#they’re all so wildly different it’s somehow insane to me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stevebabey · 1 year

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no one asked but this is the post that inspired this! thank u immensely for the luv <3 number 1 comment was wondering what steve’s bids were & from his pov, so without further ado...enjoy — part one here!

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Begrudgingly, Eddie has to admit that Robin might be right.

It’s impossible not to be looking for the bids since he brought them up to her. Even though Eddie was fully expecting to tell Robin to suck it, maybe even wager what little money he had against this working out, Eddie can’t help but watch for them in every interaction. And fuck, she’s right.

They’re little, but they’re there.

The first one Eddie would’ve missed if he wasn’t looking for it. Actually, that’s a lie; Eddie does miss it, until Robin points it out, the nosy bitch. It’s minuscule and honestly, it just seems like Steve asking his opinion — which friends do all the time! It’s why Eddie brushes right over it.

“Okay, be honest,“ Steve had said, walking and talking as he entered the living room where Robin and Eddie were sprawled across the couches. They were both waiting on him, the three of them set on heading out to the drive-in to catch a film.

Eddie can’t fathom why Steve felt the need to change his outfit for it, but when he returns, he gets it. It’s not quite the usual polo Eddie had grown to like on Steve, this one hanging a little looser, the colour a bit darker than Steve’s usual choice, the sleeves a little shorter — almost midway to a muscle tee.

Steve’s fingers fiddle with the distressed collar of the shirt, smoothing invisible wrinkles and fussing over nothing. He swishes back his floppy hair with a flick of his head. “It’s a new shirt, I know it’s a little different - but what do we think?”

He says we but he’s looking at Eddie.

Eddie, who has taken to trying to reel in his gawp because what the fuck Steve? It’s like he’s well aware of what drives Eddie insane and has specifically leaned into it. Some evil goblin in Eddie’s brain whispers think how good he’d look in your shirt and he squashes it, giving a visible twitch to shut down that train of thought.

From the other couch, Robin clears her throat loudly and smiles sweetly at her best friend. “It looks great, Steve.”

It’s sincere and Steve’s mouth tugs up, nearly a smile but his gaze fast-tracks back to Eddie. Eddie nods in agreement, a bit sluggish from his distracting thoughts and god dammit, the extra exposed skin of Steve’s arms are so not helping. “Yeah, looks... looks good, man.”

Steve smiles, lips pressed together but his shoulders curl in just a bit, deflating just a tad. From where Steve can’t see her, Robin waves her hands wildly and catches Eddie’s attention. He watches as she gestures wildly and it takes a moment to realise what’s she mouthing — ‘A bid! That’s a bid, you idiot!’

Oh fuck, Eddie thinks. Cos it totally was; the question, the focus on Eddie. He doesn’t even think about the logistics of it, of the fact Robin was right, just jumps right into picking up the bid.

“You trying a new style?” Eddie asks and then thanks whatever god invented the whole fake-it-to-you-make-it schtick because he’s feeling so far from casual or confident. “Going metal on me, big boy?”

Eddie just manages to catch the grin that breaks across Steve’s face as he turns away, giving a scoff — it comes out too soft though, giving away his complete lack of annoyance. He pulls that usual Steve Harrington pose, hands sliding onto his hips, and screws his face into some melted smiley-grimace. “Shut up, Munson.”

Eddie grins and goads on the blush that’s beginning on Steve’s neck, a glorious tinged pink colour. “If this shirt is any indication, you’d pull it off just fine.”

Eddie watches the blush climb higher as Steve ignores the comment, his smile still giving him away. He grabs his coat and pats down his jeans — ridiculous tight acid wash jeans that Eddie hates he’s somehow become attracted to — ensuring he has his keys and wallet. Once assured, he looks up at his two friends again, brows raised, and says, “Ready to rock and roll?”

That comment alone has Eddie seriously reconsidering his type in men.

There’s only a brief moment to talk about it when Eddie and Robin cajole Steve into going and getting them both popcorn to get a moment alone. Steve had scoffed, face twitching in the way it did whenever he tried to hold back a bitchy comment, but he still stomped off in the direction of the snack stand.

The moment he’s out of earshot, both voices explode in the back of Eddie’s van.

“What did I say—”

“Jesus H Christ, you were right—”

“Literally how many times do I have—”

“Oh my god, you were right—”

“ —before you realise I’m always—”

“Robin.” He cuts her off, hands landing on her shoulders. Robin eyes them warily, lips still parted from how her rant had been cut off. “Robin, I’m gonna kill you.”

“What?” Robin’s nose scrunches up. “What the hell are you—”

“Oh Christ, I can’t believe- how long have you noticed those bids?” Eddie’s aware he sounds a bit estranged, eyes probably wide and it doesn’t help when he softly shakes Robin back and forth. She lets herself be shaken, hair flying back in forth. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! You are such a bad gay friend!”

Robin smacks his hands off her shoulders with a frown, her freckly face perturbed at Eddie’s outburst. “Dude, it’s not my fault! May I remind you that until very very recently you were seeing someone else? What difference would it have made?”

Eddie waves his hand, disregarding the point with a shake of his head. His unkempt curls cover his face and Eddie sweeps them back in one motion, “What difference would it have made? Oh my, Jesus—“

Whatever long-winded sentence Eddie was about to spit out is lost by the sound of Steve’s approaching footsteps, effectively shutting both of them up.

Eddie flings himself to the other side of the van, putting an unusual amount of distance between Robin and him like they were being caught doing something they shouldn’t.

Robin frowns at him and gestures wildly with her hands in a way that means what the fuck man? Eddie gestures back, though he’s not entirely sure what his fast hand motions are supposed to mean when Steve rounds the door.

He’s got two buckets of popcorn tucked under each arm and Eddie quickly crosses his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits like his stupid hand motions will somehow give him away.

Steve looks up, stopping just a way from the edge of the van, and looks at the pair of them. His eyes track from Robin still sitting on one of the old cushions and looking two seconds from burying her face in her hands, across to Eddie. He huffs a laugh and kneels on the edge of the van.

“I know he’s gross Robin,” He begins, tone light, as he holds out one of the buckets for Robin to take. “But c’mon, is the distance really necessary?”

Robin snickers as Eddie makes an appalled noise, both of which make Steve smirk. He holds out the other for Eddie to take and Eddie snatches it, glaring at him over the buttery rim for his comment. Then takes a handful and shovels it in because he can’t think of a witty comment to retaliate. Steve crawls into the van and plops himself between them with a content sigh.

“See? Gross.” He teases, shoving his hand into Eddie’s popcorn bucket to grab a handful. Eddie scowls and chews a little faster when the flavour on his tongue seems to register in his brain.

His eyes stare at the popcorn bucket as he chews, then swallows — up the front of the van, the radio that’s tuned into the correct frequency begins playing the opening credits song as the screen changes. Silence sweeps across the drive-in but despite the sudden hush, Eddie has no qualms about breaking it.

“Sweet n’ salty flavour?” He asks Steve, only half attempting a whisper. Robin shushes him instantly, her focus already on the movie that’s beginning. Steve smiles, looking a bit sheepish beneath the glow of the drive-in screen, but he nods.

“I know you like it.” He whispers with a small shrug of his shoulders. Like it wasn’t a big deal. Fuck, Eddie thinks again and hastily feeds himself another handful of popcorn before he says anything majorly stupid in response to that, like: Oh, amazing- have you noticed the big fat crush I have on you as well?

He doesn’t even need to look at Robin to know she’s smiling, smug as ever.

—

Steve, God bless his oblivious little heart, doesn’t even realise he’s doing it.

Steve likes Eddie. Eddie is— god, Eddie is different but he’s good.

He’s this strange amalgamation of traits that Steve can’t comprehend how they fit together in one body or how Eddie manages to pull it all off completely charmingly.

He’s loud, he says rude things, he’s fucking dorky, and far too sweet on the kids — he likes to tease Steve, and yet somehow, when Eddie calls him ‘pretty boy’, Steve knows he’s not actually making fun of him.

Steve likes Eddie, likes his boyishly endearing charm, likes his touchiness towards Steve that no other boy his age is like, likes his messy curls and his ‘holier than thou’ attitude about metal music even though Steve doesn’t get it, like at all. And fuck, Steve really wants Eddie to like him.

It reminds him faintly of when he first started working alongside Robin at Scoops. That thought tickles in the back of his mind, something along the lines of how he had wanted Robin to like him for other reasons, but he doesn’t delve into it.

To Steve, it’s simple: he just wants Eddie to like him.

After the night at the drive-in, between Eddie acting strangely skittish and Robin giving more amused snorts than usual, Steve knows something is up.

He knows they must have discussed something when they sent him on popcorn duty, the bastards. He tries his best to not feel left out; god knows Robin and he have more than a dozen secrets they’ve sworn not to tell anyone but each other.

Besides, Steve trusts Robin to come and tell him if he really needs to know, even if it does worry him a bit. He bites down his anxious thoughts, even trying for a moment to see if there’s a pattern he’s been missing.

That train of thought gets derailed when Steve recalls instead Eddie’s delightful reaction to his new shirt — that Steve definitely hadn’t bought for that specific reason.

Even though Robin had given him that look when he’d first shown it to her — her bright eyes had narrowed, her smile turning a little more coy, and Steve had felt his ears get a little hotter. She hadn’t said anything though, just suggested that he should wear it tomorrow night when they were going out with Eddie.

God, he was glad she suggested it.

Rewinding over Eddie’s parted lips, the way his brown eyes had drank in the details as they trailed up his body and lingered on his arms— Steve had the sudden thought to flex the muscle, just to elicit some reaction, but it had gone out the window at Eddie’s original dismal reaction.

‘Yeah, looks... looks good, man’. Said all aloof, like he hadn’t really thought it. It was like bursting a balloon hidden behind Steve’s ribs, one he wasn’t even aware was there until it was deflating pathetically, making his shoulders sag.

Then— ‘You trying a new style? Going metal on me, big boy?’ And dammit, it’s like Eddie had clocked exactly what calling him ‘big boy’ had done the first time in the Winnebago.

Eddie had then grinned, done another once over of the new shirt, even as Steve pretended to search for his keys and wallet while saying something snarky to try to cover up the heat crawling up his neck. Yet, Steve found himself smiling too because, fuck yes, Eddie liked it too.

But, apparently, whatever Eddie and Robin had discussed wasn’t considered important enough because Robin never brought it up.

The thought and worry about it melt away in Steve’s mind until the memory of that night is about Eddie’s compliment, about his cat-like grin over the popcorn bucket, and how he had leaned over to whisper every bad joke into Steve’s ear all through the movie.

Some of them had been down-right filthy jokes which Eddie only seemed to enjoy more when Steve screwed his face up and nudged Eddie in the ribs, yet unable to hide his smile.

After the third vulgar joke and subsequent nudge, Steve had chided ‘dude’ with a poorly hidden grin. Eddie, smile all cheeky, had nudged him back with a ‘dude’ of his own.

Which, of course, ensued a nudge competition til Robin had given a shush that librarians all over the world would be jealous of. But Steve didn’t even care because he and Eddie were arm to arm, pressed close together and Eddie…didn’t move. Stayed close, like he wanted the closeness the same way Steve did.

Steve only remembers the strange drive-in moment when Robin brings it up finally, on one interesting Saturday night.

It’s not the usual routine; it’s not very often that the whole group gets together to share drinks and get rowdy.

But it was for Robin’s birthday and she’d been persuasive enough to get even the introverts, like Jonathan, to come along. Though, she was aware he’d probably spend the night on a pool lounger, stoned to high heaven. Whatever floats your boat, she’d said, happy for the company in any form.

There’s enough of them there that it almost resembles some sort of party— and makes Steve try not to think about the last small party he threw here. He can tell Nancy notices it too, eyeing the pool a bit too long in a way he’s very familiar with, then taking a swig of beer.

So, Steve heckles them inside — doing a fantastic mothering impression as he waves the group indoors with a promise of pizza, and that has both Jonathan and Argyle perking up and beginning a fast discussion on the best pizza toppings.

Eddie makes a fuss, because of course he does, and moans terribly when Steve tries to roll him off the pool lounger he’s on. He’s had a bit of a joint and some beer, and Steve’s learned that he gets adorably stubborn after some substances.

“Stevie, this is mean,” he had pouted, gripping the edges of the lounger and staring up at Steve with those big brown eyes. “You telling me I did all that bonding with you for nothing? Can’t even lounge by the pool! I’ve got a couch at homeeeee.”

Steve had sent him an amused look of disbelief, hands on his hips after his first round of flicks against Eddie’s arm were apparently fruitless to get him to move. “Really? Didn’t peg you for a gold-digger, Eds.”

Eddie had snorted at that, one hand coming to slap over his mouth. Steve couldn’t quite hear what he had said but the words pegging and anytime slipped through and Steve thinks he could get the gist of that.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Steve muttered, feeling the tips of his ears turn warm. He didn’t know how Eddie could be such a menace— or why he enjoyed it so much when he was. Steve waved a hand in the direction of the doors, ignoring Eddie’s delighted snickering. “If you go inside now, you can be on music, alright?”

And that had finally got them all indoors, Eddie whooping and skedaddling through the doors in an instant, with a call of ‘no take backsies!’ echoing behind him.

Inside was much cozier, the whole group a little more connected when squished up on the couches together. Eddie had taken Steve’s word and was jamming a cassette into one of the speakers when Steve made it back inside after scouting around the pool for leftover cans and butts to throw out.

He’s just been thinking about what playful jab he could make at Eddie’s music, like Eddie always did to him when Robin hollered at him from the kitchen.

“Steve!” She’d yelled excitedly and he come to find her quick, brows raised as he entered the kitchen. She was grinning, already a bit jumpy as she got when she had a bit of liquor — but apparently not enough because when Steve saw what she’d called him in for, she’d announced, “Tequila shots!”

Which lead to now. A hazy combination of beer, tequila, and a bit of weed, and Steve is feeling good. Robin had managed to hijack the music not too long ago, with a hiccup of ‘it’s my birthday’ that had Eddie surrendering with a pout.

She’d since put on a bit of everything: some Blondie for Nance, Talking Heads for Jonathan, and some Bowie, just so she and Steve could dance along to ‘Magic Dance’ and she could do all the silly little goblin voices that made them both cackle.

Steve realised at some point that Robin was playing their mixtape, the one she’d made for driving in the morning, and nearly tripped stumbling over to her in his excitement. He grabbed her shoulders, not too hard, and squeezed.

“Is it- is this our mixtape?” Steve asked, words slurring only a bit. Robin gleamed, hair bouncing with her excited nod.

“Yes!” She was already dancing, even though the tape was between songs — because she knew what song was coming. “It’s Springsteen time, Steve!”

Right as the drums to Born to Run filtered out the speaker.

And oh, Steve loves Robin so much. He loves having a best friend that knows his favourite song and gets jittery and excited because she knows it’s about to play— that she put it on this mix for him.

“You’re my best friend!” Steve says, the words bursting out like he can’t control them. He doesn’t even feel embarrassed, just happy, just drunk, and overwhelming happy to be able to have this.

And even though Robin knows this, she still beams, feet dancing along and just begins to sing along with the song, “In the days, we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream…”

It’s a brazen drunken performance from the both of them. Steve’s chest is heaving after just one chorus that he’s pretty sure he put his whole soul into and he’s so fucking happy —and it feels like pure instinct to seek out Eddie, his eyes scouring the room for him.

Eddie’s leaned up against the wall, hiding his smile behind a can and Steve doesn’t think twice about it— doesn’t think about why he’s so drawn to Eddie, why he wants to include him in this happiness — just extends his hand out and grins.

Eddie sees the bid coming this time.

Part Three.

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yes i saw all ur lovely tags and MAYBE cried about it. but thats none of ur business.

@orangeandthefairroadkill @swimmingbirdrunningrock @sadcanadianwinter @phantypurple @omg-elledubs-things @henderdads @farfaras @mixsethaddams @prismandblue @kerlypride @bushbees @legitcookie @temporalcoffin @callmesirkay @beautifully-useless @millyditty @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @ninjapirateunicorns @darkwitchoferie @vi-the-best-you-can @psychosnowfox @desert-fern @scarletzgo @cr0w-culture @softpink-candlelight @livingforfictionalcharacters @makewavesandwar @kozuuji @rhapsodyinalto @eddiethesexy @cassaloopa @lightwoodbanethings @qu33rcommunist @moonlitkilljoy @starkdusk @theysherobinbuckley @sanguineterrain @loganwright @sillysparrow @hotcocoaharrington @eddie-munson-is-my-wife @she-is-tim @steddiehearts @sideblogofthcentury @sidebarre @corrodedcoughin @stevieclaus

#OBLIVIOUS STEVE IS MY FAVOURITE!!!!#idiots in love #they're so important to me ur honour #on god am i gonna make them KISS #but steve's gotta figure it out first lol #ruby writes steddie #steddie #steddie ficlet #i think i can call it a fic now lol each part is 3k+ i think #steddie fic #IF U WANTED TO BE TAGGED AND I DIDNT IM SORRY #lest i come off terribly egotistical i need direct instructions to tag lmao #even then i tagged sum people that just said 'can't wait for part 2!' which? isn't?#I DUNNO #i went off vibes someone said they were vibrating so i was like get over here the next part is here #one of these tags is just a steddie blog i love.... and they reblogged part 1 #corrodedcoughin <3 i love u hehe #the stobin bestie love SHINES in this #i love them so much they are BEST FRIENDS!!!#if u have any ideas... i do love reading the tags and seeing what people want to see next ! im fuckin making it up as i go lol

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gravyhoney · 1 month

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*asks about your ocs*

HEHEEHEHEHEHFHFDHJGJDJDJDJDJSJ

Ok I’ll talk abt the characters in the video bc I have tooooo many and I assume those were the ones u were referring to. Also this is going to be a long fucking post and might not be entirely connected and stuff, but bear with me. I love talking about my ocs and I go a little insane. If you have any clarification questions I’m HAPPY to answer them :)

They all have slightly connected stories, but only to a very little degree. They’re all somehow connected to/affected by the blue haired woman in the beginning. So they r, in order of appearance, Nixie, Rubix, Cinnamon, Revery, Kevin, and Epona.

I’ve talked abt Rubix before, not so much the others, but they’re all a part of a species that suffered a serious collective trauma (extinction event that wiped most of them out)

Rubix was too young to remember it, but got wildly traumatized in different ways dw.

Living on their world before the Fall, were shifters who the travelers had long standing (slightly one sided) beef with, so most travelers grew up hating shifters, including Nixie. Her hatred was far amplified by the deaths of her oldest and youngest brothers, and she was falsely led to believe it was the fault of shifters.

Cinnamon was her best ever friend, Kevin was Cinnamon’s bf, and Revery, stick with me on this one, was Kevin’s best friend’s younger sibling (Epona and Rubix come into play later) when the Fall happened, they all got separated and believed the others died. This far quicker fueled Nixie’s hatred and set in motion her mass revenge plan, which she decided she would not let anyone stop her from her true purpose (kill all shifters ever). Nixie did not stop short of seriously harming and even killing other travelers for their abilities or their silence. Epona was one of the lucky few who survived, but they have serious memory loss due to it.

Rubix, as stated before, was very young when the Fall happened so she doesn’t remember it. She grew up in various different situations, and Nixie was the first person like her that she’d ever met. Rubix was extremely excited to know Nixie until they realized that Nixie was manipulating them into harming people who didn’t deserve it, and also got beat to shit. Not to the extent Epona did, but you know. :)

Revery, finally not in denial about the Fall and (possible) death of not only his entire family, it entire species, settled temporarily in a town that already had various shifters living there. (She had to face and unpack her own biases towards shifters). But then NIXIE SHOWS UP!! And she’s super excited bc Nixie was in her older sister’s friend group (older sister character is not my oc, otherwise she would’ve been in the video) and she’s like ‘omgggggg someone I know!! I’m not the last existing traveler!!’ And Nixie is like ‘it’s so cool ur here. We have to kill all these shifters.’ And Revery is NOT fucking down for that, and they fight.

Cinnamon was Nixie’s best friend growing up, and helped her through both of her brother’s deaths, as well as her parents’ divorce following their loss. Cinnamon had a vague idea of Nixie’s shifter hatred, but didn’t really care bc once again. They were ALL raised to hate shifters, so it wasn’t like. Surprising. What WAS surprising though, was when Cinnamon and Nixie FINALLY found each other after the Fall and Nixie was killing other TRAVELERS if they stood in her way (not just travelers, anyone really, but Cinnamon was most put off by her murdering their own people)

Kevin…..wasn’t really affected by Nixie. Same with Cinnamon, he was put off by her willingness to kill survivors, as well as being Nixie’s best friend’s boyfriend, so yk. But he has a fun thing happening, when he survived, it was with a group of other ppl including his best friend, Revery’s older sister Celeste (@/helpimcoveredinbees character). Celeste kinda went insane and randomly disappeared, so with the Fall, the belief his long term girlfriend is dead, and the sudden leaving of his best friend, Kevin kind of lost it and literally became delusional. He also left and uh. Became a space cowboy. Until Celeste and Cinnamon both reappeared, and he snapped out of his psychosis and was like. ‘Oh god. I’ve made a mistake (became a cowboy)’

So uh. Yeah. That’s Nixie and the ppl she seriously traumatized.

#mason talks #mason ocs #mason posts #oc story #ocs #oc #oc lore

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sky-squido · 1 year

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Where in the World is the Kindgom of Hyrule? PART ONE

Alright buckle up, friends—this one’s gonna get absolutely, utterly, wildly out of hand very quickly.

Section One: The Dream

So recently, someone made the mistake of teaching me how to navigate celestially and we were talking about all the differences between how the sky behaves in the northern and southern hemispheres and I, proudly having absolutely nothing inside of my brain except for LinkedUniverse for almost two and a half years now, thought to myself: hey! Wouldn’t it be funny if one of the LU boys was from the southern hemisphere and all the others had never left the northern hemisphere? The first boy to pop into my head for this was Wind because he, being a sailor, would almost definitely have the best grasp on celestial out of the whole gang and that way he could use a bunch of nautical navigation terms when he freaks out and nobody would have any idea what he’s saying.

I mean, imagine, right, he gets to another Hyrule and he’s got this navigation stuff down pat and while you could do celestial navigation without knowing the earth is round (as far as I can tell, we have no indication the Mayans or Polynesians knew the earth was round, but they were epic celestial navigators), knowing the earth is round is really very handy and we’ve known the darned thing’s circumference for literal millennia. So, since Wind clearly has latitude and longitude lines on his map and those are defined by angles around the earth’s curvature (none of those lines are curved though, so smh my head Wind uses the Mercator projection (to be fair, most navigators do, too, because it makes drawing rhumb lines really easy, but I digress)), homeboy knows the earth is round. And also, I mean, have you seen the Wii U box art?

Anyway, my point is that a southern hemisphere Wind would know that a northern hemisphere exists he and could totally logically deduce how stuff would behave there, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t freak him the FRICK out, especially before he fully figured out what was going on, because supposedly, he’s still in Hyrule, just an earlier one, and he was right above Hyrule, so how the heck could this be in a different hemisphere?

It was at this point that I realized why my fun little idea wouldn’t work—they’re all from Hyrule. It’s the same place, just at different times, and so, if the Kingdom of Hyrule has any internal logic or consistency, it’s all just gonna be the same place so my silly joke wouldn’t make sense.

But then, I realized, the Kingdom of Hyrule doesn’t have any internal logic or consistency! Not only does the map’s basic geography change quite dramatically between games, but it’s full of locations that are quite explicitly meant to be the same ones from prior games, yet their relative positions to each other vary wildly (believe me, we are going to get to this).

Fortunately, we know a truly, insanely, staggeringly massive amount of time has passed between games. I mean, Wild’s Hyrule has lore that, ten thousand years ago, Calamity Ganon got yeeted by tech we don’t even remotely recognize from any of the earlier games, meaning all the other eras are far older than that. For context, 10,000 years from today humans were just starting to figure out how farming worked. If Nintendo is going to casually throw a ten thousand year long timeskip into their silly little timeline, then maybe we can account for all this wacky location shifting with some clever geographical wrangling. I mean, the kingdom of Hyrule is and always has been a big hot mess and if magic exists, ten thousand years is an acceptable amount of time to toss around between games, and *stares pointedly at Tears of the Kingdom trailers* then maybe we can reconcile all of this.

Section Two: The Little Adventure

I really like that phrase, “little adventure.” I’ve started using it whenever something mundane goes wrong or unexpectedly somehow, like “I’m going to have to walk a whole mile to get back home and it’s raining and I forgot my umbrella? Welp, guess it’s time for a little adventure!”

Yeah, that’s an apt phrase to use here, I think.

Because, like, okay, I know 10k years is like no time at all, geologically, so mountain ranges aren’t popping up and scooting away willy nilly, but we’ve gotta account for canon-typical shenaniganery. So generally, we have Hyrule castle in the middle, a volcanoes somewhere up, a sand somewhere left, and a woods somewhere right (I refrain from using such terms as north, east, south, and west because while the maps all have little compass roses on them and there are compasses in the games, magnetic-true variation is a very big deal, the magnetic poles wiggle around and even fully reverse sometimes, and I have my reservations about trusting Hyrule’s royal cartographers too much. Very soon, you will too). Because even that basic outline of Hyrule is subject to change. Take Twilight Princess, for example. Even if you use the GameCube version, where Gerudo Desert is to the left of the castle, like it should be, Death Mountain is to the right of the castle, not up. Since the forest is straight down, though, we could just be like “oh lol whoops guess the magnetic pole took a hike, let’s just rotate the map an entire forty-five degrees because the Kingdom of Hyrule decides to make all of its maps using magnetic north for some unholy reason.” And I mean, that’s fair game, right? Sure.

This strategy doesn’t hold up for very long.

I mean, I’m looking at broad trends here, right. I’m already assuming nothing is drawn to scale (and they clearly aren’t to scale even when the maps are literally rips of the world like for Legend’s games because I refuse to believe that Hyrule Castle and Kakariko village account for one-quarter of Hyrule’s land area). We’ve all seen those ridiculously inaccurate old maps from ages ago in our own history—there’s a lot of room for error here. I’m already assuming every distance and position and landform is an artistic abstraction and I’m also generously overcompensating for hardware limitations and the fact that Nintendo did not know they were going to try and connect all of these games decades later and was just focused on making fun, interesting, stand-alone adventures. You can keep building your one town in different locations with completely different architectural styles but give it the same name every time just to be cute. You can rebuild your castle regularly in all sorts of different spots without leaving any trace of the original. The Lost Woods can just grow legs and run around wherever they want to because the whole point of the Lost Woods is that the rules of space and object permanence don’t apply to them. We can throw around ten thousand years like it’s nothing. I’m trying to be as charitable as humanly possible. I literally do not care about the minutiae I literally just want the barest, vaguest outline of what the heck this landmass is doing on only the broadest of scales. I want this to work. I’m ignoring virtually everything about the terrain at this point, only using the locations that are canonically the same ones as from other games and allowing for incredible amounts of drift in where these things physically are.

But like—Breath of the Wild insisted on being cute and having that statue of Hylia that ended up in the Sealed Grounds in Skyward Sword be buried in the Forgotten Temple. Nice! Why is it in the top-left corner of the map?! What’s that, Hyrule just expanded out in a different direction and most of Skyward Sword takes place farther to the left than this map shows? Cute, but the Sacred Springs, clearly designed specifically to be the same ones from Skyward Sword, are all along the right side of the map! Like, sure, maybe the Skyview Spring being the Spring of Courage in Faron Woods all checks out and the second spring is in Eldin and Akkala is pretty close to Eldin, so fine, Spring of Power gets a free pass. And, again, we can fudge stuff—Skyward Sword’s map is for artistic purposes, not navigation, so maybe it’s only vaguely accurate. There’s some nebulous unmapped space between Faron and Eldin and we can just… assume there’s mountains there and that whatever pre-Skyward Sword civilization was kicking around building these things tossed a spring up there and Zelda just ~didn’t have to go there~ to get her Goddess powers back because we never saw the Spring of Wisdom in Skyward Sword. Fine.

Maybe the massive Goddess Statue and Sealed-Grounds-looking temple up in Tabantha are just a different temple in a similar style. Fine, okay, and Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword are the most incomprehensively far apart of any of these games—clearly the only reason the springs survived this long was the fact that they’re sacred.

[Digression time! It’s time for a little adventure where I ramble about the Sacred Springs! It’s not really relevant, but it sure is neat!]

Because if the same springs are in both Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, that then implies that they were lurking around in every other era but, acknowledging real life chronology issues, obviously these springs weren’t in the previous games. If we’re willing to ignore cold hard canon to pretend this is a world that really exists, though, which is way more fun, then those springs should still exist and that would be a really fun thing to have the boys stumble upon! Just in case any enterprising fic authors were looking for neat ideas I can tell you where they are, but where they all fall depends on how you decide to line up the maps. As previously established, there’s buckets of drift and inaccuracy, and I’ll get into my own mega-compilation-map after this digression is over, but if you want to just vibe and just stick to the general area and biome (like Nintendo themselves) here’s how you do it:

Courage goes in any forest in the bottom or right, power goes in any hot mountain at the top or the right, and the center of the rightmost part of a Zelda map—the part between the volcano and the forest—is always either unmapped somehow or contains at least one significant area of higher elevation, so just slap the Spring of Wisdom there. It even works for Minish Cap! If you wanna play really fast and loose with exact locations of things and the border of the kingdom and also completely ignore the castle, as I’ve been doing, Minish Cap’s map is just the righthand side of Hyrule rotated like forty-five degrees. Hot mountain up, water to the right, green in the middle and the bottom right. Works out nicely with Skyward Sword to have Lake Hylia there in the forest on the right instead of at the center bottom, and Veil Falls and the Cloud Tops could fall right in that unmapped space between Eldin and Faron, so that’s totally a valid spot to put the Spring of Widsom. (there’s actually a lot of unmapped space in Zelda games once you start looking for it and having fics take place in those areas where the boys can then stumble upon relics of older eras would actually be so badass I’d actually love to see that happen in fics).

For Ocarina of Time, the Spring of Courage would be in the Kokiri Forest or Lost Woods, up to you, Power goes up on Death Mountain, and Wisdom’s in Zora’s River/Domain. For Wind Waker, you can put Courage in the Forest Haven, Power in either Dragon Roost or Fire Mountain, and Wisdom can go on any island between the two or just end up underwater for a hot minute (it’s not like that’s gonna ruin it—it’s supposed to be wet). For aLttP/ALBW, Courage goes down by Lake Hylia, Power’s up on Death Mountain again, and if you don’t want to use Zora’s Domain, we can retcon that the Spring of Wisdom wasn’t in Zora’s Domain in Time’s era, it was in that little unmapped sliver between Zora’s Domain and the foresty area, so now we can slap the spring of Wisdom somewhere around or just past the right side of the Eastern Palace/Eastern Ruins. Isn’t this fun? For Twilight Princess, we already have sacred springs, but these are different ones—by now it’s probably been a few geological epochs since Skyward Sword, so they’re allowed to make some new springs. The old ones still have to be kicking around, though, and Twilight Princess’ map has a delightful amount of uncharted territory so we can toss them in Faron, Eldin, and that mysterious space directly between the two of them.

[Okay, digression over!]

I mean, this is fun, and if the vague suggestion of similar biomes is all we needed to line up all these maps into one cohesive Hyrule, that would be great. But it’s not. There are a few locations that absolutely must line up across games, and they ruin everything. Like, okay, I’m going to start sounding completely feral with rage, but I’m not actually mad at Nintendo. They’re making good games and I’m trying to do something very silly to their games and I knew it wouldn’t work out before I even started. I’m just so incredibly theatrically frustrated by how close it is to actually working until some random detail gets thrown in and it’s always exactly the one thing that would break everything.

Let’s start with some neat ones that do kind of work, though. Positivity! We know that, in Wind Waker, Hyrule Castle and the Deku Tree are the same ones as in Ocarina of Time. If we overlay the maps so these two points line up, we see that Wind Waker is so much bigger than Ocarina of Time and I love that. The ocean should be huge, way bigger than the kingdom, and that means we can end up playing with some navigational stuff, it’s just that Wind won’t be the one freaking out, everyone else will be, because if they go to the right spot in his era, they’ll be dealing with weird latitudes they’re not used to (yeah, remember when this essay was about celestial navigation? Me neither). The only problem here is that to get them to line up, you have to rotate them. So yeah, magnetic north can just trek forty-five degrees to the right and everyone will ignore this fact and continue to make maps in magnetic north for some reason. This is fine.

Honestly, the most consistent feature of Hyrule is the volcanic hotspot. There’s always one there, it’s almost always in a comparable spot, and unlike deserts, which can totally change over pretty short periods of time, hotspots are very reliable and locationally stable irl. I mean, even as the continental plates shift, the hotspot doesn’t. That’s why Hawai’i is shaped the way it is—the hotspot sprouts a volcano, the plates move, it sprouts another, rinse and repeat until you’ve drawn a little line of lava across the ocean. So if we line up all the volcanic areas over the Hylian Hot Spot and do only the minimal amount of rotation necessary to get everything else to roughly align, we can draw some cool connections.

For example, we established how Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time’s Hyrules align. But then in Wind Waker there’s a side quest where you plant a bunch of new Deku sprouts to help spread the forest. If we line up the volcanic hotspots between Breath of the Wild’s map and Wind Waker’s, we can scoot and pivot around and match up all the seedlings to see which one most likely started the line that Breath of the Wild’s Deku Tree comes from (because again, ten thousand years). It’s the Deku Sprout on Eastern Fairy Island! That… actually works out shockingly well. North is the same between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild and even Hyrule castle is in the right spot! I also love how Breath of the Wild’s world is only a little bigger than Ocarina of Time’s and Wind Waker dwarfs the both of them—that’s absolutely correct; you cover so much more ground sailing than on foot. Why the magnetic pole shifted more in the few centuries between Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker (so much of Old Hyrule is still alive so I refuse to believe it’s been more than a thousand years between the two of them) than it did in the canonical OVER TEN THOUSAND YEARS between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild baffles me, but hey, maybe the magnetic pole yeeting across the earth’s surface is a side-effect of Ganon taking power, however briefly. But wait, then shouldn’t it have shifted again in Breath of the Wild, since he won for a minute there? Augh whatever.

Okay, you may be wondering why I’m making such a fuss about where north is on these maps. After all, directions are relative and constructs and it was convention to put south at the tops of maps for a lot of people at different times and places. Yes, that’s all correct and I really wouldn’t have the slightest problem with any which orientation if they didn’t say north ON THE MAP!! And locations have names like “east” and “west” and they’ll say “go south of—” and these are not abstractions! North means closer to one of the axes around which the earth turns, around which the stars and sun and planets revolve. Moving up and down along a given line between these two poles means you’re on a given line of longitude so the sun always reaches its highest point at the same time, east and west mean along lines of constant latitude, where the sun’s highest point on any given day is the same—these directions are not arbitrarily defined!! You can’t just decide to put north somewhere else! You can have true north (the direction to the geographic north pole, the place where all lines of longitude converge and the sun goes around the horizon in a circle on the equinoxes, making a 24 hour sunset, and the pole star stands still overhead) and magnetic north (the place where magnetic compasses point, which is different than true north and moves kind of a surprising amount, but is only really relevant because compasses point there and also the auroras are centered on them too, which is cool), and that’s it! Those are the norths!! Don’t make up new norths!!!

And I said magnetic north moves, and it does, like 25 miles a year, and if we’re dealing with the timescale of thousands of years, that’s gonna add up.

SO WHY ARE YOU MAKING YOUR MAPS USING MAGNETIC NORTH?! NOBODY USES MAGNETIC NORTH TO DRAW MAPS—magnetic north, as previously established, moves a lot and you don’t want to have to redraw all your maps every year! Why would you do that instead of using the permanent geographical constant that’s easier to calculate because you can use the definite motion of the stars that can be measured to a fraction of a minute (up to a half mile of accuracy anywhere in the globe!) and not a wibbly, imprecise compass needle that’s only ever accurate to about half a degree—which translates to thirty nautical miles when you start trying to figure out where you are with it (nautical miles are bigger than normal miles).

But anyway. Hylian royal cartographers clearly have no idea what they’re doing.

And this is when things start making even less sense.

Because why, why on earth do the two eras who are the most insistent on being canonical neighbors have the least compatible maps?! Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess want me dead in a ditch. The Temple of Time in Twilight Princess goes to great lengths to Be The One From Ocarina of Time. Great! Why the frick is it at the bottom of the map?! The Temple of Time couldn’t be any farther up on Ocarina of Time’s map. We could try just rotating the map because maybe it was that time of the geological epoch and the magnetic poles reversed, but now the desert’s on the right side and it’s always on the left side! If anything, the right side is either mountains or ocean! Definitely not a desert. Not allowed. But what if we used the other version of Twilight Princess’ map—the mirror image flippy one from the Wii version!!! Because this makes sense!!!—and pretend the magnetic pole just happened to invert between these two games and that Hyrule’s cartography division is smoking crack and convinced that orienting all your maps towards magnetic north with no indication that true north even exists is the best way of doing things. Fine. Now Kokiri forest ends up in either Zora’s Domain or Snowpeak and the Hidden Village, which is supposedly the Kakariko from Ocarina of Time, turns out to have once been Zora’s Domain.

And that’s not even the worst offender! I’m already ignoring the frick out of the Four Swords games, but the first two Zelda games?

Like, look, I know I said I was giving a pass for hardware limitations and the irl game chronology but come on—it’s the same guy, it’s the same kingdom, and you didn’t even try to make them match up! Like maybe Zelda 1 can be given a pass because it has that same basic scaffold of mountain up, desert left, forest right, but then Zelda 2’s map is just the biggest pile of mayhem and I wouldn’t be bothered if it wasn’t explicitly the same kingdom just a little while later! Like what?! And there’s no way to reconcile any of this even remotely with that volcanic hotspot location, which has been our one and only constant in this labyrinthine hellscape!

Look, guys, I tried. I tried to come up with a way to make any of this remotely make sense.

This was about how far I’d gotten before realizing I might not be using the right approach, here.

Because the whole point of this silly project is to make celestial navigation jokes! Maybe the Kingdom of Hyrule is on the back of a big massive turtle that crawls all around the world and bumps into other turtles sometimes! It doesn’t actually matter! What matters is how the sky behaves.

So why don’t we just do celestial navigation and see if we can’t figure out what latitudes these absolutely zooted turtles are at.

But this post is long enough and also I haven’t finished collecting all my data from the various 3D zelda games so i’ll see you all in part two! (don’t hold your breath)

edit: part two is out, baby!!

#squido's op #linkeduniverse #linked universe #squido rants #squido rambles #squido's navigational escapades

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idk-ig · 9 months

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The Olympians’ Birth Order

So you know all those stereotypes about birth order? Apply that to the gods and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the birth order. At least, you do in my head cannon. Hear me out.

Ok, you know oldest daughter syndrome? They have their dad’s temper and mom’s attitude, right? That’s Athena and you can’t change my mind. Hestia too, honestly.

They know when everyone’s birthday is. They solve their siblings problems (in VERY different ways, yes).

Who do you go to when you need a nice safe spot? Hestia.

Who is the responsible one? Athena. Who does mom (step mom) go to for back up in the Iliad? It’s freaking Hera and Athena all the way.

Dionysus and Zeus are the babies. They get away with EVERYTHING. The parenting is completely different. Dionysus is the stereotypical lax parenting. He literally parties in the woods and watches plays all day. He is the GOD OF ALCOHOL. He’s insane.

But Hermes is the really baby. Dionysus came so late he barely counts. But Hermes stole Apollo’s cows as a baby and charmed his way out of it. The baby is mom and dad’s favorite? Well I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard that the only obviously-an-affair kid of Zeus’s (Athena doesn’t count) that Hera likes is…Hermes. Does Zeus get mad at Hermes? Ever? The parenting is rather lax imho. He’s the trickster god but he gets away with it. He runs wild, like a youngest sibling but everyone likes him anyway. He’s the baby. Dionysus is like the kid brother that your parents had after they thought they couldn’t have another one. And Zeus? Well…they do say parents learn how to parent through trial and error with the first kids. But by the time Zeus was born? Rhea knew what to do to protect him. He’s literally king. He is spoiled and mom indulges him. He spent his childhood singing and dancing and being spoiled.

It’s pretty clear that the elder Olympians’ birth order is Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and then Zeus. They act like it. Hestia is the eldest, Zeus is the baby. The middle kids are somewhat forgettable (as forgettable as gods can be, anyway) unless they MAKE themselves noticed. Hades is the quiet, low key, middle kid. Demeter switches between full blown mom and behavioral liability so she is the line between older siblings and middle kids. Hera and Poseidon make sure you can’t ignore them. They both have raging tempers and they will not be overlooked, thank you very much.

Now, more interestingly…the younger Olympians.

Athena is the oldest. Metis was the first wife, I don’t care when she popped out of Zeus’s head, she has eldest daughter AND oldest sister energy. She helps dad and step-mom.

Then it’s pretty clearly Ares and then Hephaestus. Why?

Well Ares is the jerk older brother. Will protect his mama but bullies all his younger siblings. Can’t really touch his older sister though.

Hephaestus is next. He’s the closest in age to Ares of the younger siblings so he’s the one Ares bullies the worst. Hephaestus is the quiet middle kid. He’s got mad skills, but he’s often forgotten about amongst the notability of his siblings around him. He’s the nice middle kid though.

He’s the one in the older half that gets along with Athena, the oldest daughter. The two could spend time together inside while Ares was outside wrestling and playing sports and bullying the other kids. He took more after Athena than either of his parents as a result.

Then we have the twins: Artemis and Apollo.

Artemis is older, according to myth and it makes sense (not that I’m saying any of this is mythically accurate at all). She delivered Apollo and has been looking out for him ever since. Apollo is definitely the little brother trying to protect his big sister.

Artemis loves her twin, genuinely. She takes after Athena, her only Olympian sister (and the oldest sister). They are both fiercely independent. They’re both virgins. They have wildly different domains and temperaments but somehow, they are similar. They represent things man can never conquer. Artemis is the hunt, the chase. Once you catch it, it’s not a hunt anymore. Athena is simply above, on a cerebral level, carnal impulses. They are both touchy about specific things.

They are complements in personality in some ways, but definitely friends. Artemis goes to Athena for advice. The only times, Athena will venture out of her normal path is to visit Artemis in the woods. They can talk about stuff.

Artemis…doesn’t like men. But who can blame her? She was born between Ares and Hephaestus on one side and Apollo and Hermes (and eventually Dionysus) on the other. Two very different duos who are definitely preoccupied with each other. Artemis is the lonely barrier between the duos.

Athena is way older than her and occupied at this point. Her father paid attention to her when she was born but, being the dead middle, we don’t see Zeus interacting with Artemis myths all that much. Or remembering she is a thing that exists. (Yes, she’s Zeus’ favorite in Percy Jackson and I could see him really liking her but still, I don’t see them crossing paths very often compared to her siblings with Zeus.) She doesn’t get along with Hera or Aphrodite and, often, she’s out hunting so sometimes it’s easy to…not forget about her, per se, but she can be absent, kind of like Hephaestus in his forges.

Apollo is the sun. He likes it when everything revolves around him. He demands attention and he’s naturally gifted so it’s easy for him to be the middle kid who manages to steal the spotlight. He steals it from all the middle kids. Athena, Apollo, and that crazy one Dionysus. Those are memorable younger Olympians. And, of course, musicians survive off having the attention on their work. Same with authors and poets. He’s talents at both AND he’s a doctor, too. He’s got great grades and great hair.

Then we get to Hermes and Dionysus. I’ve told you about them.

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signalwatch · 9 months

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Women's World Cup 2023 Starts

Sport is funny. If you are paying attention to a sport, it can appear everywhere. But the minute you tune out, it's just a thing that exists that occasionally enters your line of sight.

I don't watch NFL or NBA anymore. NBA made itself too hard to watch via their TV strategy, and if I'm going to spend one day a weekend watching football, it's going to be college ball. But y'all know I also spend a ridiculous amount of time watching the Cubs and now Austin FC.

Way back in '99, I somehow got wrapped up in watching Women's World Cup. And, honestly, it's hard to top the excitement of that WWC win. But I don't really even remember how I tuned in, I just remember being very onboard watching the team playing a sport I fundamentally didn't understand except for "ball goes in net gets you points".

It's not that I didn't play soccer as a kid. We all did. But the rules for kids were different, and I played defense, so the "strategy", such as it was, was to stop whomever was driving the goal from doing so. It wasn't brain surgery. But once you start watching soccer a lot, you realize how *hard* this game is, how much strategy is in play as an absolute constant. But I also know and understand how to folks watching, it can just look like 20-odd people in matching shirts running around a field of grass.

Anyway, I've watched some or part of the Women's World Cup since 1999 every four years. I've tried to watch the National Women's Soccer League with minimal success inbetween, mostly because coverage was spotty, and we had no local team for me to follow. But... then I got Paramount+ recently to watch my crew on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and found out NWSL is on Paramount. Horrible timing for 2023, as I was only going to gear up for the World Cup, but now I know! Also, I need to pick a team, I guess, til Austin gets one.

ALSO: Austin's Q2 stadium is only occupied every other week, and is a great stadium, and, I'm just saying... we could use a team.

Because, honestly, having a team to care about changes everything. I knew nothing about MLS four years ago, soccer culture, etc... and now it does take up a part of my life that the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs, Phoenix Suns, Packers, Cowboys and other teams and sports once occupied. I can't dedicate the time to it of the serious or hardcore fans, but I am following the team, fan groups and whatnot, and watch most matches either live or as soon as I get home.

And, I have been tracking what news I could cobble together on the USWMNT, pretty much following the end of the last World Cup, through the (wildly misogynistic) pay discrepancy lawsuits, team selection and watched some matches this year - you'll note how many movies I've been watching has dropped a *lot* as sport fills in the spots.

Anyway - the World Cup has started, and I've been watching matches. They're showing on Fox Sports in English, and the coverage is honestly really good. If you can tolerate Alexei Lalas. Which I cannot. But I persevere.

The US looked pretty good in their first match versus a Vietnam that looked insane out there, and I think nerves got in the way of better play. We have 14 players who were not on the last squad. But we do have some key veterans (Crystal Dunn, Megan Rapinoe, Rose Lavelle, Julie Ertz, Alex Morgan etc...) and I expect we'll settle in next match.

This is the push for a third World Cup title for the US, and it's easy to say "well, US programs for young women are way ahead of the rest of the world, of course we'll do well" but NO. I mean, yes, it's true. But it's also true everyone else is catching up. China has been good for years, Japan won a while back. And I'd argue England looks like a problem for our team.

The competition should be tough, and from what I'm seeing, the play is really good.

Anyway - I don't know if I can get folks to watch something they otherwise wouldn't - but the next match is Wednesday the 26th against the Netherlands. It should be well worth your time. And keep in mind, soccer matches are about 2 hours all told, so you won't lose your full evening.

https://ift.tt/nEJILw4

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/uGF9DQO

#world cup #futbol #women's soccer #soccer

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my-unmanageable-mischief · 3 years

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Almost Lost

For the Anon who requested : hello! i see that youre open for request, so please, can you write sirius x reader where they had a fight (sirius being flirty to others or anything), the reader just storm off and got kidnapped or hurt by death eater? an angst with fluff ending maybe? thank you so much

Sirius Black x Reader

“I said I was sorry!” Sirius yelled at you, following you as you stormed down the stairs, pushing past a confused looking James as you did.

“Take your sorry and shove it up your arse!” You yelled back, stopped on the stairs to point your wand at the young man, “Get away from me,” You hissed. He stopped, holding his hands up defensively, but he looked beyond pissed.

“Are you gonna hex me?”

“Into next week,” You promised, before turning to walk away again, you were staying at the safe house the order was using, someone always had to be there, and this month it was up to you, Sirius, James and a newly pregnant Lily’s turn.

“Y/N,” James tried to cut in, looking worriedly at his wife who shrugged helplessly from the sofa. When you and Sirius went at it, it was usually best to keep out. You two were both too fiery for your own good, and when you exploded, you exploded. But you always made up.

“Shut it James,” You both barked, then turned to glare at each other as if to say, ‘how dare you’. You grabbed your coat off the back of a chair and pulled it on, Sirius came to you, trying to stop you.

“Where are you going? What do you think you’re doing?” You yanked yourself out of his grip, continuing to pull the coat on.

“Like it matters to you, go flirt with McKinnon some more why don’t you,” He threw his hands into the air, groaning loudly.

“You’re insane,” He yelled, “Bonkers!” He tried to grab at you again, “And you’re not running off into the bloody night!” You shoved his chest, pushing him away from you, eyes burning with tears.

“And you’re a slag! I’ll do whatever I please!” You cried, “You don’t get a say in what I do!”

“Fine! Leave! And don’t come back!” He hollered and you stormed towards the front door, Sirius still in tow.

“I will! I hate you!” You opened the door, feeling the frigid air of London in winter hit your face. You were grateful for the cold, you needed to cool down. You stepped outside and Sirius attempted to grab you once more, you wiggled out of his grasp.

“Don’t-” He stopped, dropping his hands, “Say that!” You stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking up at Sirius in the doorway. You both didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at each other. Finally, you broke eye contact, turning and walking away into the night. “Y/N!” He yelled after you, making to follow but James put a hand on him, stopping him.

“Mate, give her some space.” Sirius shook his head wildly,

“It’s late and dark, she shouldn't be out alone.” He whispered, but James was already guiding him back into the house, “She said she hates me,” He muttered, dropping down into one of the armchairs. “Hates me!”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Lily assured him, shaking her head. “She is angry with you, she hates when you act like a jerk. It’s different.” James sat next to Lily on the small sofa, wrapping an arm around her.

“You were being a bit much mate, with the flirting.”

“I wasn’t flirting!” James gave him a look and Sirius crossed his arms defensively over his chest. “I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

“Well, Y/N started it, she was being a bitch all morning, I just wanted some fun banter is all,” Lily looked at him disapprovingly, and Sirius groaned, throwing his hands up again.

“I said she was being a bitch, not that she is one!” James nodded understandingly as Lily continued to purse her lips. The rest of the night was spent in relative silence. Sirius occasionally getting up to pace the small living room before looking out the window, like you’d be there, waiting on the steps.

“She should be home by now,” He commented when the clock in the room struck midnight, “It’s my fault, I told her not to come back,” He was growing more and more worried by the minute. “I shouldn’t have said that,”

“You both said things you didn’t mean,” Lily assured him, “She’s taking a mo for herself, maybe she went to Alice’s.” She tried to supply helpfully but Sirius wasn’t pacified.

“I’m going to go look for her,” He decided, going to grab his own coat, James got up, putting a hand on his arm.

“Give it another hour, let Lily mail Alice. If she isn’t back by one I’ll come with you, alright?” Sirius nodded his head slightly, tossing himself back down into the chair. James got Lily a quill and a piece of parchment, and owled her small note when she was finished writing it. Another hour and a quarter passed by tensely as they waited for the owl to return, Sirius still periodically checking the window. Finally there was a tap tap tap at the window and James went to let the owl back in. He opened the note as Sirius looked at it over his shoulder.

“She’s not there, we need to go find her,” James nodded his head and sighed, handing the note off to Lily.

“Alright, let’s go,” James agreed, grabbing his own coat as Sirius dashed towards the door- his coat forgotten.

They searched for you everywhere. All the streets in a mile radius, every alley, every nook and cranny. Sirius even started calling your name, much to the sleeping cities delight. He was becoming frantic, and James was growing more and more worried for his friend and for you.

“She always comes back, something is wrong,” Sirius stated, looking around wildly, practically spinning in a circle. James grabbed him, stopping him, Sirius looked at his friend with glistening eyes, “Something is wrong,”

“Maybe she went home, it’s nearly three, maybe she is home, sitting with Lily and they’re talking about how big of tossers we are-”

“You know that isn’t true.” James nodded slightly.

“Alright, where would she go, home?” Sirius shook his head. “Come on, Sirius, think, where would she go?” Something dawned on him.

“There’s a park a few blocks from here, I know she’s gone there before. To think, when I’m being a git.” How did he not check there first? Godrick, he was a fool.

“Come on then,” James nodded, “Let’s go,” They got to the park in record time, Sirius almost in a full on run, he went to the swings first, no one was there. Then he went and checked the benches on the other side of the park, also empty.

“Y/N!” He yelled out, James looked around as well, knowing better than to shush his friend at this point. “Y/N!” There was a rustling in a nearby bush and Sirius’s head snapped to look at it, then he was running. He couldn’t see or hear or even think. All he saw was one of your gloves laying on the ground near where the sound came from. He reached the bush and what he saw made his heart stop beating in his chest, “Y/N,” He cried out, and James was beside him in a second.

You were laying there, pale, dried blood around your scalp and mouth. He touched you and you were freezing.

“James, give me your coat,” He barked out and James obliged immediately. Sirius wrapped you in the warm fabric, and pushed the dried blood laden hair from your face. Your eyes fluttered and you looked at him- or past him. Sirius didn’t think you were really seeing him, you weren’t all there. He did this. He did this to you. He made you so mad, you left, and you got hurt. He did this to you.

“Siri?” You murmured, trying to lift a weak hand, he gripped the hand, squeezing your frozen digits in his hand.

“Shh, love, don’t try and talk. You’re okay, you’re going to be okay,” He promised, he was crying, he watched as his tears landed on your pale cheek. He leaned down and kissed them away, “You’re okay,”

“We need to get her home,” James stated, hand going to his friend's shoulder, “Come on,” Sirius gathered you in his arms, and lifted you, feeling your limp body in his arms. He wanted to squeeze you to him, to breathe life back into you somehow. The walk back home was tedious, James guiding Sirius through the dark streets back to the safe house. He reached the door first, propping it open as Sirius rushed inside.

“Take her to the fire,” James ushered them in, “She needs to warm up,”

“Merlin!” Lily cried, jumping to her feet when the group entered, eyes wide with horror, “What happened?”

“We don’t know, we found her in the park, go get blankets Lil, please.” Lily was off in an instant to go find blankets and to boil some water for tea. Tea would help. Sirius sat down in front of the fire, laying you gently onto the carpet, your head in his lap.

“Sirius?” You murmured, reaching out to him again, he held tightly to your hand, continuing to stroke your hair with his other hand.

“You’re okay, love, I’m right here.” He promised you, “It’s okay,” Lily returned with blankets and helped Sirius wrap you in them. He held you as some of the color returned to your cheeks, as your body became to warm up, and you began to stir more.

“Where am I?” You asked, groggily, and Sirius leaned down to kiss your forehead.

“We’re at the safe house,” He whispered. Lily got her book of medicinal spells and sat beside the two in front of the fire, smiling smally at you.

“Do you know what happened? So I can fix it?”

“Were you followed?” You asked, and the other’s shared an uneasy look.

“What?” James asked and you sat up slightly, eyes still unfocused, but full of panic.

“Death eaters, found me, did they follow you back from the park?”

“Y/N,” Lily spoke softly as Sirius continued to hold you, pulling you closer to him. “What did they do to you,”

“ Cruciatus Curse,” You managed to spit out, “Until I couldn’t see or breath or move,” Sirius winced, again pulling you closer. Lily let her medical book fall shut with a small gasp.

“Oh, Y/N,” She gushed, “I.. None of this will help, I think we have some Peppering Up potion in the kitchen, I’ll be right back.” She stood up, looking pointedly at James who followed her into the kitchen to give you a moment alone. You were coming back into yourself, and you sat up furter, looking at your boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” You whispered and he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear.

“Why are you sorry?” He asked, gently, “This is all my fault,” You shook your head, eyes welling up with tears.

“All I kept thinking was... was I’m gonna die, and the last thing I said to you was I hate you, I’m so sorry,” You voice broke and tears were streaming down your cheeks. Sirius pulled you into a hug before pulling back far enough to kiss your lips- then each each, your chin, your nose and finally your forehead.

“I was so scared, I knew something bad had happened. I said so much I regretted saying, I am so so sorry, I am an arse, and I don’t deserve you. Or your love.” He whispered. You hugged him back, burying your face into the nook of his neck.

“I love you, I could never hate you,” You promised and he squeezed you to him.

“I know, I know. It’s okay, you’re okay, we’re okay.” He assured, over and over, “We’re okay. I love you too, so much.” You laid on the floor in front of the fire, embracing. Lily came in and dropped off the potion before saying goodnight, taking James with her. You spread out in front of the fire, cuddled up under the blankets. Your head was on Sirius’s chest and you listened to his heart beating strong beneath his jumper. All he could think of was how scared he was he almost lost you. How he would have never been able to forgive himself. How he couldn’t lose you, not now, not ever.

“Y/N?” He asked into the quiet room, seeing if you were still awake.

“Hm?” He took your left hand in his, and ran a finger over your knuckles.

“Marry me?” You lifted your head and gazed up at him.

“Seriously?” You asked, and he grinned down at you.

“I’m always serious.” He joked and you managed to roll your eyes at the man, “Yes I am serious. I learned an important lesson today, and I am so stupid. I am such a fool, that you had to get hurt for me to learn it. I need you, Y/N, today, tomorrow, forever. I want you to be my wife.” You looked at him for another long minute, seeing in his eyes how genuine he truly was. Finally you put your head back down on his chest, letting your eyes fall shut.

“Of course I’ll marry you,” He wrapped his arms around you and kissed the top of your head. He would never tell you not to come home again. That much he was sure.

#Harry Potter #sirius x reader #Sirius Black #sirius black x reader #sirius black x you #sirius black x y/n #james potte #lily evans

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chocolatecakecas · 3 years

Text

Baby Blues

Through the Dark: Season 13 Destiel Fic Part 9

Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 10

or read on ao3

Dean aggressively jerks the car into park, and rips the keys out of the ignition, sending a silent apology to Baby.

Friggin Sam and his friggin brilliant ideas.

Beside him, Cas wordlessly slides out of the passenger seat, slamming the door as he goes.

Rage radiated off Dean as he watched him disappear through the door. He gripped the wheel tighter, squeezing his eyes shut.

This is all Sam's fault. It was his idea for them to go on this damn hunt in the first place.

He insisted, since Dean had barely left the house since Jack, and he hadn't been a hunt since that giant ass vamp nest. Insisted that some "alone time would do them good". So he promised to take care of Jack, and practically shoved them out the door.

Yeah, and some good it did them. They hadn't even spoken since their little screaming match, sitting the entire ride in silence.

And none of this would have even happened if Cas had jus-

Dean groaned, banging his hands against the wheel.

Who the hell did Cas think he was slamming Baby's door, thinking he's the one who’s allowed to be mad? After the stunt he just pulled?

Nope, that's it. They're talking, now.

(read the rest under the cut)

And with that, Dean was out of the car, stomping after Cas.

Dean shouts as soon as he spots him in the hall, and Cas doesn't even acknowledge that he heard.

Wow real mature, Dean thinks to himself. So stalks after him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Dean questions grabbing his shoulder to spin him around.

"Going to find my child who I haven't seen in three days" Cas replies dripping with sarcasm.

He turned to leave, but Dean quickly pulled him back. Cas' levels him with an unimpressed look.

"Hey we aren't done with thi-"

"Oh I think we are" Cas scoffs bitterly, as he pushes out of Dean's grasp.

While he continued down the hall, Dean paused for a moment in an attempt to calm himself. With a sigh he tipped his head back, groaning when he noticed one of the bulbs above him flickering. Great, now he's gotta fix that.

Spotting the broken bulb did nothing to diminish the fire burning inside him, in fact, it only fueled it. So he quickly took off after Cas' retreating form.

"You pulled that stupid move Cas, we're talking about it. It was completely reckless, what the hell were y-"

"Reckless? You want to lecture me about reckless? After all of the insane things you've done over the ye-" Cas starts bitterly, not slowing his pace.

"-We aren't talking about the dumb shit I've done, we're talking about you, right here, right now. You could hav-"

"I had it under contro-"

"Really? So almost getting sliced in half i-"

"Don't be dramatic I was not going to ge-"

"Cas, that shifter was gon-"

"Dean, may I remind you that I am an angel. I was not go-"

"Oh you're an angel? Wow, not like that hasn't stopped anything from almost killing you befo-"

"Dean, the shifter is dead. I'm perfectly fine, I had it handle-"

"Yeah, having an angel blade almost shoved into your throat is handled" Dean grumbled.

Cas finally stopped walking. They somehow ended up by the stairs.

Dean stood, arms across his chest, as anger rolled off him in waves. While he waited for Cas' inevitable sarcastic retort, his gaze traveled to the overhead lights, watching them flicker.

Great it's probably the entire grid, not just one bulb. Crappy old wiring. Well, it could be worse, at least it can't be a ghost, now way ones getting in here anyway.

With a huff he fixed his eyes back on Cas. And something twisted low in Dean's stomach when Cas sighed, clearly exasperated.

The sound ignited the flames within him once more.

Does Cas even understand? Does he even realize? Does he even ca-

"Dean-" Cas began, through clenched teeth.

The flames burned, spreading like wildfire. Dean saw red.

And Dean was off, pacing wildly, voice rising.

"Ya know what? Angel or no angel it, doesn't matter Cas. The move you pulled was completely stupid. I told you to wait for me, and you didn't listen. No, you went in with some half cocked plan and the thing jumped you an-"

"Dean, I was perfectly fine. They surprised me, but I-"Cas attempted to cut him off, but he wasn't having it.

"We had a plan and you didn't stick to it. It would have worked i-"

"Dean, the things we do, rarely go according to plan. And we both know it wouldn't have worked, we were running out of time an-"

Dean groaned, angrily pulling at his hair. His heart racing in his chest.

Neither of them took notice of the lights above them as their anger bubbled over.

"Then we come up with a new plan, you don't run in there with some half assed idea. But no, you had to be reckless and stupid and risk y-" Dean yelled.

At that Cas spun around, fists clenched at his sides.

"Dean I was perfectly safe, yes it caught me momentarily off guard, yes I could have waited, but we we running out of time. It was the only option and I-"

"Cas you just can't risk yourself just because you thought it was the only optio-"

"Dean that's what we always do" Cas accused taking a step forward.

Dean's heart pounded against his chest.

"That move was stupid, even for u-"

"We've been in far more dire situations. We've all made dangerous choices, fleeting decisions in order to save people" Cas continued, voice rising as he inched closer.

Dean suddenly found it difficult to breathe, mind racing as his anger buzzed through him.

"Yeah that's the job Cas, but you just don't go sacrificing yourself for gods sake" Dean yelled matching his volume as the lights flashed undetected.

In the pause, Dean thought he might have heard a distant sound, but Cas let out a bitter laugh, recapturing his attention.

"Oh you're one to talk. More often than not, a hunt comes down to making a risky choice. More often than not, it's about putting yourself in harms wa-" Cas was closing in now, blue eyes pinning Dean in place.

Dean drowning in pure desperation and rage, trying to get Cas to hear him. They blinded him to reality, his mind only telling him to scream back at Cas, offering no further instruction. Logic had been thrown out the window.

"What, now you're using our bad decisions to justify acting like a dumbass? What good did all that shit do u-"

"Dean, if I hadn't done it, I'm quite sure you would have made the same move a second late-".

"Like hell I woul-"Dean shouted, echoing off the walls as his hands began to shake.

"We both know you would have. You taught me to get the job done, find a different way, no matter the cost, we always find a way. That's exactly what I did, what I've always done, what we've always done. So Dean, I don't understand why this time is any diffe-"

"Because I can’t lose you again!" Dean screamed, voice breaking.

And with a bang the room went black.

They stilled, eyes meeting in the dark. Sparks floated down from the bulbs above, serving as the only light.

Dean quickly tried to regain a sense of his surroundings, going numb when he realized he heard cry-Jack.

The sound he hea-

Guilt like Dean has never felt before quickly overtook him, as he sprinted down the steps into the war room, heart pounding. They followed the sound in the dark.

The kid was crying, and they were both too wrapped up in their stupid fucking fight to even hear.

The backup generators kicked on as he reached the the pack n play, Cas beating him with his angel "night vision. "

Cas hurriedly scooped up Jack, who quickly stopped crying upon seeing their faces.

"Da! Dee!" Jack bounced in Cas' arms, his tear stained cheeks being the only indicator he was just wailing his head off. Then he was babbling away, smile on his face, as Cas pressed his palm to his forehead, checking if something was wrong. Dean hovered close, trying to look for any physical issues, when Cas sighed in relief dropping his hand.

But, upon seeing his kid safe, Dean's mind clicked back into action.

Jack crying alon-Sam-where's Sam-the lights-why di-

"-wow Jack great job stopping their little domestic display" Sam laughed as he emerged from the kitchen.

Okay what the hell is going on.

"Wha-"

"Jack blew the lights. When his emotions become unstable, his powers begin to tap into other power sources. Hence the lights bursting. That's what we learned this weekend, right bud? Already happened twice so far, oh, we need a new microwave by the way" Sam shrugged nonchalantly as he smoothed Jack's hair.

"You left Ja-"

"Wait, you were in the kitchen, you left Jack alone in here, heard him crying and you didn't go ge-"

Cas started, only to be cut off by Dean's panic.

"Okay okay mister moms, first of all, I was two feet away in the kitchen. I did run in here to get Jack, but I saw you two in here having it out, and didn't want to interrupt. So I figured one of you would grab him, or Jack would shut you guys up on his own. I guess you weren't giving him the attention he expected when he spotted you two, so Jack took matters into his own hands" Sam laughed with a shrug.

Dean's head was spinning. But he knew Jack was safe, had another angel power thing to deal with, but safe. And Sam was safe, a pain in the ass, but safe. And Ca-

His eyes slowly trailed over to him, watching realization dawn on his face, remembering that they were just in the middle of a fight.

Their was a shift in the room, and Dean's stomach twisted as he realized what he had said, what he scr-

"-aaaaaaand I think that's our cue bud. So you guys finish your fight, then Dean can fix the lights of course, and then you can see your kid" Sam smiled as he quickly plucked Jack from Cas' arms, ignoring his protests.

Dean watched them disappear down the hall, as the flames died, taking the fight in him, with them. He slumped in on himself, finally giving in to his exhaustion. All that remained was fear, which quickly let consume him.

They stood in silence for a moment, setting Dean's mind in motion again.

God what the hell was he doing? Why did he have to get so damn angry, why can't he just ta-

"Dean I-"Cas whispered

He dared a glance at Cas who was studying him, eyes full of remorse. But whatever look was on Dean's face, immediately shut him up.

Fuck

Dean tried to gain control of his ragged breathing, searching for the words.

He took a shuttering breath.

"Cas, listen I- I just got you back. And of course losing you wa-was always hard, but last time...."Dean trailed off, voice raw.

Dean's mind flew back to the flames, he could feel the sting of the cold night air, smell the smoke, hear Jack wailing against his chest.

"I-I can't go through that again Cas. And now there's Jack too, and I-it was jus-it'll kil-I can't handle it, not again. Please, I can't plea-" Dean pleaded desperately.

And then suddenly Cas' arms wrapped around him, forehead pressed against it shoulder as Cas supported his dead weight.

Dean gripped at Cas' jacket as a sob racked through him. And Cas just squeezed him tightly, murmuring something Dean couldn't make out.

It was as if everything came crashing down at once. The three months he spend refusing to process Cas' death, the terror of raising Jack, the joy and confusion of Cas coming back, the fear and fragility of their new....well Dean didn't even really know what they were. But he knew he loved it, wanted it. All of it, the past nine months bearing down all at once.

He can't will it away. He can't force it back down and burry it deep within his stomach. He can't stop it. Can't control it.

Dean had finally broke.

Another sob forced it's way past his lips, and Cas squeezed him tighter, resting his chin on Dean's head.

God how completely pathetic he must look right now.

He's this messed up over some dumb routine hunt? Cas was right, they had obviously dealt with far worse, this hunt was nothing. And between the two of them they had each made more dangerous choices, than the one Cas made last night.

But when he saw Cas laying on that floor-

He can't lose him. He can't. Not now. Not after everything.

With a sniff, Dean forced himself to pull back, but Cas kept his hands on Dean's shoulder's holding him up just in case.

Dean pointedly kept his eyes trained on the floor, mind racing.

God he was pathetic.

Cas deserves better than this. Better than him.

He doesn't deserve to deal with Dean and all of his shit, he shouldn't have to. He and Jack both do. They deserve to have a home, and someone they can rely on, someone who can keep their crap together when it counts. Not someone who will fall apart and sob on their friggin shoulder.

Cas deserves someone better, some less broken.

Because Dean is broken, and he can't be fixed. He's just beyond repair an-

"-Dean" Cas' voice cuts through his thoughts.

Cas gently, tilted Dean's chin up, forcing him to look at him.

Dean sees nothing but guilt and sorrow swimming behind those wide blue eyes, and his heart clenches at the sight.

This is all Dean's fault if he hadn-

"Dean, I'm sorry. You're right, I don't know what I was thinking, it was a reckless move. I could have waited, we could have come up with something el-" Cas began softly.

And that seemed to snap Dean back to reality.

"Cas no-you did-you didn't do anything we normally wouldn't do-"Dean began finding his voice.

Cas shook his head, frown deepening and Dean's heart squeezed again.

Great now Cas is blaming himself for the entire thing, another thing Dean's fucked up.

"Cas look, I freaked out okay. It was a stupid move, I ain't denying that, but it wasn't like it was out of the ordinary-" Dean paused taking a shaky breath.

"But as soon as I-when I saw that bloo-you're blood. And that damn thing was hovering over you with the blad-and they had it in your-I thought I was too late, and that you wer-"Dean stops, words catching in his throat.

He feels the tears begin to prick in his eyes again, and Cas quickly swiped them away with his thumb.

Dean swallowed the lump in his throat, letting out a bitter laugh

"I'm sorry, crying over so damn hunt. God I'm pathetic, yo-.Cas, you deserve better than this. I'm just some broken nobody wh-"

Cas' breath hitched and an unreadable expression crossed his face.

Something new dropped deep in the pit of Dean's stomach.

Dean was right. Cas doesn't want him anymore, not after he lost it over some stupid hunt-oh who is he kidding. This isn't about the hunt, this is about Dean. About now that Cas has truly seen how fucked up, how much of a burden, how pathetic he is, he doesn't want him anymo-

Cas gently cupped the sides of Dean's face, forcing him to meet his gaze again.

"Dean, you are allowed to feel, allowed to get angry and scream. And you're allowed to reach your breaking point, and you're allowed to cry and want and need. These things do not make you pathetic, they make you human, they make you, you".

Dean's heart pounds in his chest, while he tries to look anywhere but Cas' eyes. It's too much, he doesn't des-

"So do not ever think for a second that I deserve better than you, because I believe I'm the one who is undeserving. You're a man who does everything out of love, who taught me how to love. And you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders out of the stubbornness and love within your heart. Which only makes you even more worthy of receiving love."

Dean felt his breath stall in his lungs,

"And I'm sorry if I haven't been clear this past month, but I love you Dean. I want you, you are all I have wanted for years. And I want this, here, with you and Jack, for as long as you'll have me. And I want all of you, everything, that makes you who you are. Because you are not some perfect machine in need of repairs, you are not broken Dean Winchester" Cas finished softly as tears rolled down his cheeks.

The fear raging within him had stilled, was replaced by a sense of love he had never felt before, which seemed to be the norm when it came to loving Cas. He always found new ways to make Dean's brain short circuit and this was no exception.

Cas wants-

Dean felt the air leave his lungs as he was struck with a realization, Cas' words sinking in.

Cas loved Dean, and he wanted to be with Dean, for as long as he'll have him. For forever, mayb-but one step at a time.

So slowly, with trembling fingers, he wiped away Cas' tears.

And as he looked into those familiar blue eyes, he made a choice. Because this was Cas. And he deserved more. So Dean was going to give him more.

So he takes a deep breath.

"Cas, I-I'm not the best at this kinda stuff, but I'm gonna try okay? Because you deserve to hear it. Because you deserve everything, love and happiness-whatever the hell you want. And if what you actually want is me, then you have me. Because you're the best damn thing that's ever happened to me, and I just can't believe that you want-but I-I want to believ-I want to believe that those things you said about me are true, that I'm worthy of love and deserve to want and all that. Because I love you, and I want to be with you as long as you'll have me. So if what you sai-what you see in me, is true. Then we would both get what we want, and I think after everything, we deserve it" Dean finished, voice shaking.

And the next thing Dean knew, Cas' lips were on his, hands cupping his face. Dean quickly wrapped his arms around his waist, deepening the kiss, as they exchanged whispered I love you's.

Eventually they pulled back foreheads resting together, breathing ragged. Then Cas caught his eyes, giving him a soft smile. A smile that said I'm sorry and I'm proud of you, that expressed everything Dean needed to hear, that Cas understood. Dean found himself easily grinning in return.

And a small flicker of hope, for Dean, for them, for what their life could be, ignited in his chest. They could have this, like really have this.

Of course a single conversation doesn't fix a lifetime of self-doubt and anxiety, that exists between the two of them. But it's a start.

So Dean pulls back, keeping his arms tight around Cas' waist.

"Well I'm glad we got that sorted out. But if you ever pull that self sacrificing bullshit again, I swear to god I'll kick your ass so hard it'll blast you back to the beginning of time, capiche?"

A smirk spreads across Cas' face, amusement dancing behind those blue eyes.

"Yes. I capiche"

And Dean barks out a laugh, shoving Cas' head away affectionately.

"You're a pain in the ass, you know that?"

"Yes, but I'm your pain in the ass" Cas smirks, pinching Dean's ass, for effect.

And Dean definitely doesn't squeak in surprise, and cause Cas to laugh. But Dean does shut him up with another kiss.

God he's gonna be the death of him, but the thought only makes Dean's heart swell.

"C'mon dumbass, lets go find our kid" Dean says with a fond eye roll.

"But what about the lig-"

"Fuck the lights, if Sam thought Jack bursting them up was so funny, then he can fix them. Now, let's go see if we can get Jack to laugh so hard, that he blows up Sam's blender"

"Oh, and here I thought I was the dumbass"

Another laugh rips through him as grabs his hand, tugging Cas down the hall.

And when Cas squeezes his hand back, a warmth washes over him.

Yeah, they were going to be just fine.

Tag list:

@wormstacheangel @smiledean @shelikestv @chaoticdean @midnightwings-deancas @jellydeans @sunshine-jack @archervale @wikiangela @organicpurplepants

@bbcalamity @tkdwolf2012 @doemons-blog @rolling-stoned-girl @skylerkernaghan @shadowywerewolfqueen @the-cookie-navy @martymar1963 @thelahatiel @thefantasyfiend @castielle-deanna @aestheticflyer26

@multi-fandom-imagine @x-mypeopleskillsarerusty-x @wellofwoes @becky-srs @multi-fandom-dark-lord @perfectkoaladream @castiel-for-lunch @it--hurts--to--become @bowtiesandneckerchiefs @dakiaty @feraldean @teamfreebees @keshetcas @hrh-princess-bea @scarecrowmax

(As always please let me know if you would like to be added or removed!!!💛)

#so i rewrote this like 5 times and idk if im happy with it but this is it #this is a jourey and i hope its not too disconnected it gets a little cracky for like .1 second i dont even know #this is also so long i literally dont know what the hell happened #i wanted then to use their words for once and idk this turned into like 90% dialogue which i never write #but hey look sam!#so um...enjoy them using their words #dean winchester #castiel #baby!jack #jack kline #destiel #bec writes #destiel fic #baby jack truthing #season 13 #deancas #casdean #destiel fanfic

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britishassistant · 3 years

Text

The Villainous Paranoiac Just Wants An Uneventful Holiday (Part 2)

You need a break from your break at this rate.

You are exhausted.

You and Grim arrived back at the dorm with maybe ten minutes to spare before the other students came back from the parade and immediately set about working on completing your escape route as quickly as possible.

Only for the guy you’ve mentally dubbed “Scarabia Student A” to come to your door and tell the pair of you apologetically that because of Grim’s threats, Asim-senpai had decreed that neither of you would be allowed lunch and needed to remain locked in your room until defensive magic practice that afternoon.

On the plus side, your impromptu imprisonment let you and Grim work on the escape route undisturbed for the next hour. On the down side, it meant you both were starving after the exertion of the parade march and the digging.

The only reason you two didn’t collapse during defensive magic practice was because Viper-senpai snuck you both some bread and dried meats when he came to let you out. He also took the trouble to invite you two to a secret meeting on Asim-senpai’s behavior after dinner tonight.

You have to grudgingly admit, he is good at what he’s doing.

He has Asim-senpai do something cruel, then appears to the victims of said cruelty as a “savior”, doing what he can to soothe their pain “in spite of” his subordinate position to Asim-senpai, cultivating feelings of gratitude and empathy towards himself and resentment towards his puppet.

Even if you know what he’s doing, it’s difficult to resist that instinctual response.

Grim’s subvocal grumbling of “It doesn’t look like that white-haired jerk’s being controlled, fgnah.” is proof enough of that.

This way, once Viper-senpai drives Asim-senpai to overblot, no one will question him fighting against the dorm head he claims to be so loyal to, and his behavior before and during the overblot will make him appear to be the ideal replacement for the “mentally unstable” dorm head.

He’s definitely aiming for the dorm head position. The little performance this morning where he blatantly usurped Asim-senpai’s role of water-provider is proof enough of that.

Still, you muse while shouting out directions to Grim during magic training. Viper-senpai’s either very confident in his magic abilities or very ignorant about overblot to think that inducing it in Asim-senpai is in any way a good idea.

Especially if he’s under the delusion that his Unique Magic could somehow control an overblotted Asim-senpai.

It’d be better to just frame Asim-senpai for the actions he’s already committed under the influence, maybe show him shirking some dorm head duties if that was insufficent. You just don’t understand why Viper-senpai’s going through all this trouble and making a move now instead of closer to whenever elections for dorm heads are held, to make his win seem more legitimate.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to gain more information once you and Grim go along to this evening’s meeting with your plan in mind.

The after-dinner meeting starts pretty much how you expect it to.

Viper-senpai plays on the feelings of the other Scarabia students masterfully, painting himself as a concerned friend who only wants what’s best for his dorm head, but is at a loss due to Asim-senpai’s refusal to listen to reason. You and Grim give the input he clearly wants when he subtly cues you to.

However, when Grim tells him to just challenge Kalim for the position, Viper-san crosses his arms and coldly states, “No. There’s no way I can do that.”

Wait.

What?

“Gak! Y-you were the one who asked for advice, yanno...” Grim mutters, clearly as off-kilter as you feel.

From there Viper-senpai subtly divulges the sordid details of his slavery to the Asim family due to the circumstances of his birth, and how that conglomorate has been interfering on Asim-senpai’s behalf and at Viper-senpai’s expense for the entirety of their time at Night Raven College.

And all the while you’re sitting here, head feeling like it’s spinning a million miles a minute, trying to stop yourself from over-empathizing with the vice dorm head and figure out what this all means.

You don’t doubt for a single second that what he’s saying about the Asim and Viper families is true. However, his actions thus far have shown he is gunning for the dorm head position, even using this show of vulnerability to manipulate the other students into following him.

But why put himself and his family in such jeopardy for a simple school title?

“Asim-senpai doesn’t embody ‘the spirit of Scarabia?’ What does that mean?” You ask, latching onto a thread of the conversation in hopes of getting some clarity.

“There are different requirements for the position of dorm head in each of the seven dorms that a candidate must meet, which are taken from the virtues of the Great Seven.” Viper-senpai explains. “Duels are just an easy way to determine if the current dorm head meets that criteria or not. For example, in Pomefiore, the dorm head must have the greatest expertise in poisons, like the Beautiful Queen before them.”

One of the other students says something about Viper-senpai’s prudence and tactical thinking is much more like the Sorcerer of the Sands than Asim-senpai, but it sounds distant and far away to your ears.

Your brain is too busy buzzing over this new piece of information.

The dorm heads are supposed to be those who best embody the Great Seven.

The same Great Seven who’ve been appearing in your dreams practically every night before the overblots in their corresponding dorms happen.

What if— what if the reason that all the overblots this far have been dorm heads isn’t because the position of dorm head itself and the stresses it causes?

What if it’s because the criteria for the position of dorm head corresponds to the member of the Great Seven that dorm represents, which might contribute to who goes over the edge somehow?

After all, if you’re going by magic use and stress alone, then Buchie-senpai would’ve been the most likely candidate for overblot during the Magift incident. He did Laugh With Me an entire horde of civilians to stampede the coliseum after all.

But it was Leona-senpai, who best embodied the positive and negative qualities of the King of the Savannah, who ultimately overblotted. You even said it to him yourself when you asked him for help in investigating potential overblots outside of Night Raven College before the break. You thought at the time that his overblot was just because of the level of mental stress he was under, but if his status as a personification played a major role somehow...

But, then that means—

That means Asim-senpai isn’t automatically guaranteed to overblot because he’s a dorm head.

But Viper-senpai’s plan just plays off the common denominator of past overblots to make him seem in enough danger of doing so that the authorities are forced to recognize the signs and remove him from the position that’s “stressing” him so much.

Even the Asim family can’t object if the school is acting in the interests of their son’s mental health. They likely as not would decide to remove him from the “toxic environment” of Night Raven College altogether, either by transferring him to Royal Sword Academy or by paying for Asim-senpai to graduate early.

Though wouldn’t that mean Viper-senpai, as Asim-senpai’s servant, would be forced to leave with him? Or does he think that he’ll be able to convince the Asims to let him stay somehow?

In any case, that’s why you and Grim are still trapped here—because Viper-senpai’s under the impression that you both have some direct line to that useless birdbrain of a headmaster and can report the situation back to him.

But the amount of magic needed to keep up the charade until the headmaster actually notices, combined with the fact that everyone is saying that Viper-senpai is the rightful embodiment of the Sorcerer of the Sands means—

“Viper-senpai, you’ve got to run!”

You seize onto him, desperation evident in your face.

Viper-senpai retreats a step or two, blinking in alarm as you follow him to not lose your grip on his hand or his clothes. “Prefect, what—?”

“You said it yourself!” You can barely keep your voice from edging into hysteria. “You’re closest to Asim-senpai, and the way things are going, he’s going to overblot just like Rosehearts-senpai did. A-and overblots are illogical, they’re practically insane with hatred! They go after the people closest to them— you remember how badly Buchie-senpai was hurt when Leona-senpai overblotted, right?!”

Viper-senpai’s eyes are fixed on you as you shake your head, reliving those awful memories. “The only reason Trey-senpai didn’t die when Rosehearts-senpai overblotted was because Ace and Deuce got in his way and pissed him off more. If you stay in Scarabia...Viper-senpai, you’re in more danger than anyone else here! You need to get out of here, please, just run!!”

Please, you mentally beg as you stare at him. Please take the out I’m giving you. Call it off here, get out, get away, change your name, do whatever you have to to escape. Just, please, please don’t overblot on me too.

Viper-senpai’s brow furrows.

He slowly shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Prefect. Even if I wanted to, I’m bound to Kalim. I must follow him to the end.”

“But you could die.” You make no effort to hide your dismay, hands clenching around what they hold. “I-I can’t...pl-please don’t make me...”

His free hand begins moving towards your uninjured cheek—

CRASH!!

The sudden commotion makes the two of you leap apart, staring wildly at the source of the noise.

Grim sits dazed in the center of several overturned metal dishes and a golden lion-shaped tureen.

“Ow, ow, ow, that huuuurt!” He complains loudly, rubbing his little head. “What the heck, why’s this dumb thing empty if it smells good?! Aah, I’m so hun—”

“SSSHH!!” Practically everyone in the room hushes.

“Could you be any louder?!” Scarabia Student B hisses, looking around.

“Do you wanna just begin screaming for the Dorm Head, you stupid cat?!!” Scarabia Student A whispers furiously. “Seriously, if he wakes up and sees us here like this, we’re dead tomorrow, don’t you get that?!”

“Sheesh, I’m sorry.” Grim harrumphs, wandering back to his cushion. “It was just an accident, what’s gotten you all so worked up, fgnah?”

“Oh gee, I wonder why.” A third student somewhere near the back mutters.

“They were having a moment.” You think you hear a fourth student hiss, but you’re pretty sure you’ve misheard that one.

Viper-senpai clears his throat and goes to peer out into the hall. “...There’s no sign of movement. I think we’re safe, for the moment.”

You fiddle with your tie and collar, trying to straighten them as much as you can. “I-I apologize for my outburst. My behavior was inappropriate and not conducive to the matter at hand.”

Viper-senpai huffs a little laugh. “Don’t be. You’re only looking out for others’ wellbeing, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You know better than anyone how dangerous these kinds of things are, after all. You’ve survived three of them.”

“Four.” Grim corrects from his cushion, tail flicking back and forth. “There was that creepy one in the Dwarf Mines that broke Yuu’s ribs at the start of the year, right Yuu?”

Your tie feels a little tight as you finish adjusting it, fidgeting under everyone’s scrutiny. “...yes. It’s a long story.”

“Will the dorm-head really overblot though?” The kid you’ve mentally dubbed “Scarabia Student B” pipes up. “I just can’t see it...”

“Well, he has exhibited a lot of the symptoms shown by other dorm heads before their overblots.” You say carefully. “An obsession with achieving a certain goal is something Rosehearts-senpai, Leona-senpai, and Ashengrotto-senpai all had in common, and Asim-senpai’s desire to improve Scarabia does fit this pattern.”

“Is there nothing that can be done for him Prefect?” Viper-senpai urges, gripping your shoulders. “Kalim may be unreliable at times, but I grew up with him. He calls me his friend. Are you saying there’s no way we can stop him from overblotting?”

You shrug gently, trying not to dislodge him. You don’t want his hackles raised now. “I’ve yet to see an overblot prevented, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Keeping him from using too much magic would be a big plus, because the blot would have less of a chance to build up. Other than that, it might be best to prepare for the worst? Just in case.”

“Maybe call the family doctor on the sly!” Grim chips in. “See if he can come here to take Kalim home rather than the other way round!”

Viper-senpai nods slowly, like someone accepting news of an imminent loss. “I’ll certainly take your advice into consideration. However, I will not leave. I can’t abandon the dorm—can’t abandon Kalim— during this crisis. I won’t run and leave everyone to face the danger alone.”

“Vice dorm head!” One of the younger students chokes out.

It feels like something hard and unforgiving is lodged against your breastbone.

“I-I won’t let it.” You stammer, feeling yourself flush a deep red in embarrassment at your verbal blunder. “I won’t let it come to that, Viper-senpai. I’ll stop this overblot. No matter what it takes. I swear to you, on my life, I’ll stop it!”

Viper-senpai gives you a not unkind chuckle, meeting your gaze head-on. “Well then, Prefect. I’ll be in your care.”

You can’t hold it for more than a few moments, your breath hitching as you look away. It feels like there’s so much blood in your cheeks that the one Asim-senpai slapped earlier is beginning to hurt again.

“We-we’ll help out too, Jamil!” Scarabia Student A claims, standing up as well.

“Y-yeah! You’re much more fit to be dorm head than Kalim-senpai!” Two more students in the back push towards the front.

“Our dorm head should be someone who embodies the virtues of the Sorcerer of the Sands, not someone who paid their way in and is overblotting because they can’t take the heat.” A tall third year proclaims.

“Yeah!”

“You said it!”

“We’re all equal here!”

“You guys...” Viper-senpai looks genuinely touched, staring out at his sea of carefully handled supporters.

“What are you all doing here at this time of night?”

Asim-senpai stands in the doorway, glaring angrily at all of you.

You can’t quite help the two shaky steps back you take.

“Geh, he found us!” Grim mutters, hiding behind your leg.

“Ka-Kalim.” Viper-senpai says, hands held up placatingly. “We were just—”

“It seems I went to easy on you today, if you all are still overflowing with energy this late at night.” Asim-senpai says coldly. “You should go outside to the courtyard to practice magic until you hit your limits.”

A chill goes down your spine. “Asim-senpai, that’s really not a good idea, we were just—”

“You. Shut up.” The dorm head stalks towards you. “Do you think you can presume to order me around? Was one meal enough to make you think that lying tongue of yours could do whatever it wanted? Maybe we should switch to practice using offensive magic this time—you’d make a fine moving target.”

It’s suddenly much harder to breathe.

“D-dorm head!”

“Why you—!” Grim snarls.

“Kalim.” Viper-senpai steps in front of you, blocking you from Asim-senpai’s view. “The Prefect was only referring to your idea of starting the march two hours earlier tomorrow. Everyone needed to be notified of that, so we’ll be turning in now.”

“T-two hours?!” Scarabia Student B gasps, only to be quickly hushed by everyone around him.

“...” Asim-senpai seems to contemplate this for a moment, before closing his eyes. “Very well. But no one will be eating until dinner tomorrow for this failure to listen to directions the first time, understood?”

Viper-senpai opens his mouth to protest again, but then slumps. “...Yes, Kalim.”

Asim-senpai waves a hand. “Well? What are you all waiting for? You’re dismissed.”

The students of the dorm begin to slowly, sullenly file out into the hallway, many of them grumbling and muttering under their breath.

You take the opportunity to escape, scooping up Grim and clapping a cautious hand over your friend’s big mouth so he can’t say anything else as you edge past Asim-senpai.

“Thank you.” You mouth at Viper-senpai as you speed walk out of the room.

He shoots you a small smile in response.

The journey back to your shared room is quick and uneventful, though you feel constantly on edge the entire way there.

You aren’t able to relax until you’ve nodded a “goodnight” to Scarabia students A and B and shut the door firmly behind you, sagging against it.

You really should learn their names at some point.

“Well?” Grim asks after you hear the lock on your door click into place and the guards wander off for their patrol. “Did you get it?!”

The hard and unforgiving feeling against your breastbone hasn’t faded at all.

You turn your back and unbutton your shirt, removing the source of said feeling from its hiding place.

“Your timing with knocking that stuff over was perfect.” You turn back around and flash Viper-senpai’s magic pen. “But we need to get our escape route finished quick, he could notice it’s gone missing any second now.”

You’re sort of amazed that he hasn’t already. You kept expecting to hear someone begin chasing after you and Grim as you left, angrily screaming about the theft. If he hadn’t stepped in for you when you protested magic practice...

Thank Ace and Buchie-senpai that you somehow got away with this.

“Yes!! That’s my minion for ya!!” Grim cackles softly, grin sharp and savage as he leaps back into the hole in the floor. “I still wish I coulda bonked him over the head, but imagine his face once the idiot’s realized he’s been duped!”

“Just so long as that experience stays imaginary.” You mutter, bringing the pen over to the locked window and looking at it under the moonlight that seeps in through the slats.

There’s blot staining over half of the crimson gem.

You wince just looking at it. How much magic has Viper-senpai been using for this much for accumulate?

Still, he’s probably not so stupid that he’ll risk casting magic without it, so ar least he’ll be on magic-using probation for the duration of time that you have it.

All you have to do is keep it away from him until the blot’s dissipated and you can report his plan and living situation to Crowley and other teachers. The other teachers will force the dumb bird to actually do something about Viper-senpai’s slavery. He won’t have a reason to overblot anymore. Everyone wins.

Though unfortunately, you can’t do much about stress-induced blotting, and you have no idea if he can still overblot while separated from his magic pen. Maybe you should investigate whether or not you could just...smash it and get him a new, non-blotted magic pen as a replacement? They do those, right?

“It’s done!” Grim hisses, prompting you to stash the magic pen away again and button up your shirt. “It’ll be a kinda tight squeeze though.”

You purse your lips at the small hole. “...It’ll have to do. We don’t have any time to waste, c’mon.”

To say it’s cramped would be an understatement. You’re more covered in scrapes and dust than you’ve ever been by the time you drop onto the ground of the floor below, panting and wheezing for breath. Your bruised cheek is throbbing again.

“Now I know what it feels like when spaghetti gets made at least.” You whisper.

Grim nods. “You can say that again. Now, we’re in between guard patrols, but we’ve still gotta be extra quiet so they don’t hea—”

GRRRRRARGGHH

You stare at your monster cat’s stomach as its complaining rumble dies away.

“Hey! What’s that noise?!” Comes the patrolling student’s cry.

You close your eyes. “Grim.”

“What?!” He whispers back, ears flicking in embarrassment. “I didn’t get any lunch! I can’t help being super hungry!!”

“Grim.”

“Oi! The Prefect and the cat have broken out again!” A Scarabia guard yells as he rounds the corner. “But how?! I could’ve sworn Achmed said he locked their door!”

“Ah!!” His compatriot cries, pointing up at the hole in the ceiling. “Look!! They’ve totally destroyed the floor of their room! Is that how you pay us back for our hospitality?!”

“How dare you?!” The first guard gasps. “That stuff’s really expensive to fix! Everyone, get over here! We’ve got another escape attempt!!”

“Fgnah! Yuu, let’s go, before their buddies get here!” Grim yelps, taking off down the hallway with you hot on his heels.

You hear the door to your prison slam open behind you, accompanied by Viper-senpai’s infuriated roar of “PREFECT!!”

You bundle Grim under one arm and run faster.

You seriously need a break from your break at this rate.

Hopefully you’ll get one, if you can figure out how to make it out of this dorm alive.

91 notes · View notes

cinnaminsvga · 4 years

Text

Taming of the Bridezilla | Seokjin

→ summary: Picture this: You had been (not-so) cordially invited to the wedding of your least favorite cousin—a woman who had been hellbent on making your childhood a living hell. Now older and wiser, you would think that you would put aside your differences and attend your cousin’s special day without any hard feelings, right? You wouldn’t seek revenge, now would you?

→ genre: fake dating!au, i2l, humor/crack, fluff → warnings: seokjin and oc paradoxically have big yet small brains, fake proposals, not-so fake mutual pining, thinly veiled baby-making jokes, terrible family members, ass slapping (no worries it’s consensual) → words: 6.3K → a/n: first of all, no this is not a horror fic; i just thought the title was funny. unless you consider the stupidity of the characters to be mildly horrifying, then sure you can count this as a horror fic. this insanely ridiculous fic was commissioned by @breadoffoxy!! anyone who loves chaotic jin is an angel in my book. yes, this comm is a bit longer than expected but what can i say... i love me some jin. anyway i hope you guys enjoy!

“You got the ring, right?”

Seokjin pats his left breast pocket and gives you a quick smirk. The bump where the ring should be is fortuitously hidden by his large and garish boutonniere, looking to all the world like he had pinned a whole head of cabbage to his suit. Even then, he still somehow manages to make it work. “Of course I did. This entire plan would be useless if I didn’t have it,” he says.

“What flavor did you get? I quite like the watermelon one,” you muse, smacking your lips in anticipation. “Though it’s hard to remember since I haven’t had a ring pop in years.”

Seokjin laughs loudly, startling a group of aunties gossiping in the corner. They all shoot glares at him, though the effect has lost its novelty as they’ve already been glaring at you from the moment you arrived. You suppose that they have a good reason to, considering that you both arrived at the reception an entire 30 minutes late. You can imagine them cursing you under their breath, saying something like, “You’ve brought dishonor to us all!” or whatever it is that aunties like to say these days.

“I could have gotten you all the flavors available at the convenience store if you wanted, but then we’d be 40 minutes late instead,” Seokjin sighs, pretending to be anguished at the thought.

You snort in the most unladylike manner that you can, grinning wildly when you hear one of the aunties gasp in horrified disbelief. From the way they’re reacting, you might have thought that you just flashed them your Borat-inspired neon green thong.

“I do love a man who can treat me well,” you giggle, earning a soft pinch from him.

“Oh, hush. I know you love it. You nearly burst into tears the other day when I bought you a McFlurry because your broke ass was a dollar short,” Seokjin teases. You squawk indignantly, unable to come up with a retort.

“Whatever! Just because you’re a trust fund baby doesn’t mean you get to bully my impoverished state. Just you fucking wait ‘til I get hit by a wealthy 77 year old’s BMW and then I’ll be made for life,” you huff, your illusion of annoyance quickly shattered by the large, dumb grin on your face. “Hey, would you still love me if I broke all my limbs but had a massive bank account?”

“I’d rather buy you McDonald’s for the rest of your life than see you in pain,” he answers simply, patting you gently on the head. “Though I suppose helping you inject thousands of calories into your bloodstream would also cause you pain later on in life, but hey, at least you’d go down doing what you love.”

“Oh, yes. Keep talking dirty to me. I love it when you talk about the ways you’d kill me by association.” You laugh, casually looping your arms together as you walk past the slowly growing crowd of aunties and entering the reception hall to find your seats. Almost everyone is already in their seats, with a few guests milling about and greeting one another with tight-lipped smiles and hollow laughter. The sight brings goosebumps up your arm, bringing back terrible memories of having to make niceties with these people despite knowing that they despised you and your less affluent family.

Remember, you’re only here as a representative for your parents, you tell yourself. You’d rather bear the brunt of the thinly-veiled insults than to have your parents have to experience this hell. Besides, you have big plans for today, and they would only be brought to an end if your mother ever found out what you wanted to do in the first place.

“As they say… We’re here for a good time, not a long time, which I suppose is our philosophy for tonight as well,” he quips back. He taps you lightly on the hand, wrenching your gaze away from the magnificent chocolate fountain on the dessert table and back to his somewhat less magnificent face. A straight-up lie, but it is the only defense mechanism you have in your arsenal that can keep you from staring at how gorgeous he looks in his suit and tie like a braindead idiot. Denial, after all, hasn’t failed you during the last five years that you’ve been in love with your own best friend.

“What is it?” you ask, curious when he furtively points out one of your cousins near the front of the hall. “That’s Namjoon. Do you know him?”

“Know is a strong word,” Seokjin hums, winking at your cousin when he happens to turn towards the two of you. Namjoon’s eyes light up when he sees him, but his excitement immediately vanishes when he notices who Seokjin has beside him on his right arm. You could see the mental cogs going on inside Namjoon’s head as he stares at the two of you, but you don’t get to see him reach a conclusion before Seokjin is pulling you away, walking in the opposite direction.

“Seokjin? What was that all about?” you ask, though you have to admit you’re kind of afraid to know the answer to your own question. As much as everything about tonight’s scheme had been your idea, you can’t help but think that Seokjin’s intense enthusiasm to help you isn’t merely out of his own desire to help you as a friend, but rather due to his innate calling to cause chaos wherever he goes.

“I have a secret bonus surprise for the bride and groom once we get kicked out from this joint after we do our thing,” he says. “And, dare I say, it’ll be quite a treat for all the guests here.” The smirk on his lips is downright heinous, only exacerbating the frantic racing of your heart. There must be something wrong with you, not with how badly you want to do unspeakable atrocities to him and his evil-looking ass. Or perhaps he was simply put down on Earth to test your slowly fraying sanity.

He snaps you out of your dumbfounded, horny stupor when he continues, “If everything goes according to plan, then we’ll truly end this night with a bang, no pun intended.”

“What was even the pun there?” You raise a brow, slightly disconcerted by the way Seokjin was struggling to keep his laughter (at his own joke) at bay. “You know what? Don’t even answer. I guess I’ll just have to find out later tonight.”

After some pointless meandering while the two of you locate your seats, you are finally able to locate your table, unsurprisingly situated near the farthest corner of the hall where no one would have to see you. You’re honestly more surprised that your newly-wedded cousin had even remembered to give you a seat, though you suppose that it must have been at the behest of your uncle. While your devil of a cousin has always been rude and cruel to you, you have to admit that at least her father knew some manners, though that only begs the question as to what happened to his daughter along the way. Genetics and expensive etiquette classes can only help so much, you suppose.

“Thank you again for doing this with me. You really didn’t need to,” you say when you take a seat, nearly elbowing him in the process. Your chairs are wedged right beside the emergency exit and a grotesque ice sculpture of the bride and groom, forcing the two of you to sit so close that you could feel Seokjin breathe directly into your ear. If you shifted just slightly to the right, you’d basically be sitting on his lap (which is a prospect that intrigues you greatly, but you refrain from voicing it in fear of creeping him out… for now).

“How could I ever resist the offer to ruin your cousin’s wedding? This has been on my bucket list for years,” he winks cheekily at you. “Besides, you’re my dearest friend, Y/N. You could ask me to fight a bear naked, and I’d gladly let it eat my dick in one chomp!”

“I wouldn’t let a bear eat your dick,” you say kindly, patting him gently on the back. “You can’t afford to lose an inch when you only have two to offer.”

Before you could laugh hysterically at Seokjin’s howls of betrayal, your attention is pulled away when the soft violin music stops playing abruptly. From far away, it’s hard to tell what’s going on until you notice a bright light reflecting off of the sea of attendees, the balding head of the reception’s host bobbing up and down as he makes his way to the front of the hall.

“Attention esteemed guests! We will now begin serving dinner shortly. Please remain in your seats as our waiters attend to you.” The host speaks into a crackly microphone just as a few scraggly-looking underpaid teenagers in black dress shirts come out with the first course of the night.

Seokjin cranes his neck, trying to see what the food is. “What the hell is that? Why does it look like green shit in a bowl?” he murmurs, loud enough so that only you can hear. “I didn’t know your cousin was a Dr. Seuss fan. Are we being served green eggs and ham?” Before you can guess, you watch as his nose crinkles in disgust, a vile stench making its way to your area even though none of the waiters were even close to your table. “Oh my goodness, is that stench what we’re supposed to eat?”

“Smells like a barnyard,” you comment, though you aren’t as surprised as he is by the revolting smell. “Well, my cousin always did like making atrocious vegan recipes on her shitty WordPress blog, so I wouldn’t put it past her if she made up the menu for her own wedding.”

“She’s a vegan and a bully? What are the odds,” he says drily, cringing when he watches one of the guests begin to dry heave the moment a spoonful of the green stuff enters their mouth. “Christ. I didn’t know I was signing up for a life or death mission.”

“At this rate, I don’t think we’re getting served until the end of the night anyway,” you say, observing as the understaffed employees tried their best to get to every table while insufferable aunts did their worst to hinder their progress by nagging and complaining. Why were they so adamant about eating the food anyway? Were they itching to get diarrhea on a Saturday night? You do admit that it would probably be better, so then at least you’d have an excuse to leave earlier. “Though I suppose... Do you think eating the mystery goo while it’s cold would be better or worse?”

“It’s okay, I’ll treat you to McDonald’s when we finish up here,” he says, smiling sweetly at you. Never in your life has the mention of greasy fries and chicken nuggies made your heart race faster than it did at that moment, but then again, it could also be your high-blood pressure kicking up. Either way, you can’t ignore the way your face heats up at his offer, now more excited than ever for the reception to be over.

You and Seokjin chat as you wait for everyone around you to finish eating, not even bothered when the waiters forget to bring your food. You’re in the middle of debating the pros and cons of cock and ball torture when large dark shadows loom over both your heads, much like a solar eclipse. A cold shiver runs up your spine when you look up to find the reptilian faces of your aunts, the fumes of their designer perfume creating a cloud so noxious that you could feel your lungs shrivel into prunes.

“Hello, Y/N. It’s nice to see you after such a long time,” your Aunt Sohee greets, her tone indicating that there was nothing pleasant about seeing you at all. Your aunt, who had gotten so much botox done that she was reminiscent of a plastic balloon ready to pop, has her entourage of fellow aunties behind her, all of whom looked ridiculous in their fake designer dresses. You swear you can see that one of them had forgotten to snip off the Made in China tag before wearing it to the wedding.

“Aunt Sohee, you’re looking… young,” you say after a moment, deciding to settle on lying for now. Even though your main plan for this evening is to create chaos at your cousin’s wedding, your one condition is that you wouldn’t cause a scene with your aunts. While you are hardly in the running for favorite niece, there is still a 1% chance that you could get some inheritance from them once they hit the grave, so you’ll have to grit your teeth and bear the incoming barrage of personal questions coming your way lest you lose out in the long run.

“Why, thank you. I can’t say the same for you,” she huffs, shamelessly grabbing my cheeks and squishing them like stress balls. She peers sourly at your disfigured face, trying to squint judgmentally at you but failing due to her horrendous plastic surgery. “How old are you? Why do you have so many wrinkles?”

You feel your eyebrow twitch involuntarily, unable to respond even if you wanted due to the gorilla-hold she has on your face. You side-eye Seokjin, who is looking back at you with a blank and calm expression. You had already told him beforehand that you wouldn’t be arguing with your aunts, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to be an asshole.

Being an asshole, after all, is Seokjin’s favorite pastime.

“Hello, Aunties. My name is Kim Seokjin, and I’m Y/N’s long-term boyfriend. She’s told me many good things about you,” he says with a polite smile, his hamster cheeks puffing up in that adorably boyish way. The surrounding aunties all begin to coo at his handsome face (unfair!), but they’re quickly silenced by a sharp glare from your Aunt Sohee. She appraises him, giving him a once over with a pursed lip.

“Long-term boyfriend, huh? Are you sure you aren’t paying her or something? Y/N hasn’t had a boyfriend in years. Her cousins have told me that she’s been too busy with other… extracurricular activities to bother sticking around,” your aunt says snidely, her sneer deepening. She lets go of your face, crossing her arms when she spies the expensive watch on his wrist. “Ah, I see that you’re well-off. I just can’t possibly see why else you’d be staying with her if not for other reasons.”

You can feel your blood pressure rising, the veins on your forehead undoubtedly bulging as you try to suppress your rage. Screw your cousin for spreading a rumor that you’re a whore! It’s as if you were the one sucking guys off in the locker rooms when the two of you were in the second year of high school and not her. You haven’t even had your first proper kiss, for heaven’s sake!

Instead of getting angry, Seokjin’s expression hardly changes at all. His serene smile is still plastered on his face, but only you can tell that he’s even remotely bothered by their rude remarks. You can feel the air around him turn frosty, but your oblivious aunties are still too busy tittering amongst themselves, exchanging insults at your expense.

“Oh, are we that obvious?” Seokjin tilts his head, feigning innocence. Your head jerks towards him, your eyes bugging out of their sockets. What the fuck? “You are so right, Auntie Sohee. I’m sure Y/N must have informed you about our predicament. You see, we’ve—”

“Your predicament?” Aunt Sohee scoffs, interrupting Seokjin mid-speech. “I can’t believe the nerve of this girl, bringing her little boy-toy to the holy matrimony of her cousin—”

“—been trying to produce an heir to the Kim Line for months now,” Seokjin sighs heavily, looking off into the distance with glazed, dreamy eyes. You nearly cough out a lung at his sudden proclamation, about to interject and ask him what on earth he was talking about. Your words die on your tongue, however, when he grips your hand tightly underneath the table. He taps three times on the back of your hand: an old sign that you both made back in high school whenever he was busy bullshitting his way out of trouble.

Luckily, none of your aunts notice your blunder, all of them too occupied trying to wrap their heads around what Seokjin had said. Multiple mouths drop open in surprise and disbelief, including your Aunt Sohee. Her penciled eyebrows arch comically high, her smoothened forehead wrinkling infinitesimally (a feat in itself, for you were sure she had long since lost any ability to move the skin on her face.)

“I beg your pardon?” she whispers, staring daggers at Seokjin.

Then beg, you think to yourself. Judging by the way the corners of Seokjin’s lips lift slightly, you have a strong feeling that he was thinking the same thing to himself. Instead, he says, “Yes, Aunt Sohee. You see, I come from a long line of businessmen. Ever heard of Kim Enterprises.”

Her face turns pale. “You mean… the Kim Enterprises? The one that owns—”

“South Korea’s largest chain of department stores? I’m flattered that you’re familiar,” he winks. He leans forward, gesturing for your aunts to come closer, like he’s imparting state secrets to them. “My older brother, who has been married for quite some time, has chosen to remain childless at the behest of his wife. For that reason, my father put me up to the task of producing an heir for the company.”

“An heir?” your aunt repeats, dumbfounded.

Seokjin nods, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, it’s quite unfortunate, but it’s a responsibility I’m willing to take. My family is notorious for planning our lives, even for the next 50 years, so I am forever grateful to have Y/N who is willing to bring me multiple potential heirs to my family.”

“Multiple heirs?” Your aunts shriek in unison, causing a few nearby guests to look over at your table in curiosity. You wave at them awkwardly in apology, hoping to get them to ignore the absolute clusterfuck happening right in front of you.

You feel Seokjin kick you gently in the shin, urging you to say something as well. You clear your throat, channeling all the pent-up Seokjin energy that you had indirectly absorbed over the years of being his friend. “That’s right… My Jinnie has always been so lonely, living in his gigantic mansion with his piles of money. He may have never felt the loving touch of his father, but I’m certain that we’ll be great parents to our children. Why, we’re almost like a pair of rabbits when it comes to—”

Aunt Sohee clears her throat abruptly, a deep flush coloring her cheeks as she glares daggers at you. She looks absolutely peeved, and it takes all your mental fortitude to restrain yourself from jumping up in triumph. Take that, wench!

“I have to admit that this is somewhat… unexpected,” your aunt says carefully, pointing a tight smile at Seokjin. He beams back, positively delighted.

“Y/N is quite the catch. I’m grateful to have her in my life,” he says, his tone growing soft by the end. He looks at you then, and you find a mysterious emotion floating in his eyes that you can’t quite name. When you blink and try to get a closer look, his careful façade is back in place.

Eventually, your aunts lose interest in you once they realize they can no longer bully you, not when you had an incredibly rich boyfriend to back you up. “Must be nice being a rich boy, huh?” you snicker, teasing the blushing boy beside you. Thanks to his hair growing longer than usual, the tips of his ears are miraculously hidden away. When you brush his hair back, they are as red as a baboon’s ass.

“Oh, shut up. You know I hate flaunting my dad’s money,” he whines, pouting cutely. He fingers the watch on his wrist, staring at it uncomfortably. “This isn’t even my watch. I had to borrow one from my brother.”

“Well, you did it for me, so I suppose it’s not all bad,” you laugh, pinching his cheek lightly. “Plus, it was funny watching my aunts shut up for once. They’re just mad that you’re richer than the groom.”

“Really? What does he do?”

“He’s an entrepreneur.” You snort, emphasizing the word with air quotations. “Honestly, he just calls himself that while he waits for his self-made business to pop off or whatever. No such luck so far, if what I heard was right.”

“Lucky for you, you’re stuck with my devastatingly handsome face and stinkin’ rich bank account,” he jokes, contorting his face into a funny expression until you’re left snorting at his antics. Little does he know, you still would’ve l***d him even if he wasn’t any of those things, but that’d be too cringey to say. What are you, some sort of romantic lead protagonist?

It takes a little bit over an hour for dessert to start getting served, by which point the bride and groom decide to make their rounds to greet the guests. “Don’t you think this is the perfect time to put our plan into motion? The dance floor is open and we should be able to make it to the center without anyone noticing,” he whispers, his breath tickling your neck.

“Yeah, let’s go,” you say, but just as you’re about to get up from your seat, a flurry of white blocks your path in an instant. You startle slightly, falling back to your chair and hitting Seokjin in the chest with a soft grunt. “Shit, sorry about that Seokjin—”

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my dear cousin,” a voice cuts you off, the disdain in their voice dripping like acid down your ear canals. Your blood freezes instinctively, years of past trauma crashing down on you as your childhood bully stands just inches away from you, her blood-red lips stretched into a broad smirk.

“Kairi,” you greet.

“Y/N,” she responds.

“Seokjin!” Seokjin adds helpfully.

Your cousin turns to him slowly. “Quite right,” she hisses, eyebrows pinched together in thinly-veiled annoyance. “I’ve heard through some whispers that my baby cousin finally managed to snag a rich kid for a boyfriend and I just couldn’t help but let my curiosity drag me over here.” She looks you up and down, snorting at what she sees. “You would think that having a chaebol as a boyfriend would mean you could at least afford a proper dress.”

You glance down at your dress: a hand-me-down from your mother because you couldn’t be bothered to buy a new one, not when you’d rather choke on Satan’s hot fiery balls for all eternity than spend any amount of money just to attend your cousin’s wedding. Despite this, you can’t help your cheeks from heating in embarrassment, an automatic response after years of bullying and torment from that spoiled bitch.

When you don’t reply, Kairi’s smirk widens. “Oh? Cat got your tongue? Sugar daddy couldn’t even be bothered to buy you a dress? While you’re at it, maybe you should ask for a new car too. I’m surprised you even made it here alive in that old metal deathtrap of yours. You’re lucky you were just late to the reception instead of dead on the street.”

You can sense Seokjin staring at you from your right. Your fists are clenched tightly on your skirt, your nails nearly tearing the fabric in your searing rage. Slowly, carefully, Seokjin slips his hands underneath yours—he pries your death grip open until he can lace his fingers in between yours. At once, your anger melts at his tender gesture, your focus pulled away from your cousin and back to him. He thumbs the back of your hand, as if assuring you that he’d handle this himself.

He smiles at Kairi, not a single ounce of kindness in his eyes. “Yes, indeed. It is my mistake entirely for not ordering a dress much sooner. Y/N is so incredibly humble; she’d rather wear a vintage outfit than wear one of those paper-thin dresses from YesStyle that you and your bridesmaids seem to favor,” he sighs, pretending to be pained.

“Paper-thin? YESSTYLE?” Kairi screeches, her voice breaking the sound barrier. You watch in fascination as her skin turns an unflattering ruddy shade.

Unperturbed by her murderous aura, Seokjin prattles on. “Quite right,” he mocks her with her own words, smirking ever so slightly. “Though, I must apologize for being late to the reception. That was my fault as well. My father had a general meeting this morning for all the employees at the company, as he had wanted to announce that I would be the Vice President starting next Monday. We tried to leave sooner, but everyone had been too busy congratulating us,” he apologizes, though not apologetic in the slightest.

Your cousin could cosplay as a walking crack pipe with how much steam was puffing out of her ears. She’s livid, so much so that her fury was preventing her from formulating any sort of comeback. “You—how dare you—I swear on my—” she stutters incomprehensibly, her vulture-like nails tearing her dainty paper-thin skirt into shreds.

Just as she looks about ready to blow, her father comes around to your table. He places a hand delicately on his daughter’s shoulder, immediately understanding the situation when he sees you. “Kairi, I think it’s time for you to greet the rest of the guests. Uncle Iverson said he has a gift for you that simply cannot wait,” he says, doing his best to appease you. He gives you a genuinely regretful look; you shake your head, waving off his concern.

“It was nice seeing you, Kairi. I hope you and your husband will have a wonderful year together,” you say. You gasp exaggeratedly, holding a hand to your heart. “Oh, sorry. I meant to say I hope you have wonderful years together. Pardon my mistake.”

Before the scant amount of brain cells in your cousin’s brain could process your words, her father pulls her away, dragging her to the next table over. Once they’re out of earshot, you heave a sigh of relief. Beside you, Seokjin lets out a laugh that he had been undoubtedly holding in the past few minutes, sounding like a fish gasping for air with how much he is shaking with mirth.

“Fuck, that was hilarious. Did you see how angry she got? Beautiful,” he says, wiping away a stray tear. “Love that for us!”

“Damn. I knew you were good at bullshitting, but even your acting skills almost convinced me,” you whistle lowly, impressed. “You sure you’re not a con-artist in disguise?”

“All good businessmen are con-artists, my young padawan,” he snickers, winking at you. He shrugs. “You get used to dealing with assholes like her when you attend enough rich people parties. Besides, all good lies are rooted in the truth, after all. That’s what my father taught me when I was seven.”

“You must have been a terrible child, then.” You laugh, before realizing what he had just said. “Wait. Rooted in the truth? What does that mean?”

“Oh. Well,” he clears his throat, giggling nervously. He rubs his neck, embarrassed. “I am the vice president of dad’s company now. I just lied about the meeting being this morning. He announced it a day ago or something. Not that it’s a big deal or anything…”

You gawk at him, speechless. Not for the first time in your life, you are once again stunned by the absurdity of the man before you. How did men like him exist outside of cheesy k-dramas? He’s handsome, rich, funny, AND well-mannered? It’s almost like some love-crazed author had penned him into existence for their entertainment.

Seokjin breaks you from your reverie, tapping you thrice on your shoulder. “Shall we go? The dance floor is still empty. It’s now or never.”

You nod excitedly, standing up to head towards the center of the hall. This time, there is no one stopping you as the two of you make your way towards your destination. The lights near the dancefloor are still dimly lit, as most of the lighting is currently focused on the guests as the bride and groom make their rounds to greet everyone. Even if Seokjin got onto his knees right now, only a few people nearby would notice, so you’d have to do something to catch people’s attention.

“This is going to be moderately to highly embarrassing for a few moments, but I think that’s the atmosphere we’re going for, isn’t it?” Seokjin whispers, his mouth embarrassingly close to yours as he holds you gently by the waist. There isn’t a need for him to stand so close to you, but you have to admit his presence is mostly calming—minus the fact that he’s been your crush for five years and he’s going to be fulfilling one of your deepest fantasies in front of your entire extended family. No biggie.

“I suppose so. What are you gonna do to get their attention?” you ask, palms beginning to sweat. Despite this, Seokjin still takes your hands into his own, a small smile on his lips.

“Just watch,” he whispers, before slowly getting down on one knee.

Ba-dump. Here we fucking go.

“My dearest Y/N… The apple of my eye, the straw to my berry, the con to my dom,” Seokjin says, projecting his voice so that it can be heard even above the music. One of the violin players is even startled long enough to stop playing, further causing more heads to turn in their direction. You hear a gasp coming from your left, but you force yourself not to look. Instead, you stare right back into Seokjin’s sweet brown eyes, your heart beating a mile a minute.

This isn’t real… This is just a prank, bro. Get over yourself, you hiss internally, but your heart refuses to listen.

“You’ve been in my life for almost half a decade, and not a day goes by wherein I don’t wonder what it would be like to live the rest of my days with you. In many ways, I wouldn’t be the person I am if it hadn’t been for your presence in my life,” he says. If you look deeper into his eyes, you can almost trick yourself into thinking that they looked wetter than they had just a moment ago.

“Y/N, you are the person I’ve loved for years now. I used to think you didn’t like me as much as I liked you, so I was always scared to pop the question. I had many opportunities to ask, but I suppose tonight just felt like the right moment. I was afraid that if I didn’t do it now, I might never get the chance to ask again, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you slip away out of cowardice.”

For some reason, his words seem almost too real, like he was speaking the truth. You have never doubted his acting skills, but would you be willing to wonder if there was even a small possibility that there was some truth to his tale? You swallow thickly, the need to ask just dangling on the tip of your tongue.

He rifles through his jacket pocket, procuring a small velvet box. He thumbs it almost reverently, his hands shaking slightly, but you can blame that on the nerves from hundreds of people watching you. He takes a deep breath, opening the box with a soft click. “My dearest Y/N… Would you give me the honor of spending the rest of my days with you?”

You feel your breath get knocked out of you in an instant, the genuine adoration in his eyes too much for you to handle. You stammer slightly, too busy staring at him to properly register the loud claps, screams, and hollers all around you. “I… Seokjin… This is…”

“MAKE THEM STOP! SOMEONE KICK THEM OUT RIGHT NOW!” You dimly hear your cousin screaming obscenities somewhere, but you are still too caught up in the moment to care. The world only consists of you and Seokjin—nothing else matters right now.

When you look down at the box in his hands, fully expecting to see a comically large ring pop nestled in its cushions, but instead you find—

You gasp, nearly doubling over in surprise. “Oh my god, Seokjin. Is that a real fucking diamond ring?!”

He shrugs, smiling wryly. “Only the best rocks for the girl who rocks my socks off every night,” he jokes, but his nervousness is palpable. He’s sweating, a drop trailing down the side of his face despite the strong air conditioning.

Oh shit. It hits you right then that his proposal is real. The damned idiot is fucking proposing to you in front of your most hated family members, and he’s proposing to you for real.

“Kim Seokjin, please fucking explain yourself—”

But before he can have the chance to open his mouth, you feel rough hands grab you by the shoulders, pulling you away from him. “I’m sorry I have to do this, ma’am. Bride’s orders,” one of the waiters says, awkwardly escorting you to the exit. When you turn back, you see another waiter pulling Seokjin away as well, the box with the ring still clutched tightly in his hand.

The two waiters deposit you outside the hall, bowing stiffly before heading back into the room. You’re still breathing heavily, the adrenaline coursing through your veins. Seokjin isn’t any better, bent over with his hands on his knees. From your vantage point, you can see how red his entire neck is, his blush reaching even past the collar of his shirt.

“Seokjin…” you trail off, unable to say another word. You’re completely flabbergasted, elated, annoyed, and mostly just mind-fucked because when on earth did Kim Seokjin ever have a crush on you?!

“I’m sorry. That must have been quite a shock,” he coughs out a laugh. He rubs his face, embarrassment rolling off of him in waves. “I just… It was sort of a last-minute decision I made. I’ve been into you for years now, and I know I’m kinda putting you on the spot by proposing like that, but I knew if I didn’t do anything soon, you might just slip away before I can say anything.”

“Wait. So are you really… proposing to me?” You squeak out the last bit, your face mirroring his reddened state.

“No!” He shouts suddenly, before covering his mouth with his palm. “S-sorry, what I mean to say is, it wasn’t really a marriage proposal. It was more like… just a general proposal? I do want to live with you forever, but I know that thought must be daunting and—oh god, I don’t even know if you like me like that, so this must be incredibly weird and out of line. Please excuse me while I shove a cactus up my ass—”

“Seokjin,” you interrupt, silencing his rambling. He clamps his mouth shut. “Are you… asking me out?”

He nods his head. “Yeah…”

“And what you said is true? You actually like me?”

“No, you don’t understand. I love you,” he says, before getting shy again. He looks down at the ring box. “Fuck. This isn’t a real engagement ring, by the way. It’s more like a promise ring, so you don’t have to feel bad for rejecting me.”

“Oh my god, I’m in love with an idiot,” you groan, pulling him into a hug. You nestle into his chest, giggling hysterically into his shirt. “I fucking hate you.”

“Wait, I’m getting mixed signals over here,” Seokjin says, gasping when he feels how tightly you embrace him. He doesn’t complain, however. He returns the gesture in kind, nuzzling deep into your neck. “So, does that mean the feeling is mutual?”

“Yes, you idiot. Now give me my ring.”

“My pleasure, princess.” He laughs, drawing away slightly so that he can slip the ring on your finger. The diamond shines brightly under the fluorescent lights, but nothing brings you more joy than having the boy you love in your arms.

As the two of you are sharing a sweet moment, it takes a second for you to realize that the commotion from inside the venue still hasn’t stopped. When you crane your heads, you spot one of the doors had been left ajar, allowing you to slip your heads through the crack just in time to see Seokjin’s beautiful bare ass being projected onto a large screen.

The musical notes of Rick Astley’s most popular song play loudly on the speakers, drowning out the sounds of the bride screaming bloody murder as the IT people tried their best to sort out the mess. The Seokjin on the screen slaps his ass in time with the tune, his glorious moon-shaped globes shaking mesmerizingly for all to see.

When you look to Seokjin for an explanation, he merely shrugs his shoulders. “They really should do background checks on the people they hire for these things. Taking that one video editing course in university really does pay off, huh?”

“Sure does,” you grin, linking your arms together. “Now let’s get some fucking McDonalds.”

And so, you lived happily ever after—the end.

665 notes · View notes

internalsealpanic · 3 years

Text

Love Through the Ages (Tim Drake)

Summary: Love like baggage needs to be declared.

a/n: This is part two of a series that is a fic rec list disguised as a fic. For these fics, most of the characters will be speaking different languages, so unless specified otherwise assume that the characters are speaking in the first language I mention. They’re all vampires with centuries under their belt. Why wouldn’t I make them all polyglots. Also, thank you to the proof reading gang for putting up with my shenanigans. I will have links to the fics I recommend in the fic itself.

Warnings: Everyone is dramatic.

Masterlist

Series Masterlist.

You watch the rusty green of the warehouse wall disappear behind a spray of orange paint. There is nothing more satisfying than watching paint make old things new.

A whistle interrupts your reverie, making the can slip from your hand. You swear, the harsh syllables echoing in the empty air. The can bounces down the scaffold and lands in someone’s hands. Tim’s face gets sprayed with a mist of orange. He makes a noise and rubs at his face. You bark out a laugh and he grimaces at you. The begrudging fondness obvious on his face.

He waves at you, eyes still stinging from the paint. Giddiness flourishes in your chest. “I knew I’d find you here!” He shouts in a dialect of Mandarin that you hadn’t heard in ages.

It takes you a moment to understand him. You’re honestly extremely rusty. It takes you another moment to realize that it made no sense for him to find you. “How?” You shout back in Romanian.

Tim shakes his head, throwing his hand over his shoulder. “Open canvas.”

You snort, looking down at him. Tim’s breath catches as he stares up at you, your smile. You’re haloed by sunlight. You look like an angel descending from heaven.

Tim’s forced to pick up his jaw when he hears your voice again. You’re tapping your watch. The words are lost to him.

“What?!”

You shake your head, strands of hair coming loose from behind your ear. “I asked...” You shout in a coarse frawl. “... Isn’t it a bit early for you to be here?”

It was.

He was only 30 minutes early. No big deal.

He shrugs. “I just wanted to watch you paint.” He says, trailing off. Oh God, Tim thinks. Does he sound lovesick? Is Cassie right? He pushes the thoughts down, opting to look at the building instead. On the side of the building was an immaculate portrait of the Red Hood rendered like a saint, haloed in golden light and surrounded by your orange marigolds. It would look at home in any grand cathedral. Your talents never ceased to amaze him.

“Should I ask why you’re defacing a building?”

You turn back to the building picking up a can of yellow paint. You tilt your head. “It’s a massive improvement, yes?”

Tim looks around. The pavement is littered with wet trash mixed. The buildings were rusted. Everything else is covered in grime. “You’re rude… but not wrong.”

You preen, electing to ignore the first half. You turn back to your canvas before Tim can get another word in. He knows he’s lost you.

“So, why *the* Red Hood?”

You look away from the portrait, setting the can of yellow spray paint. It sprays your sweatshirt and Tim laughs. You stick your tongue out at his face flushing. You liked this sweatshirt. He gave it to you the last time you had meandered into Gotham. “Why not? We’re in the Bowery. He’s like a saint here.” You snip, switching to Russian. Ok, that made sense. You toss your sweatshirt into Tim’s face. The fabric is lousy with the smell of paint and of 5-hour energy drinks. It was an improvement over the pungent odor of garbage.

He tries to rub the orange paint on his face away before he tucks your sweatshirt beneath his arm. You’re still looking down at him, wry amusement on your face. “I’ll paint your beloved Red Robin when I get to China Town. Heard he was quite popular in those parts.”

Tim’s heart flutters. He stutters out his next question. “Why are you using spray paint for this type of illustration?”

“Kon said I couldn’t do it.”

Tim snickers, “As if Kon could tell the difference.”

You frown only realizing your mistake. You curse under your breath. Tim doesn’t stop laughing at you. “Shut up!” You snarl.

Tim dodges the next paint can you throw but the next one hits him square in the face. You grin triumphantly. Tim raises a middle finger at you and you giggle in response. You feel bad, seeing him wince in pain. You’d buy him apology tea later but for now, you clasp your hands and call out to him sweetly. “Sorry, Timmers!”

Tim, equally as mature and well aware that you’re only half sorry, blows out a breath, muttering something colorful before shouting back: “we should get going if we wanna eat out after looting the museum.”

At that, you launch yourself off the scaffolding, your body feeling weightless as it falls. Tim drops your sweatshirt as he holds his arms out to catch you. He catches you easily. You two spin as you wrap your arms around him.

“You are certifiably insane.” He laughs. His nose smooshed against yours.

“And so are you.” You snort, hugging him.

He hugs you back. You hum so softly into his hair that Tim wouldn’t be able to tell it from a breath if he were human. Tim holds you close, hugging your waist tightly. He doesn’t really want to let you go. You don’t either. You and Tim stand there for a bit when you hear his cell beep.

“Why does your phone sound like a pager?”

“Because Babs told me how to.”

“That literally explains nothing.”

“I’m not taking crap from the gremlin who had ‘Baby Shark’ as their ringtone for 12 months. WILLINGLY.”

You pout at him, your face so close to his. Tim’s only half paying attention to your defense. To be fair, it basically boiled down to ‘it isn’t that bad’ and ‘Bart’s ringtone is worse’.

After a short shopping trip and a cab ride later, you arrive at the museum in fresh clothes and less paint on his face for Tim.

“All the World’s a Stage. They botched it! The nerve! The barbarity of it all. It's just like when they botched ‘Words with Friends’ or ‘In Ice We Trust’ or even ‘Tomcat’. That last one was pretty much gift wrapped for them!” You say throwing up your hands nearly hitting Tim and whatever poor bastard was unlucky enough to be behind you.

“For someone who isn't invested in modern media, you're getting fired up.” Tim chuckles, eyes flickering behind you. You had managed to miss the people behind you but you do have a rather conspicuous space behind you.

“They had such good material to work with” you say, gesticulating wildly. “And- and they butchered it.”

“You need a 5 minute breather?” Tim asks, resting a hand on your back.

“Shut up,” you laugh.

Tim grins at you as if he had no idea what this ultimate betrayal feels like.

Determined to prove him wrong, you say : “C'mon, Timothy, you ranted like this when they botched the star thingy.”

“It’s Star Wars, you heathen.”

“Star. Thingy.” You repeat, crossing your arms.

Tim squints at you. You know he’s not gonna blow up at you but somehow that’s scarier.

“You can pay for your own cab later.” He grumbles.

“Star. Thing-Y.”

Tim turns to leave. This always worked. Always without fail, you grab at his hand, lacing your fingers with his. Tim tries not to smile.

“Fine.”

“Was that so hard?”

“It was excruciating actually.”

“You're being dramatic.” He says, showing the woman behind the ticket counter your passes.

“Excuse me, I left all my drama in the Renaissance.”

“Oh really?”

“Ok not really but admit that both Andromeda and Stars, Forgive Me have better writing.“ You bite out.

“I- That’s unfair,” he says. You raise your brow in response.

“...”

“Fine,” he sighs. “But admit that Andromeda should have been named ‘Space Whores’.”

You squint at him then smile. “Oh abso-posi-tute-ly.”

“Have you seen this dirty old hockey mask?” You ask, tapping the glass as if the hockey mask would react if you just agitate it enough.

“What is that?” Tim asks, looking over your shoulder. His brows crinkles when he sees the mask. “How is that romantic?”

You hum. “Ask the curator?” You suggest, looking around. He was usually out and about. He could never sit still even if he tried. You lean down narrowing your eyes at the plaque. “Says here some dude called Jason terrorized 3 kids over summer.”

“That’s very romantic for our Jay to do.” Tim says, crossing his arms and switching to Cantonese. It was a weird habit but you knew why. Apparently for all Jason’s skill in languages he somehow could not get a handle on Cantonese.

“Not that Jason.” You say, smirking.

“You sure?” Tim asks, leaning closer to you.

You snicker, “As in character as that would be...”

“True,” he says, edging closer and closer to you. You rock on your heels nervously at the proximity. “It’s a shame, I thought there would be a machete to match too…” You can feel Tim’s breath on your cheek.

“OH LOOK AT THIS.” You say twisting away and pointing to a black and white photo. Tim’s hands leave his sides to grab for you, to pin you to his chest, but he has enough self control not to. Instead, he follows you.

“It’s just a man and a woman in business suits. Yanno something you can see in any metropolitan city.”

“Yes but,” you say, tracing a nonsensical pattern into the air, “I’ve heard a story about this, they were both extremely rich and heads of their companies, went from enemies to lovers - my all time favourite.”

Tim looks closer at the photo of the man and woman with their backs to the camera just holding hands along the NYC sidewalk. It’s cute. “I thought your favorite was lovers to enemies.”

“Well of course, it is! The drama, the absolute tragedy. It’s better than any trope in existence. But I love that this is just black and white. You don’t need anything else to indicate they’re in love with each other.”

Tim is all too tempted to point out that that likely wasn’t intentional, that it was a limitation of the time, but the look in your eyes robbed him of his breath, so he swallowed his thoughts.

Your eyes rove over the room frantically in search of something.

“So is there any reason you wanted to go to this exhibit instead of watching lavalantula 10 in theaters?” Tim says, tapping another case.

You turn to look at him, shock etched into your features.“10? We've seen lavalantula 1 through 9 in theaters? Why did I agree to that?”

“Cus you love me?”

You narrow your eyes at him. “Probably not.”

Tim gives you a hurt look.

You scowl at him. You have no idea why everyone thinks he’s the nice Wayne sibling. He is a manipulative little shit who plays you like a fiddle. And yet here you are falling for it. An absolute buffoon.

You grumble an apology under your breath before continuing. “This is more cultural Timmers and lord knows we need more culture.” You wave sarcastically.

“I think we've lived enough culture.”

“it cannot hurt to experience more Tim,” you snort. He rolls his eyes. You grab onto his arm and look up at him bright eyed. Two can play it at that game. “Please Tim....”

He scowls at you. “Fine-”

“Yes!”

“-but you owe me a movie marathon.”

“Fine. Fine,” you nod, “just don’t pick something dumb.”

“I just got the new star trek box collection.” He beams.

“You could just shove me into a grave.” You sigh dramatically.

Tim grins. “The Renaissance called-”

“Oh fuck you, Grackle.”

He snorts and you hate that you fall in love with him more every time he laughs.

You cross your arms giving him a hard look. “Fine but we have to have an intermission of my choice.” You say, offering a hand.

“Deal.” He says, shaking your outstretched hand.

“Great, you've just agreed to watch the Great British Baking Show with me.” You say smug.

Tim curses himself.

"Are you still looking for that one painting?"

You tip your body back to look at him, your eyes wide and startled. It takes no time at all for them to shift to their usual angry shape. "Yes," you say quietly. It's Tim’s turn to be startled. Your hands curl into a fist. "It wasn't done and those bastards took it."

Tim reaches out to put his hand on your shoulder.

You cast your hands up to the sky dramatically. "The barbarity of it all!"

Tim smiles, letting his hand fall to his side. You would be ok.

You two walk on as Tim rants about StarGate could have had a bigger fanbase if it hadn’t excluded so many people. You add StarGate to the list of things to not remember.

You stop.

Your heart presses a bruise in your throat.

Framed in wood laden in ivy and marigolds is a painting that was painfully familiar. Even unwashed, you can still see the bright reds of rose petals, the wild greens of the women’s skirts, the brilliant oranges of marigolds, and the blinding whites of cobble stones. The image was a practice in entropy made into perfection. The chaos of Valentine's day in a small town square reduced and captured in an infinitesimal moment.

Damian told you that people had started calling them Warsaw’s Faceless Sweethearts. You hated that. A part of you wants to scream. You want to tell them that this wasn’t for them. This painting was made for one person and one person only.

You’ve been staring at it too long. Tim looks at you. You’ve known him too long to not know that he’s worried. That he’s feeling that stupid surge of protectiveness he always does when you go quiet. It’s in the cautious way he reaches out to you, slow and steady the way you approach a spooked animal. You want to lash out at him but he’s your Tim. Besides, too much of your mind is trapped in the painting, in the white gazebo, in between the couple who’s stuck in the moment before a kiss.

Tim stands closer to you, his fingers lacing into yours with centuries worth or practice. He looks at the painting. “This painting looks familiar.” Tim says for the lack of anything better to say. It was yours. He knew that with only a few seconds of looking.

“I… I don’t think so,” you say clumsily, “that’s definitely not the painting I’ve been looking for. Yup that one looks completely finished. Yup definitely.” You tug at Tim’s arm.

He gives you a look, staying perfectly in place, before turning back to the painting. His gaze draws low. In a glass case sits scraps of paper lined with charcoal. It takes an embarrassingly long time for Tim to realize that they’re sketches the artist did. Tim recognized the baker, the blacksmith, the seamstress, and even the constable. Most glaring of all he recognizes your marigolds. His eyes drift to the sketches of the couple in the gazebo. They were numerous, haphazard and unsatisfied. You were clearly frustrated with the groom’s face. Tim wonders who the poor guy could be.

In the corner of the page in the center, he sees it. “Wait… is that me?”

“NO!”

“Is that you?” He asks, pointing to the figure next to his. In the sketch, your lips are brushing against his. Tim’s lip tingles trying to replicate the sensation.

You’re frozen stiff. You try to pull your hand away. You want to bury your face in them. Scratch that, you wanna be buried six feet under. Tim doesn’t let go of your hand.

“That’s the umbrella you lost back in London.”

“I lost a lot in London, Timmy.”

“Well...” Ok. Yeah, you did. Hence why he can’t get you to London even with the promise of letting you ‘improve’ Buckingham palace. But that isn’t the point. “(Y/n), this is gorgeous.” He says, turning to you. You look at him stunned and scared. He squeezes your hand.

You shake yourself out of his grip. Tim lets you. He knows when to back down.

You step forward leaning on the rope separating you from your work. “I told you it wasn't finished.” You say, glaring at the painting as if willing the colors to move.

“What happened?” He asks, bumping his shoulder against yours.

You bump your shoulder against his. “Warsaw.”

“I don’t follow.”

“That little town in Warsaw. It was kind of hard to finish the painting when soldiers were setting fires to houses. Ok, they didn’t do it directly but there was smoke.”

“Yeah kind of.” Tim agrees, smiling sadly. He looks back at the painting. “I want to keep it.”

“What?” You blink not quite following the shift in conversation.

“Darling, I think we should have it. It’s ours after all.” Tim says holding your hand in his. Your mind is bouncing between too many things. He called you darling. He’s holding your hand. He’s smiling so sweetly at you. You’re addicted to that look in his eyes, pure unadulterated adoration.

You cover your face with your free hand, feeling the smile on your face go uncomfortable wide. You feel something on your forehead, a kiss like a raindrop. It comes again and you feel like you’re going to collapse.

“It’s yours..” He trails off hesitantly. “..if..” You look up at Tim, waiting with bated breath. Tim squeezes your hands. “...if you’ll be mine. ”

@batarella, @anothertimdrakestan, @lucy-roo, @multifandomgirl-us, @bungunz, @birdy-bat-writes, @boosyboo9206, @americasmarauders , @l-inkage, @arestorationofbalance , @cloudie-skay, @wunderstell @hyp-oh-critical @glorified-red

#Tim Drake #tim drake x reader #tim drake imagines #vampire au

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foryoumyheroes · 4 years

Text

Their S/O takes them to an Asian House Party

[Midoriya + Todoroki + Bakugou + Kaminari + Kirishima]

A/N: Hey here’s a niche that no one asked for.

I know that Japanese is a type of Asian but I am a wildly different type of Asian 🤣🤣, so my headcanons are based entirely off of being this other racial group.

I just want to say that most of the time older Asian relatives really step out of line with their comments and can be really hurtful. I absolutely hate that behavior and their mindset, but for the purposes of this let’s just say that they’re not being harmful at all and it’s mostly light teasing :) If they’re like that in real life :) screw them >:) Also P.S. if these sound familiar it’s because I’ve recycled a lot of ideas from my other blog where I wrote “Asian House Party” headcanons already!

Warnings: mentions of alcohol, hints at underage drinking

Midoriya Izuku:

For the longest time it has only been him and his mom, so when he enters the house and sees it packed with people his brain just goes blank because this is a family party.

These people are all related to you somehow??

He asks you how you guys are all related and you’re genuinely like, “I don’t know???” You just call everyone auntie and uncle and hope for the best.

If you start taking him to parties before he becomes a Pro, he has enough of a baby face that your older relatives and grandparents give him a red envelope without thinking too hard about it. But he gets so embarrassed and feels so bad that he ends up giving it to your mom.

At his first party he’s supperrr nervous and wants your family to like him. He’s stuttering nearly every other syllable.

Never leaves your side. Trails behind you like a puppy the entire time.

After he’s been to several parties with your family, they recognize his red Nike Air Forces in the pile of shoes outside the house enough to be like, “Hey, [Name]! Your boyfriend’s here!”

Midoriya is kinda of a pushover during the beginning of the series, and Asian families have the tendency to tease without knowing how it might sound, so he becomes an easy target until you pull him aside and tell him to argue back.

He’s like noooo I don’t want to be disrespectful :(. He says that he’s used to bullying so this is nothing which makes you kinda sad and angry. You’re like hahahaha no.

You two eventually get your family to stop and that’s when he’s finally indoctrinated into your fam.

He’s kind of the quintessential Asian boyfriend? He goes to a good school, is sweet and innocent, polite to elders, etc. When he goes to the party with you your aunties are going to your cousins and say, “Why can’t you get a boyfriend like [Name].”

Your female relatives kinda baby him because every time they see him he’s always in a new cast with another broken bone, so when there’s no more space left on the couches or the folding stools they kick your cousins off to make room for him.

When he later becomes Pro-Hero Deku, everyone’s in love with him. He becomes the talk of the party. Everyone brags about him saying that they practically saw him grow up when they only see him once or twice a year.

He also becomes the “cool uncle” that offers to take your younger relatives out for boba. But you pay. You have to pay or else your mom will yell at you for making the guest spend money.

Yes, you will polite fight your own boyfriend.

No, he will not win, but he’s determined to win one time like the shonen protag he is.

Always leaves the party with the large trays of leftovers for him and his mom.

Even when he’s like in his late twenties he’s still sitting at the kid’s table.

Todoroki Shouto:

When you first invited him to a party with your family he’s just like, “Oh. Sure.” Most of the parties he’s been to is the rich people parties that his dad took him to for publicity, so he arrives to the house in a whole suit and tie.

Your cousins and uncles are clowning him while the older women swoon. You’re in the background panicking because everyone else is in sweats or shorts while he looks like he’s going to prom??

[Your auntie says, “Oh my god, he’s making such a good first impression!”

You: Hahahaha! Yea!〔´∇｀〕

Inner You: Oh god I forgot he’s clueless ⊙▽⊙]

Brings an expensive pastry every time because Fuyumi said it was polite. From that everyone’s like, “Oh??? You’re invited to every party from now on!”

Becomes the source of your mom’s humble brag. “Oh, your son goes to Stanford and is studying medicine? My kid and their boyfriend are both Heroes-in-training and he’s the son of the Number One Hero — “

Kinda just does whatever your aunties and mom tells him to do?

He’ll sit wherever they tell him to sit, even if it’s far away from you and he’ll even take the many family photos for you guys in the end. Even though he’s shit at photography.

If they’re like, “Oh, you’re so skinny, you should eat some more!” He’ll just shrug and be like okay, and doesn’t stop them when they continue to put food on his plate even though he’s full and gets into a big food coma that knocks him out on the couch right away.

Every time he appears, your aunties will just stop and say, “Oh, he’s so handsome!”

He’s getting better at handling kids and it shows by the way he’s more willing to play with them then hang out with your cousins that are around your age. He’s in the room upstairs and is ;; just napping with them.

The kids in the party call him Zuko.

Before you brought him your aunts and uncles would be like, “Do you have a boyfriend?? Do you have a girlfriend??” and you would say, “Yeah, Todoroki Shouto.” And they would laugh in your face.

NO ONE BELIEVED THAT HE WAS YOUR BOYFRIEND UNTIL YOU BROUGHT PROOF!! HERE HE IS !! IN THE FLESH!!

I feel like he would have the most culture shock? You guys conduct yourself in such a different way than his own family and from everyone in 1-A. You guys go batshit insane.

When you wake him up and offer to walk him to the train station to take him home, he offers to walk you back to your house as well and you say, “Oh, I’m going back to the party after this.”

It’s almost midnight??

He asks you where are you going to sleep or if you’re going to sleep at all and you don’t know how to explain the concept of how you and all of your cousins and siblings are going to cram into one room upstairs and sleep on every blanket in the house on the floor while only three or four lucky relatives are able to get the bed.

Older Asians have no filter so they will straight up say to his face that he looks nothing like his dad he’ll just go, “ :’) Thank you, that means a lot to me.”

Before Endeavor’s redemption arc he’s prone to oversharing and one day he tells your mom that his dad is a piece of shit and his mom is in the hospital.

Your mom, taking her sandal and holding it like a weapon: Oh? Where’s your father?? I just want to talk. Your mom is welcome to every [Surname] party from now on!! Haha! (◕ᴗ◕✿)

His brain is doing backflips trying to figure out how you’re related to everyone.

The only guy that neatly puts his shoes off to the side at the front door.

Bakugou Katsuki:

At first you didn’t invite him to the party, he kinda just figures it out from how your relatives are all tagging you on social media and forces you to invite him.

Not because you’re ashamed of him but because they’re somewhat overbearing ;; and Bakugou has no filter.

For someone who’s so “badass” he’s super anal about the rules and punctuality.

You tell him the party is at 18:00 and by 17:45 he goes into your house and finds you still napping with your PJs on. Even though you tell him that the party isn’t really starting at six he doesn’t listen. He forces you to get dressed and takes you to the party and whatdoyouknow no one is there yet. No one is going to be here until at least two hours after the designated time.

He instead forces you to help the women in the kitchen prepare the food, aka he’s helping while you laze around in the living room.

All of the women are like, “Wow! You can cook so well! [Name] you should be more like him!!”

If this is the first time he meets your entire extended family, he’s inwardly hyping himself up to make a good first impression. If you are not Japanese, he manages to memorize several greetings in your language and the proper formalities when greeting an older relative. Then he goes in and everyone’s already drinking and screaming their throats out to karaoke.

When he walks into the party with his black tank top and saggy pants everyone’s first thought is that he’s an Asian Baby Boy. Like he probably takes social media pictures in front of cars, is going to break your heart, goes to raves, is named Kevin Nguyen.

Everyone is loud af at this party so they don’t really care that he’s screaming. They love teasing the shit out of him because his reactions are so fucking funny.

When one of your uncles offers you alcohol he immediately snatches it away from you. No, you guys are underage, have an athletic lifestyle, and he’s so protective of you asdfg

He’s been so focused on being a Hero that when your cousins play against him in video games or card games he loses horribly. He’ll just keep going, “One more round!” until he finally wins.

Your mom forces you to do a convenience store run to get something that the party is running out of and when you come back Bakugou managed to find is way into the “women” side of the room where they’re all gossiping with him and playing poker together like they’ve been friends forever.

Your mom honest-to-god acts like he’s more of her child than you are.

When you guys finally get your families to meet, his mom and your female relatives are going to be so powerful together.

Is trying his damned hardest to get through the entire party because it can go all night long and he sleeps at 8:30PM.

Kaminari Denki:

The KING of the Asian House Party.

Absolutely CRUSHES it at karaoke with your family. Even though he might not speak your language, he’s putting so much passion into it that no one cares anyway.

Sings so loud that the neighbors complain.

Your family loves him because he’s just so happy-go-lucky. The life of the party.

He goes around eating all night and continually asks you, “Hey [Name], what’s this? What’s this one?”

You can drop him off in the designated kids room and not see him for hours on end. He’s too busy playing video games with your cousins and siblings.

But he’s such a sucker. Your uncles and older cousins pull him into any gambling game and he loses so bad, even if he’s gambling things like candy or food.

Kinda gullible when your family teases him?? If you’re not Japanese they teach him an insult in your language but tell him it’s a complement or “It’s like saying, I love you more than words,” and they send him off to tell you it.

And he acts super fucking cocky like the e-boy smirk while he’s rubbing his hands together, and biting his lip and shit. While you’re just sitting on the stool with a drink in your hand like, “Okay....”

He tells you the insult and butchers the pronunciation already, but acts like you’re about to fall in his arms and you just ;; burst out laughing ;;; until you fall off your chair.

Has the party time down pat. He won’t arrive until three hours later, and that’s when you tell him an earlier time than everyone else.

Will drink anything your uncle offers up. He’s a lightweight. You end up half-carrying him half-dragging him back to his house. Nearly trips on the sea of shoes outside the front door and falls on you.

You’re just lucky that he doesn’t discharge his Quirk randomly when he’s drunk.

Doesn’t get Asian glow.

When your mom discovers you struggling outside she just tells him to sleep over and if this is his first party with you guys, you’re able to get the bed because he’s the guest 😌😌. If he’s been here several times before, yeah ;; you guys are going back to a pile of blankets on the floor.

Kirishima Eijirou:

The “big brother” figure of the party.

The kids love him and he’s willingly playing “Heroes and Villains” with them for hours.

Since he’s so broad they hang off of him like a limpet and he walks around with children draped around him.

Ngl... He walks into the party dressed like all of your other male cousins.

Basketball shorts, t-shirt, crew socks.

He’s able to find his shoes super fast at the end of the party because he’s the only person that’s willing to wear crocs.

Willing to go outside with your cousins to play basketball with them but he’s so out of practice that he fumbles so bad.

After several games he gets the hang of it and isn’t deadweight to your team anymore.

LOVES going to your family’s parties because he gets to eat whatever he wants without holding back. Eats several plates and when someone suggests going to get ice cream he’s like, /gasp/ “Ice cream???”

They were offering the little kids, but okay, a teenager can come along too.

You’re never too old for ice cream.

For some reason he’s able to get along with everyone at the party?? He just has a personality that makes him easy to talk to, and by the end of the night or the next day, he’s saying goodbye to everyone by name.

[“No, wait, [Name], I haven’t said goodbye to your cousin’s sister-in-law’s daughter yet.

You do a double-take because even you have no idea who that is.]

When he gets a little bit older and he’s finally allowed to move out of the kid’s table and eat with the older male relatives he’s so ;;; awkward.

They’re just all in the garage eating, drinking, and smoking and he’s just sitting there having no idea what to do.

Eventually he convinces you to join him in the garage because he wants your emotional support and is super shocked when you fit right in. He’ll just ;;; go back to the kid’s table.

Can’t sing to save his life.

You guys heard him do karaoke once and you never let him do it again.

If one of your relatives teases him he’s able to laugh it off and not think too much about it, but if they say something that might be hurtful to you he’s so quick to shut it down. He doesn’t care that they’re blood related to you or not.

Does not let up until they apologize.

For some reason all of the ladies are confused af when they find out that he dyed his hair?? They’re like omg is he a secret delinquent.

LOVES to hear your relatives talk about what you were like when you were a kid.

It’s embarrassing af but he just laughs it off like, “It’s okay, babe! You sound like you were super cute as a kid!”

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css1992 · 3 years

Note

I absolutely love all of your stories and was hoping to give you a prompt! I haven’t seen you write Tony or Peter as superheroes, but I would love a story where the team goes on a mission that goes wrong and they think Peter is dead. A few months pass, and Spider-Man pops up in a different color costume next to a big baddie (Quentin? Rumlow? Whoever it is def has a crush or Peter lmao). If you can’t write the prompt, no worries.❤️

(...)

“Thank you so much for taking my prompt omgggg! To answer your question, Spider-Man pops up as a baddie, and he works with/for another baddie”

You’re too sweet and kind, my dear, thank you so much! I’m so sorry this took so long, something happened in my personal life and I was too heartbroken for love stories for a while there hahaha Everything’s fine now. I hope you’re still out there to read this and I really hope you enjoy it! <3

[*]

This takes place a few years after Civil War. A few details were changed – Peter was recruited at 18, while attending MIT; Endgame never happened, they defeated Thanos in Titan; Tony and Pepper never got back together after their break-up somewhere between IM3 and CACW.

TW: Mentions of blood, alcoholism, grief and death. I guess that’s it, let me know if you find anything else triggering!

[*]

“It’s him.” Tony stood there paralyzed, staring at the hologram projected from Nat’s phone, heart pounding, ears ringing. “It’s him,” he repeated, running his hands through his hair, trying to get a hold of himself, trying to make sense of what was happening, of what he was seeing. It was too surreal – impossible! – he had to be hallucinating. Right? Maybe dreaming? Had he drunk himself into a stupor again? Had he finally gone mad?

It was a regular day, Tony had been down in the lab for an unknown number of hours when Friday announced Steve, Nat and Bruce were at the door, which was unusual. Usually, they’d visit one at a time, an unspoken agreement not to overwhelm the engineer, but that particular day they all marched into his house saying that he needed to see something. He was too exhausted to tell them to fuck off, so he just poured himself a drink and shrugged, gesturing towards the living room.

Nat proceeded to project a video from her StarkPhone and what he saw took away the ground from beneath his feet. He tried to sit down, but he didn’t make it to the couch, his legs were not responding, he fell on his butt in the middle of the living room. The blood felt like ice in his veins, his throat was closing up, his eyes were burning and his hands were shaking so fucking badly. He was boneless and petrified all of a sudden, as he watched him swing from building to building on his webs, a black and white blur.

Peter.

He felt Steve and Bruce on either side of him, trying to help him up, but he didn’t take his eyes off of the projection. It was him. My Peter, you’re back, you came back to me, you’re okay, you’re alive–

“Tony, it’s not him.” Steve’s voice brought him back to the real world, and he looked around. Natasha and Bruce both stared at him with worry in their eyes, like they agreed with Steve.

“What, are you fucking insane? Of course it’s him!” His voice was firm, angry, even though his hand was shaking when he pointed at the hologram, to the short video that kept replaying on a loop.

“Tony, he robbed a bank. He put civilians at risk. How could you think this is Peter? Are you insane? Don’t you know him? Look, we had to show you this because it’s going to be all over the news soon and whoever this is, they’re trying to tarnish Peter’s memory and we can’t allow it, but this – this isn’t him, Tony. I’m sorry.”

The older man stopped for a second, taking a deep breath. Was he going insane? Was he seeing things, was his mind playing tricks on him again? It wouldn’t be the first time in the last few months. He focused on the images. The bank’s alarm was sounding loudly, as people started running wildly out the front door. Seconds later, someone wearing a cape and a – helmet? Fish bowl? – on their head walked out, then finally him.

Not him, Steve said, but how could it be anyone else, when Tony could clearly see it was Peter gracefully swinging around on the webs. Not him, Steve said, but how could it not be him when Tony recognized every inch of his body? The long neck, the narrow, yet strong shoulders, thin waist, round ass, strong thighs, small feet, long hands and thin, wiry arms. How could it not be him when Tony could recognize the way he moved, the way he leaped and landed effortlessly, the grace with which he swung back and forth?

“It’s him, Steve.” Even as the words left his mouth, his eyes were fixed on the boy in the video. The suit looked a lot like the one Tony made for him, but it was slightly different. Black, instead of blue. White, instead of red. But it was him. Alive and breathing. “It’s Peter, I know it is.”

***

It was supposed to be an easy mission. Even though it called for every Avenger in town, it was just a security measure, Steve told them. They intercepted a terrorist group communicating online, planning a coordinated attack on Stark Tower, the Avengers Compound and Times Square. They were professionals, but only human. They thought they’d be enough: Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man, Spiderman, Winter Soldier and even the Hulk as a safety net.

In a way, they were sufficient. They were able to avoid the attack and arrest almost every single one of the terrorists that weren’t killed during the mission. But the cost was high – way too fucking high.

Peter.

Tony knew what happened the exact moment when it did. He knew there was no saving him when he opened his lips and tried to call out his name and instead of words, blood came out. Thick, dark blood. He saw the life leaving his eyes when he looked at him one last time, eyelids drooping and then closing. There was no saving him, Tony knew that, and yet he tried. He flew as fast as the suit would allow him, even though he had no idea what he would have done if he had reached him in time. Which he didn’t.

Peter disappeared before his eyes, along with the man who had put a knife through his heart. And not just any knife, not any metal would have been able to pierce the suit. It had to be vibranium. Whoever that man was, he knew that, maybe he had Peter in mind all along. The only thing Tony remembered about him were his wide, blue eyes. Cold and wild. The sadistic smile when he heard Tony’s wail of despair. Tony thought he knew him somehow, but couldn’t be sure.

They just disappeared. One second, they were there, right within his reach, the next, they were gone. He’d lost him. The person he’d sworn to protect at all costs, at the cost of his own damned life, but he was useless the moment Peter needed him the most. Gone. Disappeared before his eyes, Tony couldn’t even bring his body home.

He remembered crumbling to the ground, broken and unbelieving, staring at the empty space where Peter once stood.

“Tony...” Steve crouched down next to him, looking pained and devastated, and the older man broke down.

“I lost the kid, Steve. I lost him.”

He didn’t remember a lot of that day, he’d passed out drunk in his room for the first time in ten years, woke up hours later in the med bay with Steve, Rhodey and Pepper speaking in hushed voices. He didn’t care what they were saying, because the first thought he had when he opened his eyes was that he’d lost the love of his life. His Peter.

***

“Boss, I was able to acquire the footage from the bank’s security cameras.” Friday’s voice brought him back to the present and they all jumped up, all eyes turning to the huge screen facing the couch.

“Good girl, play it,” he answered quickly, taking a seat because he knew he would need it.

It started with a normal day in a bank, people walking around, standing in line, talking to each other, nothing out of the ordinary. Then the guy they’d seen leaving the bank in the other video – Fish-bowl-guy – appeared out of nowhere, levitating above the patrons, slowly floating down.

“My fellow citizens, do not fret, I mean you no harm.” Of course, New Yorkers wouldn’t take his word for it, not after everything they had gone through over the course of the last decade. People started screaming and running, trying to get to the exit, but Peter stood there by the door. When they tried to push through him, he webbed some of them to the walls and the others froze, slowly stepping away from him. “This will all be over soon, I promise.”

Fish-bowl-guy demanded the tellers filled bags with money from their drawers as Peter guarded the exit. He didn’t say anything and it was driving Tony crazy, because he was dying to hear him. Both because he wanted Friday to run the audio through a voice recognition software to prove once and for all that it was him, but also because for six months he hadn’t been able to even look at pictures of Peter, let alone hear his voicemails or watch his silly videos. And he had several of them, the younger man sent him at least a video a day – his daily vlogs, he called them – even if they were just in different rooms.

But Peter didn’t say anything, he just stood by the door as Fish-bowl-guy talked to the patrons.

“I know we seem like the bad guys right now, but I promise you, we’re not. We’re the heroes here, really,” He started, overlooking the tellers as they filled the bags with cash. “We’re here to take the city back from those who took it from us. You know what I’m talking about, right?” The man looked at the patrons as if he was expecting an answer, but no one said a word. “Tony Stark and his little army. He took over his daddy’s empire, now he thinks he can just take anything and claim as his own. He’s done it to this city, even if some people haven’t realized it yet. We’re his hostages. He built himself an army and they control this city, the country, even! They fake threats and then come to ‘save us’, they destroy our homes, they kill our loved ones, they don’t care about collateral damage! Some of us have lost everything, because of Tony fucking Stark and his minions. But it will all be over soon, I promise you. I will set you free.”

He took the twelve bags full of money that the tellers placed on the counter and gestured for Peter to come closer and the young man webbed his way to him, until he was standing by his side. That was the moment people started running out of the bank, the moment they saw from another point of view in the other video. As they watched people leaving, Fish-bowl-guy placed an arm around Peter’s shoulders, pulling him close in a very friendly way, it made Tony’s blood boil and his heart sink.

“You’re doing great, honey. You’re doing the right thing. Come on, now.” He stroked his shoulder softly then walked outside, followed closely by Peter and then the video was over.

The room was silent for a few seconds after that as they tried to understand what they’d just seen. Tony didn’t want to read too much into it, Peter was clearly not in his right mind if he was robbing a bank, but still – the guy called him honey. He was… comforting him. And Peter let him.

“We have to find him.” Tony quickly ordered Friday to do a thorough search on the web, check surveillance cameras all over New York, police database, anything that could give them a clue on where they might have escaped to – or where they had come from. The news said they were followed by the police for a few blocks, then they simply disappeared before their eyes. It brought back terrible memories.

“Yes, we do, but not for the reasons you want, Tony.” Bruce frowned, coming to stand next to his friend. “You have to agree this – it’s just not possible. Peter is dead, he would never –“

“Then where’s his body, Bruce? Huh? Can any of you answer me that?” He looked around the room and they all avoided his gaze, as if worried they’d break him if they dared to say what they thought. “He disappeared. Right before my eyes, Bruce. Friday couldn’t connect to Karen, we have no idea what could have happened after that.”

“Tony, his heart was pierced.” It was Natasha’s turn to try. Tony could see it was hard for her too, she had a soft spot for Peter, from the very first time Tony recruited him, when he was still an eighteen year-old kid. “He couldn’t possibly –“

“He was enhanced!” He yelled, annoyed they were all so ready to discard the possibility that the person in the video could be Peter when it very clearly was. “Is! He is enhanced! I was never able to measure just how far his healing factor went, Friday could only estimate with the amount of information we had at the time, but clearly–“

“Tony, listen–“

“No, you listen! You listen to me, okay? That’s my fiance! I’m telling you this, that is the man I love, the man I sworn to protect and then abandoned for six fucking months assuming he was dead, when I didn’t even try to look for him! I just fucking drank my days away when I could be looking for him and now he needs my fucking help! So you can either help me find him, or you can fuck the fuck off, ok?” He was breathless by the time he was done, and they all looked at him like he’d gone insane for good.

“What do you suppose happened?” Steve asked quietly, and Tony frowned. “What do you think could have happened in these past few months that would turn Peter into that?” He pointed at the screen. “If he was alive this whole time, why not look for you?”

“I don’t know, Steve, we’ll have to ask him.” Truth was, Tony was terrified of the answers to those questions. He couldn’t think about it at that moment, he had to find him first. “What happened to Barnes? You of all people –“ He didn’t need to finish the sentence, couldn’t. He sighed and Steve flinched, eyes growing wide as the familiarity of the situation seemed to dawn on him. “Do you think you could’ve mistaken him for someone else? Ever?” Tony’s eyes were burning, but he didn’t shed a tear, he didn’t have time for tears. He needed to find him.

Steve was stunned silent after that, watching Tony with huge, watery eyes.

“Tony, we just don’t want you to get hurt,” Bruce intervened again, approaching him carefully. “We don’t want you to go through the pain of losing him again in case...”

“It’s doesn’t get any worse than this, Bruce,” Tony sighed, because he knew that nothing could hurt more than the thought that he’d failed Peter. That he didn’t try to look for him. That Peter had been held captive by a fucking terrorist organization for six months because he was too drunk to get out of bed and fucking try to look for him. Because he just lost hope and never thought Peter might be out there, waiting for him to come, to save him. “There’s nowhere else to go but up, from where I’m standing.”

Nobody said anything else after that, but later that day he got a message from Steve saying they would find Peter.

***

He was in the hospital for three days after Peter’s death. He was a fifty-year-old man with a shitty heart, after all. He was sedated for most of it, whenever he woke up he was so out of his mind with grief that they put him right back to sleep. When he was finally able to go home, he insisted he was left alone, but to calm Pepper and Rhodey down, he activated Friday’s babysitter protocol. It was Peter’s creation. It would let them know if Tony wasn’t eating well, or if he harmed himself in any way. If he tried to deactivate it, it would notify them immediately.

So he was left alone, at least most of the time. He spent his days in the lab, drinking, working, crying, thinking. The memories came and went unsolicited, specially when Tony was too out of it to control them. Suddenly, he’d be back in the boy’s dorm room in Boston, looking at that ridiculous onesie that he hid in a box of books under his bed, watching him stutter as he tried to explain it was just a cosplay.

“A cosplay of some dude who does stunts on Youtube?” Tony raised a brow, amused, and Peter’s face grew red as he scrunched up his nose and frowned in annoyance.

“He’s not some dude doing stunts, he – he’s helping people!” He argued, taking the “suit” back from Tony’s hands and stuffing it under his tiny bed, before sitting on top of it.

“Sure, if you consider doing back flips for the camera helping people, then Spider-boy is doing great,” Tony shrugged, sticking his hands in his pockets nonchalantly, only to watch him grow even more irritated.

“Man! Spider-man! And I don’t just do back flips, I– He...” He stuttered and Tony took pity on him. His expression softened and he sat next to him on the bed, feeling the tension coming in waves from him as he muttered a quiet “fuck” under his breath.

“Peter, I know. I know. Okay?” He clasped a hand on his shoulder and the young man looked at him with huge, round eyes. Scared. Unsure. “I’ve been watching you for years. Your secret is safe with me. I’m not here to expose you.”

“Then why are you here?” He raised a brow and Tony took a deep breath, trying to organize his thoughts.

“I kinda picked up a fight with Captain America about signing some papers and then he met this friend who was supposed to be dead, like, eighty years ago, but is somehow alive and possibly a mass murderer? Now I need all the help I can get to fix it.” He winced and watched the boy’s face for his reaction, but he just raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There was silence for a few seconds as Peter looked around the room, then back at Tony.

“So when do we leave?”

That was the thing about Peter. He trusted Tony blindingly, he never asked too many questions before jumping headfirst into whatever the older man proposed him. No matter how crazy, how inconsequential, how inappropriate. So he wasn’t too surprised when the boy said yes when he asked him out.

They had just arrived at the compound after Strange teleported them back from Titan, they hadn’t even showered yet, they were both covered in bruises and blood, but he looked at Peter and couldn’t help but think he could have lost him. They could have died, and he would have died without knowing the answer to the question that had been sitting at the back of his throat for months by then, which was–

“Yes,” Peter nodded, a faint blush taking over his dirty and bruised cheeks, and Tony blinked a few times.

“Don’t you want to think about that for a minute?” He asked, tilting his head to the side, and Peter frowned.

“Um, no? Why?”

“Because you’re twenty and I’m twenty-seven years your senior, kid.” It was terrifying to say that out loud. Peter was twenty. Tony was forty-seven. Twenty-seven years separated them. Tony was full grown man when Peter was swimming around in his father’s testicles.

“You just asked me out, you can’t call me kid anymore, I’m sure that’s written in some rulebook somewhere.” Even though he was still blushing, he found it in himself to be sassy and annoying. Tony rolled his eyes playfully.

“Fair enough. So, should I call you later?” He pointed over his shoulder, signaling that he was going to his quarters to shower and rest for a few hours. Peter frowned.

“For what?”

“For your answer? About that date?” Peter just looked at him like he’d asked the most stupid question ever.

“I just said yes.” He said, raising an eyebrow, and Tony sighed.

“I thought we agreed you’d think harder about it.”

“Uh, no, you just chickened out for a second there, but my answer is still yes.” He shrugged with a playful smile on his lips and Tony gawked at him.

“I didn’t chic – ugh, you’re such a brat.”

“I’m sure brat is off-limits, too.” He winked, walking away towards his quarters.

Tony worried about their relationship – as did everyone else, specially their close friends and May. Peter was so young and, to make matters worse, he sort of worked for Tony. Ever since Germany, the older man paid him a hefty salary for being a part of the team – he was always on call, after all, and always trained at the compound whenever he was in New York.

But as it turned out, his worry was unnecessary. Although young, Peter was mature beyond his years and acted more like an adult than Tony did most of the time – they sort of met in the middle. As for the power imbalance, it actually felt like Peter was in control more often than not. It was subtle, though, Tony only noticed because Rhodey pointed it out once.

“That kid’s got you wrapped around his little finger.” He laughed into his beer bottle as he watched Peter walking away. Tony blinked, having a sip of the tea the younger man had just brought him. Peter was dead set on getting him on a healthier diet and tea was somehow involved. The young man insisted it would help with his sleeping schedule, so Tony just agreed, even though he thought most teas tasted like dirty water. “If he says jump, you ask how high.” Tony was going to argue, but then stopped himself. He tried to think of the last time he’d said no to Peter, the last time he’d denied him anything, but not a single memory came to mind. “I’m not judging, it’s a good look on you. Whipped boyfriend.”

Tony noticed, then, that he was. Whipped, that is. Peter was always telling him what to do – gently, of course, and always with his best interests at heart. And he listened, because, as it soon became apparent, Peter was usually right about most things. Tony was more practical, he was in charge in the lab, what with decades of experience over him, as well as in the battlefield, for the same reason. But when it came to their personal lives, Peter called the shots. And it was fine. It was good. He felt loved and cared for like never before and he loved it. He loved Peter.

But he’d lost him.

And he couldn’t help but feeling guilty. It was his fault, had to be. He was in charge out there. He was supposed to look out for him in the field, he was supposed to keep him safe, bring him home alive and well, but he couldn’t even bring his fucking body back. He had nothing left of him but terrifying memories of cold, dead eyes and bloody lips trying to call out his name.

Days and weeks and months went by, but he barely noticed, barely left the tower anymore. He was vaguely aware of people coming and going – Pepper, to check on him from time to time; Rhodey, trying to get him out of the lab; Steve, with constant reports on what the Avengers were doing, as if he cared; Bruce, with excuses about projects he was working on; and Nat, for unclear reasons. They never asked him to suit up, though, not for anything. Not in a Tom Ford three-piece, not in Mark L. They just let him be. Which was good, it felt good to be forgotten up there in the workshop, which used to be their favorite place in the world.

Over those three years they’d been together, Tony had taken Peter everywhere – and he meant everywhere. A boy who had barely left Queens before he met Tony got to see so may different cities, so many different countries, even if just for one night sometimes, just for dinner, before they had to get back to their hectic lives.

But they always went back to their favorite place, Tony’s workshop, filled with so many memories it sometimes felt like it was haunted by their ghosts. Both of them. Because some part of Tony must have died with him and sometimes, when he got distracted, he saw them. Specially on the floor by the couch, that was too tiny for the two of them and Tony kept saying he was going to buy a bigger one, but for some reason he never did and they always ended up on the fluffy rug on the floor.

“You feel amazing,” Tony whispered as his fingers enveloped Peter’s hips, pulling him down lower, and the younger man moaned quietly and smiled as the words left Tony’s lips. He leaned forwards to kiss him as rocked his hips in a slow, lazy pace. “You are perfect, my love.”

“If you keep feeding my praise kink like that, I’m not gonna last two minutes here.” He laughed quietly against the older man’s lips, who sighed when he felt the boy’s muscles tightening around him.

“I won’t complain too much about it.” He tightened his grip on Peter’s hips when he sat back up and started moving up and down in a way he knew would drive the engineer insane. “You’re gonna kill this old man someday, I swear.”

“I really hope not, I kinda like him a little.”

And their ghosts giggled together and disappeared into thin air, like dust in the wind, and only a half-dead Tony remained with a glass of whiskey in hand, staring at the rug on the floor.

***

Friday was monitoring the press and the internet for any sign of Peter, but there was none to be found. For the first couple of days, Tony was restless, but hopeful. Peter had been missing for six months, there hadn’t been any sign of him for all of that time, so the fact that he appeared out of the blue that day meant that something had changed. He was sure he would show up again at any second.

As days went by, though, his hope started to dwindle. He grew desperate by the hour thinking that he would have to go another six months without seeing Peter, perhaps even longer – perhaps he’d never see him again. Sometimes he wondered if he was wrong, if that wasn’t even Peter in the video, if maybe he was really dead after all, but whenever he watched the video again he was sure of it. It was him.

So he couldn’t help but think that he had to be locked up somewhere. It brought back terrifying memories of those three months he spent in that cave in Afghanistan and how he never really recovered from that – he still had nightmares about it, twelve years later. Peter had been gone for six months, seventeen days, four hours and thirty-three minutes. And counting.

He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, the only thing he could think about was Peter, and the cave, and Barnes’s sessions with BARF, and Hydra’s brainwashing methods. He drove himself mad with all the possibilities of what could have happened to Peter – what might be happening right at that second as he waited for answers.

He’d been awake for almost sixty-two hours straight when it happened.

“I think you should see this, boss.” Friday’s voice interrupted the loud music and Tony frowned as he raised his eyes from his latest project – a new suit for Peter, one so sophisticated and impenetrable, not even vibranium could pierce through it. Friday wasn’t supposed to interrupt him unless the world was ending or she had news about Peter, Tony was very specific about that, so, yeah, he was a little freaked out when he heard her voice.

She showed him footage of Stark Tower’s security cameras, Tony’s heart almost stopped when he saw the boy sneaking in through a window, along with Fish-bowl-guy.

“He’s here.” He whispered to himself, unable to move for a second. His first instinct was to run to him, but he couldn’t be irresponsible, there were lots of people in the building, he couldn’t predict what could happen, so he had to take a few precautions. “Friday, where’s Pepper?”

“Miss Potts is not in the building, she’s caught in traffic a few miles away, boss.” Tony nodded to himself, taking a deep breath, then he started moving.

“Evacuate the building immediately, but don’t cause a panic, I don’t want them to know I know they’re here. Call Pepper, tell her to stay away. Where are they headed?” As he barked out orders, he watched Peter climb into the vents.

“They seem to be heading to the mainframe, boss.”

“Revoke Peter’s access to the systems,” Tony rushed to the elevator, the mainframe was situated right below his penthouse, it took up the whole floor and there was no way in or out other than the elevators and the air vents.

“Done, boss.”

Tony’s heart was beating wildly in his chest, filled with mixed feelings. He was going to see Peter for the first time in six months, after he literally rose from the dead – he’d gone to his funeral, for Christ’s sake – but it wouldn’t be a heartwarming reunion. He knew Peter wasn’t himself. Something had happened to him and he wasn’t okay, he was worried about what might happen, but the anxiety to see him again in person after so long was stronger than anything else.

He activated Mark L and when the door to the elevator opened, the room was quiet. It was huge, the light was low and blueish, there were at list seventeen rows of processors from one end of the room to the other, and Tony knew that at the very back, in a corner, there was a computer. He walked down the aisles quietly until he saw them. Peter had his back to him, but there was no mistaking the line of his shoulders, his neck, the way he stood, his quick fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Peter...” It came out as a sigh, but it was loud enough for both of them to hear and turn to him. For the first time, Fish-bowl-guy had his helmet off and Tony could see his face – the same face that took Peter away from him months earlier. “You!” He stalked towards them, but Peter webbed his feet together. Tony could easily break it, but stopped in his tracks, he didn’t want it to escalate to a fight. “What are you doing, Pete?”

“How dare you talk to him, Stark! After everything you’ve done?” Those eyes were so familiar, but he couldn’t place them. Tony frowned, taking a step closer, breaking the webs around his ankles.

“What– Pete –”

“You revoked my access?” Peter asked, exasperated and nervous when the computer announced his access was denied. That voice. That sweet, honey-like voice...

“So it is you.” Tony took yet another step closer, reaching out to him, but Peter got into a fighting stance.

“Why did you have to do that?” To Tony’s surprise, his voice trembled, like he was actually hurt by that. His heart broke in a million pieces. “You used to love me, you said–“ He shook his head, taking a deep breath. “You leave me no choice.”

“Peter, please–“ Before he could say anything else, the younger man leaped at him and almost managed to rip the faceplate off his face as he sat on his shoulders and started pulling it, but Tony was able to grab him and throw him away, but not far enough to hurt him. He stumbled a few feet and got right back up. “Pete, what are you doing, just stop!”

“No! You stop, Tony, please! How could you–“ He came at him again, and Tony flew out of the his way, but was caught by his web around his ankle. Peter swung him and threw him to the floor, but Tony quickly got up. “Please, Tony, you –“

“Don’t talk to him, Pete, he’s gonna try to manipulate you! We have to kill him, there’s no other choice!” Fish-bowl-guy was typing furiously at the keyboard, but Friday was keeping Tony updated. He was good, definitely above average, but he probably wouldn’t be able to hack into his systems. “Once we’re done, we can’t let him live, Peter.”

“What the fuck is he talking about! Kid, it’s me, it’s me, what are you doing?” Tony tried to reach Peter again, but he shot webs at him, trying to tie his arms to his torso, which was useless. The engineer knew Peter was going easy on him, he was almost as strong as Mark L and if the suit he was wearing was anything like the one Tony made for him, it had an instant kill mode. Still, he kept trying to bind him, not hurt him.

“I can’t let you release Extremis to the public! Please, I’m begging you, let me help you, we can–“ Fish-bowl-guy grabbed Peter’s arm, pulling him away and shaking him.

“Peter, stop fucking around! He’s dangerous!”

“Don’t fucking touch him!“ Tony had had it with him, he charged his repulsors and was going to aim right at his head, but for a short while, the room went dark, then when the lights came back up, only Peter was there. He had his mask off and, for a moment, Tony was free to breath. For the first time in months, he could fill his lungs up with air because his beautiful face was right there in front of him, within reach. Alive, healthy.

And staring at him with hatred.

“You’re disgusting, Tony. How could you do that to me? You groomed me, you sick fuck, I was just a boy, you molested me!” He started walking towards him and Tony blinked in shock.

“What?”

“You’re a good for nothing piece of shit, you left me for dead months ago, didn’t even come looking for me, I bet you found some younger ass to fuck, didn’t you? You old perv.” Tony took a few steps back, heart beating loudly in his ears. He’d never seen such hate in his eyes in all those years they were together.

“Pete...”

“You came after me because you couldn’t find someone your own age who would put up with your crap, right? The drinking, the nightmares, the fucking panic attacks, I was so fucking done with it! All of it!” He couldn’t believe his ears, Peter – he would never talk to him like that. Right? Or was that how he felt the whole time? “Give me access to EDITH, Tony.” He demanded and Tony frowned. EDITH was an AI that gave its users access to Stark Industries's global satellite network along with an arsenal of missiles and drones. It was only supposed to be used in case of Tony’s death, Peter knew that. “If you want to redeem yourself, you’ll do it, and I might forgive you.”

“Boss, I think you should see something,” Before Tony could answer, Friday activated the suit’s thermal imaging and Tony frowned. Peter was not standing in front of him. In fact, he was nowhere to be found and there was nobody where he stood just seconds ago. First, he panicked, thinking he had disappeared again, but it just took him five seconds to realize what was going on.

“Where is this hologram coming from, Fri?” Friday deactivated the thermal imaging and Tony was shocked by how realistic the Peter staring back at him was. So realistic that only one person in the whole world could have made it: himself.

“There are five drones projecting images in the room, sir.”

“Take them out.”

In seconds, five tiny missiles were launched from his suit and the drones fell to the floor, lifeless, and suddenly the whole room changed. It was still the same setting, but it somehow looked more real then, and of course, Peter had disappeared.

“Tony? Tony, where did you go?! What – what happened?” He heard Peter’s voice on the other end of the room and he rushed to get there.

Peter was curled up in a corner, looking scared and desperate as he looked around him in confusion. The other guy was kneeling next to him, trying to comfort him again.

“Pete, whatever he showed you, whatever you saw, it wasn’t real. He’s using BARF!” He tried to approach the young man, but his eyes were wild as he shook his head. He pushed the other guy away but kept crawling backwards, away from Tony as well.

“Stay away from me, please, don’t come any closer. I-I don’t wanna hurt you, please, Tony, please...” He was still looking around like he didn’t expect to still be there.

“Why do you always have to ruin every-fucking-thing, Stark? Why do you have to stand in the fucking way of every single thing that I do?” Fish-bowl-guy got up and started marching towards him, furious.

“I have no fucking idea who you are, you fucking weirdo.” Tony aimed his repulsors at him and the guy stopped, laughing incredulously.

“You hav – you motherfucker! You think you’re a God, don’t you? Above everything and everyone, literally wrapped in wealth and technology you’re unfit to wield. Like the holographic system I designed. A revolutionary breakthrough with limitless applications, that you turned into a self therapy machine and renamed it BARF! My life’s work, Stark, and you renamed it BARF! I told you it was a mistake, that my technology could change the world and then you fired me. You said I was… unstable. Ring any bells?”

It clicked, then. The crazy, wild eyes, the hand gestures, the insane world domination plans.

“Beck.” No wonder Tony had forgot about him, the guy was brilliant, but completely insane. He helped develop the technology behind BARF, but once he started talking about weaponizing it, Tony decided to let him go. “I didn’t steal it, it belonged to me, it was my idea, I made you head of the project because I thought you could see it through, but your ideas for what it could be used for were clearly unhealthy and a fucking threat to the world. So, yeah, not sorry for firing your ass, I was clearly right. What even is your endgame here, Beck? What do you want?”

“These days, you can be the smartest guy in the room, the most qualified, and no one cares. Unless you’re flying around with a cape or shooting lasers from your hands, no one will even listen. Well, now I’ve got a cape. And lasers. With my technology and with EDITH, I will be the greatest hero on Earth!” He spread his arms and laughed like the madman he was, and Tony frowned.

“Yeah? Where are your lasers now?” The guy looked at him like he had just realized he had nothing. Peter was curled in a corner, too confused to act, his drones lay limp on the floor, and he had no way out of the room. “Better luck next time, asshole.” Tony wanted to kill him, he did, but he controlled himself and just knocked him over the head. He fell heavily to the floor and Tony turned to Peter, who was still looking at him like the whole world had been turned upside down. “Peter, baby, c’mon, it’s me, it’s Tony,” He tried to approach him, but he shook his head violently.

“S-stand back!” He panted, eyes flicking between Tony and the guy on the floor. “What’s happening, I don’t understand, I don’t… We were… Outside and you…You killed people, how…”

“It’s fine, it’s gonna be fine, I promise, just trust me, I will take care of you, I’ll take care of everything, I –“

“Stay away from me!” Peter got up and run towards the elevator, Tony had no choice other than shoot him with the tranquilizer he used on Bruce when he hulked out at the wrong time. He rushed to catch him before he hit the ground and carefully cradled him in his arms.

Finally, in his arms. Warm and alive, solid and breathing.

“I’m so sorry, Peter. For everything. I’ll make it up to you.”

***

Tony startled awake when he heard screaming. His heart almost jumped out of his chest and he was on his feet in a matter of seconds the minute he registered it was Peter’s voice. He was distressed, possibly hurt, so he flew to his side, but was quickly pushed away by nurses and doctors that rushed into the room and Tony remembered the last 24 hours, where they were and why.

“Tony! Tony!” Peter called as he gasped for air, and that was more than enough for the older man to force his away back to him, grabbing his shaking hand.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here, are you okay?” He asked in a rush looking into his wild, scared eyes, and the kid just looked back at him for a few minutes, blinking several times, before he nodded slowly.

“Are you – are you real?” He rubbed his forehead, panting, and Dr. Cho approached him to run a few tests. Peter had been out for a whole day after the Hulk-sized dose of tranquilizer Tony shot him with, even with his fast metabolism.

“I am. Do you feel that?” He brushed his thumbs across his cheeks and Peter closed his eyes, sighing and nodding slowly. Tony took his hands and pressed them to his own face, down his scratchy cheeks that hadn’t seen a razor in weeks, and Peter smiled. “It’s me, I’m here now, it’s over.” Tony explained to him as doctor Cho checked his blood pressure and his pulse, asked him a few questions, then once she was satisfied, she nodded.

“You’re okay, Peter. You just need a lot of rest, ok? Most of your wounds from the fight have already healed, but I’m going to keep you here overnight just to be sure, then you can go right home, ok?” He nodded and she smiled. “Welcome back.”

She left the room and silence took over for a second, but they still looked at each other, as if afraid that if the looked away the other would disappear. Nat had interrogated Beck and figured out his plan. The terrorist attack was an ambush, it was his goal to kidnap Peter all along, he knew he was the only person, besides Tony, who had access to EDITH.

He made them see Peter’s death as he kidnapped him with an illusion of Tony. He was holding Peter in a warehouse in Queens and the sad thing was, he didn’t even need anything to contain him. He kept him there with illusions. Peter thought he was at Stark Tower the whole tome, living with Tony as if nothing had changed.

Well, with a few changes. Beck’s Tony was slowly going mad, called himself Superior Iron man and planned to take over humanity by spreading a virus called Extremis 3.0. When Peter refused to help him, he was turned into a hostage. Peter was “Tony’s hostage” for months before Beck “rescued him” – by keeping him in the same warehouse, with different illusions. He managed to make him believe the Avengers were in on Tony’s plan and they had to stop them. The bank robbery was necessary to weaponize the few drones he was able to build after he left Stark Industries.

“How… How are you feeling, Pete?” He braced himself for the answer, because he knew it would be nothing short of horrible and he knew that whatever happened to him was his fault. The younger man bit his lower lip, frowned, and shook his head slightly.

“Confused. Scared.” He confessed, tearing up, but he kept holding Tony’s hand tightly. “Not sure if any of this is even real. If you are real.”

Tony could see that he meant it when he looked into his eyes. He was terrified. The older man took a deep breath and sat beside him on the bed.

“Do you remember our trip to Brazil?” He placed Peter’s hand on his own face again, kissing its palm. Peter nodded with a small smile. “Remember our last night there, on the hotel suite’s balcony? We had been together for, what, two, three months at the time? Remember what I said to you?” A tear ran down his cheek when he whispered yes. “I’m gonna marry you someday, kid.” Tony whispered back, joining their foreheads.

“And I said you couldn’t call me kid when you were making marriage plans.” Peter laughed wetly between tears, leaning up to place a gentle kiss on Tony’s lips, sighing in relief. “I should have known that could have never been you…” Peter’s hand slid from Tony’s cheek, to his shoulder, down his arm, until it reached the little cuts on his hands, the rough pads of his fingers. Peter took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “How long?”

Peter didn’t have to ask the whole question, Tony heard it, and he squeezed his hand.

“Six months.” He winced when Peter’s eyes grew large as saucers.

“Fuck... Fuck! Tony – I feel so stupid… I should have known, I should have fucking –“

“Hey, hey, don’t, don’t you dare blame yourself, you hear me? He fooled us all, Pete. The reason why I didn’t come looking for you before was because... For six months, I thought you dead.” He cradled his face in his hands and Peter gasped.

“Oh, God, Tony.”

“I saw you die, Pete,” He whispered, lowering his head so Peter didn’t have to see his tears. “I saw you die before my eyes. And I – I believed it, too. I never went after you, kid. I’m so sorry, I could have saved you, but I–“ before he could finish, he felt the boy’s fingers under his chin, lifting his head, and he was met with an equally wet face staring back at him.

“I’m here, now. And so are you. We’ll get through this together, okay?”

“Pete...”

There were no more comforting words to say other than his name. The name he hadn’t dared to say for so many months. He knew they had a long way to go, he could predict the sleepless nights, the nightmares, the anxiety attacks, the absolute terror of thinking of ever losing him again. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but they were going to do it together, they would heal together and relearn how to recognize each other blindly once again. One step at a time.

#starker #canon-compliant #sorta #cssprompts

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thesoftboiledegg · 3 years

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OK, now that I've gotten my least favorite episodes out of the way, here's my ranking of my favorite Rick and Morty episodes (up to season four):

Season one: "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind" I don't think this is necessarily the best episode, but it's still my favorite episode of all time. The Citadel of Ricks sounds ridiculous (or rick-diculous) in theory, but somehow that episode makes it work. This show introduces so many great concepts: the Citadel, Doofus Rick, evil Morty, the evil Rick robot. It was fascinating to see a sweet, gentle Rick that got along well with Jerry as well as an evil Morty whose true motivations are still unknown. Plus, this episode was fun and hilarious to boot. It's basically the ideal Rick and Morty episode--a fun, exciting adventure that introduces an intriguing sci-fi concept and sets up a bigger story that carries through the rest of the show. I'm still wondering what Rick's comment about a "cocky Morty" was about (and I'm pretty sure the rest of the fandom is, too.)

Season three: "The Rickshank Redemption" OK, this is it. This is the best Rick and Morty episode of the entire series. The episode cleverly starts with a fake-out, then turns into an exciting, fast-paced adventure that actually shows Rick's brilliance instead of just telling us that he's smart. We get our biggest glimpse of Rick's backstory to date (who knows how much of it is true, but still), character development for Morty and Summer, worldbuilding for the Citadel of Ricks and a brilliant callback to "Rick Potion #9." At the end, Beth and Jerry finally separate, a decision that has major impacts for the rest of the season instead of resetting itself in the next episode. The insanity all culminates in Rick going on another unhinged, manic tirade in the garage that ushers in the "darkest year of our adventures." This episode also had a huge cultural impact with the now-infamous Szechuan sauce reference. I don't think Rick and Morty is ever going to top this one, which is so well-paced that it feels like it's longer than twenty minutes.

Season three: "The Ricklantis Mixup" The Citadel worldbuilding is excellent (and again, it's a concept that shouldn't work, but somehow does), but what really makes this episode stand out is how it weaves together multiple stories that seem like they're unrelated at first but come together in the final conclusion. This episode is a brilliant commentary on the issues that plague modern society (which is rare for Rick and Morty) and explores how Ricks and Mortys from alternate realities can be wildly different, which doesn't really come up in other multiverse episodes. The artwork in this episode is top notch, too. Just a phenomenal episode all around.

Season two: "Interdimensional Cable 2" This is probably the episode I've watched the most. I wasn't a fan of the first Interdimensional Cable episode, but this episode pretty much fixed all the issues that I had with it. Most of the clips were so bizarre and unfamiliar that you actually felt like you were watching episodes from another reality. "Lil Bits" and "The Adventures of Stealy" are my favorite clips. The framing device with Jerry was also hilarious and gave us a fascinating glimpse at an alien hospital (OK, it was mostly jokey, but still.) Rick and Morty has some issues with the animation, but the alien designs are always excellent.

Season two: "Mortynight Run" This episode was just an awesome Rick and Morty adventure. I loved the brightly colored alien worlds that they explored and the way Rick's plans spun wildly out of control. Blips and Chitz and the Jerry daycare sound kind of silly in theory, but they ended up being perfect additions to this episode. Plus, this episode had a lot of memorable interactions between Rick and Morty. "That's the difference between you and I--I never go back to the carpet store."

Season two: "Total Rickall." This episode is so much fun. The concept is brilliant, and the solution to the problem is actually really clever, not a dumb cop-out. The crazy characters that keep showing up are hilarious--and best of all, this show introduced Mr. Poopybutthole. I love how the animators added him into the opening sequence. Plus, the twist at the end of the episode is genuinely shocking. The audience thinks that they have it figured out and the Smith family is naively letting him stay in their lives. But nope--Mr. Poopybutthole is actually real, and Beth might have just killed him. To top it all off, the after-credits scene is brutal. "He says he's sorry that you didn't have any bad memories of him."

Season three: "Rest and Ricklaxation" I probably don't have to tell you how much this episode is a brilliant exploration of Rick and Morty's characters. What I love about it is how it doesn't go the way you'd expect. Rick and Morty become "nice" and happy, but it's actually detrimental to their personalities--Rick is a hollow shell who doesn't care about his grandson, and Morty is basically a high-functioning sociopath. The part where detoxified Rick burps and says "Excuse me" is pure genius.

Season three: "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender" I feel like a lot of people don't like this one, but it was a fun send-up of superhero movies (I'm saying this as an MCU fan) as well as a great exploration of Rick's toxic, codependent relationship with Morty. I mean, the entire plot basically happens because Morty said (or implied) that he likes the Vindicators more than Rick. This was also one of the rare times when we see Rick when he's hardcore blackout drunk (as opposed to his regular level of drunkenness.) "Who the fuck is Noob-Noob?" is my favorite ending line of the entire series.

Season four: "The Vat of Acid Episode" I didn't rank this one higher because I have to be in a certain mood to watch it, but it stands out because it's utterly different from any other Rick and Morty episode. This episode wasn't afraid to take risks, like setting up a basic plot (Rick and Morty being stuck in the vat the whole time) and veering away from that altogether. The long sequence with Morty's girlfriend was also pretty risky. I thought it was out of place when I first watched this episode, but now I think it adds a lot to the show. Then there's the fact that Rick's plot is so utterly cruel and brutal, even for him. The only slightly "redeeming" thing about it is that he created a way to undo the whole thing--but still, he put his grandson through an insane amount of emotional trauma just because he was starting to stand up to Rick. This episode also had some of the best Rick and Morty interactions of the entire series. "The Vat of Acid Episode" was complex, challenging and another one of those rare times where we see that Rick is truly brilliant.

Season three: "The Wedding Squanchers" I don't rewatch this episode all the time, but I liked this one because it had some good character moments like Beth finally admitting that she tolerates Rick's bullshit because she doesn't want him to leave again. This is also one of the rare episodes where Rick does something truly selfless that doesn't benefit him. We also see that Rick claiming that he doesn't care about anything is a bunch of bullshit--the way he screams when Tammy shoots Birdperson is tragic and horrifying. Plus, who saw that twist with Tammy coming? And of course--this episode sets up the best episode of the entire series.

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #morty smith

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fandomsilhouette · 4 years

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we’ll have (a devil of a time)

Felix throws a wrench in Lila’s meticulous planning when he refuses to be wooed by grandiose tales of adventure and daring, when he refuses to give away any hint of what she might lie about to get his attention. Somehow, this leads to Marinette shaking hands with all the wrong (right) people.

Happy @felixmonth, y’all!

This new kid, this Felix, is never going to fit in. Everyone can see it the moment he steps through the door on that first day, black suit and scowl in tow, and slouches into the seat at the back of the class next to Chloe, prim and proper, glowering all the while. He catches Lila’s eye immediately, with his tangible air of wealth and power, the sheer amount of usefulness he seems to hold in his brooding body.

Of course, her interest lasts exactly as long as it takes for Felix to make it very clear that he has absolutely no interest in her, no matter how much she lies or cajoles him into joining the rest of the class.

“Hey, Felix!” She starts by sidling up to him, turns on the charm she thinks she has. She’s got him pegged, she’s sure of it: a pretty boy like that, all dark and mysterious, has got to want space to be sensitive and vulnerable. He longs to be their friend, and Lila knows it. All she has to do is give him a chance.

Then he immediately declines her exclusive invite to the Winter Social After-Party (hosted by her, of course), leaving the split halves of her invitation to flutter pathetically to the ground.

“I prefer to spend my time with people of consequence, thanks.”

Just like that, Lila is left scrambling to piece together the torn shreds of her plan. Alright, then. If he won’t be friends with her, he won’t be friends with anyone.

She lets her gaggle of admirers reassure her over and over that “He was so mean to you, Lila! How could he say such a thing?”, that of course she doesn’t have to associate with a bully (no matter how sweet and generous and self-sacrificing she is, oh!), Lila makes it her business to meticulously bar Felix from each and every social circle she can manage.

Irritatingly, this suits Felix just fine. He sits at the back of the class every day next to Chloe, making it seem like the back was something to choose instead of somewhere that the lowest echelons of the class, the dregs of society, were banished to.

Marinette has gotten used to watching the back. She could be exiled at any moment, after all. So she’s seen the way Chloe doesn’t cling to Felix and heard the way Lila and Alya whisper snide comments from their seats next to her just quietly enough that she can’t hear without asking, watched them stiffen and shush on the occasion Felix walks by their table. A slight nervous fidget. A muttered “speak of the devil.”

Marinette knows that associating with Felix is a social death sentence. She also knows that he makes Lila uncomfortable, off balance. Most of all, she knows that her own social life is hanging by a thread. Marinette is done waiting for someone else to cut the string and send her crashing. Her life is not meant to be waiting for someone else’s choices.

She finds him at lunch at the backmost table by the trash cans, the table of outcasts and degenerates, lounging in the shade of a tree. Sunlight filters through the leaves, casting him a mottled medley of light and darkness until a cloud passes overhead and sends his features into shadow. He picks at his plate, a vulture seeking a soft patch of flesh.

“Hey.”

He looks up, but not directly at her. He doesn’t respond. The fork hangs suspended a little above the plate.

“I’m Marinette. You’re Felix, right? I know Lila’s turned the class against you, and that’s pretty rough. I’ve been there. I’m actually still kind of there. I know you already have Chloe, I’d like to be your friend too.” She sits opposite him and begins eating with an air of determined purpose. He waits a long moment.

“I don’t need friends.” He spits at last.

Marinette pauses between bites. “Let me be clear. I’m not giving you a choice about this. Call it a partnership if you want, a merger of interests, whatever. Lila is going to wreck you and you could do worse than to have someone who knows exactly what her game is working with you.”

“...I see. And what exactly do you know?” He goes back to eating, unconvinced and dripping with condescension.

“You know Lila is lying, obviously. Do you know why?”

“I know very well why.” He says, a sharp edge of arrogance entering into his voice “She makes people like her to get what she wants. I’ve known people like her.”

“And what does she want from you?”

“I’m rich.”

“You’re cold. You’re standoffish and mean and an absolute prick. You’re an easy target to make her look good. She’s going to be out here doing her best to be your friend,” and she spits that word like a curse too, “and you’re going to ‘bully’ her, turn down her made up offers and snub her parties, and she’ll say it’s because you think you’re too good to hang out with them but of course she doesn’t think that! She wants to see the best in you! Until the rest of the class hates you, thinks you're the worst person on the planet for daring to breathe the same air as them.”

He goes silent then, fork still frozen in the air as his knuckles grow bone-white on the gleaming metal. After a long moment, he adds “What do I care? This nobody school doesn’t matter to me, and neither does anyone in it...” He hesitates, glancing at the seat next to him, then returns with renewed vitriol. “What value does this have to me?”

Marinette scoffs. “You of all people should know better than that. We’re insanely well connected, didn’t you know? Rose is friends with Prince Ali. Juleka is in Kitty Section, which has been aired on TV. Adrien is… Adrien, and you already know Chloe. Alya runs the most popular superhero blog in Paris. And as much as I hate to brag, I’ve won competitions for Gabriel Agreste, I’ve worked with Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale, I’m the costumer for Kitty Section, I’ve been on TV, and you’d better well take me seriously! You think these people won’t figure out who you care about and leave it in ruins for you to cry in the ashes of?! Just because they haven’t yet doesn’t mean they never will.” She hesitates. “You don’t know them like I do. They’re insanely loyal.”

“Not to you,” he scoffs.

“That’s the problem.”

Silence hangs thick in the air. At long last, gives a small, conciliatory nod. “I… see. Perhaps this could be a… profitable arrangement.”

Marinette gazes sardonically at him, as he begins to flounder with his hands, reaching out for a hug and then a handshake, shimmying awkwardly in place. She waits a moment, amused, then sticks her hand out for him to shake.

He takes it.

“This is what you were going for, right? It’s your signature move.” Her voice shifts suddenly into something playful and light, and Felix is knocked off balance. This is… different.

He sputters. “It seemed… appropriate for our agreement, okay!”

“It’s called a ‘friendship’, you know.” Marinette sticks out her tongue and winks.

Felix blushes. “I wasn’t… I didn’t… it’s an unfamiliar phrasing… for me.”

“I’ll help you get used to it,” she promises, “That’s what friends are for!”

He chuckles a bit, an uneasy, unpracticed sound. Marinette smiles, genuinely this time, and they settle in to eat in comfortable silence.

It becomes a familiar habit, an easy routine: Marinette joins Felix for lunch, jokes around and teases him until he’s bright pink and laughing, then slips away once Chloe makes an appearance. She waits for him after class on the days Chloe rushes off early, and finds herself walking home with him, the space between them shrinking each day.

Felix finds himself having parallel conversations, one snide and one almost curious, both vulnerable and resigned to losing the only friend they have left, offering their own selves up for sacrifice as if it would hurt less if they gave it freely instead of having it torn from them.

“Why do you even hang out with her?” Chloe and Marinette both ask him.

“You two are a lot alike, you know. You’d never see it in her, but you’re also not looking. You should.”

That’s all he’ll say about it, and they learn not to push.

One day, Chloe shows up early, and Marinette is left scrambling to pull the leftovers of her lunch together, clumsier in her rush than she ever is. She sits down on the bench, shoving Marinette over and announcing that she’ll be “slumming it with the commoners, actually,” and won’t be eating at her hotel anymore. Her eyes look every direction but Marinette’s.

“Alright,” Felix responds placidly. He picks up his lunch and walks around the bench, settling back in next to Marinette. “Please don’t push my friends around, Chloe.”

“Well, I--” Chloe is taken aback, hurt. “The rule has always been that she’ll leave when I show up! I’m here now, so she can shove right out of here, thanks.”

Marinette sputters. “We had an agreement! You get half of lunch and all of class and it’s not like that’s less time than I get, and I was about to leave anyways but now I don’t think I will. Thanks.”

“He’s my friend! You and I both know he’s only tolerating you because of who you know,” and at that Chloe glances over to the rest of the class sprawled out on the grass, giggling over Lila’s latest fantasy adventure.

Something like hellfire burns in Marinette’s chest and she swallows it down.

“Fine. I’ll leave.”

Felix moves faster than anyone, standing up and gathering her lunch in his arms, tucking it gently into her bag. He swings her backpack onto his arm, which looks wildly out of place with its cheerful pink against his dour grey vest, and then gently pulls her hand into his.

“I’ll leave with you, Marinette.”

Chloe gapes, eyes bulging, an ugly startled expression that Felix knows she isn’t faking.

“You’re going to choose her over me?” For once her voice is quiet.

“...I can’t let you pull me wherever you want, Chloe. Marinette is my fr-- my friend. Just like you are.”

“Why not?!”

Marinette lets Felix pull her up, his arm wrapping around her waist, and then pauses uncomfortably, standing where she is.

“...look. Do you want to just come with us? Felix keeps saying we’re alike. Maybe it’s time to find out why.”

Chloe’s face contorted into an unpleasant grimace, as if she’d just swallowed the bitterest pill in the world and, grudgingly, came out the healthier for it.

“I… what are you doing, Marinette? We don’t like each other. That’s what we do.”

“...yeah, well.” Marinette glances over at the class again. “I could use another friend. Couldn’t you?”

Felix grins. “Or a business partner!”

“...I could manage business partners, probably.” Chloe smirks and Marinette smiles back when Chloe reaches out to shake her hand.

“You two are so alike! It’s so cute that you’re getting along.” Lila’s saccharine voice cuts through their tentative conversation and sends them startling. Alya’s just a few steps behind her, scurrying to follow with Lila’s bag clutched in her arms. It would be worrying how much she looks like Sabrina, if Marinette still had it in her to care. Months of passive aggressiveness and constantly being in the wrong had taken its toll on her, and she was done. Isn’t that why she had sought out Felix to begin with?

Felix is already helping her up again, pulling her up from the bench as Chloe storms up to Lila only to brush past her, shoving her shoulder into Lila’s chest. Alya catches sight of Felix’s arm around Marinette’s waist, and calls out.

“You’re really going to make a deal with the devil, Marinette? Is that how low you’ve sunk?” Alya’s voice is uncharacteristically malicious. “You won’t be friends with Lila, you antagonize her, bully her, and now you’re befriending her bully? This is the person you want to be? Ugh. I can’t believe I ever thought you were worth being my friend.”

Chloe pauses, halfway between the table and the door to the classroom, and spins around on her heel, snapping into place with a confident click. The old smirk is back now, given a new purpose.

“Actually, Alya Cesaire, you aren’t worth her friendship.”

Alya is frozen in something in the middle of furious and offended and gaping, humiliation shock, and Marinette is frozen right there with her. Hesitantly, gazing at Chloe in shock, she sidles a little closer to her. Chloe is still going.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hate this goody two shoes queen of perfection, but you? Have you forgotten when she’s done for you? After all the terrible advice you’ve given her over the last year, I’d think you’d be on your knees begging her to stay. After all, isn’t she the one who helped you get an interview with Ladybug for your blog? No one had even heard of it until then. And she was the one that helped you go on dates with Nino while she babysat. She’s the one that brings you cookies every morning and coffee when you’re tired and lets you crash at her place. You think she should be waiting for you? Darling, you’ve gone and lost what little mind you had left. You have no idea what you’re pushing away.”

Marinette can’t figure out what has possessed Chloe, to say all these words in Marinette’s defense that have been burning a hole in Marinette’s chest for so long but have never quite found their way out. She doesn’t even know how Chloe knows all this. She gapes at Chloe in newfound admiration and awe, suddenly aware of how the same venom that Chloe had always drowned Marinette in can be used to pull her back up.

Felix is getting impatient at the door, and Marinette slips her hand around Chloe’s wrist to pull her away. Chloe doesn’t stop, just redirects her attention to Marinette, flipping her ponytail back behind her like she’s dismissing Alya and Lila.

“What. An. Idiot. You know?”

Marinette gapes for a moment and then bursts into giggles. “You’re right!”

“Like, I don’t like you but at least I can recognize the value you have as a friend.”

Chloe determinedly doesn’t look at Marinette as she says it, and Marinette doesn’t respond for a long moment. When she does, she squeezes her hand still wrapped around Chloe’s wrist and goes quiet, soft, fond.

“I like you too, Chloe. I’m glad we’re going to be friends now.”

Felix grabs Marinette’s other hand as they get to the doors.

“Business partners, huh?”

Both girls stick their tongues out at him.

Alya watches them leave, her hands crumpling into angry fists. She manages two furious, determined steps after them before Lila summons her back.

“Wait.”

She’s sitting at the table now, lounging across the seat like a traitor on a newly conquered throne. Alya turns back to her. Her mouth, gaping a moment ago, has hardened into a razor-tight line.

“Let them go. They’re not worth you, Alya. They’re being bad friends. What was that you told me about Felix? You don’t have to associate yourself with bullies, right? C’mon. Let's have lunch!” She swings her legs back over and starts making her way over to the shaded grass under the trees, settling with her feet tucked under her. Lila stretches out a hand, nails manicured and neat, and waits until Alya takes it.

Lila pulls Alya down, and grins with all her teeth bared.

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