#songs play a really really important part when i write fics

[florelia12]

https://youtu.be/eH4F1Tdb040

#songs play a really really important part when i write fics #and ive been obsessed with this one for Helia #i wont say im doing a rewrite #but im definitely going all the way back to create my own proper verse #witch helia hehe #Youtube

[girasollake]

Hi! Can I request a smut imagine with prompt 48 and trope 8 with Theodore Nott.

She’s a slytherin too and a badass bitch who everybody wants to be or date

Thank youuu!

✧ theodore nott x fem!reader x jealousy x "you. are. mine."✧

(this request is a part of my writing event, here is the link to the masterlist of the fics i'll be publishing from said event:) )

this took longer than i expected, thank you for your request anon! x

told u guys i’d post smth… surprise!!!!

warnings: 18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, p in v sex, some swear words, some slight cedric x reader, theo being bitchy ig, fingering, general sex stuff, orgasm denial, ummmmmm yeah i think that’s it

i’ll reread it later to fix mistakes cuz rn it’s 2 am where i live and i’m going to bed bye

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

Your relationship with Theo was complicated. At least in your mind that was the most suitable word for this dynamic, you could never find anything else that would quite describe it. You were friends, that’s for sure, this was the only thing you were certain of. Some days you had found yourself tangled in his bedsheets, his soft fingers caressing your back as you lingered in his scent. But, there were also days when you didn’t speak to him at all, strolling through the halls and seeing him tug a piece of hair behind the ear of some Ravenclaw girl while simultaneously giving her his infamous smile. Even though you also flirted and went on dates with others, something inside your guts sunk down each time you saw him with a girl who was not you. And you could barely handle it. Every time you promised yourself you’ll never sleep with him again or give him your attention, you’d always end up doing the opposite. There was something about him that lured you in, it was toxic, but so divine. So, whenever his lips connected to yours in a hungry kiss, you’d forget about all of the other women he probably does this with. It was just you and him and your only thought during these moments was to stay with him like that forever.

‚-it’s not like it’s that important.’

‚Huh?’ You lifted your head and met Pansy’s annoyed face. ‚Sorry, what were you saying?’

¨What is going on with you lately?´She shook her head and sighed. ´I asked if you have a date for the ball.’ She then added.

‘Oh, well, not really.’ You shrugged.

‘Seriously? Is this about Theo again? I’ve told you multiple times that there is a fucking queue of guys just waiting for you and all you do is always go back to him.’ She huffed. ‘What about Mason? Louise? Henry? They were all head over heels for you, I don’t believe they didn’t ask you at least once.’

‘They did. I just said no.’ You mumbled and avoided her angry gaze.

SShe groaned and took a sip of her butterbeer. ‘I was not going to tell you this, but I see there is no other option.’ Pansy took a deep breath. ‘I heard the boys talking about the ball and Nott wants to take Arisa.’

You swallowed a big gulp in your throat and looked down into your drink. You expected that something like this would happen, you just didn’t think you wouldn’t be prepared to hear it.

‘’M sorry.’ She looked at your numb expression with caring eyes.

‘It’s okay Pans.’ You gave her a soft smile. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time to move on.’

Even though you tried to not think about him for the next few days, it was unusually hard. He was on your mind non stop, like a song playing on repeat. On top of that, everyone was talking about the upcoming event. While walking through the halls you overheard people gossiping about the pairs, discussing what they are gonna wear and you were also a witness to roughly 7 performances of the boys creatively asking their crushes to go with them.

You walked into the courtyard and took a seat on the nearest free bench. You pulled out your sketchbook in hopes to finally draw something. Truth is, you didn’t remember the last time you practiced your beloved activity, not that you didn’t have time, you just didn’t have any ideas. This time wasn’t different, you looked around and then your gaze rested on the empty page before you. You made a soft line with your pencil and stopped, it was like your hand didn’t want to listen to your mind. You groaned and closed the sketchbook to put it in your bag again. While doing this, you felt a presence in front of you. Looking up, you saw Cedric Diggory, a charming smile plastered on his face.

‘Hi, do you have a moment?’ He asked and you stood up to face him.

‘Of course.’ You smiled.

‘I have a question.’

‘If you want my help with something, then no. I can barely finish my own essays and-‘

‘No, that’s..’ He chuckled. ‘I was wondering if you’d want to go to the ball with me?’

‘Oh..’ You bit your lip softly from the inside. ‘I.. I’ll think about it. Is that okay with you?’

‘Surely, just don’t take too long, darling.’ He sent you a wink and walked out of the courtyard.

Later that night you were studying in your dorm, soft music was playing in your headphones as you scribbled some sigils for one of the classes. Your back was turned to the door, so you didn’t hear that someone came in. It was the feeling of being observed that made you move your head to inspect the room and there he was. Theodore Nott stood next to your door, his arms were crossed and you couldn’t quite read his expression. You grabbed your headphones and took them off.

‘Knocking exists.’ You told him.

‘Not for me.’ He replied sternly.

‘What are you doing here, Theodore?’ You fixed your position on the bed so that you were fully facing him. ‘Don’t you have any other hoes to tend to?’

‘Are you going to the ball with Diggory?’ He avoided your question.

‘Why do you care?’ You stood up.

‘Answer me.’ He took a step closer to you.

‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.’

‘For fucks sake, stop being a brat and answer the question.’ He said through gritted teeth.

‘It’s none of your business.’ You replied while stepping closer to him and poking your finger into his chest.

His scent filled up your nose and you felt this forbidden feeling again. Your body was lustful, for him, but you couldn’t let him win again.

He chuckled, ‘See, that’s where you’re wrong.’

You scoffed, ‘Fine. Yes.’ You spat at him. ‘I’m going with Cedric. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

His eyes darkened at the confession, which wasn’t even true. You just wanted to get on his nerves and see what he would do. You didn’t even have time to react before he pinned you to the wall and hovered over you. Your breath hitched and you tried your best to avoid his eyes, because if you looked into them, you’d lose.

‘No, you’re not.’ He stated. ‘You are not going with anyone.’

‘Why? Why the fuck do you care so much?!’ Your eyes were glued to the ceiling.

He gripped your face with one of his hands and forced you to look at him. You closed your eyes.

‘You.’ He whispered and brought his lips closer to yours before breathily adding the rest. ‘Are. Mine.’

The sound of his voice was angelic and it sent a certain feeling down to your core. You tried your best to resist but your eyes fluttered open and met his. You lost.

He grabbed your face and connected your lips in a hungry kiss. You whimpered into his mouth and cursed yourself in your mind. Why was he so addictive? Why couldn’t you quit? He just felt too good to be true. Kissing you in all the right places, his fingers touching where you needed him most, every time you felt him inside of you, it felt like heaven.

He took a few steps back and tried to not break the kiss. He pushed you onto the mattress and with one of his hands he pushed all the books off the bed. He left wet kisses along your jawline and you moaned at the feeling. He discarded both of your shirts and attached his lips to your chest, leaving a couple love bites along the way.

‘I want you to say it.’ He mumbled into your ear.

‘Hm?’ You were brought out of your trance.

‘I want you to admit you’re mine.’

‘But am I?’ He stopped kissing your neck and gripped your throat.

‘Are you?’ He raised his brow and smirked challengingly, knowing you’d fold under him.

You stared deep into his eyes and swallowed harshly because of his grip, before replying, ‘I’m yours.’

‘Good girl.’ He let go of your neck and connected your lips once again.

Soon enough both of you were a sweaty mess, clothes laying somewhere on the wooden floor, soft sounds escaping your lips as he pumped his fingers in and out of you. His breath on your neck and occasional kisses made you feel dizzy, his fingers making you squirm from the pleasure, but it wasn’t enough.

‘I need to feel you.’ You breathed out and Theo didn’t waste a second.

He positioned himself on top of you and slowly entered your aching pussy. You threw your head back and he used that to immediately attach his lips to your neck once again.

‘’S okay, darling. You’re doing so good f’me.’ He whispered to help you relax.

His voice made you let go of the tension in your lower body, finally allowing him to move at a pace so perfect for both of you. He lifted you up and spinned both of you, so that you were on top of him. His thrusts became quicker and stronger, one of his hands was caressing your breasts, while the other rubbed your clit so deliciously. You cried out his name a few times when you were close, but he always stopped just then. He just smirked every time and continued his actions, it turned him on, watching you whine on top of him. He felt he was getting closer to his release, so he sped up again, and this time his hand stayed on your sweet spot. You reached your high with a loud moan and threw your head back, your hand grabbing Theo’s arm. He released inside of you with a loud groan and you used that to push away his hand which was still rubbing circles on your bud, too sensitive for more. You collapsed on top of him and gave him a peck on his collarbone. Theo reached for the blanket and covered the two of you.

‘I lied.’ You mumbled.

‘What?’

‘I’m not going with Cedric.’ You replied softly. ‘I told him I’d think about it and..’

‘Good.’ He interrupted. ‘You’re going with me then.’

‘Am I?’ You looked up at him playfully. ‘I thought you were taking Arisa.’

‘Who?’ He replied and you giggled. ‘She asked me to go. But I refused.’

‘Why? She’s a nice girl.’

‘Maybe. But she isn’t you.’ He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. ‘And I belong solely to you.’

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

@ girasollake 2024

#imagine #x reader #🤍 - girasollake writing event ☾ ⋆* #theo nott x you #theo nott x reader #theodore nott x reader #theodore nott #theo nott #theo nott x y/n #theo nott x fem!reader #theo nott smut #theo nott imagine #theodore nott x you #theodore nott x fem!reader

[mickyschumacher]

hi! I love the way you write and I’d love to see some Daniel Ricciardo or Oscar Piastri content!! Older brother’s best friend and something including model!reader or figureskater!reader. I also cannot begin to describe how much I love your Taylor song based fics. I was hooked on Style and Dress, thank you, have a wonderful day :)

𝐈 𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐄𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 .ೃ࿐

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: you don't have much in common with oscar piastri other than three things: you're both rare talents, you know each other through your older brother, and that, unknowingly, you both really like each other.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: older brother's best friend trope! (although not heavily enforced), suggestive but nothing crude, poor ice skating knowledge, mentions of the spa track, crashing and DNFing, reader likes to blame things on alcohol, lily (oscar's current gf) is his ex (oops), slight diss of tsitp, jealousy!!!, scene of harassment and a creepy man, a physical altercation in which oscar gets physically hurt, attending the wounded scene! (sobbing rn), a cute and horribly cheesy, fluffy ending!

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: oscar piastri x figureskater!fem!reader, arthur leclerc x reader

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓: 5k+ (um srry hehe)

𝐀/𝐍: i wanted to this was oscar but since he's kinda young, i did a one year age gap bc the territory of 'the older brother's best friend' for piastri is alarming to say the least. i also assumed it was a female reader due to my other works, hope that and this whole piece is okay!!

𝐏.𝐒: if you couldn't tell, it's loosely based off of taylor swift's 'i can see you' bc i ended up losing track lmao. sorry for taking FOREVER but coming back from holiday, going straight back into uni, and having writer's block is the worst combo 🤧 as usual, poorly proof read!

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

⋆  •°.  。  .°•  ⋆

In a world of billions, quite strangely yet only logically, there were many talented people across the globe. But very few were be a World Champion let alone the opportunity. You were part of this few. The Youngest World Champion in figure skating in history, a two-time World Champion and the 2022 Olympic winner.

You were a living legacy in your town.

Of course, you couldn't do it without the support of the people you loved. Your parents attended all your competitions. In fact, your father was the one who had brought you to the ice when you were three. And your brother, no matter how much of a menace he was, he was your number one fan. Despite all the things he had to do, he was always there for you.

Your brother was one of those Australian boys who had turned their passion for dirt biking into a career for motorcross racing.

Naturally, he had found a friend who was also very interested in racing. However, instead he loved driving a open wheel single-seater formula racing car at crazy speeds. That friend was Oscar Piastri. A childhood best friend of your brother's and a sort of acquaintance slash family friend of yours.

It worried you two see some of the most important people in your lives risk death almost every day but you enjoyed watching them do something they loved.

You could see it in their eyes when they raced. It was the same passion you had for the ice. The slivers of ice that occasionally touched your skin thrilled you was the same excitement that coursed through the two Aussies when they felt their engines rev.

It was odd. You could've sworn a few days ago, you were all kids playing in the backyard of your house; your brother riding his toy bike while Oscar raced him on foot and you commentated in Oscar's favour to piss your brother off. And now all three of you were leading your careers: you were a competitive figure skater, your brother was slamming the MXGP and Oscar was one of the best rookies introduced to F1 in a while.

Where time had gone... you could not even begin to wonder. Heck, once upon a time you were staring down Oscar in the school hallways because for some reason you could only talk to him outside of school. And now... well, it was complicated to say the least.

You had always liked Oscar. It was difficult not to. He was always around you. The boyish charm, the small smiles, the puppy brown eyes, his offers to help you with your homework, you visiting him when he raced... everything had built up inside you. It was festering.

But that's how you liked it. You didn't want to cross any lines. As heart-racing and flustering as your crush on him was, you could not bear the idea of telling someone who was brotherly to you that you liked him.

It was repulsing.

And as far as his dating history could went, Oscar didn't like you. Oscar wasn't a player but he definitely didn't like being single from what you could tell.

To be honest, considering you didn't see him that much due both of your schedules, nothing between the both of you would've ever happened if you're annual family holiday hadn't happened.

Your family and the Piastri's took time out at least once a year to relax together. And this year, your brother and Oscar's breaks overlapped, and you had persuaded your coach for two weeks off. That was all the both of your parents needed before booking a trip to Greece. Everyone wanted to go when they were younger and now they could finally go.

Two weeks... not much could happen. At least so you thought.

The moment you saw Oscar in Greece, your heart thumped against your chest like it had never before and you knew you were screwed. It was ridiculous. How after all the time did you still like this stupid driver? He was the root cause of your lonely love life. Which for most figure skaters was not a big deal... you had prospect lovers falling left and right. Especially the guys in pair skating. But no... you were head over heels for Oscar out of all people.

With the firm boundaries you had made, you ventured to not make a big deal about what you were feeling and pushed it to the side. But the thing about pushing things away, they have a funny way of coming back up.

━━━━━━━━━━━

On the first night of your much needed vacation, you had found one of the most popular restaurants in Santorini while endlessly browsing through social media and decided to get everyone out of the lovely AirBnB you had rented. Upon arriving, your parents and Oscar's were cooped up on one side of the dining table, leaving the 'kids', as your mother calls you three, on the other.

You released a sigh of content, feeling the crisp breeze dance past your skin in the warm summer evening air while your sip of assyrtiko (Greek white wine) slipped past your throat far too easily. Thank God you had chosen an outdoor restaurant tonight. Every time you were on holiday, you couldn't be more grateful to get away from all the stress. If you could live like this every day, with the warm breezy evenings and the amazing architecture, you would.

"So," your mother started, her voice hitting your direction. You flickered your gaze over to her, raising a brow. "How are my kids' love lives? Are you getting down?" She waggled her eyebrows behind her glasses.

A wave of heat pricked your skin at your mother's words. "Mom!" You hissed out in disbelief while your father and Oscar's parents chuckled.

"What? You guys never tell me anything anymore! I used to be the holder of all your secrets and now... now I am an old woman!" Your mother cried, wiping an invisible tear off of her cheek.

You and your brother blankly looked at her and then towards each other. To say your mother was a character was an understatement. She enjoyed her theatrics far too much for anyone's liking, more specifically you're liking.

Oscar grinned, reaching out his hand to hover over hers. "You could never be an old woman. Always young in my heart."

Your brother snorted at Oscar's cheesiness. After you and your brother, Oscar was your mother's son and Oscar was a suck-up. He liked being in the good books, especially that of your mother's.

"Of course," Your mother chuckled softly, patting Oscar's hand gently. She sucked in a sharp breath. "What happen to you and Lily? I heard you two broke up? I thought you liked her a lot?"

You could see Oscar tense at the mention of his ex, your own body rigid. It wasn't a surprise to you but you actually hated hearing about Oscar's love life. Unrequited feelings were already a bitch and you didn't need to make it any worse.

Oscar cleared his throat, a small smiling tugging at his lips. "I thought I did too..." He trailed off, falling into his own trance momentarily. Suddenly his eyes flickered around his surroundings before they landed on you. "I guess I just saw something I else I liked a lot more."

A slight shiver crept down your spine and your heart travelled towards your ears. You pressed your lips tightly together, furrowing your brows.

What the fuck?

You snapped your eyes away, firmly placing them on your empty plate that suddenly held your entire world. Oscar had never ever looked at you like that. Any time you looked into those puppy browns, they were usually some mix between happy, anger, annoyance, sadness, humour, and the God forbidden 'I-see-you-as-my-sister' type love.

But this... this was something else entirely. The softness of his gaze, his words, the timing of it all; a perfect execution of sorts... it was a first.

Maybe you had taken one too many sips of the wine. It was the only reasonable explanation behind your obvious hallucination.

Sooner or later, the sun would set, a main reason behind your picking of the restaurant. The parents and your brother were at the front of the house, arguing about who paid for tonight's dinner. You were more than happy to wait it out on the balcony and revel in the last few rays of light, eyes closed and the breeze dancing across your skin.

"Well don't you look happy," Oscar voice stated, nearing you.

You opened your eyes, slightly turning your head to the side only to look back a few second later. Oscar and sunsets... you enjoyed that combo far too much for your liking.

"That's because I am. Sometimes being off the ice is refreshing," You told him, taking in a breath of the fresh evening air.

Out of your peripheral vision you could see Oscar tilt his head, eyes raking over you with a small grin tugging at his lips. You ignored the pace of your heart as he nodded at your remark, settling in next you with his hands on the balcony bar, a mere inch away from your own.

"I hear that," Oscar sighed, looking out at the horizon.

You forced yourself to look over at him, trying to read his mind after hearing the burdened sigh he released. "Oscar... I hope you know you're doing well in F1 right now. You're doing pretty good compared to Lando's rookie year."

Oscar smiled gently. You knew him far too well. "I know. I just... I feel like everyone's expecting so much more of me. Podiums... race wins... like everything else I've done. And then Spa came along."

You winced at the mention of the track. Oscar had collided with Carlos on the very first lap. Carlos said Oscar was too optimistic about making that turn and Oscar said that he didn't even know what Carlos doing; that the Spaniard turned as if he wasn't even on the track. Nevertheless, the collision resulted in both of them DNFing.

You snorted. "Spa is a shit track," You dismissed Oscar's current pessimism with a wave of your hand.

Oscar chuckled at your crudeness. He couldn't disagree with you. Spa was one of those tracks which felt auspicious to any driver. The one where you hoped you at least passed the finishing line. It didn't matter what your position was... as long as you passed it, you were okay.

"Guys come on! We've finished paying," Your brother called out.

The both of you turned around. Oscar pushed himself off of the bar, heading towards your brother. "Who won this one?" He asked in amusement, hands gliding past his waist. Ever so gently, in his walk, he teetered towards you, letting his hand brush past your own, sending a tingle down both of you.

You gulped at the racing feeling, immediately pulling your hand closer to yourself. This hairs of your body stood straight and your fingers felt numb. Heck, you felt numb.

Damn, you thought, this is some crazy good wine.

━━━━━━━━━━━

The thing about your inclination to blame everything on the alcohol you consumed was that it only actually worked if you consumed alcohol. You were lucky if you could extend to the remaining bits by a day with the claims of a hangover.

But right now, you were sober as hell.

An unfortunate event, to say the least.

"Y/N, wake up," Oscar's voice pounded against your blanketed, muffled ears.

"Ugh, no" You groaned, cocooning yourself into your blanket and pressing your head further into your pillow, savouring the warmth.

You always had such early mornings when you trained, waking up at ungodly hours only to workout before heading to the rink. Being on the ice was the only thing you loved. Your fans were sweet but everything else after that, the press, the workouts, the food, sucked. So you cherished the late summer morning in Santorini. And no person, let alone a boy who announced his F1 team to you by saying "I'm driving for a papaya", was going to ruin this for you.

Oscar put his hands on his hips, eyeing you with a twitch in his eye. "But breakfast is ready. I cooked!"

You laughed into your sheets lightly. "Oh boy, that's even worse!"

Oscar looked at your peeking head and humoured eyes blankly. "That," he started to say as he began to literally pull you out of your bed by your arms, "is very very rude thing to say to the chef."

"Oscar, no! Let go!" You begged, hands flailing to attach themselves to anything. Falling on the hard cold floor was not the ideal morning for you.

At least not alone.

You jutted out your leg, nudging Oscar's to the side, making him stumble over his steps. As he quickly realised he was losing balance, he threw his body under yours, creating a soft landing for you as you both fell to the floor.

You were laughing too hard to realise Oscar's one hand had even moved to your waist and the other to your head, as if it was to protect you from getting hurt.

"Oh my God! You should've seen your face! It was like–" You turned to mimic his expression but you couldn't find the words. All the air around you had been seized, your throat was dry and you were breathless.

When had Oscar's face become so close to yours?

You couldn't remember the last time you were this close to him. Probably as a child. He was cute back then as well. But growing up changed the both of you. The most apparent reminder of how old you were was the tiny short hairs from his chin that he always tried to shave off. His eyes were still as brown as ever, less big because he grew into his face. And his lips... they were kissable.

His face was also littered with freckles here and there. You didn't even realise your finger had shot out to play connect the dots with them until you could feel his faint warm breath from how close you were.

Your eyes trailed up his face to find his gaze firmly planted on yours. Suddenly you could feel where his hands were and your skin burned at his touch. The current heatwave in Europe had left you in some thin pyjamas. You didn't regret it last night but you definitely regretted wearing them right now.

Hypnotised, you found yourself leaning in naturally. Oscar's head also nudged forward. Your lips were barely a centimetre away from each other. You could hear your name slip out of Oscar's lips as the faintest whisper. Like it was a struggle to say your name because he couldn't think.

His woody and amber scent engulfed you and for a second, you couldn't think.

Not until you could hear your brother scream both of your names from the kitchen, demanding you to come to breakfast.

You blinked, falling out of your trance as quickly as you fell in.

Oscar felt you jerk in his arms suddenly, pushing yourself out of his hold and attempting to stand up. "Y/N, I–"

No. God, no.

You weren't ruining a friendship over this.

You could pretend. Yes. Pretend. You can't see him.

"We're coming!" You yelled back, feeling your cheeks redden with embarrassment and annoyance; both vexing feeling for yourself.

God, what a day to be sober.

━━━━━━━━━━━

Honestly how this holiday had gone from zero to a hundred was beyond you.

Pretending like nothing had happened in your room was harder than you thought. Not when Oscar looked at you with these burdened eyes and like he had something to say to you, right on the tip of his tongue.

You considered avoiding him. But doing so on a family trip was easier said than done. Besides, it would've been pretty obvious to everyone else and knowing your family, they would've made a big deal out of nothing. Because that's what it was: nothing.

But alas, you have a brother. And normally, he's stupid and self-obsessed to the point it bordered on unhealthy. But as your brother, it seemed he had some sort of sixth sense for these sorts of things. Something about the older sibling being superior or whatever lies he convinced himself with.

"Why are you being weird with Oscar? Your brother asked you while you ate some ice cream and caught up with the new season of 'The Summer I Turned Pretty'. At first, you couldn't fathom watching a character called 'Belly' out of all things but somehow you got hooked.

You paused the scoop of ice cream you put in your mouth, letting it slowly melt away as you stared hard at your nuisance of a brother. "I have literally no idea what you're talking about."

"Ha, nice try. You're supposed to use 'literally' when you deny it the second time," Your brother smiled at you smugly.

You pressed your lips together, feeling your teeth slightly grind against your spoon. You couldn't decide whether you wanted to smack the shit of your brother with a spoon or bury him in a six-foot deep hole.

"Come on, lil sis, you can talk to me. Everyone's out of the house right now," He partially jested while being entirely serious.

Burying him in a hole it was.

"I have nothing to say to you," You stated, eyes reverting back to your show.

Your brother narrowed his eyes, grabbing the remote to pause the episode. Ignoring your exclaim of annoyance, he sat down next to you and took your ice cream and spoon away from you to dig into the pint for himself.

You shuddered in disgust. You were not having that flavour for a while.

He pointed your spoon at you. "I know you think I'm stupid, which I may be, but I'm not entirely an idiot. What happened with you and Oscar? You were all happy buddies a few days ago. Now he looks like a lost puppy and you look like you saw Pennywise in the hallway."

You bit down on your lip to prevent yourself from laughing. You couldn't actually let him know he was funny.

"Did he do something to you? Y/N, if he did something wrong to you I swear to God... just tell me and I will end him."

Your eyes widened at the sudden change of the conversation. Sitting up, you waved your hands in urgent dismissal. "No! Oh my God, nothing like that! Holy shit."

Your brother let a relieved exhale fall from his mouth before furrowing his brows. "Then what happened? Is it your stupid crush on him?"

"I–what?" You asked dumbfounded, looking at your brother incredulously.

"Your crush? Like the one you've had since you first laid eyes on him. You know everyone knows right? It's kinda obvious. Well, everyone but Oscar," your brother said nonchalantly.

You blinked blankly at him. "Before I throw myself off of a cliff, I can give you the generous choice of how you die? Personally I'm thinking asphyxiation, arson, or murder."

Your brother gulped, slowly putting away the ice cream. "Okay, first off stop watching Criminal Minds so much. Second of all, you don't need to feel embarrassed. All of us have been secretly rooting for you. Especially mom and Oscar's mom. You should've seen how happy they got when I told them Oscar and Lily broke up. It was seriously creepy."

You sighed, falling onto the couch. "It doesn't matter how creepy it was. We almost kissed! And then you called for us. Any later, I would've ruined our friendship. What's the point anyways? He doesn't like me. I'm gonna die in the friendzone," You dramatically sobbed out.

"Well you can start by not turning the other direction when you see him. Poor guy looks like you killed his dog. Do you think a guy who's dog was killed has any guts to speak to their murderer? And that's beside the fact that he may like his murderer."

Where was that shovel again?

"You know what you need to do? Do something that makes him talk to you. I got it! I could set you up with Arthur! He's in Santorini too! Oscar would hate it."

"Oh my God... do you want me to die?" You asked, slightly horrified at the look of pure joy on your brother's face .

Your brother grinned. "Of course, I do. Would I be your brother if I didn't?"

━━━━━━━━━━━

For as long as he could remember, Oscar was a peaceful guy. He didn't really get angry quickly. He was usually calm and usually could think before he acted.

But all those characteristics were thrown out the window, well into the air of the music festival everyone decided to attend, when he saw you walk into the event with Arthur Leclerc. His former teammate out of all people.

"Is that Arthur? Why is he here?" Oscar asked your brother.

"Hmm?" Your brother turned around, pretending to squint at the two of you briefly before catching your piercing gaze. "Oh yeah... that is him. He told me he was in Greece. Guess he found Y/N first. Makes sense I guess."

Oscar looked at your brother dubiously. "I... what does that even mean?"

"I don't know why but I always got the feeling he liked Y/N," your brother shrugged.

Oscar blinked. "You're taking the fucking piss..." He huffed in disbelief.

"What? Oh? Here they come."

Truth be told, Arthur was more than happy to oblige with your brother's game. He hadn't seen Oscar in a while because they were in different championships now. Getting the opportunity to play with him a bit was a hard offer to turn down.

"Ozzie!" Arthur cheered, bringing him into a hug.

Oscar raised a brow at you. That pet name originated from you when the three of you decided to become superheroes for a day and you decided to name eight-year-old Oscar, 'Ozzie the Mozzie' after he got bitten by one. No one else on Earth called him that but you.

"I was telling Arty here about that mozzie that bit you and he really liked Ozzie the Mozzie," You chuckled softly.

Arty...

God give him strength because Oscar wasn't sure how much longer he could bear this.

To be honest, you weren't much of a music festival type of person. It was always crowded, hot, and filled with some sort of drugs even if you couldn't see it.

But aside from that, you enjoyed the serenity it could bring; the indie music that was well on it's way to becoming pop; the calming breeze; the warming sun.

Well you would enjoy it more if a certain Aussie wasn't staring daggers to the side of your head–Arthur's head.

You felt a tap on your shoulder and you turned around to see a stranger. A somewhat attractively creepy stranger but a stranger nonetheless. You raised your brows and gave a small smile. "Yes?"

"I know you don't know me but I just saw you from over there and I wanted to say you're really pretty!"

You blinked, feeling the three boys around you stiffen at the compliment. You nodded slowly, putting on a grateful smile. "Oh, thank you so much," You responded, laughing awkwardly.

A moment of awkward silence settled in the air as the guy still remained in front of you.

"So... I was wondering if I get could get your number?" The guy asked with an odd glint in his eyes.

The alarms were ringing in your head and an uncomfortable shiver went down your spine. "Uh, I'm sorry. I... I don't really want to. But thanks for your offer," You politely declined.

"Oh come on. I called you pretty... that's gotta be worth your number. Come on."

Oh.

Honestly, you were speechless. Your number which for him was the leeway into your intimate life was worth a compliment.

"Yeah, I don't think so," You quipped sharply, gritting your teeth.

"Come on, baby girl. Let me show you a fun time." The guy stepped forward, his hand reaching towards your body.

You froze at his words. You wanted to move but you couldn't.

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Oscar, Arthur, and your brother step in front of you.

"Mate, fuck off. She doesn't want you," Oscar pushed the guy away from you.

Your brother snorted. "I don't think anyone wants him."

The guy sneered, making you wince. He raised his hands in a feigned defence, beginning to turn away from you. Thank God. "Fine. I didn't want a girl like you anyways. All these guys around you... a whore."

Arthur and you, as the pacifists you were, watched in silent horror as your brother poked his tongue in his cheek and Oscar's head quickly whipped towards the guy.

"Oscar..." You warned meekly as Arthur tried to get your brother's attention.

The last thing any of you needed was famed athletes on the front page of ESPN, cited as the cause of a brawl.

"What did you say?" Oscar raised a brow, ignoring your pleas and walking towards the guy. His tone was dark and the total opposite of what he normally sounded like. He was raged.

"The truth," The guy chuckled. "I said she's a whore. Why? What are you gonna do about it, little boy?"

Yeah see, the guy most definitely had a couple of inches on Oscar and you brother. You weren't really keen on seeing them get pummelled to the ground.

Oscar said nothing in response but raised his fist, slamming it into the side of the guy's jaw.

Oh for fuck's sake.

As if the guy had lightening reflexes, the guy quickly pulled his head back up and got a hold of Oscar, getting into a cycle of punches.

Your heart dropped at the sight. Your brother, thank God, and Arthur quickly realised that Oscar wasn't winning anything here, stepping in to push the two men apart. A small crowd began to gather, some thankfully aiding in trying to stop whatever was going on.

Arthur pulled Oscar away and towards you. You held Oscar against you, clutching him tightly as your heart raced in your ears. Somewhere in the muffled sounds you could hear your brother.

"We're going home. Now."

━━━━━━━━━━━

Your brother and Arthur had decided to go explain the situation the both of your parents who were out having lunch because you couldn't blame all those bruises and dry blood on Oscar's face by saying he fell. This left you to clean up Oscar to reduce the risk of your parents having a heart attack.

You clenched your jaw, holding the first aid kid and a wet cloth to your side as you walked towards the seated racing driver who had found a lot of interest in the floor all of a sudden while icing his face.

"I can't believe you," You mumbled in annoyance, taking a seat next to him. You gently grabbed his chin, putting side the ice bag, trying to decide on where to start cleaning but you could only wince at his face. His bottom lip and his brow was slightly torn, the side of his jaw and the top of his cheek had started to bruise, and his nose was a blood fest.

All the pain Oscar felt began to disappear as he felt your hands gently graze past his skin, scouting all the damage that had occurred. He looked at your pained eyes and internally sighed. He hated seeing you in pain. "He was disrespecting you. I wasn't going to just let it go."

You rolled your eyes, slowly wiping away the dry blood. "He was like six foot two, Oscar. You're like five foot. He could've ki... he could've really hurt you," You jested before your voice fell into a bare whisper.

Oscar's heart clenched as you went back on your words, watching you grab some antiseptic with shaky hands. He grabbed your hands, holding them with his own and softly looked into your eyes. "But he didn't. I'm fine. See?" He smiled widely before wincing at the pain shooting through his face.

You snorted. "As if."

"Hey, you're talking to a guy who crashes at most craziest speeds. Bet that guy can't do that," Oscar shrugged nonchalantly.

You narrowed your eyes. "If you weren't already hurt, I would've smacked the shit out of you right now. Just so you know."

Oscar grinned at you. "Ah, there's the ever kind Y/N I love."

You rolled your eyes before processing what he had just said. As friends. Friendly love. Right. You shook your head out of your trance, removing your hands from his and returning back to the stupid first aid kit next to you.

Oscar mended his brows together. "Hey," he tapped your thigh, "you heard what I said right?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah," You said idly, opening the tube of antiseptic cream.

"What? I..." Oscar sighed, taking the cream out of your hands before pulling you closer to him. His hands held your face, looking you dead in the eye. "I said I love you, Y/N. You know... the type where you look at someone and all you know is that you can't breathe without them? The one in your books?"

Your mouth felt dry. You blinked blankly. Your hands felt clammy. You chuckled nervously. "Pfft, what? You don't love me. You mean as a friend, right? I think you need some medicine. Maybe there's some in this kit." Your eyes darted down, frantically looking around the box as your heart thudded against your chest.

"Hey, hey," Oscar called, using his hand to turn your chin towards him. "I don't. I mean, I do love you as a friend, but no. I love love you."

"Well... what about about Lily?"

"As I said... I realised I loved someone else more," Oscar told you, letting his confession sink into your mind. "You know... if your idiot brother didn't call us that day, I definitely would've kissed you."

Oh.

Well.

That was something.

This was real. You weren't dreaming. You hadn't died. Oscar, your childhood best friend and your brother's best friend, was confessing to you.

"Huh... well, if it's any consolation, I probably would've kissed you too," You retorted, trying to keep your quirking lips at bay before you began smiling for too much for anyone's liking.

"Probably? That kinda sucks. Are you sure you wouldn't have definitely kissed me?" Oscar grinned, grabbing your waist and seating you down on his lap.

"Hmm... I mean maybe. This current environment is nowhere near as enticing as my bedroom. I mean what is sexier than me waking up, am I right?" You joked, trying to cover up the fact that you were dying at the proximity between you two.

Oscar pushed a lock of your hair behind your ear, letting his fingers trail down your cheek, holding your jaw while his thumb grazed your lips. "Well, I can think of a few other things."

You silently watched as Oscar leaned in and pressed his lips against yours. His lips were softer than you could ever imagine.

You blinked, taking a mere second to register what was going on. Oscar Piastri was kissing you. Holy shit, Oscar Piastri was kissing you!

You kissed him back, feeling his hand wrap around the back of your neck and the other holding you steady against him. Your skin burned at his touch, feeling his fingers snake past the hem of your shirt and rest on your hot skin.

Oddly enough, despite your heat, goosebumps sprawled across every inch of your skin as his tongue darted out, exploring your own, giving you access to his mouth.

You could've sworn you were walking on fire. One more step and you could've combusted. Your thighs clenched at the moan that slipped from Oscar's mouth as your teeth tugged on his bottom lip, your hands roaming around his chest and his arms.

Oscar's hand wrapped around your hair, enjoying the softness he had wanted touch ever since he realised he had feelings for you. His pants felt tight as he felt your hand brush against his bare torso. Fuck. You were going to do him in. He fell back further into the couch, holding you tighter against him.

The desire you had was blinding you. Your other hand fell to his cheek, forgetting about his injuries till Oscar murmured an "ouch".

You retracted your hands, pulling back from his lips, a move Oscar clearly didn't enjoy as his eyes followed your lips. "Shit!" You exclaimed, "the antiseptic! Sorry!"

Oscar paused in his trance, realising what you were talking about. He smiled softly, lips widening even further when he saw your swollen lips and flushed cheeks.

You carefully applied the cream to his brow before moving to his lips. "The diagnosis for you Mr Piastri is no more kissing for you," You grinned.

Oscar looked at you dumbfounded. "I–what? For how long?"

"Mmm... a week?"

"A week?" Oscar repeated in exasperation. "There is no way I can last that long. Not after this. Besides I'm pretty sure kissing actually helps you heal faster."

Your skin warmed further at his confession. You cleared your throat and held his hands. "I am confident that is not scientifically true."

Oscar narrowed his eyes, lips quirking in amusement. "You need to read better medical journals, doc."

You tilted your head to the side, leaning in further. "I think I have an alternative."

"Yeah?" Oscar's eyes danced across your face, smiling softly. "What is it?"

"It's less practical, more theoretical. Confessional, if you will," You shrugged, letting your forehead rest against his.

Oscar shut his eyes, enjoying the warmth of you. "Oh really? Don't let me stop you."

"I love you, Oscar. I've loved you since we were little heroes running around in the backyard."

Oscar opened his eyes, hands wrapping around your waist. He smiled widely at you. "Are you sure you said a week?"

You rolled your eyes, hitting his chest playfully. "I'm sure."

© 𝐌𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐘𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐔𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑

#mickyschumacher #f1 x reader #f1 x you #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #formula 1 #oscar piastri #oscar piastri x reader #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri fanfic #oscar piastri fluff #oscar piastri imagine

[m0nsterqzzz]

Capture the Flag

pairing: clarisse la rue x child of apollo!reader

summary: you hate capture the flag, and clarisse hates people hurting you. that's that.

warnings: kidnapping? *done by a bunch of demigod teenagers for the simple outcome of winning a game* mentions of murder because what is a clarisse fic without it? swearing? kinda oc clarisse just because I can't write anything else without turning it into enemies to lovers

a/n: she is my love. clarisse defender for life.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Clarisse La Rue.

The name sparks fear in many people at Camp Half Blood. Kids cower when she’s near, or run away when she walks towards them. It makes her happy, having people fear her. She thrives off of it, being a daughter of Ares; the god of war.

But too you? The name brings warmth, comfort, and love. It’s very rare her wrath has ever been directed towards you, and the few times it has been was when she didn’t know you. When you were just another camper to her.

It only took a few days at camp for you to be claimed by your father, Apollo. 

It made sense really, your bubbly and energetic personality was so similar to your fathers and his demi god childrens. You moved into cabin seven with your small backpack of beloved items from your past, picking the bed in the corner farthest away from the few other children of Apollo and spending most of your time in that spot if you weren't at arts and crafts or archery. Not many people cared about you at first, not that you mind while you were trying to process all that happened for you to finally get to this wilderness home. Then you tried to make some friends, which ended with you mostly spending your days with your siblings or the children of Hermes and the campers who lived in that cabin without being claimed.

Then, you met your girlfriend. The love of your life. You're everything. Clarisse.

She had protected you during a game of capture the flag, not realizing that your “attacker” was one of your best friends who simply held his sword up to you in a playful way. You teased her for weeks after that, giving her the title, “my protector”. Although the teasing eventually stopped, the nickname never did.

You’re her sunshine. That’s clear to everyone in camp, but nobody really talks about it for fear of being hurt by her spear.

Capture the flag is one of her favorite days out of the week. Other than every Tuesday when Chiron lets you eat dinner at her table- an agreement that came after a very long week of begging of course. That was his compromise to your ask of being able to spend every night at that table, and Clarisse wasn’t going to push it despite liking the first idea more. 

It became a lot harder to win said game when she started dating you, team red losing one of their best fighters when she would leave her post by the flag to roam the forest and make sure you are okay. It just makes you laugh when she stops kissing you up against a tree to suddenly run back to her post when she remembers the main task at hand, but her siblings and team would definitely disagree that it's funny.

Today's no different, and after threatening her teammate with her spear, she leaves her post to find you with the peace of mind that they’ll protect the flag and won’t tell on her to the other players on team red.

You on the other hand, you have your headphones in, music blasting in them as you dance through the forest and around the trees. Capture the flag has never really been as important to you as your teammates on the blue team, and both Annabeth and Luke eventually learned to give you a simple task and let you do your own thing. 

The nymph's join along in your activities every once in a while, but for the most part they just stay in their tree form as you dance past them.

You’re in your own world with your favorite song playing on your wired headphones that stay connected to the ipod in your hand that your girlfriend gifted to you after she came home from a quest a few months ago. It’s only when someone hits your helmet-covered head with the butt of their sword so hard you pass out that you realize you wandered into the red team's territory.

Waking up, the first thing you notice is the harsh light of the sun glaring down at you. Then it’s the rough feeling of wood on your back and the tight pull of rope on your stomach when you try and fail to stand up from your sitting poston. Your stomach churns as you realize what kind of situation you're in; no help, in a vulnerable position, and no weapon. Lastly, you groan when you realize that your headphones have been taken out of your ears and are laying in a tangled pile a few feet away along with your ipod.

After a few seconds, your vision clears up and the two blobs of color that you saw in front of you turn out to be two people. They’re clearing down at you from their standing positions, one with a sword out and the other holding a dagger.

“Good morning sunshine.” You cringe at the nickname that comes from one of the boys you now recognize from the Aphrodite cabin. It’s the one that your girlfriend uses for you. 

Children of Aphrodite may be well known for her being the goddess of love, and all things pink and pretty, but sometimes people forget she is also a goddess of war. Her demigod children are sweet and nice, but it’s no big surprise why Clarisse likes having them on her team when you see their fighting abilities when they actually try.

“What do you want with me?” You question harshly, trying but eventually giving up on trying to force the ropes to untie by moving your body around. You’re tied to a thin tree, thin enough for your arms to reach behind you and wrap around it- it's kind of like your giving the tree a backwards hug with your hands tied together around it- but not thin enough to break when you push you back up against it to test the theory on if you can snap it. 

They look at eachother and chuckle, putting their weapons away when they realize you can’t get out of your ties. One you recognize as Oliver steps closer to you as he says, “Annabeth and Luke care about you so much, the moment they realize that you’re missing, they’ll forget all about the flag and Clarisse can go get it.”

You stare at them blankly for a few seconds before you burst out laughing. They glance at each other before narrowing their eyes at you.

“What are you laughing at sunshine?” You finish laughing when the ropes pull on your stomach way too tightly with the way your body shakes with the laughter. “You ummm…” You start, taking a deep breath when you find yourself beginning to giggle again. “You thought the most amazing plan…was to lead my overprotective friends and girlfriend…the girl who carries a spear with her everywhere she goes and hurts anyone who looks at her wrong mind you…to the spot where she’ll find her partner tied up to a tree in a clearing where no one is around to stop her from killing you guys?”

They stare at you with a sudden look of fear in their eyes before they walk a few yards away to begin whispering to each other, the confidence from earlier gone and rethinking their plan after you brought the obvious ending to your attention.

“Hey guys?!” You shout out, smiling when they turn around for a second to face you. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell Clarisse not to kill you! She usually listens to me because the last time she killed someone, I didn’t cuddle her for a week!” Their eyes widen at your casualness, as if her killing someone is completely normal in your world before turning back around so you can’t see them panicking. It doesn’t matter though, the way they move their hands erratically and have to take deep breaths from raising their voices in fear is enough knowledge.

They come back a few minutes later, the fear still there as they stand in front of you. You don’t ask what plan they’ve come up with now, and they don’t tell you.

You guys sit in silence for a second before you glance at your earbuds and ask, “Do you guys like jazz tunes?” The boys stare at you with a confused expression.

“Um..…no. Why? Is that what you were listening to?”

“No. It’s just a conversation starter. The quiet was getting kinda awkward.”

The silence is back again, before you begin to quietly hum the tune of the song you were listening to before they interrupted your state of happiness. “So…..did you guys see my amazing dancing?”

Liam chuckles, eyes not meeting yours as he scans the forest around you guys and mumbles, “It wasn’t that good.” Oliver lets out a small hum of agreement. 

You scoff, eyes falling to your legs as you whisper under your breath, “Well damn. I’m definitely letting my girl kill you now.”

Suddenly, a few yards away, there is a loud scream that could make someone's ear eardrums bleed. It isn’t one of fear or sadness, but of anger. The boy’s eyes widen and they begin to spin in circles to try and keep track of the attacker as they pull out their weapons. You just smile.

The sound of someone running is what finally snaps them out of their panic enough to try running away, but she’s already there using the end of her spear to hit one's back so hard he falls forward and pulls the other one of one backwards and throws him on the ground by his armor. 

The first boy she pushes tries to get up and scurry away, but she simply places her foot on his back and presses so down with her boot with enough pressure he looks ready to cry. He really should be wearing armor. 

“Clar! Clar, it’s fine! I’m fine!” You shout when the fear starts to set in that she might actually hurt them, and she doesn’t even seem like she’s listening as she twists her spear in a circle and looks towards the other boy with a grin on her face that you know all too well. She’s going to kill them.

You begin to try and pry your hands out of the rope so hard it begins to shred your skin like paper in hopes of stopping her from doing something she’ll get in so much trouble for, and it’s only when you let out a small whimper of pain does Clarisse stop her actions. The grin falls from her face, and her foot releases the boy as she hurries over to you.

Both boys get up off the dirt, stumbling over their own feet as they begin to run back into the forest to hide from Clarisse. “You touch them again and I’ll kill you in ways even my father couldn’t imagine!” She screams over her shoulder in a terrifying voice, and the way she then turns to you with a sweet smile would be weird to anyone else. It only comforts you.

“I’m so sorry sunshine. I’m so sorry I let them hurt you.” She whispers as she uses the sharpest part of her spear to cut the ropes off. You sigh in relief, bringing them to your lap so you can gently caress them. There are red marks surrounding them, some of which you can already tell are going to bruise and one with a small cut on it from the rope and bark on the tree rubbing on your skin.

Your girlfriend looks guilty, so when she begins to spill even more apologizes you shut her up with a gentle kiss. “It’s okay Clar. I’m okay. It’s my fault. I wasn’t paying attention.” She shakes her head no and you watch with a small smile as she uses the most gentle touch you’ve ever felt to pick up your wrists and assess the injury.

“Really. I’m fine. It’s just some rope burn.” She hums in understanding, bringing them up to her lips one by one to place a feather light kiss on the red spots. “Better?” The curly haired girl asks with a small smile. 

“Much.” She nods, letting out one more apology before she picks you up bridal style and begins to walk back in the direction of camp. It’s only when you make it to the edge of the clearing and the cabins, mess hall, and big house come into view do you realize she’s not taking you back to your team's territory. 

When you go to ask where she’s taking you, but she just shh’s you and takes the trail to the infirmary. In the distance, the conch shell sounds, signaling the end of the game. It’s followed by the familiar cheers of your team, making you feel bad.

“I’m really sorry Clar. I could have walked myself. I’m so sorry” She just shakes her head, walking into the small building that only has about three Apollo children in it, the kids who don’t like to play capture the flag and volunteer to stay in the infirmary in case someone needs medical help. You know them, sending them all bright smiles and they do the same.

She sets you down on a gurney, a quick glare to the boy standing awkwardly a few feet away with a clipboard is all he needs to run over and begin gently cradling your arms to wrap your wrist’s. His name is Jamie, and he’s the quietest out of all of your siblings. Even with his silence, you know he’s an absolute sweetheart after nights spent painting with him or enjoy a walk in the sun together.

“Just take off the bandages to ice them every once and a while, and you should feel fine in a few days.” He mumbles before scurrying off to do something else, but in reality you know he’s just trying to get away from the girl who now stands at the edge of your bed like a guard. My protector.

You stand up, slowly walking towards her and wrapping your arms around the back of her neck. “You know, your siblings are beginning to despise me for being the reason you guys are losing.”

She shrugs, a small smile making its way onto her face. “Let them. They ever talk shit, you come to me. I’ll deal with it. Until then, they can despise you in silence. I’m just happy you’re okay sunshine.”

“Thanks to you. My protector.” With that she chuckles, leaning down to kiss you as your arms tighten around her.

“But I’m definitely getting Chiron to change the Apollo cabin to our team.”

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

#clarisse la rue #clarisse la rue x reader #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson series #clarisse la rue x you #ares god of war #once again i don't know how to write endings

[lifeiskentastic]

Ken x gn!Reader as friends to lovers story

A/n: my first fic on tumblr… and hopefully not the last;) also english is my second language so if you notice a mistake please write to me about it, 'cause i'm just learning and this will help me a lot.

Summary: A real world reader finds a box of vinyl records in Ken's house, which leads to an unexpected turn of events.

Genre: fluff, comfort, friends to lovers;

Song played in fic: Biggest Part of Me by Ambrosia;

World count: 805 words;

Hope you enjoy!

***

"Ken, can I borrow this, please?"

You point to a small box in the corner of Ken's House (and yes, as it turns out, it does really exist), right by the entrance. Although it may look small at first glance, if you take the lid off, you'll be genuinely surprised at how much can this thing hold. How many music records can this thing hold.

"Mmm," Ken turned to you in confusion, distracted from the very important task of destroying all available books about patriarchy (only those that mentioned horses survived).

As soon as Ken realized what you were pointing at, he jumped up and ran over to you.

"Oh, this thing..." He exhaled heavily, as if he didn't know how to describe it: "I brought it from your world... I haven't figured out how to use it yet. But it was fun to play with it in Frisbee, though."

You had to hold back your giggles, knowing full well that the box contained not a Frisbee but rather vinyl records of 80s rock hits.

"Ken... Don't worry, I know what it is, and unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend playing with it."

Ken looks at you in confusion, waiting for an explanation.

"Then what does it do?" Now his face was full of curiosity.

"Oh, it's music." You bit your lip, already anticipating that wave of the cutest delight in the entire universe on Ken's face. "My favorite music, for real. What a coincidence!"

"Ah, so that means we can listen to these little flat wheels?"

As difficult as it was, you still controlled your laughter because you didn't want to hurt your friend's feelings.

"Huh... Yes, Ken, wait a minute, I'll play you something."

You had noticed beforehand that the box contained a modern vinyl record player. The only question was where Ken had gotten it from, but you decided to put that aside for later. There are more important things to do now. For example, the culturalization of the inhabitants of Barbieland for unselfish purposes (or one particular inhabitant of Barbieland for, to be honest, a little bit of selfish purposes)

You could feel Ken's intrigued look on your back as you conscientiously chose which song to start your immersion in the deep culture of the 80s. Of course, you chose the one you thought Ken would like the most. Of course, it was a love song.

As the playful melody began to play on the record player, you were very pleased with yourself. But Ken was still on edge. So you wisely decided to relax him a little.

When the first words of Biggest Part of Me by Ambrosia touched your ears, you gently led the surprised Ken into a dance, grabbing him around the waist with one hand and intertwining your palms with the other. He was a little confused, but he quickly realized what was going on and began to follow your movements. His puzzlement turned into a gentle, homely smile, and those two crystal blue eyes look that always gave you goosebumps.

"It's a nice song." He spoke calmly and quietly, though there was no need for that. "Make a wish, baby, and I will make it come true."

He began to sing along to the beat of dance, which suddenly gave him control of the situation.

"I finally found someone who believes in me." Ken kept staring at you, still smiling gently. "I need your love here, next to me."

It seemed as if with every turn in the dance, your faces were getting closer together. And when you felt that you were crossing the line between friendly dancing and something closer and more romantic, you had to stop it. But you didn't want to.

"You're the biggest part of me".

Immediately after these words, Ken stopped singing. He thought for a moment and then confidently proclaimed:

"Hmm, really," he raised his eyebrows as if he had come to some brilliant conclusion, "I really feel like you are the biggest part of me."

You had to swallow because something strange and incomprehensible was preventing the answer from coming out of your throat. However, when you felt your cheeks burning, you realized that this strange and incomprehensible feeling was embarrassment. A very unusual kind of embarrassment, the kind that you shouldn't normally feel towards a friend.

"M-m", You understood that Ken was waiting for your answer, so you gathered all your willpower into a fist and said, "I feel something similar, Ken."

Ken's smile grew bigger, and his joy radiated from him like rays from the sun.

"I'm, ah, glad to hear that... Does that mean we can continue dancing?"

You smile back. Ken was charging you with positivity just by being there.

"Of course, Ken, as much as you want!"

You were both ready for the next song.

Thanks for reading! I'd also love to hear your ideas for the next Barbie fic, so see ya.)

***

#ken x reader #ryan gosling ken #ken #barbie 2023 #barbie movie #kenergy #ken x you #sorry for the fact that there is really nothing serious here #ken fluff #ken fic #fanfic #barbie #ken barbie #barbie ken #fanfiction #first post

[babydollmarauders]

YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN, KID — JACK HUGHES

jack hughes x fem!reader

part of the Midnights Fic List

summary: in which y/n spent her high school years changing herself to become what she thought was Jack’s type, but when they meet again a few years later, she learns that she never needed to change in order for him to like her.

warnings: eating disorder mentioned and lightly described, weed mention/use, alcohol mention/use, light profanity, changing yourself for a guy (yes, that is a warning), this is mostly angst.

notes: one of my most relatable Taylor songs to my favorite guy <3 this was proofread but if you see anything insensitive, please let me know so i can change it. for timeline purposes, i should mention that i wrote this with a summer birthday in mind for y/n.

important: THIS FIC IS NOT ROMANTICIZING ED’S. if you’re struggling with an ED, please know that you can message me any time! i understand the pain and frustration and i will always be there to help in any way possible.

14 YEARS OLD

it was in my freshman year of high school that i noticed i was a bit different than other girls my age. with them having middle school relationships under their belt, and most being in sports rather than chorus like me. i didn’t really think much of it, as boys played no part in my life besides as defacto muses for my songs. but i still felt out of place.

16 YEARS OLD

it was in the summer before my junior year that i met Jack Hughes. a USNTDP hockey player and my first official crush. my family had rented a lake house and the Hughes’ ended up being our neighbors for the summer. My parents quickly befriended Ellen and Jim, and when they realized they had children the same age, all four of them tried for weeks to get Jack and i to hang out. but to no avail, because i was shutting myself in my room for some quiet writing time, and Jack was always busy with his brothers. but when i had slipped away from my parents to go for an evening swim one night, apparently Jack had the same idea. we saw each other at the lake and got to talking, becoming friends pretty quickly after that. it was 2 weeks into the friendship that i realized he made me feel things that my other guy friends didn’t.

when we split up at the end of the summer, we promised to text, but a couple weeks later i was pleasantly surprised when i was called into the school office to show him around. with pretty similar schedules, we were seeing each other in school quite a bit, and from that our friendship only grew. i sat with him and his friends at lunch, he would pick me up for school on the mornings that my car wouldn’t start, and he would even walk me to my classes sometimes.

but because of that, my feelings grew too. i did a full one-eighty, changing my entire personality. i stopped spending my weekends at home, instead opting to attend parties, just in hopes of seeing Jack there. and i found any excuse to talk to him, for even just a minute.

**

i’m sitting in my room, struggling with my math homework when my phone starts ringing. i peel my eyes away from the worksheet to glance over at it, and my heart flutters when i see Jack’s name, his picture lighting up the screen. i quickly press the answer button, holding the phone up to my ear.

“hey” i say.

“hey! you texted saying you have a question?” his voice is raspy, words coming out slow and slightly slurred, and i can hear Trevor, Alex, and Cole talking in the background. he’s smoking weed.

“uh, yeah. i had a question about the Algebra 2 homework, but i can just ask you tomorrow when you’re in a better state of mind.” i laugh.

“how’d you know?” i can hear his grin through the phone, and it makes me smile.

“call it best friend’s intuition. i’ll let you get back to the guys.” i tell him. we say our goodbyes and i hang up, taking another second to stare at my phone with a goofy smile before i turn back to my math homework.

**

during the school year, i listened to him talk about each girl he was seeing throughout the year. each of them pretty, skinny, and blonde. and eventually, i wondered if he would like me as more than his annoying best friend, if i looked like those girls. so i would stare in my mirror for hours some nights, pinpointing things i should change about myself. as like most teenage girls, i had always been insecure, wishing to change myself. but now i learned to use Jack as an excuse for it. and from there, things started developing.

i begged my mom for weeks to let me dye my hair, and when she finally caved, i went to the salon and went blonde. but my hair wasn’t the only thing that changed. my eating habits were altered. slowly at first, just cutting out certain foods, and then all at once. i started skipping meals, excusing myself from dinner by saying i had a large lunch, leaving the house quickly in order to avoid breakfast, and only eating at lunch when Jack expressed concern about my lack of food. like now.

“good afternoon, hockey knuckleheads. your favorite person has arrived.” i announce my arrival at the lunch table while dropping my book bag by my seat, interrupting the boys current conversation. they all look at me, quickly saying their hello’s.

“y/n, you’d give me an autograph, right?” Trevor asks, and my face pinches in confusion.

“uh, what?” i ask.

“like, if you knew you were gonna be famous one day. you’d give me an autograph right now, right?” he clarifies.

“ignore him.” Jack laughs, pushing Trevor’s face away from he and i. he turns back to look at me, eyeing the empty tabletop in front of me. his smile drops and he turns to his backpack, pulling out a protein bar. he throws it over on the table in front of me, it landing with a smack, making me flinch.

“eat.” he tells me. my eyes bounce between the snack and him, studying his serious expression.

“i’m fine, Jack. i ate a big breakfast this morning, so i’m not hungry. keep this for when you need it at practice.” i tell him, sliding the snack back towards him. but of course my stomach speaks volumes, deciding right then to grumble loudly. Jack raises an eyebrow at me and slides the bar back over to me. i sigh, opening it up and taking a bite. he smiles at the sight, and it makes my heart skip a beat.

“good girl.”

17 YEARS OLD

it’s the end of senior year now, and i’ve gotten no closer to dating Jack than i was before. i’ve spent countless nights alone in my room, writing songs about him and crying over snapchat stories of him with other girls.

it’s another friday night, and that means another party in hopes of Jack seeing me dressed up. this time, my own party. with my parents out of town for the weekend, i took the chance to throw a party, inviting what felt like my entire grade in a mass text.

i walk around the house, my blonde hair curled and in a half-up-half-down do. i’m decked out in a tight fit black mini dress with black ballet flats to match, and i did a full glam makeup look. i scan the living room for Jack, but when i finally find him, i immediately feel tears pricking at the back of my eyes.

he’s sat on the couch, a pretty blonde draped across his lap, whispering in his ear as he nods, his arm wrapped around her waist to keep her steady, and a grin on his face. our friends were sat around him, some having their own discussions, and some singing along to the music playing on the surround sound speakers.

i go to spin back around, fully planning on going upstairs to my room for a quick cry, but before i can fully turn, i lock eyes with Jack. he raises his hand in a wave and beckons me over and i offer a weak smile in return. i look around the party once more and feel something snap inside of me.

i feel so stupid. i’ve spent the last almost two years of my life changing myself to try and get his attention and to have him look at me in a new light. spent almost two years overanalyzing his every move and i let my final two years of high school slip by me. instead of living in the moment and enjoying my rapidly declining time with my friends, i was wondering if Jack had seen my snapchat story, or if he did then why didn’t he slide up? amongst various other things to do with him.

i was done revolving my entire life and every decision i make around a guy who obviously doesn’t like me the way i like him.

21 YEARS OLD

it’s been four years since i started living for myself. in that time, i went to a treatment center for my eating disorder, graduated college, moved to New Jersey for a new job, and made new friends. i haven’t talked to Jack in three of those years. not because i didn’t want to, but because after high school, our friendship fizzled out. he went on to play in the NHL, and i went to college. we both lived busy lives, and it became too much to handle. i still talk to the other guys, Trevor the most, but not nearly as much as i used to.

now i’m sat in a club. it’s a saturday night, and my friend Yaz wanted to go do her favorite hobby. seeing how many men she can get to buy her free drinks. currently, she’s chatting up a cute brunette with an accent out on the dance floor, and i’m sat by myself at the bar. drinking an almost gone shirley temple and wondering why i agreed to go out when i would much rather be snuggled on my couch with a blanket and a movie. i’m debating telling Yaz that i’m gonna leave, when a guy sidles up next to me, taking the seat on my right and throwing me a smile.

“hi, i’m Dawson.” he holds his hand out and i slip mine in it, shaking.

“hi, i’m y/n.” he nods before turning back to a table of guys.

“IT’S HER!” he yells over, and my brows furrow, face pinching in confusion. he turns back to me and smiles again. “sorry. my friend said he thought he knew you, but he didn’t wanna come over and then be wrong.”

it’s at that moment that a shadow encases us, and i glance over my shoulder to see the one person i wasn’t expecting.

“hey!” Jack takes a seat on Dawson’s abandoned chair. i didn’t even notice he had slipped away. “it’s been so long!”

i blink a few times, just taking in the man in front of me. he looks good. like, really good. i wasn’t naive enough to think that the love i held for him had been snuffed out, i’m just comfortable with myself enough now, that i know that changing myself for him won’t do anything except hurt me.

“hey.” i breathe out. “wow. uh, i wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“yeah, i wasn’t really expecting to see you either. what are you doing in New Jersey?” he asks. okay, it’s not like i’m stupid. i knew Jack lived in New Jersey. i just also know it’s a big state and the possibility of us running into each other was slim. but apparently the universe likes to laugh in my face.

“i live here.” i tell him. “i moved here a few months ago, for a job.”

“and you didn’t call me? i thought we were friends!” he jokes, and i stiffen at the word. friends. yeah, that’s all we’ve ever been. “can we go somewhere? to talk?”

i nod and he leads me out of the club. i send a quick text to Yaz that i went outside for a few minutes, and she responds with a thumbs up emoji. Jack and i stop outside the entrance. the club stopped letting people in about half an hour ago, so there’s no line, just us and a bouncer standing about fifteen feet away at the entrance.

“well, you look good! you went back to your natural hair color, i like it. it suits you better than the blonde.” Jack starts off, and his words strike a nerve in my heart. he didn’t like me blonde? i knew it didn’t change anything with how he felt about me, but i didn’t know he disliked it in general.

“you look healthier too. that makes me really happy, y/n. my mom told me a couple years ago that your mom said you got treatment for your…disorder. i’m really proud of you.” my heart breaks a little more at his soft tone, he seems genuine. “i saw you earlier, with your friend. you have the spark in your eye back. i’m really glad you seem happy again. i’m just sorry i didn’t do anything before, to help you with anything you were going through. i was a naive kid, i just thought you’d come to me if you were struggling. but looking back, i realize that i should’ve reached out to help you regardless.”

“Jack, you shouldn’t blame yourself. you were a kid. i was a kid too, i didn’t understand the full extent of what i was doing.” i tell him. tears prick at my eyes and i blink them away.

“can i ask you a question?” he asks.

“of course.” i nod.

“why did you do it? was there a reason? i mean, at the time, it felt like you completely just changed overnight. but maybe it was a gradual thing and i just didn’t realize it back then.” i lose hope in keeping my tears at bay, letting one roll freely down my cheek. “you don’t have to tell me. obviously. it’s your business. i just- i’ve been wondering.”

i take a deep breath, mentally preparing myself to explain.

“i was a naive kid, Jack. i liked a guy and i thought if i changed myself, maybe he would like me too. but it didn’t work, and instead i realized that i was just harming myself by not eating, doing things i hated, going to parties just to try and get his attention. looking back at it now, it was stupid. but back then, it seemed like the best idea i had ever had.”

“you did all that for a guy?” he asks. but his tone isn’t the usual one i get from people when i tell them about my past. it’s not incredulous, or judgmental, or even pitiful. he just sounds, sad. i just nod my head. “well, whoever he was, he wasn’t worth it. if a guy doesn’t like you for you, then he’s an idiot, and he doesn’t deserve you. i’m really glad you see that now. although, i wish you would’ve known it before.”

if only he knew.

“switching the topic.” i say, and he lets out a small breathy chuckle. “how have you been?”

“i’ve been good. just, trying not to get injured on ice, ya know?” i nod along.

“oh yeah, i remember. i still don’t understand why you would put yourself through that barbaric game.” i joke and he laughs. the sound causes butterflies to erupt in my stomach, and it almost feels no time has gone by at all. i still feel like a lovesick teenager.

before either of us can speak again, my drunk friend stumbles out of the club, an arm looped through Dawson’s.

“hey, i thought i’d bring this one back to you. she kinda seems like she might need to sober up some.” Dawson tells me, and i thank him. Yaz lays her head on my shoulder, and Dawson says his goodbye to me and Yaz before slipping back inside.

“who’s this?” Yaz stage whispers, studying Jack who still stands in front of me. Jack and i laugh at her drunken attempt at being quiet.

“this is Jack.” i tell her. “Jack this is my friend, Yaz.”

“Jack. Jack, Jack, Jack.” Yaz repeats, and it’s like i can see the gears turning in her head. “that name sounds so familiar. Jack.”

“hey, wait! isn’t that the name of that guy you told me about? the one you were madly in love with in high school?” she blurts out, and my eyes turn as wide as saucers. i can feel my face heating up. i turn to look at my friend, who apparently has absolutely no filter when she’s had too much to drink. before any of us can say another word, a blue car pulls up and Yaz’s sister, Cara, steps out. “Yay! my ride!”

Yaz stumbles over to her, only stopping to turn and blow me a kiss before letting her sister help her in the car. Cara throws me a smile and a goodnight before getting in herself and driving away. leaving only me and the guy Yaz just exposed my love for.

i turn back to Jack, finding him wide eyed and repeatedly blinking. i open my mouth, but nothing comes out. i’m not sure what to say. but apparently Jack does.

“it was me?” he asks, pointing to his chest. “i was the guy?”

i feel like i might be sick. i never meant for him to know. i thought i would take that secret to my grave. i manage a weak nod, not able to physically speak.

“why- i mean- why did you think you had to do those things to yourself, y/n? i- i’m just— i’m so confused.”

“you had a type.” i shrug. “you dated all these girls, in high school. and they all had the same things in common. blonde, skinny, pretty, outgoing. you liked all those girls romantically so i thought maybe if i was more like them, you would like me like that too.”

“but i did like you like that!” he exclaims. i furrow my brows and my nose scrunches in confusion.

“what?” i whisper.

“i did like you romantically! i just thought i never had a chance with you. so, i busied myself with other girls. why do you think none of them ever lasted long?” he asks.

“i don’t know, i never really thought about that.” my head swarms with all this new information.

“because, they weren’t you.” he pleads. “i tried to forget those feelings for you by dating other girls, girls that before i met you, were my type. but they weren’t you. none of them were you.”

he steps forward, taking my face in his hands.

“i can’t believe you thought you had to change for me. fuck, i’m so stupid. i should’ve just told you i liked you when i first realized my feelings.” he breathes out.

“you can tell me now if you want?” i offer meekly, my head spinning. i want to kiss him. i’ve waited almost six years for this moment, and dear god i want to kiss him. now quite possibly more than ever.

“i love you, y/n.” he whispers. “i’ve loved you since the summer we were sixteen and you tried to push me off the dock into the lake, and i pulled you in with me. i still remember when you popped back up in front of me in the water. my first thought was ‘she’s so beautiful.’”

i inhale a shaky breath before tilting my head up to cover his lips with mine. kissing him with desperation and need. need to not waste another second that i could spend being with him. Jack is frozen for a second before his lips start moving against mine. his hands trail down my body to grip my hips, pulling me towards him. we fit together like a puzzle piece. my own hands grip the hair at the nape of his neck. we pull away from each other, and i look into his eyes.

“i love you too.” i whisper. “if that wasn’t obvious yet.”

“yeah? i don’t know, i think you might need to show me again.” he smirks and leans back down capturing my lips in a kiss once more.

#jack hughes #jack hughes imagine #jack hughes x reader #midnights fic list #faithlynn’s writings <3 #babydollmarauders #nhl fic #nhl imagine #nj devils #hockey fic #hockey imagine

[rendy-a]

amh if possible could hoy make hdcns for the dorm leaders ( separately ) reacting to their mc fem explaining the marvel universe and then puts them to watch the movies hehe ( ..also mc's fav hero is dead-pool ;) bc it gives me laugh imagine their reactions about this xd) , thanks in advance and take care<33

This certainly ended up being a little bit of a crack fic but it ended up amusing. Hope you enjoy it.

At first, he scoffs as such a time-wasting thing as wanting to watch dozens of movies.  Where is the educational value in this?

He is just too polite to refuse to listen, so he’ll end up letting you describe all your favorite scenes to him.

You are better off if he doesn’t take an interest because, if he does, he is going to turn into the worst sort of comic book geek.  Be ready to have him quote lore from issues of source material at you during any discussion on this from now on.

What do you mean who would win?  In Volume 3 #3, Thor clearly defeated Iron Man.  Don’t get upset Prefect, I don’t write the lore, I just recite it.

Doesn’t appear to be interested but, if you pause long enough, he’ll prompt you to go on.  It’s important to you, so he’ll try to care at least a little.

You’d never tell him this, but you love to banter with him because it reminds you of your favorite character.  Sometimes you wonder if he’d be pleased or offended to know who you remind him of.

Movie marathons?  Not only is he willing to do them with you, but he is also often the one who suggests them.  Don’t be deceived though, it’s not for the movie but for the quality nap time on the couch with you. 

Don’t turn that off, Herbivore, I’m watching it.  What do you mean I don’t know what’s going on?  This is the part where we learn her mom isn’t dead after all.  So quiet down and keep the lights off.

Please, he is in Board Game Club with Idia. You think this is the first time he has hmmm’d himself through a conversation about fictional characters?

Wait, you say that this makes a ton of money?  Tell him more about this merchandising and licensing.  Especially that, what do you call it…ah, Happy Meal.

You can eventually talk him into watching the movies with you for ‘research purposes.’  When you do, you can’t help but notice how teary-eyed he gets at the sad scenes.  He’s just so sensitive!

Deadpool is also his favorite character.  He feels a sort of connection to certain parts of his story.

So, she chooses to stay with him even though he looks like that?  No, I’m not blubbering.  No, I don’t need you to cuddle with me.  Ok, fine.  Just for a little while. 

He doesn’t get it, but he still loves it.  Sure, you have to explain everything to him three times, but he gets excited over your excitement.  Call him any time to talk about your theories on how things would have gone if Thanos had made a different wish on the infinity gauntlet.  He doesn’t mind if it’s 3 AM (just don’t let Jamil find out).

Movie marathons turn into parties.  Why just watch the movies when you can have themed snacks and dress up too?  Hulk smash cakes and Black Widow berry cobbler?  Yes, please.

His favorite part of any film is the soundtrack.  If he hears a song he likes, he gets up to dance along.  It’s pretty disruptive when you are watching the movie but when you see how much fun he is having, you find you don’t really mind after all.

Sorry Prefect, Jamil says we can’t have dance battles in Scarabia anymore.  Ooh!  But come by the Pop Music Club later.  I’m going to play all my favorite songs for Cater and Lilia. Ahaha!

You were worried Vil would dismiss your favorite Marvel films as inferior art, but he is actually rather generous about it.  He believes the film should suit the audience and, as so, there is nothing wrong with films like this that serve to entertain the masses.

Still, he can’t help but be critical of everything while you watch.  He doesn’t criticize the things you’d talk about with your friends but topics you’d hardly even notice while you watched like the set design and lighting.

You notice Vil seems secretly fond of Loki.  You think the idea of the Villain that survives the main movies to get his own spotlight series appeals to him.

No, Potato, I’m just saying the angle isn’t right for this sort of tone.  A shot from below would be more effective.  Plus…wait, are you having more popcorn?  I don’t think so, it’s past the time you can snack before bed.

You had expected Idia to be all in on the Marvel Universe but, at first, he is oddly resistant to it.  He’d rather recommend you one of his own favorite hero movies.  If you disagree on which is better, he is more than willing to fight with you over why his is best!

After a heated argument, he puts on some of the movies to watch so he can come up with targeted points about why his own shows are better.  This does not work out for him as he gets sucked in himself.  Next time you meet up, he wants to go over tiny bits of lore and speculate on future plot lines from hints in the past movies.

You might think his favorite would be Iron Man because they both are innovative engineers, but he is a fan of Ant Man.  Shrinking down to a size where you can hide from everyone; it’s an introvert’s dream!

Prefect, this is serious business!  I’ve drawn up plans.  So long as we sleep only 2 hours a day and avoid taking any breaks for food, studying, and showers, we can finish at least three seasons this weekend.  True fans like us need to be ready to sacrifice for the shows we love!

There are many things Tusnotarou doesn’t understand, and this is one of them.  For starters, he barely knows how to use his smartphone, let alone how to stream movies and shows.  So, before you can even start explaining the plot, you must explain the whole concept of series and interconnecting shows to him.

He doesn’t get it, but he is happy to watch with you.  Your reactions to the show are far more amusing to him than the actual show.  Plus, he feels like he learns so much about the human world from your conversations.  A subway, how intriguing an idea.  Humans are so fascinating.

Even though he watches politely, he isn’t very impressed.  They can fly?  Well so can he.  Magic, lightning, superstrength?  All just part of being a dragon.  Perhaps instead of being interested in these superheroes, you’d rather learn more about him?

 Lilia, do you think I am a superhero?  The Prefect has been explaining this concept to me in great detail lately.  I can’t help but notice the many things I have in common with these so-called heroes.  Why yes, Lilia, now that you mention it, I am wearing a cape.  Another point in my favor. Fu fu fu.    

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst wonderland #riddle rosehearts #leona kingscholar #idia shroud #kalim al asim #azul ashengrotto #malleus draconia #vil schoenheit

[bachissidehoe]

it's only just begun - isagi y.

chapter 1 of 7 of the blue lock band series. chapter 2. chapter 3. chapter 4. chapter 5. chapter 6. chapter 7.

synopsis: y/n was the number one fan of the underground alternative rock band known as "Blue Lock", who after earning a well-deserved following through a viral single, left her wondering if they'd even remember her if they saw her- if he'd remember her. and why would he? y/n's no longer the only Blue Lock fan to have an unrequited crush on their lead singer.

warnings: smut; fingering; penetration; overstimulation; degradation; unprotected sex; dominant isagi; fem reader; minors DNI

disclaimer: all songs referenced are credited to THE DEEP END

note: my first fic on tumblr! pls show some love and i'll be posting more content here from now on :)

w.c. 4.3k

And just like that, Blue Lock was no longer her secret little band that she felt like she had all to herself. It was fun while it lasted, but when their single “It’s Only Just Begun” took off almost a year ago, y/n slowly fizzled out of Isagi Yoichi’s life into the category of just another fan of his. 

She can’t help but feel a little upset at times, she really enjoyed talking to Blue Lock’s front man nearly every day. It felt like she was part of it. She remembers when they were writing their hit song and Isagi would run some lyrics by her- after all- it only makes sense that Isagi would take his #1 fan’s professional opinion into consideration. 

As for the other band members- it’s likely they knew of her. They followed her on Twitter and occasionally replied to some of her comments. But it was nothing like her closeness with the lead singer. 

Regardless, she still follows every single one of them on all social media and keeps up with their new releases. She even follows their manager and their stage director. And she’s proud of them, too. They’re a good band, they deserve this. They’ve always deserved to become as famous as they are now. So when their tour dates were released, y/n was the first in the queue, purchasing a single ticket.

And now she stands among the large crowd, the large crowd they deserve, listening to the beautiful sound of Isagi Yoichi’s voice followed by cheers and screams from his thousands of adoring fans. She can’t even bring herself to sing along, not even with the harmonies of the other band members, she doesn’t want to drown out any of his hypnotic, captivating voice. The way his mouth moves against the microphone, his vocal fry when he hits a high note, how he tosses his hair to the side to shake the sweat away, his smiles to the crowd- she wonders if he remembers her. 

Alright, fine. Maybe y/n had a crush on Isagi Yoichi: the lead singer of Blue Lock, the man of many talents who not only sings like an angel, but plays guitar, keys, and even the saxophone. Maybe y/n still does have a crush on Isagi Yoichi. 

She probably wouldn’t be waiting with a crowd of much younger teenage girls by the backstage exit in hopes she’d get to catch a glimpse of him on the way out of the venue if she didn’t have just a slight crush. She probably wouldn’t be telling herself “I’ll wait all night if I have to” if she didn’t have just a little crush on-

“Excuse me?” 

Y/n turns around, catching the eyes of a woman about her age, dressed in the venue’s work uniform. She points to herself, mouthing “me?” to the woman. 

The woman nods.

“Yes, what’s up?” She asks, stepping away from the crowd so she can hear her. 

“I just have a quick question, do you mind stepping off to the side?” The woman asks politely, professionally. She works here, obviously, so maybe it’s important. Maybe they found something of hers she dropped somewhere.

Y/n shrugs, looking back at the crowd for a moment. She’ll surely lose her spot, maybe even lose her chance to catch the eyes of Isagi Yoichi on his way back to his hotel. But it’s probably dumb anyway. She seems to think seeing him will make him want to talk to her again, maybe even fall in love with her, maybe even-

“Sure.” She says, ditching her childish chances to date the band member of her dreams. 

“I’m sorry to pull you away.” The woman says. “I just didn’t want to say anything too loud over there.”

“What do you mean?” Y/n tilts her head to the side. 

“Are you l/n y/n?” 

“Yes.” 

“Great! I was told to look for the girl dressed in the blue skater skirt and fishnets, but there’s quite a few of those around.” She chuckles. 

“What is this about?” Y/n asks again. 

“Oh, my bad. One of the band members said he knows you. So he was hoping you’d wanna come back and say hi.” 

Y/n’s heart flip flops in her stomach, and she instinctively squeezes her legs together to prevent the inevitable moment where said heart drops out of her body entirely. He remembers her- or at least one of them does. Enough to notice her in the crowd and ask to see her. She could scream. She wants to run back over to those teenage girls and tell them they lost. 

“Are you fucking with me?” Y/n asks, a look of shock plastered across her face. 

The woman laughs. “No, no. I’m serious.”

“I- I-” She stutters, trying to collect herself. It shouldn’t be like this. They’re just old friends, she doesn’t need to act like a deer caught in the headlights. She takes a breath. “I’d love to say hi.” 

Suddenly she’s being snuck around to the back of the venue, through a door, and down a long hallway. She considers the possibility of this being a joke and her being robbed and murdered, but she’d honestly rather that than miss the chance to see Isagi Yoichi. 

“You found her!” An ever familiar voice, a gorgeous one. It reaches her ears and penetrates the deepest reserves of her brain that she’s set aside for content relating specifically to him. 

And he’s there, sitting on a plush beanbag clutching his guitar, his hair sweaty and stuck to his forehead. 

“Isagi.” Y/n breathes out, smiling, her heart racing. It feels like it’s going a mile a minute. It didn’t actually fall out of her chest before, but it very well might now.

And Isagi, he’s beaming. He’s cheerful as ever, likely hyped from the amazing show they just put on. 

“Y/n!” His expression changes to a light, playful smirk. “Thought I told you to call me Yoichi.” 

“I- um-” She stutters, wishing she’d just be able to play it cool. “You’re right. I guess it’s been a while.” She scratches behind her head, becoming increasingly aware of the many eyes on her standing at the door of their backstage common area. 

“I missed you!” He stands up, leaving his guitar strewn on his beanbag chair as he walks over to her, wrapping his comforting arms around her shaky body. 

He missed her.

“I- missed you- too.” She manages. “You’re amazing.” 

“Oh stop.” He shrugs off her compliment with a kind smile. “Guys, remember y/n? She was one of our OG’s.” He turns toward his band mates, one of his arms lazily strung over y/n’s shoulders. It might actually send her into a psychotic spiral. 

“How could I forget the one who helped us decide on “always be the anchor in the back of my mind” for that verse?” The gorgeous lead guitarist flashes her a flirty smile. 

And y/n’s attention is suddenly directed toward someone besides the lead singer- the other six people in the room besides a few workers- the members of Blue Lock, the up and coming alternative rock band. 

Isagi Yoichi: Lead singer, keys & guitar Chigiri Hyoma: Lead guitar, vocals Nagi Seishiro: Backup guitar, vocals Itoshi Rin: Bass guitar, vocals Itoshi Sae: Drums Mikage Reo: Band manager Bachira Meguru: Stage director

“Chigiri, yeah. I did help out with that one, huh.” She giggles. “Great to see you again, and um, great to meet you.” She directs her attention to the manager and stage director, who were relatively recently brought into the scene. By the time Mikage and Bachira were hired, the band had already gotten fairly famous, and y/n had already basically lost touch with the original five members. 

“It’s an absolute pleasure.” Bachira smiles.

“Great to meet you, Blue Lock’s number one OG fan.” Mikage greets her. 

Of course, in obsessively keeping up with Blue Lock’s endeavors even after Isagi stopped talking to her personally, she’s well aware of the story behind Bachira and Mikage’s addition. Bachira is Isagi’s high school best friend, and Mikage is Nagi’s high school best friend. When she found out the two of them were brought on, she honestly was a little jealous. But they’re just as gorgeous as the band members, and meeting them in person is sending her body into overdrive. Plus, with Isagi’s arm still over her shoulders, she may as well be dripping down her leg. 

“C’mere, we have so much to catch up on.” Isagi leads y/n over to the couch, sitting her next to Nagi as he sits back in the beanbag chair across from her. 

“Are you catching up on the bus ride? Because we’re leaving for the hotel.” The unbothered drummer speaks up. “Or you can stay here and fuck her on the couch for all I care.” 

Y/n can almost feel her skin melting off at Itoshi Sae’s comment. 

“Hah! Well we’re not playing here again, so who cares?” Chigiri chimes in with a laugh, slapping the older Itoshi’s back. 

“May as well go back to her place.” Nagi shifts his body slightly, bringing his left thigh flush against y/n’s on the couch. It looks like he’s hardly noticed, but y/n definitely has. It makes her want to press harder into him, maybe even lay on top of him- the irresistible snowy-haired fan favorite. “I’ll come too.” 

“No you won’t.” Isagi playfully rolls his eyes. “And nobody’s going back to anyone’s place! I just wanted to say hi and talk to her!” 

“Unfortunately, Isagi, Sae’s right and we do have to be heading out.” The manager chimes in, holding his phone to his ear as he talks to who y/n can only assume is the tour bus driver. 

“Gonna have to talk to your lukewarm girlfriend another time.” The younger Itoshi slings his bass over his shoulders. 

Itoshi Rin was definitely insulting y/n just now, but she still feels an electric pulse rocket through her body when his emerald eyes meet hers. He could insult her any time. Plus, he called her Isagi’s girlfriend. 

“That’s all good, um, I’m glad I got to say hi-”

“No! Sae’s right, just come back to the hotel and hang for a bit.” Isagi suggests. “I feel bad, I haven’t talked to you in forever, I missed ya.” 

Y/n feels like she could combust, knowing that everyone else in the room is considering Isagi’s potential ulterior motives. She only wishes that were the case. She could only dream of him wanting her in that way. Even in all their time talking, he never made a move on her. They only met in person a single time and he was nothing besides friendly, so it never made sense for her to be forward with him about her little crush. 

“On- on your bus? To- the hotel?” She gulps. 

“Unless you have something to do. Don’t worry, none of the fans or paps will see you or anything if that’s what you’re worried about. Reo will handle all that.” 

Right. They probably do this all the time with girls. Obviously they’d have a protocol when bringing a girl back to their hotel. Even so, that’s not what she’s worried about at all. 

“I don’t have anything to do! I’ll come with you!” 

“Y/n, do you have a car here?” Mikage asks, already thinking ahead with making arrangements.

“No, um, I took the train-”

“Great!” He turns around, typing feverishly into his phone. 

“When you’re done with her, send her over to me.” Chigiri winks. He was always the shamelessly flirtatious type, frequently jumping into frame when Isagi was facetiming her just to make a quick flirty comment. 

“No way dude.” Isagi jokes. 

And with that, she finds herself shuffled away and snuck onto the tour bus, snuck off the tour bus, and snuck into Isagi Yoichi’s hotel room. 

“I wanted to say I’m sorry, you know, for like stopping talking to you.” Isagi walks around the room, a singular white towel around his shoulders, his hair still wet from the shower he must have taken while waiting for y/n to be gracefully snuck inside. 

“Oh, um, I-” Y/n struggles to focus, given that Isagi Yoichi is standing shirtless in a pair of gray sweatpants in her direct line of vision. And his body is fucking incredible. “It’s fine, um, I dunno, you got popular, uh-”

“Yeah I got popular, but it all went right to my head. I cut out so many people and I’m just glad you’re not upset with me. I know I’m touring now and stuff but I felt like seeing you at the concert was a good opportunity to apologize-” He trails off, noticing y/n’s dazed expression as she looks at him. 

“T’s all good.” She says, sounding like she’s from another world. 

“Uh, you okay?” He chuckles nervously. “You tired? Sorry for bringing you here I know it’s late-” 

“No! No I’m not! I want to see you, don’t apologize I understand I just, um, I miss being close with you and all, but you’re famous now! And you deserve it so-” 

“I know, it feels pretty good. But you didn’t deserve to just be unadded and unfollowed one day. It wasn’t fair, you were always so good to me and the boys.” 

“I- I was sad for a bit but I get it!”

“You were sad? Fuck, man.” Isagi sighs. “I know I hurt you, we were friends and I just threw it away because the fame got to my head.”

“No, no, I was barely sad- uh-” She panics, trying not to make him think he treated her anything besides perfectly. The last thing she wants is for him to remember her as that one salty fan he ditched. She’d rather him remember her positively, like someone who’s sweet, kind, an old friend. “I just missed you, it’s so good to see you! I never stopped listening to your music and supporting you, and when I saw you were coming here on tour I just had to go! I really am surprised you remembered me at all.” She chuckles nervously, her palms clammy and her eyes shaky. 

He’s really just standing here, trying to apologize to her, with his shirt off. How can she possibly focus on a serious conversation?

“You’re surprised I remembered you?” He tilts his head to the side. 

“Uh- well- I just felt like since you didn’t like me like I liked you I just thought you probably had other girls you were talking to or you know getting famous you’d want to like have girls and not really want me talking to you all the time-” It’s like her words are spilling from her lips before she can stop them, her eyes darting everywhere in the room besides Isagi. It’s like the things she’s been wanting to say to him can’t be stopped. 

“Hold on.” He stops her. “You didn’t think I liked you?” 

“Um, um at least not like that uh, you know-” She panics, her heart beating out of her chest and a layer of tears forming over her eyes. 

“Y/n, I wanted to apologize to you because I did like you, and I didn’t want to tell you that because if I was going on tour, I wouldn’t be able to see you. And I just cut you out instead.” He sighs. 

The words don’t even fully sink in at first. “Oh, okay.” 

“I liked you, like, the whole time. So I just wanted to apologize.” 

It finally starts to make sense. “It’s- it’s okay. It’s okay. I- you-” 

Isagi chuckles. “Maybe I can’t date you, but-” He leans down, placing a finger under her chin, forcing her nervous gaze into his deep blue eyes. “I could make it up to you, if you like.” 

His gaze is hypnotic, just like his voice. “I wanna, um, I- you- your-” She takes a breath. “Sorry.” She squeaks.

“Tell me what you want.” His voice is softer, slower, closer than before. She hasn’t heard this version of his voice before. It’s beautiful.

“I want, I want-” She takes another breath, a deeper one, one that lets her fully realize what she’s about to do. “I want you, Yoichi.” 

“Hm.” He breathes out. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He closes the gap, bringing their lips together, his finger still under her chin as he leans over her. 

Her hands grip the sheets, her legs shaking as she sits upright on the bed. Suddenly she feels like this is her first kiss ever, like she has no idea what she’s doing. 

His kiss starts out soft, but quickly devolves into something dangerous, something ravenous. His hand traces from her chin to her shoulder, his fingers pressing into her skin to push her backward. 

And she lets him. How could she not? His fingers feel like they’re leaving permanent marks on her skin, like she’ll never forget where he touched her chin, her neck, her shoulders. She finds herself looking up at him, reaching for the towel around his neck to bring his lips back into hers. 

In no time he’s on top of her, hungrily making out with her like he wants to devour her, his strong arms holding his body above hers as if he’d crush her if he were to let his weight crash down. She wouldn’t mind though, she’d be totally okay with him crushing her. 

“Always wanted this.” He breathes out, leaving a slight space between their lips only briefly before reconnecting them. His tongue slides effortlessly against hers, his saliva dripping from his tongue to hers. It’s so wet, and it tastes so damn good. 

She can only whine in response, reveling in his taste. She doesn’t have the space to talk anyway, not with his lips drinking up every single one of her noises. 

“Love those pretty sounds, fuck I’ve been missin’ out.” He shifts his weight to one side, tracing his other hand down her body to the hem of her shirt. “Want this off, baby.” 

Y/n licks her lips, completely dazed. “Off, baby?” She repeats, as if she’s shocked he would even say it. 

“Want it off, so fucking bad.” His voice is so lustful, filled with such a different tone than his normal, upbeat, kind attitude. He’s horny. 

“Mhm, please-” She lets him grab her collar, forcefully pulling her up so he can swiftly lift her shirt over her head. 

“Ahhhh-” He groans. “And I’ve been missin’ out on that?” His movements are rough, his hands forceful, needy. Within seconds her bra is discarded on the opposite side of the room, his tongue cascading over her nipples like he’s painting them with his saliva. 

She can’t stop herself from whining, moaning, it’s the only thing her brain can do while he sucks her tits like he’s trying to drink from them. He’s so different right now, he’s so dominant with her. She wants to sign her body over to him, she feels like her body should belong to him. 

His other hand slides to her untouched breast, his fingers moving to pinch her other nipple, kneading it as if he’s trying to bruise her. His hand trails further, traveling smoothly under her skirt to rest on her plush thigh. 

“G’na need these off too~” He slips his finger under the waistband of her panties, popping his mouth off her nipple to get through his sentence. 

“Mhm~” Y/n nods, her hands resting her hands behind her head as she lets his expert movements own her body. 

She’s dripping, she knows she is. The thin fabric of her panties wasn’t doing a great job of protecting her from her own arousal, but he slides them down her legs anyway, the soaked fabric leaving a trail of wetness down her thighs. 

“Hm~” Isagi chuckles, his lips wrapping back around her nipple like it belongs there, dipping his middle finger into her soaked cunt. “Look at you, such a wet little pussy for me.” He says, adding a second finger.

Her body is a mess, her voice is fried, her brain is mush. She can’t do anything besides submit to his fingers etching themselves into the memory of her walls like they’re shaping her body for him and him only. His mouth makes a mess of her breasts while his fingers make a mess of her inner thighs, pumping easily into her slick hole. 

“You’re already so ready f’me, but I need y’to cum first.” He gives his mouth a break, a final bead of saliva dripping from his tongue and landing on her already well-coated nipple. Without his mouth occupied, he goes harder with his fingers, curling them into her g-spot like he was the one who put it there in the first place. 

“Fuck- fuck fuck- ahh~” The breathless gasps leave her lips, her eyes snapped shut as she feels the aggressive knot grow in her stomach. 

“Y’need more? Hm? Bet you do, such a slut for my fingers.” He slurs, his thumb moving to rub quick circles on her throbbing clit. 

“I- gonna- Yoichi~” She whines, the knot exploding ferociously as she cums around his fingers, leaking out of her hole as if it was too full to stay inside.. 

“Ah there ya go, dirty girl.” He spits, sliding his coated fingers out of her aching pussy, directing them immediately into her mouth. “Clean me up, will you?” He forces them between her lips, her tongue circling over his fingers, soaking up every bit of her own cum. It’s demeaning, it’s degrading. But it’s so damn hot. 

“Taste good sweetheart?” He smirks, using his free hand to step out of his sweatpants he probably shouldn’t have put on after his shower in the first place. 

“Hm, f-fu-” She tries, her mouth too full to let any coherent words form. 

His cock springs out of its confinement, finally freed from the shackles of his boxers that struggled to keep him contained at all. And seeing the size of him- y/n wonders how any boxers would be able to survive without being shred to pieces by his gorgeous, thick cock. She wonders how she’ll be able to survive without being shred to pieces. 

“Scared baby?” Isagi smirks, forcing her gaze from his cock to his dark, lustful eyes. “Don’t worry, you can take it.” He leans down to kiss her, a menacingly soft, degrading kiss. “Either way, you fucking have to.” He places one last threatening kiss against her lips.

Before she can process it, his arms are wrapped around the backs of her thighs, sliding her ass slightly off the edge of the bed as he lines his cock up with her desperate cunt. The oversensitivity of her orgasm makes his tip against her hole even more intense. She can’t help but writhe against his grip almost animalistically, like she wouldn’t be able to stop if she tried. 

She’s wet enough for him to slide in easily, filling her up as if he’s carving out her hole himself. She wraps around him perfectly, squeezing around him in a way that causes his breath to catch in the back of his throat as he sucks in through his teeth. His nails dig deeper into her thighs, likely leaving a set of gorgeous nail marks she’ll surely cherish later. 

“Fuck~” His saliva pools in his mouth as he speaks, threatening to drip onto her exposed skin. “It’s like you’re sucking me in babygirl.” He breathes, holding her thighs tight as he begins fucking into her. 

Her fingers grip the sheets so hard she feels like she might rip them, she couldn’t have imagined being fucked like this, no matter how many times she got off to the thought of him back then. No matter how many times she’d play their songs in the background while she pleasured herself. She couldn’t have forced her brain to come up with a scenario where he holds her over the edge of the bed and fucks into her like she’s a doll. 

It doesn’t take long for his thrusts to become relentless, her cunt squelching with each forceful plunge of his thick cock. 

“Fuck, flip over.” He demands, though doesn’t give her any time to move her body on her own, flipping her body himself using only his tight grip on her thighs. “Knees.” He commands, and she does exactly as he says, propping her ass up and leaning forward on her elbows. 

“Damn, what a fucking nice ass.” He slaps her once, gripping the plushy skin as he sheathes himself inside her once again. “G’na fuck you hard ‘till I cum, kay?” He uses his other hand to grip her hair, shoving her face into the mattress. “Be a good toy f’me.” 

“Mhm~” She whines, though he wasn’t waiting for her confirmation anyway. 

His thrusts are somehow harder from behind, wrecking her pussy with every forceful push of his cock between her slick walls. He pounds into her, leaving her nothing but a whiny mess as her pleas are muffled under the weight of his hand pressing her into the bed. The pain is overwhelmingly masked by the pleasure of being fucked by him, Isagi Yoichi, the lead singer of Blue Lock, but even she knows she’ll struggle to walk- or even stand- after this.

“G’na cum, g’na fill you~” He grunts, sloppily thrusting a few more shaky times before painting her insides white, his cum overflowing her cramped pussy. He pulls out, finally letting up on his tight grip on her hair and ass, his cum spilling out along with him.

“Yoichi-” She finally manages, shakily rolling over onto her back. “That was-”

“Hm? You think we’re done?” He stands over her threateningly, immediately sliding one of his fingers between her used, overstimulated folds. 

“Babygirl, it’s only just begun.”

#blue lock #fanfic #anime #blue lock smut #bllk x reader #isagi yoichi #isagi x reader #band au #bllk band au #bllk fanfic #blue lock fanfiction #isagi yoichi smut #isagi smut #isagi yoichi x you #anime fanfic #anime smut #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer

[alexjcrowley]

I realised my passion for crossover has just created a multiverse of, I don't fucking know, detectives and supernatural stuff (no, it's NOT superwholock)

So we start by assuming, like some already did, that Q from the Daniel Craig's James Bond movies is the fourth Holmes's siblings. So you get four Holmes: Mycroft, Sherlock, Eurus and Q. But then Q in clearly in a romantic relationship with James Bond.

Now it's undeniable that James Bond has a twin brother, Benoit Blanc, who is the world's most famous detective, and he is married to Philip (Hugh Grant). You can clearly notice from Benoit's...everything (passion for mistery and fasion sense most of all) that he is related to Fred Jones from Scooby Doo, he and Philip are in fact Fred's parents.

To conclude this part of multiverse of hyperfixation, James Bond exists in the same world of a bunch of teenagers with 1970's van and a talking dog. I cannot stress how important it is for me that Sherlock Holmes DOES NOT solve the mustery of why Scooby Doo can talk.

But let's now expand in a different direction.

For some of you who might not be acquainted with the medical drama House MD, it's one of the gayest shows ever made on God's green earth. And, as all the fans know, the REAL finale is House and Wilson running away together after all Wilson's problems suddenly disappeared (I am phrasing it like that because I don't want to spoil it). Now, of course they can't live in America because House can't exactly recover from his own Reichenbach falls, so obviously they have go to London. Like, no questions asked.

And as many have already speculated they are probably the married couple Mrs Hudson's friend was renting an apartment to.

Sherlock-Watson and House-Wilson have a complicated dynamic going on, I just know they suspect of eachothers because there's something wrong with the other couple.

London comes, of course, with all it inhabitants, such as Crowley and Aziraphale (whose supernatural presence could explain Scooby Doo being able to talk???? Maybe he is an ex-infernal hound sent to Shaggy??? Was Shaggy another aborted attempt at an Antichrist?????). I really likes to believe they're House-Wilson and Sherlock-Watson neighbours. And every one of these three couples tries to pretend they're a very normal couple, and not, like, non-human or a Government's resource or technically dead.

But also, you must not forget, London comes with Hob Gadling, the immortal lover of Sandman, who might as well exist in this universe, because why the fuck not, he stole the "meet every x years" idea from Crowley, the goddamn poser. Hob Gadling and Crowley clocked eachothers in a minute and now the two couples have dinners together because "they're the only other supernatural couple in the neighbourhood, we should befriend them!" (said Aziraphale and Hob while Crowley and Morpheus sighed).

ALSO to House MD fans I want to remind you that Wilson got arrested in Louisiana when he met House and there's a popular headcanon going on that Benoit Blanc is from Louisiana so do you think??? Benoit Blanc one day happened to interact with the police department of a city in Louisiana and a policeman was like "hey last week you missed a guy from New Jersey who deadass smashed an ancient mirror in a bar because they were playing a song he didn't like on the jukebox". And Benoit was like (I can't write his dialogues I am so sorry) "Mmhh yeah muhst say thur arh sum jingles I simply cannut grow fund of but by Guhd to,,, smash an ancient mirruh that wuld be bee-YOnd mahself"

And these connections are all canonical in my mind. (There are crossover fanfics between Good Omens and Sandman, and between House and BBC Sherlock, and between Sherlock and the James Bond franchise, and between House and Good Omens- there's a fic I really like with these fandoms- and there's a drawing I also reblogged on Tumblr of Fred presenting Benoit Blanc as his dad).

So, basically, in my head, Sherlock is highly pissed off by Benoit Blanc being considered the best detective in the world though he respects him, Q is Fred Jones's uncle and probably added a lot of cool MI6 features to the mystery machine, Gregory House, notorious atheist, lives in the same universe of angels and demons and the Sandman and pisses off Sherlock Holmes costantly just because they don't like eachothers, Hob Gadling amd Crowley looked at eachothers once and they knew neither of them were humans, Aziraphale and Crowley always stumble in every other characters' shenanigans and once in a while throw a miracle their way and Hugh Grant/Philip makes cupcakes for everyone.

And if you really want me to be precise, Dead Poet Society lore counts for Wilson, but Neil didn't, well, if you saw the movie you know.

And I know they are technically not correlated, but I would love to find a way to connect Dirk Gently, Todd Brotzman and The Rowdy Three in all this.

There's a part 2 to this post here

#house md #scooby doo #good omens #sherlock #james bond #dead poet society #glass onion #benoit blanc #hilson #johnlock #sandman #dreamling #00q #knives out #ineffable husbands

[nolita-fairytale]

burn your life down: the director's cut, or rather, fun facts about this story now that it's over

luca's last name in my fic is davies, and formally davies-bernardi. bernardi in italian means 'strong as a bear' which, was truly a perfect coincidence that i originally thought it sounded good hyphenated with davies. it felt like the perfect little nugget to drop in here.

this one kind of took on a life of its own. I thought maybe a headcanon or a few chapters, then 46.5k words later... before writing a fic, i always like to map out where i'm going, because it helps me zero in on what story i want to tell. as someone (and who hasn't, truly) who has plenty of abandoned fics, i like to get clear on what story it is i want to tell before beginning to write so that i know it's a fic worth writing for me. no, i don't think finishing a fic should be a marker of success, but where i'm at right now, it feels like the best way for me to see if i have a story to tell or not.

speaking of stories to tell, the reason i wanted to have our main character divorced was because i wanted to try something different. i wondered how i could differentiate this mc (while keeping the reader neutral so you could picture yourselves in it if you wanted to) from others that i have written / will write in the future. the divorce and growing apart is actually kind of inspired by my previous upstairs neighbor who i met a year after his divorce. i wanted to imagine what the inner world of someone who had experienced a divorce that wasn't messy, but its relationship had just run its course and i the end, left two people who weren't sure who they were and how to talk to each other anymore would be like.

music and playlisting really helps me envision and feel into the world that I’m building. I ask myself questions like: what does their love sound like? what does this relationship shound like? how do i want the world i'm building feel, and how do i convey that in sound? and then of course, what songs could underscore certain moments of this chapter? listening to the playlist i create as i go really helps me get into character aka enter the world of the story when i'm sitting down the write.

so many of my fics and interactions are based on my own real life experiences, which is why they often feel so human and so real. i weave in little details like conversations i've had, a person i reminded of. i often write dialogue after i've imagined the scene in my head down to the cadence of how characters speak to one another to make sure it feels grounded.

speaking of, we've got to talk about the food in this fic, something that you all complimented me on at the very beginning! it was important for me to have the food feel deeply personal to reader, and be an expression of her identity through the years. yes, i wrote it with an mc with asian heritage in mind. however, i wanted to make space, again, for you to picture yourself in this fic, which is why mc's ex and family were written with japanese heritage.

a lot of the dishes were inspired by dishes i've had that were similar to what i think her culinary pov would be, and a lot of it is the way that i cook as well. i am not a chef by any means, but i am AM a home cook who occasionally does pop ups who very recently discovered my own culinary pov. food for me is something that not only helps me express myself, but has helped me connect to parts of my own identity. in so many ways, as someone who describes themselves as a cultural melting pot, food helps me feel closer to myself; it helps me find and define, and express who i am.

the culture of food and the role it plays in allowing us to connect was really important for me to weave into this story as well.

for the mikkelson twins, i pictured timothee and pauline chalamet as jesper and mathilde.

for the kimuras: rina sawayama would play astrid, darren barnet would play joe, and gia kim would play lina.

let's talk about luca's character development: so many things were so will poulter-coded/borrowed for will poulter, which felt right to do considering he wove his own life into the luca's tattoos. examples? the nike book, the kendrick lamar on the playlist, how much internal work the man has done on himself.

in the end, I initially had mc have a way bigger freak out than she did -- that it would be her final: holy shit am i ready to be loved moment, but as i wrote it, it ended up being luca who brought up the main conflict. it just ended up going in a different direction and didn't feel right to go with my original plan, because she felt so in their relationship already that i pivoted.

i watched a lot of travel and lifestyle copenhagen vlogs because i'm obsessed with youtube.

after season 2 of the bear, i wanted to explore what positive relationships with mothers could look like in these characters. that's why mothers (and single mothers) are the superheroes of this fic.

i knew i wanted this fic to be about these things: second love, loss, trusting the beginning that comes after the end, inspiration, following your heart, and mothers. these are the guiding principles that i used when writing, knowing that these were the pillars i wanted this story to be about.

looking forward: i am working on two oneshots that will live in this world, one about marcus visiting again -- an eat, pray, love for him of sorts -- that's about mothers and loss and life. the other one is a fun, sexy little smutshot that will hardlaunch their (she and luca's) restaurant so keep an eye out for those. truthfully, i've only just started workshopping the marcus one and am prioritizing finishing my carmy fic first.

opening myself up for q&a! feel free to ask any questions about this fic or my writing process in the comments.

#chef luca #will poulter #luca the bear #the bear season 2 #the bear headcanon #luca x reader #the bear hulu #the bear fx #the bear fanfiction #chef luca x reader #pastry chef luca #burn your life down

[letteredlettered]

Since people expressed interest in the comments about the music I used to write my current fic, I wanted to share some of what I explored to write it. I don't think that you need to know this canon or have read this fic to read this post, though I do spend a bit of time talking about how canon influenced the choices I made. Anyone who has been following this fic knows that it was supposed to be porn, and largely, it really still is for the most part a fic about sex. But I did do a lot of research on music with which I'm frankly not very familiar, and the process was really rewarding.

The fic is Time Signature, if you're interested. This post has a lot about music, electronic music, Chinese music, and music theory, as well as some links to music that interests me and inspired portions of the fic. I don't expect anyone to read anything this long, but it was nice to write it.

Canon. One of my favorite things about both book and drama canon is how in synch WWX/LWJ are cultivation-wise. It’s not just that they can predict the talisman the other will use or the seal the other will cast; they also have the same hunches solving mysteries, the same instincts protecting others, the same ideas about where to go. When writing an AU, it’s important to me to show that synchronization (beyond physical attraction and sex), mostly because I think it’s hot.

In canon, however, WWX revolutionizes cultivation, inventing a whole new method when no one ever thought that possible. I also think this is hot. I also think it’s hot if LWJ thinks it’s hot. Look, canonically, LWJ disapproves of demonic cultivation because it will injure WWX’s spirit and body, but imo there is a reason LWJ is so into WWX, and it’s not just because WWX bugs him. It’s not even just because WWX is really cute and happy and exuberant and everything that’s the opposite of his upbringing. I also like to think that it’s because WWX is a fucking genius, and LWJ doesn't mind the idea of upending tradition and the entire cultivation world as much as it really seems at first that he would; he just struggles with anything that could hurt WWX. So anyway, WWX being revolutionary, in basically a technological sense, is important to me.

Wangxian both play music canonically. LWJ’s playing is noted to be particularly powerful, and WWX’s chosen music is at least one part of his revolutionary cultivation method. Additionally, the song LWJ writes for them is an important plot point. It makes sense that in a modern AU, music is a point of connection, so that is what I chose for their careers.

The final point about canon I want to make in connection to the music for this fic is that this is a Chinese canon with Chinese characters set in China. I don’t think it’s wrong to write AUs set in the west. I have done so, and I think there is value in examining a Chinese canon that has become very popular in the west through the lens of the Chinese diaspora. But I also think that there is a lot of value in a western person such as myself trying to learn and understand the cultural context for a canon that I really like, even if I sometimes get it wrong.

I had decided to set this fic in China because I thought the setting would not strongly feature, which would give me an easy “in” to write something set in a place I don’t know much about. Directly after choosing the setting I chose their careers, which made me realize I needed to do a lot more research—both about the careers but also about the setting--than a fic that was supposed to be mainly porn should have really required.

Music genre choice. Lots of AUs I’ve read have Wangxian’s mutual interest be that they both play western classical instruments. This baffles me, but it’s what I’ve seen, so I loosely started there—ie, I spent some time thinking about what would be revolutionary in western instrumental music, which entailed doing some research on contemporary classical music. There are obviously pioneers in any music genre, folks doing new things, but it turned out I just did not know enough about this genre to really understand what would be truly avant-garde.

I took a step back and thought about the instrumental music I have personally heard that feels really new and different, and Philip Glass was the first thing that came to mind. I first heard of Philip Glass when I saw The Hours, for which he wrote the soundtrack. I still think that soundtrack is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and I did use it as inspiration for music in this fic, particularly LWJ’s. More on that later.

Philip Glass is great, but for all his eastern minimalist influences, he is a strong figure in the western paradigm. I did some research on Chinese contemporary instrumental music, but most of what I found had a really western flavor. I think there are two reasons for this—one is that I am in the west searching for articles in English; for all that we like to imagine the internet is universal, search algorithms and search history is actually making it far harder than it used to be to find material with which you are completely unfamiliar. Secondly, western music did in fact have a notable impact on Chinese music, which is fine, it’s still Chinese, but I worried about everything I wrote just sounding like it was about western classical, which is a concern of mine I’ll address more later.

Since I wasn’t finding what I wanted, particularly for WWX, in the “art music” (aka, lowercase “c” classical music, which Wikipedia says is also known as “cultivated music, serious music, or canonical music”—ie, instrumental music with strings, winds, percussion) scene, I realized I needed to examine the other contemporary music, by which I mean everything else. Since I am most familiar with rock, Radiohead immediately came to mind, but Radiohead is a band, and there are lyrics. Though the lyrics are not where the meaning of Radiohead songs lie (the vocals are treated as largely instrumental), if there were lyrics, I’d need to write about them, and I didn’t want to. More importantly, Radiohead is singular in what they do, which makes them difficult to categorize, and this makes them difficult to describe textually. You can say that Radiohead revolutionized rock, or even reinvented it, but that is not really addressing how fundamentally avant-gardeRadiohead is. Describing how revolutionary Radiohead is on paper really is just saying “but they’re different!” over and over again.

What I needed for WWX was a music genre that was revolutionary, an entire school of music that felt cutting edge and frankly, unfamiliar, and for that, I realized I needed my brother.

Some stories about my family. My brother is a music artist who creates electronic music. If you want to understand why it took me this long to get to my brother in this thought process, you should understand a few things about him. First, I love him a lot, but we’re not very close. Second, my brother is probably the quietest person I know—like, idk, LWJ levels of non-talking. Last, I do not understand my brother’s music. I’ve tried! I listened to it a lot! But when I didn’t understand, I asked questions, and my brother cannot explain any of it. He’s an expressive guy! Just not verbally, and as a very verbal person, I have a tough time when people cannot use their words. Like, even asking him what type of music he plays, he’ll say something like, “It’s complicated.” (This is a lie. He’ll look at me and say, “Type?” And I’ll try to explain what I mean. And he’ll say, “I don’t know.” And if I said, “Okay, but if you had to label it?” He’d laugh and say, “Why?” And if I said, “So I can better understand your music,” he’d think for a long time, then look very frustrated, and laugh, and say, “I don’t know?” I think we’ve literally had this exact conversation).

Anyway, possibly through one of these type of exchanges, where I’m grilling him like a school marm and he’s acting like I’m making him take a standardized test he hates (I’m his little sister. Would it be easier to subject him to these horrors if he was my little brother?), I learned that one of my brother’s influences is Aphex Twin. My brother loves Aphex Twin. I . . . don’t. I’ve listened to a lot of him (in order to understand my brother better); I do not like it, and I do not understand it. My brother talks about Aphex Twin like he’s a genius (if and when my brother talks at all). Now, my brother is a very smart guy; it’s not that I didn’t believe him when he said Aphex Twin was a genius, but he also gets . . . swept up by things, and as previously discussed, he doesn’t talk a lot, so I didn’t really understand what my brother meant by this. It took hearing about Aphex Twin randomly, in a couple other places, for me to realize Aphex Twin is a Big Deal. When I looked up Aphex Twin at some point in order to better understand the music my brother makes, I found that Aphex Twin is considered by many to be a genius and also a pioneer. Apologies to all of you who already knew that about Aphex Twin.

Sidenote, my brother’s wife is also a musician, though not professionally. She could have been, considering that she was ranked as one of the top flute players in Texas, and Texas is fucking huge. But no, professionally, my sister-in-law is in cognitive science and linguistics, which you may remember was the career LWJ had in Say More (my fiancée is also a linguist. I also know a few other linguists. My life is convenient for my Wangxian AUs, I gotta say). I mention my sister-in-law because my sister-in-law has enough musical acuity to also recognize that both my brother and Aphex Twin are geniuses, which really helped me to understand that even though I’m not really into this music at all, it really is a Big Deal.

So, I researched Aphex Twin and also went to my brother’s website for his music to find out what the hell this type of music is called, and it turns out there’s not a good name. IDM, which stands for intelligent dance music, is a label Aphex Twin himself famously does not like, and my brother labeled his own music as “acid, techno, house, electro.” Wikipedia said that Aphex Twin is known for techno, ambient, and jungle.

Anyway, into this confusing morass of electronic revolutionary music is where I decided to plunk Wei Ying.

Electronic music. Note for this section that I know nothing about electronic music. I’m writing this post partly to document the journey of discovery I went on to write this porn. I’m not really trying to educate anyone so much as I’m trying to provide insight as to what I researched for this fic and what the references are, in case the fic interested you.

When you really get down to it, music made with electronics has as many genres and styes as music made with more traditional instruments, and the labels are just as confusing (see this Wikipedia list of electronic music genres). For instance, “electronica” just means music made with electronics to some people, but to others it’s more specific. You’ve also got a bunch of other terms: ambient, EDM, techno, house, IDM.

This is all based on what I learned from Wikipedia, but here are some loose definitions as I understand them: There’s ambient, which is really made for background listening, and then there’s EDM (electronic dance music), which is made for active listening—ie, dancing. Within EDM you have lots of genres, such as techno; techno is usually characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, and house, which . . . is also characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, but the tempo is different. From what I can gather, house is also a bigger tent than techno; ie, many different genres and styles can be house, but techno is more often just techno. (Note that part of the reason all of this terminology has so much overlap is that it originated in different places; techno was invented in Berlin, house in Chicago.) Meanwhile, the list of genres of house is so big that it also has its own Wikipedia page, which is almost as large as the list of electronic music genres.

Note that there is such a thing as “house ambient”, which explodes the entire concept of ambient vs EDM. To aid in that explosion, IDM is described on Wikipedia as including styles such as ambient techo, and “is regarded as better suited to home listening rather than dancing.” What stands out about IDM, and the reason it is featured in the fic, is that it’s known for being experimental. (I’ll add that it emerged in the 90s, which isn’t great for my fic. Whatever WWX is doing, he is on the edge, and 90s music already old to him, even if he’s Aphex Twin’s biggest fan! But alas, my research could not tell me what is happening right now, because you really have to be involved in The Scene to understand what’s new. By the time it’s documented, it’s already really a little old.)

If you are researching electronic music and how it is revolutionary, you’re probably going to get into its evolution and history, since this is a new style of music. And if you are looking into the origins of this kind of music, you’re going to find Brian Eno. And if you’re looking into Brian Eno, you’re going to find minimalism.

Minimalism. Brian Eno is an extremely famous dude. I’d probably heard of him before, but I am very good with big concepts and pretty bad with details, so because I didn’t know anything about the bigger concepts behind ambient/electronic music/minimalism, I never paid attention. Now I’m hearing about him literally everywhere, which is funny, since it’s not like he’s new news. Ezra Klein was literally waxing poetic about Music for Airports just a month ago.

Eno is famous for his pioneering work in ambient music and electronic music, and, as one might expect, electronic ambient. Eno was always doing experimental, avant-garde stuff, and early on he embraced a minimal style. He later coined the term “ambient music.”

What’s interesting about this is that around the same time as Eno was doing this in later 1960s/early 1970s, a new kind of art music was being born in classical circles. This is the capital “M” Minimal music, for which—you guessed it—Philip Glass is really famous. And when you look at Philip Glass’s influences, he was deeply influenced by the minimalism of eastern music, especially Indian and Tibetan music. I couldn’t really find anything saying that Brian Eno was directly influenced by traditional eastern music, but Eno is definitely a fan of Glass and vice versa; they really build on each other.

This ended up just being a very cool intersection for the fic that I didn’t plan. I didn’t end up using it very much, but I must say I was stupidly pleased that the kind of music I was looking into for both of these characters has such deep roots in eastern music traditions. So now let’s talk a little bit about eastern music, specifically Chinese music, since that’s where this fic is based.

Chinese music. I did read a bit about Chinese music for this fic, and I have to say that I still don’t know a lot about it. As stated above, I’m in the west, using my western search techniques, looking for primarily articles in English (though I get Google to translate some things). I also just have a western understanding of music and music history, and it turns out, surprise, different cultures are different, and my entire paradigm for understanding music does not really apply to music from other cultures.

I, and many of us, want music to be a universal language, something that can move through all barriers and touch us in our souls. And it is! I have listened to and loved music not from my culture! But thinking of music as something intrinsically universal and therefore immediately moving to everyone really collapses the rich history of musical tradition all cultures have. Music really is like a language, in that it is built on the culture that creates it; it has its own internal logic; it has style and meaning that depend on the history of that tradition and the understanding of its audience. The brief reading I’m going to do to write some porn will not give me to understand the deep and rich tradition of Chinese music, but also, frankly, even if I turned all my efforts and career to learning and understanding this right now, I still would not have the best comprehension. I don’t even comprehend western music, and I grew up with it. So, forgive me for the paucity of my understanding and knowledge, and please correct me if I make mistakes.

When I think about Chinese music that I know about, I think of two things: modern and traditional. The modern stuff I’m thinking of is stuff like C-pop, but also the things you might hear on the soundtrack for a drama or movie. To me, none of this music sounds that different than western pop or western soundtracks. There are a few reasons for this: one, there are tons of Chinese music that is not reaching me. Two, maybe I just think it doesn’t sound that different because I can only really process what I recognize. Three, in a similar vein, maybe I’m thinking “that sounds like what I know” when really what I know sounds like what I’m hearing. Globalization is definitely doing things to music; if you’re telling me that Asian pop is not influencing western pop right now, I’m going to think you’re crazy, considering the influence and popularity Asian pop has in the US and Europe right now. And four, western music did have an impact on Chinese music, so there’s that.

Obviously, the music genre I chose for Wei Ying falls into the modern sphere, and I certainly looked into the techno/EDM/IDM/electronic/ambient/house scene in China. Articles I found stated it took a little longer for EDM to pick up steam in China, but now it’s definitely going strong. There are some great electronic music festivals, EDM clubs, underground EDM scenes, and EDM music artists (composers and DJs!) in China. Researching these artists was pretty difficult, especially because I wanted Wangxian’s musical discussions to be highly technical, and for highly technical discussions about EDM you are wandering into some very niche spaces. I’m sure such spaces about EDM in China exist, but they’re most likely to be in Chinese.

As I’ve said, globalization is a factor when it comes to cultural difference in music, and I’d add here that because this genre of music is so new, globalization has even more influence, from what I can tell. That said, I do not want to diminish how much influence very specific locations have to do with this type of music. EDM is very tied to clubs (because of the dancing) and performance (because of deejaying, and also because of things like live coding/algorave), which is probably why we get so many granular genres of house—Chicago house is different from Detroit, just for example. Regardless, I stuck with researching a lot of western artists for both the music and musical discussions in the fic, mostly because the music is supposed to be so new and avant-garde that is should not be something overly familiar to the reader, even if they’re steeped in electronic music genres.

Then there’s traditional music.

Traditional music. Traditional music obviously had a huge influence on Chinese modern music. The influence of traditional eastern music on modern eastern music, as well as traditional eastern music itself, is what really influenced a lot of western minimalism of the 1960s and 70s (and onward). To be clear, not all “eastern” traditional music is the same. It’s just as richly diverse regionally as traditional western music, if not more so, given “the east” is fucking huge—though I will say that a lot of people think of western music as pretty monolithic, because folk is characterized as a separate tradition than classical. When you consider ancient western folk, there’s a shit ton of it, and it’s quite diverse. There is also folk music in eastern music traditions, and this is different than music that would have been played in courts and palaces, so there’s really a ton going on.

Traditional music is what people think of when they think of eastern music being “weird,” which is something I really hate. Look, I love being weird; I think weird is cool; it’s great. But weird means unusual, and traditional music is very usual; people who say that just mean it’s unusual for them, and they should think about their words. What they’re trying to say is that traditional eastern music will sound very different for many western listeners, even though, again, we like to think of music as so universal, actually!, because it’s based on math, actually!, and math is so universal!!! The truth is that math is patterns, and patterns are things that your brain recognizes when there are familiar elements, and when there are unfamiliar elements your brain has trouble recognizing the pattern. So, again, music is a way to communicate across all kinds of boundaries, but it is not a universal translator. (But it does make you wonder . . . if Lan Zhan played Inquiry, could Aeneas answer???)

Regarding the unfamiliar math, what we’re talking about is scales. I think most people know this part. Eastern scales are based on math, just like western scales, but the frequencies are divided up differently. Among other things, traditional Chinese music did not use equal temperament, which means depending on what note you start with, the intervals for all the notes on the scale were be different. A way of thinking about this, at least as I understand it, is that a piano is even tempered. All the notes are always the same whether you’re playing in C major or B flat, because you have no control over the frequency produced when you press the key. But if you’re using just intonation—say you’re using an instrument with just a few strings—you’re adjusting the frequency of the note to match your scale. It requires extremely precise hearing and playing ability.

Notation for traditional Chinese music was really different than how I as a westerner understand it. For one thing, it didn’t include rhythm, and for another, it represented more a framework for improvisation than every single precise note. (See Gongche notation, Wikipedia.)

Authorship was also thought of pretty differently. When I googled “great Chinese composers,” the only results I was getting were twentieth century. There are some great ancient Chinese composers, but I had to do a lot of digging to find them, and trying to find someone like the Chinese equivalent of Beethoven is just the wrong approach. When you get right down to it, this really seems to be about the fundamental difference between western individualism vs eastern collectivism and community-based thinking. The individual artist is not the hero of the story. That said, the tradition of the music is very heroic. For instance, the notation allows such variation that the same piece can really build and grow through different artists, much like a story through oral tradition. Additionally, for an artist in an ensemble piece to stand out would really be quite rude; the point is not the individual talent of the musicians but the fundamental beauty of the piece. (This was a particularly hard thing to research, and I mostly found out what I laid out above from various folks answering questions in forums. The best one I found is here.)

Another thing is that harmony, as we think of it, was just not really a thing in traditional Chinese music. The focus was on a melody, which is where minimalism comes in. I’d add here that the “as we think of it” is pretty important, because the western paradigm, including western music language, is not super great at really capturing the nuance of Chinese music. I am terrible at tracking my sources when I research stuff for fic, so I was trying to find some of them now, and I came across this article, which examines the harmony that did exist, but how different it is from what we think of when we think of western harmony.

Despite the reading I did on this subject, very little about Chinese traditional music made it into the fic. I do have Lan Zhan reading a book on traditional music that he hates. This isn’t based on a book I found, but rather to show that Lan Zhan isn’t really into the idea of musical “purity,” that is, ideas of what you should and shouldn’t do with music. That said, I’m not really aware of what strictures around traditional Chinese music are like, or what the Chinese thought is on that. I am aware of how deeply restrictive western thought is regarding music theory, and that’s really where that part of the fic was coming from.

I’d originally had Lan Zhan reading a book on western music theory and very deeply hating it, but I also felt like having him read a book on western theory could reinforce the idea that he’s working within a western paradigm, when really the whole point is that this Lan Zhan very intentionally uses traditional music values. Due to his inspiration from Wei Ying, he’s breaking the norms of how that music works, but he's not necessarily making it western; he’s making it avant-garde. Basically, my inspiration was a Chinese Philip Glass, but I didn’t want to say that because as mentioned above, Glass is still western, no matter his influences. That said, Wei Ying does compare Lan Zhan to Philip Glass and also Tan Dun, who you might recognize as the guy who did the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among many other very famous projects.

Tan Dun has in fact been called the Chinese Philip Glass, which is probably not very respectful to Tan Dun, who is himself an incredible (and experimental!) composer. I should note, however, that Tan Dun is Chinese American—he was born in China, but got a degree at Columbia and has lived in New York since. Also, he is particularly famous for marrying Eastern traditionalism with western style, and that really wasn’t what I wanted for Lan Zhan. I didn’t want Lan Zhan to be incredible because he was using western traditions, though he is familiar with them and can make very talented use of them. A lot of very famous Chinese modern composer are famous for that, and that music is still very Chinese. That said, I felt that if I made that Lan Zhan’s style, it would feel like I was saying Lan Zhan’s music is special because it’s western, and that was something I really wasn’t keen on.

In the end, I possibly did the fic and traditional Chinese music a disservice by having Lan Zhan read his book and hate on it. One of the whole reasons western music theory sucks is it can be pretty racist, and that’s what I was trying to avoid, but by conflating my rage at western music theory with eastern, I didn’t really help things much. But anyway, since I’ve now mentioned it, let’s just take a slight detour to talk about what I mean by racist music theory.

Western music theory racism. There’s a scene in the movie Tár that really solidified my feelings on the subject. In it, a student who identifies as BIPOC and pangender, says they don’t really have much use for Bach because of Bach’s misogynist history. The extremely famous director, Tár, played by Cate Blanchett, lambasts the student for “cancelling” Bach because of Bach’s personal life. The student goes on to say that they really just don’t have much interest in cis male white composers, and Tár continues to lambast the student for considering things like gender and race in conjunction with the art.

My understanding of this scene was that it was demonstrating that Tár is a jerk, so full of herself that she can’t listen to other voices, and so steeped in her 18th century western ideas of genius that she’s literally silencing the music voices she’s supposed to support. That was not most people’s reading of the scene, and in retrospect, possibly not the intention of the film. It seems rather telling that not a lot is known about Bach’s misogyny or lack thereof; there are plenty of other “great” western composers that are known to be worse in terms of misogyny and abuse, and yet the film did not make this scene about them. In retrospect, maybe that scene wanted to paint this student as kind of ignorant for cancelling Bach, and Tár really puts them in their place when she describes how art is more important than the artist.

Fuck that. I certainly believe that art is more important than the artist. JK Rowling sucks; that doesn’t mean I will stop loving HP fic and the part it’s played in my life. But the ugliness of the scene is that it hinges on importance of Bach, and look here, shocker, Bach is not essential, just as JKR is not essential if you decide you don’t ever want to familiarize yourself with the literature of TERFs. Even if you want to be a musician and create or conduct music, Bach is just not essential.

He’s pretty important if you want to be a western music historian, true, but when we talk about music there are many, many music traditions that are incredibly worthwhile and important that not only weren’t created by cis white men, but also weren’t ever derived or influenced by cis white men. If you think that you need Bach to know and love and create and perform and conduct music, it’s because you’re operating in a single paradigm that has become yes, universally known, but also for that reason oppressive and imperialist. I am not saying western classical music is bad because it’s imperialist, just to be clear. Bach’s great! Hate ‘im, but I do love me some Beethoven and he was also very cis and male and white and also a complete douche! What I’m saying is that forcing this music tradition on others is deeply imperialist, and it happens all the time.

Anyway, this is really a tangent, because despite my very good intentions to write about Chinese music, as I have stated, almost everything I used for reference was western, even a lot of the stuff I listened to. Maybe I just wanted to acknowledge that that’s a little racist, even though I tried not to be. Maybe I also wanted to hate on Tár and leave you with this interesting video about white supremacy in music theory.

References. Finally, we’ve reached the part I had originally intended to post, which is why I started writing this. Below are the essays and articles I used to write this fic. They were used in three ways: 1) to describe the music (though I also listened to things, see next section), 2) to inform Lan Zhan’s critiques and Wei Ying’s ideas—though I read a lot of essays to do that, just a crazy amount considering how little of the fic is actually about that, and 3) to describe the reading material Wei Ying and Lan Zhan exchange.

Music Beyond Airports – Appraising Ambient Music

This is a series of essays largely focused around Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, though there’s a lot of other stuff as well. I didn’t read everything in here, but the collection is absolutely fascinating. “Ambient House: “Little Fluffy Clouds” And The Sampler As Time Machine” is one of the “articles” Wei Ying sends Lan Zhan; meanwhile, the collection as whole is what Lan Zhan sends Wei Ying when he says he’s been reading about ambient house. Additionally, “Adaptive Game Scoring With Ambient Music” really influenced Lan Zhan’s commentary about arpeggiation, the first time he comments on Wei Ying’s music.

Counterpoint - Tracking in the Music of Aphex Twin

I have some embarrassment about this, given that the article is about counterpoint, and as I have discussed above, eastern traditional music doesn’t really employ that in the way westerners think about it. However, it’s also pretty backwards to restrict Wei Ying to traditional eastern music, as modern Chinese music includes plenty of counterpoint, and part of the point of the fic is that Wei Ying is doing entirely new things that haven’t been done before. Well. They’ve been done by Aphex Twin, as described in this piece, which also describes the first piece that Wei Ying plays for Lan Zhan in the fic, in the car. I did lift the phrase “pedagogy of counterpoint,” and could not decide whether it was long enough or significant enough to credit in the fic.

Unequal Temperament: A Review of Aphex Twin’s SYRO

I can’t remember what I used this article for. It’s an interesting read.

Reverb Machine (the entire website)

This is the site I kept returning to over and over and over again. Most of the articles about electronic really focus on either the equipment used or chords. In the fic, Lan Zhan isn’t supposed to know much about equipment or how any of it is used, because he does not do electronic music. Also, I didn’t really want to talk much about chord progressions, because those discussions are steeped in western music theory, and I wanted it to be possible for Wei Ying to be using the kind of scales traditional Chinese music used, even if a lot of modern Chinese music does use an even-tempered 12-tone scale. However, this site has a lot, and I ended up returning to it again and again so Wei Ying could say an offhand thing about reverb, and to describe certain things.

Notably, Wei Ying’s track, sex.mp3 is loosely based around Trent Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack to The Social Network. I haven’t even talked about Trent Reznor, but he was also someone I considered deeply when I started thinking about making Wei Ying do electronic music. In case you don’t know, Reznor was the artist behind Nine Inch Nails, but in later years he moved on to more experimental things, including movie soundtracks. Side note, movie soundtracks and video games is where a lot of these experimental artists doing either minimalism, ambient, or electronica, or a combination of all three end up, and I ended up reading a lot about video game music.

But anyway, when I saw the Social Network, I came out of it 1) admiring Aaron Sorkin and wishing I didn’t admire Aaron Sorkin because he’s kind of a douche, 2) shipping Mark and Eduardo way too much for my comfort, 3) going HOLY SHIT THAT SOUNDTRACK. Turns out I was not alone in finding that soundtrack totally different and new compared to anything I have ever heard, because as it turns out, it really was—wait for it—revolutionary. I understand that I have now said that about Glass, Eno, Radiohead, and Aphex Twin, but hey, people are doing things in music. Like I get that pop and hiphop artists are revolutionizing their genres all the time, but also it is possible for music as we know it to be redefined, and it’s not just the weird shit you hear that sounds like noise (there is a place for the weird shit that sounds like noise, and Brian Eno is closer to it than any of the above mentioned; I am not dissing weird shit that sounds like noise, because it is part of how we get where we are going).

Anyway, I used this website’s essay about The Social Network’s piece, “In Motion” to describe some of the music and inform some commentary on it.

“East Meets West: A Musical Analysis of Chinese Sights and Sounds, by Yuankai BaoSounds, by Yuankai Bao” by Jiazi Shi

This was the only essay I found that really had the extremely niche technical jargon that I really wanted for the fic that was also about Chinese music. You’ll note that it’s about a Chinese composer who is, again, famous for marrying eastern and western tradition, but this was what I could find in English, and I searched a lot. You’ll note that Lan Zhan’s very specific comment about the key change is something very directly inspired by this grad school dissertation. You’ll also note that this is where I found “Flowing Stream,” including a description of the song and the lyrics.

Music. A lot of fics like this one will link you to a specific piece that the character is playing. I could not do that, because the music in my fic is very intentionally made up. As I have been saying, the whole point is that Wei Ying is pushing the boundaries, inventing music that does not exist. So is Lan Zhan, by the end. I listened to music to inspire the descriptions, but it is not what they are playing, and almost none of it is Chinese. I’d be very interested in finding some Chinese music that is working on some of the principles of minimalism and electronic that these pieces employ.

Aphex Twin – Stone In Focus

Now you’ve come to the climax—this is really the story of how I learned to love Aphex Twin. This piece makes me cry. It’s what I used to describe the piece that has the remix of Lan Zhan’s guqin piece from 12 years ago. Obviously, the guqin piece mentioned in the fic is the canonical piece, Wangxian, but I find Wangian in the drama cheesier than I want it to be, and this Aphex Twin piece doesn’t have the Wangxian part. It’s just the sad longing part before Wangxian enters, but you’ll also notice that there are no flutes! Again, this is not the piece Wei Ying wrote; it’s just what I used for the description.

I didn’t link to the YouTube video I was watching, because the video was a collection and this didn’t come on until after minute thirteen. But that video just has this very sad tunnel that looks like maybe it’s for a train, and the rain is falling, and that makes me cry as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHl4NVytGpo&t=1074s

Book featuring Ndidi O - Hold On, I'm Coming

Wait, you’re saying, this is not electronic/house/ambient at all; this is just a trick to get me to watch one of your favorite wangxian vids! You’re right! But frankly, I was not focused on the genre when describing the music; I was focused on getting the feel of it that I wanted. The opening sequence to this was what I used to describe the track they make love to. (Lan Zhan starts making out with him and kind of slowly humping him to the track with the wangxian remix, but then Lan Zhan demands he plays something else, and this is what I listened to to get the feel for it.)

This pieces is a cover, and frankly, I can’t find out much about it. But just thinking about it turns me on and makes me cry and makes me feel so much, I can’t do it too often.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “In Motion,” from soundtrack to The Social Network

As noted above, this piece inspired sex.mp3, but I will say that the article I linked above about this piece, as well as the memory of the soundtrack itself, inspired descriptions more than listening to the piece itself. In the fic, sex.mp3 is initially described as “violent.” This was because I didn’t know if the track would play a big part in the fic, and then when it did, I really had to change to both to fit the meaning and the flavor I wanted; it became “anxiety inducing,” and that’s when it became “In Motion.” “In Motion,” however, is kind of too bright and peppy to really be sex.mp3, though I will say I was trying to listen to it just to write this section of the post, and I had to turn it off. It makes me SO anxious.

Philip Glass – soundtrack to The Hours

I’m linking the whole soundtrack, because in the fic Lan Zhan writes several related pieces, which is what this soundtrack is. I can’t even recommend one piece on this soundtrack, because it’s the thing as a whole that really makes you cry, and I can’t say I listened to a specific part of it to describe Lan Zhan’s music, because I know it so well that I only have to listen to a small piece to get all of it.  

Flowing Water, played by Chen Leiji

The part this played in the fic is obvious. I listened to at least five versions of Flowing Stream/Flowing Water, and this is the one that I like the best. However, like all the renditions I listened to, the piece eventually becomes pretty complex and different than I wanted for Lan Zhan. In fact, what the narration describes as “showing off technique” is what I found in all recordings of this piece. I guess if you’re going to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on YouTube you’re going to do something impressive with it, but I will say this piece is still very close to what I wanted.

I will also say that when I searched for this piece, as well as several other traditional songs, the search results had a lost of stuff that said you can listen to these pieces for tranquility and calm and meditation. I suggest listening to this one as extremely passionate and longing, and you’re going to get a lot more from it. If you resign it to the background, yeah, it’s kind of nice. If you let each note really speak to you, you’re going to really ache in a beautiful way.

Brian Eno – Ambient 1, Music for Airports

After hearing so much about Eno and Music for Airports, I was a little afraid I wouldn’t like it. After all, this isn’t really my genre, and witness how long it took me to find something I liked by Aphex Twin. However, I really needed some inspiration for the piece Wei Ying composes after Lan Zhan breaks them up, so I started listening to it.

The opening to this album is not the heartbreaking thing that the fic describes. It in fact does break my heart, but that is because there is something so sweet about it, lonely and sweet, but also perfectly fine being by itself. This piece is like a child alone in a room, figuring out blocks. This piece is like a cat on a piano, content with its nonsense noise. This piece is what it’s like to be alone and to be fine with that, to love from afar and be fine with that. It still brings me to tears, listening to it.

Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place

Apparently I did not succeed in writing all the music without Radiohead. I will say it happened because I happened to be watching a TV show that just happened to use this song right when I needed something powerful. I was already thinking about them, because my BFF was listening to a podcast about In Rainbows, which explains the children shouting “Yay!” in 15 Step. I really wanted something other than rain to get sampled in Wei Ying’s music, and my brother has specifically used his children talking or his babies crying as samples. Once Lan Zhan knows about A-Yuan, I wanted to use that idea, so I listened to 15 Step again, which is far too peppy for what I needed. But then Everything In Its Right Place came on, and it’s actually way too melancholy for what I needed, but that doesn’t really matter; I just needed to get a few notes described, so this is what I used for inspiration for what Wei Ying plays Lan Zhan after he admits to being in love with him. I will just say that re-listening to this song really does remind me of just how much Kid A means to me, but also how much it means to, like, music. There was really nothing like it at the time.

-

I will end this post by saying that I am not, in fact, a "music" person. So many people need and rely on music to get them through tough times. I mostly don't care about it. I don't have a Spotify account, and I can't imagine taking the time to really curate playlists.

But one thing I can say about me and my tastes is that I'm interested in learning. I want to try new things and hear things that I haven't heard before. To be a little self-aggrandizing, I think that that's a good thing. I think it makes me a better person to work on listening to things that I'm a little unfamiliar with and learn what's great about them. I think I got to do that quite a bit writing this, even though in the end I used a lot of pieces I was familiar with to do the actual writing. I hope that maybe someone reads this and decides to listen to something new, just like I did.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 1

Propaganda under the cut

Christine Canigula

This has enraged me for YEARS. She is constantly sidelined in the fandom in favor of the main m/m ship which itself its fine but the way people treat her drives me NUTS. When I actually was in the fandom, Consistently! her crush on the main character which is a CENTRAL fucking plot point is just explained away to make room for yaoi. If they even have that kind of decency. Like 99% of the fics just say "oh! she's a lesbian actually totally this was comphet im not a misogynist" or "she's Actually Aroace" and not ponder on the optics of sanitizing the CANON fucking attraction of a chubby easian girl. It's sososo transparent and another fucking example of she's actually the Mom friend! or other annoying racist and misogynistic tropes.

She likes play rehearsal. She's the love interest of the main character, Jeremy. Jeremy also has a best friend, Michael, whom he's usually shipped with. And since she's the canonical love interest and as such often gets in the way of their beloved ship. They are very creative in finding the ways to get rid of her to ship Michael with Jeremy, ranging from making her asexual(because ace people can't date apparently), completely kicking her out of the last two songs of the musical and putting Michael in her place, to vilifying her and claiming she was never interested in Jeremy in the first place, despite musical explicitly saying the opposite.

Love interest of the main character Jeremy Heere and therefore stands in the way of the fandom's most popular ship, boyf reinds. Being specifically a love interest we don't get. A whole lot of her but she's fun! She's a theatre kid. She is silly and goofy. Also has a one off line in one of the songs that mentions she has ADD. Idk what I'm supposed to say really and I'm always bad at talking about characters so.

Han Sooyoung

han sooyoung is one of the main trio protagonists yet people constantly ignore her in order to ship the other two males despite the fact that they are all doomed by the narrative TOGETHER!!! fanon content is even worse because it either slaps a lesbian sticker onto her to shittily write her off in fanfic OR they make her so one dimensional its like a cardboard stand in. han sooyoung arguably has a more important/interesting dynamic with the main male protagonist yet everyone ignores her because they want their uwu gay babies IM SO SICK OF ORV FANS

Dokja and Joonghyuk are a very popular ship (rightfully so, i get it) but usually Sooyoung is seen as in the way of their relationship or not as valued as the other two even though her place in the story and relationship with the other characters is just as strong. Recently there was a post on twitter being rude about people who ship her and Joonghyuk (which is a super valid ship) and i saw a lot of hate that i believe just stems from her getting “in the way” of a yaoi ship. 

99% of that kind of symbolic fanart REFUSES. to acknowledge her existence man. even though she is part of the main TRIO man

#round 1 #poll #christine canigula #be more chill #han sooyoung #omniscent reader

[whimsical-roasting]

“Coach Ted, how do you feel about group cohesion and dance breaks?”

thinking about random moments shared in the jamie tartt x psych major!reader fic i have in my head... just cute shit tbh

okay so the reader has been with the Richmond club for a solid few months, she’s a familiar face and friendly to the team but not super close with everybody, minus Colin and surprisingly,,, Jamie hehe

the team seems to be having a serious tie-streak going on, and they’re all kinda bummed by it

Ted’s obviously still Ted, unwavering winners mindset that basically means ‘do your best, give yourself a pat, shake it off, and repeat’ - with the addition of a smile ofc!

the reader has been doing readings for her org psych class and knows that raising group morale is necessary but also so so hard.

sometimes motivational speeches just don’t cut it yknow?? sometimes you gotta think outside of the box to fix the vibes and spread positivity

so there she is, standing in the coach’s office with a bluetooth speaker in her hand, nervously waiting for it to be her turn to speak

“Coach Ted,” she calls him in a manner that’s playful but still professional - he’s insisted on just Ted in the past and she’s complied but for serious conversations, she enjoys leading with a ‘subtle sense of professionalism’

“Coach Ted, how do you feel about group cohesion and dance breaks?” she asks, fiddling with the speaker in her hand

“Well darlin, I love a good flash mob. Gosh, those folks must keep in touch, right?” He directs his eyes to Beard, who peaks over his book and replies affirmingly, “a bond has been formed,” causing both you and Ted to smile

“Well, less flash mob but more like... a bi-weekly dance break?” she continues as Ted’s eyes land on her again. “I know the boys are bummed with the tie-streak and I was reading in my org psych textbook about the importance of autonomy in decorating our workspaces, and how group morale helps cohesion which’ll lead to better attitudes and hopefully better performance - not that our performance has been poor, it’s been great, I’m proud of the boys really! But, it sucks to see them bummed out...So maybe a twice-a-week-song-dance-break will lift spirits??”��

she’s rambling. she’s nervous!! it’s a good idea tbh but still, sharing means being vulnerable and the potential of getting rejected

Ted politely waits for her to finish, nodding along and then grins, “sounds wonderful darlin! Hey, maybe you can get the boys to give some song suggestions to help with the whole autonomy thing you mentioned.” 

she’s happy !! grinning as she steps out to the locker room, dragging out the whiteboard from the corner and scribbling in a lil corner of it

Jamie’s eyes follow her silently. truth be told, they followed her when she entered and disappeared into the coach’s office. but he smiles a lil seeing her grin at herself

when she’s done with the whiteboard, she calls for attention and lets the boys know to write down their suggestions, and she’ll choose two songs for the week randomly!! she emphasizes nervously that it should help according to her textbooks and Jamie is silently nodding, eyes drifting to her hands as she fiddles with the whiteboard marker

Dani is the first to speak, “pardon me, can it be Spanish songs too?” and she smiles really big, “anything you like!!” 

Isaac adds, “yea bruv, I fuck wit Bad Bunny” and there’s a wave of approving noises from the rest

SO, the plan has been implemented, and it’s frickin working!!! 

the boys always look forward to whose song is chosen - lots of rap, some taylor swift, Work Hard Play Hard makes them go nuts, some musical songs from Colin but it’s okay cause the lads are hyped over Hamilton 

Ted gets into it!! dancing!! Dani and Jan Maas share an imaginary mic!! it’s great, but Jamie’s favourite part is seeing her join them in the locker rooms for every dance break grooving to the music

one day SHE chooses the song... “Keep Your Head Up” by Andy Grammer cause the team seemed extra tired and bummed

everyone’s like ??? who chose this?? she’s like ‘me. I did.’

she’s trying to break the tension, so she takes her imaginary mic and goes to Ted, then Colin, then Sam, and soon everyone’s into it - just happily singing and dancing

she somehow ends up next to Jamie, shoulders bumping. she’s swaying as she faces him, playfully mouthing the lyrics to him as he smiles with a slight blush (not that she notices cause she’s blushing too)

they’re both dancing close to each other, and she lightly pokes his chin when the song goes, “you gotta keep your head up”, reaching up to pull down his headband at, “and you can let your hair down,” grinning at him when he’s like ‘hey!! :o... >:)’

the song ends, and they’re still laughing at each other, holding hands...a bit longer than they should tbh hehehe. Jamie loves her energy and kindness, it matches his goofiness and makes him wanna be a better person

but anyways!!! they pull away, hoping no one notices.. some do but don’t say anything

#jamie tartt x psych major!reader #jamie tartt x reader #ted lasso x reader #ted lasso #jamie tartt

[kassiekole22]

Josh being in love with an oblivious reader and the twins are alive and trying to create situations to get them together 👉👈👉👈👉👈

Best Day Ever

Picture lightly edited by me.

Pairing: Josh Washington X Fem!Reader Description: After a spur of the moment decision, Josh takes you and his sisters to a carnival. Hannah and Beth decide to take this opportunity to push you and Josh together, since Josh has had a massive crush on you for a long time and has been too afraid to make a move... Warnings: Fluff, Maybe A Pinch Of Angst, Kind Of Mutual Pining (But Very Intense On One Side. 👀), Friends Turning Into Beautiful Lovers. Word Count: 4.8k (I haven't written a fic this long in quite a while. 😅) A/N: This took an embarrassing amount of time, I know. I was just in no mind state to write and I wanted it to be perfect, so I decided to wait. And it took even longer because when I was editing it one last time, the final copy got deleted so I had to reedit the whole thing and rewrite the parts I had added in there. @108garys requested a carnival fic for Josh a few days prior to this request, so I got the idea to combine them together. I hope that's ok. 🥺👉🏻👈🏻 This is actually my old Jalim fic, Just For Fun, too. I always wanted to rewrite it because I felt like it could have been better than what it was. So, when I got the opportunity to do this, I decided to finally do it and I am happy with the results. Anon requester and @108garys, I want to thank you for giving me this request. It really made me happy, knowing that people wanted me to write a fic for them, especially when I was so new to the Until Dawn fandom. Anyway, I'll quit my rambling now. I hope you all enjoy. 💖 Josh's MasterList: 🖤 Main MasterList: 🖤 Josh's Angels: @lorebite, @house-of-kolchek, @koexchange, @yesitsloulou, @mistmoose, @jasonexo, @mornandil, @fortune-fool02, and @raven-the-cryptid. (If you want to be added to the taglist, let me know in the comments! 🖤)

》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《

Me, (Y/N), Hannah and Beth were driving from the store one sunny afternoon. We weren't there long; only to grab some microwave popcorn and chips for a movie we were planning to watch. It was a short trip but everybody insisted on going along for the ride. It was nice, having the three most important women in my life with me. Even if it was just something as simple as going to the grocery store, it was memories like these that I cherished the most.

The ride was pretty silent other than a song playing quietly on the radio, but it was nice — it was peaceful. A couple of minutes passed and we drove passed a carnival. That's when I noticed (Y/N) turning her head to look out her window.

"Oh, looks like they set up a carnival for the weekend." I mentioned, just to see how she would react.

"Yeah, I noticed." She said just barely above a whisper whilst still staring out her window. "Haven't been to one in years."

"Jesus, us neither." Beth spoke up in the back.

"Probably since we were sixteen." Hannah recalled quietly.

I sat in silence and pondered for a minute, taking my eyes off of the road for a quick moment to watch (Y/N) whilst chewing on the inside of my cheek. She looked sad — or maybe disappointed. Now that I had thought about it, I hadn't been to a carnival in such a long time. We really weren't in too much of a hurry to get back and I was sure that the movie could wait.

"You wanna go?" I finally asked and she took her eyes off the window to gaze at me with uncertainty.

"W-What? No, we can't. We have groceries in the back seat." She looked down at her hands folded in her lap, her lips turned down into a disappointed frown.

"Oh, fuck yeah!" Beth cheered behind me, startling me and nearly making me jump out of my seat. I shook my head as I let a short chuckle roll passed my lips.

"The groceries can wait. Nothing's gotta go in the fridge." I mused. "It'll be fun."

Before she opened her mouth to protest again, I turned the car around and drove in the direction of the small carnival before us. I pulled into a free parking spot, got out and rounded the side of the car before opening the door for (Y/N) and giving her my hand to help her up. Her eyes lit up with wonder as she studied the crowds and the attractions around her.

"What should we do first?" She asked me as we walked in, hand in hand, to ensure that we would not get separated.

We had done this before but only so we don't get separated in big crowds because (Y/N) hates to be alone. I wish it meant more to her than that. I wish she knew that when I held her hand, it's not just because I don't want to lose her in a big crowd…

"Fuck, I don't know! I'm so excited, I can't think!" Beth said eagerly with nothing but pure excitement in her voice and I chuckled at her enthusiasm. "This is going to be the best day ever!"

"I'm excited too." (Y/N) giggled. "What do you think, Josh?"

"I don't know. We haven't had lunch yet — you wanna get something to eat? My treat." I suggested as I pulled out my wallet and smiled kindly at her.

"Yeah, I am pretty hungry." Hannah expressed and I nodded before grabbing plucking out a twenty. Luckily, I went to an atm before heading to the store and had enough cash on me for the day.

"Yeah, I'd love that." (Y/N) expressed. A look of adoration melted into her soft eyes as she gazed up at me for a moment and I swear, it made my heart stop. I felt heat creep within my cheeks and I looked away quickly, hoping she wouldn't notice.

We went to the nearest food stall and I ordered some burgers, some fries and Pepsis for us all. After, we found a bench close by and sat down with our lunches. (Y/N) took a bite out of her burger and her eyes lit up before closing to appreciate the taste.

"This is amazing!" She took another big bite. "I forgot how good carnival food is!"

I couldn't help but smile at how happy she was over something as simple as a burger. I admired how she enjoyed the small things in life. Even something as small as food could cast the biggest smile on her face.

"Jesus! Ok, Josh! You are taking all three of us to carnivals more often! It's a must!" Beth declared before taking a bite out of her own burger.

"Yeah, you'll have to become that big movie producer fast so you'll have enough money to splurge on us!" I couldn't help but full out laugh at Hannah's comment and, by the looks of it, (Y/N) and Beth couldn't either.

"(Y/N), back in California, we have the biggest fairs and carnivals! Like rollercoasters that could last an hour, I swear to God!" Beth mused once she calmed down from her fit of giggles, wiping a tear from her eye as she did so. (Y/N)'s eyes widened before she turned to look at me for conformation and I nodded as a smile crept upon my lips.

"Shit! Yeah, I have to see that!" She giggled excitedly in agreement.

Beth finished her meal first and waited a minute until (Y/N) was finished before taking her hand and nearly dragging her off the bench.

"We have to go do something really quick." She said and both me and (Y/N) raised a brow in confusion.

"What about me?" Hannah asked, a frown forming where her smile used to be from being left out.

"If you weren't such a slow eater, then you could come too." Beth teased and Hannah's lips turned up into an awkward smile as she adjusted her glasses.

She always did that when she felt nervous.

"Well, Jesus! At least she paces herself — unlike some of us." I said, gesturing to Beth and she scoffed.

"I would watch yourself, big brother." She approached me slowly as a mischievous look formed in her eyes. I clenched what little I had left of my burger in my hands, in fear that I was about to lose it. "You know, I'm shocked — you're usually the fastest eater out of all three of us."

She stopped right in front of me and froze for a moment, making me feel both confused and worried. Before I could even attempt to react, she booped my nose and when I winced, she plucked the remainder of my burger from my hands and pushed it all in her mouth, smiling wickedly at me as her cheeks puffed out as if she was a chipmunk.

She skipped off with (Y/N) and I yelled a threatening, "I'll get you back for this!" Over my shoulder and I just barely caught Beth giving me the finger as she walked away.

I stayed seated on the bench with Hannah and watched all the children playing before us. I began imagining what it would be like taking my children to the carnival, watching their excited expressions as they went on all the rides and ate as many sweets as they could while (Y/N) is scolding me for giving them too many. Aw hell, who was I kidding? (Y/N) was just as much of a push over as I was. We would all probably spend the night with stomach aches. I was so deep in thought about my future that I failed to notice the small smile on my lips as I watched the children play.

"You can't fool me." I heard Hannah speak up beside me as she nudged my shoulder with her own. She had closed the little distance between us so she was sitting by my side now, finishing up her food as she watched the children play as well. "You can put on that "player" act all you want, but I know the real you. I see the way you look at (Y/N). Face it Joshy — you're smitten."

"What? Nah!" I scoffed with a roll of my eyes and Hannah rolled hers as well. Why do siblings gotta be so good at reading each other?

"You are with her every day, you talk about her constantly during the times you aren't and you can't tell me that you wouldn't do absolutely anything for her." She accused. "And you also can't tell me that you weren't just imagining those kids over there as your own."

I stayed silent for a moment, realizing that my sister was right. She knew that that front I always put up was a lie. I had always wanted a family of my own, and I think I had finally found the girl that I wanted to start it with — if only I had the fucking balls to tell her how I felt.

"Well, lil sis — I think you might just be right." I muttered, mind only half in reality as I pondered actually telling her that I had feelings for her.

"Look what I got!" Beth sang behind us and I jumped, hoping that her and (Y/N) did not just hear my confession. I turned to see them both holding cotton candies and, judging by their facial expressions, they didn't hear a thing. They handed me and Hannah ours before sitting down beside us on the bench.

"It's so sweet." (Y/N) said as she licked her lips. My eyes lingered on them for a second, admiring how soft they looked before I noticed Beth smirking at me out of the corner of my eye.

"Sure is!" I agreed, turning my attention back to (Y/N). "But, not as sweet as you."

She giggled at my comment and Hannah and Beth made gagging sounds. After we finished eating our cotton candy, we decided to go on some rides. Can't go to a carnival and not go on the rides, right? After all, it's good to get the heart racing every now and then.

After walking around for awhile and trying to agree on what we would all go on first, my eyes met the one that I was definitely not going to skip. I pointed at the Drop Tower, "Yes! We're doing that!" I demanded as I pulled on (Y/N)'s arm.

"I don't know, Josh…" She looked up at it reluctantly and then looked at me, a worried expression on her now pale face. Hannah and Beth walked up beside us and looked up at the tower as well. Hannah looked so pale that I already knew her answer, and Beth looked so excited that I thought she'd for sure join us. But then that excitement in her eyes turned into mischief as she peered over at me and (Y/N).

'What is she up to?' I thought to myself as I glanced at my sister out of the corner of my eye.

"I think I'll sit this one out. (Y/N), why don't you try it? Josh will be there to protect you." She nudged my shoulder and I glared back at her. I couldn't believe she was going to do this — she was going to leave us alone to push us together.

"But Beth, you love these kinds of rides." I said through gritted teeth, giving my sister the 'don't you fucking dare' look. She just smirked at me and then turned her attention back to (Y/N).

"Come on! It'll be fun! Please? I just know you'll love it!" She begged her like a bratty little child.

(Y/N) heaved a sighed. "Fine."

We got strapped in and before we knew it, the ride started to go up. (Y/N) closed his eyes as tightly as she could while her fingers clenched the safety bars and I couldn't help but feel bad for getting her in this situation that she very clearly didn't want to be in.

We got strapped in and before we knew it, the ride started to go up. (Y/N) closed his eyes as tightly as she could while her fingers clenched the safety bars.

We were finally at the top and I never felt more alive. The adrenaline felt better than any drug I have ever taken. I wanted to throw my hands in the air and scream it to the world.

"This is awesome!" I yelled with a laugh following my words. (Y/N), however, did not look like she shared my enthusiasm. Her eyes were still clenched shut and she now was shaking like a leaf! Now, I could have been my usual cocky self and acted all brave in front of her, as I usually did. But seeing her this scared hurt my heart.

So, instead of acting like 'the big man', I decided to look down and scream at the top of my lungs, "FUCK! SHIT! OH, HELL NO!"

She bursted out laughing at my reaction and just by looking at the sweet smile on her beautiful face, I knew that all the teasing I was going to get from Hannah and Beth was worth it. The ride dropped down and I screamed again but more dramatic and dragged out compared to the last time.

I got off of the ride first, staggering a bit to make (Y/N) giggle before giving her my hand to help her down. Then we headed back into the crowd of people to find my sisters.

"That was fun!" (Y/N) smiled up at me and I felt my heart swell.

"Hey, big brother! Have any vocal cords left after that big performance you gave the whole park up there?" Beth teased with her famous cocky smirk plastered on her face and I literally bit my tongue to hold back my bitter reply that was practically pushing through the seam of my lips.

"Yeah, you sounded like you were being chased by some blood-thirsty monster or something!" Hannah laughed and I rolled my eyes. But (Y/N) giggled as well and I remembered that it was worth all the torture just to hear it.

'Remember her smile. Just remember her fucking smile.' I thought to repress the urge to give my sisters nice Indian burns on each of their arms.

"How about some games?" I attempted to change the subject as I pointed over at the game booths. The girls snickered as they followed me, reminding me that although I was able to change the subject now, it didn't change the fact that I would be getting the worse of it later.

We walked up to a target shooting game and I slammed a few dollars down on the counter.

"This is gonna be too easy." I smirked. The carny took the money and handed me the gun.

"You get three tries. If you get three out of three, you get a big prize. If you get two, you get a medium prize. You get one, you get a small prize." The carny explained and I nodded.

I aimed the gun at the target and after a few moments of making sure the tip of my gun was perfectly aligned with the target and Beth nagging at me from behind, I fired… And missed. I felt my cheeks heat up from extreme embarrassment because I could hear the giggling of three girls behind me. I fired again and missed, letting out a frustrated grunt and cursing under my breath.

"Need me to show ya how it's done?" Beth teased as she patted my shoulder and I glared at her. She put her hands up in defense as she let out a chuckle. But I could see in her eyes that she regretted nothing. After letting my eyes linger on (Y/N) for a moment, I looked back at the target.

I really needed to focus this time. I aimed for the target one last time, fired, and missed again.

"Fuck!" I slammed my hand down on the counter. Being a perfectionist, this was frustrating as all fucking hell.

And it was even more frustrating because I knew my way around a gun. Growing up, I spent a lot of time fucking around at the shooting range at our lodge, so I was a pretty sharp shooter. But (Y/N)'s gaze heavy on my back was making me nervous as all fuck.

"It's ok, Josh. You're probably still lightheaded from the ride." (Y/N) spoke softly beside me as she placed her hand gently on my tense shoulder.

"How's this; I'll give you one last chance — if you hit the smallest target, I'll give you the big prize." The carny offered while smiling kindly at me and I nodded in agreement.

I aimed for the smallest target, took a moment to make sure I was perfectly aligned with it, and took a deep breath. I had to get it this time. I closed my eyes, carefully squeezed the trigger and the gun went off with a loud bang one last time. I opened my eyes and my heart jumped into my throat.

"Fuck, Yes!" I yelled excitedly.

I fucking got it.

I hugged (Y/N), who had been clapping beside me to cheer on my victory. The carny handed me a big, fluffy, black teddy bear with a red bow around it's neck and a big red heart between it's paws that said, 'love'. I didn't hesitate to give it to (Y/N).

"—For you." I declared proudly. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell agape.

"Really?" She looked unsure for a moment as she hesitantly took the bear from my hands.

"Of course! I have to give you the prize, since you're my biggest cheerleader." I nudged her shoulder playfully and she blushed as she hugged the bear while smiling up at me.

"Hey, love birds!" Beth called out to us and I mentally face palmed at her ruining our moment.

'Dammit, Beth!' For all I knew, it could have turned into our first kiss.

"Don't mind her." Hannah rolled her eyes with a chuckle. "We were wondering if you guys wanted to continue going on some other rides?"

"Sure! Why not?" I agreed before following my sisters to their next ride of choice.

We decided to go on some calmer rides, since Hannah had a weak stomach. The Carousel was Hannah's first choice because she loved the horses. When I went to sit on the horse beside Beth's, Hannah pushed passed me and jumped on it before signaling behind her. I looked behind me to see (Y/N) already on her horse and the one beside her empty. I glared at my sisters, seeing right through their little plan and went to sit beside (Y/N). Not that I'm complaining though — we had a good time and it was pretty fun.

And then, after that, we tried the Bumper Cars. Me and Beth got a little too competitive there, ending in a couple of cars getting a bit damaged. After awhile, Hannah and (Y/N) stayed parked on the sidelines and watched the shitshow of a war that me and Beth created in the middle. She will never admit it, but I clearly won that round.

And we also tried the darts game, where (Y/N) won a small, light brown puppy plushy that had really big and buggy sad eyes.

"Ha! It looks just like you! It's got those big—" Beth couldn't finish, because I interrupted her quickly, trying to avoid being embarrassed for the— however many times it's been today.

"DON'T!" I growled as my eye shot daggers towards my sister.

"But you didn't let me finish, big brother." She smiled innocently and I looked over to Hannah and (Y/N), who also looked weary of Beth's attitude as well.

"Fine… Go ahead…" I sighed, defeated and finally accepting my fate.

"It's got those big bug-eyes, just like yours!" She reached up and patted me on the head and I clenched my teeth. I glared at Beth and Hannah held the toy up beside my face.

"It's uncanny!" Hannah laughed and I just about ripped the toy right out of her grasp.

"No need to be a smart-ass!" I grumbled as I folded my arms across my chest.

"Oh, but it's cute." (Y/N) chuckled as she took the small toy from Hannah. I felt a familiar heat creep upon my cheeks as she spoke and turned to look at me with a softness in her eyes that could bring light to any dark heart.

"Really?" I said, barely above a whisper after swallowing thickly.

"Yeah." Her voice was so soft, it almost made me cry.

"Uhhhhh— W–Why don't we try the haunted house?! That should be fun, r–right?" I attempted to change the subject as I tore my eyes away from hers. The girls agreed and we headed towards the ride.

Of course — as I expected — Hannah and Beth ditched me and (Y/N) for their own cart, leaving me alone with her YET AGAIN! I didn't know how much more I could take. I loved being around her — don't get me wrong — but for the last month, my little crush on her had been growing stronger and being alone with her was painfully awkward, especially since she didn't even realize that I had feelings for her. Nope! After all the regular compliments I gave her, she still hadn't figured it out! Well — to be fair — I make comments towards lots of girls but those are different. Those are just dumb sex jokes I make to be funny and sometimes weird people out. With her, it's different — it means something. I just wish she knew that.

Maybe I shouldn't be so annoyed with Hannah and Beth trying to put me in these awkward situations. They just want me to be happy. But what people don't know is that I'm a lot more insecure than I let on. Yup! That's right! Mr. Bone Zone isn't so confident after all! So shocking, right? So, being alone with a girl as pretty as (Y/N) is basically fucking torture for me.

Our cart began to move towards the entrance to the ride and I sneakily put my arm around (Y/N). It was a bold move but I had to do something! I felt her tense and for a minute, I thought it was because of my arm and I went to pull away before realizing that it wasn't my arm at all, it was because she was scared.

As our cart moved throughout the ride, I noticed her getting more and more tense. I then shuffled closer to her and she — I am assuming subconsciously — leaned into my body, as if she was hoping for my protection. I instinctively wrapped my arms around her and began explaining how each prop was made and every gory and ghostly illusion was done. It seemed to calm her and she eventually relaxed into my embrace — just another perk to having a father in the film industry.

Once the ride began to slow — or as I like to say: the calm before the storm — she began to melt into my arms and rested her head on my chest. Trying so hard to keep it cool, I rested my head on top of her's and closed my eyes, enjoying the moment of peace we had.

"Thank you, Josh." She whispered and I felt my heart stammer a little, until— "You're a good friend."

'Fuck! You're kidding, right?!'

I felt my heart drop at her words and squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I could, trying to ignore the disappointment and small bit of heartbreak I was enduring. The ride eventually came to an end and we were greeted by Beth and a very pale Hannah, who looked as if she was about to vomit. Laughing and trying to ignore what had just happened, I wrapped my arm around my little sister to give her a comforting side-hug before we continued on to do something new.

A few hours later, we all decided to go on the Ferris Wheel before finally going home. Again, Hannah and Beth insisted on going on their own cart, leaving me and (Y/N) alone for what I was hoping was the last time today. After being taken to the worst zone of all — the 'friend zone' — I really didn't want to be left alone with her any longer.

We reached the top and (Y/N) leaned into my side and I subconsciously wrapped my arm around her shoulders. It was dark out now and the park was lit up by all the lights from the rides and the games. It was a breathtaking view and judging by the smile on (Y/N)'s face, she thought so as well. She rested her head on my shoulder and I froze, not knowing what to do.

"It's beautiful." She whispered as her beautiful eyes lit up from the lights of the park and I couldn't help but notice how they illuminated her face just right, showing off her best features.

"Just like you." I murmured without a second thought. But her body tensing up and the sudden movement of her pulling away from me made me snap out of whatever fucking trance I was in at the moment.

"W–What?" She stuttered her question as nothing but pure shock painted over her calm expression that her face held only second ago.

"Oh— Uh— I was just saying— You know, like I always do?" I tried to brush it off but the look on her face told me she didn't believe me.

"You never said it quite like that before." Her voice was barely above a whisper. And in that moment, I knew I couldn't keep it from her any longer.

"(Y/N)… There is something I have to tell you…" I admitted as I looked down at my shoes, terrified to meet her gaze. "I like you — a lot. Hell, I might even love you! I'm sorry, but I can't hold back my feelings any longer."

After a few seconds of silence that felt like hours, I decided to glance up — only to see her staring at me with an even more shocked expression. Her eyes were wide, mouth agape, pale; she looked like she had just come out of a horror movie!

"I–I had no idea, Josh…" She whispered as she looked down at her hands that were now folded in her lap as she picked at her nails nervously. I fucking knew it was coming to a rejection. I wasn't too familiar with the whole thing. Babes would go with me even if they didn't like me, just because I had money. But I knew (Y/N) was better than that. And I knew that because of that, I was going to lose her.

"I'm sorry if this has ruined things between us." I look away from her, mentally kicking myself for being so dumb. But then I felt two soft hands over my own. I hesitantly peered back at her to see her staring at me with warmth in her eyes that no fire could create and a smile that could bring me back to life if I had died.

"I never said that it did. I like you too, Josh — a lot, actually. I just didn't think that you liked me back." She explained and my eyes widened in shock.

"Y–You like me too?"

"Yeah!"

"Holy shit!" I yelled excitedly, standing up but then remembering that I was hundreds of feet in the air, so I quickly sat back down, making her giggle. "S–So, you'll be my girlfriend then?"

"Of course, silly!" She chuckled and with that being said, I placed a gentle kiss upon her soft lips. Finally, I have gotten what I have truly desired for so long.

'I'll have to thank Hannah and Beth for this later.' I made a mental note after we broke away from the kiss after a minute or two. She rested her head on my shoulder and I rested mine on top of hers as we enjoyed the rest of the ride.

Driving home, we were all exhausted from the day we had. I looked in the rear view mirror to see Hannah and Beth, completely knocked out from exhaustion and I just chuckled to myself — it was the first time Beth had been quiet that day.

Then I looked over to (Y/N) — who was fast asleep in the passenger seat while cuddling her bear with a big smile on her face. My heart felt so warm at the sight of how happy my girl was.

And nothing has ever made me happier.

It truly was the best day ever.

》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《》《

#until dawn #josh washington #josh washington x reader #Hannah and Beth are alive and Josh is ok! 😤 #KassieUntilDawnFanFics

[shadyruinskryptonite]

ATLA Culture HC

Sorry I have a few notes on this one

A/N Since most of Titan Bending's readership is from AOT, I want to apologize that this doesn't have any reference to that world in it. I just don't have enough personal thoughts to add to the world-building from AOT to do an entire post like this.

A/N Even though there's no mention of AOT in the HC themselves, I still did the same tags for this as my fic because I want anyone that might read my fic to still see these because they are kind of important for upcoming chapters.

A/N I mention different songs and artists throughout this post. Let me know if you’d like me to make playlists for each of the nations. I think that could be fun and might do it anyway.

Idk if this is a headcanon or actual canon but music is super important to all of the cultures in ATLA

I talked about this a bit in my fic Titan Bending, but with English being my first language, I sort of consider that to be a universal language that most people learn in tandem with their native language (that’s how my brain makes sense of what should be language barriers between, well, everyone)

Northern and Southern Watertribe

Their native language would be something like Russian (I’m thinking like the native tribes of Siberia.)

Sokka and Katara speak this native language.

Similar to how a language like Spanish has morphed into different dialects, there are different dialects of the language for the north and the south.

There are a lot of sea shanties that are important to the culture as well as warrior songs. This includes basically anything by SKÁLD.

I also see songs like Savage Daughter being from the Watertribes.

The song Labour by Paris Paloma is a sort of revolutionary cry amongst the women of the Northern Watertribe.

Sokka and Katara are both really good singers

Sokka plays guitar

Again, this might be actual canon and not just in my head but the beads that women wear in their hair directly correlate to how wealthy they are. I’m almost positive I saw this in a video now that I’m typing it, so I’m sorry I can’t give that creator credit, but an example is that Katara’s classic hair loopies and braid are a much more functional hairstyle for daily work than Yue’s extravagant hair.

Fire Nation

So the Fire Nation is obviously based on Imperial Japan, that’s not a headcanon that’s fact. As such, they would speak Japanese.

I listen to a lot of Asian music - Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese. I have found a wide variety of songs that I would sort of characterize as “Fire Nation.” Thus, I HC that each of the Fire Nation colonies have developed thier own languages which is how I reconcile in my noggin all of the different songs I attribute to the Fire Nation

Earth Kingdom

It’s widely known that the Earth Kingdom is very diverse, so with that comes a lot of different cultures melding together.

The Sand Benders definitely speak Arabic. They were clearly designed with a sort of Middle Eastern aesthetic in mind, so I really hope that doesn’t come across as racist in any way, I just speak Arabic and I really want them to.

Side note to this, my HC takes it a step further and I want to believe that they’re Bedouin because I’ve done a lot of research into the Bedouin and when I lived in Jordan I got to experience a lot of their culture and they’re who I know the most about so if I ever write about the Sand Benders, those are most likely the customs I will incorporate

All of the romance languages are present throughout the Earth Kingdom

Ba Sing Se has different districts for the different cultures throughout the Earth Kingdom and there’s a big market with live music in the Inner Ring.

@mochminnie @sseleniaa @naruwitch Tagging you all so you don't miss this, even though it's not directly a part of the story <3

#aot #attack on titan #snk #shingeki no kyojin #avatar: the last airbender #atla #the gaang #Levi Ackerman #Levi x y/n #Captain Levi #Levi x reader #Hange Zoe #Prince Zuko #Zuko #Zuko x y/n #Aang #Katara #Sokka #Toph #Suki

[ananxiousgenz]

TPP HADESTOWN AU PART 4

ANOTHA ONE. i am so sorry guys, but the muse has possessed me and i literally cannot stop writing. this is no longer a flash fic. i am now a slave to the au. this time will be a direct continuation of part 3 because honestly i wanted to keep writing that but i also just wanted to post it so consider this a kind of part 2 to part 3 if that makes sense

tpp mutuals come get your juice!!! @smidgen-of-hotboy @ceaseless-watchers-special-girl @urjover @one-joe-spoopy @waters-and-the-wilde

when he said his name, juno heard it.

ringing in the background like the hum of a crystal wine glass.

the song.

when peter nureyev said his name, the song echoed with it.

"your name has the same melody," juno breathed, eye wide and searching for some kind of answers on the face of this strange, beautiful man. how could his name have the song of spring laced through it?

nureyev shot him a sideways look and took a sip of his drink. "so. what do you do for a living, lady who's going to marry me?" he questioned, leaning back in his chair and looking juno over with a gaze he could only describe as skeptical.

"oh! well, I work here at the bar with rita. she's over there. but you've met her already so I don't know why I'm introducing her."

rita gave a friendly wave from her perch behind the bar.

"I also, um. I, uh. I sing. sometimes. not all the time. i'm not bad at it. typically when I do sing, someone will give me a couple bucks. it's nice. oh, and uh, I can play guitar too, but I haven't done it in years, and to be honest, I don't really want to-"

nureyev cut juno off, looking away disinterestedly and downing the rest of his drink. "that's nice. so you're like all the other bar workers in existence. that doesn't exactly sound like something I'd want to marry."

suddenly, the butterflies that had been gradually building in juno's stomach began to unexpectedly drop dead.

"heyyyyyyy, that's not very nice, mista nureyev. mista steel isn't like all the otha ladies you eva met! he's a very supa awesome lady who I love workin' with and-oh oh oh! mista steel! you GOTTA tell him about that song you're workin' on! it's so pretty! and important! I'm sure mista nureyev would LOVE to hear about that!" rita cried, bounding off the bar and hustling over to deliver another drink to the table.

"oh, uh, yeah! I'm working on this song to bring spring back again," juno said, feeling mildly embarrassed that rita brought it up with this man who was still basically a total stranger. "it's not done, honestly, it needs a lot of work. but, when i'm finished with it, it will hopefully fix.....everything."

"wait just a moment." nureyev's brow furrowed and juno's stomach twisted at the sight. even when he was skeptical and defensive and bone-tired, he was still so damn attractive. gods, what juno wouldn't give to just kiss him right now- focus, steel, he's trying to talk to you-

"so you say this song will bring spring back again?"

"yup! at least it should."

"that's...." nureyev placed a finger over his lips in thought. "I haven't seen a proper spring in at least a decade, maybe more. the world has been so wrong in recent years... I shudder to think where it would all end up without the return of warmer weather."

"well, that's the idea with the song. I want to fix it. all of it. when the song is done it should put the world back on track. more sunshine, springs, falls, rain and flowers. you know. all the stuff that's just sort of been missing. maybe you could help me out with it!" juno grinned a bit sheepishly.

"and why would I want to help?" his eyes were cold, almost as cold as the biting wind and frost outside, but juno thought he saw the beginning of a thaw at the edges of his facade.

"because, mista nureyev. he's real good at makin' people feel like life is worth livin' again with that music of his. also, he makes the BEST chocolate cake i've eva had! and frannie agrees with me!" rita chimed in, cleaning the bar top as best she could with her short stature.

juno snorted involuntarily, marveling at rita's ability to constantly be focused on food. "it's true, I won a local competition a few years back for that cake."

nureyev's face had half a smile on it now, and the butterflies in juno's stomach turned into a hurricane.

"so you can make people feel alive again? that's quite a gift, juno. but what else can you offer me?"

"huh?"

"say, for example, if we were to get married. who would pay for the wedding rings? times have been hard, and gold is scarce. how would you do it?"

juno thought for a moment. "the rivers. they've got plenty of gold in them, and if my song works, they'll give it all to us for wedding rings."

nureyev's eyes glinted with something juno suspected was either curiosity or suspicion.

"what about a wedding feast? or a bed? good food and better beds are hard to come by these days. what would you do about that, juno?"

"the trees would take care of the wedding feast, and the birds would take care of the bed."

"with your song." nureyev cocked an eyebrow as though it was a question.

"well, yeah, of course."

"you talk a lot about that song. why don't you sing it for me?"

a wave of panic stuttered through juno's mind. "I can't. I told you it's not finished."

"you said you wanted to take me home and marry me, is that true?

a sly smile crossed nureyev's face, and goddammit it only made juno want him even more. "yes," he breathed.

"then sing the song for me, juno."

juno hesitated, then nodded in spite of himself. he shouldn't be doing this, he knew he shouldn't be doing this, but he couldn't help it.

he was in love.

and lovers need the spring like a flower needs sunshine. so he'd sing the sunshine back for peter nureyev.

he stepped back, breathed in, and let the notes flow from him like water from a faucet. the song flooded the room, hitting the walls and rushing back to his ears in perfect harmonies, and for a moment, he was back in that wheat field with benten, strumming guitar as he danced like a pheonix rising from the ashes, spinning around and around and around like he was the center of the universe.

and then the song ended. and juno was back in a shitty roadside bar, holding a perfect dahlia in his left hand, with peter nureyev staring at him now, eyes wide and sparkling.

"that's...... you...... how did you do that?" nureyev asked quietly, standing from the table on unsteady legs and taking the dahlia to examine it with shaking hands.

"i didn't do that, the song did," juno muttered as nureyev gently touched the immaculate petals of the dahlia, still damp with dew. rita beamed at juno from the bar and gave an overenthusiastic thumbs-up. juno just rolled his eyes again.

peter nureyev looked at him then, all of the previous frostiness gone from his eyes and something like amazement and love and hope spilling through them.

juno decided that he liked it when he looked like that. it made him feel like he really could fix the whole damn world with that song of his.

nureyev seemed to come to some sort of conclusion and slipped the dahlia into the buttonhole of his traveling coat. "so, what time does your shift end, my dear juno?"

juno thought for a minute. "uhhhh, the bar closes around 10. why?"

his eyes gleamed like a pair of stars as a smile twinkled on his lips. "didn't you say you were going to marry me?"

#THERE WE GO #IT'S DONE #HURRAH #i look forward to seeing all of you screaming at me in the tags #if anyone has any notes for me feel free to drop them in the comments #as always #i love y'all <3 #the penumbra podcast #tpp #hadestown #tpp hadestown au