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multiplefandomsblog · 3 years

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Nagito x Autistic!reader HCS

request; Oh okay, awesome!! I just wanted to make sure before I requested anything :) If you don't mind, could I request headcanons for Nagito with an autistic s/o who is really helped by him? Like they're really comforted by him and helped by what he does for them, even though he doesn't think he's helpful at all?

warnings; autistic!reader(not rlly a warning), gn!reader, unedited, sensory overload, harmful stimming, kinda kinda long? I got a bit carried away.. But oh well!

note; I’m still kinda anxious that I could’ve offended autistic people somehow with these hcs, so if I did something wrong, please don’t be afraid to let me know! I tried doing a bunch of research as to understand it and write better, and so I hope that these hcs were somewhat accurate! I’m honestly kinda mad at myself for not knowing more about autism, so i’m really glad you requested this and pushed me to be more aware >:D tysm for requesting and, ily <3<3<3(oh and sorry for the long wait D:)

- mod chia

◊ Frankly, Nagito understands your autism. He, himself has some problems with understanding social cues and honestly, just talking to someone without accidentally offending them is tough for him. He is very unaware of how the things he does and says could potentially offend or disrupt others.

◊ So he can relate to you on a level.

◊ If you ever started to stim—but in a unhealthy way, like punching yourself, banging your head, just ways that can potentially harm you—, he’d take your hands and let you fidget with them instead. He knows stimming is something that you do to cope, and that’s okay, but he doesn’t want you to hurt yourself by doing so.

◊ So he encourages punching and banging his head instead- Which, of course you say no to! Instead you settle for squeezing his hand and swinging it whenever you felt anxious. He won’t say anything about it but, he actually really enjoys it when he feels you playing with his hand. It makes him feel more secure. To him it meant that, if you were touching him, you were protected and still alive- that sounds bad. Basically, he enjoys the reassurance that you aren’t leaving him or getting hurt from his luck.

◊ Eventually you became more reliant on Nagito, needing him to be there with you whenever you felt uncomfortable or when you needed to listen to his voice rather than what sounded like thousands of other unfamiliar voices around you. And that isn’t a big worry for you because he is always by your side. He doesn’t like leaving you either, because you seemed to be the only one who truly understood him.

◊ Every time the Monokuma body discovery announcement came on, you got triggered, not only did it mean another person died, but it was also obnoxiously loud and bringing your stress levels through the roof. It seemed so loud that it started to echo inside your head, Monokuma’s shrill voice rining through your ears. When Nagito saw you cover your ears(or any other signs of sensory overload), he immediately springs into action and goes to you, doing his best to calm you down.

◊ If you need to be in a tight space to feel safe in, he will find you a place and let you stay in there. If you just needed him, he’ll always be there for you. If you needed music or a relaxing video to watch, he somehow already has it due to his luck.

◊ Instead of you rocking yourself back and forth, he would offer to rock you himself in his arms, unless you didn’t want to; then that’s alright too! He just wanted you to be comfortable.

◊ If you were feeling disturbed by nearby loud noises, he’ll find the perfect place for the both of you to relax in silence together, or by yourself if that’s what you needed. He knows all the best places to escape because of his shared hate with you of loud places. It makes him incredibly happy to have someone to share these places with. Though he’s in such a beautiful place, he can’t seem to enjoy it completely due to the void in his heart; loneliness. He’s really really glad he is able to share what seemed like a beautiful secret with someone as hopeful as you.

◊ He’s careful to not say anything too self-deprecating when you want to be alone, because he knows you aren’t isolating yourself from him because you didn’t like him, you were isolating yourself because you needed to, to help yourself. So he definitely avoids saying stuff like, “I see, so you’re leaving because I’m trash, huh?”, he doesn’t want to make you feel guilty for something you can’t control. Instead, he kisses your forehead gingerly and leaves you be.

◊ He believes his actions in helping you isn’t as helpful as you think. He thinks that he’s just being overbearing or selfish when he does things like this, though when he sees you looking less stressed after his actions, it makes him happy. So maybe it was worth it.

◊ He’d insist the things he did weren’t helpful, and that he couldn’t see how he helped you at all but when you tell him how much he has helped you cope, and go into every detail, he feels his heart go doki doki(lmfao).

◊ He’s overjoyed to know that the things he did helped you, it assures him that the things he does, doesn’t annoy you.

◊ I headcanon that when you first met, Nagito never realized you had autism, and so he had went on one of his usual hope rants, unknowingly stressing you out with the overflowing amount of dialogue spilling out from Nagito’s lips. When he finally snaps out of it and sees you stimming harmfully and covering your ears, it’s like something was activated in him? He immediately realizes what was happening and he does his best to try and calm you down, apologizing quietly as to not disturb you more.

◊ Somehow, he already knows all the things that help you destress. Whether it’s repeating a phrase over and over, just talking in general, counting, reading a book, he’ll help you in whatever way. Although his voice had stressed you out earlier, it actually soothes you now. His voice is surprisingly comforting when spoken with softly.

◊ Once you had calmed down from it, he started apologizing frantically, his voice still at a soft tone. You thought it was adorable and very thoughtful of him to speak at such a small tone for you, heart fluttering as he continued speaking.

◊ Despite wanting to talk more about hope, he promises not to ever again in front of you- But! You stop him. You explain to him that it’s not that you don’t want to hear it, it’s that the way he explained it was too much for you.

◊ So he tries to slow down his hope rants and dial it down to a good 3(the og being 10-). He’s extremely happy to hear that you actually want to continue hearing about hope, despite breaking down from it earlier. He thinks it’s very hopeful of you.

◊ When you avoid eye contact while listening to his hope rants, he confronts you about it bluntly and suddenly. I don’t think he knows much about autism, only hearing about it and reading a few articles about it, but never meeting someone autistic in real life. So you’d have to explain a lot of it to him, including the lack of eye contact during conversation. Once you explain everything to him, he understands waaaay better and you start to notice positive changes to his behaviour around you.

◊ Honestly, you being autistic kind of works out perfectly for him because of how blunt and honest he can be at times. His bluntness helps you out, finding it easier to communicate with Nagito then others because he doesn’t use any confusing social cues, he just tells you what he needs to say rather than hinting at it. He’s glad that his blunt behaviour that others seem to hate, helps you understand him better.

◊ You both have strange humours that no one really understands, so when Nagito tells you a joke that you don’t understand and vice-versa, neither of you laugh but you still appreciate the effort.

◊ It’s kinda like, “That made sense, and it was a good joke, but it wasn’t funny.” and you’re both alright with that.

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authorialarcanist · 3 years

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It Seems I'll Never Understand (Kagerou Project)

Genre: Angst

Rating: Mature

Pairing(s): Tateyama Ayano x Kisaragi Shintaro

Summary: "...Hey, Shintaro. Why'd you do it? I mean... You could have stayed out of it. It wasn't your fight."

In a world where Shintaro Kisaragi was the one who killed himself on that fateful august day two years prior, Ayano isn't sure what she can do with her life. Living in fear of the Snake of Clearing Eyes, all she can do is think back on the past, and wonder - why it was that her best friend took her place when she's sure he must have hated her, and when was it that it all went wrong.

Shinaya roleswap with a focus on making it work with as few changes to canon as possible.

---

It’s late - late enough that it’s gotten truly dark out. I’m walking along the road to my home, a boy next to me. The bridge we’re crossing seems to stretch out endlessly into the distance, illuminated only by the moon and the street-lamps we’re passing by.

I fiddle with my scarf absentmindedly as I steal a glance at his face. I’m so glad… I was finally able to become friends with him. Or, well… maybe ‘friends’ isn’t the right word just yet. To him, I’m sure I’m still just that stupid girl who made him tutor her for hours after class.

Still… I tell myself that this is the most important first step. Mm-hm. Now that I’ve introduced myself, I’m sure that we’ll be friends - real friends - in no time at all.

“You really saved my life! I never would’ve been able to finish that problem set on my own.” I grin weakly as my babbling inevitably turns to self-deprecation. Ah, well… after my terrible performance back there, trying to act cool for my new friend was a lost cause already. Well, if this was a manga, at least this might be the part where the aloof genius breaks character to reassure me that I can do it?

“Even with my help, it took you way too long…” He sighs. “Geez. I only came here to get my wallet, too. I must be really unlucky.”

—Yeah, right. I’ve only known this guy for a few hours now, but it’s pretty obvious that tender support isn’t his strong suit.

“I really am sorry…” I shrink a little under his criticism. “But! I promise, I won’t forget about today!”

“What are you saying? Didn’t you just say you forget things no matter how much you study?” Ow… I guess I did say that, but… he really has no faith in me at all, huh?

But he just doesn’t get it! Not quite panicking, I redouble my efforts to explain myself. “Today’s special! I’m going to try extra hard not to forget, so it’ll be okay!”

He hums in contemplation and stares away into the distance. And then—

—“Liar.”

I recoil from the sudden accusation. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

“You’ve broken your promise already, haven’t you? You can’t even remember my name.”

He picks up his pace, and though I try to follow, I can’t seem to move forward.

“Huh? Of course I can!”

“Really? Then why haven’t you said it?”

“Why are you so focused on that all of a sudden?”

“Say it, Ayano.”

“Stop it!”

“Say my name.”

“I— You’re—“ Tears spill from my eyes. I’m trying to say it. Why — why is this happening? Why couldn’t we just keep walking together, chatting about nothing important, like friends do?

“…Yeah. I thought so.” He stops walking, and for some reason, I freeze as well. I have no choice but to watch his back as he speaks. “I guess it’s not your fault, though. Sorry.” He shakes his head. “But… Try to remember, okay?”

He turns to face me again.

His eyes are red.

“If you can’t remember soon, then—“

——

Knock. Knock. Knock. Three hesitant raps on my door.

The sound wakes me from my dream. Already, it’s growing too hazy to remember. All I can say for certain is that hewas there.

He’s always there in my dreams. Maybe it’s some cruel balance for the fact that he’ll never be there again in real life.

“Ayano?”

At the sound of the voice calling for me, I turn over in my bed and bury my face in my pillow, trying not to make any sound to indicate that I’m awake.

“Ayano, please, I know you’re in there. I just want to talk.”

I don’t respond. My father is dead. That’s the best way to think of it. The safest way to think of it. Even when the snake lets him out, it’s only in the hopes of getting me to snap.

“Ayano, I’m sorry. I know I haven’t been the best father to you, since your mother died. But please, I just want to know what happened. What happened to Shuuya and Tsubomi and Kousuke. Why you won’t talk to me. Ayano, please.”

My hands clench against the pillow. I force myself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

“Ayano…”

In.

Out.

“…Just… think about it, okay? I’m here, if you’re ever ready to talk. Even if you need another two years, I’ll still be here.”

A lie. Dad won’t be here. Just the snake.

“…I love you.”

I stay silent, waiting until the sound of footsteps fades from my hearing. No matter how many times I go through this, it never gets any easier. But… I can’t talk to him.

Even if the snake wasn’t privy to his every thought, I can’t bring myself to speak with the man who sold my world.

“…Is… he gone?” A tinny voice whispers from my computer’s speaker.

I listen for a moment. When nothing happens, I nod. “Yeah.”

My computer monitor lights up as it exits sleep mode, and a girl in blue peeks out from her hiding place behind a browser window. “…I still don’t understand why you don’t leave here, Ayano-chan…”

I shake my head. “I… I just can’t. I’m sorry, Ene.” Ene… that’s what this girl calls herself. About a year ago, she popped out of an email and decided to stick around. She tried to put on this sassy, hyper front at first, but it fell apart pretty quickly.

I’m pretty sure I know who she really is, after all. And she knows I know. I just haven’t been cruel enough to push the topic.

It’s not like she has much of anywhere else to go, after all.

“…Okay. I get it.” She looks down at the taskbar and pokes her index fingers together. “Just… hang in there, okay, Ayano-chan? Do your best.”

“Like my best has ever mattered,” I mumble, and sit down at my computer chair. To be honest, my activities since dropping out of school two years ago have been nothing, nothing, and a heaping dessert of nothing. It’s not like I have any sort of online life to speak of, even. It’s just that… ultimately, there’s nothing else to do when I’m living under the same roof as my father. I can’t risk going outside at the wrong time and having to face him. At least he respects the boundaries of my room; and the snake finds it convenient to leave me a sanctuary under his supervision for as long as he doesn’t have any need of me.

“…So, um… Ayano-chan?” Ene glances up at me, a little shyly. “Can I ask about whether…”

Ah. That. I shake my head. “…I’m sorry. I’ve tried talking to him while my father was away, but Konoha really doesn’t seem to remember anything about us.” Konoha… the white-haired boy the Clearing Eyes took in really is just another reminder of my failures. Still, I know that’s not hisfault, and I can’t really blame Ene for being too scared to check up on him herself. Talking to him hurts badly enough for me, and I still hadn’t been quite as close to Haruka as she was. Honestly though, whenever I’d felt safe enough to slip out and check on him, Konoha had seemed pretty nonresponsive. Forget remembering me and Ene; he didn’t seem to remember anything, not even basic things like rain.

“I see…” Ene droops. This happens every time she brings up Konoha; as much as she’s tried to be around for me, I don’t have the first idea how to comfort her when this topic comes up.

Well, honestly, I don’t think I’m in a place to be comforting much of anyone. Back when I tried all those years ago, it only ended in pain.

In the end, I go with the tried and true method of pretending I didn’t see anything. When there’s nothing you can do, acknowledging the problem only ends in more tears, after all. I pass the day mindlessly browsing the web and making more paper cranes for the army that chokes every available surface in my room. Occasionally, I can’t help but fantasize about what things might be like if I had Paper-Animating Eyes. Sending an army of little origami birds to get revenge on the Clearing Eyes… it’d definitely be a more efficient way of getting a wish granted.

Ah well.

At least my father has work during the day and the snake has better things to do than waste time in this lonely house during the nighttime, so I’m able to check on Konoha and grab something from the kitchen for lunch on most days. That’s particularly important, because dinner can be much more spotty, depending on whether my father is in a “bury his problems in work” mood or a “try desperately to be present to make up for selling his soul to an evil snake” one. Well, okay, I really don’t know how much he’s able to retain about what the Clearing Eyes does when in control of his body, but if he really is oblivious about everything that might actually be worse.

Unfortunately he seems to be in a “try to atone” cycle right now, so I’m running off of a single meal when the knocks return once again.

“Ayano.”

Ene hides behind the browser window again, and I click off of the tab showing a video of a mongoose taking down a snake.

…What? Look, I have to deal with the spite somehow.

“I know you’re in there.”

I stay silent.

“I’ve got another mission for you, Ayano. You know the deal by now.”

I freeze. This isn’t dad.

“I trust I don’t need to spell it out for you?”

It’s the other one.

“I’m waiting.Or is this some pathetic attempt at rebellion? If so, I have to applaud. It’s the most pointless one yet.”

I finally find my voice. “I-I understand.”

“Heh. Good.” The snake chuckles. “Two children are coming to stay in this house soon. Your father’s sister-in-law, and some hanger-on. When they’re here, you’re going to be the model of a big sister, understand? Get them to trust you, and then make sure they’re in a certain place on August fifteenth.”

I shrink in on myself. Children? Please, no…

“I said, understand?You know what’ll happen to your family if you refuse…”

“N-no!” I shoot to my feet in panic. “No… I understand…”

“Good.” What should be my father’s voice drips with malice. “See? Wasn’t that easy? Goodbye, Ayano.” Saying the last two words in an odd sing-song voice, the snake leaves. I collapse back into my chair, hugging myself.

“A-ayano-chan…” Ene peeks back out from her hiding spot.

I turn to her with wide eyes.

“Ayano-chan, you don’t have to do this. Please, we can fight back. I’ll help you.”

…If only. But no, I know it’s hopeless.

I can’t fight the snake. All I can do is delay the inevitable.

I shake my head, and start disconnecting the speakers from my computer. If Ene tried to do something brave, and the Clearing Eyes found out…

“…Ayano, please…”

I pull the plug on my monitor. Ene may still have access to the inside of my computer, but the most she’ll be able to do in the house is open and close the CD drive.

“…sorry…” I whisper quietly to myself, even though I know she can’t hear me.

God, how did things turn out this way?

——

I have many precious memories, moments I’ve spent these past two years trying desperately not to forget. Reading storybooks at bedtime with my mom. Meeting my little siblings for the first time. The way my dad’s face used to look when he’d play with us, long before everything happened.

If you were to look through those treasured days, flipping from one to another as though they were files secreted away in a lockbox, one might still stand out from the rest. Perhaps it’s laminated, or hidden behind a false back. Not because it’s more precious than the others - I wouldn’t trade my family for anything - but because it’s unique nonetheless. A moment elevated in its rarity, and in the pain it brings me - not the dull ache of my mom’s face, nor the stabbing betrayal of my father’s failures and mine, but a gaping void of ‘what if’s.

The first time I ever got to see Shintaro smile.

It was during our second year of middle school, a couple months after the day I finally introduced myself. The last test I’d gotten back had been my lowest score yet, and with exams rushing to meet me, I was honestly in a panic.

But then, Shintaro’d spoken up. For the very first time, he gave me a totally unprompted offer to help me study.

“Thank you so much,” I’d sobbed. “I don’t know what I was gonna do…”

“Ugh, don’t be annoying about it!” He’d refused to meet my eyes as he grumbled. “I just know that if you failed your exams I’d somehow get dragged into helping you catch back up. It’s just easier to get this over with this early, alright?”

Whatever his stated reasons, I still felt like I’d been saved when he stuck around to help me pound the latest lessons into my skull. And I don’t know if we finished faster than usual, if something good had happened to him at home, or if his guard was just down that day for some other reason, but one way or another, he decided to stick around and chat for a bit afterwards.

I can still picture it clearly. That sunny classroom, me perched on my desk to bask in the light from the window, him leaning his chair back as we killed time… and the glint of light that drew my eye to the spine of a book just peeking out of his bag.

“Hm? Hey, Shintaro?”

“What?” He glanced lazily back at me.

I tilted my head to read what I could from the spine. It rung a bell; I’d overheard some of the other girls in our class talking about it from time to time. “Isn’t that ‘Let’s Fall In Love’?”

“HUH?” I winced at the sudden crash as Shintaro lost his balance and fell in a heap.

“Ah! Are you okay? I’m sorry!” I rushed to help him up, but he just scrambled back until he was pressed against the wall.

“W-w-w-what are you talking about? I-I don’t, I mean, that’s not—“ Shintaro grabbed suddenly for his bag, but his hand missed its mark and sent the contents spilling out as it toppled over instead. The book landed face up, its cover proudly displaying a drawing of a boy and a girl standing together in a very shoujo-esque artstyle. Emblazoned above the picture was ‘Let’s Fall in Love ~ by Yumeno Sakiko.’

“Umm…”

“I mean! It’s Momo’s! Yeah! My little sister wouldn’t stop pestering me, so I picked up her copy for her, uh-huh! I definitely don’t read shoujo manga!” His stuttering picked up pace as he scrambled for excuses, and I couldn’t help it - some part of me kinda wanted to watch him squirm for a little longer.

So, I grinned slyly and searched my memory of my classmates’ conversations. “Uh-huh? You know, with how Mamiko and Oze were talking in the latest chapter, don’t you think there might be a chance they’ll—“

“THAT’S HERESY!” Shintaro slammed his hands down on the ground, and I winced at the sudden spike in volume. “Mamiko and Suzuki are meantto be together!” He clenched his fist and held it to his chest. “I can’t imagine how anyone would think otherwise after that moment in volume 7! And anyways, Oze and Waka may be having a fight right now, but everyone… knows…” He trailed off as my control failed me and I started to giggle. “…Fine. You caught me. Happy now?”

At the sight of him forcing down a pout and struggling to regain a serious expression, I laughed even harder.

“…So I like shoujo manga. Is it really that funny to you?”

“No, no! I’m sorry!” I did my best to get myself under control. “It’s not that, honestly. You just looked so earnest, and then you kept trying to hide it… If reading that sort of thing makes you happy, then I think that’s a goodthing! It’s actually kinda c—“ I suddenly realized what I was about to say, and blushed heavily. “—I mean, it’s kinda cool! Yeah! You shouldn’t worry what other people will think about your interests, you know?” Oh yeah, that was an absolutely stellarsave, Ayano. Absolutely nobody was gonna suspect that you almost called your classmate ‘cute’ without thinking. Aside from, I dunno, people with eyes.

Thankfully, all of that intelligence must have come out of Shintaro’s perceptiveness instead, because he let it pass without comment. “So…” Shintaro seemed to be looking anywhere in the room other than my face, which might have helped the whole ‘not noticing my face doing a bonfire impression’ thing. “Do… you also read it, then?”

“Huh?”

“Y, you know! ‘Let’s Fall in Love’!”

“A, ah! Right!” I snapped out of my thoughts. Right, let’s just pretend that slip never happened for now, and I can unpack whatever the heck it meant on my own time, when I won’t make my one school friend think I’m even more of a weirdo than he already does. “Ehehe… Not really, actually.” I scratched the back of my head and grinned sheepishly. “I was just parroting something I overheard. I’m more into the shounen stuff, you know? Hot-blooded super sentai fighting to save the world, and all that.”

“Really? But they’re so formulaic. You can see everything coming from a mile away. And how do those guys get through posing dressed like that and not die of embarrassment?”

Well, I couldn’t just sit there and take that. “What? Hold on a moment, like your mushy stuff is any better! Aren’t they all just ‘boy meets girl, cue nothing happening for the rest of their school lives’?”

“Wh— they are not!There’s nuanceand relationship growth and everything!” Woah. Shintaro was looking about the most fired up I’d ever seen him! At that thought, an idea clicked in my head.

“Hmm… Alright, then!” I grinned at him and gave a sharply enunciated chuckle, heh-heh-heh. “Why don’t you tell me more about this series, and if you manage to change my mind I’ll give reading it a try? And then, in return, you’ll watch an episode of Engine Sentai Go-Onger with me, and we’ll see how you feel about heroes after that!”

Shintaro rose to the challenge. “Fine! Come on then, I’ll teach you about why Yumeno-sensei is a master! I mean, her portrayal of Mamiko’s inner struggles alone touches the heart, even for a boy like me! There’s this moment in chapter 12 when she…” He lit up as he talked, gesturing wildly with the plot points. I’m a little ashamed to say that I actually stopped paying attention after a few moments, because my focus suddenly seemed drawn to his face. He was grinning - actually grinning, the first genuine smile I’d seen from him in, well, ever- as he opened up about his interest.

I can only remember thinking two things as we walked home that day.

The first was, ‘What a pretty smile.’

The second was, ‘…oh. Crap.’

…So, yeah. It looked like I maybe had a teeny little crush. That was okay! It was fine! It meant I was finally starting to grow up, right? Anyways, whatever Shintaro’s romance manga said, I was pretty sure that people were supposed to get a lot of those with time. They didn’t have to mean anything, or, y’know, gamble their only real non-family friendships on the chance that someone who was really smart and cute would still want to hang out with a dumb girl they barely tolerated helping out if she asked.

Not a problem! I’d just go about my life as normal, and it’d fade in time. Eventually, I’d probably look back on this day and laugh.

…And if in the meantime, I wanted to see him smiling like that again? Well, that could be my little secret.

——

Of course, let nobody accuse me of being a good planner. Obviously, the darn thing only seemed to get stronger with time. Wanting to see Shintaro smile because I wanted him to be happy slowly morphed into wanting to be the reasonhe was smiling like that. Hoping that maybe, if I could be the one to make this lonely boy smile, that’d mean I was actually worth somethingreally the hero I pretended to be.

Mom died, and I had to be the strength for the whole family as dad seemed like half his world had gone missing, but no matter how much I needed comfort of my own, I wasn’t ready to tell him.

We met Takane and Haruka, and one friend turned into three, but even though I’d only be gambling 33% instead of 100, I was still too scared to tell him.

And then I found out that dad had changed, what the thing in his body had planned for Haruka and Takane and my siblings, and suddenly my stupid little feelings didn’t seem so important. I had to research the read eyes, and I needed Shuuya to cover for me, and in the end I didn’t have the attention to spare for my friend my crush my…

…for Shintaro. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice our growing distant. Why I didn’t notice things growing strained.

Why I didn’t notice that I really was just burdening him with my own expectations.

Didn’t notice until a hill at sunset, a hand snatched away, his back receding into the distance while I stood alone.

After that, I wondered about a lot of things. How much had been genuine, and how much really had just been putting up with me. How much of my motives had been pure, and how much had been that dark little thrill of seeing him down and feeling like I was still needed.

How cruel it must have been, to plan what I was planning and still try to hold onto his hand until the last minute.

So I didn’t try again. I delegated as much school time as I could to Shuuya (and carefully didn’t wonder why his face was growing more stressed, why his own time seemed to draw thin.) I withdrew further, and dedicated everything I had to my lonely mission. August fifteenth came all too soon at last, and I shoved my responsibilities onto Takane, told her to be honest with her feelings even as I swore that my own were better ignored. I wrapped my scarf around my neck, the colour of a hero, I steeled myself and turned to mount the stairs, and I was interrupted.

“Shuuya? What are you doing?” My little brother had arrived in front of me, hands on his knees as he gasped for breath.

“N, neechan, please!” Panting, Shuuya raised his eyes to meet mine. They glistened with tears. “You have to— you have to stop Shintaro-kun! He’s about to do something really stupid!”

“Huh?” I was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

“He’s already gone to the roof! I couldn’t do anything! Neechan, please!”

“The roof?” I still didn’t understand, but I burst into a run anyways, leaving my brother behind. Why was Shintaro even here today, when he didn’t need summer school? Why did Shuuya know about it? What could he be doing on the roof, other than…?

He wasn’t involved. God, please, he wasn’t involved, why was he here?

I took the steps two at a time, ignoring the pain shooting through my lungs, and had no choice but to stop for breath and lean against the wall for a moment when I finally reached the door leading outside.

My father’s voice filtered in from outside. No - not my father. The thingwearing his skin. “Honestly, kid.” He sounded mildly exasperated, like my dad did whenever a student had turned in a particularly baffling answer on a quiz. “You think that you’re gonna be the big damn hero? You really think there’s a single thing you can do here to beat me?”

“No.” Shintaro, this time. “Honestly, it’s a stupid plan. Totally useless in every way. But hey.” A dark chuckle. “Objectively speaking, the life of a rotten boy like me is just worthless enough to make it worth trying.”

I’d finally caught my breath, but at that it caught in my throat. Did he mean—

I burst through the door, screaming, “Shintaro, NO!” The roof was empty except for two people. My father, standing on solid ground looking mildly vexed. And Shintaro, clad in that red jersey I’d said I liked, the color of a hero, sitting perched half-on the fence around the edge of the roof and half dangling over open air.

His eyes met mine, and no matter how hard I try I know I’ll never forget the way his face clouded over, the way his eyes darkened, or the words he said to me at that moment.

“…Oh.

“Ayano.

“The very last person I wanted to see.”

His final curse delivered, he leaned back. The world distorted around him, horrible discordant red tearing open fangs in the sky.

And he fell.

I must have screamed, but it’s a blur. I just know that by the time I came to, I’d fallen on my knees, and the thing that took my father was laughing.

Laughing.

“Ha! You kids never fail to surprise me, you know that? I never once would have expected that depressing little thing to get up off his ass and do something like this!” He paused. “Well okay, I guess I would, but the part where he tried to stand up to me was still new.”

Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d jumped to my feet and was tackling him. “SHUT UP!”

“Whoops!” Somehow, my father’s body stepped out of the way before I could react. I found myself impacting concrete and rolling on the roof, scrapes all over my body where I’d fallen. “Come on, brat. You’re a big girl now, you should be used to hearing swear words by now. Or wait, are you angry about the boy?”

With a wordless scream, I threw myself at him again, but this time he casually stuck out a leg and tripped me.

“You might still have time to save him, you know. Throw yourself off the roof after him, and maybe you could convince him to come on out and bring me that snake he stole.” He sneered. “Of course, it’d mean making this whole little sacrifice play all for nothing. And this guy” he tapped the side of my father’s head, “might even willingly help me kill the brat if you did! Oh, now thatdespair would be delicious to see.”

I swallowed the pain as my fists clenched, scraped raw though they were. “…Shut up. You… you’re just trying to convince me because you know your plan’s finished. You can’t gather the snakes now. There’s no… no more reason to kill Takane and Haruka, or the others.”

*snrk.* The monster covered his mouth with a hand.

“What’s supposed to be so funny?”

“Ha! Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just… you think this kid managed to save your friends? Please.” He rolled his eyes. “He was too late. They’re already dead.” He shrugged and continued in a sing-song voice. “And anyways, the boy was a goner already. You should be thankingme; this way, at least he has a chanceof living for another year or two.”

“W…what…?” I slumped, the fight draining from my veins. No. It couldn’t be. Takane and Haruka… they were gone, too?

My “father” walked up to me and rested a hand on my shoulder. To anyone watching, it might have just looked like a father comforting his daughter; but I could feel his fingers dig into my flesh in a vice grip. “Still, working this all back out from the top is going to be a pain. And that’s not even counting all of the cleanup I have to do! It’s one thing for those other two kids; I’d made preparations for them. But spinning the sudden disappearance of this brat, too? No, that’s far too much work.” He crouched down until he was level with me, a too-wide smile on his face. A shiver ran down my spine. “So, Ayano.I’m going to have you do me a little favor, alright? And before you consider trying to do something brave, consider just who it is that has your family’s life in his hands, hmm? Don’t say anything; just nod.” I nodded, stricken. Everything I’d planned had come to nothing in a few short minutes. “You’re going to find Shuuya for me, and you’re going to have him go make himself look like this guy -“ he waved vaguely at the empty edge of the roof - “’s body for me. A suicide should be easy enough to explain away. Especially when the victim was as gloomy-looking as this asshole here. Honestly, people’re gonna think it was a miracle he lasted as long as he did.” My fists clenched again at relentless slander, but there was nothing I could do. I was totally and utterly defeated. “You got it, Ayano? Do this, and I’ll let the people you care about live a little longer.” He chuckled. “…Well, what’s left of them, at least. Hahahaha!”

How could I have ever thought I could be a hero? All I’d managed to do was arrive too late to save either of the snake’s intended victims, and drag a bystander to his death in the process.

In the end, tears streaming down my face, all I could do was nod.

——

“Neechan!” Shuuya rushed up to me the minute I exited the school. He grabbed my hands - I didn’t resist - and gasped at the scrapes all over them. “What happened to you? Where’s Shintaro-kun?”

“Shintaro— He’s—“ My voice caught.

“Nee…chan…?” I could see the exact moment Shuuya caught on. His eyes widened and his face fell, all in one motion. “Dammit! And just when the guy starts to convince me he’s not all bad, he has to go and do something like this…” His hands tightened involuntarily around mine, but I couldn’t even find the energy to wince.

I spoke in a flat voice, forcing myself to put one word in front of the next. “Shuuya. There’s something very important I need you to do.”

“Huh? What is it?”

“You need to use your power to turn into Shintaro. Let somebody discover ‘his’ body, so there’ll be a record. If you don’t, then… then he’ll…” My voice caught again, but I forced myself to continue before Shuuya could ask any questions. “And then there’s one more thing you need to do. I need you to take Tsubomi and Kousuke, and go away. Go somewhere far away from here, and don’t— don’t tell me anything about where you’re going. You can’t contact me at all, okay? I can’t have any way to find out more about you.”

“W—what?”

“It’s the only way that you’re going to be safe. I… we can’t stop the Clearing Eyes. He can have you all killed in a moment.”

Shuuya must have been able to see the seriousness in my eyes, because he didn’t try to debate the point. “Okay, but… Why can’t you come with us? We can all run, that’ll be safer!”

I just shook my head. “…No. He… he’ll find me, somehow. He knew how to respond to everything that I tried. Anything I do… no matter what, I’m sure he’ll…” I hugged myself and started slowly walking towards the path home. It was clear to me now. I was nothing more than a puppet dancing on the Clearing Eyes’ strings.

“W-wait, Neechan! Come back!”

“Goodbye, Shuuya. Please don’t forget to do what I told you. Consider it… My final request as your sister.”

“NEECHAN!”

——

“…Hey, Shintaro. Why’d you do it?”

I lie on my back, staring at the empty ceiling as I talk to the air.

“I mean… You could have stayed out of it. It wasn’t your fight.”

The cranes crowding every surface above me seem to swirl and distort, like a heat haze.

My head keeps playing his final moments on repeat. Even as the happy days grow dimmer and dimmer, I can’t seem to forget his last words no matter how hard I try.

‘The very last person I wanted to see.’

“If… if you hated me so much, why didn’t you just let me be the one to jump? Why take my place?”

I wonder… if I’d been the one to jump that day, would he have been able to do what I couldn’t? I indulge in a brief fantasy of Shintaro, red jacket flapping behind him, standing tall with my siblings as they face down the Clearing Eyes together.

…Somehow, I just can’t see it. Sorry, Shintaro.

‘The life of a rotten boy like me is worthless’

“…Did you hate yourselfthat much? Were you so sick of life that you grabbed the first excuse you could find?”

…Maybe. But… somehow, as much as he tried to shut the world out, I can’t help but see Shintaro as someone who was brimming with life underneath it all. At the very least, whenever he talked about his sister, he didn’t seem like he’d want to leave her.

The thought of Momo-chan makes me wince. Another memory, this time of her crying and screaming at me when I’d tried to comfort her.

When I’d broken down and sobbed that it was all my fault.

I can’t blame her for hating me. To be honest, I wonder if it wasn’t what I was secretly hoping for.

Just another case where Ayano’s self-satisfaction came before actually doing her job.

My alarm clock rings. I’d set it instead of my phone, to make sure Ene couldn’t try and be a hero. (I can’t help but hope that she’s given up on me, and found her way to somebody who’ll be a better friend.) It means that the children…

…my victims…

…should be arriving soon.

I push myself to my feet. In the end, even blaming myself is just pointless self-satisfaction. I’ve made the choice to play this role; I made the decision that these two children were worth less than the family I know and care about.

It doesn’t take too long to get myself presentable. I choose an outfit that looks like its owner hasn’t been in hiding for the last two years, and glance at my scarf, hanging wrinkled and dusty on a hook.

My hands shake.

And I turn away without touching it. I don’t deserve to wear that color.

Not when red is the color of blood.

“Sorry, Shintaro. Guess you made the wrong trade, in the end. Even a genius like you makes mistakes, huh?”

With that snide remark, I turn my back on his sacrifice and walk out into the house.

…Still, a thought flits across my mind.

—Ah, I would have liked to see that smile, just one more time.

The doorbell rings. It’s time.

I hide my feelings behind a smile, painting it from ear to ear.

And I open the front door.

#kagerou project #tateyama ayano #kisaragi shintaro #fanfiction #shinaya #suicide cw #angst #i promise future fics for this series will be happier once i'm ready to write them #happy kagepro day!

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thewritinggrindstone · 4 years

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Identifying Harmful Repetition in Your Writing

Something I’ve encountered ad nauseam over the last few projects I’ve edited is a relentless repetition of words, phrases, and ideas. One of the most frustrating and confidence-destroying issues a reader can encounter is poorly executed repetition, which can stem from different problems, including:

Too much reliance on your natural stock phrases.

Limited vocabulary.

Not proofreading close enough or editing thoroughly enough.

Lack of confidence.

Not writing with the reader in mind.

I want to preface this with the fact that obviously certain types of repetition aren’t bad. Repetition is an incredibly powerful tool when used effectively, and what’s effective is subjective per book and per reader. That’s a massive topic for another time. This post is specifically about egregious uses of repetition, the types that any good editor or beta reader will point out as in need of fixing.

Stock Phrases and Words

Every person has their own unique lexicon, a repository of words and phrases they naturally will draw upon when they speak, write, and even think. There’s a reason clichés are prevalent, and that’s because the brain likes the path of least resistance. It’s easy to mentally grab those words and phrases that are constantly in arm’s reach, those words and phrases that are comfortable and familiar, but constantly doing this while writing and then not changing them can result in overuse that is noticeable on both stylistic and technical levels. It can also lead a reader to the understanding that you haven’t thought critically about what you’re writing, which can and will undermine their confidence in you.

If you’re writing a first draft, don’t worry about this too much. You probably just need to focus on putting words down, not exactly what those words are. Repetition is an issue that can and should be intentionally fixed during the revision process.

If this is a problem that bugs you even when you’re drafting, there are different ways of dealing with it. I tend to be highly aware of most repetition within my work, and because I constantly edit as I write, backtracking to add/move information as I go doesn’t tend to interrupt my workflow too much. If I know I’ve already used a word and can’t think of something better after several seconds’ thought, I’ll use the repetition and immediately flag it somehow—usually with a “repeat” comment—so I can deal with it once I’ve completed the draft. Opening a thesaurus or dictionary tends to be more disruptive during drafting than it’s worth, but sometimes it isn’t, and you will need to determine what works best for you according to your own style.

Once you’re ready to target the issue of repetition, you will need to work hard, think hard. Don’t settle for the easy word, the stock phrase, the cliché. Discard the timeworn, the tired, the used-before. Play with language—try to come up with new phrases, unique descriptions. Get silly, flip rocks over, dig around under them, push things as far as you need to create something different, then go back and edit again, refining what you’ve written until you’re satisfied.

It’s going to be a process. It’s going to be difficult. It won’t be natural at first; you’ll need to form new pathways in your brain, just like when you learn any new skill, and that’s uncomfortable, but if you persist, your writing will be fresh and alive and won’t be as prone to being bogged down by reader-infuriating repetition.

Limited Vocabulary

Tying into the idea of your personal lexicon is the size of it. No matter how much you pay attention to precisely what words or phrases you’re using, you won’t have much in the way of options if you don’t have at least a good-sized repertoire to draw from.

Increasing your lexicon is something that just takes dedication and time. You can’t rush it, you can’t force it, but you can be deliberate in growing it. Read broadly, maybe bookmark or sign up for your favorite dictionary’s word of the day, or keep a word cache of interesting words or phrases you like.* I have a document titled “word hoard” in Dropbox where I keep all unusual, unfamiliar, or beautiful words I encounter as well as their function(s) and definitions. Most of these words haven’t properly entered my own lexicon yet, but actively being aware of words that are anywhere from slightly to completely outside what you usually use will help you become a more mindful writer.

* I got this idea from Barbara Baig’s Spellbinding Sentences, which is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read on writing.

Lack of Proofreading/Editing

The identification and elimination of repetition hovers somewhere between content editing and technical editing. It’s an easy problem to skim over, especially when you’re the writer because you’re likely too familiar with every word you’ve put down, and issues like this tend to fade into the background. This is particularly true of writers who have reworded or reorganized a given piece of writing, since repetition can easily become lost in the jumble.

If possible, set your project aside for at least a few days—preferably a few weeks or even longer—then come back to it and read it with fresh eyes while intentionally noting and commenting on or highlighting all uses of repetition, big and small. If you aren’t sure if it’s something you repeated, flag it anyway—you can always check later.

If you don’t have time to set the project aside for a while, read your work aloud. If you can’t bear reading your work aloud or you aren’t able due to circumstances, listen to the document instead. Word has a read aloud function, and there are many online text-to-speech websites where you can paste a piece of writing. The unnatural cadence of the artificial voice might be weird and awkward at first, but listening won’t fully engage the “reading” portion of your brain, and you’ll likely find it easier to notice uses of repetition, among other problems. While writing this post, I have listened through it three times, tweaking phrasing and eliminating repetition—and deleting some of the harsher statements—as I go.

If you’re feeling really brave, have another person read your writing back at you. Nothing like being uncomfortably hyperaware of every word you’ve put down to recognize pretty much every single problem within your work. Just do not overcompensate and decide that nothing you’ve written has any value at all (it does), or that you’ll need to change everything (you don’t). If you approach this method with the understanding that it’s going to be awkward but are nevertheless determined to get something useful out of it, you’ll benefit, especially if your reading partner is willing to help you with any areas you feel you need assistance in.

When editing for repetition, if possible, pay attention not only to noun/verb/adjective usage. Go deeper. What types of repetition are you prone to using? Do you begin a significant portion of your sentences with conjunctions? Are there certain conjunctions you use more frequently than others? Do you reiterate entire sentences two or more times with only slight variations in wording? Do you return to the same idea numerous times? What about tone, do you use lots of rhetorical questions? Sarcasm? Self-deprecation? Self-boasting? Do you frequently return to the same imagery or settings or use of metaphor? Or grammar—are there certain punctuation marks or grammatical conventions you use more than others? Do you have a sentence construction you consistently fall back on?

Again, some of these questions might require an outside opinion for you to find suitable answers, but becoming self-aware of not just what you do but why you do will help you recognize these patterns, which in turn can help you mentally eliminate repetition before it even makes it past your fingertips.

Lack of Confidence

Widespread repetition of sentences and ideas is often a major symptom of a writer who isn’t confident in their abilities to communicate what they’re talking about. “If I just tell you this fact again, surely you’ll believe me this time. I’ll make you believe me. Do you believe me now? What about now? Now? Now?”

The painful truth is... no.

Encountering mindless or fear-based repetition is extremely frustrating for readers. Inevitably, without fail, every single time I edit a book by a writer who has repeated themselves over and over and over again, with every single repetition, I increasingly doubt both their credibility and their ability to pass on important knowledge to me. I feel either patronized and insulted, or I feel annoyed because it seems like the author threw their thoughts down on paper in whatever order they came out and then hit publish with

no regard for how those thoughts will be perceived by others, and

no regard for how they are wasting the reader’s time.

Please, please do not undermine your credibility by repeating yourself. Readers usually only need to read information one time for them to absorb it, maybe twice, so trust your readers. If the reader needs to come back to information, they have that ability. Do not force unnecessary repetition in their faces. Always assume readers are at least as smart as you. If you don’t need the information repeated, give your readers the same respect.

Increasing your writing confidence will once again take time and effort. You’ll need to determine why you’re not confident and then seek out methods of correcting the issue(s). In general, fear of not being heard or understood tends to be the underlying cause of repetition, so learn how to be deliberate in your writing. Say what you mean to say. Say exactly what you mean to say. Understand that you have something important to share with the world, so share it—then stop. Readers will appreciate you for not wasting their time.

Writing for Yourself

Yesterday I finished editing a project just over 88,000 words. Nineteen chapters. Almost 250 pages.

I hated every word, and I learned nothing.

If it had been a line edit, I could’ve cut the book’s word count down below 50K merely by eliminating all of the repetition. This author is infatuated with the sound of their own voice, talked on and on and on merely to hear their own self-revelations and how special they are compared to everyone else stated again and again in near-identical sentences.

I’m editing another book right now that is less self-important and is far more interesting on the whole (and is thankfully over a hundred pages shorter), but again, the author has repeated themselves sometimes three or four or five times, with some phrases appearing over fifteen times, and I can feel my resentment growing. If an author isn’t going to take the time to put forth a thoughtfully crafted piece of writing, why should a reader likewise invest in it?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with writing for yourself. You should—you’ll learn a lot about yourself as both person and writer, and you’ll enjoy writing more, and you’ll (hopefully) be able to refine your skills.

But if—if—you intend to share your writing with the world, if you actually have something to say, you need to be aware that you have a duty to make yourself understood without wasting people’s time. Do not make people regret having picked up your writing by being so in love with the sound of your own voice that you are no longer courteous to others.

Love your writing. Love it fiercely and passionately and with reckless abandon, but reach a place where you know how your writing is going to be perceived at large. Use as many words as you need to get your point across and no more.

In Closing

If you’re still having difficulty identifying repetition within your own work, ask someone who is skilled at recognizing this issue to look over your writing. It’s always easier to recognize repetition when you haven’t written it, so fresh eyes can give you the insight you might not be able to see yourself.

Know your audience. A children’s book will require a different level of repetition than an instruction manual or a sci-fi novel or an autobiography. If you’re reading a recipe, you’d be annoyed and confused if the author told you to add the same ingredient twice due to shoddy proofreading. Write and repeat accordingly.

Whatever you’re writing, make a point of intentionally performing at least one round of editing with the intention of eliminating unnecessary repetition. Your readers will appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

#writing #repetition #editing #proofreading #advice #red talks

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ethereaiin · 3 years

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Jinx | genshin impact

synopsis; you've been a magnet for spirits all throughout your life spared without a moment's peace. your meeting with him was fate itself finally fulfilling an unspoken wish, though you wondered if there was a lot more in store for you than just mere friendship.

features; you, chongyun and a bit of xingqiu.

[modern au]

extra; originally a 2 shot.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

To you, silence was a rarity.

The world, as you knew it, was rife with noise and chaos that no one other than yourself seemed to be aware of. Amongst wandering the same plane as the living, the dead could speak and it was only you who heard their voices. Your head was constantly filled with their screams and soon enough, peace was something you could only dream of having a moment of.

From childhood, you were subjected to visions of the unseen and the voices of the dead that spoke of things you could never truly understand at the time. Your mother and father never refuted the things you claimed you saw and instead they only smiled down at you with a look of misplaced pride. To them, you were the culmination of all their and their family’s efforts to recreate the glory that once belonged to your family name.

It was no secret that your lineage was famously infamous for its connection with all things supernatural. Mediums and spiritualists used to make up a better part of your kin and although they were now a dying breed, you were one of the few born in the newest generation who were naturally gifted with the ability to commune and attract the dead.

The so-called ‘gift’ your parents often revered you for was nothing short of a burden.

It was because of this gift there was a constant stream of voices and spirits around you, and in turn, your mind was never truly at rest. You couldn’t sleep most nights and the dark circles that lined the underside of your eyes were only a small testament to the countless nights you reluctantly spent awake. The accompanying migraines were the cherry on top of your growing list of problems along with your almost crippling addiction to painkillers that definitely would have raised your physician’s brow if they’d heard about the amount you ingested in a single day. Still, somehow your pallid complexion and lifeless gaze never seemed to discourage your parents from pressing you into embracing your abilities and rambling on about the honor you’d one day return to your family name.

Aside from your unwanted ability to attract things not of this world, you attempted to live a relatively normal life- whatever that meant for someone like you. You went to school like any other teen your age, though your days usually consisted of dozing off in the back of the class or staring at the floating figures roaming about your desk. You often forgot that normal people were not privy to the voices of the dead and you’d usually find yourself talking back to them aloud. It was this reason alone that you didn’t have many friends, though you never seemed to mind the lack of living company. If anything, you thought of your solitude as a blessing in disguise. There wasn’t anyone to question your odd behavior nor did you ever feel the need to explain the constant odd occurrences that would happen around you.

Still, despite your intentions of not socializing with anyone to avoid burdening them with your problems, you somehow managed to make at least one friend.

Well, you wouldn’t go so far as to call him your friend. Not only was it extremely presumptuous of you, but you also couldn’t wish companionship with you onto anyone. Yet, Xingqiu, in spite of all your claims that he was nothing more than an acquaintance, assured you that the relationship you two shared was most definitely friendship.

You were more than well aware of his true intentions. It was obvious after your first meeting with him that he was more interested in your rumored predicament than he was in you. Much like anyone who held intrigue in the supernatural and all things strange, he wanted to see if the rumors were true; if you were really able to call forth the spirits of the dead like everyone said.

While it was still a mystery to you how the rumor was somewhat accurate to the truth of your situation, you didn’t think too much of it. Most people were skeptics and so they only concluded the rumors about you to be just that. Nothing but rumors. The few people who did believe them, most of them being classmates who were witnesses to the strange things around you, avoided you like the plague. That was the extent of it all other than Xingqiu’s casual prying that you’d deflect with practiced ease in a change of subject. You would say your life was easygoing and days droned on with little to nothing major happening.

Until you ruined it all with one minor slip-up.

Most of the strange things that happened around you could be chalked up to nothing more than coincidences. Of course, if anyone put a little more thought into it they’d see it was all connected to you in some way, but all of the incidents that happened in public were minor. Whether it was a desk moving slightly, a person getting their shoulder touched, or an inexplicable breeze; all of it could be rationalized as pure coincidence.

That was until you made the mistake of communing with a particularly violent spirit while still in school that things took a slight turn for the worse.

You were smart enough to make sure to wait until the after-hours of school to begin your séance, even double-checking to make sure there wasn’t anyone occupying the hallway your class was in. While you never really liked making an effort in talking with spirits that would do you harm, this one’s antics were beginning to intrude on your comfort zone and was bringing too much awareness to its existence. Not only did it like pushing your classmates as they leave or enter the class, but it also enjoyed pulling harshly on chairs and incessantly knocking on the thin walls. When its activity was beginning to pick up a little too much over the course of a month, undoubtedly due to the energy you unconsciously fed it with, you knew it was time to step in. It was tied to the school and so your chances of baiting it back home where a communion wouldn’t be seen by the public eye were slim. It didn’t help that it was stubborn on top of its knack for violence. At the time, you knew your only choice was to take a chance and speak to it where someone could accidentally overhear you, or leave it to wreak more havoc and potentially still expose you on a larger scale. At least if someone saw you and another rumor leaked out, you still had some room to deny the claims and keep your secret intact. The moment you stepped back into your classroom after checking the others in the same hall, you made your choice.

The conversation you had with it was rough at the start. It was always like that when it came to remaining spirits of the dead which was why you hated speaking to them in the first place. Throughout your exchange, it loudly protested against giving in to your demands to control it, and just when you were close to convincing it to leave; the door of your classroom swings open and it’s then that your world metaphorically shatters into tiny bits of nothingness.

You can clearly remember the look on Xingqiu’s face as he stood in the threshold of your classroom’s door. His amber colored eyes were wide and his lips gaped into an expression of surprise. He obviously didn’t expect to see you lounging about in your classroom well after school already ended and you didn’t expect him to burst in through the door as if he were ready to fight whatever lied on the other side. Your reaction to his added presence was instantaneous and so was the spirit’s. The sound of crashing desks as it made its way towards your friend in the doorway was loud and almost unbearable. No matter how much you screamed for it to stop and even attempting to grab at it as you tried to manifest its physical form, there was no intervening. Your powers, untrained and imperfect, could do nothing for you and the moment your fingers slipped right through the spirits translucent form, you fully realized the extent of your mistake.

The thought that ran through your head at first was ‘why was he here?’ You hated yourself for thinking of ever blaming the victim in a circumstance that you technically caused. If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t have been a spirit tied to the second place you frequent the most and if it weren’t for you Xingqiu wouldn’t have been pinned to a wall by an unseen force. All of this was caused by you and the second thought that ran across your mind was self-deprecation over your less than ideal choices as you hurriedly made your way towards your friend’s writhing form. Before you could even touch him or even attempt to once again use your abilities in to once again try and pry the spirit off of him, the figure suddenly disappeared; bursting into thin air as if it were never there to begin with.

“Xingqiu, what happened?” The sound of a new voice lit with a tinge of worry but still remaining steadily composed, attracted your attention, and your gaze lifted away from the sight of your friend to meet the new presence of someone you didn’t know.

At the time, you didn’t realize that this person’s existence would one day become so important to you. You didn’t think about how his mere presence was enough to drive the never-ending whispers of the decease to a halt or how you no longer could see the shadowy figures lurking in your peripherals. Instead, your thoughts were messily scattered between assuring Xingqiu’s safety and making up an excuse as to why you were trying to reason with a ghost as if it were human. The peace you were craving for since the day you first heard the wail of a lost spirit was right there, embodied in an unknown sixteen-year-old boy, and you couldn’t even see it at that very moment.

Xingqiu, unfettered by the assault, merely held a knowing smile on his lips as he picked himself up from the classroom floor. You would have thought he would have been afraid like so many of the others that unknowingly interacted with the spirits. You thought he would have been afraid of you. He was smart. Smart enough to put two and two together to come to an astounding conclusion that the rumors were right, or at least held some truth. He had to have been aware of what you were doing alone in the classroom and he must have heard your shouts for the spirit to stop when it charged towards him, yet he said nothing.

At least, that’s what you hoped for.

“You. . . you can see them, can’t you?”

It was hard to remember what his expression was at that moment as your eyes were trained on the floor in a desperate attempt to disassociate yourself with the downward spiraling situation you were in. You couldn’t bring yourself to deny the claim as he saw you. He knew and you knew he knew. Denying at this point would have been foolish and if the silent stare of his friend who now stood next to him told you anything, you were definitely in something akin to an interrogation. Xingqiu has always been stubborn, especially when it came to your situation and now that he had something to go on, you knew he wouldn’t back down until you gave him answers.

That was the day you finally told someone of your strange gift. Although your parents loved to go on and on about your abilities, you have never spoken about them aloud to anyone. You wanted to bury it deep within yourself and act as if it never existed to begin with as a sorry attempt to create some kind of normalcy for yourself. Saying it out loud in that quietly buzzing classroom made it feel all too real. Explaining your magnetism for the dead to those two silently staring boys made you realize that maybe you were never meant to live a normal life. It was a cold realization. One that made your body feel heavy and your fingers tremble at your side as you swallowed down what felt like a thousand needles.

The empty feeling you felt in the pit of your stomach slowly engulfed you.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Contrary to popular belief, you were not all that knowledgeable about the world beyond your own.

You were aware of the basics; the floating figures always lurking around you were the spirits of the dead and you alone were the only person able to see them, and the constant voices were their cries to return to life; a wish no one other than gods could grant. Your parents never explained much of anything to you other than the expectations they held in your abilities and what they hoped you would do with them in the future. Most of it pertaining to you profiting off the grief of others which you considered to be completely immoral. No matter how much your parents claimed you were 'wasting' your gift, you could never bring yourself to use it the way they wanted you to.

It was because of your refusal to budge in your stance against them that you essentially refused to learn anything from your grandmother; the only other person in your family to have the same abilities as you, and the one who pressured you the most to give in. You knew from the start that you were seen as nothing other than a new source of money to your family, the greed was clear in your parents eyes and your grandmother hadn't differed from them. She wanted you to become a psychic like her, which consisted of bringing people into a small dark room while she 'channeled' the spirit of their loved ones before charging them thousands of dollars for a few measly seconds. Those people's misery was real and to know that your grandmother wasn't helping them out of the goodness of her heart but rather out of selfishness was more sickening than you originally thought. It was cruel the first time you saw it and you never went back to visit her ever again after that.

All of your life you believed it was in your best interests to just ignore that part of you. To bury it deep within your heart never to surface again until the day you died. You didn't like the part of you that differed from the rest of the world and you strived to reject it in order to save yourself a headache. Though that part of you that you desperately wanted to ignore was easier said than done. After all, you can't bury dead people who have no body. Nor could you shut them up.

Your confrontation with both Chongyun and Xingqiu essentially forced you into their friend group. Their knowledge of you was far too much to leave unsupervised and you were sure the mischievous look on Xingqiu's face couldn't have meant anything good. While having friends wasn't something you were ever against, you also couldn't deny the loneliness you experienced since the start of the rumors circulating the school. The obvious avoiding of contact with you done by your classmates still hurt no matter how much you told yourself it didn't. Frankly, their offer was something akin to a shining light and you gladly took it. You were delighted with the outcome, the shared lunch with both boys plus their friends, whom you never met before, was refreshing and felt new, but most importantly; you felt normal. Though the closer you got to the both of them, Chongyun more so than Xingqiu, you noticed things.

Chongyun was different from you. You could tell the moment his eyes met yours the first time you met in that wrecked classroom afterschool, and again when he ran into you in the hall the next day. He was different from you because there was still a brightness in his gaze that had yet to be snuffed out.

You couldn't accurately call him the cheerful type, but he was far more amiable than you. The brightness you saw in him not only pertained to his stellar personality, a feat you were witnessed to during many lunches alongside him and Xingqiu, it applied to the purity he seemingly wore like a badge of honor. To you, he appeared nothing short of untouched by the unseen evils of this world; the same evil that writhed and crept in the deepest pit of your being.

Maybe for that reason alone you felt inexplicably drawn to his presence.

Around him, you noticed that world seemed to fall a little more quieter than what you were normally used to. The silence of the dead was indeed deafening and the lack of their being around you made rooms feel emptier. At first, it was hard adjusting to the peace he brought you; something you couldn't believe you were thinking when you were first searching for a way to gain it. Your interest in him only continued to grow knowing that he too was apart of the same world as you.

How could he appear so unfazed by it all? How could he continue living on in a world where it wasn't occupied by just the living, but the dead as well? How had he not been crushed by the weight of it all? You thought he was strong to have seen what you've seen and not feel as if human life was so pathetically insignificant and carry on with a perceived unbreakable resolve.

While you both were apart of the same world involving the supernatural, your lives couldn't have been any different. He was raised as an exorcist; trained from birth to deliver people from the clutches of unseen evil and you. . . You were never raised to see the good in others. Your family was the prime example of that.

There was a part of him that you couldn't help but see yourself in. Of course, you could never be as radiant as him, it was merely only a 'what if' scenario you often thought of. If your parents were anything like his, thinking only for the good of others, would you be just like him? Though the thought always ends short at that. There was no way you could be like him; to see the world through eyes unblinded by the ugliness of humanity. He was witness to both sides, the good and bad, yet he continued to believe in what he thought was right against all odds. He was stronger than you because where he would have the will to stand strong against your parents, you could do nothing more than meekly refuse.

Your initial admiration for him might have been the reason why you began looking at him more closely. It was a vain attempt to understand just what it was about him that exuded strength when he appeared as if any little thing could knock him over. When he learned of the inborn link you held to the supernatural, he was quick to tell you of his. As impassive as his face appeared, you could clearly see the excitement he spoke with when it came to exorcisms and the pride in his eyes when it came to the subject of his family. He spoke as if there wasn't anything he wished to hide from you and that hopeful side of you that wanted to cling to the small connection you two shared hoped that he felt the same.

Maybe it was because you essentially laid out your life story to two strangers that he felt the need to share his own, but you liked to think that there was a possibility he too was looking for someone who could truly understand the world he lived in. To the both of you, there couldn't have been anyone better suited to the role than each other.

There were sides to him you were witness to, sides you would never give up for the world. The twinkle in his light blue eyes and the slight twitch of his lips when he was close to giving into one of Xiangling's antics, among others. These were moments you treasured. Each of them were stored away in your mind to recall again another day. He was your personal sunshine; the one person you could rely on to always say the right things and although you could never tell him that aloud, mainly out concern for embarrassing him and unintentionally triggering his condition, you like to think that you'd get the chance one day. For now you'd count on actions to convey the unspoken things you weren't brave enough to say.

As the days pass with you and him side by side, you only wonder what's instore for the future. For once you found your small slice of heaven. The visions and noise stops when you're next to him and although his ability of warding off spirits did nothing but peeve him, you couldn't be happier. He was the normalcy you sought for; the silence you yearned for and the reprieve you never knew you needed. Next to him, for just a moment, you think you could become something of a regular girl.

You could wait for him for all of eternity if you had to. One day he'd realize the secretive smiles with reddened cheeks and the slight graze of your hand against his were not accidents and meant far more than just mere friendship.

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lesbian-choso · 2 years

Text

Lowkey sick and tired of posts that are like ‘xyz is the only good thing in this horrible evil world blah blah blah’ like idk sometimes it’s tiring seeing that constantly even as a joke when you’re someone who’s been depressed and coming out on the other side or you are currently still depressed but doing better than you were prior, because like maybe I want the world to be good and for there to be an unlimited amount of tiny joys within it. I really do think that ppl should make the effort to stop making self deprecating jokes, to stop saying humanity is inherently selfish, to stop saying the world is evil, etc. I’m sure someone will read this and think it’s a load of rubbish, but from my experience, actively choosing to think positively even just a little bit helps so much, especially when you are depressed or generally stressed about the world. Soup is good! Bread is good! Fridge magnets are good! Finding those tiny joys and recognising that they’re a part of that world you think is worthless will help you in understanding that there is hope.

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theladysexpistol · 4 years

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Can I get a Narancia x !Depressed Male Reader? Like a scenario where his s/o is crying and he comforts him. I know that’s dark but I’ve been going through some shit

I’m so sorry this ask took so long to answer, I hope you are doing better now, Anon! 💕

Ya girls back, darlings. Apologies but I hope you were all still entertained by my antics. I just didn’t have time to fill requests but now I’m all moved and settled down

~~~

Narancia Ghirga burned with life and vitality. He was a flame, explosive and destructive when underestimated; but warm and sheltering all the same. A beacon, a lighthouse you could turn to when lost at sea in the darkest of nights.

You were the opposite of him. Smiles were a rare treasure on your face, gifted only to those most precious to you in the happiest of times. You were blessed to have someone like Narancia to call yours, but it was all the more painful when you were being so hard on yourself - what had you done for him? Why did he even love you?

Anxiety forced such self-deprecating thoughts to the forefront of your mind constantly, and after a particularly bad day you crawled into bed early and hid, trying to block them out but succeeding only in blocking out the world - and making them more perverse.

What good am I for Narancia? What good am I for anyone?

How could he love me? How could anyone love me? I’m worthless.

It’s no use, I’ll never be good enough for him.

These thoughts drowned out the sound of the noise outside your bedroom, as your boyfriend returned and called for you, asking what you wanted for dinner. You had no idea he was home.

When Narancia got no reply, he grew concerned. Either something had happened to you - which wasn’t unlikely, considering his connections to Bucciarati - or your depression had gotten the better of you again. He was familiar with it because of how Abbacchio had suffered for so long, though rather than drowning your pain and sorrow in alcohol you usually reclused to a quiet corner by yourself. He knew the quietness made sure you wouldn’t be overwhelmed by noise and activity, he also knew it made those thoughts harder to ignore. Narancia knew and understood you. He found you curled up in your bedroom less than a minute after going to look for you.

“[Y/n], hey, there you are,” his usually sharp voice was measured, intentionally soft. Narancia crawled onto the bed and grabbed you around the waist, pulling you into his lap. “What’s going on?”

Biting back tears, you simply shook your head as an answer.

“It’s not because of something I did, right?”

Again, you shook your head in response, with even more vigor. The last thing you would ever want is for Narancia to think any of your problems were his fault. He was a flame in the darkness, after all. He was only good.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked.

You didn’t make any noise in response, simply hugging him close to you. His heartbeat, thrumming with life, was a steady sound, comforting and grounding. He ran his fingers through your hair. A moment later you heard him turn the radio next to your bed on. It was his usual station, hip hop and rap, but he turned it down to a gentle volume as he sat and hugged you close to him.

Narancia wasn’t one for silence, and you knew the low music was his way of showing that. In a way it was comforting too, even if you didn’t like the song playing, because it only reminded you of him. He didn’t say a word, but his actions always spoke louder.

“I love you [y/n], you know that?” He said, and your eyes widened. He probably didn’t know what made you upset, or maybe he did. Maybe he was just that in tune with your thoughts and feelings. “I just, I just really want to do whatever I can to help you when you feel this way. You mean everything to me.”

“Thank you,” you mustered, croaking our in a hoarse voice.

“And I never want you to doubt how I feel,” he continued, keeping his voice low but it still had that familiar cadence, you still felt the thrum of his voice rumbling in his chest. “You’ve been there for me when I needed you. I will never stop being here for you when you need it.”

Narancia kept talking, his mind jumping to different places - talking about how much Aerosmith cared about you, talking about the rest of the gang, talking about music - but he always went back to how much he cared about you.

Often, that barely seemed like enough. But every time he said it, every time you felt the vibrations in his chest as he spoke those words, drove it just further and further into your head. It was like Narancia had crawled into your brain and was beating all the awful thoughts with a stick.

Honestly such an image made you crack a smile.

Eventually, a new sound tumbled into your ear where it was pressed against Narancia’s chest. Your boyfriend gave a whine of frustration.

“Ugh! I’m starvin’. I’m just gonna order takeout!”

Narancia reaches fo the phone, but it did not escape your notice how much effort he put in not to disturb you.

Gently you closed your eyes, wrapped up in his arms, lulled to sleep by the best of his heart and the rumble of his voice in his chest as he cursed in angry Italian at the guy on the phone.

It was amazing how that flame never went out. And you knew it never would.

#bree writes #jojo fanfiction #narancia x reader #feral orange baby🍊#narancia ghirga i love youuuuuu #tw depression #request 💖

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skinks · 4 years

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I had a REALLY intense beatles phase in my late teens and i had the hots for paul mccartney and one time i found this story where this woman said she met paul at a party in 65 and he took her home and they talked until the sun came up and then he got a call telling him to come to the studio and he started to say he had to leave and she was like "not before you fuck me" and he laughed and then he DID and he left her alone in his house after and she stole his underwear (1/2)

(which she kept for decades until her husband threw them into their muddy front yard one day in a fit of jealousy) and a teapot and it always made me absolutely FERAL with jealous horny rage and like?? just this incredulous feeling of How On Earth Did That Really Happen and anyway bill hader’s dumpster mattress one night stand story is my new version of that (2/2)

The fucking journey this just took me on, holy shit. Did she at least get to keep the teapot?

I love that you had an intense teenage horny phase for a Beatle, I had one for Bob Dylan and I remember watching one of his electric era tour documentaries and being HORRIBLY jealous of the 60s girls hanging around outside his hotel... anyway that’s besides the point

I UNDERSTAND!!!!! THE MATTRESS STORY HAUNTS ME.... Bhader knows what he’s doing, he can try to couch it in as much self-deprecating oh-I’m-just-an-awkward-nerd fronting as he likes but he KNOWS what he’s doing and that woman knew it too. You ever notice how it’s the most competent ones who don’t feel the need to loudly prove themselves by being anything other than humble?? What did he SAY in that club! “It was going well,” he says, what does that MEAN, BILL, what did he fuckjfdkjcnnfkcning do that convinced this woman to leave the club, go to her place, lift a bed onto a car, go to HIS place and move furniture when she was literally moving to a new city the next day all so sHE COULD FUCK HIMMMM HOW IS HIS GAME THAT GOOD I FEEL LIKE A CHARACTER IN AN EDGAR ALLEN POE STORY BEING SLOWLY DRIVEN MAD BY THIS UNANSWERED MYSTERY

Ok sorry, I’m back. This is making me want to read a fic where (before they get together) Eddie watches an old interview of Richie telling the mattress story and he’s a seething ball of jealousy too. Then Richie comes out, he and Eddie sort their shit and get together, and one day Eddie laughingly comments that he had no reason to be jealous after all since Richie was obviously making the story up.

Richie looks at him weirdly. “I didn’t make up—that story did actually happen, Eds, I only changed it so people thought I went home with a chick.”

They are lying in bed. Eddie’s eye starts twitching. “Pardon?”

“Yeah?” Richie stretches, draping his right arm over his own head to scratch his left ear. Eddie will not be distracted by his chest right now, what the fuck. Richie squints at the ceiling. “I think his name was... Marco, or something. At least, that’s the name he gave to quote unquote Chris.”

“Marco, okay. Huh.”

“I wanted to be Lance or something cool, but my friend said I inhabited Chris better, I dunno. I didn’t even tell him why I needed a fake name, he was just like, big into method.”

“Yeah, mhmm.” Eddie sits up, nodding. He can’t stop nodding. His head feels like a champagne cork fizzing at the top of his spine. “So you, you uh—you were such a fucking player in your plaid and your baggy jeans that, that, that were the only things you even owned back then, Rich—don’t try to deny, it I’ve seen the pictures—that you convinced some guy who was moving town the next fucking day—”

Richie’s eyebrows shoot upwards. It makes his eyes look rounder, more delighted. “Convinced? Eddie—”

Eddie can’t stop, twisting the sheets in his hands til his knuckles go white. “Yes, convinced, you convinced him to go pick up some dirty mattress right off the street with a complete stranger even though you always make such a big deal about how awkward and nervous and repressed you were, you still, you still—”

“I was probably on molly or something at the time, man.” Richie’s beaming up at him. He pokes Eddie in the arm. Eddie feels how tense the muscle is, and fights to relax. “I’m kidding, at worst it was just a little tipsy driving. A little Wacky Races. Just call me Dick Bastardly.” Richie grins at his own dumbass joke, poking Eddie some more. “And it wasn’t just the mattress by the way, it was the whole bed. That’s a key detail. Headboard and everything.”

“The headboard?!” Eddie tries not to yell, but it comes out louder than he means to anyway. More of a shriek, embarrassingly. He lurches around in place to glare at their own flat bar of wood behind them. He holds onto that thing! It supports him, even when Richie’s fucking him into the wall!

Betrayal is neverending today, apparently. Eddie turns his glare onto Richie, who is laughing. “Stop laughing!”

“Your face,” Richie gasps. He covers his own face, then changes tack and yanks Eddie down over him to cackle into his flaming-hot throat. “What’s the problem! You’re acting like this is the same fucking bed, oh my god, you think I haven’t at least changed my mattress since I lived like a—like a Beavis and Butthead parody in Westwood, fifteen years ago?”

Eddie squirms miserably. Not even Richie’s broad nakedness against his can salvage this, he’s well and truly destroyed their sweet afterglow with his stupid overreaction. Feels like being fifteen again, ruining clubhouse hangouts with his snappy sulking as soon as Richie mentioned some girl at school. “No! No, obviously fucking not, just. I dunno.”

He doesn’t really deserve the gentle tease in Richie’s voice. “What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know!”

And that’s the part he hates most.

“Okay, okay. I think I do. Jesus, you’re actually jealous,” Richie breathes. He bites his lip, the way he does when he’s so happy about something he’s making a real effort not to talk over it. He’s still a little sweaty and pink from their Friday night activities, bedraggled hair and no glasses. The expression always scrunches his left eye into a full squint, something Eddie finds so helplessly appealing he can’t imagine what it’s like to watch that interview and not feel jealous.

Eddie grunts, shrugs as best he can under Richie’s heavy hug. Fucking Marco.

Richie’s hand is firm on the back of his neck. There’s pressure from his thumb at one point of Eddie’s jaw, the soft part between ear and bone that has him gulping open for Richie’s low murmur, “Eddie baby, don’t be jealous.” Their mouths meet and Eddie sighs into the slick warmth of it, feeling grateful and abashed and idiotic all at once.

They separate with a little snick of spit. Richie lids his eyes open just a touch, looking drowsy with affection. Eddie lowers his forehead to Richie’s shoulder and speaks to his collarbone. “I just—I hate it when you act like people are just doing you a favor for, for liking your shit or fucking going home with you when clearly it was—you’re fucking hot, Rich, and, and sexy when you’re not trying to be, and you were hot back then too, but you still act like it was a miracle anyone wanted to even touch you when I—I always would’ve picked the stupid dirty bed up off the street too. For you. And I wouldn’t’ve moved town the day after. So.”

Richie doesn’t speak for a moment. There is a cloud above their shared, clean bed, implicit with shared memory of all the times they dirtied each other’s sheets with grass stains and grubby feet, chip crumbs and even tears, just once, just before Eddie really did move town and forgot all the things he cared about so much more than he ever cared about getting sick.

He would never leave again though, is his point. Richie always seems to know what he means before Eddie does. He tries to think it loud enough, brings his hand up blindly to Richie’s face and strokes back his hair, not because Richie is a mind reader, but because he knows what it means that Eddie has never wanted to touch someone else like this.

Eddie’s spine then, curving under Richie’s knuckles like brushing a shiver along a set of wind chimes. His hand lands on Eddie’s tailbone, an X marks the spot that still throbs with loosened heat and pleasure from his orgasm. Lying on your front is bad for your posture.

I’m not lying on my front, Eddie thinks, with a little of the vicious defiance he doles out to that cloying voice sometimes, the one that tries to ruin quiet moments with its fretting. I’m lying on Richie’s. He’s good for my posture. He’s gonna snap my spine back into place and this time I’ll let him touch me.

Richie presses their temples together, small-voiced. “I guess... I find most of the flattery shit hard to believe. I didn’t like myself or the stuff I was making, so I’d automatically assume they were lying, y’know? If I agree it implies I believe them, which makes me feel like some giant, arrogant dick—don’t say it.” He pats Eddie on the ass. “But, on the other hand, if I think I’m somehow important enough for people to lie to, that’s kind of an arrogant dick move too.”

Eddie pushes up to eyeball him. “Even with sex? That’s so fucking dumb.”

This second ass-pat is harder, more of a stinging smack. Richie’s guarded look coils into a grin again at Eddie’s bared-teeth hiss. “I never said it wasn’t.”

“Well, I mean, what do you think it meant that fucking Marco—” Richie snorts at the projectile venom burning acidic holes through Eddie’s voice, “—was clearly willing to catch fleas or goddamn tetanus just to fuck you? What about me? You think I’m pretending it’s good just to encourage your weird, unnecessary inferiority thing? ”

“No, you’re right,” Richie laughs. His snorts have bubbled into full-blown giggles now as he squints down at the mess between their stomachs. “That’s pretty hard evidence you’re providing there, Eds.”

Getting harder too, rubbed up against the soft crease of Richie’s hip. Eddie can feel the lingering red throb of heat on his ass, like closing his eyes and still catching the gold-coin flash of the sun branded on the inside of his eyelids. Richie digs his blunt nails into the stung tenderness of his skin and gently pulls Eddie’s asscheeks open. He feels Richie’s quickened breathing against his wet mouth, and wonders how to ask for another spank in a way that isn’t gonna make him want to enter witness protection afterwards.

“I can’t believe you were jealous, you’re the last guy in the world who needs to be jealous,” Richie moans. Eddie feels the vibration of it on his tongue, now sucking on the knot of Richie’s adam’s apple. “Wait, can you really get tetanus from abandoned street beds?”

“Ugh!” Eddie bites him there and pulls off slowly, sucking so the stubbled skin of Richie’s strong throat is released from his mouth’s suction with a wet pop. Richie’s hips flex against him. “I almost wish this was the same fucking bed just so I had something to throw out into the yard!”

“O-ooh, how telenovela of you, I like it.”

Oh Christ, Eddie has to put some kinda stop to this before Richie starts speaking Spanish. He needs to last. He needs to beat Marco. “I’ll throw you out with it,” he says, too breathy and honest for anywhere else but here. “Trashmouth. Sweetheart.”

Richie’s face is flushed, eyes dark and desperate. He grips at Eddie’s ribs so hard Eddie feels them bending. “Dumpster diver.”

Eddie rolls his hips down, plants his palms on either side of Richie, shoves them under the pillows. He braces his elbows hard into Richie’s shoulders and grinds their sweaty foreheads together, but whatever aggression there is within him is softened by his catapulting heartbeat, harmonising with his own laughter. With Richie’s, always.

“Nah, ‘fraid the only thing left to remember that half-night stand with Marco is, well.” Richie looks down between them again, eyes almost crossed. “It’s me. My dick, more specifically.”

Eddie can feel as much. Another wave of possessiveness froths through him, crackling in the pockets of his joints, feels like cartoon steam whistling out his ears. “It better not be half-standing because it remembers anything about fucking Marco,” he snarls.

Richie raises his hands in a down boy gesture. It shifts his arms and shoulders in the way that sometimes makes Eddie wish he were a door, just so Richie could ram him open, and so he pins Richie’s wrists to the bed instead.

“Please don’t throw my dick out into the yard, babe,” Richie says.

“Gonna give you something to remember this fucking bed by,” Eddie says, and slides down Richie’s body to do just that.

#ficlet #hhfhchfjjf SORRY #this is why it takes me so long to answer asks 😭#im like 🤔 i’d love to see a fic about x 🤔🤔🤔 and then there’s a harp timeskip sound effect and i wake up to stuff like this

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youngbugandtonystank · 5 years

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I LOVED your meta-analysis of Tony in endgame! Can you do the homecoming edition with tony's facial expressions and feelings? thank you! x

Hi!

Of course, I’m sorry I took so long.

Well, Homecoming is my favorite irondad movie. Yes, it’s an irondad movie for me. We get to see the paternal side of Tony. It’s not a surprise for me or anyone that Tony can get paternal, you can tell he loves kids and gets along better with them than with most adults. He’s a natural on this.

Let’s start with the fact that Tony had a long emotional journey in Civil War, from getting nostalgic with clearing traumatic memories of his parents with technology, Charlie Spencer, his guilt over Ultron, the Accords, fighting with the Avengers to finding out the truth about said parents and getting betrayed in the process.

All of this.

And the first thing he decided to do after all of this?

Make sure Peter gets home.

Now, the most important thing you should notice about Tony in here is his posture. Look how relaxed and happy he looks, look at the way he’s sitting. After recently getting betrayed by a close friend, this is how he behaves around Peter. This is enough for me to believe that he blindly trusts Peter and that scares him. Since the moment he met him this is the thing that impressed me the most about their relationship. How easy things come for Tony when it comes to Peter. Trust is the main one.

Of course, it’s not all unicorns because this is Tony Stark. He probably noticed how quickly he was to trust Peter and how he behaves around him so he uses his typical mechanisms of defense to fight this.

One of my friends pointed out for me that on many occasions Tony tries to avoid eye contact with Peter.

Typical mechanism. Avoid eye contact, put on his glasses, mask on.

And that is not the only effort he made to put a distance between him and Peter, he uses the ‘’hands-off’’ mentor attitude and puts Happy like a wall between them. Look at his hand gestures, he’s trying to make this something casual. It’s his way of putting up a wall.

Also, this is not how we open the door for someone else, ok?

There were other ways to open the door for the kid.

And as soon as Peter is out of the car:

After a while of not getting in contact with the kid, Peter; the danger magnet he is, gets himself in trouble and we discover that Tony receives alerts every time the suit's emergency parachute is activated or when it exceeds a certain altitude. We also discover Tony has a tracker on Peter’s suit and it’s not afraid to admit he put everything necessary in the suit.

At first, he doesn’t appear to be shaken up by the fact that Peter almost died a few minutes ago but this is because he’s trying to remain calm. In the Homecoming Novelization, they give us the reason why Tony is in that place:

“So where are you?” I asked, looking around suspiciously. I half expected to see a drone in the sky spying on me.“India,” came the response. “I thought I’d hit up a Hindu temple. Center myself. That sort of thing.” Wow, I thought. I guess when you have Stark money, you can do stuff like that. “Thank God this place has Wi-Fi or you would have drowned.”

He’s trying to center himself. After saying ‘’Please, forget about the flying vulture guy’’ and trying to make Peter understand he needs to stay on the ground for his own safety and Peter failing to understand this, this is his dad reaction:

The angry-anxiety outburst. This man was having an anxiety attack throughout this scene. After not succeeding in getting a guarantee that Peter is going to be out of harm's way, he goes into fight-or-flight mode and releases this little explosion. When you’re on your way to an anxiety episode that is very close to turning into a panic attack your body starts interpreting your anxiousness as a signal that you’ll need to stand your ground or escape from what you believe is a danger. What it’s most interesting to me in this is his reaction after the outburst. He’s not only confused as to why is he so angry or so fatherly invested in this kid, but he’s also experiencing his mind going “blank” as the fear and worry take over.

Almost like he’s asking himself ‘’Why am I acting like this?’’ ‘’What the hell was that?’’

And then saying: ‘’Sorry, teenager’’. Dad af.

And then we fully get to see what he’s trying to stay calm from. THIS. Anxiety can trigger this reaction. I believe what Tony is experiencing here is some sort of mechanism of physiological tremor caused by anxiety. This is how awesome RDJ’s performance is. He understands his character so much he can make these little decisions and add more depth into the character.

After this, he tells Peter it’s not too early to start thinking about college, since he went when he was 15 so for Tony, it’s never too early and he knows Peter is a genius kid. He understands Peter and he even acknowledged this when he said this: ‘’Listen, I know school sucks. I know you want to save the world. But... you're not ready yet.’’

Then he calls Peter to tell him the FBI was about to ambush Toomes and his people but he also took the opportunity to congratulate Peter for his job on Washington. I love the sheepishly way he’s doing it, like this is new territory for him.

But Peter at the moment is not appreciating the compliments because he has other things in mind. This is the moment you realize both of them are on different grounds. What many people don’t realize is that Peter is not only seeking approval, he’s trying to find a way to ensure his stay in Tony’s life. Notice how he asks Happy what’s going to happen to him when he realizes Tony sold the tower (He can feel Tony slipping further away from him) or when he tells Ned that he’s never going to come back to school since Tony is moving the Avengers upstate and blindly believes that If he brings Toomes to justice Tony is going to offer a place for him (He takes drastic measures).

Meanwhile Tony is trying hard to be there for him but still at arm's length. He gets a little offended when Peter doesn’t appreciate that effort and brush that off like it’s nothing. You know the thing that actually warms my heart? When he remembers the little stuff about Peter’s life. While Peter is trying to win his place in Tony’s life, Tony already has Peter in his heart, whether he knows about this or not.

Remember those conversations you have with your parents over the phone and they hear some weird background noise and they demand to know what’s going on? This is Tony in here. Also, the fact that he knew that Peter quit band six weeks ago. lol dad much?

Then the famous ferry confrontation. This is exactly the moment Tony lets Peter know in a very direct way he cares and a lot. Since the moment Peter accuses him of not caring, he doesn’t take his eyes off of Peter.

He’s using anger as a way to let out the stress and worry he has over this kid. The little sniff, the way he continuously walks toward him, etc. He’s tired of being worried and explains to Peter that he’s the only one keeping faith in him because of how young he is and the more he explains, the more scared he gets.

When things get to the point where he can’t stand it, ‘’it’s not working out’’ / = ‘’It’s not working out for me’’, he demands the suit back and dramatically says that this is something permanent. That this is a ‘’forever’’ decision. He believes that if he takes away the suit Peter is going to stop risking his life. And this decision probably hurts him more than it hurts Peter judging by the way he can’t even look at the kid when he asks for it.

He heartbrokenly explains to Peter that if he dies then he feels that is going to be on him. He feels responsible for Peter and it’s heartbreaking because this is coming from him. This is not some misplaced way to fix things or a way to repair some old wounds. This is not his responsibility, he can easily go to this kid’s aunt and tell her what’s going on so she can deal with it but instead, he realizes he got emotionally attached to this kid and therefore no matter if he’s in the suit or not, Tony is going to feel responsible. Because he cares. Because he has a soft spot for him. Because he already has a place in his heart.

The way he grips his arm, another way to tell he’s on the verge of anxiety, again. And then he admits what’s been on his mind since meeting Peter: He wants him to be better than him. He already chose him. He wants him to be his better version. He recognizes Peter and him are similar in ways that scare him but he wants the flaws he sees in himself to disappear on Peter. He doesn’t want Peter to be like him. And he demonstrates this in the self-deprecating way he expresses it:

Then Peter goes and still risks his life with or without the suit and Tony gets Happy to drive Peter to Avengers upstate. The first thing Tony does? Apologize to Peter for taking the suit and at the same time, he lets him know he did something wrong therefore he had it coming. Something he probably never got directly from his father; an apology and proof that he actually cared.

He makes sure Peter knows he’s proud by fist-bumping his shoulder lol, side-hugging him and telling him he wants him on the team by showing him his new suit.

Can we talk about this for a moment? Is this Tony’s version of putting the kid’s accomplishments on the fridge? He was going to show this to a lot of reporters and people when Peter ‘’announced’’ he was going to be an official member of the Avengers. Can we also acknowledge the fact that Tony keeps track of Peter so much that he knows bloggers write about spider-man and this time he’s bringing the big guns by picking up 50 real reporters to the case? D-A-D.

Then he gets rejected lol. Something he probably expected it. There’s no denying he felt rejected but not because Peter doesn’t want to be part of the Avengers, the part he feels rejected from is the ‘’mentoring’’ part. He did mention that with a little mentoring, Peter could be a real asset. He wants to be that mentor and now he’s ready to be more close to him.

He even takes the mask off.

But he still can’t keep eye contact with him, something he still does in Infinity War. Apparently, Peter’s big puppy eyes are lethal weapons for him. He can’t stand the admiration and gratitude coming from this kid’s gaze. He’s not used to this.

This is what I love the most about Homecoming. Proud!dad Tony. AT the end of the day, he’s proud that Peter chose to do the right thing and stay on the ground. He knows Peter is going to be the best out of all of them and this is the most gratifying accomplishment for him.

Thank you for asking! I was going to make one from Peter’s POV, if you want it, please tell me!

#tony stark #peter parker #irondad #spiderson #homecoming #spiderman homecoming #hoco #mcu #marvel #robert downey jr #tom holland #infinity war #endgame #far from home #Iron Man #spiderman

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syms-things-5 · 4 years

Text

Moving On

A Drabble (I think, tbh I don’t know the difference)

Warnings: None really, a bit of suggestive language.

Characters: Chris Evans x You

Summary: You had enjoyed an undefined friends-with-benefits thing with him for some time but now you decide to end things before your feelings take over. If only that was the end of it.

Word Count: 1241

First one I’ve written so hope it reads well. Just an idea I had on this cold, dull Sunday afternoon

***

It had been twelve days since you ended things.

You were doing OK. Not great, just OK. You didn’t expect much else to be honest, you knew it was going to be hard. Heart-breaking, even, but it had to be done to save your sanity.

Every time you had promised yourself you would start this conversation with him, something always happened that stopped you in your tracks; you were enjoying a movie too much, he’d ordered in some amazing food and you were entering a carb coma, or he was looking at you in that way again.

No matter what it was, it didn’t take much to push the questions out of your mind and before long another week had passed, another week where you didn’t hear from him because he was busy or you had a work thing that took priority. This cycle would always start again, though, and seven months is a long time not to develop feelings for somebody.

Rinse. Repeat.

To Chris’ credit, he had made it clear from day one that he wasn’t looking for anything serious. He had told you he had been in and out of relationships and now he just wanted to have some fun. There was to be no definitions and no pressure on either of you. You understood it perfectly at that time and while it would have normally gone against your better judgement, some no-strings fun wouldn’t go amiss. Work made it difficult to make a proper commitment to someone at this time in your life and Chris had made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t be making any demands of you.

“You never know, he might regret it. He might regret letting you leave like that. Did he seem upset?” ask Angela as she poured out another glass of red wine for you. The bar was quiet and no one could overhear your conversation so you weren’t much bothered.

You threw yourself into your work and had started visiting the gym every day before heading home to your quiet but cosy house. You would spend time baking and working on your paintings. On the advice of another friend, you even took up knitting and would often sit in front of the television for hours at a time as a distraction from feeling the urge to text him. He’d left you alone and while you had asked him to do so, you were also kinda disappointed he had decided to keep this promise.

“I don’t think he’ll be starving for attention. I doubt he’ll be missing me that much.” You took a long drink of your wine and allowed the spicy, peppery heat to warm the back of your throat as you swallowed it down.

“Well,” she twisted her glass in between her hands on the table. “He’s a stupid fool.”

No. Chris wasn’t the fool. The only fool here was you and as more time passed, the more it became blindingly obvious you were never cut out to be a friend with benefits. Some people found it easy to separate their feelings from sex without taking a second glance but you quickly discovered you couldn’t. You just didn’t have it in you, and that was no bad thing.

You couldn’t even think of any negative aspects about him or his personality to at least try and give you a head start on feeling relieved you were no longer involved with him. He was just lovely 100% of the time. He was goofy and funny, sometimes wickedly so. He was skilful and talented at so many different things but still maintained a sense of self-deprecation about himself. He loved his family and would often humble-brag about his nephew’s latest accomplishment at school.

He was smart and passionate about the things that you were interested in and if he didn’t know what you were talking about, he always made an effort to learn. He would joke he was just trying to impress you but really, you knew he just liked learning about new things as much as you did.

He was calming when you had a shit day. He was encouraging when you were doubting your ability to do your job properly. He was gentle when you asked him to be, and rough when you begged him for it. He was an experience unlike any other. So when you approached the subject of ending things, he was almost as confused as you were.

You played it safe and told him you “…just had some feelings, nothing scary so don’t panic.” He nodded slowly at first, accepting of what you were telling him and rather than question you, he stayed quiet when you asked him to just listen.

It wasn’t like you were expecting to fall in love of anything, you knew what this was from the outset but now you realised you weren’t cut out for something so casual anymore and you wanted to move on and see where life took you. You were grateful for the time you had spent together which was an understatement but you didn’t want to cause him any more discomfort than you had evidently done so already. You hoped you could be pals at some point in the future because he was the only person you knew who shared your love of watching The Office over and over again, but you would also understand if he would rather simply cut all ties instead.

“Why the hell would I want to do that?” he finally spoke after you had rambled on for what felt like an age.

“I don’t know. I just figured…maybe that’s what you would prefer?” You shrugged, unable to read his expression. He was looking at you and even at this distance, being separated by his kitchen island, he was still too close for your comfort. “I’m just saying there’s no expectations here or anything. I’m happy to do whatever you want to do.”

You feigned a smile trying to diffuse the tension but he barely blinked at you. Just kept looking forward in a way that was going to trip you up soon unless you did something. You awkwardly looked around for your jacket before remembering you didn’t have one and simply grabbed your work bag and threw it over your shoulder. You made a move towards his front door before glancing back at him. He hadn’t moved an inch. Hadn’t changed his expression from one of confusion and possibly a bit of sadness. “I’m so sorry, Chris. I know I’ve ruined things but I promise, it’s nothing serious. You don’t need to worry but I do think that it’ll probably be for the best if we don’t speak for a little while.”

You thought he nodded briefly but couldn’t be sure. “Um…OK. Sure.”

It was the longest drive home in existence made worse by the heavy rain that decided to bless your journey. As you reached your home and entered your bedroom to collapse on the bed, you finally allowed yourself to feel the tears that you had kept at bay. Even now, sat across from your friend, the tears were almost always just a blink away but you were getting better. Every day, a little better. Maybe one day soon you would simply come home and crash out without the need to stay busy to keep your mind active and off him.

You had to have the hope at least.

#Chris Evans #Chris fanfic #fanfiction #You #Chris fic #Drabbles and randomness #chris evans x original female character

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acaemia · 3 years

Text

I bought a planner!

February 11 2021

Hola a todos. It’s the last week of the term! I guess I’m already on break but I still feel un poco stressed because I feel as if I still have work to do. 😅 Anyway, I submitted a lot of deliverables the past few days, one of which was my final essay for one of the classes under my minor degree.

I woke up from my nap this afternoon and saw a Canvas notification for my output! My prof commented on my essay (but he didn’t grade it yet idk) so I was like woooo let’s gooooo. I was still sleepy so I was like 🥱🙂💛 when I saw it and then I woke up and read it again and I was like 😀😳✌️🥰

[Message Reads: Well written Sophia. I could tell that you learned and more importantly enjoyed the class. Your essay was a joy to read.]

It really means a lot to me as a student/writer to get encouraging messages from my professors. I’m really cheesin y’all. 🥺 It’s really the little things.

I was about to say something like “it’s just a reflection paper though” but I realized that:

1. I almost invalidated myself again

2. It’s not “just” a reflection paper!! reflection is very important!! just because it’s not like, an academic research paper doesn’t mean the value is absent or any less than the other requirements!!

AHA! Almost caught myself downplaying my achievements again. Nope! Not this time! I’m beaming because my professor recognized my skill. I’m also happy that I got to express how much I genuinely enjoyed his class. Teachers also need encouragement after all.

I’m not sure what grade I garnered from this paper since he didn’t grade it but we’ll see when the final grades come out. I’ve been doing consistently well in this class anyway so I am not too worried. It was stressful since some group mates were just rude or unhelpful but we made it through this class!

Moving on...

Earlier this week, I made a post because I got a notif from Canvas that really triggered my anxiety. It was my grade for one of the important papers for my majors class, as well as one comment from that particular professor. Long story short, my sister ended up checking it for me and I got the grade I targeted (2.5 baby!!) and his comment wasn’t too cruel.

[Message Reads: Your paragraphs are vey long! This makes it very difficult to read your essay!]

I have to admit that I started being conscious about the length of my sentences when he said that. I don’t really proofread (well sometimes I do) my shit on here so my posts tend to have errors and a ton of run-ons like right now. Also, this prof is a boomer. That’s just how they talk online. A user over at Reddit told me that I don’t need to compartamentalize everything that comes to my head and I’ve been doing my best to choose my mental battles lately. My fearful reaction is understandable given I am only human and I do have my insecurities.

However, I have a choice to view this comment constructively. Receiving criticism shouldn’t be an excuse for me to hate on myself. Even just a little. I’m actively working on building myself up and to stop crumbling at every comment I receive (whether it’s comments from my own head or other people).

Receiving these comments from different professors this week reminded me of the importance of balance when it comes to mindset. I have to acknowledge both my strengths and weaknesses. I have to learn which comments to take and build from instead of taking everything in and weaponizing it for self deprecation purposes.

I received validation from the first prof and I was reminded of the importance of being kind to myself from the other. I’m really grateful for everything that’s been taking place in my life lately. So much angel numbers and blessings have made their way onto my path and I really love that for me. 🥰✌️

In a recent vlog, Amber Scholl opened up about her relationship with her body. She’s gone a long way since she was a teenager but she said that the thoughts never really go away, you just learn not to act on them. That reminds me of a tweet that goes like...we never stop healing. I still have a long way to go in terms of self confidence but my goodness I am so far from the person I was last year and I know I’m making her proud because of all the growth I experienced. Most importantly, I’m really proud of myself since I didn’t jsut learn my lesson. I’m embodying the lessons I learned and I’m really making an active effort to be better for myself.

I’m trusting myself more and making more decisions. I even bought myself a planner earlier! Big deal since I tend to overthink purchases because I always feel guilty. I really wanted that planner so I went for it. I also decided not to take two classes next term because I know what I can handle. I’m going at my own time and I feel so empowered to say that. So much of my life was lived because of pressure from other people. They made me feel so suffocated that I would bring it to myself to pressure myself when I’m in stressful situations. Not this time. I’m taking myself back. The planner I bought is just a start. I’m owning myself and I really couldn’t be more proud.

This post is long but...that’s okay. This is my post. It’s my account. I’m writing for myself. I don’t owe anyone good grammar, etc. (except my profs lol). Alright, my anxiety is starting to act up but I’m still feeling pretty empowered right now so I’ll hit post to shut it up.

If you’re reading this, thank tou. Hope you enjoyed the little trip to my mind. Feel like a whip nae nae would be appropriate rigjt now.

🥸

👊🏼

#sopher junior

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funkymbtifiction · 4 years

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What is your method on typing people for their Enneagram? Thanks a lot.

For real people you mean, or characters? For characters it’s harder since you can’t ask them clarifying questions and so must rely on what they seem to want and how they get it. And sometimes there’s a lot of guesswork involved. I’m still learning to tell the difference with fictional characters between certain types.

People... have tells. Things they seem to focus on. Things that matter most to them. Ways of getting it. Obvious underlining focuses. Pride in themselves (or, in the case of certain numbers, too much ‘humility’). You can even, if you believe in tritype, get a read on their second fix sometimes (for example, the 925/926 I know is mostly the peace-seeking, self-erasing 9, but I do see the eager-to-help, rush-to-give-you-things friend-making techniques of the 2). In a way, it’s easier for me to type strangers than those close to me, because ... I have a bias for or against them and know them too well, so I am factoring in way too much information and it’s clouding my judgment.

But in general...

You can tell a head type because they choose to step back and think before they react. They want to “think about it.” Or they have obvious fear-based statements or behaviors. You need a crowbar and grease to get anything out of a 5. 6s are obviously 6s (fearful but funny about it, self-deprecating, or in the case of a social 6, a rigid adherent to whatever party they feel holds their security in its hands -- a religion, a political party, a social group, even being anti-establishment but gathering ‘like-minded’ people around them). 7s are good-natured, whimsical, and somewhat flighty, often with commitment phobias. (I sort-of typed one of my writers at work I’ve never met in person in my life a 7 because reading over his material, the 7-ness bleeds through -- funny, irreverent, and it took him 25 years of living with the mother of his children before he finally asked her to marry him, coz #CommitmentPhobic).

You can tell a gut type because they are ‘instant reactors’ to situations, either in a defensive posture (making things stop) or pushing them further (making things happen / blow up bigger). The 1s rush in with strong right/wrong opinions. The 8s fire first, ask questions later and push people. The 9s are quick to diffuse arguments, back away, numb you out, or be passive-aggressive with their anger. If you talk to them, a lot of 9s will say things like “I’m not aware of when I’m angry... it can take a couple of days for me to recognize that’s what I’m feeling,” or even “I have lots of angry dreams.” I know of 3 different 9s in my life who confessed that -- it’s the only ‘safe’ place to exhibit their resentment or anger, since the real world isn’t ‘safe.’

You can tell the image types because they’re all about... well, you. How they want you to see them. What they want you to admire. The 2s are generous and giving and sometimes childish or seductive, but it’s all wrapped up in their pride in being an Important Person in everyone’s life. The 3s are looking to craft a persona -- they are already living out who they want to be in their head, or trying to actively work toward making it happen, or have workaholic behaviors, because “I am what I do.” The 4s are anti-YOU. “I’m not like you. I have better taste than you do. I need Higher Things.” They are also prone to melancholy or longing / envy and can be melodramatic. The 4 never met an emotion big enough, so they will increase it in an effort to sink into it.

Some people are harder to type than others, but I generally do the following:

- get an overall impression of them through watching them for awhile (some types look like other types, but under a crisis, the real person comes out)

- take note of their usual patterns of behavior and focus (one self-typed 9 I realized was a social 7 instead, because all the time she talked about wanting to escape, go on the road, see everything, and fears of missing out on things, feeling jealous when others got to do things/have experiences and she didn’t)

- ask them questions, not leading but to see what their answer might be; although in unscripted, unguarded moments of deep conversation, you can sometimes get people to open up about what they want out of life

- consider what their focus appears to be (the 6s on tumblr want me to check their typing work, for example, or rely on me as an ‘expert’ in MBTI -- and this holds true even for 6 fixers) and how they ‘get things done’

Sometimes people who send me asks have an obvious undercurrent of a number or unintentionally use language that suggest certain types to me, or they profess to be one number and... what they say does not support it.

You also have to be open to being wrong, since sometimes... you are. People can surprise you. In good and bad ways. My main problem is ... I have a need to understand everything and if someone doesn’t quite seem ‘right’ for their number or their type or something nags at me as being misaligned, I cannot let it go. I will work and work at it tirelessly, and drive myself crazy with over-thinking, especially if I’m trying to connect unknown behaviors with a number. (Is this optimism 9 or 7? If this person says they are a 2, why aren’t they ‘around’ when others need them? Etc.)

- ENFP Mod

#question #enneagram #submission

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yo-its-matt · 4 years

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How did you get to the point with confidence that you are now? I’m a baby adult (19) but every time I start to feel a little okay with myself or motivated to improve I remember all the either cringy, stupid, selfish, or just mean things I said/did as a child/teen and I go back to feeling like a terrible person and like I shouldn’t even bother because I’ll always be terrible because I can’t undo the past. How do you get past the self hate and get to the confidence?

I want to preface this answer with a few things. It’s going to be separated into ‘realizations I’ve come to’ and ‘active changed I’ve made’, it’s probably going to be long, and most importantly, my answers are based on my personal experience and some privileges I realize I have that others may not (some of those being a stable income/steady job, not being enrolled in college, my own vehicle, and supportive parents). While there is no one single way, this is what I’ve realized/changed that helped me get better. Take from it what you can, if you’d like.

Realizations I’ve Come To:

Unchecked self-deprecation and sarcastic-deprecation towards/between friends (even in the form of humor) is very often not healthy, easily leads to miscommunication, and to feelings of self-doubt.

Though we have a set list of expectations and a society around us screaming “if you are not constantly getting ahead, you are falling behind and dying” and “you must meet these social deadlines by these points in your life, and if you miss out on them by chance, choice, or circumstance, you’re less than human”, these things are absolute lies. In the grand scope of the human life span, you have so much more time than you could ever believe to experience these things and check them off your list. Do not let others dehumanize you for taking life at your own pace.

People at any given singular point in time are inherently complicated. People over large spans of time are infinitely more complex. There’s no permanent state of self because the circumstances that our wildly different lives hold, our understanding of the world around us, and the ever-changing opinions we hold based on that understanding are all simultaneously in a constant state of change. The only thing that matters amidst all that confusion is not your compounded mess-ups, not your relapses, not realizations you make about previous self-states. It’s that today, you want to be better than you were yesterday.

Active Changes I’ve Made:

Cut out influences within your control that have a negative impact on you. There is no negative influence you actively consume that 1. Cannot be cut out for your betterment and 2. Cannot be replaced with something that will actively further your betterment instead.

I stopped watching overly cynical Youtubers who only went out of their way to examine media they disliked and replaced them with creators who have a more positive outlook on what they consume.

If someone I carve out extra time from my day for doesn’t reciprocate or continually lets me down, I cut them out and I do not go back to them. When it’s hard to gather effort to give to people you care about and they actively squander it like it’s nothing, that is not someone who values you and you do not need them around.

Make self-care a hobby and a part of your routine. Do some things unabashedly for YOU. You are allowed to be self-indulgent, you are allowed to enjoy the life you have.

I picked up the hobby of collecting and painting old Ben 10 figures that I missed out on as a kid, and I do it for me.

I get coffee and draw once every week at the book store, and I do it for me.

I got a PS2 slim, a few Dance Dance Revolution games, and a dance pad, after years of wishing I had. I do it on weekends for exercise/fun, and you bet I do it for me.

I dress up for me, I put on a good song during the commute with the windows down for me. I buy that little chocolate orange from the dollar store the only comes around Christmas time, and you best BELIEVE I do it for me.

It is healthy and necessary to push yourself into new territories, but only where you can and only when it isn’t dangerous. I would encourage looking for small opportunities and fitting them in where possible.

I gave a cute barista my number earlier in the year. It didn’t matter if anything came out of it, it mattered if I actually bothered to gather the guts to get up and do it after not believing I was worth that for so long.

I took an old art mentor up on an invite to a community drawing event. It didn’t matter how full or empty my tip jar was, it mattered that I put myself back out in the community because it made me realize how good it was for me and how much I missed it.

I entered my art in a local exhibit for sale this past month on a friend’s suggestion. It didn’t matter whether anyone bought them, it mattered that I put myself out there after I sheltered my work from the community after not having believed it was worth sharing.

I wish I had some sort of big conclusion here, but that’s all I got!

Once again, I realize the life I live has a much different context than many others that may be seeking advice from my set of experiences, likely due to my access to some things other people might not have. I hope some part of this helps and applies to your life. I hope you love yourself, you’re more than worth it.

Take care.

#long post #confidence post

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artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

Blue Neighborhood Series: COOL (Rock-centric) - Mac

AN: Thanks as always to Meggie! Who is an angel on earth for betaing. I love her to death. And thanks to everyone leaving such amazing comments! It means so much!

Summary: In the aftermath of their night of revenge, Rock struggles to find where she fits in.

Monday morning brought the news: vandalism, several thousand dollars worth of property damage, a ruined reputation, and speculation.

The most obvious suspect, Heidi, had an alibi. The photos Widow had taken were time-stamped and location tagged. There was no trail for anyone to follow.

They had gotten away with it.

That should have made Rock feel better.

It didn’t.

And besides a few more names and faces in the hall, the night didn’t do much for Rock socially. She had thought, maybe foolishly, that some good old fashioned illegal activity might finally be the push she needed to make some friends. As it was, she was still eating her lunch alone in the old prop room above the theatre.

But she had her anime and her videogames and her ability to tune out the world around her.

She propped her phone up and clicked on the next episode of My Hero Academia. It was her third time watching it through, and she knew the episodes by heart now. But the familiarity offered her comfort in an otherwise hectic day.

Rock was so absorbed in the show that she almost missed the crash on the stage below her. Almost.

She clambered up on unsteady feet, heart pumping in her ears as she walked out of the stuffy prop room and onto the platform directly above the stage. She looked down and was shocked to see two familiar faces strolling through the prop trees that made up the set, giggling like children.

“Don’t break that!” Jan scolded, though her words lacked bite.

“I didn’t see it!” Jaida said, crossing her arms defensively.

“You’re so tall you can’t see anything below your knees, huh?” Jan teased. “Well, I guess we can’t all be future D-1 athletes.”

Jaida started to grab at Jan, who narrowly avoided her grasp. The two girls fell into another round of giggles. This time they both ducked their heads away, unable to keep eye contact.

Rock observed them warily, hair prickling on the back of her neck at how familiar this scene seemed. She should go, should leave the two alone, and allow them to get up to whatever they came here for, but something kept her rooted in her spot. Morbid curiosity.

When they settled down and color was high on both of their cheeks, Jan motioned to the audience widely. “Are you gonna shut up and let me do my thing or what?”

Jaida held her hands up in mock surrender, shit-eating grin still etched into her features, as she made her way into the first row of seats, spreading out her long limbs goofily, flopping around in an effort to make Jan smile.

Jan held back, but the joy still shone in her eyes.

She tried to steady herself, inhaling deeply, before beginning to sing.

Rock didn’t recognize the song, but she found that it didn’t really matter, the tone of Jan’s voice conveyed everything she needed to know. The notes drifted up into the rafters, settling high above the singer and melding to the ceiling. The emotion hung in the air. Sadness, self-reflection, loss. It plucked at Rock’s heartstrings more than she cared to admit.

She wasn’t the only one.

Jaida sat in the audience, previous sloppy posture made up now, back ramrod straight, eyes wide.

As the song came to an end, Jan gave a silly bow. Jadia smiled so bright Rock could make it out from where she was standing. The loud clapping echoed in the empty auditorium and Jan giggled as Jaida approached the stage, eyes still wide in amazement.

“I can’t believe you didn’t get the lead.” Jaida shook her head.

Jan sat down on the edge of the stage, her legs hanging off the side. “It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess.” She shrugged.

“Well, you’re amazing.” Jaida grinned. “But I agree,” she paused, “you sound much better on stage than in your backyard.”

Jan laughed, throwing her head back in abject joy, long strawberry blonde hair tumbling down her back and shaking along with her shoulders. Rock hadn’t seen her this happy in what felt like forever. She seemed lighter somehow. Freer.

When the two locked eyes again, something different passed between them, Rock had only a second to process before Jan leaned in to close the distance between her and Jaida.

The kiss lasted only a second before Jan pulled back. She was clearly shocked by her own actions, Rock could tell, because a split second later she was standing up on wobbly legs and running toward the exit of the auditorium.

Jadia was left to stare at the empty space she left.

Rock planned to leave. To exit quiet and daintily and pretend like she saw nothing. God clearly had other plans because as she began to tiptoe back the way she had come, her hand missed the railing, causing her to stumble and cry out before catching herself.

“Fuck!” Jaida yelled in shock, jumping about six feet in the air.

She shielded her eyes as she looked up into the bright stage lights. “Jesus, Rock,” Jaida exhaled. “The fuck are you doing up there?”

Rock blushed head to toe. “Oh, ya know, eating lunch.”

Jaida put her hands on her hips. “So… You saw that, huh?” She motioned to the space where Jan had stood.

Rock nodded hesitantly, unsure of what the correct answer was. Jaida pursed her lips and ran a hand through her dark hair.

“Can we, uh, keep this between us?”

Rock didn’t need prompting. She nodded once, firmly. Jaida offered her a weak smile in return before heading the way in which Jan had run off.

Rock’s head was spinning. She didn’t keep up much with school gossip, finding it confusing at best and defamatory at worst, but you didn’t need to be nosy to know about the infamous red truck photo. The school had gone wild a few weeks back, speculation circling in every social circle. The conclusion had been that Eastview’s ‘it’ girl, Jan, had been getting it on with the varsity basketball captain. Everyone had accepted it as fact, and, not feeling the need to question it, Rock had believed it too.

But based on the scared, and quite frankly, disgusted reaction Jan just had… Rock suddenly felt the need to sit down as realization dawned on her: Jan wasn’t the one in the picture.

And that opened a whole other can of worms.

Rock sighed. She really needed to find a new place to eat lunch.

…

Rock coughed out a cloud of smoke.

She heard murmurs from her companions, some judgmental, others bored. She did her best to ignore them as she raised the contraption to her lips again, and someone leaned over with a lighter.

The weed burned her. Throat and nose alight with a smell that felt like it was filling the space between her brain and her skull. She didn’t cough this time, which she counted as a victory, and she passed the bong to her right.

Widow encouraged her. “That was good! Usually newbies cough for like an hour.”

Rock just nodded, if she opened her mouth to speak she knew she would cough. She held it in, content for now to hold her breath and wait the feeling out. She took the time to admire her new position, even if it was just for the day.

After not so subtly mentioning her social predicament in the group chat, Widow had been among the first to offer her an alternative.

Rock found that she actually used the group chat that was formed after their night of shenanigans a lot more than she thought; every now and then she shared funny videos she found or had a sidebar conversation with Jackie about their statistics class. Some of the other girls used it frequently too, with Crystal and Heidi being the most vocal. The cheerleaders mostly kept to themselves, but would react to conversations with an emoji or two. Even Widow chimed in every now and then with a biting comment or a response to someone’s question.

Rock felt lucky her self-deprecating joke was answered at all, let alone by three separate people.

For now though, she just thanked the stars that she got to spend more time with Widow. After their night of illegal activity, Rock had been itching to learn more about the mysterious older girl. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt drawn to her presence.

Rock tried to relax as Widow’s friends settled into easy conversation.

The outside air was welcome on her heated skin; the fall breeze dancing up and down her legs, feet against the brick of the shed. They were still on school property, which caused a bit of underlying panic in Rock’s gut, but her companions seemed unbothered and had clearly been doing this often enough to not be nervous.

They were far from the school, Rock reasoned, the long-abandoned athletic shed being located just a stone’s throw away from the already distant baseball field. There was virtually no way they would get caught. Still.

The bong made the rounds again and Rock hit it twice more, only coughing a bit on the second exhale.

She didn’t start to feel the effects until a bit later. At first, she couldn’t even tell, her mind already thrumming with nerves, but as her heartbeat slowed in her chest and her thoughts began to calm she felt an unfamiliar wave of weight fall off her. Before long her head felt hazy and light and she was smiling widely, giggling at the blades of grass jumping, dipping, and turning in the wind.

Widow smiled encouragingly at her and said something that Rock didn’t hear. The older girl waited patiently until Rock made eye contact before repeating herself.

“We gotta get back,” she said. “Class starts soon.”

Rock nodded, but it made her head dizzy so she stopped. Widow extended a hand, and Rock took it gratefully, doing her best to appear unfazed by the sudden movement upward. She must have failed because Widow’s eyes suddenly looked concerned.

“You okay, Roxy?” she asked genuinely.

Rock nodded. “Yeah, I just…” She trailed off.

She just what? What? Wat? Water. She needed water.

She let Widow lead her to the school, all the while doing her best to fight the heaviness of her eyes. They made it inside with a few minutes to spare, minutes Rock gratefully took to guzzle water from the fountain.

Widow rubbed her back in slow circles, reminding her to breathe and to take it slow. As the bell chimed above them, Rock felt her stomach flip unpleasantly. The echo of the noise bounced around in her head, and she suddenly didn’t feel so good.

She lied through her teeth when Widow asked her again if she was okay. Rock didn’t want to be a bother. She had already been enough of a burden by smoking Widow and her friend’s good weed and now she was keeping Widow from class. Rock shook her head and did her best to assure her that she would be fine. Widow only left after getting Rock to pinky promise she would text her if anything went wrong.

Rock practically sunk into her seat in her next class. Her head felt light but her eyes felt heavy and the weird combination of sensations was doing a number on her thoughts. As their teacher began to pass out test grades Widow’s words echoed in her head, “don’t freak yourself out or your trip can get real bad.”

Easier said than done.

It felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her head, as Rock saw yet another bright red D on her test.

Fuck.

Her parents were gonna kill her.

Not because they really cared a lot about her grades, but because it meant they’d have to come into the school and have another useless talk with her teachers about her performance.

Rock’s parents were… busy. From the time she could comprehend the word, that’s what her parents had been. Busy with work, busy with social engagements, busy with things that a silly little girl would never understand. Busy. And that had been fine. It meant that Rock didn’t have a bedtime, could order from her favorite pizza place every night, could not do her homework for weeks at a time. But Rock quickly learned that she’d really rather have parents than the freedom to fall into a sugar coma every night.

Her parents were busy. They didn’t have time to cook dinner or clean the house or, well, parent. Rock had taken on that responsibility, helping her little sisters to bed, making sure they got their homework done on time, packing their lunches for them. She did her best, learned to cook, how to drive, and how to head a house, but she still fell short a lot of the time.

Especially when it came to her own needs.

And because she never really had a strong family structure, Rock had become self-sufficient to the point of isolation. Maybe that’s why it was so hard for her to make friends, not that she had much time to dedicate to outside relationships anyway. Still. It would be nice to not have to go it alone all the time.

All of a sudden the room started spinning, as opposed to the calm relaxing way it had been moments ago. This time it was a violent thrashing instead of a gentle rocking, and Rock felt herself gripping her desk in an attempt to slow it down. The people around her started staring, she could hear their whispers without straining her ear.

But what really got to Rock was when the person behind her tapped her lightly on the shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her seat, banging her knee forcefully on the desk instead.

“Woah, sorry!” The guy apologized, but his words felt like they were delayed with his mouth and she could practically feel them hitting her skin, and Rock needed to get out of here now.

She stood up to the best of her abilities and sprinted out into the empty hallway. The whipping motion of her head as she desperately searched for the nearest bathroom only made her dizzier. The nearest women’s restroom was blissfully empty, and Rock wasted no time before dousing her face in water, her makeup be damned. She scrubbed and scrubbed at her skin, the only action that made her feel like her body was her own.

When Rock felt steady enough, she made the brave decision to sit on the grimy bathroom floor near the window unit until she felt better. She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her head against them for an immeasurable amount of time. Girls entered and exited the bathroom, but Rock paid them no mind.

After a while, when the world stopped spinning, and she felt more like herself, she stood up. She glanced down at her phone to see three notifications from Widow.

W: you still feeling ok?

W: you should have lunch with us again

W: everybody really liked having you

Rock declined politely.

…

Lunch with Brita, Gigi, and Jan didn’t go much better.

Gigi had thrown out the offer after Crystal and Widow. It was half-baked at best, Rock knew. She still went, willing to give the whole experience a chance. The night of the revenge plot the cheerleaders hadn’t seemed so bad. Maybe a little stuck up, but ultimately harmless.

Rock quickly found that her assessment had been correct. They were harmless. Harmless and boring.

Jan spent the whole period practically mute, picking at her lunch with a fork. Rock couldn’t help but wonder if Jaida had mentioned her presence that day in the theatre. By the way Jan was refusing to make eye contact with her, not even deigning to smile, Rock was pretty sure it had come up.

Brita was too involved in texting whoever and ignoring the puppy dog eyes from her boyfriend to notice Rock’s appearance. Gigi was sulking, but attempting to make light conversation with Rock.

“So… uh, you going to Homecoming?” Gigi asked.

Rock shook her head. “Nah, gotta babysit my little sisters.”

“Oh.”

It was mostly true. She always had to look after her little sisters. But mainly she wasn’t going because she had no one to go with. And as much as Rock was perfectly fine on her own, she had no desire to be reminded of it for an entire night.

“Well, Jackie and I are going together,” Gigi said. “As friends,” she quickly corrected.

Gigi glanced over at a still quiet Jan, something strange passing behind her eyes and sneaking into her tone. “And we aren’t sure yet if Jan is taking anybody, but she’s riding with us.”

Jan glanced up at her name and offered Gigi a weak smile.

“So if you change your mind and need a ride, we got you.” Gigi smiled. “I mean, we all live next to each other.” Gigi gave a weak laugh at a joke she didn’t make.

This had been a mistake.

Rock didn’t consider herself to be incredibly exciting, but the sheer lack of personality coming from the table made her feel sucked dry of any creativity and will to live. Rock mentally patted herself on the back. She had given it a go with the popular kids, young Rock would be proud to see her sitting with a bunch of cheerleaders. Finally socially important.

She could tell Gigi meant well, and no offense to her, but Rock would literally rather get hit by whatever insufferable party bus the girls had no doubt rented than go to Homecoming with their group.

But Rock just smiled and nodded politely. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

…

When she attempted to eat with Crystal, Heidi, Aiden, Jackie, and Nicky things went a little better.

Crystal welcomed her with a warm smile and even walked with her arm in arm to the art room where they ate. She sat on the tabletop and the two went through and traded food like they were in grade school again. Crystal gawked at how good Rock’s fried monkfish and coriander sauce tasted, and Rock hid a blush at the compliment to her cooking.

As Aiden and Heidi filtered in they each gave Rock a smile and a polite wave, before delving into another one of their nonsensical arguments. Rock tried to follow their logic but got lost halfway through and just settled for looking at Crystal with raised eyebrows.

“They always do that.” Crystal rolled her eyes at the two.

Jackie entered a few minutes later and joined in on the argument. Crystal and Rock just sat back and enjoyed the added layer of entertainment.

“Jacks always uses big words that neither of them knows and then they fight about that too,” Crystal whispered, eyes alight with mischief.

Rock giggled at the statement as she saw it play out before her very eyes.

All of a sudden Crystal’s posture changed, her previous relaxed shoulders suddenly upright and attentive. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why.

Rock wasn’t immune to the charms of women, having chosen not to label her sexuality just yet, but knowing a good looking woman when she saw one.

And Nicky was good looking. Her beauty only rivaled by her impeccable fashion sense. It was kind of unfair, really.

Crystal coughed awkwardly as Nicky made her way over to the two.

“Hello, Roxanne,” Nicky greeted as she sat next to her.

The extra beat of silence as Nicky didn’t greet Crystal rang out pointedly.

“How have you been?” Nicky directed her question to Rock, who stumbled out some form of an answer.

“Fine. Good. Fine. I’ve been… good.”

Nicky smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Good.”

After another ten or so minutes of pointed silence, Rock excused herself, the art room suddenly feeling less freeing and more restrictive with the added tension. She let herself out the big metal doors that lead directly from the art room to the outside, let herself breathe in and out once before completely breaking down.

Four years of buildup released itself in gasping breaths and a stream of tears.

She was a senior in high school—a damn senior—and she had no friends, no life, and no plans for the future. She had missed out on football games and sleepovers and trips to the mall and parties and all the things that high school movies drill into you from the time you can talk that make the whole four years worth living.

Rock had missed it all. She had been too exhausted or too bored or too… busy.

Fuck.

She was just like her parents.

And wasn’t that just a kick to her already wounded pride.

Rock heard footsteps approaching the door so she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and plastered on a fake smile for who she assumed to be Crystal.

She was shocked to find Nicky looking at her concerned, a carton of cigarettes half out of her back pocket.

“Hey.”

The two stared at each other for a moment.

“Sorry, did you want to be alone?” Nicky asked genuinely.

“No, no,” Rock shook her head. “It’s totally fine.”

Nicky looked awkwardly at her feet and then awkwardly at the cigarette box in her hand. “You want one?” She offered.

Rock looked at the package doubtfully and shook her head. “Thanks though.”

Nicky nodded and pulled out a bright red lighter, flicking it open and holding the cigarette to her parted lips. Rock watched her, fascinated by the way she effortlessly held the smoke in her lungs, then exhaled just as gracefully.

“So… You are a fan of Death Note?” Nicky asked, blowing out a small cloud of smoke.

Rock looked up at her words.

“You have a Ryuk sticker on your laptop,” Nicky explained. “He is Ryuk here, yes?”

Rock nodded, shock still evident on her features. “Oh, y-yeah,” she stammered out. “It’s one of my favorites.”

Nicky smiled, easy and effortless. “Me too.”

“You…”

Nicky rolled her eyes. “Yes, I like anime. Why is that so hard for people to understand?”

Rock ran a hand nervously at her neck. “Well, you look like that.” She motioned to Nicky’s frankly editorial outfit of a black turtleneck tucked into copper pants, nude platforms, and minimal gold jewelry accentuating her model-like posture.

Nicky quirked an eyebrow up as she exhaled another cloud of smoke. “And you look like that. I do not see a difference.”

“Yeah, okay.” Rock scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You watched anything good recently?”

Nicky didn’t hide the way her eyes lit up, and Rock felt her stomach twist in anticipation.

“Okay, I know it’s taboo,” Nicky worried her lip between her teeth, nervous energy suddenly rolling off her in waves, “but RWBY is really good,” Nicky rushed out.

“You did NOT just say that to me!” Rock exclaimed, doing her best to hide a smile at Nicky’s defensive expression. “The animation—”

Nicky cut her off, free hand expressively gesturing. “—it’s shit, I know, but it gets better!”

Rock shook her head disapprovingly, barely biting back a laugh at this point.

“And there are lesbians!” Nicky added animatedly. “Well, they aren’t confirmed yet,” she conceded, “but they will be!”

Rock continued to shake her head. “How dare you say you like anime!”

Nicky looked at her hard, but the underlying tone of abject joy still rang out clearly. “Listen, bitch, I watched all of Attack on Titan and read the manga. I paid my dues, let me enjoy this.”

Rock couldn’t help the raucous laughter that escaped her. Nicky joined her moments later, the two smiling all the while.

“Okay, okay, fine.” Rock held her hands up in surrender.

Nicky smiled widely.

It was a good look on her.

Rock winced as she put out the cigarette with her expensive-looking heel.

When the two made eye contact again, something different swam in Nicky’s cool blue orbs. “Crystal will kill me if she knows I’ve been smoking.”

Rock nodded, a sudden understanding of the situation dawning. “Your secret is safe with me,” she promised.

Nicky offered her a weak smile, before allowing her face to reform into the pristine, confident force of nature she always was. She nodded her head to the art room door and Rock smiled in response.

And Rock allowed the brief thought to cross her mind.

Maybe she hadn’t entirely missed out.

#rpdr fanfiction #rock m sakura #jaida essence hall #jan sport #widow von du #gigi goode #crystal methyd #nicky doll #jaida x jan #friendship fic #blue neighborhood series #cool #mac #s12 #tw marijuana

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imreallystressed · 4 years

Text

nothing is okay /j (pt. 1?)

word count: ~2000 pairings: general angsty platonic DLAMPR, more specifically platonic roceit and the creativitwins, and some angsty (platonic) anxceit because we’re here anyway. warnings: angst! so much of it. angry virgil, yelling, self-deprecation (thanks ro) and the like, crying, remus and his remusy ways, spoilers!! if you need something tagged shoot me an ask! notes: WOW this got out of hand. im almost definitely continuing this oops!! also while this is not meant to be unsymp virgil AT ALL, it could potentially be perceived as such just because we don’t know his reasoning. if you want it tagged let me know! there is. a cliffhanger. at the end,, but it is 100% optional and if you want to imagine a happy ending go for it!! ill write one too, i promise, but i need a break oops next! AO3 LINK

“Right,” Roman had said, or something along those lines, and then he had sunk out. Left. Always too scared to own up to his mistakes, and always too arrogant to even admit he made them.

He had sunk out, ended up in his room, because it was the only place he could ever feel safe anymore, what with the looming threat of his brother, who only came with some fun and terrifyingly complicated emotions he always chose to ignore. He’d never related so much to Logan.

He was in his room, and then he was in his bed, the tears in his eyes and guilt cloying at his chest making every movement feel clipped, like the whole world was moving at three frames per second, jumping around instead of the steady stream of ideas his room usually provided. Yes, his room was safe. But he was so, so alone.

He’d collapsed into his bed, wrenched his hands in the soft duvet until he swore he could feel the fabric tearing, and there he’d stayed for God-knows-how-long. He would guess somewhere around the three hour mark, at least since Patton knocked on his locked (always locked) door and he’d given no answer. Then again, Roman always had a way of losing track of time, helplessly locked in place as the hours flew by.

It had been, in fact, three hours and twenty-eight minutes since Roman had done his sort of... controlled free-fall into the bed, and hadn’t moved. His face had a print on the side, likely from the sequined pillow that he had fallen onto by chance - he hadn’t noticed the uncomfortable prick of plastic shards until he got up, rubbing his face with sore hands. He had, in fact, torn the cover of his duvet, but it was nothing he couldn’t imagine away when he was feeling better, or even take a needle to.

His head still felt stuffed full of cotton, but the feeling of guilt worming its way around inside his chest, up his throat was all too sharp. His first course of action was to apologise.

After that, well.

He would burn that bridge when he got to it.

He made his way over to the attached bathroom, splashing some water on his face with sluggish movements, trying to cool off his burning eyes or clear away the redness on the right side of his face. The water helped, however little, and he felt marginally better, more clear-headed at the very least.

Of course, with his senses now unimpaired, he was able to hear the yelling.

At first, it just sounded like some general voice - vaguely Thomas, but could also just be a stock audio of a man shouting into a microphone. Just under that, though, when Roman blinked tightly and focused a little more, was a faint gravel, oh-so-familiar, one that matched neatly with a grinning face and easy banter - Virgil. Virgil was yelling.

Roman dried his face roughly, irritating his skin more, and zoned out completely as he waited in front of the mirror for the red blotches to fade. Virgil’s voice faded in and out, sometimes stopping entirely. Roman couldn’t tell if someone else was interrupting him or if he was just that out of it.

Finally, after what felt like an hour of choppy-but-definitely-not-pleased dialogue and the sound of waves and misplaced bits of the conversation from earlier washing over his head, myriad colours and shapes dancing across his vision, Roman glanced back up at the mirror.

He looked normal - or, well, the normal from the past few months. Before that, there might’ve been a little more colour in his cheeks, or light in his eyes. He smiled, just to test it, and found his smile both reassuring and wholeheartedly wretched. Pretty, yes, enough to fool anyone looking, including himself - but just that. Pretty. Nothing behind it, no real emotion.

Roman straightened his sash. He could work with pretty, right?

“Don’t touch me!” shouted Virgil’s muffled voice, and Roman opened his door.

The first person he saw was Remus, lounging on the sofa cross-legged, his smile just as deranged as usual but his eyes pinched, like he was making a real effort to keep up his... peppy attitude. God, Roman could relate.

Then Patton and Logan, who both brightened upon seeing him, if you could call relief brightening. They were standing next to each other, but several feet apart - almost like they were ready to move, hold someone back. Patton wore a peacemaking smile that was obviously slipping off his face, his glasses sliding down his nose. Logan looked significantly more composed, his hands clasped behind his perfectly straight back (the only straight thing about him, Roman thought automatically) instead of hovering, like Patton’s. Like Remus, his mouth was set in a line normal for him, but his eyes were lidded slightly, not quite glaring but certainly not approving.

And then, of course, like the centerpiece in an odd stage, Virgil and De- Janus. Janus’ stance was defensive, pulled back with his hands raised by his sides. Virgil’s stance was none of that - he’d leant forward, hands thrown out beside him, gesturing wildly. Janus’ face was unreadable, eyes conveying some sort of sorrow, possibly, but mouth set in a classic smirk as he met Virgil’s eyes.

Virgil looked absolutely furious.

Roman’d seen him angry, sure, plenty of times. A lot of the time directed at him. But he’d never seen Virgil truly upset. Like end-of-the-world, life is over, “I’m going to stab you to death with a kitchen knife” upset.

Roman stepped into the living room. Patton threw him a brief smile - a real one, not a “please don’t kill each other on the carpet” smile. Logan gave him a nod, and raised one eyebrow in a silent question, which Roman answered with a smile. His fake smile, but a smile nonetheless, and Logan didn’t seem to mind.

Virgil barely seemed to register that he was even there, continuing whatever point he had started. Roman heard a lot of words, angrily shouted, but none of them that he hadn’t already thought about.

Janus glanced over at him quickly, almost unwilling to look away from Virgil, and gave him a tiny smile, or just the ghost of one. Roman felt a tiny shred of guilt fall away from his chest.

Sudden movement caught his eye, and then Remus was next to him. His smile was gone, and instead of looking insane and slightly worried, he just looked like... well, like Roman.

Back in the beginning, right after the Split, both Roman and Remus were told, separately, that they tended to mirror each other. Completely subconsciously, one would copy the tiny mannerisms of the other. According to Logan, it was painfully obvious, especially when they stood next to each other.

Some far-off part of Roman’s brain wondered if he was doing that now.

“They’re fighting,” Remus said.

“To answer your question, I do have eyes,” Roman responded instantly, forcing down a panicked wave of nostalgia and memories of Thomas’ carpet on his face.

Remus didn’t laugh, but the side of his mouth did quirk up a little bit, and Roman felt like they were kids again, watching Logan and De- Janus debate.

“Oh please, like you’d know anything about being honest with feelings-”

There went that happy thought.

“How long have they been like this?” Roman asked, in part to distract himself from how dry his mouth was all of a sudden.

Remus screwed up his face. “Ugh, time. Long enough for a horse to bleed out.”

Roman blinked at him.

“Like two or three hours. You know I suck at time. We both do.”

Roman had to suppress his flinch at that one, turning his gaze back to the two in the center of the room. “Two or three hours? And they’re still going like this?”

“Oh, you should’ve seen Virgil when he first found out. Entertaining stuff,” Remus said, but it lacked his usual screech of laughter.

“Has anyone tried to interrupt?”

“Almost got decked.”

Roman sighed. “If I asked to talk to... Janus. Alone. Would Virgil kill me?”

“No. You’re the only one he hasn’t actively screamed at.”

“I was in my room this entire time, of course he hasn’t-”

“Or about,” Remus continued. Roman avoided his eyes, suddenly finding the ground very interesting. “In a negative way.”

Remus nudged his shoulder, and headed back for the sofa. Roman didn’t have time to shove away the feelings box that time - but he did have the foresight to hide his reaction to it.

“Janus!” he called, before he could talk himself out of it. Both Virgil and Janus paused, and suddenly Roman had four pairs of eyes on him - Remus was fiddling with some kind of string contraption that Roman really hoped wasn’t going in his room later. “Can I - can I talk to you? Alone?”

Janus looked back at Virgil and then to Roman again, his expression a closed door, and took a step towards him. Roman gestured to his room, and Janus made a beeline for it without hesitation. By the time Roman was closing the door, Patton had already clasped his hands on Virgil’s shoulders.

The last thing Roman saw before he shut the door was Virgil’s face, utterly heartbroken.

“If he asks you to pick a side, don’t,” Janus said the moment the handle clicked.

“Huh?” Roman responded, very eloquently. “Oh! Uh, sure?”

“It’s- he’s already mad at Patton. And that’s my fault.”

“It’s really not,” Roman responded instantly. Janus gave him an expectant look. “I assume he’s mad at Patton for... being your friend? Or something. And that’s fine, I don’t know what happened, but it’s not your fault, right? ‘Cause Patton made that choice and he seems to be sticking with it, and that’s his choice, not yours. So- yeah.”

Janus looked absolutely baffled, and Roman realized all in a rush that nothing he had just said made any sense, but Janus interrupted him before he could say anything.

“I- thank you, Roman. I appreciate it,” he said softly, and wow, did he actually understand any of that?

“No problem,” Roman said, rushing on. “I wanted to apologise. I didn’t - I shouldn’t have made fun of your name. It was mean, and I was lashing out, and I’m really sorry, and it’s actually a really cool name and I didn’t know you were into mythology-”

“Roman.”

Roman shut his mouth so fast there was an audible click.

Janus looked slightly pained, glancing around the room awkwardly. His tongue was moving inside his mouth, but he wasn’t saying anything, like he was thinking of the right words. Roman toyed with his fingers nervously, waiting.

“Okay,” Janus said, and Roman’s head shot up. “I accept your apology, even if I think it was unnecessary.”

“I-” Roman began, but Janus held up a hand to cut him off.

“I apologise too. Comparing you to Remus was low blow, and it didn’t make much sense anyway. Neither of you are evil. You’re nuanced.”

“We weren’t,” Roman mumbled.

“You are,” Janus repeated, frowning. “Years of personal growth have that effect.”

Roman smiled faintly. “Thank you.”

“Just common courtesy-”

“Not for that. But that too, I guess.”

Janus met his eyes, and they shared some kind of look, before he looked at the door again, sighing.

“I guess I should get back to that.”

“I can ask him to calm down.”

“It won’t work, and he has a right to be upset,” Janus said, pointedly avoiding Roman’s silent question. “You should sit with Remus. Make it obvious you don’t want to be involved, and we part as neutral.”

Roman frowned a little bit - neutral certainly didn’t sound good - but nodded anyway.

Janus opened the door.

(stop reading here to avoid the AngstTM cliffhanger and come up with your own ending :7)

(i can’t put another break so we’re using parentheses babey!!)

They stepped into the living room, eyeing Patton, Logan, and Remus, who all wore different shades of “distinctly guilty”.

The room was quiet.

Virgil was nowhere in sight.

#sanders sides #sanderssides #sanders sides fic #thomas sanders #ts fic #ts spoilers #roman sanders #janus sanders #remus sanders #virgil sanders #roceit #tw angst #stressed writes shit #longpost

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