#the student body at miss rose’s primary | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shewrites02 · 3 years

Text

Gone Too Long |Shikamaru x Reader|

Summary: Not having his partner around begins to toll on Shikamaru

Word count: 3k

Lady Tsunade was assigning weekly chores to all the Shinobi who had yet to be assigned a mission. Usually these tasks were reserved for Genin, but this week had been slow for the village. Many Chunin and Jonin were left task less aimlessly patrolling the village.

"Shikamaru, you'll assist Iruka at the Academy for the remainder of the week."

Shikamaru let out a long dreadful sigh before muttering "What a drag, that's so much work." Just above his breath.

Shikamaru complaining was not out of the ordinary, but him complaining in front of the Fifth Hokage was and everyone took notice. Lady Tsunade slowly looked up from her journal with her eyebrow slightly raised. She was offering Shikamaru a chance to apologize before she completely ripped into him like she often did with Naruto. But all he did was smack his lips and cross his arms against his chest.

"Forgive him Lady Tsunade, he gets like this whenever y/n is gone on a mission." Ino announced proudly as a devilish smile graced her lips.

The other ninjas futilely tried to suppress their laughter but soon the whole room erupted into a uncontrollable fit. Even Lady Tsunade's scowl had turned into a humorous smile. Shikamaru's face began to turn beat red as his fellow shinobi teased him.

"So that explains his nasty attitude this whole week. Me and Akamaru knew there was something up with you!" Kiba laughed after Akamaru barked, agreeing.

"I bet his attitude will change once he gets some... special attention" Tenten snickered.

This even warranted a light chuckle from the stoned face Shino Aburame.

"Special... Attention?" Naruto mumbled completely lost. as usual he wasn't paying any attention and the joke had gone completely over his head. Kiba leaned over and explained the joke as clearly as he could. It took Naruto probably a full minute before he caught on and laughed with the rest of them.

Shikamaru grumbled under his breath, but didn't argue. As much as he hated to admit it to his friends, not having you around severely impacted his day to day interactions. He was constantly irritated because he didn't get as much sleep with you gone. The side of the bed where you usually reside seemed like a gaping hole with you not there, and no matter how much tossing and turning he did he was never comfortable.

He was frustrated that he couldn't come home to you after a long day of working with idiots. Even if you did nothing but tell him to give his teammates a break he missed the sound of your voice soothing him. He missed laying in your arms while you lectured that not everybody was a genius like him. At this point he would settle for your hands just gracing his.

And most of all he was distracted by the crippling fear that one of these days you might not come home to him. Shikamaru undoubtedly knew that you could handle yourself. Yall had spared a couple times and you'd come close to beating him more than once. But the idea of not being there to protect you often left him feeling helpless.

With these thoughts constantly running through his mind, it was difficult to focus on the seemingly mundane tasks he was often given. To be honest the only times he wasn't thinking of you was when he was on his own missions, and even then his thoughts were reserved for keeping his squad alive and staying alive himself specifically to see you again.

"Well you'll be glad to know she's coming back today, I'll be expecting you to be in a better mood tomorrow!" Lady Tsunade teased before shushing the crowd and returning to give out assignments.

Just as Shikamaru had thought working at the academy was the exact mindless work he dreaded so much. They could've put him with the younger children, given him a challenge, well at least that's what he thought. Instead he supervised a group of kids around the ages of 9 to 11. These children were no stranger to Shikamaru or his legacy, actually any shinobi rumored to have amazing talent or great potential was a topic of discussion amongst the children in the academy. The stories they've heard of Shikamaru and the Nara clan as a whole were impressive enough to earn their respect. In fear of potentially earning themselves a bad name with someone they could possibly call their squad leader once graduating, They gave Shikamaru absolutely no problems.

"Shikamaru Sensei... is it true you forfeited your last match in the Chunin exams?!" A little boy shouted across the blacktop as he and a large number of his classmates came rushing towards the lazy uninterested ninja.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"I told you, Idiot!" A young girl exclaimed, hitting the previous boy in the back of the head with a scroll she had. "He was running out of Chakra and knew he couldn't finish the fight!"

The young girl's confident proclamation surprised Shikamaru. Every ninja in the village knew the story, but very few knew the reasoning behind his actions. Usually the only ones who accurately recounted the story were those who saw the match with their own eyes.

"Who told you that?" Shikamaru inquired.

"Y/n Sensei told our whole class the story the last time she came to the academy, had all of us try to figure out why you'd throw a match that you practically had won. She said it's her favorite story to tell students who are about to graduate."

"Yeah she said it's still the most amazing match she's watched during the Chunin exams, even now!"

"She told us that if we wanna be half the ninja you are, we always have to be thinking two steps ahead."

Shikamaru couldn't stop that infamous smirk from creeping onto his face. He loved hearing that you spoke to your class about him, that you even bragged about how talented he was, even if it was to a bunch of children. You admired him not only for the person he is, but the ninja he's become and that was a great honor to Shikamaru.

"Look, it's y/n Sensei, she's back from her mission!" The little girl from before yelled pointing over at the village's entrance. All the children fervently yelled your name in a vain attempt to get your attention. The academy laid on hill that allowed them to peer down at the entire village, though they could see you, you could not see them.

Shikamaru acting as if he too were one of your students rushed to the fence to see if they were correct, if finally the love of his life had returned home. Sure enough right alongside Kakashi and Tsume there you were. Your smile is as bright as ever despite having a few minor scrapes and bruises. Butterflies filled the pit of Shikamaru's stomach and what was just a sly smirk had turned into a full blown smile, teeth and all. He's heart fluttered, but skipped a beat at the same time it was like he had seen you for the first time.

"Go ahead, class is wrapping up anyway!" Iruka whispered over to him.

Shikamaru was stunned, he was so entranced by the sight of you he was completely ignorant to his surroundings. For the first time since he graduated from the Academy he had let Iruka sneak up on him. Your being gone had even a greater hold on him than he initially thought. He needed to see you right now.

He thankfully patted Iruka on his back before darting off toward the exit. He knew you'd first go to Ichirkau Ramen to pick up dinner for the two of you, a tradition set in place to celebrate a successful mission. So if he could move quick enough he could make it to the flower shop and back to the apartment the two of you shared before you. He did not want a cold empty uninviting apartment to be what greeted you once you returned home, especially after seeing you had endured wounds while on your mission. Honestly he didn't want you to have to worry about a thing.

Once he fumbled into the door, he immediately began to prepare for your arrival. He lit every candle he could find and arranged them around the perimeter of the bathroom while the water for a hot bath drew. He even went as far as to place rose petals in the water. Something he never understood but knew you would appreciate. When that was handled he placed one of his t-shirts on the counter and dimmed the lights. He could hear your footsteps approaching down the hall.

His nonchalant nature made it absolutely impossible for him to display any type of excitement or anticipation willingly. Due to this he sprinted back to living snatching up a book that was left on the coffee table and pretended to read it as you walked into the room.

He lowered the book just below his nose being careful to conceal the wide tooth smile he had behind those pages.

"You're home." He announced very casually.

You laughed. He never exceeded those two words when it came to welcoming you back, never a "I missed you" or "I'm so excited to see you" always those two words. When you first started dating such a dull response hurt your feelings, you wanted him to be jumping for joy to see you. Now the promise of hearing those two words was the primary motivation in completing your missions.

"And look, ramen!" You squealed slightly shaking the bag.

Shikamaru glanced over at the bag then returned his gaze to his book. You scoffed slightly offended, this was your favorite part of coming home, pigging out on loads of ramen after eating forest food for a week. Shikamaru knew this! He'd let you recite the details of your mission to him while he attentively listened, it was when you explained all the scrapes and bruises you inevitably always returned with.

"Go get cleaned up so we can eat." He demanded eyes still glued to that stupid book.

Your face fell, that childish giddy smile now wiped clean away. Shikamaru had never had a problem sharing at least a quick meal with you before you hopped in the shower. You were well aware of the toll half a day's walk had on one's body, but was this your boyfriend's crude way of telling you, you smelled. You sat the ramen on the dining room table not bothering to suppress the pout on your face.

Shikamaru got a glimpse of your expression out the side of his eye and immediately felt guilty. Perhaps there was a better way of getting you in the bathroom to see his surprise for you. One that hadn't made you feel so self conscious or small. For such a genius he made some stupid mistakes.

He placed his book on the coffee table to meet you in the kitchen. Bypassing the food he snuck behind you, creeping his arms around your waist before planting a small soft kiss on your cheek. Shikamaru snuggled his head into your neck before speaking.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so crass." He mumbled against your skin. "But I do have a surprise for you in the bathroom."

You perked up at the mention of a surprise. A wide grin sneaking on your lips as the scowl you held earlier dissipated. Shikamaru had always been a thoughtful boyfriend even if he was so coy in his interactions with you. He'd fill the apartment with roses for your anniversary , then downplay the extravagant act when you walked in the door. He once planned an entire surprise birthday party for you just to spend the entire night proclaiming he barely did anything. You were excited to see what considerate display your partner had put together this time.

You let out a small gasp as you walked into the romantically decorated bathroom. The dim candles created such a relaxed yet intimate ambiance to the entire space. You chuckled some at the rose petals. Despite the countless lectures both you and Ino had received on how pointless it was to pick the petals off of roses when a person could simply just give their partner a bouquet of roses, he still included them in your warm bath.

"Shika... you didn't have to do all this."

"It was nothing." He reassured disregarding the full speed sprint from the academy to the Yamanaka flower shop, then to the apartment. "Here let me help you."

Shikamaru assisted you in removing your garments. He knew how even the smallest tasks could bring out the failure's in your body after such a long mission. Something as simple as slipping out of a pair of cargoes seemed like a feat to a body so sore from what felt like an endless battle. He let you grasp onto his forearm before dipping into the tub and sinking shoulder deep. The warm water against your ailing body felt almost euphoric. As usual Shikamaru knew exactly what you needed.

Of course your generous boyfriend could not stop there, running you a bath was not enough. He was going to bathe you himself too. Tenderly rubbing the dirt and grime from every cut and scrape on your body.

"How'd you get this one?" a question he asked ever so often. His tone is always dull and irritated.

Shikamaru hated to see you covered in bruises. You called them a causality of the job, but to him they were just a sign that he wasn't there to protect you. He would try to ignore the small ones, but any that seemed too deep or painful he felt obligated to inquire about. Although he never liked the answer. That's probably why wiping away your wounds was so therapeutic for him. If he couldn't prevent the pain, at least he could alleviate it now.

"A shuriken hit me, cheap shot." You huffed.

Your boyfriend's face didn't soften, in fact you were sure you saw him actually grimace at the mention of you getting hit. You wondered why he even tortured himself asking questions he didn't want the answer to. Nonetheless you weren't going to let some small injuries ruin your first night home.

"Rumor around the village is you missed me a whole lot while I was away. "

Shikamaru's cheeks instantly flushed as he averted his eyes away from you. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously as a few unsure chuckles fell from his mouth. He was searching for the words to say.

"I ran into Naruto at Ichiraku's, he said you had such an attitude with all of them. Heard you even snapped at Lady Tsunade you missed me so much."

"Damn, Naruto!" He mumbled underneath his breath. "You mess up my whole routine when you leave!"

You let out an exaggerated sigh at the tired excuse.

"Give it up Nara, you missed me!"

Reluctantly the shadow ninja accepted defeat. He laced his now wet hands with yours and brought them to his lips. He planted a trail of endearing kisses up your arm to your elbow before gently returning your hand to the soothing water.

"I'm a mess when you're not here. I swear you occupy so much space in my brain, I can't even think straight. I miss you so much."

The revelation caught you off guard. Maybe it was his lustful entrance of finally having you home after a month, but Shikamaru very rarely was this vulnerable with you. Such words blossomed butterflies in your stomach. It was as if Shikamaru was confessing his feelings for you for the very first time.

"I love you so much y/n."

"I Love you too."

The two of you feel into a comfortable silence. Shikamaru stood to grab you a dry towel. Reluctant you feel deeper into the water, Although drawing colder you couldn't imagine getting out the tub just yet. After all it had been weeks since you allowed yourself to be pampered in such a way. You wanted to savor every moment.

"God, this feels so good." You moaned in pleasure.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at your blissful proclamation, that infamous smirk plastered on his face. He approached the tub, abandoning the towel on the counter, and kneeled behind you. He snaked his hand up your torso, fondling you some before they landed at your neck. You'd have let out a small gasp if the familiar feeling of his fingers lightly squeezing your throat hadn't completely knocked the air out of you. He kissed his way from behind your ear down to the base of your neck.

"I can make you feel better."

The next morning the two of you found yourselves in Lady Tsunade's office, along with your comrades. As usual the Fifth Hokage was assigning daily tasks, when her eyes fell upon Shikamaru. His demeanor was clearly different from yesterday, His hands had returned to his pockets and his scowl had been replaced with a content grin.

"You seem to be in better spirits Shikamaru." Tsunade announced inquisitively. "I assume you've resolved that issue of yours?"

The other shinobi snickered at her insinuation. The attention made both you and Shikamaru look down at the floor hoping it would open up and consume you two whole. Shikamaru rubbed the back of his neck, eyes closed before answering.

"Yes Ma'am."

#shikamaru imagine #shikamaru x y/n #shikamaru x you #shikamaru x reader #shikamaru #shikamaru nara #fan fic #fanfic #naruto #naruto shippuden #konoha 11

434 notes · View notes

drarrily-we-row-along · 3 years

Text

Day 129: Pangea

cw: mentions homophobic slurs

It was their day off.

Their one day when they didn't have to work and their five year old was at the muggle nursery school. They often cleaned and did laundry on days like these, but they always made a point of spending some quality time together. Harry had realized shortly after they'd adopted Cassie that it really hurt their relationship not to have time they set aside for just the two of them.

Today they were headed to get some ice cream and talking about the slumber party they were going to be hosting in a few days and all of the arrangements that had to be made when Harry's mobile started to ring.

Draco watched curiously as Harry pulled it out of his pocket, "Hello?"

"Yes, hi, is this Mr. Potter Malfoy?" a woman asked.

He glanced at Draco and put the phone on speaker, "Yes, this is Harry."

"Hi," the woman said again, "This is Linda in the school office. We're going to need you to come pick Cassie up."

"What? Why?" Draco asked before Harry could reply. "Is everything alright?"

"Sorry, I have you on speaker so my husband could hear you."

The woman chuckled and Draco looked ready to reach through the screen and strangle her. "Everything's fine. She just had a little disagreement with one of the other students and is pretty upset. The head mistress will have a chat with you when you get here."

"The head mistress!" Draco hissed.

Harry laid a hand on Draco's shoulder. "Thanks for calling us. We'll be right in." He hung up and braced himself for the inevitable.

(Read more below the cut)

"What happened?" Draco asked immediately.

He rolled his eyes and turned around to walk back to their house so they could drive to school, "You heard what I heard," he said. "I don't know any more than you."

"Yes but you went to Muggle primary school!" he protested, walking quicker. "You should have some idea-"

"I don't."

"Do you think it was accidental magic?" Draco asked.

He shook his head. "That was not the sound of a call about accidental magic."

"Then what do you think she was fight about?"

"Draco, there are a thousand things to fight about. Muggle children are just as unpredictable as wizarding children." He reached over and took Draco's hand, "She's only five, how much trouble could she be in?"

----------

When they arrived Cassie was over talking to a different adult and the headmistress waved them in.

She seemed happy enough so Harry let her be and followed the headmistress in, Draco all but vibrating with nervous energy behind him.

"Mr. and Mr. Potter-Malfoy, thank you for coming."

"Harry and Draco are fine," he said.

"What happened?" Draco asked quickly.

Harry glanced at him, "Sorry. We've just never been called in before. Is Cassie in trouble?"

"This afternoon, Cassie told a story to her classmates about how the continents got separated."

"Gaia," Draco nodded. "It's one of her favorites, she likes to hear about how life thrives no matter what."

Harry took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Right," Headmistress Blake replied, "and that's great. Storytelling improves communication skills and it's great for students to share like that."

"So why are we here?" Draco asked.

"Jacob told her that Gaia wasn't real, that the whole story was made up, and tried to tell her about Pangea."

"Pangea?" Harry asked incredulously. "How old is this kid?"

She chuckled, "His parents are geologists."

"Still!" Harry said, "That's pretty advanced for a five year old." Draco looked completely befuddled as though he had no idea what they were talking about. "But I still don't understand why we're here."

"I'm getting to it," she said. "She tried to tell him that it was just a story that her father told her."

Draco nodded, "Should we not tell her stories like that?" he asked, sounding panicked.

"Not at all," she said, giving him a warm smile in an obvious attempt to diffuse his anxiety. "But Jacob called you a liar and used a bit of derogatory language."

Harry's entire body froze, "Excuse me?" He'd been hoping that she'd be in Hogwarts by the time other kids were old enough to understand the implications of having two dads. It wasn't a big deal in the wizarding world, but it mattered in the muggle world still.

Headmistress Blake nodded, "She told him it wasn't nice to talk about people that way and insisted that Draco wasn't a liar. When Jacob doubled down on the slurs, she punched him."

"Good." Harry covered his mouth, "Sorry," he said quickly. "Sorry, it's just-"

"We have taught our daughter not to hit," Draco insisted, glaring at Harry. And while this was true, they had, it was only because Draco was already teaching her the words for jinxes that would be more effective. She was going to be a terror once she got her wand. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid that I don't understand what sorts of slurs you're referring to."

The headmistress rubbed her eyebrow uncomfortably, "He called you poofs and said that fags can't be trusted," she said and Draco's jaw dropped, his hand clenching Harry's so hard that Harry was afraid he'd need a healing spell cast when this was over. "Other students overheard and told Miss Murray after the fact."

"We taught her not to hit," he said, "But we've also taught her that it's important to stand up for what is right," Harry said. "It sounds like she tried to use her words first and then when that didn't work she used a different means available to her."

"But the next step should have been talking to her teacher, not punching another child."

Harry nodded, "I can understand why you'd-"

"Excuse me, Harry," his husband interrupted, "But I can't," Draco said bluntly. "And here's why; we are raising our daughter to be strong and independent because Salazar knows that women are not taken seriously in this world. Teaching her now that there is someone to help her when she is being verbally assaulted will not help her when she is grown."

"Mr. Potter-Malfoy, I understand what you're saying but-"

Draco shook his head, "With all due respect, there is no but. If her teacher didn't notice that another child was shouting bigoted slurs at her because she has two fathers then no one was coming to her rescue."

The headmistress squared her shoulders, "Cassie's being suspended for two weeks."

"What?" Draco spat.

"We cannot set a precedent that allows for violence to be the answer."

"And what is Jacob's punishment?" Draco demanded.

She blinked at him, "He's got a broken nose."

"Setting aside that his actions still deserve a punishment from a source of authority so he doesn't continue to grow into a bigoted prick, let's just say for the sake of argument," Draco said, voice sharp as nails, "that she'd gone over and told Miss Murray about what he'd said what would his punishment have been?"

"He would to apologize," she replied.

"What? Just said he was 'sorry'?" he asked incredulously. "That's it?"

She nodded, "Yes. He's only five."

He turned to look at Harry completely outraged, "This whole school can fuck off," Draco said, standing from his chair and pointing at Harry, "I told you this was a bad idea."

Harry winced, he had in fact said this was not a great plan, just not for this reason.

"We'll be taking our daughter home today and she will not be coming back," he said. "And we will be telling this story to anyone who will listen."

"Mr-" she started, looking taken aback, since Draco had always been the polite one of the two of them.

"Oh, don't even start with me," he growled. "I run a very successful design business and while I do not understand how most of the social media works, I have someone who I pay to do it and she and I have been friends for a long time. Get ready to lose any family that you have that has a conscience, you can become the place for all backwards bigots." He started toward the door and Harry stood up.

"We'll sue you for slander," she said.

He looked over at her, completely unimpressed, "It's only slander if it's not true."

"It'll be your word against ours," she replied.

A pale eyebrow rose, "Yes it will. Lucky for me that I've recorded this entire lovely exchange," he said, twirling a pen that the Weasleys sold at the joke shop that did just that. "Feel free to contact our solicitor about anything else."

And with that he swanned out of the office.

Harry stared at her for a long moment, "Maybe you should consider educating your parents and students." Then he followed Draco out.

Draco was already squatting next to Cassie, murmuring softly to her, "yes, well done, my darling," he said pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"He was really mean, papa," she murmured.

His husband nodded, "I know, love."

"Hey, bean," Harry said, ruffling Cassie's curls and bending over to kiss her temple. "Let's get out of here, yeah? Do you have all of your things?"

She held up her unicorn backpack and nodded.

Harry helped her get her backpack on and then they set off, each of them holding one of her hands.

Cassie chattered away about the rest of her day, not even mentioning her run in with Jacob again.

-------------

After they put Cassie to bed they came back downstairs and Harry collapsed onto Draco on the sofa, resting his head in his lap.

"Pansy says that story is spreading like wildfire."

"Really?" Harry asked.

Draco nodded.

"S'kinda sexy," he said.

Draco laughed, "Sorry?"

He shrugged a shoulder, "You getting all livid and protective. It was sexy."

His husband's fingers combed through his fringe, "I'll always fight for you, for her, and for us," he promised.

"I know," he replied. "You're a good man Draco Potter Malfoy."

"It's only going to get harder," Draco said.

"Maybe, but we'll look for a more inclusive nursery school-"

Draco shook his head, "I mean when she heads to Hogwarts."

"I don't think so. People don't care about a man marrying another man," he said.

"But they care about the savior marrying a death eater and then disappearing for almost a decade and a half." He sighed, "I just wanted her to start somewhere where my sins wouldn't burden her and here we ar-"

"Hey," Harry said, sitting up and stopping the words coming out of his mouth. "You are not a burden to her and our marriage isn't a sin that could ever burden her-"

"I didn't mean to imply that you-"

"Listen to me," Harry interrupted. "Draco, you are a good dad," he said as he cupped his cheeks in his palms. "You are a good husband and you are a good person. We are both lucky to have you."

"Harry," he murmured, eyes downcast.

"You are," he promised. "I love you and Cassie loves you. and we are so blessed to have you."

"I love you too," he said, "But this isn't the last bully-"

"I know," Harry assured. "And we'll always be here for her, yeah?

Draco took a deep breath before nodding. "Yes. You're right."

"Ooh," Harry replied, crawling over him and straddling his hips. "I love it when I get to be right."

His husband rolled his eyes, "Just kiss me already."

And of course Harry obliged him.

Life wasn't always easy or perfect but they always had each other and Cassie always had two dads who would go to the end of the earth for her.

----------------------

Day 128: Snake | Day 130: Forfeit

#100 drarry drabbles in 100 days #one year of drarry drabbles #drarry ficlet #drarry drabbles #established relationship #married #parents #cw:mentions homophobic bigots

243 notes · View notes

tobesobri · 4 years

Text

Bust | Part One: Chisel (7.8k)

“Disappointed?” She tilted her head, smirking at him. She had no right to think he liked her better than Rose. She, herself, liked Rose better too. So she was sure he had to be at least a little bit sad to see Rose missing.

He smiled and the second she saw those dimples she was reminded of his Instagram all over again.

“A little,” he nodded, pinching his thumb and index finger together in the air and she painfully agreed.

“Well, you get me all by myself tonight.” She didn’t realize how it sounded until it was too late. Until she was cringing at all the sexual insinuations she’d just made for absolutely no reason. She could have said something else that wasn’t laced in an innuendo. But no, of course not. She had to continue her embarrassing streak when it came to Harry.

Instead of being creeped out by her, however, and pulling a confused and slightly terrified face, he laughed. And, on God, his laugh was the most amazing thing she’d ever heard. This wasn’t the first time the sound of his laughter graced her eardrums, but it was the first time he was laughing because of something she said that wasn’t about crooked penises.

“Lucky me.”

In which Y/N is an annoyance in Harry’s sculpting class.

story masterlist | my masterlist

It’s not her forte. Her hands don’t know how to hold onto things. They tremble under pressure. They mess things up no matter how hard she tries.

Not that she had really tried very hard to begin with.

Sculpting was just not something she saw herself doing. Ever. Not with her lack of agility and poor attention to detail. But to appease her whining best friend… she’d do just about anything.

The class was held in a little art studio with large windows for ventilation and tall ceilings to display the mass amounts of student artwork on butcher block shelves. She never thought she’d be back in a classroom type setting after graduating college, but here she was.

Learning, what she proclaimed as, a useless skill.

The studio was smack dab in the middle of an inclined street. Little quaint buildings that sat on an angle because why not pour foundations on a hill and make her weekly walks to the studio a little sweatier than she would have preferred. Even if it was winter in their little beach village town. Sweat still happened. It just happened underneath a scarf and a hand-knitted beanie from the sewing shop next door.

She could not deny, however, that the late afternoon classes every Wednesday and Saturday brought her way more joy than she’d anticipated. She looked forward to meeting up with Rose at the bottom-of-the-hill cafe, sharing the daily special with her before making their way up to the studio. It was calm in the middle and end of her hectic weeks that she most definitely needed.

What she didn’t need, however, what she most certainly did not look forward to, what she could have done without, what took her joy and smashed it against a wall was him.

The instructor.

Harry ‘I have nice hands and a misleading smile’ Styles.

It had only been two weeks into their classes and he had already told her one of her bowls was garbage. That the way she sculpted a face was terrifying. That she couldn’t draw for shit and that made her attempts at sculpting even worse.

So by Saturday of their second week, she didn't care anymore. He was a jerk and she would be the best pain in his ass she knew how to be.

While everyone called him Harry, like he’d asked them to the very first day, she called him Mr. Styles. Just to see the way his eyes rolled back into his head and his nostrils flared. While everyone asked him insightful questions, like what glaze was best to use or what tool sculpted eyes most efficiently, she asked him if she could use the bathroom.

She got a fucking kick out of irritating him. Knowing he went home after their classes just as irritated as she’d been. With clenched fists and a pounding headache.

It helped that he was insanely too attractive to be teaching a bunch of millennials about sculpting in his free time.

“You should really leave him alone, he might kick us out, you know,” Rose said on their first third week walk up Justice Hill. There was no justice in walking uphill, and most fucking certainly not in the humidity-ridden beachside town. She found the street name personally offensive.

“Oh fuck him. If he kicks us out, he’ll have to refund us.” Y/N did not, even for a second, bother to lower her voice as they neared the studio, knowing any one of the other students could hear her if they were to walk by.

“Refund us what? We got the class for free, remember?”

Y/N racked her brain like she’d completely forgotten that little detail before shrugging it off. “Whatever. He won’t kick us out.”

“How do you know for sure?”

Before she could make some stupid remark about how Harry secretly liked her pestering him or about how much he seemed much too impressed by Rose’s progress to ever get rid of them, the devil himself turned the corner in front of them.

He came out from an alleyway that connected the street to a tiny parking lot. And while they were going uphill, he was coming down. He was hard to miss and so were they, but still he attempted to not see them.

“What a prick,” Y/N mumbled under her breath as they got closer to each other. And almost as if he could read her lips, he rolled his eyes so fucking hard she thought maybe they’d finally pop right out of his head this time.

“Shush,” Rose warned as the three of them finally met in the middle, at the door to the studio that was decorated with a bright yellow ‘Open’ sign, children’s drawings, hand-painted hours of operation, and one too many polaroids of past students and their sculpting creations.

They all stood and stared at each other for a moment before he opened the door first, holding it as, to Y/N’s surprise, he let them go in first. And while she was still in shock at the gesture, his body language said it all. Like he was forcing himself to be nice to the dynamic duo, to the bane of his existence. While she was too distracted by Harry and his clay-stained trousers and cable-knit sweater with a cartoon deer embroidered on it, Rose walked into the studio first. Giving Harry a polite smile that he returned almost… genuinely.

And right when Y/N made a move to follow, Harry stepped in front of her. She jolted back as he just about let the door slam her in the face.

Today was going to be fantastic.

* * *

“Right, so,” Harry began, clapping his dry hands together as he took a seat behind his messy table at the front of the studio. “I know some of you haven’t finished your heads yet, but our focus today will still be on the bodies. We’ll have a catch up on Saturday to make up for it.”

Y/N sought out her head on the wall where she’d placed it last week beside Rose’s, realizing for the first time just how ugly it really was. And to think she’d been trying to sculpt Harry’s annoying face. Even more annoying that no matter what she did, he was always a lot more handsome than her hunk of polymer clay.

“... because, like I mentioned, we have special guests today who will be modeling for you.” Harry stood again while two very thin and very conventionally perfect people came out in white robes. Y/N couldn’t help but gag.

“This is Hope and Jordan.” Harry motioned as he introduced them, not getting any further in his instructions before Y/N raised her hand in the back of the class.

Rose attempted to get her to put it down, too, because Harry was clearly in the middle of something, but it didn’t really work out so well. Y/N was a stubborn son of a bitch.

“Yeah?” He pointed at her, sighing while planting his hands on his hips. He knew nothing she had to ask was going to be at all beneficial to the group.

She cleared her throat and just from the smirk on her face, he braced for impact. “Are they going to be modeling nude?”

She made just about everyone blush, except for Harry. He hated how she never took anything seriously. That the art he’d spent years perfecting enough to teach meant nothing to her. It was all just a primary school joke in her eyes.

“Yes, actually,” he answered bluntly and then returned to what he was going to say before Y/N’s interruption. “So I want everyone to get a piece of paper and while they’re modeling, do a rough sketch of what you might want the body of your sculpture to look like. The importance is to get the proportions down so that when you use the clay, you’ll know how much you’ll need for each part. Just like we did for the heads.”

Harry walked around the class once the models were stripped and the sketching began. Rose started immediately, concentration on her face as she flipped between the female model and her piece of sketchbook paper.

All Y/N had was a scratch piece of grey-toned mixed media paper she’d found laying on their table. And absolutely no clue where to even begin.

She stared at Harry instead of the naked models, watching as he helped others around the room, pointing at their sketches and where they could improve. His other hand behind his back that gave her perfect access to stare at his rings. Remembering how he’d taken them off guide their first few sculpting lessons. Remembering how his hands had so gently but so fucking firmly caressed the mound of clay into the exact shapes he wanted like he knew exactly what to do with those things.

“See it’s going just as I expected back here.” When his voice was at her ear, she jumped out of her skin and out of her daydreams. Twisting her head around to him as he stood behind her, she found him staring over her shoulder at her blank piece of paper.

She narrowed her eyes at him once she’d fully processed what he said. “Sorry I’m trying to figure out the best way to scale up that dude’s micro-cock, proportionally, if you don’t mind.”

He just about choked on his own spit, and rightfully so. But when he glanced to her eyes instead of her disappointing blank canvas, with his eyebrows furrowed and his cute little nostrils flared just the way she liked them, it was clear his reaction wasn’t for the reasons she’d intended.

He was quiet. Lips pursed, mind completely empty apart from hearing her say cock over and over again. Echoing against his skull. Making a home for itself in his hippocampus for later purposes. When he was not in a class full of students with their eyes on him, watching him get hard at the fucking way she said cock.

“Leave you to it then,” he cleared his throat and continued on.

“He may not kick us out, but killing you is still an option,” Rose whispered once Harry was a safe distance away from them.

Y/N leaned back in her seat to watch him walk down the rest of their row. His hands behind his back again, eyes wandering over shoulders.

As long as he had those rings on while he choked her out, she was okay with that.

* * *

Everyone had moved on to their bodies. Gathering the clay they needed from the front and using their sketches as guidelines to build around the pre-made wire and aluminum foil armature. Most everyone had some sort of a form being attached to the heads of their sculptures by the time Y/N even got started.

Because she decided on using Harry as reference after all and he would just not stand still.

With the models gone, they were on their own, with help from Harry of course. He played several videos and gave various demonstrations to aide them. It wasn’t supposed to be perfect, but after she gave it her all for about ten minutes, she was ready to give up. Her body looked like a very lumpy, very deformed version of Shrek.

She took a break again, watching Rose sculpt for a while instead. She watched Harry sometimes too as he walked around the class again in gloves this time. Smoothing out features and picking up tools to aid in the process of forming collarbones and wrinkles.

The studio was in its typical state of disarray. Random cups of milky water on every table, pieces of clay smushed into the tile floor, tools and used gloves strewn about with no rhyme or reason. Harry thrived in that kind of environment while Y/N well… she hated it.

She wanted organization and cleanliness. Her nine-to-five called for that kind of thing. But she was slowly getting used to it. To letting go and embracing the mess while she was here. She wasn’t the one that had to clean it all up anyways.

The only time she wasn’t daydreaming was when Harry started up their aisle again, walking in front of their table this time however. He helped a couple others at the end of their row, watched some of them work before eventually landing right in front of Rose’s station.

He cocked his head to the side while he watched her struggle to form an even pair of breasts on her headless lady. And even though Y/N was trying her best to look busy, she just couldn’t help it.

Rose handed her work in progress over to him with a frustrated huff after he offered his assistance. And like… no way was Y/N missing out on Mr. Harry fucking Styles fingering some clay into the perfect set of boobs. No way.

Especially fucking not when he removed his gloves and used those fingers in their bare glory the way she wished he’d use them someplace else. She watched while he slapped some more clay on Rose’s poor flat-chested model and proceeded to smooth it out with his expert fingertips. She watched the clay melt under his touch, watching him dip into their shared cup of water to aid the process. She looked away long enough to admire the concentration on his face, the way he bit down on his lip and furrowed his brows the way she was used to. She watched again while he fixed all of Rose’s mistakes just by gliding his thumbs over the two perfect little lumps on her sculpture that sure as hell hadn’t started out so perfectly.

She had no idea why Harry sculpting a tiny set of breasts on what would eventually become a mermaid got her so hot and bothered but… it did. It did so fucking much, she was almost salivating like a dog by the end of it, thinking about what his hands could do with the real deal. But then he handed it back to Rose with a content smile on his face and burst Y/N’s little bubble.

“Might be better,” he said softly and Rose nodded in agreement. She hadn't noticed before, but when he stood to his full height it was clear he’d been leaning over on their table. Closer to the both of them than he’d ever really been before. And she knew he was tall, taller than Rose, who was five foot seven inches herself. And not just that but his shoulders were broad and his arms were a humble amount of muscular. Almost like he was a sculptor that kneaded clay a hundred hours a week. Maybe that was why she was a soaking wet mess.

He stretched his gloves back onto his hands and glanced Y/N’s direction. Eyes going straight from her disaster of an art piece to her flushed face and back.

“Don’t even know where to start to fix yours up,” he commented while moving slightly to his right until he stood directly in front of Y/N this time.

She looked at her abomination, wondering if it would be her worst idea to push more of his buttons or not. But, she went for it anyways. Her lack of impulse control would definitely come back to bite her in the ass one day.

“It’s the penis. Still haven’t gotten that down yet.”

He nodded, amused rather than his previous reaction to her antics. “Can see that, yeah. He’s got a bit of a crooked willy there.” Harry poked at it with his index finger and she became hyper aware of his closeness this time while he leaned over her tabletop again. Because his hands were right there, almost touching her own. And they were big, bigger than she realized. She could see him perfectly through the transparent gloves, his long fingers with clipped nails at the end that were well taken care of, considering.

She would need to soak herself in holy water for a while after this.

“Oh, is that not what the male anatomy looks like?” She teased, not fully realizing they were getting along for the first time and it was because of dicks. Because she’d put an oddly shaped protrusion on her figure before she’d even done much else with the blob of clay stuck to her form.

“No,” he laughed, shaking his head at her and standing up straight again. “Maybe if you paid attention when the models were out here, you’d know that.”

“Maybe if you hired someone who’s cock I could actually see from all the way back here without a fucking magnifying glass.” She was only slightly aware of how fully immersed she was in the debate over this penis.

But all he heard was cock again. She really needed to stop saying that. Because this time his mind was a little more imaginative while he stared at her lips and thought about the way she might say that on her knees in front of him.

He shook his head clear. She was an insufferable nuisance that he just barely tolerated on a good day. He didn't need her clogging up his brain with her cock talk too.

“Just fix it.” He mumbled.

She huffed when he left her to her own devices, not even bothering to offer his help, but she really shouldn’t expect any less. If he helped her, he would be doing it all for her. And that was hardly the point of taking a class to learn how to sculpt if the hot instructor was just going to do everything for you.

“Is there a reason why you’re arguing with him about penises?” Rose asked, hushing her voice around the apparently taboo word.

“It’s fun. And if I’m going to sit here in this stupid class with you I’m going to have some fun.” Y/N, on the other hand, was not hushed or subtle at all, as she ripped off the phallic piece of clay from her sculpture.

Rose cringed when she glanced past Y/N to find Harry looking right at her. He had been helping someone a few seats down and clearly not far enough away to have missed what Y/N said. All of his features drooped and he looked genuinely upset. Rose wished she could put a filter over Y/N’s mouth to save everyone from her insensitive outbursts. Especially Harry. He always tried so hard and for Y/N to brush everything off and boil it all down to a ‘stupid class’ even broke Rose’s heart a little. So she could only imagine how Harry felt.

After their typical hour and a half was up, once everyone at least had some semblance of a body minus the legs and arms, Harry called the class back to order.

“Alright, that’s time. You can put your armatures back on the shelves, carefully. As always, I’ll be around for a little while after. Have a great rest of your night, I’ll see you all on Saturday.” He finished his spiel, turning away to help clean up before a lightbulb went off in his head and his voice rang through the studio again, “Oh, and make sure you bring your sketches back with you!”

Everyone worked on cleaning up, including Harry. And while Y/N took both her and Rose’s sculptures over to their respective spots on the shelves, Rose walked up to the front of the class without any warning whatsoever.

She tapped Harry’s shoulder and watched while his smile faded just the tiniest bit after he turned to find her. That Rose’s poor face had to be associated with the thunderstorm that was Y/N.

“I just wanted to say sorry… about Y/N.” Both Rose and Harry glanced at the girl in question near the back of the studio, playing with their two sculpted bodies like they were barbie dolls. “I forced her to do this with me so she hasn’t really taken it seriously. But I’m really enjoying the class, you’re a fantastic instructor.”

His smile returned again and if he was being honest with himself, it really did make him feel better to hear her say that. He had some sort of a reasoning for Y/N’s horrible attitude and while he wished it was her apologizing and not Rose, he figured it was good enough.

“Thank you. You’re doing really well so far. I’ll see you on Saturday, yeah?”

She nodded, giving him one last polite smile before trotting back to Y/N and helping her clean up the last bits around their workstation.

“Please do not tell me you were flirting with him.” Y/N gagged, using a ball of clay to gather the little pieces spread across their table like a magnet.

“No, actually, I was apologizing to him for your behavior.”

Y/N snapped her head up, first at Rose and then Harry all the way across the room from them. “You what?”

“He’s just trying to teach and you’ve been a fucking knobhead.”

Y/N gasped in fake offense, which was actually slightly real offense. “Excuse me, he made fun of my bowl the first day, you seem to have forgotten about that.”

“A toddler could have made a better bowl than that, Y/N, and you know it.”

She frowned, grumpily averting her eyes to the table with her arms crossed over her chest like she really was a toddler.

“I’m just saying,” Rose started, a bit calmer this time, “stop pestering him.”

* * *

Y/N thought about everything Rose had said. About how much she wished she could take things seriously and not constantly get on people’s nerves all the time, but she simply did not know how to. Taking the piss out of things and making jokes was how she got through her days.

But she did agree. Harry didn’t deserve her behavior. Maybe he was a bit of a jerk to her to begin with, but insulting his class might’ve been crossing a line.

Because she didn’t actually think it was stupid. She quite enjoyed listening to him. She liked learning something new and following his instructions as he walked them through some of his techniques. She liked being connected to all the people in the little studio, even if only briefly. Complete strangers all shared that one little thing in common and it made her all fuzzy and warm inside each time she met up with Rose at the end of every Wednesday and Saturday.

Hiding behind a bit of humor, however, was a lot more comfortable than admitting she found pleasure in anything as corny as sculpting classes.

On Friday night, boredom got the best of her and she took a chance upon searching Harry’s name on Instagram while she took her weekly bath. It had been Rose’s idea, the bath, not stalking her attractive sculpting instructor online. That decision was completely her own. But the baths at the end of stressful weeks had a little influence from her best friend, as did most aspects of her life. Baths were a waste of time, in her opinion, and she preferred the efficiency of showering. But Rose had given her nice smelling soaps and weird fizzy things for bath time and well… she couldn’t let them go to waste.

So, amid her regularly scheduled, once-a-week bath, she scrolled shamelessly through Harry’s feed. Because he did, in fact, have an instagram. And she only knew it was him because every fourth post was a video and in said videos were his hands. And, fuck, they were just as nice on film as they were in person.

He didn’t post much of his face, which she thought was an actual crime, but there was a lot about him and his sculpting. She found out it had been his sister’s birthday recently, who, when she smiled, looked just like him. He’d also just finished a piece he seemed really proud of, a clay head and bust of a pit bull, to which he linked in the caption about a local shelter who rescued the breed specifically and needed donations. Her heart nearly fucking melted.

Harry wasn’t much of an open book, though, unless he let his art do most of the talking. He seemed to enjoy sculpting women the most, which is probably why he’d been so good at de-lumping the breasts on Rose’s mermaid. But all the female sculptures he made weren’t sexual at all. They had meaning behind them. Like every single clay face she clicked on throughout his photos had a story. Like he was uplifting rather than fetishizing.

And not every single one of them was skinny and had perfect features. She was shocked to see at least half of the creations she’d skimmed through were of larger women with imperfect breasts at times and asymmetrical faces. Not sticking to typical European beauty standards as she may have originally assumed he might.

It made glancing down at her very much imperfect body feel a little less like an attack. Because Harry spent his time putting all his love into his little sculptures with diverse body types that she almost felt ashamed for ever hating hers.

Once she was done clicking on just about every single post he’d ever made, she finally found a selfie. Well… not really a selfie. Someone else had clearly taken it of him candidly while he had been working. But there was an awfully cute smile on his face and very familiar dimples poking into his cheeks that make her heart warm up again.

He wasn’t a damn thing like she’d assumed he was from the beginning. She thought his art centered around the ideal, and that maybe he was a little condescending because of it. But his Instagram told a different story about his art. And she wanted to know so much more about him.

She was completely lost in her dreams about him that just the smidge of distraction led to accidentally liking a photo of his from two years prior.

She’d have to move countries. Change her name. Delete everything. Never look back. Y/N? A distant memory.

Before dropping her phone in the tub and really making a complete ass out of herself, she threw it, instead, onto her furry rug in the middle of the bathroom and sunk herself down into the water. Wondering if it would really be so bad if she just drowned a little bit.

Because she desperately wanted to. There was nothing she could do. Not even unliking the picture would help. He’d still see the notification. Still click onto her page and realize who in the fuck had just liked a two-year-old post of his that he, himself, had probably even forgotten about.

She wanted nothing more than to sink her head under the pink-tinted water and never come back up. Her mind would not stop with the visualizations of what his reaction might be. Things he might be thinking. Like is this that fucking bitch from my sculpting class? Or whether or not she might find herself blocked by morning.

God, just make it stop.

But suddenly her phone buzzed and her heart just about stopped beating. It had to be the notification that Harry blocked her. Was that even a thing? Did Instagram notify you if someone blocked you? And why was her phone on silent? Because her Instagram notifications and her text messages made very different sounds. If it was just a text, she’d consider ignoring it. She’d continue marinating in all her shame a little while longer. But it ate her alive not knowing what the buzzing was from.

So, carefully, she pulled herself upright and reached across the floor until she had her phone in her hand. Before she clicked the screen on, though, she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath.

But when she opened her eyes and found out why her phone had buzzed, she let that breath out and settled her ass down again. It was Rose.

Hey, I can’t make it tomorrow for class. Felt like absolute shit at work today and had to go home because as it turns out I have the flu.

“Fuck,” Y/N mumbled to herself. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go alone because facing Harry after she just did what she did was one thing, but doing it all by herself was another. But a part of her did still want to go tomorrow. The part before her horrific accident when she was full on getting a love boner over Harry. She’d wanted to see him again so fucking bad.

Okay. I probably won’t go too then

Y/N physically frowned at the idea of waiting another five days to see Harry again. Her brain really needed to make its fucking mind up about him. Did she want to see him or not?

No! You have to go and tell me what I missed!

Y/N rolled her eyes, but felt relieved. Even after her embarrassing slip up, her desire to see Harry again still prevailed. And she hated it. How was she even supposed to look him in the eye tomorrow, both of them knowing damn well she’d been stalking his Instagram back to two fucking years ago?

* * *

It was beyond weird sitting in their usual cafe on Justice Hill alone, even without the whole Instagram fiasco of the previous night she was trying everything in her power to forget about.

However all the desperate attempts to bury that awful experience were fruitless when she glanced across the room over her latte and found a very familiar set of grumpy-looking eyes already staring at her. But once she did notice him, he immediately looked away, stepping up to the counter to order his own cup of coffee.

She nearly choked on her drink, having to set it down and wipe what had spilled onto her chin off with a napkin she’d already used to sop up another one of her messes.

Of the three weeks now they’d been going to classes and frequenting the cafe just before, she’d never seen Harry. It was like he didn’t have a life outside being an instructor. He just popped up in the studio and she always left before him so she had no idea what he did after class either.

But seeing him here was like seeing a fucking unicorn in real life.

She couldn’t help watching him either, even if she knew she shouldn't. But, in her defense, he was wearing beautiful wine-colored corduroy pants with a tight white t-shirt tucked into them and a beige coat thrown over his arm to match. And for shoes he had on his usual white vans that had gained a few more scuff marks since the last time she’d seen him. His fashion would look terrible on anyone besides him.

He glanced her way again, briefly, when he left the counter with his cup, fighting his legs from walking in her direction but not exactly winning that battle.

And to her surprise, he stood right in front of her, behind the chair where Rose usually sat.

And when she looked up at him, he completely forgot why he had come over. He had no fucking clue what he was doing there. But it was too late now for him to back away and pretend like it never happened.

“Your friend's not coming?” His voice shook, but she didn’t notice with the way he finally took his fucking eyes off of her and gave her a chance to breathe again. He glanced at his watch just to confirm that it was, in fact, only five minutes until class started and it seemed reasonable to assume Rose wasn’t meeting her before then.

She pulled herself together and pretended like his close presence wasn’t intimidating her in the slightest.

He smiled and the second she saw those dimples she was reminded of his Instagram all over again.

“A little,” he nodded, pinching his thumb and index finger together in the air and she painfully agreed.

“Lucky me.”

He left her so fucking speechless, that after he started backing away from her table, reminding her to not be late, she still ended up being late. Because she sat in her chair for what felt like a century repeating his two words over and over again in her head.

Lucky me.

She knew he was only teasing but the way he’d just gone along with her original joke and how his voice sounded when he said it, she could not believe it. She could also not believe how Harry had some kind of massive hold on her that she sat staring at a wall for ten minutes trying to figure out how to operate properly again just to get up out of her chair.

Lucky fucking me.

She could scream.

If she wasn’t in public.

There was an extra pep in her step as she took Justice Hill alone this time, partially because of how giddy Harry had made her and partially because she was late… right after he told her not to be. But how was she supposed to be on time after what he’d just done to her emotions. And to the throbbing mess between her legs, but that's another story entirely.

Everyone was all over the place when she’d finally arrived, though, so it made slipping in the back that much easier. Not that she got past Harry’s watchful eyes, though, but at least she wasn’t interrupting anything while the class readied their workstations for another full night of going ham on their sculptures.

Harry kept his eyes on her mostly the entire time she did the same at her empty little area, watching as she tucked her purse under the desk for safekeeping and threw a couple tools he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her use onto the table. When she wandered off to the wall of shelves to retrieve her absolutely horrifying work of art, he finally gave her some privacy again. But he couldn’t help the fact that he’d been worried sick when she didn’t show up on time after he’d just seen her at the cafe, thinking something horrible could have happened to her between there and here.

So making sure she was unscathed before he, too, got his area organized was essential.

She sat in her chair and stared at what she had made the past three weeks. They’d started with something simple on the first day, taking a pre-cut slice of clay and free-handing a bowl with a few tips from Harry thrown in here and there. Then they jumped straight in after he showed them a few clips of sculptors working, pausing to explain specific things about creating a head and face. They were given everything they needed to make sculpting a complete figurine of a human body as easy as possible.

And still, she managed to create a combination of Shrek and the abominable snowman.

She huffed, wondering if she asked nicely enough Harry would let her just start all over. But before she could even think to do so, he clapped his hands together and got everyone’s attention for today’s mini-tutorial.

He explained smoothing to them and how there were many different ways of doing it so that your end results weren't littered in fingerprints. He reminded them to use water to smooth out the initial shapes of the clay they wanted and if they were having a really hard time with too much warmth from their fingers to use the gloves.

He ventured a little into detail work of the bust, showing a short clip of another artist forming collar bones with just two tools and her fingers. He explained what tools those were and why they were the most efficient for details and went on some more about other detail tools that were good for different things.

And the entire time she was far too lost in his voice and how his eyes lit up passionately when he rambled to even think about the fact that she wasn’t taking a single note for Rose’s sake.

They’d done a few lessons on details for the face, but they had yet to really get that far, only having put on tentative eyelids, lips and a nose for their heads before he really dove deep into details in what she assumed would be a full class later on.

And when he finally took a break to ask for any questions, she was, of course, the first to raise her hand. He thought about ignoring it, knowing all too well that anytime Y/N raised her hand in the back of his classroom, she was up to no good. But he was too nice to do that to anyone, even her.

So he called on her by nodding his head and she cleared her throat while he grimaced, expecting the worst.

“So, um, for example if we were going to do bigger details like abs on a male figure, what would be the best tool for that?”

He could have sworn he was having a heart attack. He had to blink a few times just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. She was actually asking him a legitimate question, and a good one at that. He had to repeat what she said in his head first, just to make sure it was real, before he answered, completely unprepared.

“Um… well after you lay out the clay where you want on the body, you can use one of the knives to blend the edges,” he held up an example of one for her, “and then a large ball or oval tool like this,” he held up another, “to smooth everything out. You’d probably want a more blunt pointed end to shape them, though, after you blend the clay in.”

She nodded like she’d been fully absorbing every single word coming out of his mouth and then he watched as she dug around quietly in the tool kit on her desk, in search of the types of tools he’d mentioned.

He could not fucking believe it though. She finally showed a stitch of interest in learning about sculpting. And he had no idea why she decided to right now. Maybe it was because she was without her partner in crime, but either way he was stunned. Absolutely fucking marveled.

After a few more questions and some demonstrations, he let everyone go and continue working on their projects while he circled the room as he normally did. And he found himself glancing at her from time to time, all by herself in the back with a genuine look of concentration on her face as she attempted making her creature a little less loch ness monster and a little more human.

Eventually, after he figured she was giving it enough effort for him to step in and help if she needed, he headed her way. And just as she sensed him walking down her aisle, while she was busy shaving off clay, a piece of it went flying into the air, completely out of control.

He stopped in his tracks after almost being smacked in the face with a chunk of clay and bent over to pick it up before someone squished it into the bottom of their shoes. He leaned over the edge of the table in front of her again, setting the piece of clay down next to her gently while she bit her lips between her teeth and tried to hide her embarrassed red cheeks behind her hands.

“Sorry!” She squealed at him, further digging herself into a hole.

He shook his head, “S’alright. Not the first time that’s happened.”

She laughed at the thought of him actually getting hit in the money maker with a hunk of clay and it eased her worries a little.

“So how are those abs going then?” He asked.

She stared at her sculpture for a moment before she sighed and turned it around to face him. It wasn’t as bad as it had been before, but it was still pretty rough.

“Mind if I…?” He held his hands out and she, without a single hesitation, handed it over to him.

He immediately grabbed the shaving tool she’d been using, and since it still sat next to her where she’d put it down moments ago, his fingers brushed against her hand when he picked it up. Sending every one of her nerves in the general area on a field day to mess with her nether regions again. It’s just… his fucking hands were an art form in and of themselves. His knuckles prominent, stretching soft skin around the bone. His veins protruding every time he made a more delicate move that required precision. Even the ones on his arms underneath the ink when he was a bit more rough with her sculpture sent her over the moon, while he shaved off bits and pieces with firm pressure to define the shape of the body and somehow create a human-like figure from her mess.

Then he started smoothing down the surface with a little water on his fingers and she went batshit. His hands while dry were one thing, but sparkling, wet, slippery fingertips? Lord have mercy.

She watched him spread a chunk of extra clay onto what would be the figure’s chest to build it up a little more with the knowledge of their previous conversations about dicks and abs making it clear she was attempting to make a male figure. She couldn’t help but watch his muscles flex underneath his tight white t-shirt. From far away across the cafe it had caught her attention. And now right here, she was definitely not letting it go unnoticed. It wasn’t too tight that he looked ridiculous, but just the right amount to show off every curve of his biceps and triceps and whatever other -ceps he had hiding underneath the shirt. He was normally in oversized tops so she was taking full advantage while she still had the chance to.

When he handed it back to her, it was like he’d done some kind of magic spell to get it to look so good after what she’d given him to work with. He leaned forward a little more and pointed at the figure’s chest and she was only halfway paying attention to him when he spoke, mostly focusing on how close he was and every single time he accidentally brushed his skin against hers.

“So if you want to make the abs,” he paused to glance over and dig through her pile of tools until he found the one he was looking for. “Use this to kind of sketch out the shape like we did with the faces,” he took the ball tool and rolled it down the middle of the chest, making a short indent to separate where the pectorals might be, “then you can add on the dimension like I was saying earlier.”

She took over the tool when he flipped it around and gave it to her so she could try for herself. And he watched for a short while as she did what he said to do, sketching out tentative abs, but not really knowing exactly what they looked like to come to any sort of realistic end. Her figure started to look like a shirtless Johnny Bravo.

He just giggled and pointed his stupid finger back into her personal space, smoothing down her mistakes until they disappeared, “Have you never seen a six-pack that wasn’t on a cartoon character?”

She racked her brain, trying to say something funny, but once she looked into his eyes, nothing came to mind. “Of course I have. I just don’t know how to make them look realistic.” She couldn’t exactly remember the last time she’d been faced with a naked man’s chest, but she had seen them before.

“Well…” Harry sighed, resting his head on his hand and staring at her sculpture sideways, “he doesn’t have to have abs.”

And then she said it. Something worse than her earlier set of words back at the cafe. She had no clue what was going on with her tonight, but she needed an ass-kicking for it.

“Do you have abs?”

“Me?” His eyes flickered up to hers in shock and it was far too late for her to backtrack, she was here and she had to face what she’d done. Even while he looked at her like she was fucking insane.

“Uh, well. I mean…” She had no fucking clue what she meant. And even if she did, she sure as shit wasn’t telling him.

Then it clicked in his brain. “You’re not using me as reference, are you?”

After a solid three seconds of just staring at him, she laughed. “No, of course not.”

“Hope so after you gave him that wonky penis.”

She sighed once they were through it. Once he’d proved, yet again, that he didn’t make her embarrassing statements feel as bad as they really were. He kind of just... went along with it.

But then she made it even worse.

“So yours isn’t wonky and crooked, then?”

Jesus, fuck Y/N just shut up.

His smile never faded, however, and instead, he leaned close again and whispered, “Maybe one day you’ll be lucky enough to find out.”

#harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #harry styles writing #sculptor!harry

945 notes · View notes

narrans · 3 years

Text

A Tall and Small Collection | Soren | Winter

His breath hitched in his throat. The frigid air filled his lungs, constricting them with each gasping breath. He could hear his younger brothers calling out for him. Each beat of his heart seemed to slow, begging him to calm his nerves. The crashing vibrations behind him were growing louder and louder. He had to speed up. He willed his legs to move faster as he darted to the side. The harsh sound of heavy breathing was close enough for him to smell. Just ahead was a hiding place. The roots of a freezing tree offered just enough protection; but could he make it? There was no other option. He pulled out his pin and dove, tumbling through the roots and spun on his heel to jab out. His heart leapt into his throat. A hollow, emptiness swelled in his gut as he came face to face with the gaping maw of a dog. He gripped his pin tight and thrust forward.

Soren woke with a start and sat bolt upright, a cold sweat on his brow. His breath was shallow and rapid. Every nerve in his body sending chills and nervous sparks through his body. As his heart began to calm and stop hammering against his chest, he laid back down and tried to breathe deeply against the constricting feeling in his chest.

It was a dream. It was only a dream – this time at least. Soren’s dream pulled from events just four days ago. Soren could’ve sworn he could still smell the dog’s breath. He glanced at either side, remembering his two younger brothers sound asleep and pressed against him. He hadn’t disturbed them. Their makeshift bed on the dirt and under those few scraps of clothing they managed to bring with them was neither comfortable nor warm. It allowed them to survive, which was enough for now.

Northern winters were harsh and frigid, especially by the northern lakes. This was not a contested point, it was fact. The wind would easily reach below zero. The snow could bury a yard in hours and make any terrain dangerous to traverse. Water would freeze over and become nearly impossible to drink or drill to boil. Wildlife, scarce in certain months, was nearly impossible to hunt and often the stores closed. If someone had a house with heating and water and light and the means to sustain such a life, it wasn’t so bad. No person in their right mind would live outside willingly in such harsh conditions; but, sometimes, it was unavoidable – especially if that person was a borrower.

In a small subdivision filled with a labyrinth of apartments and college town students, a family of four borrowers lay shivering in the cold. It was only late fall, but there was still a dusting of snow on the ground. They were forced to migrate after Brady, their father, thought he was seen. He most likely was seen; at least, that is what Soren guessed.

Neck stiff, Soren tried stretching without disturbing his siblings. A quick glance around told him it was just after dawn and he couldn’t see Brady anywhere nearby. He felt a frozen growl rise in his throat. If he was being honest with himself, Soren resented Brady in a way. Brady was clumsy and careless; it was a miracle he hadn’t been killed or worse, caught. If it weren’t for Soren’s mother, they probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.

Soren shook his head free of his thoughts. He couldn’t think about that now. He had to focus on the move ahead of them. The house they intended to stay in for now was largely unexplored and they were in desperate need of supplies. His brothers were too young, being only seven and eight years old, and Brady was incompetent. Soren would need to handle supply gathering. With a gentle nudge, he began to wake his brothers.

“Soren?” groaned the youngest, Rey, teeth chattering slightly.

“I know, it’s early; but it’s time to wake up,” said Soren. Dorian stirred, pressing himself into the warmth of his eldest brother. Soren maneuvered slightly so he could better peer out of their rooted hiding place when they heard something. It was a soft scraping, and it was getting louder. Soren leaned forward, much to his brothers’ dismay, and pulled his pin from his pack and held it at the ready. The hair on his arms raised. His breath stilled as his heart began to pump harder in his chest.

It was Brady. Even with mixed feelings about him, Soren had to admit he was glad of his return. He said nothing and instead dropped his borrowing bag at the edge of the hole they came through.

“Anything?” asked Soren. Brady shook his head.

“Nothing. Everything is sealed up tight. There’s a whole maze of walls in this place,” muttered Brady, sinking against the wall and pressing his head to the concrete. Rey and Dorian stirred at the sound of their father’s voice and sat up shivering. [Of course.] Thought Soren bitterly. The knot in his gut wouldn’t be satisfied with snow again. Even though his body shuddered uncontrollably for a moment, he managed to push himself onto his feet. His brothers moaned in protest as their primary source of warmth.

“I’m going to see what I can find,” muttered Soren after retrieving the borrowing bag from the ground.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You should save your strength. We should just move onto the next home,” said Brady.

“It’s almost winter Brady. We’ve got to settle long-term here, at least for now. Regardless, we need some supplies. Don’t go anywhere until I get back,” said Soren stiffly before slinging the pack across his body and ducking in-between the walls.

The walls were only slightly warmer than their place by the crawl space. There was a place he could climb from the crawl space to the hall. Step by step, he carefully traversed the wall’s edge until he reached the first floor. From where he stood, he could stare up at the towering expanse above him. Just the sight of something so tall gave him a sense of vertigo. He couldn’t even see the roof of the hall without some sort of light source – and he only had a few matches which he left behind. The bricks and drywall surrounding him did offer some limited light where the electrical outlets connected their world to the world of the humans.

Soren shuddered at the thought of being seen by a human. His mother and father had told him stories of what happened to other borrowers who had encountered humans. The horror stories passed through generations was now uncommon. Whether some of the stories were true was always in debate. Still, it didn’t stop Soren from always been careful and he wasn’t about to stop now.

Just ahead was an outlet into the first floor. Soren took a calming breath before approaching the holes and the wires. Each wire in of itself was nearly as thick as his arm, making the hair on the back of his neck raise. Carefully, he pulled on the screw and unwound it just enough for him to peer inside.

The warmth from the room poured in through the miniscule crack Soren was able to create. He listened in. Nothing. He breathed deeply. There was a thick smell of mothballs and something else. A smell of a thick, scented powder wafted through the air. It was an unmistakable scent of litter. [Cats.] Soren pulled the plate back over and tightened the screw. [I have to remember not to go here.]

Soren jogged to the next few rooms which he soon realized belonged to the same human because of the smell. [We can stay in between these walls here and be unbothered as long as we don’t go into the rooms. It’s much warmer at the very least, even if it does stink.] Soren felt his way along the walls and jogged through the darkness until he reached another break in the walls. [These must divide the larger rooms] thought Soren.

The next five rooms Soren checked turned up unusable since they were completely empty. Soren had dared to go outside of the walls and walk around the chilled rooms. The vast expanse of room seemed endless and empty. It was unnerving and forced Soren to duck back into the confines of the walls. [How can humans live in such a huge space? I know they’re huge, but still…]

There were only a few abandoned spider webs and no signs of mice. Finally, after a long trek through the walls, Soren managed to find what he was looking for – a warm apartment kitchen left unattended. The outlet on the floor came out right beside the kitchen table. The chairs were covered with skirts that hid the legs, which made the perfect hiding place. The kitchen itself was only twenty-seven paces away. The counter, on the other hand, was another issue altogether.

The surface was slick and covered with something called linoleum. Gaining purchase with his hook was going to be nearly impossible without leaving a mark. Soren glanced from side to side. A move this bold wasn’t something he usually partook in, but he was running out of options if he wanted to make sure his family ate today.

Soren stepped out from behind the wall and walked the twenty-seven paces to the edge of the wall next to the kitchen. Empty and no active signs of humans at the moment. The kitchen was small, but there were still two separate counters. One side had the sink while the other had the stove. Based on his experience, bread didn’t do well next to water.

Taking a shaking breath to swell his confidence, Soren darted from his place by the wall toward the stove while swinging his hook as hard as he could toward to top of the oven. Missed. He cursed under his breath and tried again, this time finding his hook catch something metal. [I must’ve snagged the grate of the stove.]

Soren wasted no time and began climbing, his heart pounding as he rose further and further from the ground. Out of breath, he reached the top. He looked around. The place seemed clean and well put together. Soren shook his thoughts away. He couldn’t think about this now. He turned his attention back to the counter in search of something he could grab and shove into his bag quickly. [There!] There was a bread box shoved in the corner by the wall and the counter. More importantly, there was an electrical outlet mere inches away from the box. He’d hit the jackpot.

Soren wrapped up his hook and made quick work of getting into the box, pulling off enough breadcrumbs to be unnoticed. He wanted to take the entire end, but it would have been too much and was bound to be noticed. He had hopes that what he took wouldn’t be noticed as it was, pinching off more than what he usually would.

Soren had just stepped back onto the counter when he heard a loud grinding sound coming from the next room just behind the door. His heart stopped. Every nerve in his body screamed to run. He couldn’t hesitate now, but he had a choice. He could try and shimmy down his line back to the cover he knew would lead him back or he could pull free the electrical cover mere inches from himself. He made his choice.

Climbing now would be too risky and at least he could duck behind the top of the bread box which was just barely taller than the backsplash. Hands trembling, he began frantically unscrewing the cover. It was already loose. There was the sound of a high pitched, shrill sound followed by silence. Soren could guess it was a car coming to a stop. His hands fumbled as he managed to pry the screw loose and began to peel back the faceplate. Nearby, he could hear muffled shouting.

Humans. They were angry by the sound of it. Soren pulled with all his might, accidentally stumbling backwards when the plate came off suddenly. He could see the lock turning. It was now or never. He leapt to his feet, screw in hand, and bolted behind the faceplate cover. He straddled the electrical cords and managed to pull the face plate back into place just as the door opened.

Heart pounding through his ribs, Soren listened as the two humans, who were still shouting at one another, came into the apartment. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but at least he was out of harm’s way – for now at least. There was a small shelf just below his feet which he didn’t see before. Soren imbedded his spare hook into the wood and rappelled down the line and began jogging back to where he had left his brothers and Brady.

It was a close call, but not an unsuccessful venture. His family would eat tonight, and that’s what mattered. As his legs carried him, Soren couldn’t help but think about why the humans were shouting at one another. How could they be angry when they had so much? They had food and shelter, warmth when they wanted. Soren rounded the final corner and dropped down from the ledge into the crawl space. He could feel the temperature difference instantly.

Yes, they would move as Brady requested; but, Brady wasn’t going to be the only one calling the shots anymore.

Continue

#borrowers #g/t #giant tiny #tiny human #giant world #adventure #medical #angst #fear #pain #hurt #surprise #survive #narrans #liveforyou #family #walls #walls have ears

77 notes · View notes

youminagrey · 3 years

Text

Abnormal Lovers（Breakdown/Knock Out）Chapter One

——The bright red sports car’s paint was still shining even under the dim lights. His streamline hood ,cables on the neck consisted a perfect parabola line. The magnetic, seducing gasp breathed out from his acoustical generator——

This enchanted transformer was now lying under Breakdown, having a hot interface with him.

This transformer was not anyone else, but the substitute professor Breakdown just knew eight hours ago,

Knockout.

Breakdown was used to agree this sort of “cheated with teacher” fragging only could be seen on Pornhub. He never imagined that it would happen on himself today. Of course, this wonderful adventure should begin at today’s afternoon.

“Tlick Tlock——Tlick Tlock——”

The electronic clock alarm had been set an hour ago now reverberated in Breakdown’s brain module, and the pop-up windows emerged one by one on private screen. Breakdown could only get out of dormancy mode，squinting his optics reluctantly.

Wheeljack from the opposite bed had already prepared the data sources for next class, watching Breakdown with full of excitement.

“Woke up? Bro? The next class is nursing , and I am not going to miss it!”

“Uh，Wheel,Professor Ratchet attended Cybetron Medics Seminar and will return in one week cycle.Do you forget......”Breakdown illustrated the truth to another transformers with a little sort of embarrassment.He does not expect his friend with the expression of being infected by cosmic rust.

“What! Then, then who will give this class!” Wheeljack’s facial expression module was going to explode, but something popped in his mind, “Hey, bro, why don’t we skip the class and go to oil house?I’ve heard that.....”

“Of course there will be substitute professor.Do you forget, too?”

Breakdown asked toward Wheeljack’s spark again.

“Oh ,for the sake of Primus, this lesson is just my elective!My major is Fuel and Explosion! And I will not care anything about this lesson except for Ratchet!”Wheeljack whined.

If Professor Shockwave of Mechanical Biology was here, he would said that it was illogical.Breakdown thought so and prepared the final review resources for Wheeljack silently.

“I’ve heard that this substitute professor is very young, who graduated two year cycles ago.It is outstanding for him of being a young substitute professor .”

“Enough, I won’t attend today.It’s boring without Ratchet.”

“Starscream claimed that the substitute professor is pretty .Won’t you come and see?”

Breakdown tried to persuade his friend to be a good student.

“Only you will believe that scrap‘s words！Do you forget he used how many excuses to pull off the deadline and was rebuked till off line by Professor Megatron? Furthermore, do you think these nerds will have sick model and paint in reality?Then Only in Thundercarker’s novel!”

Wheeljack’s optics rolled back.

“Fine, but I suggest that if you won’t be attended to get some participation points, when Professor Ratchet back, you will be hit by the wrench agai.....”

“Ah!Say no more.Get to the class ASAP,bro!”

When they pulled the door ，the classroom was filled with student，although they rushed to the class as fast as they could.

Just at the moment Breakdown pulled the door, he felt his spark was palpitated suddenly.

Being late was nothing to felt shock, but what exploded breakdown’s cpu is the transformers face to him.

Some sort of petit body compared with Breakdown, exquisite tire that revealed his sports car identity, slim but looked quite powerful waist, slender but curved legs.He was a Velocitroness who were born for race in the nature.He must be a sports car with excellent speed and functions!

But what more shining is that red ,sparkling paint after meticulously polishing, sexy curve of the streamline hood, and the transformer who with porcelain white face, long vermilion optics was now watching Breakdown with much pondering, like a turbine fox which was looking for its predator.

This knockout transformers was walking toward Breakdown himself.

Sex tension seemed to be overflowed in air by his every actions and steps，but he also looked so exquisite even arrogant.

Breakdown had not met transformers like this in his life, literally unacquainted. Was he transfer student?But why did he stand so close to the platform?He was late ,too?That made sense corresponding his vain appearance .

“Wow~hefty, Don’t stand beside the door now that you are late~Our class is going to begin~”

His voice was enjex.

Breakdown just realized Wheeljack had already disappeared somehow, leaving scorching optics sight from whole class and this red sports car.

Whatever, this new student was too garish , little assistant commanded by the professor?

Whereas Breakdown was always with good intention toward others, moreover in the classroom. he did not have a quarrel with this cocky beauty although he may looked a little sort of fierce.

“Thank you for your notice, new here.”The last two words were emphasized by Breakdown.

“I accept your praise to my youth.Aren’t you humorous, hefty~”

Praise?Wait, he......was the substitute professor?

Scrap, transformer only in Thundercraker ‘s novel really existed.

But, he is so pretty, and his manner is so......uh, slutty?How could he be the transformer who was a substitute professor at young?That would be so.....

“Hefty, tell me your name.”The red sports car interrupt Breakdown’s thinking.

“Breakdown......”he said haltingly, turning round and watching that beautiful transformer clicking on the roster.His keen fingers tapped on the screen.

“Em~, remembered you, and that hunk come with you , whether should.......”

“Wheeljack, uh, I mean his name.”

Breakdown caught sight of the charging transformer in the back seat.

“Thank you student.”

The young professor smiled, flamboyantly.Breakdown was watching in a trance, but the professor moved away at once, returning to the platform where he should be.

Primus,did he have any improper thinking about the professor he just met？But Breakdown does want to sit in the front and observe this unique professor meticulously，and he always sit in the front so no one would suspect. Nevertheless , Wheeljack had already been offline at back so far.As his good friend namely,he could just sit by him.

Having to admit that， Wheeljack and him were really frenemy sometimes.

The place Wheeljack picked was very suitable for sleeping in class——the marginal corner of classroom.Breakdown worried that his optics were not good enough to discern the fair professor clearly, but the fact was he worried too much.

That flame-liked red, would impacted the visual module ,even in a hundred meters.

“Students, before beginning the class please let me introduce myself first.My name is Knockout. Good to see you guys~”

The red sports car smiled one more time.

“Hey, students, I actually just graduated from here so far, and it can say that I am your senior schoolmates~, so don’t call me something like Professor Knockout, that kind of appellation is more proper to Ultra Magnus and Ratchet. For transformers as handsome as me, is more likely to be an elder brother ,isn’t it?”

Students took the hint and guffawed, except for Smokescreen who curled up when he heard “Ultra Magnus”.

He was humorous, Breakdown thought.

His name was Knockout.......,Breakdown considered that he saw this name on medicine magazines , and he also cited his essaies some times

Charming.

Breakdown concluded, and that was the first time he was not focus on class.

The content even one bite of it was not memorized on retention module.His database for note was absolutely empty, but he remembered Professor Knockout for this class.Oh , did not call him like that.He did not like this appellation.

He remembered his chipper laughter, unique optics, waist that often twisting when he was giving class.Of course, the most conspicuous thing was he sparkling shinning paint. The note on database was replaced by his clumsy facsimile of Knockout.

He was like a ruby. The ray of light from primary star penetrated through the window, passing into the elaborate tangent of the jewel, and diffracting , refracting among mazy crystalloid structure

Ultimately, totally reflected the perfect red to the whole world.

Even the time was like being trapped by rose wing.The bell had already ringed.

Class over, the other transformers began leaving.

Alright,

Maybe the imaginary transformer only could exist in imagination, as the picturesque beauty only could exist in picture.Breakdown thought so.

More likely, after two weeks’ relief lesson ,Breakdown would never meet that red sports car again.Their life would not have any more intersection.After two weeks, his life would come back validity.There would not be no more moment that he felt his spark pumping so fiercely.

The beauty and the beast would not encounter. This is reality.

So he poked his half-awaked room mate, and was ready to leave, with regret.

“Bang bang”

It was the sound from Breakdown’s arm being knocking.

“Hi, hefty~Hope you listen carefully this class, but, don’t forget .There’s punishment for late.”

It was him, actually.

His face appeared with cunning smile, and his optics up to no good.

Whatever, it was still so charming, more over, his charm was with threatening .

Late.......

Breakdown came up with idea of sweeping the laboratories with Wheeljack. It seemed did not matter.Whereas he was really shocked by dedication of this substitute professor, because he did not look like that kind of transformers.

“OK.......What do you have me to do, professor.”

“Ah, ah, two mistakes~”

Breakdown wryneck confusingly, and his little optics reflecting big doubt: “Excuse me?”

“Mistake No.1, don’t call me professor, too fusty. By the way I am just substitution.”

Knockout and Breakdown looked at each other. That unique optics locked Breakdown, commanding he to do not move his sight away though he felt shy.

“Mistake No.2, one is enough, and that will be you.For the other guy, let him continue charging.”

It could not be that thing.....Although Professor Knockout was seductive, random frag was still not in Breakdown’s acceptance zone.

Therefor, silence was the present.

Knockout found that Breakdown keep surly, knocking his hood:

“Um? Hush?Remaining awkward pause for transformers who have handsome paint like me isn’t a good habit?Or you thought something improper?

He smiled frivolously, continuing saying to himself.

“Listen up, hefty , the punishment is ——”

“Come to oil house with me. Two transformers, half fare, today!”

Breakdown felt some sort of disappointment, and fluke mind.

Well, out of expectation, but it is within understanding.

“Uh....Ok, professor, oh no, senior.”

Although the final essay was waiting for him, and placed Wheeljack in dorm then hanged out himself was not a good choice ,too.

Knockout smiled with satisfaction: “ Then deal. 7pm, front gate.Don’t stand me up~”

He left with his words.

Breakdown watched he walking out of classroom.

Knockout’s pace was swift, corresponding sports car’s hot-headed characteristic.Breakdown thought so, and concerned that maybe he was just pushed into oil house by a sociable sports car.Maybe Professor Knockout just wanted have some one who can accompany him to drink enjex. Of course,Knockout was a pretty and sociable sports car.

In room 412 of UC(University of Cybertron)

Wheeljack was sitting in his charging bed , crossing his legs, and his fingers slides on the screen, with his twinkling light blue optics.

Breakdown also browsed the Cybernet. On his screen which was not so big, one webpage was tricks of chatting, the other one was ravage adoption.Almost every transformers liked to do this when they were bored: slide the webpages, and even there was so much needed to do , transformers always would create excuses for surfing on the Cybernet.

There always would be a time that was not so noisy , especially when the other dorm mate Thundercracker went out with seekers from near room.

“Breakdown, you see ,ha ha, Professor Ratchet was even more serious in medics seminar than in class.Oh he is so cute when he looks like that.”

Breakdown received a video from Wheeljack .

Breakdown did not responded him which was rare, due to his effort of trying put all of social tips on his memory module. The times he went to oil houses was not too less, but always with Wheeljack , and the transformer who chatted with others was always Wheeljack ,too， leaving him drinking enjex quietly. There was no true love in oil houses, even a stable relationship, and that was what Breakdown took for.

Bro....The new substitute professor of today, invited me to go to oil house......”

Breakdown would like to ask for some pieces of advise from out-going transformers.

“ The one with dazzling paint?”

It seemed that Wheeljack did not care there was no response from Breakdown about Ratchet.

“Um......what do you think?”

“He is some kind of pretty, but is really cocky.Even I was charging I still could feel his.......seduction.He invited you?”

“Yeah, as punishment fo being late......but I think he is more than some kind of pretty.”

“I admit that he is handsome, but I prefer Sunshine. More, be careful. I think there will probably be something like drunken mistake. All in all, you don’t need to concern that there will be silence with that kind of transformers. They like leading conversation, and for you just answering. Hope you have fun tonight ,bro.”

“Thank you......”

#bdko #knock out #tfp breakdown #tfp knockout #tfp #breakdown #transformers #fanfic

15 notes · View notes

natasharomanoffismywife · 4 years

Text

Home Is Where The Heart Is Chapter 4 (Scarlett x Y/n)

`back to masterlist

Tag list: @natasha-danvers @lesbian-x-blackwidow @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @disneykid125 @summergeezburr @nowthisisliving27 @sighsam

Word Count: 1,113

Y/N Pov

“Do we have to move? I’m comfy!” I whine out as I stretch my long body across Scarlett, today was one of the few days where we had nothing to do. No interviews or re shoots and with Rose in school Scar and I had the whole house to ourselves, ashamed to say that we passed up on the chance for a sex day opting to catch up on some much needed sleep and spend the day gorging on junk food.

“Y/n it is 2pm and we still haven’t showered yet! Come on if you agree to a shower then maybe we could share one together, save on water” Scarlett proposes, sending me a wink causing me to jump up from my space on my love, vibrating with excitement as I try to wait patiently for my sexy lady to drag me to the shower.

“You had me at showering together” I say jokingly to Scarlett, who giggles softly before walking over to me and pulling me into an intimate kiss. I start to loose myself in the magic of the kiss, melting into a puddle once Scarlett’s tongue enters my mouth.

Ring ring ring ring

The shrill ring of my mobile ruins the atmosphere, I reluctantly pull away from the kiss to answer the annoying machine. Scarlett pouting adorably as I move away from her embrace.

“Hello, Y/n speaking?” I ask out politely into my phone.

“Hello Miss L/n this is Mr Mead the head teacher at Westfield Primary School. There is a problem with your daughter, she had gotten into a fight with another student. We need you to come down please” Mr Mead informs me, all playfulness abruptly leaves my body instead replaced by worry, Rose doesn’t just get into fights she would’ve been provoked to react like that.

“Ok thank you for letting me know myself and Miss Johansson will be down soon” I reply back before bidding farewell, hanging up the phone only to be met by a questioning Scarlett.

“What’s going on? Where do we have to go?” She asks out curiously, I shake my head trying not to let myself get too worried. I run to the bedroom, throwing on some jeans and an old shirt before gesturing to Scarlett to do the same.

“It was Rose’s head teacher she had been caught fighting another student, Scar she hates violence, why would she fight someone?” I ask, letting my worry wash over me once more. The blonde walks up to me and squeezes my hand in a comforting gesture, she presses a kiss to my temple before pulling back.

“It’s going to be alright, we will go and see what is going on before we panic” She says softly, picking up the car keys as we walk out of the house.

We drive to the school in silence both of us worried about what we are about to walk into, finally arriving at the school after what seemed like the longest journey ever. We walk down to the head teacher’s office, seeing a banged up Rose sat outside the window.

I take in the state of my daughter as we get closer to the office, I notice that she has a plaster covering a cut across her forehead while she looked to have a few bruises and scrapes littered across her arms and hands. She looked miserable as she sits nursing her wounds, the dried tear tracks down her cheeks indicate just how much she had cried before we got here. I instantly feel like shit for not being here for my daughter when she needed me, we would’ve been here sooner if I hadn’t demanded a lazy day.

“Ahh Miss L/n and Miss Johansson if you could please come in” the head teacher calls out, Rose turns her attention to us after the teacher calls out to us.

“Mamma, mummy” Rose calls out to us, Scarlett sends her a smile before walking into the office leaving me to comfort our little girl while she deals with the teacher. I walk over to her dropping to my knees in front of her, opening my arms letting the small girl jump into them.

“Hey sweetheart, what happened?” I softly ask the trembling girl in my arms, she sniffles a bit before pulling away from me letting me sit down on her vacated chair whilst she climbed up on my lap, curling up in my chest.

“I told him to stop mummy! I asked really nicely too but he wouldn’t, I’m sorry I hit him” Rose timidly confesses before bursting into tears, I don’t push her I just let her curl into my chest as I gently rock her back and forth.

As I am sat calming down Rose I hear the door slam open, an angry Scarlett comes stomping out and towards me. Her thunder face softens immediately once she sees how upset Rose is, coming over to me to press a kiss to the little girl’s head before leading us back into the car. As soon as we start the car up Rose falls asleep, her hard day catching up with her.

“What happened back there?” I finally ask, noticing that Scarlett’s hands are white as she grips the steering wheel in a death grip.

“Some kid a few years older than Rose wasn’t allowed to go see Endgame by his homophobic parents, they blamed it on us because he didn’t want us to taint him. He didn’t like it so started to rip into Rose, she hit him when he didn’t stop and but by the looks of it I have a feeling that the boy won.” Scarlett spits out, I can feel my anger course through my veins as I hear about what Rose went through.

A boy 2 years older than her beat the shit out of her, all because his parents wouldn’t let him see a movie. I try to shake away my anger though, Scarlett is filled with enough hate for the two of us, I need to be calm one in this situation.

I take one of her hands off the wheel and into my warm hand, pressing a featherlight kiss to her finger tips. I can instantly feel and see Scarlett untense under my kiss, her anger slowly melting away as we drive home.

I glance in the rearview mirror smiling softly as Rose softly snores in the back, knowing that no matter the hurdles we are thrown in front of we can get passed them together. As a family.

#home is where the heart is #chapter 4 #scarlett johansson x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #actor fanfiction

132 notes · View notes

ofwolvesandbutterflies · 4 years

Text

may i?

Pairing: Lee Taeyong x Reader ft. Chenle

Genre: fluff

Tags: docent!reader, chaperone!taeyong

Warnings: *unedited*

day 28 of 30 days with NCT

Synopsis: in which you’ve found yourself in the middle of an unlikely situation with the most handsome elementary school chaperone you’ve ever seen.

// I’m not here to give you complications... // (x)

[08:13]

Small children filed into the lobby of the art museum one by one. An inaudible groan filled your cheeks as you did a headcount of all the 7-8 year old children and adults in this group. This was going to be a long day… A long day filled with careless primary schoolers, bored adults, and hours of droning through the same old tour you had been reciting for the past few months. Never once in your life had you ever thought you’d find yourself in the old, dusty art museum your grandparents worked at for so long.

But here you were, short on money during your last years of undergrad, smiling through clenched teeth as the exhausted teacher before you collected the tour bracelets and chaperone stickers. This time, the annoyed sigh fought its way past your lips as yet another cheeky little boy reached out to touch the statue of the Foo dog on the left side of the doorway, the one with a missing tooth.

“Excuse me! Hey! You!” you called towards the younger boy who was at the moment mere millimetres away from touching the statue’s lackluster polish. The younger boy’s hand stopped in mid air as he threw a guilty glance over to see if you had been talking to him. You continued, oblivious to the fact more than half of the students were looked at him. “I know he’s pretty but you can’t touch art, kiddo.” The teacher you had been talking to along with the rest of the class turned to see who you were about to scold. He withdrew his hand, frowning at you but following your directions regardless.

“Chenle!” A smooth, only moderately stressed voice pounced at the child before you even had the chance to dismiss him. Ahh, you thought to yourself. So, that’s the little imp’s name. The younger boy - or - Chenle’s eyes widened in what you could only describe as stress as a rose haired male who looked much too young to be his father sped towards him.

You had witnessed many types of chaperones in your time working at the museum, all types most usually mid thirties to middle aged and none anywhere near as stylish as this one.

This chaperone was dressed quite plainly, in just a pristine, pressed white t-shirt tucked into a pair of stylish black slacks cinched with a - goodness, was that a Gucci belt? Blinking the surprise out of your eyes, you studied the rest of him. A couple of thin silver bracelets wound their way around his thin wrists and glinted in the sunlight filtering through the windows, matching the distress dancing in his eyes as he glanced between the child in his care and you. He was quite slim, like a dancer. And really quite handsome. His lips were pulled into a disapproving pout, somehow complimenting the angularity of the rest of his features. Dark eyes darted around carefully as he squatted next to the boy. “Come on, bud. We've been over this at other places, too. You can’t touch the exhibits!”

Regardless of the fact this was more responsibility you had ever seen a chaperone take for their child, you almost felt… guilty. It had only been the fourth time in the past week you had caught another grubby hand trying to touch old BuBu (the name you had so affectionately given the single toothed lion), and yet you couldn’t help but feel bad for the blazing cheeked child who stood there speechless, getting scolded quietly around his friends by his chaperone.

Heaving a heavy sigh, you clapped a couple times, loud and clear. Both Chenle and the chaperone stopped to look at you. “Alright, children. May I have your attention, please?” Soon, all sounds of children chatter had died down and you smoothed a hand over the invisible creases on your work uniform. “Thank you. My name is Ms. Y/N, and I will be helping you out today.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, you launched into the ground rules of the museum, tossing the occasional glance over to where Chenle snuck back towards his group of friends. The younger boy shot you a grateful smile.

“Now then,” you clasped your hands together, fixating the best flight attendant/museum docent smile on your face. “Are we ready?” The group nodded and so the tour began.

Despite the fact Chenle still tried to touch a couple more various pieces of art around the historic building and his awkwardly cute chaperone still insisted on shooting him the least intimidating scowl of disapproval you had ever seen, the class tour went pretty well. You brought the children to the interactive area, instructing them to go around to the different stations and try the art methods you had described during the tour with the materials the other volunteers provided.

The students fanned out to the different corners of the room, the trained smile dropped from your face and you leaned heavily against the wall.

“Uhm… pardon me, Miss?” the smooth, familiar voice of a hesitant male sounded only a mere centimetres away from you, sending an abrupt flinch through your body. You turned on your heels to see the handsome chaperone from earlier standing a little off to the side, looking just as sheepish as Chenle had when he got caught earlier this morning.

You slid the polite smile back onto your lips and straightened yourself, ignoring the racing of your heart at just how much more handsome this man was up close. “Oh! Hey there!” the volume of your voice sent a painful cringe through your body. Nevertheless, you continued, brushing off any nonexistent specks of dust dotting your uniform. “May I help you?”

“O-oh! Uhmm, no! No, no thank you!” he chuckled nervously, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his neck. The fake smile on your face quickly morphed into a genuine one as you watched him stutter. Just like they had before, his eyes traveled quickly from one place to another, refusing to meet your curious gaze. You raised an eyebrow. The pink haired male bit his lip in an effort to collect his thoughts. Finally, he stuck a hand out towards you, offering a lopsided smile. “Uh, sorry. I- my name is Lee Taeyong, I’m Chenle’s older brother-” he paused to tilt his head to over where his younger brother sat, painting carefully with the other children. “-and I just wanted to apologize on my little brother’s behalf.”

You took his outstretched hand with a light giggle, not failing to notice the way Taeyong’s eyes curved into happy crescents at the sound of your laugh. “Nice to meet you, Taeyong. But hey! No worries, we all learn in different ways and Chenle seems like a great kid.”

“I don’t know about ‘great’ kid…” he scoffed playfully, nearly forgetting to let go of your hand. “But thank you for being so understanding. Are- are you sure it’s okay, though? I mean, Lele almost touched a couple of - what did you say they were? - Ming Dynasty vases? Not to mention that gold looking Foo dog at the entrance… How were you not strangling him?”

The two of you laughed and you were almost surprised at how easier it was to converse with the male.

“I’m serious, Taeyong, it’s fine,” you smiled, a pink heat dusting both of your cheeks. “He didn’t touch them and you were very on top of making sure he knew what he was doing was wrong. You’re all good, don’t worry.”

“Still,” the young man mumbled, digging the tip of his custom vans into the carpet beneath you. A strange fluttery feeling settling in your stomach when Taeyong glanced at you shyly through his thick lashes. “I feel like… I should do something to make it up to you after how difficult he was today.”

Something about this whole situation reminded you strangely of high school and the first time you had asked your crush out. Taeyong somehow radiated the giddiness of a teenage boy as he stuck his hands in his pockets, cocking his head towards you. “May I - I dunno - take you out for coffee sometime or something?”

You hid the giddy smile slowly spreading across your cheeks behind a hand and you nodded. Perhaps today wouldn’t be as boring as you had originally thought.

a/n: i don’t know... i think my original thought process was how ridiculous it would be for a chaperone of a bunch of 8 year olds to ask out a cute docent... i have no idea XD

61 notes · View notes

afieldinengland · 2 years

Note

what is ur full in-depth analysis of mr king?

oh, there’s so much to say…. i’m utterly obsessed with it, i watched the whole thing open-mouthed in a sort of mad, gleeful awe. this got a little long so it’s under a cut :)

the episode is clearly written from such a place of love for the wicker man (1973), and for folk horror as a whole. taking the schoolroom scene where sergeant howie is confounded by miss rose and her girls, and writing it large…. with the kicker being, of course, that alan is both howie and rose in one, he just doesn’t realise it yet. ceri is brilliant as a sly rowan morrison, with all those little plotting glances and the utter awareness of the seriousness of her task. her particular role of making such a serious allegation is excellent for how it works in the horror, making us immediately suspicious of alan and briefly blinding us to other goings-on. taking folk horror into a modern classroom is genius, completely and utterly— the rituals of the school day, the loss of a teacher’s authority in the face of their students, the poster-paint, the class tadpoles, breaktimes…. the markers of primary education coexisting with corn dollies, sun masks and sickles. it’s everything children of the corn (1985) wishes it could be, in many ways. something i found particularly fantastic was the school’s test for whether the new “mr. king” is eligible to serve as john barleycorn. their fields don’t demand the combination of virginity, power, foolishness and free will seen in the wicker man, nor the willingness to sleep with an anointed member of the village seen in robin redbreast (1970). instead, it’s whether the victim is “as nature intended”, “still sheathed”— a particularly obscene feature that makes the classroom setting all the more disturbing, and one that they must use a particularly insidious game of subterfuge to ascertain. still, though, the test has that warped folk horror quality in that alan “could” have escaped, if only he had known. if howie had slept with willow, if norah had spent the night alone, if alan had been circumcised, they could have escaped their various fates— but these are impossible to control, and thus these tests are even crueller traps than inescapable ones, in many ways. continuing with the wicker man inspiration, if alan is sergeant howie and miss rose, and ceri is rowan morrison, then the headmaster mr. edwards is lord summerisle. more bumbling, certainly, but in the end he leads his children in sacrifice just as his lordship does on may day— and since that blessed day is fast approaching, i’m sure they picked this to air this week on purpose, even if the plot is based around a harvest festival. and winnie the cleaner is willow macgregor— wryly, darkly flirtatious with the obliviously condemned man, seeing him as deliciously virile both for her body and her crops. reece shearsmith mentions on the podcast inside inside no 9 that he wanted to write an episode where a teacher was controlled and blackmailed by a pupil, and i think it certainly works here— there’s a tinge of absolution (1977) to the way ceri and the other children assume authority over their new victim. a particularly captivating part of the episode for me was the combination of new awareness of climate change and the old rituals and rhythms of the earth— the children haven’t been taught much of the science of climate change or hurricanes, they only know the danger of leaving the village, and how a man’s blood must water the fields. they’re disturbed by the newcomer’s talk of the “world ending”, when they have been appeasing it in the bloodiest way for centuries. the children really are fantastic, a believable little cohort all set against alan as he helplessly and haplessly seals his own fate. goodness, it’s brilliant, and peppered with loving references to the mother of folk horror films throughout— from the way the masks are revealed to how mr. edwards holds up his hands in the final seconds before the ritual begins. it’s probably the best thing i’ve seen on television in a long long time

#answered #thank you!! sorry for the late reply i don’t know if this is any good #inside no 9 spoilers #inside no 9

27 notes · View notes

holyfuckthisfishcandrive · 4 years

Text

Twins and Stars

Third chapter of the Woethough AU!

First Previous AO3

Word count: 1235

Warnings: brief mention of mild injury and murder

For nearly two years now Patton woke up on Monday mornings with a smile on his face, no matter how many bruises littered his body and how stiff and sore his muscles were from jumping over rooftops and defeating villains.

Monday was only one day before Tuesday and Tuesdays Logan came to the shop.

He always bought at least a handful of flowers, either for himself, his ex's grave, his son or on last Valentine's Day for the class he had been teaching at the time. It was a very sweet thing to do in Patton's opinion.

The week after he had asked Logan how the flowers had been received and Logan had told him that all the students had been excitedly trying to figure out who had gifted them the flowers since he had done it anonymously.

Patton often told Logan about his customers in turn or about the stray cats he'd always leave food for on in the back alley. He had memorized the way Logan had laughed at the story of the raccoon that had stolen the bowl and had been tackled by at least twenty cats when he had tried to make his getaway.

Patton went through his morning routine, brought out some food for the strays and entered his shop.

He still had some time before opening and used it to fill up the water, sweeping up a few leaves and petals, checking the mousetrap and starting his coffee machine to get it going for the day.

At 8am exactly he turned the sign in the door from 'Sorry, we're closed!' to 'Come in!'.

The early morning was very quiet, most people being at work or at school and the only customers before midday was an old man who wanted to make his wife 'feel like a princess again' on her birthday and was exited over the many flowers Patton showed to him and a little kid with a crumpled five-dollar bill asking for something nice for their 'Mummy'.

Patton gave the kid a small discount but they didn't need to know that.

They smiled up at him with a wide gap in their teeth and that was enough to make up for the little money he had practically gifted to them.

At noon he made a small break, visiting Miss Cho in the bakery and cooking himself some noodles before going back to work.

He could always tell when school was over because masses of students would go by Miss Cho to buy some baked goods. The primary school was just a block away and the middle school barely further.

Most students simply walked past his shop, some would maybe look around a little and a few bought something once in a while, usually around holidays.

The bell chimed and a small group of friends came in giggling about something.

"Do you think she'd like these ones?" a girl pointed at a big vase with Azalea.

"I dunno," the other girl said. "She's not my girlfriend!"

The first one grinned at the word girlfriend and Patton smiled into his coffee. Young love was a beautiful thing.

"How about these?" the boy who was with them asked and gestured at the begonias. "They look a lot like roses and are probably easier to put in a bouquet."

"They are pretty," the first girl seemed to think about it. "Yeah, I think she'd like them."

The girl ended up buying a small bouquet of them with a few forget-me-nots in between and walked out with a giddy grin, her friends telling her that it would go great all the way out. Probably a date. Maybe a first one or anniversary.

A little later two identical-looking boys came in and Patton made a double-take before realising that they were probably twins. At least they dressed very differently.

Patton decided to let them look around on their own for now, he was running out of coffee and had to put some new water into the machine.

But the boys didn't seem to want to look around at all.

Instead they went straight up to his counter, the one on the right slammed his hands on it and they spoke in unison.

"We want you to train us as heroes!"

Patton stared at the two boys in front of him.

"You want what now?" he stuttered, hoping against all reason that he had misheard.

"We want you to train us as heroes!" the one on the left said. His brother nodded enthusiastically.

"Who are you two even?" Patton asked and remembered just in time to add: "And what makes you think I could train you as heroes?!"

"I'm Remus, this is Roman and we know that you're Heartrate!" the one on the right exclaimed and grinned widely. Patton noticed that he was missing one of his front teeth.

"What?" he asked dumbly and glanced behind them to make sure there really wasn't anyone else in the shop. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

They couldn't know.

He had been so careful not to be seen going out in costume or returning home.

"We saw you," Roman insisted. "You were on our rooftop and you took off your mask and we saw your face and recognised you because Dad always sends us here when he forgets to buy something for Ma on their anniversary!"

Patton felt like his brain had been slowed to the speed of a snail. Good thing Professor Logic wasn't here or he would have already used Patton's bafflement as an opportunity to kill him.

"You saw- Wait! What were you two even doing on a rooftop that late? That's extremely dangerous!" He scolded, slipping into Dad mode.

The boys looked at him flabbergasted.

"Are you trying to parent us?" Roman asked.

"That's none of your business!" Remus claimed at the same time, crossing his arms.

"Oh, I think it is, young man," Patton said sternly. "As an adult and hero, it's my responsibility to keep everyone safe, especially young people such as you two!"

"You admitted it," Roman grinned just as Remus was about to protest again. "You admitted that you're a hero."

Patton's face fell.

"Fudge," he cursed.

Now both boys grinned at him.

"So will you train us?" Remus asked eagerly.

"No," Patton said.

The boys' smiles fell.

"What?!"

"Why not?!"

"Because it's dangerous!" he insisted. "I don't want to put children in that kind of danger! As I said, it's my job to protect you!"

"But you can teach us to protect ourselves!" Roman protested. "And you wouldn't have to do this alone anymore!"

"Besides," Remus added and began to smile again, "we'll try to become heroes either way! Either we do it with your training and help or we do it on our own!"

Patton opened his mouth and closed it again.

He didn't doubt that they would. Both boys looked determined to do this.

"Fine," he sighed.

The twins cheered and high-fived each other.

"But," Patton interrupted sternly, "you will do it on my terms. You won't go out and fight until I allow you too. You will listen to me and if I tell you to retreat you will."

This was important. If he couldn't stop them he could at least protect them.

"Okay!" Remus nodded until he almost fell over and haad to stop.

"Sure thing," Roman smiled brightly. "When do we start?"

#sanders sides #patton sanders #ts patton #logan sanders #ts logan #logicality #roman sanders #ts roman #remus sanders #ts remus #flowershop #a superhero au #my writing #au #woethough au

19 notes · View notes

crackimagines · 4 years

Text

Dawn of War (FE: Three Houses Short Fic)

The students of Garreg Mach have nothing to do to pass the time during a massive storm, in which the House Leaders sit around trying to alleviate their boredom.

Claude manages to find a tabletop game hidden inside the drawers, and this game proves to test their tactical prowess, and find out who is the better leader of war!

...In which they get weirdly competitive about a game of toy soldiers shooting each other.

----

The storm outside raged on, the rain pelting the door with thunder able to be heard in the distance.

Claude, Dimitri, Edelgard were stuck inside the classroom since they had business to attend to before the storm came upon the Monastery.

Sighing, Claude looked out the window and shook his head.

(Claude) “Great, we can’t even get back to our rooms without being completely soaked!”

(Edelgard) “Unfortunate, I don’t have anything with me to study or pass the time productively...”

(Dimitri) “We could always spar.”

(Claude) “I’m not sure that’s a good idea with how big your weapons are. Plus my arrows are totally going to pierce something important like a book.”

(Edelgard) “Then are we trapped in here with literally nothing to do?”

(Dimitri) “Hm...Perhaps we could look around for a book to read?”

(Claude) “I’m wanting to have something to do, not be put to sleep. Though, looking around for something isn’t that bad of an idea.”

Everyone got up to look around the classroom to see if there was anything worth doing while they were trapped inside the classroom. Edelgard opened a closet and raised an eyebrow after seeing the contents.

After getting the other two’s attention, they sat the mysterious box and book on the table.

(Edelgard) “What in the world is this?”

(Claude) “I think this is a board game. What is this even doing at a military academy?”

(Dimitri) “We might as well take a look. It’s not as if we have anything better to do.”

---

After a bit of reading, the three realized it was a game similar to chess, only that you roll dice and use measuring sticks in order to move your pieces and attack.

The pieces were tiny plastic miniatures, which appeared to be soldiers of some kind.

The soldiers Edelgard picked up wore heavy armor, and had a massive golem with what looked like a cannon to be its right arm.

As for Dimitri, his soldiers looked far more metallic and skeletal.

Claude was perusing through the book Edelgard picked up and eventually found pictures and descriptions of what they were.

First was Edelgard’s miniatures. It consisted of 5 soldiers in heavy armor, and the massive golem.

Space Marines

“The Space Marines are defenders of humanity, the greatest of the Emperor of Mankind's warriors. They are barely human at all, but superhuman; having been made superior in all respects to a normal man by a harsh regime of genetic modification, psycho-conditioning and rigorous training.”

Dreadnought

“The Space Marine Dreadnought is a massive war-machine piloted by an honoured Space Marine hero whose body has been ravaged in battle.”

Looking over at Dimitri’s miniatures, it consisted 10 skeletal soldiers and 1 on top of a spider-like construct.

Necron Warriors

“Necron Warriors are the primary infantry troops of the soulless, undying mechanical monstrosities known as the Necrons. These once living creatures are now made of living metals, and carry weapons that atomize their foes.”

Necron Cryptek

“A Cryptek is one of the technologists and engineers of the Necron race, and they are responsible for studying and maintaining the technology of the Necron dynasties.“

(Claude) “So, from what I understand so far, you use these miniatures to fight in a toy-sized war against each other across the galaxy?”

(Dimitri) “That sounds-”

(Edelgard) “SO AWESOME!...Er uh, incredibly childish.”

(Claude) “Hah, come on no need to act all shy! It’s not like anyone can watch us play glorified chess!”

(Dimitri) “Come Edelgard, I bet I could beat you at this game!”

(Edelgard) “Hmph! I accept this challenge!”

(Claude) “Sweet! I’ll be the rules guy! Now let’s see...”

ONE EXPLANATION OF HOW TO PLAY LATER...

The two set up the board and took a good look at their miniature battlefield.

INITIATIVE PHASE:

OBJECTIVE: King Slayer (Kill the Enemy Commander)

Edelgard - Space Marines

5 Tactical Marines, 4 armed with Bolters (very big assault rifles), 1 armed with Missile Launcher

Dreadnought, armed with assault cannon (very big minigun), combat weapon (giant fist), and flamethrower

Dimitri - Necrons

10 Necron Warriors, all armed with Gauss Flayers (green laser beam)

1 Necron Cryptek, armed with Staff of Rod (Enhancced version of Gauss Flayer)

(Claude) “Wow, looks like odds are in your favor, Dimitri! But let’s see here, now we roll off to see who moves first!”

Dimitri and Edelgard rolled a single six sided die.

Dimitri rolled a 3 while Edelgard rolled a 5.

(Edelgard) “Ah, I move first!”

(Claude) “Alrighty! Go ‘head and move your models!”

MOVEMENT PHASE: Turn 1 (Edelgard)

...

The Space Marine squad moved with their dreadnought closely following behind, aiming down their bolters as they trudged down the ruins of this barren wasteland.

Their heavy weapons expert carrying the missile launcher, Brother Ferdinand was the first to speak up.

(Ferdinand) “Sergeant Hubert, what is this ruin?”

...

(Dimitri) “Wait, are you naming your squad after your classmates?”

(Edelgard) “Well, I thought it’d be easier to tell who’s who in the unit. After all not a single one is painted.”

(Dimitri) “Fair enough. Hah, maybe I should do the same with my commander! Though my warriors are mindless automatons, so perhaps naming them wouldn’t be worth it...”

(Edelgard) “Now, where was I moving them to?”

...

Hubert didn’t turn to face him, instead keeping an eye on his helmet’s tactical display.

(Hubert) “This world is a Tomb World, filled with the Necron. Though it is a graveyard, these Xenos will arise from the ground to stop us if we are not careful. Commander Edelgard wants us to perform reconnaissance at this area, and report back.”

Hubert turned to his communications specialist with the scanner, Linhardt.

(Hubert) “Any readings?”

(Linhardt) “Affirmative. Multiple signals are dead ahead.”

The booming voice of the Dreadnought shattered the silence as it clenched its fist.

(Caspar) “Finally. Action.”

Two of the other marines walked past the wall and immediately jumped back into cover.

(Petra) “Brothers, we have contact!”

(Dorothea) “Necron Warriors are right in front of us!”

Caspar moved to the front, shielding his battle-brothers with the dreadnought’s chassis and started warming up his assault cannon.

...

(Dimitri) “Wow, there is not a lot of space on this board.”

(Edelgard) “At least there is cover for all of us to hide behind. Anyways Claude, what comes next? I have finished moving my models.”

(Claude) “Let’s see...Ah, shooting phase. Let’s go ahead and roll to see what hits and wounds!”

SHOOTING PHASE: Turn 1 (Edelgard)

...

(Hubert) “OPEN FIRE BROTHERS!”

Caspar’s assault cannon started shooting into the crowd of Necron warriors that were assembling themselves as they rose from the ground.

Most of the bullets made their mark by nailing them in the head and torso, though the damage appeared to be minimal, as they continued to rise.

Only two Necrons were taken out by the initial burst.

(Dorothea) “Damn, the reports of Necrons being durable was no exaggeration!”

(Hubert) “Provide fire support, brothers!”

The Space Marines opened fire, the sounds of their bolters becoming deafening as volley after volley was fired into the crowd.

All of their shots had been shrugged off, even though they hit.

Ferdinand took aim with missile launcher and pulled the trigger, smoke exploding out of the barrel as a missile flew towards them.

Hitting a Necron directly, it exploded into pieces, finally having the first casualty.

(Ferdinand) “1 xeno down!”

(Hubert) “Do not relax yet, brother! They have their reanimation protocols!”

...

(Edelgard) “Your men are quite durable! I have to roll a 4 or higher on my dice to even wound you!”

(Dimitri) “Hah! And it would appear that you are too far to charge into melee as well! Though your aim was true, your boldness has now become your downfall!”

(Claude) “Right then, your turn to move Dimitri!”

...

MOVEMENT PHASE: Turn 1 (Dimitri)

As the Space Marines fired into the Necrons, Cryptek Annette knew that their bolters would cause superficial damage at best.

(Annette) “Foolish meatbags. They think they can harm us.”

Annette turned to one of the fallen warriors and pointed her hand at it.

(Annette) “Rise.”

Activating the reanimation protocol, the warrior rose back up as if it were never taken down to begin with, and began to march.

...

(Dimitri) “Reanimation protocol: on a 5+ roll of your die, a slain model in this unit may return to battle at full wounds. If you have a Cryptek within 3 inches, you may get to add 1 to this roll. So in this case, rolling a 4+ just made that warrior come back to life.”

(Edelgard) “Uh oh.”

...

SHOOTING PHASE: Turn 1 (Dimitri)

They all slowly marched in perfect unison towards the Space Marines, aiming their gauss flayers at the team.

Not needing to verbally give the order, the Necrons opened fire.

(Annette) “Reduce these humans to ash.”

(Hubert) “INCOMING!”

A majority of the shots missed the humans as it whizzed by their heads.

(Annette) “Slightly alarming. It seems their aim has not been calibrated properly yet. I will fix this.”

Since the dreadnought was in front, the suit took a majority of the hits, vaporizing bits and pieces of his armor.

The human in charge of the team looked like as if it were about to give another order. Annette was not going to let that happen.

Cryptek Annette fired the rod towards the leader, in which a marine got in the way of the shot.

(Dorothea) “SERGEANT, WATCH OU-”

Brother Dorothea’s head was shot clean off, as the body shook violently for a single second before falling over, dropping her bolter, blood spilling out.

(Hubert) “NO!”

...

(Dimitri) “Hm...maybe I should have focus fired on your squad instead of your dreadnought. It’s way tougher than any of my units compared to your marines!”

(Edelgard) “At least you managed to put one of my men down with your commander.”

(Dimitri) “I suppose that is the silver lining. It appears I’m a bit too far to charge in myself, so I suppose it’s back to you?”

(Edelgard) “Indeed! I will have revenge for space marine Dorothea!”

...

MOVEMENT PHASE: Turn 2 (Edelgard)

(Caspar) “YOU WILL FALL BY MY HANDS, XENO SCUM!”

Caspar charged forward, ignoring the shots incoming by the Necron Warriors.

Hubert pointed towards the enemy, reloading his bolter.

(Hubert) “WE AVENGE OUR FALLEN!”

With a rallying cry they all charged aiming their bolters at the enemy.

SHOOTING PHASE: Turn 2 (Edelgard)

Caspar first used his flamethrower now that he was finally in range, igniting the skeletal abominations into flame.

Even though his heavy flamer was a weapon that could melt the most solid material, the Necrons remained unphased.

Pointing his assault cannon, he opened fire into the crowd and 3 of the warriors went down since they were the closest to the gun as it fired.

The Marines provided covering fire, picking any of the stragglers off, however much of the same effect happened with no one going down.

(Hubert) “We will get overwhelmed by their reanimations at this point! Brothers, we go for the Cryptek! Caspar, show no mercy!”

(Caspar) “LONG HAVE I WAITED FOR THIS MOMENT, BROTHER HUBERT!”

FIGHT PHASE: Turn 2 (Edelgard)

(Caspar) “XENOS, MEET YOUR DEMISE!”

Caspar charged straight for the squad of warriors, shrugging off the shots they fired in vain, finally getting into close combat.

...

(Dimitri) “What are your stats on your dreadnought?”

(Edelgard) “Let’s see...Oh, ouch! 2+ on a D6 to hit, AND wound!”

(Dimitri) “Uh oh.”

...

Caspar grabbed one of the Necrons and slammed it into the nearby building’s wall. Swiping his hand back, he knocked back several more Necron as they tried to swipe their bayonets onto the his chassis to no avail.

3 more Necrons were completely crushed as Caspar continued laughing, ripping apart any of them in his path.

MOVEMENT PHASE: Turn 2 (Dimitri)

Although Caspar was easily defeating them, 4 of the 6 Necron he crushed reassembled themselves, and got back into the fight.

(Annette) “That meatbag leader...”

Annette quietly left the warrior’s fight, as her presence was not needed. They would keep it busy with their reanimation protocols.

It was of no matter however, once their leader was down, all that mattered was to take down the dreadnought herself.

Circling around the building, Annette stood right in front of where the entrance where the marines would have flanked her.

(Linhardt) “SERGEANT!”

SHOOTING PHASE: Turn 2 (Dimitri)

The Cryptek aimed its staff at her enemies and fired, the shots hitting Petra and Linhardt.

Ferdinand and Hubert dodged in time, but didn’t look back to see if they were okay.

Their icons on their tactical display were darkened, then disappeared entirely.

...

(Edelgard) “No!”

(Dimitri) “Hahaha! Another 2 down!”

(Claude) “Tight spot you’re in princess! What’s the strategy?”

(Edelgard) “Hm...”

...

MOVEMENT PHASE: Turn 3 (Edelgard)

(Ferdinand) “Sergeant, I got this!”

(Hubert) “Brother, what are you doing?! We need to fall back and-”

(Ferdinand) “No, I got this!”

Loading another missile into his launcher, he ran towards the Cryptek and dodged more incoming shots.

...

(Dimitri) “Edelgard, you realize moving your marines up makes them have a penalty for shooting right? Firing your missile launcher will be on a 4+, and it’s your only shot.”

(Edelgard) “It’s the only shot I need to end this game!”

...

SHOOTING PHASE: Turn 3 (Edelgard)

Ferdinand finally got into position and pulled the trigger, the missile flying straight for Annette.

...

Edelgard breathed calmly and started shaking the die in her hand, and finally let it roll.

(Dimitri) “It hit?!”

(Claude) “And Edelgard needs only a 2+ to wound, but there’s a chance you could survive! Your cryptek has 4 wounds!”

(Edelgard) “But my missile causes D6 damage!”

Rolling a 3 for the wound roll, everyone was on the edge of their seats for the total damage.

...

When the missile made contact, everything exploded violently, pushing Hubert and Ferdinand out of the building.

Hubert looked up to see if the Cryptek still stood.

All he found was bits of him everywhere.

(Ferdinand) “Mission...complete...”

...

VICTORY: Edelgard (Space Marines)

SURVIVORS: Hubert, Ferdinand, Caspar

The damage roll was a 4.

(Edelgard) “YEEEEEES! WOOHOOOOOOO!”

Edelgard high fived Claude and started pumping her fists.

(Dimitri) “I cannot believe the odds of that happening!”

(Claude) “That was one heck of a gamble you did!”

(Edelgard) “And it paid off! Looks like your overconfidence was your downfall, Dimitri!”

(Dimitri) “It would appear so Edelgard! Good game!”

The two shook hands and sat normally on their seats.

(Edelgard) “That was a fun way to pass the time, honestly!”

(Dimitri) “I would not object to another game of this! Perhaps we should introduce our classes?”

(Claude) “Ooooh yeah, after that, I want a piece of the fight too!”

(Edelgard) “Well, let’s clean this up for now.”

...

Hubert and Ferdinand slowly walked back with Caspar tailing behind, engines smoking.

(Hubert) “We will make sure their geneseed is collected. Their sacrifices are not in vain.”

(Ferdinand) “Indeed. The Xenos have paid with their life, but our battle is not over yet.”

(Caspar) “The Necrons still plague this world, and no doubt other foul forces will be here to stop us.”

(Hubert) “Let us not dwell upon for that. Come, we make our way to report to the commander.”

Nodding, the three of them walked away, reloading their weapons.

Only in death does duty end for them,

for in the grim darkness of this future:

There is only War.

#fire emblem three houses imagines #fire emblem three houses headcanons #fe3h imagines #warhammer 40k #fanfic #Edelgard von Hresvelg #hubert von vestra #dorothea arnault #petra macneary #caspar von bergliez #ferdinand von aegir #linhardt von hevring #black eagles #blue lions #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #annette fantine dominique #golden deer #claude von riegan #shitpost

29 notes · View notes

techcrunchappcom · 3 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/frankensteins-castle-is-now-have-become-a-tourist-attraction/

Frankenstein’s castle is now have become a tourist attraction

Student of records and manual Cyrille has been taking me across the Swiss metropolis on a Frankenstein go to and the sculpture of the beast at Plainpalais, the web page in which it submitted its first homicide, was too acceptable a photograph occasion to miss.

Frankenstein is a specialty however developing fascination in Geneva, energized by the bicentenary of the beast’s creation. It was in June 1816, 200 years prior, that a gathering of five youngsters from England accumulated in an estate sitting above Lake Geneva and attempted to unnerve each other with apparition stories.

‘Waking dream’

According to the current travel stories blog, one of them, 18-year-old Mary Godwin, had a “waking dream” which she related one night and mesmerized her crowd, which incorporated the English sentimental writer Lord Byron.

Mary was joined by her future spouse, the 23-year-old artist Percy Shelley, who had relinquished his first wife and youngsters to abscond with Mary. They were all free-thinking bohemian spirits – what we would call today elective creative’s.

Byron urged Mary to record her frightening story; she began promptly and called it “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.”

The best travel journal online blog stated A duplicate of that first release gazes me in the face. It’s one of the six creator’s duplicates Mary Shelley got herself and it’s brimming with comments; most would discover their way into the subsequent version.

Artistic summer

The Geneva-based Fondation Martin Bodmer, perhaps the greatest library of uncommon books on the planet is praising the bicentenary of Mary’s bad dream with a show. There are pictures, canvases, first versions, and original copies that clarify the foundation and reproduce the setting of that abstract summer.

Teacher David Spurr from the University of Geneva, the keeper of the show, fills me in.

He shows the 1816 meteorological records from Switzerland; the most extreme temperature in June fluctuated between 10-12 C (50-53 F). A manually written note says that even toward the month’s end “there was not a solitary leaf on the oak trees.”

Today Villa Diodati is exclusive; however, the delightfully manicured gardens are periodically open to general society.

Birches, pines, and lime trees ascend over the blended fragrances of rose nurseries, lavender supports, and columns of citronella hedges. Muscat plants encompass the manor slopes, as they did in Byron’s time; and somewhere out there the Jura Mountains rise delicately over Lake Geneva. The nurseries are a spot for motivation now as they were at that point.

In the estate, the youthful companions read a collection of German phantom stories by candlelight. At the point when that was finished, Byron urged them to develop shocking tales of their own.

This is the place where Mary Shelley came up trumps with her considerations of what might occur if a researcher-made life utilizing power. Tests with this new actual wonder were extremely popular at that point and individuals were especially captivated with its capacity to cause spasms.

Destroyed château

The top travel blog in usa stated In 1803 Giovanni Aldini, an Italian researcher broadly passed an electric momentum through the body of a balanced man before a welcomed crowd in London; the group thundered as his dead jaws started jerking and his inert appendages began moving.

Mary’s book was distributed to extraordinary well-known achievement, yet the primary version didn’t bear her name; the distributer accepted that deals would endure if peruses realized that it was crafted by a young lady.

Precision robots

The Shelleys cruised on the Rhine in transit back to London. It’s conceivable, yet obscure whether Mary had the opportunity to visit those two locales.

Teacher Spurr offers another alternative; he gives me a French volume by Francois Felix Nogaret, called “The Mirror of True Events” distributed in 1790.

Whatever the motivation, it’s Mary Shelley’s creation that turned into the object of our interest; she can legitimately call “Frankenstein” her own.

#best travel journal online blog #current travel stories blog #top travel blog in usa #Travel

2 notes · View notes

sinnhelmingrmoved · 4 years

Text

tma au rundown. warning. long with too many bullet points.

basics:

her name is leah lindqvist. no, this is not her birth name, not even a name in any official records, but it’s what she goes by and what the majority of characters will know her as. the only exceptions to this are those who knew her in her human life and those who have stumbled upon her in statements -- more on that later.

appears to be in her late 20s-early 30s, with an old world aristocracy look under her gothic leanings. has a propensity for elegant/historical looks in her day to day life, being rather more put together than the setting’s primary goth. notable for her bloodless complexion and bright green eyes. tall and thin.

has lived in london for the last three years, looking for an in to the institute to further her own research. changes living arrangements at around season 3 to better stalk keep an eye on our main protagonist.

originally scandinavian, specifically danish, though her accent seems strangely lax for someone who claims to have only left her motherland a few years before.

is an avatar, though her exact ‘patron’ is a question she’s been trying to answer for a long, long time. the circumstances of what she deems her ‘becoming’ seemed to involve at least 4 separate entities, only one of which could have won her.

backstory:

was born the youngest of three children in a happy copenhagen home, her father from good stock and her mother a force to be reckoned with in the community. at some point, the house of cards crumbled for the couple, and their children were shuffled off to what relatives would take them. leah, or whoever she was before, went to her father’s brother specifically.

said uncle was a proper gentleman, a pillar of the community, worldly and wealthy. he had a particular fondness for the macabre, and venerated a man known as jonah magnus and his various associates. this man about town had such dreams for his latest acquisition, for this bright and tender child who wanted the whole of the world in her hands.

leah was raised alongside but differently from odin’s four sons, groomed for something beyond her understanding. she was expected to read and recite, to observe others, and to mind her ps and qs more than her cousins ever would. as she grew towards adolescence, odin took to traveling the world with his ward, haunting locations of past or ongoing fear activity. leah was meant to observe, and to be seen.

that was a perilous thing, and got her on the wrong side of various avatars and monsters more often than she cares to remember. she has had confirmed run-ins with the spiral, the stranger, the desolation, and the dark through these ‘misadventures,’ and has had at least one brush with the lukas family in her youth that leaves open the possibility of later lonely interference.

it should be noted, however, that leah’s moments of what her uncle would dub martyrdom -- that is, to be made to witness the influence of fears on the world -- were almost invariably fatal for the subject of observation. while odin perceived her as witnessing the world and following the path of the eye, leah herself was chasing death.

the dawning realization that her life was to be given solely in service to this all-seeing eye led to brief fits of rebellion or anxiety that her uncle worked to curtail. her panic at the situation came to a head at some point in her twenties when, according to all involved, leah attacked odin’s favored son. immediately afterwards, leah was ousted from the family, abandoned to a distant property. the outside world, however, would receive the fiction that she had gone missing and would never be recovered.

left to a rarely-traveled island on the norwegian sea, stripped of the protections her uncle offered under the sheltering eye, those entities who marked her soon came begging their pound of flesh. locking herself into a small cabin on the property, she endured bouts of darkness and mist rolling over the outside world, a constant knocking or clawing at the cabin door, and an apparent loss of self. after some perceived months of this isolation, some hallucination or dream came to her in which she perceived her patron reaching out and taking all of the fear away.

once awakened, she was discovered by a passing ship and returned to the mainland, walking and hitchhiking her way back to the main family estate. she found her uncle badly aged in the months of her absence, striking when he was alone and demanding answers from him : what was her intended purpose? what did the eye have to do with this? what had she become? why did he choose her? at some point, her interrogation became too much for the old man, and he passed before she received the answers she sought. after disposing of his body, odin became another missing person’s case in the family, and leah made her way across europe for the next few years seeking the answers she had not received from the source.

has had a past attempt to breach the institute and lasted a good few days hidden among the archives. was eventually found out, however, and was made to escape. all the way to the mainland, in fact, due to whatever she uncovered about the place rattling her deeply enough to keep away from england for some years.

eventually, with all other avenues of knowledge running dry, leah was forced to return and consider that the answers she sought lie in the institute itself. to that end, she had taken up residence in a london apartment complex and tried to get in several times.

recent events:

has been an accomplice in several fear-motivated disappearances of young men in the london area. it’s an open secret among those who know her status as avatar that she makes offerings for her ‘partner’ out of human sacrifices.

tried to infiltrate the institute and got far enough to nearly get eaten by worms in season one, saved only by the timely intervention of her partner. none of the actual archival staff are aware of said event until she actively brings it up.

has developed a growing fascination with the latest archivist, including reaching out to him in season 3 once he’s on the run.

eventually offers him her statement in exchange for a chance to delve the archives resources for the explanations she’s been without. becomes an occasional feature from there on until she once again flees into the night after a brush with its master.

spoilers:

has been completely divorced from the concept of time as it flows for others. many of the discrepancies about her story as she tells it can be explained through this: her months abandoned on the island actually took place over a number of years, her time spent combing through the european continent took more than a decade, and she can no longer remember her birth year because it does not align to her perceptions of self. even those she knew in humanity, such as gerry or peter, register as oddities for having aged in accordance with real time rather than her own.

her patron is the end, who had indelibly marked her at some point in her youth and seems to have intervened and claimed her once she was in serious danger. her exact role as an avatar of this fear is muddled by her decades of self-serving pursuit of knowledge rather than living up to whatever she was meant to do.

odin really stumbled into getting an intended avatar of the eye marked by different fears. it was not his intention, but rather a result of caretaker negligence in trying to make a witness of the girl. he never expected that it would have meant something in the grand scheme of things.

despite appearing all of 32 at most, leah was already in her twenties by the 90s. she’s actually in her 50s though her general issues with time mean she has not realized this fact and her status as an avatar has left her pretty ageless.

relationships:

alliance/partnership/friendship with sittimoranimiinterfectorem‘s michael. michael was the first of her kind leah met, and one she looked up to as a potential font of answers. instead, michael has been toying with her for years, as a liar ought to. outsiders can infer a variety of potential takes on the relationship, as outlined here.

alliance/mentorship/unrequited feelings with sittimoranimiinterfectorem’s jon. leah’s initial trepidation in approaching the new archivist soon turned to a soft spot for this man the world was going to eat alive. she realizes he is walking down the same path her uncle forced her down, and has taken on a slightly protective and wise elder role over him. that said, she has also has a fancy for him, attracted to his dark eyes and devotion to his humanity.

former companion/occasional ally of bookburnt‘s gerry. the two crossed paths every once in a blue moon during the years, given odin and mary were associated with one another in their travels and overlapping ideals. leah tried to take on a supportive role for the teen, sometimes sending gifts, while gerry in turn tended to cut loose with someone who got it. in adulthood, the two sometimes ran into one another in the weird world in which they inhabited, though leah had no idea this man was the same boy she had tried to bond with years before.

potential acolyte/student of medisinals‘s blackwell. we’re still plotting it out but the two have each other’s acquaintance as avatars of the end.

relevant statements:

statement of frida hoarr, concerning the disappearance and life of her husband odin. first mention of the hoarr family and leah’s original identity. (2001)

statement of olaf agner, concerning his time working for the hoarr family in north zealand. a less rose colored view of odin’s ‘visionary’ work and his 'creepy’ niece. (1987)

miscellany statements referencing a one eyed man and dark-haired girl/young woman at or around the scene of various incidents involving the fears across europe. sometimes references the girl in question reaching out to those that are marked. (80s-90s)

statement of torsten hoarr, concerning the personal records of his father and the disappearance of his cousin. (2007)

reference to leah’s invasion of the institute archives in an incidental discussion with michael shelley about his having been deceived into allowing a certain young woman into the archives (2009)

miscellany statements establishing odin as a sort of chessmaster invariably working with the eye before, during, and after leah’s part in his life. (60s-2001)

statement of james berger on the subject of his friend ethan hamilton going missing. first clear picture of leah and michael working in tandem. (2014)

statement of leah lindqvist concerning her personal history and... ‘becoming.’ statement recorded direct from subject. (2017)

#it is knowing it is knowing [V: TMA]#they can't get into my head [HEADCANON]

7 notes · View notes

torendheavenandearth · 4 years

Text

2.6

“‘Great Guro,’ asked the Student to Munsad Buralakaw, Civilization Diwata. ‘Pray tell, and let the ancestors hear: for what purpose do we suffer? For what purpose do we let our fellow men take advantage of us?’

‘Violence for violence’s sake,’ replied Munsad Buralakaw. ‘Man is the only soul capable of it. To inflict evil because they want evil. To inflict good because they want good. Higher concepts become swords, ideals become blades. Man is both divine and infernal, God between the fingertips of Good and Evil, neutrality compromised. For this reason, suffering cannot end.’

‘So, Great Guro, do you say that suffering cannot be removed?’

‘To remove suffering is to remove Man.’

‘Then why must Man persist, if all things are to suffer? Would it not be a greater good to simply end suffering by ending man?’

‘Nay, hangal,’ said Munsad Buralakaw. ‘Persist to ease the suffering of others. Because to remove Man is to remove goodness and joy and hope and love.’” - From The Lost Teachings of the Forgotten Diwata.

▼

Upon that bloody throne, they kissed, short and sweet. “Quick! Before more Guwardya Sibil arrive,” said Lulu, breathlessly. They rushed into the busted open door but--

--Lulu was gone. It was only Qayin, again. It always ends with just me, she thought to herself.

Qayin didn’t even go into the door. She was there again, in that door frame, in that liminal space between within and without. The doors bring me to places… thinks Ang Nilapastangan. Do I dare…?

She was already halfway in. If she were to back out now, then it would be a horrible waste of life, now wouldn’t it?

With a breath, Qayin stepped through, and she was there.

She was there at the end of all things.

Again.

▼

She didn’t think she could do it. She didn’t think she could do it all over again, but there she was.

It’s not fair, Ang Nilapastangan said to herself, her words echoing into white void. She’d come to terms with this. She’d accepted this part of her. She’d accepted that this had happened, that all of this was in the past, it was part of who she was, it was part of her name, it was part of the broken sword that formed her soul.

Why then, was she still so scared? Why then was she still so unsure? Why, then, was she still so angry? Why was she still filled with regret?

Remember what happened here, Qayin, Ang Nilapastangan spoke to her past, but her past does not listen, for the past is not the present and never will be. Always ever-fading memories, stuck in that twilight dream of never-happened and must-have-happened.

Qayin stepped forward. She was in the middle of a sea. A sea that reflected only white sky. And there, in front of her, was God.

Demonyong Bakulaw was in his Dimunyu form. He had revealed to them that he was not simply a demon or a sitan, but he was a Dimunyu, one of the original satan-kings that sided with SANLIBUTAN in his rebellion against his grandfather, MAYKAPAL, the BATALA. In his Dimunyu form, his corpus melted away and vomited a burning serpent-gorilla, with seven-hundred and seven hands, wielding weapons half the length of the sky. His face was that of a gorilla’s but he sported a mane like a lion and whiskers of a dragon. With his sky-rending weapons he faced off against God, this God being DYOSVETA, God the Father.

He was not winning, but his bravado was enough. “I’ve faced off against the Creator!” Demonyong Bakulaw roared. “I am YAWANG BAKULAW DAOTAN, and you will fall by my rebellion!”

In that liminal space, that non-existent yet everpresent space of sea-sky, the demon ape faced off against God the Father. DYOSVETA’s countenance was that of a true demon sky god: a great humanoid lion, with skin of marble clouds, and lightning running down the length of his body. His wings numbered in infinities, and his face was a sculpted marble bearded figure in a perpetual scowl. He had a crown of fire and light, which had been impossibly frozen into a perfect shape, one that resembled a king’s crown and or a sword impaled upon his head.

He wore an armor of angels, and his sword was demonkind melted together in an ever-wailing mass, and was called ATONEMENT. His shield was the sternums of men sewn together, with their still-beating hearts turned into embellishments, turned into roses, and it was called MERCY.

“I come unto you with a form you may decipher with your misunderstanding eyes,” said DYOSVETA. “Now kneel before the Sky.”

Lulu was spent. Her single golden-agimat arm was falling apart, the burning red lights running up its length fading in glow. Her eyepatch had been cut, revealing her missing eye. Qayin knelt next to her, holding her by her shoulders. “Lulu! We have to go!”

“No, Qayin! Remember what we said!” She grasped Qayin’s hand, which was wielding the Soul Eater. “Use it. Use my Gahum.”

Qayin knew what that meant, and she shook her head. “No. Lulu, I can’t.”

“You can. You have to. Become the winner of the Hagdanan, Yinnie. Please.”

Qayin opened her mouth to say something, but her throat tightened up, and she couldn’t choke the words out of her mouth. She was crying, and her tears were blood. “I can’t.” When she said it, it was weak, fractured, broken. Non-words.

“You can,” said Lulu, and her conviction was true.

Demonyong Bakulaw skidded onto his knees and caught the fierce sword strike of DYOSVETA with his arms. His soulstuff, his Kalag, was failing, dissipating, but his scowl never left. “Never let your anger for God fade,” he would always say.

“Lulu--”

Lulu reached up and kissed Qayin wholly in her mouth. A full kiss. A desperate kiss. A final kiss.

And then, as she did so many times before, she guided Qayin’s hand. “I love you,” said Lulu, and they both wept crimson.

Qayin, only with the help of Lulu's own hand, impaled the tamawo woman's chest. “I love you,” replied Qayin, but she couldn’t say the words, so she only mouthed them. Lulu crumbled with her fingers trailing Qayin’s cheeks, trying to wipe away her tears one last time.

Lulu failed, of course, and her hand simply fell to the side. She fell limp.

But in her death, the Soul Eater grew more powerful. The Soul Eater was, in truth, a simple sword. It had the shape of a kampilan, with the difference being the eye that grew at the pommel, held in place by the Bakunawa jaw that was kept open. It also had veins running up the length of its blade, as if it were alive, but it was not.

The blade felt heavy in Qayin’s hands as she rose to her feet, staring at the now dead Lulu. Who thought her final resting place would be here, in the end of all things?

Qayin turned around and readied to face God, DYOSVETA, the Father.

When she turned around, DYOSVETA’s face was there, and his sword was ready. Demonyong Bakulaw was dead, nothing but a lump of meat and Kalag upon the sea-sky. DYOSVETA swung his sword, but Qayin parried it away in the heat of battle. She could only see red. She broke DYOSVETA’s ATONEMENT.

She became the Swordbreaker. And with that, Qayin raised her blade and brought it down.

God was Cut.

But without another word, DYOSVETA summoned BLASPHEMER, spear made up of coagulated darkness and the sound of weeping rebellious angels being tortured for eternity. In a space quicker than an instant, the BLASPHEMER was through Qayin’s skull.

“Hesitation leads to death,” spoke DYOSVETA, and Qayin was BLASPHEMED, again and again, until she was thrown out of the End of All Things and left to die upon the wet ground of a random barangay in the middle of the Archipelago.

Her head was punctured, riddled by god-holes, and for her heresy she was laid down onto the muddy ground, never to reach the heights that she did. She failed her friends. She failed Bakulaw. She failed Lulu. She failed herself. She thought she was ready, she thought that surely, this time, she would be able to deal some kind of blow against the Tyrant of Crimson Sky, but no. She failed, she died, and she was going to lie down there, upon the mud ground, as the rain began to patter.

A man and his wife walked up to her and carried her into their house. They were talking, Qayin knew, but she didn’t know what they were saying. Her memory was hazy, her hearing blurred and unfocused.

All she remembered was that, as they were mending the wounds that they could--and called for a mananambal to heal the rest (the God-driven spikes into her head, the hatred of god lashed across her back)--they asked for her name, and she responded: “Ang Nilapastangan.”

Apparently, her story had already begun spreading from there. From the people that saw her--watched her--literally descend from heaven like a hated lightning bolt. When it got out that her name was Ang Nilapastangan, she was cemented upon the fabric of the universe. She became one of the Karanduun, one of the few that the masses and the oppressed and the countryside would tell stories about in their darkest nights.

“Swordbreaker,” they whispered, and deviled-spirits carried their words to the next town, to the next barangay, to Biringan, to the villages and hamlets of the Empire. “The Blasphemed: Ang Nilapastangan. She Who Broke God’s Sword.”

▼

Like a gasp, Ang Nilapastangan is hurled back into the hallway. The blue figure is closer now. Just a door away. A room away. The Pistang Gatusan nga Gabi’i to her left is ending. The greatest of the spirits, the Philippine dragons: crocodiles that swim in the clouds as if the sky was a river, are already making their way through the parade. The crocodiles are always the last, and these giant ones burn with the colors of the four primary elements: of fire, water, earth, and air. The Ninuno of the World.

Ang Nilapastangan turns back to the blue figure, and it’s in front of her. A gaping maw, jaw ripped open, mouth revealing not a throat but another face within it. The face of a smiling woman, eyes blackened with ash poured into her sockets. Blood drips from her lips. “Qayin?” Her tongue seems to savor the word, the secret name of Ang Nilapastangan.

“Yawa,” says Ang Nilapastangan. “Leave me now. I have made my peace with who I was, who I am. You have no power over me.”

The blue figure’s sprouts spider legs, tipped with razor sharp blades and each one with a long proboscis tongue extending from invisible compartments. Her wings sprout from behind her, webbed with blackness. “What makes you think I am Yawa?” and the woman laughed.

Ang Nilapastangan’s eyes narrow, just for an instant, and then she smirks. “Ah, you must forgive me. Sometimes I forget my own stupidity. If you wanted my Gahum, Asuwang, then perhaps you should’ve just asked.”

“Hm?”

“Here.” And Ang Nilapastangan raises her hand, filling it with contained pastel power. The technique she learned from Lulu.

I will never use blades again, thinks Ang Nilapastangan. Like Lulu, I will rend heaven and earth with my own two hands.

With a single punch, she punches the Asuwang away, sending her flurrying back through the endless hallway that they are in. Pastel light streaks from her fist and paints the walls white. The Asuwang, however, lands on the ground and then skitters onto its spider-blade legs.

Ang Nilapastangan raises an eyebrow.

The Asuwang flings itself forward, bladelegs ready to cut, but Ang Nilapastangan steps into the lunge--some of the blades cut into her skin--and grabs the Asuwang’s body, which is now shaped more or less like a serpent-centipede. Ang Nilapastangan whirls around, dragging the Asuwang’s head across the pastel painted wall, and then flings her out of the window.

Ang Nilapastangan’s Gahum ignites as she flings her, and the glass windows shatters as the Asuwang’s body slams against it. The Asuwang flies across forestry, over to where the Pistang Gatos nga Gabi’i is happening.

Ang Nilapastangan turns around and kicks a door down. A normal room. She kicks another one down and there! A staircase. She runs down it, stopping for nothing. It’s a long staircase, much longer than it had any logic being, and she knows that this is not the city hall but the illusionary labyrinth of a madman demon.

As Ang Nilapastangan steps on a step halfway down, the Asuwang explodes into the scene and slams against the staircase and begins scuttling down the steps. Below, a pile of corpses writhing and eating each other grows, rises, and stops Ang Nilapastangan from reaching the ground.

Ang Nilapastangan leaps, bringing her fist up and performing that pastel technique again, this time infused with her most violent Gahum.

In the air, she throws her fist down.

Her Gahum tears through the staircase, obliterating it completely, and the pastel power slams against the pile of corpses, flattening them and sending them flying against the walls. Ang Nilapastangan uses this opportunity to use the midair amalanhig to buffet her fall down to the ground.

Ang Nilapastangan throws the battered amalanhig away from her and stands.

The Asuwang slams down to the ground behind her.

Before Ang Nilapastangan is an opening that led to the open doors of the lobby. There she ses that past the doors of the lobby there’s nothing but more hallway.

“Foolish girl!” screams the Asuwang, and Ang Nilapastangan tilts her head back in both exhaustion and boredom. “You think you can get out? This entire town hall has been given to me by Padre Sangalang to become my fantasy! My reality! You cannot escape for as long as my nightmare-proboscis seeps into your soul!”

Ang Nilapastangan turns. Her punch made a makeshift circular arena for them: flanked and walled off by the mass of writhing corpses and body parts. There, before her, blade-legs clinking against the stone floor, is the Asuwang woman, seemingly in her fully manifested diyablo form: a serpentine centipede, although the little legs are little blades, useless for moving. Eight spider legs, two of them for piercing, all of them made of demon-swords. Her face is, in truth, a shield-mask that hides her true face within her maw. A veil of hair, beautiful and silky, flutters about her as if she’s underwater, and her eleven wings sprout from behind her. The wings seem to be grafted on, since they grow and overwhelm her left side like a tumor.

“Face me, Karanduun!” shrieks the woman. “I am Kinalimutang Birhen ng Walang Hanggang Kasakiman, the Fantasy Arachne Demon, and you will know my name as I eat yours!” She surges forward, four spider blade-legs acting like hydraulic presses. In the next instant she is in the air above Ang Nilapastangan.

Ang Nilapastangan, all this time, has been keeping her Gahum in check. If she didn’t, they’d find her. She’d be a bonfire in the middle of the forest, with night-demons watching all about.

But if she wants to get out of this alive, she has to bring out her Gahum. This is potentially a powerful asuwang, perhaps a Gabunan, an elder, but she isn’t sure. If she holds back, she can die, and with her death will be the beginning of the end.

She takes the attack head on, choosing to let her Gahum burn. Her soul a furnace, she catches Birhen’s lunge and digs her heels to the ground. She is driven back a good few feet from the force of impact, but she manages to catch the attack. Ang Nilapastangan slams the Birhen down to the ground, making sure her faceshield cracks against the stone. The Birhen shrieks, and swings wildly with her spider blade-legs, and Ang Nilapastangan has to leap back to avoid the swings.

Not wild swings, Ang Nilapastangan understands. Those are calculated swings, trying to lop her head and feet off.

With the pressure off of the Birhen, she rises to her feet and, using her wings, takes to the air. Ang Nilapastangan smirks: no way can she be that aerodynamic with that body.

Of course, that thought is immediately broken when the Birhen begins gliding around like a dragon in water, swooping down and cutting with her bladelegs. Ang Nilapastangan is caught by one. It cuts through her skin like a hot knife upon clay. She curses and evades the rest of the attacks.

“For a Karanduun, you are not living up to your reputation!” shrieks the Birhen, flying into a graceful spiral in the air and then turning to face her, coiling her serpent-centipede body.

But, Ang Nilapastangan notices, her mask-shield is cracked, and she smirks.

She leaps up just as the Birhen strikes forward, like lightning. Ang Nilapastangan catches the two blade-legs pointed at her like spears, lifts her feet, and then slams them up against the Birhen’s mask shield.

The Birhen screams. The crack spiderwebs, but it does not shatter. Not yet.

The Birhen flails around, flinging Ang Nilapastangan against the wall. She flips and then slams feet first against it. The corpses beneath her writhe, are crushed by some aftershock.

“You cannot kill me, fool!” yells the Birhen, spiralling in the air again and then launching black javelins at Ang Nilapastangan. Ang Nilapastangan turns to one side and then sprints. The black javelins impale the wall in her wake. Ang Nilapastangan’s every stride is burning crimson as she moves diagonally across the wall, moving to a spot higher than the Birhen.

A black javelin bites at Ang Nilapastangan’s ankle, but it’s negated by a sudden flash of bright red light. No beats missed: Ang Nilapastangan launches herself off the wall, turning into a red lightning bolt heading straight for the Birhen. The Birhen, apparently, sees it coming: she twists her entire body around to avoid the lunge, catches Ang Nilapastangan’s body with her serpent-centipede body, and then flings her down to the ground.

Ang Nilapastangan isn’t going to lie: She felt that one.

She pushes herself off of the ground, just as four javelins impale her hands and feet, pinning her to the ground. Ang Nilapastangan winces, and blood runs down her wounds. She shakes her head and flexes her muscles once, and the javelins shatter.

She pushes herself up again, but as she does, another javelin is sent through her back. Blood splashes up, red blossoming. Ang Nilapastangan doesn’t let herself fall to the ground. She keeps her body off the ground.

And then a great force sends the black javelin down even more, opening her wounds. The Birhen has turned into a modest devotee, a woman with a conservative skirt and with a tapis over that, with a butterfly-sleeved blouse, and a panuelo on her head. Her eyes and hair glow azure, even as her face is a placid mask.

She’s standing on top of the black javelin, driving it deeper.

“Oh, you’re disappointing,” she says, in an infruriatingly patronizing tone.

Ang Nilapastangan bursts.

Inhibitors released. She has to. She knows that if she doesn’t, her sheer luck isn’t going to be enough to save her. She has to bring back the things she’s learned, the skills she’s hidden away deep in the recesses of her soul when she inhibited her Gahum.

But not the weapons that she’s accumulated. Never the weapons.

Karanduun are known to be prone to great shows of brilliance, their faces and skin burning like the sun, their veins like magma. Their hair is like the sky. It was the highest form of visual expression: becoming nature.

Ang Nilapastangan becomes Ang Nilapastangan, the Swordbreaker, the Crimson Bodhisattva Biraddali. Her hair turns into wings, her horns shatter and form into a halo of power. Her eyes burn bright magenta, and her skin turns into the sun-fire hot skin of a demon, liquid steel.

With another flex of her body, she blows the Birhen away. The Birhen slams against the wall.

The javelin is gone now. Ang Nilapastangan is standing now. She tilts her head back and stares at the Birhen.

The Birhen, eyes wide, takes to the air and then shapeshifts back into her serpent-centipede form, her body contracting and then unfolding like cloth thrown to the wind.

Before she can finish her transformation, Ang Nilapastangan is there, above her, fist sent straight down. “Sinagsibat!” Ang Nilapastangan announces, as her fist burns violently with the pastel brush strokes, melting together to create a white-red spear of energy, which she launches straight through the still-shapeshifting Birhen.

The spear-fist sears through some of the newly formed legs of the unfolding cloth. When the Birhen completes her shapeshifting, she has lost 3 of her legs, and 3 of her wings.

She screams. She attacks without abandon now: the Birhen assaults Ang Nilapastangan with her blade-legs. “Spider Rips the Web!”

Ang Nilapastangan parries every attack without a single cut. She catches the last blade leg, turns in the air, and then flings the Birhen straight to the ground. The ground shatters, the debris turns into strands of illusory matter.

It’s breaking apart, Ang Nilapastangan thinks. She knows the truth about this place, however. Some kind of illusory labyrinth, formed by powerful Asuwang sorcery. In the back of her mind, Ang Nilapastangan congratulates the Birhen for putting up such a convincing fever dream. That would mean that the Birhen is truly an adept Asuwang, with many years upon her back.

Unfortunately, it’s time for it to end.

She bends Gahum and impossibly pushes against air, sending her streaking straight down into the earth where the Birhen has fallen. Her fist slams against the Birhen’s now exposed head-tongue, sending a shockwave rattling bones.

Debris and dust kick up as if someone had dropped a cannonball into water. When the dust clears, Ang Nilapastangan is gripping the Birhen’s neck. A vise grip, one that no being in Sansinukob can remove.

However when the dust clears, Ang Nilapastangan sees that it’s not the Birhen she’s strangling with a single, Gahum-burning hand, but Lulu. Her tears are blood, her face that immaculate white again. Her single eye blinking red.

“Q-Qayin…” her breath is ragged. She’s dying again. She’s dying again.

She’s dying again.

Ang Nilapastangan’s grip faltered.

Return to the Table of Contents.

#karanduun #torendheavenandearth #outbreak #2.6 #writing #webnovel

2 notes · View notes

inspired-by-the-music · 4 years

Text

Chapter 2: An Arrangement

Ae-Young’s POV

Before I ever left for college, even before my brother, Heechul, enrolled in law school, Dad insisted upon having a weekly family dinner. Ever since Mom left— which happened almost before I could remember— Dad craved some kind of intimacy with us that he could barely fit into his busy work schedule. So it didn’t matter that I was physically, emotionally, spiritually exhausted from the journey home— I couldn’t skip dinner in favor of a nap.

Heechul said unsympathetically, “You should have taken me up on my offer to drive you home after the graduation ceremony.”

I don’t know what prompted him to speak to me. One minute, I had been drifting to sleep upright in my chair and likely drooling onto the white lace placemat; the next, I had to react to my brother’s bug-eyed stare.

“As if I’d even consider getting into a car with you after that drunken speech you gave at dinner.” I stretched as I talked.

“Yah!” He kicked me under the table. “Don’t call my heartfelt congratulations drunken!” When I didn’t apologize, he added, “Besides, that night was the first time I drank in my whole life.”

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t bite back laughter as he chugged a dark red wine he yanked out of Dad’s cooler shortly after arriving. “I see. So now you can’t imagine life without—”

He interrupted to complain. “Don’t you think Dad could be bothered to show up on time? He schedules these dinners, and he’s always the last one here.”

Yes— as fatigue washed over me, I wished Dad would hurry so I could faceplant into bed ASAP— but I didn’t like to complain about him. Heechul wouldn’t want to hear me explain what he already knew (that Dad likely got caught up in something important at the firm and was now probably stuck in downtown traffic) — so I decided to shrug and scroll through Instagram.

Just as Heechul opened his mouth to tease me for being a Daddy’s Girl, Dad came through the front door. As he took his hat and coat off and walked them and his briefcase to his study, he called, “Sorry I’m late— I’ve told you two countless times the stresses of running the most successful Korean law firm— Don’t worry, I’ll just come to eat in my work clothes— Don’t want to keep you waiting any longer— Ae-Young—”

As he stepped into the dining room, I rose, assuming that he intended to greet me even though I saw him just a week ago for the graduation. He swiftly concluded, “Put your phone away— No electronics at the table.”

Ignoring Heechul’s giggles, which were drowned by another gulp of stolen wine, I tucked my phone into my pocket and promised, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

Heechul’s amusement at my scolding quickly lost to his all-consuming craving for attention. As Dad settled into the seat at the head of the mahogany table too large for three, Heechul said, “Don’t be too hard on our little graduate. She was just gonna perform a little welfare check on you— you know, to make sure you didn’t fall in the office like old folks sometimes do. We would’ve come to help if you couldn’t get up.”

Dad replied, eyes narrowing in either annoyance, fondness, or a combination of the two, “You joke about my age, Son, without realizing that as I mature, you do too. Or at least your body does.”

While I howled at dad’s implication that Heechul was man-child, while Heechul struggled to retort for the first time in his life, the chef Dad hired soon after Mom left wordlessly dropped off some kind of seafood. After piling some onto my plate, I picked at it curiously. I wasn’t picky; I was just the opposite, actually. I couldn’t recognize even my favorite dish to save my life, and I knew better than to ask the chef. He would mistake my innocent question for criticism. Whatever was on my plate, I decided, was delicious as soon as it touched my tongue.

“Ae-Young,” Dad called. I looked at him and chewed my mouthful as fast as I could. “Why did you take so long to get home?”

I reddened at the reminder that I had graduated a week ago. I hadn’t been ready to abandon my independence. The day after the ceremony, I rejected separate offers from Dad and Heechul to be driven home and focused instead on promoting myself around town in the hope of scoring a job so I could afford an apartment in the city. Jobs for a recently graduated photography student were slimmer than I allowed myself to dream.

It wasn’t the embarrassment of unemployment that struck me silent. Dad would be proud to hear how I tried, regardless of the results. He would never admit it, but learning that I didn’t want to come home would hurt his feelings. He was a strong man— tall and broad with a strong jaw and permanently arched eyebrows. I always imagined that the criminals he prosecuted trembled at his stern appearance before he ever got to use his sharpened wit against them. So why did I treat him so delicately, as if he would break from something I said?

I had to say something, though. He was blinking at me expectantly. “I was busy, um, tying up loose ends.”

Kindly, as if merely interested in how I chose to spend my week, Dad asked, “What loose ends?”

Before I could answer that I had been helping my best friend, Key, move into a new apartment— which was a half-truth— Heechul answered, “Don’t you know, Dad? That’s a part of how young people talk today. It’s code.”

“Code?” Dad pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. Swallowing some of the fish, he looked and Heechul and questioned, “Code for what?”

I knew Heechul was just running his mouth and that it wouldn’t lead anywhere that interesting, but I cut my eyes at him and repeated, “Yeah. Code for what?”

“Obviously, Dad,” Heechul pointed at me as he accused, “Ae-Young was breaking off some university fling, but not after a few nights of passionate—”

I cut him off by flicking some of my fish— shrimp, maybe— at him and hissing, “Shut up! You’re so gross!”

Dad started with a tired, “Kids, please,” and he ended with an only slightly playful, “You better have broken up with your little fling, Ae-Young.”

Those days, I was too sensitive about my complete lack of romantic life. Defensively, I argued, “There was no fling, Heechul is just stupid. And if there was a fling, why should we have to break up just because I graduated?”

“Yeesh.” Heechul stabbed at his food, grumbling, “What a drama queen.”

Perhaps sensing that my temper was flaring, Dad said calmly, “Heechul— it’s about that time in the evening where I ask you to drink quietly while I discuss serious matters with your sister.”

I knew Heechul thought Dad liked me better. Even now that we were both adults— I was 22 and Heechul was 36— Dad couldn’t decide whether to treat us like the children he knew or adults we were. The inconsistency didn’t bother me so much because I loved Dad as the only parent I had ever really known. When Dad would dismiss Heechul’s silly comments, he would whisper something like, ‘Mom would never.’

He didn’t do that anymore. He took a long sip of his wine and avoided my gaze.

“I’ve been thinking—” Dad said to me as I flinched out of my memories. “It’s about time you get married.”

Heechul spat out his wine in a spray across the table and spoke when I was speechless. “Well, that’s sudden. Don’t you think she’s too young for that? I mean, I’m not even married yet!”

“We can’t expect Ae-Young to wait until miracles happen to get on with her life,” Dad responded, and Heechul shrank.

Heechul’s outburst empowered me to say, “Look, Dad, I’ll be on the prowl for a husband if it’s so important to you, but I’m a little more invested in finding a job—”

“You already have a job,” Dad replied simply. “Now that you’re home and Mrs. Choi retired, you can be my secretary.”

Before I could filter my response, I said, “No— I mean a real job.” Thankfully, he wasn’t offended; his brow furrowed in confusion, though, so I said, “I want a job as a photographer. I majored in photography, remember?”

“Yes, I remember.” He shifted slightly in his seat and straightened his tie. “I don’t know much about that field; the law firm has been in the family for generations, and nobody strayed until—” He subconsciously looked at Heechul, whose gaze hardened, but he clarified, “I don’t blame either of you for pursuing your dreams. Your happiness will always be my primary concern— and that goes for both of you.”

He wasn’t satisfied to continue his speech until Heechul and I swore that we knew that. Then, he told me, “I know everything you dream of will come true. If it doesn’t, it won’t be for a lack of effort, and you’ll still have a family who will take care of you. But I won’t always be around to—”

I shook my head. It was impossible to imagine a world without Dad. Just the thought sickened me, so I begged, “Don’t talk like that.”

He strictly maintained, “It’s the truth, Ae-Young. As your brother reminds me weekly, I’m not getting any younger—”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Heechul interjected, but Dad didn’t acknowledge him.

“— And what will happen to you two? You can’t inherit the firm since you’re not lawyers. Then what about your children? What will their futures be?” He reached for my hand, but he was too far away as he swore, “I’m not just trying to marry you off to any person in search of a wife. And if my selection is too terrible, I’ll call the whole thing off.”

Simultaneously, Heechul and I shrieked, “You already chose someone?” and destroyed the diplomatic environment our father tried to create.

“Typical,” Heechul seethed and slammed his glass down. “If you were gonna set one of us up, why couldn’t it be me? I’m the firstborn, I haven’t had a girlfriend in, like, six months, my standards are a hell of a lot lower than Miss Graduate’s—”

“You went to undergraduate school too, you moron! We’ve received the same amount of education—”

“Children, please!” Dad never rose his voice, so Heechul and I instantly hushed. “If I knew anybody you liked, Heechul, you naturally would have been my choice for the arranged marriage. You are older and therefore may feel entitled to own the firm—”

Smirking, Heechul disagreed. “No, I just want a hot lawyer wife.”

Dad and I had learned a necessary skill: knowing when to go deaf to Heechul. He continued, “And I worried that at your age, you wouldn’t appreciate your father telling you what to do about something so. . . intimate.”

Heechul didn’t especially appreciate parental guidance at any age, so Dad was right to worry about that. How long has he been thinking about this? I frowned. And why is he only bringing up now?

“So you chose a husband for Ae-Young just because she’s more obedient?”

Dad wouldn’t release me from his stare as he said, “I don’t take this lightly— asking you to abandon your freedom so I can breathe easy knowing that you will be taken care of when I’m gone. You’ve always been a free spirit. I could see you dancing barefoot in the garden from my study when you were just a little girl. Do you remember that?”

I remembered dancing in the garden, but I never knew he watched me. I nodded quietly.

He said, “I’m not being completely selfish. I never would have brought his up if I didn’t know the perfect person to protect you—”

Heechul impatiently demanded, “Who is it?”

Dad answered, “Kyuhyun.”

I didn’t get to prepare myself— I didn’t even fully wrap my mind around Dad’s speech— I didn’t know what to say other than “Kyuhyun?”

Heechul relaxed in his seat as if he had been truly worried and the name of that family friend dispelled those worries. “That’s not so bad, Ae-Young. You’ve always liked him.”

My heart was beating me to death. I couldn’t hear as I countered, “I can’t marry Kyuhyun. I haven’t seen him in the last four years— and now our first conversation has to be about this? I can’t believe you asked him to marry me!”

“Now, isn’t four years a bit of a dramatization?” Dad shook his head, disbelieving. “You must have seen him at the Christmas parties!” “For some reason, Dad,” Heechul winked, “I think we should trust Ae-Young. She would remember the last time she saw Kyuhyun.”

My heart thundered at Heechul’s teasing. “Why would you ever ask him to marry me?” I asked again; I stood as if that would make the question impossible to ignore.

I expected another speech about how Kyuhyun was the best lawyer at the firm, how he was unfailingly honest and morally upright in every sense, how he had always been a great young man, how he had the advantage of being the son of Dad’s lifelong best friend—

I expected to hear him sing Kyuhyun’s praises as he had done my entire life. Instead, he answered softly, “I know you loved him.”

My affection for Kyuhyun existed since the moment we met— which, I’ve been told, occurred a few days after I was first born— and it resided in the innermost part of my heart, in a place I hadn’t visited in years. To be taken there so forcibly and with no warning was overwhelming. Humiliating. I felt naked, exposed, and embarrassed that I was overreacting.

Because my feet were frozen numb, I slid back into my chair and stared blankly at my half-cleared plate.

Dad’s shoulders fell, and Heechul didn’t say anything.

“I thought you would be happy with him. Did I misunderstand the time you cried to me after the New Years’ party?”

Dad was referring to something that happened when I was a teenager. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but I have never forgotten the red-hot scalding shock when I found Kyuhyun’s longtime girlfriend kissing some stranger on the balcony. I never wanted to tell anyone what I had seen, but the words tumbled out of my mouth.

“Well, that’s how these things go sometimes, I’m afraid,” he tried to teach me. He ran a thumb along his empty ring ringer the way he always did when he thought of Mom. “Passion drives people to do hurtful things. Even passionate love can leave scars.”

I refused to accept it. “Nobody should hurt him like that. He deserves everything good in the world. And what do I do now? Do I have to tell him? Do I have to break his heart when that’s the last thing I want to do?”

“These things always come out in the end,” Dad claimed as he pulled me into his side. “The truth always comes to light, whether good or bad.”

I never told Heechul, and he seemed to know better than to ask. “No,” I admitted, “You didn’t misunderstand. But that was so long ago, Dad. Who knows what has changed?”

“Who knows?” Dad shrugged. Sagely, the thought aloud, “I think if you loved somebody once— and I mean true admiration, not childish infatuations— you will love them always.”

Then Heechul, who had been quiet for too long, asserted his presence once more. “Wait a minute. Isn’t Kyuhyun, like, way older than Ae-Young?”

Without thinking, I answered, “He’s 10 years my senior.”

“I don’t think that matters,” Dad said. Glancing at me, he added, “I understand that like most young women, you want a romance that makes you swoon, but there are many kinds of forever loves in this world. I want that happiness for you— none of the temporary pleasures and scars.”

Dad took advantage of mine and Heechul’s silence as we considered his wisdom to say, “I hope you both adjust to this idea by next Friday evening because Kyuhyun will be joining us for dinner.”

I decided immediately that I would have to reunite with Kyuhyun before then. Seeing him for the first time four years— as my fiancé— with Heechul and Dad as an audience sounded like a nightmare.

The only way I knew to contact him was to call his office on Monday morning. Of course, I was struck by the complete lack of professionalism on my part, but I didn’t actually regret dialing the number until his assistant answered.

I forget his greeting. All I remember is the terror that seized my body when he asked, “May I receive your name and reason for calling Cho Kyuhyun’s office?”

I stuttered, “I— um— my name is Kim Ae-Young.” I knew he wouldn’t recognize me as the firm owner’s daughter. Even if he did, that wouldn’t explain why I was calling Kyuhyun’s office. There was no option except to breathe deeply and adapt to the situation. “I’m Kyuhyun’s fiancé, and I’m calling to discuss an, uh, urgent personal matter.”

There was a three-minute pause before he said, “Okay. I’ll connect you.”

10 notes · View notes

tinytendril · 5 years

Text

we stayed up all night (to watch the sunrise) | A High School!Robbaery AU

Summary | Robb enlists Margaery’s help, by pretending to be his girlfriend for the end of year ball in order to make Jeyne jealous. At some point, they’ll have to convince themselves it’s all just an act.

AN | mostly inspired by the wonderful ramblings of this small yet fantastic fandom. Also, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. Robb as the avid poetry-writing romantic (duh), and Margaery as the shamelessly popular it-girl. Also, who doesn’t love a good fake-boyfriend/fake-girlfriend trope!? Allllso, an excellent song to go with this fic.

‘She was a rose in the hands of a blind man who could only feel her thorns,’ Robb finishes, looking at her imploringly. Any passerby, swaying in time to the overhead music as they are, would assume that he was reciting poetry for her.

She rolls her eyes, but does so with unmistakable amusement.

‘Stark…’ Her lips, twisting upward into her habitual smirk, eventually gives way to her laughing.

Everything Margaery expresses makes anyone encounter her feel like they’re the cause of her infectious laughter, easing them into feeling like she’s let them in on an inside joke. She’s fast friends with what seems like their entire year because of this. That and the fact that half the student body has, at one point or another, fancied her since primary school.

He, unfortunately, was looking for actual feedback. He is afraid to ask, ‘What?’

‘I was at Waterstones the other night, picked up a magazine and found a little ditty in it too, a caption for the Who Wore It Better page.’

‘Except I wrote that one.’

‘Dickon wrote me a poem in our fourth year. I think it went something like, “There once was a woman from Nantucket—”’

‘It’s surprising how little I’m getting from this conversation,’ Robb finally lets out an exhausted sigh, steering her into the dramatic dip she taught him to do just before entering their PE hall. In the corner of his eye, he spots some friends of Sansa’s blushing and whispering about them from the no-dance zone, against the walls of the hall. Thankfully, his family wouldn’t be witness to any potential mortifying moments tonight.

‘Oh hush, it’s working.’ Margaery gestures for him to look over her shoulder to where Jeyne Westerling is in the arms of Harry Hardyng. Or, the person who had the guts to ask her to go to this ruddy dance before he could get the chance.

Jeyne, to his surprise, already has eyes on him and isn’t quick enough to avert her gaze without suspicion. If he’s not mistaken, he catches a small, fleeting smile his way.

Robb comes to and finds that Margaery still has her own knowing smile on her face.

‘Do you know what girls want, Stark? Girls in our year don’t want roses or poetry, they want a guy with a car, or a guy who can sit pretty for an instagrammable moment, and they definitely want a decent promposal just in time to set up hair and makeup appointments for an even better selfie for prom night.’

‘That’s shallow…isn’t it? Besides she’s not like that.’

She shrugs, though he does have a point, since she’s almost certain that Jeyne would be the type to coo over Robb waxing poetic over her being his ‘flower’. Still, he's one to talk when he, just days ago, asked her a favour by pretending to be his girlfriend for the night, in hopes of making Jeyne jealous. If it wasn’t so out of character for him, she’d be calling him out on this behaviour, but she decides against it. In fact, she decides to berate Theon about this scheme later.

It’s a lucky thing that Sansa is a dear friend. Lucky that she also knows their mother to be just as dear. All the Starks are legitimately the kindest people she’s ever met. And luckily, Robb happens to be familiar enough to her to know his intentions were and have always been pure, if their sharing a kiss during a game of spin-the-bottle and the ensuing hand-crafted Valentine’s Day card in their fifth year was any indication. More lucky is the fact that her actual, non-fake boyfriend Joffrey is on holiday and would not be interfering tonight.

‘It really is working, isn’t it?’ Robb gestures for her to watch Jeyne this time, especially since Harry has disappeared to the refreshments corner and Jeyne’s curiously watching them, sitting at a nearby table with a gaggle of other girls.

Before she can stop herself, she ties her hands around Robb’s neck so that he has to dip his head lower, low enough to count how many freckles he has on the bridge of his nose. Close enough to see that his blushing may be because they haven’t been this close since fifth year’s spin-the-bottle days. If this is all part of the plan, she thinks, either of them could be successfully convincing the other.

‘It’s weird,’ she says softer than she meant to sound, maybe because she realizes that their charade and the rules they had set up for themselves hadn’t called for any unnecessary physical contact (though she instantly questioned his experience of being in a relationship before this half-baked mission), yet she is contemplating this closeness as well.

Gods, Joffrey will be asking her to offer some kind of penance for this when he returns.

‘What’s weird?’

‘Well, you’re so stubbornly kind to everyone,’ she tells him as if he should know better. ‘You’re smart and Gods know you’ve got a better reputation going for you compared to half the boys in school. You’re not bad-looking either. You looked even better in your football kit when you and Theon won last Saturday’s match.’

Theon: i’m not v good at lip reading, but did Margaery actually say my name? mate, is she asking about me????

Robb silences his phone, and tries to silence the fear that Theon (the only person he somehow entrusted with this scheme) could give them away at any moment.

‘Smart and not bad-looking. I should make that into a shirt,’ he quips.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

This is a terrific feeling, he thinks, and is reeling from this rarity; suddenly, she’s out of witty comebacks. He figures he shouldn’t take this moment for granted and triumph a little. Margaery and her academic accolades, her family’s summer house in Dorne, and her doe eyes literally opening doors for her. He can’t explain the thrill of having an upper hand over her for once.

She even lamely replies to his silent amusement, ‘Oh, shut it.’

Though true to form, and because she’s right about him being stubborn in his ways, he tries to make her feel comfortable again, ‘Thanks for doing this, Marge. It was a long shot in asking you, and we haven’t spoken or even hung out in ages—’

‘That, right there,’ Margaery says with wide eyes, bright and focused again. ‘Why wouldn’t Jeyne want someone kind and humble and smart over someone as simple as Harry—’

‘And Harry’s got his arm around her, and she’s going mad from laughing at something he’s said, and he’s definitely going to ask her out tonight. That’s it, that’s what’s happening.’

He’s not sure what possesses her, all he knows is that he sees her inching forward and he does not stop her. Suddenly, he feels her lips on his, and he instinctively shuts his eyes. This kiss isn’t like fifth year’s tentative, purse-lipped one. This is her pink-laquered pout softer and more appealing than he imagined (and yes, he’s not going to be that idiot who denies his eyes flitting to find them throughout the night), and this is her perfume that reminds him of the shopping bags his sister and mother have sometimes brought home from one of their girly shops. Except, he doesn’t remember his mind feeling hazy from smelling this honey, flowery scent before.

‘Robb…’

If it wasn’t for his perfume-addled brain, he might be analyzing how she’s openly chewing on her bottom lip when they separate. But, she’s already starting before he can, ‘She’s coming.’

‘What—’

Then, Margaery shoves him away, and dramatically bursts for the surrounding people to hear, ‘Robb, you’re right. I’ve got to go back to Joffrey—but—’ A single tear tracks down her cheek. ‘This was—I won’t forget you.’

Robb finally sobers at that, ‘On the nose, that one.’

‘Hush,’ she whispers and angles a wink just for his eyes.

Like a scene in a play, he musters his strength to not laugh after she departs their stage, taking her last act with her. He almost misses what Jeyne has to say as she finally approaches him, while, in the distance, Margaery tosses her chestnut curls over her shoulder before she finally exits the hall.

‘Is everything alright?’ Comes Jeyne’s sweet concern.

‘Erm—aye—fine, yeah. Just got dumped, but I’ll uh—be fine.’

‘I didn’t even realize you two were together.’

‘We barely started,’ he explains, though he surprises himself to hear how genuinely disappointed he is to admit this.

#robbaery #robb x margaery #robb stark #margaery tyrell #got fanfiction

47 notes · View notes