#I spent so long drawing this idk who I am anymore
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reminder to take care of your loser human body
#danny phantom#danny fenton#college au#sam manson#tucker foley#there’s uh#lots of headcanons here#everlasting trio#they really ride the line between good friends and assholes#I love it for them#also#I headcanon the nausea thing comes when he neglects either half#do too much ghost stuff?#forget to be human?#get sick#too much human stuff?#energy too built up?#congrats you’re sick again#self care is important lmao#emetophobia#cw vomit#I spent so long drawing this idk who I am anymore
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Late, I know, but…! Only by two days, so I’ll still label/tag it:
Ichihime Week, Day 7: Mythical Lovers / Rainbow
I was planning on adding in magpies in the background this time, but I was getting lazy, and it’s already late, so maybe next time ^^;
(Also I was thinking of making a rainbow version, but it didn't come out as I would have liked? Idk. I still think it’s cute, though, so I put it under the cut)
Alrighty, listen: I really didn’t mean to wait this long to post. But, like, very shortly after Eid, my iPad’s storage filled up, like, to the point I couldn’t even access my mail (that’s how I found out, pfft). I was wondering why I’d ever need 256 GB 4 years ago… but still, it was $100 extra bucks. Sure, it was a grad gift, but 128 GB was expensive enough—still a lot of storage, too… Not enough, clearly!
Hoarding layers (and recoloring my own art, pfft) has really caught up to me… but also, it wouldn’t help too much if I didn’t either. After deleting what I could bear to part with, that took away around 5 GB, but merging layers in other works barely made a dent.
So I’ve spent these past few weeks wondering what to do, thinking about emailing my 2019 (imported from my 5s) and 2020 works to an email I also created 4 years ago for some reason I totally forgot about and never used so that I don’t end up taking any space in my actual one and then uploading them onto two (since I really don’t want my files corrupting) USBs via my laptop, trying to get those USBs from Target (but since I was adamant this time in getting 256 GB USBs—I don’t want to have to worry about storage for a longgggg time—there were none in stock), ordering them off of eBay instead since my dad insisted on their cheapness, waiting a week for them, then transferring them to that email and uploading them onto its Google drive if the files was too big…
But that was taking much too long and still left space on my iPad while I was doing it. I managed to complete the 2019 and 2020 pieces from my iPad, but it also only ended up being around 1 GB… So, like, I need to clear more years (breaks my heart, it does ;~; Sure, I still have access to them via that email and those USBs, but it’s not convenient anymore, and there are still pieces I plan on getting back to… ackkkkk).
Contemplating it some more and discussing it with a friend, much as I abhor subscription services, I finally decided to purchase a premium membership on Ibis for that 20 GB of cloud storage. I can afford the 30 bucks a year, and I like the app anyway—serves me good—and not having to watch an ad every 18 hours to access my go-to brushes would be nice, plus having access to the other stuff, but yeah: ✋🌈✨cloud storage✨��� 🤚
Anyway, I’m pretty sure a good chunk of what’s taking up my space is actually the cache, as I’m already more than halfway through my drawings, and I’m not sure if I’ll reach that 75 GB of storage Ibis was apparently taking up with just my drawings. So I’ll probably need to download everything, then delete the app and redownload it ‘cause stupid IOS doesn’t let you easily clear it 🫠
Anyway, I really thought I’d be done by now, but am not—that said, I managed to clear out around 10 GB off of Ibis (not my iPad; I somehow managed to gain back 5?? Somewhere?? I’ve no clue; I don’t see it), which is wayyy more than enough to get one drawing done for IH week, so I paused the whole storage thing for now. I actually tried to get day one’s drawing done on the 6th, but I’m dealing with perspective that’s hurting my brain, so I decided to get day seven’s done instead, ‘cause I thought I’d be on time…
Me? On time? Man, who knew I was so funny… 😒
But yeah, day seven is done! I’ll definitely revisit that day one drawing in the future, but not anytime soon. As if I wasn’t backed up already, this whole storage mess has backlogged even further, and there are other dates coming up 😮💨 And, y’know, gotta finish the storage transfer, too… Ahhhhhhhhhh!
Anyway, on a more positive note, gradient maps are actually very neat to use—had a little too much fun, eheh. I won’t confess how much time I spent testing it out on this piece, but here be my favorite:
They’re so golden <3 ☺️
#bleach#inoue orihime#kurosaki ichigo#ichihime#ihweek2024#ichihime week#fanart#digital art#the cons of digital art man…#and well me being a hoarder too but shhhh 🤫
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i don't know how to say it because i'm not super good at drawing boundaries but sometimes you guys get overexcited and can be a bit too mean, and while i can't ask for everyone to like, read the mood, it does feel really disheartening when i'm clearly being emotional or tired that it's completely irrelevent if you want to have your fun.
and i'm sorry no, "you can answer later" doesn't cut it when i can like, have enough energy to indulge in answering one ask and then everyone suddenly start to decide it means it's the right moment to fly in and really go ham about it. and nevertheless i will see the notification, i will see the message in my activity page, i always clearly see when i'm posting emotional stuff and there's a long ask about horny headcanons dropping right afterward. Sure I can ignore the ask for later to answer but that doesn't change the initial feeling of disconnect.
it still is my blog, it's still is the place i manage and have been throwing my thoughts randomly in the void mostly for over ten years, it's really touching and humbling that you have found yourselves at peace talking with me and it's genuinely sweet at times, but eventually it adds this level of stress when i am just not in the mood or clearly doing something else and then the inbox gets to explode regardless, or about it even.
I'm not asking you to care about what i do or anything like that but this is a difficult position to be on for me and ngl it really does feel like at times it just totally disregards my feelings.
Like i spent the evening of the day i was talking about going through an emotional moment out of the death of one of my fav chara of all time, having to answer multiple horny asks. And like, i thought answering one or two wouldn't hurt at first but eventually it's when i was 10 asks in that it really sunk in and i started to feel really depressed.
I'm glad you have fun here and i do joke about being a clown putting on a show, but this isn't really a joke anymore when i genuinely feel like you go ham like that without consideration about how i could be feeling because you decided to come and and hit the funny box. Unlike any of you who can go on with their day or can decide not to read things, i have to read everything that comes into my inbox eventually.
It's really difficult to articulate because it's usually not so bad, it's been a whole ton of fun and i don't know how to word it in a way that wouldn't just scare people of. and a lot of the problem is more in the fact that there's a lot of you and what can be 2/3 asks you may send sometimes add up to 50 asks a day, if not more, and if it's less it's because i carefully been offline trying not to blog about anything unless it blows off again.
But getting the feeling that i'm an entertainer who has to always be ready for the direction you guys want to take regardless of what i may be doing or feeling is starting to genuinely weight on me.
idk how to fix it, it's not like i want you guys to just stop messaging all together, and i can't ask for this type of attentiveness, but a little consideration would be nice once in a while without me having to be hyper explicit about why i wouldn't feel up to the task, especially since i do have the habit to carry on regardless of my discomfort and only realize way later that i've been pushing myself then.
Like idk just. just chill a little?
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im thinking about making a patreon because i .. uh .. i cant justify drawing for myself anymore and its killing me lmao
it takes me really long to draw so any time i hav should be spent on comms... iv been trying to fight off burnout by drawing things i like inbetween commissions like that sv anatomy practice and vampire/werewolf mngling was just for me but it still ended up setting me behind schedule because i had to rest my eyes and wrist afterward. but not only that i also wanna like. make a lot more things ...
like i wanna do animal, insect, architectural, jewelry studies and fashion and character design explorations and try designing icon packs and branch out trying embroidery with mixed media and clothes making and get into making like 3d things with clay and soft sculptures. i wanna make historical fashion coloring books with việt phục and fashion zines ...
also theres a lot of stuff i dont post bc im not sure if anyone would be interested in all the design concepts and notes i had for example the homestuck dreamer outfits or the various sha hualing designs and sketches i had before getting to the thing i posted? like i hav a bunch of different sqh outfit and hair designs but theyr more clothing based and not detailed character/face art ...
idk !! it sounds like an excuse. its like, who cares just post it ! i know i shouldnt value my art by the amount of numbers i get from posting on social media and i dont mostly but its kinda unavoidable ? to me ? i know i only post fanart and ppl follow me for that and its not a bad thing ! being realistic i just dont think anybody but me would be interested in it ??
i dont know. god. i dont know what this post is about. ''i dont think anybody would be interested in the things i really wanna make'' but im thinking about making a patreon for things i really wanna make anyway because thats the only way i can justify it is if i can profit off it in some way. i dont really want to, but with my financial circumstances i dont know. i never wanted to make my livelihood off my art. i dont even consider or call myself an ''artist'' really, i just want to MAKE art
i dont know why i still cant find a steady job after 5 months applying to everything and its making me miserable. its embarassing, they say to be persistent with jobs but calling and even walking in to check on applications and watching employers awkwardly try to turn me away without just flat out telling me no even though none of them hire me is an exercise in public humiliation. how bad do you want a job? bad enough to make a fool of myself with nothing to show for it. and i want to make art for myself to cope but it takes too much time and time is money
maybe this post is about my art anxiety under capitalism. i dont know
i think im safe enough now to admit my friends gofundme i was posting about months ago about helping their friend escape their abusive household was actually my gofundme because i was worried about them finding out and preventing me from leaving or internet stalking me afterwards. i did hav a scare when i got a phone call i thought was from my brother but ended up being a police officer, whos my mother's friend ...
but anyways. me admitting this is just to give context that. i ran hundreds of miles away from financial security and everything i ever knew and im still struggling to find steady income nearly half a year later. i just dont understand what im doing wrong. is it my name? is it because im not from here? iv been working continuously ever since i could legally my resume isnt BAD. am i just stupid? should i have just tried to make peace with my lot in life?
i thought getting away from my family would let me be in a better place to create more art, thats one of the things i was so excited about but this feels just as stressful as when i was the only earner supporting my family during covid. i just want a stable job so i can make art. i dont want making art to be my Job. i dont want to be a ''starving artist'' begging for people to care about my art i just want to make art. but fuck i dont know how to sustain any of this
sorry for this mess. insurance is different out here and i havnt been able to find a psych either so its not like i can talk about this in therapy instead of venting on my art blog. all my life i wanted to make things without the fear of it all being destroyed. the main reason i havnt branched out from illustrations is because its entirety can be saved digitally even if its physically ruined. my sketchbooks were thrown away or ripped apart by my family either from carelessness or anger to hurt me but now that im finally enough safe to have them again or make something i can hold in my hands without the fear that someone will come in break it and make me clean up its corpse i cant afford it
i dont know what to do. is it worth it? is making art worth it? i mean. its worth the rent this month. and i still love drawing god this is probably bad for business because i dont want people to feel bad for commissioning me or anything but not to be dramatic why does it feel like im fucking dying
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i just wanna feel okay. i just wanna move on. i just wanna be able to go a fucking month without thinking about her. all her memory does is give me massive anxiety, and fear, and dread, and i never realize it's coming from her memory until something triggers it again.
i fucking hate this. i know i have ptsd. i have SOME form of it. idk of it's the normal one or c-ptsd or some secret third thing but i'm not exaggerating, and i'm not faking it, and i'm just so fucking tired of fighting it.
it's not even about her. last summer, i almost died. i straight-up barely made it through. and my illness has been affecting me since middle school. my first experience with seeing stars was caused by my thyroid fucking up. my heart rate has been over 200 several times. i don't know how i haven't had a fucking heart attack and keeled over yet.
it's bound to happen. but also not. we're not tied down by fate, there's no such thing. self-fulfilling prophecies yes, and butterfly's wings flap and suddenly you're on the run from the law, yes. but it's not fate, it's an intricate web of cause and effect to get you there.
what caused this in me?
no one fucking knows. i'm tired, and i'm queer, and i'm disabled, but able-passing, and i'm hurt, and traumatized, and guilty of so many things no other living soul knows about, and i'm struggling with religion again and hating myself for it, and i just want to feel okay.
i just want a day where i don't have graves. a day where i can run as fast as i want, and a day where i won't fall over for it, and a day where i can lay on my stomach and pick grass in a field where it's warm or even hot but i'm not uncomfortable, or i want to be able to play tag with my brother, or just go a single fucking day where nothing matters and i can just.... exist.
i want to be alive.
i can't see my future. i can't see where i'll be in ten years. i spent last summer wondering if i'd see 2023. i'm here, and i made it to my 20's (something i didn't think was possible when i was 14), so now, i just gotta get to my 30's, right? but... there's so much shit going on. where will i be at 30? is it even worth thinking about? surely, yes, since the future is important, but... i can't see it. i can't see it, and if i can, the only reliable thing i see is loneliness. i'm always alone, sitting on a couch, touch-starved, watching tv and not even drawing. my hand got fucked up somewhere along the way, cuz of course it was, and i can't do anything.
they say that dreams are a reflection of the subconscious. that whatever reality we don't want to face, it comes out in dreams. but if that's true, why does she keep haunting them? is she in my future?
i want to be alive. i am alive. alive, i tell you.
.....but for how long?
it feels like i'm waiting for a clock to count down, that the people who say that we only breathe a certain number of times in our lives are right and my limit's almost up. i'm going to fall asleep, and not wake up, and no one will even notice for a few days because i'm already a hermit who prefers staying inside because the sun makes me feel awful and even when i'm inside that's when i get eaten alive by just, everything.
i got this far in life by being positive. i can continue to do that. but, my positivity has also blinded me to the bad before, and pretty much every relationship i've ever had has turned sour in some way because i refused to acknowledge a person's faults or express when i was uncomfortable until i couldn't stand it anymore. i wanna lay boundaries, but not upset people. i wanna hold a friendship for more than two years without it rotting away like an old maple leaf downed in acid. i hate thinking about my past, but i also love talking about it because i always think that imparting my bad experiences will help people somehow, even if it hurts me to think about it, but i should think about it, otherwise it'll fester and come out later.
i need therapy, but i can't get it. i'm alone.
i'm alone in my head. i'm alone in this room. i'm alone in this city. i'm alone in my pain, and my struggles, and i'm alone in my life. i feel like i attract bad people and hurt the good ones. i can't maintain a good friendship unless it's online. i'm going to be all alone, by myself, with no one to really reach to when my body finally fails me and i'm left to thrash around by myself.
i need to go to bed.
#dimond speaks#vent#severe content warning for this one- lots of self-negativity; helplessness; talk of death; ect#unreality in the tags#also ptsd and cptsd#i lead a fun life as you can clearly fucking see#like i'm lucky. i feel like i have it good. but at the same time i keep getting fucked over every other week#unreality here but the writers of my life cannot make up their damned minds on what my living space or mental state is#like just fucking pick one so i can deal with it properly!#i just wanna feel okay. i dont think thats a tall order right?
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Prelude - I need to stop catching sight of poetry on my explore page lol. This is entirely self-indulgent and very specific cause I’m rotting thru life rn and so if u dislike I understand lol. When I was in the hospital this last time it sucked rlly bad and like the awful horny degenerate I was I kept thinking abt Kirishima and soft sweet Sugawara idk lol
Pairing - Death god Kirishima x Reader
Warnings - Suicide, suicide attempt, no smut. Death. Drunk Drivers. Yandere but only a little bit and cause I can’t voluntarily accept love it has to be forced bc I cannot handle the thot of someone who is sane loving me bc there is no freaking way lol
Music - https://open.spotify.com/track/5Iy1wdO0tMaHwKnfFYtlel?si=-vqod-W6SHia8ui2Hdl_9g
Adding this one bc it’s like one of my favorites and I wish god I wish and I hope that this year is better than the last amen lol also there’s nothing more sad to me than someone pleading and begging and crying for the year to treat you nicely like bitch u okay? no. the answer is no.
https://open.spotify.com/track/0xRO7EKgYKVB8zKIoiXMDD?si=HYBaiBzjRGmQwfCHgnTUxA
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“It hurts.” You had told him, as the entity sat at the end of your hospital bed.
He often sank heavily onto the nearest surface, as if his bones ached with the weight of his body. You saw him often during those first few days in the hospital, days spent puking up pills, every move you made monitored, doctors and nurses scolding you about the severity of your actions.
You didn’t think they could see the hulking figure that comforted you.
“I”ve heard that it’s supposed to.” The red god of death would think aloud.
“I don’t want it then.” Tears upon your cheeks, soft, misty. “Take it.”
“Your life?” A nod would affirm his question, but the red god would shake his head. “I am no thief. Not a hunter, simply a gatherer of souls. I won’t take what doesn’t belong to me.”
“Then it’s yours, have my life. A gift, from me to you. Don’t make me live it any longer…..”
His sadness would show in his eyes.
But the soul-crushing hugs that were provided were admittedly a tiny bit nice.
“You’re far too sweet for your own good. I’ll receive your life when the time is right, not before.”
“But I don’t want it!” You sobbed into his shoulder, the god seeming to be your only friend in the world.
Hands stroked along your back, soft shushing sounds as the god attempted to soothe you in the ways he knew how. Soft touches, kind truths. “Many don’t. But it happens - life happens anyways. All you can do is find the things that make it less painful.”
“That’s not enough, it still hurts. I can’t stand it.” The sobs wracking your body didn’t stop the entity from holding you.
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
——
He’s patient and kind.
Surprising for a god who’s work involves collecting souls as if they were taxes. A job that should be bitter and tiresome, but the entity has infinite softness resting inside of him.
He walks with you, as you get “better“.
You watch him stop to marvel at flowers, to study the way dew drips from trees in little drops, eyes wide and wondering as crows startle from their perches and take off with noisy weeping.
This courtyard is drab and brown, a prison. Safe.
Yet the god of death treats the space gently, with respect. He thanks the old walls for standing, the worn stones beneath your feet. Their service is noted and appreciated. He’s so tender it almost makes you sick.
But you come to realize that he’s simply allowing himself to be vulnerable, to experience the earth and the beings in it.
For as soon as one recognizes vulnerability, which is so different from weakness or tragedy, one experiences a sense of tenderness. Without tenderness, pleasure means nothing. You need only look at the animals to see the truth of that. It is gentleness that distinguishes their playing from the actions they constantly take to ensure their survival.
You ask why he walks with you, why he is so focused on seeing you get “better“.
A soft smile, a meeting of eyes. “There is an end to your pain, sometime and somewhere. It’s most likely not here, not in this place at least-“ and he looks around, at the cold walls, the other sick patients, the staff. All human.
“-It will come. But for now, it’s enough to try and seek it out ourselves.”
You must look more sick than you really are, talking to thin air like that.
——-
Once you return home, the red god writes you letters.
He’s an old soul, an old god. You’re sure if you asked, he’d be able to recount the very first souls he reaped, a man and a woman, sinful and sweet but in love.
The letters help you get out of bed. What new stories or little quips the god has written pique your curiosity, even when you don’t want to move, don’t want to be awake or alive.
He tells you stories about certain souls, how each one is infinitely interesting, how they all interconnect. How some of them struggle against him, however fruitlessly. But he’s not the one who brought about their death, he’s there to comfort and guide.
Other souls, (“souls like yours” he writes) welcome him, run to his arms like a long lost lover. Their death was terrifying by their own hand, and it hurt. He can’t take away that pain, those memories. The red god says he wishes those souls find peace wherever he must take them afterwards, or at least, some form of contentment.
“The meaning of life is to give life meaning, at least, that’s what seems to be the consensus.” You rip off that part of the letter, hang it on your wall by your bed. The other letters you keep in your nightstand, content with the knowledge that there are souls out there like you
It’s hard work, creating meaning for yourself.
The red god takes to visiting you between each letter, says he misses you, the way your soul cries. He tells you that he wishes he could help you quiet it, quiet that raging, terrible storm that hurls you about.
You make him cookies - it’s the only way you know how to say thank you. It’s what your mother taught you, so it may not be right, but the god eats them nonetheless. He likes it when you eat with him, feeding you bites from his cookie, wiping chocolate off of your nose, making you laugh with stupid jokes and a mouth stuffed full of cookies.
Even if some of them are too crunchy, or others too soft, all of them imperfect.
Imperfection is the essence of humanity, he tells you, and it’s more fun eating each cookie with the thought that you’re devouring your imperfections, making yourself whole again, filling up the empty spaces in your soul.
——
Eventually, the crawl back to your feet, rise with the unsteadiness of a toddler. You fall frequently, cry often, but you’re able to get up and try again.
Some days you need to bury yourself in sadness, let yourself feel and feel and hurt. Other days are not so bad, but still tinged with regret and fear and sadness.
The red god is by your side, gives you something to cling to when you waver.
He is always there.
He will be there when you meet your end.
The god is in no hurry.
You question why he wastes his time on you, hours spent reassuring you, talking to you, tucking you in your bed and leaving glasses of water on your nightstand before taking his leave.
Home is a feeling, not a place. Home is with you - that’s what he tells you. You take his breath away, even though he might not even need to breath because he’s the god of death. HIs thoughts muddle and he trips over his feet and can’t help himself from wanting to hold you.
You learn that even gods yearn for home.
He’s capable of feelings and emotions just like any other human. He may be wiser, and older, able to draw from experience and a deep well of wisdom. But he still feels, and feels deeply.
Just as he gives the earth around him such reverence, he extends that same attitude when he deals with you.
“Everything I see reminds me of you. When I wake and the sun creeps over the mountains, hesitant, it reminds me of the way that you rise - haltingly, yet it happens nonetheless. The flowers in the field that so steadily grow, you’re like ground they take root in, soft and unstable yet still tenable with the potential for growth. I don’t know, I haven’t exactly held such closeness with a human-“
He trails off, but you think you understand.
Maybe you don’t. It’s hard to relate to a god.
——
A confession occurs, and you’re surprised to learn that the blood-red god of death is in love.
“What did my hands do before they held yours? What did my heart do without all of this love? I can’t hold enough of you, I carry such love for you in my heart.”
With a frail, hopeless human nonetheless.
You don’t know what to tell him, how to explain that you can barely take care of yourself right now, meet your own needs.
But the red god seems to know, seems to understand the way your breath hitches and your eyes widen. One more hug, squeezed tight to his chest while he promises nothing has to change.
Things do change, even if you wish them not to. The world doesn’t bow to your whims, nor the death-god’s.
Innocent touches, his hand on your shoulder, patting your head, offering to rub out the tension in your back after you’ve had a crushing day - they don’t feel so innocent anymore.
The constant survellience still seemed kind, and you knew it was with your best intentions in mind that the god hovered so close, invading every aspect of your life.
But a creeping tendril of unease took hold, and you worried.
Everywhere you turned, he would be there, ready to support you, walk you through anything you wished.
Again, you questioned his commitment. Why? Why you?
“I can’t explain how fond of you I’ve grown. How heat blossomed in my chest as we grew closer. There’s infinite things I wish to say to you, ways for me to express my-my love, but I’ll just let you live.”
He neither killed you nor let you live.
Was it frightening? Maybe. But you had nothing to really live for, lost, searching for your own meaning in a big big world, floundering in an endless sea of sadness and suffering. You weren’t afraid of anything the god could, or would, do to you.
Until you woke up, not knowing where you were, in pitch black.
Arms encircling your shoulders, a soft body beneath your own, holding you tightly, a hand caressing your cheek.
A sun rose, on a strange new land, on the blood-red god gazing at you.
“There seemed to be so much more time for you. But accidents happen, Drivers drink and hearts give out. I was expecting you to grow old, for us to live and love like that, see how you grew through life.”
He looked around this new world, and you vaguely remember what had come before. A walk along the sidewalk, blaring horns, impact, blood.
“But this will be just as nice. You can stay here with me now. Life can’t cause you anymore pain.”
You don’t feel comforted by those words. There’s no way for you to know whether this new world would be better than the one you left behind.
#kirishima#Kirishima Eijirou#kirishima x reader#kirishima imagine#bnha kirishima#kirishima x you#yandere#Yandere kirishima#tw.death#tw.suicide
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Texts from the Lost Tomb part 6.1
🎶 Back on the bullshit I never got off🎶
Is this another unnecessary story arc?? With three sections??
Yes.
Wushanju Crew Chat
Wang Meng: You know, I’m someone who appreciates consistency in my day. My life is pleasant, very few issues indeed if you ignore the big ones. And yet. Yet here we are. With unresolved messes at the end of a day.
Wang Pangzi: SOMETHIN YOU NEED TO SAY MARY POPPINS
Wang Meng: We need to talk about Huo Daofu and the glittery bead curtain.
Wang Pangzi: MY FAVE TEEN WIZARD SERIES
Wu Xie: did you turn on that suggested word thingy lol
What glittery bead curtain
Wang Meng: I closed the shop at 6:00pm this evening on the dot. I locked all of the doors in and out of the shop very carefully, especially in light of recent events. The hall leading to the back office was empty. I filed the day’s paperwork, updated and sent emails, and then spent an extra hour organizing receipts and dusting. When I came back out, there were glittery iridescent bead curtains over the front entrance to the shop.
What could this mean?
Wu Xie: uh that you need to spend less time at work?
Wang Pangzi: LOOKS LIKE WE GOT ONE FOR THE DETECTIVES. THE MYSTERY OF THE BEDAZZLED THRESHOLD COMMENCES
Wu Xie: I think we can be relatively secure in thinking a glittery bead curtain isn’t a hostile threat
Wang Pangzi: SAYS YOU
I REMEMBER YE OLDE EXPLORATION TIMES HOW FAST THINGS GOT FURIOUS
BEANBAG CHAIRS SET AFLAME AND LEFT ON DOORSTEPS AS A WARNING
GLITTERBOMBS FOR DAYS
PANIC AT THE DISCO
Wang Meng: Ugh, forget it. I should have just taken them down, regardless of who they belong to.
Zhang Qiling: They are not mine.
Wang Pangzi: A BOLD STATEMENT COMING FROM OUR PRIME SUSPECT
SOMEONE QUICK GO DRAW CHALK AROUND THE DOORWAY TO MARK THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
Wang Meng: Do we know anyone who *would* sneak in and put those up? For whatever reason, legal or not? Even as a joke?
Wang Pangzi: ARE YOU SERIOUSLY ASKING WHETHER WE KNOW ANYONE WHO IS CHAOTIC, AN OUTLAW, A PRANKSTER AND/OR SNEAKS INTO PLACES
BECAUSE THAT WOULD MEAN OUR SUSPECT LIST IS LITERALLY EVERYONE WE KNOW EXCEPT FOR YOU.
Wu Xie: okay let’s think about this; for starters, I didn’t break into my own shop
Wang Meng: You would be in danger of doing some work in the process, that’s true.
Wang Pangzi: LOL
Wu Xie: ANYWAY let’s keep going. For example, Xiao Ge would only break in somewhere for a good reason. Xiao Ge, did you do this?
Zhang Qiling: No.
Wu Xie: okay who’s next
Wang Pangzi: YOU REALLY MISSED YOUR CALLING IN INTERROGATION TIANZHEN
REALLY PUT THE SCREWS TO HIM
IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE;)
Zhang Qiling: How can we be certain *you* didn’t do it?
Wang Meng: Admittedly that was my guess, too.
Wang Pangzi: WOW I SEE HOW IT IS
BLAME PANGZI AS USUAL
ANYWAY HOW DOES HUO DAOFU FIT INTO THIS
Wu Xie: Oh yeah him! Oops I got distracted
Wang Pangzi: UR ENTIRE HISTORY IN A NUTSHELL
Wu Xie: Ugh fuck off
Wang Meng what abt Huo Daofu??
Zhang Qiling: ?
Wu Xie: oh sorry xiaoge I didn’t realize you wouldn’t have spent much time around him last year
He and I go way back
Zhang Qiling: Way back where?
Babysitters Club Chat
Wang Pangzi: I CANNOT BELIEVE HE IS BUYING YOUR INNOCENT ACT
IF YOU EVER TURN TO EVIL WE ARE FUCKED
Zhang Qiling: ?
Wang Pangzi: YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO HUO DAOFU IS
YOU WERE EXTREMELY POLITE AND BORDERLINE FRIENDLY TOWARDS HIM
Zhang Qiling: I wanted him to feel welcome. I wanted to be sure he understands he has a place here. A specific place.
Wang Pangzi: FOR A SILENT GUY YOU ARE A MASTER AT SUBTLE POWER PLAYS IM ALL TINGLY
LMAO THE IDEA OF WU XIE LEAVING YOU FOR HUO DAOFU IS HILARIOUS AND ALSO NOPE
Zhang Qiling: Rationally, I understand that.
Main Chat
Wang Meng: Huo Daofu is coming for the weekend—didn’t Wu Xie tell you? Wu Xie asked me to check in a week ahead so we could start getting ready for his arrival
Wu Xie: oh yeah I did do that
Wang Meng: Fortunately I know you and so I already went ahead and took care of everything.
Re: the trip
He made a deal with Wu Xie’s doctor that he would do periodic checkups on him here at Wushanju
Bc Wu Xie hates being in the hospital
And frankly the hospital hates him too
Wang Pangzi: FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT LOL
I FORGOT HUO DAOFU WAS DOING THAT
A VERY CHIVALROUS GESTURE
WOULDNT YOU SAY
XIOAGE
Zhang Qiling: Is it safe for him to be here with a criminal loose on the premises?
Wu Xie: Right, back to the curtain! Let’s focus on the curtain, hmm?
Wang Pangzi: I AM SO LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS WEEKEND.
ALSO WE CAN RULE OUT XIAO BAI FOR THE CURTAIN SHE JUST SENT A SELFIE FROM NORWAY COVERED IN GREEN SLIME WITH ZERO CONTEXT, UR PROTEGE INDEED
Wu Xie: okay but who else would do something so oddly charming yet illegal and—wait.
Snake Eyes Chat
Wu Xie: hey, Glasses hasn’t been in touch lately right?
Li Cu: uh nope
Unless u count the outdated memes
Why, is money or Xie Yuchen missing
Or is this curtain related, I saw Wang Meng’s tweet
Wu Xie: haha no nothing to worry about really
(I mean maybe? but who knows)
Wang Meng is probably just getting a little paranoid in his old age
Li Cu: better than getting reckless and stupid as hell in ur old age
Wu Xie: …hey:(
Unknown Number: Li Cu, we discussed this.
Wu Xie: ????????
Li Cu: *sigh* fine, reckless and stupid as heck
Unknown Number: …close enough.
Wu Xie: EXCUSE who is that
Madame, Sir, Non-Binary Tree Spirit, etc—whomst the fuck
Are you
Li Cu is underage FYI
So Im staying on this chat
Li Cu: okay first of all, it’s not like that
Second of all I’m literally not underage I s2g
u threw the embarrassing surprise bday party, okay so u should remember
And C, that’s my counselor and I invited her. She wanted to meet u and I knew u wouldn’t agree to a visit so I added her to our chat
we have been discussing u
Wu Xie: Oh wow!!!!!!!
What a surprise:)
hi so nice to meet you:)
Main Chat:
Wu Xie: RED FUCKING ALERT
FUCK THE CURTAIN FUCK THE VISIT
IVE BEEN TRICKED INTO FAMILY THERAPY BY A SMUG TEENAGER WHO TEXTS UNKNOWN NUMBERS
Wang Meng: I assume that means something to someone here?
Not my problem? Good.
Wang Pangzi: AHAHAHA GOD I LOVE LI CU
HES LIKE ADORABLE KARMA FOR ALL THE SHIT YOUVE PUT ME THROUGH
IM RAISING HIS ALLOWANCE
Wu Xie: wait i give him an allowance
has he been collecting on two allowances??
Zhang Qiling: Three. I knew about both of yours.
Snake Eyes Chat
Wu Xie: so uh may I ask your name?
Unknown Number: you can call me Ms. Lee.
Now, if you’re comfortable talking in this format, why don’t you tell me how things have been going?
Wu Xie: oh everything is normal and fine and safe as usual, why do you ask:)
Li Cu: I heard about ur necklace thing. nice of you to NOT mention it.
another dangerous adventure. again. prick.
Ur lucky your cool boyfriend cares about you so much or you’d have already died like ten years ago
Wu Xie: lol try twenty years ago
Li Cu: That isn’t funny.
Unknown Number: …What?
Wu Xie: shit ur right, okay that was a bit glib, my apologies.
…I use humor as a coping mechanism?
Unknown Number: and Li Cu, how do you feel about that?
Li Cu: he doesn’t even know what that phrase means
He doesn’t cope, like ever
In fact
It’s kind of why we met
Which is a funny story in retrospect tbh
Wu Xie: haha what are you talking about sweetie hahaha need I remind you of certain anecdotes that could idk send me to jail maybe lmao
Unknown Number: …You know, perhaps an in-person meeting might be more effective?
Wu Xie: haha such a nice idea but why
Main Chat
Wu Xie: If I go to jail, I’ll have to create alliances for protection, right, that’s how it works on tv
Who do we know who spends time in jail
Other than Hei Yangjing, he’s only ever there for like 12 hours and i suspect he just gets himself arrested bc he enjoys the breaking out process
Also how’s the curtain case coming along
Zhang Qiling: Has someone threatened you?
Wu Xie: well not yet but soon I’m sure
Wang Pangzi: WHERE WAS THIS PARANOIA WHEN WE GOT TAKEN TO THE TEA HOUSE HUH
Snake Eyes Minus Your Fucking Therapist Chat
Li Cu: okay how tf did u pull off spy and undercover shit
u are sus as hell
Wu Xie: damn son is it pick on Wu Xie night
I missed the flyers or I would’ve invited my uncles
Also re: the curtain it’s been mostly solved
Li Cu: I’m not your son, idiot.
Wu Xie: …oh. Sorry, sorry, you’re right, bad choice of words, haha
Forget i said anything
Delete this chat even
Li Cu: shit I meant
Legally, biologically, I meant—
shit
…I turn into an asshole as a coping mechanism?
Wu Xie: oh that’s all okay! I have to go do something else now let me know if you need anything okay kid thanks!
Li Cu: goddamn it calm down who’s the kid here
lemme organize my thoughts so I can articulate my emotions fuckin healthily or w/e
Ugh maybe for like one afternoon we could go to Ms. Lee together? She knows how to word stuff
Wu Xie: uh…okay.
Li Cu: Anyway you don’t need to worry abt jail
As if you would survive prison for one day you’d piss off half the place in like an hour or less
I gave Ms. Lee the heavily edited version of the desert highway to hell roadtrip and i discussed it more in terms of like “nightmarish but still wouldn’t take any of it back”
Well maybe the sand
that shit was everywhere
Wu Xie: oh kiddo. It’s fine, really…You don’t have to explain yourself to me.
Li Cu: no, no it’s just
I do technically have a dad
who is an asshole. Being a son doesn’t really mean shit to me bc it sucked.
So you need to stop backing down just cuz ur guilty abt stuff. I’m really really glad ur not my dad in a good way. Do u get what I mean there
Where’s the mafia widower I followed into hell, huh
Wu Xie: Ur a good kid, despite my influence. I’m really glad you have someone to talk to after everything I…after everything. Wow this talking through feelings thing is kind of weird but nice ur right
Jfc no wonder it took me and xiaoge so long to—you know what, we won’t get into that
Li Cu: ew tmi
Also re: this week’s recent necklace fuckery
I moved my stuff here, I live here now
So you can’t die anymore
Or else…Idk I don’t have a threat planned
anyways abt the curtain
Wu Xie: oh my god, kid…kid you have no idea
I am in tears.
Li Cu: see this is why I can’t be nice to you I can sense the hallmark channel from here
Ugh don’t be sad in ur room that’s dumb
Go hug Pangzi or something
Maybe delete this chat
Or the curtain thing
Focus on the curtain thing
Just stfu and go away
Wu Xie: <3 screenshotting this <3
Li Cu: I take back everything I said. This is why Xiao Ge sleeps on the roof. I hope the ghosts of the Wangs put up that curtain to strangle you somehow. Go die in a stupid way, it’ll suit you.
Wu Xie: lol don’t worry I’m not gonna embarrass you with it or anything
Main Chat
Wu Xie: omg guys look how cute my kid is *sending screenshot*
Wang Pangzi: I MEAN
HE IS WISHING YOU DEATH
BUT SURE
CUTE I GUESS
Wu Xie: no but read the whole thing:):):)
Zhang Qiling: It is indeed very hard to remain angry with you. And you are welcome to join me on the roof.
Wang Pangzi: UH NOPE
NOT WHENI HAD TO BLEACH THE COUNTER IN THE KITCHEN
DONT TRAUMATIZE THE EARLY BIRDS THEYRE ALREADY FREAKED OUT BY U YA HOODIE CRYPTID
Wu Xie: ok true but babe ur like a sexy cryptid
Wang Meng: so, are we just accepting that there is a glittery curtain of unknown origin, and Huo Daofu is going to have to see it while he’s waiting for you at Wushanju bc you’re going to family therapy?
Wu Xie: right
Wang Pangzi: SHOULDA TAKEN EARLY RETIREMENT HUH
Wang Meng: I’m going to go dust something.
Unnamed Chat:
Unknown number: so the curtain…
Unknown number 2: yep, not my best work but I kinda panicked last minute u know
Unknown number: what is in the water at Wushanju that makes everyone dumb and attractive
Unknown number 2: relax they’ll figure it out
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hii frech!! i just rlly wanna say that i look up to u... a lot. youre such a sweet, genuine person, ur art is absolutely amazing.. and idk man ur just so fuckin cool (not to mention u dont take shit from anyone, my infp ass could never lmao)
like srsly the best part of my day is seeing youve posted some art. ur so talented!! ur style gives me such good vibes idk how to even describe it.
alsoo i saw how a bit ago u got diagnosed with bipolar disorder and adhd, and i have both, actually, so it felt kinda nice to be able to relate to someone i think is cool hehe :3
anyways im sure having a random 15 yr tell you how rad and awesome u are is prolly kinda weird(?) so im gonna get outta ur hair now lolziez :))
love yah <3
(oh yah also im so proud of u for coming out as a he/him lesbian!! thats so sick!!)
trying not to cry real tears (I would like to think I take not shit but in reality I am an egg, I know I ain’t no pushover anymore qwq)
but um thanks;;;: I hope that you also get the same help and treatment I am getting with my bipolar disorder and ADHD and many other things....it’s a long recovery and I spent YEARS until now, me being 23 now learning I have it....it’s.....it’s gonna be hard, but I know I can heal and I believe you can too! sorry if this sounds weird haha but I just want you to know that we may have the same diagnosis kinda but we can work on it and get better!
It’s so.....baffling that I have people who look up to me as a person or content creator, I don’t feel like I change anyone’s lives or make a difference. I’m just a lad who likes to draw and share it on the internet so they can get a laugh or feel happy! I’m glad that my content brings you joy and happiness because that’s what I strive for as an artist! Bringing joy and laughs to others
You’re okay honest! Thanks for these kind words, I hope you’re living your absolute best life and I wish nothing but the absolute best and happiness for you and everyone who reads this! Thanks for following and supporting my work, without you guys I wouldn’t be here with y’all today <3 thanks for just being a fan
(Also thank you!!!!!)
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i loved you first.
an: I wrote this mostly a couple nights ago when I was listening to my "ouch" playlist and sobbing so hard I got a 48-hour migraine over the fact that I'll never see my crush again and I can't do anything about it because a) I'm moving in less than a month and leaving everything I know behind and b) he has a girlfriend. But that emotion eventually evolved into "i'm never gonna see some of my best friends again after we move away from each other next month" and that just turned me into this big pit of anxiety where I felt like time was just moving too fast but not at all and I'll miss everything if I don't go do something. So. I was fucking sad and this was the result. completely unedited angst. probably sucks ass, but that's how I'm feeling right now. Anyway, I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't really been around for a few days. I deleted all my asks so if you had something sent, its gone, and i'm just popping in to post this. idk when I'll be back this time, but i'm trying to take care of my irl relationships and moving and college and all that and it hurts a lot more than i can explain and everythings putting my anxiety through the roof lately. anyway........
song inspo: i loved you first- joan
word count: 2.3k
"You keep running away when I need you most
Running away when I get too close
My heart is full but yours is running out
I think I'm afraid of what comes next
Yeah, I'm afraid you've lost your head
Baby, you know that I loved you first
But now, you're in love with somebody else."
Mat was losing you.
You were his best friend. You'd grown together, laughed together, made stupid decisions together in the wake of your last breakup, he always came to to with his troubles, and, as much as he hated hearing the way your ex treated you, he kept his mouth shut and kept being the shoulder you needed to cry on again and again.
And Mat had been in love with you for as long as he could remember.
Ever since the night of your breakup, he'd been waiting for the right moment to tell you how he felt. You were fresh out of a breakup, and he knew that was the worst time to say anything, so he kept quiet. He helped you get yourself out there and smile once again. He brought that beautiful, gleaming smile back to your face. And it warmed his heart to know he had helped bring some of the sunshine back to your life. He waited and waited, comforting you after all your bad first dates and keeping his cool when you came over for movie night. He tried to ignore the way his heart pounded when you circled your arms around his waist and mumbled "At least I'll always have you, Maty." He tried his hardest to calm his heart and keep his eyes on the movie while you cuddled up with him, wearing his clothes, but the light of his TV betrayed him and lit up the way you were smiling against his chest, deep in sleep, safe and comfortable in his hoodie. He didn't tell you how he felt, all those years. He couldn't lose what he had of you in trying to get more. He would be happy with just this for now.
You rested against his chest, unaware of the way Mat was staring at you as if you'd put the stars in the sky all for him. He was so ready to give you his all, to tell you everything he wanted to say, to finally get to call you his, and hear you call him yours. He leaned down to ghost his lips across your cheek, letting the words fall before he even realized his mouth was moving.
"I love you so much, more than you'll ever know."
Maybe he said the words then because he knew you wouldn't hear, maybe he was afraid of actually telling you, afraid of the chance that he would scare you away with how full his heart was. But he didn't mind. He said it, and as long as he knew he loved you, he'd be content with staying like this for a while while you picked yourself back up and regained your confidence. Once you weren't still reeling from your breakup, he'd let it out. He'd tell you for real.
But then, one of your first dates went well.
He'd gotten his usual post-date text from you, the one he always made you promise to send just so he knew you were safe. He expected another letdown, a list of all the things wrong with your date, or ways they were just like your ex. Instead, you were gushing. Mat couldn't stand the hope in your messages, the way you were so excited, rambling on and on about this guy. He wanted to be happy for you, he wanted to be glad you were finding someone you liked, but he couldn't help feeling the pain from the sting that someone was actually taking you away from him again.
Soon, your movie nights together as friends were overtaken by date nights, and Mat was left alone in his apartment, sitting on the couch you used to cuddle him on, wearing the hoodie you loved to steal, and watching the TV show you introduced him to, half heartedly checking your snap story to see you in the middle of a date with him. He tried to hide his jealousy whenever you spoke of your boyfriend, he tried to appear proud and excited for you, but the hard truth he didn't want to face was that he was losing you. He was losing his best friend, the person he loved the most.
He didn't know when this started. He didn't know how to stop it, but you were pulling away from him. And that scared him. Mat couldn’t stand watching you fall more and more in love with this guy, not when he was right there, willing to give you all the love he had in his heart.
You were the one Mat went to on his worst days. The days when he felt like a waste of space, like he'd never amount to anything more than he was. The days it seemed like the weight of everyone's expectations was about to make him crumble to his knees. The days he needed you most. It only took a quick 'you free tonight? I need you.' text, and you knew exactly the state he was in. 'Of course Mat, I'm always free for you.' But ever since you started dating this guy, his texts went unanswered, unseen, and he was left alone on his hardest nights, with harsh reminders that the girl he loved was falling in love with somebody else right in front of his eyes, while he could do nothing but watch.
This guy had no right to come between you two. After all, Mat had loved you first.
He had comforted you for years over your shitty boyfriends, and this newest guy was no exception. Mat would still find himself, on rare nights, holding you in his arms while you sobbed about how your boyfriend made you cry again, whispering to Mat that 'at least I know you would never do this to me'. But the next day you were gone, running away from him as if you'd never snuggled up in his arms for comfort, as if the late-night conversations meant nothing to you.
'You're right, I would never do this to you." He thought to himself, watching you toy with the sleeve of his sweater and snuggle into his chest to dry your eyes with your best friend's warmth. "So why do you keep going back to the man who hurt you, when I'm right here?'
Mat had so much he wanted to say, and though he didn't want you to run away again, he could only hold his tongue for so long.
"I'm so glad you invited me out for lunch, Mat. He's been such an ass lately, so I'm glad to get away. It's been a while since we talked, yeah?"
Mat couldn't bring himself to answer. God, his heart was throbbing in his chest. He loved you so much, but you were falling in love with an asshole who didn't treat you right. You looked so beautiful sitting across the table from him. The sun was gleaming off your hair, but the beauty was made sour by the necklace that sat around your neck, the necklace your boyfriend had given you on your 3 month anniversary. Mat swallowed back his nerves. "(Y/N), I need to be honest with you."
Any trace of happiness on your face was gone, replaced with dread. Part of Mat felt like shit for making you feel like that, but another, more sinister part, felt a little glimmer of revenge. You'd been running away from him for months, abandoning your best friend for some shitty boyfriend who you still cried over to him, and maybe now you were feeling a slimmer of what dread he had felt when he thought of your crumbling friendship, and the love he had for you that he couldn't do anything with. "What's wrong, Mat? It seems really serious."
"It is." Mat took a deep breath. He couldn't meet your eyes. He didn't know when he started to feel uncomfortable around you. You had always been the person he could admit anything to. Now, you were pulling away from him. "We've been friends for so long, but recently, I feel like I'm… losing you."
"Mat, you're not losing me."
"Yeah, I am. I'm losing you to your new boyfriend.”
Finally, Mat met your eyes, and was astonished by the fear there. How could you spend the last few months drawing further and further away, and then be shocked when he confronted you? Hadn't you realized how little time you spent together? Hadn't you noticed how the only time you spent with him was when he was comforting you from something your boyfriend did to upset you? Hadn't your words- 'at least I know you'd never do this to me'- meant nothing?
"Look, I know you're happy with him, and I'm happy for you… no matter how much you complain about how he's an ass... but… we- you don't come over anymore.”
“I’m- I’m sorry, Mat, I’m more busy than I was when I was single-”
“No, it's not just that. You stopped answering my texts. You know… the ones… when I'm vulnerable. When I need you. I get that you’re gonna be busy, but I opened up to you about shit I would never tell to another person, and I can’t even get a response. You're running away when I need you most…"
He let the silence fall between you again. After a few moments, you spoke up, "Mat…" but your voice fell flat when you couldn't think of the right words to fill the air.
"You still come over, but only when you need someone to dry your tears when your boyfriend did something stupid. You come to me. You only come to me when you need my comfort, but you can’t give me the comfort when I need it, and I’m fucking tired of it.” His words weren’t bitter towards you at all. That’s not what he felt. He wasn’t angry at you, he was angry that either of you had let your boyfriend come between you, he was angry at himself for letting you go, for being too fucking insecure to tell you anything. “You- you keep telling me you wish you could find someone like me. But can't you tell how perfect I am for you?"
"Mat, stop." You were picking with your fingers, a habit he knew all too well.
“I know you remember that night.”
“Mat…”
“It was when you were still trying to date, and always came over after your bad first dates. We cuddled, we…. We got way closer than friends should. I thought- I guess I just thought there was something there. I thought we’d end up as more…”
“I-” Your throat was tight. You hadn’t even realized how much Mat’s words were affecting you. “You can't just… drop all this on me right now, it's not fair."
"What do you really see in him?"
"What?"
"What do you see in him? Does he really love you like you know I do?" You sat quietly, your mouth agape, eyes dropping to the table. Mat’s voice dropped quieter. “You know I love you. I know you know. Friends don’t just cuddle and… and fucking open up about every single little insecurity and promise each other they’ll never leave, and say ‘at least I know you’d never do this to me. I loved you. So fucking much. And it’s so hard to watch you fall in love with someone else, when my heart is so fucking full of love for you.” Mat scoffed in spite of himself. He knew he was fucking it all up, your friendship, any chance of a relationship with you, and it was making his words taste even more bitter. "You know what's not fair? How I have to sit here, watching you fall in love with someone who doesn't love you nearly as much as I do."
“Please stop, Mat.” You quieted him, your hands shaking, in fear of what would come of your surely-shattered friendship. “I- I didn’t know. I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“Bullshit.” Mat was well aware of the tears beading in his eyes, but he tried his hardest to ignore the burn of them rolling thickly down his cheeks. “I- I was always there to hold you… to comfort you when your dates didn’t go well or when your boyfriend fucked up. Can’t you see?”
The silence that fell between the two of you was deafening. Neither of you could make eye contact, and instead focused on staring at the table, not caring about the people inevitably walking around you and wondering what was happening.
“I’m… I’m sorry, Mat.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn't… I’m with my boyfriend. I can’t just…” You shook your head. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Nothing.” Mat sat back in his chair. He’d said what he invited you here to say, and that was all he had planned. He didn’t think of anything else past this point. “I just… I had to tell you. I’m not gonna tell you what to do, I’m not gonna say you have to choose me or him, and I’m sure this fucked up our friendship like crazy. I just- I can’t keep watching this, okay? That’s all I had to say. I know you love him, and I… fuck, I still love you. I just hope you don’t forget about me, alright?”
“Mat, you’re my best friend.”
Mat stood up, sliding down some money for the drink he had bought earlier. God, he felt like shit, watching the girl he loved move on, knowing there was no way they could keep going on like this, no way she would want to keep seeing him knowing how he felt. But he couldn’t hide it any longer, and now, it was ruined.
“I gotta go.”
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idk if you’re still accepting prompts but if you are can you do a merhayes first kiss? how do you think we’ll get it next season?
First Kiss - Merhayes
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how we'll get the first kiss. I feel like we're going to be cheated out of a lot of their first with the time jump but I hope you enjoy this!
Cormac Hayes had known that he had wanted to kiss Meredith for a long time. Too long. It took him a month after this realisation to ask her out on a date. Their work schedules had meant that it had taken a further two weeks before they managed to go on said date. During those two weeks, Cormac hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Meredith. He swore she was everywhere he turned in the hospital, her name always being called by someone, her laughter ringing in corridors.
On their first date, Cormac still felt a little hesitant to kiss her. He didn’t want to try and cram in too many firsts at the same time at the risk of being overwhelmed. Whilst he was certain of taking this step forward, knowing that both his boys and Irene had given him their blessing and Abi wanting him to move on, he wasn’t quite prepared to go headfirst into the dating scene. Easing in seemed like the best way to go.
By their third date, Cormac had taken Meredith to the Seattle Japanese Garden before they headed down to the beach for a picnic at sunset, he couldn’t stop staring at her lips. He felt like a teenage boy with his first crush all over again. When he’d driven Meredith home, the two of them spent half an hour chatting on her porch swing. He shifted himself closer to her, moving his calloused hand so it enveloped her. The lull in their conversation had presented him with the perfect timing. As Cormac had leaned in closer to Meredith, the scent of lavender suddenly overwhelming his senses, she jumped up from her seat so quickly that she could have had whiplash.
Slightly taken about by the sudden movement, Cormac looked up at her with a furrowed brow before slowly standing up, “Is-uh, everything okay, Meredith?”
He hadn’t been sure when he had exchanged Grey for Meredith, somewhere between this date and the last. What he did know though, was that he loved the way her name rolled off his tongue.
Taking a step away from Cormac, Meredith looked slightly worried. “Yeah, I just realised the time. I should really go in; I’ve got an early surgery tomorrow.”
Cormac wasn’t quite convinced. It was only just gone ten o’clock and he knew that Meredith was a night owl. She’d gotten into the habit of texting him the most random of questions at 1 AM and would walk into work five hours later, fresh as a daisy, if not a little grumpy if she hadn’t had coffee yet. Even so, he decided not to argue with Meredith about it.
“Night, Cormac,” she whispered, placing a gentle kiss on his cheek before going inside.
Cormac heaved a sigh, hands in his coat pockets he walked back to his car, head down. He couldn’t help but feel a little like a kicked puppy. Maybe he had just gotten the signal wrong…. Maybe she had. Or hadn’t. Maybe Meredith knew that he was going to kiss her and pulled away on purpose. It seemed the more likely of the two options. It was the option that hurt him the most. Cormac had thought their dates had gone well. Why would you go on three dates with someone if they hadn’t gone well? Having spent days building up to this moment, Cormac went home feeling deflated. He knew that it was completely up to her whether she had wanted to kiss him but that didn’t stop him from feeling like a fool for the rest of the night.
Work the next day had been unbearably awkward. Meredith had made a beeline for the door anytime they were in a room together and Cormac had no clue what to even say to her if he did manage to catch her. It wasn’t until the both of them were forced into an OR together that they had to face each other. Meredith was the first one to break the silence, not wanting the rest of the staff in the room to feel awkward given that this was going to be a long surgery.
“How was Austin feeling about his history test today?” She briefly looked up from the open abdomen and caught his eye.
Cormac felt his shoulders relax a little after hearing the warmth in Meredith’s voice. At least he could rule out her being upset with him. The two began an easy conversation over the OR table but as Cormac began to relax, Meredith felt a tightly wound coil of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. It hadn’t managed to leave her throughout the entire six-hour surgery.
When the patient was finally stabilised, Cormac looked up and grinned at Meredith. The memory of what had, or hadn’t, happened last night temporarily wiped from his brain and he rode on the adrenaline of being able to save the eight-year-old girl lying in front of them.
“Shall we go and tell the parents, Grey?” Her name was only reserved for their moments alone. Away from the prying eyes of the Grey-Sloan staff.
“You go,” Meredith quickly replied, “I’ll close up.”
“Are you sure? Because I think Helm could handle it.”
She shook her head and she asked for prolene, “I’m sure, it’s been a long surgery and I just want to see the whole thing through, but you should go. Her parents are going to be waiting.” That wasn’t exactly the reason, she was just dodging an inevitable conversation between the two of them. One that she needed to prepare herself for just a little bit more.
It hadn’t taken very long for Meredith to close the little girl up. She’d meant to take her time, but autopilot had kicked in. Her hands knew the routine without her even needing to think about it. So, instead, she took her sweet time scrubbing out, barely keeping up with the conversation that Helm was trying to hold beside her. When she finally walked out of the OR, she saw that Cormac was still stood by the OR board updating his tablet. She quietly walked past him, hoping that he would be too engrossed with patient charts to see her but luck was not on her side.
“Grey!”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Meredith slowly turned on her heel to face Cormac.
“It was a good surgery today.”
“Yeah. Saving a patient is usually a good sign,” the sarcasm that she used as a defence mechanism had slipped out before she’d been able to stop it.
Cormac raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything else, turning back to his tablet. Huffing out a breath of air, Meredith knew that it was better to have this conversation now rather than later. She’d spent all last night stewing on what had happened after she’d gone home. After much prodding from Amelia, Maggie and surprisingly Winston who seemed to be just as invested in her love life as her sisters were, she’d told them what had happened. How she had basically run from Cormac the moment she thought he was going to kiss her. Amelia had ended up howling in laughter. The Meredith Grey, Chief of General Surgery and Catherine Fox Award winner, had run away from a kiss. That had ended up earning Amelia a pillow in the face. When Meredith had finally managed to get around to the reason why, the look of amusement on all their faces had soon turned to one of sympathy. Truth be told, Meredith would have preferred the former.
They’d all had a point though, as much as she hated to admit it. She needed to talk to Cormac about what had happened. He didn’t deserve to be in the dark about what was going on. What was the point in drawing this out any longer? The anxiety had continued to gnaw itself away at her stomach and she needed rid of the feeling.
“Actually, Hayes,” He looked back up as he handed his tablet back to a nurse. Meredith removed her scrub cap, twisting it in her hands. “Can we talk?”
Nodding, Cormac followed as Meredith began to walk away. They stood in silence as they entered the lift. Meredith stopped when they got to the walkway that was directly across from the large glass window panes. Sighing in relief when she realised that no one else was around, she rested her forearms on the railing. Cormac stood next to her in silence, waiting to see what she had to stay.
“About yesterday…” Meredith began, looking out of the windows.
Cormac winced a little. He had a feeling that this was going to be what she wanted to talk about. The ease of the conversation from earlier was no longer present and Cormac began to worry that maybe Meredith didn’t want to see him anymore.
“Aye,” he pulled his scrub cap off, running a hand over his head in embarrassment. “Look, Meredith, I’m sorry if I read the signal wrong. I just thought…”
Quickly shaking her head, Meredith reached out a hand and placed it on Cormac’s arm. “No, you didn’t.”
Slightly confused, Cormac cocked his head. “So, what happened?”
Removing her hand, Meredith didn’t know where to look. The look on Cormac’s face made her chest ache. The care and concern he had for her evident in every line of his face. She decided to look back out to the windows again where the sun was slowly making its decline.
“It’s stupid,” she muttered under her breath.
“Try me, Mer.”
Rubbing her face with her hands, Meredith went slightly red. “I was scared,” mumbling as quietly as she could.
Cormac leaned in closer, “I’m sorry, what?”
“I said I was scared!” She snapped at him.
This did nothing to aid in abetting Cormac’s confusion. “Scared?” He asked, making sure that he was hearing correctly.
“Yes. Scared. Which is stupid and idiotic because… well because it’s one of your firsts and it isn’t one of mine.” At this point, Meredith had begun to pace back and forth. “But everything feels different with you. I know I told you that Andrew was the first person I said I love you to after Derek and I did love him, but I wasn’t in love with him. Some parts always felt missing, like sitting a square peg in a round hole. And with you, it feels like there’s a chance of something so good and so right that it scares me. It scares me because I haven’t felt like this for so long, Cormac, and I’m afraid that it’s all going to disappear because the minute that you kiss me, I know that I’m not going to be able to turn back. I know that I’m not going to want to.”
Cormac gently caught Meredith’s arm to stop her from pacing. “You’re not stupid. You’re daft but you’re not stupid.”
Meredith continued to look down at her trainers, too embarrassed after blurting out all her feelings to say anything.
“I’ve been terrified of kissing you, Meredith. Do you know how much I had to psych myself up for yesterday?”
“I’m sorry.”
Cormac shook his head at her, giving her a warm smile. “I’m not saying it to make you feel bad. I can’t promise that I’m not going anywhere, and you can’t promise me that either, we both know that bad things happen all the time but I can promise that I’m not planning on willingly leaving you anytime soon. Grey, some things are worth the risk…” He trailed off as he laced his fingers with her, gently pulling her closer to him.
“What do you say, Meredith? Am I worth the risk?” His mouth was inches from her own, s faint smirk placed upon it and his breath fanned her face.
“Stupid, cocky Irishman,” Meredith muttered before closing the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his neck and she reached up on her tiptoes.
Cormac held onto her waist, not wanting to let her go. Anyone looking on would have seen the two silhouettes bathed in an orange glow, completely ignoring the world around them.
When they finally broke apart, Cormac had a huge grin on his face. As much as Meredith wanted to roll her eyes, she couldn’t help but match his smile.
“So, are you going to answer my question?” He teased.
Hitting his chest, Meredith just laughed before kissing him again.
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Monday Morning Rewatch Thoughts
This episode was disappointing. I think the last episode would have served as a better mid-season finale personally. Thoughts below:
Annie
- The plot of, “I wasn’t Ben,” and Annie being motivated to keep Ben in his current school for that reason is amazing. That is the kind of plot I want, and care about, for Annie. I love that they have included Ben’s transition into the story line in a way that it isn’t the main focus and that Ben has other pieces of characterization and other challenges/points of conflict than just his transition, but that they haven’t shied away from it when it makes sense.
- The financial aid lady is a down.ass.bitch. for telling Annie to just go find some guy she’s slept with the put down on the paperwork. I’m sorry, but that was great of her to be like listen here’s a loophole so you can help your kid and I will not ask questions.
- I did not like the Kevin (name?) storyline at first because it just didn’t make sense? And I did not like his characterization at the auction of being the “trashy homeless guy” who eats way too much food and steals dogs. I felt like he had more to him when he told Annie that he doesn’t want to be a favor to her. I think she has more chemistry with him than any other guy we have seen her with (including Greg, sue me) and I’m actually looking forward to a possible storyline of her and him falling in love via being awkward roommates. I am hoping it has a current of don’t judge a book by it’s cover, and that Kevin is someone who is a good person and has an interesting story that brings Annie to some sort of realization about herself.
Ruby/Stan
- I HATED... yes... HATED Beth in the scene where Stan was going over the game plan. She was so damn condescending. Stan was biting his tongue and being as polite as he could be, but she was fucking rude. Point blank. Rude.
- Because of that, I loved the scene where he called Beth out. And he is fucking right. And you know what? He even threw her a bone that she was ignored in her home for so many years. Which is fucking true, and made the conversation SO much more nuanced than just Stan calling her out. It made it sooo much more complex that he mentions her motivations. He has known this woman like a family member to his own family for decades. It makes sense he would see and understand the nuances of why she is doing what she’s doing. I hope it is foreshadowing for something more to come.
- Sarah and Ruby have the best chemistry of any parent/child relationship in my opinion. I love watching them on screen even for just a few moments.
- Ruby’s, “I did it for me,” at the end was remniscient of Beth telling Dean, “I wanted to,”. Yes, thank you. Ruby is not a yes man. She did this shit for her family, for her kids, for herself. As much as I think Beth might try to be in charge and often is, it was a good reminder that Ruby is still in there and still has a backbone. She has called Beth out with stealing the Tesla, with the sex tape, etc. before and I want that energy back.
- Annie and Ruby having a sweet moment together on the bench was great, I love them together. They’re so fun but also so so sweet.
Beth/Dean
- She’s with fricken Dean again this week.
- Beth’s eyebrows and wig are fucking terrible. Someone CHILL with the eyebrow filler.
- Was Rio just watching Dean and Beth? Like hanging out waiting? He was like RIGHT THERE when Dean got up. Was he behind a tree watching Dean with his arm around Beth just boiling?
- Dean being pitied by the guy he was trying to sell product to was great. He has been knocked down so many pegs. But also, it was a waste of fucking screen time.
- Not so easy to get out from under someone’s thumb, huh Deansie? How’s it feel to be a dumb ass yet again? A year’s supply of skin care? Guessing Beth is gonna have to bail him out which is again a waste of screen time and something no one gives a shit about seeing.
- The fact that Dean thinks he was good at selling cars is just... sad.
- Beth being a “bad bitch” and selling purses to the husbands who went to see strippers is completely undermined by her being a doormat for Dean who is a sexist, condescending pig who cheated, lied about cancer, and has not shown a single ounce of respect for her as a woman outside of her ability to raise children and make cookies.
- I do not want to see a storyline of Beth trying to get money to leave and go to Nevada or wherever. I know the show runners have said Beth will realize she can’t escape Rio if they’re in the same town, so that is what this storyline is going to be. Her trying to escape Rio yet again. This has been drawn out long enough now. This episode was so confusing and weird. Like her and Rio got the trust of the SS just so the agents could leave? Their relationship advancement, her making this choice of him or SS, etc. was for... what? The drama of the last episode was because of... what exactly? What was the entire point of the SS storyline if it literally put us no where? I’m asking sincerely if anyone has thoughts.
- I don’t want to see Beth and Dean anymore. I am fucking exhausted of seeing Beth and Dean. I am over it. I spent almost this entire episode on my phone because I was bored. The Beth being sweet to Dean storyline is so so so far past where it made any logical sense to the plot. There has been no advancement or progress. She’s supposed to be in a love triangle? We have seven episodes left and there has been absolutely zero progress in her and Dean’s situation. I will be looking for some fucking conflict in this next episode with Dean seeing Rio otherwise I have little to no hope for the Brio ship going forward.
Rio/Nick
- Rio is the spider that Dave talked about right? That he couldn’t get and so he never went back in the bed?
- Nick is a pathetic pussy, and so is his bodyguard. Mick is the only ‘muscle’ I want on my screen. Thanks.
- The bullet wounds not being there is unacceptable. Not just because it completely minimizes the fact that this man was shot in the chest three times and left to die, but also just from a plot standpoint. Like this was the entire storyline of season 3. Wtf. I understand Dean’s not being there, because that was treated as a minimal storyline. But Beth shooting Rio was the entire basis of season 3′s conflict. It’s bizarre and completely unacceptable.
- I posted a little while back about stereotypes, guessing that Nick was going to push Rio and Beth together by stereotyping them both and not seeing the deeper connection between them. Tooting my own horn because this is exactly what Nick did. Beth is the soccer mom, Rio the “gangster”.
- Nick and Dean are the same force for Rio and Beth, respectively. They’re both oppressors. They both don’t get it, the draw between the two. Beth and Rio both try to minimize their relationship, admitting only to sex and nothing more, to their oppressors. Beth used to want to get out from Dean’s grasp and Rio currently does with Nick. Both Dean and Nick have put this other person in a box, minimized them to nothing more than a stereotype, taken away their choices, taken away their power and control. How Beth does not realize Dean is her oppressor and not Rio is fucking beyond me.
- Nick doesn't have kids, so who was the kid referring to Rio as his uncle? The female cousin’s child? Let’s see more of her and less of Dean please.
- Rio literally couldn’t cope the second Nick brought up Beth. He walked away like a love-struck teenage idiot not wanting to admit that he made a bad decision over a girl. I’m curious about this. I hope we find out more of why Rio did it. Did he do it just to scare Beth into submission because he knew he couldn’t hurt her? Or was there a layer of thinking Lucy was a threat to Beth? Because Lucy was pissed at Beth. Or a layer of trying to feign still having power in front of his boys but not being able to hurt Beth?
- Rio’s voice is so raspy at the end, he’s so tired and beaten down, literally and figuratively. And I cannot catch the meaning behind “sometimes it’s worth it”, to be yourself? He sounded so... just sad and down when he said it. It sounded so vulnerable.
- It is not, I repeat, not a storyline they should go down of thinking it is cool/fun/sexy/empowering/feminist for this “gangbanger” to be in love with the housewife and for her to not reciprocate and then torment him. It’s not.
Promo/Going Forward:
- I think we have seen confirmation that Rio will lie/keep things from Nick. I think Rio gave Beth the plates, and they will be working together going forward. I hope.
- Rio chilling in the backroom of PP with Beth, so chill, so nonchalant, put me in the ground.
- In the below shot, you can see Rio still sitting there with his hand on his chin as Beth talks to Dean. This scene better be LOADED. Go ahead and mention them banging, Dean. That will be fun. But also I want to see Beth try to talk her way out of it. Go ahead and try to tell Dean you didn’t have a choice Elizabeth. Go ahead and try to minimize what this is when Rio is sitting there listening. That will be golden conflict. I want to see Rio realize the dynamic between Beth and Dean, see him see how submissive and pathetic she is when Dean is around, see how Dean belittles her, and then use that against her to pull her out of her shell. I want to see Beth try to minimize her relationship with Rio, see him call her out on that too. Idk. This scene has been four seasons coming so it better not be a disappointment.
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Way Wetter
Summary: Monty gets turned on by Reader but she remains oblivious
Warning(s): Getting turned on?(idk); hints at future smut(but not smut); jealous Monty
Words: 898 words
MASTERLIST
(My gif...ahhhhdjd)
Hey, baby," you said tightly hugging your boyfriend from behind.
"Heyy..." Monty pulled you in front of him and gave you a sweet, tight kiss on your lips causing Justin to make gagging noises.
You hadn't seen him all weekend and you missed him, and so the PDA( ok who am I kidding dating Monty obviously involves a whole lot of PDA).
"Get a room, you guys are disgusting," Justin says with a disappointed grin.
"Says he who practically can't keep his hands off his girlfriend," you say giggling, getting all the boys around you howl as Justin turns red.
The bell rings. "See ya later, "you wink and kiss Monty. A little too long.
And rush towards your class.
"Damn," Monty whispers under his breath.
*************
You gather your books as you move eagerly to your History lesson. It's the only lesson you have with Monty today and you don't want to miss it.
You quickly enter the class. Monty is not here yet, so you sit down in your usual place and get out your notebook to do some doodling.
"Hey, Y/n, you seem to be busy."
You look up to see the person to whom the familiar sweet voice belongs to.
"Yes, Zach. Very busy," you say giggling.
Zach sits down in the seat next to you and leans closer to take a look at your drawing.
"Wow, it's beautiful"
"Aww, thank you Zachy," you say dramatically touching your chest. Both of you start giggling not noticing Monty who enters the class to see Zach sitting in his place next to his girlfriend. He is pissed before he can do anything about it, the teacher enters the class.
You turn away from Zach to pay attention to the class. You then look around realizing Monty had not yet come. You see him, sitting a few seats across, staring at you intently. You fail to see the jealousy smeared across his face and simply give him a sweet smile before turning to face the teacher.
Monty feels his body heating up. It had been days since you had spent time together, thanks to your schedules. And here you were today, wearing jeans that clung onto your hips beautifully framing your ass and a T-shirt that leaves barely anything to imagine what lies beneath, giggling and talking to a boy that was not him. Zach. A wave of jealousy seeping down his body.
How you were pursing your lips around the tip of your pen while thinking hard wasn't helping either. He couldn't help but imagine something else in place of your pen there. Just thinking of you made him hard.
As soon as the bell rang he quickly walked away.
***********
You walk into the cafeteria and spot Monty sitting with his friends. You were confused when he walked out of history without waiting for you but didn't give it much thought as you needed to get to your next class.
"Hi, ya'll," you said sitting down next to Monty. You held his muscular arm tightly taking in his warm feeling.
Monty stiffened as you came closer, your breasts pressed up against his biceps and your palm on his thigh was too much for him to handle. He tried to pull away only to get you to pull him nearer, pressing yourself even more.
Justin and a few more jocks joined the table. Since there was a lack of space at the table, you get the point and move to sit on Monty's lap. Monty mentally cursed them as you sat down. You had sat on his lap before, but the context of today was different due to what he was experiencing.
You were trying to get yourself comfortable on Monty's lap. You squirmed not realizing what you were doing to Monty. He brought his large hands to your hips and stopped you harshly. You turn around innocently pouting "What happened?". You lean in to give him a peck on his lips, causing your thigh to press against the hardness in his pants.
That's when realization hits you. You blush. And start to slightly grind against him.
Monty can't take it anymore, he pushes you onto the place next to him and grabs his bag, and walks out quickly, to tend to his hard member, erect for attention.
You quickly say your goodbyes and rush after Monty into the parking lot.
***********
Monty leans against his jeep, breathing heavily. You come near him and touch his shoulder gently, trying your best to hold back your smile. But Monty sees right through you as soon as he takes a look at your face.
He quickly grabs your arm and literally stuffs you onto the passenger seat of his jeep leaving you confused before climbing into the driver seat himself. He drives out of school, "Monty but.."
"Shh." he growled. You knew better than to argue, anyway this was way better than sitting in class. Way wetter.
Monty slowly started running his hands on your thigh sending shivers down your spine. He kneaded your flesh just inches away from where you needed him the most. You let out a slight moan. Monty smirked. The tables had turned.
"You have been such a bitch today. Teasing me all day. Wait till I get my hands on you", he says lowly chuckling.
You gasped knowing what was coming your way.
*********
MASTERLIST
Hey...check out my other posts. Requests are open. 💕
#13rw fanfiction#13 reasons why imagine#13 reasons why#13rw#13rwedit#monty x reader#montgomery de la cruz#monty de la cruz#Montgomery de la cruz x reader#timothy granaderos#clay jensen#Justin Foley#zach dempsey#Bryce Walker#jeff atkins#jessica davis#tony padilla#Alex Standall#tyler down#chocolate nightmare moon
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hello here's a playlist of songs that i commonly heard on sundays on the radio. mostly 50's and 60's american classics punctuated by strong orchestra-esque openings and that very distinct vocal tone almost all singers at that time had. idk but making this playlist made me sad for some reason lol. these are mostly songs my mom would play very loudly on the radio in order to wake us up for the earliest sunday mass. i didn't even realize how much these songs were played when i was a child and how much they punctuated that time in my life. i rarely go to church anymore, much less be woken up early by my mom so making the playlist was a bit emotional. i never really realized how long it's been since i've heard these songs and somewhere in the time i've spent shuffling thru spotify radios, i had this weird and a bit melancholic feeling/epiphany that my childhood has really passed me. anyways, i guess the playlist stands as a way to revisit some serene and quite enjoyable times when i was kid. even if it were moments when i had to wake up at the crack of dawn and drag my barely conscious body for a cold shower. at least i had some fun drawing squiggly lines on the frost that had creeped up on my bedroom window. sharing this only since i wanna know if there are other pinoys who have similar experiences since i know almost all radio stations in the philippines play old songs on sundays. hope you enjoy this haphazardly curated playlist! spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6kzBEKQVYTvoGJecNP85Qe?si=6f09b19530904d7e
Thank you.
But if I listen to this, my mind and body will think it's sunday, that i just came from 5:30 am mass, and that I'm allowed to laze around as much as I could.
Sunday radio playlists are still around visayas. I think in Manila, listening to radios are almost obsolete cuz I sure ain't hearing these there.
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I started rambling about my experience with kh and then it turned into khux and then it just turned into me rambling about Ryou and my art journey????? enjoy I guess,
it’s very long but there’s art in there :)
It’s funny to think about my kh journey as a whole tbh, I grew up watching my mom play video games, which included kh1 and 2. I wasn’t allowed to play the playstation2 we owned BUT I did have a gameboy so the first game I played was CoM (after my mom finished it ofc,) so I guess you could say I’ve always been passionate about kh “””side games””” lmao but I did fall off of kh very quickly bc again, I wasn’t allowed to play our PS2 and also I Am A Terrible Gamer I’ve Never Finished CoM I’m sorry you all had to find out like this, but then 358/2 came out when I was in middle school and!!! I didn’t care and I didn’t play idk why lol
Anyway, fast forward to high school I’m like 15 and my older sister, who HAS been keeping up with kh, has a wallpaper on her phone of roxas and ventus. And bc I haven’t kept up I say “nice roxas wallpaper” and she says “thanks but it’s roxas and ventus” and I proceeded to get so mad that I was determined to prove to her that her wallpaper was just roxas twice and then I fell down the BBS rabbit hole and suddenly I was reading about vanitas and then I’m reading the fan translations of the BBS novel and I’m crying??? I am sobbing???? and that’s how I actually got into kh for real lol we are vanitas stans before we are people,
It’s so funny how I thought I was some kh super fan, knowing all this stuff that I spent so long reading and rewatching cutscene movies, but I never once, SOMEHOW NEVER ever came across khx. It’s so absurd and bizarre I seriously have no idea how I never once encountered khx prior to khux. I suppose that has to do with the fact I wasn’t involved in the fandom? In early high school I had stepped away from fandoms as a whole and I didn’t have any interest in really posting content or interacting with fans anymore bc of how burnt out I was from a previous fandom,
but khux released! and I was so hype and excited for it! on launch day I was a senior in high school, I had ran around to every “nerd” and weeb I could find in school to ask them to join my party and fun fact about me is I have crippling social anxiety I literally refuse to start conversations irl so holy shit I was OUT HERE doing the MOST
My player just originally had my name (Matt) but everyone in my party had fun names so Ryou was born! High school was one big yugioh phase for me and ryou bakura is one of my favorite characters ever so it was just the logical name choice lol I quickly started creating Ryou, the character, as well. I was also leaving my homestuck phase and that + vanitas obsession made This character design (art circa 2016)
If y’all are familiar with my kh oc’s you might notice that keyblade now belongs to my kid Monty LOL
Anyway that got scrapped quickly for the chip and dale outfit (which is where Ryou’s trademark goggles are from <3) Goggles have been a staple of my character designs for a LONG TIME so like, it had to be done, (that’s a separate ramble about a separate oc tho)
OG Ryou was an interesting guy; he was a young party leader with this overwhelming responsibility on his shoulders bc of his status as a party leader. In his original story, he also struggled heavily with darkness, much like Terra but for Ryou it was more that the darkness was controlling him and not like a source of power like it was for Terra
A big part of early Ryou I kept, however, was the crushing awareness of loss. One of my party members (the strongest one at the time,) had left without saying a word and I was very confused and hurt. This was around the time the ephemera plot was happening so I decided to incorporate it into Ryou’s story; having him experience losing a friend to darkness since it’s so normal for wielders in Daybreak Town to just disappear, and this would unintentionally become a theme for both me and Ryou as khux friends would just randomly disappear.
I was desperate for khux at this point and I decided to watch the fan translations for khx and GOD, god, was I obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about the foretellers. And I’m not going off about that here bc I already did that, but I actually started entering fandom again! I did it slowly, I started on tumblr before this blog was made altho it was me sending anons to the few khux related blogs I could have lol a friend convinced me to get twitter where I got involved with the ffxv fandom, which led me to the kh fandom and eventually the khux fandom there which is what REALLY got me going on khux.
I joined discord servers, most of the servers I’m in are khux related, and from there I joined the khux oc rp (shout out to anyone there who might be reading this lol here’s some art from the beginning of the rp,)
It’s SO FUNNY how the RP influenced me so heavily. I hadn’t RP’d in YEARS, I used to have a strict no oc rp policy, but here I was? And the funny part is, I had barely developed Ryou. I had scrapped his original story and all I had was POST WAR Ryou so I literally had to reverse write him; I had only ever written him as a depressed, guilt ridden adult, but it was a fucking blast and I have such fond memories of this rp when it was active,
But anyway, this encouraged me to get more serious about art! I started drawing, writing, cosplaying, and roleplaying when I hadn’t done any of that stuff in a very long time. The first time I ever drew a background was for a deviant art khux competition actually LOL
also! I always think extremely fondly of the drawing I did of Aced in the keyblade war. It was also one of the first backgrounds I ever drew and it felt like my real starting point in the khux fandom. It got a ton of notes on here and someone wrote a tiny fic in a reblog which just made me SO HAPPY like it really felt like people were noticing me :) I was going to draw a matching Ira but!! I just never did!! One day tho, it’s on my art bucket list to redraw this along with Ira,
Aside from my personal growth, khux was great for my social life ngl, I made SO MANY friends online and got to meet a ton of people irl over the years! It’s crazy to think about all the people I now know and talk to? It honestly makes me really emotional. I’ll never forget taking the train into NYC and meeting up with discord friends. Going to conventions and talking with people about the latest khux update? Absolutely insane and those were some GOOD TIMES, if I thanked every khux friend or even just person who made an impact on me then we’d be here for a LONG TIME,
Fun fact, for my Lauriam cosplay all I needed to buy was the wig I just owned his outfit LOL also? Probably retiring that cosplay ngl people treated me like absolute garbage when I wore him and it led to a lot of confidence issues for awhile ngl. That’s probably one of the only memorable negative experiences I have with khux; it was great when khux people recognized me but for kh fans that weren’t in khux? They were FUCKING MEAN??? fuck kh fandom at large, I only care about khux fandom,
This leads me to another huge part of my experience in khux fandom: THEORIES!! I used to write SO MANY and oh my god my brain was so full all the time. It was a huge appeal for me in the fandom; I had been previously writing theory posts in the RWBY fandom and it just migrated over to khux for me lol I had done a ton of theorizing around Lauriam tbh, it was really the only reason I liked his character at all bc initially I did not care about the dandelions, anyone who wasn’t Skuld I was like “please leave Now thanks”
A funny part of khux fandom I never intended to be apart of is the MEMES, I really only started doing memes as stress relief bc college had me so busy all I had time/energy for was these quick little shit post drawings.
The first meme I made, file name “invi despair” LOL we need to get her a girlfriend smh anyway, I think in my senior year of college I did a bunch of rapid fire memes all in one month bc the stress of finals was getting so bad afdgfhdgf as far as I know my impact on this fandom will be my memes bc all I do now is enter a kh/khux server and introduce myself and I go “yeah I draw art. here’s a meme” and everyone goes OH YOU, honestly I am nothing if not a clown
I’ve talked so much idk where I’m going with this. Khux is just a good game even if the gameplay actually kind of really sucks yknow lol but it was the first game I played where I like, REALLY got into the meta and the mechanics. I used to read so much on the mechanics and watch youtube videos on which medals were worth pulling for. I was never a whale or a top player exactly, but I could rank well if I tried lol I’ve made it to the top 100 for solo rankings, my party has made it to top 10, and in pvp I’ve made top 300. I’m not the highest level in my party but FUCK do I know how to manipulate this game LOL
And with all that hard work, the strategies, the theorizing, the content I’ve made-- it’s been my life for 5 years. I’ve logged into khux almost every single day. At the end, I have logged 1820 days in khux out of 1910 days. Kinda crazy. Crazier I’ve never spent money on khux either lol the only “money” gone into it was one time my mom gave me a google play store gift card and I used it on my birthday for a VIP xemnas medal which eventually made it to regular pulls anyway but it was nice and a little treat :)
I’m not a gacha fan, I don’t care for it, so I don’t think I’ll be touching another gacha again. But for kh? This was pretty fucking awesome, even if it sucked a lot sometimes LOL It was worth it for the people I’ve met most of all I think. I would honestly be a completely different person without khux and that’s REALLY insane to think about.
#the khux hyperfixation is REAL#but yall knew this about me#there's so much more I could say but it's 2am and this is long enough already#im rambling
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If you don’t mind could I request an Azula x f reader where the reader is a water bender and is with the gaang but leaves them to stay with Azula at the boiling rock and promises to never betray her?
ooh, we've got a corrupt reader over here lmao, thank you so much for requesting! fun fact, azula is one of my favorite characters so i'm glad someone requested something for her! hope you like it!
•••
Changing Sides (Azula x Fem!Reader)
Warnings: none.
Genre: Angst, idk, not really but not fluff either.
Fandom: Avatar The Last Airbender
Summary: See request.
Word Count: 1467
You didn't know why, but you just didn't want to be there anymore. You hadn't been with the Avatar for long, but you knew being with him wasn't your destiny.
You were a waterbender that had fled from the Northern Water Tribe, living in one of the many colonies, and ran into the group in the Earth Kingdom right before the fight at the catacombs, but you barely knew how to bend water. You hated the Avatar, he disappeared when he was needed the most, and that darkened your heart from a young age. But there was something else, you didn't know _what_ it was, but deep down you've always felt the urge to see the Fire Nation triumph in the war. Why did you even need different nations? Sure, there had been some damage and mistakes, but the possibility of all being as advanced as the firebenders was greater than any of that. So from the very first time, you were fascinated with the Fire Nation princess and how powerful she was, and the thought of wanting to join her crossed your mind, but you quickly brushed it off. Why would you want to join her? She was from the Fire Nation after all. However, the princess never really left your mind after you saw her that day.
When her brother showed up saying he wanted to join you, you couldn't believe it. You thought that he must've been crazy, why run away? Why leave the greatest place in the whole world? It made no sense to you.
You never said anything out loud about your inner conflict, but you did start acting a little more distant. You were bored in the Air Temple, you needed something exciting in your life, something new; you needed something that gave meaning to your life. You didn't really care what the rest of the group thought, but they did notice your attitude change and were worried about you. But whenever they asked if something was wrong, you just told them that everything was fine, that they had nothing to worry about.
You were a lot closer to Sokka than with the rest of the group. It wasn't _so_ bad to be by his side, even though he talked a lot most of the time. So when he and Zuko went to the Boiling Rock, he asked you to go with them. They couldn't bring Katara, she would most likely refuse due to how dangerous it'd be, so you were the best option since the girl had taught you a lot about waterbending.
You weren't really excited to go and see a bunch of prisoners, but it was better than staying and doing nothing. During your trip, the boys talked a little about their pasts, and then Zuko asked you about yours.
"My life isn't interesting at all," was all you said.
"Come on, I'm pretty sure there has to be something," insisted the boy.
"And what would you even know about interesting?" You snapped. "You're the one who left the Fire Nation after all," you mumbled.
They didn't understand what you'd meant but figured that it would be best to just finish the conversation, plus you had finally arrived, so you had to focus on that. You finally arrived on the shore of the prison and got rid of the balloon.
You all thought it would be best if you pretended to be guards, so you grabbed some uniforms. A lot of things happened while you were there, but nothing that really mattered to you.
Everyone was thinking about how to escape from there. At first, they thought about you using your bending to keep the water from touching you, but that option was dismissed as soon as you realized that you'd obviously end up getting caught while trying to climb the wall; it would draw too much attention, and since you were there as enemies of the Fire Nation, it was the last thing you wanted. You eventually came up with a plan, but you still stayed because there was a chance of finding Sokka's father.
It turned out to be true, he arrived at the prison, and now you had to think about escaping again. Every single moment you spent there was complete torture to you. You felt like the only reason the guys had asked for you to go with that was so they'd be able to have a waterbender nearby. You were sick of it, and you decided that once you were back in the Air Temple you'd leave the group for good. You had no idea of what you'd do but thought that everything would be better than what you had been doing up until that moment.
The new plan consisted of taking the warden as your hostage and using one of the gondolas to escape. It wouldn't be easy, you knew it, but it wasn't impossible. Suki took care of grabbing the warden, and now all you needed to do was leave that place.
However, Azula and Ty Lee appeared out of nowhere. You all got to the ceiling of the gondola, waiting for the two girls, ready to fight them. You mainly just stood there, not really knowing what to do, and protecting yourself whenever you needed to. Zuko and Sokka were fighting against the princess and then suddenly everything moved underneath you. Azula almost fell from the gondola, but you managed to grab her hand and pull her up. You two shared a look, she didn't really know why you'd helped her but there was no time for questions.
"They're about to cut the line!" Yelled Ty Lee.
You saw another gondola that was coming from the outside and then shared another look with the princess. "Then it's time to leave," she said. Azula looked at you before using her bending to land on top of the other gondola.
You saw that another girl was helping you all get away. Once you reached the other side, you began running away, but suddenly you and Zuko stopped.
"Zuko, (Y/N), what are you doing?" Asked Sokka.
"My sister was on that island," said Zuko, as if any of you needed to be reminded of that, especially you.
"Yeah, and she's probably right behind us, so let's not stop!"
"What I mean is that she must've come here somehow."
You all saw a Fire Nation airship and the rest of the group began walking towards it. However, you looked at the two boys a few meters away from you for a moment. You knew what you had to do, what you _wanted_ to do. So you took a deep breath and ran away from them. You used your waterbending to reach the platform that you were escaping from just a few moments ago. Sokka and Zuko looked at you with complete surprise all over their faces, and you could hear their voices from behind you. You didn't look back though, you never would.
Once you touched the ground, you saw that the guards had grabbed both Mai and Ty Lee and that Azula couldn't move her body. "Put them somewhere I'll never have to see their faces again," you heard the princess say. The guards did as she said and the rest of them let them know that you were there. "And what are _you_ doing here?" She asked, anger clear in her voice. "I might not be able to move but I can still beat you."
"I'm not here to fight," you said. She looked at you, waiting for you to continue talking. "I'm here because I want to join you."
"You think I'm going to believe you? How stupid do you think I am? Guards! Take her too!"
"No, wait!" You yelled. "I'm serious, I mean it! I'm on your side, deep down I've always been," you confessed. She kept looking at you and gestured the guards to let go of you.
"So you finally realized," she said. You looked at her with a confused look and she rolled her eyes right before talking. "You think I haven't noticed that you had doubts? I realized from the first time I saw you, but I guess you finally made up your mind."
"I did, I swear I did," you told her. "And I won't be like those two girls," you said. "I won't betray you." She kept looking at you and since you didn't get an answer, you got on your knees, practically bowing in front of her. "I promise I'll never betray you. I pledge my loyalty to you, Princess Azula." You lifted your head to look at her and when you saw her smiling, you knew that there was nothing in the world that could make you change your mind.
•••
TAGLIST:
@noodlesfluffy @just-a-belgian-girl
#azula x reader#azula fanfic#azula fic#azula imagine#atla imagine#atla fanfic#atla fic#atla x reader#avatar imagine#avatar fanfic#avatar fic#avatar x reader#avatar azula#atla azula#avatar the last airbender
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Read into Me Chapter 11: Love Story
Steve Harrington x Reader
CATCH UP ON THE SERIES HERE
Words: 4,771
Warnings: fire, injury-all end of season three things!
Author’s Note: Happy belated Strangers Things 3 Day! I wanted to get this up yesterday, but I didn’t have it in me to work. This is the end of the series, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! It was a fun little ride!
Series Tag: @divinity-deos @thecaptainsgingersnap @wolfish-willow @scoopsohboi @herre-gud-nej @clockworkballerina @maddie1504 @i-am-trash-so-much-its-scary @jisungiesluv @wildcvltre @stanleyyelnatsiii @n3wtscaseofniffler5 @peterparxour @linkispink1995 @a-big-ball-of-idk @used-avocado @mochminnie @sledgy14 @the-creative-lie @yall-wildin-like-siriusly @ggclarissa @voidnarnia @anonymousonion33 @awkwardnesshabitat @darkcrystal-wolf @hannahrisacher
Paris was a lonely city. You’d arrived alone, having not seen Steve since prom and still desperate to see him one more time. You’d selfishly kept his sweatshirt, wanting a piece of him to take with you to a different country. Your mother hadn’t picked you up from the airport, having sent a car instead. She didn’t seem much interested in speaking to you after months apart; she was much more interested in redecorating her new condo and talking about her fiancé. You met him, a French fop named Jean-Pierre at least fifteen years her junior. He was nice enough, although a bit fruity for your liking. His interests were more on the modeling jobs your mother was getting him. She had no time for you, which was fine since your lessons at the salon began immediately.
You and thirty-five other young hopefuls spend your days locked in a studio with abundant resources and endless models and objects to sketch. And you hated it. You hated the long, rambling lectures from the artists who came to the salon to preach the values of the school and the importance of French art. They alternated between speaking in French and English without explaining themselves as they switched tongues. Your French language skills were nonexistent, so the lectures were exhausting and endless. The only time they ever seemed to help was when they brought you all to the Louvre to examining the long dead French men who’d made the museum possible. There, you could at least sketch out the greats and enjoy the beauty of the art. Inside the studio, you felt as though your head was going to explode. The lectures spoke too loudly and loomed over you without warning or word, you weren’t allowed your headset or Walkman in the studio to combat them, and the smell of various paints and clays made your stomach churn. The girl who’d taken up the easel next to you, a little German named Lisle, had taken to making clay pots and sculptures and the sound of her pottery wheel mixed with her incessant humming made you want to commit manslaughter. It didn’t help that the smell of the brown clay invaded your sinuses and made you sneeze violently. You dreaded the salon. But you dreaded being at home more.
Your mother had hired you a French tutor, utterly horrified by the fact that you hadn’t been practising. You tried to tell her that, despite her assumptions, Hawkins High had stopped offering a French elective two years before you started there.
“You cannot live in Paris without speaking French! It won’t do!” she moaned. Jean-Pierre was already on the phone, speaking fast into the receiver. You didn’t see what the big deal was. Everywhere you went, people spoke enough English to communicate with you fine. It didn’t occur to you till after dinner that if you were to study in the country, you’d need the language to understand your lessons.
So you got a French teacher, a short tempered older man who insisted on being called Monsieur Bérnard. His greying whiskers moved sharply as he spoke and he often spit on you as he taught proper pronunciation and conjugation. He ranted and raved all afternoon, disgusted by your apparent lack of an ear for languages and your doodling on the edges of notebook paper instead of working. You’d go from sensory overload in the salon to being bullied by a Freud-looking asshole each day with no room for a break or a breath.
You lived for weekends. Rest was very well thought of in the city so the hell spawn tutor didn’t work and the salon locked its doors. You were allowed to wander the city at your leisure, your mother glad to have you out of the apartment. You’d spend most of your days sat at a café near the Eifel Tower, a prime spot to tourists. Every day, you’d bring your sketchpad and try to draw out the profiles of those you passed you by. You spent two weekends working on a sketch of people sunbathing on the lawn in front of the tower. But it seemed you left all your talent in Hawkins. You’d spent so long drawing familiar faces back home, now that you were away from your nest, you found yourself without the skill to capture the faces around you. It occurred to you that you knew the faces of Hawkins far too well. They were engrained in your mind, your hand working like a stamp to put them on the page. France was full of strangers. You didn’t know how to understand them like you understood Hawkins. France wasn’t home. You couldn’t work out in a world of strangers.
You couldn’t work in the salon either. It was too much. Everyone was constantly showboating and trying out-do one another. You couldn’t work with people spying over your shoulder. You felt judged and insecure about what you could do. You didn’t want to be watched as you tried to make art. It didn’t help that you had no idea what to make. The closest thing you’d gotten done is that sketch of the Eifel Tower and that wasn’t something you couldn’t buy on the streets around the monument. You’d tried all the things that you couldn’t in your bedroom-paint splatter art, pottery, carving, paint pulling, mosaics. You never finished anything. The drive to push through wasn’t there.
When the loneliness and fear became too much to bear, you held Steve’s sweatshirt and cried. It still smelt like him; Irish Springs soap and Fabregè Organics shampoo and hairspray and a bit like sweat. It was nice though. You missed him. You tried to write him letters, but you knew that they wouldn’t get home before you did. You’d made up your mind that whatever the answer was, you were going home. Whether that meant deferring a semester or missing the first week of school you would go back to Hawkins. Still, you’d written over a dozen letters, all crumpled in your waste bin.
You waited until the last minute to finish something for submission. You’d tried to sketch your mother, to find who you knew in the fancy woman in front of you. With her bleached blowout and designer clothes, thirty pounds lighter and yellow gold jewellery glinting in the midday sun. She looked like the epitome of elegance, straight out of a magazine. The woman you remembered had greying roots and love handles, her only jewellery the wedding rings your father had given her. Europe had changed her into someone who you didn’t know and who didn’t seem to want to introduce herself to you. Nothing you drew seemed to capture the middle between who she was and who she is now. You realized in her profile that you weren’t a part of her life anymore, that she didn’t want you there. You were as strange to her as she was to you. You passed each other like ghosts in the hall, almost recognizable but hauntingly foreign.
The day before your final piece for submission was due; you got a letter from Steve. It only had one sentence.
“I should have asked you to stay.”
It was all you needed to hear to be inspired. You made your final project a tribute to him, mixing memories with unfinished letters building into his face. You used plain black ink to sketch his profile on the surface of the mess, building him into your loneliness. You only had your memory to recreate his face and your own letters to fill the canvas. Still, it was the only thing you’d done the whole time you were in the country that you were actually proud of. You didn’t finish it until the sun rose and you handed it off to be judged without a second thought, bleary eyed and exhausted.
You were on a plane home by the wee hours of July 4th.
Hawkins was a depressing place. After graduation, Steve found himself listless and at the hands of his father. He was a failure, a disgrace of a son. He was unready to start into the family business. His grades were pathetic. He had to get a job. Of course, with no job experience and late to the game, no decent place wanted him. The new mall only offered him one place of employment, Scoops Ahoy. And the uniform was embarrassing. Stupid sailor shirts and matching shorts, fucking knee socks and a corny paper hat. He looked like a certified geek. And his co-worker was a freak. Robin fucking Buckley did nothing but bug him all shift. It didn’t help that he had no friends without you, even Dustin had left for some nerdy science camp after the school year ended.
He was alone and lonely.
He tried to write you a half dozen times. But nothing seemed to make sense, nothing was worth telling you. What was he supposed to tell you? That he had become an even bigger loser overnight? He felt so utterly pathetic. He just wanted things to go back to the way things were. But what did that even looked like anymore? It wasn’t a life with Nancy, she’d dumped his ass, and it wasn’t a life with you, you’d left him for a different continent. He didn’t have a clue where he was going anymore. So he did what any lonely, practically friendless teenager did-he worked his ass off. Eight hours every day in the mall with smart ass Robin Buckley, waiting for the ground to suck him up. And sure, he tried to hit on the girls his age that came around. It was a good distraction from his broken heart. He’d made up his mind that he was ready to move on and try to date again. That he needed a girlfriend. That he needed to be cool again.
And then, Dustin came back and Hawkins started acting up again. He thought it was over. Those damn dogs were gone, the thing was closed, the kid was safe and acting like a kid. Everything had gone back to as close to normal as he’d seen it in awhile. But Dustin just had to find a secret code and Buckley just had to decode it and Lucas’s bitchy little sister just had to be small enough to fit into the vents and find a secret Russian elevator. And they just had to get stuck in it.
He couldn’t keep that damn kid from seeking out trouble. And yeah, it was kind of fun in a scared shitless kind of way, but it wasn’t worth getting drugged and beaten up and nearly dying for. And it certainly wasn’t worth getting tricked into thinking that he had feelings for fucking Robin. He could murder that kid for getting it in his head that he liked that girl. Robin was cool; he wouldn’t pretend that she wasn’t a decent friend to have at the end of the world. But he didn’t need the embarrassment of trying to ask out a lesbian. At least the reason for her rejecting him wasn’t that he was unattractive or lame, just that she didn’t dig dudes. He was cool with that. And at least he got to punch out a communist. If he could tell his father that without going to prison or being murdered by a Russian goon, he’d be proud. Fuck that, he was proud. He won a fight! He beat up a Russian spy! More than one, he beat some up while drugged out; at least he thought he did. He couldn’t remember much, other than watching Back to the Future with Robin. That movie was too confusing. And then he stole a car, he saved Nancy’s life, he set up that weird tower thing for Dustin-there was too much going on to even recognize how crazy he sounded. How crazy all of this sounded.
And then, the mall was on fire.
Your flight landed on the fourth of July at about ten fifteen in the evening. It took about forty-five minutes to get from the Indianapolis International Airport back to Hawkins. You were buzzing. Seven words had given you all the hope you needed to push you back to the states. Every fibre of your being was alive with energy, with excitement. You couldn’t wait for your grandfather to park the car, you jumped out as soon as you were settled in the driveway.
“Don’t you want to go upstairs and unpack?” your grandmother called after you as you booked it down the driveway.
You turned back “No, I’ll be back later!” you called. Steve’s car wasn’t in the driveway but you figured if anyone was home they’d know where he was. You bounded up the stairs, ringing the doorbell twice.
Mrs. Harrington came to the door in her bathrobe. “Oh, hello there…” she trailed off, obviously unable to remember your name.
“Y/N, hi it’s nice to see you, do you know where Steve is?” you asked, bouncing from your heels to your toes.
Mrs. Harrington narrowed her eyes “He’s at his job I assume. At the mall.” She said slowly.
“What mall?” you demanded. Mrs. Harrington’s eyes blew wide open and you realized that you were probably coming off like an insane person. “Sorry, I’ve been out of the country for about a month.”
“It’s where the Hawkins Laboratories were, off East Wood Road.” She pointed out the door towards the roads. You knew instantly that the fastest way to get there was through the woods. You ran through the backyards of your neighbours and into the woods. You didn’t like the Hawkins forests. They were dark and dim and poorly maintained. The county hadn’t been out to cut down potentially problematic trees on the few hiking paths in the woods. Burs caught your socks and twigs scratched your legs as you hopped logs to try to get there faster. They’d carved a road through the woods, you’d found it halfway to the mall, deserted and blocked off. You could see the bright orange flames from a mile away.
Your heart stopped dead in your chest. Steve was in there. You could cry.
Instead, you hopped the blockade, running down the road despite the calls of passing fire trucks and police. You didn’t care if they tried to arrest you, although you doubted that they could. It would be a waste of time to bother with you during an emergency.
The parking lot was filled with emergency vehicles. Massive streams of water were attacking the building. Luckily, it seemed the mall was closed, judging by the few people who were milling around not in uniforms. You sprinted into the crowd, looking around frantically.
Steve had been ushered into the back of an ambulance and draped in a bright orange emergency blanket. It wasn’t that cold but he felt as though he was freezing. The EMTs had checked his vitals and disinfected the wounds on his face and knees. As for the remaining drugs in his system, he chose not to mention them. He knew that the high would wear off eventually. Robin was sat next to him, equally bandaged up and silent, save an uncontrollable shiver. Wordlessly, Steve took the blanket off his shoulders and placed it over hers. He wasn’t that cold. Moreover, he just felt numb. He’d had this happen so many times; his face beat in, an otherworldly thing trying to destroy his life and hurt his family, a major building destroyed-it all felt familiar. It made him sick to his stomach to know that it was familiar. If he had anything left in his stomach he would’ve thrown up.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something running towards him. At first, he tensed. He didn’t know what it was and it could probably kill him. His heart stopped and then raced wildly. He held out an arm to protect Robin and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Steve!” you cried. He was in an ambulance. He was hurt. He was alive. You felt as if you could cry. In the span of fifteen minutes he’d gone from working to escaping a fiery building to missing in a fire to simply hurt. And hurt was just fine, you could handle hurt.
“Oh my god Steve, are you okay? Are you alright? I love you so much…”You grabbed his face, examining the bruises. You pulled him tightly to your chest, trying not to cry or freak out. You knew it wouldn’t help.
“I love you too…” he breathed into your ear, pulling you close to him. He recognized you by the smell of your hair, the feeling of your arms around him. He could cry. He didn’t believe you were real. But when you pulled away and his hand came to your face. You were real. And you were here. And he was safe. He was safe and alive. Feelings of relief rushed through his body. He wanted to cry, but the shock was too overwhelming for a tear to even drop.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper and hoarser than he’d ever felt it. “I thought you were still in Paris.”
“I came home early,” you chuckled, pressing a kiss to his jaw bone. “I didn’t get in.” That was the nicer version, the judges laughed at your final piece, they called it pedestrian. You should’ve been more upset, your mother was furious, but you couldn’t have cared less. You were free to go home. You could’ve thanked them for rejecting you.
Steve pulled away, looking you squarely in the eye. He wouldn’t have you give up on school to hang out with him in bum fuck Indiana. But you were telling the truth, it was written plainly all over your face. “Those bastards…” Steve murmured. You laughed, your eyes watery and throat thick. You were overwhelmed. You expected to come home and just see him in his element. You expected him to not necessarily want to see you. You didn’t expect a fire or Steve being injured or Steve to even be there at all. You pulled Steve back into your arms, you didn’t want to let go.
“I missed you so much…” you whispered. Steve’s arms came around your hips, pulling you in between his legs. He needed you here, to keep you in place for awhile.
“I missed you too…” he said, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of your head. “Did you get my letter?”
You looked up “Yeah I did…” you said “I wish I had written you, I tried so many times but I couldn’t find the words and-” Steve kissed you hard, stealing the words from his throat. He didn’t care if you didn’t write him back; this was the best thing he could’ve gotten from you. A letter wouldn’t do it justice.
You were lit up by his kiss. This is what you needed. No words could do the feelings he expressed in his kiss justice. You felt alive. You felt at home. Steve tried to pull away, but you pulled him back by his shirt, kissing him as if your life depended on it. Maybe it did. You couldn’t be sure anymore.
A loud clearing of one’s throat interrupted you and you pulled away to see Robin waving awkwardly. “Oh hey Buckley…” you muttered awkwardly. “How’s Samantha?”
“No clue, she never called me back.” The younger girl shrugged nonchalantly, hopping down from the ambulance deck. “I’ll catch ya later, Harrington.”
You turned your attention back to Steve, looking down at the material still in your fists. He looked ridiculous. “What the fuck are you wearing?” you asked with a laugh. Steve’s hands settled on your lower back, holding you in between his knees as if you’d run off if he didn’t.
“Oh this? This has been my whole summer.” He groaned “I’ve been captaining a boat on an ocean of flavours.” You couldn’t help but cackle, you had no idea what he was talking about but he seemed so serious.
“And by that you mean?” you lifted the fake red neckerchief attached to his shirt, running the material between your thumb and forefinger.
“Ice cream store in the mall,” he pointed to the embroidered Scoops Ahoy logo on his breast.
“You’re kidding…” you shook your head as if to shake the idea out of your mind. Steve’s fingers trailed the raggedy edge of your sweatshirt. Well, his sweatshirt, his last name and basketball jersey number were embossed on the back; he could feel the textured design on your lower back.
“I like my sweater,” he chuckled, reaching up to adjust the length of the drawstrings on the hood. You looked away, a bit embarrassed.
“I didn’t mean to keep it I just…missed you,” You replied “You can have it back.”
“Nah, it suits you,” he smirked “Besides, I want my girl in my stuff, it’s cute.”
“Your girl?” you grinned giddily, elbowing him in the ribs. “Since when am I your girl?” You liked the idea of being Steve’s girl. It had a nice ring to it.
Steve smirked, squeezing your hips in his hands. “Oh come on baby, you’ve been my girl for awhile…”
“Oh really? Well, I wouldn’t know since you’ve never asked me…”
You heard a loud yell and turned to see a set of paramedics carrying a stretcher towards you and Steve. They were sprinting and bringing a badly burnt and unconscious Billy Hargrove towards the ambulance you sat on. You quickly moved out of the way. Steve grabbed your hand, allowing you to tug him from the ambulance’s deck.
You only got a brief look at the teenager, but it made your stomach churn violently. You felt ill. You felt Steve squeeze your hand. You turned to look at him and saw how hollow his eyes were. You wrapped your arm around his middle. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” you said, trying to stifle a yawn. You were exhausted from your flight and your run here and the trauma that had smacked you across the face.
Steve noticed anyway “Did you just get here?” he asked, lifting your chin.
“My flight landed at ten, I came to see you as soon as I could.”
“You should’ve gone home to rest, I wouldn’t have been mad at you.” You looked absolutely exhausted. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like.
“I missed you too much to not see you. And what if you had gotten hurt, if you hadn’t made it out then I would’ve never forgiven myself…”
Steve wrapped his arms tightly around you, shielding you from the scene, as more mangled people were brought out. The beast must’ve fallen apart once the brain was destroyed. It looked as though a bomb had gone off. Steve squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to leave, but he knew that the FBI would be called and he’d have to talk to them again. He wanted you to go home, but that didn’t seem like an option now. Selfishly, he liked having you there, it was comforting to have you in his arms, squeezing him under his ribs and keeping him calm.
“I’m not gonna get hurt, I’m okay…we’re okay…” You nodded roughly against his chest. You felt as if you were burning up and freezing at the same time. You saw blinks of red flashing lights and sirens as one of the ambulances sped past. You were so thankful that he wasn’t on that ambulance.
“Yeah, I know, I’m not gonna let you out of my sight ever again.” Steve lifted up your chin, raising an eyebrow at you. “What? Last time I did you nearly died and for what? A shit job in the mall?”
“Well, not just for a job, I was helping Robin and a couple kids who were with us,” That wasn’t the whole story. Steve knew he’d have to tell you eventually about everything, but for now he was more than comfortable ignoring the looming problem beneath their feet.
“What a hero…” you giggled, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Something had been bothering Steve for awhile now and he determined now was the best time to tackle the subject. He turned away from you, folding his hands in his lap.
“Did you mean it when you said that you loved me?” he asked quietly. Truthfully, he wasn’t certain that you meant it. Or if he had even heard you correctly. After Nancy, he wasn’t sure if anyone actually loved him back. He’d given so much of his heart away only to have it tossed to the floor and tread upon like it was nothing more than a cigarette butt. He wasn’t sure if he could trust that you meant it.
You let out a small sigh through your nose, crossing your arms over your chest. You were a bit embarrassed. You were half hoping that he would forget about it. Your response brought all of Steve’s hopes crashing down. “Yeah, yeah I do,” you admitted, rubbing your arms, having suddenly gone cold. “I will admit, I hadn’t planned on saying that this early, feels a bit middle school to say that you love someone before they’re even your boyfriend.”
Steve turned to look at you once again, a bit surprised. Your face had gone red, adorably red, but still very red and your gaze had turned down to the asphalt at your feet. He reached out and took your hand, interlacing your fingers with his. “Good,” he said with a smile. You turned up to look at him; brow furrowed “I thought I had like imagined it.”
“Oh…no you’re good.” You said slowly. He looked like a little puppy dog, his whole face was radiating sunshine; it was almost hard to look at. It was harder to not match his energy, to get drunk off it. Then again, no one was stopping you from just enjoying the moment. You let out a small breath, not so much heavy with sadness or regret, but simply exhaustion. You let your head rest on his shoulder, smiling softly despite the scene in front of you. If it weren’t for the smouldering building and the emergency vehicles surrounding the pair of you, it would almost be romantic. The fact that you were even trying to find romance in the scene felt a bit silly, but maybe that was what this was supposed to feel like. Finding love in a burning building was a bit dramatic, it certainly not what you’d expected for your life, but you determined that no matter what you’d keep Steve safe. You had no idea what was going on at this scene, you had no idea what happened. But no matter how scared you were, you knew that Steve must’ve been even more scared. You knew that you couldn’t protect him, the same way that he couldn’t protect you, but maybe together you could keep each other safe for awhile.
“I love you too, you know,” Steve said quietly, his gaze trailed on the smoke of grey smoke coming up off the extinguished fire. The front of the mall had crumbled and the giant neon ‘Star-Court Mall’ sign shattered on the pavement. You hadn’t seen the mall before the fire, you didn’t know what it was supposed to look like, but a cavernous jagged mouth probably wasn’t the design goal. Still, you turned your attention to the side of Steve’s face. He couldn’t face you, the tips of his ears bright red underneath his flat, sweaty hair.
You swallowed hard “I know,” you say softly. Steve turned to look at you, examining your face with a nervous expression. You smiled and nodded reassuringly “I know.” Steve smiled and laced his fingers with yours. He squeezed your hand tightly in his and you squeezed his back, the feeling of his hand squeezing yours the only feeling left in your body beyond the giddy buzz. You didn’t know how any of this worked, you didn’t know if you were doing this right, if there was a right way to do it. The buzz under your skin was two parts anxiety and one part excitement. But you didn’t pull away. You were glued to his side.
“You know, I think that was one of the first normal conversations we’ve ever had,” Steve mused.
You scoffed loudly rolling your eyes “That was not normal.
Steve shook his head with a small laugh “Yeah, I know…”
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