#I usually only make sketches instead and that doesn’t mean they’re unfinished. Maybe that’s just all they’re meant to be

[randomalistic]

Cool awesome reminder that you don’t need amazing technical skill to be a good artist/storyteller

[ruvigapo]

Hi do you have maybe some tips for someone who is learning how to use water colour? What brand of water colors to use etc. ??

Hi! Sure i guess.♡ Keep in mind that while i wouldn't say i'm a beginner i'm definitely still learning too.

I will uh.. i'll edit this post this afternoon with some tips lol (note to self to not use the tumblr app in the morning lest your thumb slip and post an unfinished post XD)

((Or maybe i am still a beginner, idk. Okay yeah i'm a beginner but i can give some tips.))

Okay so, i'm home. Been a long day. Here are some tips.

Honestly though, i'm Definitely not an expert when it comes to watercolour specifically. I've used it since i was a kid but i only really got the hang of it resently and i'm definitely still learning.

1. So honestly my first advise is to just look at a lot of different tutorials and ask a lot of different people. This goes for most mediums, but there are a lot of different ways to use water colour to achieve the look that you want and a lot of people do it differently bc it's so versitile.

2. This is a given, but honestly, there's no better teacher than experience. The more you try something out and try doing it in different ways, the more you'll be able to find what works for you. That's really important i think.

This is a tangent, but I took a water colour summer course once and i learn a lot of cool stuff, but i also learnt through a lot of trial and error that my style of water colour was very different from how it's traditionally taught here. Partially because i'm impatient and can barely wait for the layers to dry (this, btw, is honestly a must in water colour tho so that's really gotten better on my end with practice) and partially because a lot of the techniques i learnt were good for landscape painting but dificult when drawing more complicated pieces in my opinion. They're still great techniques but i also learnt to take inspiration from other sources that more closely match what i like to paint.

And the more i learn the more i find that i am also able to incorporate traditional techniques that before seemed very dificult for me.

3. As for art supplies, i honestly wouldn't worry too much about it. Especially as a beginner. I always say that the tool doesn't make the artist, the artist makes the artist. In the end, the most important tool you will ever need is your mind.

I'm also not very good with what brands are high quality and which aren't so there's that frankly.

I'd say ask around and look into what brands are available to you. Most standard water colour sets are good and last a long time. Then you can of course expand your tool arsenal. I'd recomend a bigger pallet just because i'm the kinda person who really enjoys mixing and trying out a lot of different colours and therefore need a lot of space to mix colours.

Also i'd say look into what type of brushes you prefer, and pay attention which brushes are water colour brushes and which are acrylic brushes bc they're pretty different.

Really high quality brushes are usually made with animal hair, which makes it able to hold a lot of water and pigment. I don't like them much personally bc i don't use a lot of water for my drawings as a general rule (mostly because they're doodles and the paper in my sketch book doesn't hold water all that well). (And also sometimes the hairs fall off from the brush and get stuck in my drawing 😬... they're worth checking out though.)

But try out different types of brushes and see what you like. It might be tempting to get a very tiny brush for tiny details but honestly, a medium size does the same work just fine with a light hand in my opinion. And depending on wether you want to paint big or small, what size brush you need will vary. I know that art supplies can be expensive though, so don't feel like you Have to get the most expensive thing when you're just starting out.

4. Speaking of just staring out... honestly, don't even worry about using up your supplies and feeling like every single thing you make has to be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. And not only is that okay but it's nessesary. Not to mention that perfection is wholy a myth and can't be achieved so don't even worry. Quantity over quality i always say. The quality will come with time and work. Which is why i always recomend cheaper brands anyway because you will be painting A Lot to git gud, as they say, but that might just be me.

5. Back to brands

Honestly Please invest in a good paper at least once. It doesn't have to be Fantastic, it just needs to hold water. I'm not even joking, the quality of your paper does wonders for the quality of your drawing. Can you make water colour look good on normal paper? Sure. Case in point, all of the things i paint. But honestly, if not for the sake of a result, then try it out for the sake of experience. Try different things. See what works for you. I honestly do recomend starting out with a good water colour paper since the result will be miles better and you'll feel way more encurraged to continue. That's the one supply i'm adamant about trying honestly. But again, budget wisely young padawan. And if you ever feel scared to use your supplies bc they were expensive and you don't want to waste it.. again nothing is a waste, everything you draw is stored as knowlege in your brain that you'll use to make better art in the future. Nothing is a waste. But if you're like me and the anxiety really hinders you, just get a cheaper paper. I like to paint in my sketch book bc it feels like a diary to me and it doesn't have to be perfect and if i screw up it's still fine. I'll tape it over and start again.

Okay so.. i realise that this is rambly and maybe a bit preachy and not very specific. Starting out can be scary and you want all the things in the right place and you want things to go well every time you paint even though you know it's not going to at first. But you just have to start somewhere and keep going from there. Bc if you never start, where will you be?

So honestly, if you don't have any supplies on hand, just go to the nearest place that sells art supplies and get yourself some good paper and a water colour set and just go ham trying out the colours.

Here are some of the water colour things i've watched over the years to help me in geting started.

This last guy i only found the other week. He does a more trafitional style, more in line with how i was taught at that one summer class thing. So it's always nice to look at different ways to do the thing you want to do.

6. Water colour to me has always been tricky. It's water so it flows, and for a while, that was frustrating because i wasn't able to control it i thought. I prefered using markers but honestly, markers are way more expencive than water colours and you can't mix them and get as much if a clean finish, so now i only use water colour to colour my drawings.

But for a while i avoided water colour and instead opted to use guache. Guache is mostly used in illustrations bc they're easy to layer since the paint is opaque. It's much more forgiving than water colours, so if you want, buy a couple tubes of guache and try that. You don t need that many. I use cyan magenta and two types of yellow as well as white. Any art teacher will tell you that with practice you can mix almost every colour from those colours. I almost never use blacj anymore. Unless i'm lazy, in which case i'll jusr add a layer of black water colour on top of the guache. (GUACHE CAN BE EXPENSIVE THOUGH, DON'T FORGET TO BUDGET)

There are opaque water colours but most aren't i believe. That's where the main difference between guache and water colour comes in. See, in water colour, traditionally, you aren't supposed to use white to lighten a colour. Instead you use water to dilude the pigment. This gives a much more clean and crisp finish. You can do this with guache also, but since quache is already opaque it will still have that same grainy look wether you dilude it with water or mix it with white or both. I mean... i personally love the grainy look so... it's very story book-ish.

With guache bring opaque that also means you can paint over mistakes and start over pretty much, so again, guache is much more forgiving. Once the white of the page is gone when you use water colour, you can't get that back without adding white guache on top, which honwstly just looks messy imo. So be aware of that.

7. Let layers dry before adding another one or the colours will bleed together. Learning to be patient is key. But if you're like me you can just use a hair dryer tbh.

8. If you're using a good paper, you can experiment with a lot more water. Taping down the paper helps bc the paper will swell a lot and buckle when you add a lot of water. (Press it between a butt load of books to get it somewhat flat again).

You can try taking a spunge or a wide brush and add a layer of water before adding the pigment. It can have some interesting results.

You can also leave the paper dry and just paint layers like you would with markers. Both work. Water bleeds more but that's really cool in landscape painting so if that's something you want to try, def experiment with letting the colours bleed together.

9. Oh and don't forget to swatch out your colours when you get them. Water colour dry lighter than it looks when you put down the colour, so swatching helps with determining what colours you want where.

There are So Many videos on the subject honestly. I like to watch videos while i paint. It's fun.

Okay so this is long enough i think. I barely grazed the tip of the proverbial iceberg but i hope it helped.

I really encurrage anyone who knows their stuff abt water colour to add on to this. I really don't want to spread false info. These are just my two cents on the top of my head.

Which basically just boils down to

JUST DO IT

I honestly tell myself this every day. And if i can do parkour then you can paint.

Good luck and have fun! 👍👍👍

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S2 Ep 33:  ᵇˡᶦᵐᵖ ʙʟɪᴍᴘ  BLIMP ԀꟽI⅂ꓭ

I usually don’t really do these during weekdays but lets just say today was a day where I felt the need for a healthy distraction.

Ah, it is episode 33. There are...so many episodes in a Yugioh season, guys. I was just not aware. But, here we are at episode 33 and we are finally going to start the finals.

For reals this time, no one’s going to get engaged, no one’s going to randomly murder a bunch of people. We are officially starting the finals this episode.

Sort of.

Man, Kaiba and his butterfly-wing shoulderpads. Sometimes it just looks like he’s just going to gently flutter away.

Also in this stadium with Kaiba and Mokuba is Marik and Odion, who is just as confused as to where the hell everyone went and why the hell Mai just flew by being carried off by a ninja in a jet pack. The hours it must have taken to wait for Yugi’s crew to walk 2 single blocks was enough time for Marik to formulate yet another back-up plan. I want to say this is plan #9.

It’s a good thing Pharaoh can’t read anymore, considering that Marik’s just walking around in a crop hoodie with a tattoo that just reads “SEASON 2 SPOILERS, PHARAOH, DO NOT READ” in hieroglyphs.

But if you wait long enough, even Yugi and his friends will accidentally wander the correct direction and actually show up.

(read more under the cut)

Not a joke, this is actually an unfinished public works project, congratulations, Kaiba Corps, there is nothing that Kaiba won’t try and then fail at, at least once.

Anyways, this shady-as-hell unfinished stadium seems kind of like a good place to get murdered and then tossed into a cement slab. Which honestly, would have been a very likely end to this season, considering what we have been through so far.

Marik decides to sneak around the bleachers, probably on all fours so no one would spot him, jump out a window, and then come in through the front door like he’s not been here this entire time. As he did, apparently he made everything very, very windy. In fact, everyone with a millennium item brought with them a spooooooky gust of wind except I think Yugi, who is probably too short to pull that one off.

Yugi did manage to get the vibe of “something bad is coming” before Marik entered the field, but like...there’s so many bad things at this point, Yugi. So many people that could be. It feels like that might be half the cast. You could say that at any given moment in this season and be absolutely right.

So, after possessing Tea for a second, for...some reason? Did she need threatening? Anyway, after doing that, Namu is in with the gang because literally nothing will prevent Yugi from becoming a friend with you, especially if you are trying to hide the fact that you just tried to kill him by drowning him in the ocean.

Funny how instead of them asking how the hell Namu got away from cultists, they have to fixate on the mystery of “is Bakura good at cards!?” because, and I kinda forgot about this, I guess they don’t remember the last time they saw Bakura play. How far up their own ass is Yugi and Joey to assume that just because Bakura doesn’t brag about cards all day, that Bakura hasn’t been equally good at cards? They kind of deserve this.

Yeah and PS Kaiba absolutely did not check the satellite to get the DL on why the hell Bakura got so many cards. Dayjob Saruman I guess went home for the evening so...although that shadow game was definitely being recorded on a computer, we’ll never know what that mess looked like on Kaiba’s end. Like there’s just three duel disks covered in ectoplasm hanging out in the cemetery and no one seems to have noticed?

Like for a competition that was huge about security and tech, they only seemed to watch the God Cards players and then Mokuba randomly monitored Joey Wheeler for some reason. That was it. That was all the people the Kaiba’s cared about.

So although Marik and Odion and Bakura could probably take on everyone right now. Like riiiight now. They decide not to because, well, I nearly forgot about someone that I was really looking forward to seeing again, that’s right, my favorite boy!

AW THERE HE IS!

to quote one of my actual favorite earworms,

Where has this big boy been hiding!? He’s freakin ginormous, but apparently he was just hiding behind a soft cloud or something, in anticipation of this grand reveal in a very sketch unfinished stadium that’s probably being used to bet on bum fights.

Mokuba gets excited for the first time since...I don’t remember if Mokuba’s ever actually been excited before. Like I’m digging through my memories here and no, Mokuba’s been mostly abducted, angry, bored, or scared, this is the first time he’s exuded that pure pre-teen energy.

PS a blimp’s max flying height is 1500 ft, and what surprised me the most about this was realizing that this entire time we’ve been watching this show, we’ve been getting measurements in US metrics. Didn’t realize that before today.

Also, on my wikipedia deep dive into blimps, I found out that like...this is probably not a “blimp,” but actually a semi-rigid airship but...I’m gonna keep calling it a blimp. Don’t @ me, blimp fandom on tumblr.

It’s so good to see more Blimp. Even though...probably the worst place to throw a tourney? Like...how many people are you even gonna fit in there? Like...is this televised? I mean I don’t know how Kaiba’s marketing works for this, honestly, he took over every TV in the city to get people to join this tourney, and now that it’s in full swing no one can watch it?

Whatever, it’s a blimp.

Duke Devlin is still here, despite the fact that I don’t think he’s going to do anything for the rest of this season. I guess they had to promote that gameboy game so his face will just be in the background always although as a dice player he um...he has no purpose here.

In fact it makes no sense, he works with Pegasus who straight up killed Mokuba and Kaiba like a month ago, why are they just letting him on their airship? Whatever.

I dunno, maybe there’s more that Duke will do eventually, but he just seemed like a replacement for Bakura at first--and Bakura’s back now, so why’s he still here?

Ishizu is here, and while every other time we’ve seen Ishizu, she’s been talking our ears off, the one time she should probably say something, she instead decides to lock herself inside her bedroom and avoid everyone.

I guess she was mostly avoiding Marik so they don’t have a sibling laser fight in the hull of a Blimp. That would have made things so awkward for Yugi and Bakura. Especially Yugi, who still doesn’t know that thing around his neck shoots freakin lasers.

Props the background artists who had to draw billions of small little buildings AKA the worst background in the world to draw. I will go through hoops to avoid drawing even a single building, but to have to sit down and paint just a whole page of buildings that someone’s going to smack a foreground on anyway? Mad respect. If you look closely you’ll see that this artist had to use a ruler and perspective and other annoying tools that take up time and energy. Even using editing tools like using blocks of black color to imitate the look of rooftops and crowded structures, it probably took them a few hours to make the background that went in a .2 second scene.

They’ll probably reuse these buildings later, don’t get me wrong, but oi, I feel for them in my carpel tunnel bones.

Seto keeps telling Yugi that they’re rivals but I don’t think anyone on this show other than Joey thinks of Seto as much of a rival at all. You almost feel a little bad for him, like he’s in a weird...hate triangle, but very much on the loosing end of it.

Next we get a good look at Kaiba’s interior design decisions, and much like his mansions, it’s a lot of very unexpected soothing pastels. Like this is a lot of seafoam blue. How can someone so angry make something so grandma-zen? Is it actually Kaiba’s grandmother who is just slapping down all these paint chips when he’s not looking? I mean it’s got muted pink stools even, with a makeup station.

Tea, Tristan, and Duke have no rooms to go to because they aren’t actually part of this competition, so they’re just squatting around until they’ll probably all end up crashing with Mokuba, the only other person who is not dueling in this competition. Reminds me a lot of the first week of college, where everyone is just coasting dorm room to dorm room and there’s like 10 people there who actually don’t actually go there but want to hang out with their high school friends and they just end up sleeping in your room for 7 days until they read your other friend’s diary, get hella indignant, and then storm off back to California. My apologies to my Freshman year roommate who had to put up with all that girl drama.

And because it’s this show, the men and their bottomless stomachs decide to raid the smallest little mini fridge and you wouldn’t believe what takes up about 1/4 of it

There is so many cheese wheels in this Japanese show, guys. So, I felt like doing a quick google search of Japan and Cheese and it’s just a bunch of ex-pats talking about how the European cheeses most of us are familiar with is harder to find in Japan. So, maybe that’s why? It's a status symbol that he can find round cheeses?

But even if you can only get your hands on a 30$ Swiss wheel every so often (because that really is just Swiss cheese, like lets be real.) how much Swiss cheese can one man eat??? Especially since, looking closely, there is not a single baguette here. No man can eat that much cheese without a bread!

Sorry, stuffing your face full of free cheese you pulled out of your friend’s mini-fridge is also giving me vivid flashbacks to my Freshman year of college.

Also little edit--just realized that flag is flipped 90 degrees from French so that’s probably a Holland flag? Although I looked up European flags and there is...none that have that color order so I don’t know which country they were originally going for.

YO I just realized there’s no curtains on any of these pelvis-height level windows. So, you can’t sleep because of the lights, and you can’t change into pajamas because like--the whole city will see.

Kaiba does seem like the type that would on purpose not install any curtains on any of the windows he’s ever owned, though.

Keto is gone, and now we just have Roland, who is probably too terrified to ever abduct the Kaibas by picking them up by the neck with one arm.

Anyway, in case you were wondering--since the show has decided to make a huge fuss over card prep time--how can they prep for a card game if they only have the cards they brought with them and they don’t know what the other people are even playing or which person they’re playing first?

Kaiba did nothing. He sat there and thought “If Yugi doesn’t even put that God Card in his deck this entire tourney will be absolutely pointless.”

Mai took little sips of milk. Probably paired it with Swiss cheese. Just a huge bite out of a wheel of Swiss cheese.

Odion never found the refrigerator.

Marik took a nap on this bed that looks like it’s just made of foam. Why is this the only one on the show who’s like “Youknow, I should sleep at some point.”

And Yugi’s prep involved talking to himself a whole lot, which explains why none of his friends wanted to stay here for that. I doubt very much Yugi kicked him out of the room. He was probably like “no, stay, stay” in that high pitched-low pitched voice combo until they were like “nooooo I don’t want to be present for your daily seance checkup byeeee.” while slowly backing out of the room.

Yo remember that time we were worried about Bandit Keith stealing the puzzle?

Apparently...Pharaoh could have just sort of done that dizzolving thingy and appeared right back on Yugi’s neck.

And remember that time Yugi handed that puzzle to Joey?

Apparently...Pharaoh could have just sneezed and then bam--right back around Yugi’s neck.

Like remember any time this season that we’ve been like “Oh no, the puzzle! We’re gonna lose it!” no that...that was never a problem.

I mean to be fair when it’s dismantled it might not work but um--apparently you can’t lose an item after it’s decided it likes you. At all. Which is kind of weird because Pegasus totally lost that eyeball, and aren’t all these items property of Pharaoh anyway?

I’ll try not to think about it as this rule seems to only really apply to Bakura. 

Anyway, next week--I’m pretty sure the finals are indeed actually starting next week. I could be wrong as I have been every single episode but maybe--probably--the finals are actually going to start. We shall see.

[therealsymmetra]

//Wanderers

Among the wild no one is an anomaly 

Dylan is @jorgancrath

Stella keeps her head down, eyes trained on her page, every so often flitting upwards before she refocuses on where her pencil scrawled. The Hunter was sitting in the sunlight, legs folded and an open bag in his lap, some kind of food in his hand although the way he was angled she couldn’t quite tell what it was. He had oddly enough given her good intervals between poses, sitting, laying, standing, moving about the space as he settled for a meal. She wasn’t prone to visiting the City or being around humans in general so the most figure work she got was on traveling Eliksni she would come across. But this Hunter, this fascinating man she had come across several times, was proving a good subject to sketch. She was hidden in a large tree bough, up high enough that she was pretty sure he hadn’t seen her when she had settled. It was just easier for her, being out of the way, watching someone be natural and unaware, however it didn’t escape her how possibly unsettling it was. Luckily she was well concealed among the foliage, she added a block of shadow, a dip in his cloak, before looking up again only to find the spot of sunlight that broke through the canopy to be empty. She sat up, squinting into the shadows, searching for his figure, and when she couldn’t find him she sat back, letting out a huff. So much for that.

“Is that me?”

Stella jolted, notebook falling from her hands and to the dirt below as she reached for her rifle out of instinct only to the find the Hunter crouched just above her on another tree branch.

“Oh, my bad,” he said, sucking air in through his teeth as he leapt deftly and silently from limb to limb before he hit the ground.

Stella watched in awe and embarrassment, only realizing when he picked it up and turned it over, seemingly admiring himself, that he was still looking at what she had drawn. She scrambled down, her method crude and only half as graceful as his own descent, snatching the sketchbook from his hands even though he stood a head taller than her.

“That’s pretty good, got my stunning good looks down!” He said as if it were a casual conversation, laughing, a warm sound that made Stella’s heart pound a little louder.

“Uhh it um, it was just a sketch I didn’t, I uh didn’t mean anything, it’s nothing really just practice and uh well you shouldn’t do that you know? You shouldn’t, it’s rude,” Stella said, stammering, trying to untwist the knots from her tongue.

“It’s rude to, what? Sit in the sun and eat lunch?” He asked, humor to his voice even though she couldn’t see his expression beneath his helmet.

Stella felt her cheeks redden further, letting Stitch transmat the sketchbook away, huffing as she avoided his gaze beneath his helmet.

“I’m Dylan, this is Icarus,” the Hunter said, holding out his hand for her to take it.

“I’m Stella,” she said as she took his hand “and this is Stitch,” she said as the little ghost bumped her shoulder.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, I’ve seen you before, we took down that Fallen ketch the other day didn’t we?” He asks and she nods.

“Oh… oh yeah that was you wasn’t it,” Stella looks up, unable to discern a face beneath the helmet.

“You forgot me already?” He asked, fake hurt in his voice as she kicks as the dirt.

“What? No. No no, I just… I come and go a lot, I’ll pass a lot of Guardians, help out. It’s not personal,” she says.

“A fellow wanderer huh?”

Stella stares off into middle space for a moment, contemplating her life since she woke up. Was she a wanderer? “I guess,” she sighs more than says. She doesn’t know what she is, she doesn’t know why this virtual stranger makes her want to contemplate that, but she shrugs off the question.

“Most Guardians favor the Tower over the wilds, don’t see many of them out here unless they’re on patrols, much less a Titan. Hunters are more likely, maybe Warlocks, Titans like their walls,” he says.

Most Guardians don’t feel like an outsider because they have too much of what makes them a Guardian.

“Walls are like cages,” she says instead, a surprising statement, one that she feels makes her chest hurt but she doesn’t know why.

There is silence between them and she has to physically shake herself.

“Doesn’t matter, I just like the fresh air,” she says as he paces over to where he was sitting before, pulling an unfinished ration from behind the log.

“Well, if you ever want company, I’m around this area for another, oh, week or so. I can pose for you if you want,” the chuckle in his voice makes her blush as she awkwardly tries to look like she’s doing something other than standing there and watching him.

“I’ll keep my eye out.”

“See you around, Stella.”

She nearly jumps at her name, usually it comes from Stitch and no one else. But she likes how he says it.

“Yeah, see you around,” she says as she watches him nearly melt into the wilderness, his footsteps blending with the natural soundscape, and disappears.

[artificialqueens]

everything’s different and nothing has changed (trixya) — dylann

Trixie wants this part to be over. The part of returning where he relearns how to move when no one is watching, where no one’s expecting him to provide quippy commentary about anything, where he could literally do anything and it wouldn’t matter is terrifying, somehow.

A/N: this is a post-as3 reunion fic based on a prompt i got from an anon (“give us the post-as3 reunion we all deserve. katya is out here being messy and i need it”) i don’t know if i delivered on the katya being messy front, but feelings are involved and those are definitely messy.

not an established relationship but there’s definitely an agreement in place. i use drag names and he/him pronouns for both throughout.

shoutout to dare for getting me to try my hand at trixya (and fixing all of my prepositions) xo

content warning for alcohol and some mildly explicit content

It ends as quietly as it began, with Trixie standing on the sidewalk, all of his best drag stuffed into three suitcases and a few duffel bags beside him. There’s a car on the way, his phone’s in the pocket of his worn jeans, and there isn’t a single camera around.

It’s a little after 10 pm, and the air is heavy and suffocating in a way only LA air can be in late August. Trixie is a year older, and done, and the world around him doesn’t seem any different.

He’d spent the past few weeks drafting texts to Katya (mentally, mostly, but sometimes also literally, jokes scribbled among rushed sketches and stray lyrics), and now that he’s back out in the real world, none of them seem right.

Trixie wants this part to be over. The part of returning where he relearns how to move when no one is watching, where no one’s expecting him to provide quippy commentary about anything, where he could literally do anything and it wouldn’t matter is terrifying, somehow.

It’s like the first day of school after summer break: everything and everyone is the same, supposedly, except they’re not, they haven’t seen each other in months and a summer changes people. It’s a chunky metaphor but Trixie is so tired, and it makes enough sense.

He pulls his phone out and glances at the time. The car was supposed to be here nearly ten minutes ago. There are no new notifications since he turned the phone on an hour ago. Then, there’d been too many emails and twice as many tweets, and he’d marked everything as “read” without really looking at any of it. There’s been nothing since, and that shouldn’t feel as disappointing as it, surprisingly, does.

No one knows that he’s out. No one knows that it’s over.

His finger hovers over the green Messages icon when the phone vibrates and a notification (Arriving Soon: Jake is arriving soon in a Toyota Camry) so Trixie looks up and watches the car pull up.

Jake greets him quickly and steps outside to help him load all of his bags in the trunk.

“Long day at work?” the driver prompts as Trixie gets inside the car and clips his seatbelt on.

“Kind of.”

The man offers a sympathetic smile in the rear view mirror. Trixie nods and looks down at his phone, typing and sending a text before he really has time to rethink or edit.

To: Katya 🚬👵🏼 (10:21:07pm) my uber driver’s kinda cute

***

Trixie’s apartment is even quieter than the street when he unlocks the door, props it open with one of the smaller bags, and drags the first suitcase in.

The lights are off and the street lamp light that filters through the window on the far end of the living room casts strange shadows on the furniture. It all looks as if someone snuck in and changed the layout of the room just enough to make it unnerving. Trixie drags the second suitcase in and reaches over to flick the lights on.

In the warm light that floods the space, it looks more like the room Trixie knows well enough that he could give the world’s most underwhelming museum tour: here’s the scratch in the hardwood floor where the legendary Trixie Mattel tried to move a couch on her own, here’s the burn mark on the coffee table where she left a curling iron unattended a moment too long, the curtain rod that’s holding on entirely on regular prayer and balled up gaff tape.

It’s home, and he’s there, and nothing’s changed.

Trixie hauls the rest of the bags in and closes the door. His hand lingers on the doorknob as he exhales a slow, steadying breath and reaches his free hand up to rub the bridge of his nose. His body feels heavy and uncomfortably hot and he wants to sit down for a year.

“Jesus, come on,” he whispers, because he’s the kind of person who talks to himself now, apparently, and pushes himself away from the door.

Trixie leaves the bags pushed up neatly against the wall and then turns the TV on, walks over to open the window, lights a candle on the coffee table, paces until the shadows in the corners of the room soften. It’s home now, and not the twisted Coraline clone version of it from half an hour ago.

He showers and changes into the oldest pair of sweatpants he owns and a faded black t-shirt he doesn’t remember buying. He ends up back in the living room where his phone has been abandoned, screen-side down, since he came home. Trixie settles in the corner of the couch and finally picks it up. It lights up to show the time — just past midnight — and no new notifications.

This time, he rests his thumb on the home button and unlocks the phone, pulling up his messages again. Maybe the text didn’t send, or he somehow missed a notification, or—

He glances down and his stomach turns a little. (The last time Trixie ate was brunch, standing up near a craft services table, and that feels like half a lifetime ago. He should probably do something about that, too.)

Since the last time he checked, the small gray text underneath his message has gone from “Delivered” to “Read 11:27pm”, and then there’s nothing.

The candle on the table wavers as the slightest hint of a merciful late night wind blows in from outside. It smells heavy, oak and mahogany, and he can practically hear Courtney lecturing him about how that’s not a summer scent at all but it’s comforting so he closes his eyes and inhales deeply.

Katya’s not the best at texting. He texts in full, grammatically correct sentences, no emoji, and will usually give up and call when he gets a thought that’s too long to type out or a joke which just has to be delivered a certain way. Sometimes, he opens his texts, glances at them too quickly to even skim through, and clicks out of the app. Trixie’s watched him do that too many times to begin counting.

So maybe that’s what happened. Or maybe he’s working, or he’s with people, or he’s busy, or he just didn’t know what to say.

A slightly manic part of Trixie’s mind clings to the latter, the chance that Katya just didn’t have an answer, that maybe he didn’t spend weeks and weeks drafting the perfect return text, that maybe—

“Shut the fuck up.”

Trixie’s voice comes out loud enough to surprise him as he speaks into the empty room. The train of thought derails and crashes somewhere beyond his own comprehension and he closes his eyes to imagine it burning because fuck this. He knows Katya too well to let himself consider that. It feels unfair to Katya, almost like a betrayal, that his mind would even come up with any of this at all.

The train still burning in the back of his mind, Trixie gets up and fixes himself a drink because being home means he gets to do that, and it can be plain vodka on the rocks and not some watered down cocktail which looks good on camera and leads to the sharpest headaches.

He brings the bottle back to the coffee table, just in case, and settles with a cushion in his lap to watch whatever episode of Snapped is flashing blurry black-and-white photos of a crime scene on TV.

Trixie’s halfway through his second glass when he solves the case before any of the detectives on the screen do. They’re looking at a college roommate.

“It’s clearly the ex,” he says to no one in particular, waving his free hand distractedly at the TV. “Why would he call her three days after her birthday if he didn’t have some unfinished business with her? It’s in the phone records, Jennifer—“

The doorbell rings, inappropriately loud for this time of night. It startles Trixie and he jumps a little, sending vodka splashing over his wrist and dripping onto the cushion. It takes a second to register that he should probably do something about the doorbell and he hasn’t moved when it rings again, three short buzzes telegraphing insistent anxiety.

Trixie scrambles up and walks over to the door with the drink in his hand and the damp cushion tucked under his arm. The peephole has been cracked and speckled with paint for probably decades before he’d moved in, so Trixie just accepts that murder is a very real possibility, and cracks the door open instead.

Katya’s out of breath but smiling, his arms dangling awkwardly at his sides like he wanted to look casual and couldn’t quite remember how to pull it off.

Trixie lets the door swing open all the way as he steps out, wordlessly finding his way into Katya’s arms. The hand that’s not holding a glass presses firmly against Katya’s back right where his ribcage is tangible under the thin cotton of his shirt. Trixie is vaguely aware that he drops the cushion along the way.

He closes his eyes and breathes — sharp, deep breaths as Katya pulls him in closer and holds him tightly, his nose pressed against the short hair on the side of Trixie’s head.

“You bitch,” Trixie starts finally, when he feels steady and trusts his voice.

“I wanted to say hi in person—“

“You absolute whore, I was so worried—“

“Shh. Shut up for half a second,” Katya cuts him off mid-rant and Trixie lets out a breathy laugh as he pulls back just enough to catch his eyes. Katya grins, toothy and wide, and says quietly,

“Hi. Welcome back.”

And Trixie isn’t mad at him for ignoring his text and making him wait anymore because Katya’s beaming at him and it’s worth it.

“Come in, they’re just about to arrest the ex boyfriend,” Trixie says once he realizes that they’re still at the door, and practically out in the hallway.

Katya follows him into the living room, picking up the cushion as he goes.

“Love the mood lighting.”

“I like to create the illusion that I wasn’t watching true crime by myself through candles that smell like men,” Trixie shrugs and Katya cackles and follows immediately with,

“That candle wears an expensive watch and starts ghosting you after the third date.”

Trixie laughs and watches Katya sit down on the couch like he’s in his own living room, humming judgmentally as he flicks the TV off.

“—which is a pity because the one time you fucked in his car it was actually pretty good,” Trixie continues, which gets Katya to hold up a hand to his chest, clutching invisible pearls as he howls with laughter.

“…even though the leather interior sticks to your ass and gives you a really gross rash,” Trixie finishes, and Katya’s doubled over his own knees, laughing hard enough that he snorts gracelessly when he gasps for air.

It’s easy and quick, and Trixie’s heart settles a little as he realizes that this part hasn’t changed, that thankfully, it doesn’t feel off-kilter and unfamiliar the way his apartment had when he came back. They’ve been away from each other too many times for that to be a surprise but this is different, somehow. The room seems cozier with Katya in the center of it, laughing on the couch.

The laughter dies down gradually and fades into a comfortable silence. Trixie is, for some reason, still standing, like an anxious host who isn’t sure if sitting down would be polite just yet.

Katya looks up at him, and then his eyes trail past Trixie and land on the bags by the door.

The silence shifts, now thick like electricity in the air before a storm, like the second of anticipation before a roller coaster drop.

It’s Katya who breaks it. He looks back at Trixie and prompts,

“So?”

Trixie tucks his chin down and glances at the floor. His teeth worry his bottom lip and there are uneasy lines creasing his forehead when he blinks back up at Katya.

Katya, on the other hand, keeps his face almost entirely neutral, except his eyes widen a little (that’s shock), and then narrow (that’s anger), and then the corners of his mouth twitch dangerously (Trixie’s learned that’s outrage),

and it all takes a split second because then Trixie exhales, pushing all of the air out of his lungs, and presses his eyes shut as he nods affirmatively to answer the initial question.

Katya’s face shifts. The lines of it soften and his eyes go wide, and he’s trying not to smile as he rises from his spot on the couch,

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It hits Trixie then, when Katya launches himself at him and envelops him in his arms, and he sob-laughs into Katya’s neck and Katya just holds him tighter and tighter and laughs along with him.

“I told you,” Katya whispers finally, and it comes out shaky but Trixie is crying onto his t-shirt so maybe that’s okay. “I knew it, of course I did, I knew it but— Fuck, it feels fucking good to be right.”

Trixie laughs helplessly and pulls back a little.

“I’m so proud of you,” Katya says, low and private, catching Trixie’s eyes and staring directly at them the way he does when he really, really means business. “No one deserves this more than you do.”

Trixie sniffles as he laughs again. Later, he’s going to have wrapped his mind around it, and he’ll tell Katya just how much this is because of him, because of how they’ve built each other up, because of how fiercely Katya has believed in him and his fantasy that entire time.

Now, the thought of all of that just chokes him up again and Katya’s kissing his forehead as he cries and whispers Thank you, seriously, Katya, thank you thank you thank you.

Katya doesn’t move until the shared sound of wet, tearful laughter fades into another near-perfect silence. His lips are steady against Trixie’s forehead, not quite a kiss now as much as a solid, constant presence, and Trixie feels like his heart might burst open if it lasts a second longer.

He tilts his chin up carefully right as Katya starts to pull away, and their noses bump against each other. The room’s gone terribly quiet; the low murmur of the street feels like it’s coming from some other world.

The soft, dim light from the candle lands at the high point of Katya’s cheekbone and Trixie reaches up distractedly, traces his thumb along the line where that spot of light fades into shadow. Katya watches him silently, intently, his breath coming out hot and shaky against Trixie’s knuckles.

Trixie’s mouth has gone dry.

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” he says, and it comes out in a quiet rasp. “If you don’t mind.”

Katya’s cheek shifts under his thumb as he exhales one beat of a laugh and moves his head in the slightest of nods.

Trixie’s eyes fall shut. He drops his hand from Katya’s face to the back of his neck and tugs him closer, and when Katya’s lips hit his, it’s urgent but soft and for the second time in about twelve hours, Trixie wonders fleetingly if it’s possible to pass out from sheer joy.

Katya has a steady hand at the small of his back and he uses that to steer Trixie over to the couch, not once breaking the kiss for anything longer than one breath.

Trixie moves to sit and Katya follows him down until he’s straddling him, and Trixie cranes his neck up as he chases a deeper kiss. Katya lets his hands drop and slips cool fingertips under the hem of Trixie’s t-shirt. His light touch draws a gasp from Trixie and when he presses harder, Trixie groans into his mouth and drives his hips up.

Katya responds in a low sigh and Trixie reaches up, pressing his dull, short nails at the back of Katya’s head as he runs his teeth lightly over Katya’s bottom lip and then slips his tongue into his mouth.

Katya grinds down in one sharp motion and this time Trixie curses under his breath in response. He’s half hard in his threadbare sweatpants and his head is swimming.

This isn’t the first time this has happened but it’s the first time in a really long time, the first time since the night-long conversations and the agreements and the we can’ts and we shouldn’ts. The thought occurs to him distantly while Katya kisses the juncture of his jaw and his neck, open-mouthed and hot.

“Katya,” he whispers and Katya hums noncommittally in response as he licks his way down Trixie’s neck. “Katya.”

Trixie’s insistent the second time and Katya draws back and looks down at him, and his eyes are dark and wide and it takes Trixie a second to recollect his thoughts.

“Can we?” he whispers finally, because he has to hear it, because Katya could say no and pull away now and it’d be okay, because it’s been both and neither and Trixie needs to know where they stand.

“Rumor on the street is,” Katya starts lightly, arching down to kiss him. “according to recent events,” another kiss, “you can do anything.”

He delivers the last word in a dramatic whisper, and it’s the cheesiest line Trixie’s heard in years and his entire chest hurts as he laughs.

“You’re terrible,” he whispers, and it sounds like anything but. “I changed my mind, I don’t even want to—“

“And that’s okay,” Katya lets his voice drop to a murmur as he speaks just close enough to Trixie’s lips that they almost touch. “But we can. If you wanted to.”

Trixie exhales another laugh, relieved this time, and is still laughing when Katya claims another kiss.

“We should move,” Trixie whispers.

Katya nods and pulls back surprisingly quickly, with the energy of a man driven by pure enthusiasm.

“Hold on— not trying to start a fire,” Trixie says, and bends down to blow the candle out.

Katya has crossed the small distance to the bedroom door already.

“Hey, Tracy,” he calls quietly as the candle goes out.

Trixie looks up. There’s dim light coming through the bedroom window and Katya’s a dark silhouette against the frame of the open door and somehow, even the blurry outline of his figure is beautiful.

“Yeah?”

“Happy birthday.”

[hencethebravery]

“Lilac Wine,” 1/1

Summary: She takes a sip anyway. She kisses him anyway. His lips, teeth, and tongue all taste of it. When she breathes between their kiss she inhales the harsh burn of it, and her head spins but all she can do is demand more; curl her fingers around the collar of his jacket tighter, tighter. (Ao3)

Notes: My own little contribution to the miracle that was the Neverland arc. For Kat (@abbadons-little-witch), who has returned to school even though she wants nothing more than to fantasize about Colin and write fic about Emma and Killian smushing their faces together like God intended. xo

+ When Emma was young, she was desperate to be special. If she stood out, the possibility was greater that someone would want to keep her. That a teacher or a babysitter or a social worker would see how unusually talented or smart she was, and a nice couple would suddenly decide that it would be in their own best interest to take her home. Trouble was, of course, that no one really wanted to see an orphan. She was drowning in her clothes most of the time, and regardless of her plans, she didn’t necessarily want people to see her. She usually let her long, thick hair cover her face. She didn’t make eye contact with her teachers and peers, and even when she wanted to raise her hand in class, there was that little niggling something holding her back. A voice inside her head that told her no one wanted to hear what she had to say anyway.

Despite her nervousness, she did try for a while. Quiet, isolating talents that wouldn’t necessarily require her to share them at first. Maybe, she would think, maybe if I practice a lot, by the time I’ve gotten better, I won’t be afraid to show them. So she tried her hand at drawing, found whatever paper and writing implements she could (some of them she would even steal from her classroom at school), and she would begin. A soccer ball, the starving cat that wandered around her neighborhood, the fake bowl of fruit that sat in the middle of the living room at the foster home. Anything and everything, she tried. She kept all of her drawings in a folder in her desk marked “TOP SECRET,” underlined three whole times, and then circled with a yellow highlighter, just to be safe.

And then, one day, the worst happened. A boy whose name she would fail to remember as an adult, but whose face would still appear in the occasional nightmare, discovered her secret, pulled her attempts at “special” from their hiding place. He flat-out ignored the “TOP SECRET” printed across the front, the three lines beneath it. And he looked, and then he laughed, and then he showed everyone else. And she knew she couldn’t bear it, not again, so away they went, into the garbage with everything else. With the short story she tried writing, the rhyming poetry that sounded eerily like Dr. Seuss and she decided right then and there that being special wasn’t worth it.

And then she punched him in the nose.

//

He probably hadn’t meant for anyone to find it, but he had left it exposed in the middle of the table, practically begging to be found. There’s standard fare, captain’s logs, temperature and visibility and any number of nautical details that she couldn’t make heads or tails of. But there were also sketches, some spanning the length of two pages, others sequestered away in the corners of a single page; small and insignificant. Some completed, others not. Half of a face, a clenched fist. The shape of a whale or shark fin, breaching a tempestuous wave.

Who would have thought? Captain Hook is a tortured artist. She smirks to herself, pushes away the guilty feeling that maybe she shouldn’t be looking at this, maybe it’s private. She keeps a fair amount of her own secrets, after all, knows what it’s like to keep certain parts of yourself hidden away from prying eyes. It makes a certain kind of sense; the dramatic flair, the broody disposition. The eyeliner. Whatever the reality, there’s an attention to detail within those pages that she can’t shake. A noticeable talent that a part of her envies; the small, insecure orphan inside of her yearning for talent, one thing, anything, that would make her stand out from a crowd of kids just as lonely and desperate as she was.

She starts taking notice of the world and people around her as an artist would. As he might. The island is large and imposing, but from a distance it’s a formless mass, made of dark greens and blues, swirling in and out of each other like a whirlwind. When the water crashes against the shore it’s paler, somehow, the colors less indistinct. She can see the pebbles, shells, and seagrass drifting along the sand beneath the shallow waves.

The way her father looks at her mother. The way Gold looks at all of them, as if they were merely pawns to be moved on a board that no one else can see. The way Regina seems to inspect her rather than simply look, knowing that it’s Emma but seeing Henry instead, like she were just an empty, used up vessel that’s already served its purpose. And maybe she is. Maybe that’s her talent; a receptacle with no substance of her own, her only purpose to exist as a means to another’s end; for Regina’s son, the Savior’s magic, her parent’s dreams. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

//

His eyes are blue but sometimes they’re not. And blue is just… not adequate. It’s not enough, it would be like saying Neverland from the prow of his ship was black. And it’s not black; it’s night, and jungle, and the deepest ocean she’s ever seen. It’s textures and sounds, and his eyes are not blue. She hates that they’re not blue.

He’s taller than she is, but strangely, she never feels as if he’s towering over her. He holds himself with a certain kind of confidence that she admires; for all her blustering these last few days, it feels like she’s moments away from crumbling. But she suspects, and this is when the blue of his eyes turns darker, and maybe slightly green, that if she were to fumble under the weight of all this, he would lean towards her (maybe just a bit) so she could lift herself back up.

In the moments before she briefly fumbles, grabs the lapels of that stupid coat and makes him lean, she notices an absolutely abhorrent sheen of sweat across his brow and cheeks. It’s been there for days, this island wins first prize in overall humidity, and everyone has been slightly sweaty since they arrived, but it plays differently along the planes of his face. And why, good God, why, can’t sweat, just be sweat? Only it’s not, because it barely shines, but it emphasizes a blush in his cheeks that she keeps noticing; this flushing pink that she can’t stop looking at.

The liquor lingers on her tongue from his kiss. She's had expensive booze before, the kind that you can barely feel when it slides down your throat. It lands so smoothly in your stomach that you barely notice when the room starts to spin. The unholy concoction in Hook’s flask could barely be called rum. It burns before you even take a sip, the fumes of it invading your senses, warning you off.

She takes a sip anyway. She kisses him anyway. His lips, teeth, and tongue all taste of it. When she breathes between their kiss she inhales the harsh burn of it, and her head spins but all she can do is demand more; curl her fingers around the collar of his jacket tighter, tighter.

Time seems to move slower, and there’s a brief moment in the midst of this sweet, warm, boozy torture that she wonders whether or not Pan has played a trick on them. If this island has more in the way of deception than they had realized, if he’s been sent by Pan to distract her; if there’s an enormous, ticking clock somewhere under their feet and the hands have been rigged to move slower. She can tell he’s surprised at first, which is a treat in and of itself, but then she feels his chest expand with renewed vigor against her own, and that’s when the doubt trickles in.

The worry that it’s some kind of trick to prevent her from rescuing Henry, But there’s just no way, she thinks fleetingly, there’s no way, with the shocking gentleness of his hand against the back of her head, as if he has to remind himself that she’s real, and here, and she kissed him. And there’s a give and take to this moment that she’s never quite experienced before; she doesn’t feel as if she’s an emptiness that exists merely to be filled by his expectations of her, rather he is overwhelmed by what she is, and all she can think is that if this indeed is yet another one of Pan’s deceptions, that she would gladly be tricked, again, and again; would gladly let the hands of the clock move slower and slower until they stop, and she can feel the scruff of his face, rough and inviting, against her lips forever.

//

She knows that the clock has to start ticking again. There’s a heaviness to the hands of time that starts to ring in her head, and despite the slight loss of balance in the aftermath of their kiss, she feels steadier. His forehead rests wearily against her own, and it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to keep her lips from returning to their place against his rum-soaked mouth. She’s afraid to open her eyes, because she suspects that the mere sight of his long, thick eyelashes resting against the flushed apples of his cheeks would be her undoing.

When time resumes, this will have to mean nothing; an unfinished sketched in the pages of her memory. Hidden away, labeled “TOP SECRET,” where no one can discover this speciality that she didn’t think she would ever find. This moment in which simply being herself was more than enough for somebody else. No exceptional talent required.

“That was,” he whispers against her mouth, and she feels a desperate tugging in her heart that yearns to hear the end of that sentence, but the traitorous, practical part of her doesn’t let him finish. Silently urges the beat, beat, beat in his own chest to keep it tucked away in the pages of his very real, very heady notebook full of various implications and complexities that she can’t bring herself to consider any longer than she already has.

She asks that he not follow, and for all his talk of being a “scoundrel,” he’s remarkably obedient. A quiet, “As you wish,” at her back follows her all the way back to the campsite; it follows his every action even when he remains blessedly silent, and when they finally rescue Henry and return to the Jolly Roger it follows her down into his cabin, where his notebook has suddenly, remarkably, disappeared.