#this is where I need to practice better habits ig

[royrockstone]

Some of these ig :)

Roman + 😃 , 🐈 , 🎡 , 🎭

Kendall + 📿 , 🧡

Shiv + 🐈 , 😨 , 🌘

I hope I'm doing this right, I usually don't do these hc/ask game things but I just finished honesty and it was delicious so...

(also sorry for making you think about roman being happy)

Roman

hc + 😃 for a happiness-themed headcanon

omg this is tough... ty for apologizing bc this is a hardship...

i think roman thought of logan as the font of all happiness. i think, after logan's gone-- it's not that roman stops being able to feel happy or that the world has gone grey or whatever-- it's more that he can no longer trust the feeling of happiness, if it doesn't come from logan. i think logans death so subtly but completely unmoored him that happiness would start to feel wrong or traitorous.

hc + 🐈 for a pet/animal-themed headcanon

i mean why write a hc in a tumblr post when could've had a dog exists.

buuut i think roman probably shouldn't have a pet because he is just not responsible. BUT he would be capable of lavishing tremendous love on one periodically, if there were one in his life. i could see him being in a semi-sham relationship with a woman where neither of them is at all happy, and delaying the breakup bc she has like. a cute cat.

i can also very clearly imagine roman being incredibly emotional and irrationally angry about his pets. like he told shiv to feed his fish while he was away at military school and then he gets back and he's like "you clearly didn't feed my fish every day they look all pale and sad this is why you'll be a terrible mother"

hc + 🎡 for a hobby-themed headcanon

i think he's mostly a passive hobby person. going to the movies, etc. i think active hobbies feel embarrassingly earnest and also middle class to him. i could see an older roman having some kind of rich person conspicuous-consumption based hobby (collecting amusingly ugly but expensive paintings, maybe?)

hc + 🎭 for an arts-/crafts-themed headcanon

i think a lot about the 'roman wrote a screenplay' throwaway line, and my final judgment is that roman probably has the capability to write cleverly, but lacks all the work ethic and compassion and interest in others that would make a good screenwriter. i am also a 'roman secretly wishes caroline had put him in ballet lessons' truther. i think that's for aesthetic reasons plus the vague sadomasochism of a ballet master with a troublesome student being very gerri-esque and appealing, and i don't think roman would have ever acted on that wish.

Kendall

hc + 📿 for a faith-themed headcanon

im sure he had a TM phase, a Buddhist phase, maybe a Kabbalah phase back when that was a thing, but he also can't help but subordinate any belief he has to his larger belief in, like, The Market, and he lacks the commitment to stick to any one belief about the nature of the universe or his own spiritual practice.

he clearly believes in God, but not in any helpful or constructive way. he needs God in the sense that he needs the domineering presence of a belief in something overwhelmingly bigger than himself, which is why logan was able to be his godhead for a while. but he also clearly wants to believe that sins get punished and expunged, that he can have a clean slate and a clear conscience again, and he's yet to find any force that can really offer him that.

hc + 🧡 for a friendship-themed headcanon

kendall is the only sibling who lets people get somewhat close to him, for better or for worse, and that puts people like stewy close enough to see everything that's wrong but never close enough to help him (and maybe stewy just isn't interested enough to attempt to help anymore) when kendall tried to get stewy in bed with waystar, im sure every single one of stewy's instincts were like Do Not Do This and kendall was like "dude. name one good reason why you shouldn't be i the kenny business" and stewy was like "well you have half an eating disorder and an entire coke habit, and your rickety aging family business is held together with debt and duct tape"

(i kind of want to extend my kendall pov chapter from eat what's rotten into a full fic one day, because i like thinking about stewy's view of the roy dysfunction/the collective family ed.)

Shiv

hc + 🐈 for a pet/animal-themed headcanon

im team shiv resents mondale. i think she doesnt even like the image of having a dog-- nothing appeals to her about the christmas card with a big, handsome purebred. i think she internally sentenced herself to doing something nice for tom because she felt bad about something or other and next thing she knew they had a dog. i think shes disgusted by them being dumb, and undiscriminating, and messy. see again couldve had a dog

hc + 😨 for a fear-themed headcanon

i think shiv is mostly afraid of germs and her father. there's a lot of talk in the show that infantalizes shiv-- the pretend post office story connor tells, 'she sees monsters from piles of laundry on the floor' or whatever, 'he built you a playground and you think it's the world'. and it feels like it's just rank misogyny, and in many ways it is, but also that language suggests something that is true. shiv has a polished adult exterior, and hides it all well, but she is, as much as her brothers, still a petrified child who perpetually thinks she's in trouble with daddy. and i dont think the people around her completely see or acknowledge that, but they are dimly aware of it.

hc + 🌘 for a night-themed headcanon

insomniac shiv is very close to my heart. i like the idea that she thinks shes stronger than other people because she functions with very little sleep. like she was that person in college who was like 'ive slept five hours in the past three days and im going to a party tonight and ill have my midterm turned in before that'

#finally done with this! sorry #will rb the ask game again in case anyone else wants to indulge me uwu

[mooifyourecows]

I’m about to move cross country for college, what do you think helped you the most in your cross country move? I’m feeling really unsure about the college I’m going to but I want to go I just don’t feel like it’s good enough for ME ya know. Like I could go somewhere better but this school has everything I want, it’s just a lower level than I want ig. 🤷‍♀️ idk man

I dunno if you're looking for more practical information like "bring your social security card and other important documents you might need" or what but since you seem to be having tumultuous thoughts about the idea of the actual moving and leaving behind your old home, let's talk about that.

I think a super important thing to remember is that nothing is permanent. I feel like when we were younger, all the adults made everything seem so set in stone, right? Like you have to make every important decision about the rest of your life while you're a teenager and once you've locked that in, there's no going back. Even the idea of buying a home, getting married, etc was touted as this big uber vital step that you absolutely CANNOT fuck up or else next thing you know you're thirty and living in your mom's basement and a total deadbeat and nobody takes you seriously, womp womp

But the opportunity to change your mind and do something else never stops coming to you, no matter what you've done, no matter how old you are, no matter where you've gone. You always have the chance to do something different.

If you marry someone and realize you don't want to live the rest of your life with them, you can get divorced. It's not a shameful act. You shouldn't make a habit out of it, because yes, hardship can come hand in hand with something like that, but it is possible. It is available.

If you buy a house that you realize isn't good for you/you can no longer afford, you can sell it. You don't have to keep it forever. You're not given only the one chance to buy a house so you have to wait and be picky to make sure it's THE house. There's no such thing as your "forever home" unless that's the home you WANT and have the means to stay in forever. If you have the ability to buy a home, you can just do that. And then sell it and move somewhere else. It's a PROCESS, lemme tell ya, but it's doable.

If you choose one career path and later decide you hate it or it's not living up to your expectations you can just quit, and find a new path to follow. It might be difficult starting from the bottom again but you can do it. You don't have to choose just one job to do until retirement. Be an accountant for five years, then go into aviation, then mow lawns for a bit, babysit, write the next hit novel, become a pharmacist, then manage a Kohls. Do whatever. Whenever. Until you're ready to be done with it all.

If you go to this college for a bit and decide that it's not the right fit, you can just go to another college. You can move to another place. You can start over. Or start in the middle if you're able to carry over things from your last experience. It's never too late to do that kind of thing. Don't stress yourself out about whether or not you made the right decision because these decisions are so easily remade. Go to this school, do the base level and then if you think you need more, go do more. It's admirable to have degrees from multiple schools. It's impressive to have many accolades. There's no such thing as too much school. No future employer is going to look at your resume, see you did 8 years of school instead of 4 and think that it's a bad thing, like you're a flip-flopper who doesn't know what you want out of life.

Don't be scared to make big decisions. Five years ago, the thought of leaving my home state was unthinkable. When my brother would encourage me to consider moving somewhere new, I was adamant about how there was no way, no how i could/would do something like that. Then I made a spontaneous decision to buy a house i only saw online and move 1,600 miles away from my home town and everything i've ever known and I don't regret it. Not even a little bit. Even the things that i miss are overshadowed by how much better I feel here.

You can and should make big decisions about your life! And then make them again and again and again until you're finally in that place that you feel comfortable and happy to call your life. I know that it's expensive and wildly unfair how difficult it is for people who aren't insanely rich to be able to do those things but hey, I believe in you.

Don't let your doubt about "what if i did this instead" ruin the path you're on right now. Maybe in two years, you won't even want to pursue the career you're considering right now anyway. I haven't met a single person who stuck with their first plan right out of high school. They all changed their minds or fell into a newfound passion or opportunity.

It's not lost or wasted time. Cherish every moment. Even if you're going to change your mind in a year or two, there's still value in what you're doing right now. You're experiencing things that are unique to these choices you made. You're going to meet people you wouldn't meet if you went to that other school. Take advantage of that

And have fun!!!! You should always be having fun! Whatever your age or what you're doing in your life, find a way to have fun. Do something stupid and silly. You are going to a new place, with all new people. You can be whoever you want there! You can completely change your style or your personality. Go see new things! New nature, new architecture. Learn some stuff, not just from your school, but from the environment, the locals.

I believe in you and I hope you have an exciting and wonderful time in your new place in the world. Sorry if this answer is totally not the kind of information you were looking for, it's been like 3 years since I moved so I've mostly forgotten all the small details about that process lol. Get your address changed at the post office. Get a new ID soon after you move. If you don't have a car, look immediately into public transport and how you can access it. Learn to care about the weather because chances are, it's gonna be different and strange and suddenly relevant. Look up local plants/insects/animals so you know what you're dealing with in terms of irritants/pests/possible encounters. Get a new doctor and have a check up. Etc, etc

And good luck!

[burnwater13]

Grogu had asked his dad if he could get a speeder bike of his own. He thought it would be a practical way for him to get around. He thought it would it be a smaller target than the pram. He thought he would look really cool and could go really fast… that’s when his dad said, “No.” 

At least the Mandalorian hadn’t said, “Never.” By the way, cold comfort is still comfort. Grogu realized that Din Djarin had to get used to the idea. When Grogu looked back at their adventures the Mandalorian must have thought that speeder bikes were a lot of trouble. People still got shot at by Imps using them. Din still fell off them, like that time on Tatooine. Oh right, those times on Tatooine. 

But it would be different if Grogu had a speeder bike. He’d promise to be really careful. He’d get a safety helmet. He’d wear a brightly colored jacket so people could see him… Or he could wear something that helped him blend into their surroundings better.  He could fly it much lower than most people because he was smaller than most people. He could… stop talking about it because his dad now had a pounding headache. Sure. Fine. Whatever. 

But Grogu wasn’t going to let go of his quest that easily. Nope. 

The next time they visited Nevarro City, Grogu asked High Magistrate Karga’s protocol droid who made or sold speeder bikes in the town. They didn’t know, but offered to ask the Anzellans. The Anzellans said they didn’t know either, but they offered to ask around. Their contacts asked the Marshal and IG-11-M found him at the market place with his dad. Dank Farrik!

“Citizen Din Djarin. Citizen Din Grogu has requested information on speeder bike sellers and manufacturers. At the current moment there is only one person who custom makes speeder bikes on Nevarro. Their name is Snig. They can be found on the street of Makers, approximately thirty meters to the north of the junction with the street of Sellers. Is that sufficient information?”

The Marshal waited for the Mandalorian to reply and Grogu thought that was a good opportunity to escape, until his dad stepped on the hem of his coverall and trapped him. 

“Yes. Thank you, Marshal. Sorry to have distracted you from your duties.” 

Din wasn’t looking at the Marshal while he was speaking. Nope. He was staring directly into the center of Grogu’s brain. Grogu could feel it and it did not feel good. 

“You are welcome, Citizen Din Djarin. I will be on my way.” 

The former assassin droid walked away at a sedate pace and Grogu wished that he could have followed suit. He wasn’t trying to be naughty or anything like that. He just had a simple question and now that he had his simple answer they could go back to shopping at the market. He was sure that he needed a new coverall now, given the tear that was forming where the Mandalorian was standing on it. 

“Grogu, we’ve been over this more than once. No speeder bikes. You are too small to control one. They require a lot of focus and the ability to perform your own maintenance. We have other things to focus on right now.”

His dad wasn’t wrong, even if everything he said cut Grogu to the quick. Sure, he was small. There was no denying that. But all that meant right now was that people could step on his coverall and keep him from doing what he needed to do. And everything needed skill to operate and maintain. Even the preserver had needed that and all Grogu did was put in an extra large jar of frogs to chill the liquid they were in so he could have a refreshing drink later that day. What was the big deal. 

“Mando! Little One! Have you seen the new murals? They were just finished. I think you’ll like them. The City Council proposed that we do something to honor you and the little guy for all the things you’ve done to help us. Come on! You’ve got to see it!” 

Greef Karg… High Magistrate Greef Karga had appeared out of nowhere, which was his habit. He seemed very happy and Grogu was glad that he’d appeared just at that moment. It was a great distraction and his dad had finally taken his foot off the hem of Grogu’s coveralls. 

“Sure. Lead the way.” His dad replied as he quickly picked Grogu up.

The High Magistrate lead the way. 

“I’ve got to tell you Mando, the artists who put this mural together did a great job. I think you’re going to be very proud.”

Grogu heard his dad make some sort of noncommittal sound as they walked and sighed. It sounded nice. A big painting showing stuff his dad did. Getting rid of Moff Gideon. Getting Rid of the pirates. Bringing the Mandalorians there to act as protectors, even if that didn’t last for a long time. Yup. His dad deserved a mural. 

A few minutes later they were standing outside of the Nevarro City Civic center and there it was. Five meters tall and fifteen meters long and it showed all sorts of moments from Din Djarin’s adventures. 

His dad walked him down the whole length of the mural and paused several times and Grogu coo’d to him at various details, like Kuiil helping them with the blurrgs and IG-11 when he was set up to be a nanny and the time Grogu saved them all from the Fire Trooper. And the time Grogu healed the High Magistrate. And the time Grogu saved his dad from the Mudhorn.

“That’s when it all started. You knew he was special then.” The High Magistrate said as he patted Din Djarin on the back. 

“Look, we even have Grogu doing the magic hand thing.” Greef pointed to another scene.

Grogu giggled at that. The High Magistrate asked him to do the ‘magic hand thing’ all the time. He almost never needed that kind of help. It was a funny little joke between them now.

“Okay, kid. When do the shops on the street of Makers close? I think Grogu needs his own speeder bike.”

What?! Yippee! 

Grogu whispered softly, ‘Love Dad’, to the Mandalorian. 

Who responded, as anyone might have expected, “I know.”

#calendar prompt a day #the mandalorian #grogu #din djarin

[qsphyxias]

any passing tips? congrats!

first of all, i love your username

second of all, thank you

third of all, i have so many get ready

warning: this is for transmasc people because i don't know any transfem people and im not transfem so i cant give my input on that, this is for if you want to be cis-passing, probably enforcing a little toxic masculinity honestly, also this is heavily based on my own experiences so far so this may not apply to everyone. and like i said, this is for people who want to be cis-passing, the tips are kind of aggressive.

first! something reallly important i learned about binding; flat chests are not super duper natural, though it still passes, it's still not as natural as a cis guys' chest because!!! guys have pecs. seriously, if you see small bumps under your binder, that is fine, actually, it may be better than a flat chest. flat chests are fine too, but tbh having small bumps as pecs is more convincing.

wear the waistband of your pants on your lower hip

for stance, put your hands in your pocket and slouch your back. if you want, try to walk with the tips of your toes aiming to the opposite sides of each other?? like, an opposite catwalk

take up more space, if you have a backpack, hold on the straps and bring them closer to your chest

like this ^^

lower your voice, it's okay if it sounds weird or fake, just fucking do it. you have to be confident, look confident, and even smell confident. don't think, just do. it'll be easier for it to be more natural that way.

say stuff like, "nah, bro, bruh, my bad, yo" be really chill, and really confident but not overconfident. i usually just act like a stoner or a fuckboy, or if it helps, just kinda watch what cis guys do and absorb those traits, and mimic them. that's what i do.

don't have too many manners, but like, apologize when you need to. if you bump into someone in the hallway, give them a quick nod or acknowledgement and keep going, or pretend you didn't see anything. if it's an awful bump, then ofc apologize but if not, just brush past them.

if you have a resting bitch face, that's bonus points. don't make too many facial expressions or any exaggerated tone while you talk. your face should have a neutral facial expression, like a bored, focused, tired, or occasionally smiling expression when your friend has something funny or hilarious. don't suppress your feelings, just change how you probably look when you are expressing those feelings, at least to an extent.

this happens a lot to me but like, when i'm really in the zone, or when im laughing, my voice tends to go higher pitched, and this is the case for maybe a few months but one you practice deepening your voice and changing your mannerisms, it'll go away because you'll go into habit.

also! a tip to lower your voice; when you wake up in the morning, make sure that the first word you say after you wake up is really low, because that helps set the bar and the octave of where you will start speaking in for the rest of the day.

idk if this actually helps but i don't ever drink water and that makes my voice rlly raspy in the morning, i'm convinced thats why it's so easy to skip a few notes down into a lower voice but like idk you should still drink water (and apparently when you're on T, you need to drink a lot of water)

also, another thing, start speaking from your chest and your stomach, not your nose- if that makes sense? sometimes i think it's not even about the tone, it's literally about the depth of your voice. so like, just make your voice heavier ig? but if you're in high school like me, don't make it too deep because you're supposed to be having voice puberty right about this point (i usually throw in some fake and some real voice cracks but idk if that helps or not, it's just fun)

if you're worried about height, which tbh i don't think is much of a problem, you can buy those gel shoe lift thingies and hide them in your shoe

i'm gonna be honest with you, being fashionable is seen as feminine, and it really sucks, but that doesn't mean you have to stop looking fashionable if you want to be seen as a guy, if that makes sense? cis guys usually just wear sweatpants and 7-day old hoodies, they don't have much of a style (in high school at least) but nowadays there are more fashionable guys. just, know that if you want to look more fashionable and like, really good, it will make you look a little less cis passing.

but tbh this is not super true, it's just from my experience

painting your nails is fine. mild jewelry is fine.

probably better to use men's deodorant, shampoo, conditioner etc.

consume a lot of media with heavily masc characters, aka men that you look up to/favourite characters, etc. just so you can take in their traits and hopefully raise yourself to be more masculine.

have a big group of guy friends to blend in, otherwise, you can just be that gay guy in a group of girlfriends(but you'll be the token gay friend, and honestly it's not great), but tbh i suggest having a bigger group of guy friends, or just have one trusted guy friend. trust me, this is crucial. (at first it was crucial, now idk)

another thing to make sure, make sure that guy friend doesn't know you're trans, and thinks you're a cis guy. trust me on this, you need one guy friend. just one, and you're set for life.

girls typically can tell if you're trans, and it's a higher percentage to get misgendered by them rather than guys bc they just dont care ig.

ANOTHER THING!! this is kind of a stupid tip, but another passing tip is to literally not care. throw away any self-esteem, any worries about whatever you're doing, but at the same time be mildly aware. be in the habit.

if you do get misgendered, don't say "my pronouns are actually__" instead say, "huh? im a guy."

saying "my pronouns are" heavily imply that you're part of the lgtbtq+ community and guys might make fun of you for it.

^ this doesn't apply if you're talking to lgbtq+ people.

if a guy sits next to you, don't get nervous. just manspread lol.

try to make yourself more comfortable around guys, even if it's tough.

guys are going to want to do a cool handshake as a greeting if they feel like they're your closer friend so get ready for that

if someone deadnames you, look confused and ignore them (don't get defensive, unless necessary)

if someone asks why you're in the guy's locker room/bathroom, look confused (don't get defensive)

^^ when you walk into the guys' bathroom, walk in with your guy friend, don't be nervous, act natural.

this is just a disclaimer, i'm super biased so warning for that below.

there are basically two choices to have when you want friends as a transmasc/trans guy

have a (small or big) group of lgbtqia2s+ friends who have been through it, and understand your own gender struggle, it's a higher chance they will never misgender you because they know how it feels.

- they are definitely more fun, and better than the other choices

- you can find these people in an lgbtq+ club or you can hunt them down

have a group of friends that have a majority of guys or just have one friend that is a dude. they will not misgender you, they will not even think about it because they see you as their "pack"

- but there are consequences for this, you will probably have to sell your soul because there's a chance, they are probably homophobic or transphobic, not a huge chance, but still a chance

- they will attack you in a playful but painful way

- you will absorb their toxic (masculinity) traits (they're not all toxic)

- but you will also absorb their passing masculine traits

do not be friends with cis, straight girls unless you are 100% sure they are true allies, and see you as who you are — there are people like that, but they are r a r e (this only applies if they know you're trans)

^^the she/they's don't count, the she/they's are awesome (sometimes)

- if you do decide to be friends with cishet girls, they will likely infantilize you (my own bias and experience)

^^this doesn't apply if you already have cis girl-friends that you've known for a long time and you know they respect you and support you.

- the cishet girls (who know you're trans) will not treat you like a guy, they will treat you like another friend that's a girl (based on my own experience, it's not great)

(again, this is just my own bias, and based on my experience)

THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE THOUGH!! I made these observations based on this one girl that was basically a piece of shit to me, we're not friends anymore dw (also this is outdated)

#passing tips #[💬.chat? with me?]

[lady-literature]

for us to collide (part 4)

anyway who actually expected me to end this thing in 4 chapters lol

rip me ig

Read on Ao3 | part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 (final) | deleted scene

After the not-so-impromptu interrogation courtesy of her friends (because there was no way they hadn’t planned that, it was too coordinated) Robin doesn’t stop by for two weeks.

Which is… fine. Marinette is plenty busy anyways. The extra time she has free now that she isn’t entertaining a bratty vigilante, goes to more productive uses of her time. Like watching bad horror movies with her friends and jeering at the horrible acting and special effects.

(Red Hood stops by in the middle of watching Grizzly Rage and proceeds to rant for twenty minutes about ‘shitty, unrealistic blood splatters’. Marinette has long since passed the point of being worried about it.)

So, yeah. She doesn’t see Robin.

But Damian, oddly enough, seeks her out.

It’s early, and there isn’t anyone else in the studio right now which means Marinette has her music blasting and she’s humming along as she hand paints silk for Clara’s dress. It’s loud and she’s in her zone, so it’s only by Tikki warning her that she realizes someone entered her sanctuary.

Her eyebrows raise when she sees who it is.

“Uh, bonjour Damian," she greets confusedly, reaching over to lower the volume on her speakers. "I hadn’t expected to see you here. Is there something you need?”

He stops before her workstation, only slightly bigger than the ones the rest of her staff use due to the sheer amount of open commissions she normally has. She has an actual office on this floor, but Chloé uses it more than she does. Marinette likes the open space and being around her designers more than she likes the privacy.

His eyes catch on the two bouquets of flowers she’s yet to take home, neither of which have even begun to wilt—and likely won’t. (She’ll have to take them home soon before people start asking questions.)

“I was called here by Father, but he’s currently indisposed. I’ve been told to wait.”

She waits a moment for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she asks, “So you came to visit me?”

“Yours is the only tolerable presence to be found.” His lips purse, and he crosses his arms. “And that includes that imbecile Drake who is no doubt still in his office like the pitiful insomniac he is.”

Her tongue is already halfway around a joke about excuses—she didn’t befriend Felix for nothing, okay? She knows how people like Damian work—when she realizes what he just said.

“Wait. Tim’s been here all night?”

Damian snorts. “He certainly didn’t return to the manor.”

She’s out of her seat in an instant, frowning and muttering up a storm as she rummages through the storage cubes pushed up against the far wall. She has a blanket, pillow and plain cotton shirt in her hands before Damian registers that she even moved.

“I’m going to kill your brother,” she says simply. “Would you like to come with?”

She’s gotten closer to Tim since working in Wayne Tower. He’s a notorious recluse and rarely leaves his office when he’s in the building, but Marinette makes it a point to visit him during lunch and before she leaves for the night.

He isn’t one of her Waynes, but he is a Wayne and her Waynes love and care for him so there’s not much of a difference really. She does like to think they might be something close to friends at this point though. And if the way Tim comes down to visit whenever he ventures out of his office means something, she might even be right.

Another thing that should be noted, is that Marinette is very much a ‘ride or die’ kind of person when it comes to the people she cares about. She will ruthlessly bully her loved ones into taking better care of themselves on threat of death because she is the semi-hypocritical mom friend and damn proud of it.

Damian looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the items in her hands and the determined set to her jaw and says, “Of course.” Then he’s plucking her things from her hands, offering her his arm and saying, “Shall we?”

Marinette laughs as she loops her arm with his. “We shall.”

***

She spends ten minutes scolding Tim before wrangling him onto the couch in his office and wrapping him up in the blanket so tightly he’d need to be an escape artist to get out of it. He tries to struggle anyway, but Marinette has too much practice at this and he doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Damian stands at her shoulder and smirks the entire time, eyes dancing with amusement as she forces the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to take a fucking nap. Then, she’s treated to the sound of his surprised laughter as she begins switching out all of Tim’s regular coffee for magic-decaf—not that Damian knows it’s magic.

(By the devilish smirk playing at his lips, she’s starting to think that maybe Damian really is just as sadistic as Duke and Jason say he is.)

***

Damian starts dropping by more often after that (read: starts dropping by at all). Not that Marinette minds. She quite likes his company, actually.

He normally stops by first thing in the morning when Marinette is the only one in the workshop, walking in like he owns the place. For the first couple days, he asks about Ladybug and the rest of Paris’ Court, claiming that he’s curious about them.

She answers them, but only as far as she’d answer them for any reporter and is careful not to give away any sensitive information not known to the public. He gets a bit frustrated at one point, complaining that she must know more, but she stays stubbornly silent about it and, sometimes, steers the conversation deftly to the Great Bat and his Flock instead.

He eventually stops asking about the Parisian superheroes and instead their morning conversations turn to a thousand random things. Complaints and anecdotes and a silly back and forth between the two.

Marinette’s never been much of a morning person but having Damian there to keep her company is… nice.

She almost finds herself looking forward to mornings now.

***

When her Waynes learn that she’s started a food kitchen and makes a habit of spending her weekend there, they immediately insist on joining her, despite her protests.

“You guys really don’t have to do this,” she says even though the three of them are already in their aprons and Cass is eyeing the boucher, Vivian, and her collection of knives with glittering interest.

Duke grins at her, “We know, M. But we want to.”

Jason finally turns back to her from where he’s been staring at the kitchen with something just shy of awe on his face. “You’re downright incredible, you know that?” he waves a hand out at the seating area, and then at the people in the kitchen assembling the healthiest and cost-efficient meals she and Felix could find after days spent researching. “I would’ve killed for something like this when I was on the streets.”

“It’s not just me who’s got this up and running-” she tries protesting but then Fiona, the woman Marinette actually put in charge of this place, is at her side and all but shoving the four of them into stations.

Marinette ends up by the pastries, like always, and she can see Jason making sandwiches. Duke's been roped into making eggs and bean casseroles and Cass, by some grace, actually ended up by Vivian and is having a blast cutting up all the meats as fast as she can.

They don’t stop until lunch, all four of them helping prepare meals for the upcoming week in bulk. After, they all go out for ice cream by the pier and Jason smears chocolate on her nose and Duke carries her around on his back when she complains about being tired.

Cass takes pictures of it all and later, Marinette gets them all printed out.

It ends up being a really good day.

***

The buzz from the charity gala and all the press regarding her and Damian’s non-existent relationship had calmed down weeks ago. There was still the odd article about Marinette being seen with her odd assortment of Waynes and the newspapers still called her ridiculous names when they got a picture, but it was about as close to normal as she gets.

The quiet lulled her into a false sense of security.

Ice Prince and Sweetheart Finally Seen on Date: Fairy Tale Romance or Publicity Stunt?

The ‘date’ in question was a coffee and lunch run for her designers and also Tim (because kwami knew he'd work through lunch if allowed).

Damian normally didn’t stay past Lilliane arriving in the morning (the poor dear was chronically late and always the last to arrive) but he hadn’t shown up until after she came that day and overcompensated by hours—which she hadn't minded. He kept to the fringes of her workspace and didn't distract her, instead focusing on his own thing. She wasn’t quite sure what he was up to, but she knew he was switching between his computer and sketchpad every so often.

(She's pretty sure he was hiding from Dick for some reason. He’s the only Wayne brother who doesn’t visit her at work, seeing as they have their bi-weekly gymnastic sessions; recently, with the addition of Mar’i, who still calls her ‘twin’ and whom Marinette still adores.)

And then lunch had rolled around, and it was Marinette’s turn to go out so she brought Damian with since he was still there.

They were out together for forty-five minutes. Tops.

“Why me?” she whines into the surface of her desk.

Damian, the asshole, just laughs at her and she can’t even be mad about it because he’s only just started laughing around her and not hiding behind so many of his walls. He laughs and Marinette knows it's precious so instead of shooting him the glower he deserves, she finds herself having to hide the smile slowly creeping on her face.

***

They’re splashed across the papers again less than a week later, only this time she has her Waynes there too.

Marinette's wearing her bright red sundress and she's somehow convinced Damian to wear a jacket with elaborate crowns and snowflakes embroidered up the sides. Because, as Chloé says: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

They see the camera this time and the photo splashed across the page the next day is of Marinette laughing with Jason’s arm slung across her shoulders as both he and Damian flip off the camera. Meanwhile, Duke and Cass stand just far enough in frame to capture their expressions of pain and amusement respectively.

(Marinette makes a mental note to order apology gift baskets for the PR department.)

There are a lot of headlines the next day about Marinette’s ‘harem of Waynes’ and how she’s a ‘horrible influence on such bright children’. She spends about ten minutes trying to decide whether she should be horrified or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it and eventually decides on both.

Adrien, the little shit, sees the headline and immediately prints it out to hang in her kitchen.

It reappears every time she tries to take it down.

***

Gotham does not smile upon daytime heroes.

Not to say that Gotham really smiles on anyone, but it’s especially vicious to those that think they’re owed anything. She’s heard the way Gothamites talk about Superman and The Flash—it’s not exactly what one would call adoring.

But Ladybug's been a daytime hero her entire career and it is not difficult to see that there's something distinctly different about the way daytime heroes and Gotham’s vigilantes operate.

Something more vicious, maybe; something more restrained.

Without the light of day and without the people’s eyes watching them at every moment, the Gotham Bats have become something else entirely.

Signal, their Daytime Protector, is especially strange.

A bat who's meta, straddling the line between day and night. The Day Patrol, trained by the night.

Sometimes, when she and Signal talk about heroing, there is such an odd type of disconnect that it throws her. Nothing horrible or major, but little things she’s sure she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t so intimately familiar with it all herself.

They don’t always talk about heroing though. After two months, Ladybug is proud to say she seems to be worming her way past his outer shell nicely. He tried so hard to keep his distance from her, but Ladybug’s always liked a challenge, and it isn’t long before she has him relaxing around her. 

Well, for a definition of relax anyway. He's still a bat after all.

But then, it’s pretty easy to get past Signal’s barriers when she’s already had practice breaking through the more stubborn bats like Robin and, to an extent, Hood. Not that Signal, or any of the bats, know that.

Which, speaking of the bats, isn’t it a bit weird she’s only met three spread across two of her alter egos? As Ladybug, she’d expect to be hounded by a few of them but the only one she’s met is Signal. She can’t decide if it’s because he’s the only one that operates in the daylight, or if they just don’t want to spook her into running or something.

Either way, they’re going to start giving her a complex. She’s heard so much about the rest of the Batfamily, and not one of them even wants to meet her? Either her?

(Maybe Marinette should ask Robin and Hood what’s up with that? The way they talk about how nosy Red Robin is, she’s surprised he didn’t drop by months ago and- is it weird that she’s offended by vigilantes not prying into her private life?

…Probably.)

***

Marinette blinks, stopping dead in her tracks.

Damian's on her fainting couch, sketchpad in his lap as he waits for her.

“Why are you wearing a beanie?” she blurts out instead of greeting him like a normal person. "You never wear beanies."

Luckily, Damian scowls at her question rather than at her. It’s a subtle but very important difference.

“Sorry,” she apologizes anyway, putting her bag down. “I haven't had coffee yet.”

He hums, then nods to her desk where she finds a steaming to-go mug. Her face lights up and she quickly snatches it, breathing deeply the lovely aroma. “You’re a godsend.”

That brings a quirk to his lips, closer to a smirk than a smile, but progress nonetheless.

After a moment, where she sips at her overly sugary monstrosity—just the way she likes it, when had Damian even noticed that?—and he continues sketching she asks again. “Okay but, I actually am kinda curious. What’s up with the hat?”

He sighs heavily, closing his pad. “It’s… better than the alternative.”

Marinette snorts. “Alternative to what? A top hat?” But instead of snapping back like she expects, he just continues to frown. Immediately, her lips turn down into a concerned frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” he grounds out and Marinette puts her coffee down. She’s just about to open her mouth and say something else when he reaches up and rips the beanie off his head.

For the second time in less than five minutes, she stops dead.

Marinette opens her mouth. Closes it. Blinks, but the scene doesn't change.

His hair is still blue.

Damian Wayne's hair is blue.

Damian Wayne’s hair is vibrantly electric blue.

Her hand shoots up to cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her giggles.

Damian’s scowl deepens. He moves to shove his ridiculous beanie back on his head but her hand snaps out before he can.

“No! No, I’m sorry I just-” she giggles again. “You looked so upset by it and you took me by surprise. I like it!”

He glares up at her, still sat on the fainting couch so it’s her who has the height advantage for once.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She rolls her eyes, the hand that wasn’t settled on his arm reaching up to touch the bright strands. It's slow enough that he can stop her, but he, surprisingly, makes no move to.

His hair is a lot softer than she expects it to be. But she supposes he didn’t use that gel stuff today, planning on keeping his hair under a hat the whole time.

“It looks good on you,” she says softly.

He snorts disbelievingly and she smacks his shoulder lightly. “It’s true! I swear you could look good in any color.” She clicks her tongue longingly. “I wish I had your skin tone. I’m too pale to wear pastels like I want.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Pastels?”

“Oh you hush,” she quips, finally pulling her hand from his hair. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, why’d you dye it blue in the first place?”

“I… lost a wager with Todd.”

She laughs, starting to move around and get ready for the day. She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled, which means she gets the whole day to create. She’s pretty excited about it.

“I should’ve guessed it was Jason’s doing.”

Damian shrugs, settling back into the cushions. He drapes himself across them in a way that’s effortlessly elegant and like he’s ready to be photographed for a magazine cover or something. Must all her friends be so pretty? It’s playing hell on her self-esteem.

“But blue is your favorite color, right? So there’s that at least.”

Damian hums. “Todd had threatened to dye it pink or some other equally garish color.”

“Hey!” she exclaims in mock outrage. “What’s wrong with pink? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair pink for ages.”

“Nothing. It’s just simply not a color I appreciate.” He makes a face. “Like orange.”

Marinette huffs, but there’s a smile on her lips. It's quiet for a moment, for long enough that she thinks the conversation's been dropped. But then-

“Why don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he repeats. “Your friends—Couffaine and… Kubdel? They both have colored hair.”

Marinette shrugs. “I dunno. Never got around to it I guess. I suppose I could do it now. Dye mine in solidarity,” she jokes. “Oh! We could match even! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I thought you wanted pink?”

“Well, yeah. But blue is nice too. Besides,” she smiles wryly over her shoulder, “you just said pink was ‘garish’.”

Damian frowns slightly, shaking his head, “On me, perhaps. But I think you’d look very fetching in pink.”

“Oh,” Marinette pauses, feeling her face grow warm at the sudden compliment. “Well- Uh, pink it is, then.”

***

(Damian watches the blush rise on her cheeks as she turns away to try and hide it. Yes, he can’t help but think, fetching in pink, indeed.)

***

Luka insists on being the one to dye her hair, citing that he’s the one who had dibs all these years, but Alix and Jason both all but demand to be there too.

Her bathroom is not big enough for all four of them to sit in.

Not a single one of them cares.

Cass and Duke ask for progress pics along with Uncle Jay, and all her Parisian friends cycle through standing at the bathroom door to see how it's going.

The constant stream of people looking at her makes her feel not unlike an animal at a zoo. (When she wryly tells this to Alix, all she gets is her friend cackling on the ground.)

But, after all the bleaching and conditioning and waiting, she stares into the mirror with soft pink hair the color of bubblegum and thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

She thinks it again when Damian walks in the next day and almost trips over his own feet.

(She’s also wearing her Robin themed sundress, complete with hood, matching boots and personal touches not found on the mass-produced version—but Marinette doesn’t know why that would be relevant.)

Her favorite reaction to her new hair color though is, by far, Mar’i’s.

Marinette doesn’t see the young Grayson until a week later when she’s invited to the monthly family dinner Alfred insists all the Waynes attend—which includes her now, apparently (she tries not to show how pleased she is by that).

She arrived with Damian, who was kind enough to pick Tim and her up from work, and Mar’i takes one look at Damian and her standing next to one another before she starts babbling excitedly about Lilo and Stitch and Angel. A character who is—apparently—Stitch’s girlfriend and the complimentary pink to his blue.

Marinette is momentarily surprised, but Mar’i’s enthusiasm is contagious and it isn’t long before the rest of the Waynes are teasingly calling them Angel and Stitch. Marinette thinks it’s all very funny and adorable.

Damian, on the other hand, most certainly does not and threatens everyone who calls him that ‘ridiculous nickname’ with graphic depictions of bodily harm.

‘Angel’, oddly enough, sticks for Marinette. She finds she kind of likes it.

***

Later, Damian asks her about nicknames.

Well, he calls them ‘asinine titles’ and doesn’t so much ask as demand she explain why she allows anyone to call her by them seeing as she has a ‘perfectly serviceable name,’ in his opinion.

Ignoring the fact that she’s heard Dick call him multiple nicknames he hadn’t protested to, she says, “Well, I guess it’s that everyone uses Marinette. A nickname is something… special. A little more personal, I guess. And, I dunno. My parents named me Marinette, but it’s nice to share something between other people. And it shows they care.”

Damian looks confused after she’s done, but also thoughtful. He doesn’t say anything to that and Marinette doesn’t really expect anything to come of it.

She's proven wrong when, a week later, Damian calls her Starling instead of Marinette.

(And the transition from Dupain-Cheng to Marinette had been enough to make her beam—this is just ridiculous.)

***

When Robin disappears a second time, Marinette doesn’t get the chance to notice his absence on her own. He’s only stopped showing up four days ago—which is longer than normal, but not unheard of—when she hears unfamiliar voices on her balcony.

Looking out, she finds three semi-familiar individuals clustered around the plate of treats she leaves out for Robin and Hood.

Nightwing and Red Robin are both stuffing their faces full of the fruit tarts she had made while Spoiler glares at them and seems to be cursing the fact that her mask covers her mouth the same way Hood always does when she makes those raspberry scones he likes.

The scene is… odd. For many reasons but most pressingly that their arrival has come out of nowhere.

“Well,” Nightwing explains when she asks, “We wanted to visit ages ago, but baby bird threatened to stab us all if we tried.”

“He’s very… particular about you,” Red Robin tacks on while Spoiler nods sagely like she hasn’t crafted some strange straw monstrosity just so she can drink tea while still wearing her mask. Red Robin has one too, but his for the aesthetic rather than out of necessity.

Marinette stares at the three of them. “That… does not explain why you are here now.”

“Robin can’t stop us now, obviously,” Red Robin says casually, like he hasn't just kicked her heart into high gear with a few words.

“What? Why?” she demands, trying very hard not to sound panicked. “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Red Robin blinks, going quiet in that way Hood and Robin do when they’re judging her just a bit. She hates this family.

“No, he’s… fine.”

“B’s just benched him for the time being,” Nightwing helpfully supplies, amusement flickering at the edges of his lips. “He’s a little too… conspicuous at the moment.”

Marinette’s shoulders relax even as her brows furrow. Conspicuous? What in the world is that supposed to mean?

“Does that mean he won’t be coming around for a while?” she asks before she can think better of it.

The three vigilantes in front of her share a look before Spoiler says, “Probably. But the gremlin’s never been one to sit still so who knows?” she smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners as she leans toward Marinette conspiratorially. “But don’t worry. We can keep you company in the meantime!”

“We’re much better company than the demon anyway. Certainly less insulting.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s an ass, for sure, but you can tell when he means it and when he’s just stumbling over himself.” Marinette smiles fondly, “For someone so dignified, he trips over his tongue quite often.”

Now the vigilantes are really staring at her. She’s starting to feel pretty uncomfortable about it all when Nightwing beams at her, jumping up from his seat to sweep her into a hug. It startles her, but she doesn’t push him away, instead laughing at the sudden affection.

“Oh you really are perfect!” he exclaims, setting her down and still grinning like an absolute lunatic.

She’s smiling, because Nightwing’s joy is infectious, but she's even more confused than before. And then, before she can ask what he means, Red Robin’s wrist computer lights up—and damn, isn’t that cool? Marinette wonders if Tikki could do something like that for the Ladybug suit—and the three are moving to swing back out into the night.

She waves them off and they all promise to visit again.

Marinette shakes her head before going back inside with the empty pastry plate and four empty mugs.

***

Damian knows of Marinette’s friends of course. It'd take more effort not to when she talks about them every chance she gets and tells him all the wild stories about their escapades and misadventures.

(They also all came up in the background check he ran on her when they first met.)

Most of her friends are exceedingly normal oddly enough. Well, they’re all mildly famous and the leaders of their various fields, but they’re just civilians.

The only exceptions being, Bourgeois, Agreste, and Graham de Vanily.

Bourgeois is a former hero like Marinette, only she doesn't seem to still be in contact with the Parisian Court. All the articles he could find spoke about how Queen Bee was deemed unfit for her mantle and later replaced by the new bee hero, Ambrosia. Agreste was caught up in the scandal of his father being Hawkmoth, but he was found innocent and ignorant of his father's crimes (something Damian made sure to confirm). He now works at and is being groomed to own the bakery Marinette's parents run, seeing as their daughter has little interest to do it herself.

And finally, Graham de Vanily, Agreste's cousin, has a history of causing trouble wherever he goes. Nothing villainous, and rarely even malicious, but there's something about him that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not everything is as it seems with the Graham de Vanily heir.

Besides those three outliers, Marinette's friends seem to be untouched by the vigilante life. Which means he thinks they must be utterly boring.

Only, when her friends start coming around to visit and drag her out for lunch or some other random outing, Damian keeps finding himself baffled by each of them.

They act strangely and with a dangerous air none of them should possess, except for Tsurugi. The questions they ask him are strange and the jokes they make have no sense. He's been warned about how he better treat Marinette so many times, he's started to lose count. (Which is ridiculous. He treats her just fine and would never intentionally harm her. What are they trying to insinuate?)

But, by far, his most memorable encounter is with Lahiffe. A veritable wolf in sheep's clothing.

Marinette is excitedly babbling about her newest idea for her summer collection, pressed up against him on the chaise and practically shoving her sketches in his face as she demands his critique and thoughts.

Her hands are waving every which way and, on more than one occasion, he has to quickly lean back so she doesn't hit him in the face.

He’s focusing on what she’s saying so much—because she has a habit of forgetting things if she doesn’t write them down and needs someone to remind her of the ideas she had at a later time—that he doesn’t even realize Lahiffe is there until he clears his throat.

Marinette jumps, almost elbowing him in the stomach. “Nino!” she shouts, springing up and flinging herself at the other man who catches her like this is something she does often.

“Heya, Nettie.”

“Wait- what are you doing here? You’re not-” she jolts back to look at Lahiffe’s amused expression. “Oh kwami, is it time already? Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry! I have to give this one thing to Publishing but then I promise we can go, okay? Like, just five minutes!”

She's already moving before she finishes speaking, sweeping up papers and rearranging files and putting things away with all the swiftness and agility of a speedster. Damian watches her go about her routine, occasionally handing her something she’s dropped or pointing out a thing she’s missed, weaving around her chaos with practiced ease.

Then she’s sweeping out of the office with a distracted “be right back!” and he’s alone with Lahiffe.

The second Marinette leaves, the man’s attention swings onto him with a strange weight. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and Damian’s hackles raise with every passing second.

He doesn’t snap at him though, because he’s one of Marinette’s friends. Insulting him would only serve to make her upset and that’s something Damian's been trying to avoid causing as of late.

“Man,” Lahiffe says at last. “Alix wasn’t kidding about the whole besotted thing, huh?”

Damian rears back, straightening up to his full height. “I beg your pardon?”

Lahiffe laughs and waves his hand about like that’s supposed to mean something. “Ah, no need to be embarrassed about it, dude. You’re far from the first of us to fall for her charms.”

“What.”

“Yeah, we've all been there. I think over half of the Paris crew crushed on her at some point, including myself. None of us are into her like that anymore, so as long as you treat her right, you got nothing to worry about."

“I’m not- I'm not interested in Marinette,” Damian tries to protest but Lahiffe just calmly steamrolls over him.

“Nah. Everyone loves Nettie. It’s universal law or something. First, there was me and Adrien, then Luka—who she actually liked back for a while there but are now practically siblings. Chloé liked her in collége, but she hadn’t really come to terms with that at the time. Alix might’ve, but she’s pretty grey-ace and fluctuates on the romance points, so who knows.

“Oh! And Nath. He also snagged a date with her, but he was an Akuma at the time so I’m not technically sure that it counts. And he’s with Marc now anyway. Thinking of adopting a kid, last I heard. Anyway- my point was: everyone loves Nettie. And don’t bother trying to fight it, because it only makes her pull of gravity worse.”

Lahiffe then claps him on the shoulder like their talk amiable and not the most confusing speech Damian’s ever heard.

And then he doesn’t even get to say anything to that because Marinette is sprinting back through the door, grabbing her jacket and bag, telling him goodbye, and dragging Lahiffe out to who knows where.

Damian stands there longer than he cares to admit trying to make the world make sense again.

***

A week and a half after she learned Robin was benched, Damian catches her staring off into space as she doodles tiny robins in the margins of her sketchbook.

He gives her an odd look when she scrambles to hide them, blushing hotly and babbling about how she’s “Just fine! Nothing to worry about! I’m just, maybe, perhaps, a little worried for a friend even though I shouldn’t be, because his family says he’s just fine and-”

He looks contemplative when he leaves that day, but he didn’t ask about her outburst, so she extends the same courtesy to him.

***

That night, Robin returns.

“What,” she says around the laughter threatening to bubble out of her throat, “are you wearing?”

Robin scowls from behind the full cowl he has on that she’s pretty sure belongs to Red Robin. It makes him look a whole ten years older and she can’t get over how ridiculous he looks. If he keeps doing stupid things with his face while wearing that monstrosity, she is definitely going to laugh at him.

“What are you wearing?” he shoots back petulantly.

She blinks in confusion, then realizes she’s still wearing her Red Hood inspired jacket right now. Tan colored fake leather with fuzzy, red inner lining, done with all the same pockets, buttons, and zippers Red Hood has on his own jacket. It looks almost exactly like the jacket she fixed for him all that time ago, except she's also added a soft, crimson hood and his own personal bat symbol stitched across her shoulder blades.

As far as things she's designed goes, this is one of her simpler ones. It's nothing like the elaborate creations she makes for the Ambrosia or Ryuko themed items.

But Red Hood was a simple kind of person, and she likes that it’s reflected in her work.

Robin doesn't seem to agree if the poorly concealed disdain on his face means anything.

“What?” she asks teasingly, “You jealous?”

He scoffs and looks off to the side. “Of course not. I simply do not understand why you’d want anything to do with that simpleton. Especially not when I know you have clothing articles referencing far superior individuals.”

She snorts good-naturedly, "What 'individuals'? You mean you?"

The way he raises his nose self importantly is answer enough, and she can't stop herself from rolling his eyes. "Well, it's certainly a start. But I'm not the only one."

"Oh, yeah? And who else is marvelous enough to stand on the same level as you?"

"Multimouse."

Her mouth goes dry, and she can tell Robin is pointedly not looking at her.

“Come inside,” she blurts in lieu of all the things she really wants to say—which are mostly just embarrassing variations of I missed you. “I can, uh, make us tea. If you want.”

It's the first time she’s ever invited him inside and she can see the small bit of shock on his face—well, what she can see of it anyway—before he schools it.

“Yes,” he says in a tone of voice that implies it was his idea in the first place. “That sounds… good.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass her by into the flat. Only instead of just walking past her, he stops halfway through the doorway and stares at her. She’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out with his hand to gently grab a lock of her hair.

“Pink suits you, by the way.”

She quirks her lips, “Yeah? You don’t think it’s… too much?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, “Absolutely not. You look…” he trails off, mouth flattening into a line and dropping his hand.

She blinks at the odd behavior. “Nice?” she offers tentatively.

He nods, but it’s a little jerky and strange. But before she can ask about it, he’s already turning to enter her flat like he owns the place, remarking about her choices of tea and if she’s finally acquired an ‘adequate teapot’.

She shakes off the moment and goes in to follow him before he wrecks her kitchen in his careless search for tea supplies.

***

MinnieMouse: COME GET YALL JUICE

and by juice i mean me

I still do not have an american license

JaneAustenStanAccount: what do we get out of it?

MinnieMouse: ???

the pleasure of my company??

also youre literally the one that invited me to watch megamind

JaneAustenStanAccount: and??

daisyduke: shut up jay

we all know youre soft for M stop tryin to play tough

MinnieMouse: this is why duke is my favorite

he’s a living callout post

swanlake: :(

MinnieMouse: second favorite

im so sorry cass ily

swanlake: :)

daisyduke: i aint even mad

JaneAustenStanAccount: I AM

guys wtf

MinnieMouse: you brought this on yourself

maybe you should be nicer to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

daisyduke: ‘get fucked jason’ -marinette 2k20

btw im omw for you now

MinnieMouse: thnx ur the best

also im bringing scones as movie snack

daisyduke: noice

swanlake: !!!

JaneAustenStanAccount: FUCK YEAH!!!

MinnieMouse: you dont get any Jay

JaneAustenStanAccount: >:(

i hate it here

***

Marinette doesn’t know a lot about Robin’s past, which she assumes is by design. Secret identities don’t lead well to handing out details and concrete information about one’s personal life.

But, she thinks, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that whatever facsimile of a childhood Robin had was about eight different levels of fucked up.

It’s in the vague allusions to ‘training’ and the scorn filled way he says the word ‘mother’. It’s in the not-quite-confusion—because whatever family he has is better now, at least—of Marinette telling him about her own parents. About the happy memories she’s shared with them, of learning to bake bread and croissants and macaroons under the loving guidance of her father and practicing delicate designs and frosting techniques with her mother.

So, yeah. She knows he’s kind of messed up and definitely checks off the childhood trauma box that’s apparently one of the requirements for being her friend.

So when Robin suddenly decides to go against everything she’s learned about him up until this point and actually share something about himself—and when that thing he shares just so happens to be a story from his childhood—well… Marinette wouldn’t say she’s prepared, but she’s not- prepared.

He’s in her kitchen, because Marinette has learned her lesson about bleeding vigilantes on her couch, and she’s pretty sure he could’ve gone back to the Cave for this, but he came here for whatever reason. (Was closer, he said. Marinette doesn’t know if she believes him.)

She’s cleaning the knife wound on his arm, and she has his cape laid out across her island. There’s a hole in it she plans on sewing back up after she finishes sewing the hole in her reckless vigilante back up.

“You need to be more careful,” she scolds. “You’re lucky this didn’t nick something important.”

“It's hardly the worst wound I’ve ever acquired,” he tells her in a tone of voice that he probably thinks is reasonable. “At seven years old I had to dig a bullet out of my side in the middle of a Himilayan snowstorm while still making it back to base with time to spare after having successfully assassinated a Russian ambassador.”

Marinette pauses where she’s smoothing the gauze onto his bicep. Her eyes flick up to his, and she sees the exact moment he seems to realize what he just told her. He’s gone utterly still beneath her hands, with terror or worry or the effort it takes not to bolt out the window immediately, she doesn’t know.

“That’s horrifying,” she tells him as she finishes securing the obnoxiously bright bandage, “Never tell me that story again.”

She then drops a kiss onto his bicep, subtly imbuing it with enough luck that it will keep off any infection—the wound was filthy when he came in, seriously, was he in a sewer?—and pats his cheek warmly before moving to clean up all her supplies.

She feels his eyes on her the rest of the night, but every time she turns to him, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. All she knows is that he seems… softer, in a way.

***

Three days after Marinette’s unexpected look into Robin’s past, she finds a box on her desk. It’s a jewelry box, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately freak out is the fact that it lacks any of the miracle box markings.

Still, she opens it hesitantly, and inside, she finds a necklace. A completely normal, non-magical necklace that’s simple and pretty and very much shaped like a tiny toy mouse.

There is no note.

***

(Lahiffe was right.

The Earth spins around the sun. The sky is blue.

Everyone loves Marinette.)

***

The necklace is obviously supposed to be a reference to her Multimouse days, but that doesn’t exactly narrow down who could have left it for her.

Or well, it does, but all the people it narrows down to don’t make any sense.

Multimouse is a badly kept secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people outside Paris don’t know about her and the people in Paris didn’t exactly recognize her off the street either.

Her Court knows, obviously, and so do the Waynes and the bats. But her Court wouldn’t leave her mouse themed gifts, they tend toward ladybugs or their own animal motif as a gift (the amount of cat and bee themed items she owns is ludicrous).

Which leaves the Waynes and the bats.

But her Waynes wouldn’t leave the gift on her desk, and they certainly wouldn’t forget to put a note, so Duke, Jason, and Cass are out.

She must stand there thinking about it too long, because then Jeremy's walking in, just as bright and early as ever.

He sees her holding the box and his face turns a strange mix of curious and outraged. “Is it your birthday? I swear, Boss if you didn't tell us it was your birthday-”

“No, Jeremy,” she says, amused despite her confusion. “That’s not for a while yet. I found this when I walked in,” she shakes the box slightly for emphasis, “but there wasn’t a note.”

“Oh.” A smile slowly spreads across Jeremy’s face. “Oh?” he purrs, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Does the boss have a secret admirer?”

Marinette blinks and- what?

“What? No. I can’t- That doesn’t-” she splutters but Jeremy just laughs and walks over to his station to start setting up for the day, leaving Marinette to her breakdown.

Because this can’t have been left by a secret admirer. That’s just crazy.

There are exactly two people who could’ve left this for her and neither of them would be an admirer of any kind. And she wouldn’t want them to be anyway because that would be stupid and ridiculous and weird.

She doesn’t like Robin or Damian like that…

Right?

***

(It’s impossible not to love her, he realizes, mostly by accident.

She loves, wholeheartedly and unafraid and so much more than Damian had ever thought one person could. She loves with a ferocity and passion no person deserves or can match.

And Damian, foolishly, loves and wishes to be loved by her anyway.)

***

There are roses on her desk the next day, potted and still healthy.

The day after that, there’s a box of expensive chocolates. Like, the kind only Adrien, Felix, and Chloé buy without a second thought. The gossip has spread far enough that all of her designers know about the gifts and probably-admirer.

On the fourth day, there is a box full of high-quality pencils and a new sketchbook, one with nice thick drafting paper, but small enough to fit in her favored bag. Her name is embossed across the front, along with her personal motif of delicate apple blossoms.

On the fifth day, she shows up to find there is only a drawing, which should point to it being Damian, but drawing-her is holding a robin in her cupped palms which cannot be a coincidence. Drawing-her also looks serene and beautiful with her mouth curved slightly and her eyes gentle and soft and Marinette is as touched by the image as she is frustrated by it.

There are hair sticks on the sixth, and delicate pins shaped like flowers on the seventh. Another stunning drawing of her on the eighth, a bottle of wine older than Master Fu on the ninth, the softest cashmere blanket on the tenth, a basket of sweet floral lotions, a glass statue of a bird in flight—she gets so many gifts, Marinette has to stop keeping count.

It’s somewhere around day six that her designers must’ve ratted on her to either Felix or Chloé because it’s not long after that, that all of her friends learn about the gifts and start being terrifically unhelpful about the whole situation.

They each try to give her advice, which would be sweet if it wasn’t all equally terrible and conflicting.

They’re also placing bets on who they think her admirer is, Damian or Robin. They’re trying to be discreet about it—which means they’re failing miserably.

Marinette, admittedly, never expected any different from them.

***

Marinette begins watching Damian in the mornings with a newfound interest.

The gifts are always there before she arrives, which means they're also there before Damian arrives, so she’s in a prime position to catch his reaction.

Or, she would be, if he ever reacted. He barely glances at them and never says anything unless the gift is particularly obnoxious, like the giant stuffed mouse she found sitting in her chair last week. (It was almost as big as she was. Adrien, Nino, and Alix had ended up on the floor from laughing so hard when they’d seen it.)

Damian almost never comments on the gift she received that day, but whenever she uses or wears something that her mysterious admirer had gotten for her, he makes sure to compliment her. Which would be  very suspicious except that Robin does the same thing.

It’s just- they’re both so frustratingly silent about it all! Marinette is this close to just grabbing one or both of them by the shoulders and just shaking until they tell the truth.

It’s driving her insane! Before the necklace appeared on her desk, she didn’t even know that she liked Robin and Damian.

And now she’s overanalyzing their nonreactions. She hates it.

It feels too much like she’s back in collège, trying to sort out her feelings for Adrien and Chat. (Who ended up being the same person—which was just very inconsiderate of him, really. The least he could do is let her angst have meaning dammit!)

And- ugh. What if she doesn't even like either of them? What if her mind is just making her think she does because the idea of them liking her was presented? What then? Or what about the fact that the two boys are also ridiculously similar when she thinks about it. What if she only likes one and is just projecting her feelings onto the other because her mind associates the two?

Oh, she doesn’t like that thought. That thought makes her feel upset and like she wants to cry into a tub of ice cream.

Nino happily indulges her and doesn't even complain when she eats her way through his stash of mint chip as she dramatically complains about stupidly confusing boys.

Honestly, she may as well be back in lycée.

***

(What Marinette does not realize in the midst of all her careful analysis of his reactions, is that it’s not the gifts he’s focused on.

When she wears the necklace and hair sticks, she misses the way his eyes linger on the slope of her neck. As she cares for her roses, she doesn’t notice the way he follows the easy nimbleness of her fingers. She uses her sketchbook and eats the expensive chocolates and doesn’t pay attention to the way he steals glances at her lips. She doesn't see the way his hands twitch when she ventures just near enough to touch.

(She exists next to him, in any form or light, and he is captivated by her very presence.)

Marinette looks, but it is in all the wrong places.)

***

Strangely enough, it’s Signal who helps her with her internal crisis—completely unintentionally and in a very roundabout way—but he helps all the same.

He’s taken an… interest, she supposes, in her magic. One that is entirely his own and has very little to do with that Bat from what she can tell.

His abilities and hers stem from different origins, but she would be lying if she said his weren’t oddly complementary to her own. His precognition abilities stemming from his photokinesis has been useful on more than one occasion regarding the experimental spell matrices she, Tikki, and Nooroo have been testing out.

The magic is normally invisible to people without a Miraculous, but Signal seems to have little trouble seeing what she’s doing, even if he can’t interact with it the way she can.

(There is also the fact that she seems… more when he is around. Days that he spends watching her do her work go by faster and smoother than when he is away. Her magic is easier, and her mind spins with ideas and creations faster.

It’s an odd phenomenon and Ladybug is looking into it.)

There has been more than one occasion where Signal had warned her of the matrix’s imminent collapse with enough time for her to prepare herself for its blowback.

The version she’s working on today is their fifth iteration. It’s supposed to pull the miasma out of the building, filter it through her and Tikki’s own magical energy, before flowing back into the brickwork. Marinette had thought of the idea while talking with Nooroo.

If she can get it to work, it will shift the misfortune into good luck and order and release it back into the environment. Then she’ll only need to cleanse strategic portions of the city in a lattice network, and the creative and destructive energies will mix from there, balancing themselves without much input from her at all.

Of course, that’s only if she can actually get it to work. It’s been almost a month and this is the fifth version and it’s already collapsed on her three times in the last hour. Signal must see the frustration on her face and has taken to trying to distract her with small talk.

She’s very thankful for it, actually. If he wasn’t doing that, she would probably start screaming right here and now, on this random rooftop in the residential district. Which would just be very startling and embarrassing for everyone involved, so. You know. Glad she doesn’t have to do that.

Eventually, she asks him, apropos of nothing, “You’re a detective right?”

He pauses, and blinks at her, likely trying to follow the train of thought that led her to that question. She assumes he did not find it because when he speaks, he still sounds confused.

“Yes? I guess that’s technically what I am.”

“So you’re good at figuring out who’s behind a crime?”

Signal only looks more confused. “Yeah? But Ladybug, what-”

“Great, so. Hypothetically, if you had two suspects for a—well it’s not a crime. A… thing? Situation. How would you figure out which one of them is actually behind the… situation?”

Signal’s lips quirk, just a bit despite his confusion. “I think I’m gonna need a little more to go on than just ‘a situation,’ LB.”

Ladybug purses her lips and stares down at the light weaving intricate patterns in the space between her palms. Slowly, carefully, she tells him, “There are items being left where a person can find them. But the identity of the person leaving them and their intentions are unknown.”

“Are the items dangerous?” he asks worriedly.

Ladybug shakes her head. “No. They're more like gifts.”

“Are the gifts unwanted or creepy? Unsettling? Threatening?”

Another head shake. “Just confusing and… thoughtful.”

“Someone is leaving you thoughtful gifts and you're worried about that… why?” Signal asks, slowly and disbelievingly. 

“It’s because I- wait! I’m not the person!” she panics, causing the magic to spark dangerously in her hands but she barely notices. “The person doesn’t even exist. It was a hypothetical question!”

Signal stares at her. She can’t see his eyes or the top half of his face, but she just knows he’s raising his eyebrow judgingly at her.

“Stop that!” she snaps. “Stop being perceptive! I have enough perceptive people in my life so knock it off!”

Signal laughs like the horrible person he is. “But don’t you need me to be perceptive? That’s like, a requirement to be a detective.”

“Stop it,” she says again, mulishly and very childish.

And isn’t that an odd thought to have? Ladybug being childish.

How novel. Ladybug has never once been childish. She can’t afford to be, because when she is behind the mask, she is all the most important parts of herself. She is the Grand Guardian, is the one who must be in control at all times because she has an entire team to keep safe and alive.

Behind the mask, she’s all of her greatest responsibilities.

But here, in Gotham and with Signal, she is none of those things to him. She is simply another hero, that is his age and very much like him in ways so few are. Ladybug, in the moments she spends with Signal, is probably the closest she has ever been to carefree while in the mask.

It’s as comforting a thought as it is terrifying.

Signal raises his hands in surrender, but his lips are still quirked in amusement. 

Ladybug regrets starting this conversation.

She regrets it even more when, five minutes later, Signal manages to pull the rest of the story from her… along with a name.

She realizes her mistake a second too late to stop herself, and then all she can do is watch.

She watches, with ever-growing horror, as Signal slowly puts the pieces together. She watches, as her whole secret identity starts unraveling around her for the first time ever. She watches, stricken, as Signal opens his mouth to speak.

And then she grabs both sides of his head and Orders him to sleep.

***

The second Marinette bespells him, she regrets it.

She was panicking, okay? And Marinette panicking is very different from Ladybug panicking and truly, she creates messes just by existing.

Nooroo flies out of his hiding place to make distressed noises at the now unconscious Signal with her, which is… actually kinda soothing, if not exactly helpful.

At least she knows she’s not the only one upset right now.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nooroo frets, flitting around her head with agitated wings. Hers aren’t much better, if she’s being honest. “What are we going to do, Guardian? He knows who you are! This is bad.”

Marinette worries her thumb between her teeth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. With a thought, she's back in her civvies and Tikki is perched on her shoulder, blinking at the scene she’s suddenly a part of.

“Well,” Tikki says, sounding far too calm for the situation. “This isn’t ideal.”

The laugh that escapes Marinette is on the edge of hysterical. “You think?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tikki repeats firmly, “But neither is it a disaster.”

Nooroo lands on her other shoulder as she kneels down beside Signal to rearrange his limbs to not be so uncomfortable. “But he's unpredictable!” he argues, curling into the side of her neck like she will hide him from the world. “We don’t know what he’ll do with this information!”

Tikki hums thoughtfully. “Then we will have to ask. There are far worse people we could have been revealed to. We're lucky it was a friend rather than foe.”

“You think so?” Marinette asks softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

She knows the Bat’s flock are good people. Many of them are her friends, or people she hopes to call friends soon.

But she doesn't know if these people Marinette calls friends could be Ladybug’s allies.

The bats hoard secrets like black holes, and perhaps they would keep hers just as well, but they could just as easily use it against her. Batman barely tolerates her presence, she can tell by the way Signal talks sometimes, and it is no small stretch of the imagination that he would use this to try and kick her out of Gotham.

Marinette cannot, as a Guardian, leave Gotham.

But more importantly, she doesn’t want to leave Gotham. It’s… her home now. Her friends are here. Her family is here. Robin and Hood and the other bats are here. Damian and all her Waynes are here.

Leaving Gotham would not only make her sick and jittery at the imbalance, but it would break her heart.

If, when Signal tells Batman, he reacts poorly, there is so much that Marinette is set up to lose. And that terrifies her.

Some of that thought process must show on her face—or perhaps Nooroo has just picked up on the turmoil in her chest—because the two Kwami are pressed on either side of her face, nuzzling and hugging as much of her as they can reach.

“We’ll make it through this, Marinette,” Tikki says firmly, no room for argument. “Don’t worry so much. Both of you. Everything will turn out just fine, you’ll see.”

***

@bluesimani @how-to-fuction-properly @chocolatecatstheron @mystery-5-5 @nickristus-dreamer @mochegato @thenillabean @animegirlweeb @novaloptr @darkdaysandfakesmiles @optimistically-pessimistic0524 @clumsy-owl-4178 @g-arya @undecisioned @smolplantmum @blackmagicforever @i-wanna-be-a-ninja @wannajointhecrabcult @paintedhope7 @redscarlet95 @roselynfey @ira-sairain @lozzybowe @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @2confused-2doanything @pepelachanel @too0bsessedformyowngood @miraculouspenta @itsmeevie01 @corabeth11 @jalaluvsu

#maribat #daminette #ml x dc #my typewriter #for us to collide

[thisdreamplace]

I'm so close to giving up on practicing the law (consciously) overall. It's like yet another habit (of conscious manifesting, living like a king in a kingdom/reality etc) that I've failed to incorporate

However, like a chronic sufferer who actually wants a way out ie who seeks a chance of living differently and not permanently not living I really don't want to give up. But I'm so disheartened of this

Ik yk what it's like, and I'm aware of how u pushed thru despite everything, and yk very well what it's like when u too were on this side

I feel like I'm caught in the claws of a beast that grows larger and larger. Btw this isn't a msg abt 'im the only one for whom manifesting doesn't work'. (Coz I have, by consciously focusing etc, seen evidence of the law and all), so this ain't even about believing in something unseen

Maybe it's an info overload thing. Idk. Ik enough by now, to realise the core of it is to live like it's already happened, deliberate before reacting so u don't perpetuate the old patterns/story/consequences yadda yadda

So what should I do? How do I refocus? How do I stop thinking Idk enough (even tho even now im aware of how the 3d is an illusion etc and I think I've caught up on all the real free deal on manifesting, law of assumption on the 'net). I think I'm tired of reading up on it and implementing it. Ik it's effortless (and sometimes it really is!) Still, I want utter power over my reality (not micro managing like, but there are still major aspects of my life that I wanna change). What do u suggest? ig my question (or monologue, amirite? 😉) relates to how I feel I'm all over the place related to this. I mean, you can't measure a company's performance w/o numbers yeah? And I'm an analyst (tho the messy-desk sort who teeters b/w must-get-the-finest-details to aye-imma-wing-it: and I can't force myself to be either at will 😒) who's gotten a mind blank

So yeah, please, by all means, knock me on the head, give me a wake up call, throw a book or two at me. I've been enrolled in the manifesting course (figure of speech) for so long, yet I'm not focused enough to garner true results (not blaming the 3d, but I mean it's kinda obvi when u ARE working but there aren't much results, how's that different from day dreaming or wishful thinking yeah?)

In conclusion, also, any idea how I can improve? What could I do (or not do) (other than self concept. I oft subject myself to the I Am Love peeps and they're pretty cool and the stuff they say is 💯) How do I pull myself together?

Thanks for reading this far! Thank you overall! 😎

I know you asked about what you can do other than self concept and I'm sorry but my advice is going to be #1: self concept. haha If it wasn't for me deciding to give myself my all, I don't think I'd still be here.

Here's the craziest thing about the law: we come to the law because we desire for something, then find out it was never about our desire. It was always about us. You see, the more you keep your desires at the forefront of your life, without putting yourself first in line, the more complicated you make your journey. The truth is, nothing needs to change except you. So you don't want to hear my self concept advice, you want there to be anything else except self concept, but the truth is your conception of self is your everything. It is the foundation upon which your world is happening automatically. Change your conceptions of self and you change your world. Period.

I mean, even now this is important for you because of everything you are saying. If you truly want to use the law to your advantage and finally live the life you know you deserve, stop running away from yourself. Stop wanting your desires to fix your issues. Stop looking for a technique to make the magic happen. Only you can make this work. That's the thing about it. You've said you read enough, no? So at this point you should have some sort of idea of what you're into, what kind of things make sense to you. Actually start to apply it now. Like seriously. Dedicate the rest of the year to applying the law in the way that makes sense to you. Make sure your #1 goal is yourself. The only progress/change you need be worried about is a change within yourself.

If you want utter power you give it to yourself. And I'll be upfront. For some it's an easy and powerful experience. For me, it's been difficult, painful, and uncomfortable. But that's because I was so engulfed in my victim mentality for so many years. I wanted someone to come by so badly and save me and even after the law, I had a hard time giving that up. The more attached we are to the old story, the more difficult our journey will be. And that's okay. We have to be gentle with ourselves in those tough moments. It's not a race and you're doing everything perfectly. When I finally decided to take responsibility for myself was the moment my life changed for the better. More and more the law clicks and I feel more confident in who I am as God of my reality. But you have to be willing to leave that victim mentality behind you. How can you take on full power of your reality, while living like a victim? You automatically give your power away like that. So, drop it. No matter how scary and uncomfortable it is. You must.

There's a certain amount of mental discipline that must be practiced when it comes to the law. So for that, I recommend meditation. Any way you want to do it. No you don't need to be focused on the law all the time but you need to be aware who's in control of your reality. It's you. You don't get anytime off from being God, it's a full time job. That's why self concept is so important, because it's what is manifesting naturally 24/7. So the least you can do is make sure your foundation is one in which you actually want to be operating from.

Hopefully this helps to pick you up and give you some idea of where to go next on your journey! You absolutely got this! And don't forget to take care of yourself and look out for yourself as you continue on your manifestation journey. 💖

#basics

[sweetcathedral]

Note: Final part! Part 1 & Part 2 are here.

⚠️: Reader’s discretion is advised. This chapter contains forms of dubious consent and explores the theme of sex being used as self-harm.

Suna turns his attention to him. “Don’t you get tired?” He questioned with purpose.

“That doesn’t matter,” Tsukki replied defensively.

“Yes, it does.” He takes another puff of his cigarette.

“I was just asking if you were free or not—”

“Your habit of sleeping around isn’t for pleasure or self satisfaction anymore, right?” It was pointless trying to make someone like Tsukki come to the self-realization of his habit, so Suna decided to just force him to come out with it, regardless of the outcome. “Constantly sleeping around with no regard to whom you’re doing it with. And if I say no, then you’ll just call one of your toys out for the night.”

“I thought we agreed that this relationship wouldn’t go anywhere beyond fucking each other.” Tsukki was getting annoyed.

“Is it because of Kuroo’s girlfriend?” Suna ignored him, continuing to press onto the topic. “Is that why you feel the need to fuck someone tonight? Not because you’re turned on or anything, but because you hate the way you feel right now.”

“… shut up …”

Not yet.

“You were mad that there were no flaws to her because you needed to hate her in a reasonable sense.”

“I said shut up …”

More.

“You hated the jealousy you felt and compared yourself to her to see who would be better suited for Kuroo, knowing that he’s already happy in this relationship. You felt empty knowing this and wanted to fill that void with anything to ‘help’ you move on from Kuroo. And you think sex would do the trick?”

Tsukki avoided looking Suna in the eye with his fingers curled into a fist, his nails digging into the palms of his hands. Suna felt the need to keep on pressing him. Anything to let him vent out, so the thought of sex wouldn’t be an option for his outlet right now.

“If you don’t like the way sex is feeling—!”

A sharp pain shot through Suna’s cheek.

“Quit talking like you know how I feel!” Tsukki had slapped him hard across the face.  “I don’t care about whether or not it feels good, I consented to it! So why do you even care?! I never asked you to care in the first place!” He snapped.

There.

“You may not have asked for it, but you need it! Someone to care for you, at least!” Suna fumed, letting the cigarette drop to the ground from his lips.

Tsukki collected his composure, deeply exhaling. “Fine. I’ll call someone else then.”

“For fucks sake, would you listen,” Suna sneered, grabbing Tsukki and holding him up against the wall by the arms. “The way you’re handling this isn’t right. You’re not thinking straight, you need to take a breather.”

“I’ll decide how I handle myself,” Tsukki yanked himself out of his grip, storming back into the restaurant.

Again, Suna wasn’t able to get through to him properly. It always ended like this anyways, everytime he tried to get Tsukki to let loose another way, he always ended up leaving him for another. Time and time again, he’d fight with Tsukki to reason with him, helping him be more self aware with himself.

Tsukki was right, Suna didn’t know how he felt and he might’ve been invasive with what he said, but Tsukki wouldn’t have reacted that way if what he said was wrong. He knows that feelings were out of the question, but is it so wrong to be worried about Tsukki’s well being, despite being in a sex-only relationship. Does he need to have feelings for him to care? Tsukki didn’t have to depend on him with everything, only when he felt like he couldn’t shoulder the burden anymore. That’s what Suna established this relationship for: not only to keep Tsukki from recklessly sleeping around with strangers, but to also help carry the burden for him. Communication, that was all Suna needed.

When he got back into the restaurant, Suna had forgotten about Tsukki slapping him across the face that his cheek had noticeably swollen up.

“Suna, your face!” Atsumu frantically put his glass of iced water to his cheek.

Suna winced, only realizing how painful it felt. That was one hell of a slap.

“What happened?!” Hinata worriedly asked.

Kageyama gave him his last yakitori to make him feel better, while Kenma asked the waiter for some ice.

“Hey, where’d Tsukki go?” Suna looked at his empty seat.

“He left to go meet up with a friend,” Hinata informed.

Friend my ass.

Memories of the sexual marks on Tsukki’s body flashed in Suna’s head.

He checked his phone for any messages. Nothing. Obviously, Tsukki wouldn’t message him any type of reassurance after fighting like that. Looking back on it now, he feels guilty for being the reason to push Tsukki into that decision. Fuck, I should’ve said yes.

“You okay?” Kenma asked with a concerned look on his face.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Suna painfully smiled, laughing it off as he internally blamed himself for tonight’s ordeal. Thinking that he could’ve done better to help Tsukki.

* A picture of Suna and Tsukki with their fans is shared.*

~.x.~dinobear~.x.~: tsukki!!!

rrx.98: saw this on my friends ig, im so jealous😭

xxx.~ali.supremacy~.xxx: LUCKY!!

keiko_katanaka_: (reply to @rrx.98) your friends are so cute !

rrx.98: (reply to @keiko_katanaka_) thank youuu, I honestly love them❤️❤️

user99109992844: where did the girl in the middle get her top from??

apple_pie_2: so prettyyyy

zoomzoom: @chuupetchi im saving this

zoomzoom: @sumatso @tofurice @orange.ritz

orange.ritz: Suna can smile🥺

sumatso: aww Sunaa

tofurice: 🥰

* A picture of Kenma, Hinata, Tsukki, Kageyama, Atsumu and Suna at their table at the Korean bbq restaurant is shared. *

user10177498232: omg! I work there but I wasn’t working this shift

user32334700981: WAS THIS TODAY???????

rrx.98: I work near there😮

bokurokuto: @zoomzoom you guys went without me?☹️

zoomzoom: (reply to @bokurokuto) @akaashikeiji

akaashikeiji: (reply to @bokurokuto) we went out today

~chan.yan05~: Ken and Hina are so cute !!

realanon00: I saw Suna and Tsukki head to the back, but I didn’t wanna follow after what happened to Suna

user44448103945: (reply to @realanon00) I feel bad for him ….

user30004847269: (reply to @realanon00) wait what happened

realanon00: (reply to @user30004847269) Suna had a stalker incident

* Article: Accused stalker who stabbed pro volleyball player pleads ‘not guilty’ by reason of insanity link is shared. *

* Article: Suna Rintarou of EJP taken out for the remainder of the season to recover from stab wounds link is shared. *

* Article: Pro volleyball player, Suna Rintarou, rushed to ICU in critical condition after altercation with stalker link is shared. *

* Article: Pro volleyball player, Suna Rintarou, miraculously survives critical stab wounds to the lower abdomen link is shared. *

* Article: Suna Rintarou in critical condition after stalker altercation, EJP coach rushes the decision to take him out for the rest of the season link is shared. *

* Article: Fans pray outside the hospital of Suna Rintarou, wishing him a speedy recovery link is shared. *

user30004847269: 😧😧😧😧😧

~chan.yan05~: aw man i remember this….

clx.90s: my heart sank when i read how bad his condition was

2k1990s: i remember watching the games, all of them started with a moment of silence for Suna

littletibetanfox: the atmosphere was so heavy during that season, im glad he recovered well

realanon00: Suna came back with a swollen cheek, but that was after Tsukki got back and left..

xxx.~ali.supremacy~.xxx: 👀

godcomplex101: yikes😬

user50011823241: Tsukki and Suna have been hanging around each other a lot lately

apple_pie_2: but theyre in diff teams

godcomplex101: oop tea???

user30004847269: its also not the league season yet

realanon00: maybe they live together ?

rrx.98: their teams are in diff prefex

clx.90s: i mean they have summer practices now so maybe its another training camp 🤷‍♀️

apple_pie_2: truu

zoomzoom: @chuupetchi

orange.ritz: (reply to @zoomzoom) 😗

sumatso: (reply to @zoomzoom) Suna you good?

darealest02: i know Tsukishima sleeps around a lot, my older brother went to college with him

rrx.98: (reply to @darealest02) wait whatt

_____fiveunderscores.: (reply to @darealest02) huuhhhh

clx.90s: yeah.. everytime i see a recent pic of him he always has a hickey somewhere new

zoomzoom: @guccibird @yachan96 collect your boy

guccibird: (reply to @zoomzoom) ….

yachan96: (reply to @zoomzoom) we’re not with him 24/7, its my first time hearing of this

bokurokuto: (reply to @zoomzoom) we see him most of the time, we can talk to him

zoomzoom: (reply to @bokurokuto) only during our summer intensives

bokurokuto: (reply to @zoomzoom) yeah! like now!

* A video recording of Suna and Tsukki fighting at the back of the restaurant from a public street view is shared. *

zoomzoom: 🤭

orange.ritz: noooo

bokurokuto: oh..

rrx.98: WHAT

guccibird: @yachan96 I CANT HEAR WHAT THEYRE SAYING

yachan96: (reply to @guccibird) WAIT ME TOO

clx.90s: DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THEYR SAYING

zoomzoom: @chuupetchi I KNOW YOURE ONLINE

user30004847269: naahhhh

user30004847269: this is a lieeeee

xxx.~ali.supremacy~.xxx: 😶😶

apple_pie_2: 😳

~chan.yan05~: 😨😨

realanon00: wait who uploaded this ???

realanon00: howd you get this

user77700178329: i was on my way back from work until i heard yelling coming from the restaurant

user77700178329: it was eerily quiet too, so they were loud

user50011823241: shiiit

* A video recording of Suna and Tsukki fighting at the back of the restaurant from a public street view was removed. *

realanon00: oh?

user77700178329: awkard

apple_pie_2: that was quick

sumatso: @zoomzoom you get that?

zoomzoom: (reply to @sumatso) ya I got that

sumatso: (reply to @zoomzoom) send that to us @tofurice @orange.ritz @guccibird @yachan96

zoomzoom: @bokurokuto practice is gonna look awkward….

bokurokuto: (reply to @zoomzoom) dw we can fix this 😊

zoomzoom: (reply to @bokurokuto) no, its not our business

bokurokuto: (reply to @zoomzoom) their our friends 👯

bokurokuto: (reply to @zoomzoom) they need our help

zoomzoom: (reply to @bokurokuto) @akaashikeiji

akaashikeiji: @bokurokuto i think we should leave this to them

xxx.~ali.supremacy~.xxx: could they be dating ??

~chan.yan05~: dont know, i mean if they are theyre doing a good job at keeping it lowkey

rrx.98: 👀👀

user77700178329: nah theyre just friends

user77700178329: i overheard Suna trying to get Tsukishima to stop sleeping around, apparently hes getting outta hand now😬

2k1990s: oh nooo😔

clx.90s: i feel bad, I hope he’s okay

apple_pie_2: ew..😒

littletibetanfox: i hope Suna’s okay, that slap looked painful 😖

#minors dni #haikyuu!! #suna rinatro #tsukishima kei #haikyuu!! fic #suna fic #tsukishima fic #suna angst #tsukishima angst #suna x tsukishima #suna rintaro x tsukishima kei #suna rintaro angst #hq tsukishima #hq suna #hq fic #haikyuu suna #haikyuu tsukishima #suna x tsukki #hq tsukki #haikyuu tsukki #haikyuu time skip #suna time skip #tsukishima time skip #suna rintarō #suna rintarou

[whetstonefires]

Hi Whetstonefire. I have a question about the comic where Nightwing cheats on Starfire with Barbara: What happens directly after that? Does Starfire find out that Nightwing cheated on her? And, if so, how does she react? I've read online that (according to Marv Wolfman) Starfire is the opposite of everything Batman taught Nightwing to be and that Batman taught Nightwing to be repressed and cold. What did Nightwing contribute (emotionally) to the relationship between him and Starfire? (Cont.)

(Cont.) From what I can tell, from online, Nightwing was adamant about standards of mercy and monogamy - how do you think, if Starfire were to be written as her own character and not written around Nightwing and his emotional needs, she would handle and react to that? (This bit is an FYI for other readers: this is just speculation, not hate. Sorry about that.) Sorry about the questions! Have a nice day! 

Okay there are so many separate questions packed in here! I may miss some of them lol and I do not want to put in the hours it would take to produce an orderly response to all this, so this post is going to be a mess.

Initial query and important point: the cheating story was out of continuity. Like, literally, not just by ‘being rejected by the fanbase,’ it was just this weird retcon oneshot that seems to have been some sort of fuck-you to Nightwing or his fans or something. So no, it had no in-setting fallout lol. It, in more ways than most comics, didn't exactly happen.

It was just this weird thing where Dick hooks up with Babs before giving her a wedding invitation, which is both out of character for him in general and out of step with where he was leading up to the wedding--he was desperate to get married so they could have some Normal Stable Adulthood Happiness; the choice to recharacterize him as a fuckboy who regards it as a loss of freedom isn’t congruent, on much more than the level of principle.

As far as how Kori would feel about it, if she had learned...that is very hard to say. Apart from how it would require her to reinterpret everything about where their relationship stood at that point, the data is very unclear, and I don’t even have all of it. Gonna back up to cover some of the rest of the ask, get some context here.

So this actually brings up two of my biggest gripes with Wolfman’s NTT--weird Kori characterization and the weirdly negative interpretation of Batman as parent that backwashed heavily into other titles and influenced the character for the worse, in ways we're very much still dealing with today. 😩

The latter is pretty self-explanatory, though Wolfman’s take that the main thing Bruce taught Dick was repression does shed light on some writing choices and make others funnier. But Kori. Oh my lands.

So, item one, I wouldn't say that Kori is overall opposite Bruce, or even of his philosophy? There are just some very major points of opposition. She isn’t emotionally buttoned-down like at all, especially about positive feelings, although considered realistically with all the bullshit they’ve piled into her backstory she absolutely leans on repression to cope and stay positive, which makes her a lot like Dick actually.

To an extent, she was clearly written around foiling Dick’s Batman-derived traits in the same way that Robin was written to foil Batman, bright and glad and aerial. A Flamebird to his Nightwing in theme if not in name.

You could do some interesting stuff with that, and the bildungsroman aspects of this period of Dick’s life, like he has two roads forward in terms of how he’s going to define ‘adulthood’--does it necessarily require becoming more like his mentor-father, for good and ill, or can he make Kori in part a destination, as it were, and create an adult self that is derived from who he has always been as well as the man he’s modeled himself after?

To an extent I think this even was one of the things going on in ntt but like. Only a little bit.

(Given how much like Bruce Babs is in most of the ways Kori isn’t, especially once she’s Oracle, you could make a case for her as love interest being like. Symbolic of his not being in a rebellious phase? That gets weird and oedipal really fast tho lol.)

Okay stepping down one meta level lol, the thing about answering the 'what would kori' question here is that her character is deeply bound up in her culture, about which we are told and shown a great many contradictory things. Any attempt to read her as an independent character has to tackle not only the gender stuff you allude to and these inconsistencies, but how much of the sheer mess of her is rooted in racism.

'Fantastic' racism, technically, because Tamaraneans aren't real, but the 'taming the savage' narrative that kept surfacing between them and the language used in reference to it is just. The existing racism of presumably the writers, placed in Dick's mouth, and it's super gross. I hate it so much.

(I had a faint hope when they cast her for live action it was with a deliberate intent to directly tackle and better that history, but lollllllll nah. At least they didn’t double down in it tho! Can you imagine, with a black actress, in this day and age....)

So to predict and comprehend Kori, you have to make a lot of calls about Tamaran as a civilization. I like to slightly privilege stuff established earlier if there's no good reason not to, so while much is made over time of her inappropriate rage and the violence she was raised to normalize, I think what she says in her first appearance is good to keep in mind: in her culture, kindness is for friends and cruelty is for enemies. She doesn't understand why the Titans seem to have this backwards.

Kori is not a merciless person. She’s very empathetic, as a rule. With people she loves, she is self-destructively forgiving. That's not a trait only Dick benefits from--her family keeps betraying her in new exciting ways, and she keeps letting them.

Her arc of growing away from that habit is however greatly crippled by centering Dick in the narrative and by the awful 'civilizing' overtones that keep coming into it. When she comes back after the 1986 breakup, still married to Karras, she brings with her a commitment to doing things the Earth way--to eschew lethal force as more than a compromise with her friends’ values, but as a deliberate choice.

This deserved a lot more space and time than it got, and the fact that it didn’t get it is only somewhat due to her being subordinated to Dick and to general writing fail; a lot of it’s just the team book problems of everything happening to everybody all at once.

I mean, Dick’s journey later on to deciding he loves her enough to date her even though she’s married and it’s technically against his principles was packed into this absolutely heinous issue where he was inspired by a woman refusing to separate from her husband who’d just threatened to kill her and their kid with a knife, until being stopped by Nightwing. Because he’s apologizing for what he did.

This is his inspiration for accepting Kori’s marital status! It’s supposed to be heartwarming, as far as I can tell! Not heavyhanded messaging that this is a self-destructive terrible choice in which Kori will inevitably harm him somehow! This issue is pro ‘consensual open relationships under certain circumstances’ and also ‘giving abusers another chance’ as expressions of love. Welcome to the 80s ig.

(Notable is that the wife in this issue was black and the husband and son both looked very white, so it’s probably her stepkid and she probably wouldn’t get to keep him if they separated; this is not even vaguely treated as a factor.)

Point is, everyone was getting too little space to actually go through the amount of development they were getting, and it was clumsily handled; it’s not just her.

In an overlapping period Gar processed his issues with his adoptive father with whom he constantly fought and their shared trauma over the rest of their family (the Doom Patrol) having died violently not long ago via a batshit several-issue storyline where Mento went crazy, created supermutants, and abusively mind-controlled them to attack the Titans. It is literally all like this.

Back to the infidelity thing, now. So much to unpack. So like I mentioned above, their first big breakup, while partially driven by Dick’s existing conflicted feelings about their different ideas about things like ‘killing in battle’ and ‘her identity and loyalties being tied up with her home planet,’ is explicitly over different takes on monogamy.

When Dick is breaking up with her, Kori makes it clear she thinks it’s totally reasonable to have both a husband and a love, since Karras also has someone he loves and they’re both fine with it, but the story doesn't really explain how nonmonogamy works on Tamaran, or even if it's practiced outside the context of political marriage. They do do a sort of...soulbond fusion dance...thing, as part of the ceremony, so marriage is definitely serious business. There are so many levels of cultural difference that get poor to no development.

But to return to the weird ooc retcon cheating story: because of this context, no matter what her personal norms are, Dick specifically casually sleeping with someone else would be something for Kori to be mad about, because of the hypocrisy.

Then there’s the Mirage Incident, which I haven’t read through properly and which was very poorly handled by the writers. Kori is upset about Dick having slept with someone impersonating her and there’s a general vibe of this being treated by Dick’s social circle as unfaithfulness even though he was in fact sexually violated by deceit; it famously sucks.

We still don’t learn a lot here about Kori’s ideas about monogamy, from what I have seen, because her focus is mostly on feeling like Dick doesn’t care about her enough or in the right way since he couldn’t tell the difference. Which is an understandable feeling, even if it’s not an appropriate reaction to have at him at this time.

What Nightwing contributed emotionally........hm. This is a mess, honestly; he was all over the map, and not just because of having Brother Blood in his head. I cannot speak definitively on this, it’s too inconsistent.

For most of their relationship, Kori was the more intensely invested one, the one to initiate and the one who was shown at length to be excited to come home at the end of the day to their shared apartment because her boyfriend was there to see and talk to. If we set aside his more egregious white male bullshit, Dick was pretty emotionally available most of the time, though? They were cute.

Since they split up a lot of ink has been spilled making him less into her in retrospect, but he was pretty invested--leaving her coincided with mental breakdowns both times, and it wasn’t even mostly because she was doing his emotional processing for him, because she wasn’t, although it’s fair to say he often fell into using the relationship as an emotional crutch. Kori was definitely doing the same thing though so...it wasn’t the most balanced relationship in fiction history, but apart from slight codependency and the racism, it was decent enough.

She gets more evenhanded development than most superhero love interests, honestly, because she was costarring in a team book. She had her own storylines. She had other friends.

Mostly both of them just needed some space to finish growing up and stop being retraumatized long enough to process some of the existing trauma better, and I think they could have gone on being good for each other for a long time.

#long post #this did in fact take me about two hours #ask #a nonny mouse #dickkori #koriand'r #dick grayson #nightwing #hoc est meum #teen titans #new teen titans #wolfman and perez #sexism #racism #relationships #monogamy #drama #shipping #lol nonny if you're sorry why do it #do you mean sorry to inconvenience me? #do you mean 'sorry to activate your compulsive question answering?'

[pillowfluffs]

Room Renovations | Hyunwoo, Minhyuk

Pairing: Hyunwoo X Reader (gender neutral) and Minhyuk X Reader (gender neutral)

Genre: simple fluff, fun ig 

Author’s Note: inspired by me currently redoing my room too tehe

Hyunwoo: 

The room was so hot, all your clothes and things were scattered into messy organized piles all over the floor, and you couldn’t move your dressers that were right in the center of the room

Everything was so heavy and you couldn’t move anything on your own but most of all you were so hungry

Your room looked like a complete disaster- specifically the floor and this was only the beginning

You were in the process of clearing out your little apartment so you could return it to the landlord and move in with Hyunwoo

But now clearing it, you didn’t realize you had so much stuff

Your bed was completely covered by your wardrobe from your closet and dressers and you needed to pack them into suitcases but you also needed to get rid of stuff and put things into storage, give stuff away, etc

You actually liked to pack things and such but this was a bit more than you initially thought

It was pretty stressful since it all was a time crunch

But right now you couldn’t think straight or focus on something too much- all you wanted was food in your tummy. The heat didn’t help at all- you just wanted the air conditioning to come back on and for Hyunwoo to return

You currently moved to your book case and grabbed two empty boxes- one for donations and others for keeping

You only had one shelf and a looking at the books, almost half of them were bought on a whim since you thought you would like to read it but you were wrong

You fanned yourself with a small magazine, frustratedly stacking books into both boxes, averting your gaze from everything else in the room

This was how you were whenever you packed your room: you got a little too excited about things and you did this thing where you jumped form one thing to another, not finishing the first thing

It was a bad habit and this time, it proved to be the worst habit you could have while packing your entire room

But not looking at your things could only help so much. It was like a mosquito bite or a thorn in your side, but in this case, there were multiple things of either or

Your clothes still needed to be folded and you were a fraction of the way through but you also needed to clear your desk and sort your supplies into the desk box… however, your bookshelf was one of the few things left untouched and you just had to sort these books right now

Your body felt so drained and tired spending the last couple days packing your entire apartment and your bedroom was one of the worst since you had so much

Birds chirped, bees buzzed, life went on as if nothing was wrong or stressful in life but you were going through the complete opposite and it really sucked right now

“I’m back,” the sound of the most glorious man in your life right now. Hyunwoo. Was. Back

You threw the book in your hand into the donations box and practically sprinted out of the humid bedroom, the socks you wore on your feet made you slip and almost fall as you approached him

“Foooddd!” you exaggerated, raising your voice a little towards the end to emphasize your hunger and little crankiness to which he playfully raised the take out bags up in the air in his hands

“Wooo,” he slipped out of his sneakers, setting the bags onto your kitchen counter

You had boxes stacked on top one another in your living room near the shelves and around the side of the couches with your belongings inside

You wasted no time zipping between the piles of boxes like it was an obstacle course and washed your hands with soap before you reached for plates and utensils

Hyunwoo wore a fitted b lack t-shirt with black joggers. You set yours and his plate on the counter next to the plastic containers containing the pasta and sides of beef and veggies in smaller ones

You danced about behind him, singing along to a random song, your hands tapping and lightly slapping his toned back as he plated yours and his foods

The aroma of the pasta wafted through the kitchen in the area around you two and it made your mouth salivate. Your stomach practically screamed in hunger

You wrapped your hands around his slim waist, peeking around him from behind

“Here you go,” he pushed your plate to the side so you could take and you happily did, letting out a joyous wheeze screech, making his eye smiles appear on his face

After parting his own, he put the covers over the containers and left it there in case you wanted seconds

You plopped yourself on the light brown leather couch in the center of your living room, tapping your utensils as you looked to him, waiting for him to join you

But it didn’t take him long. Hyunwoo was hungry too and you already knew he could most likely devour this entire order by himself

When he sat down, it was when the two of you began eating

Tasting the first mouthful of pasta on your tastebuds was almost enough to bring tears to your eyes. It was either that good or you were just hungry

“Mmm, thank you so much,” you bumped your head to his arm, taking another bite into your mouth

“No problem. How far did you get while I was gone?” He asked, shoveling a mouthful of pasta and stuffing a few pieces of the side order of meat into his mouth

“I don’t even think I made any. I was hungry and hot and it made me annoyed with everything,” you took a bite of a veggie, tasting it. “But you’re here and food is here, so things should be a lot better. I can think now.”

And you were right

The two of you had seconds with little to no leftovers left and got back to work as the sun set outside, the last bits of the day painted beautifully into the early evening sky

Hyunwoo helped you move your dressers into the hall so one of them could be donated and the other could be brought to your parents’ house to be reused

The room opened up but now the main things were the piles on the ground but that was all that was left

You focused yourself and got to folding your clothes as Hyunwoo finished where you left on your bookshelf. He listed out titles for you to tell him whether to keep it or not as you folded and packed your clothes into suitcases

When he finished clearing your bookshelf, he moved your boxed books out to make even more room so it didn’t feel as stuffy

Everything really was better after food and the temperature going down

When those were out of the way, he started your desk for you. Here, he didn’t have to ask you too much so the two of you talked about whatever

You filled your big suitcase and all you had left that would fit into your smaller suitcase. As Hyunwoo cleared your desk and supplies, including your office supplies, you didn’t realize how much stuff you didn’t want until he asked you about it

The trash bag you had for anything in general was filling up fast but things were clearing and the more things were being cleared, the more it felt like the weight was lifting off of you

When your clothes were finally done and folded, Hyunwoo took the suitcases out for you and now the living room was organized with stacks of your boxes

It was a bit after midnight when your room was finally cleared and now all you had left to do was move your boxes, take out the trash of stuff you didn’t want, bring your boxes of donated things to their respectful places and do a clean down before returning your keys to your landlord

But the cleaning day would have to be for another day- most likely the day after tomorrow  

When the final box was packed, you had never seen your room so clear

You could feel the small bags forming beneath your eyes as you yawned for the nth time

You stood before Hyunwoo and leaned into him, wrapping your hands around his neck, giving him a tired hug

‘Thank you for everything,” your voice was silky in his ears

He leaned down, bringing his face to your shoulder, kissing your jaw and neck, his hands traveling down the sides of your body

“It’s nothing,” he smiled against your skin, the tips of his ears turning red

Minhyuk: 

Upbeat music played from your bluetooth speaker that was connected to Minhyuk’s phone, the song echoing off your high walls

The two of you were currently in your rented room in the house you shared with three other roommates

The house itself was pretty old but it you weren’t surprised since it was one of many other houses that lined the edge of your university campus. You’ve lived here since your first year, renewing your lease every year

It was pretty convenient for you as a uni student since you didn’t have to pay the expensive housing and meal plan feels as part of your tuition but you also didn’t have to waste gas by driving to campus and struggle to find a parking spot while you were at classes

You didn’t have to waste money or struggle to find a spot. Instead, you walked to school to your classes almost everyday but since it was your last year, you didn’t have too many challenging classes since you had almost all your credits

This year was just the final stretch and it was almost over

But before the year ends, you began to pack your room so you could bring them back to your parents’ house to live there in the mean time before the year ended

And since your room was one of the biggest, you also had the most stuff so you didn’t have to go back and forth between your place and your parents’ house for your things

It had only been a few hours since you started and the two of you had only managed to clear your dresser but you still had your closet and desk and bed and decorations

Today was going to be longggg. You could already tell

The biggest challenge you could see was your closet as you scanned your room and Minhyuk spread himself out all over your bed, humming along to the song, occasionally letting his voice shine

But you didn’t mind and no one else did either since one of your roommates was out for their classes for the day, the other was back at home already, and the last one was just out and about

You two had the house completely to yourselves

“Can we order pizza?” Minhyuk asked as you pushed your two remaining jumbo sized suitcases into your little walk in closet

“Yeah, order on my laptop and then get in here,” you called, your voice raised since the room muffled sound. It was pretty cozy and to be quite honest, you knew you were going to miss this space when you were back home

Some nights when all the sounds of traffic or parties were going on, you brought your pillow and blanket to your closet, focusing in there since it was much quieter

You opened your first big suitcase and got to it. You piled your t-shirts and folded sweatshirts and pants from the built in shelves on the wall into your suitcase which filled about a third of it. The rest were all hung in hangers, which you also had boxes for to bring back with you since they were still good

You picked a section and started there, responding to Minhyuk as he called out possible toppings you would want, adding them to the pizza before it would come

It was nice since it would arrive most likely while the two of you cleaned out your closet so it would be a nice little treat

“Do you want a side of fries?” He called out

“Can you get seasoned?” You called out, pausing from your folding

“Yeah,” he responded, his voice quiet. He made the payment putting in his card info and then he joined you inside your closet

He got to work and brought in your speaker that was still playing music, turning the volume down in the small room

Light rain tapped on the little window in your closet but it was nothing you two could hear over the music

He sand along horrifically, getting you to laugh, being a source of entertainment and sunshine on this gloomy day

He folded clothes as he took them off the hanger and left them dangling on the metal rod as you took your time to take them individually off the hanger off the rod, discarding them

But while going through your wardrobe, you noticed a few articles you didn’t even want anymore and articles you never even more. You left and brought back a bag to donate your clothes

This made it somehow more fun to pack everything since you knew not everything in here was going to go into your suitcases and who knows? Maybe clearing out your closet would go by a lot faster than you thought

About an hour passed and the bag was 2/3 of the way full and your current suitcase was roughly the same 2/3 full. The two of you were making good time, getting through halfway through the closet

With the music going loud, it was suddenly interrupted from the call of the pizza deliverer. It was at this time you realized how much worse the storm had gotten, how much darker it was outside, the tree in the front yard swaying harshly in the wind

It was a sight to see and it made you stop where you were mid fold of one of your shirts

The sound of his steps thudded louder as he approached the top, the smell of pizza filling your room as he brought it to the main empty area

You folded your final shirt and went out to join him, the two of you washing hands side by side in the shared bathroom that you no longer had to share with your roommates

The pizza smelled delicious but what really got your mouth watering was the seasoned fries with garlic spice and parmesan cheese

The two of you ate your fill, leaving about three slices left before getting back to work

Instead of listening to music this time, you connected your laptop to the speaker and played a movie the two of you didn’t care about too much, acting as a background sound while the two of you commented about how cheesy the lines were and about how poor the acting skills of the cast were

By the time the movie was about a quarter of the way through, the two of you were able to finish packing your closet in a breeze. You got rid of a lot of old clothes you brought from home, packing the newer ones you had bought

You still had your second suitcase which was perfect cause now you could pack your bedding and save a few more boxes for your desk supplies and decorations

You sat at your desk with a box empty at your side, neatly organizing things into it as Minhyuk climbed a little step ladder you borrowed from downstairs to take down your string lights that were weaved around the wooden support beams

Fortunately, you didn’t have too much/ you didn’t bring too much things for your desk, mostly a couple books and a few textbooks since almost everything was online

He neatly placed your lights into your box as you packed your notebooks, flipping through them, seeing the familiar notes you had to take with your rushed handwriting

The day was going by a bit slow but things were getting done in a non-stressful environment and it was pretty nice

The movie played on your laptop still on your bed

Looking around, it felt weird to see it so empty. You could remember the days you moved in, you and your parents helping you bring up your desk and curtains, helping you set up your room

Now you were seeing it all go away and being cleared. It was like you were creeping toward the end of a chapter you didn’t think would be near so soon

The desk and decorations did not take as long as you thought as possible. You honestly felt like you had a lot more but seeing it all boxed up and in suitcases made it feel like you really didn’t bring that much

The bed was the final thing you two had to do but it was time for a break

There wasn’t too much of a rush since it wasn’t like you two were going to be leaving with all your things as soon as the bedding was packed

The storm was still brewing, it was rush hour so the streets were packed too and no one was here to bother you or anything

There really was no rush at all. The two of you laid in your bed beneath your plush comforters, laid and surrounded by all your fluffy pillows

He placed the laptop on his stomach to watch the movie despite how.. not good it was and you laid beside him, legs tangled with his between the sheets

You rested your head on his chest. One arm around your, his fingers rubbing circles into your arm while the other rested behind his head

At the comfiness all around you, you yawned into him, using your blanket to wipe away the tears that formed in your eyes

“Nap time?” He nudged your arm

“Maybe…” you said a bit more tiredly than you thought you were, your eyes getting heavy

~~~~~ Masterlist for more! Thank you for reading!

#monsta x #monsta x headcanons #monsta x scenarios #monsta x x reader #monsta x imagines #monsta x minhyuk #monsta x hyunwoo #shownu #son hyunwoo #hyunwoo #minhyuk #lee minhyuk #shownu imagines #shownu scenarios #shownu x reader #shownu headcanons #minhyuk headcanons #minhyuk scenarios #minhyuk x reader #minhyuk imagines #pillowfluffs

[awed-frog]

Do you have any advice for someone who’s really struggling to study? I’m really stressed and demotivated, and I can’t seem to sit down and just study. In my country we only have virtual classes so maybe It has something to do with that, it’s really sad that it’s my first college year and I haven’t attended one single face to face class. Anyway, If you have any kind words I would really appreciate it. Love your blog btw <3

Hey! Thank you for this! And I’m very sorry you feel that way...just know you’re not alone, I think we’re all a bit ‘what’s the point’ rn, and for students (and teachers) this period must suck especially hard. I don’t know exactly what can work for you, but here are a few things that come to mind. I hope you can find something useful!

Have habits and routines. Our days are all over the place, which is not good for motivation or mental health. Instead of procrastinating, feeling guilty, working in a hurry and then feeling even worse, decide on a schedule that works for you. Don’t be too hard on yourself - give it as much time as you need to do the work well, and devote the rest of your day to stuff that makes you feel accomplished and serene (maybe learn or practice a non-screen skill, such as cooking or painting?).

And: at risk of sounding like a yoga mom, don’t forget about your body. Very often stuff like bad mood or exhaustion has physical, not mental, causes. Try to make time for sport - dancing in your underwear, running outside, walking the dog, online pilates, a 7-minute app - and, if you can, a few minutes of meditation, singing or breathing exercises every day. I’d recommend the ‘cardiac coherence’ stuff - lasts about 3 minutes, makes you feel really great. And: remember to stretch, smile and drink water throughout the day. If possible, go outside or have plants and flowers around you.

When it comes to habit, try to understand what kind of person you are and react accordingly. Some people work best when they change cold turkey (new day, new me), while for others it’s better to adjust things more slowly (for instance by moving the alarm clock forward five minutes every week or two). If you’re the second type, a method like Pomodoro could work well to organize your work schedule. 

Have pretty things. Try switching to ink or coloured pens, have nice stationery, organize your Word documents so they’re neat and tidy, use candles, plants, ‘good mood’ incense - whatever makes you feel your work has meaning and worth.

Try background music. Some people work better with noise, and you can find all kind of noises online, from stations to coffee shops to purring cats. Others like classical music. For me, what works is video game music, which is designed to keep you alert and focused while being unobtrusive.

Try to keep your workspace as similar as possible to a ‘real’ workspace. No stack of dirty mugs and plates, no abandoned pajama bottoms. If you can manage it, start your day as if you were actually going outside - dress for actual human company, put on make-up if you like to - and remember to prepare your desk the night before: textbooks, charged laptop, notebooks, water bottle, possibly a diary or a motivational quote or anything you find useful.

If it helps, study with friends or classmates. Have video meetings, chats or shared Google docs and work together. Rant with people who’re going through the same thing, but also find a way to help one another. If you live with flatmates or family members, maybe you can find a moment to work together on your separate things? Dad does admin, mom prepares a work presentation, you do your homework and that’s ‘work time’ for everyone?

Divide your tasks. Make clear lists of what you have to do - as detailed as possible (not: shakespeare essay, but: 1. read book, 2. write essay, 2b. introduction and so on) and pay attention to when the stuff is due, either writing it down in agendas or post-its or creating alerts on your phone. Some people also like the square of doom (you know, that ‘important + urgent’, ‘important + non urgent’ thingy).  

Keep track of what you’re doing if you find it helps you. There are good apps for this, or you can use a nice journal or an Excel sheet. Track whatever you want - minutes of study, words learned, tasks accomplished...a favourite of mine is ‘a time logger’, which can track your entire day. When I was in uni, it made me realize I was working a lot more than I thought, and reaching daily goals kept me motivated.

Rethink your internet consumption, especially news, TV shows and social media. Try having periods where you go off-screen whenever you need a break. Stuff like, ‘no TV before 6 pm’ or ‘no tumblr on weekdays’ can automatically make you a lot less stressed and a lot more productive. 

You can also decide to modify the way you engage with these things. For instance, if your studies involve a language, you could watch only TV shows in [language], or turn on [language] subtitles, or you could switch to Buzzfeed [country]. If you like IG, pinterest or tumblr, try having a separate ‘weekday’ account which is about healthy escapism and/or accountability: landscapes and poetry instead of fandom content, or a personal blog about your day - use the right tags and connect with others who’re going through the same thing.    

Imagine you’re teaching someone. I’m guessing you’re passionate about your subject, so turn your study sessions into imaginary conversations. Teaching a lesson (or making a speech) is often the best way to see what you understand, what you need to work on, and what you’re interested in learning more about.

Websites like b-ok can help you find books about your subject (or not) - possibly stuff you’re not actually compelled to read, but which sounds interesting nonetheless. Broaden your horizon, discover different stuff, and sooner or later you’ll find yourself making connections between the exciting stuff you’re basically reading for fun and the actual subject you’re studying.

And: remember why you’re studying this. What are you passionate about? Why did you fall in love with your subject? Why are you studying it? Sometimes we have to endure a few boring classes to get to the good part, and that’s okay.

And finally: visualize the future. The world will get better, and at some point you’ll be glad you’ve spent a few (or many) hard and boring hours getting your degree. What are you going to do after this? Make a ‘future’ board, write a fake Wikipedia article about yourself, give a Nobel or graduation speech, give a pep talk to your (imaginary) future children about the hardships you faced on Zoom and how you overcame them to become the mom they know and love. Whatever works, no matter how ridiculous or narcissistic or far-fetched is a good thing!

I hope this helps! Remember to remain calm and positive, and talk to yourself as if you were talking to a child or a best friend. Less You suck and the world is going to end and more Yes, you didn’t do great today, but we can always do better tomorrow, it’s okay to have an off day! Uni is hard enough under any circumstances, and right now...do your best and resist the bait of dark thoughts: we will get through this, and everything will be alright. It’s how it works.

#ask #studying #students problems #life tips #life advice #motivation #anxiety #mental help #singing about the dark times #you can do this <3

[ichigo-kamome]

Start Over - Imagine Dragons - Sakuatsu One Shot

Okay HI GUYS so first post

(wow how cool)

I wanted to do a little writing exercise and shuffle a playlist I really enjoy and then write for characters based on the song. So, Start Over by Imagine Dragons was my first song <3 here’s a link to the song!! https://open.spotify.com/track/2Iug43iQrHN8CbGsUd2tEt?si=CrDSFtEpRKe1UkYojJwWiQ&dl_branch=1

This is just going to be a quick one shot because I can only listen to a song on repeat so many times before wanting to scream, so it stops whenever I get annoyed of the song :) ig this is angst with like a good ending? IDEK HAHA BUT ENJOY!! 

oh and there is a bit of language in this? :,D also I didn’t edit this because I didn’t have time to so my apologies for unintentional grammar mistakes and misspellings! :,>

The plane was filled with hardly any noise at all, but in Atsumu’s mind there was a storm of noise, emotion, and words. So many words. Words he was told, words he said, words he shouldn’t have said, words he should have said. 

Actions. Ones he did take, ones he didn’t take, all of them ran through his mind faster than the plane was soaring in the air. The silence around him felt entirely deafening, and there was nothing he could do in this moment but sit there and replay the memories of the past night.

He was more than aware that he had royally messed up. Sakusa Kyoomi had informed him of that. Yet, his own ego rendered him completely blind the moment he heard such words.

“You care so much about appearances, yet you refuse to work on your own. Becoming a better version of yourself on the court is something you’re more than willing to do, but outside of that? Where the public eye is blind to? Well, so are you.”

Those words replayed countless times, echoing off walls and coming back to him. It was all he could think about. How he had done Omi wrong, and how all he wanted to do was fix their situation. 

However, that wasn’t exactly possible in the present situation. 

Miya Atsumu was on an airplane with no cell service, and he would be stuck there for multiple hours. It felt like hell, having to sit there for so long with his own thoughts and the words that he heard last night. The words that were true. Then again, it wasn’t all a bad thing that he had to reflect on the situation. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi was also left alone with his own thoughts, emotions, the words that were spoken last night. This odd feeling of the presence and absence of regret plagued him in his isolation. He knew that what he said needed to get to Atsumu in some way. 

Lately, the setter had been so concerned with who he was on the court that he had forgotten to examine his character off the court. Of course, this led to mistakes, apologies, more mistakes, more apologies, an endless cycle of hurting those around him, and Sakusa left alone many nights in which he shouldn’t have been. The pain he felt wasn’t sharp, however. It was more of a dull, emotionless pain that caused him to feel somewhat repulsed.

“Ya shouldn’t be hangin’ around someone who makes you feel like trash, right? So, I’ll do the honors and kindly fuck off for a while. See how ya like it, Omi.” He still was dumbfounded by those words. He knew Miya to be someone who would sometimes speak first without fully evaluating how it would effect the other party, but he didn’t realize just what it was like to be on the receiving end of one of those comments. 

Sakusa and Atsumu had a relatively healthy relationship. Of course, they had their disagreements, but there had never been an explicit moment in which Sakusa could remember that Miya would have the chance to lash out so harshly.

That’s a good thing, at least. It’s only happened once. He thought.

But, how long until it happens again? 

Omi felt his heart sink and he sighed, trying not to think too much about that right now.

What if there isn’t an “again”?

---

Again. A word Sakusa didn’t seem to be fond of in the recent weeks. Atsumu had always made the same mistakes, again. He had always been out too late with other people, again. He had always come home the next morning, again. Apologized, again. Said he’s never do it, again.

But now, the word had new meaning. If there was no again for Atsumu to hurt him, would that mean that he had moved on? Would that mean his leaving was final and there wouldn’t be any risk to get hurt again?

There was always a risk to get hurt. Sakusa knew that full well. And, he knew there was a risk to get hurt repeatedly. However, if there was no risk, that meant there was no Atsumu. While he didn’t like risk, he didn’t like the idea of never being able to say “I love you,” again to his best friend.

Miya Atsumu had been gone for a couple weeks for training in another country. He had been so far, and yet all he wanted to do was go back home to the people he cared about. 

He had messed up so many times. He had his “fall” and realized he sure as hell didn’t like how lonely it was on the bottom. The people he had neglected to care about recently weren’t there, and everything that came along with promise was so far from that. He didn’t want to be there and longer, and knew he had to change his habits and lifestyle outside of the court to better himself and lend more towards those he truly cared for. 

One of those people being Sakusa Kiyoomi. 

God, I need to call him before my flight back home, was all he could think. He was sitting in the airport with less than 5 minutes until he was to board. I have time, he thought. 

He grabbed his phone and dialed Sakusa’s number by instinct. Omi <3 read the contact. He hesitated only slightly. Maybe this is better to settle in person. A phone call isn’t the best way to discuss this, especially when I only have so much time.

He sucked in a deep breath. There was no way he could do this properly

“But, I hafta at least try.”

One ring. 

Two rings.

Three. 

Damn, Omi, pick up...

Four

Five.

“Hello?” He heard at last. 

“OMI!” Atsumu practically shouted in the middle of the air port. People turned their heads towards him dramatically, some looking aggravated, some confused, some about to laugh. He didn’t care. The noise in his mind had already been that loud, so he had hardly noticed the stark contrast when he spoke at such a loud volume.

“Ow, okay, no need to shout. It’s a phone call, I’m right here. Why did you call?” Omi said monotonously. Atsumu felt a cold shiver run down his spine, and all at once he wanted to hit the large red button on his phone screen and pretend he never called and their argument never happened and everything was okay. However, that would get them nowhere. That’s not what Atsumu wanted.

“Heya, uhm, I don’t exacly have a lot of time?”

“Mm. Figures.”

“But all I’ve been able ta think about lately is how ya were so right.”

Sakusa Kiyoomi wished he had been recording this call, because he might not ever hear those words again. Before, it was always ‘I was wrong,’ never, ‘you were right.’

“And I’ve been treatin’ like so much less than ya deserve. Yer one of my favorite people, Omi, and I have don’t nothin to show that ta ya.”

Silence for the first time in two weeks.

“I wanna do better by ya. And, I don’t have a lot of time ta get into details because I board the plane shortly... and I don’t expect an immediate answer from ya, but, can try again?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t push your luck, you heard me the first time. Get home safely.”

“Oh. And, of course, we can talk more about it later and everything, because I still have a lot ta say and I wanna hear what you hafta say too because what you wanna say is important to me an-”

“Miya?”

“Yes?” he sucked in a breath, holding it in the absence of conversation.

A pause.

“Get home safely. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Yeah, you got it. Me too.”

“Goodbye. See you soon.” A beep.

“Bye, Omi. Cya soon.”

#sakuatsu #oneshot #haikyuu #unedited #sakusa #sakusa kiyoomi #atsumu miya #miya atsumu #haikyu #haikyuu fanfiction #angst #idk what i'm doing honestly #but i'm kind of proud of this ngl #maybe i should do this more often #or maybe it will never happen again #good luck trying to figure it out #haha ty for reading <3 #Spotify

[adenei]

Auror 99 - Chapter 12

Ao3 || FFN

Takedown

“Fifteen minutes til his visiting window,” Ron said as he walked over to Harry and Hermione. “You have the cuffs?”

Harry nodded. “I’ll be under the cloak, waiting in the G’s section.”

“And I’ll be over on the other side of the archives, near the immigration records,” Ron clarified. “I just finished speaking with the Auror team sent to aid us if necessary. They’ll take their positions at the other stairwell once we notify them that he’s entered the area with the DA coins. Hermione, it was brilliant of you to think to use them, again. Jake, Amy and Charles are keeping watch outside.

“Rosa,” Ron paused as Rosa took off Harry’s invisibility cloak and handed it back to Harry, “You and Hermione will take the back staircase. Remember, if you have to shoot, nothing lethal. Let Hermione attempt a stunning spell first, but remember he’s quick. Any questions?” Everyone shook their heads.

“We should get into position,” Harry said. 

Ron walked with Rosa and Hermione and stopped at the door to the stairwell. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?” He asked Hermione as Rosa gave them a private moment.

“Yes. I know it’s been years, but I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’ve forgotten.”

“I know, I wasn’t saying that. Just making sure you’re okay.”

“I will be. I’m more worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Just make sure you’re well hidden in the stacks, alright? You don’t know if today will be the day he decides to check a different area. Don’t assume he’ll just head to Harry,” Hermione warned him.

She made a good point. “I’ll be careful, I promise.” He kissed her briefly, and she squeezed his hand before slipping through the door. 

Ron walked over to the immigration archives and hid in the next aisle over from where they made their breakthrough yesterday. He positioned himself in the center of the aisle, just in case he needed to move one way or the other. And now we wait.

It didn’t take long for Gerteso’s arrival. He was a creature of habit. Ron heard the far door open and close, the scratch of the quill on parchment was faint, but there, and then the heavy footsteps of work boots that indicated he was on the move. He waited for them to stop in the G section as they had the day before, but they kept clunking, and they were getting louder.

Fuck. Ron moved swiftly to the far end of the aisle, and took cover on the edge of the shelves. He wasn’t sure how Hermione knew he’d change his search today, but she did. He quickly took out his coin and sent the message that was already pending for MACUSA, and waited. He hoped to Godric that Harry followed him, so he’d have ample back up. The last fight wasn’t easy, but hopefully this time he had the element of surprise. 

Sure enough, he heard Gerteso stop walking a few aisles over, most likely search the G’s again. Ron felt the coin heat up indicating MACUSA was in place. A few moments later, he felt it heat up again. It only had two letters “IG”. He knew that was Harry, telling him where Gerteso was. ‘Immigration - G’s.’

Ron checked each aisle stealthily as he made his way closer to where Gerteso was. He didn’t need to send Harry a reply asking if he was ready. They’d worked together long enough to know Harry was there and had his back. Ron positioned himself and could see Gerteso in the middle of the row, pulling boxes. He waited for him to put the box back before he made his move.

As soon Gerteso’s hand left the box, Ron waved his wand, casting a silent stunning spell. A flash of red hit him square in the chest, and another spell was cast immediately after. Ron covered his body in case Gerteso got a spell out, as he was bloody quick the last time, but he saw Gerteso’s wand flying toward Harry, who must have cast Expelliarmus. Ron cast Incarcerous next and watched as ropes flew out of the end of his wand and wrapped tightly around Gerteso. 

Harry had taken off the invisibility cloak in the meantime, and stuffed it in his cloak. He was now headed toward Gerteso to cuff him. They weren’t taking any chances. As British Aurors, they weren’t as well versed in the magic of vampires, so they didn’t want to risk his potential for wandless magic. Ron met Harry at the bound man, and held him up while Harry attached the cuffs. He said the spell and they lit up purple, indicating they were working.

Ron cast the counterspells to any disillusionment and glamour charms. It partially did the trick, but it didn’t fully reveal Gerteso’s true identity. Harry and Ron looked at each other, communicating silently. It had to be Polyjuice potion. That would make sense with his time limit, and why he only spent forty five minutes on any given day. They searched Gerteso for any signs of a flask, but had no luck. 

The sick git simply smiled eerily at them. “Can’t apprehend me if you can’t prove who I am.”

“Nice try,” Harry said as he tapped the cuffs that turned a bright shade of blue. “New technology,” he said to Ron, who nodded in understanding. Kingsley was really pulling out all the stops for them.

“State your name,” Harry said gruffly.

They watched as Gerteso opened his mouth in an attempt to use whatever alias he’d chosen that day, and then his eyes grew wide.

“Go on, tell us,” Ron said. 

“Leonardo-” he looked pained, “Guarnieri.” It was clear he hadn’t spoken his real name in years by the way it seemed so foreign against his lips. 

“Do you also go by the alias Howard Gerteso?” Ron asked.

“Y-yes,” the man had no choice but to tell the truth.

“Well, then, Howard Gerteso, you’re under arrest,” Ron said.

Harry went to retrieve Hermione and Rosa, tossing the cloak to the latter. Rosa took out her phone to let Jake, Amy and Charles know to standby. Hermione left with Rosa to go meet the rest of the group and to notify Kingsley that Gerteso was in custody. Harry began guiding Gerteso towards the stairwell, where the MACUSA Aurors were waiting, while Ron doubled back to pull Martini’s wand record for questioning.

~o~ 

A short time later, Kingsley joined Harry and Ron, who were waiting outside the questioning room. The polyjuice potion had finally worn off, and Gerteso was in his true form. Harry and Ron still kept up the disguises they’d started with for anonymity purposes. They were joined by the MACUSA Auror Director, a Mr. Stanley. 

“I’ll leave you to it, then. Let me know if you need anything,” he said to Kingsley. 

He left them and headed back to his office. “I’ll be right out here watching and listening. I trust you two.” Kingsley gestured towards the room.

“Thank you, sir,” Harry and Ron said.

Harry and Ron walked in and were met with a scowl on Gerteso’s face. “Well, , he doesn’t look too pleased to see us, does he Jason,” Ron said to Harry.

“Not at all, Nolan. So he must know he’s going to have to do the time for all the money laundering he did in Gringotts,” Harry responded.

Gerteso grunted, but didn’t deny his responsibility.

“So, Howard, or should we call you Leo? What brings you to New York?” Ron asked him.

“Vacation,” he said snarkily.

“Yeah? A vacation that required you to use polyjuice potion to sneak into the wand records office of MACUSA for the past week or so?” Harry countered.

“Last I checked it was open for anyone to check,” he spat back.

“So why the secrecy?” Ron continued. 

“I don’t have to tell you two anything.”

“You don’t have to, but it might make it easier for you. Of course, it’d take the fun away from us, since we knew you were after this,” Ron pulled Martini’s file out of his cloak and set it on the table. “What’s your brother got that you’re after, Leo?”

“Everything,” he growled.

Well, if this wasn’t the classic case of jealousy and revenge, Ron didn’t know what was.

“How long have you gone by Gerteso, then?” Harry asked.

“Long enough.”

“We’re going to need a more specific answer than that. Only since your time at Gringotts? Or maybe, since this photo?” Ron pulled out the photo they’d printed from the newspaper clipping all those years ago.

“How’d you find that? That’s from a muggle newspaper.” Gerteso leaned forward to get a better look.

“We’re the ones asking the questions,” Harry said firmly. “How do you know that shopkeeper.”

“Fine.” It looked like Gerteso was finally going to give up some information. “He took me in after the attack. I was in the kitchens before the death eaters invaded the orphanage. I was able to sneak out the back door and hide behind a dumpster. That’s how I saw Benedict escape with my brother. I was about to call out to them, but then the explosion happened and it knocked me out. When I woke up they were gone. That shopkeeper found me and took me in. Thought it best to change my name, and then he raised me muggle.”

“No one from Hogwarts came for you?” Harry asked even though he knew the answer.

“Why would they? Everyone assumed we were good as dead, even though they never recovered our bodies. Course, all the records were destroyed, so they didn’t actually know how many of us perished, did they?”

“So how’d you get a wand? And learn magic?” Ron asked.

“Why’s it matter?” Gerteso had a knack for answering questions with questions.

“Why? Well, the fact that you’re practicing magic and worked at Gringotts is the ‘matter.’ So please, enlighten us,” Ron pressed.

“Stole one. Then taught myself.”

“Did you steal the books, too?” Harry asked. Gerteso simply shrugged. Just another crime to add to the list.

“Alright, so you’re clearly going to Azkaban for a long time. Money laundering, from the goblins no less, stealing, impersonating others, evading the law... so how about you tell us what you want with your brother.” Ron was getting ready for the cincher.

“I want what’s mine.”

“Which is…?” Harry was starting to get impatient.

“His title.”

Ron nodded. “Thanks, Leo.” He nodded to Harry, and they left the room to discuss with Kingsley.

“Good work, you two,” Kingsley said. “What are you thinking for your next steps?”

“I’d like to leave him in the dark until tomorrow. We should bring him to the 99 so they can question him for his identity theft. It’ll only make our case stronger,” Harry said and Ron nodded as he took over. 

“Hermione is working with Rosa and Amy to contact Martini and ask him to stop by the precinct for a publicity stunt. They’ll give him a tour, and we’ll bring him in the room and Disarm him when he sees his brother.” 

“We’ll make sure we have time to get Gerteso to comply with helping the MACUSA team take his brother down. He’s got a lot of jealousy and vengeance flowing through him, so it shouldn’t be too hard,” Harry finished.

“Very good. I will have Gerteso transferred to holding, and will personally see to it that he’s transferred to the 99 tomorrow morning. We should be able to wrap this up tomorrow if all goes well.”

“Thanks,” Harry and Ron said.

“You two may go. Make sure your plan is well thought out with the team. Once Gerteso is settled in his cell, I’ll visit Holt and give him the rundown. We will plan for nine tomorrow morning. Now, get back to your team,” Kingsley said.

Harry and Ron said their goodbyes and made their way to  join the rest of the team.

~o~

The team spent the last couple of hours planning out every detail, question and potential move Martini could make tomorrow. Holt was able to contact Martini, who confirmed he would visit the precinct. Now that they’d secured his visit, the team was also certain that Gerteso would be willing to help them take down his brother. It’d be a brief, but shocking reunion for sure. Satisfied things were in good shape for tomorrow, the team retired early again for more movies.

“I think we can get through two more movies tonight!” said Amy. “And then the other two tomorrow, if you’re allowed to stay one extra night.”

“I’m sure Kingsley won’t have a problem with it,” Hermione said kindly. She knew they all wanted to get home, but she needed to see this through, and hoped that the boys were invested, too.

“Honestly, if we can wrap this up in the morning, we could finish the reports, watch the movies and then we could take a late portkey. We have to come back to pack up anyways. Plus, Kingsley should at least have the decency to give us a few days off after this case,” Ron suggested. “So we can rest when we’re home.”

“That’s true,” Harry said. 

“I can go help speed the process along by starting the paperwork tonight,” Rosa suggested. Well, it wasn’t really a suggestion, more of a statement, as she’d already grabbed her jacket and was headed out the door. “I’ll meet you guys at the precinct in the morning.”

Ron looked worriedly at the rest of the detectives. “Don’t mind Rosa, she likes her private life. She already brought her stuff back to her place before you got back from questioning. You don’t have to worry about her loyalty. Actually, you should be thankful, she never offers to do extra paperwork,” Jake explained. “She’s also clearly not an HP fanatic like Amy and Charles are.”

“And you,” Amy said with a smirk.

“Okay, fine, I’ve joined the dark side,” Jake finally relented.

“Well, it’s good to know not everyone is obsessed with my story,” Harry said sarcastically.

“Shall we, then?” Amy asked.

The group settled in to watch Order of the Phoenix. As the scenes progressed, Ron muttered to Harry, “At least our hair’s a more accurate length for this go around.” 

Hermione couldn’t help but laugh at the comment. “That was pretty awful. And why is mine much more tame? What are they trying to accomplish?” Harry and Ron shrugged as Amy remained awfully quiet.

It was a longer movie, but it was more accurate in their minds than the fourth. “Umbridge really was awful,” Hermione commented. “And that actress gave a chilling performance. It felt like I was there all over again.” 

Harry glanced at his hand, which still had his own handwriting on the back of his hand. “Well, they got the disaster of my relationship with Cho on point, but where were your Department of Mysteries injuries?” Harry asked Ron and Hermione. He looked at Amy. “Are they in the books at least? It was bad. They were in the hospital for over a week. Hermione didn’t even wake up for several days.”

“It’s in the books, yes,” Amy confirmed, “but I think the movies wanted to focus more on your loss than the other’s injuries.” She was referring to Sirius.

Ron could tell Harry was tense so he changed the conversation. “Well, I for one, am insulted that they completely disregarded Firenze, and they left out the swamp. What a shame.”

Hermione nodded. “Should we start the sixth?”

Amy got up to change the discs as Harry gave Ron and Hermione a look. “Well, this should be fun.”

Hermione and Ron both grimaced. Hermione looked at Ron. “Can I just take a moment to apologize ahead of time again for the canaries? If they’re even there…”

“Oh, they’re there!” Charles chimed in.

“I’m sorry, too, for...well, you know,” Ron said. 

They’d been together long enough  that the whole year had been discussed at length, except for one tiny detail that Hermione seemed to have forgotten about.

The movie started rolling with the Underground scene. “Er, what is this? This never happened.” Harry looked incredibly confused. “They really didn’t use the Dursleys in this at all?” He looked surprised as Amy and Charles shook their heads.

The trio was on edge for several of the scenes they knew were coming, but it wasn’t until the Quidditch trials scene started that Hermione let out a shriek. “Oh, no. Shit! No!” She looked at Harry as Ron asked her what was wrong. It was completely out of character for her to swear.

“N-nothing. Could we- Amy can we skip this scene?” she asked nervously.

Amy seemed to realize what Hermione was alluding to, but Ron spoke up first. “No, keep playing it.” He watched as Movie Hermione cast a confundus charm on McLaggen and looked at her.

“Tell me you didn’t.”

“I- it wasn’t because I thought you couldn’t do it!”

“Hermione-”

“I was so mad at him and his smugness. He needed that cocky smile rubbed off his face. He would have been awful - he was awful! When he played in that second match. He was such a foul pain in the arse.”

Hermione’s face threatened tears as Ron looked to Harry. “Did you know?”

“I only guessed, and I told her it was wrong. I wouldn’t have let him make the team anyways, but apparently she didn’t trust my judgement either,” Harry rolled his eyes.

“And you didn’t tell me because…?” 

“Because by the time I confirmed it you were in a right foul mood because of Ginny, and then you spent months snogging Lavender. By that point, the season was almost over, and McLaggen’s true colors came out anyways.”

Jake, Charles, and Amy were watching even more intently than they had the movie, which Amy had since paused. Everyone waited to see how Ron would react, and they were all surprised when he simply smirked and put his arm around his wife.

“You know, looking back on it, it’s kind of sweet that you wanted to help me and make McLaggen suffer.”

Hermione gaped at him. “You’re not mad?” Even Harry looked surprised.

“If it was fifteen years ago? Yeah, I probably would have been, but I’d like to think I’ve matured enough to not let something that happened when we were sixteen bother me now. Can we keep going?”

Hermione relaxed a bit and sunk into his side as they continued. Everyone was trying to keep their comments to a minimum as they had the previous evening so they wouldn’t miss anything, but when the scene with the Burrow catching fire appeared, the trio all lost their minds. 

Even Amy and Charles agreed that it was a very odd addition that wasn’t necessary in the slightest. Jake thought the effect was cool, but sort of out of place. After the outburst, they were able to make it to the end, and the trio looked shell shocked. Up until that point, things weren’t terrible, but what the writers and directors had done to Ginny and Ron’s characters was completely inexcusable.

“Ginny may well kill someone if she ever sees that,” Harry commented. “And what was up with Ron being so far in the back of that last scene? That’s not how it went at all.”

“I’m actually pretty disgusted,” Hermione agreed. 

“As much as you kissing Ginny after that match shocked me, mate, I think they did a disservice by totally changing that here. Whatever that was supposed to be in the Room of Requirement was just awkward..” Ron said.

“I was really upset when I saw they’d messed that up,” Charles agreed, ever the romantic.

“Amy,” Hermione said, not paying attention to the rest of the conversation. 

“Yeah?”

“Please tell me that the screenwriters were not trying to attempt to create a nonexistent relationship seem plausible.”

Amy gave Hermione a worried and apologetic look. “I wish I could..”

“Oh my god,” Hermione’s face was red and she looked livid.

“What?” Harry and Ron were looking at her.

“They were trying to imply that Harry and I would have been a better couple! I’m so angry I could scream.”

“Hermione, you wanted to watch these,” Jake tried to tell her.

“And I don’t regret it, but there’s no wonder there’s all this speculation still surrounding the three of us.”

“ ‘Mione, stop, it doesn’t matter. We’re happy, Harry’s happy with Ginny. We’ll tell the rest of them to bugger off, it’s fine,” Ron tried to reassure her.

“It’s not fine! They completely destroyed your character, and elevated mine to make me seem too desirable! How are you not more upset by this?”

“Because it’s fiction based on presumed fiction. Muggles don’t know we’re real, so this is all just a story to them. It’s no use getting your knickers in a twist over. Our real fans know what’s true and what the movies fucked up, yeah? We can’t let it affect us.”

Hermione let out a loud sigh. “I really hate when you’re the voice of reason.”

Ron grinned at her as Jake and Harry suggested they should all probably get some sleep. “We’ll finish this saga tomorrow, and then Amy and Charles, you owe me some Die Hard marathons!” Jake said excitedly. 

“To one more day and an almost closed case,” Charles said as they all stood to go to their separate rooms.

“Cheers!” chorused the rest of the group. It was hard to believe this crazy case was going to come to an end tomorrow.

#hp trio #hp au #hp b99 crossover #b99 au #ROMIONE

[shy-violet-soul]

Love in a time of COVID-19

Summary: Bucky won’t let anything get in the way of showing you he loves you & making you smile. Characters: Bucky Barnes x you; Steve Rogers; mentions of Clint Barton, Tony Stark, & Natasha Romanoff Ratings/Warnings: Character has Rheumatoid Arthritis, mentions of symptoms & treatments. Social-distanced-fluff of the highest concentration. Clint being weird & Bucky being goofball-y awesome. A/N: I saw the photo that inspired this on IG, and laughed so hard I just about cried. The marvelous OP graciously gave me permission to include it in my fic. You’ll find it at the bottom of the work. I thought we could all use some fluff in our lives these days!

I also have a friend with Rheumatoid Arthritis who is finding this time to be exceptionally difficult. Please support those in your circle who need some extra love right now.

Thank you @pinknerdpanda​ for beta-ing once again! All the social-distanced-hugs to you!

This work is a piece of fiction inspired by characters created by the MCU. Please do not copy/print elsewhere without my written permission

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He was convinced. People’d lost their damn minds.

Bucky had survived warzone trenches in Europe. Had lived through the Great Depression. And had never seen the level of human stupidity he’d witnessed the first few days of March 2020. It’s an airborne illness - why the hell were people buying 96 rolls of toilet paper at a whack? What were they gonna do, wrap it around their mouths and breathe through it?

The Avengers Tower was going through its own issues. Stark vowed to spend his self-isolation inside one of his suits; a good idea in theory until he realized he still had to pee. Steve kept expounding on the virtues of using the time to catch up on reports. Natasha spent her time snorting at the treasure trove of new social media memes while Clint thumbed his nose at the whole thing by licking every door knob he passed. Bucky was washing his hands more just because of that. Gross.

Yes, they were pretty well hooked up to do the shelter in place, social distance, whatever the hell they were calling this thing. Bucky couldn’t fault Tony (well, probably mostly Pepper) for the very streamlined system in place that kept the Tower stocked with all manner of essentials. And, the Stark Foundation was busily getting help where it needed to go while Bruce videoconferenced with Dr. Cho and Shuri on treatments and vaccines. They were good to go for the foreseeable future.

His only real worry was you.

Your rheumatoid arthritis made this whole thing much more dicey, and - if he was being honest - a frick ton scarier. The illness suppressed your immune system, which meant you had to be more proactive on a normal day with handwashing, etc. Throw in a virus with no vaccine and no treatment? ‘Proactive’ took on a whole new definition. Sanitizing surfaces and extra cleanliness efforts were easy to step up. But he knew how much you hated being cooped inside. It didn’t help that the humidity had climbed up into the 70-ish percent region. The heavy air, coupled with the bite of winter chill still hanging on to the calendar, had your already tender joints pitching all kinds of a fit.

Right now, you were curled up in your favorite spot - a well padded window seat overlooking Central Park. Bucky had switched on the fancy fake fireplace for you, had wrapped you in blankets and propped you with pillows. The light pouring in haloed a bright shine to your hair, which normally would have a smile on his face. But your wan face pulled a grimace from him instead. Your shoulders rose and fell with a sigh, and Bucky would have cheerly scrubbed every surface of the whole damn Tower to get you out and about and smiling again.

A knock on the door spun him on his heel, and Bucky stalked to the door. Everyone knew the protocol - no visitors allowed!

“What.” Not a question, but a cold, terse demand. Steve drew a deep breath as he measured the look being leveled at him. He’d faced firing tanks with less caution. His friend’s frown was fierce versus his blank murder stare. Bucky was mad but not in an assassinating mood. 

“Buck, I’m not gonna stay. I just wanted to stop in and say hi.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.” The door swung closed in his face. Steve rolled his eyes, throwing his arms up in disgust.

“C’mon, man.”

“No.” Exasperated, Steve couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his mouth. You and Bucky were a match made in heaven. Eidetic brain with the memory of an elephant, you were hands down one of the best analysts he’d had the privilege of working with. You chased after clues relentlessly, bulldogged in your tenacity. Straight up bullheaded in your obstinacy, though. 

If anyone could out-stubborn you, it was Bucky. Lord knows, he had enough experience chasing after a certain runt who couldn’t stay out of back alley brawls. Steve knew that, in odd moments, it still struck his friend that he didn’t need his help in the same ways. When Bucky’s muscle memory had him moving before his brain caught up if Steve coughed or sneezed. He could practically see the wheels turning as Bucky struggled to stitch together broken memories with current moments. A natural protector, Bucky needed someone to nurture. To cajole and wheedle and, if necessary, out-stubborn. You fit the bill to a tee.

“I don’t have coronavirus, Bucky!”

The door snatched back open. “Oh, yeah? And how do you know that?”

“I can’t get sick. Serum, remember?”

Bucky glared at him through squinted eyes before stepping back into the apartment.

“Carrier,” he hissed, slamming the door again.

“Was that Steve?”  Fatigue even hung heavy in your voice, the faintest gravel in the back of your throat threading a husk into your words. Bucky winced with you when you shifted in your seat, struggling painfully to stand.

“Yeah. Now I’m gonna have to wipe off the door knob again,” he groused as he briskly rubbed sanitizer over his hands. “Clint’s such a dumb ass.”

You snorted softly as you padded towards him. “I know. Who licks door knobs to prove a point?”

Taking in your stiff posture, Bucky leaned in close and pressed a kiss to your forehead. 

“Why’d you get up? What do you need? I’ll get it,” he murmured into your hair. Your sigh huffed softly against his chest as you gratefully leaned against him, glancing at the clock in the kitchen.

“I should probably take another dose of ibuprofen,” the words mumbled up, uncertain. The illness had dragged up new challenges - too many doses of the NSAID was ripping up your stomach. Steroids helped, too, but you couldn’t take too many rounds too close together, and you’d already taken one prescription a month ago when the wet winter had your shoulders and wrists feeling like they were grinding straight through to your bone marrow. Pepper and your doctor were trying to get a DMARD approved through insurance, but with all this new virus ‘fit hitting the shan’, the insurance company backlog was sky high. That left you with balancing growing joint discomfort against growing stomach unhappiness. Thank God for ice packs and Tony’s ridiculously over-the-top whirlpool baths.

Bucky held in his own sigh as he pondered your situation. “Let me make you some of that chamomile tea and some toast to go with it.”

He didn’t think it possible, but your shoulders sagged even more. “I’m really not hungry, Buck.”

Threading his fingers through your hair, he gently rubbed the back of your head the way you liked.

“I’ll make it with that raspberry rutabaga jam on it. You want that?”

The catch in your throat grew to a fist-sized lump fit to choke you. The throbbing in your shoulders and arms radiated in time with your heartbeat up into your brain. Your knees felt weird - rubbery, tender, like you weren’t sure they’d support you. You missed your job, you missed your friends, you missed outside. As much as you adored Bucky, you were lonely for the other pieces of your life. The misery in your heart swelled to mammoth proportions, and you couldn’t choke back the sob that broke from you.

“I want -”

Bucky’s gut pinched so hard it hurt when you started crying. “What, love? What do you want? Anything, I’ll get it for you.”

Crying just made everything hurt more, and you swallowed hard to shove down the tears, anxiety, and stress. You glanced up, seeing the stress that pulled tight lines into Bucky’s face. You tried to offer him a smile and knew you failed pathetically.

“Rhubarb, hun. It’s raspberry rhubarb jam.”

Bucky saw you trying, knew you were trying to make him feel better, and wanted to cry himself. He’d do anything to bring back your smile.

“Rutabaga, rhubarb, whatever. You go sit, I’ll bring it out to you with the ibuprofen.”

You shook your head as you stepped away from his urging embrace. “No, I need to move around a little.” Neither of you spoke as you moved to the kitchen, content in the quiet puttering as Bucky filled the kettle and popped bread in the toaster. Out of habit, he went to wash his hands when an idea hit him.

Staring blankly out the window, your thoughts drifted to your ‘to be read’ pile as you tried to decide between starting a new book from your oft-ignored stack or comfort yourself with a lovely reread. You were so lost in your musings, you didn’t track on the activity behind you.

“Babe, can you grab the butter and jam? I’m washing my hands.”

You turned around to step to the fridge, stopped in your tracks at the sight before you, and burst out laughing. 

Bucky had taken off his metal arm and put it in the dishwasher.

Hilarity pealed from you in waves, folding you over as you leaned against the counter. You tried to catch your breath and glanced up at Bucky. The proud-as-punch smile on his face set you off again, laughing so hard your shoulders twinged at you.

When a snort broke into your snickers, Bucky couldn’t help but laugh with you. Giddiness swirled with relief at your delight, and he felt prouder in that moment that he did receiving his U.S. Army Expert Marksmanship medal in ‘42. He knew he couldn’t carry your burden for you, but in this moment, he’d lightened it a bit. Moving in close, he gathered you to his chest with his other arm, relishing the feel of your giggles against him. You gasped for breath as you wiped the tears from eyes, then reached up to cup his face in your hands, smiling fondly into his twinkling gaze.

“I love you, you giant goofball. Thank you for taking such good care of me.” 

Bucky leaned down and kissed the tip of your nose.

“Gotta take care of my best girl.” Giving you the gentlest of squeezes, he then urged you back to your cozy nest. “Go sit. I’ll bring it all out in a few.”

Still grinning, you headed for your phone. “First, I gotta get my phone. This is going on Twitter!”

#shy vy writes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x reader #rheumatoid arthritis #RA #steve rogers #love in a time of COVID-19 #covid19 #coronavirus

[daesungfmd]

hello! i’m peyton, but you can call me pey for short if you’d like; either is fine by me. i’ve only recently returned to tumblr rp, so i’m still getting back into the swing of things! please....... be patient with me in the meantime. anyway, i’m going to be writing for impulse’s lead vocal  &  rapper, hwang daesung! go ahead and leave a  ♡  if you’re interested in plotting with us and i’ll send you an im asap!

private profile  /  idol profile  /  plots  /  pinterest

daesung is originally from the neighborhood of samcheong in seoul. his mom owns a small salon there, which is where he spent the majority of his time while he was growing up (and where he still spends a lot of his free time nowadays, tbh). 

he doesn’t have any siblings  &  his dad passed away when he was twelve, so it was just him, his mom and the stray cats that they fed. they struggled quite a bit in these times and daesung’s mom often considered selling the salon, but daesung refused to let that happen. he didn’t ask for a whole lot because he didn’t want to make her feel bad.

but! he’s always been very deeply interested in music  —  stems a little from memories of just sitting in the family car with his dad and sharing music as well as listening to a busker who frequently performed near his school.

wanted to be a rockstar, which definitely irritated his mom. she wanted to be supportive, but she also wanted him to succeed in life  &  knew how hard it would be for him to make something like that come true.

regardless, she kept buying him the cds, record players, records, guitars, etc that he asked for around his birthday and the holidays because he never wanted anything else.

a series of strong-willed fights resulted in daesung’s mom finally allowing him to audition for companies. after many rejections, he found his home at gold star entertainment.

he became a trainee in early 2012—so when he was 15—and two years later, he debuted with impulse. during this time, he became estranged from his mother, but after debuting, he began to get closer to her again.

he stayed outwardly optimistic during his time as a trainee, but he didn’t exactly love it and his health was on a steady decline, both physically and mentally. there were times when he wanted to back out because he didn’t want to be an idol, he wanted to be a rock musician, but... he had too much pride to go back home. so he stayed.

during next: origin story, daesung’s poor dancing skills  &  unfaltering confidence had him framed as an arrogant boy with no shame; furthermore, he was said to be dumb because of how many times certain things had to be explained to him. towards the end of the show, he was able to redeem himself a bit, though.

to be fair............... he is kind of dumb. promoted as the ~4d type~, but it’s not like that image was pulled out of thin air --- he’s more or less the same on and off camera, can’t really differentiate between his work persona and his actual self. the best way i can describe it is that it’s really obvious that he isn’t book/traditionally smart, but he’s intelligent in other ways: emotionally, first and foremost. 

anyway! in impulse, the shameless and dense aspects of his personality that the public had already met were molded into a new, more likeable persona... although more likeable is still up for debate. during the debut era, he was very loud, a little too honest, always trying to crack a joke  &  steal the show.

in his most ridiculous shenanigan so far... he has a nervous habit of scratching his head (also does this when he’s embarrassed  —  i.e, when someone’s making fun of him) and fans made a compilation of the clips. he took it much further than he should have and made a statement without running it past management about how he’d been scratching because he had lice. never actually had lice, but fans began gifting him with copious amounts of lice shampoo, hair trimmers, plastic gloves, hairnets, etc. management was definitely fed up with him over this... but he found it hilarious.

impulse debuted nearly  7  years ago, so he has toned down his behavior a bit... or maybe the public’s just gotten more used to it? it’s hard to be shocked by him now ‘cause the public’s already seen it all. seen as the kind of idol who has no shame whatsoever.

i intend to push him towards variety whether he likes it or not. he really, really wants to act, but the company’s quite adamant about not letting him do that (for one good reason: he sucks at acting)... so maybe variety’s the next best thing? he certainly doesn’t want to be reduced to the few osts he’s done, anyway. </3

he doesn’t hate being an idol. it isn’t what he wanted, but all things considered, he doesn’t think it’s that bad, either. impulse’s music is a lot better now than it was when they debuted, he’s made a lot of friends who he never would’ve otherwise met  &  he likes to be known/liked. kinda indifferent about the idol status ig.

for more general facts about daesung... he’s quite the social butterfly. he has many friends, but i imagine that he doesn’t have very many close ones. partially because he doesn’t tend to spend too much time with individuals  &  partially because it’s hard to break past the superficial layer with him. his fans will claim that he’s the most genuine guy around, but when you actually know him, the constant grin and jokes become a bit unnerving. especially when it’s obvious that he’s not doing well, but refuses to speak about his feelings.

but once he deems someone trustworthy, he’s the king of oversharing. he’s a very open book, will tell you anything you wanna know if he knows that you actually care.

he’s a very affectionate guy, whether he’s close to someone or not. he thinks the world could definitely use some more love (and he’s seen first-hand that idols tend to be the angstiest mfs around), so he’s always looking for a way to brighten someone’s day or at least get the tiniest smile out of ‘em. with people he is close to, he’s usually pretty touchy; likes to hug his friends, rub their backs, ruffle their hair, etc, but his affection is also shown through words of affirmation! if you need an ego boost, he’s here to provide it. thinks his friends are the absolute coolest. with people he’s not close to, he tends to crack jokes to break the ice, try to talk about their interests, pay attention to whatever they have to say. gives spontaneous gifts to friends and acquaintances. likes to spend time with people, too, whether he knows them well or he’s just starting to.

he says “i love you” like it’s his life’s motto. calls up his friends when he’s drunk like, “you know that i love you, right? i really love you. so much... damn. i miss you!!! i love you and i miss you! please come back to me!!!” aka it starts out innocent enough but then he starts sounding like a crazy ex. no worries, though, it’s just your good ol’ friend daesung acting like a fool because it’s been a week since he last saw you. <3

makes spontaneous phonecalls. if he has your number in his phone, he’s definitely called you a handful of times — even if you’re a virtual stranger. i imagine there are plenty of people who’ve probably blocked his number at this point.

he’s interested in fashion, but if he said this aloud, it would be treated as a shocking statement. nothing that he wears is ever in trend. most of his outfits are inspired by ‘90′s fashion, but even taking that into consideration, hardly anyone ever thinks he looks good other than himself. his neon-toned bucket hats, excessively tie-dyed clothes  &  gaudy accessories result in him getting clowned a lot. it’s very obvious when he dresses himself....... probably not even allowed to pick his own airport clothes.

mcs have joked that he even manages to make expensive brands look cheap with how he styles them. kind of hurts his feelings but it’s okay. <3

he’s super into skateboarding. he didn’t start until after impulse debuted, but he’s gotten pretty good at it with how much he practices in his spare time. has a collection of unique boards  &  even has his apartment decorated with some furniture made from decks. some fans have definitely met him at skateparks before.

believes in the most outrageous conspiracies  —  say what you want, but you can’t change his mind about anything. he thinks that aliens are indeed real (and already walking the earth), he thinks that the government consists of people who are not entirely human, he thinks that there’s a huge chance that this world is only a simulation, he thinks that all cryptids are Definitely real (mothman, bigfoot, nightcrawlers, etc) and so on. i suggest not letting him get going about this because he can def sound a little crazy.

specialties: reciting quotes but always getting one word Terribly wrong, misusing and mispronouncing words, getting under everyone’s skin without even really having to try, slapstick humor and making 30 second stories feel 3 hours long.

#fmdintro

[8makes1cheese]

f2l with Song Mingi♡

Pairing: Mingi X Reader

RoommateAU, (and like High SchoolAU in the beginning and kinda CollegeAU?)

Tags: cursing, shitty attempts at comedy, fluff, kinda sorta suggestive?, ig drug use and drinking?(booze and weed)

Words: 2.5k

A/N: Okay so, this is my first bullet scenario thing? and its weird...like this is so weird but I tried XD it ended up this weird mix between bullet scenario and oneshot fic and i-

...............all I can do is practice and try to get better but yeah. SO HERES THIS :D (im srry don hate me T-T)

-Finding Your Best Friend-

this bb would be the best-est friend you would have in this world

probably why you fell for him in the first place, but let's not get to ahead of ourselves

you guys met freshman year of high school

your guys' mutual friend Yunho is really the reason why

you just moved to town, and since said town was small, it was clear to you that everybody knew everybody else

you felt pretty lonely on the first day because of that

second day of freshman year is where is all started to come together

you were looking for a nice spot to sit and have your lunch outside because you didn't want to look like the weird loner person eating by themselves in silence

you found a pretty spot under a big tree near the track field, you put a random cool cake making tutorial on your phone and ate your lunch

the video was at a part where they were placing intricate designs in frosting all over the cake when you hear "Whoa, that is so cool!"

you jump about 3 feet in the air and immediately gather up your phone and get up to spin around to see who interrupted your quiet time

a young man, not sure his grade, with peach colored hair and a worried expression on his face, raises his hands in a surrender pose

'okay but what the hell was he doing, watching my phone behind the tree?'

well reader, we'll never know

"I'm really sorry! I didn't mean to scare you that bad! Really, I am so so so sorry!"

you, still in shock, just nod at him

now you're both just standing in front of each other

not saying anything

....well

this is awkward

"I-I'm Yunho...by the way."

you clear your throat, not sure why, nervous habit

"[Y/N].."

"So, uh... Haven't seen you around here before.."

once you explained you were new, and new to the town in general. There was no escape.

you were now best friends with the giant teddy bear and there was nothing you could do about it

yunho immediately took you under his wing and showed you around the campus. Then the town itself after school was out.

but Ro this seems to be turning into a yunho x reader fic/ bullet scenario

stfu I'm getting there

what did this turn into even

so now you and Yunho are bffs

enter giant teddy bear 2.0

you and yunho are hanging out at lunch, it's become a usual for the past two weeks

and Yunhos other bff is becoming sus about why Yunho hasn't been eating with him at lunch or doesn't seem to have as much time after school for him

that's when giant teddy bear 2.0 (if you don't know that its Mingi then idek-) finds his bestie with some random chick

a really adorable random chick

"So this is where you have been?"

you and Yunho start, not expecting someone to find your guys' spot

Also, deja vu, amiright?

"Oh, hey Mingi!" Yunho greets the tall dirty blonde haired teddy bear

And you're totally not sitting there thinking, 'holy shit, he is...wow.'

and that's how it all started

he stayed and introduced himself and you hit it off just as well as you and yunho did

maybe even better..

he started showing up everyday, at the what was dubbed 'The Cool Kids Spot™️' by you all, with yunho

even tho we all know you guys were NOT the cool kids

then it went to him being at the spot before everyone showed up

so he could see you first

then it turned into him meeting you up after class so you both could grab your food together and meet up Yunho at The Spot™️

before you could even realize it, he became your person

you were the first person he ran up to and hugged after him and Yunhos dance group took home 1st place at a competition

he was the first person you called when you were told that your poem won an award

you were the person he'd come to if he needed any kind of advice

and he was the first person you went to if you needed to get out of your head or your anxiety was getting to you

the high school years went by so fast

a lot changed

but what never changed was Mingi, he may have grown

and damn he grew

but he was your constant (and yes, yunho too, we can't forget yunho bro)

-Knowing They're The One-

high school came and went

Mingi and Yunho were accepted by a prestigious performing arts school

you, however, were going to just a regular college

luckily, both schools weren't terribly far from each other

which is why, instead of suffering in dorms, you and Mingi decided to get a apartment together, not far from both schools

yunhos ass stayed with his parents because they live like right next to the school, lucky hoe

you all still make time for each other

but you and Mingi prefer to stay in, order takeout and watch random stuff on YouTube

whenever you or Mingi went out it was always together (unless it was classes)

Grocery shopping? Together. Doctors appointment? Together. Girls night? Together. Guys night? Together.

"So, you must be suffering right now" his friend Yeosang said to him on a rare guys night that didn't involve you.

Mingi looked at Yeosang perplexed, ignoring whatever Wooyoung was talking to him about

"What are you talking about?"

"You and [Y/N] are literally always together, the fact she isn't here surprises me."

Mingi laughed. "We're not always together."

A cacophony of "LIES" and "BULLSHIT" filled the air as all of Mingi friends called him out on his bullshit

Mingi could feel his face heating up

"W-well, so what if we are! Were best friends AND roommates."

"And lovers~" his friend San whispered in his ear from behind and laughed, dancing away before Mingi could hit him

"We're not together!" Mingi exclaimed, rolling his eyes.

"But you want to be."

Mingi turned to look at the owner of the voice. It was Yunho, leaning against the entrance of the kitchen everyone was gathered in

He was looking at Mingi with a smirk

Mingi knew Yunho knew how he felt about you

and not because he told him

well...he kinda did

FLASHBACK TIME

it was your guys' high school graduation

more specifically, the night of, and you were all partying and yunhos house

celebrating the fact that you all were officially adults now

lol you thought

and what better way to celebrate that than with underage drinking

be safe kids, don't drink irresponsibly

and Mingi. Got. Wasted.

by the end of the night, he was crying (and maybe puked once or twice...) in Yunhos arms about how beautiful you were, and how amazing and talented you were

wouldn't shut up about how soft and perfect you feel in his arms when he hugs you or vice versa

"She is my soulmate." After every other sentence mentioning how perfect you are

but wait, where were you while Mingi was crying and puking you ask?

That night you met Yeonjun, who is now one of your closest friends

  at first, a friend of Wooyoungs, who you all became friends with junior year, along with his best friend San

Yeonjun, who went to a different school across town, was invited along by Woo and San

you and Yeonjun hit it off so well, drinking and laughing, and talking about how much he loves his boyfriend Soobin, and maybe you drunkingly going on about how amazing Mingi is

however, Mingi didn't know Yeonjun

and what he saw that night was you, enjoying your time with someone who wasn’t him, laughing at jokes that weren't his, hanging all over someone who could never know you as well as he did (and that totally wasn't the reason that Mingi drank like 2 bottles of straight vodka, not at all)

and at that moment

he knew

he fucked up

he was in love with you

OKAY END OF FLASHBACK

Mingi wasn't sure what to say

he could deny it sure, but he knew it was useless

not after every person in the room gave him a knowing smirk after Yunhos comment

“She doesn't-”

“Oh, whatever. you guys are literally already a couple. And dont even try to deny that. If she was here right now, she’d probably be on your lap and you two would be sitting in some corner of the house whispering some weird drunk lovey shit to each other.”

well...

Mingi really didn't have a argument for that

that night he came home sober

but you didn't know that until months later when he told you he wasn't actually drunk

anyways when he got home you were sitting in the living room

music playing away on YouTube while you type away on your laptop

you didn't hear him come in, softly singing along to the song under your breath

he stood there for a moment and just..looked at you

your hair was a mess

you had on the same clothes as yesterday

probably haven't done a skincare routine in months

you were the most beautiful person he had ever seen in his life

he felt so much love swell in his chest

hes known it for a while now but at that moment all that was going on in his head was

“That’s my soulmate. I love her. I love her so much.”

“Hey.”

he wasn't sure if he had said it loud enough but apparently he had because you flinched and turned to see who the ‘intruder’ was

“Oh, Mingi! Shit, you scared me...” you laughed. “How was guys night?”

He made his was over to sit on the couch as you told him how your paper was coming along and then waited for him to answer your question

he sat for a good minute not saying anything

“Mingi?”

he looked at you

“you okay hun?” you asked, placing your hand on his cheek

and then he kissed you

it was so quick, you had no time to register that it was happening at all

and he left just as quickly

slamming the door to his bedroom and leaving you flustered and panicked

-So....Lovers?-

the morning after the kiss was the most awkward moment that you and Mingi had ever had

luckily it didn't last long at all

you two were silent, awkwardly making breakfast

then Mingi busted out with “Man, I’m so hungover! I barely remember anything from last night!”

“Do...do you remember anything from when you came home?”

“No, to be honest, I don't even remember coming home...”

-cue forced laughter-

-cue Mingi not trying to be disappointed when you looked relieved-

 he asked you if anything happened and tried not to feel sad about the fact you were going on about how nothing happened and he just came home and went to bed

why wouldn't you mention the kiss? maybe everyone had it wrong, you didn't feel the same. why else would you avoid it?

but everything went back to...normal

you two would cuddle every night on the couch

you showed up to every guys night like usual

(there may or may not have been more knowing smirks thrown Mingis way)

he showed up to the rare girls nights you'd have with your (like 2) girlfriends

(they literally just consisted of everyone chilling in some secluded spot and sparking up a blunt or two and bull-shittng)

but everything wasn't normal

because even though it lasted 0.0002 seconds long

Mingi cannot stop thinking about that kiss

neither can you for that matter

that's when you confided in your bestie Yeonjun

who knew all about your love for your other bestie

you went to Yeonjuns one Saturday afternoon without mingi

its been a month since the kiss and Yeonjun is only disappointed in the fact that you didn't tell him sooner

his solution was simple, just tell him how you feel

its so god damn obvious he feels the same

but who are you to do the simple thing right?

so what do you do?

you go with Soobins idea

and :) you:) go:) on:) a:) blind:) date:) with one of soobin and yeonjuns friends:)))))))

well

at least you were supposed to..

the night comes when you were supposed to meet at a nice cafe with their friend Beomgyu

you. were. lookin. FIRE BABY

slaayyyyy

you were in the kitchen grabbing your keys

and maybe prolonging the fact that your going out with someone who isn't MIngi

when Mingi walked out to heat himself up a noodle cup

and maybe one for you too because he didn't think you were going anywhere and was going to ask if you wanted to chill in his room and play mario kart

his jaw DROPPED when he saw you

he felt like he was just kicked in the gut, all breath left his lungs

and he may or may not have gotten an instant boner but-

he cleared his throat to get your attention

“You look...nice.” wow, Mingi, smooth

“O-oh, thanks, um... ill be back later okay?”

when Mingi asked where you'll be going and you said you had a blind date, he swears to this day he blacked out for a moment

next thing he knew he had you pushed against the counter

“Mingi-”

“No.”

“w-what..”

“You don't have a date.”

“But I do-”

then his lips were pressed against yours

and unlike the first, this one lasted a hell of a lot longer than 0.0002 seconds

it wasn't fireworks or butterflies or a sudden realization of unconditional love

it was rough and messy and filled with so many emotions including relief that your love for each other can finally blossom

you didn't say a word to each other when you parted

you stared at each other for a while, panting with big smiles on your faces

once your breathing returned to normal you gently pushed him back so you weren't pressed against the counter anymore

“I’m going to change in PJ's.”

Mingis smile lit up his whole face. “But I thought you had a date..”

“No, I don't.” you kissed his cheek and left to change.

-YES LOVERS FINALLY-

so you guys never really sat down and were like ‘hey so are we...?’

because you both knew you just....were

after that night you guys started acting like you had been dating for months

it was just like before

because of course, like always, Yunho was right

you guys already acted like you were dating

now kisses and a lot more were added to the mix

which just made everything 1000x better

everyone knew it was just a matter of time

you loved waking up to his arms wrapped around your waist and him softly snoring in your ear

he loved waking up to you peppering kisses all over his collar bones and neck

your loved bloomed♡

A/N pt2: Im sorry if the end seems so rushed as well, I started running out of steam and my mind blanked but I didn't want to prolong this and never post it...like i do with everything...

Thank you for reading!

#song mingi #ateez #ateez scenarios #mingi fluff #mingi scenarios #mingi x reader #ateez x reader #kpop fanfiction #kpop #kpop fluff #ateez fluff #8s place #ateez fanfiction #mingi friends to lovers #mingi f2l #ateez f2l #mingi fanfic #kpop fanfic #ateez au #mingi oneshot #song mingi oneshot #ateez oneshot

[twisted-nox-sidus]

(I'm bad with clear skies. I want to hide my ugliness from the light. But things lurk in the shadows cast by that light... And I'm a little interested in finding out more about them.) - Strix, narrating.

Based off nighttime and an owl, so she's not necessarily "twisted" from anything/anyone. She's actually designed around an otome MC struggling with the concept of love (because why not).

(Note: This post is super long since I put a lot of depth into this OC. There’s a lot of angst surrounding her than what’s given at face value. I even left out some details that are considered a surprise that reveals more about Strix. Some bits of her profile are rather messy and all over the place. I hope you guys love her as much as I do!)

Name: Strix Noctowl

Real Name: Secret

Nickname(s): Transfer Student, Problem Child, Newbie, etc.

Age: 16

DOB: 3/3 (Pisces)

Gender: Female

Height: 5'4.5" (164 cm)

Likes: Fluffy things, birds (particularly owls), music boxes

Dislikes: Gossip, thunder, her eyes

Hobbies: Reading, singing, piano playing

Race: Human

Affiliation: Night Raven College

Year: First

Relative(s): Unnamed mother (deceased), unnamed father (defected), unnamed grandparents, Sidney (great-grandfather)

Dorm: Unallied

Personality

A down-to-earth but curious young lady who never runs short of her sharp-tongue. She goes by Strix Noctowl in order to separately identify herself as the girl known specifically in Twisted Wonderland. Strix tends to be pessimistic and talk about pop cultural references no one in Twisted Wonderland would understand but nonetheless is determined to return home. She is more of a nocturnal person.

She is known to be “disobedient” and rebellious by the NRC. Many students admire her for her fearless, outspoken character but also keep at a distance to avoid getting roped in potential punishments with her.

Strix is not a virtuous person and can play petty if the situation compels her. She can be violent and won't hesitate to resort to a little punch to get her point across. Questions how most of the cast don't know the meaning "no" on a daily basis.

Underneath her shell, Strix is a touch-starved, naive, and utterly vulnerable girl. The absence of her parents led her to believe she is not loved and relies on her dear grandfather for almost anything she has trouble with. She is also shy about asking to fulfill her selfish desires and sometimes hides it too well that it becomes painfully evident to others.

Strix has a child-like impulse to touch things that pique her curiosity, such as trying to touch Leona's ears or Malleus' horns. The Savanaclaw dormitory is a prime victim of her "harassments".

Strix has a bad habit of falling asleep on a constant basis to the point she can sleep with her eyes open and stay still from what she was doing (ig. holding a stack of papers). This also happens arbitrarily at random places and time, such as sleeping mid-conversation. It's an impressive feat, as remarked by many of the guys. The habit was stemmed from the inner part of Strix that likes to dream (despite being a realist) and being a sound sleeper. She says this is the only time she can truly escape the cruel reality. It's a technique Strix may or may not be proud of.

About

Strix is a rare case at Night Raven College. Initially it appeared she had no powers whatsoever and was not remarkable in magic classes. Pretty disastrous, actually. She received a lot of hostility from the students who believe she doesn't deserve to be a worthy student at the prestigious magic academy, the very field she sucks at. Soon, Strix awakens her powers (explained in Abilities section) and works to control it while attending the college.

Due to Strix's insistence, she identifies herself as an "unallied" student and is taking residence at the run-down dormitory. She had complained a lot about each and every dorm and considers the NRC dorm a better place to reside in. She didn't really mind being the sole student in the rundown dorm since she was accustomed to solitude. She won't spend much time other than sleeping there anyways.

In order to repay Crowley's generosity and protection, she volunteered to work as his aid, such as helping clean up and sorting the books and documents piling up his workload. In addition, Strix works part-time across each of the seven dorms to earn herself money instead of relying on Crowley all the time. This also helps keep her busy and familiarize herself with the dorms and its students (since she has to cooperate with the uncooperative chaotic student body). (FYI, her payment is based on her performance which will be reported by the dorm leaders to determine the wage.)

Abilities

Strix has the ability to summon colorful, quirky, and adorable Dream Eater Spirits (please think of the Kingdom Hearts series because that's exactly what they will look like. I’m not capable of creating them myself so please use them as reference) that obey her heed. She surprisingly has good control of her magic (probably because she’s a dreamer and is adept with her dream magic as a result) and works on honing her abilities so she doesn't subconsciously summon the fun yet pesky creatures and start a zoo attraction. If a colorful creature is running rampant on campus, you know who is responsible for it. A common Dream Eater Spirit she summons is a curious owl dubbed Peepsta Hoo (shown below).

History

Strix was raised by her great grandfather Sidney since she was a child, whom she trusts and loves the most in her family. Sidney is a half-blind antique shop owner; a man who was born on the very day and year Disney was founded (10/16/1923). He practically grew up with Disney and shares his love with his descendants including Strix, who also adores the magic of Disney as a result. He is at least 96 years old, yet still somehow has spunk to him.

Strix's mother died from childbirth. Her father couldn't handle the sight of Strix who was slowly looking more like his dead wife every day and abandoned her to start a new life with another woman, essentially cutting ties with Strix when she was only five years old. In an outburst he said he hated Strix's eyes that were said to be devoid of light and emotion ever since she was an infant before leaving the house with luggage in hand. Strix dislikes her birthday since that marked the day her mother died and never encourages her own birthday parties or gifts.

Strix grew up resenting her eyes that were seen as a curse. Her grandparents even agreed with her former father that her mother gave birth to a "heartless, cursed monster". It was said that for the first five years Strix was born into the world, she barely expressed emotion outside of a blank slate, though Strix herself claims to not remember that. Her grandparents on her mother's side still resented her for her mother's death while the grandparents on her father's side don't want to have anything to do with her. Only Sidney was willing to raise her.

Strix is touch-starved due to the absence of her parents. As a child she had wished for them to pat her head, hug her, and hold their hands; the simple intimate things expected for family to do. She never knew her mother, and her father was aloof towards her and even treated her like the Plague by avoiding contact with her. What she had wished was for their affection, or rather the affection of a mother and/or father (which will be fulfilled by everyone’s bird dad Crowley in the future).

The only one who could meet her demands was Sidney who happily gives her attention and affection. He was the only one she could confide to and seek help.

Strix grew up believing she only needed to depend on the love of her great grandfather. She was extremely timid and nervous as a child who didn't understand how to befriend kids her age and harbored jealousy towards them who lived with happy families. This jealousy is what primarily made her keep a distance from them. As a result, she didn't make any friends, and never had up to when she was warped to Twisted Wonderland.

Strix once had a crush on a boy (dubbed "Caelum" for narrative purposes) who smiled brightly like the sun and filled her with warm giddiness. However, that was when she was six years old and the boy in high school, practically a decade year gap between them. It was more of adoration than romantic attraction, but she never met anyone else who was as nice and warm as him other than Sidney.

Caelum was her neighbor who babysat her whenever Sidney had to run errands. He played with her and spoiled her with her needs; they were like brother and sister. It was until he had graduated and moved away to dorm in a faraway college that they never saw each other again until seven years when a letter of invitation was sent for his wedding.

Strix's emotions conflicted over how she should express her romantic feelings among the platonic ones up to the day of his wedding. She froze up and fled out of fear before she could answer him. The moon was blue yet cold that night, and she discovered something like a mirror in the garden pond. She was suddenly shoved from behind and fell into the mirror. This leads to the current situation and the start of a twisted fairytale where happy endings are not as they seem.

Trivia

- Strix is a name used in various mythologies to refer to creatures who bring forth misfortune. They usually appear in the form of birds, mainly owls. "Strix" is also a genus of owls in the typical owl family (Strigidae).

- Noct in Noctowl means "night". Yes the owl is snuck in there, go figure.

- Strix's birthday falls on "I Want You to Be Happy", also known as Girl's Day.

- Strix once took care of a baby snowy owl as a child but had to say her farewell when it was released into the wild. Ever since, she likes to learn more about the beautiful feathered creatures.

- Strix's preferred type of person is someone who would wholeheartedly accept her touch-starved needs. Of course, she would do the same vice versa.

- Strix's most treasured item is the wristwatch that also plays like a music box. She never goes out without it. She also carries a gold heart lock (the one seen in her default outfit) on her out of impulse and never bothered to understand why. She says she feels safe bringing it with her.

- Strix has 2.0 eyesight. She can pinpoint a person from far away and recognize them.

- If you rub Strix's head in a particular way by running your fingers from behind her ears and massaging her scalp, she'll fall asleep. Apparently it calms her nerves and loosens the tension built up. She melts like goo on the spot and subconsciously clings to the person, purring in contentment like a completely different person (like an affectionate house cat). It's effective for silencing her, having her sleep, or just fluster her altogether. The first in the NRC to discover this embarrassing weak spot was...? That's a story for another time, though.

- Strix learned to play the piano for ten years since she was six years old, the same time when she first met Caelum. Caelum was the one who got her into the piano after expressing his love for the instrument and classical music. Initially Strix played to earn recognition from him, but over time, especially after he left, she grew fond of the piano (also because the sound works similarly to a music box) and honed her expertise in the field. She won piano competitions up to now and has a goal of becoming a pianist in her career. Her piano skills are highly praised by her peers and sought after by Azul, but even then she feels insecure. Ever since the wedding, her hands freeze up and hover over the keys as she automatically recalls the daunting memory of Caelum and her bittersweet emotions. The crowd's peer pressure wasn't helping either. (And yes, she can play the piano while asleep. What a pro.)

- Strix's love for Disney makes her prone to humming and singing to songs including but not limited to Disney as she works (of course when she knows she's alone). Sometimes she can get carried away with her singing and wind up lost in her own world as she does and would take a while to notice another presence in the room. When she gets caught, she dies on the inside and gets extremely embarrassed to the point of acting tough with a tomato red face. Apparently she is terrible at being self-aware of her surroundings when she gets into it. Then again, this is the same girl who falls asleep in the middle of corridors without realizing she was asleep.

- On that note, her singing voice is actually really nice, almost trained like a pro. Azul officially never lets her out of his sights now that she has full potential to be a full-time staff at Mostro Lounge. Her singing and piano skills are much needed at Mostro Lounge, however Strix would only willingly do the latter. She would die before singing in public. That's a big no no.

- Strix is said to have back (and neck) problems. Probably from the arbitrary times she sleeps in uncomfortable positions, or simply the stress from Night Raven College and the students' antics overall. Someone once touched her shoulder and mistook her for a statue. It's surprising how her appearance hides the stress and drowsiness well. She looks nothing like your average sluggish person.

- Strix likes antagonistic characters in storytelling. She tends to like the villains more than the main characters because she admires the good, the bad, and the ugly of their characters unbound by the laws that prevent them from their free spirits. They're flawed, but she finds relief in knowing they are not completely black like many would depict.

- Strix had a fear of brooms as a child after she watched Fantasia. She grew out of it soon, but even to this day she still looks back on the rather horrific scene with a pale face while holding the broom during flight class, much to Ashton’s confusion.

#twisted wonderland #my post #my art #character profile #strix noctowl #twst oc #twisted wonderland oc