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trentaafcsblog · 3 years ago

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Midnight Memories

Mason Mount

This isn’t like him at all. Trapped in a crowd of drunk and disorderly people who are staggering around to the beat of the music, sloshing their drinks all over one another when the pink and purple strobe lights descend upon their bodies and start flashing in a series of random patterns, enhancing their alcohol-induced illusions and perceptions of the world as they flail their limbs around and claim they’re flying or walking on clouds - a stage that Mason isn’t willing to reach tonight, or any night, for that matter.

A sea of girls in overly tight dresses and heels that barely support them crowding around him and slurring things in his ear. Running their fingers up his bare arms and begging for another drink as he awkwardly shakes his head and tries to break away from them, only for another person to grip onto him from the other side and smear their cheap sticky lipgloss all over his neck in an attempt to add ‘I kissed a footballer’ to their CV. “Just kiss meee” they whine, pouting in his face and trying to pull him closer before giving up and making a move on the next available man, one who’s willing to explore their mouths and buy them endless rounds of multicoloured shots for the rest of the night without gently shoving them away or not-so-subtly avoiding their alcohol-coated lips.

This isn’t your type of place either, although you’re five cocktails deep into the stack of pornstars that your friends insisted on ordering. A stain down the front of your white bodycon dress thanks to an escapee half a passion fruit that decided to leave your triangular glass in order to explore the vomit-tainted floor. Your lips all patchy now that your lipgloss has migrated to decorate the rim of your empty glasses with sparkly nude smudges, although you’re slightly relieved because it means that your hair won’t get coated in it anymore, and it minimises the evidence if you end up kissing someone too, not that you came here to do that, or risk putting yourself in the same category as the girls that are now trying to climb into the VIP section with a bunch of semi-famous people, all because they want a drunk kissing video to plaster across their social media, hoping that it takes them to the front of the papers in the morning for being such-and-such’s ‘mystery girl’.

You’re looking up at the VIP area cordoned off by security guards in black puffer jackets and walkie talkies in their hands, feeling an overwhelming sense of empathy for all of the people that have to tolerate that kind of behaviour. Your eyes start scanning across the section of the club that is far too expensive for just a few hours’ stay, wondering if you can recognise any famous faces, but it’s just the ‘I lasted one day in the Villa and still managed to secure a Pretty Little Thing brand deal’ Love Islanders and the friend of the friend of the friend of a semi-professional footballer that made one twelve minute appearance for Arsenal back in 2010 and thinks he’s God’s gift. All of them either eating each other’s faces or taking boomerangs of them cheers-ing their margaritas before having to retake the same video five times because they’ve lost several lime slices in the process and it’s ruining the aesthetic. Your focus sharpening on someone with their back to you and at least ten girls around them, taking it in turns to have a drunken selfie or begging him to buy them a bottle of champagne with one of those fancy sparkler things on the top that gets brought out by women wearing elaborate carnival-inspired feather headbands and very revealing dresses. And you can’t help but feel sorry for him because you can tell just from the back of his head that he’s incredibly uncomfortable, even more so when he gets offered a blowjob from a girl who’s now threatening to get her boobs out in exchange for a whole bottle of Don Julio, in a bucket of ice, just how she likes it.

He’s turning around to face the rest of the club just as you go to look away at the menu that’s being wafted under your nose by one of your friends, and you can’t help but do a double take at his familiarity. Squinting your eyes so that you can get a better look at his features. ‘Nice drink’ you think when your eyes catch the glass of Diet Coke in his hand, quite obviously not accompanied by a swig of vodka going by his incredibly tense frame and stiff dance moves. Well, it’s not really dancing, it’s more of a ‘I’ll just copy what my friends are doing so I don’t look awkward’ move, aka a two-step shuffle from one side to the other. You can’t help but giggle as you watch him from across the room, your friends completely giving up on trying to entice you with a selection of expensive cocktails as they leave you to stare at some random man on the other side of the club, their need for a second stack of bright coloured drinks clearly overriding the want to look out for their friend.

You’re watching him for a bit longer. Becoming completely fixated on this familiar stranger who you can’t help but sit and giggle at. Part of you wanting to cringe with him at how hellish this night has become, but at the same time, it’s kind of funny watching someone who should be so used to having a large following blush and laugh awkwardly if anyone happens to recognise him. Okay, maybe it’s slightly uncomfortable to sit and watch a swarm of girls attack him with their overdrawn lips whilst he does everything in his will to not shove them into next week, especially when his friends start laughing and taking little videos of the awkward encounters, clearly ready to embarrass him at a later date. But regardless, it’s nice to know that fame hasn’t gone completely to his head, unlike an ex-reality TV star who’s screaming ‘do you know who I am?’ at one of the bouncers who won’t let her hang out with her ‘friends’ in the VIP section.

But you’re quickly forced out of your trance when you feel somebody shoving something into your hand. Looking down at your palm and clocking the ten pound note before your eyes are lifting to the hand that it’s been given from. “Go and get us those cocktails” your friend slurs before slumping back in her seat and falling to one side slightly, her pink lipstick slathered all over her chin from where she’d tried to apply it without a mirror when a man wearing an extremely tight fitting top happened to settle down in the booth next to you, obviously hoping that he’d look her way. “Hurry up, I’m thirstyyy” your other friend whines, making you sigh and mutter something under your breath in reference to them being lazy and ruining your evening, as you slide out of the row of pink arched seats and stand up. Having to grip onto the back of the chairs when your legs go all warm and fuzzy from the one too many cocktails you’d already consumed, pulling your dress down to a more appropriate length before heading off in the direction of the bar. Trying to catch a glimpse of Mason as you swerve in and out of the sea of dancing bodies, but you just end up feeling as though you’re going to fall to the floor when the strobe lights start spinning on the ceiling before dispersing their blue and green beams around the room at the most ridiculous speed. Everybody around you swaying from side to side and elbowing you in the ribs as you try your best to dodge them, kicking yourself for wearing the most stupid pair of heels as your toes crush into each other more and more with each step, cursing when you skid in a puddle of what looks like - or at least you hope is - vodka, and you have to grab onto a stranger’s arm to steady yourself, much to their dismay until they catch a glimpse of your apologetic face and suddenly want to make out with you.

You’re breathing a sigh of relief when you finally make it to the bar, setting your bag down on the counter and ordering what you think your friends want, although you probably should have double-checked with them first considering you were too busy having a nosy at someone across the club to pay any sort of interest to their alcohol preferences. “What?” you’re shouting at the barman when he tells you the total of the drinks, hoping that you’ve misheard him but ten pounds clearly isn’t going to cover the cost of sixteen cosmopolitans with added shots of vodka. Panicking when he repeats the price and turns his back to get started on making them, your hands now frantically searching your bag in the hope that you manage to find the extra money before he starts yelling at you for ordering things without being able to pay. “Fuck” you’re hissing as you turn the contents of your bag out onto the countertop, checking the inside of your phone case and a pressed powder incase they happen to house the remaining money. Your heartbeat pounding louder in your ears the closer it gets to having to admit that you’ve actually only got a quarter of what you need.

“I’ll get it” someone’s saying, clearly sensing the tension between you and the barman as you shrug your shoulders in response to him sticking his hand out for the money. “I’m not a charity” you snap back, your slightly tipsy state giving you a rush of confidence as you continue to search your bag in the hope that the money has magically appeared just so that you can laugh it off and shut everyone up. “I know, but it’s on me” they’re saying again, leaning forward and tapping their card on the machine before you can even consider fighting back a second time. “Thank-” you’re starting before realising who it is that’s just saved you from an incredibly awkward situation. Surely not. Surely Mason Mount hasn’t just bought you, of all people, a load of cocktails for your mates.

“It’s okay” he laughs nervously, making your heart melt because clearly he’s just as awkward around you as he is everybody else in this club. “Prices have gone up, haven’t they?” he smiles as he takes a step closer to you, propping himself up on the countertop with his elbows before asking the barman for a lemonade, with ice, just so it isn’t too fizzy. “Yeah, I don’t normally come out so I underestimated it a bit” you laugh shyly before looking off in the other direction, simultaneously cursing and thanking your friends for leading you to believe that you could get sixteen cocktails for a tenner, because without their stupidity, you wouldn’t be talking to the boy that you’ve been watching all night. “Prefer to stay at home then?” he asks as you turn back and nod your head. “Me too” he’s saying, “I’m normally in bed by now” he giggles as his gaze rises to the clock above the bar, the time reading 00.04am. The slight dark glow under his eyes letting you know that he’s normally tucked up by 9pm in his pyjamas. “What are you doing here then?” you ask. Stupid question really. He’s here for the same reason that you, and probably half of the people here, are - he’s been dragged along and forced to pretend that he’s a right party animal whilst he sips his non-alcoholic drinks and fights off every woman in sight. “My mates made me tag along, I’m kind of glad they did now though” he’s telling you, the second part of his sentence almost becoming inaudible as his voice quietens just as the volume of the music rises with the chorus of ‘My Yé Is Different’, ironic since you’ve just spotted the twenty grand watch decorating his wrist whilst you’re stood there in a passion fruit stained dress. But you’re still managing to hear it, and you can’t work out whether that’s in reference to you, or the fact that he’s been able to drink fizzy drinks when he’d normally only have water. Except you’re not stupid.

“Bet you say that to everyone” you tease, gaining his attention again as he laughs nervously and shakes his head. “Only the special ones” he replies, which is true, but now you can’t help but wonder if his drinks have been accompanied by a few shots of something or another because those words and the sincerity of his tone aren’t a reflection of the awkward man you spotted ten minutes ago, let alone the fact that he clearly considers you to be one of these ‘special ones.’ “Yeah, yeah” you’re saying back, flicking your hair over your shoulder before taking a sip of one of the cocktails that are sat before you, still waiting to be taken back to your friends. “Got quite a few drinks for somebody that doesn’t go out much, no wonder you needed me to pay” he winks as you roll your eyes and blush at the thought of somebody having to give you a helping hand with the price. “This is my last one, I’m off in a minute cose I can’t keep up with everyone else” you’re shouting over the music, watching him throw his head back and laugh because he thought he was the only one in that position. “I’ll join you” he’s replying, thanking the barman for his drink before taking a sip through the straw. “Not the sort of thing you say to a girl after only knowing her two minutes, Mason” you’re teasing, studying his face as his eyes blow wide slightly and he shakes his head, quickly swallowing his lemonade before stuttering on his words. Unsure whether he’s panicking about you jokingly misinterpreting his comment, or if he’s uncomfortable over the fact that yet another girl knows his name, but either way, he’s laughing awkwardly when you tell him that you’re only messing.

“I wouldn’t mind though” you say smugly, causing another nervous giggle to escape his lips. Your alcohol-induced confidence only adding to the butterflies that are already batting their wings against his rib cage, something about your slight feistiness and sarcastic sense of humour attracting him to you, even more so when he takes in how beautiful you still look despite being on the verge of your alcohol limit.

“Where are you going afterwards?” he’s asking once the lights have swivelled around in the opposite direction and the blush on his cheeks isn’t so evident. “I’ll just go to the chippy down the road and then get a taxi home” you’re telling him, looking down into the fluorescent pink concoction in your glass and feeling your stomach churn at how rough it’s going to make you feel in the morning. “Mind if I join you?” he’s asking as you look across at him in disbelief, watching as he downs the last few sips of his drink and stands the glass back on the countertop. Is this a dream or something? “Sorry, that was a bit forward...again” he panics, feeling a surge of anxiety run through his body incase he’s greeted with newspaper headlines in the morning about him unintentionally trying to latch onto girls that aren’t interested in him, even if half of the club know his name.

“No, it’s fine, of course you can” you laugh, your cocktail glass almost slipping out of your grip thanks to the layer of sweat that is now developing across your palm. “I’ll just take these over to the girls and then I’ll be ready” you smile, looping the strap of your bag over your shoulder and grabbing as many glasses as you can, which really isn’t a wise move since you’ve partially lost all sense of coordination thanks to Mason’s ability to wipe any drop of confidence out of your body and replace it with nervous butterflies.

“I’m off” you’re announcing once you’ve made your third trip back to the booth your friends are sitting in, their drunken reactions to your words making you giggle as you reach over them to grab your jacket. “Where are you goinggg?” one of them whines, gripping onto your leg and pouting before another one is drawn to the verge of tears at your confession. “I’m just tired” you nod, blowing them all a kiss and ensuring that they text you when you’re home as you turn around and head off towards the exit, not wanting to keep Mase waiting any longer. Praying that he’s stood just around the corner outside as he’d promised as you stagger across the dance floor and dodge a sea of flailing limbs and slurred shouts of ‘can I get your number?’. A sigh of relief forcing itself out of your nostrils when the ‘exit’ sign hanging above one of the fire doors becomes within touching distance and the bouncer in charge anticipates your departure, pushing down the grey bar across the middle of the door and letting it swing open, enabling you to step out into the night.

“There you are” you smile as you approach the back of his figure, his head kept down and a cap adding a nice accessory to his outfit, although it’s definitely worn as some form of disguise. “Hi” he’s smiling nervously when he realises that it’s you, a swarm of butterflies invading his tummy again when you link your arm through his and gently rest your head on the top of his shoulder - a move that you’re aware might push you into the same category as the other girls that have been after him all night, but your crippled feet and wobbly legs are grateful for the extra stability, even if your motivation to make that move takes you both by surprise.

“Let me get this” you’re saying once you’ve made your way into the kebab shop, your arm dropping away from his as you gesture towards the table up against the front window. “You sure?” he’s asking, dipping his hand into his back pocket ready to pull his wallet out just incase, but you’re nodding and confirming that you’re more than capable of paying four-pound-fifty for a kebab and a couple of drinks - just as well really after the events earlier this evening. Giving him a small smile as he turns and heads off towards the table in the corner, his celebrity instincts kicking when he takes the seat right in front of the glass, conveniently covered by a sticker of the menu, and some extra protection offered from the back of his body.

You’re setting the gold foam kebab box down on your table for two, along with two plastic forks, a bottle of water and a Fruit Shoot because you noticed him eyeing them up in the fridge when you came in. And it turned out to be one of the hardest decisions of your life trying to work out what flavour he wanted. Maybe it was the alcohol that was messing with your brain, making you think that he was more of an citrus guy than a berry one. Or maybe it was the fact that you were buying a child’s drink for a fully grown adult, a famous one too, who probably hasn’t had one for ten years, which only added to the pressure. Or maybe it was because you liked him and you didn’t want to ruin your chances by getting him the wrong flavour. But after flicking your gaze between the stack of bright coloured bottles and his body cowering away in the corner, you settled for the blackcurrant one, just because he looks like the type of person to play it safe - well, he is the type of person to play it safe, going by his Diet Coke and lemonade choices tonight.

“This for me?” he’s asking as he picks the purple bottle up, smiling when you nod to confirm his answer. “How did you know this was my favourite flavour?” he’s questioning, a smug look appearing on your face as you shrug your shoulders and reply with ‘only the ‘special ones’ know that kind of information’. A giggle escaping his mouth at your words before he’s pulling the plastic lid off the drink and taking a sip, humming at the familiarity despite not having one since his seventh birthday party. “Still as good as they used to be” he’s saying, something about the additional happiness that’s now surging through his body after a drop of blackcurrant juice making your tummy fill with butterflies because he really is just the cutest, biggest child.

You’re both sitting in a comfortable silence as you pick at your shared kebab, trying to eat from separate ends so that you don’t cross any boundaries or run the risk trying to stab your forks into the same piece of chicken. But the fuzzy filter that the alcohol has brought to your eyes and the slight delay that it’s caused between your thoughts and your actions means that you find yourself diving into the last piece of pitta bread just at the same time that Mason does. And from his side it’s a poor judgement call. The sugar from his Fruit Shoot clearly giving him an extra boost of energy and causing his arm to extend outwards towards the polystyrene box, clouding his mum’s reminder that ‘you need be a gentleman and let girls eat whatever’s left, even if you want it’. And truth be told, he doesn’t really want it, which is why the pang of anxiety as soon as his plastic fork clashes with yours is stronger than ever. His cheeks turning a violent shade of crimson as he quickly pulls his fork back, leaving just four little holes from where the prongs had been as you panic and do the same.

“Sorry, no you have it” he says quietly, nudging the box towards you in the hope that you get the hint. “No, you eat it” you smile, pushing it back towards him. The two of you just repeating the same movement as the box moves two centimetres one way, and then two centimetres back the other. “Mason, just eat it!” you whine as he sits opposite you and shakes his head. “I said you could have it” he smiles nervously, subtly wiping the sweat off his palms and onto the material of his jeans when he realises that you’re staring straight into his eyes. “Why are you getting all nervous for? Just eat ittt” you groan, a giggle escaping his lips because there’s no way you’re backing down on this one. “Fine” he huffs, stabbing his fork back into the little holes that it made earlier before slowly moving it towards his mouth. Your eyebrows raising more and more as you watch it edge closer to his lips. And then he’s doing the unthinkable and quickly changing the direction of his fork so that it starts heading towards your mouth instead. Involuntarily parting your lips whilst you wait for what’s just happened to register, and the next thing you know, you’re swallowing the piece of pitta bread.

“What a fuss about nothing” he hums as you roll your eyes at him. “You’re quite romantic, aren’t you?” you tease as his eyebrows furrow in the middle, waiting for you to clarify your comment. “Is that all of the alcohol that’s made you so desperate to share the last piece of food with me?” you question, another layer of blush painting itself across the tops of his cheeks. “Oh, sorry, you didn’t have anything to drink, did you? Lightweight” you smirk, making him roll his eyes this time. “I’m just being a gent, plus you’ve been drinking so you need something to sober you up, maybe it’ll stop you being so rude next time I offer to buy you a drink” he says smugly, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in the chair. A wave of composure washing over him now that he’s left you slightly speechless and he’s matched your sense of humour. “Next time? You’ll be lucky” you sass as he scoffs at you. “You’re the one that needs to buy me a drink to apologise for snapping at me, so there will be a next time to call it quits, thank you” he smiles, his sudden burst of confidence talking to you allowing his real personality to shine through, and you can’t help but start to get lost in it. “Was I really that rude?” you ask, secretly dying as you think back to your ‘I’m not a charity’ comment at the bar. “No, I’m just messing” he laughs, eliciting the same response from you as you erase that memory out of your brain. “You’re just confident, I like it” he’s saying, the last part of his comment getting lost when a group of people come staggering through the door, drowning out his words for the second time tonight, but you’re ninety-nine percent certain you managed to catch it. And now you’re the nervous one.

You’re quickly moving the conversation on to something else when you feel your chest starting to heat up with anxious prickles. Mason going all funny inside because it’s clear that he has the same effect on you as you do him, but he’s trying to push that to the back of his mind as he listens to you rambling on about your favourite breed of dogs, and how you had a fish finger sandwich for tea before you came out tonight, and how you actually know quite a lot about football but you’re reluctant to bring it up because you don’t want to embarrass him, although your drunken state causes you to let a few football facts slip out, all of them relating to Mase but you’re too caught up in your fuzzy alcoholic state to even recognise. But he does, obviously. Finding it sweet how you know exactly how many appearances he’s made for Chelsea, and what minute he came on in his debut against Manchester United, and what colour boots he wore against last season’s match against Newcastle. Just sitting back and letting you talk in between the occasional swig of water, hardly being able to get a word in edgeways because the alcohol is well and truly running through your veins now, making you come out with all kinds of mismatched comments and slurs. But he doesn’t mind, which takes him by surprise a bit, especially as he’s secretly scared of drunk people and he can count the amount of times he’s felt a bit tipsy on one hand, but there’s something different about you. Maybe it’s your sense of humour and how you’ve got him in stitches, or how your drunken state leads you to be more concerned about the welfare of a stray cat outside than it does anything else on the planet, or maybe it’s how deep beneath that strong outer shell you’re protecting yourself with that he knows you’ve got a heart of gold, an inside of ‘pure mush’ as his mum would say.

“What time is it?” you slur after knocking back your last swig of water. “Nearly one o’clock” Mason’s replying, glancing at his overly-expensive watch as you sit there and wonder how he actually knows what hour of the day it is when all of the numbers have been replaced by diamonds. “Better head off” you mumble, staring blankly into the empty kebab box and trying to process what move you need to make next in order to get yourself back home in one piece. “I’ll order you a cab if you want, or I’ll walk you back, I don’t know how far away you live” he’s saying, forcing you out of your trace as you look up at his tired, bloodshot eyes. Knowing full well that as soon as you’re gone he’ll be running home to bed with a glass of water to tone down the bubbles in his tummy from his fizzy drinks, paranoid incase they give him a fizzy version of a hangover. “I live about half an hour away and I can tell you’re ready for bed so I’ll go with the cab” you smile, making him giggle nervously at the fact that his tiredness has been uncovered, although it’s not difficult to pick up on the fact that the only other time he stays up this late is on New Years Eve, and even then he normally sets an alarm for 11.57pm so that he can wake up from his nap in time.

You’re letting him help you put all of your belongings back into your handbag after you insisted on showing him your favourite lipgloss midway through your earlier conversation. Linking your arm through his and stepping out into the coldness of the night, a breeze nipping across your legs and causing you to let out a little squeal as you start pulling your dress down to try and hide your goosebumps. “Here” Mason’s saying, taking his jacket off and draping it over your shoulders. “Mase” you’re replying. Mase - he likes that, and he likes how naturally it’s left your mouth too. Trying to give it back to him but he’s adamant that you keep it. “Gives me another reason to see you in order to get it back” he winks, making you roll your eyes as you stand snuggled into his side on the edge of the pavement.

“Did you want my number?” he’s asking, already taking his phone out of his pocket and holding it out in your direction before you even have chance to respond. “You’ve not really given me an option have you?” you laugh, making him giggle as he shuffles awkwardly from side to side, waiting for your digits to appear on the screen. “Only because I need to give your jacket back, there’s no other reason for this” you tell him, smiling as he nods his head but you both know that’s a little white lie. “There you go” you’re saying, passing his phone back to him as his eyes study the new contact in his hand. A new number written beneath Y/N.

‘Shit’ he’s thinking. He didn’t even ask for your name before this. Awkward.

“Pretty name” he smiles, trying to play it off cool, but you’re not drunk enough to not notice his mistake. “So pretty that you didn’t even know that’s what I was called until now” you reply, making him giggle and let out an awkward ‘oops’. “I’ll let you off this once” you’re saying as you look up at him stood beneath the lamppost that’s towering above the two of you. A golden glow adding a filter to his face and making him look even more gorgeous than he did when he was sipping his lemonade in the club and shoving lettuce and chicken into his mouth. And you’re desperate to just kiss him, especially since he’s got a bit of dried Fruit Shoot in the corner of his mouth and you know his lips will taste all sweet like they do in the movies. But considering he’s only just learnt your name you don’t think it’s the right time, and there’s also a bunch of Tottenham fans making their way up the street, not wanting to have to make him endure any teasing, especially when he’s already stayed up late in a part of town he wouldn’t usually be seen dead in to spend time with you.

“Thanks for tonight” you whisper as you briefly rest your head on his shoulder, pulling it away when the taxi he’s ordered for you appears at the side of the curb. “My pleasure, thank you” he’s saying back, removing his protective hand from the small of your back and stepping forward to open the back door of the car for you. “Told you that you were a gent” you tease as he mumbles ‘shut up’ and pretends to shove you into the back seat with a giggle. “See you soon for that jacket, yeah?” he winks as you reply with ‘yeah yeah, whatever’, making him let out a little chuckle as he closes the door on you. Giving you an awkward little wave as you head off down the street, standing and waiting for your car to turn the corner before heading home himself. Leaving just a message of ‘thank you again, can’t wait to get my jacket back cose it’s freezing without it ;) x’ that’s just appeared on your screen connecting the two of you. And even if you have been slightly tipsy tonight and now can’t remember half of the things you spoke about, there genuinely doesn’t seem like a better person to sit in a kebab shop with in the early hours of the morning after stumbling across him by pure chance a club that neither of you particularly wanted to spend the night at. Thanking your lucky stars for allowing your paths to cross because you already know this is the start of something special. Very special.

#mason mount #mason mount blurb #mason mount imagine #football blurb #football imagine #dominic calvert lewin #jadon sancho #ruben loftus cheek #marcus rashford #ben chilwell #dele #jesse lingard #tyrone mings #james maddison #trent alexander arnold

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shoezuki · 4 years ago

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What are some of your favorite au ideas/headcanons about the arctic anarchists?

anon this ask made me realize i have done Nothing like. headcanon related in terms a mcyt shit and. wow. thats shocking that used to be my Brand in other fandom circles lkhsl;hsg anyways uh heres randomass hc’s

technoblade is avoiding home. he gave the go-ahead to let ranboo stay and he Likes ranboo but the last time some kid was in his house.... it didnt go well. hes Avoiding that all over again. also confrontation scary

ranboo is also Very Horrified for when techno goes back to the commune like. philza is great, he’s a friend. technoblade is a ‘friend’ but holy SHIT he’s terrifying. that guy is a force to be reckoned with and like. what if ranboo does something Wrong? also. confrontation scary.

basically; both ranboo and technoblade are socially awkward messes. philza is tired of them but doesnt step in (yet)

technoblade goes home. he sees none of his things have been touched. his house is intact. theres no ugly cobblestone towers. thats all good signs

philza points to the lil nook in the mountain where he wants to make a dog pen and technoblade sees some makeshift shack already constructed

the cow farm causes him to recoil for just a split second but he ignores that

when ranboo first meets technoblade he stutters and basically shoves the New axe of peace he made for techno in his hands, rambles on about getting them more emeralds and how he Swears he didnt touch anything ever

technoblade shows affection through Giving. when ranboo gifts him a new axe to make up for the one that tommy took he is like. he has to take a few moments ok . he leaves ranboo suddenly

from ranboo’s perspective technoblade like. goes completely silent, back straight, doesnt say a word, and then skulks off. ranboo is writing his will out after that

technoblade Cant like. rationalize this right now hes losing his mind so ofc he goes to phil

“philza he gave me an axe. its netherite.” “Oh yeah, he’s been sayi--” “what is he planning he’s plotting something.” “WHAT”

Philza has to convince techno that, no, ranboo isnt using some extreme manipulation tactics against him. and then he has to convince ranboo that No he isnt going to get killed. bonding times :)

no matter how much philza insists that ranboo can take whatever he wants, ranboo Refuses to take any a their things or use anything unless philza basically Shoves it right in his hands. so philza does. constantly

technoblade is trying to Keep Some Distance but like. he’s gotta be nice yknow? so he gifts ranboo things by leaving them in his ‘house’ when he’s away

its always smaller things, like dyes ranboo was talking about getting or food.

ranboo doesnt even realize its from technoblade he just assumes that he forgot he got it and moves on. technoblade doesnt ever bring it up

phil catches technoblade trying to sneak in and leave something while ranboo is sleeping and he (quietly) yells at him

ranboo tries explaining how eyecontact Feels to him to the both of them Really Anxiously and that it’s like ‘physically uncomfortable’ but technoblade interupts

‘wait but isnt that normal’

theres a very long awkward silence before technoblade changes the subject completely

philza is Very used to technoblade’s not so human traits (hiding ‘valuables’ away from them, talking to the voices under his breath, distracted by gold easily, a sort of ‘bloodlust’ if hurt, snorts and squeals when he forgets to repress them) but he is Not used to ranboo’s habits

the first one noticed is that ranboo is... not exactly stealing. but he Always seems to want some block in his hand. he doesnt seem to realize it, picking up things, walkin around, fiddling with it, and then putting it down somewhere random

leads to some arguments with techno before they find their enchanting table in the nearby village

Ranboo is Always Aware of when someone looks at him. philza will glance at him from inside techno’s house through the window, and then suddenly ranboo bolts upright and stares directly at him. philza Always jumps out of his skin

once techno watched as ranboo yawned, his entire jaw cracking and stretching open wide to show rows of thin teeth. techno hasnt been the same since

technoblade berates ranboo’s little ‘shack’, sayings its lame and ‘philza probably thinks its ugly’ ranboo just shrugs but one day he returns home late at night to see technoblade Attempting to build an Actual House for him

ranboo clears his throat and technoblade attacks on instinct. philza patches him up and techno says sorry really briefly then leaves. ranboo keeps finding diamonds and golden apples in his house now

sometimes ranboo finds technoblade just laying in the middle of his cow pen. he doesnt question it

ranboo starts writing little things that like. he wouldnt usually write in his memory book. ‘unimportant’ things

moments like times he spent brushing all the dogs in the kennel, brewing potions with phil and techno in near silence together, weird little ‘catchphrases’ techno says, that time he watched technoblade trip over his own cape. little things

it takes a while for technoblade to be Really and truly comfortable around ranboo. and frankly ranboo doesnt even notice any change. philza does

technoblade makes ranboo clothing to match the aesthetics and actually gives it to him, even specifically making it extra warm since ranboo never lived somewhere so cold

philza instantly notices when he stops carrying Any sort of weapon when ranboo is around at home.

at some point ranboo calls it home for the first time and like. techno’s ears flick in his direction. he’s perked up for the entire walk home. shifting his eyes in ranboo’s direction but not quite

philza cooes over it and pokes fun of techno later that day and technoblade huffs at him but doesnt say anything

#mcyt #technoblade #philza #ranboo #ghhhhhgg #thankyou anon kjagfklsgklsgh #Anonymous

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cinnamonest · 4 years ago

Text

Yandere Kaeya Alberich

Words: 3,162

Tws: General yandere content, Kaeya being a dick

Summary: You’ve been trying to avoid the Favonius captain. He’s convinced you’re unsafe without him. If you don’t believe that, he’ll prove it to you.

"Traveler."

Your muscles tensed. The hairs on your skin raised up. How?

You turned your head towards the voice, a strained smile across your face. "Captain Kaeya!" You pushed with all your effort to make your voice sound pleasantly surprised, excited, sing-songy in the way anyone who knew you would expect upon being greeted with a familiar face. "What are you doing so far out?" You said it so very playfully, casually, as if it was a casual conversation maker and not a genuine question that burned in your mind.

What the hell was he doing so far out of his jurisdiction? What need does he have to be out all the way in Liyue?

Why did he have to show up when you specifically went out of your way to avoid him?

"Oh, I was looking for you. Asked around. Heard you were hanging around the area," He said, pulling out a chair and sitting in front of you, effectively cornering you in your little spot in the corner of the small tavern. He smiled, folding his hands together and resting his chin on them. "I just sent a couple knights out to look for you."

He made no effort to even try to hide it. He was completely shameless. That explained the Favonius knight that had appeared in the tavern earlier - you'd felt uneasy as you saw the man gaze around, halting when he made eye contact with you, before abruptly stepping out as quickly as he'd come in. You should have trusted your gut and left as soon as you could - but here you were.

When you'd first met Kaeya, you'd admired the young captain. He was brave, skilled, charming, and undeniably a very attractive man. His charisma made him a well-respected, well-liked person throughout Mondstadt, even if his reputation did include an arrogance that was just as well-known as his skill.

That was the issue - you'd noticed that trait, that one characteristic about the man that made you uneasy, that upset you so greatly that you had resolved to avoid him entirely. Well, three traits.

One, he was obsessive, clingy, attached to a degree far too unnatural for someone who had known you for such a short time.

Two, Kaeya was a little overly touchy. It was just on the border of your discomfort, too noticeable for you to feel okay with it, but too mild to feel justified in confronting him about it. Everywhere you went with him, you could always feel his hands somewhere on your person.

And three, Kaeya was perhaps the most condescending, self-righteous person you'd ever met. He was always, always right. You never knew what you were talking about. He always knew better. He was always smarter, you were always dumber. Or so he seemed to believe. You'd grown to be increasingly irked, insulted whenever he would treat you like some naive idiot, reminding you how you, some foreigner, had no grasp on reality in this world. Really, you were hopeless, you really should let him stay by your side, help your poor naive little self navigate the world, since you were so incapable on your own.

"Oh," you finally responded, snapping out of your thoughts, smile straining, trying to come up with some response to the utterly creepy truth he'd been so shameless to reveal. "Yeah, I came out here for a few days. Really, uh, pretty area."

"Mm. That it is. This place attracts a good deal of tourists," he tilted his head. "The route here is... Particularly dangerous, though. You didn't travel here all by yourself, did you?" His eye contact was unwavering, and you found yourself breaking away, opting to gaze downward. "Or were you... Accompanied?"

"Ah, I came here by myself," you answered. "I didn't encounter any dangers... Outside a few hilichurls."

"Hilichurls are responsible for quite a few deaths in the area. You shouldn't underestimate them," he remarked. "Really, that's an unwise decision, coming here alone... You really should have sought some protection."

"Oh, I'm pretty good with a sword. I can take care of myself."

He laughed, shaking his head. "Is that so?" His voice was amused. Condescending. As if you were a child, some little kid insisting on your competence. "I'm sure you'd fare well, if you found yourself surrounded by them. Or worse," his voice darkened, "some... Other forces. Plenty of bandits and other criminals walk the roads in the Mondstat region."

Isn't it your and your knights' job to deal with that?

"O-oh, I see. Well, it's a good thing I didn't run across any of those..."

"Yes, it is." The blunt statement left you feeling your stomach churn with awkward silence that followed. The undertone - the clear hint of frustration - of his voice made you shiver. "They could easily catch you off guard..."

You'd left Mondstadt almost solely to get away from him for a few days. You needed some respite. The irritation in you boiled over ever so slightly. "It's ok, I'm pretty sharp. I'm always on guard."

Since meeting him, Kaeya had been attached to you virtually every waking moment of the day - no, he insisted on being near when you slept, too. On the very day of your arrival, he'd insisted you sleep in the knight headquarters, despite how many times you repeated that an inn was perfectly suitable. It was safer, he claimed. Safest in the little spare room just down the hall from his own, where he could come check on you before you settled down for the night. The first time, you'd been startled, flushing as he stood in your door frame, thinking that the moment he realized you were barely clothed in your sleeping gown, he'd surely get flustered and leave, but he didn't, opting to talk to you for several minutes before turning away. That experience had been... uncomfortable.

He'd been everywhere you were, both inside of Mondstadt and, albeit a bit less, in the wilderness. You weren't even sure how he kept appearing exactly wherever you were - you'd be minding your own business, and a knight of Favonius would appear in your line of sight - soon after, Kaeya would always appear. No matter what time of day, no matter how far out you were, no matter what you wore or who you were with. Even if you had other people in a party with you, he insisted on showing up, as he claimed, for your safety. Sure, you had other companions that could try to guard you, but really, were they any valid comparison for a swordsman of his caliber?

You didn't need them, he could easily be more than enough, surpass any other companions you could take with you.

"Excuse me miss," a waitress approached. Oh no. "Did you and your friend need anything else?"

You knew what was coming, but he moved to speak before you could, snapping his head towards the woman. "No. Could you kindly leave us alone?"

The poor girl's eyes widened. "O-of course. My apologies." She quickly scurried off.

You'd never seen him be anything short of rude, even downright nasty, towards anyone that entered his presence. Somehow, you felt that he likely wasn't like that when it was just him - he was too clearly well-liked to be so rude all the time.

"Anyhow," he turned back to you, "I came here primarily to fetch you... Extremely important matters happening back in Mondstadt. That bard is looking for you. Something about Stormterror?"

Oh. That changed things.

"Something's wrong with him?"

"Mhm. Apparently so, but I don't have any details. Your assistance is needed immediately, apparently. Come," he smiled again, rising and extending his hand, "I'll take you back."

It shouldn't bother you - you should be grateful. You should simply sigh, and acknowledge that even if he was clingy, even if he was unnecessarily protective, there was nothing wrong here, there was nothing about the situation that should give you the feeling that it did.

It was a weight in your stomach, a twisting in your gut. Something instinctive, something in your deepest, most primal senses, was set off, a chill seeping through your blood. An innate sense in your very core that directed your actions, told you to get away.

But your trained sense of social decency rejected such an idea. He was being gracious, kind, helpful, and although he might put you at unease sometimes, Kaeya was known for being an upstanding person. And besides, logically, someone who seemed to like you so much wouldn't do anything to harm you.

You realized that you had frozen in place, briefly lost in your thoughts. He cocked his head. "Something the matter...?"

"N-no! No, I'm fine, I'm coming," you stood hurriedly, pushing the chair back as you did. "Thank you, Captain Kaeya."

He hummed in approval. "Of course. What kind of knight would I be, letting a defenseless girl wander back alone?" He paused. "I'll always protect you, so long as you actually bother to tell me when you plan to disappear." Despite his smile, there was an obvious hint of passive aggressive irritation in his voice, and you tried not to cringe in discomfort.

"Oh, aha, I'll be sure to let you know next time."

"I'd appreciate that."

You wondered how you'd apologize next time when you conveniently forgot your promise.

As you exited the little tavern, dropping mora on the bar for the owner, you felt a firm hand on the small of your back, pushing you through the doorframe. The touch made you shiver, and it lingered, like a brand against your skin.

The walk back was lively, you weren't bored with Kaeya to talk to. Even if his conversation was primarily bragging about this or that, telling you all the oh-so-wonderful feats he'd accomplished in his time, it was better than silence, you supposed. You were back to Mondstadt fairly quickly - no hilichurl encounters, although you did briefly run across a few slimes that he insisted on taking down by himself.

"Hey, are you feeling alright?" He stopped in the middle of whatever he had been going on about - honestly, you weren't paying that great of attention.

"What? I-I'm fine," you responded, eyes wide.

"Really?" he looked at you with something like concern in his uncovered eye, brows furrowing with worry. "You look... a little sick." Suddenly, he pushed the back of his hand against your forehead. "You feel hot, too."

Well, now you did feel warm, his touch leaving a searing feeling on your skin. "A-are you sure? I don't think I'm..."

"No, you're definitely coming down with something." He glanced over in the opposite direction, where the city walls were not too far off. "You probably haven't even realized it yet. I could carry you the rest of the way, if you'd like."

"O-oh, ah, no, that's fine! I can walk... just... fine..." You found yourself trailing off, embarrassment making your face burn.

"Well, why don't we stop by the Knights' Headquarters before we go to meet that... Venti, was it? We have a nurse there that could see to you."

"I..." you paused. Once again, that dreadful, sickly feeling rose in your stomach. Something telling you that something was wrong.

And again, you pushed it back. "Ok, sure."

He hummed in acknowledgement, swiftly moving towards the gates. "Let's hurry, then. Let me know if you change your mind and want me to carry you." He added a slight smirk to his last sentence. You weren't sure if you found it endearing or irritating.

Once you got back, as expected, Kaeya began directing you to the Knights of Favonius headquarters. And you followed him, all the way in, all the way down the stairs, all the way into the hall -- wait.

You figured perhaps he was absent-mindedly headed that way out of force of habit. "Uh... Kaeya, are you sure we're going the right way? This is..."

The same little tucked-away hallway that your rooms were in. In fact, you were literally coming up on your room.

He stopped, turning his head your way with a soft smile. "No worries. You're really starting to look like the blood is draining from your face... I just figured I can bring the nurse down here." He paused next to your room, then took a step back, motioning his head, as if to tell you to go in. "Just sit down, I'll find her and bring her this way."

The churning was stronger than before. Every hair on your body stood up. Every instinct you had told you something was not right.

Nonetheless, yet again, you didn't listen.

Your feet clicked on the stone floor as you walked through the door. It all occurred so quickly, your mind spun. It felt like a punch to the gut, the air knocked out of you, the impact pain pulsing as your back was slammed into the wall. Strong hands kept a bruising grip on your shoulders. The room spun around you, head dizzy and struggling to process. What snapped you into awareness was a cold, sharp chill pressed right up against your neck, and a firm knee pressed between your legs.

He had you pinned to the wall, sword hovering ever so slightly above the skin on top of your veins. You gasped for air from the impact. "K-Kaeya!" You managed to choke out. You couldn't form anything beyond that. Panic was surging through your body, mind overwhelmed as survival instinct tried and failed to find a quick way to get away.

"What's that?" He pressed his face forward, almost nuzzling it into your neck. You could feel him smirking against your skin. "I believe I remember you saying something about how you couldn't be caught off guard...?"

You were vaguely aware that you would normally be angry - furious - over whatever was happening here, but primal fear still controlled your brain at the moment, unable to feel anything but panic. You trembled.

"This is what I meant when I said you should be more careful," he muttered. "You think you're so capable and strong, but look at how easily I could trap you... I could kill you, right now, so easily."

Your body shook fiercely. You felt tears begin to gather around your eyes. "I-I just... Trust... You..." Your voice was weak, frail, trembling harder than your body. "You're, you're my, m-my friend..."

"Mm, plenty of people will come along pretending to be your friend, (y/n). You're very, very lucky that I actually do have your best interest in mind." Finally, he lowered the sword from your throat. You released a breath you hadn't realized you were holding in, and you felt your knees give way, stumbling forward, quite literally falling into his arms. He dropped the sword in order to catch you, and it clattered to the ground.

Your shaking hands grasped his arms, fingers digging firmly into his skin, desperate for some sturdy stillness to cling to. There was a moment of silence.

"You see, (y/n)? Think about all the people that wouldn't just be proving a point like I am... All the people that might want to really hurt you... Do awful things to you... Aren't you grateful I'm not like that?" His voice was deeper than its usual tone, and you felt his chest vibrate as he spoke from where your head was pressed against him. It was low yet soft, almost a growl, yet almost a whisper.

You were breathing rapidly, forehead pressed against his chest. You didn't respond.

"I said, aren't you grateful that I don't want to hurt you?"

"Y-yes," you found your voice. You didn't know what else to say.

"And you understand now... You need me. You need me there to protect you from bad people. You're so easy to trick and overpower... So naive... Imagine what could happen if you get into this situation again, but for real... And I'm not there?" He reached one hand up, stroking the back of your head. "Surely, you understand that now, don't you?"

You nodded.

"That's good. I hope you remember that, next time you try to run off." He tsk-ed, tilting his head to rest his chin on top of your head, grip on your shoulder increasing, almost crushing. "Honestly, you should really just be guarded full time. I could probably arrange that."

As you began to calm down, the reality of the situation began to dawn on you. Anger rose in place of the fear. He had the audacity to do something like this, and blame you for trusting him? You wanted to speak up, say something, but that same primal instinct told you it was a bad idea.

This time, you listened.

He gently shifted, setting you down on the bed. "Now, you really do look sick, truly. Tell you what, I'll just go see that bard in your stead, tell him you couldn't make it. We'll have to just figure something out. I'll tell the nurse to come down here."

"Wh-what?" You started to stand on your shaking legs. "No, I-"

"You really can't be going out," he grabbed your shoulders and firmly pushed you back. "Really. You'll just get worse. Better to recover faster, than prolong your illness, no?"

"I don't feel si-"

"You are sick." Once again, his smile was betrayed by the irritation in his voice. "Don't tell me you don't know about the Mondstadt influenza? No wonder. You're foreign, so you're probably highly susceptible to illnesses you've never encountered."

You'd been given a rundown of local illnesses by Lisa, actually, but didn't recall such a thing. "I've... Never heard -"

"You won't feel symptoms for several days after first showing signs. You're very lucky I'm used to seeing it." He pulled out a watch, eyebrows rising. "Oh, look at that. It's already time to meet the bard. I'll be back in a little bit."

"Wait-"

"It'll only be a few minutes. I'll be back soon."

"Captain Ka-"

"Get some rest now."

The door shut firmly. You heard his heavy footsteps quickly sprint down the hall.

A nurse never came. Ten minutes passed, half an hour. You thought about trying to go find her yourself. Maybe he was actually being honest. Maybe you were sick. You almost wanted him to be right. You would prefer being sick to the idea that he might be lying to you.

You preferred worrying about being sick to worrying about the implications and meanings of the situation if he was lying to you.

You finally stood, resolving to go find a knight yourself, ask for directions to the nurse. Something. Anything to get your mind away from this, distract yourself from your brain's racing to process what had happened just before.

The metal lock rattled against the wood as you tried and failed, with increasing desperation, increasing heartbeat, increasing rapid breaths, to open the door.

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere kaeya #yandere genshin impact #yandere x y/n

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daltonacademia · 4 years ago

Text

There’s A Time For Daring - 1

charlie dalton x fem!reader [post events of the movie]

word count: 1.7k

warning: allusions to sex / slight sexual harrassment? drinking, mentions of neil’s suicide, horrible parents

Charlie couldn’t help but emit a low growl as his vomit-inducing, picture-perfect, high-society mother and father, whom he despised, prodded him towards the expansive front entrance of Nealson Preparatory School located in southern Vermont. His fuschia-lipped, cakey-faced mother, Cynthia Dalton, was a well-dressed, dignified housewife by day and charming socialite by night; she was particularly harsh as she trampled his pen-stained oxfords with her spearish kitten heels. His eyes shot daggers at the snow-strewn path below, a familiar fire burning in his core.

There were many things Charlie was tempted to furiously spit out at his parents, but instead, he managed to keep his jaw clamped shut, his pearly whites digging into the light pink of his lips hard enough to draw blood. No matter what he shouted, cried, pleaded, they wouldn’t budge. They never would. And it was infuriating.

“Charles! Being expelled from such a prestigious school is no laughing matter, young man. That school cost us quite the pretty penny! How dare you defy the rules to the extent of expulsion. It’s disgraceful, and I will tolerate it no longer!” Charlie’s mother shrieked, furious tears smudging the thick mascara that coated her eyelashes.

“You’ll be shipped off to Nealson Preparatory School in February, and if I hear so much as a single mention of your name not followed with overwhelming compliments, you can expect nasty, nasty consequences! Go pack your things, you’ll be staying with Aunt Barbara until the first of February finally arrives!” The rims of Charlie’s brown eyes stung with anger, frustration, and furthest down, sadness. He was diminished to nothing but an image-ruiner to his mother. The person who was supposed to love him, protect him, save him from the horrors of this hell called Earth.

Mr. Dalton silently observed the boisterous outburst from his expensive leather armchair across the den, a glass of strong, half-drunk whiskey in his palm. Charlie couldn’t bear to see their despicable faces any longer, and as his body felt no longer under his control, stomped up the stairs in a huff, rapidly swiping away the glassy tears spilling from his eyes. Thoughts of running away, escaping it all, flooded his unstable mind. ‘I get why you did it, Neil. I really do. But did you have to go so soon?’

But instead of lingering on the image of Neil any longer, he hastily threw his bare necessities into his suitcase, which was still covered in an array of Welton Academy stickers.

The grounds of Nealson were unsurprisingly well-maintained; it reminded him a lot of Welton. The impeccably manicured lawns, gleaming, icy blue lake, the gothic stone arches and pillars. It was eerily similar to Hellton, even down to the ice-cold blanket of snow coating the distant rolling hills. It’s beautiful, Charlie thought, surveying the slow sprinkling of snow, No, it’s hideous.

Before he could fully vomit at the vile grounds of his new school, his parents fiercely shoved him inside the Headmaster’s dingy office, politely taking the vacant mahogany seats beside him. Charlie couldn’t be bothered to listen to a word his parents said with pearly white smiles, which were no doubt tooth-rotting, sugar-coated lies about the real reason he was expelled over a month prior.

He knew that they couldn’t just be transparent and tell the Headmaster that he had socked the utterly vile Richard Cameron’s face in (rightfully so, in his opinion), or that he was a star member of the infamous Dead Poets Society, or that he had gone to the extreme lengths to stage a phone call from none other than God himself. It didn’t work like that.

His mother’s cheeky, artificial voice sounded precisely the same as it always had: carefully rehearsed and slathered with naivety. Seemingly without hesitation, the catty woman could deflect any less-than-pleasant questions or insinuations about her “golden role-model” son, who’s admittedly “a little misguided at times”.

The new headmaster seated across from him appeared to be around the same age as Mr. Nolan, which, as far as Charlie was concerned, was older than the Cretaceous period at least. His pale-as-a-ghost skin was wrinkled and paper-thin; his patchy, gelled side-swept hair was (very obviously) dyed a deep, midnight black, reminiscent of an off-brand Elvis.

Charlie’s ears continued to mute the awkward conversation happening amongst him, his focus instead shifting around to the various awards and certificates lining the ivory walls. They all seemed so phony; ‘Best Headmaster- 1947-1959’, ‘Nealson Academy: Exceeds Expectations’. The Headmaster had even framed his high school superlative: ‘Voted Most Likely to Succeed’. What a pathetic-

In a swift blur, his parents rose from their seats, his mother clutching her magenta purse with matching pursed lips. Charlie was handed a hefty, stapled packet packed full of school rules and guidelines with a denture-toothed smile from Headmaster ‘Campbell’. This’d make some decent kindling, he thought as he yanked the packet from his clammy clutches, leafing through its pages with a smirk, this garbage’s almost laughable.

A syncopated rhythm of raps on the door, followed by a gravelly, ‘come in', presented his new dorm escort. His chauffeur just so happened to be you, the accomplished and universally admired student body president in the same grade as the newcomer. You were dutifully donning Nealson’s horrendous uniform: a crisp, white button-up accented with a blue and silver tie was topped with a depressing grey sweater vest. An equally loathsome pleated skirt concealed your thighs, and your ankles were shielded from the chilly February air with black crew socks.

You extended your perfectly manicured, soft hand out to your brand-new peer with a yearbook-worthy smile, introducing, “Hi. Welcome to Nealson, I’m Y/N Y/L/N.” You swore you heard the brunette mutter something disrespectful under his breath, but nonetheless, he, rather unprofessionally, shook your hand with an eye roll. Things between the two of you were not starting off the way you hoped, but you were determined to make a good impression. The best impression possible.

“Charlie Dalton,” he replied with a mischievous smirk. The brunette standing in front of you reeked of cigarettes, and there was the slightest smell of cheap beer clinging to his clothes. His brown hair was messy, springing out in every direction, despite the water furiously combed through it. His eyes glinted with rebellion, a look so alluring yet dangerous.

“I’ll be showing you to your dorm, which you’ll sleep in for the remainder of the year.” Since Dalton was starting in February, he only had five months of studying before long-awaited senior year. Mr. Campbell waved the two of you off, and with that, you trekked towards the Boys’ wing, Dalton sauntering at your side.

The walk through the main corridor was silent and awkward. You had tried to enchant him with fun facts about Nealson and its (extensively selective) history, much to his obvious boredom and dismay. His umber eyes glazed the walls, uninterested in the decor. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, but for all you knew, it could be on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

After a while of treading through the high-ceilinged corridors illuminated with fleeting pale rays of sunlight, the boy next to you made no attempt to hide him drawing designs up and down your body.

“I’ve never been to a school with both boys and girls,” he drawled with a smirk. “Do things ever get exciting around here?”

You shook your head no while indiscreetly tugging down the hem of your skirt uncomfortably, and he said, “Do you think you’d maybe wanna spend the night with me in my dorm? Make sure I’m all settled in?”

Your whole body, from head to toe, froze. The audacity of this… creep! Your tongue poked, nearly stabbed, the back of your teeth, wanting to unleash a select few words to the disgusting Dalton beside you. But alas, if he were to tell anyone of your fiery wrath, you’d be demoted from class president faster than you could explain what really happened. It’s a corrupt system, sure, but even with the power that comes with such a title, there was no way to mend it.

Eventually, while you were wrapped up in the furies of your mind, Dalton revealed a small, autographed golf ball from his trousers pocket and began throwing it up and down above his head casually with every step.

“Can you not?” you snapped at the chestnut-haired boy after he tossed the sphere up and down again in an arch. “Don’t wanna get in trouble on your first day, do you?”

“You think this’ll get me in trouble? Have a little fun, it won’t kill you. I promise.” Dalton turned his gaze towards you, an annoyed but smug grin painted on his lips. He slowly tossed the golf ball to your hands, intending for you to catch it. However, the small ball evaded your grasp, instead bouncing around the hardwood floors below you, creating a series of loud, reverberating thunks.

“You were supposed to catch it, you know,” Dalton teased, nonchalantly watching you chase after the rogue orb. After it was finally safe in your clutches, you stomped over to the no-good newbie, irritated.

“Nealson’s strict. They don’t let stuff like creating an awful lot of racket go unreprimanded.” You were seething; red-hot blood pumped through your veins. Dalton didn’t look anything but utterly amused.

“Wow, you’re just about one of the biggest suck-ups I’ve seen in a while.”

“A what?” you growled.

“A suck-up. A rule-following poster child of excellence? A bratty, know-it-all? Anything along those lines?” He sputtered insults so nonchalantly, it made your blood boil and eyes sting.

“You better watch it, Dalton. I don’t know who you think you are-”

“I’m the best thing that’s happened to this school, by the looks of it.”

You had nothing left to say to this conceited shuck of a boy who really thought that he was all that and a side of fries. Well he wasn’t! Not in the slightest! And if his first day of classes wouldn’t drill it into him, you would.

The rest of the walk was pin-drop silent and tense. No more fun facts about Nealson escaped your downturned lips, just the light patting of his beat-up oxfords and your pristine mary-janes on the polished wood floor. The hallways seemed more depressing than usual, their framed portraits and condensated windows didn’t fill you with the motivation that you came to expect.

After finally arriving at the boys’ dormitories, you grumbled, “well, this is it. Have a swell life, Dalton.”

“Right back at ya, Y/L/N. Let’s hope this isn’t the last time we meet.” He gave you a cheeky wink before slamming the door in your face.

#dead poets society #Dead Poets Society (1989)#dead poetry #dead poets society x reader #dead poets society quotes #DPS #dps fanfiction #charlie dalton x reader #charlie dalton x y/n #charlie dalton

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badapricot · 4 years ago

Note

Sorry this is a sticky question, but new to BL here and I've come across a lot of mewgulf hype. Like they're inescapable. My ig and yt feeds are full of them and I've never actively gone looking for them. I guess once you watch one bl your socials just get sucked into the BL vortex.

Anyway my question is, because I've seen a lot of mewgulf stuff, unintentionally albeit, but I've seen a lot of it, and chemistry wise I do agree they have some professor x level concoction going on. And I read your mewart post on all the drama that went down before mewgulf... Anyway my real question is (god why is it so hard to get to the point for me 🙄)... 🥁 Is there any truth to mewgulf or is it pure fantasy?

Like I don't wanna arm twist you into answering this extremely uncomfortable question, but I'm just really really curious and it's hard to find an unbiased and objective opinion in a circle of shippers. I'm not a real-people shipper, I stick to fictional couples only, but those two are just on a whole different level of fantasy building, they might be deserving of Oscars for how convincing they are. (Oscars are shit tho but they are still considered gold std because of hollywood industrial complex but I digress.)

This is a sticky topic because Waanjais are pretty crazy and intense but I’ll try to answer this the best I can. I was a pretty firm MewGulf “believer” up until December 2020 when a bunch of issues started happening between them.

The vague timeline on when their relationship started going south:

Mew started totally ignoring Gulf on social media.

On the day of Gulf’s GMM BOYFRIEND concert, Mew posted a “Good luck bro” message to Gulf on top of a picture of the flowers he’d gotten him. Not weird at all, but fans were joking about how it seemed like they’d fought because Mew would usually call Gulf the Thai equivalent of darling.

Gulf had an issue where crazy fans were starting rumours that he hooked up with a dancer from his concert just because they had a sexy dance routine together. Mew posted a photo with a sun emoji on IG and Gulf replied with a sunflower comment. This is because they’ve turned sun and sunflower into a shipping brand. Mew replied with a rude emoji and then posted a coded message on his IG story that said “Every time you have problems you use me. It’s not cool at all bro”. It’s not hard to figure out that he was shading Gulf for “using him” to distract from his scandal, especially after he recently called Gulf “bro” which he never has.

Mew and Gulf had a really awkward live in December 2020 where the whole comment section was full of fans pointing out that they were fighting, and they were reading the comments with the MC.

Mew got home and blew up at a MewGulf fan who said he was unprofessional for his behaviour during the live.

Mew ignored Gulf’s New Year’s greetings and thanked everyone under the sun, including their Mom’s, but totally left Gulf out of them (despite Gulf being his partner of two years) and he ended it with a shady comment about “leaving people behind in the New Year”.

Mew deleted 90% of his and Gulf’s couple photos on IG.

Mew and Gulf had a lot of really awkward lives together as soon as 2021 started.

Mew totally ignored the Waanjai MewGulf anniversary even though their fans bought a firework show for them. Meanwhile, Gulf made a video visiting all the fansites and he did a live during the fireworks show where he gave away cookies to fans. When Mew was asked about fireworks in an interview, he pretended that it was a gift just for him and not for him and Gulf.

Mew’s sails had the wind taken out of them after he was nationally clowned for 8 days by NCTzens because his cover MV was accused of plagiarism.

Mew recently unfollowed CH3 right after they posted Gulf’s teaser (Gulf was recently signed under them).

Gulf did an interview with CH3 where he was asked if Mew had congratulated him for joining CH3 and his answer was, “Maybe?”

Mew tried to blame Gulf and CH3 for MewGulf not having a fanmeet in 2021, even though he himself said he’s booked for the next year.

I’m probably missing more details because I’ve left the fandom but since his NCT issue, Mew has generally gone back to being polite to Gulf at least in public, but he’ll still occasionally do or say shady things about Gulf, while Gulf treats him with the expected professional respect.

I don’t know if they dated or if it was just a crush or a work romance, but I do think there was something romantic between them because I’ve “known” Mew for 3+ years and he’s a really emotional and erratic person. He lashed out at Gulf, the exact same way that he lashed out at Art. He wouldn’t have done all those things to Gulf if they weren’t involved in some way, but that’s just my personal opinion. Mew doesn’t shit where he works, unless he has feelings for his work. I also don’t think either of them are that good at acting. You can genuinely see that they had a lot of love for each other at some points.

As of now? I think they’re living in a friends to lovers to enemies AU and they’ve come to a professional understanding, because Mew can’t handle more scandal at this point, and Gulf doesn’t want any. I think they’ll continue to work together cordially until their couple contracts end, and then they’ll eventually split professionally. I don’t think they’re currently dating and I don’t even think they’re friends.

#mewgulf #mew suppasit #gulf kanawut #asks #Anonymous

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donutloverxo · 4 years ago

Text

Nude

Run through - Steve wants to try new things so he takes a painting class with a nude painting subject. Only the woman he has to paint are you, Peppers assistant and his crush.

Pairing - Steve Rogers x reader

Word count - 2k

Masterlist is linked in the bio!

Steve Rogers was many things. He was an artist, an amateur cook (who really does try), a loyal friend, a good citizen, a soldier. Yet when people looked at him, they only ever saw the captain. His friends called him cap. He'd go weeks without hearing his own name. Sometimes he felt the lines were blurred. When did Steve Rogers end and Captain America begin?

He had a big wake up call when he confronted Tony, saying he wasn’t iron man, it was an alter ego. To which Tony said that Steve was basically captain America. And Steve couldn’t argue or disagree, because it was true. He didn’t want to lose himself in his work anymore than he already had. His therapist told him to make healthy boundaries, which is what he’s going to do.

So he ordered some colors and pencils online and got to work on his art, for the first time in a long time. It was exhilarating and freeing. He could lose himself in it, go on for hours without thinking and seeing anything but the colors and his canvas. Which was extremely rare for him. He could rarely ever shut his brain off or run from his traumatic memories.

Everyone could see the visible change in him. How he seemed happier. Clint even joked about it saying

“Cap must be getting some”

To which Steve only snorted. There was no room for anything as complicated as a relationship or sex in his life, not right now.

But wouldn’t it be nice? To have a woman to hold and to paint. To love and care for. He didn’t let himself delve too much into that fantasy. Because even if it was a nice escape once in a while, he knew that while Steve Rogers might make a good partner, Captain America would certainly not. He would never subject any woman to deal with either of them.

With some encouragement from Sam and his old friends he started attending painting classes at his alma mater, the Brooklyn College, every Saturday evening. It helped him make some friends. He didn’t know if he could call them friends. Most of them were too different from him. They seemed like different types of 'tortured artists'

When he heard that there would be a nude subject to paint the next class, he was a little bit hesitant. Such a thing would’ve been scandalous in the 40s. But he was trying to open himself up and that meant pushing his comfort zone, even just a little bit.

When he set up his canvas, oil colors and brushes that Saturday he expected male subject. He didn’t however expect to hear a woman’s voice. He was too focused on his set up to look up, whatever. He didn’t care if it was a man or a woman. There wouldn't be anything erotic about it. This was strictly professional and educational.

He looked up to take a good look at his subject, when he felt as if his soul was knocked out of him. There you stood, his crush, Pepper Potts' assistant, and the woman who turned him down.

“You know back in my day they used to play elevator music” He said to drown out the awkward silence. Even after all this time, he still didn’t know how to talk to women. He had had a crush on you since the moment he laid eyes on you. You were always so funny and sweet. Asking him and everyone about their day, if they were doing well. Always willing to help others.

When he let it slip that he likes banana bread, you baked him a whole loaf of it, which chocolate chips so ‘so you think of me when you have them. They’re my signature of sorts' you had said proudly. Of course he’d be thinking of you when he ate it. Overthinking actually. Wondering If you like him as he likes you, or if you’re just being your sweet self.

“Oh we still have that!” You chirped “but not in um professional or business buildings like these”

He just nodded. Tapping his foot impatiently. You would get off in just six floors it was now or never. “Hey uh – what are you doing this Friday?” he asked shyly.

“Oh just watching some Gordon Ramsay with my dog probably. I have no life” you laughed at your own self depreciating joke “Why?” you tilted your head.

“I was thinking, maybe we could get dinner? Only if you uh – you wanted to, you're free to say no” he promised. Maybe he should’ve asked you to ‘hang out' or 'for a coffee' like most people these days. But he felt that was no way to treat a lady, especially one like you.

“Oh Steve” he was already disappointed upon hearing your tone “I would’ve loved to. But even though we don’t work together, it wouldn’t look good you know? I mean I don’t care much for 'my image'” You said making air quotes “But I don’t, it’ll be complicated” You looked completely defeated. As if it hurt you to say no more than it hurt him to hear it.

“I completely understand” He nodded “no hard feelings” he gave you a smile as he watched you walk away. It did break his heart a bit, but he’d respect your feelings.

He looked at you taking off your satin robe revealing your bare body to the class of twenty or so artists. His breathe hitched. Your hair flowing down your back and covering a bit of your left breast, your soft stomach and thighs, the patch of soft curls at your core, your nipples hard against the chilly air, and how your stomach rolled a bit as you sat uncomfortably on the stool. You were beautiful. A work of art even. There was absolutely no way he could do you justice. He started drawing an outline on his canvas. You would very well be his best subject.

You looked around a bit, your fingers holding onto the stool for dear life so you could stave off the anxiety and feeling of being so exposed. Then your eyes landed on him. You thought you were dreaming, maybe you didn��t see properly, so you did a double take. Then you were frozen on the spot. There he was, Captain Rogers, the first Avenger, the man you often dreamt about, sitting right in front of you while you were naked as the day you were born.

You had no idea what you should do. This was literally like a nightmare come true. If you flee it would look bad, if you didn’t it might look worse. You decided you’d follow his lead. So you peeked a glance at him from the corner of your eyes and saw him, sketching you? Holy shit Steve Rogers was drawing a nude portrait of you. What has your life become?

You had always been insecure about your body. You knew magazines, porn and movies were meant to feed people lies to get them to buy more things. That didn’t make you feel any less bad about not looking anything like the women in them. You tried to remind yourself that you have many things going for you. Like your supporting family, your loving friends, your cute labrador, your amazing job.

Speaking of your job, exactly why you turned Steve freaking Rogers down! A man that looks like him asking you out and you say no. Your friends flat out laughed in your face at your unfortunate predicament, where the cake is right there but you can't eat it. Now that you thought about it, it was funny.

Your co-workers weren’t kind to you. Even on your best day you didn’t look anything like the women you worked with, who would stab you in the back the first chance the get. You were kind to everyone, but you knew by now not to expect the same treatment back. Which was why you had to say no to the beefy blonde. You didn’t want to be branded as the ‘office slut’.

Which now you were sure you would be. You didn’t know Steve enough to know he’d be willing to keep this a secret. He didn’t seem like someone who would do that to you. But you still couldn’t help but think the worst.

You squirmed and shivered in the chair for a good part of the next two hours. By the end your back was sore and you did everything you could to avoid looking at Steve, only sneaking glances here and there, while he seemed too engrossed in his work.

You had done this a couple of times before, to accept your body for what it is and get comfortable with it. If you weren’t going to love it no one would do it for you. Finally the time was up and the artists were asked to pack up for the day.

You quickly got up from your stool putting the robe back on. You turned your back to Steve, stretching your muscles. You couldn’t wait to lay down on your comfy bed and just get out of here. But you knew you needed to have that inevitable conversation. You probably would never be able to look Steve in the eye after this.

You walked towards him as he was cleaning up his work station. “Fancy seeing you here” You cringed at your embarrassing attempt at a British accent.

“Hey there” He gave you a bashful smile scratching the back of his head “I didn’t expect to see you here”

“Right back at ya” you returned his smile, no longer feeling on edge. It was strange how his presence served to comfort you.

“You do this often” he asked casually. You couldn’t really hear any judgement in his tone, not what you would expect from a hundred year old.

“No not really. It just uh – I’m trying to love myself. Which I already do! Of course” you let out a nervous chuckle “just trying new things and stepping out of my comfort zone”

“That makes two of us” he said as he was done packing his bag, which he was deliberately doing at a slow pace. He didn’t want to leave. Not yet.

“Can I... Look at your painting?” You asked nervously. You didn’t know if you wanted to see his interpretation of your naked body, what if it was bad? But what if it was good? What if he was impressed by you...

“Uh it’s not done yet. And frankly I’m not that good”

“I seriously doubt that. I’ve seen the sketches in your office” You caught your slip of tongue. You couldn’t let him know about your borderline unhealthy obsession with him.

“Well, have a look then” he relented showing you his canvas.

You let out a breathe you didn’t even know you were holding at the painting. It was breath-taking. The woman looked like you, but why was she so beautiful and graceful? In the painting she was sitting on a stool, like you, in front of a tree admiring a rose in her hand. She was naked as well. It reminded you of classic Greek paintings where women weren’t perfect, but were celebrated for their imperfections.

“It’s amazing Steve. I – do I look like that?” You stammered not being able to tear your eyes off the painting.

He shook his head at your shock “On the contrary you look much better I’m glad you like it”

“You’re a great artist” you gushed

“I don’t know about that. I’ve seen much better” he said humbly.

You would argue with him. But you knew it would be of no use. Looking at the beautiful woman in the painting gave you the surge of confidence you needed “Steve, does the offer for that dinner still stand?” You straightened your back looking up to lock eyes with him.

“Yes” He blurted without even thinking “how about tomorrow evening?” He asked.

“Yes that will be awesome! You can pick me up at seven. I’ll text you the address“ you said making an mental note to do so.

You could hardly wait for your date. You didn’t really care about what your co-workers would think of you. As long as you were happy their opinions didn’t matter.

Tags will be in the reblog! If you want in on the taglist click the link in the bio or send me an ask!

Please do not steal or repost my works. Reblogs are welcome.

This was actually a request. But I can't fir the life of me find the person who requested it. I hope you see it babes❤

#steve rogers x reader #chris evans x y/n #chris evans x you #chris evans x reader #captain america x you #captain america x reader #steve x reader #steve Rogers x you #avengers x y/n #avengers x you #avengers x reader #marvel x reader

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himboarcher · 4 years ago

Text

reasons i've seen folks say that grad critics hate grad:

they hate travis (in fairness, i’ve def seen some comments of people shitting on trav for the sake of shitting on trav, but it’s not super common and typically gets downvoted into oblivion on reddit.)

it's not balance / travis isn't griffin (???????)

they hate neurodivergent people (again, in fairness, i have seen a handful of comments that could come across this way! but most of the time when travis being ADHD or his NPD is brought up, it's by defenders saying that criticizing travis is ableist because he's neurodivergent or, in one particular comment, infantilizing him bc of it and literally comparing grad to putting a kid's artwork on the fridge. there were some comments early on that pointed to him being a narcissist as the reason for things people disliked about grad, but everyone seems to have realized that that's a shitty train of thought and left it behind.)

they're just toxic haters (again, there are a small handful of people like this because this is the internet, but the genuine criticism greatly outweighs their bullshit. i 100% think that the people, which is mostly just one dude who is also insufferable on reddit, who have been responding rudely to positive tweets under the episode announcements lately are out of line and need to stop. there's been an influx of that lately, presumably because people are frustrated that after over a year of grad going on, there's been no improvement to most of the major issues. that's still no excuse to be a dick to folks, though.)

vs some of the actual reasons i don't like grad:

the racism / racist tropes, and the way that they’ve straight up ignored this criticism and will likely never acknowledge it. pretty wild considering a core tenet of their brand is their willingness to acknowledge when they’ve messed up and do their best to course correct.

clumsy attempts at inclusion that are shallow and often end up being fairly offensive ("...ask me about my wheelchair," anyone?)

on a related note: i don't think that travis had bad intentions, but as an nonbinary person, it feels othering to me that travis only has enby characters give others their pronouns unprompted. i'm thinking specifically of kai here. having listened to their introduction, i don't think it's as bad or awkward as some people have said, but i can't remember travis ever having another NPC tell the PCs their pronouns, especially not a cis character. it's not a huge deal, but it's something that rubbed me the wrong way. admittedly, i don't think it would bother me so much if travis hadn't dropped the ball so much with performative inclusion in the past.

okay i'm putting the rest under a read more because even without getting into all of the problems i have with it, this got Long.

little to no player agency. player choices are ultimately meaningless and have little to no effect on the world. even when he seems to go along with a plan they come up with, it always ends with them having to go back to travis' pre-written script (see: subpoenaing the xorn, but not really because they had to go with travis' original plan of "send the xorn home through the rift".) the players repeatedly get told things about what they think or feel or what they've been doing to an unnecessary degree. fitzroy is the only one who really gets space to play and decide things for himself, and that's only because travis has decided he's the main character.

the NPCs are all too nice and willing to give the PCs anything they ask for and more, unless the PCs are trying to follow their own plan and then the NPCs are completely useless. but honestly, aside from gray, all of the NPCs are just.... nice. travis refuses to even let his antagonists be mean or cruel or even more than just slightly rude, because that'd be a bummer and we don't want that! the "twist" of gordy the lich king actually being polite and chill is not a twist at all because everyone is like that in this world. the NPCs are also wildly overpowered, but then suddenly absolutely useless when the PCs actually want their help.

too many cliffhangers that are dropped immediately at the beginning of the next episode. i feel bad for travis because so many of these cliffhangers actually set up good momentum and seemed like things were gonna get interesting, but almost every single time he just dropped them at the beginning of the next episode. like when althea showed up to interview the boys and the next episode started with travis being like "actually you went to sleep, she said she'll be back tomorrow!"

that time travis specifically said in his exposition dump that the thundermen left their horses behind because they thought the centaurs might be offended by them riding horses, only to later on rag on them for being surprised that the centaurs had horses they could ride.....

also the centaur arc in general, but i already listed racism above, so.

the way that the toxic positivity and parasocial tendencies in the mcelroy fandoms have made a large portion of the fandom take ANY criticism as a personal attack on travis and/or on themselves for enjoying something others consider bad, either morally or just quality-wise. it’s okay to admit that something you like has problematic elements or just isn’t as good as it once was. you can and should engage critically with the media you consume.

related to above: the way travis has handled genuine criticism, which is to throw public tantrums on his twitter or make weird passive aggressive tweets & ultimately ignore all the genuine criticism and advice he's been offered by claiming it's all subjective, even after he specifically asked for it and set up an email for folks to send in genuine, objective advice for him (after he threw a tantrum on twitter and replied to someone's criticism publicly, which resulted in his followers dogpiling on that person bc how dare they insult their internet best friend). while i was writing this last night, he actually announced that he’s taking a break from Twitter and acknowledged that he’s been using it as an echo chamber where he can easily get validation from folks, and honestly i’m happy for him that he’s recognized this problem and is stepping away for a while! i hope he’ll genuinely use this time to reflect on how he’s been behaving and find a more healthy way to use social media. i’m leaving this point in because i think his Twitter being such a positive echo chamber was encouraging him to do stuff like this, and him somewhat acknowledging his behavior doesn’t mean it can no longer be discussed.

rainer. extremely cool concept in theory and i was very into it until that awkward "does anyone want to ask about my wheelchair?" moment. also when travis had her use her mobility aid to RAM INTO A DOOR instead of just fucking knocking???? also all the times travis has tried to force a romantic relationship between her and fitzroy, despite fitzroy displaying no interest in her in that way. also, just to clarify: as an ace person, i don’t think this is aphobic! (and it’s kind of a stretch to call it that imo, especially since griffin never explicitly said that fitzroy's aromantic!) i just think it’s weird and awkward and a little uncomfortable for me personally, mostly because it reminds me of the times i’ve been in similar situations.

less of a problem than a lot of the other stuff and more just bad writing, but the forced emotional moments. in general, nothing in grad feels earned (why are the boys heading a war? when they have multiple actual heroes with combat experience on their side and a supposedly powerful secret organization? and the thundermen are like 21 years old max and have only had like ~10 fights in the entire campaign?) but there've been a couple times where travis has tried to force unearned emotional moments, presumably because he knows people enjoyed those with the last campaigns. but the difference is that in balance, the big emotional moments happened because they were earned. in grad, it's just travis throwing a baby pegasus at us for a few minutes and then the next time she shows up, it's supposed to be a tearful goodbye.

there are absolutely no stakes. remember when the thundermen got told that if they left, gray would kill 10 students? and then they left and came back and it turns out that what gray actually meant was, "i'll tie ten students who are mostly nameless NPCs to a tree and throw some dogs at them that you can easily stop in time, then throw a tantrum because how dare you but i'll leave before you can really do anything to hurt me lol" travis did have fitzroy's magic get taken away, but like. it didn't really do anything? also all he had to get it back was be coerced into using drugs by an authority figure and trip in the woods?

we're told that the school is weird and the hero system is corrupt, but the world of nua is still presented as more of a liberal utopia than anything? althea getting fired because of a corrupt villain is the only time we've somewhat seen corruption, but even then, she was still allowed to get (what seems to me, anyway, but admittedly i don't know for sure bc nothing about the HOG makes much sense) a fairly important job from the very people who stripped her of her hero license or whatever the fuck heroes need?

travis doesn't actually seem to understand how capitalism or bureaucracy works and just chalks up everything to "red tape." also more on the rest of the boys than him specifically, but the "let's destroy capitalism!" thing turning into just pushing some filing cabinets over................... okay.

and one last piece of extremely subjective criticism: it's just kind of.... boring. i think a lot of people, myself included, would be willing to overlook 90% of the problems with graduation if it didn't feel like such a slog to get through.

also people saying that we can't or shouldn't criticize graduation because it's "free" is absolutely absurd for several reasons. first, something being free does not make it above criticism. second, there ARE people who directly financially support the show with monthly donations. three, there's a difference between something being free and something being not for profit. podcasting is their full time job. they make their living off of money made from TAZ and MBMBAM (and probably their other shows to a lesser extent). this not a fun home game that they are graciously recording and sharing with us. it is a product they are producing that they make money off of, both from ads in the episodes and merch & books based off of these podcasts. they have marketed themselves as professionals, and both griffin and travis have been on panels where they are marketed as professional DMs and appear alongside other professional DMs (which makes it incredibly frustrating when people say that travis is just a newbie DM and we can't criticize him because of that. if he's a newbie, then he should not be taking part of panels as a professional DM where he speaks as an expert). TAZ is free in the same way that an episode of NCIS is free. i may not pay for it directly, but the creators are paid to create it and profit off of me consuming this product. so saying we should be grateful for any mcelnoise that the benevolent good boys share with us and that we're not allowed to criticize it "because it's free" is absolutely wild.

#negativity cw #i guess #anyway this is not meant to say that you cannot enjoy grad.#but i'm tired of folks on this website acting like there aren't genuine problems with it #and saying that people just dislike it bc they hate travis etc etc #taz graduation #i genuinely don't expect anyone to read this bc it's so long #but here ya go.#long post

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slimyficgirl · 4 years ago

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Funny ((Elonix Reader))

You didn’t visit Metro District often, but today was a special occasion. A brand spanking new Korean BBQ had just opened up in The area, and you and your friends planned to eat and eat until you couldn’t eat anymore. So, here you were, walking through the area with a smile on your face as you tapped away at your phone, checking your GPS. You were approaching the restaurant, and as you did you noticed shrill, fangirlish screams coming from right across the street. Glancing up, you saw something surprising. Standing across the street, surrounded by screaming fans and bodyguards, were 5 freakishly tall, robotic young men in black sailor-esque uniforms. Each had a different colored theme and all were thriving off the attention. You knew them, of course. How could you not? There was the white haired leader, Rin, the red Mohawked bad boy, Zimelu, the cool blue haired Purl-Hew, the sweet and innocent Haym, and the green funny boy, Eloni. They made up the extremely popular robot boy band, 1010, ran by their manager, a war veteran called Neon J. You would call yourself a fan, sure, but not a big one. That being said, you’d tell anyone who asked that your favorite member was Eloni, which usually surprised people. The poor guy wasn’t that popular, but you? You loved funny guys. Still, no way in hell were you a big enough fan to care much for the apparent meet and greet going on right now, and especially not enough to spend that sort of money just to get a ticket. Your 200 buckeroos was going to the best meal you’d have all year. Good trumps pretty robo boys, hands down. And yet, you found your gaze lingering on the tall men. Which they noticed, each pausing from their smiles and waves to strike a pose and give you a flirtatious wink. You felt your face start to burn and you tried awkwardly to laugh it off. They were just..programmed to be like that, so you really shouldn’t think much of it. Then Eloni, the absolute mad lad, DABBED at you. Unable to stop yourself, a loud laugh wheezed out of you and, unknown to you, the green haired boy froze and glanced at you again, his already flowing cheeks beginning to glow brighter as your laughter continued. Zimelu noticed this too and snickered, gently elbowing his brother in the side, which Eloni swatted away with a flustered face. Your phone binged and grabbed your attention though, and you pulled it out of your pocket. Your friends would be there in a few minutes, thank god.

Y/N DEMANDS FOOD IN THE MOUTH HOLE! With nothing else to do, you just..standing there, fiddling on your phone as you waited. It was strange to see someone from Cast Tech district over here, so Neon J had to wondered if you were here for the meet up. So..he called out to you, “Excuse me, Soldier! At you here for the meet and greet?” His voice caught you off guard and you fumbled with your phone, barely able to keep from dropping it. You looked up at him with a startled expression, eyes wide. The boys were signing autographs now, but were glancing at you expectantly, especially Eloni. He’d...really liked your laugh.. “I-I, uh, no! I’m just waiting to eat with some friends! Thank you though for checking!” You replied, embarrassed at the strained sound to your voice. This was just...incredibly awkward. They all seemed surprised and you shifted uncomfortably under their gazes, only relaxing when the deep voice of your friend Mel filled the air. “Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, TOUCHING YOU! SWEET CAROLINE!” As if filled with some primal instinct long forgotten in the human race, you let out a loud, “ BAH BAH BAH!” Which told your friends that you were nearby, causing them to laugh. Eloni laughed too. Hard. Neon J looked between his least popular-among the fans-son and you, a thought forming in his screen of a head. As this went on, a group of girls who had gotten their autographs and photos broke from the group, heading towards the BBQ. They bump past you and snicker before pausing to hold the door open as your friends Mel, Lee, and Sunny finally join you outside the restaurant.

"Losers first~“

What...sort of power play was this? What did they expect to gain from it. Your back was turned to the boy band but the bristling you felt from their direction told you they didn’t much appreciate their fans’ rude attitudes. You glanced at Mel, who just shrugged, bowed, and held out a hand. “M’friend.” You snorted a laugh and took his hand, “Thank you, My good sir~”

And then the two of you just waltzed inside. Literally. You waltzed.

While the fans watched with confused, judging expressions, Eloni could be heard just WHEEZING with laughter. Neon J stared at his robot son with a tilted head. This event had turned out to be more interesting than he’d expected.

After you ate yourself nearly sick, not regretting a damn second of it by the way, you left with your three friends. Each of you walked sluggishly, a food coma most definitely in your futures as you left the BBQ. Outside, the meet and greet was just starting to wrap up, and Neon J, who had been waiting for you to leave, motioned to Eloni once you had. With a slight grin, his cheeks glowing brighter yet again, the giant robot strode over until he was towering before you, fidgeting slightly. You craned your neck up at him, eyes wide. What..was going on? Eloni glanced over at the other members of 1010, who gave him an encouraging salute, which you didn’t even know was a thing. Taking a deep breath, Eloni spun in a circle and struck a pose as you watched in a mixture of awe and anxiety.

“Baby, you outshine everything around you.”

You froze, the only noice managing to come out of you was a whispered ‘HHHHH’ while your friends stifled their laughter behind you. What was going on??? Okay, sure, you...maybe..sort of...kind of...imagined something like this happening before, but you never had BBQ sauce on your face then, and you’d never thought it would actually happen! Eloni was looking to you for a response, and you quickly glanced away, using your sleeve to wipe the remaining sauce off your mouth. “I...thank...yoooou?” “I’m Eloni. What’s your name, beautiful?”

HHHHHHHHHHHH.

”I...I know, I...” How do words? What is talking? You were definitely malfunctioning and Sunny could practically see the internet explorer loading spinner over your said, so she gave you a gentle nudge. “I-I mean, I know! You’re kind of my favorite member of Ten Ten! I’m Y/N....h-hi.” As you spoke, the unsure smile on his face grew until he was practically beaming down at you. “I am?” Oh god, he was so excited. That was so cute...”Y-Yeah.” You’d even tried writing him fan mail before, but..you were so awkward, and it always sounded awful when you read it back to yourself, so the letters always sound up getting burned instead of mailed. Eloni crouched down slightly so he was more to your level, “Then would you like to take a photo?”

A photo with your favorite celebrity? And it was FREE? No way were you turning that down!

Your own sheepish grin forming, you pulled your phone out of your pocket and Eloni plucked it from your hands. With his free hand, he held your waist and pulled you closer, so your cheeks pressed together while he took the photo. He was really warm, which made sense because...robot.

Don’t pass out, don’t pass out, don’t pass out. Fainting during a time like this is SO not cool!

Grinning, he let you go, messed with your phone, and then handed it back to you with a wink. “Thanks for the honor, baby. I hope you grace me with your presence again soon~” HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. You could only manage to nod before he walked away, you

face feeling like it was on fire. The boy band packed up their things, climbed into their limo, and drove off. You just stood there, your brain fried as Sunny glanced over your shoulder at your phone.

“Hey, so, he just gave you his phone number.”

#Tumblr change the post limit you idiots #It took an hour to get this on here #Because the word limit is stupid #No straight roads #nsr #nsr 1010 #1010 eloni #eloni x reader #Elonixreader

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hongism · 4 years ago

Text

mists of celeste ➻ three

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, eventual smut ➻ Word Count: 4.1k ➻ Rating: M ➻ Warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

⇐ previous | next ⇒

mists of celeste act one ➻ part three

"First order of business," Yunho starts as he gets up from his stool. "I need to run some basic scans on your arm to gauge the injury and infection. Then a full-body scan to see how far the infection has spread. How long have you had the injury?" He moves around the bed you're placed on with quick steps, a tablet in hand.

"Th-Three days," you stammer, watching him work. Spectre cuts in, and you almost forgot he was standing nearby with a brown belt in hand.

"Four days. Today is the fifth," he says. Yunho glances over at him, eyes wide in question.

"How do you know…?"

"She was on the bridge of the HMS Revenge. Considering that Hongjoong destroyed the ship four days ago, this is the only logical explanation." Spectre motions towards you with his head. "I noticed her on the second day, to be honest. I only wanted to see how long it would take for her to reveal herself. Until I saw the blood trails, at least."

"Ah yes, that makes sense." Yunho nods before bringing his tablet to hover over your arm. Blue light emits from the bottom of it, a faint stream of light that cascades over your bare skin.

Now that your military uniform has been stripped, you can see the injury better, although you don't particularly want to see it. It's bruised black and blue, blood all around the hole that is shiny and fresh. It oozes a bit still, although the liquid is not all red, and you're certain that it's the infection mixed in as well. Not something you would like to look at but the blue rays coming from Yunho's tablet are quite fascinating to watch as they dance over your arm. You don't feel the touch of the light; you can only see it as it moves as though on its own accord. Sure you've had injuries time and time again, but the treatment methods for them were never like this. No fancy tablets with strange lights. Although the military has always had a more traditional approach to everything they do.

"Hm. The bullet is in there pretty deep, huh? It… uh, it's in an awkward spot. The bullet tore right through your brachialis muscle along with a bit of your bicep. Moreso, the nerves all around the path of the bullet itself seem to be a bit fried? I doubt that makes any sense to you, but in layman's terms: two muscles have critical damage, and that's not something we can immediately fix. I can remove the bullet with an emergency operation to cut the arm open and take it out, which is the best course of action. The nerves can be… I'm not sure how to say this in a way that will make sense to you. Hm, well. The nerves can reconstruct themselves over time. When I do the surgery, I can help them along a little bit but I don't think it's needed. Nerves try to repair themselves by shrinking back and resting for a period of time. After the rest period, they grow back as they were. Muscles can do the same sort of thing but not in cases of extreme trauma. A muscle damaged in extreme trauma creates these gaps that are too large to fill on their own so scar tissue forms in the gaps as a way to compensate. Does that all make sense?"

"I have an infection-induced fever," you state. "I don't understand anything you're saying." Yunho raises his brows.

"I'll take that as a no." Yunho lifts the tablet higher and drags it through the air above your head all the way down to your feet. The blue rays conform to your body as they move, widening and contracting with the folds of your clothes. "San, could you do me another favor? I need you to go get Woo so I can have an assistant to run the operation."

"No, no, I can do it," Spectre answers with haste. His eyes dart between you and Yunho. "Woo won't be necessary. I can help you." Yunho stands up straight, pulling the tablet back to his chest one the light retracts from your body, and stares at San. He looks ready to argue about the topic but never opens his mouth to retort. Instead, he releases a deep sigh: a sign of relenting. San's lips quirk upwards into a small smile of victory.

"Fine. Get the anesthesia injection, a scalpel, tweezers, and gauze." Spectre turns away from the bed upon hearing the command. You watch him walk out the corner of your eye, thinking over Yunho's words.

"Anesthesia?" You repeat. "I thought you said you didn't want to use anesthesia on me."

"I didn't want to. But that was before I ran the scans and saw the extent of the damage to your muscle. I'm not getting this bullet out without trouble, so numbing it is pretty much the only comfort I can give you."

"Wait San – the belt. I need it." San passes said object to Yunho by tossing it across the bed. Yunho folds it in half. "Here, you're going to want to bite down on this." He holds it out to you, and you take it between your teeth, glancing up at Yunho as you do. He then reaches around you to pick up the bottle of vodka from his table. "Please – well, please try not to jerk your arm while I do this."

Yunho grips your arm at the elbow, a small effort to keep you steady as he tips the bottle towards your wound. You clench your teeth around the leather belt before the alcohol even touches your skin. Anticipating the worst helps quite a bit, in fact, because the second the first drop of alcohol lands on the wound, you're screaming around the belt. If not for the death grip Yunho has on your elbow, you would be thrashing. It's the worst pain you've ever experienced. Far worse than being shot, far worse than burns or frostbite, hell even getting shot by a laser hurts less than the pain you're in at the moment. Yunho keeps the steady stream of alcohol going, flushing the wound out. The mix of blood, infection, and alcohol is causing a grotesque foaming mixture that drips from your arm to Yunho's hand and onto the bed.

"Hang in there, I'm almost done," Yunho mutters, voice barely audible behind your muffled screams. He continues pouring alcohol over the wound until it runs clear but the pain doesn't let up even after he stops. "See, that wasn't too bad!"

His cheery tone and optimism only make you want to punch him in the nose. Luckily for him, your punching arm is out of order at the moment and you're in so much pain that you can barely feel the limb. All you can do is spit the belt out. Yunho catches it before it hits your lap. He inspects the leather, a small laugh escaping his lips as he sees the indentations of your teeth along the belt. You all but bit through the leather on both sides.

"I hope you didn't like this belt too much, San," he calls to the man who stands on the other side of your bed. He's gathered the materials that Yunho asked for, all piled up with the other stack that Yunho already had.

"Oh, I didn't. Captain did though."

"You took this from Hongjoong?" Yunho asks, voice rising as he gapes at the other man. He grins like a Cheshire in response. "On god San, you're fucked if he finds out."

"That's why he won't find out. Can't miss something you forgot you had."

"That's not the way h—"

"Anyways." San passes the shot of anesthesia over to Yunho, interrupting his train of thought.

"Yea, yea. We need to work fast to get the anesthesia in so there's enough time for it to kick in and wear off before the 47 hours are up." Yunho takes the shot in one hand, his other hand squeezing around your elbow. He pokes at the skin a few times then presses so hard that you release a loud noise from the sudden pain. The needle enters your arm so quickly that you barely feel the pressure. Warmth is the only thing you feel for a moment, a cozy yet uncomfortable sensation that spreads down to your fingertips and all the way up your arm. "Okay, we'll need to give you a bit of time now. The anesthesia will take a bit to kick in, so in the meantime, I need to run an IV drip for dehydration. Just for putting some fluids back into your body that you've lost through all the sweating and vomiting. Not to mention you probably haven't had a lot of water in the past few days. I'll also do a drip later for narcotic painkillers once the anesthesia begins to wear off. Okay? All standard protocol for an operation like this, I promise."

"Let's just get it over with," you murmur back. He frowns at you, a small "okay" leaving his lips before he continues his work on you.

The combination of your fever and the pain is bringing a piercing headache. You don't notice that Yunho moves around the bed until his hand reaches for your left arm. You yank it away as though burned. His eyes go wide at the forcefulness behind your action. A moment later though, he tries again, fingers closing around your wrist. You try to tug away but his grip is a bit too powerful this time and you fail to release your arm from his grasp.

"I need your uninjured arm for the IV. There's too much damage on your right arm to get these fluids into your bloodstream."

"Use my right arm or no arm at all," you hiss back. Your fingers clench into a tight fist, knuckles going white from the pressure.

"I already saw it," Yunho whispers. There is no point in whispering, as the room is silent aside from his voice, so San can hear the words as well. Still, you freeze. The tension leaves your arm and you let it fall limp in Yunho's grasp. "I'm sorry. I saw it when we were getting the uniform jacket off."

"Whatever," you say, looking away from the man. The plain, white wall before you is suddenly much more interesting. Despite the length of time that has passed since you received the brand, the memory always remains fresh. The sensation of searing hot metal being pressed against the inside of your wrist, the pain that resonated through your whole body, and the feeling of five pairs of eyes glued to you as you received the brand. It's all too real and present in your mind. Just the thought of someone seeing the brand is enough to send you headfirst into those memories.

"How… how did you get it?" The healer inquires. His voice is quiet again, no doubt hesitant and uncertain about asking the question. You barely feel the next needle that enters your arm.

"That's none of your business," you respond without looking his way.

"Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry for intruding. I'm just – just trying to make conversation to distract you from the pain."

"Well, talk about something else. Not my past."

"Understood." You catch sight of Yunho's small smirk out the corner of your eye. Despite your confusion, you decide against asking him about it and wait for him to contain what he's doing instead. He places small round patches on various points around your chest, deft fingers dipping under the fabric and back out without you even feeling it. "These are just for keeping an eye on your heart rate. It's good I checked too because your heart rate is awfully slow. Could be due to the infection or your body is trying to conserve. Normally I only see it this low if the patient is asleep though."

"Need anything else?" San asks. He steps forward, hands coming to rest on the foot of the bed.

"Not right now. I think we're – wait. Wait." The level of panic in Yunho's voice does not comfort you one bit. Especially when Spectre's face shares the same level of concern. "Something isn't right." Yunho swipes furiously at his tablet, fingers moving so quickly over the screen that you can't tell what he's trying to do. "She was shot in the arm… outer arm with no exit wound, the bullet still present in the brachialis muscle right against the humerus. Why does she have pneumothorax too?"

"English please?" San asks.

"Punctured lung. It's a punctured lung that could collapse at any minute. Yours looks to be a pinhole, meaning it's small and acute. You should recover just fine without any treatment if you were a healthy adult but there's a serious infection running through your blood and that means it could cause complications if not treated. More importantly, I can't do an emergency operation like this if your lungs aren't fully functional. I'd need to put you on an oxygen mask just on the off chance that your lung collapses during the surgery but a one percent chance is still a chance."

"What caused it? I haven't noticed anything." You try to sit up a bit to look at Yunho's tablet but he pulls it away before you have the chance.

"It depends on all sorts of factors. Do you know how long you've had a lung problem?"

"I didn't even know I had a lung problem," you retort.

"She's been on the ship four days, Yunho."

"Okay, okay. We can worry about that in a bit. I need to get the IV drip in now." You glance forward as Yunho approaches your arm with another long needle. San is blocking your line of sight. He doesn't look back at you; instead, his eyes are fixated on your arm, rather your wrist where the chain brand resides. Subconsciously, you turn your wrist away only to have Yunho resituate it again as he inserts the long needle.

"You're looking pretty pale again," San comments. You take a deep breath but find yourself unable to respond. All the white in the room begins to blur together. All the strength left in your body is ebbing away. "Yunho, she's looking pretty fucking pale!" The man's voice climbs in volume as his form blurs into nothingness. Yunho keeps working on your IV, securing the catheter and tubes with a piece of tape.

"Shit, hey. Hey. Hey, stay awake." Yunho reaches over, patting your face with his palm. You push him away with a weak shove as a wave of coughs overwhelms you.

"Is this normal? What do you need? What's wrong with her? What do we do?" San rambles. Yunho rubs at the skin between his brows as San speaks.

"Shut the fuck up, San. If Woo were here, he would know what to fucking do since he helps me ninety percent of the time." San leans forward, smacks Yunho's hands away from his face, and grabs hold of his collar.

"If you don't want my help, then you're on your own," San hisses as he yanks Yunho forward. A weak laugh escapes your lips.

"Do you all fight this often or am I just special?"

Yunho sighs at your half-hearted jab and pushes San off him. He reaches for his ear, beginning to speak again but this time it's not directed at San.

"Wooyoung to the med bay for emergency operation assistance." The moment his hand leaves his ear, San is back in his face.

"Call it off!" He yells. Yunho deflects San's anger with a surprising sense of calm.

"I'm not letting a girl die simply because you don't want him to be seen. The fact of the matter is you don't know what the hell you're doing so you're of no use to me."

"Your damn savior complex is going to be the end of everyone on this ship."

"Then we were doomed the minute I set foot on the ship. Wooyoung is the only one who knows how to help me conduct emergency operations and laser surgeries. You need to fuck off and let me do my damn job. It's my job to save people, no matter the cost. Yours is only to kill them. So, why don't you listen closely and hear the wheeze in her breaths? The sweat on her forehead? The residue from her arm? If I don't get to work quickly, then you'll have a body to haul out. Do you want to be responsible for her death?"

At those words, San stands down. He leans back and stands up straight ahead, the fury dropping from his features as he moves. He turns away from the bed but something in you causes you to lunge forward with a sudden bout of strength and catch his wrist. He glances down at you with widened eyes.

"Thank you… for – for saving my life." San's gaze softens. A smile almost crosses his lips but he stops it before it can show too much.

"I did nothing except prolong the inevitable," comes his response. The words are spoken in a cold and emotionless tone, much different from the tone he used with you previously, but you no longer have the strength to even think straight. Your hand falls away from San's wrist as you fall back against the bed. Yunho lets San leave the med bay without exchanging further words with him.

Instead, the healer finishes connecting all the IV tubes and fluid bags.

"You're probably going to pass out," he mutters, bending over you and resting his palm against your forehead. "We'll try our best to work quickly and keep you under during the operation, okay?" You can only nod against the pressure of his hand. He eases you further into the bed and makes sure you're flat against the mattress. The action is like the magic touch for you to fall unconscious. Before your vision goes completely black, you see a new form enter the med bay, one with tanned skin and hair that looks like coal and ash. You don't have the chance to look over the rest of his form before the darkness overtakes you.

✦ ✦ ✦

Waking up again takes far too much effort. Your whole body feels as though it's made of pure lead, and you can't even open your eyes easily. You can't recall what happened before you fell asleep or where you are; the confusion only grows further when you're finally able to crack your eyes open.

White. The color is all you see for a few moments before your vision clears up some. The brightness of your surroundings blinds you. You shift and push your head to the left. Wires and tubes are all around you, two lead to your arm and another to your face. You try to feel around but you aren't able to; the strength hasn't completely returned to your body. All you can do is move your head from side to side for the time being. You check your other arm. There's a large white bandage wrapped around your bicep and you can't recall what's underneath it.

The clink of metal distracts you. It resounds from somewhere in front of you, and as you twist to look in that direction. A man with tan skin stands near a sink. You peer at him. Something about his figure seems familiar but you can't place it. Seeing him brings reality back to you, however, and you recall how you got here, a Cheshire cat finding you in a crate, the gentle giant healer who helped you.

"Wh-Where am – where am I?" You stammer out, voice cracking and hoarse as you try to talk. The man jumps at the sound of your voice. He drops what he's doing and turns towards you, eyes wide and curious as he looks over at you. Now that you're more awake, you can see more clearly and get a better look at the person with you. Besides the caramel tan, he bears dark hair that's almost black but not quite. The color is more between silver and grey but the color of his hair is the least interesting thing about him. There is a metal collar around his neck, a thick block that stands out against his skin, and you peer at it in curiosity. A collar? I don't… You don't have time to look at him, however, because he's rushing towards you a second later.

"Oh, you're awake!" He chirps as he comes closer to your bedside. "You're aboard The Horizon, ship belonging to Captain Kim Hongjoong. I'm not sure whether you remember it, but you were awake for a little while before the surgery." At his words, vague memories of a healer and a man with a strip of white hair float to the forefront of your mind. "You had a pretty awful fever though so it might be a bit hard to remember. Yunho – the healer, if you remember him – patched up the pinhole in your lung and kept it from collapsing with quick laser surgery. We also removed the bullet in your arm and drained the infection. He patched it up with stitches as best he could. He said that it was hard to close without some skin grafting, but he didn't want to do that so he just closed it without the extra graft."

"How – hold on, how long have I been here?" You ask. The sudden barrage of information catches you off-guard. You're still waking up, brain not coming back to full functionality, yet this man doesn't seem to care about that one bit.

"Oh! Hm, I think you've been on the ship for maybe a total of seven days? If you include the first four stowaway days, that is. Otherwise, you've been asleep for three days."

"72 hours," you mutter to yourself. You remember something about the captain telling Yunho that he only had a certain amount of time to fix you.

"Sorry? I didn't quite catch that."

"72 hours… but the captain gave Yunho 48 hours to fix me."

"47 actually!" The man corrects with a bright and blinding smile, his teeth shining under the yellow light above your heads. "Captain only gave 47 hours to fix you, but it only took Yunho 17 so."

"Wh—What do you mean?"

"We were up for 17 hours trying to fix you up. Captain was impressed at Yunho's speed so he said that you could have extra recovery time. Oh, if you pretend to still be resting, you could get longer recovery time!"

"Why is everything in this room so damn white?" You mutter as you push yourself into a sitting position. The man shakes his head.

"No, no, no! You shouldn't get up!"

"Why not?" You protest, swinging your legs over the edge of the bed. "I'm fine, I feel fine, and nothing is going to rupture. Laser surgery doesn't leave tears or stitches either so it doesn't matter."

"No!" The man argues, voice climbing in volume. You blink up at him, eyes wide from the sudden outburst. "Yunho told me not to let you leave, and I won't go against what Yunho wants. If he says you stay here, then you stay here."

"This is ridiculous. Now I'm being kept here against my will? Am I a captive now?" You scoff as you continue to get to your feet. The man moves with surprising haste. He leans across the space in front of you, snatches up something from the table, then grabs your head. You try to fight back but he has already caught you and overwhelmed you. Something sharp pierces your neck. You cry out at the pressure but waves of warmth wash over you next. You stumble backward when he releases his hold on you. The backs of your knees hit the edge of the bed and you fall back onto the mattress as your strength leaves your body again.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry but I had to do it. I won't go against what Yunho says." His voice sounds somewhat remorseful. You're losing consciousness so fast that the world spins around you and as you glance over at his hand, you spot a large shot. You'd recognize that almost anywhere. The military use them religiously, a typical weapon that you would brandish when dealing with insurgent civilians. High grade emergency sedative shots.

"Y-You…" You can't finish the sentence before the exhaustion overwhelms you and you pass out yet again.

✧ ✧ ✧

a/n: hello hello it’s that time~ new chapter! i hope you all enjoy it! please let me know what you think so far and what your fav part has been or anything about the story!! i know things are moving rather slowly at the moment bUT i promise it’ll pick up in the coming chapters, we just gotta get through this ish first !!

consider sending me a ko-fi!!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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betweentheracks · 4 years ago

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On a scale of 1-5000, how annoyed do you get when people have the gall to tell you, “Wow! You’re so lucky!” when they find out that you work in entertainment and with celebrities?

Also on a scale of 1-5000, how unimpressed are you with the celebrities you end up working with?

Please share some horror stories so we can commiserate over nightmare clients! 😂

Yeef and also yikes, do I actually want to dive into this particular can of worms? Lmao.

I thoroughly see spots of red in my vision whenever people try to do the whole “Wow, that’s really cool and lucky for you! How many famous people have you met or worked with? Your life must be so glamorous and exciting!!” Like please, spare me. It isn’t glitz and glitter all the time - in fact, the fun parts are in the minority of how working in this industry goes. Beyond that, I’m not ‘lucky,’ I worked my ass off to pull this off and have never slowed my pace (until this COVID-19 chaos) to ensure my post remains relevant. In accordance to your ranking, I guess I would go with 4999 points annoyed.

Frankly, my rating and impressions of my clients are like a river that flows on and on and yet there is no apparent water to be found. I have a good rapport with most of the ones I am contracted with exclusively, but they're prone to make my feelings change from sentence to the next. Celebrities will forever remain exhaustively effervescent.

If you really want some dish, I can offer up some from a client I once worked with in my apprenticeship and how much I hate the time I had to spend with her while also retaining a sense of gratitude for helping shape me into someone that can withstand some of the prickly goings-on of the industry. She wasn’t even my client, as I was merely apprenticing and therefore was little more than a ghost that shadowed one of the veterans of our company. I’m highlighting this now before diving into the thick of what was the worst week in my career thus far because it is extremely important to keep in mind that I was under no actual obligation to work with this woman.

Ahem, so, story time! Let me start off with first making it clear that even now I will only work with actresses and actors when I have no viable means of refusal. This is simply a preference of mine and stems mostly from this woman’s behaviors and treatments of me and some of the crew I worked with at the time. I was quite young when I entered my apprenticeship, like barely more than 20, and I was simultaneously accustomed and starstruck by the world I was entering. Before the apprenticeship, I had already been working off and on via temporary contracts and commissions as a MUA at the time, so I knew the ends and outs of the place and the people that worked my end of it. However, I hadn’t worked with many clients one on one as either a MUA or as an aspiring wardrobe stylist. Due to this I was still very green and awkward and hadn’t yet figured out the line between casual and professional (to this day, for me, this line is nearly nonexistent) and I tended to make a mess whenever I opened my mouth so mostly I kept quiet and melded into my role as an observing trainee with occasionally useful ideas but was mostly just an extra pair of hands. The stylist I was shadowing was, in a word, cumbersome. They weren’t a very great teacher and had a tendency to drop projects into my lap without much proper instruction or insight and would leave me to attempt making sense of what was wanted by means of vision boards and client portfolios. In much a similar fashion, when a scheduling conflict came up involving the actress which will star in this tale and another more major artist; naturally, he had to see to the client he had a more tangible contract with and stuck me with wrangling our golden girl.

Within the first 4 sentences of our first exchange as stylist and client I hated her immensely. She was the type of client I abhor to work with; overbearing and demanding, thankless and impatient. She was in the midst of her career finally catching some interest which is the most pivotal time in any celebrity’s career and I like to think she was so bitchy and just plain mean due to the stress and pressure she was under but it doesn’t make what happened any more justifiable. Her immediate and first words to me were, “You’re young and clueless enough to be my baby sister. Whatever authority you think you can have in dictating what I wear ended with the sound of the door opening when you stepped in, get that straight now.” I remember this extremely clearly because I went from gobsmacked to incensed within the time it takes to pop the top on a can of soda. But! I knew at least enough to know to keep my mouth shut and temper my immediate dislike of this person and tried to push forward and steer the conversation in the direction of what her ideal style and presentation should be. It went well enough for all of an hour tops before she domed me again by calling me “baby sis” in place of my name. As I am, in fact, the baby sis of my family I am well aware of when a power play is being maneuvered in on me and spotted this for what it was: her trying to remind me that I had no right to be speaking to her, let alone designing her. This was a culmination of her being upset and put out that she wasn’t chosen by my mentoring stylist and was stuck with someone that had basically no merits behind her.

Calling me this wasn’t really an issue for me, but it did chafe against my skin enough to make me feel uncomfortable and anxious. Still, I let it slide and she continued to call me as such for the duration of our time together. The true horror of this story is what comes next and the escalation from minor verbal insults meant to belittle me fanned into blatant sabotage. She and I had come to a sort of estranged agreement when it came to modeling her vision board - she wanted to retain some traces of her perceived sweet and demure self from when she was cast in her first role, but play up the maturity and grace she held now and have it reinvented into timeless class while holding a touch of being chic. It was a headache to make sense of since, from a the perspective of fashion and trends at that time, this wasn’t the ideal and even seemed counterintuitive to someone in her position and of her age. I went along with it and threw myself into the quest to pull from the brands she mentioned liking most and for days I learned firsthand how exhausting and tedious it is to make acquisitions and swear responsibilities/accountabilities one after the other and put my name and my company on the line. I handpicked every item and steadily managed to pull off forming my second ever ensemble of 4 sets of styles each with 2 or 3 substitution items that could alter the look entirely while still remaining within the realm of what the client had asked for. I worked upward of 13 hours for 4 days and when I finally was able to bring the client to her showroom and present my designs, I was only able to feel relieved for mere minutes before she began to yell and make a scene. She demanded my supervisor and the head of the styling department of our company both come to tend to her and see what a mockery I had made of her ideal image. She went on to use her acting quirks to insinuate that I had gone off half-cocked and overruled her every idea and word and then dared to present her with such low quality fashions. She even managed to produce a vision board that was entirely different from the one she and I had planned together! It was obviously done by herself and lacked the detailed attention any of the stylists housed in our company would have added, but it was convincing enough to appear damning.

At this point my head was in a weird place, trying to make sense of the perilous world I was throwing myself into and the fact that this was actually happening to me at all and wasn’t just me daydreaming while watching daytime dramas. After I worked through that initial shock, I was more than mad but less than enraged. I was confused as to why this client was being so purposefully obstinate and difficult for me, even briefly wondered what sort of grievance I could have possibly cost her when I had only just met her and had done my utmost to seem cool and pro like all the seasoned stylists I had worked with. I thought I was going to lose my job and have to go back to my family with my tail between my legs and tell them they were right and I never should have strayed from my original course and career path. I only became aware that I was crying, like big fat tears that made a mess of my face and were embarrassing to the point that I wanted to flee, because my supervisor had given me his handkerchief. It was at this point that I teetered and looked deeply at the person accusing me and wasting my time and efforts and realized that it wasn’t about me and was only ever about her. This moment of clarity, though, was like the opening of a gate I had been clinging to all week in hopes of keeping all my spurned senses quietly simmering beneath my skin rather than wreck my name and finish off my chances before they truly begun. I very rudely told my supervisor and the department head that if they needed proof of my hardwork and dedication to the vision of a thoughtless actress caught in the weeds of her own wilting fame then they were free to examine my copy of the original vision board and compare it with the one she had; that they could check through the 15 or so LORs under my name and in her stead (both names are featured for security means). Anyway, she was attempting to spill a stain across our company and specifically the stylist in charge of me for blowing her off. Her idea was that if I failed in a big way it would make him look like a horrible mentor and cost him some of his reputation. I was merely cannon fodder.

This got insanely long - let’s put it up to me also being a storyteller and writer as well as very passionate about this encounter. It sparked the timid embers of my uncertain pursuit of my career into a fire that has since gotten me through many other rounds of hard hitting clients and their excessive personalities and entitled arrogance. I love my job a lot, but man is this industry full of bullies.

#peekbackstage #style asks #style speak #anyway now i adamantly avoid working with the acting crowd and my life is a lot more simple

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thatsamericano · 4 years ago

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Roses, Balloons, Chocolates, Wine, and a Custom Mix CD

Pairings/Characters: America/Romano. Background Gerita, appearances from Belgium and England.

Ratings: Teen, but only for cursing. Extremely fluffy with no warnings to speak of.

Summary: For Romano, Valentine’s Day is just another reminder that he’s alone and unloved. He doesn’t care that he has to spend time at a world meeting. But when a “secret admirer” surprises him with extravagant gifts they left at the chair he’d been using for the past few days, Romano realizes that he wasn’t as unloved as he had thought.

Word Count: 1987

Notes: Written for Day 7 of @hetaliancupid-hetaliaevent.

Veneziano was pouting as he walked towards the conference room hand in hand with his boyfriend. His older brother trailing behind them and scowling. “England is so un-romantic,” Feli complained. “I can’t believe he’d schedule a meeting on Valentine’s Day of all days!”

Germany frowned thoughtfully. “Normally I would argue that these meetings are important for international cooperation on world issues affecting us all. But I was hoping to spend more time with you today, schatz.”

Romano rolled his eyes. “Well, some of us are perpetually single and don’t give a shit.” Savino didn’t hate the concept of Valentine’s Day, a special occasion to spend time with a significant other and celebrate the love you feel towards each other. But since he didn’t actually have a significant other and was forced to spend way too much time around Feli and his macho potato, Savino wasn’t a huge fan of the holiday. For him it was just another reminder that he was alone and unloved.

“Aww, cheer up, fratello! I’m sure you’ll find someone soon.”

Savino scoffed. “Unlikely.” Little did Feliciano know, but Romano actually had found someone he wanted to be with. But America hadn’t been able to pick up on the many and increasingly obvious hints he had dropped over the years, so Savino was beginning to lose hope. Alfred wasn’t stupid, and Romano didn’t think he was that oblivious. Maybe he was ignoring Savino’s feelings because he felt uncomfortable rejecting him outright. That sounded exactly like something that idiota would do.

Germany pushed open the doors to the conference room where several nations were already milling around, speaking to each other in small groups. (They had left a bit later than usual, since Romano was dragging his feet and took a while to get ready.) The meeting room looked just like it had for the past few days, except for Romano’s chair, which was festooned with too many red, white, and pink heart-shaped balloons for him to consider counting. A crystal vase filled with red roses had been placed on the table where he would usually take notes, along with a giant heart-shaped box of what Romano could only assume was chocolates.

“What the fuck?” Savino muttered to himself.

Feliciano turned to him with a smug grin. “See, I told you, Savi! I knew you’d find someone.”

“It’s probably just a dumb prank.” Romano wouldn’t put it past someone to mess with him that way, wanting to see him get excited just so they could laugh at him later. But he could feel his face heating up as he pushed past Feli and his boyfriend and rushed over to the seat he’d been using for the past several days.

Romano’s eyes widened when he got close enough to see the box and see that it wasn’t just chocolates, but Godivas. If this was a prank, it was a particularly expensive and stupid one. He checked the small card stuck among the roses, but that didn’t provide a clue. It only said that it was “To Savino, from your secret admirer.” The person who’d written the note had drawn a heart with a cartoon arrow pointed through it underneath their message. Savino sensed that the handwriting was familiar, but he couldn’t recognize it instantly.

Romano frowned. “Ugh. I wonder why they didn’t tell me who they are.”

Romano sensed someone walking closer to him, and when he glanced over, it turned out to be Belgium. She had a small, inscrutable smile on her face as she delicately touched one of the roses with her fingertip. “I think they were nervous. It can be hard to tell someone you like them, especially if you don’t know how they feel about you.”

Wait, wasn’t Godiva a Belgian brand? Was Belgium his secret admirer? Savino’s eyes widened in alarm. He tried to respond, but he was struggling for words.

“Emma, I’m flattered. I’m really, really flattered, and I know I used to have a crush on you when I was a little kid, but—”

Emma laughed. “Relax, silly. It wasn’t me. But your secret admirer called me a few days ago to make sure Godiva was a brand you’d like. They were so anxious, and they really wanted to make you happy. It was adorable.”

“So you know who they are? Aren’t you going to tell me?”

Belgium smirked at him. “That would kind of ruin the whole secret admirer thing, now wouldn’t it?”

Romano glared at his old friend, but it had no effect on Belgium. She giggled as she walked away to go speak to her brothers, and Romano glanced around the conference room to see who his secret admirer might be. It clearly wasn’t Austria, who was kissing Hungary on the cheek. Savino’s heart lodged in his throat when he saw America from across the room. Alfred was smiling warmly as he handed over a black and white cat plushie to Japan. He knew the gesture probably wasn’t romantic, since Alfred liked to give his friends Valentine’s Day presents too. He had given Savino several stuffed animals over the years, and they usually sat on his headboard unless Romano was feeling particularly lonely, in which case he might hold one as he slept. But just the thought of America choosing Kiku over him hurt far more than it should have.

America looked up suddenly, and he gave Romano one of those huge, obnoxious grins that could make the sun look dim and dreary by comparison. Savino blushed and fought the impulse to smile back at him, but his lips were twitching at the corners. He forced himself to glance away, hoping against hope that Alfred had only met his eyes coincidentally and hadn’t noticed that Savino had been staring at him like a goddamn moron.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see America exchanging a quick word with Japan, who nodded in understanding. America zoomed around the table towards him so quickly that he didn’t even notice he’d bumped into Norway, who was glaring at America viciously after the unintentional slight. Hopefully Norway wouldn’t curse America with some weird troll later.

Alfred was flushed by the time he skittered to a stop in front of Romano. He was carefully holding a wine bottle with a red ribbon tied around the neck. “Hi, Vinny.”

Savino chuckled. “Hey, Fredo. Why the fuck did you run over towards me?”

“I wanted to give you your Valentine’s Day present before the meeting started.” America passed the bottle over to Romano. “I… uh, know you’re really into wine, but I don’t know much about it, so I asked the Secret Service guys I’m friends with, and apparently one of them is married to this gal whose family owns a vineyard in Napa Valley. It’s not Italian, but he said this was a really good year, so hopefully you’ll think it’s good enough.”

“That’s… that’s actually really thoughtful of you, bastard. Thank you.” Romano carefully set the wine bottle down next to the vase of red roses and turned back to face America.

America ran his hand over his hair, which was incredibly distracting because of how golden it looked, even under the greenish overhead lighting that wasn’t flattering to anyone in general. “I, um, also made you something.” He pulled a clear CD case out of his jacket pocket. Instead of handing it over right away, like he had with the wine bottle, Alfred took a deep, shuddering breath. He seemed nervous, but Savino tried not to get his hopes up. “It’s just some songs that reminded me of you. If you don’t like it, you can throw it away, I guess.”

Alfred finally held out the CD towards him, and Savino took it. He read the inscription Alfred had written in marker. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Savino! Love, Alfred.” It was a fairly normal inscription, but then a couple seconds later, Savino realized that Alfred’s handwriting perfectly matched the note from his secret admirer. He’d even drawn a heart with an arrow pointing through it.

Romano teared up. He was ecstatic, and he was in disbelief that his Alfredo, the friend he’d been pining over for ages, was actually his secret admirer. “I can’t believe you did this for me.”

Alfred blinked at him, clearly confused by his gratitude. “It’s just a CD, dude. Most of the songs aren’t even in Italian. And it didn’t cost me any money to make.”

“I didn’t mean the CD! I meant everything. You got me wine and roses, and a giant box of Godivas! You tied so many balloons to my chair that I’m surprised it hasn’t floated up to the ceiling by now!”

“That would take a lot more balloons. These chairs are really heavy. Do you think I should have gotten more balloons?”

Savino shook his head. “Only you could do all this and worry that it still wasn’t enough. I love you so much, Alfredo.”

“You… you love me? Like as a friend? Because if so, you’re gonna feel really awkward if you listen to that CD.” Alfred glanced away, chuckling nervously. “I put a lot of cheesy romantic ballads on there.”

Savino yanked Alfred down by his shirt collar and planted a firm kiss on his lips. America barely had a chance to respond before Romano pulled away and looked straight into his eyes.

“I like cheesy romantic ballads, and I like you. And not just as a friend, idiota.”

Alfred gave him a goofy, lovestruck smile. “Awesome.”

Romano smirked and played with Alfred’s tie to tease him a little. “I didn’t get anything nearly as extravagant for you for Valentine’s Day, but maybe later we can go back to my hotel room and listen to that CD you gave me. I’ll make dinner for us. It can be our first date.”

Alfred tilted his head down playfully. “I love your food, Vinny. And I love you.”

“I know you do.”

They kissed again, and this time it was more passionate and emotional, but it didn’t get inappropriate for their very public setting. Before it could get inappropriate, someone cleared their throat loudly, which interrupted them.

England had an awkward, mildly irritated frown on his face. “If you two don’t mind, everyone else is ready to start the meeting now.”

Alfred giggled. “Sorry, Artie.” He didn’t sound sorry at all, and Romano couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t thought about the work they were supposed to do today ever since he had discovered the surprise his “secret admirer” had left for him.

Romano sat down in his chair, and America took the chair next to him, where Veneziano had been sitting for the past few days. When he looked across the table, Feliciano was in the seat Alfred had been using during the extended multi-day conference, taking up the place between Japan and Canada. He beamed and waved to them from across the table. Alfred waved back enthusiastically.

Savino turned to look at his Valentine. “You switched seats with my brother?”

“I kind of told him what I was planning yesterday and asked if I could sit next to you if things went well. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not. I’m glad I get to sit next to you.” Now Veneziano’s certainty and smugness earlier made sense. He had been so sure Savino would “find someone” because he knew Alfred had been planning to reveal his feelings today.

Alfred shifted closer so that they could hold hands under the table. England had started his opening presentation, but America wasn’t even feigning interest or pretending to take notes. “I’m glad I get to sit next to you too,” he whispered.

Savino ducked his head to hide the grin he couldn’t contain anymore and squeezed Alfred’s hand. His heart was beating too fast and he was too happy to pay attention to anything England might have been saying.

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pinnochiro · 3 years ago

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pinn reviews - final fantasy xv

a long ramble about final fantasy fifteen that sort of looks like a review, as written by someone who finished the game fifteen minutes ago and needs to get these words out of his head. spoilers inbound.

i'm a pretty big fan of video games. i don't know what my first was, but it was probably either banjo and kazooie or mario kart 64, at my cousin's house when i was very small. i think that video games as a medium are so interesting, since the fact that video games are inherently interactive changes the way that they tell any story. it's a shame that despite loving video games so much, i'm absolutely terrible at them.

i'm absolute dogshit at video games. whenever i boot up something new, i always play on easy mode because. i'm that bad. unfortunately, this means that a lot of video games are simply. impossible for me to beat. that's fine, as at the moment i live with my good friend lizz, who is certifiably Good at Video Games, and so we've been playing video games together for a little bit now. typically this means that she will actually play the majority of the game while i sit with her and watch, but occasionally i'll have a go, but she'll end up with the controller as soon as a boss fight or puzzle or a mechanic i just can't seem to grasp shows up. we recently played through the entirety of the kingdom hearts series together, and this was an absolute blast of a time. i'm glad to say that i adore kingdom hearts now, and it's become one of my hyperfixations, which you might be able to tell from my icon. but we'd finished the kingdom hearts series, and we were left to move onto something else. we'd also played final fantasy 7 remake, so in my wisdom, i suggested that we play another final fantasy game.

we looked through the ff games that were already purchased on our consoles thanks to lizz's uncle, and eventually, we decided that we should play. all of them. however to start, we were going to play final fantasy xv, 15, and work our way backwards through the mainline, single-player games.

i'd heard that xv wasn't very good, but honestly, i was still quite curious. one person who i'd been following on twitter for years was pretty obsessed with the main party members, to the point where i knew their names and what-not even though i didn't have much of an idea what the game itself was about. i remember watching a video by supereyepatchwolf a few years ago about how the game sucked, but i couldn't remember much of the details, and i knew, based on my obsession with kingdom hearts, that xv had started as a different game called final fantasy versus xiiv. i don't know all the details about versus thirteen, but i do know that it was originally helmed by the creator of my beloved kingdom hearts, mr tetsuya nomura, and that after many years, the vast majority of the game was thrown out, nomura wasn't in charge any more, and the whole thing was rewritten and reworked, which sounds like a fairly rough development cycle. but so what, i don't care about gameplay. i want to play the video game with those cute guys that i see fanart of on twitter, and lizz seemed happy enough to play through it with me.

and so we started final fantasy xv. i've been told that since the game was practically dead on arrival, they threw in a bunch of new content and reworked a lot of the early game before i got my hands on it. so my gameplay started with a scene of the four guys fighting some demon dude on fire and they're all old and grotty. whatever, that cutscene ends and we're put into a combat tutorial. that's over and we're on the road in what looks to be central america, pushing a car.

our four leading lads are noctis, the prince of the lucis empire, his best friend prompto, his bodyguard, gladio, and his chef and other things, ignis. i do quite like the main four members of the party in xv. prompto is quite easily my favourite, voiced by robbie daymond of goro akechi fame and with a bunch of fun little animations and quips that make him very likeable. he gets extremely excited at the idea of riding chocobos and has what i considered the best scene of the game, where he and noctis meet on a motel rooftop and discuss prompto's imposter syndrome, since he's only part of noctis' official retinue as his best friend. noctis is a fairly typical main protagonist, he's in love with a woman he hasn't seen in eight years and needs to go marry her or something, i don't care. gladio is a tough macho man with a mullet who wears leather jackets and wields a greatsword, and is apparently only 22, which is at least 10 years younger than i assumed. ignis is a strategist and chef, who takes on the most authoritative role and constantly tells noctis to not drive his car at night. i was not a fan of ignis at the start, but he grew on me, especially with how hard the game hit me with his personal arc. the four boys are off, driving to noctis' wedding in a different country across the desert when their car breaks down. we then run into the first issue of the game.

cindy is a mechanic. she also has her ass and tits out constantly, like your sleazy uncle's shirt with a naked woman was instead semi-alive as a video game person. she fixes your car and acts fairly sexual and it's just like. why do we have to do this. aren't we over overtly sexualised women in video games who have no reason for the way they dress other than the character designer was horny? whatever, i like women as much as the next guy, but cindy's design just. makes me feel so uncomfortable.

anyways you get to do a little driving around with the boys, until you stay the night before catching the boat to your fiance. overnight, you find out that noctis' kingdom has been basically destroyed by an invading empire called niflheim, and practically everyone noctis knows, including his father, are dead. you learn that noctis and his bride to be are also assumed dead, with noctis hearing his own death announcement on the radio. the game has a bunch of added cutscenes that are actually footage from the three-hour-long prequel movie that came out after the game, are extremely hard to follow and honestly i had no idea what i was looking at. anyways, noctis' family is dead, so it's time to do some hunting sidequests.

that brings us to the combat, i suppose. rather than the turn-based or even active turn-based combat that the series is known for, xv opts for more modern action rpg-styled combat. i was, naturally, terrible at this, but i managed to get around it with the fact that. it is almost impossible to die in this video game, provided you have enough items. the game allows you so much time to heal yourself that there's practically no way to have your entire party wipe unless you're doing absolutely terrible, and even then, your party members will probably try and heal you themselves before that happens. lizz tells me that the combat is boring, you just push the same button over and over and then you win. i do appreciate that, for someone like me who is terrible at reading enemy movements, there is a giant button that pops up on screen that tells you when to push the block button, but even then i was prone to fucking it up. whether that's the bad game design or my terrible gaming abilities is up to you to decide. anyways, the game is fairly easy but has annoying combat, your teammates limit breaks will only land about 50% of the time (or never, if you are gladio) and i was still bad at it, so i didn't have all that much fun.

instead of an active levelling system, the game will only tally your character's level ups when you either make camp or visit a hotel. camping is, in my opinion, the only saving grace of this game. each time you make camp, you get to see the characters doing fun little camping activities together and just hanging out, ignis will cook up a new meal in a dramatic fashion and everyone will compliment him and eat it off their coleman's branded plates, it's just very fun. you also get to see what pictures prompto has taken, which is one of my favourite gameplay features. prompto's passion is photography, and while i support him in this wholeheartedly, his picture taking skills are, quite frankly, awful. the game will randomly take shots while you're on the move, which leaves you with a delightful selection of awkward poses, characters hidden behind bushes, pictures taken while someone is half-dead in combat, and snaps where the natural lighting absolutely makes it impossible to tell what's going on. it's hilarious and going through prompto's collection of photos each night is honestly the best part of the game. we managed to wind up with a few shots that, even despite being scripted events, turned out absolutely terrible, and i will cherish those forever.

anyways, since noctis' father and fiance are dead, that leaves him the king of lucis. the only important person to make it out of the capital alive tells you to drive to the middle of nowhere, where he randomly springs on you. hey. go into a bunch of these dungeons and absorb a bunch of swords, this is your destiny as king and how you will defeat the empire. noctis goes, uh, alright i guess, and you're set loose again to wander around for a bit collecting the 'royal arms'. this plot point wasn't explained well but hey, whatever, we're collecting the glowy swords and that's fine.

you're introduced at some point to ardyn, the main antagonist. he's old, kind of groady and wears a fedora. he's a dick to you and talks about his automobeeel. apparently my friend miri thinks he's hot, she is wrong.

i can't remember what happens specifically but you're told that your fiance is still alive and in fantasy venice, and she's talking to the gods on your behalf to borrow their powers. there's a mission where you follow some purple trees that are electric, and you do that i guess. i enjoyed riding the chocobos around, but couldn't care much for the plot at this point. ardyn leads you to a volcano, where you fight a giant lava god. he tries to step on you and i, a denizen of the internet and with an active fear of foot fetishists, was extremely uncomfortable. noctis becomes friends with foot man and a lightning god who lived in those trees, and ardyn steals your car.

very upset by this, noctis and his gang risk everything to sneak into a military base and steal it back. because this is a video game, this works out fine.

there's a little mining city which is all about Girl Power, because all the Women run the Mining Industry like Girl Bosses, and you hang around there for a bit. because all the women are so Empowered, they wear bikinis all the time with overalls over the top. gladio decides he needs to fuck off for a bit, i have no idea what he does since i haven't played the dlc, and then he comes back with another scar. you hang out with his sixteen year old sister, who has a crush on the engaged and 20-year old noctis, and then you drive her to a lighthouse. when she's in your party, she can't really fight, but she gets a pink chocobo and i thought that was very cute. we turned out own chocobo white and lizz named him 'jones' after a mount she has in ffxiv.

eventually, you have a long boat ride over to fantasy venice. this is the part where the game stops being 'fun with a few issues in combat and a rushed and poorly told story.' the open world, which was a main feature with a bunch of little areas to find where noctis can fish, little hunting sidequests and random photo spots where prompto takes touristy photos, is now gone, and it will not return for the entire rest of the game. you can 'go back in time', but the open world was the most enjoyable part of the game, and it kind of really sucks that the main story doesn't let you have any more freedom like that.

after arriving in fantasy venice, you have a talk with fantasy hillary clinton and beg her to let your girlfriend summon a god into the middle of her city. hillary agrees, and you don't get to meet up with your fiance, because even if the game is constantly telling you how much noctis loves her, there is. barely any interactions between the two in the entire game. from what i can tell, they met when noctis was a child and they haven't seen each other in ten years but are still fantasy dog pen-pals. noctis marrying her was supposed to make an alliance or something like that, but her brother has betrayed her to the army. noctis' girlfriend is also an oracle, which means she can heal people, i guess? everyone talks about how important she is and she's constantly telling people that she needs to use her powers to help noctis but she's practically a non-entity.

as can be expected of most female love interests in a game primarily focused on men, noctis' fiance is killed while summoning a god for noctis to befriend. noct gets very mad about this, and turns super saiyan and kills the god back, but his girlfriend is dead and that's super sad you guys. there's a beautiful prerendered cutscene where she says goodbye to noctis but since we barely know her, and we've only been told over and over that they're in love without anything to actually well, show this, it didn't have much of an impact. fantasy venice is destroyed, and ignis is blinded while trying to help calm the giant raging god.

iggy's blindness and how the game makes you account for this and grow to care for him was one of the highlights, in my opinion, as well as crushingly depressing. while i'm not disabled and have no right to say if this was 'good disabled representation' or anything like that, i believe that the game handles it decently enough. the group falls apart as noctis is upset about his girlfriend, gladio is extremely mad that noctis won't care for ignis, and prompto just wants everyone to get along. there's a mission where gladio constantly yells at you passive aggressive things to noctis about how he's a cunt for running, which is obnoxious, but the character arc itself is fairly strong. when you make camp, ignis can't cook anymore, so everyone eats cup noodles in a depressing ass cutscene. ignis remains in your party for the rest of the game despite his disability, and he doesn't magically regain his sight like other fantasy media would do, which at the very least i think is good. i'm not sure what the opinion of actual disabled people is of the character, considering how often disabled characters are either turned into misery porn to make the abled audience be glad that isn't them and if ignis' arc falls into this trap, but i hope that it wasn't handled too poorly, as that would just be another terrible mark in this game's list of bad moves.

the characters eventually make it to the evil empire's capital, which is abandoned and filled with daemons. the characters learn that ardyn is super evil and taught the king of the empire how to turn humans into daemons, which has now happened to the entire city. the 'magitek suits', presumed to be enchanted armour that fights as the empire's infantry, actually house the souls of the human-turned daemons. honestly i like this as a plot point but the game handles it pretty terribly. there could have been more lead up to this, the explanation is pretty lacking, and prompto's Big Plot Twist is. terribly handled. turns out that prompto was born in the empire and was going to be one of those empty soldier daemons, but he was rescued by people belonging to noctis' empire. not that the game tells you that. instead, prompto goes 'turns out i'm one of ... them' and Does Not Elaborate. The game doesn't tell you shit, not about prompto's past, not about how he feels about this, not about how anyone else feels about this either because the other party members just go 'oh that sucks, good thing you're not evil' and the scene ends. robbie daymond tries so hard to sell these terrible, terrible lines, and it almost entirely fails, i'm so sorry prompto. fortunately because i'm a nosy ass, i read prompto's wikia page and knew the plot twist ahead of time, because i don't think i would have even registered it if i didn't.

anyways everyone in the evil empire is dead and ardyn starts talking about how he's immortal and an ancient king of noctis' country but the gods thought he sucked because he's too evil. i missed most of this because the cats got the zoomies and were dashing across the couch right in the middle of his speech so i can't tell you anything else. noctis tries to get a big magic crystal to fight him and instead. gets schlorped inside.

TEN YEARS LATER

yes then ten years actually pass while noctis is asleep. the game shows this by switching the head on noctis' character model to have a beard, but that's it, no changes in animations or whatever. the sky is permanently night and only one human civilisation remains, the rest destroyed by daemons. as a plot point, this ends up feeling. extremely worthless. why was noctis asleep for ten whole goddamn years? so we can wake up and go 'damn it sucks out here'. but it's barely even a like, incentive to fix everything, because you have a long talk with a former child you were friends with where he talks about how humanity is still going fine and everyone's okay and the world has moved on without you. it feels. pointless. when you meet up with your party members, they are exactly as you left them, only with slightly different character models. there is no change in the voice performance, the character's movements or how they talk to show that they've been without you for ten years. they barely mention it. i'm just. so confused as to why they decided that a ten year timeskip was the way to go? since nothing really changes, couldn't you have made it like, two years? one year? six months?? have the characters react a little more? something??? at least if it was only a year or so i wouldn't have to deal with the fact that noctis looks like norman reedus with his shitty facial hair now.

anyways after that there's a bunch of long and boring boss fights. you fight some dead kings for some reason, your party members get a little bit to talk about how cool they are and how much they love noctis, and then you meet up with ardyn. there's another boring boss fight and god this was only a few hours ago but it's already gone from my head. you summon the gods and the old kings to beat the shit out of him after you both go super saiyan again? there's incredible music but it feels barely earned and just kind of eh. anyways, noctis dies, which was the price of using the crystal of light or whatever the fuck. his ghost marries his fiance's ghost finally, and they smile as they look at one of prompto's pictures. you can pick any picture you want to go here, and then the credits roll, showing all of the pictures you saved of prompto's shots. showing me all the pictures at the end is honestly lovely, but it really only served to remind me of how much more fun the game was in the first half. and that's the end, of final fantasy xv.

so what did i think of the story? it's terribly cobbled together and struggles to get you to feel anything and play out all the plot beats. you feel awful for the countless employees who spent years working on the beautiful cutscenes only to have them be in this game, which sucks and the story barely gets through. there were parts that i enjoyed, mostly the thing about the daemons being people, but honestly the rest of it is a mess. it's hard to follow at the best of times and just awkward and terribly written at the worst. the ending is cheap, and it doesn't feel like you've actually accomplished anything. i left that game feeling numb and empty, sad that i'd wasted so much time to end up with such a colossal failure of a conclusion.

i had fun with the game when it was my four little guys running around doing sidequests and camping together. after the midway point of the game, there's none of that, and you're bogged down into a plot that just pushes you from point a to point b and boring overlong bossfight to boring overlong bossfight. the character moments between your party are a lot of fun, but the second you hit fantasy venice, everything is pretty much on rails and you can't do anything except what the game tells you explicitly to do.

should you play this game? no lol. if anything i've mentioned about the story interests you, you'll be better off watching a lore video or reading the wiki. if you do want to play it after all that, just don't proceed after the myrthril refining quest, it's pretty much all downhill from there. will i play the dlc? unlikely, i think lizz and i will just watch a cutscene movie of those.

this game left me feeling empty and numb and not in a fun way. i wanted, so, so hard to like this game, and it all crashed around me in a beautifully overproduced and confusingly written cascade. i love you prompto, but even your cute little freckly face and terrible photography can't save this trainwreck of a game.

tl;dr - final fantasy xv sucks. i hope that 13, our next ff game, will be better.

#ramble #review type thing #did you read all of this? im impressed #i did not proofread #so if its a mess #just pretend thats a meta commentary about the game itself #i wrote this for like an hour trying to understand the feelings this game gave me #final fantasy xv

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guessimjoiningthespidermanfandom · 4 years ago

Text

It Takes Two to Tango

Peter Parker x bisexual!reader

Peter Parker x fem!reader

Peter Parker x black!reader

Peter Parker x villain!reader

Warnings: Language, guns, knives, violence, self destructive behavior, mentions of mania and depression, mentions of bipolar disorder, descriptions of tattoo guns, slight slut shaming maybe, a bong, allusion to corrupt government, mentions of prostitution, mentions of parental neglect, and mentions of piercings.

Word Count: 6.5k

Songs: Drew Barrymore- SZA, No Role Modelz- J.Cole, Baby Blue- Action Bronson, Little Dark Age- MGMT, Gansta- Kehlani, Shutter Island- Jessie Reyez, Good Days-SZA, King’s Dead, Kendrick Lamar, and Saint Bernard- Lincoln.

“Which was odd because usually he talks the most on these rides. After we got over the initial awkwardness of the whole fire and Vulture thing we fell back into the way of things. Well if he was going to play this game I would too because what’s that saying? It takes two to tango.”

A/N: Hold on tight a lot goes down and it’s not looking up anytime soon.

Series Masterlist Previous Part Next Part

I was running faster than I’d ever had before the heels I had been trying on? Not helping my case. Since this is apparently my brand now I backed myself up onto the edge of the building.

I had a gun trained on me.

“Come with us Y/N please,”

“No! Who the fuck is Y/N?”

“Don’t play dumb ma’am we’ve done extensive research on you and we see you’ve done the same with us,”

I rolled my eyes.

“Fuck you! I have no idea what you’re talking about and this is harassment,”

“You’re cornered there’s no way out,”

The man wasn’t going to shoot me. No one would’ve come all the way out here and have chased me for this long when they had a gun if they were really planning on killing me. They would’ve done it already. And if this was who I thought it was I was not going with them.

“Just come with us, we’re on your side, we’re not trying to hurt you,” That sounds exactly like someone who was going to hurt me would say.

“Yeah says the man who has a gun aimed at me,” I rolled my eyes.

“This is simply a safety precaution, just make this easier for everyone,”

I looked back at him before making my decision. I was getting the hell out of here now.

I bent backwards towards the street underneath me. Instead of free falling I put my hands behind me going into a backbend kickover grabbing onto the ledge.

Using my legs as a propeller I launched myself closer to the wall. I’d gotten lucky and the walls had protruding bricks that I could scale.

The man who I think was from SHIELD was hot on my tail. So I had to move fast. I scaled my way to the nearest balcony jumping into the pool in a leap of faith.

I’d made it in thankfully. Guess my story wasn’t over.

Then I had to run. I was running down the streets. Thankfully this was New York and no one would bat an eye at someone who was drenched head to toe running down the street. They’d just pass me off as another nut job and go about their day.

So much has happened I feel like this is an episode of shameless. You really were too busy to tune in last week you skank ass bitch? I almost died twice and I still managed to check in, whatever, just pay attention to the next clip.

“So that building exploded and that loud siren noise I think I told you about was going off in my ears and when I left the plane with Vulture and Spidey were fighting by a crashed plane and Vulture put too much power onto his wings and they were gonna blow up. And I got mad like fucking top of the anger iceberg mad. So when I was like on the verge of blacking out like fucking fire came out of my hands and disintegrated those wings. Like they turned to ash before my very eyes. Then I had a panic attack of course and that’s pretty much it,”

“Uh… I just called you here to tell you I found something about that SHIELD guy who came after but, I’m glad you’re okay,” Felicia told me.

“Sorry… I guess I got too excited,”

“What'd you find?” I moved over to her in her spinning chair.

“Look and see for yourself,” She moved out the way.

I sighed plopping down onto the small twin bed.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said, picking up a piece of popcorn.

“What are you talking about?” Carmen asked as if she was genuinely confused.

“You’re trying to trick me into eating and sleeping, which is totally not fair because if I want to wallow in self pity I should be able to,”

“I know what happens when it gets bad and I’m not letting you get there again,”

I sighed again. She is always claiming that she sees herself in me and she wants me to be the best version of myself.

She acts like since she’s one year older than me that she’s my mentor or something.

Plus she also thinks I have an undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder so who’s to say everything else she says isn’t a lie also.

We were watching a Wrinkle in Time and I knew I was going to cry when the girl’s dad came back. I always did and I didn’t want to cry today.

“Wanna go do something?”

“Sure... Where are we going?”

“Out,”

I tried on a lot of Carmens clothes and ended up wearing the most extravagant outfit I’d ever worn. I felt extremely giddy for no reason in particular. I was wearing a puffy skirt and corset. We were walking about the streets of Brooklyn with no clear destination in mind just talking.

“I just find it funny that all you have to do to be famous on Tiktok is be white and skinny like smoke a cigarette in a subway station or some shit,”

“Why don’t we get famous?”

“Now how would we get famous,” I poked.

“I’m offended that you don’t think we could,” She stopped on the side of the street.

“Gimme your phone,” She demanded in a kind way.

I plopped it into her palm.

I’d honestly forgotten where I was for a second because I’d zoned out yet again. She put the phone back in my hand and she had made a Tiktok account for the both of us.

She was only checking to see if I liked the account name because she took the phone right back afterwards.

I didn’t mind.

“I should get a tattoo right?” I asked, putting another one of the chamoy gummy worms in my mouth.

“How many do you have now?”

“I think like twelve?”

“And that’s not enough for you?”

“Noo! I like the ones I have. I just want a bigger one.”

“Then do it?”

We were actually in walking distance of a tattoo parlour I just didn’t trust them. Never cheat on your nail tech or hairstylist and it goes the same for tattoo artists.

Two subway rides later we were in Queens. I walked up to the front desk and was about to ask for my go to artist but she walked out the back room before I had the chance.

“Y/N, ‘s that you?” She asked.

“The one and only,” I twirled around in my dress.

“This dress is very different than your usual style but I can’t say I don’t love it,” She pulled at the fabric then glanced up her eyes, lighting up in recognition. She gasped “Is this Carmen?”

I nodded “My bad lemme introduce you to each other. Carmen this is Enchantress and you already know Carmen apparently,”

I’d played a Russian roulette sort of thing with my tattoo Pinterest board just clicking one with my eyes closed. Then there was the buzzing of the gun moving along my skin. Puncturing it in a way that felt extremely bittersweet.

I never understood people who said tattoos hurt. I could always barely feel them. They felt like a simple scrape over your skin. Also at this shop they still give you the wrapping for your tattoo but it’s filled with ink still so you can move it around in the bubble. I like messing with the ink sack. I think that’s why I come here so often.

I was admiring the tattoo on my lower abdomen in the mirror when I was startled.

“Wait!” Enchantress exclaimed, starling me “I just realized you got a piercing. Come here,” She beckoned.

She turned towards me

“It’s actually super straight, did you do this?”

I opened my mouth to respond when Carmen answered for me.

“No, some girl did it for her in her school bathroom,” I really gotta stop telling her everything. She’s always snitching on me.

“I want to be mad but I can’t because it actually looks super healthy,” She titled my chin up to get a better view “However if it gets infected I’m beating your ass,”

We exited the shop after I paid well, Carmen paid but I’ll pay her back. There was a pretty hefty discount too, because Enchantress loved me apparently, I loved her too. She’s an older sister figure like my role model. I mean she was when I was a few years younger. I think I’ve grown out of role models.

I felt a sharp uncomfortable sensation in my body which sort of felt like those anxiety brain zaps but located in my abdomen.

I looked behind me and there was something off about this man who was standing a few feet behind me. I accidently made eye contact with him and he bolted off.

Weird.

“Y/N are you even listening to me?”

“Huh,” I turned in Carmen’s directions “Sorry what'd you say?”

“I was saying that since you got a tattoo, I’m gonna cut and dye my hair,”

“Cool what color?”

“I don’t know yet let’s go just to CVS ‘nd decide there,”

I was sitting on the kitchen counter behind the chair Carmen was in as I applied the bleach to her hair singing along to the song playing.

Why is it so hard to accept the party is over?

You came with your new friend

And her mom jeans and her new Vans

I set the bowl of hair bleach onto the counter hopping down to get ready for my favorite part of the song.

And she's perfect and I hate it

I sang it loudly moving my hands around like I always do releasing my energy. It was almost like therapy. Who am I kidding SZA is therapy.

I used the bathroom and I couldn’t find soap. I looked under the cabinet and found the soap. I also found something else I wasn’t expecting to see. I brought it back into the kitchen with me.

“You have a hello kitty bong?”

She grabbed it from my hands examining it.

“Well actually I stole it from my sister,”

“No way, this is Dinah’s? Because she just got ten times cooler,”

“All I know was she got back in college, then she just stopped using it,”

I finished Carmen’s hair which for some reason she trusted me enough to cut curtain bangs for her honestly they didn’t look too bad. It was just very time consuming.

“Okay but are you sure, how’d you know he’s gay?” Harry questioned leaning back to look at the kid again.

“Just watch,” I raised my voice just enough for him to be able to hear me “Charlie!”

He turned around as if he were stunned that I was talking to him.

“Who me?” He asked.

“Yes you,”

“Oh,”

“So can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah sure I guess…”

“What’s your favorite Percy Jackson book?”

“The answer Lightning Thief is pretty basic but it’s my favorite or maybe the Titan’s Curse, I’m not sure,”

“Okay cool, thank you,” I turned back to face Harry “See,”

“That doesn’t prove anything but okay,”

“He knew more than one book in the Percy Jackson series that tells me all I need to know,”

“I know more than one Percy Jackson book,” He eyed me.

“Yeah and you’re gay,”

He just huffed. Got him there.

“He still wouldn’t fuck you though,” I sat tucked my legs underneath me.

“Whatever shouldn’t you be in your class? Which is it again?”

“Physics,”

“Oh…”

“Oh what? Don’t oh me,”

“You’re avoiding Peter,”

“I’m not avoiding Peter,” I totally was. Just Harry thinks I’m doing it because I like him. I didn’t tell him that but I might've let him believe it, because how do you even go about telling someone Hey I’m avoiding the person because fire came out of my body and they saw it. I’d sound insane.

As I was walking to the gym and by to, I mean away from, but that’s not the point, I could’ve sworn I saw the same man from Saturday in the window near the crowd of students.

Accompanied by the same gut feeling.

I pushed my way into the gym. To avoid him. I bumped into someone. Off instinct I got defensive but then I heard an

“Oh, sorry. Sorry!” Once they’d turned around I realized it had been Peter. Just my luck.

“You’re fine that was basically my fault anyway,”

I was going to just walk over to one of my friends but they weren’t here and Liz literally just left the school. So I had no escape.

Well there was one escape. There’s always a way out.

“Y/N!” The female gym coach called.

“Yes?” I rolled my eyes.

“Where are your gym clothes?”

“Probably in the locker room...”

“Why aren’t you wearing them?”

“I didn’t feel like it,”

“You need to change for your grade, participation is important,”

I picked up my backpack off the floor before pushing open the doors to the girls locker room. Instead of going towards my locker I headed straight for the metal doors leading into the hallway. I went to the space I always seemed to drift to when I had nowhere else to go.

The teachers bathroom.

I know that sounds weird but it’s the only one I can lock. I stole a key a while back when I went to get my phone back from one of the teachers.

I guess Carmen was a psychic or something because one of the videos she’d posted on our group account of us eating in the dresses, me getting that tattoo, and dying Carmen’s hair had blown up.

I did not see her take any of the clips but the proof was right in front of me.

The video had half a million views and I assumed that was because of all the comments helping pushing the algorithm.

Some of them were nice like

hey lol

you’re both gorgeous omg

That tattoo is cool af

I want to be you

I should pay you to do my hair lmao

I can't tell if i want to be you

The other half were like

No child should be getting a tattoo you look so young

That is the devils sign I’m praying for you.

Why please Go To God✝️✝️🙏🏻🙏🏻♥️

Im praying for you

At first I was confused as to why half of the comments were people praying. Then I realized it was because Carmen had on her pentagram necklace.

I’m definitely not complaining about the comments though because they got me that many views, likes, and follows, but the ignorance upsets me. A pentagram only represents Earth, Air, Water, and Fire it’s about balance.

I think it’s cool, kinda like the Avatar. It has nothing to do with Satan. I didn’t really want to think about Fire. I was still freaking out about Friday. It hadn’t happened again so maybe I dreamt it or something.

Somehow I spent the rest of gym and half of what should’ve been me heading to detention responding to every Christian’s comment with something dumb or witty.

I was walking towards the detention room and was startled by Peter. Again.

“Hey Y/N?”

“Yes?”

“Um… this is gonna sound insane but,” he paused looking down fiddling with his hands.

My face twisted up in confusion as to why he still hadn’t spoken.

“Are you gonna to speak…”

“Oh. Oh!” He looked back up “Yeah you remember my internship right?”

“Yeah…” I guess he was going to act like I didn’t know about him being Spiderman again.

“So now Mr. Stark is interested in you and wants you to come with me upstate,”

“Why me?”

“I’m not sure, but if you’re coming someone is outside waiting for us,”

I’m sure this was just another attempt to lure me into some SHIELD mess. However Peter had no idea about Thorn or any of the other fucked up shit I’d done. So it would look suspicious if I didn’t go. Because what kid or any other person wouldn’t want to meet Tony Stark.

“Okay then, what are we waiting for?”

The ride there was completely silent. I spent the whole time texting Carmen as she complained about her boyfriend. I really hated him oh my God. Peter had gone into the building about 15 minutes ago.

“Okay, if he’s always getting on your nerves and trying to control you why are you still with him?” I asked in the snap meant for Carmen.

“You know why, I’m not going to say it because then you’d get mad at me,” She sent a video back.

“Thank you I do not want to hear about your boyfriends dick-,” I was interrupted by a knock on the window “Okay I can’t talk got to go,” I sent the video before sliding across the seat pushing the door open.

“What happened?” I asked as Peter sat back in the car.

“It was a test,” He said, providing no further elaboration.

The back window was rolled down and the guy who drove us here. Happy, I think. There is no way that was his real name. He stuck his face in the window.

“Hey, the boss wants to see you now,”

I turned back to Peter and whispered.

“The boss? Am I about to walk into some mafia meeting,”

He just laughed at that.

“We don’t have much time,” Happy urged.

As we began walking the halls of the giant building as I pocketed random trinkets that I could sell for a quick buck.

“So what’s your real name?” I asked Happy since this whole time he was leading me it was a silent ride.

He continued to ignore me.

So I asked again. I could tell from his body language that I was getting on his nerves.

I asked twice more and by the time the last sentence came out of my mouth we’d already reached our destination. He walked away not before mumbling a quick I hate kids.

“Y/N it’s nice to meet you,” Tony greeted as he reached out to shake my hand. I allowed it.

“You’re a lot shorter in person,” I pointed out after releasing his hand.

“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” He reached for a bowl putting something in his mouth. “Grape?” He offered.

“No thank you,” Not like they’d be poisoned or anything, no one had even gotten the chance to question me yet. Also there was the fact that he was eating them but this could be a Princess Bride situation. Not taking any chances.

“Okay,” He clapped, dusting his hands. “Let’s get to the point now,”

“So I’ve been informed that you had an instance with pyrokinesis,” He continued after I nodded. “I was hoping to research this to get to the bottom of this,”

“So you want to use me as a lab rat?”

“No of course not, the research would be used purely for your personal benefit,”

For my benefit my ass. They were going to turn me into a lab rat or a soldier.

“Okay I’ll think about it,” Thought about it. A hard hell no.

“If you do choose to do so since you are a minor I’ll need parental consent,”

“Of course,” I nodded.

There was a pamphlet that I wasn’t going to read. I wasn’t really going to ask for permission. Was I? If I wasn’t then why was I back at ”my” house.

I just missed my bed, it was messy but it was mine.

I started sobbing for no reason at all. Maybe it was the old sketchbooks on my bed, or my mom's broken jewelry box. It could’ve been the smell of incense that never left from the lack of ventilation. It was probably the pile of crystals on my dresser. Then again it could’ve been the nazar eye amulet from the broken bracelet on the ground or the hole in the wall where I used to keep my favorite knife. Maybe it was all of those things. Maybe it was so much more. Maybe it was something different entirely. Maybe it was the colors of the wind. Who knows.

My eyes stung as my eyeliner dripped down and into them. I blinked the tears away as I went through all my clothes and I mean ALL my clothes.

I found another bodycon dress. I slipped it on after stuffing a few other articles in my bag. I continued searching to the very back of my closet and I found an old purse. There were at least $50 in the back pocket and in the front pocket there were- Oh.

There was a small plastic bag with at least 500gs of Xanax. I must’ve left them there after Washington.

I wasn’t going to take them. I really wasn't; I just put them in the bra. You know for safe keeping. I heard the front door open and made a break for the balcony.

Although I’d regularly seen my sisters. I still hadn’t seen my dad since I’d left. They’d seen him a couple times though he was fine with the idea of them staying at our grandma’s for who knows how long. He doesn’t care as long as he’s still got that girlfriend of his. I can only imagine what he told her about us not staying with him.

I jumped down the stairs of the fire escape and my heart almost jumped out of my chest. As something hit my calf.

I looked down to see it was just Salem climbing up my leg. I lifted her up to my chest nuzzling the top of her head.

“Hiii baby!” I cooed in a baby voice.

I now more carefully made my way down the steps so as to not disrupt her. Now I was going to go straight to my grandma’s house to drop off the clothes, but I wanted to go shopping before it got too late.

I already had no money so I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea but there I was with a $300 charge on my credit card.

I probably looked insane walking around the mall with a cat in my backpack and black streaks underneath my eyes.

If you’ve never done this I highly recommend it. Every subway train comes with carts and the last cart is a door with railing and no other restrictions. You can just sneak into the very back.

The wind hitting your face is the most freeing thing in the world and you can scream as loud as you want and no one will hear you. That fact can be unsettling to some but to me it’s beautiful.

Releasing your true emotions to no one but you and yourself. I closed my eyes holding onto the railing with one hand and Salem in the other. I put her back into my backpack before sitting down.

Since the app is addicting, and you can’t tell me it’s not, I opened Tiktok and the first thing I saw is a guy pouring what I hoped wasn’t I thought it was into a bowl.

So naturally my first reaction was to make a video about it because who doesn’t overshare on the internet.

“Tell me why,” The track rumbled underneath me, making Salem whine, I picked her up letting her cuddle into my chest.

“Okay, I have a cat now but-” The track rumbled again “It’s so fucking loud but tell me why I opened this hellfire app and see some dude pouring cum into a bowl, I hate everyone,”

Within like six minutes of me posting it I had multiple likes and comments.

The only reason being is that Harry dueted.

I gotta say being the kid of a mayor and a multimillionaire gives you some form of clout. So he had a pretty heft following.

Harry’s similar to me in the way that we’re mean to our friends. So naturally we’re ”mean” to each other.

“You look stupid,” Harry claimed in his video “Also who’s fucking cat did you steal put it back and get in the trains properly and go wash your face,”

I hadn’t even realized I was on my new account at first.

Of course I made a response video.

“First of all this is my cat, her name is Salem and she’s adorable” I mean not really but she belongs to no one else, and I feed her. “Second, ignore my eyeliner. I actually think it looks kinda cute,” Lie, It just made me look crazy. “Also how'd you even find this account so fast? Stalker. I’d advise you shut up before I post your phone number then you’d have to ward off groupies. I’m sure you’d like that though.”

I’m pretty sure the majority of the people in our comments thought we were being serious. So in turn they commented things like I have no idea who you are but I’m on your side, is this gonna be another scandal, or here before the news is talking about it.

I’m not complaining. His history of scandals got me to 5k followers for the pure assumption that I was involved in some other secret.

My mind was moving at 100 miles per hour. It felt like I was on a whole bottle of adderall. I was going somewhere. At least I remember I was supposed to be somewhere. I’m pretty sure my grandma’s house was where I was going. Right?

“No weapon against you shall prosper mija,” My grandma squeezed my hand “You are stronger than you know,”

“I know. Thank you,”

I’d got here and we had a 30 minute conversation about my mental health without outright saying anything about mental health. It was just mostly her taking shots at my dad. With the exception of her telling me I was dressed like una furcia.

“Okay well,” I pushed up off the couch “I just came to bring some clothes and I need to get back anyway,”

“Get back to where, where are staying?” She asked.

“Oh you remember MJ right?” I lied.

“Oh yes, I like that lil’ girl,”

I went into the guest room to where my sisters were staying. I could hear rustling as I got closer to the room. I flicked on the lights. To see both of my sisters asleep. It was only 10:30 so that was highly unlikely.

“I know you’re not sleep it’s just me,”

They peeled open their eyes, sitting up.

“I come bearing gifts,” I announced kneeling down next to the bag.

I placed the bag on the floor carefully so I wouldn’t hurt Salem.

Sapphire squealed when she saw her.

“You got Salem? I missed her!”

“Well actually, I just brought clothes,” I dumped them on the bed “Aaliyah come here?” I asked.

She hopped down from the bed.

“All of Sapphire’s clothes are over there but I know we’re like the same size so pick what you want,” I told her.

She took at least half of what I had but I wasn’t complaining because at least she wasn’t going behind my back and taking them.

“Okay but like am I really allowed to hate my father like cause,” I tried to move only to immediately lose balance “Shit- but like can I even hate my dad if I do the same shit he does, like maybe, maybe it’s like some contractual blood magic shit and I’m just destined to be a shitty person,” I was sending videos to some group chat I didn’t know who was in it because I couldn’t really read the name I just know Harry was the only one responding.

“I get it being like your parents is scary but you’re not and I won’t let you be like that, now get some sleep please,” Harry reassured.

“NO! It’s like,” I struggled to get the sentence out “It’s like crazy because before I existed it like someone fucking planted this, like it- it’s a-,” I hit my forehead on each word as if I could physically knock them out. “It’s a seed in my brain and it’s only going to grow as I get older and I’m just gonna be an asshole, it’s fucking happening already and I-“ Carmen came into the living room I flipped the camera onto her “Say hi!” I slurred.

“Y/N you okay?” She said making her way over to me. I stopped the video and sent it.

“I’m fine how are you?”

“I thought you went to bed,” she ignored my question.

“I did. Then I couldn’t sleep,” I leaned back onto the couch. She crouched down next to me feeling my forehead.

“You have a fever,” She claimed.

“No I don’t! Why does everyone keep saying that?” I whined.

“Are you high?” She moved closer to my face.

“No I’m not fucking high,”

“You’re slurring your words,” She pointed out moving into the kitchen “What’d you take?”

“What?”

“I said what’d you take,” She going into one of the cabinets “I know you’re not drunk because you don’t smell like alcohol and you don't smell like weed, so I’ll ask you again,”

“I didn’t take anything, I'm not high!” I explained.

“It was Benadryl wasn’t it?” She came back into the living room and handed me a glass of water. “You know that stuff kills people,”

“Yeah I think I of all people would know that,” Truth is I wasn’t lying. I didn’t take anything. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, maybe sleep deprivation.

“True,” She sat down on the floor next to me “You know how I said I can tell when it’s getting bad,” I nodded. “Well like I was saying before it’s getting bad for you-”

“No it’s not,” I interrupted “I’m literally the happiest I’ve ever been today,”

“I was getting there,” She held her hands up in an attempt to placate me “That’s just the calm before the storm it’s mania,”

“I’m not manic! Stop trying to psychoanalyze me I’m perfectly fine,”

I must've woken Salem up because I could hear her footsteps as she paddled over to me and sat in my lap. It’s like she knew when I was getting angry.

“That’s the thing you’re not fine, just let me know when you’re ready to admit that,” She pushed off the ground using her hands “Try to get some sleep please and thank you,”

I think it was the weight and warmth of Salem on my chest that finally lulled me to sleep like a weighted blanket.

“Sapphire!” I yelled to catch her attention “Stop running you’re gonna hurt yourself,”

She slowed down before making her way back to Aaliyah and the other kids at this birthday party.

I sat back down on the table’s bench before getting back on my phone. I saw this post one time about how people use technology to distract themselves so they can't have the chance to have a depressive thought. Then I decided to prove that theory wrong so I put my phone up and I thought.

And boy did I have a lot to think about. The biggest thing on my mind was why. Why did Tony Stark come after me? Why did the guy with the gun come after me? Why did my mom feel the need to make an “Incase I die” video? Why did she have connections to people like Kingpin? Why did she even know Wade? Wasn’t he some science experiment gone wrong?

Then that got me thinking what if I was a science experiment gone. What if that’s why Tony Stark wanted to experiment on me. What if that was under the orders of someone from SHIELD, because how would he have known about me otherwise.

Welp, there was only one way to find out.

“Okay I’m in,” I settled. “What do I have to do?”

“Uh are you sure?” Tony asked.

“Positive,” I affirmed.

“Well first we would probably do some blood tests and an MRI. Then see where that takes us.” He looked back over at me “Can you do this tomorrow?”

“Yeah tomorrow works for me,”

“Great,” He clapped his hands together “I’ll send Happy to pick you up from school,”

“No it’s fine I can get here myself.”

“It’s a different location,” He revealed.

“Okay tell me where it is and I’ll make it there myself,”

“I can’t not even I know where it is,”

“Fine, I’ll do this, but only if I can bring a friend,” I requested “You know for safety reasons?”

“Safety reasons? Do you not trust me?”

“Not really…”

“Wow okay, you can bring this friend,”

“Who doesn’t trust Iron man?'' I heard him mutter to himself as I made my way out of the building.

I always thought the apocalypse would come in colors. The sky flashing from red to pink to purple to orange. Then there would be a loud sound almost like the Big Bang. Then nothing. I had a vivid imagination when I was younger.

I guess I was wrong though because it was already here and the sky was as blue as ever. And the air was as humid as ever in this crusty ass building.

“I told you already I’m not a soldier you’re gonna have to pay me for this,” I spoke into the comms.

“Shh,” Tony hushed “Just wait for your target.”

Life hadn’t been all that bad. Just for the past two weeks I’d been training with Peter since at the end of the week that I agreed to testing, Spiderman joined in the Avengers officially. Which, good for him I guess.

Trying to get my brain back on track now. I’d been training with Peter and now we’re going on our first mission. I was not loyal to Tony at all. Nor would I ever be. I’m not calling him Mr. Stark like Peter does either, he doesn’t deserve it. I was trying to look up my mom with the information Felicia gave me and I saw she was listed as level orange in a shield file. Whatever that means.

One thing it meant was I couldn’t back out just yet now.

This would be one deep inside job.

“Peter?” I whispered into the comms

“Hello?” He asked.

“Where are you?”

“I’m guarding the entrance like I was told too?” He asked more than stated.

“Well, come here,”

“But Mr. Stark said-“

“I don’t care what Mr. Stark said come here,” I interjected without even thinking about the fact he could’ve been listening in somehow.

“Yes?” He questioned once he was standing in front of me.

“Take my role for a second,” I pulled my gun out the holster “You know how to use a gun right?”

I thought back to the last time we’d actually fought as our alter egos. Except then he didn’t know it was me and he still doesn’t. He definitely didn’t know how to use a gun then let’s just hope he did now.

“You know what, I don’t have time just take it,” I placed the gun in his palm before speeding off.

“Wait!” He called out “Aren’t you defenseless now?”

“I’ll be fine baby boy,” I called back.

I made my way into the farthest depths of the warehouse. I’d been here once before. That was before I knew Felicia and we’d gotten into a scuffle about a diamond. Let’s just say I was young and I went home bruised that day.

Apparently I was under the impression she had it and she was under the impression I had it this whole time. So maybe. Just maybe it was still there. It was somewhere in the back last time I checked.

There it was. I grabbed it and recoiled when I heard a voice accompanied by the sharp zap in my body.

“Looking for something?” They asked. I turned around only to be faced with a large burly almost Frankenstein looking man.

“Oh yeah I was looking for you actually, you just made my job a lot easier,”

As if my words were a signal for him. They probably were. He lunged forward towards me with his left side fully open. I evaded and left a sharp kick to his side.

He wailed out in pain before slinging me backward as I tried to reach for the diamond off the floor.

I skidded across the floor before hopping back to my feet.

“I found the guy,” I spoke into the comms.

“Who are you talking to?” The target teased.

“Your mom,” I taunted.

“Hey!” He cried.

“Where are you?” I heard Peter ask I didn’t get a chance to answer because the man swung at me again.

That hit made contact with my shoulder. He continued to swing and I continued to walk backwards. I realized almost too late that I was backing myself into a corner.

I’m not sure where or who I heard this from maybe Wade but sometimes the only point your opponent has his guard down is mid punch.

I scrambled for my knife, fingers dancing around the holster on my waist as my feet continued to slide along the pavement underneath me. Just as the man swung at me again I sent my knife towards his torso. Except it didn’t make contact. And I had never missed before, especially not from this close.

I was confused until I realized it was because I heard that all familiar wet sticky sound of Spider-Man’s web shooters except this time I was glad to hear it.

Peter webbed the man's arms and mouth all while my fingers went lax in shock for only a moment but one moment too long.

The knife clattered to the ground making a noise that drew Peter’s attention. I tried to swipe it away with my foot but Peter had already grabbed it.

“This is Thorns knife,” He spoke calmly and I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or if it was for himself.

“And how would you have Thorns knife unless you were,” I saw his eyes light up as he made the connection. “Wait, you’re Thorn, holy shit, I’m so stupid how’d I not notice before,”

“Peter seriously you can’t tell anyone,”

He looked up as if he were just noticing I was still there.

“Don’t worry I won’t be saying anything at all,”

Yeah, this was definitely the apocalypse because I don’t know if it was just me but life was ending.

Another silent ride and I realized exactly what he’d meant when he said he wouldn’t say anything. He was giving me the silent treatment.

Which was odd because usually he talks the most on these rides. After we got over the initial awkwardness of the whole fire and Vulture thing we fell back into the way of things. Well if he was going to play this game I would too because what’s that saying? It takes two to tango.

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@tomdiddlyumptious

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angstyaches · 4 years ago

Text

Blood and Whisky

CW: alcohol, jealousy, emeto, slight fever, blood, reference to meat/hunting animals

(Three Boys in a Townhouse)

“Are you a beer or a whisky man?”

Felix’s question lingered for so long that Elliott turned his head to see why Shayne wasn’t responding. The kid looked like death, and a bit like he wanted the armchair to swallow him whole. It had been two or three weeks now, at least, since he’d arrived at the townhouse, but Elliott was finding it hard to keep track.

Between bouts of fever and terrible thirst, not to mention all the time he’d been spending on hunts, he’d barely been alone with Felix in days. He was looking forward to knocking back two or three whiskies and collapsing into bed, hopefully with Felix joining him. So far so good, it seemed; the whisky tasted as smooth as it had before his transition to full vampire had begun. Now all he needed was his boo to come and cuddle with him.

But Shayne was taking so long to decide that Felix might never get to sit down. Impatience bubbled up in the back of Elliott’s throat like a blister. He reached across and clicked his fingers close to Shayne’s face, making him blink and look at him.

“Pull yourself together, man,” Elliott instructed, slumping back on the sofa again. “The boy asked you a question.”

“Uh, beer, I guess,” Shayne said finally.

Felix handed him one of his cans, the tall ones with the Japanese brand name. Then he stepped back and flopped onto the sofa, into the crook of the arm that Elliott had draped across the back of the cushions.

Elliott swirled his whisky in his glass in his other hand, wondering why he’d felt a stab of bitterness at hearing the answer. It wasn’t like he particularly wanted to share his favourite Scottish import, but the chance to put the kid in his place and tell him he couldn’t have it might have been nice.

“Cheers, then,” Felix grinned, holding out his own can. He waited for Shayne to tip his against it before turning to tip Elliott’s glass. Elliott wondered, abruptly, if he should sit forward and try to tip drinks with Shayne, but the boy had already turned his head and taken a sip from his can. Probably for the best. Might have been awkward. Yeah.

They drank in silence for a few minutes, and Elliott could sense Felix glancing back and forth between him and Shayne, as though he were looking at two non-consecutive jigsaw pieces and was trying to figure out if he could make them fit somehow. The quiet in the room, the awkwardness, was enough to make Elliott’s skin crawl, and he found himself reaching for the bottle, taking his arm from behind Felix’s shoulders. He topped himself up with double what he’d poured out the first time.

Elliott inhaled sharply after taking another sip, the liquid still warming him on the way down. He wasn’t sure if the sting in his chest was just from the drink, or if there was rebellious stomach acid being added to the mix, but he didn’t get to wonder about it too long. When he sat back against the cushions, he saw that Felix had taken out his phone and was choosing some music to put on.

In anticipation of Felix getting up to dance, and forcing Elliott to get up with him, Elliott took another few sips of his whisky – and one urgent gulp. When they danced and acted silly, he usually needed to be a little tipsy in order to get on Felix’s level, and he reckoned his inhibitions would need to be significantly lowered tonight, if Shayne was going to be there rolling his eyes at the pair of them.

Something bit at the back of his throat as he watched Felix stand up and reach towards Shayne instead.

The dark-haired boy was mid-sip, and looked like he’d turned to stone as he stared at the hand. After a few seconds, he rested his can on the floor next to him, and let Felix pull him up from the armchair.

Elliott blinked, and a tint of red framed the scene as the two of them started to dance to the lively song together, Shayne painfully stiff and clumsy compared to Felix, who practically turned into rubber when he was dancing.

Shit, no, he thought, blinking and watching the red spike fade away. He felt his drink begin to tremble in his hand, and he held it against his knee to steady it. The whisky in the glass sloshed back and forth, and he felt the whisky in his belly do the same, along with the blood he’d drank on that morning’s hunt.

This was ridiculous; there was nothing to feel uncomfortable about; was there? Felix was just a good person, and didn’t want Shayne to feel left out. That was all. That was why the two of them had been spending time together, watching movies, taking walks in the park. Those activities didn’t involve Elliott because he and Shayne weren’t good for one another; they pushed each other’s buttons in a way that wasn’t healthy for either of them right now. Plus, he’d been away with Ryan a lot lately, and the two of them could simply have bonded in his absence. Right?

Elliott knocked back the rest of his whisky and tried not to stare at the two of them. He wondered what it would be like if he just got up and started dancing too – if it would feel like the three of them were together dancing, or if it would just make it more painfully obvious that they were dancing together, and he was dancing alone.

The red tint flashed across his eyes again, and he felt his fangs wrench ever-so-slightly downwards. He flinched and brought the heel of his hand up to his face, putting pressure on his gum as it ached. He shouldn’t be thirsty; Ryan had monitored him carefully as they hunted and fed, letting him know when he’d had enough to keep his transitioning symptoms at bay.

And he still wasn’t even sure he was angry; jealous, maybe, hurt, maybe, but… If this was all it took to make him angry these days, then maybe he’d become more insufferable than he’d thought.

He felt a sudden change in his body, like something had shifted, but he couldn’t tell if it was his temperature or something else. He really wasn’t in the mood to sweat and shiver all night, and he couldn’t help the grimace that crossed his face as reached across to put his empty glass on the table. He propped his elbows on his knees, arms draped forward and head low.

He stared down at the floor for a long moment, the bad feeling finally solidifying as a heavy ache in the pit of his stomach. He glanced up to see if Shayne or Felix had noticed him acting off, but the two of them were seemingly lost in each other’s movements. The music sounded like it had gotten louder, but Felix’s phone was on the arm of the sofa, and there was no way he’d come close enough to turn it up without Elliott noticing.

His vision blurred with red spikes again as he spotted Felix winking at Shayne mid-motion. Elliott hadn’t seen Shayne smile since he’d been much younger, but just then, something similar to a smile twitched at the edge of his mouth, and his dark eyelashes blinked rapidly. He looked down at the floor, touching his hair and looking extremely flustered, which made Felix giggle and pull teasingly on his hands.

A lurch from deep in his stomach made Elliott clamp a fist to his mouth. He let whatever was unsettling him to slide up his throat, thinking it might have been a belch; instead it was a silent but painful hiccup that brought up a splash of liquid that either tasted sweet or bitter or both. Lips tight and fist still in place to keep them that way, Elliott eased himself up from the sofa just as Felix was turning sideways to bump his hip against Shayne’s.

The hallway and the kitchen swirled past him, hazed with red. He shoved open the back door and realised his temperature must have soared, because the first breath of night air had droplets of sweat drying into his forehead.

Once he was a few hundred feet from the back door, his knees finally buckled, the pain in his stomach increasing urgently. He doubled over with a hand to his mouth, knees sinking into the grass unable to tear this hand away before a gush of deep orange vomit gurgled up against his palm.

“Fuck,” he whispered, clutching at his stomach with the hand that wasn’t covered in the sticky concoction of blood and whisky. The pain had turned into something that felt like a stab wound. Since his transition from half-vampire to full vampire had started, he’d grown used to the feeling of his body rejecting regular food, but the pain had been nothing like this. It was like the whisky had turned everything in his stomach into thick, bubbling tar.

The retching sounds were closer to screams than anything, and he was glad he’d gone outside instead of holing up in an echoey bathroom. Mouthful after mouthful splashed onto the grass, along with a few chunks of meat he’d taken while feeding, which obviously hadn’t been digested yet. The heaving became so violent that he couldn’t hold his stomach anymore, had to put both hands on the ground to stop himself faceplanting onto the grass and the filth. His throat was practically singed by the time the heaving eased off.

His senses began to return to him, evident in how his ears suddenly pricked and a spike of red flashed across his vision. He wasn’t alone on the lawn anymore, and there was only one person in the townhouse who didn’t know to leave Elliott alone while he was throwing up.

“Go the fuck back inside,” he shouted hoarsely over his shoulder.

To his surprise, Shayne actually flinched back, lifting his hands to show him his palms. His voice was low, and he paused to clear his throat as he spoke. “Are… Are you okay?”

“What does it look like?” Elliott tried to snap, though it came out sounding more like a whine. He gasped to catch his breath, and pressed a hand to his chest in an attempt to combat the fiery pain lingering in his oesophagus. His gut was burning too, but at least it wasn’t trying to escape up his throat anymore.

“I thought you looked like shit just before you left,” Shayne murmured, stepping a little closer. “More shit than usual, I mean.”

“This coming from you?” Elliott muttered, spitting sour saliva into the grass and finally sitting back.

“I just thought you could handle your drink better than that, El.”

“I could handle it fine, until –” Elliott shook his head. The only people who knew about his condition were Felix, Ryan, and Nancy, and he didn’t want to give Shayne any ammunition against him. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. In fact, after the way you were acting with my boy just now, I should knock out a couple of your teeth.”

Shayne’s face dropped and he took a step back, despite the fact that Elliott was actually just a nauseated mess on the ground. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“All the time you and Fee have been spending together,” Elliott said, his heart sinking lower as he heard himself finally voice his worries, “and just now, the – the dancing, and the flirting –”

“Flirting? Elliott,” Shayne protested, “I don’t even know how I’d… what do you mean by flirting?”

“All those little looks you kept giving him,” Elliott spat, his gums beginning to ache again as his fangs pushed against his lower lip. “You were practically red in the face, and I swear I saw you nearly crack a smile at one point.”

Which he certainly wasn’t now; Shayne looked pale enough that he might have started throwing up right next to the spot where Elliott had emptied out his insides. Instead, he looked away across the garden, opening his jaw wide and digging a knuckle into the side of his cheek.

“I was nervous,” he admitted quietly. “I’ve been shitting myself since I got here, and I don’t – I don’t know how I should act around everyone, especially Felix, when he’s so – so much…”

Elliott swallowed guiltily. He loved Felix more than anything in the world, but even he had to admit that he knew what Shayne meant by “so much”.

“If it looks like flirting, then I’m sorry. Whatever.” Shayne shrugged, turning his gaze back on Elliott. “But fucking hell, are you seriously accusing Felix of this – this, whatever thing you’ve invented in your head?”

Elliott’s blood cooled so quickly that the garden spun, and he had to shake his head to steady his vision. Shayne’s eyes glinted in the moonlight and, for a moment, there seemed to be four of them.

“Of – of course not,” he mumbled. He wondered if he’d imagined the crack in his voice at the end.

“Then…” Shayne held out a hand and shrugged with one shoulder. “Pull yourself together, man.”

Elliott gave a deep, rattling sigh, but took the hand anyway, realising a moment too late that he’d reached up with the hand that was now covered in dry vomit. It cracked, and he felt some of it flake away from his palm at the contact.

The realisation seemed to hit Shayne a second later, as his expression dropped. They both stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity before Shayne finally pulled on Elliott’s hand, helping him up from the ground despite what had happened.

“Sorry,” Elliott mumbled, taking his hand back and instinctively rubbing his palm on his trousers.

Shayne did the same to his jeans, though with a little more vigour. His mouth was fixed in a very tight line before he glanced up at Elliott again.

“There’s a reason your name rhymes with ‘idiot’,” he snapped, starting to walk towards the back door.

Elliott’s jaw fell open. Jesus, kid, how long have you been sitting on that one? He frowned and hurried to follow him. “That’s – that’s a half-rhyme at best, you little shit, so who’s really the idiot?”

Shayne turned mid-step to show Elliott his middle finger. Elliott didn’t know if he was imagining it, but that same half-smile from earlier seemed to be playing on his face.

“It’s still you, old man.”

#emeto #emeto boys #emeto sickfic #upset stomach #vampire emeto #fantasy emeto #swallow the world #elliott #felix #shayne #alcool #nausea #fever #sickfic #three boys in a townhouse

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