#we’ve been living long distance for a long time but they’re the people I call mid breakdown but we also have really different relationships | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heich0e · 7 months

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begin - nicholas wolfwood/f!reader (trigun) prequel to the poly!au, bounty hunters!au, wild west-ish, tw BLOOD/INJURIES, reader is patching up a bullet wound so warning for all the expected nastiness that entails, tw mentions of attemped assault (not reader and not in detail), mentions of sex work, gratuitous mentions of nico's stubble

BOUND - poly!au masterlist

You live in a nothing town, in the dead middle of nowhere, called The Bend.

It’s called that because a long time ago—long before your days, or your daddy’s days, or even your granddaddy’s days—there used to be a wide, rushing freshwater river snaking through the valley, and right where the town centre now sits is where it used to turn east to the far-away sea.

But the river’s dried up now, and it took the green grass with it.

The sea is farther than you could ever hope to travel.

And the B on the sign that marks the border into your dusty little nothing-nowhere town has rusted off and decayed away with the years, which means the only warning that any misguided traveller has to tell them where they’re heading is an ominous old sign, half-rotted, that reads:

Welcome to The end.

It’s fitting, you think. An omen to give anyone who wanders within spitting distance of the border a final caution that they have one last chance to turn around. A choice to get out while they still can.

It’s a choice you never had.

You were born and raised in The Bend. Your blood runs thick with the dust that coats the decrepit old town. It’s all you’ve ever known, and all you ever will know; your beginning, your middle, and your miserable, inexorable end.

Because that’s the thing about The Bend: few people ever show up here and those who do aren’t stupid enough to stay. And the unfortunate few that are born from the dusty earth and dried up riverbeds, like you? Well, those ones never leave.

There’s some comfort to be taken from that, you suppose; a kind of stability that comes from monotony. From certain inevitability. Every day the same, unchanging. A familiarity to the nothingness of your little town, your little house, your little life.

But then, on a night just like any other, something changes.

One night, you meet him.

Nicholas isn’t quite sure how he ended up here, but he isn’t all that surprised either.

There’s something kind of undeniably fitting about bleeding out in the middle of fucking nowhere, supported on either side by two of the finest prostitutes The Bend has to offer—and flanked by a handful more as the group guides him through the dark, dusty night.

The Bend isn’t the first hellhole town Nicholas has ever stumbled into. His line of work has brought him to more than his fair share of seedy dumps just like this one. Towns like this are the perfect place for someone to hide from the law after all, because not many people would bother to come looking for you in places that might as well not exist. Most bounty hunters don’t even know about this particular town, and they don’t care to learn, especially since half the maps on the market don’t even bother marking its sorry half-existence down.

But Nicholas isn’t like most bounty hunters.

That’s what brought him to The Bend.

There’s a vicious flash of lightning that suddenly forks through the sky overhead, lighting up the dim, depressing town and the dusty valley beyond it as brightly as the midday sun for just a blink. It’s followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder that makes the packed earth under his unsteady feet tremble, and Nicholas knows that means the lightning’s closer than he cares for it to be.

“’s it gonna rain?” he slurs, tearing his eyes away from the sky and looking over to the woman supporting him on his right (or is that his left?)

He wracks his hazy, addled brain as he tries to remember her name. Starts with a V, he’s pretty sure. Victoria? Viola?

She snorts, her ruby rouged lips lifting at one painted corner. “Honey, it’s been almost five months since we’ve seen a drop of rain around here, and even then it was nothin’ to write home about. You just focus on puttin’ one boot in front of the other, and don’t go gettin’ your hopes up.”

All at once, Nicholas is reminded of the burning pain in his arm; the searing, radiating agony of a bullet nestled deep into flesh.

Oh. Right.

He got shot.

It’s not the first time he’s suffered a similar wound, nor will it likely be the last if he makes it through the night—God, or whatever all-knowing bastard’s out there, willing. That doesn’t make it any less of a miserable bitch to deal with, though.

How the hell did he get shot, again?

He ponders this question for a moment, reflecting on it through alcohol sodden introspection, and the answer comes back to him in bits and pieces as he keeps aimlessly shuffling along through the night.

The sound of heels clicking overhead at the town saloon—that’s the first thing he remembers. The clacking metronome of Big Annie’s working girls crossing the wooden floorboards of the brothel that operates above the only place in this awful little town to get a half-decent drink.

A drink.

Yes, it was something bitter and dark—completely nauseating to presently even think about. It burned on the way down, and now it sloshes unpleasantly in his stomach as he walks. The girls had made him down the better part of a bottle after he’d been shot—to help with the pain, they’d said, and he’d been anything but reluctant to heed their advice—and he’d already had fair a few glasses earlier in the evening as he’d occupied his table in the corner of the bar on top of that. Panic had palpably sizzled between the women while they watched the tattered cloth Nicholas held to his arm ink steadily darker with scarlet in the lamplight of the old bar following the shooting—the tension building amongst them like the perspiration beading at his temple. They were bickering about something then.

No, not something.

Someone.

“We gotta take him to see Mama!”

It was Charity who said that, he recalls—the pretty little thing with full lips and a mane of thick, curly hair that Nicholas had complimented the first time he ever saw her traipsing through the saloon. She can’t be a whole lot older than 20, and her voice is still high and childlike; even more so that particular evening as she stomped her foot petulantly, looking over at him with worry-filled eyes as she made her plea to the other girls watching him bleed out in the musty wooden booth.

“Mama won't want anything to do with this one.”

That was Violetta who’d replied to Charity’s fractious appeal. She’s one of the older girls who works for Big Annie at the brothel. She’s got a sort of seasoned air to her, with a husky rasp in her voice—like the sand that blows through the empty streets in town has roughened it. She’s still undeniably pretty, but she comes across a little tougher than the rest of them. Doing the job she does in a town like this one, Nicholas doesn’t blame her for it.

Violetta’s the one currently supporting his right side, leading him through the night towards the woman who’s supposed to be his saving grace.

Towards Mama.

But who the hell is that?

He’s sure he’s heard the name in passing while he’s been kicking around the town saloon between his work, nursing half-noxious drinks and flirting harmlessly here and there with Big Annie’s working girls—who seem to have taken a liking to lingering around his table between visits from johns.

Nicholas wasn’t even supposed to be staying in The Bend long, only for a day or two to follow up on a bounty lead he’d caught wind of three towns over—but the lead went cold, and a few days turned into almost a week. Nevertheless, while his stay may have been extended, he just he never thought to ask any more questions about this mysterious matriarch all the working girls seemed to know so well and speak so highly of. But now, as those very same girls are dragging his half-conscious ass to the other side of town in search of this Mama, he wishes that maybe he’d dug a little deeper.

“Mama’s gonna get you all fixed up, handsome,” little Charity appears on Violetta’s other side, her eyes wide enough as she stares at him that they reflect the next flash of lightning as it rips through the dark of night. She looks worried, in spite of her words—even in his present state of drunkenness and blood loss fuelled delirium, he can tell that much.

They all do. Even the toughest, Violetta—though she seems reluctant to let on as she stands stoically at his side and shoulders his flagging, stumbling weight.

Charity nods, but it’s a gesture that seems more to reassure herself than anyone else. “Mama always takes care of us; she’ll have you good as new by morning.”

Ah, so this woman must be a doctor of sorts—or as close to it as a shithole little town like this can offer.

It’s Nicholas’ turn to nod, a bobble of his cotton-filled head the only recognition he can muster to her words, as he just keeps staggering on under their guidance. He’s lucky that The Bend even has some kind of doctor to look after him, even if it’s just some old lady who looks after the saloon girls.

The unlikely group soon arrives at the doorstep of a little house at the edge of town—as slummy and dilapidated as all the rest of them—and Queenie, the girl who’d moments before been supporting Nicholas’s injured left side, raps sharply on the door.

“She’s not gonna answer,” Violetta mutters dourly under her breath, still at Nicholas’ right side.

“She will,” Charity counters with her arms crossed over her chest, punctuating the assertion with an indignant little huff for good measure. “Mama always answers when we come knockin’.”

But Nicholas worries for a moment—a long moment as the door stays firmly shut—that Violetta might just have a point. It’s the middle of the night after all, and this ‘Mama’ could very well be sleeping like any other reasonable person would be at this hour.

Queenie knocks on the wooden door for a second time, this time with an open palm. This series of raps is a little louder. A little more insistent.

“Mama? It’s us! Open up!” she calls, casting a worried glance over her shoulder at Nicholas—who’s got his entire weight slumped over onto poor Violetta, now.

Nicholas is bleeding out on the front porch, and part of him still almost feels bad for waking up some poor, unsuspecting old—

The door flies open.

“What the hell do you want?”

Oh.

Nicholas knows that his eyes travel up your frame in a way that can only be considered wholly impolite. But he’s not really in his right mind, after all—or at least that’s what he tells himself as he justifies his immodest stare. He starts at the uneven cuffs of your paper-thin trousers, before climbing up, up, up your body to the tight white undershirt your wear—appreciating the way it clings to the curve of your waist and sits snug around your chest, and he particularly admires the pretty little edge of lace that frills around the neckline at your breasts. Finally, his gaze makes it to your face, and you look irritated to say the absolute least on the matter.

He’s not all that sure what he was expecting to find on the other side of the chipped paint of this shabby front door, but he can say with a steady hand to his foolhardy heart that it certainly wasn’t you.

For a moment, Nicholas is convinced they’ve got the wrong house—as improbable as that might be in a town as small as this one. At the very least, he waits for someone else to come to the door—a mother, or grandmother even—because surely you can’t be the one that these women have been calling—

“Mama! You gotta help us,” Queenie exclaims. She’s luckily perceptive enough to stick out her foot once she sees you fully process just what’s waiting for you outside, keeping the door jammed open with her heeled boot as you rush to slam it shut.

“I haven’t gotta do anything,” you counter sharply from around the edge of the door, your face pinching in a blatantly vexed expression at the way the woman is keeping it ajar.

Your eyes flicker over to Nicholas through the gap between the door and its frame, surveying him with a look of disdain that might just have been enough to offend him if he were a little more himself.

“Mama, he got shot!” Charity suddenly bursts into what can only be described as a spectacular display of tears—blubbering noisily between each word as she elbows her way through the group towards your door. She reaches across the threshold and desperately clutches at the front of your shirt with both hands as she pleads to you. “P-please let us in, y-you’re the only one who can h-he-help him.”

“Bertie, what in God’s merciful name is wrong with you?” you sigh aggrievedly, roughly batting her hands away from their grip on your clothes. In the next breath, you wrench open the front door to your home, stepping back to allow your unexpected visitors the space to cross through the doorway. “And cut the waterworks or you’re gonna wake up half The Bend and get us all shot.”

As the girls help Nicholas inside and across the gnarled, warped floorboards of your little house, you slip wordlessly away into another room out of sight. When you return moments later, you’ve pulled on a creased button-down over that pretty little undershirt of yours.

Nicholas can’t help but notice that you’re dressed practically like a man, especially in comparison to the painted faces and petticoats of the other women in the room. But it strangely suits you, for reasons he can’t quite place.

“He got shot fightin’ some bozo tryin’ to rough up Ada on her way home,” Violetta explains when you look to her with an expression that demands context. She’s the most level-headed of the five woman gathered in your tiny home, so no one can blame you for turning to her first.

Nicholas feels dizzy, the modest lamp-lit room around him reeling like a child’s toy spinning top gaining speed.

Did he do that?

He remembers hearing something out back in the alley that runs behind the saloon and the inn when he went out to take a piss late into to the evening, well after it had dropped dark. He was already sufficiently drunk by that point, but there was no mistaking the sound of a woman putting up a fight the moment that he heard it. He followed the racket and found the pair quickly—on instinct more than anything—grabbing the drunken man by the scruff of the neck and hauling him off the poor girl he was trying to force himself on. In the ensuing scuffle, the man pulled a gun that Nicholas wasn’t expecting. With his senses drink-dulled, he didn’t react quickly enough to miss the shot entirely and caught it in his arm—but he’s lucky the guy had such terrible aim to begin with, or the night could have turned out a whole lot worse.

But who’s this Ada? He thought the girl he’d helped’s name was Priscilla—having met her a few times in the saloon. She was always quieter than the rest of them, a little more reserved. She didn’t say much to anyone from what Nicholas had witnessed in his time spent in The Bend. But Ada’s not the first name he’s heard since showing up at your door that’s unfamiliar to him.

“You've got a lot of nerve dragging some no-good, half-cocked brute to my door like this in the middle of the damn night, Sarah Jane,” you hiss through your teeth, your eyes flickering from Violetta over to Nicholas once more.

Violetta snorts, but offers no argument.

“Please, Mama,” Priscilla (or is it Ada? Nicholas can’t keep track anymore) says quietly, though her tone is unmistakably earnest. It’s the first time she’s said anything since the girls came stumbling through your door with the injured man propped between them. First time he remembers her saying anything at all—at least other than when he heard her screaming and chased off the scum that was hassling her.

Your attention suddenly turns to where Priscilla stands just off near the corner of the little room, with Theodosia (another one of Big Annie’s working girls) at her side with a comforting arm looped around her waist. It’s not hard to see the way the woman trembles as she holds her shawl around her shoulders. She’s got a bad scrape across her cheek, and her lip is split—evidence of the ordeal she’d gone through earlier in the evening. Her skin still looks clammy and sallow from the shock.

Your expression softens as you contemplate her.

“C’mere, Adaline,” you beckon to her, reaching out a hand. “Step into the light and let me take a look at you.”

She approaches you without any reservation, and you carefully inspect her wounds after taking her face gently in your hands. A long, resigned sigh slips from your lips once a moment has passed, having turned her face this way and that to fully scrutinize her condition. You look around at the women gathered in your home, and the man slumping between them, then your head hangs in defeat. Your hand lifts to pinch the bridge of your nose.

“Bertie, go grab my bag from my room. Georgie, fetch some clean water from the basin in the kitchen.”

Charity and Theodosia move briskly once you’ve issued the order—like they don’t want to give you the opportunity to change your mind.

Nicholas finds it a little funny how easily these women yield to you, though most seem to be your seniors—you’re just a scrappy young thing, only a few years into your adulthood if he had to guess. As he watches you, he sees that you carry yourself with a certain quality that’s beyond your years—every action and word steeped with a sort of weary assuredness that you haven’t even lived long enough to properly earn.

He watches you move with the grace of a woman, and listens to you speak with the authority of a man—and It could be the blood loss talking, but Nicholas thinks you might just be the most interesting thing he’s stumbled upon in this god-forsaken little town.

“You’re a doctor?”

You freeze, your head snapping in his direction when you finally hear him speak.

Your lip curls and you bare your teeth to him, and Nicholas is suddenly reminded of those city cats that wander the back alleys in Julai, hissing with their hackles raised when you happen across their path.

“Do I look like a doctor to you?” you sneer at him derisively.

For some unplaceable reason, Nicholas almost wants to laugh—the sensation bubbling up in his stomach in the wake of your harsh words.

(Though, that might just be the liquor.)

“Her daddy was a doctor,” Queenie whispers to him quietly as she and Violetta help Nicholas up onto the wooden table at the centre of the room at your instruction, leaning him back until he’s laid flat across it with a grunt. “Only one The Bend’s seen in the last 80 years."

“Prudence, you better shut your damn mouth if you want me to do anything about this mess,” you snap without looking up, busy rifling through the ancient leather medicine bag that Charity just dragged in from the other room.

You tend to Priscilla first, fixing her up with a compress on her cheek and a salve for the cut on her lip. She’s not the most desperate case in the room, but no one tries to turn your attention to the man on the table until you’re good and ready to do so of your own accord—a unanimous, though entirely unspoken, pact of silence lest your precarious agreement to help be withdrawn. Once you’re satisfied that the woman’s been sufficiently looked after, leaving her once more in the dutiful care of Theodosia, you finally turn to Nicholas.

The lamplight is fairly dim, even though you’ve moved it closer to the table to help illuminate your work—and there’s very little oil in the grimy reservoir of the glass lamp to keep it burning.

You approach him slowly.

“You a lefty?” you ask him, plunking yourself down in the wooden chair nearest to his injured left arm.

“Luckily not,” he slurs, his head lolling over to look at you as you sit beside him at the table.

“Luckily?” You huff, and Nicholas thinks that maybe it’s as close to a laugh as someone as mirthless as you ever gets. “You must not’ve heard: luck left The Bend years ago, and it’s not coming back.”

Nicholas really does find himself laughing then in the face of your plain, bur distinctly dour expression—and he immediately winces as a sharp pain shoots through him from the strain of trying to hold it back.

Your eyes survey the sopping, blood-soaked handkerchief he’s holding to his injury, then you lean over towards the medicine bag and begin digging through it again. He watches as you pull out an inhumanely large needle and some thread.

“Clear out, ladies,” you remark flatly to the group of onlookers without glancing up from the contents of the bag before you. “None of you are gonna wanna see this.”

The girls delay momentarily even after you bark out the order, as though worried that once they leave the room your willingness to help may exit with them.

You lift your face in their direction, some gauze and a corked flask of an indistinguishable transparent liquid in hand. Your lips pull down noticeably at the corners when you see the way the women are hesitating. “Go on, then. I’m making this exception for you once, and never again. Get Ada back home safe, and then the rest of you oughta do the same.”

Still, no one seems keen to heed your words.

You and Violetta share a pointed look, and it’s clear your patience—hardly-there to begin with—has worn dangerously thin.

“Alright, whores—clear out!” the older woman says, turning on her heel and corralling Queenie, Charity, Priscilla, and Theodosia towards the door with her arms outstretched. “Unless one of y’all are keen to be the next one who needs stitchin'!”

It takes a moment to get everyone moving—Charity in particular putting up more of a fight than the rest of them—but eventually Violetta succeeds in ushering them out. She casts one final glance back from the doorway, and Nicholas catches the exchange of almost imperceptible nods of thanks between you.

It’s unbearably quiet once they’re gone.

You move swiftly but silently, and set to work without a single word exchanged between you and the man stretched across your table. Without hesitating, you drag a thin blade in two strokes up the front of Nicholas’s bloodstained shirt—one cut along the torso and then another up the sleeve—and then pull off whatever’s in your way. You don’t so much as bat an eye as the tanned skin of his chest and abdomen is suddenly bared; there’s no distinguishable emotion or thought on your face that Nicholas can make out, but he’s also fairly distracted as he bites back the groans of pain that threaten to slip out each time you jostle his injured arm too roughly.

Next, you begin cleaning the surface of the wound—as best you can given that it’s still unstitched—in preparation to fish out and remove the bullet still stuck inside. That little flask from earlier has some sort of antiseptic in it, which Nicholas discerns by the acrid smell and unbearable burning that rips through him as you let it trickle over the open gouge in his skin. He cries out as it happens, and the sound even takes him by surprise—guttural and completely instinctive.

“Don’t be a baby,” you sniff, dabbing away at the blood and antiseptic around his wound with some clean gauze.

“Sorry,” Nicholas mumbles through his panting breaths, pressing his opposite hand over his mouth in an attempt to keep himself quiet.

Your eyes flicker up to his briefly in the wake of his apology, and your gazes meet. You’re the first to look away after the momentary hold.

Next, you tip the flask into your hands, coating your palms in the stinging, astringent antiseptic. The lamplight catches in the little droplets as you shake them from your fingertips.

“My daddy told me once that doctors have to tell lies to keep their patients calm,” you say quietly, your lips pursing forward as you wrap one cool hand underneath his bicep. “Said that it’s just part of the job.”

You suck in a little breath, meeting his gaze briefly once more.

He can’t help but think your eyes look pretty when the light reflects in them like this.

“But I’m no doctor—and this is gonna hurt like fresh hell.”

Outside your rickety little house on the edge of this forgotten, nowhere town, another peal of thunder roars.

You don’t often patch up bullet holes.

In fact, you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve tried.

But you’re not a professional, and you’ve never claimed to be; you’re just a doctor’s daughter who used to follow her father on his rounds through town, helping out whenever and wherever it was needed. Unavoidably, you learned some things along the way—like treatments, and time-honoured remedies, and how to sew a stitch so it won’t pucker when it scars—but you’re about as far as anyone could be from trained. You’ve got no education beyond your reading, writing, and basic arithmetic—what little education the school house in town could offer you until you just stopped going altogether—and your experience is limited only to the care you offer to Big Annie’s girls: whether it’s cleaning up the messes left by their particularly nasty customers or treating them as best you can when they fall ill.

You don’t bother telling any of this to the man bleeding all over your table, though. You doubt it would do him much good.

Daddy used to deal with gunshot wounds all the time. They’re about a dime a dozen in a town like The Bend, after all, where tempers are high and spirits are low—not to mention where the men outnumber the women by about ten-to-one.

And if there’s one thing you know about men, it’s that they all love slinging guns but less than half of them ought to be allowed to—because it always leads to injuries like this. It’s rarely ever women who walk around town getting themselves shot.

But in spite of all that, and your lack of experience, you watched your father go through the motions frequently enough that the movements come to you now like second nature: disinfect, remove, keep pressure, suture, bandage. You know the order of things, and you find your mind clear and your hands steady as you set to work—starting by cleaning him up as best you can to prepare to extract the bullet.

You can see the very butt of it in peeking out from inside his ugly wound; a pesky little thing, slick with blood that catches in the light when his arm twitches towards the lamp. It’s not nestled too deep in there, thankfully, and he’ll probably be fine if he lets it heal properly—but it’ll still hurt like a bitch to pull out.

But that’s his problem, not yours.

Unfortunately, you don’t have a pair of tweezers you trust to pluck the bullet out—at least not a pair that isn’t rusty—so your god-given tools will have to be what you use for the undertaking. You disinfect your hands as best you can before you begin.

“Would you stop squirming?” you mutter under your breath as the man on your table flinches the first time your fingers graze his open wound.

“Sorry,” he mumbles back, and your eyes flicker up to his face again briefly.

This man keeps apologizing to you.

It’s unsettling.

His dark eyes are heavy lidded, but you can still sense them tracing along the lines of your face as you work. There’s visible sweat beading at his temple as he lies flat on his back atop the wooden table in the centre of your home, and his bare chest rises and falls with heavy, laboured breaths that shake every so often on the exhale—the lamplight at your side catches in the perspiration glistening there too, near the little smattering of hair that sits at the highest point of his sternum.

This guy—this stranger who’s bleeding all over the table you eat your meals on—really pisses you off.

He’s got an awful lot of nerve to show up here in the middle of the night, looking for your help after he went and got himself shot. A small part of you knows that’s not entirely fair to think, because he got shot helping Adaline and it was the girls who’d brought him to you in the first place, but you still can’t help but be resentful.

You feel yourself frown.

Your fingertips dip inside the wet heat of his wound for the first time, and he lets out a gasping, wretched groan from deep in the centre of his chest—so loud it almost makes you flinch.

“Don’t pass out,” you warn him flatly, pinning his injured arm more firmly to the table and prodding further in as you try to get a grip on the evasive little bullet with the very tips of your fingers. “You’re dead weight if you’re unconscious, and I’ll drag you outta this house in parts if I have to.”

“Noted,” the dark-haired man says through clenched teeth, his eyes squeezing shut as he attempts to stomach the pain.

You don’t have anything to offer him to dull the sensation—though you’re not sure you’d waste something so precious on him even if you did. After a while, and a bit more poking and prodding, he seems to acclimatize to the agony anyway.

Or at the very least he gets better at masking it.

“I’m Nicholas, by the way,” he grits out after a while of you unsuccessfully trying to remove the bullet—frequently having to pause and wipe away the blood that’s continued to seep from the wound, slicking you down to your wrist. It stains the cuff of your shirtsleeve now, and you regret ever pulling it on to begin with, because you know it will be a nightmare to pound out in the wash.

“Didn’t ask.”

“I know,”—miraculously, he manages to laugh a bit, even as you’ve got two fingers digging around inside his arm—“just thought I’d tell ya anyway.”

You don’t bother replying, your eyes honed in solely on the task at bloody hand.

“‘M grateful for your help, y’know. Even if it’s just an exception,” the man—Nicholas—slurs next, his head tipping to the side on your kitchen table. You can tell that he’s talking, if nothing else, to distract himself. A lonely bead of sweat drips down his throat as he looks at you. “It’s awfully nice of ya to take pity on a no-good brute like me, Mama.”

You feel a crick of irritation tighten in your jaw then, as he parrots your earlier words back to you. Your fingers, still poking around to retrieve the bullet in his shoulder, twitch—and you aren’t sure the gesture is entirely involuntary. The man on the table before you yelps, flinching away from the pain, and you lean closer with your eyes still fixed on the wound piercing his skin.

“Don’t call me that,” you hiss through the dull scrape of your teeth grinding tightly together.

Nicholas lifts his right hand to his mouth, curled into a fist, and his pearly teeth bite down hard into the flesh at the base of his thumb as he pants through the pain. You finally, mercifully, manage to get a grip on that damned bullet, plucking it out and tossing it into the waiting dish atop the table with a delicate, terribly anticlimactic clink. You swiftly press a pad of clean gauze to the wound to staunch the bleeding while you reach for the stitching needle you left set off to the side.

“Hold this,” you order him, and the man lets his hand slip from the bite of his jaw to do as he’s told while you rifle through the bag at your feet. You can see the marks his teeth left in his skin as he takes the gauze from your hand into his own and begins to apply pressure.

You stand and wash your hands off as best you can in the basin of water Georgie brought in for you earlier, poised at the end of the table. The liquid tints pink as you first dip them in, and then slowly it turns an even darker, uglier colour as you properly scrub his blood from your skin. You shake as much of the water off your hands as you can, and then use the front of your shirt to sop up the rest—faintly rust-tinged handprints left in the cotton.

You take your seat once more, and Nicholas watches you through mostly-closed eyes as you set about sterilizing the needle.

“How come I can’t call you that?”

You light a candle using the lamp at your side. Then you swish the needle around in antiseptic before running it through the flickering flame until it sparks—careful not to let it lick too close to your fingertips. Your eyes slide over to Nicholas as you pluck it from the fire.

With his face tilted towards you, another little drop of sweat has tracked down his cheek towards his prominent nose, and it glistens against his flushing skin in the warm light of your oil lamp. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, too—from what you don’t doubt is the combination of pain and whatever booze he’s been guzzling to numb it—and lips part on a shuddering exhalation as you survey his face.

“Call me what?” you mutter, averting your eyes and turning again to search through your medicine bag for a clean roll of bandage.

“Ma—” A sudden, harsh glare cuts him off before he even has the chance to say it. He smiles a little, the expression half-delirious, and you can’t help but think that if he weren’t so weakened from the pain that wracks him, he might have even managed another laugh.

You kiss your teeth quietly. “Only the girls call me that.”

The man bleeding out in the middle of your table clearly knows your tone of voice means not to push it, because he doesn’t. Instead, he turns his head until he’s staring up at your dingy ceiling once more, though you can tell from the faraway look in his eyes he’s not seeing much at all.

“The girls,” Nicholas remarks quietly, speaking more to himself than anything. “You don’t call ‘em by their names.”

That’s right: he’d only know the girls by their working names. You’re surprised he even caught that.

“The hell I don’t,” you mutter, turning back to face him in your seat once more with your last roll of bandage clutched tightly in your hand. You set it down atop the table as you set your supplies up just how you like them. “I call them by the names their mothers gave them.”

Nicholas hums thoughtfully. “Sarah Jane, that’s Violetta?”

You grunt out an affirmative, threading the freshly cleaned needle with nimble, dextrous accuracy.

“And Charity, her real name’s Bertie?”

“Bertha May,” you correct him, snipping away the excess thread with a little pair of mostly-dull scissors—careful not to take more than you’ll need, but still giving yourself sufficient supply to work with.

“Priscilla’s name’s Adaline,” Nicholas continues, his eyes still tracing the cracks in your ceiling. “And what about Theodosia and Queenie?”

“Georgina and Prudence,” you supply flatly as you secure a tight knot in the end of the stitching thread.

Nicholas sighs before slurring, “’s a lot to keep track of.”

You snort. “Wait until you find out Big Annie’s real name.”

He looks over at you with wider eyes than you’ve seen on him since he came staggering through your door. He catches the expression on your face and his own softens, clearly sensing that you’d said it only in jest.

Annie’s just short for Annabelle, after all. Madam’s rarely need to take up new personas—why would they need to be someone they’re not if they aren’t the ones doing the dirty work?

Nicholas watches as you tug on the stitching thread one last time to test its strength—eying the glinting needle warily. You set the threaded implement carefully off to the side once you’re confident it’s ready.

“So you learned all this stuff from your daddy, huh?” he asks you next.

You swallow over the unpleasant lump you suddenly feel in the back of your throat and reach up, nudging his hand away from where he’s holding the gauze to his wound. He’s become a real chatterbox now, and part of you wonders why you’re even tolerating it.

You clean the area with antiseptic again—and Nicholas is just as dramatic as he was the first time as a low moan of pain tears through him. For a moment you worry he really might be on the brink of passing out, the whites of his eyes taking over as they begin to roll back, so you know you need to keep him focused.

“He used to take me with him on his rounds,” you mumble a reply to his earlier question.

Nicholas’s eyes open a bit wider when he hears your voice, a little more focused now than they had been.

“My daddy, I mean,” your tone is dismissive and flippant, but it seems to be an effective distraction. “I just picked things up here and there while I watched him work.”

“You’re a natural.”

You snort mirthlessly in the wake of his reply. “Don’t know about all that.”

“You just pulled a bullet outta my arm with your bare hands, that’s gotta count for something.” Nicholas hisses as you press the antiseptic-soaked gauze to his wound one last time, then he sucks in a sharp breath. “And the girls trust you a lot, so you must be good at it.”

“Somebody’s gotta take care of them.”

Lord knows no one else around here does.

You set the scarlet saturated gauze aside in the dish with the discarded bullet, then pick up your needle.

You make neat, even sutures through his skin, and you take your time to do it right. You’ve always been good at this kind of thing, even when you were young. You were born with a keen eye for detailed work like this, and your daddy used to get you to finish up the smaller wounds he was called to treat that needed finer stitching—said your little hands were just better at it than his own big, life-roughened ones. He always used to tell you that you got your steady hands from him, but your nimble fingers from your mother.

Not that you’d know anything about that.

Nicholas has stopped flinching now, a little more relaxed than he’d previously been, and you can’t help but look up at him every so often as you work—wondering if that steady, even rise and fall of his chest means that he’s finally knocked out. Especially since he’s suddenly gone so quiet.

But each time you check, you find his eyes are still open—though only just barely—and are peering up towards the ceiling. Sometimes you catch him glancing at you too.

Once the wound has been fully closed in a tidy little line of stitches, you wrap the roll of bandages around it with some gauze tucked underneath, just in case.

“You’re all done,” you say quietly, slumping back in your chair once you’re finally finished.

All at once, you feel exhausted—the adrenaline you didn’t even know had been rushing through you disappearing in a blink. It reminds you of how the wind dies in the valley in the wake of a bad storm, like it took the breeze with it. You’re all too conscious of the fact that it’s the middle of the night now, and that you ought to long be asleep.

“Thank you,” Nicholas says as he pushes himself up onto the elbow of his uninjured arm, though he still winces at the movement. You don’t make any attempt to help him.

His shirt is in pieces, and he discards it since it’s of so little use to him now, shaking his right arm to free it from the only sleeve that remains in tact on the garment. You watch as he pushes himself fully upright, throwing his long legs over the side of the table to stand. When he does, he dips slightly—like the sudden movement makes him woozy, and his knees are weak—and his right hand shoots out to balance himself on the edge of the tabletop on instinct. You suppose it’s not unexpected given the amount of blood he lost.

You watch his toned, tanned back as he stretches himself out as much as his injury will allow; observing how his skin pulls taught over the defined musculature that surrounds his spine. He’s littered with scars—a map of wounds that weren’t stitched as neatly as the new one on his upper arm—and part of you can’t help but wonder how he got them all. Can’t help but wonder what stories those marks tell, written in a language you don’t know how to read.

You look away, feeling an inexplicable heat flood rapidly to your cheeks.

You stand and quickly slip off your own overshirt—just some old button-up left behind from your father, though you have no memories of him ever wearing it. You clutch it in your fist and stick it out for him to take.

He eyes it in surprise for a moment before accepting it.

“Those blood stains are yours, anyway. You might as well have it,” you say, eyeing the red mark at the cuff on the right-hand sleeve as the garment passes from your hold into his, “in any case it’s in better shape than the one you came here with.”

It saves having to clean it, too. So it’s all the same to you.

“I’ll pay you,” he slurs, still unsteady on his feet as he begins rifling awkwardly through his pockets with his only useable hand. He almost tips right over in his haste, but you quickly slip beside him and steady his frame.

“Yeah, you will,” you agree, holding tight to his right arm to keep him standing. “Worry about it tomorrow.”

Nicholas’ bare skin radiates warmth with only your thin, lace-trimmed undershirt left separating you as you stand pressed into his side. He peers down at you curiously, blinking slowly like he’s being called to sleep. From this close, with him standing properly upright for the first time, you realize just how big this man is—tall, with a broad chest and defined muscles, and stubble dusted along his sharp jawline that you hadn’t noticed before. You take a sudden step away to put much needed distance between the two of you, these realizations making something stir in the pit of your stomach that makes you feel squeamish.

“Do you know your way back to the inn?” you ask him, your arms crossing over your front.

Nicholas bobs his head in a completely unconvincing nod. It’s not like the town is big enough to get lost in in the first place—and he very well might know his way if it were daylight, or he weren’t half delirious—but sending him out into The Bend in his current state would be as much of a death sentence as it would have been to turn him away when he first showed up at your door.

You sigh in resignation.

“Just sleep on the floor here for tonight. I’ll check your stitches again tomorrow morning before you leave.”

The man looks taken aback, but he nods quickly—as though he doesn’t want to give you time to rescind the unexpected offer.

You fish around in the depths of your father’s old medicine bag, eventually pulling out a bottle of murky liquid as Nicholas gets settled with an old cushion and a threadbare quilt near the unlit hearth of the fireplace. You use the edge of your nail to uncork it, take a quick whiff to make sure it’s the right one, and then tread towards the man on the other side of the room.

He peers up at you from his makeshift bed on the floor, resting with his knees apart and his long legs sprawled out in front of him. You pass the little glass bottle to him, your fingers brushing as it passes from your grip into his. “Drink this, it helps to fight off infection.”

He eyes it warily. The outside of the bottle is suspiciously grimy, and the putrid colour of the liquid inside is no less reassuring. “What is it?”

“Hog Fennel.”

He grimaces, peeking into the opening of the bottle with one eye closed. “Sounds foul.”

You snort. “It is."

Nicholas doesn’t draw it out any longer, tipping the vial back an draining it all in one shot. He winces once he swallows it down, his pink tongue peeking out a little as he pants through the taste—which you’re sure is bitter and disgusting.

“How was it?” you ask him wryly.

“I’ve had worse, honestly,” he says, shooting you a little grin you can’t believe he’s able to manage not only in the wake of such a disgusting concoction but considering what he’s been through that night.

You blink, your brow furrowing, and then eventually nod dismissively before turning and shuffling off towards the other side of the room where the door to your bedroom is found.

“Thank you.”

Nicholas speaks again as you’re just shy of crossing the threshold into your room, you consider pausing in your shock but then think better of it.

“You already said that,” you reply, your tone annoyed, and shut the door behind you.

You open it again a second later to poke your head back out towards him.

“I’ve got a gun in here, by the way, and I won’t miss. Just in case you were thinking of trying anything funny.”

Across the room, Nicholas is already laying down on his pitiful excuse of a resting place, looking strangely content.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says with a smile, though his eyes stay closed.

Part of you is annoyed at how comfortable he seems. How easily he talks to you. How normal his presence feels in your home.

Another part of you—one that’s deeper, locked away and hidden out of sight in a place where you think you’ve lost they key—isn’t.

You slip back into your room and close the door behind you with a soft click.

And in the silent stillness of your little bedroom with your shoulder blades pressed back into your bedroom door, you realize that the thunder outside has stopped but you can hear the softest, faintest pitter patter of raindrops through cracked glass of your window.

Rain came back to The Bend.

Maybe luck would follow.

#nicholas wolfwood x reader #wolfwood x reader #poly vashwood #trigun writing #trigun fic #writing

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mintywolf · 3 months

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A Long Road Home - Page 49 Author Notes

Page 49

Here we go. o.o

On Laudna’s shelf are two tabaxi dolls, either inspired by this guy

and his little sister or intended to be gifts for them. Unfortunately, some people just don’t appreciate a little hut in the woods being populated by handmade dolls. :(

Laudna hiding under the bed in fear is something tenuously connected to her backstory in scenes that may or may not actually show up in the comic depending on how much information I have when I get there. In the original draft of this page she was just sitting on the bed holding Pâté and waiting but since then we’ve learned that she spent some time in what was implied to be Lord and Lady de Rolo’s old bedchamber, either hiding or imprisoned there. (Matt and Marisha seemed to give conflicting accounts on this, unless it was both?) Either way, if she was using it as a refuge or being kept there by the Briarwoods I thought she’d probably have felt more secure underneath the bed than in it.

Regardless, Laudna tends to regress to a childlike mindset when she’s scared or upset and hiding under the bed seems like something she’d do. (Tangentially, I have wondered where Laudna slept for the few days after the gnarlrock incident, if she’d be too afraid to impose on Imogen by sleeping in what she’d perceive as her bed while she was still mad at her, and where else she’d sleep if so. I thought probably the floor next to the bed, so she could remain close to her without disturbing her, or maybe under it, which like a lot of Laudna-related details seems amusingly creepy until it’s sad, so that’s my headcanon.)

This panel of Imogen running through the woods to rescue Laudna in her jammies is one that I’ve had planned pretty much since the genesis of the comic. I didn’t give a lot of thought to her coat (other than intending for her to be wearing one) until I had to draw it and since Laudna making her a new coat when they’re living in the mountains in the next chapter is a detail mentioned now in two fanworks I have posted she can’t already have one that she cares about or at least thinks to bring with her when she leaves Gelvaan. So I thought maybe it was an old coat of her dad’s that she just throws on when she needs to do chores outside in the winter or even currently belongs to him and she just grabbed it when she ran out the door. So that’s why it’s too big on her.

I'm really bad at estimating distance but I'm pretty sure I'm breaking the rules on the limits of the message spell here. But it's an intentional callback to page 21:

Laudna: Now my thoughts will be with you even if I can’t be. Imogen: If you ever need me, you just call out to me, and I’ll come runnin’, okay? Laudna: Is that a promise? Imogen: It’s a promise.

so I feel it is justified.

Throughout this chapter Laudna has owned exactly two shirts and I knew whichever one she's wearing for this last plot arc is going to be the one she takes into the next chapter because everything else in her house gets burned, and I decided I liked the grey one better but I'd put her in the red one for the scarlet fever arc because she had been wearing the other one for several pages before at the harvest festival so I intentionally had her tear her sleeve on the fence in the last page so she'd have a reason to change.

#a long road home #author notes

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waitmyturtles · 1 year

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CW: MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS FOR THE MOVIE “THE PORNOGRAPHER: PLAYBACK.” LONG POST!

I feel like there’s been something humming in the wind lately around the franchise of The Novelist/The Pornographer. We’ve seen a cameo by the incomparable Izuka Kenta in Candy Color Paradox, Yoshida Munehiro is about to cameo in The End of the World, With You, and The Novelist’s Twitter account has been buzzing with news about new DVDs and theater showings of the last installment of the franchise, The Pornographer: Playback. Miki Koichiro, the screenwriter and director of the franchise, has TWO shows out at the moment, the aforementioned TEOTWWY, as well the sessy-sessy Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu, the three seasons of which I am dying to watch as soon as there’s a solidly bad season of QL sometime in the future (which seems like will never happen in my lifetime, bless all these amazing QLs for coming out every season!). Couple all of this with recent reviews of the OG Novelist and Mood Indigo series by the fabulous @gillianthecat (here) and @respectthepetty (here), and I was happily reminded of good times of watching all of these parts way way back when I first discovered QL/BL in 2019/20.

When the amazing @lurkingshan commented on a stray thoughts post by @bengiyo that she had seen The Pornographer: Playback, I was VERY intrigued. With HUGE thanks and big ups to @lurkingshan, I watched it over the weekend, and here are my thoughts! I’m going to put up a break to keep y’all from getting spoiled if you want to avoid it.

First off, let’s make sure we know what all the installments are, and that we’ve watched what we’ve needed to get to the movie. We have:

1) 2018 -- The Novelist: the original meeting between student Kuzumi Haruhiko and adult author Kijima Rio

2) 2019 -- Mood Indigo: a prequel depicting the sexual engagements between Kijima Rio and his classmate, Kido Shirou

3) 2021 -- The Pornographer: Spring Life: a very short vignette set 2 1/2 years after Kuzumi and Kijima first met. They’re now in a long-distance relationship, and Kuzumi visits Kijima in the countryside at Kijima’s sister’s house, where he’s living as he continues to write.

(The first three works are all available on Viki.)

So I was BEYOND THRILLED to get to watch the movie and see all of this wrap up. If most of y’all only watched up to Mood Indigo, you saw Kijima re-meet with Kuzumi. Kuzumi, at that time, was just becoming a successful employee in the advertising business.

Spring Life hints that things are still going well for Kuzumi, and that he was looking forward to spending a summer break with his long-distance boyfriend. Most notably, the piece ends with Kuzumi jumping from honorifics, by asking Kijima if he (Kuzumi) could call Kijima “Rio-san,” which we know indicates intimacy. Kijima’s like, whatever you’d like, and the smile on Kuzumi’s face takes up the whole screen, it seems.

So then we finally get to The Pornographer: Playback, which begins during the same summer break. Continuing with the theme and mood that I like to call melosexual (the music alone of this franchise is SO INTENSE, let alone the heaty sex scenes), the guys head to a love hotel and do their thang. At the end of the night, as they’re getting dressed, Kijima finds a business card in Kuzumi’s wallet for a hostess club that Kuzumi is forced to go to with work colleagues.

Without divulging a tremendous amount more about the plot at this moment, the movie is basically structured around the push-and-pull of Kijima’s inability to move authentically closer to people -- not just Kuzumi, but also his sister, who Kijima disappoints repeatedly by backing out of family events.

Kijima’s essentially paralyzed by fear and insecurity that he is a terrible person -- one that is not worthy of love. His sister is so overwhelmingly angry about it that she essentially kicks him out of the house, and blames their mother for never calling him out on his namby-pamby bullshit (at least, that’s in her eyes). At another point in the movie, he frustrates Kuzumi so much that Kuzumi walks out on the relationship and heads back to Tokyo, a surprising move for the otherwise always-devoted younger companion.

It takes a serious scolding by a hospitalized and flirtatious owner of a karaoke snack bar (you read that right) for Kijima to get his damn head back on straight and fight for his relationship with Kuzumi. (And, HILARIOUSLY, I was cackling -- in the process of this, Kijima has KIDO -- KIDO OF ALL PEOPLE -- call Kuzumi on Kijima’s behalf, to get Kuzumi to talk to Kijima to reconcile. KIJIMA used KIDO to call KUZUMI. Lord.)

Okay, so what I’m really getting at here is that the movie showed that the whole franchise was missing two KEY elements that the first three parts did not have: comedy and authentic emotional connection. There was actually a little comedy in this! Besides the whole Kido thing (which I’ll get back to in a minute), there were a couple of bumbling moments that were designed to elicit some lightness, mostly with the snack bar owner, a flighty gal with a lovely son who tries to hook up with takes Kijima under her wing.

About the other element: we FINALLY, FINALLY SAW KIJIMA SHOWING SOME EMOTION ABOUT SOMETHING. He really regretted letting things go to shit with Kuzumi. Kuzumi called Kijima out for wasting Kuzumi’s time to leave work in Tokyo and visit the countryside. Kuzumi felt like Kijima wasn’t taking him seriously, and was constantly pulling back. I mean -- Kijima was living away from Kuzumi.... for what, exactly? It’s not ever clearly explained. And Kuzumi got angry and left.

This is a great time to mention the excellent post by @emotionallychargedtowel on pursuer-distancer dyads, because the Kijima-Kuzumi push-and-pull in this movie perfectly defined this dyad dance. When Kuzumi got fed the fuck up and pulled way back -- Kijima finally stepped into his emotion and owned his desire to be with Kuzumi.

Honestly, in the first three installments of this franchise -- I felt like Kijima really didn’t talk too much. I felt like he was far more defined by his brooding, his letting the winds take him to where he was at any given moment, ragingly sexual and lonely all at once. He simmered -- he was flinty, defensive, and used his sexual energy to dominate and burn the emotional energy all around himself.

The movie showed a TOTALLY different side of him. To me, the movie showed that his relationship with Kuzumi, long distance as it was, HAD a softening impact on him -- even to the point that Kijima dropped everything he was up to in the countryside to head to Tokyo and fight for the relationship. Kijima needed to be rendered totally alone, one last time, to come to realize that the connection he had with Kuzumi was worth fighting for.

And, yes, in the process of it, he brought back Kido in the mix -- which was also seriously poignant.

REALLY SERIOUS SPOILER HERE, y’all, especially if you love/hate/gaaahh that awful devil, Kido!

. . . . . .

Kido asks Kijima if they could have ever had the same kind of relationship as Kijima is fighting for with Kuzumi! AAAAAHHHH! AND! AND! KIJIMA SAYS, no way. We’re too similar.

WHICH IS TOTALLY TRUE! They’re both self-indulgent, selfish assholes! I mean, after that insane sex scene in Mood Indigo, Kido just fucking LEFT -- he just LEFT, and GOT MARRIED, and HAD A KID, and was like, peace the fuck out, I can’t actually be my honest queer self with you, Kijima, because I think that’s actually abnormal (oh, Kido, you internally messed up piece of shit, AAAHHH).

Whereas, as beautifully analyzed in @respectthepetty‘s review, Kuzumi represents honesty and openness -- the kind of traits that Kijima doesn’t have, but is aspiring to, in order to be with Kuzumi. AAAHHH.

I was seriously like, WHOA, WHAT AM I WATCHING HERE, at that moment. AND, AND? At the end of that scene? Kido wishes Kijima good luck. And says: “You better keep Kuzumi-kun. He’s a valuable asset.” Of course, what a Kido thing to say -- that humans are assets, commodities. But -- he sends Kijima off with good wishes.

And then.

Kijima reunites with Kuzumi. He called Kuzumi by Kuzumi’s name, Haruhiko. AND -- holy shit, y’all, my mind was blown. He tells Kuzumi that he loves Kuzumi by saying ichiban aishiteru.

I tell you, I was FLOORED. All throughout the movie, I’m like, “dang, Kijima keeps talking and talking, and I just don’t remember him TALKING all that much before in the other three series.”

And then he DROPS the ichiban aishiteru! And I think BOTH me AND Kuzumi are BOTH LIKE, WHAT THE DAMN, DUDE!

I’ve spoiled a LOT, but I won’t say more after this, except to say the following:

The ending was one of the happiest, LOVELIEST endings of a drama/movie I’ve seen in QL. Oh. my. god. Talk about SATISFYING. EVERY. CHECKBOX. MARKED. Takezai Terunosuke and Izuka Kenta were MAGNIFICENT. I had SERIOUS tears. They got in everything -- they got the heat, they got in FAMILY, LOTS OF FAMILY, GORGEOUS shots, FEELINGS. ALL OF IT.

@bengiyo made an excellent point recently in one of his reviews of TEOTWWY that it seems like Japan lately has only been doing high heat in stories about death. It’s an accurate point: all of the pieces of The Novelist came out well before TEOTWWY and Eternal Yesterday, the two most recent shows about death that had heaty elements. I kind of wonder about something. I wonder if other directors and screenwriters are like.... The Novelist did it the best. We can’t mess with that standard.

Because -- Takezai’s and Izuka’s acting in those scenes is BEYOND EXCELLENT. It was NECESSARILY EXCELLENT to end this franchise on such a warm, happy, COMPLETE high note.

Now that I can look back on all four parts of the whole franchise, what Miki Koichiro did for us by way of Kijima was to show the whole-scale growth of a man vis à vis love. This guy, Kijima -- a brilliant writer who was influenced by a sexually provocative teacher, someone who was left inexplicably behind by a tormented, internally homophobic lover/benefactor -- felt he was deserving of nothing. And then he found his something in Kuzumi. He nearly destroyed the relationship, multiple times. And as he fell and slipped while climbing the hill of happiness, he was able to get a stronger and stronger grip each time he tried harder. And he was supported by people around him, including family and random friends, to give him lift.

This movie was a lot more straightforward than I had honestly expected. I 100% expected more of the melosexualness of the first three parts of the series. Instead, what I got was a WHOLESOME (I can’t believe I’m using that word, but it’s true!), complete, and uplifting story of a man finding his true happiness in his lover, his companion, his chosen family. All of it certainly laced with heat, for sure, but also very deep, very convincing love.

It was utterly fabulous. It might be too emotional, maybe too family-oriented for some who preferred the dark heat of the previous installments. But Playback, in my eyes, was a perfect closing note for a man who honestly deserved happiness after the work, and the SELF-CHANGE he put in, to get love in the first place. If you are a fan of this whole series, and can get your hands on the movie, I beg you to watch it, even just for one of the best happy endings you’ll ever see in QLs.

#spoilers #the novelist #the pornographer #the novelist: playback #the novelist playback #the pornographer: playback #the pornographer playback #mood indigo #the novelist: spring life #the novelist spring life #the pornographer: spring life #the pornographer spring life #takezai terunosuke #izuka kenta #yoshida munehiro #miki koichiro

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partyoffourplusfur · 8 months

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Ya know I’m not sure I’ve ever formally posted about our dog, Greg, on here. Getting ready to try a new training tool so why not start documenting on here 🤷‍♀️

We got Greg 2? Years ago (time melts into eachother these days) and he’s great. He’s a 3 year old mini poodle (I think he’s a schnauzer/poodle mix) Loves to play fetch, tug, and “get that dog”. He’s amazing with the kids. So tolerant and vocal about when he doesn’t want to be messed with which the kids have learned to back off which is also great. He plays with the cats. (Well Billie. They’re bffs. Olive isn’t a fan of playing with him. She’s a cranky old lady) He loves being brushed and I’m able to groom him myself (a fantastic trait of a long haired pet for a broke ass bitch)

BUT he’s reactive. And it’s a real pain in the ass.

But. He’s just reactive. Not aggressive. I always feel the need to clarify that.

Mostly to other dogs and men. Can’t just let people live their lives.

He will bark up a big bad storm, but the moment said person is near him, he’s on his back asking for belly rubs 🙄 literally. He was barking at a guy running in the neighborhood. Living his life. And got away from us and I had to yell at the guy (he’s just loud! He won’t bite you! And Greg just rolled over the second he was in arms distance of the dude🙄) all bark no bite.

Dogs on the other hand, I keep him away from of course because im not going to let anyone potentially get bit.

We had an instance where a neighbor dog was loose (it’s a whole thing. I actually called animal control on them and they haven’t been out loose since. Anyways) and came near us and Greg lost his freaking mind. Dog was friendly and just wanted to say hi but Greg only saw a threat to me and the kids and I was swinging him in the air by his harness so he didn’t get close enough to bite them or be bit because at that point I would have abandoned him to get the kids inside and then who knows what kind of damage would have been done to the both of them.

We’ve tried redirecting with a clicker and treats. And that works when we’re inside the house. Not so much when we’re in public. Because he’s like DANGER! DANGER! A THREAT TO MY BABIES! A THREAT TO MY MOM! even though everyone is totally fine and he’s the one making a fool of himself.

Anywho. Next we’re trying a bark collar. Which I’ve always been pretty against. Because like who wants to SHOCK their pet? But I’ve discovered that bark collars these days typically have settings, where they first beep, and then they vibrate, and then they’ll shock. And you can change the intensity of the vibrate and shock settings. So really it can be very subtle. And lots of reviews said once their dog realized what the beep meant, they generally learned to shut the heck up because they didn’t want to be shocked. So we’re gonna try it inside the house for a week or so and once we’re not barking so much in the home, then we’ll try neighborhood walks, then try being in public. And hopefully he’ll learn to not bark and we can stop using the collar.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just when he was in public. He’s unfortunately pretty reactive to Jesus a lot of the time and always trying to “protect” me (even though I swear he’s his favorite person) Oh like for example last night I fell asleep in bed and Jesus was playing games. Greg was in bed with me and he also fell asleep. Jesus came in to get the phone charger and spooked Greg and he was barking up a storm (and scared the shit out of me) at Jesus even though he clearly knows THAT HE LIVES HERE TOO like damn dude. It’s not that big of a deal he’s allowed to come into his own room. Chilllllllll.

Anyways yeah that’s what’s going on with the dog and I have pretty high hopes. It’d be great if he could at the very least learn to not bark when in the house. He barks at the neighbors when they come into the building or sometimes when they’re walking around too loud upstairs.

Greg is just a loud boy with anxiety.

#Greg #Gregory #reactive doggo #reactive not aggressive #one time he snipped at the kids and it was a final straw for me and I was ready to throw him out and give him away but were past that now

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talkingwithghosts555 · 2 months

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A Conversation with James Dean

K: Oh man, this is a trip.

J: (grins) Why?

K: Because, I haven’t talked to someone new in a very long time and you finally come through all the way. I always wondered why you hovered around in the background for so long and today it’s like…suddenly. I have to say, sort of crappy timing on your part.

J: (continues to grin) First…(raises a finger) it wasn’t the time for introductions but my curiosity about you was always very strong. Second…(raises finger) sometimes it’s better for people to channel when they’re sick because their defences are very low.

K: I don’t think I have defences when I channel.

J: Everybody has defences when they channel. More about is this right or is this wrong…is it true. When someone’s sick, all of that goes away because the person’s energy is concentrating on fighting a virus and isn’t concerned about fighting what’s uncomfortable.

K: Oooo. That’s a good way to put it. To be honest, I’ve always sort of felt like we’ve known each other even though we’ve never met and I’m wondering, without giving too much away…

J: (nods while sipping on a mug of something…I assume it’s coffee) Very wise.

K: If you are an aspect of someone I already know in spirit.

J: Like…did I come back as their face, because I just couldn’t stay away, and we did somewhat the same things?

K: Kinda like that, yes.

J: (nods while lighting a cigarette, inhales, and exhales) Something like that.

K: Still smoke?

J: At least here, it’s doesn’t cause any real damage. I need to stay busy with my hands.

K: Got it. Then, reincarnation…

J: (gives me a confused look) I don’t much care for the term.

K: What would you call it?

J: Huh. (thinks) Another chance. When people die, they go back and they look at what they’ve done and if they feel it was a finished project or not. I didn’t feel like my project was finished. I wanted to get back as soon as I could but the circumstances had to be right, so I had to wait a few years to do that and I wanted it as close as possible to what I had already done and that happened. That was created for me and I was lucky it was.

K: Then not everyone gets that chance?

J: I was pretty adamant about it. (inhales the cigarette)

K: Can you be? If a person dies and doesn’t feel they finished something, can they just demand to come back.

J: I’ve known people that dive back in within…a day of dying.

K: You’re joking????

J: No. I’m not. Earth is a…for a rebel…(winks) it’s just as adrenaline filled as any stunt would be. The difficult part of that is…nobody really understands that until they die. No one really understands the beauty of it until they die and when that epiphany comes…for those that love the rush, they come back.

K: When I hear about NDEs (near death experiences) most people say they don’t want to come back.

J: A lot don’t.

K: You’ve been channeled before, right?

J: Lots of times. (sips coffee)

K: Why do you want to do that again with me?

J: The connection is different. The relationship is different.

K: Okay.

J: It’s nice for us…(pats his chest) to connect with someone on a different sort of level. You’ve heard that before.

K: I have.

J: There are so many great connectors out there. That’s what I call mediums. I call them connectors. And once in a while, you’ll find one that you can just step into and hold hands with without it being awkward. The others, you keep at a distance and just talk about the easy stuff. Like shootin’ the breeze with an acquaintance.

K: Did you have a lot of those, sort of lighter conversations, with people when living?

J: I wanted to connect. I really did. I think from the experiences I had when I was growing up, I sort of protected myself from sharing too much. I found protection in the acting. I found that I didn’t have to show who I really was because I could act it and be believed.

K: Did you ever show your true self to anyone?

J: Only a select few. I had a few rocky relationships…on and off again relationships because they could see that I was faking it…acting even if I wasn’t on a job and that created friction. I guess you could say, I didn’t give into trust very easily.

K: Interesting. I have that same issue. I don’t trust very easily.

J: (inhales and exhales) No one blames you for it.

K: I didn’t think anyone did.

J: (grins) It only takes one, right.

K: For sure.

J: (shakes his head slightly and smiles) I guess the circumstances of one’s youth really does create impressions…keeps people wanting to hang tight to things real close and the only way to do that is to pretend you’re someone entirely different.

K: What happened to you? In your youth that kept you so hidden?

J: Abuse. Abuse from someone I was supposed to trust…that everyone else trusted and because everyone else trusted him, I was meant to as well.

K: I’m sorry about that.

J: After my mother died, I was desperate for that sort of care. That sort of…comfort that only a mom could give a son at a very young age but that also made me a little bit…vulnerable because when I needed that, that sort of care came in the guise of sex and when you’re young, you start to believe that’s what love or comfort was.

K: Did you feel comforted when you were abused?

J: Something in me told me this wasn’t what I was looking for. It was shame for me because I felt ashamed that I actually thought it was the same thing…comfort and abuse. So, I never shared that part of my life with very many people.

K: What happened when you did?

J: Depends on the person. For some, it excused my behavior. I wasn’t always a nice guy. I would act out, lash out, sometimes resort to violence in my adult temper tantrums especially when I was alone. And those that excused me for it used the abuse as a reason to. (drops the cigarette and steps on it) Some gave me the sympathy which I hated. I hated every bit of sympathy given to me. It made me feel like I was someone who showed weakness and I didn’t want to be seen as weak. I don’t know. (shrugs) Life’s moments, when you’re young, and all you’re ever meant to be is innocent…can really fuck a person up.

K: For sure. I hear that. Was acting an escape for you then?

J: Like a lot of people, it gave me the chance to explore different parts of myself. Different ways to love someone else. It allowed me to learn about human nature, what worked with others and what didn’t. I used to take what I acted out in movies…I used to take that into my daily life and act that role and noted how people responded to it.

K: Were you ever really James to anyone?

J: I didn’t really know who James was.

K: When I look at your picture. I don’t see a young man. I don’t see someone who died in their early twenties. You seem older somehow. Would you consider yourself to be an old soul?

J: Yeah. I would take that title. Old soul.

K: Do you find that the old souls…who come to earth all the time since the beginning…those are the ones that are chomping at the bit to come back as soon as possible?

J: Depends on the job. If an old soul has only ever known earth, they want to come back as soon as possible. If an old soul is part of a greater collective of energies, they have the tendency to want to go back to any one of those collectives and not return to earth for a long, long time. When was you last life on earth? (sips coffee)

K: 1921.

J: Then, you didn’t wait too long to come back either.

K: Much to the chagrin of celestials that shall not be named.

J: (shrugs and chuckles) Sometimes what’s in our spirit’s best interest doesn’t agree with others. It’s all personal.

K: Just like here.

J: Just like here which is so beautiful. Everything is just a fucked up beautiful disaster.

K: So, after coming back as our mutual acquaintance…do you feel like you accomplished what you wanted?

J: In a relatively short amount of time, it all clicked. Plus, I wanted to leave a legacy and I did that.

K: Why did you want to leave a legacy?

J: I think that legacies of doing good are important. Not just a legacy built on a face of someone but a legacy of what we leave behind…what good we did. As much good as I did as James, it wasn’t nearly what I accomplished in the life after that and that’s what I’m most proud of. It had to be on those timelines that happened. I guess you could say my life as James was a test run.

K: Being the face of James, have you connected with this other life? After they died?

J: Absolutely. It’s like…having a twin brother.

K: I haven’t been able to really wrap my head and heart around the higher self and the soul aspects of someone because one spirit will still come as different faces and it’s very hard to feel like those are all the same…person. I guess I need to use person because it’s what I see.

J: I get it. Absolutely. That’s the beautiful disaster and that’s the power of spirit. That not only can a person connect with one aspect but of all the aspect of the One. And it can send people, who aren’t ready for that, into a tailspin of sorts. But when a person is ready for that, it’s just a general acceptance of the whole thing and whoever you see in the moment, is who you see with that greater understanding that not only do you connect with one but with all. This is the lesson that humanity is learning, that by connecting with one, they actually connect with the All. People talk about oneness but oneness doesn’t mean not seeing everything that makes up the One. What’s the best part, is seeing the intricacies of the one…as all these different experiences that contribute to it. Intricacies never block. They are the cosmic DNA of the One and every bit of DNA contributes that that special part of someone that is just a contribution to the Whole.

K: Wow.

J: I got that when I came back. Because the spirit doesn’t understand what’s real and what’s not real. Everything is real and spirit will live all parts as a contribution to the whole thing. When I understood that, I didn’t have a reason to go back. Not right away. There are people that need to live their lives and come back to this side before we both decide we go back together to finish what we started in life. After that, the earth contains us and creates from that part and then we can start creating something new, somewhere different.

K: Wow. That’s amazing. Thank you for your honesty.

J: It’s pretty incredible how all of this is being supported now. Just in this sliver of time (pinches his fingers together) is that awareness supported, but even though it’s supported doesn’t mean that sliver of time will have many takers because it’s still pretty fucked up. It’s a pretty fucked up way to think or believe.

K: TELL ME ABOUT IT!! Thank you for that.

J: I needed a lot of validation in my life as James to make it worth it. It didn’t look like it to the outside world that looked in. But in those quiet moments, I would just beg for some validation about what I was going through. I guess that’s why I had the two sides to me. The rebel and the quiet introvert. Depending, mentally, where I was at, is what you got. If I didn’t receive the validation of a job well done, a person would see a rebel. If I felt confidence, you would see the quiet, contemplative James.

K: Who did you like better?

J: Each had their moments.

K: I’ve only ever seen Rebel without a Cause.

J: That was a long time ago.

K: I think I was…like twelve or something.

J: Why did you watch it?

K: Paula Abdul and Keanu Reeves, of course.

J: (laughing) I guess that…there’s so much foreshadowing in people’s lives.

K: I think that a person would only see the foreshadowing after they died. Like it’s some huge epiphany after the fact.

J: Hindsight is 20/20. Especially here.

K: What is one thing that you wished you did have when you lived as James.

J: (thinks) I guess what anyone would want. A great love story.

K: Is earth a romantic place?

J: It could be more romantic if people gave in to the vulnerability of romance. I couldn’t give over 100% to vulnerability. Even in the quiet moments, I still needed to pretend something because pretending was sometimes easier than the real. To have a great love story, it takes less pretending and more authenticity.

K: That’s beautifully said. Thank you.

J: Audrey says, hi. (he’s smirking, picturing her) Now she…understands what a real love story is.

K: I know she does. She’s amazing. She came in the other day. It was nice to see her.

J: And, you’ll be seeing more of me.

K: What about asking permission?

J: (he’s sort of slouching over the arm of the chair he’s sitting in) I was asking.

K: That was not asking.

J: Okay. May I please come and have more talks with you?

K: Why?

J: Because it’s meaningful to me. Sort of a way to be a part of a great love story.

Heart melts.

K: God! Men! Why is it always dashing men.

J: The ultimate attraction.

K: (laughing) Okay. Yeah, sure. You looking like that and me in a housecoat and sweats, snotting everywhere.

J: It’s the human experience, Kim. A beautiful disaster. Thanks for this.

K: Thanks, James. I’ll be seeing you…I guess.

J: Absolutely. (jumps to his feet and salutes) Until then.

K: See you.

J: Ciao, Bella.

#james dean #spirituality #talking with ghosts #channeling #channeling spirit #new age #mediumship #psychic #intuition #automatic writing #message from spirit #mediumship readings #channeled messages #messages from heaven

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a-student-out-of-time · 1 year

Text

Yeah, I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic to all this, but what’s this got to do with the people we’re asking about?

__________________________________________________

That's just what I was getting to.

It was a particularly cold day when it happened.

__________________________________________________

*December 17th, 2025, Nuuk, Greenland*

Guuh, I’m so sick of the snow...

You wouldn’t be so cold if you got up and moved around.

Says the guy wearing a coat. Lemme borrow it, you can take my spot.

You’re the one who volunteered to be the lookout!

Guugh, Missy, when’s the boat supposed to get here?

Please stop bickering and I’ll tell you.

The captain said they’d be arriving with an hour. From there, they’ll take us to Newfoundland, and we can take a plane back to the United States.

Assuming the sea ice doesn’t keep us boxed in until the spring.

Echo? What do you make of all this?

Huh?

Yeah, can you see anything?

Hmmm...lemme think...

I...I don’t really know...

Your powers worked before, didn’t they?

Because we were in danger. It’s how I managed to keep us on a safe route up to here, but...I don’t really know if I can force it.

Don’t pressure yourself, Echo. You’ve done well up to now.

Yeah, but if I could give us an advantage over them, maybe make sure we all get home, I should keep trying to figure this out, shouldn’t I?

I don’t wanna feel useless...

You’re not useless, Echo.

That’s right. Your power is so knew, it’s not fair to punish yourself about not knowing to use it.

I know, I’m just gonna try and focus...maybe I can get-

GAGH!

Echo? What’s wrong?

Echo?

...I saw them.

Them? The boat, or the Project?!

Th-The-The Project! They’re coming!

Again?! Why can’t they just leave us alone?!

Stay calm, everyone! Remember our plan! We’ll head for the docks, and if necessary, confront them there!

_________________________________________________

We’d been preparing for this for several days now, coming up with plans in the event they came for us.

But we weren’t expecting what happened.

_________________________________________________

There they are!

*In the distance, a group of snowsuit-wearing men with guns converge on the edge of town*

Oh no...

Sei, you head to the docks. I’ll find a way to draw their attention and meet you guys there.

Lyle, no! I’m not leaving you behind!

Don’t argue with me! Someone has to-

*BOOSH!*

*A huge burst of white light and snow flurries erupts in front of the PP personnel, sending them flying back*

Gaah!

Whoa...what the hell was that?

???: That, buddy, was a flashbang arrow!

Who’s there?

Up here!

My name’s Tamon Mayumi, and I’m here to get you guys home.

You...y-you are? Oh my god, yes, please!

And why should we trust you?

You did just see me take out that whole group of guys with an arrow, right?

We can’t wait though, they’ll probably be back up soon!

We’re not going anywhere until you prove this wasn’t a ruse to get us on your side.

Lyle! Sei!

Guys! There’s a helicopter here!

A what?!

Help has arrived! Let’s get out of here!

Told you! Now c’mon, let’s go!

_______________________________________________________

Phew...I can’t believe we got out of there.

You guys were in a tight spot back there. Glad we managed to find you in time.

Yes, and we greatly appreciate the rescue, but who exactly are you?

I’m Esumi Masa, and this is my colleague Tamon Mayumi.

I’ve been investigating your disappearances.

Ah yeah...we’ve been away from home longer than we realized...

I’m sorry we couldn’t find you all sooner. The Kisaragi Foundation only picked up your ship as it past near Japan, and then Ota-san and Konno-san disappeared not too long afterward.

We tracked you all to the arctic, and so I called up Mayumi-chan.

I live in Amsterdam, so when I heard about the situation, I came to help.

So, the signal was picked up by more than just the Project?

Yep, we’re gonna make sure you all are safe from now on.

_________________________________________________

Returning home proved...difficult, I’m afraid.

At the very least, they were able to provide a proper funeral and some closure for the families of those affected. We’ve had to remain in Japan for the time being.

#danganronpa #drlapse #danganronpa lapse #nwpm #neo world program monitor #sdra2 #super danganronpa another 2 #gaea espère #kanon ota #lyle termina #echo pine #missy vesper #sei konno #nikei yomiuri #Mayumi Tamon #Masa Esumi #a student out of time #DR #The Price of Fate arc

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silvermistanimelover · 2 years

Text

Bombs and Lazers (Crackfic)

Soooo... I wrote this lil’ crackfic a while ago, but it never saw the light of day. So here! Enjoy.

Time sighed as he pulled himself together. This was a new Hyrule. Perhaps they were there for a new Link?

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Twilight turned towards his mentor.

“A new hero?”

“Yep.”

“It’s been a while! I’m excited! What do you think he’s like?” Wind bounced happily on his feet.

“Who knows?” Legend kicked a rock. “I just hope they’re not too energetic.”

Not a moment later, a massive explosion blew debris miles into the air. The ground shook and the heroes crouched to keep from falling over.

“What the fuck?!” Wind cried out, only to receive a light cusp upside the head, courtesy of Sky.

“Language.”

“Yes, mom.” He stuck out his tongue.

“Someone might be in trouble, we need to go look.” Twilight stated after a moment. The heroes quickly rushed over to see a small group of bokoblins running for their lives.

At first, all they saw was a strange robotic creature. It glowed blue and had one large eye and legs like a spider. Then, they saw the guy riding it. “Whoop! Yeah! You almost got ‘em! Go Zelds!” He called out, a large grin on his face.

“Your aim’s improving! Go wild, Link!” A female voice made them look up, where they saw a blonde girl riding a similar robot that was flying.

“What… the fuck am I seeing?” Time muttered under his breath.

“I’mma firin ma laser!” The man called out with a cackle as a powerful beam fired straight at the fleeing monsters. They screeched as they were thrown several hundred meters into the air.

“DOCTOR OCTAGONAPUS RAAAAA!!” The girl screamed out in glee as she shot at the flying monsters.

The heroes just stood there at the crest of the hill as the fields before them lit aflame. With dawning horror, Time belatedly realized that the man had called the girl ‘Zelds’, and she had called him ‘Link’.

“No.” Legend immediately responded, turning away. “Nope. Nu uh. Not gonna happen.”

“I’m with Legend on this one.” Warriors gulped. “That’s a gremlin.”

“THIS BITCH EMPTY!” Link cackled as he threw more monsters into the air.

“MOTHERFUCKING YEET!” Zelda matched his cackle with one of her own as she threw the monsters across the goddessdamned forest.

“Hylia? Do we have to?” Time asked the sky. A brief flicker of lightning in the distance answered his question and he wanted to cry.

“Oh, hey! There’s people over there!” Zelda cried out suddenly, pointing towards them. Link tilted his head and abandoned his game of monster hunting. Dear Hylia, was that a Lynel running for its life?!

“Hiya! You look new. Who’re you?” He asked, jumping off his… ride.

“Er… you are… Link, right?” Sky asked hesitantly.

“Yep. And if—look bananas!”

“I’m sorry, what?” Four blinked.

“Good, you aren’t Yiga. So, you were saying?”

“Uh… we’re heroes from across time. And we wanted to know—”

“Fuck this.” Legend huffed, cutting off Sky. “Hylia wants you to join us in traveling across time and space to fight overpowered monsters.”

Link blinked at him for a long moment. “Yeah, cool I’m in. Yolo, right?”

“Yowhat?” Wind looked as confused as the rest of them.

“Oh, that’s right. If you’re from different times…” His eyes widened. “Zelda, they don’t know what a meme is!!”

“Well, then, you’ll just have to show them.” She shrugged. When had she gotten there?

“Right.” Link held up some kind of glowing tablet. “This is a Slate. Sheikah technology. With this, we’ve discovered something called the internet. And the internet holds memes and epic bouts of human stupidity.” He grinned. “And I can’t wait to record more.”

“I don’t understand.” Warriors frowned.

“It’s all cool.” Link smirked. “Just wait till I show you nyan cat.”

Time was going to kill that goddess.

#I wrote a crackfic #this was way funnier in my head #I hope you laughed #Wild should not be allowed to know what a meme is #dank memes #I wrote this at 3am with no sleep #linked universe #gang meets Wild

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 1 year

Text

Pursuit

We're about an hour into the pursuit, and only two of the ten people onboard the Flotilla Vessel Sunken City have managed to fall asleep yet.

The rest are doing something called "the search procedure" -- standing on the port bow, as if they can see their destination coming up through the murk -- and they are all talking among themselves about how this is the third time they've done this route in their entire life, and they're really getting tired of doing it, why is there this obstacle course -- oh, of course, it's just because we had to build all these boats, we couldn't afford to have them sit idle on the shore forever... we've been saying for years that we should replace all the boats, with new ones, and it's getting worse with each new model, and all the old boats break down on the shore in the winter, but what are you going to do, have a fleet of boats go obsolete after one season... why is this happening to us, why are we always running into problems, why can't the shipbuilders ever do anything right -- oh yeah, because they've been getting paid more for the new boats than for the old --

A few people have started doing exercises, and they're all thinking the same things: it's really hard to imagine that anyone ever did this before, it's not a thing you could ever do in real life. It's harder to imagine than imagining a future like this now, after we already have this.

One guy is telling everyone about how this is his fifth chase in his whole life.

"It was a lot harder back then," he says, "I mean, I think it was about eight years back then." He sighs. "Not that I was having any trouble back then -- " he pauses to smile at someone off in the distance -- "oh, you know." He pauses again. "But this is a lot less fun than the first one, I mean, I guess we're about as far away from our destination as we were the first time. We should've just gone home then, we could have gotten there on one ship, this is so difficult, I'm bored... but if you think of the last one as 'fun' for a time, you realize how much fun it could've been... I mean, you could've made it to the city with a third of your people on a few days, instead of just... we're making progress." He waves with his arms, which is more or less what a chase is.

"What about you?" someone else asks. "How many chases have you been on?"

He smiles again, and takes a step or two forward, then pauses to think about it.

"I think I'd say five or six," he replies. "It was a bit less of a time crunch back then."

Someone else asks, "Hey, you said you had your fourth just yesterday!"

He nods. "Yup. Yeah, I guess you can say that."

As we pass the next buoy, it says "3 MILES."

"This is going to be a long chase, isn't it," one of my co-pilots says from the other side of the room.

"Oh, yeah," I say.

He glances back, and I realize he's looking at me like he knows I'm the one who sent the text. He turns his head again, looking out at the murk.

He looks nervous.

I think about his reaction. I haven't felt nervous or anxious since I woke up on the bottom. I wonder why he's feeling that way. I wonder if I could somehow get my thoughts into his head, and tell him things I want. I wonder if there's some way I could get closer, and ask him what he's feeling, and if I could somehow do something... but the distance of the floor is too great, and it's too hard to imagine what a person looks like from that distance, and anyway it would take too long.

"How old were you back then?" one of the people behind me, a new guy, asks.

He doesn't respond right away.

"I don't think I remember," he says slowly. "It wasn't really something I cared about, then."

"Oh, that's a good sign," one of his compatriots says.

"I'd still rather be with my friends back then," he says. "But I guess you could say I had the chance to live for a while, you know? Before the whole thing started."

"The whole thing started?" the new guy says.

"It's always this," he says -- his tone sounds like he's scolding himself. "Why couldn't you just take one of the boats?"

I glance back. The guy's expression is confused and hurt, like he's thinking "this is the same guy who just asked if he had more than two chases... " and I turn my attention to my screens again.

* * *

The ocean here is pretty damn calm I don't know why... why would it even look calm, in this murk? It's not calming, in fact... well, it was calming enough when the City was above it... but we're down here, so it can't be... it's almost as if it doesn't have water in it, just like the City --

"Why is it that way?" someone asks from the back of the room.

It's another new guy who joined us at the buoy. He looks worried.

I've been thinking about this too. I realize we're all staring at our screens. This is really taking a long time. Maybe it's not the right place to try talking about this.

"I don't really know," I say, without looking back at them. "Is it different down here? What's different about this water?"

I hope he looks back. I hope he asks "Did you want to know that?" but I don't care if he does or not.

"It's the bottom," someone says.

"What bottom?" one of my co-pilots, the guy who asked about me in the beginning, says. "What do you mean, the bottom of the ocean?"

"The ocean," one of my crewmates says, "is like a big lake... with bottom. I think you could say the ocean is like a big bathtub. I don't think you could call it that, but I think you could call it a bathtub, and with the City's top, it's like this big lake... with bottom -- "

He pauses to look back. It's the same guy who looked at me when I sent the text, but now his expression is pained, wounded, confused, like he can't imagine a person like me in his head, if he could just get his thoughts into his head, and tell me what I want, and --

This is going to be a long chase.

This is going to be a long chase --

I'm going to be a long co-pilot.

#original fiction

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gareth-thakor · 21 days

Text

GARETH THAKOR. // INTRO ♰

[ dev patel, cis man, he/him, 35 ] we’ve followed [ GARETH THAKOR ] for awhile now, the [ HUMAN ] has been in Skellige for [ THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ]. They found a true kinship within the [ HEYMAEY CLAN ]. They’re known to be [ HAUNTED ] and [ DEVOTED ]. They often remind us of [ THE SMELL OF FRESH PINE, BRUISED KNUCKLES AROUND A CROSS, & GENTLE PRAYERS IN THE DARK ]. Our thread has already been woven on what their future is looking like, but we’re eager to see the [ MONARCH OF CLAN HEYMAEY ] experience it

biography under the cut (tw; murder, death)

my sweet prince who i love sm already. lets get into it!

His great-grandfather was the first in the Thakor line to lead clan heymaey. they are a very pious, noble family and have long worshipped freya.

gareth is the second born son though he also has a younger sister (planning to send this in as a WC!) . his father led the clan before gareth was born, and his older brother (samson) was raised to eventually take the title.

around 12 years old, gareth started hearing a voice in his head. what he didn't (and still doesn't) know is that he is descended from the extinct line of the paladins of ritarin. one of his ancient ancestors was slain in skellige long ago, and is trying to maintain law and order because he can see what's to come.

at 18, the voice had gareth convinced that his older brother, samson, was corrupted and needed to be dealt with. gareth chose to ignore the voice in his head, and instead believed he was insane and begged his father to let him move out into isolation.

for about 5 years, gareth largely distanced himself from the clan and lived alone far out away from people. he very took to the life of a humble farmer. but that voice never went away-- never stopped telling him how selfish he was being.

one day, word came that his father was murdered by none other than samson, who believed it was time for him to take the title and lead their clan.

gareth returned home and let what he calls the 'divine voice' take over to deliver the just execution of his brother. he doesn't actually remember killing samson, just the blood on his hands after driving a dagger into his brother's heart.

gareth has been monarch for at least 10 years-ish?? he leads with a firm hand, allowing that divine voice of his paladin ancestor to guide his decisions. he still doesn't know exactly who the voice is, but he's slowly seeing it as more of a gift than a curse.

very much carries the guilt of his father's death because he knew he could've prevented it.

he is always giving back to his people, and the people of skellige. gareth has experience as a farmer and a healer. so he helps where he can.

sort of the role of the peacekeeper amongst the clan monarchs, is what i'm envisioning! not really the type to start a fight, but he will send aide to anyone who asks for it within good reason.

i'd love to plot literally ANYTHING with my boy. he's a brand spanking new muse so any types of connections are wide open. besties, lovers, enemies, anything you want!

#nornsintro #[ intro. ]#[ self. // gareth thakor. ]

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mally0 · 3 months

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Vanity, Kansas.

“About two hours past Wichita. You remember Big Bertha?”

“‘Course I remember that rusty old bitch. Should we stop by that atomic graveyard this time?”

“We’ll pass it about halfway. We’re gonna be going down closer to Tulsa.”

I crack a skeptical grin, “ You would know.”

“I know it like the back of my hand. If you came to visit me more often maybe you’d know it better, too.”

“I’m coming to visit you right now, aren’t I?”

“Ha! The biggest visit of them all,” he says, grinning like an idiot.

He tells me it’s out west, and a bit south after Big Bertha. So close to the long forty-four that I’m almost offended. Piss and vinegar aside, I’ve driven this track many times. We have, together. Me and Tom. We’re both big explorers, “woodspeople” is what we like to call ourselves.

Not as many woods along forty-four, but there’s plenty to stop and see. The hills on their own are enormous, rolling tundras of wheat. Statistically speaking, even they’re not enough to make Kansas less flat than a pancake. Sayings like that always make me laugh to myself. If you’ve heard people talk about Kansas, I can assure that you’ve been lied to.

Kansas is to me what Missouri is to Tom, the greener grass. After years of dating and failing, I ended up meeting Tom on Tinder. At first, my mom would tease me. She called him a “mail-order husband,” until she saw him. Then, she called him a hunk.

It’s funny, when we first matched one of our biggest bonds was how much we hated our hometowns. We still do, and here me and Tom are moving to his. When he told me his great aunt So-and-so left him a house in her will, of course we had to jump at a windfall like that.

Vanity is closer to the border of Kansas and Oklahoma. This isn’t the first move for me, but it’s the first out of state. I’ve lived in a handful of cities around Missouri, but I’ve been stuck in my hometown for the last five years or so. Tom’s a good thing for me, like that. It’s about time I moved out of my parents house. I’ll be twenty nine this year.

“Does it make you scared, living so far away from your folks?”

I roll my eyes and say “Does it make you scared?”

“What, you moving in with me?”

I grimace at him, “No, us living so close to your folks.”

We make a good comedy duo, when it’s just us. When we’re together that's how it usually is, just us. We’ve introduced each other to our family and friends. It’s weird to plan a date for so long, then lock onto a bigger group than we’re interested in. We’re a couple of socially awkward deer running around in the woods, and we just happened to luck into each other.

A semi rushes past, sending an immediate gale hammering down on top of Tom’s beetle. The car’s a sturdy old boy though. He’s been through it, his shell’s flaking, but he’s still the toughest beetle out there. I watch in the rear view as the semi wobbles into the distance, little flecks of our car’s clear coat in hot pursuit.

“What’s the weather like there?”

“Just like this. The wind’s always been hell, but don’t worry.”

He goes quiet for a moment.

“You can hang on to me.”

“OK! Moving on,” I bluster out, “Oklahoma, eh? It’s like you’ve got two states at once down there!”

Like I said, I explore a lot. I know every spring, cliff, and lonesome hill in Missouri. I know a good few in Kansas, and I’ve intermittently been here and there for a con or a show. I wish Tom would be more excited to get out there and explore OK, too. The way he talks about it, it may as well be a foreign country.

“You've never even been to a concert in Tulsa?”

“No, it sounds like it costs an arm and a leg just to make a left turn with all the tolls,” he says.

“It’s not that bad.”

“Why haven’t you been more often, then?”

“Well, it’s not that good,” I say.

“What’s so good that it’s worth a five hour drive?”

And, of course, I know what he can’t help but say.

“Other than you.”

I make a fake retching noise, and we have a laugh. I hate that romantic garbage.

“You know I gotta tell ya, since you won’t tell yourself.”

“Pull over for real, I’m gonna puke.”

I wanted to get out and stretch, that’s all. I start hiking up one of the hills. In the winter they would be excellent for sledding, if only it weren't for the highway. In the late summer they were like Elysium on a globe.

It takes a serious, concerted effort from each leg to heave myself up the amber waves. The wind is famous here. That much of the stereotype is true. I stoop at the peak of the hill and see the silhouette of a squall line over the hills, dipping across the highway. My hair whips at my face. A convoy of semi’s teeter past as the dry, wheezy air spins and devils skyward.

The wind turbines loped on at the same pace they always did, despite the gales. It’s as if the world were not complete until those looming needles were pincushioned into the dusty ground. I tell Tom things like that, and he always brushes it off. He’s a far bigger fan of the stinking creeks and the oppressive, moist air of my home.

“This place really is still the dust bowl. You stick around long enough, and you’ll see it.”

“I was here all last summer, babe. It was dusty, humidity is what kills me. The day after it rains in Missouri’s summer is the hottest of the year. You should know, you were there.”

“Well at least we’ll always have to visit your folks. I was laughing it up in that summer rain.”

The squall on the horizon prickled with violet thorns, a hot rush of rainscent loped across our path on the long fourty-four. The bug shook against the buffet, but he held firm as always. Tom sniffed.

“My mom always said big storm cells like that made people show their true colors. Even in summer, people raid the stores. The roads flood real bad here, everything’s so flat. ”

"Yeah, she’s where all that cheesy crap in your brain comes from.”

“Hey now, my mom’s a smart lady.”

“Maybe to you. It’s always storming in Missouri. You know how many funnel clouds I’ve seen try and give my house a kiss?”

“You’ve told me quite a few.”

I always wanted to plant an orchard on my grandma’s land. It’s not a lot of land, and it’s not a very profitable place for an orchard, but there’s a dream in my mind of walking through the flowering trees in a light summer rain just after spring. That’s the kind of rain Tom was remembering. Most sunshowers in Missouri are dreadful because of that heat you know is coming. Countless garden projects dashed against the stones because of it.

I know, realistically, that the orchard would burn up much the same. I bet it wouldn’t even get to its first harvest, and it would be nothing but a muddy field full of little black sprigs. As a child, I had a friend who lived in the city limits. His parents got it into their heads that they were farmers, not ten minutes away from Aldi’s.

“You know, they say that when you tend an orchard it’s a virtue. It’s because only future generations will know the sweetness of that fruit.”

“Babe. Enough.”

He says, “Yeah, yeah. It sounds maternal though. I think that’s very uncharacteristic and very sweet to hear from you.”

“I don’t want kids. I want those pears.”

We laugh, but we don’t laugh the same.

“Are they that good? You never buy pears for groceries,” he says.

“Most of them are just normal pears. They’re huge, knotty and fat. I’m not usually the ‘eat a straight up pear’ type of person. I just love to be around them. She grew strawberries, which I hated. She grew apples, which immediately soured and went crabby. She grew some impressive pears. There’s a small and special little tree in my Grandma’s garden, and it grew the best damn asian pears you’ve ever had.”

“So you’ve always been picky. What’s the difference?”

“Well the flavor, I guess. They’re more apple-like in their bite, and almost boozy in the taste. You remember that sake we had a while back? With the fancy little jar they brought out?”

“That stuff was really good.”

“It was only fifteen for a serving like that, too. We’ve gotta try and find some. We’ve also gotta get some asian pear jam, if they ever grow again.”

“Jam?”

“Yeah, like jelly.”

“I didn’t know they made pear jam.”

“Well don’t sound so disgusted. You’d eat a pear, right?”

“I don’t know, I’m not really—”

“Pear jam is awesome, alright? You’ll just have to believe me.”

“It seems like a lot of work just to eat a fruit you’re not that fond of.”

“I am fond of them!” I say, a little flippantly. “They’ve always been there. Pears are an inseparable part of summer and fall. I’d have to carry bucket after bucket back to the house and wrap them so they’d ripen. Then, a month or so later, they’d be ready to eat, or dehydrate, or jam.”

Tom’s quiet for a moment, and the car’s getting to be unbearably muggy. Kansas really can get hot, but that’s not Kansas’s fault.

“I’m a little surprised it’s that big of a deal to you. You never let me try any.”

“Don’t you remember? I said everything stopped growing in my grandma’s garden a while ago. If anything ever does though, I’ll be sure to make you try some.”

The broken A/C wheezes out an admirable little breeze. The sunflower road signs pass by, occasionally interrupted by a tractor trailer or a billboard with some hateful slogan. Those aren't Kansas’s fault, and they’re so derelict out in that bountiful wasteland that they seem more like ancient ruins than some warning of slurs to come. In fact, everyone I’ve met in Kansas has been just peachy. They’re far nicer here than back home, where frowning is the state sport.

After another hour of NPR, just as the sun hides behind the hills, the squall line officially crests across the horizon. The cell signal drops, and the cheap little touch screen radio gives us a shrugging emoji.

I love this part. Tom’s a lot of things, but he’s terrified of quiet. Makes a complete mouse out of him. He’ll usually whimper out a few jokes, and we’ll laugh. I’ll give him ten minutes of cold shoulder and he’ll insist upon some big topic that’s been eating him. That’s how it is, he can’t just say the important thing when he needs to. He’s gotta make an appointment, usually about this time.

This time he’s quiet.

I’m almost impressed, so I pretend to doze for a moment. I roll over in my seat, curling up. My head keeps bouncing against the headrest, so sleep’s out of the question. I wonder if it’ll be hard to sleep, living somewhere away from home again. I listen close, past the rush of the car and into the Kansas twilight. There’s no cicadas, no dogs barking. The A/C smells like the promise of beer or fresh bread, hot out the oven at that. Just for me. It’s nice. It’s quiet. There’s a hint of rain, a slight chill.

It’s a little unnerving. So I yawn and stretch til my hands hit the ceiling’s sagging upholstery.

“You’re quiet,” I say. “What’s the matter, nothing on your mind?”

“No. Why, do you have something you need to tell me?”

“No. You usually do and save it for here though. I was kind of looking forward to it.”

“You know me so well.”

I brace for another cheesy one liner that doesn’t come. Just that Kansas quiet.

“Well, I should hope so,” I manage.

“Why were you pretending to be asleep just now?”

I have a little laugh. He’s quiet. Tom’s car speeds on and on in a straight line, towards a purpling sky. I’m sweating quite a bit in that dry, airy car. The vents aren’t much comfort, failing their one job.

“I don’t know, I guess I was waiting on you to ask me something.”

“Something like that?”

“Uh, sure. I guess not. I was just passing time.”

“Right.”

The sea of wheat outside sighs. I crack the window for a minute and stare out, head just past the portal. The wind is still dancing out here, just like it was earlier, and the trip before. No escape from the heat either, since it’s coming from outside. Nothing’s wrong with Kansas.

“Close that, it’s hurting my ears.”

And it does hurt a little, so I close the window.

“You aren’t seeing anyone else right now, are you?”

“Jesus, Tom, no!” I shout. I didn’t mean to shout. I’m just offended at the question at this point. I mean, I’m moving in with him, and he springs something like that?

The radio sputters back on, thank god.

Tom turns it off. I glare at him. His eyes are on the road, a good driver. He’s trying to stare through me without looking at me.

“Look,” he says, “I only ask that because I love you. This is a big deal, and I just gotta be sure.”

“You asked me to move in with you. I want to. So, what, are you never going to be able to fully trust me?”

He goes quiet again. He doesn’t have to say no. It’s the same situation. He wants to, but he’s a big-ass, principled man. He doesn’t let go of the past. He makes enemies. Even me.

I’ve already decided to move in with him. I do not go back on my decision, I’m not insane. I see him white knuckling the wheel. He must be remembering, too.

He must remember how it was his decision to not date around. I was always the only one good enough for him. He remembers that just because he doesn’t usually ask questions that he won’t like the answers to, what he does not know will still hurt him. Rather, he insists that it does.

The fact that I have chosen him now is not enough, and it never will be. He expects the opposite to be enough for me. I see him there, beads of sweat squeezing out from his hairy hands. He’s shaking a bit.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve grown lazy, or overly comfortable. I haven’t been seeing anybody but him for quite some time now. A long-distance relationship is a tall order to fill. Maybe that’s why he works himself up like this.

He’s not budging, so that settles it.

“Tom, I’m not backing down from this. The fact that you still feel this way, and bring it up now is a real dick move. I’m gonna stick around for six months or a year or two, if I want. Then I’m gone.”

His bug’s path trembles in the wind, but it doesn’t stray its course. Tom’s hands are strangling the wheel now.

“Does that make you wanna go through with this less? I could be lying now. Maybe I’ll stay forever, I don’t know. What I do know is that I need my partner to trust me.” I lay my head on his shoulder and say, “I love you. I know you love me, too. Isn’t that enough?”

He screws up his face, deciding. He chooses to say nothing, and turns the radio back on. Save that, it’s quiet until Big Bertha's loom crests the horizon.

“If I ask you to stop at the big ol’ gal, are you going to push me off and be done with it?”

He laughs, “Of course not. I love you, too.”

“See now that’s the most romantic thing you’ve said all trip.”

Big Bertha is a rusting crane, long decommissioned, but it still makes a decent excuse for a tourist trap. Most people are too smart or too boring to fall for those things anymore, but not me and Tom. Big Bertha is up on a bit of a hill, roiling walls of grain all around. The gate attendant is either sleeping or out to lunch. If you and your partner are the adventurous sort, it's a nice romantic detour. If you and your partner are exceedingly stupid, the view from the top is to die for.

“Babe, didn’t you feel the wind shaking the car earlier? You can’t climb that thing.”

“I’ll just hold on tight, like before! Come on, Tom. For me?”

“No way.”

“You can’t stop me, then."

I’m already climbing the chicken wire fence. Tom’s deciding to say nothing. I hop over, a little puff of dust toots up from the ground. Bertha’s corroding form looms above me on a dry, cracked concrete slab. She’s as tall as a wind turbine, and twice as climbable

“Please don’t go up there. If something were to happen to you now—”

I don’t wait for him to finish. The rusty iron spokes running up along Big Bertha are plenty grippy for my feet, but I quickly want to go back for gloves. I’m as stubborn as Tom is in some ways, though. I don’t, and my hands stay the course.

The wind does blow awfully strong in Kansas. I feel Bertha swaying slightly as Tom and the car and the cracked concrete slab are progressively swallowed up by the wheaty sea. I was right, too. All I need to do is hold on tight and be brave to keep myself steady as I climb.

I don’t bother to get to the top, but I do stop and gawk at a little valley I see a ways down the road. There’s a thick fog being kneaded by the wind, I can see it threatening to spill out of the valley. When the wind settles, it will. For now, the wind lopes over it without a care. I was able to fool myself that I had climbed above the squall line, looking at that valley. Up in the air, feet dangling above the clouds.

I kick my feet like that for a little spell, and then I do feel bothered to get to the top. The funny thing is at that point it’s not hard, and the Kansas wind settles down just a bit. Just for me.

I find it easy to love Kansas because it does that for me. It’s a more nurturing place than the swamp I call home. Easier to breathe, easier to feel free. I look down from Big Bertha on the climb down, and I can just barely see a little ‘FOR SALE’ sign on the bob-wire. I don't believe it.

That’s what I rush to when my feet hit the lovely, dusty ground. Of course, It’s not Big Bertha, It’s the land next to her. I don’t know how big an acre is, maybe it’s even the land around her. I’m walking back to the car, where Tom’s waiting in a little huff. I’m daydreaming about buying the land and homesteading a little ranch, or rather, an orchard. I wonder what would grow here, and the answer licks at my face with almost a longing. It’s a sweet little picture, just farmer me and my farmer Tom under Big Bertha. All we’d need is a thresher and we could spin this straw already around us into gold.

“I can’t believe you did that. She’s fit to fall over any day now.”

Now I’m quiet for a moment as the beast groans above. He’s right, but I’m glad I did. What if she falls just as we roll down the hill? I may never see her shape against the sun again.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come. I should have.”

I’m still quiet. I’m wondering about some more realistic housing options. I know Augusta’s super cheap. I love Wichita, but that place will drain the very soul from your bank account.

“Babe, look I—”

Now I put a little finger up to shush him. Forceful, yet gentle on his lips. I look at him with all the love I feel for him, right then and there. That’s how it is with me and him. The rain finally begins to fall in Kansas, and the windshield wipers screech across Tom’s windshield. “Hey, you love me. You just can’t stand it. Let’s just get back home this once, ok?”

#writing #writeblr #short story #fiction #romantic #original post

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theway-itwas · 1 year

Text

20221218

for jonghyun,

five years is a long time.

this fateful day that i dread every single year is finally here once again. five years. half a decade. one thousand eight hundred and twenty six days since you left.

it’s surreal. it’s crazy to think about. it’s been so long, and yet it’s gone by in the blink of an eye.

there’s still nothing i wouldn’t do to bring you back. i miss your bright smile, and your eyes that twinkle like they house billions of stars. i miss your voice. i miss the way you’d laugh with your entire chest, or how your whole body reacted to just about anything. i truly, deeply miss you, jjong.

so much has happened in just a year, and i can’t even begin to think of the person i was five years ago.

desi and i just hit our one year anniversary on the 7th. they’ve been really good to me and for me, i hope you’ve been able to see it. we’ve been talking about moving in, and it just about seems like it might be something happening very soon. i love them, i really do. they make days even as gloomy as these feel okay. they’re amazing, and i wish you could’ve been here to see.

i recently adopted a(nother) cat. yes, desi’s cat piper is technically mine too, but i hardly see piper. i don’t live with her yet, i don’t get to call her mine because she’s technically desi’s. but this cat, he’s all mine. the cat rescue my neighbors have, they asked me to take care of it for a month while they’re in the amazon. of course i wanted to, and i can’t say i didn’t expect to get attached to all of the kitties, but this one really won over my heart. his name is cloud, like cloud strife from final fantasy, and it really fits him. he’s a real cutie, just a big sweetheart. i think you’d love him, and i could totally see you wanting a cat someday. i’ll make sure to tell him all about you later tonight.

i’ve made and lost a bunch of friends. i haven’t necessarily lost many, but some distance has grown between us, and that’s okay. i don’t hate them, but i’ve grown to realize that what i think is good for me and what i want to constantly surround myself with just isn’t them. as for the friends i’ve made, they’re pretty great. i’ve also grown a lot closer to some friends, and i can say i’m happy with my relationships right now.

i got a new job, too! my last job was horrible, that’s for sure, but this new one isn’t so bad. i’ve never worked in retail before, so it’s definitely been a new, stressful experience for me. nevertheless, i think i’ve definitely grown to love the people there and the state i’m at. though, i am late quite often and i put myself in a lot of sticky situations. i have many flaws as a worker, but i’m trying to fix them, i swear.

i tried to contact my doctor for an adhd assessment. it’s been something i’ve struggled with for the longest time, and i finally pulled the trigger, just to be told there’s a countless number of hoops i have to jump through just so i can actually get the help i need. they basically need to treat me for my “severe anxiety” first (their exact words) which doesn’t really help because i needed help with my inattentiveness, but it’s okay. i’ll call them back eventually, i just need to find the motivation (and also not forget on the days which i am motivated). i’m getting it all sorted out, slowly, but it’s a work in progress.

this time of year always gets a bit gloomy remembering you’re not around. i try to have fun and make the most out of days like these, and i try to stay positive around the holidays, but some nights are harder than others, naturally. i just hope you’re doing well wherever you are.

i love you, jjong. i miss you endlessly and i really hope you’re happy. you did well, and you worked hard. you are always in my heart. thank you for letting me love you.

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selfcallednowhere · 2 years

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October 27, 2018 New York, NY

This show was at Terminal 5, a venue I hadn't been to before and was not particularly impressed with--it was...fine, but didn't have any real charm to it. This was in fact my first time seeing them anywhere in NYC besides the Music Hall of Williamsburg in a good 15 years, as that seems to be their main home base these days.

I was having my all-too-common travel delays and difficulties getting to this show from the one the previous night in Baltimore, no need to detail it all here, but suffice it to say that by the time I arrived at the venue (along with my pals Joe and OK) everything was totally packed. We did manage to find a place that was way in the back near the bar but elevated enough that we could see over most of the rest of the crowd, which was I think about the best that could be expected given the circumstances--at least I could still see, even if I was much farther away from the stage than I'd prefer.

I was still frazzled and out of it by the time the show started (these show trips of mine also inevitably involve eating very little and sleeping even less), but all of that melted away the moment John stepped on stage, holding something special: A CAMERA. My exact words to Joe and OK were "He's taking a picture, I'M GONNA DIE." His collection of vintage cameras is one of my absolute TOP TOP TOP favorite things about him and, much like seeing him remove his shirt onstage (even though he had another one on underneath) in Baltimore the previous night, seeing him with a camera on stage was something I'd wanted so desperately for so long that once it was actually happening I could scarcely even comprehend it. Unfortunately our distance from the stage meant I couldn't identify the specific model, but it was still way way more exciting than I can even attempt to put into words, and occasioned multiple exclamation points in my show notebook.

They opened again with "Damn Good Times," during which Flans greeted us with a "good afternoon" (after the aforementioned out-of-it-ness from several days on the road with them myself my sense of time was about as out of whack as his probably was) and told us how great it was to be in NYC. After that they did "I Left My Body," "Your Racist Friend," "Particle Man," and "The Famous Polka."

Flans told us "It's true, we're not taking requests!" and explained that New York is "our home away from home even when we're at home." He asked John how his day was and he said he'd slept for most of it, which he described as "very exciting."

JL: We've been traveling around Canada, playing some exotic places that we've never been to before. We did not play in Moose Jaw. Nor did we play in Medicine Hat. But we did play in...Saska...phone? I believe it was called? JF: Interesting side note about Canadians: they will not take photographs during live performances, no matter how much they're welcome to do so.

He then gave us the important stage announcements that we were welcome to take as many pictures as we wanted to and they would be playing "two face-melting sets. The second set is all fusion, and so far nobody likes it. But it's like, count along with They Might Be Giants, some complex rhythms, y'know, some Rush tribute--not actual Rush songs, but just Rush tribute songs."

Then he told a story about being on Twitter the night before and how sometimes "when people leave posts that are impossible to comprehend, you have to seek out who posted it. And the person who posted it wrote that they were 'shy AF.' And I still don't know what that could possibly mean." John replied, "It's 'autofocus.' It's a photography term," which was a joke I enjoyed way too much (see above comments about my ABSOLUTE FREAKOUT over him having a camera on stage). I also couldn't help thinking of a show I'd been to on the spring leg of the tour when he'd been clearly legitimately baffled by Flans writing "AF" on the setlist and needed him to explain "It's as fuck, John."

Flans asked John to confirm that he'd really done nothing but sleep all day, and he said that he'd also had an exhausted and semi-coherent conversation with his wife. Flans replied that he'd presented his wife with their very first piece of taxidermy.

JL: We discussed that earlier in the tour [at the Ithaca show two days previous--Flans purchased it at a weird antique shop next door to the venue]. You were not sure how Robin was gonna go for it. JF: It was definitely one of those take it or leave it things, y'know. I mean taxidermy--c'mon, people. It's sort of a horrible idea. JL: And yet! How endearing.

Flans went on to explain his visit to the "antique parentheses junk store" and how he wasn't actually sure what animal the taxidermy he got was but "it looks just like a tiger, if a tiger was this big" *holds up hands to indicate something about the size of a small dog*.

JF: We have determined that there's a special nook at the top of the stairs in the basement where it will reside. The big problem is if you get something like taxidermy you're either gonna lose the friends you have...or you're gonna have to move on to all new friends who might be a little bit creepier. JL: Right, but you can taxidermy your old friends, so you still get to keep them. JF: John, it's that kind of outside thinking that keeps this band fresh. JL: Think about it. Problem solved! JF: What's a little bit of cannibalism among friends? JL: I didn't say eat them. I just said stuff. JF: Oh, I'd say eat them! With a delicious Béarnaise sauce! JL: This is the basis of our collaboration, John. I say taxidermy, you say eat.

This has gotta be one of my favorite pieces of banter that I've ever witnessed--in addition to finding taxidermy really fascinating and compelling myself, I just loved Flans expressing concern about his friends not being creepy enough to handle it, and then his BFF immediately responding with something hella creepy, and then him going back to that and making it even creepier--and weird as it sounds I think it actually is a fitting summary of the way their collaboration...elevates each other, let's say.

Flans explained to us again that there would be two sets but "only one epically long conversation at the beginning of the show," which he further described as "another episode of 'inappropriate things to say in a public forum."

Up next was the double shot of the always extremely high-energy and superfun "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and "The Guitar," the latter featuring some very adorable hopping and waving on the "the lion waves goodbye" part from John. Afterwards, Flans apologized because he'd accidentally kept playing in the previous song and "blazed over Danny's solo moment."

Then he started to introduce the next song but stopped for some kind of on-stage whispering from Danny, who apparently thought he was confused about the setlist order. He protested that whatever Danny was telling him was what he was introducing.

JF: Danny! It's a little bit early to be fuckin' up the show! I drank my 14 coffees. I'm focused. JL: We don't have time to discuss stuff off-stage, so this is really both a performance and a meeting for us.

Then Flans said something about an attempted intervention for cold medicine but that he was "an autonomous agent of destruction." Then he did the usual big spiel to introduce the contra-alto clarinet, which is "on the Audobon Society's Endangered Species of Musical Instruments list," and then the self-deprecating (and depressing to me cos I adore I Like Fun so much) bit about how he knew we'd all be disappointed that they were about to play some new songs but should crank up the fake enthusiasm.

The first of the new songs (expectedly, because of the presence of the contra-alto) was "All Time What," rockin' as ever. Afterwards, Flans asked if those of us in the "Enormo-Dome" wanted to hear another new song, and when he got intense cheers in response (as he'd directed, but I'm sure I can't have been the only one who was genuinely thrilled with new material from this truly sensational album), he replied (in a faux-gruff voice), "This is truly unexpected, ladies and gentlemen! Unprecedented for a bunch of good ol' boys from the Deep South like us to have to dazzle you with some of our newer material." His voice cracked a bit midway through, as if he were struggling not to laugh at his own awareness of how ridiculous he was being. Then he said he was going to "knowingly chuckle as a talk," but the sound that he was making now sounded more like a cross between coughing and choking.

John decided to jump in too at this point. In his own silly voice (which sounded slightly closer to actually Southern than Flans's, although still quite far off from anything real): "This next song was written when we were flat broke and stone drunk in the Louisiana rain. 'Member that, Flansburgh?"

Then he broke character for a discussion of Dan's shirt. "At the beginning of the show it looked like Mr. Dan Miller was wearing a shirt that said 'ICK AR,' and then a little later it seemed to be saying 'CHICK PAR' when he didn't have his guitar strap on. But I feel like there's more to it--we still haven't seen the whole...it's gonna be a reveal, as the show goes on. There's gonna be more, I trust." Having seen the shirt in full previously I can verify that its full message is "CHICKEN PARM," which is still pretty mysterious, frankly.

Anyway, up next was "Let's Get This Over With," which I still could not get over my intense excitement at finally getting to see on this fall leg trip after desperately wanting to from the moment I first heard it way back in January. Next came "Doctor Worm"--I've seen him do the bridge of this song in various silly ways, but never quite like how he did it this time, which was leaving out quite a few of the words.

Afterwards, Flans (now pulling out a smooth-radio-DJ-style voice) proclaimed the next song "a special long-distance dedication to all the taxidermists in the audience tonight." John reprised the "flat broke and stone drunk in the Louisiana rain" bit from earlier, this time adding "covered in formaldehyde." Flans ran with it: "Tiny whiskers glued to the backs of our hands...on accident." John said he wanted this whole bit to keep going, but that they were running out of material.

Up next was my eternally beloved "Museum of Idiots," followed by my also beloved "Authenticity Trip" (a tonal/energy shift that should've been jarring but they pulled it off somehow). John explained that they were gonna do a couple more songs and then "take our hopefully well-deserved rest of 20 minutes or so. Where we'll just be backstage frozen in place panting, like, y'know, in a musical."

Then Flans said he was going to use the break to listen to another chapter of a book on tape. John said something about Keith Richards but Flans said it was about the making of A Star is Born. John asked him which version of A Star is Born it was. "I can't tell you." Then John asked him who was doing the reading. "Say it's Gilbert Gottfried. That's what I want." Flans explained that he actually was listening to the aforementioned Keith Richards thing ("It's a very colorful book. Don't do too many drugs...is one of the big messages of the book."), but that Keith Richards himself only reads about that first four paragraphs and then hands it off to "the guy whose name I can never remember..." John: "The guy who plays Keith Richards in the pirate movies." Flans then explained how John had suggested Gilbert Gottfried should read the final chapter, "and then I proposed that all books on tape should end with the final chapter being read by Gilbert Gottfried. The fantastic surprise ending of every book on tape."

They closed the main set with "When Will You Die" and then "Spy" (complete with all its requisite improvisational silliness/awesomeness).

Flans started the second set with, "It's exciting to be performing so close to both Halloween and November 6. Don't usually conflate those two events, but in recent times they seem somehow--connected." Then he told us the next song was written by George Soros in 1840. "Currently they're making The Shining II: The George Soros Story. He's everywhere, people."

As the 1840 intro indicated, the next song was of course "Tippecanone and Tyler Too," and then came the expected explanation from John of the HUGE JUMP to the FUTURE of 1844, "where everything is preceded by the word SPACE. Space beards! Space horse and buggies! Space...quill pens, or something."

After (of course) "James K. Polk," Flans re-introduced Curt and gave a shout-out to Marty: "What says 'acoustic set' better than the electronic drum stylings of Mr. Marty Beller, ladies and gentlemen? Everybody loves the electronic drums on the acoustic set! Because it's a musical non sequiter."

Then he explained that the next song features the word "parkour," but "in spite of the French origins of the word 'parkour,' and the proximity of Germany to the country of France, no one in Germany knows what the word 'parkour' means. That is what we've discovered on our recent travels. Doesn't matter how many times you say it--it does not translate. They've got a different word for everything...except parkour." Then he said the next song was also the title track of the new album, and that there were signed copies of it available at the t-shirt stand, wherever that may be. "Can you find it? It's like geocaching. This is like the Zapruder film portion of the program, where people point in the direction of where the t-shirts came. The sound of the t-shirts came from over there."

After "I Like Fun," Flans introduced "Applause Applause Applause" with a plug for Dial-A-Song, and then: "This song takes us all the way back to September--fond memories of September, when things were simpler and less fucked up." Afterwards: "No unplugged performance from They Might Be Giants would be complete without the uninvited political comment, so: This next song is a special long-distance dedication to everyone who's not running for the Supreme Court of the United States." The next song, indeed appropriately enough, was "How Can I Sing Like a Girl?"

"Istanbul" and then "The Mesopotamians" led to "Why Does the Sun Shine?", complete with more of John's great, silly-voiced shenanigans on the spoken parts, e.g. "If the sun were hollow, a million earths would fit inside of the hollowed-out sun. But, yet, though, it's only a middle-sized...hollowed-out...star." After doing this a couple of times, him just switching back to his normal voice at the beginning of the part where he's supposed to explain how far away the sun is was enough to get a big laugh, and then another when he switched back again. Then: "Scientists have found that the sun is a huge...atom-crushing...apparatus...for crushing." Then came an apology for last night even though "it wasn't the real me," and then he informed us that the heat and light of the sun are caused by "this finger. That's it. That's all."

Up next was "Experimental Film," which elicited many excited exclamations all around amongst me and my show companions about how much we loved the song and how we'd never seen it before and just generally !!!!!!!! Later setlist searching revealed that I had in fact seen it before, but only once, and anyway the "OMG IT'S A SONG I REALLY LOVE THAT I'VE NEVER GOTTEN TO SEE THEM PLAY BEFORE" thrill is such a particularly intense and joyful one that I'm ok with it happening even if it's not strictly accurate.

And here is a tiny nitpicky thing that I might be embarrassed to admit were it not for the fact that I long ago blew my ability to pretend I don't care about such things way too much, so: I do adore the song, but I've always been bugged by the lyrical choice of "but" in "Which nobody knows about/But which I'm still figuring out"--I just don't think it makes any sense in context, and that "and" would've been the logical conjunction to go with--so I was quite happy to hear John agreeing with me(/forgetting his own lyrics--the more likely explanation if I'm being honest) and singing it that way.

After that there was some general yelling from the crowd (not even anything too specific as far as I could make out, just "BRAND NEW SONGS!"), but John explained, "We're delighted to take requests, but we will not be able to play any of them, because of our computerized light show." Then he said something about someone having written an entire setlist, which they would "take under advisement." Flans then promised they'd do it the following day. John: "Providence, Rhode Island. Be there. For one of the weirdest shows we've ever done." I am not sure if whatever paper they were referring to actually was a fan-created setlist or what, but that would actually be a really fantastic prize for them to have for some sort of contest--I know I can certainly think of plenty of other songs I'd otherwise never get the chance to see that I would very VERY much love to, and I know I'm not the only one.

Next they did "She's an Angel," one of my top favorite songs that I connect to in a very deep emotional way, and then "Let Me Tell You About My Operation," one of my top favorite songs that I connect to in a totally rockin' out and soaking up all the energy of Flans as the absolute king of stage presence way, so that was fantastic all around. Next was "Whistling in the Dark," which is not a song I have the same sort of deep attachment to, but it is quite fun live.

Afterwards, Flans addressed all of us in Terminal 5, "the concrete box that rocks," to tell us that we could get a free download of the next song from their website "1-800-GOT-JUNK. I'm being serious right now. I know it sounds like I'm lying." Then he said he wanted the houselights up for the next half hour so that "like The Carol Burnett Show" they could thank us all as individuals. Then John started playing some semi-schmaltzy keyboard music. "Lady with the skeleton shirt on/Don't turn around, I'm singing directly to you/Thank you for coming to the show/Fellow with the IFC shirt/You've got some good ideas, but this is not the time or place." There was also some confusion about someone who had a shirt that said "Babes" ("Oh it's the name of a band?/Is it your band?/Good") and what it means to wear a hat indoors, all still sung in something approaching falsetto.

They closed the name set with "The Communists Have the Music," rocking the socks off everyone as usual, making it a great closer.

The first encore consisted of band intros and then more socks-rocking with the perennial live favorite "Twisting," this time featuring John messing around some on his Kaoss Pad, which I don't think I've seen him do on this one before and was fun.

When they came back for the second encore, John thanked us and then said "You've made a happy band very old" which cracked me up. Then he did this bit I saw him do several times on this tour about how AC/DC fired their singer and replaced him with a crow. "I don't know why they've waited this long." Flans said that if you study the liner notes you'll see that the crow previously had a writing credit on "Hells Bells," "the big balls song." John said that crows are really smart (which is true!), and Flans said, "But kinda saucy lyric writers."

And then they closed the whole show out with "Dead" followed up by "Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal"--two such wildly different songs tonally, but somehow the combination worked, and was a fantastic way to wrap up a fantastic show!

Final (still requisite even though the all-spex-all-the-time thing makes such concerns significantly less important anymore) JL wardrobe comments: this blue stripey pocket ringer t-shirt he's been fond of lately, reasonably decent hair.

#tmbg #show reviews

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boldlyvoid · 2 years

Text

For Your Eyes Only

summary: A viral tweet after the Zodiac copycat case in San Fransisco leaves Doctor Reid with a proposition. to get to know the girl who publicly announced to the world that she thought he was cute, or miss out on the best love he could ever dream of.

Warnings: Long Distance Relationships, first times, smut, fluffy emotional sex, Virgin!reader, oral (female receiving), fingering, breeding kink

*flashback in italics

word count: 6.1K

He tapped his foot anxiously as he stood in the train station, a bouquet of flowers in hand and an awkward, press-lipped smile plastered to his face.

Passing strangers smiled back, old ladies wished him luck and their husbands give him a knowing nod. Wooing a woman wasn’t something many men did anymore, it was a thing of the past, his heart loved her like he’s known her for centuries, this was only natural for him.

He takes a moment to think about that part of life, the end bit when they’ve done everything they wanted to with the love of their life, who they’re still somehow in love with… the longer he knew Y/N the longer he wanted to grow old with her.

His hands are shaky, he can’t imagine a life like that without Y/N, even if today was just the first time he was going to see her in person.

9 months ago she had a semi-viral tweet, jokingly asking him on a date while he was in San Fransisco, not thinking he’d ever see it.

Penelope finding that tweet was the best thing that has ever happened to him.

He ended up texting her a lot.

They’ve talked about everything. Through text, it was just simple and basic topics, nothing that could get him in trouble or be considered sensitive material at work. She knew all about him, he knew all about her… and then some. Penelope took it upon herself to do some digging, following her on Twitter and doing a deep dive on her own.

“So, she’s never had a boyfriend from what I’ve seen, she’s a teacher, she just finished college last year and she’s working at a daycare near her house. She lives with her parents and siblings, she’s a Swifty… I think they’ll be cute together,” he overhears Penelope as she sits on the edge of Derek’s desk.

“Her name is Y/N,” he adds without even looking up. “If you’re going to talk about her, use her name.”

“Reid, how are you so calm about this? She’s a stranger on the internet?” Derek’s voice of reason chimes in.

Only Spencer finds it completely unreasonable. “Everyone we talk to is a stranger before we get to know them. Some of the sweetest people we know are people we’ve interviewed in cases who were strangers 10 minutes beforehand. I think I know how to talk to someone and determine if they’re a safe person. I’m 30-years-old for crying out loud.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Derek understands where he went wrong. “Sometimes I forget you’re not a kid anymore.”

“And I only looked into her because I love you,” Penelope explains. “And I didn’t do a whole deep dive either, I just went through the account she tweeted you from. She seems lovely.”

“I really like her,” Spencer smiles. “We’ve been talking on the phone a lot lately. She wants me to get a better phone so we can FaceTime… would you be able to help me with that?”

Penelope’s face lights right up, “of course I can! Do you want to head to the apple store after work?”

“I’d love that,” Spencer smiles, an extra boost of happiness coursed through him and he was able to finish his paperwork faster than normal.

The first time he saw her face… he fell in love right there.

He sent her a text, keeping his same number as before, he surprised her when it popped up blue for the first time.

He checked his hair in the mirror first before anything else, nervous beyond belief and it showed. He made sure he looked nice, he cleaned his room up a bit and he tried out a few different places where he could rest his phone and look good, by the time he finally had the confidence to call her, she was calling him.

“I was about to call,” he whines as soon as it connects.

She smiles, giggling out of control, “oh my god? Hi?”

“Hello,” he’s a smiling mess right back. “You’re beautiful.”

She shrugs it off, “thanks, you’re very handsome as well.”

“Um, so, how was your day?” He leads in the way he would if they were just talking. Getting to see that glimmer in her eye as she talked was better than he ever imagined. She was so stunning he almost forgot to listen.

“… and what did you do?”

“Oh, uh,” he thinks to all the horrible things he flipped through and the conversations he had on the phone. “I consulted with and helped a detective in Orlando solve a weird case today… it wasn’t a serial but it was a strange one.”

“Gross stuff?” She asks carefully.

He nods, “yeah. I’m always astounded by how creative psychopaths can be.”

She laughs a little, “should I be scared?”

He laughs then too, shaking his head, “no. no, it’s my biggest nightmare to actually do anything that I’ve seen.”

“Intrusive thoughts?” She reads right through his wording choice. “I have them too. I’m always worried the kids will get hurt, one of my biggest fears is protecting them during a school shooting… I hate that it’s so common that I genuinely fear for it often.”

He just nods along, not giving her facts or statistics or scaring her any further, “I think that makes you incredibly strong to go to work every day with the intention of protecting them.”

“That’s a nice way to look at it,” she agrees. “You’re too wonderful to ever be a bad person, I know it’s easier said than done, but don’t worry. I don’t think you could ever do something mean on purpose.”

He smiles, believing her, “thank you.”

When they started getting to know each other on a deeper level, he met her family, with who she in fact still lived. Her mom always came in to say goodnight to her before bed, saying goodnight to Spencer as well with a smile and a wave.

Her siblings also came in a lot to say hey. She was a decent amount older than them. Lucy was 12, Emmett was 15 and Archer was 17, all still in school and all very fond of their big sister. Archer came in most nights to sit on her bed and talk to her about spider-man, something that Spencer knew a lot about from Jack and Henry. He bonded with most of her family during all their long night chats, even talking to some of them without Y/N even in the room.

Her father was very quiet and never bothered her when they were on the phone, he did however meet him when she left her laptop in the kitchen unattended.

“So you’re the boy my daughter is infatuated with,” his strong manly voice startled him slightly. He was standing in front of his coffee maker, making a pot and talking to the laptop.

He sat straight up and fixed his sweater, “yes sir. Hello, I’m Spencer Reid.”

“I know, we watched the news together as a family when she saw you the first time,” he smiles at him. “Well done on catching those copycats, I’m sure that wasn’t easy. I remember when they were in high school. Too smart for their own good.”

“It was difficult, but nothing is too hard for our team,” he doesn’t want to boast just about himself when he knows it’s more than him.

“Dad,” he hears Y/N as she walks back into the room. “Stop harassing him, please.”

“He wasn’t,” Spencer steps in. “We were talking about the zodiac copycats.”

“Ah,” she raises her brows, “I take it he’s been embarrassing me?”

“Not enough,” her dad teases. “I didn’t tell him how you said you would let him—

“Okay,” she picks up her laptop and her snack, “I’m going back up to my room now. Bye, dad.”

Spencer laughs, “bye Mr. Y/L/N.”

“Just because he’s a principal doesn’t mean you need to call him that,” she teases him as she climbs the stairs. “Please tell me he didn’t say too much about me?”

“He didn’t, he said you’re infatuated with me and that’s it,” Spencer recalls.

“Good,” she sighs, reentering her childhood purple room and sitting on her bed. “At least he didn’t lie.”

He’s also infatuated with her. She was quickly becoming the best person he knew.

They stayed on FaceTime all night when they could, with his phone set on the pillow, talking to her in his low sleepy voice about their days and absolutely falling in love with each other. It was one of those nights that he officially asked her to be his girlfriend.

She was laying there in the low light reading a book with her laptop on a pillow, the both of them completely silent as they hung out. It was how they were most nights after a certain point, after they shared their days and wanted to unwind, both being introverts and loving alone time. Only now, they love alone time together, the sound of the other person just existing was extremely calming to them.

He’s been trying to read as well, stuck on the same page as he watches her from the corner of his eye. On the tiny phone screen, he has rested on his desk, he leans in, “Hey, Y/N,” he asks lightly.

“Hmm,” she rests her book against her chest and looks over to him through the screen. Pushing her glasses up and smiling at him.

“My friends at work have been asking a lot about you… and I was wondering if it would be okay with you if I called you my girlfriend in front of them?” He asks it very carefully.

She squeals slightly, sitting up gleefully and placing her laptop in front of her so she can look at him better, “you want me to be your girlfriend?”

He nods with a shy smile, “I really do.”

“I need to come and see you soon,” she rushes out as she nods like crazy. “I really need to hold you and give you a big kiss because all this excitement inside of me is going to make me spontaneously combust at this point.”

“Really?” He feels exactly the same. There’s nothing he wants more than to hold her on nights where they just silently hang out.

“Yes,” she laughs, “you’re my favourite person, Spence. Ugh, I want to hug you so bad right now.” She tightens her hands into fists and shakes them, grinding her teeth together, she wasn’t kidding.

“You’re also my favourite person,” he replies, tilting his head slightly and staring at her affectionately.

She looks at him the same way, “it’s too early to say it, isn’t it?”

He shrugs, “if we both feel it, is it really too early?”

“Tell me when we meet,” she smirks. “I know, but I think that will be more special.”

And so he waits.

He’s been so infatuated with her for 9 long months, calling her his girlfriend for 6 of those, and now she’s on her way to DC to spend a week with him.

Banking up enough sick and vacation days to have as much time with him as possible, she packed her bags and hopped on the next plane.

Texting him to say she was on her way and sending him into a slight anxiety attack. He cleaned his whole apartment, actually bought groceries and bought new sheets for his bed so she’ll be as comfortable as possible.

He can see the top of her head as she walks towards the escalator and then she looks up, smiling at him and his whole world stands still right there. He knew he loved her just talking to her, seeing her in person made him know, for sure, that he loves her.

She lights right up when she sees him, running towards him, she drops her suitcase on the ground and jumps into his arms. He holds her tight around the middle and squishes the flowers. Her cheek rests against his, she runs her hands through his hair and silently holds him while she catches her breath.

“I love you, so much,” he whispers into her ear, feeling more content than he ever has before.

“I love you even more,” she replies just as softly.

He presses a quick kiss to her cheek before she pulls back, resting on hand on his cheek as she smiles up at him.

She shakes her head in amazement, “holy shit, you’re real?”

He nods with a laugh, “I am. So are you, and you’re so beautiful… wow.” All the air in his lungs rushes out, he’s stunned that she’s real and there and his.

“These are for you,” he hands her the half squished flowers, “I promise they were prettier before the hug.”

“It adds character,” she takes them and holds them close, “thank you.”

He can’t help himself, he pulls her in for another hug and she laughs as she settles against his chest. “We should get out of the way… we’re in everyone’s way.”

“Yeah,” he agrees but he doesn’t let go. “In a second, I have waited too long for this.”

“Okay,” she gives in, holding him close. She sighs, “you’re so cozy.”

“Let’s go home,” he says as he pulls back, “we can just cuddle for hours.”

“Okay,” she nods with a smile.

He takes her suitcase in one hand, holding her hand with the other. His heart is overflowing with joy, he can’t wait to show her his town, his apartment, his friends… he was so excited to introduce her to his life in hopes that she stayed a part of it. He knew she’d miss her family and friends, but the idea of her moving to Virginia to be with him was something he’s had on his mind for months now.

This was his chance to make her fall in love with the city, with his life and with him. Once she loved all of him, maybe then it would be easy for her to stay.

His car is old and light baby blue and so incredibly his on the inside. He has a crocheted steering wheel cover that’s purple and green flowers, it’s clean with a lavender air freshener… he has a few stuffed toys in the back seat and a police box stuck to the dash, along with a doctor who bobblehead who she would guess is the 10th... it’s exactly what she expected Spencer Reid to drive.

He’s cool, original, interesting, the smartest man she’s ever talked to, and the love of her life.

She can’t help but stare at him affectionately as he drives them home, to his home, not knowing she already felt home as long as she was beside him. All the aching in her heart instantly disappeared when she hugged him, the homesickness died and she knew where she was meant to be.

He doesn’t know it yet, but she has a job interview at a pre-school in D.C, and if she gets it she’s going to need a place to stay… if this week works out then hopefully his home will be her home and she’d never feel homesick again.

She’s spent so many nights wishing she could fly, spread her wings and go to him… she’s imagined having teleportation powers, the ability to just think about him and show up beside him. Be it in his apartment, the bureau or even a hotel room, she wanted nothing more than to be beside him.

And now she was.

“So,” she smirks playfully, “what do you have planned for this week?”

“Nothing,” he quickly smiles at her before returning to the road. “I have a list of what’s going on around us each day, but I wanted you to pick what we do. I have already seen everything here, I want to show you the things you’d love.”

Her heart swells, she reaches out for his hand and holds it tight. “On Wednesday I have something I need to do downtown… if you want to pick something and meet me there, after?”

“What do you have to do?” He’s confused, the way she knew he would be.

She smiles and thinks about keeping it to herself for a bit, “I have an interview… where Henry goes to school.”

She watches his eye widen as he turns back and forth from the road to her, “what?”

She nods, “yeah, I wasn’t going to tell you yet but I’m too excited.”

He finds a safe spot to pull off to the side of the road, he puts the car in park and stares at her with so much excitement, almost mirroring hers. “I was going to ask you to move in before you leave?”

“Ah!” She squeals, “I didn’t want to impose and ask!”

He pulls her in for a hug, “god, I love you so much.”

She wanted to wait to kiss him until the time was right. She overthought the most perfect kiss with him over the last 9 months of talking to him. And now she thinks it’s time. She pulls back, placing a hand on his cheek and staring into his eyes, “I love you.”

He’s the one who leans in, pressing his lips against hers ever so softly with his eyes closed. She’s so shocked she just watches for a moment, closing her eyes as she breathes him in and really kisses him back.

—

She’s cuddled into his chest while they lay in bed together.

As soon as their shoes and coats were off, that’s where they ended up. Not in a steamy, need-driven sense, but because they’ve spent 9 long months waiting to just hold each other.

Under the covers, legs all tangled up and her arm raised over the pillow to play with his hair as she kisses his neck and cheek lightly. His hand is under her shirt on the flat of her back, tracing the odd shape into her skin as she hums contently.

“You’re so soft,” she whispers.

It makes him laugh to himself, “you’re one to talk.”

“I could lay here forever,” she sighs, “but my arms going numb.”

He sits up with her, getting situated and comfortable once again, she pulls away and gets out of the bed, reaching for the hem of her pants, “you’re cool if I take these off right? It’s too warm.”

He nods with a smirk, “I’ve seen you completely naked, it’s not too weird.”

“I’ve seen you naked too,” she reminds him. “I wonder how your boss would feel if he knew you were sending nudes to me on the internet…”

“He accidentally airdropped a nude to Derek once,” Spencer can’t hold back his laughter for long, giggling as she opens her mouth in shock.

“You’re kidding?” She asks as she pushes her pants down to the floor, stepping out of them and kicking them towards her suitcase.

“Nope, it was hilarious hearing Derek scream like a little girl at a haunted house,” he teases.

“I can’t wait to really meet them,” she bounces a little as she sits back down beside him. Clapping her hands together, “they’re so funny on the phone I’m sure they’re even better in person.”

“They are,” he smiles just thinking back to the time she met one of his friends for the first time.

The first time he talked to her on the phone during a case, he was in a hotel room with Derek when she called. Hiding in the bathroom to talk to her, Derek finally knocked on the door after 20 minutes to ask if he was okay.

“Yeah, I’m just on the phone with my girlfriend,” he replied through the door.

“Girlfriend?” Derek hadn’t heard him use the word yet. “Can I talk to her? Please, I promise to be nice?”

Spencer laughed as he looked at Y/N on FaceTime, “did you hear that? Do you want to meet Derek?”

“I would, yeah,” she smiles, he watches her sit up and straighten out her shirt and get ready to meet someone new, it’s unbelievably cute.

When he opens the door and hands his phone over to Derek, he’s not sure what he’s expecting to happen, and yet, somehow, it’s exactly what does.

“Oh my!” Derek exaggerates, “aren’t you beautiful? Reid, how did you manage to land her?”

“I saw him on TV and I wanted him and now he’s mine,” she answers through the phone for him. Making Derek laugh even more.

“She’s ambitious, beautiful, I just hope you’re smart enough to know you can do better,” he teases.

“I’m also smart enough to know he’s exactly what I need,” Y/N’s always been very quick. “I take it you’re single?”

“How’d you know?”

“No man who’s happily with someone would joke about doing better,” she points out. “He’s what I want, I don’t care what people think.”

“I really like you,” Derek smiles at her. “I was worried when he found someone that they wouldn’t be what he deserves. I can tell he’s safe with you.”

She smiles then, and Spencer knows because she makes this little laugh through her nose when she smiles like that, “he is. And he tells me he’s safe with you, you’re always protecting him.”

“That I am,” Derek smiles back. “We all love Spencer like he’s our little brother. He’s well taken care of.”

“I have 2 little brothers and a little sister,” she admits to him. “Spence tells me you’re a middle child? Bookended with sisters… that must have been interesting.”

He looks at Spencer with a smile, “so is that what you spend your free time doing? Telling your girlfriend all about us?”

“He tells me everything,” she gets out as Spencer just nods. “Sometimes I’ll just call him when I’m sad and say a word and he’ll teach me something to do with it because hearing him talk makes me happy.”

“Awe,” Derek places his hand on his heart, “that’s honestly exactly what I hoped Spencer would get one day.”

“Really?” Spencer asks.

Derek nods at him. “I know we don’t always have the time to listen to all of your facts, but I knew when you finally found someone one day they’d love them. It’s a very unique trait of yours that we all love.”

“It’s the best, isn’t it?” Y/N asks. “He has the answer to everything in his mind, I’m never going to run out of things to ask him. It’s always so fun talking to him, you’re so lucky you get to see him every day.”

“Are you guys going to meet up any time soon?”

They both shrug, “I have a week I can take off in June, when the kids go home for the summer vacation, we’re trying to work something out.”

And that something came to fruition.

He just stares at her for a second, amazed that she’s real and in front of him. “What?” She giggles, “why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re beautiful,” he has no other words to say. “I am so in love with you… it’s crazy to think this is the first time you’re actually here with me?”

“I know,” she lets out a relieved sigh, “it’s been so long, I never thought I’d get here… I can’t believe you’re real?”

He puts his hand out to hold hers, she takes it and pulls him forward into a hug. Wrapping around each other, she pushes him back against the mattress and lays on top of him, “and you’re mine,” she adds.

“Can I be honest?” Spencer whispers as he runs his hands over her back.

“Always, hon,” she kisses his jaw slightly.

“I half expected us to rip each other’s clothes off and fuck on the living room floor as soon as we got in, with how much we’ve been teasing each other lately,” he admits.

She laughs, “believe me I thought about that on the way here too.”

“You did?” He pries, wanting to see where just talking about it could take them. Every time they’ve done anything it always started as a simple conversation.

She pulls back enough to sit in his lap and play with the buttons of his shirt. “Can you blame me? Once again, I’ve seen you naked, I know what I’ve been missing out on while we’ve been apart.”

“Me too,” his hands continue under her shirt, up towards her bra where he unhooks it with a smirk, “oops.”

She pulls her shirt off with a giggle, letting her bra straps fall down on their own as Spencer reached for the cups to hold it in place. “Are you sure? We don’t have to right away, we have all week.”

“I’m very shocked you have enough self-restraint to not look at my boobs right now,” she teases him, licking her lips and pressing them together as she shakes her head with astonishment. “I want to. I’ve wanted to for so long.”

He lets her bra fall down, and his breathing hitches as soon as he sees them. He releases a content sigh, “wow…”

She laughs again, “you’re so cute.”

“I’m fully clothed under a naked woman I’m in love with,” he retorts. “I— I can’t believe this is happening?”

“Well it is, and we’ve gotta do something about all these clothes,” she teases him as she gets off him, “I can’t be the only naked one, that's not how this works.”

“Actually, did you know that there is a fetish for having sex with your clothes on?” He explains as he unbuttons his shirt and takes it off along with his cardigan, “Endytophilia is when someone experiences a gratifying sexual release while semi or fully clothed.”

She laughs, “I’m not sure if that’s your nervous tick to explain things or if you’re trying to tell me you have that?”

He shrugs, “I’ll try anything once.”

She kneels on his bed and walks towards the edge, placing her hands on his belt and working his pants off for him, “we can introduce kinky stuff later, right now I want to make love to my boyfriend for the first time.”

“Isn't it… your first time?” He worries.

She nods, “technically, but there’s no one else I rather do this with.”

He pulls her into a hug, kissing the tip of her nose gently before smiling, “I’m going to take such good care of you, baby.”

“Take your pants off, then, mister,” she teases him and tickles his sides as she plays with the hem of his pants.

He presses his lips together, pretending to be fed up, “it’s Doctor., to you.”

“Mmm, doesn’t sound right, she keeps teasing him. “What about sweetheart?”

He nods, “I like that one.”

Pulling back, he pushes his pants to the ground and steps out, “socks? No socks? Ethan made me keep my socks on, he said I have weird toes…”

She laughs, “I don’t care… I’m not doing foot stuff with you.”

He laughs, almost losing his balance as he takes them off, “I know, I’m just nervous rambling.”

“You’re adorable, there’s no need to be nervous,” she pulls him closer as he kneels onto the bed, sitting in his lap once he’s settled, and pressing their chests together.

She pulls back enough to toss him against the pillows and lean over him for another kiss, his hands trail her thighs in search of her hips as he kisses her again, and again, her tongue on his is sweet and gentile and he could stay like that with her forever. And then she grinds against him, moaning into the kiss as his fingers dig into her skin.

Her hands in his hair, he helps her rock against his clothed cock as their make-out session gets messier and messier. More moans erupt, teeth touch, she tugs his hair too hard and he arches his head back with a moan, giving her pause to move her kisses south on her way down his body.

The wetness from her underwear has darkened his own, leaving a wet spot against his cock that makes him shiver. She yanks his boxers down as soon as she can, shimmying out of her panties and hovering over him again, “Woah,” Spencer objects.

“I need at least 20 more minutes of foreplay with you,” he whines as he carefully flips them over, hovering over her as she rests her back against the bed. “You’ve been taunting me with this pussy for months.”

Pulling her panties down, he spreads her legs and spreads slobbery kisses along her inner thighs. Leaving hickies that will surely bruise and fade by the time she goes back to California, but he wanted to mark her. He loved her body, he’s been just looking at it for so long, dreaming of covering her in kisses for months on end, he groans against her skin thinking about it.

“So pretty,” he mumbles against her skin, “and all mine.”

“Only yours,” she plays with his hair in her hands, “no one else will ever get to see me like this.”

That sounded incredibly permanent. It was more than a promise, it was a wish, a want, a craving. She never wanted him to let her go, and he wasn’t about to let her either.

—

She’s staring at him between her legs with fire in her gut, her own mouth opening in a silent gasp as she watches him get closer and closer to her pussy, “so pretty.”

She feels like the world stills, “and all mine,” he continues.

Her breathing picks up, she’s never been so horny in her life as she grips his hair, “only yours. No one else will ever get to see me like this.”

She means it. She was for his eyes only, she never wanted to be this intimate with another human being, she had found her match and she wasn’t about to just let him go.

She pulls him in closer, he’s quick to run his tongue along the length of her cunt, groaning at how wet she is, “fuck, babe,” he sucks her clit into his mouth, sloppily kissing her most private area and making her head spin.

She had no idea it could feel this good. Legs writhing in the sheets, back-arching, she grinds up against his tongue in time with his movements, fucking his face essentially. It sounded like he loved every minute of it as well, the noises he made were so incredibly sexy on top of everything else that she was closer to the edge faster than ever before.

Her orgasm hit her hard, gripping the sheets for support as she let out the loudest moan of her whole entire life, “Spence, Spence, oh my god,” she pants as her breathing works on settling itself out.

He’s smirking up at her, lightly teasing her clit still with his index finger, “if you’re comfortable and really turned on then it makes the first time easier.”

“Yeah?” She’s still breathing hard like she ran a marathon. “I’m still going to be impossibly tight… believe me.”

He takes that as a challenge, laying flat on his chest between her legs, he gathers her cum and uses it as lube to insert his middle finger all the way. It’s so hot, the way he watches as it goes in and out of her each time. He slowly adds a second finger, only pumping into her till he reaches the first knuckle, then the second and finally he’s stretching her open enough to take both full fingers. He scissors his fingers, curling them and rubbing against her g-spot as he worked her open enough to fuck her.

“I’m good,” she can’t take it anymore, so turned on and unable to cum again without clit stimulation, she couldn’t wait any longer. “I need you now.”

He pulls out carefully, kneeling between her legs as he strokes her wetness onto his cock. “Remember what we talked about?”

“Yeah,” she smirks, “I’ve been on the pill for 3 months now, I want to feel all of you the first time.”

She swears his eyes roll into the back of his head as he takes a deep breath in, “fuck, I love you so much.”

“Yeah?” She teases, “come here?”

He leans down enough for her to pull him back into a kiss, tasting herself on his lips and craving more. Messily making out, she reaches between them and spreads her legs more, pushing the head of his cock towards her entrance and pushing him in slowly.

They both pause making out, open mouths pressed together as they moan out in pleasure, “keep going,” she encourages him, “oh my god?”

“You’re so fucking tight,” he agrees, slowly pushing in as far as he can go, and then he just stays there, staring at her softly. “There you go.”

“Not a virgin anymore,” she smiles, pulling him in for more kisses as she gets used to the stretch. Then he starts to rock his hips, pulling out ever so slightly and thrusting back in with enough power to make her gasp. “Fuck me?”

“Yeah?” He goes a bit faster, “like that now?”

She nods, tossing her head back against the pillow, he continues kissing and sucking on her neck as he fucks her. Letting her moan as much as she wants, she claws at his back, wrapping her legs around him as she takes it all in. This was what she wanted when she imagined her first time.

She wanted it to be sexy, cute, funny, everything it was supposed to be when she finally had sex with the person she loved the most. Spencer was everything to her, she felt a tear slip down her cheek, feeling so much she couldn’t help it.

“Spence,” she moans his name again, “my clit?”

He hums, changing his angle and sliding a hand between them, she twitches hard when he makes contact with it. He groans, she had tightened around him too and he wasn’t going to last much longer, “fuck, babe.”

“Fill me up,” she’s used to saying that to tip him over the edge when she was on the other side of the country, now she actually means it.

His hips sputter and his rhythm changes then, he’s so fucking hot like this she takes a moment to push his hair out of his face and look at him, staring into his eyes as he fucks her, she smiles.

“I love you, so fucking much,” he’s able to say as he holds back for her, “I want you to cum with me, baby.”

That alone does it, that same familiar hear bubbling inside her veins and gathering in her loins, she came with another shout of his name as she pulled him in closer.

“Ugh,” he stills as he cums with a groan, thrusting forward with each twitch of his cock as he fills her up. It’s hot and incredible, she gasps in shock at just how much it is.

“oh my god?” She’s wrapped around him like a spider monkey, breathing heavily and not willing to let him go at all.

He giggles against her skin, kissing anywhere he wan as she catches her breath. “You okay?”

“Perfect,” she sighs, relaxing against the mattress as he pulls out and rests against her comfortably. “I don’t know what to say besides oh my god?”

“I know,” he smiles in agreement, “it was amazing.”

“I can’t believe I have to leave in a week… I want to do that every day for forever,” she exaggerates. “I love you.”

“I love you even more,” he repeats her wording for earlier. “I’m serious, you don’t have to leave. And you can come back whenever you want?”

“I want to come back as soon as I can,” she sighs, “I want to actually get a cute little house here with you and build a little life together and start being truly happy.”

“Okay,” he looks up at her, resting his chin on her shoulder, “I’ll start looking around, I’ll send you every listing and you can move here even if you don’t get the job. We’ll figure something out.”

Her heart is so full of love, she cups his face and pulls him in for another kiss, and another and another until they’re going at it again.

They don’t do much else for the rest of the week.

Part 2 coming soon

the road trip from San Francisco to D.C!

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phantomrose96 · 3 years

Text

Fenton Fact

Danny leaned back against the red brick chimney of the Casper High roof, and he looked across the stretch of land rolling far off from the building top. For a place so off-limits, so hidden-away from the normal bustle of the school, the view really wasn’t anything special. Sure, the school was decently tall, but it overlooked the staff parking lot, and the empty Casper High tennis courts, and the back of a strip mall two blocks over with the recently-haunted laundromat.

Not that it mattered. It took more than tall-building-views to impress Danny anyway, even the nice ones. And he wasn’t up here for the view.

Danny let his eyes drift shut.

“Sup loner, room for one more?”

Danny startled, and it wasn’t Sam’s voice specifically that startled him. (He’d grown used to her bursting from his Fenton Phone earpiece during most nightly patrols.) He’d just lulled himself a bit too comfortably into the idea that no other human could follow him to the top of the locked rooftop of the Casper High building.

“Did I just surprise a ghost?” Sam asked. “Should I do it again with a ‘boo’?”

“Haha,” Danny answered with a fake chuckle. He blinked himself back to prickly awareness, drowsiness batted away like dust bunnies, and stared up at Sam. “I’m not surprised. I just wasn’t expecting anyone else to be on the roof. How did you even—”

Sam was a few steps ahead of him. In explanation, she waggled the Fenton-branded grappling hook gripped in hand.

Danny leaned back with a faux-exasperated sigh. “Since when do you even have a grappling hook?”

“Since I told your mom it would be a wildly cool line of gear to add to the Fenton brand.”

“Does this mean my mom now has a grappling hook too?”

“Yes. And your dad. And Jazz. And Tucker.”

“Great. When I go home and all the ceiling fans are torn down I’ll know why.”

A gentle silence lapsed over them, punctuated with the swell of fall wind.

“So…” Sam continued. “Can I sit here?”

“Huh?” Danny looked at her, anchoring his drifting thoughts once more. “Oh, yeah. I thought the ‘yeah’ was implied.” Danny shuffled a bit to the side, back still resting against the chimney. He patted the spot he cleared. “What am I gonna tell you? No?”

“Just making sure.” Sam stowed the grappling hook to the side of her belt and settled into the spot beside Danny, feet outstretched. “In case maybe you wanted some alone time.”

“’Alone time’ isn’t really something I get anymore. I’ve had about a hundred-too-many ghosts crash through my bedroom for that.”

“So why the roof?”

“Roof is more for uh…” Danny twirled his hand, “‘less adoring crowds’ time. ‘Less classmates ogling me’ time. You can stay so long as you don’t ask me to sign anything.”

“I was never interested in the parasocial or capitalistic value of celebrity signatures. Besides, you cross your ‘t’s weird.”

Danny replied with a half-hearted chuckle. His line of sight drifted into the middle-distance again, unfocused.

“Is it getting to be too much?” Sam asked.

“Hmm?” Danny answered, eyes shifting back to her.

Sam gestured broadly, hands and arms outstretched. “You know just. All this. Everything.”

“…Nah.”

Another small silence grew from the cracks in the concrete between them.

“Paulina and Star are looking for you. You know that, right?”

“Oh, are they?”

“Danny. You knew that.”

“Maybe.”

“…And you’re not interested in seeing what they want?”

“I figure Tucker is keeping them busy.”

“You’re unfortunately right.”

“Phantom Phacts?”

“Phantom Phacts.” Sam nodded. “I made him promise to leave out any embarrassing trivia from the trivia section.”

“Thanks for that,” Danny answered. “Is his presentation any good?”

“You think I’ve ever stuck around to hear it?”

“Fair.”

Sam pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs and set her chin to her knees, staring forward.

“You’re really not interested in sitting with Star and Paulina for lunch?”

“Not really. Why? Is that bad?”

“No, it’s absolutely great. But I’m…” Sam shrugged, “surprised, I guess. I feel like usually you’d jump at the opportunity. And I kinda don’t think you’re refusing because you’ve suddenly recognized the banality of A-lister status.”

“Maybe that is what happened, you don’t know that. Down with capitalism, Sam.”

“Danny.” Sam tilted a fraction to face him. “I’m worried that this is all too much for you, and you just won’t admit it.”

Danny sat with the silence that followed. “I don’t think it’s too much. I’m just—I dunno. I mean. I’m just not feeling it.”

“…You can admit if it’s overwhelming, Danny. I’ll be the first to shut down ‘Phantom Phacts’ if it is.”

“Nah, nah let Tucker have his fun. He’s not the problem. It’s… I dunno.” Danny pushed himself taller against the chimney, upright now and unslumped. “It’s a little bit overwhelming, I guess, maybe. But it’s kind of what I expected. Maybe even a little easier than I was expecting. I thought I’d be dealing with a lot of Phantom-hate once everyone knew but, I guess that kind of died down a long time before everyone knew.”

“Valerie holding you at gunpoint in the cafeteria wasn’t Phantom-hate?”

“We’ve had a lot of good talks since then, okay?”

Sam let out a quiet laugh. “So then… why aren’t you sitting with the popular kids right now?”

“I just didn’t want to, I guess?”

“And why didn’t you want to?”

“It just didn’t really feel right.”

“Is it because of me?” Sam asked, another side-long glance cast to Danny. “Because you can sit with them. I’ll still make fun of you if you do, but you don’t have to… not sit with them because of me.”

“What? Huh—no. Nah, nah I mean I do care what you think Sam. But I mean if I wanted to be sitting with them then I would so. I mean. You don’t have to worry that it’s you.”

“So then what is it?”

Danny took a moment to answer.

“It’s just… it’s a feeling. I dunno. Like.” Danny spread his arms out. “The invitation is wrong? Or the invitation isn’t actually for me?”

“…The invitation is for Phantom instead?”

Pensive indecision set into Danny’s eyes. “That’s not totally it. Because I mean I AM Phantom. I’m not not me when I’m Phantom. Maybe I trash-talk a little more in ghost form but I’m not… not me. That’s still just me. You know that.”

“Right, yeah, no Danny. It just sounded like that’s what you were saying.” Sam let her legs slide out a few inches. “So what are you saying?”

Danny sat with the question. “When the news first picked up on Phantom, way back when—Inviso-Bill?—that wasn’t really anyone, you know? They made up some spooky icon to make the news about. Which was just like, whatever, not me. I didn’t even take ‘Inviso-Bill’ too personally because that just wasn’t me. And even when I stopped being an enemy and started actually being ‘Danny Phantom’… no one actually got it right, you know? They kind of came up with a character for me. Just some hero. I listen to the news and how they talk about me and I think, even now, I think ‘That isn’t me.’”

Danny pulled his knees in, a mirror to Sam, and stared down into his tattered jean fabric. “And when everyone learned I’m Phantom I guess I kind of expected them to be like ‘Oh it’s Fenton’ and then that fake version of Phantom would go away.” Danny raised his eyes to Sam, far more bothered than before. “…I think the opposite happened. They don’t look at Phantom and think ‘oh it’s Fenton’. They look at Fenton and think ‘oh it’s Phantom.’ I think Danny Fenton got put away. I think the person I was for 14 years doesn’t exist to them anymore. Whoever they invited to lunch isn’t me. He doesn’t exist. But I’m suddenly responsible for him. And it’s not even me.”

Danny paused. “And now I’ve been wondering like… how long until I disappoint them? You know? How long until I do something that makes them angry because I’m not doing the thing they expect ‘Phantom’ to do? How long until they start seeing there’s too much ‘Fenton’ in me and they start to hate me for it all over again? For them to really like me, I don’t think I can be me, and I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to be someone who doesn’t just disappoint everyone in the end.”

A long gust of wind swept between them, stealing away the seconds.

“…So now you’re hiding on the roof.”

“It was the easiest solution to my problem.”

“But not a lasting one, if you ever want to get down.” The wind settled, and Sam swept a lock of hair behind her ear. “…Do you care if you disappoint them?”

Danny shrugged. “I. Yeah. I think. I don’t—I don’t think I totally know for certain, but I don’t want to disappoint anyone.”

“Well, you’re not going to disappoint me, or Jazz, or Tucker—and if Tucker does act disappointed over any lost Phantom Phacts ventures I’ll whap him over the head. But I mean, we know who you are. We’re not going to be disappointed realizing you’re not ‘Phantom.’ The worst you can do is land right back where you started.”

“And what if I started acting like ‘Phantom’ instead. Would that disappoint you guys?”

“Do you want to act like ‘Phantom’?”

Danny paused. “…No. Not at all.”

“Then don’t. It’s that simple.” Sam stood, and she stretched until her back popped. “It’s not your responsibility to uphold whatever delusions people project onto you. I won’t hesitate to call them out on it. You know I’m good at being direct, and you know I’m even better at making enemies.”

“I don’t wanna be mean to them though when they’re finally being nice.”

“They’re not being nice, they’re projecting. If their niceness to you is conditional on you fitting to the box they created for you, that’s not nice, that’s manipulation, and it’s exactly the root of my ever-frothing disdain for popularity. It’s always some element about popular people that people latch on to, and they can fit the box that people give them, or they can reject it and find themselves wallowing amongst us outcasts. Don’t do that to yourself, Danny. Don’t live in their chains.” Sam tilted her head to Danny. “You spend all day trapping ghosts into tight little boxes and you can’t even recognize when it’s happening to you. I think you’d be better at spotting this.”

“It’s a cylinder, really. The thermos. It’s a cylinder. And don’t say ‘box’ so much. You might summon company.”

“You just said ‘box’ though.”

“I did say ‘box’.”

“Box.”

Sam laughed, noise trailing light on her lips. “…Feeling any better?”

“A little, I think… I still… I still think I... it's not as easy to just say 'I don't care if I disappoint them.' It's still scary. I don’t want to end up proving them right that they were right to hate me all along.”

“Are the opinions of Dash Baxter really the ones to be holding on a pedestal? Is his opinion of you really more important than what you think of yourself? You’ve been through this with the A-listers already. Don’t torture yourself again just because the door is wide open. I promise you Danny, it won’t make you happy.”

“So I should just do whatever makes me happy?”

“Every time.” Sam nodded.

"Even if I'm a total disappointing loser?"

"All the better."

"Even if I blow any chance I have with Paulina out the window?"

“Wouldn't have it any other way. Got any idea what you intend to say to her when she finds you?”

Danny paused. He pushed himself standing. “Maybe I could talk her ear off about NASA until she gets bored of me?”

“Excellent. Can I join? I have a lot to say about SpaceX and private capital encroaching on space exploration.”

“Does that apply to me? I’ve been to space. Am I private capital?”

“You’re not private capital.”

“Then what am I?”

“Annoying.” Sam locked arms with Danny, and dragged him along forward, her combat boots clunking against the rooftop. “And my friend. Come on. I’ll brief you on everything wrong with privately-owned space exploration while we’re rappelling down the side of the building with my sick and cool as hell grappling hook.”

“I can fly.”

“And I have a sick grappling hook. What’s your point.”

“It’s probably called a ��Fenton Hook.’”

“Is that a Phantom Phact?”

Danny shook his head, and a smile pulled on his lips. “Nah. I think it’s a Fenton Fact.”

#danny phantom #dp #dp fanfiction #-lobs this over the fence-

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