#I’ve figured it out I am literally the smartest person in the world | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pope-neuro · 2 years ago

Note

Give headcanon for merc.

(Sorry I been taking so long to get to these, I’ve been dealing with the sudden death of my baby bird, life has been kinda terrible this week)

NOTE: There will be some suggestive stuff in here but most of it is for comedic purposes

General merc headcanons:

Scout:

-my boi got adhd like you would not believe

-The poor bastard cannot focus on anything for the life of him, no matter how hard he tries

-One of the reasons why he has trouble with reading, he was never really able to focus enough to figure it out, as that’s something that takes a LOT of time and a LOT of focus.

-Really talented artist tho! He loves drawing and keeps a sketchbook or two in his room! He likes to doodle before bed each night, it helps him calm down

-Somehow gay and homophobic at the same time

-Would absolutely lose his shit over the blue lobster meme no matter how old it gets

Soldier:

-My goofy ahh uncle

-The physical embodiment of “he a lil confused, but he got the spirit”

-Bro does not give a FUCK what anyone else thinks and I respect the hell out of that

-The men in his family were all in the military, which is one of the reasons why he’s obsessed

-secretly very insecure that he never actually made it into the official military

-Puts up a front so he can avoid feeling like a disappointment sometimes

-Solly is one of those people that sleeps like a LOG. Literally nothing can wake him up other than his own internal clock, which conveniently goes off at 6am.

-It is at this point in the morning when he goes around the base and attempts to make everyone else get up. Most are not pleased.

-Bi as fuck. He kisses men. He kisses women. He literally does not care, a beautiful person is a beautiful person, son.

-He calls his partner “son”.

Pyro:

-He is my son

-I love my son so much I am so proud of him for just existing.

-Pyro’s name is Ernesto

-His mask is literally just his face, like the plague doctor SCP. What appears to be clothing is actually just his body.

-He is from another planet, and the oxygen in our atmosphere has hallucinatory effects on members of his species

-Poor baby is basically in a haze 100 percent of the time :( but he does his absolute best!

-He literally only wants to spread peace, love, and flower power

-Fire makes him feel nice, because it’s bright and it’s warm. Fire is friendly and comforting. It helps ground him in this strange world.

Demo:

-Under-appreciated as fuck holy shit

-Probably one of the most hardworking people on the team, if not THE most

-This guy is doing multiple jobs at once in addition to his demanding work as a mercenary.

-He’s actually super smart! He may not act like it when he’s super drunk, but he seriously does know what he’s doing

-Chemistry EXPERT. Can he please help me with my chem 101 homework I literally could never. I know he’s smart because chemistry is fucking impossible and he loves the subject

-sometimes works with Engie to develop new types of bombs!

-My theory is that he turned to alcohol in order to cope with the chronic burnout he must be facing by working so many jobs at once. Just helps him check out of life for a while, but unfortunately that comes at the cost of his liver.

-Fr tho how the fuck is he even alive, he drinks HYDROGEN PEROXIDE at one point, which isn’t even related to alcohol at all, it’s literally just a poisonous chemical💀

-I have reason to believe he now has epilepsy as a result of medic damaging his hippocampus while scooping his brain, I made a post about this a while ago if you’re interested in more details

-He is very much in need of a hug

-I love him so much

-You’re doin good lad

Heavy:

-One of the smartest people on the team, despite what you might perceive at first glance.

-The only reason he may sound “dumb” to some people is because English is his second language, and he has a very hard time speaking it.

-Fr tho English sucks, I have no idea how people learn it later in life on their own

-In the Russian dub of meet the heavy, he speaks a lot more eloquently. Definitely strikes me as the type of person to have a PhD in Russian literature.

-His dream was to one day become an author, but mercenary work got in the way because it was the best way to provide for his family overseas.

-He still writes from time to time in a small notebook he keeps by his bed, in the hopes that one day he’ll publish something

-He will

-Gay AF

-The literal definition of a Bear

-His guns are his babies, he literally loves them like they’re his children.

-Honestly I feel that way about my PC so I get it😭

Engie:

-Also a very underrated character

-Ties with medic for Smartest On The Team

-Engie just puts his genius towards more practical (and less unhinged) use

-I mean clearly he’s not TOTALLY stable, he did cut off his own arm to attach the gunslinger

-Always felt the need to prove himself growing up. Because of where he’s from, people tended to assume he was kinda stupid based on stereotypes. He obviously ended up proving everyone wrong.

-Is autistic and has OCD. He needs to do things a certain way or he can get extremely upset, especially in his workshop. It’s his safe space that is not to be invaded unless he is expecting you.

-Acts like a father figure to pyro. Basically the only one who isn’t unsettled by him (other than maybe medic)

-He definitely takes pyro fishing on the weekends

-Very talented singer, but he’ll absolutely deny it if you tell him. He’s super humble about everything

-But nah everyone else always loves to listen to him sing and play the guitar when they’re all hanging out at the fire pit.

-He’s such a dad I love him

Medic:

-Medic is my wife

-Smartest member of the team along with Engie

-Actually very strong! He lifted soldier up by the collar in expiration date, and he’s gotta weigh at LEAST 250.

-Also carries around heavy equipment all day, and is STILL the second fastest runner on the team, only behind scout.

-Medic is actually a pretty big dude. It’s just hard to notice when he’s standing next to heavy who is an actual giant. I think medic is canonically like 6’1 or something. Big dude. Wide shoulder. Booba. 👍

-Of course he looks small when he’s near heavy, EVERYONE looks small standing next to heavy

-Bi medic Bi medic Bi medic Bi medic

-Contrary to popular belief, he DOES indeed have the title of “Doctor”. In order to get a medical license in the first place, you are required to complete med school and obtain an MD or DO degree. Licensure and degrees are two separate things. You can lose a license, but you can’t be stripped of the education you already learned. The title of “Doctor” comes with a degree, not a license, as we have seen with engineer and Heavy’s PhD’s.

-He’s autistic with a special interest in medicine! If he’s not actively in battle, his in his lab working on shit. He LOVES it. It’s basically the only subject he cares about (source: am autistic w/ medical special interest. Am I projecting? Maybe but oh well)

-He very clearly knows what he’s doing, even though his methods are kinda fucked💀

-He’s succeeded in literally raising the dead multiple times in addition to inventing all of his healing devices completely his own.

-Hangs out with Engie when he’s not working on stuff, they both enjoy building/inventing devices and they enjoy talking about their shared special interests. He is closest with Engie and heavy out of everyone on the team.

-The only one that knows pyro is an SCP

-He’s a hoe. A massive hoe

-we are married

Sniper:

-Emotions are scary and Should Not Exist

-Also autistic! The man has literally no idea how to speak to other humans, and talks to himself constantly (am autistic, can confirm)

-MASSIVE introvert, has to retreat to his van a couple times a day to recharge

-He likes to draw birds he sees while on the job!

-Likes plain black coffee which I will never understand it’s so fucking bitter literally wh

-Doesn’t like people to know he’s somehow only 27 years old despite looking like he could be my dad when in reality he’s only like 7.5 years older than me

-He could be my brother but he looks like he could be my dad wtf

-One of those lucky bastards who doesn’t burn in the sun easily, he’s outside constantly

-His ideal place to be would be outdoors on a nice sunny day. A wide open area with no one else around.

-Puts his hat over his face when he sleeps because of course he does

-He Is Not Straight

Spy:

-Pan, poly

-Canonically enjoys his romances “in groups of six”

-Spy hosts orgies guys, valve’s words not mine

-Sigma chad, has fucked your mom and will do it again

-Is not aware that he smells terrible from smoking all the time

-God knows how many children he’s left behind because he’s afraid of staying in any type of committed relationship

-Very similar to sniper in that emotions are Scary

-Speaks every language known to mann

-He absolutely has a sex dungeon. In this video he literally has plans to “remodel his dungeon”:

https://youtu.be/IIoBW__Y8DY

youtube

-WHAT OTHER KIND OF DUNGEON WOULD HE HAVE

-ITS A SEX DUNGEON

-HE’S HAD IT LONG ENOUGH THAT IT NEEDS REMODELING

-Probably has the best social skills out of anyone else on the team

-Possibly a sociopath? Or just very good at hiding his intentions and motivations

-Spy is awesome but also I love making fun of him

-Haha skinny legg mann

Im so sorry poor anon asked this like a month ago😭😭 but I wanted to be really thorough with my headcanons!! I hope you like em and feel free to ask me more shit :))

#tf2 shitpost #tf2 medic #tf2 #medic my beloved #medic tf2 #team fortress 2 #tf2 headcanons #tf2 scout #tf2 pyro #tf2 soldier #tf2 demoman #tf2 heavy #tf2 engineer #tf2 sniper #tf2 spy

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gussiebell · 2 years ago

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c’mon, give it a shot.

Bridget: I can’t fucking believe this shit. This is such bullshit. We live here for, what, two months? And you JUST NOW tell me I’ll be going to school FOR THE FIRST TIME? EVER? Sabrina: Not the first time. Remember middle school? Bridget: I remember the hospital bill you had to pay because I broke that kid’s nose. Sabrina: Do you really think you’ll have another “Brent Vigara” accident again? At your age? Bridget: Uh. Probably?

Sabrina: All right, let me take a seat. Bridget: Ugh. Sabrina: You’re scared. I get it- Bridget, cutting her off: I’m NOT scared. Sabrina: Bullshit. You’re terrified. The only possible way to even try to get you to go to school was to spring it on you like this. It’s not right, and I didn’t like doing that to you, but am I wrong? Bridget: ... Sabrina: Exactly.

Sabrina: Can’t you look on the bright side for once? Bridget: No. Sabrina: You can find something you’re actually interested in! Bridget: Not gonna happen. Sabrina: You’ll learn about everything, Bridget: Bullshit. Sabrina: and you’ll be able to get all the friends you could want. Bridget: Oh my god-

Bridget: I don’t WANT any fucking friends! I swear, you are one of the smartest people in the world, a LITERAL WIZARD, and yet this won’t get drilled in your stupid thick ass skull. I. DON’T. WANT. FRIENDS. I don’t want to be around people, I don’t want to learn about the world, I DEFINITELY don’t wanna do any fuckin’ math, and I don't want another human person to ever look at me again. Period. End of sentence. Not gonna change.

Bridget: I fucking SWEAR this is all about what YOU want. What about what I want?! Sabrina: And what’s that Bridget? Total seclusion? Bridget: YES! YOU SHOULDN’T LET ME BE AROUND PEOPLE! WE HAD TO BE ON THE RUN BECUSE OF HOW MANY ISSUES I’VE CAUSED! YOU KNOW BETTER SABRINA.

Bridget: [panting, catching her breath] Sabrina: ... Feel a little better? Bridget: None of your fucking business. Sabrina: Can I at least have my turn? Bridget: You never yell. Your turns are boring as all hell. Sabrina: Didn’t hear a “no”. Bridget: Did you hear a “yes”?

Sabrina: ... Listen. I’m not asking you to like it. I’m asking you to try it, not just... throw in the towel with dealing with the outside world. Bridget: Yeah, like that worked out well the last ti- Sabrina: And stop focusing on the past. Bridget, you’ve sat with all your feelings for too long. You need a distraction. Moreso, you need an education. Bridget: I hate it when you say “moreso” because it makes you sound like an asshole. Sabrina: Hush. Look, if you don’t like it, give it a month, and I’ll pull you out. There’s just some things I can’t teach you Bridget. You need to take this chance. For both our sakes.

Sabrina: Like I said, I can’t teach you everything you need to know to be an adult. I’m not going to be here forever, okay? We both know that. Again, I got you the accommodations you’d need to be as comfortable as you can be. This will give me time to work, figure something out for the both of us, AND help you in many ways. Just... try.

#bs!#get ready for a lot folks!#i literally love these two so fucking much #i got attached so quick but that's probably because they're spin-offs of ocs i've known since i was a kiddo #anyways #>bridget voss #>sabrina meire #the sims 4 #the sims 4 story #ts4 #ts4 werewolf #ts4 spellcaster #ts4 story #simblr #maxis match

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spenciegoob · 4 years ago

Text

Who Needs Luck?

A/N: hi! I solely wrote this because of my 3 recent visits to NY (no, I sadly did not meet mgg)... plus i’ve been going there my whole life.. this is becoming the longest authors note, but as i’m writing I just want to say the people who work at food trucks in nyc are the nicest people ever, ask them about their day (AND TIP OMG PLS)

Summary: Reader invites Spencer to go to New York City with her where he finally sees the beauty right in front of him.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Category: Fluff!

Content Warnings: reader can’t drive very well (I apologize if this is a callout post), slight road rage, language

Masterlist

Word Count: 2.4K

____

I never considered myself a lucky man. Life had proven time and time again that no matter how many four leaf clovers I set out to search for, how many pennies on the ground faced heads up I stumbled across, luck was never on my side. I’ve learned to live with it, accepted my fate as the world’s smartest punching bag long before I was even in college.

But then I met her, and as cheesy as it sounds, I didn’t need luck that morning.

The second I woke up, the universe seemed to have it out for me specifically. I swung my legs over my bed, and in my half asleep daze stepped on my glasses, successfully breaking them. Unable to see on my short trip to the bathroom, I stubbed my toe… twice. Once I finally finished my morning routine more methodically, I walked out of my apartment only to bump into a stranger, sending the coffee she was holding all the both of us.

I had tried to apologize so many times, cutting my words short when they didn’t feel right. I had gotten through a series of “I’m, uh, oh, I, you,” before her smile interrupted my thought process, leaving me awestruck instead.

“That’s okay, but you owe me a coffee now.” She giggled, actually giggled, even with the scorching liquid causing her shirt to stick to her body. “Maybe… together?”

I didn’t hesitate to agree, taking her up on the offer that weekend and never looking back. Even when a loud crash, followed by a quiet, harsh ‘shit’ woke me up in a startle, there was no regret. Maybe just a little concern for my girlfriend who now that my eyes have adjusted to the darkness, can be seen holding her knee on the floor of our bedroom.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered out, grabbing onto the dresser to stand straight again. Once she was on her feet, she came over to sit on the edge of our bed, immediately running her fingers through my hair. If I wasn’t so worried about her knee, I probably would’ve fell asleep again.

“Are you okay?” She giggled at my scratchy morning voice before nodding her head. It’s then I realized how the sun hasn’t even begun to rise, the room still pitchblack. “What are you doing up?”

“Getting ready to go to the city, sleepyhead,” she said as if it was the most obvious answer, but truthfully, it left me with more questions.

“At... 5 am?” I sat up, glancing at the alarm clock three times just to make sure I was reading it right. She may have always been a little strange, but usually at a reasonable hour.

At this, she stood up to continue getting ready for the very early morning. Now I notice why she fell, the piles of clothes leading to the closet had to have at least half of her outfits compiled together.

“Well, yeah. I want to get there before noon.” Even in my perplexed state, I rose from the bed and carefully tiptoed around haphazardly thrown clothes to reach her.

While wrapping my arms around her waist still hidden under my t-shirt, I questioned. “It’s right outside? You have 7 hours.”

She turned to look at me funny as if I wasn’t the one digging through clothes and waking up before dawn to walk literally 5 minutes to my desired location. My eyebrows must have subconsciously furrowed at one point, because she brought her hand up to stroke her thumb on my forehead. Immediately, I felt the tension melt, no longer caring to correct my confusion. She still did it anyway.

“Not DC, silly. New York!” I wish it were untrue, but my heart dropped at her words. She was leaving, going to a city I wasn’t familiar with beyond reading about, solving cases, and memorizing subway maps. Is this how she feels every time I board that jet?

“W-what? You’re just going to New York City?” I inwardly cringed at how desperate and sad I sounded, but I really didn’t want her to leave.

“Mhm,” she mumbled, turning back around to return digging in her closet.

“For how long?” Please change your mind. Please change your mind. Please change you-

Realizing that I was fully awake, she let out a boisterous laugh, allowing the way it bounced off our four little walls to return back to us. It was a sound most treasured. “I was hoping to get back around 9.”

“What?” I leaned back to look at her like she was absolutely preposterous. I mean, she was!

“Roadtrip!”

That’s how I found myself in the passenger seat of her car, no coffee in my hand because I wasn’t allowed until I have “a real cup of coffee.” Whatever the hell that means better happen soon, because as much as I loved watching the way she concentrates on the road in front of her, my eyes were starting to droop.

“It’s going to be another 4 hours. You can sleep, my love.” How she knew me so well, I will never be able to figure out, but I was out before we even made it across state borders.

That however, didn’t last very long. My girlfriend may be short and sweet, but behind the wheel? That’s a different story. The horn to her car is a very familiar sound when I’m jolted awake by a sudden stop.

“Really, asshole? Go!” She yelled, slamming her hand against the top of the steering wheel before looking over at me. “Hey, I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to wake you yet. I forgot how awful drivers are here.”

“Where is here exactly?” I questioned, sitting up from my slouched position to find cars practically on top of each other on a road not wide enough for two lanes.

“New Jersey. We’re 10 minutes away.” Wow, I didn’t realize I slept for that long, and I have to admit I’m a little surprised I wasn’t woken up sooner.

“How are we 10 minutes away? It’s at least another 30 to get to the tunnel.” Looking at our surroundings didn’t help me determine our exact location. To the left of us, there were dozens of graffiti murals on the side of what I assumed was another elevated highway. To the right, sidestreets with local businesses ranging from auto repair shops to fast food joints to gyms.

“Nuh uh, stop analyzing mister. You’ll know when we get there.” She waved a finger in my directions, putting a pin in my scrutinization. I pouted right back, successfully playing along to the theme of her scolding me like a 5 year old.

“I don’t like surprises you know.” It was the truth, but her contagious laughter that filled the car made me slightly less disinclined to stop asking questions.

“Oh I know, but trust me, you’ll like this one.” She went to go reach over to grab my hand from where it was resting in my lap, but stopped short and retracted in favor of slamming the horn. “Oh, come on!”

***

“So you drove to a train station... in New Jersey?” I asked while she was… attempting to park the car.

“Well, yeah. I’ve been taking this route since I was a little girl.” Once she finally figured out how to evenly space a two door convertible in a very spacious parking spot, she unbuckled her seatbelt, and was quick to grab her bag from the backseat. “Well, come on mister, we’re going to miss the train.”

To be quite honest, I have never been so lost in my life. I could probably pinpoint our exact location on a map if I wanted to, granted I was given any sort of information, but part of me didn’t want to. Scratch that, all of me didn’t want to, because my entire life has been planned out in front of me before, but right now, I get to be spontaneous with the most beautiful girl on the planet.

“Don’t let go of my hand,” she told me, lacing our fingers together and pulling me forward. “Don’t stop to look around, you will get pushed.”

We made it inside, and if I thought the DC transit system was bustling with people constantly, this place was so much worse. There were hallways left and right, all packed with people in a rush. It seems everybody had some place to be and zero time to get there.

“Upstairs.” We walked up two flights before reaching a platform, buying our tickets and making it just in time for a train to arrive. “I know they come every 8 minutes, but thank god we made this one,” she said as she sat down.

The cart we were in wasn’t too crowded, and once I finally found a map on the wall across from us, I saw that it was a direct ride to the World Trade Center.

“You said you took this train when you were little?”

“Yeah, I went to the city a lot as a kid. This was the easiest, and the cheapest way there.” A small smile played at her lips, obviously the product of some childhood memory. “I used to hop it.”

“Of course you did,” I laughed back with her, thinking about how an innocent looking child would be the first person to get away with sneaking onto the train.

***

“I said it before, I will say it again. Do not let go of my hand.” This time it was more stern, and if I were being honest, I would say that it got me the slightest bit nervous. She must have noticed, she always does, because she continued. “Don’t worry, it just gets congested and I don’t want to lose you.”

She was right about that, it indeed was very congested, but that was okay because she was holding my hand, and I would follow her just about anywhere if it meant she kept looking over her shoulder and smiling when she saw me. Once we made it across the way, and in front of heavy looking glass doors, she turned to me and started walking backwards.

“You okay? This is definitely not off to a great start.” She was wrong, it was off to a perfect start.

“Yeah, I’m okay, but you might want to watch where you’re going,” I said before her back hit the door.

“Please I can get here with my eyes closed.” And then we were outside, and all 5 of my senses were hit immediately. The sun was shining down on us, and before I could complain about not bringing my sunglasses, she handed them to me. My heart fluttered at the innocent act, taking the sunglasses with such gratitude even though she had already moved on to retrieve hers. “Do you smell that?” She asked.

“There are a lot of answers to that question,” I told her, not knowing if she was talking about the smell of the construction happening at the corner, the permanent garbage smell or something entirely different.

“The hotdogs, silly. Come on, there’s nothing like ‘em.” This time, I laced our fingers together, not because I was scared of losing her, I was, but I just really wanted to be closer to her. She didn’t mind, in fact, she let out a content hum and leaned her head on my arm as we walked to the stand.

“Can I get four hotdogs with sauerkraut and two grape sodas,” she asked the vendor, who politely nodded before moving on to prepare our food.

“You’re going to have a heart attack by 35,” I said as I nudged her with my shoulder. She gave me a small push back before answering.

“Is that a doctor’s diagnosis?” She asked as she took our now ready food into her hands, after paying the man before I even had time to blink. I just grabbed the two cans of soda and followed her where she was making a beeline for a park bench. “Watch out for skaters.”

“Yes, it is indeed a doctor's diagnosis.” I unwrapped one of the hotdogs before taking a bite. I closed my eyes and let out a content hum. “It may be a little worth it.”

“Exactly.” We sat there quietly, enjoying the warm weather and sounds of wheels against pavement. At one point, she rested her head against my shoulder, and I am convinced wherever she went would be Heaven.

***

“Are your eyes closed?” We found ourselves with both our hands interlocked, my eyes closed while she walked backwards. I gave an ‘mhm’ before she continued. “We’re here, just keep them closed, and…” her words trailed off. “Okay open.”

I opened my eyes to her holding her arms out in the middle of the largest bookstore I’ve ever seen. “Surprise!” My eyes were bouncing everywhere. It wasn’t too crowded, the large stairwell across the store catching my eye first. There were bookshelves tens of feet high, all loaded with different genres and authors. To the right of us, tiny knick knacks and pins and socks. It was beautiful.

“Wow,” I whispered out, still stuck in my place admiring our surroundings. She was beaming up at me, a hint of pride at her successfulness to drag me 6 hours away to the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.

“The Strand has always been my favorite place in the city. Come on, let’s go explore.” She grabbed my hands again, pulling me deeper into the store towards a shelf labeled adult fiction.

***

Six books, three pairs of socks and a postcard later, we were back on the busy streets of New York, aimlessly walking and admiring the tall buildings and different attractions. Well she was, I was admiring the way she was looking around like it was her first time here. Maybe I should have been paying more attention to our surroundings, but no amount of skyscrapers or fountains could possibly ever match up to her level of beauty.

“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” I asked randomly, startling her into jumping a tiny bit before giggling. She stopped us, turning to face me fully before reaching up to grab my face in her hands.

“Once or twice.” The kiss we shared on the New York streets were no different than the ones before, but this time, it felt like a silent promise. A passing between two lovers that no matter where we are, our love is the most beautiful thing there is. “I love you too, dork.”

___

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sineala · 4 years ago

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Holy Crap!!! Asks are backkk ... best Christmas gift everrr. I wish you nothing but the best in this world!

I’ve got a question, I have read a few of iron man runs so my knowledge of the character is limited. I tried following the current run but almost every iron man blog I follow are hating it so much and I am scared to ask them why lol so I wanted to know what ur opinion and mainly what is Tonys character flaw? Cuz I don’t know why he is being called OOC in the current. I always thought his main flaw was indeed a huge ego and manipulative. I believe it aligns with his core character because he was a prodigy, smart, filthy rich and handsome. So why wouldn’t he be cocky? Also; I believe it is an insecurity/cover up. His dad paid no attention growing up which makes me believe it’s a habit of Tony to constantly act out to get attention elsewhere. Okay I’m rambling A LOT, my question is why is arrogant/cocky/insensitive Tony considered an OOC when I thought it was his major flaw?

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Love to have you back! 💝

Merry Christmas to you too, anon! Oof. I guess we’re getting the salt out early tonight...

Okay, so. This is kind of complicated, but the thing about Tony is that the way his character has been written has changed over the years. He initially started out as... well, the best way I can describe him is as a fantasy of ethical capitalism. He was filthy rich but he was also A Very Good Person, very kind, very caring. He was generous. He knew his employees’ names. He believed in philanthropy, and as late as v3 he was going around doing things like funding programs for low-income kids and funding women’s shelters. Like, he was honestly a deeply, deeply good person who just wanted to help people. (I can pull panels to support this if you need them; I just figured it would be a lot faster not to.)

You’d think someone like that would be egotistical, but the thing is... he wasn’t. He absolutely wasn’t. I’m not saying that he didn’t believe he was right, because he was also generally very confident that he was right (I mean, he’s one of the smartest people on the planet, so he generally IS right) but he also had absolutely zero self-esteem. And so I would say that in order to get arrogance you need high self-confidence plus high self-esteem and Tony had a whole lot of one but none of the other. I mean, this is a guy who, when kidnapped by Skrulls, who then posed as Avengers, figured out that they were Skrulls because he sincerely believed there was no way the Avengers would care about him enough to come rescue him. He has, canonically, described himself as depressed. (I know, that was Fraction’s run, but still.)

There’s a really nice takedown somewhere near the end of the v3 arc in which he becomes the Secretary of Defense where a senator basically asks why he should get this job when he is so totally arrogant and Tony just says that he has done so many things to save people that no one has ever found out about, and he has never asked for credit, he has never wanted credit, he just wants to keep people safe, and that’s just... that’s just really Tony, to me. (And he does get the job, too.)

Hang on, I am doing a bad job paraphrasing, let me find it. IM v3 #76-78:

(As opposed to say, now, when he’s spending most of an issue complaining that no one thanks him.)

But starting with Fraction’s run, more or less, the portrayal of Tony started to shift from “a billionaire who is explicitly ethical and a Good Person” to “a billionaire who is kind of an arrogant jerk because that’s what billionaires are.” So it’s not, in a sense, out of character for the current run to take this tack with Tony’s character, because it’s a direction he’s been heading in for about a decade now -- but many people who are fans of 616 Tony as a character are fans of his earlier portrayal in the comics, in which he is absolutely not arrogant at all, and many of them (including me) aren’t really eager to read a run where it’s just assumed that he’s an asshole and he needs to be knocked down a peg. Why would I want to read a run about my fave where literally no one likes him and all the other characters tell him how terrible he is? Why would I want to read him, for example, making casually ableist remarks where he mocks the idea of learning sign language?

The current run also flat-out ignores a lot of past canon in a way that people who are fans of past Iron Man canon can find a lot to dislike about. There are a lot of guest villains from the Silver Age, that is true, but everything else... yeah, no.

I mean, okay. My absolute favorite IM run is Denny O’Neil’s run, specifically the second drinking arc. I know for a fact that the current IM writer has read it because he likes to post panels on Twitter. And I’m just not sure how anyone can read that run and come away with the impression that Tony is arrogant, and yet that seems to be what’s going on. The audience of the current run is clearly meant to agree with Patsy as she tells Tony to check his privilege -- and while, yes, he is a billionaire, he also spent about ten straight issues being broke and homeless and living in a cardboard box. He may not know what it’s like, say, to be born into poverty, but he does, actually, know what it’s like to have nothing. He has been there.

And also, contrary to Patsy’s assertion, Tony does in fact know what it’s like to be suicidal, because he has literally tried to kill himself at least twice, and one of them was in the middle of the second drinking arc, and, again, I know the current IM writer has read it because he has been posting panels from that very issue. Tony sold his coat to buy one last bottle of booze, sat down outside in a blizzard, and waited to die. And there are a lot of fans who find Tony’s mental health issues relatable, find his triumphs inspiring, and so on -- and so it’s kind of frustrating to read a run where we are, essentially, told that Tony is An Out Of Touch Privileged Dude who could never understand anyone having problems like that, because one of the things fandom likes a lot about Tony is that he does actually have those problems himself.

I think the best thing I can say about the current run is that it is crafting an interesting narrative about a man who needs to learn humility; I just really wish that this man weren’t Tony Stark, because in the way he’s been canonically portrayed for decades, he’s already had that covered.

I will say that the art’s nice. I own all three variants of #1 with the tentacles and am still planning to frame them.

This is not to say that I think it is wrong to like the run. Hey, if you like the run, I am glad to hear it, because I am glad that someone is actually buying this comic every month who is enjoying reading it! And it is definitely in line with recent trends in Tony’s characterization. I just keep picking up Iron Man comics and hoping that this month the old Tony, the Tony that I started reading Iron Man comics because I wanted to see more of, will be back... and he’s not.

#Anonymous #replies

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notallthosewho-wanderarelost · 3 years ago

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Since it’s Tuesday and we get Loki 1x05 tomorrow and then I’m seeing Black Widow the day after, and I guess I’m doing these now, some thoughts on Loki 1x04.

Hopefully this will be a shorter post due to me not knowing wtf is going on. This show is so chaotic and it’s perfect but that makes trying to predict it impossible. How VERY LOKI OF IT.

NOPE, NOPE THIS IS NOT A SHORTER POST, I have no idea what is going on plot wise but this episode gave me a lot of character stuff to talk about apparently.

Alright, let me get the big one out of the way. I’ve already said this in various places, mostly tags, but if I’m gonna make this post it’s gotta be here. I’m uncomfortable with Loki/Sylvie being romantic. Would prefer for Marvel to stay away from selfcest. PLEASE. I’m kind of hoping and wondering if it’s a fakeout for a reveal that Loki has finally learned to love or at least accept himself through his care of and admiration for Sylvie, which would be VERY Agent of Asgard-esque and I can see it being very probable.

I think giving Loki a love interest of any kind was always going to be difficult to pull off, but especially Loki as he is at the point in time when the show finds him- fresh off his attempted takeover of Earth and probably still deeply reeling from the revelation of his adoption and also likely mentally affected by any torture and/or mental manipulation Thanos might have done on him. Loki’s self-loathing is probably still close to an all-time high here and he’s questioning who he even is. I’m not saying that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else- I don’t think that at all; in fact I think loving someone else would probably encourage someone to value themselves more- but Loki as he is here I think would need to work through some of his own issues before he could get involved with anyone else. I think that Loki would need to learn to love himself first, to accept that he’s worthy of love, before he could genuinely fall in love with anyone else. (Remember this, I’ll come back to it.)

I got major sibling vibes from Loki and Sylvie on Lamentis. Like I said last post, they felt like alternate universe twins to me. They’re the same person from different universe, but also very much not the same- I feel like twins is the closest description? I can admittedly be pretty awful at picking up romantic vibes when I’m not expecting them, but I did not get romance vibes at all.

I also feel kind of annoyed that we would never be having this conversation or having this as a canonical ship option if Sylvie hadn’t been female. Loki is now officially canonically bi, (which means Sylvie is too btw) but in comics Loki is both bi and also genderfluid. Lady Loki is just Loki when Loki is identifying as female. So having Loki fall in love with a female version of himself feels both unnecessarily heteronormative and kind of...awkward in terms of 616!Loki’s genderfluidity, to put it lightly. (Note: I am not genderfluid, this is just my opinion, please prioritize actual genderfluid people’s opinions on the subject over mine.)

That said, after I finished the episode I was genuinely confused if they were actually going there and had to go look up interviews to see what the Loki team was saying about it. I found this interview with head writer Michael Waldron, also featuring quotes from director Kate Herron and from Tom Hiddleston. Relevant quotes below:

“That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story,” head writer Michael Waldron explains to Marvel.com. “We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy? But in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story.”

Loki reassures her that while they might lose, they don’t die — they survive. He goes on to call Sylvie “amazing” for how she almost took down the TVA on her own, and it’s clear from the look on his face that even though they’ve only been together a short while, Loki’s already come to admire and respect her. As the moon literally crumbles around them, Sylvie places a hand on Loki’s arm, and that’s when it happens: A branch on the Sacred Timeline. These two Lokis are having a moment they were never supposed to have, which as Mobius puts it, is “pure chaos.”

“The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship,” continues Waldron. “Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, ‘Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?’ These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA.”

...

“Who’s a better match for Loki than himself?” director Kate Herron chimes in. “The whole show is about identity. It's about him, and he is on a very different path, and he is on a different journey. He sees things in Sylvie that he is like, ‘Oh, I've been there. I know what you feel.’ But she's like, ‘Well, I don't feel that way.’ And I think that was the kind of fun thing about it. She is him, but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences. So just from an identity perspective, it was interesting to dig into that.”

“When Loki meets Sylvie, he's inspired solely by curiosity,” reveals Hiddleston. “He wants to talk to her and understand her and try to discern what was similar about their experiences, and what was different. He keeps asking her questions because he wants to see if his experience was also her experience. I think he realizes, and she realizes, that while they're the same, they're not the same.”

Aside from the parts where Michael Waldron says “...have this guy fall in love with another version of himself...” and “the same person falling in with another version of one another,” everything they talk about in this article could be read as Loki and Sylvie caring for each other in a way that’s not necessarily romantic. Waldron even says that the series is specifically about self-love and forgiving yourself.

(Coming back to the thing from earlier about Loki needing to love himself now.) The way I’d read Loki and Sylvie’s relationship, especially from Loki’s side since we know more of his history, is that this is the first time that either of them actually cares about themselves. Because of their trust in and their love for each other, they’re each able to see themselves as a person worthy of love. I think that’s what the Nexus Event was. I think that’s why Loki and Sylvie’s moment of connection destabilized the timeline. Because Loki’s self-loathing is a deep root of his villainy, and the sacred timeline needs Loki to be a villain, two versions of Loki feeling self-worth, at the same time and place, created a HUGE nexus event. Loki even says it himself in the first episode: he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, he does it because (he feels) he has to, in a desperate play for control. He lashes out and hurts people because he thinks it’s the only way for him to have some control over things.

What Loki starts to speak to Sylvie at the end, he says, “This is new for me,” and references the nexus event on Lamentis. We never get to hear what it is that’s new for him. The episode sets it up to make us think that Loki’s about to tell Sylvie that he’s in love with her. But I think (or hope) that he was about to say something more along the lines of how the time he spent getting to know Sylvie on Lamentis helped him learn to care about himself and see his own self worth. That’s certainly a new feeling for him, since Loki seems to have always been an outsider and been looked down upon. And actually saying out loud that he’s starting to gain a sense of self worth would definitely be new for him. Loki knows that he and Sylvie will figure this out because he’s figured out the nexus event on Lamentis- that when they accept themselves and their own self worth, they can do pretty much anything.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that we never actually hear from Loki himself that he’s in love with Sylvie. We only hear it from Mobius, who’s feeling pretty betrayed by Loki and uses the entire concept to write Loki off as a huge narcissist. That way, he won’t feel as bad about Loki betraying him, or about sticking Loki in a time loop jail. Not that Loki would be the type to shout any romantic feelings to the world, especially in this situation, but the way he kept denying it didn’t seem like it was something he had to lie about.

This episode also called Loki a narcissist a lot; I assume to set up the “reveal” of his feelings for Sylvie and explain why he would fall in love with an alternate version of himself. But while Loki is many things and sure has a lot of issues, I do NOT think narcissism is one of them. When the time loops really start to get to him, he says to Sif: “I crave attention, because I’m a narcissist. And I suppose it’s because I’m scared of being alone.” But that second sentence completely contradicts the whole idea of narcissism! According to a quick google, the definition of “narcissist” is “a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves.” But Loki is the exact opposite. He has such a low opinion of himself that he acts out to get attention, because he’s so used to being overshadowed, overlooked and alone that he’s afraid that if he doesn’t do things for attention then nobody will give him any. He can be arrogant, yes, but even a lot of that stems from well-earned confidence. Loki is very talented magically and is used to being the smartest person in the room. He knows what he’s good at. But he sure isn’t attention-seeking just for its own sake. Any narcissism he’s displayed, he’s done since becoming a “villain” in Thor, and it’s actually been a mask to cover up his massive inferiority complex.

I also think it’s definitely worth mentioning that when Loki calls himself a narcissist, he’s repeating what Mobius said to him earlier. Loki clearly does care about Mobius and his opinion of him and feels bad about how things have fallen out with him. He’s also been through the time loop dozens of times now, and there’s a reason the TVA picked that memory. Because what Sif says to Loki really reflects his deepest fear. He doesn’t want to be alone, but he has such little love for himself that he might very well think he deserves to be. Loki’s emotionally exhausted at that point and just wants things to stop.

Okay. I think that covered most of my character analysis of the episode. I have some theories about Sylvie and the Time Keepers/TVA, etc, but they won’t be anywhere near as long as THAT^ was.

To start at the beginning of the episode: Sylvie’s backstory is SO SAD. I want to hug her. She spent almost her entire life on the run, growing up and living in apocalypses so the TVA wouldn’t catch her again. She didn’t deserve any of that and I’m so upset on her behalf.

Especially because as I said in another post, I think that the reason Sylvie got taken by the TVA was because she was never going to be a villain. Sylvie was kind and wanted to be heroic in the clip we see of her as a child, and she knew she was adopted. She was never going to be the Loki the TVA needed her to be for the Sacred Timeline because nothing would have ever pushed her to do what our Loki did.

The scene with Sylvie and B-15 was so good. Sylvie was kind to B-15, because her natural instinct is to be kind, and I have so many feelings about that. I love Sylvie. And then B-15 coming to the rescue to uncollar Sylvie and Loki and give Sylvie her sword was EPIC. She’s so cool.

Small aside, I got emotional seeing Asgard again in Sylvie’s flashback. I miss Asgard. :(

Also, if a kid can escape the TVA just by biting the agent holding her, the TVA have really got to step up their game. That’s kind of pathetic. Good for Sylvie though, that was very clever of her. The most juvenile yet effective tactic.

The Time Keepers being fake robots was an excellent twist, and one that I kind of saw coming as soon as they didn’t show Ravonna’s conversation with them earlier in the episode. It immediately made me feel like there were no Time Keepers at all. (And I was wondering if the no-robots rule from episode 1 would be plot relevant! I wonder if it has anything to do with the Time Keepers actually being robots?) It was also really clear that Ravonna was lying about what happened to C-20. As of now I think that Ravonna might actually be the real power behind the TVA. Or possibly a designated lieutenant to the real power behind the TVA:

When I was looking up interviews about Loki/Sylvie in this episode, I stumbled across an article about Ravonna’s comic counterpart and started kicking myself so hard for not recognizing her. In comics, Ravonna Renslayer is Kang the Conqueror’s wife. (Now, in my defense, my previous exposure to Ravonna was in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, in which she spends most of her screentime in a coma.) For anyone who doesn’t know, Kang the Conqueror is a time traveling classic Avengers villain. His whole thing is that he time travels, and wants to take over all of time. So it’s possible that Ravonna runs the TVA to benefit Kang somehow (maybe because Kang needs a certain sequence of events to assure a future victory over the Avengers?) or even does it on his orders. Kang the Conqueror is also set to be in Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania. (Aka Antman 3.)

(I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Kang the Conqueror also happens to be the reason the Young Avengers form. The very first member, Iron Lad aka Nate Richards, is a teenage Kang who meets his future self and decides he doesn’t want to be evil, so he travels back in time to get the help of Kang’s nemeses, the Avengers. However, he lands when the Avengers have disbanded and winds up putting together a team of Avengers-affiliated teenagers instead. The team gets bigger over time and a later version of it notably includes Kid Loki. I’m not going to go off on a Young Avengers tangent here but I LOVE the Young Avengers, please read Young Avengers volume 1 by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung and all of its associated tie-ins. It’s fantastic. Unfortunately Kid Loki is only in volume 2, which gets a very solid “no thank you” from me but ymmv. Imo if you want Loki, read Agent of Asgard instead; I keep bringing it up for a reason and that’s because it’s amazing. Kid Loki is also in Journey into Mystery prior to his appearance in Young Avengers, and I haven’t read that yet but it looks very good.)

I’m VERY curious as to what the deal is behind the TVA. This could go a lot of different ways but they all seem exciting.

This show is definitely gearing up for a finale in which the TVA no longer exists or at least no longer decides everyone’s fates, which is exactly what I predicted back in episode 1.

Final thoughts on the episode: I was just wondering after Mobius was pruned if maybe the pruning sticks are actually teleporters of some kind, instead of time tasers, and then we got THAT CREDITS SCENE. I am so confused but also VERY EXCITED. I almost screamed when I saw Kid Loki. MY CHILD. I just had this thought but oh, I would kill for a Thori reference. Best murder dog. Classic Loki’s costume looks so terrible, it’s absolutely on purpose, and I love it.

THIS SHOW HAD BETTER END WITH MOBIUS GETTING A JETSKI. AND BOTH SYLVIE AND LOKI HAPPY.

I’ve been wondering since the show was announced if this show would somehow end with a version of the comics Kid Loki + AoA Loki storyline, where this Loki gets reborn into the main MCU as Kid/Teen Loki so he can join the Young Avengers, and I still don’t know how I feel about that, but with how things are going I can still see it happening.

LET EVERYONE WE LOVE BE HAPPY AT THE END MARVEL.

#long post #loki spoilers #loki 1x04 #loki series #a rare text post appears #loki #sylvie #mobius #tva #ravonna renslayer #kang the conqueror #meta #my stuff

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clean-bands-dirty-stories · 4 years ago

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Weak ~ S.R. (part 3)(final)

A/n: Kind fo struggled to find an ending to this that I liked, so I hope you guys liked it. Side note: I was inspired by “Easy” by Camila Cabello for this part :)

Word Count: 8600+

MASTERLIST

We fall for that. Wake up, we fall again. We fall for that. Can't wait to fall again- One sip, bad for me; One hit, bad for me; One kiss, bad for me, but I give in so easily. And no thank you is how it should've gone, I should stay strong- But I'm weak, and what's wrong with that?

It took almost an entire month before Y/n really came to terms with having actual feelings for Spencer. With a lot of help from Michael and some stern words from Hotch when she'd begun to give Spencer the cold shoulder, she'd finally sat down and really thought about it.

I mean, who wouldn't fall head over heels for Spencer Reid, am I right? He was a total dork and had the prettiest smile she'd ever seen. He also had a huge heart and when he looked at her from across the room with the look of some kicked puppy, she still couldn't help but notice how beautiful he was with even that look on his face. Not to mention how kind and considerate he was. He even tried to save people everyone else rightfully hated, because every life that kept living was a victory to him. He shut himself down and kept himself in check as not to annoy others. Y/n was the only one who willingly listened to him, and he'd been slipping recently because he didn't have her to talk to anymore. He was just a really great person... and also really, really attractive like fucking hell dial it back just a TAD for the sake of a single woman with a weak heart.

When she could finally think about it without freaking out because of her past, she approached him again. "Hey." Her voice was soft, heavy with guilt.

He was surprised when he looked up and saw her. He stood, then stepped back to try and play it off like he hadn't been incredibly eager. "H-hi." His eyebrows came together as if in the world's smallest cringe and Y/n couldn't help but smile at the adorable awkwardness.

"I, uh." Her smile wavered as she remembered why she was here. "I'm really sorry, Reid." He frowned deeply at her use of his last name so she gave in a little. "Spencer." His shoulders lifted a little. "I've kind of had a lot of thoughts up in this little noggin of mine and unfortunately my brain works slower than average so it took me some time to figure it out." She shook her head. "I'm sorry it's made it so weird between us. I hope we can still be friends?" That's not what she really wanted, but she knew that what she REALLY wanted would be forever out of her reach. Spencer would never return her feelings. She didn't deserve it. Maybe her feelings now were healthy, but back then... no. What she had said and done and thought all those years ago was inexcusable. She couldn't have a relationship like wanted to with him with a such a secret between them, and she would NEVER tell anyone about it. It was in the past, it didn't matter. Just like her real feelings for the boy wonder in front of her now.

"Of course." He seemed relieved by her words. "Did I... do something to upset you?"

She smiled. Of course he'd think it was his fault. "Never," she reassured. "I... upset myself." That was as close to the truth as she could get.

It only confused him more though. "Are you okay?"

"Please," she begged softly. "I- it won't happen again. Can we please just forget about it?" Her eyes were wide and earnest. "I promise none of us were in any danger. You just-" She sighed. She hated the thought that he might worry enough to go digging, because with his resources he might find out. "You remind me of someone in my past," she worded carefully. "Someone I hurt. And- he didn't know I hurt him, but I did. And sometimes when I look at you, I remember that version of myself and it's... difficult. But I've come to terms with it for real now, and accepted that I'm a different person now. It was years ago and I'm better, you know? So it's really happy news and nothing you need to worry about. I promise."

He seemed to calm down for real at my reassurance. "Okay," he promised. "But if you need anything-"

"I'll come to you first," Y/n declared. "Well." She got a coy smile on her face. "Second. I have an old friend who was there during the whole thing. Who helped me through it. So he might be a tad better at helping, but with his experience and your incredible mind, I'm absolutely sure that if anything comes up it won't even be an issue."

He looked a little sad. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you." He hesitated, so Y/n didn't say something in case he wanted to share something personal as she had. Now that she was sure that her old habits were long dead, she no longer felt worried about getting close to him. It was incredibly refreshing. As she'd thought, he did speak again, pulling out her thoughts so she could focus on him. "I feel like I should be able to do more for my friends. I'm trained to do this as a career, but when it comes to people I care about rather than some murderous psycho, I end up being pretty useless."

She's taken aback by his bluntness. "Are you serious?" He shrugged and she reached up to grab either side of his ace with both of her hands. He seemed surprised by the contact, but didn't pull away. He seemed even more shocked by the fact SHE hadn't pulled away from HIM. "Pen, you're like literally the smartest person I've ever met. Everyone considers you a genius, and you've earned that title time and time again- so much that it drives people crazy sometimes." They both chuckled. "Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're a mind reader though. Be nicer to yourself. Please. You deserve it."

He relaxed at her words and only then did he realize her thumb was grazing his jaw tenderly. She slowly removed her hands. He seemed like he wanted to stop her but he didn't, and she felt her stomach light on fire. "Thank you." The words were soft and warmed Y/n to her core.

Y/n shrugged. "Besides, 'The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.' You're gonna miss things you don't want to be there. I've been the type of person people ignore when I'm upset since I'm usually pretty upbeat and get over things quickly anyway."

Spencer seemed to glitch. "What did you say?"

A blush swallowed Y/n's face as she winced back in shame. "I don't mean to blame you, I just mean that it's okay, because I'm used to handling it on my own and-"

"No," he dismissed. "The thing about observing obvious things."

It was then that she became cautious. "It's a quote from a book I read a few years ago. One of the few things I made myself remember and internalize. It made me feel better about how I... got into some tricky situations, before I learned and taught myself better and stuff."

His expression brightened. "You've read The Narrative of John Smith?"

She tried not to think about how she'd read it because she'd watched him carry around the book for months. How it had rested on the dashboard of his car and it had made her curious since he blew through books so quickly and never held onto one for long. She tried not to think about how she had gotten it to feel closer to him, reading it slowly and writing down things that she thought were neat. How Michael used those exact words she'd cherished to help counsel her in a way that got through to her in the beginning when she was drowning in guilt. "Yeah," was all she said, even as so many more thoughts raced through her mind.

"That's so wild." He seemed to catch his breath. "I've been meaning to get a copy of my own. I keep borrowing it from the library and returning it too late. It's one of my favorite books."

"No way." She laughed, trying to make it sound casual. "I still have my copy, if you want it."

The idea of reading it again seemed to excite him, making Y/n relax. "I'd love to borrow it. I have to say, I can be a little... hard on books. I have a lot of love to give them."

The joke made her relax completely, her worries rolling off her shoulder. She was a new person, living a new life that was so much better than she'd ever dreamed. "You can actually have it," she told him. "Honestly, it's kind of a reminder of some things that I don't want to remember, and I haven't read it in a long time and probably won't ever again."

"Really?"

"Really," she promised enthusiastically.

He thought for a second then that glimmer in his eyes shone, just like it always did when he got an idea. "What if I read it to you? We could make new memories. Unless you don't like the book."

Y/n laughed. "It was a little hard for me to swallow, but with someone like you to help me if I ask some questions here and there..."

"Oh absolutely," he agreed.

"Then sure." He cheered and she laughed and then Hotch called their names because they had a new case. Both of them went into the meeting beaming.

"Did you bring it today?" It had been six whole cases where every day Spencer would ask her the same thing, and every time she had to disappoint him because she came to work very early in the morning and returned very late at night and she always forgot it.

Not today though.

Her parted, upturned lips gave her away and Spencer jerked in excitement. "First," she began, holding up a finger as she reached into her bag. "To make up for taking ages to finally get it to you." She extended a small bag of Sour Skittles. He seemed to do that physical stutter like he always did when he was so surprised by something it was like a human glitch, eyes on the Skittles like they were going to jump out and bite his hand. "Since it took me over two months to get it to you," she said quietly. Why did he look like she was holding out a dead dog rather than a bag of candy? Then she thought about how the very first gift she'd ever given him was this exact treat. She panicked for a second. Did he know that it was a stalker after all that had given him the gift? Did he expect it to be her? Had he stopped liking this candy because of her selfish recklessness all those years ago? Oh god. "I didn't know what you liked, but they're my favorite," she rushed awkwardly, pulling her hand away. "I' sorry I didn't mean to upset you."

He caught her wrist and she looked into his eyes, ready to see accusation and anger when she did. Instead, she saw guilt. Guilt? What did he have to be sorry for? "No, I love it. Very thoughtful. I'm so sorry, I just-" He swallowed. "I haven't liked them for a while. But," and he snatched them from her hand, pointing back to her bag. She slowly took out the book and he grabbed that too. "Like I said. Here's to new beginnings. New memories with things that were once ruined but didn't deserve it." Right there he opened the bag and popped a few in his mouth. His eyes watched her as he chewed and his body seemed to relax. He then rolled up the bag so none would spill. "Maybe after work today we can meet at my place and I can read to you and we can share them together?"

His place. "I... What about my place?" He made an odd expression and she returned a sheepish one. "I'm weird about other people's places." This was absolutely true. After she'd developed her obsession with Spencer, she got nervous being too intimate with other people, in case it shifted to them instead. "Until I'm super comfortable with them. It's kind of weird, I'm sorry."

"No, I get it." And he seemed to, though it was obvious he understood the feeling rather than the context. "Your place."

Y/n went to confirm, but then Hotch came out, the look on his face that meant they had a case. "As much as I'd hate to interrupt your date," he told Reid and Y/n - both who went beet red, making the rest of the team smirk - before holding up the case file. "We have a case. You guys can do it on the plane though, or in the hotel once we get there." At our surprise, he explained further. "We're headed to Alaska, and the storms are going to be very bad this time of year. There won't be much time to call each other, so Garcia will be coming with us as well. Because of the constantly bad weather, the electronics aren't very advanced so we'll need Y/n as well to help Garcia sift through footage and get information as much as possible. Getting information on this case might need more people talking than we have time for, so Y/n will be needed in quite a few places."

Suddenly Y/n was very excited.

She was going out into the field.

Boy, oh boy I love it when I fall for that. I'm weak, and what's wrong with that? Boy, oh boy I love ya when I fall for that. I'm weak- Go! But I'm weak, and what's wrong with that?

Y/n was relieved that after all the hard to swallow cases, the team was finally getting reprieve from a case that was unwinding pretty quickly. Not quickly enough. Never quickly enough, as two more women turned up dead before they had a suspect who seemed to have a third lined up for her grave the next day if they didn’t do something about it.

So, they did something about it. They were working with a team, who had split up to do different things. The woman cleaned the mess left from the torture, and the man finished off the victim in her grave before leaving her body there to be found later by police. Morgan and Prentiss were going after the man, and Spencer and Y/n were supposed to infiltrate the house and hack the computer for information on where the woman was keeping the victims, since it obviously wasn’t at home. Once they did, they’d send word to Hotch and Rossi and they’d take care of the rest.

It all went wrong pretty quickly.

First of all, Spencer hadn’t the book they’d been reading together on the dashboard. It shouldn’t have been a problem, since they’d reading it together every night to unwind before bed. To distract themselves so they could actually get some sleep. Or, Spencer had been reading it to Y/n. The memory was a good one, and had been getting increasingly better. Now that Y/n had come to terms with her feelings, she felt herself easily falling into a closeness with Spencer that left them growing very close. Physically even. They were very touchy and hovered around each other. Even with Spencer’s hesitance to touch people because of his germaphobia, or Y/n’s hesitance to share bits of herself that might reveal her past. The little goodness between them amidst all the bad things was a breath of fresh air for everyone. Not even Hotch had the heart to break them apart - especially when they both deserved to be happy, and why not together?

Even now they were smiling at each other, taking comfort in each other’s presence. Y/n was nervous to be on the field, wearing a bullet proof vest just in case even though no one should have been there. With the skills she’d picked up from Garcia even in the short time she’d had and Spencer’s never failing intelligence, it was going to be an easy in and out mission. No worry.

The book shattered everything.

Or, at least, what was inside of it.

It dropped on the ground of the car and Spencer reached inside to grab it really fast and put it back on the dash. As he did so, something fell out of the later pages much further into the book. Further than where they’d gotten with Y/n’s constant questions and wanting to understand. Something that Spencer had though adorable then, but was now tainted by the thing he held in his hand.

When he didn’t move, Y/n moved over to him. “Pen? What’s wrong?” She’d begun to use the name naturally instead of his title or even first name like everyone else. Usually it made him smile, but now it made him flinch. She reached out for him and he jerked away. “Spencer?” It wasn’t how she’d referred to him in a while. It seemed to upset him even more.

The thin thing spun around in Spencer’s thin fingers so that Y/n could see the other side. When she did, her heart stopped dead in her chest. “What’s this?” Spencer demanded.

In that moment, Y/n was that same scared girl she’d been when Spencer had walked into her precinct with his team for the very first time and all she could think about was how much she didn’t want her past to come back and eat her alive and ruin her life. Because now, staring at her, was Spencer. Or, a picture of him. An extremely old picture of him. A picture that was now six years old, of a Spencer with slicked back hair and vests and glasses, looking at JJ with a huge smile on his face. It was one of the intimate photos Y/n had taken when-

“I burned all of those.” She took a step back, but the movement might as well have been a slap across Spencer’s face for how he flinched.

“You had more?” This time he looked less shocked and more angry.

Y/n tried to find some words. “Had,” she stressed, trying to come up with something. “I- not anymore, not for a long time.”

She could see the gears in his brain turning, but it didn’t seem to be much work to put the puzzle that he was trying to solve together. She thought of all the things that gave her away. The book that was one of his favorites that she just happened to have. The candy she had given him. The shame she’d been carrying with her so long, that had driven them apart even when they shared the same working space. The picture in his hand now that was from a time Y/n was not in his life. A time she should have no record of. And yet she did, and he was holding it out to her as proof.

“It was you?” His words sounded sharp and accusing. She had never heard Spencer y’all like that before.

She tried to explain. Explain how much she’d gotten better and how far she’d come since then. But the words got stuck in her throat. She deserved this. She couldn’t get that thought out of her head. She deserved this. “Spencer-“

“My name is Dr. Reid and I’m a federal agent so you better answer my fucking question.”

Her vision blurred with tears. “Yes,” she whispered. The word held so much pain and regret that Reid stepped away, looking to where there was no trace of her. It hit her then. Slipping the picture in the book as a bookmark all those years ago. It was the only time she’d ever taken a picture out of the box. She’d used it as inspiration to get through the book. Every time she set a goal, she’d save it with the picture and her prize was seeing his smile again. After she’d finished the book, she’d forgotten she’d left the picture in it.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HER?!

“You let me become your friend.”

A bubbling sob broke from the back of her throat. “I tried not to,” she begged him to understand. “I tried everything, but it was one thing after another and suddenly I have all these REAL feelings for you and-“ She hissed when his eyes shot back to her, hitting her like he’d hit her with his car. “Reid that was YEARS ago. I’m a totally different person now-“

“This isn’t years ago for me,” Reid snapped, his eyes wide as his mind began to reel.

Y/n looked away. She closed her eyes, feeling her heart drop into her toes. “We have to find out where the next victim is or she’s going to die. Can we talk about this later?”

“I can’t LOOK at you right now let alone with you.” He seemed panicked and Y/n flinched, recoiling. “Are you stalking everyone then?”

“I’m not stalking anyone,” Y/n defended weakly. “Stalked. Past tense.”

“Was it only me?” Spencer demanded.

The question seemed odd. “Yes?” That seemed to trouble him more. She couldn’t take it anymore though. She grabbed her pants to ground herself, turning away from him. “Let’s split up then. I’m not letting work drama cost this girl her life.” She steeled herself, wiped her tears, and then began moving inside from the back door, leaving the front door for Reid. “Just stay here.” He didn’t say anything, just stayed still and letting her go.

She slipped inside, making her way to the computer. She called Garcia as she’d been told to. “Hey G.” She frowned at the name. Did she have to leave the BAU now? If he couldn’t look at her or function, how could she stay? This might be her dream job but this was and had been his life for ages. She couldn’t take that away. No, she’d leave.

But that was later.

This was now.

She had this case to finish before anything else happened.

Garcia asked Y/n about the sniffling but Y/n brushed it off- no reason to get into why she’d been crying. And the case was more important now. Between hiding her own pain and trying to focus on hacking and finding this woman who was waiting to be saved, Y/n didn’t see the woman creep into the woman. The woman, who was one half of the unsub team, who was hefting a metal skillet in one hand and a knife in the other.

“Where’s Spencer?” Garcia asked suddenly. “He should be helping you with this.”

“Outside,” Y/n asked casually.

“What?” Garcia snapped.

Y/n didn’t get the chance to throw a response back though. A knife plunged into her gut and her mind went blank as pain erupted through her like she’d never experienced before. By some luck she knocked the skillet out of the woman’s hand, the chair falling back and the knife slipping out of her gut as she fell.

The unsub sat on Y/n’s chest, hefting the knife over her head, a grin on her face. The woman grabbed Y/n’s phone, leaving close to it. “Any last words?” She purred.

Garcia gasped. “DON’T-!”

The woman closed the phone. “Begging,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “What a fucking waste of time.” Then she stabbed Y/n again, cutting off a scream that escaped her by some serious luck.

The thought that she was going to die here passed through Y/n’s mind as the knife left her again and she groaned, blinking as her vision began to swim. The pain was all consuming and suddenly she was fading out as the knife buried itself higher in her stomach for a third time. Only one thing left her lips. “I deserve this.”

The woman grinned even wider. “Do yourself a favor and pass out, Dearie. After you I’ll be done. That completes the cycle.”

Y/n didn’t know what the woman meant, but she gave in to the pain anyway. The last thing was her blood on the knife and the woman’s hand as she hefted it over her head to bring it down on Y/n a fourth time. The last thought she had was that she was going to die worse than alone. She was going to die at the hands of a psycho with a knife, in pain and on the floor. Her story would be told by Spencer, who didn’t understand her struggle or how far she had come. It was all over and she’d be remembered as the creepy bitch who’d stalked Spencer Reid years ago and then been unlucky enough to end up actually falling in love with him.

Splendid.

It was quiet in the room outside of where Y/b was still unconscious in the hospital bed. When Garcia had called Reid in a panic he had run inside, because stalker or not Y/n was part of his team and he wasn’t going to let her die just because he felt a little disturbed.

The truth was that he was actually torn in a lot of directions at the moment. Knowing that there had been two stalkers, or maybe one after the other, was an unsettling thought. If Y/n had just been watching Spencer, there was still a stalker out there watching all of them, and no way would they not be jealous of how Y/n had been successful in getting close, if they knew about it at all.

There was also the fact that Spencer had fallen really hard for Y/n. He had some very strong feelings for her, but low every memory and feeling seemed to be tainted by the image of Y/n sitting in her car outside his house, or looking over him as he slept. How long ago had she stopped? Why had she stopped? How far had she gotten with stalking him? How long had she been doing it before she stopped? He thought of the day he walked out to those Skittles on his car and his heart had completely stopped as all the stalker cases filled his head in one go, as they did now. So many more cases now though, and much more fear.

What did she know that he didn’t know she knew? That she’d learned from watching him without him knowing?

When he apprehended to woman unsub and called an ambulance for Y/n, they’d all ended up in the hospital as they too often did with cases that went just a little wrong. Hotch had wrung the story out of him and now everyone was here and had heard the full story, especially his explanation of why he let Y/n go in alone.

Eyes slowly moved to Spencer, but he couldn’t handle it. He left, making up some reason about wrapping up the case and telling the local police they’d succeeded and such to get back to the precinct and to a computer.

It took him an hour to find Michael Bills. He was Y/n’s therapist. Spencer had dug deep into Y/n to get answers to his questions. Answers he couldn’t wait to get when she woke up, because he needed them right now. She had done everything to keep Michael and her past buried, but with help from Garcia he’d been able to dig it all up.

He called Michael the second he found the connection. “This is Dr. Bills speaking, how can I-“

“Tell me what you know about Y/n,” Spencer demanded. “Please,” he added shortly as an afterthought. This man had known. He had KNOWN and he just, what, didn’t say anything? Let Y/n keep going? Let her work with Spencer?! He was in town, how did he not stop her, knowing what she did?

There was a soft sigh. “Is this Dr. Spencer Reid then?”

He didn’t seem surprised. It agitated Spencer. How much did this man know about him to be able to read the situation and put it all together so quickly? “Yes,” he finally answered.

Michael hesitated. “What do you want to know?”

“You’re just going to tell me?” Spencer asked, eyebrows knitting together. “What about Doctor-Patient confidentiality?”

A pause. “Y/n would want me to tell you. I’d rather it be me anyway. If she did it she’d be too hard on herself and no one else was there.”

“Too hard on herself?” Spencer snapped.

Another pause. “Dr. Reid, talking as a professional, Y/n was a very strange case. She came in tears, begging me to make sense of her mental state and help her get better. Told me first session that she was stalking an FBI agent and that she felt terrible for doing it but she was in too deep to stop herself. She cane to me for help, a total mess, and did every single thing I told her to do. Worked with me and was open and honest when something didn’t work. She worked two whole years to shake you from her mind and make a better life for herself. I was there when she burned the pictures. I was there when she threw away her camera and emptied her apartment of everything she could find that reminded her of you.”

“Not everything.” He was trying to find something she was still guilty of. It seemed it had been over ages ago. “She still had my favorite book. One of her pictures inside it.”

Michael hummed, considering that. “She probably missed it. Dismissed it later, as it was just a book. I... look, Dr. Reid, I can only speculate as far as that but I can tell you from first hand experience she did a 180. Coming from someone who wanted to turn her in because I didn’t want to get involved with a federal agent and his stalker, I tell you now with full confidence that Y/n is absolutely everything. Her job. Her friends. Her time. Her sanity and peace of mind. Her self respect. Coming to terms with being a creep was hard for her to do, and she still holds herself accountable for that.”

“Why did she become friends with me?” He had to know. He was desperate. He needed something to be angry at her about. How could he hold something that had ended SIX YEARS AGO over her head now? She’d saved Spencer’s life more times than she’d put it in danger. “And- and how far did she get? Does she know where I live? Did she come into my house?”

“No,” Michael rushed. “It- well this won’t be funny to you, but we used to joke that even when she was crazy she still had enough sense to draw a line. She... never followed you home. It was something she was proud of.” S long silence between the two men. “Honestly Dr. Reid, I’m going to tell you what I told her. Years ago she had an obsession with a boy she had a crush on. A fantasy where you were the center. But she broke that herself and cleaned herself up, allowing a space for you two to genuinely form a relationship. I think whatever she’s feeling now? The relationship you guys have? I think it’s genuine, and totally safe and real. I think she is as far from crazy as one can get. She pulled HERSELF away from stalking. She’d been done a year before we even started working together. Have you ever seen anyone do that?”

Spencer had to admit, he hadn’t. He also had to admit that... he had nothing to be mad at her about. I mean he did, but he was six years too late to lord this over her. She didn’t deserve to have all her hard work ignored and years erased. She didn’t deserve to have the lowest she’d ever been - the worst thing she’d ever done - shoved in her face and down her throat. She was kind and good and caring. She deserved someone who gave her the time of day and respected the shit she went through to make a real life for herself. Who recognized all she’d done to leave behind a destructive path and end up working for the FBI in the BAU, practicing to be an agent and save lives and stop people like who she’d almost become.

Spencer rubbed their bridge of his nose, sighing. “Thank you.”

He could hear the smile in Michael’s voice when the man spoke again. “My pleasure.”

Spencer ended the call, standing up from his desk. He had even lore to explain to his team, and when Y/n woke up... they had even more to talk about.

Boy oh boy I love it when I fall for that.

Y/n didn't know what people usually dreamed about when they went into a coma, but she really hoped it wasn't anything like this. She had no idea how long she'd been out, but in her little mind palace it seemed she'd been here for eons. She remembered a time before here but it was almost like a dream, or at best a story she read when she was a child. She HAD been a child after all, even though she couldn't remember it. All she could remember was here and now, sitting in the dark of nighttime in this field, fingers every so often wrapping around the grass to feel it before letting it go and going completely still before doing it again after a while. It was silent here. No wind or night animals. Just the moon and stars and the dark, tall blobs in the corners of her vision that she assumed were trees. Or some monster that was waiting to kill her. Either way she didn't have any fear for it. Monsters weren't real after all, right? She'd been sure of that once. Now she wasn't so sure though. Monsters didn't have horns and claws and fangs like she thought, but they were just as real. She saw one every time she looked in the mirror.

Is that why she was here? Was it a punishment for everything she'd done? Had it been so wrong that she had been trapped here in this eternal nighttime, unable to move as she looked at the stars and wondered when something would happen? Nothing did happen though. She just sat there in the dark, alone. At least the air wasn't too cold and the ground was comfortable.

Hold on that wasn't right. She wasn't a monster. She'd seen monsters. She'd seen the blood on their hands, and the hunger for more of it in their eyes. She had seen the pile of bodies and the tension in bodies that would never truly leave, even if they did survive. She'd seen people get murdered live and watched as people other than just the monster with its fingers around her neck got off on it like it was some kind of porn. She'd seen a monster have sex with its girlfriend in the places it killed other women. She'd seen people murder those they loved most because they thought it would help increase their luck. She'd seen fantasies so thick and twisted that it didn't even make sense to those with normal minds. Those like her who knew when a line had been crossed.

She wasn't like those people. She had been headed down that path, changing into one of them, but she had stopped herself. She'd never be able to cover all the scars from the healing it had taken to e herself again, but she was herself as much as she could be after flipping everything on its head and making it out for the better. Well, as herself as she could be without going back to old habits. Better than her original self, even.

She was a good person. She'd made mistakes, but she'd also made up for them god damnit. She'd sacrificed everything to make herself a person who made life better for others. She didn't deserve to be alone in a field, surrounded by maybe trees maybe monsters with no grasp on the past and therefore no acknowledgement of the future. She didn't deserve to sit in the dark with no good company, trying to make sense of the here-and-now foggy place her mind had been wedged.

It was that thought that pulled her out of it. Pulled away from the dark forest with the stars that began to disappear as shadowy figures stepped int he way of her seeing them. Pulled away from the sleep, jerking her awake, eyes shooting wide as her body spasmmed, hands wrapped tightly around her sheets. Tears were already streaming down her face and something was beeping sporadically. A burning pain ripped through her body and all she could see was the last thing that had been there before she'd been taken to that place that was nowhere and everywhere all at once. A hand gripped her arm and she screamed, her vision blurred by her tears.

"Y/n." That voice. She knew that voice. It cut through her panic, such a familiar sound with so much care and concern in it. A voice she never thought she'd hear again, let alone with those emotions in it. Her eyes focused as her gaze sought out the face she was so hoping to see. To her relief, her eyes locked with another pair, brown and large with concern and warm.

"Spencer?" She croaked out, leaning away in surprise.

The room grew still and quiet until Y/n's head cleared and slowly everything came back piece by piece. The room was full of who she guessed was now her ex-coworkers. People she saw once as family, but now knew probably hated her. No one could make eye contact with her except Spencer. They were too busy looking at him as he looked at her. Y/n felt her head fall as she looked at her lap in shame. She wanted to apologize. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She wanted none of them to be there. Why didn't she just wake up alone?

When she went to pull her knees to her chest to hide her face, she winced, her hand shooting to her stomach. "Careful," a nearby doctor warned her. "You'll pull your stitches.

Then her mind cleared more, and she remembered the woman above her. The sick smile that twisted her face as the knife went in and out of Y/n again and again. Y/n closed her eyes, leaning back into bed and pulling the blanket over her head, groaning softly. Now that it seemed her freak out had passed, everyone was filing out of the room. Had they been outside waiting for her to wake up? Maybe they felt obligated since they had a relationship with her, even though they probably didn't want to anymore. Maybe they were just waiting to say goodbye and fire her.

Her mind began racing, filling with thoughts that made her chest hurt much more than her stomach did. When it went quiet outside and she thought she was alone, she began crying. She moved her hand against her mouth to muffle it, but allowed herself to let go and release the little sobs she'd been locking within. Her worst fear had come true. Her past mistakes had unearthed and were ruining her life once again. All the friendships she'd made. The job she so loved and was looking forward to becoming a bigger part in was being taken from her before she could even really start.

A hand skimmed her shoulder and she squeaked and jumped, moving her blanket down in surprise. To her horror, none other than Dr. Reid himself was sitting in the chair next to her bed, looking rather upset. He probably was listening to her self pity and loathing it. Loathing that she could feel bad for herself when he probably felt she deserved every injury she'd gotten. Did he hate her that much? Was everything so far ruined in such a short time? If she could go back in time she'd go back to the first day she saw him in that stupid coffee shop and strangle herself. How could she have been so stupid?

Self loathing like she'd not felt since she'd first realized how messed up she was began to rise up in her chest and consume her. Her chest restricted and her heart began to burn. Her throat closed and she found she couldn't breathe. "I-" She cut off, her eyebrows coming together as her face tensed as she struggled to breathe.

Spencer's concern grew. "Are you okay?"

Her hand rose to her chest, trying to massage it as if it was a tight muscle rather than a panic attack. She knew herself well enough to know that's what it was. She used to get these all the time, and still did occasionally. It started when she'd had a breakdown over her actions against Spencer and hadn't left her fully since. "I'm- fine," she managed, her face contorting further at the pain it caused her. "I-" She sucked in a breath and felt it get lodged in her throat.

"Panic attack," Spencer realized quietly.

"I'm-" But again it was cut off as she winced, shaking her head. She covered her face.

Spencer reached over, grabbing a pen off a nearby desk. It looked to be some sort of table, with food on top of it. It must have had wheels, because he pulled on it and it moved closer. He moved the food off, putting the desk in between them and setting the pen on top. "Can I show you something?" She looked over, feeling the urge to snap at him but holding it back because he didn't deserve that. Why didn't he just leave? "I can move this pen with my mind," he told her confidently. "Do you want to see?"

That caught her attention. "Uh-" But then she winced again.

He took that as a yes and stood up. He picked up the pen, holding it out for her to see. "Give me a second as I..." He rubbed it on his pants. "I have to charge it with static electricity. It makes the pen move better and connects it to my mind so I can move it better."

"So you move it with static electricity?" She asks quietly. Her words were a little breathless but came nonetheless.

He tried to hide a smile and failed. "No. I move it with my mind." She rolled her eyes and he chuckled. He placed it back on the table when he finished "charging" it and then pointed at it, sitting back down. "Now, watch this." She did just that, her eyes on the pen on the table and his finger as he pointed to it. His finger began to move forward and to her shock and wonder, the pen began to roll along with it. It went on and on until it fell off the end of the other side of the table, his hand dropping to catch it at the last second.

"Okay that was not some static electricity bullshit," Y/n accused, pointing her own finger but at him rather than at a pen on a table. "How did you do that?"

The grin on Spencer's face was contagious, pulling up Y/n's own lips. "A magician never reveals his secrets, you know that." She rolled her eyes and laughed and he relaxed. "You feel better?"

His words made her stop short. "You... Yeah." Her chest had loosened and her body had relaxed. There's wasn't any pain. She could breathe just fine. "How did you do that?"

"Distraction." That was an answer he could give her. "I took your focus away from what you were thinking and feeling and it allowed your body to move on more quickly."

Y/n was quiet for a few seconds. Long enough that the silence was noticeable and Spencer felt the urge to reach out and comfort Y/n when she looked away from him. "Why did you help me?"

He knew what the real questions behind that was and he sighed. "I talked to Michael." She looked up at him sharply. He was already looking back and their eyes locked. There was no judgement in his gaze and it surprised her. "I was... a little freaked out at first. The BAU has a stalker. One that's been following all of us and has been killing people to show that he knows our cases. Sending us gifts to let us know he's there. I thought you were..."

Y/n shook her head. "God no. I could never kill anyone, Spencer."

"I know." He offered a small smile. "Six years ago huh?"

A small groan came from Y/n. "I hate thinking about it." She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "And I don't expect you to forgive me, Spenc-" He cut off, shaking her head. "Dr. Reid. I don't expect you to trust me again either. And I especially don't expect you to work me considering you don't trust me, so I'm quitting."

Spencer jerked. "Y/n, this is your dream job. What you've always wanted."

She nodded. "I know that, but there are other things that people do. I don't expect people will hire me as an officer of any kind once this goes on my record, so I'll just have to do..." She shrugged, her face set as she glared at her hands. "Something else."

"You're an idiot." She looked over, confused, to see him smiling. "I know why you're doing this, and you're a total idiot." She didn't know what to say to that, so Spencer simply continued. "Did you know that a few years ago I was kidnapped during a case? I was drugged really badly. So much so that I got addicted while on it. Or maybe it was before when I found more of it once I was home and continued to use it. Either way, it got bad pretty fast. Hotch found out and told me that he would have to let me go if this continued. You can't give someone who's drugged a gun. I even... came to work once." He winced and Y/n felt her heart shatter in her chest. She knew what he was talking about. She remembered that span of time he seemed off. Distant and faded. She'd thought it had been the job getting to him. Maybe depression. Shed never imagined something like this. "If we were all judged by the worst things we'd ever done. Held accountable for mistakes we made years ago. If we were all judged based on the lowest points in our life, I wouldn't be here either." He reached forward, taking one of her hands between two of his. "I'd like you to stay. You add a very important piece to our team, and... I'd miss you. You're my friend, Y/n. No matter what you did over half a decade ago, YOU stopped it and got better. You didn't have to be stopped by someone else. You changed it made a better life for yourself and now we have a relationship that is very real and I don't have many of those." He looked at her and suddenly 'friendship' sounded different when he said it. "I'd like you to stay."

Well, how could she say no to that?

"So what's going on with you two?"

Y/n was half asleep, her head on Spencer's shoulder. After she'd gotten out of the hospital and returned to work her and Spencer had been inseparable. Now that the air was clear they could be honest with each other. They still weren't doing anything about the feelings they both seemed to have. Y/n was nervous to cross that line and Spencer wanted her to feel free to take things as slow as needed. He'd be lying if he didn't admit that he also needed time to come to terms with her past himself. They'd had a long talk about it, with Y/n telling him what she knew and how far she'd gone in stalking him. It had been a hard thing to hear, but most of the information was fuzzy for her to recall or outdated, so it didn't matter. Even more had been overlapped by what she'd learned naturally through their current friendship, so that helped. In return of his forgiveness, she'd gone on a rant of all the stupid things she did in high school - not something he'd asked her to do, but something she'd insisted on anyway. He'd been laughing so hard at the end of her most embarrassing high school moments that all had been forgiven and it didn't seem as weird anymore. Maybe he just had a higher tolerance than he should.

Now they were here, much closer and familiar with each other as well as much more open and honest. Y/n never pressured Spencer to tell her anything, sensing the line he'd silently drawn of her getting too much into his business. She chose to be quite open herself though. To the whole team, not just Spencer. The team thought there would have been more hesitance, but before Spencer knew about all of this and it had put a little chip into their relationships, he'd been pretty sure of much stronger feelings than friendship so it had progressed pretty quickly.

It didn't matter what either of them had done in the past. They were much more concerned with what they were doing it now, and making sure that they did as much of it as possible together.

Spencer chose to hum rather than shrug, in favor of not waking Y/n. "I like her. She likes me."

"And everything else?" It was Morgan asking. The man was always protective of Spencer, but Y/n had been his friend too and he felt the need to have her back as well. Of this whole thing went south it might end up REALLY ugly.

"It doesn't matter," Spencer decided. And then he let it go. And Y/n felt her own chest release, finally really setting all those old fears free. It just didn't matter anymore.

Morgan nodded though Y/n couldn't see that. "Cool."

And that was the end of it.

"I can't believe it's real," Y/n whispered softly. She had gone through school. She was graduated. She was a REAL member of the BAU now. Badge and gun and all. She thought of her younger self looking at that TV screen as she watched the news as a child, and how proud that little girl would be to see who she had grown up to be. Her eyes turned to her friends. "I did it."

Spencer moved forward first. "And now there's something I have to do." They hadn't been as close since Y/n had gone to school, but they still talked all they could and hung out around their schedules. The most they'd seen each other was between calls at work - but then it was mostly dead bodies talk and asking her to research people who might be killers, or at least connected to them. Now was one of the few times they'd been in person, and would be the first of many as she'd be following them on cases rather than staying behind with Garcia.

He took the pause of a moment to grab her face, pulling their lips together, and she let him. They'd made a deal to wait until she was graduated so that neither of them were distracted amidst all the very important things that required their attention more. Now they didn't have to wait anymore.

The rest of the team cheered and hooted and hollered but the kiss didn't last long. It wasn't a surprise, but it had been long awaited and even the chaste exchange was something to be celebrated.

"To the future?" Y/n offered quietly.

"To the future," Spencer agreed.

"As long as you guys aren't idiots on the field," Emily groaned. Her smile let them know she was joking though.

"No promises," Y/n responded easily, the two separating so she could sass her friends that had become family so quickly. "Especially to you." She smirked and the room erupted in laughter and acknowledgement of Y/n's jab at Emily.

Yeah, they were going to be just fine.

Tag List: @ajwantsapancake @urie-bowie-mercury

Spencer Readers: @realimbo

#spencer reid #matthew gray gubler #x reader #imagine #criminal minds #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds imagine #matthew gray gubler x reader #matthew gray gubler imagine

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pineapplesandpinas · 4 years ago

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Air Mattress - Fred Weasley One-shot

Prompt: Imagine your OTP having to share an air mattress for the night. Person A is already in bed and comfortable and person B is very tired from the day. B ﬂops down on the other side, launching A into the air.

Warnings: None this is literally all fluff lol

A/N: Hey guys! This is my first fic, so I’m really nervous to post this. Please give me any and all feedback!! I am accepting requests and will try and get to them as soon as I can. Thank you for reading!!

*Gif not mine*

Staring at the air mattress you sighed. The whole situation was your fault anyways, so you had no room to complain. While staying at the Weasley’s for Christmas certainly had its perks, there was the issue of capacity. While many were always welcome to the Burrow, this year the amount of people outnumbered the bed space. So, the air mattress had been brought out. The stupid thing wasn’t the most comfortable, and you all agreed that it wasn’t fair to make two people sleep on it the entire break. So, a plan was devised; split into pairs and when your turn came you would spend the night on the air mattress together.

In theory it was a great plan. However, it was now your turn with the mattress. And you had been paired with Fred. Had it not been for your massive crush the only thing you would be worrying about would be your ability to fall asleep. But Fate had a cruel sense of humor, and you had drawn the short stick. Now you had to spend the night next to the man of your dreams. How were you supposed to react?

You had concluded that the best way to avoid embarrassment was to fall asleep before Fred. Retiring early, you gave the excuse that you wanted to be up early for presents. Everyone bought the lie, and now here you were lying on the uncomfortable mattress. Sighing you knew that sleep would not come easily tonight but gathered the blanket up to your chin anyways.

You couldn’t tell how much time had passed but you had managed to drift off into a light slumber. The door creaked loudly, waking you. You could make out a tall dark figure and knew it was Fred. Trying to calm your now racing heart you shifted onto your side and tried quickly to fall back asleep. However, your senses had been thrown into overdrive.

Your ears perked up at the sound of soft clothes hitting the floor. The knowledge that Fred was undressing quite literally behind your back had you shivering. You heard him groan and move to the end of the bed. You were confused until you heard a whoosh of air and Fred hitting the mattress beside you. Hard.

Funny thing about air mattresses- the air doesn’t tend to stay in one place. So as all the air was moved from Fred’s side, it rushed to yours. Shrieking you felt yourself go airborne before hitting the hard-wood floor. Groaning you rolled onto your back, trying to catch the breath that had been knocked from you.

“Oh, Merlin are you alright Y/n?” Fred had jumped up the moment you hit the ground. “Bloody hell I feel awful. Can you get up?”

You nodded, unable to speak. You looked up into Fred’s concerned eyes, feeling his hands on your sides holding you up. Weakly you sent him a smile.

“Only you would forget about the physics of an air mattress Weasley.” You joked. Fred’s frown deepened. “Oh I’m only joking c’mon. Just get back in bed, I’ll be alright eventually.” You shrugged off his hands and crawled back onto the bed. When Fred made no move to follow you looked up in surprise. He was still watching you, guilt written across his entire face.

“I’m really sorry Y/n. I should have known that would happen. I was just too tired, and my dimwitted brain couldn’t comprehend anything.” This time it was your turn to frown. Fred certainly wasn’t dimwitted, quite the opposite in fact. Holding your arms open you motioned to him. Pulling him forward you wrapped your arms around him in a tight embrace. You could feel his hesitation before returning the hug full force.

“Now you listen to me Frederic Gideon Weasley. You may act like an annoying prat most of the time, but you most definitely aren’t stupid. Your one of the smartest people I know!” Feeling him scoff you hurried on before he could interrupt. “I’m serious Fred! I know for a fact that it was you who came up with the idea for the joke shop, and you’re the mastermind behind almost all the pranks you pull. No average bloke could think of half of that stuff!”

Pulling back, you looked grabbed his face and looked him straight in the eyes. “You are no dimwit. If you ever say such a thing again, I’ll hex you.” He smiled at that and you felt your heart warm at the sight. Glancing down at his lips you quickly pulled your eyes back up, only to see his dilate. Suddenly his lips crashed into yours, and you squeaked in surprise. You recovered quickly and pushed back, eyes screwing up as your heart exploded in fireworks.

The kiss ended before long and you were embarrassed to find yourself chasing his lips. He giggled at your response.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now.” He murmured. You felt your cheeks go warm.

“Yeah?”

“Of course. Blimey Y/n, why do you think I offered to share the air mattress with you? All my time is spent thinking of you. The way you laugh at my jokes, how soft your hair is, when you get all worked up over a stupid test. What about you is there not to love?”

Your cheeks were flaming at this point. You hid your face in his shoulder and felt him chuckle. His long arms wrapped around you once again, and you enjoyed his strong hold. At some point you pulled back and gave him a small smile.

“What do you say we get to sleep. After all, tomorrow is Christmas.” His eyes lit up at the mention of tomorrow morning and you laughed. Laying down you faced each other, simply looking into each other’s eyes.

“I have to say,” You whispered. “Even though I haven’t opened any presents yet, you’re the best one I’ve gotten.” Together you both drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

Perhaps sharing an air mattress wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

#fred weasley #fluff #fred weasley fic #harry potter #fred weasley x you #fred weasley x y/n #fred x y/n #fred x you #harry potter imagine #y/n #hogwarts #the burrow #christmas

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pochapal · 4 years ago

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I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart

i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.

the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.

next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!

thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.

speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.

the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.

bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.

#Anonymous #hi bestie here's 1500 words of me getting mad about the worst television experience i had in my life #why the FUCK was this man tumblr's favourite back in the day. what the fuck did anyone see in any of this shit #i never want to think about dr whom ever again

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traincat · 4 years ago

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I’ve read Waid and Hickman’s FF runs and am currently reading Zdarsky’s 2 in One. I’m planning on eventually reading the Lee/Kirby run. Can I ask, what other runs would you recommend? Is Claremont’s good? Sorry for bothering.

I LOVE Waid and Hickman’s Fantastic Four runs, and Zdarsky’s Marvel Two-In-One was excellent to the point where one of my lingering disappointments is that Marvel brought the Fantastic Four back in a way that prematurely cut off Zdarksy’s 2n1. I know I said I wanted them back but wow did we all get monkey’s paw’d on that one. Zdarsky did really excellent stuff with both Ben and Johnny and the multiverse hopping was honestly fun and interesting. Lee/Kirby is also, in my opinion, just a really terrific run -- it lays the groundwork for not only the future of the Fantastic Four but a lot of big concepts for the Marvel Universe in general, and I think it holds up really well by modern day storytelling standards. Lee’s sense of humor works well with the retrofuturistic vibe and Kirby’s art is always wonderful. In particular I think it’s interesting to look back on The Galactus Trilogy (Fantastic Four #48-50) as the granddaddy of all event comics, for better or worse.

Claremont -- okay, I love Claremont’s run, let me start off by saying that. Claremont’s run follows on what is in my opinion one of the worst periods of Fantastic Four canon, and I mean bad to the point where the literal canon at that point was that to get things back on track the Fantastic Four had to be put in a bubble universe. Claremont’s run kicks in one or two issues after their return to the main Marvel universe and it’s so fun. I think Fantastic Four is one of those series that kind of flourishes in adversity and Claremont’s run starts off with the Fantastic Four trying to regain their footing in a world that had assumed them dead, their Baxter Building gone, living in a warehouse property. Claremont, in my opinion, also has one of the best if not the best handle on characterization for a lot of key Fantastic Four figures, including Johnny, Reed, and Sue. His Ben is also very good, but I think Ben in particular tends to be an easier sell for a lot of comic book writers -- the outcast, the gruff man, the comic relief. He’s easier to identify with than Reed, the Smartest Man on Earth, or Johnny, defined by his youth and beauty and queercoded since the ‘60s, or Sue, by sheer factor of being a woman. So I think a lot of writers identify with Ben first and foremost and put the most love and care into his depiction, whereas the others are a little easier for them to leave by the wayside. Which isn’t a bad thing -- I love that one of the most beloved comic book characters is also one of Marvel’s few canonically Jewish characters, but there is a wealth of truly excellent Ben canon in comparison to the other three. Especially with Johnny, there’s no one else who has written for Fantastic Four who has put nearly as much thought and detail into Johnny’s relationship with his powers, both the positive and the negative, as Claremont has, even reworking the origin story from Lee and Kirby’s joyous scene of Johnny flaming on for the first time into a deeply traumatizing incident -- being sixteen and traumatized and bursting into uncontrollable flames.

(Fantastic Four v3 #11) There’s also a lot of women in Claremont’s run! A valid criticism of Fantastic Four canon is that by its initial core team makeup it tends to be lacking in female characters compared to some other big Marvel staples, but Claremont brings in a ton, from Reed’s college friend and fellow genius Alyssa Moy (who has been done dirty by pretty much every other writer who’s ever touched her, including Waid and Hickman) to multiversal bounty hunter Bounty to the most platonic of Johnny’s gal pals Caledonia to Valeria Von Doom, a “time dancing” teenage incarnation of the baby Sue lost back in Byrne’s run, who sets up baby Val’s eventual return. Claremont is also king of Reed vs Doom setups -- if you haven’t read his Fantastic Four vs X-Men miniseries, I highly recommend it, and he brings a lot of the two sides of the same coin energy from that into his Fantastic Four run.

The downside of Claremont’s run is that the plot is always there and always running and I could not explain half of it if you paid me. Things certainly happen! Like all the time! For seemingly no apparent reason! Stuff gets set up and then it’s not resolved and now we are in Latveria! I don’t think this is necessarily all that detrimental -- the run is still massively fun and the characterization is always fresh and interesting. It’s just that sometimes you have no idea what’s going on and you have to roll with it. And then sometimes you do know what’s going on but in the way where you know Claremont was just writing it because it’s his kink. Which is like, whatever. As authorial ids go, you can pretty consistently do worse than Claremont’s, I’ll give him that. So I do recommend on it the whole, as long as you’re not going into expecting the kind of plots either Hickman or Waid brought the book. Claremont’s is kind of like “stuff happens and it’s either weird or fun so just don’t pay too much attention to it.”

Aside from Claremont, I feel like I generally like far more Fantastic Four runs than I dislike -- but also I don’t hate Millar’s run, which is honestly bad, so it’s possible I’m just very forgiving with the Fantastic Four. I really like Robinson’s run, which is the last run before the Great Fantastic Four Drought of 2015-2018. It’s short, self-contained, and devoted entirely to one story, so it’s pretty tightly written, with good characterization and some very shiny art by Leonard Kirk. Straczynski’s run is decent enough for the fact that it intersects with Civil War -- I think he does his best to get into the heads of the characters re: their actions in Civil War -- and it leads directly into Dwayne McDuffie’s run, another brief one where Black Panther and Storm take over for Reed and Sue. Very fun. Marvel Knights 4 is also a fairly recent run that’s got some strong moments in it, although I feel it’s a little inconsistent in its handling of the characters. It’s still fun, though. For an older, longer run, I like Simsonson’s -- the art is very dynamic, even if the storyline kind of gets too involved with itself.

(FF #337)

I recommend Byrne’s run with the caveat that there’s plenty to dislike about it and plenty of reasons to avoid it, not the least of it being Byrne himself as a creator and a person. It’s heavily sexist in how it deals with Sue, it retcons a huge age gap into Sue and Reed’s relationship, and Byrne’s early departure sets up my all time least favorite Fantastic Four story. (Though that one is Roger Stern and later Tom DeFalco’s fault.) It is historic as Fantastic Four runs go, though, and there’s a lot in later runs that’s built over it or references it or borrows from it. So it’s a rec with a lot of caveats and I also understand why people might give it a skip -- I think it’s more important for an understanding of the greater body of Fantastic Four canon and the impact it had than for the actual run itself. I do think Byrne has some very interesting subtext with Johnny, although it never come to fruition, and while his Sue falls victim to a lot of sexism, I really like what he does with the character of Frankie Raye, who like poor Alyssa Moy I don’t think has ever gotten really good treatment ever since.

I have mixed feelings on both Millar and Fraction’s runs, not in the least because I think they end very similarly -- and that Millar did it better, which doesn’t say great things. Millar’s run is kind of like a trashy popcorn flick version of Fantastic Four; it’s not actually good, but I can’t say I don’t like the terrible eldritch monster in Scotland Christmas arc (Fantastic Four #564-565) and I’m sort of into future Sue. Fraction, on the other hand, takes a space road trip and makes it boring, which is the greatest Fantastic Four sin of all. He’s one of the rare writers who I think actually writes a bad Ben Grimm -- not the least because his run goes out of its way to try and label it Ben’s own fault that he was transformed into a monster. I do really like his FF (just the initials) though.

The only Fantastic Four runs I can say I really truly dislike are Tom DeFalco’s and Dan Slott’s, which sort of unfortunate because DeFalco’s is both long influential (I have no idea why because it’s honestly terrible like in terms of storytelling) and because Slott’s is happening right now. DeFalco comes onto the book on Fantastic Four #356 and stays on until Fantastic Four #416, at which point Marvel hit a literal retcon button to get out of the mess he’d made. (This leads into Fantastic Four v2, which is largely skippable -- it’s basically a mid-90s retelling of a bunch of early Fantastic Four stories that leads back into the FF heading back to the main universe.) DeFalco’s responsible for the Skrull retcon in the JohnnyAlicia marriage and for dragging that out for over 50 issues, the entirety of which feel like he was writing without a plan or outline or literally anything, and I have never felt like a comic book was attempting to gaslight me through its own incompetence or refusal to commit to things it set up itself as badly as I do with DeFalco’s run. (I like other non-Fantastic Four Tom DeFalco runs. I just hate this one.) Dan Slott’s run is just 25 issues and counting of badly written emotionless unfunny pages blandly stapled together and I so badly want Marvel to kick him off the book for its own good.

#almosteverythingnerd #fantastic four #traincat talks comics #comic recs #long post/

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lacheri · 4 years ago

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i don’t know if your event is still open since it is already past time from your deadline but the event in ypur navigation says otherwise so i am betting my luck ≡^ˇ^≡

i am INFJ-T, and i am a pisces ☉ scorpio ☽. i use she/her. i love to have mutual pinning trope with reiner braun. i’m someone who is studious and sometimes i based my worth to my grades LMFAO i like earth tones. i love cooking and singing, too! my love languages are words of affirmation and acts of service!

thank you for creating this such beautiful event 🤍

hi mono! I hope you like it angel! <3 (also this is so funny I literally started this the day you submitted and before I navigated through your (now old) theme, at least it's ON BRAND)

The Moon: everything looks prettier under the moon's glow. this is the card for the subconscious, for the dreamer, for hidden thoughts and feelings. this card has many different meanings, anxiety and fear lace the moon as well, but I like to interrupt this as a positive sign when it appears in a reading. it provides a dreamy cast on all things that fall under its light. this card just makes so much sense to me with you being an infj, someone who's filled with imagination and insightfulness.

ivy - frank ocean. "If I could see through your walls, I could see you're faking. If you could see my thoughts, you would see our faces."

If there were words to describe him, they escaped every corner of your mind. His blonde hair curled outwards in flicks against the nape of his neck, begging for your fingers to reach out and entangle themselves in the strands. You knew he’d be going to get it cut within the week, he always did when it grew out to be this long. Still, you could admire him, even if you were staring directly into the back of his head, daydreaming away of your could be love.

“Pass the quizzes back!” Professor Hange called out from the front of the room, handing out large stacks to the front rows of students.

You sat back in the fifth row, directly behind Reiner Braun, the theoretical love of your life. Had you even spoken more than two sentences to the man? Absolutely not. Did you know his favorite flavor of gum was spearmint, and he never could keep a pencil on his person? Of course, he asked you every single day.

It wasn’t like Reiner had a well known reputation or anything, in fact he floated like a social butterfly between so many different groups of people, it was hard to dislike the guy. He always had a charming smile on his face and a kind word to say. It didn’t take much to develop your small crush on the man sitting in front of you, and although he was mostly silent while in class, his eyes would swirl with concentration whenever you’d catch his line of view.

The sight of his sharp jawline came into your field of vision as he turned, resting one arm on the back of his chair as he met your eyes, palm extended with your paper, “Here ya’ go.”

“Thank you,” you managed to smile, tucking a strand of loose hair behind your ear before reaching forward, passing back the rest of the stack to the student behind you.

“I’m sure you did great,” he offered a small smile when you turned back around, the genuine kind that had your heart fluttering in your chest. “You always do.”

“I’m sure you did too,” you responded shyly, diverting your gaze to the paper now in front you, smiling as your eyes scanned the contents. A perfect score, just as you had hoped.

Reiner hadn’t completely turned around yet, darting his eyes between you and his own quiz, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

Record officially broken, “Sure, what’s up?”

“Do you think you could help me out with this class?” his eyes were shifting all over the room, his usual confident façade in tatters. “I don’t understand a single thing about biology.”

“Um,” your eyes widened dramatically, a cold sweat breaking out under your clothing. No way, there was literally no way this was actually happening.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” you saw the twinge of pink rise on the apples of his cheeks as his fingers lifted to scratch the back of his neck. “I can pay you too.”

“No, no,” you shook your head furiously, forcing words passed your teeth. “You don’t have to pay me. When did you, uh, want to do this?”

“I guess after class if you’re not busy,” his eyes flickered to the clock above the whiteboard on the wall. Please say yes, he chanted in his mind.

“No, not really. That works for me,” You'd be calling out of work right now if you had a job, cancelling any and all plans to take full advantage of this golden moment. One that had played in your head the entire semester, living in your daydreams while you ogled the blonde with a fluttering heart.

“Cool,” Reiner bit down on his bottom lip as he smiled, readjusting himself to face forward as Professor Hange began to lecture the class about their pitiful grades.

“Cool,” you breathed out, feeling a sense of relief now his eyes weren’t directly on you. If you only knew how Reiner’s heart thumped in his ears, how that smile never left his lips. He’d been working up the courage to ask you that all semester.

The library was nearly empty after the sunset, the perfect scene for your tutoring session with the ever handsome Reiner. It took all of your willpower to stay focused on the textbooks sprawled on the table in front of you, and not the warmth radiating from his body as he sat next to you, his knee brushing against yours.

“Okay, so what’s the difference between mitosis and meiosis again?” you whispered, feeling the gnawing tingle of sleepiness behind your eyelids.

Reiner broke the contact from the page in front of him, you could feel his breath hit your cheeks bones as he muttered, “Mitosis has four stages while meiosis has eight. The chromosome numbers are the same in each one though.”

“No, just mitosis stays the same,” you turned your head to the old book in front of you, pointer finger trailing the sentence as you corrected him. “The daughter cell is halved in chromosomes in meiosis. Both produce new cells and start with a single parent cell.”

“This makes no sense,” Reiner groaned, placing his head in his hands.

This plan seemed a lot better in his head, allowing the perfect opportunity to get close to you, to hold a conversation. He’d turn around almost every day of class and ask to borrow a pencil, just to talk to you. He felt bad when he’d begin to turn in his chair just to see you already extending one out for him. So, Reiner moved on to offering you gum every day. This also became the expected, and you began placing a foiled covered stick on his desk as you’d walk into class every day.

You were just so smart and so pretty, there was absolutely no way he stood a chance. He lacked the brains, lacked the courage, not to mention he didn’t have any outstanding features. Sure if he was incredibly handsome he could at least try to dumbly pull you, ignorantly stumbling over half assed compliments and actions. But he was too self aware, feeling small next to your figure. He was out of ideas, and found that he was using his last ditch efforts to finally make his move.

“Here, I’ll make you some flash cards,” you offered, taking a sharpie and some loose index cards from your school bag.

“Do you think we could do this more often?” Reiner mumbled out suddenly, a fierce blush threatening the tips of his ears. “The, uh, study sessions? I’m really lost.” He just wanted to spend more time with you.

“Yeah, of course,” you pulled your bottom lip between your teeth, avoiding his gaze at all costs.

“Cool,” he breathed out, a weight lifted off of his chest. “I’m usually free after class most days, maybe we could like, get food tomorrow?”

Reiner was sweating awaiting your answer. He’d been building up the courage for weeks now to ask to be in your presence, and he felt as if he might’ve been pushing his luck. Of course, you didn’t feel this way at all, almost in a stupor that your crush had even asked to spend more time with you.

“Okay,” you smiled so softly, Reiner could feel the red heat reach the apples of his cheeks. “There’s this really cool diner in town, I’ve been dying to go.”

“The retro one? I’ve been there a few times, it’s pretty cool, and the food is really good,” C’mon Reiner find another reason to keep her attention, “Are you busy tonight, we can go now?”

You glanced down to your outfit, and deemed it cute enough to go out in public, “You sure? I don’t want to hold you up if you have plans.”

Reiner couldn’t pack his bookbag faster, fingers clumsily fumbling all the notes he had taken during your study session, “I’ll call an Uber right now.”

It was like you had known Reiner all of your life. If someone were to pass by the diner’s windows that night and saw the two of you, shoveling food into your mouths and sipping on milkshakes, they could’ve sworn that you were dating, deeply in love. The way you both leaned in across the table, toes centimeters away from touching under the booth, fingertips so close on the table, it was almost a sure sign. Reiner of course wouldn’t have worked up the courage to officially ask you out until your sixth study session, almost at the end of the semester. And of course you said yes, brain malfunctioning at the admittance of his feelings.

When you met Reiner’s closest friends, Bertholdt and Annie, he introduced you as “the smartest, prettiest girl in the whole world”, and had gotten a little too enthusiastic when asked how the two of you met.

“We had a class together and I drooled over her every single day, and finally got the courage to ask her out,” not exactly the truth, you’d think as he’d recite the story. He was leaving out how badly you had pined over him as well. Almost in denial, Reiner genuinely couldn’t believe he had somehow managed to capture your heart from the very beginning.

It seemed as if your feelings for Reiner only deepened and blossomed under the weight of your new relationship. You had only begun to scratch the surface, and you fell so deeply in love with the blonde as time moved forward. Maybe it was the universe calling to you when you had first met him in your biology class, or maybe you were just meant to be soulmates. You’d say exactly that too when your friends would ask you how the two of you got together.

There wasn’t a better matched couple, the friends would think. Strangers would agree too, catching the sight of your conjoined hands together and loving gazes and you’d sit in that diner, night after night, study sessions in the library. It had to be fate, you decided in the end. Reiner was everything you ever wanted and more, even better than the daydreams you had conjured while you stared at the back of his head. Reiner felt exactly the same, and he told you every single day how you were the best thing to ever happen to him.

#lacheri's 200 follower event #WOOOOO THIS TOOK A MINUTE TO WRITE #i hope u like it mono <3

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snickiebear · 4 years ago

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hiyaaa hehehe

10, 13 and 20 💚✨

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK!!!!!!

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for?

Okay so my fav fandoms would be The Old Guard, Hannibal, Naruto, ATLA, and Soul Eater.

My favorite pairings JoeXNicky, Hannigram, Kakasaku/Shikasaku/any multisaku ship (excluding Sasosaku), and then Zukka.

Finally, my fav character to read for is SAKURA. I LOVE THAT BITCH. she is endless potential and i love seeing how everyone writes her differently, though my fav is unapologetically badass Sakura. i just love her so much.

13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic?

AHAHAHA sometimes! I’ve gone over this ask before but it just depends on the fic itself. Like most of the ones posted i had an idea and just ran with it. I knew what I wanted to happen then I just filled in the blanks. For the intimacy of being understood I did like a “progressive” outline where i would write and then plan what i wanted next.

As for right now, i have an outline for my first like “serious” fic and i think its pretty digestible? Its chapter by chapter in bullet points and pretty play by play...though, hm. Well, now that I think about it the outline might be pretty confusing because i make references to things that people might not understand A LOT so theres that... as in world building shit. i think u get it AHAHAHA

20. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

The initial thought. That first idea in its rawest form where you havent turned it over countless times in your head. I love that aha moment, that stroke of genius when you figure out a kink in your plot or know exactly where you’re going with the fic/how it ends.

For me, it feels like i could literally punch god. i had a break through when texting my beta a few days ago (she doesn’t want know of any of my plans for Of Love and War) and i went apeshit i was like “I AM THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE WORLD” and her immediate response was like “great now im scared” AHAHAHAHA

ask me shit plz

#silly things from silly friends

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be-ready-when-i-say-go · 4 years ago

Text

They Don’t Know You Like I Do

This is a reupload, a throwback. It was originally written in 2019 and posted on my old account calumh-excess. I hope you guys enjoy.

In the same universe as We’re Outsiders.

Sandra should be out of his league. But with a good heart and an open mind, she gives Ashton a shot. That’s all he needs.

Greaser!AU.

Enjoy my masterlist.

Support me on Ko-Fi

_________________________

When there’s a knock at the door, Ashton’s a little confused. Though, knocks are more frequent now if he has to be honest. He racks his brain for who could possibly be at the door. It’s not Luke. He had to run some errands for his parents. It’s not Calum. He’s at work; left early this morning. Calum did agree to be at the race. And unless Calum forgot his keys, Ashton is sure that Calum wouldn’t be showing back to the house.

So Ashton finishes zipping up the boot and walks to the door. Cookie stands on the other side, grinning. Her siblings attached to her hips. He grins at the sight. It’s very common on Saturday mornings for her to show up at his doorstep, whether Calum is home or not. More often not, since Saturdays seem to have picked up at the shop and Cookie seems to be able to sneak away before the morning rush. “Know your boy toy’s not here right?”

She rolls her eyes, extending out the glass dish. “I know. I did talk to him last night.”

Ashton takes the dish; it’s heavier than he anticipated. It smells good though. He won’t lie. The deep inhale almost makes his stomach growl and his mouth salivate. “Thanks.” They don’t need to be taken care of, but it’s nice. She always brings enough for not just Ashton and Calum, but also Luke and Michael. “One of these days I’m gonna get that recipe.”

“Oh, hot stuff, we’d have to be married for that,” she teases laughing.

“You say that like I won’t snatch you up from Calum.”

His only acknowledgement to the tease is a smile. “Got one more in the car. Can they sit inside for a second? If you’re not busy.”

“Yeah, they can sit inside for a minute.”

Teresa, Cookie’s sister, taps Ashton on the leg on the way in. A game they seem to always play where he attempts to dodge it, but never seems to skirt out of the way fast enough. Ashton buckles a little at the motion, careful of the food he’s still holding, and drags himself to the kitchen table. “I oughta report this!”

Her brother, Curtis, settles onto the couch. He’s always been quiet. But he smiles at the exchange and settles into the cushions. Ashton leaves the dish out. He’s glad Cookie came by. He wanted to ask her for a favor and had planned to stop by her place or the diner before heading out for the race.

The door creaks open again and Cookie walks in, heading straight for the kitchen. She doesn’t linger long on the fact that there aren’t many groceries left. She just slips the glass dishes in and prays that they can get back on track soon.

“You know,” Cookie starts watching her sister and brother pick up the deck of cards at the dinning room table and Ashton stand in front of her. “I could get you in at the diner. My folks ain’t that bad.”

Ashton shakes his head. He knew long ago when he lost his job that Cookie could help him out. Somehow it felt wrong, felt like he would’ve been intruding. Besides, he wouldn’t be down for long. “I appreciate it. But I don’t wanna put your folks in a tighter spot. If I start working there and someone hits the roof, y’all take the hit. Not me.”

“World won’t be so black and white one day.”

“Sometimes I think I could be doing more. More than just surviving and more than just hoping for you.”

“If you got marching boots, I know how to get you in.”

It’s only a nod. They are silent, even as cards shuffle in the background. But Ashton knows, by way of the stirring in his chest, that he’s going to be asking about that march.

“Well, I ain’t mean to take up too much time,” Cookie starts, seeing the current round is coming to an end.

“Wait before you go, can I ask you a favor?” It’s not exactly the smartest thing in the world he’s done for cash, agreeing to a race.. Though he’s smart and never gets tied up for people that race for pinks. “I need some help.”

Cookie leans back into the fridge, the white Keds on her feet matching the tile as she crosses her ankles. “Help how?”

Ashton knew he shouldn’t have promised Sandra that Cookie would’ve been there without actually asking Cookie. However, by the time Ashton managed to get home, Calum had already gone to bed and Ashton for sure was not about to call up to her house at that time of night. He was just trying to get Sandra to see that he was just a guy, not the label that people had put on him.

“I have a race.”

Cookie nods. “If you telling me Teresa actually hit you that hard that you can’t drive no more, I oughta sign that girl up for boxing or something,” she teases.

Ashton has to laugh with a shake of his head. “God almighty, no.”

“What’s about this race and needing help?”

“I need you to tag along. I told this girl they were cool and I just need you around so she doesn’t flip.”

It’s a heavy sigh that expels from her lungs and Ashton all but slides to his knees as he grabs onto her hands. “Please, Cookie? Please?”

“These ain’t no family affair. I’ve got my brother and sister. It’s technically illegal.” While Cookie didn’t hold too fast to the rules that governed them, she was not about to act fast and loose in front of siblings. They have fast lips.

“I’ve never seen a race,” Teressa cuts in. She’s dealing out half the deck between her and Curtis.

“See!” Ashton says, lips rolling over as he pouts. “C’mon. Just the one solid. Please.”

“And there’s a reason you haven’t,” Cookie replies. If she gets in trouble on her lonesome is fine. Her parents will flip, they’ll give her a lot of noise. However, that was her fault. If she gets into trouble with her sister and brother around that’s a whole new can of worms. One she’d rather avoid. There’s so much pleading on Ashton’s face though. And of course it had to be a girl too. Races aren’t scary, but they can get nasty.“You ain’t racing for pinks are you? Hate to leave you stranded.”

He shakes his head. “No, I’m in no position to race for pinks.”

The house is in decent condition, but he’s between jobs and needs to find a new source of cash fast. His cars the only thing he’s got going for him. He was let off from his previous gig because the owner was worried about his rep. Not that Ashton wasn’t hard working and diligent at whatever he put his hands on. He busted his ass at work. The owner was looking at a ‘bigger picture.’ It’s bullshit if Ashton is asked. He didn’t throw a fit in front of the owner. He thought about it. He wanted to, but he didn’t want to ruin his chances. He quietly took the week’s pay and left the office. He’s got good word from this boss to another place. Ashton’s worried that his reputation is going to precede him all his life though.

Ashton finally continues, “Please, I need your help. I need the bread and she’s--she’s different, Cookie. She’s giving me a shot.” He’s totally smitten, but he wouldn’t completely admit that. Sandra didn’t exactly grow up on this side of town. None of the guys can help him out. Cookie’s his only shot.

It’s one of her few days where she doesn’t have to be on shift during the morning. She had really just wanted to hit the store to see if the hair grease she needed has been restocked and she wanted to just not think about anything until work.

“Look,” she points over to Teresa and Curtis, “y’all gotta keep tight ships on those lips.”

“Thank you!” Ashton shouts and her siblings chorus.

“And you,” she starts, finger singling him out. “I beat feet after it’s done.” Cookie agrees. “But if there’s any heat, I am not hanging around.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Ashton gushes, wrapping her up in a quick hug. “And I totally understand about the cops. I’d literally do whatever to shake your trail. You know that.”

“I know.I know. You surely know how to put a girl in a pickle.”

“It’s a specialty,” Ashton returns. His grin wide.

The kids continue their game of War before Cookie’s pulling out of the driveway first and waiting for Ashton to lead the way. Admittedly, Ashton didn’t tell Cookie that Sandra was a Soc, a Prep. But maybe she had figured it out by the way he talked about her inexperience with races. Most people would probably laugh at the fact he’s into a Soc. And he knows Cookie would never judge him, but sometimes even he felt a little shame in it. But Sandra is a saint and Ashton is in need of a blessing.

His logic isn’t flawed, but it is a little wishful. If he wins the race, Ashton can show Sandra his world’s not all that bad, it’s not all dangerous. It has it’s danger for sure. But if he could just get her to see the good, then maybe he had proven that the labels were unjust. And it’s twisted thinking he knows. Sandra already seems him as a good person, she already sees something in him. But it’s the outside world. It was always going to be the outside world it seemed that would be in the way. It reminds of how he was with Cookie and god, it makes him feel like an asshole. He could be the first person to admit that. He would be the first to admit that.

When they get the makeshift track, old back roads that lead to the deserted factory, Ashton spots the boys. They rush up from the dirt sides. Calum checked the car before he left this morning. But that was then and now it needs another glance, checking for holes in tires or rocks in the tracks.

Ashton finds her, Sandra, in her red dress with black polka dots. She waves, but doesn’t make a move closer from her car. She swore to Ashton she would find a way to the race. He insisted that they could meet somewhere, but when she looked down, biting the side of her lip, he knew not to push it. He walks over, cheeks lifting into a grin.

“I feel so overdressed,” Sandra whispers, tucking more of her hair behind her ear.

“Nah, I dig it.” It’s who she is and Ashton can’t stop the thundering of his heart.

“You sure this isn’t an issue? Like I thought pinks would be involved and everyone here looks,” she doesn’t finish the sentence. This isn’t her crowd. She knows it; Ashton knows it. Ashton’s sweet though. Always helps her grandmother with the bags to her car. He even referred them to a great car shop. One of his friends works there, always looks out for them and makes sure to work on their car exclusively. He’s for sure a fun time, always laughing at something, always making up a new gig when there’s only her in the store and the radio’s playing a good song. But this isn’t her crowd. She’s not sure how they’re going to accept her.

“Hey, my guys are cool. Stick with them and there will be no issue,” Ashton urges.

Sandra goes to speak, but then she notices a girl with a fro walking up to her, lips painted red. It’s a bold choice, but she wears it well. Ashton’s thankful that Cookie’s approaching. “That’s Cookie. Calum’s girl. The guy that works on your grandmother’s car. I told you she’d be here.”

Sandra nods, a smile lifting her lips. It’s a little bit more comforting to have someone else on Ashton’s side, that’s not a Greaser as company. She thinks the whole Greaser versus Socs is ridiculous, but she’s not naive to think that the lines don’t exist for everyone else. “You Ashton’s girl?” Cookie asks, knowing the true answer. But it’ll make both of them turn red and Cookie can’t pass up on that opportunity.

“Oh, no,” she mumbles as both their cheeks turn beat red. There’s a blashful glance between both of them. Ashton’s hoping Cookie’s teasing isn’t too much but he does like the sound of her being his girl. He needs to win this race, make a good impression and keep Sandra around. That’s all he wants.

“Alright, Ms. Red, you guys are just friendly. I get it. Mind if I borrow the pretty lady for a moment?” Cookie extenders her elbow, waiting for the gentle grip to move them out the way of the race.

The touch is light and they walk up to the side of the road. Cookie can feel the nerves off Ashton’s girl. She keeps looking over her shoulders. Like she’s afraid something is gonna jump out at her. “First race?” Cookie asks.

The girl nods, ends of her hair flying up in the wind. “Ms. Red? That’s a new one.”

“What’s ya name? Maybe you’d like that more.”

“Sandra. But I like Red better. You’re the one really wearing the devil’s paint better than I ever could.”

“Then Ms. Red it is. And nothin’ wrong with a little make up.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I just--,”

“Don’t have a cow, sweetheart. Just kidding around.”

They reach Cookie’s car, her siblings eying the girl on her arm. They’re suspicious of every new person they meet. It took them ages to warm up to Luke, Ashton, and Michael. She can’t blame them. Every white person to cross their path has only ever spit on them. She’s praying that they don’t hold such skepticism in their heart all the time. “Teresa and Curtis, my sister and brother. Ms. Red.”

Both of them give curt nods. Cookie goes on to introduce the rest of the crew before hopping into the backseat of her car with her siblings, she sits on the edge of the door, feet planted on the seat. Curtis sits between her legs. Teresa right in front of him. “Take a front row seat,” she offers to Sandra waving to the passenger side seat. Calum leans up against her car, right behind Cookie and her siblings, his hands buried in his pocket of his work pants. The switchblade curled into his fingers.

Sandra doesn’t miss the tension. She looks up to Cookie, the fear flashing over her face. “They don’t bite. Well, for anklebiters, they don’t,” she assures.

“You’re going to regret that,” Teresa interject, lightly tapping her sisters ankle. “White people just never done us no good.”

Kids, they’ll always be honest. “Tes,” Cookie warns. The tension is still thick, but the engines roar and Sandra jolts at the sound. “Get in, Red unless you want dust on that pretty little dress.”

“Thank you.” She smiles, climbs into the car and then kneels on the seat to watch them. Another girl, from the opponent's side, stands in the middle of lanes, scarf in her hand. She holds it above her head. She holds it there for a moment. Ashton revs his engine, just get get under the guy’s skin. “The car’s a lot louder,” Sandra comments. It’s to no one in particular. Curtis climbs to the passenger side of the back seat and stands, looking over the door.

“Ashton’s engine is souped up thanks to Calum,” he says as the rumble settles. “Nothing illegal. Just gives him more speed from the start and he can maintain it for the entire race.”

“Hey, look at my man paying attention,” Calum laughs, holding his palm straight up for Curtis to slap it. They go about their handshake, a series of slap, pumps, and snaps.

Curtis looks up to Sandra. “We ain’t trying to be mean. We just...sissy, what’s the word? Scared, but like not scared scared.”

“Worried or maybe concerned,” comes from both his sisters.

“Concerned,” Curtis repeats to Sandra. She nods. It makes sense all things considered for them. They have to be cautious to some degree. It’s a matter of life or death. Cookie’s teasing and offering of her car makes Sandra’s less anxious though. She’s completely outside of her realm and needs an anchor. They’re nice. “Nice dress too,” he concludes. “Sissy has a skirt like it.”

Before she can express her gratitude, engines growl to life yet again and Sandra snaps her attention to the road. Ashton doesn’t press down hard on the gas; he, in fact, gives the initial lead away. He can come behind and cut to the inside on the turn. He’s not worried about a lead. He’s got a plan. He always has a plan.

Sandra grips at the door, heart thundering in her chest. “C’mon, Ash. Take him.” The words are falling from her lips before she’s even realized it. After the initial kick up of a dust cloud, she can make out Ashton sliding inside. The first turn comes up and he cuts to the inside. There’s a tap to his bumper, but he tries not to show it. Keeps a steady hand on the wheel to correct.

There’s cheering, but it’s hard to catch it over the rumble of the engines. Sandra can feel it bubbling in her chest as she wants to join in again. She wants to scream his name. She wants to let him know she’s rooting for him. As the second straight away comes up, Ashton falls back just a little. The noses of their cars keep trading places.

Her pulse quickens, veins pumping against her skin. But Ashton looks so calm as they round in for the second lap. “Leave him in the dust! Burn rubber!” Sandra screams. It feels good to let the primal shout leave her lips. Louder shouts from Cookie and Ashton’s group start to cut through the rumble. The entire side of the road is almost as big of a roar as the cars themselves.

Ashton slips in front and hauls ass, pressing harder onto the gas. It kicks up another sputter of dust. As the last straight away comes up, Ashton keeps the car going as fast as it can. He doesn’t even stop until he blows past the start line. “Yes!” Sandra cries, pumping her arms into the air. As the drivers meet, shaking hands and exchanging cash, she climbs out of car and rushes over to Ashton.

“That was incredible,” she gushes. Her heart is still racing. He notices the childlike awe lighting up her eyes.

“Aw, shucks. It won’t nothing,” he replies, cheeks warming as her compliment. That was admittedly a tame race. They can get uglier, there can be scraps. But it’s a relief it didn’t happen. He didn’t want to show her that. He’s careful to stand in front of some of the nicks on the car He knows they traded taps on the course.

“It was pretty amazing to me.” The rest of them walk over, to congratulate Ashton. Cookie, much to her word, leaves after giving her cheers. Calum follows directly behind her, wanting to make sure she gets home safe.

“We ought to celebrate!” Sandra grins, brushing her hands over Ashton’s. She notes the rings adorning his fingers and plays at the pinky ring. “My treat! I’ve got a little of an allowance. What do you say?”

Ashton, flustered at the feel of her fingers over his, nods. “But I can cover myself.”

“Nonsense, you just won! No need to spend the earnings already.”

“I can’t.” He can pay his way through the world and he for sure doesn’t want to seem like he’s too willingly to take advantage of her niceness.

“Ice it. You’re getting a treat! And don’t think you can run off either,” she warns, walking back to her car.

Holding up his hands, Ashton knows he’s a goner. Hook, line, and sinker, there’s nothing he can do to save himself. The smile rests on Ashton’s face makes his whole body warm. “I’m listening. No runnin’ from me, ma’am.”

The rest of his guys cheer on his victory but soon it’s wrapped up and he climbs into his car, preparing to follow behind Sandra. Down the streets, Ashton realizes that he’s going further north. The anxiety starts to hammer at his chest and his fingers tremble. God, he doesn’t need trouble. Not right now, not after such a great victory.

Staring up at the sign of the parlour, Ashton’s takes a moment to exhale. He can’t afford trouble. He won’t get into trouble. He won’t. He’s going to just go inside, get a quick treat and then go on about his day. He parks right next to her, climbing out of the car. Eyes are already burning holes into his skin. He tries to swallow that bit of panic that his chest.

The leather jacket feels less like an accessory anymore. It’s armor. He wears it so they know. So they don’t start shit. He wears it so when his shoulders fall, the bulk keeps them wide. Even if he’s not looking for a fight, it looks like he’s ready to scrap.

“What’s your poison?” she jokes as they walk in together. “Stud like you maybe it’s chocolate.”

Ashton laughs softly, shaking his head a little. “I’m actually pretty square. Vanilla’s my vice.”

“Mr. Big and Bad goes for vanilla.”

“He does. Can’t tell anyone though.”

“Secret’s safe with me,” she winks, walking up to the counter to order the shake and even a slice of something for him as well. It’s as she leans against the cool material that she notices the distinct sneer on one of the waitress’ face. It dawns on her. She’s brought him to her side of town. But they don’t know him like she does. So she juts out her chin, reaching into the pocket of her dress. She plays at the bills and finally they girl walks down.

Sandra doesn’t let her open her mouth. “Vanilla milkshake, two straws. Slice of chocolate cake if there’s any left.”

“Anything else?”

A shake of the head no and she turns around to see Ashton, smiling up at her. He digs into his pocket and finds some change before walking over to the jukebox. He looks through the selection. He could be a sap. But right now he feels like making a little scene. He slips in the coin and presses for “The Twist”. Ashton snaps his fingers to beat, looking over his shoulder to her. She leans against the counter, laughing, hair flying in the ponytail.

Ashton starts tapping his foot, shuffling closer to her. People, he’s learned, are always staring at him. He’s gonna give them a reason to stare now. Sandra is beside herself, watching him singing along, while twisting himself side to side. The only thing that matters is her smile, her laugh. Ashton likes being a bit of a goof. He likes to have fun. He knows his life has never been easy, but there’s no reason not to smile. He makes it a goal to make someone smile each day. They deserve, everyone deserves a bit of kindness in the world. He thinks himself to be lucky to give that to anyone. Sandra admires that in him. This drive to give everyone a little piece of happiness.

When Ashton slides his way up to her, holding out his head, she doesn’t hesitate to give into his antics. They dance in the middle of parlour. She holds onto hands, bending her knees. It’s easy to twist her torso side to side. She’s never been able to do this before. To just let herself go. It’s normally so much emphasis on being a lady, being prim and proper. She’s never really ascribed to you, in a way that she wholeheartedly believed. But she was well aware of the society she was in, the role she was told she had to play.

But she didn’t have to play games with Ashton. She didn’t have to pretend. If she wanted to swear, which she never did anyhow, she knew she could. If she wanted to let her hair down, she could. If she wanted to sit unladylike, she could. She was not restricted with him. And that freedom, the vulnerability, made her fall even more in love with him. God, was she in love with him?

“Uh, you want this shake or not?” the girl behind the counter shouts. “Been waiting for forever over here.”

Sandra walks over, sliding the cash across the counter. “Sorry. Just havin’ some fun.” Another set of hands slide in around her and grab the glass and the plate. She immediately notes the slender fingers, the rings.

“Just a little dancin’ sweetheart. No need to get heated,” he says before going back to their table. He notes one shake and the two straws. “Bold, are we?” he teases, handing one to her.

“What can I say? I’m livin’ on the wild side.”

Ashton brings a piece of the cake to his lips while speaking. “Yeah, so wild your hair’s still up.”

It’s not a challenge, just a tease. But Sandra brings a hand to her hair, untwist the elastic around her hair. Her hair falls down over her shoulders as she shakes it loose. “Anything else to say, Stud?”

No, he’s got nothing else to say. That’s the thing about her, behind her button nose and blue eyes are a curiosity, a yearning to live life the way she wants to, not the way she’s been told to live it.

Outside at their respective cars, Sandra slips her hair tie from her wrist. The bow sells it, makes his heart warm more than he’s willing to admit as she slides it onto Ashton’s wrist. “Something to remember me by,” she grins softly.

“I’m always thinkin’ about you. So it’s not hard.”

“Smooth talking there.”

Ashton brings his fingers to her cheek before tucking just a little bit of her hair behind her ears. “When can I see you again?” Tomorrow’s her grandmothers doctor’s appointment. She starts her new job the day after. He’ll be okay even if it’s just for a quick moment to enjoy her company.

“I’ll ya a ring, okay?”

He nods, “Okay.”

_______________________________________________

He knows Sandra’s grandmother’s car when it pulls into the gas station. He managed to snag this gig at the gas station. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. He doesn’t quite want to go into the factory just yet. He knows it’ll make him the most money, but he’s gonna clean up his act before doing that. She smiles at him, as he closes in on her hair. She’s still has her driving gloves on. “What can I do for ya, Ma’am?” Ashton teases, opening the gas cover.

“Fill her up.”

“How was work?” She’s a secretary at the firm in town. Not a lot, nothing to write home about but it helps out. Every cent does now for her and her grandmother. Her grandmother’s not sickly. Just getting up in age, requires a lot more attention.

“Long, just glad it’s over.” There’s a moment of silence. “Grandma wants to meet you,” Sandra says. Her voice is soft.

Ashton’s been dreading this. Her grandmother isn’t fond of people like him. Though she smiled in his face when he carried her bags, Sandra tells him that always sneered at home. Always said boys like him were no good. “Thought she hated me.”

“She likes you. Likes the man that makes me smile. But she doesn’t like how she’s never met you, according to her.”

“But once she finds out it’s me, she’s gonna blow her top.”

“No, she’s not. She won’t. I promise.” He finds that hard to believe. He wants to believe her. She seems so earnest. But Ashton knows that older people are set in their ways. He finishes filling her tank, taking the change from her fingers. “Hey, hey,” she urges, gripping his chin. “She’s gonna love you. Because you’re incredible and she just hasn’t seen that. All she’s seen is the leather jacket, the hair. She’s only heart stories. But she’s never sat down with the real you.”

“Most people don’t need to sit down with the real me to judge me.”

“She’s gonna love you.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can.” It hurts to see him pull his chin from her grasps. It’s not hard, not a jerk, just a soft turn to his head until her fingers fall from around his skin.

“How?”

“Because she don’t know you like I do. She’s gonna love you because I love you.”

His heart beats against his ribs. They’ve been seeing each other, including tucked into dark corners, for only a few months. But to say that she loves him, that’s a whole new thing. “You love me?” The question exhales from his lungs so softly she barely catches it.

With a nod, she grins. “Yeah, yeah I think I do. I know it’s only a few months, but call me young and dumb--,”

Ashton interrupts her with a kiss. “No, be young. Be dumb. We only get this shot once.” The words press against his lips. He should take his own advice. “I love you.”

Lip tucked between her teeth, she looks to the ground before glancing back into his hazel eyes. “So, my house. Saturday. 6:30?”

“Your house. Saturday. 6:30.”

________________

When Ashton stares up at the door, he swears for a hot second he might vomit. He tries to keep it down. These are his good penny loafers. He’d hate to ruin them. But there is just something in his gut that tells him that this dinner is a bad idea. It takes him another minutes to finally lift his hand to knock. There’s a moment before the door cracks open and Sandra is standing there, in a powder pink sleeveless dress, hair pulled back from her face.

“Oh is that him, dear?” Her grandmother calls, the voice far away.

It takes everything in Ashton to step through the threshold. When she finally rounds the corner, her smile falters. There it is. There’s the passing look of judgement clouding her face. “Hi, ma’am. How are you?” He asks, extending his hand.

She doesn’t reach for it. “Good, thank you.” Her gaze lands on Sandra. “Sandy, can I speak with you? In private?”

The two woman walk down the hallway and Ashton stands, right near the door. He could bolt. He could leave it behind. But he stands there, knowing the hushed whispers being exchanged are about him, are about her and him together. The voices get a little louder. He caught “not good” amongst the hurried murmurs. He knows he shouldn’t interject. It’s not his place. He steps through the living room. They’re huddled together.

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude,” he starts. “But I care deeply about your granddaughter. I know the reputation that I have. And I earned it. I won’t lie.”

“You say that like I should give you a shot,” her grandmother snips.

He shrugs. “I’d like one. I’m not the type to make excuses for myself.”

“I know about boys like you. You’re scared and you’re angry. And you take it out on anyone that looks at you the wrong way. You hang out with all those other boys too, all they do is drink and get into fights. Even the girls they associate with get into trouble too. You’re kind are no good.”

“Yeah, yeah maybe I am scared and maybe I am angry. Yeah, I’m a lowlife in your eyes. But I’m the lowlife that carried your groceries to your car for a year. And I’m the lowlife that that keeps the tank full even if Sandra can’t afford it at the time. I’m greasy and not the goody two shoes you’d want for her. Yeah I’ve been in my fair share of fights and yeah I’ve put some people in serious hurt. But I’m not so bad. I’ve been you, okay? I’ve been on the other side of this conversation where you’re so worried about what others are going to think. And all you can see is the trouble I’ve been in.”

He continues after wiping at his nose with the pad of his thumb. He’s riled up. He feels like an ass. Is this how Cookie felt? He can’t change that. He does right by her. He gets her now. “I know the bad I’ve done. But I know the good too. You think me heartless. I wish I was heartless. I wish I didn’t give a shit so much about so many things. Took a friend in because his parents abandoned him. I was barely scraping by for myself, but I took him in. He needed to finish school. I didn’t. I dropped out. Had to. But him, he’s smart. He deserved a second chance. And his girl, she’s brilliant. I mean, the mind on her- I wish she could go to college. But she can’t. Her heart’s too tied to her family. Oh, and she’s Black. So it’s not like anywhere is going to give her a second chance.

“And my friend, Mike, man’s a wizard at the guitar. I mean, that man is bad at the guitar. But he hates playing in front of a lot of people. He could’ve been gone. Luke, Luke’s got some pipes. But he won’t sing unless Michael plays and because Michael doesn’t play all that often, they’re both here. They got families they care deeply about. They got families that they gotta provide for. So you can think of us what you want. You can think us all bad. But you don’t know us. You think you know us. You only know what others have told you. I really don’t mean any disrespect, Ma’am. But I just want you to consider that. Consider people are more than what you know of them.”

He looks to Sandra, who’s wearing a smile on her face. This is the Ashton she knows. Not one to hold back his tongue, one to always fiercely protect the ones closest to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll be staying for dinner.”

She watches the way he pops the collar on his polka dotted button up. She’s know sure where he got it. But it makes her immensely happy to know that he matched a dress of hers. His shoes are silent over the hardwood floors. Sandra turns back to her grandmother. “You always taught me to be kind to everyone, to keep in mind everyone has their own story. But you couldn’t even take your own advice.”

“I was kind,” her grandmother retorts.

Sandra shakes her head. “You know what I mean.” She hoped her grandmother would change, she thought she could get the opinion to change. But maybe her grandmother would destined to always be stuck.

“You can’t keep seeing that boy. He’s no good.”

The words mean nothing to Sandra. Her grandmother relies on her. She’s not a child. Holding on finger up to her grandmother, she races outside, finally hearing the car engine roar to life. The evening has a slight chill but it doesn’t stop her from racing to the driver side door. Ashton rolls down the window. It took him forever to even gain the courage to turn over the key in the ignition. She’s probably come out to tell him this is it.

“You didn’t have to come out to tell me. I know,” Ashton says, staring straight ahead.

“If you thought I came out here to tell you it’s over, you’re wrong.” Her voice is soft. She reaches through the window, playing at the collar of his shirt.

“What?” He’s positive he didn’t hear her right.

“She’s older. She doesn’t know you like I do.”

“But that’s your--,”

Sandra cuts him off. “I know who she is to me. But I’m an adult. I want to be with you. And she can’t stop me. Give me a minute, alright? We’ll go somewhere else.”

When her lips brush over his cheek, Ashton can only nod at her request. She walks back into the house. Her grandmother sits at the dining room table, hands clutching her cane. “You can’t keep seeing him. I forbid it.”

“Grandma, I love you. But since you refuse to sit down and have a conversation with him, I don’t think your advice is the most well informed. Now,” she starts fixing her grandmother a plate. “You’re gonna eat. I’ll be back to clean the dishes. But you just relax.”

“Where are you going? Not out with that boy, I know.”

“His name is Ashton. As I’ve told you before plenty of times.” The plates makes a soft thud on the placemat. “Eat. I’ll be back.” She puts the rest of the food up. Her grandmother watches, shouting at her that he’s no good. But no one’s perfect. And she if wanted perfection, she’d never find it. Maybe that was part of her grandmother’s problem. She craved perfection so bad, craved to fit in, to not shake the table that she never saw how unstable the table was in the first place.

“Enjoy your dinner!” Sandra shouts, throwing a sweater over her shoulders and grabbing her keys. Ashton is still waitin in the car. She climbs into the car. “Let’s drive,” she giggles.

“I got a destination in mind. Bit of a tradition. Hope it’s not too square.”

“You? A square? Never.” The drive isn’t very long. The skating rink comes into view and Ashton spies Calum’s bike still around. They still have a little bit of time. They have to go to the rink on the West side. Too many people stared at them, a group of white boys hanging around and friends with folks like Cookie and Calum. And it’s not to say they didn’t get looks on this side either. It’s not to say that Cookie’s unfortunately gotten into with a few of her own, but it’s generally safer.

“When we’re not supposedly running a muck of the town, we’re skating,” Ashton says.

“How’d you know I was a great skater?”

“You might’ve mentioned it once or twice.” She’s mentioned it more than that actually. But it’s not like Ashton’s keeping count. It’s not like he goes home and gushes to Calum probably too much about Sandra.

The pair walk inside and grab some skates. It takes a moment of wondering before they spy the rest of Ashton’s friends. Cookie spots them first, smiling. “What happened to the red, Ms. Red?”

“Let him borrow it for the day,” Sandra returns, rushing over to help take the pitcher from her hands. The table cheers, noticing the pair.

“Thought you had a fancy dinner?” Michael questions as they settle and tie up their skates. Ashton shakes his head. Michael catches on to the sour expression. That topic is canned without hesitation. They all knew about Ash’s concerns. They’re not really shocked, if they’re honest, that things went sour. It sucks nonetheless. They had hoped for Ashton Sandra’s grandmother wouldn’t be such an issue.

Ashton gets to his feet first and takes her hand. They step out onto the floor and she glides off. Ashton’s not a terrible skater, but he’s not the best either. She turns around and sees him pushing off hard. “Alright there, tough guy?”

He laughs. “Keep yappin’ that’s fine!”

As they come around a second time, the song shuffles. Everyone recognizes the start to Put Your Head on My Shoulder. People start pairing off. Ashton spies Calum and Cookie finally coming back out. Sandra slows into his side, fingers brushing over his. “You look as coordinated as a baby giraffe,” she teases.

“Keep talkin here, just keep on.” There’s a moment of quiet between them as the laughter dies down, gliding next to each other. A little slower than the rest of the crowd, but neither of them cares. “Sorry about being frosted back there. I just--people don’t understand. And sometimes they don’t want to. Which is frustrating.”

She nods. “I get that. I’m sorry she refuses to listen. I wish I could get through that thick skull sometimes. She means well, but sometimes she can do harm.”

Ashton stops along the wall, pulling her gently into him. “It happens. But you chose me. Over everything.”

She shrugs. “Easy choice, if I’m honest.” Ashton cups her face, fingers gently brushing over the soft skin. He’s lucky to have her. He’s lucky she chose him.

“Aren’t you worried?”

“I’ve got a lot of things to worry about. But not you.” Ashton leans in, just a smidge, lips capturing hers for a brief moment. His breath leaves him. He’s sure time is either paused or sped up but he doesn’t care. There are some wolf whistles that pass by. And both of them know it’s his friends. Sandra buries her face into Ashton’s shoulder, the heat flooding her cheeks.

“You guys are assholes,” Ashton laughs, watching Luke, Michael, and Calum pass by. The song fades out. Something more upbeat turns over the speakers. He coaxes her out from his shoulder. “Don’t mind them.”

“I mean, kind of hard not too.”

“But you got me, baby. You got me.”

Her eyes twinkle and she cups his cheek before kissing him. She does have him. That’s a comforting thought, one that makes her feel safe. As their lips part, Sandra exhales a bit breathy. “C’mon now before your knees knock and you fall.”

“You got jokes now,” Ashton hollers after her figure, skating away. “Now you got jokes. I see how it is.”

The evening is filled with too many orders of cheese fries to be healthy, too many refills for Cokes. They sing along to the speakers and Sandra laughs, hooking her arm through Ashton’s. “You didn’t tell me you could sing.”

His smile is bashful, face turning red. “You ain’t ask before.”

“The four of you ought to start a band or something,” she concludes. She’s heard the stories of Michael’s historic guitar playing. Stayed over at night, once, to listen to the four of them act a fool, singing until the wee hours of the morning.

“Good luck with that,” Cookie interjects. “All of ‘em hardheaded. Mine especially.”

“But you love it anyway, doll,” Calum returns, kissing her temple.

The group decides as the twilight is swallowed up by night to turn in. Outside, they split off in various directions towards their cars. “Make sure you get your red back,” Cookie hollers, trailing behind Calum. “You look betta in it anyways!”

The group howls at the comment. “Nah, baby, it’s a team effort.”

In a flash, Cookie runs up, laughing, leaving Calum to wait at the bike. “I know that’s right. Good seeing you again,” she adds on sincerely. “I mean it, too.” Since the race, Sandra’s tried to talk to Cookie more, tried to ease the tension that inevitably may not disappear completely. But they can try. “Mrs and Mr. Red,” she laughs with a wink.

“See how she put Mrs, first,” Sandra grins.

Ashton nods. “Yes, yes, I most definitely did.”

Ashton pulls into her driveway, staring back at the same doors that shut him out. It’s okay. That door need not ope, he concludes. Sandra stretches across to give him one last kiss. It deepens when Ashton takes hold of her face. It’s not a kiss that conveys the passion that’s brewing in the both of them. It’s not a kiss that’s light and airy. It’s a kiss that spells how desperate they are for the other to know, deep down, this is real.

As they part, Ashton pulls off one of the main rings he wears and plucks the necklace off from around her neck. Threading the chunky gold metal onto the dainty chain, he rehooks the necklace around her neck. Sandra drops her hair around her shoulders to take a look at it sitting over the powder pink to her dress. “Something to remember me by,” he explains, from his wrist, she can see the hair tie still. How did she miss that?

“I could never forget.”

She climbs out of the car and he watches to make sure she gets inside. As the door closes behind her, she grins to herself. Making choices is scary. She knows her grandmother will not be quiet about her stance. But this is the first choice that was solely hers to make. And she’s proud of it.

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