#I’m going to tag things I want to save because for the longest time I just thought

[not-so-local-lesbian]

Tags from prev reblogs somehow gave me an indescribably meaningful reminder about life, and I’m gonna save this for later n yall should too

@fairycosmos / Comic by @shhhitsfine / Comic by @incendavery

[choslut]

˖ ࣪ ، ◞ せ⌇ INKED. featuring s. geto.

↻ geto enjoys his job for this exact reason… he gets to give pretty girls like you your first ever tattoo.

tags : tattoos, slight masochism, dirty thoughts, suggestive actions, possessive behaviour, tattoo artist x florist trope, voice kink, dirty talk, praise kink, latex kink (if you squint), implied fingering, marking (literally and figuratively), implied virgin!reader, slight dubcon // wc. 1.1k

author's note : the longest one of the series… and possibly the longest author’s note too. i want to thank everyone who’s supported me throughout this event from the day i released the masterlist all the way up until the last work today!! i know i’ve said that every one of these have been my favourite but why not save the best ‘til last… this very specific image of geto haunts my (wet) dreams 🤤🤤 thank you again for all the support, because of you guys, i managed to go from 200 to over 900 followers !! 💓💓 i can’t thank you more, and i hope you enjoy this last work. this has been luna, and thank you for reading!!

pspsps …. you might want to stick around for my upcoming kinktober. it’s going to be a thriller…

“i would’ve never striked you as the type to want a tattoo, sweetie.” GETO looks at you over the frame of his glasses, eyebrow quirked as he confirms your appointment on his laptop. “and especially not one of this… calibre. is it your first time?”

you nod shyly, eyes averting from his gaze. he looks at the sheet of paper with your desired design on it, and the corners of his lips quirk upwards. a tramp stamp. totally not your type upon first glance. 

he’s looking forward to this. 

you’re a sweet enough girl. you wear denim miniskirts and baggy floral t-shirts, and your face is almost always bare, save for a few coats of mascara on your eyelashes and the occasional touch of lip gloss to make your features pop. you work in the flower shop across the street, and the only way geto can describe you is cute, and definitely not the type to want such a striking design tattooed on your lower back. it’s in such an intimate position, and he can’t help but feel a tiny bit jealous for the lucky fucker who gets to run their hands all over it whilst he-

“it’s not too… extreme, is it?” you bite your lip nervously. “my friends told me that i should do something out of my comfort zone, so…”

he tears his eyes away from the sheet of paper to look up at you kindly. “it’s beautiful. come this way, we’ll get started now.”

“since it’s your first time, i’ll try to take things slow.” you’re lying flat on your front on the table, skirt pulled down an inch and shirt riding up your stomach. geto stands beside you, rolling up his sleeves and donning his latex gloves before prepping the stencil. 

you have such pretty skin, he notes. beautiful and untouched, with such a pretty arch in your spine. he would’ve loved to imagine you positioned like this in different circumstances, but for now, he’s your tattoo artist and you’re his client, so his job is to make you feel as comfortable as possible. 

so, to soothe your nerves, he runs his latex-clad fingers along the arch in your spine, splaying his hands across your lower back and smiling when he feels you shiver as a disinfectant wipe comes into contact with your skin. 

“i’m just prepping the skin, and then i’ll transfer the stencil. it’ll feel a little cold at first, but hopefully it’ll help calm all those pesky nerves. does that sound alright?” you nod. “good girl.”

shit. it just slipped out, the praise, but then he notices that your muscles start to relax. you like praise. good to know, for next time. 

time seems to pass slowly as geto works his magic, plastering the stencil onto your lower back. it’s affecting him, your reactions, and when he finally reveals the potential placement of your totally out-of-character tramp stamp, he has to physically restrain himself from groaning out loud. 

the placement — it’s fucking dirty. 

geto decides to check up with you before finally starting to prep his equipment. “are you sure about this? it’s your first time, so it might hurt.” he chuckles lightly. “scrap that. it will hurt, but i’ll try to make it quick so that you feel the least amount of pain as possible.”

“i…” your voice dies in your throat when you feel his fingers trace the outline of your preeminent tattoo. “ ‘m a bit nervous. never done this before.”

“mm, i know, angel. you have such a beautiful body… i’d be honoured to mark it up some more next time.”

oh. you know (read: think) there’s no underlying intent to his words, but the way his honeyed voice purrs behind you has a stream of wetness start to build inside of you, and you try to discreetly clench your thighs to quell the dull ache in between your legs, praying that geto doesn’t notice. 

he does. if he wasn’t mistaken, this might just be your kink: being left merciless whilst someone toys with your body. he doesn’t overstep though, just teases, running his hands along your bare legs. “how about here next time? i could ink a pretty little flower on your ankle, or maybe some initials… yours, of course.”

geto rathers he mark his initials on your ankle, but again, boundaries. to stop himself from saying anything that’ll have you bolting out of the studio in a millisecond, he finally sits in his chair, picking up the needle and scooting towards you. “are you ready, sweetheart? this is going to hurt, so tell me if you want me to let up at any time.”

you won’t. he knows you won’t, because the feeling of his fingers on your skin is intoxicating for you given the way your toes begin to curl in your flats as he steadies his hands on your lower back. “relax, love. it’ll hurt less.”

the needle pierces your skin, ink blooming as geto begins his work. the feeling… it’s strange, given the fact that it’s quite literally repeated pinpricks on your back. but it feels strangely good paired with geto’s hands on your back, and his smooth voice praising you all the way through. 

“oh, you’re doing such a good job for your first time, love. i’ve never seen anyone react so well.”

“does it feel alright? wouldn’t want to cause any harm to this precious body of yours.”

“i’m almost finished. you’ve been such a good client, i wouldn’t mind inking you again.”

all of it goes straight to your head, and the pain of the needle is replaced with instant euphoria as your mind fills with lewd images of geto fucking you in this exact position, hands on your lower back in the same way as he eases inside of you. and his voice, good lord, his voice… he would totally talk you through it, his rich grumble echoing in your ear as he guides you to orgasm. 

“you’re taking it so well, aren’t you, baby? that’s my good girl.”

“fuck yes, angel, just like that… oh, you’re so damn perfect.”

“you’re close? cum for me, baby. need to feel you, atta girl…”

before you know it, a moan slips from your lips, and you immediately dread geto’s reaction. 

“did you just…?”

your cheeks are on fire. “n-no! sorry, it hurt a little bit there. i should be fine though, you can keep going.” 

he quirks an eyebrow. “well then, the fault is mine entirely. allow me to make it up to you? i’d feel horrible for hurting you, after all.”

your slight nod is all he needs and suddenly he’s finishing up and wrapping your tramp stamp before prying your thighs apart and slipping his latex-clad fingers into your dripping panties. 

PREVIOUS : SWEET TALK ft. choso NEXT : N/A

liked that? check out the WE’RE SO BACK masterlist.

© choslut 2024 — do not copy, repost or translate my works without permission. chain divider by @/cafekitsune.

[damienns]

My GIF Making process: Screen capturing using MPV player, Organizing files, 3 Sharpening settings, Basic Coloring PSD + Actions set

This is a very long post so heads up.

I’ll try to be as thorough and true as much as possible to the way I make my gifs (I already use Photoshop Actions which I’ve long since set up but now for this tutorial I’m reviewing them to show you the exact steps I’ve learned to create my gifs 😃) and present them to you in a semi-coherent way. Also, please bear with me since English is my second language.

First things first. Below are the things and tools we need to do this:

Downloaded 4K or 1080p quality videos (let’s all assume we know where to get these—especially for high definition movies and tv series—so this post doesn’t get removed, okay? 😛)

Adobe Photoshop CC or the CS versions can work as well, but full disclosure I haven’t created gifs using the CS versions since 2020. I’m currently using Adobe Photoshop 2024.

mpv player. Use mpv player to get those frames/screenshots or any other video player that has a screen grabber feature. I’ve used adapter for the longest time but I’ve switched to mpv because the press to screenshot feature while the video is playing has been a game changer not to mention ultimate time saver for me. For adapter you need to play it in another video player (like VLC player), to get the start and end timestamps of the scene you want to gif which takes me ages before I can even open Photoshop.

Anyway! Please stop reading this post for a moment and head over to this amazing tutorial by kylos. She perfectly tells you how to install and use mpv player, both for Mac and Windows users.

One thing I have to share though, I had a tough time when I updated my MacOS to Sonoma since MPV is suddenly either duplicating frames or when I delete the duplicates the player seems to be skipping frames :/ I searched and found a solution here, though it didn’t work for me lol. My workaround for this in the meantime is decreasing the speed down to 0.70 then start screenshotting—it’s not the same pre Sonoma update but it works so I’ll have to accept it rather than have jumpy looking gifs.

Now, after this part of kylos’ tutorial:

you can continue reading the following sections of my gif tutorial below.

I want to share this little tip (sorry, this will only cater to Mac users) that I hope will be helpful for organizing the screenshots that MPV saved to the folder you have selected. Because believe me you don’t want to go through 1k+ of screenshots to select just 42-50 frames for your gif.

The Control + Command + N shortcut

This shortcut allows you to create a new folder from files you have pre-selected. As you can see below I have already created a couple of folders, and inside each folder I have selected screenshots that I want to include in one single gif. It's up to you how you want to divide yours, assuming you intend to create and post a Tumblr gifset rather than just one gif.

Another tip is making use of tags. Most of, if not all the time, I make supercorp gifs so I tag blue for Kara and red (or green) for Lena—just being ridiculously on brand and all that.

Before we finally open Photoshop, there's one more thing I want to say—I know, please bear with me for the third? fourth? time 😅

It's helpful to organize everything into their respective folders so you know the total number of items/frames you have. This way, you can add or delete excess or unnecessary shots before uploading them in Photoshop.

For example below there are 80 screenshots of Kara inside this folder and for a 1:1 (540 x 540 px) Tumblr gif, Photoshop can just work around with 42-50 max number of frames with color adjustments applied before it exceeds the 10 MB file size limit of Tumblr.

Sometimes I skip this step because it can be exhausting (haha) and include everything so I can decide visually which frames to keep later on. You'll understand what I mean later on. But it's important to keep the Tumblr 10 MB file size limit in mind. Fewer frames, or just the right amount of frames, is better.

So, with the screenshot organization out of the way, let's finally head over to Photoshop.

Giffing in Photoshop, yay!

Let’s begin by navigating to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack…

The Load Layers window will appear. Click the Browse button next.

Find your chosen screenshots folder, press Command + A to select all files from that folder then click Open. Then click OK.

After importing and stacking your files, Photoshop should display the following view:

By the way, I'll be providing the clip I've used in this tutorial so if want to use them to follow along be my guest :)

If you haven't already opened your Timeline panel, navigate to Windows > Timeline.

Now, let's focus on the Timeline panel for the next couple of steps.

Click Create Video Timeline, then you’ll have this:

Now click the menu icon on the top right corner then go to Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips

Still working on the Timeline panel, click the bottom left icon this time—the icon with the three tiny boxes—to Convert to Frame Animation

Select Make Frames From Layers from the top right corner menu button.

So now you have this:

Go and click the top right menu icon again to Select All Frames

Then click the small dropdown icon to set another value for Frame Delay. Select Other…

The best for me and for most is 0.05 but you can always play around and see what you think works for you.

Click the top right menu icon again to Reverse Frames.

I think Photoshop has long since fixed this issue but usually the first animation frame is empty so I just delete it but now going through all these steps there seems to be none of that but anyways, the delete icon is the last one among the line of feature buttons at the bottom part of the Timeline panel.

Yay, now we can have our first proper GIF preview of a thirsty Lena 😜

Press spacebar to watch your gif play for the very first time! After an hour and half of selecting and cutting off screenshots! 😛 Play it some more. No really, I’m serious. I do this so even as early (lol) as this part in the gif making process, I can see which frames I can/should delete to be within the 10 MB file size limit. You can also do it at the end of course 🙂

Now, let’s go to the next important steps of this tutorial post which I’ve numbered below.

Crop and resize to meet Tumblr's required dimensions. The width value should be either 540px, 268px, or 177px.

Convert the gif to a Smart Object for sharpening.

Apply lighting and basic color adjustments before the heavy coloring. I will be sharing the base adjustments layers I use for my gifs 😃.

1. Crop and Resize

Click on the Crop tool (shortcut: the C key)

I like my GIFs big so I always set this to 1:1 ratio if the scene allows it. Press the Enter key after selecting the area of the frame that you want to keep.

Side note: If you find that after cropping, you want to adjust the image to the left or another direction, simply unselect the Delete Cropped Pixels option. This way, you will still have the whole frame area available to crop again as needed and as you prefer.

Now we need to resize our gif and the shortcut for that is Command + Opt + I. Type in 540 as the width measurement, then the height will automatically change to follow the ratio you’ve set while cropping.

540 x 540 px for 1:1

540 x 405 px for 4:3

540 x 304 px for 16:9

For the Resample value I prefer Bilinear—but you can always select the other options to see what you like best.

Click OK. Then Command + 0 and Command + - to properly view the those 540 pixels.

Now we get to the exciting part :) the sharpen settings!

2. Sharpen

First we need to have all these layers “compressed” intro a single smart object from which we can apply filters to.

Select this little button on the the bottom left corner of the Timeline panel.

Select > All Layers

Then go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters

Just click OK when a pop-up shows up.

Now you should have this view on the Layers panel:

Now I have 3 sharpen settings to share but I’ll have download links to the Action packs at the end of this long ass tutorial so if you want to skip ahead, feel free to do so.

Sharpen v1

Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen…

Below are my settings. I don’t adjust anything under Shadows/Highlights.

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Click OK then do another Smart Sharpen but this time with the below adjustments.

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

As you can see Lena’s beautiful eyes are “popping out” now with these filters applied. Click OK.

Now we need to Convert to Frame Animation. Follow the steps below.

Click on the menu icon at the top right corner of the Timeline panel, then click Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips

Then Convert Frames > Convert to Frame Animation

One more click to Make Frames From Layers

Delete the first frame then Select All then Set Frame Delay to 0.05

and there you have it! Play your GIF and make sure it’s just around 42-50 frames. This is the time to select and delete.

To preview and save your GIF go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…

Below are my Export settings. Make sure to have the file size around 9.2 MB to 9.4 MB max and not exactly 10 MB.

This time I got away with 55 frames but this is because I haven’t applied lighting and color adjustments yet and not to mention the smart sharpen settings aren't to heavy so let’s take that into consideration.

Sharpen v1 preview:

Sharpen v2

Go back to this part of the tutorial and apply the v2 settings.

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 20

Radius: 0.5

We’re adding a new type of Filter which is Reduce Noise (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise...) with the below settings.

Then one last Smart Sharpen:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Your Layers panel should look like this:

Then do the Convert to Frames Animation section again and see below preview.

Sharpen v2 preview:

Sharpen v3:

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

Reduce Noise:

Strength: 5

Preserve Details: 50%

Reduce Color Noise: 0%

Sharpen Details: 50%

Sharpen v3 preview:

And here they are next to each other with coloring applied:

v1

v2

v3

Congratulations, you've made it to the end of the post 😂

As promised, here is the download link to all the files I used in this tutorial which include:

supercorp 2.05 Crossfire clip

3 PSD files with sharpen settings and basic coloring PSD

Actions set

As always, if you're feeling generous here's my Ko-fi link :) Thank you guys and I hope this tutorial will help you and make you love gif making.

P.S. In the next post I'll be sharing more references I found helpful especially with coloring. I just have to search and gather them all.

-Jill

[seventeenreasonswhy]

Super Shy ~ A JWW School-Life Romance Pt. 3

Star Athlete!Wonwoo x Shy Wallflower!Reader

Jeon Wonwoo... THE Jeon Wonwoo is... paying attention to you!?

~1.5k words

Read Part 1 + Part 2

Series content: fluff, first crush plot line, school-life anime vibes, slow burn/yearning, some light angst, classmates to friends to lovers, fem reader, reader is ~*super shy*~ and has low self-esteem, reader is kind of bullied (?), sweetie pie Wonwoo, appearances by Choi Hansol and more!, all characters are in high school so no explicit content (but probably kissing eventually).

My Masterlist

Author’s note: Thank you to everyone who has read, reblogged, and liked this little series so far! This part reveals more about Y/N’s interests and talents, which she’s afraid to share because she is insecure! But not for long with sweet Jeon Wonwoo around. Also she has a fictional younger sister named Daehee (not after anyone in particular, I just like that name). 😉 These two are so innocent and cute, I’m having such fun writing them! Enjoy!!

Taglist: @clownprincehoeshi @soffiyuhh  @wonwoos-wineparty @hamji-hae @junniesoleilkth @seokqt @haniinah @yangtyunhannie @cherrylovescheol @lukeys-giggle @cookiearmy @sojuxxi  @vixensss @lixisoul99 @mjpark15 @lelsforlino  @neivivenaj  @blvkkeddcc (lmk if you want to be tagged!)

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+

“Whoa you’re going all out on that, Y/N—”

Your younger sister, Daehee, had come down for breakfast with her bangs still in curlers, wearing her school uniform shirt over her Hello Kitty pajama pants. She was watching you as you concentrated on preparing various dishes at the stove. A thin omelet, grilled shishito peppers, vegetable tempura; it was pretty simple stuff, but you’d developed an urge to create aesthetically pleasing lunches these days.

You couldn’t really explain it, although somewhere in your heart you knew it probably had something to do with Jeon Wonwoo.

For the past week, Jean Wonwoo had been spending lunch on the roof alone with you.

The two of you barely exchanged words, really. Your longest conversation probably lasted only a few minutes. But not for Wonwoo’s lack of trying! You still wondered why he was spending his lunchtime up there at all—even more so why would he keep trying to strike up conversations with you? You guessed he really was just that nice. But every time you were around him you couldn’t help clamming up somehow.

“Are you in any clubs, Y/N?” he’d asked you the other day, between bites of his kimbap.

“Uh, no...” you answered quietly, your nerves frazzled from your total lack of conversational skills.

“None of them appeal to you?”

“Uh, not really that...” you didn’t know how to answer him. You’d ended up just looking at him blankly, like a fool. However, nothing in his facial expression or his tone made you feel like you had to necessarily come up with an answer... But his gaze was intent, and you found it hard to hold onto for more than about three seconds.

“What do you do for fun? To relax?” he followed up breezily, “You’re the class mystery.”

“Um,” the odd self-consciousness you felt at being called ‘the class mystery’ aside, you couldn’t really think of anything to say to him.

Actually, there was one thing that came to mind... but it wasn’t something you’d ever shared with anyone. Your one ‘hobby.’ Though to you it felt more like... squeezing a stress ball. It was what you did when you needed to turn your brain off.

He wants to know what I do to relax?

You couldn’t say what compelled you, but you pulled out your phone and found the photo album you had saved of your miniature paintings.

You worked with acrylic paint on very small canvasses, using very fine, small brushes to create miniature floral designs, portraits, landscapes... Your style was incredibly detailed. You had hundreds of tiny canvasses in little boxes and frames all over your room. You took pictures of most of these tiny paintings when you finished. You had even recorded a couple of time-lapse videos, showing you creating them in fast motion. You’d never felt compelled to create a social media account to display or monetize them, though. You painted because it was what you had done since you were a preteen—the careful, methodical process of dabbing tiny paintbrushes into your carefully mixed colors, getting the tone and shading of a poppy flower’s petal on a tiny scale just right... For you, creating these paintings was like a meditative practice.

By some stroke of inspiration—or insanity—you handed your phone to Wonwoo. His face became visibly more curious as he took your phone carefully in his hands.

“Wowwww,” Wonwoo said, holding the screen closer to his face. He seemed absorbed in your phone—you even caught him zoom in on a few pictures. You could tell he was looking carefully through the album.

“You’re crazy talented!” he said after a while. He sounded genuinely impressed.

“No, haha,” you somehow laughed, coughed, and gasped at the same time, your heart accelerating out of embarrassment from his compliment.

“No, seriously—Y/N, these are really incredible!” he said. “They’re so detailed, and they’re so small! How do you even do that!?” His eyes were glued to your phone screen. A part of you was screaming inside, why on earth you would show these to him!? and urging you to snatch your phone right out of his hand, throw it over the side of the building even. You couldn’t believe that Wonwoo was seeing this, this... habit. And YOU had been the one to show him, of all things!

“I wouldn’t say they’re ‘incredible,’” you said, filling up with more and more anxiety over coming off as bragging or crossing some social boundary that you shouldn’t have crossed.

Wonwoo finally looked up from the screen, looking directly at you instead. You still couldn’t bring yourself to meet his gaze, but you felt his eyes on you. After a long pause, you dared to glance up at him...

But he quickly looked away from you.

Ugh, I’m probably making him feel like he has to be super nice or something...

“Oh, whoa—a time-lapse?” He said, quickly recovering from the somewhat awkward moment when your eyes had met. But his stumbling across the most recent time-lapse video that you’d made prompted you to snap out of your reverie and bolt to grab your phone out of Wonwoo’s hands.

“Ah, don’t watch that!” you lunged for your phone, but Wonwoo reflexively pulled his hand away, surprised by your reaction but still effortlessly dodging your attempt. He smirked down at you, and your heart almost stopped.

“Why not?” he said, and the deep resonance of his voice made you realize how close your bodies were—you were practically sprawled over him after reaching for your phone, his face just inches from yours...

Your whole body seemed to flush a deep shade of red before you catapulted backward away from him. You could have sworn that you saw that Wonwoo smiling to himself, but you were so flustered and anxious about the way you’d completely invaded his personal space that you couldn’t think straight.

“I won’t watch it,” he said light-heartedly, smiling at you as he tossed your phone back to you. “But you are super talented, Y/N. Painting is such a unique skill, too.”

And just like that, he went back to eating his kimbap like nothing had happened. His relaxed, friendly tone mercifully neutralized the atmosphere, but you just stood there clutching your phone to your chest.

“It’s not that I’m embarrassed,” you started, even though you couldn’t look Wonwoo in the eye, “It’s just—I’ve never shared these paintings with anyone except my family...” Your heart kind of ached for some reason as you said this to Wonwoo, who just continued to look at you in silence. What on earth had compelled you to share that with him?

Agh, say something! You willed for this pause in conversation pass, but it didn’t seem to be budging.

“Thank you for showing me,” Wonwoo said at last. His low, gentle voice seemed to shoot directly into your bloodstream, flushing you an even deeper shade of red than you thought was humanly possible. You looked at him briefly, and something about the way he was looking back at you...  

The moment had played over and over again like a movie in your head for the past few days. The directness of his gaze. The rich, sincere quality of his voice. The way he’d smiled to himself... you couldn’t stop thinking of that particular lunch hour.

Standing at the kitchen counter, Daehee watched you dip veggies in tempura batter and toss them in the pot of hot oil on the stove. You let your mind run through the questions it had been asking all week: why was he spending time with you like this? Did he lose a bet? Is there some kind of hidden camera prank you should be wary of? More than that, why was he being so nice?

“Hellooo, earth to Y/N! I said you’re really going to town on your lunches these days,” Daehee tried again to get a rise out of you.

“Oh,” you said, taking the last piece of tempura squash out of the oil. “I just like experimenting.” You weren’t lying, exactly—you did like exploring all kinds of different food and dishes. Cooking was fun to you, different from the calm of painting.

You would be lying if you said that an added bonus wasn’t Wonwoo noticing and complimenting your work.

You liked it when he praised you. It felt like he meant it.

No one could be that good at faking sincerity, could they?

You couldn’t help but hear that small voice in the back of your head, doubting Wonwoo’s intentions.

But he hadn’t done anything other than come up to the roof during lunch this week, mostly just eating in silence with you—the two of you simply looking out at the sky...

But after you had shown him your paintings...

Maybe it was since then that you had started to put more effort into your lunches.

[ladykailitha]

Sweet Surrender Part 4

Here we are guys, the end of the sequel of the summer Valentine fic. Thank you all who liked, commented, and reblogged this lovely story. I love seeing my regulars interact with their comments and tags. It's makes me so happy.

And if regularly do and haven't lately: I get it, it's not always easy to comment (whether as a comment or in the tags) on every part, just know I missed seeing them.

Sadly no prom-posal because they can't really go together-together, but Eddie did go over and ask in person. He's not a complete idiot.

This is my longest "chapter" I've written clocking out at 3700+ words because I refused to split it up further dammit!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Damn it scheduled for 10pm not am but here we are just a few minutes late.

~

Eddie sat at the back of the class as he always did, trying to come up with ideas of what to do for prom. Because of course Steve said yes.

Steve’s eyes lit up and he swung Eddie around chanting, “Yes, yes, yes!” until the pair of them fell to the floor giggling like children.

They kissed and laughed until they couldn’t breathe.

Steve already had a suit, he really hadn’t grown that much since the funeral and just needed a nice cummerbund to make it school dance worthy. So he didn’t go with the Hellfire boys to get their tuxes.

Jeff had gone for a blue suit jacket with black pants and bow tie with a white button up. Gareth went for a double breasted black jacket and bow tie with matching pants. Brian had picked up a white jacket and bolo tie with black pants.

Eddie though?

Eddie had gone for a thin black neck tie and tight dress pants and then was going to wear his leather jacket over the top.

Steve was positively salivating at the thought.

They were sitting at the table discussing prom ideas when Nancy came up to Steve.

“Hey, do you have a date to prom?”

Steve and Eddie shared a concerned glance before Steve just shrugged.

“These guys didn’t get dates either,” he explained, “and offered to let me go with them as a group. Why? You asking?”

Nancy’s face twisted in disdain. “No, of course not. I’m not going to that meaningless high school mating ritual.”

Steve huffed out a laugh. “Jonathan didn’t want to go, huh?”

“He won’t let me pay.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stomped her foot.

Steve rolled his eyes and shared a glance with Eddie who shared his exasperation.

“What do you want, Nance?”

She pursed her lips and looked down at the floor. “I thought that if you had a date, then we could double and Jonathan wouldn’t feel pressured to spend a lot of money.”

Jeff and Brian looked at each other and then burst out laughing with Eddie joining in.

“Tell me you’ve never been poor without telling me you’ve never been poor,” Brian huffed out between gales of laughter. “Jesus H. Christ, he’s gonna feel even more pressure to spend a lot because he’s gonna see Stevie here go all out for his date and he’s going to get flustered and upset he can’t do the same for you then there’ll be huge fight, leaving you stranded at the prom waiting for Mommy Dearest to pick you.” He wiped away a tear of laughter.

Steve nodded and then half shrugged. “I’m with him on that one. It’s a guy thing. You’re out to wound his pride and you’re only going to catch hell for it.”

“Here’s a thought, Nancy Drew,” Eddie said with a menacing grin, “why not skip it and do it next year. At your actual senior prom since he’s so worried about it. Give him time to save up for it so he can do something nice for you and stop pushing people around.”

Nancy’s jaw dropped and she turned to Steve. “Are you just going to sit here and let him talk to me that way?”

Steve swirled in his chair to look up at her. “We aren’t dating, and he’s not wrong. Plus, I’ve been asked to prom by a couple of very forward girls and had hints broadly dropped that I should ask them to prom. Tammy Thompson was the worst of the lot. Talking about how a king should be with a proper queen or some shit like that. And I’ve turned them down because all of them want the Harrington charm and money and not me, also they’ll want sex or worse, to go steady and I just can’t handle that right now.”

He looked pointedly at her.

She frowned for a moment and then her eyes went wide and her mouth formed a silent ��O’.

“Yeah,” he said, turning in his seat to out his back between them. “So you’ll pardon me if I don’t want to do you any favors.”

She slunk off back to the table with the rest of her friends and Jonathan.

Gareth shook his head. “The absolute nerve. Jesus Fucking Christ.”

Steve could only agree.

~

“Come on, man,” Gareth huffed, crossing his arms. “If we all pool our money we could rent a limo and show up in style.”

Steve threw back his head and laughed.

They were all sitting around Gareth’s garage making the final plans for prom.

“Dude, you could,” Steve agreed. “But those things take up at least three parking spots and you will have the rest of the student body hate your guts for all of time for it being in the way of everyone else.”

Gareth slunk further into the couch with a sneer. “It can’t be as bad as he’s making it out, he just doesn’t want us to have any fun.”

“That’s because you were a freshman when Tommy H. and Carol Perkins did it for junior prom last year,” Steve said, shaking his head. “They got so much shit for it, and it took Tommy bullying certain people to get it to stop.” He raised his hands. “Something I didn’t condone by the way.”

Jeff winced and shook his head. “Hard pass on being hated more than we already are.”

“I’m with Jeffy on this one Gare-bear,” Eddie said with a grimace. “Let’s take Mr. Romance’s advice on this one, yeah?”

“Fine!” Gareth growled. “But I refuse to get in the fuck ugly Bimmer of Steve’s and I’m not to be seen in these nice suits in Eddie’s van.”

“I never said we couldn’t rent a car,” Steve said reasonably, “just that we shouldn’t rent a limo.”

Suddenly the four other boys were leaning forward in their seats, looking at him in rapt interest.

“What did you have in mind, Stevie?” Eddie asked, slowly licking his upper lip.

“Who hasn’t had the dream of showing up to school in a shiny convertible?” Steve asked with a smirk. “It’ll be nicer than a limo, and most likely cheaper, too. And of course I bet we could get Eddie’s Uncle Wayne to rent it for us, with the little bribe that he gets to drive it around first.”

Eddie threw back his head and cackled. “That would work! He would love the little bribe, too.”

The other three boys looked at each other before Jeff said, “All in favor of getting nice convertible for prom?”

All the hands went up and Steve sat back, looking like that cat that got the cream.

~

Steve stayed over at Eddie’s the night before the dance. The plan was that after lunch, Steve would go home and get ready for the dance and then Eddie would pick everyone up for dinner then they would go to the dance.

Eddie had other plans, of course, but Steve didn’t know about those. Yet.

Around ten o’clock in the morning, with the two boys still tangled up in each others limbs there was honking of someone’s horn, followed by Wayne yelling at them to get the hell out of bed.

Steve and Eddie blinked bleary-eyed at each other for a moment before the fog of sleep cleared and they were on their feet in an instant. Steve threw on some sweats as Eddie yanked on a pair of jeans. They were out the door before Wayne could honk again.

He was leaning up a red 1984 Chrysler LeBaron five seater with white upholstery with the top down. His arms were crossed and had the biggest smile on his face.

“So what do you think, boys?” he said cocking his head to the side. “You think it’s fancy enough for that dance of yours?”

Eddie and Steve shared matching grins. They ran down the stairs in their bare feet up to Wayne and the car.

Steve was already running his hands over the body of the car. “Wayne, she gorgeous. She wasn’t too much was she?”

Wayne shook his head. “You boys’ money more than covered it for the night. I’ll return it tomorrow with a full tank of gas, no worries.”

Eddie hugged his uncle tightly. “Tonight is going to be the best night ever!”

Wayne hugged him back as Steve continued to admire the car.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to find one that would fit all of us,” he breathed, “but fucking hell. It’s perfect Mr. Munson!”

“I’m glad you’re happy with it, Steve,” Wayne murmured as Eddie let go of him to follow Steve around the car. “Brian will probably have to sit in the front seat to be comfortable, but other than that, you’ll be golden.”

“Well, old man,” Eddie said after Steve and he looked over every inch of the car, “She’s all yours. Just bring her back by five so I can pick everyone else up.”

Wayne chuckled and opened the driver’s side door. “She really is a beaut, Ed. I can’t wait to let her unwind on the open road.”

Steve smiled and shook his head, knowing that he wanted to do the exact same thing. He followed Eddie into the trailer, a skip in his step.

Eddie made for the kitchen to starting making them breakfast and Steve sat down at the small table they had nearby.

“So we’re going out to eat at Enzo’s,” Steve murmured. “Which I really don’t want to know how Gareth pulled that off, considering everyone goes there for prom and getting reservations are vicious. It’s almost a blood sport.”

Eddie chuckled pulling out the eggs to scramble. “Gareth’s mom is friends with the owner and she always has a standing table there.”

“Well that’s a relief,” he said wiping his brow. “I thought he had murdered a couple of our fellow students for the privilege.”

“I love that it’s Gareth you think would be the murderer,” he called over his shoulder, “instead of anyone else coming with us tonight.”

Steve half shrugged and started counting them off on his fingers. “Brian is a staunch pacifist, Jeff gets sick at the sight of blood and you are so sweet that it’s impossible to believe that would harm anyone unless they started shit first.” He tapped his fingers on the surface of the table. “But Gareth is the quiet one and everyone knows that serial killers are the strong and silent types.”

Eddie poured the beaten egg mixture into the heated frying pan and began to stir it around.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said after a few moments. “I love your absolute faith in me, by the way. If there were any serial killings in this town, the mob would come after me first.”

Steve sighed. “True that. Unfortunately.”

Eddie scooped the cooked eggs onto two plates, bringing them over to the table with a couple of forks.

They settled down to eat. After a few minutes of silence Steve asked. “You thinking of doing anything after the dance? I know we haven’t really talked about what we’re doing after.”

Eddie got that soft secret smile that made the butterflies in Steve’s stomach take flight. “There might be a couple of things I might have in mind.”

Steve shook his head fondly. “And let me guess, it’s a surprise and I’m not supposed to know?”

“Yup!” Eddie replied with a grin. “No eat up, I have plans for this morning...” he wagged his eyebrows suggestively.

Steve started immediately shoving egg into his face to Eddie’s cackling glee.

~

To say Steve was nervous would be a fucking understatement. He’d never been picked up for prom before and not knowing when Eddie was going to show up only made his anxiety spike further.

It wasn’t that Steve didn’t know when Eddie was going to leave to start picking everyone up, it was that Steve was third after Brian and Gareth, who were first and second respectively.

In his hand was a corsage for Eddie. It was black rose wrapped in a silver ribbon. And he was doing everything in his power not to crush the clear, plastic box it was in.

There was a knock on the door and Steve’s face fell a little when he saw it was Gareth at the door.

“Wow,” Gareth snarked, “don’t look all excited and shit to see me or whatever.”

“I–I guess I was expecting Eddie...” Steve muttered. He shook his head and tossed the box on the table. “I’m ready to go.”

Gareth frowned a little bit and then his expression cleared when he saw what was in the box. “Oh hell no.” He held up a finger and dashed back to the car. He yanked Eddie out of the driver’s seat and toward Steve’s door.

As they neared Steve heard Gareth grumble, “You are not fucking this up already!”

Eddie opened his mouth to protest when he saw Steve at the door looking dejected. He snapped it shut with an audible click. He saw the box on the table and looked back at Steve.

“You got me flowers?” he breathed. He couldn’t believe it. He had told Steve that he was taking care of everything.

But he forgot one thing and the fact that Wayne hadn’t brought it up, meant that Steve had gotten it for him as a surprise but told Wayne to keep Eddie from buying one for himself.

Steve gulped down the lump in his throat. “It’s just a silly corsage. The other guys aren’t wearing one, so I’ll just tak–” he reached up to remove his own white rose corsage when Eddie put his hands over Steve’s.

“No, sweetheart,” Eddie murmured. “I screwed up. I was supposed to be wooing you tonight and I already misstepped. I should have come to the door to pick you up. That wasn’t fair to you.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he mumbled still trying to remove his corsage.

Eddie took his face in his hands and pressed their foreheads together. “Baby, it is. Because it’s important to you. So what we’re going to do is, you’re going to stop trying to remove yours so it doesn’t get ruined,” and immediately Steve’s hands dropped to Eddie’s waist. “Good boy, now the next thing you’re going to do is pin that pretty flower you got for me on my leather jacket and then we’ll go get Jeff, okay?”

Steve let out a shuddering breath and then nodded. Then with trembling hands he took the black rose out of the box and pulled out the pin that would be used to attach it to Eddie’s jacket lapel.

Eddie wrapped his hands gently around Steve’s quivering hands again, this time to calm him. “Take your time, Stevie.”

Steve took a deep breath and looked Eddie in the eyes.

“There you are, princess,” Eddie cooed at how much calmer he looked now. “If it helps, I can knock on the door and we can start over.”

Steve shook his head but took a step back. He brought Eddie’s lips to his and kissed him deeply. “This will just be some stupid story we tell our grandkids when we’re old and grey.”

Eddie burst out laughing. “Only a month in and you’re already planning our grandkids! And I thought I moved fast.”

“Nope!” Steve teased, kissing him again. “You move fast, I move faster.”

Eddie giggled as a more confident Steve pinned the corsage to his leather jacket. They walked out and got into the LeBaron. Steve hopped into the back seat with Gareth who grumbled under his breath.

“I told him he should have gone up there and not send someone else, but noooo,” he muttered darkly. “I’m a little squashmore who’s never gone on a date in my life, what would I know?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie huffed. “Rub it in. And where oh font of wisdom did you gain such knowledge, hmm?”

Gareth erupted, throwing his arms in the air. “I watch movies!” he huffed as Eddie pulled out of the driveway. “My mom and brother love romantic comedies. The dude always goes to the door unless he’s meant to be the douchebag loser.”

Steve burst out laughing. “He’s got you there, Eds.”

“Mistake made,” Eddie said dryly, “lesson learned.”

They got to Jeff’s, who’s mother had gotten Brian, Gareth and her son all corsages. They all had a single red rose to match Eddie’s black and Steve’s white roses.

“Ooh,” Eddie murmured. “Uncle Wayne was playing the long game, wasn’t he? He told you not get me and Steve corsages because Steve had them covered, didn’t he?”

Mrs. Laurence shook her head, barely containing her smile. “Steve coordinated it with me and I filled your uncle in.”

Eddie shook his head fondly and took Steve’s hand.

She took pictures of everyone in the tuxes and then sent them off with a wave.

~

Dinner was amazing. Especially with Steve gently guiding them with which forks to use, the meal was delicious and company was even better.

Their waiter even commented that he wished him and his friends had thought about just getting dressed up anyway and going to prom as friends. It would have been better than them sitting at home eating pizza and feeling sorry for themselves.

Steve just smiled up at him as the rest of them filled him on the rest of their plans. Well... all but Eddie anyway.

They got to the dance and while Mrs. Click was absolutely fuming, she couldn’t bar their entry because there was nothing in the rules that said they had to bring dates and as long as they had their tickets, she had to let them in.

Eddie took great pleasure in smiling at her as they walked into the gym.

The theme was of course Sweethearts so the gym was decked out in hearts of every size and of every shade of pink and red imaginable.

Steve chuckled as Jeff and Brian gagged. Gareth smacked them upside their heads and went off in search of punch, the other two boys shuffling behind him.

Eddie and Steve stood at the entrance a moment.

Eddie rocked back and forth on the balls on his feet, shoving his hands in his pockets to hide how never he felt. “So what do you do at a dance when you can’t dance with the one you want to?”

Steve looked over at him and tilted his head. “Make yourself as big a menace as possible, of course.”

Eddie grinned as Steve grabbed his wrist and they melted into the crowd.

~

About an hour into it, Eddie led Steve away from all the loud music and sweltering mass of teenage bodies.

“Eddie!” Steve protested with a laugh. “Where are you taking me?”

Eddie just cackled and kept pulling him along. They got the drama room and Steve was amazed he could hear the music.

“How?” he whispered.

Eddie grinned again. “They have speakers in here from the gym. They’re usually turned off as some brave stage crew managed to figure out a way to stop it from streaming in so kids could practice their lines and shit and not have to listen to basketball scores, but I got someone to turn them on for us.”

Steve turned to him in shock. “Us?”

Eddie nodded and led Steve further into the drama room. It was decorated in fairy lights and sparkling hearts.

“Oh, Eds...” Steve breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

“I paid one of the drama kids to do this for me so I could surprise you,” he murmured.

Just then a soft love song came over the speakers and he held out his hand to Steve. “Dance with me.”

Steve let out a watery chuckle and folded into Eddie’s arms. They danced cheek to cheek to the music and were still dancing slowly when the song changed to something more upbeat.

“I was so worried I couldn’t dance with you up there,” he murmured into Eddie’s ear, “and then you went and found a way for us to do it down here instead. God, I love you so much, sunshine.”

They kissed and danced until the announcement came over the speakers that they were crowning the prom king and queen. They walked back to the gym hand in hand.

“I tried to get myself removed from the ballot,” Steve said softly just as they reached the doors. “I told them that I didn’t want even be here, but they refused. Said that I was nominated by someone else and only they could remove from the ballot. They wouldn’t even tell me who. But then you came along and I still don’t want to be prom king, but I figured at least being here with you would be worth the price of admission.”

Eddie smiled and kissed him gently. “I think you’d look pretty in a crown, darlin’.”

Steve let out a nervous giggle. “You would.”

They let go of their hands and walk back in.

Steve made prom king. Like everyone assumed he would. And even though Billy hadn’t been on the ballot he came in second place with a lot of write-ins. Steve suspected that Billy had actually won, but as he wasn’t on the ballot and the principal not wanting it to go to a thug like Billy Hargrove had cinched Steve’s bid for the crown.

Prom queen was Tammy Thompson. Which she obviously had insider knowledge of when she broadly hinted to him to take her to prom. She even hissed about him probably wishing he had taken her when he had the chance as to not leave her poor date standing there on the sidelines.

Steve just smiled and nodded and suffered through their dance.

Once it was all done, he handed the bouquet of flowers to Jeff, the sash to Gareth and the crown to Brian.

“You’ve got nothing left, baby,” Eddie murmured as they walked out of the gym and into the darkened halls of the high school.

He gave Eddie’s hand a quick squeeze. “No, Eds. I’ve got you.”

That night after they had done all their after dance activities, they would make love in the back of the LeBaron under the stars at the quarry after they had dropped everyone else off and in the morning after they waved off the LeBaron as Wayne drove it back to the rent shop, Steve would drag Eddie back into the shelter of the trailer and kiss him senseless.

But until then, they had each other and that was enough.

~

Also if you saw this yesterday NO NO YOU DID NOT!

Tag List: COMPLETE

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[panoffrying]

My Shamura Headcanons

Part 1

Hello! So I will warn it’s hard for me to explain things in text sometimes so I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense😭 but imma do my best. The “Look what you made me do” video explanation is at the bottom.

Also thank you so much @7moonbird for helping me write this💜💜🦐 a lot of this is her ideas too.

So right now I don't have anything set in stone, but Shamura is the deity of Knowledge and War. I imagined that Silk Cradle🕸️ used to be lands full of creatures both knowledgeable and powerful. However, when Shamura got their skull split, they started to loose their mind because of the brain damage. They were losing that domain of wisdom and with that soon all of silk cradle became nothing but war, all the creatures there just want to fight with no other thought in mind.

Also, when the siblings(bishops) went into purgatory they relived their deaths over and over again, Shamura is the last to be saved and stayed in that cycle the longest. 🐛🐸🦑🕷️

And despite Shamura caring for their siblings, they were strict and I imagine their belief in upholding the balance was so strong that in the end it hurt the siblings one way or another. So I feel like when it was time for Shamura to be saved, it had to be something all the bishops agreed upon. Narinder probably took the longest to convince which caused Shamura to be in there longer. So when the lamb comes around,

Shamura 1: had brain damage before going into purgatory that caused them to forget things quite often.

2: has been stuck in a loop fighting their death constantly to the point of insanity for heaven knows how long.

They are at a point where they don’t recognize anything.

The Look what you made me do Video Explanation

Here’s the video

The lamb and Narinder go to get Shamura out, Aym and Baal tag along too lol they are hungry for adventure.

But Shamura is at such a point of pain and insanity that when they get there Shamura is just fighting to fight, it's the only thing they can do. They don’t recognize the lamb or anyone else there, their vision is red. 🚩

The crown is having a few issues that I’ll explain in a different post hopefully, when I get a better idea of it. But the lamb starts having crown issues during the battle and everyone starts to realize that Shamura will be a difficult opponent that they need to plan more on how to fight them. Shamura ends up stabbing lambert the moment there’s an opening 🤷‍♀️🧍

[asphalt-cocktail]

Lead Us To Temptation- Chapter 3

Chapter 3- Hell Hath No Fury

Summary: In the small town of Eden Ridge, you knew several things to be true: church happened every Sunday, the saloon served free lunch with the purchase of a drink on Thursdays, coal miners left work at 7PM sharp, and Bucky Barnes was a man sent from the depths of hell dangling the threat of temptation and sin right in front of your face. All you need to do is reach out and grab it.

Pairing: Outlaw!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Fluff, Talks of crime, robbery, crime for hire, talks of violence and guns, kidnapping, talks of past smut, less religion than the previous chapters but its still there. Bucky is a criminal in this so idk what to tell you if you are shocked by the crime. There isn't any gore and nothing is described in graphic detail. Don't worry reader is a badass this is a love story with a happy ending.

Word Count: 2.9k

A/N: I just want to pop in and say how grateful I am for all of the lovely comments, reblogs, tags, and likes I have been getting over the last few weeks! You guys are the ones who keep me writing. I am not doing a tag list, but you can feel free to turn my notifications to get one every time I post a new chapter <3

Masterlist

Read me on AO3

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Staying in Eden Ridge was probably the longest Bucky had managed to stay in a town and not do something to get run out or have another wanted poster with his face printed on it and slapped on every shop bulletin. 

It was making the boys antsy. They could only hold up so many stagecoaches carrying rich assholes on the outside of town before they got too bored. 

“When are we going to hit the bank Buck? We’ve been here so long the damn seasons have changed.” John’s voice had the uncanny ability of springing a sudden and painful migraine behind Bucky’s eyes anytime he spoke. 

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose. John pissed him off. “We need to wait a bit before we hit the bank. The ticket seller at the train station mentioned something about a train coming in to transport coal from the mines and take it back east. I guess the coal company is sending some bonds with it because the owner made a deal with Union Pacific.” 

“So what, they’re taking the bonds to the train yard?” 

“I’m glad to see you’re using the brain in that big fucking head of yours John.” To be completely transparent, Bucky harbored a strong dislike for John. 

Their association was almost solely due to John being Steve’s cousin, and Steve’s endorsement was something Bucky didn’t have the heart to dispute. Steve saved his life on more than one occasion. They’d gone through the Civil War together, they experienced the death of both of their parents together. You couldn’t get much closer to a man than that.  

The other reason being was John’s uncanny knack for survival. Despite the dangers of their lifestyle, John seemed to evade death, Bucky reckoned it was because God sure as hell didn’t want him and well, the Devil probably didn’t either so they just left him to do his business in the land of the living until they decided what to do with him.

Bucky was aware that his disdain for John might be uncalled for considering John’s role as the enforcer in their party. John was the one they sent out to take care of the more unsavory business transactions. However, these factors didn’t compensate for the fact that he was just plain weird and unpleasant to be around.

But Bucky was having such a lovely time playing house with you so, naturally he kept his plan to rob your father's train car transporting bonds to the Union Pacific rail yard. Management needed to cash them in and finalize the deal stating they were to use the Eden Coal & Iron as their main supply source. It was a deal that would make your father a very, very rich man. 

Robbing trains was as easy as stealing candy from a baby. An old, half balding, rich, man baby. Bucky could do it in his sleep. He didn’t feel bad about robbing your father. In fact he felt kind of good stealing from that rotten son of a bitch. 

Stealing these bonds would only be scraping the surface of the vast wealth your father accumulated by exploiting the hard working people of Eden Ridge. He was as crooked as crooked could be and there was no amount of praying or church going that would save his soul from the depths of hell once he died, god willing. 

If only you knew how your father treated the hard working miners who toiled in the depths of hell for him. He squeezed 15 grueling hours of labor from them 6 days a week, their backs bowed under the weight of his insatiable greed, all while their families languished in hunger. 

He wasn't the benevolent savior of Eden Ridge, rather, he resembled a vampire, voraciously draining the life force from the Earth and the good hearted denizens of the town you called home. Once he exhausted every able bodied man here, he’d slither away to prey upon the next unsuspecting community. 

Bucky’s plan was simple: wait a day or two several towns away to intercept the train and get to work. But he had to be careful If he got too reckless with his crimes, he’d have to leave. The question loomed in the back of his mind, when he had to leave would you come with? 

When he told you he was leaving to work a job you felt sick, “What do you mean leaving?” 

He cleared his throat and licked his lips, “I need to take the boys to deal with something for a few days. I promise I’ll be back by the end of the week. Two weeks tops.” He said hugging you tight, it pained him to see you worrying so much.

“But what if you don’t come back?” The question punched him in the chest and stole his breath. 

“Now don’t go talking like that.” He scolded you, “I’ll be back I promise.” You swallowed his words like a brick of lead. 

So for seven days you did the only thing you could do and waited. You sought comfort in Sam’s sister Sarah and her friend Natasha, spending most of your free time practicing needle work, reading, and chatting with the women. Sarah was a familiar and friendly face from the local church. Tragically widowed two winters prior, she was left with the responsibility of raising two boys on her own. To your knowledge, she had embraced her brother’s motley crew of friends, offering them sanctuary with open arms.

After your second meeting with Sarah she introduced you to Natasha, the local Madame. It took everything in your power to not turn your nose up at the idea of a woman engaging in sex for money. Your pious thoughts took a back seat when you remembered you were also engaging in sinful premarital acts with a man. 

Not sex though. No. 

Every time you thought today was the day Bucky shut it down. As much of a filthy bandit he was, he was still extremely respectful towards you. He always said he wanted to wait, the moment never felt right.

——

The moon hung low in the inky black sky as Bucky and his crew of bandits moved like vultures closing in on their prey. They moved silently, night as their accomplice- the thick fog veiling their actions, the rhythmic clatter of wheels masking the sounds of struggle. No witnesses meant no loose ends, and Bucky knew it well. 

It was quick. Efficient. 

Kill everyone on the train and then set it back on course so some poor sad sack could clean up the mess left behind. 

When Bucky’s eyes laid upon the bonds, your father’s exceptionally neat handwriting looping on the paper, he grinned like a snake. Peter could easily get a few hundred for the bonds. Having such a young boyish face always made him seem more trustworthy than the other members of the gang. 

To make up for leaving you worried half to death Bucky bought you a lovely hair pin. It was copper with a small decorative flower on the end of it. “If you think all it’s going to take is a pretty hair pin to forgive you, you’re wrong.” You lied through your teeth snatching it from his dirty hands and pinning it into your prayer veil, because of course Bucky returned just in time to take you to Sunday mass and have lunch with your family afterwards. 

Since midweek, your father had been in a downright rotten mood. He’d spent the last few days late at work and when you showed up to the office to bring him dinner he was yelling at his assistant every time without fail. 

“Tell them to double the guards! Put a damn Gatling on the top of the roof! Send the Pinkertons! I don’t care what you have to do, get that money to the train yard.” 

“But sir-“

“I said figure it out god damn it!” The way he slammed his hands on his desk made you jump. 

It wasn’t often your father lost his temper, but when he did it was frightening. 

At lunch your father glared daggers at Bucky while your mother preened over him. It was nice to see things hadn’t changed during his week away committing crime. 

“James, dear, you should work for the mining company!” Your mother kindly suggested, “My husband is always looking for strong young men such as yourself.” 

It took every fiber of his being to not scoff at the thought of selling his soul to the company, “I rather like the ranch work I’ve been doing for Miss Wilson, but thank you ma’am. If I have a change of heart you’ll be the first to know.” 

On the record Bucky was a ranch hand for Sam’s sister, sure he helped out here and there for the woman but he wasn't getting paid for it, your family didn’t need to know that. 

“We have some friends that are ranchers down in Texas, let us know if you ever venture down there and I’ll send a telegram to them for you.” Your mother was a bonafide socialite. She knew people of all walks of life and thrived on making connections for people, “Your horse is trained so well, they could use someone with your talent.” 

“Alpine?” Bucky grinned thinking of his beautiful white mare, she was almost as stubborn as you are, “I have to say she’s probably my second favorite girl.” 

Your father hated seeing Bucky around the house. He hated how Bucky was always a perfect gentleman whenever he came around. It didn’t matter, no daughter of his was going to marry some rough neck, dirty ranch hand if he had any say in it. 

There was something just plain not right with James Barnes and your father was going to get to the bottom of it. 

As it turns out, it took very little effort to find out the history of a career criminal. This was worse than if Bucky was actually a ranch hand, not only was he a criminal, but he robbed the damn train your father used to transport the bonds not once, but twice in the span of two weeks. 

He couldn’t believe he let a man who stole from him into the safety of their home. He couldn’t believe he let a criminal court his daughter (not that he even approved of the courtship). Bucky was probably sitting in his room at the inn laughing and counting the dollar bills that belonged to in his pocket. 

And the image of that pissed him off to no end. 

It pissed him off so much that he paid off a group of bounty hunters to finally deal rid him of the man once and for all. Bucky wasn’t going to come gracefully, but lucky for your father, Bounty hunters had loose morals and business practices much like he did. When he told Brock Rumlow "I don't care how you do it, just get rid of him!" your father didn't know he opened up a new, lawless realm of possibilities.

----

The late summer sun hung low in the sky as you quickened your pace home, the two men behind you following relentlessly, footsteps crunching on the dusty streets. You couldn’t make out their faces as they stayed just out of your line of sight but the feeling in your gut only harbored malevolence and fear. 

Your path meandered through town, twisting and turning to ensure they truly were following you.

Two turns left. Three turns right. Then a detour past the butcher.

Dread settled inside you and you quickened your pace, ragged breaths gasping as you neared the outskirts of town and broke into a full sprint as best you could, bunching your skirts in your arms so as to not trip. The buildings thinned, and the darkness deepened as you drew further and further from the bustling center of Eden. 

Further away from anyone who would hear you scream.

Rough hands grabbed you, forcing a bag over your head as you fought, kicking and screaming. Hissing and spitting like a feral cat. Their powerful builds quickly overpowered you, sitting on your legs as you thrashed trying to squirm away, clawing at the dirt and wedging it under your fingernails and covering your fine dress. Then they tied you, bound your arms and legs and threw you on the back of a horse like a sack of grain.

When the horse finally halted you were dragged off, stumbling and disoriented. The hood was yanked off and you were roughly pushed into a small, dark room. You turned finally able to make out the face of your captors who reeked of sweat and malice. He was tall and broad, skin tanned by the sun, with dark hair and eyes. He would have been handsome if this were any other circumstance.  

Your nostrils flared like an angry bull as you exhaled and spat at him in defiance while he manhandled your still fighting body, “Let go of me!” You shrieked, anger overpowering your feelings of fear. 

How dare they! How dare these filthy men put their hands on you and soil a perfectly good dress. How dare they throw you on a horse with a bag over your head and force you into this filthy damp room. Your rage bubbled over, you’d never felt this level of anger before. But the sheer callous disrespect of a lady pushed you over the edge. 

You should have been afraid, fearing for your life even. But the type of men who did this? Well they were cowards. Lower than the lowest cretin to walk the Earth. 

“Well look at you, now I know why Barnes has taken such an interest in you Missy.” The man in front of you grinned like a snake. His hand trailing your jaw, fingers lingering against your skin, “you’re a little firecracker ain’t you?” 

You turned your head to bite him, teeth snapping together as you snarled.  Ordinarily, you epitomized the quintessence of a respectable lady—devout and pious, a paragon of Catholic virtue. Yet, confronted with this dehumanizing treatment, a primal instinct awakened within. If they insisted on regarding you as a beast, then, in the eyes of the Almighty, you would unleash the ferocity of one. “Let me go.” You hissed, “You… you cretin!”    

The man shoved you roughly away, narrowly dodging your bite, “Easy there ma’am, we ain’t gonna hurt you.” For some reason you had a hard time believing him with the kidnapping, the pushing, the bag over your head, “We just need you to bring us out cash cow.” He said and slid over a wanted poster with an uncanny portrait of Bucky on it.

Oh

Now it all made sense. 

You took the poster and read the script:

WANTED CAPTURED DEAD OR ALIVE James “Bucky” Barnes  For multiple accounts of murder, theft, and fraudulent activities. Known leader of the Barnes Gang, responsible for numerous bank and train robberies across the Midwestern and Western United States. This is a dangerous individual who will not hesitate to murder.  Mid thirties, brown hair, scar on left arm. Last scene heading west towards the Eden Mountain range.  If spotted DO NOT APPROACH; contact local authorities.  Bounty of $5,000

Of course they’d take you as bait to lure a man with a $5,000 bounty and his gang of merry bandits out from hiding. Something told you that these men thought taking down Bucky would be easy. But you knew this would probably be the hardest $10k they were going to make. They’d probably die doing it! And silently you hoped they would.

A man’s head isn’t worth $5,000 because it’s easy work taking him down. It’s worth that much because he won’t hesitate to fucking kill you in the worst way possible. You didn’t know exactly what Bucky was capable of doing, but you couldn’t help the shiver that crept up your spine when your eyes landed on the big, bold DO NOT APPROACH, “I think for your sake, you should let me go.” 

Perhaps there was a touch of madness in relishing the thrill that such a perilous man inspired within you. Yet, it was the very specter of danger that ignited a fervent blaze deep in your core. To you, Bucky was a flame dancing provocatively over a pool of oil—intensely captivating and inherently volatile.

The dark haired man scoffed, “Your beau ain’t the big bad man everyone seems to think he is. Not when he’s got such an easy weakness to exploit.” 

It was true, Bucky was having the time of his life in Eden Ridge playing house with you. He was living in utter domestic bliss.   “If it’s money you want, my daddy will pay you.” You offered. You had to exhaust all your options and if these men were money hungry then your father would be more than happy to give them the $10k for your life. You didn’t know how much money he had exactly, but you knew it was a pretty penny. 

“Sweetheart, your daddy already paid us.” He mocked you. 

You blinked, brain barely able to comprehend the words he said to you. What a weird thing to say. 

Unbelievable even. 

You were going to have to dissect that at a later date when you were in a better position. 

[mirkwoodshewolf]

The dad who stepped up; John Wick x oc teen

*Author's note*

Okay so this is the first update in what feels like forever. Now that I'm on winter break and away from home I can start to feel the creative juices flowing. I might also post up some other stuff that I've had saved but didn't feel confident in posting before as some christmas gifts for you all.

But this oneshot (possibly might turn this into a series but only AFTER I've seen all the John Wick films. I've seen bits and pieces on youtube but never all the way through *dodges flying objects*) So just to put in prespective this is a prologue before the first film. Like the five years John has once he retires. But I wanna see how all of you like this and if anyone wants to see this turned into a series, give me a shoutout below and comment whether you wish to be tagged or not.

Warnings: Fluff, angst, parental abandonment, cancer mentioned.

Taglist:

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@queen-paladin

@waddles03

@plethora-of-things

@psychosupernatural

@remussl0vers

@queensdivas

_______________________________________________________

If you think being a teenage girl is bad enough, try being the teenage daughter of the infamous Baba Yaga.  Well not blood related but I’ve known John Wick for most of my pre-teen/teenage life.  He was a wild card I never expected coming into mine or my mother’s life, hell men like him only exist in my mom’s Fabio romance novels. 

Even though I would later in life learn of who he truly was, I still can’t help but think back to the days when he first came into our lives.

Age 11

It all started when I had came back from my first summer at Camp Walden.  I had learned about this camp from my best friend and I pleaded with my mom for me to go.  At first she acted like she wasn’t even going to allow me to go but then on the last day of school, she had surprised me with an application of approval and a plane ticket for me to go to Camp Walden.

I spent eight weeks at the all-girls camp learning how to fence, canoe, all the typical fun camp stuff.  Made some new friends and would write letters to my mom every single night (as per her conditions since there wasn’t any cell service up there).

I got off the plane with all my bags and looked around the gate until I caught sight of my mom.  She held out a welcome home sign and when she found me from the load of passengers, she and I raced up to each other and hugged each other tightly.  She picked me up rocking me back and forth kissing me repeatedly.

“Oh I hope you had a lousy time at that camp because I am never sending you there again, I missed you too much!”

“I missed you too mom.”

“Wait did you…..you got your haircut?” when I had went I had pretty long hair and now I come back from camp with my hair up to my shoulders.

“Yeah when we were playing truth or dare, a girl was dared to cut someone’s hair and since I had the longest I was the victim. Luckily for me her mom’s a stylist and she learned from her. Are you mad?”

“I would be but she did something I’ve never been able to make you do since you were little.” We both laughed as she held me close to her again and we began to leave the airport.

“So mom how’s your summer been?”

“Oh the typical single mom empty nester. Watching trash tv and drinking mimosas.” I shook my head at her.  “But I wanna hear more about camp. Eight weeks of not hearing your voice is way too long for me.”

“Yeah it was a lot for me too mom. But it was a lot of fun. I got some pics of some foxes that came by the camp.”

“Ohhh exciting. I know you’ll be adding those to your collection my little fox kit.”

“Yeah. And canoeing is much more difficult than they make it seem on TV. We got tipped over like five times and we didn’t even leave the docks.”

“Awww man, I’m sorry baby.” We threw my stuff into the trunk and I rode in the passenger seat while mom drove us out of the airport parking lot and we headed for home.  “Oh by the way your aunt Chessy just had to be here to see you come home so expect to be smothered by her.”

“Did she bring Sammy?” I asked excitedly.

“You know your aunt. Never leaves home without that dog of hers.” I clapped my hands excitedly.

“Also baby I have surprise to tell you once you get settled in.”

“A surprise? What is it?”

“It’s a surprise and like I said I want you to get settled in first before I tell you what it is. It’s tiring flying from coast to coast non-stop so I want you to take as much time as you need to get settled.” I let out a groan as I sat back in the seat.  When you’re a kid and you hear the word ‘surprise’ you never want to wait for it.  But grownups just love to do that to you.

Before long we finally arrived at the house and mom put the car in park in the driveway and turned the engine off.  I stepped out of the car and looked at my house in relief.  The door was left wide open and I immediately heard barking as Sammy, my aunt’s golden retriever raced out and came over to me.

“Sammy!” he came up and sat down allowing me to hug and kiss him.

“Oh now this fully grown woman can’t be my little Sarah can it!?” I heard aunt Chessy’s voice say as she came out.  I let go of Sammy and ran up to her and she too picked me up just like mom did at the airport.  Spinning me around and rocking me back and forth.  “Oh welcome home baby girl. We missed you soo much! Hey,” she separated our hug and took both my arms in her hands as she continued, “Don’t you dare convince your mom to send you that way again for far too long. You’re lucky I soil you too much otherwise I wouldn’t have extended my stay.”

“I love you too aunt Chessy. Camp was fun but there’s truly no place like home.”

“Amen to that sister. You’re just in time I made cornbread and chili your favorite.”

“Did I just hear cornbread and chili?” mom perked up as she carried my bags over her shoulder.

“Yeah it’s on the stove but Sarah gets the first bowl. And Helen don’t carry all that weight, that’s what I’m here for.” Aunt Chessy grabbed my bags while mom briefly gave her a glare but aunt Chessy gave her a look back.  “C’mon kid, let’s get you inside and well fed.” As we walked back inside with Sammy sticking to mom’s side whimpering and licking her hand, that’s when I began to notice the black mustang also parked in our driveway.

I sat down at my balcony bed while aunt Chessy began unpacking my bags.  I had my bowl of chili with the cornbread inside of it in my lap and I said.

“Hey aunt Chessy, how’d you afford a mustang from the rental car place?”

“Oh I wish I could afford one in real life. But that car doesn’t belong to me.”

“So what did mom get it or something?” I asked.  That’s when we heard my mom giggling.  I turned and looked outside and saw her with a man right out by the pool.  The man was sitting on one of the pool chairs and I could see he had pure black hair, wore sunglasses and a dark t-shirt.  “Who is he?”

“Sarah it’s none of my business how my big sister ruins her life she’s a big girl.” Aunt Chessy said as she began taking out all my dirty clothes.  I set my bowl of chili aside and went up to her and said as I wrapped my arms around her right one.

“C’mon aunt Chessy I need to know. Who is he?” aunt Chessy let out a deep sigh and turned to me.

“His name is John Wick. Your mom met him at the gas station when she accidentally forgot to grab her wallet to pay for gas. If you ask me I think he wanted something a bit more than just to be a good Samaritan.”

“What do you mean?” this time we could hear a splash by the pool and mom’s laughter before it turned to shrieks and then back to laughter again.  Aunt Chessy let out a groan as she rolled her eyes.  I went to grab my camera while Aunt Chessy continued on her rant.

“Look you know how I’ve felt about men especially after your father left you guys. So I gotta ask myself what does a man like that who belongs in a Fabio romance novel want with a woman who is trying to work out her life as a single mom? Then I realize there’s a million reasons why that man has stuck around, and all of it is just waiting to be spent from the New York bank.” As she talked I stood there with my camera to see both my mom and John in the pool together at first playing like little kids before being wrapped in each other’s arms.

“What you think he’s loaded or something?” I asked.

“Ehh what do I know? But I’ll tell you one thing, this man’s got your mother eating out of the palm of his hand. They do everything together, they go on drives in that car of his, they swim together, they go out to eat dinner every single night. But you know what, meet him. See for yourself, don’t let me influence you.”

 I saw them making goo-goo eyes at each other before kissing each other as they remained in the pool.  I snapped a quick picture of them and felt an odd feeling in my stomach as I looked down at them.  Could he be the surprise that mom was talking about?

After I had my lunch and aunt Chessy was now doing my laundry, I got on my bathing suit and put on a Shadow the hedgehog t-shirt over it along with some old sandals.  I grabbed my sunglasses and decided to head out to the pool. 

There I saw John once again sitting on the pool chair with my mom just coming out of the pool and grabbing a towel.

“Ohh Sarah, didn’t expect you to come down so soon.”

“Figured I’d stretch my legs out in the pool. At least this time I won’t have algae or wet sand between my toes.” I said wiggling my toes as I kicked my sandals off my feet.

“Well since you’re here I guess there’s no time like the present ehh? Sarah, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.” She came up behind me and walked us closer to John.  “Sarah, this is John Wick.”

He removed his sunglasses and I finally got a better look at his face.  A sharp facial structure and a scruff beard that had some hidden grey to it.  Deep brown eyes that pierced through my very soul and almost sent a chill of fear up my spine.

“Hello.” His voice had a slight ruggedness to it but it also had warmth and friendliness to it.  Not like how when someone who has a rasp to their voice it makes them creepy.

“Hi, Mr. Wick.” I greeted shyly as I placed my sunglasses on top of my head.

“Well I can’t believe I’m finally meeting the famous Sarah. I’ve been looking forward to this all summer.” John said as he adjusted himself to sit up properly and get a better look at me.

“Really well here I am.” I said with a shrug.

“Helen, you’ve been holding out on me. The way your mom has talked about you I expected to meet a little girl but you are so grown up and just as beautiful as her.”

“I’ll be 12 soon. How old are you?”

“Sarah!” exclaimed my mom as tugged me by my shoulders.

“It’s fine Helen. There should actually be no shame in children asking adults their ages.” John assured my mom.  “To answer your question I’m 43.”

“That’s 32 years older than me! How old are you again mom.” I asked looking up at her.

“Wow if only you were this interested in math when it comes to your homework. Look I’m going to head inside and get some food. Maybe even check to make sure Chessy is doing the laundry correctly. I love my little sister but sometimes she can be a scatter brain when it comes to laundry. Be right back.” With that mom left me alone with her new ‘boyfriend’.

“My aunt said that you guys met at a gas station, is that true?”

“Yes that is true. I don’t know the full story but from what I did see, the cashier was giving your mother a pretty hard time so I thought I’d give her a hand and help pay for her gas. And not three days later at the Walmart nearby she actually helped me with finding the better laundry detergent. From there I guess you could say the rest is history.”

“How come my mom didn’t mention you in the letters she’d send me?” John let out a deep sigh and looked at me with a sympathetic look.

“I imagine this is pretty awkward, right?” I merely shrugged as I crossed my arms over my chest.  “Your mom felt that this type of news would’ve been better to be talked about in person. But I want you to know this Sarah, these past eight weeks I’ve really come to care for your mother. And I wish I can do the same for you, but if not I’ll understand and I’ll walk away.”

Now this is something I’ve never heard of happening in real life.  Normally the partner wouldn’t allow their lover’s child to dictate whether or not they’ll stay together.  But just from seeing mom and him together, that’s the happiest I’ve seen her since……him.

Needless to say (and as you all know) John Wick stuck around with my mother.  They waited to get married until a year into their blossoming relationship.  And it was also after their marriage that mom and I would leave our home of Nappa, California and go to live with John in his house in New York.

It was out in upstate New York so just roughly about a 20-30min drive away from the city.  It was fairly similar in size to our old house back home with wide open spaces, a good sized backyard, and a two door garage. 

Ever since they got married, mom’s always tried to have John and I do some ‘father-daughter’ bonding time.  And even though John did his best to understand my interests whether it came to gaming, music, or movie trivia, there was just something about being alone with him that didn’t sit right with me.  I already got fooled once by my dad once, I wasn’t going to let another one do the same thing to me again.

Age 13

I was sitting in the passenger seat of John’s mustang as we drove into the city to pick up some groceries.  Mom had to suddenly be called into work with an emergency and John said he didn’t want to leave me alone in the house by myself.

After a brief back and forth with each other of how whether or not I was capable of staying at the home by myself, I ended up losing that battle and had to tag along.  As we walked through the aisles picking out everything we needed, my eye soon caught a bunch of people at a table advertising something.

I noticed their posters for the Gotham Archery classes.  And there happened to be one right nearby in Manhattan.  I turned to John to see him looking at some deals on eggs then turned my attention back towards the table.  Archery did always fascinate me but there was never any schools or lessons back at California that were within driving range of us so I could only fantasize about shooting an actual bow and arrow like Legolas or Merida did.

“You want to go talk to them?” I jumped at John’s voice and looked up at him.

“Huh?”

“You’ve been staring at them for the past five minutes without even blinking. So either you’ve got some beef with one of those gentleman or you’d like to go talk to them and think about joining them.”

“Yeah that’s funny. Me doing archery.” I scoffed as I brushed it off with a laugh.

“What’s so funny about that?” he leaned his arms over the shopping cart as he raised his brow at me.  One look at his eyes and I knew he wasn’t kidding around.

“You—you’re being serious?”

“If it’s something you’re interested in, you should go for it.” A strange fluttery feeling came into my chest when he said that.  Dad never really took the time to encourage me to go out for something, it was always mom who tried to push me to achieve what I want.  So hearing this from an adult male, especially someone like John Wick felt strange and new to me.

I took a deep breath and walked over to the table and it was there I began my journey into the world of archery.

After bringing John over to the table so that he could get some of the information too (since I was under 18 I needed to have an adult present for the information given and to ensure that there would be an adult present whenever I was taken to classes).

We had a meeting that night with my mom and she was so proud that I had managed to find something to do here in New York.  And already having John be the chosen supervised parent to go along with me also made her happy to know that we finally managed to find something to bond over.

After several months of lessons, I actually ended up doing a lot better at archery than I could imagine.  So much so that my instructor encouraged me to participate in the upcoming tournament that would be held at their school in Brooklyn.

Mom, aunt Chessy and John all came to support me in the tournament but when I began to see the large crowd that was gathering around to see all of us that was competing, my heart began to race and my stomach began churning.

“Full house, oh sweet Jesus.” I groaned as I held my stomach tightly.  I fiddled with my archer’s glove unhooking and re-hooking the straps as my anxiety was starting to go through the roof.

“And here we have future gold medalist Olympic archer Sarah Wick.” I shook my head trying to hide the smile etching at the corner of my mouth and looked up to see John with his phone pointed right towards me.

“Haha you’re such a comedian.” I mocked sarcastically.

“No joke. Those archers don’t know who they’re about to go against.” I winced slightly as I looked down and fiddled with my glove once again.  “Hey, everything okay?” he asked concerningly.  He pocketed his phone and sat down in front of me.

Could I maybe trick him into taking me home? Mom never fell for the classic ‘fake sickness’ trick whenever I needed to get out of something.  Guess that’s just something mom’s automatically know, but John—he wouldn’t know and I’ll bet he wouldn’t even ask questions about it.

“I’m not feeling so good John. I think I need to go home and lay down. Yeah that’s it let’s go home.” I went to sit up but he held onto my shoulder and pressed his other hand to my forehead.

“You don’t seem to be running a fever.”

“It’s a stomach bug. Suddenly started up out of nowhere.” I let out a pained hiss as I groaned lowly.  When I looked up at him, one look on his face told me that he wasn’t buying this act for a second.  “This isn’t working is it?”

“It was a good try.” He acknowledged giving me a wink.  I dropped the act as I let out a deep sigh.

“How do you guys always seem to know when we’re faking it?”

“I may have only been in the parenting game for a short time, but I know how to spot the classic ‘feigning sick bit’. Even pulled it myself from time to time. Now you wanna share what’s really going on?”

I don’t even know myself why I suddenly felt like coming clean to him.  Whether it was him not talking down to me in order to get the answer, or him even acknowledging that I did my best to fake him out.  Either way I finally came clean to him.

“I didn’t think there was going to be so many people here to see us compete. It’s stressing enough with the judges, but the people in the audience……I’m just—so afraid that I’m gonna make a total fool of myself.” John let out a soft hum as he nodded softly.

“I believe what you’re going through right now is what they call stage fright. Everyone gets it, even me.”

“You? I don’t believe you.”

“Oh yeah. Believe it or not this 45 year old, 6’1 giant of a man has and still sometimes deals with anxiety and stage fright.” We both softly chuckled at his statement.

“How do you get by?”

“One step at a time. I can only control what I can. And yes there will be the unknown that you wish you could say ‘hey I want you to do this’ or ‘you’re gonna do it this way’. But we can’t let the fear dictate over something we love.”

“Wow…..that’s—deep.”

“I try my best.” John merely shrugged, which got another laugh out of me.  “And think of it this way; after today: No one but your mother, aunt, instructor and I will remember what you did here today. So don’t do your best for those nameless people out in the audience, do it for the ones that really know you.”

“Thanks John. That really helped more than you know.” He gently squeezed my shoulder and said.

“Glad I could help. And good luck out there.” He stood up and walked back to join my mom and aunt at their seats.

Whenever mom gave me advise or encouragement while she always looked on the positive aspects of it, just between the lines I knew there were times that she would sugarcoat certain things.  Like there was too much optimism in certain events that I knew wouldn’t be good but she’d always make it seem like everything was going to be okay.

John, however, just hearing him speak about the reality of the situation but not making it sound too cynical.  He somehow managed to find the perfect balance of optimism and realistic philosophy.

And it paid off.  By the end of the tournament I had gotten three bronze medals and a silver medal for all the categories I had decided to compete in.

As the years went by, there would also come a test that would push the Wick family to the extreme.  When I turned 14, my mom was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor.  There would be days when she was able to live with us and live a normal life, but there were dark days when she’d have to live in the hospital for weeks on end.

Age 15

This was one of mom’s bad weeks.  One day when John and her were out on their wedding anniversary date out in the city.  I had gotten a call from John telling me that she had collapsed when they were walking along the docks after their dinner.

However unlike before, this time the tumor had attacked her so aggressively that she now has to be on a ventilator to help her breathe properly.  The doctor’s say that even though there’s brain activity, she’s unfortunately locked in a coma-like state and it’s unknown on when she’ll wake up…..or ever.

It was also throughout this time that John and I began to lean more on each other now more than ever.  Especially when he came back into the picture out of nowhere.

It was just after school when John and I decided to visit mom in the hospital.  I had gotten my German test that he had helped me study for and I wanted to tell mom how I had aced it.  She always wanted to make sure that I never fell back on my class work no matter what events or after-school activities I had.  We arrived at the hospital parking lot and as we got out of John’s mustang, I asked him.

“Before long I’ll have to start driving, think I can practice driving the mustang?”

“Just because you passed your German exam doesn’t make you an expert on my mustang.” He told me.

“Oh come on John. I’ve been paying attention to how you shift the gears and I dare say I’m confident enough to drive it.”

“There’s a difference between confidence and arrogance.”

“That hurts John. That really hurts!” I exclaimed as I held my heart like I had been shot.

“Yeah, yeah report it to Child services. Come on.” we headed into the building and checked in to see my mom.  We walked down the familiar corridor and saw mom in the same position as she has since her check in.  Laying still and motionless on the bed.  I came up and sat beside her and took her hand in mine.

“Hey mom, we’re back. Just like we promised. Hey get this, you know that German test that John’s been helping me with? I aced it. Can you believe it, after months of struggling I finally get an A+ for that class.”

“The real credit goes to your daughter Helen. She’s the one who took the test, all I did was teach her a few tricks to remember what she needed to learn.” Said John as he sat on the other side of my mom’s bed.  Soon my mom’s doctor came in and greeted us.

“Mr. Wick, Ms. Wick.”

“Dr. Sanchez. How has she been?” John asked.

“Well some good news at least. We’ve noticed how she’s been able to now breathe on her own so we took her off the ventilator and for the past ten hours she’s been breathing just fine on her own.” We both sighed in a huge relief.

“Any signs on when she’ll wake up?” I asked.

“That unfortunately is still yet to be determined. But we’ll continue to constantly monitor her progress and we’ll call you with any new updates Mr. Wick.” He said the last part to John since he was the emergency contact for my mom.

“Thank you Dr. Sanchez, truly.” He nodded and soon left the room leaving the three of us alone.  John took his spot back at my mom’s right side while I fiddled with the new bracelet that John had gifted them for their anniversary. “You were right about the bracelet.”

“Told yah. Mom’s never been one for clunky or flashy jewelry. And it really is beautiful.” I stroked along the silver flowers that decorated the bracelet. 

“I’m gonna head down and get some coffee, you want anything from the cafeteria?”

“I’ll be okay till we get home.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“John!” I whined.

“You don’t drink enough of it, you gotta stay hydrated.” He said standing up and circled around mom’s bed before gently shaking my head around before leaving the room.  I shook my head and said.

“He really is a great guy mom. We’ve actually been getting along more lately since you had to stay here. He’s been taking me to school, archery practice, helping out with my homework. And been the support system I needed even though he’s hurting himself. He may not want to admit out loud, but I sometimes hear him cry at night without you there. So—keep fighting mom. Please, we need you home.”

I lay my head down on her bed as I gripped her hand in both of mine as tightly as I could.

“Helen? Sarah?” I gasped as my eyes shot wide open.  I turned towards the door and there I saw someone I never expected to see ever again.  My dad.

“D-d…..d…..” I stammered.

“My god, Sarah is that really you? God look at you you’re all….”

“What the hell are you doing here?!” I snapped.  “How did you find us?!”

“I-I didn’t. My son’s here for his final chemo treatment.” His son? He went and had another kid after he abandoned me and mom? “So Helen’s got……”

“I don’t need to tell you shit!” I snapped. “Get out of here since that’s what you’re good at!”

“Sarah come on. It wasn’t my fault. I thought you were right behind me, honest!” bullshit.  He knew what he was doing that day, I’ve come to grips with it.  “That day at the mall…..”

“Don’t ever mention that day to me. I was so—so.......” my voice quivered as I tried to contain my emotions that were boiling inside of me after 8 years.

“Oh hey, hey. Don’t-don’t cry baby girl.” He tried to comfort me.  I heard his footsteps getting closer to me and once I saw his feet within my vision I pushed him back aggressively.  “Sarah!” my dad exclaimed in surprise.

“Get out.” I lowly sneered.

“Baby girl I’m trying to make things right with you.”

“Get out, get out, get out.” I kept muttering as my hand fidgeted at the door.

“Sarah I’m your father—” the second he stepped closer to me.  I lashed out with my best right hook and nailed in right across the face screaming at him.

“GET OUT!!!” I tackled him beating him with my fists.  Punching, clawing and slapping him repeatedly in a blind rage repeatedly telling him to get out through my grunts and growls.

I really don’t recall what all happened after that but I soon felt arms wrap around my waist trying to pull me away.  I tried fighting back but my arms were soon pinned to my side as I heard John’s voice suddenly break through my rage.

“Sarah enough! Easy! Easy!” I stopped and my vision became clear once again.  My dad’s face was bleeding profusely as nurses and security had now came to see what the commotion was.

John escorted me out but security tried to stop him.  There were words exchanged between the two of them before John took me out of the hospital.  All the while keeping a secure grip on me but not manhandling me.

Everything felt—numb.  The sounds of the city were muffled and I barely felt myself being moved around.  My hands wouldn’t stop shaking and my heart was pounding so fast I thought it would burst out of my chest.  Never before have I felt such rage to get me into that blind state and attack someone like that.

Next thing I knew, I suddenly felt a stinging sensation on my hand and I went to lash out but a hand stopped me and my vision suddenly became clear.  I found myself back at home with John kneeling in front of me, my wrist gently grasped in his calloused grip.

“Easy, easy. You’re home now Sarah.” Home.  Frantically my eyes looked around to see if it was true and I soon came to realize what had happened.  I was home, my real home.

Like a crack steadily increasing along a newly broken mirror, my shock suddenly began to overflow as tears rapidly fell down my face.  Immediately I wrapped my arms around John’s waist as I buried my face into his chest and wept hysterically.

“I’m sorry John….I’m so sorry John…..I-I didn’t want you to see…..” I spoke through my hysterical sobs.  John instantly wrapped his arms around me, one hand rubbing my back while the other was buried within my hair gently stroking and massaging my scalp.

“It’s okay, let it out. Just let yourself fall apart. I promise to hold you together.” He softly whispered into my ear.  The moment he had said that, I had let out the most gut-wrenching, raw, almost animalistic sob of rage, grief, self-hate, confusion, and sorrow that I had kept bottled in since the day my dad abandoned me.

And true to his word, John kept his tight yet comforting hold on me with each raw sob that came out of my mouth.

After what felt like an eternity and for doctoring up my bruised and bleeding knuckles and palm, I lay there in my room just fingering the bandaged wraps that John had placed over my wounds.  We didn’t speak after my breakdown but somehow he knew that I needed to have some alone time.

Slowly I got out of bed and headed towards mom and John’s room.  The door was shut so I went up and knocked so softly I thought he wouldn’t hear me.

“Come in.” I heard him say.  I opened the door and saw John laying across the bed.  “Hey Sarah. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Can…..we talk?” John nodded and allowed me to sit on mom’s side of the bed.  I pulled my legs up to my chest as I took mom’s pillow and held it over my knees.  The faint scent of her perfume still lingered onto the pillow.  “Did she ever tell you about him?”

“Your aunt made it clear that your father was a…..sensitive subject.” Of course she did.

“I was seven years old. We were out at the mall having our monthly daddy-daughter date. He took me out to red lobster to eat, and then took me to all my favorite stores. Next thing I know as I’m looking at some video games, he’s just gone. I called out for him in the crowded mall but I couldn’t find him anywhere. It was pure luck that a mall cop found me after 20 minutes. I was so frightened and confused…….” I sniffled and wiped away the tears that were burning in my eyes.  “Why did he just leave me like that? Was it something I did or said or—And to come back after supposedly living his new life…..”

“Hey, hey.” His large hand encompassed both of mine as I was clenching mom’s pillow so tightly my knuckles were turning white.  His touch alone made me relax even though I didn’t want to.  “He had no right to suddenly come up to you after all these years. And you are not to blame for him abandoning you.”

“Then why did he do it?” I asked brokenly.

“I wish I had an answer for you. But know that no excuse he can come up with will ever justify what he did.” he wrapped his arm around me, allowing my head to rest just over his heart once again.  I shut my eyes allowing a few tears to fall drip down my face.

“You’ve been nothing but supportive and loving to me these past few years. And I never thought I’d find myself saying this but I like you John. I really, really do like you. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to call you…... you know. It still hurts to even say the word out loud.”

“I understand. I never expected you to come forth and call me ‘that word’ as soon as your mom and I got married. I just wanted you to know that you’ve got another person in your corner whenever you feel like you can’t talk to your mom or aunt about something.”

“Thank you John, for everything.” We looked at each other lovingly and he brought me into a tight hug.

“And can I just say, that was an impressive right hook you gave him.” I laughed as I buried my face chest and gripped onto him tighter while I felt him place a loving kiss to the crown of my head.

One last thing I’ve noticed about John were his hugs.  There truly was a difference between the way my mom hugs and the way he hugs.  Mom’s hugs were always a gentle comfort like being wrapped in a fleece blanket.

John’s hugs—well his were like a protective barrier.  Like nothing in the world could get to me and he was going to ensure it with each tight, comforting squeeze he gave.  And while it felt like my bones could pop and break any second, it felt comforting to know that such strength could be so gentle when needed to be.

[zivazivc]

Reading the tags of your recent Kunoichi Turtles post that Female Casey has a bit of a flirtatious personality has led me to headcanon that when Lavinia starts crushing on David (I think that’s Mona’s genderbent name in your AU?) she goes to Casey for advice and tips on how to flirt with a boy but when actually trying to use the flirting tips on David she fails miserably (like that flirting lesson scene from the movie Jumanji), but unknowingly to Vinnie the bad flirting worked and David is smitten XD

AHAHAHA! XD I would literally cry from second hand embarrassment if an episode like that existed. Maybe, maybe, I can see that happening a few "episodes" after David's first introduced into the story, after Vin finally comes to terms with her emotions. Because in this version the relationship progresses slowly over the course of like a season and a half (a lot of that due to David only visiting when his job demands it), and Vin has cold feet like for most of that time lol

David is the one who gets smitten with Vin first in my story and starts making subtle advances while Vin is completely on edge and skeptical of them and needs a while to realize that he actually likes her in a romantic sense, for real, and doesn't have some ulterior motive. After that she's just very awkward and tongue-tied about it.

You know how Raph kept telling Donnie to give up on his crush because they're all giant mutants that won't ever get a chance at love? I wanted to put attention on that part from canon since the show didn't give me that with the canon Ramona. Raph being a teenage girl can only make that mind-set worse, giving him/her more insecurity and self-hatred. Especially since Vin is the biggest of her sisters and the least "cute" and feminine of them. So I don't see her making the first move in any situation, and I think she'd only flirt after it would be made clear the other person feels the same way.

Ahh, sorry, that got a bit serious maybe. The two actually have a really sweet and healthy relationship (y'know, in my head, where it's been living rent free for years now lol), Lavinia just has to work out some things first before she's angst free.

In this AU we first meet David in the episode Newtralized, where David and Sal are trying to arrest the Newtralizer. Slash is there (he's an all-time baddie in this version), Vin gets captured thanks to David getting in the way of the fight, David feels responsible and goes to save her -> bla bla bla -> Vin has a rescued princess moment that she doesn't know how to feel about...

I've been trying to make this episode into an actual fic for the longest time. On the topic of Casey, I'm showing you a short section from the wip. It takes place toward the end when they've all reunited. I think it's also a good example on why Vin would not go to Casey for romantic advice XD

.

.

.

Casey leans in close to her face, her hooded eyes joining her friend’s thoughtful gaze on the young Salamandrian on the other side of the rooftop who is currently listening to his veteran commander going over what had happened while they were split up.

“Look at him standing there,” she says to her smoothly, almost whispering into her ear, “dark skin over toned muscle. Those abs, man.”

“Casey!” Vin cries out in shock and horror and swings around to face her friend’s smug smile.

“Like a chiseled renaissance statue,” Sofie helps with uncharacteristic coyness to her smile.

“Sofie, no!”

All four of the girls are grinning like Cheshire Cats at Lavinia’s discomfort, enjoying themselves way too much. Vin’s cheeks and nose are thoroughly covered in a deep blush and she hates that it’s there in the first place. She doesn’t even like the guy.

“David the Statuesque! That’s what I’m naming him.” Marie exclaims, sounding proud of herself for that one. “I was going to go with something more fun but since he’s your knight in shining armor—Literally!—I gotta be respectful.”

Vin can’t even hide her tortured grimace. Her shoulders sag and she sighs miserably. “I hate you guys.”

[moss-sprout]

Trails Of Roses

I wanted to make something for prinxiety week and really felt inspired by todays prompt: Roses!

Tags: @prinxietyweek

Summary: Roman goes to the imagination a lot to go on his creative and adventurous journeys. Sometimes he’s only gone for a while, a few hours or days. But other times he could take weeks to return, the longest being 2 months without returning. Virgil develops hanahaki while Roman is away, and in order to preserve his own life, goes after Roman.

Word Count: 3,864

TW: Hanakahi Disease, Slight blood, Swear words, Description of animal death

_ _ _

Tim Burton has always been Virgil’s pick of movies, so it was no surprise that the other sides surprised him with Corpse Bride and some pizza for his birthday. What was a surprise, was that Roman conducted the whole thing, being the most insistent on performing grand gestures. It shouldn’t’ve been unexpected really, but Virgil was still not fully used to their blooming friendship after they used to be so hostile towards each other for months, only to finally find common ground and slowly build their acquaintanceship to form a strong friendship. Corpse Bride wasn’t his favorite movie by Tim Burton, but it made sense that Roman picked it -- being the most romantic of the sides. Currently the sides were all sitting together on the couch, Logan leaning against the arm of the left side of the couch with a mug of coffee, making occasional critiques on the movie's inaccuracies and logical solutions that could’ve been made. Patton was sitting on the couch next to Roman and Virgil -- Roman being the closest to Virgil, their shoulders almost touching despite there being plenty of room on the couch for more space. But Virgil didn’t mind for some reason, Roman was a good movie companion to murmur songs and snicker about inaccuracies with. Roman was currently tapping along to the Piano Duet on Virgil’s wrist, which made the movie slightly more difficult to pay attention to. 

The movie eventually ended and they all talked about as normal for a while before Roman squeezed his wrist gently and let go to stand, walking to the center of the room. The conversation fell quiet as they all stared expectantly at Roman.

“My friends! I am sorry but I must announce my departure! The Imagination calls to me once again. There is no telling when I will return, but I leave tonight.” This wasn’t unusual. Every so often Roman would announce he’s leaving for another adventure in the Imagination.

“Oh! Good luck, Roman!” Patton squeaked hopefully.

“I never understand why you depart yourself to these frivolous adventures-”

“Lo, be nice! This is important to him!” Patton cut in and Logan sighed before attempting to pull his face into something that looked something like a face of agreement.

“Not that I’m offended,” Roman said in a very offended tone, “but I do it because I have citizens to save, witch dragons to slay, nothing that your math equation filled brain could comprehend anyways.”

“It’s an imaginary state of mind there are no real peop-”

“Anyways,” Roman cut him off, earning an unsatisfied grunt from the other, “I have an important project to tend to in the imagination and I won’t be here.”

Virgil wrinkled his nose, “weren’t you just there last week?”

“Well.. yes…”

“And imaginary citizens can’t wait for their prince to slay their imaginary dragon?”

He sighed, “I understand it’s your birthday Virgil, but I assure you this is of the utmost importance. I’ll make it up to you when I’m back.” he said with a wink. A flustered expression flashed across Virgil’s face before he turned away, attempting to hide it with his bangs.

“Wh-whatever.” he murmured.

_ _ _

A few hours later, Virgil was in his room when he heard chatter in the hallway. Looking at the clock on his wall he realized it must be time for Roman to go – making it dramatic as he always does by formally saying goodbye to everyone beforehand. He figured he should go say goodbye and sunk down to join the others in the corridor. 

Rising up, Roman stopped mid-conversation upon seeing Virgil, his face lighting up “Virge! You never come to see me before I leave.”

“Yeah well, someone’s gotta tell you not to get eaten by some demon bunny when you step into the unknown.”

Roman gasped, a dramatic hand flying to his chest, “you have so little faith in me?”

“Not since you almost died trying to approach a hallucinatory cow.” he smirked smugly.

Logan turned to him, confused, “how do you know it was hallucinatory?”

“He was in a boat. In the ocean.”

Roman sputtered, his face turning red, “T-that only happened once! And you try being stranded on a boat for two days! Things happen.”

“Well you better start to mooove it before you’re late for your journey, Roman.” Patton grinned, and behind him he heard Logan heave a deep sigh.

“Thank you, Patton. I bid you all farewell until our next fateful moment!” he called, beginning to step back toward his room. They all said a final goodbye before the door shut. Logan said something about having to check on something in the oven, and Patton followed closely behind him. Virgil lingered in the hallway for a moment, just staring at Roman’s door before sighing, shaking his head and turning to walk away. But just as he did his eye caught sight of something shiny. He immediately halted and turned to look again, making sure his eyes weren’t just playing tricks on him. On the floor by Roman’s door was something small reflecting in the moonlight from the window. He bent down and picked it up, revealing a small jar of.. Something.

His eyes widened with the realization that this was probably important and fell out of his pocket when he was leaving. He quickly burst into Roman’s room, only to find it empty.

He was already gone, and probably wouldn’t be back for a while. Time in the imagination worked differently than in the mindscape, he wasn’t sure if even Roman knew how it worked; so he’d be gone for a while. Virgil just hoped that the bottle was nothing important. He clutched it into his palm, staring quietly at the door that led to the imagination. 

Virgil vaguely wondered for a moment what Roman would be doing on his journey, and what was so important that he needed to do it tonight. Normally, he would be preparing weeks in advance but he just suddenly mentioned it tonight. 

He suddenly became very aware that he was inside of Roman’s room. He hasn’t been in Roman’s room very much, and never for very long. The room was casted by moonlight by the large windows, the red curtains and bed set glowing amongst all the white and brown in the room. The room also smelled heavily of Roman, with his rose water perfume and lingering scent of fresh paper. It caused him to relax a bit, the familiarity creating a safety net over him from his anxiety. His friend had now provided more comfort for him, feeling strangely safe and content whenever he was nearby. 

He coughed, shaking his head before heading to Roman's door. It would be awkward to explain why he was just standing in Roman’s pristine room if he was caught here. Roman’s room was beautiful but he felt so odd in there, his black and purple clashing with the soft whites and reds. Elegancy against ruggedness. 

He reached the door before doubling over into another coughing fit. He quickly went straight to the bathroom to grab some cough medicine from the bathroom before Patton could notice and force Virgil to take another “sick day”. He shuddered upon remembering what happened last time Virgil showed the slightest sign of sickness. He opened the cabinet grabbing the cough medicine and shut the cabinet. He glanced at himself for a moment but looked back when something caught his eye. He squinted at himself in the mirror when he spotted a splash of red on his hoodie. Slowly, he brought his hand to it and gingerly touched it. He grabbed it in his fingers and pulled it off, examining it. 

He stared at it for a moment, confused. It was… a petal? Or something like that. It was red and soft and when he hesitantly smelled it, it smelled like a flower – probably a rose or something like that. Virgil figured that Roman had a draft in his room and he probably had a flower vase in there that caught the wind and blew a petal onto his shoulder. He brushed it off, pushing the odd petal to the side of the sink and resumed with the medicine. 

He downed the cough medicine, cringing at the strong taste of artificial cherry flavor that Patton got before coughing more. He groaned, not wanting to deal with being sick. He hung his head but froze when he saw the sink. Slowly, he lifted his head, not taking his eyes off the sink as he stared. There… There were more rose petals, about 6 of them in the sink bowl. Virgil rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things but they remained. He stuck his hand down and grabbed one, making sure it was real. It looked almost identical to the one he pulled off of himself earlier. He felt something on his tongue and pulled one out of his mouth. He stared at the bowl as he began to comprehend what this all meant. 

The word “hanahaki” flashed across his mind and he blinked, remembering the infamous fanfiction trope. He’d vaguely wondered if this applied to him, but shook his head dismissively. He didn’t fully understand what was happening but it was late and he was sure to be fine tomorrow. He scooped up the petals and threw them in the trash before brushing his teeth and going to bed.

Everything will be fine tomorrow.

_ _ _

Everything was not fine. 

The day after coughing up the first petals – his throat felt a bit clogged and throughout the day he would cough into his palm to see more of the obnoxious red flower petals. 

He did some searching on the internet, and after a brief Google search he found he obtained the symptoms of Hanahaki Disease… somehow. The petals were red and of Roman’s favorite flower, so he put two and two together and realized his affections must lie in Roman.

Only problem was Roman wasn’t back yet, and there was no telling when he would be back. According to a fanfiction site, if they didn’t get something done about the flowers soon, then whoever had it would die of suffocating on the flowers. But Virgil was still shy and didn’t know what to do, so he waited, figuring Roman would probably be back soon enough so he could confess and rid his lungs of them.

Unfortunately, waiting didn’t work. He waited three days and checked Roman’s door frequently to see if he’d returned. His hanahaki hadn’t gotten any better, and his petals became harder to hide and more frequent.

During breakfast on the third day, they were all eating the pancakes Patton made when Virgil fell into a coughing fit, the red petals falling from his mouth in front of his other two roommates. When they asked about it, he gave up on hiding it, explaining the story to them.

And that led to where Virgil is right now, at Roman’s door to the imagination. After a flustering conversation with Patton and Logan, they agreed that waiting would be risky, and it would be a good idea to look for him in the imagination. They weren’t too happy about it, seeing as Virgil has never been inside the imagination, and would have no idea where to find Roman. But it was either that or waiting, which proved itself to be unsuccessful so far. They had packed a bag together, one with a first aid kit – including some medicine that Logan thought could slow the hanahaki. It also had food and water for his journey. He stared unmoving at the door, fingers fidgeting with his sleeve before he took a deep breath and opened the door.

The other side was bright. A soft white glow illuminating from the door, sparks of colors floating out of it. He took a step in, and suddenly he was falling.

Virgil woke up on a soft patch of grass. He groaned, sitting up and scanning the realm.

“So this is the imagination..” he muttered softly to himself as he surveyed the area. It was pretty, with valleys under a cloudless sky and a large body of water off to the right side of him. He stood and walked forward toward the edge of the hill, revealing a small town below. He couldn’t tell if there were people there – even if fake, the thought of being surrounded by strangers made him shudder in fear. 

“Well,” he said to no one, “I better start going if I’m going to find Roman.” He chose a direction on where he guessed Roman would be and began walking.

It quickly occurred to him that he had no idea what he was doing. He didn’t know where anything was and there wasn’t a definitive path he could’ve taken. He even got the courage to walk to town and see if there was any information he could get from the villagers, but they weren’t programmed to answer Virgil’s specific questions – so they either broke or went back to their repetitive task.

The first day went by fast, and Virgil set up a spot to rest near the forest, planning to travel through the forest the next day.

Virgil woke to the sound of something being dragged. He blinked at the harsh sunlight in the sky and turned over, only for the dragging sound to stop for a moment before continuing. He blinked, sitting up, wondering what that noise was. All sleep left him as he faced a small dragon dragging his bag.

“Hey! Stop that! That’s mine!” he shouted, spooking the dragon. It hissed at him and grabbed his bag, flying away before Virgil could catch it.

“Seriously?! That was literally all I had.” he sighed, wondering how Roman put up with this place. “Well, better go through the forest before it gets late..” he sighed, turning to face the forest and head in.

It didn’t take more than a day and a half for Virgil to realize that the forest was either really big, or he was just walking in circles, because it seemed endless. His illness wasn’t doing great either – he’d read about the full flowers and hoped he wouldn’t get any, but he wasn’t so lucky. Every so often, if it wasn’t petals he’d be coughing up, it would be a full flower that he’d choke on, confirming it was in fact a rose.

Multiple days went on like this. After he’d escaped the forest he’d went on to more valleys and mountains. The imagination was much bigger than he anticipated, his hope draining fast. He was beginning to think it would’ve probably been better if he just stayed in the mindscape. 

He was hungry, not being able to find much food since that dragon went away with his bag. He was leaning against a wall in one of the towns he tried passing through. It was always the same answer he got whenever he asked: “did Roman come through here?” and the villagers would shower the prince with praise but wouldn’t confirm when they last saw him. That's what he gets for trying to make sense of fake people. 

Right when he was about to give up for the day, he spotted a bunny hopping not too far from him – having a snack on the grassy pasture. He licked his lips, it wasn’t much, but it might work. He crept towards it, freezing whenever it looked his way. He was so close when he felt his throat close up again. He mentally begged his lungs not to, but before he could stop it he was coughing again, startling the bunny. It snared its row – no, maybe two rows of sharp unnatural teeth at him. 

“Demon bunny?!” He cried out as it made its way towards him angrily. If he wasn’t so stricken with confusion and fear this situation might’ve been funny. 

But before it caught up to him something flashed in front of him, pinning the rabbit to the ground. It was the dragon! “Wait, you stole my stuff!” he shouted at it, but it ignored him, and began ripping the rabbit apart with its teeth as Virgil gaped, trying to process what just happened.

After a few bites it looked back at Virgil and made a weird gesture for him to follow. Virgil hesitantly started following it, not knowing what it was doing. Every few moments, he coughed again, a spew of flowers and petals trailing the ground, along with the untasty savor of copper thanks to the thorns that would rise in his throat. The dragon didn’t seem at all fazed by Virgil’s sickness however, and would keep coaxing him in a certain direction that Virgil felt compelled to follow.

After walking for what felt like hours, Virgil and the dragon reached a tower. It looked old but not terribly run down. It made a chittering noise and flew inside through one of the windows. Virgil slumped against the wall, feeling weak. Of course he follows a stupid dragon out to some tower where it probably just wanted to be fed or something. His dramatic sigh got interrupted by a series of more painful coughs. Virgil could still hear the dragon. Its chittering got louder and it was standing on the edge of the roof on the tower, making some calling sound.

Before Virgil could puzzle out what it was doing, he heard a louder, deeper version of the cry in the distance. Before long, there was a bigger dragon flying towards them. He choked on something between a gasp and a cry as he scrambled for his sore and tired legs to work so he didn’t get burned to a crisp by the dragon for being close to its baby. 

He couldn’t though. No matter what he screamed at his brain, he still sat there on the grass against the tower wall staring at the big dragon becoming bigger as it came closer, becoming more visible. It felt like his heart was in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the moment the flames hit his skin as the flapping of its wings approached. This was it, he was never going to say goodbye to the others, or tell Roman how he felt, or ever watch Thomas grow up or-

“Virgil?!” his eyes snapped open at the familiar voice. There, on the back of the big dragon, was Roman, sitting on a saddle as he gazed baffled at the sight, obviously not expecting Virgil to be there.

“R-Roman!” he started, trying to get up, but his jelly legs sent him straight to the ground again with an oof.

“Wait, don't move, I’ll help you.” he heard Roman say as Roman unsaddled himself and approached him. “Virgil, what on earth are you doing here? The imagination is dangerous for someone as inexperienced as you.”

“Roman, I-” he was cut off once again but hacking coughs, feeling his throat close up with something rising through. 

“Virgil, breathe.. By the Gods of the Sun, how long have you been out here?” he heard him scold as he examined him. Virgil wanted to bite back but couldn’t even speak with the rose forcing its way out of his throat. After several painful moments it broke free and dropped to the ground along with some loose petals and Roman’s talking stopped as they both stared at the blood soaked flower in front of them. 

“Is… is that-”

“A rose. Yup, been getting them all week.” he replied, his voice still raw and raspy.

It was silent for a moment and Virgil heard Roman was about to say something but a chitter broke the sound instead, the small dragon came between them, saying something in some sort of dragon language to Roman.

“That’s where you went off to?! Y'know your mother and I have been looking all over for you this past week.” he scolded, but there wasn’t any anger in his voice.

The dragon chiddered some more before Roman rolled his eyes playfully and shook his head, “yes I can get it for you give me a moment.” he dug through his bag but seemed to realize whatever he was looking for wasn’t there and began to panic slightly. Virgil remembered the glass bottle a few days prior and reached in his pocket, relieved to find it still there.

“Are you uh, looking for this?”

Roman glanced up, “oh thank you, Virgil! I feared I had lost it. It’s her medicine I prepared for her so she would get over her sickness. Unfortunately, she’d snuck off and her mother was worried. We went looking for her, but it seems you found her first-” he rambled, but cut himself off, his eyes glazing over an emotion Virgil couldn’t read.

“Oh. Right. Virgil, what are you doing here?” he said in a soft tone, simply curious but not annoyed.

Virgil shifted, and if on cue, began coughing again, sprouting up more rose petals – thankfully not a flower this time.

“Um, well, you see – I have hanahaki.”

Roman blinked, “the fictional disease based on unrequited love?” 

Virgil shyly nodded. He waited for a reaction, maybe Roman would reject him politely, or would swoop him into a dramatic kiss, or perhaps would play koy. But he didn’t expect Roman to laugh.

Virgil watched as Roman laughed, stunned at the unexpected reaction. But before he could figure out what that meant Roman lit up, “who ever said it was unrequited?”

“I..”

“I thought I was quite obvious really.” he said before his expression dimmed to a softer one as he locked eyes with Virgil. The emo side shifted in awkwardness, for he didn’t know how to handle the soft affection.

“I actually came out here for you. I planned to be back sooner but the imagination never rests.” Roman said as he began digging through his bag. After a few moments he pulled out a small box and placed it in his hand, their fingers touching briefly as Roman pulled back his own hand. 

“Technically, I could’ve made that in my room, but it was easier and faster to create it here. It’s kinda why I come here a lot.” he shrugged, soundly oddly timid.

Virgil’s fingers smoothed over the wooden box before lifting up the lid. Immediately a soft familiar tune began playing from it.

“Is this..” he breathed, barely loud enough for anyone to hear as the music box continued to play.

“It’s a small collection of Tim Burton songs! It was a little challenging to make because I had to really focus on the tunes in order to get them perfect but-” he stopped when Virgil looked up at him, small pools forming in his eyes.

“Oh goodness, do- do you not like it? Sorry I-” he was cut off by Virgil wrapping his arms around Roman’s neck and pulling him into a kiss.

“Of course I love it, dumbass.” he chuckled. “It’s sappy and thoughtful and… totally you.” he smirked and Roman returned with a beaming smile.

For the first time in days, Virgil thinks he can breathe again.

[blueberrytwoberry]

star wars au idea

Okay so one of the ideas I played around with based on AUgust was a Star Wars AU for 9-1-1, but I don’t know exactly where I’m going with it as far as plot so i don't think I'll end up writing it and just want to free it from my brain

I’m just fascinated by the idea of them still working as, basically, emergency responders during the rebellion era, because SOMEONE has to be there to jump in and try to save people after/during a space battle, and that’s what THEY’RE doing. Sometimes they get involved in the fighting, of course, but their primary goal is keeping as many other rebels alive as possible 

Chim is the longest standing member of the 118 rescue squad. He joined up after some Imperials came into a bar where he’d been working and started shit, eventually starting a fire because they suspected some of the clientele were rebels.

Chim managed to get out the fire and keep everyone alive after the Imperials left and realized he’d found his calling, but it’s been a hard, brutal road and he’s already lost so many people he cared about through the rebellion. 

Hen left behind a soulless (but profitable) job in the Empire after she watched her mentor get dragged away for suspected sympathies with the Rebellion (turns how Hen had some of those sympathies, too). Along the way, she met Karen, who’s one of the Rebellion’s preeminent ship designers, responsible for the creations or engine modifications that help keep their rag tag groups ahead of complete destruction by the Empire. 

They don’t see each other as often as either of them likes, because Karen’s work requires her to stay in one place, as much as possible, and Hen’s pulls her from one battlefield to another. 

The group is led by Captain Nash, of course, who was an officer in the rescue corps back in the old Republic army and is carrying around just a ton of trauma from the Clone Wars (and from the loss of his family due to an accident he caused) 

Athena is The Law on an outer rim planet that often serves as their home base, when they have a chance to take some downtime. She’s basically in charge and gets to do her full old-west gunfire strut as much as she damn well pleases. 

Absolutely no one realizes she and Bobby are Together for an embarrassingly long amount of time. 

Buck is a guy who joined the rebellion, initially, for a girl. He has no real… connection to the cause, not at first. He lived a life mostly untouched by conflict, on an Imperial world, and only got a look at the hell that so much of the rest of the galaxy was going through after he left home. 

And then he got involved with the rebellion, things with the girl fell apart, and he stuck around because he’d found a family and something to do with his life that felt worthwhile and bigger than he was, by that point.

But he’s still got this creeping sense of… not really belonging enough, sometimes, because he joined “late” and not because he wanted to stand up for what was right, even if he’s now fully bought into the cause. So, yeah, imposter syndrome rebel Buck. 

(And, because this is Star Wars, he probably at some point discovers that he’s a clone of his dead older brother, that his parents failed to deal with their grief and thought they could just replace their son, but then never quite managed to love Buck in the same way, anyway, because, yeah, grief doesn’t work that way. So he’s got even MORE imposter syndrome after Maddie tells him about that, he’s not even his own person! He’s just the clone of a dead kid!)

Anyway, so Buck is with his Rebellion Group, grappling with his complex feelings about whether he belongs with them REALLY or not, when Eddie gets recruited into their group, and Eddie, ooof

Well. Eddie. Was in fact an Imperial soldier. Recruited at eighteen. Served for years, until he sustained injuries in combat. And then he came back to his family, and discovered a few things, like that his wife was working with the Rebellion and that their son’s injuries had come from an Imperial doctor, who’d suspected Christopher of being Force sensitive, and, while he was processing all of that, Shannon went to Alderaan, using a visit to her sick mother as an excuse to deliver some important documents to the Organas. 

And then the planet blew up.

In the aftermath of that, Eddie fully defected over to the Rebellion and is now focused on keeping his kid safe (surprise, turns out Chris still has SOME access to the Force) and clearing out the red from his ledger. 

I know I’d want the plot to involve Buck basically figuring out Eddie’s Whole Ass Messy Deal, and drama when everyone realizes that Eddie used to be a storm trooper, with that probably coming out when they get in an actual fight, and think they’re all going to die because they aren’t trained as soldiers–

Except Eddie is, and ends up saving them, demonstrating a great familiarity with imperial weaponry and tactics, and most of the crew just puts two and two together and leaves him alone (Bobby knows about his history, the rest…not so much), but not Buck, who tracks him down while Eddie is tending to his own wounds, to ask a lot of questions like “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” and “Wow, you just killed kind of a lot of people, what’s up with that?” while, of course, taking over the job of tenderly patching Eddie up.

Leading to Eddie having a breakdown and spilling his guts about what he’s done and his guilt and how HE should have been the one who died, not Shannon, and Buck going, “Well, I’m GLAD you didn’t die!” and Eddie going, “Well, I don’t see why” 

And that leading to a kiss and make-outs where Buck is trying to be careful of Eddie’s injuries, with things progressing from there.

And, basically, the plot would roll all the way through until RotJ, where their crew is there for the Battle of Endor, because everyone is expecting heavy casualties, and they get to see the destruction of the second Death Star and the fall of the Empire and enjoy the brightness of the future. 

[kaitlynpcallmebeepme]

You'll Never Be Alone

You'll Never Be Alone

Spencer Reid x BAU!Reader

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Idea: Based off of a lot of what @spencer-reids-adventures writes (which is really good btw) where reader and spencer have come up with a system where if either one of them has a hard case they force eachother to sleepover which ends the night with always talking about what's on their mind.

Requested: No

A/N: I’m making the background of the reader being a pediatric nurse before she joined the FBI/BAU because I want to be a NICU nurse (and it also gave me a reason to have made it a hard case especially for the reader).  I switch a lot between who’s thoughts I’m speaking.  **I love you if you get this Stray Kids reference.**  Let me known if you want to be tagged when I write for a certain fandom. I finished this on a night shift (why is that the only time I ever have motivation to write), and I'm studying hard to take my NCLEX in a few months (the test you have to pass to become a nurse).  I'll be sure to pick up my writing after that. 

Let me know if you want to be on my tag list when I write or if you only want it to be for certain fandoms. 

Requests: Nope, but requests are Open. Fandoms I write for in pinned post.

Warnings: Some season spoilers (just the themes, mainly in Spencer’s), infant death and kidnapping mentioned, child pornographer mentioned, hard cases, mental stress, mention of Spencer’s past drug use, Derek misinterpreting a situation, please tell me if I missed any.

Word Count: 2,122, wow one of my longest yet

We all trudged our way back into the bureau after one of the worst cases we had in a while.  Cases involving kids were always hard and ones we put all our effort into, but this one involved infant kidnapping.  That hit me at a deeper level than everyone else because I used to be a NICU nurse before I decided I wanted to join the BAU.  Also, infants don’t deserve anything bad to happen to them.  They literally are not strong enough to do anything to anyone.  

I dumped my to-go bag on my desk, louder than I intended.  I felt everyone’s eyes on me after that.  “Sorry.” I mumbled.  

Hotch and Derek were the ones to discover the bodies of the five missing infants and three more that were unidentifiable and decomposing in the basement of a manic bipolar who, apparently, had a miscarriage.  That was my only saving grace in this case.  Neither Spencer nor I had to see the bodies.  I’m glad Spencer didn’t have to see them as well because I knew that he couldn’t forget that image no matter how hard he tried.    

Spencer started packing up the paperwork from his desk adjacent to yours. "My place or yours?" 

You knew he didn't mean it in a sexual way. You also knew there wasn't an answer option of 'I want to be alone right now.' Those were the rules you and Spencer set for yourselves.  

It was after he came to you because a case affected him so much that he had the temptation to start using dilaudid again.  He just needed some distraction then because he couldn’t go back down that slippery slope.  Never again.   You both made a pact that night that if there was a case that shook you to your core that you would not spend the night alone, no matter how you felt.  Many bad things can happen when you’re alone with your thoughts after hard cases in a job like this.  

“Mine.  I got better food and you know it.”  That made Spencer smile knowing that even through a hard case you still kept your sarcasm up.  He also knew that it would break as soon as you were behind closed doors.  You needed to be somewhere where it was safe to be vulnerable.  

“Mine has my library though, and I know how much you like it there.”  

“Fine, but you’re reading me Harry Potter to sleep and getting take-out.”  At the end of the night, you didn’t care where you slept.  You had some clothes at his apartment anyway.  

You drove the both of you back because the subway was closed (it was the middle of the night, so obviously).  The car ride was silent as you both were trying to figure out what to say or if any words needed to be said.  It wasn’t awkward silence**, but comfortable silence.  Once you parked, you and Spencer made it up to his apartment.  

Spencer’s apartment usually gives you the warm homey feeling, but it just made you feel safe.  Safe enough to break down.  You stood no more than a few feet in the doorway and rivers of tears started coming out of your eyes.  Your mind saying words of blame. ‘THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE IF YOU HAD DONE MORE!’ ‘YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE IN THERE!’ ‘YOU SHOULD HAVE SAVED THEM!’ Your mind making your body numb and you couldn’t do anything but drop to your knees in Spencer’s front room.  Your eyes flowed rivers of tears down your face as all your walls broke.  

The arms of Spencer around your shoulders broke your intrusive thoughts.  He slowly lifted you up and guided you to lay on the couch with your head in his neck.  He allowed you to cry and be vulnerable and he gave your forehead kisses as silent words of reassurance.  Spencer has been through more than enough in his life, yet he still chooses to show kindness to others. “I can’t get them out of my head.  I didn’t even see them and I can’t get what their tiny bodies would look like out of my head.”  It would be worse if you had an eidetic memory, but you didn’t say that.  You were just feeling so defeated and helpless at the moment.

He let you fall asleep on his shoulder with him rubbing your back.  You woke up being under covers in his bedroom with Spencer nowhere in sight.  You still felt the sting of your eyes from crying so much last night.  You walked into his living room to find breakfast, clearly ordered, set up in his living room.  “I waited until you got up before I got your phone set up for Harry Potter.” His hair sticking up in many different directions from having obviously slept on the couch.  

“Please tell me you didn’t sleep on the couch in your own home.”  That would have made you feel worse if you kicked Spencer out of his own bed.  

“No, I slept next to you in case you woke up from nightmares.  I also got you breakfast from that Mom and Pop place you liked that does white chocolate chips in pancakes.  Also, Hotch gave us both the day off to recover.”  You looked at him as if he was your world, because to be honest, he was.  There’s no one else who would treat you this way.  Spencer was truly one of a kind.  His cute curly hair stuck out every way while he wore a Washington D.C. sweatshirt.  Probably one of the only ones he owns and that he was probably forced to buy in a downpour you suspected.  

You sat on the couch next to your breakfast, raised your arms, and made grabby hands toward Spencer offering, more needing, him to sit with you.  Spencer makes his way over to you looking the most comfy he has looked in days.  You both sit on the couch and enjoy your breakfast while watching Chamber of Secrets.  It was what you both needed to recover.  Good food and good company.  

The time when you got to pay it forward to Spencer was after a case in Vegas.  You had mixed feelings about cases in Vegas.  You hated the hot weather and it was a city of dreams, failures, mobsters, and addiction.  It was also where Spencer was from and you knew he liked visiting his Mom, but you hated how many bad memories of his childhood the city brought up for him.  

The case you were working was women who had their skulls cracked and left in the desert with carvings in their abdomen.  Not your typical case, but working it wasn’t too difficult.  The team ended up narrowing it down to a 30 yr old man who lived in Nevada his whole life.  When we arrested him, in the act of dropping another body stupidly enough, Spencer didn’t move a muscle.  He just slowly lowered his gun as Derek did the muscle work of arresting him.  

Spencer was silent on the way back to the hotel and no one dared push him.  He would open up on his own time.  Once everyone exited the SUV, you took over the drivers wheel and searched for the nearest grocery store.  You got jelly filled chocolate frosted donuts, Spencer’s favorite, and indian takeout.  

You trudged up to his hotel room and fully expected Spencer to not open his door when you knocked.  And you were right. You were met with silence and a still door.  You sat down on the gross hotel floor and leaned your back against the door.  “Just let me keep you company Spencer.”  You knocked your head against the door, planning to sleep out there until he opened it up.  Apparently you didn’t have to wait too long before you stumbled backwards because you didn’t hear the door knob.  

When he opened the door, Spencer just looked defeated.  All you could do was raise yourself up and wrap him in your arms.  You slowly guided him to the bed with the food as he held onto you like his life depended on it.  

“I knew him.”

“What?”

“I knew him.  He used to bully me when I was taking high school classes at age 11.  I couldn’t do anything about it then because no one would believe me and my Mom was having bad episodes then, so no one would believe her.”  He just hiccupped and sobbed into your shoulder letting it all out, and you kept rubbing his back. “Seeing him again just opened up old scars.”  

You couldn’t pretend to know what pain he was going through, but you knew you weren't going anywhere.  You just rubbed his back and laid him down to try to lull him to sleep by running your fingers through his hair and whispering words of reassurance. You assured him that you would be there to scare away any nightmares and keep the demons away.  

You fell asleep like that until morning, until there was a knock on the hotel door.  You tried to slowly untangle yourself from Spencer’s arm grip and answer his hotel door, and of course who is it, Mr. Chocolate Thunder himself (you guessed that or Hotch). 

“What do you want Derek?”

“This is Spencer’s room.”  You looked at him dumbfounded and you’re pretty sure you had bed head.  

“Yeah … and?” Those were the only words that it took for Derek to show those pearly whites in a smirk. 

“Ok, I’ll let you get back to taking care of him.” 

“I was, but not in the way you’re implying.” You whisper-shouted defensively.  “We all know this case was tough on him.  I didn’t want to leave him alone overnight.”  That kinda brought Derek’s mind out of the gutter, because although he teases Spencer to no end, he does look at him like a little brother.  He just smiled and nodded. 

“If you don’t answer your phones, I’ll stop by when I get news about when the plane’s leaving.”  He left it at that before leaving you be.  

You couldn’t sleep much after your encounter even though you were back in Spencer’s arms, so you slept on the plane ride back.  Spencer on the other hand, had gotten the best sleep he had after a hard case in a while.  He was busy playing cards and giving facts to Derek about the history of playing cards.  

“The most common theory of why there are 52 cards in the standard deck is that they correspond with the number of weeks in a year, given the fact that there are 365 individual symbols in a deck of cards, and that the 13 cards match the 13 lunar cycles, and that the 12 court cards match the 12 months of the year.” Spencer explained with his normal air finger movements to match.

“You seem more peppy after a case than usual Reid.”   

“Well this case didn’t affect me as much for some reason. I didn't need as much time to recover from a hard case.”  Derek already knew the reason.  Everyone knew the reason.  That’s what made it hard having a family of profilers.  No secrets can be kept for long.    

“She likes you, you know. And it could turn into something more if you asked her out pretty boy.”  Spencer always knew the risk of trying to make something more between friends, the pros and cons of possibly losing that friend always laid heavily in his mind.  Was it worth the risk?  After seeing first hand how you treated him last night when he was at his lowest (well, not his lowest, but one of his low points), it may just be something more.  The topic was left at that as they finished up their card game and the plane landed back in DC.  

Because of the jet lag, Spencer wasn’t tired and he gauged that the nap you took on the plane ride was effective.  This may be his golden opportunity before he overthought and talked himself out of it.  He waltzed his way around to stand next to you at your desk while you packed up your case paperwork to do at home.  

"Hey, do you maybe… I don't know. Want to get some food then go to that drive in theater outside of town? Together? As a thank you for staying with me last night."  He had no idea if what he was saying was working or cringy. He'd never done this before.  However, you shyly smiled at his shuddering mess.

"Yes Spencer. I would love to go on a date with you." 

Well it apparently worked. 

Summary rest of it: I might do two cases, this first one of the reader being stressed and the 2nd one of spencer being stressed.  Everyone trudges into the bureau really exhausted and spencer says something that the reader needs to come to his place.  They go to his place which we know has a wall of books but some other nerdy things and is very warmly for the reader.  Once she sits on the couch she cries into her hands.  Spencer comes to her side and hugs her while she cries into his shirt thinking it’s her fault the infants died (the UNSUB could be doing it because their kid died due to prematurity/miscarriage and the kids he stole died due to physical abuse because he obviously wasn’t taking care of them).  Spencer stays with her and comforts her with words saying even though it’s upsetting that they died, it’s not her fault and they’re not going to be suffering anymore.  She can’t get them out of her head but she does mention that it’s probably worse for spencer because of his eidetic memory.  

Spencer’s case could be in vegas and the unsub could be a kid who bullied him a lot and the case is just bringing up memories and tearing open old wounds.  Spencer trudges through the case insisting everyone he’s fine.  They end up staying the night after the case ends and decide to leave in the morning.  Reader ends up leaving to go to the corner store to grab tons of snacks and bangs her head on his hotel room door to knock.  She doesn’t even ask if he needs someone to talk to because she knows he’ll say no but he does need someone.  No matter if he wants to talk or not, she wraps him up in a blanket, feeds him good food, and maybe he does start talking.  Morgan could try to get in the room once spencer’s asleep and the reader has to untangle herself from spencer’s arms to open the door and tell him off.  Even though Morgan does tease them a little bit, he does say if he’s okay now, he’ll check up with spencer in the morning.  When he does check in with spencer (either at the bureau or on the plane), spencer says he’s doing better than he usually would after a hard case like this and he’s not sure why, but morgan knows why obviously.  It could end with morgan giving spencer a nudge saying he should ask her out, spencer could rephrase it and actually ask her if she wants to have a movie night just the two of them as a thank you for staying with him when he needed it.  

[no1ryomafan]

We’re gonna ignore the fact it’s nearly 3 am while I type this but I’m gonna for once embrace my true cringe-I say as cringe is dead-and admit at least here since I said it on twit but not everyone follows me there that I’ve been cooking up a getter crossover fic with mega man ZX of all things. Why? Well next to mega man being what truly sparked my obsession for robots and ZX is my favorite series of the franchise there is a scary amount of similarities between the two that a crossover unironically fucking works well. Like I don’t think it was anything intentional, ZX definitely has some mecha influence like every other mega man series but it was more so (obviously) inspired off of toku if we focus on an genre in Japan. However both in a way can be boiled down to “humanity’s future is tied directly to machines” and “destiny is my path to choose” in terms of narrative themes so they legit stick together sososso well.

(also I noticed like- Arma!Kei and Go and Ashe and Grey are almost scarily fucking similar minus Ashe&Grey actually getting to know each other since that sadly doesn’t happen-in the manga they do meet but they aren’t related rip-in game but I might need to save that for a different post even though it’s not at all in the au since there’s no place for it I just I rotate it constantly)

Me and my beta reader were so insane enough that for nearly a YEAR we figured out this au because it was just “what if ryoma but in ZX” for the longest fucking time I’m not fucking exaggerating because it’s a semi trend of mine to want to throw ryoma into other series even if I’ve mostly restrained myself with this 💀 But when the fic is up I will likely be tagging it under ZXG so it’s easy to organize so yeah.

[ageless-aislynn]

Rules || Share 10 facts about yourself and tag 10 other blogs! I want to get to know my mutuals, and the people I follow a little bit :) The facts can be about anything! 

Tagged by @mrtobenamedlater, thank you!

1. I vid by using a lot of line-of-sight, meaning I find the beat I want the action to match on the audio line and line it up that way. I, of course, also watch the video/audio preview window but, for fine tuning the beat use, I rely on line-of-sight to get things hitting when I want it to. Hopefully. 🤞😣🤞😂

Here, have a random cap of “Like Ghosts” (John/Kai, Halo) as it was in progress. 😉

2. Once I finish my WIPs, I plan on taking a sabbatical from writing. I’m honestly not sure for how long, I’ll have to see how I feel when I get there. Right now, that means, over on the Halo side of the Field of WIPs, finishing “15 Minutes” and “Recreation” and, for the Flash, “The Price,” “Guardian Angel”, “Split” (temp name for final fic in the Ghost of Eobard Thawne series) and whatever I can come up with for the final Snowells Week for this year. 

3. I now have way more games in my Steam library than I’ll ever play in my life.

This is mostly because of how I like to play. I like to get to know a game, to become familiar and comfortable with it. This is why the Halo MCC was perfect for me: I can replay something like Reach a million times and either do exactly what I usually do and STILL have something unexpected happen or I can try out something totally new and different. Like, I had no idea for the longest time that you can save the Troop ‘hog on ONI: Sword Base, the one that drives across the way and gets blown up by the Wraiths as soon as the door opens when you pick up the target locator. But you can TOTALLY save it (with the Acrophobia skull and a plasma pistol 😉) and drive it all of the way through the rest of the mission with a full load of 3 marines and Kat along with you until you reach the elevator section! It will be on fire the entire time but its health is fine, it’s all just cosmetic. So I always save the Troop ‘hog now, unless I have a reason to need a Warthog with a turret on it. I love my Flamin’ Troop ‘hog! I named it Trooper because I’m original and unique. 😎👍

If I have to not save them, I always dramatically exclaim, “NOOOO, MAH BOYS!!!” when Trooper goes boom. 😭😭😭 We also pause to acknowledge Trooper’s destroyed shell when we return to the base later. 😥😉

Anyway, playing like this means I’ll replay one game over and over and, with long games, well... I can spend a LOT of time on them, rather than “one and done” playthroughs and move on to the next one. I just find this more fun than always learning something new. 🤷‍♀️

4. I wish I could take good photos of my action figures but I have a lack of decent light, a serious need for a tripod or something to steady my camera and I could definitely use some cool or interesting backdrop/dioramas. 😕

5. Speaking of action figures, my Master Chief in his Olaf bathrobe is one I’m always going to keep right next to me. I think of him as my Cozy Chief, lol.

6. This is my most popular vid on Youtube. It’s 14 years old and was a request.

7. I think this is a GIF I’m going to get a lot of use out of

I feel like I buffer a lot these days, lol!

8. I listen to a lot of ASMR and I highly recommend it if you have trouble sleeping, need something to listen to while you work or study that is “background noise-ish” or if you have anxiety. If you’ve tried before and didn’t like it or didn’t find it helpful, I also really recommend trying different types. There’s tapping, scratching, mic noises, nature sounds, no talking, whispering, fast, slow, roleplays... Honestly, it’s kinda endless at this point, lol! Headphones recommended as well to get the best effect, IMO. Oh and an ad blocker because there’s nothing worse than drifting to sleep at long last and then HERE, BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!! blares you back awake. 😱🤬😉

9. This is the most recent Barbie I bought. She’s sooooo pretty and has a real, knitted sweater!

(Barbie Extra #20 😉)

My mom and I started collecting Barbies in the last year of her life and it makes me feel closer to her, especially if I find something I know she would’ve liked or if I get a great deal on something. Or whenever I find a Barbie shoe pack, lol. I can still hear her telling me, “We need more shoes! Barbie never has too many shoes!” and those are some trufax right there. 😉

10. I’ve struggled to find interesting answers for this that I haven’t told you over and over before. So in lieu of a (nonexistent 😛😉) cool final fact about me, here’s a hug to carry you on your way today.

Tagging: anybody who’d like to do this *boops your nose politely* 😉🤗💖

[shorthaltsjester]

Thought about your queer Fjorester romance thoughts and I’m here to say: what if t4t fjord/jester.

oh i mean . Extreme yes . Extremely . but my queer romance fjorester thoughts have more to do with like . the narrative of their romance over (extremely correct) headcanons if that makes sense? like i know some people read jester as experiencing comphet as a lesbian wrt how she contextualises her own romance using stories and sex work (despite the fact that this is… fairly inconsistent with the world of exandria, namely the lack of heteropatriarchy in it, and the dynamic between womanhood and what media feeds us about it is an extremely rich one on its own that doesn’t necessarily need queerness to be a meaningful story - if you’ve seen crazy ex-girlfriend, rebecca is a character that reminds me of jester a lot in terms of their relationships with Media™) and because of that they see fjorester as being some symbol of heterosexuality but if you actually look at their story it’s one that can be read as fairly queer.!

like. everything people want out of a comphet lesbian jester is already there in the narrative just. without the lesbianism. like. it is still so meaningful for jester to fall in love in a way that Isn’t like her stories and she does! and she still gets the actions of a storybook romance like fjord dramatically jumps after her to save her when she falls and jumps up and pleads for her to stay when the traveler gets moon chained and he goes to her door after she gets her life sucked away and kisses her dramatically after fights and says he loves her in the rain he made. and those are tropey and sweet and exactly the kinds of things she would find in her stories. but they come paired with this person who has seen everything Unstorylike about her and who she has seen in Unstorylike ways. like that conversation she has with yasha about how it doesn’t feel how she thought it would but in a positive way, instead it feels comfortable. because she’s known fjord the longest, she’d been the only person who witnessed him make the choice to put on vandran’s mask, she’d stepped out onto the road for the first time going Far from home with him by her side, he’d been the first person to see her let her own mask really slip and he’d been nothing but supportive.

and likewise fjords relationship with masculinity while not exclusively queer in the = lgbtqa+ way, Is quite queer in the challenging society’s typical thought way, and jester is a significant proprietor of him developing a healthier relationship with that masculinity. and what i find especially moving about that is that jester Does playflirt and eventually have real feelings for fjord but in the moments when she supports things like him growing his tusks back or complimenting him for being strong, it tends to be the most blatantly platonic their interactions are, because she cares about him understanding that she believes in who he is and who he’s becoming regardless of how it intersects with her interest in him. there’s that first time his tusks come up and while she’s being supportive of him growing them out, it’s in a way that’s neutral support, she outright says she’d support him if he grew them out or continued to file them down, whichever he preferred for who he is - though obviously one is a healthier version of self image for fjord. and with that support, it’s fjord who decides that, actually… he doesn’t want to keep filing his tusks and encourages jester to tell him to stop if he rubs at them or anything

anyway this got away from me for an answer to an ask that truly did not request any of this but. i am bored at an airport and fjorester are the world to me also anon i want to be clear again that i adore headcanoning t4t fjorester and this is not a slight against your ask at all it just provided me with the opportunity to clarify what i’ve meant when i’ve said fjorester can easily be looked at through a queer lens in several different tags of posts by now

[the-type-a]

Get to know me!

Thanks for the tag @catastrophicmind and @duncans-unibrow !! 💜

I wasn’t expecting to answer all of these but tbh this makes it more fun lol

🖌 - Do you have/want any tattoos?

I have one tattoo on the right side of my waist. It’s of my zodiac sign in cursive writing and the symbol above it. I do want more though!

💚 - What’s your favourite colour?

Purple! 💜

🍕 - What’s the last thing you ate?

Pancakes, bacon, and eggs. It was at like 1am but I was literally starving so Marcus cooked it all.

🕰 - What time is it where you are rn?

1:21pm (coming back to update that it’s 2:02pm now and idk why it took me so long to finish this 💀)

🌟 - What is your zodiac sign?

I could tell you my whole chart, but I’ll just stick to my big three. I’m a Pisces sun, Virgo moon, and Leo rising!

🌍 - What is your favourite accent?

Honestly have no idea. I could say English because of Harry, Liam, Louis, and Zayn. I could say Irish because of Niall. Or I could say country because of Marcus. 😂

⚡️ - Do you have any scars?

Nope!

🌺 - What’s your MBTI type?

ESTJ ✨

🥀 - Favourite animated movie?

The Little Mermaid 🧜🏽‍♀️

📺 - Favourite show?

I have more than one: total drama, grey’s anatomy, friends, game of thrones, the umbrella academy, euphoria, that 70s show. There’s probably more that I’m blanking on right now too.

😂 - Are you ticklish?

Yes, and I will physically hurt you if you try to tickle me.

💍 - Do you ever want to get married?

Of course! Fun fact: I was supposed to get married in November of 2020 but then covid happened. NOW we’re trying to save up on our own because our families keep trying to take over. Still want a Fall wedding though 🫶🏼

😳 - Do you like your name?

I love it! When I was younger I hated it, I have no idea why.

💙 - What colour is your bedroom?

Cream, kinda boring lmao

🤓 - How did you get your name?

My mom loves reading the Bible, Saint books, and Angel books. She told me she always loved the archangel Gabriel, so there you have it! She also said she liked the nickname Gaby.

🎓 - When did/do you graduate?

Graduated college in 2020. Never had a graduation ceremony or anything. Thanks COVID.

🍄 - Do you have/want any piercings?

I’m Latina so you already know my ears have been pierced since I was 4 months old. Then when I was 17 I got my bellybutton pierced. Idk why but I did want to get my nips pierced lmao but not anymore. Sorry that might have been tmi.

👀 - What colour are your eyes?

Dark brown. They almost look black but in the sunlight you can see the brown come out.

👱🏻‍♀️ - What is your go to hairstyle?

Just straight down. I never really do anything with my hair unless I’m going out to a special occasion. My hair is also naturally straight so I’ll just wash it, brush it, and go.

🥂 - Have you ever drank underage?

Unfortunately I did succumb to peer pressure with this one. Although I did try (and throw it up) beer in high school, my freaking DAD gave me beer in my purple and yellow SIPPY-CUP when I was like five. Then you know, drinking in college. It was a “dry campus” even if you were 21+ and everyone hated that.

🍾 - Have you ever gotten drunk?

Again, unfortunately. I’ve only blacked out twice though.

😱 - What’s your biggest fear?

Don’t come for me… but I genuinely don’t have one. There are things I don’t necessarily like, but not to the point that I’m genuinely afraid and can’t function around it.

🥵 - Would you rather be too hot or too cold?

Too cold. I absolutely HATE being hot. It’s easier to warm up if I’m cold too.

🌦 - What’s your favourite weather?

Sunny with a light breeze. Nothing too hot and not cold enough to need a jacket. (I freaking hate jackets btw)

🍂 - What’s your favourite season?

Autumn!!! 🥰

🐷 - What’s your favourite animal?

Polar bears 🐻‍❄️

🐶 - Do you have any pets?

A dog and a cat! Ranger and Nala! 🐾

😴 - What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep?

Maybe like 2 days? Not entirely sure but it’s around that.

🎨 - Any hobbies?

The gym, reading, writing, music, art.

🛩 - If travelling was free, where’s the first place you’d go?

Bora Bora!

🎇 - What’s your most searched thing on Google?

I always delete my Google search because I hate how cluttered it looks, sooooo idk what to tell you lol

📱 - Favourite app on your phone?

Tumblr, my beloved 💜

🤠 - Are you more of a city person or a country person?

100% a city girl! Born and raised in it, and when I tried to give the country a try I got extremely depressed.

Tagging: @aprincessnotaqueen @art-by-mira @courtneyenthusiast @doitcody @elskamo @hollowboobtheory @marshunter06 @ragamuffin-bites @sentimentalslut @straighttxhell @sugarlesswriting @unawarer @withjust-a-bite @xwhatababex