#too bad I got busy and plagued halfway through the year

[lizzie-boo]

After Graduation

Eddie Munson x Reader

*Volume 2 Spoilers*

Summary: Eddie had big plans for the two of you after graduation. Travel and adventure were on the horizon but now that future didn’t seem so bright. Especially not with the way things were headed.

Words: 1529

Warnings: ANGST, character death 

A/N: I cried a little writing this. I’m sorry for this emotional rollercoaster of a story but it’s all I could think about so I had to write it. 

The first time you met Eddie you were sure that you hated him. It was the first day of your sophomore year of high school and his senior year. The day hadn’t gone to plan at all. You had wanted to get to school early, find your classes, and spend the first day back catching up with all your friends. Instead, you had slept through your alarm, missed the bus, and subsequently had to bike to school. What was already shaping up to be a terrible day only got worse when your assigned locker didn’t want to open. No matter how many times you put your combination in the door didn’t seem to want to open.

Finally, after pulling on the handle with all your strength the door flung open, sending you stumbling back into the one and only Eddie “the freak” Munson. He was notorious in the halls of Hawkins High, his reputation for being slightly unhinged following him wherever he went. Everyone knew who he was and most avoided him like the plague. You included because you had no desire to mingle with the seniors, especially not one with Eddie’s reputation.

When you had finally turned to see who you bumped into you felt your cheeks burn. You knew there was no way that the day could get any worse now. You squeezed your eyes shut and waited for what you assumed would be an outburst to rival all others. Instead, he mumbled an apology and continued on his way to his first period.

As the bell rang in your ears all you could do was stand there staring at the spot where Eddie once stood. After all the stories you had heard about him being a crazy loser who was part of a cult you were shocked at his reaction. Nothing about the interaction gave the impression that he was anything other than an awkward high school guy just trying to make it through the day.

After the first fateful encounter, you seemed to bump into Eddie more often. Somehow your paths managed to cross multiple times a day. By halfway through sophomore year you had declared Eddie Munson to be your friend, even going as far as to sit with him during lunch every few days. Your other friends had been confused at the start, wondering what you saw in Eddie that made you want to befriend him. No matter how many times you tried to explain it they never seemed to understand. Thankfully they all supported you and while they were confused they supported you in branching out and making new friends.

By the end of the school year, Eddie had crept his way up the friendship hierarchy, securing his place as one of your best friends. More often than not you found yourself in his company as your friendship grew stronger.

And as you moved on to your junior year of high school he returned for another senior year. It was abundantly obvious that Eddie could care less if he graduated, he was too busy with everything else in his life to give a second thought to his classes. You knew that he tried his best in school but was easily distracted and often forgot to do his work. He had let you see his grades before and they weren’t all bad, actually, they were good for the most part. It was just the odd class or two that he didn’t seem to do well in that were the cause of his inability to graduate. While you wanted to watch him succeed, part of you was secretly happy that he hadn’t graduated the year prior. This way you were able to get another full school year with him by your side, while you were still sure about life. Because you knew the second he graduated everything would change, he would get a job and his work schedule with your school schedule would no longer match up and then you wouldn’t be able to see him as much. You knew that once you weren’t sequestered into the same building every day that you would inevitably drift apart.

Luckily this school year your fears were squashed. Not only did you not drift apart but you grew closer than ever before. The easy friendship you shared had begun to blossom in a way that you were never expecting. Friendly jokes led to shy flirting and innocent touches now held a romantic charge. Yet, neither of you were bold enough to make the first move so you danced around your feelings waiting for the right moment to come clean.

As the end of the school year drew closer his fate of redoing senior year once more was sealed. As you sat together at lunch the reality of the situation dawned on him. Realizing that if he could keep his grades up next year then he would be able to graduate with you by his side. As he told you his grand plan over the sticky table he finally let his confession slip, that if there were anyone that he wanted by his side it would be you.

You spent the summer before your final year of high school with Eddie. The warm summer days were filled with movie nights, kisses, and more dates than you could keep track of. It was the relationship that you had dreamed of since you were little. It was all here right in front of you and nothing could have made you happier.

When the first day of senior year finally rolled around you faced the day hand in hand. You could see the spark in his eyes, the determination that this would be his year. As the weeks flew by you began to make plans for after graduation. Discussing places that you wanted to visit and the things you wanted to see. Always promising each other that you would be together for it all. After all, there’s no point in doing any of it unless it’s with the person you love. At least that’s what you told yourself back then.

Now, that optimistic outlook on life, of always being together made you want to throw up. It had been a whirlwind of events that you couldn’t begin to fathom but now as you kneeled in the dark version of Hawkins it finally began to sink in. You held Eddie in your lap as the bats circled the two of you. In the distance, you could hear Dustin yelling for the two of you but none of that mattered right now.

What mattered was that Eddie laid bloody and battered in your arms and you knew there was nothing you could do to save him. He weakly smiles up at you and there’s no stopping the tears.

“You promised this would be our year,” you sob, letting your hand tangle in his dirty matted hair.

“It is, we are saving the world.” His voice is weak as he struggles to breathe. You know he doesn’t have much longer so you cherish the time you still have.

“We were supposed to travel the world together, I can’t go without you,” your voice breaks. You weren’t sure how you could go on living without him. He was everything good in your life, the one person who made you feel whole, who made you feel loved.

“You have to, I’ll be with you, right here.” His voice comes out in a raspy whisper and he musters all his strength to reach up and place his hand over your heart.

“Please don’t leave me,” you beg as you pull him closer to you.

“I wish I could stay.” His hand falls landing next to him on the ground.

“I love you, Eddie, always and forever.” The tears stream down your face landing in large drops on his dirty bruised skin.

“I love you too sweetheart.” His eyes begin to shut and just before they can fully his breathing stops. A scream tears through you as a fresh batch of tears pours onto the ground.

He was gone and there was nothing you could do. It felt like your heart had died with him along with any dreams of the future. Everything seemed dark now that he was no longer there to light the way.

As Dustin pulls you into his arms, his own tears staining your shirt, you let Eddie’s last words echo. Sweetheart…it echoed over and over. Something about it sent your mind spiraling trying to find out why it sounded so strange.

Then as the pieces clicked together you let out a sob that had both you and Dustin shaking. Sweetheart had been the pet name that Eddie used for his guitar only. You had often joked with him that he should use it for you instead. To which he would jokingly tell you that one day he would when you meant more to him than his precious guitar. And today he had, with his last dying breaths he told you in his own way that you were the most important thing in his life. That his love for you compared to no other.

#stranger things imagine #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson imagine #stranger things #stranger things volume 2 #volume 2 spoilers #character death #angst #x reader #reader #reader insert #dustin henderson #stranger things season 4 #st 4 #st 4 vol 2

[actualfarless]

Star Crossed Lovers

You are a Hero summoned to deal with the Demon King. After fighting your way through hordes of the Demon King's minions, you find yourself face-to-face with the Demon King. They're from the planet you were summoned from, and your most fond person.

Story below or read on Wattpad.

Paladin climbed the steps to the Demon King’s castle, his knuckles white on the hilt of his blade. Once the mightiest sea in Decipere, the desert stretched for miles far below, beyond where the black sky met the barren earth. Twisted trees stripped of green filled what had been a forest on the cliff. Every minute in the Demon King’s wasteland a reminder of all the hurt he caused. Every second was a reminder of Paladin’s duty. 

Every step was one closer to home.

His lone heartbeat in this desolate place urged him onward. Three years ago, the desperate citizens of Decipere summoned Paladin to their aid. The Demon King unleashed hordes on the land, conquering nations, turning them into wastes, and slaughtering thousands. Those who survived ran, but the Demon King’s reach expanded to the globe. In the end, they hid in camps in sacred places where even the most vile creatures of hell dare not tread. The people of Decipere prayed and wished and hoped upon the final star in the night sky.

Paladin was their last hope.

He reminded himself of that every night when the cold set in his bones. He reminded himself every time he fought a demon. And when his mentor, Logan, fell to the horde. And when Kyrie lost herself to darkness. When an entire village burned because of his mistake.

Paladin was their last hope. If he wished to free the people of Decipere from tyranny, if he wished to see home again, he would need to kill the Demon King.

He paused at the door to the keep, a large stone thing of ancient Leogere construction. Few buildings like it existed anymore, either fallen to time or the tyrant, but those that stood were places of great power. If Paladin were to kill the Demon King, it would be here, where his power was greatest.

Paladin pointed his sword to Hearth, to home, charging the runeblade with the star’s magic.

Then he stepped inside.

The room was dark. No surprise. Legends said the dark magic claimed his eyes long ago. Even if they were wrong, shadow sight was minor magic. Paladin could perform the trick himself, if he so wished, but there was no need. He trained with the monks of Ludere. Were he deaf and blind, he could fight as well as any soldier.

Paladin made note of the shadowy details of the great room, not that there were many. The room was almost as barren as the wasteland outside, save for the few banners covering any possible window and the sconces placed on buttresses. At the far end, on his throne of skulls, sat the Demon King.

“So, you have come at last,” said the Demon King, his tone almost bored. His voice echoed off the stone walls.  Paladin pointed his sword at the Demon King. “Am I to meet my end, Paladin?”

Paladin hesitated. The Demon King had spoken the exact words he’d thought. There were rumors that the tyrant could read minds, but few survived the Demon King and fewer were in a state of coherency. Paladin had taken precautions against this power just in case. He doubted there was any real threat to his mind, so long as he stood and breathed.

Paladin had another concern. His voice was familiar.

“I am their final hope,” Paladin told himself. Feeling the resolve, he tightened his grip on his blade and took a step toward the Demon King. The charged magic hummed beneath his fingertips. “Your curse upon this world has gone on long enough. It ends today.”

“No, my dear Paladin, it doesn’t.”

Paladin saw his adversary twitch and managed to call upon his magic before the impact hit. It would be too weak to cause any real damage, but hopefully it would prevent the Demon King from following up his attack before Paladin could recover. A wave of force knocked Paladin backwards, flinging him through the air with the ease of a man tossing a ball. Starlight filled the room as a thin beam followed Paladin’s blade as he tumbled through the air. The stone cracked on the floor, wall, and ceiling and the arm of the Demon King’s throne fell to the ground. The tyrant himself lay on the floor where he had flung himself out of the magic’s path.

Both recovered at the same time, standing on opposite ends of the hall. A rune had dimmed on Paladin’s sword, reminding him of his limit. Once the power was gone, he would have nothing more than his martial skills and the few spells he memorized.

It wouldn’t be enough to kill the Demon King.

Once again, the Demon King fired another wave of force at Paladin, but he was ready this time, planting his feet firmly on the ground and bracing himself with magic. The force loosened his helmet and flare his cloak, but nothing more. The Demon King followed his magic with a heavy strike from his axe, closing the distance too quickly for a human. The dust had barely cleared, and Paladin was on the defensive.

He deflected the Demon King’s axe with his blade. He attempted to retaliate but noticed the Demon King’s clenched fist in time to dodge back. Fire filled the space between them, where Paladin’s head once was. The heat cascaded over his body.

Calling on his training, Paladin fixed his footing, deflecting the Demon King’s strikes and dodging magic. Each attack started before the last was complete, leaving no gaps for Paladin to use. Each was too close and too well placed. The pair found a rhythm, turning the fight into a dance. 

A single mistake would cost Paladin his life. He bided his time. To say they were evenly matched was generous to Paladin, but he held his own. Then, as the Demon King, recoiled from a particularly well timed block, Paladin saw his chance. He closed the distance, ramming his shoulder into the Demon King’s masked face. Knowing this would likely be his last chance, that if he didn’t make this blow lethal, he would die, Paladin called all the remaining magic into his runeblade brought the charged blade down.

He saw the smile beneath the crack too late.

The Demon King released a wave of force. Unlike his earlier attacks, this was directionless, expanding in all directions with explosive force. Paladin couldn’t counter it quickly enough. The runeblade went flying, tearing the room apart with his starlight beam, narrowly missing the two combatants. Paladin landed on his back hard. He grunted in pain as all the air left his body. His helmet and pauldrons and every loosely strapped piece of armor flew off.

He knew he was defeated.

The final blow never came. Paladin slowly rose to his feet, trying his best to ignore the throbbing in his head. His vision slowly cleared and he saw the Demon King standing there, exposed lips trembling. The Demon King’s axe law on the ground. For a moment, Paladin thought he’d won. Somehow, his sword’s magic had cut through the Demon King, vanquishing his foe once and for all.

But no, he wouldn’t be so lucky.

“Bailey,” the Demon King said in a whisper, carried to Paladin’s ears on a soft whisper.

Paladin felt his heart skip a beat. He was beaten, bruised, and disarmed, but hearing that word - that voice - defeated him. He dropped his arms to his side, staring at the Demon King with tears in his eyes. The Demon King lifted his mask, but Paladin didn’t need to see his face. He already knew.

“Isaac.”

The two men approached cautiously, in disbelief of the sight before their eyes. Bailey took Isaac into his arms, wrapping the man into a tight embrace, ignoring his pained grunts and suppressing his own body’s screams as Isaac returned the hug. His body ached, but it was nothing compared to the ache that he carried in his heart for five years. Though they both looked different, older and more muscular, Isaac looked the same to Bailey. Bailey looked the same to Isaac.

They stared into each other’s eyes for too long. With too many questions and too complex answers, they settled for silent admiration. Isaac ran his hand along Bailey’s chin, appreciating the rough feel of his stubble. Bailey held Isaac. Finally, unable to resist any longer, they kissed for the first time in almost half a decade. It wasn’t the answer to their questions, but it was enough for now. For the first time in years, Bailey’s heart was light.

He knew he would be going home.

Isaac knew he wouldn’t.

#short story #star crossed lovers #now im starting to get into 2020 #god these hot dudes shoulda just fucked #also shout out to my 2020 doc that actually has links and titles on it #too bad I got busy and plagued halfway through the year

[from-the-clouds]

Kiss Me More (Part IIII) - Zemo/Reader

Masterlist | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | 

Summary: Reader ponders the decision they made after meeting Zemo in Riga. Series now complete!

Words: 5.2k

Warnings: Kissing, marijuana & alcohol abuse, heavy angst & depression, small reference to suicide, implied casual sex, yearning

A/N (also check out A/N at end when finished reading): This is it, everyone! I was going to end this completely differently originally, but after some thinking --  and some light peer pressure from ya’ll, I did something a little different. I did fight with this part the most out of all of them, so I hope it’s still good. Please enjoy. And thank you for all the love on this series, it’s been so fun to write! Also I was listening to this song while writing this.

---

The incessant buzz of her alarm clock jolted her out of her dreamless sleep. Fumbling in the dark, she slapped the top of it, hitting the snooze button and looking at the interface with bleary eyes. 

4:00 A.M. It stared, indifferent, back at her tired face. 

She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut and lamenting, bargaining, half expecting the clock to turn back time when she opened her eyes again. Unfortunately, it did not. With a huff, she threw back the covers and stretched, disturbing the orange cat that slept in the empty spot next to her where her husband used to lay. 

Snorting, the cat lifted its head to look at her as she climbed out of bed before curling back up in a ball where her feet had been. 

“Don’t mind me, just getting ready for work so I can feed us,” she said, grumpily, then in a moment of repentance, affectionately scratching her behind the ears. 

She had always been a night owl, so she didn’t think it would be possible to ever get used to waking this early. No human was meant to function at this time. It was the one part of the job she hated most. The rest of it was manageable, though it was still work. 

Setting about her morning routine, she showered, made coffee, and donned her uniform. Eating a day-old bagel and nursing her coffee on her tiny balcony, she looked out over the darkened horizon. It was far too early to even enjoy a sunrise. 

There was a saying, time heals all wounds. After her husband died, she’d heard it a lot. It was a saying she had come to find true. But it’d been well over a year since she’d left Helmut, alone in that swanky hotel room, and it still hurt like it was yesterday. 

“I understand,” he’d murmured, and she felt the ghost of his kiss on her forehead, arms around her waist, even now. She shivered, not from the chill of the morning air.

She’d left her old life behind, all of it. Sam and Bucky, too, about a month after their time in Riga. She couldn’t look them in the eyes after what she’d done.

But, she was proud of what they’d accomplished. They’d defeated the Flag Smashers. Bucky seemed happier, more at peace. Sam had accepted his role as the new Captain America. John Walker seemed to have faded into irrelevancy. All the loose ends had been tied up in a pretty little bow.

Except for hers.

Which is why she moved, sold all the stuff in her tiny NYC apartment, and packed her car full with what she couldn’t bear to part with, some photos and momentos from a different lifetime. Her car didn’t stop until she hit the Atlantic Ocean, on an island just south of Charleston. All but undiscovered by tourists, the residents in the sleepy beach town kept to themselves, and she could go about her life in peace, undisturbed. 

She couldn’t just run away from her problems, that was why she’d left Zemo. It seemed counterintuitive, but in her mind, it made sense. The problems would catch up to her, like they always had. The dissatisfaction she had with her life, with herself, was always going to return. And she knew she had to be alone to deal to face it head on. Like a wounded animal, crawling into the woods, there were only two ways things could end here; either she’d heal and come out stronger, or eventually she’d die. And so far, the healing part wasn’t going great. 

Each day was a matter of convincing herself that she’d made the right choice. Especially now, as her eyes burned, fighting to stay open against the inviting embrace of sleep. 

Despite it being dark outside, the bakery was bustling already when she walked in the service entrance. It smelled amazing, as always. Sweet and warm, a cacophony of aromas, baking bread, fresh coffee, sugar.

She set about the usual preparations to open up, packaging orders for the regulars, sweeping the floor, wiping down countertops. Once the place was open, she didn’t have to work the register, as she prepared batches of dough in the back for proofing, to be baked the next day. 

Before, she’d been a terrible cook, but she’d grown comfortable in the kitchen after learning to bake. There was something satisfying about working with her hands, at this point she’d memorized all the recipes and the work became second nature to her. Now, she always had fresh bread and pastries in her kitchen, although they were the slightly disformed, ones the shop owners deemed too ugly for the glass display cases. Daylight was cherished, even if she barely saw it inside the shop. Because while she was awake, busy with work, her thoughts remained pleasant.

At night it was the hardest. Things got quiet, lonely. When she got home, she poured herself a drink. Cheap whiskey, the kind that came in a plastic bottle and burned on it’s way down. She had never been much of a drinker before, she was now. Her thoughts were more manageable after a drink. Especially because she was usually thinking of Helmut. 

It was often that she wondered what he may be doing, and those thoughts usually ended with the image of him lying in the sun, poolside, on some island in the Pacific Ocean, drinking expensive champagne with a supermodel. It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought to her, and yet she was plagued by some variation of it every night. 

Sometimes, she’d humor herself, and imagine what they might be doing had she decided to stay with him. Unfortunately, thinking of that was more upsetting. She wanted it, selfishly, though she wasn’t willing to admit it.

When she was younger, it had been so easy to block out the pain, to just press forward, no matter what. Much to her dismay, it didn’t get easier as she got older. Years of watching those she loved in pain, years of being in pain had taken a toll on her resilience. She wasn’t the strong woman she once was, she was weak.

That night, one drink had turned into two, into three. Wallowing in her own self-pity had become second-nature, she felt like Hamlet, lamenting her circumstances, a constant turmoil monologuing in her brain. But this night felt particularly worse, for some reason. 

For the record, she had been doing better. But she was all-too-familiar with how grief worked, pulling her back down the dark side of the mountain, where she was forced to fight her demons over and over again. At some point, they were going to win.

It was a funny thing. Despite the loss of her husband, who she had loved dearly, his death had been easier to accept. Final. She couldn’t bring him back. Helmut on the other hand, was still out there, an open wound that could never fully heal.

Before she knew it, she was four drinks in, at her bedside table, fumbling through the bottom drawer, until she found what she was looking for.

Back on her couch, she stared at the card in her hand, the hastily written phone number on it, an international line. Helmut had given it to her, the day she left, stuck it in her purse while she wasn’t looking. She didn’t discover it until she had returned home.

It had been months since she last did this, pulled the card out of its hidden place in her drawer, placed it on the coffee table in front of her next to her phone, and considered dialing it. It had been a frequent occurrence when she first moved here, when she couldn’t find a job and spent most of her mornings either hungover, or stumbling home from rendezvous with men whose names she wouldn’t remember, and she wouldn’t care to, because there was only one man she really wanted. She could only hope he’d be as close as one call away. But she never called. 

I mean really, he’d probably moved on by this point. If she was going to call, she should have done it months ago, when there was more of a chance that he’d give a fuck. 

She considered this a setback. But she’d made her way halfway through the cheap bottle of whiskey, it was the drunkest she’d been in ages and she was curious. She didn’t know whose number it was, who’d be on the other end of the line, and never knew why Helmut would want her to have it to begin with.  

At this point, she wasn’t capable of good decision making. In general, it hadn’t always been her strong suit. So why did doing the right thing matter now? It didn’t, she decided. 

Taking a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle, she ensured she wouldn’t remember what happened next, at least not clearly. 

The phone rang twice before someone picked up. “Hello?” she didn’t recognize the sound of the man on the other end of the line immediately, so she didn’t answer. All she had wanted to do was maybe hear Helmut’s voice, he didn’t even need to know it was her that was calling. 

“Hello?” the man repeated, and she realized it wasn’t completely unfamiliar. The grandfatherly, comforting tone wasn’t her former lover, but someone close to him. And she supposed that wasn’t terrible.

“Is this Oeznik?” she asked. 

“It is,” he said after some hesitation. “May I ask who’s speaking?”

Truthfully, she was shocked she’d allowed herself to go this far. This was a bad idea. If she stopped now she could get off without doing any real damage. But just as she was about to hang up, she heard her name, muffled, on the other end of the line. 

“H-How do you know it’s me?” She raised the phone back to her ear. 

“I thought you sounded familiar,” Oeznik chuckled, low and soft. “Helmut told me you might call.”

“He did?” she squeaked. “Yes, although it was awhile ago. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I uh….I….well….” she managed. “I guess I just….I guess I wanted to see how he was doing.”  Her words flowed together like the liquor she was drinking, she knew she sounded drunk.

“Good, since we last spoke,” he said. “I don’t hear from him much these days...maybe every couple months. As you might imagine, he’s trying to keep a low profile for the time being.”

She nodded. Perhaps Zemo was as lonely as she was, hidden away in some cabin in the middle of nowhere. Though she had to imagine it looked much nicer than her current place, and maybe he had better company than a portly orange cat that begrudgingly liked him. “I understand.”

“How have you been?” he asked.

It sounded stupid, but she realized it was the first time someone had asked her that. Sincerely. Checked up on her. Even if she was the one who had dialed the number in the first place.

“I’m good,” her voice cracked. “Just keeping busy.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Helmut always had such nice things to say about you.”

“Really?” she couldn’t stop herself. 

“Of course, would you like me to let him know you called?” 

“No, no...I wouldn’t want to bother him,” she choked on her words, something catching in her throat.

“Are you sure you’re alright, dear?”

“I’m okay, I just….” she felt tears prick at the back of her eyes, lowering her voice, since she didn’t think her normal register would come out as anything other than a whine. “I think I made a horrible mistake.”

“What’s the matter? What did you do?”

She shook her head, shaking the tears loose and now they were lining her lashes, threatening to spill over. However, she managed to make the next words she spoke come out clearly. “Nothing, I just...it’s really stupid, I really shouldn’t have called.”

He sighed on the other end of the line, and she felt like, despite her attempt at staying calm, he could still see that she wasn’t somehow. “It seemed Helmut was awfully sweet on you,” Oeznik’s words next came hesitantly, calculated. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he told me if you ever called, to help you with whatever you might need, no matter the ask.”

Oh God, what had she done? A sob left her, one she couldn’t control, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle any more. Her tears were flowing freely now, tracking down her cheeks and along her chin. She wiped at them clumsily, clearing her throat. 

“That’s very kind of him, but you can’t help me. I’m so sorry to bother you, please just forget I even called,” she forced a smile on her face so that hopefully he could hear it. “Goodbye.”

She hung up, horrified, and within seconds had deleted the call log from her phone. She’d been thoughtful enough not to memorize the number, and the lighter she used whenever she smoked sat in front of her. Without a second though, she burned the card, watching the paper blacken and disintegrate, until it was all but a pile of soot on her Wal-Mart coffee table. It was a fair punishment, and ensured she’d never get the chance to embarrass herself like that again. 

And then she cried, sobbed into a pillow next to her, until her tears ran dry and she wore herself out, falling asleep on the couch alone. When she’d wake the next morning, the only evidence of her actions would be a throbbing headache and a dead phone. 

She wouldn’t remember the call.

----

Life went on, as it always did. It had been about a month, and since that night she grew more indifferent, remembered how to ignore heartbreak. For now, she was stuck in her purgatory, waking up before the sun and falling asleep before it set, smoking joints, drinking cheap liquor, and going on the occasional date with people who she didn’t really like, tourists who would leave after a week and wanted temporary company. 

Despite everything, she partly believed things were getting better. Maybe they weren’t, but the possibility that someday they would seemed feasible. And that was enough, for now. 

On her days off, she’d walk to the beach and lay on a blanket, reading a book until the sun dipped below the horizon and lit up the sky in hues of pinks and purples. She found a record player at an antique store and began collecting vinyls, listening to obscure artists whose albums she found in the $1 bin. It wasn’t so bad. Life wasn’t so bad. 

She took a shower after work. Tomorrow was her off day, and she wasn’t sure what she had planned besides maybe watching a movie and getting stoned. Maybe she’d try going to the beach. The weather was getting warmer, and she could even go swimming if the water wasn’t too cold. 

Exhausted from her day of work, she laid down in her bed, still in her robe, her hair wrapped in a towel around her head. The sun was setting outside, the windchimes she’d hung outside slowly clanging together, birds singing in the warm spring air. Her cat hopped on the bed, offered an affectionate trill and curled up at her side, purring, in a rare display of affection. A cool breeze drifted through the open window. And for the first time in over a year, she felt content. Closing her eyes, she savored the moment, committed it to memory, so she could recall it the next time she was drunk-crying in front of her TV. 

She fell asleep slowly, so slowly that when she woke, startled by something in her kitchen clattering to the floor, it felt like she hadn’t even been sleeping at all. The clock next to her red 11:31 p.m. and it was pitch dark outside, the cool breeze from before had grown stronger and her bedroom curtains were billowing, wind whistling loudly through the apartment. Her cat had left her side, and she frowned, shivering in the sudden cold.

Pulling the towel off her head, she made her way over to the window with the intention to close it, sleepily, lazily, until she heard something else. A creak in the floorboard. A heavy footstep in her kitchen. That wasn’t just her cat. 

Some kind of muscle memory was ignited then, an ancient instinct that called to her from a different lifetime. Darting across the room, the gun she kept was in her hand, stealthily pulled from its hiding spot beneath her mattress. Truth be told, she never thought she would’ve needed it. Anyone looking for her would be smart enough to kill her in her sleep, not be so foolish as to wake her first with their heavy footsteps. 

A dark silhouette stalked through her kitchen, moving slowly. It was a man, she assumed, based on his broader figure, and lack of coordination. In her experience, women were often stealthier without trying. He took another step, the floor creaking below him, shuffling on bargain linoleum. 

Staying low, she crept forward, ducking stealthily behind furniture, avoiding the spots on the floor she knew made noise. It didn’t appear the intruder had a weapon, in fact, it seemed he was bumbling about, searching for something. A burglar, and a bad one at that. An island full of vacation homes owned by rich doctors and they thought they’d find valuables in her shitty apartment?

It wasn’t until she was standing directly behind him, gun aimed at his head, that she finally spoke up. 

“I believe you’ve come to the wrong place,” she said flatly. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’d be in your best interest to leave empty-handed.”

Her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, but the intruder froze, arms slowly raising in defeat, empty-handed, as he turned around to face her. In the dingy room, she couldn’t make out any of his features, could only see that he was clad in all black.

“Unfortunately, liebling, that wasn’t my intention.” 

She would’ve recognized that voice anywhere, though the endearment he’d used was enough to clue her in. Hitting the lightswitch with her free hand, she was face to face with the man she’d spent the past year trying to purge from her memory, Helmut Zemo. 

Her gut twisted, her mind raced, but the only thing currently bubbling up, over the surface of every other emotion was the pure, seething rage left behind in the wake of fearing for her life.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she stepped towards him, gun still raised, fuming. 

“Hey, hey!” he staggered backwards, hands raised, eyes averted. 

“I thought you were a fucking robber!” she hissed. “I thought you were here to kill me!”

“Lower your voice,” he scolded. “You’re going to wake your neighbors.”

Taking a deep breath, she realized she still had her gun trained on him and she lowered it, clicking the safety and discarding the weapon on the countertop. “What the fuck?” she asked. “What the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I didn’t know you had such a mouth on you,” he smirked, but she wasn’t finished, and she glowered at him. 

“You broke into my apartment!” she growled.

“I had to be sure I was in the right place.”

“Yeah? You couldn’t have knocked first?”

He nodded, eyes trailing down to her hands, which were trembling, she hadn’t even realized. He seemed to understand what he’d done then, and she flexed her fingers, eyes locking with his. “I suppose...you may be right,” he said, surrendering.

She felt the rage subsiding as she took in his appearance. He looked not so different from the last time she’d seen him, except a fair amount of stubble covered his jawline in a short beard. He was still devastatingly handsome. Zemo’s dark eyes, filled with longing, drank her in, tilting his head as his gaze shifted to her lips. It was like she could read his mind, she knew what he wanted, what he was thinking. And her body was going to betray her if he kept it up.

Despite everything, she was still upset. Upset and embarrassed, as the light was doing an unflattering expose of her tiny, cluttered apartment, full of mismatched furniture and water-damaged wallpaper that her landlord refused to replace. It probably gave the prison cells that Helmut had spent years in a run for their money, and was in stark contrast to every other aspect of his life.

“What’s this?” he asked, gesturing to the empty liquor bottles on her countertop, stowed in her trash can. “Have you been drinking?”

“Not tonight,” she quipped, on guard. Had to be. As much as some old instinct told her to throw herself into his arms, press her lips to the underside of his jaw, and let him envelope her in the comfort of his embrace, she knew she couldn’t.

“Hmm,” he brushed past her, frowning, looking disappointed, as he made his way to her living room. 

“How did you find me?” she asked, eyeing him wearily.

“I’m a wanted man, I trace every call that comes into my estate,” he said over his shoulder. 

Helmut was taking inventory of the cramped space, staring at the photos she’d hung in a collage on the wall behind her couch, with a few watercolors painted by her late husband. One in particular, that he was focused on now, was from her wedding. Of all the memories she chose to hang, this one was her fondest, her former partner was all dark curly hair falling into deep blue eyes, and she was the portrait of a blushing bride, wearing a dopey love-drunk smile, gazing at him, ignoring the camera. 

“You looked so beautiful on your wedding day,” he said, turning over his shoulder to look at her. He was so out of place here, standing in her living room, for a moment she thought he might be a hallucination, some physical manifestation of the heartbreak she’d experienced. “Although that doesn’t surprise me.”

She flushed, suddenly self-conscious in her thin black robe and still-damp hair. It occurred to her that she wasn’t looking her best, which made this whole situation that much more disconcerting. However, the compliment disarmed her slightly, and the anger she felt began to dissipate, slowly. She was going to offer him something to drink until her cat, who had been absent through the chaos, suddenly jumped up on the back of the couch and promptly hissed at him in an attempt to defend her territory.

“Pumpkin, be nice,” she said, although it was mostly to placate Helmut. Pumpkin never listened to her. 

Helmut let her sniff his hand, and she was stunned when the cat rubbed her face against it. Of course, Pumpkin would like him of all people. That made sense. Then again, she supposed it made them not so different. He turned away to look at the rest of the room. “I see you haven’t kicked that bad habit you told me about,” he gestured at the ashtray full of roaches on the coffee table. 

“Did you just come to my place to insult me?” she asked, putting her hands on her lips and feigning confidence. She could’ve rolled over and cried and told him how much she missed him, how many nights she’d spent crying over him, and while all of it was true, she felt indignation was the better option for her self-preservation.

“That’s a good question,” Helmut turned to face her now, hands in the pockets of the leather jacket he was wearing. Completely inappropriate for the weather here, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care. “Why do you think I’m here?” he asked.

She shrugged, feigning indifference. “I don’t know, but you shouldn’t be.”

He snorted, his frustration evident, and she saw a glimpse of the man that so many feared, the side that had earned him his dangerous reputation, that had him locked away in a high-security prison for nearly a decade. “I didn’t come all this way for nothing, draga, we’re going to have it out.”

“Fine,” she said, lacing as much venom as she could into her words to prepare herself. “Then get on with it.”

He stared her down, and the expression her wore startled her, something sparkled in his eyes, mischief, relief maybe? It was insulting. Like he didn’t take her seriously. But there was something else there, too, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but it was wiped from his visage before it registered.

The tension in the room dissipated slightly when Zemo sat on the arm of the worn couch she’d bought from a yard sale, and she winced. “I spoke to Oeznik the other day,” he said flatly, snorting, eyes focused on a stain on one of the rugs she owned. “He told me he had the pleasure of speaking to a friend of mine about a month ago.”

Frowning, she tilted her head, her eyes meeting Helmut’s. Something in her brain sparked a memory she’d once dismissed as a dream after a particularly bad night of drinking.

“He was concerned, you see, because this friend didn’t seem to be in the best state of mind,” Helmut rose from the arm of the couch, stalking forward slowly, and she couldn’t move backwards, not even if she wanted to, as he could pin her easily against the front door. His voice grew louder, faster as he went on. “He said she was crying, slurring her words, he told me he thought maybe she might be-” Helmut cut himself off abruptly and closed his eyes, clenching one of his fists, a look of distress on his face as he took in a terse breath. “I won’t finish that thought, but you’re a smart girl, you can imagine what I’m getting at.”

Swallowing hard, the phone call came back to her in pieces, the tears, sobbing on the phone to a man she hardly knew. It was the night she finally admitted to herself she’d made a mistake, even though she’d already known it, deep down when she left him in the hotel room. 

“Please forgive me for breaking in tonight,” Helmut said. “But I couldn’t bear the thought of you not answering the door, I needed to see with my own eyes that you were okay.”

Exhaling through her nose, she looked at the floor. “It’s not like that. I had too much to drink.” she said, keeping her voice as steady as possible. “It was just a bad night.”

“Then tell me, what was the horrible mistake you made?” he asked, stepping closer. He was close to her, now. So close. And his proximity made everything more difficult.

God, if only she could remember exactly what she’d said, the only thing that came to her were the emotions, desperation, sadness, grief. It was all too much, and he was threatening to bring them all back to destroy her again. 

“I shouldn’t have called,” she said, shaking her head. “And I’m sorry. What do you want me to say? What do you want from me?”

“What do I want from you?” He asked, tilting his head, his eyebrows pulling together. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? How hard it was to sit on a plane when all I wanted to do was be here? With you?” His hand rose to cup her cheek, stopping just short of her face when she flinched away from his touch.

“Please stop,” she managed, the burn of tears behind her eyes almost menacing. The last thing she needed was to cry in front of him. “You’re undoing everything.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. 

“You’re….you’re here,” she murmured weakly, wetness seeping, glossing over her pupils. “I only have so much capacity for pain right now, if you touch me now, you’ll ruin everything.”

No one ever had this kind of hold on her, she’d never bent her rules to appease anyone else, and she’d gone toe to toe with super soldiers. He was just a man, and yet, he terrified her. 

“You really want me to leave?”

She couldn’t answer, but one tear escaped, sliding down her cheekbone, and she sniffled. 

“I’m not the one who did this to you,” his thumb, swiped along her face gently, wiping it away. He’d touched her, just barely, and she was reeling. 

“I know,” she stuttered, gasping. “I know it was me, but I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You are so stubborn.” His expression softened as he looked upon her, his thumb tracing underneath her jaw, tilting her head upwards to look at him. Malleable, she obliged. “I’ve thought about you everyday since the night we spent together. You’ve plagued me. That can’t be a coincidence. Are you really happier this way? You must be honest with me.”

She shook her head, blinking out fresh tears. “No, I’m not. I just thought...by the time I realized I made the wrong choice, you’d have moved on. People like us don’t get to be happy.”

“Says who?”

How could she refuse him anymore? This would continue to go on until she gave in. And from the beginning, she wanted to give in. There was no use in fighting the inevitable. The small point of contact -- his hand on her chin -- radiated impressive warmth, and she could feel every part of herself being attracted to him, quelling some ache deep within her. 

Reaching up, she clutched at Helmut’s palm, which didn’t last long, because he pulled her into his arms, nestling her head underneath his chin. She melted into his embrace, finding solace in the warmth of his solid frame. 

“Come home with me,” he coaxed softly. 

“I will,” she murmured, surrendering to the comfort of his presence. “But you have to let me bring Pumpkin.”

He chuckled, warm and amiable, the vibration of his chest echoing in her own. “Of course, you’ll bring Pumpkin,” he murmured into her hair. Oh, how she had missed hearing him laugh. They could’ve stayed that way for hours, and she would’ve been content, but he pulled away, hands on either side of her face as he studied her.

Unable to hold back any longer, she leaned in to kiss him. It was chaste at first, all the memories of her last night with him came flooding back quickly when he parted his lips to deepen the kiss, but she didn’t want that quite yet, just needed a moment to process this. The simple comfort of being held by him, kissed by him, was more than enough for now. He’d been waiting for this, she could assume in the way that he responded, pulling her impossibly close so she was engulfed in him.

Her stomach flipped, a warmth blossoming in her chest as he pulled away, their foreheads touching. “Oh, I missed you,” she sighed, shivering as his beard tickled her neck, his mouth on her sensitive skin.

“And I, you,” he murmured. His eyes studied her, carefully, up close, and for the first time since meeting him, she really let him see her, teary-eyed and vulnerable.

She would never let him go again. 

---

A/N: So here we are! I know it’s been a ride, but I’m really excited for these two. However, I don’t feel like I’m done writing for Zemo yet. If ya’ll have any headcanons, thoughts, questions, requests, etc, feel free to drop them in my ask box or shoot me a DM. I’d love to talk more about him. I also would be down to write more oneshots based around this series, because I am sort of like….okay, they obviously have a connection, but they don’t know that much about each other, and I may or may not have a light future already mapped out for them. I might do an epilogue at some point even. But if you have anything you’d like to add, let me know!

Taglist: @juice-1981  @sapphiredreamer26  @tatooineisdry  @marvelsvision @spookycereal-s @trelaney @fireghost-x @booksarekindaneat  @thunderingbats  @felicityofbakerstreet @takacsgram @mischiefmanaged71 @fanfictionedagain @merelyhooper @gyllord @mundaytuesday @friday18eo  @lovegood7553  @adara-wolfhart @a-djarin @farawaywasteland @sky-writes-stuff @fuckinglittlekitten @katyasrussianaccent @agent-jbarnes  @neoarchipelago @pattispunk @kpopnena @purebloodwitch @spookyconsultingcriminal @msmarvelwrites @professorrw @lazyradeecal @captainrexstan @notyourfuckingbusinesss @felicityofbakerstreet @unlikekiana @maeday-18 @friendly-letters @fandom-lover-4 @meefal @queenfairyfangirl @gogomonbebelf @scullys-alienpussy @the-multiverse-approach @sky-writes-stuff @safiakillspop @eggofhumiliation @originalcollectorsaladsstuff @archangelproperty @friday18eo @jayden-rose-leon @actuallyanita @mayhemmachine @kermuddgen @zadiewrites @pach-inks @theokatz @reichelhache @autumnsoidier @mischief-siriusly-managed @danaaeaa @joey-motorola @singlemomslayer @stevesbestgirl @dinna-fashh @popriskra @xaanyhs @adorable-punk-superheroes​

#helmut zemo #helmut zemo x reader #helmut zemo x you #helmut zemo imagine #baron zemo #tfatws #the falcon and the winter soldier #marvel #mcu #marvel writing #tfatws writing #daniel bruhl #zemo x reader #zemo x you #zemo fanfiction #helmut zemo fanfiction #writing #fanfiction #tfatws fanfiction #series

[nugnthopkns]

dance me to the end of love (iii)

word count: 4.3k

warnings: fem!oc, cursing, potential percy jackson & the olympians spoilers, alcohol consumption, motion sickness and vomiting

series masterpost: here

a/n: this took me a hot sec to finish but here it is! there's a dumb little latin joke in here but that's just because i'm a nerd lmao

Ryan is certainly giving Bette a run for her money in the best friend department.

Magdalene has no intentions of usurping her best friend, but Ryan is quickly becoming the person she talks to most frequently. It started on social media but quickly moved to regular texting, both of them being twenty-five and capable of communicating through more normal channels. The text thread between them isn’t indicative of their newfound friendship – it looks like they’ve been friends since high school. At any given moment at least three conversations are going on, and Magdalene regularly sends him random updates throughout the day. Ryan likes hearing about any interesting artefacts she encounters at work so she keeps mental notes to tell him during their frequent phone calls.

Despite talking to him almost constantly, Magdalene hasn’t seen Ryan since they grabbed lunch at Barn Owl nearly two weeks ago. The lake house trip is a couple days out, and she’s been busy trying to get all her ducks in a row. At work, the current project is coming to an end and Magdalene will be sad to see it go – it’s the first thing she’s been on from start to finish. She’s got a neighbour coming to spend time with Caligula while she’s away so he doesn’t get too upset. Though the days are passing by in a haze as she tries to get ready, Magdalene is excited to get away for a little bit. It’s been a few years since she’s left Denver for more than a night, electing to skip on Bette’s previous vacation invites, and it will be nice to slow down. Life is moving at a comfortable pace, but having some time to pause and breathe will keep Magdalene from feeling too overwhelmed.

Halfway through her last day of work, Magdalene gets a text from Ryan that makes her nearly double over in laughter.

Julius Caesar walks into a bar and says to the bartender “I’ll have a Martinus please!” The bartender replies “Don’t you mean a Martini?” Caesar shakes his head and says “If I wanted double I would have said so.”

It takes her a minute to catch her breath, which piques June’s curiosity. Magdalene recites the joke and her boss rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but does let out a chuckle.

June didn’t think it was funny, but I did. Thank you for making today infinitely better. You riding with us tomorrow?

Magdalene tucks her phone back into her purse, determined to remain focused for the last few hours, and misses the reply telling her that Ryan won’t be riding with Bette, Tyson, and herself, but rather with Cale and his girlfriend to leave enough space for all the gear getting brought. She doesn’t see it until she’s walking across the parking lot to her car and it fills her with a sadness that doesn’t make much sense. He’ll be there for the entire week, so does it matter that he’ll be in a different car for the four hour drive? Magdalene has a sinking suspicion about why she’s upset, but she pushes it down. There’s no space in your life for a relationship right now, she reminds herself as she unlocks the door to her apartment. Caligula is waiting patiently at the door and distracts her thoughts from the handsome man with the kind smile that’s been all she can think about recently.

The cat is incredibly perceptive and knows the regular routine is going to change, making him particularly clingy. He follows Magdalene as she finishes packing, meowing and begging for pets, and she considers bailing on her friends. Caligula has mild separation anxiety and Magdalene doesn’t go away often partly because of it – though another reason is her homebody nature. Only the thought of seeing Ryan keeps her from hanging all her clothes back up.

“Don’t worry little boots,” she coos, “I won’t be gone long. Maria is going to check on you while I’m away, and I’ll be home before you know it.”

It seems ridiculous to speak to her pet as though it’s a child, but Magdalene knows Caligula comprehends what she’s saying. He’s always been smart, and the two of them share a bond that’s hard to explain. She picks him up, puts him in the pocket of her hoodie, and they spend the rest of the night packing and dancing along to the radio.

☼☼☼☼

Bette forgot to mention that the road to the lake house is winding, and Magdalene spends the entire ride with her head between her knees. Motion sickness is something that unfortunately plagues her during journeys longer than a couple of hours and she wishes she would have thought to take anti-nausea medication before leaving the house. Tyson tries to crack a joke about her being a bad passenger, but his girlfriend swats his arm and passes her friend a water bottle with a concerned smile. The two of them speak in hushed tones, almost certainly for Magdalene's benefit, and she does her best not to throw up on the floor of Tyson’s car. After what feels like two decades the vehicle rolls to a stop at the end of a gravel path.

“Mags, we’re here,” Bette says softly, praying that her friend will begin to feel better after stretching her legs and feeling firm ground underneath her.

There’s an unintelligible groan from Magdalene, but she rises out of the car and stumbles into the house. Tyson and Bette insist that she rest and they’ll handle the unloading of the car, so she crawls into one of the empty beds and falls asleep as soon as her head touches the pillow. It’s a dreamless slumber, one fuelled by the pure exhaustion of battling illness while travelling, and when she awakes hours later Magdalene feels oddly refreshed. Her energy level is still relatively low, but she knows that intaking food won’t be an issue.

Padding down the stairs as quiet as possible in an effort to not break the peaceful atmosphere, Magdalene is met with a quiet house. She’s utterly confused – she didn’t sleep long enough to miss dinner and judging by the way the sun is low in the final car full of people should be arriving any minute. For a moment she thinks the group left her in the mountains alone, but then the sound of a trunk closing breaks the silence.

“I fucking told you bro, you should have let me drive!”

Ryan’s voice echoes in Magdalene's ears and her heart skips a beat. She didn’t realize how much she had missed him or how excited she is to see him. Despite everything inside of her saying she should run into his arms Magdalene stays put in the kitchen, running the tap to get a glass of water. She focuses on the mountain on the other end of the lake, framing the setting sun and creating a postcard ready photo. The camera app on her phone is open and angles for the best shot are found. Ryan tumbles through the door a second later, arms filled to the brim with luggage and bags of food.

He drops them the second he sees her, running up behind her and lifting her off the ground. “Mags! Cale almost hit a deer!”

The shock of Ryan’s onslaught of affection catches her off guard, and Magdalene shakes her hand, forcing the picture to turn out as nothing but a blur.

“No hello?” She laughs as Ryan lets her feet touch down on the wooden floor. “It’s the least you could give me after destroying my chance of getting a National Geographic worthy picture.”

He smiles but doesn’t let his hands drop from their perch on her waist. “There’s six more days for you to nail it. I’ll even help if you ask.”

Other bodies enter the house then, causing Magdalene to slink away from Ryan’s touch even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. They’re simply friends, and she doesn’t want Bette to get any ideas. The last thing Magdalene needs on her plate right now is her best friend forcing her to paint a custom denim jacket with Ryan’s number across the back. “I can’t believe you almost hit a deer,” Tyson sighs in disbelief.

“It wasn’t even close,” Cale grumbles, picking up his bags and stomping off to find a place to claim as his own the next couple of days. A petite redhead follows after him, giving a small wave to those in the kitchen before scurrying away. When she asks, Ryan tells Magdalene the girl’s name is Livy, and that she’s Cale’s girlfriend from back home.

Everyone shrugs at his moodiness and disperses. Bette and Tyson stay in the kitchen to make dinner, Ryan goes to claim the final room, and Magdalene slips outside to sit on the patio furniture. The sun has dropped drastically in the past five minutes, causing the air to chill. She wraps her arms tighter around her legs and watches a pair of birds fly over the lake below. It’s so peaceful, a complete one-eighty from the insanity of her life in Denver, and Magdalene thinks about never leaving. She knows it’s impossible, but as she closes her eyes and listens to the quiet laughter of her friends inside the idea seems like a pretty good one.

The sliding door creaks open and Ryan goes through as quietly as possible. He tosses a sweater in Magdalene’s direction as he walks over, plopping down beside her on the small couch.

“Thanks,” she mumbles, slipping the fabric over her head. “I didn’t realize how cold it had actually gotten.”

He smiles in response and shuffles his body a little closer to create extra warmth. Magdalene leans into him, trying to appear casual even though her heart is beating rapidly, and pulls on the strings of the sweater Ryan gave her.

“So, are you excited for this week?”

It’s more awkward than she thought it would be – seeing him in person again, especially since they’ve been texting almost constantly, and the words kind of stick in her throat.

“Honestly? Now that I’m here I am, but I was a little leery about taking time off,” Ryan explains, detailing how he’s trying to improve some aspects of his two-way play and is worried his progress will plateau. Magdalene understands and shares her own worries about taking time off work even if her boss encouraged it.

After catching up quickly and running out of things to say, the pair of them sit in silence watching the sun set until they’re called inside for dinner. It’s nice to just exist, especially with Ryan beside her, and Magdalene feels her heart sink as they separate and he goes to make sure Cale isn’t actually mad at him.

☼☼☼☼

It storms the first two days at the lake house, forcing everyone to stay inside. Tyson complains about how he has less time to drive the boat that came with the property but the others take it in stride. Magdalene spends most of the time reading for pleasure, something she hasn’t been able to do much of the past few years, and Ryan joins her for large chunks of the time. It turns out that he too is an avid reader, and the two of them discuss their favourite novels and series while the other four play board games.

“So you’re telling me you wish Annabeth would have joined the Hunters of Artemis?” Magdalene shrieks in shock, almost knocking the wine out of her glass as her arms flail in disbelief.

“I think it made sense for her to,” Ryan defends.

“But she’s perfect for Percy!”

He sticks to his guns. “I’m not saying she isn’t. I just think that at the time the offer was presented it was the most logical choice. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about what would have happened if she did.”

She ducks her head in defeat because she had imagined it, on many occasions in fact. When reading the series for the first time in middle school Magdalene had desperately hoped Annabeth would choose the Hunters over Camp Half-Blood, gaining the family she herself never was privy to. They return to reading quietly beside each other, occasionally knocking elbows when trying to turn a page.

Tuesday brings sunshine and clear skies, which means Tyson is trying to corral everyone into the boat as soon as they’re up. Magdalene tries her hardest to get out of it but her pleas fall on deaf ears.

“You’ll be fine, stop being such a wimp,” Cale jests. She knows that he’s just anxious to soak up some sun, but the words hurt more than Magdalene would have liked them to.

Livy swats her boyfriend across the chest. “Enough! If she doesn’t want to come she doesn’t have to.” The smaller girl sends her a kind smile before speaking low enough that only Magdalene can hear her. “I know your book is just getting good and you look like the kind of person who needs alone time to function properly. Enjoy yourself.”

Seemingly excused from the day’s festivities, Magdalene gives a sheepish wave before climbing the small hill to the house. Ryan meets her halfway and is appalled when he hears of her plans.

“Nope, I don’t think so. You’re not leaving me alone to be the ultimate third wheel!”

He has her off the ground and over his shoulder in a millisecond, jogging lightly to catch up with the rest of the group. Magdalene’s laugh bounces off the tree lined shore, and she’s too busy having fun shrieking at Ryan to complain about being forced to spend all day on a boat away from her book. Tyson peels away from the dock before she can regret tagging along, and Bette tugs Magdalene to the bow.

The two girls chat quietly, giggling and sipping on the mimosas they made earlier. Magdalene isn’t a huge day drinker, but Bette makes sure there’s more orange juice than champagne to make her feel less guilty. Livy joins them a while later after becoming sick of the boys and their shenanigans. It’s nice to hang out with a group of girls that aren’t competing for the top spot in a class, Magdalene decides, and she revels in the stories they tell of going to hockey games and babysitting the children of players so they can catch a break. Twinges of jealousy creep up at the wonderful family dynamic the Avalanche seem to have, but she stomachs them. She reminds herself that other people deserve to have support systems and excuses herself from the conversation.

Magdalene slides into the free space beside Ryan, and without thinking he wraps an arm around her shoulder. It feels so natural that she wonders if it’s how he greets all his friends, but the looks of shock and Tyson and Cale’s faces say otherwise. After a bit more cruising they find a small bay to anchor in for a while. The sun had climbed to the middle of the sky and is unbearably warm, leaving everyone no choice but to jump into the water to cool off. Magdalene does her best to float peacefully a short distance away from the group but is somehow brought into a splashing war because the teams aren’t equal.

Eventually the constant barrage of water chills her to the bone, and Magdalene swims back to the boat. She watches from the sidelines and cheers for her old teammates with a towel wrapped snugly around her. Ryan breaks from the group too, insisting it isn’t fair to have teams on unequal strength. Once dry, he picks up the baseball cap he brought and places it delicately on Magdalene’s head.

“Your cheeks are starting to go pink and I don’t want you to burn,” he explains, passing her a bottle of sunscreen as well.

“Thanks Ry.”

They muse about the idyllic beauty of the scene in front of them until everyone rejoins them. For reasons unbeknownst to Magdalene Tyson is in a rush to get back to the house, which leads to him driving very fast and a little erratically. The contents of her stomach threaten to come up but she holds them down, tightening her grip on the leather seat. A wave crests and Tyson hits it head on, causing the boat to lurch and rock. Magdalene knows it’s going to happen before it does and leans over the side to save a mess from being created. All the alcohol and food she’d consumed throughout the day is no longer in her body, and heat creeps up the back of her neck. She’s embarrassed – what twenty-five year old gets sea sick?

“Are you okay?” Ryan asked, not bothering to hide the concern in his voice.

She tries to smile but it comes out more like a grimace. “I just, uh, get motion sick really easily.” Bette passes her a water bottle and she drinks it quickly, eager to get the taste out of her mouth.

Ryan lets Magdalene curl into his side the rest of the way home, and rubs comforting circles on her back to ease her discomfort, doing his best to ignore the stares from his friends.

☼☼☼☼

The trip comes to an end much more quickly than Magdalene would have liked. Tomorrow morning they’ll pack up and drive back to Denver, returning to their normal hectic schedules. Cale and Livy are heading back to Alberta for the rest of the summer, and Bette and Tyson will be going for a visit as well. She’s heard Ryan mention going home in passing, which most likely means he doesn’t have plans to stay. Magdalene will be all alone in Colorado, but she’s used to it. The only issue being friends with professional athletes is that they leave. She’s been dealing with the loss since Bette and Tyson got together years ago – having them around as her support system most of the year and then them disappearing for a couple of months.

Not wanting to think about how soon she’ll be alone, Magdalene heads outside and starts a campfire. It’s a skill she picked up as a kid and it has come in handy over the years. The newspaper crinkles under the flame from the lighter, and soon the kindling is burning well. Everyone else is still inside, cleaning up from dinner and preparing for one last night in paradise. She places a few blocks of wood in the fire pit once there’s a good enough flame and curls up in a chair, lost in thought about what comes next. There’s rustling from somewhere behind her but she pays it no mind, assuming it’s a small animal wandering through the forest.

“Can I offer you some company?” a voice says softly, waiting for a response. The movement wasn’t a raccoon but in fact Ryan, and Magdalene gestures at the chair beside her with a smile.

He passes her a glass of white wine, which she takes with an appreciative hum. They sit in silence for a moment, admiring the beauty of the setting sun. “I’m going to miss it,” Ryan sighs, leaning back in his chair and extending his legs.

She nods. “Me too. It’s so quiet up here. Denver gets too loud sometimes.”

“Tell me about it. I’m not just going to miss the lake though, it’s also lounging around and not having to worry about hockey. And you.”

The ending comes out rushed, and Magdalene isn’t sure she heard him correctly. “Me?”

Ryan looks at her like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Yes you. Why wouldn’t I? You’re funny, smart, and catch all of my West Wing references. There’s no one who gets me quite like you, even back home.”

It takes her by surprise. They’ve only known each other for a few months, and only really started associating after the party at Bette and Tyson’s. There has to be somebody who knows him better than she does. When she voices her opinion Ryan just scoffs, saying that people treat him as one-dimensional because he plays hockey. Somehow the conversation shifts to Magdalene, and when she lets it slip she gets lonely in Denver without her friends, Ryan asks the question she’s been dreading.

“So why don’t you get a boyfriend?”

“I can’t just get a boyfriend because my friends are gone,” she laughs, but there’s an edge to it, like she’s unsure of where this will go and how to question the follow ups.

He rolls his eyes. “I know that, but like, I don’t know, wouldn’t it be nice to not be alone all the time?”

It would be, Magdalene thinks, but she just shrugs. “I guess I’m not looking for a relationship right now. I just finished school and for the first time in a long time I can focus on myself.” She leaves out the part where Ryan gives her butterflies and that if he asked she’d probably jump headfirst into a relationship with him.

The topic is dropped then because Tyson comes out of the house screaming about the night is going to be wild because it’s their last together for a while. Magdalene and Ryan share a look of mild panic, but both of them are itching to have fun with friends so they raise their glasses in salute before finishing them in one gulp.

Magdalene drinks more than she should and wakes in the morning with a killer hangover. It seems that no one else is better off though, all stumbling around looking for Advil and coffee like it’s going to be their last meal. Packing up takes a bit longer than expected, but they’re still out before the official checkout time. There’s a bit of discourse on who Magdalene will travel home with. Bette wants her in Tyson’s car, no doubt to talk about how close her and Ryan seem to be, but Cale offers to bring her with them. His reasoning is that Ryan is driving him and Livy directly to the airport, and having the front seat could be good for her motion sickness. It’s ultimately Magdalene’s choice and the idea of having more time with Ryan before he leaves is too enticing to pass up. She bids her other friends goodbye, promising to come over for dinner before they fly out, and climbs into the cab of Cale’s truck.

Once again she’s a less than ideal passenger, but this time it’s because she sleeps the entire way back to Denver. The drinking took it out of her and coupled with the queasiness in her stomach from the winding roads sleep is the only thing that makes sense. So much for extra time with Ryan she thinks as she wakes up in the airport parking lot.

“Sleeping beauty has risen!” Ryan chuckles, “Why don’t you get out and stretch your legs for a sec? We have the parking spot for another fifteen minutes.”

Magdalene does as suggested because truthfully her joints are a little stiff, and finds Cale and Livy grabbing their bags from the back. She hugs them goodbye and wishes them safe travels, which Cale returns with a warning not to get into too much trouble before heading for the entrance. Once both of them are safely inside the confines of the airport, Ryan and Magdalene get back in the vehicle and finish the last leg of the trip.

She directs Ryan to her apartment complex, and he mentions that he’s never been in this area of the city. “That’s because you have no need to be around a bunch of university kids,” she laughs. Once they pull into the parking lot, he offers to help her take up her bag. It’s only a small suitcase Magdalene could definitely handle herself, but she wants him to come up, to prolong her time with him.

Magdalene’s keys jingle in the lock as the door opens. Ryan follows her in and shuts the door carefully, not wanting to disrupt the aura of peace that permeates the space. From what he can tell, the average size apartment is the perfect reflection of Magdalene – packed full of books and plants and feels very put together despite the owner being only twenty-five. After their shoes find a home on the boot rack and the coats they brought for the drive home are hung in the closet she leads Ryan into the living room. There’s a soft purring by his feet, and Ryan looks down to see an animal. He never pegged Magdalene as someone to keep pets.

“Who’s this?” he asks, bending down to pet the small white cat.

“That’s Caligula.”

A puzzled look graces Ryan’s features. “Who?”

“Caligula,” Madalene giggles. “You can call him little boots if you’d like. He’ll respond.” She picks up the animal when it comes to her and scratches gently behind its ear.

“Why would you name your cat something dumb like Caligula, and why does it respond to little boots?”

It’s then the woman realizes that not everyone understands the reference. “Caligula was the third emperor of Rome,” she explains, “But his real name was Gaius. He gained the nickname Caligula as a child and it just stuck. It translates to little boots in Latin.”

Ryan is in awe of Magdalene for what feels like the millionth time. Of course someone as smart as her would have a crazy name for a pet and have the knowledge to back it up. He feels his chest tighten with affection but he wills it away. She isn’t looking for anything right now, he reminds himself. Magdalene’s self-professed inability to reciprocate his feelings is frustrating, but Ryan knows he’d wait forever for her.

☼☼☼☼

additional notes: catch some extra content here!

taglist: @scrunchmakar @marcoscandellas @toplinetommy @ricohenrique @lovethepreds @cutiesara23 @hockeyallthetime @stlbluesbrat21 (add yourself to the taglist!)

#ryan graves imagine #ryan graves x oc #ryan graves fic #colorado avalanche imagine #nhl imagine #nhl fic #hockey imagine #hockey fic #cwrites #dmtteol

[combat-wombatus]

A Little Confession

Pairing: Iida Tenya x gn!reader

Genre: a lil angst, fluff

Warnings: none!

WC: 1.5k

Summary: You missed your best friend. Iida seemed to be avoiding you, and a late-night cuddle sesh may be just the thing to get him to fess up.

(A/N): akjhfskjdhflakjhlkjhfd this took me 2 weeks and it’s like 1.5k words help-

i can’t like deal ok this is absolutely terrible and i’m just...posting this because I NEED TO GET RID OF MY WRITER’S BLOCK DAMMIT

forgive my sins...idk if y’all really want to read this ALKDJFHAKJ it sucks but...yeah...just needed to get something out too...

this is for my new year’s event btw (yes i realize we’re halfway through january already i still have 30 asks sitting in my inbox staring at me like 🧍🏻‍♀️i promise i’m not ignoring them i just...suck at writing-

6: “You knocked on my door, at 2 in the morning, to cuddle?”

You tossed and turned in your bed, the restless energy from tonight still invading your thoughts. You found it hard to believe what had happened.

Over the course of the week, your classmate had been kidnapped, All Might’s true form had been revealed, more of your classmates risked their lives to perform a rescue operation (albeit successful) of their kidnapped classmate, a formerly-believed-to-be-dead supervillain showed up and basically demolished an entire city with a quirk you hadn’t thought would be possible, and now you had all moved into dorms for your own safety.

If that wasn’t overwhelming, you weren’t sure what else could possibly be considered so.

To make it all worse, your best friend, the rule-abiding, goody-two-shoes hero-in-training, had been a part of the rescue operation. The rescue operation that most definitely broke the rules.

You were worried about him. Not his sudden change in attitude (you had felt that the orderly behavior would succumb to recklessness sooner or later), but with the fact that he didn’t tell you about his involvement until it was already over and done with.

Of course, that could’ve been because you were with Hagakure and Jirou, passed out in the hospital from a villain’s gas quirk, but that didn’t mean your phone was broken.

It would’ve taken one text.

Just one.

One that he never sent.

Sighing, you flipped over on your unfamiliar mattress again, trying to clear your mind so you could fall asleep. It was close to 2AM, and if you continued like this, you wouldn’t have enough energy to stay awake in class tomorrow.

He doesn’t have to tell me anything! You tried to reason with yourself. It was his business! Besides, it’s not like I could’ve helped.

But what if he’d gotten hurt?

What if you weren’t there to save him from his reckless decisions?

You hadn’t even seen him since that incident, and he hadn’t reached out by text either.

Did he not want to associate with you anymore?

Unwelcome thoughts plagued your head, making it impossible for you to get any sleep. Sighing to yourself, you quickly threw back your covers, tossed on a cozy cardigan, and shoved your feet into your fuzzy slippers. The restlessness had made you hungry, and since you couldn’t sleep, food was the next best thing.

Quietly making your way into the halls, you shuffled in the direction of the kitchen, careful not to wake your classmates. You’d almost made it to the elevator when you spotted a faint glow coming from inside Iida’s room.

He’s still awake too?

Steeling your nerves, you raised a fist and rapped on his door lightly. A chair screeched, and moments later, Iida answered the door in a nightcap and pajamas.

“(Y/N)?” His eyebrows were drawn in a frown. The gesture made the heavy bags under his eyes look even more prominent, and the sight made your heart clench.

“Ten…what’s wrong?”

He adjusted his glasses, looking uncomfortable. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you. There’s nothing wrong.”

You saw through his fib, but you chose not to call him out on it. He’d tell you when he was well and ready.

“Then…can we cuddle?” You voiced hopefully. You’d missed him more than you cared to admit, and being rather touch-starved the past week, you longed for his familiar strength.

Iida, for his part, looked confused. “You knocked on my door at 2 in the morning…to cuddle?”

“Mhm,” you yawned. Stepping past his door, you swiftly wrapped your arms around his solid frame, relaxing in his scent.

“(Y/N) …” he awkwardly closed the door with one hand, the other wrapped around your back. “We aren’t supposed to be in each other’s rooms.”

You murmured noncommittally into his chest. You could deal with the repercussions later.

After a moment of internal debate, Iida rested his other hand on top of your head, rubbing soothing circles and slightly mussing your hair.

“Missed you,” you mumble, voice slightly muffled by his shirt.

Iida cleared his throat, desperately trying to get rid of the lump that was building in it. Hugging you tighter, he rested his chin atop your head.

“I missed you too.”

After a while, you tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

“‘m still hungry,” you mumbled sleepily, nuzzling your face into his chest.

Iida chuckled. Some things never change.

“I’ll go grab something,” he pressed a soft kiss to the top of your head. “Go sit on the bed, okay?”

“Mhm…” You sat down on his bed. His sheets smelled like detergent and eucalyptus, an intoxicating aroma that made you even sleepier than before.

“Don’t think he’ll mind if I just…lie down…” Kicking off your slippers, you curled up on his mattress. You’d only closed your eyes for a second before you drifted off into sleep, hands clutching the warm blankets.

“I got some cheese and-” Iida stopped in the doorway, holding a packet of cheese and some crackers. “Oh.”

His eyes settled upon your dozing form. He carefully set down the snacks, then quietly padded over to the bed. Gingerly sitting down as to not wake you, he shifted the blankets over your body, a gentle warmth filling his heart.

He didn’t want to acknowledge how much he missed you either. He wasn’t a selfish person. He really wasn’t. But for you, no matter how hard he tried, he found it hard to not be selfish.

Slowly, he laid down on the bed next to you, trying to keep a respectable distance: not an easy feat to accomplish, given his size.

Taking in your peaceful expression, he found it in him to finally fall asleep, grounded by your presence, just a fingertip away.

You woke up to Iida’s breath tickling your cheeks, his arms wrapped snugly around your torso. Shifting slightly, you gently lifted one of the arms caging you in and slid off the bed, padding to the bathroom.

When you returned, he was still asleep. The lines of his jaw were softer than usual, making him look…relaxed. You resisted the urge to snap a picture right then and there.

Your weight settling on the bed stirred him from his slumber.

“Hmm…(Y/N)? What…oh.” He blinked blearily.

“You didn’t wake me up yesterday?” You asked softly, resting your head atop his chest.

Iida flushed. “Ah…no. You looked tired, and it was late, and, well…I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Ten, you know you could’ve. I wouldn’t have minded.”

“I would’ve,” he whispered.

This time, it was your turn to blush.

He didn’t stop at that.

“(Y/N) …I…I don’t want to be a bad influence.”

You stilled. What?

“You…a bad influence?” You giggled. “Ten, where did that come from?”

He breathed out a sigh. “I…I never told you, did I?”

“Told me what?”

“This isn’t…this isn’t the first time. This isn’t the first time I…participated…in vigilante activity, (Y/N). This isn’t the first time I stepped outside the bounds of the law to complete my own agenda.” He admitted with a pained expression.

“Ten…are you telling me that you’re a vigilante?”

“Not really, no.” He winced. “(Y/N) …do you remember Stain?”

“Stain? The Hero-Killer?” You dug deep into your memories, trying to remember what was so important about Stain.

Oh.

“Is this about your brother?”

Iida grimaced. “I…I may have left out the entire story about my internships.”

“What happened?” You had an inkling about what he was going to say, but you didn’t want to make assumptions yet.

“I interned at Hosu City, even though I received better offers…because I’d heard news about Stain operating there. I wanted revenge, (Y/N). I wasn’t…I wasn’t a hero at all. There’s something about misguided justice that pumps you full of adrenaline, and I made several rash decisions. But after the fact? I regretted all of them.” Iida clenched his eyes shut, but two shiny tracks still snaked their way down his cheeks, marking dark splotches on his pillow.

“Ten…”

“And that’s just it. I regretted what I did, but then I had to go and do it all again. Genius, right?” He scoffed at himself. “I’m a terrible influence, (Y/N). I…I don’t want to ruin your future.”

“Stop it.” You hugged him tight, burrowing your face into his chest. “I don’t think that you’re a terrible influence at all. You did save him, didn’t you? Without you…do you really believe that Bakugou would’ve made it out safely if you hadn’t gone?”

“I…”

“Stop being so hard on yourself, Tenya. You’re braver than you give yourself credit for. And yes, you were reckless. Yes, you made rash decisions. But that’s not enough to measure your whole life by. And, in the end, you did accomplish something for the greater good, right?”

A small smile played at the edge of his lips. He pressed a small kiss onto your forehead.

How lucky he was to have you.

“Thank you, (Y/N).”

He almost said something else after his expression of gratitude. Three simple words, whispered in his head, that he didn’t yet have the courage to confirm out loud.

I love you.

Coco’s 20-21 New Year’s Celebration

Masterlist

#seriously #i don't think i'm a functioning human being anymore #argh #bnha #bnha scenarios #bnha imagines #iida tenya #tenya iida #iida #ingenium #iida x reader #iida scenarios #iida x y/n #bnha x reader #iida fluff #bnha fluff #mha #mha fluff #mha imagines #mha scenarios #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfiction #bnha fics #bnha drabbles #mha fics #mha drabbles #iida drabbles #iida fics #iida tenya x reader #coco's new year celebration 2021

[topsytervy]

Rafe dating Barry's sister

Here's a little headcanon sort of thing that I completely intend on making a whole little blurb on

warnings: swearing, mentions of drugs and drinking, implied sex but only if you squint, barry being a protective little shit, grammar and spelling mistakes, some things may be capitalized and some not (I was a little tired typing this one up), I think thats it

this came out a little longer than I wanted it to but its fine

~~~~

you were Barry's younger sister

18, freshly graduated from hell and moving on to college (or as Barry called it, hell 2.0)

and barry was slightly protective of you

as in he once almost fought a child someone when you were 12 because someone called you stupid

you were a good kid though, the complete opposite of your brother

obviously, I mean the man sells drugs

and barry only wanted the best for you

especially when it came to people who could be future partners

"listen, y/n. listen carefully. If they try to pressure you into doing shit you don't want to do, drop them. If they yell at you for no reason, say adios cause there's only one person allowed to raise their voice at you and that's me. If they're putting you in dangerous situations, gone. And if they even think about roughing you up, you tell me and they'll be taken care of real fast. They'll think twice about doing anything like that again."

His big one though was anyone who was into hard drugs.

"I don't mind if they smoke a joint or two but if you even think about dating someone who does meth, coke, whatever, I'll be smacking some sense into you cause you can do so much better than people like me. Ya hear?"

Enter the tall, blonde, blue-eyed, extremely handsome kook who goes by the name of Rafe Cameron

You didn't mean to develop feelings for him but, I mean, look at him

he's just a sad boi in need of some love

You two just fell into a habit of talking whenever Rafe was waiting for Barry to come back

and eventually, it went from just talking whenever he was waiting for your brother to dming each other late at night

and then he was giving you rides home from school (before you graduated)

and then he was giving you rides home after your work shifts

and then to your work shifts

and then you were sneaking out of your room to meet him at the beach or somewhere

you told him you liked him after you had one too many beers, Rafe staying sober because he didn't want anything to happen to you

you two ended up sleeping in the bed of his truck that night, you curled into his side as he had a dopey smile on his face

cause now he knew that you liked him the same way he liked you

so the next morning consisted of him taking you out to breakfast as you mumbled how sorry you were about what you said last night

"don't be sorry cause now I can do this and not make a fool of myself."

and then he kissed you

just a nice little peck, nothing too over the top considering you were public

oh I'm sorry

did someone say secret relationship

cause yeah

in case you forgot, Barry doesn't want you dating crackheads

so you had to sneak behind his back which was fucking scary for you considering you never really kept anything from your brother

you almost got caught a couple of times too

like when Rafe tried sneaking through your window and knocked over your aloe plant which caused barry to jolted awake and run into your room, gun in hand

Rafe got nicely acquainted with your closet that night and some other nights after that

or when Rafe left a nice hickey on your neck

or when he was taking a shower and you had to run into the bathroom cause you heard Barry heading that way, hollering to what he thought was you

you two eventually got caught halfway through month three when Barry caught Rafe sneaking out of your bedroom in the middle of the night to take a piss

"Oh hell fucking no, country club."

you woke up to shouting and glass shattering, Rafe whispering to Barry to stop before he woke you up

When you walked into the kitchen, Barry's glare fell on you

"What the fuck did I tell you y/n?" He spat, finger pointed at you as he walked towards you

You flinched at his tone, the last time you heard those words was when you climbed some rocks he told you not to when you were 8 and you ended up falling and breaking your arm

except he was more panicked than mad back then

"Say goodbye." "What?" "Say goodbye to Rafe. This is the last time you're seeing him." "Barry-" "Don't Barry me, y/n. I told you what kind of people to stay away from and you didn't listen. As for you, if I see you here or anywhere near her, I'll fucking kill you."

You watched as Rafe made his way out, shooting you one last look before shutting the front door behind him gently

with tears in your eyes, you turned towards your brother, fists clenched, and said four words you had never said to Barry ever

"I fucking hate you."

For the next two weeks, you avoided Barry like the plague, barely paying him a glance and it hurt him a lot

and that's when he noticed a couple things

so he hopped on his bike and went over to Tanneyhill to talk to Rafe

Rafe heard the bike and sighed when he looked out the window to see his ex-drug dealer

he quickly walked to the front door, a drink in his hand, okay a bottle of vodka and it was barely 11 AM, and opened the door

"What do you want?" "To talk." "About?" "Y/n."

Rafe walked out and shut the door

"Is she okay?" "Physically, yeah. Emotionally, I'm going with a hard no. At least not since I made you two split. I just- I realized a couple of things looking back on the past couple of months." "Like?" Rafe asked as he leaned against the front door."How happy you two were during that time. How she wasn't constantly stressing about small things like she was earlier this year. How you haven't bought anything from me in that time." "What are you saying, Barry?" "That as much as I worry about her and don't want her dating anyone who could put her in danger, I want her to be happy and it's killing me that she won't even breathe in my direction. And you made her really fucking happy, country club. So, go get her. I'll leave you two alone to talk. Only talk though. No funny business." Barry pointed at Rafe as the younger man grinned.

So, Rafe and you got back together after he reassured you he was not going to get killed for being there and when Barry came back, you engulfed him in a hug

"See? He's not that bad Barry. He's a big old teddy bear once you get to know him." "Yeah, yeah, yeah. All I care about is you're talking to me again." Rafe rolled his eyes with a small smile as you pulled away from barry. "We're going through some ground rules though."

#outerbanks rafe #rafe outer banks #rafe cameron #rafe x reader #rafe obx #barry outer banks

[owletstarlet]

water, sunlight (tender mercy)

“You’re full,” the spirit insists, eyes round and steady. “This will help.”

(also known as, owlet’s ill-advised spin on hanahaki. CW for Natsume’s Terrible Childhood, as well as a bit of a CW for symptoms of Vague Anime Illness during this our extended plague year.)

Ao3 link in the notes.

***

Four days.

He was twelve years old.

Twelve years old, and about to look after his aunt and uncle’s house during their long weekend trip north. He didn’t mind, had looked forward to it, honestly; he’d be on school break himself, and the quiet of the empty house had sounded more than appealing.

His cousin, two years older, had been tasked with leaving the spare key where Takashi could find it, under the potted yuzu tree on the porch.

Except she never did.

He tried and failed to find an unlatched window to shimmy through. He’d had enough change on him for a payphone, but the name and number of the hotel had been scrawled down on a pad left in the kitchen.

He contemplated the police station, next. But by now, so late in the day, his guardians would have reached their destination hours away. He’d head off the potential fallout from troubling them; they weren’t the warmest of people but Takashi was provided for, didn’t mind his school, and he hadn’t managed to step out of line just yet.

Four days couldn’t be so long, surely.

But then he’d misjudged some things. Namely, how much food that pocketful of change could get him at the hundred-yen shop, how cold it could still get at night even in early March, and how no 24-hour convenience store or café would let him in for long to warm up if he couldn’t pay for anything.

And it hadn’t been that bad, all things considered—the park he’d stayed overnight in was near enough to people’s homes that the larger youkai steered clear, and then on that last night when a chilly rain had driven him indoors the lady from the convenience store gave him a bento she’d been prepared to toss out, even heated it up for him.

And when his aunt and uncle returned to him dozing off on the porch, all it took was a quick lie about having locked himself out that morning and they were none the wiser to the whole ordeal. He even got to keep the food money, having tucked it away into his pillowcase the night before they’d left.

And yes, it’d been uncomfortable, and inconvenient. But definitely not worth waking up in a frigid sweat over, four years later.

It’s not just the once, either.

He’s otherwise had a nice week; there’d been a school trip to the botanical garden for everyone in their year. Touko had sent Takashi along with cranberry muffins for everyone to share on the train, and Nishimura hadn’t stopped rapturously singing their praises for the rest of the day. They’d made a sort of competition out comparing their mandatory sketches of the different plants to see whose bush clover was the very worst, and bickered a bit over what the prize ought to be while Sasada, their de-facto judge, just rolled her eyes at them and told them they ought to at least try. Takashi had dozed off for most of the train ride back, a dreamless nap, while Kitamoto and Taki took it upon themselves to steer him by the shoulders back from the train station to the bus stop. Takashi had let himself be led, in a pleasant twilit daze, all the way back to the Fujiwaras’ front door.

He woke up crying out, that night, heart hurling itself against a chest that felt brittle and thin.  

***

Three days later finds Takashi crouched in the moss of a little forest clearing, riding out the wave of dizziness as a name swirls through the air above him. Its owner gives him a smile as it sinks through their skin—no flickers of Reiko this time, no associated memory for Takashi to absorb in turn. And there isn’t always, that’s not unusual, but what is unusual is the way they lean forward towards him once the process is complete, to place a cool finger right between his eyes. Once Takashi stops seeing double, he thinks hazily that the youkai looks rather like an heirloom doll—glossy straight hair, round apple-cheeks, blush-pink kimono—but their mouth is pinched, as if in passing concern.

“You’re full,” they tell him.

Takashi just blinks at them.

“Care to elaborate?” Beside him, Sensei’s eyes narrow. “Or don’t. We were just leaving.”

“You’re full,” the spirit insists, eyes round and steady. “This will help.”

They slide their fingers downwards across his face, his neck, to rest at the hollow of his throat. Takashi feels the pop, the sudden chill sinking through his flesh.

Sensei forces his way between them, then, poking at Takashi’s skin with his paw. “What was that?” he demands.

“A nudge,” the ayakashi says, simply. Seconds later, they’ve vanished.

***

Takashi doesn’t notice straightaway. He’s bleary-eyed and yawning through his Civics assignment after dinner, but he’d returned a name just hours before, so it doesn’t exactly raise an alarm bell. Neither does the tickle in the back of his throat, not when the weather’s chilly and half the school is sneezy and runny-nosed at the moment. He drinks the honeyed tea Touko brings him and has all but forgotten about it as he climbs into his futon that night.

He’s twelve years old. He wishes he’d taken a coat, before they’d left.

Touko offers, in the morning, to keep him home from school; he’d been coughing last night, loud enough that the sound carried down the hall. But Takashi can’t remember it, the only apparent trace of it in the persistent tickle that has him clearing his throat every now and then, so he accepts a mask and a thermos of tea and her pat to his cheek, then leaves as usual.

He’s not feeling truly dreadful until lunch the following day; throat prickling, chest too tight, stomach roiling too much to handle more than a few bites of rice. Nishimura walks him home, looping their arms together and resolutely waving off Takashi’s worry that he’ll just get him sick, too. They stop twice, Takashi left winded and red-faced from the deeper, heavier coughs that had begun just hours before.

Touko makes him tea again that night, when he feels bolstered enough to make his way back down to the kitchen for okayu that hurts to swallow. But the thick cup slips from his fingers seconds after she presses is into his hand. It cracks into three neat pieces when it hits the floor, its contents splattering his socks and the toes of Touko’s slippers.

He’s barely opened his mouth to apologize—

Cracked porcelain. Scalded fingers going red. Heartbeat in his throat.

He was seven years old.

“I—”

Whatever he was about to say is snatched away by a low, deep cough, colliding with the sudden urge to be sick.

He manages to keep his dinner down, just barely, after some not-so-deep breaths through his nose over the toilet he’d bolted to. But he’s leaning over anyways, moments later, hacking and spitting and something just beneath his sternum rips itself free.

He peers into the water, at the white scraggly thing, half curled in on itself, that he’s somehow just choked up.

He blinks, flushes it down. Heads straight up to bed, dazed, wondering with a sudden icy pinprick of fear just what he’d been about to say to Touko.

He wakes again that night, throat searing, the sight of blistered fingers and tea-darkened wood floors burned into the backs of his eyelids.

Sensei’s eyes narrow. “A chrysanthemum?” He prods at the damp crumpled thing lying on Takashi’s pillowcase, this one’s petals shot through with burgundy.

Takashi stares at it, knees drawn up beneath his chin, chest aching like something’s been torn loose from him.

***

Two nights later and he’s curled on his side, cheek pressed against the cool whorls of wood where Sensei had deposited him on the doorstep of the Yatsuhara Temple. Hauling himself upright to reach the doorbell is beyond him. He gets a shaky fist up to knock, somehow, unsure who will answer the door. Tanuma had said something about his dad and a business trip, maybe, but the details are like water through a sieve in his mind.

Nothing happens. He’s at the bottom of a lake, pushed down and down and when the sound of a doorbell drifts through his ears a nebulous moment later, it’s beyond him to wonder just how on earth Sensei managed to do that.

He senses the light of the opened door through shuttered eyes. A sharp intake of breath, a dull thunk of knees dropping to the floor beside him that he feels more than hears.

“Natsume?” Tanuma’s voice has gone low with fright, one tentative hand on his shoulder and another, seconds later, lighting on his forehead. It makes his skin prickle, and he feels his face screw up.

“Wh—is he hurt?”

“He asked to come here,” Sensei says, obliquely.

Takashi finds a thready sliver of his voice then, opens one eye to Tanuma’s face washed bloodless by the porch light, gaping at him. “Sorry,” he starts, but the word ends jagged on a cough.

And another, and another, and then he’s spitting mouthful after cloying mouthful of bruised petals into his own shaking fingers.  

Before he’s opened his streaming eyes he feels cool hands uncover his mouth, a thumb swiping across his chin.

“What…what is this?”

***

Takashi has no real awareness of how he got inside, or even what room he’s in; just that they’re on the floor, that Tanuma’s got him gathered up in his arms.

He tries to lay him out flat, but an odd, reedy sound shakes loose from Takashi’s throat and he feeels his own fingers scrabbling at Tanuma’s sleeve. Tanuma stops halfway to the floor, a panicked question in his eyes, holding Takashi in place awkwardly half-cradled against his chest.

“Hurts,” Takashi manages, breathlessly, by way of explanation. He can’t elaborate. He watches frantic, imploring eyes flick to Sensei instead.

“He’s cursed.” Takashi can’t see him but there’s an edge to his voice. “Some busybody got it into their head that they were doing him a favor. Now he’s choking up flowers every minute or so, as if that’s at all useful. He’s got a soggy little garden in there now.” Takashi feels a paw prodding his ribs. “You could see them, couldn’t you? Out on the doorstep.”

Tanuma nods, slowly, and Takashi watches a dozen questions flit through his eyes. But he must see that Takashi can’t spare the breath for the answers, so instead he says, “How do we stop it?”

Sensei sighs. “Seems like it’ll resolve itself, sooner or later. The brat’s just selective about his audience for it. And your house was closer than the Taki girl’s, so here we are.”

“‘M sorry,” Takashi repeats, through a wheeze. “B-but Touko-san and Shigeru-san, they can’t…” It’s true, and it’s urgent, but the words escape his grasp like slippery minnows so all he can do is look up, dazed and panting as though he’d sprinted here.

“…maybe you shouldn’t be talking right now.” And with that, Takashi feels himself being gently turned and positioned so his back is against Tanuma’s chest.

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it,” Sensei mutters, even as Takashi’s pressing both hands over his mouth again while his chest, or his stomach, or some elusive in-between place, has begun to turn itself inside out again.

His fingers come away cupping a tattered flower, yellow now with splotches of red that stain his skin where the petals touch, and Tanuma sucks in a breath.

“What’s happening to you?”

He finds out, soon enough.

***

A water bottle with a cracked lid. His homeroom teacher, her kind face taut as she asked him to open his bento. He’d figured if he tucked himself in the corner and let it sit on the edge of the desk, nobody would ask. He was dizzy, his limbs felt like they might evaporate into the stuffy air. He wondered if she’d let him put his head down until the period ended.

He was thirteen years old.

Sensei rolled in an empty wastebasket, at some point. Takashi’s got his arms locked around it, head lolling halfway inside it. Tanuma hadn’t interrupted, hasn’t said a word other than the whispered assurances beside his ear every time something rips inside him, leaving him hacking and teary-eyed and trying not to whimper. The words, when they come, are drawn out like some unspooling thread, from the dustiest corners of his mind that he never looks at too closely.

Knees pulled up to his chest in the dark, perched on a musty stack of futons. Clutching at his stinging cheek, ears pricked for heavy, meandering footsteps.

He was eight years old.

Tanuma started tracing slow circles into his shoulder, at some point, while he spits bits of himself into the wastebasket.

“If you can stand, I can—my bed…”

“Doubtful,” Sensei says. He’s pressed lengthwise against Takashi’s thigh.

Scraped arms wrapped tight around a branch that feels weak, precarious in the breeze. The creature gazing up at him, amused, blackened blood on its lips. Thunder rolling in, far off still but the air already thick and charged.

He was ten years old.

It takes a bit of time to come back to himself, to slip back into his body from the spaces between. It’s not over, he knows, but Tanuma’s pressing a glass of water into his hands now, helping lift it to his lips when it’s clear his fingers have all but gone wooden.

The long look Tanuma gives him once he’s set the glass aside makes Takashi feel pinned down like an insect to a corkboard. It’s an odd crooked angle to look up at him from; the side of Takashi’s head is braced against his collarbone. But Tanuma’s jaw is locked, and his eyes are red and wet, seem like they have been for awhile but Takashi doesn’t have the presence of mind to recall when that had started.  

He’s carding back Takashi’s damp fringe while Takashi wishes he could just squirm away, fingers endlessly careful even as his voice turns steely.

“It isn’t right.”

Takashi pushes the “sorry” out on a wheeze; it feels like an exercise in futility when there’s that itching promise behind his ribs of more to come, that stopping it would be like trying to swim straight up a waterfall.

Tanuma shakes his head, fingers coming to rest on Takashi’s cheek, where there must be dried-up spittle and bits of plant matter and blood coating the skin.

“It’s not—“ he starts to say, then lets out an unsteady breath. “It’s not what you’re telling me. I mean. That’s not right, either. And you shouldn’t ever believe it was. But you…” he trails off again, like he’s trying to parse out the proper words, and Takashi’s suspended, hovering right on the edge of something vast and formless and ready to snap him right up.

“These things…” he waves his hand vaguely at the wastebasket. “You never would’ve told me any of this, if that spirit hadn’t forced you, would you.” It’s not a question, but it’s not an indictment. Takashi says nothing.

“You shouldn’t have had to,” he continues, softly. “Ever, if you didn’t want to. It should have been your call.”

The sound that escapes Takashi’s mouth then is a bitten-off, ugly thing. He’s not sure when his eyes closed, but he feels the careful pads of thumbs swiping away the at the hollows beneath them.

“I meant that, but I didn’t mean to make you cry.” A pause, and Tanuma’s pinched face finally swims back into view above him. “You should try to finish the water, okay?”

He does, but there’s the sensation of tacks pressed into his throat when he swallows.

A sound of shuffling, then Sensei’s poking his knee. He’s dragged in a cushion that Takashi thinks came from the sitting room. “Just put him down here, if he can take it,” he huffs. “It looks like you’ve been trying to cradle a cooked noodle for the past hour.”

He ends up on his side with his cheek squashed against the cushion, a scent of stale incense clinging to the fabric, Sensei firmly sandwiched between his stomach and his arm.

Tanuma sits cross-legged in front of him, one hand resting on Takashi’s upper arm. His eyes are still puffy but he looks thoughtful, now.

“You know that Jizo altar in the garden?” he asks.

Takashi blinks, manages a nod.

“So, um. Yesterday I was out there sweeping and pulling the weeds around it, and I went around the back side and there was a swallow’s nest… I mean, I think that’s what it was, it looked like it was more mud than sticks and it was wedged up where the wall meets the roof.”

“Too early in the year for swallows, isn’t it.” Sensei’s voice is muffled by Takashi’s forearm.

“I thought so too. I haven’t seen any out there yet, but Dad said I could use his camera to try to get some photos anyways. He’ll put them in the monthly newsletter. And I’d like to get up there to see if there are any eggs inside, but…”

“It’d make a decent snack, if there were,” Sensei drawls. Takashi can’t muster much force, but he manages to flick Sensei in the ear hard enough to elicit an indignant squawk.

“I’m a little afraid that the swallows are gonna come  back while I’m there and give me a hard time about it,” Kaname says, a rueful quirk to his lips.

“D-do swallows even…” Takashi has to stop halfway through to muster the breath, to gulp hard past prickling that’s morphed into burning. “Would they attack people?”

Sensei’s head pops up then, chin resting on Takashi’s arm. “Hah. If they do, I hope you record it.”

Tanuma’s hand migrates to the top of Sensei’s head. “Well you could just come see for yourself,” he says, fingers seeking out the spots around the bases of the ears Sensei likes best. “I was going to ask Natsume if he wanted to help get the photo. Once you’re feeling up to it,” he adds, to Takashi. Takashi manages a bare nod.

“Oh, and,” he goes on, with a considering glance towards the darkened window, “I’d thought it’d probably be a good idea to put a box on the ground underneath, with some newspaper inside? In case it falls.”

Takashi can feel another cough mounting behind his sternum, the wrongness clamoring to wrench itself free; knows he’s about to be swallowed up by another place and time. His lips twitch anyway.

“Kind of you.” The breath behind the words is rattling oddly, and judging by the tightness around Tanuma’s eyes, he doesn’t miss it.

“Well, I mean,” Tanuma says, after a beat of silence, with a thin smile of his own. “It’s probably pretty bad luck to let a bunch of of baby birds die right beside a Jizo, or bad form at least, but. Thanks. You can help with that too, if you want.”

Before Takashi can answer, the words have fallen straight out of his head and bled through the floor. And he’s tipping backwards, down, down until he’s nine years old again.

A bus stop in the rain, a rapidly darkening sky. His aunt was an hour and a half late, now. He’d just walk, if he knew the way.

Hungry yellow eyes, glinting out from between the bush and a vending machine.

***

Tanuma’s not there when Takashi wakes. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. But the sheets on Tanuma’s bed smell like his uniform, tatami and detergent and incense. The curtain’s closed, but he can see the light peeking through the edges.

He doesn’t try to sit up. His chest feels scraped hollow and his brain skitters away from the thought of the mouthfuls of blood that had come up with the flowers. Sensei’s nowhere to be seen.

He’s staring at the ceiling lamp, drifting, when Tanuma appears in the doorway with a tray in hand. He opts not to flick the light on, setting the tray down to lean over the bed and draw the curtain halfway back. Takashi doesn’t need to ask if he got any sleep at all,  not when he looks for all the world like he got punched in both eyes. But his smile had been real and relieved when he’d seen that Takashi was awake.

“I brought tea,” he says, perching on the edge of the bed. “But you’ll probably want water first, right?”

He does—he ends up chugging down two-thirds of the offered bottle like he’s dying, one of Tanuma’s hands behind his head and the other steadying his elbow, until Tanuma gently pries it from his fingers to keep him from being sick.

“Where’s Sensei?” he asks moment later, in a sandpaper voice, while Tanuma helps prop him up on the headboard.

“He said something about going back to the Fujiwaras’, pretending to be you long enough to come down for breakfast and tell them you were headed here for the day.”

Takashi grimaces, and the look Tanuma gives him is sympathetic and only slightly amused. “It’s better than making them worry, right? I’m glad it’s not a school day, anyways.”

They’re silent for a moment, after that, while Tanuma pours him the tea. Takashi smells lemon and honey. He stares down at the cup warming his chilled fingers, watches the steam curling towards his face. It’s good, but he feels torn open, still, like the whole of him is an exposed nerve.

“I—”

“If you’re trying to apologize, please don’t,” Tanuma says, abruptly, meeting his eyes. “You already did. A lot.”

“Oh.” He takes a sip of tea, not sure what else to do.

“Sorry. Just. You didn’t need to, is all. None of that was my business, if you didn’t want it to be. I told you that.” Takashi watches his jaw clench and unclench. “It just…made me. Really angry, at some people I’ve never met.”

“You don’t need to be,” Takashi murmurs, more to the blankets on his lap than to Tanuma. “It’s, um. It was long enough ago that who knows how much of it I was even remembering right.” He shrugs, and the movement makes his ribs ache. “And the Fujiwaras are kind, anyways. I’m lucky.”

Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say, because Tanuma’s face does something odd. Then his cup is taken out of his hands, and there are arms wrapped around his back, and a face buried in his hair. He’s shaking. Maybe they both are. Takashi goes still for all of two seconds before his arms are coming up too, of their own accord, and he’s clinging right back like his life depends on it. Like he could sink right through Tanuma’s skin, if he could just hold on tight enough. He’d be alright with that, he thinks. He’s lucky in more ways than one.

Beside them, the tea grows cold, dappled light falling across their knees.

***

#not great but i’m tired of looking at it #about the illness cw it’s a lot of coughing so 🙃 #which makes everyone and their dog anxious right now #natsume's book of friends #natsume yuujinchou #tanunatsu #tanuma kaname #natsume takashi #cw child abuse #cw illness #owlet's fanfic #natsume yuujinchou fanfiction

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 28

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 28 - Immortal

In some remote mountainous areas in the south, Miao women used clay pots and menstrual blood to raise hundreds of insects. They sealed them, placed them in a damp place and cast curses on them. Once the day was done, the poisonous insects will have killed each other and the last one was embodied with Gu poison*. The curse made with Gu poison could make someone's love interest fall helplessly in love with them for the rest of his life, and it could also plague one's enemy with nightmares, madness, and even death. The women who concocted Gu poison were typically loners, often muttering to no one, avoided by the general public.

*(T/N: 蛊 - Gu poison was believed to be the combination of all the venoms from the insects that died and would be used for black magic in southern regions of China)

In Nanyang Black Magic, they would use the body of a baby that died recently, boiled out the toyol*, poured it on a puppet doused in human blood and placed it in the home. The imprisoned baby ghost would protect the house but the curse-caster will be punished. They would also carve birthdates into wood, causing the other to die.

*(T/N: 尸油 - literally 'corpse oil.' I'll spare you the graphic details but basically taking a dead body's chin and boiling it until oil drains out of it)

This black magic flourished in the Ming Dynasty. The Eastern Depot eunuchs* were in turmoil. Everyone was reporting each other, no one would speak to each other, eyes darting between each other daily. These curses were developed as a branch of Daoism to oppose political rivals. A-Yan said that the Daoist practices used to drive out ghosts and save people were declining, but this black magic has stuck around. It was one of the biggest spots in Daoist history.

*(T/N: 东厂 - a secret police & spy agency run by eunuchs meant to suppress political opposition towards the emperor)

Saturday morning was a beautiful day. The sun was shining but not to the point of being unbearably hot. The distant mountains stood silently under the blue sky. A black Audi passed quickly through the country’s tree-lined roads, raising a cloud of grit and dust. A white goose with its head held high on the roadside was startled by the car, flapping its wings and stretching its neck to hide behind a fence.

The car stopped at a small farmhouse in the northwest corner of the village.

In the courtyard, a tall Shuzi tree stretched out dense branches, looking extraordinarily vibrant. In contrast, the entire courtyard was strangely decrepit. A well was covered by a millstone and the stone-paced path was full of weeds. The doors of the three mud-brick houses were closed, with straw curtains covering the doors and windows covered with dust.

Everything was very different from a month ago. Lin Yan remembered that the last time he came here, there were hens and rabbits. The old lady in blue embroidered clothing was kneeling on the futon with her eyes closed. The small courtyard was filled with the mysterious atmosphere of the countryside. The current yard would give people the impression that the homeowner hadn't been home for years when, in fact, a fresh grave in the back of the mountain had only been built a month ago. Rural people were convinced that the houses inhabited by the living were blessed by the gods and sheltered from the elements for decades. Once the owner of the house dies, the gods will follow, so the empty house often collapsed and was destroyed in less than six months.

"When Second Immortal Gu was in the village, she would help children that fell sick with fever, and the adults that were dealing with evil spirits. Young men would ask her when they'd get married and, for the right price, she'd tell them." The village chief said with a cigarette in his mouth.

The village leader knew Yin Zhou’s mother well. He heard that Yin Zhou wanted to bring someone to pay tribute to Second Immortal Gu and waited at the entrance of the village to welcome them. It took ten minutes to drive from the village leader's house to Second Immortal Gu’s house. The village head smoked four cigarettes in a row. Yin Zhou squeezed his eyes shut while Lin Yan and the little Daoist priest twisted their heads out of the window every 30 seconds to gasp for a breath of fresh air. The village chief was the only one of them chatting in the smoky car. Lin Yan saw how the complaints of three people and a ghost just flew over his head.

If a ghost could complain.

Lin Yan found a roll of incense from the little Daoist's bag and lit it. He put the incense burner at the door of the mud-brick house and offered his respects.

"Last time, we left just before Second Immortal Gu had her accident. I should have come to offer some incense sooner, it's just things with school got busy and I haven't been able to make it until now." Lin Yan brushed the straw curtain and the accumulated dust fell on his face. "Cough, cough. Does - Does anyone take care of this place?"

"Of course not. You big city kids wouldn't know. Doing this line of work is only good for putting food on the table. Immortal Gu came out here in her twenties. In less than ten years, her husband and two sons had died and she was the only one left. She couldn't even save herself." The village leader stuffed his yellow striped shirt into his pants. "Don't feel bad. No immortal in this village could escape that fate."

"Come on, let's go, you guys are here to see her grave. We don't put up any gravestones here. We just build a stone platform, but the villagers will remember who it's for. I'll take you up there."

The sun was growing hotter. Several of them used broken branches to smack the grass in case of snakes while they hiked up the rugged mountain trail. A rural cemetery wasn't as neat as an urban cemetery. Each family claimed a spot, with every newly deceased buried next to the rest of their family. The grave was a prominent mound of dirt with a large stone on top. Some of the graves were too old to even make out the mound, the ground studded with small light blue flowers. A date palm tree grew wildly, and they needed to watch their step when walking so they wouldn't disturb the resting dead.

Second Immortal Gu's grave was off on its own. The mound was freshly dug. Other than a crooked wreath lying on it, it was indistinguishable from the older graves that had been abandoned for years.

The scene made Lin Yan feel incredibly guilty. He burned a large stack of paper dollars in front of the grave, playing with his branch while saying silently in his mind: Auntie, if you're still here, please come back and tell us who harmed you. We'll avenge your death.

The village chief took the cigarettes Lin Yan had bought him and squatted off in the distance to smoke. Lin Yan winked at the little Daoist priest and said softly, "Let's start?"

A-Yan nodded and took out a crumpled photo from his pocket that he had found in a frame in Immortal Gu's house. The immortal in the photo was still very young, wearing a floral cotton jacket and staring vacantly ahead.

"Now isn't a good time. The s-sun is too high. The mountains are filled with Yang energy, and the ghosts may not be able to be reached." A-Yan said. He jumped up and grabbed a twig from the date tree above his head. He hung a spirit summoning flag on it and patted the dust off his shoulders. "Here's a picture, here are the bones. Um, Lin Yan, I'm going to borrow your birthdate for this."

Before Lin Yan had time to ask, the little Daoist priest handed him a dagger. Unlike his usual mahogany sword, this one was actually made of metal. The handle seemed to be a few years old, and the tip of the blade gleaming a bright white in the sunlight.

"H-Hold this for a minute. You might feel a little uncomfortable, but don't let it go." A-Yan instructed: "I-I'll read one sentence and you read the next."

Yin Zhou chuckled but he felt that it probably wasn't the time to laugh so he quickly turned his laughter into a string of coughs.

Surprisingly, A-Yan never stuttered whenever he talked about Taoism and charms, Lin Yan muttered.

Time passed by and it was almost noon. The date trees in the mountains couldn't block the hot sun. After standing there for a long time, most of them were covered in a layer of sweat. The village leader couldn't bear the heat and left to join some nearby people to drink some tea. Lin Yan stood in front of the grave with the dagger in his hand. He rubbed the sweat on his cheeks off with his shoulder, hoping that this time it would be over quickly.

The little Daoist started reciting. His voice didn't sound like proper speech, but the slow rate of speech wasn't too difficult to follow. Lin Yan held the hilt of the dagger and along with the chant. Not even halfway through the incantation, Lin Yan already began to feel that something was wrong. The temperature around him began to drop, and the hot sweat condensed on his back. He kept shivering like he was suffering from heatstroke. A chill came from the handle of the dagger. First, the temperature seeped into his palm, and then his whole arm, up to his shoulders, through the bones in his spine to the back of his head in a numb wave. It was as if he wasn't holding a dagger but a frozen fish that had been left in the bottom tray of the freezer for a year.

The spirit summoning flag above his head began to move.

"It's cold." Lin Yan took a breath and scanned the silent mountains around him. "Have you reached the soul?"

"I t-think I found her." The little Daoist hesitated. "Huh. . . that's weird. . ."

After reciting two more incantations, the bone-chilling cold air had spread to his calves. Lin Yan's teeth chattered and he shivered out: "A-. . . A-Yan, are you sure this is okay. . . it's too. . . cold. . ."

The chanting continued, the little Daoist priest shot him a sideways glance, his eyes cold. Lin Yan can only brace himself to keep follow the mantra incantations, a heavy cold sweat forming on his forehead.

"Hold on for a little longer. The soul is bound to something, I want to break it free." A-Yan gritted his teeth, and a piece of talisman paper was slapped against the blade. All of a sudden, the cold washed over him like a tsunami. Lin Yan's whole body felt like it was being stabbed by needles, veins popping on his forehead from the pain.

"A-Yan, what are you doing?!" Yin Zhou knew something wasn't right when he saw Lin Yan's lips turn blue. "If you can't do it now, someone's going to get hurt. Lin Yan, use the ghost that's following you!"

"Almost there. Don't let go!" The little Daoist was flushed a sickly pale colour and he rapidly chanted the mantra. The spirit summoning flag above his head was being whipped by the wind. There was a ripping sound and the whole piece of cloth was torn in half and fluttered down onto the old grave in the distance.

"I-It's okay. . . A-Yan, go faster. . ." Lin Yan was so cold that he could barely get his tongue to work. He tried to move the hand with the dagger to it but he found that his skin was stuck to the metal and he couldn't budge it. He was shivering from his arms all the way down to his legs. Lin Yan staggered back and stepped on the bag they'd brought, almost falling backwards.

A force of strength supported his back. Xiao Yu's voice sounded right when he needed him, but his low voice didn't let him retort: "Let go."

Xiao Yu's hand covered the back of Lin Yan's hand. Compared to the temperature of the dagger, his palm was actually warm. It was just right to block the cold air that kept pouring into Lin Yan's arm. A-Yan's expression changed in an instant and he shouted loudly: "Back off, beast!"

"I'll fucking finish this. . ." Lin Yan abruptly closed his eyes and pressed his palm to the blade. All at once, the bone-chilling cold air felt like ten thousand needles running through his palm up to his arm. At the same time, there was a cold that grew behind him. He quickly opened his eyes but Second Immortal Gu hadn't appeared. On the contrary, Xiao Yu snapped Lin Yan's wrist with completely overwhelming strength, forcing the sharp weapon out of his hand.

The moment the dagger was taken out of Lin Yan's hand, he felt like he was immediately torn out of an ice block and thrown into a fire. The ritual was broken, the hot sunlight licked his back, making his whole body numbly feel like it was going to dissolve. However, he couldn't care less about his body's reaction. What happened next made Lin Yan and Yin Zhou - who was freaking out off to the side - shocked. They saw Xiao Yu holding the dagger inching towards A-Yan, frigid eyes filled with killing intent. When the palm of his hand touched the hilt of the knife, it sounded like searing flesh. But he didn't care. He grabbed A-Yan's collar with one hand, and violently plunged the dagger toward his left eye with the other!

Lin Yan's mind kicked into action. He subconsciously rushed over to hold Xiao Yu's waist, using all his strength to drag him back. However, something was wrong with the little Daoist priest, too. His usual cowardice was gone and his eyes burned with rage. He rolled away and broke free, rapidly taking out a handful of cinnabar and tossing it towards Xiao Yu. His voice changed because of the trembling: "An evil beast is an evil beast. You can't stay!"

"What the fuck is going on!" Yin Zhou couldn't see Xiao Yu. He could only see the little Daoist tumbling on the ground alone trying to avoid a shimmering dagger. Lin Yan's nerves were fried. While dragging Xiao Yu back, he roared towards Yin Zhou: "How the hell should I know? You grab A-Yan!"

He had never seen Xiao Yu so angry. The midday sun was burning and blinding. The ghost's whole body was emitting a faint greenish-black aura. The knuckles of both hands snapped open, sharp claw-like nails grabbing the back of the Daoist priest's head. Lin Yan thought he was seeing things and closed his eyes, but the scene stayed the same. The place where the ghost stood glowed a greenish-black and the place where the human stood was a dancing orange fire, intertwining with each other, but the orangish-yellow flames were gradually dying out. . .

Later, he would learn that people have yang energy and ghosts have yin energy. When the energy was extremely concentrated, he could directly perceive the yin and yang without his eyes confusing it in his mind. This was the foundation of excellent Taoism. He had inadvertently opened a long-closed door to the mystical arts.

However, the current situation was extremely dangerous. Xiao Yu held A-Yan’s neck with one hand and the dagger cut inch by inch into the little Daoist priest's arm blocking it. The hand holding the knife was searing black from the contact with the blade of the evil spirit's. A Yan's face grew purple, his eyes bulging. Lin Yan didn't dare to hesitate for a moment and scrambled over to protect A-Yan from behind. There was a clanging sound and the dagger rolled to the ground.

The little Daoist broke free from the evil spirit's hands, clutching his bleeding wound and groaning intermittently: "Lin Yan. . . Immortal Gu. . . Immortal Gu's spirit is trapped. . . I couldn't get her. . ."

Lin Yan supported the little Daoist's shoulders. His eyes gleamed, and the soft deer-like eyes were different from those when he had when he cast the spell. "The curse. . . Be careful." A-Yan whispered. Lin Yan hadn't gotten the chance to ask what was going on before his thin body couldn't support his own weight. His eyes rolled back and he fainted.

Lin Yan and Yin Zhou looked at each other, shocked by the outcome, unable to utter a word.

#dig a grave to dig out a ghost #dig a grave to dig out a ghost translation #english translation #chinese bl #chinese novel #danmei novel #danmei #yaoi novel #yaoi #bl novel

[statticscribbles]

Still

Summary: Sweet Pea/Reader Request: sweet pea broke up with the reader because she was going away for the summer and he told her it was because he couldn’t stand to be away from her for too long, she comes back early to see him with Josie, and he doesn’t know she’s back so when school starts again he tries to win her back and she’s not having it, maybe they make up after he earns back her trust

“So it’s just for the summer for now but they said they might want to keep me on for the other holidays!” You beam and everyone cheers. “That’s great Y/N are you nervous about going out of town though? I mean an entire summer is like forever!’ “Archie.” Veronica chides. “You’ll do great, it’s only three months.” She smiles back and you turn when your boyfriend scoffs. “Sweets?” “Nothing.” He doesn’t look up from his lunch and you frown. “Sweet Pea-“ You start but he stands and walks off. Toni glares following him and Fangs shrugs. “He doesn’t do well with separation, he’s like a puppy.” Fangs assures you and  you nod, watching as he and Toni return moments later; he squeezes your hand offering you a half smile. “It won’t be too bad; we can talk everyday.”

You’re halfway out of town when Sweet Pea texts you.  Your dad almost swerves off the road when you start sobbing. You know you’re not actually calmed down, just numbing everything as you explain to your dad that Sweet Pea broke up with you because he didn’t want to be so far away from you. Your dad buys you a milkshake at the next place you drive by. You make it to the internship without any other issues, relieved you have the work ahead of you to take your mind off what had just happened on the ride up. You go about the next two months almost on auto pilot, it’s easy enough, going to the internship, spending the day working and then heading back to the dorm you’re staying in to sleep. When they tell you you can go home early, that they’ll be more than happy to have you come back anytime you want, you try to look relieved when your dad picks you up. ————————————————————————————–

You don’t tell anyone you’re coming home, you know they’ll be at pop’s around the time your dad said you make it back to Riverdale, and you ask for him to drop you off so you can surprise them. “It’s not that- Y/N!! What’re you doing back?” Fangs crashes into you and Toni pries him off pulling you into a hug, you laugh as the rest of the group take turns greeting you. “You’re back like an entire month early!” “Yeah they said I could come back next year, but they basically ran out of work.” You shrug a little. “Cheryl’s having a pool party tomorrow, so you made it back just in time.” ‘Sounds fun, where’s everyone else?” You ask grateful that it’s not just Sweet Pea missing.

“Sweet Pea’s off with Josie again, they got together pretty quick, it’s a ‘summer fling’ according to her, of course Sweet Pea probably wants more.” Toni snorts and you fake a laugh. “Oh sorry Y/N.” “No it’s fine I made my peace with it, not my fault he couldn’t handle me being away for two months.” She agrees to come over to help you pick a swimsuit. You know she’s going to talk about everything that’s been happening while you’ve been gone. —————————————————————————————–

You’re surprised you don’t care seeing Josie and Sweet Pea together. You can tell Toni and Fangs are watching you and gauging your reactions. You track Josie and Sweet Pea from the side of your eye, and you find yourself almost annoyed with how often you catch Sweet Pea looking at you. “What?” “Nothing.” Sweet Pea shrugs. You nod at turn to talk to Toni, feeling Sweet Pea’s eyes on you the entire time. You’re content to ignore it until Fangs starts a game of Chicken and you’re hoisted up onto his shoulders facing off against Josie, who’s balanced on Sweet Pea’s shoulders. “You’re going down Y/N.” Sweet Pea smirks and you roll your eyes. “In your dreams Sweets.” You can’t help but laugh when Josie goes under, you high five Fangs, climbing out of the pool and wrapping yourself in a towel.

“Josie and I aren’t anything.” Sweet Pea explains as he walks up. “What you do since we broke up, isn’t my business.” “I want it to be.” You turn to him as he comments. “You made the choice, you live with it.” You turn away from him making a point of walking over to talk to Veronica and Archie. You hate how you turn slightly when you feel his eyes move from you. —————————————————————————–

Despite the awkwardness at the pool party, once school starts Josie assures you she and Sweet Pea are done, they have been since the pool party; you don’t comment about they haven’t been together since you got back. You notice Sweet Pea around more and you finally pull him aside two days after school starts back. “Sweet Pea, we can be friends, you don’t have to avoid me like I have the plague.” He nods, the corner of his lips quirking up for a moment.

You’re a little confused when he offers to carry your bag; but you let him, relieved at the weight lifted off your shoulders as you shift the cheer gear in your arms. “Thanks.” He smiles nodding. “No problem Y/N; I was wondering if you were free-“ “I have cheer practice for the next week. So rain check?” “You free Saturday?” “This Saturday? Busy.” You offer a half smile; nodding to the girls locker room. When you return from putting the cheer stuff away, you find Sweet Pea standing next to the door, holding your bag.

“You need a ride home?” He shouts from is bike holding out his helmet. “No thanks, I can walk.” You shrug off the concern on his face. It takes him two more days to pull you aside. “Listen Y/N; I know I messed up. I shouldn’t’ve broken up with you and gotten with Josie; who was only there to take my mind off you. I should-“ “Sweet Pea stop. You broke up with me; because you didn’t want to deal with us being separated? You separated us on your terms, because you didn’t like not having control. Now you need to learn the consequences.” “But Y/N-“ “What? I love you, that doesn’t mean I’m going to let myself get hurt again by it.” Sweet Pea swallows nodding. You shake your head pulling him towards you in a hug; you can hear your voice crack. “I love you Sweet Pea; you changed us. Not me, you.”

“I can fix it.” “I’m not worried about you fixing it. I’m worried about it being repeated. What if I go on a family vacation? Or another internship? What if I got a part time job?  I love you Sweet’s god I do, but I can’t live my life waiting on you to let me know when I can go.” Sweet pea nods hanging his head. “Yeah, I never realized how bad I was-“ “No.” You snap at him nudging his chin so he looks you in the eyes. “You are not bad for me. We just had a problem that we’ve never faced and instead of talking through it we both just ran away.”

“You didn’t-“ “I went to the internship didn’t I?” “Well yeah but-“ “I’m free tonight if you want to go to Pop’s?” You give him a small smile that he returns. “As friends.” He clarifies. “Friends, for now.” You smile squeezing his hand slightly.

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#sweet pea x reader #sweet pea x you #sweet pea x y/n #sweet pea imagine #sweet pea reader insert #jordan connor #jordan connor imagine #jordon connor reader insert #stattic

[yonymii]

2 arabesques

a/n; this one was hard to write bc I did it while having writers block but I hope it's ok!! I love alisa a lot she is lovely and I would marry her if she was real 🥰🥰😍😁😁 also I got very absorbed like, halfway through so y/ns personality is basically me. yes

wc; 3.9k

warnings; cursing,

genre; fluff, strangers/friends to lovers, romance

pairing; alisa haiba x gn!reader

listen to 2 arabesques here!

She reminded you of the old paintings of angels you’d seen in art galleries as a child. It was weird, seeing something so ethereal reincarnate as a university student. She didn’t belong here; she belonged on a pedestal, deserved to be adored. But life was unfair, you supposed, and not everyone could experience the excitement of such an elaborate life. Perhaps that was why she was studying fashion modeling in the first place (whatever that was). You’d probably never know. She had absolutely no idea who you were.

By the time you’d stopped daydreaming, your final class of the day was over and everyone had left. Only you were left in the lecture hall, sitting at the very back with your head resting ontop of your arms, the shuffling of the professor packing up his things quickly making tiny little noises at the front of the room. He left, the door swinging shut behind him, but it wasn’t locked. 

It didn’t take you long to pack up, seeing as your laptop hadn’t left your bag in the first place. You swung it over your shoulder after your coat, tucking your hands into the sleeves to protect them from the bite of the wind. It had been snowing when you arrived in the morning, and it took and hour to wake up your fingers to be able to type, let alone write anything. 

The hallways were quiet (as usual; it wasn’t as if anyone wanted to stay in school when they didn’t need to). The little shop on the ground floor had a few students in it, but they were in a hurry to leave too. The large exit doors had obviously been open all day and it was absolutely freezing. You were glad you’d put on your big coat in the morning; it was a long walk back to your apartment and you planned on going to a coffee shop before going there.

It had stopped snowing, but the ground was covered in puddles and your boots and feet got soaked in numbingly cold water as you wandered towards the place you usually studied. It was slowly getting darker as you walked and the sun was lowering itself below the tall line of skyscrapers and apartment blocks when you entered the coffee shop and joined the small queue of teenagers and tired-looking adults ordering their drinks. 

It was quiet inside but you were thankful for the warmth the heaters provided, and the low hum of voices under the music wasn’t unwelcome; you payed for your drink quickly and went to sit at your usual spot, the two-seater table in the corner. There was a small, dim light hanging above your head and it lit the space in a soft, golden glow, unlike the rest of the coffee shop that was lit by streetlamps outside. The moon was hid behind a building, only half of it visible, but you still found yourself staring at it for an unnecessary amount of time. It reminded you of her; your friend’s friend. The girl studying fashion modeling. 

To be quite honest, you didn’t see her that often, so it was a mystery as to why she plagued your mind so often. Apparently, her brother played volleyball for a highschool called Nekoma (albeit not very well), and she was half Russian. Not that it mattered to you, though. You supposed that you’d like her anyway. 

Suddenly, you found yourself snapped out of your little trance by the waiter bringing your mug to the table and setting it down a little too loudly. He walked away quickly, avoiding any sort of contact with you, but you weren’t bothered by it. You were focused on your book so the lack of conversation wasn’t disappointing in the slightest. The bell at the door rung again, and because of the small distraction of your drink arriving you raised your head to see who it was, somewhat begrudgingly, despite it being completely of your own accord.

Your eyes were met with a pair of stark green ones that seemed to go right through you; you shivered, not because they were unfriendly. Admittedly, you knew who she was, but your frank lack of energy made it hard to want to communicate with anyone, and so you pretended not to see her, looking back down at your book and swiftly burying yourself in the pages, as if you were trying to hide from her.

You knew your efforts were futile though. She was almost too nice, and it wasn’t like she knew you were already half-asleep and probably weren’t able to form a coherent sentence. At this point, you weren’t even reading. The words were going right over your head. 

You heard her footsteps before her voice, and you didn’t even need to look up to know she was smiling. “Y/n!”. Too loud. You tried not to wince to noticeably.

“Hey, Alisa,” you managed to spit a greeting out. You weren’t sure what you thought about her at this point. You were tired, and it was late, and you had so many essays due that you doubted you’d get more than an hour of sleep over the next few days. Yeah, sure, you loved her but you were so overwhelmed you didn’t think you’d be able to handle talking to one more person. Emotions were confusing (especially when you considered yourself to be in love, whatever that felt like).

“How have you been?”, her voice was like silk, and you had to wait a moment to process what she was saying. Alisa continued, “I haven’t seen you since last month! How have you been?” she looked down at your book, then at your bag that barely held all the paper assigments from your classes. She laughed (the same laugh that gave you heart palpitations. This  was the reason she wasn’t good for you) “You look busy.”

You laughed (it was sort of forced, but that isn’t the point), “Yeah. School tends to keep you busy,” you paused, adding shakily, “I’m used to it, though. Don’t worry about me!” 

The blonde girl frowned as she watched you panic, your eyes darting everywhere but her. It was hard not to worry when you watch someone you consider a friend fall apart in the back corner of a coffee shop. She tried her best to ignore it though, and as soon as you managed to look back at her she continued the conversation.

“I don’t think we have each other’s numbers yet, y/n. Do you mind exchanging? Maybe we could go out together sometime, since i have to get home and look after Lev,” she sighed, and her eyes closed momentarily, “He’s a bit of a handful. For a fifteen-year-old.”

You didn’t have the energy to feel sorry for her but you let her enter her number into your phone, and she listened attentively when you told her yours to make sure she didn’t get it wrong and end up texting a random stranger to make plans. After you watched her leave, take-out cup of coffee in hand, you lay your head on the darkening pages of your book, ear pressed to the paper. You closed your eyes for a moment and then sat up, breathing deeply as you drank the rest of your tea. You closed your book, tucking it into the bottom of your bag and standing up, patting your coat pocket to check that your phone was still in there. 

It was pitch-black when you stepped outside, and the streetlamps made you squint and cover your eyes with one hand; your apartment wasn’t too far away but it was cold and taxis were easy. You flagged one down and climbed into the back, sitting directly behind the driver (it made you feel safer anyway), and you put in your headphones. 

The drive passed quickly, and as soon as you paid for the journey and exited the car you began to walk briskly up the stairs to your place. Your keys were in the same pocket as your phone, and you pulled them out wearily, pushing the silver one into the lock and turning it till you heard the familiar click. 

The door felt extra heavy tonight, and your bag dropped to the floor just as quickly as you dropped onto your bed. The lights were too bright to turn on but the fairy lights lining the walls were fine; you opted for them as you dropped your thick coat next to your bag and shoes. Closing the window from the freezing cold and switching on the little heater, you crawled into bed and let the warmth envelop you. You fell asleep in mere seconds, ignoring the loud vibrations from your phone carry across the room. 

-

Most of the time, when you don’t want to reply to someone’s message or call them back, you just pretend to have not read it or noticed in the first place. It was weird, leaving the notification there, just to remind yourself that she texted you first. When you’d exchanged numbers the previous week, you just assumed that you’d be the first one to reach out. That’s how it had been with every other friend you’d made. You weren’t disappointed; in fact, you were grateful. You hated having to initiate conversations, however you still felt bad for not replying. 

It had been five days since Alisa first messaged you, three since the second time, and fifteen minutes since the last. The latest one read ‘I’m coming over. Be about 20 minutes!’. 

You sighed, reading it once more and then turning your brightness down. Just because you hadn’t replied to any of her texts didn’t mean you weren’t ok. The music barely reached your ears since you were buried so deep under your covers, but that was fine. You weren’t really listening to it anyways.

There was a knock at the door. You didn’t think that the person on the other side realised how thin it was, but you definitely heard them sigh and let out a string of curses after you didn’t reply. It was Alisa, but you knew that. Nobody else would want to check in on you. The doorknob rattled and you winced; too loud. It opened, a little quieter this time, and slowly, the covers were peeled off of your figure. Alisa sighed (again. How sick of you could she possibly be? You only got back in touch less that six days ago) and looked down at you with disdain. 

“You need to get up. Have you missed any classes?” you shook you head in response to her questions. You couldn’t miss classes. It’s not as if you found them particularly difficult. Just a little boring, that’s all. 

You closed your eyes, tapping your fingers against the mattress. The blinds had been opened and now the evening light was pouring into your room unfiltered. Alisa grabbed your wrist gently, pulling you up painfully slowly. You groaned, rubbing your eyes and patting her hand to let her know you can sit up on your own. 

You opened your eyes somewhat begrudgingly, squinting from the still too-bright light. Alisa was stood at your small fridge, rifling through whatever food was left in there. She pulled out a half-full bottle of milk and a packet of ham. “Do you not uhh,” she paused, “have any… other kinds of food? Or is your diet limited to milk and ham sandwiches?” 

“I usually get takeout. Or ham sandwiches. Sort of depends how lazy i’m feeling on that day.” She turned and smiled at you, nodded her head back towards the door. “We can go to mine. I have ‘good’ food there. Lev needs feeding anyways.”. You grinned, “I thought Lev was fifteen?” 

“Yeah, but he’s still incompetent. I’ll teach him to cook later, when i’m not taking care of you.”

You looked down at your lap, and then at the pair of shoes on the floor next to your bed. Sliding them on, you stood, looking at Alisa for approval. “You look fine. When was the last time you changed?”

You hesitated, thinking for a moment, “A few hours ago, when i got back from class.” You grabbed the brush on the bedside table and combed through your hair a few times, evening it out from the mess it was a minute ago. “C’mon,” Alisa opened the door, “Don’t forget your keys! I doubt you wanna get locked out, right?”

-

Alisa’s house was big. She was lucky not to have to live in student accommodation, in all honesty. When you sat down on her large sofa, you heard the voices of two adults nearing. You weren’t sure what to think at this point. You and Alisa barely knew each other, and she’d come to your apartment, dragged you out of bed, invited you into her home where her whole family was. 

“Alisa, darling? Have you brought a friend over?” 

You saw her nod out of the corner of your eye as she made your meal, humming quietly to the tune of the music. There were loud, fast footsteps in the corridor that her parents had exited and looking up, you saw a lanky grey-haired boy with the same stark green eyes as her. He was almost as tall as the ceiling, and when he entered the room he had to duck to get through the threshold. You assumed this was Lev, Alisa’s high school age brother. Volleyball boy. Whatever. He was unimportant, and you were hungry. 

“Ah! Lyovochka! Are your teammates here? Do they want food?” she didn’t look up from the kitchen counter as she spoke but Lev nodded, running back to ask his friends if they wanted food. (He never came back to give any sort of answer, though)

“So!” the sudden appearance of Alisa’s mother was unexpected. She was just as pretty as her daughter, but very obviously older. “What’s your name?”

You stuttered, panicking slightly, avoiding any possible eye contact. You looked to Alisa for help, and caught her gaze as she hurried over, sitting next to you. “This is y/n, mom. We met a while ago but i invited her over for lunch today,” she looked at you and patted your thigh, trying to calm you down slightly, “We might go out to the city later, if that’s okay with them.”

Alisa’s mother raised her eyebrows at your unwillingness to speak; maybe she thought you were being rude, but you didn’t have the capacity to worry about that right now. “Nice to meet you, y/n.” You nodded, slightly dizzy from being so overwhelmed but trying to be as polite as possible nonetheless. Alisa’s dad was stood behind the sofa, a large cup of what you assumed to be tea inbetween his hands. 

Alisa stood and ushered her parents away, towards the door. “Were you going out?” they nodded, grabbing bags and phones on the way out, “We’ll see you later, then!” Her father tried protesting, but Alisa reassured them that Lev was completely fine while you and her were here. 

Once the door was closed, Alisa looked back at you apologetically. “Sorry about them! They can be a little overbearing sometimes.” she gave you a small smile and pulled out two plates. “I think that’s an understatement.” you replied quietly. 

She laughed loudly, earning a smile from you. “I’m glad you’re okay now though.” she looked at you, smile instantly gone from her face. “You are okay, right?” You nodded, and she relaxed, serving your food onto the plates and bringing them round to the coffee table you were sat facing. “It might be a little hot. Wait a bit before you try it.”

You picked up your plate and put it onto your lap, the warmth of it heating your legs, as if the heat of the room wasn’t already enough. Your face felt warm and your hands shook slightly as you reached to pick up the food; you were either hungry or nervous. It was probably best to not think about it too much.

Alisa was staring at the TV that was sat on a polished wooden desk by the wall, her eyes mirroring the images from the screen. From the looks of it, she was watching a documentary on animals in the arctic, probably one you’d seen before. You weren’t looking at it, but the narrator’s voice sounded familiar and when you were little you’d watch stuff like that constantly, sometimes the same one over and over again until you got bored of it then moved on to the next one (which you’d also - metaphorically - beat half to death and then abandon)

After your meal, the two of you were still, to your displeasure, sat it silence. Alisa had turned the show off and was now sat reading a book and you were fiddling with your hands, waiting for her to notice you and let you go home (really, you could leave any moment, but you didn’t want to say anything first). 

You stood up upon hearing Lev shouting from what you assumed was his room, and Alisa’s head immediately snapped up. She checked the time on the clock above the kitchen counter, and gasped, looking at you apologetically. 

“Gosh! Y/n, you should have told me it was so late! I’ll walk you home.”

You shook your head, and the blonde girl in front of you sighed. “Are you sure? It’s getting dark. At least let me call you a taxi, ok?”. You hummed out a noise of approval and she picked up her phone that had been resting precariously on the arm of the sofa. 

As she was speaking to the person on the other end of the line, (a series of yeses followed by her address and then your street. You smiled, tapping your chest and then sliding your arms into the sleeves of your jacket. She opened the door for you and the taxi pulled into her drive as you stepped out of the threshold; you waved at her, thanking her for your stay, and then wandered over to the taxi, sitting in your usual seat (behind the driver) and she only closed the door of her home when the car drove off. Your phone buzzed; ‘text me when you get home safe, ok! -Alisa <3’.    

-

The next month was January.

The holiday season had passed without you seeing Alisa once, except for in a corner shop once, where you pretended not to see her but ended up being approached anyways. That time there was a pink coating her porcelain skin (you weren’t sure whether it was makeup, the cold or an actual blush, but you opted for the last one to satisfy yourself somewhat).

You sort of wished that you’d been able to spend the holidays with her, though. Sometimes, you found yourself thinking about her unconsciously. It was weird, but you ignored it. Stuff like that seemed like a lot of effort to you, and you were not notorious for being invested in relationships, platonic or romantic. 

You only had one class today, and after that you saw her in the hallways. She’d obviously had a class in the same building of you, and as usual, you pretended not to have seen her. You just kept walking, coffee in hand, eyes on the floor. Again, like the first time you’d really talked, you heard her footsteps approaching and accepted your fate. 

“Y/n! Hey!” she kept walking after you; you buried your face into your scarf and tried to get yourself to stop but it felt like your feet were moving on their own. Why were you ignoring her? You liked her, for god’s sake! You barely knew her, you should be using moments like these to get to know her better! What the hell were you doing?

Her hand landed on your shoulder and pulled you back. By now, the pair of you were outside, and your feet were crunching over newly layed snow. It was coming down thickly, you had to squint to see her properly. She looked tired, and her face was pale in comparison to the pink of the tip of her nose and her ears. It was cold, after all, and she didn’t have a scarf of hat or anything. You wanted to lend her yours; that was what people who were close did, wasn’t it? Why did she look so bedraggled anyway? 

“Y/n, seriously, stop.” 

You frowned, confused. You looked sad? And why would she care anyways? You weren’t close, and you could see her friends looking on from the steps of the building. The snow was catching in her hair and it felt like time had stopped; she really did look unreal. “I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Alisa. We’re not close, and we barely ever talk.”

It looked like she was about to cry. Maybe it was the cold?

“I don’t need a reason to care about you, y/n!” she reached a hand up to rub her eyes, “I can’t seem to stop thinking about you, and it’s driving me crazy!” she pointed to her friends on the steps, “They know it!” she was shouting now, and the wind seemed to whistle even louder in your ears, “Everyone else seems to know i’m in love with you except you! And i’m sorry if i didn’t make it obvious enough for you.”

At this point your brain was going overdrive to process what she’d just told you. You knew you probably looked stupid just standing there and staring at he but what else could you do? This wasn’t exactly how you’d pictured your evening going, and despite receiving confessions before this one felt different; you felt like your heart was on fire. It burned, and you were out of breath despite standing completely still. Alisa reached out and took your freezing cold hand into her own. She was surprisingly warm, and there were tears dripping off of her chin onto her coat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, you probably never felt the same way. Like you said, right? We barely even know each other.”

You stepped forward (again, it felt like you weren’t in control of your own feet) and with the hand Alisa wasn’t holding, cupped her cold cheek. She looked back at you and you could see her friends out of the corner of your eyes chewing the inside of their cheeks. It was embarrassing to say the least, but necessary. Alisa sniffed, and you looked back down at the ground, shaking your head. “No that’s not what i..” you tried to make your voice louder, “I just didn’t expect you to also feel like that.” 

She laughed (it was probably the most beautiful noise you’d ever had the pleasure of hearing) and leaned in so that your foreheads were touching, her pretty smile still adorning her lips. “I’m glad,” she whispered, and the burning of your cheeks felt like a blazing fire across your face. 

“Call me later, ok?” you nodded as she moved her face away, hand leaving yours reluctantly. “We can go out sometime. If it’s uhh.. okay with you, of course.” You giggled, and Alisa waved, her friends running after her (also giggling and patting Alisa’s head in what looked like celebration). It had stopped snowing, and the sun was shining through the clouds in a golden evening glow, lighting up the city marvellously. You decided to walk home today.

tags; @chqrryvelvet @wissbby

#alisa haiba x reader #alisa haiba #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu x reader #x reader #reader insert #alisa haiba x y/n #gn!reader #gender neutral reader #haikyuu drabbles #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu writing #haikyuu #haikyuu!! #haikyū!! #haikyu x reader #selene's writing #🌙works #lev haiba #haiba x reader #nekoma x reader #nekoma high #nekoma

[omgkatsudonplease]

[ficlet, bagginshield] shock and delight, pt 1 (bridgerton au)

The banks of the Brandywine River are packed with strolling couples on the day of the promenade, their chaperones following shortly behind. Thorin and the Fundinson brothers arrive exactly on time, Thorin carrying a bottle of Old Winyards. According to the sommelier in the shop at Bucklebury, this particular bottle was their last vintage one.

Bilbo and his chaperone Mr Greyhame show up a couple minutes late, the Hobbit fretting and dabbing at his brows with a monogrammed handkerchief. “I’m so terribly sorry for my lateness,” he flusters, hopping on one foot to the other like a nervous rabbit as he peers up at Thorin with a sheepish grin. “I forgot my pocket-handkerchief and had to go back for it.”

Thorin is caught between the absolute adorableness of Bilbo’s contrite pout and the absolute absurdity of the reason for his tardiness. 

“You are forgiven,” he declares instead. Bilbo’s pout smooths into a heart-melting smile.

The two of them begin to head down the path alongside the river, their pace leisurely. Other promenaders pass them by, as well as several open carriages pulled by unprotesting ponies. Thorin finds his gaze oddly drawn to the way the spring sunlight seems to burnish Bilbo’s curls into gold. Probably where Lord Stormcrow got the Golden Hare moniker, he thinks, before forcibly looking away towards a young Hobbit family having a picnic by the river. 

It’s a picture-perfect image of marital bliss. Thorin supposes something like that is what Bilbo is looking for, which Thorin himself obviously could not provide. Though he has yet to hear of any pushback against what must be an odd coupling by both Dwarvish and Hobbit standards, he is sure opposition will make itself known eventually. A marriage of true minds often lacks the productivity factor of a standard marriage, something which would be keenly felt in the family of a gentleman as distinguished as Bilbo Baggins’s. 

He, on the other hand, has already named his sister-children as his heirs. So it didn’t matter whether or not he married at all, nor did it matter whether or not his One (wherever they may be) possessed the physical apparatus or mental inclination for childbearing. 

“I have a question,” says Bilbo after a moment, breaking through Thorin’s thoughts like sunlight through stormclouds. “How do you know Gandalf? He’s an old family friend of mine, and apparently my cousin Fortinbras was the one who suggested he watch over me this season, but I don’t know how he would know you.” He looks thoughtful, hazel eyes peering inquisitively into Thorin’s face. 

In spite of himself, Thorin feels exposed, almost vulnerable. 

“I suppose Gandalf does have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, though,” muses Bilbo after a moment, before laughing and shrugging it off. “So? How do you know Gandalf?”

“To use your phrasing, Mr Greyhame has a finger in Erebor’s pie,” replies Thorin simply, not wanting to discuss how, years upon years ago, the Wizard had found his father in the depths of the Greenwood lost in enchantments and his own memories. King Thráin had, as the story went, finally succumbed to his grief about the deaths of his father and son, and had gotten lost in the Greenwood on his way to Azanulbizar to mourn them. 

He half suspects that telling Bilbo all of that would just make the poor Hobbit run off screaming in the opposite direction. So instead he bites his tongue, folding his hands behind his back. 

“I see,” says Bilbo, fiddling nervously with one of his cuff-links. “I’ve never been to Erebor. I’ve barely even left the Shire as-is.”

Thorin arches an eyebrow, remembering the abundance of maps and walking-sticks in Bag End the first time he’d gone over for dinner. The smial, though grand in size and luxurious in room variety, didn’t have the same cold ostentation as the mansions of Dwarves or Men. It felt homey, well-loved. A testament to lives well-lived.

No wonder Bilbo was so picky about the search for his One. If Thorin were not king, he would have wanted his halls just as cosy and warm, and he would have wanted to share it with only those who would brighten its nooks and crannies. 

“You certainly give the appearance of being well-travelled,” he says neutrally, still thinking of the maps and walking-sticks.

“Within the Shire,” demurs Bilbo. “I have had to go to Annúminas on business, of course, and once I went to Fornost with my parents on holiday, but Hobbits as a rule try to stick within the four farthings of the Shire. After all, why go out to see the rest of the world when the world comes to us every year?” 

His last question is both rhetorical and bitter. Thorin’s heart aches a little just hearing it. 

“So it is a matter of respectability?” he wonders wryly. Bilbo raises an eyebrow, so Thorin explains. “There is not much stopping you from running out of your front door and into the Blue, after all.”

Bilbo chuckles ruefully. “No,” he agrees. “But every time the side of me that craves adventures begins to make plans, the other side of me protests mightily, saying I’ll miss my books and my armchair and having six regular meals a day.”

Thorin has, indeed, noticed that restaurants and tea shops in the Shire have a more constant cycle of meals than anywhere else in Middle-earth. He’s honestly not complaining. 

“Speaking of meals,” he says, nodding towards the basket that Mr Greyhame is carrying, “I brought Old Winyards. Shall we find somewhere to sit?”

Bilbo checks his pocket-watch. “It’s halfway between elevensies and luncheon,” he remarks. 

“Yes,” says Thorin. “Consider it ‘lunchensies’.”

Bilbo bursts out in laughter at that, a bright joyful sound that rings through Thorin like one of the golden bells of Dale. His own stomach flutters a bit, and it takes all of his self-control to simply gesture for Balin and Dwalin to come help them set up their picnic on the banks of the Brandywine River. 

~~

Lunchensies is a success. Bilbo immediately takes a liking to Balin the moment they all sit down on the blanket together, happily chatting with him about books and history in between bites of his sandwich. Thorin watches them, unable to stop the smile on his face as he watches the way his old friend brightens under the Hobbit’s genuine inquisitiveness. 

“Yes, the road between here and Erebor was not as arduous as it used to be,” Balin is saying. “There is, of course, the stray highway robbery within Orc territory, but rumour has it that after the Shadow was broken at the end of the last Age, the majority of the Enemy’s armies have fallen out of its thrall and prefer to keep to themselves within the Mountains.”

“Occupying the ancestral halls of Khazad-dûm,” growls Dwalin. Thorin, too, feels the cold resentment deep in his stomach, but he tempers it by watching Bilbo chew thoughtfully at his sandwich, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s.

“While Durin’s Bane continues to live, Khazad-dûm cannot be retaken,” he reminds Dwalin. 

“If it continues to live,” muses Balin, before hastily switching the topic. “On the other hand, we are fortunate not to have awoken anything similar within Erebor. Though we did almost lose it to the firedrake Smaug.”

Thorin remembers the flames, remembers the lives lost to the dragon. The tragedy had seemed insurmountable at the time, but now he supposes rebuilding a Kingdom within the ashes of dragonfire was not as bad as being forced to flee for a new home like what had happened to his ancestors in Khazad-dûm.

“Almost?” echoes Bilbo, his eyes wide. Dwalin hands him and Thorin both glasses of the Old Winyards. Mr Greyhame, too, is helping himself to a liberal portion of the wine. 

“The Lady Mika, wife of the Lord of Dale, requited her husband’s death upon the dragon by shooting him with a black arrow,” explains Thorin as he pops a strawberry into his mouth. The fruit’s juices spill over his fingers; he hastily licks it off before wiping his fingers with the handkerchief.

Bilbo’s cheeks are dusted light pink when Thorin looks up again, and Thorin can feel his own cheeks heating in response.

“Well,” flounders the Hobbit, “that must have been terrible to go through. We haven’t had anything quite like that in the Shire, save for long and fell winters and the odd plague outbreak. But enough talk of dark and grim things! What is your favourite part of Erebor?”

The question throws Thorin for a moment. “Everything,” he says, but Bilbo raises a doubtful eyebrow at that. “All of Erebor is connected,” explains Thorin. “From the mines to the forges to the crafting halls, every part serves the whole.”

“Cogs in a machine,” muses Bilbo. “But what about a location? If you’ve grown up there all your life, surely you must have a favourite place. Secret hideouts from childhood, all of that.”

Thorin considers the question again, and this time the answer comes almost as if he had always meant to say it: “My mother’s garden,” he replies. “She kept a well-tended terrace beside the Royal apartments. We still take care of it, of course, and in the spring the cherry and apple blossoms blanket the grass like petalled snow.”

Bilbo’s expression lights up. “That sounds incredible,” he says.

“In the summer, the entire terrace is flooded with fireflies. I remember thinking once as a child that they were stars come down to play with us.” 

Bilbo’s hands tighten against the stem of his wineglass. “I should very much like to see that,” he says quietly. Thorin smiles, before noticing the knowing glint in their companions’ eyes.

He glares at them until they subside. 

#the hobbit #bagginshield #tolkien #lily's dabbles #bridgerton au

[werezmastarbucks]

more like honeymoon [2]

previous part

word count: 3769

warnings: loving couple throws fists

music: in the text

LOS ANGELES by blink-182 segment

You had a dream that the prison world was being destroyed. The fearful suspicion was on the back of your mind at all times, but you didn’t know how to express it. Kai always said you were the more paranoid one. All the bad outcomes, you always considered them. You argued that this kind of pessimistic outlook saved your live even when you didn’t know it did. Well, look where you are now, he would reply. Not that it’s bad, so I don’t know what I’m trying to prove here. He just liked to argue.

The white light together with earthquake came, and the ground crumbled beneath your feet. Kai was somewhere away, you could only see his silhouette as he stood on a hill or something. You were now staying in Los Angeles. The end came while you were running to him, the whiteness becoming your least favorite color. Your heart was tearing apart because you were so tired of something constantly trying to stop you from being together.

You woke up in your happy crowdless realm, the queen of enclosed nothingness, and felt like you wanted to go home for the first time. Just because this dimension was more fragile.

Kai was sleeping next to you, his nose deep in the pillow, and you had no idea which part of him was responsible for breathing. Like in a trance, you crawled out of bed and left through the balcony doors to look down on the city lit by nobody, to make sure the world was intact. It didn’t, and wouldn’t, go anywhere. You got used to being here alone and having it all, so quickly, a part of you couldn’t imagine sharing this planet, and Kai, with anybody.

When you returned to bed, Kai was lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. His hand took your chin and turned your head to him.

“Where were you?”

“I had a bad dream”.

Kai was a pro in bad dreams. He had a black belt in going back to hell through his dreams. Agonizing, long, realistic nightmares plagued his head no matter how deep he shoved it under the blankets. He looked a little strict for someone who consoles another after a bad dream. You had your suspicions he had other things on his mind. Sometimes you would catch him observe you as if he was expecting you to run away.

LA1 by Moby segment

You were finishing the book. This was the book you’ve been meaning to read ever since you were fourteen. When everybody nailed it at school, you were busy with other more interesting stuff, and so, you never ended up reading it. Now was the epitome of everybody’s ‘one day’. People leave interesting tv shows, tedious chores, the best packs of cookies and postponed hobbies for that cryptic ‘one day’ but it never comes. Not for most people at least. Now, you two, more so you than Kai, finally faced this neverending time period to do everything procrastination took away from you. You finally were finishing that damn book.

As you laid there at the pool of your new house, and the sun was sending blinding specks jumping off the water, Kai was drawing complicated shapes on the side of your leg and looking down the valley of Los Angeles, the city where he was king. Just like everywhere else.

“I think I have memorized every inch of you by now”, he said.

You swallowed down a sigh, because you were about fourteen pages away from the end. You knew when Kai started talking, there would be nothing else but talking for at least fifty minutes.

“Good, now, if I get into a horrible car crash and get terribly disfigured you will recognize my body one way or another”, you replied, trying to at least finish the page. Kai’s hand laid on the paper, pulling it away.

“Once we get out”, you smiled.

“If we get out”, he corrected you.

You let go of the book he was pulling away. He didn’t like sharing you.

“You think... we’ll be here long?”

“The spell is all we have, and it’s useless”, he shrugged like he didn’t care. “There’s nothing else. The ascendant is out there, and we don’t have a Bennet here to cut her...”

“Do these things have expiration date?” you asked, worried, “is it possible that one day, this prison will collapse and disappear?”

He looked at you, his hand caressing your knee absently.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s awesome here though, isn’t it? You like it, right?”

“Of course I do”, you nodded, without giving it too much thought. You looked down to the city where Kai’s gaze has been wandering earlier. “I’m still waiting for the horror to kick in, but it doesn’t. Either I’m too jaded to care, or...”

You bit your lip hard, thinking, whether you’re willing to spoil him. Parker’s palm squeezed your skin lightly. His hands were always warm, and he never refused to tickle you. He was a perfect guy to live with in a prison world: impossible to exhaust, handsy and resourceful. He could stay in one place for weeks, or drive through several states in one day. He knew every part of this magical planet and never felt lost anymore. It was bittersweet how this luxury of traveling without any discomfort came after eighteen years of him agonizing here alone.

He looked good with the hills of Los Angeles on the background, serving as colorful addition to him. His dark hair, and gun-like eyes, his demeanor of rich cynical kid who’s going to do you on the kitchen counter and never call again - only, Kai was following you everywhere.

“Or?” he took you out of your pondering. He didn’t like that either, when you drifted off in the middle of conversation. What are you thinking about? Who are you thinking about, Y/N? His tone of voice always said, I took you as far as an enchanted prison world so that you can’t see other guys, and you still have your head in the clouds.

“The feeling of having everything you need in your arms is intoxicating”, you sighed. The fundemental sensation of being completely satisfied with your life, while being in a literal prison world, came from the realization. Kai Parker was the final point of whatever path you’ve been striding. You weren’t one for professing your love passionately, or expressing it many times. But this one time you felt like you needed to get it off your chest.

“You ever had that?”

He blinked.

“Do you want to stay here, or do you want to move on? You wanted to see Fontana, right?” he asked, a bit lost, and he sounded like his mouth was dry. You took your book back from him.

“Pomona first”.

That night there was vivid change in Kai; instead of pounding you into the bed, like he usually did, as you both enjoyed it, he laid low, pressing you into the matrass with all his body. You felt almost like suffocating on the long, stretching feeling he was drilling into you with passionate, deep movements. For the first time you felt what it was like when you’re trying to jump out of your own skin with pleasure, after all the crying and moaning is just not enough.

“Wait for me, baby”, he was whispering, as you two moved together, hips to hips, shoulders to shoulders, and you thought your eyes will pop out, that maybe your nails are already halfway inside his shoulder blades. Kai was changing; he has been for some time now. He was becoming calmer and happier, and now, as he was making you come and told you to hold on at the same time, for a second there you could see him, shed of all his layers. The Kai Parker he would’ve been many years before, many tortures and catastrophes, and murders ago. The magic, devilish temptation, malevolence, misery and memories aside, there he finally was, a person who was begging you not to come without him, because even that, he didn’t want to do alone. As you clutched the hair on the back of his head, soft, just slightly curly, you felt your body fill with love, that kind that never really lets go of you. Because you finally saw the last manifestation of him, the last entity that lived in him, and it needed you, and loved you.

Kai, too, was making love as opposed to your usual experimental mutual fucking. Both types brought you joy; after he collapsed on the pillow next to you, you knew he would never be the old Kai. You could feel it in your guts.

I’M ON FIRE by Bruce Springsteen segment

“I could take you literally anywhere, and you still choose America”.

You dragged your now big bag on the glistening asphalt, sweating in heat, and gave up, motioning towards it.

“Technically, Hawaii...”

“Technically, Hawaii is America”, he nodded, picking up your bag, “but I hear you”.

“The Pacific, Kai”.

“You know what I did when I was here?” he asked, for the thousandth time in nine months.

“Climbed the Everest”, you chanted, rolling your eyes.

“Climbed the Everest”, he noted proudly. It took about a week? for you to convince him you weren’t interested in dying forty-five times before you finally reach the top of the mountain. He clicked his tongue finally, saying there’s no adventure to you. That’s how you ended up jumping off the Grand Canyon. Dares always led you to some drastic decisions you later regretted.

You settled on the famous North Shore, where the ocean was blue and green, and the palm trees swayed every day... all the day. At three oh seven, it rained for eleven minutes, and then, a majestic double rainbow stood above Oahu. The evening was so beautiful you felt you wouldn’t get tired of it in a hundred years. It’s really hard to get tired of hawaiian sunsets. Everything was perfect.

Until your phone rang.

When you were clutching on Kai, your belly bag was on you, together with all essential things in the world of the twenty-first century. You had your phone in there, the charger in case of anything, car keys, wallet, pack of plasters and some gum. It all traveled with you into the world of ‘94, and that’s how you listened to music from the future in the world of the past. The charger was especially useful, because you could keep your phone turned on and took pictures. Literally everything you did resembled a young couple’s honeymoon. You were forced to delete everything from your phone though, so that it could contain all the photos from different places. You even joked that, once you run out of space completely, it’ll be time to go home.

Another once we get out moment.

Now, your phone, that survived here for nine months because you were charging it regularly, rang, and you didn’t even pay attention at first. It hasn’t rung before. This thing is not supposed to ring, it’s supposed to play music and take pictures of Kai as he is being adorable, sleeping in his king-sized bed, his head buried in the pillow.

You stood like a dummy in the middle of the parking lot, waiting for him to bring the bags to the car. And the phone was ringing.

What is this noise? you thought. Then your hand slipped into your pocket, and your heart got confused as to whether to sink or to leap. Your brain got squeezed inside your skull. Rage, and relief, and worry filled you. You knew so many things at the same time. Suddenly you knew you missed home like crazy. You missed leaving the house and seeing dumb people around. You missed not being a spoiled brat living in the houses that didn’t belong to you. Missed the traffic on the streets, and you missed animals and birds. In this world, there weren’t so much as spiders, crawling around and creeping you out. Not a mosquito, not a lousy worm. No sharks in the ocean, no swallows in the skies.

Also, you knew you’d kick Damon’s ass so hard he’s going to choke on his own kidneys. You recalled the moment you threw yourself in front of Kai, so full of yourself, and announced,

you wanna send him away again, you gotta send me with him

and Damon looked at you with his ever exhausted silver eyes of a jaded cat, and said,

okay.

And sent you, the person he used to call a friend, into the prison world.

Also, you knew, somehow, that Kai will be unhappy about this. Many times that he asked you ‘you like it here, right?’ you felt he was now clinging on the very place he used to be horrified of. It was way more than your own ego, so you barely thought that it was you that changed his perception. You were secretly scared his mind will start telling him this condition of things is normal. That only two people in the world is normal. And he won’t want to leave once the chance comes. That all his once we get outs is just him playing along with you, while he knows, in the back of his mind, that you’re never getting out, and he doesn’t care if it drives you crazy.

You answered the phone and didn’t say anything. Damon was silent, too, for a second.

“Well”, he said finally, “how you lovin’ it?”

You found his cockiness inappropriate. Not like he has locked you in a closet with a bully and came round in fourteen minutes to check on you.

“What is it? Are you here?” you asked, you throat dry.

Kai left the supermarket and was about a hundred steps away. It was going to rain in half an hour.

“Yes, we decided to pick you up, so to say”, he replied shortly.

“You decided I have learnt my lesson? Decided I was now good to go home, that’s what you decided?” you asked, your voice bubbling inside your throat like a pillar of boiling air.

“Give it to me...” Elena’s voice was closing, and your lungs trembled. You have missed them all. Even the Salvatore douche. God how you missed others. You could see Kai slowed down. He had very good eyes, and he saw you were holding your hand to your ear. He was fifty steps away.

“Y/N, where are you? We came to get you back home. Listen, we never meant to...”

“Ask her about Parker”.

“Are you alright? Are you with him?”

“We’re not taking him with us!”

Your voice quivered.

“I’m fine”.

It came out less bitter than you meant; like you were about to cry, while in reality you were bursting with rage.

“Is he keeping you there? Or has he left you there alone?”

“What do you mean?”

The audacity of them. Left you alone. They’re the only ones who throw their friends into magical prison worlds, for nothing.

“Well, he has stolen the ascendant. We had to build a new one”.

“What are you talking about? Kai doesn’t have the ascendant”.

There was silence. Through the flapping hot hawaiian air, you could see Kai with the paper bags walking towards you.

“Yes, he does”, Elena chuckled sadly. “We thought he’d be out by now”.

“We only found one useless spell, Elena”, you growled, “how are we supposed to get out without Bonnie’s blood?”

“Oh my god”, you heard Damon mutter. The palm trees started swaying in front of you. You knew now yet another thing. You were just afraid to think it.

“Bonnie conjured that one without blood. We didn’t have much time, Y/N. It was just the spell, and the ascendant. You’re saying he found it? Why hasn’t he got out then?”

All your guts sank down there together with your mind. At the same time, there was nothing to be shocked about. The signs were all there. You never even showed interest enough for him to share about the ritual of traveling between the worlds.

“That fucking liar was keeping me here”.

“Y/N, where are you?” Elena was almost yelling now.

“Tell her to go back”.

“Is he abusing you?”

Your face got distorted with anger and bitterness at the same time; you could feel you’re grimacing at him, as the musles in your face and neck went tense.

A gust of wind slapped you in the face, and the phone slipped out of your hand. The invisible pull was so sudden you were grabbed, too, and nearly fell on your face, as the clutch pulled on your hand a little.

“Kai!”

The phone shot through the air, right into his hand, and fifteen steps away, you could see he was furious already. The temper of this guy.

He hopped through the air. Your head was ringing with the echoes of their voices.

Kai couldn’t wait to walk another couple of meters, so he just leaped to you using magic. Perhaps he also did it to startle you more; as he reemerged next to you, his hand laid on your throat, and not the usual possessive sensual way, but ‘i’m about to squeeze the life out of you’ way this time. Your head bumped on the side of the car. The only reason he didn’t smash the phone on the ground was probaby the amount of fantastic pics it held.

“What did he say?” Kai growled.

If you could talk, or breathe, you’d say he’s a dick. You fought him, the anger giving you strength, your fists hitting him into the chest and stomach.

“Is he coming for you?”

Kai was screaming, and you have never seen him like that. For a moment there it felt like the old Parker, the miserable, uncontrollable, lightning throwing witch was back in his skin again, and you couldn’t take it to fix him all over again.

Your hands grabbed on his forearm as you kicked him in the shin as hard as you could. Kai yelled, letting you go, and you could finally breathe.

“Dick”, you scolded, “you dick”.

Your voice was hoarse. He didn’t hear you. Kai was suddenly full of demonic fear and fury, and the noise; he barely felt pain which let go of him in a second.

“You’ve been lying to me?!”

“You’re not going anywhere”, he said, his voice quivering with how much he contained inside. All the acid lava sleeping in the depths of his being, frozen by the comfort of not being disturbed, like he was locked away in a mental institution, now rose again and illuminated his skin from the inside.

“You’re lying to me!”

Too bad you lost it, too. Kai might have become a little like you; but you have become a little like him, too.

“You said there was no way out! While you had the ascendant all along? From day one!”

“You said you liked it here!”

You charged at him, your fist up, and he blocked it easily, hitting you in the stomach.

So, he beats girls, too!

He was never good at seeing the kick coming. God knows why, if you wanted to defeat Kai Parker, you just kicked him with one of your legs. He never sees it coming. The fight exhausted both of you as you screamed atrocities at each other. You knew you were just letting the frustration out; that kind that floods over you when you realize you’ve been wasting months in the prison world while you had all the means of getting out that whole time.

Kai, however, was fueled by something more sinister than that.

You never really meant to hurt him. Just punch him in the teeth for being a proper dick. He knew he was doing wrong, otherwise he wouldn’t be asking this ‘you like it here, right?’ like a broken record all the time.

And like a fool, you always replied, yes, because it was truth.

He now believed you’ve been lying to him, too, like a scared cat that was suddenly brought in at the vet clinic and the doctor was clicking the long metal scissors in front of him. He felt betrayed. He thought you’re dreaming of getting out and see your friends again.

“I am not enough for you! You have the whole world! And me! So what, you meant something else when you said that I am everything you need?” he yelled. Almost at the top of his lungs. The clouds were meanwhile gathering above Manoa, to release the rain in ten minutes.

“I meant it!”

“Then why do you need to leave?!”

“Not me - us!”

“We are not going anywhere! You’re staying here, with me!”

“No, you listen to me, Parker, we’re going back there, together, just like we arrived here! This”, you pointed your finger at the wretched sky where even the rain was on schedule, “is not real”.

As soon as those words left your mouth, you knew he’d misinterpret them.

His mouth moved like he was about to tear down his own face and bit yours off with the bloodied teeth of a skeleton. You could feel your lower lip swell. Blood was dripping down your chin because of how hard you fell on your face after he threw you away with his witchy move. You were about to break his jaw completely, and it was his own doing. If he hadn’t wanted you to become a fighter, he shouldn’t have taught you.

Your right fist was shaking with pain. It felt like you shattered your knuckles completely beating on his stupid head. Nothing in the world could set it right.

“What did you say?”

You felt mortally tired. It felt like when you stood on the edge of the Canyon, like when you were about to fall.

“Kai, this world is fiction. We need to go back out there...”

“It doesn’t work out there!”

“It will”.

He panted. He spat the blood on the ground, and you felt like you wanted to stop fighting and start making out.

The paper bags were scattered all around the car, one lonely banana forgotten under the blazing sun.

“I will fucking kill you for lying to me”, you sighed.

“I thought you loved me”, Kai responded, his voice dead, and your heart shuddered.

“I fucking do!” you roared.

“Then why do you...”

and that, all over again.

#kai parker #kai parker imagine #kai parker x reader #vampire diaries imagine #tvd imagine

[clevercatchphrase]

2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

 Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

 Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

 Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

 Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

 Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

 The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

 To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

 Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

 Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

 Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

 And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

 Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

 ON TO 2021!

 I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

 Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

 Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

 1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

 2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

 3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

 4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

 5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

 6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

 7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

 8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

 9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

 11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

 Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

 Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

 For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

 I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

 Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

 I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

 I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

 Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

 I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

 I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

 I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

 Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

 Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

 Good night.

#long post #new year's resolutions #year review #year retrospective

[serialreblogger]

I know you don't talk about school much, so feel very free to just pass this ask by, but how did you... make a decision for a degree and everything?

whooof a good question! short answer is, there’s a reason i don’t talk much about school, and that’s because i straightup don’t have a clue what i’m doing. but for the record: nobody? does?

there’s this idea that as soon as you hit grade 11 you need to get started planning the rest of your life out, and once you graduate high school you have to have like a ten-year career plan. but nobody, really, does. if you have a ten-year career plan in grade twelve, the only thing that guarantees is that you’ll be doing something dramatically different in ten years (and probably have at least one major identity crisis two to five years in).

because here’s the thing: it’s really, really unfair to put that kind of expectation on teenagers, to start with. you literally don’t have the necessary experience to make that kind of decision. you aren’t capable yet of making informed choices about the direction of your life, just because you haven’t LIVED enough, you don’t have enough information to draw from. and really, you’re also still a kid. you’ve been entirely dependent on your parents for survival up to now, and for a disproportionately high number of teens, that means accepting abuse, micromanagement, neglect and/or general unhealthy circumstances as a fact of life. none of that equips you to make any kind of balanced choice about the direction you want your life to take.

all of this is to say, first of all, if you’re planning to go to university just after high school, don’t hold yourself to an all-or-nothing standard when it comes to your course of study.

when you’re starting an undergrad, especially if you’re doing so within a year or two of finishing high school, don’t worry as much about picking a major that will serve your career path (look, i’m going to be honest with you, there’s seriously no undergrad degree that gives you a significant leg up in the job market at this point, and that includes the sciences. english majors + chemistry majors = equal difficulty finding work after graduating without either a master’s degree or some kind of nepotism. the only exception is maybe business majors, but they don’t really count because nobody trusts business majors). don’t worry about what you “should” be majoring in or whether the subjects that interest you are “practical.” None of the courses in university are practical.

That’s what I did, anyway. i didn’t declare my own major until halfway through my third year (and still graduated in four). My university had a whole bunch of core required courses for every major regardless of your field of study, which made that easier; i took an introductory course on plant biology, an english course where we studied dracula, a philosophy course, a course on “history of the Western World” (which was essentially colonialist propaganda + the black plague), and a theology class from the Catholic college partnered to my university. I don’t know if you know this about me, but i forkin adored every minute of that semester. That’s the second thing: if you hate high school, that is ABSOLUTELY not a guarantee you’ll hate university. In uni i finally got to learn about things that actually interested me, got to choose courses and drop ones i didn’t want to deal with, and was not only allowed but encouraged to engage critically with what i was being taught. it was brilliantly freeing.

So: if you’re looking for advice on how to pick your major when you first start college or university, i guess my main advice is don’t. Not that you shouldn’t declare a major if you have a pretty solid idea of what you genuinely want to do, but like. if you don’t have a solid idea. that’s OKAY. 90% of people don’t, because you just don’t have the necessary context to determine what you really enjoy and what you want to learn more about (let alone what you want to do for the rest of your life).

sign up for the things that interest you. drop the things that don’t. see where that takes you, and go from there.

(also, if after your first semester you think university just genuinely isn’t something that appeals to you, maybe take some time off. like i said, going to university doesn’t by any means guarantee a career. you can figure out who you are and who you want to be in settings that aren’t the suffocatingly stressful, high-stakes conditions of academia. i, personally, am overall glad i went to uni and value the ideas and facts and ways of thinking i learned there; but the fact remains that it took my anxiety from “bad enough to spawn eating disorder” to “i can’t bear being alive and also resonate way too hard with descartes’ ‘does anything even exist’ crisis oh god oh help” levels. also: student loans. if you find that learning for its own sake isn’t exciting or fun for you, take a break!! find something that IS exciting and fun, and try doing that for a bit instead. never feel like you have to put yourself through something that’s taking more from you than it gives.)

#existential crisis tw #whoops i thought it had been long enough but i remembered that particular anxiety obsession for too long jeez i'm good at freaking myself o #still got it! #anyway #for whatever it's worth - and bearing in mind that i'm by no means qualified for this advice #here it is #i don't give this sort of monologue unsolicited because i really don't know if it's useful #i still feel at sea myself when it comes to academia #if you ask me about why i'm getting my masters in library science i will stare at you with the void of infinite darkness in my eyes #and my adhd mouth will tell you ''iunnno'' #we shall see! how it goes! #and for you lunar i wish all the luck and happiness in the world #i hope this helps at least a little? in some way? #whatever path you end up taking is gonna be awesome #just because you're the one that will be on it #ask linden

[jadelotusflower]

December/2020 Roundup

I hope everyone is getting through the holiday season alright! It’s been kind of a busy month for me and I didn’t have much time for creative pursuits, so the reading/watchlist is a little shorter this time.

December Roundup

World Without End by Ken Follet - set 150 years after Pillars of the Earth, again in the town of Kingsbridge, this time we follow the lives of two branches of the Builder family tree - the descendants of Aliena and Jack, Merthin and his brother Ralph, and those of Tom (through Martha), Caris, Petranilla and Godwyn. But miracle of miracles, there’s a second female pov in Gwenda to provide the peasant perspective.

This is in many ways a rinse and repeat of Pillars, where the goods guys suffer and suffer until the end when the bad guys get their comeuppance, and by now it’s starting to wear on me (there is one more novel set in Elizabeathan times, but I’m not sure I’ll bother with that one). While Pillars was set in the backdrop of The Anarchy, World covers the start of the Hundred Years War and the Black Death, and the latter seems rather prescient - Kingsbridge goes into a six month lockdown at one point, and not wearing masks becomes a political issue. As always, it’s the detail of day to day life I enjoy the most about these books, and Caris trailing the English army as they pillage France, and her efforts to fight the plague are confronting but compelling.

In fact I enjoyed Caris the most as a character, but was disappointed in her ending - she spends the whole novel reluctant to conform to the social expectations of women at the time and doesn’t want to be trapped by marriage and children, and yes she unwillingly becomes a nun, but in a way that gives her the freedom to pursue her interests in medicine (albeit still constrained by her gender). But rather than her happy ending having the power and satisfaction of prioress of the nunnery running the hospital (her life’s work), Caris renounces her vows and ends up married to Merthin after all. Maybe it’s that Merthin is a bit of a wet rag of a character, maybe I just bristle at Follett’s world where men can find satisfaction in the clergy (Prior Phillip being the best example), but for women marriage is always the pinnacle despite their abilities and success in other areas.

Also, Follett Never Write Another Sex Scene Challenge.

Smallville (seasons 1-3) - This has been a year of comfort watching for many people, a time to revisit those old shows we loved because they feel familiar in a time of uncertainty. This month I started a Smallville rewatch - I was a casual viewer back in the day but only really started to get interested about halfway through (when Lois showed up), so I’ve actually never seen it all the way from beginning to end. And well...the early seasons are a slog, let’s put it that way. Bad CGI and stilted acting aside, this was a teen drama first and foremost and the early noughties was strong with this one.

I remember never particularly caring for Chloe as a character, but wow is she painful in the early seasons, pining over Clark while he’s pining over Lana, but while his mooning is just annoying, she is almost manipulative in blaming him for not reciprocating her feelings and it’s very Nice Guy and cringe.

It’s funny, I remember not being a particular fan of Lana either, but I’m actually liking her a lot more on rewatch - wearing a necklace with part of the meteor that killed her parents is metal af. It is kind of weird to see grown man Lex hanging out with these fifteen year olds - I mean the actors don’t look it, but the characters are very much minors! Twenty-somethings should not be calling a teenager their best friend! It’s particularly creepy when the minute Lana turns 18 Lex develops romantic feels for her :-/

Once they start to bring in more of the Lore it gets better - I actually got very emotional when Christopher Reeve showed up - it’s such a great scene, and the strains of John Williams’ original themes in the background made me tear up. But the core concept was always an interesting one - that when Clark arrived the meteor rocks/kryptonite infected some of the population giving them superhuman abilities - lending credulity to the Monster of the Week episodes and the murder happy teenagers of Smallville. However they never really do a deep dive into the implications of Clark’s arrival and the meteor rock essentially causing widespread mental illness that’s dealt with either by these kids getting killed or institutionalised, but maybe that’s too heavy for this type of show.

It’s also very apparent (and disappointing) on rewatch just how quickly they sidelined Pete Ross, the only black character, who is unceremoniously booted at the end of the third season. Tale as old as time.

2020 Roundup

Books read:

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Avonlea

Anne of the Island

Anne of Windy Poplars

Anne’s House of Dreams

Anne of Ingleside

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The History of the Kings of Britain

The Pillars of the Earth

The Sunne in Splendour

Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him

The Testaments

Kathryn: The Tainted Queen

Gutsy Women

Girl, Woman, Other

The Evening and the Morning

Women and Leadership

World Without End

That’s a total of 18, a vast improvement on last year, and I’ve really enjoyed getting back to books again.

Writing (complete):

Auld Lang Syne - 3169

The Years Are Rolled Away - 6026

Writing (wips):

The Lady of the Lake - 14,493

Against the Dying of the Light - 44,021

Turn Your Face to the Sun - 2064

Total: 70,093

That’s around 7k less than last year, and I haven’t progressed as far with my wips as I would have wanted (in fact my goal was to complete the three above) but oh well, here’s to a better and more productive 2021 and all that.

See you all next year x

#december roundup #2020 roundup #fic life

[weird-incarnate]

A Brief Intermission For Shipping Content

This is the story of how Dr. Valentine and Dr. Afton met.  Dr. Afton belongs to @theho11owknight TW: Sexual Harassment, Nearly getting hit by a bus,  Summary: Dr. Marbus Valentine has  been on Earth for over a millennia now. Somehow she still gets herself into quite a bit of trouble, but that somehow all led up to this. Her first meeting with Dr. Charles Afton. 

Dr. Marbus Valentine woke up to the familiar ache of her body complaining. It’s been a full millennia and her damaged back still complained of the soreness it felt from the wounds inflicted on it. Groaning, she rolled over trying to go back to bed, shivering as the cold air hit her exposed back. She would’ve loved to fall back asleep, she really would have, but Nurse Mortus had other plans, made apparent by the way he kicked open the door and let himself in. “Rise and shine, my Valentine!” He rhymed laughing at his stupid joke. Mortus surveyed the room and clicked his tongue at the scene The computer in the corner of the room had been left on, again, and she had neglected to pick up her clothes off the floor… also again… She wasn’t necessarily messy, no not by any stretch of the imagination. Dr. Valentine actively enjoyed cleaning! Mortus on the other hand, hated anything being out of its place. He had to set up everything just right and it had to be like that the moment he woke up. Dr. Valentine was not like him, made apparent at her snakelike hiss when he opened the blinds. “Oh hush, you have to get to your clinic, and I need to get to the bar,” He scolded, “I’m just waking you up before I leave. Are you able to get there on your own today?”

“Yeah yeah… I’ll be fine getting there Mortus,” She responded grumpily, before shifting and sitting up in bed to rub her back, ignoring Mortus’s complaint at the lack of shirt she was wearing. “You’re in my room you old bastard. You should’ve expected it.” “Still! You’re an angel! Have a fragment of modesty please?!” He begged averting his eyes, and making a bee-line for the door. “I’m leaving to work! Be careful and I’ll see you tonight!” 

Dr. Valentine watched him leave, and waited to hear the front door shut before swinging her legs over the side of the bed and using her night stand to push herself up into a wobbly standing pose. After a couple shaky steps, as per her morning routine, she made it to the bathroom and began brushing her teeth. She spat out blood, most likely leftovers from last night's feast and sighed returning to her computer screen. She checked the news to see if anyone found the bodies of her victim from last night. They hadn’t and she was sad they hadn’t even been reported missing yet. She wondered about their family, their friends, their loved ones. She was struck between being sad and relieved no one had reported them yet, but accepted the relief and rolled over in her desk chair with a push to the dresser.

 It was too early for her to go to the clinic yet, Valentine wasn’t due to be there for three more hours. Still she got dressed, pulling on a turtleneck and a pink skirt, something she had worn for years. It took a bit of struggle to pull the turtleneck over her back scars as they were being angrier than usual today. Once the fabric settled she was able to move easier, and rolled over to her wheelchair in her room. She picked up her black plague mask off of the wheelchair seat and sat down in it after a quick transfer, pulling on her mask. It took her about twenty minutes to get ready in total, not shabby for a bad pain day. Looking around, she located her hat and placed it on her head, before rolling her wheelchair into the living room, and then to the front door. Did she ignore the meds and food Mortus set out for her? Probably. Did that matter to her in the moment? Not really. 

She checked herself in the entryway mirror of the quaint house to make sure everything looked correct on her, before unlocking the front door and rolling out, locking the door behind her. Dr. Valentine began her trek down the street into the city humming a small tune to herself. Despite the normally busy metropolis it was quiet and empty today. She didn’t mind it entirely. After years of living in the city, she did get sick of the noise every once in a while. 

Without much incident, Dr. Valentine arrived at the park, seeing some people walking their dogs, and children playing before school. She smiled at the scene. Normally she hated parks but this one by her house always brought her a sense of peace and joy. It was always so quiet and empty. Happily rolling down the path, she made her way to the duck pond where everyone seemed to be gone. She took some spare bird seed out of her bag and tossed it into the water, giggling to herself as they flocked to the seed, nibbling on it. 

However, she quickly felt a familiar feeling of being watched and she looked away from the ducks to a man on the other side of the pond. Dr. Valentine was taken by surprise at his appearance. Sure, in this new generation, much of the clothes was brightly colored and very different from when she was sent to earth, but only doctors ever adorned plague masks and here she was. Staring at a man in a plague mask. He was quite intriguing at her first glance. He had on a purple dress shirt and black slacks, with a black and silver plague doctor mask. He had what looked like a scar across his neck, and some marking on his wrist as well, but Dr. Valentine ignored all of it. She locked directly onto his glowing purple eyes peering through the holes of the mask. He hadn’t actually been looking at her. He was actually looking at the ducks she was feeding, but when she stopped feeding them, he noticed almost seemingly instantly and locked eyes with her. 

Dr. Valentine cursed the blush she felt tint her cheeks as she ripped her gaze away from him. The blush deepened when she saw him approach her. She damned the angels in heaven by making her a hopeless romantic when she fell, getting ready to roll away in escape, but he stopped somewhat close to her to look at the ducks closer. Despite her usual hatred of strangers, Dr. Valentine spoke. 

“Would… you like to feed them too?” Her voice came out soft and gentle, but nervous. The masked man looked over at her and back at the ducks before nodding. Dr. Valentine couldn’t help the smile that spread across her cheeks as she poured some feed into his hands and let him toss it out into the lake where the ducks quacked and munched away. That should’ve been it. It really should have been, but Dr. Valentine was desperate for human connection. So she started attempting to chat with him. 

“The ducks are always so hungry in the mornings. They would eat my whole bag of feed if I let them,” She mused, halfway not expecting a reply. 

“Do… you come out here and feed them often?” The man asked, seemingly analysing her. His gaze could have melted her alive, if she was the slightest bit weaker. Instead, she ripped her eyes away from him for the second time and looked back at the ducks. “Only when I get the time. I was just heading to my clinic but I had a lot of extra time so I decided to stop by here.”

“. . .Interesting…” 

Dr. Valentine was practically melting in her seat at this point. Looking for an escape, she looked up at him, glad he couldn’t see her face, and offered him the small bag of feed. He looked at it without taking it, so she prompted him further. 

“I have to head to work about now. I don’t meet many people by this duck pond so take this as a gift and feed them for me okay?” She smiled, and even though he couldn’t see it, she practically radiated sunshine through her posture, getting the message across. He took the bag, his hand brushing hers for a moment, and pulling back analyzing the bag. Dr. Valentine pulled her hand back and wished him well before taking off down the pond and into town. 

She cursed herself for chickening out and not staying longer. In her defense, she was useless when it came to her dumb instantaneous crushes. Either way, she hoped he enjoyed her gift to him. Despite her alert nature, she didn’t really get shaken out of her daze until she heard someone whistling at her. 

“Huh?” She jerked up and looked around, her eyes falling onto a tall man, with blonde hair and tanned skin whistling at her. 

“Hey, I’ve been trying to get your attention for like… five minutes!” He laughed, saying it in a chiding tone. 

“Oh uh… Do I know you?”  She asked, not intending it to sound as rude as it came out. 

“No you don’t but I’d like you too baby!” Oh. Oh gross. He was one of those guys. 

“Uh sorry, I’m not looking for anyone to date right now.” 

“Oh really? Are you sure?” 

“I’m not interested.” She snapped at him, fed up with his approach. Dr. Valentine realized her immediate mistake, when the smile on the guys face turned into a snarl. 

“I don’t think a crip like you has the right to be choosey” He answered with an angry tone. 

“Excuse me?! What right do you have to demand I go out with you after you insulted me?!” 

“It should’ve been a compliment you bitch! You should be honored I even considered you!” 

“I… I don’t even fucking know you!!” Dr. Valentine, very quickly fed up with this guy, went to roll away, but was stopped by him grabbing her backrest and forcing her back to face him. Not thinking, Dr. Valentine responded by pressing her foot against his chest and shoving her leg straight as hard as she could, shoving him back. She pushed him away but herself also in the process, causing her left wheel to fall off the edge of the curb. The entire chair tipped over and dumped her into the street, the force of the fall skidding her directly into the driving lane, and right in the path of a bus. 

She was only able to push up to all fours before she saw the bus barrelling towards her. She froze like a deer in the headlights and closed her eyes waiting to be hit. A flash of purple could be seen tackling her out of the line of danger. She heard the screeching of wheels, and felt herself be shoved several feet away, and her back slam against the concrete. She cried out in pain, her mask getting skewed and falling off. She opened her eyes several seconds later, to be greeted with the same masked doctor from the pond on top of her. He had shoved her out of the way and was surveying her for damage and there was a slight crackle of… electricity?

Dr. Valentine looked at him, entranced by his purple eyes, but even when he met hers, she didn’t look away. She noticed the ever slight widening of his eyes, and processed her mask had fallen off and her glowing pink eyes were a dead give away about what she was. Fear filled her body and she covered her eyes expecting some sort of reaction. Fear, hatred, anger, but all she felt was him picking her up off the tough concrete and carrying her back to the side walk, where the man that had caused her to fall was long gone. She fixed her mask back on her face, as she was set down on the sidewalk. The bus driver peeked out of his vehicle to ask if she was okay. She gave a quick nod, and after evaluating if he could trust the man that saved her, the bus driver drove off. 

The strange doctor picked up her half crushed wheelchair out of the street, and looked over at Dr. Valentine. 

“Um.. I don’t think you can use this,” He stated, as he attempted to spin the bent wheels. Dr. Valentine looked at him, then to the wheelchair, and started laughing. She was probably in shock, but something about the situation was so funny to her. He looked back at her laughing form and returned it with a small chuckle. 

“No, I don’t think I will be able to use that,” She giggled, trying to calm her panicked, heaving chest, “I.. uh… thank you. For saving my life.” 

“. . .Don’t mention it.” He said flatly. 

“Hm… Only if you don’t mention my eyes,” She joked before reaching out her hand, “I’m Dr. Marbus Valentine. Who are you?”

“Dr. Charles Afton. And are you sure I can’t mention the eyes?” 

“I’m sure.” She smirked, “Uhm… I don’t suppose you could call a friend for me…? I don’t have any way home.” He responded by pulling out a phone and handing it to her. She didn’t waste any time and called Mortus’s number. After explaining the situation and getting promptly chewed out for nearly dying and fretted over, Mortus said he would be there in ten minutes. Satisfied with the answer, she handed the phone back to Dr. Afton. 

“Thank you again. You’ve been a great help,” She smiled under her mask again and hoped she translated how grateful she was with her body language. Dr. Afton nodded, his face looking thoughtful. 

“I should get going. Are you going to be okay?” He asked. 

“I’ll be just fine,” She replied, getting as comfy as she could on the sidewalk. Her tailbone still hurt. She wasn’t expecting to feel his hand place itself on top of her head in an odd ruffling motion. He pulled away just as quickly as he did it. 

“Take care of yourself,” He said not really as a request but a statement, and walked away. Dr. Valentine didn’t even get time to respond before he turned the corner of a building and vanished from her line of sight

#plaguesona #plaguecore #plague doctor #shipping #writing