#HOWEVER i noticed this and my brain went wild lmao. like for all i know this doesn't make any sense

[jynxedshapeshifter]

okay so in general I really don't like Daryan's design. It works for his character but his hair ruins it. HOWEVER. I am currently finding myself in a state of REALLY wanting his jacket because the shark theme goes beyond just his hood resembling an open shark mouth and the zipper pull resembling a shark tooth.

His jacket is made up partially of layered fabric. For the sake of showing what I mean by this, I've highlighted the parts of his jacket where that's obvious here:

The red lines are where his jacket has fabric that overlaps. This isn't something I would usually find so fun as a character design element, but here, Daryan's shark-themed. His jacket is designed after a shark. The way the fabric is layered on his jacket, especially his sleeves, looks like shark gills when you view them from a dorsal view. How the fabric is on his left arm also looks like the jawbone of a shark.

Maybe I'm just stretching what the intention was with Daryan's design. I fully acknowledge that I might be. But my silly autistic brain cannot unsee the layered fabric on Daryan's jacket resembling shark gills now.

[lilover131]

Why I’m scared for Syaoran-Theories

For literal years I have shouted from the mountain tops that I am worried something bad is going to happen to Syaoran in Clear Card. I even stated it in my initial thoughts for spoilers of Chapter 1 back in 2016, so I can confidently say I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Now here we are 55 chapters and 5 years later, and I’m more worried than ever. 

The thoughts I had were mostly revolving around the when, and I think CLAMP is throwing us some breadcrumbs along the way that we might be missing (or in my case, extremely over analyzing XD).

However, I will tell you that the theories I have about the ‘how’ part, which I have kept mostly to myself until now, begin with a story, and a dream….or several rather.

Under the cut due to length, and forewarning…some of this is going to sound probably crazy and like a wild crack theory. I haven’t talked about up until now out of fear that y’all might think I’m going off the rails. Lmao. So please read with a grain of salt.

For those who have followed me for a while, you might have noticed that I have CCS related dreams quite a bit. And in these dreams, it’s a common theme that nothing good ever happens to Syaoran. Lol. Now, before you say “Hey Chrissy, those are just dreams and mean nothing!”, hear me out.

 Every once in a while, the dreams that I have tend to carry some truth to them or end up actually happening. Please understand I’m not trying to say I’m prophetic or anything, but rather I am a firm believer that dreams are sometimes your brain’s way of finding answers to things that you can’t while you’re awake. Granted, some things I can’t explain, but I promise I’ll get to the point here.

 One specific example I can give here is when the Clear Card manga first started, none of us knew the identity of the Cloaked Figure in any capacity. All we knew was that they were about Sakura’s height and probably wanted her key, and that was really about it. When Akiho showed up in the series, people instantly pointed at her and said “it’s gotta be her”. I admittedly believed it too, but a part of me thought “that just seems too simple”. 

 But then I had a dream.

 I was very confused by it, but I went to my friends on Discord the next day to talk about it. It was July 28th, 2017 (thank goodness for time stamps!). And in that dream, I had seen the Cloaked Figure standing on a telephone pole, staring down into Sakura’s bedroom window. Their hood was down, and I could clearly identify the back of Syaoran’s head. I thought “There’s no way that it could be Syaoran, that wouldn’t make any sense”, so I tried not to think too much about it and dismissed it as just a dream.

 Then came chapter 24 almost a full year later….for those of you who don’t know what chapter this is, the one I’m referring to is when THIS bombshell was dropped on us. 

Needless to say, I was pretty spooked. Not only was my dream right about Syaoran being the Cloaked Figure, but he was even standing in the exact same spot as the scene that occurred in chapter 24. I will even say that this wasn’t the first time either that I had experienced a manga related dream actually happening in some capacity. Back during the serialization of Tsubasa when I was about 15-16 years old, I had a dream of the other Syaoran (or Real Syaoran as some may know him as) appearing before Clone Syaoran in a desert, surrounded by a destroyed city, and when the first chapter of the Acid Tokyo arc came out, I about lost my mind. The moment I saw that destroyed city, I was like “This is where the other Syaoran is going to appear”, and I turned out to be right.

 These dreams could have been a one in a million fluke, never to happen again, but boy have I had a loooooot of dreams over the years, and I’ve been documenting them ever since that Cloaked Figure dream and paying close attention to details, particularly because that was the most accurate one I’ve had so far, and I honestly can’t explain how it happened. But over time I have come to learn how to kind of pick out the dreams I feel actually mean something compared to the ones that are probably just a result of me thinking a lot about CCS.

 With that in mind, there has been one reoccurring theme in some of the CCS related dreams that I’ve had, and that was the presence of this scary, black goop like entity that doesn’t have a figure. The only thing I can really say about it is it was alive but certainly not human. I had the first dream about this entity even before the Cloaked Figure Syaoran dream, and the date appears to have been February 2nd, 2017.

 In this dream, that shadowy creature completely consumed Syaoran, who was protecting someone in its path, who I can only assume was Sakura. Like many of my dreams before, I dismissed it initially until I had a second dream on April 14th, 2018.. This time I didn’t see the actual shadowy creature, but rather saw a somewhat intense conversation between Sakura, Syaoran, and Kero. Syaoran seemed frustrated and incredibly worried, and the dialogue was in Japanese, so I could not understand a word of it. But there was one word in particular that he said, and I managed to remember it even after I woke up. Somewhere in this dialogue, Syaoran had said the word ‘kagemaru’. Why that word was the only one I held onto, I’ll never know. But it’s important to remember here that I don’t speak or understand Japanese. But something here compelled me to try and look this one up.

  I try to follow my intuition on things, so I googled the word ‘kagemaru’. I found mostly images of a character from Yugi-Oh GX (lmao), whose name happened to be Kagemaru. I have literally never watched anything beyond the original Yugi-Oh series, so I can promise you I wasn’t at all influenced by this. What surprised me was what the name meant...

 ‘Kagemaru’, appears to translate as ‘Pure Shadow’.

 AGAIN, my dreams were referencing a shadow, and weird enough in a language that is not my own. But that point on, I had an actual name for this entity, ‘Kagemaru’. To me, that gave me more reason to pay closer attention, and that’s where I really started documenting my dreams on Tumblr, which you may have seen. I thought to myself “this could be important, or maybe I’m just overthinking things again and this really is just a dream”. I thought “no one is going to take any of this seriously, and neither should I”. But at least if I had it documented and it turned out happening, then I could go back and actually say “Okay, maybe it’s real”.

 So I didn’t think about it for a while until episode 22 of the Clear Card anime came out on June 10th, 2018, a few months later. And there was a scene in particular that gave me chills.

 The scene I’m talking about is when Akiho is telling Tomoyo about her scary dream. This differs a bit from the manga, where she didn’t have this conversation really with Tomoyo at all, but since Ohkawa was involved in the script, I still consider it relevant. The really key thing I paid attention to that Akiho said was this:

She didn’t describe what this scary thing looked like, but it was clear that it was a truly horrifying dream for her, since her hands were trembling as she spoke about it. Additionally, she had spoken about said dream just before to Kaito and stated that there was a voice that said “You can never return”. Now, we weren’t sure what this voice sounded like until the anime aired it, and I gotta say…I was not expecting it to sound the way it did. The voice that says this in my opinion doesn’t sound human, was not really recognizable as any of the characters we know already, and immediately it gave me bad vibes and reminded me of the ‘Kagemaru’ I had seen in my dreams before. But still, I went on thinking “well maybe they’re still unrelated and I’m overthinking this”.

 Then chapter 27 came out in the beginning of October, 2018. Sakura and Akiho were down in the library in the basement, and right after Akiho had gotten emotional and was consoled by Sakura, they were suddenly in the dream world that Sakura had seen so many times. Again we heard that creepy disembodied voice say “You can never return…”. But what happens directly after this is what perhaps scared me the most. Akiho goes into what I call ‘Book-mode’ and says “Bring her power, too, “in” here”. There were a few words said before that, but one thing to keep in mind as well is that in the Japanese version of this chapter, different fonts were used for each speech bubble coming from Akiho, implying that multiple people that were not Akiho were speaking through her. And what did we get right after this was said?

A black, shadowy mass that tries to consume Sakura….

 I cannot tell you how bad this freaked me out when I saw it. Words cannot describe it. It was such an uncomfortable feeling, and I felt I couldn’t really ignore it any more. So all this time, I have just been waiting for developments and constantly fearing for Syaoran the entire time because of my dreams. 

 If you’re thinking “Chrissy, this is really weird”, then buckle in, because it gets a little bit crazier still.

 Sometimes I like to go back and read old fanfics I wrote up but never posted (I was a very shy child who kept most of my writing to myself). Well, in February of 2017, I recall reading back through some documents, and I found one that was only about a page, but I had written it all the way back in 2008, a long long time ago now. I had long forgotten about this and have no idea where it even came from, but something compelled me all those years ago to write about a black shadowy mass that formed into a dragon. That’s right…a dragon.

 So, all in all, it’s been a pretty wild ride for me. Lmao.

 Now that I’ve told you this story, let me further explain why I think Syaoran in particular will become a target. CLAMP, in my opinion, has been pointing in this direction for quite some time and hinting that something was going to happen to him. It kinda started when he said he came back to Japan to be “ready when the time came”, and it seems to be based around a future his mother saw. This future she saw has still not been disclosed to us, but Syaoran from the very first chapter seemed determined and prepared for a moment in particular that has yet to happen, and Eriol is supporting him from behind the scenes.

 Throughout the series all after this were numerous, numerous occasions in which people around Syaoran expressed their concerns for his well being and expressed how much they care about him. I’ll go ahead and list them all now so you can see the sheer volume of them, which means CLAMP is really trying to hit this point home. Why you might ask? It seems obvious to me that they want to increase the emotional impact that a future moment will bring, and that is why I am so entirely convinced something bad is going to happen to him. 

 1.       Yue—Chapter 27 of the manga  

2.       Meiling—Episode 16 of the anime

3.       Wei—Episode 19 of anime

4.       Sakura Cards-Chapter 27 of manga

5.       Touya—Chapter 54 of manga

6.       Eriol—Volume 7 drama cd (translation courtesy of @meimi-haneoka​ HERE 

Eriol: So, as we thought, she ended up creating a new card? Then...

Syaoran: I know...what I’ve got to do. I’ve put a spell on the teddy bear. I’ve already given it to Sakura. Through that bear, I’ll be able to use the Sakura Cards little by little...Hiiragizawa?

Eriol: Please, just don’t forget this. Sakura-san is important for me, too. Not because we’re connected through Clow Reed, but because Sakura-san is her own person.

Syaoran: Yes (I know).

Eriol: In the same way, I care about you because you are your own person, is what I’m saying./In the same way, you are important because you are your own person. (not sure about which one)

Syaoran: -silence-

Eriol: (chuckles) ...It is typical of you, to not give a reply.

 Sakura is obviously in this list too, but I thought she was obvious enough that I didn’t need to show examples. Clearly she would be very upset if anything happened to Syaoran, which may be also why she is so upset seeing the dreams of him as the Cloaked Figure. Even the mere thought of those visions are enough to give her anxiety and put a frown on her face. 

 So seeing all these signs that CLAMP is throwing out there, it seems practically confirmed that Syaoran is going to get into quite a bit of trouble, but it’s a matter of how and when. Here’s what I think ultimately is going to happen, and please take this as a vague idea. I don’t expect things to happen exactly this way, but this is the scene that plays out in my head when I think about it.

 I think that at some point, Akiho is going to go into ‘Book-mode’ again, perhaps stirred by emotional thoughts about Kaito, and come after Sakura. That black shadowy mass is going to try and grab her, but at the last second, Syaoran rushes in and throws himself in front of her, which would be a classic sacrificial Syaoran move. Sakura might try to do something about it like grab him and pull him out of the path, because she cannot bear to have anything happen to him, but then…in that split moment, she remembers that she cannot touch him right now or else she’ll hurt him, due to the spell placed by an unknown source keeping them apart.

As a result, she hesitates and is unable to save him, just like a very similar scene that occurred in Tsubasa (for all who have read, you know what I’m talking about, and back then there was a black shadowy mass too, wasn’t there?!). Maybe this also would explain how Syaoran becomes the Cloaked Figure, why he looks so devoid of emotions and feelings in those visions as well, or maybe even how the dragon comes about and why the Cloaked Figure stands atop it. We know that the spell inside Akiho is also slowly crushing her soul with the more magic it absorbs, so what if it were to transfer to Syaoran instead? His eyes and facial expression are so cold in Sakura’s visions/dreams, and it’s clear that what she was looking at is not Syaoran, at least not in soul.

In this daydream theory I have, Sakura is devastated and wants to change things and wishes for a moment that she can go back and do things differently, and in that moment of wishing, makes the card that that Kaito needs.

I think it seems somewhat implied that the card Kaito needs is time related. The reason I believe this is because when Sakura made REWIND, Kaito said it was “close”, but still not what he needed. I can’t speak as to what Kaito’s goals are yet, but maybe he wants to go back and change a moment in time that happened long ago, but he’s not strong enough to do so. It requires an obscene amount of magic and also is considered taboo, at least in the magical world in Tsubasa, and these same ideals and lore seem to carry on through other CLAMP series. I feel this also lines up with the ‘forbidden’ magic Kaito keeps referring to and also explains why he would deem time magic in particular necessary to accomplish it and made his contract with Momo.

Another theory I can throw out there is perhaps there is an impending consequence for Syaoran already that is just not being considered. For example, we know he’s breaking a magical contract right now by holding onto the Sakura cards and that Eriol expressed he was against the idea of Syaoran doing this. I feel like there might potentially be underlying consequences to this sort of thing that CLAMP isn’t divulging, especially since it seems kinda odd for the only problem to be that he gets worn out quickly? I mean, Sakura did too when she first was transforming them, so it just seems kinda…light in terms of the gravity of what he's doing. Additionally, for Eriol to be so adamantly against something, it means it must be serious. After all, he certainly doesn’t mind putting himself in situations that make him bed ridden for the ones he cares about, so it seems unlikely that this was Eriol’s concern, unless he’s just being incredibly hypocritical.

Ultimately, we have a lot more information to find out, but here’s what I’ve got based on the things we know now. If you read all this and think I’m a crazy person, I wouldn’t blame you. Lol. I’m fully prepared to be wrong and honestly hope I am, but I thought now was the best time to get all this out and see where things go from her. Everything will surely be all right!!! 

[yeolmae-s]

a chanbaek analysis from a veteran exo-l (part 2)

CLICK HERE TO READ PART ONE

Writing this was a bit harder in comparison to the first part, because I wanted to organize things into a neat timeline, but I ended up not having enough patience for it lol specially because both of ChanBaek's main archive blogs seem to have deleted their pages documenting each date of EXO's early years. Therefore I apologize in advance if this part is a bit more messy. Also, please don't forget that all of this is my opinion and I don't mean for any of it to be taken as truth!

I kind of want to jump from MAMA era directly into Wolf era, since we don't really have a lot of cover regarding their debut phase besides Chanyeol's overeagerness and Baekhyun's awkwardness towards it, so to sum it up, I felt as if Chanyeol was more confident and consistent on what he thought an idol should act like, while Baekhyun (sweet, innocent Baekhyun who was a trainee for less than a year!) was still unsure on how to act on camera.

On the few early variety shows/interviews EXO appeared on, the members always pointed out how funny Baekhyun was, how good he'd be at variety and at doing imitations, but he never really lived up to all the praise on camera, although off of it, he most likely was as good as his members claimed.

He was a bit stiff on his early days in comparison to what we see today, and that's normal, I guess, since he debuted really quickly, but when you compare him to Chanyeol the contrast is so interesting, because the latter was able to latch on to a persona as soon as the public gave him one, while to me, Baekhyun was still doubtful regarding what to put on display. In the end, deep inside, Baekhyun is a private person, and was even more so when he wasn't confident enough to talk to fans like he does today.

Once again, I’m sorry for not being able to upload the gifs directly into the post, so I’ll just link them like I did on my last one.

This is another one of the moments where Baek appears to tell Chanyeol to just. Hold on for a bit.

There's another one similar to this where Chanyeol does the same thing (try to whisper on Baekhyun's ear) and Baekhyun fake laughs and stares at a fan's camera right after. Then, his expression just goes blank. It's really interesting to watch because you can just see the gears spinning on Chanyeol's brain as he stares at Baekhyun for a second and clearly thinks alright, fanservice time, and leans in to whisper something: it happens so fast you just know it wasn't genuine whispering, just a playful interaction for the fans, and Baekhyun's direct stare to the camera as soon as it happens just confirms this for me. 

1: Chanyeol spots his target.

2: He’s really thinking this through.

3: Baek's in a perfect position for whispering-time, so he leans in and does his thing.

4: Baekhyun laughs.

5: And stares directly at a fan's camera.

6: Immediately regrets his life choices. Chanyeol looks pleased.

It's actually better to watch the whole thing, so I'll leave it here. (starts on 0:28!)

(Random note: on this date EXO perfomed a cover of H.O.T's We Are The Future, and I feel like a lot of new EXO-Ls have not seem it and I adore this performance, so I'll link it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-z4s3fdgo)

Now let's jump on to Wolf era, shall we?

Wolf era

I can't help but laugh when I think about how wild 2013 was for both EXO and EXO-Ls. They had their first hit song (which was Growl, not Wolf) the fandom grew considerably, shippers where just discovering the cute ISAC moments between "BaekYeol" and "HunHan"... Or at least that's how everyone remembers most of what happened during that year.

Are we forgetting the rumoured ChanBaek fight?

Considering their past interactions on airports, SMTOWN concerts, ISAC and other events, ChanBaek was now widely known to be close to each other. Baekhyun even said Chanyeol was the one who made him open up, and both of them mentioned feeling this "connection" to each other as soon as they met (although jokingly).

After Mama, the fandom was content-less for a considerable period of time, and what most people did was sharing around old performances and repeat overused memes.  I think that in every fandom there is a period where fans establish their main inside jokes and basically just get together to create a collective line of thought for perceiving their idols. That being said, one of the most well established facts in the fandom was that Chanyeol and Baekhyun were close. That was a fact.But then Wolf came, and they suddenly were not. 

This gif is a good example of how awkward their interactions were. Not even my delusional shipping brain in 2013 was able to come up with an explanation for it.

They simply did not acknowledge each other at all, and Chanyeol appeared to be closer to Kyungsoo (I think Baekhyun interacted a lot with Tao, but that may have been during the Growl era, not Wolf. As I said before, I'm a Chanyeol stan guys, sorry lmao).

Point is, these two boys who seemed to be best friends suddenly were clearly distant from one another.

What added fuel to the fire of the rumours was their appearance on Sukira, a radio show, where Sehun cried because the members sometimes had fights. Here's a fanacc:

[130530] EXO at Sukira

Sehun cried because the members sometimes fight.

Sehun: "Let's be loyal to each other, don't fight, and go until the end"

D.O: "We've been under a lot of stress lately because of the comeback, so I wish we won't fight in the future and do our best"

Here's a video cut of this part of their interview. 

I think this ask on lets-talk-baekyeol, a popular ChanBaek analysis blog from back in the day, shows how curious a lot of fans were.

What happened back then?

There's really no answer for that. On my opinion, not even Chanyeol or Baekhyun could give us a concrete answer on it, because I don't think an actual fight happened. For me, it was most likely a personality clash, a disagreement that probably wasn't even voiced out loud, just both of them noticing how uncomfortable things got, if Baekhyun's reactions to Chanyeol's fanservice is any indication. I somehow doubt there was a specific episode that created this distance between them, specially because during Growl, they went back to being friends, although not as touchy on camera as before, as if one of them had established their limits (oh, I wonder who!), but I still have this feeling that all of this was unspoken, because unspoken things seem to be a pattern on ChanBaek's relationship (something I'll touch on later, hopefully).

But it was during Growl era that I noticed something else about Baekhyun.

Wolf era

EXO'S Showtime was a such a gift. I recommend reading lets-talk-baekyeol's blog for this. I don't really agree with everything they say they do present a lot of relevant points. I may repeat them here, since I noticed them myself as well, but credits for them nonetheless.

I remember finding the lack of ChanBaek interactions during the episodes really dissappointing, but considering the Wolf Era drought, this was better than nothing.

My 13 year old self was devastated when Baekhyun appeared so quiet during Chanyeol's birthday episode, and during a recent rewatch of it, I think realized why.

Baekhyun doesn't like superficial things. It's not that Chanyeol is insincere, but he's just better than Baekhyun is at handling people pleasing, even when he doesn't really mean what's he saying/doing. The Chanyeol birthday episode was heavily centered on Chanyeol's random admiration for Kai, which I think we can all agree that it was a little bit scripted or a really spur of the moment thing that they just ran along with and oh man. Baekhyun did not want to be part of it.

During ChanKai's hug, this is what he looked like on the background, and the poor boy even refused to eat cake. He's just in the back, which is weird, because he's such a talkative person and Chanyeol is one of his closest friends. The only moment where he seems to be genuinely comfortable is when Chanyeol blows the candle and it's really cute. To me, it seems that he was kind of embarrassed to witness so much acting from everyone else and was unable to participate because he struggles with things like this, but the moment Chanyeol blows his candles to comemorate his birthday seems sincere enough for him to fondly smile.

This ties in so well with everything from Mama Era. He's just unable to keep acting/people pleasing on the same easy way that Chanyeol does, but this time he's not as nervous about it as he was on his earlier-early days, where he probably felt pressured to actually do stuff. Now he just doesn't do **it, he just doesn't do something that he dislikes doing, and that sadly creates a distance between them on camera and probably on a deeper level in their relationship as well, because both are just realizing how different their perceptions over their jobs is.

There's also this moment that the mods on lets-talk-baekyeol pointed out.

On the Christmas episode, when the members leave the couch to go get their presents, Chanyeol stays seated while Baekhyun gets up to fetch his. This is the sitting arrangement before (almost) everyone got up:

But when Baekhyun comes back, there's free space next to Chanyeol, however he's hesitant to sit by his side. He actually hesitates and doesn't sit down. Jongdae even gives him a little push right after.

Baek just seems hesitant to do things on camera, to interact with Chanyeol in front of an audience. For this moment, I feel like he's afraid to sit next to Chanyeol and end up having to over act. It's not that Chanyeol himself makes him uncomfortable, but the image of the friendship that they ended up creating for fans demands a lot from him.

And when I say hesitant to do things on camera, I really do mean it, because when Baekhyun thinks he is not being recorded/seen, here's what he does:

Here and here.

Their relationship clearly changed, and I think the reason for it is actually simple: both of them were under the impression that they were compatible with each other when they actually were not. Their personalities are extremely different, even if the way they present themselves is sometimes similar. Wolf and Growl era was our way, as fans, of watching them navigate around each other and finding out how their relationship was supposed to work.

And you know what's nice about that? The members watched all of it unfold. Their reactions to some of ChanBaek's interaction is a gold mine when it comes to analyzing them, because they clearly know, just as we do, that their relationship is kind of complicated. But I want to talk about it on the next part.

I am sorry for cutting this off again! I don't know if the next part is going to be the last, because after Growl there's Overdose and we all know what happened on 2014 [coughs] dating scandal [coughs] god help me I don't want to talk about it [coughs] so there's a lot to uncover and I need time to organize stuff.

Thank you for reading!

[starlightinhumanform]

Friday Night Lights: Chapter Two

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Ship: Romantic Prinxiety, Platonic Sleepxiety 

Summary: Roman and Virgil play opposite positions on their rival high school football teams. It’s the Homecoming game and tensions are high. Neither are willing to lose but one must rise above the other...

Warnings: Descriptions of pain/injury, Moderate language, One mention of drinking (Please tell me if anything needs to be added)

Genre: High School AU, Rivals to Lovers, Fluff 

A/N: Well... nearly a year since the first chapter came out I’m finally writing again!!! I really love this AU (even though I know very little about football lmao) and I have a lot of ideas about how I would like to include more Sanders Sides characters into this world. If I can get some more of my unfinished fics done, I really want to expand this series. Until then, I hope you enjoy! Love you all 🖤✨

Chapter One   Ao3   Fic Masterpost   Fic Request Info

The first play passed by in a blink. Most of the guys at the front went down quickly, even the largest crumpling under Prince and his brigade. Somehow in the chaos, the ball had been passed to Remy instead of Virgil and the fullback was tackled to the ground.

Virgil rolled his eyes at Remy as the team fell back into formation, only a few feet forward from where they had begun, “Dude, why’d the fuck did it get passed to you? It’s not like a knucklehead like you would know what to do with it.”

Remy huffed a laugh in response, “I have no clue. I’ll make sure it gets to you this time… hopefully.”

He glanced over in the direction that Remy was grimacing. It was Prince, of course, lumbering toward his position with what seemed to Virgil to be nothing but brutish arrogance. Roman acted like the entire game was about him; he acted like it was West Shore Vs Roman instead of West Shore Vs Knights. He probably didn’t even care about the game— it was all about showing off.

Crouched in the back of the formation, it was hard to see anyone at the front but he could picture Roman, somehow managing to smirk behind his mouthguard. Virgil hoped that Remy would rub his face in the turf.

—————————————-

Roman prepared for the second down, glad to see that the jock in front of him wasn’t looking nearly as confident as he had at the first down. Knocking someone to the ground always seemed to do the trick.

The ball was hurled straight back to Tempeste and the bitch who had growled at him earlier didn’t even try to block Roman. Good. All that was left between him and the weird little halfback was Remy Ristretto.

Roman tried to steady himself before the expected slam, but Ristretto’s tackle hit him low in the stomach, managing to knock him off balance. From the ground, he could just barely see the purple form of Tempeste weaving down the field and avoiding every single one of the Monarch Knight’s defense.

Roman tried to throw off the weight of the boy on his back but found himself thoroughly pinned down. His mouth was filled with the taste of plastic turf and dusty rubber and almost the entirety of his vision was blocked by the grape juice flavoured uniform on top of him. It was humiliating. And Tempeste was still running, reaching the end zone without being touched by a single Knight. It was like his feet didn’t even touch the ground, flying across the field.

The West Shore team were given the chance to make a field goal, and made it, but Roman hardly noticed. He was too busy grumbling about how he was going to get back at Tempeste the second he got the chance.

—————————————-

By halftime, Virgil felt like he had been driven over by a steamroller. Multiple times. A steamroller covered in baseball bats.

As the marching band paraded past where Virgil was sitting, he wondered vaguely about the operability of a steamroller that had baseball bats attached to it. Maybe the hit he had taken to the head earlier in the game had been harder than he thought.

Remy sat down besides him, “What’s going on in that big old head of yours?”

“Uhhhhh, a lot of cartoon gong sound effects. Now that I think about it, that might just be the band.”

Virgil looked out across the field as the marching band made their final pass around the turf. The sky was completely dark by now but the stadium glowed bright as day under the huge lights. It was always wonderfully surreal to Virgil, the time of night when the field became its own little world still holding onto the glory of day. He hoped glory was still how he felt about this field by the end of the game. The alternative would be shame; the alternative would be defeat.

And defeat was not an option for a game right before homecoming. It’s not that Virgil particularly cared about the school dances, quite the opposite in fact, he hated them. They were crowded, noisy, and you had to wear uncomfortable clothes and stand around with a bunch of people you don’t like instead of being at home watching scary movies and eating pizza in your pajamas. But there’s only one thing worse than going to a school dance— going to the a school dance after losing the biggest game of the season.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Remy’s voice broke through Virgil’s thoughts, “Well stop it. We’re ahead of the Knights—“

“Barely.”

“—you’ve made some great runs so far—“

“I’ve gotten blocked plenty of times too.”

“—and you’re always at your best in the second half of the game. Now stop putting all your energy towards making the little hamster wheel in your brain turn faster and go use it on the field. C’mon man, the third quarter is about to start.”

Virgil shook his head as if to dislodge the distracting thoughts, letting his purple bangs fall in front of his face for a moment before brushing them back and putting his helmet on. Remy was right. Virgil had started football as a way to channel his anxiety, not to cause himself more. He just needed to get on that field and start running.

He jumped up and started bouncing on his feet, letting the adrenaline flow through his body until it felt like he was buzzing. Virgil was ready to win.

—————————————-

Roman was ready to win.

He could feel it boiling in stomach, the drive, the push to alway be the best. The teams had been neck-and-neck the entire game but West Shore’s grape-coloured menace had managed to scrape by with a slight lead by the end of the second quarter. Roman had no idea how Tempeste could even run that fast; he had short little legs and was about as delicate as a twig. Maybe West Shore just hooked him up to a car battery and gave him 20 energy drinks before every game.

However they made it happen, the kid could run. He didn’t look like he belonged on a football team, more like a trackstar or even a dancer. Roman knew he looked like a football player— tall, with broad shoulders and a thick waist, his extra weight part of what made him such a good defense. But Tempeste... he was like no player Roman had ever seen. Maybe that’s why Roman couldn’t beat him like any other player.

As the teams fell into formation, Roman looked across the row of helmets and accidentally made eye contact with Virgil. His stare burned with intensity. Roman hated to admit it, but he liked that about the rival school’s halfback, the feverish energy that seemed to storm around him. In fact, if Roman was being really honest, he loved playing against the West Shore because he loved playing against Tempeste. The energy was infectious. Playing against him made Roman want to run faster, hit harder, be better.

Roman smiled behind the mouthguard that rested on his bottom teeth. Maybe he did know how to beat Virgil; maybe he had to be just as crazy and vicious as his opponent.

—————————————-

Virgil knew what it felt like to get tackled. In his high school career he had gotten jumped on top and thrown to the ground by various sweaty, muscly dudes more times than he could ever dream of counting or would ever care to. He had been dragged to the ground, sat on, and pushed over from every angle and in every way.

But he had never, never felt a tackle like Roman’s in the beginning of the third quarter of that game.

He saw it coming, practically in slow motion, before Prince actually hit him. The boy’s shoulders were nearly twice as big as Virgil’s even with all his gear. He came charging towards Virgil head-down like a bull, his bright red helmet set with a direct trajectory to Virgil’s solar plexus.

Virgil tried to sidestep, skirting just past the moving wall of Roman Prince, but somehow Roman was moving simply too fast. The impact struck just at his core and a deep kind of pain, like a bruise that goes all the way to the bone, resonated outwards through his entire body. A vibration ran all the way to his fingertips.

Virgil could see the crowd going wild, booing and cheering and maybe just screaming with no inflection, making noise for the hell of it. He couldn’t hear any of it. Maybe the entire world had been put on mute or maybe the ringing in his ears was drowning it out.

He fell backwards and Roman flew over him, momentum carrying him forward. When he landed— and boy, did he land— he fell on directly onto Virgil’s chest. Virgil thought Roman had knocked the wind out of him by hitting him in the sternum. By landing flat on his chest with the entire bulk of his body, Roman found another ounce of breath left in Virgil’s body to shock out of him.

His vision and hearing tunneled out, focusing on the one thing capturing his entire attention: Roman. The boy on top of him was heavy, crushing Virgil through his thick shoulder pads. The heat of Prince’s body spread through his gear as well, although, based on the sweat damping his hairline, Virgil really wasn’t one to talk.

Roman was strong, stronger than him. Virgil tried to squirm away but he could feel Prince throwing his weight downwards and his arms straining to keep Virgil caged to the ground.

Just as intense as his physical strength, Prince’s eyes seemed to burn. Before, they always seemed to be depthless, simply dark and brutish like a bear. Now, breathlessly close, there seemed to be a light behind them, a thousand times brighter than the stadium lights. Gold tones shining through the dark brown of his eyes. It was the most beautiful thing Virgil had ever seen. It was also easily one of the most terrifying things he’d ever seen.

Virgil kept the ball close to his chest. As long as he could keep it, the West Shore team would still have possession and could continue to move forward across the field. They could still win.

—————————————-

Roman had Tempeste pinned to the ground and somehow it was the most exhilarating thing he had ever done. Which isn’t to say he had never tackled the halfback before— they had been playing against each other for several years now— but this was different somehow, more personal.

Tempeste growled beneath him, wriggling to escape the tackle like water slipping between his fingers. Roman push down harder, refusing to let him go.

Footsteps pounded behind them, turf crunching under the stampede of Knights quickly charging forward. Roman braced himself for the pile-up he knew was coming, over a thousand pounds worth of his team jumping to join the tackle.

One guy slammed into Roman’s back then another, then another. The pressure of the game must have been getting to them as well because they threw themselves at Roman and Tempeste like a pack of wild animals.

It felt like every single Knight, including the offense players, were joining the tackle. And feel was the correct term. He could hardly see anything besides Tempeste’s face within his purple helmet. But he could feel everything, every hit of his teammates as their full weight fell against his back. Beneath him, Tempeste’s breath began quickening, like he was sprinting again. But of course he wasn’t, he was pinned down just like Roman was.

Roman glanced down into the depths of Virgil’s helmet, searching past the grill. Shining in the dark, his eyes caught a small reflection of the stadium lights. They were large, startled, and obviously panicked. He looked like a trapped animal and his breathing only continued to become more rapid.

Their eyes met as Roman looked down and he realized this was the first time he had ever seen Virgil look really, truly afraid. He had seen Tempeste in the fourth quarter, 20 points behind and looking as determined and fierce as ever. He had seen Tempeste sprint across the field, followed by the entire Monarchs team, with a huge grin on his face like there was nothing he would rather do than be hunted after. He had seen Tempeste stand toe-toe-to, small chest puffed out and jaw set confidently, with some guy over a foot taller than him because he tried to mouth off about Virgil’s ability. He had never seen him like this.

“Hey, it’s going to be ok,” Roman set his helmet grill against Virgil’s. He knew Virgil couldn’t hear him and probably didn’t even know why he was putting his face so close. Hell, Roman didn’t even know why he was doing it. There was something about Virgil’s genuine fear that he felt the need to comfort him, tell him that it was just a game, that he would be alright.

The weight of another player hit him and Roman was slammed against Virgil’s chest. The sudden shift forced Roman onto his wrist, the small joint carrying him and the entirety of his team. Something cracked. He gasped sharply as pain struck every molecule in his body. Roman’s vision went black.

—————————————-

Virgil sat in the locker room, staring vaguely across at the rows of blue shelves in front of him as he held a pack of ice against his shoulder. The nurse said that it might have been dislocated in the pileup.

He wished he could blame it on Roman, that oaf was the one who had tackled him to begin with. He couldn’t though. It was Roman’s job to tackle him and that’s exactly what Roman had done and as much as it confused and somewhat infuriated Virgil, he also knew the other boy had protected him from the blunt force of his teammates. Why? Why would he do that?

Dull pain throbbed through the entirety of his body, clouding his mind. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t quite wrap his head around what had happened.

Virgil was pretty sure Roman got hurt too. As he had walked off the field, gritting his teeth, he caught a glimpse of Prince cradling his hand as he walked in the opposite direction.

It was one hell of a pileup; four years of football and he had only been in a tangle that bad the first time he had played against the Monarchs. Maybe he and Roman were just destined to create disasters.

Virgil grimaced as his mind kept wandering back to Roman. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help but worry if Prince was alright. Virgil had no idea what was going on in his mind, or on the field, or in the locker room on the other side.

—————————————-

Roman was bored. He sat on the bleachers, watching the game drag on ahead of him as he held a pack of ice to his wrist. The nurse had told him it was probably just strained but Roman wasn’t convinced. He could feel the ache throbbing up his arm with every beat of his heart. Between the pain and the pressure spreading out from grinding his teeth, Roman’s head was trapped in a haze that he could barely see through.

From what he could tell, the Monarch Knights were winning. With Virgil out, Westshore’s offense had been greatly weakened. Roman hardly cared; he wasn’t out there, Virgil wasn’t out there, none of the spark was left in the game. What was the point of winning if there was no one to win against?

The crowd roared as the final quarter came to a close. The Knights won, but Roman didn’t. He felt disappointed, dejected, and like he didn’t quite understand where he was. This wasn’t his game.

The night came to an end and Roman opted to go straight to the locker room instead of shaking hands with the other team, blaming it on his wrist.  Usually, he loved facing the other team after a win— admittedly because it gave him a chance to gloat over them— but he just couldn’t find that same feeling tonight.

—————————————-

Virgil leaned against a cold concrete wall of the bleachers, staring up at the stadium light’s false sun above him. If he looked far enough, he could find the dark sky and the twinkling lights of the city below him and beyond the intense glow of the school.

A cool breeze was picking up as the world shifted into night. It was beautiful but Virgil couldn’t appreciate it. He just wished there had been some sort of ending, a closure of some kind. He and Prince’s last hurrah against each other. But they hadn’t gotten a hurrah, all they got was a game that petered out and came to sputtering stop as they both sat on the sidelines. Virgil didn’t even care that West Shore lost; it was never about West Shore and the Monarchs. It was about him and Roman.

Someone cleared their throat behind him, “You mind if I join your sulking or would you rather be left alone to mope?”

Virgil spun around, his body tensing at Roman’s voice and sending a twinge of pain down from his shoulder, “What do you want?”

Roman stepped closer, “I told you, I came to sulk with you because that’s obviously what we’re both doing.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, “Yeah, right well... fuck off.”

“Man, I thought you might bite before but now I’m sure of it.”

Prince took another casual step forward as Virgil’s mind began racing. What is he doing? Virgil’s eyes swept over Roman. He had never really seen him out of his football uniform and damn. In denim jeans and a red tee shirt, Virgil was actually able to see him for the first time. Most guys were greatly exaggerated by the uniform, making them look bigger and stronger, but nope, Roman was really just built like that. His gaze reached Prince’s face. Like the rest of his body, his features looked like they had been sculpted and chiseled like some type of statue. He was reminded of how beautiful Roman’s eyes were when he actually took the time to look at them, the warm shades of brown filtering through each other.

“Uh, what are you looking at?” Roman laughed, a hint of nervousness creeping into the edge of his voice.

Virgil felt blood rushing to his face as a deep blush rose to his cheeks. He had been staring, hadn’t he? “Sorry.”

Roman stepped even closer, clearing his throat again, “I actually came over here because... I wanted just wanted to tell you I’ve really enjoyed playing against you. And it can’t just be summed up by saying ‘good game;’ it’s been a hell of a good four years... you’re a phenomenal player.”

Virgil stared down at his feet. This was not what he had been expecting, not that he had been expecting any of this, “You know... it hasn’t been easy to be the smallest person on the team— shit, I’m the smallest player in any of the district teams. I don’t think I would have kept playing, or would have tried as hard to stay on the team if I wasn’t absolutely set on kicking your ass.”

Roman laughed— a deep, genuine sound flooding from somewhere in his broad chest— and Virgil couldn’t help but grin.

“So yeah... thanks for that. And good game,” Virgil smiled up at the other boy.

“Well, we can’t exactly shake hands like usual,” Roman glanced down at his swollen wrist and Virgil’s shoulder that he was still nursing.

“Can we do something else then?” Virgil moved so he was standing face to face with Roman, his heart pounding in his ears.

Virgil could feel Roman’s breathing quicken as he reached up with his good arm, sliding his hand to the base of Roman’s neck. Put he didn’t startle, he didn’t try to move away. If anything, he seemed to be leaning into the touch.

Virgil moved forward, standing on the tips of his toes to press his lips against Roman’s. For a horrific second, he thought Roman wouldn’t return it but after a moment of apparent shock, Roman bowed his head to deepen the kiss. He tipped them forward, supporting the entirety of Virgil’s weight with his uninjured hand.

When they finally broke away, Virgil was completely breathless. He definitely hadn’t seen that coming at the beginning of the evening.

Roman looked equally surprised but he began grinning like an idiot as the realization of what had just happened settled over him, “Can we do that again??”

Virgil laughed at Roman’s eager, puppy-dog-eyes expression, “At least buy me a drink first.”

“Well, I can’t exactly do that seeing as we’re both like 17–“

“Excuse you, I’m 18,” Virgil stuck his tongue out in mock indignation.

“Yeah, well, uh, would you maybe want to go to homecoming with me?” Roman began rushing his words out, “I mean, I totally get if not. There’s absolutely no pressure. And I’m sure you already have plans so—“

“That’d be cool,” Virgil broke in, “I’d really, really like that.”

Roman’s face once again broke into a beaming smile, “Really??”

“Yeah you big idiot, that’s why I said it. Besides, it’s awful going to a dance after losing a game so I might as well bring a trophy,” Virgil slipped his hand into Roman’s and began leading them out of the stadium and into the parking lot. Nothing could have prepared him for what happened tonight. He had started the evening determined to win, but even though West Shore lost, he didn’t feel disappointed.

Virgil looked at the silhouette of Roman against the fading campus lights as he walked alongside him. Maybe he had won something even more important than the game.

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[kaylorrehabcenter]

Rating Every Song on Fearless Based on How Gay it is

Hello friends! I still have a few song analyses in the pipeline (and one on Lover the album) but today in honor of Fearless (Taylor’s Edition) being announced and Love Story being released in a few hours I thought I’d do something fun to celebrate!

And you know what? Fuck my usual disclaimer, I am the word of god here. Try and change my mind about any of these. I dare you. (I kid I kid this isn’t that serious and you’re free to disagree <3)

1. Fearless 15/10

Everything about this song is so fucking gay oh my god. This isn’t a fruit, this is a whole ass edible arrangement. As a small rural town Gay (my hometown has a population of less that 4,000 and where I’m living now has a population of 2,500) this uh. Hits.

“And I don't know how it gets better than this/You take my hand and drag me head first, fearless”

Y’ALL

The idea of falling in love with someone who makes you less afraid of your homophobic small town…….it’s getting to me.

“My hands shake, I'm not usually this way but/You pull me in and I'm a little more brave/It's the first kiss, it's flawless, really something/It's fearless”

This is making me emotional, I'll be honest. I see so much of my friends and my experience in high school in this song. 

This quote I found on genius is from when the album was released on BMR’s website.

“When I wrote ‘Fearless,’ I wasn’t dating anyone. I wasn’t even in the beginning stages of dating anybody. I really was all by myself out on tour and I got this idea for a song about the best first date. I think sometimes when you’re writing love songs, you don’t write them about what you’re going through at the moment, you write about what you wish you had. So, this song is about the best first date I haven’t had yet.”

This just screams baby Tay writing gay folklore to me, about the gay stories she wish she had. Notice how there are no pronouns in this song??? Fruity I’m telling you.

All that to say. I’m crying because the linear note says “I loved you before I met you” and I want to go listen to Long Story Short and cry now.

2. Fifteen 1/10

Objectively pretty straight as she’s singing about her and Abigail’s dating boys in HS. And Taylor got with a senior guy. Good for her I suppose.

Unless he was one of the shitty ones in which case.

“This is life before you know who you're gonna be”

This however, is a cute line and the whole song makes me warm and nostalgic. You can also hear her crying after the line “and Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind” which makes me emo and I’m sure will take on new depth after Abigail’s divorce and hurt me even more.

Other highlights that make me sob include.

“When all you wanted was to be wanted/Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now/Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday/But I realized some bigger dreams of mine”

Bigger dreams of hers indeed :’)

(Also how can you say she’s a gold star lesbian when this song exists. She was obviously dating boys in high school and even if you think she’s a lesbian. Comp het is a hell of a drug kids.)

3. Love Story 8/10

Tried to change the ending indeed.

This is THE Taylor Swift song, and maybe it’s the nostalgia talking but damn I still love it. Written because she wanted to change the ending of Romeo and Juliet (how anyone likes RandJ enough to want to rewrite I have no clue.) and/or because her parents didn’t approve of a guy she was seeing. (according to genius, it would’ve been too early for Joe J so it could possibly be Boys Like Girls frontman, his image did clash with hers and they did release some cute songs together. However if you want my take it’s probably folklore about Emily, take for what you will)

This song has very oft gay vibes with the ‘They don’t approve of our love angle!’ but uses male pronouns so points redacted for that. HOWEVER this is a very early use of ~the male perspective~ in Taylor’s songs and for that it deserves all the love.

“ So I sneak out to the garden to see you/We keep quiet, 'cause we're dead if they knew/So close your eyes/Escape this town for a little while”

More rural town angst!!!

Nothing gets me more than rural town angst.

“Romeo, save me, they're trying to tell me how to feel/This love is difficult, but it's real”

Originally the lyric was “this love is different”. Granted I do not remember the source, i’s just lore implanted into my brain, but make of that what you will.

“"Marry me, Juliet, you'll never have to be alone/I love you, and that's all I really know/I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress/It's a love story, baby, just say "Yes"”

Marry me Juliet from the male perspective :)

Also worth noting. This is Karlie’s (and Kim K’s lmao) favorite Taylor song which. While basic as hell. Makes this cover sad as hell to this former Kaylor. (thanks @swiftgron-get-married for the tears <3)

Also not to make this about a man AGAIN but the secret message is “Some day I’ll find this” AND SHE DID IM CRYING.

4. Hey Stephen 1/10

The one thing Camilla Cabello and I have in common is loving this song, so I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

This song is very painfully straight.

How can you think this woman is a gold star lesbian.

The only noteworthy thing is that this is one of the few songs she confirms who it’s about. The secret message is “Love and Theft” which is the name of a country music duo who went on to open her Fearless tour. Which, does make me side eye this song a little bit.

Still a cute song.

“Hey Stephen, boy, you might have me believing/I don't always have to be alone”

5. White Horse 1/10

Oh look. It’s track five. 

You know maybe this is just me being a bitch but in my ranking of track fives this is. Pretty low. Maybe on the bottom.

Like I don’t have a lot to say about it. 

She’s going through it over a guy. He was a cheating dickweazel. 

“'Cause I'm not your princess, this ain't a fairytale/I'm gonna find someone someday/Who might actually treat me well”

“Try and catch me now, oh/It's too late/To catch me now”

These lines hit though!!

And she found Joe!! Who treats her well!!!! And she isn’t the princess, she’s the prince who dropped her sword and knocked on her door!!! But this time if they come for them she’s ready!!!

Yes I will make every song about Long Story Short <3

6. You Belong With Me 5/10

Ah yes. The other THE Taylor Swift song.

You know. If I went to a high school with a cheerleading squad. And I had a crush on a cheerleader. I would blast this song. So for that it gets a 5/10. Otherwise. Fairly straight and fairly iconic.

7. Breathe 8/10

Well. We know this one is about a woman. (Emily Poe for those not in the know. Ha. A rhyme!) That alone has an 8/10. And it’s the first time she has a featured artist so bonus points for that!

It was nominated for a Grammy and it fucking lost to Jason Mraz. When’s the last time you thought about Jason Mraz.

I will not have Kaylor feels on a fucking Fearless song but damn is it VERY easy.

“Never a clean break, no one here to save me/You're the only thing I know like the back of my hand”

“It's 2 A.M, feeling like I just lost a friend/Hope you know it's not easy, easy for me”

Also this bridge? Goes off. HIGHLY underrated. 

8. Tell Me Why 3/10

You know. Maybe this album isn’t as gay as I once thought.

This song does bop though, not as good as her other angry songs on this album. But I can vibe with this you know. Why are you being an asshole mysterious man.

“You could write a book on how to ruin someone's perfect day”

This has to be one of baby Tay’s best burns. Damn. 

“Why do you have to make me feel small/So you can feel whole inside?/Why do you have to put down my dreams/So you're the only thing on my mind?”

Men ain’t shit kids. However, bonus points for the shade. 

9. You’re not Sorry 1/10

Ok, ok. Maybe this was a foolish endeavor.

Because yet again we have a very straight song. A good song. That was on Taylor’s episode of CSI. But oh dear. Very straight. Gets a measly one point. We started this post off so very very gay but damn. We seem to be nearing the end on a very straight note.

10. The Way I Loved You 20/10

Hey Remember what I said about this album being very straight.

WELL THAT WAS A LIE.

Is this a comphet album or am I projecting.

This is one of my favorite baby gay Taylor songs. Her masterful use of pronouns (he is sensible! And so incredible! And all my single friends are jealous! But I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain, when it was two am and I was cursing your name!) makes the other person she’s singing about completely vague, while we know she isn’t happy with whichever guy she’s dating.

Mayhaps an early reaction to PRomances?

Either way this song is so good, truly an underrated gay gem I mean. Look at it.

“Breaking down and coming undone/It's a roller coaster kind of rush/And I never knew I could feel that much/And that's the way I loved you”

AND THE BRIDGE. Do all of her gay songs just have kickass bridges?

“He can't see the smile I'm faking/And my heart's not breaking/'Cause I'm not feeling anything at all/And you were wild and crazy/Just so frustrating/Intoxicating, complicated/Got away by some mistake and now…”

Damn. I’m imaging this with 2020 vocals and fucking ascending.

Also please watch the live performance of it from the Fearless tour. It’s such a damn shame this got cut from the movie and some woman in the front row is wearing a cowboy hat. Everyone is holding up those cameras everyone had to have before smartphones. Taylor is being endearing. It’s a good time.

11. Forever and Always 6/10

Bonus points for the ~drama~ of it all. Added last minute to the album? The iconic throwing of the chair in live performances?? All of it very dramatique and for that we stan.

Still pretty straight.

Also Joe Jonas responded to the song and why do I find his response so damn funny. “It’s part of being a musician, I guess. You write songs about each other.”

This is another song where the idea of Taylor’s grown up vocals on this is………..whew

12. The Best Day 0/10

This gets zero points because it’s about her literal mom.

Still makes me cry.

God bless Andrea Swift indeed

13. Change 13/10

We start the official tracklist with a gay song. We end it with a gay song.

We will ignore that it was originally written for Scott and BMR and instead induct it into the hall of gay pride anthems, as it should be. 

“We're getting stronger now, finding things they never found/They might be bigger but we're faster and never scared/You can walk away, say we don't need this/But there's something in your eyes says we can beat this”

“This revolution, the time will come/For us to finally win/And we'll sing hallelujah, we'll sing hallelujah”

The music video is cringe though lol

14. Jump then Fall 10/10

This song is gay because I choose it to be. <3

Like. Picture baby Taylor writing this song and playing it on her guitar to a girl she has a crush on telling her that she’ll protect her and they’ll be safe and in love and happy together. Gah, maybe I’m ~projecting~ but this sweet ass song always gets me and is EASILY in my top five Taylor songs. Super underrated and hecking cute. 

“We're on the phone and without a warning/I realize your laugh is the best sound/I have ever heard”

Like. Look at this shit.

“I watch you talk, you didn't notice/I hear the words but all I can think is/We should be together”

Tell me this is about the first time you get a crush on a girl and she’s your best friend and she’s amazing and beautiful and you realize you kinda want to kiss her and you hope she wants to kiss you too.

“I had time to think it oh, over/And all I can say is come closer/Take a deep breath and jump then fall into me”

And she’s the Romeo who's going to protect her!!!!! She’s the knight in shining armor in this song and I love that for her??

“The bottom's gonna drop out from under our feet/I'll catch you, I'll catch you/When people say things that bring you to your knees/I'll catch you/The time is gonna come when you're so mad you could cry/But I'll hold you through the night until you smile”

I won’t divulge into full on analysis here because. This is what this post is about but PLEASE listen to this song more. It’s such a gay little gem.

15. Untouchable 9/10

How does she make a cover sound gay.

It sounds so gay.

“You got to come on, come on, say that we'll be together/Come on, come on, little taste of heaven”

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

16. Forever and Always Piano Version 1/10

This song gets 1/10 because I don’t like it. There. I said it.

17. Come in With the Rain 3/10

I can see why this is a bonus track. It doesn’t hit me as much as the other songs on the album.

But damn if I don’t want to scream sing this one driving down a high way.

18. Superstar 7/10

You can’t tell me this song is about a man. I simply won’t entertain the idea.

You cannot prove to me that this song is about a man. There is not a male pronoun in sight. 

>:)

19. The Other Side of the Door 6/10

Is this song about having a fight about being in the closet? Probably not. Will my gay little brain make it about that? Yep!

And that, funky little queer pals, is my gay rating of every Fearless song. Like and subscribe, #t3atmidnight

[a-monsters-love]

Hi!! I know this is super dramatic but I was wondering if you’d be willing to write some ✨angst✨ Maybe Todoroki, Hawks, Bakugo Midoriya (take your pick if that’s too many) reacting to their s/o taking a particularly bad hit for them? Enough to knock them out of a fight. If you needed an idea for a quirk, maybe a short burst teleportation quirk? Just an idea! Thanks for taking the time to read this! 🖤

Oh man, I love drama but let’s see if I know how to write angst, and I LOVE THAT QUIRK IDEA. I had a similar idea for a fic that’s been pinned until I get ✨inspiration✨ aND HERE WE ARE. Also thank you so much for the request and for being so polite 💛

The idea I had was inspired by Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck-It-Ralph, like a glitch quirk. I’m gonna make the 1-A boys pro hero’s for this because it’s so much more work to do it while they’re still in school, I’m cutting Izuku cause I can’t see anything but crying or our feral child in the latest update and oh man it hurts too much.

These are a fraction shorter than I would’ve liked them to be however i wrote them on my phone so they looked longer lmao

——————

[Master List]

Todoroki Shoto:

Hours. It’s been hours since this fight had begun, or so it felt like. You were panting heavily, Shoto watched you stand your ground firmly. You took a deep meditative breath, you smiled softly at him and glitched. You appeared on a window ledge behind the steel villain and went in to distract him while Shoto went to work. He looked around and noticed you were cornering the villain where less civilians were around. The villain turned as if to attack you but made a quick action to attack Shoto off guard, you glitched towards your husband to stop the steel needles from impacting him. “(Y/N)!” He screamed, your hand was so close but the world went black.

Shoto watched as several thick steel needles pierced through your body, you smiled softly at him and you eyes closed before you hit the ground. Tears sizzled before they could run down his cheeks, he saw red and froze the villain quickly. He didn’t care about the repercussions, he didn’t care what would happen, all he wanted was for you to be alive at the end of the day.

He sat there with you in his arms as blood pooled around the two of you staining your respective uniforms. A medic removed you from his arms and he followed silently. He didn’t say anything in the ambulance, he didn’t say anything while you were in surgery, he didn’t say anything as you were transferred to a hospital room.

Days that passed turned into weeks before you opened your eyes, when you did you see his bi-colored hair as he slept snuggled into your arm leaned onto your hospital bed. You smiled softly and pet his hair with you opposing hand, a deep breath leaves you. Shoto stirs and rubs his eyes as he sits up, his left side lights aflame as his emotions run wild. “Hey.” You said, your voice was scratchy and muffled from the oxygen mask.

“Hey.” His voice shook as sat up, he clutched your hand in his and squeezed it lightly. “(Y/N)-  I- you can’t…” His words hitched in his throat.

You sighed and smiled softly again, “I’m sorry, Sho.” Tears left your eyes, you couldn’t imagine how he must feel. “My body just-“ Moved on its own, you chuckled softly at the thought.

He chuckled getting the point of what you were going to say, he kissed your forehead softly. “Try not to do that again…” He nearly whispered the words, you could felt him shaking. You couldn’t promise you wouldn’t do it again, but you could promise to try.

Takami Keigo (Hawks):

You didn’t know how he could flirt while fighting, at first sure it was cute and sure you love him but, “Hawks! Is this really the time?” You tried not to hiss at him blushing in embarrassment and frustration.

He gave his award winning smile, “Of course, Angel! How else am I supposed to keep up morale?” You snorted at his comment and rolled your eyes.

“Focus, Birdy.” You jumped out of the way before colliding with cement being thrown at you. You glitched towards the villain before he could touch the ground again, as soon as you reformed in front of him your stomach felt hot. You coughed up blood and looked down. You materialized into the villains knife, looking back at your boyfriend a tear streamed down your cheek. “Focus…” Your voice was almost a whisper as your body fell towards the earth.

“DOVE!” His cry was almost a screech. Keigo’s eyes narrowed as he sent the last of his feathers towards you to soften your landing. “THAT’S ENOUGH.” He charged towards the villain but your words echoed in his mind ‘focus’. Hawks retrieved his longest feathers that now dripped with your blood, he saw red but kept hearing your words. He made quick work incapacitating the villain before rushing to find you. You’d already been taken into an ambulance and ushered off to the emergency room.

Keigo paced enough to wear a trench into the ground while you were in surgery. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as the surgery sign turned off. He was told to rest by a nurse but refused until he saw you.

You slept for a few days before waking up, when you did he was staring at you wide eyed. He was surprised to see you awake but gods was he relieved. He wore what one might consider pajamas, his sweatpants were pulled up to his knees, his shirt and sweater were disheveled. He had dark heavy bags under his eyes the indicated he wasn’t handling you being out very well. “Angel..” He spoke softly.

You smiled and winced painfully as you adjusted, Keigo stood quickly to help you adjust the lift in the bed. “Hey Birdy..” You coughed out, “You look like hell.”

He rubbed his face and snorted, “Dove. Is this really the time?” He was grateful you could make jokes even while on deaths doorsteps.

You smirked, “How else am I supposed to keep up the morale?” You teased, quoting his comment the day of the fight. You both chuckled softly before silent set in. “I’m sorry Kei, I should’ve been paying more attention.” Your hand grazed over your newest scar.

Keigo goes to say something with a smile but it quickly drops, he looks at his  hands as they shake. “I… I don’t know what I would’ve done with out you…” He glances up at you with misty eyes. “Don’t scare me like that, (Y/N)…”

Guilt sets in your stomach as tears well in your own eyes, “I didn’t mean to-“ You reached out your arms and he climbed into the hospital bed beside you. You pet his hair until he fell asleep, you both knew this was part of being a hero but this was the last thing you wanted.

Bakugo Katsuki:

Just once, just once you’d like to have a normal date with your boyfriend. Sure, you’re both hero’s and sure, it’s not like villains had a schedule you could follow and plan around. Fuck, just once you’d love if King Murder Explosion himself would just let other hero’s handle things themselves.

You glitched around the street collecting and moving civilians, “Ground Zero, the western street is clear!” You shout up to him.

A smirk grows on his lips as he follows your lead, blasting the villain to the street you cleared. You start clearing the surrounding streets as you knew how your boyfriend was, blasty boi couldn’t avoid making a bigger mess than needed. “COME ON! SCARED?” He chided with the villain, edging him on.

The oversized criminal threw an empty car towards Katsuki who blasted it to the ground. Things being thrown and blasted back and fourth continued for a moment when you heard a cry for help. A child, you thought. You look back at the two fighting and glitched towards the sound, you teleported between rubble slowly finding your way to them. “Hey… it’s gonna be alright.” You said in a hushed toned as you found their little hand, glitching them into your arms. “Hey- Hi kiddo, I’m here now.” You pet their hair as the sobbed silently, trekking back to safety.

You could only glitch one person at a time safely, the last thing you needed was to glitch a possibly injured child into having a seizure. “(Y/N)!” You heard Katsuki shout, “LOOK OUT!!” He howled, you looked back too slow and glitched the child to safety.

By the time your quirk confirmed they had materialized safely you were struck in the head with a large chunk on concrete. Everything was dizzying and then black, “Suki..” You mumbled as you hit the ground.

The next explosion was loud, aggressive. Katsuki hadn’t seen that much rage since high school. After everything that happened and then meeting you, you the woman he wanted to marry, gods he saw red. He debilitated the villain in a series of large blasts, bellowing for medics who arrived at the scene. He screamed at them to hurry up and help you, screamed until he was sure it was burned in their brains before fizzling.

The world had never seemed so silent, everything ached. Everything was dull and lifeless as he waited for you to wake up. They claimed you’d be fine, Recovery Girl had come to see you. Now was just a waiting game, Katauki’s patience was thin but he’d wait for you for the rest of his life.

You woke that evening to quiet bickering, you can hear Katsuki on the phone. You assumed it was Kirishima, you smirked thinking about how much your boyfriend has calmed down in the passed years. “No, I couldn’t ask her! You really think I had the time? We’re in the fuCKING HOSPITAL!” He hissed.

You hummed, “..Suki?” You ask, he disconnects the line as soon as he heard your voice and walks over to your bed.

“Why didn’t you teleport to safety?” He jeered.

You sigh and look at the ceiling, “I had a child with me, I couldn’t.” You rubbed your eyes and looked at him. His gaze softened and he sat down.

He sighed and pressed his face into both of his palms, “Today was supposed to be fucking special, I always fuck this shit up.” You hummed in curiosity, a blush crept up his ears.

“Everyday is special with you, Suki. Stop being so hard on yourself.” You chuckle softly.

He looks up and rests his chin on one of his hands, the other reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small velvety box, “That’s not what I meant...” He huffed and handed you the box.

You sat up awkwardly and took the box, opening it to see a ring set. It was simple but it fit the two of you, tears bubbles up in your eyes. “Katsuki-“ Your voice hitched in your throat and he slouched back in his seat while ruffling his hair. “Of course, oh my god-“ The two of you chuckled and you reached out for him to come closer, you pressed your lips to his for a chaste kiss. “So, who’s idea was it to make you do all the extra frivolousness?” You snort at him and he shot up.

He growled slightly ruffling his hair aggressively, “I KNEW YOU DIDN’T NEED ALL THAT SHIT.” You burst into laughter and groaned at the ache in your head, maybe you could get a day from him to go on a date.

[legendofzelda4life]

Happen To Anyone

Unless you’re new here, yk the drill lmao. Today’s day 35 with some Sky and Four platonic angst. (this was actually for yesterday lmao)

However, if you are indeed new here: I write Zelda/LU-themed one shots everyday until the LU AU is updated. I do take requests and more info about that will be left at the base of this post.

Let’s get into it.

TW: blood

-----------------------------

“You okay?” Sky asked, looking down to the hero of four who - for whatever goddessdamned reason - was laying on the floor.

“I fucking hate these world jumps.” He groaned, sitting up slowly. His eyes were a purple-ish blue and his movements were quite shaky. “Who’s Hyrule?” He asked, turning his head slightly to Legend and Twilight.

“Mine.” Legend spoke, eyes full of nostalgia as he looked around. “Ooh, the vet’s world. Is it full of hoarders?” Wars asked, causing Four to chuckle lightly.

Sky smiled. Everyone could still make jokes. Good.

The group walked for a little while, Wind asking about places every now and then.

“Who’s house is that? The owner must be pretty smart to have it away from all the people.” Hyrule said with a slight shudder as he thought about the large amounts of people they may encounter.

“Thanks for the compliment, ‘Rule.” Legend pulled out a key and unlocked the door. He didn’t let anybody else in. Just grabbed a few items and left again.

They didn’t walk for long before-

“Ambush!!!” Twilight yelled, the group immediately tensing at the one word.

Four tried his hardest to avoid some of the attacks but it seemed his body wasn’t very coordinated. Sky noticed his eyes were still purple and blue. Was something wrong? They usually went blue if he was mad…

“AH!” Sky let out a large gasp of pain - though it sounded a bit like a yelp too.

“Sky, I’m so sorry…” Four apologised as he swung at another bokoblin. “It’s fine, I can still do stuff.” Sure, the hero was now supporting an injured waist that caused blood to run down to his waist band.

Four nodded lightly but continued to stick near Sky for the remainder of the battle, making sure he wasn’t close enough to cause any more harm.

Afterwards, there was a lecture.

Four’s body shut down the second the battle ended, eyes turning a blank, stale, violet colour.

“You have to be more careful!” Twilight yelled. “You could’ve caused some serious harm to Sky! More so than you already have!” He gestured to said hero - who was being bandaged up by Hyrule.

“Pup, don’t yell at him.” Time said, placing a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. The boy shrugged off his grip. “He could’ve killed Sky!”

“Twi, look at his eyes.” Wild mumbled. Twilight turned to Four.

The boy’s eyes were pitch black.

They started to fade into separate colours though, eventually settling on red.

“Maybe… maybe Sky should keep his distance.” Four said quietly, standing from where he had sat with Twilight, moving to a tree across the camp site.

Eventually, Sky came over, sitting next to Four.

“Go away.” Four mumbled. “No.” “I could hurt you!” “This could’ve happened to anyone.” Sky said. “What…?” “You heard me, whatever is going though your brain could’ve happened to any one of us. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Who else do I blame though? If I can’t blame myself, I can’t blame you, or Twi, or the cook, the sailor, the captain, anyone.” He wanted to scream as he placed his chin on his knees.

“Blame Hylia! She was crueler to you boys than she ever was to me!” Sky yelled dramatically. “Fuck Hylia. She had nothing to do with my actions here and now.” Four stood abruptly and turned to walk away but Sky grabbed his arm.

“Let go of me, Sky.” He growled. “No.” Sky burned two eye-shaped holes into the back of Four’s head. “I will hurt you, and this time,” Four unsheathed his sword, giving Sky that ‘I-am-staring-through-my-hair-because-you-are-about-to-die’ look.

The boy faltered a little but his grip stayed firm.

“Do it, you won’t.” Sky smirked.

Four’s features visibly darkened and he held his sword high, Sky readying for the impact.

But the sword didn’t hit.

Sky glanced up at Four wearily, just to be met with a sight he never wanted to see.

Four was crying.

His arm still held the sword high but he looked at Sky with tears running down his cheeks. His eyes…

They were full of regret.

Four dropped the sword and harshly yanked out of Sky’s grip. “Not my fault, huh?” His voice was empty and emotionless.

Yet Sky could hear every drop of disguised hurt.

He couldn’t move.

He wanted to.

Badly.

But his body wouldn’t respond, leaving him to stare after Four as he walked away…

What had he done? Did Sky’s reaction sever the connection he had with Four?

“This could’ve happened to any of us.” Sky turned to see Time walking over from camp. He tilted his head slightly, causing Time to chuckle. “Whether it was the person doing the damage,” he gazed after Four, “or the one receiving it,” glanced down at Sky, who was still on the floor, “this could’ve happened to any of us.” Sky nodded in agreement.

“He doesn’t believe that though.” It was Sky’s turn to put his chin on his knees. “That’s because Four, like everybody else here, has secrets no one else knows of.” Time explained, still looking in the direction where said hero had gone.

“Anyway, enough of that, you want something to eat?” Sky nodded softly, finally finding the ability to stand as he made his way over to the fire.

He made eye contact with Twilight and smiled softly. Given, he shouldn’t’ve yelled at Four like that, but he had no right to beat himself up over it.

END

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I’m sorry? Angst who?

Also I really gotta learn to keep up to date. I wrote this pretty late yesterday and fell asleep when I was ‘resting my eyes’ so everything after Four asking who he should blame was new.

LEAVE REQUESTS BELOW!

REQUESTS MUST INCLUDE: PAIRING (can be more than two lmao) TYPE/GENRE/CATEGORY (fluff, angst, etc) PLATONIC OR NOT

I WILL WRITE ONLY ABOUT THE LINKS (including the ravio, shadow, the zeldas, and requested characters. Will not write about whole other fandoms though)

I CAN DO READER INSERTS IF REQUESTED (no oc’s tho)

CAN DO AN AU IF REQUESTED

[tinyhwng]

Stray Kids Reaction to you accidentally calling them “baby”

—genre; fluff x100

—msg; idk i just thought of this. also i got really invested and made hyunjin and everyone after just a bit more longer than the rest.(you can tell lmao)  anyways, enjoy!

______

Chan

it was late and you asked your bf to toss a hair tie to you

“baby can you toss me that”

you didn’t realize what you said until you saw the giggling mess your boyfriend was in

“baby huh?”

you immediately retract your statement and ask for him to forget that you had said anything

still teases you

you sigh and turn your back on him

he comes and turns the chair back towards him

“i’m sorry, are you mad?— i mean i’ve been meaning to call you that too”

now you’re the giggling mess

he smiles and admires the image of you laughing

“baby it is then”

“it’s time for bed, babygirl”

read the rest of the members under

Woojin

your relationship was still fresh and new

only calling each other by a syllable of each other’s name

you just happened to slip up this one time you asked for a drink

he was getting up to get snacks from the kitchen during your movie night

“woo, baby can you get me something cold from the fridge?”

he left without a problem, only realizing it as he grabbed the drink from the fridge

he makes his way back, going back to cuddling session yall had

“i liked the sound of that”

“sound of what?”

“baby.”

your face in shock, realizing you had slipped up

“ahaha... forget that.”

“what no, y/n- i mean, baby it was cute.”

you hide your face, blushing uncontrollably as he gives you a big squeeze

“please, keep calling me that.”

Minho

you were whipped for him 24/7 but that was nothing new

however, sometimes, you were just a little too whipped

you were watching him play with his cats and words just naturally came out of you

“omg, baby you look cute”

he turns to you, his eyes widening in shock

“y/n that’s disgusting” he teased

your own words flustered you, pressing your hand over your lips to keep it sealed

“i literally didn’t mean to say that-”

he jumps on you, cradling you

“no i was kidding.” 

his face also red from blushing

“i was thinking of names i could call you but baby sounds perfect.” he gives you multiple smooches, reassuring you that he liked it.

“you’re my baby and these are our babies” he laughs, pointing at his cats.

Changbin

he thinks you’re the most hilarious person in the world

after him of course

he just laughs or smiles at anything you say

but of course, you also found some of his jokes extremely hilarious

he makes a joke and it got your WHOLE ass quaking

bitch u couldn’t breathe

“shit, baby that was priceless-”

“fuck”

you turn to him, his face red visibly heating up

“let’s forget i just said that”

“eeeeee”

inhuman noises idk

“what? no, say it again”

he pleads, his face scrunching up in anticipation

“b-baby”

“oh em gee. call me that from now on. “

“bin-”

“it’s BABY!”

Hyunjin 

babying your boyfriend was your favourite job

you were tiny compared to him 

still, he was your BIG baby

but one time, you were in the mood to be babied instead

you wanted for his attention, his mind attentive to his phone as he watched his live performance

having one earphone on, he was too distracted to attend to you

you were gonna call him how you always did when u babied him but your tongue wanted otherwise

“baby~”

he takes a look at you, removing his earphone right away

“I didn’t catch that, y/n. what did you say?” he said, a big smirk painted across his face

you shake your head, pretending what happened never occurred

“i don’t know what you’re talking about-”

as you tried to leave to fix yourself, he tugs you back 

you fell into his lap, his arms wrapping around your waist

“i’ve always wanted to hear that from you.”

your flustered ass tried to avoid his gaze, feeling humiliated 

“i tried to say jinnie, i swear-”

“no, no more jinnie. baby is my name now.”

he pulls your face to look at his

“you have my attention now, baby.”

Jisung

you were watching him perform once

it wasn’t your first time but you were too invested to control yourself

the whole crowd was screaming so you were screaming along

not that you planned to do so

but he was asked to do some cute things and immediately after the crowd went wild

your voice was too distinctive for him to not notice though

“LET’S GO! THAT’S MY BABY!” you screamed, practically at the top of your lungs

jisung stopped midway his speech, laughing to himself hearing your voice loud and clear

after the show ended you met him backstage

he zoomed into your embrace telling him how proud u were

“can you say that thing again?” his eyes pleaded

“what thing?”

“the thing- what you were screaming earlier”

“let’s go, that’s my-” your face shift in realization

“ahhh, y/n, continue it” he whined

you hide your face, too embarrassed to say it

“ok i’ll do it then, baby. baby y/n, let’s go see the boys now”

you nod, sticking beside him he guided you to the room

“my baby is so cute.”

Felix 

constantly talking to you or talking about you theres no in between 

whipped™

he was overseas for a tour so you guys resorted to facetiming every night

it’s been almost a whole week without him and you were m i s s i n g him

 two different timezones,  he called you while it was night where he was

you could tell he was exhausted but he called you anyways

“lix, you should go and rest”

he murmurs a no, his voice getting deeper as time passed

you were running out of options to get him to rest and you didnt wanna just end the call cause it would upset both you and him

as you were calling him by his nicknames, your brain couldn’t keep up with what you were saying

lets just say mistakes were made

he jolts up immediately, screaming for your attention

“baby? is that what you call me now?”

“wait felix, no, i didn’t mean to.”

he mocks you, repeating what you said multiple times

“lix, i just wanted you to go to sleep” “my day just got a whole to better because of that”

you sigh, watching him from your phone failing to hold your smile

“i’ll go rest now if that’s what you want,” he pauses, giggling. “baby.”

“ahhh go to sleep~” you whined

“goodnight, baby”

Seungmin

seungmin wasn’t the type of person who was interested in pet names

well actually he just never mentioned it 

to you, he was more of a skinship guy

holding hands, cuddling, soft kisses, etc

there was some nights you both just expressed your current concerns with one another 

such a great relationship tbh

he was talking about his concern about the new comeback, afraid he might disappoint people

he was just hard on himself like that 

you reassured him though. telling him anything he does would never disappoint you or others

he got all blushy and giggly at your comment

your gaze fixed onto his smile, his face just a few inches from yours

“you’re so cute, baby”

his eyes expanded, turning to you

“oh crap. sorry, i didn’t mean to say that. you were just really cute” you explained

“well- i actually like it though”

“what? i thought you didn’t like pet names”

he gave you a confused look, “i never said i didn’t like them and now that i heard it from you, how could i ever hate them?”

you blushed at his comment, not knowing how to answer

“please call me that, i like it”

Jeongin

jeongin, the nation’s baby 

you always wonder to yourself how lucky you were to be a part of his life

so every second of the day you tell him how much you love him

you only called each other by your first names, never really going past that

you were going home from the dorms one night before your tongue decided to go against you

“bye, baby- i mean, jeongin” you hugged him goodbye hoping he didn’t notice your slip up

welp, good news buddy, he did

he gave you a light squeeze, refusing to let you go “wait y/n, don’t go yet” he whined

your face flushed red from embarrassment knowing it was too late to take it back now

“jeongin, i gotta go home. you have an early schedule tomorrow too”

“do you expect me to let you go after calling me that?” you can feel him giggling in your embrace 

“say it again, please, then i’ll let go”

you were defeated by his gentle yet desperate voice

“okay,” you exhaled, “baby- i gotta go now”

he squeezed you one last time before letting you go with a satisfied smile on his face

“aha! i made you say it. please say it more to me now”

you wave him goodbye as you made your way out

“bye, baby! text me when you get home”

[lux-i-fer]

Believer of Faith and Mortality

Ao3 link

Synopsis: Lucifer and Chloe's victim shouldn't be alive, but the fact that he's currently alive and giving a statement says otherwise. When more and more miracle cases begin popping up, Lucifer believes that their lives aren't being spared out of the goodness of his Father's heart. The knock at the door only proves his theory.

Rating: T

Notes: Here we are a year later lmao. Sorry it took so long, you guys know how life is. Unbetaed

Chapter Number: 5

By the time Chloe arrived at the crime scene--a small convenience store just inside city limits--the paramedics had already packed their third zombie victim into the ambulance. Dan was on the scene, conversing with some of the techs and occasionally gesturing at the ground. He hadn’t noticed her pull in yet, and for that Chloe was eternally grateful. Arriving here undetected meant that she could have a few moments to herself before having to go out and act like her world wasn’t just turned upside-down the night before.

Chloe closed her eyes and let her mind drift. Thoughts of her father and Nicholas Keller and Maria Poncé mingled with dinner menus and Trixie’s upcoming parent-teacher night. For a moment, Chloe felt normal again. She mentally sorted through the laundry that needed done and configured the drive time between Dan’s apartment and Lux, just as she would have done any other day. Her meditation was almost successful until she opened her eyes to ask Lucifer if he could pick Trixie up from school next week, only to find an empty seat in his place.

Right, she’d put Lucifer on babysitting duty today.

A stab of guilt shot through her heart when she recalled both John and Lucifer’s bewilderment at being put on house arrest. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to exclude either of them from her day but honestly what did they expect her to do? Chloe wasn’t about to turn a 1990s John loose on a 2020s world without supervision. It wasn’t her fault that the only person who could fill that supervisor role was Lucifer.

But even with her self-reassurances, Chloe couldn’t shake the feeling that she was a horrible daughter and an even worse partner.

“I am a good daughter,” Chloe finally said aloud. “There is nothing wrong with leaving Dad with Lucifer. They’re grown adults, everything is perfectly fine.” But everything was not perfectly fine. People didn’t just come back from the dead. Especially not the fathers of divine miracles. Chloe had tried to ignore this whole clusterfuck and focus strictly on work, but the more she pushed it off, the more unbearable it was becoming.

Chloe banged her head lightly against the steering wheel. How did this become her life? She was supposed to be taking Trixie to the beach on the weekends and having dinner with Lucifer after a long day at work, not dealing with resurrected fathers.

Chloe groaned. Ugh, who was she kidding? She was a horrible daughter. Lucifer and John were strangers at best and enemies at worst. If the awkward silence in the kitchen was anything to go by, it was leaning more towards the latter. And instead of trying to diffuse the situation, she’d confined them to a tiny apartment with only each other as company.

Chloe knew it was wrong to just dump John on Lucifer like that, but when she’d come downstairs to see her father still alive and talking to Lucifer, she’d just panicked. Whether she chose to acknowledge it or not, Chloe wasn’t ready for her past to meet her present. John’s death had always acted as a divider between her wild-child acting days and her normal life on the force. Packing away all of her grief into her life before the force had been the only thing that could ease the sting of John’s death. When Perry Smith had tried to shatter that wall around the first nineteen years of her life, Chloe had retreated further into her budding relationship with Lucifer to cope. The method had always worked. The day after Perry Smith’s trial, Chloe was back at work and all thoughts of John Decker were firmly locked out of sight. That wasn’t the case anymore. Now those clear lines between before and after were blurred and there was no telling what kind of unresolved emotions would slip through the cracks.

Knock knock.

Chloe jumped at the sound. She whipped her head around to find Dan, fist poised to knock on her window a third time. She stared blankly at him for a second as she collected her thoughts. Dan made an opening gesture with his other hand, and Chloe cracked open her door.

“Hey,” he said in greeting. He stepped out so she could open her door completely.

Chloe unclipped her seatbelt and got out. “Hey,” she said back. “What do we have?”

He shrugged. “Not much. Our vic’s name is Alandra Chase. She’s twenty-four.”

Chloe cringed, she hated the young ones. That was their second victim under thirty this week. “What happened?”

“Well around 6:30am Chase stopped by this convenience store to buy a coffee and when she came out a guy came out from around the corner and tried to take her purse. There was a struggle and eventually the mugger ripped the purse out of her hands. Chase fell backwards and hit her head on the edge of the sidewalk. I guess she was laying here for about fifteen minutes before anyone noticed.”

That made Chloe double take. “Nobody heard the struggle? Not even the clerk?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “The guy at the counter says he didn’t hear anything, but you know how people just turn a blind eye to stuff like this. Especially in this area.” They came to a stop by the convenience store door. “But we did manage to catch the altercation on the security cameras, so it’s not a total loss.”

Chloe nodded and knelt down to examine the small blood spatter on the concrete. Had it not already been marked, Chloe doubted she would have noticed it. These types of fatalities rarely had a lot of blood, but this was on another level. It was as if she hadn’t even hit the ground. “Was she ever pronounced dead?” she asked him.

“Yeah. The coroner established her TOD like twenty minutes beforehand. The next thing we know, she’s thrashing around in the body bag.” Dan made a face and Chloe mirrored him; what an awful way to wake up. She sat back on her heels and surveyed the scene again, trying to imagine the uproar Alandra Chase caused.

“So why am I here? You guys seem like you have everything under control.”

“Well initially we thought this would take a lot longer than it did. Obviously that’s not the case. But you being here actually works out. The lieutenant wants us to go interview the first two victims. The sooner the better, he said.”  

“Alright let’s go then.” As she stood back up, Chloe caught a whiff of something sweet. “Hey do you smell that?”

Dan inhaled. “What, the pot?” He chuckled. “Yeah so?”

Chloe waved her hand. The scent seemed to grow stronger with the motion. “No, no. It smells like--” she inhaled. “--Like the fairgrounds? Like that thick, disgustingly sweet smell that’s always hanging around the cotton candy stall.”

“Uh no, sorry, didn’t smell that.”

She shook her head. Whatever it was, it was familiar. Chloe knew she’d smelled it before, and it wasn’t at the fair. It couldn’t be. That conclusion just seemed too...easy. No, she told herself, we’re putting a stop to that train of thought right now. She was being paranoid. Her, Dan, and Trixie had just visited the fairgrounds a couple of weeks ago. Her brain was just mixing memories.  

She swore quietly to herself. Here she went again, letting her imagination run away with her sanity. Everything about this case was putting her on edge, and Chloe vowed that she was going to take a long vacation after it was finally closed.

“Hey do you care if we ride together?” Chloe said, changing the subject.

Dan seemingly took the change in stride. “Yeah sure. Take my car?”

Chloe nodded and they set off towards his unmarked Charger.

The drive to the hospital was uneventful at best. LA traffic made it last three times as long as it should have been, but that was old news for locals like them. On any other day the hold up would have annoyed Chloe like it annoyed thousands of other LA drivers. Today; however, she welcomed the idle feeling of the traffic jam. It was familiar, and boy could Chloe use a bit of familiarity right about now. In fact, the sea of cars and asphalt was so mundane that Chloe could almost forget about the emotional trainwreck that undoubtedly awaited her at home.

Not for the first time that morning, Chloe missed the life she’d had just the week before. Back then, people coming back to life might have been strange but nothing too out of the ordinary for the girlfriend of the Devil himself. But then John had to go and show up at her door and change all of that. Now it was personal. And it was because of that that there was a part of her that wished she’d never answered the door last night.

Chloe bit her tongue at such a selfish thought. She should be grateful that her father was even here to begin with. If Lucifer was to be believed (and Chloe had no reason not to), things like this never happened. Lucifer’s Father didn’t allow such things to happen. This was, quite literally, a once in a lifetime opportunity. But Chloe was a homicide detective and homicide detectives didn’t know how to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

If people found out that John was alive, they’d start asking questions. Questions that would attract unwanted attention. Chloe knew if they weren’t careful, sooner or later the feds might be knocking on their door. And then what? They find Lucifer there, informing anyone who asks that he’s the Devil, and then round them both up for testing? Chloe mulled over her mounting paranoia. That situation didn’t even account for other factors like Penelope Decker.

She’d spent the majority of her morning routine debating whether or not she should even call her mother and tell her the news. Penny was John’s wife after all, if anyone had a right to know that he was alive it was her. But Chloe just couldn’t bring herself to make the call. If John's sudden resurrection came to an equally sudden end, living through John’s death a second time just might break Penny for real.

Chloe remembered the years following John’s death with startling clarity. Her mother, despite being the greater source of income, had relied on John for everything. Penny was a free spirit and often remarked that without her husband, she’d just fly away. John was always the one that made sure the bills got paid on time, that Chloe got to her acting lessons or her school functions, and that the groceries got bought on a regular basis. When he died, it was like Penny’s tether to earth was severed. In the few weeks following the funeral, she’d floated around the house like a ghost, never speaking and staring listlessly at the American flag gifted to them by the LAPD. When Penny had finally stopped being a shadow of herself, she’d thrown herself into her work, booking every convention circuit in the country and leaving Chloe behind to pick up the pieces. It was only in the past three years that Penny had started to make an effort to reconnect with LA and her family.

Chloe thought about the way Penny smiled the last time she’d visited for dinner and decided that she would not call her mother. She knew it was the wrong choice, but the alternative was reopening a decades-old wound that was only just starting to heal. Still, Chloe couldn’t shake the conflicted feelings rising up through her gut. The closer she and Dan got to the hospital, the more noticeable the feeling grew. It had rolled slowly up her throat the deeper her thoughts spiraled and the pressure to voice her fears was almost unbearable now.

When they finally pulled into the hospital parking lot, Chloe opened her mouth. “Dan can I ask you something?”

Dan blew out a breath, the first sound he’d made since they’d left the crime scene. “Yeah, of course.”

“If your tía Josefina was one of our zombie victims, what would you do?”

An uneasy silence swept through the car at the mention of his favorite aunt and legal guardian. Josefina had been dead for only half the time that John Decker had, but Chloe knew that the passage of time changed little about the rawness that followed the death of a parent.

Dan scoffed, and she knew she’d caught him off guard. “Chloe what’s bringing all this on? Are you and Lucifer doing okay?” When Chloe didn’t answer, he continued. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that he didn’t show up to work today.”

“No it’s not that, I promise,” she said quietly, deliberately avoiding his gaze. If anything, Lucifer was the only comforting thing about this whole process.

“Okay then what is it? Because this just didn’t come out of nowhere, Chloe. You’ve been out of it since we got in the car.” He put a hesitant hand on her shoulder. “Look, I know we’re not together anymore and we haven’t been for a long time, but I still worry about you. I know I didn’t do a great job showing that before, but I promise I do.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds, the heavy hand on her shoulder making them feel like minutes. Finally Dan spoke again, his voice low and coated with emotion. “I would be beside myself if mi tía came back to life today. I fucked up so much right before she died. I would give anything to show her that I finally did something with my life. And that she didn’t waste hers on raising me.”

After hearing that, the guilt in Chloe's heart seemed to seep into her lungs. She took a few deep breaths to reassure herself that she wasn't completely drowning in it yet. Of course Dan would want to see Josefina again, it was stupid of her to think he would answer any other way. Even still, Chloe wished he had, if only to quell the overwhelming feelings of shame that had been boiling under her skin all morning.

An ambulance roared past their car and skidded to a haphazard stop in front of the ER doors, reminding Chloe of the real reason they were here. She took in one last deep breath. Now was not the time to break down, she told herself. Chloe silently collected all of her negative thoughts and shoved them into an imaginary box, just like how John had taught her to do when she was eleven and ostracized by her classmates. After locking the box into the farthest fringes of her consciousness, Chloe covered Dan’s hand with hers. “Josefina would be very proud of you, Dan,” she muttered absentmindedly.

“I know,” he said, mimicking her prior response. “And Chlo’?” She finally turned to look at him. “Your dad would be proud too.”

Chloe nodded. So Dan had known what this was really about.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Without another word, they both got out of the car and made their way into the hospital. The silence persisted through the check in and badge verification process until a nurse called their names and motioned for them to follow her.

“So how about you take Nicholas and I’ll take Maria, does that sound good, Chloe?” Dan asked, shuffling the files in his arms as if to remind Chloe that they still had a job to do.

“Yeah that’s fine,” she said, taking Nicholas’ file from the stack.

Chloe was embarrassed to say that for a second time she had almost forgotten that they were here to interview Nicholas and Maria. She mentally shook herself; she really needed to get a grip. The world didn’t end because her deceased father of seventeen years randomly came back from the dead the night before. Chloe paused and considered her words. Shit, the world really wasn’t going to end because of some pseudo-Rapture bullshit right? Right? She made a mental note to text Lucifer about it after the interviews, praying that his current uneasiness had nothing to do with the potential end of days.

The nurse continued to lead them through a maze of sterile hallways and bustling nurse’s stations until they finally reached a small, secluded hallway. They stopped in front of a room.

“This is Mr. Keller’s room. Ms. Poncé is at the end of the hall, last door on the left,” she said, gesturing at the rooms in question. “I can escort whoever will be visiting Ms. Poncé the rest of the way if needed, detectives.”

Dan turned to Chloe once more. “Meet back at the car when we’re done?” She hummed in affirmation. He dug into his pocket and produced a set of keys. “Here, take my keys so you’re not waiting around. I have a feeling it’s gonna be awhile for me.”

Chloe took the keys and waved him off. She had a similar feeling about Nicholas’ interview. “Good luck.”

“You too,” Dan said over his shoulder, already following the nurse down the hall.

Chloe took a deep breath before stepping into Nicholas’ room. To her surprise, he was awake. She knew at this point she shouldn’t be surprised by anything the zombie victims did anymore, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘Tis the folly of humanity, darling she could hear Lucifer saying in her head, mortals cannot help their curious inclinations towards the supernatural.

And if Chloe hadn't been convinced that there was some supernatural intervention involved in Nicholas’ fate, she was now. Nicholas looked like he’d been to hell and back. Chloe couldn’t help but wonder if there was some truth to that statement. He looked similar to the last time she’d seen him: thick black hair, gangly limbs, and a small scattering of pimples across his face. However, where his eyes had been filled with desperate ferocity at the crime scene, here they were almost vacant, as if drifting on a morphine high. She supposed he probably was after getting stabbed in the chest.

“Hello Mr. Keller,” she began.

His brown eyes dragged over to meet hers, but he didn’t return the greeting.

Not a totally abnormal response, Chloe noted.

“I’m Detective Chloe Decker.” She brushed aside her jacket so he could see her badge clipped to her belt. “I work in the homicide unit, and I’m here to get some more information about your case. May I ask you a few questions?”

Nicholas blinked, but still said nothing.

“Mr. Keller, I need your consent before we can begin,” she prompted.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was softer than she remembered.

“Okay great. Can you tell me anything about the person who might have done this to you?”

Nicholas just stared at her, as if already worn out from speaking. Chloe held his gaze. Finally, as if in slow motion, he opened his mouth to speak again. “Tall. Black stocking cap. White. Male.” He rattled off the list with near mechanical rhythm.

The information was minimal, but Chloe wrote it down anyways. “Anything else? No identifying tattoos, markings, or piercings?”

His eyes glazed over for a moment, and Chloe suppressed a shudder. It was like talking to a corpse. “An outline of a star on his inner forearm,” he said slowly.

Now that was something she could work with. “Do you know which arm it was, Mr. Keller?”

For the first time, Chloe saw a hint of humanity flash across his face. Nicholas’ thick eyebrows knitted together and his mouth twisted into a grimace. “Left. I saw it when he…” he absently touched his bandaged chest.

“I understand,” she said.

Nicholas’ hand dropped back into his lap like a stone, face falling blank once more.

“We don’t have to talk about the altercation right now, Mr. Keller,” Chloe told him gently.

He gave her an aborted nod.

“Let’s talk about motive. Is there anyone who would be upset with you or who would want to kill you?” Nicholas said nothing. Chloe shuffled some papers in his file. There had to be something in here that could get through to this kid. And he truly was a kid, she’d realized. Nicholas’ file said he was nineteen. Hell, apparently he even still lived with his mom.

“It says here you live at home and attend community college, is that correct?” At the word ‘home’ Nicholas pursed his lips. Gotcha, Chloe thought. “Nicholas,” she leveled her best mom look at him, “is your father in the picture?”

Nicholas looked as if he wanted to shrink down three sizes. “No. He’s dead.”

Damn it. Another dead end. But at least she’d got him to open up a little bit. He was still stiff but at least now Chloe didn’t feel like she was talking to a shop mannequin. Some of the hollowness had finally left his cheeks and his eyes had gained a little bit of the fire she’d gotten a glimpse of when he’d first come back to life. Chloe didn’t know what kind of chord she’d struck in him when the mom voice came out, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try and pursue it. But first she had to play the part.

She took a tentative step closer to Nicholas. His eyes didn’t move from the spot where she’d been standing. Taking his silence as a good thing, Chloe pulled a plastic chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. For a moment, she imagined Trixie was the one in this bed, waiting for Chloe to come tuck her in or to tell her one last bedtime story.

She cleared her throat, suddenly feeling a little choked up. “You don’t have any siblings either, is that correct?” she said, still a bit shaken.

He shook his head, eyes still fixed on the space she’d occupied a minute ago. “Just me.”

She rested her elbows on the railing of his bed. “And your mom, right?”

Nicholas’ head whipped around, all disassociation gone. “Yes,” he said breathlessly.

“And you would do anything to protect your mom?”

“Yes.”

“Help do the dishes?”

“Yes,” he said more adamantly this time.

“Help bring in the groceries?”

“Yes.” He was panting now.

“Help pay the bills?”

Nicholas jerked forwards, his face contorting into a mask of frustration. “Yes!” he shouted, spittle flying from his lips.

He was mere inches away from her face. So close, in fact, that Chloe could smell his breath. It smelled sweet.

She took a moment to let them both compose themselves. “How do you help pay the bills, Nicholas?” she finally asked. Nicholas’ jaw clenched. “Because we don’t have any record of you holding an on campus job or any job for that matter.” Chloe paused, watching his face for the slightest flicker of recognition. When there was none, she continued. “I don’t want to assume because you seem like a nice boy, but the street we found you on is a popular spot for--”

“Drugs! Yes I know!” Nicholas’ chest was heaving now. His eyes looked as wild as they had when he’d tried to pull the knife from his chest. His eyes ran a quick length up and down her person, almost on the verge of tears. “I know,” he said again, voice shaking. “It’s been the only thing that makes ends meet.” He said the last word with a sob. “This was only my third time--it was gonna be my last time.” Nicholas gulped down a rattling breath. “The guy didn't like that. He said he wanted back all the money I’d made. When I said I didn’t have it, he pulled the knife on me.”

They sat in tense silence as the weight of the situation seemed to sink into Nicholas for the very first time.

“He almost killed me,” he half-whispered to himself.

Chloe refrained from correcting him.

Something about the way he’d wondered his last thought out loud reminded Chloe of the time she visited Jimmy Barns in the mental hospital. It took everything in her power to keep the discomforting thought from showing on her face. She let the silence stretch out between them for a minute more before she stood up. “I think that’s enough for one day.”

Nicholas whimpered.

“The LAPD will be in touch with you later this week to give a full, detailed account of the events that transpired this morning.” She uttered her scripted closing statement with the same sort of mechanicalness that Nicholas had when she’d first arrived.

Without waiting to hear his response, Chloe fled from the room. She didn’t even bother to walk down the hall and check in on Dan. Instead, Chloe made her way to the car, more than ready to leave and never come back.

To be completely honest, she couldn’t really pin down what was so unnerving about Nicholas Keller. The whole thousand yard stare thing was pretty creepy, but his sudden bouts of mania had been as frightening as they had been unexpected. Either way, Chloe was utterly exhausted emotionally and physically. Her heart had pounded when she’d seen Nicholas’ short fuse rear its ugly head.

His file hadn’t indicated any anger issues or bipolar disorder, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Chloe knew from her experience on the force that men rarely got the source of their anger issues diagnosed, let alone put on a medical record.

When she got to the car, she wasn’t surprised to see that Dan was absent. As far as interviews go, Chloe’s had been relatively short. Even she hadn’t been expecting to get a confession that early on.

To pass the time waiting for Dan to finish up, Chloe made a few phone calls regarding the nature of Nicholas’ would-be murder. Their initial motive for it had been a mugging similar to their third victim’s, due to the fact that Nicholas’ wallet had been missing from the scene; however, in light of his recent confession, it was clear that was no longer the case. Just as she finished up her last call, Dan slid into the driver’s seat.

“Hey so guess what,” he said, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Hm?”

“I think I know what you were smelling earlier.”

Chloe’s head shot up. “Yeah?”

“So remember how you said the smell reminded you of the fair?” She nodded and gestured for him to continue. “Well I was interviewing Maria and I kept smelling this weird, nasty sweet smell, and I’m like ‘what is this?’ I couldn’t figure it out for a while until I remembered that the jacket I’m wearing right now was the same one I wore when we took Trix to the fair a couple weeks ago. I haven’t washed it since we were there so I wonder if that’s where the smell is coming from.”

Chloe so desperately wanted to believe Dan, she really did. She had enough weird shit going on right now that she was almost willing to just accept his theory. After all, his reasoning was pretty watertight. Still though, there was one thing that still didn’t make sense.

“As much as I’d love to believe you, Dan, I don’t think it’s your coat,” she said, fidgeting with a few papers in Nicholas’ folder.

His eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean?”

“I smelled the same thing in Nicholas’ room. It was, like, coming off of him.” Chloe shuddered just thinking about how gross it had been when some of Nicholas’ spit had hit her face.

“What like BO or something?” Dan said in disbelief.

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah trust me, I know.”

Dan shook his head and turned the car on. “I guess that would explain why you caught a whiff of it at Alandra’s crime scene.”

Oh that’s right, she had. Chloe hadn’t even made that connection yet.

As they eased back onto the highway, Dan started back up again. “So not only do we have zombies now we have gross cotton candy smelling zombies. What the fuck even is this case.”

Chloe couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yeah. Do you want to know something weirder, though?”

“Hit me.”

“Nicholas’ murder wasn’t a mugging.”

Dan glanced over at her. “What? What was it then?”

“A drug deal gone wrong.”

“Aw, no!” He hit the steering wheel lightly. “Really? That kid?”

She nodded. “Yep, sadly. He said it was the only thing helping him pay the bills at the moment.”

Dan scoffed. “Poor kid.” He glanced in the rear view mirror and changed lanes. “Hey by the way we’re headed to the precinct. I got one of the techs to drive your car there so we wouldn’t have to go halfway across the city.”

Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God. Thank you, I really wasn’t looking forward to going back there.

“Oh yeah, also. How was your interview with Maria?”

“Eh, okay. It was a little creepy if I’m being honest.”

That got Chloe’s attention. “Why?” she asked, trying to keep it as neutral sounding as possible.

Dan made a noncommittal sound. “I don’t know. Maria was just kind of...different.” He gestured to the back seat. “Would you grab her file and see if she has any history of mental illness? I didn’t see any but I want you to double check.”

Chloe did as she was asked. “Nope, doesn’t look like it.”

Dan’s brow wrinkled. “Yeah okay that’s what I thought. Anyway so Maria was just, I don’t know--empty? That’s the only way I can describe it. It was like she wasn’t really there at all.”

“Like she was possessed or something?” Chloe prayed that wasn’t truly the case, she did not need another layer added to this shit sandwich.

“No, not like that. She was just really quiet and had this distant look on her face for a while. I hated it.” Chloe made a face. That didn’t sound good. “The whole thing was just a total Nope for me.”

She couldn’t agree more. “So did you get anything useful from the interview?”

“Yeah I got a few potential leads on who shot her, but that’s about it. You?”

Chloe sighed and threw both Nicholas’ and Maria’s files back into the back seat. “About the same here.”

“Fantastic,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Chloe hummed in agreement.

There was a beat of silence between them. Chloe’s mind drifted back to John and Lucifer, and this time she didn’t try to fight it. She’d have to call and check in with them over lunch. She knew she’d better start preparing herself now. Whenever Lucifer was involved, anything was possible. She frowned at that thought, thinking of just how much the realm of possibility had opened up in the past few days. Chloe glanced out the window at the cars whizzing by and decided that Linda would be getting a long phone call in the near future.

“It’s funny how people can just cling to life like this, huh?” Dan said, quietly breaking the silence.

Chloe forced herself to smile. “It sure is.”

[bonsaiiiiiii]

Tracy's In The Pool Series III - Green Party

Soooooo...today is my man Virgil's Birthday! (I was hoping to post this at midnight but Tumblr didn't let me.) In honour of my man's birthday, me and bro thought about a funny idea to celebrate this day with him. (Here today is also national holiday, here called Ferragosto, so we celebrate double lol) He was very proud of this masterpiece and wanted to gift it to my man! I really hope he likes it lmao

💖

"And so today is your birthday, son." Jeff said affectionately, touching the shoulder of his second son.

Virgil smiled sweetly. "It would seem so."

"Come on!" the others protested, who until then had pretended that it was an ordinary day "we wanted to surprise him!"

"How did you do it last time?" Virgil raised an amused eyebrow. "No, I’d love to throw a party this year."

"We can’t." Scott answered, extinguishing and burying that last crumb of hope that had lit up in the eyes of Virgil and the two tinies, that for once wanted only to get away from everyday's boring routine.

"And who told you no? This is the first birthday we celebrate...all together," he said, looking down at Jeff, who smiled at him. Eight long years had passed, he had waited so long for this moment, so he didn’t even think of anything ordinary. In fact... "so I wish it was something memorable."

Scott huffed a little upset, but then his natural leadership instincts melted a little bit. "Do you have any idea where to go yet?"

"Yeah. What do you think about going for a classic picnic?"

"Oooh, like when we were kids!" Gordon stepped into the conversation, his eyes glittering.

"Actually I don’t remember anything..." Alan murmured to himself, almost thankful that no one heard him.

"Well...but where exactly would you like to go? And then how do we do with IR?"

"Let’s take a day off. We haven’t had one for an eternity of time!"

"It seems like a really lovely idea to me too! So I can prepare lunch." Grandma said, and the brothers' faces were about to turn green.

"Good idea...you’ll have so much fun." He murmured John, now sure and stuck on the fact that he would stay in his beloved space station, along with EOS and his beloved bagels.

"I don’t think you realize I want you on the picnic, too." Virgil answered slyly, crossing his arms to the chest, raising an amused eyebrow.

"I don’t even think about it, Virgil. In the forest there are wild animals, then there are insects that will not give us a moment of peace, and also I must warn you that I am allergic to the pollen of a lot of flowers that surely will be present in the forest. Then I will suffer the heat and I will burn. No, no, I will stay here." explained John, and he went on, sure in his theory, for a few good minutes.

Everyone, except Jeff and Grandma, crouched down at the table where they were sitting, and Alan and Gordon thought it best to fall asleep face down on the table, bored by the long sermon of the middle brother. Scott couldn’t keep a bored yawn escaping his lips from listening to him.

Virgil stopped the redhead. "Stop, before everyone goes to sleep." And in saying it, he gave a couple of slaps behind the heads of the two tinies, that by surprise -or fright? - jumped to their feet, shouting, "we're ready to go!"

"You’re ungrateful. I’m just expressing my concerns." mured John, almost incredulous.

"In the meantime, I really don’t think we should go to Thunderbird 2, wherever we went." Virgil started talking after a few moments. "How about we rent a private jet?"

"A...a jet? Private?" Brains asked, a bit reluctant.

"Yes. We can rent one, so why not? It will be a break from the rule, instead of always going with the Thunderbirds." Virgil answered with a big smile. "By the way, Brains, you’ll be there, too, right?"

"Um...yeah, I think so." Brains answered, laying a hand on his chin.

"Why? How many people are you going to invite?" Scott asked seriously.

"The few that serve to define the party I would like to make a 'party'. I also want to invite Lady P."

"Mhm. I'll let her know." John replied, already ready in front of the Lady’s contact.

"Sounds like a great idea to me! It would be good for all of us to get some air and enjoy nature." Jeff smiled, putting his hands on Virgil’s shoulders, and he smiled back. "And then I really like this private jet idea. I haven’t been on a plane in a long time, think."

An incoming call interrupted Jeff’s happy speech; Virgil departed to answer the call, and the smiling face of Lady Penelope appeared in the holocam. "A party? I think it’s a lovely idea! You can count on my presence. But.." The Lady became thoughtful "John informed me that you’re going to rent a jet."

"You don’t like the idea?"

"But yes, I just find it a bit...unusual. But it’s good to depart from original plans once in a while. When is the party going to take place?"

"Today! We'll let you know the details."

"FAB. See you later!" Lady P greeted everyone warmly, and then closed comms.

"So when we leave...?" asked Alan a bit strangely.

"Mmmh...two hours to get ready and then we can leave."

"All right, son. I’ll take care of the jet." Jeff said giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder.

"Are you sure you don’t want any help with the preparations? I can help you up the stairs..." Virgil responded uncertain, approaching his father almost immediately, but he gently pushed him away.

"Go. Don’t worry about me." Jeff responded, slowly rising from the chair in which he had sat, and then making some uncertain steps to the stairs. Virgil followed him with a rather concerned look, ready to react if his father ever needed it.

When he saw his father climb the stairs and then disappear upstairs he looked back at his brothers with a slight sigh, only to return smiling. "So, shall we go get ready?"

🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Hood wiped the dust off the shoulder of his suit, stood up and fixed his tie. Of course, blowing up the prison where he was confined from the inside was certainly not a good idea, given the great closeness to other buildings, but that’s how the world goes about. (bro had this idea, don't @ me) Lying on the ground, some guards groaned with grief, or murmured confused words after regaining consciousness; the Hood did not pay too much attention, and simply began to walk in the direction of the exit, exit of a prison that no longer existed. The GDF had seriously made a mistake to confine him, but the best part was that now International Rescue would show up; who knows the dismay on their faces...

But time passed; first it was 30 minutes, but then a few hours passed: an hour and a half, to be exact. No one showed up. But he was sure that people had noticed the explosion, because someone was still running from side to side to extinguish the prison fire. Strange...he thought, looking around in the form of an ordinary citizen.

Meanwhile, the Tracys had just landed in Waipoua forest, in New Zealand (place totally improvised and searched up last minute, ugh). They had all gone out to stretch their legs a bit, although the journey had been fairly short, and they had also found a quiet place to camp and eat. Lady Penelope had waited for them at the entrance of the forest, and they had all entered together; even the lunch, instead of having been prepared by Grandma Tracy as announced, was ordered, including the raspberry and chocolate cake, Virgil’s favorite.

And as far as they remembered, that was the most memorable and fun party that was ever celebrated; there was no one who wasn’t having fun. Gordon and Alan pulled out the portable speakers that they had brought from home, and when they connected them to the communicators they chose the music for Virgil; everyone enjoyed dancing. After all, why not do something different, something out of the box, from time to time? thought Virgil, smiling at the scene. Yet he had a strange feeling about something; he could not say what it was, but it was something that made him really restless. He decided not to pay too much attention, focusing more on the party.

Only that the event that Virgil had...'heard' came true: while they ate the cake laughing and joking a big explosion very close to them made the earth tremble for a few moments. Virgil first looked at the shirt he was wearing, all smudged of cake, and then looked around, immediately noticing a trail of smoke rising from somewhere in the forest.

Scott and Virgil went to check, while the others sat on the picnic towel, a little worried. But the worry on their face vanished when the two elders, via communicator, told the others that there was no one injured in the explosion, except some wild animals, which however did not suffer serious damage. The two were about to turn back, when Virgil noticed an unusual movement with the corner of his eye.

"Uh... Scott?" Virgil looked for Scott with his voice, but did not look away from the mysterious figure that had appeared before him.

"Yeah, Virg-" Scott’s voice faded down his throat when he also saw the mysterious person. "The Hood!" he then said in an accusatory tone, to the man who looked at him in a mocking way.

"It’s strange that you didn’t show up...especially when the prison exploded. But tell me, what did you come here for?"

"What do you mean 'the prison exploded'?" Scott asked, without worrying about covering up his concern.

"Is there an echo here? That’s what I just said." the man answered.

"You won’t get away with this!" Scott confronted him, while Virgil looked for the ship he was to arrive on, or the person, or people, who were to be his puppets.

"I was going to blow you up to tell you the truth, but I targeted the wrong forest, heh."

"But you weren’t very careful." a new voice was added to the trio, and they all turned around to see Colonel Casey sprouting from a bush (also this was an idea of bro). "In fact, we were able to locate you immediately. Arrest him." The Colonel turned to some soldiers who appeared next to her, rushing immediately to Hood, who screamed and railed at them all.

(From here on, everything stops. There are no other ideas.)

[i-beg-your-parsons]

[Shreya] wasn’t in last week’s chapter, so have a fic (#1)

Relationship: Shreya Mistry/F!MC (Celestine Leblanc)

Count: 1775 words

So I’ve decided that I’m going to make this a series where I update this whenever a character (in this case, Shreya) is swept under the rug (so am I updating this every week, multiple times then? Who knows! 🙃). It’ll be good practice for me to get back into writing. But maybe not every week exactly, I’m starting my undergraduate thesis lol.

Apologies if they’re OOC, especially Aster? (She’s good friends with Shreya in this fic!!) I haven’t tried writing them much and it’s been a while since I did a fic lmao. Hope you peeps like!! Let me know if you want to be tagged for subsequent ones.

This uses the following prompts:

“My cat is more sassy than you’ll ever be.”

“Watch out! I can’t slow down! Move! Move! Move!”

“Am I good at skateboarding? Pfffft! Of course I am!”

Tags: @jellymonster, @deeohno, @coolios-beanios, @h-doodles

__

“Watch out! I can’t slow down!” 

Shreya is startled by a panicked voice, almost dropping her hand mirror on the sidewalk. She whirls toward the direction of the sound. What the - 

“Lady, please move, move, move!!” A blur of blue, red, and brown was hurtling towards her before her brain could really process anything. They make a sharp turn, just barely brushing her skirt, so thankfully she avoided being pummelled into the wall. Her three-inch heels, however, threw her off balance, making her stumble into a large potted shrub situated outside the facade of Maison D’Yew. 

Wonderful. How fucking elegant.

“Oh my stars, are you hurt?” A feminine voice calls out to her, presumably partially responsible for what had just transpired. Shreya inwardly huffs to rein in her annoyance. It would be extremely unsightly for a Mistry to throw a tantrum. At times like these, she was thankful for those dry etiquette lessons her parents made her take when she was seven. 

“I-It’s quite alright! I didn’t get hurt; just much too close and personal with this plant,” Shreya assures worried girl in her haughty ‘humble’ voice. 

(Well, something had to channel her anger. The thick branch digging into her back was not helping keep her head cool.)

She could feel the girl’s slender hands firmly grip her arms and try to pull her up. It was gentle and slow, but jagged twigs were poking her everywhere, “Ow, ow, ow!”

The sounds of her distress halt the girl from pulling her, but she still kept her grip. Her voice sounded more apologetic, if it was even possible, “I am so, so sorry! I told Zeph it was stupid to try riding the broom like a skateboard, but he didn’t really care because he said it would look cool.”

Everything was so fast and panicked and ridiculous that Shreya couldn’t help the wild giggles that bubbled up her throat as she nodded, “I can definitely vouch for the fact that it was stupid.”

Shreya could hear the girl grin, “Nice to know someone sides with me.”

A comfortable lull settles over them before the girl clears her throat. “Maybe I could try magicking you out?”

She seemed capable enough, so Shreya finds that she doesn’t mind. 

“OK, go for it.”

Flashes of green and brown lights from the Wood magick circle peek through the gaps between the leaves obscuring Shreya’s vision. Slowly, the twigs and leaves retract, revealing the face of her saviour as she leaned closer to pull her up by the shoulders.

And fuck: She was exactly Shreya’s type.

The blonde had her eyebrows furrowed in panicked worry as she gently picked off leaves that had gotten into Shreya’s hair and clothes. “Again, I am so sorry. I’ll be sure to give Zeph hell for dragging you into this.”

Shreya could feel the warmth creeping up into her cheeks and the tips of her ears. Her touch was so soothing. “It’s no problem. Is he going to be okay?”

The girl’s face scrunches up at the concern for Zeph. “Yes, probably… I think.” She opens one pale blue eye to find that Shreya was still looking at her, waiting for… what exactly? 

A furious blush colours the girl’s pale cheeks.

“I… should probably go make sure he’s okay. Have a good day, miss!” The blonde turns at the direction Zeph went off and starts at a sprint. It was only then that Shreya sprung into action, hurriedly calling out to the blonde before she left, “M-my name’s Shreya! What’s your name?!”

The blonde doesn’t look back at her, but she yells, “Celestine! See you around!”

—

“So that’s why Aoi was so grumpy when we stepped out,” Aster chuckles as she sipped her sencha tea. They’d been friends for a while, as Shreya was a regular at Maison D’Yew, despite having people who could easily run the errands for her at Mistry manor. Whether it was just a Shreya thing, or an excuse to visit Aster, the wood nymph didn’t mind. 

It was always nice to see one of her only friends.

“For what it’s worth, I apologised to Aoi the shrub before I went inside the shop,” Shreya offers. “And besides, it wasn’t all that terrible.” Her face warms at the memory of the girl — Celestine, she reminds herself — and the concern she showed for her. Shreya absently stares at the steam coming off her drink, remembering the blonde’s delicate blue eyes which were, fittingly enough, the colour of a strontium sulphate mineral, celestine. 

Her parents must be familiar with Attuneless science. I should ask her next time.

Silence descends over the two girls as Shreya spaced out and Aster observed her. She blows at her tea again, before taking a sip. “So when are you going to see her again?”

Shreya almost spills her hot drink and shoots Aster an incredulous look. The green-skinned girl pauses with a blank look of her own and blinks, before giggling as she realises her friend’s thought process.

“For the last time, I can’t read your mind unless you’re a plant. I just know what you look like when you’re excited about something.”

Shreya grips her mug a little tighter, in an attempt to fight down her worsening blush. Aster continues to observe her reactions over her cup of tea. “Or someone, in this case.”

“… She was really cute, okay?”

Aster can’t fight off the grin on her face. Checkmate.

She reaches out a woody hand to pry off Shreya’s own from her grip on the hot cocoa and pats her friend’s manicured nails. They were painted a deep crimson today. “You should ask her out.”

Shreya sighs, “But what if she’s not into girls? I don’t want her to be uncomfortable.”

Aster tilts her head slightly and blinks. It wasn’t like the heiress to resign herself to the possibility that the girl she was interested in identified as heterosexual. “But what if she is? And more importantly,” Aster leans into her friend’s personal space to whisper in her ear. 

“What if she’s into you?”

Shreya jerks back from her friend, clamping a hand over her ear. She shivers like she was just put under a shower of ice cold water. She narrows her eyes are the wood nymph as she tries to calm her breathing. “Why are you being so cheeky today, Ass?”

Aster simply shrugs with a pleasant smile. “One of us has to bring the cheek to move the conversation along. It’s obviously not going to be you, what with this smitten state you’re in.”

Shreya rolls her eyes, “Spare me; my cat’s sassier than you.”

Aster blinks, “You don’t have a cat.”

Shreya throws up her hands in exasperation, “That’s the point!”

The two continue to lock gazes in a contest of wills: Shreya with a piercing glare, and Aster with an amused sparkle. The competition was intense, as if the winner would have their argument proven right.

“Zeph, slow down! You might bump into someone again!”

Shreya’s attention immediately strays to the voice. Could it be…?

“No can do, Leblanc! Those croissants might get sold out!” A voice, presumably Zeph, answers as the front door of the café is slammed open by said male. “Hannah, my bro! Two croissants on the double!”

The short-haired blonde at the register rolls her eyes before shaking her head. “Alright, Denim. But sit your ass down, okay?”

Zeph flamboyantly stands at attention, before giving a dramatic salute. “Roger that, Pixie cut!”

“You’re being way too dramatic,” Celestine steps into the shop, putting her hair up in a ponytail, presumably to cool herself off from running after Zeph. Her hair tie is held between her lips, giving Shreya the perfect excuse to look at them.

Celestine seems to notice the stares directed at her, as her gaze connects with Shreya’s. Her eyes light up in recognition, and her hand immediately comes up to wave at the Fire-Att. 

“Why hello, Shreya! Fancy seeing you again,” Celestine walks over to their table, then rocks back and forth on her heels as she stands.

Shreya brings up a had to wave back, feeling the clamminess that had suddenly developed. “Hi, Celestine. I’m usually here every Saturday with my friend Aster here.” She gestures to Aster, who was absolutely buzzing with excitement. The flowers in her hair were blooming.

“As she said, my name is Aster and it’s so wonderful to meet you, Celestine. Shreya was just telling me about the incident this morning with my Hydrangea macrophylla, Aoi.” The wood nymph managed to get up from her seat and move towards Celestine within that sentence to grasp and shake the girl’s pale hand with her pliant fingers. “He’s thankful for your wood magick because it fixed the branches Shreya broke when she fell into him.”

Celestine draws a blank look, before looking over to Shreya for help. The heiress simply nods, but what does that even mean? She decides that it’s better to play along. “Well, he’s very welcome. I didn’t get the chance to tell him that his flowers were a very beautiful shade of blue.”

“Honestly, Aster, how many times do I have to apologise?” Shreya complains from her seat on the table.

Aster grins at Celestine’s response while pointedly ignoring Shreya, “I’ll be sure he gets the message.” She stares meaningfully into the confused blonde’s eyes, bringing up a hand to hover over the other girl’s cheek. Celestine can feel the coolness of her skin, a plant-like material that felt much like the stem of a flower. Her eyes suddenly darken into a tar-black, seeping into the veins of her translucent skin, “It’s not often that you find humans — Attuned, especially — who care as much for plants.”

Sensing the newcomer’s shock and exponentially growing discomfort, Shreya interrupts. “Hey, uhm, Celestine, would you guys like to sit with us?”

And just as suddenly, Aster is back from her Branching, “That’s a wonderful idea!” She moves to pull out the chair next to Shreya (and if it ends up skewed a little too close to her friend’s seat, well, Aster doesn’t know anything about that).

“I’ll go ahead and assist your friend there are the counter. It seems like he’s having a bit of trouble,” Aster points to where Zeph is gesturing wildly in a conversation with Hannah (aka Pixie cut), who was managing the counter. “Don’t eat her up while I’m gone,” she grins at Shreya, who blushed at the insinuation, but kept her cool this time. 

She fires back with a grin of her own.

“I make no promises.”

––

[flyswhumpcenter]

The Eyes Watching Your Back - Chapter 1

Chapter 2: [TBA]

Summary: Angie's sharp eye isn't just to assist in operations, just as much as a nurse's mission exceeds the OR. You just wouldn't expect the nurse to have to take care of the surgeon she was assigned to. 

Fandom: Trauma Center Ships: Pre-Rel. DerAng (Derek/Angie)

Notes: Oh no, I ship it.

This was written with a prompt in mind, albeit I'm not sure of how exactly I went through with it. I have this bad habit of straying away from my prompts whenever I try following one, but here you go.

It's going to be a two-shot because I have too many ideas about these two medical-field dorks. I borrowed a few names and things from other, much older stories that I found when going on a TC fanfic reading spree the other days. It's my way to pay hommage, in a way. It may also be out of character, but at least, I'd have tried lmao. This is set before UTK2 for sure, buuuut when exactly is left to fanfic/fanon limbo. You do you, reader. 

AO3 version available here.

Credit to @sickficideas for this prompt I’ve used for the story!

When she started her career as a nurse, the first thing Angie Thompson’s mentor and first doctor to assist, Dr Sarah Miller, told her was that doctors were much more illogical than they looked. Not that they were dumb, quite the opposite way around: they simply had skewed priorities due to how their brain worked due to their job. Angie didn’t believe her at first. Doctors should have always had their priorities very much in check, right? It was part of their job, for goodness’s sake!

But alas, as most of what Dr Miller had ever told her, the latter turned out to be right.

 As a nurse, Angie was aware of everything around her. It was part of her job to always stay alert to whatever could be happening around her, especially when it involved patients. She always had eyes everywhere, every place she went, in every corner of the hospital she worked at and in every nook and cranny of the city, just in case someone needed her help. Naïve was the one who’d have thought she couldn’t identify an ailment from a few yards. In a way, that was her own Healing Touch, or what was the closest to it. She may not have been able to slow down time like a certain surgeon she worked under, but it was most useful in some cases, especially in her profession. And it didn’t drain her dry, which was a much welcome plus: watching Dr Stiles collapse seemingly out of nowhere after a successful surgery a while back had scared her stainless.

 Speaking of the devil, her observant eyes had started taking up on some hints about her assigned surgeon’s… predicament. She couldn’t exactly tell why that was, but the feeling lingered in a part of her brain. Dr Stiles was obviously a goofball if she wasn’t behind her back and if the staff at Caduceus wasn’t constantly behind his back, and that was what had repulsed her at first (she’d have rather worked under a qualified and upmost serious surgeon such as Dr Kasal…), albeit he had grown over it. He was now a serious and hardworking surgeon, determined to save people’s lives from biological weapon GUILT, focused and not even that whiny anymore. He truly had grown into someone respectable and always hard at work…

Perhaps a bit too much, in fact.

 Coming from Angela “my work as a nurse is more important than literally anything else in my life” Thompson, that was rich, and she knew it. However, she had a way to justify her reaction to what was currently going on in Caduceus USA. She really did, she promised, she wasn’t just worried or paranoid or anything like that. She was just concerned about the general functioning of the building in case there was this one element which’d break and lead to catastrophic consequences in case GUILT patients came in… They had very little personnel capable of treating the disease. Moreover, it’d be that time of the year where people drove insanely because of the summer break, and there always were car crash victims sent down their way. She had all the reasons in the world to be more alert than at any other time of the year.

 To make it short, she was staring at Dr Stiles any time she could without being spotted by him either. Would their head surgeon operating on GUILT patients be out cold, it’d be the worst thing, a grand-scale catastrophe for mankind. That was the one reason she worried about him. It wasn’t personal, not at all, it was professional and for the greater good, just like a doctor and a nurse should always think of first. As an assistant, it was her mission to make sure the surgeon she assisted was doing his job properly too, so her eyes were also careful about that. She’d allow no slip-up from him, not when lives were constantly on the line in their own little life.

 Angie had always had an eye for details and especially for spotting the little things most people would never notice in others. People would have called her nosy, but that constant stare at everything around her had saved lives before, and she intended for it to do so again in times where she couldn’t fully trust who she was working with. Well, that was making Dr Stiles out to be a filthy incompetent, which he wasn’t (at least, not anymore), but there was still something just wrong with him. Simply and plainly wrong.

 First of all: his hair was even messier than usual. He had never been known for a neat and tidy hairstyle, but this was getting ridiculous and out of hand all the same. Second: his stance was getting weaker and weaker, and it wasn’t rare for her to see him staggering against a wall after performing some GUILT surgeries. Third: even if he was scatter-brained to begin with, it was getting worse and worse by the hour. She wondered if he didn’t forget his own name at times, because calling him out in front of everyone wasn’t cutting it sometimes. That wasn’t a thing normally-composed human beings in a good condition did, and this was the last hint she needed to diagnose something all by herself like the witty clever nurse she was: her assigned surgeon was, seemingly, overworking himself.

 The Angie from a few months ago wouldn’t have believed it. Mr Stiles, the lazy and unkept surgeon who’d abandon a patient for some conference, overworking himself to exhaustion? That wasn’t happening during her lifetime. Even if she was stubborn, Angie had to give in to reality: that was probably and actually happening right around her eye’s corner and she, well, she didn’t know how to act upon it. Perhaps she could just yell at him to stop whatever he was doing and take a rest before they were an entire surgeon down for the duration of a fatigue-induced illness leave. That’d be the worst in times where GUILT was rampant and threatening to end countless innocent lives who had never asked for a painful death by internal lacerations, inside toxic fumes or a direct dive into the heart of an unnatural worm.

Oh.

 She had thought her eyes had been stealthy enough to avoid being detected by the entire staff of Caduceus when, one time, she was in the lounge picking up a cup of coffee for herself and a second for Dr Stiles (caffeine wasn’t the best way to remediate to his growing exhaustion, but if he didn’t drink it, she was afraid she’d be met with a grumpy surgeon, and that was the last thing she needed) before getting taken out of her thoughts.

“Tell me, Angie,” Leslie’s voice had made her rise her eyes from her cheap cup of coffee, “isn’t there something on your mind lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but… You seem more alert than usual, no?”

“I’ve been because of GUILT running wild. You never know if someone’s going to get infected or when.”

She thought back to how pale De… Dr Stiles had looked when he had just learnt Dr Kasal had been infected with Tetarti. That lapsus was painful, even if it was just mental. It better have just been mental.

“That’s true, but you seem to mainly focus on Derek, am I wrong?”

“W-what makes you think that?!”

 Leslie’s giggles didn’t make her laugh for sure. The shriek must have been heard from a mile away, so she couldn’t even deny her primal reaction and the lack of manners going with it. Oops, wasn’t that just too bad?

“You keep looking in his direction, these days,” she said with a gentle smile that slightly disappeared afterwards. “Are you concerned for him?”

“Concerned?” She wanted to scoff. Well, she guessed you could have said that… “I’m concerned about whether or not he’ll be able to operate for much longer, but that’s it. I’m concerned for the potential patients to come.”

“By this, you mean you’re afraid he’s going to burn out or something like this?”

“You could say that…”

Leslie let out an amused giggle again.

“I have to assist Tyler soon, I’ll leave you to it. Take care, Angie.”

As she said so, she took her leave from the room, indeed letting her colleague alone in front of the coffee machine with two cups in her hands.

 As it stood, Angie hadn’t seen Dr Stiles today yet. It was a weird thing to notice, since she was used to arriving before him in their shared office, sighing to herself that his paperwork was still late as ever and how messy his desk always managed to get itself to be. To be fair, she had had to fill in some papers herself elsewhere before going to their office and, even then, she decided to bring them coffee while she was at it. She got far more surprised to see he wasn’t there at all, before grumbling to herself again that he was late. Well, before correcting herself and realizing he could have very well been stuck in traffic jams and other city misadventures. She had gotten herself late in those before too, it was (for once) outside his power to help with it. No reason to get angry, so she sighed again, at herself this time around. She really needed to calm down on her impulsivity.

 Come to think of it, she had a benign case of appendicitis to operate on later with Dr Stiles. By later, she meant that she had to start preparing right now: review the patient’s chart, refresh her memory on the procedures to go, disinfect herself, putting on scrubs and helping Derek do his magic. Dammit, Dr Stiles. She meant to think Dr Stiles. Frequent slipups were pissing her off. She had let herself get distract for way too long by whatever was on her mind that she almost forgot what truly mattered in the grand scheme of things! And so she rushed her mind back into the surgery that had to happen soon.

 As always, Angie managed to quick-start herself back into the swift of things. There was no time to lose on useless thinking and pointless dwelling, and there was a high probability she’d meet back with her surgeon near the OR, and they’d quickly discuss things out there before heading in for a new surgery that she’d make sure would go perfectly fine and end in a success. The patient’s case wasn’t much to be worried about: a twenty-something man affected with a case of appendicitis, who came in early enough for them not to have any complication. It’d be just fine, really, so why did she have a bad feeling about it all? There was no chance of GUILT being involved. They always made sure of so, these days, by testing every incoming patient with a Chiral reaction test to be one-hundred-percent sure. And her certainty about these things would lead her to her temporary fall.

 Her astonishment when she saw Derek walk towards the operating room in shambles almost made her drop the patient’s chart to the floor without her realizing it.

 There was something within her that made her heart leap warmly in her throat, that something she could only link to a realization: she had been right to be weary all this time. Before her was the reason why her mind could never feel at ease whenever she was at Caduceus or even away from it when she knew Derek was still here, serving as a backup surgeon, looking over patient charts, filling that damn late paperwork.

And yet she had done nothing to stop it until now, until it was late. All she could do was to slip Dr Clarks, who was around, a hint about it and watch him take the operation over for them. He, too, knew this was all going to go terribly wrong would they follow that path.

 “Dr Stiles,” she forced her voice to sound stern and strong, almost cold, almost as hard as steel.

The doctor in question, a hand against the wall and a dripping smile on his face, rose his eyes to face her. Glassy eyes, she could see that from the other side of his glasses.

“Huh, hello, Angie… Sorry for being late, I had some… papers…”

Barely coherent speech patterns. Flushed face. Bags under the eyes, and bags under the bags. Obviously overworked and about to give in.

“Doctor, I’m afraid you’ll have to skip on this surgery. Dr Clarks is taking care of it.”

 Her eyes quickly bolted to keep her surroundings in check. In her back, right near her dead angle, Dr Clarks nodding to her to confirm something and entering the OR. Before her, Dr Stiles still walking to her, his face not knowing whether to be surprised or be tired and done with everything in the world. He was stubborn, when he wanted to.

“What do you mean, Angie…? That’s my patient, no…?”

“He was. Now,” she replied as she walked to him with the least impatience she could show, “let’s bring you back to your office and maybe even your place. You’re in no condition to operate right now.”

He rubbed his eye under his glass, but still refused to be held back to another part of the building, back against the wall. He really was making it difficult, wasn’t he? Goddammit…

“I may be tired, but Mr Mark is my patient and a doctor… never abandons his patient. Y’should know that, Angie…”

His eyes were fluttering, but he still continued on shaking legs and in a hasty pace, feet staggering, heavy under the weight of crushing fatigue.

“It’s Mr Monarc, Dr Stiles…!”

“C’mon, Angie, we need to operate…”

 As soon as he attempted to give her his hand to encourage her to come, she slapped his wrist away from her. The anger was now boiling in her veins, an anger she now knew was born out of pure worry. She was far less worried for patients than she was for him at the moment and, now that she was finally honest with herself and in terms with the fact she was worried such a goofball, she had to stop him in his tracks.

And that was why she let herself yell.

 She gripped his wrist right as he was about to walk past her, skin hot under her fingers, sweat forcing her to clutch harder as to keep her grip on the situation.

“Dr Derek Stiles, I insist on the fact you’re in no condition to operate and, as your assistant, I cannot allow you to operate in such a condition! If you don’t comply, I’ll be forced to witness you collapse on the job, putting a patient at risk and forcing us to send you to Hope Hospital! Nobody here needs that, so stop being selfish and take a break! Understood?!”

That had escalated quickly for sure…

“B-but…”

“There’s no buts, Dr Stiles! This isn’t a GUILT victim either, so any other surgeon can take care of it!”

 Derek opened his mouth to respond something after staying agape for a few moments.

“I…”

He gave in right before he could tell her anything else, prompting her to recover his now-limp body in her arms. Goddammit. He was a yo-yo, one day too lazy to properly care for patients, another pushing himself to collapsing for the very same patients.

And there was no doubt about the fact she’d have to take care of him if she wanted to, once again, keep in check. What a handful.

[polzkadotz]

Asas reread their fics - ftayc - chapter 5

has it been literal weeks since I’ve done this? yes do i remember how long this chapter was? nope

and yet this has been sitting in my drafts because I kept being too lazy to come here and write the tags lmao

I’ll be reading this chapter of my fic from the ashes you crawl

It begins right after they have left Moriyama and Andrew transforms itself back into human form in the air, so Neil could be nicely held down by Andrew on top of him because Andrew is Dramatic, I guess.

Neil expects Andrew to ask a lot of things, but Andrew ends up saying that he knew exactly where Neil had been and he wanted to know why he knew that.

There’s also Neil calling Andrew’s dragon a “giant squirming worm” lmao

Neil reminds Andrew that he doesn’t need to hit him since they still have their game of truth for a truth, so Neil waits for Andrwe to offer something and Andrew caomes up with,

“I didn’t notice that you were living inside my brain in an unusual way” Andrew stop, we already know you’re gay my dude, just be Honest

Neil reveals to Andrew that he knew that because Andrew had become his priest and that the priest choosing process usually went through with wild magic, which Neil does not control. Andrew says that he doesn’t want that, but Neil tells him if he really doesn’t want to be his priest, putting distance between them would make the bond fade, but it would take a decade. Andrew, of course, wants it out at that moment, and the only way for that to happened would be if Andrew became immortal himself.

They go back to the hotel and Neil is a little bit hyper until Jean appears in the room out of nowhere. They all go into fighting mode--except Andrew, who knows what the fuck is going on--and then Jean is kneeling in front of Neil, as low as he can.

Jean thanks him and Neil tells him to get up and tell his message. Jean tells Neil that Ichirou didn’t want the immortality at all, and Neil tells Jean to tell Ichirou that “What he looks for can be found in the last resting place of a goddess on a western North American beach”.

Then Neil goes on to ask Jean to repay his debt because Neil “wants his father dead”. Jean doesn’t need to be the one to do it, it just needs to be done. Jean tells him no one would go for it because he was immortal and Neil is like, “Bitch he ain’t immortal anymore” and vomits his father’s immortality that he had been storing.

Jean says he’ll spread the news that Nathan is not immortal anymore and then Jean disappears dramatically because nobody knows how to exit through a door, apparently. Neil tells them what happened when he went out and then...

And then it comes.

The Big Moment.

What Neil is the god of.

Which explains why Neil made them go through the longer more difficult way because he doesn’t know how to do aynthing else lmaooooo

However, it doesn’t matter what they argue about, Andrew will always be right:

I want to see all of you praying for Neil when you’re doing something dumb, thank you.

Neil goes to the roof of the hotel to dramatically experience rain as a free man and Andrew appears after him, and Andrew tells him to change his expression since Neil being happy about being free is disgusting to him.

Neil decides to confront Andrew about why he went to search for him when their bond alerted him Neil was in danger. Andrew tries to weasel his way ouf of answering, and then Neil calls the game of a Truth for a Truth and Andrew snarls in disgust but goes with it, and says that he knew Neil was suicidal.

(Why didn’t I put a suicide tag for this entire fic??? That’s a bit telling about the mental state I had been while writing it lmaoooooo)

Andrew wants to know more about his options (he doesnt gain anything from being immortal, but he does gain a power boost from being Neil’s priest). Then Andrew tells Neil the amount of money he gave to them was too large to be accepted as tip and Neil tells him they can escort him back to the US and that might be enough for Neil, which Andrew accepts easily enough since Neil said they could do it via plane.

It takes four days for the rain of victory that Jean had made fall to stop and then they’re able to get a plan back to the US. Andrew was taking the extended protection detail seriously, but Neil can feel how restless Andrew’s dragon is and he’s like, “Yo, tell me what the fuck is wrong with your dragon” and thats how Neil learns about Andrew’s fear of heights, even though Andrew is a dragon who fucking flies.

Andrew, in turn, wants to know what Neil will do with his spare immortality. Neil wants to destroy the last bit of his father’s that is out in the world, but he doesn’t know if it will be useful in the future, so he will put it somewhere secure.

Neil thinks its a little weird to be back at Fox Security, facing Wymack as he read the reports that they all wrote about the mission. Wymack looked angry over some parts of it, which made Neil....... uncomfortable, but there was nothing he could do.

Then Andrew appeared in the door in the middle of the review and Wymack just tells him to close the fucking door lmao. Neil is like “I didn’t know Andrew would be here,” and Wymack is like, “Well, he said you paid for the services a little longer,” and Neil is like, “Andrew doesn’t undestand tips,” to which Andrew is like, “Shut up, you’re the one who doesn’t understand 10 million dollars isn’t a tip” and once more, there I go making it obvious I don’t know what real money looks like bc i’m poor, i guess! lmao

This is a very messy message but you know what? Me neither, Wymack.

Neil finally decides to admit that he might still need a little bit of protection since he knew his father was going to come after him, and Wymack asks if Neil is satisfied with keeping andrew was his detailed protector and Neil tries to play it cool but wtf Wymack???? Of course he is.

When they come out of Wymack’s office, Abby asks Neil if he’s okay and he replies with his comeback (TM)

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6