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coepiteamare · 4 years ago

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depth of field

pairing: yoongi x female!reader genre: angst (are we surprised), fluff, reader is an actress, yoongi is photographer warning: a lot of feelings, uhm there’s like 2 lines about sex but it’s not super explicit, bad break ups, not beta read, heartbreak, header credit: lovely isa! she’s so talented please check her out @monvante word count: 9.5k (how and why this became the longest thing i’ve written, i don’t know) rating: sfw though slightly mature (2 lines about sex but not explicit) collab: the valentine’s day collab with a bunch of awesome writers! please check out everyone’s stories!

summary: yoongi is a nature photographer and you’re an actress who’s spent her entire life in front of the cameras. when he’s hired (against his will) for a photoshoot, he’s not quite expecting you: all smiles and charm and mystery. (alt: you laugh, and yoongi hears the night sky crumble into a thousand shooting stars. he fumbles with the settings, his heart rattling in his chest like the camera in his hands, but for the first time, the picture doesn’t do the sight in front of him justice.) A/N: this is....so late because i am big dumb + life changes + writing is hard. i have extremely mixed feelings on this one, but if you do read it, i hope it makes you feel something. if you listen to epik high, a lot of this was written while listening to “sleepless in _________”.

[Triptych: Sleepless In The City.JPEG]

[alt.image: Black and white triptych of a view outside a bedroom window. The position of the shot is the same in all three: all of them are directly facing an open window depicting the Seoul skyline. Towards the bottom of the picture, the edge of a bed can be seen: a plaid blanket with a light coloured bed frame. Right below the window is a dark wood dresser with a glass of water on top. At the center of the frame is a square, side hung window with light coloured (white) curtains on the sides. The first frame depicts a light blue coloured sky. There’s a lens flare at the top right of the corner. The second frame depicts a gradient sky. There’s light from the buildings shining through. The third frame depicts a darker sky, but the building lights are still on. The glass of water lies in the same position through the pictures, with little to no change in water amount.]

There’s a loud bzzt bzzt coming from the side of his bed as sleep clings to his eyelashes and glues his eyes shut, exhaustion still running through his veins. His fingers fumble, groping in the darkness, for the source of the noise until his fingers clasp around his phone and silence it. He rubs his face in his pillow and lets himself settle in again, sleep creeping back when—bzzt, bzzt—there’s another round of vibrations from his phone. Yoongi knows he turned on the do not disturb mode, so he contemplates answering as his fingers make contact with his phone, before pressing the side button and turning it off.

He shuts his eyes, but sleep doesn’t call his name this time around. Someone else does, as the door swings open.

“Yoongi!”

Yoongi groans and pulls the covers over his head, letting the weighted blanket settle around his body, but Hoseok peels it off his body without a struggle.

“You could have called when you came back,” Hoseok opens the black out curtains, afternoon light flooding through the window and making Yoongi’s vision dance.

“You could have called before you barged in.”

“I did,” Hoseok settles on the edge of his bed, laughing when Yoongi kicks him off, “you didn’t answer.”

“I was busy.” He sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes, the afterglow of his dreams fading from his mind.

Hoseok looks at the suitcase still packed at the corner of his bed, at the instant noodle cups on the counter. “I see that.”

Yoongi shrugs and reaches for the camera bag on his nightstand, fiddling with the zippers and refusing to meet Hoseok’s eyes.

It’s quiet before there’s a sigh that paints the silence between them. Hoseok reaches his hand out, eyes a little soft, smile a little apologetic, and Yoongi gives him the camera.

“So how was Greenland?”

“Cold. Colder than here. Not green at all.” Hoseok laughs at that, and perhaps it’s the weather, the lack of people Yoongi has seen the past few months, or Hoseok’s sunny disposition dispelling the shadows, but there’s a small warmth that blooms through Yoongi. “It was nice though. Nice pictures.”

“I can see that. Did you have an exhibition in mind for these?”

“No. I just wanted a change of pace for a bit.” he clears his throat, trying to unstick the words clinging to his esophagus. “New environment. Clear my head. Look for new inspiration.”

Hoseok hands him back the camera. “I signed you up for RKIVE LAB’s Valentine’s Day exhibition.” Yoongi stops fiddling with the buttons and grips the camera a little tighter. “Portraits of love. Pictures of people required.”

“I don’t take pictures of people.”

“You used to. Before.” Hoseok doesn’t say it—knows to shut his mouth even before Yoongi glares at him—but the presence of the words stains the air like an unwanted lens flare smudged across the picture. The weight of it lingers, glaringly obvious in the silence, as heavy as the blanket curled up at Yoongi’s feet.

“Used to. Not anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t do it again.”

“And that doesn’t mean I want to. Besides, I’m not ready for another exhibition.”

“Yoongi,” Hoseok takes a seat on the bed and this time, Yoongi doesn’t chide him for it. “Your last exhibition was a year ago. You stopped photographing people for 8 months. 4 months ago, you decided—out of the blue, mind you—to pack up and visit Greenland, 2 weeks before your exhibition. Not only was PR an absolute nightmare, but you also scared me. I was worried about you.”

There’s a sense of guilt that trickles through him at Hoseok’s words. Yoongi hugs his knees to his chest and tucks his chin over them. He’d sink into the floor if he could, let it swallow him whole if it meant he could avoid the conversation, but knowing Hoseok, he’d continue, even when it closed back up.

“You need to let go,” Hoseok squeezes his shoulder.

“I need to sleep. I’m still jet lagged.”

“It’s been a week since you’ve come back!”

“Exactly,” he pouts, and tries to reach for his blanket, but Hoseok gently slaps his hands away. His voice softens when he opens his mouth, insecurity painting the edges.“I just don’t think I’m ready for an exhibit. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”

“I think you just need to try.”

The sigh that leaves his body doesn’t do much for the heaviness that he can’t seem to dispel. He’s tried. Tried to take pictures, tried to photograph people, but he doesn’t know how to capture them without the lens of heartbreak, without finding pieces of his ex hidden in filters. He’s tried to forget, tried to remember, tried to drown everything out to the bitter taste of alcohol, and nothing worked. He tries, and nothing works.

“I don’t know how to take pictures of people anymore,” Yoongi says weakly.

Hoseok’s smile is bright, too bright, the picture of false reassurance. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve already made a call.”

[Ready Or Not.JPEG]

[alt. Image: An out of focus, blurry, god shot, full body photograph of a girl. She wears a short red dress with thin straps and black platform boots. There’s a pink and green image/texture projected on top of her as she poses with her arms stretched over her head. The woman is not at the centre of frame, but more towards the right. The photograph appears to be taken hastily, as if the photographer was falling down when taking the shot.]

Yoongi’s forgotten how much light is involved with studio shoots: the moment he steps into the studio, there’s a flash of bright light, and there’s small spots of light dancing in the corner of his vision. He wants to go home, curl back into his cotton sheets, and hide under the covers.

It’s convenient, he’ll admit. Outdoor photography, especially nature photography, means hours and hours of planning ahead, of trekking into the wilderness and adjusting lenses and camera angles, and tripod placements to get the perfect shot, only to have something—be it the sun, or a bug, or an animal, or a tree that decides to fall at that moment—interfere and ruin the moment. But indoor photography means that everything gets to be controlled, adjustable to his whims.

Yoongi fiddles with his camera settings, finger nervously itching for something to do in the unfamiliar environment. He’s not sure if he likes these kinds of photographs, the ones scripted and tweaked until perfection is smudged against the frame of the picture. He likes spontaneity, likes the unpredictability of nature, but he also likes the idea that everything can be adjusted, picture perfect, to the way he wants it. (No one leaves, no one hurts. Just pictures. Just his ideas.)

“I didn’t know we were getting a new photographer.”

He spins around and almost stumbles backwards at the sight of you. He could easily have deemed you as one of the set pieces: clothes perfectly pressed, skin glossy, not a hair out of place. You're brilliant and dazzling and beautiful, pressurised to perfection, and Yoongi doesn’t know if he likes that. Doesn’t like the crisp edges of your pants, the sharp angles of your shoulders.

“My name is Y/N. It’s nice to work with you.”

He stares at the hand in front of him for a second before wiping his palm on his pants. Your smile doesn’t fade as Yoongi gingerly shakes your hand. “Yoongi. I’m just here to watch Vante on shoot. I haven’t photographed people in a while, and our agent thought it would help me to watch him in action.”

The way your eyes sparkle, light up brighter than the studio lights, feels uncanny: he knows he’s seen it before, but he’s not sure where. It stirs up a familiar feeling in his tummy, like the anticipation that builds just as he’s about to press the click of a shutter.

“I’m sure you’re a lot better than you think you are,” your smile is warm, but it sends a chill down his spine. It feels wrong, like he’s stuck in the wrong picture frame, the wrong background. The ground is blurry, his head is light, and when he blinks, everything feels cold.

“You’re a lot better than you think you are, Yoongi. I’ve seen the photos. I know you,” his voice is warm, and Yoongi can hear the smile in the way he grips his hands. “I want to see the exhibit you put up, and I know other people will too.”

“Hey,” there’s a jolt of electricity when you touch him. He blinks, and your face is in front of his, brows knitted. “You okay? I lost you for a moment.”

“Fine,” his voice is scratchy, so he coughs to clear it. “I’m fine. Just-uhm-it’s been a minute. Memories. I haven’t stepped foot in a studio for a while.”

“You must have loved it. Taking pictures of people,” when he tilts his head and tries to make sense of your words, you smile and let go of his shoulder. “You wouldn’t have had such a visceral reaction if you didn’t love it. I’m a firm believer that the things we love never leave us. So you’ll find that spark again. I believe in you.”

When the shoot starts, Yoongi moves around, trying to remember what it was like to work with other people other than him, what it’s like to capture the soul of a human being through a split second. But his mind is still standing where you left him, trying to digest your words to the tune of shutter sounds and someone else’s voice.

All throughout the shoot, he wants to puke, wants to unclog the memories that won’t drain and be forgotten. But they keep playing—over and over and over—and refuse to stop. He talks to Vante in a daze, but he’s unable to wake up from the voice that he hears over and over again—you’ll find that spark again, Yoongi. I believe in you—until your voice cuts through the fog.

“Wait!” he grabs your wrist, and quickly lets go when you turn back, eyes wide. “Wait. i-uhm-have an exhibition and I was wondering if you would be interested. In being the subject.”

“I’m flattered, but-” you pause and bit your lip, eyebrows furrowed, and there’s that feeling again, the click of a puzzle piece falling into place: everything feels all too familiar and foreign at once, like a dream he knew long ago, a photograph he’s taken and forgotten about. Jamais vu and deja vu all at once.

It’s stupid, he knows. But there’s something about you that he doesn’t know how to let go. He’s not sure he’s ready to let go.

“What’s your exhibit on?”

“Love.” He takes a sharp breath in. The word feels a sucker punch to the gut, like touching a wound that hasn’t healed. “What it means to fall in love.”

He knows his face gives away more than he wants to, but you don’t press him for answers. You continue to smile and ask him other questions about his photography instead, but something about the way you pretend like everything is fine reminds him of him, and everything hurts more. He answers the questions, tries to see you instead of his outline over yours, but still sees him in the way your eyes smile, in the sharp raise of your brows, and the quick way you navigate his defenses and gives him his space.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for an exhibit.”

“I don’t think we ever know if we’re ready for anything,” you smile, and he feels nauseous again, like something is trying to crawl out of him. He hears the voices in his head crash over him like a wave, drowning out the sounds of everything and everyone else.

How do you know you’re ready? He hears his voice wobble from the weight of his sorrow, quiver from the pressure of composure. He can’t meet his eyes.

“I don’t think we’re ever ready for anything, Yoongi. But we don’t know until we try.”

“But we do it anyway. Because we never know until we try, right?”

“Right,” he repeats soullessly. (He wasn’t ready then. He doesn’t know if he’s ready now. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to move on.)

“So I’ll do it.”

Yoongi snaps out of his reverie at your words, blinks away the fog. “Pardon?”

“I’ll do it. I don’t want to be the reason you don’t do this,” you purse your lips. “I do have a favour to ask though.”

“What is it?”

The smile that spreads over your face, slow and cheshire, makes him grip his camera tighter. “How do you feel about going to a party?”

[Are You In Love.JPEG]

[alt image. Nighttime. A girl in a white dress on a rooftop with skyscrapers behind her. Her hair is blown back by the wind. Although her face is mostly turned away from the camera, there’s a hint of a smile on her face. Her eyes are closed as she spins around, dress billowing around her. The ends of the dress are unseen because the photograph cuts off at what would be her knees to show the cityline behind her. The skyscrapers are out of focus, blurry, so the girl is highlighted. Despite the lights in the background and the moon in the corner, she is the brightest piece in the photograph.]

Yoongi has never been a fan of parties or crowds. He doesn’t like the rush of people, of bodies pressed against each other as they slide across the floor; he hates how the lights are too dim and too bright. It’s too loud, bass amplifying his insecurities and dampening his social skills.

Even at this gala, stuffed with people with important positions and famous titles, where the music is moderately loud and the tables are posh with red velvet tablecloths, Yoongi feels out of place. His glass flute feels awkward in his hand, tie a little too tight no matter how much he pulls it down. He knows he doesn’t belong here (or there or anywhere. It was always him who belonged and Yoongi who followed): security had stopped him before he entered telling him “paparazzi not allowed,” and gave him a once over when he fished out the invitation from his pocket, hesitantly letting him enter the venue and side-eyeing him the entire time. Minutes tick by, and there’s only so many hors d'oeuvres s he can devour, so he pulls out his phone to send you a text of rushed excuses (i have food poisoning. My pipes burst. My car broke down?) and hasty apologies. Just as he manages to get halfway to the exit, squeezing in between crowds, he sees you.

A smile dawns over your face, and all his insecurities melt into the background. “I’ve been looking all over for you”

He points towards the buffet at the back. “They have good crab puffs.”

You laugh at that, and he feels his cheeks stretch into a smile. The silence that hangs over the two of you now feels comfortable, like the world is dimming down to highlight you both, and Yoongi takes the moment to watch your eyes sparkle under the crystal chandeliers twinkling above you. You look at him, quirk an eyebrow and nod towards the exit. “Want to get out of here?”

“Yes please.”

You grab his hand, lace your fingers with his, and pull him up the stairs to the roof, letting go to run to the edge. He feels where your palm was in his, the loss of your warmth, and wants to reach back out to you.

“How pretty.” The wind is cold, sinking teeth through skin and tearing through hair, but you cross your arms and fight back, planted firmly where you are to look at the view beneath you: small glimpses at people living their lives.

Yoongi can’t take his eyes off of you. “Yeah. Pretty.”

“I like coming to the rooftops at parties. Sometimes, when the world is too loud and too much, I go up to the rooftop and I just stand here. ” your teeth chatter, and Yoongi rushes to take off his coat and drape it over your shoulders. Your fingers brush against his and something about you, he realises, feels like a fever dream: hot, hazy, and electric, even in the bitter chill of the winter winds. “I come up to the rooftop and I just look at people living their lives and wonder what I would be doing if I wasn’t here.”

Something about the way you look, empty and hollow, carves a hole in Yoongi’s chest. His fingers itch to reach for the shutter, bring it back to his eye and catch you in his view, but he fiddles with the camera strap around his neck instead. “What does it feel like? Being at the top?”

What does it feel like? To be at the top? Yoongi writes and deletes over and over and over again.

Your laughter sounds as bitter as the wind, but your smile is still fixed in place when you turn your body to meet his. “Like a rollercoaster. Only it’s going backwards as it goes up, so I can see the floor, see the bottom. I am always aware of how far I have to fall. I see the damage before it’s done, so I am always anticipating the drop.”

Your shoulders sag, his jacket slipping down, and Yoongi, for a moment, thinks he sees stars glimmering in your eyes, catching the light of the city and threatening to fall. But when he blinks, all traces of it are gone and you’re back to the girl in the ballroom, smile shy and coy and knowing.

“So what about you, photographer? What does it feel like to be in love?”

His brows furrow and there’s a flush of heat blooming on his cheeks. His heart beats a little faster, staccato against his ribcage, like it’s trying to outrun the shame of being discovered. He’s not sure how you know, so all he can do is stutter. “I don’t-I mean-”

You raise your eyebrow, quirk your head to the side. “Isn’t that your exhibit theme? Explorations of love?”

“Oh,” before he can stop it, a film strip of memories starts playing through his head, snapshots of a relationship shelved in the back of his closet. It’s a slow slide show that sticks to his throat with every image, printed and smudged into the corners of his thoughts. He feels the corset of his ribcage tighten until he’s breathless, so he looks everywhere. Everywhere but you. “I don’t really know what love is supposed to feel like anymore.”

When your hand gently presses against his chest, Yoongi’s eyes widen, feet gently fumbling backwards from the chill of your fingers. “Does it hurt here?”

“What?”

“Are you heartbroken?”

The words fall off your lips casually, like you were asking him how he took his coffee (no sugar, no cream) or how he liked his steak, and not plunging into his insecurities the way the cold of your fingers sink into his skin. The two of you blink in silence as Yoongi struggles to find the words. Everything feels wrong, his tongue twisting and falling to form the correct sounds—

“Stop thinking about it. Feel it here.” you press a little harder against his chest, “Are you heartbroken?”

(Empty coffee cups, songs unfinished, laughter in the walls that he’s unable to scrub off. Yoongi remembers all of it.)

“Yeah.” it’s quiet, his voice stuck in his chest, but he sees the corners of your eyes soften and knows you hear his honesty over the howling wind. “I am.”

You retract your hand and hug his coat a little closer. “I don’t think there’s just one form of love, just as I don’t think there’s just one way to love someone. We love differently, and we love different people differently. Heartbrokenness is just another form of love. Just because they’re not there doesn’t change the way you love them or the fact that you love them. It just means all the love you have to give is still sitting here,” you bring your hand back to his chest, cover his heartbeat, “with no place to go. Isn’t that love?”

Isn’t that love? Seokjin asks him, sitting in the corner of Yoongi’s room. The sun casts a golden glow over his skin, kisses his dimples, and Yoongi swears Seokjin has always been more ethereal than mortal. “You take photos and bring me food when I forget to leave my desk because that’s what you know how to do. I write you songs and love letters because that’s what I know how to do. We say I love you in different ways, but does that make it any less love?

“I guess it doesn’t make it any less love.”

You look his way and laugh, brilliant and dazzling and beautiful, and nothing in the sky can compare: not the moon, nor the comets, nor the galaxies. You laugh, and Yoongi hears the sky crumble into a thousand shooting stars. He fumbles with the settings, his heart rattling in his chest like the camera in his hands, but for the first time, the image through the lens doesn’t do the sight in front of him justice.

But he tries anyway. He presses down on the shutter and tries to stuff your laughter into a freeze frame, even though he knows it won’t compare.

It could never.

[____Struck.JPEG]

[Alt Image: A girl sits with her chin over her knees next to a floor length window as a rainstorm blurs the background into hazy lights. The lighting is dark, but there’s a flash of lightning outside as it lights up the girl’s face. She stares outside her window, at the sky, deep in contemplation.]

Yoongi finds that Seoul sparkles when you’re next to him. Even the bitter winter winds that blow through his parka can’t steal the warmth of your hand in his when the two of you walk through the streets. The two of you start to spend more time together, getting food and eating in your apartment and taking pictures of nature. You’ll have glasses and a cap and a mask on, and there’ll be more of you he can’t see than he can, and still he finds you to be the brightest star in the night sky. But he likes you best like this: dressed with a smile and his t-shirt, face free of the traces of your day, in bed with him. He’s not sure when he’s found himself to be at home in your place, but he finds himself there instead of his studio apartment. Outside the window of your penthouse apartment, he can see the Seoul skyline and skyscrapers: if he looks down, he can see smudges of people walking through the streets, living about their daily lives.

Sometimes, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night to find you sitting on the floor, against the floor length window, looking at the world below you.

“Come back to bed,” he’ll murmur, sleep still fogging his vision, and you’ll smile, set your tea on the nightstand, and wrap your arms around him as he pulls you closer to him until the andante of your heartbeats lull him to sleep.

Tonight, however, your head is leaned up against the glass, watching as the rain pours down, and there’s something about the moment that makes Yoongi reach for the camera to take a quick shot. He knows the lighting is off and the shadows are dark, but something about the way you’ve tucked your knees under your chin and folded in on yourself makes you seem so small, so different from the girl he sees on the billboards and magazine covers and television shows.

You turn around when the flash goes off. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“The thunder,” he explains, just as another flash of light strikes through the sky. You hum, but don’t move towards him: this time, you look back out the window. He’s tempted to wait for the lightning to strike again so he could have the shot of your face illuminated in light, but the image through his viewfinder looks so different from what he’s used to, so he takes the camera with him and sits down across from you. He leans his face against the cool of the glass.

“Hey,” you smile, but it doesn’t reach your eyes. He sees the shadows under your eyes, the build up from over night shoots, and it tugs his heart. There’s something beautiful about you like this, in the normalcy.

“Hey,” the two of you sit in the silence for a minute. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Another flash of lightning, then a roll of thunder. “Just thinking about how many people are out there, just living their lives. I wonder if they all know me, if they have an opinion of me, if they’ve seen me act. I wonder who I am to them, if I am anybody at all.”

“What do you mean?”

You pull your fingers away from the glass, but don’t look at him. “I feel as though I am always playing a character. So, I wonder what character they know me as. If they would be interested in knowing who I am.”

His hand reaches out to yours, and he moves his body closer to yours, until your knees are knocking against his and your legs are entwined. “I’m interested.”

Another flash. You smile, but it fades as quickly as the lightning does. “What about you? Anything on your mind? You seemed pretty distracted earlier.”

It’s Yoongi’s turn to not meet your eyes. There’s a slew of umbrellas below, a bunch of colourful blobs against the pavement. (Seokjin liked the rain. Do you like the rain? He’s not sure.)

“It’s nothing.” He can’t meet your eyes.

“Is it hard to let them go? The one who broke your heart?”

Yoongi hears the way your voice softens, the way it carries through the room gently, the same way you asked him if he was heartbroken up on the roof weeks ago. You’re always a little more perceptive then he gives you credit for, a little too good at reading in between the lines. He lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah. Yeah he is. I still think about him sometimes. Sometimes, I still hear his voice in my head.”

He feels your gaze on him, but neither of you say anything for a while.

He knows you have a busy day tomorrow, jam packed with schedules and meetings and shoots and bits of sleep in between. (Not that your days are ever not busy. You’re always running from here to there, a blur of motion in the screenshots of his memories.) But the two of you just look out the window, at the storm that refuses to quell, and listen to the rain fall.

He wakes up next to the lingering warmth of your body heat, your shampoo still clinging to the pillows and sheets. There’s not much to do today, so he takes his time getting ready to go back to his apartment and edit. Just as he’s putting his toothbrush into your toothbrush holder, his phone starts to vibrate.

Before he’s even said hello, Hoseok’s voice cuts through the phone. “How’s your exhibit coming along?”

“Good morning, Hoseok. How was your sleep? Mine was lovely, thank you for asking.”

There’s a sigh that comes through the phone. “I slept great. So how’s your exhibit?”

“It’s coming along.”

“Word on the street is that you’re getting close to Y/N.”

He catches a look at himself from the entrance mirror and is glad Hoseok can’t see him right now. There’s a small constellation on the dip of his collarbone from a couple nights ago. “We’re working together on the exhibit, yeah.”

“Yoongi, I’m serious. I’m glad that you’re editing and taking photos; I really am. I just think—if you are more than just coworkers—you should take it slow. You remember what happened last time-”

“It’s not like that this time Hoseok.”

“I know. But it’s happened before. You always fall too hard, too fast and then you don’t know how to dig yourself out of the hole when it’s over. “

Yoongi gently shuts the door behind him, shoves his free hand into his coat pocket. “When do I need to send you the pictures?”

Another sigh. This one is heavier than the other. “Next Friday.”

“Alright. I’ll see you then.”

“Just take care of yourself, Yoongi.”

“I know,” there’s a hum from the other end before he presses end call. “Trust me, I know.”

[Love Looks Pretty On You.JPEG]

[Alt Image: A girl turning around to smile at the camera as she holds the hand of the photographer. There’s a lens flare at the upper left corner of the picture. She glows as she smiles, sunlight hitting her cheekbones. The picture is a bust shot, and though the girl is in the centre of frame, she is slightly out of focus: the photo is mainly focused on the interlocked hands due to the depth of field.]

It’s strange how in love you are with the mundane. You like coffeeshop dates, holding hands in public, and the ability to walk down the streets without covering up your face, things Yoongi has never thought twice about. He prefers time spent in doors, tucked away with food and natural lighting. But you prefer the outdoors, the sun on your face, even if it isn’t the great outdoors. No, you like pavement and parks and everything in between if it means you don’t have to cover up.

“I’ve never really had that,” you told him once, mouth stuffed with street food. “I’ve always been conscious of the way people look at me, how they’re going to view me, and the eyes. I’m always aware of people’s eyes on me. Growing up in the spotlight, working in this industry for so long meant I don’t get to have the normal things in life.”

So he tries to take you out more, though more often than not, it ends with the two of you running away from shadows and bright lights. More often than not, the two of you find your way to his or your apartment, tucked away from the eyes of everyone else with take out spread across the floor. He dreads the moment you pull your hands away from him, when the hands on the clock move too quickly for his taste. Tonight, however, he has you all to himself.

So, he takes his time: delicately arranges the bouquet of purple across your chest and up your thighs, gently plucks your moans from your lips, and plants kisses on the field of your shoulder blades when the bloom of pleasure becomes too much.

Your chest gently rises and falls under the white sheet, while his heart rapidly flutters inside his ribcage. Before he knows it, his fingers are on camera, trying to immortalise the moment before time takes it away from him too.

When the shutter goes off, you bring your hand to his, pull his body to yours, and nuzzle your face in his shoulder. “So.”

“So?”

“Exhibition soon. Have you figured it out?” You pull back and trace your finger along the constellation you drew on to his chest. “What it feels like to fall in love?”

He’s not sure. It feels fast: time seems to slip through his fingers when he’s with you. It feels slow: every moment is a picture frame, a freeze frame of a small infinity. It feels quiet: neither of you are loud, reveling in the silence and the quiet, sharing the same breath. It feels loud: you smile and he hears the sirens go off, ringing his mind until it’s drowned out by the pounding in his chest. I don’t know. It just feels different with you, he wants to say, but it sounds stupid in his head. It’s similar to how he felt like with Seokjin, but brighter, a saturation of colours and experiences.

“Feels like you,” he tugs you closer.

His brows furrow when you reach away from him, and he tries to pull you back: he reaches for your hand, but you slip away from him with a small smile. “Tea. I’ll be back.”

He hears the pitter patter of your footsteps as you walk into the hallway, and he waits for you to come back. He waits and waits, until his eyelids grow too heavy.

When he blinks again, the light is shining through your curtains. The blanket is tucked under his chin, but the bed is empty. He rolls over, but it’s cold.

The pillow doesn’t smell like you.

[Apparition.JPEG]

[Alt Image: A picture of someone’s eyes. The eyes are staring directly into the lens. One eye is lighter than the other, due to the angle of the sunlight. Although they are in the center of frame, the face is turned slightly to the side, as though they turned around for this picture.]

It gets harder and harder to meet you through the interstices of your schedule: you text him less and less, and he finds himself trying to find every possible reason to see you.

Did you eat?

Are you free anytime soon?

I miss you.

Every short text finds an even shorter response, crammed between short breaks. He spends more time fiddling with his phone, shooting up at the glow of his screen, than he does with his camera. His camera sits on his nightstand, untouched for the past few days: every time he tries to take a picture, all he can see is you. You laughing at dumb cat videos he sends you. You squealing in delight as the unpredictable Seoul weather brings rainfall. You leaning your head against the glass, lost in thought.

He sees you in unfinished pizza boxes and unfinished netflix shows and half empty mugs strewn around. He finds you in everything. So when you show up at his doorstep, pizza box in hand and hat over your head, he almost dismisses you as an apparition.

You stick your foot in his doorway to stop him from shutting the door. “You’re not kicking me out so soon? Not when I brought pizza?”

He takes the pizza box from you, still a little unsure if you’re real, but then you call his name.

“Hi Yoongi,” you smile, and it’s so much prettier than he remembers. He knows you’ve had a long day—eyes glazed, shoulders drooping, smile falling—and something about the way you’re trying to hold your smile makes a corner of his chest squeeze tighter, until it hurts to breathe. He’s not sure what to say, not sure how to move past the breathlessness, so the two of you wordlessly chew on your pizzas.

When the tension grows thick, the silence hard to breathe through, the clump of feelings in the pit of his stomach feels harder to hold on to, so he blurts out, “I love you.”

His confession rings through the room, echoes in the silence, and crashes against your chest. Though neither of you say anything, he continues to hear the ripples in his head, his voice repeating over and over again. You don’t look at him, and his leg won’t stop bouncing, his hands won’t stop fidgeting with the camera settings.

“I love you,” he says once more, just in case you didn’t hear it. He hopes your silence is because you didn’t hear it the first time. He knows better, from the way you bite your lip (your nervous habit) to the way you shrink into yourself (another tick he’s noticed).

“I should leave. I have an early shoot tomorrow.” you stand. The smile plastered on your face makes him want to hurl, too reminiscent of your first meeting when you held him at an arm’s distance. When Seokjin held him at an arm’s distance, right before he told Yoongi I don’t think I’m the person you’re in love with. I don’t think this is going to work out. When Seokjin smiled and told him I’m sorry but wasn’t sorry enough to answer the phone when Yoongi’s heart was bloody and broken and drenched in alcohol.

“But I love you,” it’s quiet and hoarse this time, and Yoongi doesn’t know if you can hear it over the sound of his heart breaking, but you turn around. The smile on your face—brilliant and dazzling and empty—burns something in him, the hollowness of his chest suddenly swelling with rage.“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“That,” Yoongi motions to you, brows furrowed and anger coating his tongue. “Stop looking at me like I'm a screenplay and a set, like you’re trying to read me and understand what I want. I don’t want anything from you.”

“That’s ridiculous. Everyone wants something.”

“Fine. I want you to be you. not what looks best on screen, not what you think I want you to be. But you. I want you to be you.”

“What’s that supposed to be like? Being me?” the anger lacing your voice, the way your smile drops quickly off your face, makes Yoongi’s anger fizzle out into a cold chill. “You don’t realise how biased the camera is, how you’re seeing the picture the way you want to, the way you want to frame things? Tell me you look at me and you don’t see what could be changed. that you don’t see how you would adjust the exposure, how to narrow or widen the depth of field.”

Yoongi doesn’t say anything, mouth glued shut and sticking together with shame. There’s a heat licking up his neck to his cheeks that burns through his skin and into his chest that only grows hotter when you continue.

“My job is to give people what they want, squeeze myself into a character and a script. Become a fantasy they can project on. I’ve spent my entire life being different people and fitting myself into the role they want me to play. I don't exist, Yoongi. I only exist between action and cut. I am constantly in some form of a take. I am constantly shooting different movies for different people, being the different characters they want me to be. You want something from me too, Yoongi. Don’t you get it?”

He forces himself to look up at you.

“Did you like me for me, Yoongi?” You tilt your head, eyes tired. “Or did you like me because something about me reminded you of your ex?”

Yoongi recoils, hurt spilling out of his veins. He opens and closes his mouth, but nothing falls out. Instead, it’s another roll of memories that plays through his head.

I think we should break up, Seokjin tells him and Yoongi drops his fork. When you look at me, it feels like you’re seeing someone else, a version of me that exists only in your head.

Who are you seeing when you take a picture, Yoongi?

Who am I to you?

What do you see through the lenses?

When you smile this time, it’s more of a grimace, like his silence gives you an answer. Your eyes fall to the floor, shoulders trembling as you laugh humorlessly, and you start to leave.

Yoongi tries to say something—anything, the correct thing—and frantically pulls at his brain. “But I love you.”

That makes you stop. You stay at the doorstep, hand gripping the doorknob, but don’t turn to face him. He waits for you to say something, anything, for you to turn around. But you don’t.

You open the door and close it behind you, never looking back.

He’s alone again.

[Blank.JPEG]

[alt.image: A black square. Darkness. The absence of light. The shade of broken heart. Is it nothing or everything? Is it too much or too little?]

Everything about you is intentional, from the tilt in your head (precise and exact, calculated) to the gleam in your eyes. The way your lips curl as you smile.

He wonders if his broken heart was also something written into the script, if he was playing the role of a character he never signed up for, if his broken heart was something you calculated from the very start, just like the angle of your head tilts and degrees of your smile.

His camera suddenly feels all too heavy, too fragile, and too much like his heart. If he wasn’t a photographer, would he have met you? In another world, would he have seen you through the view of his camera, just a subject and nothing else? No coffee dates and rooftop talks, no heartbreaks? He grips his camera tighter, and a flare of anger rushes through him, filtering every other thought and piercing through his vision. When he blinks and the lights settle, there’s a dull sense of pain near his foot and a dent in the wall.

There’s shards of broken lenses on the floor, but he shuffles back to bed, sob clawing at his throat.

Maybe you were like a film camera, brilliant and beautiful at first glance. Until the film is dipped into chemistry and developed and the errors are hung out to dry.

So why does it hurt so much?

There’s a loud bzzt bzzt coming from the side of his bed as sleep clings to his eyelashes and glues his eyes shut, exhaustion still running through his veins. His fingers fumble, groping in the darkness, for the source of the noise until his fingers clasp around his phone and silence it. He rubs his face in his pillow and lets himself settle in again, sleep creeping back when—bzzt, bzzt—there’s another round of vibrations from his phone. Yoongi knows he turned on the do not disturb mode, so he doesn’t contemplate answering when his fingers make contact with his phone, pressing the side button to shut it off.

He shuts his eyes, but sleep doesn’t call his name. Neither does Hoseok.

Instead Hoseok gently shuts the door after slipping off his shoes at the entrance. He makes his way over towards the bed, and Yoongi pulls the covers over his head. He waits for the tug, but it doesn’t come. Instead, there’s a gentle dip to the side of him when Hoseok takes a seat, silent.

They sit like that for a while, Yoongi gently breathing—up and down, up and down—with a chest that feels broken and a heart that rattles inside his ribcage. He still feels the hum of alcohol in his system, sloshing in his lungs as they rise and fall.

“I’m sorry, Yoongi,” Hoseok’s voice vibrates through the silence. “I’m sorry you were hurt. But you can’t keep yourself holed up.”

Yoongi shifts under the blankets, but doesn’t say anything. He wonders if sleep would drag him under if he pretended long enough. His head is throbbing, and he wants another drink, but he knows Hoseok won’t let him while he’s still here. He knows because the last time he was heartbroken, he shut himself inside his apartment for two months until he was more alcohol than water. He stopped going out, stopped answering phone calls, stopped taking pictures because everything reminded him of Seokjin.

Now that his camera is broken, he can’t be reminded of you. He drinks up until he can forget, until the film of memories is damaged, so he can fall asleep. When he wakes up and he remembers you still, he drinks up again to forget, shot after shot after shot. He doesn’t want to remember.

“I called RKive. Told them you weren’t doing it.”

“Okay,” he whispers. Yoongi’s so tired and his head hurts, and he just wants to get this over with as quickly as he can so Hoseok can leave and Yoongi can pour out his sorrows into a shot glass that never seems to run dry.

I don’t want to be the reason you don’t do this.

He wishes he could stop hearing your voice in his head, stop seeing you in every corner of his room, stop smelling your perfume on his sheets. He just wants to go to sleep, dream in black. Stop remembering you.

“I’m sorry, Yoongi.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Are you heartbroken?

“Yeah,” the tears fall and his shoulders shake when he sobs. “Yeah, I think I’m heartbroken.”

“Oh Yoongi,” Hoseok hugs him close, and Yoongi lets out the wail that’s been stuck in his chest the past week. For the first time, he wants to let go instead of take in, so he weeps into Hoseok’s chest, until his throat is dry from the sounds it’s making. His body trembles from the stuttering in his chest and the remnants of his sobs.

“I just want to stop hurting,” he hiccups into Hoseok’s shoulder as Hoseok gently pats him on the back.

“I know. I know.”

“How do I stop hurting?”

Hoseok gently peels himself away from Yoongi until he’s looking at him directly in the eyes. “You have to learn to find closure. Whether that’s talking to her, making art, or just going about your routines until it doesn’t hurt anymore. You have to try.”

“What if I’m not ready to move on?”

I don’t think we’re ever ready. But we do it anyway. Because we never know until we try, right?

“Moving on isn’t a step; it’s a goal, Yoongi,” Hoseok squeezes his hands. “You can work towards it. But it’s a conscious choice we make and conscious steps we take. And when you make those steps, it gets easier to breathe and visit places you used to. And one day, you’ll look around and realise that you’ve done it. Maybe not completely, but enough. But you can’t just hole yourself up in your apartment or flee the country. You have to try.”

Hoseok’s eyes are soft when Yoongi looks at him, and Yoongi understands that he’s never allowed himself to move on from Seokjin, just slapped a bandaid over his wound and pretended it didn’t exist. When he met you, he used you as a gauze to staunch the injury and called it healing. He didn’t notice that he bled all over you, didn’t see that you were bleeding over the red of his blood on your wounds. You were trying to tell him you were hurting, and he was too fixated on how similar you were to Seokjin, how he found love again, to hear.

“Hoseok,” Yoongi reaches out for his arm, squeezes his hand. “I want to do it.”

“Do what?”

“The exhibit,” his voice is muffled under his insecurities, but he wants this. “I want to do it.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he lies. “I think I need to do it. For me. To move on.” He’s not sure if he’s ready; he doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready. So he takes the step anyways.

Yoongi knows Hoseok is thrilled: he hasn’t stopped smiling since before the exhibition, when there was a crowd of people outside waiting to enter the exhibition, and even before that, when Yoongi was collecting the photos and taking more. Yoongi’s worked tirelessly through the nights to meet the Valentine’s Day exhibit deadline, but now that he’s here, he’s a little proud of himself.

He should find Hoseok, tell him thank you. He should also talk to Namjoon, the owner, and congratulate Jimin, Namjoon’s assistant, on a successful exhibition. He should talk to Jeongguk, the painter, about the rose installation piece that’s at the centre of the gallery. He should talk to Vante about the giant photograph of a bird’s eye view of Seoul. He should, but he’s looking for you.

You were the only guest he wanted to invite, even when Hoseok raised an eyebrow at him and asked him if he really wanted to do this. (He did. He texted you over the course of two weeks and deleted each message before it was sent. In the end, he sent you his heart the old fashioned way, with stamps and an envelope, and sealed it with the hope that you’ll receive it in time.) He doesn’t think you’ll come, so he tampers down the anticipation, tries to not look for your laughter or hear the way your eyes form crescents when you smile too hard. Despite the invitation, he doesn’t know if he’s ready to see you again, so he tries to keep himself busy and talk to the visitors about the pictures. He tries to not think about you.

But it’s hard when you’re all he has up for his exhibit, when your face is at every corner. When you’re all he’s been able to think about.

And as it slowly starts to get closer to the close, he tries to not be disappointed. He puts on a smile and asks Jeongguk about the sun and moon holding hands, discusses lighting techniques with Vante, and manages to make Jimin beam with pride when he compliments him about how nice the exhibit set up is.

When the clock strikes 5, Yoongi packs up his camera and tucks it into his bag with his disappointment and begins to head out.

“Take care, Jimin.”

“Bye, Yoongi!” Jimin chirps. “By the way! There’s a lady in front of your exhibit. I think she was captivated by it; she’s been standing there for the past half hour if you want to talk to her!”

A very familiar silhouette greets him.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

You don’t turn around to face him, just stand there looking up at the picture of you smiling at the camera with the covers pulled up to your chin. He hears the people in the background, the faint hum of murmurs and laughters, but you stand there, quiet and arms crossed. He takes a step towards you before shuffling back to his original spot, shifting his eyes to the portraits before him.

At first glance, you are the same girl in the portraits, but the longer he looks at the portraits, at you from the peripherals in his vision, the less the two of you look alike. The girl in the photographs is soft and bright and sunny, draped in warm light and colour corrections, saturated in happiness. The girl in front of him is worn down and exhausted, cloaked in disguises and fronts that she doesn’t have the strength to put on properly. “I remember this day, but I don’t remember it like that.” You nod towards the picture in front of you.

“What’s it like? In your memories?” he asks, and wants to take it back. There’s too many questions bubbling inside of him—Did you love me? Do you remember how I smiled when you did? What do your frames of memory look like? Do they look like mine, painted in a golden filter?—but he doesn’t know how to develop them into words. He’s not sure he wants to compare the photographs of your memories in the fear it’ll corrupt his.

You’re radio silent, so he stands there, shuffling his feet back and forth as his heart drops with each second. He understands what you meant, back at the rooftop, when you had said about riding a rollercoaster: he sees the answer to your question before you’ve spoken, sees the damage he’s caused through the lens of hindsight. Yet some part of him still wants to hear the words from you.

“I don’t remember a lot of it. I remember it was going well. And then I just remember the hurt. I remember realising you saw someone else when you looked at me, just like everyone else. How I wished I could take back everything from the beginning. I wished I could take back the first time I met you. What would it have been like if I had said no? Would it still hurt?”

“I’m sorry,” his hand reaches out for you automatically, too used to the warmth of your body and the lull of your heartbeat to alleviate the stiffness in his chest, but he pulls his hand back as he realises there is too much space between the two of you: he’s not sure if you want to shorten the distance, if you want him at all.

“Why did you say yes?” he asks instead of what he really wants to ask. “To this. To being the subject. You could have said no.”

“I could have.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because you seemed genuine.You looked like you were genuinely looking for a reason—for something, for anything, for purpose—and I liked that. I haven’t met a lot of people like that. Genuine. Earnest.” Your body turns to him, but your gaze is still brushing against the floor and clinging to your hands. “I think a part of me wanted, desperately, to be the source of your purpose. So I let myself believe that you genuinely wanted me for me.”

“I think I loved you.”

“I think the both of us were looking for someone to love,” the corners of your mouth wobble, a pale imitation of the blown up picture of your smile on the wall. “Maybe that’s why it didn’t work. Because we were blinded by our desperation.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that. The way you look—so curled up in yourself and so vulnerable—slowly makes him realise there’s so much to you he wasn’t able to see. Were there more moments you tried to open up to him, only to have him turn a blind eye because he was still thinking about Seokjin?

“I wish I had met you later. Maybe in a different universe, you and I have a different story line, one where when you and I meet, I have learned to accept love and you have learned to accept heartbreak. Maybe we would have been ready for each other then.” Your smile wobbles, just as it did last time, and Yoongi’s heart wobbles too. When you start to walk away, he tastes the bitterness of his memories surfacing.

“Wait!” he reaches out and grabs your hand, squeezes it a little too tight. When you turn, eyes wide, it feels like a scene he’s seen somewhere before, a picture he used to know. “We could. We could start over. We could make that universe this one.”

“I don’t-I’m not following.”

He drops your hand and offers you his. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. My name is Yoongi.”

“Yoongi, I’m not-”

“What’s your name?”

“Y/N,” you tentatively take his hand and shake it.

“It’s nice to meet you for the first time. This is my exhibit,” you smile, head tilted in confusion, but the light in your eyes is warm, so he keeps going,” and I was wondering if you wanted to get coffee?

You bite your lip, but don’t let his hand go. He tries to keep his smile on his face, but his heart is beating with the force of a supernova and he feels his nails cut through the skin of his anticipation. When you look down at his hand, he knows you can feel the tremors that run through it, the electricity of anxiety crackling through his veins, but he keeps his eyes on you and the way your eyes search his for clues, for cues and stage directions.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that,” you smile, and it feels like the first time he’s seeing you.

He’s not sure, this time, of the damage: he’s not sure he can anticipate the fall, the wreckage caused. Doesn’t know if he wants to.

It’s a brand new film strip. A new camera. A new storyline.

He’s never been more ready.

#yoongi fic #bts fic #yoongi x reader #yoongi fluff #yoongi angst #yoongi imagine #yoongi scenarios #bts fluff #bts scenarios #bts imagine #bts x reader #thebtswritersclub #heartsforbts #bangtaninn #btswritingcafe #bangtanuniversity

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sneakerdoodle · 4 years ago

Text

🎶⚗️✨

i have a lot of feelings about Wandersong's worldbuilding, music, magic and what it means for these two

image description:

.a 3-page comic featuring two characters from Wandersong, Miriam and Bard. the comic is partially colored (each object and character filled in with one individual color)

Miriam's color is light purple, Bard's is neon/salad green. Miriam's speech bubbles are rectangular and Bard's - circular.

Page 1: Miriam and Bard are sitting on the ground some distance away from each other. Miriam has pulled her knees up to her chest and is resting her arms on top of them, hiding the lower half of her face. she is watching Bard, who is sitting in a relaxed pose, one leg bent, leaning on their left arm and holding the right one up in front of them. on their right hand, a butterfly is sitting. Bard is smiling at it, singing.

the second panel shows Miriam still watching them as they lift their hand up higher, and the butterfly lifts off their fingers.

Third panel: Miriam lifts her head and addresses Bard with a sulking look; Bard is adjusting their pose, pulling both kness up.

Miriam: How do you do it? Bard: Huh?

Fourth panel: Bard is sitting in a butterfly pose, one arm up in the air, another at their chest, singing with their eyes closed. The butterfly from earlier turns around, attracted by Bard's singing once again. Miriam is turning away, sulking, her mouth hidden once again.

Bard: I just sing!~ You should try it!

Miriam: Doesn't work that way for me.

Fifth panel: Bard is looking at (apparently) Miriam, pondering; the butterfly has landed on their hat. There are three dots next to Bard's face.

Sixth panel: showing Bard looking up to the sky, hands resting on their legs, still in the butterfly position. The butterfly is disturbed by them turning their head and takes off.

Bard: I guess... There is more to it?

Page 2:

The first panel shows the butterfly and a leaf being carried by wind, with a treebranch in the background; there are notes floating in the air.

Bard's speech bubbles overlay the panel, saying: 'Everything has its own melody. If you listen and respond in a way that makes sense...'

Second panel: Miriam and Bard both looking up as Bard continues talking, smiling.

Bard: ...it resonates?

Third panel: Miriam's expression changes to a more relaxed open one, eyebrows raised a bit.

Miriam: ...I get it.

Bard (out of the frame): ?

Fourth panel:

Miriam is turning to the Bard, straigtening one leg, her arm resting on the bent kee of the other. She is gesturing to accompany her explantion, her exression once again more serious. Bard is facing her, listening with their mouth slightly open. Behind the two there is a grassy hill, and to the right the tree.

Miriam: That's how potion-making works.

Fifth panel:

Miriam continues her explanation, gesturing in front of her to demonstrate mixing. Above her, three of the four ingredients for the Potion of Power are shown: the mushroom, the flower and the leaf.

Miriam: You sense for the magic in nature and combine the right types.

Page 3:

The first panel takes up the entire width of the image and more then a half of its height. It's a close-up of a tree branch, with a mossy flowering growth near the base of it and a ladybug crawling along it. The moss and the ladybug are glowing faintly. Their colors are gradiented, the moss eventually mixing into the color of the tree.

Miriam's speech bubbles overlay the panel.

Miriam: It's... kinda great, seeing the world like that. Everything is just, different shades of the same thing? Varied, but... connected.

The second panel shows the two, both leaning back on their arms and looking up, Miriam with a serious expression, Bard with an impressed one, mouth slightly open.

The final panel shows the same thing, but the two's expressions have changed: Bard is smilling as they speak, Miraim raises her eyebrows in realization.

Bard: Like a song!

end description.

#wandersong #the bard wandersong #kiwi wandersong #miriam wandersong #my art #this took less than i expected hours-wise but more days-wise #anyway!!!!!!! look at that!!!!!!!!!! baby's first comic strip!!!!!!!!#ws continues to be the most efficient drive for creative exploration #this used to have a link to my lil meta/character analysis post #then i realized the link made it not show up in the tag. rip #anyway the link's in the replies now

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gr-ogu · 4 years ago

Photo

Hello! As requested, here is a tutorial on how I make my gifs. I would like to preface this by saying there are many ways to make gifs, and there’s no right or wrong answer imo. This is just how I personally go about doing so!

I will be using PS CC 2017, but as long as you have the video timeline option, it shouldn’t matter too much; on any version of PS, you should be able to adapt anything I mention here! You will also need some kind of screen recording software. I’ll talk a little more about that under the cut.

To start, you need the source material you will be making the gifs from! I get mine from snahp(.)it (avoiding links so tumblr hopefully doesn’t banish this from the tags lmao) and I always opt for either 1080p or 2160p. Not all laptops will support 2160p as it’s 4K, but either works great! You just want your gifs to be the best quality possible.

Next is where the screen recording comes in. I don’t use the screencapping method to make my gifs (where you use a program to cap a clip and then load those caps into a stack in PS). This isn’t for any particular reason… it’s just how my friends, (who very kindly taught me to gif), had always done it, so it’s now how I do it too. Personally, I find the quality to be just as good as the screencapping method, and have never noticed a difference between the two.

As I have a PC, I use the software built into it for screen-recording. If you go here: theverge(.)com/2020/4/21/21222533/record-screen-pc-windows-laptop-xbox-game-bar-how-to – you can see how to use the XBOX screenrecorder to record from files you have d*wnloaded. This also works on some streaming sites, but I think it depends on what browser you use. Personally, I recommend Firefox, as that seems to bypass a lot of the blocking and ads that occur when trying to do this sort of thing.

For MAC users, I have been told handbrake works well, as it converts MKV files to MP4, which can then be used to make gifs. You only need to convert part of the file to MP4 depending on how much you want to gif, and this also bypasses the screenrecording stage, as you can edit MP4 clips on Quicktime. I am told you can split them into smaller clips by going to edit > trim and it saves the new clip!

I have also used anyvideoconverter for small clips, but I can’t say what it does to the quality of your video, or how big of a file it lets you put in! With the XBOX screenrecorder, it doesn’t matter what type of video files you get, as the recording will save to MP4 anyway.

LOADING YOUR FRAMES

Now, go ahead and record whatever clips you want to gif. Make sure you have the video timeline open, by going to window > timeline. Then, go to file > import > video frames to layers.

Next, select and open your clip from where it has saved (with the XBOX recorder, it saves in video > captures). You should see a little window pop up, where you can move the sliders back and forth to clip your recording to whichever part(s) you specifically want to gif. I recommend trying not to load a lot of frames into photoshop at once, but I would be a hypocrite to say that, since I do it a lot lmao. Just be patient if you do!

Once you have chosen the length, click okay. Never, EVER, I repeat NEVER click the button that says “limit to every __ frames”. This really ruins the flow and quality of your gif—it’s better to have shorter, but smoother gifs, I promise. And with tumblr’s new 10 MB limit, it shouldn’t be a problem anyway!

Then, your frames should open up. What we want to do is make them into a smart object, so we can edit all the layers at the same time. To do this, click the small button in the left-hand corner. ALWAYS click this first. If you don’t, it will only convert the first frame to a smart object and the gif won’t work.

Give it a second to sort itself out, then, on the right-hand side, select all your frames at once using the shift key.

Then, go to filter > convert for smart filters. This might take a minute. Don’t click anything else in case PS gets angry lmao, just leave it for a second and it’ll do its thing. The more frames you have, the longer it takes! Now we have our gif, but it needs to be cropped, sharpened and coloured!

CROPPING

You want to start by selecting the rectangular marquee tool on the left-hand side, then drag it across by clicking and highlighting the area you would like to crop your gif to, like so:

What I tend to do is select everything inside the black lines you sometimes get around your gif (this depends on what file you d*wnload), and also the tiniest bit inside the sides. This is because I’ve found if you crop it right up to the edge, you get a tiny bit of transparency on the sides of your gifs, which I’d rather avoid.

Once you have your desired selection, go to image > crop. Now, the dimensions for tumblr are 540px width, so all your gifs have to be that width. However, the length is up to you. I really like big gifs, so sometimes I even make a full square, or even longer. It’s entirely up to you, and what kind of set you want to make.

For the purposes of this gif, I will stick to what I usually go for, 540px by 350 px. This will mean you’ll have to crop some width off, but that’s okay, since Marisa isn’t central anyway. The cropping is always trial and error for me, as sometimes people move out of the frame within in the gif. The best thing to do is just try it, and then move the slider in the timeline window at the bottom to see if the person stays inside the gif, and if not, adjust accordingly.

Next, go to image > image size:

In this box, if I put the width as 540, the gif is a smaller height than I want, as it keeps to the dimensions of the gif when you load it into PS. That’s okay, just put the height you want instead, and we’ll crop off the excess.

Then click OK. Using the rectangular marquee tool again, we need to remove the excess width. Part of the reason I like this version of PS is that it tells you the width of your selection as you do it, but you can always use the ruler as a guide, and check the size of your image by going to image > image size again.

Again, use image > crop, and your gif should now be the correct size!

You can also use the crop tool in the timeline window to crop the length of your gif:

However, I tend to wait until later on to do this (which will be explained further down!)

SHARPENING

Next you want to go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen.

These are my settings. However, 0.4px is very sharp, too much so, but that’s easily fixed.

Go to filter > blur > Gaussian blur and then set it to 1.0.

Now on the right-hand side, we need to reduce the blur, so double click the little adjustment button, and change the opacity of the blur. I usually go for 20-30%!

Then click OK, and that’s your sharpening done!

COLOURING

I picked this scene on purpose as it’s dark, so good for showing how to colour a gif. I have a base psd which consists of some very basic adjustments, but it mostly exists so I don’t forget what adjustment layers I like to use. I adjust them every time I make a gif, essentially colouring each gif from scratch.

In this case, the psd actually makes it darker. So, what I will do is turn each layer off, and adjust as I go. A lot of people say using lots of adjustment layers ruins the quality of your gif… I have never found this to be true, as long as you are gentle with them. If you whack the brightness right up to the top, it’s going to ruin your gif no matter if you use 1 adjustment layer or 100. I would just say use your common sense, and adjust a little at a time!

I start with a simple black to white gradient map set to soft light, because I think it helps you see depth once you add some brightness to it. I usually do this on about 10%, or more if needed. It’s probably unnecessary, I just like how it looks!

Then, I move onto using curves and levels. This is where things can diverge depending on who you’re colouring. If this person is white, it doesn’t matter too much. If they’re not white, you don’t want to white wash them. My best advice is to play around with it. By adding vibrance and other (usually the red) selective colour settings later, you can ensure you don’t change the person’s skin tone from what it originally was. You can also use layer masks at varying opacities (various shades of grey), on your curves and levels, to remove some brightening so that you’re not changing anyone’s skin colour. Just brighten slowly and check in with yourself honestly about how your gif looks.

Some people don’t like using levels, or curves. It’s completely up to you. I tend to use both because levels are good for bringing depth, even if not brightening (though I like to use them for that as well).

One thing you can do is use the white point of the gif to make PS adjust the curves itself, however I like to drag the sliders myself and see what it looks like. Just make sure it’s not too bright, as we will be using further layers to brighten more, after.

Next is levels. The slider on the left controls the black point, the one in the middle controls the midtones, and the one on the right controls the white points. The black brings depth, the midtones adjust the overall brightness, and the white points produce stronger highlights. Again, you’ll get a feel for how this works as you practice. Just don’t use the white point excessively, especially if your characters are not white.

Then I add vibrance (+20!), because we’ve removed a lot of it when lightening the gif. Next is exposure, which I find brings out the highlight and shadow areas more effectively:

Then colour balance! This helps with scenes that might be a certain colour, i.e. too blue, too green, too red, etc. Moving the sliders in the opposite direction of the colour your gif is will counteract it. The best thing to do when accounting for different colours, is to make a new layer every time you change colour, so that you don’t get confused. I always add a new layer for colour balance and selective colour if I want to change more than one thing. So one for red, one for yellow, one for pink, etc.

A layer of brightness just to make the gif pop, and because the scene is extra dark, I added a very gentle extra curves layer:

SAVING YOUR GIF

Time to save the gif. You can go ahead and file > export > save for web (legacy) now, but then you’ll have to reopen the gif to reset the frame rate from 0.07, to 0.05. Instead of doing that, I use a modified action. The original was made by the very talented @elenafisher! So I do not take credit for that at all. You can find the original here: elenafisher(.)tumblr(.)com/post/190817437374/gif-sharpening-action-2-preview-download and in my resources tag. Please reblog it if you’re going to use this!

To use an action, first make sure you have actions turned on in window > actions. To load in your action, go to the little lines circled, and then load the action from your downloads:

Obviously if you don’t want to sharpen your gifs yourself, you can use the action as it is, and it will give you a beautiful glowing effect. If you’d just like to use it to flatten your gif into frames like I do, make sure to take out all the items I have highlighted:

Until it looks like this!

Make sure you have the layer under the file name highlighted, and then click the play button at the bottom! (If you get a screen saying select all frames cannot be found, don’t worry, just click continue!) You can delete the layer that does that if you want, I just keep it in case I realise I’ve forgotten to do something, because you can click cancel and edit your gif before you flatten it. Of course you can undo the steps to get back to the smart object version of your gif, it just takes longer!

And now your gif is in frames and set to 0.05 already, so you don’t have to change the speed! All you need to do now before saving is change the gif cycle to “forever” in the bottom left-hand corner:

Then to save the gif go to file > export > save for web (legacy). Sometimes, the gif is bigger than the tumblr 10MB limit. You’ll be able to see this in the bottom left-hand corner of the gif save settings. If this is the case, I like to preview the gif, to see whether it would be best to cut frames off of the beginning or the end, or both. When you’ve decided, you can select the frames at the bottom, and in the right-hand side panel, and delete them both using the little bins/trash icons.

I keep checking and deleting frames until I get the gif under 10 MB! Just don’t delete frames from the middle, as then you’ll have the same issue as if you selected “every other frame” when making the gif: it won’t flow!

Lastly, these are my save settings:

So that’s it! That’s how I make all my gifs. Blending I do when the gifs are in the grouped, smart filter stage, whereas text I add on during the framing section above! Really hope this is helpful, please feel free to ask any questions you may have! 💖

#gif tutorial #tutorial*#completeresources #yeahps #chaoticresources #allresources #mikesmom #usergeo #userava #usertix #usersmile #usertom #if you'd like me to cover anything more advanced just shout #i wanted to show how i add text too but tumblr wouldn't let me add any more pics #but people can let me know if that's something you'd want!

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bunsblr · 4 years ago

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Tu... torial? Pt. 5.

Final part of my tutorial! This is a little all over the place, because that’s how I am in this stage of editing. Also I didn’t proofread this...

Open this in dashboard for best view of the screenshots.

Disclaimer: I have no formal training for any kind of graphics stuff, I work in an office as a receptionist - I serve coffee for a living. I am absolutely self taught and while I consider myself pretty comfortable with photoshop, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t about a gazillion of other things that can be done that I have no idea about. There are people far superior than me in the Sims community. This is just how I do it, with techniques I have picked up through the years. Some things I go over in these will be pretty basic, some things a little more unorthodox. Disclaimer 2: My edits take time. This is what I do to relax, one edit takes several hours for me. Sometimes days :))) Disclaimer 3: My photoshop is in Swedish, which is my first language. I tried my best to find the English translations for every step that I do.

Tools used: The Sims 4, Adobe Photoshop 2020, One by Wacom Pen Tablet (very basic and unfancy).

It´s hair time baby! I very much enjoy drawing hair on sims. I make a new empty layer on top of my base Sim layer.

This is where having a drawing tablet makes a huge difference. We need the brush to be sensitive to pressure to get the effect of hair strands. I chose a hard brush, small small size (how small depends on the picture size of course, but I usually land somewhere 6-9 px)

I pick up a color from the hair, I usually starts with a medium light color.

I start by drawing strands around any tips of the hair so they don't look quite so solid. I do this part with both short and long hairs. Hot lazy tip: straight unlayered hairs is the absolute easiest. This is a layered hair so I start with the bottom and work my way up. I pick up different colors from the hair as I go along, to add dept.

Continuing up in the hair and add strands to the pointy bits.

When I feel like the pointy bits have been softened I select one of my hair brushes. I use these ones by Para Vine.

I start painting "around" the hair with one of the lighter colors picked up from the hair, changing the direction of the brush every once in a while for a more natural result.

After this the hair is looking a little fuzzy, so I'm going to go back with my small harder brush to fill these parts out.

I don't add a lot of them, just small bits here and there for filling.

This is a little overkill but... now we have some of that "squary" thing going on in the hair as well that are still showing through our painted layer. Now we could paint over these, but painting can actually be overdone and I wan't to keep the hair recognizeable because the creator put a lot of work into it! So I go into liquify and smooth over any wonky lines still showing, just slightly.

A comparison of before and after hair. Still recognizeable, but softer.

This is our result so far. We've come a long way, but we're not done.

At this point (or actually sometimes sooner) I add an adjustment Curves layer, this will not end up in the finished image, this is just to give me an idea of what the image might look like with more contrast (which we will add later). I keep this at the very top of the layer panel and turn this on and off as I go. Very important to have it turned off if we are going to eyedrop a color and use that to paint, since it would pick up the wrong hue if we have it turned on.

Now I still want the front of my sim to be a little darker to fit my lighting, but I don't want to go over with any more shadow. So I duplicate my Sim layer, and go to Layer -> Adjustments -> Curves. This will only change the active layer, as opposed to creating an adjustment layer down in the Layer panel that will change all layers below it. I drag the curve down a bit to make my new Sim layer darker.

I add a layer mask to my new Sim layer, and bucket fill it with black color so the new layer gets hidden.

I chose an absolutely HUGE soft brush, with medium opacity, and starts painting white on the areas where I want the new darker layer to be showing. And blend by going back with black where the line is to harsh.

Time to add some highlights. I create a new empty layer between my two Sim layers, and add a clipping mask by holding Alt and hovering on the line between the new layer and my bottom sim layer, until the little square with the arrow symbol comes up and then click. This will make whatever I do on my new highlight layer, only show up on the areas where the layer underneath is filled.

Time to paint. I disable the curve adjustment layer for this. I choose a bright color, in this case a light pink because I didn't want a contrasting color for this picture. I go with a big soft brush around the edges where I want my highlight to hit. In this case, the arm, the hand, the arch of the back and the calf. I didn't add anything to the face in this picture because I didn't like the way it looked, but usually a little highlight to one of the cheeks is just *chef's kiss*

And somewhere around here I got really stuck and really struggled to follow with this tutorial. I felt the picture was lacking something and I tried several different things. I added light rays, tried creating different light sources, there was a moon at some point. But I ended up with just a simple additional gradient shadow down in the right corner (on a new layer down in the Background layer group). Life changing…

And then I didn't like the pink highlight on the skin (sigh, this is how I work, but it’s not recommended to be this indecisive) so I removed that and added a more beige-yellowee highlight instead. And forgot to take a picture after the highlight was added....

And now I go into nitpicking mode. I add a new empty layer on top of my Sim layer, I add it under the highlight layer so it automatically takes on the clipping mask of the Sim layer, I name it Clean-up Crew and go in to refine anything slightly wonky. Picking up colors with the eyedrop tool and going over flaws with a tiny brush.

When I fixed this little light area on the back of her head I left the Clean-up Crew layer and went to my Hair layer instead, because I still have that separate and it's above all the other layers.

I thought my sim was a little too far down in the picture so I moved her up by selecting my whole Sim layer group and the layer on which I have her ground shadow, chosing the move tool and pushing them up. This will move all the layers in the Sim layer group as well as the ground shadow layer equally.

I'm telling y'all, nitpicking mode could go on forever. Added more strands to the bangs.

Noticed a little pointy part on the calf, so I wen't into Liquify on the base Sim layer and smoothed that out. Since the highlight layer has a Clipping Mask corresponding to the Sim layer, the highlight stayed in place.

I duplicate my Sim layer group once more, and merge the layers within this group. So now the Hair, Highlight and Clean-up Crew is all merged onto the Sim layer. I hide the previous Sim groups.

With my new Sim layer selected, I go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation. I want to make my Sim a little less bright so it will match the background a bit better.

I drag down the Saturation and Brightness slider a bit until I like what I see. After this I save my whole image as a PNG-file because from now on I want to edit the whole picture but still want to keep this psd-file as it is for anxiety purposes. Important: I disable my curves layer before saving this as a picture, I don’t want that brought with me into the next steps because I will be adding new curves there.

I open my new saved PNG-file. I go to Filter -> Convert for Smart filters. This will allow us to go back and change any filters we add to this layer. I go to Filter -> Camera Raw Filter and for some reason this window opens up humongus. I start by dragging down the temperature. How much depends on the picture, usually more if it's nighttime.

I pull up the Whites a bit for a cleaner look.

Now I add a Curve Adjustment Layer. Now you can add Contrast in the Camera Raw Filter as well, but I prefer the curve layer because I like to control the different levels. This way I can make my darkest parts a little brighter, giving just a little washed out flair to it all.

I select my background layer again and go to Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise and choose a level that I think looks good. This just brings the picture together a bit more. Also vintage vibes :)))

I add my frame (because it´s my aestethic and I think it looks cool on tumblr) by resizing my workspace and adding a filled white layer underneath the background layer.

I resize my picture (Image -> Image Size) because we don't need it to be huge.

And they I just fine tune the Filters and Curves until the end of time :’)))

And that is that my friends! That’s the end of the tutorial! I hope you could follow somewheat and that someone found it useful. Thank you for reading and never be afraid of contacting me if you have any questions :) I’m very friendly.

#ts4 edit #tutorial

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techmomma · 4 years ago

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One efficient animation idea I’ve been mulling: sub-pixel shading principles used in more complicated larger images.

Y’all can look up sub-pixel animation, the barebones idea of it you can see here.

Basic idea: creating the illusion of movement and smoother transitions by only changing value and color. We think the bar below is moving when it’s just colors switching around. The outline of the shape doesn’t change or there’s minimal movement (the ends aren’t moving left and right: that’s just a block turning to white).

I don’t use flash or more complicated animation programs like toonboom or after effects or whatever, but in “simpler” programs that are sort of more analog to hand-drawn animation, one could achieve the same thing with masks. Things like photoshop and clip studio. First thing that comes to mind is lens flares. You make a single shape with a mask, like any of these. (So ya gotta understand how masks work.)

(That’s the great part about masks is you can get these cool soft edges.) This will look invisible until you put the mask over something, like a layer with a big soft circular gradient. Something like this.

To create the illusion of the lens flare moving across the screen, getting brighter in one spot and them dimming out as it crosses the camera, in theory, you could just move this gradient underneath the mask. One layer for the gradient, with the mask unlocked from the layer (meaning the mask stays in place even if you move the layer’s contents), just moving across the image. You basically draw twice then drag one of those things drawn across the screen, boom. Dynamic anamorphic lens flare without having to re-draw anything or do any morphing—you probably wouldn’t even need any tweening, setting up an eight-frame animation would only take like thirty seconds, maybe twenty if you’re real fast and know your shortcut commands.

You could even layer them to get more complicated flares like the one above, with parts moving in opposite directions to get that realisitic overlapping movement. You could also combine this with shapes in front of the flare to get that “planetary lens flare” effect, either as the planet moves across the screen or the source of light behind it does.

To be even less destructible and more alterable, rather than applying the mask to a layer, apply to a layer folder. Boom, just add more layers to said folder for more frames, delete frames as needed. Mask only has to be unlocked from it’s “layer” once.

Could also be used in some manner for those eclipsing lens flares.

With the mask set up right, all I gotta do is move the flare and it’ll automatically dim and brighten, no input from me.

In theory. I’ve yet to test it but I feel pretty solid on it.

#a baby animator thinks about animation

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cherrywoes · 4 years ago

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ii. come with me, destroy the masses.

tw (general): graphic descriptions of blood, gore, sexual content, violence, homicide, physical torture, psychological torture, rape, dubcon, drugs, overdosing, suicide, cannibalism (brief desc/mention), knife play, wax play, dacryphilia, sadism, masochism, bdsm, corsetry, human trafficking, drug trafficking, oral fixation, thigh kink, stocking fetish, food play (and more to be named.) tw (this chapter): stabbing with knitting needles, mention of oral sex, mentions of displaying heads upon mantles, blood, gore, etc.

“MAMA, YOU LOOK like you were drowned in a river and left to dry out in the sun,” were the first words that Akamine Jun’ichi said to you when you exited the prison facility with a grace only you could have afforded. He was dressed to impress in a two piece suit, the back panels hanging a few inches lower than normal and fluttering in the slight breeze. His hair, dyed to such a blue fluorescence that it was almost too bright, had been grown long, longer than you had seen him last, and now framed his face in feathery layers with the rest tied to the top of his head in a messy knot that was almost stylish. The hair pin he’d shoved through it was just a little bit too ostentatious, but he wouldn’t be Jun’ichi if he wasn’t the least bit over extravagant. You observed him with an amused half-smile upon your lips, eyes darting down to the gold rimming the seams of his expensive dress shoes and the gold plated spikes embedded in the back heel. “Ah, or should I have said your beauty has not faded a day since you went in?”

“Oh, you know I hate dishonesty,” you tutted, reaching up and patting his cheek condescendingly. He leaned into it slightly and you smiled knowingly, withdrawing your hand before a crimson blush could make its way up his cheeks and fluster him. Where Nao was like your child, Jun’ichi was your doting husband, always quick to defend you and flourish at your side—you could always count on him to have your best interests at heart. While easily flustered by any smidgen of affection you gave him, he was quick to recover, clearing his throat and giving your mundane sweatpants and shirt a cursory once over. You sighed and lamented,”They burned my clothes when they were done using them as evidence. That was an expensive pair of Louboutins I lost; I’d rather like another pair of them.”

“As you wish.” Jun’ichi bowed slightly at the waist, almost mockingly, but you adored him for his candor. He plucked a new cell phone from his coat pocket and handed it to you with a flourish. When you raised a fairly bushy and unplucked eyebrow, he said, carefully,“Your last phone was… a bit outdated, [Name]-sama.”

You scowled at the dark screen of the Samsung. Technology had advanced while you were rotting away in a cell block, that was for certain. A quick press of a short button on the side sent you to a home screen; from there it was easy enough to figure it out, though you didn’t like change. You much preferred your flip phones and old burners compared to the pricey piece of technology in your hand; it was fragile and felt like it could break easily. You examined the lavender casing on the back and the three cameras in the top left corner, eyes narrowing in displeasure.

“Fine.” Tucking it away into the waistband of your pants, as there were no pockets to be had, you fixed him with an irritated stare. “But we need to make several stops before I’ll feel like myself again. You haven’t emptied the coffers while I was away, have you?”

Jun’ichi laughed lightly. “No, I merely filled them. You may take a look at your account on your phone if you like.”

When you glowered at him at the mention of the phone, he looked away.

“Perhaps not,” he mumbled, as an afterthought. In an effort to draw your attention away from the shiny new toy he had bought you, he said,”So, to the salon? Your hair looks very unhealthy.”

“No, the seamstress.” You reached up and plucked the collar of your cotton and polyester t-shirt with a grimace. It was cheaply made and something you wouldn’t have been caught dead in if you had a choice; you much preferred silks and pure cotton and the comfort of a nicely pressed pantsuit or jumpsuit. “Mixed fabrics make me itch.”

“Of course.” He gestured for a car idling at the curb of the police station. You watched the sleek black Lincoln pull out and begin to drive towards you, your eyes flicking over the shiny new finish and the dealership plates still screwed into the front plate. The driver was unrecognizable to you, with his hair buzzed short and a plain black suit to match his unassuming appearance. He wore sunglasses as well and you attempted to peer past them, but found it worthless to do so. You trusted Jun’ichi to vet the staff properly, and if he didn’t, you would have his head—whether it was between your legs or on your mantle was his decision to make. He was lovely at apologies, but you weren’t in the mood to deal with another betrayal—Nao’s already stung quite considerably and your temper would flare if you had another. You hoped his teeth were sitting on your desk, waiting for you to admire them: the gold caps had been quite nice and you were debating having the diamonds embedded in a dog collar so you could leash it around his throat and walk him around in public and within your manor just to humiliate him a little more. He hadn’t cried when you had pulled out his teeth, but maybe he would at the thought of public humiliation. He always was sensitive to his image.

Your parents would be so disappointed that you forewent the traditional Yakuza punishments. It was a pity they were too dead to see the empire you had built from their ashes.

“Did Nao return to the manor?” You inquired as Jun’ichi opened the door for you politely. He hummed in an indication for you to elaborate, hand pausing on the door and the other held aloft to help you into the cabin. “Did he put his teeth on my desk like I asked him to?”

“Ah.” Your advisor grimaced, as if imagining the pain his subordinate had gone through himself. He was always the sympathetic one, even if you forbid him from doing anything to help the people you punished. “Yes, he did. By the cup of red pens, I believe.”

With a curt nod of satisfaction, you stepped into the cabin and allowed the door to shut behind you. It was a luxurious car, of that you were certain, the leather soft and buttery and surprisingly real. Faux leather was disappointingly common in most cars you had purchased, even from luxury dealers like Mercedes and Lamborghini. You ran a finger down the seam of stitching on a corner, watching the flesh of your thumb catch on them as you went. You ignored the bustling city in favor of examining the car, uninterested in the changes that had occurred in the time you had been incarcerated. You were eager to return to your throne and get back to work; after all, no one ran the underworld quite as well as you did. You trusted Jun’Ichi to keep things stable, but he was soft and malleable, a trait you should have beaten out of him years ago; but you had needed that softness during that time in your life, and while it wasn’t a regret, it was a mistake you acknowledged with your heart.

You pulled your new phone out of your waistband with a tired sigh. You felt you could do with a few hours of sleep in a proper bed with satin sheets and a weighted duvet, but there was work to be done that couldn’t wait a second longer. Ten years was too long to be out of the game. You had meddled in affairs, of course, but you had never been able to get to the full extent of your former power while you were trapped in that prison. Now that you were free, there would be several people who would pay dearly for what they had done to you—but first, you had to lay low. Your release had been a secret thanks to hush money paid to several media outlets and cops, of which you had no doubt paid a small fortune for. You didn’t want rats scattering back into their hidey holes and popping back out to be menaces when you least expected it.

Before you could explore the features of your sparkling new touch screen phone, a call came through. The contact icon was blank and only displayed a gradient of color, but you recognized the number typed into the contact name well enough.

“Swipe right to answer it,” Jun’ichi offered helpfully.

You frowned and did as he said, holding the phone up to your ear and hoping you didn’t accidentally press something wrong. You were rewarded with an excited yell on the other line.

“Lǎo bǎn niáng!” You pressed your lips together at the term but did nothing to correct it. “You’re out of prison! I was wondering when you would finally get out; I’ve missed you over the years.”

You could practically hear the pout in Huang Jinhai’s voice when he spoke. The man was over fifty years old, yet he still acted as if he was a sulky teenager, which wasn’t much of a change since the last time you had spoken to him. The prison didn’t allow you to collect calls from China, citing you were a ‘risk’, so you never spoke to him as often as you got to with your own syndicate, which wasn’t often at all. “Shū fù, you know as well as I do that they would never allow me to call you. It is nice to hear your voice, though.”

Jun’ichi caught your eye in the rearview mirror. You scowled at him and jerked your head to indicate he should look forward and away from you.

“Ah, I can hear the lie in your voice even over the phone.” You repressed a sigh at the sniffle you heard over the line, turning your head and knocking it against the window. “But that’s an issue for another day. I had a gift sent to your manor house when your lieutenant told me you would be released—I think you’ll love it when you see it.”

A flash of color caught your eye. You turned to look out the window, holding the phone slightly askew from your face. “You know I don’t like surprises.”

“But you’ll like this one, I think.” He laughed. “Knowing how you are, you’re eager to get back to work, so I’ll let you go.”

You hung up before he could take you on another tangent. While you loved your uncle, he could be a bit much, even for you at times. The fact that he had somehow gotten a ‘surprise’ into your manor was interesting, however; his last surprise had been a very crude rendition of a Jackson Pollock painting, however it had been all over your bedroom and in blood and various entrails you weren’t keen on identifying at the time. He was never one to do things in halves, your uncle, so whatever surprise he had gotten you was doubtless something to be wary of.

By the time you had thought through all of the possible things he could have done to your home, you had arrived at the seamstress’ home. It was a small thing nestled between family owned bars and shops catered to foreigners, and in a shady enough area as well. There were thugs crawling around every corner, some from syndicates you knew and some that you did not—several hosted fairly visible tattoos of panthers on their arms, exposed by short sleeved shirts and wife beaters that looked to have seen better days. While they weren’t clean, per se, they appeared well taken care of and the stains on their shirts were old blood or sake stains. Their shoes denoted a fairly well off syndicate as well, cleaner and fancier than their clothes; their jewelry as well, the same panther motif hanging from gold or silver chains or even studs in their ears.

“I see you’ve let interlopers into our midst,” you noted quietly. Your fingers began tapping a rhythm on the window button, counting each panther you saw on the street. You could see Jun’ichi stiffen in the front seat, leather creaking under the sudden shift in weight. The driver paid no mind to it and waited for you to either step out of the car or deal with Jun’ichi while he still sat in the front seat, in the perfect position for you to rip the drawstring from your pants and slide it around his throat and choke him with it. Sliding your fingers off of the button and to your phone, you idly checked the time and glanced at the driver, still silent. “Your failure will not go unpunished. For now, I think, I don’t want to keep the seamstress waiting.”

You leaned forward and snatched the sunglasses off of the driver’s face. You saw his eyelashes flutter in surprise as you were setting them upon your own nose, hooking them behind your ears. When you were satisfied with how you appeared, you stepped out of the car. You didn’t wait for Jun’ichi to follow you; you didn’t trust yourself not to force him to his knees and beat him with his own belt buckle for his indiscretion. There were too many panthers roaming the streets for your taste; they likely reported to someone within the area and your low profile would be blown far too soon.

The inside of the seamstress’ home was quaint and humble. Littered with silks and numerous fabrics, it was a mess of chaotic order, and there were several needles within grabbing distance with enough length to puncture through someone’s eye and into their skull. You picked one up as Jun’ichi squeezed through the door behind you, pressing the sharp tip to your finger and watching a bead of blood well up from the slightest pressure. Other than Jun’ichi’s breathing and your contemplative hum, the house was quiet besides the settling of the wooden support beams and rustling of fabric from somewhere deeper within.

“So the Monster of Tokyo returns,” a wizened, cracked voice sussured. Nestled in the darkest of corners and between large bolts of fabric, Fushimi Chinatsu looked up from her complex knitting pattern with a smile and the corners of her eyes crinkling. Her needles snapped together with a metallic clack, the yarn discarded into a small basket hidden near her feet. She stood slowly, the sound of her bones protesting the only other audible noise in the room, her spine bowed and her neck hunched. She wore a humble outfit of a skirt and a modern graphic t-shirt that was slightly too-large to accommodate the scoliosis in her spine, looking entirely out of place among the yards of silk and lace. Other than her dark, beady eyes and silver hair, Chinatsu was every bit the grizzled ex-Oyabun that you recalled her being. As she drew closer into the light of the windows facing the road, a tattoo of a spiraling dragon and white koi came into view, once hidden by the shadows. “I wondered when you would finally one-up those dicks playing law and order.”

“Fushimi-sama,” you greeted her cordially, the smallest of smiles on your face. “It’s good to see you.”

She laughed, an inhuman cackle that had the hairs on your arms and neck standing on end. “And it’s good to see I can still tell when you’re lying. Don’t worry, [Name]-chan, your secret is safe with me—I have a few more years in me before I hit the grave.”

“I’m surprised you’re still alive.” Slowly, you put the large needle back where it had been laying. Chinatsu watched your movements like a hawk, dark gaze following your hand as it moved away from the needles to pluck at samples of fabric lying beside it. “I would have thought you’d be dead by the time I got out.”

“By natural causes or by my brother-in-law?” She remarked snidely. When you gave her a loose shrug and a quick raise of your eyebrows, she snorted. “Either is likely at this point. But I don’t think you’re here to discuss my death, Akamine-sama, unless I’ve done something to slight you in the past?”

“No, you’re right.” You examined a sample embroidered with cranes and white lotuses; for a kimono, most likely, with the quality of the fabric. “I’m here for new suits. In the same style as usual, of course, and with payment in full.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Chinatsu was deceptively calm as she lifted a spool of crimson red thread and an equally as livid vermillion silk to compare, holding them up for your inspection. You didn’t miss the slight tremble of her hands as she did so. “I believe a red suit would be in style, no?”

“That would be perfect.” You picked the needle back up and twirled it across your knuckles and between your fingers. “But first, I need to take care of some business. You’ll understand, won’t you?”

You reached back and yanked Jun’ichi forward by his tie. Not expecting the sudden show of force, he fell to his knees, the wood groaning under his weight and the sudden movement. You barely detected the splintering of a singular board beneath his knee. His eyes went wide as you grasped his hands and placed them together in a mockery of prayer.

“Akamine-sama…” Chinatsu tutted. “Prison seems not to have blunted your blade.”

The needle punctured through Jun’ichi’s palms with one quick, precise thrust. There was a momentary pop as it broke through a joint and ligament in his palm. He didn’t scream—your men never screamed—but he did let out a strangled breath at the needle jutting out of his hands, pinning his palms together in front of his face. You had avoided anything purposefully crippling, but blood streamed down his wrists and disappeared into his suit sleeves regardless.

After a moment of consideration, you patted his cheek mockingly and turned your back on him. Then, you turned and pointed to the steadily growing puddle of blood between his knees and underneath his hands, giving Chinatsu an inquiring look.

“Can I get that shade of red?”

i. i wish i could say i'm sorry. | masterlist. | iii. speak my name, tremble with fear.

taglist (open):

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyū!!#haikyuu x reader #oikawa x reader #oikawa tooru x reader #toru x reader #oikawa toru x reader #iwaizumi hajime #ocs #yakuza au

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hakurasakura · 4 years ago

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Hi! I loved the recent set you did of Mazikeen I was wondering how did u set the fourth and fifth one?

hi! thank you so much for your compliments!

dw i'll walk you through the entire process i did for those two gifs. side note: i do use photoshop cc 2021. and there is an assumption that you know how to use the basic settings in photoshop when making a gif.

maze's aliases gif:

ok for this, i had to screencap/get a t*rrent of a maze scene with not much movement. make sure that the quality of the gif is 1080p, tho sometimes i do get scenes in 720p and the gif does turn out alright in the end.

before any sharpening and adding adjustments, i crop the gif to the size i want and go to image > image size to make the gif and ps canvas the size i need. for example, this gif is 750 x 500 (dont ask me how this fit onto a tumblr post, i dont even know).

step 1: sharpen

i know most gifmakers use sharpening actions to make their process go easy and fast, but i personally sharpen each gif by hand. so, i go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. these are the settings for this particular gif:

step 2: brighten and adding the black and white filter

ok after being satisfied with my sharpening settings, i go ahead and add a curves layer. this helps to brighten up the gif, especially when giffing dark scenes. sometimes, when it is a tad bit too bright/white, i add a vibrance layer to add some color back. finally, add a black and white filter by clicking on the option that looks like a box with half of it colored in white. i adjust the settings until i like how the gif appears.

step 3: adding a colored background

for this step, i created a new layer and on top of that, added a layer mask. staying on the layer mask, i click on the brush tool and select the color i want my background to be. my brush settings are: soft round pressure opacity with a 50% hardness. then, i gently go around the gif, of course on coloring the area i wanted to stay black and white. then, going back to the layers tab, i clicked on the blending mode (automatically it will say "normal") and selected "color". here is the tutorial i used when i was confused on this part

step 4: fonts

the two fonts i used are afterglow and adobe handwriting, for "aliases" and maze's named aliases respectively. for the little diamonds i used as bullet points, i went to type > panels > glyphs panel. i used the font arial to get the diamond glyph. then i clicked on that text layer and went to blending options. for there, i clicked on stroke, change the color to white, and kept the stroke size at 2. then i went back to the main blending options menu and lowered the fill opacity to 0. for maze's nicknames, i went to blending options and applied gradient overlay and color overlay, one being white and the other being black, respectively. then, i went back to the main blending options menu and changed to blend mode to "difference".

and that's it for this gif! just make sure everything lines up in the timeline tab.

maze's quote gif:

ok for this gif, first i had to get the quotations gif be at the same length as my maze gif. i used this gif pack by @fluffybap to get the gif overlay. once i have the maze gif and the gif overlay at the same time delay and timeline length, i select all the frames of the quotations gif, copy, head over to the maze gif and select all the frames and hit paste. when clicking paste, photoshop prompts up a dialogue box about how to paste these frames. i use "paste over selection" and make sure the option for linking all layers is unselected. once everything is alright, i go from frame animation to timeline. then i make the two gifs into their own smart object (make sure all the layers of the quotation marks are linked. i personally like to manually link all the layers together at this point so it is easier to move the gif overlay, either all together or one set).

after that's done, i followed steps 1 and 2 from the previous gif.

step 3: fonts

the first half of the quote is in the butler font. i clicked on that text layer and went to blending options. for there, i clicked on stroke, change the color to white, and kept the stroke size at 2. then i went back to the main blending options menu and lowered the fill opacity to 0. for the "bitches" part, i used a font called signature and i went to blending options and applied a peach gradient overlay and a red color overlay. then, i went back to the main blending options menu and changed to blend mode to "difference".

p.s.: to move the left and right quotation marks, i made to link together the left ones first and moved them where i want, and did the same thing to the right ones. and yes you can change the color of the quotation marks.

and once again, make sure everything lines up in the timeline tab. and that's it! i hope this answered everything about my process for these two gifs! as always, my askbox is always open for questions about gifs, my gifmaking process, or anything. also, everything i use in my gifs are reblogged onto my resources blog, @starrypsd

#svarade #(anon 🏷).#tutorials #gif tutorials #*mine #allresources #chaoticresources #ps resources

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aiweirdness · 5 years ago

Text

Nonexistent Easter Eggs

I’ve been experimenting with image-generating neural networks, which look at a bunch of images and via trial and error gradually learn to produce more like them. Or at least “like them” according to the neural net’s own interpretation of realistic, which is usually missing a lot.

Last time I used runwayml to finetune Nvidia’s StyleGAN2 neural net on Great British Bakeoff screenshots. This turned it from a neural net that produced fairly-convincing human faces to one that produced horrible abstract versions of the baking show, with smears of bread and flesh and bunting everywhere. Its results were such a mess because it was trying to do so much - it couldn’t handle all the variety in the baking show.

So, this time I decided to try training StyleGAN2 again, but this time with a much much simpler set of images. I dyed 30 easter eggs, set them on a wooden floor, and then panned over them with my phone’s camera. I extracted 1,928 frames from the resulting video, started training StyleGAN2, and after 3000 iterations it was producing these:

These are at least recognizably eggs, even if they look like they have somehow caused the universe to warp around them and are just barely managing to linger within this dimension.

It’s worth remembering that I didn’t give the neural net any instructions on what eggs were or what were the allowable colors and shapes. It just had to figure out why the faces it was generating at first were unacceptable, and what should change about them to make them more egglike. Unsurprisingly, the intermediate stages were somewhat startling.

It’s interesting to see what the neural net failed at. I had included several speckled eggs in the training data, yet none of the eggs turned out speckled. It did attempt to do a couple of the striped eggs, but they came out with weird color gradients that I have no idea how you’d accomplish in real life. If you look closely, you can see that some are strongly textured to the point of being oddly furry. Based on their underlying math, image-generating neural nets tend to be better at small-scale texture than at big stuff.

Some of the neural net’s eggs were nothing like the eggs I had dyed. Pleasingly pearlescent, they had multiple layers of colors showing through, and an often plasterlike texture. There’s an apparent depth to them, as if they were cloud layers on gas giants. Or maybe the blush on a fruit. These are mistakes, but strangely appealing ones. I wonder what kind of animal would hatch from these.

It is seriously easy to try this yourself - you don’t need a fancy computer, or any coding skills. Got several hundred pictures of something? Use runwayml.com to generate your own monstrosities.

Subscribers get bonus content: More amazing eggs!

My book on AI is out, and, you can now get it any of these several ways! Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s - Boulder Bookstore (has signed copies!)

#neural networks #stylegan2 #runwayml #easter eggs #eggs #dyed eggs #easter

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sometimes-love-is-enough · 5 years ago

Photo

Character sheets and illustrations for @kieraelieson‘s @ts-storytime Big Bang story, Searching For Home! I’m very, very glad that I jumped in to pinchhit for her, because doing all this art has been an absolute blast.

Click on those bad boys for full size and details.

[image description: Below cut, due to length.

The first three images are digital art showing 'profiles' of the various characters - with one full-body illustration to the far left with their names next to them, and various smaller illustrations of them to the right.

First image:

1: 'Dee' - a medium-height man with shoulder-height wavy brown hair. His skin is light brown, and his ears are pointed. The right side of his face are covered in a dotted pattern, and he winks mysteriously at out at the viewer. He is wearing a long black cloak with bright golden highlights, and his arms are lightly crossed beneath it. Underneath it, he has a plain brown suit and long pants. He is barefoot. Next, a shot of Dee from behind displays that his cloak has a long gap in the back. He is glancing over one shoulder at the viewer. Handwritten text next to this reads 'back of cloak is also open to make room for wings' An illustration of Dee facing away from the viewer, now with a set of large golden-yellow wings on full display. They're similar in shape to butterfly wings, with two distinct sections to both sides and ragged edges, like a goldfish's tail. Light orange patterns run through them like veins. They appear to glow, faintly. Above this is a small doodle of Dee flying with these wings, arms outstretched to either side. He is glowing brightly, and a dotted line trails out from behind him, marking where he's flown frown.

2: 'Virgil' - a short child with pale skin and messy dark hair. His arms are crossed protectively over his front, and he looks out with his eyebrows raised and his mouth slightly open. His shirt is grey and has many patches and tears on it, and his pants are a dark purple and in a similar state. His brown shoes are untied. Next to this, Virgil sits cross-legged on the ground, expression delighted as he pets and plays with a very large black fluffy spider with red eyes. A small purple heart hovers over his head. Virgil faces away, displaying a set of large wings that are attached to his back. His wings are similar to a monarch butterfly's, but purple and violet in coloring. The edges have bright white and purple spots on them, and the middle of both has intricate dotted patterns with teardrop-shaped black and white 'eye' markings on them. They are glowing faintly white. Above this, a sketchier drawing of Virgil attempting to fly with these wings. He has an expression of panic on his face, and is flailing his arms wildly. A handwritten note pointing to this illustration reads 'Too skinny, clothes are a bit too baggy + beat up.'

Second image:

1: 'Logan' - a tall thin man in a long black trenchcoat with silver buttons. Underneath, a dark blue shirt with ruffles and a pair of full-length brown pants with a silver belt. He has light skin and brown hair parted neatly over his left ear. He's wearing square spectacles and raising one hand in greeting, with the other tucked behind his back. Next to this, Logan is giving a Patton (see next character description) a ride on his shoulders. He's holding firmly onto Patton's legs, and smiling up at him. Patton's eyes are closed in contentment and his arms are folded on top of Logan's head. There is a swirl of dark blue in the background of this. A handwritten note next to this indicates that 'this is the right way to carry a child.' Logan, no longer his his long coat, has fallen asleep next to a pile of books. He rests his head in the crook of one arm, with a cartoonish 'Z' in a bubble above his head. Logan, in motion as he sprints towards some unknown destination. His eyes are wide and his coat swirls dramatically around him. A circle of dark color encircles his head. Two small sketches of Logan carrying Patton. In the first, he has Patton tucked inelegantly under one arm, like you might carry a football. Both of them seem unconcerned, and Patton is smiling. In the second, Logan lifts Patton up, holding him under the armpits with a blank expression. Patton flails his hands happily, grinning. The handwritten text next to this notes that 'These are probably not good ways to carry a child'.

2: 'Patton': a short chubby child with a bright grin and square glasses. His skin is a darker brown than Dee's, but still fairly light. His hair is curly and dark-gold, and he's wearing a light grey coat with lighter grey fluffy bits at the neck, sleeves, and bottoms. His jeans are cyan and fall just below his knees. He wears brown boots and a light-blue shirt underneath the coat. Patton in profile from the chest up, facing right. He isn't wearing his coat, and he's still grinning. A note pointing to his glasses reads 'Doesn't actually need glasses! They're frames. He wears them so he can look like Logan' Patton, waist-deep in water, with his coat pulled up around his head. His eyes aren't visible but he's still smiling. His hands are extended outwards, like he's venturing further into the water. He's surrounded by specks of light. Two doodles of a baby seal, whose fluffy fur and coloring greatly resembles Patton's coat. There are spots of gold the same shade as Patton's hair on its back.. The first shows the seal lying on its side and looking left, flippers pulled close to its chest and water droplets exploding out around it. A label declares it '(FLUFFY)'. In the next, the seal pup is splashing downwards into water, bubbles spiraling out around it.

Third image: 1: 'Remy' - a medium-height man with brown skin, wearing sunglasses (from behind which yellow eyes are faintly visible) and a necklace with a yellow pendant. Short orange horns extend from his dark brown hair. He's grinning crookedly and flashing a peace sign at the viewer. He wears an unbuttoned black jacket with a ragged hem and a dark shirt visible underneath it, and black sweatpants with dark brown boots. He balances his weight on one foot, tipping the other back. A handwritten note pointing to him reads 'hides horns under hair, hides yellow eyes behind dark glasses'. An illustration of Remy's dragon form - a tall black dragon with the same coloring as Remy's jacket, and massive dark wings that are extended above him. His tail is long and ends with a puff of wavy brown fluff. A note pointing to it reads 'swishy soft tail'. He has the same orange horns as humanoid-Remy does, except longer and curved backwards, and glowing yellow eyes. His neck is curved and bent downwards as he looks at a pink sketch of a fat man with wings, who is there to provide size reference. The man barely comes up to the base of his neck. An illustration of Remy in flight with Emile riding him (see next description for details). Remy's massive wings extended out to catch the wind, and his limbs and tail are bent as though he's turning in midair. He glances up at Emile, on his back. Emile is grinning, his own wings open to catch the wind, and is holding tightly to Remy's neck.

2: 'Emile' - a fat medium-height man with light brown skin and light brown hair streaked through his pink. He has square-ish spectacles and a half-smile on his face. He wears a light pink-grey sweater patterned with salmon stripes, and a pair of light blue jeans. His shoes are brown. He also has a pair of large wings extending from his back. They're dark brown at the top but the color transitions from there into a lighter brown, into even lighter brown, and from there into cream. Emile faces away from the camera, his wings fully extended behind him. From here, we can see that they resemble a falcon's wings, and that the dark brown is more prevalent on the back of them. A note pointing to this explains that they're 'Slightly too small to properly fly with - better for gliding'. An illustration of Emile in flight. His wings are extended to catch the air and are not rendered in very much detail. His arms are raise and one foot is extended, as if he's coming in to land. Behind him is a blue sky and faint wispy clouds.

The fourth image shows all of the full-body portraits from the previous images positioned next to each other to show their heights in relation to each other. In order from tallest to shortest, this is Logan, Remy, Emile, Dee, Virgil, and Patton. Behind them is a light pink-to-blue gradient, with lines extending from the top of their heads to emphasize their heights. They are standing on a nondescript grey rectangle.

The last three images are watercolor A4 portraits featuring the character designs from the previous images.

Fifth image: Virgil and Dee, both with their wings out, are in the middle of a lush green forest, surrounded by oversized flowers and blades of glass. The gnarled brown wood of various trees frames the scene. Dee is standing barefoot in the grass, facing sideways with his glowing golden wings extended behind him. He's smiling up at Virgil, with an encouraging hand extended upwards and the other holding onto Virgil's own hands. Virgil is giggling and hovering in midair, wings fluttering and legs slightly askew as he tries to work out how to fly. They're illuminated by a beam of sunlight from above. A spider appoximately the size of a small perches on the wood in the left foreground, watching them.

Sixth image: Logan walks through a rushing deep blue river that comes up to mid-calf height. His long coat swishes around him and he is glancing back with a worried expression on his face at Patton, who he's carrying on his back. Patton's arms are wrapped around Logan's chest and his legs are behind supported by Logan's hands. He's wearing his grey coat and flasses and appears to be asleep. Puffs of white mist swirl near Logan's head. Behind them both, a black-and-blue night sky is patterend with many, many white stars, some of which are connected in constellation patterns. The moon is bright white in the sky, a half-crescent that illuminates both Logan and Patton from behind.

Seventh image: Remy, in his humanoid form, kneels behind Emile on a bright yellow beach. Remy peers over his sunglasses, looking concerned, as he touches Emile's wings gently - they're tattered and ragged with blood covering them in messy splotches. Emile is sitting with his hands pressed into the sand, glancing back at Remy with a sheepish smile. In front of them, the ocean is visible with bright blue waves foaming white. Behind them, there are many rocks in red, pink, orange and yellow gradients. The sky above is blue with fluffy white clouds, and the sun shines down brightly on the scene.]

#sanders sides #tss #ts-storytime #kieraelieson #my art #long post #image description #image described art

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seb-owns-these-tatas · 5 years ago

Text

Witcher Of The Night (Chapter 10.1)

THIS IS MODERN ERA READER WHO WOKE UP IN THE DIMENSION OF THE WITCHER.

WITCHER OF THE NIGHT MASTERLIST

CHAPTER 10

Characters: Geralt of Rivia x small!Naive!Reader

Summary: You’ve woken up after the possession without remembering how it went, nor did you remember yourself confessing for the witcher. Three wishes were said with an comfortable feeling that seemed irresistible for you and for the white wolf himself too; leading into having renowned stress and frustration for Geralt with tensions that seemed to be carnal deep inside.

Warnings: Sexual tension. Frustration from both. Reader being one naughty woman for some bum staring and keeps on bothering a sleeping Geralt. Soft, soft, soft, Geralt of Rivia. Anxiety filled reader. Captain America is mentioned.

Words: 7.6k (SHEEIT. THIS IS LONG AF. WHAT THE HECK TATA HAHAHA. I WAS TOO HAPPY THAT THERE’S SOME TENSION NOW. HAHA! I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT!)

A/N: Smut will be up soon. (Maybe around chapter 14-16) There will be! Patience is a virtue, bb’s! Also, this is one of my favorite chapters that I’ve written! Heehee! I hope you’ll love it! 💖

TAGLIST IS STILL OPEN FOR THIS ONE! Heehee! Don’t forget to REBLOG, COMMENT OR GIVE FEEDBACK IF YOU DID LOVE THIS CHAPTER! IT’LL MAKE ME SMILE!

Disclaimer: PNG’s used in edits are not mine even the GIF’s too. However, the edits and oneshots are definitely from moi. Characters, places and said monsters aren’t from moi as well. GIF’s INCLUDED ARE CREDITED TO THOSE WHO MADE THEM! I DO NOT OWN THEM! (Some Gifs are from demivampirew)

MY WORKS ARE NOT NOT NOT NOT NOOOOOOT TO BE POSTED ON ANY OTHER WEBSITES. My official username in Wattpad is “TATATHEPOTATO” and that’s the only other site I have for writing aside from Tumblr. Thank you, Tater tots!

After the aberrant incident with your Djinn, you'd happen to wake up in the arms of the witcher. Geralt didn't know what happened; nor does he have any as to what explanations can be said. Nobody knew your wishes, not even yourself as you woke up sitting on a saddle; with Geralt's arms surrounding you in a warmth that tells you he was protecting the person in front of him; which was you.

He'd deeply pondered about it as the gang hiked back towards their path going home. What was the reason that you've been possessed by some sort of pneuma? Better yet, what have you really wished for?

All he remembered was your ebony eyes that consumed you from that time being. Though, drinking black blood was ticked off the list because he never even gave you the opportunity to try it nor is it possible for your tiny frame to take the elixir with no immunity like his.

You were definitely possessed; but then it left once you'd given him a barf of black smoke as explained by the bard who saw everything before his eyes.

He wasn't sure of it, but he couldn't be steadfast that the spirit wasn't in your body anymore; keeping you as a host. Though, the bard's explanations interprets that you've given the spirit to him.

Geralt would rather much prefer that than for you to painstakingly have it.

Hence, there was still a lot of questions especially that you woke up like finding a djinn never happened. Those words that was whispered out of your lips sounding like Elder speech.

He'd only understood the first word you've said which was 'Cáerme,'.

It meant Destiny. The word he hated the most.

The latter shouldn't have searched for the Djinn in the first place and just chose the latter option, but he just had to be so stubborn for wanting to flip the bird back at destiny who was trying to play him like a puppet and also at Durriken who began to spat shit back in the Tavern.

"Geralt," Jaskier extolled as the witcher walked Roach out of the forest. The way his pitch turned higher; sounding so mesmerized by the image he was seeing. The vast meadow sitting before him as a petite stone house castle appeared before them. Their wooden cavern long gone as another house has been magically changed; a stone house that probably had a second floor and rooms to provide for the whole family.

The bard gasped and stood in the middle of the field, his eyes shimmering in delight as he loomed before the new house; arms all wide as he exclaimed, "THIS IS SPLENDID! A MIRACLE, INDEED! What did she even wished for?!"

You were oddly silent. For Geralt, it was strange as he'd noticed that the first thing you've asked when you woke up in his arms was 'what happened?' as your eyes were weary and somehow filled with fatigue.

Your quietness was disturbing him to the fullest because he was fond of how you were always asking stuff whenever you see something uncanny in the midst of trailing down the path; which your naivety and curiosity lead to having a Hirikka living in his home. But, now; you were just staring out of nowhere as you sat on the saddle.

All your energy has just been taken from you when you've woken up in wonder; leaving you drained.

"What did you wish for, midget?" Geralt asked out of nowhere as he yanked on Roach's reigns as the horse galloped forward, towards an unspecified small, stone castle that you weren't accustomed with.

You've cocked your head to the side, squinting your eyes back at the larger house sitting in front of you and at the question that the witcher has asked, "What? I haven't yet. We were about to go to the swamps, remember?"

It was a sapped response that made the witcher hum in wonderment; shrugging to himself as the horse maneuvered to the side of the house to see that he'd still acquired his stable but not made of wood; but made in stones.

The house totally looked sumptuous to Geralt's surprise. He was used to the penurious looking stuff, but not the lavish life. He'd been sleeping in brothels before, had no home and friends other than his horses. Yet, life seemed like surprise him to the fullest.

"You've already made your wishes and we have already went to the lake," the witcher surly grumbled, his voice vibrating against his chest as you could hear the cavernous timbre that surely always does give you a touch to the spine.

Howbeit, once you've heard the velveteen gradient passing through; the effect was rather much profound. Kindling with the sparks that seemed to give your spine a shiver.

Totally bewildering, overwhelming and suddenly pleasurable.

"I...didn't? What are you saying?" you softly chided as your body went stiff by the patent purl of his effect on you. The witcher detected your body turning rigid like you've been shot to the head; yet he paid no thorough heed to it as he thought you've just shivered from the benumbing breeze of the night.

You've felt shifting from behind and noticed Geralt who'd gotten to jump off his horse first. No movements were made other than you who was stupefied at whatever stupendous feeling you were having. Beseeching peepers peering down at the witcher who had his beautiful amber eyes on you; silently watching like a hawk with his expression stoic but somewhat pliable that only you had the liberty to.

Very weird indeed.

"Jump." the witcher ordered, his voice sending more overwhelming ripples of shivers that made you subtly shake your head but it was noticed by Geralt as his mouth formed a firm, thin line; eyebrows slightly creased together from the reaction he got.

You timidly hauled your leg off his horse. The witcher's robust fingers spontaneously grabbing onto your hip before you could even jump then fall to the ground; like an instinctive reflex coming from the man himself, carrying you down with no effort. You were gently placed to the ground with much caution.

The wavelet of pleasurable specter traveled through every parts of your body, involuntary stepping an inch away from the latter which has made his hands stay where they have been, cocking his head to the side as he blinked in confusion.

He stared at his fingers far too long; seeming to be feeling what you were also feeling as of the moment. But, he never planned to tell; thinking that it was just probably the side effects of what has happened prior to the Djinn incident that has occured.

"Ughm," your heart was beating fast, giving you an unrewarding feeling when you've subtly moved away from the witcher; your actions never liking what it did when you've felt weight laid upon your chest, making you want to groan out loud in ire, "T-Thanks,"

Geralt could only raise a brow in silence from your reflexes; a weird abrupt feeling of frustration spreading through his chest but he paid no regard as he wanted something he couldn't quite understand.

The witcher was the first to leave, his mouth in a small frown by whatever was irritating him. You tailed behind Geralt stepping foot on their door step with quick marches. From the moment you've thrown yourself in the space of their new humble abode, you were awestruck as you've scanned the whole place with stupefaction.

The interior design of the whole house was in cardinal and wood brown, floor in stones. Geralt stood in the middle of a rather medium sized living room, thoroughly inspecting the place with his scrutinizing amber eyes with Jaskier, Cirilla and Kolby entirely delighted by the miracle that has been given.

You've stood behind Geralt, his Herculean back shown to you as you were staring at it far too long. A sudden thought for wanting to see his body bare which earned a mental slap for your untamed brain.

What were you just thinking right now?

The brooding witcher puttered an exquisite groan to himself, a phantom of satisfying prickle of your stomach giving your insides a warmth that seemed to slowly become insufferable as he'd turned around to meet your doe-eyes; guilelessly peering up at the witcher who was all colossal and strong.

"Tell me your wishes---" he firmly started, roughly spitting out his demands when Geralt met your vindicated gaze that could get him antsy. But, now he was just beyond feeling irked. His gaze simply falling on your lips that held nothing but kindness; those lips that he suddenly wanted to savor all night long.

What was wrong with you both?

Geralt exhaled a calm breath; tightly gritting his teeth as he sharply snapped his eyes away from your vermillion, "---right now. If I were the Djinn,"

Kolby was yelping in the background in his own way; the Hirikka way. Albeit, Jaskier was trying to avoid the harmless monster as it was trying to stand in his path, asking for something from the bard, "No! Bad Hirikka! Stay away!"

You've given the witcher a look of peculiarity; studying how rigid his stance was before you. Eyes closed and seeming to be breathing deeply. The latter couldn't help but take note of how unyielding your scent have been, a sudden feeling that he couldn't withstand and just want to bury his nose in the crook of your neck.

It made Geralt hum a dangerous and displeased short-lived grumble deep inside his chest.

Lemon with a hint of peony. His new favorite scent since the moment you came running off the forest.

"Why---"

The witcher has sharply cut you off out of the blue, jaw clenching as he'd fluttered his eyes for you to see; piercing, obscure and penetrating. "Just tell me, midget."

Those eyes seem to always take your breath away; maybe even your soul as well because of those lascivious thoughts whispering inside your head; scorching your spirit to the fire wanting to be flamed.

"A..A bigger, better house for your family," you hesitantly murmured, soft and quietly which made Geralt's eyebrows twitch. The sound was delicate and utter convincing for him with a perilous want to satiate.

The type of satiation that he wanted to covet; all night long.

It was definitely sudden and treacherous.

Jaskier gave you both a once over across the kitchen, eyes bulging out of its sockets when he'd noticed it was bigger than what they had before; more comfortable and homey. Kolby was trailing behind the bard like he was his shadow which was still being ignored by the lean man himself, "Which explains why we have a small castle house right now, thank you very much, small rat! I can now bathe without Roach staring like he wants me to breed him,"

Jaskier's laugh was loudly resonating around the house which accompanied with the silence you were having with Geralt. One thud and you've noticed the witcher came closer, glowing amber eyes solely on your small frame as he continued his interrogation, "And the second?"

"Enough...food and clothes for everyone,"

Jaskier has seen a basket full of apples, oranges, grapes and everything you can ever wish for. His face twisting in oddity when he'd given the basket of apples to the Hirikka who'd devour it like he has been famished. The bard continued to listen, hearing Cirilla's loud stomps of excitement coming down the stairs of their new two-storey stone house, "Kolby is certainly loving it," he cajoled, stepping away from the Hirikka with a cringe on his face before looking at the princess who was now twirling around with a new pretty yellow gown that she held to herself; a huge beam on her face, "---Also, Cirilla."

You've stayed rooted on the ground, accepting the witcher's presence like it wasn't giving you the shivers and a weirdly palpable desire for wanting him close. Closer than you can ever imagine. Geralt also wanted you nearer, maybe even more. A lot more. Your irresistible scent clouding his mind as he'd taken several steps closer, your scent crashing his palates like a damn delicious snack he'd wish to devour.

The latter lowly whispered crude profanities to himself when the 'want' was starting to get to him. It wasn't like this before; the cravings and utter such. Only for tonight. He ceased his steps once he was an inch away from your feet, looming before you like a skyscraper as you've felt the heat of his stare totally irresistible as time goes by.

It was creating an enigma for your silent mental thinking; heedful of keeping your thoughts in a haywire.

"The last one?" It was a mere grumble, a volume that only you could hear as you were thoroughly enchanted by those amber eyes trying to burn your vindicated soul.

"The happiness of all, especially...yours," your heart was running a mile as you were consumed by the fire in his eyes. You softly stuttered with utmost sincerity. Never wanting the overwhelming sensation to go away as he was now closer; seeming that your desire to touch him was turning deep-seated.

You wanted to touch his face. Badly. The warm feeling threatening you to do it.

But, it seemed like the witcher was also feeling the same way and was somehow more immune to the irresistible repulsion. You've seen his eyes faltering, changing into a look of frustration, anger and depletion as he snapped his head away from you. The veins to his temples throbbing as deeply growled to himself; fighting off something he was feeling that you couldn't decipher.

Then, it was like he'd broken the spell as he abruptly shifted away from you; shaking his head. The overwhelming sensation changing into dismay and pain. His reaction sparking you to feel downhearted. Shouldn't he be happy that you wished for his happiness as well?

You've blinked back at the witcher with a frown, the way his eyes shun away kept your heart at bay, pondering of the fact if he felt it too or was it just another one of your ridiculous hallucinations? There were voices inside your head, screaming that you've told the witcher you liked him, though you never remembered when and where.

Maybe, it never happened?

Hence, why does the idea felt incorrect?

Jaskier, a great eavesdropper; managed to slid his way to where you both were. The bard's ocean eyes raking both of your rigid forms like you were acting pretty strange. Especially, the witcher who seemed to be having an internal battle within himself, "Alas! It seems like this is the wish that broke my heart because the witcher doesn't appear happy at all,"

Geralt gritted his teeth as he spoke; clearly upset of your last wish as he was glaring you down. The sudden change of his attitude making you scrunch your nose in dismay; his frustration seeming to also be given as you had your fists on either side, huffing out a breath; "You didn't wish to go back to that earth you call your home?"

"By the sound of my last wish, I think I did."

"It didn't sound like it," the witcher roughly spat. Bruising that selflessness and naivety of yours with his simple words. You crippled under his fierce gaze and felt yourself thwarting, "I really did! I didn't want to be selfish and wish for myself! Coming home makes me happy! Obviously, it would've been for you too based on how persistent you are in throwing me away! If I did say that to the Djinn then I should've portaled back home already!"

The sudden high-pitch timbre of your voice was an accident. You didn't mean to burst like a mad man at the witcher who had been wincing since the moment you've spat spiteful words after words. You were utterly infuriated; from the heavy, unrelieved feeling and also disheartened by how he was strong willed about how you should go back to where you came from.

Jaskier was rooted on the ground. Hands fidgeting over his cup of water, tapping the lid when you've started dropping a bombshell back at the unnerved witcher who now had a stoic expression carving his features once again; giving you each other looks as his mouth was in an 'O' form, staring back at Geralt; waiting for another mistake that he could do because he was that type of lout as Jaskier knew.

But, to the bard's surprise; his expectations had been high as he waited for the witcher to yell back like how he did to him back in the days; accidentally hurting his heart.

Yet, there was no angry witcher coming forth.

"You should've been more specific," Geralt calmly murmured, audibly sighing from the anger you've poured down on him; leaving Jaskier to his astonishment, "---you're too fucking selfless," the latter went on with his gruff rumbles, shaking his head in disdain as he turned his heel to drop his heavy metal sword on a medium sized brown mahogany table, "---to even include us in your wishes,"

Cirilla was nowhere to be found; currently in her room as she was jumping on her pretty large new bed. Jaskier wearily blinked back to the both of you who seemed to be in a mess; nodding to himself from the moment the witcher was the first to even calm down when you were maddened.

The simple action was enough for Jaskier to get blown away because he rarely does that when someone was proving a point to the witcher, especially when the point was actually about his rickety attitude that he couldn't control. The bard left you both to your argument, never wanting another quarrel and trying to cease the war by waving the white flag.

His firm and calm response made you feel bad. Totally bad especially when you've seen his frown. Howbeit, you were pondering why was he even thwarted about the fact that you included them in your wishes when he should've been thankful?

Witchers were complicated, you thought to yourself. The pent up aggression now leaving your body when you've tried to reason out to the witcher; though, it was still there deep inside. You just tried to shake it off.

You've tread on the heels of Geralt; throwing questions after questions as you were hot on his wheels, "But, did we get the Djinn?" First. "What happened?" Second. "Are you really not going to answer me? Is this a part of your brooding charm, then?" Third.

He'd ceased his steps before the first block of the stairs, your forehead hitting his beefy back. You've immediately hissed at that and caressed the part that was hit, silently groaning out for being an annoying idiot.

The witcher wasn't moved at all.

You were beyond awestruck from how you were acting. You've never been seeking for his attention before yet here you are; kindling with his patience.

"I'm sorry," the guilt was eating you alive. Your sudden caterwaul and needy attitude making you feel strange. You were never like that. Ever. You genuinely apologized to the witcher, biting at the pillows of your chapped lips from the anxiety, "---I didn't know you want me to leave that bad, Geralt."

Still, no answer from the witcher. Albeit, that was his problem with each passing day with you; the thought of you leaving was slowly penetrating his will on watching you go. He was slowly hating to see you leave.

If Destiny was hearing his thoughts, it'll be celebrating by how she was playing her cards right. It's what she wanted from him; from Geralt.

To accept his destiny. As always.

"---Also, thank you." you continued, trying to communicate with the silent hunk of a man, "---For always saving me when I should've been killed already,"

You've given him a small, sad smile without him even looking. Catching you off guard when he'd momentarily turned around to see a partial of his apologetic amber eyes.

"I---"

Though, it seemed like destiny didn't want that from Jaskier's brash interruption; Geralt didn't have the chance to continue what he wanted to say. A subtle roll of his eyes as the bard hollered from the second floor, being happy as a box of birds when he was welcomed with a bed that seemed so comforting to sleep on. He was just looking through the set of rooms; deciding to give Geralt the chambers that had wider windows then leaving to catch up on the others. There was also a pretty much medium sized bath room that took up most of the proximity of the home itself.

It was rather fantastic.

"THERE'S ANOTHER SPARE ROOM! HOWEVER, IT IS PRECISELY ONE ROOM DESTINED FOR ME!" he shouted from above, hearing him uttering out the most unfamiliar words he'd excitedly said as he continued to yell, "---YOU ARE AN ANGEL SENT FROM AN UNKNOWN PORTAL, Y/N! I SEND MY KISSES TO YOU! MUAH!"

Geralt's features was masking in complete fatigue and dismay; sighing from the bard's horrible interaction.

You bit your lips together, beaming back at the witcher who had a tight scowl on his face as you'd stealthily stepped back; planning to flee from his presence. Your thoughts thinking that maybe he was already annoyed, "Okay then, I'll give you your wanted silence."

You've side-stepped, cautiously aware of how heavy his gaze rested upon you. But, you were too bashful to even look back. Nervous that he would notice that you were already deeply fond of him.

But, something inside you says he already knows which is why it added more butterflies in your stomach; lately becoming uncontrollable and raucous.

"Where are you going?" Geralt bluntly questioned, you've ceased from escaping within his presence and gave him a look that tries to state the obvious, "To my chambers?"

The brooding witcher cocked his head to the side, curiosity filling his cat eyes. His lips twitching for a smirk to carve because your reasoning was hilarious, "The kitchen?"

You gave him a tight crease of your forehead, finding his queries rather abrupt and weirdly strange because he seemed to be pointing out that it wasn't your room and so you've laid down your opinions and viewpoint, "I know you were kind enough to lend me your bed because I was wounded. But, I think the medicine still works like a miracle and---"

Therefore, it was enough for the witcher to simper. The strange sentiments of keeping you close as he tries to sleep assaulted those strange senses that continues to give him impelling decisions.

"No," Geralt wanted to wince. It was not what he wanted to say. His crooked smile fell when you eyed him like he was a weird one, "What do you mean, no?"

"You can have my bed,"

The latter's nose was scrunched, subtly snapping his head to the side as he lowly cussed, "Ugh, fuck." when that was abruptly said out in the open.

He wanted you with him. On his bed. With reasons that can get him to sleep and also because of that feeling he couldn't get off his chest.

You puckered your lips in quick ponder, before shrugging to yourself and suddenly sleeping on his bed seemed to be normal, "Okay--What?"

Geralt calmly exhaled a breath, blinking back at you with a scowl as his body went stiff; uttering his next words with contrived annoyance, "You can suffer from Jaskier's lute strumming in the middle of the night; non stop like a dragon in heat," his teeth gritted against each other. Though, you didn't notice that and was more heedful of his anomalous attitude, "Is...Cirilla's room not available?"

The witcher shook his head, to the question sent and for his random actions, "You can't always sleep in her room," pause. He'd started again with doubt dripping in his baritone pitch, "---There are...peril instances that may occur when she is deep in her slumber,"

You clicked your tongue, "So, I have no choice but to sleep in your bed?"

"Hmm."

All you've gotten from him was a raise of his brow and a low menacing hum that seemed displeasing to the ears, "I think that was a yes," you avoided his intense golden peepers, thoroughly tentative of how your fingers fidgeted with the hem of your long mustard colored sleeved sweater; his demands giving your heart another blush, "---You are acting...weird today, Geralt."

With you stating the obvious ignited a grudging groan from the latter. Words were in a surly rumble as he languidly spun in his booted heels and took his flight up the stairs. His heavy, muscly weight making the floors creak with every step he takes; following him from behind, "Fine. Sleep with Kolby for all you want."

The way up was steep and narrow. Having an ounce of space for the person below the latter when he walks up. You were lost in wonder as your focal point was fortunately on Geralt's abounding derriere that made your mouth dry. 11/10, you rated inside your brain. Totally A+ with that tight leather pants he wore. He had a better bum than you, which made you look back at your own tushie, lighting up a scoff to your disappointment.

"---He seems quite unstable before we went to go get that faux of a Djinn,"

Halfway up the stairs, the witcher ceased. Sensing something was going on as he slightly turned his body to see you staring straight at his tushie. Geralt eyed you down in confusion, his amber eyes skeptical as he just caught you ogling at his firm glutes. The witcher couldn't help but scorn, seeing your mouth shut and in awe from what you were seeing.

You've blinked back to see him staring you down with that guileless curiosity of what you were just doing. Maybe staring at a witcher's bum wasn't exactly the brightest idea when he had heightened senses. A loud clear of your throat got him smirking before he continued to ascend.

"You--You called him Kolby!" you stuttered and tried to ignore that you were caught red handed by the witcher. You went after him and feel the blush creeping up your face, "Don't--Don't you turn your back away from me when I'm talking to you, Rivia! "

Your eyes scanned the way up the stairs, utterly surprised to see their house magically transformed into something better, "---So, I really did made the wishes already! Your house has a second floor right now?"

A crane of your neck as you watch his dirty, tousled hair bounce with every step you take. Those buns of his also jiggling when he took his final step and you couldn't avoid but silently give a chef's kiss; understanding how he was ravishing and utmost pleasing to the eyes of women.

Until your foot caught the ends of the stairs and you stumbled. One knee falling flat on the floor and a loud thud erupted from your clumsy accident. Too much bum staring. But, it was probably worth it. "Oh---Geralt! Ow!"

There wasn't much struggle as the witcher effortlessly grabbed your weight in one second; keeping you still as you were given a whiplash by those spellbinding eyes.

The witcher had one knee dropped to the ground, never hesitating to give assistance to your dextrosity. You were a lummox when you were bashful and shy; uttering out the most ungraceful confessions, opinions or even being an utter clutz because your fingers fidget from the embarrassment.

"So fucking selfless with her wishes and utterly cloddish,"

Geralt checked your bandages in haste, straightaway pulling the hems of your sweater in the right, respectful amount to see them all bloody and looking like you've stitched them open because of your accident. Touching you seemed to be the least of his worries when you've arrived; like he couldn't feel the prickling, delightful sensation that he pours out on you whenever he does.

He was prettier up close. You mentally thought to yourself, charmed by his handsome features when his focal point was on your bloody bandage, "You need those bandages changed, midget." he grumbled the thought out loud, slightly craning his head as you had the advantage on the position you both have; meeting those curious doe eyes like you wanted more from the witcher.

Something insatiable, pure and peckish.

Faces close in proximity, trapped in a spellbind that you both completely had no power in. His warm breath hitting your ajar mouth, slightly filling the curiosity you had for the witcher.

You've raked the small scars on his face, imperfections that made him more striking; wondering how many flaws did he have to take to become a monster-slayer in their world as you remembered Cirilla's stories about him. What more scars did he held on his body in which you find him still delightful.

The gap between the both of you was perilous. There it was again, the sensations that you both were having; yet no one was willing to risk.

"Geralt?" you softly whispered against the his lips; watching those eyelids of him fall shut when he'd craned his head to see your eyes staring right at him. Those gorgeous eyelashes that had been given to him; rather than to a woman like you. It was unfair to see how gorgeous he was up close.

Lemon. Peony. It was enticing for a witcher. Bringing him to a haven he didn't thought there was.

From the moment he'd heard you softly say his name, he'd slightly fell back; seeming to be caught in a vulnerable state. You've finally seen his eyes that was now filled with ire; like he was struggling with something within himself, "Hmm?"

"Did I...do something?"

The witcher exhaled a breath he has been holding, your scent catching his senses as he tried to imprint your scent by heart, giving him the advantage that it helps in making him calm and at ease, "No," he gruffly mumbled, breaking the spell and dragging his sky scraping height to the fullest; standing up with a frown on his face by wanting to achieve something that shouldn't be dreamt of, "Not at all."

Vulnerability would answer his curiosities and the witcher didn't know if he was ready yet because the last time he did, it got his heart broken.

You've had sleepless nights. Even more than you can ever imagine back in your apartment. The insomnia was kicking you in the ass for a thousand times as you kicked and stirred in your sleep, beside a witcher who has been giving your heart a marathon.

Just his breathing was keeping your breathing and heartbeat erratic.

There it was, the desire of having the big witcher close to you as he slept on the other end of the rather new large bed, his strapped, broad back away from you looking like the space he'd given himself was rather too little for his large frame.

It was funny to see him struggling with the small space as you've twisted and turned for the hundredth time. You couldn't hear anything other than the eerie, buzzing sounds of the night. Jaskier finally had shut up from creating new epics and strumming on his lute, so to say; it was probably three o'clock in the morning in their time.

You were wondering if that was how the witcher slept. Only on one position; never moving like he was dead. It has already been two hours and you had nothing to do but tap on the mattress with your fingers and stare at his clothed back. Did he also have scars on his back too? you mentally thought to yourself and gently turned your body to look at the wooden ceilings.

Sleep wouldn't consume you tonight. You'd rather have a different type of sensation that would consume you all night. Your breath hitched at the thought of that, wordlessly dragging the sheets above you to wrinkle your nose from the damaging ideas inside your head. Your soul probably tutting because of how you've become from the moment you've fainted and remember nothing.

There was a sigh. Your head snapped towards the witcher who seem to shift in his side of the bed, placing a hand underneath his pillows as his face was morphed into distress. He couldn't sleep at all because you were restlessly moving like a worm, also for the heavy feeling tugging at his chest since the moment he'd woken up from being attacked by the djinn.

"Geralt?"

He didn't answer.

"---It's cold, like really cold." with that, he deeply sighed; never planning on opening his eyes. The latter was hoping you would stop turning around the mattress and also for the uncomfortable feeling resting on his chest with every breath you take.

"Not for me,"

Geralt knew you were pouting at his response; but he paid no heed and tried to silently have his slumber. The brumal temperature of the night never giving him a headache because his body heat was taking it nicely as it was also helping the heat that began to start from his chest up till the every end and nerves of his body; making him groan to himself when you've unintentionally whimpered to yourself when he'd rejected the idea of closing the windows.

The sound you make was making him crazy.

Also, the clothes he was wearing to sleep was making him crazier; even hotter than it was supposed to be.

"Geralt," he grabbed onto the pillows a little more tighter, drowning himself in the fluff of his pillow as you continued to disturb him because you somehow couldn't find your own sleep as well.

"Yoo-hoo~ Beefy Legolas?"

It went on and on. Your twists and turns also did as he finally had to tiredly grumble.

"Let me have my nap."

You were lucky your wound was given medicine because it wasn't hurting anymore. An elbow on the bed to support yourself as you peeked to see Geralt's shiny hair glimmering beneath the candle light. Tempting you to give care and probably spend a little time tugging at it as well. Those thoughts make you shake your head, clearing your throat as you asked the witcher with utmost purity lacing your tongue.

"Geralt, can I braid your hair while you sleep?"

"No."

"Did you bleach your hair then? You know, it’s like a way of coloring your hair and such---"

"No."

You softly huffed in disappointment, lower lip jutting out as you sighed from the energy and itch that you couldn't fight off, trying to see if he had his eyes opened but his burly form was making it difficult. You could only see his back and ivory hair, "Where's the gym? I mean, obviously you do go to a gym with that...build. Except, if you're given a serum like Captain America's..."

The latter lowly grunted in response; making your spine shiver from the sound as he does so. You've suddenly swallowed the saliva down your throat, wincing as you subtly held onto your chest; feeling it strangely grow a temperature hotter. You shake your head to try and ignore the uncomfortable feeling.

"You are talking in riddles that I couldn't comprehend, midget."

Geralt audibly sighed, turning his sturdy body to see you wide awake and innocently blinking back at the latter. Acting all guiltless like you weren't just trying to wake him up. He exhaled an exasperated breath; amber eyes glued to the ceiling with a grimace on his face.

"So, you're...awake?" you innocently stated the obvious, trying not to act guilty that you were anxious about a lot of things and your brain doesn't seem to cooperate with your body.

"How can I sleep when you keep tossing over and over," the latter rasped before languidly turning and facing front to you. His eyes searching for whatever was keeping you awake; pondering why your energy level was at the top. Totally too much for his wearied ones, "---I'm starting to regret why I offered you my bed," he gave a soft shake of his head as he comfortably dropped his head on his fluffy pillows, watching you drop yours at the same time. You've welcomed those golden peepers drilling with your emotions; setting fire to your insides, though you've never told anyone but yourself.

"I told you so. I have insomnia when my anxiety strikes like a bitch,"

Geralt had his eyebrows in a tight knot, "A what?"

"I can't sleep." you honestly told, breathing out your frustrations as you've felt the witcher's stare heavy on you, "It's just so...cold,"

He gave a small, tender smile. It was unconscious, the witcher didn't know if he even was smiling when he had hunches onto why you couldn't sleep. Based on how you were giving him bear hugs up all night when your fever went high, a leg on his robust ones; face nuzzled on his clothed, wooly chest; he knew you were a cuddler.

Howbeit, nobody also needed to know that he had his fingers raked in between your hair like the witcher was brushing it to make him sleep.

Like it was calming him down; making his breathing steady and at ease.

"You want something." he simply graveled, thoroughly amused.

"W-What?! No!"

Did he know what you were thinking? Especially those promiscuous ones? Or only the part where you wanted to be near him as you slept?

The latter scoffed, his smile turning crooked as you've seen those teeth eventually showing as he beamed, "I didn't thought naive midgets lie. I must say, your flaws are surprising."

Albeit, despite of how he was making your stomach flutter wildly; this brooding man gives you comfort in such a weird way.

Adoration was definitely a complex part in life that nobody can ever explain. A diversity in their world and also in yours.

"You need a hug." the witcher stated as a matter of fact, knowing that it was what you needed as you continued to fidget and tap on the mattress with your fingers.

"Maybe," pause. You've peered back at the man who kept giving your heart beat a difficult time; being drawn to his amber colored eyes, enraptured by his presence as you were caught in a spell that he could only give.

Only him and nobody else.

Geralt seemed to be a good listener and so, you've done the inevitable as he was the only person you've shared a bed with for all your life. Other than your mother when you were younger. He was the only man you've approved of having your personal space infiltrated.

"I had...stuff toys and a big pillow back in my home. It was the only thing I could hold for me to sleep. The only thing that can keep me company in a cold day," you started, shifting your eyes away from the witcher who was on the far end of the bed; waiting for you to continue like he always does, wanting to know what was inside your head.

Curiosity always leads to something else.

"---So, I must say that it helps with my anxiety and insomnia. Thinking that I have someone to hold; someone to protect me from all the sadness, rejection or disappointments that seem to love me throughout my life,"

"Are they beasts?" you glanced at the latter, studying him if it was a joke. But, all you see was a determined witcher who was patiently waiting if his guesses were correct.

"Anxiety and Insomnia?" Geralt gave a quiet hum as an answer.

"What? No. Definitely---Well, maybe. If you think of it that way. They keep your mind unstable and problematic. Fifty percent would want you thinking about things that should've been left forgotten. It ruins your sanity,"

"It is a beast then,"

You've given him a small smile, memorizing each curvature of his face; never wanting it to be forgotten. The way his eyes peer back at you in curiosity for whatever you wanted to say like hearing you talk was his entertainment and pleasure.

He'd watched you move closer, letting your curiosity get the better of you as you've felt his hot breath fanning your face in a way that could give you warmth in the midst of the brisk night; his windows never closed shut and feeling him closer than you can ever ask for was giving you the warmth you needed.

A warmth that could take those horrid thoughts away.

"Tell me your stories," you softly urged him on, his voice seeming to be soothing. The only ones that could pacify your jitters to shut down.

The witcher blinked, appearing to be off-guard but utmost compliant nevertheless, "About?"

"Your monsters. The ones you've slaughtered," you joyously smiled, your eyes turning crescent shapes as it felt as if it was the moon that was giving Geralt light to his night sky, "---It might be helpful if I want to become a game developer of something,"

"I've only shared stories with my horse,"

You placed your palms under your head, craning fully to see those eyes piercing through your soul; satisfying your cravings for having him close than you can ever wish for, "You mean, Roach? You talk to your horse?!" a soft exclamation was all it took for Geralt to give a short scoff.

"Merely, now because I have Jaskier and Cirilla. But, prior before they came around; I only had my horses to talk," pause. "---You wouldn't want me talking about how I hunt monsters, it'll bore you to death,"

You firmly shook your head to show him your will-power in hearing those interesting stories he had. A monster-slayer who had boring stories? You doubt. Just learning the back stories of a main character's game was interesting, no doubt that Geralt's stories would even get you gasping from all his slaughters, "I love all types of stories," you cordially whispered, eyes twinkling underneath the candle light as the witcher blinked back, "---Also have read ones that weren't of a penchant. Yet, I've grown to love them."

With little effort of bringing out the big guns, Geralt obediently complied. The deep baritone of his pitch lulling you into having your slumber. He'd talk about his latest hunts and quests; learning about monsters that you didn't know existed. Mostly deadly as some has taken him down and eventually lead him to being poisoned. You've frowned at that, but he'd reassured you that his scorching trials created him to be immune to any poison that was harmful to humans.

He was mutated after all and it made him more compelling.

Geralt has stopped his lullabies when he'd reach at the point where he had tried saving a town called Blaviken; quietly simmering down as you were suddenly perspiring like a dog in heat and heaving deep breaths.

"Midget." he firmly stated, studying your face when you've fluttered your eyes closed as you started listening to his stories. You've nestled closer to the witcher who had a wince on his face as he was perplexed by the sudden drops of sweat that was forming on your forehead. "---Are you alright?"

You gave a quiet chortle as you've felt his breath fanning your forehead, "Maybe,"

His medallion rested on your forehead, realizing that you were cuddling him a little too closely but the bear of a man didn't seem to care, "Your answers can always leave a person guessing," he grumbled more so to himself as you felt him shift on the mattress. Curious as to why his big, rough, calloused fingers were behind you; his hand that he has used to hold a sword and yield for those men to be butchered.

His hand that had magic was now raking through your hair, gently and slowly combing your hair as it was giving you succor and protection.

"You're not...uncomfortable?" you hesitatingly asked, voice smaller and quiet as his body was taking in your small form. The witcher had his eyes closed now; like he was in peace, "I've done far worse than to be scared of giving people hugs,"

"But, this is called cuddles and chill because you're hugging and talking me to sleep,"

"Is that what it is now? Is that what its called in your kingdom?" you've heard him tease, his lips curved in a way that tells you he was poking fun at your modern references that he certainly didn't know.

His fingers continued its ministrations; how gentle he was made your heart beat drum so loud that you could hear them ringing in your ears and you were sure Geralt could be hearing it. You gawked back at the latter, "It won't be called Netflix and Chill because I swear it has a different meaning and---"

Geralt quickly cut you off, abruptly opening his eyes to give you a compassionate look in his eyes, "Cuddles and chill it is, then." you've bit your lip in an attempt to shut your mouth.

"---Sleep, midget." the once brooding witcher demanded before giving your spine a satisfying shiver as his thick fingers raked on the hairs of your nape as he patiently untangled those locks away, "Those beastly creatures you have won't slaughter you while I'm around,"

Inside both of your chests, there was still that insatiable feeling that you couldn't comprehend. However, the fire dissipating an ounce by the tiny bit of wholesome intimacy you've gotten; was just the rattles of one's cage because there was always more.

More and more you'll be willing to take.

Hence, It was a full moon and wolves howl whenever the moon shines bright against the brumal, cold nights as a cicatrix began to shine which has rested in between the valley of your breasts.

FEEDBACKS ARE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED! PLEASE DO LEAVE FEEDBACK IF YOU’VE ALREADY READ THIS OR EVEN PRESS THE REBLOG BUTTON OR LEAVE A HEART. IT’S FINE WITH ME. THANK YOU! HOW TO BE GERALT? MIDGET KEPT ON BOTHERING HIM. XD

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