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mattnben-bennmatt · 5 months ago

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The Evolution of Matt Damon

GQ (8 September 2021)

He was the golden-boy actor who became one of Hollywood’s biggest icons. But as of late, the narrative hasn’t been so simple.

By Chris Heath | Photography by Lachlan Bailey

No one notices the masked man sitting on a bench at the back of the Malibu Seafood Fresh Fish Market & Patio Café’s covered seating area. Nobody catches—floating in the warm ocean breeze above the drone of the cars on the Pacific Coast Highway and the smush of the crashing waves beyond—any of the telltale snippets that might prod them to look twice:

“…I mean, Bono lived down the street…”

“…There was the moment when I passed into the realm of being somebody who was an elder statesman versus the new guy. You know, I never was clear when that happened. It was just kind of like I woke up one day and that was the case…”

“…Those last few days of shooting, we knew that we were going to get shut down…”

“…You just get way too much credit for things that you normally wouldn’t get credit for. ‘Oh, you’re so nice.’ ‘No, I’m not really—I’m not so nice.’…”

Instead, Matt Damon manages to turn up here, talk about pretty much anything and everything for two hours, and leave undisturbed. The mask clearly helps. He is wearing it for our encounter because his 12-year-old daughter, Gia, has COVID. Though she has been isolated in her bedroom and has had nothing but a low fever, and although everyone in the household is having PCR tests every 18 hours, all so far negative (Gia’s aside), caution dictates that our masks stay on and we sit diagonally across a table. It only adds to the all-round strangeness. Before meeting him, I expected that Damon might be one of those polished celebrities who bombard you so affably and articulately with chosen tales from their life that you might not notice until it’s too late all of the things that they’ve carefully decided not to share. But the man I encounter will be nowhere near so controlled or straightforward.

Damon and his family spent the first part of the year in the relative sanctuary of Australia, for reasons we will come to, but about three weeks ago they returned to the Northern Hemisphere. “It’s been a whirlwind,” he begins to tell me, though neither of us is quite yet aware just how roughly some of those winds may have buffeted him. “The relative calm of a COVID-free continent,” he continues, “to L.A. and then France…”—for the Cannes Film Festival—“…and then back here. And, you know, dealing with this.” Family illness, worry, quarantine. “It’s just been a lot, like from zero to hundred again. I was excited to kind of reengage with the world, but I forgot how fast it moves.”

Shirt, $760, by Prada. Vintage shorts by Polo Ralph Lauren from Front General Store. Vintage belt by J.Crew.

At the Cannes Film Festival, Damon was promoting the release of the movie Stillwater. One possible sign of Damon’s disorientation as he reengaged with the world came during the ovation at the end of the Stillwater screening: Damon was widely reported to have teared up. He says now that he didn’t even realize that he had done so until he was told afterward. “Had it not been for a bright light and the camera literally two feet away from me in that moment,” he says, “I guarantee you nobody would have noticed. But, yeah, I was just pleasantly overwhelmed a little bit.”

Do you tear up easily?

“Sadly, yes. Now, the last few years, more than any other time. Yeah, for a whole host of reasons. I’m an easy get now.”

Why do you say, “Sadly, yes”?

“Well, I’ve never liked, you know, cheap tears. I don’t want to be, you know, the person where it’s like, ‘Oh, there he goes again.’ Because that gets pretty boring too. But, yeah, you do see it a lot as people get older, particularly men—at least in my life, I��ve noticed that—people are a little quicker to tear up.”

I guess they’ve put so much fucking effort into not crying…

“…for so many fucking years! And now they’re just like, ‘Ah, fuck it, I’m not bothering with that anymore.’ ”

Robe, $450, by George Cortina for Anderson & Sheppard. Ring (throughout), $2,700, by J.E. Caldwell and Co. from Wilson’s Estate Jewelry. Towel, $245, by Hermès.

A while back, Damon let slip a story about one other time that he cried, right at the beginning of his career. The origin saga of Good Will Hunting is now Hollywood lore: the two teenage Boston friends, Damon and Ben Affleck, both set on acting careers, who shared everything as they followed their quest (their joint BayBank account had the code “River P”: “Because,” Damon says, “he was the guy who got the jobs that we wanted, he was like the best young actor and we just admired him”); how in their early 20s, frustrated by a lack of opportunities, they decided that the only way to break through was to write their own film to star in; the years the two of them spent honing a script about a roughshod but preternaturally talented Boston kid; their willingness to walk away from huge amounts of money if they weren’t allowed to appear in the film; the eventual triumph, leading not just to Damon’s first Oscar nomination for acting but their shared win for best screenplay, which made Damon the second-youngest person ever to win a screenwriting Oscar. (Affleck was the youngest.)

These tears came on the very first day’s filming. In front of the camera were Robin Williams and Stellan Skarsgård. Damon and Affleck sat watching. At last, it was the start of everything.

“Sometimes those moments sneak up on you,” Damon reflects. “And that was another one of those moments we never thought was going to arrive. To see not only actors, but those actors, saying the stuff that we wrote, was like…fuck. Just, I guess, a mixture of joy and disbelief. And relief. And gratitude. That would probably be it. That was a really nice moment. I’m not ashamed to say it.”

I ask Damon whether Affleck was crying too.

“I remember him as crying. Now, memory is a funny thing, as we know, so you would have to ask him, but my recollection is we both were. Yeah. I think, as I recall, I put my hand on his arm, as these guys were talking. On his shoulder. Like: ‘Holy shit…’ ”

Later, I do ask Affleck, who concurs: “We both cried.”

I ask Affleck whether they’d been surprised to see each other cry.

“No, I knew Matt was an emotional…” he replies, leaving the sentence hanging, no noun required. “No, it didn’t surprise me at all to see Matt crying. It surprised me a little bit to be crying along with him, but maybe he felt that way about me.” Affleck likewise reflected to me on why that moment caught them in this way: “It was all we thought about, it was all we focused on, and we never really believed it would happen. And it sort of represented the sum total of what we tried to do. You know…”—Affleck laughs here, perhaps a little wryly—“…we might have cried for other reasons had we been able to see the whole future and understand the complexity of what we’d gotten ourselves into. But at the time, we had the sort of surety and the naivete of being just guys in our mid-20s who weren’t thinking about anything except what was happening just right there in the moment, and feeling a tremendous amount of belief and satisfaction that it actually happened. That we actually accomplished something. We just felt relieved that we hadn’t totally failed.”

Going into the pandemic in the early months of 2020, Matt Damon was better informed, if not better prepared, than many of us, for the most Hollywood of reasons. In 2011, he had starred in the Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion, in several respects an uncannily precise fictional preview of what was to come. After Contagion, Damon had kept in touch both with the screenwriter, Scott Burns, and the virologist, Ian Lipkin, hired as technical adviser to guide the film’s science. Over the years since, whenever some kind of outbreak or epidemic seemed to be threatening, Damon had been in the habit of checking back with them to “get kind of the down-low on what was going on.”

As the first mutterings emerged from China, Damon duly contacted Burns to ask what Lipkin was saying. “No, this one’s real” he remembers Burns telling him. “This is exponential—the world is going to look completely different in two weeks.” Damon was in France, shooting The Last Duel with director Ridley Scott, and they raced to complete vital exterior shots. The plan had been for the production to move on to Ireland, but it became increasingly obvious that this might not happen right away. The day before the scheduled move in early March, the shoot was put on hold.

Damon’s wife and three youngest children were with him in France, and they had a family meeting. Should they fly back to America while they could, or travel on the crew charter flight to Ireland and wait things out there? They chose Ireland.

In many ways, it was a decision that worked out. “We got really lucky,” says Damon. “We had about as good a lockdown as we could have ever hoped.” As well as the house waiting for them in the coastal community of Dalkey, other nearby properties had been rented by cast and crew who had returned to America. These were all now vacant, so there was plenty of room for Damon’s party to spread out. In one house, for instance, Damon installed the teachers they had been traveling with, allowing his children their own in-person private school that they could walk to each day. His assistant and trainer also got their own spaces. Within the two kilometers they were permitted to travel, they could swim in the sea, take long hikes in the Irish countryside. It was like a time out from the world.

“He has freedom. It’s the most intoxicating thing of all. And that, very few very famous people have. He’s free from self-consciousness. For a man who looks in the mirror for a living, he’s not even a little bit self-conscious.” — Bono

“There was like a quiet,” Damon reflects. “There weren’t scripts being sent, or work to do, or people who needed answers for anything. It was just: Take the kids to school and then go train, or go for a walk. It was very simple. That part of it was eye-opening, going forward, in terms of how I’d like to spend my days.”

Meanwhile people elsewhere were watching a younger Damon deal with far more harrowing pandemic circumstances, as Contagion became a hit all over again. Surreally, these viewers were joined by Damon himself. “We were just flipping on Apple TV and it was just there, in our face,” he remembers. “People were kind of hungry for more information, and the information was kind of scarce at the beginning. And so, I don’t know, I think we probably went through the same kind of subconscious or conscious process that everyone did, and just pressed ‘play.’ ” Damon allows that he was pleasantly surprised by what he saw. “I remember thinking: This is better than I remember! Because when we released it, I think it felt more like a science fiction movie. It felt a lot more far-fetched than it actually was.”

Sweater, $3,550, by Brunello Cucinelli. Shorts, $450, by Hermès.

Word soon spread that Damon and his family were here: In the upside-down world of spring 2020, this curious happenstance even prompted its own article in The New York Times. That story, “A Seaside Irish Village Adopts Matt Damon,” detailed a few Damon Dalkey sightings and explained how a photo of Damon holding a bag from the Irish supermarket SuperValu “seems to have been his ticket to local acceptance,” leading to a proliferation of “delighted memes and glowing articles in the Irish press.” The particular excitement triggered by this SuperValu image seems to have been its stars-they’re-just-like-us implication that Damon might have gone gloriously native, his plastic bag loaded with beer cans ready for a determined drinking session.

I speak to one of Damon’s neighbors from that time who recalled for me the disruptions caused by this American movie star’s unexpected presence:

“I’ve lived in this village, or next to this village, for 30 years—this fucker is there for three months and they make him the king of Dalkey! I mean, it’s unbelievable. He’s caught in some kind of local photo shoot with a SuperValu plastic bag, and the rumor that he’s carrying cans, and suddenly he’s got all this credibility that some of us just are incapable of ever achieving. He’s beloved! I mean, there’ll be a statue of him there. I don’t know what it was, and what he did. But I’m very annoyed about it. I’m not happy at all.”

The speaker is Bono. His ire—“Thirty years I’ve put into that fishing village, and suddenly the fisher of men takes over!”—is, of course, theatrical. Damon and Bono are friends, and go back some way. In fact, according to Damon, Bono was indirectly responsible for initiating the third great focus of Damon’s adult life aside from his acting career and his family: his work in expanding global access to water, primarily through the organization water.org. This was back in 2006. Damon had been exploring making a trip to Africa with Bono’s charity. He planned to go just as soon as he could find the right moment. That was when, according to Damon, Bono applied his renowned powers of persuasion: “He called me, and I said, ‘No, no, I’m going to go,’ and he said, ‘No, you’re going to go now.’ I said, ‘No, no, come on, my wife’s pregnant.’ He said, ‘There’s always going to be a reason, and you have to go now.’ And he was right. And that started the journey—it wasn’t going to start until I went. Until I started engaging, nothing was going to happen, and I think he knew that.” (For his part, Bono downplays his role here—“I think he gives me too much credit”—but extols Damon’s subsequent achievements in this arena: “I think he’s better at it than I am—subtler, less hectoring, very effective.”)

When we speak, Bono also offers up some more general reflections about Damon, ones I will come to ponder a great deal.

“In the last hour, with this call coming, I was trying to think what it is about him,” Bono says. “And I realized that he has the thing that the whole world wants: He has freedom. It’s the most intoxicating thing of all. And that, very few very famous people have. He’s free from self-consciousness. For a man who looks in the mirror for a living, he’s not even a little bit self-conscious, I’ve found. I mean, I think I’ve got freedom, but I’m self-conscious. When I walk into the newsagent’s, I can see myself walking into the newsagent’s, do you know what I mean? He’s really himself.” Bono subsequently appends to this a further, related thought: “There’s some things you shouldn’t get too good at. Celebrity’s one of them.”

I ask Bono whether he’s saying that, in the nicest possible way, Damon is not that good at being a celebrity.

“Yeah, that might be the truth,” Bono replies, and contrasts a particular glazed look he has learned to recognize in the eyes of some politicians he meets with the affect of someone like Damon. “He’s not professional,” Bono suggests. “He’s way beyond that. He’s an amateur, in the way that he should always be, regarding celebrity. You know, quite good at it on the weekends, probably falls down in the week. But the respect for people and for human life, and the squandering of it, that’s absolutely core to who he is. And he’s just trying to be useful. Trying to be helpful.”

Jacket, $3,995, by Paul Stuart. Shirt, vintage. Shorts, $480, by Hermès.

After about three months in Dalkey—the SuperValu bag, incidentally, had actually been filled with beach towels for the kids—Damon and family headed back to Los Angeles, though they would return to Ireland for two months later in the year to finish The Last Duel. Toward the end of that shoot, Damon turned 50, but the production was under a strict quarantine protocol, so there could be no party. Instead, he conferred with his old college roommates on their shared text chain: “I was just texting that I definitely bested their COVID 50th. I was shooting a battle scene in The Last Duel in which I had nine confirmed kills. We were laughing about that: ‘This is the best midlife crisis ever. I’m just slaughtering my way through my midlife crisis.’ ”

Then, near the end of last year, the possibility arose of a new escape. Damon had made a brief, surreal appearance in Taika Waititi’s 2017 Thor: Ragnarok, as “actor Loki.” Now Waititi was preparing a follow-up, Thor: Love and Thunder, to be filmed in the early months of 2021 in Australia, and asked Damon whether he would consider reprising his earlier cameo. It was not hard to see the appeal. Australia was, as we shall see, somewhere he and family already had close history. It was also one of the safest, least virus-infected places on the planet (and, consequently, not an easy place to visit). Damon agreed to take the role if he could bring his family. Discussions began, and permission was granted. “There were government officials who called me and explained to me in no uncertain terms: The only reason you’re getting in is because this production is creating jobs,” Damon explains. “Now, could the production live without me? Yeah. But you start pulling jokes away from something that’s funny and eventually it’s not, you know what I mean?”

Again, things worked out well. Although he would be required on set for only two days, Damon was able to stay there with his family for five months. He played his onscreen part as required—“It’s going to be a laugh, and it’s going to be a really good movie, so I’m always up for that”—and there is circumstantial evidence of some socializing: A photo surfaced of Damon at an Eighties birthday party thrown for one of Chris Hemsworth’s friends, dressed as…well, best let him explain.

“I didn’t know what the heck to get,” he says of preparing for this outing. “So I went kind of Run DMC and got me the old Adidas tracksuit with the Kangol hat, which was very much the look in the ’80s where I grew up. I think my wife got some plastic chain online that I accessorized with. And, funnily enough, Idris Elba came in dressed in the exact same thing.”

But mostly it was family time, and a further reprieve from what was happening elsewhere.

“So again we were really lucky,” he acknowledges. “I mean, we’ve been about as lucky as you can be throughout this pandemic.”

Which, on one hand, is very evidently true. Though, on the other hand, the fact that he is saying this when one of his daughters has tested positive and is isolating at home, and when his oldest daughter—who was in New York at the beginning of the pandemic—had her own brush with COVID in March 2020, may also show how much we have all learned to recalibrate.

Sweater, $1,200, by Prada. Shirt, $495, by Brunello Cucinelli.

When Damon and I speak for a second time, 38 hours after that first meeting, he is now unmasked (sufficient testing and quarantining has been achieved), and we are two-and-a-half-thousand miles away from Malibu. Today, we have brunch at the Osprey restaurant in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

This is Damon’s new neighborhood. He and his family have been principally living in Los Angeles for some years but are now in the process of moving back to New York. “A big transition for the kids—new schools, new everything,” he says, explaining how he’d like them to be able to have the kind of independence that a less car-dominated environment can allow. “So, ‘in flux’ will probably be the best description of my personal life. Not to say we’re not excited—we’re really excited.”

Damon and his wife, Lucy, have four daughters (the oldest, Alexia, predating their relationship). Their names are inked, one above the other, hidden high on Damon’s right arm— “Alexia,” “Isabella,” “Gia,” “Stella”—though Damon seems momentarily taken aback when I mention this, as though unsure that this is public knowledge. “Did I show my tattoos?” he muses. “I guess I did.”

“My own kind of sanity and mental health really benefited from having someone who I grew up with who was also going through something similar.” — Ben Affleck

He added these four names a couple of years back, but his first tattoo, on the same upper arm, was done in 2013. It had been his wife’s idea.

“She just announced it,” he says. “We were in our apartment in Manhattan, and she was, like, ‘We’re getting tattoos.’ I was, ‘Okay.’ ” Damon says that he had only one stipulation—that they fulfill a promise once made. “There is a friend of ours who did all of Heath Ledger’s tattoos,” says Damon, “and I told him if I ever got a tattoo, he was my first phone call.” That call was duly made and the friend, Scott Campbell, biked over from Brooklyn and freehanded the name “Lucy.”

Idly, I ask about the stray tattoo on Damon’s upper arm that doesn’t appear to be a name: a strange loopy line heading up toward his shoulder. This, it turns out, was done on that same day in 2013 and comes with its own story:

“That’s something that Heath had on his arm. Heath was an incredibly restless, creative person. Like, I talked to the person who did his hair on The Patriot and she said he hated sitting still so much ‘that by the time I got the wig on and I set it and everything, and I’d finished, he’d get up and there would be a sculpture of bobby pins that he’d done.’ He was really sensitive. This stuff just flowed out of him. He was really special. I just wanted to get something that Heath had. Scott showed me his laptop and I said, ‘Scott, what’s that one?’ And he goes ‘I have no idea—I think that’s just some shit that Heath squiggled.’ And I went, ‘That’s the one I want.’ ”

Lucy, who was also friends with Heath, got the same tattoo on her foot.

“So we both have that,” says Damon. “It’s like a little creative little blessing. It’s like an angel that looks over all these names that are on the arm.”

Hoodie, $1,340, by Louis Vuitton Men’s. Vintage shorts from Front General Store.

Damon was first urged to read Eric Jager’s book The Last Duel, about a dark and dramatic episode in 14th-century France, with a mind to its movie potential, back in 2011. He demurred. Hearing that Martin Scorsese already had the rights, he felt it would be a waste of his time: “I said, ‘Well, if Marty has it, he’s going to do it with Leo.’ ” Seven years later, the rights now available, Damon relented.

At first, he couldn’t see it. “Twenty pages in, I was just thinking, We can’t do this,” he says. “Like, these guys are absolute savages. These guys are born in the middle of a hundred--year war, they do nothing but rape and pillage and fight for their entire lives.…” But then the central story gripped him: of two men, one accused of rape by the other’s wife, and of the woman at the center. “She had, at great risk to first her reputation and then to herself, stood up and told the truth, again and again and again,” says Damon. “It was just pretty amazing.” He sent the book to Ridley Scott, whom he had wanted to work with again since their successful collaboration on The Martian. Scott shared his enthusiasm. Now they needed a script.

One evening, Damon had dinner with Ben Affleck. Over the years, the two teenage friends have remained close, in a way that—as they separately acknowledge—far transcends the cartoon best-Hollywood-buddy way it can often be depicted.

“Like, I don’t want to be his friend in public, you know what I mean?” Damon says. “It’s way too important a friendship for that, and it goes so beyond this career or anything. You know, it’s a significant part of my life and not for public consumption in that way.”

“I can’t speak for Matt,” Affleck offers, “but my own kind of sanity and mental health really benefited from having someone who I grew up with and knew as a child who was also going through something similar—this 20-year-plus journey of being in the public eye—who I could reflect on it with honestly, talk things over with, be myself with, who I knew why we were friends, why he was interested and loved me, why I loved him. I often think of people who just become successful and then get thrust into this, and I think, ‘How do they do it without having somebody that they can talk to? Who they can trust? Who knew them before?’ It’s just been such an asset to me—and, I think, I hope, to Matt—this relationship that we’ve had.”

The two of them have remained periodic work colleagues—they share a production company—but after winning their Good Will Hunting Oscar, they had never even attempted to collaborate on another script. To a large extent this was a reflection of just how successful their initial strategy has been—kick-started by that movie’s success, both had long been busy with the kind of opportunities they could once have only dreamed of. But it was also that what they had done back then seemed too cumbersome to ever repeat.

“The process of writing was so time consuming when we did it, when we were 22 and 20,” says Damon.

“We didn’t have jobs, we didn’t have anything else to do,” echoes Affleck. “We had two years to sort of muddle our way through a draft, and then another draft—to spend time sitting around and drinking beer and talking about the themes and playing video games and bullshitting.”

“We really understood the characters, and so we would take them and we would put them in these different scenarios,” Damon explains, “and then at the end, we kind of mashed these disjointed parts together into what could cohere as some kind of narrative. And that’s a really inefficient way to write. And I think both of us just intuitively felt like: Well, we’re never going to have enough time to do that again.”

Sweater, $1,295, and vintage shorts by Polo Ralph Lauren. Vintage shoes by Brooks Brothers from Melet Mercantile. Socks, $13, by American Trench.

But over that dinner, Damon told Affleck about The Last Duel, and at the end of the meal lent Affleck his copy of the book. “He was recently sober,” Damon recalls. “And when he’s on his game, he really sees the matrix. At seven o’clock the next morning, he called me—he had gone home and read it—and said, ‘We should write this.’ ”

Affleck tells me that he had stayed up until three or four in the morning, reading. When Damon had solicited his opinion on material in the past, Affleck hadn’t always “been super-enthusiastic,” he says. This was different. “All of a sudden I had a very clear idea of: Absolutely, this is a movie, this is how we should do it. It just thrilled me. And the story of this woman and what she had experienced and been through and the bravery she’d exhibited and the resilience and strength of character it must have taken to have gone through this—it just became very, very clear to me right away how it could work as a movie.” He became possessed with a great sense of urgency—“we have to do this and get it done now”—that he needed Damon to share. “He’s got a busy life, he’s all over the place,” Affleck explains, “and he frankly requires being marshaled a little bit to focus and zone in.” So Affleck laid out a plan of action: “Okay, and this is how we’re going to do it: We’re going to do four hours a day, I’m going to schedule it, I’m going to come over there…”

As soon as they began, they quickly found a very different rhythm from the last time around. “It really fit in with our lives,” says Damon. “Get up, get the kids out the door, to do everything we needed to do in our personal lives, and then meet in a very relaxed setting, work for four or five hours, then go back and kind of fulfill all of our obligations at home.” He describes these sessions as involving a lot of pacing around, acting out scenes, before one of them consolidated what they had. “He’s a better typist than I am,” says Damon. “But sometimes I’m closer to the laptop.”

They also soon realized that they needed something else. Damon’s initial proposal had been that they should tell the story from the different perspectives of the principal characters, and it became obvious that they needed a third collaborator, someone who could write the wronged wife’s story in a way they never could. That’s when they brought in the director and writer Nicole Holofcener. “I mean, what a great story, what a unique story, and what a feminist story to tell,” says Holofcener. “It was daunting in that she was a real person, and I felt honored and terrified to make sure that I was doing her justice and make it very clear that her truth was the truth, and to make her a whole person. She was extraordinary for speaking the truth, despite horrible consequences if they decided she was lying.” From the way the collaborators talk about it, their aim transcended the unwrapping of a he-said/he-said/she-said tale to lay bare some of the toxic consequences of even allowing such a story to be framed in that way. “If Unforgiven is the anti-Western Western,” says Damon, “then this is the anti-chivalry chivalry movie.… I think it’s a really good movie. We’ll see what people think.”

Both Damon and Affleck now imagine collaborating together more often in the future. “The discovery, I think, for both of us,” says Affleck, “was: It’s so much more pleasant and rewarding and wonderful to go to work and work with people that you love.” But for now, Damon has nothing planned beyond The Last Duel’s release. He’d like to spend the rest of the year bedding down in New York. If there’s something suitable he can make in the spring, he will; if there isn’t, he won’t. Somewhere along the way, he will eventually direct. He has come close twice but stepped aside. He was initially scheduled to direct Promised Land, a movie about fracking that he wrote with John Krasinski, and was also supposed to direct Manchester by the Sea, which was based on an idea Krasinski had proposed to him over dinner. But when Kenneth Lonergan subsequently tendered the script that they had commissioned, it was obvious to Damon that Lonergan should direct it instead. (He likes to joke that the best move he made as the movie’s producer was to fire himself as the movie’s director.)

Most likely, though, more acting will come first. “I feel like I’ve been steadily improving at my job for a long time,” he says. “And that’s a great feeling.” He muses about how sometimes, for all one’s effort, movies may still misfire. “I really want people to care as much as I do about the things I’m putting out,” he says. “And, you know, some of them have really worked, and some of them really haven’t.”

There’s no one making films, I suggest to him, who gets it right all of the time.

He nods. “That’s what I think’s so interesting about it—it’s impossible to do it perfectly, this. It keeps you coming back, like an addict. You know more and more, but you know you never know enough to know.”

Sweater, $3,325, by Hermès.

Pandemic aside, there was one previous extended break—over 18 months between the end of 2016 and the summer of 2018—when Matt Damon stopped making films. The first year of this period was spent back in Boston, staying close, during his father Kent’s final illness.

“We rented an apartment a block from his apartment,” says Damon, “so if he was well enough, he’d come for dinner, and if he was well enough to be at home but not to come to our place, we would go to sit and have dinner with him.” And when his father was in the hospital, Damon would be there every day. It was an intense time not just for Damon but for his wife and children. “They were very much a part of that. They had a front-row seat to that process, so it was a big year for them too. For our whole family, it was a seismic event.” Echoes from this time reverberate throughout our conversations. “I remember my dad saying in his last year of life,” Damon will mention at one point, “that he didn’t feel old. His spirit felt the same.”

Damon’s father died of multiple myeloma on December 14, 2017. That same week, the orbit of Damon’s life was also knocked askew in a completely different way. It feels important to note that although Damon points out that these two events occurred at the same time, he never explicitly links them beyond that. Specifically, he doesn’t try to sidestep any of the trouble that would cascade down upon him, as perhaps he might, by excusing himself as a man distracted by grief.

In Matt Damon’s career up until that point, there had been very few significant wrinkles: It generally seemed as though he had fluently mastered how to put his most charming face forward to the world, and that the world by and large had reciprocated by being duly charmed. Until that week. To dutifully promote Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, filmed the previous year, Damon had surfaced to record an interview for Popcorn With Peter Travers, the first part of which appeared on ABC on the morning of his father’s death. At one point, Travers asked Damon a series of questions about the wave of #MeToo allegations sweeping Hollywood. Damon replied at length and with apparent confidence, in a manner that would strike many people as that of some kind of presumptuous luminary who felt he had the answers everyone had been waiting for and who assumed it would be appreciated if he not only stepped in to tell it like it is but also set a few things straight. The response to both what Damon said and the fact that he seemed to believe it would be appropriate for him to say it was forthright.

“I mean, we all come into the world and we’re a fucking hot mess, do you know what I mean?” he says now. “And we make mistakes. And even in doing our best we make terrible mistakes.” The ensuing reaction was not one that Damon was accustomed to. “It was painful,” he says. “It’s hard to take punches for things…the person that they were saying, ‘He’s tone-deaf, and he’s…’ you know, I don’t like that guy either. So it’s hard to hear those things about yourself.”

An old friend persuaded Damon that he should rein in any instinct to wade right back into the conversation. “She said, ‘Don’t respond. You’d be inclined to say, “But I’m a good person.…” Don’t do that. Just be quiet for at least a month and just listen. Listen to the objections to what you said. Try to understand why you upset people.’ And that’s what I did. My friend’s advice was great in the sense of not getting in a defensive crouch—because that was my inclination, and you can’t hear anything in a defensive crouch—and as painful as it is, the only way forward is to really try to understand what you’ve done and really reflect on it.”

Even if Damon might still take issue with much of what was thrown at him—“95 percent of the stuff was entirely unhelpful, it was just Twitter-bashing stuff, which did put me in a defensive crouch, because you just go, ‘That’s nonsense’ ”—the more solid criticisms hit hard. “There were articles written about things that I said, about centering a man in a sexual assault situation. And I go, ‘Wow, I did do that. I thought of it entirely from his perspective.’ Like, that’s where my head went. And, ‘I didn’t think about these women’.… Because I’m trying to relate to the situation, and I relate to the person who has more in common with me. But in so doing, I’m doing damage not only to the people in that scenario but to anybody who’s ever been in that scenario and who feels like, ‘Oh, here I go again, getting overlooked.’ So it changed the way that I look at some of these things. It makes me hopefully more aware.”

A month after the initial interview, Damon resurfaced to promote a campaign for water.org and briefly addressed the situation: “I made a very sincere apology about not wanting to further anyone’s pain. Which is my truth. I mean, I don’t think it’s particularly revelatory. I think most of us would say that. But I certainly wanted to make it clear that I was truly sorry; that I didn’t mean to do that.”

And then he went away.

It was Damon’s wife who suggested to him that they go to Australia. This trip, lasting several months, was, says Damon, primarily a response to “the end of this fucking horrible year that I’d spent in the hospital with my dad.… It was like, ‘Let’s go to the other side of the world, just our family, and let’s make memories with the kids. Let’s go on an adventure.’ ” This recent media firestorm provided one further impetus. “I think that we would have gone either way. But certainly I was like: Nobody needs to hear from me for another year at least.”

In Australia, the Damon family traveled around, doing camping trips, finding remote beaches and islands, before returning to a base in Byron Bay where sympathetic friends lived. “The whole Hemsworth family,” says Damon, “and all of their friends, we’re close with all of them, and they were just a huge support system for us.”

Back then, in the year after his father’s death, Damon simply didn’t know when he’d go back to work. But eventually a script came through that enticed him: Ford v Ferrari. Nonetheless, his transition back into the world of what he used to do did not go as smoothly as Damon had anticipated. He was playing the cocksure former racing driver, now race car designer, Carroll Shelby.

“I just kind of showed up,” he tells me, “and I put on everything and none of it felt right. I’m supposed to be playing a guy who can sell anybody anything, and I didn’t feel like I could sell anything to anybody. I really didn’t. And I thought: I’m not ready to work. And I remember walking out of the trailer, it was the summertime so it was over 100 degrees. I remember walking to the set in my boots that were already giving me blisters after about 10 steps, with my cowboy hat that was stiff on my head, with this feeling that I can’t sell anything to anybody and I’m about to pretend that I can. And because I don’t feel that I can, I will be pretending. And I remember thinking: ‘This is a really stupid job.’ ”

Acting? I ask.

“Yeah, the whole thing. ‘I can’t believe this is what I decided to do with my life.’ ”

Damon’s first scene was with “a great character actor from Georgia” named Ray McKinnon. By chance, Damon had worked with McKinnon back when Damon was 19, in a TV movie called Rising Son, one of his first jobs. (Damon, naturally, was the son who was rising.) Somehow that helped. “There was something about coming back to where it all started, and doing a scene with Ray. And he just was so good that I was, ‘All right, maybe this isn’t the dumbest thing in the world to do.…’ ”

Damon’s next scene was with his costar Christian Bale—“one of my favorite actors,” says Damon, and a key reason he’d committed to the film. “Six months earlier, he had been 245 pounds,” says Damon—Bale had been playing Dick Cheney in Vice—“…and he was not a pound over 170. And I came out and he was sunburnt, and he had these coveralls on, and it looked like he’d been wearing them for his entire life, and he had this hat that was just beaten to shit, and it was just every detail. Every detail. I mean, it was fucking beautiful. And I went: ‘Okay. This is why we do it. This is a great thing to do with my life. Because we tell people stories—we tell people stories, and that’s the most human thing there is.’ And if you’re going to tell them stories, then fucking tell it well.”

It had come back to him. He was Matt Damon, and—for now, anyway—he knew what to do.

Matt Damon has never embraced social media.

“I just never saw the point,” he says. “And I feel better and better about that decision as time goes on. I understand wanting to be connected to everybody on Facebook, but my life is so full and I’m connected, really, to everybody I need to be connected to. And then Twitter, I just reflexively didn’t believe that my first knee-jerk response to something was necessarily something that should go all over the world.”

But then Damon mentions that he does, nonetheless, have “a very private Instagram account,” one he uses to see friends’ kids growing up around the world, and to which he only very occasionally posts.

I reflexively ask him what one of his typical posts would be. Slightly to my surprise, he pulls out his phone.

“I’ll show you,” he says.

As the app opens, he reads out his stats: “I have 76 followers and I’ve done 40 posts since 2013.” Then he shows me the most recent photo. It was taken of 15-year-old Isabella on her birthday. “That’s what she’s been doing,” he says, by way of explanation, “every time we take a picture of her nowadays.”

In the photo, his daughter is looking at the camera—and at her father—brandishing two raised middle fingers.

Days after our final meeting, something new blows up and I am reminded of the impulsive ways in which Damon seems to oscillate between great reserve and openness. This circumstance also stems from Damon sharing something about his family. An interview appears in the British newspaper The Sunday Times in which Damon is quoted as explaining how, some months earlier, one of his daughters had left the dinner table after he had made a joke using what he said she called “the f-slur for a homosexual”; how she had subsequently written him a letter explaining his transgression, and how Damon had agreed that she was correct and that he would retire the word. If he intended this story to show how we all must continue to learn and adapt and listen and strive to be better (and maybe also to show appreciation and deference for daughterly wisdom), that was not how it was widely received. The message that landed was: Matt Damon had been blithely using that word until a few months ago (and so might be, it was often also implied, a thoughtless homophobe). In the wake of the unfavorable coverage that followed, Damon issued a statement. In it, he sidestepped an apology, arguing for the good intentions behind the father-daughter story he had told, disputing its status as a “personal awakening,” denying that he uses “slurs of any kind,” and asserting, “I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.”

It nonetheless left an uncomfortable and unresolved mess. When GQ sought to discuss this further with Damon, he declined. In that vacuum, I found myself thinking about this, and about other unguarded moments that punctuated the conversations we did have. It made me consider how for all his poise and worldly bearing, there could be something guileless about Damon; and whether there was an aspect of himself that made him somehow vulnerable to stepping into those puddles that more deftly cynical men know how to step around. It made me wonder, too, whether a celebrity who shuns social media might also fail to learn how to inoculate themselves against the perils that lie in wait in the savage judgment chamber of the modern world. And it made me ponder anew Bono’s observation about how Damon wasn’t good at being a celebrity. Bono clearly meant this as a grand compliment, but perhaps the same virtues Bono sees may sometimes carry their own cost, out here with the rest of us, adrift in the follies and rewards of being human.

Back before, in the last few minutes of our Brooklyn brunch, I had asked Damon whether he ever felt misunderstood. In answering, he once more referenced back to his 2017 missteps. “I felt like I was being represented as something that I didn’t feel in my heart,” he said. “And the media, it’s so powerful—like, that fire hose of attention is overwhelming, no matter what. Even when it’s good, it’s really overwhelming. Some people love it, and you can see that they’re looking for it and they need it, constantly trying to get more of it. I’m not passing any judgment on that, I’m just not that way. Some people love a bright light on them. I’ve never been that person. I always really wanted to work. I really wanted to work. But not the other part.”

Shirt, $760, by Prada. Vintage shorts by Polo Ralph Lauren from Front General Store. Vintage belt by J.Crew.

Chris Heath is a GQ correspondent.

A version of this story originally appeared in the October 2021 issue with the title "Sincerely, Matt Damon."

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thebeardedladyofthelake · 2 years ago

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I'm going to be honest, I was actually half asleep when I wrote my response, and I hardly have any memory of writing it, thus I was not exactly being fully coherent or accurate, and some of what I said was unsubstantiated. Taking a look back at the lore, I can't find anything specific that refers to the servants starving, so I'm pretty sure that was just an assumption on my part based on the number of commoners fought in Stormveil and the fact that said commoners look very malnourished. Additionally I first read the item description for pickled fowl feet in Stormveil and thus mentally connecting it to the location.

But given that the wandering nobles and other humanoid enemies are similarly emaciated, and Stormveil is not the only place where fowl feet are found, my assumption here is probably off base and ungrounded. I apologize for the confusion.

What IS very much apparent is that neither Godrick nor his keep are particularly well maintained. The jewels adorning his crown are cracked or missing, his castle walls crumbling. Instead of using his resources to attempt to fix what he has, he decides the best course of action is to get a dragon. Restoration efforts are dull. Dragons, on the other hand are awesome, glamorous, and fearsome. It is like someone who is in crippling debt buying an expensive truck with the rationalization that the truck will help them haul things more efficiently, which it certainly will, but he could have done just as well with something less fancy and clearly the prestige is more important to him than the utility...

As for Godrick rotting, I do not believe there is anything that specifically refers to this being the case, but I am a bit more confident in this assumption based off his model. While you are absolutely correct about the tree parallels, many areas of his body show some pretty telltale signs of gangrene, infection, and necrosis.

Original images from here

Look at all that discoloration, especially at the feet. Toes/fingers nearly black at the tips with yellow nails sloughing off... Pretty classic signs of tissue death right there. He's magically gluing corpse flesh to himself, and while he can clearly control it masterfully, much of it is definitely worse for wear and has begun to decay. It's no small wonder he isn't dying from sepsis.

But yeah, you are absolutely right! Despite multiple characters and item descriptions dunking on Godrick, his presentation in game is absolutely badass. His boss theme is one of my favorites in the whole game and his cutscenes are iconic.

A lot of people misunderstand what aspects of Godrick are actually his failings, instead simplifying him into "that one tryhard that just can't win"

Sure Malenia beat his ass, but she's MALENIA. She can beat anyone's ass. This is very much getting into headcanon territory, but I honestly think his defeat by her lent a great deal to many of his pragmatic actions that ppl tend to paint as cowardly. He was clearly outmatched by Radahn, so he left, it's that simple. The fan base jeers at him for this but, like, when you get transported by that trap chest into Caelid underleveled and keep dying in that cave, it is hardly a cowardly move to get out of there asap and come back when you've leveled up, and I don't see how covertly escaping Radahn's siege is any different. Running away is a legitimate strategy.

But yeah, in short, I strongly agree with you on this.

Curious 3

I wonder how strong Godrick is exactly, like I'm aware of his early game low stats being laughable and pathetic, but what about lore wise tho. Like this man took a big ass dragon head, slapped it onto his wound and holds it up like it's nothing. I imagine him have some impressive strength within that grafted body of his and he can just get stronger with more limbs or parts. Like a funny idea of this would be if you tried to have a Chariot run him down, but instead you see him actually stop the killing machine and lift it (slowly) over his head and just yeet it down at you. Obviously not where near Radahn strength, but his grafting could possibly get him there.

#elden ring #lore discussion #the truck thing might be a bit specific might be a bit of a specific example but that kind of thing is very common where i live #long post

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comicaurora · 2 years ago

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how do you like,,color schemes, or like color pallets? i have ideas for colors but when i put them down it all looks muddled or disjointed or just weird, even when i plan it out, so do you have any advice?

(ik you get a lot of asks so no pressure to answer 😭 also thank you for the advice on dynampic panels! it was rlly helpful and im getting the book you and the commenter reccomended soon.)

That's a tough one. I know a lot of artists really play around with color schemes and color theory, but I never went in for that stuff. All my color palettes were generated initially by drawing the character, coloring them in different ways until I found one I liked (lots of playing with HSB sliders) then saving those colors to the palette for future consistent use.

I think this is a fine way to handle things - some of the pallets have even shifted a little over time as I swap out individual colors for ones I like more. For instance, my pallet for Falst still has a dark brown saved in it from when my design for him had darker hair, before I decided I liked the aesthetic of the lighter, more golden hair.

There's no right or wrong answer here (except the cursed paletteswap) and a lot of alt color schemes would look good, but the trick here is that as far as I'm concerned this matters a whole lot less than your shading and lighting.

If the colors look disjointed and weird, it's entirely possible that this is because the figures aren't matching their environment. If we were doing physical art, this would be a huge pain in the ass to fix. Fortunately, because I do digital art, I don't need to worry about all the complexities of paint mixing and underpainting and all that jazz - I can just use layer combine modes.

Suppose we want to put a character into this lovely unity asset.

If we just slap our figure on top, this isn't going to look good.

He looks like a desktop icon. We can do better. The light source in this shot is high and centralized in the frame, and it appears to be a dusty blue-white. The shadows it's casting are quite dark and stark. For now let's not worry about the color of the shadow layer - let's just draw in how we would shade this figure given this directional light. I'll use a nice light purple to start with, but we can play with this later. Benefits of digital art! Other benefit: when set on a Multiply layer, a light purple shadow immediately makes our figure look like this.

That already looks a lot better! But part of what's making this figure stand out against the environment is that the darkest points on his design are a lot darker than the background he's standing in front of, and at the same time the shadows on him are much lighter than all the shaded areas we see in the background. This is also one of the telltale visual indicators of bad VFX compositing - the light levels and black levels need to match between the different parts of the image. (there's a late episode of columbo where they use this to catch the killer!)

So, for the easiest first step, let's see what happens if we shade the figure with a dark green colorpicked from the image instead.

Immediate improvement! We've got the shadows lined up and the figure looks like he belongs in the environment. And while we could leave it as-is, I find it also helps to address the highlights as well, especially in dark environments. So I take a mid-tone gray from the light part of the image, I select the negative space of our shading layer, I fill that space on a new layer set to the Add (Glow) combine mode, I use a soft eraser to mellow out the really harsh glow that's farthest from the edges of the figure, and I blend the whole thing by 200 pixels.

We could keep playing with this, but at this point we have a character who, regardless of underlying palette, looks like he fits in with his environment. Heck, we can even hit him with our cursed paletteswap and he still looks like he fits in the space.

It'll work even if he's a uniform neutral gray.

So while precisely playing with color palettes is very important for certain styles of art, one huge benefit of digital art is you can just use your own freeform aesthetic sense to lock in a very basic starting palette that defines how your characters look under theoretically perfectly neutral conditions, and then you can do all the other hard work of coloring them and matching them to the space by way of shading and highlighting without ever worrying about the underlying base colors. And if you decide some part of the figure is too saturated or dim or weird or whatever, you can play with that one part until it looks good and then just update your palette with the new shade.

#asks #art stuff

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actofscoobris · 3 years ago

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Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School

Original airdate: October 16, 1988

Date watched: February 27, 2022

Runtime: 92 minutes

Synopsis: Shaggy has been hired as the new gym teacher at Monster High Miss Grimwood’s Finishing School For Ghouls! They need some help getting in shape for their annual volleyball match against the neighboring military academy. They win, due to shenanigans! But then, out of nowhere, the movie remembers to introduce its main antagonist, Revolta, who wants to brainwash all of the girls for some reason? She almost succeeds, but she is stopped by our heroes, Shaggy and Scooby (and Scrappy). Scrappy commits a cardinal sin by rapping the movie’s closing musical number. Our heroes flee at the end of the movie when they see the school’s new crop of students, including a baby Godzilla. WHO DOESN’T STAY FOR BABY GODZILLA?

Culprit: There’s never an unmasking in this movie, as Revolta never tries to hide her identity and the military school's cheating in the volleyball match is deeply transparent to all but the ref (known centrist Scrappy-Doo). Perhaps this is a reference to the way the US Military flaunts war crime violations and faces no consequences. Makes you think! Perhaps that is more credit than is deserved by a movie that has Scrappy-Doo rap at the end. Only history can tell.

Guest star(s): Tony Award-winning actress Glynis Johns as Mrs. Grimwood

Trivia: The Ghoul School students reappeared in a 2018 episode of OK K.O! Let’s Be Heroes, “Monster Party.” Three out of the five original voice actresses reprised their roles as one had passed away and the other had retired.

Ratings

Spookiness: For a movie that features the progeny of so many famous movie monsters, there’s actually not a lot of scariness in it? It’s more charming than anything. Some of the brainwashing scenes are pretty unnerving, and there’s a bit with quicksand that teaches kids to always be afraid of quicksand, but otherwise things are pretty straightforward. I will say that Revolta’s design is pretty spooky. MARINA: 2.5; LAURA: 2

Characterization: These 80s Scooby-Doo film ventures really suffer from a lack of Fred, Velma, and Daphne. It hurt Boo Brothers really bad, but Ghoul School manages to do what its predecessor couldn’t: have an actually good cast of supporting characters. Revolta is honestly a wash, despite her incredible titties. All of the students enjoy the benefit of having iconic movie monster designs to riff off of. They’re cult favorites for a reason! MARINA: 4; LAURA: 4.5

Overall: It suffers from some of those telltale pacing issues Boo Brothers had to deal with, but it’s way more enjoyable of a romp overall. I think these movies were designed specifically to be turned on in the middle of. After all, that’s the definition of syndication! Watching it start to finish is actually a bit of a chore, though. I think when I was a kid, I blocked out all of the parts with the military academy because they were boring. Those parts are still boring. MARINA: 3.5; LAURA: 3.5

Outlandishness: In the middle of the movie, the school hosts a party so that all of the parents can meet their school’s new gym teacher. Dracula, the wolfman, a mummy, a ghost, and “Frankenteen Sr.” are all in attendance. There’s dancing and music and funny antics and then before they all go home all of the monster dads graphically threaten Shaggy’s life should anything happen to their beloved daughters. That right there is what all Scooby-Doo movies should strive to achieve. MARINA: 5; LAURA: 5

Brevity: It has the exact same runtime as Boo Brothers. It does a little bit more with that runtime, but not enough to completely save it. Instead of feeling like one insanely long chase sequence, it felt like a multi-episode arc that had been mashed into one movie. Slightly better overall. MARINA: 2; LAURA: 2.5

Final ratings: MARINA: 3.4; LAURA: 3.5

#scooby-doo #scooby doo #scooby doo and the ghoul school #an act of scoobris #ghoul school

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forevercloudnine · 3 years ago

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:3c I can't even claim I came up with TwoToucans, bc Penguin came up with it himself. "Mr. Couples" put on an ad about selling two toucans on 202 street to lure in Harvey to wreck a Scarecrow drug lab. Like, I came in for twobats (tbf they have good moments, too) and *aggressively* got this instead. Idk anything about telltale, is Penguin super obsessed with Harv there too? If so, it might be a ref. Scarebat vibes in Bruce using Scarecrow drugs+Lucid dreaming for "psychological conditioning" tbh

Oh my GOD... truly irresistible bait for poor Harvey

Telltale Harvey is more of casualty of Penguin's obsession with Bruce Wayne, so it must be a coincidence. But I love Bruce stealing Scarecrow's M/O for psychological conditioning... reminds me of Detective Comics #999 (iconic Bruce freakism content).

#batman: the audio adventures #harvey dent #two face #bruce wayne #scarebat #i love it when bruce uses fear toxin. truly content designed to appeal to me personally

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hopeymchope · 3 years ago

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Judging the Danganronpa x Sanrio character pairings

You may have already heard that a DANGANRONPA X SANRIO line of crossover merch was announced a few days ago! Which is obviously AMAZING, because they’re combining cutesy characters that have often been marketed to wee children with everybody’s favorite murderdeathkill game! I LOVE IT.

I have a niece who went through a Sanrio/Hello Kitty phase, so I actually know a few of these characters. In turn, this means that I have THOUGHTS on how the DR1 and Sanrio cast were paired up.

Granted, I still had to look up a lot of these guys and read about them. But now I feel adequately educated to the point where I can judge just how well the Danganronpa and Sanrio pairings actually match up.

Makoto Naegi/Cinnamoroll - Obviously this totally works because Makoto IS something of a cinnamon roll, eh? EH? But Cinnamoroll is said to be shy albeit still very friendly. He also likes to seek out fun new adventures. So, aside from “very friendly,” I’m not sure that this sounds like Makoto. I also doubt that calling a character a “cinnamon roll” is common slang in Japan. So this is whatever.

Sayaka Maizono/Wish Me Mell - Mell has the power to connect people’s hearts by simply stating the feelings they keep inside. She was initially withdrawn and believed she didn’t have any friends, but the people who cared for her finally broke through her shell and convinced her that she DOES have friends. So uh, Maizono... I guess music can also bring out people’s feelings? And perhaps you could plausibly HC that Sayaka has often felt like her surrounding friends were “fake” and only there because of her celebrity status. There’s not really much to go on here.

Leon Kuwata/Tiran - Tiran is an orange T-rex that is said to be scatterbrained but still a strong and reliable leader. Meanwhile, Leon has orange hair, and he’s certainly strong and kind of scatterbrained sometimes. It sorta works.

Kyoko Kirigiri/Marroncream - Marroncream is bright, positive, and fashionable. She is talented at making crafts and sweets. She lives in Paris. She has nearly nothing in common with Kyoko, although Kyoko did live abroad a lot in her younger years. So I could try to latch onto the Paris thing.

Hifumi Yamada/Pokopon - Pokopon is a raccoon that loves to read but dislikes ghosts and “the thunder god.” (uh... what?) He also finishes his sentences with the unusual suffix “-das.” Of course, Hifumi loves to write (which certainly is connected to reading), and he likes to end all names with a weird suffix (”-dono”), so I can see how they might make a cute pair.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru/Pekkle - Pekkle is a duck who is good-natured and kind. He loves to sing and dance. It kind of sounds like he should’ve been matched with Sayaka, but instead he’s here with Taka. While Ishimaru is definitely a good person, I don’t think most people would immediately describe him as “kind.” And he certainly isn’t known for his love of music.

Yasuhiro Hagakure/Monkichi - Monkichi is a laid-back, easygoing guy who is upbeat and loves puns. His dream is to become a poet. It’s said that once he sets his mind on something, there is no stopping him! And in comparison, Hagakure is... well, he’s kind of laid-back in the sense that he’s kind of lazy? But he’s actually pretty high-stress a lot of the time, too. Honestly, there’s not much linking the two.

Chihiro Fujisaki/Kurousa and Shirousa - Shirousa is the white one and is the older sibling to Kurousa, the brown one. Shirousa is described as an energetic leader and Kurousa is described as being nice but lazy. They like to make cakes. What does any of this have to do with Chihiro? Beats me. This particular pairing is nonsense.

Byakuya Togami/Badtz-Maru - Badtz-Maru is said to have a bad attitude and dreams of being “the boss of everything” when he grows up. He tends to act a bit selfish, and he mocks things he dislikes/disagrees with. He enjoys expensive food and collecting photos of movie villains. With the exception of that last point, I’d have to say that this sounds like a near-perfect match for Togami.

Mondo Owada/Goropikadon - The Goropikadon are a group of cave boys whose actual names are Goro (blue hair), Pika (pink hair), and Don (teal hair). Goro is always hungry and joking around. PIka is a thoughtful, shy mama’s boy. Don is serious and places a high value on honesty. Overall, I suppose that how quick Mondo is to get angry and resort to violence kind of makes him seem like a stereotypical caveman? But in terms of their distinct personalities, only Don’s focus on honesty rings true for Mondo.

Toko Fukawa/Lloromannic - Another multi-character one. The Llormannic are a pair of creatures named Berry (the black one, who is male) and Cherry (the pink one, who is female). They are mischievous and love to play pranks on humans. Cherry was originally alone and created Berry for companionship; however, she mixed up her magic spell ingredients and used salt when she meant to use sugar, which resulted in Berry turning out to be a more hostile being than Cherry. I suppose the fact that Berry is a darker creation of Cherry’s sort of reflects the relationship between Toko and her other self, Genocide(r) Syo/Jack. However, Berry and Cherry are still best friends. Toko and Syo/Jack are definitely not that.

Celestia Ludenberg/Kuromi - Kuromi is the rival of a bunny named “My Melody” who doesn’t appear in this promotion. Kuromi is said to look “tough and punk” in her jester’s hat with the pink skull on it, but in reality she is very girly. She enjoys writing in her diary, reading romance books, cooking, and checking out good-looking guys. I suppose Celestia did have that dream of living in a mansion where she was served by handsome guys dressed as vampires? So... they both like hot guys? But that’s all I’ve got here. Pretty sure this pairing only exists for aesthetic reasons. And admittedly, their aesthetics mesh very well.

Aoi Asahina/Keroppi - Keroppi lives with his family on the edge of Donut Pond. He is bubbly, a fantastic swimmer and, because of the name of his home pond, is often associated with donuts and/or things that are donut-shaped. Ok, so this was an obvious pairing, then. They nailed it. Probably the single best pairing they came up with.

Sakura Ogami/My Sweet Piano - Yes, the character’s name is literally “My Sweet Piano.” She’s described as soft, kind, and girly. Given Sakura’s secret love of girly things, I can see how this soft, pink, girly sheep would be something she’d love to be around.

Junko Enoshima (...?)/Hello Kitty - Hello Kitty (a.k.a. Kitty White) is described by Sanrio as “cute, bright, sweet, kind-hearted and tomboyish.” They also say that Kitty is very close with her sister, Mimmy. As for Junko... look, the only reason I think maybe this is supposed to be Junko is because Mukuro already has her own Sanrio matchup (see the next entry), but in terms of her appearance, this “Junko” sure looks like it’s “Junkuro.” The telltale sign is that giant bow on the left side of the head, which only Mukuro-as-Junko has ever worn. I doubt we’re supposed to be thinking that they did two Mukuros in two different outfits, though?

It’s like this: If it’s Junko, well, I guess both Junko and Kitty are icons within their respective brands. And Junko tries to put on a “cute and bright” exterior persona, I guess? But that’s pretty thin. On the other hand, if this is Mukuro in disguise, this is actually a semi-decent matchup! Mukuro is arguably tomboyish and certainly very close to her sister (at least from her own perspective), so these two are not without their parallels.

In either case, both Kitty and the Unknown Despair Sister have a big bow on the left side of their head. Which I think is the real reason they’ve been paired, honestly.

Mukuro Ikusaba/Little Twin Stars - Kiki and Lala are a pair of twins that were born on December 24th. Mukuro is one half of a pair of twins ALSO born on December 24th. Instant connection! Kiki (the blue-haired boy) loves fishing and inventing things. He is curious and cheeky. Lala (the pink-haired girl) loves drawing, writing poems, and cooking. She is rather timid. In short, the “twins with the same birthdate” thing is the only thing connecting Mukuro to these two. Still, it’s not bad.

Also, the most amazing thing to come out of this team-up so far HAS TO BE MonoKitty. Hello Kitty cosplaying as our favorite psychotic MurderBear? How great is that? SELL ME MERCH OF MONOKITTY.

#sanrio #danganronpa x sanrio #sanrio characters #danganronpa merch #hello kitty #danganronpa crossovers #danganronpa official art

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wasabito · 4 years ago

Text

had so much fun writing for my baby boy tendou, so here’s my entry for the hqhq sfw server collab! be sure to check out the rest on the masterlist found here! enjoy ✨

words: 3.0k

prompt: “you woke me up at 3am for this?”

synopsis: your neighbor is ridiculous, kind of annoying and little bit on the weird side, but you wouldn’t have him any other way.

You had to be the biggest idiot on the planet—an obvious exaggeration, yes, but you were still inclined to believe it was true.

How else could you explain the feeling of being so utterly fed up with one’s actions like this? Were there enough words in the dictionary to describe just how exhausted you were by your own antics, more specifically, your forgetfulness since that’s what had landed you in a world of pain and embarrassment?

The answer was no.

You sat with your back pressed against your front door, head in your hands and chin tucked between your raised knees and chest. At your side was your wallet along with stacks of newspapers, coupons and whatever else had been stuffed in your mailbox, bills probably. Advertisements too. Honestly, it was hard to be happy about a new restaurant opening up down the block when you were currently stuck—locked out of your apartment to be precise.

The landlord of your cheap little complex wasn’t expected to be back for another hour according to the sign posted outside of his office. So until then, you’d remain posted up by your doorstep like some loiterer.

You shifted in place and blew a puff of air from your lips, feeling little pinpricks in your legs. For the fifth time in the last forty-five minutes you felt like kicking yourself, hard.

The sun hung low, nearly touching the distant horizon signifying the end of another day. Even the sky was painted a warm umber, casting dim shadows.

“Locked out, huh?” came a snide, but accented voice.

It took you way longer than necessary to realize that suddenly you weren’t the only person on this floor. God, where was your head at?

A pair of forest green crocs stood before you, complete with a few odd charms and trinkets. A cartoon volleyball, pinned next to a smiley face, a donut and a gaudy “i heart paris” chain dangling from the ankle strap. A person’s shoes could say a lot about who they were...your mother thought so, at least.

Resisting the urge to projectile vomit all over this stranger’s rather questionable taste in footwear, your wary gaze panned upward, glossing over white tube socks and a pair of the longest legs you’ve ever seen on a person—yet another exaggeration. You came face to face with a crooked smile. Curious ruby eyes returned your stare with almost the same amount of scrutiny.

Who the hell was this guy?

Mystery-man easily towered over you, and not only because you were hunched over and sitting. He was tall as hell, all lanky build, gangly arms and legs disguising lithe muscle and a surprisingly sturdy frame. He looked like the i-run-every-morning type; semi-athletic at the very least. His buzzed hair was the color of cinnamon, no that wasn’t right, paprika maybe? Either way, it contrasted sharply with the paleness of his skin, so much so that you could see the faint blue of the veins in his arms.

“Yoohooo, anybody hooome?” He tilted his head at you.

“Huh? Oh uh, yeah, I’m locked out. I forgot my key inside and Mr. Laurent won’t be back until later.”

“Hmm. That sucks...”

“...Um… do I… do I know you or something? You look a little familiar.”

He pinned you with a funny look, before pulling out a set of keys from the back pocket of his shorts.

“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t~ I mean we are neighbors, after all.” Laughing as if he’d made some sort of joke, he entered his apartment with a twirl and a dramatic wave of his arms.

You stared at his door for a solid minute, only to finally succumb to your urges and facepalm at your own idiocy. Of course he looked familiar, how could he not when he literally lived four feet away.

With a sigh of resignation, you braced yourself for another hour spent sitting outside your front door. It wasn’t like there was any other place you could go or anyone you could call. The battery icon on your phone blinked red, warning that it was soon to run out of juice. Guess that meant no Among Us or Subway Surfer for you.

Five minutes later, the door next to you opened. It was Mystery-man again, but this time, he sat in front of his door, just like you were. And he did so with a bag of pretzels and a jar of nutella in hand.

“Must be bored out here by yourself.” He crunched on a pretzel before offering you the bag to take some. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep ya company.”

You weren’t sure why, but there was something about this guy that intrigued you. You half-wondered if it was the funny little curl of his smile, or the wideness of his eyes that made it seem like he was looking at all of you, all at once.

"You must be pretty bored...uh,"

"Satori Tendou, but most people call me Tendou. Miracle boy works just fine too."

"Right... Tendou, as I was saying, you must be incredibly bored to come sit out here with me. You sure you don't have anything important to do?"

Tendou's grinned widened. "Positive! And it costs me nothing to be neighborly, so don't even sweat it."

That was...nice of him?

If sitting outside with you was the way he wanted to spend his late Tuesday afternoon who were you to deny him? And truthfully, you didn't mind the company, at least not really. Provided this guy wasn't some creepy-stalker-weirdo, you were sure there wasn't any harm in getting to know the person who lived one door over.

"So, Tendou, how long have you lived in the area? You don't really look like you're from around here...I could be wrong."

Tendou raised a thin brow at you. "Weeeell, if you're asking about how long I've lived next door, it would be about three maybe four months give or take, but if you're asking how long I've lived in Paris, it would be a year next month. Speaking of, I think Semisemi has a birthday coming up..."

You watched as he pulled out his cell phone and tapped away at the illuminated glass screen. You couldn't help but notice the goofy little anime stickers on his phone case. One in particular caught your attention.

“Is that...Kirara? From Inuyasha??”

“Oho! So, you recognize this?”

Backtracking, you mumble out, “Ah, well…only a little.” Though your face was turned away, the tiny smile on your lips was not hidden from Tendou and he thought you were pretty cute.

Funnily enough, what you had expected to be a rather unnerving and possibly creepy exchange turned out to be anything but. Tendou was incredibly fun to talk to—a bit teasing and a little overwhelming with his superfluous hand movements and gestures. But he was funny and a lot kinder that you would’ve given him credit for.

You learned that he was originally from Japan; it explained his accented French. He had come to Paris right out of high school to study culinary arts in one of the most renowned countries for it. Now he worked as a chocolatier, under the tutelage of a master patisserie in the city, an older man who was both a creative genius and a thorn in Tendou’s side. Tendou spoke of his teacher with equal parts awe and annoyance.

And he got to know you too. How you’d found yourself in Paris, thousands of miles away from home in an effort to rediscover yourself in the city full of rich history and culture.

You didn’t have many friends here, and it truly was a pleasure to make his acquaintance.

Soon, you both heard the telltale sound of jangling keys as your landlord rounded the corner with his clipboard in hand. Once you were able to get your door open, you waved a goodbye to Tendou.

“Thanks for keeping me company, you really didn’t have to.”

“No biggie, it was fun!” He threw a mischievous little grin and a peace-sign over his shoulder and reentered his apartment.

You found yourself wanting to cross paths with him again, and hopefully in better circumstances. But you hadn't known your wishful thinking was soon to manifest as you ambled through grocery store aisles a week later, eyeing down any items with pictures on it.

“Why in the hell is this toilet paper so expensive.” You mumbled.

“So, you complain about the price of toilet paper, but wear sneakers that cost two-thirds our rent.” That voice sounded familiar, and after hearing it for about an hour just days ago, you were a bit surprised you could recognize it so quickly.

Stunned, you looked up to find Satori Tendou, your quirky neighbor with an arm full of pita chips, a milk carton, and baby carrots.

“I never said I made the best choices.” You found yourself smiling despite the previous crease in your brow. “...Dude, get a cart before you drop everything.”

Instead of getting his own, he simply dumped what he had into your cart with a teasing grin. You couldn’t argue with his logic there. Tendou sidled up against you, once again towering over you with a kind of ease that should be criminal. “Need help reading something?”

You wanted to say no. You almost said no. But swallowing your pride, you gave a weak nod. “Yeah, this word right here.” Pointing to the unfamiliar script printed on the label. “What the heck is this?”

“Weeeeell, looks like that brand is scented, ya know, for when ya—”

“Don’t bother finishing that sentence...please.”

You quickly grab what you need and continue on down the aisle with Tendou following closely behind.

Just like when you’d first met him, he made conversation the entire way. By the time you both made it to the cash registers, you’d argued at least three times over french pronunciations and whether cashews were the cousin of peanuts.

And just as last time, he left you with a grin and a peace-sign while you stared after his retreating back, paid groceries in hand.

After an entire day spent baking, you found yourself on Tendou’s doorstep with a tupperware full of baked goodies later the next evening. You had been meaning to thank him for being such a good neighbor to you. It was certainly unexpected, but a welcome gesture nonetheless.

You only had to knock twice before the door was wrenched open and you were greeted with the set of...vanilla? Some pop song played in the background while your neighbor looked at you curiously.

"H-Hey Tendou, I um...I baked you these." You held out the plastic container, hoping he'd simply take it from you without question and you could return to your apartment without somehow embarrassing yourself. "There's a little bit of everything in there, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, macadamia nut—wait you aren't allergic to anything, right?"

"Nooope! Not a thing, thanks neighbor!"

"It was no problem, especially since you've helped me, not once but twice now."

Frowning, you couldn't help but be a little upset with yourself. You'd come to France to prove that you could, in fact, live a normal life outside of your family’s jurisdiction but day by day you were proving to need them more and more.

It was disappointing, to say the least.

"Hmm, what’s with the constipated look on your face. Did the toilet paper not help?” Tendou tilted his head at you with a teasing grin, lips curled at the edges, taunting. You blinked up at him, surprised, and if you were honest, a little annoyed too.

"Hah?!"

"Just thought it was worth a mention, nighty-night~!"

Tendou proceeded to shut the door on you; one hand rested on the frame and the other held on to the cookies. You quickly took a step back lest he chop your entire arm off, ready to trudge off in the direction of your own home but not before sticking your tongue out at him.

Stupid Tendou, always saying stupid shit.

You were on the couch, half asleep when it dawned on you that it had been his own twisted, “Tendou” way of cheering you up.

The rest of the month passed just like that. Occasionally, you would bump into Tendou at the grocery store, or the leasing office, or even the laundromat. And every single time, he’d either make you laugh until your sides hurt or annoyed enough to want to give him a friendly punch. At one point, you two had even exchanged phone numbers, because according to Tendou “it was ridiculous not to have your friends on speedial” which only led to hours spent on Facetime or playing iMessage games.

You knew exchanging numbers would come back to bite you in the ass, it was only a matter of when.

It was clear you weren’t going to any sleep tonight, that was for sure. The incessant buzzing of your cell phone every five minutes was an enemy to your circadian rhythm. You could name on one hand those in your contacts with enough sense to know that you lived in a completely different time zone from them now.

Somehow your neighbor was the very last person you suspected, but it was his contact photo that stared back at you, goofy looking grin and all. You squinted against the brightness of your screen in your otherwise dark bedroom.

you up?

come quick

gotta show ya somethin

come oooon

you're awake, i know you are

It took you less than a minute to shuffle on a pair of slippers, grab your keys (you weren't going to forget them this time) and slip out of your apartment.

You hadn't even knocked twice before the door was pulled open. Tendou looked a mess, more so than usual. Unidentified stains littered the apron looped around his thin waist, streaks of what you hoped were just flour and granulated sugar were all over his hands. You almost wanted to ask if he was baking or dealing dope.

“You woke me up at three in the morning...for this?”

“Yuuup!”

"When I said you could call me at any time, I really didn’t mean any time.” You scratch your side, a contemplative look on your face at the sight of Tendou in what you would assume to be his pajamas. An old volleyball hoodie with the words "Shirazorizawa" printed across the front, and old sweats the were so obviously cut with scissors at the knee.

Rolling your eyes, you mumbled a curt, “Alright, move aside.”

Tendou ushered you over to his kitchen where several of his cooking supplies laid on the island, along with a tray of some chocolate dessert spread.

“It’s all still in the testing phase, but I think I’m onto something here.”

He was definitely giving off “mad scientist” vibes. You tried not to snort.

Holding a small chocolate cake in his hand, he smiled, a genuine smile this time. "Open wide."

You obeyed, far too tired to argue, and let him pop the treat into your mouth. Tendou watched as you chewed, as if it were the most interesting thing ever. His wide gaze carefully took in every shift in your expression.

"So? Whaddya think?"

"I...," You chewed a bit more. "...It's delicious! Is that—"

"—Pistachio, why yes it is!"

Tendou was practically bouncing on his feet with excitement. "It takes the entire thing to a whole new level."

You had to agree with him there. This was probably the best chocolate madeleine you'd ever tasted. "Great work, miracle boy. Will you be introducing this new recipe to Claude?"

Mentioning his teacher seemed to sober him up a bit. "Ehh, maybe? The old man's a bit of traditionalist, so I'll just have to figure out a way to get him to approve."

"Maybe try calling him at three in the morning?"

Tendou stuck his tongue out at you before popping a dessert in his mouth. The pure delight on his face was so contagious, you found yourself smiling just the same. You couldn’t help but admire his passion.

“Hey, Tendou… do you like your job?”

He blinked at you, chewing coming to a slow halt. “Well of course! The pay isn’t the best just yet, but it’s a labor of love. I’m willing to put my all into it at least.”

“Huh… that’s pretty cool.” You wiped your fingers on a nearby rag. “I hope to feel the same one day… if I can figure out what I wanna do.”

“Why not bake? You’re pretty good at it.”

“Oh am I? Last week you said my baking needed some work.”

“Well, duh, but my standards when it comes to confectionaries are impossibly high. Even so, I think you’d be successful as a baker. What’s stopping you from pursuing your labor of love?”

And that was the thing with Tendou. He talked a lot, teased even more, but it was never idle ramblings. Somehow, he always seemed to hit right at the heart of the issue with almost painfully uncomfortable accuracy.

“I don’t really know so…” You looked away, trailing off.

“Either way,” he said and placed a finger under your chin, raising your head until you were looking him in the eye. “I’m rooting for you.”

For a moment, you simply stared, awestruck. It was the first time in a long while someone was actually putting their faith in you, believing in you. He had come blazing into your life unabashed with his easy grins and gaze alight with mischief. His encouraging words, sincerity, sensitivity. Tendou was really incredible.

“Tendou…” You took his hand in yours, squeezing it. “Thanks. For everything.”

“Of course, what are neighbors for.”

BONUS:

Three months later you sat curled up next to Tendou on his sofa, his entire apartment smelled of chocolate cocoa with hints of cinnamon.

Before you was an application. Culinary school.

“You really think I can do this?”

Tendou placed his head on your shoulder with a tiny smirk. “One hundred and twenty percent!”

You pondered for a moment, then decided that if he thought you were up for the challenge then you’d believe him.

“For the record, you probably aren’t supposed to recommend your girlfriend for an interview. You know, conflict of interest and all.”

Tendou laughed and pulled you closer. “Trust me, we’ll be fine, so don’t worry your pretty little head, ‘kay?”

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu!! x reader #tendou x reader #tendou satori #satori tendou #satori tendou x reader #tendou satori x reader #sabi.writes

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jww-archive · 2 years ago

Text

I THOUGHT IT’D BE ME WHO HELPED HIM GET HOME. self para

It was quiet when she got back from Nashville. No sound of Beau — his tags tinkling or the telltale Heeler whine that generally came when she got home. No Ty, battling her 18 bags and doing his best to not ask why she somehow came back with more bags than she left with, and why she had another, different guitar. No food set out, his fingers not laced between hers and asking if she ate yet. Instead she stood in the foyer of her house, the world around her completely silent for once. It was a rare luxury, this quiet. Her phone was usually going off. Her bags were stacked there, where the driver unloaded them. And she stood there too. Silence. It wasn’t something she was used to.

June flicked a light on to the rest of her house and shook her head. It was late. Exactly 2:13am. She sent Ty a text, I’m back at my house. She kicked her heels off, and slowly made her way to the kitchen, the house still so eerily quiet. She wished she didn’t give Beau back. Or that she left him with Vann all along and bought a different dog. The water was splashing into her cup from the door on the fridge and her eyes went to the wall outlet.

There was a cord that was sticking out, plugged into a phone that was haphazardly shoved into the drawer. June was scared of it. Scared of what she’d find on it — artifacts of the life Jamie had cleaved her from in attempt to save the asset that was the June Watson Corporation that paid her a ridiculous amount of money. Now she was battling with new agents, working into the contract something of a reverse rate. There was incentive now to not push their asset (her) so hard. Bonuses, too, if they were able to hit certain targets with the least amount of dates on her calendar. Something that if it was built it, maybe she wouldn’t be looking at that phone.

The water started to overfill and June cursed. She grabbed a towel and mopped it up, distracted from the phone. Then she looked at it again. Current phone tucked in her back pocket, she finally dug into the drawer and fished it out. Her fingers collided with the space grey iPhone XR, the clear case had a polaroid of her and Vann stuck between the clear case and the phone. June stared at the photo. It was taken toward the end, and the low quality of the photo obscured the pain in both of their eyes. Instead, she saw both of them smiling, her in her place seated behind him on the couch. The photo didn’t show it it, but she knew her hands were around his waist, between the layers of clothing, ever careful to not hurt him more but wanting to touch him.

She swiped her truck keys off the counter and slammed her feet back into her heels. Wasn’t the best footwear for back roads but she didn’t feel like a costume change at the moment. She couldn’t fathom going upstairs, she’d lose her nerve. It had to be now, despite the shaking in her hands, the world of hurt she was about in step into. Working her way out to where the truck was parked and started it, she climbed in and tossed the phone into the cup holder, glancing at it like a totem that would come alive and bite her.

She was spinning out of Iron Hill before long and then she turned onto a gravel road. The truck navigation left little breadcrumbs of where she’d been as she drove. It was impossible to get lost. She kept driving. The radio was on — some song that was reminding her of that phone, and man who likely occupied it — and finally she pulled over. She made sure she wasn’t in some farmer’s field and cut the engine off, the windows coming down. Crickets and lightning bugs illuminated the air around her. She clicked her seatbelt off and pulled her knees to her chest. A defensive move. Then she powered the phone on.

The Apple icon came on. She typed in her old password. Then — all at once — all the messages and voicemails and alerts started to populate the screen. The badges on her voicemail made her stomach roll. Her palms started to sweat, and her mouth filled with salvia. She clicked on it. Scrolling down she saw record after record of his name. Like some diary or all the letters he didn’t send because he was doing this instead. She knew they’d be here because he said they would. Maybe part of her was hoping that he’d suddenly turned into a liar. That all this was some elaborate rouse to fuck her up like she fucked him up. Except it wasn’t. And he wasn’t the type. Vann was a lot of things, but he’d only been purposely petty a handful of times and never like this. She, however, tore him apart for a second time and while she still felt she was forced to — it didn’t make this easier.

She didn’t know where to start. So she put the phone down on the console. Her stomach finally rejected the anxiety and hurt, and she burst out of the door of the truck and stomped ungracefully into the tall grass to dry heave. June forgot she didn’t eat anything today, so there was nothing in there to really throw up. She’d been bad about eating, someone somewhere would’ve yelled at her about it. But she was alone now, and by her own doing. Not even the dog.

June wiped her face, and walked back to the truck. The phone was staring at her. Backlight still on and illuminating the truck cab. Stepping up, she drank some water and then grabbed the phone and stepped back down into the tall grass. Wrong shoes for this. Her stilettos looked stupid and out of place here. Just like she did. She scrolled down the voicemail list again. It was him. In the beginning there were others. Other friends. But then, after about a month, it was just him.

Walking down the gravel road. She knew she had to listen to one. The wound was already open. Plus, she’d already had enough anxiety over this to dry heave, so she might as well start to pay attention to this particular wound. She needed to clean it out. She tapped on a random one. He sounded drunk. She sighed. She might’ve laughed at his stupid joke if she didn’t recognize the numb, spaced out tone to his voice. He got worse. You couldn’t save me. Her eyes closed tighter, and she realized she was crying. She wanted to call him. Make him listen to himself. Make him hear what he sounded like and ask him if that was a man he even recognized. But what good was it? There was no convincing him that maybe she had a point, he was set in his justification of it and they already had that fight. No use on kicking a dead horse.

She scrolled and clicked a different one. He sounded sober in this one. Sober and happy. Walked all the way across the ranch. She exhaled. Should’ve been there. But she wasn’t. Instead she was god knows where. Counting calories and staring blankly at the mirror wondering who she was. Just like she was standing here on this backroad and was wondering who she was now. Listening to the verbal diary and love letters of Vann Richmond, former NFR bronco rider and hopefully former pill addict. She scoffed. She couldn’t sort out her emotions around all this. “Is this what you wanted me to listen to?” June asked the stars like they were him - but she’d never say these words to him. “Your drunk, high, ramblings? Six months worth? God.”

Still. She kept going. Randomly. Because a timeline was too much for her. She couldn’t listen in real time. The ones where he was wasted were too much. He couldn’t stand, but he was telling her he loved her? Sure, she asked him to wait, but this? Where was the sense in any of this? The later ones, while more sober, still hurt but in a different way. The lost her best friend sort of way. When they were done, all but the last, listened to them all again but the last. This time in order. This time she paced up and down that dirt road in her stilettos, the stars and the lightning bugs watching over her. This time, she only threw up twice from the feeling that she was kicked in the gut. From the realization and proof of how bad he got. He’d never tell her it was her fault, but somehow, he still blamed her. Still loved and blamed her all in the same breath. Her fingers hovered over the last one and she stared at the blue dot telling her it was unread.

Hey Peach, hope you’re doing well. Hope Beau is being good. I ain’t good for anyone else. I love you.

Again. Again. One more time. Her hands were shaking again. He said that to her not four weeks ago, on his stupid leaning porch. What was this? Why now? Walking briskly back to the truck she climbed in. Slammed the door shut, yanked it on in a way that her father would shake his head at. Backing up, she pulled out. Her foot slammed down on the pedal, the gravel and dirt spinning out from the truck wheels as the speed climbed. She wasn’t thinking, she was driving, spinning gravel going 65 down gravel roads that threatened to buck her and the truck into a tree. Wouldn’t that be her luck? To crash a new truck on a backroad when she was supposed to be alone.

When the tires hit oil and gravel pavement, the tires made a squeal as she dropped the truck into 105, not giving a shit about any of the other people or sheriffs or whatever that could be hiding on these back roads. She saw a turn for another gravel coming up fast and she took the corner a little too fast and damn near clipped the street sign name and took it with her. Vann would’ve been white knuckled in the passenger seat. All the times she bailed him out of jail, and he figured they were gonna die on the drive back. That was the last time she had driven this pissed. Truth was, June was a hell of a driver. She just didn’t like to. Now though, she was churning gravel. Her panic settled and with that did her pace. She chewed her lip. Her mind was moving over and over. Yanking out pieces of herself. Examining them.

It was a logical fallacy to think this was about the men. It wasn’t. This wasn’t a love triangle, this wasn’t some fucked up romance about one man being better than the other. It was about her. It was about who she was and who she wanted to be. It was about what parts of herself she gave up and what parts she wanted back — it was about being able to start looking in the mirror and recognizing who she was. She glanced at the rear view. Her eyes caught themselves in there. The beginning of the dawn streaking across the sky made them look more blue than their natural green. She recognized those eyes.

As the truck came out on the other side of gravel road — a county away — she knew she’d come to some sort of conclusion. It was early �� even earlier in Texas. Yet, her mom would be awake. Her dad might’ve even made it back in for breakfast by now. She used her new phone, realizing that she’d been paying for both to be active and that made her even more mad. Three rings, and her mom was on the phone. You kept this from me? June’s voice was stone cold. Junebug? I - well, you have to realize. June shook her head. Put Dad on, I know he’s there. I can hear dishes in the background. There was a paused and then her father’s voice. June, what’s this about? Why you up so early?

June shook her head. Been up all night, Daddy. Listening to this goddamn phone. You know, the one you hid from me.

Not sure why you think you’re able to swear at me, daughter.

What else you been hiding from me? What else he do that I don’t know about? While I was busting my ass on those tours, tearing myself apart because I was sick missing him? Sick from that decision I had to make? Sick because I thought he was dead, or he really didn’t give a damn? You know what that did to me?

Finally, her father’s temper erupted. Of course I do, June. Your mother and I watched you not even move from that room for three weeks. We watched you waste away until your bones started to show, we could see your damn collarbones. Your mother — she had lunch with him, he was drunk and high and all that shit, weeks after the show you were playing. You telling me that was what you wanted?

Vann’s voice on that voicemail rang in her ears: You look skinny.

I wanted to have a choice, Daddy. He wasn’t your choice to make.

No, daughter, he wasn’t. But when he came to ask you for your hand, I told him he could have my blessing for your hand when he gave you everything. When he gave it up for you, instead he put those goddamn pills over you. Then I got to watch my only daughter go through it. All shit that I had to go through when I lost my best friend. I didn’t want that life for you, that marriage for you.

There was silence. June heard something she didn’t know. He asked you to marry me? She coughed. She was crying, and she wasn’t sure if it was sorrow or anger that had her in tears. She had never felt this angry with her parents in, well, ever. They’d always been on her side. But this didn’t feel like they were on her side. It felt like they were the reason why she was in this situation now. If everything else had been allowed to happen she would’ve either been with Vann or had closure. Neither of those things happened. And now she was ripping herself and two other mean apart at the seams trying to make sense of everything.

Yeah, that bronc bustin’ fool showed up and disrupted my life for like three weeks tryin’ to convince me, and when he finally did, I told him you were worth it all, everything he had to give. He had to give you that. He didn’t. He broke his promise, and I took my daughter back.

There was a long stretch of silence. June didn’t know what to say. That explained why he was so behind on winnings that year. Explained all the fights, explained it all. Her hand covered her face. I wasn’t yours to take back. I wasn’t and I’m not someone’s fucking property to barter and protect, I’m not some stupid girl that everyone apparently thinks I am. That was wrong, Dad. So, unbelievably wrong. Have Momma send me my things he sent there. I want them back. And don’t call me unless it’s to apologize.

She hung up. That was the biggest fight she’d ever had with her family. She shoved the truck into drive again, and spun out onto the road and sped back to her house. Once back in her driveway, she caught a look at herself. She attire she was wearing in Nashville that day — the crop top, black skinny jeans with the zippers, and her black stilettos were streaked with dust. Her face had a scratch on it from a bramble she accidentally stumbled into when she was throwing up. There were little dots of blood. Her eyes were swollen. And for the first time, she was recognizing herself.

If people didn’t get in the way, this would’ve been easier. Stomping into the house, she yanked off her clothes, the stilettos and dropped them into the trash. They were destroyed. Making her way back to her things, she unzipped the luggage to find a new pair of shoes. Sneaker heels, a pair of high end joggers, and, well, she kept the crop top. Yanking out the toiletry bag onto the floor, she grabbed a make up wipe, pulling off the remains from a sleepless night. She needed a cup of coffee. The decision seemed to be made in her head. Now it was going about it. That was the harder part.

She spun the diamond ring around her finger idly, thinking. She remembered what he told her when he asked her to marry him. She made a promise, she gave a man her word. It was shot to hell the second Vann turned back up in her life, and she pressed a palm into her face as she rolled up to the drive thru. She wondered what his mom would say about this if she were still alive. Girl he was engaged to all torn up over another man. June was the girl that momma’s warned their sons of, but they didn’t know it till later. A different sort of woman you didn’t realize to not bring home, the kind that put their hearts through hell because, she wasn’t easy. She was too wild, but wrapped in this pretty package, so they all thought they knew what they were getting. June didn’t have the dignity to be the kind that warned upfront. She spun the ring again around her finger. Rings meant there weren’t any doubts, there weren’t any contenders, there wasn’t a second choice — rings meant that there was but one and all the rest weren’t even a thought in her mind. Rings meant that she didn’t have to avoid bars, or look over her shoulder, half hoping to see another man and half hoping he’d fled the town.

Rings meant all that, and she was doing the opposite. She was the only one in this promise was doing all the things she knew the ring meant she shouldn’t be doing. This was a permanent decision she was going to make, it wasn’t lost on her. June wasn’t really the come back type, despite what her patterns were with Vann. When she left someone, she generally was good and gone. It was humane that way. She jerked her head up and smiled at the barista that handed her the drink. She handed over the ten dollar bill and told her to keep the change and then pulled out. Rings meant all that, she thought as she spun the ring. Had it been a different ring, things would’ve gone different. Maybe. There were two choices here: one leaving and one coming back. She was pretty sold on one of them.

You couldn’t save me.

She took a sip of her drink and continued to drive around, thinking more and more. It took her a moment and then she picked up the phone and called Karli. There were four rings and then a familiar voice answered the phone. I thought you died, but the grocery store tabloids kept tellin’ me you were alive. How you been?

June laughed, Hey. Sorry, I know it’s been a while. I got the save the date to your wedding, congrats.

Funny, haven’t gotten yours.

June rolled her eyes.

It still on? Or is it just for the industry folk, and little ol’ me ain’t invited?

The question made her pause. She didn’t say anything for a minute.

June? You okay? You generally ain’t this silent. Especially when I poke at ya.

Was she okay? That was a good question. Karli was the only person that June didn’t blame for anything. Staying out of the crossfire when it came to her and Vann was something she’d done from the beginning. She wasn’t the type to stand in the way, but also wasn’t the type to shove either of them in a particular direction. She was the only one who actually got a kick out of her and Vann since the start. Called her on her bullshit, and was, well, something of on his side.

No. You, uh, heard from Vann lately?

I mean, Trace might’ve, but you know how Vann is. When he ain’t wanna be found, no one can find him. Except maybe you.

Yeah, yeah. He’s here. Iron River.

Oh.

Did you know - I. Karli.

Karli just laughed, as if she knew what June was trying and failing to say. Oh, hun, you’ve always loved that man. Right from the damn start. I remember the way you looked at him on the dance floor. And he always loved you, hell, he was never one to keep a woman. Definitely not one to chase so hard after one. But you had him making phone calls and smilin’ and I remember this one time, we caught him lookin’ at you and... Trace and I agreed we never seen him look at someone like that. Not up until and not since.

He said I couldn’t save him though.

So? Being a white knight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

That’s not, that’s not the point. He can’t trust me to help him, that’s what that means.

No, that’s not. Damn June, been with that man for so long and you ain’t figured him out? Ain’t all that complicated. That means sometimes he’s gotta save himself, because he can’t stomach you doin’ it for him. He can’t stomach you going to war in his place. He gotta do it himself, and you can’t tell him the way he wars is wrong. That means, you gotta watch, because he ain’t need someone to do it for him, he ain’t need someone to fish him out. He can fish himself out. He just needs you to be there when he gets back and not judge him for how he tries to put himself back.

June was silent.

Karli spoke again, I think I know what you’re about to do. You wanna call me when you’re done? Or you can come here, if it goes bad or if you wanna skip town. Trace and I are out on the pacific circuit right now.

June shook her head. I can’t skip out, gotta rip the band-aid and all... one more thing? He really miss rodeos in 2014?

Shit, June that was like seven years ago.

I know you remember, you never forget anything.

There was a sigh on the other line and Karli finally answered. Yeah, I remember he missed a few big ones. Wasn’t like him. Couple weeks in a row. Asked him where he was at when he showed up again and he just gave me this shit-eating grin and told me I’d find out later on.

June replied back, he went to Texas to ask my daddy to marry me, and apparently my daddy put him to fucking work and then about asked him to join the circus.

Your dad never did like them rodeo boys.

No, not at all. We’re not talkin’ over that, and the whole... you know he hid my phone? It was an ugly fight I just had with him over that, and I quote, ‘bronc bustin’ fool’.

June Watson, in a fight with her family and fired her manager. Never thought I’d see the day. Even sounding more like yourself.

June’s lips titled up, the praise and confirmation from one of her closest friends of that she saw in herself when she came home from the drive was nice. Thanks, Karl. For everything. I gotta go, but I’ll give you a call and let you know how it went.

If not, the grocery store keeps me up with the rumors.

#( self para. )

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all-might-can-smash-me · 4 years ago

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Homestay 2

@darlingely

Part 1

You are on part 2

Part 3

Taishiro Toyomitsu / Fatgum x Reader!

Summary: after developing a relationship from his time as a guest in your home, the two of you have been surviving on text messages and phone calls ever since he left to go back to the city. The both of you missed each other terribly...so a little surprise wouldn’t hurt....

Sorry for typos

Masterlist / request info in masterlist

Ever since those three heroes had left at the end of the week, your semi large home had become painfully quiet. Without Taishiro though? It had become painfully lonesome. Every night you expected his figure to appear in the door way to your room to cuddle the night away like the two of you had done the week that he, Suneater and Red Riot had been guest in your home, but every night you were left disappointed. After a week or so the feeling had slowly faded away, but you still yearned for Taishiro. You wanted to see that grin, be in those arms, and listen to those laughs rumble through his chest as your head would be rested upon it. Instead, you were left to impatiently check your phone every second it was in your hands or listen for the telltale signal of your obnoxiously loud ringtone whenever you would be tending to your garden are bothering the chickens for their eggs or to toss out their feed. The times you did receive a text message and did hear that loud text tone, your heart would drop down in your chest and end up in a ball of flutters and fast heart beats. A blush would always manage to find it’s way onto your cheeks, even if it were to be a simple text that would be wishing you a great day, good morning, night, and or jus a plain hello. That man always kept your heart in a flutter and your cheeks hotter than the rays of a summer sun. What really made your hear go boom was the calls the two of you would had, mostly at night. The two of you could spend the moment the sun goes down and when the sun goes back up talking and giggling over the phone, but the two of you didn’t care if your heads were an exhausted haze throughout the next day. Spending the whole night talking and laughing was worth it, but sometimes he would have to sadly skip the phone call of end it early since he is a pro hero after all. As the months went on, that feeling had crawled it’s way into your core. That bitter loneliness and yearning for that man that made you swoon. So, having a neighbor agree to watch your home, you made the hike along those dirt and gravel roads with your suitcase in hand, the straps to your stray hat adjusted to keep it snug upon your head and away from the ghostly grasp of the wind the fluttered along beside, whipping the train ticket in your hand playfully as if it were a cat teasing a feather.

Now you had a bit of experience when it came to the city, you didn’t live under a rock and you surely never just decided to never leave the area of sparse farming towns and villages either, but when the city had come into view through the window that was situated next to your seat on the train...you couldn’t help but let a childlike excitement creep up within you. The city still was quite amazing! The roads always zipped and zoomed with vehicles, people would move from one side of the street to the other in a HUGE heard, and then the city always had heroes patrolling and dashing by to keep the streets safe. And the buildings! You couldn’t help but always feel that they might just fall on top of you as you shuffled past people, eyes darting to the directions that was open on your phone, gushing out apologies if your suit case would have accidentally wacked a passerby’s legs. Your footsteps had soon came to a stop once your phone chimed a pleasant ‘your destination is to your left’ up to you.

“Fatgum...” you muttered out as you read the huge letters that were upon the face of the building. You couldn’t help but let out a giggle once you finally got a good look at the hero agency. “Hey...it looks like him!” you spoke out to yourself with a grin upon the revelation. Your amusement was soon mellowed out as you took in a deep intake of air, now beginning to make your way up to those glass doors, not pushing through, a blast of air pressing past your face and pushing the small little hairs around your face. “Whoa...” you mumbled out as you let your eyes scan the area. It was your very first time in a hero agency, so yes of course it was going to bring a childlike excitement to accompany the new experience.

“Can I help you?” A voice asked from the reception desk, snapping yourself out from your star struck haze. Now looking to the woman at the front desk, you quickly offered a smile before lugging up your suitcase to now lean up onto the reception desk gently, though just as you were about to say something, the woman was already speaking again as she looked up to you from her seat. “I’m sure I can help you find your way to your hotel in no time! What is the address ma’am?” You were kind of caught up in your own confusion for a second before giving a little shake of your head and a laugh to go along with it.

“Oh, no! I’m here to see Fatgum!” You spoke out once you had regained your composure from your little moment of hazy confusion. The other woman only gave you a confused look as she had began to type and click away at the computer that sat off to the side, eyes quickly scanning the screen before looking to you.

“I’m sorry...but I’m positive you aren’t on the schedule, but I can try and get you a time to meet with him. Either call the agency later or leave your contact information so that someone will be able to contact you..” She professionally explained as she was already handing off a business card towards you across the desk, but you only looked to the card, eyebrows scrunched together.

“Look...I traveled here from the Niigata area to come and visit him, so you can just tell me where his office is, that would be all I need.” You said with a sheepish smile as the woman seemed to only grow agitated and suspicious of you. “And I was hoping to not let him know I’m here since it is a surprise and all..” you continued on, but your voice seemed to lose it’s up beat tone the more the receptionist casted that cold gaze to you.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that, but you can still leave your contact information in order for us to contact you or try contacting us tomorrow or the next day in order to schedule a meeting, have a nice day.” she curtly spoke once more, her attention now the phone hat run upon he desk, her fingers now rapidly typing away at the keyboard with the iconic loud clicks. You of course only let your smile fall down in a small frown, backing away from the desk with the feeling of embarrassment tearing at your insides as you turned away from the reception desk.

“Now what...” you mumbled out as you had began to slowly make your way to the glass doors.

“Boo!” Shouted a voice, hands jabbing at your sides which caused you to give a little yelp, now whipping around to face the culprit. One of your hands were raised to give a good smack to them too, but you only gasped with a grin upon your face. “Did I scare you with how spooky that sounded or what?” chuckled the familiar figure before you

“Red Riot!” You exclaimed, now offering the other a tight hug with your suitcase set at your feet, now pulling back to look a him. “You look so cool! I didn’t get to see you in your costume whenever you, Suneater, and Fatgum stayed!” You pointed as you admired the young, future hero in front of you.

“Yeah! Must be kind of weird, but what is weirder is that you are here! For a second I thought I was hallucinating or someone else just had that some beat up straw hat..” He teased as he let a finger tap the brim of your hat, you only rolling your eyes and pushing his hand away. “Thank goodness it was you, it would have been embarrassing if I did that to someone I didn’t know” he said with a sigh of relief.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t do that!” you scolded him, but it was in a joking manor as you leaned down to grab your suitcase again. “But...where is Fatgum? I came to see him, but I wanted to surprise him, ya know? Along with Suneater!” You quickly added with a little laugh. “But I didn’t have much luck with doing that...” you said with a little frown, casting a glance to the reception desk “I should have figured that much, it being a hero agency and all...”

“Hey! She’s with me!” Shouted out Kirishima towards the woman at the desk, now taking the suitcase from your hands as he soon motioned for you to follow as he led you up the stairs. “Suneater is out on patrol, along with Fatgum and I was just about to head out for my own patrol hours” He explained as he looked over his shoulder and at you, now pushing open a door and ushering you in. “So you can just wait in here for Fatgum and Suneater, it shouldn’t be long” Kirishima now set down the suitcase at the large desk. “I really gotta go, but I’ll probably catch you later if you are staying for a few days, catch ya later!” He called out as he was already rushing out the office, door closed to leave you in the silence, eyes scanning the room. At first you hesitantly walked about the room, freezing at every trick sound that your brain teased your ears with. Soon you were now letting your hands touch everything! The chairs in front of the desk, the desk itself, the shelves, filing cabinets, everything that you could reach to glide your fingertips across. Your eyes had finally landed to the chair the sat behind the desk. With a little excited squeal, you let yourself flop down onto the massive chair, letting our a laugh as you let the chair spin, now facing the windows that looked down the streets. The same windows that made up Fatgum’s iconic grin on the outside of the building.

“That’s funny, I don’t remember leaving my chair facing that way. Red Riot must have sat in it again..” Muttered at a voice from the now opened door of the office. That is when you quickly spun around to now face the other within the room. “Holy crap! When did you get here!” Exclaimed Fatgum as he quickly rushed forward, you now standing up from the huge office chair to allow him to lift you up with a tight hug.

“I bought a train ticket to come and visit for a few days! I wanted it to be a surprise, so Red Riot let me up here” You muttered out as you pulled your face back too look down at him. “But look at you! You’re so cute and you look really cool too!” You exclaimed excitedly as you let your eyes admire him once he set you down, hands still gently holding onto his. “And I thought you were tall when the three of you stayed for the week....you’re taller now...” You spoke as you finally looked up to him with your shocked expression, the large grin stretching across him face and just the smallest blush crawling just a tad bit out from under the mask that covered the majority of his face.

“It kind of slipped my mind that you really haven’t seen me like this, sorry” He said as he let out an almost nervous laugh as he looked down at you. The words he was going to speak got trapped in his throat thought as he looked down at you. That giant thud and flutter of his heart was the culprit as he finally got a good look at you, but someone clearing their throat off to the side caught you and Taishiro’s attention, hands now separating and a step taken away from each other.

“And you Suneater! You were cute before, but you are even cuter now!” You giggled out as you were now hugging Tamaki tightly, of course flustering the young adult, but he simply gave the tiniest of hugs back in return.

“Hey Suneater, you can head home now, since your completed your patrol hours for today, don’t forget to clock in your hours though” Taishiro spoke out after clearing his throat, Amajiki only nodding his head before bidding a quiet ‘nice seeing you’ to you before leaving the office, but once that door closed, Taishiro had you back in his arms, holding you tight and smothering your face with kisses. “You sneaky little thing...” he muttered out with a little laugh before setting you down, though you only rolled your eyes as you let yourself set at the edge of his desk as he sat down upon the huge chair that you once sat in.

“I probably should have let you know, I kind of made a fool of myself at the front desk..” you said with a small laugh as you swung you feet a little, holding onto Taishiro’s hands that were now rested upon your lap. “She was kind of really suspicious of me...” You said as you let your thumb gently rub upon his hand. One of his hands had slithered out from your grasp to gently pull down the hat from your head, hand soon smoothing the flyaway hairs from your face. The time was spent with of course him explaining a few things about his agency and what not. The time was also spent with laughter, a few blushed and a kiss here and there that the two of you couldn’t resist sharing. He was also elated over the fact that you also planned to stay at his apartment as well. Apparently sleeping alone wasn’t really the same for only you. Once the hours got late and he could head home now, he took hold of your suitcase, your straw hat now jokingly upon his head as he lead you down to the main floor, your hand holding onto his arm as you followed beside his towering figure.

“Hey, this is my girlfriend, so next time just let her head up to my office, ok? Have a nice night!” Taishiro said with a grin to the receptionist as he had pushed past the doors, holding them open for you. The term ‘girlfriend’ left a grin upon your lips that was being supressed by a bit from your teeth, a blush crawling upon your cheeks. Now you hugged onto the parts of his arm that you could reach as the keys to his apartment jingled around in the lock to his door, finally givin that knob a twist before opening it. “This is my apartment.” He said as he allowed you in first, following after you to close the door shut and lock it to then slip off his shoes and begin removing his protective gear and other parts of his costume such as his mask and along with tugging down the hood to his jacket. Though you were already roaming around the apartment, shoes of course left behind at the front door. You let yourself give a quick walk around the kitchen, then you sprawled out upon the couch in the livingroom, but you quickly got up to continued your self directed tour. Taishiro only laughed as he watched you, announcing he was having food delivered which you only gave a little nod of your head as you continued on.

“Bingo!” You cheered as you opened a door to reveal his bedroom, now already tossing yourself onto the massive bed, letting yourself get lost and buried deep within the covers. You squealed though when the blanket was pulled back, you laughing as Taishiro was down beside you, now pulled up and snuggled against him. “I missed you so much...” you hummed out against his chest.

“Me too....” he spoke out quietly in agreement as he let his hand gently play with your hair, enjoying the sound of your rhythmic breathing against himself. “Maybe you should just move out here, live with me...” Taishiro said, now moving to look down at your face, but couldn’t help but let his his lips press those soft kisses against any available space upon your face.

“As much as I would love to do that, I can’t just give up the house I have....it means a lot to me...” you hummed out with closed eyes as you let those kisses continued to pepper your face, but your eyes soon opened with the disappointment of not feeling those soft kisses anymore.

“Who said you have to get rid of the house? I’ll help you keep it up, you know? When I get weekends off or recovery periods we can just go over there, away from the world to be by ourselves...” he said with a little wink, you only blushing and giving an eye roll, but you couldn’t help the smile upon your face.

“We’ll see about that, now come down here and give me a proper kiss.” You said with a giggle as you leaned up to press your lips against his, but the two of your were interrupted by a knock upon the door.

“The food...I’ll get it...” he said with a disappointed groan as he got up, footsteps lead down the hall and the the front door. The next couple days went a little like this. You would show up to the agency after sleeping in just a little bit which couldn’t be helped, his bed smelt like him and it was EXTREMELY comfortable. Then you would head straight to his office to visit with Tiashiro or maybe Red Riot and Suneater. One night the four of you were back at Fatgum’s apartment enjoying dinner together, Red Riot now speaking up.

“Hey....the receptionist said that she’s your girlfriend, Fatgum...” Kirishima spoke out with a raised brow, looking to the pro hero expectantly how only looked up from his plate with wide eyes, glancing over to you before back to Kirishima.

“Well...she is...” he finally said, small blushes already staining you and his own cheeks. “We have been for a while actually, but you know, it’s mostly just been over the phone and phonecalls.” He said as he looked over and down to you. “I just haven’t told you guys yet or really anyone.”

“Pay up...” came out a hushed voice, Kirishima cursing as he handed over money to Tamaki who quietly took it from him and pushed it away into the depths of his pocket.

“You two were betting cash on this or something?” Taishiro asked in bewilderment as he gawked at the two teens before him. Kirishima was the one to quickly explain himself.

“Well I thought that the receptionist just assumed that the two of you were dating, but Tamaki said that it was so obvious though since you always texted her, called her, talked about her.....and he also mentioned seeing you sneak into her room while we were staying at her place...ow!” He growled out in pain, Tamaki casting him a fearful glance that told him to just ‘shut up now!’ after giving a kick to his shin carefully.

“Wow....and I thought I was being discreet about it.” He said with a laugh as he continued to eat, you only shaking your head as you watched him continue eating.

“Well...we probably really weren’t now looking back at it...”

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someoneintheshadow456 · 4 years ago

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WE GOT ANOTHER ONE LADS

I think I may have come across another Fandom Frollo (aka - closet MAP who screeches at fiction and accuses everyone else of being sex offenders to cover their ass). First it was IHPAZ, then it was rasinrat, then it was the Twitter Purity Crusade CP ring (yes, that’s ACTUALLY a thing!), and now... I think I might have caught another one of these jokers in the act.

Below the cut: TW for graphic language and descriptions of CSEM

What the hell kind of pedos has this person been seeing? Because they most certainly don’t use Disney villain style dialogues to groom their charges. If they did, there’s NO WAY they’d be able to successfully groom someone because nobody, even children, is stupid enough to go for a devil in plain sight. This is a trait I see of Fandom Frollos all the time – they assign these stupid, over-the-top fictional lines that NO real person would say unironically towards what they believe to be pedos. But they sound very creepy and strangely detailed… almost like they got off on writing that.

Blatant accusations with zero proof – another classic Fandom Frollo tactic. If I accuse everyone else of being pedos, then I’m clearly helping! Look at me protecting the kids! Look at me being wholesome and pure!!

Their response?

WTF?! What the fresh hell. NOBODY said anything about looking at children in such a disgusting way. That’s something YOU pulled out of your behind for some godforsaken reason. How does ANYONE look at “banning cartoons won’t help because pedos will be pedos whether cartoons exist or not” and think “ahh yes, this is saying CSEM is okay!” Also, AGAIN, note the very descriptive and graphic language of something they ostensibly are trying to fight against.

Me: Banning cartoons won’t help. It’s like saying banning guns will stop murderers. The murderers will keep existing, they’ll just move on to knives instead. Comprehensive sex ed and self-defence courses for minors are the best way of stopping pedos. The young generation being armed and informed is always a pedo’s biggest weakness

This clown: Okay! Let’s NEVER do anything to stop pedos ever again!

Why do I have a feeling that’s EXACTLY what this person wants?

“I’m not an abuse apologist! I just think that we can blame the actions of rapists on fiction and that it’s totally okay to call rape victims gross for saying otherwise!”

Again, WHAT’S WITH THE HYPERFIXATION ON CHILD RAPE IN PARTICULAR?! If you’re so disgusted with the idea, why do you keep throwing those evil words around?!

There is ABSOLUTELY no way a person can be this ignorant – especially someone claiming to be a CSA survivor, regarding the use of religion in child grooming. But I gave them the benefit of doubt and explained anyway, and made it very clear that religion wasn’t to blame, it was EVIL PEOPLE twisting religion so they can use it as an excuse to be evil:

Their Galaxy Brained response, which is TOTALLY not a deflection from the shitty things they might be doing:

Ah yes – with THIS icon, there’s no way you could have found out what my race was! Obviously, my profile picture is SO WHITE that nobody could have just, well, CLICKED on it to see that I clearly wasn’t!! Do I need to make another DP with me in saree and a blatant red sniper dot on my forehead just to make things clearer for this hellsite?!

Or how about THIS jackass response that proves, “yes, yes they ARE being intentionally obtuse”

Nobody – NOBODY who actually cares about CSA or abuse, will say something so vile when being confronted with examples of people twisting religion so that they can hurt children.

Yet another telltale sign of a fandom Frollo – a little TOO MUCH eagerness/sadistic glee from punishing pedophiles, and is WAY too vocal about their desire to hurt them. Hating pedos is the DEFAULT Sharon. You don’t get a cookie for basic decency! It reeks of “if I scream at the top of my lungs about how much I want to kill these people, nobody will know that I’m one of them!! I am very smart!!”

“Don’t teach kids how to identify a predator!! They could be ANYONE! Especially me!!”

Keep this in mind:

…for what they say next:

THEY HEARD – “PEOPLE AGAINST SEX ED TEND TO BE PEDO APOLOGISTS” AND ASSUMED I WAS TALKING ABOUT THEM.

Or how about THESE rather chilling accusations that seem to flow out of their mouth as easily as breathing?

A PSA – if you hear “sex ed” and think that it means showing minors pornography… maybe the problem lies with YOU. Maybe the one with a warped sense of sexuality is YOU. Maybe the one who is putting kids in danger is YOU.

Them:

“How dare you call me a sex pest! I’m not a man, so I can’t be a sex pest!” – the calling card of all non-male sex pests EVERYWHERE.

If this creep comes to you, BLOCK THEIR ASS. It’s not clear if they have done anything yet, but they’re showing very dangerous signs.

#tw: csem mention #tw: csa #tw: graphic language #fandom frollos #fan pol #block and avoid #callout #anti anti #pro shipping

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pi-creates · 4 years ago

Text

Texture Editing for TWDG: The Definitive Series

Since I’ve had a few people asking how I’ve edited the texture files, here’s a small tutorial with links to help people out if they’d like to give it a go.

This information and the tools used are all thanks to the Telltale-Modding-Group on GitHub, I didn’t make anything aside from the actual changes to the texture files that you see in my screenshots. Seriously, if you want to learn how to do this stuff or are interested in the idea of mods, check them out - I’m mostly just paraphrasing their tutorial here for the people who have asked me for it.

I also use the Definitive Series and some of these tools do not currently work with other versions of the game. And my method of importing my edited textures back into the game is the same method I use to model swap - this is not the only way to do this, the Modding Group offers an alternative via making mod files and a mod loader. I will link to their explanation of the modding method when it’s appropriate - but otherwise I will be showing my method.

=====

Before we begin, you’re going to need some tools for this to work. You will need either Paint.NET, or Photoshop CC with the Texture Works Plugin found >>HERE<<. These programs will let us edit and save .dds files.

I personally use the Photoshop method and will be showing how to edit textures using that software.

You will also need to use a Texture Mod Tool to convert the games textures into an editable format and back into something the game can use. The tool and the instructions on how to use it can be found >>HERE<<. [some seriously smart cookies over at that Git-Hub group - I am very thankful]

Basically, this tool will take .d3dtx files (what the game uses) and convert them into .dds files (what we can edit), and vice versa.

As for how to get the textures files, you can either try following my instructions from my model swapping tutorial >>HERE<< and extract your mesh folders using ttarchext and search for the .d3dtx files you want to edit, or you can use the Telltale Explorer tool >>HERE<< to search and save the .d3dtx files without extracting a full archive.

=====

For demonstrative purposes, let’s try editing Minerva’s head texture.

Minnie first appears in Season 4 Episode 3, so we will find her textures in the WDC_pc_WalkingDead403_txmesh.ttarch2 archive. This archive can be found in the Archives folder inside your game’s install directory.

Either extract this archive using ttarchext, or open the archive using the Telltale Explorer.

If using the Telltale Explorer, selecting the [View...] button on the top of the window will let you filter what you’re seeing. Selecting .d3dtx will show us all the textures used in that episode of the game.

The specific file we are looking for is sk62_minerva_head.d3dtx.

It looks like this when highlighted in the Telltale Explorer:

Yes, it’s creepy looking, that’s what all the textures look like.

In the Telltale Explorer, click [Save File] and select [As is (raw dump)]. In spite of it having an option to save as .dds here, don’t do it. This tool will not create an additional file you need for texture editing to work.

Save/Move this file into it’s own little folder. For now, let’s just make a folder on our Desktop called “Textures to Edit” and put it inside.

Now we need to go to the Texture Mod Tool. Inside the texmodtool folder, there is an application called “TextureMod_GUI”, that is the file we want to use. Here’s the tool window that should open:

Click on the little folder icon to find the texture directory - in this case, the folder on our Desktop called “Textures to Edit” Once you have selected the folder, you should see the one file inside listed on the left column.

Click [Convert to DDS].

Once the tool finishes converting, you will see two files on the left column - one is the converted .dds file, and a .header file. Select the .dds file and you should see this:

You will want to take note of some details that appear in the Image Properties section in the bottom right corner.

The most important thing to note is the DDS format: DXT1, and that the file has mipmaps. This will determine how we save our file later, so remember it.

You can close the Texture Mod Tool for now.

Next, we are going to open that new .dds file in Photoshop/Paint.NET.

In Photoshop you will get this little pop-up:

Leave these options un-checked, it’s fine. Loading all the other mipmaps would require you to edit them individually, instead we can let Photoshop auto-generate those later.

We can now make whatever edits we want to the texture - clean it up, add details, alter colours. Go wild.

I’ve decided to try cleaning off all the dirt and reapplying Minerva’s freckles. Here she is after I’ve used the Healing Brush and added a few layers of splatters to look like freckles.

When you are done making your edits, select [File] > [Save As] and use the drop down menu to make sure you are saving your file as a .DDS. Do not rename the file, let it overwrite the sk62_minerva_head.dds file you converted earlier.

After you select to overwrite the file, you should get a pop up asking you more specific details on how it is saving the file.

Because the original file format was DXT1, we want to make sure we save this file with the same formatting. Using the dropdown menu, you can hover over the options to see better explanations of what each format is used for. In our case, you want to select BC1 since this covers the DXT1 format.

We also need to make sure we check the box that generates Mipmaps since this texture file had those to begin with.

Press the [Save] button in the bottom right when you have finished.

Now we need to convert this file back into a .d3dtx file. To do that, we need to use the Texture Mod Tool again and navigate back to the Textures to Edit folder.

Select to [Convert to D3DTX] and select where you want the final file to be saved. For simplicity, you can just let it save on your desktop.

The final step is putting this file back into the archives, or using the instructions provided by the Telltale-Modding-Group to create mod files and using their mod loader. Instructions on their method can be found >>HERE<<.

Or you can follow the steps outlined in my model swapping tutorial >>HERE<< using ttarchext to overwrite the texture in the extracted WDC_pc_WalkingDead403_txmesh.ttarch2 archive, then rebuilding the archive (after making backups - please remember to make backups) and replacing the archive in the main game directory.

After using whichever method you are comfortable with, you should be able to see your texture edits appear in game.

And there she is with the texture edit.

#twdg #tech support #tutorial #telltale games #i really can't overstate how great the github group is #their tutorial is what you guys should be checking #and their mod to load any level #or freeroam the school #(which is stil a WIP but works)#texture edits

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plush-rabbit · 4 years ago

Text

Can I Ask You Something?

Friendships are an odd thing. It starts off as an unexpected meeting between two strangers, where you later begin to learn more about this person who was just a stranger a few moments ago, to trusting that person wholeheartedly; to do whatever you can to make them happy. It’s a wonderful thing where you’re in love with said person, willing to hold their hand in public, kiss their cheek, go to them first when you have news of any kind. Where a mere memory of them is enough to make you smile, where after not seeing each other for a moment is enough to make you want to hug them, where you can feel safe in their arms. You meet a person by chance and they end up becoming one of the most important people in your life. Friendships are built on trust. Built on sharing snacks. Built on inside jokes. Built on love.

Your friendship with Tomura, however, isn’t any of that. It’s different than friendships you’ve had before. It was a meeting that you forced and that he complied with. Where you have doubts about the friendship- or whatever you can call this relationship when the word feels to sour on your tongue- and you don’t know what he’s thinking or what he looks like. Where you lay awake after late night talks and can feel a storm brew in your mind as you lay under the covers and think about him. It’s a relationship built on messages and the occasional phone calls. You don’t know if you can trust this person. You want to and sometimes when you hear his laughter, you think that you know him- you can trick yourself that you know who he is. You’re okay with sharing snacks with anybody- you like to share, you like to eat a cake and leave your friends the piece with the most frosting. There are jokes that you’ve two shared- ones where you snort and call him a dork and ones where he laughs- it’s shrill and a bit creepy if you were to be honest- and he calls you a dumbass and you can hear the faint sound of people yelling in the background that you never comment on.

When you were lonely, you reached out and he reluctantly let you grab onto him. You held tight and now you’re afraid to let go. You’re afraid that he’ll let go and a part of you that won’t remain silent no matter how many times you smother it, never wants him to let go of you. You’ve become oddly attached to the faceless man.

Tomura is crass, curses as if it were his first language, secretive as if he were protecting himself, curious as a cat, prying into you with delicacy and cunningness, never realize what he’s doing until you’re halfway through a story. He’s rough around the edges, making sure to bare his canines when you begin to pry. But no matter how many times he barks, no matter the little insults that leave his mouth, insults that longer hold the same sting as they used to be before, you inch closer to him. You always feel a second away from offering another video chat- this time where you can see who he is. You want to see who he is behind the screen.

However, at the same time, you’re scared who you’ll see. You’re scared that perhaps he’s a ghost from your past, someone who you wanted to leave behind that you’ve forgotten their voice and they’ve found a new name to use as a mask. You worry with dread creeping at your ankles on the good nights that the person who you can joke with is someone with cruel intentions. Other nights, you drown in panic and wish to grasp at him like a lifeline, only for the worry to drag you deeper, his face always muddled and hand always out of reach.

You wonder what he thinks of you. What his true thoughts are behind the jabbing insults and hissed out curses but you’re always too afraid to ask, too afraid what the truth will reveal.

Within the next week, there’s idle chatter in between the early mornings and late nights. Chatter where it fills the room with such ease. Chatter that dies and fills the room with silence, noises from the house are the only indicators that you both are still on the call. Chatter where it gets cut off due to your own responsibilities or his. A promise from you that you’ll try to message him later if time allows it and a click of his tongue as he tells you he’ll talk later.

The relationship gets easier day by day. Sometimes the word friend rolls of your tongue without you even realizing it- it feels natural to call him that. Other days, you’re hesitant to even say the word- to even think of what it truly means. It catches and sticks in your throat, suffocates you and leaves you feeling odd all over. Days where his name is light and sweet on your tongue, days where it’s bitter and uneasy. It’s easier to say a nickname those times; it doesn’t hold as much power as his actual name.

Talking to him gets easier- even if his name makes you unable to breathe. There are more phone calls, even if they’re short. You get to hear him talk about his day, talk about what he’s currently doing and most of the time he’s playing a game and he’ll entertain you with the plot, with the lore and the graphics. You do your own research on the side, your gasps telltale signs that you looked up what happens in the end and him snapping at you immediately not to spoil anything. You never do, always giving a vague hint to look behind a box if he wants an achievement or extra ammo. But you never give him tips. You offered once and he denied, saying that he wanted a true victory and not a false one where he had to rely on an external source. The ways he says it, with a heavy voice that takes a darker tone, makes it feel as if you’re missing out on something. You lay off, telling him that you’ll be there if he ever needs help, hoping that your own tone will hold the same hidden meaning that his held.

“Okay, so what I’m hearing is that not only do you play video games like twenty four-seven—”

“Not twenty four-seven,” he growls but the sound of guns in the background does nothing to help prove his point.

“—and you watch anime and you basically like never leave your home? You’re like a total NEET,” you giggle into the phone, phone pressed between your shoulder and ear. You tighten your hand around the bar when the subway wobbles and around your bag of takeout when someone shuffles in the corner of your eyes.

“Not a ‘NEET’,” Tomura says, hissing into the receiver and you can hear the scene restart. “Look, if I’m a NEET then so are you.” He curses loudly into the phone and you wince, eyebrows furrowing and mouth pulling into a wince that he can’t see.

“You know,” you voice takes on a sing-song tune, “if you need help, I’m more than happy to give you a hint.” Your eyes flicker upwards, reading the poster taped on the wall and flickering down to a baby bouncing on their father’s lap. “If you descri—”

“It’s fine,” he drones. “Besides, you aren’t even home yet… Are you?” On your side of the phone you hear him slurp on something and a clatter of glass.

“No, not yet,” you confirm, “I’m like a stop away.” You lick your lips and glance out the window, sighing when the outside world still blurs by. “And I like totally fu-messed up too,” you pull a face at your almost swear, glancing at the baby who remains unbothered and father who checks his watch. “I forgot I had my headphones with me so like instead of talking to you through the mic, I have the phone pressed up against my ear and shoulder.” You stumble when the train comes to a slow, jostling people awake and others slipping their phones into their pockets. “My phone is gonna be all greasy and gross Tomu,” you whine, bouncing your leg and clutching the plastic bag tighter in your hand.

“I don’t know why you didn’t just have it delivered,” he grumbles.

“Because I was already—sorry, sorry,” you mumble with your head bowed as you weave out of the subway, wincing each time the plastic bag nudges at your leg, “I wasn’t thinking and I was already in the neighborhood.” You stand next to a wall, hands searching in your bag for your pair of headphones.

“Dumbass,” he snickers into the phone.

“Yes, yes. I’m very dumb,” you mumble, tongue sticking out as you untangle the wires, careful not to pull too harshly. “Now give me a sec, lemme connect my headphones.” You let out a sigh and begin your trek to your apartment. You smooth and the wires and speak into the mic. “Okay, I’m back. I miss anything? Finally beat that level?” You tease, a skip in your step as you wait for his reply to come. It’s silent for a moment too long. “Toma? You there, bud?” Still no answer. You step to the side of the sidewalk and see that call is still going on. “If you were gonna step out, should’ve at least waited to tell me,” you mumble to yourself, a frown tugging on your lips.

You disconnect the call and send a quick message to Tomura to call you later when he had the chance. You keep your headphones in your ear for the rest of your walk home, humming a soft tune and hoping that no one would stop you.

Shigaraki comes back to his phone with a reflection that stares back at him, a hand covering most of his face and a red eye that glares back at him. The screen is black and he pulls the hand off with a sigh, letting it hover over his chest before placing it delicately on the desk.

He frowns when the call has ended, the contact screen staring at him and a message icon is on his notifications. He reads your message with a neutral expression and checks the time. Thirty minutes until they go on a mission.

Your phone rings twice before you pick up with a cheery, muffled hello.

“Why’d you hang up?” He asks, getting straight to the point, fingertips drumming on the desk, eyes looking into the computer screen where he last paused. He hears the clinking of glass and wonders if you’ve already arrived home.

“Because I was on the call for like a minute or two until I figured I hit bad cell reception or you like had to do something,” you pause for a moment. “Was I wrong?” Your voice is muffled and he suspects that you are home and you’re eating. “What happened?”

A mission brief. One that went on long enough for you to hang up and be in the middle of your meal when he called. A pale hand reaches over to grab Father, placing it back on his face, instant relief and sickness coming to him all at once. “I had things to do,” he answers.

“Right. Things,” you say sarcastically and he can hear the smile in your voice. “Could’ve sent me a message or something. You don’t have to like just disappear on me,” you chuckle.

He hums and nods to himself. “Are you going out tonight?” He asks, closing his eyes, a hand twisting the shirt into his palm.

“Nah, why? Did you want to have a long call this time?” He stares at the cracked ceiling with disinterest. “I wouldn’t mind but—”

“I have something to do soon.” He flexes his hand in front of him and runs his thumb through his fingertips.

“Oh.” He hears you hum. “Why did you ask if I was going out then?”

His eyes shoot open and he stands straight. Why did he ask? He knows why. He can feel his breathing grow heavier, breaths ragged and throat tight. There’s a mission later tonight. Without thought, his hand wraps around his neck and nails drag across his skin, he lets out a low whine in response, pinpricks of scarlet bead out.

“Tomu?” You sound genuinely concerned. “Are you all right?” Fuck. “Did you hit yourself?” Fuck. “Tomura if you don’t say anything, I’m gonna think you’re dead. So like, can you please respond?” With a mind of its own, his hand pulls away, nails and fingertips shining with his blood. “Tomura if you left again without telling me I’m gonna be like,” you pause for a second, “annoyed.”

“What do you want?” He hisses out, hand dripped in blood curls into a claw.

“Oh thank god.” He hears you sigh. “I was worried you like fell or someone had broken into your place. Are you okay?”

“Why do you care?” His lip curls in disgust and the hand on his face makes him feel sick, stomach churning and bile rising in his throat.

“Because you’re my friend.” You make it sound like it’s the most obvious thing. “All I hear from you is like silence for a while followed by a whine. I thought you were hurt,” you mumble, your tone is small, like a child who is being scolded.

He’s silent for a long time and his mouth burns, warm liquid seeps out and trickles down his neck. He feels sick.

“Hey,” your voice is soft, “if you’re not feeling good, we can talk tomorrow if you want? Sound good Tomu-”

He hangs up without a goodbye. The little finger that doesn’t touch the phone shakes. His heart is beating rapidly against his chest and it hurts. He wants to throw the phone at the wall and stomp on it until it’s broken in millions of pieces. He wants to decay the phone in his hands. He wants to- He takes in a sharp breath and closes his eyes, his anger still rising and threatening to boil over and cloud his mind. The phone is tossed on his bed and the door shuts behind him with a loud crack.

You don’t hear from him for few days. All your messages are unseen and unanswered. You dialed him the day after, left a few messages asking if he was all right and any other variation that you could think of. You’re too scared to actually dial him now; a sick feeling in your stomach when you think back to the last conversation that you had with him.

He cut you off so quickly. You were sure that this friendship was on the better half than it was when you both initially had met. Heck! He had even begun to talk about his days unprompted and would answer you when you would call to talk about nothing. But then he was silent and made a noise like he had gotten surprised at best or hurt at worst. You didn’t want him to be hurt. But with the way he wasn’t answering your messages and not even looking at them was making you feel sick every day. And it wasn’t like you could send someone of authority over since you didn’t even know his address or full name.

“God, this sucks,” you grumbled, running a hand over your face and gritting your teeth. Your fingers tap nervously on the side of your thigh, something to keep you in rhythm. “Maybe I’m overthinking this,” you tried to reason to yourself but the pit inside kept growing. “He’s always been secretive maybe he had a surprised vacation planned or like a family emergency.” You can feel the heat in the tips of your ears burn. You bring your hands up, your fingers tracing over the shell, noise muffled for a brief second. “He’s fine,” you tell yourself, voice firm and hands in fists, “I’m being silly.” You nod as if giving clarification to a statement said into the air will make it that much more true. “Plus, it’s not like I can do anything except for wait for him to message me back.” You don’t want to think about the “or” part of that sentence. Anything could be added after “or” and none of the options were good.

It’s silent in your room; your face is illuminated by the dim glow from your laptop. It burns hot on your blanket and provides you with additional warmth that soothes your nerves. Your eyes burn with sleep and head begins to hurt, fatigued by sleep and light that shines directly on your face. Your body grows heavy, eyelids begin to droop and your phone is fully charged, the green light shines bright and is unblinking as you stare at it. Your eyes glance down to the corner of the screen, the time blinks at you, flipping quickly into a minute in the future. Your eyes are back to the phone. You can feel the bags beneath your eyes droop, feeling that if you stay awake for any longer your own body will pull you into the bed until you’re a mess of limps entangled in a plush blanket.

Your phone remains silent and unmoved and you can feel you heart actually hurt. It feels as if it’s being squeezed; it’s a soft squeeze that leaves you taking in a bigger gulps of air, but the nails that dig in, that peel away at it the top layer and leave it exposed, is what truly makes it ache.

There’s been no contact from him in the past few days. The first day went by without worry, he’s done it before where you wouldn’t hear from him for hours and you assumed that perhaps he had been busy all day and fallen asleep afterwards. Messages were left unopened and you were disappointed but it was nothing to fret over. The second day, messages were still unanswered and the call you sent had gone straight to voicemail. The worry had dugs its claws into you at that point. One the third day, the first few messages were left unseen. The phones calls afterwards would ring for too long, making you sick with worry and a bottom lip that was bitten and stained your mouth in bright red. On the fourth day, you hadn’t bothered to send a message, reasoning that he would message you when he was ready. If he was ever was. The day bleeds into the night, your mind distracted by trips to stores for house necessities.

It’s late, the moon high in the sky surrounded by clouds and stars as you lay in bed, consumed by an online video. The screen dims, a notification popping in the corner to alert you that the battery in running low. With a click of your tongue, you put your laptop to sleep, the screen loading into your lock screen before going dark, the power light grows dim and you’re staring at your reflection in darkness. Your eyes adjust quickly and you close it softly, sucking in air through closed teeth when the bottom heats the pad of your fingers. It’s shoved off to the side, and you’re alone in the darkness. Hands search for the cord, fingers tracing a line down until it reaches the plug and it’s pulled out, tucked into the handle of your dresser with a soft clink of metal against wood. In the darkness, your thoughts begin to creep up, hands that grip at every part of your body and send both a mixture of chills and heat, it freezes you, makes you clammy and all at the same time makes you uncomfortably hot and twitchy. Dull nails are dragged across the blanket in an attempt to calm your nerves, the little moment of relief is well received. You repeat the motion, letting yourself indulge in the noise.

Your mind grows foggy and soon the repetitive motions become sluggish until your fingers twitch, once, then twice before coming to a still. You’re asleep for a wonderful thirty minutes where the promises of dreams start to lure you in. And then your phone buzzes to life. It’s a shrill ring that you set to make sure if anything had happened while you were unawake, the noise will wake you up and you’d respond to whoever it was on the other side.

It comes to an abrupt stop, the other person on the line having given up but then it rings again. Your body wakes first, hands searching blindly until the phone is pushed and falls onto the floor. You wince and search for the lamp, the light making you close your eyes and mouth pulled into a grimace. With a look downwards, you sigh when your phone has landed face up. Your body threatens to fall off the bed as you reach to pick up the still ringing phone. There are no cracks on the screen, still pristine and clear as you analyze the screen and through bleary eyes, you read the caller ID.

Tomura.

Your eyes shoot open and hands reach for the phone, a quick swipe of the green button. “Hello?” Your voice is slurred and heavy with sleep. You clear your throat. “Hello?” Oh god, please let him be okay, please.

“You sound tired.” He sounds forced- as if he had to push the words out of his throat.

You arch your brows and bite back a groan. “…Do you know what time it is?” Without meaning to, a yawn escapes you and you lay back down on your bed, your eyes struggling to stay open as you wait for his reply.

“Right.” He sounds distant and your worry bubbles over.

You lick your lips and glance to the night stand where an empty water bottle lays on its side. “Tomura? Can I ask you something?” You shift in your bed and pull the covers up to your chin.

“Whatever.”

You let out a low sigh. “What happened? You were gone for like a while.” Sleep slowly vanishes from your mind but it remains foggy, unable to filter what’s you’re trying to say. “You don’t have to like tell me, but I was worried that something had happened to you or like I don’t know, that you like just wanted to stop talking to me and,” you push the blankets off you and lean against the wooden bedframe, “I… Are you okay?”

He’s silent on his end. His breathing is the only thing that you can hear, it’s steady and it eases you a bit to know that he’s still on the line. Silence has filled your conversations with him plenty of times. They’ve been awkward, unnerving, but they’ve also been comfortable, reminding you that you’re not alone and that he’s still there. This silent however is just silent. There’s no reassurance that he’s okay; just that he’s still here. Sleep is fading in and out, a gentle tide that nudges you awake for a few seconds longer before receding back and lulling you back to your sleep.

“I’m okay,” he croaks out and in the background you hear a loud creak.

“Promise?” You ask, eyebrows knitting together and hands once again scratching at the blankets that warm you.

“Why do you care?” His voice is small as he speaks to you.

“Because you’re my friend,” you tell him, “I care about my friends Tomu. And you’re my friend so by like definition, I care about you.” You ran a hand through your hair, smoothing out your hair. “I- Am I your friend?” You take in a deep breath and run your thumb across the side of your finger. “You like don’t have to answer that now, I just—”

“Yes.” His voice is tight but clear. “I- You are.” You hear let out a shaky breath.

Your lips curve in a gentle smile. “I’m glad.” Tears still prick at the corner of your eyes and make your vision blur, you’re unsure if it’s from the sleep that still clings onto you or the emotional side of you that always makes itself more apparent in the dead of night.

“You sure you’re okay? You sound… different.” Different is the nice way to put it. He sounds defeated and lost. When he’s silent, you press. “Bad night?” You offer as a way to expand on what he’s feeling, a way to help him.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” He says wearily, a loud yawn that confirms his tone.

“You wanna talk about it?” Your mind and body begs for sleep. “If you want of course. I don’t mind staying up.”

“It’s late.” It sounds like he finally realized what time it was, voice suddenly tired and thick with sleep.

“Yeah, Tomura, it’s really late.” You lie on your side, legs curled in and eyes are barely able to stay open. “But like, I’m already awake. The offer still stands, you know.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow?” He asks, his voice returning to that akin to a child, hopeful and nervous all at once.

“Yeah, that would be nice.” You chuckle lightly. “Just like don’t flake out this time, okay?” You joke.

“I uh, yeah. I won’t flake. I promise.” The last words are soft, as if he didn’t want you to hear or even want to acknowledge what he had said himself.

“Okay. I’ll hear from you tomorrow.” With a burst of late night courage, you open your mouth. “Remember, you promised. And you can’t break a promise- especially to a friend.”

You hear him laugh, it’s muffled but it’s genuine. It doesn’t sound creepy to you this time, it sounds pleasant. “Yeah, I won’t.” There’s a brief second of silence. He wishes you goodnight and whispers your name. There’s a skip in your chest when says it and a grin grows on your face, slowly etching itself onto you.

“Yeah, okay. Goodnight Tomura.” A second of peace passes where you can breathe easy and you hang up first; the phone blinks the time that you’ve talked to him before going dark. You slide the phone onto your nightstand and the blanket bunches under hands as you curl in deeper into the bed, eyes closing without resistance and mind clear and chest light.

Tagged:

@rogueofbullshit

@loveableasshole

@yul-is-sparkling

@noonewouldlisten25

@noodlenerd101

@localdisaster

@snackgod

@iikillerkitteh

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