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shurisneakers · 4 years ago

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harmless (iv)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader, drabble series)

Warnings: cursing, guns, mention of war, frustrated bucky, dramatic reader

Word count: 1.5k

A/N: good evening i’ve never been to any of the places i mention in this series so dont come @ me

if you have any ideas for future inventions/evil plans, lemme know! i might actually end up using them

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Series Masterlist

He spends the weekend doing nothing. It’s supposed to be relaxing. He finds it nauseatingly boring.

“No mini mission this week?” Steve asks him from across the couch.

They’re supposed to be catching up on Star Wars but two prequels in and Bucky could feel himself lose his sanity. Anyone could present him with a random assortment of alphabets, call it a Star Wars species and he would have no reason not to believe them.

It’s not like he doesn’t like space. It’s just that he’s had enough of it and everything and everyone who came from it for the foreseeable future.

“No. Someone else is taking care of it.”

“Didn’t you volunteer for this?”

“I pulled myself out of the case.”

“I thought you were having fun.”

Bucky’s head slowly turns to look at him. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugged. “Looked like you were.”

Well, he wasn’t. He likes it here at home, glued to the TV. Popcorn beside him, sweatpants on. Refreshing, calming, slow, mundane, and Jesus Christ, so fucking boring-

His spiralling is interrupted by the dinging of the elevator to the common floor. No one was allowed up there unless it was extremely urgent. Guests were barely allowed into the Tower as it was.

It reveals the receptionist from downstairs, Marie. She’s always a little reserved, a little shy. But Bucky had seen her chew and spit out trespassers or anyone who dared to get on her nerve. He adores her.

“Hey, Marie,” Steve says while Bucky sends her a friendly wave in greeting. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a hostage situation downtown,” she informs them.

“Okay...” Steve drawls, waiting for a reason why this was an Avengers level threat.

“They’ve asked for Mr. Barnes by name.” She makes a mention towards him.

Bucky sits up straight. Bits of popcorn fall off his chest.

“What?”

“They said, and I quote-” she looks down at her notepad. “‘Tell that grumpy motherfucker that I’m waiting for him and that he’s not getting out of this so easily because we have come too far.’ End quote. They’ve also told me to include a kissing emoji. And a skull.”

Steve and he look at each other.

“Well?” Steve prods.

Bucky sighs and gets up to go get ready.

The entrance of Chuck E. Cheese is more crowded than he’d ever seen. He wasn’t even sure he’d seen people in the store before. If there were, they probably only came up till his waist.

There are a few journalists, a few policemen standing together outside. Whispers of confusion and curiosity reigned free.

Bucky gently pushes his way to the front. He gets a nod from a police officer who opens the door for him after a quick briefing.

The place is darker than it usually would be. A trademark, it seemed. The blinds are drawn shut and most of the light is coming through whatever sneaks in through the crack.

“Hey, Barnes.” Your voice is muffled by a mask that looks suspiciously like it was made out of classroom craft supplies.

There’s a person in a loose chokehold in your hand with a gun pressed against his head. Once again it looks straight out of a cartoon, purple with round disks lining its barrel.

“What’s all this now?” He gestures around monotonously.

“A hostage situation. Didn’t you get the memo?”

“Got that part down, genius,” he bites back. “But why?”

“Fucker kept harassing me when I was walkin’ down the street.”

The guy’s helpless gaze met Bucky.

“Catcalling me, stalking me.” You tighten the grip you have on him. “Call me darlin’ one more time, you son of a bitch. I dare you.”

He wasn’t impressed with his pleading eyes. He kinda felt like he deserved it.

“Why’d you do it here?” The bright colours were starting to give him a heading. “And where are the staff?”

“It’s symbolic, Bucky,” you emphasise, “He deserves to be among other rat bastards.”

Of course.

“The staff?” he asks again.

“Gave them thirty bucks and told them to leave. I’m not a monster.”

“Right.” He doesn’t bother refuting you. “Why’d you call me here?”

“Dunno.” You shrug. “Thought it’d be fun. You having fun yet?”

You shake the guy you’re holding. He gives a small whimper.

Bucky doesn’t want to stop you. He had chugged enough Respect Juice in his lifetime to know that this guy probably deserved a threat or two.

Hell, he’d even help but you were more than capable of handling this on your own.

“Listen,” he sighed. “As much as I’m sure he deserves it, this is technically illegal and I’m required to stop you.”

“Sorry sarge, I thought you weren’t interested in playing this stupid game with me,” you mock, voice dropping to imitate him.

“I’m not.” It wasn’t entirely true. One Saturday with Jar Jar Binks had convinced him otherwise.

“Okay, so before you leave, do me a favour and call Hawkeye. I hear he looks mighty fine when he’s annoyed.”

His face involuntarily scrunched up. You were going to replace him with Clint? Clint?

He probably took it more as an insult than he should have.

“I’m not doing that.” Bless his foul mouthed friend, but he was a little shit who was too sarcastic for his own good. At least twice a week he’d say something stupid to Bucky and then take out his hearing aids when he tried to argue back.

“You’re leavin’ me with no options here,” you groaned, using your thumb to flip a switch. The gun looks like it powered up, lights along the side turning red.

If he let you have this, it’d be a bad look for the Avengers.

New York man dies in Chuck E. Cheese lone hostage situation, unable to be saved by same superhero who tried to fight Thanos with a machine gun.

“Tell ya what,” he says instead, “If you kill him, there won’t even be a slight chance that you’ll see me again.”

Your grip on the gun falters.

“If I let him go...”

“I might consider coming back next week.” He’s trying to spin it, make it look like he’s the one with the upper hand here. “But you gotta let him go.”

You search his face for any signs of dishonesty.

“Let him go or you’ll never see me again.” It sounds too much like Clint��s arguments with his dog who brought a live squirrel into the house.

“Fine,” you relent, a glint in your eye. “but say goodbye to this fuckface.”

Before Bucky can open his mouth to shout in protest, you pull the trigger. The man clenches his eyes shut, face red.

He expects blood to be splatter across his face.

Nothing happens.

A barrage of bubbles floats into the room.

“I meant it literally,” you say, pushing him off you. “Say goodbye. He’s leaving.”

The man stumbles to the ground and Bucky doesn’t make any attempt to catch him. He scrambles to his knees, picking himself up and scurrying out the door to a hoard of reporters.

The door shuts behind him with the chime of a bell.

“You’re annoying,” Bucky states, giving a small sigh.

“I’m well aware of that.” You pull off the mask, wiping the sweat off your brow.

“Where is the agent assigned to your case?”

“Dunno. Last I saw he was crying on the driveway of my lair. I just figured he’d pick himself up later so I left him there.”

Bucky’s nose twitches.

“You weren’t actually going to kill him, were you.” He shrugs with his shoulder towards the door. It wasn’t a question, more a statement. He knew you wouldn’t.

“I could have.”

“But you weren’t going to,” he repeats.

“No,” you admit. “I wasn’t. But I’m glad to see you showed up.”

“You held someone hostage as leverage.”

“No, no. I held someone hostage and then asked to see you. They were completely unrelated.”

“You’re evil.”

“You jumped to conclusions,” you point out. “Would you like a trampoline next time? Maybe a pogo stick, you clown?”

He has a very real gun in his holster. His very real metal death arm aches to use it.

“No one else agreed to come,” he deflects.

“We both know that’s a lie. You were going to come back anyway.” You stuff the bubble gun back into the bag. “I’m deliciously irresistible.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Then beg.” You give him a smirk and he rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry, you win this round, sarge.”

He doesn’t say anything. He watches you remove your heist gear, revealing normal civilian clothes underneath.

You walk casually to the kitchen, intending to leave through the back door.

“But I can’t say I lost either.” You send him a wink before swiftly pushing open the door and leaving him behind.

He only watches you leave.

It doesn’t hit him until a few seconds later that he let a criminal out of his hands when there were several policemen and journalists outside.

He entertains the idea of chasing you down and handing you over.

It takes him only a few seconds to decide that if they wanted you, they’d have to try themselves.

Next part

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #mcu fic #bucky fic #bucky barnes fic #bucky fluff #bucky barnes fluff #bucky angst #bucky barnes angst #harmless fic #winter soldier x reader #Winter Soldier #bucky barnes #bucky

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cellsshapedlikestars · 4 years ago

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I feel terrible that I haven’t been participating in the last couple events, so I decided to write something for day 3 of the @jonsaseasonalbash

Prompt: crow and little bird

posted on ao3 here

When Sansa steps into the tattoo parlor, she nearly loses her nerve and runs back out.

But no, she made this appointment and she will keep it (plus, if she runs away, Arya will never let her live it down and she cannot let that happen). She just wishes she'd waited until Arya was free instead of declaring, loudly, that she could do this by herself.

It's a Tuesday morning and so she isn't surprised when she notices the shop is practically empty and that there's only one other customer. As she goes to the front desk and then waits for the tattoo artist she booked with – a woman named Val – she tries not to look over at the other customer to see who they are and what kind of tattoo they're getting. That would be rude.

She can't help it, though, because the other customer is distractingly half dressed (and distractingly ripped) and no matter how hard she tries, her eyes keep flitting over to him. He's only in a sleeveless undershirt and she can't help taking in the corded muscles in his arms, eyes sweeping down his forearms and to his hands and-

“Sansa?”

“Yes!” she turns to face a woman who must be Val, trying to look as innocent as possible. It doesn't seem to work, because she's pretty sure Val gives a slight snort of laughter and looks over at the man with a smirk before leading Sansa to a chair that... has a perfect view of the only other customer.

She keeps her focus on Val as the woman applies the stencil to her skin and they both agree that they like the size and placement. While Val preps her needle, Sansa stares at the line of small birds in flight across her inner wrist.

Little bird.

She is free of the Lannisters now and that taunt will never hurt her again. She will never allow herself to be used like she had before and she is getting this tattoo to remind herself.

(Not that her new job is any better, she sighs internally. After leaving Lannister Publications, she'd gotten a position at The Mockingbird, but her creepy boss had relegated her to writing fluff life and style pieces. Not that Sansa has anything against life and style, but the pieces he gives her are incredibly stupid, to the point where it almost seems like he's doing it on purpose, and Sansa aches to write something better, something more. She wants to be a real journalist.)

The needle doesn't hurt as badly as she was expecting (though it's still not pleasant) and Sansa can't help when her eyes wander over to the other chair – or, more specifically, the man sitting in it. His dark hair is pulled up into a man bun that she should hate, but he somehow makes it work. In fact, she should hate his whole look – scruffy beard, battered boots and old jeans – but it just... well, it works for her, ok? Even the way his face has settled into a resting scowl works for her, against her will or better judgment.

But then she sees the tattoo.

He's already got a few of them, and the new one is being added to his upper arm and she almost rolls her eyes when she sees it – a black crow.

He must be a fanboy.

Ever since The Crow showed up in Winterfell almost a year ago, she's seen normal men go absolutely insane over the superhero. He's only been seen a couple times, a man in all black with a mask who leaves one black feather as his calling card.

He'd made quite the splash with his debut – dumping Ramsay Bolton on the front steps of the Metro Police, bound and gagged, with a trunk full of evidence so concrete there was no way that even his father, politician Roose Bolton, could get him out of it. And, stuck into the bindings around Ramsay's wrists, a single black feather.

Newspapers had dubbed him The Crow – even her own newspaper wrote about him nearly every single day, even when he wasn't active. The Crow wasn't like the other superheroes that had been popping up in other cities – he didn't fight petty crime, he didn't seem to prowl the streets at night looking for minor assaults and thefts. No, he went after the elite, the ones the police couldn't (or wouldn't) touch.

(There had been a time when Sansa had wished desperately that The Crow would come for the Lannisters and save her, but he never had. The Lannisters might be cruel, but they weren't criminal masterminds, and in the end, it had been Sansa that had saved herself.)

Sansa sighs and tears her eyes from the stranger and back to her own tattoo. He may be one of the most attractive men she's ever encountered in real life, but she doesn't think she wants anything to do with one of The Crow's fanboys. She has mixed feelings about The Crow himself – she has no issue with someone taking the law into their own hands when the law refuses to do it themselves, but superheroes come with consequences. Consequences that look exactly like the stranger sitting across the room from her – men who decide that they, too, will mete out their own justice. Those copycats usually turn out to be less heroics and more violence for the sake of violence.

Yes, Sansa has very mixed feelings about The Crow.

She looks up again (determined that this is the last time she will look) and she nearly jumps out of her skin when she sees the stranger staring straight back at her. Their eyes catch and Sansa feels a wave of something rush through her. He doesn't look away and she finds herself caught, breathless, until Val declares that she's all done.

(When Sansa's legs almost give out when she stands, she laughs it off to Val and pretends she has a low pain tolerance and also her blood sugar has dropped and it definitely has nothing at all to do with the stranger who's eyes she can still feel burning into her as she walks away.)

SIX MONTHS LATER

Sansa tries very hard not to cry.

If she cries, her nose will stuff up and then she'll have an even harder time trying to breathe around the gag in her mouth. She tries to take deep, calming breaths, fighting against the panic that is swirling through her chest. Her hands are bound tightly behind her, her legs likewise bound with industrial zip ties, the plastic cutting into her skin whenever she tries to move or struggle.

How did she get here?

She'd sworn, six months ago, that she would never allow herself to be at the mercy of a man again - she'd even gotten a tattoo to remind herself. But here she is.

From her vantage point, lying sideways on the bed, she watches Petyr Baelish fold and pack his clothing into a suitcase. To anyone else, he would probably look calm, but Sansa has been around him long enough to see how pale his face is, the tight line of his mouth, the slight flaring of his nostrils - he is terrified.

But why?

Four hours ago, she'd been working late in the office when Petyr had found her and told her to come with him. He wouldn't explain where or why and when she refused - when she tried to leave, tried to run - he'd had his right hand man bind and gag her and they'd shoved her into the back of a car and driven her to Petyr's penthouse.

It hadn't registered then, but Sansa knows something has happened to scare Petyr. Something has forced his hand. He has been making advances towards her for the past few months, making sweet promises of a promotion (she'd finally be able to write something real), trying to take her out to dinner and giving her little gifts that made her stomach turn sour. She'd given the gifts back, refused the dinners.

But something has changed and now he is kidnapping her.

She'd overheard him and Brune talking about a private plane – about an island where he would never find them. Sansa knows that she is going to be taken to this island, that Petyr will no longer accept her refusals.

She wants to vomit, but she tamps it down, afraid that she'll choke behind the gag. She may be bound and helpless, but she refuses to die. She'll find her way out of this, somehow.

The door bursts open and Brune comes in, face a hard mask, and Sansa watches Petyr's eyes get wide and somehow even more fearful. Then something dark fills the doorway and Brune's hand comes up, gun at the ready, and Sansa closes her eyes tight when the first shot goes off. There's a second and a third in rapid succession and then more noises, but Sansa's heart is pounding so loudly in her own ears, she can barely hear.

Eventually there's silence, though it takes her a while to notice it.

No, not silence.

Someone is moving about the penthouse, and when Sansa finally opens her eyes, she nearly lets out a sob when she sees a dark figure dressed in all black standing over the bodies of Petyr and Brune.

The Crow.

There's a rip in The Crow's sleeve and she can see blood seeping out from where a bullet must have grazed him. Her eyes won't leave the blood on his arm as he bends down and begins to tie up first Brune and then Petyr. There's a lot of blood, but underneath she thinks she can see something, almost like a tattoo-

“Are you ok?”

She tears her eyes from his arm and looks up at the masked face that's now turned towards her. His voice is low and rough and even though she can't see his eyes behind the mask, she can feel them on her.

He stands up and walks over to her and carefully unties the gag, finally pulling it away and she coughs and nearly chokes when it's gone. Her mouth is so dry, but she manages to croak out, “water?”

She should be asking him to untie her, but she feels like she still can't breathe with how dry her mouth and throat are and The Crow leaves the room and comes back with a cup of water. He helps her sit up and holds the cup to her mouth, with his other hand on the back of her head, holding her steady, as she gulps down the water.

“Police will be here soon,” he tells her, setting the cup down on the side table.

Then he goes back to the bodies (she sees they're still breathing, which doesn't surprise her – The Crow has never killed anyone, as far as she knows) and he pulls out a single black feather from somewhere and tucks it into the bindings at Petyr's wrists.

“Aren't you going to untie me?” she asks when he starts moving towards the door again.

He turns to face her and says, “no.”

“What?” she gasps, twisting to try and face him better.

“You're evidence,” he shrugs.

“You're just going to leave me here?” her voice raises an octave in disbelief. “You're supposed to be a superhero!”

“I'm not a hero,” he says, the words biting. “Just because the news-”

“You help people!” she cuts in. “I read about what Ramsay Bolton did,” she swallows hard, remembering the horrific things that had come out in the wake of his arrest, the things he'd done to countless women and gotten away with because of his father's position. “You stopped him.”

The Crow stares at her for a while – or, she thinks he stares at her, she can't see his eyes. But she feels it, feels his gaze burning into her and something like a shiver rolls down her spine.

“You're evidence,” The Crow says again. “I'm not going to untie you.”

She knows, deep down, that she will be ok. The police will get here and untie her and she will be fine, but she can't seem to focus on that because there's a primal fear coursing through her at being tied up and helpless. She breathes deep and tries to calm herself.

“Then let me interview you,” she blurts out. He jerks back in surprise and she can't blame him, the words surprise even herself – she hadn't meant to say them. But she has, so she continues on. “Let me write an article on you.”

“No.”

“You owe me!”

“I just saved you,” he says and she thinks if he weren't wearing a mask, she would have seen him roll his eyes. “If anything, you owe me.”

She ignores the strange feeling that flits through her stomach and struggles to sit further upright. “I can help you,” she tries. “Isn't there some message you want to get out?” He's silent and she tries again. “Something you want to tell your fans?” She watches his mouth twist in disgust and she thinks yes! There it is.

“I don't want fans,” he grits out through clenched teeth. This is it, this is her chance.

“You could tell them to stop. Let me interview you and you can tell them whatever you want.”

She waits, heart in her throat, pulse pounding in her wrists, against the zip ties that bind her and the ink of her tattoo. She is not a little bird.

For a long while he watches her, eyes hidden behind his mask, mouth set into a grim line. The silence stretches out between them, crackles with a sort of energy Sansa has never felt before, except maybe once, six months ago in a tattoo parlor when-

Sirens wail in the distance, startling both of them. Time's up, she thinks as he begins to back away towards the door.

“Let me interview you,” she says one final time, and she's surprised at how low and breathless her voice is.

The sirens get closer, red and blue lights flickering on the ceiling through the penthouse windows. He's a shadow in the doorway, almost gone.

“Maybe,” he rasps and she feels a thrill go through her.

“When?”

“I'll let you know. If I decide I want to.”

She doesn't get the chance to say anything else because he's gone – no flash, no notice, just gone. Seconds later, there's the pounding of feet in the hallway and the door bursts open and police pour into the room. She's subjected to questions and she's photographed while still bound, but the indignity of it doesn't touch her.

She's going to get her story, she can feel it. As the police cut the ties and help her up, she knows it's true. She's going to get her story and something else bubbles up in her chest, a new determination. She'll get her story and-

And she's going to unmask The Crow.

#jonsa #jonsa fic #jonsaseasonalbash #i was watching a lot of daredevil #so sue me

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rigmarolling · 5 years ago

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Top 5 Things That Will Kill You In the Victorian Era

If you’ve ever spent more than two seconds with me, you know that I live and breathe the fog-choked air of Victorian London. All day. Every day of my life.

See, in many ways, the Victorians were the first version of us--overwhelmed by rapidly-changing technology (and its awful effect on the climate); dealing with incredible wealth gaps; grappling with rising crime and faster travel and out-of-control media and the whole, “God is dead, oh no” thing.

Also, everything was trying to kill you.

Like, literally almost everything.

From your clothes to your doctor to your canned food, here are the top five things that will kill you in the Victorian era.

5. Other Victorians

If the rise of penny dreadfuls (cheap magazines stuffed with horror stories for us morbidly-inclined goth types) was any indication, Victorians loved them some true crime.

And there was no shortage of subject matter to choose from: depending on where you ventured in London, at least, you could be subject to anything from pickpocketing to mugging to violent assault and, of course, murder.

There were a few reasons for this:

For one thing, the population in London alone increased by millions in the 19th century, and approximately no one was prepared for that. So, to accommodate the rapidly-booming population, the wealthy folks in charge reached out and lovingly ensured the masses of the disenfranchised poor were taken care of by redistributing resources and education and access to opportunities that improved lives on a both a personal and social level.

Lol, no, I’m totally kidding; they shoved them into slums and tenement buildings and pretended they didn’t exist.

So of course, there was a rise in crime, because if you have five kids and you can’t find gainful employment and your family will starve if you don’t steal that basket of food over there, or that purse that lady left sitting over THERE, what are you going to do? You’re going to steal the food and the purse to survive, Jean Valjean, I understand, I do.

Except the powers that be did NOT understand, and instead routinely espoused the idea that if people were poor, it was because they were morally bankrupt, or inherently bad, somehow, and the “criminal classes,” as they came to be known by the growing Victorian middle and upper-middle classes, were simply considered genetically bad to the bone and therefore undeserving of assistance.

Basically:

So ANYWAY.

Crime was on the rise and there were multiple efforts to stop it with varying degrees of success, but big city usually = big crime, especially when there’s a massive gap between the one percent-ers and THE REST OF US, WASHINGTON.

Ahem.

All that crime? The booming news industry loved it. The press ate it up and then spit it back out in salacious headlines that never even bothered with journalistic objectivity, like this gem:

I mean. Full disclosure: I, too, agree that cutting off a woman’s head, arms, and legs and then burning them is “awful, inhuman, & barbarous” but just...maybe...maybe tone it down? Just a bit?

No? Okay.

See, here’s the thing: crime sells. It always has. And papers went nuts with full illustrated spreads about the latest brutal murders so you could sit in your parlor and get anxiety poops thinking about how the butcher down the street looked at you funny the other day and oh, God, you’re probably next, oh God.

The most famous murderer of the era, was, of course, Jack the Ripper, which was just the orchestral climax of a hideously corrupted society that had bubbled into naught but a festering carbuncle, an ulcer upon the very soul of man, trussed up as a city of industry, but which is merely Salome, dancing with the Lamb’s head upon a platter and sending us all tumbling into a fiery pit.

....Ahem, again.

Some popular ways your fellow Victorians could kill you included: dueling (with swords but usually with revolvers), stabbing, garroting, and, probably the most popular method of the era, poisoning.

Speaking of which...

4. Anything dyed that hip shade of green

In 1775, a guy named Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a new shade of green, cleverly called Scheele’s green, and it instantly became a hit. Pretty soon, manufacturers and tailors were dyeing everything this color.

Look at it. Bright, airy. Calls to mind a fresh, spring meadow. (What’s that, you ask? Well, before the Industrial Revolution belched out black smoke onto absolutely everything, there were these things called plants and grass and they were all over the place and you could frolic through them and it was very nice for your serotonin levels.)

I mean, listen, this isn’t really my color because anything vaguely yellow-ish makes my already yellow-ish skin look especially jaundiced, but it’s a lovely shade:

Besides using it to create beautiful dresses and tasteful waistcoats, they used it inside book covers:

And it was a super popular wallpaper color:

They had green candles and green cups and green kitchenwares and green paint.

But while Carl Wilhelm Scheele didn’t exactly murder anyone (even though he has three names like every serial killer ever), he sort of, accidentally, indirectly, kinda...did.

Because that springy dye contained every Victorian black widow’s favorite method to dispose of a troublesome husband: arsenic.

Scheele, of course, had no idea--no one did--so I’m fully exonerating him here, but the poison nonetheless started to take its toll.

Reports began to surface of kids getting sicker and sicker and then dying in their green wallpapered rooms; of fashionable ladies rocking those green dresses at balls and then ALSO getting sicker and sicker and breaking out in horrible sores before dying.

They even used this stuff to dye food green, so of course, anybody who tucked into Victorian green eggs and ham also, you know. Died.

And if they DIDN’T die, they got cancer, because if arsenic doesn’t kill you, it will give you cancer. And then kill you.

Eventually, as science advanced and went, “HEYO, there’s literal poison in this stuff,” consumers were like, “Well, shoot, this summer’s hottest beach shade just killed an entire boarding school,” and Scheele’s green finally fell out of favor.

It was, however, used as a pesticide up through the 1930s, so...way to use the...leftovers? I guess?

3. Your canned food

Hey, now that we’re on the topic of deadly chemicals being where they absolutely should not be, let’s talk about canned food.

In the Victorian era, it was the new Hot Thing (next to arsenic green). You mean I can can my food now? Like? Forever? Oh, only for a few months. Okay, cool. Still cool.

Above: Road trip snax.

Food preservation methods had existed long before canned meats and veggies and soups, but canned everything really started to gain traction around the middle of the 19th century, and people were stoked. Remember, the population exploded; people needed new methods of obtaining cheap food that didn’t spoil immediately. So: cans to the rescue!

Recycling hadn’t really been invented, though, so today, archaeologists constantly find giant Victorian trash pits filled with empty cans.

You know what also hadn’t been invented? Consumer health and safety boards.

So guess what was in the tin cans themselves?

No, no, don’t worry, it wasn’t arsenic.

It was lead.

Which, in case you weren’t aware, is also very, very bad for you.

So bad, in fact, that today, scientists are pretty sure lead-lined tins of canned food were partially responsible for the deaths on the disastrous Franklin Expedition, an ultimately futile trip to discover the Northwest Passage lead by Sir John Franklin in 1845. Every single man on board the two ships stranded in the Arctic died, and in the 1980s, when scientists discovered perfectly mummified bodies (GRAPHIC, if you don’t like that sort of thing, but awesome if you do) of some of the sailors, one of the mummies contained insane amounts of lead. They later tested the cans found scattered across the wreck site and whoops, they also contained insane amounts of lead.

Above: Some of the tin cans from the Franklin Expedition, which contained items like salted beef, vegetables, tea, lethal amounts of lead, and Chicken of the Sea.

Granted, other factors contributed to the Franklin deaths, like, you know, being stranded in the Arctic and starving to death, and also tuberculosis, but lead-lined canned food certainly didn’t help things along.

2. Your doctor

Here’s my advice if you’re in the Victorian era and you’re starting to feel sick: do not get sick. Just don’t. Because then that means you’ll have to go to the doctor. Which probably means you will die.

Hospitals in the 19th century were deadly. Often even more deadly than just staying at home, according to Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art. Nobody knew how to treat anything, really, because medical understanding of biology was in its infancy and antibiotics didn’t exist yet, so you were absolutely, definitely going to get some kind of infection the second you stepped foot in a Victorian hospital.

Above: The surgery, where nobody has any idea what they are doing, ever.

Doctors weren’t trying to kill you on purpose--they just didn’t know any better. And it super duper didn’t help that common treatments for everything from the common cold to tuberculosis included taking mercury (which kills you) and blood-letting, (which can also kill you) the tools for which are shown below:

Those might look like fun doodads for your astronomy class at Hogwarts, but they’re actually vials and a really, really sharp needle that pricks you until you bleed out a critically dangerous amount of blood into those vials.

The (ancient) school of thought behind blood-letting was that draining patients of “bad” blood would rebalance their “humours” and get rid of the icky thing that was making them sick. We might laugh at it now, but if you don’t know any better, logically, it makes sense.

Medically, oh my God, it’s the worst.

So if Doc didn’t bleed you to death, he might try surgery--done without anesthesia or antibiotics (until good old Dr. Lister came along--read The Butchering Art!), and then ship you and your amputated stump leg off to the hospital ward where, instead of healing, you’d get wheeled through hallways stained with every bodily fluid imaginable into rooms filled with people coughing up every bodily fluid imaginable, some of which would get into your leg stump, infect it, and then kill you dead.

“But what about medicine?” you ask. “Can’t I just take medicine?”

Sure! Just be aware that it definitely contains morphine and probably contains cocaine, or mercury, or arsenic, or sulfur, or pulverized bits of ancient Egyptian mummies (I am not kidding. True, the latter had started to fall out of favor in the 19th century, but, like. Stop).

Above: Hard drugs, but just for you.

You think I’m joking?

Above: PARTY TIME.

Sometimes, a doctor would just advise that you move to a “more temperate climate” like Rome or Spain if you were feeling chronically ill, which might help you get a tan and COULD help if you had sucky lungs, but eventually, you’d just die anyway, because what you really needed was a strong antibiotic or antiviral medication and the closest you were gonna get was Mrs. Hopplebopple’s Temperance Tonic, which was probably filled with ground up baby bones and just so much heroin.

And don’t even get me started on Victorian surgical tools:

Open wide.

1. Water

There are three rules in this life: don’t watch any Adam Sandler movies except for maybe Anger Management, don’t eat the yellow snow, and do not, ever, for any reason, ever drink water in Victorian England.

That’s because it was about as clean as a Victorian hospital.

Meaning it wasn’t. At all.

Victorian water--of the Thames variety--contained:

Cholera, one of the deadliest killers of the era and bad water’s favorite roommate.

Poop, human and otherwise, because a functioning sewer system? I don’t know her. (At least, not until the 1860s.)

Pee, human and otherwise, because nothing says, “Jolly Old England” like an open trench of piss rolling through the city.

Dead things, like animals, fish (which are animals, so why am I listing them as a separate thing?), and, occasionally, humans.

Chemicals, which spewed forth from the great factories in billowing, bubbling, belching rivers of sludge. (Ha! Omg, yes, I was an English major!)

The Thames was so filthy that Londoners called it “Monster Soup.”

Above: Same.

In 1855, scientist Michael Faraday (who was also kind of hot; tell me I’m wrong), wrote a letter to the Times about the disgusting state of the river:

"Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. ... The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real sewer."

Tl;dr: “It smelled like ass.”

In fact, it got so bad, so putrid, so horrifically clogged with every disgusting thing your mind and your butthole can possibly conjure up, that it lead to one of my favorite things to read about in the world: The Great Stink of 1858.

Yes, that’s the real name. I did not make that up. History is incredible.

Above: Summer vacation, 1858.

The summer of 1858 was miserably hot in London. And the Thames was miserably clogged with poop, and pee, and chemicals, and dead things, and, uh oh, cholera. During July and August that year, the smell wafting from the river was so offensive that Parliament was actually adjourned because everybody kept throwing up. Cholera devastated the city. The water was killing London.

Faced with either the prospect of living with a city-wide vomit-and-diarrhea smell for the rest of forever OR finally cleaning things up, the government actually did something right and chose the latter. They contracted civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to overhaul the city’s sewer, to which Bazalgette, pinching his nose, responded, “FINALLY.”

Above: Joesph Bazalgette, savior of the London sewers and purveyor of a truly beautiful mustache.

Bazalgette proceeded to build the London sewer system still in use today. His efforts greatly reduced the number of cholera deaths, cleared the Thames of its Cronenberg-esque muck, and ensured that poop goes where it’s supposed to: way the hell out of HERE and way the hell under THERE.

Water sanitation still had a long way to go, though, which meant you either had to boil your water to kill the bacteria in it, or you could just drink alcohol instead, which was the safer option but which would also leave you very dehydrated and also, if imbibed excessively, would leave you very dead.

So really, you were doomed in some way no matter what you did, and if that isn’t the moral of the entire Victorian story, then I don’t know what is.

#victorian #listory

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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If it's any consolation, I'm sure that the Advisors and the rest of the MLA (Re-Destro, Trumpet, Geten) will show back up sooner than the final arc, just because we're going into Year 2 and the students would find great 1 on 1 or team opponents with the Advisors. Re-Destro and Geten are heavy hitters (and Geten could be tied to Dabi, Shoto and all that somehow) and they were locked up with Mr. Compress and Machia, but who do you want to see first from the Advisors?

Thanks, anon; I certainly do hope we'll get to see more of them. Admittedly, my main concern is that I so liked what was going on with the Paranormal Liberation Front that even if we do see all of the MLA types again, if it's only in the context of speedbump battles for the students, that's still going to be a letdown. Better than nothing, to be sure, but I really do want them to join back up with the League, even a League that's confused and out of sorts under All For One's hand. I love RD's big spiritual-awakening-flavored crush on Shigaraki, the cross-organization tensions and relationships, just as much as I love the depth the MLA brings to the world outside of just what's going on with the heroes.

I'm fairly frustrated with how the MLA fared during and after the raid, largely because it's awfully hard not to conclude that, if what we have right now is all the erstwhile-MLA are ever going to come to, Shigaraki would have been significantly better off if he'd just killed them all and shacked up with Ujiko for four months. And that would be such a waste! The end of My Villain Academia was such an enormous triumph for Shigaraki! I want his victory to amount to something more than what we've seen, something that shows that both his strength and his mercy will pay off for him in the long-term, will be a concrete benefit to him rather than, with the benefit of hindsight, the reason everything went so wrong.

Particularly with Re-Destro, since Horikoshi saw fit to have Dark Shadow all but one-shot the man, and Edgeshot defeat him off-panel, it's really not going to mean much to me for him to have a big fight with students unconnected to anything else. The drama's rather gone out of it at this point. That's particularly the case since, if he's no longer connected to Shigaraki's plot, it's that much easier for him to just be off-paneled and forgotten about. But, if Rikiya gets looped back in with the League, if his gratitude and admiration of Shigaraki mean he still has a role to play in Shigaraki's arc, that makes it much easier to get invested in any fights that role will lead him to. Ditto the MLA more broadly; it's categorically ridiculous to present that organization with the kinds of numbers, breadth of influence and legitimate grievances they have, only to try to sweep them back under the rug exactly like Shigaraki accuses heroes of doing with everyone they can't save.

To say the least, I'm pretty invested. But I appreciate your consolations and am trying to hold out hope that we'll get some good stuff with them yet!

My anxieties aside, and to hit the other portion of your ask--who would I like to see first among the Advisors?--hit the jump:

(All nicknames and shorthand are taken from this post.)

Well, it'd be nice if they could all get at least as much to do as the Eight Bullets back during the Hassaikai arc, seeing as they got a similar splash page spread introducing all their faces. There are considerably more than eight of them, of course, but even if they never get more attention than e.g. Galvanize or the hose-faced guy who iced Midnight did, at least then we'd have some idea of their power sets and at least one angle on their personality.

Assuming we aren’t going to get full breakdowns on every single one of them, there are still four things I'd really like to see happen with the MLA/the Advisors: the student fights we're expecting, the jailbreaks we're being told about, the reunion with the League I'm praying for, and for literally anyone in the in-world media to try and get their side of the story.

Student Fights: Seeing the guy who killed Midnight again is as sure a bet as any of these get. Momo is an important enough character, with enough sustained arc, that she will have to get something else to do before the series is over. Taking command of a group battle against real opponents--ones with more responsiveness and agency than Gigantomachia--would be in-line with what she's been moving towards so far. I would, however, love it if that fight would be more challenging than a straightforward battle of tactics.

I headcanon Hose Face and Scarecrow as, respectively, an ex-con and a dude with physical disabilities--both people who have ample reason to want to change the series' status quo irt human rights abuses in prison and overly restrictive quirk use laws. I'm not expecting the canon to validate me on what amount to wild guesses, of course, but I want those Advisors in particular to have motivations more nuanced than, "They're quirk supremacists; who cares why they're willing to put their lives on the line over this?"

A feel-good revenge match in which a bunch of teenagers lay the smack down on characters whose humanity the audience is asked neither to know nor care about would be lazy, and counterproductive to the series' current thematic concerns. Give Momo her victory, by all means, but don't give it to her easy. A confrontation like this would be a good way for the less central Class A students to begin wrestling with the question of who, exactly, heroes "save" and what it is that people need to be saved from, exactly the way Deku and Uraraka and Shouto are now wrestling with these questions.

As far as other fights go, I'd also love to see Brand and The Question pop up again. They're probably the two I'm most curious about purely in terms of what their quirks are. Why does The Question wear a mask, and what's he like that he wound up in Mr. Compress's chain of command? And with Brand, what kind of quirk does he have that's powerful enough to land him a ranked position in the Guerilla Warfare Regiment but indirect enough that he fights with a sword?

Prison Breaks: I wouldn't expect this to be particularly involved, probably more of an aside than anything, but I want the Bindi Ladies to spring Hole Punch Face, thus getting us an angle on what's going on with that particular trio. Aviator Teeth can come too because I want at least some hints about what his deal is.

I'd also love to watch Horikoshi even attempt to retroactively justify some of the logistics of the single-day capture and subsequent detention of 17,000 super-powered, combat-trained people.* I mean, I don't think there are any feasible explanations for that, but I'd be curious to see what he'd come up with, especially if every possible answer just makes Hero Society look worse! We have only ever seen Tartarus as an example of the prison conditions in this country; I'd love to hear more, and an MLA-focused jailbreak would be a great way to show it.

PLF Reunion: Of course, my number one thing to see with a reunion is Re-Destro being just as dismayed as Spinner is over Tomura's possession. I crave more serious attention being paid to Rikiya's profound awe over Shigaraki's freedom, and would love to see his reaction to Shigaraki apparently losing that freedom.

Aside from the obvious, though, if the PLF does start piecing itself back together, I expect to see Sanctum again, given the attention he's gotten so far, and the fact that he's now the highest-ranked member of the Tactics Regiment. It'd be great to get some explanation for how he can possibly be "the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army," given that the Army was generations old already when Re-Destro was just a child. (If we do get that information, I imagine my own explanation will be jossed hugely, so I would also be happy to take time with Sanctum that doesn't explain the discrepancy but also doesn't invalidate my headcanon.)

In the context of the regiments reforming, I'd also like to see Nimble and Aster, both because this manga needs more women, and because I'd like to see more of how Spinner and Toga interact with the people they were nominally commanding.

Media Attention: Trumpet's my number one hope here--the lack of any look into the state of the government in HeroAca Japan has been a total let-down since his introduction**, but I was particularly annoyed that the last time we saw him he was smiling (albeit in a fairly haggard way), giving me hope that we might next see him doing his part to portray all of this in a light that would sway public opinion. And then literally one chapter later, we get prison guards talking about how the Hearts & Minds Party, a perfectly legitimized political party with representation on the national level, has been perfunctorily dissolved less than twelve hours from when the raid started. How is there even an argument that the system heroes were upholding desperately needs to change?

I'm very tired of the media in BNHA only ever showing up to beg for/demand that heroes tell them what’s going on, particularly those damn press conferences. Journalists do investigative work! Newspapers employ reporters to actively seek out news! Reporters in free countries don't just sit around waiting for the government or heads of major industries to graciously hand them press releases! For heaven's sake, Trumpet was the head of a major political party. People should be foaming at the mouth trying to get a statement from him!

Especially with public trust in heroes breaking down, there should absolutely be intrepid reporters out there looking to get to the bottom of any of the layered conspiracies the public's just been hit with and told to just write-off as a bump in the road on the return to normalcy.

Anyway, Trumpet's the obvious choice, but if I could be sure the manga would validate my headcanons about Nimble and Scarecrow's disabilities, I'd be happy to put them in this position, too. Trucker Toad would be another good candidate, if there's any basis to my idea that he is or used to be a transport driver who's seen a lot of the country outside the areas e.g. the Top Ten Heroes are patrolling. He's obviously a good candidate for getting back to that idea of anti-heteromorph bias, too. But really, I'd take anyone who can give a cogent explanation of the MLA's position on self-determination and the various ways Hero Society has exacerbated quirk-based discrimination.

Anyway, that's about where my thoughts are on where I hope the MLA people are and what we might see of them. Thanks for the ask!

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

*Or as many as 100,000 more than that, depending on how through the statement, "Their bases around the country were also attacked, and their supporters rounded up," was meant to be. An influx of 116K people, incidentally, would triple Japan's current carceral population.

**Why! Why would you introduce a politician and then never even glance at your setting's political situation??

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha spoilers #meta liberation army #paranormal liberation front #stillness-answers

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queven · 4 years ago

Text

Y’know Superman? This is an AU based on that

A/N: Me and my sucky titles. Prepare yourself for some heavy emotion

“You!” a voice exclaimed angrily. Keith jerked his head up, his eyes meeting Lance McClain’s angry blue ones.

“How did you get an interview with Superman? He kept on refusing to answer me!”

That may have been Keith’s fault a bit. Okay, a lot. Their city newspaper, the Voltron Times, was looking for journalists to get an interview with the Man of Steel himself, Superman. Which was kind of lucky considering Keith is said Man of Steel.

It may have been cheating a bit, but Lance was already the best journalist on the team. Let Keith have a chance at getting the front page article, man.

But now he had to deal with the angry journalist, who already declared a supposed rivalry with him on sight.

“Probably you were too forward with him. Maybe Superman is people-shy?”

Lance scoffed. “As if. He tried more pick-up lines on me than I’ve heard in my life, and that’s saying something”

“Pick-up lines?” Keith pretended to act confused. One of his favorite parts about being a crime-fighting hero was messing with Lance in his superhero identity.

“You know...like ‘You’re a knock-out!’”

Keith snorted. Lance shot him a bemused look, tension easing from his shoulders, and then rolled his eyes.

“Whatever. I hate that guy. Way too cocky”

Say what now? Keith thought Lance was into that stuff. It was easier to woo the dude with his own medicine while being the most famous hero in Altea City.

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

“Take that, Sendak!” Superman aimed a well-made punch at the mad scientist supervillain who was knocked off of his new death ray. Seriously, that guy was so predictable. Every time, he would make a new death ray, and Superman would knock him out or destroy his machine with his laser eyes, and the cops would arrest the defeated Sendak. He would break out of prison again, and make a new death ray, and the cycle kept on continuing.

Talk about stubbornness.

Speaking about stubbornness, Lance McClain was storming over to the crime scene, clutching his journalist pad murderously.

Keith might actually be intimidated.

“I heard you gave an interview to Keith Kogane, but not me? Why? We’re part of the same newspaper. What does his interviewing have that mine doesn’t?” McClain actually looked a bit distressed.

“Changed my mind after you left. Felt that if people wanted an interview, an interview they will get. So, when Keith came to me, I accepted” he shrugged, pretending to be nonchalant, while hovering in the air.

Lance pouted, crossing his arms slightly, and Keith smirked at the sight.

“Hey, don't frown, you'll never know who might be falling in love with your smile”

A startled look came onto Lance’s face, and then he screeched, stomping away from the crime scene.

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

Keith was hanging out with Hunk, Pidge, and Lance at the cafe downtown for lunch when the subject came up.

“Who’s your guys’ favorite superhero?” Lance asked, chomping into his sandwich.

Pidge and Hunk perked up, exchanging looks. “Superman, of course” Pidge answered,”Pretty sure you already know that based on our dissection board”

Hunk and Pidge had a big dissection board in Pidge’s room, trying to find out the origins and limitations of Superman’s powers.

“Who’s your’s, Lance?”

“Batman, duh”

“Duh?!” Keith yelled indignantly. Seriously, why did Lance hate Superman so much?

“Well, Batman, unlike Superman, uses his brain, not super strength and powers and stuff, to defeat the bad guys” Lance finished, looking triumphant as if he just destroyed a debate opponent.

Keith had to grit his teeth not to pounce on the annoyingly infuriating guy. He also cursed his mind for falling in love with Lance.

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

“Superman! Superman, wait up!”

Keith recognized that voice, and smirked inwardly. Lance. The manager of the newspaper firm, Allura, got Lance on the case of writing Superman’s biography. Of course he perked up immediately at the chance of messing with the journalist again.

“Yes? Is there anything wrong? You already look perfect, no need to worry.”

Lance ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “I’m working on an article again for the Voltron Times, and I need to know your secret identity? Like so that we can do this interview thing any other time you’re not bugged by fans”

“Nice try,” he chuckled, having gone through this a lot.

“It was worth it,” Lance leaned back, a bit more at ease. “But seriously, what about I ask you a few questions now, nothing about your identity, I promise.”

Keith nodded. Sounded fair enough. Spending time and changing the opinion of the guy he had a crush on? Count him in.

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

“So, what’s your favorite animal?”

Covering his hands to stifle the laugh that came up was hard. Lance groaned.

“Jeez, that was all I could come up with, okay? I didn’t expect you to say yes!”

“Don’t you always have a backup plan?”

“Ye-wait. How do you know that?”

Oops. He slipped. “You’re pretty famous in Altea City, to be fair. Leading journalist. Smart and pretty.” Keith answered, lying through his teeth.

The journalist blushed this time, shuffling through his haphazard notes blindly. “So? Your favorite animal?”

“Oh my god” Keith was actually stunned. Nobody had ever tried to ask such a normal question to Superman him before. “Hippos. Definitely hippos”

Lance’s lip quirked as he was trying to restrain a laugh. He jotted it down into his signature notepad, and put his pencil down. Keith zoned out, observing his hands.

“Keith?” Lance asked, trying to get his attention.

“Yeah?” Keith answered back. WAIT. No. Superman. Not Keith. Shoot. “Umm...I mean...who’s Keith?”

“Nice try, man. I’d recognize that mullet anywhere” Keith put a hand to his hair, feeling the loss of an elastic band. Whoops.

“When did you find out? About this?”

“Probably a long while back, when you first gave yourself an interview. That’s cheating, technically”

“Oh”

“Yeah, I also said that comment during lunch today to test my theory out, and you reacted like I thought, so I thought Hey, he’s probably just a crazy fan or something, but no. You’re Superman.”

“Say it louder so that Sendak can hear, yeah?” Keith snarked, feeling a bit annoyed and panicked at this point.

“Can’t-I can’t believe this! Superman is also the coworker I’m in love with! This is your secret identity!”

“In love with?” He felt like hysterically giggling, because they were both so stupid. And in love. Yikes.

“Oh my god, shut up, Keith! Or should I call you Super Keith?”

“No”

“Keith Man”

“No”

“Super Mullet”

“I will fly off and ditch you right here, and right now.”

“You wouldn’t do that, Superman, would you? Man of Steel, defender of the weak.”

Keith’s stomach rolled like it was attempting(and failing) to do a somersault. “You won’t tell anybody, would you? You better not. People could get killed, Lance.”

Lance chuckled nervously. “Who do you think I am? Some kind of gossip?”

Keith gave him a flat look, and Lance sighed, offering his hand out. Spitting on his palm, Keith slapped it onto the other’s, grinning slightly when Lance winced.

“I still don’t know why you always insist on doing this, do you know how unsanitary it-wOAH!”

He flew up suddenly, cradling a kicking Lance in his arms, laughing.

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

The next day, a newspaper was slammed onto Keith’s desk by a familiar tan-colored hand.

“Nice paper today,” Lance stated, coolly.

The main headline was in block letters, saying SUPERMAN SAVES LOCAL JOURNALIST FROM DEATH RAY. The big front page picture was of Keith carrying Lance, who was making a peace sign with both hands to the camera, grinning widely. The article, written by Pidge, was going on about how Superman saved yet another citizen from Sendak and his reign of terror.

“Congrats, man. Allura must be impressed.”

“Yeah, she’s impressed all right. Forgave me for not getting an interview earlier and failing to figure out yo-Superman’s identity” he finished, awkwardly.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Smooth”

“Shut up.” Lance grumbled, cheeks flushed. “She still says I need some info on him, so how do you feel about meeting up later for coffee? Incognito?”

“It’s a date,” Keith grinned. He could live with this.

Part 2(fluff)

#klance #klance au #klance fanfic #fanfiction #superman #superman au #sorta a superman/lois lane au #not really tho #just the article w/superman plot thing #except done in the klance way #keith x lance #voltron keith #keith kogane #lance mcclain #lance mcgay

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imnotwolverine · 4 years ago

Text

The marriage pact - Old faces

Henry Cavill x OC Alice - multi-chapter

Part 1 Old faces | Part 2 >

Disclaimer: none, (re)meet-cute

Author’s note: It’s romcom weekend, okay? 😘

Word count: 1.682

(Link to my Masterlist)

[ Alice.in.writing.land ]

Dear readers.

I’d like to share with you some old wisdom from my nan on how to make: The perfect cake.

First of all: you always make sure you grease up the tin - ‘gotta make it slide right in, slide right out.’ She’d say with a grin so wide that my 12-year-old-self thought she’d tear her face in half. Her eyes would glitter mischievously as her hands moved with those swift and precise movements, leaving no inch of the inner cake tin unbuttered.

‘And! Make sure you always fully preheat the oven, because there’s no shortcuts to the perfect cake.’ She’d tut, pointing at the oven, to which I’d nod most dutifully, preheating the oven as she requested while she’d utter something about making sure you get yourself a good size baking pan; ‘He’s gotta be right for the job and most definitely don’t try to double the recipe. Focus on one good cake, and do NOT overdo it. Nobody likes a dense, overworked cake.’

Then, her hand lightly beating through the cake battery, she’d turn to me and give me a knowing look. ‘If you don’t know what kind of cake you want, you’ll only be in for a disappointment, you know.’ - To which I would start bouncing up and down, eagerly requesting chocolate cake. There was no doubt in my mind what kind of cake I wanted. It always was chocolate cake.

Those were good Sundays. Perfect cake baking Sundays.

And do you know what? Only now, 25 years later, do I realise she was never truly talking about cake. Or baking tins. Ha..no. Silly me. My frisky nan was talking about men. Partners. Love. And perhaps sex, but that leaves you some space for interpretation.

Now, my nan was a great baker. She had five kids. Buns of joy, really.

I, on the other hand, not so much. Despite knowing full well what kind of chocolate cake I want, I just happen to be a very bad baker. And perhaps.. it’s time that I start to learn, because her last advise still rings true in my ears:

‘And timing, my dear, listens more closely than you think.’ She’d wink, kissing grandpa on his cheek, to which he’d grumble some indiscernible acknowledgement, the glimmer in his eyes not hiding the fact he still loved her dearly.

Yes. I’m going to try harder and bake myself the best - birthday - cake, with a bit of nan’s advice. Meanwhile I hope you get all your cake wishes fulfilled, too.

Have a good, single Pringle Friday my dear readers.

A just turned 37,

Ali

A scorching hot September sun washed over the zoo entrance, the Durrell challenge just finished but the media circus far from over.

I yawned, stretching myself out as I watched my fellow journalists and reporters hover like a dark cloud around the person I would be interviewing in some ten minutes from now.

The poor guy hadn’t had a moments rest since he crossed the finish line of the Durrell challenge run and I felt my heart pang with guilt for taking another snippet of his precious time.

Then again, I had a job to fulfil and stupid as it was, I kind of enjoyed writing for the local newspaper. Writing was my thing, and currently I was in charge of writing one of the most beloved blurbs in the paper; Old Faces.

Every week I interviewed a well known inhabitant of the island. George the butcher and his famous spicy sausages, Henriette and her fourteen dogs, Ilias the swimmer - an old man swimming an astounding 10k a day. And a tiny highlight being todays interviewee; Henry, the movie star, back on our beloved Jersey Island to show his support for the local zoo.

Meanwhile for me, he was just Henry, my childhood neighbour, a friend.

—

‘Alice! You’re on!’ A familiar voice startled me and I quickly scrambled up from the little stone wall I had been lounging on, my hands grabbing for my notes and voice recorder as I started making my way through the paparazzi mayhem.

‘Sorry…sorry! Excuse me..Coming through.’ I said, pushing myself past the crowd until I reached the shade of a dark blue canopy, finding that strangely familiar face before me, resting in a chair, his running gear sticking to his muscular physique.

Henry.

He stood up from his chair, reaching out his hand to ..eh...introduce himself? I felt a sour taste in the back of my throat as I realised he didn’t recognise me, his lips pulled up into a friendly, yet professional smile.

Yaiks..Okay.

Don’t mind it, Ali, the poor guy can’t help it.

‘Hi..’ I awkwardly moved my stuff to one arm so I could shake his hand. ‘I’m Alice, local newspaper.’ I greeted, to which he nodded, his smile growing ever so slightly. He pointed at another chair, gesturing me to sit.

‘Please take a..-’ My voice recorder slipped out of my arm as I tried to take my seat, my eyes barely registering as Henry moved with lightning speed to grab onto the cord of the device mid-air. I gasped.

‘Oooph..that could have gone wrong.’ He chuckled, winking at me before he put the recorder back in my hand.

‘Sorry.’ I sniffled, feeling the slightest of blushes creeping over my cheeks. ‘Thanks Hen.’ I muttered without overthinking my words, my eyes already averted to a woman that appeared on my right - his left.

‘Hey!’ She smiled - Samantha, a chubby and bubbly lady I had known since my toddler years.

‘Hi Sam.’ I smiled in turn, seeing she held onto a sort of timing-device.

‘Okay, so..we’re a bit busy as you see. You’ve got four minutes..starting..eh..’ She clicked a button. ‘..now! Have fun!’ She cheered, winking cheekily at Henry.

‘Oh.. yea yea. Okay thanks.’ I nodded, my brow furrowing ever so slightly as Sam sauntered off again. Quickly I straightened my back, my sweaty fingers fumbling with that darn voice recorder - I really should get a new one.

‘So. Eh Henry! Hi! Welcome back!’ I started, offering him a smile, my fingers still trying to get the tiny buttons to cooperate.

Click. Set. Start.

Okay, here goes.

Henry smiled his most warm, Henry-esque smile in return. ‘Thank you..Alice.’ He hesitated a moment, as if deciding what to make of my name. Perhaps because he started to recognise me..or...perhaps he was just tired, trying to memorise all these three million names that wished for his attention today.

Yea..probably that was just me, wishfully thinking.

He didn’t seem to recognise me, and that was..okay.

I swallowed. ‘Okay. So. To give you a short insight in this interview. I write the Old Faces blurb in the paper and I must say that we mostly entertain older readers so ..you know..keep the “young folk language” to a minimum.’ I winked, clicking my pen. Henry shrugged. ‘That shouldn’t be to hard. So what would you like to know, Alice?’

This time my name escaped his lips far more fluently, naturally. I looked at him, our eyes meeting for a few silent, peaceful seconds.

‘I’m curious. What do you miss most from your time living here?’ Our eyes remained locked together as he licked his lips. ‘Hmm.’ He broke our gaze, thinking. ‘..Many things. I had a most wonderful childhood here. The beautiful nature, the ..zoo.’ He nodded at the zoo entrance behind us. ‘..the closeness of the community.’

I nodded, quickly interrupting him as time was sparse. ‘And what particular elements of that community do you miss the most?’

‘The simplicity of it.’ He started, then furrowed his brows. ‘No scratch that. That doesn’t quite capture it. Hmm..I think I mostly really enjoyed how natural it was to be around one another, care about fellows and neighbours, without there being any hidden agendas. You see my life is quite different now. I reside in circles that live and breath fame, fortune, wealth. Which sounds great for outsiders, but for insiders it can be exhausting at times too. For me at least, it can be. Being back here just makes me realise that not all people are like that. And, I enjoy the breath of fresh air it brings.’

‘And the great exercise too.’ I tease, making him chuckle in delight.

‘Yes, and great exercise. That last hill sure was a..challenge.’

‘And how are you going to spend your time here? How long are you staying?’ My pen still hadn’t touched the paper to make notes, our eyes sharing that same deep look again. Deep browns looking into fresh water blues.

He had aged well.

‘Only for the weekend unfortunately. But I’ll use the time to visit family, reacquaint with..old friends..friendly faces.’ His lip tugged in a half smile, near shy. Did he recognise me now? I wasn’t so sure, and perhaps I could have asked, but it wasn’t so - our little interaction was abruptly stopped as Sam reappeared.

‘And... that’s it! Thank you so much for coming Ali!’ She spoke, practically squeezing herself between me and Henry. I blinked away from Henry’s gaze and quickly looked up, realising this was it. This was all I’d get to see of Henry.

Alright then.

‘Thanks Sam.’ I smiled, quickly grasped my things and stopping my voice recording before thanking Henry.

‘Enjoy your stay!’ I laughed as he watched me grasp onto the voice recorder for dear life.

‘Thanks..eh..Ali.’

Once again that unnecessary hesitation before saying my name - though this time it was even more stomach-flutter-worthy, because he used my nickname. My childhood nickname.

I could only shoot him the quickest glance over my shoulder before Sam wrapped an arm around my shoulder, her voice muttering some sappy gossip into my unhearing ear.

I didn’t hear a word she said, because my mind was racing.

Did he recognise me? Did he recognise me? I couldn’t tell, his mouth slightly agape as if he were to ask something, but Sam had already coached me away.

And there I went. Back to my failing, cake baking life.

General tagsquad: @harrysthiccthighss @tumblnewby @magdelen69

Fluff lovers squad: @star017 @perhaps2remember @pterodactylterrace @witchersqueen @desperate-and-broken @toomanyfandomsshreya @deliciouslysassyarcade @pamacs-macs @cavilladdict @scorpionchild81 @lebguardians @sofiebstar @amberbabem @mis-lil-red @aestheticqueenb

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#henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill fluff #henry cavill meet cute #henry cavill x author #henry cavill x writer #fanfiction #the marriage pact #jersey islands #kal #henry bear #fluff #romcom

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cupcakes4747 · 4 years ago

Text

Truth Or Dare | one

Word Count: 2K

Warnings: n/a

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader, Jungkook x Reader

Genre: fluff

Laptop. Check. Phone. Check. Supplies. Check. Keys. Where are the keys? You looked around for the keys, trying to quickly find them. After ten minutes of searching, you realized that they were in your hand the entire time. You groaned at yourself and quickly rushed out the door. You didn’t want to be late for your first day at university. You wanted everything to be perfect. Ever since you were in middle school, you have been dreaming of going to this college, and you couldn’t believe you had actually made it. You had all sorts or expectations for college you had been thinking about for years. Studying in aesthetic hipster cafes, getting your own apartment, partying with your friends, and most of all, getting a boyfriend. You were the only person you knew that has never had a boyfriend. All through middle and high school, all of your friends would get a new boyfriend every few months and you would always have to third wheel and watch them make out with each other. They would tell you stories about losing their virginity and how awesome sex was, while you on the other hand had never been asked out, or even kissed. You never understood why; you weren’t unattractive, and there was nothing wrong with your personality, but for some reason, it really hurt your self esteem. You thought that you were undesirable and repelling to boys. But now you were in college. You were older, smarter, and since your awkward phase was over, prettier. And there were a whole bunch of new guys who didn’t know who you were and this was your chance to prove to yourself that you weren’t as undesired as you thought. However, ever since you moved into your dorm three weeks ago, you’ve been having all sorts of bad luck. First, the moving van was two days late, so you had to live in your dorm for two days without any of your stuff. Then, you accidentally clogged the toilet and had to call a plumber who ended up doing a horrible job of fixing it. And then, a few days ago, when you went grocery shopping, you realized at the checkout line that you had forgotten your wallet. You didn’t want to be late for your first day of university on top of all that. You ran as fast as you could to the bus stop and as you checked the time after you sat in the bus, you gave a breath of relief. You were five minutes ahead of schedule.

Making it to class on time, you finally started to calm down. You watched as all the students piled into the lecture hall, looking for someone who seemed friendly enough to introduce yourself to later. Then you made eye contact with the most beautiful boy you have ever seen in your life. He had dark brown hair that fell over his eyes, a tall, muscular build, and that mysterious “bad-boy” look. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him. And just your luck, this attractive man happened to sit right next to you. Oh my god, what am I supposed to do? Do I talk to him, or...? Your thoughts were interrupted when you heard him say:

“Wow, I must be in heaven, because I am looking at an angel.” Is this guy flirting with me? You blushed. Nobody had ever flirted with you before. You didn’t know how to react so you just let out a nervous giggle, even though you later on realized that that was the dumbest pick up line ever. The class started and the cute boy kept making sarcastic and funny retorts to everything the professor would say. You found yourself giggling to everything he was saying and you weren’t sure if it was because you genuinely found it funny or just because you thought he was attractive. After class ended, you both formally introduced yourselves and the cute boy, who said his name was Jungkook, asked you if you wanted to go to a party that weekend. You had never been to an official party before; only small get-togethers with your close friends. Everything you knew about frat parties was from the over-exaggerated scenes in college movies.

“Sure, why not,” you said nonchalantly, as if partying was a regular part of your routine and that getting asked to go to a party by a hot guy was an everyday occurrence.

“Great, see you in class tomorrow, Y/N,” Jungkook replied. You beamed as you speed walked out of the lecture hall. This was the most interaction you’ve had with a guy your age other than the weird nerdy kids on the math team back in high school.

When you arrived home, you dashed straight to your closet to figure out what you were going to wear to the party, completely ignoring your pending responsibilities as an adult. How did people dress at college parties? Should you wear something trendy? Something stylish and fashionable? Something cute and innocent? Something sexy? You had never thought of yourself as sexy, but as you were looking at your reflection in the full-length mirror, you realized that your body was not that bad. You worked out consistently and ate healthy, which made you look healthy. And plus, a sexy guy like Jungkook would probably be interested in a sexy girl. You didn’t own any sort of sexy dress, but you knew your roommate had plenty, but she was out somewhere so you couldn’t ask her then. You sighed and decided to get started on your homework.

The next day, you walked into your first class, excited to see Jungkook, but he was nowhere to be found. Disappointed, you sat down at your seat and listened to the professor.

“For our very first project of the school year, we will be doing a partner project where each assigned pair will be assigned a piece of classical literature and have a series of mini-assignments to complete about it,” your professor’s voice boomed across the large lecture hall, “It will be due a month from today.” You groaned internally. You hated partner projects. Either the other person would take control of everything and not let you have any input or say of what goes into the project or the other person would completely slack off and not do anything, leaving you to do all the work. The professor started calling out names of the assigned pairs from his list. Please let my partner be Jungkook, please let my partner be Jungkook. “Y/N and Namjoon, you two will be partners. Please raise your hands.” You raised your hand and looked around the lecture hall for another raised hand. A tall man walked up to you with his hand outstretched.

“Hi, I’m Namjoon, your partner.” You shook his hand and introduced yourself to him. He was almost an entire foot taller than you and could be quite handsome if he didn't dress so dorky. He was wearing a plaid sweater vest on top of a shirt and with pants that did not match at all. Along with that he was wearing a paper-bag brown hat which made him look like a journalist from the 1950s. You appreciated cute dorks since you considered yourself to be one. You both had decided to meet at the library later that day to get started on the project, both of you deciding that it was a bad idea to procrastinate and that it was smartest to start as soon as possible.

Later, in the afternoon, you were walking to the library to meet Namjoon to get started on the project and heard footsteps running up to you.

"Hey, beautiful," Jungkook smirked after he caught up to you. Your heart fluttered.

"What are you doing here? Where were you in class today?" you questioned.

"Oh, I ditched. I was still hungover from a gathering at my friend's place last night. Did I miss anything important?"

"We started a project with assigned partners. I'm meeting him up at the library right now."

"Oh, boring. I'm glad I ditched." You rolled your eyes.

"Anyways, I need to go now. It was nice talking to you, Jungkook."

"Wait, are you still coming to the party on Friday?" Oh my gosh, he remembered!

"Yes, text me the details, please." You told Jungkook your number as he typed it into his phone.

"Okay, cool. I'll let you know everything. Bring your hot friends." You rolled your eyes at him again.

"Yeah, sure. Bye." You didn't know how you were capable of keeping up a causal conversation with an insanely good-looking guy. Usually, when a good-looking guy would approach you, which they rarely did, you would just panic and freeze, and never be able to come up with anything interesting, witty, or funny to say, causing yourself to reply only with one-word answers, making yourself look unconfident. The problem was that you were kind of unconfident. Other people's opinions mattered way too much to you, causing you to revolve your life around how others will react. You knew it was unhealthy, but had no idea how to stop.

Lost in your thoughts, you had already made it to the library.

“Hey there!” Namjoon said. He had already found a table and was ready to go with his laptop open. “I already got a headstart on the assigment. I came up with multiple points of views to analyze this part of the text.”

“Wow, you are really on top of things,” you replied, impressed.

“I already read this back in high school for fun. Although it was a few years ago, I have a general idea about what happens.” And here you were thinking you were the only person of your age group who read classic literature just for fun, but decided against mentioning that you had also read it for fun in high school. Now that you were in a new location where nobody knew who you were, this was a second chance at a first impression. You did not want to be considered a nerd anymore.

You sat down and began reading and discussing the novel with him. Even though you just met him, you found that you really enjoyed working with him. Namjoon had a different perspective than you which made you see the novel in an entirely different way and vice versa. It was refreshing to have a deep conversation about a topic both people enjoy, as most exchanges you’ve had in the past year were just shallow small talk. As you both reflected and discussed, you had breezily finished the assignment in much less time than you anticipated. Perfect. More time to get ready for the party.

“Nice work. We got done really fast. Maybe to speed up this project and get this over with, we can finish the next essay question tonight since it will be fresh in our memory,” stated Namjoon.

“Actually I’m going to a party tonight. Tomorrow maybe?” you said trying to hide the proudness in your voice. You never thought that you would be partying instead of doing homework since it was usually the reverse. You thought he would think that you were super cool and adventurous for partying in the first week of school, since it was something you would have never even contemplated doing in high school. Namjoon, however, seemed unfazed by this.

“All right I’ll just submit mine tonight. You can do yours tomorrow. I’m happy to proofread your work before turning it in if you’d like.” A small part of you was disappointed that he didn’t seem to think anything of it and another small part of you was worried he would think you were irresponsible or a bad student when in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. It was still nice of him to offer to help you when you knew he was probably busy with other things.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” you said gratefully as you packed up your things, “When can you meet up next?”

“How about Sunday evening?”

“Works for me.” You both bid your farewells and went your separate ways, eager to go to your first college party and see Jungkook.

#namjoon angst #namjoon fluff #jungkook smut #bts angst #bts fanfction

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years ago

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Seeds

Before I read it, I had this idea I could write a review of Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds for the Comics Journal, but the book just sucked too much. It had basically nothing going for it, or even decipherable as an advancing plot. One thing wrong with it is there’s this sort of conspiracy element, or this “no one believes the news” anymore element of it, but Nocenti didn’t want it to be about “fake news.” Donald Trump has rewired the narrative, so now entire types of subject matter feed into this propaganda machine simply by being addressed. Nocenti’s best work does not shy from topicality, addressing the currents in the cultural air, but this time the modern world feels too hot to handle.

I ordered the Daredevil: Typhoid’s Kiss trade paperback, reprinting a bunch of Nocenti’s work with the Typhoid Mary character from the nineties. The longest story in there is a miniseries with art by John Van Fleet. It’s partly about post-Tarantino video-store employees turned filmmakers kidnapping Typhoid Mary to use her as the subject of a documentary about serial killers and violent media. It’s also about Typhoid Mary working as a private detective trying to track down a killer of prostitutes, who the police don’t care about, and are maybe the actual killers of themselves. Storywise, it’s a pretty cool attempt to address real-world issues of the day within a pulp context.

Van Fleet’s art is pretty boring and bad in a way that’s distinctly ahead of its time. While the miniseries itself probably wouldn’t exist without the precedent of Elektra: Assassin a decade before, (a spinoff about a female Daredevil villain created by the writer during their run on Daredevil where that character defined their run) all the photoreference that’s probably actually just photo backgrounds run through filters sets a precedent for the Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth Daredevil stuff to come a decade later. And it’s frequently annoying on a page design/panel background level. Like in terms of how the panel borders sort of default to grid shapes so there ends up being things that “read” as panels but that don’t actually do anything for pacing. It’s just fitting the narrative into regimented design choices.

This maybe only happens the once. But the art is also just super-stiff throughout, with a very chunky line that eliminates any real nuance. There’s a bunch of characters, but a lot of them are indistinguishable from one another, and that’s because the linework is about as muddy as the color palette — It kinda seems like he’s working with models and photo reference but also doesn’t have that many models to work with so he’s having them play multiple roles, but also his work basically seems more like photoshop filters than actual drawing? There’s a bunch of stuff that I think sucks, basically. But you can also draw a direct line from what Van Fleet is doing in Typhoid to what Aja does in The Seeds. All these choices that are meant to be classy and dignifed, a move away from the excess of superhero comics. The covers of Typhoid are just portraits of the main character, interchangeable from one issue to the next, which was a move that again, was ahead of its time: This is what so many Marvel covers in the 2000s looked like, the Tim Bradstreet Punisher covers probably being the go-to example. It’s pretty dull but it’s nice they’re not super-sexualized.

While the choices arguably suit the subject matter in Typhoid, which is at least partly about movies, in The Seeds, the story doesn’t really make any sense because the visuals seem so steeped in unreality. The premise is that a tabloid has photographed an alien, proving aliens are real. There is really nothing within the context of the story that explains why the news outlet would have enough gravitas to be convincing and have this be an actual news story. And the book is drawn in Photoshop, which is itself a photo-editing software, so the “reality” of the book is defined by the very medium that people recognize as why images can’t be trusted. This contributes a level of irony that could maybe be worked with if the book itself wasn’t so ugly and dull. The whole thing looks like some Banksy bullshit. Outside of word balloons, text appears in the large all-caps typeface of image macros. I don’t have scans of The Seeds because I gave my copy away on account of there not being any reason to keep it around.

The book is beyond dated at the time of its release. Partly this is due to the speed the cultural conversation has been moving for the past five years. It’s been a difficult time period to work on a work of fiction about the news, certainly, and not only has the comic been a long time in the making, the writer has also been away from making comics for decades now. If the authors had been able to make this as a serialized monthly comic, it might’ve stumbled into timeliness, or the predictive, but as it is, the reading experience feels like a bunch of different, disparate ideas that do not really cohere into a narrative. Leaving aside how the book seems to emerge from a general cultural gestalt of the the 1990s, when The X-Files and Weekly World News were objects of discussion, every major plot point or news story chosen for thematic resonance is approximately fifteen years old. I believe 2005 was when I started to hear about colony collapse disorder. This bee metaphor has been lapped by a Honey Nut Cheerios campaign at this point. (A few years back, boxes of cereal came with seeds of wildflowers you/children could plant.)

Darin Morgan’s episode of The X-Files revival “The Mengele Effect” ably addresses all the issues with how cynicism and conspiracy theories feel different now, all the issues that Nocenti seems terrified of and hopes the audience doesn’t think of when reading her humorless X-Files throwback comic. That episode’s great. Much of The Seeds seems like it was better done in the decidedly not-great Transmetropolitian. There’s something so dated and sad about this comic’s idea of a cool journalist protagonist: People barely smoke cigarettes anymore! I know no one wants to draw people vaping, but the imagery this book wishes meant “cool, urban, woman” reads as nostalgic affectation in 2021. That so much of the commercial landscapes of our cities has been replaced by vape shops was one of the biggest clues we were already living in a dystopia three years ago.

Nocenti, when she was working regularly, got to be a pretty effective writer for having a monthly deadline wherein she could speak on the issues of the day as they were happening. In the absence of a regular gig, this rare chance to speak her mind gets hampered by how much there is to talk about, and how complicated it all is. If it’s too complicated to address in an ongoing superhero comic, a one-off graphic novel with vaguely commercial ambitions turns out to be a worse space for it. It’s so much sadder than anything in this dream-of-the-nineties comic that the authors were given the grace to make something only under the conditions that doom it to failure. Real people made this work of fiction, and I don’t know what the fuck they’re even talking about, and that’s a more complicated narrative than the journalists in this comic who… stumble upon a story and then need to take to back because it’s too important or something? I don’t understand what this comic is about. It’s clearly gesturing at being about a bunch of different things, but what they get from being in juxtaposition with one another, I don’t know.

In interviews in advance of the release of The Seeds, Nocenti talked about how this was the first time she got to make a comic that didn’t have to have fight scenes or conflict in it. But reading Typhoid it’s clear how conflict ties the story’s disparate threads together. But also while reading Typhoid I kept on thinking about how visually, the Steve Lightle shit that preceded it is so much cooler! Here he is, bifurcating a page so two narrative threads can be told with different approaches to stoytelling:

People sometimes talk about how crazy it is that Nocenti started her Daredevil run immediately following up the Miller/Mazzucchelli Born Again run with a fill-in drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. But I don’t think anyone has pointed out that, since these Typhoid Mary team-up comics appeared in Marvel Comics Presents, she’s basically following up Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, and Steve Lightle is totally capable of doing that! Even if these comics are kinda whatever narratively, Nocenti comes up with dense enough narratives to give him shit to do. She’s a good writer within the context of the harsh strictures of early nineties mainstream comics. Which I know seems like a harsh diss! But being a writer that makes work that consistently gives a comics artist something interesting to do is a difficult job that many people are just not interested in doing for various reasons, so it should be recognized when it’s attempted and accomplished.

It’s also interesting that the whole visual approach where both Steve Lightle and Barry Windsor-Smith shine is dependent on flat color. The changes in storytelling made to accommodate the shifts in visual language in full-color mainstream comics didn’t really benefit anyone, and now needs to be outsmarted. In The Seeds, we’ve got this pretty dull reading experience that superficially in its two-color print job and nine-panel grid, looks like it might be influenced by Mazzucchelli’s work in Rubber Blanket and City Of Glass. And we’ve got a black and white Barry Windsor-Smith comic coming out from Fantagraphics in a few weeks that I really hope blows it out of the water.

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heoneyology · 5 years ago

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fateful coincidence [1] | l.jh

A/N: does anyone even read my stuff anymore...? anyway, I jokingly told rani (who I can’t even tag anymore or don’t know what blog to tag-) that I should just write my jooheon dreams as fanfics, because then I would at least be writing something instead of being on hiatus. and she took it seriously and said yes. so here we are.

Word Count: 7148

Genre: chaebol/heir!au, slice of life, soft angst, humor? (am I even funny?), romance (slow burn)

Pairing: reader (fem) x lee jooheon (monsta x)

Warnings: mature themes/suggestive, language, there will be... sugar daddy themes... later... but not like sexually idk if this is a warning???

Summary: Lee Jooheon is a well-known heir to a global hotel conglomerate, and is next in line to take over the family business. You’re a journalist aspiring for more, but barely managing to pay your own bills at the end of the month. The two of you are from entirely different worlds, yet fate somehow tangles your threads, and Jooheon seems to know an intriguing amount more about you than he lets on.

“You mean to tell me they just dropped out? Randomly at the last minute like that?”

The voices of your coworkers had been floating around overhead for many minutes longer than you would’ve liked, by now. Why they couldn’t gossip over their coffee delivery somewhere else was beyond you. Why they had to do it at all was further unfathomable. Attempting to push their voices out of your head and concentrate on your work, you rub your temple, squinting at the computer screen in front of you.

“Apparently the journalist got sick and they had no one else to cover from that company. So they called us,” your friend and coworker, Yoo Kihyun, answers the other speaking in his usual matter-of-fact tone.

“It’s tomorrow, though!” The original speaker complains, pressing forward further, “And we’re such a small publication! How can they expect us to take place for the other last minute like this?”

You’re not sure which is louder in your mind, at this point: The complaining of your coworkers—specifically the female senior whose name you’d forgotten—or your typing. With each passing word they utter of annoyance or disbelief, mixed with Kihyun’s logical explanations, the clacking of your fingers against the keyboard beneath your hands quickens, intensifying, before you finally let out a harsh sigh and push yourself away from your desk in frustration. There’s no way for you to concentrate if they’re all going to stand around and gossip like high schoolers.

“Isn’t this good for us, though?” You speak up suddenly, causing the small group to glance over at you in surprise. Typically, you weren’t one to bother with their idle chit-chat breaks. The fact that you were doing so now took them by surprise. Even Kihyun quirks a curious brow at you.

Before you speak up again, you roll your shoulders and give a small stretch. Between their nonsensical worried rambling and your own pile of work, you could physically feel the stress building up in your body. “That they invited us, I mean? As such a small publication?”

In your mind, it made more sense to be excited over being a small publication, taking a larger publication’s place, to any event. Even if it was simply as a fill-in due to a last minute call out—and even if it was a lone instance that may never happen again.

“None of us know anything about the content of the story—how the heck are we supposed to write on it?” The female senior who had been whining up until this point whines once more, and your eyebrows shoot up on your forehead in surprise. Even Kihyun, who is standing next to her, quirks his curiously raised eyebrow back at her instead of you.

Before you can think of the words that pop into your mind, and process them, you blurt out, “And you went to school for journalism?”

As soon as the question falls past your lips, immediately landing heavily into the air of the room, you tense your jaw—realizing just what it was that you said to your senior. But really, how could you go to school for something and refuse to write about it simply because you were unfamiliar with the content?

Next to her, the rest of your coworkers share curious glances. Kihyun presses his lips into a hard line to keep from snickering. Thankfully, rather than say anything, she simply scoffs and stalks off back to her desk. You watch, holding back a grimace by biting down on your lower lip, embarrassed over the slip of your own tongue.

With yet another sigh, you plop back down into your seat. As you do so, the group disperse their coffee gossiping, and you prop your arms on your desk and drop your face into your hands, fingers rubbing your forehead. There was a pounding just beyond your forehead, a mix of stress from work and the unnecessary blabbering that had been filling the workroom just moments ago. But, now, there was an added tension due to a fixation of worry over your lack of filter.

Beside you, the noise of the chair at the desk next to you shifts, signifying Kihyun’s return. At the sound of ice cubes clattering against each other, you lift your face from your hands to see Kihyun giving you a sideways glance, setting an extra cup of coffee on your desk. When you make eye contact with him, he quirks a brow at you, and there’s a sudden urge to smack his eyebrows straight off his face. They’re going to get stuck like that, someday.

“What?”

“You really don’t think before you speak, do you?” He muses, leaning back in his chair and scooting it back to his own work space.

“Tell me something we both don’t know already,” you grumble, reaching for the coffee. Giving the cup a small shake, you watch the ice cubes swirl around within the confines of the plastic amidst the milky brown liquid. “But seriously, how can you go to school for this and then decide just because you don’t know something, you won’t report on it? That defeats the purpose of both the job and the degree…”

“Not everyone has the work ethic you do,” Kihyun replies simply, glancing at you. “Drink the coffee. It should subside the headache. You’re overworking and stressing yourself.”

Surprised, you give Kihyun a dumbfounded blink. “How—?” You start, before cutting yourself off with a small shake of your head. Kihyun was observant, and after years of knowing him, as much as you wanted to ask him how he knew you had a headache and were stressed, it was better not to. It would only lead to him chastising you, anyway. Following his instruction, you lift the straw to your lips and take a sip of the coffee.

Satisfied, you set the coffee back down. It’s your turn to rant, now, similarly to your senior journalist. “Seriously, though, how hard can it be? Isn’t this just an event for the global opening of some hotel? The press probably won’t have any time to ask personalized questions, they typically don’t during those kinds of events.”

Kihyun pulls his gaze away from his work at his own computer, turning back to you. However, before he can answer he blanches. Curious, you glance at him, before glancing over your shoulder to see what exactly he’s staring at. As you turn, a white envelope is simultaneously stuck in your face, and you startle in surprise, practically jumping out of your chair.

“Sh-shit! Team leader!”

Minhyuk, towering above you, gives the envelope a little wave and smirks. “Since you seem so confident about this story, here’s your invite to the event.” Before you have a chance to react, Minhyuk loosens his grip on the envelope, allowing it to fall from his grasp to your lap. You scramble, attempting to catch it as it falls, watching his back as he walks towards his desk. “It’s a black tie event, by the way.”

You feel the color drain from your face, mouth dropping open. “Black… tie…?”

“Is there a problem?” Minhyuk asks, glancing up at you from where he sits at his desk across the room. You clench your jaw, sharing a glance with Kihyun before shaking your head. “Then I expect this to be your best article yet.”

By this point, your jaw is clenched so tight your teeth are grinding together. Letting out a silent sigh through your nose, you turn back to your computer. Slowly, you can feel yourself slump down in your seat further, in defeat.

You really don’t think before you speak, do you? Kihyun’s words echo in your mind, taunting, as you set back to work—heavy with more stress than before.

—

Hours later, you find yourself with your cheek resting against the cool glass of the bus window, blankly staring out at the scenery passing by in a blur. You close your eyes, the movement and slight jostling of the bus making the ache of your head worse. Your head pain hadn’t eased up for the rest of the day, much to your displeasure, and the turmoil of thoughts running through your head hadn’t helped to ease it up in any way, either. You’d ended up straining both your eyes and your mind further by trying to push past the migraine in order to focus on your work, which you suppose had made everything all that much worse.

“I’m too poor for this…” you mumble, dejected. A freaking black tie event that you had no money for. Now, you felt the need to complain as all your coworkers had—except for completely opposite reasons.

“Shouldn’t have opened your mouth.” Next to you, Kihyun is quick to answer.

You lift your head off the cool glass of the window, scowling at Kihyun where he sits next to you, browsing on his phone. “Are you a broken record?”

Lowering his phone, Kihyun lifts his gaze to you before offering a shrug, and you sigh in exasperation. You let your head fall back to the pane of the window with a lack of control, knocking against it, further jostling the pain throbbing in your head.

“Is your headache gone?” Kihyun asks.

“No.”

“And you just—” This time, Kihyun is the one who sighs in exasperation. “Look, I know financially it’s not the best thing to happen to you, but this could be good for your name. And for our company, like you said.”

“I don’t have money to go out and spend on fancy clothing, Kihyun,” you grumble, squinting out the window. The light is starting to hurt.

“It’s not prom season. Just buy a dress and then return it after you wear it.”

As the bus begins to slow, a bus stop nearing ahead, you lift your head off the glass of the window again. You give your head a small shake, pursing your lips. “My moral compass is disappointed in you, but not surprised, that you’d say something like that.”

He chuckles as the bus completely stops, and you gather your bag and stand, squeezing past your legs he tucks in. “Good luck. Text me when you get home.”

You scoff, wrinkling your nose at him. “Why should I text the good for nothing best friend that won’t even go dress shopping with me?”

Though you say this, you both know you’ll text him. Your relationship with Kihyun tended to be a bit of a push and pull, but he was easily the one person you could rely on for anything. And as much as you would quip your words at him, neither of you took it to heart. Kihyun had already made prior plans before this had come about, anyway, and you couldn’t fault him for that.

When you exit the bus, you turn to watch it pull away. Unsurprisingly, Kihyun has scooted toward the window you’d just been occupying, and you give him a small wave before he and the bus are out of sight.

Your head is still pounding, and as you walk up the street a ways in the direction of the mall, you decide it’s probably best to make quick work of this shopping spree considering how the pain hasn’t eased up all day. Neither coffee nor food had helped, and though you knew it was caused by stress—there wasn’t much you could think of that might lessen the stress and ease the headache. You just hoped you’d be able to sleep that night.

Just find a simple dress and go. Anything that will pass for the event, you don’t need to look good.

Of course, that’s much easier said than done. You’re on your fifth store before you find anything that might pass for the type of event you’re headed to. With each store, you watch the prices of the clothing increase. The time of the year means no sales, and because the type of clothing you’re looking for is so specific, it also means that what you’re looking for is bound to be more expensive than usual. Or, rather, at the very least—way out of your budget for the month.

You pull away from a few racks, adding another dress over the small stack draped across your arm. Resigned to your fate, you turn to find a dressing room to sort through the stack you’ve collected. From your peripheral, you realize as you turn someone is walking down the aisle, and you both shift to make room for the other. Without regarding the person, you mumble out an, “excuse me,” out of courtesy as you pass—that is, until a mysterious force of momentum works against you and you don’t pass at all, but rather find yourself stumbling backwards.

Simultaneously, you and the stranger both let out an almost-strangled sound of surprise, and you feel your grip on your clothing articles slip from your grasp, falling to the floor with the hangers clattering against the tile underfoot. Before you join the clothing in your fall, you feel a hand instantly reach out to grab hold of your elbow and steady you. For a brief moment, you glance down at the clothes, before lifting your gaze to the stranger who’d kept you from falling.

In the process of lifting your gaze up to the stranger’s face, you catch sight of the cause of all this—one of the clothing hangers in his arm is linked with one of your dress hangers that had been so abruptly ripped from your grasp. You let out a small exhale of amusement from your nose, before meeting the curious eyes of the man who you’d gotten caught by—or rather, literally caught on.

He quirks a brow at you, clearly having heard your soft laugh.

“S-sorry, I wasn’t—” You stammer out, straightening yourself up and giving a nod towards his arm. “I just thought that was funny.”

“Hm?” The sound stems from the back of his throat, confused, before he blinks down at his arm and breathes out, “Oh… oh—” and then he’s glancing up at you, his round and curiously lit brown eyes suddenly sparkling with a sort of panic. “I’m sorry!”

A chuckle escapes past your lips, more audible than your tiny snort of air from earlier, now amused by his reaction. “It’s fine, it was an accident,” you reply, crouching down to collect the fallen dresses. As you do so, he reaches to his arm to unhook the dress. Before handing it back to you, he eyes it for a moment, gaze flickering briefly to the stack you’d recollected.

“Going to a big event?” He inquires, mild curiosity in his voice. If not for the events that had just transpired, you would have thought him to be prying.

“Thanks,” you murmur, accepting the dress. “Yeah. Technically, it’s for work, but it’s formal and I don’t have anything… fancy or nice.”

The man nods at the dress he’d just given back to you. “That one’s the fanciest, if you ask me. If you’re wanting to spoil yourself a little bit, even though it’s for work.”

While the opinion of a stranger means nothing in particular to you, you still find yourself eyeing the dress he’d returned. It was fancy, you had to agree—but more in a simple, stunning beauty sort of way. With a plunging neckline, the black dress was simple yet elegant. And definitely not something you’d consider your style.

Rather than say that, though, you just give a small smile. “It’s also the most expensive one. I’ve got a budget and this party wasn’t in it until about seven hours ago…” You drape the dress back over your arm, giving the stranger a smile. “Anyway, thanks for your input and thanks for not letting me fall when we got snagged.”

Instantly, he returns your smile, and you’re almost surprised at the deep dimples that break out on his cheeks. “Have a good night. Be careful not to run into anyone else.”

You don’t think anything of the stranger and his dress recommendation until you’re in the dressing room, cycling through the different dresses you’ve chosen and trying them all on. Despite your better judgement, you keep ending up back on that one—the black floor-length dress with the plunging neckline that you thought you’d never be able to pull off, yet somehow hugs the curves of our body almost perfectly. Each time you try it on, you end up grimacing into the mirror and returning to one of the other dresses. It’s not your style. It’s not what you usually wear. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be…

None of the other dresses seem to fit you just as perfectly, and none of them tug on your heartstrings the way that simple black gown does. While you’d already resigned yourself to the fate of going way over budget for the month because of this whole endeavor and your giant mouth speaking out of turn, it takes you almost thirty whole minutes of groaning and grumbling the dressing room, physically pained by the dent this is going to leave in your bank account—before you find yourself at the register checking out, having chosen the black dress anyway.

“Oh,” the girl at the checkout breathes out as you’re busy fumbling through your purse for your wallet. You pay her exclamation no mind, until you hear the next words, “You must be who he was talking about.”

He? Who’s he?

“Huh?” Again, your mouth allows for a dumb reaction to fall past your lips without first thinking it through. You pull your gaze up from your purse to stare at the cashier.

“There was a handsome dimpled man who was here buying a suit earlier, said he ran into a girl who seemed stressed over buying a dress, and that he wanted to pay it forward…”

A moment of silence suspends between the two of you, before you blanch. “Pay it forward?!” You blurt out, voice raising an octave in panic. The girl at the cashier startles in surprise, and you immediately snap your mouth closed and swallow, attempting to calm your panicked heartbeat. “Sorry I just—what?”

Who the hell pays anything forward these days? Let alone for a ball gown? In your chest, you can feel your heartbeat quickening back into a panicked state, and somehow it seems to fall into sync with the throbbing of your headache that you’d almost forgotten was there. The constant pain had slowly fallen into something akin to a static white noise you’d pushed down.

The cashier can’t do anything but shrug at your confusion, fumbling as she works to fold the dress into a box and bag it, pushing it across the counter towards you. She seems to want to be done with you—and honestly, you can’t blame her, after your sudden outburst.

“There’s a gift receipt in the bag if you need to return it.”

You forget to text Kihyun you’ve made it home when you do, too distracted on the bus ride back to remember to do so.

—

You’re relieved, the next day, that the migraine which had been tormenting you for the majority of the day before is gone. You’re also slightly confused, having been so accustomed to the constant throbbing in your head for days now that you’d just assumed it was some sort of karmic punishment you were receiving, for something you’d clearly done and forgotten about. The throbbing just beyond your forehead and eyes had become such a constant, too, that the lack of pressure almost makes you feel, ironically enough, empty. The last thing you really needed was an excuse to dwell on all your stresses with a clear head.

Of course, that being said, Kihyun’s chastising blaring through the speaker of your cell phone is enough to bring the migraine back—or at least threaten to, anyway. Thankfully, it doesn’t, and you grimace as you hold the phone away from your ear, listening to his scolding from afar.

Because of the event and your migraine from the day before, which had been chronic for almost a week now, you’d skipped work. You figured if your job wasn’t going to take care of the expenses for anything else concerning this event, the least they could do was allow you to take the day off to properly prepare, considering how expensive it had gotten. Both of those reasons had led to you taking the day to sleep in, though, until the late afternoon, when you prepped for the evening and got ready. Kihyun had called you just as your cab ride to the venue—the hotel—had ended, and had proceeded to scold you almost immediately after picking up the phone for not only skipping work and worrying him over that and your health, but also for not telling him you’d gotten home safely.

As much as you appreciated his worry as your best friend, a part of you couldn’t help but feel a small bit of annoyance. If he had been so worried, why wait until almost six in the evening to even bother reaching out? When you’d woken up, and even as you were getting ready—going extra lengths to not only style your hair, but put on makeup—Kihyun hadn’t texted or called.

“Ki, can I call you later? Or tomorrow?” You finally place the phone back at your ear, interrupting his ranting, watching others similarly dressed to the nines mingling about in the hotel lobby. Kihyun’s phone call had come at an inopportune time, right when the ribbon cutting ceremony had begun. Now, with the hotel officially open, people were milling about and exploring.

The streets had been crammed upon your arrival, and you’d asked the taxi driver to drop you off a bit of ways down the block, not wanting to deal with the crowds and traffic. It had ended up working to your advantage, since it also meant taking Kihyun’s phone call away from the noise of everything going on, and the cheering that had ensued. You lift your free hand up, glancing down at the delicate watch encircling your wrist. The press event would be starting soon.

“What?” Kihyun’s voice is a bit harsher than usual. What the heck is wrong with him? He’s being a brat.

“I’m already here at the hotel. Since Minhyuk is going to kill me if this isn’t my, ‘best article yet,’ I should probably focus more on my work at hand, don’t you think?” You explain, glancing around the lobby of the hotel.

It’s grand. Fancier than anything you could ever afford to stay at, with marble floors and vaulted ceilings, decor ranging from colors of golds, black, and deep burgundies, and windows that spanned the entirety of the wall up to the ceiling itself. At that moment, it looked more like the home of a conference than the grand hotel that it was, with tables and posters set up explaining the project this specific hotel chain was aiming for—but the small details stood out to you the most.

Before Kihyun can get a word in edgewise, you continue, “I’m sorry if I upset you by not contacting you last night—but a lot happened yesterday and I wasn’t feeling well. I just wanted to rest. If you were so worried, you should have called before now to check up on me.”

You aren’t entirely sure if it’s you being petty, or him—but you hang up before he can fire back, not wanting to spoil the night ahead. Not that you were here to spoil yourself at all. You had work to do, and while you hadn’t needed to be at the ribbon cutting event, the press conference was something you couldn’t skip out on. Especially because of a whiney Kihyun.

Just as you slip your cell phone into the clutch you’d chosen to match your dress, a voice perks your ears. “Was that your boyfriend?”

Despite the vague familiarity of the voice, you still startle in surprise, spinning around on your heel—you hadn’t expected anyone to be eavesdropping on your conversation.

“You—” The word blurts from your mouth in surprise, though this time you manage to catch your tongue before you say anything you might regret, as you had done in the first place to get yourself to where you currently were.

The man from the mall department store stands in front of you, stunning in a plain black suit and white dress shirt. A simple chain encircles his neck just beneath the collar of the shirt, adding a slightly rougher edge to his sleek, professional appearance. There’s a neutral expression on his face, his eyebrows raised at his question aimed toward you and a small, polite smile at the edges of his lips. Despite that, though, his eyes hold a hint of curiosity—something you’d noticed the day before, as well. Maybe it was simply the shape of his eyes, or perhaps the color, but they seemed to be constantly sparkling, alight with unconveyed feelings and expressions of their own.

“No, that wasn’t my boyfriend.” You aren’t entirely sure why you answer him in earnest, especially after he’d gone and bought such an expensive dress for you—a complete stranger. Shouldn’t that typically be a warning sign to head the other way?

“I see you chose the dress, after all,” the man muses, as though reading your mind. Suddenly, his polite smile is broadening into something a little brighter, dimples indenting his cheeks. The sight of the deep impressions causes your heart to pull in your chest. He looks so boyish, you think.

But that’s all the dimples provide to his demeanor, aware of the way his eyes suddenly trail down your form. You become hyper-aware of the way the satin clings to you, and subconsciously scramble to lift your half-open clutch to cover the deep v-neck of the dress. He seems to take the hint of your self-conscious change in demeanor, bringing his eyes back up to meet your gaze—though pausing halfway when he notices that which you had been trading your phone for in your purse.

The way he steps forward, invading your personal bubble, has you tensing—a stark contrast to the comfortable yet shy trade you’d had the day before. His hand reaches up to gingerly trail up the lanyard dangling from your hand, which had fallen from the purse, before tracing over the face of the ID card attached at the end.

“You’re press?” He wonders, before he reads your ID aloud. The way his name falls from your lips causes your heart to lurch into your throat, his voice smooth and honey-like. He lifts his gaze to yours, his dimpled smile broadening. “I’m Jooheon, nice to meet you.”

Jooheon… The name lingers in your mind for a moment, just as he allows his hand to fall from your ID and he steps back. Why does that name sound familiar?

“You should probably head to the conference room, before you’re late.”

“Oh, shit!” His words suddenly spur you out of your thoughts, and the distraction of him in of itself, and you scramble to close your clutch. You had just been annoyed at Kihyun about the possibility of being late to the press conference, and now you were allowing yourself to be distracted by this clearly rich and overly handsome dimpled boy. “I need to go, I’m sorry to rush off like this! Thank you so much for the dress!”

You had wanted to discuss how to pay him back, somehow, but at that moment you find yourself rushing off away from him, instead, pushing yourself through the small clusters of people who block your way. Briefly, in your haste, the thought of if you’ll see him again passes through your mind. What if you didn’t? What if you couldn’t repay him for the dress? Inwardly, you groan, wondering how everything in the span of the last twenty-four hours had become such a confusing mess.

Trying to clear your mind of that specific worry and focus on the task at hand. You flash your press ID at the door before entering the conference hall, trading the lanyard out once more for your phone as you fumble to open a recording app, taking a seat. It happens to be just in time for the first speaker to enter the room, introducing himself as the hotel’s manager. As you listen to the gentleman speak, you idly flip through a pamphlet that had been handed to you on your way in—skimming over the details of the hotel itself, the history of the owners and shareholders and their other hotels, and the overall goal for this specific hotel line as a luxury eco-friendly brand, and more. Having done no specific research before going into this mess, none of the words particularly stick with you in understanding.

“Now, I’d like for you all to give a round of applause for the heir of the line and next CEO, Lee Jooheon—”

Lee Jooheon…

Jooheon…

Your ears instantly perk up, and just as your head snaps up in surprise, the familiar name doing cartwheels in your head, you catch sight of the dress man entering the conference hall with an even more familiar dimpled smile.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me…” you breathe out.

As he takes center stage, he gives a bow that is met with a round of applause, before he introduces himself. “Thank you all so much for joining me tonight for this event. My father put this project in my hands, and while it’s been challenging at times, it’s also revealed to me the hard work that he’s done through the years to get our hotels to where they are today. Tonight, I’m going to share with you our next global chain of hotels and introduce you to my ideas and the business plan from here onward…”

Jooheon continues to speak, and your phone records idly where you hold it between numb fingers. Similarly, your mind feels almost as numb as your grip does—turning over everything that had happened to you in the last day. You’d told yourself that you wouldn’t spend time thinking about these events, that you had work to focus on. But somehow, the events and your work had intertwined and tangled, and now you weren’t sure what it all meant. Surely, at this point, it wasn’t karma any longer? Right? But you also didn’t believe in weird twists of fate… so how the heck had this domino effect transpired?

You barely pay attention to the press conference, forget to engage and ask your own questions, and find yourself slumped at the hotel’s bar when everything is said and done.

When the bartender steps up to you, you barely lift your head from where it rests in your hand, sudden exhaustion overtaking you. “I need something stronger than that free champagne they’re passing out, please. A rum and coke will do. But make it heavy on the rum.”

“Sure thing.”

“You can put it on my tab,” a sudden familiar voice adds in, and immediately the exhaustion is replaced with a shot of panic straight through your system. You immediately straighten yourself up.

“No,” your voice is firm, and you glance over your shoulder—this time unsurprised by Jooheon’s sudden appearance, hands casually tucked in his suit pockets making his stance reveal just how broad he is. It almost distracts you, before you set your jaw. “We are not putting it on your tab, you’ve already done enough.”

“Does this mean you’re taking back your gratitude for the dress?” Jooheon wonders, stepping forward to claim the seat at the bar next to you. “Did you not like it after all?”

When the bartender sets the glass down in front of you, you’re quick to lift it to your lips and take a drink, wrinkling your nose very slightly at the taste of the rum burning down your throat, before turning to Jooheon.

“No, I’m very grateful for the dress—although my conscience is telling me I shouldn’t be,” you scowl at him. “Why would you even buy this expensive dress for me? For someone you don’t even know? And now you want to pay for my drinks?”

Jooheon frowns, only turning away from you briefly to accept a drink the bartender has set on the countertop for him, before giving you a thoughtful expression. “Is this not how you flirt with someone you find attractive?”

Dumbfounded, you blink at him, trying to process his words. Attractive? It was definitely just the dress… no, that doesn’t make sense, he’s the one who bought the dress before even seeing me in it… You shake your head, taking another drink. Two swigs, and the small glass of rum and coke is gone. You motion to the bartender for another.

“You should slow down a bit.”

Despite his warning, you have no intentions of doing so—especially as an instruction coming from a stranger somehow intent on concerning himself in your affairs. “I need this. I’ve had a hard…” Day? Week? Month? All of the above, really, though the past twenty-four hours have really hit you the hardest.

“Life,” you settle on.

“I can drink to that.” Jooheon raises his glass as another rum and coke is placed in front of you. Though you don’t toast him back in return, you both drink at the same time.

As you lower your glass from your lips, swallowing, you let out a small sigh. “This isn’t how you flirt with anyone.” Although his question has long since passed, you finally give him an answer, turning to look at him. You feel your heart skip in your chest, taking note of the fact that he’s already staring at you intently—as though, since sitting down, he hadn’t taken his eyes off you in the first place. Your next words have him frowning.

“In fact, you shouldn’t even be flirting with me in the first place. I’m just here for my job, nothing more.”

“Is this because you found out who I am?”

Your answer comes quicker than either of you expect, a sharp, “Yes,” exiting your mouth without hesitation. Jooheon raises his brows in surprise, and you purse your lips, staring hard at your drink before deciding you need more of the alcohol in your system, between your stresses of life and the current awkward reality of the situation at hand, lifting the glass to your lips again.

“So you’re telling me, just because I’m a chaebol, just because I’m rich, and just because you’re a journalist—I’m not allowed to flirt with you, or pay for things for you?” Jooheon asks. “Although, I will admit, maybe the dress was a bit out of line. But you seemed stressed and I was feeling generous, I just wanted to help someone. You or otherwise, it could have been anyone yesterday I did that for.”

“That is exactly what I’m saying. But, also, you don’t just go and spend money on random people without knowing them. It’s not common, and can be taken the wrong way.”

Jooheon shrugs. “I don’t really care how people take it.”

The luxuries of being rich, you want to blurt aloud in retaliation. If only you had enough money to splurge and spend on people you knew and didn’t know, otherwise, just because you were simply feeling generous as he was.

“I’m not a charity case,” you mutter, mostly to yourself, pursing your lips and glaring down at your drink.

“You never minded this before,” Jooheon retorts, just as softly, the tone of his voice sulkier than it had been.

Surprised, you blink, glancing up from your drink to stare at him. A small episode of panic has seemed to settle over him, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise—as though he hadn’t meant to say those words aloud. For once in your life, you’re glad it’s not you who has blurted something without thinking, one of your most common traits. But you don’t allow yourself to be too thankful, instead replaying his words in your mind.

You never minded this before. What?

Before you can ask him what he means, Jooheon’s phone rings. Saved by the sound, he mutters out a hasty, “excuse me,” and pulls his phone from his inner jacket pocket, stepping away from the bar to take the call.

Hasty yourself, you take another drink, downing the rest of the rum and coke and waving for another. As the bartender takes your glass away, you turn on the stool to peer at Jooheon, watching his back curiously as he speaks on the phone. His frame has straightened, his broad shoulders taking on a more tense position than they had been while next to you. In fact, sitting at the bar with you, he’d almost seemed comfortable—more than just confident in his surroundings, but rather it was as though he were sitting and sharing a drink with an old friend.

Your mind is reeling thanks to his words. Do you already know each other? Or had you met before? Or perhaps this was a situation that had happened before? No, surely I’d remember a random rich guy splurging some money on me… no, not even surely, you’d definitely remember something like that. As more thoughts swirl in your mind, trying to make sense of the words he’d uttered, you also find yourself beginning to wonder if something is seriously wrong with you. Kihyun had been badgering you to go to a doctor about your constant migraines, the ones that could almost be considered chronic by now—you’d written it off as just stress, telling him it was standard for the job and standard for the unlucky turn of events you were experiencing in life. Perhaps, though, it was actually more?

When Jooheon returns to the bar, phone slipping back into his jacket, you don’t even have a chance to inquire about what he’d said. In fact, you can’t even think of how to formulate the question correctly before he’s snatching the glass in your hand away from you and setting it aside.

“Hey, seriously. Slow down.” When he purses his lips, a faint hint of his dimples appear, and you can’t help but think back to your earlier thought from the night: He looks so boyish. It’s kind of cute.

“Shit,” you blurt aloud, the realization of the thought you’d just had dawning on you. Jooheon’s pursed lips quickly turn into a frown.

“What?”

“I think I’m drunk.” Why you were admitting this to him, of all people—someone you still considered a stranger, someone who was too curious about you, and someone who seemed to know something you didn’t—was beyond you.

Jooheon snorts out a small laugh. “No shit. That’s why I was telling you to slow down. Stress drinking is as bad as drinking with a broken heart, you know.”

You roll your eyes, giving your head a small shake and pushing yourself off the bar stool. You aren’t aware of the toll the alcohol has taken on you, a warmth spreading through your veins like a wildfire, overtaking you—until you find yourself unable to get a decent foothold when you stand. It becomes apparent to you, then, just how much you’d had to drink amidst your bantering with Jooheon. You fully expect to fall face first onto the floor, but instead, you’re surprised to find that Jooheon’s quick reflexes immediately have his arms snaking out to steady you, a hand grabbing at your elbow and another carefully curving around your waist.

The action brings you closer to him, pulled halfway against his chest. You blink, allowing the vertigo that has dizzied your mind in a very airy manner, one that has you feeling warm and content, to settle. Then, you glance up at him, hiccuping in surprise when you realize his proximity and just how close him and his bright brown eyes are. Something in your heart, and stomach, both stir, causing a small burst of adrenaline to push past the surface of the cloudy haze the alcohol has created and make you push him away.

“H-Hey,” he stammers in surprise, keeping an arm on your elbow firmly, refusing to let go in case you lose your balance again. “Be careful. Are you okay?”

“Fine. I’m fine… I just…” Just what? Got nervous? Were you drunk, or did you really have feelings suddenly stirring up for this handsome stranger? If he was even that—a stranger. Nothing made sense, and it made even less sense while fuddled by alcohol. “Jooheon, do I know you?”

Jooheon blinks, meeting your gaze. But besides that simple acknowledgement of your question, he doesn’t react any further. Or rather, he doesn’t turn it into a dramatic like you had expected, mainly at him getting caught uttering those words earlier. Does this mean he’d meant for you to hear that? You’re too out of it to notice the way his eyes briefly flash, before, a half-smile more akin to a smirk pulls at one corner of his lips.

You practically freeze when Jooheon leans forward, your heart stopping in your chest. The vibrating buzz of the alcohol seems to suddenly cease, stilling to silence as Jooheon places his lips to your ear, his breath hot as he whispers, “Rather than that, the question should be—do you really not remember me?”

As he pulls away, his lips find the side of your face—your cheek—pressing a chaste kiss there before he straightens back to his full height. Your heart, suddenly, remembers how to work again and goes into overdrive. If not for his firm hand at your elbow, you’re almost certain your legs would have buckled beneath you.

Jooheon turns away from you then, and you barely register the words he speaks to someone in the distance. “Hoseok, can you take her home?”

When Jooheon turns back to you, he pulls a little white card out of his suit jacket. As he lets go of your elbow, he takes both your hands in his, folding fingers down over the white card he places in your palms and giving your hands a small squeeze. “Tell me when Hoseok gets you home safe, okay?”

You’re too dumbfounded to reply, heart beating rapidly in your chest and echoing loudly in your ears. You’re not even sure you register his words—and, unfortunately, he receives the same treatment as Kihyun the day before—you don’t remember to get the phone number off the business card and text him you made it home, or tell him to thank his bodyguard for helping you all the way up the stairs to your apartment.

Instead, the card buries itself somewhere to the bottom of your clutch, which is discarded immediately as you cross the threshold and mindlessly find your bed, a distant reminder of the events of the night that doesn’t rear its head until two weeks later.

#jooheon fanfix #monsta x fanfic #mx fanfic #jooheon scenario #jooheon imagine #m.writes

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hiiraism4 · 5 years ago

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MLQC Song Fic : Gonna Keep it Under

TagYou know what to do : Listen while reading this

youtube

Pairing : GavinxReader, GavinxMC

Tag : .....enduring feelings

Words : 1800

What if Gavin didn’t interrupt you/MC on Blind date?

(Baby, you and I are best friends

So I gotta keep a distance

'Cause I don't want to risk the thing that we have, no)

Your meeting with Gavin was part of Gavin’s plan. It was arranged. But it would be a lie if Gavin said that he didn’t feel excited meeting you again. You both went from awkward to each other to feeling content to each other. You, who were afraid of Gavin, now would go around, proudly saying that Gavin’s your friend, best friend even.

You would never know how the term of ‘friend’ made Gavin’s heart flutter, even if he yearned for something else, something more. But Gavin would never do that. Being your friend, being able to protect you from far, not being awkward to each other and have fun with each otehr company was all Gavin could ask for.

It would be lying if Gavin said that his crush towards you had died. Nope.

All the years you were apart and Gavin still had the feelings towards you, even if he dated someone else, it didn’t never last longer than a month because Gavin was never emotionally present for his exes.

(And my tongue I gotta bite it

But it's oh, so hard to fight it

'Cause I don't wanna mess up all that we share)

“So, what’s your relationship with officer Gavin?” Anna asked one day, when Gavin took you to the shooting location with his bike. You turned to see Gavin, smiling. While Gavin maintained his stoic face, his heart was beating fast.

“He was my senior.” you told Anna. “He was scary back at school, but now i can say that he’s my friend.”

Gavin bit the inside of his cheek.

Friends, huh? That works too. Gavin rather be your friend and keep all of his feelings inside rather than risking it by confessing it and losing it all, losing you. After all these years Gavin tried to find you again, after the attempts to tried to be close, Gavin wouldn’t wanna mess up.

Friends it is.

(You're the needle in the haystack

That I found but need to put back

'Cause I don't wanna you to be that one thing I've lost, no

So the truth remains a secret

And forever I'ma keep it

'Cause I fell there is a line that we shouldn't cross)

“So, what do you like about the target?” Eli asked when both he and Gavin went out for a drink. Gavin glared at Eli and the latter coughed clearing his throat, rephrased what he just said. “I mean, that junior of yours.”

“She’s...the one who saved me.” Gavin hold the glass of cocktail in his hand, playing with the ice cubes by shaking the glass. “My evol was awaken by her.” Gavin closed his eyes, remembering the time when he was free falling from the rooftop and felt something awoken deep inside him when he heard the piano playing and your voice.

Eli hummed. “No, i don’t think that’s all.” Eli smirked. “There’s gotta be more to her, Gavin. If it’s just being grateful to her for saving you, you wouldn’t hung up on several girls you dated in the past like that. It was almost like you couldn’t move on from that highschool crush of yours, for years.”

Gavin gave Eli an annoyed look that Eli knew that he was right. Gavin sighed.

“True, i did like her even before then. She was an honor student, she had many friends, her journalist talent already exist since she was in journalist club.” Gavin sipped the cocktail. “She was scared of me, back then. But she never ran away from me, unlike some girls, even my classmates. She even gave me a bandaid when she saw a cut on my face.” Gavin chuckled to himself.

Eli was listening to Gavin rambling stuffs he likes from you, probably because he was under alcohol influence that Gavin bared his other side to Eli. Eli found Gavin amusing, like he was talking with a highschool kid who was in love. The older commander remembered the day Gavin walked in to the commander and literally begged for Leto to give Gavin the mission to keep an eye on you, even it was Eli who was originally supposed to do that.

“Then, since you’re close to her now, why don’t you confess to her?” Eli asked.

Gavin fell silent. For a split second, Eli swore he could see Gavin’s sad smile flashed acrossed his face.

“There’s a line that i should not cross, Eli.”

Eli wasn’t sure if he felt pity towards Gavin, or wanted to slap some sense to the fellow captain of his for being a coward,

(Oh, baby

Situation's crazy

How you make me love you, love you like that

Love you, love you like that

Don't wanna

Be caught up in some drama

And jeopardize the friendship that we have)

“Gavin, you’re back!” you exclaimed happily when you saw Gavin flew just right outside of your apartment’s balcony.

Gavin’s eyes lit up seeing you. He did flew back from his missions straight to your home when you send a chat to him, asking if he was okay since you couldn’t contact him for 2 weeks straight. Gavin landed on your balcony, taking off his shoes and walked inside your apartment. Soft pastel colors wasn’t really his fave, but seeing your apartment interior, Gavin just began to like it since it suits you.

“Oh no, you’re hurt!” you said as you saw Gavin’s bruises on his hands. Gavin was about to tell you that it was fine but you were forced to sit on the couch while you walked to your bathroom, getting first aid kit.

Gavin watched you closely as you pat his scarred hand with a disinfectant. You frowned, asking him “Does it hurt?” you asked. Gavin shook his head. He was so used with bruises and scars on his body. Part of the mission.

Watching you tend to his wounds patiently made Gavin’s heart flutter. You checked his other hand, find some cuts on his fingers and you also tend to those wounds too. You frowned, complaining that Gavin should take care more of himself, which Gavin smiled to and nodded as you kept on going on your rambles.

Gavin’s heart would even burst when you prepared food for him later that day. Telling that Gavin always eat takeaways and instant noodle so you opted to cook something for him. You weren’t really a chef like Victor but you thought your cooked meal was pretty decent.

“It’s so unfair, making me love you like that.” Gavin murmured as he watched your back, preparing the food for him.

“Hm? What did you just say?” you asked.

Gavin exhaled. “Nothing.”

(Being with you is impossible

I can never be too close to you

Baby, I don't wanna lose you no

I ain't gonna be delusional (oh oh)

Emotions start to soar

I lock'em in a drawer

Forever gonna keep it just the way that it is)

“Bro, what’re you waiting for? You should’ve totally ask boss out!” Minor exclaimed as he shoved down his hotdog.

“No.” Gavin deadpanned.

“But Gav! She’s going to the blind date her aunt set up for her, standing you up! How can you just pass the opportunity! Come on, i’ll help you!” Minor clenched his fist to the air.

“No.” Gavin shook his head. “It’s alright Minor. It’s alright already. I’m fine. Besides, there’s no chance that she would go out with that Chandler guy.”

Gavin heard from Minor that you went out for a blind date your aunt set up for you. You even told Gavin about it on chat. Gavin could feel that he was being anxious but there was nothing he could do but offering his help, like, he would definitely stand by nearby the restaurant you and this Chandler met and would definitely stormed in if things went south and you needed his help.

But what Gavin didn’t expect when he entered the restaurant and sat a little bit far from you was, you seemed to enjoy Chandler’s company. You even smiled, laughed. And even…...blushed? Gavin bit the inside of his cheek.

Gavin didn’t even know if having Minor with him right now was a help or a torture to him.

“Gavin, you’re impossible! What if she really go out with that guy?! Seriously i’d rather having my boss dating you! You’ve loved her since high school.” Minor kept on persuade Gavin to came and snatched you away from the Chandler guy.

Believe me, Minor. I’d love to. But--

“One more word, i’ll shut you up myself.” Gavin’s replied immediately make Minor went silent and gulped.

(So that's where it ends

'Cause baby, I love you

But I am never gonna tell you so

We can be friends

But never a couple

I don't wanna I don't wanna lose you, no

So I'll just go, go gonna keep it under

It's good just the way that it is

Go, go, gonna keep it under

'Cause there's just too much I would miss

I'm gonna keep it under)

“You’re dating Chandler?” Gavin replayed what you just said when he took you home.

You nodded excitedly. “Yes, i’ve been going out with him for several months. He confessed to me last night.” you smiled

Gavin didn’t know what he should react to the news. Happy? Sad? He should be happy because the girl he was so in love with is happy right now. Sad because the source of her happiness wasn’t because of him. It was because of someone else.

That’s how it is, huh? This is how it ends.

Eli or Minor would give him an ear later on but right now Gavin had to deal with the harsh reality. Because he didn’t wanna lose her, didn’t wanna lose the thing that he had with her, Gavin held it all in with him, bury all his feelings deep down. In all honesty, Gavin was insecure. Insecure that he wasn’t good enough to be with her, to make her happy. So he opted to stand by her side, protecting her, like a friend would, while he watched her from far.

“I love you, that’s why, i will let you go.” was what Gavin had in mind.

If you’re happy with your relationship with Chandler, then so be it. At least Gavin would still be able to stay by your side, even if he wouldn’t be able to taste your cooking anymore, or have any excuse to come to your apartment right after his missions.

That was for the best.

“I’m happy for you.” Gavin smiled, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Thank you.” you smiled back at him.

But Gavin had a bad feeling.

A real bad feeling about your relationship with the man named Chandler.

If this Chandler ever hurt you, or he found out that he hurt you, Gavin wouldn’t stay calm about it. He promised himself. He sacrificed his own feelings, keeping it under for years.

How long will it last?

[TO BE CONTINUED]

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miraimisu · 4 years ago

Note

"You're lucky your cute" for Lona? 🥺

[part 1] | [part 2] | [part 3]

Gladion isn’t sure what the ABC of friends with benefits says, but he doubts ice cream dates are in the manual. Moon says it’s not a date, but Hau and Lillie won’t be with them, and both of them blush when plans have been laid: it is a date.

Against his better judgement, he doesn’t say anything about the issue, because the idea isn’t bad and Arceus forbid he asks her out first.

As they stroll along Heahea City’s port, he looks around, tense and stiff. His baseball cap and glasses should conceal his identity just fine, and nobody is looking at them, but now that they’re on a date, it feels so surreal and foreign he’s unsure how to act.

Beside him, Moon sighs. “Stop looking around. We’re just normal people enjoying a normal day together.”

Gladion, always more self-aware than her, rolls his shoulders in a conscious effort to rid himself of the tension. “What if someone finds us and thinks we’re on a date? Do you really want the Alolan media to follow you around again?”

Moon looks away. “Well, so what? Would it be that bad if they thought you’re dating me?”

Gladion squares her jaw, and his grip on his ice cream tightens to the point he nearly shatters the cone. “That’s not it. We said we’d keep this a secret, right? What if Hau and Lillie find us strolling instead of battling like we said we would?”

Moon shakes her head, sighing. “You worry too much. Let’s sit down and eat the ice cream– we can tell them we’re just taking a break, if they see us or something.”

Gladion never thought trying to go on a date with Moon would be this complicated. Maybe if Moon had picked a more secluded place to go, he’d be enjoying the afternoon and not distressing over the media and tourists spotting them.

Moon doesn’t look pleased, but she’s not annoyed, either– as though she’d seen it coming.

He doesn’t know what’s worse: being unable to enjoy a date or Moon not enjoying herself because of it.

With a sigh, he follows Moon to a bench near a wooden juice bar that stands on the beach. Moon eats her ice cream, glancing at the beach behind her distractedly, and Gladion runs a hand over his face.

“Look, I’m sorry. I really don’t want anyone to find us out and make us the talk of the region.”

Moon nods with a smile, licking her lips clean of ice cream. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not?”

She shakes her head with a giggle. “We’re both new at this– dating and all that. You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t scared of journalists hiding around every corner. Also, your ice cream is melting.”

With a start, he fumbles to turn his ice cream around, licking the falling bead off. One of Moon’s statements sticks to his memory, and he gulps. “Um, so this is a date, then?”

Under her straw pamela, her shaded cheeks heat up, and she becomes endearingly bashful. “I– I mean, if you don’t want to–”

“N-No!” He looks around, knowing he spoke a bit too loudly. “I mean– yeah. I do. But I’m not sure how to act. We don’t exactly go on dates and, um, do what other couples do. Not like we’re an actual couple, of course…”

She purses her lips. “Of course.”

The silence that ensues is filled with the chatter of bypassers and the cooing of seagulls in the sky. He doesn’t like how she agreed to them still not being anything, and he hates how he can’t ask her to be his girlfriend like a normal person would.

For goodness’ sake, they’ve done everything beyond that step. They’ve kissed, slept together, traveled together and thus lived together. This is ridiculous.

Moon clears her throat. “You know, dates aren’t about us being romantic. We just have to do what we always do.”

Mental images of what they always do invade his head. His throat dries up. “Here!?”

Her eyes widen with an intense blush. “Not that! We have to do the other things we do when we’re not, um, doing that kind of stuff. Battling, walking around, eating malasadas, poking fun at Hau, fun things!”

Gladion chuckles. “Hau isn’t here.”

She laughs. “Fine then, no poking fun at Hau, but we can do the rest! There’s a Mantine Surfing contest. We can go watch later, or take part in it, if you’re up to getting your ankles wet.”

“I refuse to participate if you do. You always play dirty.”

Moon grins cheekily and licks her ice cream. “Fine then, you’ll just watch. We can use the prize to invite Lillie and Hau to dinner.” She scoots a little closer, looking at his lemon ice cream. “How is it?”

He looks at his ice cream, then at her. “It’s good. Do you want a taste?”

She nods, and he lets her have a little lick. He would have kept the little plastic spoon with him if he were with someone else, but they’re well beyond that line now. The sight of ice cream on the corner of her lips doesn’t have the right to look as enticing as it does, though.

Moon licks her lips slowly with a delighted hum. “It’s sweeter than any I’ve ever tried. Never thought you would like something this sweet. Do you wanna try some of mine?”

He looks at the ball of raspberry ice cream, hesitant. It’s not his kind of sweet, but if she likes it, then it’s probably good. “Sure.”

He leans in to have a small bite. At first, it’s a little too much on his tongue, but it leaves a pleasantly tangy taste in his throat. Moon looks at him expectantly. “It’s good,” he confirms with a smile. “Suits you well.”

Moon giggles, and before she can keep on eating her ice cream, she points at his mouth. “You have a bit of ice cream there.”

Blinking, he frowns. “Huh? Where?”

A second passes. Moon looks left and right, biting her lip; that’s the first warning.

With a little smirk, she scoots closer, their legs touching. Moon leans in, and for a second, he thinks she’s going to kiss him– that is, before she licks the residue off, eliciting a shudder out of him.

Her tongue had brushed his lip, and the contact alone had made his whole body come alive. She savors it with a wide smile, only broken when she looks at him again. She covers her mouth with a laugh.

“Um, your ice cream...”

He looks at his right hand, where only bits of the cookie cone remain. His lovely ice cream sits forlornly on the sandy pavement. He gasps, blushes, and Moon laughs at his expense whilst blushing plenty herself.

Gladion grabs her hand and pushes them out of the bench before she can embarrass him any further. Moon laughs louder, following him as he takes them to a secluded spot behind the juice bar, sheltered by the shade of some palm trees.

“You’re lucky you’re cute. You really are,” he grumbles. “Do you know what you do to me when you do that?”

Moon grins, leaning against the back of the bar. “I was just messing with you. It’s funny how bold and honest you are when we’re alone, but the second we’re in public, you turn into the cutest idiot ever.”

It’s not every day that she delivers such sweet words, and his heart reacts accordingly, thumping within his chest. “I– that’s not– I’m not an idiot, I just have a sense of awareness! And you know very well two can play this game.”

Moon shrugs, taking a bite of her ice cream nonchalantly. “You’re welcome to try anytime. I’ll just enjoy my ice cream.”

His whole being seizes up at the challenge. Her eyes are heated, just like when he’d face her in the League. It never fails to make him soar, because she’s just as great a Champion as she is a lover.

With decision, he grabs her jaw, and before she can get a word out, he kisses her, relishing in the lovely taste of her ice cream off her lips. She lets out a surprised hum, a hand halted in mid-air, before he retreats and licks his lips to relish in the taste.

Her throat bobs as she gulps. He stares at her, wiping a bead of sweat off his jaw. It’s hot outside.

They linger in the moment, letting it drizzle between them.

“Am I blunt, or am I not?” He’s shamefully breathless. Just the sight of her takes it away.

Moon purses her lips. “I– I suppose so. Just a little.”

A flicker of irritation courses through him. They can go back to their bench and keep enjoying the afternoon like a normal couple, and yet…

Gladion gazes at her, contemplating his possibilities. Her onyx eyes sparkle under the sun, her skin is slightly rosy, and her lips are plump and inviting. He can still feel them under his lips, how sweet she tasted.

His heart swells. He grunts, looking away with a gulp. “Gladion?”

Her voice. He had forgotten about that. He loves her voice.

“Goddammit,” he mutters, turning to her again. He tilts her chin up, slanting a hand right beside her head on the juice bar. “You’ll be the end of me one day, I swear.”

And he kisses her again, softly so. She gasps against his mouth, and tentatively holds onto his shoulder. They move slowly, and he finds himself entranced in the pace, in how she sighs into the kiss, in how sweet she tastes and that he’d like to kiss her like this forever.

He cups her cheek, tilts her head, doesn’t rush the kiss. Their lips move leisurely. His free hand caresses her arm and pushes her closer, and she bunches the front of his shirt with her other hand as she tiptoes closer to his height. Something falls softly on the sand, but he pays no mind to that, too focused on the bundle of soft kisses and eager touches against him.

She gently nips his lower lip, and the feeling makes his stomach twist and his self-control stretch taut. A guttural groan rips through his throat, and she giggles.

How can he deny that he’s absolutely in love with her when he’s melting against her? Does she know that he doesn’t mind being gentle with her? Does she feel the same way?

Moon pulls away, much slower than ever, and there’s merely an inch of air between her. She looks up at him, breathless, and he gulps at the sight. Her cheeks are adorably rosy.

Gladion never thought romance and soft loving touches would blow him away, but he finds himself absolutely enamored with this side of things.

Judging by how she’s looking at him, smiling shyly, she seems to feel the same.

“T-That was new,” she whispers. Her eyes travel down, and she gasps. “Oh.”

Gladion looks down, as well, only to find their hands tightly entwined. Despite their intricate and complicated relationship, they’ve never held hands; they weren’t supposed to be anything but heartless lovers seeking heated affection.

And now, here they are, being anything but that.

In the distance, he hears the ring of a bell, the cry of a happy Mantine splashing in the sea. He looks over his shoulder to find people gathering at the shore.

He caresses her knuckles with his thumb, hesitant.

Nobody will know it’s them.

Gladion tugs them away from the shade and strolls to the contest. He refuses to look at her lest she finds the shameful red tinting his cheeks. “C’mon. We have a race to win.”

“Wait, we’re still–!” Moon squeals as Gladion pushes her to his side.

“Let’s act like a normal couple for once,” he grumbles, pushing his baseball cap further over his head. “We can talk about it later.”

Moon laughs, but doesn’t say anything against the idea. She gives his hand a little squeeze, and when they reach the crowd queuing for the contest, he squeezes back, tracing her knuckles with his thumb absent-mindedly as she leans against him.

If this is what it means to be actually dating… he might need to reconsider their conditions.

#ask #lonashipping #gladimoon #pokemon #probably too much kissing #I rarely write kisses so I'm very shocked at my self LMAOOOOO #really enjoying these tbh ghfjdsklñ #so thanks for asking Champy!!!!!#sorry for the thirst LMAOOOO #and sorry about making these so interconnected I JUST SUDDENLY LIKE FRIENDS W BENEFITS LMAO

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earsofducks · 4 years ago

Text

Day 4 - Blogging

Hello and welcome to blogging and online dating and such an intense crush, my gosh.

@ineffablehusbandsweek - thank you for reblogging everything, and thank you for putting this together!!! Why did I not say this before?? You’re fantastic and I appreciate you.

One of Crowley’s favourite things about being a full-time blogger is that he can sleep whenever he wants to for however long he wants. For example, it’s two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, and he’s only just rolling out of bed and no one is judging him. What a good life.

He yawns, stretches, finds some water and drinks it. He stalks past his plants with a hypocritical “don’t you dare slack off.” He fetches his laptop from the living room and takes it with him into the kitchen, where he sets it on the table and then rummages in the fridge for some eggs.

Eggs are timeless. Eggs are always appropriate to eat. Crowley loves eggs.

Once he’s beaten and scrambled them to his satisfaction, he sits down at the table and opens his laptop.

20,000 hits. Not bad, he thinks, grinning to himself.

It helps that he used to be a network-employed journalist. He was good at it, too, at asking questions, at wheedling until an interviewee caved and told him the whole truth. But it felt restricting, being assigned things, only writing what his bosses handed him, so once his name got big enough he left the network and started a blog.

And somehow, it’s providing him with enough to live on.

He scrolls through the comments section, telling himself that he’s not looking for anyone in particular and knowing full well it’s a lie. He’s just about given hope when there’s a ping, a notification, and he clicks on the little pop-up, hoping that maybe…

And it is.

Angel1941: This was absolutely lovely, my dear. I have been so enjoying the chronicles of Frances the Fern. I hope that she starts behaving for you. Have a good week!

Crowley doesn’t bother hiding the massive grin that spread over his face the second he saw the user name. Angel, as he’s been calling the commenter in his head, started commenting on his posts about four months ago, and has been taking up progressively more space in Crowley’s mind.

He gets up from the table, grinning like a loon, and sets about making coffee while reflecting on how he should respond. It’s not like he can just say what he’s thinking. (What he’s thinking is something along the lines of “when did I develop a crush on you? Why did I develop a crush on you? We’ve never met each other!” Not the sort of stuff you can just post online.) He’s got to be clever, subtle, allude to the fact that Angel brings him joy without stating it explicitly.

He can do it.

Except he can’t. After a couple of hours, he gives up and replies in some little blurb about how Frances will shape up if she knows what’s best for her, and it’s good to hear that someone’s reading. Not even close to the witty, heartfelt content he was hoping for.

Discouraged, he goes searching for his phone and then pulls up a dating app when he finds it. Nothing to get your mind off of silly internet crushes like the cathartic left-right-left of Tinder. (Crowley is just enough of a public figure that sometimes people accuse him of catfishing, which is always fun. He enjoys catering to their suspicions, sending increasingly wacky and grammatically incorrect messages, until they report him and he gets to pull the ‘surprise! It’s really me!’ card.)

Crowley starts swiping, starting to warm to his work, and then a profile slides across his screen and his heart skips a beat.

Angel1941.

There’s the angel, beaming up at him, wearing a truly bizarre tartan bowtie and a suit that looks like it belongs in the 1800s. And he’s using the same username. What an old-fashioned... But he’s smiling, he’s happy, he’s beautiful, and Crowley can feel himself melting into the couch cushions.

He can’t swipe right. Angel won’t like him, not in real life. They’ll talk for a little bit and then Angel will, wisely, decide that Crowley is too much and he’d rather not have him in his life. Crowley won’t get comments that make him Snoopy dance internally. Crowley won’t have anything to look forward to.

(Crowley might just be enough. Angel might just like him. All his dreams might just come true.)

Not probable, but the possibility will be much more concrete than if he doesn’t take the risk.

Well, shucks, he thinks, and swipes right.

It’s a match! the screen congratulates him, and Crowley’s insides flop around like fish out of water.

Well, that’s done now, he tells himself, and sets his phone down resolving not to look at it again unless he gets a notification.

He picks it up a few minutes later.

After agonizing nearly the entire afternoon over whether he should send a message, Crowley’s phone pings from across the kitchen and he dives for it, nearly toppling his glass of wine as he does so.

Angel1941: Well, hello there! Perhaps I can hear about Frances in real-time updates. :)

Crowley sags against the counter and clutches his phone to his chest, smiling hard enough to hurt his face.

Angel - Aziraphale, actually, it turns out, but habits are hard to break - is a brilliant conversationalist, and seems to somehow enjoy Crowley’s pathetic attempts at responding in kind. Crowley doesn’t know why he seems to be so tongue-tied (as it were) when he’s speaking to Aziraphale - he’s a writer, for goodness’ sake - but he’s grateful that Aziraphale doesn’t mind.

As far as he can tell, anyway.

They chat off and on for nearly two months, and Aziraphale comments on every blog post and then gives in-depth reviews to Crowley later, and Crowley is having the time of his life. He gives Aziraphale his number and they switch from Tinder to texting.

Aziraphale starts calling him ‘dear.’ (He nearly chokes to death on his coffee the first time.)

He learns that Aziraphale works at the local library, that he loves sushi and hates hot dogs, that he goes to St. James’s every weekend to feed the ducks (frozen peas and things like that, of course, because bread is bad for them. Did you know that? Crowley hadn’t, but had been glad to find out.) and take a stroll, that he wants to go to Paris for the crepes.

(All the way to Paris just for crepes, angel, really?

I’d do a good many things for crepes, dear. You ought to know that by now.)

After two months, Aziraphale sends him a message that nearly sends him into cardiac arrest.

Angel: I’ve got something I’ve been meaning to say.

Crowley physically winces and sets about trying to brace himself for something like ‘you’re fun to talk to, but I’ve had about all I can’ or ‘I’ve had enough of you and your nonsense’ or ‘this was all a cruel joke and I’ve never actually cared about you.’ (He may be, possibly, a little dramatic.)

Crowley: ask away

Crowley tosses his phone onto the couch and paces his flat restlessly. He really, really, really doesn’t want to stop talking to Aziraphale. He’s gotten more than a little attached, and he doesn’t - he can’t -

His phone buzzes and he lunges for it.

Angel: Very well.

Crowley, it has been an absolute joy texting with you, but

Crowley’s heart sinks. He hasn’t opened the message. He doesn’t really want to. He looks at his lock screen until it goes black, and then he finds that he wants to know. (Needs to know, even.)

Angel: Very well.

Crowley, it has been an absolute joy texting with you, but I must confess that I’d dearly love to see your face and speak with you in person.

Would you consider joining me for dinner sometime this week? If you’re free, of course.

I’d very much like to take you to the Ritz, if you’d be amenable.

Crowley laughs. He laughs and jumps up and down like an excited toddler and clutches his phone to his chest and holds it at arms’ length and chucks it at the couch again.

“Yes!” he cries to his empty apartment, “yes!”

After he’s celebrated enough, he picks up his phone again.

Crowley: I’d be amenable.

Angel: Oh, good! Shall we say Sunday? 9 pm?

Crowley: It’s a date.

#ineffable husbands au week #aziraphale #crowley #have I mentioned that I love them #because I do #blogger au #blogging #online dating #tinder #I have no idea how any of these things work #I don't know what I'm doing

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marithlizard · 4 years ago

Text

Ace Attorney: Rise From the Ashes (part 1)

A couple of people expressed interest in a writeup as I play through the game, so I thought I’d give quasi-liveblogging a try. It might have come out to be too detailed - let me know if the result is amusing enough to go through the next part.

(I knew this already, but wow liveblogging is a lot of work. And it must take twice as much effort to do this for a show and to include screencaps.)

(I’ve tried three times now to put proper line breaks/spacing in, and they’re just not displaying, at least on desktop. I’m sorry.)

A brief, stylized opening designed not to give away much, except that a creepy-looking doll is involved.

Two months? Phoenix, you haven't taken a single client since Maya left? a) are you depressed, and b) how are you paying rent on the office?

Ookay, you're not going to tell us why you've been moping around. I don't think it's that you have a crush on Maya. Are you just not able to function without a partner? That's not great for your ability to survive, but I can sympathize.

New perky assistant, right on cue. (A partner who isn't a young girl would be a nice change now and then. (But not Larry. Anyone but Larry. In fact, I take it back, this girl with the pink sunglasses will do just fine.))

Oof, Phoenix still not being able to say out loud that Mia's dead.

In the first two minutes pink-glasses girl has asserted that he's his female boss, the coffee boy, and 'better than nothing'. Aha! The problem with all the clients he turned down was that they didn't insult him enough.

Kid, you can't be more than sixteen, and you have silly face buttons on your lab coat. You are about as much a scientific investigator as Photography Girl last episode was a journalist. ...But apparently you have a future job lined up in forensics, so you're more organized than she was. And this world certainly could use more competent crime scene analysis.

"I promised her I'd bring Mia Fey". Huh. Is Mia's murder not well-known to the public, then, even though the Edgeworth case apparently got famous enough to earn Phoenix a bit of a reputation?

A murder charge with an eyewitness, and an assistant who "kind of hates" her sister the defendant. Sounds hopeless, let's do it! Off to the Detention Center.

...Did we just overhear the defendant threatening their terrified guard with a pay freeze? Is she their boss? And if she's someone that high up, why doesn't she already have a better defense attorney?

I like Lana Skye's character design. She looks as though she should be starring in a Takurazuka revue show, swearing eternal star-crossed love to a princess.

She insists she did it. By genre convention we know that can't be the case; my first assumption is that she's being forced to cover for someone, blackmailed or coerced by someone higher up in the system. But it would certainly be interesting if it turned out she was covering for Ema.

Must....resist...plotbunnies...

Oookay. A prosecutor should certainly know ways to commit murder without getting caught, and this sounds like the opposite of those ways. WHY does she claim she did this? You're not even going to ask her, are you? *headdesk*

Ema: "Please ignore that totally gay statement by my sister, because I certainly plan to!"

Lana: "No don't help me, go away go away go away go away go awa-oh fine."

Hmmm. From Ema's description of the behavior change, Lana has been being blackmailed or coerced for a long time now.

Time to go investigate the underground parking garage.

Attorneys aren't supposed to examine crime scenes, and defense attorneys aren't entitled to a copy of the police investigation reports. What does a "normal" defense attorney in this world do for their clients then? Always assume a loss and try to negotiate a plea bargain? I wonder if we'll ever get to see one in action.

It's...a cop with a cowboy fetish? Do police not have dress codes here? Maybe they're waived above a certain level, and some people take pride in cultivating a unique style to show off that they can. It would explain Edgeworth.

You are dramatically pretending to shave in front of us. Also you just called Ema a baby cow. Although you know her and seem sympathetic - I guess Lana brought her little sister to the office sometimes? Not sure what I think of you, Jake Marshall.

I am revising my stance. Being Phoenix's partner on a case requires precise and narrow qualifications. Specifically, just enough sense to stop him from doing something breathtakingly stupid, but not enough sense to take the badge firmly away from him and do the job themselves. Ema fits the bill perfectly.

Ooh, new mechanic! And an ID card number for a Bruce Goodman who dresses like a white-hat agent in Spy vs Spy. (I was trained on games that would require you to write that number down and remember it later, but AA will certainly be more forgiving.)

Using the new mechanic on Phoenix's attorney badge, I deduce that at some point this game it will be stolen.

It doesn't explain Lana's supposed actions, but that red sports car does kind of scream "My owner is a jerk, stuff a body in my trunk." Instead of a chalk outline, they seem to have outlined the hanging body with string? Is that actually a technique, and how do they get the rope to stay put in precise outline?

And the cowboy gives them a hint. So he's on their side but constrained by rules?

Lady put the boobs away. Why are you selling sushi in a negligee under a fur coat, at a crime scene? And why would anyone trust food from someone whose nickname is "the Cough-Up Queen"?

Angel Starr, dominatrix lunch lady. It says something that this is not the weirdest witness in an AA game so far.

She hates prosecutors, and therefore especially Lana. Not a trustworthy witness. But it's probably no fun to cater for a group of (relatively) wealthy and powerful people you despise. Especially if they're smugly giving awards to each other as they eat lunches. (Eeeevil lunches. She probably coughs on them.)

"The rhythmic beat of Lana Skye's knife"... very poetic, but didn't Lana say the victim was stabbed only once?

We can't get back to the car, phooey, so up to the prosecutor's office we go.

Pink...everywhere...no question whose office this is, even if one of his outfits wasn't framed on the wall. (why do you frame an outfit?) I see a very ugly trophy on the sofa, so he's the one who won the award.

Ema: "this is the kind of room that just screams 'I can do the job'. Actually it screams 'I don't need to pretend to be heterosexual', but the two aren't unconnected.

Is it just me or is that trophy broken off at the top?

Edgeworth did you just roll with being insulted and make a joke about it? I'm so proud of you, you've clearly relaxed since your murder trial!

BWAHAHA of course it was Edgeworth's car.

Wendy the security guard from the Steel Samurai case is sending Edgeworth expensive presents?? a) that's both funny and a little sad, b) how can she afford it, and c) he keeps and displays them which is very courteous.

WAIT did you - did this game just heavily suggest Gumshoe hangs out in the office a lot? Twice, once when you look at the shelves and again when you look at the desk? I don't ship it, but this is the point where I start to see why people do.

Awwww he's embarrassed about the trophy, that's cute. So he's the one who "devours the evillest lunches of all", hmm? I wouldn't have thought the Cough-Up Queen's weird not-even-fresh lunches would appeal to Edgeworth's refined tastes.

Ema actually has a bit of a crush, from the way she's rhapsodizing about Edgeworth sleeping on the sofa. d'awww. And I definitely want to know the story behind the outfit. Made by his mom and too precious to wear?

Edgeworth, no one thinks you did it. Sheesh. He certainly doesn't sound happy about having to prosecute Lana, even though he believes she's guilty. His car, his knife... it almost seems like this is a plot aimed at him, or perhaps a plot against Lana with a healthy dose of fuck-you-too-Edgeworth to it.

Huh. Maybe it *is* aimed at him. I've been assuming all this time from his behavior on the stand that Edgeworth has indeed been messing with evidence to convict obviously innocent people, and also assuming that it's common practice in this corrupt justice system. (Much as it is in Japan and in the US). But the way he's talking about rumors right now, it sounds more like he's being slandered. And he thinks the award he was given was out of mockery. Ouch.

So yes, the trophy is broken. (In RWBY, you assume everything is a gun; in AA, you assume everything is a murder weapon. It probably broke when it was used to hit someone over the head.)

Evidence transferal day, huh? Was the murder timed to draw attention away from a case being closed? And Edgeworth parked his car only three minutes before Goodman was stabbed and thrown into its trunk? No way. He was there for the murder, or more likely that's not when the murder happened. (Is he being coerced like Lana? I don't think so, but it's possible.)

Enter an idiot mailman with a bandaged hand. And exit, with sniveling. What was that about?

And a hint to go investigate at the police station. Is Edgeworth being friendly, attempting to signal something, or merely aware that the most efficient way to get rid of Phoenix is to give him a clue to chase?

The police department entrance, with some sort of plywood jester figure in front of it. We're offhandedly informed that it took 30 minutes to get there from Edgeworth's office, which means that will be important later.

This is the creepy doll from the intro! It's clearly meant to be a mascot. Was it made by the sniveling mailman? There's a certain resemblance...

No, I should've guessed that Gumshoe made it. I mean ... mechanically it's pretty clever for someone who's not a craftsman or engineer? Moving articulated limbs and all. It's just the aesthetics and design he shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near.

Yes, yes it is odd that only the top-ranked people are being allowed to work on the case. Are they all in on it? A patrolman in charge of the crime scene instead of a detective - that suggests Marshall is part of the conspiracy. I'm thinking the dominatrix lunch lady is too.

Gumshoe is so happy about the prosecutor's award - Edgeworth probably didn't have the heart to say that for him it's a mockery. Daww. (Also there's something endearingly cheerful about his hopping-caterpillar eyebrows.) He's also being much more helpful than his superiors would want, probably just because he thinks of Phoenix as an ally in general now.

Back to the parking lot, with a letter of introduction in hand this time.

I genuinely can't tell if the lunch lady is a sex worker, if she actually has multiple boyfriends, or if that's code for her professional contacts in whatever she's really doing here. (And that's an interesting cultural bit, isn't it - any of those options seem possible, and I'm not expecting any of the characters to question her competence or morality because of it, not even in court. If this was a US-made game my expectations would be...different.)

"Good men always die young"...I see what you did there, Marshall.

Autopsy report confirms one stab wound. Lana and the victim worked together on "a case a few years back", ding ding ding. Someone didn't want the evidence for that case transferred. Or looked at.

Marshall used to be a detective but got demoted? And he's lying about why he was assigned to the crime scene, and telling us Gumshoe is off the case because he's friends with Edgeworth. The police chief, whoever he is, is now at the top of my suspect list.

Happily, the game will let me do dumbass things like show off Goodman's ID card without consequences. Marshall seems very uninterested in it and why it was found so far from the spot of the murder, which I take to mean "we have our official narrative, don't go messing it up with facts or evidence."

Finally we can examine the car! First up, Lana's cellphone. The whole business about hitting redial and somehow not knowing that Ema's phone rang was weird. Phoenix’s lie couldn't possibly have fooled Marshall, who is bizarrely claiming there's no way to know who the last call was made to. It's an odd thing to conceal, even given the “no facts please we have our narrative” stance. Maybe he's trying to protect Ema somehow?)

Marshall said the rumors about Edgeworth came from Lana. And we have a note found in the trunk: 6-7S 12/2, on a piece of Goodman's stationery.

Er, yeah, Ema, why didn't you mention your sister called you 3 minutes after the claimed murder time? If Lana hung up right away that's hardly incriminating for either of you.

End of Day One! We are, as usual, completely unprepared for tomorrow morning's trial.

#ace attorney #rise from the ashes #ace attorney spoilers

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thedeaditeslayer · 5 years ago

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The Cool Side of My Pillow Interview: A Trip Inside the Mind of Bruce Campbell.

When you mention the name Bruce Campbell, the first thing that readily springs to most people’s minds is the boomstick toting, chainsaw-wielding final guy of the Evil Dead franchise, Ash Williams. However, for some of his fans, he will be forever linked with the Harvard educated, resourceful bounty hunter, Brisco County, Jr. Then, of course, there will be those devotees of Burn Notice that will be quick to let you know that Sam Axe, the ex-Navy Seal with a love of Mojitos and Tommy Bahama shirts is their guy because we all know, “Chuck Finley is forever.” For those of you that have never had the pleasure of watching the inventive spy show, Chuck was Sam’s alias that he would use as a cover on certain operations. The mere fact that Bruce Campbell is a part of three vastly different fandoms says quite a bit about his ability as an actor as well as his likeability quotient.

A headliner on the convention circuit for years, the minute he is announced as a guest, tickets go flying out the door and venues sell out. Campbell understands what the people want and he is more than willing to give it to them which is why most promoters clamor to book him. His Q & A sessions are legendary and audiences love the way he sarcastically banters with them. In addition to being an accomplished actor, director and producer, Bruce is also a New York Times bestselling author with four books under his belt. If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and his soon to be released, The Cool Side of My Pillow.

His latest book is a collection of essays or as he would say, “rants.” This venture is unlike any of the previous mentioned titles and perhaps his most personal effort to date. In a sense, you get to take a trip inside Campbell’s mind. He expresses his feelings and opinions on a variety of topics from current events and social media to his code of ethics. I was fortunate enough to chat with Bruce about The Cool Side of My Pillow, and his future projects. After reading his book, you come away with the knowledge of how genuine and thoughtful he is which is refreshing in this day and age.

Diabolique: What I like so much about The Cool Side of My Pillow is your honesty. Your writing style makes the reader feel as if they are having an intimate conversation with you. You don’t hold anything back. There are certain aspects in the book which made me feel a tad uncomfortable because you shared some information that was deeply personal, in my mind. I don’t know if I would have included some of the things that you did.

BC: Oh, sure. You always have to decide where you stop. Where is the line? For me, it depends on the type of book. It depends on the type of subject matter. Every project is different.

Diabolique: Were some of the subjects you tackled cathartic for you?

BC: I don’t normally do that sort of stuff. I’m happy to share if I feel something is useful. In the chapter, “What Are You On?” I’m not ragging on people who have habits. I have habits that was the point. There are very few people that just go through their daily life without jacking themselves up, knocking themselves down, knocking themselves out, you know? So, its kind of amazing. The human condition fascinates me.

Diabolique: “A Little Effort Goes a Long Way” is one of my favorite segments. A tale of hard work, ingenuity and perseverance. Which is key to succeeding in the entertainment industry. Where does your drive come from? Some people can pinpoint it to relatives, a mentor…

BC: I do attribute some of it to the Detroit metro area. A lot of my buddies worked on the line, they worked in the factories, it was a great summer job that paid really good money. In Detroit, it was weird. There weren’t a lot of discussions about hopes and dreams. But I could see things happen incrementally that encouraged us. My grandfather worked for ALCOA Aluminum for over 40 years. Would he want to do that job? Was it his favorite job? He wouldn’t even know; it was his only job. He had that job for his whole adult life. My dad wanted to be a painter. I call him a “go betweener” because he didn’t do exactly what he wanted to do but he didn’t do what he didn’t want to do. He got into advertising because it was sort of creative but it wasn’t creative enough so he got into community theater which was more creative. That filled a very strong niche for him and so he kind of straddled the line and then I came along. He allowed me to pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted to do in whatever industry I wanted. He was the first investor in Evil Dead. So, I benefited from the transition of ONLY having drive. Meaning, you just go to work, it doesn’t matter what the job is. The next generation is, “Well, the job kinda matters.” My generation is, “The job matters a hundred percent,” because it determines what you’ve decided to do with your life. So, I am grateful for having enough drive but grateful for being injected with enough freedom of thought to then do my own thing. Partly the drive is the Midwest because you put a tie on, put your sport coat on and you go to work. Get your briefcase, shine your shoes and off you go.

Diabolique: Do you think it is important if you want to be in the arts to have a benefactor? Not necessarily monetarily but someone who encourages you like your dad?

BC: Well, my mom did sort of amateur writing so she was sympathetic at least to that side of the arts. She liked that creative side. My dad was way more interested in acting. So, I saw him in plays and stuff. I definitely benefitted because I had a sensibility that was similar to my dad. My two older brothers could give a shit about acting. They never touched it. I think my dad saw, “Hey, the young guy likes acting just like me.” That was probably an advantage.

Diabolique: Another thing about that particular section that is fascinating to note is your resourcefulness. The anecdote that you recount about having to come up with a way to deliver newspapers in a horrendous snowstorm and the lengths that you went to just to do your job is inspiring. I feel like that isn’t something that would be done by the younger generation, these days.

BC: We were pre-slackers and again, this isn’t to sound like a crabby, old guy on a hill shouting down about the great old days, at that time there were no other options. Our boss dropped off these papers at the top of a hill. That was as far as his van could go. He dumped the whole thing on me and my brother. We delivered them together (the resolution involved Bruce donning hockey skates and a toboggan). So, we thought okay. There was no option of saying, “Dude, I can’t do it. They’re just not going to get their papers today.” That would be the current response. You would wait until the roads were plowed, like that night, and then you would get your damn paper the next day and you’d end up getting two papers. It wasn’t an option. There was nothing in my upbringing that said, you can tell your boss, no. Now, if I thought it would have been very dangerous or life threatening, I probably would have said, no but short of that, there was a slightly different mentality in the air. You did what you were fucking told, for the most part which is a little bit different now.

Diabolique: “The Princess Di Factor” was a thought-provoking chapter because you talk about the click-baiting, disinformation and too much information that occurs on social media. Some of your peers have their PR reps handle their feeds but you are very present in yours. Do you think someone who is interested in getting into show business has to obtain “influencer” status?

BC: I think there is certainly pressure to do it. The old actors when they were doing a film could get away with telling the local studio, “By the way, I don’t do social media.” They say, “I’ve never done it. I don’t have a Twitter feed. I’m not starting now.” They can get away with it. But a younger thespian has a website and at least two or three social media platforms. I think its important to get a distinction of what are using them for? Facebook is all mercenary. Whenever I post, its just for a link to get tickets. I just do that to keep the account warm but I won’t add to it. That one is really inflammatory. They are finally starting to take the misinformation down. It should just be illegal. The stats are mind boggling. Something like 65% of the people who refuse to do social distancing and stuff like that get their information from YouTube. Its not news sources. Its like the Wild West. I think it needs to be settled. I would introduce journalistic standards and practices where by if you tell a little white lie, you get yanked and if you get fact checked and the facts say you’re wrong, that gets yanked.

Diabolique: At the beginning of your book, you discuss the toll of COVID-19 isolation and changes to the convention and motion picture industries. After presenting the Ashland Independent Film Festival awards virtually, do you think conventions might go that route in the future? San Diego Comic Con has gone entirely online which is surprising. Galaxy Con is another.

BC: If we don’t straighten this out, yeah. Sports are going to be weird for a while. Large venues are just going to be strange. How are you going to figure out the San Diego Comic Con? How are they going to make people feel comfortable jamming 125,000 people over a four-day period into that convention center which is already elbow to elbow and unhealthy? I don’t know. I’ve talked to promoters about a bunch of different things. I’m doing a Drive-In tour. Also, some theaters have opened up again so I am going to encourage and reward that so I have added five theater dates for later this summer: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City and San Antonio. I’m getting back out on the road. This is not a tour year at all but when I heard that drive-ins were making a comeback, I thought let me be part of that. Some of them are struggling to open and I want to help. I’m tired of being on the sidelines. I want to get back into it. Drive-ins are perfect. You’ve got your distance. I can go up to cars and hassle them and there’s no problem. I can shine my flashlight in the cars, see if people are having sex, there’s a lot of fun stuff we can do. I want to be the first guy they meet when they come into the place to park. I want to be the guy that parks everybody. It’s time. Everyone wants to feel normal again. Eat the meatloaf sandwich. Going to the drive-in is the oldest meatloaf sandwich you could ever eat. Bring the hooch. Hide it under the seat. Bring a cooler, bring your reefer…

Diabolique: In The Cool Side of My Pillow, you mentioned that you were going to attend San Diego Comic Con, New York Comic Con and the 2020 Electronics Expo which were all canceled due to the pandemic. Were you going to promote the Evil Dead game?

BC: That’s what I was going to do. That’s what I was going to those conventions for.

Diabolique: What’s the status on it?

BC: I have been looking at and approving a bunch of new stuff. They are full-fledged, full bore into it. I think they are talking 2021 for an actual release. Its rolling along, looking great. It got delayed because of the nightmare of video games. Platforms change and evolve. You look at somebody else’s games and go, “Shit! We have to change everything now.” We have to stay current. I have to finish doing the voice work.

Diabolique: I know you are aware of all the rumors surrounding potential work in the future. You even mentioned in your book that you had a few offers. Is there a possibility that you might show up in Doctor Strange 2 and Mall Rats 2?

BC: The Kevin Smith thing could happen if it all winds up together but we haven’t had serious conversations about it. For Dr. Strange, everyone is at the mercy of what Marvel is going to do and this backlog of movies they’re going to do now. So, I think it won’t be until 2021. Marvel has to figure this all out. They have to figure out what movies they are going to do next, what movies they are going to delay, what movies they are going to shit can, what movies they are going to advance and speed up…the marketplace is ever fluid.

Diabolique: Do you have a release date in mind for The Cool Side of My Pillow?

BC: I have to say summer. We’re blasting away. We’re finishing graphics and photos and all that. We’re doing some legal crap. I’m starting a publishing company too. Tartan Media is going to release it. It will be my Campbell clan logo. It will be just to put things out. Movies, TV shows, whatever. That’s the new shingle.

Diabolique: Is there anything else on the horizon?

BC: Because the book isn’t going through Simon & Schuster, they’ll kind of have to find it where they find it. I’ll tweet about it. It will hopefully be available later this summer through Audible. I am going to do the audio book myself within the next two weeks because I want the e-book and the audiobook to come out at the same time. That way it gives you a choice. I want this to be a summer read.

Diabolique: Any updates on Bruce vs Frankenstein?

BC: With Bruce vs Frankenstein, I talked with Mike Richardson, who is my partner on this and we’re going to start with a graphic novel. So, I am going to adapt the screenplay. We’re going to put that out first so people in the industry can get a better sense of it. Mike has been selling a lot of projects to Netflix and he said that’s kind of the way to go with his material and fantasy stuff so he suggested we do that first. We’ll get a great artist, sell it in comic book form, people can totally see it and as a director, its kind of like doing storyboards. It’s a tremendous amount of extra prep that I can do just by going through it because I actually have to think about pages, panels and descriptions. It’s a format that’s not my normal format. Screenplay format, I can fart, I got that down. This is different with the way it looks on the page so it will be a very interesting translation process.

Diabolique: Are you doing any projects outside of Tartan Media?

BC: There’s this movie, 18 ½. It’s directed by Dan Mirvish. He’s with Slamdance. The story is about the missing minutes of the Nixon tapes and what happened to those minutes. Originally, I got hired to play a character in the movie and I couldn’t do it for a number of reasons and then the guy came back and asked if I would play Nixon.

Diabolique: So, the audience will just hear you?

BC: Yes. Apparently, it’s this 18-minute-long fight scene where you will hear Nixon in the background. Ted Raimi comes into play Alexander Haig and Jon Cryer is playing Haldeman. We did all these sessions over Zoom and we each recorded them separately (saying this in Nixon’s voice) having our conversations. They will put it all together and put it in the background.

Diabolique: Anything new to report on Evil Dead?

BC: The official name is Evil Dead Rise. We’re getting a new draft in. I don’t think anything will happen until 2021. Full bore ahead, we’re very excited about it. A whole, new ballgame. No more cabin in the woods.

#Bruce Campbell #The Cool Side of my Pillow

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