, basking in his warmth.

“I promised I would take you here, didn’t I?” Yoongi brushed the hair out of your eyes.

You nodded and curled into him, pressing a kiss to his jaw to let him know wordlessly just how much you cared about him. The connection you shared was was deeper than words. But that didn’t mean you didn’t have a surprise put together for him. Over the past several months, you had been going through vocal therapy. Yes, your vocal chords had been damaged beyond repair. They were not fit for regular use. But you found that with practice, you could force out a hoarse whisper. It was barely there, barely audible, but still there.

You didn’t say anything. Yet. You were saving it, the first ‘I love you’ for a special moment. You didn’t know, however, just how soon that would be.

***

A week in Disney seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Every day brought a new adventure.

One of the days you went to Blizzard Beach and you got to enjoy the sight of Yoongi in his swimming trunks with wet hair. There was a ton of splashing involved, especially where Hobi was concerned. His playfulness had been soaking more and more into Rainbow, you noticed. You were glad, though. After she had been stuck with Gray Syndrome for so long, it was nice to finally see her happy.

Another day, you went shopping in Downtown Disney, where when you tried to pay for the toys and things you had found, Yoongi lowered your hand and gave you a look that said, “I don’t think so.” And then proceeded to pay for you, which prompted you to give him a kiss as soon you walked out of the store.

You ended up watching Fantasmic, riding Star Tours, competing in Toy Story Mania, meeting Stitch, eating at Be Our Guest, and doing what you and Yoongi had always done: made the most of the time you had.

On the last day, everything was perfect. You were wearing your matching soulmate shirts, you had ridden so many rides, gotten ice cream, and now, you were watching the fireworks. Hobi and Rainbow had gone to ride Splash Mountain one last time, so you and Yoongi were alone, staring up at the brilliant colors that filled the night sky. His arm was slung around your shoulders and yours was wrapped around his torso.

After a few minutes, Yoongi bent down, seeming to notice something on the ground. You were too distracted by the bright lights and moving colors to fully process what was happening.

“Jagi, you dropped something.” His voice was behind you now, and when you turned to look, he was kneeling there, a little velvet box with the most perfect ring inside held in a shaking hand.

You were stunned. Shocked. You sort of had a feeling something like this was coming. You had known Yoongi for a long time, going on four years now, and you were soulmates after all. But there were still tears in your eyes as your heart threatened to hop out of your chest.

“Yes!” You mouthed, nodding frantically after staring at him for a while. “Y-yes!”

“I had a whole speech ready.” He chuckled, still kneeling on the ground. Yoongi took the ring out of the box and slipped it onto your finger, kissing the back of your hand. He stood on shaky legs, standing to meet you.

You didn’t hesitate to grab his face and pull it to yours, kissing him long and deep. His arms wrapped around your waist tightly and he deepened the kiss, thumbs massaging circles into your hips. When you finally came up for air, he stopped to look at you for a long time, admiring how the light framed your features so perfectly. He wanted to remember this moment and everything about it.

The moment you agreed to be his forever.

“Yoongi.” You strained to make even the smallest noise, but even with all of the sound that surrounded you, he still was taken aback, lips parting in silent surprise. “I love you.”

Although he had been able to keep his composure until now, the sound of your voice, however crackly, faint, or hoarse, caused him to immediately burst into tears, reaching out for you and pulling you into his arms. He couldn’t contain the emotion built up inside him anymore, and you realized as he held onto you as tightly as he could that this was the first time you had seen him cry. Even when you had met for the first time, he hadn’t cried, even though you had.

“I love you so much.” His voice was muffled in the fabric of your t-shirt. “So much.”

And so you stood there, holding each other and crying and confessing your love over and over, a diamond ring wrapped around your finger and more love in your heart than you knew what to do with. You knew one thing for certain: you couldn’t wait to start working on your forever with the man of your dreams.

#kpopwonderlandtag #yoongi #yoongi x reader #yoongi imagine #min yoongi #bts #soulmate au #suga #suga x reader

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attacksoftheclones · 7 years

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Why We Need to Appreciate Padmé Amidala

In spirit of #SWisagirlthingtoo making its way around Twitter, I thought now would be the perfect time to make a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while. Star Wars up until recently has not given much attention to its heroines, perhaps with the exception of the iconic Princess and General Leia Organa. It is incredibly sad that it has taken this long for the franchise to realise that characters such as Leia, Padmé and Rey (as well as the many animated heroines we have met such as Ahsoka and Hera) have been and will forever continue to be definitive factors in the way many girls have and will grow up.

When it comes to Star Wars, I loved Leia and I love Rey, but they are both not the heroine I connected with. I connected with former Queen and then Senator Padmé Amidala from the highly criticised (although increasingly less so) prequels and then again in the animated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Any Padmé fan knows that loving her as a character most often means you’ll often be told that in the end she did ‘nothing but cry over Anakin’ or is in no way comparable to her daughter, you’ll find it frustrating that no reference is made to her at all following Episode III and you’ll know that she has little to no presence in merchandising even when you are more than willing to throw coins down Disney’s way for her.

But Padmé deserves to overcome all of the above. Padmé constantly has to battle against both what people expected her to be (arguably a Leia clone) and the often restrictive and limiting definitions of what makes a “strong female character”, especially in pop culture. Regardless, here is why Padmé is such an underappreciated and amazing character.

The Phantom Menace:

Padmé is elected queen at 14 years old, a competent and strong leader wise beyond her years. She was educated in public service from an early age, earning the trust of her people after serving as the Princess of Theed and becoming a junior senatorial adviser upon joining the team of Apprentice Legislators from the age of 8.

She is one of the first people to acknowledge and realise the failures of the Republic (“It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions”, “Wake up, Senators, you must wake up!”).

She is brave enough to take part in espionage missions in order to allow herself to take part in both negotiations and the action, as well as to keep herself safe.

When the time comes, she is brave enough to reveal herself as the queen even though it is not asked of her.

It is her idea to form the Gungan Alliance and to try retake Naboo herself. She is able to realise that a diplomatic solution is no longer plausible for her home planet and instead of sitting back and ordering action from the sidelines, she fights alongside her people and risks her life in doing so.

She delivers victory, bringing the two species of Naboo together and liberates her people.

Padmé served the full two terms allowed by Naboo’s laws but was so popular as a leader that her people wanted to amend the constitution in order to allow her to remain queen.

Attack of the Clones:

Padmé continues to serve her people as the representative of Naboo in the Galatic Senate, even as her life continues to be threatened and also after she watches her decoy (and friend) die.

Despite more threats to her safety, Padmé is selfless in going with Anakin to Tatooine to try and save his mother as well as wanting to help and rescue Obi-Wan.

Padmé is prepared to put her career first. She denies her feelings for Anakin right until she believes she is going to die on Geonosis and understandably realises that her career does not have to be the only satisfaction in her life. She accepts that she is entitled and allowed to love, even when Anakin does not share the same luxury.

She decides to become committed to hiding her relationship so that she can continue her duties for the Republic as well as attempting to ensure Anakin is not denied his life as a Jedi.

Her every action is not driven by her love for Anakin. She decides to go rescue Obi-Wan when Anakin argues against it and whilst Anakin and Obi-Wan bickered when chained up on Geonosis, she instead took the time to rescue herself and reach higher ground.

Padmé survived the Battle of Geonosis as a clever politician and as a blaster-weilding fighter whilst many other Jedi and trained clones died. She proves again that she can fight.

The Clone Wars:

Padmé essentially becomes a hero through her politics.

We see more of her in action in the Senate, particularly in the episode The Pursuit of Peace where she gives an unforgettable speech. “Who are we fighting for? My people, your people, all of our people. This war is meant to save them from suffering, not increase it. I support our brave soldiers whether they come from the clone factories or from any of the thousands of systems loyal to the Republic… It is our duty and our responsibility to preserve the lives of those around us.” The full version can be found on Youtube.

Padmé continues to be the target of further assassination attempts but continues to expand her power and influence nonetheless.

Padmé cleverly earns the attention of the galaxy’s most important players and is able to come to adaptable and sufficient compromises with them despite differences in beliefs and alliances.

Missions with Ahsoka!!

She again does not let her decisions be influenced or driven by Anakin. When Anakin does not want her to go on a mission he deems to dangerous in the episode Senate Spy, she replies “You’re not going to let me? It’s not your decision to make, it’s mine”. Padmé puts her duty to the Republic first, even when it bothers Anakin on multiple occasions.

She is brave enough to leave Anakin when he violently attacks Rush Clovis, whom she had been previously romantically linked with.

Revenge of the Sith:

Yes, many of her scenes where she is active in the early formations of the Rebel Alliance are cut and we will never forgive George Lucas 5eva. The original ending where she attempts to assassinate Anakin also would have been awesome. This movie is where Star Wars fails Padmé, but her role in it still can not be ignored.

Padmé is able to question the state of the Republic when many around her are too afraid to in fear of accepting what it may truly mean – “What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists and the Republic has become the very evil we’ve been fighting to destroy?”

She recognises that Palpatine has gained too much power in the Senate upon becoming Emperor and reorganising the Republic into the Empire, famously stating “so this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause”. This leads her to form the early stages of the Rebel Alliance that would ultimately become a deleted scene but should still be considered canon.

Once learning all that Anakin has done, Padmé states that he is “going down a path [she] can not follow”. She is not blinded by love and is able to see his actions for what they are and who he has now become. He ultimately destroyed everything she had worked so hard to preserve.

Whatever way you want to believe Padmé died, she went through unimaginable heartbreak and her emotions should not totally be criticised because her pain will never be understood by most. People also often fail to realise that Padmé’s fate is also that of the Republic. She was fated to die with it as she was symbolic of its spirit. I think it is fair to say that she was never destined to live past the birth of Luke and Leia (despite that one line from Leia in Return of the Jedi which can be argued for) as Vader would never have been fully committed to being Palpatine’s apprentice with Padmé around and her future would have had to have been reduced to one of hiding.

It is Padmé that instills the hope and kindness in Luke that allows him to refuse the dark side and resurface the last bit of humanity left in Anakin/Vader. Luke does not win over his father through combat or power but through embodying the eternal impression of light that his mother left on his father. Like his mother, Luke knows that fighting, or ‘aggressive negotiations’, will not always be the answer. A New Hope is ultimately a product of Padme’s legacy.

I know myself that I would not be the person I am today without my favourite female characters. Through female characters, as girls we can feel as though we have defeated great evils, overcome inner conflicts and sometimes even get to save the boys for a change. We might not be able to pick up a blaster or lightsaber in real life, but we learn it’s okay to take charge and that there is absolutely no reason we should feel ashamed for doing so. We learn that we can aim for and strive for any goal whilst also feeling confident and every bit capable to get the guy on the side if we wish to and that having such feelings should not be seen to diminish our strength in any way.

Padmé carried the weight of her gender throughout the entirety of the prequel trilogy and for that reason alone she was never going to please everyone. She was the new female lead and many hoped she would be a character who was along the lines of being Force sensitive or perhaps even a pilot like Rey. But Padmé’s strength was in being kind when she had every reason not to be and was a force to be reckoned with through her intelligence and diplomacy that helped preserve the security and stability of the Republic for as long as it was able to stand under Palpatine’s manipulative rule. She was the humanitarian the galaxy needed when it began to lose all humanity.

Many people who grew up watching the prequels first probably connect with Padmé more because they never tried to fit her into a mould or an already established idea. But I do hope that fans of any age can come to recognise that Padmé is as worthy of being centre stage in the Star Wars arena as any other female character and I truly hope Forces of Destiny can help bring that about. Of course we need more representation in the Star Wars universe and I will never deny that, but I am lucky enough that I did gain a character from Star Wars that I adore so much. I also appreciate that these female characters can be every bit important to male fans as they are to female fans and any male fan that is able to appreciate our heroines as equal to our heroes is helping fandom and pop culture take a step in a better direction than it has in the past.

#padme amidala #star wars #women of star wars #prequels #padme naberrie #queen amidala #the phantom menace #attack of the clones #revenge of the sith #TPM #AOTC #ROTS #the clone wars #TCW #forces #forces of destiny #FOD

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vertyblog · 7 years

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The Best: The Saga

I have a good friend, not on tumblr, who frequents terrible roblox roleplay servers, looking for fun.

A result of this fun is one of the best stories I’ve ever read. The Best story.

He preferred to remain anonymous, but I think this needs to be shared with the world. With that in mind, all of this text below this readmore is his own words, not mine, and a completely factual account of events. (The art is by me tho.)

Oh speaking of that- the art was made at the time of original telling, which means there was some artistic liberty and also my art separates it into three parts while the actual text goes with two parts. I left both as is for the sake of historical accuracy.

Now then, before I get into the glorious clusterfuck that is my story, I need to make a few things clear. Yes, this was an RP, but it took place within an actual game space. All characters were in a "Physical" world and not just some text on a page. However, most complex actions were done 100% of the time through text. With that out of the way, we can begin.

This story is split into two pieces, each one taking place on a different real-world day. They all happened back-to-back, and the entirety of the story took place over the course of a weekend. As a sort of hobby, I like to go trawling for terrible RPs and join them to laugh at what I find. It's nothing short of incredible observing (and sometimes being a part of) the often hilariously bad antics Mary Sues get up to. This being said, while this STARTED as one of those times, it quickly escalated into the greatest thing I've ever lived through. So, enough of the backstory, let's get into it. For this particular outing, I decided to pick a Super Paper Mario RP. Yes, they exist and yes, they are exactly as terrible as you think they are. But that's not why we're here.

PART 1, In which a Hero is born-

It all started from the moment I logged in; we were off to a flying start. Basically every bad RP trope and sin was being evoked at the same time completely unironically by people who didn't know any better. I don't come to these to clean them up or set everyone on the right path, I come here to point and laugh at the people for my own amusement. Still, you can't exactly lurk an RP that takes place in an actual game; You have to be SOMEONE, and if you looked important in any way you would somehow be swept up into whatever crap they were doing. So with all of this in mind, I chose to look as unimportant as possible. I was a Green Toad. Not a frog, mind you, but those vaguely adorable Mushroom folk from Mario (Why am I saying this? I have seen some real idiots and the last thing I need is someone thinking I was a frog while doing this). Toads are nearly invisible, as far as the dozens of Marios and Luigis and what-have-yous were concerned. So, with my character set and with one eye on the global chat to catch any wonderful bits of Fail RP, I set off on the greatest ride of my life.

I chose to settle down in a town on one of the map borders. Honestly it was a quaint little place. Snow-covered, with a train occasionally showing up to ferry off whatever Joe Q. Jerkholes wanted to go to where things actually happened. Now, while there's definitely some cringe-worthy stupidness in every last RP I've gone to, I can reliably say without a doubt in my head that I have never seen something as laughably terrible as what this one group of people was doing. There was one group SOMEWHERE that were having a Cyberpunk RP. In this Paper Mario game. How exactly you do that is beyond me; it's not like the map is full of cities and technology and flying cars, and yet they were having the time of their lives blasting away at each other with their guns and smoking their cigarettes in back alleys that didn't even exist on the map. It's been over a month since this happened, and I can't even remember what was going through my head at that point, so I'll put it bluntly. I'll stand for a lot, I'll idly sit by and just let a lot of crap happen. This was just one step too far, and through the power of bad (great) decisions, I decided that I was going to put a stop to it. Of course if it was as simple as that, we wouldn't have this story.

Before I set out of the little snow-covered town, some preparations had to be made. Even if I was the most un-threatening Toad in the world, someone out in that grand old world would find SOME reason to start something with me. To that end, I took up a simple spear. There wasn't a single thing special about it; no legendary enchantments, no amazing artifact status, no +1. Just a completely mundane spear. And that was it. So with newfound weapon in hand, I boarded the train out of town. Cutting out the boring travel time, I arrived in a desert area. As frequently as these people were talking about their trenchcoat-wearing Bob-ombs and augmented Yoshis (I wish I was joking), I still had not a damn clue where on the map they actually were. As I would soon find out, where they were didn't matter. While the group actually having this RP was only something like six people, it happened to be the "Coolest" thing on the whole server, so everyone and their mother was copying it. Enter our first contestant, who now stood in front of me. His sprite was your average Shy Guy. The way he was DESCRIBED to me, he was nothing short of Adam Jensen, sunglasses and all. And just as I had predicted, he saw some random Toad wandering around and figured I must have been easy pickings. So he more or less started trying to kick my ass. If you're expecting some amazing and epic battle to get written here, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Instead, this is what actually happened. He tried his best to get his actions across, and I responded by using the largest words I could get from my vocabulary and putting them into my responses. After a few minutes of this, I'm convinced his brain shut down and he simply logged out. So, that was one victory for me. And I continued on my way.

To say that the effects of this RP were server-wide is an understatement. Everyone I came across had some bit of metal stuck to them somewhere, and I'm convinced they saw the Mushroom Kingdom as some glowing neon cityscape. Luckily for me, most of them seemed content to let me continue on my way. I wasn't out to burn down the whole server, my problem was specifically with the source of the madness. Rapidly exhausting the places these guys could be, I hopped on a cruise ship to maybe point me in the right direction (And to get away from the throngs of cyborg rejects wandering the streets). Unfortunately for everyone, not even at sea was I safe from out-of-place Cyberpunk whackos. Our next offender happened to be a Yoshi. This particularly wonderful individual had a mohawk and could breathe fire, among other fun abilities (Can you guess what color Yoshi he was? Hint: it was black). In hindsight, I'm pretty sure he was trying to make himself Bowser without actually playing as Bowser. At any rate, he was yet another wonderful problem who saw fit to try and murder me. To his credit, this guy wasn't actually thrown off by large words, and did put up a reasonable fight. After a few minutes of us dancing around the ship trading blows (And the entire thing being an inferno because of liberal application of fire), the two of us go overboard. It was either to escape the fire or he grabbed me and jumped, but that doesn't matter. What DOES matter is that when you replace a large portion of your body with metal parts, you don't float very well. To my utter shock and amazement, the Yoshi forgot to augment his lungs. I think he wanted me to pull him ashore and start some wonderful friendship between us, but I was having none of it. I left him to sink to rock bottom, which prompted some wonderful comments from him riddled with questionable grammar, mostly to the effect of "Aren't you the hero?". He didn't get a response from me. I was just some Green Toad with a spear.

So, I clamber ashore from this underwater zone and I'm on an island. Decently sized, and as I would soon find out, without a single other person on it. While I DID want to get away from it all, this was a tad extreme. I get to exploring and find out a few wonderful things: The only boat that takes you off of this island was broken because of shoddy scripting and would never arrive, there is nothing to do on this island outside of jump on things and reenact your favorite castaway movie, and the Circuit City wholesale saw no signs of stopping any time this century. What would have normally been entertaining roleplay failures in the global chat became anything but. I'm not some insane Mario fanboy, but having gotten this far into attempting to stop this from happening and having it continue unopposed just felt like a slap in my face; It was an insult to me, and this had gone from a visit born from morbid curiosity to an anger-fueled mission. With my only way off of this island never arriving, I decided on simply killing myself to respawn on the mainland. I was simply going to walk into the ocean, fall through the map, and respawn back where there were people. It was when I took five steps out into the water that something incredible dawned upon me. The entire ocean was a solid object, just like the land. It was simply a different kind of land painted blue and with a fancy water texture on it. Only the water immediately around the cruise ship was special in any way, with the rest of the ocean just being a solid slab. I was walking on water. I walked all the way back to the mainland. The mapmaker does deserve SOME credit, however. When I say this was an ocean, I mean it. The walk was long, but eventually, I came ashore once again.

Where exactly I ended up concluding my miracle walk across the ocean was another matter entirely, however. I stepped out into a forest that I hadn't been to before. Once again, giving the mapmaker some credit, I did get lost in these woods. After a couple of minutes of aimless wandering, the forest took on a different tone. It's become obviously more spooky (I use that term loosely. It was about as spooky as a bedsheet ghost) and it becomes very clear why: the woods appear to lead directly to the titular mansion from Luigi's Mansion. Why exactly it was in a Paper Mario RP I couldn't tell you, but there it loomed, amidst the trees and less-than-adequate lighting. It was here than I ran into a pretty large issue; not so much the mansion proper, but what was right next to it: E. Gadd's lab. This is one of the very few locations on the entire map that had actual, honest-to-God technology in it, so to say that it was swarmed was an understatement. Now, I want to make something very, very clear here. I won my first two scrapes with these clowns because of sheer luck or glaring incompetence on their part. No matter how well I wrote or how amazingly I could wield a spear, it would offer no defense from an entire room full of these people all coming at me at once. So the lab was a no-go, but I derived a small amount of joy from the fact that there wasn't a single one of them in the mansion proper. I like to think they were actually afraid of the place, although that probably wasn't the answer. So my next course of action was to go inside.

As mentioned before, the inside hadn't a single soul within. I have never played Luigi's Mansion so I cannot attest to the accuracy of the interior. For what little the words of a stranger on the internet are worth, it certainly looked the part. Probably much smaller than the real thing, but once again that isn't the point. After walking through a few identical hallways and being moderately shocked at the complete lack of anything even remotely resembling a ghost, I finally ran into someone else, and was more than surprised with what I found. I fully expected another wonderful individual to come charging at me with his cyber-arms and demand my lunch money or something, but instead I was greeted with a "Hello" and the realization that this one guy wasn't a cyborg. For those that care, he was playing as Mr. L, or at least had him selected as his player model. He wasn't exactly in-character, but I think he just wanted to talk to someone that ALSO wasn't trying too hard. We get to talking, and he genuinely threw me a curveball when he asked, "What's your name?". To be honest, I hadn't given our hero one yet. In thinking what name would be appropriate for a random Toad, something rang out in my head, something that Toads always seem to say. "I'm The Best.", I told him. Seemingly content with that answer, we exited the mansion together. It is at this point that, once again, I have to be the bearer of bad news. I'd love to say that we teamed up like some kind of Buddy Cop movie, found those jerks, and saved the day like the big-dick heroes you think are at the end of this chapter, but alas there is no such thing. So here's what actually happened. A hacker turned up, and crashed the game. As simple an anticlimax as that. With that being said, in all honesty I don't think I could've went out and gotten a better ending. There's something wonderfully poetic about Cyberpunk RPs ending because an actual hacker turned up.

If our story ended there, I would have been content. But once again, through the power of excellent decision-making, I returned the following day.

My second excursion started more or less the same way as the first: Roleplaying failures abound, yours truly as a Green Toad, and a whole wide world to blunder through. Except at the onset of this adventure, there were no Trenchcoats or Augments. It wasn't exactly 100% normal goings on in the Mushroom Kingdom, but really it never is. As I once again trekked up to that snow-covered village, I scanned the Global chat for anything worthy of my attention; be it offensively bad or just stupid enough that it had to be seen in person. Three things caught my eye. The first was a bodysnatched/posessed/evil/combination Princess Peach who was now out to kill Mario. Normally this would be cause for alarm, but there were roughly a dozen people playing as Mario. As far as I was concerned that Peach was doing her God-Given duty and thinning the herd, so I would let her carry on this most righteous mission. The second event was that, apparently, the Mushroom Kingdom was in the midst of some kind of alien invasion. This was ALMOST what this part of our story was about, until I saw the third and final thing to grace my screen. Somewhere out in that world, out in that grand old expanse of continent, there was another Toad calling himself The Best. It was a common thing for any enterprising Toad out on the street to say; that wasn't what set me off. He was using it as a title, claiming that he was actually The Best. He swung those two words around like some kind of blunt instrument and expected everyone to bow down to him. So I made it my NEW mission to take the title from him. I had claimed in passing to a random stranger a day prior that I was The Best, and now the time had come to prove it. With spear once again in hand, I set out from my frozen home to take a random person on the internet down a few pegs.

I elected to not take the train this time, instead deciding to hoof it back to civilization. I had an entire server to comb for one man in particular; a train or any kind of fast-travel would raise my chances of missing my mark. Fortunately (Or unfortunately, depends on which camp you're in) it also increases my exposure to the ever-present bullshit that infests these places, which is exactly what I ran into. Fleeing at high-speed from a full-blown Dragon, a Princess Peach made a beeline straight for me. Yelling "Help me!" in about every way imaginable, she just sort of kept on running past me and left the first person she ran into with the monumental task of getting rid of a Dragon. Deciding a Toad was an easier target than a Princess, the dragon seemed pretty happy with the arrangement as well. I've had my fair share of fighting dragons, so I had a pretty good battle plan. Of course, EVERYONE always has a plan, until the goddamn lizard starts breathing fire. The start of the fight was pretty ineffectual on both of our parts, the Dragon trying vainly to hit the tiny target that is a Toad and me trying to piece together how I would take down something this stupidly big. Calling upon my experiences dealing with things far too large for a person so small to be expected to kill, I decided to take the Shadow of the Colossus road, and start scaling the beast. I'm assuming at this point the thing took flight and I somehow brought it down to earth again after a prolonged struggle, because the next thing in my memory is me still fighting this damn dragon in the middle of the desert.

I don't know just how long we had been locked in this struggle, but I know that at that point I just wanted to be done with it. I did my best to force the thing into a good position for me to gain the upper hand, but it's pretty damn hard to make a dragon do much of anything, especially when it wants to consume your weird Toad head thing (Is it a hat? Is it their head? Someone please inform me, I need this question answered.) But sure enough, through judicial use of baiting both literary and physical, I managed to get the Dragon into a corner. Three separate times I tried to end the fight with a decisive strike, but each one he would bullshit out of it. It's to be expected, the last thing anyone wants is for their character to get offed, even worse if its in an excessively embarrasing matter. "Killed by spear-wielding Toad" is about as embarrasing a death as you can have in something like this, being only a few steps above "killed by Goomba walking to the left". But anyway, that's not the point. After a bit more flailing, I took one final shot at the damn thing in such a way that there was well and truly no way out of it. Probably fed up with getting whooped all up and down the map and airspace by something only a few steps above "Goomba" in threat level, the dragon promptly ragequit. And that is the story of how I killed a dragon. Unfortunately (Or fortunately, depending on how you feel today) I didn't have time to go track down the Princess and inform her that the dragon was dealt with. I probably would've gotten a cake, maybe a statue, maybe ignorance. Who can say? At any rate, with that distraction dealt with I got back to my primary mission.

You would think that in a game like this, Toads would be in short supply. I certainly thought so, but apparently they were more popular than I first assumed. For a good long while, the only thing I did was wander the earth, find a Toad, and ask them if they were The Best. It was always followed with a "No" and I continued on my way. There were probably far better ways I could've gone about it; I could've just called the guy out in general chat and hopefully had him come to me. Hindsight is 50/50 and in spite of how often I'll think of myself as a smart individual, I am definitely not the brightest bulb in the box. Anyway, back to our story. This pattern of asking random Toads if they were The Best and moving on went on for a few more iterations, until I saw one of them get on a train. Thinking it was my man, I made a beeline for it, only for the train to pull out of the station and speed off with me having not even seen the guy's name in time. STILL unable to grasp the concept of "Global Chat", I did the only thing my mind thought of and started running after the train like an idiot. I don't have to put it in writing but I'm going to anyway: Trains are faster than Toads. I did not come even close to catching up to that train before it sped off over the horizon and carried the mystery man with it. So I did the (reasonably) smart thing and just caught the next one, hoping that maybe he'd be standing around the next train station, making my life easy.

It seems endemic of the Mario universe that nothing is ever simple. You want a dollar? Go bash your head against a brick. Out for a Sunday Stroll? Hope you're headed to the right, 'cause that's the only way you're going. So of course shit went down on the train. A player dressed as Mr. L walked up and down the cabin kind of aimlessly. Given my one and only instance of prior experience with anyone dressed up as Mr. L, I was almost delighted. For one brief and shining second, I thought I would finally have an ally against the chaos. The first words out of his mouth were that, verbatim, he pulled out a knife and tried to stab me. He was one Katana short of fufilling every stereotype in three seconds. Honestly I don't know what I expected. I never got a chance to respond to my assailant, as another player dressed up as Luigi spotted his evil twin, thought he was hard enough, and decided to have a go. Say what you want, but I wasn't about to deny Luigi a shot at his doppelganger. The two of them launched into combat, and I made myself scarce. I don't know who won the scrap. Some say they're still fighting to this day. All that matters is that the train pulled into the station, and I kept on my search.

The cycle continued. Find a Toad, ask if they're The Best, get the answer of "No", keep on walking. Until finally, I found my man. He didn't look like your average Toad, but that isn't saying much. Clad in some kind of cloak and armed with a spear all his own, he had chosen Yellow for his color. I approached, and I asked the question for the last time. I got a lot more than a "Yes", but to save all of you the hospital bill and subsequent psychiatrist visit, I'm just going to condense it down to a "Yes". After a while of his rambling about just how great he was, I cut him off with an offer someone of his pride couldn't refuse. It was something to the effect of "I don't think you're all that great, and I'll fight you to prove it.". Several sentences of heated words and a LOT of escalation later, it had gone from a simple test of honor to a full-blown fight to the death. My plan was to keep it on the down-low; any sort of high-profile and high-impact fight would be sure to draw attention from everyone and their mother, and the last thing I needed to deal with was some full-blown warzone. Unfortunately for me, someone playing as Bowser overheard us and walked up.

I know what I expected. I expected Bowser to go on about how HE was actually the Best and try and kill both of us. Instead, he said that he wanted to host this death battle at his "Rad castle". Before I could object to this in favor of the quiet 1 v 1 I wanted, the other guy agreed to it. What I DID finally say was that I would meet him there at sundown. Both for dramatic effect (which I knew he'd eat up), and to give me at least fifteen minutes to come up with a plan for when this inevitably went tits-up. So, with the date and time for our climactic showdown set, I hit up the local shops. I bought everything I could that I thought would give me some kind of edge, which turned out to not be much. Wandering the continent on a manhunt didn't exactly pay well, and I could only afford a few Mushrooms and a single Fire Flower. Knowing full well I was pretty unprepared for some kind of mass-swarming if Bowser sent out the army of minions he'd probably have waiting, I went anyway. Even if I was marching straight into what I thought was a massive trap, I had little choice anymore. I knew what I expected. When the sun set, and I made my way through that castle gate, I realized that I had completely under-estimated whoever was playing Bowser. What greeted me when I walked through that gate was nothing short of incredible.

You see, Bowser had spread the word about this fight across the land in record time. His castle was packed with people, all watching from the ramparts and the balconies and anywhere else they could stand or sit. And amidst them all, looking down from his throne room, was the King Koopa himself. As I entered the courtyard, he gave me a goddamn entrance worthy of some kind of wrestler on WWE. It was absolutely astounding. He went on to do the same for my opponent. I hadn't planned for an audience, much less one the size of damn well near the entire server. With that many people watching, I threw aside my plans for some quick and decisive conflict. These people probably paid really good fake money for those seats and goddamn if I wasn't about to give them their money's worth. And just like that, we crossed spears and the fight began. Everyone I had encountered up to this point was either incompetent or simply unintelligent. He was a completely different beast. Prideful, overconfident, and showboating like you wouldn't believe, but he could actually back it up. For the first time in my entire misadventure, I was toe-to-toe with someone who could stand up to me. He might have actually been The Best, if only I wasn't here. It was a knock-down, drag-out brawl, eventually exiting the courtyard and had us both parrying and dodging through all of those balconies and ramparts I had mentioned earlier. Spear met spear, strikes glanced, and we continued to drift through the castle locked into a lethal struggle only one of us would walk away from. Eventually the fight gravitated to the highest spire of the castle, steered there by both of us. We both knew the fight was going to end up there, and we both wanted to be the last man standing. Unfortunately for him, I borrowed a page from Joseph Joestar's playbook and started going for some hard reads and some pretty sick bait.

At the very pinnacle of the spire, I went for an all-or-nothing maneuver: I let him disarm me. My spear sailed off the tower and far, far out of my reach. Rather than go for the killshot, he gloated. He launched into yet another speech about how great he was and how I was a fool for challenging him and all that wonderful jazz said better by about three dozen other folk. It was at this point that I pulled out the ace I'd been hiding up my metaphorical sleeve the entire fight, and used the Fire Flower to launch a point-blank fireball right into his face. It caught him mid-sentence, and it gave me the upper hand, if only for a brief moment. My one regret out of this entire adventure is that I didn't have a cool thing to say at that exact moment. So, wordlessly, I dropkicked him straight off the tower. And down he plummeted, well within view of everyone who attended, right into the lava below. And with my brutal mission achieved it was official: I was The Best, and everyone in the server now knew. So much for being an unassuming Toad. As I stepped down from the tower back into the courtyard, Bowser stood before me and the exit. To this day, I am absolutely convinced that he was going to start something the moment the fight was over. But after the display I put on up there, he merely handed me my spear (No idea how he got it), told me that the fight was the most awesome thing he'd ever seen, and got the hell out of my way. With my goal attained and no reason to stick around with all the attention I was about to get, I walked out of the fortress and logged off.

But what if I told you it got better? The following day, curiosity won out one last time and I logged back in.

PART 2, in which the Hero becomes a Legend-

Everything up to this point was great and amazing, but this is the point at which this story transcends reason. It's also the part I remember the best, so strap yourselves in, this is going to be a long one.

I log in, I pick my Green Toad, I exit spawn. As an extra measure, to keep anyone who remembers me from last time from swarming me immediately, I hide my Username. Immediately, something strikes me in a metaphorical sense; I spy another Green Toad. Not exactly out of the ordinary, except they were talking to yet another Green Toad. Chalking it up to coincidence, I entered town. The sheer number of people playing as Green Toads was staggering. It had gone from nearly a dozen Marios, Luigis, and any other important guy that looked cool, to nothing but the most unimportant character in a Mario game in a very specific color that wasn't red. In one chain of bad decisions and murder in front of an audience, I had gone from some nameless jackass to the new meta. Everyone wanted to be The Best, it was goddamn surreal. On the upside, when everyone's The Best, no one is. So by virtue of being so popular, I was once again invisible. Imagine if every problem solved itself like this. On the downside, it was going to be a bit hellish proving my own identity. Still, it was nice to blend into the crowd again. I kept a watchful eye on the chat. With this many people wanting a title that can only belong to one man, I figured the entire server was going to devolve into complete anarchy sooner or later. There was a certain appeal to a server-wide free-for-all with everyone vying to be the same guy Highlander-style, but that's neither here nor there.

It was calm. It was surprisingly calm; no one went for each other's throats, life proceeded as normal. The Princess and a few Toads that guarded her walked amongst the crowd of people in the town square. Spotting her and her guard was pretty easy; they were the only thing that wasn't green. She was handing out invitations to the townsfolk for some kind of banquet or celebration or party or SOME kind of mass-gathering at the castle that night. Even the Global chat was calm; the entire server was, if only for a minute, peaceful. Honestly, the place had started to grow on me; I can say that I legitimately liked the dumb antics that I usually got up to every time I logged in. So I stuck around, even though nothing was going on; Hell, I thought about buying a house near the castle just to be closer to where the action happened. Funnily enough, this was the right choice. While I was house-shopping, I saw speech bubbles floating up from this sort of back area inbetween a few of the houses. It wasn't out-of-place or anything because the town was jam-packed; it was what the bubble said that caught my attention. "They can't know we're here.", it said. So, naturally the curious type, I ducked into a nearby vacant house and started spying on whomever was speaking.

It was more Toads, but something was off. They were purple and not green, the both of them. One just an ordinary Toad and the other using some kind of palette swap of Toadette, I think. Their conversation continued, and to say that I had struck gold was an understatement. So, to run you through who these two were and why they were about to set the greatest cavalcade of insanity in motion: Remember when I mentioned that there was some kind of alien invasion going on in Part 2 of my story? Well, these two were it. Shapeshifters, and not friendly ones. Obviously they wanted to take over the Kingdom, but their plan was to crash the gathering the Princess had planned for later tonight, slaughter her and any other important figures that turned up, turn all of the Toads into more aliens through MacGuffin Magic, and then take their army and steamroll the rest of the continent. Now, I was in a bit of a tight situation. I didn't have my spear yet, so charging into the alley and handling them right then and there was out of the question. Warning the town or the Princess' guard was something I was strongly against, as that reduced me to nothing more than a whistleblower and not the absolutely legendary figure that I had somehow become in the eyes of these people. So really, I had one option: Get my spear, get supplies, and personally foil their plan in front of everyone. The only problem was, I did not have a lot of time or money to do it with.

I had very, very little in the way of coins to my name, and I wasn't just about to grab any spear from any old shop; It had to be the one I've always carried. The journey from the main city up into the snow-covered lands isn't exactly a long one, but it wasn't short, either. Worse still, what shops they did have up there were pretty lackluster in supplies and rather high in price. Still, I didn't have time to do much else. I made the trek, keeping a watchful eye on the sun and the global chat, hoping the party wouldn't start until I got back. I made it up there as fast as I could, and my spear was there waiting. I'd used it for a lot up until now, but its greatest challenges were still ahead of it. With my weapon of choice sorted, I walked into the local storefront. All I could afford was two mushrooms and a bottle of Hot Sauce that happened to be on sale. Honestly, I was ready to take anything I could get on the shoestring budget I had brought with me. As I departed back for town, things took a turn for the worse: The sun had set, the party had begun, and I was nowhere near the city.

I was running as fast as a Toad could go. I kept glancing from the road to the global chat; their plan could kick off at any moment and if I wasn't the guy to stop them then I don't think anyone else would. Yeah, everyone wanted to be me, but nobody wanted to have the danger of potentially having their character die doing heroics; they only wanted to be heroes and live to gloat about it. Sooner rather than later I get back into the town. There's no yells about dead princesses or mass anarchy in the town, so I only assume that I still had time left. Finally, I reached the castle proper only to be faced with something I forgot to prepare for: The Princess had posted up guards out front whom were actually checking for invitations. I didn't have one and I didn't have time to go looking for one, either. I had to get through that door as fast as possible; I had no idea where my enemies were and for all I know they were already inside. It's then that I looked at the guards at the door and remembered a very crucial fact: everyone was playing as a Green Toad today. If I could just get through the door, they wouldn't be able to pick me out from the crowd. So with that in mind, I picked my moment and simply sprinted through the doors. Once inside, I walked into the nearest group of similar-looking mushroom people and held my breath. The door guards walked in, picked some random fellow that just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, and kicked him out instead of me. If you're out there, and you're reading this, Thank you random citizen. Yours was a pivotal role in this tale, and I will not forget your unintentional sacrifice.

I was inside, and the gathering was in full swing. Just what this was all for I never found out; I was moving too fast to take in the details. First it was scanning the crowd and trying to pick out anyone that was purple. Luckily, it seemed as though they weren't here just yet. Then, I tried to find the Princess. Outside of their plan and the fact that they came from outer space, I had no idea what those two could do, so my best bet was to get the Princess out of the castle and hope that the confusion they'd cause would let me and her get the hell out of dodge before the E.T.s realized she was gone. Let me tell you, it's no wonder Bowser is able to kidnap her so easily, because she REALLY makes no attempts to hide herself or even have guards around her. She was talking to Daisy and a few OC Princesses from made-up kingdoms about, well, me and my stupid antics yesterday. Almost on cue, I walk up to where she was standing and strike up a conversation. Well, perhaps "conversation" isn't the right word; it was pretty one-sided. I got her attention, and informed her that some very not-nice people were due to turn up any minute now and that she should come with me if she wanted to get out of this in one piece. This prompted a question I was hoping beyond belief would eventually get asked. "What? Who are you?" I needed only to utter three words and draw attention to my username for just a moment. "I'm The Best."

Three words worth twenty times their weight in gold. Three words that silenced a whole table full of royalty and fixated all eyes on me. Three words, met only with a singular response of ":O". With little ceremony, and even less to say, the Princess stood up and was at my side in an instant. I had lucked out; the person I was trying to save was also a huge fangirl. The rest of the table had their own things to say, but at that point my mind was already trying to think five steps ahead. Every second I was still at this party was another second off of the invisible timer heralding the arrival of the aliens. I was being posed with a really, really difficult question: How do you sneak a Princess out of her own party while attracting as little attention as possible? Frankly I didn't have an answer, so my initial plan was to simply say "Screw it" and walk out the front door, all witnesses be damned. Fortunately for the dramatic tension of the story and unfortunately for my nerves, at that exact moment, my time ran out, and our two antagonists strolled into the castle, shooting down my plans for an easy front door escape. Our escape was temporarily put on hold, and all mental resources were instead pushed towards NOT letting the regicidal extraterrestrials spot me or Princess Peach.

As fast as my fingers could manage, I typed out my instructions. Specifics aren't important, the gist of it was that I wanted her to stay as close to me as possible, and to follow my lead. With that out of the way, I ducked behind a pillar and triple-checked that I was talking into local chat only. It doesn't take a genius to conclude that attempting to do anything remotely discrete with Princess Peach is nigh-on impossible. The stealthy approach lasted all of fifteen seconds before the gig was up, the aliens spotted the Princess, and they started making a beeline for her. Now, at this moment, I did not have a lot going in my favor. My plan was falling apart, the bad guys were closing in at a very fast pace, and it was a very real possibility that if I wasn't the luckiest man alive our story would have ended much sooner and with a much bleaker twist than the version we got. Luckily for me, my original plan was still VERY fresh in my mind, and they weren't inbetween me and the door anymore. So with a very simple exclamation of, "RUN!", we made a mad dash for the door and the chase was on. It was at this precise moment in time that all hell broke loose.

When someone yells "RUN!" inside of a packed venue, people tend to panic. When shapeshifting space aliens pull out guns and begin firing into a crowd of people, said people tend to freak out. When everyone's pretending to be a hero and the shit hits the fan, you find out who the real heroes are. Toads were racing everywhere, lasers were being sprayed like Xcom just turned up, the Princesses still at the table were having a full-scale freakout, and what guards there were inside were fighting a losing battle at attempting to make sense of the utter chaos. The Castle emptied at an alarming pace, both because people were throwing themselves out of any available exit they could find and because there were two determined shooters killing those that couldn't. Ducking and dodging, my luck held out long enough to get outside with the Princess in tow. The streets weren't much better than the inside, with most of the sensible folk running as far as they could, and a few plucky people that didn't have a grasp on what they were up against charging into the Palace to play the hero. Still, if only for a few seconds, we weren't being shot at. Those few seconds let me think on my options to devise a new plan better than "Run like hell". I came up with "Run like hell, but towards the harbor, then get on the first boat going anywhere." And so, I informed Peach as we made a madman's dash towards the coastline. Unfortunately, the Princess hadn't caught on to the whole "Local chat" thing, and ended up saying aloud how great a plan it was. The aliens became an issue again really quickly after that blunder.

I called on every action movie chase scene cliche that my mind could spit out to slow them down. There wasn't a tremendous amount of city we had to cover, but it felt like I was running a cross-country marathon (In spirit. I was sitting in a desk chair holding "w" for a minute or two.). In spite of my best efforts, their blasts were getting more accurate by the second and the lead I had on them was evaporating. Still, sometimes you can call in a favor from Lady Luck, and sure enough when I reached the port, there was a ferry departing. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and so a shout of "Get on the boat!" was all it took to secure our getaway. In my mind, it was the classic action dive onto a boat just as it departs the harbor, laser bolts barely missing the hero as he escapes below deck. In reality, all I did was walk into the designated "Get on the boat" area. Details, details; what matters is that I had managed to pull this escape off, and at least for the moment we were well and truly safe. A minute later, and we step off of the ferry with a few other frightened townsfolk in a place called Rogueport. I had no time to relax, however, as the ferry was very punctual, and I had only three minutes at best before the next one turned up, probably carrying two whole units of bad news. After a very, very quick examination of the town, I noticed it had a train station. An escape by rail certainly beat walking, and so we set about the time-consuming task of waiting for the next train. With what she percieved as a moment of peace, the Princess got around to asking what we were running from. There is no good way to explain to someone that Aliens are trying to kill them; take it from me, I tried. She didn't believe me; maybe she had doubts that I was who I said I was. Honestly, wherever her indecisiveness came from has no real bearing on the story, because the train didn't arrive in time, and the aliens turned up in all of their glory.

We were cornered, but I could tell from the way they were acting that they hadn't caught on to who I was just yet. There were some generic villain-esque statements, "Turn over the princess and we'll spare you" and all that nonsense. Their answer came in the form of a drawn spear and a combat stance. I thought over how this was going to play out. There were two of them, both with guns. There was one of me, trusty spear in hand and a handful of items to keep me in the fight. I made damn sure they didn't get the first move, and launched my attack. What played out was a game of cat-and-mouse, with them trying to stay just out of range and pelt what they thought was any ordinary wannabe with lasers until he went down. They quickly realised that I was no poser, and began to play dirty. Up until now, I had been dodging everything they could throw at me. They seemed to know this, too, and decided to fire on someone that couldn't dodge half as well: Princess Peach. My plans shifted from an all-out offensive to playing completely defensively, having to block or leap in front of every shot they now fired at the Princess. Things rapidly fell apart even further as what little healing items I had to keep myself in the fight disappeared at an unacceptable rate. It was absolutely clear that they were about to win, and Lady Luck was unreceptive to any further bribes as the train was still nowhere in sight. I looked into my inventory for some kind of 11th-hour miracle; who knows, maybe I had another Fire Flower I had forgotten about until now. The only thing left was the bottle of Hotsauce. To put it bluntly, I had no idea what it would do. Maybe it WAS another Fire Flower, just by a different name. Maybe it was one final healing item to keep me fighting for just a few seconds more. With everything to lose, I downed the bottle.

I promptly burst into flames.

Absolutely zero people were expecting that, myself included; the Princess practically fell over when it happened. Life had given me lemons and the means to go out and burn something down in one fell swoop; I felt Cave Johnson give me his strength from beyond the grave. I decided to see if space aliens were flammable by disregarding any form of subtlety and just bumrushing them, spear swinging all the while. Still shaken from the act of self-immolation and scrambling to come up with a counter of their own, the psychological warfare value of a flaming madman stabbing you with a spear proved to be the alien's Kryptonite. All told, these two were incredibly smart, but more than that they were organized. Maybe they had another chat program open or something, but these two were absurdly coordinated. This was one of the few times I managed to disrupt their harmony, and it gave me the edge I needed. For a few seconds I tore into them, paying back what they had done to me over the course of several minutes. When they finally got back in-sync with one another, they unanimously decided to run the hell away. With shouts of "This isn't over!", they fled back into town and away from the Princess and I. The train STILL wasn't here. I was completely battered, and if they had just stuck around for a second longer, that would've been the end of the story. Still, a pyrric victory is still a win in my books, and I turned to the Princess and gave a simple "Believe me now?". She did. She also believed that we needed a new way out of Rogueport, which I was more than happy to agree with.

Hoofing it out of town was somewhat unacceptable because that's what the bad guys just did, so that limited things slightly. After a few seconds of looking around, we found a blimp offering nonstop service to somewhere named Glitzville. I don't care what the name was, when I got off of that airship I was convinced that it was where Pro Wrestlers went when they died. It was literally this fighting arena floating in the clouds, built up like a massive coliseum. I have no idea what the hell Super Paper Mario's plotline is and even now I don't have any goddamn clue, but between the cruise ships, aliens, and Wrestling afterlife it must have the most confusing story of all time. At any rate, we moved inside, and I judiciously purchased snacks to get my HP back up (With the Princess' help, of course. She had money and I still didn't, glorified murderhobo that I was.). There was one problem that we noticed, however, and it was that Glitzville is its own little world; it doesn't connect to anywhere and was a very, very flashy dead end. Still, it was probably a bad idea to head back down into Rogueport in case the terrible twosome was there looking for us, so we decided to lay low in a floating sky coliseum for a few minutes. It didn't take long for someone to stumble upon us, and boy, had I seen nothing yet.

At first, much like an eldritch abomination, my brain could not comprehend what had walked up and started engaging in conversation. He was talking like several different big-shot wrestlers all got mashed together into one man, and said man was some kind of bird-person-thing. Absolutely ripped, on every poster all over the Coliseum, and asking me who I was. I still couldn't articulate a sentence, so it was a good thing the Princess was quick on the draw. "He's The Best.". I will never get tired of that line for as long as I live. Of course, Birdman wasn't quite ready to believe it yet, but a flash of my username made him take a step back. Obviously he recognized me, but he still had some doubts. I called it from a mile away; he wanted to fight me in the ring. I was of two minds about this: It would frankly be really, really cool to throw down with the guy, but I was in the middle of saving the Kingdom. I declined politely, trying to get the point across that this was a really bad time and that I had some more important things to do. Just as I'm about to walk out of the door, he says it. A declaration, and a challenge I couldn't refuse. "I thought you were The Best!"

The Princess was probably about to jump to my defense, but I was quicker on the draw this time. I turned right around. "I am. Meet me in the ring." Saving the world could wait; beating this bird was now my top priority. I handed the Princess my spear and headed ringside. At this point in our story, I was more than a little nervous behind the screen. The only thing I had ever made sure this lovable yet murderous scamp was good at was wielding that spear of his, and with it out of my hands I felt positively naked. To make matters worse, I was stepping into a coliseum with a positively ripped professional wrestler; I had really little margin for error here. As I strode through the doors that led to the ring and gazed upon the massive audience of NPCs, the very beginnings of an idea started to form in my head. As he, too, made his entrance, I got an overwhelming feeling of Deja vu. This fight, in a sense, was nothing new; save for my opponent and the locale, this was a repeat of yesterday. There was little warmup; we both were eager to get this started, with him wanting to thrown down with The Best and me wanting to end this and get back on the road. He started off with some bombastic moves and acrobatics, staying true to his avian nature and attacking in drops and dives. I did my best to stay out of his way, but he was the one in charge here.

With his high-flying style, he controlled the pace of the match from the get go. Finding opportunities to try and get hits in was difficult, and I could only dodge for so long. Eventually, he changed tactics and tried to bring me to the floor with a lariat. I ducked his arm, and seeing this as what could potentially be my one and only opportunity to get a hit in, threw out a leg sweep. I was expecting him to dodge it and retaliate with something of his own, but not only did I connect, the way his response was worded was like he just got hit by a car. In that moment I remembered just who I was, and the enormous amount of weight my self-made title held in the eyes of these people. What the hell was I afraid of?

I was The Best.

To figure out just why this happened, take a minute to imagine what the conclusion to yesterday's match must have looked like to everyone but me. A nameless man challenges some hotshot that's been hooting about how great he was all damn day to a duel at Bowser's Castle, and without saying a word, brutally murders him and then disappears without a trace afterwards. That is the kind of edgy-ass intro and outro all of these people WISH they had, and I just sort of did it without even thinking about it. Because of that, rumors had spread about The Best. What he was truly capable of, where he had come from. At this point, not even I knew just how strong I really was. Truly, though, there was no better place to find out than in this ring, against this bird. I pushed my newfound advantage, and the tide began to turn. Every time he came down, I was ready for him. Instead of dodging, I was blocking and countering. The tables turned, and I threw in some style of my own. There was something inside of me that felt deeply, deeply validated when I came up with the idea to start using spears, as in the wrestling move, in this scuffle. I soon decided to really push the envelope, and go for suplexes. I didn't have a mirror anywhere near me, but I didn't need one to inform me of the big, stupid grin on my face when some tiny mushroom man grabbed a buff bird three times his size around the waist and actually pulled it off. In spite of all of this, the eagle would not fall, always managing to kick out at 2 and keep the fight going. Maybe it was a dare from him; some kind of pride that made him demand that I truly gave him all that I had. Perhaps he just wanted to drag out a fight with a legend for as long as he can. I'll never know his reasons, but they didn't matter. If I lingered here, there was the chance someone with less than wonderful intent would walk in and kidnap the Princess while I was distracted.

With this in mind, I had to go big: bigger than anything I had used so far. One move popped into my head before all others, and I decided to give my opponent a finishing barrage worthy of a Platinum game. He launches a few strikes of his own, but at this stage in the game I knew that I was a god among men. Like Neo at the end of the first Matrix, I blocked and no-sold everything he pulled out. Finally, he over-extended, and I saw my opportunity. Getting him in a grab once again, I launched into a wholesale stolen Final Atomic Buster, but I didn't stop there. After slamming him down into the mat and leaving him stunned, I sprinted out of the arena, shoulder-barging through my exit doors and rushing into the stands. From there, I ran up as high as I could go, and launched myself into an elbow drop that shook Glitzville to its very foundations. I transitioned into a pin, and at last, he stayed down. The Princess was cheering, the NPCs were cheering (But that wasn't news, they were always cheering), and I took a second to bask in the glory of it all, before remembering that there was still a world I had to save. I helped the turkey off of the floor and, as he described it, an indent in it shaped exactly like him. There was a small conversation afterwards, and I want to give the player behind that bird a shout-out. He never broke character once, and goddamn was he skilled in the art of a good RP fight. Still, my journey wasn't going to end here, so after some goodbyes, we got back on the Zepplin and the Princess and I came back down to earth. Unfortunately, it was not the same earth that we had left. In my fifteen or so minutes of absence, the aliens had gotten busy.

I had saved the Princess, yes. However, that was the only thing I had managed to save. Every other Princess at Peach's party was dead, logged out, or otherwise totally on-board with the new management. The general population of the server, easily swayed, were all over the chance to sign up as world-conquering aliens. Except the ones that weren't, which ended up becoming something called the X-Nauts in some attempt to fight the space aliens for control of the server. To put this lightly, the Kingdom was a war zone. Conflict and strife had erupted everywhere, and anarchy reigned. At first, I was ready to take up my spear and take on the entire world, but that's when I realised something. That's exactly what the last guy calling himself The Best did, and then I came around and knocked him clean off of his high horse; I could not let me pride consume me like it consumed my predecessor. No, if I was going to win this war, and bring peace back to the land, I needed a plan. To fight back this many people, I'd need an army of my own. Only problem was, I didn't have much left to work with. The aliens were converting anyone they could get their hands on at an alarming rate, The X-Nauts were razing everything they came across, and if I didn't act soon we'd be caught in the middle of it all. It was here that my mind came up with its final, greatest plan. I already had an army, for all intents and purposes. I just had to convince an old acquaintance to lend it to me. I told the Princess that we were going to pay Bowser a visit. For a minute, she thought that I had played the longest con in the business, and was about to hand her off. Fortunately for her, I hadn't come this far for a cop-out ending like that.

Our travel time to Bowser's domain was not a completely peaceful one, with lots of sneaking around on our parts. With everyone having moved on to other things, I was once again the only Green Toad on the map. If anyone caught sight of me, I'd be drowning in assailants from both sides of the fight, and chances are I'd lose the Princess in the human tidal wave. Once again, I do not know the storyline to Super Paper Mario, so for all I know, everything happening around me was super canonical. Still, I find it hard to believe that space aliens toting guns were fighting men from the moon decked out with technology all their own and even some towering mecha, in this universe most known for an oversized turtle that kidnaps the same Princess from her castle over and over again with two plumbers playing the hero. Either way, we made the trip to Bowser's castle a little easier when we stole one of his airships and simply flew all the way there. You'd think that would attract a lot of attention, but so do giant robots piloted by space men laying siege to your town. We slipped through by simply being part of the background noise. We DID, however, end up attracting a lot of attention from Bowser, and what little forces he had managed to hold onto during this war.

The welcome we recieved, by flying up to Bowser's own fortress in one of his stolen airships, was a lot less than warm. It was plenty warm temperature-wise, active lava flows have a tendency to ensure that, but that did little to warm the ice-cold stare of a few Koopas at the front gate. The fortress was already on edge given all the fighting everywhere else, it's a wonder they didn't try shooting us down before we even got this close. Still, as I strolled down from the ship's wheel and dismounted with the Princess, the general tone at Casa de Bowser went from "barely-restrained fury" to "utter confusion" real damn fast. They were prepared for an army, hell they were probably ready for a last stand, but the moment they commanded me and the Princess to halt, and demanded to know who I was, they collectively realized that they weren't prepared for just one Green Toad. I told them three words, and revealed my username for the whole fortress to see.

"I'm The Best."

Their momentary silence spoke volumes, more than what came out of their mouths next ever could. They could have done a lot in that situation, and what they chose to do was doubt my claim. It was a pretty sensible move on their part, after all if a man came to your front door and claimed to be the President, the first word out of a lot of people's mouths is going to be "Bullshit". Unlike the possibility of the President upon your doorstep, they next decided to attack me. And that second part told me everything I wanted to know about the company Bowser still held. They were tenacious, weren't afraid of literally anyone, and had so much loyalty that they would sooner throw themselves at the mushroom equivalent of Chuck Norris over disappointing their lord. They went down in a few moves on my part, but I knew I was in the right place. I told the Princess to hang around outside of the gates, and that I wouldn't be long. More came in behind them, happily a few more troops than I was expecting Bowser to have. It was a creative writing exercise on my part; I had to find a way to disable or knock out every combatant that came at me without roughing them up too bad, after all if my plan worked these were going to be my soldiers. Skipping over a stroll through Bowser's castle with a couple of speedbumps on the way, I made it to the same courtyard I had begun yesterday's deathmatch in. And wouldn't you know it, Bowser was waiting for me atop his balcony. I didn't have to say a word, he knew who I was. He didn't know why I was here, though, and that part got me to say quite a mouthful. In short, I needed an army to take back the Mushroom Kingdom, I had the Princess on my side, and he was the world's only shot at getting thoroughly un-fucked. And here, I got some very lovely exposition on the situation and exactly the level of fucked the world was at that moment in time.

As far as Bowser was concerned, it was already too late. The aliens had everything they needed to complete some kind of ritual or something, the usual "Unseal the ancient evil" type of plot, you know the kind. The only thing really stalling them was the X-Nauts, and even then it wasn't going to last for much longer. The moment this thing was out of its can, the aliens were going to bowl over everything that wasn't them. But to top it all off, out of everything he COULD have called Bullshit on, he thought I didn't have the Princess. That was the easiest fix in the world, all I did was whistle and she was by my side in an instant. I don't know what it was about that gesture, but the moment Peach came into the frame, he did a complete 180 and agreed to help. If it was all screwed anyway, then he thought he owed it to his men, the Princess, and even me to be, and I quote, "The nastiest thorn in their purple side for as long as we can!". Which was a hell of a motivation, but from there? We had a start. I had my army, I had the Princess, and I had a clock counting down to Doomsday. What I didn't have was an assault plan.

I did have experience and a black belt in kicking asses by these folk's standards, though. So I let Bowser figure out the finer points of the assault, while I grabbed up every Goomba, Paratroopa, Koopa, EVERYONE I could get my hands on inside that fortress, and I trained them. It was a crash course if ever there was one, and I knew that at best, these guys were only going to get me so far. Still, when an army "trained by The Best himself" came rolling over the hills, suddenly these mooks were going to be looked at like supersoldiers. I devoted no time to planning the assault out myself, as I figured, having done it so many times and with me at his side, Bowser needed no help coming up with a plan for breaking into Princess Peach's castle, and my faith was not misplaced. The X-Nauts had the full brunt of the alien's attention, currently launching an all-out, last-ditch offensive from the harbor in some vain attempt to get in and drive them out before their Cthulhu cult did its job. We were going to come in from the side, using the very airship I rode in on, and take the aliens by surprise. We were nothing more than a handful of hopeful idiots, but we had Bowser, and we had me. With the element of surprise, he thought, smashing into the castle and taking out the aliens was going to be a cakewalk. Getting out again was going to be the problem, but he thought I could take care of that part on my own. I didn't object to that. After all, I was The Best.

And here, I took a moment to realize just how far I had come in the past few days. As I had said at the very start of this chapter, I had gone from some nameless jackass to the new Meta literally overnight. I didn't come out here to be the hero, but here I was, at the forefront of an army I had personally trained to save the world from an alien invasion. From beating back cyborgs with big words to suplexing a buff bird in the great Wrestlemania in the sky, my story was a winding, insane pathway that I don't think will ever be replicated. And one way or another, when I got on that airship, it was going to have an ending. I was going to do everything in my power, and perhaps a few things beyond it, to see this through to the bitter conclusion.

Just before we departed, there was one thing I had to take care of. I had to ensure that, during this whole escapade, nobody swooped in and stole Peach out from under me. Honestly, at this point she had little value in the grand scheme of things but I'd be the shittiest goddamn hero ever if I let the Princess get offed during the big battle with evil. I couldn't keep her at my side, we were marching into a war zone. I couldn't just leave her at the castle, as everyone and everything was coming on this assault, and either side could kick down the doors with no one home. Eventually, I picked one of the more useful people in my army, and told him to stay with the ship for as long as he could, both to defend Peach and to rain down hell with the cannons. Something about me calling him "The best in the army" really sold it to him, though, and he agreed to the plan. That was all the preparations I could make, because we were out of time. By the way things sounded in the Global chat, it was now or never. Everyone piled on to the ship, Bowser took the helm, and I climbed up the mast to deliver a pre-battle speech to my men. I don't remember the whole thing, but I remember the gist and spirit of it.

For as long as anyone could remember, this land had heroes. Gods to some, they were so almighty on the field of battle that none could ever hope to best them. And as far as anyone knew, no one could surpass them. Everyone in front of me, from the Goombas to the King Koopa himself, had lived in the shadows these figures cast on history. Well right now, I didn't see those heroes. Instead, I saw in front of me something far brighter, far deadlier, far stronger. Now, it was everyone else's time to shine. This was OUR time, damnit, and for once in our lives, WE were the giants people would look up to, not because of some prophesy or some pre-ordained onus of heroism, but because we had fought tooth and nail for everything we had. And now, in this dark hour, it wasn't gods that rode on wings of fury to save the world, but the common folk with absolutely nothing to lose.

When that first volley of cannon fire left the Airship, the Aliens had no idea we were even coming. Two seconds afterwards, though, they found out real quick. Bowser didn't just land the ship, no, he ran it aground right through a column of the purple bastards and the broadsides started FLYING after that. I vaulted the railing, leading my army from the forefront, and from there it was all a blur of combat. I can't know what happened for sure, I was so sucked up in the high of warfare that my eyes were focused solely on that castle at the end of town. I think when Bowser crashed the ship, it gave the aliens such a shock that their front line basically collapsed, and the X-Nauts came pouring through. It was absolute goddamn pandemonium. The chat was moving so fast that I just closed it, instead relying on the speech bubbles popping up over people's heads to react to the warfare around me. We had aliens in front of us, X-nauts at our rear, and in the center of it all, a legendary Green Toad and his elite fighting force annihilating all that dared approach. Bowser was a one-man wrecking crew, bashing down X-Naut mechs faster than they could get to the combat zone, while I had attained a level of power so ridiculous that I was parrying gunshots with my spear.

I was invincible, shouts of "IT'S HIM!" and "IT'S THE BEST!" popping up so frequently that they accounted for nearly half of the local chatter. Nothing could stand in my way, but that didn't stop everyone from trying. The element of surprise only helped for so long, because as soon as they knew who I was, EVERYONE came swarming twoards me. My progress twoards the castle was slow, but I was simultaneously the unstoppable force and the immovable object. They could slow me down by sheer weight of numbers, but there was no halting our advance. Knee-deep in the conflict, I became blind to just how dire my situation was getting until far too late. I was making progress twoards the castle, yes, but things had been taking a turn for the worse right under my nose for a while. My men were good, but they had their limits. I had started to lose them, and it's only when I took a look behind me that I only saw four of them left, including Bowser.

At this point in the fight, the aliens had lost too much ground, and too many numbers. What remained was falling back inside the castle as a last line of defense, but the X-Nauts just kept coming. Whenever they'd lose someone, that guy would just run back to the Harbor and re-join the fray as reinforcements. There was absolutely no end to them, and soon making our way to the castle doors wasn't the biggest of our concerns. The X-nauts were grabbing all the space we gave up, and soon the five of us found out backs up against the castle doors, too busy fighting for our lives to get inside. I lost another man to the tide, but I couldn't fight any harder. I was hitting the limit of how fast I could type out coherent actions, there were just too many. On the other side of the screen, I was sweating bullets, both metaphorically and physically, because I was beginning to think I couldn't do this. I know that analogy that says, "What's a mob to a king?" and frankly, I don't think that man has seen what a pissed-off mob of people can do. Back against the wall, typing to my limit, I thought I had come all this way to finally fail right at the finish line.

And then, it happened. Lady Luck hid an ace up her sleeve from me this entire time. Chekhov's gun got speed-loaded and fired, because Rawk Hawk dove out of the sky with the most literal interpretation of an RKO out of fucking nowhere I will ever witness. I don't even know how the hell he got up that high, the game didn't include methods of flight, and Glitzville was across the goddamn map. But SOMEHOW, that glorious bastard came in during the 11th hour, with an entrance so perfect that for a moment, I wanted to name him my successor. With typical professional wrestling banter, he tore into the crowd in front of us like a hurricane, and I knew that this was going to be the last miracle I got today. I told whoever was left to buy me time, and I kicked in the front door to the palace.

The war raged outside, and now inside I waged a one-mushroom offensive on everything those extraterrestrial bastards could muster. I channeled the collective fury of everyone that had ever played an XCOM game, and I ripped and teared my way to the room where the ritual was taking place. I don't know the names of any that stood beside me on this fateful day, and held that door, but if you find this story and you read it, know that I await you in Valhalla, brothers. Shoutouts aside, I made it to the ritual chamber. I found out I had made it too late, JUST too late, probably because the Ayys wanted to win so bad they had started to bend the rules. Either way, they had their God or Leader or whatever the hell they were trying to summon right there in the chamber. Frankly, I expected hentacle tentai or Cthulhu, what I got made very little sense and frankly almost felt like a cop-out. Standing in front of me, in the middle of this somewhat intimidating ritual circle, I had what I can realistically describe as an edgy Princess Peach and her Stand, The Downward Spiral. Upon looking this one up after the fact, I now know that I was staring at the Shadow Queen, but that name is nowhere near as good as what I came up with. And lo and behold, the first thing she asks is who dares to defy her.

Do I even need to type out what I said at this point?

The only noteworthy thing about her response is that she had never heard of me. Which frankly, is both an insult that a fourth grader would come up with, but also absolutely perfect given the context of everything about me. I properly introduced myself via a spear stab to her midsection, which didn't go over very well with her OR what little lackeys she had left. In the grand scheme of things, it's sort of funny how this adventure began and semi-ended with the same three words, in the same place. Upon looking it up, I now know the term for this is "bookending" but damn if life doesn't work out sometimes. Anyway, this final brawl proved to be one hell of a show, looking back. She was pretty reliant on that Stand of hers, a lot of stuff involving hands that sort of gave me a few flashbacks to Geb, but legally distinct from Geb because these are made of shadows or some stupid shit. It was a big game of keep away for her, because she could just keep the damn hands coming all day long, but I still had to land a hit on the actual her to keep the show going as planned. To pull out a cringeworthy joke on any readers, I was trying to catch her, while she was trying to make me catch those hands.

Still, a mob fight involving twenty different people is a lot different than one person controlling twenty different things. I was still fighting in mob mode, and she just couldn't keep up. I would have loved to know just how quickly I was launching my assault during that, get some kind of time-traveling WPM counter so I have a solid statistic to give you, but without that I have to describe it. I was typing pretty fucking fast, to avoid flowery language or a dumb analogy. She still dragged out the war of attrition for as long as she had patience, but at this point in the story I had come too far, and sacrificed too much to give any ground in there. Like the dragon a day prior, she gave up too much ground, got cornered, and I promptly finished the job. Unlike the dragon, she had enough respect for both the narrative at play and herself, and played out her downfall. Kudos to her, because with that one action she was already a better roleplayer than a lot of the folks that came before her. So, job's done, hero wins, evil is defeated, right?

I fucking wish it ended there. GOD, do I wish it ended there. In my mind, the X-Nauts would have fallen back, I would have strolled out of the palace, and me and my surviving troops would celebrate with whatever the Mario equivalent of a cold one with the boys is. But no, sometimes fate demands a final act.

I made my way back to the door, only to find that my troops were all dead and the X-nauts were swarming the lobby. Rawk Hawk, Bowser, every last one fought to the bitter end, of that I'm fucking certain, but in the end, they were overrun. I couldn't accept it! I flung open the chat window, trying to find ANY record of that battle, frantically scrolling up as far as it would let me. Maybe they just fell back inside the castle, and they're waiting for me to come rescue them. Maybe they doubled-back to the airship and they're going to come in and pick me up in a really badass, "You thought we were dead, haha!" sort of way. No, they were gone. They put up a slobberknocker of a fight and raised hell for as long as they could, but every last one died defending that door. And that wasn't all, no, if that was all maybe I could have accepted it. Wrought bloody vengeance on the X-Nauts until they gave up the ghost themselves, but no. I saw in the Global Chat the one thing I absolutely, positively did not need to read with my own two eyes. Somehow, two of those alien bastards broke through every last goddamn X-Naut, got to the airship, took down my best man, and they stole the Princess.

And at that point, all I saw was red.

I do not know where I summoned the typing speed from, nor do I think I will ever manage it again, but when those X-Nauts finally found me, they didn't even have time to call it in. I was on them like shit on a pig, and more than that, I wasn't stopping for anyone. Squads, mechs, it was all the same in my mind, just more obstacles between me and the only goddamn thing that mattered in this bloodbath. I kept one hateful eye staring into the global chat, and something kept turning over in my mind. Their names seemed so familiar to me, but I couldn't place them. Steeped as I was in the battle, my brain devoted solely to ripping through an entire army singlehandedly, I didn't know who I was dealing with. I hauled ass out of the town and cut down anything that tried to stop me, the X-Nauts could have the goddamn palace if they wanted it so badly. And only now, holding W harder than I had ever held a key in my life, did I recognize those two names. These two are the ones that started it all. That couple I saw behind the house, The aliens that shot up the palace, the duo that fought me at the train station, those two insurmountable dickheads that just couldn't accept defeat like everyone else, and had to try and drag me down with them. I thought they were going to kill the Princess any minute, petty bastards that they were, but no. They decided they were going to do it onboard a train just to fucking taunt me. Ride off into the sunset, kill Peach when you get there, and then log out. No chance for me to interfere.

But I knew that train real goddamn well, and it took its sweet-ass time getting to that station.

And I ran. I ran so far away. I just ran, I ran all night and damn well to the crack of dawn, because those bastards weren't getting away. Getting to Rogueport without the ferry, especially when you're traveling from the town, is a daunting prospect. It's not like you're running a cross-continent marathon, but with everything riding on my ability to get there before the train did, you can't fathom how long that sprint felt like it took. The train arrived before I did. They got onboard, but before it pulled out of the station, I slipped on. I made it there with time to spare, and in the interim, we could do nothing but awkwardly stare at one another, knowing full well the confrontation that was about to take place the moment this train left the station. It all came down to this, one final showdown between me and them. They had numbers and guns. Unlike last time, all I had was my spear. No miracle hotsauce to tip the scales, no healing items to call upon to drag it out. And just like last time, they had no idea who they were dealing with.

The train left the station, and we were transported to an endless bridge over an ocean, the train hurtling twoards the unknown. The sun was just breaking over the horizon, and the moment the game let us move, it was on. They tried the guns, but I was knocking blasts out of the sky like it was nobody's business. They tried to attack the Princess again, but this time I got so thoroughly in the way that they couldn't even reach her. Still, these two had otherworldly coordination, and a desire to see me fail almost as strong as my need to win. There was no cavalry coming. If I failed here, my legend was going to die with me. Lady Luck had pulled every string she could just to get me on this train; she had nothing left to give me, and in the back of my mind, I knew it. Both of them wouldn't accept defeat, not even taking a blow here and there to make the fight seem fair. They just wanted victory. I needed to make my own luck, and to do that I needed to throw the playbook out the window; do something so unconventional that not even they would see it coming. I did the absolutely unthinkable, gave a mental farewell to the only ally I had left, and threw my spear.

I threw it knowing full well they would dodge it without a second thought. Whenever he dodged, he moved his in-game character a little bit, just to make it feel that much more real. So when he went to dodge it, I "physically" sprinted right at him, and used the momentum of my in-game avatar to bodycheck him right off the train. No amount of godmodding or powerplaying can save you from literal, inescapable death, and just like that the fight was one-on-one.

The remaining alien was none too pleased with my maneuvering, and redoubled their assault to try and kill me. I was having fucking none of it anymore; I slapped that ray gun out of their hand and gave them a hook to the jaw. The fight with Rawk Hawk flashed through my mind, and I once again called upon every close-combat move I could muster. The chips were crooked, the dice were weighted, but I had no choice anymore. A spite-fueled grudge match on the top of a speeding train probably looked cool as all get out to any spectators, but in my mind there wasn't anything about looking cool, or being flashy. It was about being The Best. It was about saving the Princess, about conquering all of the odds, about being the hero everyone thought I was. But more than that? It was about beating this stuck-up, godmodding bastard in a straight-up fight. Still, there's only so much you can do in a roleplay fight when the other person doesn't want you to win. Take it from me, because I tried everything. There was no reasoning with them, there was no outplaying them. They wanted to see me die, and I wanted to see them fail. Only one person can get what they want out of a conflict like that, or so I thought. Something finally dawned on me, trading blows with this thing on top of the train for what felt like aeons. Nobody was walking away from this, and that is the only way this is going to end.

I had to face facts, I was going to die on top of this train but so were they. A world where neither of us win, but in a way, we both get what we want. I made my move, grabbing them with both hands and forcing them to the train's edge, both in RP and with my avatar. They fought the entire time, trying to squirm out of it, knowing what I was trying, but I wasn't letting anyone live. Not them, not me. I backed up just a hair's breath, and then came at them full-speed. The avatars ended up colliding with one another, flooring both of us as we tumbled over the side together. As I went over the edge, I said one final sentence to the Princess before I hit the water and met my fate. "Tell my story." And just like that, we slammed full-speed into the kill-zone underneath the bridge together, the alien keysmashing in impotent fury the entire time. A pyrric victory for me, but a victory nonetheless. I started to go through the motions to log out, and just before I exited, I saw the Princess' final words. She never even knew my name. Only that I was The Best.

That's my story, and I swear to god it's true. I'm sharing it because a few friends demanded a writeup, and while it took me a while to get it all together, better late than never. I don't want any fame from this, and I can guarantee that, for that reason alone, anyone claiming to be me is lying. The Best's story is finished, ended. Only a handful people know who it was, and I'm content with that. I'll go down in the annuls of nameless history like I've always wanted. All the fame, none of the consequences. Thanks for reading all the way through, you have a good day.

#roblox rp #The Best #paper mario #rawk hawk #bowser #Mr. L #shroob #shyguy #cyberpunk #green toad #toad #super mario #princess peach #roblox roleplay #roblox #The Best The Saga #I REPEAT: NOT MY STORY

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houseofvans · 7 years

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Sketchy Behavior | Hellen Jo

Never afraid to speak and/or draw her mind, Los Angeles based artist and illustrator, Hellen Jo and her characters can be described as rough, vulgar, tough, jaded, powerful, bratty and bad-ass - AKA her own brand of femininity. Known for her comic Jin & Jam, and her work as an illustrator and storyboard artist for shows such as Steven Universe and Regular Show, Hellen’s rebellious, and sometimes grotesque artwork and illustrations are redefining Asian American women and women of color in comics. In fact, that’s why Hellen Jo was a must-interviewee for our latest Sketchy Behavior where we talk to her about her love of comics and zines, her antiheroines, and redefining what Asian American women identity is or can be; and what her ultimate dream project realized would be.

Tell folks a little about yourself. So is it Helllen with three “l”’s? Mainly because your IG handle and website has a whole lot of extra “l”’s?

Haha my actual name is Hellen with two L’s. All my emails and urls contain a different number of L’s to confuse everyone. My grandfather took my American name from the Catholic saint, but he spelled it wrong, and now I share the same name as the mythological progenitor of the Greek people. But I like it better than my Korean name, which literally means, “graceful water lily” HAHAHA. I am an illustrator-slash-painter-slash-I-don’t-know-what living and working in Los Angeles.

Let’s talk about your early childhood / background. I read you’re from San Jose, CA and both your folks were professors, which is really cool!! How did you end up making art instead of teaching a room full of students about Hotel Management or Medieval History? Just curious where you got your “creative bug” and what early comics, arts, and/or influences led you down the road to becoming an artist?

I grew up in South San Jose, and yes, both of my parents are professors, of finance and of applied linguistics. A lot of my extended family are professors too, so I grew up parroting their desire for academia, but really, I started drawing when I was a wee babe, and I’ve always wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was really young, my parents drew for fun, really rarely; my dad could draw the shit out of fish and dogs, and my mom painted these really beautiful watercolor still lifes. I was fascinated, and I’d spend all my time drawing on stacks and stacks of dot matrix paper by myself. My parents also had a few art books around the house, and I remember staring so hard at a book of Modigliani nudes that my eyes burned holes through the pages.

What was the first comics you came across?

The first comics I ever got were translated mangas that were given to me by relatives when we’d visit Korea. I remember getting Candy Candy, a flowery glittery shojo manga for girls, and I was mesmerized by all the sparkly romance and starry huge eyes. I was also enthralled by Ranma ½, a gender bending teen manga that was equal parts cute art, cuss words, and shit too sexy for a kid my age. However, I was mostly thrilled that I could understand the stories with really minimal Korean reading skills, thus cementing a forever love of comics. In junior high and high school, I read a mix of newspaper strips and some limited manga, and I was enthralled with MTV cartoons “Daria” and “Aeon Flux”, but I wasn’t exposed to zines or graphic novels until I moved to Berkeley for college.

Did you have a first comic shop you haunted? What did you fill your comic art hunger with?

Being a super sheltered teen with not-great social skills, I was lonely my first semester, so I would lurk at Cody’s Books and Comic Relief every single day after classes. I read the entirety of Xaime Hernandez’s Love & Rockets volume, The Death of Speedy one afternoon at Cody’s, and it literally made me high; I was so hooked. I amassed some massive credit card debt buying and reading as many amazing comics as I could those first (and only) couple years of school: all of Los Bros Hernandez’s Love & Rockets, Dan Clowes’ Eightball, Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte comics, Peter Bagge’s Hate series, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, Taiyo Matsumoto’s Black and White, Junji Ito’s Tomie and Uzumaki volumes… I could not believe the scope and breadth of the alternative comics genre, and the stories were so insanely good; they literally mesmerized me. I was so obsessed; I even skulked around the tiny comics section at UC Berkeley’s Moffitt Library in search of books I hadn’t read, and amid the fifty volumes of Doonesbury strips, some sick university librarian had included an early English translation of the Suehiro Maruo collection, Ultra Gash Inferno. That book blew my tiny mind about a hundred times; it’s totally fucked up erotic-grotesque horror porn, but the art is unbelievably beautiful. I read that entire thing sitting on the floor in the aisle, feverishly praying to God to forgive my sins after I finished the book, because I was way too ashamed to check it out of the library.

How about zines? I imagine a comic devouring ….

I devoured zines at a nearly equally fervent pace, including those by Aaron Cometbus, Al Burian (Burn Collector), Doris, John Pham, Jason Shiga, Lark Pien, Mimi Thi Nguyen, etc. I had never seen a zine before in my life, and suddenly, I was living in a town full of zinesters. I was drowning in inspiration. I tried to copy the art and writing of everything I read, and I spent a lot of my time making band flyers, trying to pass off zines as suitable replacements for term papers (this worked just once), and making monthly auto-bio comics for a few student publications. Eventually, I dropped out of school, then dropped out of school again, and I made my first published comic, Jin & Jam; then it all became real.

What was your early works like? and how did these become fodder for your self-published stuff later? What about your own experiences did you feel needed to be expressed in your own comics and artwork?

As a kid I was mostly copying sparkly girl manga and Sailor Moon stickers, and I don’t think I’ve really strayed all that far from that. My first few zines were cutesy autobiographical comics about crushes and falling asleep at the library; incredibly dull stuff. I made a super fun split comic/ep with this band I loved, The Clarendon Hills, but after that point, I was tired of drawing cute, goofy shit.

I had also really been obsessed with Korean ghost horror movies in high school, and I wanted to make comics that reflected more of that kind of coming-of-age violence and rage, so I made a couple standalone horror comics, Paralysis and Blister. These were longer than anything I’d ever done (forty to fifty pages each), and I felt like I was finally figuring out how to write interesting stories. I eventually dropped out of school and made Jin & Jam, based a bit on growing up in San Jose and on other kids I had grown up with.

At the time, there were still relatively few Asian American women in comics, and I was tired of whatever hyper-cute, yellow-fever, Japanified shit we were being pigeon-holed into, so I reacted by writing and drawing vulgar girls who started fights and didn’t give a fuck. I went to art school for a few semesters, got better at drawing people, and went on to draw nothing but mean bad girl ne'erdowells. I’d never been a very strong or defiant personality outwardly, but I’ve always been a pretty big fuckin bitch on the inside, and I just wanted to draw how I feel, in the most sincere way possible. And naturally, over the years, as I continued to develop this attitude in my art, I was able to express it better in person as well. Self-actualization through making comics!

For folks who don’t read comics, can you explain why they are SO AMAZING and moving to you! What about the format, art and overall genre makes them so great and not just your typical “funnies.”

I truly believe that comics are the greatest narrative format and art medium of all time! They are completely full of potential; you can draw and write whatever the hell you can think of, there are no real rules, and you as author and artist can create a deep and intimate experience for your reader. You can bare your vulnerabilities or yell at the world or create a visual masterpiece or inform people, visually and narratively. I don’t even believe that good art makes good comics; writing is king, and the art should really serve to further the story. Some of the worst comics I’ve ever seen had the most amazing art, and some of the greatest comics I’ve loved have the plainest, most naive, even ugly visuals, but those authors were able to finesse a symbiotic relationship between the text and the images to tell a compelling story. People are already so drawn to images, so it makes sense to me that they can enhance a reader’s literary experience so much.

I read that Taiyo Matsumoto is one of your all time inspirations. Most folks probably don’t know much about this master of comics, heck my knowledge is limited, so what makes his work speak to you so much? Perhaps it’ll encourage folks to venture into a new world of art exploration through visual comics.

Taiyo Matsumoto is the all time master of coming-of-age comics. I worship at his altar, for real. He is a Japanese artist, so technically his work is manga, but his masterful storytelling and singular visuals are so different from most manga, beyond categorization. He writes quiet, powerful stories about boys, girls, and teens who live in uncaring worlds surrounded by unfeeling adults, but they rise to these challenges and thrive in spite of themselves. The characters feel deeply, and the reader can’t help but ache and rage and celebrate just as fully. The drawings are beautiful and sensitive, with rough, loose artwork consisting of scratchy lines and cinematically composed shots.

What were some of your first memories with his work?

I remember buying the first two Pulp volumes of Black and White (also published as Tekkonkinkreet) at Comic Relief, reading them both at home that day, and then, covered in tears, literally *running* back that evening to buy the last volume before the store closed. I probably cried a dozen times while reading it; it’s a story about two orphan boys who protect each other in a neo-Vegas-like city of vice, but the characters were so brutal and brilliant and poignant. I had never read anything like that before, and it literally made me sick that, at the time, none of his other works were available in English. Eventually, I figured out that he was more widely published in Korea, so on every family trip, I’d run away from my folks for a day and buy as many of his books as I could carry back to the US. I made my way, slowly, through the Korean translations of Hana-otoko, Ping Pong (another incredible favorite!), and Zero. A beautiful collection of short stories, Blue Spring, was published in English, and then VIZ began translating the series No. 5, but they abruptly stopped mid-series due to low book sales. I was so starved for his work that at that point, I’d ebay his art books and comics only available in Japanese and just stare at them. Eventually, Black and White was made into the anime film, Tekkonkinkreet, and Ping Pong was made into an anime mini-series, and his rise in popularity ensured a wider English availability of his work. His current series, Sunny, is being translated and published here, and every volume breaks my heart a million times.

I’m sorry, this just turned into a gushy, gross fan fest, but Matsumoto’s books really changed my entire perspective on how comics can be written and paced, how characters can be developed fully, and how important comics really are to me. I love them so much!!!!!

You’ve worked in so many cool fields such as a storyboard artist and designer, and on various cartoons, such as Steven Universe. For folks who are interested in those fields, what can you tell folks about that? I’m sure like most artists, you’d rather be spending those long hours working on your own personal art, so how do you balance them? How did you move from a comic artist to working as a storyboarding artist?

I stopped working in animation about a year and a half ago, but the transition from indie comics to storyboarding was rough one, for me. I got into storyboarding at a time when a lot of kids’ animation networks were starting to hire outside the pool of animation school graduates and reach into the scummy ponds of comics. In my case, the creator of Regular Show, JG Quintel, had bought some of my comics at San Diego Comic-Con from my publisher, and he offered me a storyboard revisionist test.

Some cartoonists, like my partner Calvin Wong, were able to transition wonderfully; cartoonists and board artists are both visual storytellers, and once they’d learn the ropes, many of them thrived and succeeded. I can’t say the same for myself; I have major time management issues, I draw and write incredibly slowly, and going from working completely alone to pitching and revising stories with directors and showrunners was just a real shock to my system. For most of my time at Cartoon Network and FOX ADHD, I wasn’t able to do much personal work, but I crammed it in where I could.

Storyboarding also requires a lot of late nights and crazy work hours, to meet pitch deadlines and to rewrite and redraw large portions of your board. I just couldn’t deal. I lost a lot of weight, more of my hair fell out, and the extreme stress of the job put my undiagnosed diabetes into overdrive (stress makes your liver pump out sugar like crazy, look it up, people!) I realized that this industry was not meant for lard lads like me, and when the opportunity came to stop, I did. I could never figure out the balance between my job and my personal work, and I finally chose the latter. Now I’m trying to figure out the balance between making personal work and surviving, but I’ve yet to crack that nut either!

From your art I get a sense of rebellion and angst, how did this morph into an outlet through comics, cartoons, and illustration? Some aspects of your work that are so cool is the fact that your characters are female and women of color and in a completely new way. Asian characters definitely get stereotype in art and comics, so when did you consciously start to create these awesome antiheroines and redefine what Asian/Asian American women/girl identity is or can be?

A lot of the seething rage bubbling behind my eyes has been simmering there since childhood, and a very large portion of that anger comes directly from all the racism and sexism I’ve experienced as a child and adult. I’ve been treated patronizingly by boys and men who expect an Asian girl to be frail, demure, receptive, and soft-spoken. I’ve experienced yellow fever from dudes who are clearly more interested in my slanted eyes and sideways cunt than in whatever it is I have to say. Even in comics and illustration, people constantly tell me I must be influenced by Japanese woodblock print (pray tell, where in the holy fuck does that come from???), or they’ll look at a painting I’ve done of a girl bleeding from her mouth and dismiss my work as “cute”. I despise this complete lack of respect, for me and for Asian American women in general, and I’ve made it my life mission to depict my girls as I would prefer to be seen: fucking angry, violent, mean, dirty and gross, unapproachable, tough, jaded, ugly, powerful, and completely apathetic to you and your shit. Any rebellion and angst in my work comes directly from my own anger, and in my opinion, it makes that shit way better. Girls and women of color get so little respect in real life, so why not “be the change I want to see” in my drawings?

I think I was always aware of this lack of respect, and the “othering” of Asian American women, but once I got to college and learned to put a name to the racism and xenophobia and sexism and fetishism that we experience, my heart burst into angry flames, and it exploded into all of my art. I’ve never been able to hold that back, and I’m not interested in doing so, ever.

Talk about your process and mediums and process. Are you a night owl or an early bird artist? Do you have stacks of in-progress works or are you a one and down drawing person? Do you jot down notes or are you a sketch book person.

I am a paper and pencil artist all the way; I do work digitally sometimes, to make gifs or to storyboard, but I hate drawing and coloring on the computer. I’m terrible at it! I draw everything in pencil first, erasing a hundred thousand times along the way toward a good drawing. For my paintings, I’ll then ink with brush pen and paint with watercolor, all on coldpress Arches. For comics, I ink with whatever, brush pen or fountain pen, or leave the pencil, usually on bristol board. I’ve also been keeping sketchbooks more recently (never really maintained the habit before), where I like to doodle fountain pen and color with Copic markers. In sketchbooks, I’ll slap post-its on mistakes, a trick I learned from paper storyboarding on Regular Show.

I am a total night owl and a hermit; I have to be really isolated to get anything done, but at the same time, being so alone makes me crave social interaction in quick, fiery bursts. I’ll go on social rampages for a week at a time, and then jump back into my hidey hole and stay hidden for months, avoiding everyone. It’s not a very productive or healthy way to be, but it’s how I’ve always been.

I have great difficulty trying to juggle multiple tasks; I tend to devote all my mental energy and focus into whatever I’m working on at the time, so I need to complete each piece before I can do anything else. It’s an incredibly inefficient, time-wasting way of making art, but it’s also the only way I can produce drawings that I am satisfied with.

If we were to bust into your workspace or studio, what would we find? and what would you not want us to find?

You’d find an unshowered me, drawing in my underwear, which coincidentally is also what I do not want you to find!

You’d also find a room half made into workspace (more below), and half taken over by boxes of t-shirts and sweatshirts (I do all my own mailorder fulfillment, like an idiot!) I also like to surround myself with junk I find inspiring, so the walls are covered in prints and originals by some of my favorite artists, a bookshelf along the back wall is filled with about a third of my favorite comics and books and zines, and every available non-work surface (including desk, wall shelves, and bulletin boards) are covered in vintage toys, dice, tchotchkes, bottles, lighters and folding knives, weird dolls and figurines, a variety of fake cigarettes (I have a collection…)

Work-space wise, I have two long desks placed along a wall; the left desk has my computer and Cintiq, as well as my ancient laptop. Underneath and to the side of this desk are my large-format Epson scanner, fancy-ass Epson giclee printer, and a Brother double-sided laser printer. The right desk has a cutting mat, an adjustable drawing surface, and a hundred million pens and half my supplies/crafts hoard. I have a giant guillotine paper cutter for zines underneath this desk. I’ve got two closets filled with button making supplies, additional supplies/crafts hoard, and all kinds of watercolor paper, bristol paper, and mailing envelopes are crammed into every shelf, alcove, gap. This room has five lamps because I need my eyes to burn when I’m working. Also, everything is covered in stickers because I am obsessed with stickers.

What is something you’d like to see happen more often if at all in the contemporary art world? How’s the LA art scene holding up? Whaddya think?

As an artist who adores comics, I have a deep affection for low-brow mediums getting high-art and high-literary respect. Not that a comic needs to be shown in a gallery to be a valid art form, but I am so excited that comics that used to be considered fringe or underground are gaining traction as important works of art and literature. I wish this upward trajectory would continue forever, until everyone understands the love I feel for comics, but who knows what the future holds: the New York Times just recently stopped publishing their Graphic Novel Best Seller lists, and I think it’s a damn shame.

The LA art scene is really interesting to me, because it embraces both hi and lo brow work so readily; fancy pants galleries that make catalogues and sell to art dealers have openings right alongside pop-art stores that sell zines and comics, and I enjoy having access to both. I will say that I think LA galleries are a bit oversaturated with art shows devoted to television and pop culture fan art; yeah, I get that you loooooooove that crazy 70s cult classic sci-fi series and you want to draw Mulder and Scully and Boba Fett in sexual repose for the rest of your life, but I’m more excited about seeing new and original work from everyone. I know you have something to say, and I want to see it.

Mostly, I’d obviously love to see more women of color making art and making comics; we’ve come a long way since I started making zines in 2002, and there are some incredible WOC cartoonists making amazing work right now, but we need more more MORE!

What would be your ultimate dream project? What is something you haven’t tried and would love to give it a go at? Dream collaborations?

My ultimate dream project is the Great American Graphic Novel, but I am so shit at finishing anything that I have not been able to even approach this terrifying prospect. But I figure I have until the day of my death to make something, so … one step at a time?

As far as something I’ve never tried, I’ve been recently interested in site-specific installation; I’ve always been a drawer for print, confined to the desk, and I’m in awe of cartoonists and illustrators who have transitioned to other forms of visual media, whether it be video, sculpture, performance, whatever. I know my personality tends toward repeating the same motions forever and ever, and I hope I can break out of that and make something really different and challenging for myself. I also secretly want to make music but I am the shittiest guitarist ever so maybe it’s better for the world that I don’t!

The dreamiest collaboration I can think of is to illustrate a skate deck for any sick-ass teen girl or woman skater. Seriously, if any board companies wanna make this happen, EMAIL ME

Give us your top 5 of your current favorite comic artists as well as your top 5 artists in general.

Top 5 Current Favorite Comic Artists:

1. Jonny Negron 2. Jillian Tamaki 3. Michael DeForge 4. Ines Estrada 5. Anna Haifisch

Top 5 Artists of All Time

1. Taiyo Matsumoto 2. Xaime Hernandez 3. David Shrigley 4. Julie Doucet 5. Daniel Clowes

What are your favorite style of VANS? And how would you describe your own personal style?

My favorite VANS are the all-black Authentic Lo Pros, although I have a soft spot for my first pair of Cara Beth Burnsides in high school (they were so ugly and I never skated, but I loved them).

My personal style can be described as aging colorblind tomboy who dresses herself in the dark; my favorite outfit is a black hoodie with black denim shorts and black socks and black sneakers.

What do you have planned for this 2017? New shows? New published works?

I’ve got two group shows with some of my favorite artists in the works; I’m so excited but I can’t share any details yet. I’ve also been writing a new comic, but don’t believe it til ya see it!

Best bit of advice and worse advice in regards to art?

Best Advice: Never be satisfied; always challenge yourself to make your art better than everything you’ve done previously.

Worst Advice: Make comics as a stepping stone towards getting a job in animation. When people do this, you can smell the stink of insincerity a mile away. Fuck you, comics are a beautiful medium, and every shitty asshole who does this, I hate your guts!

Follow Hellen Jo

Website: http://helllllen.org Shop: http://helllllen.bigcartel.com Instagram: @helllllenjjjjjo

Images courtesy of the artist

#vans #vans art #hellen jo #comic #cartoonist #indie #zine #sketchy thursdays #interview

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