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bluebayousblog · 11 months

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RUMOR HAS IT (pt. 5)

(Drew Starkey one-shot)

This is not a full on story but if you want more l'll be happy to add on upon request

Plot: in which drew and isobel address a false rumor in the most abstract of ways

Setting: Isobel’s apartment after Drew’s party

Disclaimer: Isobel is an OC, 18+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

After two decades on this planet never did Isobel think a family friend would be the one to make her feel so understood and seen. She’d been coasting through life with blind emotion, never truly processing her feelings because to Isobel they were inferior compared to others who could lay it all out on the line.

Then there was Drew, someone who for so long she viewed as an dense asshole who so naturally read into her heavy silence and didn’t run at what he found. He made her feelings valid, made sure she understood that her feelings were normal not a burden. Isobel never wanted to be an inconvenience and when that was always on the forefront of her mind her lightest grievances felt like meaningless complaints.

Not only was Isobel quiet because it was her default but because it was what made her comfortable, and because of that she made herself feel invisible. Drew without effort was making her feel so seen it only made her want to hide from the light, to push him away because full transparency would unveil everything she tried to hide.

Though his intuitiveness was unnerving, she couldn’t ignore how nice it felt, and completely allowing herself to revel in the feeling of trusting a person on a somewhat emotional level—to shine in the light—was something she hadn’t done since her last relationship.

Drew’s unwavering gaze has her pinned to the back of the couch, she couldn’t decipher if that look was waiting for her to rebuttal, or silently daring her to argue with his revelations he’d come to. They both knew he was right, the arrogant smirk he couldn’t help but let twitch onto his lips was proof enough of his confidence. “What would be an appropriate reason to end this then, Drew?”

Isobel asking him this question would normally unsettle him but the innocent look in her eyes, the taunt in her tone, the way her arms lifted to wrap around his neck told him she was about to start fucking with him.

In the past, Drew never had to consider what would constitute and warrant breaking things off with a girl because he’d never been in a situation that involved the need. Now, for him Isobel wasn’t just a girl, she meant something to him, especially when everything she gave him was more than just a touch or a kiss.

He’d like to think he would be man enough to tell her if there was someone else, but right now he didn’t think wanting another woman was a possibility for him. She had him on a leash, sure it was leash that Isobel wasn’t utilizing to her full capability, but nevertheless it was there, waiting for her to take hold. He didn’t know if that would mean anything to the girl, hell she once had a man in her life that claimed he loved her all the while entertaining other women.

“When I stop letting you know your worth, Izzy, when you don’t feel that from me there will be no objections on my end.” Drew promises, his forehead falling against her as her nails gently scratching across the back of his neck, “I would never want to drag you along.”

Drew always was bracing himself when it came to Isobel, never knowing what was going to come out of her mouth or where those hands or lips would find themselves. She was a force no matter how reserved she was, what she gave him was always like a hit of the most potent drug—she could never disappoint.

“Doesn’t it suck that you can’t completely ensure that doesn’t happen?” she replied with a hum, her words were cynical but she didn’t pull away, if anything she leaned further into him.

“Isobel-“

“No, Drew,” she interrupted him before he could continue to build some unrealistic expectations and promises, Isobel had forcibly learned not to rely on hope after being severely cheated on. She learned not to expect a man to want only her because disappointment would only fill her in the end. “I don’t need grand declarations from you about the future, let’s just see how this plays out, yeah?”

She could tell he didn’t like what she’d just implied, that she’d basically said she didn’t trust him, and she only expected the worst out of them together. Her words were harsh, but she had no reason to completely trust Drew, and doing it for her own sake? That would only result in disaster.

“I can do that, but we’re still talking eventually.” He squeezed her left hip in his large hands, probably to show her he was serious, and Isobel was all for it as long as it wasn’t just about her.

She was the one who obviously had all the insecurities, but this thing between the two wasn’t just about her. Still, it felt like her inner turmoil would overbear the conversation, or prove to be rudimentary to what actually mattered. But she would try because he insisted, something she wasn’t used to.

“You sure are making a lot of demands tonight.” Isobel murmured, licking her lips, his blue eyes watching the movement. Never did she think she could thoroughly enjoy a man telling her what to do, but when Drew did it drove her wild. Part of her wanted her to obey while the other half wanted to make him just as insane.

It made Drew feel good to be able to look out for her—he wanted her to feel secure more than anything—that need came from depth him like it was his destiny. And when she submitted to that, to him taking care of her, it filled him with inexplicable emotions that drew him closer to her.

And when she praised him for having her best interest, teasing him about getting firm with her just as she was now, it made the man want to drop to his knees. He recognized that playful look on her face, the suggestive glint in her eyes was his weakness, her eyes in general would be his end. Years and years of lackluster family dinners and he’d never noticed how enticing one look from Isobel could be, it was was all consuming.

He couldn’t help but wonder if his blindness to all that was Isobel was because his body knew once he really did see her his world would shift.

“Someone’s gotta keep you in line, Izzy Bear.” Drew half joked.

Isobel’s eyes drunk in the slight upward tug on his lips, the darkness surrounding them not taking away from the edge, and when she drug them upwards to meet his, that was when Drew knew he needed to pull away. “Where are you going?” She frowned as he took a step back putting some distance between the two, their fingers brushing each other before they dropped to their sides. Drew immediately slid his into his pockets, needing a barrier to keep him from pulling her back in to wipe that look off her face.

“I don’t want to take advantage of you, Is.” He breathed as he leaned on the wall behind him, getting even further away from the girl.

“What do you mean?” Isobel questioned.

The girl was fully aware of what this was between them, and though she wasn’t usually the causal type, Isobel couldn’t help but want to be attached to him at any possible moment. But that strained look on his face had her sighing in retreat. “You had some drinks tonight, Is, and we both know one drop of alcohol gets you going.”

Drew couldn’t help but chuckle as the girl rolled her eyes at his little dig, he’d partied with her plenty of enough to know a cup of beer could put her past tipsy, and he’d been so busy drooling over her the whole night he hadn’t touched any drinks. She’d caught him off guard earlier in his bedroom, but he was serious about not disrespecting her and letting things get out of control on an unleveled playing field would be the exact opposite of that.

“You’re such a prince, Drew.” Isobel sighed sarcastically, throwing him an annoyed squint before turning and walking away towards her room, “I’m going to go get ready for bed.”

Drew just stood there in the silent darkness not knowing what to do with himself when she disappeared down the hall. When the boy heard the shower begin to run he sighed and sat on the couch, deciding he would wait for her to come back out before he left. Drew had never spent the night in the same building as Isobel unless it was family related, and he didn’t want to cross any boundaries that she wasn’t ready to take on.

They had less than a day left before they would be embarking on their drive back home for the holidays, and he still had some things that needed to be packed. He smiled to himself knowing Isobel was probably fully prepared to get in his car and hit the road at this very moment.

He fell into such deep thought he hadn’t noticed Isobel’s return, and when he looked up and saw her walking towards him he wished he walked out of that door when he still possessed any ounce of resolve. She was bare faced, skin dewy from whatever moisture she’d lathered on, and her body was covered in an oversized cotton tee that he prayed was hiding shorts beneath. She looked refreshed and comfortable and did nothing short of take his breath away.

“You could’ve come back and waited in my room.” Isobel smiled, shoving his shoulder and giggling when he actually fell into the back cushions of the sofa. She was doing her best not to fidget under his gaze, his eyes roaming over every inch of her.

Drew stiffly sat back up, running a hand through his short hair, telling Isobel something was obviously frustrating him, “I gotta go home and do some packing for tomorrow, Izzy.”

“Drew, no.” She dragged out, whining in protest and completely melting any tension present in his body. Isobel verbalizing her want for him was like a calming melody he couldn’t help but take in, “I want you stay with me tonight, I’ll keep my hands to myself, promise.”

She held out her left pinky finger, the only appropriate way to fully back up her words. He stared at her hand for a few seconds, contemplating her offer before finally curling his around her smaller one. Isobel couldn’t help but smile, immediately grabbing his hands and attempting to tug him off the couch.

“Come on we can put on a movie.” Isobel suggested as he followed down the hallway where her bedroom was.

She finally dropped his hand when they got to her bed, rounding the mattress to get to the other side and crawling under the covers. Drew’s mouth dried out at the sight, she looked adorable and he just wanted to grab her and hold her all night, “You’re cute as hell, Izzy.”

Isobel brought the comforter up past her nose, hiding the bottom half of her face as she watched him turn away, unbuttoning and pulling off his pants leaving him in black boxers and a shirt. The muscles in his back contracted and stretched as he leaned downed to pick them up before walking over to her desk and placing them on her chair.

He silently commanded her attention, getting on her bed from the foot of it and reaching to the light above them and turning it off unknowingly causing the hem of his shirt to reveal the skin leading into his boxers, “Drew, can you take the shirt off please?”

He cocked his head to the side, shaking it in disbelief at the girl hiding behind the covers, and if he didn’t how much of a clean freak she was he’d think Isobel was just trying to get him naked.

“Anything for the princess.” This had been a thing between their families for as long as he could remember, Isobel asking for something and everyone making sure the princess was satisfied.

Sure, she didn’t get everything she wanted, her parents didn’t want to raise a monster. But when it came to Drew, he’d always found it hard to say no to her, he simply was adverse to seeing that look of disappointment on her face even as a young boy.

Isobel released a breathe when he finally got under the comforter after discarding the shirt, she had the most beautiful chest staring back at her and couldn’t touch. She was hoping sleep found her quickly tonight or promises would be severely broken.

“Have you never spent the night in a girl’s bed?” Isobel asked.

Drew looked down at her trying to decide if she was being serious, but seeing her swallowed up by all her blankets and pillows was about the most unserious thing he’d ever seen, “Why do you ask that?”

“Cause you are about as stiff as a board right now.” She smiles, Isobel had never seen the guy so tense, and he was the most laidback person she’s ever met. Who knew getting him in her bed would be so awkward? Especially since the two had done far worse than share a bed for a night.

Drew knew he was being rigid, hell his body was so close to the opposite end of the mattress he could tumble to the ground at the gust of a wind—regardless of her obvious joking one would actually think he’d never been with a girl in his life. Clearly that was far from the truth, and it was just this girl in particular that had his every sense being triggered just by lying there beside him. He was way too aware of Isobel, the breathes she released causing her chest to rise in fall in an even pattern, the smell of that vanilla scent that was always gently gracing his nostrils and clouding his mind, and the fact that the body of the girl he could not get out of his head was just an arm’s reach away in all her glory. The mere thought of her soft skin being under the same comforter had every hair on him standing alert because as much as he wanted to pull her against his body he knew he probably shouldn’t touch her. Not when he couldn’t seem to control himself when it came to her, and not when Isobel always seemed to be on a mission to tease him out of his mind. She didn’t make him uncomfortable in any way, it was just the thought of ever making her feel that way that had him hesitant to relax.

“I always get nervous when I’m near a pretty girl.” He stated, partially explaining why he was being so taut before getting more comfortable in the bed, and when he saw the smile that spread on her soft lips he swore his body melted into it.

Isobel was used to Drew complimenting her looks, he even did it when they were younger, but that intense look of longing in his eyes was new. It lit her aflame, made her feel like no man had ever viewed her the way he did, like he had never looked at another girl in that way and it only solely belong to her.

“There’s no need to be nervous, I told you I would keep my hands to myself, Drew.” playfulness was clear in Isobel’s eyes but she remained on her side of the bed.

So much had changed since that day on the couch, including how much the two wanted each other. And with that it seemed as if Isobel who was hesitant with their relationship lacked the least amount of control physically. Sure, she could keep her emotions on lock as long as she kept them barreled in her mind, but her want for Drew? That was coursing through her veins and influencing every movement she made around him.

He made the girl so shy when they were around others that her cheeks felt like they were going to burn off just hours before at his party, but when it was just them alone she knew he wouldn’t judge her for wanting him.

“And I believe you, Izzy.” He chuckled making the girl roll her eyes as he folded his lean arms behind his head. He was so far, but still suffocated the space with his presence and the fact that he had her undeniable attention annoyed her.

“You know I’m as clear headed as ever after that shower, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that I want you to be the only other guy to fuck me.” Isobel sighed, fingers tapping the fabric of the comforter between their adjacent bodies. That simple action was teasing for Drew, with weight of her words lingering between them, the sound of her her nails scratching along the material made it feel as if his blood was vibrating in his veins like it was getting ready to travel down his body, “You’re going to regret being all gentlemen like real soon, Drew.”

There wasn’t a trace of a threatening tone in her voice, and as much as he wished to hear it there wasn’t any trace of alcohol impairing her speech—it was just the same old Isobel’s.

“What do you mean?” He furrowed his eyebrows at her nonchalant voice, speaking as if she wasn’t lying down beside him and telling him she was ready to have him inside of her. He wasn’t going to go back on his word, but still her entertaining the thought of them fucking had goosebumps scattering his skin. He wasn’t going to be able to go to sleep with such things racing through his mind because when he shut his eyes he knew exactly what would brighten and form in that darkness behind his eyelids.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow when there isn’t a trace of alcohol in my system, okay?” She mocked, but it didn’t piss him off, it only caused that heat growing inside him to rise a tenfold.

And all he could do was lie back as she patted his bare chest with her dainty hand before she turned her back to him and eventually drifted to sleep. When he heard her tiny snores fill the room he forced himself into an a sleep laced with all that was Isobel.

•

Isobel had never felt so warm waking up, sure she’d woken up on occasion drenched in sweat from the heater or a bad dream, but this warmth was different. It was so many things at once, a woody, sage smell mixed with her favorite vanilla scent filled her nostrils, and then there was just the feeling of being held that caused that warmth to spread throughout her entire being pulling her to hold on tighter to what was surrounding her. It was just familiar. Making her want stay in that state of rest forever as her eyes remained sealed shut.

The girl was so aware while also being weighed down by the high of such a relaxing sleep. Her awareness kept her from drifting off again as that warmth continued to swirl throughout her partially conscious body. A content hum vibrated in her throat at the heavy feeling settling beneath her, and she locked her legs tightly around the warmth. And a much throatier sound threatened to escape her at the feeling of pressure pushing against her right between her legs.

“That feels nice.” She found herself whispering against the soft feeling of skin on her lips, the thought and sound of her small voice making her eyes snap open.

Her face was buried in Drew’s neck his scent gracing her nostrils as it was only thing in her airway. She made little movement to look up and see he was still asleep, quiet snores leaving him with his hand locked firmly around her waist. The two were plastered against each other despite being on opposite ends of the bed before falling asleep. Isobel sighed at the feeling of her breasts being pushed against his hard chest, that sound alone seemed to make imaginary floodgates burst open in more ways than one.

As soon as the sound escaped her, Drew mirrored it with a grating moan followed by his hips flexing up in between her legs he was nestled between. His hips had snapped into her so roughly she slid up the bed and the headboard softly knocked into the wall. That warmth returned shooting through her and pushing an unmistakable moan out of her mouth that cracked open against his neck at the feeling of his hardened dick dragging against her heat before he relaxed back on the bed still fast asleep.

Drew was obviously enjoying himself, the slight smile on his soft, pink lips completely telling of that. Isobel was far from uncomfortable under his movement and she planned to cuddle further into the man, that was until he began to slowly roll his hips back and forth against her pussy as if he were fucking her in the moment. The sensuous sight of his hips rolling into her so carefully and the feeling of his erection rubbing against her made it feel as if sweat misted out of her pores and coated her entire body with it.

Without a second thought she roughly broke out of his grasp, pushing him onto his back as she lowered herself down to his legs well away from his crotch. Isobel was smacking Drew’s chest when his eyes cracked open, though it was the feeling of his back falling against the mattress that interrupted his dreaming. He couldn’t recall what he was exactly dreaming of but he knew it felt good.

He looked up at Isobel hovering over him, her hair a black curtain around her pretty face as little pants drifted from her mouth. Her dark brown eyes darted all around his face as if she was looking to see if he was really there before breaking out into a fit of laughter on top of him causing his entire body to shake with her.

“What are you doing, Isobel?” He asked with confusion set deep into his features, never once had he woken up to a giggling girl sitting in his lap.

The girl laughed a little while longer before she was able to contain herself, staring at him until her eyes began to trail down his body, his following her gaze where they stopped on the tent in his boxers. For about a minute the two just sat in silence, eyes darting between his morning wood and back to each other’s eyes as Isobel sat there with an innocent smile on her face.

“Drew, you were humping me in your sleep.” Isobel told him in between more laughter and his face immediately heated in embarrassment.

“No.” He countered, dragging out the word like if he said it longer what she’d just told him wouldn’t actually be true, but the hard on in his pants wasn’t helping to plead his case.

“Yes, you definitely were,” Isobel was thoroughly enjoying tormenting him. She was genuinely having fun with him in the moment, not worried about what was going on outside of their little bubble they were in, “And don’t worry your little brain, you did not make me uncomfortable okay?”

Just as Drew could so easily read her, she was subconsciously picking up on his emotions little by little. She couldn’t decipher if it came so naturally because of how fast they’d been moving intimately or because she’d known Drew since he was in middle school. And right now worry was present in his blue eyes as they continued to scan her for any sign of discomfort.

Her smile made him relax as much as his racing thoughts would allow him to, he knew sleeping in a bed with her was a bad idea as soon as he slipped under the sheets. He knew he had enough restraint to not touch her when she’d been drinking last night, but the fact that he couldn’t seem to stay away from her when they were asleep unsettled him a little, “You promise I really didn’t make you uncomfortable, Isobel?”

“Pinky promise.” She insisted, offering her pinky up to him for the second time in the last twelve hours, and once again Drew entertained it and wrapped his finger around her’s.

As they looked into each others eyes it made the small gesture feel like they were promising so much more, it was like an unspoken bond was growing between them, and no terms needed to be discussed because their locked gazes expressed everything that wasn’t being said.

Drew didn’t immediately let Isobel’s finger go, he kept it latched onto his as he pulled her hand towards him before sealing the promise with a soft kiss to the back of her hand, still staring into her eyes. Her body fell into his at the feeling of his lips on her skin, she could feel him pressing against her stomach but ignored it as she spoke, “Were you dreaming about me, Drew?”

“Don’t ask me shit you already know the answer to.” His tone had some warning in it but his eyes were distracted.

Isobel only hummed in response, reveling inside at how worked up he was getting. “Fuck.” He muttered when the girl began to slide herself up his body, her breast grazing his torso until they were pressed against his chest. His big hands found their way onto her hips, holding her there like he thought she would disappear from his lap.

A squeak left her mouth from Drew flipping their bodies around, placing her onto her back and covering her lips with his own in a hungry kiss. He breathed harshly through his nose, air vacant in his lungs from just simply kissing Isobel, their hearts pounding against each other’s. When his tongue broke the seal of her lips he wasn’t shocked at how good she still tasted despite just being asleep because after all this was Isobel. It made him mold himself further into her body. He wanted to get as close as possible to find a single a flaw and even then he knew he would still cherish her because it would make her all the more real.

He was addicted to the way that they kissed each other. He’d never kissed a girl with so much greediness and passion, it was a perfect concoction of both and the taste made him ravenous for her. Isobel’s head pushed further into the pillow behind her, relaxing her mouth as she gave him more control over the kiss and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Reluctantly removing his lips from her, he dove back in for a few more kisses like he couldn’t get enough, deeply moaning into the last one as his nose nestled tightly into the side of hers before bringing his attention to her neck where he left the softest pecks. His wet lips puckered against her sensitive skin, traveling down to the expanse of her collar bones and chest that he stretched neckline of her shirt to reach. All Isobel could do was lie there and whimper in his ear as he took what he could access with his greedy lips. The feeling of his tongue flicking her own and his large hands rubbing up and down her thighs had her close to delirium.

“We have to stop, Iz, I need to go pack.” Drew begrudgingly mumbled into her neck not heeding his own words as his mouth remained attached to her skin. Isobel groaned in resistance as she tightened her arms and wrapped her legs around his waist, knocking the breathe out of him when she grazed his dick. But as good as she felt pressed against his throbbing member, it was the perfect reality check because if he didn’t stop now he didn’t know where things would lead, “Isobel, come on we have a long drive ahead of us.”

When Drew used her full name she knew he was being serious, and as sadistic as it may be she usually liked to mess with him to see what reaction she would get out of him. If he would snap on her because she liked to see him worked up, not knowing if he would completely ravage her or unleash some type of foreign anger. Drew had always been so gentle with her, always doing what she asked, and she was curious to see a side of him he’d always kept away from her.

But now she knew it was in their best interest if she actually listened or it would mess up more than just their impending car ride together, “Fine.” She huffed dramatically. Isobel had been in deep thought about how they were going to be able to face their family with everything going on between them, and there was only one plausible thing to do that she planned to eventually tell Drew before they got home.

She immediately pulled the comforter back over her body when he got off her and walked over to grab his pants. The evident bulge in his fitted, black boxers claimed her full attention, her mouth practically salivating when he stuck his veiny hand down his pants to readjust himself to fit his zipper over it.

And when he looked over at her, catching her blatant stare and his eyes mirrored that same look of desire she knew they both weren’t going to survive this trip back home.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

PART FIVE

PART 6

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electronickingdomfox · 1 year

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Excerpts from “Shatner: where no man...”

I recently read this book (Marshak & Culbreath, 1979) and wanted to share some excerpts (the book can be borrowed for free at archive.org, by the way).

To be honest, there’s a LOT of filler and hero-worship in this book (to very annoying levels), and it’s not a biography in the common sense of the word. But it also includes personal interviews with Shatner, Roddenberry and Nimoy, which I found the most interesting parts (chapters 7 and 8 above all). So here’s some of the stuff, chosen because it relates with Star Trek or it’s just funny/curious. With special attention to the K/S parts. Because I’m making the selection and say so.

From an interview with Shatner and Nimoy (1977)

Nimoy comments on the scenes he thinks define Kirk and Spock’s relationship:

Nimoy is asked about a particular blooper he’s never seen:

Gotta love his last line. In relation to Devil in the Dark:

Nimoy then explains that he wasn’t always conscious of his reactions in front of the camera, some of them may have come naturally to him while playing the scene (like the swallowing here described). On the other hand, Shatner said in other parts of the book that he himself was very aware of his expressions and why he used them. Interesting to know when analyzing certain scenes.

About the problems with Turnabout Intruder (Roddenberry also addresses these issues in another section):

Elsewhere in the book (not part of the same interview), Shatner had also talked about this same episode:

Really, Janice Lester never struck me as the classical femme fatale who seduces men for her advantage, but Kirk... would turn himself into one? Oh, well. I can see that.

From an interview with Roddenberry and Shatner (1977)

Gene comments on Kirk and Spock’s relationship:

For this well-known passage, I’d just like to address some common criticism from those who grasp at straws to discredit what Gene said here. I’ve often seen this interview described as the authors “manoeuvring” Gene into talking about physical love between Kirk and Spock. As if Roddenberry had said that at gun-point, and thus wasn’t valid. Well, NO. The interviewers only bring the subject of Alexander and Hephaistion because Gene had previously talked about the Alexander/Kirk parallel. And they never speak of them as anything more than friends. The whole “physical love” thing was brought entirely by Roddenberry (as a little later after this interview, he’d do with the t’hyla-lover stuff in the TMP novel). The authors DO have an obvious agenda in this book, not gonna lie. But their fantasy revolves around alpha-male Kirk getting into relationships with strong women, not around K/S (at least not in this book). Believe me; I’ve read the whole thing, and it’s pervasive. To the point of trying to push Kirk/Uhura or Spock/Leila as love stories, despite Nimoy being much in disagreement with the latter, and both being forced to it. Not to mention, the authors barely brush on the “physical love” thing, and move back to the Alexander/Kirk parallels.

In fact, the authors ask Gene again about Kirk and Spock’s friendship, and again, it’s him who makes the connection between their relationship and sexual relationships in general:

Confront this with the passage in the TMP novel:

But it still felt painful to be reminded so powerfully and unexpectedly of his friendship and affection for Spock—theirs had been the touching of two minds which the old poets of Spock’s home planet had proclaimed as superior even to the wild physical love which affected Vulcans every seventh year during pon farr.

But enough with the seriousness:

I can’t believe they were discussing Kirk’s ass in front of its owner... There are other raunchy things in this interview (it’s Roddenberry after all), but I won’t put them in here.

From an interview with Theodore Sturgeon

So the legendary “In a pig’s eye!” line was DeForest Kelley’s improvisation? He’s the boss.

#star trek #star trek tos #william shatner #leonard nimoy #gene roddenberry #theodore sturgeon #interview #k/s #sondra marshak #myrna culbreath #kirk x spock #spirk #book excerpts

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stellarred · 10 months

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CAUSE VS. CANON: Making the Case for Qcard

*Warning: May trigger some Qcard shippers*

I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday about loving certain dynamics in stories, like Star Trek's Qcard for example, and how nitpicker fans and shippers analyze the writers' work, the actors' performances, etc. to show that a dynamic/relationship is true/canon.

She insisted that if you look hard enough to find proof that a relationship between two characters is canon, or has validity, you will find it "*simply because you want it to be true, even if it's not.*" 😡😡😡

She called it "nitpicking for a cause."

As a devoted and longtime Qcard shipper, I bristled at her comment, and I proceeded to explain how writers intentionally weave dynamics into their scripts and stories through devices, including: parallels, such as STP S2's Q/Picard and Teresa/Rios, and through lines, such as STP S1: the butterfly motif, (Q)ueen cards, (Picard's unusual luck in surviving the explosion), which led to S2 Q's butterfly comments, the S2 trailer (Q)ueen card, The Sun/Q motif, Q, of course, and his lesson to Picard about opening himself up to love, so that he could be chosen by someone else to be loved in return. Then, in S3, we had Q's last minute return signaled by the Sun, and Picard allowing himself to love Jack and being accepted by Jack.

I also pointed out that Trek writers choose very specific words for actors to use at unusual times to indicate dynamics, too.

Ex: Picard (S2): I always filed Q as *unknowable.*

@porgthespacepenguin and @celestialholz both have meta-analyses on Qcard that beautifully prove Qcard as canon by the writers.

She still insisted at this point that I was nitpicking, intellectualizing dialogue, and over-analyzing all because I WANTED Qcard to be real.

Finally, I told her that writers, such as Cindy Appel, producers, like Akiva Goldsman, and Ron D. Moore, as well as actors Patrick Stewart and John de Lancie backed it up, too.

She then said, "Well, De Lancie was told to act a certain way and read the script."

I then pounced, saying that although actors follow scripts, they do have some agency in their performance. John de Lancie and Patrick Stewart both made deliberate choices in their portrayals, using certain types of body language, voice inflections, facial expressions that added credence to Qcard.

At this point, she gave up the fight and smartly so.

I mean for her or anyone else to suggest we Qcard shippers find those nuances/subtext/indications woven into a script and performance out of a desire or desperation for it to be canon irritates me.

My friend then asked me, "Why can't you just casually watch something, like Star Trek and enjoy it for what it is? Why all this analysis?"

It's a fair question.

I guess it's because while I can casually watch something and enjoy it at face value, other things, such as Qcard are like finding gold dust on the ground. You see gold on the surface, and it's great. You could make some money from selling that gold dust, sure.

But, if you dig just a bit deeper, you find a rich gold mine worth much more. Much more satisfying.

So, what do you think?

Was my friend correct in saying we Qcard shippers analyze and nitpick for The Cause?

Or, are we actually on to something?

#qcard #star trek q #q #john de lancie #patrick stewart #star trek tng #star trek #stp #debate #qcard is undeniable #casual viewer's pov

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tavina-writes · 4 months

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Have you any suggestions for someone who has started recently (few months ago) to publish fics on ao3 and doesn't get a lot of hits/kudos? I feel a little down and insecure, and I don't know if it's my writing the problem or the fact that the pair is not the main and not liked much

Hi Nonny!

This is a difficult conflict to have with yourself, and I'm sure that like, you've seen all the posts about how like "you should be self indulgent! you should write for yourself! who cares about engagement!" and this both is and isn't true. But also even if you think it is true and you'd like to get some of that energy it's very difficult and for that sending you so many hugs. It is very normal to feel insecure about sharing something you've made, and I think writers of all levels of experience and "engagement" feel down about themselves like this in cycles.

idk if I'm qualified to say a ton on this topic, but I've seen lots of "unhealthy relationship to stats page" and could tell real stories about horrible things that have happened so I guess here goes nothing?

A few things to keep in mind:

what do you consider "not a lot" ? 10? 100? 1000? One of the major problems of focusing overtly on hits/kudos/comments/and other things you can't change is that inevitably if you achieve the "number of your dreams" you will....get a new number that you want. It will be bigger. Chasing this type of external numbers based validation to the exclusion of other stuff is very difficult because it is one of those sliding slope black holes to never being satisfied with what is currently going on. This is my primary thought on why focusing on stats isn't very good: it's very easy to get into a never ending cycle of never being happy.

as someone who's written for several years: we're coming up on the winter holidays, end of the semester, winter break type time period in many parts of the world but esp for northern hemisphere english speaking fandom, so if you're seeing a decrease in hits/kudos/comments/the feeling that someone out there is reading your work in general, this could play a big role. If you've only been publishing for the last few months the first time this happens can be really jarring! But it has nothing to do with the quality of your writing or if people are interested in reading and everything to do with brickspace taking up a lot of time right now. (I imagine this might also be true for Chinese speaking fandom around New Years, but I can't say since I don't engage there very often to notice trends.)

Depending on the fandom, (which, unless you, like me, are into Naruto which seems to thrive on niche AUs from now until forever), main pairings/fandom popular juggernauts will always get more people reading than a rarepair. That doesn't mean the people who write for rarepairs are doing a bad job or that writing for a rarepair isn't rewarding to the writer in other ways, but that may mean modulating expectations on like "how many people will click on my work?" and "how much feedback will I get?"

So overall, I feel like there's a combination of factors here for why you might be feeling down, but there are ways to help with this!

For one: talking about your writing and your work and what you're doing! This, I've found, is a great way to make friends. (also to anyone who says that this is obnoxious and attention seeking, this is the attention seeking webbed site, if you don't want attention why are you here????)

For two: locate friends and yell your thoughts at them <- I have found this to be 100% a mood picker upper when it comes to "am I doing a good job at writing?"

For three: find what makes you really happy about your own writing! This doesn't mean that you have to seek to improve your writing, but just, stuff that you enjoy, a line you really like, a relationship you enjoyed, a fic you thought was nice, and be kind to yourself about it.

Again, sending you hugs nonny! I hope some of this helps!

#asks and answers #I've never gotten asks like this before and idk that I'm qualified to provide advice but like #if other people who see this want to chime in with what they do or how they deal with it please do!#I think getting down about your own writing is a universal experience #every writer I've ever known gets it from time to time

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daintyduck99 · 7 months

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leaving notes for Rulie plz

The last day of school is always ridiculously—

Julie pulls Flynn out of the way as a large trash can barrels by, sighing as cheers erupt around them and a jock pops out.

Chaotic. It's ridiculously chaotic.

She just hopes that the guys aren't too involved in the chaos. The last thing they need is to get in trouble on their very last day of school.

Her hands move faster at the thought, sweeping stuff she no longer needs into the nearest jockless can. She starts cramming other things into her backpack to sort later, mostly shirts and sweaters.

One of them looks like Reggie’s, and she pulls it out to confirm that, yes, it's a flannel she stole from him months ago.

Flynn takes the opportunity to rifle through Julie's locker as Julie pulls the flannel on, quickly reclaiming a few items of her own.

She wrinkles her nose at the thick notebook lying in the bottom of the locker.

"Ugh, Jules, throw that away already."

Julie takes it out gingerly, shaking her head. She hugs it to her chest as Flynn groans, ducking her head to hide a blush.

"But you hate math!" Flynn exclaims. "Almost as much as I do. If you won't spike it into the nearest trash can, can't I?"

"No! Go spike your own notebook."

Flynn hums. "Nope, now I gotta know what's special about that one. Spill!"

Julie bites her lip. She finds a well-worn, dog-eared page and flips it around.

Flynn visibly melts, cooing as she reads.

These lines aren't for chatting / but your voice keeps me going / when my mind wants to roam / it leaps from each one

"That's cute. You wrote that part?"

Julie nods. She knows the silly, impromptu little song by heart, one that she'd totally forgotten to rip out before Reggie could see it, along with her sunshine doodles.

The page is also peppered with several of his smiley faces, a sunflower with hearts for leaves, and his equally silly response:

I'll always be cheering / On the rewired lines you're hearing / There's no problem you can't own / I'll be your number one

Flynn starts to flip through the pages, but Julie snatches them back. There's a good chance Flynn would land on his actual annotations, but there are also some conversations she'd never stop teasing Julie about, along with some she just…

Doesn't feel like sharing. Dream box material, scraps of secrets, sacred wishes.

Flynn beams. "I always knew there was something going on between you two!"

"Nothing official," Julie murmurs. "He's…"

"Sort of perfect for you?"

"In a band that's about to make it big!"

Flynn flaps her hand. "Long distance is a thing. I think you two could make it work. I mean, hello? Those lyrics alone?"

Julie sighs. She carefully tucks the notebook away in the back of her backpack, in the slim space for a laptop.

"I don't know, Flynn…"

Flynn grasps her hand. "Just come on!"

"I wasn't finished!" she yelps as Flynn drags her away, barely holding onto her backpack as they weave through the chaos, thankfully avoiding more jocks.

"Eh, you got everything important."

"But the janitors…"

The rest of her protest dies in her throat.

Reggie's laughing at something Willie drew on his little magnetic whiteboard, grinning like the absolute sunbeam he is, and Julie's heart starts to race. Especially…

Especially once his eyes land on her.

They get impossibly brighter, and his grin gets broader, and she might pass out.

"I better go check on Bobby," Willie says, which is entirely valid, but something about the way he says it and the look he exchanges with Flynn makes Julie squint.

Flynn adds, "And I'd better check on Carrie before she decides to throw away perfectly good sunglasses again," which, also valid, but—

"Oh, and Julie has to tell you something!"

If she didn't love Flynn, she'd be so dead.

Her and Willie both, honestly.

She giggles nervously as the two of them make their hasty retreat, only scooting closer to narrowly avoid an elbow to the face as another senior rips a folder in half.

Reggie just waits, looking at her with those bright, curious eyes, and she bites her lip.

Her gaze lands on his whiteboard, half taken up by Willie's drawing of a dog on a skateboard, and she moves without thinking, reaching for the marker.

Reggie makes a curious sound. "Wh—"

"No peeking!" she says through more nervous giggles, although they become a bit more genuine as he spreads his hands in an exaggerated show of surrender.

She scrawls a little sunflower, along with a handful of heartfelt words:

I want to be your number one, too. I love…

Which is when she runs out of room.

Huffing, she circles the you in your and draws a little arrow that leads back to it.

She steps away with shaking hands.

Reggie's breath hitches. "Julie—really?"

She nods, only to squeak as he scoops her into a fierce hug, hiding her flushed face in his chest. Her arms circle his waist.

It's nearly drowned out by a bunch of shouting, but he says, "I love you, too."

And she's always happy to see it in writing, texting him constantly during his first tour.

#what are we prompts #rulie #reggie x julie #rulie relajante #ficlets with ash #julie and the phantoms

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bleachbleachbleach · 1 year

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Hi! I don't know whether you're interested with the topic I'm about to discuss, it's about the relationship between Kyouraku and Nanao. Lol. All we know until the end of TYBW is Kyoraku and Nanao are officially revealed as uncle and niece. Only to that point, no more no less. But yesterday I scrolled over Instagram and found somebody commented in a post about Kyoraku, asking 'Kyoraku and Nanao are married right?'. Of course, people are denying it (some even said he's married to his zanpakutou lol). Later, there's this one guy went 'YES THEY'RE CANONICALLY MARRIED AND YOU PEOPLE JUST DON'T ADMIT IT'. Then he got himself explaining about the moment in chapter 651 (when Nanao asked Kyoraku to gave her sword back, when she said something about 'The man I adore will laugh at the curse'), there's a kanji word on that scene that defining Nanao's love confession to Kyoraku that leading into their marriage (sorry I forgot which word, but it's on the exact scene I wrote before). At first I was certainly sure this guy most likely misinterpreted the situation. But later on, I asked myself, what if I'm the one who didn't understand what I read? What if they're actually married and I didn't realize it. Idk, but if it's true I feel like it somehow ruin the atmosphere of the story (plus I'm sure both of them never thought about marrying each other because WHY SHOULD I MARRY MY OWN UNCLE/NIECE??). That's why I wanna ask for your opinion since you're indeed a thorough reader of Bleach, are they indeed married? Or is there any indication they cross the path and begin as husband and wife? I'm sure none of us wanted it, imagine marrying our own uncle lol. Your analysis lighten up my soul as a die-hard fan of Bleach who loved to contemplating every simple detail of the story lol. Thanks before!

I’ll begin by admitting that I am not someone who is bothered by fictional cartoon ghost incest, so if Kyouraku and Nanao want to be married, sure, go be married! I’m 1000% certain weirder marriages have and will continue to happen in the Seireitei. But the part about this conversation that’s interesting to me is—

Well, let’s start from the beginning!

"Marriage" is on the table here as a thematic concept because of the Ise Curse, wherein Ise women marry men, and the men always die (and their children are always women). Nanao’s mom tried to cheat the system by marrying out of the Ise Clan and into the Kyouraku Clan, but her husband still died anyway.

Nanao’s line isn’t inherently about marriage—she uses the phrase お慕いする人 (oshitaisuru hito). お慕い (oshitai) is an honorific way of expressing admiration/respect/adoration/pining. But, especially with those last two, you can see the valid potential to read the line romantically. However, it can also be used in reference to a grandparent, a teacher, or other non-romantic partners for whom you feel deep admiration.

Bleach 651

Given that the context is Nanao’s mother’s love life, and a curse that governs the love lives (and/or marriages) of Ise women, I think it’s reasonable to read that context into Nanao’s line, as well as into Kyouraku’s response (a small but witting smile), and to understand this exchange as romantic.

She's definitely talking about Kyouraku to Kyouraku here. But is she talking SOLELY about Kyouraku, or is she also referencing some future hypothetical man? I think that’s more open to interpretation.

As far as her message to Kyouraku, I’d personally read it less as a confession of love than as an assertion of agency. This is the part love so much about this scene: She and Kyouraku are losing this fight. Soul Society is losing this war. They’re probably all gonna die and it’s all beginning to feel a little preordained, a little like just deserts, a little like past romances being crushed by a cruel and inescapable family curse. For Nanao to say this now, in this moment, is to ask Kyouraku to stop protecting her and to let her join this fight―no matter the odds, no matter the sense of inevitable and pre-governed fates. Because the Kyouraku SHE knows doesn’t take shit from "fate"! He laughs at such things, and he believes, in the deepest core of his being, in a mutable world. This is what Nanao loves and admires about him.

She reminds him of this, and he smiles. They did not come here to die at the hands of the Wandenreich, or to fall to punishments meted out for crimes that are and are not theirs. If they have crimes to answer for, the answer is not death. There’s other work that must be done, on the other side of this. If Kyouraku can believe that about the Ise Curse (and Nanao's future love life with this future hypothetical man) and give Nanao her sword, then he can believe that about this Thousand-Year Blood War.

Can that faith and devotion also be read romantically? Yeah, sure go for it. Can it be read entirely platonically? I’d say yes, that too!

Personally, I think Nanao probably dodges the Ise Curse by being Extremely Lesbian, but whatever she ends up doing I’m pretty sure it involves a lot of sex and even more forms of love than that amount of sex that don’t have anything to do with sex OR romance. But that’s all beyond the purview of this scene. XD

#thank you for the ask!#uhhhh two months ago but again i promise our tardiness is not for lack of interest! just stress and time #but my shame at how tardy these are is greater than my stress about the work i should be doing rn lol #kyouraku shunsui #ise nanao #bleach tybw #bleach manga #bleach カラー #bleach meta #no brain just bleach #asks

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linklethehistorian · 3 months

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salutations mr linkle the hyrule historian tumblr can u direct me 2 the last anon that said ur wrong bc i think they're great n I wanna give them a kiss on the lips!!!! anyway was it not u that said the OFFICIAL!!!!!!! 15 translation was wrong n bad so i dont think the opinions of anyone who considers rimbaud a doormat n wrote the abomination that is cherish are valid

anyway anon if ur reading this ilove u pooks u me n bitch tree anon n bully anon should b poly or smth we'd make beautiful children

Hmmmmmmmmmm, well I don’t remember anybody saying I was wrong, honey. 🤔 Last anon just asked me a question about if I’d ever considered something, and I answered! 😊

Anyway I’d love love love love to help you two hook up bc that’s so sweet and I want to meet your future children so much! 🥺💕💕💕 I could be a part of a real life love story! 🥺💖💖💖💕💕💕💕💕 So cute!!! I don’t think Bully anon or Bitch Tree anon would be into it unfortunately at first, since they send me little hearts and cutesie things these days…. I’m sorry about that. 😔 Oh well! I’m sure when they hear your dedication to reach out to me they’ll still want to give you kissies somehow ‘cause they’re so dedicated to me too, just in a very loving way.

And yee! I did say the ‘official’ translation was bad! Thank you so much for remembering my words and sticking around my blog so long. 🥺💕 Anyway yeah, that unfortunately happens sometimes, and by sometimes, I mean a lot, ‘cause a) there are people out there who unironically think it’s okay to take creative liberties in translating because it’s their right as someone taking the time to do it (can’t be assed rn but if you search around this site enough, you’ll find an entire thread of translators talking about this), b), there are people who write for a lot of series they’re not into and therefore aren’t aware of all the context of previous novels, c) there are people who just slip up and make mistakes! Happens all the time unfortunately and most people don’t understand that if you misunderstand or change one thing it can change everything, and d) people who are tasked with translating 99% of the time never even talk to the people team of people who actually published the original, much less are in contact with the author themself! Mistranslations and drastic creative liberties happen a lot for example in the fandom I came from (The Legend of Zelda), which you can see a bit here! And if you still don’t believe me, you can go ask Dear old Author Neil Gaiman, who has even had some of the characters in his books turned from lovers to sisters and everything, a lot of the time completely without his knowledge until fans point it out to him! If you scroll his blog, I’m sure you’ll find those posts for yourself, assuming he doesn’t see an ask from you on if it happens. ‘Tis a sad thing, but Asagiri-sensei likely doesn’t even know when a mistranslation happens, much less do these people sit down and ask him things directly before doing their thing. He certainly doesn’t have involvement overseeing the process; that’s an unreasonable thing to ask of someone when it involves other languages they may or may not even be fluent in. And all the proof we need that it’s wrong is that the JP novel and the Stage Play (both things that Asagiri was directly, heavily involved in and/or directly penned the words of/material of the script for himself) both contradict it. If you’d like to take on that claim, since you’re implying I’m wrong, have at it! The burden of proof is on you, so, I look forward to seeing you send me the individual JP source lines of the Eng translations you want to take a crack at defending and a long wall of educational text explaining why each part of the English translation got it 1,000% right, directly in my in-box. If not, have a good day ‘cause I’m sorry, but I got limited time and other things to do right now, baby. 💕 I’ll eventually get to it myself some day, but right now I have other articles to finish first, art to make, and a fic to keep posting.

Speaking of which…OMG YOU READ CHERISH? 🥺💕💕💕💖💖💕💕💖💕💕💖💖😊💖💕🥺💕🥺💕💖💕💕🥺💕💖💕💕💕 That’s so sweet OMG OMG OMG! I’m glad you enjoy my beautiful ‘abomination’ enough to read and keep up with it! Don’t worry sweetie, the next chapter is on its way!

See this is why I love love love love love love love my ‘haters’ so fucking much, I adore y’all, I’d kill for y’all, OMG. You give me so much dedication and time, I know how much y’all adore me and I adore you right back! My beloved super fans. 💕💕💕💖💖💕💕💖💕💕💕💕🥺🥺🥺 Every ask I get and vague post I read makes my heart flutter, frfr, I’ve actually got an album I keep of screenshots of y’all’s posts to give me the motivation to keep doing what I do whenever I’m down. 🥺💖💖💕💕 This one goes in the collection for sure ahhhh 💖💖💕💕💕 I’m so important to people OMG IT’S SO CUTE AND SWEET

TAKE CARE OUT THERE ANON! PLS SEND ME MORE MESSAGES I LOVE THEM. I WAIT WITH BATED BREATH 💖💖💕💕💖💕💕💕💖💖

GOOD LUCK ON YOUR DATE!!! PLEASE MAKE BABIES WHO ARE ALSO OBSESSED WITH ME, I CAN’T WAIT 💕💕💕💖💖

#linklethehistorian #bungou stray dogs #bsd #my thoughts #thoughts #bsd novels #fifteen #arthur rimbaud #bsd arthur rimbaud #randou #official english translations #ask #anon #ily anon #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THINKING ABOUT ME OMG 💕💕💕💕#this ask made my day 🥺🥺💖💖💕💕💖#REASONS TO LIVE FR

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cheesybadgers · 1 year

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Taking advantage of your post about being able to send questions about your fics, I've always wanted to know if you have books that inspire you to write OHDH.

You know it's a statement for me to talk about how much I love what you do, but I think your narrative bias is impeccable! Not to mention the references you use in the story which are great.

Ahhh Maria, bless you and thank you so much for your kind words 🥺 And wow thank you for asking such a great question ❤️

I'll put this below the cut, because it got a bit long lol.

I've read a lot of books specifically as research for OHDH, in the sense of knowing my next chapter was going to be about X subject/place etc. but I didn't know anywhere near enough to be able to write about it well without researching first. I've mentioned a few of the books (fiction and non-fiction) I've used for this in my OHDH trivia post.

One of those books listed in that post, Everyone Knows You Go Home by Natalia Sylvester, was also a big inspiration for including Día de los Muertos in OHDH. The book is set in a Texas border town, follows a Mexican family and covers parental loss and grief (the main character's father-in-law is dead and his ghost visits her every Día de los Muertos to try and fix unresolved conflict with his son), cultural identity, and also the realities of crossing the US-Mexican border. So, it was a bit of a goldmine when I found that lol.

I also read a couple of books by Colombian authors: Like This Afternoon Forever by Jaime Manrique and Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. They both follow Colombian characters living in Colombia during the 80s. I found these stories really useful in giving context that Narcos just doesn't give, because obviously Narcos isn't told from a Colombian POV. The first one mentioned also has two gay priests who fall in love, but their ending is a sad one (I understand why though, as the author is a gay man who lived through the HIV/AIDS crisis but their partner didn't, so I think this book was him processing his own grief).

In fact, most of the LGBTQ+ books I've read since starting OHDH had sad/bittersweet endings (including Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, which gets referenced a couple of times in OHDH). I know that's not surprising in the slightest...but in a way, I think reading those books inspired me NOT to do that? There are enough tragic stories about gay/bi men (especially in the 80s/early 90s) already...and whilst they are absolutely valid and serve a purpose and are often based on the author's own experiences, I didn't want to add another.

There are a few books about/set in Madrid I've read for chapter 18 that have been really useful in providing historical context I wasn't aware of, but I don't want to give away spoilers lol, so I'll talk about that in my trivia post once the chapter is done and dusted!

I know you asked specifically about books, but film and TV inspire me a lot as well. Huge shout out to two gay films that have spookily similar premises but very different endings: God's Own Country and A Moment in the Reeds. They're both really atmospheric (God's Own Country is also aptly set on a farm, albeit in England rather than on a ranch in Texas lol) and the way they capture m/m intimacy made me YEARN.

As for TV...I know this is a bit random but Buffy the Vampire Slayer, purely for the way that show uses tropes. I know it's absolutely not the only show to do this, but I did a Buffy re-watch at some point during the pandemic (so probably not long after I started writing OHDH) and remember being impressed by the tools they used to tell stories, particularly dreams/foreshadowing/objects of significance (hello cross necklace, my beloved). I ended up including stuff along those lines in OHDH after I did that re-watch.

I also really wish I'd been able to watch The Last of Us before I started writing this fic lol...I don't think I've ever experienced such extreme writer envy as I did after episode 3 😂 It won't be part of OHDH, but after that episode I was daydreaming about looking in on Javier and Horacio when they're that age and then I made myself cry 😭

By the way, I do know this is all going waaaaay beyond what anyone needs to do to write a fic lol. But in my defence, it serves me right for writing about places/people/events I didn't know much about beforehand lol. And I also love learning new things! And this has been the perfect opportunity to learn but in a more fun way than my school days ever allowed. I've also read a lot more books than I had done in years, so who said pushing your favourite fictional men together like dolls and making kissing noises had to be a shallow hobby? 😂

Thank you once again for sending this, Maria! It's been fun to respond to 😘

#Ask #Asks #Replies #OHDH

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sweetface1 · 2 years

Text

SPOILERS FOR MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, WANDAVISION, AND FOR THE COMICS : AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED AND HOUSE OF M.

Im so sorry about spelling, grammar, and all of the rambling. I wrote this at three in the morning.

I just wanted to give my opinion on Wanda’s character in the movie. I’ve seen a lot of people saying that they didn’t like the way Wanda was depicted. Which is completely valid and I fully understand why, but I on the other hand really like how she was depicted. Obviously it wasn’t perfect and there could’ve been some changes but I did like it. I’ve seen a lot of people complain that we never go to see Wanda become corrupted from the Darkhold and that it was jarring to see her as the villain as soon as she’s introduced. I agree with this statement as someone who watched Wandavision before seeing this movie. I agree that there isn’t any progression of Wanda becoming corrupted. The very last we saw of Wanda she was looking in the Darkhold for a way to get to her children. So we as the audience knew she was using the book but didn’t get to see the effects it had on her. The other complaint was that Wanda was too obsessed with wanting to be a mother and that she would never go to the lengths she did in this movie to be one. I both disagree and agree with this statement. As someone who’s read a few comics with the scarlet witch in them, specifically Avengers Disassembled and the House of M I think that this is perfectly in line with Wanda’s character at least from those specific comics. Which it seems like the MCU is mostly using for Wanda’s character at the moment. These two storylines focus mostly on Wanda wanting her children back and going to pretty much any length to do this. In Avengers Disassembled she tries to destroy the Avengers because she thinks they killed her children. She even succeeds with killing a few of them. Then in the House of M she rewrites reality to bring her children back. These comics really show what lengths Wanda is willing to go to have her children. In the movie its a little different but it still shows she’s willing to murder and change the multiverse for these kids. Of course someone coming in to see this movie without reading or knowing any of this from the comics would probably be shocked. In the MCU it does seem like a very drastic change to Wanda’s character. I would love to hear other peoples opinions on what they thought about Wanda in this movie. ✨✨✨

#scarlet witch #marvel #doctor strange #multiverse of madness #doctor strange and the multiverse of madness #spoilers #comics #comic spoilers #marvel comics #wanda maximoff #opinion #ramblings

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miekasa · 3 years

Text

iced tea

+ pairing: levi ackerman x reader

+ genres and warnings: college au, levi is the best not yet boyfriend au, erwin would definitely be an insufferable project partner to have but you gotta love him au

+ summary: there are three rules of night class. come on time, come prepared, and come with snacks. you forget about rule number three. luckily, levi’s there to save the day.

There’s only one appeal to signing up for a three-hour night class, and it’s that you only ever have to muster up the will to attend once a week. It’s a sacrifice, but it definitely cuts down on the temptation of skipping like you would a normal, one-hour section course. Just one and done.

Plus, you have Erwin with you in this class. Is he a little bit of a professor’s pet and consistently overly chipper every class despite knowing he’s about to endure 180 minutes of lecture? Sure, but at least you don’t have to suffer alone.

Really, it’s not as bad as it sounds, especially if the course is interesting enough, or easy enough, and luckily for you, yours is both. Not to mention, your professor is brilliant, actually entertaining, and does her best to keep the class engaging—she’s funny in the dorky, lovable professor kind of way. And she gives you short, ten to fifteen minute breaks at every hour mark just to make sure everyone doesn’t completely lose their minds.

It’s a commitment, but you’ve grown to actually enjoy it. As long as you follow the three rules of night class: come on time, come with your notes prepared so that you don’t get upstaged by Erwin, and come with—

“Fuck,” you curse, watching as Erwin pulls out one of his many, tiny, organic, boxed juices. The ones meant for children with soy sensitivities that Erwin claims are packed with more nutrients.

“What’s up?” He questions, more shocked than concerned, at your sudden profanity as he sets his juice box in the right corner of his desk.

You pout. “I forgot to bring snacks.”

Come on time, come with your notes prepared so that you don’t get upstaged by Erwin, and come with snacks. Those were the only three rules of night class, and you’d completely forgotten about the most important one.

“Oh,” Erwin grins, pulling a chocolate bar from his lunch bag and taunting you with it, “Sounds like a you problem.”

You snatch a piece from the top corner, stuffing part of it into your mouth to spite him; but you regret your choices as soon as it melts on your tongue.

“What the fuck—is this mint chocolate?” you complain, swallowing the rest of the sweet with disdain.

“Yes it is,” Erwin huffs, grabbing the remaining stolen bit from between your fingers and popping it into his mouth, “And it is delicious.”

“You’re an actual menace to society.”

Erwin crinkles his nose at you, “A menace to society with snacks for the next three hours.”

His comment makes you groan, albeit a little dramatically, and you slump back in your chair to debate your options. Class doesn’t start for another twelve minutes; you could try and run to the student center quickly to buy some last minute snacks, but the line was probably already lengthy with students of similar trains of thought, meaning you’d be late if you stuck it out, which would leave you violating rules one and three tonight. Erwin makes you sit in the front row with him, and you were not willing to take the late walk of shame with an armful of snacks in tow.

You could wait it out until the first hour break, but they’ll probably be sold out of anything good by then, not to mention the race to beat out the line again. If you played your cards right, you could order food during class and time it so that it was delivered during your break, but that was risky.

Alternatively, you could try and sprint to the concessions stand near the library, but going there and back was so much further away than the student center; you’d probably end up late, too.

“Hey,” you call to Erwin, refraining from rolling your eyes as he sets all six thousand and twenty eight of his colored pens on his desk for the evening, “Is Hange still on campus?”

“No, they have work today.”

You groan. Why did Hange have to be so responsible and good with their time-management skills. They was your last hope. Unless—

“Do you think Levi will bring me Starbucks?”

“Probably,” Erwin shrugs, humming to himself; but then he thinks it over, replying again with a knowing smirk on his face, “Actually, definitely. If he’s still here, but he probably is. You know him.”

You pout, the possibility of Levi being home is high, but so is that of him being cooped up in his favorite library. Either way, he would likely be studying right now, and you’d hate to disturb him, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

[sent 6:47pm] you — leeevaaaaaaaaai are you still on campus

[received 6:47pm] leeevaaai — yes — why, what’s wrong

[sent 6:47pm] you — uwu — wanna bring me something from starbucks before class — i have my 3 hour lecture today and i forgot snacks :—( — and erwin won’t share his organic $1500 whole foods gummy bears with me

[received 6:48pm] leeevaaai — i told you i don’t like the smileys with the noses, they’re ugly — should you even be drinking coffee this late, you’ll be up until the ass crack of dawn

You scoff audibly, and Erwin takes this as an invitation to peep at your screen. Your comment about his snacks does not go unnoticed, as bitterly munches on his (yes, in fact, organic and gluten-free, as if it being mint flavored wasn’t criminal enough) chocolate bar.

[sent 6:48pm] you — that’s RICH coming from you mister

[received 6:48pm] leeevaaai — you’re being awfully rude to someone you expect to buy you a $7 drink

[sent 6:48pm] you — hehe sorry i loooove you leeevaaai — venti iced chai latte — light ice

[received 6:49pm] leeevaaai — do you think i don’t know your overpriced starbucks order by now

[sent 6:49pm] you — uwu :—)

[received 6:49pm] leeevaaai — but you’re getting a grande, i’m not made of money — and it’s punishment for sending another ugly nose smiley

[sent 6:49pm] you — un-uwu

“I don’t blame him,” Erwin chuckles, scrunching the wrapper from his now finished bar between his fingers.

You flick him away, ignoring the turning heads of your classmates as Erwin’s pens fall in the aftermath. It’s seven o’clock on the dot when your laptop pings loudly with an incoming message from Levi—and a subsequent groan from Erwin, who breeches your personal space once more to press the mute button on your keyboard.

[received 7:00pm] leeevaaai — where are you sitting

[sent 7:00pm] you — front row to the right — erwin’s idea not mine

Levi spots Erwin’s bright blonde hair before he sees you, scoffing to himself as he makes his way to the front of the room; a tray with three Starbucks cups, and a plastic bag in tow. Erwin sees him first, too, waving at him as he crosses from the left side to where the two of you are seated.

“Aw, Levi, you brought me one!” Erwin all but squeaks, reaching for one of the other drinks with grabby hands after you take your iced drink from the tray.

But Levi pulls one hot drink from the tray for himself, and pulls the remaining one out of arm’s reach. “As if,” he grumbles, bringing his own cup to his lips.

“You’re the best, Levi,” you smile, sticking your tongue out at Erwin. Levi only offers you a small nod as acknowledgement. He extends his left hand now, the plastic bag sliding off his wrist and onto your desk, silently.

Confused, you lean forward, setting your drink down to open the contents of the bag. Inside, there are two granola bars, a bagel, cream cheese, some kind of sandwich, and a small Nutella to-go cup with mini breadsticks attached. When you look back up at Levi, he simply shrugs, sipping on his drink again while a light pink dusts over the tips of his ears.

“You said you forgot your snacks,” he explains, “I knew you’d text me the whole time, bitching about how Erwin wouldn’t share his zero-calorie lemon rinds if you didn’t have your own.”

You take note that the chai he brought you was, in fact, a venti, and not a grande like he’d threatened, and that the granola bars in the bag are not only your favorite flavor, but from your favorite brand, too; and you find yourself smiling as you decipher the very clear message underneath Levi’s less than poetic words.

“What’s in the other cup?” Erwin asks, pointing at the remaining drink. Levi carefully lifts it from the tray, and sets it down on the other corner of your desk, a safe distance away from your laptop.

“Tea,” he says shortly, “So you don’t lose your mind after inhaling your coffee.”

“This is tea, too. Chai is tea, Levi.”

“Tea without milk or six kilograms of sugar,” Levi corrects you, “Or ice.”

“Iced tea is tea, you know.”

Levi doesn’t respond to that with anything but a glare. You smile at his stoicism. Erwin thinks the whole exchange is kind of weird, and wonders where you possibly get the gall to make fun of his taste in snacks when you can’t even realize you’re in love with a man who refuses to identify iced tea as a valid form of tea.

“I better go before she starts,” Levi speaks, a single hand referencing to your professor behind him, who looks just about ready to begin class for the evening, “Call me when you’re done, I’ll drive you two home.”

“Oh, you don’t have to, Erwin and I usually take the b—”

“Brat,” Levi cuts your words short, “Call me when you’re finished. I’ll be in the library.”

You throw daggers at him with your eyes, but your resolve is waning, once again, as you closely read at the implications of Levi’s promise. You accept, and Erwin is more than happy for the free ride.

Levi hums. “And eat the bagel before the Nutella.”

“You’re annoying.”

“I’m a saint,” Levi deadpans, placing the palm of his hand on the top of your head affectionately, “Call me.”

He walks away before you can debate again, just as your professor speaks into the microphone to grab everyone’s attention. You scrunch your nose, hands flying to your hair to smooth out the aftermath of Levi’s playfulness, before opening your notes for the evening.

“You’re really dense aren’t you?” Erwin asks, one eyebrow raised, but the overall look on his face is more than fond, “It’s kind of cute.”

“Huh?” you question, cheeks stuffed with food as you bite into your bagel, “Dense about what?”

Erwin shakes his head, turning back to laptop with an exasperated expression, the fondness in his eyes fading quickly. “Hopeless,” he mumbles, “The both of you.”

#aot x reader #snk x reader #levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #aot imagines #snk imagines #levi ackerman fluff #levi ackerman smut #levi fluff #levi smut #erwin x reader #eren x reader

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cozycottagetarot · 3 years

Text

Pick A Pile: How Can You Take Better Care of Yourself?

I did this reading a bit different from my others. It’s mainly based on impressions as I’m only using the images and any text on the cards at face value along with whatever else comes to me. So feedback would be appreciated. Another thing is the piles all have intertwining messages so if you feel drawn to two piles, then by all means I encourage you to check them both out.

Paid Readings (I’ll be updating them again)

Disclaimer: All readings and tarot/blog games are for fun and entertainment purposes only. It is in no way meant to act as or replace professional advice of any kind. You know yourself and what’s going on in your life best so I asks that you trust yourself above all else. Finally please take only what resonates from the reading which may be some of it, all of it, or none at all.

PILE 1

Tarot Cards: 7 of Cups, 8 of Wands, The Sun

Pile 1, the way you can take better care of yourself is by making a decision. With the 7 of Cups I see that you have all these opportunities being presented in front of you but you have no idea which one to go with. I get the impression from the cards that from postponing making a decision or choice, you’re starting to feel the brightness in other areas of your life dim. With the 8 of Wands and The Sun following however, I feel like once you make a decision, results and positive things will happen quickly, bringing you happiness. The Sun has a faint face depicted in it, so I feel like you don’t have to worry too much about unintended consequences. I see this as a sign you are being protected from unintended or unpleasant consequences as a result of your decision. Also, connecting with your inner child may be a way to help you make this decision.

The next cards that came out are: Protection (Call back your power. Cut the cords. Soul retrieval.) Soul Family (Call in your tribe. You don’t have to do it alone.) Anna, Grandmother of Jesus (Seeding the light, laying foundations. Divine plan.) The Ever-Unfolding Rose (Cracked open. It’s happening for you, not to you.)

With these cards I think some of you could be going through a 'dark night of the soul' (read: a very difficult time in your life). You may be feeling like somewhere along the line you’ve lost yourself or your direction as to where you’re heading next in life or what it is you truly desire (any Lucifer fans here because I hear Tom Ellis’s voice in my head haha). You may be asking yourself questions such as 'Why is this the way life is happening? Why me? Who am I even?' But even though it might seem unfair or lacking sense right now, keep in mind that whatever is going on is helping you in some format. Situations within reason of course, using your discernment here is best. It’s truly all about how you tell your story. Another thing is you don’t have to make these decisions on your own. Turn to your family and your friends for help/advice. If necessary, maybe you can seek professional help. If either or those things isn't really an option, you could always try taking some time to nurture yourself and journey inside to help you remember or figure out what’s important to you. When you make that effort to find/listen to yourself outside of the noise of everything else, I think that’s when you’ll find the information necessary to help make your decision.

Remaining Cards: The Hourglass Dolphin (46) — your achievement is only a matter of time. The Three Rhine Maidens (15) — love is a virtue that endure eternally.

The Hourglass Dolphin is all about finding balance between two aspects of your life, typically work and play. Dividing your time and remembering to put EXTRA care into taking care of your basic needs is another thing that’s going to help you find success. I feel like you are in a transitory phase and it really is only a matter of time before whatever darkness that may be clouding your life right now disappears.

The Three Rhine Mermaids talks about a phase in your life coming full circle, and once that happens your hearts desires are going to start materialising in your physical/the 3D.

The North Witch (23) — This card just kind of confirms or reiterates that with patience this dark phase is going to fade.

The Toad Witch (7) —This card talks about gaining wisdom from adversity. Also a secret admirer as well. There were messages of love laced through out the cards but they weren’t clear until now. Similarly, I think this will reflect in your life that after you’ve found stability once things have cleared up, you will find love as well.. or better yet, love will find you. Do keep in mind it might not be super quick… maybe Spring or Summer (depending on when you're reading this).

Self Care Activities Ideas (Homemade deck): Look good; feel good (put effort into looking the way you want), Believe In Yourself, Have a fruit (incorporate more fruits into your diet).

PILE 2

Hello Pile 2. The way for you to take better care of yourself right now is through doing what makes you happy.

Tarot Cards: Ace of Swords, The Sun, The Devil

I actually pulled the Ace of Swords last. Also before I started focusing on your pile while shuffling, the Four of Swords reversed came out.

Thinking of these two cards together, I think you need to pull back and ask yourself if what you’re doing is really the best thing for you. I feel like you guys could be in a really good place right now— at least at face value. The cards have darker backgrounds, except The Sun. I feel like whatever you are doing isn’t really sparking joy inside. Maybe it’s familial or peer pressure related? The life path you’re on right now seems ideal and fulfilling to everyone else, but somehow I feel like deep down inside it doesn’t feel that way. You may feel chained or held back as shown by The Devil. Looking at The Sun and The Devil, they came out together side by side. I feel like this is more family related meaning parents, parental figures or mentors. They may be trying to look out for you by telling you to study a certain topic or take a certain job because it’s safe, when what you truly want to do may be a little bit more risky. So even though you’re playing it safe right now and have things to celebrate, you may not be able to shake the that unsatisfied feeling inside.

The next cards that came out are: Warrior Woman (Have you answered your deepest calling?) Play (Have fun. Celebrate. Don’t be so serious.) Break The Chain (Ancestral patterns. Healing. Rewriting the future.) Transformation (Things are changing at a cellular level. Deep healing.)

All the figures in these cards look like they’re in their power. It makes me think you may be ignoring or avoiding stepping into the energy of your higher self. I kind of had the though fear of backlash pop into my head, and while it is a valid fear, I don’t feel like it’s something you have to worry about a lot. I feel like you need to schedule more time for yourself in general as well. You can’t ‘fight’ for other people all the time, you also have to ‘fight’ for you.

I’m just noticing something about the placement of the cards. Warrior Woman has a sword and is placed right next the the Ace of Swords. Break The Chain is right next to The Devil, and the sun is shining in Transformation and Play, in the same position as the one in The Sun… As I was saying, I feel like you need to just take a moment to connect with yourself. Ask yourself what is it you truly want and begin rewriting your future*.

*This is the part where I let it be known I need people to practice life coaching with so if you’re interested you can message me. 18 years and up only though.

Remaining Cards: The Siren (14) — In the treasure of a day, light is thrown on what could be tomorrow. The Stripped Dolphin (30) Good news, flowing through the ether waves will answer your prayers.

The Siren Is mostly about observation and not forcing connections. The Stripped Dolphin is about good things happening for you, especially by surprise. It’s also about new beginnings in any area of your life. However there’s also a message about not getting caught up in many opportunities, so if you were drawn to pile 1 as well, I see this as a sign to check out the pile as well.

The Silver Moon Witch (2) has a message of being able to see progress by the next full or new moon. However this card advises you to choose carefully when it’s the right time to go with the flow versus ‘swimming’ against the tide. Relating to above, journey inside yourself to figure out if you are taking the right course if action by choosing to stick with the path you’re on versus yelling plot twist and doing something different.

The Full Moon Witch (18) has two sides to it. On one hand you can expect ‘heartfelt’ plans coming to fruition, but on the other hand emotions may be running high and words that aren’t meant may be said. This another one of the moon phases cards, so you may find during the full moon you may have disagreements with your loved ones but once it starts to wane, disagreements may also reach a resolution. I think this relates to the The Silver Moon Witch card as well, so maybe before or during a full moon may not be the best time to bring up anything that may cause a disagreement?

Self Care Activities Ideas (Homemade deck): Journal, Get Creative, Listen To Music (there may be messages in songs for you)

PILE 3

Pile 3, you guys have been giving me hell from the moment I sat down to pull cards for your reading. From focusing and interpreting to editing. Everything was a mess and I’m assuming you a significant part of your life maybe as well? Or your headspace at least.

Aside from my struggles with your reading, based on the cards, I see you need to focus on yourself.

Tarot Cards: The Chariot, The High Priestess, Queen of Wands reversed.

Starting with your Tarot in no particular order, you have The Chariot, The High Priestess and Queen of Wands reversed. The Queen of Wands is my ideal (you) card. When it’s reversed, I see it as a sign [you] are not embodying the energy of your highest self and/or something in your life is out of balance. Both The Chariot and The High Priestess have black and white polarities, so I see it more as you needing to put yourself back into balance. Something may feel hidden from you, though you’re not really sure what and you want to push forward but it’s just not really happening? On the bottom of the deck is the 9 of Swords which notes to fear, depression, anxiety, etc and is needing to release those emotions. Obviously it can be more complex than it sounds, but I’m hoping you get the idea. Brain-dump came to me. Maybe you need to do a brain-dump and survey/assess your ‘kingdom’ so you can flip that Queen of Wands energy around and allow your chariot to race onward. The next cards that came out are:

The Crumbling (What are you clinging on to?) —> Do you need to release anything? Material items, a goal, a belief, way of life, or maybe just the act of trying to have it all together?

Boundaries (Where do you need to establish better boundaries?) —> Do you need better boundaries with yourself? Habits? People? Enviroment? School/Career?

Share Your Voice (Come out of the cave. Persecution. Expression.) It’s time to step into the limelight, because the world is your stage. Maybe you’ve been hanging back and suppressing who you truly are, but now it’s time to step forward into a new role… a you role. You don’t have to go from stand in actor to lead role over night, but do brainstorm and take baby steps daily to get there.

Keepers Of The Earth (You are not alone. Ancient ancestors stand beside you.) Take the meaning as you will, but I see it as a message to look for support in unexpected places. Maybe it’s an online community of people who can relate to you. Maybe it’s a book, article or video. Who knows, it could even be a friend or family member you didn’t think could relate or help you out. Remaining Cards: The Kraken (38) — Your success and happiness lie within you. The Great Sea Monster (37) — To accomplish you dream plan and believe.

The main theme of The Kraken is release. Good fortune/luck will come to you by delving into your subconscious mind to free the conscious. Returning to nature and the things that bring you inner joy. Good fortune coming in small waves which eventually grow into big ones.

The Great Sea Monster is about taking action and again, freeing your conscious mind by looking into your unconscious mind. Also there is more than one way to solve a dilemma, you just have to search the right way. The Immortal Witch (4) — new beginnings are happening for you, and your desires are on their way to you although it might not appear so currently. (Kind of like planting a seed. It’s growing though we can’t see it until it burst through the soil). The Fairy Ring Witch (9) — mental and physical communication. Connecting with or making friends with similar skills or talents. Self Care Activities Ideas (Homemade deck): Tend to yourself, Slow and steady, Get creative, Read a book (maybe a self help book relevant to what you're going through).

#pick a card #pick a pile #pick a card reading #pick a picture #tarot reading #pick a pile reading #pac #pac reading #ariesmoontarot

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myelocin · 3 years

Text

Postcards From: Kanazawa | Tsukishima Kei

Synopsis: The fear that comes with love is the realization that it isn't always just light. Love, rediscovered as both the fear and the drive that depicts the push and pull of whether it's worth it to say "I do," if the unknown is what's to come beyond the vow. In which it's a week until the wedding, and the both of you return to Kanazawa--to day one--as strangers.

Characters: Tsukishima Kei

Genre/Tags: Engagement!AU, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with Happy Ending | WC: 10,200+

A/N: this is a piece commed by @tsukishumai ;w; tq for trusting me w u and ur bb boi ily to the moon n back

playlist

commissions | ko-fi

The illusion of the soul is the false belief that love must always—always—be just light.

The truth is, it’s not. Love is many things. Primarily, love begins from desire. Then, that desire seeps into a drive that pushes you to keep wanting. Then finally, when it’s seeped in through the skin deep enough, love pools in the soul.

Love is bound to be raw at the very core. A desire. To say, “I want you,” and think it holds as much credibility as “I love you.” To look at what you know is only the tendrils of something at the very most, and trick yourself into thinking that it’s enough. A beating heart—bloody red. The line just barely hanging in-between what’s selfish and selfless, before it ultimately sways and becomes selfish sometimes.

Sometimes, being right now, Tsukishima thinks.

Sandwiched in-between you to the left, and Yamaguchi to his right, he finds his eyes flickering towards the clock a lot more often than he would have liked. Akaashi, who sat across from his seat on the table, was the first to catch on.

He quirked a brow, presumably in question earlier, and mouthed the question if he was in a rush. Tsukishima’s never been known for having too many words, but because Akaashi pauses and insists to relieve his question with an answer, he shrugs, waving him off and mouthing back that he’s alright.

“So,” Bokuto starts, his voice already slipping into somewhat of a slur. “How’s it feel to be the first to pop the question?”

You laugh, finding amusement in the man’s enthusiasm. Turning to Tsukishima, you sit and wait, expectant of a reaction.

In response, he just shrugs, but a smile breaks through and redefines the nonchalance of his expression anyway. Raising the glass to his lips, he takes a quick sip before answering smugly, “It’s nice to finally settle down. You should try it sometimes.”

Bokuto waves him off, cheeks flushed and eyes already drooping from the inebriation. “Nah,” he slurs, shaking his head. The exaggeration warrants a quick laugh from Sugawara, who sits on the other side, nursing his own drink. Continuing, Bokuto huffs and takes a slight pause before he connects the last of what he says with, “—getting married is nice and all, but I don’t know, man,” he laughs. “Just feels like I’ll end up hitting a fucking blank space after I do or whatever. Not my vibe.”

Visibly, Tsukishima shifts a little, the smile on his face maintained but the lighthearted energy that earlier fueled it just slightly more drained now.

From the corner of your eye, you notice it. Though, Akaashi’s the one who gives him a pointed stare, to which the former simply ignores.

“But—“ Bokuto continues, as if trying to remedy the cracked part of the atmosphere that isn’t even visible in the first place—“If that’s your thing, then I’m obviously not going to judge you for that.”

Tsukishima responds by his silence. Bokuto, with his head still warped around the heavy state of his inebriation, doesn’t do so much other than sip a little more of his barely filled glass of beer, Tsukishima’s apathetic expression just a blur in his eyes now.

“You seem happy, though,” Bokuto notes, then raises his glass towards you.

Blinking at being the sudden subject of his interest, you raise your own glass of water. The ice inside shifts, clinking against the sides of the glass, and slowly, Tsukishima watches. There’s familiarity in the way it moves down: trickling slow like the patience inside him that’s suddenly running by the clock. His palms just barely gripping the utensils, clammy. While his head, still whirs at Bokuto’s halfhearted words.

It’s halfhearted, he reminds himself.

The thought of hitting a plateau after “I do,” in a way is terrifying.

But he is happy, right?

The way his palms respond solely through tensing suddenly spikes the fear that maybe his ring will slip. So he looks at you, trying to find an anchor to keep the love he pushes to stay intertwined with his truth afloat as he responds, “Of course I am. I’m happy.”

You look back at him, eye to eye, though you find something waver just for a split second— wondering if there’s credibility in the saying that gold will always deliver truth.

The rest of the night flows easy.

Almost naturally, he’s quick to wave off Bokuto’s invite for more drinks at the bar just down the street, tugging your interlaced hands towards the parking lot as soon as the group found its way to the exit.

“You know he probably just wanted more company,” you laugh. Thirty minutes after making it back home, instead of jumping straight into the shower and getting ready for the night routine, you instead take out the suitcase and take your place, seated on the floor in the living room.

“We needed to pack,” you hear him respond, his voice a little distant from the bedroom down the hall.

You shrug. “Yeah, but we could have made time.”

“Sometimes we can’t just make things, if we don’t have any to make it with in the first place,” he sighs.

You chuckle. Perhaps it’s just one of those nights again. In the ten years you’ve known Tsukishima Kei, you found that he had a tendency to become a multitude of things.

A stranger, at the start, because that’s where every connection begins. The neighbor who lived with his grandfather across the street from your childhood home. Kanazawa was a long way from Sendai, but before his parents had whisked him off to Miyagi some years later, he had been the friend that oftentimes spent his afternoons with you.

Strawberry cake and tiny sips of boxed juice from the convenient store down the street, and not much conversation exchanged between the both of you. He’d tell you about the things on his grandfather’s old encyclopedia, and you’d listen with rapt attention, finding it nice how he seemed to carry a little bit of the stars the more his eyes gleamed. He just talked about dinosaurs, you remember. At ten, Tsukishima had always been a wonderer.

Then he moved.

From the friend who told you stories and shared his juice boxes with you under that tree, to the occasional email that would pop up on your phone, when you were in highschool and weaving your way in and out of pathways and dead-ends. Miyagi was a little like Kanazawa, he said. There was a lot of quiet in the two cities. His email would come once a week, then twice when you reckon he felt a little lonely.

You’d reply with the same kind of enthusiasm as he had established, though you still couldn’t deny the fact that the notification with his name on it never failed to have you smiling—at least just a little bit. At fifteen, Tsukishima was far from a stranger, but he was also falling just a little short in making it to the halfway mark of being a friend too.

The once-a-week emails were welcome, none the less. It stayed like that, until once a week turned into twice. Though most were just the customary how-are-yous and obligatory holiday greetings once the seasons came and went, one year it turned into emails about the little nothings.

‘I had strawberry cake today,’ it once read. ‘The one we used to share tasted sweeter.’

‘I joined the volleyball team.’

‘Winter here is a little colder. I remember your puffy green jacket.’

‘I don’t know if you want to know…or if I should tell you...but our team won, and we’re going to nationals.’

Somehow, you were managed to be convinced by one of your friends that same week to travel with your own highschool’s volleyball team to assist in the preparation for nationals in Tokyo. It was just a coincidence, you used to reason. You were there, and so was he. There was a hundred other courts his team could have played at, and your priority was assisting your own team in what they needed.

But still, you couldn’t help but wave back and cheer the loudest from your stands when he perfected the block and scored the winning point for the first set.

It was then, where you realized that perhaps Tsukishima Kei wouldn’t just be a stranger.

Kanazawa to Miyagi, but somehow Tokyo became the in-between. Childhood friends to the sort-of friends from the other ends of the country sharing a few scattered memories in slices of strawberry shortcake and random dinosaur trivia from an old man’s outdated encyclopedia.

He was the first to approach you after that match. A hand held out to shake, perhaps to commemorate the evident shift between strangers to friends—but it was nice.

Because after that, friends turned into something more.

Maybe Tokyo really was the middle ground. After you graduated and moved out of your respective cities, Tokyo became the third place of hello.

Then things just slipped into place. He was here, and so were you. He had plans to stay, and you just signed the contract that bound you to the city for the next two and a half years. The apartment right down the hall from yours was recently vacated, and he was looking for a place to stay.

His new work place, coincidentally enough, was just a stop away from the train station closest to your place.

You had always doubted the presence of serendipity and everything that had to dictate with the celestial control of fate, but the ease that came with the relief of him signing the lease the very next week almost seemed to validate what had been just a farfetched something.

From strangers, to friends, to lovers, then to this:

Ten years later, a ring on your finger, and an I do, bound to be said just a little over seven days from now.

Tokyo was kind to the both of you. His mother’s close enough to visit on the weekends, while Kanazawa was just a shinkansen away from Tokyo station. A new apartment with enough space for two, plus maybe an extra, and a bakery right down the street with the best strawberry shortcake made fresh every day.

The wedding’s just a week away. His grandfather, still living in Kanazawa was meant to travel with Akiteru to Tokyo last week, but because plans changed, the both of you were instead tasked with going there yourselves to travel with him. While Tsukishima hesitated, you didn’t. Yes was easy to say in a situation like this. Though your parents had moved to Tokyo some years ago, you were aware that his grandfather didn’t.

The house across the street was still his, while the one you grew up in just now became a summer home your family would frequent to when Tokyo became too swarmed with tourists.

You look at the half-filled contents of the suit case on the floor in front of you. The right side’s meant to hold your clothes, while the left was left bare for Tsukishima’s. You turn and look at him.

“You can just grab the stuff you need me to bring for you and I’ll fold it in. We should probably catch the first train tomorrow if we wanna get there before sundown.”

What comes as a reply is only prolonged silence.

You let what he started stay for a little, but because you had never been the type to be fond in gouging out answers from the blank spaces, you sigh, and break the impending silence before it could get a chance to even settle. “You’re quiet again, Kei.”

When he makes it to the living room, instead of coming back out with a stack of clothes, he stands by the wall with his hands in his pocket. His eyes shift from wall to wall, but skip over you.

Knowing that you’ll just prompt another conversation again the more he keeps his silence, he sighs, swallowing the hesitation and clinging onto the bits of courage that floats by him in the moment. Grasping at the very tips of it, he forces the words out of his mouth. “Are you really coming with me?”

You raise a brow. “Back to Kanazawa? Of course. I’m from there too, you know. Plus I haven’t seen Grandpa in a while.”

He shifts his gaze to the side, thankful for the blur that came with forgetting to slip on his glasses. He’s always had a tendency to give in the moment he looks at you, so the vagueness in the blur was a welcome change. “It’s just for a week,” he mutters. “I think I’ll handle the trip just fine.”

“Plus,” he adds, the hike in the tone of his voice giving away his panic. “—I heard there was a problem with the florists? Maybe one of us needs to go in and fix it ourselves just in case.”

In the ten years you’ve known him, you’ve always considered it a given that you’ve well perceived him by now. In front of you, he’s stammering. While Tsukishima has never been the face to poise and perfection—because at the end of the day he still is just a boy—you knew he only stammered when he was nervous.

Perhaps trying to manipulate the situation through a wordless exchange was his way of doing so. In your head, you chuckle. Tsukishima Kei is many things, and is witty when it counts—but he could never be blunt when it came to the things he was unsure of.

You try to gouge out his truth. Speaking straight to the point, you let him know that there’s no purpose in trying to skirt around. You turn to him, his sweater half folded on your lap. “You know I could have believed what you just said, but,” you pause, giving him a pointed look, “—you’re not even looking at me.”

“Is this about what Bokuto said earlier?”

The way he shifts his weight from one foot to the other awkwardly, confirms your suspicions that that it is about that, before he can muster up the courage to even say it. “Tell me,” you initiate. You’ve never been afraid to speak what needs to be said. “What’s got you so afraid?”

Once more, he hopes for the silence to speak for him. And like before—it doesn’t. Silence was never meant to fill in the blanks. What it did, rather, is add three seconds more on the clock that’s ticking regardless. Tsukishima bets on a timed clock to speak for him, and because you’ve never been the type to shrink at the presence of raw truth, you huff and poke into what obviously hits for him just a little deeper.

“You’re afraid we’ll hit a blank space after we get married, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t look away, but little by little, his body language starts slipping bits and pieces of the truth you’ve already long sensed. “I think I just need to think this through.”

“What?” you scoff. “You planned to go to Kanazawa by yourself for a week to what? Soul search? To decide if you even wanna marry me?”

“I’m sor—“

“That’s what you’re not supposed to say,” you interrupt him. “You don’t say you’re sorry for how you’re feeling, because you’re allowed to feel it how it is, but shit, Kei,” you exhale, pausing to suck in a quick breath. “You couldn’t have just said this earlier?”

He looks away again, the guilt evident on his features. “You’re mad.”

“Do you blame me?”

This time, he turns to you. “No,” he murmurs. “I don’t, but I’m gonna be blunt here—“

“—first time—“

He gives you a pointed look, but in the moment, you don’t really have much in you to care too much.

“I think I need space to clear my head.”

“Sounds like you’re contemplating on whether you wanna stay with me or not,” you respond. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that.”

Tsukishima’s steady, this time. “Of course I wanna stay with you.”

“But,” you counter. “You aren’t sure if you want to marry me.”

He looks away. “What if—we hit a plateau after.”

“That’s still not an excuse to back out before we even try, Kei,” comes your reasoning.

“You’re right,” he sighs. “It’s not.”

Then it’s you, who shrugs this time, giving in a little and throwing him what you hope he doesn’t see as a lifeline. There’s no comfort found in knowing that an out is a means of mercy when it comes to love. Why should there even be an out?

You settle for just cracking the door open instead. Though it was never locked, the fact that it remained close must have been understood differently by him.

“Let’s go back to Kanazawa separately, then,” you propose. The open suitcase in front of you still has the right half filled with his half folded clothes, so you reach in, taking it out one by one. “You stay with your grandfather and I’ll stay at my parent’s house.”

Tsukishima raises a concern. “He’ll wonder why we aren’t staying together.”

In response, you shrug. “Just make something up then.”

“Is this just a passive aggressive way to say you’re mad at me?”

You scoff. “When have I ever been passive aggressive, Kei? I’ve said shit as it is since day one.”

He flinches, maybe because of what you said or the tone of the deliverance, but either way, you decide you can’t give much of a shit. It’s a given that you’re angry, but because being hurt just paves the path to silence more than lashing out, it’s not much of a surprise that you probably look deflated in front of him.

“What I’m saying is,” you explain. “Let’s go back to Kanazawa as strangers. Do what you gotta do, however you’ve gotta do it to get your head sorted out, and then we’ll talk. I’m not dancing around in circles with you on this. Either we get married next week, or we don’t.”

He panics. “I don’t want to lose you—“

“You’re already talking like you’ve decided that you won’t be at the other end of that aisle, Kei.”

Words feel lacking all of a sudden, so you pause. The absence of the split second brevity has Tsukishima standing still, his breath held, throat dry.

But like always, clarity seems to weave its way through the cracks in the room and find you first. “Yes or no isn’t easy to decide between,” you finally mutter. Eyes to the half folded sweaters you meant to tuck into the other half of the suitcase, you realize that you’ll need to switch to a smaller trolley now because you won’t be needing this much space anyway. “I don’t know what I should tell you, because I don’t know that we’d be having a possible fallout a week before the wedding. But at the same time—I don’t want to say you’re despicable for feeling like that, Kei. It just—“

“—fucking sucks,” you sigh.

“If you feel like you need a week to figure whatever this shit is, then okay,” you nod. “Okay. Let’s be strangers for a week and by the time we’re back in Tokyo, you give me a yes or no and be fucking blunt with it.”

Later that night when you turn your back against him and face the wall, his whisper breaks through the quiet. “Why are you still patient with me about this? You could have just left me.”

You shift, laying on your back and sighing to the makeshift glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling of your room. “Because I love you,” you sigh. “Loving someone just means you have to exhaust every other option before even thinking of throwing in the towel.”

He sleeps that night, feeling heavy.

He woke up later that morning, feeling the same too.

In a sense, things admittedly started weird. You woke up before he did this time, when he usually would be the one trying to be quiet when he slipped out of bed. Even though early mornings had never been a thing for the both of you, there was still something unpleasant in waking up to an empty bed.

The sheets on your side were done, and your phone that usually would be pinging with email notifications by now wasn’t there.

It’s odd, he thinks. While he agreed to be strangers for a week, the walk to the train station was the same. Silence was normal, but the five extra inches that added to the distance between the both of you wasn’t. You nodded his way when he pointed at the shinkansen’s direction, and wordlessly would hand him his usual brew when you stopped at the coffee shop just before going in.

Seated beside you in the train, he tries to ignore the urge to poke you on the side and make conversation. Words have always come easy when it came to moments with you, he noticed.

Tsukishima’s aware that he’s always been dubbed as the kind of person who never preferred to say too much, and while that was true—to an extent—he realizes that there is some truth to the saying that silence kills.

You’re seated beside him on the train, eyes to your phone, and earbuds in place. He resorts to just staring at you through his peripherals, caught in between wanting to satiate the want to talk to you by breaking the silence, or keeping it as is.

This is where fear grips him a little tighter. The deal was, as you had pointed out just last night, that the both of you would move through the week pretending to be strangers again. You’d stay on your side of the street, while he stayed in his.

It’s a given that his grandfather’s bound to ask about you, and so in the event that it does happen, you would just spend a few hours with them and pretend like everything was fine.

You made it clear that you’d try to exhaust all the options before resorting to that, though. And it’s easy, he thinks, doing so. It doesn’t take much to fake a phone call from work or a last minute meeting with an old friend that wouldn’t be able to make it to the city for the supposed wedding.

The lines were drawn, and the outline of what was to be expected in the next week was made clear.

He thinks of what you said before you slept. Love, as that one drive that has you exhausting all your options before even thinking of quitting. It’s fair, he thinks. You’ve always been the rational thinker in the relationship.

But then again, he doesn’t doubt your hurt either. A week was lengthy, he realizes, and to act as strangers again just a week before the wedding was a different kind of test when it came to your patience.

Still, he owes you truth.

You’ve always told him to lay things bare, and even though what’s bare is ugly, because love always pushes to try—he stays, doing just that.

Undoubtedly, this is a jump. There’s no question in the fact that the possibility of reaching the peak and coming face to face with a plateau scares him. But still, his thoughts counter, to face a drop that doesn’t guarantee a landing somehow terrifies him even more.

The sound of your phone vibrating snaps him out of his thoughts. Before you answer it, he snags a look of the name written on the screen—Akiteru’s.

Tsukishima sighs, shooting you a cautious stare as you pick up the phone and turn to him.

The tone of your voice is easy, though you look at him, unbothered. “Hey,” you answer. “Just got in the train, so Kei should be calling you in about three hours when we’re there.”

In comes a pause, before you chuckle a little. Unconsciously, Tsukishima scooches in, curious. But before he could get a chance to lean in too close, you pull away a little, looking at him curiously, an eyebrow raised. “I meant to tell you,” he hears you say, and as you look at him, he chooses to hold your stare.

“Kei and I will be staying separately for the week.”

Beside you, he shifts, fighting the urge to turn away and face forward.

Assuming that your flinch afterwards was only a response to what he’s only certain is Akiteru’s sudden outburst, the prior nervousness of his stare shifts into concern. Understanding the are-you-okay that he mouths, you wave him off. “We’re fine,” you laugh. “I just miss staying at the house that’s all, and I’m pretty sure Kei wants to spend quality time with his grandfather.”

You stay silent after that, which truth be told, doesn’t exactly help with his nerves.

“He’s right next to me,” you add. “We’re fine, I swear. Just wanna enjoy Kanazawa in different ways that’s all.”

To put it bluntly, the first day is awkward.

His grandfather’s waiting from outside the gate the second you make it to that familiar street. Nothing much has changed, the two of you notice. The gate’s rusted a little by the edges, and the door’s still got the same chip on the left side he always said he’d take a look at.

“Heard they were cutting down that tree,” his grandfather says, when it’s a little over three hours later and you’re all seated at a local restaurant for dinner. His old friend owned the place, he explained. Low lights, home cooked meals, and a family run business you vaguely remember your father talking about when you were young.

Tsukishima pauses, eyebrows rising in question. “What do you mean that tree?”

“The one you used to run off to,” he laughs.

Elbowing him, you nod towards his grandfather before pointing out, “We met by that tree, you know.”

His grandfather’s quick to responding, laughing at Tsukishima’s perplexed expression. “Seems like your grandfather’s memory is doing better these days than you, boy.”

You suppose that at the end of the day, it shouldn’t have been a big deal that he forgot. You’ve never been one to dwell too deep within the symbolic little nothings that’s bound to come with life. Rationally speaking, maybe you’re just a little miffed because of what he said the night before. And maybe that’s the reason why you’re taking this a little harsher than you would have on a normal day.

But strangers, you remember. Strangers wouldn’t care if the other forgot.

So with that, you shrug. You take another spoonful of the food in front of you and shift your body just slightly to the left—to which Tsukishima took noticed—and leaned forward. Without even saying much, his grandfather already has his attention on you, the smile on his face kind.

He’s always been kind, you remember. With a smile, you choose to keep the peace in the room at bay, willing yourself to ignore Tsukishima’s stare boring holes into the side of your head from beside you.

“Now that I think about it, I don’t remember a lot of people stop by that tree,” you comment, as you take a step into nostalgia.

His grandfather shrugs, absentmindedly nodding his head as he mulls over your word through a spoonful of broth. “It was in the middle of a residential area. Bound to get taken down if you ask me. People nowadays need a place to park.”

This time, you really feel his stare beside you almost intensify. Truth is, you can make sense of what you know he only fears. The point in life was to brave through the unfamiliar to establish a consistency in familiar grounds. To continuously rise from day one, only to hit the peak and possibly come face to face with a plateau instead of something greater than even the height of all highs—you admit that it’s terrifying.

The plateau, that perhaps works sort of like that tree.

It’s been there, so here it still is.

You’ve both been at that tree—at the start—so here you both still are. Side by side back in Kanazawa, sharing a meal like I do, isn’t hanging on the line.

His grandfather’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “You’re not wearing your ring.”

Tsukishima’s voice is quick to cut into the conversation, his voice smooth. “She just doesn’t wanna lose it.”

You nod along to his lie, undecided with how to feel in regards to how smooth he seemed to have delivered his lie.

“You know, now that I think about it, it’s good that they’re cutting down that tree.”

Tsukishima speaks his mind this time. “Last week, you said you were looking forward to coming back home so you could visit that tree again.”

You don’t look at him when you answer. “I know, but your grandfather has a point. When things change, what else can you do but get rid of it?”

“Oh nothing’s changed,” he laughs across you. “Even before the two of you were born, people would always talk about how it’s just there when the space could have been used for parking.”

“Then why put off cutting it down this long?”

“Who knows,” he laughs. There’s an unfound wisdom in his eyes that read through your soul when he looks at you. “Maybe cutting down what people already see as a permanent fixture will do more harm than good in the long run.”

“Even if it doesn’t contribute anything?”

Tsukishima thinks of his fear, then of the plateau.

Through the rim of the glass, he keeps a steady eye on his grandfather, breath held as the anticipation for his words begin to really settle.

“People these days just see what’s the most obvious from the surface and consider it as the only fault then run with it. Maybe it’s not the tree,” he laughs. “Maybe it’s just the people. They want convenience so they cut off everything around them instead of adjusting to it.”

The food tastes bland in his mouth, suddenly.

“Goes to show how selfish people can get sometimes,” his grandfather finishes, as an afterthought. “A shame, really. That old tree’s done nothing but give people shade.”

At the end of the day, you really had to give his grandfather a lot more credit than what was due.

The second and third day was awkward. Even though you tried to stay inside for most of your day, venturing outside and meeting up with old friends was inevitable. And really, you should have remembered that he often started his day with a couple laps walked around the block.

On day two, he hinted that he could sense something was off. Tsukishima had been a lot more silent lately, he pointed out. First, as just a passing comment, then by the third time he’d bring it up and wouldn’t get too much of a response out of you, there came more emphasis to what he says.

He passed by the tree every time you’d round the street too. It occurs to you that passing through it was a shortcut, and contradicted his prior statements to having a route that catered towards the long way home, but you chose to not comment much about it.

The second day was curiosity, and you figured that you could live at least just a week with it.

The third day, on the other hand, gave you a little more trouble than you had bargained for.

You’re on your way home from an old friend’s house, and ironically enough, both Tsukishima and his grandfather are out by their front door, tending to the weeds of a garden that doesn’t even look remotely grown.

Tsukishima’s the first to look at you.

Stubborn, and frankly intent on upholding your end of the deal in staying strangers, you attempt to wave them off with a passing greeting as you look through your bag, feeling around for the keys to the gate.

“You don’t have to think of an excuse,” you hear him say. “He’s back inside now. It’s just you and me here.”

It’s funny how ever since you’ve made it back to Kanazawa, he’s been the one to break the silence a lot more lately.

You don’t turn. Strangers, you think. The deal was to pretend the other was a stranger.

“Cam,” he calls out again, the desperation in his voice inching more and more out of its shell. “I’m really sorry.”

You turn around, the buried anger getting the best of you in the moment. “You know the more you say that, the more convinced I am that I should just give you back your ring right now and go back to Tokyo alone. You talk like the only thing you’re sure of is the fact that you won’t be marrying me next week, Kei.”

The moment you shift your gaze from the ground to his eyes, a part of you aches at the idea that you may have to bid farewell to gold. Swallowing down the mass of emotions you hope isn’t entirely just made of anger, you steady yourself and sigh.

It hits you that it’s been a long day.

“It’s just you and me here,” you repeat, slowly. There’s a flutter in your heart that tells you it’s still love that stares back when you look at him. “Then why do you feel so far away, Kei?”

He doesn’t sleep that night.

Day three of being strangers, but he hasn’t had anything figured out. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but what only grew was the silence. The distance is really just a few feet away—across the street and through the leaves of that tree that your father would always say he’d get to.

The light from your room is still turned on, though the curtains are drawn.

8PM and it’s early. 8PM, and on a usual day, you’d usually be seated beside him in your Tokyo apartment’s living room, mulling over the nothings that went on in your day.

It’s nice to talk about the rest of the world as if all they’re meant to be is just a passing blur in the background, he thinks. He’s never been much for words, but you were.

Then again, you had always been one for truth.

Reality is, he knows he could always swallow his doubts, walk across the street, cover the distance, and apologize to you with an I’m sorry, that covers all that needs to be addressed in a standard apology. Life can be lived as easy as that. You swallow your own thoughts, adhere to what they say needs to be done in the way they tell you how to do so, and be done with it.

But he knows you just as well as he knows himself.

You’d call him a coward—and truth be told, he’ll think the same.

Present wise—he does think he is a coward.

Tsukishima sighs, knowing that blinking at your closed curtain visible from his window won’t do much of a difference. Begrudgingly, he sits up, grabbing his glasses from the bedside table.

The streets around the neighborhood are quiet this time of night. The perks about living away from the city was the silence, he thinks. As soon as he tugs on a sweater, he makes his way downstairs, carefully, so he doesn’t stir his grandfather he presumes is sleeping on the room across the hall.

He exhales, relieved at the barely audible creak the door clicks to as soon as he shuts it and turns the lock from the outside. The keys, jingling in his pockets, is the only sound that rings in the quiet.

It isn’t lonely, but it isn’t comfortable either.

Kanazawa has always been a town he’s considered as a piece of constant that’s meant to drift inbetween.

Neither like Tokyo or the towns by the outskirts of Okinawa, it stays as is. Twenty years ago, the crack on the sidewalk was there, and now, twenty years later, it remains.

There’s comfort in recognizing constants, Tsukishima admits. The tree just down this road, the crack on the asphalt, and the fact that your room is still the second window to the left visible from his on the second floor.

When he was younger, he remembers he often would stand under your window, caught in between wanting to knock on your door and ask permission from your parents if you could accompany him for the afternoon, or just wait around until you’d come down yourself.

While he left a lot of things on chance, the conscious choice to stay rooted in the spot by your window remained constant.

The gravel under his feet crackle everytime he’d take a step. The moon’s hazy behind the clouds tonight, he muses. While you’d wish for the stars, he found a temporary safety in the midnight clouds. A timelessness felt when it’s midnight, stays.

Before he turns to the corner that would lead home, he stops midway—recognizing the tree from a good few meters away.

There’s a sense of feeling an urgency to let something go, the more he stares at it. Nearing autumn, the colors start to change, and just like that, he’s reminded of the impermanence in life.

As the earth eventually changes throughout the years, he fears that perhaps in love—it would too.

“You’re out late,” is the first thing Tsukishima hears as soon as he enters the room.

From the genkan, he peers over the shelf, noticing the lights from the kitchen is what floods into the dim living room. Slipping on his house slippers and making his way around the corner, Tsukishima gets a feel of the warmth that’s radiating from the familiarity of the space.

After his grandmother had passed, his grandfather stayed in Kanazawa. Though his mother often expressed her desire for him to move with the rest of the family in Tokyo, every time, he’d only wave them off and say that there’s too much rooted here for him to just up and leave.

Walking into the kitchen, his grandfather’s the first to raise a mug his way and offer a smile. “I’d ask you if everything’s fine, but I think I’ll just wait around and see if you’re even willing to tell me.”

Tsukishima chuckles airily. “Sounds like you wanna ask anyway.”

He takes a slow sip. “Okay then,” he nods, smiling like he’s just struck a deal. “First question is—are you okay?”

In response, Tsukishima smiles, pulling the chair and taking the seat across his. He nods. “’Course I am.”

His grandfather’s eyes don’t leave him. “You’re not wearing the ring, and neither is Cam.”

Suddenly feeling like he’s caught in between a blocked exit and the spotlight, Tsukishima freezes, but wills himself not to look away. “Just needed some space, that’s all.”

“To think?”

He sighs. “To reconsider.”

“Ahh,” the older man sighs. “Cold feet. Pretty normal, if you ask me.”

He raises a brow in question. “It’s normal?”

“To be nervous, yeah,” his grandfather laughs. “But looks like it’s a different case for you.”

Tsukishima doesn’t respond, his eyes fixated towards a spot on the wall that feeds more into the blank space of his thoughts than anything more.

“You’re afraid,” Tsukishima hears, and as soon as the retaliation he tries to string together at the very last minute don’t come—he realizes the core of all the chaos in his head is meant to be just like that—

Blank.

“What are you so afraid of, boy?”

In the silence, he lets the rawness of his truth slowly spill. “What if I hit a plateau after this?”

His grandfather wastes no second in countering. “How is it life if we just keep climbing? What’s the point in doing all that work if we never get rest?”

Tsukishima laughs. “You know, by that logic it can just go the other way around too.”

He settles in his seat, trying to appreciate the silence instead of looking for company in the noise, before he adds, “What if we decide we don’t love each other anymore?”

“That’s not all there is to a plateau,” he laughs. “It’s a valid fear, but being afraid isn’t all there is after you marry someone.”

“Then what’s there?”

With a smile, his grandfather leans back, raises the mug to his lips, and relaxes—his eyes looking fondly at a faded photograph hung beside the wall clock. “Everyday,” he answers. “What’s there after I do is just everyday.”

Sensing that his grandfather means to say more, he chooses to retain his silence. Sighing softly, his grandfather keeps his smile steady as he continues to speak. “Everyday you wake up. You roll over in bed, you think about the checklist you do to consider a day done, then you come home, eat a meal, rest a little and start the whole day over the next day. Everyday’s like that.”

He shifts, leaning forward with his arms crossed supporting his weight on the table as he eyes his grandson with a smile. “Best part is, you can do all that with someone you love. Makes the boring part of the plateau a lot more bearable.”

“You wake up with them and complain about how boring the rest of your day will be, then come home and eat a meal with them. Wash the dishes, share the silence, and just go to bed knowing you’ll wake up with somebody.”

The smile on his face is honest, then he shrugs. “It’s nice, though. The plateau after you hit a certain point in life is just inevitable, Kei. You can either complain about life alone or complain about it with somebody. At least there will be two pairs of slippers by the genkan waiting for you everytime you come home. You’ll say you’ve made it home and someone will greet you. You’ll roll over in bed at 2am and someone will be there with you. The point of climbing in life is to get somewhere, not ascend past the norm.”

Tsukishima stays quiet, pondering over the truth in his grandfather’s words. “So life’s just meant to stay in the middle?” he asks, slowly coming into terms with his grandfather’s redefinition of the plateau. “Life’s meant to find a consistency in everyday,” he corrects.

A few moments pass before he stands back up, pointing to the counter with a thermos. He knows it’s yours. The old one that your mother refused to throw away, because there’s a crack by the lid and a couple faded sailor moon stickers stuck by the side.

“Look at that,” Tsukishima hears. He turns his head just in time to see the old man offer him a patient smile, the message in his eyes delivered without a hitch. “That old thing’s seen a couple of decades, but it still gets to you when you need it, right?”

It’s not so bad to have an old thing be your constant, right?

Twenty minutes after his grandfather climbs back to his room upstairs, Tsukishima’s seated on the side of the table beside the window. Peeking through the half-opened blinds, he can still see that the light from your room is still flicked on.

Without mulling over the decision, he takes his phone out, scrolling through the contacts until he taps your name. A swipe without too much pressure, because even his thumb’s memorized where your name is by now. Kind of like muscle memory, he supposes.

Bypassing the unannounced rules about what to do as the strangers you had claimed from the start of this week, it results to the lack of hesitation as he types a quick text and presses send without a thought that would counter it.

I love you, it reads.

From his spot in the kitchen, he leans back and smiles, pouring himself a cup of the tea he knows you brewed yourself on the nights where he can’t sleep.

The lights from your room stay on for a few more moments before it dims, but before the metaphoric silence could take root, the screen of his phone lights up.

Stop walking around at night. Drink the tea and try to get some sleep.

Exhaling almost in relief, it’s the slow beating of his heart that resettles him back into the love he’s known everyday.

It’s not quite the end, but it isn’t exactly somewhere unpleasant either.

Two days before you’re meant to return to the city, instead of spending the day in your room—like you had initially planned—you somehow found yourself in the passenger seat of his grandfather’s old car, with a grocery list in hand.

You sigh, understanding what his grandfather’s trying to do.

As you look down, there’s nothing much written in the grocery list. He had complained about some back pain earlier, followed up by his insistent request of desperately needing his groceries done so when Akiteru was to arrive later on, dinner would be taken care of.

Beside you, with his hands on the wheel, Tsukishima sighs. “We could have just ordered in food for dinner. It’s just Akiteru coming,” he mumbles.

Keeping your eyes to the window to your left, you shrug. “He likes making the ordinary special, I guess.”

Tsukishima stays silent after that, mentally thankful for the green light and the empty roads. The more stops, the longer silence would stay. And even after the sort of middle ground from the night before, he doesn’t know what to say to you.

After making a quick turn, he pulls up into the parking lot and kills the engine. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he turns to you, with an expectant look. “You can just stay here if you don’t wanna go in with me,” he offers. “It’s a short list, I can be in and out in a bit.”

You wave him off, already slinging on your bag and opening the car door—the list on your hand. “It’s alright. I think I’m more familiar with this area than you are, so we can just meet back in the car in thirty minutes if that’s okay with you.”

“You don’t need me to come with you?” he raises a brow.

You shake your head no, but upkeep the smile on your face anyway as you exit the car and close the door.

Something about what you say sticks with him, the more he thinks about it.

He can distinguish the hesitation laced each of your decisions. You look past him, but not exactly at him. You speak to him, but keep the conversations short. Though conversation was rare between the both of you this past week, the times that you did speak to him, your words often were clipped short.

It’s your means of upkeeping your end of the deal, he realizes.

You’ve always been one for communication, but then again, patience can only stretch so much.

He respects your wish for distance and walks the opposite way from the grocery store, towards a building he doesn’t really known. It’s a gallery, he realizes. Three steps past the entrance, he notices that he’s one of the few that’s in the room.

Traditional artwork line the wall, hung in frames that have rusted throughout time.

Tsukishima stares, eyes drawn to the pieces of art he recognizes from the few scattered memories in his childhood that relate to his time in the city.

A fieldtrip, when he was seven. He remembers leaving the house upset over the yellow hat he had to wear, and the rain boots his teacher wouldn’t let him change out of. Unlike the present, rain was present that day. He stood beside you in line, and had to tilt his head up at the piece of art he always thought was the prettiest out of the bunch.

And now, almost two decades later, he still thinks the same.

He smiles at the memory, finding the comfort of returning to what’s familiar, pleasant.

As if caught by an epiphany, and suddenly enveloped in a sense of a rediscovered home, here, within a room that’s familiar, he finds purpose in the permanence of love.

Love, that’s never meant to be stretched into the likeness of what the poets declare as the absolute form of love after “I do.”

Staring at the piece of art with the rusting frames, the strokes within the canvas still depict the same story. It still is beautiful.

It’s doesn’t become more—but it stays as is.

And maybe that’s what his grandfather was trying to convey.

To fear a certain phase in love is something that comes and goes, but it often never stays. It can linger, but eventually, it too, fades.

What stays is what’s rooted.

Primarily, just you. Truly, just love.

That tree in that old street, these paintings on the walls, and the kind of serenity that washes over him at the thought of you.

The fear in life comes in the form of thinking that beyond the peak lays a plateau. Beyond “I do,” what’s next to come is love, dwindling until “I don’t love you anymore,” is the only thing left to be said.

It’s fear, that spoke to him the past few weeks, so this time, as he gives in, he listens to love.

It’s quiet.

But through the smoke in the room, the message that’s meant to deliver truth comes in full clarity. Illuminated, it appears before him as it is. A painting that’s struck him as beautiful then and now, and the thought of you as the face that’s always been the first to greet him every morning for more than just a few years now.

An old man stands not too far from him, hands clasped behind his back as he stares—with a smile on his face—at a similar painting on the wall. Sensing Tsukishima’s presence, he looks over and redirects the smile his way. “Been coming here for years, and looking at this still feels the same.”

Poking at the doubts, Tsukishima responds, “Are you afraid that it won’t get old?”

The gentleman laughs, though soft enough so it doesn’t echo too much in the halls. The joy lingers around Tsukishima, on the other hand. “To have something grow old with you isn’t a bad thing. Day one, this piece was beautiful, and now, almost forty years later, I look at it and think the same too.”

A beat of silence passes, but the man speaks once more.

“My wife, when she was alive, showed me this piece. Maybe I look at this and still find it beautiful after all these years because I think of her, but I don’t think trying to focus on that matters much. The feeling’s the same, even if it grew old.”

Reciprocating the older man’s goodbye with a nod to the head, it’s then where he laughs, a little bit more of the truth unraveling as each moment comes and goes. Thinking of his words, he dwells on its meaning.

Standing there, alone in the museum hall, the smoke clears, and he presents himself his words of blended truth and patience.

Love is timeless, his thoughts say. The plateau after the peak is as possible as the drop, but life’s meant to be lived in the lows and in betweens as much as the highs. Time moves in waves, and perhaps love doesn’t always grow stagnant. It can be timeless, even though the frames rust. His hair will grey, and maybe you’ll stop linking your pinky with him beneath the sheets during the rainy season’s thunderstorms, but the root of love stays.

Within the plateau, time will move, and you’ll both grow old, but the taste of the tea you’ll brew for him will remain the same.

And thirty minutes later, when he makes it back to the parking lot with you waiting by the door, the love that steadies his beating heart will be the same too.

Steady, present, and timeless.

Eyeing the dashboard, you’re the first to break the silence. “Why’d you buy a postcard?”

Rolling into a stoplight, he eases on the brakes and shrugs. “Lived here for so long, and I don’t even own a postcard from here.”

“Me neither,” you blink.

A couple minutes pass, and the car’s rolling again, but he misses a turn. Assuming that he’s just not used to the usual route, you stay quiet—until about he pulls up to a familiar street.

Parked to the side, through the windshield, you find yourself face to face with a familiar tree. “Kei.” He hums.

The coming autumn has a few leaves beginning to change its colors, you notice. The summer hues, unbalanced, as bits of red begins to bleed through the green. “You were supposed to turn there, not here.”

He shifts the gear into park, then takes his hands off the wheel, leaning back. “I know.”

It’s quiet after that, but it isn’t all that unpleasant either.

This is the part where the questions begin to poke at you, the what-ifs in love let out in the open as you voice a little bit of your vulnerability. And because the truth is daunting, you hope he understands you through the metaphors. “Do you really think they’ll cut it down?”

He doesn’t allow the silence to take more than a moment. “I think so,” he nods his head.

“It’ll be good though, I think,” you add, nodding your head.

It’s quiet in the room even though the words of your truth coaxes the unhealed wound to resurface. As it comes into light, it doesn’t sting.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder beside him in the car, the tree that witnessed the first hello stays rooted, and watches.

He doesn’t turn to you as he speaks, but in a way, you feel as if a farewell was the finale that was meant to be delivered somehow. “It’s good,” he starts. “Letting go of something that needs to be let go of.”

Tokyo

Tsukishima’s the first to speak.

“I’m not good with words,” he starts.

There’s a hush in the crowd, so you stay with it, knowing you’ll only add to the silence should you choose to respond. It wasn’t your turn anyway, so you will yourself to be still and listen.

“Hey Cam,” Tsukishima continues, choosing to begin his vow with a hello. “I think a lot about what love’s supposed to have meant, mean, or eventually mean in the long run. I thought too much about it to the point where it…” he trails off, blinking at the piece of paper before flicking his eyes up to you with a slight shrug. “—to the point where love began to scare me.”

For a brief moment, he closes his eyes, confident in the fact that when he opens them, he knows he’ll see the world in clarity this time. With the smoke cleared and the scattered pieces of all his doubts set in order, the words of his truth may not speak of the most tender poem of love—but within the lines lies his truth.

As he lays his truth on you, he holds a breath and lets it all go. “I wanna wash the dishes with you for the rest of my life,” he laughs, exhaling softly, his shoulders shaking a little. “Never occurred to me how much of a liar the downside of your thoughts are when you listen to everything that isn’t love,” he continues.

Your shoulders relax, and even through the blur of the veil, you can tell his eyes are steadily watering.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the microphone just barely picking up what he says. You nod your head anyway, wishing you were holding his hands instead of the bouquet. Reassurance comes in many forms, but you know he’s always been the type to receive it well through physical touch.

A kiss on the cheek, your head on his shoulder, or your hands squeezing his. But the smile you give him suffices for now, you think.

“I wanna wash the dishes with you for the rest of my life. I’ll wash, and you dry. Nothing much happens in our day usually, but nothing has to. I’ll listen to you talk about how shit the traffic is in the city, because I know you’ll listen to me talk about the same complaints I have from Monday to Friday anyway.”

You realize he’s written his vows in the back of a postcard—the one you saw on his dashboard a few days ago, from Kanazawa.

He sniffles a little then looks up, laughing to himself at how emotional he’s getting. Allowing more than just truth to trickle out slow is a part of love too, he realizes, so with a soft laugh, he lets the tears be and speaks again. “What needed to be let go of was let go of,” he exhales, like he’s been holding his breath for this long.

In a sense, maybe he has. Sometimes fear grips you tightly enough that it shifts your point of view from one thing to another. What’s love, becomes fear. Then what’s fear, becomes the smoke that buries the core of truth too deep within the haze.

“I let go of the thought the thought that after marriage, if nothing great would come then that would be the end of love,” he breathes. “I stared at that tree and thought of Grandpa’s words again and again then wrote my apology and I love you on the back of a postcard that only had one a couple of blank lines at most.”

He waves it for you, then to the crowd, to see. The words, jumbled up together look almost incomprehensible written so closely together, but in a way, you have a feeling that he’s just speaking the rest of his truth as it comes in the moment.

The truth in love, you realize, is that its truth comes, fully unraveled the moment the initial plan falls apart.

He puts down the postcard, and just looks at you.

“There’s a lot I don’t think I will ever understand when it comes to love, but maybe I’m here to just feel it and not try to decipher it.” He pauses, ignores the few tears that roll down, and shrugs his shoulders, admitting to himself that the truth in his love is the first thought that comes.

“Love doesn’t have to the greatest,” he tells you. “I just wanna wash dishes with you for the rest of my life and hear about how traffic was unbearable.”

You smile, and your assurance reaches him.

“I think that counts as love too,” he finishes, the smile on his face tender.

As he leans in after I do, he murmurs a question in your ear that you’ve been expecting since the start.

You could have just left, he said. How did you deal with me and still choose to stay?

Your answer was said without a hint of hesitation. With a shrug, and an honest smile, you told him, “Because I love you.”

“I think we both had to let go of the thought that to love always means to have the biggest reasoning behind it. We do things for love, and because of love. That’s just how it is,” you shrugged.

Oddly enough, it’s in that same exact moment where he remembers Bokuto’s question from that dinner a week and some days ago.

How does it feel? he recalls, and even though words have never found him first nor met him in the middle easy, he gathers what he can and just settles on the conclusion that it just feels like love.

Wherein love, is this.

An identical band on his and your finger, and the taste of I do pleasant on the tongue. I love you, as a truth that’s easy to fathom and healing to hold, and the fear of what comes next just a passing thought that goes as soon as it comes.

Later that evening his grandfather sits him down and asks him what he really thinks about why people have been putting off cutting down that tree for a few decades now.

With a laugh, the hesitation that often turns decisions is made clear to him. “You know I think that people would decide things and think they’re so solid on it before even being face to face with it. The second they get to that tree with a chainsaw, I promise you they changed their minds. You think you go there and cut off or let go of one thing, then realize you’re cutting off something else in the end. They go back to what’s been there and realize that it’s not the problem at all.”

Tsukishima sighs, and his grandfather watches, the smile on his face easy. It’s like watching some emerge from a smoked out room, he thinks. Clarity’s always been a blessing, and he’s glad his grandson’s finally found it.

“Sometimes going back to the start is the one thing you need to be reminded that it’s worth it to keep going.”

“Sounds like you’re not talking about the tree,” his grandfather comments. Looking at you, Tsukishima smiles. “You could say that too.”

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watchmegetobsessed · 3 years

Text

Never Have I Ever - Harry Styles (part 2)

i quite liked this story and thought it totally had potential for more, so i’ve cooked up a part 2, continuing the idea. i have no clear plan with this, just enjoyed taking the story further, but i might turn it into a proper series if you guys are enjoying the concept!

pairing: Harry x actress!reader

word count: ~3.2k

SERIES MASTERPOST

masterlist

The car comes to a halt and you look up from your phone after being so occupied with texts you’ve been ignoring all afternoon.

“We’ve arrived, Miss,” The driver, Lawrence informs you in his usual, polite manner, looking at you through the mirror.

“Oh, thank you so much,” you breathe out grabbing your purse from the seat next to you. “I don’t think I’ll take too long, I’m not really in the mood to party,” you let him know, quickly running your hand through your hair before getting out, already knowing paparazzi is waiting for all guests at the entrance probably.

“Had a long day?” he asks with a soft smile.

“Kind of,” you sigh nodding. “I’ll text you when I’ll feel like heading home soon, alright?”

“Perfect. Have a great night, Miss,” Lawrence nods.

“Thank you,” you nod at him before opening the door and getting out of the car. Strategically, Lawrence stopped just a few buildings away from the club, so you wouldn’t be attacked right away, emerging from the car. This gives you enough time to fix your dress and avoid your private parts to end up on the tabloids. Not something you want to include in your career, if you’re being honest.

Shutting the door closed you head towards the club that has quite a long line of people waiting outside, though you have no idea why. If they are not on the list, there’s no way they’ll get inside, it’s a private party.

As you approach the entrance, people start to recognize you quite quickly and you hear your name coming from all direction, but you just flash a smile in their way, continuing to walk with the intention of getting inside as fast as possible.

Just as you expected, paparazzi are already waiting at the entrance and they start flashing their cameras in your way right away, throwing all kinds of questions at you that are left completely ignored.

The bouncer checks your name on the list and lets you inside without a fuss and you’re happy to leave the madness behind and mingle in the crowd of familiar faces.

Tonight is the celebration of the birthday of a good friend, a quite old friend of yours. Florence and you met quite some years ago, when both of you were only trying your luck in the industry, working hard to make yourselves a name. Now you are both are in the inner circle of Hollywood, piling iconic roles on your resumes together. So much has changed, people keep coming and going in your life, but the two of you managed to stay close and keep each other grounded when it was needed.

You keep saying hello to the people you know as you make your way through the guests, hugging a few guests, asking if they have seen Florence and they all point towards the bar. Unsurprisingly, you find the birthday girl right there, with a group of people circling around her as the bartender places a row of shots to the counter and her eyes light up at the sight of all the alcohol.

“Not even surprised you are already plastered,” you grin at her and she squeals upon seeing you join the little circle. Throwing her arms around you she jumps at you mumbling her greeting.

“I’m so happy you’re here!” she breathes out, clearly over a few drinks at this point. “I feel like we haven’t seen each other in ages!”

“It happens when we are both working on a movie at the same time, in different cities,” you chuckle giving her a look.

This past month has been rather busy, you were in Atlanta finishing up filming your latest movie while Florence was in Palm Springs, working on Don’t Worry Darling, she barely made it back to the city to her own birthday party, apparently they wrapped filming just two days ago so it was a close call.

“You have to take a shot with me!” she urges, already grabbing two shots from the bar and handing you one of them, not even waiting for your answer.

“Cheers to the birthday girl!” you hold your glass up after everyone else grabbed a shot, everyone around wishes her a happy birthday again before sending down the alcohol.

You can’t help the grimace that pulls on your face as the liquor burns down your throat. It’s been a while since the last time you had anything other than a few glasses of wine, it’ll take some time to get used to the stomach churning taste.

As the host of the party and the birthday girl, Florence’s presence is in high demand, so you don’t get to spend too much time with her, but you don’t blame her. Ordering a longer drink for you, sticking with some tequila based cocktail as you mingle in the crowd of guests.

Luckily, there are quite a lot familiar faces and you don’t have to linger around the club on your own. You move to a booth at the side with Sydney, a producer you and Florence both worked together previously. She is pretty new in the world of films, but she surely is a talent and you can’t wait for everyone to realize what a blessing she and her art is. You’re joined by her girlfriend, Emma and the three of you are deep in conversation, sharing the funniest stories that happened to you lately and surprisingly, you are genuinely having a good time. You really weren’t in the mood for a party after such a long and frustrating day, having scrunched in three auditions to one day because your manager messed the dates up. When you finished with the third ones, you wanted nothing else than to just sink into a nice bath, have a glass of wine and go to bed early, making your friends’ point of you being a grandma quite valid. However you didn’t have the heart to cancel on Florence, but now that you’ve had some alcohol buzzing in your system and some good company, you don’t regret coming at all.

Once you get to the end of your drink you head back to the bar to have another one, not feeling like leaving just yet. Pushing your way through the people, some keep saying hi to you and you greet everyone back with an instinct, even if you don’t know them. Something you’ve grown to do over your years being in the spotlight.

Standing in line, just like everyone else, you patiently wait to get to the front, when you feel someone bump against you from behind.

“Excuse me—Oh! If it isn’t my favorite Never Have I Ever game partner!”

Your eyes are met with a pair of green ones and a dimpled smile, you can’t help but chuckle as you turn to greet Harry.

“Hi there! Long time no see!” you smile as he pulls you into a side-hug and stands with you in the line.

“You know, maybe you would’ve seen me earlier if you actually gave me your number,” he comments with a sly smile and you have nothing to defend yourself with, he is completely right.

That day the two of you met on The Ellen Show you were actually planning to give him your number, but once your part of the filming ended your manager called you about something urgent and you couldn’t wait for him to finish as well, leaving the studio without ever giving him the chance to even ask for your number. You felt guilty and a little disappointed, but thought your paths would sooner or later cross somehow and it seems like you were right.

“I’m sorry about that. I had some papers to sign before the office closed, I had to leave,” you apologize truthfully and he nods understanding.

“S’alright. I was a little bummed, but I get it.”

“So what are you doing here?” you ask, moving forward in the line, getting closer to the front. Harry gives you a quick look that you can’t quite read before answering.

“I uhh—Florence and I filmed together last month.”

That’s when it clicks. She told you and you read about it, but you tend to forget these kind of things, not having enough capacity to keep everything in mind, only restricting it to the most important stuff.

“Oh, right! Yeah, sorry. Totally slipped my mind. Sorry, I sounded like I live under a rock,” you awkwardly chuckle, feeling a little ashamed that you didn’t remember, when Florence even mentioned it herself before she travelled to Palm Springs, but you were running on caffeine and protein bars between takes, it’s a luck you didn’t even forget your own name after those busy weeks.

“No, s’alright. Nice to know not everyone is drowning in the content that’s been put out of me lately,” he chuckles lowly. “You look lovely, by the way,” he nods at you, eyes running down your body quickly, before they return to your gaze.

“Oh, thank you,” you breathe out looking down at yourself, as if you forgot what you were wearing. It’s a little, black Gucci dress, quite vintage with some embroidered floral patterns along the slightly daring neckline. “It’s Gucci,” you tell him with a knowing smirk.

“Oh!”

“Know you are obsessed with it,” you add with a chuckle, seemingly surprising him with your knowledge about him.

“Someone did some research about me then?”

“I’ll admit, I might have searched your name one of those nights after I had a nice glass of wine.”

“And what else did you find out about me?” he arches an eyebrow at you, making your cheeks heating up. You shouldn’t have admitted that you searched him, he’ll think you’re some kind of stalker, which you are not, you just like to catch up on things sometimes. Though you are clearly a fan of his music and you know about his career vaguely, you haven’t been keeping an eye on him that closely lately, only because you didn’t have the time. However after meeting him at the taping, he was stuck on your mind for days before you gave in and checked out what he’s been up to lately and went through some in-depth articles about him from the past years, closing the line with his latest Vogue issue.

“Nothing shocking,” you simply answer and luckily, you are next up at the bar. You ask for another cocktail and Harry chimes in, adding a beer to the order.

“I hope you know I won’t let you leave until you give me your number this time,” he smirks at you cheekily, making you chuckle.

“I never said I would give it to you.” Wanting to play a little you shrug innocently, earning a stunned look.

“Making me work for it? Alright,” he nods, trying his best to hold his grin back.

The bartender comes back with the drinks and Harry is quick to whip his card out and pay for yours as well. You’re not surprised when he follows you back to the booth to Sydney and Emma. They both greet you with bright smiles upon arriving with Harry.

“This is Sydney and Emma. Syd and I worked together a while ago. Ladies, this is—“ You start the introduction, but Sydney cuts you off quickly.

“Harry Styles. You don’t have to introduce him to us,” she chuckles shaking hand with the fourth guest at the table. “I was a big One Direction fan,” she adds with a chuckle and that’s a new information. As a former fan girl, she is holding herself quite alright in the presence of her idol.

“Oh, nice!” Harry beams, genuinely looking delighted at the information.

“Her playlists have at least one One Direction song on them still this day,” Emma laughs shaking her head, while Syd just shrugs innocently.

The four of you are quick to engage in a conversation about music, mostly about what you listened to when you were teenagers and you are having some laughs at the odd taste you all used to have.

“I think my most played song was Crazy by Britney Spears. I was obsessed with that song,” you admit and Emma groans throwing her hands in the air.

“I loved that song! Even learned the choreography!” she shares, making everyone laugh around the table.

“I bet you did too,” Harry grins in your way over his half empty beer.

“Totally did not,” you scoff with a pretentious grimace that makes it clear that you in fact did.

“I would give an arm to see you dance to that song,” he sighs with an amused grin and you just chuckle, taking another sip from your drink.

At one point Florence joins the booth, buzzing from all the birthday shots she’s been constantly taking, but making sure you all are having a good time.

“I see you guys met again!” she beams looking at you and Harry sitting next to each other. “Y/N, wanna hear something funny?” she smirks at you with glistening eyes.

“Always,” you chuckle softly.

“Once on set, I caught Harry stalking your Instagram.” The man in talk almost chokes on his beer as Florence starts laughing, clearly enjoying how she just busted her co-star, but you are having a blast at how nervous her comment got him and you find the story quite flattering.

“Flo, I think you had enough to drink,” Harry tells her, urging her to leave the booth, but she is way too caught up in getting him into trouble.

“Are you ashamed she now knows you were checking out her sexy photos for that perfume campaign she did last year?” she continues, giving away even more details. Your eyebrows run up as you look at Harry, who is desperately trying to avoid your burning gaze.

“Oh, so you’re a fond of my pictures?” you tease him, his cheeks turning redder with each passing moment.

“I mean… You looked really good.”

“And quite half naked, only covering myself with a huge perfume bottle,” you add chuckling, enjoying it probably a little too much than you should, but Harry has been so confident, flirting with you, it’s funny to see him so flustered all of a sudden.

Harry lets out a nervous chuckle, scratching the back of his neck while Florence taps his shoulder, saying something that sounded like ‘good luck, man’ before she moves over to the next group of people.

“I wasn’t stalking, your profile just popped up and—“

“Harry,” you stop him with a chuckle. “It’s fine, I was just messing with you.”

“Way to make me a wreck, Y/N,” he shoots you a narrow-eyed look, but you can see the smirk pulling on his lips.

“If it makes you feel better I checked your profile a few times too,” you admit and once again, he seems surprised.

“It does make me feel better,” he nods, his sly smirk growing wider with each passing moment he spends staring at you.

Though you’ve been enjoying the night so far you are running low on energy, so when you see it’s already past midnight you send a text to Lawrence letting him know you are planning to leave soon.

Luckily, Florence is at one of the booths near yours, so you excuse yourself from your table, walking over to her to say your goodbye.

“Leaving already?” she pouts, returning your hug.

“I’ve had a long day, I wouldn’t want to be the grumpy guest to ruin others’ night,” you tell her with an apologetic smile and she nods understanding.

“I’m happy I saw you. We need to do something sometime soon!”

“Sure thing. I’ll have a looser schedule in the upcoming months. Call me whenever you are around and free,” you tell her kissing her cheek and giving her hand a soft squeeze. “Happy birthday once more.” “Thank you babe!” she cheers as you let go of each other.

Walking back to your booth you say goodbye to Sydney and Emma, making the same promise to meet up with them sometime soon. When you turn to Harry he is already up on his feet and offers to walk you out.

“Just to the exit. There are a shit ton of paparazzi outside,” you tell him and he nods, placing a hand to your lower back, ushering you through the crowd. The two of you stop near the exit since Lawrence hasn’t replied to you that he has arrived and you definitely don’t want to wait outside.

“So, are you gonna leave without giving me your number this time as well?” he asks tilting his head to the side as he hides his hands in his pockets lazily.

“Maybe I’m just trying to see if fate is gonna throw you in my way again,” you tease him, but reach for your phone in your purse. “Send yourself a text,” you tell him handing him the device.

He doesn’t try to hide the satisfied grin as he types his number in and sends a quick text to himself so he has your number. Handing it back you just take it and check if Lawrence has texted you. Right at that moment the screen lights up with a short ‘I’ve arrived, Miss’ text and you slide the phone back into your purse.

“Well, it’s been nice seeing you again, Harry,” you say your goodbye and stepping closer you engage in a short, but tight hug.

“You too, Y/N,” he smiles down at you. “Never have I ever had the number of an Emmy nominated actress’ number,” he smirks making you laugh.

“Drink up, Styles,” you tell him cheekily before you walk away, out of the club.

Lawrence is parked right in front of the building and you try to shield your vision from all the flashes as you get into the back seat as fast as possible.

“Hello, Lawrence!” you greet the man in a very delighted mood and he senses the change in you.

“Had a great evening, Miss?” he asks as he leaves from the club and heads to your apartment’s building.

“I did,” you nod biting into your bottom lip. Reaching into your purse you pull your phone out to check the text Harry sent himself.

You can’t help the chuckle that leaves your mouth when you see the short message he sent to his contact that he just saved under Harry S.

“I promise I won’t ghost you.” That’s what the text reads and as you are looking at the conversation you see the bubble popping up that signals that he is typing right now.

“So nice of you. Please keep that promise!” His text appears on the screen and you chuckle under your breath.

“Cheeky.” You write back.

“Maybe, but now I have evidence. Don’t even try to put me on your ghosted list!”

“Will think about it…” you write back with a sly smile before you lock the phone and put it away, letting your head rest against the back of the seat, eyes closing as you can’t wipe the smile off your face.

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#harry #styles #harry styles #harry styles oneshot #harry styles one shot #harry styles fiction #harry styles series #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x famous!reader #harry styles x actress!reader #harry styles never have i ever

1K notes · View notes

starglow-xx · 3 years

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(About the brother!atsushi) aRE YOU READING MY MIND MISS?! Because that has been on my mind for MONTHS. TYSM For writing it was amazing!! If you don't mind, may I request (if requests are open) atsushi, still an older brother, but with a sister that's 10-13 yrs old? It's totally fine if you don't wanna do it. Keep up the good stories, ily mwuah!

*sobs* you’re so kind thank youu 🤧🤧

i wrote this a bit differently i hope that’s okay anon! at first i planned for this to be mainly abt atsushi and the reader, but i decided to add in relationship hcs with the agency bc i ran out of ideas

if you guys liked this don’t worry! im planning a special part two for this one so be the look out for it hehe

atsushi with a tween! sister

ft. the armed detective agency

like in my baby sister hcs, you’re still the most important thing to him period

the two of you got picked up by dazai and kunikida when he was 18 (obviously) and when you were 12

for a 12 year old, you were a bit small bc of malnourishment (which makes atsushi feel so bad) so both dazai and kunikida thought you were a bit younger than you actually were

they assumed you were about 9-10ish

you and atsushi both share a favorite food !! chazuke :)

so when kunikida treated the two of you, he made sure you got more bowls bc like i mentioned above, he feels really bad that you were malnourished and under weight

(don’t bring this up but kunikida felt bad too hehe)

when dazai went with your brother to the warehouse, you were with kunikida

imagine the surprise of the other ada members when kunikida came in with a little girl dressed in rags that popped out from behind him

kenji was the one who vocalized his thoughts

“kunikida-san you have a daughter?! wow! i didn’t know that! :D”

when you found out your brother was a tiger, you were a bit concerned but you were actually kind of excited

you were even more excited when you found out the two of you were going to be taken in by the agency

anything was better than the stupid orphanage

and besides!

you got a tiger for an older brother and a bunch of other super powered agents to take care of you! who could want anything else?

at your age, you’re very impressionable and can be influenced easily so atsushi makes sure to teach you more in depth of good morals and the importance of kindness

his heart swells with pride and relief when he catches you being kind to others

pride bc he’s proud that even after all the two of you have gone through, you still ended up being a good kid and having a bright view of the world

and relief bc he hasn’t failed as a big brother

pfftt like he could ever fail

but please, from time to time reassure him that he’s perfect and the only big brother that you’d ever want bc he rlly needs that kind of validation

with his salary and savings, he tries to buy nice things for you

what a sweetheart 🥺

he saw you eyeing that one dress at a store window? fast forward abt a week and half and it’s inside a pretty gift bag for you

you wanted to try that dessert from the nice bakery? that’s dessert after dinner at one point

but other than buying you things, he sets money aside for you

like all the time

(y/n), here have this, you might need it”

“but nii-san you just gave me—”

“take it”

#1 spoiler

also your #1 confidant and source of physical affection

you tell him anything and everything (except crushies and those kinds of things)

atsushi loves it when you talk abt your day and he can see the big smile on your face and the sparkle in your eyes

it gives him the strength to keep going 😖😖

the two of you aren’t as touch starved as you’d probably think, but that’s only bc the two of you had each other

in your opinion, no one can match the hugs of your big brother

and it got even better bc YAYY he has tiger arms now ٩(◕‿◕)۶

if you ask, he’d carry you around too hehe

you also get nightmares quite often so he’ll always be there ready to calm you down, talk if you need to, and rock you back to sleep

god i love him 🤧🤧

atsushi will do everything in his power to protect you and make sure you get to grow up happy, supported, and loved

port mafia attack? oop he’s already taking you to the nearest escape route

someone is starting to harass you? they just got suckered punched into the next week

you want to go out to have some fun? he’ll go ask the president for a day off

you’re not feeling well? he’ll take another day off and take care of you

whatever you want to do, he’ll do it with you! (as long as it’s within reason)

will always be your #1 supporter! and he’s the president of your fan club hehe

he loves you so so much and will do anything for you; your life and happiness will always be more important to him

you are his reason to keep going

agency head canons !!

atsushi is your big brother, but kunikida is most definitely some sort of father figure

everyone can see it

except kunikida of course

kunikida scolds you lightly if he thinks your manners need work or if you make a mess in the agency

you listen to him of course and in turn as some sort of a reward, he’ll give you pieces of stationary

he always gives you the nice, good quality kind and you’re over the moon

atsushi adores it when you come running to him showing your new notebook or fountain pen and blabbering what you’re going to do with it

sometimes it isn’t even as a reward for being a good child; he’ll just give it to you and he’ll say smth like “i noticed you’ve used up your last notebook quite quickly, so here’s another one” or “did you run out of ink? here have this then”

he usually has a soft spot for children in general, but he most definitely has a soft spot (or a thousand) for you

yosano is kind of like a motherly figure to you

she gives you the guidance a mother should and goes on shopping trips with you!

atsushi always gets dragged along by you, but he thinks it’s worth it seeing you look so happy

yosano being a doctor also tries to teach the things you should know, or things that would be helpful to you

she’ll teach you the basics of cooking, sewing, how to treat a cold/fever, etc

also gives you excellent advice 1000% of the time

“remember (y/n)-chan if someone hurts you come tell me and then i’ll chop them into—”

“yOSANO-SENSEI DONT TELL HER THAT—”

fukuzawa is like a father to most in the agency but you see him more as a grandfather figure

bi weekly tea and gossip sessions hehe

along with cat talk!

most of the time though, it’s just you talking and him listening to you, but the two of you enjoy it nonetheless

“and then kunikida-san ended up crashing into a pole and dazai-san started to laugh at him and i did too because it was really funny but we ended up getting scolded—”

“hmm i see...”

he’ll let you stay in his office as he fills out paperwork; you’re usually doodling or drawing in your notebooks

sometimes he’ll meditate and you’ll join him, but 4/7 times you’d fall asleep

you always wake up with a blanket over you

dazai is like a cool but a highly concerning and kind of high maintenance uncle

frequently takes you out with him when he ditches work

walks in the park, eating at uzumaki so he has the excuse of treating you so he doesn’t have to pay his tab avoiding kunikida and sometimes chuuya and akutagawa, all that fun stuff

also tries to not talk abt suicide in front of you especially if it’s just the two of you alone

he knows that you mean the world to his pupil and that said pupil would probably hate him for putting suicide inside your brain

he teaches you random but useful things like how to pick a lock, how to steal kunikida’s notebook if you’re looking for some information, how to sweet talk your way out of things, etc.

is also the one to tell you that if you ever get a significant other to introduce them to the agency first

he always wants all of your gossip; some of them work pretty well for blackmail

“dazai-san! dazai-san! did you know that kunikida-san lost his glasses and he was looking for them for nearly an hour when he was just holding them the entire time??”

“woah really (y/n)-chan?! hey hey can you say it again into this recording device so kunikida-kun would believe me when i tell him—”

always ends up giving kunikida a heart attack when he says that you’ve been with him all day

ranpo is also like a cool but a highly concerning and kind of high maintenance uncle

will share some of his snacks, but don’t push it or you might not get anything at all

loves it when you compliment him

if you tagged along with him and your brother on a case, he will show off to impress you

“...and that’s how the crime happened”

“UWAHH RANPO-SAN YOU’RE SO COOL”

atsushi is lowkey and kunikida is highkey stressed that ranpo’s eating habits will rub off on you

“ne (y/n)-chan do you wanna try this highly caffeinated drink and this concerning amount of sugar filled snack?”

“can i really?!”

“rANPO-SAN NO—”

ranpo definitely does stuff like that on purpose

the tanizakis are like siblings to you!

a weird set of siblings but siblings nonetheless

the two of them adore you and think you’re precious

atsushi definitely knows how to do your hair whether it’s long or short but he got even better at it when he asked the two

hehe braid trains are definitely a thing + kyouka and kenji (and maybe even dazai)

sometimes you have sibling swap days

you’re with junichiro for most of the day and atsushi is with naomi

strange i know

each of the tanizaki siblings try to make it fun bc they know that the two of you did not at all have a happy upbringing

junichiro likes spending time with you by taking you out to different places that naomi likes to frequent

like the mall, different stores and restaurants, the park, places like those

naomi does the same thing with atsushi so if you ever bump into them, you go out and eat together :)

besides atsushi, the next one in line who spoils you the most would be junichiro (and yosano & kunikida both coming in at a close third)

he honestly can’t help it; you remind him of how naomi was when she was younger

and besides

he’s always been a sucker when it came to the happiness of a little sister

“would you really buy this for me junichiro-san?!”

“of course! don’t worry about it” :)

wanna talk abt boys/girls/celebrity crushes things like that? naomi is your girl

you feel a bit embarrassed to go talking to yosano or your brother abt that and kyouka does not know a thing abt them either

“uwahh naomi-san look at all these people in this magazine! they look so good!”

“right?! but of course onii-sama is still the best—”

you get along with kenji and kyouka quite nicely being roughly the same age as them; they’re also like siblings!

just pure, wholesome vibes from the three of you

you’re over the moon when she finds out that kyouka is staying with you and your brother

atsushi is twice as happy seeing you talk your mouth off and finally having a girl around your age to talk to

“do you think demon snow can change how she looks?”

“hmm... im not sure...”

you and kenji talk abt anything and everything

he even teaches you how to take care of plants!

sometimes the two of you are kind of in the same boat bc you don’t know much abt yokohoma being stuck in the orphanage and kenji doesn’t know much abt cities in general

“wait where are we again kenji-san?”

“ah we’re close to the ports! but im not really sure how close because i don’t know what the symbols on this sign mean”

“don’t worry! neither do i!”

bonus things!

yosano was kind of too late teaching you abt you know what

“NII-SAN IM BLEEDING IN BETWEEN MY LEGS”

you’re sobbing in the agency’s bathroom and atsushi is panicking trying to get you to open the door

“Y/N?! H-HOLD ON LET ME GET YOSANO SENSEI”

ranpo overhears and cackles making everyone around him confused

suddenly atsushi bursts in the agency basically on the verge of tears rambling incoherent sentences abt the bathroom, you, and blood

it just clicked for everybody in the room

(im going to pretend that kenji has sisters back home so that atsushi is the only one who remain oblivious here hehe)

atsushi is genuinely confused and sort of concerned that no one is freaking out with him

yosano waves her hand saying smth like that she’d take care of it and junichiro pulls atsushi to the side to talk to him

fast forward like half and hour and dazai and ranpo are cackling on the looks of both of your faces

honestly not sure who’s more traumatized, you or your brother

“why does this have to happen” :(

“ne ne (y/n)-chan!~ you’re too young but at some point you’re not going to have it!”

“uwahh really dazai-san?” :D

“yeah! but first you have to have ANFK—”

next thing you know your ears are being covered by your brother and dazai is thrown across the room by kunikida

you know

the normal

you’re twelve and have never gone to school, but the agency takes care of that

it’s too dangerous to go to school so they teach you what’s necessary and whatever else they can

kunikida takes care of math (obviously)

yosano takes care of science/biology/anatomy/health (whatever you wanna call it)

ranpo even dragged poe to help you with english

atsushi even got lucy to help you out with english too!

as tanizaki and naomi used to be students, they give you their old work books and they try to teach you all the other subjects

sometimes kyouka and kenji are there learing with you too!

sorry if there’s some errors! i’ll read through it again later :)

and as always, reblogs and shares are appreciated! i hope you all stay safe! and just in case nobody told you they loved you today, i love you! you are enough! <3

writing belongs to me! please do not plagiarize! the reblog button is there for a reason

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