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tlanwen · 4 years ago

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Every time wenzhou should have (or could have) kissed in the entirety of Word of Honor (2021)

a few disclaimers- 1; MEGA spoilers for the whole entire show. yes, all the way up to episode 36. 2; we have gotten so so many sweet moments in this drama and there is no doubt in my mind that the production crew did their absolute damnedest to give us a genuine love story with all the constraints that were set on them. they did a fucking incredible job and the lengths they went to to embody wenzhou’s love and bond on screen is commendable to say the least. and i owe them my life. However i just think said sweet scenes just scream ok now kiss at very specific moments, and i need to get it out of my system. Long ass fucking post under cut!

are you strapped in. ok let’s go

The rooftop scene (Episode 9)

earlier in this ep we get the legendary “the world isn’t important, what’s important is finding your soulmate” monologue, perfect setup leading up to their rooftop drinking date. the “why won’t you ask me why i’m happy?”// “i know you’ll tell me, in your own time” exchange??? a killer. a kiss would fit in perfectly, ideally right after zzs shushes wkx (and wkx shuts his mouth. for once). quite literally this moment is Made for a first kiss.

“You look like a worried mother“ // drinking by the road (Episode 12)

man, this episode. I can’t decide which moment is more suitable (and both happen in busy streets so that rains a little on our emotional parade), but at this point we’ve got acknowledgement on both sides that they’re willing to accept each other as the people they truly are, and they’ve rescued their surrogate son from impending doom twice. but i am leaning towards the latter scene, esp bc of the way zzs leans into wkx while they’re talking. he hasn’t done that much up until now. kiss kiss.

Talking about disguises & mustaches (and getting on one’s knees?¿) (Episode 13)

this scene is so fucking sugary and light, they’re just teasing back and forth (zzs! teasing wkx! that’s new!). we also get the severely cute “wait, did you just admit that my face is outstanding?” line. just kiss already.

Rain divorce (Episode 14)

angst? did someone say, pain? if this were a regular boring romance flick, this is were the tragedy-ridden kiss would go. wkx is watching the future he planned for both of them crumble right in front of him, trying to come to terms with the fact that zzs is dying (and that he did it to himself, on purpose.), and zzs is just kind of going thru it. the rain really would add to the drama of it all, like Right after the “fortunately, fortunately...” line. punctuate it with a kiss. would also add to the irony of wkx saying he hasn’t fallen yet, and yet here he is, a mess, bc of this information he wasn’t ready to receive (thanks ye baiyi).

3rd child rescue and cave chats (Episode 16)

we’ve had the angst, we have the begrudging /i’m mad at you and i love you but i dont like you right now/ moments, and in comes more rain and wkx monologuing. zzs saying that wkx isn’t evil and that he has a kind heart is exactly what he needed to hear. and i just think he should’ve finished it with a kiss <3

Drunk mess wkx (Episode 17)

why is this man allowed to drink. this is all so much take your fucking pick. after the “my lips are the perfect size, right A-xu?” comment, the ”does it hurt?” coupled with wkx’s hand reaching out to zzs’ chest. the “i’m just scared. could you not die on me?”?? zzs tucking in a very drunk and sad man and saying “one day you’ll open up your heart to me, until i achieve it even god can’t tear me away from you” just............. pick a line any line.

Tumbling out of the cave under Longyuan Cabinet (Episode 18)

specifically in that birds-eye shot where it slowly pans over to their disheveled faces after the romcom-esque tumbling out of the tunnel (that was framed oh so romantically in the episode trailer. complete with romantic music). like are you Kidding me.

((i’m skipping ep 19-21. i think some people would say at any point during the cave scenes/the shidi/shixiong reveal would also be fair game, but in my opinion it’s far too much of an emotionally volatile situation so i can’t see any kiss potential. the hand holding and comforting was much appreciated tho))

Wkx sneaking up on his deep-in-thoughts husband (Episode 22)

secluded lake? check. all alone? check. gentle smiles in a tense moment? we got a bingo. at this point zzs knows who wkx actually is And respects his decision to go by his own chosen name as a separate entity from the healer sect he came from (for his own personal, maybe misguided reasons). and i just think that *screams*

Waking up from the stress induced sleep (thru the power of hand holding?) (Episode 23)

this whole thing was so much, and the way the scene is framed to look like it was zzs’ touch that literally woke up wkx, And the way he looks at him after he wakes up. yea. kiss methinks.

Literally the entirety of the night time venting/healing/spilling ur guts out scene (Episode 24)

Ok i’m about to contradict myself here, i said im not going over ep 19-21 because Volatile Emotions, and this scene is also very viscerally emotional and intense but oh my God the intimacy! the openness! i had to look away multiple times during this scene bc it really seems like a private moment we shouldn’t be privy to. i cannot in good conscience say that, had wkx not kind of stormed out at the very end, a kiss would be guaranteed. whether to soothe zzs after so much crying or whatever other reason.

Painting restoration (also episode 24)

wkx’s second love language is acts of service and this episode is all the evidence i need to make that statement. we do get a very cute heartfelt family hug in here and wow cute but im sorry i cannot let go of the fact that there should have been a kiss here. i really hate inserting photos in textposts but i have to bc i need everyone to understand how much zzs looks like he wants to devour wkx whole after he realizes what he’s doing

look at it. he’s down bad.

More drinking! yay! (Episode 25)

just soulmates drinking and talking in the hush of night after their kid has been put to bed. always a great way to start an episode. they’ve settled into 4 seasons manor at this point and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere, they just look so comfortable in these shots. if u dropped a quick peck on the cheek in there i wouldn’t blink twice.

Narrow escape from dying with (and for) each other, courtesy of ye baiyi (Episode 27)

at this point most secrets are out of the bag, they see each other fully and were about to be killed 4 seconds ago. we’ve got the perfect setup, zzs already grabbed wkx by the face, the only thing between them and a kiss was the looming threat of sepsis.

speaking of episode 27, The spice grinding scene (have i mentioned i fucking love episode 27)

just two soulmates grinding spices at night. this scene is so lighthearted and cute, after a whole episode of emotional turmoil and cementing how emotionally vulnerable they're willing to be/how dedicated they are to respecting each others’ boundaries while still supporting each other, a kiss would fit in for sure.

Literally any point in the new years celebration (Episode 28)

waaAAAAA family decorating, bickering, and dinners. if i was writing it in i would put it right after chengling runs off to watch the fireworks, leaving wenzhou alone with each other. but anything goes really, they’re in their element all episode.

Knight in shining (red) armor rescue (Episode 30)

first of all- fuck prince jin, second of all, THIS SCENE ARE YOU KIDDING ME. literally the damsel in distress getting rescued. complete with a horseback ride! and wkx kneeling in front of zzs and acknowledging him as his master (and therefore himself as part of the sect again!!!!). so many emotions. i dont even care if they’re in front of all their new disciples. a romantic kiss is necessary. it would be so easy for zzs to take the hand he’s patting wkx with and use it to drag him up into a kiss.

Hairpin scene (Episode 30)

i’m not even gonna say anything. these bitches engaged on screen. good for them

“Save it, you“ (Episode 32)

god. just god. zzs gently floating down to wkx, thinking he’s gonna throw his life away in anger Again and getting so very in his face. and saying That. with That smile. what else is an option. there is no other option. just kiss.

“Senior, please let me handle this“ (Episode 33)

i am willingly ignoring how fucking painful this scene is if you think about it for longer than 3 seconds. wkx isn’t dead! and the asshole forgot to tell his beloved to not do anything stupid while he was away! oopsie! zzs is a)very mad, b)very relieved, c)is about to experience a lifetime’s worth of regret in about 3 minutes. but first thing’s first, the love of his life isn’t dead. that deserves a kiss.

Drunk wkx 2: painful boogaloo (Episode 34)

these episodes are so painful to re-watch lol. wkx clinging to zzs’ waist and talking about how easy it is to be a good happy person when he’s around him. they probably couldn’t manage a proper kiss between the alcohol in wkx and the Pain in zzs, but a gentle forehead kiss would fit in well while zzs is softly petting wkx’s head (still resting on his chest. that’s an important detail).

Wedding aftermath (Episode 35)

i’m so distraught. anyways. you can’t tell me zzs was going to sulk away to die alone like some sort of tragic housecat while wkx is recuperating after the battle (and after losing the second most important person in his life) without a kiss. not without giving him the gentlest of forehead kisses.

Literally at any point in episode 36

i’m watching this tomorrow but i don’t need to. i don’t care. we know what happens. we know how it ends. if you’re about to give up your life to keep your soulmate alive you best preface it with the kiss of a lifetime.

#shan he ling #word of honor #shl #wenzhou #woh #meta??? this isn't meta its just a faux-systematic review of most significant moments in the show by a very very unstable person #enjoy <3 #im NOT FUCKING READY FOR TOMORROW. IM NOT #I WANT OUT THIS WAS A MISTAKE.#is this the stupidest most unnecessary thing i've ever written? yes

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today-only-happens-once · 5 years ago

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the only exception

Title: the only exception

Word Count: 4,549

Summary: College!AU, Musician!AU. Patton shows up to a music festival that Virgil—along with his twin brother, Roman—is headlining, hoping to surprise him. Turns out, it’s Virgil that surprises him first. Romantic Moxiety, brief background Logince. Song-fic.

Warnings: lots of fluff and softness and sappiness, mutual pining elements, declarations of love, description of crowds, cursing, discussion of anxiety, mention of anxiety attacks, kissing, Virgil “writes” a song that’s actually written irl by Paramore but ssshhh Paramore doesn’t exist in this AU, please let me know if I forgot anything.

A/N: Someone on tumblr once made a textpost that said “The Only Exception” was a Moxiety song, and weeks later I listened to it and realized they were right. And then I had this image in my head that wouldn’t go away for like. Months. And then eventually I decided to write this. It’s basically a song-fic. Crazy self-indulgent, heh. Also, I’ve never written Romantic Moxiety before, nor have I written a Patton-POV focused fic. So writing this was a whole boatload of new. I hope it turned out okay! Edited by yours truly, so all mistakes are mine.

You can listen to the song Virgil sings at the end here!

Tags: @creativenostalgiastuff, @helloisthisusernametaken, @ren-allen, @quoth-the-sparrow, @princelogical, @random-pianist, @ravenclawicecream, @erlenmeyertrash, @milomeepit, @at-least-seven-pretty-potatoes, @rileyfirstname, @pinkeasteregg, @sassy-in-glasses, @vigilantvirgil, @generalfandomfabulousness, @lacrimosathedark, @thepoolofthedead, @monikastec, @heir-of-the-founders, @yourworstnightmare999, @artistictaurean, @kanejandkruge, @cdragontogacotar, @damienswifeolicitydallysgirl, @angst-patton, @savingshae, @noneed4thistbh, @awesomelissawho, @unikornavenger, @bopthesnoz, @spiralofsilencetheory, @finger-gunsss, @crownswriter123, @swlotakulady34, @gaylotusthatexists, @analogical-mess, @dolphidragon, @flix-net, @narniasfinestavengingsociopath, @friedlieb-ferdinand-runge, @bibbidy-bobbity-booyah, @procrastinations-my-middle-name, and also @randomslasher because moxiety! ^u^

…

Present. March. Junior Year.

Patton shoulders his way through the crowd as rock music blares loudly over the speakers. The late March air is cool, and the breeze tugs at the COLLEGE-PALOOZA MUSIC FEST banner hanging from the amphitheater’s stage. A few people he recognizes from his classes wave to him as they nod their head to the music. Patton slows as he finds a small gap in the crowd, not particularly keen on getting into the tightly packed mosh pit that had formed right in front of the stage.

The sun is beginning to set, casting the sky in a light purple hue. Perhaps ironically, it reminds Patton of the guy he’s actually here to see perform. Patton glances at the stage, but there’s no sign of him. He checks his phone for the time. The group was supposed to be on now, but perhaps he’d missed them already.

He looks at the guy beside him—leather jacket and sunglasses, holding a Starbucks cup—and asks over the music, “Which group is this?”

The guy takes a long swallow and then jerks his head towards the stage. “Planets Align. They had trouble getting the sound system working, so they’re running behind.”

Patton nods his understanding, smiles, and thanks him. Planets Align was scheduled to go on right before them, if the pamphlet he’d found on Virgil’s desk was anything to go by. He’d felt terrible at the time when he realized that the band Virgil had formed with his twin brother, Roman, would be headlining a music festival the same day Patton had already promised to help with a group project.

But the other members of his group canceled the meeting earlier today and rescheduled it for next week. So Patton really didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t come support Virgil. And if he maybe didn’t tell Virge in the hopes of being able to surprise him… well.

Besides, he had a feeling Virgil could use a nice surprise. He’d seemed really nervous about the festival when Patton was talking to him about it when he found the pamphlet. Virgil often seemed nervous, but… more nervous than even Virgil’s normal.

Patton smiles a bit to himself when he remembers when they first met.

…

September. Sophomore year.

“For the purposes of this research presentation, I will allow you to choose partners. We will need one group of three, but that certainly seems manageable.”

Patton glances around the stuffy lecture hall. It was only the third time the class had met, so Patton hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to many of his classmates yet. On top of that, it was a pretty big class. Patton had a feeling that he wouldn’t know everybody even by the end of the year. The professor waves her hand to indicate that they should select a partner and begin discussing the project.

Chatter rose up—most people leaning over towards people they were sitting next to, a few calling to friends across the room—and there was shuffling movement and the scraping of chairs as students milled about to find a research partner. Then Patton caught sight of a black and purple hoodie in the back row.

What was his name? Patton couldn’t remember, despite the ice breaker during their first class. He does remember the snort the guy had released when Patton had made a pun about his name when introducing himself. He also remembers the way he’d immediately ducked his head a second later when Patton grinned at him.

Patton gathers his things and squeezes through his classmates. “Hey,” he says. The guy in the hoodie looks up, seeming startled. “Wanna be partners?”

The guy blinks at him, then shifts in his seat and motions to the empty chair on the other side of his desk. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“I’m Patton, by the way.”

“Virgil. What, uh, what are you studying?”

Patton pulls his laptop out of his bag. “Oh! I’m an early education major. What about you?” As he asks, Patton casts a quick glance at the laptop in front of Virgil and notices the stickers on it: SANDERS in messy black scrawl, a thundercloud with a bolt of lightning, a small circle with a paint-smear style gay pride flag, and a few music notes.

“Graphic design with a minor in music,” he replies. Patton notices him glancing at the buttons on Patton’s backpack that he threw in the empty chair beside him—some about cats, some about dogs, a heart with glasses that he thought was cute, and a pride pin from last year’s Pride week.

“That’s pretty cool. You play music?”

Virgil lifts a shoulder. “With my brother, mostly.”

“Wow. That’s… really awesome,” Patton says, sincerely impressed. He’d always loved music, but really only dabbled in the ukulele. He’d always thought musicians were cool: having skills like that took a lot of work, and a lot of dedication. That seemed pretty admirable to Patton.

Virgil smirks. “If you say so.”

“I do. I mean it.” For a fleeting moment, Virgil looks taken aback by the insistence in Patton’s voice. “What do you play?”

��

Present.

“Roman is totally the hot one,” Patton hears a girl behind him say to her friends.

“Elliot thinks he has a crush on Logan Berry, you know.”

“He’s gay?” The girl sounds surprised, but not hostile.

“Ace, I think. Panromantic, if the stickers on his laptop are anything to go by.” Patton recognizes that voice as one of the girls in the LGBTQ+ club that Patton was secretary for.

“You have class with him?”

“We had English 100 together freshman year. Elliot’s in class with him and Logan, though, and says they want to gag literally any time the two so much as talk to each other.”

Patton grins to himself. Subtlety when he had a crush had never really been Roman’s strong suit. That was another place where Virgil was markedly different from his twin brother. Both Roman and Virgil had ways of keeping their distance from others, but where Roman put up a front of fearlessness and confidence and friendliness… Virgil seemed more likely to withdraw into himself.

Patton had learned that, and many other things about Virgil, slowly as meetings for the research project gradually developed into hanging out regularly and casually. Patton picked up on things about Virgil relatively quickly. He gets quiet and irritable when he’s actually anxious about something. He tends to catastrophize, especially when it comes to academics. He hasn’t yet learned how to accept compliments—something Patton didn’t let deter him from giving them. He hopes that the more he’s able to expose Virgil to them, the easier it will eventually get for him to accept them.

Patton learned that Virgil is fiercely protective, too. The fastest way for Virgil to overcome his anxiety about a situation is usually when it’s related to someone he cares about. He still remembers the fire that had alighted in his eyes when someone had started harassing Roman when he, Patton, Roman, and Logan had been heading back from a party on a Friday night a couple of months ago. Logan had been the one to diffuse that particular situation, but Patton hadn’t missed the way Virgil hovered closer to his brother and looked ready to fight when he’d seen the shaken look in Roman’s eyes.

But then there were the softer moments from Virgil, too. The fleeting moments when Patton saw something gentle and relaxed from him that a secret part of Patton liked to believe were just for him. They were a sign of trust from Virgil, and Patton had always cherished that trust precisely because it was so rare.

…

April. Sophomore year.

“What time is it?” Virgil asks with a yawn. He’s sitting on the floor of his dorm, his guitar in his hands. His back is leaned up against the drawers of his desk. Patton sits on the floor across from him with his back against the cinderblock wall and his legs stretched out in front of him.

Patton digs his phone out of his pocket and checks. “Almost 1 in the morning.”

Virgil nods and strums a few chords softly. “You’re welcome to stick around, Patton, but… y’know. It’s chill if you’d rather go home.”

Patton shakes his head “I like it here,” he says. For reasons he is still figuring out, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

Patton watches him; he watches the way Virgil’s bangs fall in a soft sweep across his face, the dark eyeshadow smudged under his eyes, the slight parting of his lips as he mouths unheard lyrics. He always loves watching Virgil play guitar. There’s something about watching him hold the light brown acoustic instrument—like it steadies him, like it’s a shield that protects him—that Patton can’t help but love. Virgil seems to… breathe easier when he has a guitar in his hands.

“Virgil? Can I ask you something?” Patton says suddenly.

Virgil glances quickly at him, then back down at the guitar in his hands. Avoiding his eyes. “Yeah. Sure.” His voice sounds oddly tight to Patton.

“Why do you play music?”

The question seems to catch him off guard. Virgil stops short for a moment, glancing back up at Patton. His hands still against the instrument, his eyes flit away in thought.

Then—to Patton’s surprise—he sets the guitar aside.

��It… gives me a space where I can… connect, I guess?” He rubs the back of his head, glancing at Patton as if unsure whether or not his own words made sense.

“Connect?”

“Well,” Virgil pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on top of them, “Yeah. I’ve never been good at… at the whole…” He waves a hand and sighs. “At the whole ‘words’ thing that’s required for making friends or helping someone or… whatever. I’m always afraid I’m gonna say the wrong thing, or make them feel awkward, or… shit, I don’t know. But music is different. It…” He huffs a frustrated sigh as the words escape him. Then he tosses Patton a wry smile. “See what I mean? Words aren’t really my thing. Music is different, though.”

Patton nods. He glances around at the MCR and Dear Evan Hansen poster on walls of Virgil’s side of the room. “I think I get it. Music lets you speak from where you are emotionally at a given moment, and people can come to you—or your music—to find that connection and community. It… lets you express yourself, and by doing that, lets you connect to other people.”

When Patton looks back at Virgil, he’s looking at him with something like disbelief. But there’s a softness and light in his eyes that makes Patton’s stomach flutter. “Yeah,” Virgil says eventually. “Exactly.” Patton meets his gaze with a small smile, even as he feels suddenly like Virgil can see all the parts of himself that he wants to hide.

The corner of Virgil’s mouth quirks slightly and he digs a small purple leather notepad out of his back pocket. He grabs a pen from the top of his desk and scribbles something down.

“Whatcha writing?” Patton asks curiously.

Virgil folds it and slips it back into his pocket. “Nothing, Pat.” He still has that soft kind of smile and look in his eyes even as he grabs his guitar and pulls it back into his lap.

…

Present.

“Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Planets Align!” The emcee shouts into the mic as he runs on stage and the band waves as they exit to the cheers of the crowd. Patton applauds them and briefly considers moving closer to the stage before deciding against it. He’d never done well with tight crowds.

The sun has dipped below the horizon now, the sky darkening quickly. The lights from the stage bleed out onto the grass clearing, providing some lighting of the crowd itself as well. The air is a bit colder now, but Patton doesn’t mind. Besides, all the people around him moving and dancing have helped keep it from getting too cold anyway.

“Next up, the ones you’ve all been waiting for. Let’s hear it for… SANDERS!”

Patton lets out a cheer as the crowd screams. He sees Virgil’s twin brother—though you’d never know it from how differently they do make up and their hair—run on stage with his arms up to encourage the crowd’s response. The cheers get louder, and Roman grins and strikes a hero pose. He’s energized. Patton smiles at his evident excitement.

Virgil follows behind him, an electric guitar strapped to his back. Even from his distance from the stage, Patton can see him shaking his head at his brother’s antics. He gives a small, appreciative wave to the crowd. His eyes scan it, and a part of Patton can’t help but wonder if he’s looking for him someone.

Reasoning, though, reminds him that Virgil said he always tries to get a feel for the size of a crowd when he goes out on stage at a venue for the first time. It had started as a nervous thing—how many people might see me fail?—but as Virgil’s confidence in performing grew, it had mostly just become a habit.

“What is UP, everybody?” Roman says into the mic. He’s wearing a bright red leather jacket with a white shirt underneath, shiny gold skinny jeans, and red high top converse. “We’re so glad you could come out tonight. How about this awesome weather, yeah?”

More cheers. Patton watches as Virgil pulls the guitar from around his back with a smile. He’s in his familiar hoodie, purple shirt, black ripped skinny jeans, and his black sneakers with purple laces. At first glance, he doesn’t seem too nervous—Patton had long ago gotten in the habit of glancing at him to check if he’s okay when he knows Virgil might be getting anxious—but it’s hard to tell from this distance.

“My brother, Virgil, and I thought we’d kick things off with an original song. How’s that sound, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals?” There’s louder cheering, and the two of them waste no time starting a song that Patton remembers from previous concerts of theirs he’d attended.

…

November. Junior Year.

Patton’s phone dings while he’s eating lunch in the student union and flipping through an education textbook to study for his quiz tomorrow on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. Exams are quickly approaching, and Patton had always struggled to remember theorists’ names for some reason.

It’s a text from Roman. Is V with you?

Patton frowns and types back quickly. No. It’s Tuesday. Then he sends a second text. Why?

The student union is bustling with students breezing through to grab lunch before rushing off to the library or their class. Groups are clustered around tables to hash out the details of final projects as their deadlines approach in the next week or two. Exhausted English majors slump over their stale coffee cups and computers as they edit their final paper for the eighth time. Engineering students running on caffeine and spite chug another energy drink before hurrying off to the lab building. A couple others that Patton can see are watching Netflix in a desperate attempt to give themselves a break before plunging back into the grind of end-of-the-semester assignments.

Roman’s reply comes almost immediately. He sent me a single letter text which usually means he’s freaking out but idek where he is

Patton stands up and forgets his half-eaten sandwich, dropping it in the compost bin as he slings his backpack over his shoulder and hurries out of the building. Have you tried calling him? He texts quickly.

R: Yeah. No response… just lemme know if you see him or if he texts you or something ok

Patton rolls his eyes. As if he’s just going to go about his day and not try to help. Especially if V might be freaking out. We’ll find him, Roman. You check the science center and I’ll check the music floor of Stokes Hall.

R: ok.

R: Thanks

Patton turns his ringer on at full volume and braces against the cold air as he hurries to the building beside the Student Union. The November air is biting. Students bustle with their noses tucked into their scarves and red fingers curled around coffee cups. There was no snow on the ground, but the grass still crunches under Patton’s shoes as he hurries across the quad towards Stokes Hall. His light blue beanie is pulled low over his light brown hair.

He’s wishing he had a scarf to hide his nose in—instead opting to try to tuck it into the sleeves of the sweatshirt tied around his shoulders—when he walks straight into someone.

“Shit! I’m so sorry—”

“Virgil?” Patton asks, immediately recognizing the voice. He looks up, and Virgil seems frozen for a moment. It only takes Patton a second to realize that his eyes are red and sunken slightly. His usual sweep of hair is a disheveled mess under the hood of his sweatshirt that engulfs his frame.

If Patton’s being honest, he looks… rough. Concern twists in Patton’s chest.

“I’m so sorry, Patton. I’m an idiot, I just wasn’t watching where—”

“Hey, it’s all good, Virge,” Patton says, quickly but sincerely. He places his hands on Virgil’s shoulder to anchor him. “Breathe.”

Virgil laughs but it’s humorless and shrugs out from under his grip. Patton frowns. “I’m fine. I know I look like a mess, but really. It’s fine now. I was just. Um. Coming outside for some air.”

Patton considers the deflection and decides to meet Virgil half-way. “I could use some too.”

“You don’t have to do that—”

“Honest, V. The cold air is kind of nice.” Patton slips his phone out of his pocket and sends a quick text to Roman. Got him. He offers a small, reassuring smile to Virgil.“ You wanna take a seat?”

Virgil meets his gaze, then glances away. He seems to think about it for a moment, then relents with a slight sag to his shoulders. “Sure. Fine.”

Patton wanders over to a bench across the pathway and takes a seat. He looks around as students rush quickly towards their classes, smiling brightly as a service dog trots dutifully beside his owner and pushes the button to open the door as the student hurries inside. He intentionally keeps his gaze from lingering on Virgil, even as he hesitates before sitting beside him.

Virgil waits until most of the students have rushed off before breaking the silence between them. “You aren’t going to ask?”

Patton glances over at him. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, and you seemed reluctant to talk about it…. Should I ask?”

“No. Yes?” Virgil groans, zipping up his hoodie against the chilly air. “It wasn’t anything like. That bad. Y’know? I just get… anxiety attacks sometimes, and sometimes they get…” He trails off. Patton senses more than sees the way Virgil glances quickly at him. “Anyway. I’m fine now.”

Patton isn’t sure what to say. He’d known for a long time now that Virgil struggled with anxiety. That Virgil had anxiety attacks doesn’t exactly surprise him, and it definitely isn’t off-putting or anything of the sort. But Patton hates the way Virgil keeps trying to deflect… something. Judgement. Concern. Patton suddenly and fiercely wishes Virgil would just let someone care about him. Let someone love him.

Patton thinks maybe he already does.

“Virgil….” Patton says softly, looking at his hands folded between his knees, “It’s okay. You know that, right? You can talk to me about it. And I’m not gonna judge you or think you’re weird or that there’s anything wrong with you.”

“I… I’m fine.”

Patton lifts a shoulder. “Okay. But… it’s okay if you aren’t, too. And either way… you’re definitely not alone. You know? You know Roman’s there for you, but… but I am too. I care about you.”

In his peripheral, he sees Virgil look at him. “Patton—”

“There you guys are!” Roman exclaims as he jogs up to the two of them. Patton smiles at Virgil—who looks, for all the world, like the ground has shifted underneath him.

Patton wants to ask him why. He never does.

…

Present.

SANDERS has played through five songs, which means they’re nearing the end of their set. Patton is beaming. Virgil and Roman play off each other so well, and their music seems to be a blend of both of them in a way. They balance each other on stage. They’re fun to watch. Patton can’t help but think, though he may be biased, that if they really wanted to… they could make a career out of it.

But then they do something that surprises Patton, and apparently everyone else too from the way the crowd starts to murmur.

Virgil trades out his electric guitar for his light brown acoustic one. Roman grabs a wooden stool from one of the wings and sets it in the middle of the stage. Virgil adjusts the strap of the guitar around his shoulders, nodding his thanks to Roman.

“So I hope you all don’t mind if we close out with something a little different than our usual pace,” Virgil is saying into the wireless mic attached to him. “But I lost a bet against Roman, and that means I gotta do this.”

“If I lost I was gonna have to wear jorts for this concert. You all should be thanking me,” Roman quips back through his own mic. There’s a chuckle from Virgil as well as the crowd.

“Yeah, well. This is a song I wrote over the course of… probably about a year. It’s about someone very… important to me. He couldn’t be here tonight, but… he’s pretty great. Anyway, it’s a little different, so uh.” Even under the stage lights, Patton thinks he can see Virgil flushing slightly. “I hope you all like it.”

Virgil starts strumming and all Patton can do is watch him, transfixed by the sound of an acoustic guitar and the sight of Virgil under a spotlight on stage. It’s a much softer song already than any other song in their entire set. Virgil ducks his head slightly, his black sneaker tapping out the ¾ meter. And then Virgil starts to sing.

“When I was younger I saw my daddy cry, and curse at the wind.

He broke his own heart and I watched as he tried to reassemble it.

And my momma swore that she would never let herself forget.

And that was the day that I promised I’d never sing of love if it does not exist.

But darlin’ you are the only exception. You are the only exception…”

As Virgil sings, Patton can’t help but feel rooted to the spot. Virgil sitting and playing his acoustic guitar reminds Patton suddenly of that moment again back in Virgil’s dorm room. That moment of honesty and openness from him that always felt so rare. Patton feels like he’s experiencing that again, despite the crowd and the spotlights. Because this is not performance-Virgil, this is just…. Virgil. At his most honest. At his mot exposed. And it’s breathtaking.

Patton doesn’t even fully realize that he’s moving closer to the stage until he almost trips over a girl that’s swaying and holding her phone with a flashlight up in the air.

Virgil breaks into the second verse, and Patton feels his stomach fluttering all over again at the sound of his voice.

“Well maybe I know somewhere deep in my soul that love never lasts.

And we’ve got to find other ways to make it alone or keep a straight face.

And I’ve always lived like this. Keeping a comfortable distance.

And up until now I had sworn to myself that I’m content with loneliness,

‘Cuz none of it was ever worth the risk.

Well you are the only exception. You are the only exception…”

And a part of Patton—a part he’s afraid to admit to—suddenly starts to grow insistent with the realization that he might be really, truly, unequivocally in love with the person singing on the stage in this moment. The one with his bangs falling into eyes that had always looked to Patton to be a little bit afraid and a lot brave.

This song, this moment, is no exception to that. Music, for Virgil, had always started from some place deeply personal. It is what allows him to connect to others, after all. And Patton doesn’t know if the song is about him, but he wants it to be. Because that deeply personal space that Virgil is singing from resonates with Patton in a way that leaves only one thought repeating in his head. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Almost as if he hears the thought itself, Virgil looks up and starts scanning the crowd again as he reaches the bridge.

“I’ve got a tight grip on reality

But I can’t let go of what’s in front of me here.” He’s scanning, scanning, scanning…

“I know you’re leaving in the morning. When you wake up,

Leave me with some kind of proof it’s not a dream. Oh…”

And then his eyes settle squarely on Patton, and Patton swears he hears the very faint catch of Virgil’s breath through the mic.

Patton gives him a small, faint smile. There’s a brief moment where uncertainty flickers through Virgil’s dark eyes, and then something sets firmly in them. As if he’s made some kind of split-second decision. Virgil stands up from the stool and starts making his way towards the stage stairs, continuing to play and sing as he does so.

“You are the only exception. You are the only exception….”

Patton loses sight of him as he steps down to ground level, the crowd blocking his view. But Virgil keeps singing that line over and over, you are the only exception, as if imploring Patton to hear it and understand it and know it is meant for him. As if perhaps Virgil has to repeat it himself to fully believe in its truth, but each time he sings it, Patton can hear the conviction growing. Far ahead of him, Patton can see people shifting around in the mosh pit in front of him.

Patton doesn’t move. He doesn’t think he knows how to.

And then through the crowd of people in front of him steps Virgil, still playing. Still singing. And Patton can’t help but notice his eyes look wide and scared and vulnerable—but unwavering—as he sings the final line.

“But I’m on my way to believing…”

He plays the final chord and stands there, looking up at Patton. He’s so close. The guitar and a few inches is all that separates them. Patton swallows past the lump in his throat and brings a hand up to cup Virgil’s jaw before leaning his forehead against Virgil’s and whispering.

“Can I kiss you?”

His eyes are closed, so he doesn’t see Virgil’s relieved, crooked grin. But he feels it when Virgil presses his lips to his own.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #romantic moxiety #moxiety #romantic moxiety fanfiction #fluff #crowds #cursing #kissing #softness #sappiness #virgil sanders #patton sanders

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vantekay · 5 years ago

Text

one for the books ||kth

word count: 2.6k

genre(s): loads of fluff, shy library worker tae, college au, roommate and best friend guk makes an appearance (he’s also your personal hype man), slightly strangers to lovers? or maybe strangers to crushes would be more fitting anyways tae and reader know each other and have a lot of those cliche embarrassing encounters and the reader is completely oblivious to tae’s feelings, that’s basically all it is

warning(s): not sure this is really a warning but I know some people don’t like it so towards the middle there is a mention of jungkook v*m-ing as a joke but if that’s not something you like then here is the warning! and as usual some cursing but nothing too intense

this was inspired by this textpost written by @himawaritae! they have amazing tae scenarios that they post and you can use :) it’s awesome and I want to say thank you for sharing your amazing scenario ideas with the world. I hope I did this one justice!

also I will most likely make a part 2 to this? probably I mean I sort of set it up that way so we will see anyways I really hope you guys like it

you smile, a soft hum vibrating in the back of your throat as you plop yourself into the soft bean bag chairs that decorate the back of the library. you place your book bag next to you and begin to take out your notes and textbook to begin studying from. finals were coming up soon and you had tried to study back at your dorm with very little success, landing you here in the empty library.

your best friend and roommate jungkook had repeatedly told you that it would be impossible for you to retain any of the information you were attempting to study in your shared dorm. it was impossible because jungkook had decided he was going to invite some of his friends over to your room for a “study session” you knew would just turn into them playing video games in the lounge space just outside of your dorm room that your university had. since jungkook knew that was how this night was going to end, he suggested you take advantage of the library just down the street from campus that not many students ever visited. after having thanked him and praised him like the god he was (not) and reminding him not to be too noisy so they didn’t get a noise complaint from the other students on your floor, you hauled yourself and all of your belongings to the library with a smile on your face at the thought of actually being able to concentrate and study.

when you walked in, the cute blonde boy who you know to be kim taehyung, greeted you with his signature boxy smile as he gave you a polite wave. you had smiled back at him, flashing him your student ID even though he was very aware of who you were and knew you weren't some random girl off the street who had wanted to take advantage of the space the library provided. it had happened before, hence the new student ID rule, and when he gave you a thumbs up followed by a sleepy grin you retreated to a spot in the back of the library with a slight blush on your cheeks.

it’s been a couple hours now since you walked into the library and you don’t remember when but at some point your eyes started to get droopy and the words in your textbook stopped making sense long ago. your hand had lost all grip on the pencil you once wielded to take notes and has now landed in between you and the bean bag as you head lolls back.

you’ve been asleep for what feels like ten minutes but has really been 3 hours, and now at midnight taehyung has to come around and make sure everyone has left the library. that’s when he sees you, passed out in the bean bag chair. your books have fallen off of your lap and now rest on the floor near your feet. your arms are wrapped around your form for warmth as the library is a bit colder than expected and your head rests uncomfortably on the back of the cushion. taehyung stifles a laugh, and his grin stretches from each cheek as he gazes at you.

after a few moments he remembers what he came back here to do and slowly steps towards your sleeping form. with a cautious hand, he reaches for your shoulder and gives you a light shake. when that doesn’t do anything to rouse you, he tries to shake you with a bit more force and calls out your name. you shift your body and your eyes open slowly, a confused look overtaking your features as you look around you at your surroundings, not being able to recall when you fell asleep.

now that you’re awake, taehyung takes a couple steps back and if you weren’t just waking up from a sleep with hazy thoughts, the blush that overtakes taehyung’s features would have registered but it doesn’t and for that he is thankful.

“um,” he rubs the back of his neck nervously as his cheeks turn an even darker shade of rose. “I have to close the library now, I’m sorry” he looks down at you with sincere eyes. he’s not sure how long you slept for but if the lines that have formed on your arms from the bean bag are anything to go by his guess would be that you fell asleep not long after arriving.

“that’s okay! it’s not like it’s your rule” you laugh as you stand to collect your books. taehyung crouches down to help you and you smile at him as a way of saying thank you. after you have everything packed up, you awkwardly stand and stare at each other for a minute and your brain finally processes the blush that has not left taehyung’s cheeks since he woke you up. his flushed face and shy smile he keeps flashing at you makes your stomach erupt in butterflies and a blush of your own climbs its way up and over your cheeks.

“I should be going now. I can almost guarantee you’ll see me back here again though. my roommate is noisy and makes it impossible for me to do anything” you giggle and taehyung feels his heart skip a beat at the sound.

“I’ll be waiting for you” he says smoothly even though his heart was beating out of his chest and he was almost positive you could hear it. he sees that his words effectively make you blush harder and he smiles. after that he leads you out of the library and you both walk back to your dorms. to your surprise, taehyung lived in the same complex that you did just on a different floor. when it’s his turn to get off, because he lives on a lower floor than you, you say your goodbyes before the doors close and your left alone in the elevator until you reach your floor.

“what the hell is that?” jungkook asks when you walk into your shared room. he was sat as his desk doing some work on his laptop but he turned around when he heard the door to your room unlock.

“what the hell is what?” you ask as you place your bag down at the foot of your bed and plop down on it on your back, a smile never leaving your lips at the thought of taehyung and your interactions with him tonight.

jungkook gets up and sits next to you on your bed. “this” he says as he pokes your face near your lips. you sit up and stare at him.

“what I can’t be happy?” you ask, pretending to be hurt by his comment but you simply cannot keep the smile off of your face. jungkook pretends to gag at your happiness.

“don’t tell me you’re...in love” he says as he continues to pretend to feel sick by your emotions, the back of his hand coming up to cover his mouth like he is about to spew chunks all over. as if he wasn’t already over-exaggerating enough, he puts space between you and him on your bed. you roll your eyes at his actions and you have to hold yourself back from pushing off of your bed and onto the floor.

“I am not-” you have to turn your head because looking at jungkook and having him interrogate you about your blooming crush on the boy you saw minutes ago is causing you to become flustered all over again. jungkook looks at you with a shocked face when you turn around to look at him again.

“oh my god you are! who is it? you have to tell me everything” his attitude changes completely from the fake disgusted act he was putting on and now he lays on your bed with his hands propping his face up and his legs kicking in the air behind him like a teenage girl. you giggle at his actions and hit him in the head with your pillow.

“stop that, we aren’t in middle school anymore and it’s not even that serious” you say but not even you believe that statement, and with the blush that is beginning to completely overtake your face jungkook knows that too. he smiles at you until he realizes where you were tonight and he sits up quickly.

“wait a minute- it’s taehyung isn’t it? it’s taehyung that’s got you looking and acting like a lovesick highschool girl” he says accusingly, a finger pointing itself at you and you lean forward with your mouth open like you’re going to bite his finger before he quickly pulls it back to his chest with his other hand.

“and what if it is?” you ask with a quirk to your brows, arms crossed over your chest and jungkook just smiles at you.

“I can help you”

it’s the next day during a break in between classes when you see taehyung again. you and jungkook sit at your usual spot at the back of the cafe just down the street from your dorm when he suddenly kicks your feet under the table.

“ow! what the fuck jungkook?” you whisper yell at him, leaning forward onto the table to put your head down in pain before you kick him back in retaliation.

“look up you dummy!” he says through his teeth as he kicks you back, to which you whip your head up to look at him with a glare that most definitely could kill. he ignores your burning gaze and leans forward into the table as well so your faces are closer. “taehyung is here” he informs you and this causes the glare your eyes once held to immediately be replaced with something else that jungkook can’t quite pinpoint.

you quickly put your hands around your face and look at the man across from you. “is he looking this way?” you ask in a whisper, your eyes dart from side to side in shock and fear of being seen.

jungkook rolls his eyes at your behavior and pries your hands away from your face. you look at him incredulously before he tells you very plainly “you look like a dumb ass, and he’s kind of just looking everywhere, like he’s looking for somebody” he says as he looks back at taehyung who’s searching the crowd with squinted eyes. he holds something in his right hand that jungkook can’t really make out from his seat.

after a good 10 minutes of taehyung standing at the entrance of the cafe still searching, jungkook connects the dots and assumes he must be looking for you. jungkook excuses himself to go get something to drink but what you miss is the mischievous grin he shoots your way before he gets up from the booth and saunters his way towards taehyung.

“hey man! looking for someone?” jungkook asks as he approaches the blonde. taehyung takes a second to register the voice of his friend but once he does he offers him his signature smile.

“yeah actually... how did you know?” taehyung asks with a quirk of his brow and jungkook smiles before looking back at the table where you sit.

“I saw you walk in and just stand here for the past 10 minutes. are you looking for y/n by any chance?” jungkook pushes further, knowing the answer already and as if to confirm his thoughts taehyung breaks out into a shy smile and a blush begins blooming up his neck.

“ah yeah…” he trails off, his hand that isn’t holding the object jungkook noticed earlier is coming up to rub at the back of his neck shyly. “she left something in the library last night and I just wanted to give it back to her” taehyung tells jungkook, finally lifting his head and making eye contact with him and the younger just flashes him a knowing smile.

“you should go give it to her now, I’m going to the bathroom anyways so she’s all by herself at the table” jungkook smirks and before taehyung can say anything, he’s pushing him in the direction of where you sit and then running back to retreat to the bathrooms.

taehyung awkwardly walks up to you and clears his throat to get your attention. you turn to look at him with wide eyes, you were expecting for it to be jungkook standing there with a dumb grin on his face. taehyung offers you his gorgeous boxy smile before he extends his hand towards you. you look down at his hand confused before you see your pencil in his outstretched palm.

“you uh, you left this in your chair last night. it must have rolled from your notebook when you fell asleep” taehyung tells you as you go to reach for the pencil from him. he has a blush spreading over his cheeks at the slight brush of your fingertips against his palm and you would be lying if you said it didn’t send a whirlwind of butterflies off in your stomach either.

“thank you for bringing this back to me” you say genuinely as you look up to make eye contact with the blonde, a smile on your face. “this is my favorite one and I would have been really sad later when I went to look for it and couldn’t find it” you now look down to the pencil in your hand with a pout on your lips. the thought of you running around the apartment looking for it like a madman while jungkook would sit and tell you it’s ‘just a pencil’ making a small smile perk your lips up.

“so cute” taehyung says under his breath. your head whips up so fast he thinks you might give yourself whiplash and he’s about to ask what caused you to look up at him like that when he realizes he just said something and he must have said it out loud instead of to himself like he meant. his eyes widen to the size of planets as he brings a hand up to cover his mouth, shock and fear written all over his facial features.

“I...I did not mean to say that out loud. I’m so sorry” taehyung is rushing his words and before you can tell him that it’s okay, he’s waving a hand at you as he rushes out of the cafe. you sit at the table dumbfounded, looking from the pencil in your hand back to the door taehyung just darted out of and a sense of disappointment fills your conscious. you’re so concerned with taehyung and what events just transpired between the two of you that you don’t see your best friend sauntering his way back to the table with a smug smile on his face.

“so how did it go with- why do you look like that?” jungkook sounds confused as he takes his seat across from you again and watches the way you look from the door to the pencil in your hand and then finally to him.

“taehyung called me cute and then got flustered and ran away…” you say, your voice is quiet and has a lilt of hurt to it that jungkook doesn’t miss.

“why do you sound so disappointed? he was obviously just embarrassed” he tries to reason with you but you can’t stop thinking about the way he ran out.

“it’s obvious he’s in love with you, dumb ass. why else would he run away like that after calling you cute to your face?” jungkook presses more, his face resting in his hands as he gives you a knowing look and you try to reason with yourself and tell yourself he’s right but for some reason you can’t help but feel that maybe taehyung didn’t mean it.

“maybe...anyways let’s head back home. I have more studying to do” you say as you get up and begin packing up your things and throwing away your trash. jungkook just shakes his head, wondering how you could be so oblivious to what was right in front of you.

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tommyparkerr · 6 years ago

Text

Not so Scary | Peter Parker x Reader

I got another request done! Now I just have one left from the prompt list I posted AGES ago and two in my inbox! I’m really excited to write them, but don’t be expecting them to come out anytime real soon...I’m uber busy, loves. But I’ll write whenever I can!!

Requested by @hollandandi : “hey! here’s a request for your plane ride! maybe something along the lines of peter or tom coming home late from a mission/work and you’ve been up watching scary movies for hours with Tess - when he gets home, you are so on edge from the films that you grab something to protect yourself (like a lamp) and hide behind the door, ready to pounce? lol something like that? maybe you even hit him accidentally and then take care of him? something fluffy! thanks and have a safe flight🧠💓”

Words: 1.4k

Warnings: Mentions of blood, F L U F F

-Masterlist-

N O T S O S C A R Y :

You’d been home alone all day. Peter had said something about Mr. Stark needing him for a mission of some sorts, and he assured you that it wasn’t anything too dangerous and that he’d be careful before leaving, but you were still anxious. Tony rarely, if ever, called Peter to help with a mission unless he absolutely had to, so either he had been lying when he told Peter it wasn’t that dangerous or Peter was lying when he told you Tony had said such a thing; you didn’t particularly like either side of that coin.

Obviously you were racked with worry and stress as soon as Peter was gone, so what did you do? You had a marathon of horror films.

Not the smartest idea you’d ever had. But then again, you usually left the smarts to Peter.

It was dark out now. Peter still hadn’t returned home and your nerves had risen to an insane state. Your hands were nearly trembling as they clutched Captain. Captain didn’t seem to mind, though, as she seemed just as scared and desperate for comfort as you—she’d been watching the films with you. The white ball of fluff whined and barked when you cuddled her closer in anticipation of the next scene, almost as if she could sense what was coming too.

Within the silence you heard a scratch resonate from your bedroom, followed closely by a slow screech. Captain looked nervous, and that alone was enough for you to pause the movie, hop up, and grab the nearest object to you to use as a weapon—which just so happened to be the only lamp in your apartment. But you doubted Peter would mind if you broke it saving yourself.

Slowly you and Captain crept to the bedroom door and waited. Blood was pumping through your veins, the sound of it rushing through your ears and blocking out all other noise. A shadow walked out just as you got close to the room and you faintly heard Captain barking as you reached up and swung the lamp over the top of the figure.

There was a heavy thud as it hit its mark and then a groan. Captain was going crazy now, jumping up and down but sticking to your side all the same. You went to hit the shadow again but it suddenly caught your hand midair, making you shriek in fright. Captain went for the bite as soon as she heard you scream, attaching her jaw the best she could to the intruder’s leg.

“Ow! Captain, it’s me! C’mon girl, get off now! You don’t have to protect Y/N from me!”

“Peter?” you gasped.

“Who else would it be?” he exclaimed, dropping your wrist.

You set the lamp down and fumbled to find the light switch. When you did, you saw that Peter had already taken the suit off and was currently dressed in a long sleeved shirt and boxers. He had lots of yellowish bruises and blood was caked around his nose, but it was old and dried already, making you thank the heavens once more for Peter’s healing factor.

You practically leaped into his arms, making him stumble.

“I mean, it’s good to see you too, but what’s with the change of heart? Just a few moments ago you were trying to kill me.”

You shook your head and clutched him tighter. “Did I hurt you?” you mumbled.

“No more than I already am,” he chuckled. When you didn’t let go within a few minutes and didn’t look like you were planning to anytime soon, he softly said, “I need to clean up, baby.”

“Yeah, you stink,” you agreed.

His giggle rumbled through his chest. “Then why are you still holding on?”

“Because I was worried,” you admitted. “You never disappear for that long without checking in.”

Peter sighed and brushed his hand over your hair. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I didn’t mean to worry you like that. But I’m here now, see? I’m okay.”

You exhaled and nodded, hesitantly stepping out of his grasp. Captain whined and nuzzled against Peter, kind of like she was saying, Sorry for trying to bite your leg off.

“As much as I admire your courage, Cap, you’re gonna have to wait until you’re a little bigger to do any real damage,” Peter cooed, lifting the puppy up and accepting her barrage of kisses. He smiled and handed her to you, giving you both kisses before heading back to take a shower.

You debated waiting right there for him, but you took a look at the bent and broken lamp and winced, knowing you had to have hurt him more than he was willing to admit. You put Captain down and let her follow you into the kitchen where you grabbed an ice pack. You immediately dropped it at the pain that ran up your hand and groaned when you saw the blood running down your palm; the adrenaline from earlier must have been numbing the pain while it lasted.

You picked up the ice pack with your uninjured hand and set it on the counter before going to the sink and running the cold water over your bloody hand. When the blood washed away you were relieved to see that the cuts didn’t look too deep and that no glass shards seemed to have stuck in your skin.

“Hey, Peter?” you yelled when the shower water turned off.

“Yeah?” he called back.

“Can you bring a couple band aids when you come out?”

He didn’t reply after that, and you only had to wait a few moments before he was stumbling out, his hair dripping water on the floor and his clothes sticking to his wet skin. His eyes went wide when he saw the blood smeared on the ice pack and he looked panicky.

“I’m fine, Pete,” you assured him. “It’s just a little blood. I cut myself when I hit you with the lamp.”

He didn’t respond, only turning the sink off, taking your hand, and carefully inspecting it. “Does it hurt?” he quietly asked.

“It stings a little, but that’s it. It’s nothing really. I’m fine.”

He gave you a look before unwrapping the band aids he brought and caringly placing them over the cuts. You kissed his cheek as a thank you before grabbing the forgotten ice pack, rinsing the blood off, and putting it on the back of Peter’s head. He didn’t fight you on this, going with you when you led him back to the living room and cuddled up to him on the couch. He adjusted the both of you until you were comfortably leaning back against his chest and a blanket was keeping your bodies warm. Captain eagerly jumped up when you stopped wiggling and slipped her way into your lap, circling a few times before plopping down.

Peter started to laugh when you pushed play on the remote, letting the eerie music fill the room again. “No wonder you were so jumpy!” You shrugged as you pet the yellow lab in front of you and turned your head to rest over Peter’s heart. The steady thumping calmed you. “You should really stop watching these, Y/N,” he said more quiet this time, his voice concerned.

“They entertain me. Scare me enough to keep me awake.”

“They also make you hit me in the back of the head with our only lamp and cut your hand from the impact.”

“Which is entertaining.”

You could practically hear Peter roll his eyes, but he silenced so you could continue watching the movie anyway. Captain fell asleep, probably as comforted as you by the presence of Peter and your much calmer persona. Pretty soon you started to drift off too, and you turned away from the tv to snuggle further into your boyfriend’s chest. His other hand came around you now, the coldness from the ice pack seeping through your sweatshirt.

“Scare you enough to keep you awake, huh?” Peter teased, rubbing your back.

You hummed, closing your eyes. “S’not so scary when I’m with you,” you mumbled.

Peter held you tighter and kissed your head. “Go to sleep, Y/N. We can spend tomorrow doing whatever you want since I was gone today, but for now, sleep. I love you.”

The words were on the tip of your tongue, the I love you, too, but they never made it past your lips before the world went quiet and you slipped into the darkness awaiting you.

XxX

Permanent Tag: @lemirabitur @my-meant-to-find-blog @jongindeepbreath @tomspideyweb @farfromjustordinary @tomsstarlight @delicately-written @catstielanddeanthedog @tom-holland-and-textposts @spiderman-n @wtfholland @hollandandi

#peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x you #peter parker blurb #peter parker imagine #peter parker au #peter parker #marvel #mcu #spider-man: homecoming #spiderman #spiderman x reader #spiderman x you #spiderman x y/n #avengers #avengers: infinity war

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stormears · 6 years ago

Text

The Sun on Jakku

Except from a fic I started before TLJ even had a trailer and I’m still attached to it, so here’s a 7,000-word long “snippet” of chapter 1. The full WIP currently stands at 13k words and is not going to be a 30k-ish oneshot like I originally thought.

Experience has taught me that copy-and-pasting text from a word document into a Tumblr textpost invariably makes random words that are next to each other smush into one word. I’m not going through a 7k long post to clear all of these. (I did it once on a 3k fanfic and different ones just showed up in its place.)

Recovering from his greatest defeat and humiliation, Kylo Ren lies in Medical and bleeds and sees visions of a little girl in a desert, growing up and starving and learning and fighting and feeling what he felt when he was young. He stills and watches her, for hours. For years. He’s with her right now.

She cut his face and he can’t see. The wounds are catching up to him, now, while he lies on his back in the snow. It brings a shiver through him. He turns, trying to move, to change, to see her and spit out the blood pooling behind his teeth. Kylo succeeds in spitting out the blood.

Underneath him, the planet surface groans and trees groan. Inside the chasm, the core and eternal fires are melting the dozen trees they had swallowed a minute before. He feels the heat, the sweat. Across the chasm is her but he can’t see her. He looks and is immediately obscured by the blood leaking into his left eye. The bowcaster wound screams disapproval through his gut and he falls onto his back again. She’s gone. The scavenger—into the snow—desert girl he carried her away she’s gone. The core belches fire somewhere near him and throws snow and hot wind at him, hard. He falls sideways a bit. A snowdrift collapses and spills onto his knees. The lightsaber rolls back and claps against his unwounded side. He doesn’t care. Every thought in his brain is running wild and crashing and he can’t focus. Can’t think.

Kylo can’t remember the worthless Stormtrooper’s number. He grinds his teeth. Hates him. Hate. He hated his father once. This unwelcome thought stops the very flow of his blood and he hacks out air and blood and maybe something else, maybe another scrap of whatever core of strength inside that kept him standing up today. Han Solo is dead. Han Solo. Worthless, indifferent bastard who loved him once. Once.

Once.

Scavenger gone. Father—father—

Someone grabs at his left shoulder, near where Scavenger jabbed into his muscle. Kylo yells and reaches for the attacker with one hand and clamps into a fist. He heaves it backward and his fist comes away holding square bits of some sort of droid armpiece. Whatever is left continues to pull at his shoulder.

Hux appears. His hair is loose, falling onto his cheeks. Like the scavenger’s had been.

“Sedate him now or we’re not making the ship.”

“Hhhelp me u-up, Hux. Now,” Kylo spits at him. But the redheaded rat only stares at him, upside down, while Kylo feels an uncomfortable prick in his collarbone. After he blinks away that odd pain, the trees are walking away. His head is lifted up. The chasm is out of sight and his clothes and head and everything around him is hotter than ever. Uneven patches of brown and white earth are floating past beneath the level of his eyes.

Kylo can’t feel his arms and cannot see the straps tying his body to a low flatback droid. He hears Hux behind him, yelling again. He tries to yell too.

“She’s getting a-WAY,” shouts a stranger who sounds a lot like him. He’s confused. It hurts. His face hurts. He tries to think about her—again—and the picture of her and the three funny hair buns blurs away like he’s become momentarily drunk. What comes back is a wide, wide view of a dirt field, the color of old and yellowed paper. There’s blinding sunlight here. It’s so bright, too bright, but opening and closing his eyes isn’t doing anything. He yells for Hux. Maybe he can do something.

Surely Hux heard him because he’s yelling for him to shut up. Kylo is hit by a stray branch from a tree that is falling down nearby, punctuated by a droid’s urgent beeping. Hux yells at them, too.

Somewhere underneath him is that familiar, controlled lurch of a landing ramp withdrawing. It goes hssssshshh when it closes and seals. The mixture of night and firelight slips away and he can see more sedated colors now. There are brown storage compartments marked in Basic that he can could just barely read if he wanted to, and big square things that are probably medcarts, a couple of them in a line. He knows this ship. It belongs to one of those small men on Hux’s bridge. The ship is still swaying, or he is. On top of the pain in his head and his side, now his stomach is quaking.

“Commencing evaluation,” says a droid. He turns his head the other way and closes his eyes.

In the semi-dark he tries to turn his thoughts away, too, away from all this hurt and the shame coming back to him so quickly and it’s so strong—like his own strong hands or his dad’s old hands on his own face because—and now he clamps his mouth and throat shut because he might vomit.

He sees her in his head, not ten minutes ago. She’s desperately blocking his side strike and backing away but she won’t get away, he won’t let her. The tree cover is too thin and he thinks in the moment that there’s nowhere on Starkiller where she can truly hide from him. He blocks her thrust one-handed and continues walking her to the cliff edge. His face is stinging, but behind his closed eyes he can see and feel the long, warm breaths she took after he offered himself to her. He wanted her to accept so badly. He waited.

He waited on her word and she turned on him. One heartbeat he listened to hers and the next, she was striking like a young god with menacing, targeted blows that made his arms tremble as he blocked. She stabbed him and cut him. Heat invading his skin and his face deeper than it ever should. Too shocked to scream. He fell onto his back in front of her. He was shedding tears through the burning pain and trying to get up and see her again. He fell because of his weak shoulder. Pain.

That he let her awaken that wild fighting prowess just inches away from him is as far from his master’s command as he could stray, but he didn’t care. Not anymore. Not…really.

A second droid with louder, bumpier wheels comes in and maybe joins the first droid in poking him but he refuses to pay their nasty beeping shells any attention. This is better. This picture he sees and how he can still hear the wind and the faraway missiles and her own breath, very close. One of the droids punches something into his flesh. With his mind he punches back. The thing’s head or whatever’s on the top half of it blasts into the wall and then blasts into a lot more pieces than it had before.

The scavenger grasping at his wrists while his saber spits and melts snow. Damn her damn her damn her for winning and running away. She fought him like she knew how he moved. Like they had the same brain but she was too ignorant to know it. Kylo reaches his hand out a little more and throws what remains of that second droid and curses again. He wants to crush the other droid, too. Crush this whole ship and his head and his stinging face.

His whole body shakes and erupts with electricity for a single second. Kylo chokes and his head flops the opposite way. Above him is Hux again, frowning like he does.

“Will you stop!? I’m trying to save your life, you worthless fucking child!” Hux screams and Kylo squints his eyes a little as though he might block some of the noise. He sees but does not fully register the tiny stun-blaster in the general’s left hand.

Hux slaps his gloved hand onto the spot where the second droid had jabbed him. It’s his right shoulder, he realizes. And that gloved hand is touching his skin and not his outer coat. Because her strike tore through part of his coat before it got to his face. Hux’s leather over his own skin feels some sort of unpleasant. Kylo is squirming away from it before he realizes he’s doing it. “I am trying to stitch you up and keep you alive. If you really want a pus-oozing scar underneath your clothes, you can have one. See if I care. I received no command to make you comfortable.”

Kylo hears most of the words and sees a mostly-clear mental picture of the little scavenger’s cloth-wrapped foot rising up to kick him in the chest. He is shaken. Everything inside scrambled.

Kylo attempts, “Is Starkiller gone?”

“Gone.” It was that and nothing else, as Hux would not explain further. The shame is coming back to him. Kylo bites down vomit again.

“Th. Thhhe scaven-ger.” He tries. His throat has a little blood in it, still. “Gone?”

Hux’s face changes somehow but Kylo’s weak eyes can’t pinpoint what part shifted or moved. “Probably not. A few officers glimpsed the Correllian freighter escaping with the rebels.”

“She’s on the Millennium Falcon?”

A snide smirk splits the general’s mouth. “That’s what it’s called? Yes. She was probably on it. I wouldn’t guess for a second that we were lucky enough to be rid of her.”

At first he’s thinking of her escaping the doomed planet. Escaping death. Then the phrase Be rid of her makes him think of her sharp-edged mind under his hand in the interrogation room. Her green eyes so desperately clinging to a spot on a wall to avoid him as he hovered. Kylo sees pictures of little droid parts held by small gloved hands and thinks about people throwing them away and being rid of them? This idea seems to appear from nowhere in his head. He blinks twice. Of course Hux would be staring at him when he can’t think clearly. When he’s ruined. This is horrible. He grits his teeth and glares. Shuts all the mess away.

“We’re meeting the Supreme Leader.” General Hux tells him some time later. Kylo doesn’t remember how many seconds have passed. “We’ll board his ship in two days and you are to explain yourself to him. No time estimate for that task was given. Understand?”

He says yes and looks away.

“And stay still for your examination, for Maker’s sake.” Hux adds. “Unless you really want to be infected and repulsive. If you stop fussing, you can be in a bacta tank in ten minutes and sleep the rest of the way.” He stops. Glares. “Bastard.”

“Don’t you have cadets to step on?” Kylo growls back.

“Phasma’s cadets could all step on you quite easily, if some starving slave bitch could do it alone. Or did that Stormtrooper do it? Did they gang up on you?” The general’s contempt slides somewhere near spiteful curiosity by the end, but Kylo Ren takes no notice of the change. He hears an ugly name falling through Hux’s mouth and he raises his hand towards it to kill it. General Hux slaps a hand onto his throat, trying to gasp.

“Don’t—insult her,” he says while the droid’s needles pull at his skin. “Do not.”

Hux’s eyes squint a little and he chokes out something that sounds like “what,” but Kylo does not notice this either. “Go away,” he tells Hux. The choke ends. Hux gasps and Kylo likes the sound of it.

As his head falls back a few inches onto the table, Kylo sees a bright bright bright field of dirt that’s golden-brown and empty except for one crooked comm tower with corroded metal plates on one side and a person sits at the base of it in its thin branch branch of shade the person has clothes that are pale and tan and their knees are up and their face is hidden and drawn into their knees but he knows they are only smearing one sweaty surface against another because it’s so so hot outside he’s gasping in th–

He and General Hux are both choking. Kylo’s head smacks back onto the table and he takes in a huge, shuddering breath. He can’t hear Hux’s gasps over his own. His eyes are huge, too, his gaze pinned directly onto the ship’s black, ribbed ceiling. He tries to think where this idea came from and why he thought about deserts, but there is no answer. He doesn’t know. He can’t remember. Already he’s kicking away from the thoughts that come to fill the void. He’s already scrabbling back to the picture of the scavenger instead, bounding away.

At last Hux comes into view again, right where he was when Kylo first choked him. He leans in with his face stony and solid. “You will be going into the bacta tank whenever I happen to remember to come check on you again.�� Then he whirls around and exits Kylo’s field of vision.

Now he waits. He grits his teeth and picks out a medcart to stare at. After a few more blinks and needle pokes, a door at the other end of the room slides open and shut and the clapping steps of Hux’s boots are finally gone. Kylo exhales. He’s still when another droid whirs down the table or whatever he’s laying on and starts flashing scanners over every place where he’s bloody. But the scanners are silent and the room is silent and he feels alone. The droids don’t matter. Their memory will be wiped. So he lets himself start shaking again.

His mind was on the scavenger, was hiding from him but with the picture in his head of her running ahead of him, he’s accidentally bumped into thoughts of future punishment. He hasn’t thought about his master yet, doesn’t want to. But thought slips in that gap and squirms in anyway. He will have to face punishment for this. The Supreme Leader will break his bones. Break his thoughts open. It comes to him with easy familiarity that makes him grind his teeth. This scene of himself on a hard black floor and shaking and squirming. He gasps and cries like a little boy because his body is on fire without real flames and every ugly, weak, sinful thought is displayed for Master to touch. Master knows what he wants and is afraid of, and when he is tired and when he walks and sleeps and shits and obeys. He stops this picture. He knows what he sounds like while crying. He exhales loudly, listens to that instead. Looking around everywhere. Medcart over there. Droid scrap there. Oil spill? Definitely is. Inhale.

For the last time, Kylo exhales and tries to control the wriggling thoughts. Think clearly, smoothly. The scavenger. He had her. She’s gone. Her hand put this scar on his face and brought this blood in his eyes and caught him. Han Solo is gone. Dad. No no no he can’t go there yet no. Scavenger. He wanted to carry her. He’s still so muddled and he was muddled even before he landed on Takodana and saw the broken little castle and green trees where she was hiding, but he knows he’s seen her before.

He knows he’s seen her before. Kylo sees

he sees-

—

Someone grabbed her arm and yanked down, and she fell like a doll would. She’s halfway in the air, not standing or lying down but held in a crumpled, painful halfway point between them. She’s hot and she’s hurting.

It’s the first day. The glare of the sun is huge and painful. She’d never felt sun like this before and wanted to go inside but she was crying. In hindsight, far away from then and there, the heat of that day was nothing special or great. But Rey was five years old. She knew she was five. She knew she had to go home. She screams but the ship was infinitely louder than her tiny mouth and it was turning away from her.

They forgot her. Mama forgot her. That is worse than all the heat and the nasty dirt in her shoes. The heat on her skin is bad, but the nausea in her stomach is worse. Rey used all the breath she had to screech at her retreating silver ship and the engines dwarfed her little scream. The reality of the sight started to puncture her. Rey’s stomach turned in ugly somersaults she had never felt before. Kylo clamps his jaws shut against the heaving he then feels in his belly.

“So what’s it worth now?” somebody said. The ship was starting to get far enough away that conversation was audible again. Rey cried into that available void “come back come back come back” but the ship was not stopping. It soared, it shrank. It took in more sunlight and again forced her gaze away from the white glare. It hurts and she’s so, so scared because Mama left me Mama don’t go help me I’ll be good PLEASE wait

Rey screamed Nooo and was met with the same wall of all-encompassing sound that covered her own: a nearby engine was starting to spin. Its waves beat against her ears. Her stomach turned, the noise tunneling into her ears. Deep in. Jiggling her whole brain. Nothing would stay still. The motion and the fear were too strong for a child’s body. Rey released it all in screams while bile-tingled dribble sizzled in her throat and she had to stop to spit it out.

The hateful thing that held her wrist all this time came to life like a devil. It squeezed her wrist and turned her screams to wails. It yanked her forward and up so that she was finally almost standing. Prompted by the shade the thing cast over her, Rey finally looked at it: it was an enormous pink man, or a man-like sentient, and it blocked nearly her whole field of vision. His face looked like it had been melted and squished into a doughy mess in a cooking pan. His clothes were brown and he was so, so big. And fat. She absorbed most of these impressions in the space of one second and would register them later. After that one second he opened his mouth.

“I said to shut your squealing mouth!” Then the pink sentient yanked its arm downward thrashed her once against the ground like he was killing a fish.

The man spoke further of radiation cells, of which Rey knew and heard nothing. She knew and felt and heard only the hard pain of hitting the ground. It was too big, too strong, her senses overcome by it. Her left side was alive with pain like a living creature, eating her.

“For ninety credits. Yeah, he does radiation fixings too.”

A wind kicked up alongside the engine’s whooshing air and tossed sand directly into Rey’s mouth and eyes. For the very first time.

She spat out the sand-and-vomit mix that was sizzling around her teeth and tongue. This time she used her less-injured right hand to wipe the mess off her mouth. She cried for someone to help her please, or she thought she did, since she couldn’t hear her own words and no one else heard her. Eventually the pink man lifted her up again. Her toes left the ground. Rey was up high.

The big man said, “Great Maker, you’re still a fat little one. Are you listening to me?” She was not listening or looking. Her eyes were forced shut by the sun. “You’d better be listening. You keep on like that, I’ll give you something to cry about.” He paused and added more slowly, “Shut the hell up.”

As his arm came down and she mostly flopped to the ground again, She lay sideways on the sand and saw everything halfway turned, and her right arm held up high, for he still held her wrist. She breathed and breathed and breathed. A blaster went off somewhere, a sound that she knew from Mama and some holovids, but no one around her reacted.

“Maggo says nine hundred credits, flat.”

“He serious? He says that to my face and I might shoot him.”

“I think that whole radiation gem went to the guy’s head.”

Six minutes had passed. She would never know that time or how far her ship had traveled while she lay on the ground. The pink fish-man lifted her up again, made her stand again. Eyes shut, sun hot. Hot.

“You listenin’ now?” said the pink man, and Rey nodded several times as she thought was expected to do for teachers and grownups and big men. “You’re with me now. I got a scrap collecting business and you work for me. You fetch the scrap and I sell it. You understand?”

‘Work?’ she thought, but couldn’t muster any words or ideas past it. Work existed far away from her and she had only foreign words and dismissal to conceptualize it. It was for grownups, for really tall, sneaky people with briefcases and fancy holos. It should not have anything to do with her.

“You understand?”

Fear opened her mouth; without opening her eyes, the girl said, “I—can’t work.”

“You can’t huh? Too good for work? You got some inheritance money you can live off of, girl?” Rey did not understand him. “Guess you can’t get fed or housed, either. Maybe you’re such a tough little star you can do all that by yourself, then. Good luck. Out of my way.”

He dropped her. The wind slid and whooshed on every part of her as she fell. Rey hit the ground rear-first and curled her head in towards her stomach. She fought to take in air and then wailed, “Where’s my mama? I gotta g-go, go home! M-My ship went away!”

The sentient beside the pink man was a frowning Chagrian. “Broken holo, this one!”

“You don’t have a mum anymore, kid, may as well quit asking for her.” He scratched at a patch on his pant leg. “Sorgel, I might’ve wasted my credits on this one. One for the dust worms. Now get outta my sight.” He took a single step away from her. Two. Nonono no.

Her body opened up from its fetal position. The man cast no shade on her now but she tried to find his face through the sunlight. “No don’t! Don’t leave me here! Please! I can work. I can. I can do it.” Already she was sobbing. “Yo—You can’t leave me b-by myself. Mama and Dad aren’t here.”

Another hot wind came up and pushed sand towards her. Into her mouth again. She spat it out and covered her mouth.

The pink man stared down at her little arms and legs that were barely tanned. He guessed her age in standard years and knew how many oscillator gears would fit in her arms and the fractions of food that would fit in her mouth. A number he didn’t care about.

While tapping his fingers on his arm he asked, “So you have a name?”

Unkar Plutt’s mind is on moving numbers of scrap and portions as he asks; Rey’s is drowned in emotions too large for her. She has to separate the answer from everything else.

She thinks of a name and tells him what her name is.

“Rey,” said the fish man. “Your ship’s gone. Mama and Dad said you live here now. Get that straight. You do what I say now. You do the work I tell you to do. You don’t make no damn trouble. Do as you’re told and you get portions for your meals and you sleep in the shed with the other kids.” Rey heard kids and meals and work and processed nothing else. There would be other kids. Her eyes were shut against the sun once again and trying to hear for her ship’s engines drifting back down to her.

“Wh-wh-where’s my mom?”

“Sorgel, are we done or what?”

“Yessir.”

As the fish man said “Come on,” Rey started to get up off the sand. She’d lain there in some form of pain or another for what her mind insisted was almost the whole day. Seven minutes ago, her ship had taken off without her, though, and Rey was alone with the pink man.

She ran after him. There was sweat on her forehead, she noticed for the first time, and swept it away with the back of her hand. This was a desert, a real desert. It was hot and bad just like holos said but much worse, she was thinking. The heat was so strong that it had weight and pushed on the shoulders of every sentient below it.

“Where is this?” she asked. Her hand hovered above her eyes.

The man didn’t look back at her. “It’s Jakku, idiot. Worthless junkyard shit planet. You got anything else, ask it now. No more questions once I drop you off.”

Jakku was yet new and strange on that day; whatever life she had come from on her ship, whatever grownups there had been who threatened and said bad words, she had parents to keep their attention away from her. Not now. She shut up the rest of the way.

Three more ships went by as they walked, all of them smaller than Rey’s and most of them dull and mean colors that she didn’t like. She saw faded stripes and patches of dead silver showing through paint and she thought of her art markers that she could have used to fill in the patches with good colors. After they passed the third, Rey wiped some sweat away again. She was awfully sweaty. Ahead of them was a wide gateway with a horizontal, red top like an elongated mushroom. Rey stared at it as they walked under it and its spine-shaped shadow. Ahead of them was a little mess of a civilization.

The fishy man was walking towards a group of tents too big for her to see at once. She had to assemble the whole place out of impressions, looking left and then ahead and then way to the right to see it all. The settlement was constructed almost entirely out of tents in a careless assortment of sizes and states of wear. Sometimes there were small metal constructs that Rey didn’t know the word for. Some tents were a roof and no walls, some three walls with the fourth opened or gone. Strange objects visible through their gaps, like tables and helmets and boxes that looked like they’d been burned. Tan and brown and rotten-plant-green and black and other bad colors. The fishy man entered into a large gap between the tents, a street of sand.

A man stuck his head between two tent flaps and spat into the sand, and the fish-man stepped alarmingly near it, but Rey took several steps around it. Sentients that she’d never seen stepped around her too, or they stepped around the pink fish sentient. She passed a tent that was beige-colored instead of one of the nasty dark colors. It was almost a nice color, like milk. She thought of berry flavored milk and wanted some. It would help her feel less hot, but she didn’t have any here.

She looked pointedly at the back of the sentient’s fat head. “Scuse me, what’s your name, please?”

“Scuse me?” he said back. His tone made Rey want to curl up again, but she didn’t dare stop walking. “You call me Mr. Plutt and don’t say ‘please’ anything anymore. You do what you’re told and don’t fuss with the other kids, or I’ll call Hesselo.”

“O-okay. Mr. Plutt. Thank—” She stopped herself by slapping a sweaty little hand over her mouth.

Plutt turned right at a vague intersection and came into a sort of street marked by endless footprints and tiny bumps of sand kicked up by nonstop footsteps. On either side tents were leaning in, offering scraps of shade on each edge of the lane and huge arrays of objects and bottles and metal pieces. Her eyes swept across grey-green engine halves, opaque tubes of vaccines and sunblock mixed together, shelves with four tiers of coiled wire cables and four armed guards in black robes watching them. Rey could not see that two of the guards were staring after her as she went past, at her and Mr. Plutt walking together. One of them looked away.

The pitted walkway in the sand branched off three different ways and Mr. Plutt took the right branch. Rey stopped once to trace her eyes up and down the other two and see where they went, but her curiosity wasn’t strong enough to keep her rooted for long. She was at Mr. Plutt’s heels again soon. Then she nearly walked into the flabby backside of him.

Metal pieces tinkled against each other in front of him. Rey stopped to listen to the soft little sounds and leaned around Mr. Plutt fat backside to get closer, but they stopped as soon as they started. They were a set of keys too small for Plutt’s hands and he had unlocked the front door of a big shed.

Rey looked to her left and to the right—view somewhat interrupted by Plutt’s butt—and tried to calculate the size of this new building. She decided it could probably fit nine or ten Mr. Plutts inside. It was ten Plutts big. It was an almost-square building with an uneven roof and two windows with blinds made of rusted steel slats.

The door swung open. It creEEEAAAKKed as it went. Mr. Plutt hobbled forward through the doorway, leaving Rey at the sudden mercy of the hot sun. She hobbled forward, too, and found the building was a little less hot than outside. Three children were in here.

One of them was a human like her, a little bigger, a little older. The other two were new species that made her stare. On little piles of red tarps in the far corner was a young Sluissi, the race of green humanoid torsos and serpentine bodies below the waist. Rey’s eyes traveled all up and down the Sluissi’s body to fully comprehend its body shape. She didn’t observe the human or the other alien and did not have time to do so. Unkar Plutt went to the final sentient she hadn’t looked at yet and kicked it out of her vision. It slid backward and hit the tarp pile with a coughing sound.

“Make room for one more,” said Mr. Plutt. “This here’s Rey, she’s new and she’ll be sleeping here, too. Move.” This last was for Rey, but she failed to catch the message. “MOVE!”

She moved and the Sluissi and the human moved aside as she came close. Rey stood in between them and felt her first twinge of almost-fear as their eyes started roving all over her. The child that had been kicked grumbled and twitched under the tarp, still unseen. “Gather up in two hours. And no more nonsense from you.” None of the children said anything back to him. Unkar Plutt turned round and walked out the door.

After another few moments, metallic tinkling let them know that Mr. Plutt was holding his keys again. He locked the door. Rey, holding her hands up near her face, lowered them at last. The rest of her lowered as well, or fell, till she sat down nearly against the wall. One of the tarps crinkled underneath her bottom. The rest of her body crinkled: eyes, lips, limbs pulling together. She needed the strength to cry. She did not know how to unlock doors that grownups locked.

While she hid her eyes, the other three sentients began to move around. To her right, something skidded on a bare patch of floor. Rey gasped and let out a long cry when something struck the side of her head like a slap.

“Hey, hey! Are you the Chiss? I bet you are.” The thing struck her again and it hurt. She cried out at the spreading pain there, on the side of her body where Mr. Plutt had thrown her onto the ground. He was the first grownup to pick her up and throw her and hurt her today and now he locked her away and she did not know what to do.

“Chiss are all blue. She’s a human color.” said one of the other two.

Rey dared to look through a gap in her fingers. The Sluissi was in front of her, leaning far, far forward and supporting itself with its hands slapped on the ground. It had dry reptile skin and long flaps growing out of the back of its head like heavy lizard spines. She stared at them helplessly. A nice green color that she liked. Something kicked her shoulder. Rey screeched and slapped her good hand over the hurt shoulder.

A Dug was grinning and glaring at her with its toes curling in mad delight. Dugs were more foreign to her than even Sluissi were; their long, muscly hands that they stood on and weasely little legs that they used for hands were a backwards manipulation of all the sentients she knew. The dug child looked like a rat with its limbs all stretched out and wrong. She watched dumbly as the right hand it stood on came up and “kicked” her in the shoulder a little softer.

“You have really soft skin. Squishy weirdo,” laughed the Dug. Its face was ratlike but furless, and tiny strips of what looked like dead skin dragged on its earlobes. “You’re gonna burn up and turn into a wrinkly old grandmother, I bet. Sun’s not good for softies.”

“Where are you from?” said the Sluissi. “Your name?”

Rey said her name was Rey. Then she coughed. “I’m thirsty.”

“Hm. Me, too.” said the Sluissi. “There’s not much water here, though, so that’s too bad.”

“D-do you guys know where the ships are? I, um. I gotta go back there. My ship left without me.”

“Oh,” said the other human child. His hands stuck out from thin, dragging sleeves and his eyes and nose showed through a head covering, and the rest of him was buried in the grey and inscrutable clothing. When he proved unwilling to give any more words, Rey ignored him.

“I, I got left here on accident. I gotta go home.”

“I bet it’s no accident if Unkar brought you in,” the Dug said with great confidence. He even added, “Unkar doesn’t do accidents when it comes to new kid scavengers. If he got you, you’re gonna be down in the dirt with us now! Sucks to be you.”

The Sluissi was laying down now. “Now our team has four cleaners. That’ll be better than three cleaners. And we can dig a lot. Can you dig?”

“I wanna go home.”

“You can’t. You’re gonna dig now. Or clean.”

Rey’s grip on her arm grew tighter and she told the Sluissi to shut up. Inside, she told herself the same thing, because believing the snaky sentient would be a dumb thing to do, because it was a kid like her and kids didn’t decide when ships traveled or came back. Grown-ups could make it come back. She couldn’t make any of this come out of her mouth. Parts of it came out in sobs. The Sluissi seemed to be waiting out her crying, but it didn’t stop, so it retreated.

The Dug slapped the floor with its left hand. “I just realized! Your stupid hair! Your hair looks like three poops on your head, ahaahaha!”

With her eyes dribbling tears, Rey reached up and covered one her buns with her hand. “Stop it. You better stop it.”

“You can’t tell a Dug to stop being mean.” said the Sluissi, unblinking. “Don’t you know anything?”

“She doesn’t know jack-oh!” screeched the Dug. “She’s dumb enough to think she can just leave if she wants! HA! My pop would slap you one if he was here.”

“Can you dig?” asked the Sluissi, blinking. “You better be good at it or Unkar won’t give you portions. It’s a fact.”

“Your hair does look like three poops,” said the boy in grey. He still crouched in the corner with his hands clasped over his knees, hardly moving. “If my hair was long, I sure wouldn’t do it up like that.”

“It’s not!” she screeched, and more sobs came unexpectedly, jaggedly out of her like a belch. “I-It’s not! My hair’s not poop! Shut u-up!”

There was a rock on the ground, or a clod of dirt or sand—Rey did not remember—but she grabbed it from between a few folds of tarp and threw it at the boy. He ducked his head farther into his knees and flinched dramatically when it hit. The dug laughed, the Sluissi quietly stared, and Rey continued crying.

She cried in spurts for an hour while the dug talked to himself and banged his hand-feet on the walls and yelled and pretended he was playing drums in a famous band. The hard metal echoes were louder than Rey’s crying. She remembered his drumming and awful not-music noise more than anything else.

She remembered the door tearing open and the Sluissi child was in the way. Quicker than lightning she moved from the floor to the wall and the slam of her green body’s impact was as loud as the dug’s drumming. Rey and the dug yelled together.

It was another grown-up, big and fat like Mr. Plutt, but none of the children knew a Barabel on sight. It was humanoid-shaped and reptilian-skinned and all but the Sluissi recoiled from it.

“Whichever one of you was making that stupid shit noise can quiet the fuck down!” it screamed, and all of Rey’s limbs curled in toward herself. “Out! Portion and work time. If you guys pull that again after lights out I’ll come back in here and step on all of you.”

“Portions and work, nice, nice, nice!” the dug screamed and clapped his little hanging feet together. “Outside! Let’s go, losers!”

He closed the short distance to Rey in the corner and pulled on her arm with his feet. “Move it or else, loser, let’s go!”

The Sluissi had already slithered out the door, under the Barabel’s giant shadow and out of sight. The boy in grey was getting up off the floor. Rey saw neither of these things with her head pushed into the crook of her elbow. She stood up this way and let the dug pull her out the door and back into the heat and the sun with its huge weight. When the dug child let go of her, she stumbled and fell into the sand. Something scraped her leg and tore through her pants. Something dropped a hard, pointy ball on her. Her breath and a high-pitched cry were slammed out of her throat.

“Get in the shade there and clean it till it looks new.” said the barabel. He produced a rag the color of old eggs and dropped it near where Rey’s face lay in the sand. “If you can’t do it, ask Mopsy.”

As he spoke, Rey spat sand out of her mouth and pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Snot and sand had smeared her nostrils and upper lip. When her head was raised and she remembered to ask this new adult if he knew where the ships were, he was already laughing. His laugh was louder than her own voice.

“Clean your face and get in there.”

“Okay.”

Her fingers found the rag and clutched it. Her palms and fingertips felt the dampness in it, and it had a funny smell attached that was unlike cleaning supplies or soap. The shade the strange reptilian man had mentioned wasn’t far away, and all the other kids were sitting in it already, spread out under a flat cloth roof held up by six poles in the ground. Grey metallic things lay scattered around them and they all were rubbing at them with old-egg-colored cloths.

Ringing the children’s tent on all sides were the masses of tents and sheds in a short spectrum of metallic and dead-plant colors. All the structures rose higher than Rey’s head, and the borders of Niima were far beyond her line of sight. She would never find the shipyard by herself. A grownup would have to take her there. And it was so hot, she wanted to cry. Even as she stared around at the tents and the other kids not far in front of her, she was sweating and the back of her neck especially was burning already. Nowhere was ever supposed to be this awful hot. She walked ahead into the shade. Without the sun in her eyes, the shapes of them came into focus. They were all bent over metal things.

The boy in grey was closest to her. He picked up a fraction of a speeder battery and plopped it in front of Rey’s feet. “You can do that one,” he said. And then he ignored her.

“Are we ever gonna go to the ships?” Rey asked.

None of them answered her. Somewhere ahead, two more barabels were growling at each other, spinning heavy chain links in their hands. The ends of them were spiked and tipped with scars of rust and dark blood. The sight of sharp and big weapons made her want to be quiet and look away. Once she sat down, most of the view of them was obscured by the pile of metal things that needed cleaning. It was the scrap pile. Rey didn’t know enough of it at the time to shiver or shrivel away from it.

One last time: “Please, you guys. I’m s’posed to go home.”

The dug grabbed sand in his little left foot and threw it at her. “Shut up and help or I’m gonna eat your portions.”

Rey picked up the rag and felt the smelly cleaning fluid sweating through the cloth and onto her palm. The battery piece had come away in an explosion and it was more charred than not. No grace wires left, three of the four safety lights cracked or broken. The durasteel frame of it was too small to be repurposed for anything more than a container for tools or food. All of this would come to her, later. Rey picked a spot that was covered in char marks and rubbed the cloth on it. She worked.

End “snippet.”

#Star Wars #fanfiction #Rey #Reylo #Because Kylo Ren sees her whole life in excruciating detail like a camerman who can't leave and he cries #The Sun on Jakku

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yuckubus · 6 years ago

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about your bts textpost, i'm not disrespecting your feelings but you say 'with all the stuff going on' but really nothing new happened, i mean surely as a fan you already knew they were offensive in 2015 and didn't apologize? this isn't new information so i'm confused by the drama on tumblr over it rn when it's been in the open for years. it's not like we just discovered they said racist things recently, it's already been discussed many times over the years. is it like hivemind mentality rn or?

i know you probably have like good intentions to asking this but the, “ i mean surely as a fan you already knew” part doesn’t sit with me so lets just start with i didnt know of their offensive actions in 2015. I was 16 when i decided to fully become a kpop stan, and my knowledge on the social issues behind the idols? non existent. if i were told that loving the idols involved in the mvs and music had shown antiblack, racist, and colorist behavior, i would not have bothered the way that I did back then. I got into bts the summer of 2015, a couple weeks before run. the only things i knew of bts were: their stage names and real names, some of their mvs, they were a south korean boy group, and some of the shows theyve done for v app, ahl, and like two variety shows. that’s it.

youre confused by the drama on tumblr over it rn when it’s been in the open for years…this entire line tells me youre not black. maybe youre a new stan, idk. antiblack, colorist, racist, antisemitic and other behaviors, do not make it okay to perpetuate no matter the time frame. these behaviors are gross, they will always be gross, and they will never not be gross and disappointing. had i known at 16 that i would idolize people who falsely respect me, but want my time, money, appearance, and attention whilst ignoring the behavior from their fans BUT AT THE SAME TIME chastising fans for simple behavior (like releasing official statements for petty shit like leaking content but you got black fans and artists on twitter defending themselves all the time bc nonblack fans feel it’s their duty to be disgusting and rude if someone so much as looks at bts), I would not have continued bothering with these idols.

its not like we discovered they said racist things recently… you clearly missed the situation three days ago where someone just, in the year of 2018, pointed out what jimin said back in 2015…like…where were you.

it’s already been discussed..yes and no. the people who need to discuss it are always conveniently MIA. when it is being discussed amongst fans, nonblack fans and some black fans think they are the ones who get to decide what is important enough to emphasize. it happens every single time, and im not gonna sit here and provide examples when all these black fans exist. go on twitter, do something, you have the power to do so.

is it hivemind mentality? no, it is not. there are people, despite these instances, who will continue to stan bts. that is their choice. we are individuals before we’re anything else which is something some people on here dont understand. bts dont control me, they have no hold over me. I am a person outside of a group of men who dont care about me the way they act like they do, and I, like many lately, have realized that. It is especially disappointing in this time that bts preach about being there for fans and having a whole campaign that is anti bullying or whatever…..but have yet to address their behaviors. don’t speak about it, be about it, and they aren’t. many fans, black and nonblack, have realized this. there is nothing wrong with multiple people deciding to unstan bts; theyre tired of the behavior.

so, until bts give me atleast 16 reasons to continue stanning them in apa format, 12 point, times new roman type style, im not going to give them my time and energy anymore. STAN LOONA! (also stan n.flying!)

#ask #anon #answered

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whattheklance · 6 years ago

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Season 7

WoW

Just wow. (be prepared for some satisfaction with a side of disappointed but constructive criticism)

Honestly, storytelling-wise this entire season is easily the strongest as a whole. They certainly delivered in terms of story.

The only oddity to me was the battle in the last episode completely unconnected to the season-long story arc. It felt so out of place, like someone mandated “you can’t end the season without having them combine into voltron at least once”

and like I guessed it was for setting up the next season, but it was SO RANDOM, it jerked my focus away from just watching.

I assumed it was Lotor, but seeing an altean was the power source, I’d say it’s connected to Lotor, just not him, himself.

So overall, the story was excellent and well crafted outside of the last episode.

We did get some good character moments for Hunk, but he still didn’t get much attention outside of a single episode story arc.

Lance too didn’t get much attention, and he didn’t even get a story arc over a single episode. Cast and crew have long been promising some Lance focus, and at this point I feel like calling B-S.

This was a team-centric season that didn’t really have a full arc for any of the characters alone, but that also means characters who’ve been neglected in development up til now, continued to be neglected.

Again, I say, this is the best overall season of the show thus far. I thought season 6 was as good as seasons 1 and 2, and season 7 is easily better than them in that regard.

But it just disappoints me and saddens me that some seriously interesting and lovable characters i.e. Lance and Hunk, haven’t had the same kind of attention as Keith, Shiro, Pidge and Allura. STILL.

With only one season left before the end, I doubt that they could really deliver on either character what I’ve been wanting this whole time. Because in order to deliver what I’ve wanted for the characters, they needed to start hinting at and building potential story arcs for them individually a season ago. Season 7 was their last chance to have enough time to do it justice, and they didn’t.

The only hope of that would be if they extended the run or did some kind of sequel to the series. So in spite of an amazing season, I’m still left feeling lackluster because I was so pumped with promises about Lance and about Hunk.

So even if we do finally get character arcs of them in the last season, I can’t see how it’d be enough time to actually be as good as the character arcs the others have gotten.

The cast and crew need to stop PROMISING things. The way they might see things in the show doesn’t mean the audience will see them the same way. So it leaves them far more vulnerable to disappointing fans by promising certain things, and then angering fans who aren’t satisfied with the outcome based on what they thought the promise meant.

I mean. I suppose this is the best possible way to come to terms with the lack of development for Lance or Hunk, with an excellent story-driven season that did have many good character moments.

But some good character moments spread over 13 episodes doesn’t-a-character-arc-make. Dropping a single episode of backstory flashes doesn’t make a character arc either. If they’d delivered on building up to Hunk rescuing his family over multiple episodes, then HEY that’d be a Hunk-centric character arc. But they didn’t. They never actually focused on him rescuing them beyond gathering intel that it was impossible across a single episode. So it sucks because they actually created an opportunity where they could’ve done it, and then didn’t.

I’ve noticed since season 6 that Lance has increased his leading ability in battles, but that’s about the only place we really see it. Without the same screen time as Keith Shiro or Allura, he gets left in the dust, even if he is starting to make calls and be trusted. It doesn’t mean much when we don’t get to see how that transfers off the battlefield in his relationships with the other characters. Lance had more significant character moments last season than this season. None of his moments this season were as much on the forefront as his moments from last season were.

Okay here’s the part where the juvenile inside of me vents on somethings

HOW DARE THEY KILL ADAM!! NOOOOO SHIRO DOESN’T GET A BREAK.

It’s like they premiered episode 1 early to get people more attached to Adam than they would be if they went in blind and binged the episodes, so the loss of him would have a bigger impact.

HOW DARE THEY LET US THINK THE PALADINS ARE DEAD FOR THAT LONG.

in this day and age and tv shows trying to be edgy AND this being the season finale. I feared that they could possibly have chosen to seriously kill them off and have those other earth kids take their place for a new season where they’re led by Shiro or something. They’d constructed the season in a way that that seemed possible with those kids as a team in the background.

And shows like Once Upon a Time did a whole 180 on their show in their final season, making it with entirely new characters. And manga like Attack on Titan did it. So I thought it was possible they’d do it. It’d be shitty and a betrayal of the audience to do such a thing in Voltron. But I was afraid it was possible, especially with how out of sync the last episode was with the first 12.

but they didn’t. and i can breathe a little easier

honestly, no matter how good this season was, I can’t see how they can adequately wrap the story up in 13 more episodes.

well, wrap up the story AND give me the character development I desire.

Okay, now the klance fan in me is coming out.

Because there wasn’t any character development for Lance this season, and no real solid interactions between them outside of the gameshow. I really think it might not happen. I know season 6 made a lot of fans lose hope where I only found lots of hope, but this season. Definitely, hope=lost.

Where did fans get that information going around “Lance is the only one in a relationship at the end and with someone he needs not someone he wants.” Did someone official really say that? Cuz I’ve always seen it floating around, but I don’t know where it comes from.

The lgbt representation they’ve been promising. It honestly feels like Shiro/Adam and the heavy hints of Zethrid/Ezor could be the extent of it. Which are nice. But having a main character in a relationship NOW would be much nicer, or at least in an ATTRACTION. Don’t even have to make it a relationship.

if they do give us allurance, I hope it’s only to show us how incompatible they are as a couple and have them go back to being friends. Like Rachel and Joey on Friends (i feel like I’ve made this exact comparison before)

Honestly I'm kinda hoping that Allura’s blush was aimed at Lance’s sister, cuz Allura/Veronica I’d be SO down for that. The irony of the girl Lance likes falling for his sister. YES give me more. I mean, even if it was to make jabs at Lance, her first comments about Allura was “she’s beautiful.” Like, yes Veronica, tell us more.

even though I talked about how this was the best season, I spent SO MUCH MORE time and energy on my disappointment.

Maybe I should sit on the disappointment for a few days then do a slower rewatch. I talked about this in a previous rewatch textpost about how knowing what happens and watching makes it more enjoyable because you’re not holding all this heavy expectations that you hope will be filled, only to be disappointed. Now that I know exactly what I’m getting, I bet a rewatch will help me get back to all the things I did love about the season to make me think it’s the best season of the bunch.

Cuz i was so like “ROMELLE IS ALL OF US” and Lance splitting up passengers and hating his choice was hilarious, and the excellence that was the stranded in space episode. Acxa in general. i love her forever. I also love Zethrid/Ezor. it’s like if azula/ty lee became a thing with a way more bloodthirsty ty lee.

Hopefully I’ll make more commentary about my quick jots above when I do my rewatch.

PS: Kosmo can’t be his name cuz Keith is still waiting for the dog to tell him his name “when he’s ready” (spoiler: it’s yorak) that’d be awesome if it’d happen and i’d die. If the last word of this series was the dog telling keith his name. that’d make me happy.

#vld season 7 #Voltron legendary defender #spoilers #lance #hunk #my commentary

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