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aokuro-san · 7 days ago

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Recommending fanfics (IV): Blue Lock Special

Well, I've been wanting to do a post like this for a long time… So today was the day. I'm currently incredibly hooked on BLUE LOCK. I think it's one of the most original and fascinating mangas that have come out in a long time, especially at the spokon level (which apart from Inazuma Eleven (which there are references to in BL too. I loved it, haha) and Haikyuu!! (maybe a little Free!) is not one of the genres I read the most). And, of course, when I caught up with the manga, I had to look for fanfics to satisfy a basic and obsessive need, hahaha. And, wow, wow, the number of incredible fanfics I've found! I think that after MY HERO ACADEMIA, this fandom is one of the best that exists in terms of fanfics. The fans understand the characters perfectly (most of them)! And that makes the fanfics I'm going to recommend today seem very realistic to me. That's why I want to dedicate just one post to some fanfics (I already recommended one in the third part of these recommendations, which I'll leave links to below, as usual) of this story that I think are more than good.

So… Here we go with this special… Christmas one? Merry Christmas in advance, by the way, haha.

(I'll try to do it as best as I can because I'm a bit thick with the cold… Anyway):

Complete fanfics: https://www.tumblr.com/aokuro-san/714582391192272896/recommending-fanfics-i-complete-fanfics?source=share

and continued with

One-shots: https://www.tumblr.com/aokuro-san/723176474909327360/recommending-fanfics-ii-one-shots?source=share

In progress or incomplete: https://www.tumblr.com/aokuro-san/757876792838307840/recommending-fanfics-iii-in-progress-or?source=share

I hope you like it!

Part 4: Blue Lock Special.

i'll remeber that mr. borderline by and talk to me in french, talk to me in spanish by Irony_Is_Life

(Wattpad and AO3)

We start with these two one-shots. Irony_Is_Life is on both Wattpad and AO3 and was one of the first authors I followed. Basically because she's not afraid to make fanfics of lesser-known, crazy ships, but no less coherent with what is presented to us in the canon.

The first one… A kind of Isagi and Kiyora with a lot of hate and sexual tension THAT BECAME ONE OF MY FAVORITE FANFICS. And the second one… A Nanase x Sae that… I was very surprised because, after reading it, I seriously thought that these two would be a GREAT COUPLE!

A creator who seems to only be there for a good time, but who is not so easily forgotten, and that is already difficult in today's writing world, so…

how to be player? by widwowilczycy

(AO3)

Oh, one of my most recent fanfics. And while it's much easier to write than some of the ones here, it's still so worth it! It's very entertaining! And it's… deeper than it first seems. Going from humor to drama is NOT EASY AT ALL (and I know this because I've read stuff like this and it usually goes pretty wrong), but widwowilczycy HANDLES IT PERFECTLY.

The plot is simple, but it gets complicated by the lack of understanding of the main character's own feelings: Isagi (of course. The fandom loves him, haha), who starts a bet with Shidou (our favorite demon) and ends up with questions about polyamory and what true love is.

So far there are fourteen chapters out of seventeen (in principle), but I see that the author has a good pace of publication. Plus, you can drink it! Just to warn you that the sex scenes are VERY EXPLICIT (which, in this case, I don't consider a bad thing because it contributes more to the plot than it seems to be telling here by me).

The Mihya Who Calls You by keicros

(AO3)

Probably THE BEST on this list and MY FAVORITE (so far) WITHOUT A DOUBT. keicros is, in and of herself, one of the most recommendable authors in the fandom (there's another story of hers down here, wait a minute). And it's no wonder considering the great work she does as a writer (at least, in my eyes). In this case we have one of the most popular couples (and, look, for the first time I agree with shipping this kind of enemies to lovers (a trope that I HATE), because it gives the feeling that they are going to eat each other's mouths at any moment, LOL): Michael Kaiser and Yoichi Isagi. Now professional soccer players, their encounters become more and more intense and toxic until their final tragedy.

Don't miss the opportunity to read it. Seriously. I was rereading it so I could recommend it and I was already back in the story… 👏👏👏

The Things I Should Do by kaikomi

(AO3)

Well, another Kaiser x Isagi. I'm not hiding it. But it's just that… THIS ONE IN PARTICULAR, was the one that made me look for even more fanfics within the fandom. And it's not only that it follows the original canon quite accurately, but it also develops an enemies to lovers that I thought was PERFECT in just ten chapters (that's where the talent lies, my friend).

If you want to start with the long fanfics within Blue Lock, this is probably the best one (and not just because it's been finished for a while).

The Straight-Faced Science Boy by keicros

(AO3)

This is the other keicros fanfic I wanted to recommend! A story in progress between Shidou and Sae (two others who seem like lovers already, hahaha. I'm hallucinating with this manga) in the middle of a boarding school environment, where coincidences, lack of recognition of feelings and humor, a lot of humor!, are present (currently) to tell us about this kind of instant attraction capable of setting fire not only to the hearts of these two boys, but also the entire school. Because neither Shidou nor Sae know how to communicate properly. And that addition, the author only knows how to handle it in an even more entertaining way.

you can call me what you like (as long as you call me) and Transitive Property by sasdavvero

(AO3)

And finally, these two fanfics by another highly recommended author; focused on the ship that would make you cry the most: Rin Itoshi and Nijiro Nanase. Very dramatic, tragic one-shots, but incredibly well done and realistic (I love Rin so much and yet I admit that I "believe" that he would behave that way with Nanase).

Anyway. I hope you can give them a chance and like them as much as I do^^ Happy holidays to all^^

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moochipeachey · 1 year ago

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Dear Diary,

I’m officially ungrounded!!! So much for being grounded "for life". My dad held strong for a good 3 months before deciding my mom was being a tyrant. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain. Soooooo I was a little dishonest in my last post. I shared a lot more than just a kiss with Eric. What can I say? Cocktails and hormones. Truthfully, I just needed a distraction & Eric was eager to supply that.

When Eric left the next morning he had the unfortunate pleasure of running into the devil my mother 👿. She ripped me a new one when she came home from church. Lord only knows what she had to say to Eric. "Do you have to sl*t yourself out to every boy that looks in your direction?" Look, I know I had a boy in my room, and, yes he did end up spending the night, and we messed around…Okay this sounds soooo bad when I write it down and actually self reflect. She may have ate that *one* little thing. ANYWAY. Moving on. Since I’ve been set free a lot has happened…

Your girl is officially a Copperdale Womp Womp (please, don’t ask). The girls have been so nice and accommodating, especially with me missing out on crucial team bonding/basic high school socialization. I’ve gotten especially close to this girl named, Noemie.

We legit talk on the phone or face time every night, and no one knows how to find the best pieces at ThrifTea like she does. She’s my sister from another mister. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Noemie, I don’t think I would’ve survived Copperdale. As soon as I made the cheer team Noemie added me to a group chat, #ThotsAndJocks, consisting of mostly cheerleaders and football players w/ a few other people scattered in. She made sure I was still invited to parties, included me in discussions, and put my name out there. Don’t get me wrong everyone else is cool, but Noemie is my person. Well, almost everyone is cool. There’s this boy…

Matthew Felix. The hottest guy in the school. And also the biggest douche in the school. Who just happens to be Eric's best friend. From the moment I stepped foot on campus, he decided that his life's mission was to make mine a living hell.

I have no clue what the Creator was thinking when they decided to put us in homeroom together, but I hope they've been enjoying the show. Everyday I wake up and wonder what issue Matthew will find with me, and trust me when I say it's something new each day. The first time I met him, he thought pulling my chair from under me was a proper introduction. And that I obviously deserved it because "everyone knows he sits next to Eric". As if it wasn't my first week! He's "accidentally" thrown a football at my head during practice on more than one occasion. I get anxious anytime I have to use my locker because I don't know if it's going to be full of packing peanuts, marbles, confetti, you name it. Every time he flashes that stupid f*cking smirk I just want to smack it right off his silly little face. He knows exactly how to push my buttons and I fall for it every time. I know I shouldn't let it get to me but.....

Sometimes, on those ultra rare occasions, he's actually capable of being a decent human being.... And no matter how much he annoys me, I can't deny that there's something about him that draws me in, like this magnetic pull that I can't escape. I wish I could make sense of all these feelings, or at least ignore them altogether, truth be told I know I should stay away from him considering my situationship with Eric. That's easier said than done. Maybe if I stop giving him the satisfaction of knowing he gets under my skin, I'll be taken off his radar. Even though I'll never admit it outside of the confines of this diary ..... I really don't want that to happen. I'm almost late for cheer Until next time diary, XOXO Naomi ♡

Introduction | Meet the Characters | Previous | Next |

#TWC #the windenburg chronicles #Naomi's Diary Entry #Naomi's POV #sims 4 story #sims 4 screenshots #simblr #ts4 #my sims

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starlightblueninja · 3 years ago

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Ciao! can I please request headcanons for the bayverse turtles with a gender neutral S/O where they’re hanging out one day and they have music playing on shuffle, but then the reader suddenly starts crying because they used to listen to that song all the time when they were little and it just hit them right in the childhood? Comfort ensues 👉🏽👈🏽 please. and thank you.

Hey!

Thanks for the request! This took a little while because it’s my first one and I wanted it to be nice UwU and I enjoyed playing around with the bois being comforting since I’ve never really done that before. Hope you enjoy 💙♥️🧡💜💚 @sleeplessdreamer14

Leonardo

You’re laying on the couch reading while Leo’s doing katas about ten feet away. Every now and again you’ll look up at him, smiling as his practiced movements resemble a dance. Mikey left some playlist running in the background on his boombox before disappearing to make food, and normally music with lyrics makes it difficult for you to read but you were only really half paying attention to the book. You almost enjoy watching Leo practice more anyway.

The music barely distracts you, at least until you hear that… familiar intro. The rest of the world kind of fades away as the song takes you back years.

Nostalgia clogs your senses, eyes watering before you know it and a lump forming in the back of your throat as you try to hold back from crying. You close the book in your lap and let the music fill your senses. It’s been a while since you’ve heard this one. Memories resurface and you try to simply blink away the tears, but it’s inevitable, they fill your eyes until your vision is watery.

“Hey,” you look up to see Leo sitting down next to you, his eyes filled with concern but voice gentle and comforting as he asks, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s dumb, but… this song just… takes me back,” you respond quietly. “I used to listen to it a lot when I was younger.”

You wipe your eyes with your free hand just as Leo takes your other hand in his. His warm, strong, big hand in yours makes the tears easier to swallow. You squeeze his palm reassuringly and he moves a little closer to you before you continue talking.

“It reminds me of the places I used to go and the friends I used to have, feels like a lifetime ago, when things were less… complicated.”

Leo perfectly understands the wish for things to be easy, and he understands how it feels to not want to carry responsibilities. He knows what it’s like to have a weight on your shoulders. And so, instead of telling you it’s dumb or offering simple platitudes, he presses a kiss to your knuckles and nods in understanding.

“I miss it,” you say simply.

“If it’s any consolation,” he starts. “I’m glad that you’re here now.”

You look up at him with watery eyes but you’re wearing a crooked smile at his remark. The song still plays on in the background but right now you’re more focused on the way the terrapin kisses your forehead and buries his face in your hair. You feel his inhale taking in your scent and you smile against his collarbone, relaxing against him.

Yeah, you still miss your old friends and family, when things were easy and you bore less of the world on your shoulders. But for now you have him, and really, what else do you need?

Raphael

Raph’s got his workout playlist on while you sit next to him, bantering back and forth with him as he does his routine. The music is a surprisingly varied mix, you didn’t expect to hear the couple of 80s pop and early 2000’s girl band songs that you did. You teased him a little about it at first but it was all well meaning.

You don’t really notice what song is playing until about halfway through the first verse. You know this song too well. It’s been a long time since you last heard it, though, and maybe that’s why it affects you the way it does now. Raph had been saying something, but his voice kind of fades away as your focus shifts to the music and the memories it brings back.

Flashes of your childhood flit past your mind’s eye. The good, the bad, the in between, and all the other things you thought you had forgotten about. You don’t even realize there’s tears in your eyes until they’re falling, running hot trails down your cheeks and it’s too late to try and hold them back.

“Hey, hey baby, what’s wrong?” Raph must have noticed you go quiet since now he’s kneeling in front of you with so much concern on his face. “You okay? ‘S it somethin’ I said?”

“No! No no no,” you’re quick to reassure him and he relaxes, but only minutely since it’s clear you’re still upset. “I-It’s stupid, don’t worry about it.”

“‘Ey, don’t say that, whatever it is, it ain’t stupid,” his hand sets itself gently on your knee.

“I just used to listen to this song as a kid a lot, takes me back.”

He’s sat down in front of you now, cross-legged just as you are so your knees are touching his, “That ain’t stupid.”

His hand brushes away the tears from one side of your face, your own hand coming up to dry the other side before you lean into his warm touch. The way his hand cups your cheek comforts you immensely.

“Feels stupid to cry over it.”

But he knows what it’s like to miss the innocence lost with age, so he pinches your cheek lightly and playfully in disagreement, bringing a smile to your face even as you push his hand away.

“I can turn it off if ya want,” he offers gently, and you hesitate before shaking your head no.

“It’s fine, I’ll be fine,” you respond.

“Whatever ya say, shorty.”

And with that you two are right back to your usual lighthearted teasing. He leaves a chaste kiss on your forehead before he goes back to working out, the memories fading away to make room for the new ones you make with him. He makes sure to remember exactly what song it is, though, and you don’t consciously pick up on this fact but you never actually hear it from any of his playlists again after that moment.

Donatello

You two often sit in peaceful quiet. Donnie will work on his projects, you sitting there on your phone or working on your own stuff, occasionally handing him various tools when he needs them. He’s often got something going on in the background, usually podcasts or heavy music when he’s alone, but always soft music when you’re around so he doesn’t miss if you say something to him. Like now, with him under the truck fixing something and you sitting cross-legged a few feet away playing a puzzle game on your phone. You’re waiting patiently for him to be done. Bed time for you two was about an hour ago now but you know how important this fix is for him and that it should really be done tonight. So you don’t press the issue but you are ready to sleep.

You don’t often notice the music he’s got playing unless it’s a song you really like or dislike, it’s just some shuffled Spotify playlist that he thinks fits the vibe of today. But you notice immediately when that song starts playing. It’s so familiar to you, after listening to it so much in the past, that it would be shameful not to recognize it now.

Your vision goes blurry as your focus shifts away from your current self. You’re reminded of the past, the radio in your old house, your parents, the way they always had the same station playing in the house and in the car and at cookouts. You’ve heard this song so much now that it immediately throws you back into the past. It happens so fast you might as well have whiplash, but you just get misty eyed instead.

Your bottom lip trembles, warm lines running down your cheeks soon after and Donnie notices quickly that something is up when you don’t respond to his request for the torx screwdriver. He slides out from under the truck but you don’t even notice at first. The music has all but consumed you now.

“Y/N? Darling, what’s wrong?” He’s immediately at your side, a large hand gently on your bicep pulling you back to reality.

You look up at him but realize that it’s a little hard to see him with the way the tears have pooled. He can’t help but think that, even though he hates hates hates seeing you upset, that those tears make your eyes glisten so beautifully under the lights.

His other hand not on your arm comes up to brush the tears away as he repeats the question now that he’s got your focus.

“I used to listen to this song a lot as a kid,” you supply an answer softly, gaze falling from his. “Just makes me sad… I dunno why, I guess it just kinda hit me. Sorry.”

“No, no, dove, don’t apologize,” he says. “I understand and you’re alright, I’ve got you here, now.”

His sugar sweet words and oh so gentle hands comfort you. You offer a watery smile before moving into his arms, letting him wrap his arms around you. You return the hug the best you can with his shell in the way, face tucked into the crook of his shoulder, and he can feel the way more tears fall from your eyes and onto his skin. He doesn’t mind though, he simply holds you. He enjoys just holding you even if he’s never admitted it out loud before. He likes knowing he can be there for you.

And he may not fully understand how your memories attached to this song make you upset, but he understands the pain and will do anything to make you feel better.

His hands run over your back, soothing trails on your shoulder blades over your shirt. Then he’s reaching for a remote he set nearby to turn the radio off. He doesn’t even need to ask you anything to know when you want his hands back on you.

“You’re the best,” you say when your gaze has fully refocused and the tears have calmed.

“No, actually, I think that’s you,” he responds, before pressing a kiss to your hair and deciding to bring you to bed, putting off the truck repairs for grumpy morning-Donnie in favor of treating you like a queen now.

Michelangelo

You and Mikey will play a video game together quietly with music on in the background. Sometimes you’ll lay on his chest and watch him play, but in times like this, when the week has been rough and you both need some quiet down time, you lay on opposite ends of the couch with your legs tangled together playing a multi-player game that relaxes both of you. Tonight it’s Minecraft, and though you both like the music of the game, you’d both agreed on having a playlist on too.

You’re mining out a coal deposit in the game when you hear that song come on the background. Mikey notices faster than any of his other brothers would that something is off. He can practically smell how the air around you sours.

Childhood memories flood back to you as you recognize every line of the song as it plays, pulling you back and away from the now. Good memories give you life vests in the flood, bad memories tie weights to your ankles. You’ve paused in the game, your character just staring at the block wall. People, places, events, all of it suddenly overwhelms you as the music plays.

Mikey is on you in seconds though, throwing himself into your arms as soon as he notices that there’s an issue. You’ve got a lap-full of buff turtle man pulling you back into the present.

“Babycakes, you smell grump, what’s wrong?” He says while littering chaste kisses across your face.

He doesn’t even give you the time to get truly upset, let alone start crying, as he’s so in-tune to your emotions that he’s always right there to comfort you.

“I’m okay, baby,” you responds, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. “Just… thinking about childhood stuff. This song reminded me of it.”

“This song?” He says, suddenly jumping up.

You don’t know where he’s going but can see the humor practically dripping off of him. He storms up to the boombox, blatantly glaring at it. While watching him poke the speaker a few times like he’s threatening one of the many criminals he often fights, you can’t help but smile. He’s so lovely, and always knows how to make you laugh.

“You!” He snaps at the machine like it’s sentient, the same song still playing. “What’d you say to my girl, huh? Punk? Wanna act like a tough guy now? Too late, fella.”

You laugh as he jabs his finger at the skip song button and it changes to something different. You like this song, Hopeless by Khalid, Mikey likes it too. His attention is recaptured when you laugh at his antics. He smiles at you before making his way back over to the couch, crawling easily back into your arms as you continue giggling.

He kisses you before booping your nose, “Don’t be sad about the past, cherry tomato, we got the whole future ahead of us.”

“Cherry tomato?”

“Yeah,” he says, offering no further explanation as he relaxes on top of you with his controller, easily shifting back into the game.

He’s quick to go from one thing to another, but you can tell he’s truly there for you when he continues to lay his head on you, announcing that he’s coming to find you in-game. Every now and again he presses a little kiss to your stomach or chest, wherever his lips meet in that moment. Your confusing and bittersweet past is left buried under your love for your beautiful, caring, protective terrapin.

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starxscream · 3 years ago

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Morning Off

“ Forced to take the morning off, Swatch realizes what exactly they have been missing. “

SwatchKaard fic!

Oh buddy we got another bc I have problems and it’s them. (Also check it out on ao3 if it’s easier for y’all to read there!)

It was hard to tell when it was morning or evening in the dark world, but time flowed all the same. Just today, it happened to be early morning, the sound of the rushing fountain in the middle of Ralsei’s kingdom filtering through the windows as if to say ‘it’s time to wake up’. Other than that, however, there was nothing but a blissful silence, Castle Town still in a state of slumber while the Darkeners continue to rest while few others begin to slowly wake up.

Swatch was one of the latter, always an early riser, even if today they did not have to go into work until later- forcibly given the morning off due to the swatchlings thinking that they ‘worked too much’. It would have been the whole day, but Swatch was not having that, needing to make sure that the cafe was being run in perfect order.

The bird sighs sleepily, a part of them torn between trying to doze or shaking off their tiredness and getting up anyways. Eyes barely cracked open, they slowly take in their surroundings, waking up just slightly. They become aware of someone’s back pressed against their chest. Arms still wrapped tightly around the other person, Swatch doesn’t make any sudden movement yet, instead dipping their beak down slightly to be able to bury their face in the mass of hair beside them. They could make out quiet snores from the other person, Swatch’s feathered fingers unconsciously stroking the patches of skin where they held him.

As much as Swatch complained about having the morning off, this was…nice. The knowing that they didn’t have to get up and leave so quickly, just being able to lay here and take in the slow morning. They let their eyes slowly flutter shut again, silently making their decision on what to do this morning.

Unbeknownst to Swatch, however, their oh-so-wonderful partner had started to stir, his internal clock telling him it was time to wake up. Unfortunately he did not want to wake up. A silent groan works past his lips, mouth curved into a frown as he suddenly rolls over in Swatch's arms and pulls himself even closer to the bird, resting his head on his chest.

The sudden movement rouses Swatch from their state of dozing, cracking open a singular eye to gaze down at the other, lifting their beak only slightly while he shifts his position around. Once settled, Swatch lowers their head back down to rest on top of their partner’s a soft coo escaping their beak.

“Good morning beloved.” Swatch whispers quietly, only earning a tired grunt from the other, pushing himself further into Swatch- at least, attempting to. He hung tightly to Swatch, wrapped around them like a coiled rod. It earns a chuckle from Swatch, moving a hand to pet their partner’s messy hair.

“Rouxls…” Swatch speaks again, trying to get their partner’s attention. Hoping to catch him off guard and get him to respond, at least just for a second, a guilty pleasure.

There’s another groan, Rouxls still nuzzling Swatch’s chest, before a huff, rolling his head slightly back to sleepily peer up at Swatch’s face. He sits there for a minute, slowly blinking, trying to shake off his own sleep but not wanting to.

“What does- doeseth…thou…” Rouxls fumbles over his words, trying to speak with his usual accent but too sleepy to properly think it out. There’s a frustrated sigh, Rouxls grumbling quietly before speaking again, “…Good morning.” The blue man lowers his head to bury it back into Swatch’s chest after that, hoping for just a moment’s more peace, expecting Swatch to have to get up and leave soon and Rouxls not wanting him to- as it was every morning. The amount of times Rouxls complained and tried to get Swatch to stay home…

A smile spreads across Swatch’s beak as Rouxls speaks, catching the poor attempt and then lack of the usual arrogant accent, a pleased chitter vibrating from his throat, “Hm…” Their gaze lingers on Rouxls for a moment, “I now see why you are so desperate to keep me around in the morning.” Casually poking at Rouxls as they usually did, waiting for the moment Rouxls remembers what this morning was.

Rouxls mumbles something incoherent, still refusing to pry himself away from the bird. Still too sleepy to question why Swatch hadn't tried to get up for work yet? The thoughts immediately erased by the tired selfishness of wanting to keep Swatch here. To actually stay for even just a morning…

Wait…

Puzzle pieces begin to fall into place, Rouxls’ mind finally jump-starting itself into working. Swatch is still here… It takes Rouxls a moment to realize, still enjoying how warm and comfortable it was in Swatch’s arms, before it suddenly hits and Rouxls’ eyes snap open. He cranes his head back to look up at the bird, blinking slowly.

“Thou art still hereth?” It’s phrased as a question, sleep still lingering on Rouxls’ voice- having not entirely figured it out yet, but enough to realize the important thing.

“Yes my love, I am still here. Did you forget what day it was?” Swatch leans down to give a kiss to the top of Rouxls’ head, “I will be here all morning.”

It takes Rouxls a moment for Swatch’s words to register and when they do his face breaks into a large smile, arms squeezing Swatch tighter. “Of courseth I did not forgete!” Rouxls boasts, obviously lying, “I am...happyeth that thou is hereth.” His voice gets quieter the move he speaks, flush rising to his cheeks at the admittance.

Swatch’s own smile gets wider, heart giving a pang in their chest at Rouxls’ admittance- truly Rouxls’ expressions were their guilty pleasure. “If it makes you so happy, perhaps I can entertain the idea of doing this more often.” They watch as Rouxls seems to light up at that, his own sleepiness fading at the prospect.

“As thou should! Thine paramour shouldeth spend thy morn with their belovedeth! It is as thy haveth always toldeth thou.” A smug tone invites itself into Rouxls’ words, Swatch unable to keep themselves from rolling their eyes at it. Not that the smile ever left their face however.

Rouxls’ hands move upwards, threading into the fluffy feathery hair on Swatch’s head, “I enjoyeth waking upeth and seeing thou faceth, even if thou is stilleth thy most frustratingeth and annoyinge worm-avian.” He hums, no ill-intent behind his words, feeling just a little bit more confident this morning, “Howevere that meanseth, that thou art here, I can noweth do this…” Rouxls pulls himself up further, giving Swatch a soft kiss to their beak.

“Mmm...if I knew I would be getting such special attention from you, I would have taken a morning off ages ago…” Swatch chuckles, opting to pepper Rouxls in more kisses, not satisfied with just the one, “So…” Swatch speaks between kisses, “What is it that you commonfolk do during the morning if not preparing for work?”

Rouxls scoffs at that, yet still giggling in between each kiss, “Commonfolk? Thou must surelyest be mistakene! I am enjoyingeth my time, somethinge thateth thou shouldeth take into considerationeth more ofteneth.” His voice slowly turns to a mumble, a half-hearted attempt to keep up the banter, “Thou ist more commonfolk than thy…”

“Says the ‘butler supremeth’ who has no one to buttle for…” Swatch murmurs in response, fingers tangling in Rouxls hair. Still leaving kisses on Rouxls’ lips, casually and so...normal. Swatch felt as if all of their worries were just...gone, like work was nothing more than an idle thought in the background. Why were they so adamant about not taking time off...

The two continue to cuddle and kiss during their idle banter, neither making any effort to move or get up. Instead just enjoying the time between them that was not usually shared. So distracted with each other, neither of them noticed the door to their room creaking open with a stifled giggle of someone (poorly) trying to sneak in.

It wasn’t until a small round flash of blue and white flew onto the bed loudly announcing, “SURPRISE LANCERBALL ATTACK!” And crashing into them both that they realized Lancer had snuck into their room. The little round prince slams into them, knocking them with a loud oomph, forcing the two to separate from one another.

“LANCER?” Rouxls loudly gasps in surprise, skipping his usual nicknames due to the shock of the sudden appearance. Swatch blinks in confusion, stunned silent for a moment, just taking it in and letting Rouxls handle it for now while he registered the situation.

Lancer laughs loudly, plopping down into the bed in the space between Rouxls and Swatch, his music player in hand. “You should’ve seen your FACES…LOL!” He says the term letter by letter aloud, “Mom Dad showed me how to make MIXTAPES and I made a really really good one! So as my other dads, you have to listen!” His tongue sticks from his mouth, wiggling the earbuds coiled and tangled around him and holding the ends up for Rouxls and Swatch to take.

Rouxls sighs dramatically, “Thine dearest water-beetle, how manyeth times haveth I told thee to knocketh! Does thou needest to learneth thou manners as parteth thou royaleth duties...” He pulls himself up, back resting on the headboard, Swatch mirroring the motions. Lancer’s grin seems to falter for a moment as he’s being reprimanded, before Rouxls continues speaking, “However! I shalt entertaine thee request to listeneth to thou ‘mixtape’ that shalt certainly be nothinge moreth than rackety driveleth.” There was no real harshness in Rouxls’ words, and Lancer lit up again, rolling over and clambering into Rouxls’ lap, the man instinctively wrapping an arm around the prince. Swatch opts to accept the earbud, moving closer and sliding their free arm behind Rouxls to pull the two closer into them. Rouxls accepts the other earbud, the two sticking them into their respective ears.

“I am sure it will sound lovely.” Swatch coos, counterbalancing Rouxls dramatic demeanor with their calmness, “Thank you for sharing Lancer.” Always so polite.

Lancer laughs loudly again, “Of course it will! Now hurry it up, I wanna go show Ralsei!” Kicking his legs up and down in excitement, snuggling closer to Rouxls as if he wasn’t planning on leaving. Rouxls rolls his eyes, still with a hint of a grin on his face, giving a glance towards Swatch who only offers a shrug and a smile.

“Thou needeth to press play.”

“Oh…right. Thanks for the reminder, vice father!”

Lancer slams the play button…unleashing the monstrosity of his fully splat sfx “mixtape” upon Rouxls and Swatch. Swatch was caught off guard, hand flying to his beak to keep from laughing, shoulders quietly bouncing at the absurdity of it. Rouxls…saw it coming, wearing a tired pleasant smile as he endured listening to it- at least this was different than just the usual sounds Lancer constantly played.

Leaning over, Rouxls rests his head on Swatch’s shoulder, watching Lancer fiddle with his music player with one hand and grabbing Rouxls’ and bouncing it around with the other.

Swatch peers over at Rouxls, a contented smile on their face as they lower their hand, resting their own head on top of Rouxls’ while the blue man appeases Lancer- the two keeping with their usual banter as the mixtape finished. Swatch remains silent, simply enjoying the moment with them both, maybe they would thank the swatchlings for giving them the morning off.

Maybe. They wouldn’t want them to get too cocky.

But…perhaps they will take a full day off sometime in the future, if this is what they were missing when they were always at work… Mmm, maybe not a full day. But another morning for sure.

#sugars sweet treats #deltarune #swatchkaard #rouxls kaard #swatch #lancer #whehehe #grips these two in my hands

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pokemoncreepypasta · 3 years ago

Text

HM Slave

[STORY SOURCE]

The Generation I games. Definitely not perfect games by any means, but they were fun to play.

It's a shame my old cartridge’s battery has been long since dead. Makes sense, it was a hand-me-down from an older sibling of mine. Between both of our times playing it, it was bound to die sometime.

I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to play it again after so many years...

The trouble was, I had no intention of learning how to replace the battery, or buying a new cartridge. None of that appealed to me.

So, I just took it upon myself to play it without saving. Any time I wanted to stop, I’d just plug it into my charger, and leave it be.

Everything about this run was just for nostalgia. It was nothing personal to me, so I didn't name Red after myself or something.

I wanted to play through this game without getting attached to anything.

The best way to go through without caring? A starter-only run. I chose Charmander, since it was the cover ‘mon, and also my favorite of the three. Not necessarily because it would make the game easier in the long run.

Of course, there’s no way I’d be able to get through with just Charmander.

My plan was to catch a Pokémon specifically to use as an HM slave, so my Charizard wouldn’t be clogged up by useless moves in the long run.

And what better HM slave than the one who can learn them all, right?

In Generation I, you can’t delete moves in any way, so an HM slave was absolutely necessary.

Not like I hated Mew or anything... I just never performed the Mew glitch as a kid and thought that this would be a fun opportunity to try it.

The darned thing did everything within its power to not get caught, blowing through every single one of my PokéBalls that I’d prepared to catch it with. Hey, it wasn’t like I was going to need them later, so I didn’t complain.

I decided to nickname the little thing. I’d heard the term “HM mule” thrown around in place of HM slave, so I thought it would be funny.

Of course, picking the Fire type had its rocky start, with its disadvantage against the first two gym leaders.

I managed to scrape by with scummy tactics, though.

I’d switched to my Abra that I’d caught to perform the Mew glitch, and let Misty knock it out.

After that, I switched to Mewl for the free turn, and then healed my Charmeleon. Then, after Mewl fainted, I got a free switch into Charmeleon.

When the battle was over, I could proudly claim the Cascade Badge.

This was Mewl’s secondary purpose, to be switch fodder for me to heal my starter.

Things were going fine until Mewl learned Cut.

The first instance where Mewl’s “skills” would come into play.

This was a game where you couldn’t use HMs from the overworld, so I went to the menu to manually select it.

“MEWL ignored orders...”

Now, imagine my surprise when my slave wouldn’t listen to orders. I tried a few more times, with the same result.

I attempted to rationalize it, picking my brain for a reason. I assumed that you could not use HM moves while a Pokémon was fainted, but something about that didn’t seem right.

I healed at the Pokémon Center to be safe though.

That seemed to work, so I assumed that I was right and continued to Surge.

Nothing really unusual happened during the fight, but Mewl was knocked out again for a free heal.

On my way out, I had to cut down the tree blocking Surge’s gym again. I was worried for a moment that I had gotten myself stuck, but Mewl cut it down just fine.

I figured the game would let me use HM moves if I would be trapped otherwise.

I went back to the center to heal up my starter, and my stubborn little mule.

(And Abra too, I guess.)

I caught and released a few throwaway Pokémon to obtain Flash, which I immediately taught to Mewl.

I made my way to Rock Tunnel.

”MEWL won’t obey!”

I was frustratingly met with this. It was fully healed, I couldn't understand why it was disobeying. I wondered if it was some sort of consequence from having an illegitimate Mew...

I kept trying and trying, but no matter what, it wouldn’t light the cave.

I was sure this little bugger didn’t want to wander around in the dark just as much as me, so I really couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

I tried checking its summary, to which its blank, neutral expression had changed to something more... defiant?

I didn't know what kind of sick joke Morimoto was pulling on me by programming Mew to be this way, but I wasn’t having any of it.

It dawned on me that Abra could also learn Flash, so I just let Mewl be prissy and lit up the cave with Abra.

I somewhat regretted my choice to teach Mewl Flash. If I had known it was going to act like this, I would have just taught it Fly instead…

I decided to go ahead and skip getting Fly, since Charizard couldn't learn it anyway.

Thankfully, I made it out of Rock Tunnel just fine.

Charizard made Erika’s gym a total joke, so I didn’t even need Mewl as fodder for this fight.

The whole game was going fine so far up to Fuchsia City, and I had completely forgotten about Mewl’s disobedience by now.

I had obtained its final two moves, so I booted the HMs up and slapped them onto it.

Of course, to use Surf and progress, I had to face off against Koga.

Things were going well up until Charizard couldn’t deal with Koga’s last Pokémon.

I sent in Mewl to heal my Charizard.

”Enemy WEEZING used SLUDGE!”

“MEWL ENDURED the hit!”

Strangely, when Weezing attacked Mewl, it didn’t get knocked out in one hit like it was meant to. Instead, it stayed in the field.

While I wanted to question it at the time, I just used a Hyper Potion on my Charizard to get it back to full.

”Enemy WEEZING used SMOG!”

“MEWL ENDURED the hit!”

Sure enough, I wasn’t dreaming. Mewl was somehow surviving all of Koga’s attacks. Normally that would be pretty cool, except for the fact that Mewl was level 7 and therefore effectively worthless in this fight.

I had to wait for it to faint to switch to Charizard, but Mewl kept surviving every hit that was thrown at it.

”Enemy WEEZING used TOXIC!”

“MEWL”s hurt by poison!”

“MEWL fainted!”

Thankfully, it eventually became poisoned and went down, so I could send in Charizard to finish the job.

I made quick work of Koga and his Weezing after that and made my way out of the Gym.

But weirdly, as I was leaving, I couldn’t help but notice the screen flashing as if a Pokémon in my party was still poisoned.

I checked my party again to see what was up.

It seemed like Mew had a custom sprite for being knocked out that I never noticed before. I didn't even know if that was a thing.

But it was definitely knocked out, for sure, so I brushed it off as some sort of bug.

I figured if anything would fix the poison glitch, it’d be healing at the Pokémon Center.

”If you drive your POKéMON too hard, they’ll dislike you.”

”Please take better care of your POKéMON.”

I was confused at this text. Was this dialogue hidden for players like me who let their Pokémon faint over and over? Whatever it is, I have never seen it before.

”We hope to see you again!”

The nurse went back to her chipper disposition afterwards though, so I figured I should just be on my merry way as well.

I checked up on Mewl to see how it was doing now.

It seemed like the nurse just haphazardly patched it up. Mewl’s expression still looked tense, but I hoped that didn’t mean it wouldn’t use its new HM moves.

I made a quick note to take down Giovanni at Silph Co. and Sabrina. My Charizard was actually getting a bit over-leveled, so I swept through without needing to use Mewl to heal during battles at all.

I decided that on my way to Blaine, I would fall back on my training a bit.

I back-tracked over to Fuchsia City since it was faster than going all the way back to Pallet Town.

I made my way down by the Fuchsia coast and hoped quietly that Mewl would let me Surf to Cinnabar.

Thankfully it seemed like the 1’4 cat was perfectly fine with me riding on its back, with no defiance at all. I felt confident, like I was finally getting enough gym badges to make it obey.

I'd even gotten it to listen when I needed it to use Strength in the Seafoam Islands. Things were really looking up.

I’d finally hit land and was ready to storm the Cinnabar Mansion and claim Blaine’s badge.

I was feeling pretty confident with my Charizard’s HP and level that I wanted to take on the Gym without healing at the Pokémon Center.

I had plenty of Potions and Revives in case of emergency, anyway.

All of the quiz questions were normal, except... This bizarre one.

“You treat all your POKéMON fairly?”

Though it had been several years since I played this game, something felt off about it, like it wasn’t supposed to be there.

I half-heartedly answered yes, despite knowing it was untrue. My logic was, at the very least, that even though I as a player didn’t care about these Pokémon, maybe Red did.

”Sorry! Bad call!”

The buzzer went off and I was harassed by a trainer. I was appalled... Was the game really criticizing me as a player?

Had I hit some sort of secret flag after making Mewl faint so much? I couldn't understand what was happening.

I didn’t give myself much time to think about it though, so I healed up my Charizard with some Potions and took on Blaine.

Charizard had fainted again, so I left it up to Mewl.

I healed up my Charizard and expected Mewl to hang on like before, but it just went down with no resistance.

With my seventh gym badge in hand, I was pretty happy with my run so far. A couple more hours in and I’d be done, I thought.

I was ready to Surf north towards Pallet Town and claim my eighth and final badge.

“MEWL ignored orders!”

But I received a friendly reminder.

I had forgotten that Mewl didn’t like using HMs without being healed. I really didn’t feel like taking it to the Pokémon Center though, so I just carelessly threw a Revive at it.

Hoping that the Revive would be good enough to satisfy it and let me ride on it again, I mashed through text a few times to see if I could brute-force it to listen.

”MEWL won’t obey!”

”MEWL turned away!”

It kept bombarding me with the same defiant messages over and over, until...

“MEWL hates you.”

I was caught off-guard. This text didn’t have the same energy as the others, lacking an exclamation point. It sounded like flat, cold, genuine hatred.

I pressed A again, and attempted to order another Surf. Not necessarily because I wanted it to Surf now, but more out of a morbid fascination with such intense text.

“MEWL used instead, FLASH!”

Suddenly, like in a battle, the screen lit up totally white.

I was booted out of the party screen afterwards, and immediately noticed a distinct lack of an items menu. Had Mewl taken it from me?

Closing out of the menu, I spoke to the Pokémon now standing next to me, knowing exactly who it was supposed to be.

”Mew!”

Mew’s cry played. I already knew it.

“MEWL hacked away with CUT!”

I flinched, horrified at the thought of Mewl directly attacking my trainer.

”HM01 was destroyed!”

But then I realized, it wasn't that...

”HM03 was destroyed!”

Instead, Mewl had stolen my items...

”HM04 was destroyed!”

… And was proceeding to destroy each of my HMs, one by one.

”HM05 was destroyed!”

After destroying HM05, Mewl’s sprite disappeared; presumably back into its PokéBall.

I was exasperated, but quick on my wits.

I still had Fuchsia City's Pokémon Center as my last saved location, meaning I could use Abra to Teleport back to the mainland.

I was smug, thinking I'd found a loophole around Mewl's attempts to sabotage me.

”ABRA used TELEPORT!”

“ABRA ran away!”

I panicked, to say the least. I frantically scrolled around my party page. How could Abra have disappeared like that? I wasn't going to accept Mewl being my only ride back to Pallet, it was impossible.

I desperately went to the PC inside the Pokémon Center, in some vain hope that maybe Abra had just been sent there somehow.

”MEWL used STRENGTH.”

“The PC was destroyed!”

I couldn't believe it.

Mewl had gone full rogue.

I suddenly had to come to grips with the horrifying realization...

I was trapped in Cinnabar with no way off.

I went through what I can only describe as the five stages of grief.

Stage 1 - Denial

I scoured the internet for any other Pokémon in Cinnabar Mansion that I could use to escape the island.

I quickly remembered that Mewl had already destroyed my HMs and stolen my items, and realized I couldn’t catch anything.

But I did have one more plan.

If I could knock out Charizard and Mewl, I could be sent back to Fuchsia. It would take a bit of work for Charizard to eventually faint, but I was prepared to try anything.

”CHARIZARD ran away!”

But I couldn’t be prepared for my Charizard running away.

I was so shocked that I didn’t even want to send in Mewl, I just said no and fled the battle.

I fell into absolute despair. Mewl had not only ruined my chance of getting off the island, but now, even if I did, what would I do without the only Pokémon I’d been raising?

Stage 2 - Anger

I’d never thought malicious thoughts about this Mew before, just casual indifference and sometimes mild frustration. But I can’t say that I didn’t want some payback towards this Mew for wasting several perfectly good hours of my life.

I sadistically thought about how I would make it faint, and then how I would torture it over, and over, making it repeatedly faint until maybe it would measure up to Charizard’s strength.

“MEWL ENDURED the hit!”

I couldn't stop myself from shouting "NO."

Despite Mewl’s apparent injuries, it hung on with one HP.

Again, and again, no matter what I did. No matter what Pokémon I faced.

It seemed like nothing could poison it, burn it, kill it.

Then, it dawned on me…

Maybe this was what Mewl wanted all along?

Stage 3 - Bargaining

Mewl’s stubbornness and special ability that made it unable to faint...

It took Mewl a long time to faint its first real opponent, due to its low level, but in the end, it grew.

I checked Mewl’s summary for some sort of sign, anything at all, that this was what I was supposed to be doing. It stared at me with its vacant, unreadable expression...

Perhaps it was shocked I had battled with it? Whatever the case, it wasn’t staring at me with hostility anymore...

So it was silently agreed between us, then. Mewl and I, we did our first ever grinding session.

It took a few hours, but Mewl’s level was growing steadily. Things seemed to be going well, until...

We ran into our first wild Ditto.

I thought it was strange, having not found a Ditto for all this time I'd spent in Cinnabar Mansion, but I didn’t see any trouble with fighting it, so I just let the battle progress.

Stage 4 - Depression

The Ditto transformed into Mewl, who appeared to have a sad expression on its face.

I quickly pulled out of the battle screen and into my party to see if something had changed with Mewl.

I checked to see Mewl, who had that same sad expression as the Ditto. Its status had changed from "OK" to a worrying "...".

I knew something was wrong, so I fled from that battle and every battle afterwards.

Though I had avoided it before on hopes of somehow escaping to Fuchsia City, I gave it all up to heal Mewl, who had risked life and limb to impress me.

After it was healed, I checked its summary again.

Though it had fully healed, it still had that depressed look in its eyes. I couldn’t understand want it wanted. I didn’t know what it needed.

But I realized that it was getting pretty late, and I wanted to get to sleep soon. I would have to leave the game on, and leave Mewl behind.

That was when it hit me.

Could it be possible that Mewl knew I hadn’t saved? Did Mewl somehow understand that no matter if I saved or didn’t save, it would disappear when I turned the game off?

I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but Mewl was more special than any other Pokémon I’d ever played with.

And if I turned the game off, it would disappear forever.

I didn’t know how to feel about that.

I went out of the Pokémon Center to reflect about this with Mewl.

I still wanted to finish the adventure with it, if it would let me.

Stage 5 - Acceptance

“MEWL doesn’t want to go.”

That was okay, I thought.

I realized that even if I went with Mewl to the Pokémon League, and won, then the game would return to the title screen and not save my progress.

Maybe Mewl understood that, too.

So then we were at an impasse, together on Cinnabar Island.

I didn’t know what to do. Even if this Mew was special, even if I genuinely believed it was real, I couldn’t just keep my GameBoy on forever. What would anyone else think?

I decided that for the first time in this entire run, I wanted to save my game. I didn't want to turn it off just yet, but at least save, as some sort of precautionary measure.

I hoped, that in the event the GameBoy turned off for whatever reason, a miracle would occur.

”Would you like to SAVE your MEW?”

It seemed that the game knew exactly what my heart wanted, and I selected yes.

Then, all of a sudden, my game turned off. Not due to low battery or anything, but it just turned off.

I panicked for a moment, and quickly switched the game back on.

It was gone. The save file was gone.

Or, rather, it was never there to begin with.

#Pokemon Creepypasta #Pokepasta #Mew #HM Slave

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t0wnspersonb · 5 years ago

Text

The Eagle and The Rabbit (Ushijima Wakatoshi x Reader)

Anonymous said:

hiiican i request wakatoshi having a small and shy manager s/o who got lost in one of their matches and someone was tryna hit on her so, that so happens to be a player from the team they are playing against

~~~

Word Count: 1,839

Summary: Your directional skills weren’t the best, but it never mattered as long as Ushijima was by your side. But what happens when he’s not?

~~~

I hope you guys enjoy some more Wakatoshi bullshit lol. I still have quite a bit of requests I’m still shuffling through so please be patient with me with uploading new content. I’ll probably be doing two more requests before I close it for now. I want to write a bit more stuff that isn’t related to Haikyuu. I hope ya’ll are Kuroko no basket fans and Naruto fans😂👀 because that’s probably going to be my next set of fics coming out!

I would also like to dedicate this to not only this wonderful anon who had such a cute idea but also to my @sunshinewitchz who is a fucking simp for Wakatoshi. but aren’t we all?

Anyway please enjoy!:)

~~~

“Wait.” Ushijima said, grabbing you by the collar of your team jacket, yanking you back to his side.

You looked up at him in confusion, the rest of the team heading towards the changing rooms.

“What is it Toshi?” you asked quietly.

He stared at your sweet face for a moment, appreciating the cuteness that you were displaying right now.

“Your sense of direction is terrible. I’m worried that you’re going to get lost.” He said simply.

You pouted at his words, while there was truth to it, he didn’t have to phrase it so bluntly.

“I’ll be fine. We’ve been here before.” You said softly, fidgeting at the ends of your hair, a habit that you always had.

You were Ushijima’s childhood friend turned girlfriend, as well as the manager of Shiratorizawa. A damn good one at that.

The only issue was that - well yes, you got lost easily. It had always been that way. Even as a child your sense of direction was extremely poor, and it didn’t improve as you got older. But to you it didn’t matter, Ushijima was always by your side, a constant protector in your life, so you never really thought about improving your directional skills.

As long as he was with you. You were always safe.

Ushijima frowned at your words. “You still get lost in places you’ve visited before.”

You sighed softly, gently straightening his jacket. “It’s fine Toshi, you need to change. The rest of the team is going to start wondering where you went. Besides I have to finish doing my manager duties before your game starts.”

He studied your face once more, his expression softening slightly. He rested his large hand on top of your head, gently ruffling the hair. “You work too hard. Don’t overdo it.”

“You guys work harder, I just want to make it a little bit easier for you all.” you said quietly, giving him a sweet smile.

Ushijima’s heart thumped hard in his chest, you were the sweetest thing he’s ever laid eyes on, and the fact that you were his… he had never been more content in his entire life.

He gently pressed his palm against your soft, plump cheek, feeling it warm under his touch. “I’ll see you in a bit. Pay attention to your surroundings.” he warned, before walking off.

You giggled quietly to yourself, watching his retreating figure. Sometimes he was too overprotective.

Not that you minded though.

You hummed quietly to yourself as you began filling up the water bottles, planning to make their drinks and finishing up the rest of your manager duties.

By the time you had finished your duties, you hadn’t realized that it was getting close to the meet time with the boys, right before the match.

But… where was that again?

“Oh no.” you said quietly, mentally slapping yourself at the fact that Ushijima was right. You hadn’t been paying attention when you went to make the drinks for the team, you couldn’t remember how to get back to where you were before, because at least you could find your way to the gym from that point.

You reached into your jacket pocket for your phone, only to come up empty handed. You slapped your forehead with your palm. Ushijima was holding onto it for you.

“I guess I’ll just start walking and see where I end up. Hopefully, the boys are looking for me now.” You mumbled to yourself and turned down one of the hallways.

But after making three wrong turns and still having now idea where you were, you started to get nervous.

Ushijima was definitely going to lecture you. A lot.

You were too wrapped up in your thoughts to even take notice of your surroundings. It wasn’t until you ran into something hard and warm that you realized you bumped into someone.

You looked up and saw a guy with black spiky hair, he was wearing a volleyball jersey that you weren’t familiar with, and he was big… very big.

You looked away from his face immediately, a red blush coating your cheeks in embarrassment as you bowed to him carefully. “I’m so s-sorry.”

Unbeknownst to you, the tall player was checking you out, a small smirk overcoming his features.

“No worries. Are you here to cheer on your boyfriend or something?” he asked.

“Um… n-no… actually I -” you stuttered out nervously. “Are you lost?” he interrupted, his eyes continuing their up and down movement on your small form.

You started to feel uneasy, your eyes darting around to see if there was anyone else. The halls were empty.

“Umm… kinda…” you said softly, trailing off.

His smirk widened, his hand resting on your shoulder forcefully. You winced in pain and fear from the sudden contact.

“I can help you find your way… or we can have a bit of fun before my next match starts.” He said slyly, leaning down closer to your face.

You flinched away, your heart racing like a hummingbird at this point, genuine fear prickled at your skin; stung at the backs of your eyes.

“N-N-No thanks. I sh-should be going now…” you whimpered out quietly, attempting to free yourself from his grasp that was now clutching at your elbow.

“What’s the hurry cutie?” he asked, backing you up against the wall, his hands now resting on either side of your head, preventing you from escaping.

Your lips trembled as you bit back tears. Your heart was thumping painfully in your chest at this point, your body shaking like a caught rabbit, and the guy that was cornering you was the snake, preparing himself for his next meal.

“It turns me on when you shake like that.” he whispered, eyes flashing dangerously as he leaned closer to your now tear stained face.

“Waka-” “What the hell are you doing?” just as you were about to call out for your savior, he was already there.

Your boyfriend’s large frame shook in anger, his glare was piercing as he stared down at your attacker.

Rage was rolling off him in waves, his demeanor resembling that of an angry eagle, ready to kill.

He was already in his uniform, his team jacket hanging off his broad shoulders, large hands clenched tightly into fists at his sides.

The tall male that cornered you froze in fear, sweat beading on his forehead at the immense amount of pressure he was now feeling from the Shiratorizawa ace.

“O-Oh, is this your manager?” the guy stuttered out, now noticing the similar jacket you wore.

“That’s my girlfriend.” Ushijima stated, his voice a deep and dark baritone. “Get away from her. Now.”

The male nodded rapidly, immediately stepping aside. “I’m s-sorry Ushijima-san. I didn’t know…”

The icy glare that overtook Ushijima’s face sharpened, if looks could kill… that guy would be six feet under by now. He quickly walked over to the trembling volleyball player, grabbing the front of his jersey, and yanking him up to eye level.

You had thought that the male that cornered you was huge, but compared to Ushijima, he was considerably small. A snake in the talons of a great white eagle.

“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know.” Ushijima said. “You shouldn’t be putting your filthy hands on any girl. People like you make me sick.”

You had never seen anyone more scared before. But the same could be said about Ushijima as he glanced over at you. He had never seen you so fearful before. It made his blood boil as he took in your trembling figure and tear stained face, you had collapsed onto the floor at this point, your shaky legs no longer being able to hold you up.

He gritted his teeth in anger before setting his eyes back on the figure in front of him. “I better not see you again.” he all but tossed the said male to the side, watching as he whimpered and scampered away.

Before you knew it, Ushijima was at your side, his large and powerful body crouched down to your level. “Are you okay?” he murmured tenderly, hands already moving to cup your face.

His eyes searched your face and body, making sure that you weren’t hurt. He didn’t notice any visible injuries to his relief, but he couldn’t stand the sight of the tears falling down your face.

“Toshi.” you sobbed out, throwing yourself into the ace, not that the sudden movement moved his solid body. He pulled you tighter into his chest, his large hands rubbing against your back soothingly as you cried.

He didn’t say anything as you cried, but his gentle touch, and the way that he held you, the way that his body crowded your small one, made you feel protected and loved. The heat from his hands sent a gentle comfort into your distressed heart, the coldness slowly seeping out of your body.

Once your tears had turned into quiet hiccups, he gently moved you out of his chest so he could look at your face.

His expression was soft as he gently wiped the remaining tears from your cheeks.

“Feel better?” he asked, tenderly cupping the side of your neck, his large thumb gently rubbing along your delicate jaw.

You nodded wordlessly, sniffling slightly as you rubbed at your eyes. He leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to your forehead, gently trailing more delicate kisses down your face before capturing your lips in a heartfelt kiss.

A gentle claim that he was here, that you were safe, and that you were his.

All too soon he pulled away but pressed his forehead against yours. “Good. We need to go meet up with the others. Everyone was worried when you didn’t show up at the agreed time.”

“I’m sorry.” you whispered softly. “I got lost.”

“We figured, that’s why we all went to look for you. I’m glad I got to you in time.” he said frowning, anger once again bubbling up as he thought of the position he had found you in.

He stood up, gently grabbing your hands, and pulling you up to your feet with ease. He tangled your fingers together as he tugged you along to the gym their match was going to be held out.

“Toshi?” you said quietly, gently squeezing his hand.

“Yes?” he asked, glancing down at you.

You beamed up at him, the sweetest smile coating your lips, your eyes held nothing but love and adoration for the tall ace.

“I love you.”

He looked away from you as a soft blush covered his cheeks, his fingers squeezing you back. “I love you too.”

****

“How come that guy is deliberately avoiding you Wakatoshi?” Tendou asked, cocking his head to the side as he watched a guy with spiky hair flinching and running away from the ball whenever it was Ushijima’s turn.

“Because he knows I’m going to break his arms.” Ushijima said bluntly, causing the familiar male to bow and apologize, much to everyone’s confusion.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #ushijima wakatoshi #ushijima wakatoshi x reader #reader insert #ushijima x reader #ushijima x you #ushijima fluff #haikyuu fluff #ushijima haikyuu #one shot #ushijima oneshot #request #ushiwaka #fluff #ushijima wakatoshi x you

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babyloposts · 4 years ago

Text

RoseBud

My Hero Academia Gang AU

Pairing(s): Sero Hanta x fem!reader

Warnings: language, drug use, explicit content, sexual themes, gang imagery, violence

Summary: a simple crush on a guy quickly turns south as you become wrapped up in an unsafe life of lies, drugs, and violence. What happens when you become a key player in a war between to rival gangs and have to deal with a complicated love life all at the same time.

—————————————————

0.5

You stayed occupied on your phone until Hatsume returned to finish up the details of your already sore rose. In the time it took for her to do whatever business she had with those boys, your numbing cream had began to wear off.

The tension in the room was thick. The previously care-free energy Hatsume possessed was replaced with a melancholic and faraway stare in her eyes.

“Alright babe I’m all done. Remember to clean the skin with a gentle anti-bacterial soap and use alcohol-free moisturizer alright.” There was a feigned happiness in Hatsume’s voice, but her eyes said it all. Whatever Bakugou had done to her, whatever he and the red head had taken from her must have dampened her mood more than the threat from earlier.

You nodded to Hatsume and she took her leave as you were re-dressing. Luckily the top you wore was a light fabric and didn’t rub against your tattoo too much, but you could tell, this was going to hurt in the morning.

Walking back into the main lobby you only found Sero. No Bakugou, Hatsume, or mysterious Red Head to be found. You wanted to be happy to see Sero, but the look on his face and the mark on his face were more than enough to dampen your mood.

“Sero, oh my God!” He cringed as your finger lightly danced over his bruised cheekbone. Your hand flew to him without even thinking. Quickly you whipped it back and silently scolded yourself for your overbearing nature. “I’m sorry I-”

“Don’t apologize. It’ll only make me feel worse about getting punched in the face.” He chuckled, but your expression never faltered. The worry was there and it wasn’t going anywhere. Your brain was rattling with questions of ‘why?’ and ‘what happened?’, but as soon as you even fixed your mouth to speak Sero was cutting you off with the sharp movement of rising to his feet.

“Let me drive you home. It’s late.” Without checking for a change in your face or any confirmation he turned to leave the shop, trusting that you had fallen instep behind him.

The car ride to your apartment didn’t answer any lingering questions either. The only sounds that graced your ears was the buzzing of the engine and the light sounds of J. Cole songs emanating from the stereo. Sero periodically asked for vague directions to your side of town, but surprisingly he found your small complex with ease.

“Thank you.” You sighed as he shifted the car into park. The car ride may have been soothing, but the fear for your new friend’s well-being never once left your gut.

“Don’t thank me. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do. And I pride myself on being a pretty nice guy.” The smile graced easily over his face as if he didn’t have a giant bruise forming under his eye. Your expression remained unmoving, your friend full of wonder as to what he was hiding from you. Yea, you had just officially met Sero tonight and he really isn’t obligated to tell you anything personal, but he was acting like none of that crazy shit just happened.

Sero chuckled, breaking through your bewildered inner monologue to move around and open your car door for you. “Alright, this is the part where you go home. Not that I’m trying to get rid of you.” He winked.

“R-right.” You get out of the car and start to your apartment. This didn’t feel right, the energy was too weird. You knew in the back of your mind that Denki was right. He had said Sero was a good guy and you’d be in good hands with him and he was right. Sero was probably trying to protect you from whatever shady business he was apart of, but you couldn’t leave this “date” where it was. You made it about half way to the door to enter the lobby of the building before you spun on your heels and placed your hands firmly on your hips. Sero was watching you as he leisurely leant on the hood of his black muscle car. Totally unbothered as you had come to expect.

“You’re not leaving here without me checking you out.” You said with all the gusto you could muster.

“Go ahead. I’m standing right here.” He smirked and drank you in with his eyes.

“Stop being an idiot and come upstairs with me. I can’t go to sleep tonight knowing that I just let you leave here with a black eye and I didn’t even offer you an ice-pack.”

“If you wanted me to come up to your apartment with you, you didn’t have to make up an excuse.” He punctuated his sentence with the chirp of his car doors locking and jogged up next to you.

“What happened to you being a gentleman?” You snorted.

“I can’t ever turn down an offer like that from you. I’ll take my chances.” He grinned slyly. You rolled your eyes trying to act like his charm wasn’t getting to you.

Sero followed you into the elevator and into your apartment. It was quaint and homey and smelled of bergamot incense. Luckily you had cleaned up a few days ago and your apartment was presentable to guests.

“You can sit on the couch I’ll get you some ice and a damp rag.” Without checking to see if he even listened to your instructions you busied yourself hopping from room to room of your apartment to gather the supplies to help his worsening bruise. Once you were back in the living room you instinctively pressed the makeshift ice-pack to Sero’s eye causing him to wince.

“That’s what you get for getting yourself beat up because of me.” You huffed.

“What do you mean? I didn’t-”

“I heard what he said Sero. That blond guy was yelling at Hatsume saying that you left the club before you were supposed to and he had to finish the job for you. You told me that you were done for the night. I wouldn’t have cared if we stayed longer.”

“I didn’t get beat up for you.” Softly, your hand was removed from in front of his eye. With Sero’s vision no longer obscured he could see the look of guilt clear as fat on your face. “I chose to leave. I was gonna do what needed to get done regardless, but my boss has little faith in me I guess. He sent his guard dog after me instead of trusting that I know how to get shit done.” Sero grumbled at the end. That seemed to have put him off. It was the one time his chill façade had faded that night.

“So... taking me to Hatsume was an excuse?”

Quickly the charm was back and he was reassuring you that you were priority number one. “No. Well kind of. I still wanted you to have a good time, but I would have had to see Hatsume tonight anyway. So, two birds and all that.” He shrugged.

With the ice pack now back on his face you started again, you found it was easier to speak your mind this way. No seductive eyes to sway the conversation. “Okay. But still. You should have checked in with whoever to avoid all this.” You gestured to his face.

“This happens more often than you think.”

“Sero. Be serious please.” You sighed. “You didn’t need to get hurt indirectly because of me. I’m not gonna ask what you or Bakugou needed from Hatsume, because obviously it wasn’t tattoo related, but can you at least promise me that you won’t leave working just to hang with me?”

“So there’s gonna be a next time.” His eyebrows wiggled, taunting you.

You stammered. You didn’t mean to sound presumptuous, but you were hoping he would want to go out with you again. “I mean yeah, I thought tonight was fun, all things considering.”

“Yeah? Me too.” His hand began to snake to your thigh that was now exposed to him as your skirt hiked up from your sitting position. The hand was comforting reminding you of the comfort you got from him earlier that night in the car.

“I-“ Your throat all of a sudden felt so dry. Clearing uncomfortably, you began again. “I don’t know if this is really gentlemanly.” You chuckled. Sero’s gaze at you did not falter for a second. His eyes were hazy and his eyelids dropped. The look in his eyes drew you in and you dropped the ice-pack from his face.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t keep my eyes off you. You’re beautiful.” You smiled as the compliment. Again the compliment on your beauty was unfamiliar, but greatly appreciated.

“Thank you... but I-” Your protests were quickly silenced by the force of his lips pressing against yours.

Like ice against a flame you melted into the kiss automatically. Your lips mended together perfectly. His felt rough, slightly chapped, but the way he moved in rhythm with you caused you to swoon. You were both drunk on each other’s touch. His hands roamed you lower body and rested on your waist, while you explored his hair and massaged his scalp with your finger tips.

A firm squeeze to your upper thigh elicited a gasp from your lips breaking the kiss and allowing Sero just enough time to slip your blouse over your head. What a pleasant surprise it was to find you without a bra on to obstruct his view. “Nice tat.” He smirked.

To avoid the embarrassment bubbling in your chest you shut him up this time by climbing into his lap and resuming the kiss where you had left off. In this position he had free reign of your body. His hands explored every inch of your legs, ass, and back.

You were a frustrated moaning and groaning into his mouth which only made him want to touch you more. Those intimate sounds making him harden beneath you.

Sero was undeniably sexy. You had fantasized about being with him before you really knew him, but everything went beyond your expectations. The way his rough hands felt against your body, the way his tongue and lips felt tangling with yours and his scent. It was a strong mix of cologne, weed, and something almost sickeningly sweet. You could have sworn it was...

Cherry Blossoms.

As if I’ve cold water had been poured on you, you ended your make out session with your crush prematurely.

“What happened?” Sero finally showed some other emotion. A mix of curiosity and worry.

You panicked how could you explain this. “Sero... you- you don’t want me.”

“The fuck are you on? Of course I want you.” His eyes flicked down taking in the sight of you bare chested and sitting on his straining erection.

“No you don’t. I’m sorry but, it’s my quirk that’s making you like me.”

“Huh?”

previous|next

Masterlist

Taglist: @black-bhabie-2000

#babylowrites #bnha x black!reader #bnha #mha #mha x female reader #bnha bakugou #black writers #mha bakugo x reader #bnha sero #sero hanta x reader #sero x female reader #sero x black!reader #Kmainari Denki #ashido mina #mha todoroki #mha kirishima

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suganovakawa · 4 years ago

Text

𝐒𝐀𝐔𝐃𝐀𝐃𝐄 .

PAIRINGS : tooru oikawa x fem! reader , slight hajime iwaizumi x fem! reader

GENRE : angst , romance

WARNINGS : cursing , car accident , recovery from amnesia

SYNOPSIS : tooru doesn’t understand how special you are to him until he comes close to losing you forever . as he struggles to comes to grips with his feelings and balance it with his future , you still have to recover from your own injuries , but without your memories to assist you .

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐗𝐈 < [ 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐗𝐈𝐈 ] > 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐗𝐈𝐈𝐈

word count : 1.8k

there shouldn’t be any harm in checking on tooru and his injured knee.

saudade masterlist .

SAUDADE

( 𝐧 . ) a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant , or that has been loved and then lost ; “ the love that remains ”

⠀everyday was like going in circles and yet never knowing what the destination is supposed to be. each day seemed to be nothing more than a loophole chains of events, only to restart back at square one tomorrow. this investigation of yours was getting nowhere, and your hope of remembering anything was becoming more of a fever dream than an actual possibility.

⠀demanding hajime to tell you everything wouldn't work, he could out-stubborn you at any given time. makki and mattsun were no longer willing to tell you a thing, for fear they'd get the iron fisted beatdown of a century from their third year peer. oikawa didn't seem like much of an option either, especially with hajime's strange request to stay away from him at all times.

⠀with nothing else to think about, your new subject of thought was that fateful conversation in the gym not so long ago. not really a conversation; truly, more like a one sided rant to someone you hardly even knew. as far as you knew, you were probably strangers with tooru oikawa before the accident. iwa still had yet to explain the conflict between him and his fellow volleyball player, and you were honestly believing that he was never planning to.

⠀you had seen him walk in with crutches the following day, absolutely distraught that his injury was that bad. you had seen the brace on his knee as he practiced serving in the gym, but you never knew how bad his knee was until you broke his line of concentration. you couldn't even go and check on him, with iwaizumi sitting right there. no one knew how or why he walked in with crutches, and he never explained why, either. you wanted to stand up on stage and tell everyone yourself to hold yourself accountable for being the cause behind his unfortunate incident.

⠀"i'm staying after school today, hajime." a more spontaneous decision was made minutes before the last bell of the day rang, causing your friend to look at you strangely. he didn't seem suspicious of you, but he certainly had questions.

⠀"do you want me to stay behind with you?" he asked, his lips pursed as you looked at the clock. there was a hope in the back of your mind, a silent plea that he would be there today as well. the odds were low with the circumstances that you had caused yesterday, but there was no harm in trying. if not in the gym, he could possibly spend his time somewhere else?

⠀"no, you can go home." you shook your head as you turned back to him, keeping a straight face as to not sound strange. "you can walk me tomorrow, and we can even go out to eat. my favorite place, of course." you grinned, lightening the mood with a playful punch to his shoulder. "how's that sound?"

⠀chuckling to himself with a shrug, he soon nodded his head. "alright, deal. i'll pay." your eyes widened at his reaction, opening your mouth to retaliate but he shushed you. "i won't take no for an answer, you know how i am."

⠀"yeah, i know." rolling your eyes with a smile of your own, you breathed a sigh of relief. even if things have been strange, hajime was still your friend. you were thankful of how eager he was to help you and stand at your side at the drop of a hat. he was a handful at times, but you were thankful for him. "i'm surprised you're not broke because of me at this point."

⠀"nah. you're pretty satisfied with easy things anyway." you scoffed and turned away, earning a bigger laugh from iwaizumi. "i'm kidding. but i'm still paying tomorrow."

⠀"fine." just as you replied, the bell rang throughout the school, indicating the students that their last class of the day had come to a close. your heart leaped as you stood up, picking up your books and supplies almost too excitedly. you stopped yourself and secretly hoped that he would stay around the school.

⠀"y/n." you felt a hand around your wrist as you left the classroom, turning around to see iwaizumi hesitating to speak further, yet his grip unwavering.

⠀"hajime?"

⠀"i'm sorry." you creased your eyebrows in confusion, watching intently as his eyes refused to look into yours. "i know... i've been a pain your ass. this whole car incident, i can't imagine how frustrating it must be for you." you weren't sure where this was going, so you chose to stay silent. "i just want you to know that i haven't been able to make your life easier, but i promise from now on, it won't be that way."

⠀your jaw clenched. the only thing you wanted to accompany such an apology is an explanation and full story of what you've been wanting since you gathered your senses. "i see," you muttered, nodding your head slowly. "thank you, hajime."

⠀"i'll treat you right, okay? i swear on my life." once he loosened his hold, you pulled your wrist away and nodded again steely, pressing your lips upwards into a soft, half-hearted smile. even with such sincere, sweet words, he still refused to tell you anything. "you can trust me."

⠀"i know, hajime. i trust you." you nodded your head, waving goodbye to him before turning the corner, beginning your search around aoba johsai for the one person you want to talk to. why did you want to talk to him? he looked so uncomfortable with you around, you almost felt guilty for even stepping near him. did you bully him in the past? did you two hate each other in the past?

⠀trying your luck, you braved a deep breath and made your way back into the gym, no plan in mind as you closed your eyes upon reaching the doorway that made way into the large gym, disappointed that you heard no sounds while you blocked your own vision.

⠀you were expecting to be met with a wave of more disappointment, until a startled voice broke the silence. "y/n?"

⠀your eyes shot open in surprise. you almost revealed your relief with a smile. right in front of you stood oikawa, leaning on a crutch supporting his injured knee. he was surprised as you were that you were entering the gym, but expressed it in a different way. "what are you doing here?" he followed up, his arm stiffening to support his weight to stand up straighter.

⠀you didn't realize how awkward this meeting would be until you stood face to face with him right here. there was no point in sugar coating it, you were already there, and he was right in front of you. "i was looking for you," you replied, standing up a little straighter yourself. "i wanted to know how you've been doing. seeing your crutches, you must've been hurt pretty bad." you bowed. "i'm sorry."

⠀"this? it's nothing. i'm on crutches at least once a month." looking back up at him, oikawa shook his head and looked away, using his free hand to scratch the back of his neck. "my knee has been pretty messed up for quite sometime now, it's no big deal. don't blame yourself over it. i was bound to hurt myself again, anyway."

⠀"then why don't you take a break?" it seemed quite obvious to you that the only remedy for these types of injuries was a hiatus and a time period to recuperate to not only heal your injuries, but to give some time to relax as well. "you should prioritize your well being."

⠀you watched the third year tense, his breath caught in his throat as he shook his head immediately, his eyes now going to the ground instead of at you. "i wish it were that easy," he mumbled. "maybe if i had the natural talent to take a breather, i would give myself a break. but i'm not naturally talented. i'm a setback, if anything."

⠀"nonsense!” you shook your head quickly, the words coming out of his mouth sounding like nothing but complete lies. "you're amazing! from what i witnessed yesterday, you're an amazing volleyball player." you paused for a second. "you played with hajime, right? what was your position?"

⠀"setter." the brunet's voice lowered. "actually, i was the captain of the team."

⠀"no way!" your eyes were practically sparkling at this point. "and you dare say you're not naturally gifted?" you placed your hands on your hips in disbelief. "i refuse to believe it."

⠀"oh, you should believe it, alright..." tooru began clenching his jaw, but you were too marveled to notice.

⠀"and i was the manager, so we must've definitely known each other before my accident!" you nodded matter-of-factly to answer your own question. "to think i can't remember anything you did as captain for the team... your teammates were definitely in great hands, i can just feel it! you - "

⠀"for the love of god, could you please get out of the way?" you stopped speaking the moment oikawa raised his voice, taking a step back instinctively. "y/n, i'm trying to get out of the gym, but i can't with you in the way. could you please move?"

⠀your pulse spiked in your system, the humiliation rushing to your cheeks faster than the blink of an eye. your legs moved mechanically to the side, your breathing uneasy as you locked your eyes to the floor, rendered speechless. this feeling was... all too familiar. you didn't like it. just thinking about it made your chest constrict a little bit. was this deja vu?

⠀it couldn't be, not when it was this effective.

⠀you heard oikawa curse under his breath, but you made no effort to look back up as the panic rose in his voice. "shit, y/n, i'm so sorry. i didn't mean to snap at you like that. it's just that i get annoyed when i can't practice, i get impatient. but by no means do i blame you for my knee! you're right, i shouldn't push myself, i should take a breather. i'm sorry, i'm so so sorry."

⠀by the time you looked up, oikawa looked like he was about to gush waterfalls out of his eyes at any given moment; the atmosphere between the two of you flipped completely, and your energy had long depleted. "no, i should be the one to apologize. i got ahead of myself, i didn't let you talk... again." moving your arms to cross awkwardly, the world seemed to mock your stupidity before backing up more from him. "i actually should probably get going now. again, i'm sorry about your knee. i'll probably be apologizing for it until you're off the crutches. see you around."

⠀you gave oikawa no time to reply as you hastily power walked your way out of seijoh, feeling suffocated as you made your way home, the deja vu eating you up as you continued to tread quickly. it couldn't be deja vu, there was no way.

⠀something in his tone of voice triggered something deeper than what your amnesia could cover. you had felt this way before. out of anything you could've recalled first, it was just your luck it had to be this.

⠀what was your relationship to oikawa before the accident, anyway?

a/n : honestly i have nothing to say, so look out for part 13 soon!

taglist ( closed ) — @ot127 @rena0921 @karlitabi-rrito @psychicpercyjacksonfan @crescentbitch @amelimiles @damnirina @pasta-warlord @blossomingbangtan @clinomanians @i-am-kinda-in-alot-of-fandoms @manq-fandoms @cirtruss @sugar-wara @haikoo @anime-simp @kairostatue @awkwardspontaneity @iwantapoptartqwq @aquariarose @softestdreamer @plantisnotplant @avylee @froppysgirl @that-animebitch @wisepandaslimeland @samanthaa-leanne @dumplingzumispam @0hakaashi @captain-janeway @afterglowkuroo @bellabelieveme @attixca @chickenrest @tycrackculture @ynjimenez @karaseijoh @lavieenblancetnoir @dabilove27 @cuddlesslut @crypto-s @keigosbitch @readeretal @shittykawaa @donghyuckster @adriloen @ella-solei @emiyummy @kukiisan @catyuyuyuu @sillykittt @dolan-mendes @kiritokunuwu @the-third-wall @yammerss @monviemoo

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hajimewhore · 4 years ago

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Body Swap 👫 (Iwaizumi Hajime/Reader) ➸Rated T, fem!Reader, 2.1k words ➷Humor, fluff, awkwardness, mild miild nsfw but not explicit, I will say I can only assume this kinda thing happens when you swap bodies lol ➷ Masterlist, Part 1, Part 2, ✈Part 3, Part 4

You initially dreaded the conversation with Hajime’s parents, wincing on the way through the door with a slight panic washing over you. But after a short and pleasant talk with them, you came to find the conversation flowed more naturally than you’d anticipated.

They’re not as doting to Hajime as they are to you, you note, but they’re friendly and pleasant and you feel as if you’re talking to your own family. Much like your own parents wanted a son, Hajime’s always wanted a daughter, so they often acted as your second set of parents. You feel a bit silly in retrospect, they’re as charming as ever with Hajime as they are with you.

They mostly inquire about Hajime’s day, and after a bit you excuse yourself to ‘study’, escaping to Hajime’s room. You’re beginning to feel positive about the next school day after the interaction, confidence boosted.

Who knew you would turn out to be such a good actress, better than you thought! Award winning, honestly. This whole body swap will be a cake walk. You can totally pull off being Hajime!

It seems you can definitely pull off the acting portion, but the sweat sticking to your clothes from your exhausting (emotionally and physically) practice is starting to make you consider the hygiene aspect of the swap. Which, has you feeling wildly uncomfortable.

This cosmic joke, shitty trope of a situation has you experiencing humiliation and embarrassment at levels you didn’t even realize were possible to achieve.

Normally after a grueling practice, you wouldn’t hesitate to hop straight into the shower and blast the hot water over your skin, feeling your muscles and aches soothed. But this isn’t your skin, or your muscles. You’re consistently reminded every hour, minute, and second, that it’s all Hajime. You should feel comforted that he’s definitely experiencing the same emotional crisis as you, but it only serves to heighten your distress.

Cheeks immediately heating at that, you recall the conversation with Hajime from earlier at the park.

“Just... let’s not think about it. And let’s definitely not talk about it. It’s a natural part of life.”

You know full well of the agreement you came to with red stained cheeks, but is there any way you could go without it? And drench yourself with Axe body spray? Or whatever it is guys like to use. You bet it would make a good repellent, no one would want to talk to you if you smelled like that.

You scrunch your nose, dashing the thought immediately, definitely not. Not only would it make you feel gross, Hajime would whack you first thing in the morning, and probably shove you in the shower himself.

‘No big deal, no big deal, it’s no big deal, you can do this!’

You find yourself chanting silent encouragements as you peel your shirt off, pitching it into a laundry basket. When you catch your reflection, a dark pink creeps across your features.

Yep, that’s still Hajime’s face,

‘Gaaah, don’t look at me like that!’

You press your hands to your face, but you end up peaking through your fingers anyways. The low sweats definitely don’t help, and neither do Hajime’s well defined abs.

You’d been true to your word when you told Hajime you hadn’t seen anything, but now you’re a little desperate to know what the deal is downstairs.

You won’t look. You shouldn’t. You don’t look. You definitely do not look.

You look,

pulling the sweats down, and shoving the briefs just past your thighs, you bite your lip at the revelation.

Okay.

Alright.

This is fine.

This is totally fine.

Hajime is just secretly packing.

WHAT THE FUCK?

You suppose it wasn’t necessarily a secret, it was always assumed of Hajime. You’ve also been privy to the third years’ cock talk at lunch, and he always did exude big dick energy, but damn Hajime.

Wait. Are you—

NOPE.

NOPE NOPE NOPE YOU ARE NOT DEALING WITH THIS RIGHT NOW.

You cover your face again, a recurring action today it seems, cheeks burning rampant and hotter than ever before. You feel a prickly hot and itchy feeling light a fire up your back to your neck, the heat of pure, unbridled, embarrassment coursing every vein.

Were you... getting a boner?

NOOOOOOO.

From being turned on by Hajime? While you are Hajime?

This is some paradoxical bullshit you are simply not having right now, not tonight, not tomorrow, and hopefully never again.

Despite the shame and humiliation beating down on your psyche, you risk a glance to see how much bigger he looks than before.

“Cold shower, yep. Cold shower helps, right?”

You immediately shove the briefs the rest of the way down, before hopping in the shower, starting it up at the coldest setting. Hopefully the freezing water will wash away not only your transgressions but also your mortification.

You squeak at the cold, bite your lip and shiver, tough it out, and will away the uncomfortable situation.

You sigh, hoping the morning will go smoother than the swell night you had, hopping down the steps of Hajime’s house.

You cross the street to meet up with him and Tooru, already seeing their figures across the road.

“Ha-Hey.”

You almost slip up with his name, but you make a clean save. Mentally patting yourself on the back, you glance to see Hajime’s bitter expression and—

Your jaw drops when you catch sight of... yourself. Your silent wish for a trouble-free morning is cast aside as you examine his appearance.

Hair unkempt, face completely bare, not even moisturizer or at least sunscreen to be seen, did he even try?

“Ha hey to you too, Iwa-chan.”

Tooru raises a brow at the odd introduction, clearly noting the slip up (and also the fact that Hajime usually settles for a short grunt and never a ‘Ha-hey’), but you can’t be bothered to entertain him right now with the current Hajime dilemma.

“Right, whatever,” you direct your attention to Hajime, “can I grab that thing I lent you yesterday?”

“What are you talking about? You’re being weird, Hajime.”

He warns you with a stern look, but you aren’t having it,

“I’m not, I know you have it, we can grab it right now. Tooru, you go ahead. I’ll see you later.”

You push Hajime back in the direction of your house, and Tooru frowns at his abrupt seclusion with zero explanation.

“Are you guys seriously ditching me?”

Tooru raises a brow, arms akimbo with a disgraced look.

“Yeah, we are, Shittykawa. Let’s go.”

You hate to diss Tooru without a solid reason, but it’s pretty on brand for Hajime, so you bite out the nickname with minor discomfort on your lips. You impatiently grab Hajime, before pulling him towards the steps of your house, Tooru’s complaints going unheard behind you.

“Hajime! You’re not wearing any make up! And my hair is a mess!”

You whine out, sitting him down at your vanity.

Hajime merely scowls,

“Seriously? That’s what this is about? Don’t scare me like that, I thought there was something wrong.”

He moves to stand, but you shove him back into the seat with a little more aggression than intended, you lowkey forgot how strong Hajime was.

And Hajime looks up at you with a incredulous expression, feeling a little scandalized, as a woman, that you would handle him like that.

“There IS something wrong though. I look awful! At least wear some foundation and mascara, that stuff is easy to apply!”

You pull out your make up box, flicking on the mirror light.

“I think you look fine this way,” he huffs, “you don’t need all that shit.”

A frown tugs at his lips, and you feel your heartbeat quicken at his earnest display. You bite back a wistful sigh, this is exactly the reason you’ve always been so drawn to Hajime. Rough around the edges, but there there’s no bullshit when it comes to him. He doesn’t disguise his intentions, doesn’t waste time saving face. He’s just genuine, unadulterated, Iwaizumi Hajime, what you see is exactly what you get, and you honestly wouldn’t have him any other way.

Setting aside your thoughts for another time to privately dwell on, you ignore the feeling.

“Really? That’s nice of you to say. Keep going.”

You smile, pink dusting your cheeks. You hope your expression doesn’t look too soft as you continue to apply the makeup to his face.

“Fishing for compliments now? No way, Shitty-L/N.”

“Nooo! Don’t call me that!”

You pause mid powder to cry out in your indignation, to which he masterfully ignores fixating his gaze on something more interesting than your whining, like the window sill.

After a bit of complaining, back and forth bickering about how uncomfortable the make up feels, you continue with a light highlight and mascara. You stop once you’re satisfied with your work, not bothering to deal with any extras like eyeliner or eyeshadow.

“All this for what? It tickles, and you can’t even touch it.”

Hajime’s hand hovers over his cheek, careful not to smudge anything. You must’ve smacked his hand away too many times, it seems.

“You get used to it. Plus it can be fun to try different brands and colors, and the little confidence boost isn’t bad.”

“Not that you need it.”

Hajime sighs out, standing from the seat to stretch. You’re sure it’s meant to be an insult to the crude ego you (and Tooru) tend to display, but you sense an underlying meaning that winds up boosting your ego even more.

“Anyways, we’re all done! And with time to spare.”

You chrip, gleaming with pride at your work. Add that too the list of things you should be, actress, and make up artist (next to pro volleyball player of course).

Hajime glances to the mirror, “’looks nice, I guess,” he hums in very faint approval.

That’s as good as a compliment to you, so you’ll take it!

He shifts to make way for the door, hooking his school bag over his shoulder.

“And it was definitely easier to do it on you than myself. Hey, maybe when you learn how to put it on yourself, you can do it for me when we switch back?”

You hover around him eagerly, and he rolls his eyes, resisting the urge to not smack his own body.

“No way in hell. The most I’ll do while we’re switched is that eyelash shit and the foundation or whatever,” he pauses, averting his eyes, “and only because it makes you so happy for some damn reason.”

You grin, ecstatic with his unexpected compliance, pulling him into a hug,

“And that’s perfect, eyelash shit and foundation or whatever is good enough for me!”

“H-Hey! Knock it off!”

It feels weird, being so much taller and hugging your body, but it still feels right considering it’s Hajime despite it all.

He tentatively returns the embrace, albeit awkwardly with one arm.

“We’re gonna be late if we keep bullshitting. Let’s go!”

He gently pushes you off and hightails it out of your room, and you laugh trailing after his awkward stomps.

“Also, wear your skirt higher!”

You call out behind him.

“What? No way in hell! This is the school standard, you always wear it too high!”

He spins around, uncomfortably smoothing out the skirt pleats as if the action could make it lengthier.

“I have nice legs, and I want to show it off!”

You growl, chasing Hajime down the stairs, grabbing onto the waistline of the skirt.

“That’s stupid and you know it. Just who are you trying to impress?! They shouldn’t like you for your legs!”

He holds a tight grip on the skirt and you scowl, prying Hajime’s hands away to yank up the garment.

“No one, it’s called fashion!”

You successfully tug the skirt higher, but a bit too much considering your panties are on full display.

You snort at the sight, “Hajime, you dog, are you wearing my strawberry panties?”

Hajime feels a sense of shame at the sudden breeze, mockery, and unfathomable humiliation.

“Knock it off, it’s just a school uniform idiot! And what the fuck else was I supposed to wear?!”

He tugs the skirt back down and you click your tongue, grabbing a fist full of the fabric to hike it back up.

“What are you two doing, we’re gonna be late!”

Tooru swings the front door open with a huff, eyes locking onto the both of you. You freeze position, instantly dreading the conversation that’s sure to take place shortly, whereas the tall setter halts at the display before him.

His precious, dear, sweet, childhood best friend’s hands are grasping at his brutish, caveman, heathen of a best friend’s biceps.

Said precious bestie’s hands are trying to shove aforementioned despicable heathen’s grip from her skirt, cheeks bright red

“Uh, this... isn’t what it looks like?”

A/N: I had extra extra fun with this part hahahaa,, sorry for the cliffhanger but I had to do it to ya, next part soon!

taglist: @cybergovl

Masterlist, Part 4

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu reader insert #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fic #iwaizumi hajime #iwaizumi hajime/reader #iwaizumi hajime x reader

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whats-rambled-rambled · 4 years ago

Text

Smoke & Mirrors - part 4

Neil x Reader

Chapter 4: Save me

(see chapter 3, 2, 1)

summary: what’s gonna happen if we lock them together for some time...?

warnings: some violence, language and other explicit things, 18+

author’s note: 4,8k words, just because I thought I needed to add more plot to it because you wanted 2 shorter chapters instead of a longer one. Who’s laughing now?

Reading this may cause a slight whiplash. Sorry, not sorry.

song for this chapter: Aimee Mann - Save me

Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think, please?

----

The Protagonist’s eyes darted at Ives.

“And what did she say?”

“Short answer? Nunya,” Ives shrugged, closing the door behind him.

Wheeler giggled and TP looked at her in confusion.

“Long answer,” continued Ives, joining the other two by the coffee machine, “is that as long as they're doing their job, it doesn’t matter who they are fucking in their free time.”

“And are they?”

“What, fucking? I thought we’ve already--”

“No, doing their job,” TP pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I have a mission for them, but it requires locking them together for a significant amount of time.”

Wheeler took a sip from her cup. “If they don’t bond, they’ll bone, and I’d say it’s better than killing each other.”

Ives snorted, clearly amused, but TP hid his face in his palms and groaned lightly.

“Was that your plan all along?”

Wheeler gave them an innocent smile. “Wasn’t yours?” she asked, and as she caught the exchange of looks, her eyes lit up. “You’re welcome.”

-----

You found the car parked near the front door and you had to admit - that grey-ish sedan was the dullest, most ordinary vehicle you’d seen in a while. And that’s why it was perfect.

Neil tossed you the keys and proceeded to load your bags into the trunk. You went to check the GPS setting. The total route was calculated for a little over 5 hours, which gave you enough time to go over the details of the assignment at least once on the way there.

As your mission partner took the passenger seat, you handed him the tablet with all the documents loaded up and ready to go. He nodded, fortunately sparing you the small talk and unnecessary comments, and started reading through them out loud as you followed the GPS directions to your destination.

What you didn’t expect was an almost insultingly short length of reports from the previous stakeout teams, and even a slightly more detailed operation brief was not enough to keep you occupied for too long. Exhausting all the work-related topics, you tensed, suddenly uncomfortable in the silence between the two of you. Especially since you caught Neil’s stare, because if his furrowed brows could be any indication, you had a feeling he might start asking way too many questions any minute now.

As the radio crackled again, you groaned in frustration. There were still two hours left of traveling through the middle of nowhere, and you’d appreciate any distraction that wouldn’t make you want to drive into the nearest tree. Unlike talking to your partner.

Neil opened the glove compartment and searched through its contents. He found a thick CD case and started flipping through pages curiously. With the corner of your eye, you saw a grin lighting his face when he finally picked one.

As you heard the familiar piano notes, your knuckles on the steering wheel turned white. Oh, fuck no.

You glared at Neil, who was gently swaying his head, eyes closed, fighting himself to keep a straight face. When the lyrics started, he pressed his palms to his chest right over his heart and looked at you as he mouthed the words.

//When I was young

I never needed anyone

And making love was just for fun

Those days are gone//

You gritted your teeth and focused back on the road, trying to keep in check the rising anger already boiling the blood in your veins, as Neil was clearly feeling the song more and more with every line.

Well, at least this time he wasn’t--...

And then just as the chorus was about to hit, Neil mimicked the opening drum sequence and spread his arms wide, singing along:

//All by myself

Don't wanna be

All by myself

Anymore//

“If you don’t change that fucking song in the next 10 seconds, be ready to walk all the way to the city--...”

“Come on, it’s a classic!” he complained, the biggest smile not leaving his face even for a moment.

You smacked your tongue, finding your most casual voice, “...and I’m not gonna be bothered with pulling over.”

Neil turned down the volume so the music was barely audible, and while it was not what you’d asked him to do, he didn’t give you a chance to scold him.

“I bet you’ve spent at least one evening listening to that song with a big box of ice cream on your lap,” he smirked, closely watching your reaction to his words.

You could feel your ears burning. Fucking hell, you really hated his guts.

“No,” you scoffed, but even you were not convinced by the sound of that. Judging by Neil’s expression, neither was he. You winced and groaned, ”...shut up!”

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” - he shrugged - “been there, done that.”

“Of course you have,” you couldn’t help but snicker at the image planted in your head.

The blue eyes studied you for a while longer before focusing back at the view outside the window. Meanwhile, the song ended, getting replaced by an instrumental track. You turned the volume up and for the next minute or two, you drove in silence.

When you heard a light chuckle, you glanced at Neil again. There was something peculiar in the look on his face, a soft gaze in contrast to a knowing grin.

You sighed.

“Do I wanna know what you’re grinning about now?”

Neil raised a brow and his lips parted in an even wider smile.

“Probably not.”

You shook your head, drawing a long breath, wondering how you were going to survive the next forty-something hours together. You could just hope that being at the actual location and starting the real work was going to make it easier.

Grounding yourself, you stared into the darkness stepping back under the car’s headlights as dusk slowly turned into night. You noticed a faint glow of city lights reflecting in the clouds over the horizon and you relaxed slowly, tuning out anything other than the road ahead.

Just as the CD player jumped back to the first song again and you switched to a local radio station, now clear of static, you realized your companion had been unusually quiet for the last half an hour. You looked at the passenger seat only to find Neil deep in his sleep and your heart started beating a little faster. Suddenly, everything about the sight seemed endearing - the peaceful face under the ruffled blonde hair, the slightly open mouth almost hidden behind the turned-up collar of the dark navy jacket, the way he wrapped his arms around himself in a little self-hug…

Your lips curled into a fond smile and as your chest clenched painfully, you turned the radio down, wishing you could do the same thing to your feelings just as easily.

-----------

The second you pulled over in the alley at the back of the abandoned hotel, two figures emerged from the door and rushed in your direction. You recognized the fellow agents and jumped out of the car to make the exchange as smooth as possible.

“Ten-minute window until the patrol comes back,” you said to a short brunette, taking your bags out of the trunk and passing her the car keys.

“Got it,” she nodded, handing you the room key in return. “Our report should be ready before we reach HQ, I will send it to you ASAP.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the lack of an easy escape plan is intentional,” said Neil as he grabbed one of the bags and looked around.

“But it is,” you shrugged, walking into the building and heading to the nearest staircase. “No loose ends. You’re either good enough to make it out undiscovered and alive, or you get revealed and --...”

“...and then even having the cavalry on call is not going to make a difference, I get it,’ he sighed, matching your two-steps-at-once pace up the stairs, “Can’t say I like it, though.”

“So let’s try not to do anything stupid so we don’t get caught, shall we?”

A corner of your lips twitched as you heard him scoff at your remark, but to your surprise, he didn’t take the bait. Huh.

When you reached the room, you turned the lock and looked around, taking mental note of the location of every piece of equipment left by the previous team - two cameras, night vision binoculars, and a parabolic microphone placed by the windows. Some parts of the blinds on the windows were broken, others were missing, but the remaining parts still provided a decent cover from the curious eyes peeking up from street level. Other than that, the room was exactly what you would expect from a stakeout location - peeled-off wallpapers of an undefined color, a small table with an electric kettle, a couple of chairs, a mini-fridge, and a mattress.

As you went to check the last few minutes registered by the camera, Neil started unpacking the supplies. Seeing nothing interesting on the feed, you grabbed one of the water bottles he’d just put on the table and took a seat by the window, your usual first-hour-of-stakeout enthusiasm fending off the tiredness you felt after the long drive.

Neil took a laptop and sat on a chair at the other window, alternating glancing outside and typing in a message to TP with a quick update on your situation.

Your main objective was to observe the building on the other side of the street, especially one loft that was suspected to be a meeting place for one of the smuggling cells’ bosses. Snapping photos of the vehicles pulling over, of the visitors, and reporting any odd activity straight ahead. The usual. But it was past midnight already and your targets were having a pretty quiet night, apparently.

As Neil finished filing in the paperwork, he stretched his arms and groaned.

“Tea?”

You rubbed your eyes, a sudden wave of sleepiness flooded your brain as soon as you lost focus on the mission.

“Yes, please, there should be a box with a green one somewhere.”

“Ah, pity, I don’t know how well it’s gonna mix with the biscuits,” said Neil in a ridiculous posh accent, making you facepalm in response.

Partially, to hide an amused smile.

You really were that tired, huh?

“I take my tea with no sugar, no biscuits, and no snarky comments, thanks,” you huffed as your eyes followed him to the table.

“I, too, don’t like talking over a cuppa.”

“What did I just say--” you groaned, smacking your thigh in frustration.

Neil giggled and rolled his eyes, now lit by a playful twinkle. “All right, one ‘green tea no bullshit’ coming right up.”

“Thank you,” you sighed, glancing up to the ceiling as if it was supposed to help with the alarming level of annoyance in your system.

Less than two hours on-site and you already wanted to strangle him.

Among other things.

And before you could stop your tired brain, it brought up a memory of that karaoke night.

His hands roaming through your body. The sound of a belt buckle hitting the floor. Your frantic gasp when you felt him inside you. His firm grip on your hips. The heart racing in your chest. Your longing body pressing itself into him even further. His uneven breath on your neck. The quickening pace of his thrusts. Your eyes squeezing shut. His muffled moan when you tugged at his hair. The cold wall against your cheek. Your fingers interlocked. His arm wrapped around you tightly. The things whispered into your ear---

“Your tea.”

“Hmm?” you mumbled, blinking rapidly and focusing your gaze on a thermal cup in front of your face. “Oh, thanks.”

Neil studied your expression curiously, a sly grin hiding in the corner of his mouth.

“Pleasant daydream?”

“Maybe,” you sent him a smug smile and raised a brow.

His lips parted slightly at the implication. Drinking his tea, he schooled his features and sat back on the chair.

You spent the next moments enjoying the hot beverages, the silence becoming more comfortable with every sip you took. But as the time went by and you ran out of tea, the peacefulness turned into boredom.

Finally, Neil shuffled in his seat and turned your way.

"We should play a game."

Even though it sounded tempting, you didn’t trust those roguish sparks in his eyes.

“We already had a chance to play ‘yellow car’,” - you shrugged - “not my fault you chose a nap instead.”

His puzzled face gave you a hint he didn’t get the reference. Pity.

“I was thinking about some sort of...questions game,” he said and cleared his throat, shifting in his chair again. "To get to know each other better."

"Why?" you stared at him with your mouth open, suddenly taken aback.

He gave you a half-smile. "Don't you think it's weird that the only thing I know about you is all the ways to turn you on and piss you off?"

"Wouldn't be so confident about that ‘all’ part…" you huffed and lost a train of thought as you spotted the familiar flare in his gaze.

"You’re sure you wanna challenge me like that right now?"

A cold shiver ran down your spine at the way his voice got lower. You gritted your teeth as your mind started racing to find a way out of the dangerous waters.

"Aren't you a master of multitasking?" you teased, batting your eyelashes.

"And aren't you scared of having an actual conversation?" Neil narrowed his eyes and grimaced slightly.

"Fine!” you fumed as you tossed your hands in the air in defeat. “Why don’t you get straight to the point because I have a weird feeling you have a very specific question in mind."

A silence that dropped after your words was heavy and you realized you’d made a mistake.

"Actually, I do,” he said, tilting his head and locking his gaze on you. “What's up with you and kissing?"

...shit, walked right into that one, huh?

You pulled one leg up on the chair, glancing outside the window to avoid the blue eyes boring into you. "It's nothing."

“Didn’t look like nothing to me.”

Sighing, you rested the chin on your knee and wrapped your arms around it, as if that little bit of comfort was enough to make the conversation easier. Your ears were burning, your heart pounded heavily in the clenched chest, and it all was only adding to your frustration. Because it really was nothing. Or maybe it should have been, and that was the issue.

“If you don’t wanna talk about it--”

Your eyes darted at Neil only to meet his soft look. A shadow of concern on his face wasn’t helping, but you were grateful that he was willing to give you a way out.

Although at that moment, you felt you owed him an explanation.

“No, it’s just that it’s a bit silly,” you said, wincing. “I’m gonna tell you, but if you laugh, I will murder you in your sleep.”

Neil smiled lightly in encouragement.

“Got it.”

So you took a deep breath and squeezed the first word past the lump in your throat.

“It’s just that kissing to me was always something… special,” you cringed, fully aware that you sounded like a flustered teenager. “Like it really meant something. Do you know where I’m going with this?”

Neil’s brows knitted together.

“I think so, yeah.”

“Good,” you sighed, forcing yourself to breathe again. “And some time ago, I made a mistake and opened up too soon, burning myself. Fuck, it’s pathetic, I know, I just…” you hesitated and looked away, feeling the rising panic. You were exposing yourself, again. “...maybe I’m just wired that way and we should leave it at that. And never talk about it again,” your voice was hollow, the result of your brain’s desperate attempts to keep your emotions bottled up, just to keep you safe.

And after what felt like forever--

“Okay.”

You shot him a thankful look, too overwhelmed to say anything.

Neil got up, moving his shoulders in small circles to get rid of the stiffness. As he walked by you on his way to the bathroom, he patted your arm lightly. Reassuringly. The tip of your nose tingled and you bit the inside of your cheek, cursing a sudden wave of softness clouding your mind.

A few minutes passed and Neil was back. He fell on the chair heavily, slowly massaging his temples with the tips of his fingers. Catching a question in your stare, he shook his head and grinned.

“What?” you asked, squinting suspiciously.

Neil chuckled, leaning back and spreading his legs. “Trying to figure you out is giving me a headache.”

You rolled your eyes and scoffed, focusing on the view outside the window.

“Who we are and who we need to be to survive are two different things, you know.”

“So it’s all an act?”

You looked back at him, suddenly perplexed. “What is?”

“This,” he gestured vaguely in your direction and shrugged. “Or rather your usual behavior.”

You snorted. “Oh, I am a real ray of sunshine, but somehow being around you makes my inner bitch jump out,” you teased, meeting his amused gaze. A corner of your lips curled and you exhaled slowly. “I don’t know, after some time you learn life is easier that way, and at one point the line blurs,” you stopped for a second and frowned, wondering what had gotten into you tonight. “Does it make any sense to you?”

Something new tainted Neil’s features as he looked away, smiling sadly.

“You have no idea.”

Just as you opened your mouth to ask what was wrong, the blue eyes darted back at you.

“I’ll take the first shift, already had my nap after all,” the little laugh escaping his mouth felt forced. “You must be exhausted. Try to get some sleep.”

Oh you were exhausted, all right. But all of the sudden it felt as if he wanted to get rid of you and you couldn’t help feeling a bit hurt by that. There was something in his presence that gave you a hint that it wasn’t the best idea to pressure him about it now, and you slumped your shoulders, nodding.

“Thank you,” you said quietly, getting up. All that held-back fatigue was going to hit you in full force any minute now, and you really wanted to be laid down by then.

A few moments in the bathroom and you were back in the room again in more comfortable clothes. You rolled out a sleeping bag on the mattress and slipped into it, covering your mouth as you let out a small yawn.

“Wake me up if anything happens or you need me to take over, will you?”

Neil shot you a quick look from his chair.

“Sure thing,” he gave you a weak smile. “Goodnight.”

“‘Night,” you mumbled.

You curled up and closed your eyes, hoping the heaviness you felt in your chest would be gone by the morning.

--------

It took your still half-asleep brain a moment to remember where you were and what was going on. You looked around as much as you could without moving your body to avoid revealing that you were no longer asleep. Oh right, the stakeout.

You noticed Neil sitting on the floor by the only floor-to-ceiling window near the corner of the room, looking outside. The early morning light seeping through the blinds was reflecting in the disheveled blonde hair, a fitting addition to his overall tired appearance. It seemed like he’d spent most of the night working through whatever bothered him after your last talk, but he seemed more at peace now. You studied him in a little moment of sleep-deprived self-indulgence, musing over the dark quarter zip pullover, those absurdly long legs in khaki pants--...

Okay, enough. You sat up, rubbing your face.

“How’s the mattress?”

Hearing Neil’s raspy voice made you quite tempted to invite him over to check for himself.

“Passable,” you replied instead, stretching your arms and wriggling out of your sleeping bag. You nodded at the cameras. “Anything?”

“Not really. One visitor, already on the list,” he said as his eyes followed you around the room.

“All right,” you sighed, flipping the switch on the kettle. “I need coffee, you want some?”

“No, thank you, but if you could pass me a bottle of water--”

You grabbed one and tossed it to him, heading to the bathroom.

When you finally looked and felt like a decent human being again, you went back to finish making coffee. As you walked to the windows with the thermal cup in your hands, you caught Neil’s resigned stare. You sat down on the floor in front of him, leaning your shoulder against the wall. A glimpse of internal battle clouded his features and you tilted your head, waiting for him to speak up first.

“I didn’t want this,” he blurted out, and when nothing else followed the statement, you cleared your throat.

“You have to be more specific, I’m afraid.”

Neil clenched his jaw. You noticed a hint of frustration in his eyes, but then his shoulders dropped and he let out a nervous chuckle, fastening his gaze on the view outside the window.

“I wanted to do things by the book. When TP recruited me… I thought I’d be just another field agent and I was okay with that,” he sighed and grimaced. “But he insisted on fast-tracking me, even when I told him it wasn’t fair to the rest of you.” Neil shook his head slowly and a corner of his lips twitched. “He promised me one of his best agents’ help on the way though. Imagine my surprise when the agent in question kept snarling at me and shoving me around instead.”

When Neil looked back at you, you realized the meaning behind his words and your mind went blank. You stared into the blue eyes with your mouth open, trying to process everything you’d just heard and its implications.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” you breathed out, feeling light-headed.

“Why?”

“Nobody told you…?” you asked, but his confused expression was his only answer. And you simply couldn’t believe that he hadn’t known all this time. “I’d been working my ass off for that position,” you huffed, studying his reaction to your words closely. “And then you showed up.”

Neil’s face dropped as he finally connected all the dots. “Fuck...I had no idea, I’m sorry.”

Seeing his sincere look, you sighed, raking fingers through your hair. Fucking hell, what a mess. The impossible mix of emotions swirled inside you and you giggled hysterically, suddenly finding the whole situation absolutely hilarious.

“And I had no idea I was supposed to babysit you,” you said as you stretched your legs, positioning them alongside Neil’s.

“Thought we were having a moment here,” he scoffed, smiling lightly.

You smirked and tapped his thigh with your foot.

“Think again.”

Neil tapped you back, stifling a chuckle. “You’re insufferable.”

“Too bad you can’t do anything about that now, huh,” you teased, wiggling your brows as you nibbled at your bottom lip.

The blue eyes lit up. “Just you wait till we finish the job,” he said slowly and placed a hand on your ankle.

But before you could respond, you heard a phone alert and Neil jumped at his feet.

He read the message quickly.

“Seems like we are about to see some action after all,” he said, pressing the phone to his ear. You downed your coffee and joined Neil by the table.

“Hold on, I’m gonna put you on speaker… okay, now”

“Hope you two are rested,” TP’s voice filled the room. “We intercepted a phone call. Our target is expecting a delivery in the next hour or so. Significant enough that from this moment on, the mission objective changes.” You exchanged looks with Neil, knowing well what was coming next. You walked back to the windows to keep an eye on the street. “We have a chance to prevent this shipment from spreading to different sellers. I’m sending the cavalry your way. But you’ll need to assess the situation as it progresses.”

“Means we might have to engage early, got it.”

“It’s your call, Neil. And as we have enough intel now… no loose ends. Good luck.” said TP and hung up.

Neil tossed the phone on the table and dashed to the bags to prep the equipment. You noticed movement in the loft across the street and snapped a few pictures before looking back at your partner.

“Are you good to go? You haven’t slept tonight.”

He glanced at you and gave you a smug smile.

“How nice of you to worry about me.”

You could feel the usual annoyance mixed with a new emotion, but maybe you were just glad to be back on familiar waters.

“Nah, I’m worried about the mission,” you snorted. “Especially if we may end up going in there alone.”

“I’m okay. How does it look out there?”

You looked outside again and tensed as a van appeared at the end of the street. “We’ve got company.”

Neil changed you by the window and you rushed to get ready.

-------

After clearing the back entrance, you found yourselves in the underground garage.

Splitting up, you took down the guards one by one without raising any alarms.

Neil checked the van and then you both made your way upstairs. You knew there were at least five more people in the loft, but you had to rely on the element of surprise because the cavalry was still on their way.

As you got to the door, you cocked your pistol and met Neil’s determined stare. You nodded.

Bursting through the door, your instincts kicked in, allowing you to put a bullet into two men before they had a chance to realize what was going on. In the next second all hell broke loose. You knew one thing - you somehow underestimated the numbers. And just as you thought that maybe you got lucky and got every last of them, someone grabbed you from behind and you felt something cold and sharp pressed against your neck. Fuck.

You dug your fingers into the arm wrapped around your shoulders, but a stinging pain made you stop any further attempts at breaking free. The blood pounded in your ears and everything seemed to slow down.

You noticed Neil standing in front of you with a gun pointed right next to your head.

He secured a grip on his pistol and the man holding you yelled something at him, but you didn’t listen, focusing completely on the blue eyes, now filled with a silent question, looking straight into yours.

You let out a shaky breath and blinked slowly.

A gunshot echoed through the room.

The pressure on your neck lowered and you heard a thud of a body fitting the floor behind you.

Neil lowered his gun.

You stared at each other for what seemed like forever.

“Nice shot,” you said, composing yourself first.

He gave you a weak smile, and just as he opened his mouth to say something, your comms filled with a familiar voice.

“We’ve missed all the fun, eh?”

------

Neither of you said anything on the way back to the HQ, not counting the short answers to the questions asked by Ives, but even he gave up after a while seeing you weren’t in the mood for talking.

You got your duffel bag out of the trunk and looked around. Neil was standing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the building, talking on the phone. You walked up to him slowly, waiting for him to finish the conversation.

“Do they need us to get in to file a report?”

“No, I convinced TP to give us the rest of the day off,” he said, hiding the phone in the pocket of his jacket. “We can do that first thing tomorrow, I’m just gonna drop the equipment now.”

“Great, thanks.”

You couldn’t wait to get back to your apartment. You tossed the bag on your arm and smiled at the thought of a long hot shower and crashing in your own bed.

There was just one thing you needed to do first.

Neil took a step towards the building and without thinking too much about it, you reached out for his hand.

“Neil…?”

He stopped and turned around, puzzled. His eyes dropped to your joined hands and slowly moved up to your face.

You gave him a nervous smile.

“Thank you.”

His features softened and he squeezed your hand gently.

“Don’t mention it.”

And then he smirked.

...of course.

“Guess that makes us even.”

(next chapter->)

#neil tenet x reader #neil tenet #neil tenet fanfiction #tenet #robert pattinson #tenet fanfiction #the protagonist tenet #ives tenet #wheeler tenet #neil tenet imagine #neil x reader #smoke & mirrors #tags hate me

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goblinconceivable · 4 years ago

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braindump: betty/daniel

I’ve been living with them for a while, notes taken, a few stories significantly started but there’s a gelling issue, which I’m hoping is at least partially down to a lack of proper braindumping. So, in no particular order and certainly not comprehensive:

Frankly I also got too hooked on the last 2 eps, which is likely where I’m blocked. It’s an abrupt emotional twist for them (esp Daniel), and in trying to make sense of that I’m losing focus on the 4 previous years.

- I’m a little bit obsessed in the scene where Betty tries to convince Matt she’s fearless by pointing out her bang-less-ness. And then runs into Daniel, who is at that moment half brain-washed, but yet when she asks about her fearless quotient his response is immediate and natural and entirely lacking in irony: “no bangs.” It’s a tiny little moment that shows how well he not only knows her, but understands her. Without judgment, without fanfare. Were I to have a husband, this is the sort of response that would confirm I’d married the absolute perfect guy for me.

- They’re too close for mirroring to be an important indicator, but there are two scenes that stand out in this vein: the first is when Betty thinks he may have pushed Christina down the stares and steals the video. She’s backing out the door, and he follows, matching her step for step. I love the direction choices because from her perspective there’s a sense of menace, Daniel as potential villain is stalking her. But from his guileless perspective he’s talking to her and if she’s moving, so is he. The second is from the penultimate, talking about Trista, where Betty’s rolling back and forth and he moves with her, rather than simply turning his head. It signals his full engagement in the conversation, seeking her attention, and is why the scene plays as flirting rather than their normal banter.

- That bulletpoint was getting a bit long, so second point on the flirting is that it plays against Betty shutting down the conversation “none of my business,” leading to the fight over involvement in each other’s personal lives, leading to the revelation that they know each other at that deep personal level so very, very well. Which was a very clumsy leadup to Daniel’s revelation during Hilda’s wedding speech, that could have been handled so much more deftly but those last two eps were quite rushed, I don’t know when they found out about the shortened season but it feels like they’d planned for more space and had to jab in exposition.

- Becaaaaause: they narratively broke his ‘aha’ moment onto “know you better than you do” while the strength of the message is really in the “do anything to protect them.” Which is, I believe, where they cut to his softened expression. Not coincidentally, this is precisely what a lot of fan-readings of the characters focus on: Daniel will do anything to protect Betty. Bobby might have said he’d throw himself under a bus for Hilda, but Daniel HAS done that for Betty- in fact literally doing so would probably have been easier than publicly shouldering the blame for the Tornado cover and giving away the profits. Due to the fact that he had time to consider the consequences and did it anyway.

- Which is tidy segue into an admission that I’m flying mostly blind on the Molly arc because I basically skipped all her scenes, but it’s my understanding that Daniel doing this was a pivotal moment for them. Ie, she was impressed that he did this thing. I mean, I really appreciate that he spent the whole press conference scene looking for Betty, so the show in no way undercut their relationship. But then they very clearly built the Molly relationship on the foundation of not only the man Daniel had become due to Betty, but choices he was making in large measure for Betty: it’s not that he saw Betty beaten down and resolved the situation: he was upset but lost, she yelled at him, and THEN he resolved the situation by taking the bullet. Did I break grammar by ending up with two colon’d clauses in the same sentence? It’s a braindump, ain’t gotta be pretty. XP

- Quick sidebar that the same thing happens with Alexis. She was expecting to come back to one brother, but then listens in on his pep talk with Betty and finds she’s returned to a different brother. This may be where I got the “an assistant” phrasing, if so, my bad. But basically, she was impressed with Daniel’s actions, not understanding that it was Betty specifically inspiring his actions.

- Follow that a step further and did Molly ever acknowledge how important Betty is to him? Legit question. I think her line here was about him doing it “for an assistant” (?) rather than even “his assistant,” establishing Betty as a non-entity for her. (Quoting a summary but I think I’m in the ballpark.) And I’m sure I’d have read about it somewhere if she brought Betty up during their discussion on who he’d date when she was dead.

- Just one last note on Molly, (okay it’s a multi-part though it veers off her as a character) but a possibly incorrect beef is that I hate the Daniel/Molly relationship because there’s no interesting or even real conflict? It’s perfect? I’m supposed to think this is magical “true love”? Molly has apparently been engaged for years to a man she doesn’t really love (and um... that’s lazy not strong), and helps inspire a vengeance filled betrayal by her ex because she’s so awesome everyone loves her? But she comes out squeaky clean because any emotional cheating on her part is balanced and thus “justified” by Connor falling for Wilhemina. And then the only “conflict” is that she’s dying, and is perfect throughout it? That’s... weak.

-That poem thing WOULD have been an interesting point of conflict but it was resolved by Betty’s intervention, rather than within the relationship. Which actually is an incredibly interesting beat. The problem with that being it’s so entirely consistent with the role Betty plays in Daniel’s life that it’s treated as just another beat, as if it doesn’t MATTER that a fundamental moment of intimacy and growth of vulnerability in Daniel’s very important romantic relationship is a door opened by a third party. There’s a strong argument to be made for something but I broke off to write the next point and now can’t remember what that strong argument is. I might remember later. It may have had something to do with Molly being a stepping stone in Daniel’s arc, but the cult-thing was so long and dominating that it didn’t work, it tied him too tightly for too long and coinciding with a loosening of his relationship with Betty there was flailing.

- Quick one: Daniel’s fast-forwarded and time-bounded relationship with Molly is the analog to Betty’s time-limited relationship with Henry. Which is a discussion I would like Daniel and Betty to have. Esp. noting that Betty and Henry had issues they worked through together (ice cream foreplay being one.)

- Player! So going back to a happy place, when Betty’s on the phone trying to fix the apartment situation and the camera pans onto Daniel just leaning against the doorway: this may be a legitimate little moment of “squee!” There’s so much denial in his laid back attitude at Player, but I still love watching how the informality of the environment reflects in the informality with Betty. He gives her free reign, and there’s many answers to “why,” and I (almost) don’t want to go into them because I totally adore how this Daniel is basically a College!Daniel only he’s latched onto Betty, who, meanwhile, is just being Betty. OMG how different his life would have been if he’d met Betty in college...

- Okay I actually don’t feel like going into whys, it’s just an arc to enjoy. With a small mention of how he TOTALLY was playing with the MODE book and handed it to Betty knowing she’d understand and use it to get them back in. Such a crazy subtle manipulation, to the point where I’m not sure it wasn’t almost entirely subconscious on Daniel’s part.

- The YETI recommendation letter. What I love is that this is another time when Daniel fvcks up, but fixes it, and more importantly displays competence and ingenuity alongside authentic caring and effort. Here’s the thing: YETI wanted Betty, even if it was just a quota thing (which it wasn’t entirely, at least one of the board was generally enthused.) So all that was necessary was to have them re-label her as from Player. Daniel knew this and did this. And told Betty that. BUUUUT that point was purposefully (by script and character) overshadowed by the gesture of the lengthy rec letter he put significant time into. Whose real audience was... wait for it... Betty. He even did a second draft! Which is more time and effort and a cleaner product.

- Also flaking on her practice run. I also enjoy how he (finally...) bounced back into the office clearly having forgotten her schedule, but having mentally shifted from Molly-space into Betty-space. He’s enthused, he’s engaged, he’s sort of bantering and I’d like to see where that scene would have gone if she hadn’t immediately gotten the acceptance call.

- So there’s this moment somewhat early on, pretty sure when Betty’s taking the writing class, and wants Daniel to give her feedback. And he’s all “why?,” coming from his “I don’t actually know what I’m doing” place. She responds that he’s her friend and wants to know what he thinks. And he does a little double-take at that word. Because until that point Daniel totally sees Betty as HIS Friend, and they’ve referred to each other as friends, with a little “f,” and he believes that. But it wasn’t until this moment that he even considered that HE might be HER Friend. Presumably because he doesn’t believe he has anything to offer her, beyond the power he holds as EIC and her boss - ie, “here run this show” and other such responsibilities.

- Which is a recurring theme. Pronounced on relationship stuff especially. When she asks him for input on the Henry vs Gio situation, when she’s trying to date the playwright. His response is always “I’m in no position to offer relationship advice/judgment on relationships.” He sorta dodges the first and is permissive on the second. I don’t know where to go with that so I’ll leave it (for now).

- When he was supposed to be in Rio, Betty wasn’t even at MODE, she was working for the “enemy,” and he was sending her regular postcards? First, they’d have been postmarked in New York and presumably with local stamps, so I’m not 100% on Betty not cottoning on. But it’s super cute that he was thinking of her when he was incommunicado with literally everyone else. Did he want her to figure it out (subconsciously)? It’s an act of reaching out, but also of convincing: he’s created a fictional narrative of being in Rio, fed and embellished by the media and swallowed by coworkers, but it’s through Betty that he’s establishing the fiction in a definitive way. He wants HER to believe it, because if SHE believes he’s there and having a good time, then he can believe it too, with a small piece of his imagination.

- Same convincing as in Player. BTW, how did all those messages on her phone work? He was 99% totally hiding the situation from her. a) why wouldn’t he just call her from his phone, as he always did in the past? b) he was creating another fictional space. Where her “number” was literally on a post-it on his temporary assistant’s monitor. It’s all play: “call Betty” happens many times, and every one is the act of doing it while knowing that he’s not really doing it. c) Betty does not point out that he should have been confused he never heard back, or more to the point, that he never heard her voicemail message. d) he was in a state of limbo waiting for her to come back, nothing is real until she does. At which point there’s lovely dramatic tension since he both wants her to fix it and get them out of there, and wants to draw her into this new reality and thus make it feel viable.

- 100th Anniversary edition. I love the idea that he’s hep on her writing his bio because he needs her name, at least, to be next to his. His identity as EIC is predicated on her being his partner, and needs that shown, even if it’s functionally an “in joke” because it’s not like she can be featured. In musing over his thoughts while flipping through the book right before deciding to quit, I usually come back to a realization of the transience of the role, but I want it to be a gutpunch of how he assumed, without being aware, that Betty would be next to him in picture, and that’s what they were heading for.

- I’ve actually got through most of my notes, so just a couple more. Daniel is super impressionable. He did what Becks told him to in the pilot. He did what Natalie told him in the cult-situation. Both against his better judgment - his look after Betty when he kicked her out for being “drama he didn’t need” - that’s the same look when he told her to clock out and was dragged off by the not-16-year-old. I’m too tired to go check the pilot, but assuming similar look there. He does what he’s told by anyone telling him to do something, but he WANTS to be rescued from the bad influences, who are so often so forceful.

- Final scene: okay so it turns out quick a lot of my thoughts are trying to understand Daniel. His growth is blatant and deep. So a second round will be more Betty-focused. ‘Cuz I identify strongly with her and don’t have a lot of surface questions about her motivations, but I’m LOST on side of the romantic coin. And plus she deserves a close look regarding how she grows during the series.

- I watched at least part of the reunion and very much like how AF answered the question of the final scene versus what EM says. Because I think they each, as actors, see it from the perspective of their characters, which means it was played authentically and grants insight. AF basically says that she saw it as Daniel coming to say thank you, and how it came down to Betty teaching him that he was good enough. Which came across a little funny because her phrasing implied they’d never talk or see each other again or something and that’s an alarming finality. But also implies that Betty really did see moving to London as a significant parting of ways, something that started as soon as she became an editor and their relationship changed. Probably before.

- She then challenged EM as to why Daniel didn’t say goodbye (as if she didn’t know and hadn’t thought about it? I’m guessing this was panel performance: asking the question “in character” and throwing the question to the other relevant actor.) But anyway, EM’s answer was “Because things were just starting.” Which is blatantly a shippy answer, and he even explains Daniel’s “revelation” as when he “really saw Betty for the first time through and through.”

- At some point in these things you’re like: oh but I thought of something else, and only stop when your brain falls asleep.

- I thought of something else. And then I forgot it. My brain is failing! But not yet failed.

- After Betty gets her braces off there’s this scene near the end, at the shoot. Daniel sees her and crosses quite purposefully to talk with her. He wants to banter and share this exciting moment with her. And the scene goes a little strange when Betty kinda goes “yeah, going now bye.” I expected more eye contact, a big smile, more conversation. That’s Betty. That’s them. But instead it’s a little awkward so Something Is Happening Here. Is she self-conscious? Did she see and hear something in Daniel’s look and comment right after she was detached from the bra and isn’t at this moment comfortable with him? Is this all fallout from her dream in which she and Daniel slept together/he thought she was a bad person/rejected her only they chose not to explicate this/cut a useful scene/thought I’d get that right away but I’m obtuse? I don’t think it’s the last one because while I can be horribly obtuse, I don’t think it was coded. But that’s what the obtuse would say.

- At any rate they don’t pick up on it again, next scene (next ep) they’re back to normal.

- But Daniel does immediately chase after Amanda and let go of her. Which is payoff for his convo with Betty earlier where she sort of disdainfully asks if he WANTS a more serious relationship with Amanda. I did sort of wonder if he actually does, but Betty’s judgmentalness is what convinces him he doesn’t. Usually I’d say Betty understands him so well she knows he doesn’t, but they’re not as close at this point, Betty is living her own life much more, so I dunno.

- But I don’t actually think Daniel was falling for Amanda, or that the show wanted us to think that was ultimately a viable path. Because of that moment when he’s in a car, calls Amanda, says “I really need to see you” and she turns him down. It parallels his text to Betty when Molly died. One text and Betty came over. This was an actual distressed voice convo and Amanda doesn’t care enough about him to be there, which is really great development for Amanda even though we don’t see her! She previously went after Matt when he was in jail, she’s interested in Tyler here, she’s not totally pining for Daniel!

- Daniel of course was using Amanda and their earned if mild emotional intimacy as a crutch, trying to fill the space Betty left. Also note when Amanda turned him down for sex and he stayed to “hang out,” - this is not supposed to be an analysis of Amanda but I wanna note I like that moment because it felt like she was pleased to think she wasn’t just sex to him, while still being over him romantically. Because she does care about him.

- Or for pete’s... I have this bad habit of writing notes which I later look at and am like... “huh?” This is a fic idea, from Daniel’s POV: “Betty had moulded him, often by sheer force of her iron will, into being a man who almost deserved Molly. And he'd turned right around and become a man who would never deserve Betty.” And I DON’T REMEMBER WHAT THE SECOND HALF MEANS. Specifically.

- Wedding dancing. Happens twice. Hilda’s wedding, we know what that is. But at Daniel’s wedding. I like that he wasn’t 100% Molly focused, ‘cuz, shipper. And I know why the show had Matt cut in, because gotta keep things moving. But isn’t it a thing that you don’t cut in on the groom/bride? It’s their day. Daniel just sort of nonverbally asks Betty if it’s okay (to leave her with Matt), but can’t help a) thinking he was a bit put out and b) want Molly to see his expression looking at Betty and have some sort of “aha” moment where she - do Molly and Betty have any scenes together? I don’t remember seeing any and I think I did skim through all the eps, but I need to do that again.

- Ooh, one of the things I forgot en route! I like that Betty has revolving love interests, because that’s textual argument for Betty never having feelings (romantic) for Daniel. Which is super, super important in this iteration of the story. There’s a couple moments - pilot and the first bridge scene - where she arguably has a momentary crush, which quickly settles into a developing platonic relationship.

- Jump back to Daniel finally seeing Betty as a true equal = romantic feelings. It’s a thing. Look my brain is deteriorting and wording is hard! So there’s two sided imbalance throughout. Daniel always saw Betty with this veneer of youth, and a great deal of his use for her is helping her “grow into the woman she’ll be.” And that’s the roadblock in him seeing her as a romantic possibility. Which was initially quite awesome because he was sleeping with people younger than her, even the “she’s actually 20″ girl was younger than Betty. And yet always saw her as in many ways more mature and competent than her. And double-yet he still saw how much further she could, and would, grow. His belief in her knows no bounds.

- Meanwhile Betty sees him as... someone who’s also becoming. Who has great potential. Bullying him into it if necessary. And because he’s guided by her, she can’t crush on him, he’s like her pet. Were she to have a crush, much less fall for him, it would have been horrifying. She needs to have a moment when she sees him as a true equal, someone who - look, everyone is always still growing so it’s not like he needs to be fully formed, and it’s a little murkier what the moment would look like when she finally sees Daniel “for the first time.”

- ‘cuz as noted, Betty has been there for pretty much every important moment of growth and crossroads in every facet of Daniel’s life. Whereas Betty consistently had many things and relationships in her life Daniel was not involved in. She’s always been way more self-reliant (not the word I wanted, is there one that starts with c?) It’s why they did sort of need to peel away through a chunk of S4, because Daniel needed to learn to cope without Betty propping him up, because it’s like a Miranda-thing:

- “I don’t need Gary. But I want him.”

- Daniel has to be able to be find without Betty before Betty can see him as a viable romantic partner. She has to see something she never has before. Daniel saw that the seedling he’d been protecting was not only strong enough to survive on its own had grown up and bloomed (process begun early in the season when he was being overprotective and she shut that down). For Betty... I guess Daniel... ... ..... it didn’t happen in the show. As EM noted, for Daniel, the ending was the beginning. Because his moment isn’t leaving MODE, that’s just the corresponding moment to Betty shaking him off. His moment is further down the road when he puts into practice everything he’s learned and ... something answered in fanfic because it’s spec and I’m tuckered.

#daniel x betty #detty #ugly betty #meta #braindump #my brain literally has nothing except #i got nothing #what a satisfying feeling #to have removed everything and set it in a magical tardis of a post

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radramblog · 3 years ago

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Some thoughts on Deltarune Chapter 2

I’m going to try to avoid being effusively praising of this game…demo…chapter. I’m sure there’s plenty of people doing that already, and I am more than cognizant of the platform I am presenting this post on. That’s going to be tough, yeah, but I’ll make it work.

I’m also going to try to avoid spoiling the thing too hard, even though there are spoilers everywhere and certain supposed-to-be obscure things are widespread at this point. But, someone could still end up reading this before they play it, so I’m going to hold my tongue a fair bit as a result.

With that in mind: new chapter is obviously out, so how does it stack up?

…I think it might be better than the first one. In my opinion.

Undertale 22 over here is a continuation of the first chapter, released about 3 years ago, taking place literally the next day in-universe. Chapter 1 coming out was a Huge Deal, not in the least a result of how it was announced. Despite the distance since the release, the Undertale fandom was still simmering along, and with an announcement that appears tied to one of that game’s biggest mysteries, it was no wonder that it was going to make some waves.

Chapter 2’s release was a surprise for different reasons. I believe at the time of the first demo, Toby stated that the remaining chapters would release as one, but that it would take a long time on account of the game being so much more complex than Undertale and not playing as much to his strengths. Of course, a lot happens in 3 years, especially with the last couple being as they have been, so Chapter 2 got its own release about a week ago.

I suppose I should stop beating around the bush and explain why I think Ch.2 is better than Ch.1, huh? I think there’s three main factors that swayed me.

Prologues and introductions always have to do one thing, and that is to familiarise the audience with the setting and characters. Despite sharing many side characters with its pseudo-prequel, Deltarune Chapter 1’s main cast are all completely fresh, and those side characters are in an unfamiliar form, and so much of the game is spent establishing cast dynamics. We have to learn who Susie, Kris, and Lancer are, and how the dynamics between them will be working for the stories to come.

However, there is the slight difference that Deltarune Chapter 1 is kind of a complete story. It’s like the pilot to a tv series- you have to establish characters, yeah, but you still have to get the plot spinning, and those characters still need to have small arcs over the course of the story. Susie and Lancer are kind of the only ones to go through actual arcs across the first chapter, given Ralsei’s currently kind of static character and Kris being a blank slate entirely.

By contrast, Chapter 2 has these dynamics in play from the get-go, and we get to more deeply explore them as a result, making the character work overall stronger. And while there are new characters at play, two of the three (arguably four) new players are already established in Chapter 1, and so we don’t need to spend as much time getting to know them. Character interactions are at the core of many styles of storytelling, and with the quirky characters we have to work with, getting more time seeing them do that is great!

The second of why I like Chapter Two better is just the gameplay. A fair few little tweaks have been made to make the whole thing cleaner- enemies now have a parallel meter to their HP bar to show how close to sparable they are, so pacifistic players have a better idea of their progress in longer fights. For those players, actually having Susie and Ralsei get ACT options is great, seeing as it makes them substantially more useful (especially Susie). When I replayed Chapter 1 in preparation for playing Chapter 2, I found myself just Guarding with them over and over while Kris did most of the work.

And the creativity with the fights is ramped up a whole bunch. This is another Not Being The First Part thing, but now that the player is used to how fights in this game are going to go, the complexity gets to increase to match, and the characterisation of the bosses and even generic enemies can better be expressed in the gameplay. I remember being genuinely shocked at how much was going on with the Ambyu-Lance enemy’s highway bullet pattern, especially when combined with other enemies in the fray.

I very much enjoyed the secret boss. Oh come on, that’s not a spoiler, everyone knows about Jevil at this point, and you get hinted at it super early on! And it’s way easier to find than Jevil was!

Anyway. My final point is just that I do like the characters in Chapter 2 better- particularly the antagonists. As fun as Lancer is, the sort of annoying whacky child characters are never something I’m particularly fond is. Even though he’s written really well, it took a lot to sell me on him. As well, as sicknasty as the King’s boss fight was, as well as the scenes surrounding it being an excellent summation of the point of the game as a whole, he’s not an especially interesting character.

And while I suppose Queen isn’t particularly deep either, everything about her is so unbelievably fun. I was pretty much sold on her immediately, with that regal “ohohoho” laugh followed by just absolutely shitposting for the entire length of the game. Her presence makes so much of this game an utter blast. Her presence reminds me a lot of the characters in Undertale who were mostly just there for one area, Alphys in Hotland and the skeletons in Snowdin, constantly popping in to keep things moving, giving each area its own little arc, and generally be fun and amusing along the way. And since each chapter of Deltarune is a lot longer than one arc of Undertale, it’s for the best that Queen manages to make this much of a good impression about the whole thing.

As I’ve stated, I think most of the reasons why Deltarune Chapter 2 are a simple result of being a Chapter 2 rather than a Chapter 1, rather than being any fault of Chapter 1’s (and the last point is basically personal preference). Both are obviously still excellent, and I’m happy to wait patiently for the series to continue if it keeps up this level of quality. At the end of the day, like, this game is currently free. And it provides a better and longer experience than a lot of actually paid games I’ve played. Toby Fox has managed to be a big shot after literally releasing one and two sevenths of a game, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be slowing down anytime soon. Here’s hoping that the assistance he’s apparently getting for future chapters works out such that it doesn’t end up sacrificing quality, but I don’t see this happening quite yet. I suppose only time will tell, but I’m optimistic. Filled with determination, as some would say.

no that’s cringy cut that one sheesh okay let me out of here im done

#ramble #deltarune #deltarune chapter 2

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albatris · 4 years ago

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ok ok alriiiight ok so the plot of ATDAO

this post is not, like........... well, it’s not gonna be a blurb or a summary or a nice neat synopsis, this is not Professional Writeblr Business, this is, this is, uhhhh

this is like drunk house party logan rambles

works best if you imagine ur just like “hey man how’s it going” super casual and I grasp you firmly by the shoulders and look you dead in the eye and just ramble all of this without taking a single breath

could I have explained in a nice neat concise "elevator pitch" sort of way? probably. mind ur business. that’s not how we do things here at albatris.org

anyway the purpose of this post is “hey people seem to know a lot about the characters and the worldbuilding and the premise but have no clue what happens in the actual story” so I’m not going to be talking about said characters and worldbuilding and premise in depth

in terms of rambles, that stuff’s been covered! this post assumes you know what Ports are, n what the nature of the ATDAO apocalypse is, vaguely what the MCs are like as people......... though I can fetch this info for you if you like

but yeah if you are coming into this post with zero prior ATDAO knowledge........... deeply deeply from the bottom of my heart: sorry

also if this is your first time experiencing One Of These Rambles

also @safe-in-the-steep-cliffs and @siarven I am tagging you because you said you would like to be tagged and also hi and also I hope y’all knew what you were in for

anyway without further ado

(visual representation of my approach to this rant, not of how complicated my plot actually is)

(my plot is not that complicated)

ALRIGHT

there are two viewpoint characters! and two plotlines which converge near the end of the story, but honestly there’s a very real possibility I will decide these are two separate books meant as companion stories to each other because I love making things difficult for myself yeehaw

ATDAO’s co-protags are Tris and Noa, best buds four years and counting. their friendship is one of the single most important aspects of the story, n the ongoing love and trust they have for each other despite the way unfolding events force their relationship to change is integral to the themes and making the heart of the story what it is. I will now proceed to not mention this friendship for the entire remainder of this post. they’re bros. that’s all u need to know. listen. listen. I have a lot to cover

so yeah, ur first key player is Tris Greer, whose parents are dicks but whose siblings are chill. most notably of said siblings there is Jacob, older brother by thirteen years, whom Tris believes is just about the coolest person on the entire planet. this plotline kicks off when Jacob gets caught in the midst of a freak car accident that kills a dude and wrecks a street corner and also somehow causes Jacob to just kind of................. blip out of existence entirely and without a trace?

n Tris is understandably horrified and distressed by Very Much All Of This, but hey, at least there are responsible adults who can look into this obviously Port-related weird disappearance and figure this mess out, right?

INCORRECT

the relevant interdimensional authorities are brought in to suss out the situation and these authorities are kind of like “hmmmm idk about this” but are all set to take Tris at least somewhat seriously until they learn the following:

that Jacob had already been reported missing to police in his home state three days earlier

that Jacob was in the midst of several ongoing personal crises and at least one nervous breakdown

that Jacob was allegedly tangled up in some real weird shit that would more than account for a disappearance under suspicious circumstances

that Tris is schizophrenic, prone to hallucinations, confusion, memory issues and quote unquote “letting his imagination and anxiety get the better of him”, and precisely zero people can actually corroborate his story that Jacob was even there are the time of the accident to begin with

and after some back-and-forth and Looking Into The Evidence pretty much everyone in any position of authority comes to the conclusion that this is just Ordinary Regular People Crimes and whatever happened to Jacob had nothing to do with weird apocalyptic energies, and that Tris is (at best) stressed out and delusional or (at worst) lying through his teeth because he knows more than he’s letting on

so Tris is forced to hop pretty quick from “I’m sure someone will handle this” to “no one believes me but I’m sure if I can find some concrete proof they’ll listen and someone will handle it” to Well Fuck I Guess That Someone Is Me

cue bizarre reality-hopping fantasy quest, which is ten times easier said than done when most of the time Tris is terrified enough just, like, going to the supermarket

he enlists the help of his new classmate Shara, amateur paranormal investigator and professional weird-bullshit enthusiast, who agrees to help him puzzle out what the fuck happened to Jacob in exchange for his assistance in mapping out Adelaide’s interdimensional “fault lines” as part of her ongoing quest to track down the source of the apocalypse

she’s got big fuckin dreams, ok, go hard or go home

slso worth noting at this point that there HAS been an uptick in Ports and their related reality-bending strangeness in Adelaide recently which is why this is of particular interest to her currently. gotta find out What Makes The Weirdness Tick, gotta find out Why The Sudden Extra Weirdness

..........and also Kai is there

Kai has no nice neat reason to get involved with the plot, Kai just likes drama and being all up in people’s personal business. Tris brings them on board for one single afternoon like “hey I will pay you some money to come to my house and fix my fucked up phone so I can listen to an interdimensional voicemail” but forgot the apparently key addendum “and then leave”

their first three chapters of knowing each other is basically Tris being like “stop inviting yourself into my house we are not friends” and Kai being like “that’s a rude thing to say to your friend. also your sister gave me the netflix password and I used your kitchen to bake pastries feel free to help yourself”

but yeah so Tris’s story mostly focuses on his quest to figure out where Jacob got yeeted to and how to get him safely home (y’all probably know a bit about The Unreality already maybe?), whilst also dealing with rising family tensions, whatever shifty stuff Jacob was involved with prior to his disappearance, and his own creeping doubts about his perceptions of reality

n I’m also saying flat out it’s not a plot that’s going the “oh the whole thing was just a delusion all along” route because ew

his psychosis is a fairly involved part of his character but the explorations around it are more to do with, like......... the difficulties he has in trusting himself and whether he has the luxury of letting himself get swept into some Big Weird Implausible Adventure when this has extremely different implications for him than it would someone else. n eventually to how his success and survival is not ~in spite of~ but specifically because of the different way he understands and interprets the world and the skills he’s developed

THAT TANGENT WAS A PERSONAL RANT IT WAS NOT RELEVANT I just have words to say on the subject of how psychosis is treated in fiction and didn’t want people jumping to the “none of it is real” conclusion anyway ok moving on

ur SECOND key player is Noa Yun, who has rather a lot on her plate right now. she’s broke as fuck and her mum is sick and her car is making Noises and she’s not getting enough hours at her job at Not-IKEA and everyone is on her back about her failing studies as if that’s a thing she has the energy to care about. feeling rather backed into a corner by life’s bullshit and her financial situation, she blatantly lies her way into a field job at the Department of Interdimensional Instabilities, because A) surely it can’t be THAT bad, and B) what does she have to lose?

so more or less what she’s doing is the equivalent of emergency services for Port-related weirdness, it’s going out and dealing with highly unstable otherworldly energies head on, navigating Weird Phenomena and bendy patches in reality......... it is, among other things, a job that’s relatively easy to get into because no one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole unless they absolutely have to

n the DII is a whole other post, this shit has lots of different functions and levels and branches and corruption and secrets and a tendency to view workers who have to go out and deal with the brunt of the apocalypse head-on as vaguely expendable and I’ve talked about it a bit before and in more Serious Words

things kinda kick off for her when in true Noa fashion she hurls herself into a dangerous situation to help out a coworker, n enters a pretty standard issue “overlap” where the barriers between universes are a little fucky, but hey, she seems to come out of it with nary a scratch, so it’s reasonable to assume everything is fine, right?

INCORRECT AGAIN

she basically gets some whacked-out otherworldly energies latched onto her that are now following her through her everyday life, and it turns out she’s starting to bend the reality around her the way certain types of Ports do, which is! obviously not ideal! she’s not exactly a Port herself, because she’s pretty sure that’s impossible, but it’s clear capital s Something happened to her in that overlap, and she doubts it’s good news. and to make matters even more disconcerting, she’s now being dogged at every step by strange visions of a child who speaks in an unfamiliar language and who seems Real Fuckin Pissed at her

so her thing is basically “I acquired fucked up reality-bending powers against my will and they might be lowkey killing me ‘cause Ports are notoriously unstable like that and also I’m haunted for some godforsaken reason” which all somehow ended up being, like, the least interesting part of her plotline for me lmao

oh and Noa also enlists the help of Shara, Because Ghosts

anyway yeah so her search to find out what’s happening to her re: Weird Children, being a Port-adjacent something-or-other, and whether there’s a way to stop her own unravelling leads her to (rogue computer programmer? mad scientist? general shifty bastard?) Laurence Marrick Thiele, who claims to have suffered a similar affliction in the past and now does some real interesting research on the subject. n this guy. well. he’s got some fuckin stuff going on

he definitely knows more about the nature of Ports than he should. also is he actually researching what he says he’s researching? also what’s with all the weird tech? also did he just straight up murder that guy Avery? all will be revealed later, maybe, if I feel like it

but yeah at about the same time as Noa goes “actually fuck this you’re shady as hell I’m out” she stumbles into, like, The Actual Reality of what Marrick is up to re: manipulating Ports and interdimensional doorways for his own gain, and the various ways this spells bad news not only for her but potentially for the entire city and anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire, and she shifts gear to “actually you know what I’m gonna kick your ass”

there are various reasons for this, but first and foremosterly you have to understand that Noa’s got a fuckload of pent-up rage and she will bring it in full force the moment you say some stupid shit like “some people are expendable” or “it’s inevitable for the greater good”

(there’s also a fun ongoing subplot with her work at the DII where she and her team are investigating a string of strange illnesses with bizarre symptoms that appear to be spreading via obscure radio stations so that’s. happening. I guess?)

but yeah the main story here mostly follows Noa’s attempts to undermine Marrick, bastard supreme, and find a way to fuck him up before he goes, like, Full Cartoon Supervillain, n also like........... her attempts to keep up her work at the DII despite her rising paranoia that the teammates she’s growing to care about will notice her increasingly unstable state and the fact that she’s all tangled up with the very forces they’re meant to be thwarting. n along the way discovering the reality of what happened to her in The Aforementioned Overlap Incident and about her visions and such

so that’s all that. did that make sense

n she’s got a whole arc going on about trust and learning to lean on others, like, she comes into this story as a very standoffish person with lots of paranoia, she’s spent much of her life feeling like she can only rely on herself, n she’s. well. yeah, like I said, she’s got a lot of anger at the world and at the various systems that have failed her and her loved ones, n the story puts her in a position to become even more isolated

and her plotline isn’t so much “you have no reason to be angry or afraid” or her learning to Not Be, It’s more, like........... yeah you have every fucking right to be furious and of course you’re afraid! but there are people around you who love you and who will jump at the chance to defend you and who will help you carry the weight of your anger and grief and none of this needs to be yours to bear alone which is extremely cheesy

which applies to both her Weird Supernatural Goings-On as well as her regular ordinary life goings-on

I feel like Alice and Jet deserve a mention for Noa’s plotline but also this went on and on too long already so. well. Alice and Jet exist! yep. they work with Noa at the DII. I have things to say about them. I will not be saying them today

and uhhhhhh

in general, for Tris, his plotline, you wanna think, like, fantasy/adventure vibes which veer pretty sharply into horror, and for Noa you wanna think...... kinda, sci-fi mystery conspiracy vibes with a dash of some superhero bullshit maybe except not really

and that

pretty much is it I think

also the fact that Kai just invites themself into the plot for funsies and then is dragged kicking and screaming into caring about themself and making positive changes in their life means there was no convenient place in this post to be like

"oh there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop"

but there's also a whole major subplot about a time loop

goodnight! thanks for coming to....................... whatever this was! have a nice saturday everyone

#alcohol mention #just in the first little intro bit #being concise is not my strong suit! this should be apparent perhaps #tl;dr #tris's brother jacob gets lost down the back of an interdimensional sofa and tris has gotta go get him back even though #he's terrified enough just leaving the house let alone leaving this entire reality on a stupid convoluted mystery quest #and noa has a run in with some interdimensional bullshit and acquires Powers and A Ghost neither of which she wants #and then accidentally uncovers the schemes of literal cartoon supervillain marrick and is like #''oh sick i was looking for a reason to go absolutely fuckin ballistic and fuck someone's shit up''#And Both Of Them Make Nice Friends And Learn To Love Themselves :)#atdao #i constantly walk the very fine line between not wanting to be Too Vague about noa's plotline vs not wanting to be Too Spoilery about it #like............... the stuff about the kid and about marrick's endgame i'm never quite sure how much to delve into hahahaha #but yeah anyway #imo i only went on ONE mildly unrelated tangent which should have been cut but i decided to indulge it instead #which is the couple paragraphs about noa's character arc #character arcs not important for this post!!!!!! but also. dfkhgkdfjshg. try and stop me #(i mean i did pretty ok staying on track for the most part i think)#(still a rambly post though)

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psych0midget · 5 years ago

Text

Music Soulmate AU

I basically just rewrote this from Andrew’s POV

The first time Andrew hears what is soulmate is listening to he is in juvie.

In juvie they encourage troubled youths to listen to music. He has a radio and “free” access to a computer. But the music radios pass on is not exactly of his liking. And it’s not like he can surf the internet however he likes, not when the internet is controlled and censored.

To be honest, he’d never even thought he might enjoy music before his soulmate. His soulmate has good music taste.

Thanks to Pig Higgs he has landed in a juvie with plenty of rehabilitation programmes. He’d gladly avoid joining any of them, but his counsellor made it compulsory.

And so Andrew choses the music programme. That’s how he larns to play the guitar- just so he can play the songs his soulmate listens to.

It’s only when he gets out of juvie that he finally finds out the names of the bands and musicians his soulmate listens to. He buys their cds, downloads their songs, goes to their concerts and listens to them 24/7.

Out of juvie he also finds out that he has a twin brother who plays the drums and a cousin who plays the piano. And what is he even supposed to do with a brother he knows nothing about but start playing music together?

At first it’s mainly covers. Aaron sets the rhythm and Andrew strums his guitar. It’s quiet and slow, like their uneasy friendship. The more they get comfortable with each other the better they play together.

It’s only when their cousin Nicky walks into them playing an instrumental cover of The Ghost of You by MCR that he decides to join them. Nicky ditches his piano, buys a keybord and becomes an official member of their unofficial band.

The first time Andrew does the vocals of one of their covers, both Nicky and Aaron hit the wrong notes and then stop playing altogether, staring at Andrew with their mouths wide open.

It’s Aaron who breaks the silence with a screeched “you’ve always known how to sing LIKE THAT and you’ve never done it before?”. Andrew just shrugs, but from that moment on he becomes the designated singer.

Their unofficial band becomes official when Kevin Day joins the line up. He plays the bass, but most importantly he writes songs. And good damn songs. Plus his father Wymack owns an independent music label and he signs them.

Even with a contract in their pocket, Andrew and his band (now called The Foxhole, who even knows why, it was Nicky’s idea) have to cut their teeth. They slowly work up the ladder one little concert after the other. It is exhausting.

Andrew hadn’t signed up for crazied fans when he’d started playing the guitar with his brother in the attempt of making up for 14 years of being convinced they both were alone in this world. But at least the fans are growing the more and more numerous.

Last week they filled a small arena with 5 thousand people in LA. The posters outside the venue said “The Foxhole, SOLD OUT.” After the show Wymack had smiled proudly and told them that the recording studio would be booked for them all month long.

And that. That is one hell of a month. Andrew loses count of how many times he thinks about breaking Kevin’s hand.

But through the caos, the deadlines, and the mind-numbing recording sessions, Andrew has - well Andrew doesn’t have his soulmate. Not with him anyway. But he has a good playlist to come back to when he gets home.

He knows at what time his soulmate turns on his mp3 player. And every evening at 8pm Andrew takes one hour just for himself, sits on the sofa and religiously listens to the playlist his soulmate is playing. It’s a habit he took up in juvie, a habit he would never give up to.

The Foxhole’s first album jumps straight to the first position of the Alternative Music chart. Right on the day it comes out.

When they get the news Nicky is so ecstatic he jumps on the sofa like a child. Aaron hugs his girlfriend, lifts her up and makes her spin in the kitchen as they laugh and laugh and laugh. Kevin just smiles, which is quite shocking per se.

Andrew’s heart skips a beat only when at 8pm he hears his soulmate listening to The Foxhole’s album. And at that, just at that, his lips slowly curl up into a smile.

After that, Andrew’s life gets the more and more chaotic. It’s shows and interviews and world tours. It’s trying to set an alarm at 8pm even when he barely has time to breathe just to listen to a couple of songs from his soulmate’s evening music session.

It’s waking up at 5am when in Paris and cursing the European tour. And then it’s missing it. Missing it when he crashes on the couch and his meds take too much out of him. It’s having The Foxhole’s concerts set at 8pm.

It’s Andrew secretly hoping his soulmate listens to his concerts because Andrew can’t listen to his playlists. It’s Andrew wishing he’d stop hoping his soulmate would come find him after a concert.

Andrew is taken off his court-mandated meds during the pause between their last tour and the new album. The drug-induced mania wears off, leaving Andrew alone, parsing through the white noise in his brain and the thoughts that won’t leave him alone. Never never never.

One night he’s so drained out by the effort of overcoming his addiction and getting used to the new way is brain is wired, he falls asleep on the sofa before 8pm.

He wakes up at 2am, angry and frustrated and pissed off he’s missed his soulmate’s daily playlist. And if Andrew, frustrated beyond words, picks up his guitar and starts trying to put his thoughts into notes nobody has to know.

It’s not like Kevin will judge if he finds out. Kevin himself started composing to fight his own alcoholism.

But nobody really has to know. Not even when Andrew makes a habit of it. Picking up his guitar and humming along with the music he plays- trying to figure out what sounds right and what doesn’t. What eases the pressure on his skull, what makes his head hurt even more.

Nobody has to know, but he kinds of forgets that his soulmate *does* know. And Andrew tries so hard not to react. But when in the morning he hears his soulmate singing along to his new song, Andrew finds himself smiling. Andrew is sooo fucked.

Let’s not even talk about the somersaults his stomach makes when his soulmate starts playing awful upbeat songs whenever Andrew stops composing. He hates those songs, thanks but no thanks.

But his soulmate annoyingly persists pestering him with happy songs. And Andrew gets what his soulmate is doing, he knows his soulmate is doing his best to show him he likes what he’s doing, he gets it, he’s just not ready to admit it to himself.

He ends up telling Aaron. And it’s just because he needs to have someone else play with him. Just to test out a few things. Not because it’s Aaron.

Aaron who disgustingly smiles at him when Andrew shows him what he has composed. Aaron who knows he has a soulmate. Aaron who asks “it’s him isn’t it?” when Andrew puts his hands in his hair because his soulmate is listening to one of his sickening upbeat songs.

Aaron who tells Kevin. Fuck you Aaron.

Andrew knows Kevin would happily crack his head open if he didn’t need a singer and guitarist. He hears him mutter something like “that fucker knew how to compose and he never said anything before”.

They end up rehearsing the song together. First it’s just Aaron and Andrew showing Kevin and Nicky the ropes, then it’s the whole band. And if the smile on Kevin’s lips is any indication, the song is good. Damn good.

They end up including it in the new album. And Andrew is okay with it. But then Wymack hears it and decides it’s going to be the single paving the way for the album. Andrew doesn’t want to, it’s *his* song, it’s something he’d come to share with his soulmate and his soulmate alone.

He was happy with it becoming part of the album. He had anticipated how it’d feel like to hear his soulmate listening to their album and recognising the song. He had not anticipated the song becoming mainstream.

But he says yes to Wymack. He owes him that much. He still decides to do things his own way.

The Foxhole are supposed to debut the song during the first concert of their promotional tour. It’s Kevin who usually does the talking, but before he can start presenting the new single Andrew snatches the mic.

He feels Kevin’s eyes drill holes in his head when he says why he wrote the song, why he recorded it and- and that’s all because he has an annoying soulmate who supports him. And when he finishes Aaron is smiling (fuck you Aaron) and Nicky is staring at him with his mouth open.

If the screams and the yells and the choruses asking for an encore are any indication, the crowd loves the song. Andrew doesn’t care. His head is screaming “now he knows now he know now he knows”. And who would ever want to have anything to do with him. He’s fucked up. Oh he’s fucked it all up.

He grits his teeth through the concert, trying to prevent the walls in his head from crumbling down right in front of thousands of people. He regrets saying it but he misses his meds. They made this part easier, they didn’t let him dwell and spiral down into chaos.

When the show finishes he knows what’s waiting for him. A wall of fans screaming to his face that they are his soulmate- Aaron had warned him about it when Andrew had told him what he’d planned on doing.

He locks the door of his changing room and tires to breathe through the panic choking him. Just a few more minutes and then he’ll get out, face the fans and the media and the mess. He did this to himself. Just a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes- but the door of his changing room is thrown wide open. The intruder closes it back behind his back and presses his body against it to keep the door shut.

Andrew barely manages to say “What the fuck?”

“Lock picks!” the guy throws them a him. Andrew effortlessly catches them one-handed. The intruder flashes him a smile so bright it can’t be real. Just like the red curls and the blue eyes and everything else about him. Who the fuck is this man?

As if he’s reading into his mind, he says “Don’t worry your bodyguards will be here in a sec.” Another smile.

Andrew barely has time to open his mouth and reply when the bodyguards come crashing into Andrew’s changing room. And right then the stranger says: “By the way, I’m Neil and in the morning you always listen to Welcome to the Black Parade. Nice to meet you soulmate.”

#all for the game #andreil #aftg #tfc #andreil fic #the foxhole court #aftg fic #aftg au #mine*

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