#I often say “every fic is a thesis” and that's very much true of this one | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moondustis · 4 years ago

Text

on the way (m)

pairing: seo johnny + reader genre: angst, smut | word count: 10k summary: “There’s a few ways you could tell this story. The tale of how you met one Seo Johnny, and how it all went down. But maybe there's no better way to do it than from the beginning.” or A love story told in 5 acts.

a/n: hello! yes, finally a new fic and yes it is college!au with a hint of fwb. i have been writing this for around 4 months now and i haven’t read some parts in awhile so it’s probably all around the place. if something doesn’t make a lot of sense, well... it is what it is lol. but yeah, hope you guys enjoy it!

act 1: messy affairs

See, there’s a few ways you could tell this story. The tale of how you met one Seo Johnny, and how it all went down. But maybe there's no better way to do it than from the beginning.

It’s a friday night, just like any other that happens after a mixture of weekly stress and the weird need to let it all out. It’s common, routine even, how you apply your makeup, pick your best outfit and scroll mindlessly through tinder in wait for your friends to arrive for a pre-game. It's common but not that usual, at least not until recently.

Your last year of college had brought a lot of feelings that you didn't think you were ready to deal with yet. A nostalgia that arrived too soon, when you would catch yourself thinking that a moment shared with roommates would be the last one. An uncertainty of the future and a constant stress between writing a thesis that somehow is supposed to summarize the entirety of the knowledge you had gotten in the last year.

And lastly, the reason why you're doing this: the unwavering fear that your life is just about to start. The same feeling you got when college just started, of freedom and new beginnings. But now, instead of the excitement and thrill, it's replaced by anxiety and the heavy weight of adulthood about to start. That's why you look into the mirror, again, applying your lip gloss with the screen of your phone still illuminated by a picture of a person just waiting to be swiped left or right. You just need to have fun, like you never will again.

It's that a too harsh way to start this? Well, back to Seo Johnny.

It's a friday night and your friends arrive, flavored vodka in hand, the cheap kind that tastes like it's not alcoholic at all. A shot for each and then you are all laughing and joking to pass time.

"Why do we have to pre game? I'm sure there will be plenty to drink." Sarah, a blonde girl with friendly cheeks asks. She tips the shot on her hand back anyway, despite the question.

"Hell no I'm not going to drink frat booze again, they are cheap." Ela, tall and smart and majoring is Social Politics, says.

You hum and Sarah asks "And we are not?"

"No, we have our dear friend making us drinks." Ela gestures wildly at Nicole, the bartender of the night who's wearing a dress that only battles your own in the matters of shortness. "We are fancy."

"She's mixing vodka with sprite." These statements make you laugh loudly.

Tinder is just a distraction as you all sit on the couch, a good way to find an easy date for the night and when the he in question shows up, a black and white picture on the illuminated screen of your phone, it earns a shriek from your friends that go on and on about how hot he looks.

"You should swipe right." Ela says, eyebrows dancing but you don't see it because you're busy rolling your eyes at your phone. Johnny stares at you.

"He's my friend." You say as if it's obvious but it's really not. The word friend feels a little weird in your mouth but how else could you describe it? College was good for you in the social aspect, you have a lot of friends, people you talk to in class, or that you meet at parties because you ran in the same circles. It usually doesn't go deeper than that, than a blunt shared or a joke about a teacher, but that's friendship anyway you conclude.

And Johnny , well, he was someone you knew, not well, but sometimes he would text you a joke that made you laugh, ask for help with an assignment, talk to you about anything during a party. He was fun, a friend, and an acquaintance. Whatever, that didn't matter and honestly neither did the way you met, through a mutual friend at a kickback. It was that and nothing more.

"Please, he flirts with you every chance he gets." Ela rolls her eyes right back at you.

"He flirts with anyone, I think." You argue, because it's true. Johnny is one of those people that just have this aura to them, that can make anyone interested with just a few words. He's naturally flirty, that's something easy to point out.

"Well he's hot." That too.

"True." Nicole says and it earns a deep sigh from you.

Acting on impulse or peer pressure, you don't know exactly, but you swipe right and then nothing happens. So you shrug and throw your phone away to down another shot.

✿

When you get to the party, it's already absolutely trashed, with freshmen spilling their drinks on the floor as some annoying EDM song blasts loud enough that you’re not very sure the thin windows of this house can handle. Frat parties were always the same, mildly boring and filled with people that didn't know how to act. It often escaped you the reasons why you continued to attend them.

You and your friends dance a little, laughing when the songs change to one that is even worse than the first one. Ela, despite her words from earlier, finds a bottle of vodka and proclaims loudly that a night can never end badly when it starts with shots, a statement you strongly disagree with but you down it anyway when she offers it and then another one just for good measure. Because it’s a friday, you deserve a little fun, right? Right.

Too tired of dancing you had found a place on a couch that was probably too old. Johnny finds you there when the shots just start to hit and you feel bubbly, like you're on a cloud.

"Hey there." He says with a blinding smile and if you weren't out of it you'd probably find it weird that he came to you, because most of the time you talked at parties was because you somehow ended up bumping into each other.

"Hi." You reply, elongating the word more than necessary and it seems to amuse him.

"Why are you sitting here by yourself?" He asks.

"Don't feel like dancing anymore." You say shrugging. "And what are you doing here sitting with me?"

You watch as he laughs slowly and fishes for his phone in his pocket. "See, I wanted to show you something."

It’s endearing, really, even more when his hand starts to wander, fingers barely ghosting your skin as he keeps his gaze glued to your face.

He kisses you deeply, head tilted to the side as he holds you close with both hands on your cheeks and you can’t do anything but let him take control. Is when he sucks on your bottom lip that you have to let out the moan you had been holding, embarrassingly too soon and only urging him on even more as he licks at your lips, asking for entrance that you so gladly give, letting his tongue slide against yours slowly. The feeling of his hands moving to your leg makes your head spin and want for more.

He kisses the breath out of you, quite literally, and you both have to part to catch it back with silly smiles, gasps of air and pecks still being pressed on your lips.

In your drunken haze, you smile when he rests his palm on your naked thigh, squeezing just slightly to test your interest. And you’re crazy, absolutely out of your mind because you show it by parting your legs just a little, just to tease, the smile never leaving your face as he mimics it with a subtle raise of his eyebrow.

And god forgive you for being such a stupid horny girl that just falls gives in so easily, taking Johnny’s wandering hand in yours and dragging him to the closest place you can find, which happens to be someone's bedroom. How nice and polite of you.

There’s not much beating around the bush. He pushes you into the bed, hovering over you and finally kisses you again, with hunger, hands on your neck and tongue sliding against yours in movements that are not shy from being desperate. And you love it, enough to have your mind swimming with the need to have him touch you anywhere that will make you feel good.

When you grip at his hair a little too harshly, he lets out a moan that goes straight to the bubble of arousal on the pit of your stomach. He’s a sight, with puffy lips and hair a mess as he drops to his knees in front of you, something you weren’t exactly expecting but will definitely not complain about.

He looks up at you, hands moving to rest at your thighs and oh, so gently parting them so he can fit in between. “Can I?” You almost die at the voice he asks for your consent in.

You nod, head spinning a little when you move to help him get yours panties off, the offending cotton fabric being thrown somewhere inside this poor person's bedroom.

A couple of things happen afterwards. Johnny parts your legs further, placing a misplaced kiss on your inner thigh. Then he goes for it with a tentative lick, as if testing the waters and just slightly as if he’s a little unsure of himself. You blink slowly in expectation.

“How do you like it?” The question makes you confused until you realize that he’s teasing you, a grin splattered across his face when you groan and try to move your hips but he keeps a grip on your legs.

“Asshole.” You mutter in what sounds more like a whine.

Which is a complete lie, because you’re already shivering in your skin and he knows that by the raise of his eyebrow in defiance. But still, your words spark something and he finally goes for it.

The first press of his tongue flat against you has your hands moving to grip at the bed sheets. He works in a pace that clearly shows that he knows what he’s doing, swirling his tongue a little to tease and then licking a stripe from your entrance to your clit to gather the wetness there.

He kisses your cunt the exact same way he did your lips, messily and desperate with the squelchy noises filling the room and setting your cheeks in heat from embarrassment. You don’t even need the long fingers he adds, slowly and then matching the pace of his sucks.

It’s a very quick orgasm, in the sense that it doesn’t take you half the time you thought it would to happen. He does a little thing with his tongue, flicking your clit and you’re crying out with your body arching from the bed as he continues to eat you out as your body trembles.

“Was I good?” He asks afterwards, words muffled because he’s still pressed against your bare center. He’s grinning, you can see it as well as the wetness that drips on his chin.

You don't reply, instead you push him upwards and kiss him again, tasting yourself on his tongue. You can feel his erection press against your hip when he brings you closer and it makes you want more.

He breaks the kiss then, palm comes to rest on your cheek, thumb on the other side of your face as he keeps you looking at him. He likes being in control, you have realized that even in this short interaction, and you apparently liked giving it to him.

You shiver when he brushes his thumb on your lips, getting them to part for him. “There you go, open your mouth.” He whispers, eyes glued to it. “Be good."

Parting your lips, you lick at his thumb before you’re sucking it, earning a grunt from him that almost makes you smirk. You put on a show, trying to get him as worked up as you are, your eyes not leaving his face.

“Fuck. You’re so hot.” He mutters, pressing his thumb on your tongue and you moan a little over it. “You want my cock on your mouth?”

You nod, smiling as he removes his wet finger from your mouth. “Yes.” Your voice is breathless, eyes glassy as you stare at him.

That earns you a smile and you feel a little pride in your chest. “That’s a good girl.” He taps your face. “Get on your knees then, baby. If you want it so bad.”

You do, positioning yourself in the middle of his parted thighs when he sits down on the bed and your mouth almost waters from anticipation.

Lifting his shirt a bit, you start by pressing kisses to his navel and he lets out a deep breath. Reaching down to unbutton his pants, you help him pull them down alongside his boxers and the sight of him hard for you is what really makes your mouth water. He's big in a way that you're sure you won't be able to fit it all inside without putting in some work.

You tease him just a little bit, placing just the small kiss at the tip before licking it slowly. He’s far less patient then you are, hand immediately moving to grip your hair. “Put it in, baby, don’t be bad for me now.”

Parting your lips, you put him in your mouth, going as far as you can go, wrapping your hand on what you can’t reach. He moans lowly, curses falling from his lips.

He lets his head fall back when you swirl your tongue around, bobbing your head slowly the way he likes. “That’s it, baby. Takin’ me so well.” You hum around him, earning yourself another moan.

You try to get him as far as you can, swallowing when you reach your limit and he grips your hair tighter. You can feel him pulsing inside your mouth and it makes you squeeze your thighs together.

He comes on your face, painting your cheeks and making you gasp a little in shock. "Fuck, I'm sorry." He mumbles, quick to search for something to clean you up with.

"It 's okay." You say, throat feeling sore and you try not to think about how that was the first time that ever happened for too long. "I liked it."

That makes him give you a look, and then he's saying with a laugh "You'll be the death of me."

act 2: ungodly hour

Maybe the fact that nothing really changes should be a sign by itself.

Johnny still nods to you when you pass by him around campus, and still asks you to ‘help a guy out’ by sending him pictures of your notes like you guys are nothing but good almost-friends. Because, well, that’s what you are and that’s good enough for you.

His face stays there on your tinder matches, no acknowledgement of it beyond his stupid joke back at the party happens and the only reminder you have of that night is the insatiable thoughts that cross your mind in the middle of a boring lecture. Because why would you pay attention to whatever your teacher is saying when you could remind bit by bit of how Johnny fucked you on his tiny dorm room, while maintaining a resting face.

Weirdly those memories don't hit you the next time you see him, because you’re too busy thinking about strawberry milkshake.

The line behind you is not even that big, considering it’s 3am and most drunk college kids prefer to go to the burger king, but the cashier has an annoyed look on his face as your friend slowly reads the menu as if there’s plenty to choose from at a place like Mcdonalds. “Hmm, we’ll have two large fries, a coke and...”

“A strawberry milkshake!” You try to go for whispering but it comes out louder and the cashier just hums.

There's just something about being slightly shit faced at this hour and at this place, that makes it all seem like it's not actually happening. Like you are in a dream that only gets better when the server calls your number and you are sipping on the milkshake you kept on talking about since leaving the club you went on.

Funnily enough, if this was in fact in a dream, it wouldn't be the first time Johnny showed up on one of yours.

He's sitting in a booth by himself, scrolling at his phone. His hair is pushed back by a snapback and your mind twirls for a second with the thought that he looks too good for someone who's here in an hour like this.

Maybe it's the remnants of alcohol still buzzing on your system. Or maybe it is the fact that you seem to have been losing your self consciousness more and more these days. Whatever it is, it leads you to the stand in front of Johnny with a smile on your face and your hand freezing from holding the milkshake.

It doesn't take long for him to notice you, a smile that makes you feel warm inside ready on his lips as you take a place right across from him like it was meant for you all this time.

"Hey there." He says, voice playful and you wonder if he had a few drinks himself before coming here. He must have had. "What's up?"

You shrug, a smile painting your own lips. "Nothing much." You say and for some reason you feel silly, in a way that makes you want to scream a little from excitement. Like a teenage girl with a crush. "Strawberry milkshake. You want some?"

Johnny laughs a little when you offer him the cup with the slightly bitten straw. "No, thank you. But it looks good."

"It is." You smile with lips closed around it.

For a moment, but not an uncomfortable one, you two just stare at each other. The sweet taste of your drinks fills your mind and makes you feel a little less dizzier.

"Had fun night?"

"Hmm, not really. Sorority parties suck." He nods in agreement. Most parties sucked anyway, that's why everyone had to get so wasted to be able to enjoy it while the high lasted. You liked feeling pretty after getting ready more than the whole rest of it. "What were you up to?"

"Got to DJ at this party with Mark, it was nice." He says it like it was no big deal, like it was something he did every other day. You had never actually seen Johnny play before, but from the way his instagram page was filled with posts about it and links to soundcloud songs, anyone could figure out it was at least a bit important to him.

You found it weird, that you didn't know much about this or anything else about Johnny besides what he would let you know. And vice versa. But at the same time it's nice getting to know it bit by bit, without a rush.

"That's really cool." Your voice is a little more excited than you expected it to be. "I really wanna see you play someday."

"Sure." He smiles sideways. Bashfulness doesn't really suit him. "I'll let you know the next time."

You nod, then you share a look. Someone screams at their friend about something you don't really care about because you're too busy watching Johnny as he watches you finish your milkshake. Is it chemistry that people call this? Because there is nothing very appealing about the drink you're having, or about the white light at this place, but there's tension in the way you can't really look away.

He looks like he wants to laugh but is too scared to break whatever is happening. You finish your milkshake with one last swallow of artificial sweetener and lick your lips. He finally breaks.

"Stop looking at me like that." He says it in a way that suggests something that it's already as clear as water.

You bat your eyelashes. "Like what exactly?"

He laughs, sweet and deep, then raises one eyebrow in challenge. "Like you want me to fuck you in the middle of this mcdonalds."

The scandalousness of the statement makes you laugh too, your words sounding half joke half true between smiles. "Well, maybe I want to."

"You don't really strike me as the type." He says it like he's unsure of it, like in the back of his mind he could actually believe you would do something as shocking as that. Truth be told, you don't even know it yourself. There's not a lot you have done when it comes to this and sometimes you even think back to him coming on your face, like it is the wildest thing that has ever happened.

"I could be." He raises his eyebrow again, this time not as a challenge but as genuine curiosity. You would like to know whether that is true or false as well.

Deep down you know that there are not many things you wouldn't let a guy like Johnny do to you.

He laughs, then pauses for a second and taps his fingers on the table as if looking for something to say. "You should let me take you out someday." Is what he decides on.

For some reason you don't think much of that at the moment. "You gotta take someone out before fucking them in public place?" You continue the joke, earning a low laugh and a head shake.

"I'm being serious."

How serious can someone really be at 4am with some alcohol on their system. This time you are the one raising your eyebrows, in pure doubt. He doesn't seem like the type who dates girls they fucked at a party once, or the type who dates girls like you. But thinking about it you don't really know what type of person Johnny is. Or what kind of girl you really are.

You click your teeth before smiling. "We'll see about that."

act 2: la petit mort

It’s not a text you get but instead a facebook invitation. It makes you laugh because men are truly all the same. Liking an old instagram picture, reacting with an emoji to something you post on stories. Never a message being straightforward, it’s like they are all physically incapable of that. You wonder if it’s because of fearing rejection.

See, dating it's not really your thing, never has been and the proof can be found in your few failed attempts. It just made you nervous, constantly on edge because it always involved a lot of confusing moments, of not knowing where it's going or what the other person is thinking. People are usually bad at the most important thing when it comes to this, communication. And you hated to be either on the side of conflict or of creating expectations too early.

But Johnny, well, he has got you interested. In a way that’s dangerous because it doesn’t happen very often, at least not with someone who seems interested as well or even the slightest bit possible.

And danger is not your area of expertise, not as of lately, but still you click on the green button and when saturday comes you’re walking inside a very underground party outside of campus.

You know it's the right place because there's some people outside smoking and the door is slightly open. You walk inside the two floor flat, the small bottle of wine you had brought shaking a little in your bag while you pass some people.

There's music playing but the sound of conversations is louder than that. The scent filling the room is undeniably familiar and it makes you wonder if there's a least one sober person in the room at the moment. You had been to parties like this before, not nearly as loud as the ones that happened on campus and with a lot less people. An amount that by the end of the night will have shrunk and the ones left will gather around the very old looking couch, share one last blunt and say unnecessary deep things and profess their deep affections for each other.

They were fun parties.

You don't talk to anyone because no one really attempts to talk to you first. That's just how you worked, social interactions never came as easy as it seemed to other people. You usually waited for people to approach and if they were nice you would cling to them. Sometimes you even practiced smiling in the foggy mirror after you showered. You practiced saying an icebreaker, smiling fakely after it, but you never really put it in practice.

You see Johnny before he sees you, surrounded by two boys that look particularly close. He looks effortlessly good, like he always does, with a black sweatshirt and light blue jeans. It makes you want to go there and hold his hand, lean against his chest, feel him loom above you and then kiss him in front of everyone as if it was normal, as if it meant nothing. You got this feeling a lot.

When he sees you he smiles big and makes his way to you with long and quick steps that don't take longer than three blinks from you.

"I thought you were going to DJ tonight." You say when he reaches you holding a bottle of beer.

He shrugs, standing very close to you now. "Nah, this is not that kind of party."

His eyes stay glued to you and you fight the urge to fix your hair. You wonder if he thinks you look good on the dress you chose.

"Hmm, it's not the kind of party I thought I would ever see you on." You point out, looking around as someone screams asking for them to play some song by an artist you don't know.

"To be honest this is much more my scene." He explains and this small piece of information he gives you about what he's really like makes you feel giddy for some reason. "The only reason I go to frat parties is because of Jaehyun."

Jaehyun was a dude that played on the football team and looked too good for his own good. Him and Johnny were always together, like they would break if someone separated them. "So that's who you got this weird frat boy aura you got from."

He laughs loudly. "Sure. But what about you? What's your scene?"

You pretend to think for a while. "I don't really know. I like very specific things that I only know I'm actually enjoying at the moment." It's a pretentious reply that you hope he finds funny.

He seems amused by it. "So, a moment type of girl."

He takes a sip of his beer and you take that moment to get the bottle of wine out of your bag. He laughs at it, as if the thought of you carrying wine around is very funny to him.

"Sure." You take a sip of your own. "You seem very keen on figuring out what kind of girl I am."

You enhance your question by raising your eyebrows as he starts leading you to a small empty couch. "Well, you're mysterious so I got to work with what I get." He says while sitting down and you follow, laughing because the last thing you would consider yourself is mysterious in any way.

"Trust me, you would get a lot more information if you just asked."

He nods, doing a whole scene of thinking of something to ask. "Ok then, why psychology?"

You almost laugh at the question because does anyone actually know why they chose their major? "I guess I like that the mind is the only thing that can understand itself." You say it in a pompous way so he knows you are not really that serious about that. "What about you? Why did you choose business?"

He looks forwards and moves as if to get more comfortable on the couch. It makes him get closer to you and your legs touch. "I don't know. Money, status, easier to get a job later on."

That makes you snort. "I don't think right now getting a job is easy in any area." You pause to drink some and then say, "You don't seem like someone who cares about those things, anyway."

He laughs just a little. "My parents do."

By his voice you can tell he doesn't really want to talk about that. Not right now at least.

"Well, at least when you are a famous dj the gossip magazines will be able to mention that you got a business degree you never used."

He leans into you when he laughs.

✿

The rest of the party is fun. You meet some of Johnny's friends that are too high to keep an actual conversation but are fun enough that you have a good time.

Johnny makes you laugh a lot and by the time you finish your wine you feel more drunk in his presence than on the alcohol itself.

There’s just something about Johnny’s presence that makes your legs go a little weak and your heart beat just a little faster, like you have a silly crush. He’s just funny, in a way that comes natural to him, and he makes you feel special, seeming interested in the things you say in a way that has your heart swoon. And on top of all that, like he couldn’t get any more perfect, he’s a whole 6’0 of man, all broad shoulders and always looking down at you with cute smiles.

It doesn't take you two long to reach his dorm, or for you to get on his bed. And when it’s like this, with him hovering over you, thrusting into you in a pace that has you seeing stars, the effect he has on you becomes painfully obvious.

It’s kind of embarrassing, really, how having him on top of you makes you feel so small and safe. How him hitting so deep inside when he gives you a sharp movement of his hips turns your inside into jelly. And all you can do in return is look up at him with glossy eyes and parted lips.

“God, I dreamed of fucking you.” He knows what he’s doing. Even worse, knows how to get to you with just a few words. “Do you like it, baby?” He asks, voice hoarse and lips turning into a barely not there smirk.

“Huh?” Is what you can reply with because you’re way out of it to make sense of his words. It just makes his smirk grow wider, hands moving to grip at your thighs so he can get your legs to open wider.

When he fucks into you faster, his cock hitting the spot that has you absolutely and completely losing your mind, he tries again. “Do you like how — Fuck— How big I feel?” His words are barely a groan from being just affected as you are. He sounds cocky but in a way that makes your eyes cross.

And you nod, enthusiastically so, because you do. It makes you shy, saying it out loud, but he seems well aware how much you love having him inside of you, the feeling of being full, the only thing that swims around your mind.

“Hmm, can you feel me here?” This time the question is accompanied by his palm on your lower belly, where a hint of a bulge forms when he gives you a deep thrust.

“Y-Yes.” You practically wail, body tingling from being so close. “You feel so —- Ughnnn.”

His chuckle is a mix of laughter and a moan, his lips coming down on yours in a kiss that’s as messy as it is desperate. “Are you shy, hmm? C-Can’t even say you like my cock inside of you.”

Your eyes roll to the back of your head. “Ah. I like it. I like it so much.”

He groans deep in his chest, hips still working. “You’ll drive me crazy one day, know that?"

What he doesn’t say but you know it’s true, it’s that he likes it as much as you do.

✿

What it becomes, is something you don't know exactly how to describe. All you know is that you spend a lot of time in Johnny's dorm these days. So much that you decorated every detail from it, from the fancy music equipment to the posters on the wall.

He fucks you in every way possible and it's weird that someone could know exactly how to please you, how to get you screaming. And then the two of you talk for hours, something putting on something to watch on his notebook while sharing ice cream, other times just laying down in silence until you fall asleep.

It's something you're not quite sure to navigate. How easy it feels when you are with him, and how right it feels. You two navigate this uncertain thing very smoothly and the need to put a name to it, asking the 'what are we' question escapes you often.

Right now you two lay down on his small bed, bare legs touching and the thin sheet on top of you barely covers anything. It was a rare thing to feel this comfortable with someone.

He's talking about something his mother said to him on the phone, about drinking green tea and you just listen, enjoying the sound of his voice until he stops and looks down at you with a small smile.

"Every time I talk about my parents you get this look." He says and you make a weird face at him.

"No I don't." You defend yourself and he chuckles.

"You do." He accuses. "Are you analyzing my parental relationship?"

You scoff, turning around to face him better. "No. I'm just friendly, feeling sorrow because of the fact you didn't get to choose what to study."

He looks back at you, looking soft with the late afternoon peeking in from his half closed window. "It's fine, really. I can study engine sound later on, there's no expiration. Besides, they did so much for me this is the least I can do."

You fight the urge to point out that he doesn't really owe them anything. It was hard sometimes to make sense of the way other people navigated their parental relationships. So all you say is a small "Yeah…"

"What about your parents? What are they like?"

"I don't know. They are divorced, so I haven't really talked to my father in a while." You hope he doesn't see this as weird. Every time he talks about his family they seem so normal, that it makes you envy him a bit. You always think that if you talk about your parents, people will think you're somehow messed up because of it, so you always keep it short. Johnny doesn't seem to mind it. "My mom is cool, I guess. She's funny."

He hums "I would like to meet her someday." It sounds like a bold statement. Something that means something, but he says with an ease that makes the thought of it seem pleasant. You realize you would like that to happen as well.

"She would like you." Is what you say with as much ease as he did.

A comfortable silence feels the room then, with only the low sound of the fan turning filling your ears. You don't think about how the room smells like sex, or about how summer is approaching and you'll probably not be able to see each other for a while.

"Are you going home for the summer?" You decide to ask.

He turns to look at you again. "Yeah, what about you?"

"I'm gonna start my internship. Work on my thesis." You had talked about both these things before, how important they were for you and the mention of it makes him smile.

"That's really nice." He says and you give him a tiny smile.

You swallow a lump in your throat then, the 2 months you'll stay apart hitting you and you just let the words escape your mouth. "I'm gonna miss you. Really."

He says it back by kissing you, softly and then with meaning. It happens naturally after that, like there wasn't anything else that made more sense than being as close to each other as possible right now.

When he enters you, you look up at him in what you think is awe. Your eyes hazy, barely able to keep open and lips parting in yet another moan.

It’s a nice view, in your defense, of Johnny hovering over you, looking so big as he fucks you so well you’re sure your second orgasm of the night is already approaching. You’re not embarrassed to say that most of the times this happens you go a little dumb in the head, your mind swimming in the gooey feeling of pleasure and all you can think about is him. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.

“Oh, oh… oh my god.” You sigh dreamily yet broken enough that it makes him smile when a sharp thrust makes your hips raise a little. He’s always proud of being able to get you like this, to be the only one who does so.

He hums as if agreeing with a very thorough statement, moving his arms so he can press his chest to yours as he fucks into you with calculated thrusts . You can barely move with his weight on top of you, with how he seems to lock you in place with his hips and it’s enough for another broken sob to fall from your lips.

“Good?” He asks in a groan and with a nice slide of his cock inside of you to punctuate the question. You nod frantically because he’s as deep as he can get, knows this very well, and the feeling is something that makes you flutter around him in the desperate need to come.

He kisses your cheek then, two sweet but filthy enough with his heavy exhales against it. His pace never gets too fast, just hinting at it but he maintains a speed that leaves you on the brink of your release. But, you only reach it when he pinches your clit with his fingers, circling it until your lips part in a silent scream and you’re coming again.

And the sounds he makes when your walls squeeze just a little more than he can handle are something else. A deep groan and a pained little sob that you find extremely endearing and hot at the same time, his face contorting as he quickened his pace just enough to push him over the edge, finally coming inside of the condom.

“You look so pretty like this.” He’ll say afterwards when he’s still inside of you, too lazy to move as you brush the hair out of his face.

And you’ll smile, in the way he seems to like so much, and say “You look pretty all the time” just to get him to smile at you.

act 3: yellow light (hit the brakes)

The rain was predictable. It had been raining every other day the entire month, on your way to work early in the morning you always ended up stepping on a pool and ruining your entire day because of your wet socks.

Not a lot of the people you knew had a car, or would willing to go out of their way to give you a lift. Your finger had hovered on top of Johnny’s contact for a while, not out of confidence that he would help you because you knew he would. But you hadn't really talked since summer started. There were random interactions, like replying to one of his instagram stories commenting on how intelectual posting pictures at The Louvre made him look and him making a joke about it or sharing a trivia about french people.

Besides, bothering people made you uncomfortable, as if that somehow put you in debt and in a state of vulnerability with the person.

But Johnny doesn’t look like he’s going to hold a grudge against you over a lift. Instead, when you apologize for making him come all the way there, he says “I was in the area anyway.”

Which you doubt, but you don’t say anything so you just smile and thank him again.

It's somehow weird that you don't even expect him to mention what happened last term. You fight the urge to say it out loud, mention a small detail about the whole thing just for him to laugh and somehow confirm to you that it really happened. It scared you sometimes how things were so momentary, as if life was supposed to be just a collection of things you would remember about and feel sad about.

But it’s easy with Johnny, had been from the start. In a way that makes you think that some people are really meant to meet if only for a moment.

You had expected the casual friendship you had with the other friends you had met at college to fade slowly, which had happened. Without the bond of parties and fun there wasn’t much left there, and that was fine, you were never really lonely because you didn’t have a lot of time to be. Your mind was also set in a routine and state of tiredness that anything out of that seemed to set it in a frenzy and it would just shut down, making it hard to make conversation naturally.

Work was usually quiet, but sometimes the girl that was also accepted for the internship would try to strike conversation about her thesis and while she was talking your gaze would be focused forward while your mind went somewhere else. She never pointed that out, probably because she just wanted to talk and not really listen. You were fine with that.

But with Johnny the silence is not the kind that makes you wonder if you should say something. You think that if you were to get in a daze right now he would try to pull you out, ask what you were daydreaming about, or maybe that’s you building your other life, the one you think about before going to sleep.

You watch the window wipe, swiping away the raindrops as Johnny picks a song. It’s just a little past 6 but the clouds make it look much later.

“How is the internship going?” Johnny asks after he sets on a song you don’t really know.

You shrug. Not long ago you had told him how excited you were for this, as if you thought your life would start with this idealized career you had created in your mind. At the time having to watch people your age sign forms about how depressed they are didn’t seem that bad. “It’s fine, not that busy at night so I get to work on my thesis when they give me those shifts.”

That involves a lot of reading multiple times the same page of articles written by pretentious men that think using difficult sentences makes them smarter. You think your advisor expects the same from you, fancy nomenclature but the human mind is already complicated enough by itself.

“And how is that going?” Johnny has no idea what you’re writing about, no one actually does. Sometimes you even doubt yourself, does it really matter to talk about something that feels so specific to your reality? Because it does seem like everyone else is doing a good job at living and not feeling like they are disconnected from reality.

You scoff and shake your head missing the way his lips corners lift just a little. “The best way it can, I suppose.”

“Good enough.” He says in his cheerful voice. “When are you going to become that kind of person that can't stop talking about what they are studying?"

That makes you laugh a little. If there was something you were familiar with, it was people who loved to talk about their thesis as if they would come up with the solution to all of the world's problems. "I don't think that really suits me." Just mentioning it made you actually a little sick.

"Yeah, because you are mysterious and all."

And there it is. Just this small reference to a past conversation you had with him, alone in your small dorm room, makes you feel giddy. You could even blush if you thought hard enough about it.

"Exactly, a box of surprises." You say, in a funny voice and his laugh makes you smile.

Outside the rain is still going strong and you can see students running around trying to find shelter while laughing and using their backpacks as improvised umbrellas. The sky is completely dark now and it makes you want to be in bed, safe and sound.

You go to ask Johnny about his summer in France, but he beats you to it. He had always been better at conversations, anyway.

"I saw that friend of yours, Ela I think." He mentions casually. "She's dating a friend of mine."

You knew that because of the numerous pictures on your instagram feed, but for some reason you pretend to be mildly surprised "Oh really? I haven't really talked to her in awhile." A shrug. "We don't have much in common, turns out."

He hums sympathetically. "Yeah that makes sense. But they both seem happy."

"Yeah." The topic doesn't really interest you. You can't barely remember a time where your past friends' love lives had any affect on you, now it's just a piece of information you'll forget about in a few hours.

"What about you, seeing anyone at the moment?" The question makes you raise both your eyebrows as you let out a laugh that sounds suspicious. It's a weird thing for him to ask but at the same time not really.

You sigh and he looks at you with a funny face, as if he's amused. I don't think I have the energy for that. What about you?"

He shrugs, turning his face to the front again. "Not really."

Months ago you think you would have made a flirty commentary about that. Something along the lines of 'That's good, I get jealous easily.' and it would have made him laugh. But now you just hum, not out of interest but because you are not sure how you would react to the potential outcome.

It should've felt obvious that he would somehow mention your relationship. You always thought that when you two talked about it, it would be bringing up the months you would see each other every day, and how you spend more time at his place than at your own. But what he says is, "Remember when you refused me?"

He says it in a funny voice, like old friends reminiscing on the past. You get confused with the pace of the conversations and ask "What?"

"At McDonalds. I asked you out and you said 'We'll see about it.'" He says it laughing, which means he's not hurt by that.

"I didn't think you remembered that." You mutter, because you really didn't. "And please, I wasn't rejecting you."

The last part is a lie. At the time you didn't think he was serious about it. Now, you don't know exactly what you think.

"Right, right. When you put me down nicely."

That makes you roll your eyes, laughing alongside him. "Yeah, right."

When the laugh dies down you watch as he taps his fingers on the steering wheel. You feel a weird sensation in your chest.

"Why did you?" He asks, voice not much more serious but the question has weight that his past sentences didn't have.

You could tell him the truth, of what kind of person you thought he was and how that changed. You definitely couldn't open up about what kind of person you were. So you settle for this: "I don't know, I think.. I mean, I'm not sure we would have worked out back then."

He hums loudly, then clicks his tongue. "Yeah. I don't know either." His voice is soft then, mixing perfectly with the muted rain sound and the song still playing. "You can never know."

You turn your face to look at him. There's no way to do it without him noticing that you are staring, but you do it without a hint of shame.

If you thought about it hard enough, about everything that happened, you would still not be able to point out exactly what would have happened if something more serious took place. And that's a weird thing to think about, because there was never a point in your relationship where neither of you decided it was meant to be casual, that's just how it turned out to be.

Later at night you will think about how there's nothing really casual about the way you can perfectly picture Johnny when you close your eyes, laying on your bed shirtless, hair a mess and face illuminated by the sun peaking out your window. How there's nothing casual at all about the fact that it has never felt like it did with anyone else.

But now, you just look at him with your heart ready to burst and you say. " We should watch a movie together someday."

He laughs, looks at you for a second and says "Yeah, we should."

act 4: what’s going on?

You didn’t feel particularly fond of mondays. Having to let go of the leisureliness of the weekend behind and welcome another week ahead never felt like a good idea when your phone alarm would start ringing at 7am.

It's not that the weekend was much better than that. All you ever did was read books that made your head ache for hours and then write never ending paragraphs that you hoped would make sense for anyone besides yourself. It was easy to become some sort of alienated when you stayed focused inside your room for so long, and having to remember that there was a whole life outside was a little painful.

When you walk inside the clinic the sound of the coffee machine being turned on reaches your ears and you mutter a small good morning to the psychiatrist that usually took the morning shifts. She was tall and always looked put together with a blazer jacket and red lipstick. Her friendly face made you suspicious for some reason.

"Good weekend?" She asks as you place your things on the front desk and you spare a smile to make her think you are interested in talking about your weekend.

"Yeah, sure." You turn on the old computer they got for you to use. A blue screen greets your eyes, then it glitches for a second like it always does. "What about you?"

It might sound like you're not a very nice person if you say you don't really care how her weekend went. Or that you would wish the conversation would have stopped at the greeting. But you really don't. These days talking to people takes a lot of effort and most of the time you wish you'd be just swallowed by silence and left alone.

"It was great, thank you." She says while adding sugar to her coffee. You are sitting down now and she turns to look at you with a sympathetic face. "Listen, I have a free spot this morning, if you'd like to talk a little."

You blink slowly, taking a moment to process the words she said, but it really doesn't take a genius to understand she's offering you counseling. Most likely because she thinks you need it.

And you're not about to argue that you don't, because you more than anything else know that you do, but you feel like you're not ready for it yet. As if you have things to figure out first. "Oh, that's very nice of you to offer." You say, uncertain how exactly to handle this. "But I have some things to get done."

The lie is accepted easily but she still raises her eyebrow a little. Still, she says. "Alright, then. Just remember I'm one door away."

You thank her, smiling politely until she finally leaves to her office. The computer is still loading and you let out another deep sigh, considering drinking a cup of coffee but deciding against it to not trouble your anxiety any more.

What happens next couldn't possibly be predicted. You take your phone out of your bag and open instagram out of habit, to pass some time. Johnny's profile is still the first one that shows up on the stories board, probably from all the time you spent messaging each other in the past.

It had been a while since you two talked to each other, but you kept up with his whereabouts from looking at the pictures he posted with friends and of random things. More often than not you fought the urge to reply to them, as if you didn't really know each other anymore.

You don't expect to see him with a girl when you click on his photo. But there he is, with arms around her and a single heart. You tap on to the next one and it's a repost from someone else's instagram, of a picture of him and the girl kissing while laughing.

There's a few words you can use to describe how you feel. Your heart drops and you go cold, blinking very slowly as the pictures change to another person's stories and for a second it's like it didn't happen. Like it was just a trick of the eye.

Would it be silly to cry over this? You think it would so you take a deep breath and try to not think about it anymore.

✿

It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that you probably loved him. Or at least felt a deep kind of infatuation. Sometimes at night you lay in bed and wonder what exactly went wrong and you can't really find an answer to that. It just naturally happened.

Maybe you should have said something, maybe if you did things would've stayed the same. You wish that at the time you knew what to say but now it was a little too late.

You stare at your blank ceiling, your skin tingling where it touches you sheets. Looking at couples always made you feel weird, with jealousy maybe because you never thought that was something for you. Being in love has always been something that other people got to experience, and you got to watch it but never try it for yourself.

Maybe there was something wrong with how you worked, how you viewed this whole thing. You wish you knew what so you could fix it.

Sometimes when you close your eyes you imagine someone wrapping arms around you, with a familiar cologne that makes you feel at home. the person doesn’t complain when you hug them tighter, probably knows this is what you need.

You think of all the men you had dated, the ones who disappeared out of nowhere and the ones who treated you like shit because you allowed it. You didn't really know how it really had to work until you met Johnny.

It had never felt like that. Gentle and soft and easy.

How to separate true loneliness from the mere need to feel something, to have someone want you? That’s a trick question and you think about it until you fall asleep.

✿

For you last month in college, you don’t do much.

The internship ends with the old lady that was in charge of the clinic telling you what an amazing job you did, and how she knows for sure you will exceed in the area. She writes a beautiful recommendation letter, mentions a few professional names and then sends you away.

A week before its deadline you send out your finished thesis to your advisor, after spending half an hour staring at your email until you can press send. You got a reply two hours later with pleasantries and a date for your final presentation.

As you wait for it there's nothing a lot to do. Some days you walk around campus without a real destination in mind, stopping by the cafeteria and the library on your way. There's not many people around this time of the year, most have gone already and the ones that stayed spend time rehearsing for presentations or hanging out with friends.

You get texts from people you haven't talked to in months, wishing you good luck and inviting you to parties that you attend once or twice just to get one last taste of it.

It’s weird that you don’t feel the deep sense of realization you thought you would. You lay down on the small bed you slept on for two years, stare at the empty walls of your dorm now that you’ve put all your things away, and you feel almost normal. Sure there’s a little ball of emptiness and excitement on your stomach alongside pride for finishing this and for having grown up so much since freshman year. But besides that you just feel normal.

Maybe this is what being alive is, experiencing life changing moments and not feeling like they mean much. Maybe some moments are just meant to be remembered as special, and not lived as such.

Your presentation goes well, you don’t trip over your words and your teachers compliment your great work afterwards. You cry, in front of a bunch of people you don’t know, and let out a deep breath of relief.

Ten days later you graduate, wearing the usual attire and walking on stage with a smile on your face when your name is called. No one screams your name or cheers loudly because plane tickets were too expensive for your parents to attend. The claps from your classmates are still nice.

You don’t expect to see Johnny there, but he shows up wearing a suit that looks alien compared to the clothes he wears daily. He looks good, familiar and it makes a lump form on your throat.

You hadn’t really talked to each other in a while. It had been a natural thing to happen, for the two of you to fall a little apart. But still, when he waves at you, you make your way to him easily.

“Finally got your ticket out of this place, huh?” He jokes with a smile on his lips that you can’t help but mimic.

“Yeah, I’m finally free.” You joke back.

You inhale softly when he hugs you, so close that you can hear his heartbeat. He surrounds you with him and you think you would drown right now if he allowed you to. “Congratulations, ____.” He says quietly, almost whispering your name.

You’re both smiling when you part. “Soon it’ll be you.”

Before he can reply a familiar face makes her way to where you two are. Johnny circles her waist when she gets close enough and you fight as to not let your smile fall. He introduces her as his girlfriend, a biomedicine student that smiles big when she congratulates you on graduating and expresses how she can’t wait for her turn to come.

She’s very pretty is what you keep thinking about as you make small talk that feels a little painful.

After some time Johnny says “Well, we should leave you to go talk to your family. It was really nice to see you, ____.”

His words sound genuine and you smile when he hugs you again.

You don’t tell them there’s not really anyone you know for you to talk to. Instead, you walk to your dorm with your heels clicking on the asphalt.

act 5: old friend / late spring

Your feet hurt a little from standing too much and not even the coldness of the beer you’re having can make you ignore it.

The truth is that you really wanted to be home right now, eating leftovers while you watched a movie. But instead, you’re in the bar your colleagues always attended after work to share a laugh and complain about mundane things while enjoying the 2 for 1 deal they had on friday for happy hour.

Working in an office with people wearing suits hadn’t been what you had envisioned yourself doing two years after graduating. You had always dreamt of having your own clinic, becoming a therapist or even working at a hospital. But times were hard and the human relations department of a marketing company had been what you had to go for.

It’s not as boring as it sounds, and you get to know about every gossip firsthand so you settle for it very easily. But having to be at a bar after a whole tiring week was not on your favorites list.

You excuse yourself from the group when they start talking about something you were tired of hearing. A gossip about the boss sleeping with someone from the finance department that you knew about months ago.

You walk to the bar, cursing your heels until you finally sit on a stool, ordering another beer that you know is gonna be your last before you decide to escape. There’s loud conversation happening all around you and a song playing over it. Your back hurts a bit and you wonder when life has become so mundane.

Lost in your thoughts, you don’t notice the man that sits right next to you until he’s ordering a beer and the voice seems familiar.

Your heart jumps out of your chest when you look at him and Johnny stands there in all his glory, with blonde hair and a very fancy suit. “Oh my fucking god.” Is the only thing you manage to mumble.

For a second you think you might be dreaming, but when he turns and looks at you his face contorts in the most amusing expression of surprise.

Maybe this is what being alive is, experiencing life changing moments and not feeling like they mean much. Maybe some moments are just meant to be remembered as special, and not lived as such.

The two of you hug while laughing and he keeps muttering something that sounds like a ‘no way.’

“I can’t believe this! What are you doing here?” You ask excitedly and he laughs.

“I’m working on a office a few blocks from here.” He explains. “Just started a few days ago.”

“I work around here too.” You exclaim and it’s like you could buzz from how excited you feel about this.

You talk about things easily, both sharing what you have been doing for the past years.

“This is crazy. I haven’t heard from you since college.” He says and it makes you freeze, blinking slowly but it doesn’t last long until you are covering your surprise by chuckling. Suddenly you’re hit with memories from those years and everything that happened between the two of you. Your eyes meet his and it strikes you that he’s probably thinking the same thing as you are.

You shake your thoughts away, leaning on the counter with one elbow and then resting your face on your palm. “Who would’ve thought we would reunite after those years in a sketchy bar.” You joke, in a playful tone to keep the conversation going.

He chuckles, bringing his hand to his face before he replies. “I would have never guessed this was your kind of scene.”

The way he says it makes you snort. “It’s definitely not.”

“Yeah.” He nods while laughing, “Still a moment kind of girl then?”

You nod then, making an amused sound while you take a sip of your beer. “Seems to me like you still got me all figured out.”

“Do I? I used to think that I did but after all it happened I wasn’t so sure anymore.” He says avoiding your eyes a little and a lump forms on your throat. “To be honest I don’t really understand what happened.”

You nod, turning to face him. “I think it wasn’t the right time.” It’s what you decide to say and he hums.

“When is ever the right time for anything?” He asks and it makes you laugh loudly.

You share a look then, one that says more than you could ever do with words. He smiles and then you smile back, like old friends would. “Maybe we met again for a reason.”

Deep down, you know this is one of those moments happening. One that you’ll look back on the future and remember that it is where it all began. Again.

#johnny scenarios #JOHNNY SMUT #nct smut #nct scenarios #neowritingsnet #i honestly think this is bad lol #but well ENJOY

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whentherewerebicycles · 3 years ago

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hello anon!! okay, this is going to be a very long post, so buckle up. standard caveat: since i don’t know the specifics of your topic or discipline or situation, some of this will hopefully be relevant and some of it might not, so just grab what works for you and leave the rest! and if you have more specific questions that this general overview doesn’t touch on, feel free to send those in.

it sounds like you have a few different questions here:

How do I find and articulate my research question?

How do I effectively take notes on my background reading in the early stages, when I’m not sure yet what my argument is going to be?

How do I organize a long research project/paper? How do I conceptualize something that has so many moving parts & happens to be a genre (a thesis) that I’ve never written before?

How do I write something that long?

also I am not sure if by “diss” you mean a senior thesis, master’s thesis, or a doctoral dissertation, as I know US and non-US universities use different terminology! so I will kinda just respond to this as A Very Lengthy Research Paper.

my response here will focus mostly on that first question (how to find/articulate a research question), with some thoughts at the end about notetaking in the early stages of a big research project. I’m going to lay out a method I just used with my own students to help them articulate questions & generate possible lines of inquiry to follow. I have been calling it the ‘research tier’ activity/system but it’s a pretty basic way of mapping out possible directions for a project. I use some version of this for every big project I undertake - whether it’s academic work, planning a course syllabus, or writing fic.

I want to emphasize, before I start, that the “tier” map you construct is a LIVING document, not a set-in-stone plan that has to be finished before you begin. the goal is to get past the anxiety of the blank page by generating tons and tons of ideas and questions related to your central topic -- so that if you hit a dead end, you can trace your way back and follow a different line of inquiry. when i am working on a research project, i am continually updating this planning document (i’ll say more about that at the end, once you have a sense of what the tiers look like).

Those questions are geared towards my students, who are working more in social science-y disciplines and/or on projects that have clear connections to specific communities. If you are writing a more traditional humanities discipline, here are some other examples:

I’m interested in...

the romance novel as a genre

Virginia Woolf’s writings on nature/the environment

the cultural reception and impact of the TV show Will & Grace

what queer social life looked like in 1920s New York

play and playfulness in the college classroom (my current research project, which I’ll use as an example)

once you have some idea of your focus, you can begin generating questions related to that focus. “Tier 2″ begins to get slightly more specific, though you are still very much in “big picture” mode. here’s some sentence stems I give my students to help them generate tier 2 questions:

my students are doing research projects that are ideally supposed to develop out of their preexisting community involvements or commitments, so i give them this additional advice:

[note: if your thesis topic is in a social science-y discipline (or a humanities discipline that leans closer to the social sciences), you can probably use some of those ideas or prompts. if your thesis topic is more of a purely academic humanities-type topic (for instance, a literary studies thesis about a specific novel), not all of those will apply perfectly, but some will hopefully be useful still!]

here’s an example, again using my playfulness project. I’ll list the question and then below it, in italics, I’ll explain what ‘stirred up’ that question for me.

T2: What are some core preoccupations or big-picture questions I want to explore? What are some things I’ve noticed that I want to understand?

Core Question 1: Why are college classrooms so serious? Why is there so little playfulness in most college teaching? Why so little laughter, movement, fun?

Observing my friend’s kindergarten classes made me realize how much elementary educators rely on bright colors, movement, singing, playing imaginative games together, etc. to engage young learners’ imaginations, minds, and bodies. Why do we value that so much in elementary education, but stop considering it important in college classes? Do learners “age out” of a need for highly interactive, engaging learning? I suspect no... so that’s a hunch I can begin to follow.

Observing other college courses (and drawing on my own experience as an undergrad and grad student) made me realize how much educators rely on the same standard methods of teaching (lecturing with a discussion section; a version of Socratic seminar discussion that is primarily led by the professor). To me, these methods are antithetical to playfulness and tend to quash people’s ability or desire to playfully experiment, try things out, risk failure, etc. I wonder if the actual methods we use to teach content or to structure our classes are producing ‘serious’ classes, whether or not we personally as instructors want that to happen. That’s another hunch I could follow...

I’m thinking of a possible connection here to my past research on the origins of English literature as a discipline (in 1920s-30s England). One of the things that scholars often emphasize is how hard faculty had to work to transform English into a serious, rigorous, ‘legitimate’ discipline, akin to the hard sciences. That’s something that I think we still see today in the way people anxiously defend the value of a humanities education. I’m curious about whether the need to justify our existence as a discipline/field of study influences our methods of teaching college students. Do we banish playfulness from the classroom because it threatens that image of the humanities as a serious, rigorous discipline? That’s yet another hunch I could follow...

Core Question 2: I have a hunch that people learn better in playful environments. Is that true -- and if so, why? What is it about playfulness that enhances learning?

I’m a lifelong fangirl, and fandoms are creative environments where people are continually engaged in acts of imaginative play. I’ve observed and have experienced firsthand how these playful environments seem to encourage people to try new things, take creative risks, learn new skills even if they’re afraid they’ll be ‘bad’ at them, and commit huge amounts of time, energy, and passion to long-term creative projects that don’t make any money or ‘earn’ them a grade. I’m curious about how we might adapt the playful, passionate energy of fan spaces to college teaching.

In my own classrooms, I’ve noticed that students get so much more into the activity (and seem to internalize the content more deeply) when I frame it as an imaginative exercise, a roleplaying activity, or a game of some kind. Teaching the same content in a way that encourages playfulness seems to produce deeper engagement (and deeper learning?) than using the traditional methods of ‘serious’ teaching.

Core Question 3: Playfulness and shared laughter/fun seem to build social bonds (again, drawing on my experiences in fandom). Could shared imaginative play help students develop better social skills? Could it help build a sense of community in the classroom and strengthen students’ sense of belonging? This question feels especially urgent to me given the epidemic of self-reported loneliness, anxiety, and depression on college campuses.

You can have lots more than 3 core questions/preoccupations! In fact, the more ideas you can generate at this stage the better. The idea isn’t to hone in on your research question (yet) but to generate as many possible paths you could take, so that you can begin evaluating which interest you most, or which seem like the most fruitful questions to explore/answer. Doing the idea-generating for Tier 2 should already begin to set you up for Tier 3 -- which involves articulating specific sub-questions you’ll need to answer to better understand or answer those core questions/preoccupations.

and then we’ll go ahead and fold in T4, as I tend to move back and forth between T3/T4 as I brainstorm.

I’ll just take one of my Tier 2 questions as an example, but again, you can/should do this for all of yours (or at least the ones that interest you most).

Core question: Playfulness and shared laughter/fun seem to build social bonds (again, drawing on my experiences in fandom). Could shared imaginative play help students develop better social skills? etc etc

T3 subquestions (with T4 “directions for inquiry” folded into the first one, so you can see an example):

-- SubQ1 Does play actually strengthen social bonds? If so, how? Are specific kinds of play better for this than others (ie, collaborative or cooperative play compared to competitive play)? With Tier 4 folded in:

Do a library database search to try to figure out where “play” research typically happens -- is it in psychology research? Neuroscience? Early childhood education?

Then begin searching for different keyword strings that might help me gather up initial sources. Some initial ideas: play + social bonding, play + social skills, play + social development, play + cooperation, play + friendship, play + mental health. (Typically finding a couple useful/relevant articles will help you generate better keywords -- as you can begin to see the kinds of terminology that researchers use to describe your topic.)

I could also maybe interview college students themselves, or design a survey - but that would depend on the type of research I want to do. Do I want to conduct my own original research study, or is my focus more on synthesizing existing research from different fields to construct an argument?

Could I find faculty or researchers who work on these topics, who might be able to direct me to specific resources or help me understand what kind of work has already been done on this topic? Maybe I can’t find someone who specifically researches playfulness, but an educational researcher whose work focuses on social-emotional learning would probably have a pretty good understanding of what features or pedagogical choices help create positive, affirming learning environments.

-- SQ2: Are college students lonely?

Are they reporting (or do they experience) higher rates of mental illness? What are the numbers on this?

What are some of the prevalent theories or hypotheses about why this is? Could social isolation or difficulty forming friendships be a possible contributing factor?

-- SQ3: Why are social bonds good for us - physically, mentally, emotionally?

-- SQ4: Do social bonds enhance learning? If so, how?

What if I looked to other non-academic learning environments (such as fandoms, team sports or group activities, etc where people are learning new skills in highly social settings) to make a case for playfulness in the college classroom? This isn’t direct 1:1 proof that “more playfulness in college classrooms = happier, more socially well-connected students,” but offering detailed descriptions of how those learning environments are structured might spark ideas for my audience (university instructors and administrators) or persuade them that playfulness has an important social-emotional role to play in college learning.

Typically what ends up happening is I produce a huge, messy document (or fill a giant paper or whiteboard if I’m doing it by hand) that has tons and tons of different directions I might follow. usually, the initial process of creating this giant brainstorming document sparks lots of ideas for where to begin researching. then, as i go off and begin reading articles, those articles typically help flesh out my understanding of the core questions or concepts i’m interested in, or my understanding of what kind of research on this topic already exists vs. where the gaps are that my own work might be able to fill. that initial source-gathering phase of research will also usually spark new questions and sub-questions, which get added to my tier map.

having some kind of messy brainstorming map/plan also helps me read in a more focused way. instead of just opening a random article and skimming it without any clear sense of what i’m looking for, i’m now opening articles and reading them with a purpose -- i’m looking for answers to the specific questions i’ve articulated. so i can skim in a more focused way, looking for specific keywords that seem relevant, and i can also take notes in a more focused way, noting down key ideas that

having a question in mind can also help me figure out more quickly if the article is relevant to my research questions or not. for instance, let’s say i open an article about how playing competitive games in high school PE classes improve students’ self-reported moods. if i didn’t know what i was reading for, i might spend a lot of time on this article, trying to figure out if it was relevant to my research (it has the keywords, right? so maybe it’s relevant?). but if i am reading with a specific question in mind (“Do collaborative learning games help strengthen students’ sense of social connection?”) I can tell pretty quickly that this article is not going to be that useful, since it focuses on competitive physical games (probably not something I’ll integrate into an English class). so I can say with some confidence, “I probably don’t need to read this whole thing, but maybe I’ll check out their lit review section or their bibliography to see if the authors cite any other work on play/playfulness that might be more relevant to my specific questions.”

i think i’ve kinda started to answer your second question about notetaking here, too, so i will also say that in the early stages of a big research project, i am absolutely NOT taking detailed notes on any of the sources i find. my focus is much more on amassing a large pool of highly relevant sources that i know i’m going to want to go back to and read more deeply as my research questions come into sharper focus. this is because deep reading burns through a lot of time and energy, so i want to make sure i’m saving that deep reading energy for sources that are quite likely to be relevant to my project.

to figure out if a source is relevant, I often skim the abstract and introduction to figure out the core questions the article or chapter is seeking to answer. then I ask myself three questions:

Are the core questions of this article the same as (or very similar to) my core questions or subquestions? If so, mark this citation as HIGHLY relevant - I’m going to want to come back and read this source carefully, to see if it’s already suggested answers to the questions I’m asking.

Do the core questions of this article seem to resonate with my core questions, even if we’re not asking them in exactly the same way, or the author of this paper is applying them to a different field? If so, mark this citation as LIKELY relevant - it may not be a perfect 1:1 with my own questions, but that can sometimes spark exciting new ideas or ways of reframing my original questions. If not, toss it.

Do the questions this article is asking suggest new questions or lines of inquiry that I am interested in exploring? Sometimes an article will introduce me to a whole new area of research or a new array of questions I hadn’t even originally thought to explore. If that’s the case, I typically pencil those sub-questions into my brainstorming tier document and mark the source as LIKELY or HIGHLY relevant, depending on how excited i am about it.

OK I WILL CLOSE HERE FOR NOW as I have to get back to work, but I will say that when I taught my students this method, they were very confused by the initial explanation of it, but then when they went back and used the models to work through the tier brainstorming activity for themselves, they seemed to find it really useful. so if you are scratching your head, try doing a quick TIER 1 - TIER 2 - TIER 3 - TIER 4 map for your own research question to see if doing it yourself helps clarify. also: if you can’t get further than tier 2, it’s usually a sign that you need to do some more reading and freewriting about the questions that you’re curious about, or the gaps you’ve noticed in the scholarship, or the threads you’d like to follow. but you can do some of that background reading in a more focused way now, using your initial big questions to help guide your selection of background readings & give you a sense of purpose as you read.

#this research 'system' would be CHILLING to some of my hyper-organized academic friends #who are all about using highly structured systems for tagging sources and managing citations and so on #but it works well for my brain & for the way i think #which tends to be very associative and focused on generating connections #i cannot tell if this is helpful or not aha i feel like students often want me to give them a highly structured method #and my answer is usually just like #research is a creative process #and like any creative process there are probably some 'best practices' or helpful methods people can teach you #but you figure out your own way of doing it based on how your brain processes and organizes information & makes connections #i was going to add 'things get less messy in the later stages for me' to reassure you & my horrified hyperorganized friends aha #but that is just a lie #usually i am cutting up drafts and moving pieces around and mindmapping and doing visual representations of sections #right up until the polished final draft #research #mw

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captainscanadian · 3 years ago

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Love Me Blue | Bucky Barnes x Reader (Vaaranam Aayiram)

MY MASTERLIST

Series Masterlist

Summary: This night was surely a dream come true.

Word Count: 2000+

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Tamilian!Hindu!Reader, Sam Wilson

Warnings: References to Hinduism, Death, PTSD, Civil War & Endgame References.

A/N: This is my entry for @bucky-smiles‘s 3K Diversity Writing Challenge! My prompt was to write a fic with a Hindu reader. I decided to write this fic with a Tamilian reader because I am Tamilian. I was born in Sri Lanka and my mother’s side of the family are Hindu. Although I consider myself an agnostic theist, I do enjoy reading the epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana. Pic from Pinterest! <3 Divider by @whimsicalrogers!

Back in the 1940s, Bucky had always made it a habit to check out the Stark Expo. Having been interested in the sciences from a very young age, he had often been rather fascinated by the genius of Howard Stark - at least, until things had taken a turn for the worst once he had joined the war. He still remembered the last Stark Expo he had attended. It had been the night before he was to be shipping out to England for the war, and he had dragged Steve out to celebrate; he had also invited two girls to be their dates.

Seeing Howard Stark present a prototype of a flying car that night had been quite the surreal experience. Sure, the Barnes family had been wealthy enough to own a car during the Great Depression and all. But nothing could ever live up to the sheer excitement of witnessing a flying car.

Well, almost nothing.

“You never mentioned that you could drive a flying car…” The man teased as he saw you enter the pocket park after parking Lola.

“You never asked.” You responded, a cheeky grin plastered across your lips as you made your way over to him.

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises?”

“Me?” You quirked your eyebrow at his words. “Are you seriously telling me that I’m the one who’s full of surprises? You’ve been full of surprises all day, Bucky.”

“Guilty as charged.” Bucky beamed, stepping over to kiss you on your cheek. “You look lovely, Y/N. Let me guess, a new dress?”

That cheeky bastard.

“You don’t look so bad yourself.” You commented, having noticed that he had finally managed to cut his hair off, and he was dressed in the finest velvet suit that matched the blue of your dress. “I’ve got to admit. You clean up really nice.”

“I’m glad you could make it.” He told you once he pulled back. “Welcome to the Stork Club.”

You could not help but let out a soft giggle at that. When Sam had told you to ‘follow the music’, you had not understood what he must have meant at first. But it hadn’t taken you that long to realize that Bucky had referred to the music that had always been playing in your heart. You had followed your heart, and it had led you right towards Paley Park.

“So, this is where the playboys of the 40s used to dance the nights away, huh?” You asked him as you stepped towards him, gently throwing your arms over his neck as you took it all in.

It was a rather warm summer’s night, and New York City was as busy as ever. But with the noise cancelling atmosphere in this pocket park, you somehow felt at ease. It felt as though you were standing on a piece of history, as the Stork Club had been one of the famous clubs during the time of the Great Depression and the years that followed. But being here with Bucky was the most surreal experience of all. Perhaps this was how calming Radha had felt when she followed Krishna’s music out to the forest - calm, relaxed, and madly in love with the man who had led her there.

“Yeah, this is it.” Bucky responded with a chuckle, his metal hand resting on your hip while his other hand moved to tuck a loose strand of your hair behind your ear. “So, may I have this dance?”

And so, the two of you had danced the night away, under the stars in a rather tiny pocket park in Manhattan, to the music that played in your hearts. While it was not the most romantic first date out there, it was more than enough for the two of you. You had to have your own Rasleela with the man you had fallen in love with, and Bucky had finally taken a girl out to dance as he did during the 1940s.

The two of you returned to the compound just around midnight, having strolled around Manhattan for a little longer, and taking in how busy it was in the city that never sleeps. Bucky had spent most of the night spitting out historical facts about the multiple buildings you’d walked past, and you could not help but admire the fact that you were indeed on a date with a historical figure.

If Natasha were alive right now, you were sure that she would have teased you about your obsession with history, and how it had caused you to date the man you had written your thesis on. Perhaps if the rest of the team found out about it, they too would refuse to pass up the chance to pull your leg about it.

Thankfully, by the time you had returned, they were all asleep. It was just you and Bucky, alone in the common kitchen, just like the many nights you had shared together before. But this time, it was not because you could not sleep through the night. It was because you did not want to sleep, or accept the fact that this night had to come to an end somehow.

Once this night ended, you knew that you had to return to reality. The reality of leading the Avengers until Nick Fury decides to return and free you from your duties; whether he was returning was still a doubt.

The reality was also working with the newly established GRC to deal with the many individuals who had been displaced due to the Blip. While diplomacy had always been your first choice in your career, it was safe to say that you were starting to enjoy working amongst the earth’s mightiest heroes once again.

And speaking of diplomacy, there was something else that you really needed to get off of your chest... something that you had been meaning to tell Bucky for a while now.

“I wish my father could see me right now.” You told him with a sigh as the two of you snuck into the common kitchen to finish up some of your leftover dosa batter. “I wish my father could see that I’ve managed to make a life for myself after he left me.”

Bucky nodded as he sighed, understanding all too well about the loss you had been dealing with. “I’m sure your father’s watching you from wherever he is, and he’s proud of you for being the best boss lady the Avengers have ever seen.” Mixing up the batter as you wait for the pan to heat up.

You could not help but chuckle at that. “It’s funny how you say that.” Seriously, it was ironic.

“Do you miss him a lot?”

You nodded. “Yeah, I do. I miss him… every day. He wasn’t just my father, you know? He was my role model, my mentor. I looked up to him. I wanted to be like him.”

“How did he pass?” He asked. “If you wouldn’t mind me asking…” There was a slight hesitancy that he noticed when you turned your head away from him for a moment, and he could not help but wonder why.

Sam had mentioned to him that your last mission with the Avengers had been in Lagos, and that you had left the compound soon after, as your father had passed away around that time.

“The bombing in Vienna.” You muttered, feeling your eyes glaze over as you remembered that dreadful day.

It did not take that long for Bucky to put two and two together. He was well aware that your father had been a diplomat, so it made sense that he would have been at the United Nations conference to sign the Sokovia Accords when the bomb had gone off. “I… I’m so sorry, Y/N. I didn’t know...” He told you as he frowned, now understanding why you had given your kind regards to the Wakandan royal family.

It was for the role they had played in putting Zemo behind bars.

“N-No, Bucky… it wasn’t your fault.” You told him with a sigh, leaning over to wrap your arms around his neck. “It wasn’t your fault. I know that now.”

That last statement almost came out as a whisper. After all, you had blamed him for your father's death, along with the rest of the world that had accused him of bombing the United Nations conference. Hell, you had even fought with Steve because of it. It was a time you did not want to recall, as you now knew that you were in the wrong.

“You thought I killed your father, didn’t you?” He asked you, his eyes glazing over as he remembered those days. Although Shuri and her team had managed to remove HYDRA’s programming from his mind, all of the memories, the trauma and the guilt were very much there for him; he was yet to start working on them.

You could not help but nod in response to his question. “I did. I… I didn’t know then that I had been wrong about you. Steve and I… we were close. I was one of the first people he befriended after coming out of the ice. Every mission, every battle he fought… I was there every single time to fight alongside him. Even when Steve opposed the Accords, I agreed with him. I was even willing to go against my own father. Hell, I even tried to talk him out of signing. I tried to stop him from going to Vienna, but he wouldn’t listen. He…”

Bucky wrapped his arms tightly around you as he let out a sigh. “So, is that why you left? Because opposing the Accords had cost you your father’s life?”

You nodded as you rested your head against his shoulder, letting out a sigh as you accepted his comfort. “Yeah, I did. I left because I didn’t see a point in fighting anymore. I couldn’t do it, not when my father was dead. I felt like it was my fault. I could have tried harder to talk him out of it. I could have stopped him from going to Vienna, but I didn’t… and now he’s dead.” You explained. “I never even got to say goodbye to him.”

He continued to hold you for a moment as you cried, knowing that you must have been holding onto this guilt for several years now. If anything, he understood that guilt himself. “It wasn’t your fault, Y/N.” He told you once he pulled back from the embrace, his thumbs brushing off your tears.

Wiping away the remainder of your tears, you turned over to pour the dosa batter in the pan. “Yeah, well… that makes two of us.”

He wrapped his arms around you once again, resting his chin against your shoulder. “If it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t your fault either, okay?”

You nodded. “Yeah…” You agreed, for you knew that he was right. “You know, for the longest time, I believed that you were the guy who killed my father, that you were the reason why I fought with Steve, that you were the reason why my life as I knew it was gone…” You admitted, grabbing the oil and drizzling it in the pan. “But now I know that I got to know you, I know that you’re… you’re not who HYDRA had made you out to be. Under all of that brainwashing and… pain, you’re a really nice guy, Bucky. You’re kind and thoughtful. You’re…”

“The Krishna to your Radha?” Bucky cut you off with a soft chuckle, his metal hand rubbing up and down your arms.

You nodded as you laughed. “Yeah, that you are.” You admitted, not just to him but also to yourself.

Eventually, that night did come to an end. After all, the two of you were exhausted from your date and having stuffed yourselves with a late night snack, it was only fair to retreat to your respective living quarters.

It was the first night in a while that Bucky Barnes was able to sleep in his own bed without any nightmares, as he was now dreaming of the life he would get to live with you.

You had a dream that night too. A dream that Andal had described that she had of when Lord Krishna had come to marry her:

Vaaranam aayiram soozha valam vandhu,

Naarana Nambi nadakkindraan yendredhir,

Poorana pokudam vaithu, puramengum,

Thoranam naatta kana kanden thozhi, naan.

The only difference was that it wasn’t Krishna who had come to marry you in your dreams.

It was Bucky.

#3kdiversity #aj writes #love me blue #vaaranam aayiram #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x desi!reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes series #desi au

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katsidhe · 4 years ago

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15.17 Final Thoughts (2/2)

Part one here. OKAY, let’s Talk About Dean™, shall we?

Dean has been flatly angry this season—really, he hasn’t meaningfully moved past the place he was in at 14.20 or 15.01. This empty rage, clawing for moral high ground, searching for some vicious place of agency and righteousness, has manifested in ugly ways all season, from the way he’s treated Cas and Jack, to stuff like executing the vampire kid in 15.04 or the bar dude in 15.07. Sam has not been exempt from complicity in this pattern; we’ve seen a lot more unthinking hunts, like in 15.10 or 15.15, wherein the motive and the story is secondary to the necessity of the Success of the Justified Kill at the end of the book. The shorthand for hunting this season has been killing things, not saving people.

Dean saying Jack isn’t family: FINALLY. thank you. It’s true, it’s always been true, this has always been Dean’s opinion, since season 13: his affection for Jack has always been fundamentally conditional. And I’m so glad to hear him openly acknowledge it in a way neither Jack nor Sam can make excuses for. (even though poor Jack, bless his heart, still tries—in the sense that he understands Dean’s straightforward hostility in a simple way that is nearly a comfort. More on that in a separate post.)

Dean’s speech to Jack in the car: wowowowow. Dean pushing Jack to suicide SURE IS SOMETHING, ain’t it? Amazing. He tells Jack, with no sense of irony or illusion, thank you for killing yourself so that Sam and I can finally be free to have a life. What’s so FUNNY here is that Dean easily could have said many things that would have been more sympathetic—like, thanks for doing this to save the world. Instead, the way he contextualizes the worth of Jack’s sacrifice is in exactly the same terms Billie used last episode: what it means for him personally.

This is an unsightly peak of selfishness. Even during the sporadic times Dean tries in this episode and in 15.16 to contextualize his need to be free of Chuck as something for Sam’s sake as much as his own, his protectiveness is much more explicitly and significantly of Their Lives. And Their Lives are not equally Sam’s: their little world’s status quo, the car the hunt the music, belongs to Dean. The amount of ownership that Dean’s had? Made him more vulnerable to the revelation of Chuck’s control, and more unhinged as he seeks to win it back. Dean’s sense of self is much less relentlessly internal than Sam’s, going back even to childhood.

I know you feel that way about Chuck, Sam says, because he has known this feeling since season 5, the revelation that every choice he made, every tiny rebellion he thought he managed, was in service to a dark plan. He knows, and he knows Dean is not dealing well, and he knows why.

I’ve already written a lot about the rest of Sam’s speech, but I gotta repeat anyway how much I LOVE Sam’s stubborn insistence that, yeah, Dean, you definitely protected me from Dad and Lucifer both, and it is in fact the only thing I’m 100% certain of.

Dean threatens Sam with lethal violence. This is not the first time, obviously, but the way it happened actually is a pretty fascinating break from tradition!

For one, this is not a Moral High Ground Thing. Dean is making no judgment here; he’s not killing Sam For His Own Good. Sam isn’t on his knees. It’s not that Dean thinks Sam is in the grip of some dark power. Dean knows Sam is just, y’know, disagreeing with him over Jack’s suicide.

This is also not an Under the Influence thing. Dean isn’t a demon, he isn’t possessed, he isn’t bearing the Mark of Cain. This is straight up, unthinking rage and frustration, unleashed in destructiveness.

If Dean HAD gone through with shooting Sam here, I’m certain he would have regretted it instantly and view it as an awful mistake [and probably we’d be watching him castigate himself over this terrible sad unavoidable tragedy]. Ironically enough, Jack’s accidental killing of Mary in 14.17 would then be the closest point of comparison—and that’s being way too generous to Dean. Jack didn’t actually intend to point lethal power at anyone, whereas Dean very much chose to aim and cock his gun.

Dean…. isn’t really a very good agent of free will, historically. In times of crisis, Dean has a pattern of being willing to go along with the first plan that gives him some kind of autonomy or power, even if it takes away more of his or someone else’s autonomy in the long term (see: selling his soul in s2; signing up for Team Heaven in s4; nearly saying yes to Michael in s5; letting Gadreel possess Sam in s9; accepting the Mark of Cain in s9; agreeing to throw himself into space and kill Sam for Death in s10; saying yes to Michael to kill Lucifer in s13; nearly caging himself in the Ma’lak box in s14; nearly shooting Jack on Chuck’s orders in s14; going along with Billie’s plan in s15). He often finds himself willing to give up freedom for security. Which isn’t always the wrong decision, sometimes it’s prudent! But he’s much less of a contrarian than what he sells himself as.

Sam, actually, for all the times that he’s lost his autonomy, and for all that he is often narratively subordinated, is the one who’s the eternal spanner in the works. He talks Dean down from a bunch of the previous examples. He’s the guy whose dramatic speeches are ruining all of Chuck’s fratricide fics—expressions of Chuck’s issues with his own sister. It’s Sam who had the bullet wound connection to Chuck’s mind, and it’s Sam who paralleled Amara this episode. Sam is a placater, Sam is the guy that Chuck really, really has a problem with, and I want to see this explored more.

Dean threatened to kill Sam because Sam was refusing to accept his fate. The destiny that Sam refused was killing Jack, who has been Sam’s investment, Sam’s kid, and Sam’s parallel, to help Dean escape his destiny. This feels like a thesis, or something like it: it’s an encapsulation of how Sam and Dean’s fates are tied together not just by love, but by an undeniable core of violence and a chilling imbalance of emotional power: love and protection inosculated with harm. Dean’s angry, he’s breaking down, he’s going off the rails, and it’s in the face of this that Sam, with blood on his face, offers unity: he tearfully makes his pitch, insists that Dean is good, that Dean won’t sacrifice Sam, that his protection is true.

#spn spoilers #15.17 #final thoughts #I have even more to say probably #but I feel like I'm losing some coherence #I heartily invite discussion!!#I feel like I've still got things to sort out about this episode #and I think a major element to that is because it's so very endgame #sam and dean #dean and anger #dean and autonomy #dean and jack #Dean and free will #dean and chuck

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thegirlwholied · 3 years ago

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fic writer interview game

(though I go such long spans between updates 'fic writer' is a generous description... look, I may not have glorious purpose but I have glorious excuses)

& thanks @aurorawest for the tag 💕

name: Cara

(...not sure how many of you out there know this actually- except those of you who know me IRL! - as while I love my name I rarely reference it here & do enjoy that a certain corner of the internet knows me as lyin)

fandoms: I am a dabbler, a renaissance fan, a reader-of-all-trades (master of none!)- I'm all over the place; if I like something I check the Tumblr tag; if I reblog it I have probably at least stalked the AO3 page to see what folks are up to (I am in my own little fandom corner- but kitty-corner to many avenues!).

two-shots: the closest I've come to a two-shot I wound up putting up as a one-shot instead (or we could count my one fic that only has 2 chapters, but in my head it has more)

most popular multi-chapter fic: I had to check but my guess was right, it is Glass of Water, & you know, imho the one thing ol' fan fic dot net still has going for it over AO3 is its cool statistics - I don't know who you are, 50-100 people from all over the world reading till the last chapter every month on FF Dot Net even now, but much love!

actual worst part of writing: making myself sit down & get going. When I really get going - I forget to stop, I forget to eat, I don't hear people talking or music (when I toured the Louisa May Alcott house they described her writing like this and I related so much), I go for hours upon hours without meaning to and then I stop and - tend to stay stopped too long. I'm not good at the 'write everyday' process; I'm best at it when traveling, when I'd settle in at a coffee shop or location (or on a plane!), write some, & have to move on, but, uh, global pandemic put a cramp in that. I know it has to be on the page to count but I really, really do a lot of my writing in my head first. Most of my fics, if you've read one, are first drafts, straight up. They just got rewritten in my head & half-started notes & beginning scenes until I finally sat down and the whole thing came out at once feeling right. Or half comes out in one burst and the rest in another burst however much later. Typically I'd adjust a few typos & post. This is by no means writing advice! It'd be bad writing advice! But just how I operate. I've tried other ways but I've learned over years that my work's better when I accomodate/work around my natural creative process rather than trying to change it. (Also deadlines. I'm so good at delivering on hard deadlines; I am weak with soft deadlines.)

how you choose your titles: as this is a fic specific 'interview', how I title fics is very different than my og fiction. Most commonly: song lyric (...actually I did title my og fiction grad school thesis after a song lyric too; i may not hear/play much music while I write but I sure think about writing while listening to it), canon reference that is typically One Dramatic Word, poem/quote references with a heavy lean on Yeats.

do you outine?: not for fan fics, but I have a general shape in my head of 'this chapter where this happens' - if I have an unfinished fic with expected number of chapters, those are pretty accurately predictions; I have at least a big picture of what happens in each chapter. & probably some of the conversations, sometimes even already jotted-down dialogue. A written outline? Not so much (my original novel did have a list of chapters with notes to keep it straight but they looked like "Chapter Thirty-Seven: epilogueeeeeeee denoumenttttttttt job" - direct quote down to the # of t's, there)

Ideas you probably won't get around to, but wouldn't it be nice?: I still convince myself I will finish All the Things! but uh some have gone wayside yeah. One I really thought would be cool & know is blowing in the wind was this Buffy fic (yes, A Fic Not Appearing On My Actual Fic Profiles) which was a *whole* Big Concept thing even though I thought I could do it in 5 chapters. ...And then I didn't.

spicy tangential opinion: not that spicy but the fanon/canon gulf is often wide & deep for certain characters in particular &🎶I'm frightened by those who don't see it🎶. really, a character’s fanon version at times may be more fun (though more often it softens character's edges amd I like edges) but... with *certain characters in particular* it feels like that distinction’s been weirdly lost. Also, random, but probably because,my formative years were fan fic dot net, not livejournal, I always feel odd when my AO3 replies to comments (instead of reviews) are a) public and b) add to the comment count. AND I tend to wind up in a loop of 'wouldn't this person rather I spent this time working on an update' where I just... never reply which seems counter to the expected AO3-cultural norm these days, so I feel guilty? Despite the guilt I just reply to so many emails for a living (3 inboxes just for work, plus then my personal email & texts!)... so for the record my default approach is 'I appreciate all comments SO SO MUCH & do read them all but please message me on Tumblr instead if you want a response".

These opinions are 'pumpkin spice' levels of spice, not exactly cayenne here, but hey I think I achieved tangential

callouts @ me: I always think I will get there faster than I do - this is true when I am driving places too! My friends expect me to be late even though I don't expect me to be late!- so I have been known to, let's say, overpromise on update speed. (I meant to do my work today, goes a favorite poem that always applies @ me) (Time between 2011 and 2021 feels especially timey-wimey and oh no 🎶well, I guess this is growing up 🎶).

(also @ me: overly fond of parenthesis.)

& definitely some people-pleasing tendencies that spill over into, not so much my writing itself, but how I feel about it.

best writing traits: detail, dialogue, ...deaths? Lol but really. My favorite thing as a reader is when writing make you laugh & cry so those are my favorite compliments as a writer. Humor/angst: always my fic genre. Even my closest-to-fix-it fics are labeled 'somebody lives' not 'everybody lives'. ...and I need to update them (dammit)

tagging: ...this is way too long to tag, aka inflict directly upon, anyone else, except @aurorawest who asked for it 😂

#about me #tag games

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bettsfic · 6 years ago

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socknography: the importance of preserving fan creator biographical data

i wrote earlier on utilizing collections and bookmarks to boost the archival power of ao3, and in that post mentioned how i wish authors would fill out their bios so we can preserve fanauthor information as well as we preserve the fics themselves. so, here is my rant about WHY WE ARE SO IMPORTANT.

for my masters thesis i wrote about the layered pseudonymity of fanfiction authors, and after doing a ton of research, i find myself still thinking of the pseudonymous/anonymous divide as it pertains to fic. we have authors we consider “famous” and ones whose followings eclipse that of traditionally published authors, but unlike traditionally published authors, we don’t put a handy bio at the end of our fics. in fact, if you want to find out about the author, you have to hope they’ve linked somewhere to their tumblr or twitter or dreamwidth, or they have consistent pseuds across platforms. and from there, you have to hope they have an ‘about me.’ but most, myself included, don’t.

unlike traditional publication -- where amazon and goodreads and even the back of the book contains biographical info -- and even unlike the rest of fandom archival etiquette -- which, despite having virtually no committed rules still maintains its organizational structure -- there is no standard etiquette on fanauthor biographical data.

i speculate the reasons fanauthors are hesitant to write their own biographies is very complicated:

there is no “ask” for it or existing standard. when i publish stories under my real name, i’m required to provide my bio, which contains my accomplishments, where i got my degree, where else i’m published, and my website. all literary author bios follow this formula, so they’re pretty easy to write. other than this post, i have never seen a request for fanauthor bios. so without an editor demanding it, and without a standard formula or platform to draw from, a total lack of information becomes the norm, and almost any info other than the standard “name. age. pronouns. ao3 name. list of fandoms and/or pithy one-liner” of tumblr or occasional ask game is seen as a deviation from the norm. even ask games get a bad rep sometimes, and they’re transitory, a post you see as you’re scrolling through to somewhere else, not static, like a dedicated profile page.

pseudonymity veers too close to anonymity. an anonymous author cannot have a biography. a pseudonymous author can, but biographies may be seen as defeating the purpose of writing under a pseudonym, or multiple pseuds. a sock account is a sock for a reason -- you don’t want it associated with your main. moreover, i believe fandom creates an environment in which to acknowledge your accomplishments and promote your own content is seen as narcissistic. fanfiction can sometimes be seen as a genre of selflessness, donating time and energy into a community centered around a shared canon, not personal gain. to acknowledge the self publicly is to invite attention, and attention is contradictory to anonymity.

shame and humility. the more information you have on the internet, the easier you are to find. very few fanauthors use their real names, or feel comfortable connecting their fan identity to their real one. i hear pretty constantly how often fanauthors hide their fannishness from their coworkers and loved ones, how only the people closest to them know they write/read fanfic. moreover, you might think “my most popular fic only has 10 kudos and 1 comment, nobody wants to know about me” (which is so not true, but i’ll get to that in a minute).

fandom is constantly changing. with a central archive for fanfiction in place, it’s easier now to be in multiple fandoms at once than it ever has been. if you want to read all sugar daddy fics, there’s a tag for that, and if you’re not picky about canon, you have an entire buffet of fandoms to choose from. communities are growing and shifting and changing shape. i move fandoms, and i keep my friends and readers from previous fandoms. i get dragged to new fandoms frequently. my interests and inspirations change, but i don’t erase my history or identity every time i move, i only add to it. i am always betts whether i’m in star wars or the 100 or game of thrones. but if you only read my fic, you don’t know the stories behind it. many people don’t know i entered fandom in the brony convention community in 2012, or that i was sadrobots before i was betty days before i was betts, or how fandom changed my life and led me through a path of personal trauma recovery, or that i co-founded wayward daughters, or ran the fanauthor workshop, or all these other things about fanfic that is not fanfic itself.

if you are a fan creator, your fannish personal narrative matters. telling your story helps preserve the metatextual history of our genre.

i think constantly about what our genre will look like in 30 or 50 years, if it will be like other genres that began as subversions of the mainstream: comic books, beat literature, science fiction. genres that, at the time involved groups of friends creating stories for each other, bouncing ideas off of one another, experimenting with or distorting other genres, and which became, over time, well-regarded forms with rich histories.

maybe one day, like the MCU, we’ll have a dedicated production company that churns out adaptations of longform coffee shop aus written between 2009 and 2015. maybe “BNFs” will be read in high school literature curriculums. maybe our work will end up on the real or virtual shelves of our great grandchildren. and if that happens, if fanfic goes entirely mainstream, how will fanfic authorship be perceived? how will fanpeople in 2080, if humanity is still around by then, interact with the lexicon we’ve created and preserved? what would you do if you found out Jane Austen wrote under five different sock accounts across three platforms over the span of twenty years? how would you, a fan of Pride & Prejudice, even begin to find all of her work?

we have so many social constraints pushing against us. there’s purity culture, which encourages further division of identity -- fanauthors may write fluff on their main and have various sock accounts for underage/noncon fics. if you’re a scarecrow, you’re much harder for a mob to attack. there’s misogyny, which dictates women/queer ppl shouldn’t be writing about or indulging in or exploring their sexuality at all. there’s intellectual property and a history of DMCAs, which, although kept at bay by the OTW, may still have influence on the “illegal” mentality of our work. with social armies against us, it’s easier to exist in the shadows, on the fringe. we change URLs based on our moving interests, and split our identities a million different ways, and keep sarcastic “me” tags full of self-deprecating text posts. we are difficult beasts to catch, because we have not been allowed to exist.

i spent a lot of time today googling the word for “pseudonymous biography” and came up empty-handed (if someone knows of an existing word, pls let me know. “pseudography” is apparently a fancy word for a typo; “pseudobiography” is a fake biography), so for lack of anything better, i’ve come up with the term “socknography” because 1) it’s funny and doesn’t sound intimidating, and 2) it encapsulates the sensitive and complicated way fanauthor identifying conventions work. and also i think “fanauthor biography,” “bibliography,” and “profile” just doesn’t cut it for the actual work of these pieces. they don’t necessarily include IRL biographical data, they include more historical/community context than a bibliography, and the words “profile” and “about me” don’t really inspire interaction, or acknowledge the archival importance of this work.

astolat’s fanlore page is my go-to example. astolat writes under multiple pseuds and has major influence in the history of fandom. she’s also a traditionally published author, but you notice, her ofic novels are not mentioned, nor any other real-life identifying information. fanlore has a really good policy on this in place, for those concerned about doxxing.

(moreover, i am not suggesting you centralize your socks. they’re socks for a reason. but most everyone has a main, and that main identity has a story.)

there are 2 existing spaces to preserve socknographies.

fanlore, a wiki owned by the OTW, you can make an account and create a user page (which is different than a “person” page) using a user profile template

ao3′s “profile” page, which is a big blank box in which anything goes

(i’m not including tumblr on this list because i don’t think it’s a stable platform.)

fanlore’s template is straight to the point and minimal, which doesn’t really invite narrative the same way a literary bio would. ao3′s big blank box leaves us with the question -- wtf do i say about myself? how do i say it? how much is too much? and because of that, most profiles are either blank or only include a policy on translations/podfic/fanart, and maybe links to tumblr and twitter. but let me tell you, if i have read your fic and taken the time to move over to your profile, you better believe i am a fan. and as a fan, i want to Know Things.

here are the things i want to know, or

a potential template:

introduction (name/alias, age, location, pronouns, occupation)

accomplishments (degrees, personal history)

fan history (fandoms you’ve been in, timeline as a fan, how you were introduced to fandom/fanfiction, what does fandom mean to you -- this is where your fan narrative goes)

fandom participation (popular fics/posts, involvement in fan events/communities, side blogs, interviews, etc. 3 & 4 might be one and the same for you)

spotlight (which of your fics are most important to you/would you like others to read and why? what are the stories behind your favorite fics you’ve written?)

find me elsewhere* (links to tumblr, twitter, insta, etc.)

policies on fanart, fanfic of fic, podfics, and translations

*you cannot link to ko-fi, paypal, patreon, or amazon on ao3/fanlore per the non-commercial terms of service

i’ll be working on filling this out for my own profile as an example, but you can also see how my @fanauthorworkshop participants filled out their fanauthor spotlights, and the information they provided. obviously, you should only share that which you feel comfortable sharing, and as your fandom life changes, your narrative will change too. it’s not much different than updating a CV or resume.

tl;dr the goal is to provide a self-narrative of your fan life/identity for posterity. who are you and why are you a fanperson? why do you create fan content? what are you proud of and what do you want to highlight to others? who are you in this space?

#socknography #fanfiction #ao3 #otw

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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Uh.....if you mash together pre-Reboot and New 52 continuities the way we all just tend to do anyway, you know who would have just as much to say about Bruce resuscitating the Joker after Dick killed him in Last Laugh?

Duke. Who does the math and realizes, wait, the fucking clown was actually DEAD, like, game over, the world rid of the problem that is him and the shit he does....and Bruce...actively cancelled this out, whereas if he’d stopped his OWN kneejerk reactions long enough to realize that reviving the Joker wouldn’t erase what Dick had done or lessen Dick’s awareness that he’d crossed that line, literally all it would accomplish is to have all of that remain true WHILE bringing the Joker back into the world and thus creating more potential victims of his in the future?

Victims like....Duke’s parents.

Aka can someone please drag Bruce Wayne’s butt to therapy because his complete inability to bend or budge on the specific issue of killing has

1) caused his eldest son no shortage of severely debilitating emotional issues all stemming from his deep-seated fear of losing his father’s love due to situations like with the Joker and with Blockbuster

2) caused and perpetuated his continued estrangement from his second son, whose actual literal death was so devastating to Bruce he was in real danger of getting himself killed before Tim came along and yet upon his actual return from the grave, still took backseat to Bruce’s fixation on a rule he set FOR HIMSELF long ago, because it was always made fairly clear that Jason could have been persuaded to change his methods in regards to fighting all other crimes if Bruce could find a way to make an exception in regards to the Joker, who has hurt all of their family so often and so severely, and that’s not even getting into the shit with the Penguin in RHATO

3) contributed to his third son’s feelings of estrangement and not being deserving of a place in Bruce’s family, in the aftermath of Tim’s entirely understandable DESIRE to see his father’s murderer dead, without even Tim actually acting on it before earning Bruce’s judgment, and with a likely extension and continuation of this divide being evident in how opposed Tim is to going to Bruce for help whenever Ra’s pops up again to be all “I’m outside ur house in the bushes spying on u thru the window, will u join me in remaking the world in our - sorry that’s a lie, I meant my - image, plz check y/n,” because again quite understandably, Tim fears being caught in the middle of Ra’s and Bruce’s ideological war because he’s afraid of Bruce deciding its because Tim is more open to what Ra’s says than he actually is, and the conflicts that could arise from that

4) almost destroyed any chance of a healthy and loving relationship between he and his youngest son before they even got a chance to start one, due to his own issues with a past Damian had literally no ability to opt out of, even if he had been given alternative viewpoints to the morality of killing, as taught to him by the League - Damian was a ten year old child who could not be expected to have the resources to leave the League and their expectations for him, without help, even if he had previously been able to conceive of a way of life other than the one laid out for him from birth

5) I don’t even know where to start with Cass and the whole shit with Deathstroke and like....I just. Yeah

6) As noted at the start of the post, had Bruce simply not intervened to resuscitate the Joker, like didn’t even need to kill him himself, like if he had simply NOT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE (like and people wonder why Dick was so convinced Bruce would judge him for not stepping between Blockbuster and a bullet to save that villain’s life when not even a year prior, Bruce had established the precedent that apparently in his mind, if there was even a possibility of resuscitating an already dead villain with a body count like the Joker’s, that was apparently what needed to be done)....but like....no Joker after the Last Laugh, no Jokerized Thomases a few years later....not to mention how that could have altered the chain of events that unfolded with Jason’s return and attempt to get Bruce to kill someone who would now already be dead.

Like....Bruce. Buddy. Pal. This vow you made - again, for YOURSELF - to never kill in any scenario, because YOU were afraid that YOU wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from doing it again, and again and again...it might have been born from a place of good intentions, but the stringent, utterly inflexible way you apply it to your own family, with zero allowance for context, let alone exceptions, is actively hurting them in any number of ways, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

You need to get some nuance. Nobody’s saying YOU yourself have to go out and start gunning people down, but there have to be room for more opinions on this than just yours...especially when it comes to the choices OTHER people make on this matter, for born of THEIR moral compasses. Your moral compass has allowed you to give yourself a pass on some pretty fucked up things, so you need to just NOT, with the whole treating it as the be all and end all of Right and Wrong.

I mean in my professional opinion, of course.

Also also also, I would just like to point out that another factor that in my mind, makes the Last Laugh story and the fact that Dick DID in fact cross that line once and kill someone, even if they were later revived.....

This is important, and potentially central to SO MANY of the internal conflicts within the Batfamily, most of them between Bruce and various of his children....

BECAUSE IT DISPROVES BRUCE’S FEAR OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IN REGARDS TO KILLING BEING LIKE...A UNIVERSAL LIKELIHOOD, RATHER THAN JUST A PERSONAL FEAR BASED ON HIS OWN SELF-AWARENESS.

Bruce’s entire thesis about never killing even once, even with someone like a Joker, is because he believes once you start down that road, you’re never going to stop....with him frequently shown as seeing Jason and his actions as proof of that basic premise....because ultimately, like with the Penguin, its like even when Jason has gone a long time without killing anyone, Bruce is convinced that its only a matter of time before he breaks his promises or finds another ‘exception’ he feels he can justify....because again, Bruce so often fixates on this idea that there IS no stopping. With it being very easy to see how this also extends at times to concerns about Damian and the possibility of him killing again, given his own past.

But when you take Last Laugh into account.....and acknowledge the fact that Dick has killed as a bigger deal than the comics or most fics have ever really allowed it to be....

Suddenly you have to take into account that yes, Dick has killed once...

AND ONLY ONCE.

Years and years and years ago....and never done it since.

And that’s a potential GAME-CHANGER for so very freaking many of the conflicts that keep their entire family so divided....because so many of them are sprung from this one central source.....which is based on this one specific fear Bruce has for himself and has since applied to all of his children as well....

To such an extent that when one of his children crossed this line for the first time....BRUCE HAD TO UNDO IT.

Even though Bruce said at the time he resuscitated the Joker so that Dick could live with himself, not have to live with having killed a man and what that might do to him.....Dick still had to live with himself, still had to live with having killed a man! It very much informed his character moving forward, was a central part of his fears in situations even tangentially similar, like with Blockbuster. Bringing back the Joker didn’t actually change ANYTHING for Dick, other than....render all that kinda meaningless, because he had to work through the emotional issues of having killed a villain....who didn’t even stay dead, and continued to kill and ruin lives.

Nope, I maintain in actuality, Bruce resuscitated the Joker so that HE could live with what Dick had done, not have to live with one of his sons having broken the vow that was so important to Bruce himself, and what that might do to him, Bruce...and his relationship with Dick, or even just his ability to continue to have a relationship with Dick. He was driven to ‘reverse’ what Dick had done, IMO, so that HE didn’t have to face it, could in time pretend that it hadn’t really happened, it didn’t count, his world order was still intact.

And that’s a level of denial that’s actually pretty damn characteristic for Bruce in a lot of ways.....and IMO, the real source of so much of his conflict with his children.

Because then once Jason came along and already had eight heads in a duffel bag by the time Bruce realized who the Red Hood really was.....it was too late for Bruce to do anything about it, to stop reality from crashing straight through every barrier Bruce tried to throw in the way to keep from having to face the moral quandary of one of his children (that he so often saw himself in) taking the step that he’d so definitively feared ever taking.

Its not that Bruce was able to ‘forgive’ Dick for killing the Joker that one time, and not the times Jason has killed, because Bruce loves Dick more.

Its because Bruce DIDN’T forgive Dick for it. HE DID HIS BEST TO PRETEND IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED.

And the reason that didn’t happen with Jason....was because it was never even an option. By the time Bruce was confronting his son as JASON.....instead of a mysterious masked vigilante....there was zero possibility of reframing this in his mind or undoing any of it like he tried to do when he resuscitated the Joker.

Bruce’s vow is all well and good for him....but the thing he’s never faced, because he’s afraid to face it, afraid it could permanently destroy his connections with his family....is that he doesn’t get to make that choice for his children. That it doesn’t make them terrible people to feel differently about the importance of not even allowing a man as destructive as the Joker to die, in large part based on their having entirely different life experiences than Bruce himself, that lead them to feel differently on specific matters like this one.

And I think the most effective starting place for that dialogue, that confrontation, realization....is for BRUCE to face what Dick did all those years ago, AND the fact that in Dick’s case, history has NOT repeated itself since.....that Dick truly did kill a man, kill the Joker, in every way that mattered....and HE’S STILL DICK GRAYSON. The person he was didn’t change, not fundamentally, not in the ways that matter so much to Bruce on every other level. Killing the Joker didn’t make Dick a killer, other than in the specific context of that specific situation.

And that to me, is such an important conversation to have within the construct of the Batfamily and their interconnected conflicts, a confrontation that could actually force Bruce to start shifting his perspective in regards to his CHILDREN’S choices, not necessarily his own....and with that ultimately spreading into each of the individual conflicts Bruce has with his various kids, and allowing for some actual PROGRESS to be made on those fronts, instead of it always just being the same old fight, with them all endlessly running in circles.

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angelbabiesss · 5 years ago

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Lay With Me - S.M.

Summary: A nice little short fluff piece bc that’s all I seem to be capable of writing.

Warnings: nada

A/N: my queens I’m back with another trash fic that I wrote. I had this idea already bc i’m a soft gorl but it was really confirmed I was writing this when I saw this. i’m always open to criticism especially now that i’m taking a creative writing class in the fall and I haven’t taken an english class in about 4 years haha yeah so let me know what you think pretty please with a cherry on top

Having a true day off was very rare for me. Between classes, my internship, and my part time job at a local secondhand book store, me time was basically nonexistent. Especially because I lived with my long term boyfriend Shawn. But today, on this glorious day, I was off from both my internship and job, while my class got cancelled for the day. A true day off is a blessing. It was nice to shut my mind off and not worry about my thesis that really isn’t writing itself or deal with rude customers who really can’t read signs.

My day started out with Shawn waking me up around 7:30 with a sweet kiss and telling me he was leaving early for a promo day. I got to sleep in a little bit more after that and finally woke back up around 10:30 to finally start my day. It was very different having to not be in a complete rush in the morning and actually enjoy everything about being up in the morning. I even thought about going to workout with all the time I have and ruled that out very quickly. Instead I decided to actually make myself breakfast instead of just popping a poptart into the toaster and calling it a day.

I decided to make myself french toast. Since it was my favorite breakfast food and I didn’t really get to have it that often, I decided to indulge myself. Turning on one of my many spotify playlists, I prepared my breakfast and turned on a pot of coffee to drink while my french toast is in the pan.

While I was enjoying my breakfast at our island in the kitchen, my phone started ringing. Answering the call without looking at the caller ID and a mouth full of french toast I finally said “Hello.”

“Hi baby, just wanted to call and check in on you.” my boyfriend said finally revealing who called.

“Oh hi honey! I didn’t check the caller ID before answering. But I’m great. My class got cancelled today, so I will just be relaxing today.” I say while stuffing another piece of french toast in my mouth.

“That’s great baby, I’m going to try and get through promo quickly but I can’t make any promises on what time i’m gonna get home.”

“No, yeah I understand. Just another day of the job so don’t stress honey i’ll be alright.”

“Okay I have to go now because we’re pulling up to the location. Love you i’ll see you when I get home.”

“Okay, love you too.” I said hanging up and continuing to eat my breakfast. Shawn has been pretty busy lately doing a bunch of promo and interviews for the new singles he’s been dropping. We barely see each other because of it. The most contact we’ve been getting recently is sleeping in the same bed at night. Most nights I’m crawling into bed late because of my thesis or shawn is crawling into bed late because he’s just got done with promo and appearances, but at some point in the night I wake up entangled in his limbs and everything is okay in the world again.

Finishing up breakfast, I decided I’d do laundry and catch up on some of the shows I was currently watching on netflix. A true lazy day was needed and that’s exactly what I was getting out of today.

✯✯✯✯

Shawn got home fairly early for it being a promo day. I was in our shared bedroom reading when he made his way into the apartment. He stumbled into our room to get out of his clothes from the day. Sitting down on our bed to take his boots off, I started to ask about his day.

“How was promo today?” Wrapping my arms around the tops of his shoulders and letting my hands wander into the front of his shirt.

“It wasn’t too bad today, I’m just tired.” He said with a tired gruff getting up to get some sweats out of the dresser.

“Did you get something to eat on your way home? Or do you want me to make something or we can postmates something if you want.” I started to ramble because I knew he sometimes forgot to eat during promo because it got hectic.

“No, haven’t eaten yet but I can wait. Just wanna lay here with my girl for a bit.”

Looking sweetly at my tired boyfriend who just wanted to lay with his equally as tired girlfriend and i couldn’t deny him that, so my next words were not a surprise. “Come here my sweet boy.” Pulling down the covers so he could get under them, I scooted up to sit with my back against the headboard so he could comfortably lay between my legs and rest his head on my stomach so I could play with his hair.

Shawn was finished changing and started to crawl into bed. Extending my hands out to him to cup his face, I leaned in for a quick kiss before he settled down.

“Mmm, hi.” he said between pecks before finally laying down. “I missed you”.

“I missed you too.” I said, running my hand down his tense back. “Feel like we’ve just been boats passing in the night, recently.”

“Yeah both of our schedules have been pretty hectic, at least we have now.” he said looking up at me with a tired smile, while I placed a small kiss to his forehead.

“Mmhm” I hummed “I like when you sit still for one second and let me play with your hair” I say finally starting to scratch at his scalp since he laid his head down on my chest.

“Me too baby.” his voice getting sleepy.

“Do you wanna tell me about your day?” I asked knowing that if he rattled off all he did today he’d start to fall asleep quicker and get the rest that he desperately needed.

“Hmm? No, no, wanna hear about your day. My day is the same thing every time I do promo.”

“Are you sure? I didn’t really do anything today.”

“Yes honey I’m sure.” His voice was getting filled with sleep just waiting to finally drift off to sleep.

“I finally caught up with The Flash and that show has like zero reason to be that good season after season. I also started to do laundry but we both know what happens when I start laundry so I immediately cancelled that.” He let out a little chuckle at that. “Then I started a new book that’s basically me in high school and my heart soared. It’s so nostalgic and light I love it so much.”

While I was squealing about the plot of my current book, soft snores started to filter through my words causing me to stop talking. “Oh my sweet boy, get your rest.”

#shawn mendes #shawn peter raul mendes #sm #shawn #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes smut #baby #I write #fan fic #shawn mendes au #shawn mendes x reader #shawn mendes imagine #imagine shawn mendes #dude hes so pretty there's no reason #baby boyfriend

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kaleidotropepodcast · 5 years ago

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the great inbox dump continues!

chetungwan said:

You followed me the same day I finished the podcast, how did you know

Just the Sidlesmith magic, @chetungwan!

Anonymous said:

so i just listened to the rent rant and i love this podcast and it is taking me over however i might’ve lost it when drew said the movie is bad, it’s one of the few musical movies i even care about.

Look I (Aja) bawled like a baby the first time I saw the movie, just like I do every time I see / hear the show. And fwiw, Drew would be the first person to tell you that no criticism of a piece of media should ever make you feel ashamed of loving it, because if it speaks to you, then that’s all that matters. <333 And Rent itself is all about that idea, too, so embrace it and go moo your heart out. :D

fancygeorgejones said:

Sick Benjamin Britten reference I LOVE YOU

THANK YOU, @fancygeorgejones! one of us may have written our music school thesis on homoerotic themes in benjamin britten operas so we very much appreciate your appreciation.

Anonymous said:

late to the party ig but. love the podcast it’s so cute!! anyway just wanted to say that the song Valentine by Atlas gives me Big Harridrew Vibes and I can’t help but imagine drew singing it to harrison bc it’s like... exactly something his overly romantic gay ass would write

Harrison definitely has this song memorized, and definitely Drew would notice and try to memorize it and then rap it to him adorably for Valentine’s, and then they would have lots of half-hug half-cuddle sweater moments, what, it’s fine, we’re fine

Anonymous said:

I really want to review your show but it has 69 reviews on itunes right now and I desperately do not want to be the one to break that so im at a crossroads because I also want to help it get noticed.....

We’d tell you that you’re in luck because now there are 122 ratings, so you can review away! But in fact reviews apparently don’t make much of a difference in shows getting noticed anyway, so the best thing you can do to spread the word is, well, spread the word! IE tell people that we exist! :) <3333 (And we know so many of you guys do just that and we love you so much for it!!)

Anonymous said:

Is your podcast on Spotify?

I’ve heard good things about it and really want to start it but can’t find it on Spotify :(

We are not on Spotify! we applied but were rejected, probably because we recorded everything in a garage on dial-up at the bottom of the ocean 😭

Anonymous said:

Do you think Harrison would make a good zookeeper?

Harrison would be slightly less awful than Drew, but between them they would turn every single animal encounter into an Event, and no zoo needs that much drama 😂

Anonymous said:

have you ever considered publishing a book surround drew and harrison's story? like the transcripts, or even a novel, cause i would 100% buy 7 copies of it

....well, we’re considering it now!

Anonymous said:

I'm preparing a fanfic about the Sidlesmith founders, and trying to use the story on the website as a base, but combining the dates from that and the date of the contract in the show, the contract is more than two years after Sidlesmith received their trust funds, while in the contract it seems like they're yet to get them. So, to be true to canon, which i know is not a requirement, but i want to be, would I have to work that into the story somehow or should i change the date of the contract?

Oh, no, a continuity error! We wrote the story on the website first, I believe, and the story itself is canonical, but we all know dates are fuzzy like that. The website and the show are both consistent that the contract was signed before they got married and the fake relationship was to end once they got their trust funds a year later. That’s the important thing — the dates are *handwaves* whatever.

Remember, this is a town that’s a thriving sea port surrounded by mountains, that’s located south of the Ozarks (Arkansas) but north of the Mississippi River (Minnesota). Time and temporality are funny things, at a baseline. So feel free to have fun with that! :D

Anonymous said:

I'm writing an enemies to lovers, fake dating sidlesmith fic. is there anything more you can tell me about them? or even the construction of the college?

oh i hope there are two of you!!! 🙏

Harriet was smoking hot and desired by everyone, and Henrik had one hell of an impressive beard. Harriet was hot-headed, but also frustratingly pedantic, while Henrik was stodgy and something of a dullard until he stumbled across a subject about which he was passionate.

They had identical taste in literature, how annoying, and always interpreted everything they read in exactly opposite ways. They each had very advanced ideas about things like sexuality, polyamory, and gender, but expressed them in their very different ways, which means they rarely realized how often they in fact agreed. They absolutely did not get rip-roaring drunk one night after fighting furiously over Melmoth the Wanderer, then raid each other’s wardrobes in order to try on one another’s clothes, and absolutely did not then have the best sex of their lives while still Harriet was still clad in Henrik’s breeches and suspenders and Henrik was still wearing her hoop skirts and corsets, after which they absolutely never ever talked about it again, because there was nothing to talk about.

Or maybe they were both ace and aromantic, and the fact they started a magic school of romance is a giant irony. Who knows!

As for the school, during the spiritualist craze of the late 19th century, a number of students held seances to try to summon the spirits of Sidlesmith, until it’s rumored that Harriet got tired of being summoned and declared she’d curse the next person who called her back from the Beyond because she and Henrik were enjoying very cozy afterlives, thank you very much. Shortly thereafter, a student who was known to be highly interested in witchcraft was seen entering a small copse of trees in the center of campus, right at midnight. The student vanished, and the students who saw her enter the trees were never able to say precisely where she had gone. And they say that today, if you examine the original blueprints of the college, there’s a small area in the middle of campus that’s completely untraceable today — as if the Sidlesmith curse had wiped out both the student and the grove in which she walked.

#sidlesmith #harriet and henrik can get it #Q&A #kaleidotrope podcast #long post

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cuddleslutloki · 6 years ago

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I have a genuine question. How often do you actually deal with antis? I've been following you for a bit now and it seems every so often you bring up antis. I've certainly kept my interest about thorki shut and locked away in a box from my friends for the simple fact that all of them think it's incest. It's not an easy topic of conversation but you just seem to handle all the antis so well? Also on an off note about beast!Thor, his favorite pass time must just be rutting into Loki 24/7 🤔

when someone tells you that you're romanticizing abuse [bc i made a stockholm moodboard for a fic] I don't know what I'm supposed to say other than I don't condone it but I write about it? Is writing about abusive relationships bad in writing??? you're the only person i ask for advice so thank you for anything in advance

i’m honestly really glad you came to me. i really do like discussing this topic in this kind of way bc i’ll never reblog an anti or answer an anti ask. even if you’re arguing against them, i don’t think it’s worth it to argue against them if it means also spreading what they’re saying

the basic premise of all anti behavior and ideology is censorship. that’s all it is.

“i don’t like this topic, you need to stop writing it and making art for it. if you don’t stop there will be consequences.”

that is censorship and that is the kind of shit fandom has had to fight ever since there’s been fandom. women, poc, lgbt+ folks have been dealing with people telling us what we can and can’t write and enjoy for... well, probably forever. but we’re still here, creating the kind of content we want to see and indulge in.

as far as how to deal with antis, my advice is to ignore, ignore, ignore. they want what any bully wants: attention

you stop paying attention, you stop giving them time they don’t deserve from you, they’ll die off. there’s no point in fighting them directly. produce the content you want to see and enjoy what you want to enjoy. drown them out. you don’t owe them a response just because they come to you. they don’t have any qualms about being rude to you, so be rude back and just ignore them. i love blocking antis, personally. take out the garbage, y’know?

antis use the words ship and support as synonyms because they think that shipping is some radical call to action for lgbt rep instead of entertainment

shipping is not activism. shipping is about entertainment and enjoyment, nothing more

so this is why i have this very blasé attitude about antis. i just don’t give a fuck about them beyond making posts trashing their idiocy. because that’s what it is. it’s idiocy, but going deeper it’s puritanism at its finest. antis use fox news scare tactic logic under the guise of some pseudo feminist agenda because they don’t understand and don’t want to understand that enjoying dark fiction as entertainment isn’t equivalent to some greater moral stance

they use the same argument about shipping and fanfiction that WASP moms use against video games and loud music: that enjoying and consuming it will make you think it’s normal and there’s nothing wrong with it irl

okay, well, vlad the impaler never played CoD or far cry and caligula never watched hentai but we know why i’m bringing them up in this context without even heading over to wikipedia, don’t we?

they use the words abuse and pedophilia waaaaaayy too liberally and they’re doing more harm than good because they’re twisting and warping words that should have very specific meanings by using them so goddamn vaguely and irresponsibly

my own personal theory is that these people are terrified that if they don’t yell in opposition to these topics 24/7 and actively attack content creators that they’d probably enjoy it, and they’ve been so programmed by the echo chamber of tumblr and twitter that they think this means they’re bad people.

spoiler alert: that’s not what it means

i literally watched a circle jerk on twitter where screenshots of some mafia starker au got tweeted and retweeted w/ pictures of someone pouring bleach into cereal and people had asked to see more of the post. if you really don’t like something, you shouldn’t hate-read about it. it’s not productive, it does more harm than good if that’s the actual issue rather than some reverse psychology-style enjoyment they’re probably getting out of it.

they claim to hate this shit so much, but they’re reading hundreds and thousands of words and putting these images in their heads of their own free will. i don’t do that with shit i genuinely dislike. i avoid it.

i see antis say they enjoy thorki fanart because they think it’s cute, then they see it’s tagged thorki and they have an over the top reaction because the nature of anti ideology states you should never enjoy something like that, so if you do then you have to make the excuse of ignorance to prove that you’re still innocent and pure. enjoyment is apologism to them because they aren’t content to simply attack fan creators, they want to try and drive away the people who consume our art as well because they know you’re the cornerstone of fandom. consumers are why creators create. yeah, i write because i enjoy it, but i also write to connect to my readers and have people commenting on my fics when they like them.

it’s also worth noting that antis only ever talk about shipping. they only talk about sexual and romantic ships. i’ve never seen an anti talk about (often extreme) levels of violence in canon source material for the ships and characters they want to froth at the mouth over.

seeing someone bleed out and choking on their own blood after being stabbed or shot or bludgeoned? meh

seeing a character who was once a child have a sexual thought about a character who was also once a child and is also their close friend? omg why are we trying to make fandom unsafe for people?

personally, i’ve also noticed that fandoms with darker canon material tend to have more chill fandoms most of the time. i think it also depends on the average age in a given fandom. there’s a major difference between fannibals and steven universe fans, let’s just say that.

creating a moodboard for a dark fic is not “romanticizing abuse” and at this point antis honestly have no fucking idea what that phrase is. they use those words the way a bored CEO uses social media buzzwords and hashtags in a staff meeting

if antis want to see true romanticizing of abuse then they can go to serial killer thirst tags and spot the fucking differences between shippers and people who forget that ted bundy was weak, flaccid, cowardly piece of shit

writing something dark or violent or whatever else and condoning the act or doing the act are different. this is why stephen king isn’t under government surveillance or in prison.

make no mistake, this anti shit only applies to fandom. they’re attacking creators here because creators out at the professional levels don’t give a fuck. they’ve tried, and they’ve failed.

creators at the professional level understand something antis don’t: that being able to reconcile your enjoyment of dark media can be a sign of emotional intelligence and good emotional health. it’s cathartic. it’s allowed to be cathartic.

the most common consumers of dark fiction are members of minority communities and people who’ve been emotionally and/or sexually repressed for one reason or another.

antis want to say that fiction doesn’t exist in a vacuum and they are 100% correct! because writing fanfiction and original fiction that relates to parts of my life that nearly killed me gives me control over something that was beyond me in the original context. writing about fucked up codependent, violent romance allows me to process my shit in a way that’s healthy and produces something fun and enjoyable.

my therapist knows i ship thorki, she knows i write thorki. i’ve had her read pieces of fanfiction i’ve written in addition to pieces of original fiction. y’know what she said? “wow, baylen, that’s vivid. you have a way with words!”

i read her a line out of smart boy and told her what the story was about and this trained professional said “well it’s a productive way to process some emotion that you clearly need to let out”

but you know what? if someone doesn’t have the trauma i have? let them write it, too! let them create and enjoy the fictional content they want! more cake, y’all!

finally getting around to one of the first parts of your ask, lol. thorki is incest. thor and loki are brothers. they were raised believing they were blood brothers, even. loki being adopted doesn’t change a thousand years of personal history where thor looked at loki and thought that they came out of the same woman, y’know?

that’s his brother and in the comics his attachment to loki is even more intense. the mcu nerfed that shit. loki’s life has been intrinsically tied to thor’s ability to feel a full sense of joy.

enjoying an incest ship isn’t some sign of moral depravity. writing abusive relationships isn’t bad. gone girl was made into an award winning movie. art should look like life, and sometimes life fucking sucks. dark stories, sad stories, fucked up holy shit idk if i can go to sleep after i read this stories exist for a reason. we need them. we have to have an outlet for our frustration, our anger, and especially our fear.

so which is the healthier option of these

to write up a piece of fanfiction where two siblings are in love in a way that might be cute and soft or might be destructive, depending on your mood?

attacking strangers you don’t know online and threatening violence against anyone who doesn’t think like you do?

i know what kind of person i want to be.

ship and let ship, thanks for reading my doctoral thesis office hours are always

#anon #baylen chats

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thehollowprince · 6 years ago

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Hey, it’s the “coding” anon here and honestly that answer to my question was excellent and the exact reason I come to your blog. I would absolutely love to hear you go on about the fetishization of m/m relationships!

This has been sitting in my inbox for over a week, and I want to apologize. I'm sorry for taking so long to get to this one, but I'm overworked at the moment. I've been pulling 60+ hour work weeks, by myself and I haven't had off since the first of December, so I'm a little tired. But I'm here and I'm ready to murder this bitch of a subject.

For starters, and for context, in case anyone who sees this doesn't follow my blog or, if you do and don't really pay attention, I am a gay man, so a lot of this comes from my own personal experience.

Now, onward my fandom soldiers.

M|M Fetishization & Objectification

I've only been super active within fandom spaces for the last couple of years. Before that, I just scrolled through Tumblr and reblogged gifsets and fluffy headcanons and whatnot, but even then I noticed a trend in fandoms that made me uncomfortable. That trend was the overabundance of gay men (chatacters) in fandom works, especially when there either weren't any gay men in that show or book or whatever.

I'm not at all saying we need less of that. I want and need more gay characters in the things I watch and read. That's actually one of the criteria I look for before I start a new show, or a book series or comics. I want to see myself represented in the media I consume, even if it is only this one tiny piece of who I am. But the problem for me arose when I saw all these fan works and headcanons and gifsets and thesis length metas about gay or bi male characters that were neither of those things in their original source material.

The biggest examples of this occured in fairly popular shows that I loved at one point, but do to a combination of bad writing and then the horrible fandom, drove me to actively dislike and avoid them. And that's always a sad thing, when you end up losing the love you had for something because others just won't let you enjoy it as it is.

Those two examples are Teen Wolf and Supernatural.

For years I watched people go on and on and on and on about Stiles Stilinski and Dean Winchester and how they were bisexual and so on and so forth.

There's nothing wrong with headcanoning a character as gay or bisexual, especially when those characters are severely lacking on screen and on paper. The problem arose when the fandom at large started to ignore the ACTUAL gay or bisexual characters that are in these shows and focus solely on their headcanons as the only representation in the show.

To start with Teen Wolf, we had, in the first season, an openly gay character that everybody in the school loved, that being Danny Mahealani. This character was introduced as gay from the very start, but oddly enough, there is almost no large fandom meta or fics or anything about him. In fact, a lot of his traits and qualities ended up transferred to Stiles, such as his intelligence and overall popularity. Hell, even Danny's attraction to Derek was stolen and transferred to him. These aren't things that Stiles is overall known for in the actual canon. He's clumsy and socially awkward and on the outskirts of the school like Scott (the main character) and has been obsessed (to the point of being considered a stalker) with one girl since elementary school, but somehow, in fandom, Stiles is suddenly the genius polyglot queer with severe depression who has a crush on the broody muscular werewolf who just wants somebody to love him.

Fandom created this portrayal of the character that didn't exist anywhere in the fandom except for his appearance. The reason I saw behind this was twofold. 1: fangirls (fandom is mostly female) want to see two "hot" guys kiss and get it on because they get off to it, much in the same way that straight men get off to lesbian porn. 2: Stiles (or any of these headcanoned characters) becomes a sort of self insert.

What I mean by that second one is that women and girls find a male character that's not "too masculine", usually kind of gangly or skinny, somewhat on the effeminate side. Someone that they can project their ideas and insecurities and so forth onto so that they can that pursue that relationship with the hunky manly man that they want to bang.

You may be asking yourself, "Why don't they just use one of the female characters as a self insert?" and I'm here to tell you that I have neither the time nor the experience to go into detail about internalized misogyny and how effects the way women do almost everything, even watching and interpreting their media.

But the reason they chose the male character is that, years ago, during the dark days of FF.net there was a lot of self insert OCs that infiltrated almost every level of fanfiction. Which caused the fandom gatekeepers to rear out of their hibernation and just shame anyone who tried to introduce an Original Character to this already beautiful world and ruin it with their lusts. Thus the OCs slowly disappeared and identifying with the male sidekick was born. And this is generally where we get the whole "my smol gay son!" bullshit. (side note: please keep in mind that 75% of shows are male characters and their problems, which is another cause for female fans to identify solely with men.)

So, for years, I watched Danny, and then his boyfriend Ethan, being shoved aside in fandom spaces so that the fans could focus Sterek (Stiles and Derek) despite the fact that both characters were stared to be heterosexual and that, on screen, they expressed nothing but mutual dislike for one another, if not outright hatred. This got so bad that Sterek, the crack ship whose members had no romantic or sexual interactions whatsoever, managed to beat (by a very large margin) actual gay ships from both this show and others in a fan poll. It got even worse when the character of Danny was written off the show (with no explanation) and we were introduced to the character of Mason.

Mason Hewitt was everything that fandom!Stiles was. He was smart and funny and openly gay and crushing on a hot werewolf. He even did the research that the fandom loved to attribute to Stiles, literally everything that the fandom had Stiles doing in fanon, but somehow the love for him (Mason) wasn't that big of a note in the fandom. I mean, Mason was even a major plot point of season five and the pack's mission to stop the Beast, but i heard nothing but cricket chirps from the fandom.

You'd think that after Stiles was written out of the show for the last season that maybe Mason will get some love now, right?

Wrong!

I didn't think it was possible to get any worse, but the fandom proved me wrong. Because instead of focusing all their pent up energy on Mason and his boyfriend, Corey, who had a number of cute moments in that final season, these fans focused on another crack ship that had no basis anywhere except in their fantasies. That ship being Thiam, which is based, once again, around two characters who actively dislike, if not outright hate, each other and even physically assault one another. But no, that apparently is a display of affection by someone who is emotionally stunted and just needs love to blossom and be his true self.

You notice how often the fetishization of homosexuality (even if only imagined) intersects with woobification?

You'll notice, if you look at Danny and Mason, that they're both POC, with Danny being brown (Hawai'ian) and Mason being black. Now, as I've said before on this blog multiple times, I am the Whittest White Man to ever White, so I don't have any qualifications to talk about fandom racism, so I'm just going to leave that little nugget there for you to think about and interpret how you will.

Moving on to Supernatural...

Before we start with this one, understand that I have not watched this show outside of an episode here and there since season eight, because I realized that no, this show wasn't going to get any better, so if any of this is contradictory to what has happened over the past six seasons (god, this show needs to die!) I do apologize.

Dean Winchester... I never really liked this character, especially as the show went on and I started to actively dislike and then, hate him. So it was annoying not being able to go into any aspect of the Supernatural fandom without coming across a post about Dean and his issues or his Bi sexiness or how his brother was mean to him.

Also, people, understand that this wasn't a new revelation for me. My dislike for Dean and the fandom's obsession with making him bisexual just so they could hook him up with Cas wasn't an overnight decision. I was there...

I was there at the Beginning, when this show first aired, when the ONLY constant characters on this show were Sam and Dean. I endured the hellfire that was Wincest and its infection of almost the entire fandom. Like, that right there, that was one of the most extreme cases of m|m fetishization I've ever seen, because the fandom needed to get off to two guys being together so badly that they turned to actual brothers for want of any other male character.

That's why Destiel immediately became so popular, because here was another guy that we saw with semi regularity that wasn't rated to the Winchesters, obviously they were meant to ship them.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "I thought this bitch was going to talk about gay fetishization, not his dislike for one character?" to which I'll just say I very easily go off tangent. But all of that is relevant because, come one of these later seasons, there was a scene where Dean was at a bar and the (male) bartender hit on him, and he didn't react negatively or homophobic.

Oh, my God, I watched my dash and the tags explode in post after post, meta after meta, about how Bi Dean was canon confirmed! Now he and Cas will HAVE to be together, because its canon that Dean likes guys. and Cas is an angel, who doesn't follow human sexual limitations, and... blah, blah, blah.

Cut to a few years later, and we're introduced to a character named Max Banes, a witch and hunter, who is openly gay and flirts with Sam in his first appearance. Where were all of his metas and fanfics and headcanons? Granted, he only appeared in two episodes, but I have watched people in this and other fandoms build mountains our of molehills, going on and on about how two male characters weren't actually straight and how they were destined to be together because the once wore similar style shirts a couple of seasons apart, or because of a carnation in a jacket pocket that signified love via the Victorian flower code (or something like that), or how the wallpaper of that room they shared a scene in was a subtle clue to their true desire for each other, etc.

And I'm not exaggerating there, those are actual examples I've seen in fandoms over the years.

But back to Max, why is it that he was left along the wayside, despite fitting most of the criteria that fandoms love in their m|m ships while Dean had entire thesis level posts about that time he shared a glance with Castiel or he let a bartender hit on him and not get upset?

And its not just these two shows, not by a long shot. If you were to go into literally any fandom of a certain size or bigger, you will come across fans putting two straight characters together because of "the chemistry" they have. Even if those characters are confirmed to be straight - especially if those characters are confirmed to be straight. Because when these loud fans don't get their crack ship that they rub one out to, they scream queerbaiting and homophobia and oppression, harassing the actors and producers and directors and writers.

Here are some others that just pop to the front of my mind...

Asher Millstone from How To Get Away With Murder (saw him shipped with Connor a lot, despite Connor's actual boyfriend)

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from BBC's Sherlock

Tony Stark from Marvel comics (all because of one panel where he said "ladies and gents" when he announced he was off the market

Literally any male character in the MCU, which is his we get the things like Stucky and Stony that permeate the fandom on almost every level (and some leeway is given here because of the MCU's lack of wueer characters)

Klaus Mikaelson and Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries/The Originals (honestly, I was surprised that people in the TVD fandom weren't immediately all over Josh and Lucas, because they're literally everything that fans want and use in their headcanon gays)

Kol Mikaelson and Jeremg Gilbert, also from TVD

Elia and Filippo from Skam Italia (despite there being, once again, actual gay characters on this show. Hell, the entire second season was dedicated to a character coming out of the closet and being with a guy)

Etc.

I could go on and on but then this post would seem infinite.

Closing thoughts, please keep in mind that I am just one guy and that my opinions don't represent everyone in fandom spaces. But also bear in mind, that my frustrations are well founded and valid from my own experiences in the fandom.

My sexuality and the fact that I'm attracted to men is not a toy for a bunch of sexually repressed fangirls who think two guys being together is hot.

#long post #not sorry at all #rant #m|m fetishization #gay objectification #creepy fangirls

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moonraccoon-exe · 7 years ago

Text

Right, so I’m not officially submitting this to Gladnis Week because it’s more of a rambled idea than a fic (or should I make it an entry nonetheless?). Okay, so

I lied.

I have this.

Fantasy AU Gladnis.

I read this book, Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman. In that universe, dragons co-exist with humans, except it’s super tense ‘cause humans are scared of dragons, but they’ve got a peace treaty. Dragons are able to shapeshift into human form; a dragon is called a Saar, and their human form is a Saarantras. Dragons live in their natural form up north, but many live among humans in their saarantras, though being allowed to shift once every four years among humans (or shift somewhere away of cities, with official permission).

Dragons think humans are mentally and spiritually inferior because of emotions. Dragons don’t feel, not in the levels that a human does, but they can experiment feelings in their saarantras. Except they don’t want to.

For dragons, emotions are an obstacle, as it gets in the way of doing things. As a summary, they believe emotions don’t let you be objective and, hence, they don’t allow you to give your best on something. Many dragons even find emotions as disgusting to witness. They believe they’re superior because they’re able to do politics and all that they do being “fully objective”.

Now, what if a saarantras decides they want to feel, even if just for curiosity? That’s fine. To certain levels. Most (if not all) saarantrai are often under the watch of censors, who make sure a saar is not feeling “too much”. If a saarantras makes public display of emotions that crosses the line of what they’re allowed, the censors will take them back to their lands at north and erase their memories, at least the ones that gave birth to the emotions the dragon felt too much, as a way to start again. That way, if they felt too much joy from hanging with a human kid, they’ll erase the kid from their memories so next time they meet said kid, it will cause nothing to their emotions simply because they don’t remember they ever enjoyed being with this kid. Or if they grew too sad because a dog died, they will erase all memories from said pet, so the dragon won’t feel this sadness because they literally can’t remember the doggo.

That is, of course, they have to see said saarantras showing emotion; maybe a saarantras feels it but doesn’t demonstrate it, hence the censors won’t know. The problem is showing it, allowing emotions to control their actions.

Dragons do this to keep the “purity” of their race. A dragon that feels can be compared to a human, and, well, ew. Humans are inferior, and sure they create art like no dragon can ever do, but what utility does art have anyway? A dragon that feels isn’t focusing 100% in their job. So nope, they’re being watched to make sure they’re not feeling too much.

Now you see where we’re heading, hm?

Let us imagine: human Gladio, and saarantras Ignis.

Forbidden love trope + fantasy AU! Don’t worry, the book doesn’t focus on the “majestic male dragon with super handsome saarantras who illicitly and ‘unexpectedly’ falls in love with doll-like beautiful human maid” story, it’s got a bigger and more interesting plot, but let us imagine the trope for Gladnis okay hndfjgnsfsp

The book’s universe is sort of like a renaissance time, but I guess we can choose perfectly fine between that or modern times like the game.

Gladio’s the Shield of the Prince by birth and job and a passionate historian by school. He has a normal life and a very good acceptance for saarantrai; not only does Gladio not fear them, he also adores the idea of the two races living together as if it didn’t matter. As the world is mostly in peace, there’s not much of a job for a Shield or soldier, so he spends most of his time in his history researches or just reading, when he can.

The saarantrai wear a little bell on their shoulder so people know they’re dragons, but some are extent of this, mostly researches. This is so that they’re allowed in human schools, spaces and jobs without being discriminated or feared. The apprentice to prince-adviser is one of those.

When he arrived to the court, they presented him as the king’s attendant’s nephew. People assume he’s a very quiet young man that’s either too shy or asocial, but a few people know this is a dragon. King Regis thought it convenient to have a dragon as the prince’s second hand, so that in a future people and dragons could learn to live and grow together; with a human and a dragon in lead of Lucis, it’d become a great change for good when Noctis would take the throne.

Clarus knows, too, and the Council, and Noctis, of course.

They hadn’t told Gladio, though. But Gladio figures it out pretty quickly. He too had assumed that Ignis was just shy and asocial, but he starts paying attention to his behavior and figures out that this guy, Ignis, it a saarantras allowed to go incognito without the bell.

Still, he doesn’t try to approach him. He holds a mostly diplomatic relationship with him, because while Gladio accepts the saarantrai, they can get rude to deal with, or just difficult. Saarantrai not only don’t feel, they also aren’t familiar with many feelings, so sometimes it’s hard to talk with them and have them understand at all. Plus, this particular saarantras doesn’t seem interested in anything; Gladio had tried conversation with him, but Ignis doesn’t reply or just goes super blank on him.

One day, however, he’s at the royal library when the doors open and two forms come in; the university’s director and Ignis, following close behind and with the same blank, serious expression of always, and both are heading his way with a request.

“You want me to teach him human Lucian history?” Gladio asks as if he hadn’t heard well, or as if expecting them to take back their words.

“Your thesis covered the very same aspects and lapses of history that Ignis is interested in” the university’s director explains. “I believed, as you’ve graduated already as top of your class and as it’s best for him to not leave the Citadel for too long due to his duties, and as you two work together here, perhaps you could teach him and guide him into his own thesis.”

“He was top of his class?” Ignis asks to the director as if though Gladio wasn’t there. “He looks like the brute type.”

Gladio knows it’s not an insult and nothing personal, this is just a saarantras with no notion of modesty or sympathy, but it still annoys him. Indeed, it annoys him even more that it wasn’t an insult; insults tend to be forced just to hurt, but this saarantras is only stating what’s a fact for him, and, well, ouch.

Long story short, the two end up together. Ignis was curious about history and studied it, and Gladio’s now in charge of teaching him. Not only does Ignis want to learn history for his thesis, he always wants to study all of it so that he can understand the human history of Lucis much better, seen as his new role asks him to stay there forever and advise a human, so to do that he must understand humans first, right?

“It wouldn’t be wise to guide people when you can’t understand them.”

Again, it’s a fact for the saarantras. But it makes Gladio feel good and makes him grow some admiration for this dragon; Ignis may seem cold and rude, but he’s actually smart and wants to make a good job, not just do it because he was told, and majored in history just for the sake of advising Noctis prudently and wisely. Needless to say, despite their rough beginning, Gladio quickly grows fond of this dragon and tries to be a good teacher and companion for him.

Ignis sticks to him in his free time, because he took the words “Gladio’s your new teacher” too literally. *sigh* typical saarantrai misunderstanding. Saarantrai value the word ‘teacher’, it’s the maximum title of admiration, because a teacher is the base for a future so a teacher is like sacred to them, and Ignis took the words too literally and now he’s following Gladio everywhere. The poor thing sticks to the Shield like a puppy or a kid, except all serious and quiet.

This one day Ignis is going through Gladio’s personal collection of books to see if any of them could be of use for his thesis, and he made two different piles. Gladio had not seen it weird at first, but when he got closer to see what kind of separation he was making, he saw that one pile was history and the other was novels.

“Why are you piling up the novels?”

“I was seeing how many of those you have” Ignis explains. “There’s so many. But these have no value. They don’t have any facts, they’re only…what do you call them? ‘Imaginary’ stories. Why do you keep all these useless texts? Do you use them for analysis of human psychology?”

“Actually, I just like them.”

“Oh. True. I forgot you’re human.” There’s a long pause. “What is so interesting about these? I see some humans going crazy about novels. But I don’t understand why. It’s full of lies.”

“Well, we’re aware it’s lies. We call it fantasy or imaginary content. I guess that we like them because they’re interesting and make us feel good.”

Ignis blinks at him blankly. He understands but doesn’t at the same time. He gets the point but…really, explaining that to a saarantras is useless.

“Why?”

“Hm…I don’t know. They may have suspense, and getting to the resolution is satisfying. Or it may be romance, and we may feel moved. Or it can be tragedy and we can cry and clean the heart.”

“Crying cleans the heart? That’s interesting, I had not heard about it before. How does it work? I assume the eyes must be connected to the heart in some way. I have learned some things of human biology but I’ve never heard of a direct connection of eyes and the heart, let alone the-”

“No, no” Gladio tries not to laugh. “I mean…it’s only a metaphor. It’s not biology.”

“Ah, metaphors” Ignis brushes it off and continues looking in the books. “We’re bad at metaphors. Us dragons, I mean. So if it doesn’t really clean the heart, what’s the purpose of making yourself cry with a text made out of lies?”

“You’re very curious for a saar, you know?”

“I doubt curiosity is an emotion.”

Gladio doesn’t respond. He laughs a bit and Ignis just stares at him not understanding the motif of laughter.

They continue their days with Gladio teaching Ignis and Ignis following him everywhere like an obedient but expressionless puppy, and with each day Gladio starts finding that more and more adorable for some reason. Ignis walking behind him or at his side, watching him with those beautiful green and super curious eyes, sitting with him to eat even if it’s in silence, sometimes following him while in pajamas, it’s absolutely adorable for some reason.

One day Gladio’s reading one of his novels while Ignis is writing some document. The saarantras looks up at his human teacher at times to see how he’s doing; sometimes Gladio’s smiling, sometimes he’s blank, sometimes he’s serious, sometimes he has this nervous human tic of biting his nails, and a few times he’s chuckling. Ignis tries to rein it in because it’d be innapropiate and novels are senseless…but…

“Explain it to me.”

Gladio looks up from his reading and finds Ignis standing in front of him, serious.

“What?”

“The novel” Ignis points at the book. “Explain it to me. It makes you smile sometimes, and then you’re nervous, and then you’re happy again. I don’t understand. You are aware the things written in there are not real. Why do they make you feel things, if you know it’s only lies?”

“Hm…well…I don’t think that’s something a saar can understand. No offense. It’s just…it’s hard to explain why something makes you feel things, you know?”

“Then describe it to me” Ignis says. “The story. Tell me about it.”

Gladio’s a bit confused and hesitates at first, but eventually he has Ignis sit with him, and he tells him the story of the book, about the heroine, the prince in dismay, the evil daemons, the plot and characters. The more he says the more stupid he feels, because Ignis shows no emotion to what he’s saying, so Gladio fears he’s getting all excited telling this story and Ignis just doesn’t get it, and Gladio feels stupid because he sees how silly it is to tell a fictional story.

Ignis just nods and thanks him, and goes back to work, and Gladio feels stupid.

But, the next day, Ignis has the same request.

“Could you please tell me the story of another of those novels that you read?” Ignis asks him. He offers no explanation, and Gladio’s surprised but doesn’t question him, and tells him more. Ignis, again, shows no reaction, only thanks him and leaves.

But the saarantras starts asking him for stories every day.

Sometimes, Gladio has Ignis follow him to some play, or to see a dance, or to hear some music, and sometimes Ignis finds Gladio looking at paintings and, as he’s following him, Ignis stays with him all the while that Gladio takes to look at them, not understanding why this human is taking so long to stare at it. But this happens so often, Ignis starts staring at them, too; he has no option. Sometimes Ignis sees Gladio play with his little sister, and some times he sees Gladio reprimanding Noctis, and sometimes rewarding him.

All in all,as time passes, Ignis sees Gladio in his normal life, and sees him in every scheme of the human emotions; angered, sad, happy, relaxed, tense, nervous, mischievous, stressed, everything, all while Gladio still takes him to art exhibitions or concerts and while he’s tutoring the dragon.

At some point, Ignis sees him play with Iris, and when the Shield is done and goes back to the saar, Ignis starts questioning him.

“Gladiolus, I don’t understand” he says.

“What’s the matter, Iggy?”

“I felt…something” the saar tries to explain, the head lightly tilted to a side like a curious bird. “I felt…content?”

“Oh? Well…that’s normal, I guess.”

“Yes, I had felt that before, but this is the first time it happens like this” Ignis explains. “I had felt content being rewarded or seeing things turning out fine. But right now, while I watched you play with your sister…you were laughing so much, she yelped out in surprise and joy and laughter, and you two ran behind each other, shoved each other and laughed, and you hugged her while still laughing, and that’s…that’s when I felt it” Ignis tells him. “I don’t understand. I was not taking part in the game. I was not part of the situation. I was only watching. Why did watching the two of you play make me happy when I was not part of it?”

Gladio’s taken off guard. He’s not sure he knows the answer to that, it’s a bit abstract, and it’s a surprise to see Ignis feeling things, even if as little.

“Well…I guess…joy is contagious?”

“Contagious? You mean like a virus? That’s new to me. I had no idea emotions had a biological manifestation-”

Gladio laughs and decides to let this dragon rant on, but when Ignis hears him laughing he looks at the Shield as if confused and shuts up, looking away. Gladio thinks he messed up and offended the dragon, but that’d be silly; dragons don’t feel so he can’t feel offended. Still, he must have made the saarantras uncomfortable.

Times continues and Ignis still requests him to tell him stories and starts requesting him to take him to more concerts.

“We dragons can master the musical technique” he says, “but you humans have this interesting way of putting…emotion into the music. The phonetic change is notorious; I don’t understand why, but a human playing with…what do you call it? Passion. It sounds…different than a dragon with perfectly clean technique. I want to understand it and how it works.”

Gladio, for a moment, thinks that this may be an excuse, and wonders if Ignis’ real motif is that he’s been enjoying of the concerts. But that’d be silly because dragons don’t feel.

Time goes and Gladio is still being followed by Ignis. They have been caught under the rain, and Ignis has run behind a laughing Gladio, not sure he understands why he laughs but certainly not upset. He’s seen Gladio help an old woman with her bags, not sure he understands why he’s feeling things just by witnessing that. He has been with Gladio when the Shield has stopped to pet a stray and scared kitten (that he ended up adopting), not sure he understands what he feels, but feeling it.

Ignis is not sure of why, but every day he’s more attracted to following Gladiolus. He’s interesting, he says to convince himself, but he feels like there’s another way of explaining it that he can’t name. He sees Gladiolus do things and he doesn’t understand why, but he knows that he admires him more and more for every of those things that he does, and he learns a lot about Gladio with the little actions that he makes.

One day, there’s a royal visit of the prince to the outskirts or in town or something, and so Gladio has to stick by Noctis’ side all the time, as is his duty.

At some point, there’s Niflheim intruders among the people that try to harm the prince, and Gladio fights them off. Ignis, as part of the prince’s retinue above his title of Crownsguard, is forced and escorted to leave with Noctis while the Crownsguard and Shield fight the bad guys off. And, he’s not sure of why, but he kept insisting that he stays…except the thing in his mind isn’t to fight the bad guys off Noctis, the prince is already safe, he’s thinking about ‘why are we leaving Gladiolus behind?’ and all the way he keeps looking back to see if he can spot the Shield, and he’s not sure why.

All the while waiting for Crownsguard to come back to the palace he’s been nervous. More than nervous, he’s anxious. And it makes him twice the anxious to be aware that he’s feeling, and it makes him three times the anxious to see that, as he’s already aware that he’s nervous, he’s trying to calm it down and keep it cool because he’s not supposed to feel, but he can’t. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t calm down, and he hates it and doesn’t understand why emotions are so hard to control. He even considers going out and to the outskirts to shift to his dragon form, to get rid of the anxiety, but he’s not allowed to leave.

He tries to think he’s nervous because they were attacked, but truth is he’s nervous for something…someone else and he knows it.

When he hears the Crownsguard are back (and ‘the injured are in the infirmary’), he requests to go see the injured.

“My human teacher is there” Ignis explains, and when he fears they may think he’s worried, he adds, “I have to see his state and see if it’s worth waiting for tonight’s lesson or if I should look for another teacher.”

The human guards are a bit confused, not sure if they just heard a saar worried or if he’s sincere, but they brush it off and let him in.

Gladio’s badly injured, but awake and stable. He receives Ignis with some shock, not having expected for the saar to visit him, so he guesses Ignis may just have a question and he will take his leave.

Instead of that, Ignis stays at a side of the bed, not replying to the ‘Hey, Iggy. Everything okay?’ He stands there staring at Gladiolus and the floor. His hands moved a little, doing a fist, undoing, doing it again and so on, softly but in a clear…nervous sign. Gladio, confused, asks him again if everything’s fine. His voice is quiet and hoarse; he’s tired and paining, a bandage around the head and covering his already scarred eye, and another on the arm and some around the torso. He’s badly bruised and there’s still some blood on him. It’s bad. And Ignis is staring at it all, every bruise and cut and bandage.

At first Gladio thinks Ignis doesn’t understand, but that makes no sense. This is physical harm, not an emotion, so Ignis should have no reason to be curious and not understand.

Quiet, Ignis sits at his side and still says nothing. Gladio stares at him, a bit worried for the saar. Maybe he’s in shock for the attack, and he has no idea how to handle shock. He’s about to ask him again if he’s fine, and, suddenly, it happens.

He hears Ignis sniffle.

Gladio’s confused at first and thinks he heard wrong, but then he sees the saar move a hand up and clean one of his eyes from under the glasses.

Ignis is crying.

It takes Gladio long to process it and understand. This is a saarantras, a saar. This is a dragon. He can’t be crying. He can’t be…feeling. But there he is, sat right at his side and refusing to look at him, a crying Ignis.

“I don’t understand” Ignis says with a trembling and weak voice. “I am not injured. Why does it hurt?”

Gladio stil takes so very long to process and to do anything that’s not stare and be in shock.

“…where does it hurt, Igs?”

“I don’t know” Ignis cries but still refuses to look at him. “I don’t know, but it does. It didn’t hurt…until I saw you. I am positive pain is not contagious. I’m experimenting…many emotions. And I don’t understand why; all that I did was look at you. Why does it hurt me if it’s you in the bed?”

Gladio still takes very long to reply. He stays very quiet and shocked looking at Ignis, who seems to be very frustrated that he can’t stop crying no matter how much he cleans his eyes.

And realization hits him then.

Ignis is worried. And he cares enough to cry.

“Gods…” Ignis sniffles. “I…should go see the censors…”

“No, no” Gladio hurries, though he’s still weak. “If you go see the censors, all the research you’ve done will be lost. Obviously, it’s the first time you experience fear in these levels, and your body doesn’t know how to handle it. But it’s fine. Don’t go to the censors. If you let them erase your memories of me…all your research will be gone, because all of it you’ve done with me. Don’t go with them. For...your research. Obviously.”

Ignis takes long, and still refuses to make eye contact. He knows this is an excuse; the censors could very easily remove Gladio from his memories without affecting his research and new knowledge. Ignis is aware this is an excuse.

But he nods. He lies to himself because he wants to. And he doesn’t go to the censors. He doesn’t want to forget about Gladio and all they’ve done together.

The next day, Ignis greets Gladio with his usual blank and serious expression, and he rarely visits him at the infirmary. But he does; rarely, but he does. Always with some excuse, or with a question that’s so silly Gladio knows is just an excuse, but Ignis visits. And Gladio knows it may be wrong, but really he doesn’t care; Ignis is showing some sort of worry and care, and that’s very wonderful. Gladio’s always thought that all this ‘not feeling’ is absurd and dragons should let that go. Not like emotions can be controlled, half their effort goes into controlling their feelings, so in some way their ‘we don’t feel to focus 100 percent in work’ is absurd. But that’s something he can’t change.

But he can not expose Ignis, and let this one dragon feel. Because from what Gladio has learned of him, Ignis has a very, very, immensely huge and incredibly kind heart. He should be allowed to feel. He wants him to feel. So none say anything.

And Ignis starts feeling in secret. Indeed, he’s been feeling for a veeeeery long while now, but now he starts feeling being aware of it. And sometimes he feels guilty he’s feeling (and feels guiltier he’s feeling guilt, hahaha), but he goes on with this, putting excuses to himself for the things he does.

And the concerts continue, the plays, the poems and stories that Gladio narrates and tells to him, and, once, Ignis took one of Gladio’s novels and read it in secret. And after that one he picked another, and another, and he thinks he’s being subtle, but Gladio knows his books, and notices when one is missing. But he pretends he has no idea.

Sometimes he hears Ignis sighing during a concert, and Gladio pretends he didn’t hear. Sometimes he hears him gasp in the suspense part of a play, and pretends he didn’t hear. Sometimes he’ll smile while watching people dance, and Gladio will again pretend he’s not seeing. But he is seeing. A smiling Ignis…Gladio likes to see a saar experiment feelings and show little, tiny demonstrations of it, it’s super interesting and new, but from all the things that he likes to see Ignis experience, he really likes to see the saar smile. It’s rare, and absolutely beautiful. Ignis’ saarantras is absolutely beautiful on its own; when he smiles in that form…the gods bless. That beauty is amplified.

One day, at a royal ball, Ignis sticks with Gladio as he’s always done (except now it’s because he wants to), and Gladio enjoys watching the saar smile watching others dance. It took him a while, but he got to make Ignis see how to enjoy watching. It’s not rare that a saar dances; they do can feel but only to certain levels and do things involving art, so dancing is not rare.

And Gladio puts that as excuse when he asks him for a dance.

And there go the two, into the mass of people to dance. Gladio, taller, takes the leading role and grabs one of Ignis’ hands and puts the other to his waist. Very curiously, he sees the saar react to that; Ignis looks at him for a moment with a bit of surprise. Ignis stares down and away and stutters a bit and tries to talk stuff, and Gladio’s a bit surprised. Did he just see a saar…going shy? Dragons can’t blush because they have silver rather than red blood, but he wondered, had Ignis been able to, would he have blushed?

The two dance one, two, three songs, and they could have gone for a fourth. But Ignis sees a censor staring at him and worries that he’s shown too much emotion during the dancing without noticing. He’s sure he’s been reining some laughs in, and he’s had half of his focus into not smiling too much while Gladio has him dancing all through the entire hall with a grace he didn’t know possible in a man his size, but he wonders if maybe one or two inappropiate ones escaped him and the censor saw it. So Ignis stops them there. Gladio doesn’t complain, but he feels a bit sad that they won’t continue. Ignis is a very good dancer.

Some days later, Ignis is helping Gladio arrange the books of his personal collection, in his office. They’re very quiet, but Gladio doesn’t mind. It’s Ignis who, while arranging books and taking that as excuse to not look at him, starts some conversation.

“Gladio. I’ve been experimenting some feelings that I hadn’t had before.”

That’s not new. Some saar can live among humans and stumble upon a new feeling only after years, and it’s difficult for them to name them.

“Sure. Describe it to me?”

“Well…I don’t know. This is the most abstract I’ve experienced.”

Gladio thinks he won’t talk again, but the saar sighs and tries it.

“Sometimes, I really want to see you.”

Gladio stops with the books after putting two in their place. At first he did not process the words, and when he does, he turns to look at the saar. Ignis too is looking at him. They keep eye contact for a moment before Ignis looks away and continues with the books and shelves.

“It’s difficult to explain. But sometimes, I want to see you to the point where it feels like…a necessity. Like my day is not complete without seeing you first. I have the literal necessity to see you, to hear you talk, and sometimes that you talk to me, and that you see me. It makes me happy, that part I do understand. But I don’t understand why it’s…a necessity.”

Gladio feels his own face become red, and a ranch of chocobos in his tummy. He’s already half-accepted to himself his own crush on the dragon, but had said nothing because 1. That’s bestiality in some way 2. That’s sick in the eyes of society and 3. It’s senseless to fall in love with someone that literally can’t (or isn’t allowed to) feel. To hear Ignis say this sort of things, it makes his heart race. He’s been a bit flustered whenever Ignis compliments him (in his awkward and sometimes harsh dragon way), but this…is new. And it makes him very flustered.

He takes some moments before he says anything.

“I guess…you’re just growing fond of my presence.”

“That is true” Ignis nods, not looking at him. “But it’s different. Sometimes, when you tell me something positive about myself, or when you find me staring, I really don’t want you to see me, and I feel…” he gestures with the hand as if not finding the word. “…this thing. I feel tickles in my stomach, but I’m positive I have no parasites. And my heart speeds up, but I’ve seen the doctor and I’m positive it’s in good conditions. And I wish…sometimes, that you can touch my face, or my hand. It feels nice, but I don’t understand the physiological reason. And I really want you to see the positive things in me. But thing is, I feel all this only when it’s about you, not with anybody else. Is that normal? What is it?”

And that’s when Gladio understands, simply because that’s absolutely normal in every human when they experience it, and because he’s been feeling it too. He’s taken completely by surprise and the only thing he can do is look at Ignis with widened eyes and the mouth slightly open. Ignis continues arranging the books with his usual blank expression. Sometimes he looks at Gladio but turns his attention to the shelves again, as if he had just said that the sky is blue instead of that…implicit, maybe accidental confession.

“Well…” Gladio starts, a bit quietly, and with the heart in the throat. “…I think…I think that’s…called…’having a crush’…”

Ignis continues with the books for a moment, stops, blinks and turns in Gladio’s direction.

“Don’t be ridiculous” Ignis says. “I have read about this whole crush issue. For the sake of investigation, of course. And what I’ve learnt is that ‘having a crush’ is just the human explanation for a fully egocentric, selfish and sometimes narcissistic necessity of wanting somebody else to compliment you, gift you things, and be good to you with silly gestures like the hold of hands or kissing. It’s disgusting and only the psychological necessity of having somebody making you feel good.”

Gladio smiles a little, with some sympathy; he likes that Ignis knows a lot of things, but the poor thing should just learn to feel freely.

“And that’s not what you feel?”

“…of course not” Ignis says with a slight hint of hesitation. “I mean, there are some symptoms, I won’t deny. But I discard it from being a ‘crush’ because of the entire ‘I want you to make me feel good’ argument. That is not the case. It’s the opposite of the case.”

“Then, you don’t want me to make you feel happy?”

There’s a long pause, like Ignis is thinking or hesitating.

“Partly” Ignis says. “I was afraid it would be this ‘crush’ thing, so I have dedicated great time to think it through and analyze it, and that’s not the core of this…emotion. It is one part, but more like an extension of it, not the core.”

“So what is the core?”

“Almost the entire opposite…I think” Ignis looks utterly confused at this point. “I stopped to think, what if you don’t want me nearby, though? This necessity to go to you, to see you, to hear you, that’s all that I want from you. But what about the scenario where you don’t want me nearby? And I thought, ‘what would I feel if that was the case? Would I stop thinking about Gladiolus if he asked me to get away?” he looks at Gladio again. “And the answer was no. Even though I do desire your attention, I realized that even if I didn’t have it, I’d still feel…rather fond of you” he scratches his head, confused. “I realized I would not mind if you didn’t want me nearby. It’s what you’d want and what’d make you comfortable. And, indeed, I realized that I would do exactly as you requested from me, because I want you to be comfortable. I would like to do as you told me because I want to know you’re…not upset, I guess?”

Ignis continues accommodating the books, as if he was talking about the weather.

“And not only would I do as you told me. I’d also stay nearby, without invading your space. I don’t understand the sudden necessity, and it may be only because I’m in age of mating and perhaps some parental instincts blossom, but…” he shrugs. “…I sort of desire to look after you. Even if from afar. I desire to see you safe and comfortable. I desire to act as some sort of guardian for you, even when I know you don’t need it, and I wouldn’t mind not telling you and I wouldn’t mind that you’d never know.”

He turns to look at Gladio again.

“I don’t understand why. But I want to protect you. In all senses. Whether you compliment me or not, or thank me or not, I have this…necessity to look at you, from nearby or afar, and know you’re safe, healthy, and happy. And that’s not a crush, I read everything about them. Crushes are the desire of being together, and what I feel…I wouldn’t mind if you pushed me away of your life. I’d still feel like this. I don’t understand it; I earn nothing from it. It’s entirely selfless and gives me no reward. Indeed, it only takes from me time and effort. Yet, I wouldn’t like to live any other way if it’s not protecting you. I’ve done research about human emotions, but cannot name this one. If it’s not a crush, what is it?”

By this point, Gladio’s mouth is open and he’s not breathing. He’s not sure Ignis is conscious of the weight of what he’s saying, or the strange beauty to itself. This saar is saying things like always, as a fact, a statement and not anything poetic, and yet it caused Gladio’s heart to flutter inside himself. And this, what Ignis describes…it’s exactly the same to what he feels.

And now that Ignis has described it in such a as-a-matter-of-fact way, he understands it, too.

Gladio’s not sure if he should get close. Ignis has shown to reject physical approaches, mostly any hand nearby the neck (due to dragon stuff, I’ll explain in another post, maybe). He’s not sure if it’s inappropriate or not. But he gets a bit closer; enough to make it intimate, but without invading Ignis’ personal space.

The saar stops with the books and looks at him, expecting his answer. Gladio looks surprised, and there’s some hints of both terror and absolute joy, and it only makes Ignis frown with confusion. He doesn’t understand how a human can feel two so very different things at the same time.

“I think…” Gladio smiles at him. “…that it’s called ‘love’.”

WOAH, this just got so long, I’ll stop here but could write more if you guys want. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

But basically I want Saar Ignis with human Gladio discovering emotions can I pls have that

Also imagine if the censors caught him hhahshasjkashsakah

Also the first time they’d make love would be WONDERFUL because of the neck thing I couldwriteaboutthat I could-

Imagine Ignis in his DRAGON FORM protecting Gladio hndfngndfg

Imagine the censors don’t catch him, Ignis goes to them bc they threatened to kill Gladio if he didn’t and Ignis won’t mind giving up his memories of him so long that keeps Gladdy safe *cries*

Gladio allowed to ride Iggy for a flight aaaah

I WANT SAARANTRAS IGNIS TO LAUGH, TOO.

*GASPS* DRAGON IGNIS FIGHTING A DRAGON ARDYN

I want this AU :’(

#hnfdndfndffdgfdg #so many ideas #side note this would also be /phenomenal/ as a fleurentia/ravnis with dragon ravus #but i made it a gladnis because I CAN #plus gladnis week #gotta be in the mood #i shall leave this in the meanwhile as i write something #for prompto-cam's centaur!gladio + cervitaurs!ignis #I AM EXCITED #I HAVE SO MUCH TO WRITE #*cries in raccoon but is also happy*#fantasy au gladnis #yay gladnis!#dragon ignis #seraphina au #saar ignis #gladnis

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viktorredemptionarc · 7 years ago

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Fic: Philosophy of self [JayceViktor]

A/N: Available @ AO3 too. This is the punk band au nobody asked for but I live to give.

Word Count: 9.857.

Characters/Relationships: Jayce/Viktor.

Rating: T for language.

Summary: Punk concerts are where miracles happen.

'Cause it's all that he wants, and he wants to be free.

Freedom cannot be received.

It's something to be conquered, not given. That's what Viktor does when he plays every Sunday night since he left college, drenched in sweat under the neon lights, the floor shaking beneath his feet as his heart tries to beat its way out of his chest. It's his way of fighting to be free, he pursues the feeling that he gets after they're done and he's standing on the stage with his ears ringing and unable to catch his breath, when he knows that it's never going to be the same because he's never going to be as free as he is right then.

He looks down at the crowd, obscured and hard to make out with the spotlight shining on him. His fingers hurt, his throat burns, his legs are shaking. Time doesn't feel real, he doesn't feel real. He exhales. Vi hits him in the back, hard, and he turns to her as she yells something, he doesn't know what, and the moment is shattered and he's back to being just Viktor, on the stage, with the strap of his bass digging into his neck.

"See you next week, asshats!" shouts Vi, into de mic, and the crowd cheers. Suddenly, everything is too much. Too little. Never enough but always overwhelming. Hot and cold.

Viktor turns on his heels and runs backstage.

-x-

Jayce has never felt so tired. Too tired to function, tired enough to pass out, and way too tired to even think about his goddamned thesis. Yet sleep eludes him, his brain set to overdrive, so he does the unthinkable and follows Vi into one of the most awful pubs he's seen in his life.

The place is dreadful but Vi has been nagging him to go to one of her concerts for what feels like, and might actually have been, years. He owes it to her, in a way, and she's the only friend he has so might as well use what's looking to be a long, sleepless, night to indulge her. Which doesn't make having to navigate through a myriad of bodies, some of them spiky, to get to the front any less annoying.

Vi's smile when he does get there, looking down at him from the stage, is kind of worth it. He tries to see her bandmates but the spotlights are off in the back and she's the only one that the light from the front can reach. Jayce watches as she turns her smile to the rest of the crowd, grabs the mic, and shatters Jayce's ears with a scream. It seems like everyone behind him is trying to get closer to the stage at once, pushing him, and just when he's about to turn around and yell at someone, the spotlights blind him and Vi strums a guitar.

His first thought after the sound fades is that he's too close to the speakers and his head is going to explode. Then it all starts again and he can't hear his own thoughts. The drums are too fast, too frantic, for him to follow. The bass is so heavy his whole body thrums to its rhythm. Vi's voice cuts through the noise like a war cry.

It's terrible.

Jayce feels alive.

And a bit nauseous, but it'll pass. Right there and right then; with Vi spitting out word after word about love, and violence, and war, he feels like everything in his life will come to an end eventually. The thought is as liberating as it's terrifying. Vi winks, at him or at the crowd who even cares, and Jayce realizes that he's laughing. At the idea of the finality of things in a punk concert with a spike digging into his spine, his ears buzzing, his entire being shaking, and his heart in his throat.

It goes on and on, waves of sound and movement and his own body swaying to it all, until suddenly it isn't happening anymore and Jayce doesn't know how long it's been since he could listen to the things happening inside his own brain. Vi struts around the stage, hits one of her bandmates in the back, and screams. Jayce can't hear shit until she calls him and everyone down there an asshat and he catches the guy with the bass running into the backstage without a word. Vi sticks her tongue out, strums her guitar, turns off the mic and drops it on the ground before following him with the drummer. Jayce thinks that she's Vi's girlfriend? Maybe? No idea.

About anything, really. Not his place in that pub, nor his place in the world as a whole. Why is he so tired if he's only been standing around laughing like an idiot as Vi jumps on stage?

"Hey, Jaycerino!" Vi crashes into him, drops her arms around his neck as she jumps, and Jayce almost loses his balance. "Come backstage, enjoy the privileges of being my friend."

She jumps off and he follows her, only half aware of what he's doing. He should go back home. It's late. How late? He doesn't know. There are many things he doesn't know, and the thought makes him anxious but he doesn't have time to dwell on it because Vi's kicking a door open and there the rest of her band is.

Jayce stays in the threshold, unsure of what the right move to make is. His emotions are out of control and it's pissing him off, and Vi's maybe girlfriend is staring at him, and fuck it. Fuck it all. He enters the room after Vi, closes the door and loses all his bravado once Vi's too far to get comforted by her just being by his side.

"So this is Jayce. Jayce, this is Caitlyn and that one sulking over there is Viktor," she points at Caitlyn, who he knows is Vi's girlfriend, and then at the other guy. He's sitting on the floor, legs crossed, his hair in disarray and his eyes dodging Jayce's. He doesn't look like he belongs in a punk band. What he does look is familiar, and Jayce frowns at him. Which makes Viktor frown back.

"What," he barks, voice gruff and low as he drags his hand across his hair, and the pieces of the puzzle come together. Jayce knows him, but he's changed a bit over the years. He's rougher around the edges now.

"We were classmates at college," Jayce says, but judging by how Viktor's frown deepens that wasn't the right way to keep the conversation going. "Viktor Evans, right?"

"Viktor Evans, yes. Who are you?"

That stings. Partly because he remembers talking to Viktor, and also because Jayce assumed that everyone knew him in his year. For better or for worse, just generally for worse because he's a jackass. Or so he's been told.

"Jayce Sawyer," he walks Viktor's way and offers him a hand. Viktor doesn't shake it, he kind of gives it a half-assed slap and then grabs it to use it to stand up. Jayce stumbles, caught off guard, but they manage to stay up and in one piece. "You dropped out, right?"

Vi makes a hissing sound by his left and he glances her way. She looks alarmed. Why.

Viktor walks past him and out of the room shoving him with his shoulder on the way. Caitlyn snorts. Jayce blinks at the spot where Viktor had been.

"What was that," he asks, turning to look at Vi, and she shrugs.

"You being a fucking idiot is what it was," she says. "Who even asks that, Jayce?"

Social norms are very confusing, he's realizing. As he's done many times before, but it feels like a revelation.

"It's true, though. Why can't I ask?"

Vi's looking at him like she does when she's going to tell him that he can't actually be that stupid. It happens often. Caitlyn doing too, though, that's new. Not a development he particularly likes.

"I don't even know what to tell you. Just get your stupid ass in gear and apologize, because that was fucking rude."

They're very uptight to be punks, he thinks, but he does let Vi save Viktor's number to his phone and promises her that he'll call.

-x-

It's been a week since, against his better judgment, Jayce went to that concert. He's been agonizing over that apology he owes Viktor for the entirety of it, with Vi nagging him via text every single day. It's not his fault that it's hard to apologize to someone when you don't think you should and when you're a disaster at socializing to begin with. Yet Vi won't be deterred and he breaks on Saturday afternoon and calls.

"Who are you?" Viktor says, on the other end of the line, and Jayce is kind of amused by the feeling of déjà vu.

"Jayce, don't hang up," he waits, expecting Viktor to hang up on him anyway, but all he hears through the static is a sigh that he takes as his cue to go on. "I'm sorry for what I did the other day? Whatever it was."

"I don't care, okay? Just let me be. I don't know you, pretend you don't know me."

"I don't know you, either," Jayce says, before he can get a grip of himself, and curses under his breath.

"Yeah, that's the attitude. Anything else?" Well, now that he knows who he is many things else. Like why even drop out when he was the only one in their class who was on Jayce's level. But he has a feeling that it would be rude as well, for whatever reason, and manages to keep that one in.

"Not...really? When's your next concert?"

"Tomorrow. Midnight, same place. Try not to come dressed like you're going to the yacht club."

Viktor hangs up on him before he can reply.

-x-

According to Vi, he doesn't look like that much of a rich twat.

"More like the kind of guy who would swear on an Elvis album," she says, tossing a shirt she brought with her across the room and into his lap. "You stood up like a sore thumb, kinda out of place."

"How did I look out of place. I'm good looking. I know that. That's half the job done, isn't it?"

"Jayce, you wore a flannel shirt buttoned up to your neck. It was embarrassing. You might be hot, but you're also like the biggest nerd on Earth," she throws a pair of black trousers at him too and he wonders if they came with the rips or if she ripped them off herself. Knowing Vi, it's probably gonna be the latter. "Try those on. I brought you some boots too, just so you don't get any ideas about wearing fucking loafers."

He barely even complains while changing and is very proud of himself for that, taking on account that he's had to jump around like an idiot to get in the stupid trousers. Thankfully, Vi's being polite, for a change, and looking down at her phone until she hears the zipper of the jeans going up.

"How do they look?" Jayce asks, already feeling like an idiot in them, but Vi smiles and it isn't that bad anymore.

"Better than your stupid khakis. Put the boots on already, we're gonna be late."

He does put them on, and a leather jacket that he finds in the depths of his wardrobe. Vi tousles his hair, hushing him when he tries to protest, and at least asks for permission before going to town with the eyeliner. Wearing it is odd and Jayce expects to look ridiculous and more out of place than ever. Once he looks in the mirror he has to admit that it's not that bad. Not his favorite, not something he'd wear much, but good to blend in.

It is also helping with the feeling of actually belonging there, right in front of the stage with who knows how many people pushing him to get closer. Vi steps on stage and strums her guitar, spotlights still off, and a deafening roar envelops him and it's dizzying, the idea that this might be his place. But the spotlights are suddenly on, and Vi's screaming, and Jayce is yelling with her to the beat of the drums instead of thinking about anything else.

He doesn't know the lyrics. He doesn't need to, they resonate with him anyway like the bass echoes through his body. Last week, he laughed like an idiot standing right by the speaker. Now, jumping and screaming and sweating like he's never done in his life, he realizes that he's crying and laughs anyway because who the fuck even does that at their best friend's punk concert.

"How was it?" shouts Vi into his ear after running off the stage, and Jayce has no idea. It's not as if he's ever been very into music before, he isn't sure he's into this music at all now or into the rush.

"It was fun," Jayce answers, and she beams and grabs him by the wrist to drag him backstage. Caitlyn is already there, laying on the floor. Viktor is nowhere to be seen.

"He'll come," Vi smirks at him, and Jayce is still too excited to even feel awkward so he pretends that he hasn't noticed.

Caitlyn sits up and waves at him and Jayce waves back. "His throat was sore, he went to get something for that. Told him to bring you some, too."

"Cool," Vi sits with Caitlyn and Jayce is starting to feel the buzz of his excitement wearing off. That's bad, because then he's going to start feeling anxious and it's going to suck.

The door opens and closes behind him and Jayce turns around and there Viktor is, holding two cups and not even looking at Jayce. Rude.

"Got you some tea. It was hard, pubs don't have tea," Vi snorts but takes the cup from him anyway. Jayce just stands there, quietly, until Viktor glances his way. "You look like Danny Zuko after a mosh pit."

Jayce frowns. "Thank you?"

"That was a compliment, I think," Caitlyn says, standing up to pat Jayce's arm. "Viktor doesn't know how to say nice things in any other way."

"It was a fact."

Jayce feels slightly lost and a little bit offended but it's not as if he picked any of the things he's wearing so it doesn't matter. Much.

"At least I don't look like I'm heading for yacht club anymore, that's progress." he says, and Viktor huffs before taking a sip of tea. Which is ridiculous, now that Jayce has a second to think about it. He's known Vi for almost his entire life and she's always been defiant. She does her own hair, yells at every figure of authority she encounters, and dresses like Jayce would expect a punk to do. Viktor he hasn't known for as long but he did meet him when at college and he kind of yelled at a professor once but that was about it. Sweaters and jeans are not what he'd call appropriate punk attire. Or old fashioned thick rimmed glasses. Or anything about him, besides the way he's looking at Jayce right now, eyes intense and fierce, as if he wants to pick a fight.

"Anyway, we gotta bail," Vi punches his arm and Jayce snaps out of his reverie and blinks at Viktor. He keeps scowling at Jayce until Caitlyn grabs his arm and forces him to leave his cup on the floor and help her carry the drums to the back of the room. Jayce jumps when Vi snorts by his side. "You staring at my girlfriend like that? Gotta warn you, she's as gay as they come."

"Good to know we have something in common. Which you already knew, by the way, so what are you even talking about."

"Is it Viktor, then? You into him?"

Jayce hushes her. "Shut up. I'm just looking, what's up with you? I haven't seen him since he dropped out."

"You shut up. I don't know, Jaycer, you are the kind to do stupid shit like that."

"We can hear you," Viktor says, from the other side of the room, and Caitlyn almost drops a drum laughing. "You aren't even whispering."

Vi flips Viktor off and Jayce laughs to mask his mortification as he does the same.

-x-

Life is a dull thing full of boring stuff. This is a reality with which Jayce made his peace years ago. What he wasn't expecting was exactly how nonsensical it all could get once he didn't have much to do, besides thinking aimlessly about his thesis with no clear schedule. He has a vague idea of when he has to have things ready, but it all feels too far away for him to focus.

There is also the fact that now that he has been to a couple of concerts he feels changed, and stupid for feeling changed. It's not as if he's a different person, or that he now all of a sudden pledges alliance to the Sex Pistols and wants to destroy the establishment. Jayce kind of did want to destroy the establishment even before he knew what the establishment was, and punk still sounds like awful noise to him.

It's the feeling of liberation that confuses him. Never has he believed himself to be someone constraint to or by anything. Sure, college sucked and he dealt with that but it was mostly something that he wanted to do. He isn't doing anything he doesn't want to. Yet, during the concerts, he felt like maybe there were others options. Maybe it was okay to be tired, angry, frustrated. Maybe it wasn't him who sucked at being polite and nice and civil, maybe it was everybody else not getting him what made things hard.

Maybe it was fine to be himself, completely, just because he wanted to.

How could things be the same ever again when he knows that there's been moments in his life in which he's known how it feels to be Jayce, as he has wanted to be forever, and for that to be okay?

There's a knock on the door and he almost falls off his chair, balancing on its hind legs. Right, he's got a life and one friend and it would be a good idea to go back to that and stop with the introspection. Thinking too much about himself and his own way of living and doing things has never brought him any good, after all. And it's way too early for that, he needs to at least have dinner before he starts a journey of self discovery.

Jayce stands and drags his feet towards the door. Vi texted earlier asking when she could get her boots back, and Jayce doesn't expect anybody else to be there. If he had known that Viktor would be standing at his door, looking at him with distaste, he would have had combed his hair. Probably. Or wore something nicer than his pajamas, but done is done and there Viktor is, looking exhausted and hostile, and Jayce steps aside to let him in.

"Where's Vi?"

"With Caitlyn, somewhere," Viktor stomps into the room. Jayce closes the door and wonders how someone who looks so tired can walk with so much purpose. "You got her boots?"

"Yeah. They are by the wardrobe, you can get them yourself," he leaves Viktor to it, doesn't expect him to need him to do anything much, and judging by their recent interactions Viktor won't be happy to hear him talk at all.

So he tries to get something done, read a couple of pages of a book he has on his table, even if he doesn't bother with sitting. It's nice, silent, Viktor is taking a bit too long but whatever, he doesn't care.

It doesn't last.

"You aren't going to ask again?"

Jayce leaves the book on the desk and frowns at Viktor.

"Ask about what," Viktor is standing by his wardrobe with Vi's boots in his hands, frowning too. At Jayce. For whatever reason.

"Why I dropped out."

"Why did you drop out?" he asks, and Viktor's frown deepens as he grunts. "That's why. Listen, I'm bad at people. Can you just let me get this one thing right?"

"Why do you even care?"

Jayce feels like being an asshole and asking what he's talking about, but he knows and Viktor has gone from open hostility to curiosity and exhaustion lightning fast. It's odd, the contrast between the man he knew at college and the one standing in his room. He knows that they are the same, but Viktor now seems less tense. Which, for him, apparently implies still being tense just not quite as much.

"You want me to be honest?" Viktor huffs and okay. Fine. It's a legit question but whatever. "Out of everyone in that classroom, you were the only one on my level. If anyone could've made it through the degree without much trouble, it'd be you. If I remember correctly, your grades weren't half bad. I don't get why you decided to leave it all behind."

Viktor stares at him in silence for long enough that Jayce thinks that he isn't going to answer. So much for honesty. But then he sighs, holding the boots with one hand and dragging his other one through his hair. It's already a mess, and Jayce wants to stop him from doing that. He had that hand on Vi's filthy boots, it shouldn't get anywhere near his hair. Too late.

"You're as arrogant as I remembered, it's kind of comforting. Annoying, too, but what's new with you," Jayce could do without being insulted. Viktor doesn't ask before sitting on his bed, leaving Vi's boots on the floor. It's something that he didn't expect to see in his life, Viktor sitting in his room as if he belongs there with his ugly black sweater and his stupid black jeans. They talked, a bit, when they were classmates. Jayce thought of Viktor as a friend exactly once, the week before he dropped out, during a conversation on the ethics of taking away free will in an end justifies the means situation. And then he never heard about him again until the concert. "You want me to be honest?"

He sounds so serious that Jayce wants to punch him in the nose.

"Sure," he says, instead, and sits on his desk facing Viktor. "Or lie, I wouldn't know."

Viktor gives him the finger. Fair.

"I loved...I love research. It was my life, and I did it seriously. As much as a student can, anyway. But it got too overwhelming for me to handle, and I dropped out."

Jayce knows Viktor enough to see that he isn't lying, but he thinks that he isn't telling him the whole truth either. If he were a kinder man, he'd see that it's not his place to pry. He isn't, though.

"Bullshit. That can't be all there was to it. I mean, I get that it can be overwhelming but it must have been something else."

Viktor huffs. "Sorry I didn't drop out for whatever reason you think I had? I didn't expect you to get it, you had most professors enamored somehow."

The first thought that crosses Jayce's mind is who the fuck even says enamored anymore. The second is that Viktor is being unfair.

"Excuse me? I might be more intelligent than most, we both know that, but I worked hard to get that degree."

That seems to be the last straw. Viktor grabs the boots and stands up, holding Jayce's gaze as he crosses the room towards him. Jayce stays where he is, refusing to give in. Viktor looks ready to throw the shoes at his head, everything about him oozing with aggression. That's new. Back in college he was less prone to showing how he felt. It isn't a bad look on him, anger. Fits the aesthetic.

"You fucking self-absorbed piece of shit," Viktor spits, and Jayce isn't angry, not yet, but Viktor is getting him there. "You think I didn't work my ass off until I couldn't handle it anymore? And what is it to you, anyway?"

Jayce bristles. "You asked, didn't you? I'm only answering. I wasn't going to bring it up, Vi says that it's rude or some bullshit like that."

"I wanted to get it out of the way. If we are going to be around each other because of Vi, we might as well behave. But nothing works with you."

"And you expect me to believe that one of the most brilliant minds in our fucking class left because he was, what, tired?"

Viktor huffs, exasperated, and Jayce wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Scream at him to just tell Jayce what he wants him to do because it'd be easier for everyone involved. It's not the first time he fucks up, it won't be the last, it'd save them time and effort.

"Yes! Why would I leave if not for that? What do you want from me? A dramatic story about betrayal? It doesn't exist, Jayce."

This is absurd and Jayce is tired of arguing. All this fighting spirit that Viktor has acquired over the years is fun to stare at from the sidelines and maybe experience for a bit, but it gets overwhelming fast. He's always been intense, yet Jayce has only known his intensity over philosophical discussions, never as raw as this. Kind of thrilling, if he sets aside just how done he is with all the fighting.

So he tries to change the subject, slightly, hoping that it isn't something rude to talk about too.

"You stopped researching altogether, then? No more of that, only the punk life for you now?"

Viktor laughs, small and gruff, and it's familiar enough to calm Jayce down a little.

"No. I don't think I can do that. It's just...academia is not my thing, okay? You know how it works."

Jayce nods. "Yeah. I get it. It's just...I was...disappointed. Not in you. Well, a little bit in you because I kind of expected big things from you," Viktor kicks his shin, not hard enough to hurt. "It got more boring after you left."

That's...raw, honest and open, and Jayce regrets saying it the second it's out of his mouth. Viktor seems to appreciate it, though, judging by the way he smiles. Small, barely there, hesitant. Jayce smiles back, shrugging. It's as awkward as it gets, but Viktor steps back and relaxes his stance, no longer looking about to punch Jayce in the teeth.

"Still not your place to put any kind of expectations on me," Viktor says, and it shatters the moment and leaves Jayce wanting to punch him in the teeth instead. "I'm leaving before you start doing it again. No concert this Sunday but we'll be at Vi's. Guess she'll tell you when if you ask."

Viktor bolts and leaves before Jayce can see him off. Jayce stares at the door until his phone goes off, and once he checks he sees that it's been ten minutes of him lost in thought unsure of how to feel or react.

Vi: viktor says taht he todl u that we gonna meet this sunday

Vi: be here at noon

Vi: D O N T wear loafers

Jayce blinks at his phone. Is everything going to be so confusing now that he's getting even more tangled in Vi's mess? Before, when it was just them and he kind of knew that she had a band and a girlfriend and other friends that didn't mix with him, there was peace. Now that he's right in the middle of everything, things have the potential to get messy fast.

He types that he'll go and his thumb hovers over the send key.

Is it worth it?

He remembers Viktor's tentative, hesitant, smile. Vi's happy shouting in his ear after the concert. Caitlyn's laughter.

Jayce hits send with a sigh.

-x-

Vi: texted him already

Vi: tell me y u coudlnt do it urself again

Viktor: complicated

Vi: complicated

Vi: ?

Viktor: too long to explain

Vi: ha

Vi: when hasj that worked viktorino

Vi: neer

Vi: fuck never

Viktor pockets his phone and refuses to look at it until he reaches Vi's apartment with her boots. He's pretty sure that she made him get them on purpose, her date with Caitlyn be damned. It's probably fake, anyway. She is home right now, after all, and her doing this can only mean that she has a plan. Viktor dreads to know.

He knocks on the door and Vi opens with a smile so wide Viktor has the impulse to turn on his heel and leave. It's a wicked thing, it spells trouble. A bad omen. However, he's there and he's got her boots so he has to stay. Tragic.

"Viktor, get your ass in here. We gotta talk about your stupid crush on Jayce."

Viktor is aware that showing just how affronted he is by that assumption as Vi drags him inside by the arm isn't going to deter her, so he doesn't bother protesting. This was her plan, then. It all makes sense, now. Fuck.

"Vi," he starts, once they've reached her room, and Vi hushes him and pushes him to sit on her bed. Viktor sits, drops Vi's boots on the floor, and waits. Fighting her has never been productive.

"So how did it go? Did you work things out?"

"In a way, yes," Viktor is hesitant to say that they did, though. It could make Vi try harder to do whatever it is she's trying to do, and he also isn't sure of just how much they tolerate each other. It's hard to say. "He's insufferable, anyway, so don't get your hopes up."

"He's changed since you left college," Vi sits on the floor in front of him and Viktor shrugs.

"Doesn't mean he's less of an arrogant asshole after three years."

"Nah. Still, it has its charm, sometimes."

Right.

"It does not. And I do not have a crush on him." Vi doesn't seem fazed by that at all. It's annoying.

"You almost choked on your own spit when I told you that he was coming backstage."

"I was surprised. I hadn't seen him in years," he tries to answer in a level, reasonable, tone. It's not a very good try. "We barely even talked at college."

"Right. I mean, you don't have to tell me shit if you don't wanna but I know you and I know him. Crush or not, you would've spent weeks dancing around the issue of you dropping out without my helping hand. You're welcome, by the way."

Why must all his friends be infuriating. "Thanks. I almost punched him, it was fun."

Vi does punch him, in the shin.

"He isn't that bad. You know that. He's a tool and he listens to Michael Bublé and cries to Gloria Gaynor but not even I am perfect."

"Vi, he thinks that he can tell me that he was disappointed in me when I dropped out. He thinks that it's an okay thing to say. The right thing to do. That's how he works, because since college Jayce has been the kind of person that doesn't understand how humans work."

She smiles. It's terrifying.

Viktor would also like the condescending edge of it to go away.

"So are you."

-x-

It's the third month of his second year of college and Jayce is seriously considering dropping out.

He's unhappy, stressed out, hasn't slept in weeks, and has been sharing his brain with a headache for what feels like decades. Nothing about what he's doing motivates him anymore. No matter how much he likes the subjects, they're a chore that he'd rather avoid. Professors are paternalistic and lenient towards him and, sometimes, they appear to expect way too much from him. He hates that they would ask less of him than of others, as if he can't do what the others can, but he's also terrified of letting them down, and anxious at the prospect of letting even himself down.

The way he doubts himself, when he's never been one to do so, is taxing. His emotions are out of control and most days anyone who tries to engage him in conversation ends up yelling at him or just leaving and never trying again.

There have only been two exceptions: Vi, who's his best friend and doesn't count, and Viktor, one of his classmates. Who he's not sure why keeps trying to talk to him every once in a while when he has said more than once that Jayce is an obnoxious idiot. His reasoning aside, Jayce is in no mood to be told just how stupid he is for whatever position he tries to defend after two hours listening to the worst professor he's ever had droning about ethics.

Poorly.

Viktor doesn't seem to take the hint when Jayce hangs his bag over his shoulder and marches towards the classroom's door.

"Sawyer," he says, and Jayce chooses to pretend that he didn't hear him and doesn't stop walking. "Jayce. I know you can hear me, are you five?"

Jayce stops, takes a deep breath, and turns around. Viktor is standing a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest. If he weren't so pissed off he'd feel sympathetic at how tired he looks, too.

"No, I am not. What I am is very tired. You were here with me while Pididly missed every point ever made on free will. I'm sure you had loads of fun, too. Now, If you'll excuse me, I'd like to get to my room and write that pointless essay he wants us to hand in tomorrow. Or drop dead, whichever comes first."

Viktor scoffs and Jayce could swear that he's kind of smiling. Hard to tell. He's very pointy, lots of angles, and the room isn't well lit.

"As if it's going to take you more than ten minutes, cut the drama," Jayce could tell him that it was probably going to take him hours because he's the kind to get obsessed with trying to write something good and do it perfectly, but what would be the point of that. "I just wanted to talk to someone, about something Pididly said. And you're the only one I know that would listen."

Jayce doesn't know if he should feel flattered. So far, his conversations with Viktor have been interesting, if slightly frustrating. Viktor, as much as it pains him to admit, is almost as brilliant as he is and his views and positions are just close enough to his that when they clash over something it's big, and they're both passionate and well-informed when it comes to discussing those things. What he does know is that he isn't in the mood to get in a philosophical debate, not today and not on free will of all things.

His curiosity be damned.

Damned to hell, because Jayce finds himself sighing and dropping his bag on the floor despite his reluctance.

"Okay, fine. What do you want to talk about."

Viktor steps closer and Jayce thinks that he should loosen up, a bit. He holds himself so tightly, even the way he walks feels nervous and anxious and contained. It's as if he wants to take as little space as possible. Which serves Jayce just fine, he usually wants his presence to be larger than life, but still.

"Why does Pididly work on the assumption that free will exists at all? I mean, being that he is, as he likes to remind us, the leading expert in Artificial Intelligence it doesn't make much sense."

That's fun. Not that they're gonna talk about Pididly, Jayce is going to try to steer them clear of that, but he sees potential in that conversation.

"That's the wrong question. Who the fuck cares about what Pididly thinks. What we should be asking ourselves is if the concept has any validity left, and what it says."

"What about taking the parts and trying to work with them instead of assuming that free will, as an entity, is to be taken as guaranteed regarding human experience?"

Viktor sits on a desk opposite Jayce, and for all the tiredness that he exudes he looks like something's being lifted off his shoulders. Jayce looks for his own feeling of exhaustion and finds it alive and well but muted enough to smile.

"Freedom and will? Good luck trying to find a concept of freedom that you like. And that's even before we get into will. For all the discussion that there's been regarding free will, the practical thing to do is to take it as something that is there, no matter how in doubt, and work with it. "

"Right. And we haven't even mentioned the self and the other yet, which is an entirely different mess," Jayce's heart skips a beat at Viktor's words and he blames his own anxiety and longing for a conversation that doesn't grate on his nerves for that. "What about a situation in which free will, taking the concept as valid, has to be taken away?"

"I'm guessing that it would depend on the situation, but also on how you explain people who don't know what free will implies, and how it could not be an inherent human quality, that you're taking it away for whatever it is you want to do."

"A situation in which free will is jeopardized to begin with," Viktor says, slowly, and Jayce finds himself leaning in closer to hear him better. "And in which that puts other lives at risk, that could only be saved by stripping it away and including external control."

Jayce thinks that he's going down a dangerous path, theoretically or not. Jayce also thinks that they could spend hours talking about that hypothetical situation if they try.

They do.

Once Viktor takes a look at his phone and curses, they've been talking for three hours and Jayce would've stayed for three more. They've barely scratched the surface, at one point yelling at each other about morality, meta-ethics, the fear of losing control, fear itself, and the public implications of such an action.

Viktor is gathering his stuff from his desk and Jayce stares at him, drawn out but satisfied, and his head still hurts and he still feels like he wants to pass out for a week but he's stopped considering dropping out.

If only for moments like this one, walking out of class with someone he can talk to about the complexities of free will for hours, he will stay.

He smiles at Viktor, Viktor smiles back. It's a weary, thin, thing. Jayce bumps his shoulder with his, in a rare display of his good mood that almost makes him run to his room in embarrassment but Viktor huffs and shoves at his arm. It's good, it's nice, it's fun.

It's the last time he sees Viktor.

-x-

Caitlyn is the one who opens Vi's door on Sunday, looking Jayce up and down. All Jayce knows about her is that she's British and that she's into Vi for some reason, and he's stunned into silence until she waves.

"Hello."

Caitlyn steps aside, leading the way inside. "Jayce. Vi and Viktor are screaming at each other about the Bad Brains. Would you like to come in?"

He follows her towards Vi's room, and sure enough he can hear Viktor and Vi yelling from the corridor. Caitlyn grabs his arm, startling him, and drags him to Vi's tiny living room.

"I'm tired of their bloody screaming matches. I know that they aren't...actually fighting, but it stresses me out. They'll stop, eventually."

Caitlyn sits on Vi's sofa and Jayce hesitates before she looks at him with an eyebrow raised and pats the cushion to her left. Fine. She doesn't bite, he hopes. The silence, though, punctuated by Vi and Viktor yelling in the distance is too tense for his liking. What can they even talk about? What do they have in common? Vi?

"How did you meet?"

"Me and Vi?" he nods, and Caitlyn laughs. "Well it's not...glamorous or anything. Not even that romantic. You and me, we are the same breed."

Jayce is unsure whether or not to feel offended. "How so?"

"I come from a rich family. Had never stepped out of London, lived a pretty dull and boring life. Then I come here on vacation, brave a pub, and meet the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The only punks I'd known where on Picadilly and took pictures with tourists, you know? And there Vi was, talking about everything that I found absurd and stupid."

"She does that a lot."

Caitlyn snorts. "She does, yes. But picture me, bored out of my mind and unsatisfied with a life that felt scripted, meeting a girl with pink hair that spoke about liberation as if it were possible. As if she believed in it. Once I felt what it was like, going back to London was unbearable. I also fell in love with her, as you know, and decided to take a chance for once. It's worked out nicely, if I do say so myself."

She smirks, and Jayce is going to ask her why. How. Where did she get the courage to leave it all behind. Doesn't she regret it, sometimes? Wouldn't she want to go back to what she knew? To the safety of a life that was laid down for her beforehand? But Vi comes barreling into the room then, throwing herself at Caitlyn, with Viktor following her dragging his feet.

"Hey, Jaycer! Welcome to my humble abode. Sorry I sent Cait to the door, was busy kicking nerd ass."

"Don't let her trick you, she has no idea what she's talking about," Viktor says, as he sits by Jayce, and Vi sticks her tongue out. Jayce knows himself and had anticipated that being in a room with three more people, one of which being very loud, would be overwhelming. Just not how much. "Anyway. These gatherings are usually an excuse for Vi to make out with Caitlyn while I write lyrics, you can come with me if you want to."

If Viktor has sensed his discomfort somehow and acted on it or is being serious, he doesn't want to discover by staying there with Vi and Caitlyn so he stands when he does and follows him back into Vi's room, taking a deep breath against the closed door.

Kind of funny, being an overbearing self-assured asshole that gets antsy when with more than two people at once in the same couch.

"You okay?" Viktor asks, and Jayce tries to laugh but doesn't quite get there.

"Not used to crowds."

He expects a dry remark. Something like three people not being a crowd. Viktor just nods and sits on Vi's bed.

"I kind of lied, anyway. We usually rehearse until Vi's neighbors call the cops on us and we have to run. What I said happens sometimes, though," Jayce cannot picture Caitlyn and Viktor running away from cops, not with how Caitlyn talks and with how Viktor looks, but it's fun to try. "You just looked uncomfortable, I guess. Sorry for interfering, in any case."

"No, it's fine. Thanks. I can come back if I want to, it's not a big deal."

Once he gets his people person persona back, and stops screwing up his own social life. Would be nice if that happens soon.

"I would advise against that, they are probably making out now that they're alone."

Jayce laughs, and is surprised at himself when it doesn't come out half as awkward as he expected. Viktor isn't even smiling, just sitting there with his stupid messy hair and his straight nose and his awful fashion choices. Jayce sits with him on Vi's bed, willing himself to stop thinking that it's a weird thing to do. That they weren't even good friends at college, that the longest conversation they've had recently has been half a fight, that it's odd to sit on a bed with someone you haven't seen in three years. But at least, he reasons, it's a chance to try and find out what Viktor's been up to since he left.

"So...how's life been."

Viktor huffs, and Jayce glances his way. "Seriously? Just going straight for it?"

"Why not."

"It's been three years, what makes you think I'm going to tell you anything."

Jayce shrugs. "I don't know. You could choose not to, but can you really resist this face."

Vi would pester him about flirting for years. Which he isn't doing, thank you very much. He's trying to...do something. Make a friend. Remake a friend? Talk to Viktor, about anything, just so they don't have to sit on Vi's bed in tense silence until they decide on something to do. That's reasonable.

"Well I can, and I'm going to. All you need to know is that I met Vi and started writing songs," Viktor catches him staring and frowns, but it doesn't feel like he wants to pick a fight. More like he's puzzled and trying to figure Jayce out, and it's making Jayce antsy. "It's been good. I had a harsh time after dropping out, but things are looking better now."

There that fierceness is again, as if he has to show Jayce in any way he can that what he thinks and has to say regarding his choices doesn't matter. Jayce looks at him, at the way his jaw is set and his eyes are narrowed, and he wouldn't say that Viktor is handsome. Not really. Yet he is, kind of, when he's looking at Jayce with the intensity of someone ready to refute every single point he makes.

Jayce gathers himself and looks away before he can follow that train of thought any further.

"I was thinking of dropping out the last time we talked before you did," he says, instead of any other reasonable thing that doesn't make him vulnerable, because he's been left raw and open and he hasn't talked about it with anyone, not even Vi. "Considering it."

"You don't have to tell me shit, you know? It's not as if I'm going to trade secrets with you," Viktor's voice is harsh. Jayce doesn't resent him. Much. "We both were in a bad place, took different paths. Looks to me like we're both sitting on the same bed right now so there's that."

Jayce, against his better judgment, turns to look at Viktor again. He's already staring at him, dead serious, and wanting to kiss him should be more of a shock. They don't even know each other that well, it's not like they've talked much. Yet Jayce can't deny it.

"I don't want to trade, just want to talk. You say I'm an obnoxious asshole but have you ever heard yourself?"

"What do you want to talk about? How you made the right choice and I didn't?"

Kiss him or punch him, whichever happens first if he doesn't drop the subject.

"No, you fucking idiot. I want to talk about me almost dropping out and how I didn't because we had a talk on free will that made me stay."

All this being sincere and emotional around Viktor is getting out of control.

Viktor looks at him, piercing and searching, and drags his hands through his own hair with a long suffering sigh. Jayce's fingers twitch.

"You are kidding."

"No."

Then Viktor grabs his face with both hands and Jayce's stomach drops, and Vi's voice comes booming from the corridor.

"Stop sucking face, Vi and Caitlyn coming through!"

And the door opens with a bang and his face feels colder than it has ever been, and Viktor's staring resolutely ahead and not at him.

"So there's some tension here," Vi says, and Jayce starts laughing and can't stop. Someone's patting his back but he doesn't care who. By the time he's recovered, only Vi's left in the room with him. "Were you really snogging, dude?"

"No, we weren't. No. I think we were getting there, though, so thanks for that," Vi's eyes go so wide that Jayce is on the brink of having another laughing fit.

"You are shitting me. Fuck. Sorry. Caitlyn and Viktor are in the living room, I can tell him to come back. Respect the sanctity of my bed. Please."

Jayce snorts. This isn't happening. He isn't talking to Vi about how he thinks that they almost maybe kissed. For all he knows Viktor could've been trying to headbutt him.

"No, it's fine. I'm not sure if that was going to happen, really," it isn't every day that he feels lightheaded enough to laugh himself stupid, Vi's his best friend, he's already being awfully honest. To hell with it all. "I wanted it to. No idea about him."

"Shit. I mean. I knew that you kinda had the hots for him because he's your type and you talked about him when you were at college and don't even fight me on this, Jaycerino, but I didn't know it would happen so fast. What are you gonna do now? Talk to him?"

He shrugs. There's not much that he can say. He'd fight her on Viktor being his type, but there's no use in trying to contradict Vi in anything she says.

"No idea. Go home, I guess. Think it through."

"Okay. Fine. But don't think about it too much or you'll scare yourself out of talking to him."

"I won't"

He goes home, relieved that Viktor isn't behaving any differently when he and Caitlyn see him off at the door, and he spends the entire week thinking about it until he ends up scaring himself out of doing anything at all.

-x-

Viktor stays after Caitlyn leaves. He sits with Vi on the floor, shoes off, and waits for her to start harping on it as she usually does.

When the clock reaches two in the morning and she's still rambling on about how good Al Schvitz is on the drums, Viktor can't stop bouncing his leg and needs to let it out before his own feelings make him explode.

Emotions are an awful thing to have, a curse.

"Vi, I have a problem."

She stops talking, blinks at him, and smiles. "I'm listening."

"Jayce is my problem."

"We have many things in common, you and I. Pity we are both so tragically gay," Vi pats his foot. "So what's your problem, exactly?"

"I...don't laugh at me, I'll punch you," he warns, and Vi pats him again. "I had a crush on him when we were at college. We didn't talk much but he was handsome, he was smart, he could hold himself in a conversation. He was interesting."

Vi hums. "Yeah. He said some stuff about you too, around that time. I'm noticing that you're talking in the past tense here? We dealing with a Jayce impersonator now?"

"Shut up. My...feelings," Vi snorts. Viktor tries to ignore her. "Died with time. Or so I thought. Did you know that I dropped out because of him?"

"No, but I wouldn't be surprised. He's annoying."

"It wasn't because of that. We talked about free will, it made me think about freedom, I started theorizing and decided to follow my own views on the matter and refuse to do anything I didn't want to do. It was...pretty dramatic."

"Oh, I remember how you were back then. That's when we met, at the pub. Loved how angry you were, got extra points for yelling at a cop."

"Focus. You mentioned him, sometimes, but I figured that he wasn't the kind to be interested in what we do. But he was. And today we talked, not about the things we used to but still."

"He's still handsome, and smart, and can hold himself in a conversation?"

Viktor is about to open up and drop his heart on Vi's floor. She's going to have to deal with that mess. She's asking for it.

"It's worse than that, he cares. About...me, and other things I guess. I hate it."

"But not him."

"Not him."

"Cool."

"In which way is me having a crush on Jayce again cool, enlighten me."

Vi sighs, as if she's very tired. It is late, but he knows that she stays up later than that.

"You are an idiot and are going to have to figure it out by yourself. Now go to sleep before I kick your ass out of my house."

-x-

Vi: hes coming backstage today too

Vi: prlly overthought everythign and about to fuck up

Caitlyn: have a little faith love

Vi: impossible

Vi: i know him i know how he is hes gonna fuck up i dont wanna watch

Vi: and viktors liske so into that idiot

Vi: haaateeweww theeememeemmee

Caitlyn: should we leave them to it, then?

Vi: yyyyeeeaaah

Vi: wanna go midnight bowlin?

-x-

The backstage is empty when Jayce gets there, still reeling and breathless, until the door opens with a bang and Viktor stomps in and stops dead once he spots Jayce there.

"You know where Vi and Caitlyn are?" Viktor asks, and Jayce shrugs. "At least they cleaned up before they left."

He stares as Viktor sits on the floor and starts fiddling with his bass as if Jayce isn't even there. As if Jayce isn't questioning everything he knows about him, and everything he's ever thought true about himself and how he wants to live his life, because he's attended three of his concerts and has had the revelation that he finds Viktor hot when he plays.

Up on the stage, Viktor isn't like the person he knew at college. He's much more like the one he's starting to know now; defiant, looking for an excuse to fight whoever gets in his way, intense. Free. Jayce has a feeling that, back at college, Viktor was still defiant and intense and a fighter, just less prone to showing it. It's thrilling, being able to see him be so unashamedly when he's out there.

Losing the possibility of experiencing this just because he wants to maybe make out with him? Not a good plan. So he'll swallow his feelings down and go on with his life, get a PhD, keep on being smarter and prettier than average, and stop worrying about Viktor.

Who's staring at him from the floor, bass held between his legs, frowning.

"What's up with you?" Viktor asks, leaving the bass propped against the wall.

He decides to cop out and answer a question with another question just to deflect.

"Does it always feel like this?"

"What? Going to a concert?" Jayce nods and Viktor smiles and stands up, stepping closer. "Not always, but most times."

"How is it for you, up there?"

Viktor won't stop looking at him, and Jayce won't stop looking at Viktor. It's wreaking havoc on his nerves.

"There's nobody here now, want to try going out there?"

He blames nodding on how dazed and exhilarated he still is as Viktor grabs his arm and drags him out of the room and onto the stage. The spotlights are off and they're the only one's there, yet Jayce can feel his heart beating in his throat. Up on the stage, looking down on the empty pub floor, it's as if he could do anything. Be whoever he wanted to be. It's like being down there looking up at Vi as she sings only tenfold.

Jayce has never learned to play an instrument or sing. All he knows about music has been taught to him by Vi. His taste is, according to her, boring and bland. Yet, in that moment, he feels like he could be a part of what they have. Leave everything behind. He gets what Caitlyn said, now, how they're the same breed.

"When we talked about free will," Viktor starts, and Jayce turns to look at him. He's looking ahead, Jayce catching only his profile. "Freedom became something that I wanted to pursue. Here, on this stage, is the only place where I feel free. And only when we are done, and I'm too tired to think of me as me."

Asking Viktor if he loses himself to his music would be a shameful over-simplification, so he doesn't. Jayce keeps looking at his profile, sharp angles softened under the weak lightning in the pub, until Viktor turns to him.

"So you think about the philosophy of self after you're done singing about fucking the system?"

"Not as such, but close. It doesn't get freer than not being at all."

Jayce's resolve regarding not acting on his feelings at all crumbles under Viktor's gaze, it's shattered by the way he looks standing on the stage like he owns it even if he doesn't dress much like a punk. It dies at the hands of Viktor's half smile, eyes set on Jayce, barely a foot apart. Just casually existing in his same space, breathing his same air. The gall.

"Hypothetically speaking," Jayce starts, trying for casual but probably failing. "If I were to kiss you right now, would you throw me off the stage?"

Viktor steps closer. "Try me."

Jayce grabs him by the neck of his stupid sweater and kisses him with no finesse. Viktor kisses back, fierce and intense and everything Jayce expected him to be. A fighter, even when he's cradling Jayce's face in his hands. Jayce lets go of his sweater and buries his fingers in Viktor's hair, sighing into the kiss. Viktor ducks his head, takes a breath, and bites at Jayce's jaw before taking a step back. Jayce's hands fall on his shoulders.

"You're still on the stage," Viktor says, voice deep and low, and a shiver runs up Jayce's spine.

"Shocking."

"I can still push you off if that's what you are into."

Jayce kisses Viktor before he can keep on talking because it's tragic, how much of an idiot he is and how into him Jayce is anyway.

-x-

A month after they, according to Vi, got over themselves Viktor's playing his bass laying on Jayce's bed and Jayce is writing down a timeline for his thesis.

Jayce looks up from his laptop at Viktor, humming along to what he's playing, and as he looks at the tense line of his shoulder and the mess that his hair is he's acutely aware of how noisy the music that Viktor likes is.

Viktor glances his way.

Jayce shuts his laptop down, crosses the room and kisses him. Viktor laughs into it and pushes him away with a hand on his chest.

"Tired?" Viktor asks, and Jayce shakes his head. Viktor shrugs and keeps on playing.

It's terrible.

Jayce feels alive.

#league of legends #viktor the machine herald #jayce #jayceviktor #fic #viktor league of legends #glorious tomorrow #my brand is them having 11 phds each and still needing vi to sort things out for them because they suck at feelings

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