#I’ve seen cheaper for much nicer places | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

teejaysnow · 1 year ago

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Welcome to Stockholm, expect grey skies and cold weather - but as long as you dress up warm, you’ll probably still have a nice time.

I’d recommend either a walk along Monteliusgatan or Fjällgatan (or both) for a very pretty view of Stockholm. (And you’ll get some nice, older houses thrown in there too, which is very pretty as well.)

I second a trip to Fotografiska while you’re in the neighbourhood, it’s one of my favourite museums - and, depending on your budget, a visit to the restaurant will give you another nice (and a lot less windy…) view of Stockholm if you can get your hands on a window table.

Walking aimlessly around the Old Town is great. Västerlånggatan is the touristy street with all the shops that sells just about everything you can think of that you can put moose or a swedish flag on, but the rest of it is pretty nice. (Also, Västerlånggatan is home to the best book store in Stockholm, Scifibokhandeln, just saying.) Also also, Stortorget is a classic stop with its colourful houses. And both Kaffekoppen and Chokladkoppen are great places for a fika, but they’re usually very crowded.

I always recommend taking one of the ferries through the archipelago - Vaxholm is just about an hour away and it’s a very nice trip - but if you don’t have much time you can always jump on the ferry that goes from the Old Town to Djurgården, it’s just a ten minute trip or so, but still pretty. And if you have a SL travel card you can use that.

And yeah, Djurgården is another must, I guess. More so in the summer when Gröna Lund (the amusement park) is open, but it’s still worth it during winter. If you’re into Abba at all, there’s an Abba museum that’s really good. You have the Vasa museum (that I absolutely loathe [it’s been 400 years since the bloody thing sank, they must have made their money back by now] but everyone else seems to love). And you have Skansen, which… well, there’s a reason why it’s one of the top attractions year after year. Lots of old Swedish buildings as well as a zoo light with some nordic animals standing around looking bored (although I’ve never seen either otters nor wolverines in all of my times of visiting, so… 🤷🏻‍♀️🙄)

You can walk back towards the city centre if your feet aren’t complaining too much by now, or you can take the tram. Strandvägen is pretty nice if you stick to the water (there’s a lot of traffic otherwise) and the houses on the other side of the street are pretty impressive. (Yeah, you don’t want to know what those flats cost 😬😬) You’ll reach Norrmalmstorg and can either take a right into Biblioteksgatan where a lot of the more expensive brand stores are, or you can continue on to Kungsträdgården - which is a lot nicer in the summer, but the ice skating rink is pretty cool (and you can always rent skates if you feel like taking a turn). If you continue past Kungsan, you’ll find NK on your right (another expensive-ish brand store) and a bit furter on, Gallerian on your left. Think it was Stockholm’s first indoor mall, but these days mostly home to your cheaper brands like H&M and Vero Moda and nothing special to see. Unless you’re into ikea, because there is now an ikea store in there which is pretty handy. Anyway, if you continue past Gallerian you’ll end up at Sergels Torg, which is the rather iconic black and white square that I guess is pretty much the centre of Stockholm. From there you can see Åhléns, which is a store with a mixture of cheap and expensive brands, and you can take a right into Drottninggatan which is the shopping street for less expensive brands (we’re once more talking brands like H&M and Zara. If you walk down Drottninggatan, you’ll get to the PUB houses (stands for Paul Urbanus Bergström if I recall correctly) and if you take a left there you’re on Gamla Brogatan where you’ll find some rather… eclectic shops (less brand, more punk) and if you take a right you’ll end up at Hötorget where you can buy veggies and flowers everyday except sundays when there’s a bit of a flea market going on. You can then finish off by taking a right and walking down Kungsgatan to Stureplan - which is a pretty boring walk tbh, but after that you’ve pretty much seen most of Stockholm.

Anyway, if there’s something more specific any Stockholm travellers are interested in, just ask - I might either know myself or I can try checking with friends.

Hiii I’m going to Stockholm on Friday and wondered if you have any tips for the trip? Tack!!

How nice!

I don't live in Stockholm so I'm not an expert but I always think Gamla Stan is a nice visit and if you want the Royal Palace. I would honestly just walk around there in the narrow streets and alleyways. Especially if the weather is nice.

The Royal palace also have some exhibitions if you are interested. You can find more information here

There's also Fotografiska museet if you like photography. It's a photography museeum and they usually have a few photographers featured at once. I love to visit l. Here's some more information There’s an entry fee though.

If you like shopping there are alot of options. I would check out drottninggatan. Åhlens city and NK but once again just walking around is very nice.

There is also Mall of Scandinavia if you only want to go shopping but it's not something I recommend really. It's a mall, it's big by Swedish standards but that's it.

I think you can get around with walking alot but of course that does take some time and effort but it's definitely possible depending on where you live. Last time I was there I walked to gamla Stan and the royal palace and back again with no problems.

I would make sure to make time for a traditional Swedish fika at a Café. That's an absolute must and you are right in time for our "Semmel" season

Semla is a traditional Swedish pastry that was traditionally eaten before the long fasting but now we eat them just for fun.

The traditional one is a wheat bun flavoured with cardamom filled with almond paste and whipped cream.

Every café will have them, traditional versions and more new conceptual versions like vanilla semla (no almond paste) chocolate, licorice, croissant, semmel wrap etc.

Or you can always go for a cinnamon bun or a danish pastry or anything really.

There's also a the classic princess cake which is a sponge cake with jam, vanilla custard and cream with a lid of marsipan.

I cannont recommend dammsugare though, which is a small pastry that tastes like arrack with marsipan on top. I can't get behind it but is popular and if you like arrack you might like it.

I would avoid chains for this so stay out of espresso house.

As for food that are many many options, everything from McDonald's and other fast food chains like Max (Swedish version of McDonald's basically) to fancier options. It all depends on what you are in the mood for. Some placed demands reservations fsr in advance but these places are usually quite hyped and expensive so not something I would look for on a trip.

If you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask. I'm always happy to help! And any swede is welcome to put in their own recommendations.

#ot #but… i’m trying to be helpful #in way too many words… 😅

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quidfree · 4 years ago

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prompts,.,, fem tdbk and a date gone very wrong ? ❤️

ohhhh my god anon. pump this shit directly into my veins i love this whole premise let’s go. also all inspired by whatever the fuck horikoshi was doing in this

just so everyone is on the same page here, it is not a fucking date.

it’s lunch. a singular lunch. people do that shit all the time. even katsuki does lunch, sometimes. she went to that semi-shitty diner place with kirishima that one time when the food hall was shut because some dumbass first year exploded into goo or whatever. and todoroki does lunch, too- her and deku were on some shitty lunch date like a week ago, as evidenced by deku’s even shittier selfie of them having a grand old time doing whatever the fuck they do alone.

fuck, not a shitty lunch date. a shitty lunch. whatever.

the point is lunch is a normal non-date thing people do, and the fact katsuki and todoroki are maybe not the usual suspects for it is just circumstantial. it’s not like they planned it ahead of time, or made some big thing about it. they literally arranged for it in public, so obviously todoroki didn’t think there was anything weird about it. and there isn’t! they’re both going to be in tokyo on the same day, and todoroki’s always happy for any excuse to spend less time with her old man, and katsuki sure as fuck wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to avoid her hag of a birth-giver for a few blissful hours, so when todoroki had very nonchalantly gone ‘oh, bakugou, we could do lunch then”, it wasn’t like she had any real reason to tell her to go fuck herself. like, yeah, maybe a year ago, on principle, she would have, but even katsuki can only take so much trauma-bonding before she resigns herself to the reality that she’s stuck with half ‘n half for life, one way or another, and she may as well suck it up and approach civility because said moron is determined to ignore her open malice until she plays along anyways. they’re... you know, whatever. friends. or something. jesus.

the point being that it’s not a date, and the fact that she’s getting increasingly annoyed at her limited wardrobe is just because she would have packed more shit if the crone hadn’t insisted that they ‘pack light’ so they could get cheaper train tickets for less luggage. it’s just annoying that she can’t wear anything that’s not screaming holiday.

it occurs to her as she sits and scowls at her suitcase that her mother has been watching her from the doorframe for some undetermined amount of time, which is criminal mainly because she’s a goddamn hero-to-be and getting snuck up on by anyone is a blight upon her good name. she tries to disguise the ego damage dealt by glowering murderously in her progenitor’s direction.

“what the fuck do you want?”

“you know,” the she-devil says, cocking a hip, “if you want to borrow something nicer...”

“i wouldn’t be caught dead in your shitty clothes!” katsuki snarls, which prompts the witch to immediately scowl back.

“watch your damn mouth!”

“watch your waistline! no way in hell are we the same size!”

“why you little-”

the interruption at least reminds her that she is obsessing over her clothes ahead of meeting todoroki for lunch, which is so humiliating it kickstarts her brain again long enough to grab some normal shit and get the hell out of there.

on the walk she checks her phone again. the previous day she’d had to bite the bullet and make the first move, todoroki’s infamously terrible communication skills making themselves known once more, and their ensuing conversation had been so mortifying she’d nearly cancelled all-together.

to: Half ‘n half

Yo asshole are we still meeting tomorrow or what

I’m busy as shit

from: Half ‘n half

Yes. TS

to: Half ‘n half

What the fuck is TS

from: Half ‘n half

I was signing off.

to: Half ‘n half

SIGNING OFF ON YOUR OWN TEXT

YOU THINK I DONT KNOW YOUR DAMN NAME

from: Half ‘n half

[Pin attached]

Does here at 12.30 work for you?

to: Half ‘n half

Yeah whatever

Don’t be late

And don’t think I’m forgetting the fucking signing off thing

from: Half ‘n half

Glad you can make time for mockery in your busy as shit schedule.

the venue looks like some rich person shit, which she semi-expected, but it means a lot of people give her weird looks as she makes her way inside, probably on account of the shorts and t-shirt she’s wearing if not her general vibe. some old woman actually drags her purse to her, which makes katsuki sorely tempted to bare her teeth and maybe hiss for effect, though she settles for scowling and shoving her hands in her pockets. it’s 12.27, because she wasn’t going to be late but being any earlier would have given off some dubious impression that she’s eager to see todoroki, except now she kind of wishes she’d just come for 12.30 because if there’s some reservation bullshit she gets the feeling she’s going to start fighting with the waiting staff, and then-

“bakugou,” todoroki calls, from inside, raising a hand with unnecessary formality. “you made it.”

“course i made it,” katsuki grunts, absolutely not relieved as she by-passes the suspicious looking waiter to join her outside. “think i can’t ride the damn underground by myself?”

todoroki is wearing jeans cuffed at the ankles and a white t-shirt on top of which she’s thrown on an open button-up with the sleeves rolled up, and she looks casual and normal and incidentally kind of like they dressed to match, but the important part is that she doesn’t look dressed up at all, so katsuki was totally right about the non-date situation, and also isn’t the only one totally underdressed for the shitty venue.

“you look nice,” todoroki says then, completely shattering katsuki’s brief moment of reprieve. “i’ve never seen so much color on you.”

katsuki almost chokes on her own tongue, but the worst part is that the asshole seems completely nonchalant about the weird as shit observation, focused on her stool as she takes a seat on the balcony. which- what the actual fuck? since when does todoroki issue compliments unprompted- of the non-professional variety, at that? and what the fuck does she expect katsuki to say now- return the compliment? say thanks? is this whole thing some kind of exercise in psychological torture?

well, fuck it. she can’t look like a little bitch just because todoroki said something inanely positive. two can play that game.

“yeah. you look half decent yourself. did you hire someone to dress you for the occasion?”

todoroki blinks up at her in surprise, which is totally a win and would make her more smug if she could stop feeling so weird and prickly all over. for a dangerous moment todoroki seems on the verge of blushing, but miraculously the world rights itself and the usual deadpan persists, one brow quirking up in completely feigned ineptitude.

“there was a compliment somewhere in there, so thank you, i think. i thought we were past this vendetta.”

“we’ll be past this vendetta the day you burn your piece of shit hero suit,” katsuki retorts, back on familiar ground, and relaxes long enough to squint down at the menu.

this turns out to be a mistake.

“the fuck? is this whole thing in french?”

“oh,” todoroki says, after a beat. “that makes sense. i thought my english had deteriorated.”

“are you- you didn’t know? you recommended the place!”

“it was the nearest place to our hotel,” todoroki defends, now having the decency of looking slightly put out. “coq can’t mean what i think it means, can it?”

“that’s chicken, asshole,” katsuki hisses, flinging the menu down. “great, now we’re going to have to flag down one of the shithead waiters and ask for a japanese menu. excuse me! hey! yeah, i’m talking to- what the hell, did he just blow me off? hey, jackass! you with the shitty mustache!”

“sorry about that,” todoroki interjects, when mustache asshole turns an offended stare their way. “do you have the japanese menu?”

“we only serve the food in its authentic form,” mustachioed asshole says, with frigid self-satisfaction. “might i suggest google translate?”

“might i suggest my foot up your ass, you shitty-”

“that’s fine,” todoroki says, in a flat tone that implies otherwise. “we’ll make do.”

the waiter sniffs pretentiously as katsuki thinks about all the ways she could beat his ass into next tuesday, running an aggravated hand through her hair when the wind rustles it into her face. she’d half expect todoroki to suggest they fuck off elsewhere, but when she looks back her way she finds an ill-boding gleam of determination in her eyes despite the impassive set to her face, and it’s a testament to how fucked in the head ua has made katsuki that she feels a sort of sick thrill of recognition at the sight. todoroki’s in stubborn bitch mode.

“i’ll have this,” todoroki says, sure enough, pointing to the most expensive item on the menu. “and also this. and one of those.”

the waiter’s eyes nearly pop out of his skull, and todoroki looks unfazed in katsuki’s direction, tapping pointedly at a sleek black and red credit card in her wallet. “bakugou?”

well, if endeavour’s paying....

“sure,” katsuki says, slowly, and then turns her meanest smile the waiter’s way. “i want the frog legs.”

mustache clears his throat, attempts condescension. “we don’t serve that here.”

“you’re a gastronomique restaurant,” katsuki says very loudly, as other clients turn to stare, “and you don’t have fucking frog legs? is this a joke? does this napkin say authentic french cuisine or am i hallucinating?”

“i can ask the chef,” the waiter demurs, casting a nervous glance at the muttering snobs nearby, and attempts an ingratiating smile. “anything else for you, mademoiselle?”

“what did you just call me?”

once the ordering debacle is over, todoroki slants katsuki what may well be an apologetic glance, vaguely contrite frown sitting pretty atop her usual dead-eyed stare.

“i probably should have read up on the place ahead of time.”

katsuki is well within her rights to chew her head off, she thinks, but food’s on the way and she got to yell at the asshole who gave her the once-over when she came in, so she’s feeling forgiving, even in the face of todoroki’s annoyingly doll-faced apology. the bitch really has to do the bare minimum and she looks like a fucking kpop idol.

“yeah, whatever. i always knew you were a shitty ops planner.”

todoroki, who is an asshole, looks relieved at her generous forgiveness for all of a second before she quirks a brow. “between the two of us, i only count one person who has actually spoken the words ‘shoot first, ask questions later’.”

“that was in a training simulation,” katsuki protests, outraged. “and you know damn well the actors were annoying as shit!”

“i did find them slightly too committed to the role,” todoroki concedes neutrally, which totally means she agrees with katsuki 100% and is being precious about it. katsuki scoffs.

“least the view’s decent.”

“the-“ todoroki starts, in weirdly confused tones, until she follows katsuki’s gaze outward and nods in understanding. “oh, the skyline. yes.”

what else katsuki could have meant she doesn’t fucking know: they’re sitting pretty in the middle of tokyo. the only thing the hellhole of a restaurant has going for it at this point is the cityscape.

todoroki stares out into the distance for a good long moment, and with the breeze her negligently loose hair whips this way and that, red and white blur where the two halves mingle. instinctively katsuki itches to braid it flat so it doesn’t tangle. if todoroki asked her she’d tell her to just cut her damn hair into a bob or something- it’s not like icyhot has any attachment to her princess hair, and she’s got the obnoxious bone structure to pull off any length. not that she’d mention this last part. or that she’s given it much thought. it’s just fucking obvious.

if todoroki could keep her mouth shut throughout the rest of the meal, it could be sort of nice. tokyo skyline, and companionable silence, and presumably edible food. worse ways to kill some time, and way less incriminating than anything that may be said otherwise.

“i think this is the part where we make small talk,” todoroki says instead, sadist that she definitely is, as katsuki grimaces feelingly her way.

“no, we don’t.”

“well, we don’t. but this is the part where we should.”

“i don’t even believe you can last a minute of small talk, icyhot.”

todoroki looks pensive, mismatched eyes thoughtful. “...how has your day been?”

“uneventful,” katsuki says, combative, and eyes her watch. todoroki does not give.

“this place seems nice.”

“you don’t even think that.”

“how have you been finding tokyo?”

“noisy.”

“the weather seems-”

“no.”

“you look nice.”

“you said that already, dumbass,” katsuki grunts, palms crackling with sweat, and does not at all read into the way todoroki makes a stupid little movement with her mouth that could ungenerously be interpreted as a pout.

“well, i meant it, so i’m saying it twice.”

“give it up, half ‘n half, just ask me about training.”

“...how is your training?”

“i did this thing yesterday,” katsuki starts, leaning back in her chair, and from then launches into a very technical and barely exaggerated retelling of the batshit insane stunt she pulled off with her quirk the day prior. todoroki’s focused attention is gratifying, in a totally platonic non-weird way- it’s just that her parents couldn’t very well follow why exactly said stunt was as insane as it is, but todoroki obviously can, and also there’s that thing with todoroki where pulling a reaction out of her ice queen act is admittedly more satisfying than most people. it has jack shit to do with the fact katsuki’s got a very minor complex about todoroki paying her her dues, and even if it did then that’s entirely fucking reasonable considering she still hasn’t forgiven her for the sports fest incident.

it is a little weird having todoroki’s sole focus on her outside of hero shit, though. it’s not like they really hang out one on one outside of school or work. it’s kind of- unnerving. yeah. unnerving, to be making prolonged eye contact, todoroki’s expression intent but not intense the way she gets in fight scenarios, frowning lightly because she has resting bitch face but apparently genuinely interested. it’s kind of a relief that todoroki asks questions- moves them safely into a conversation, so katsuki’s not just sitting there talking and sort of dry-throated. fucking waiter, leaving them water-less.

it’s fine. they talk about training, and quirks, and then todoroki pushes her hair behind her ears and leans forward to demonstrate on a small scale this thing she’s trying to do where she melts her ice and refreezes it in rapid succession so it causes what is essentially ice rain, but there’s logistics and shit that need to be worked out for it to work the way she’s thinking it might, and katsuki knows her thermal shit so they start scrawling maths over the napkins, and then bicker over the finer points of first year chemistry, so when the food actually arrives to interrupt them todoroki’s startled blink is weirdly relatable, like she also forgot where they were.

the waiter’s there and gone before they’re really recovered from the brief misplacement, which katsuki registers only when she looks down at her empty glass.

“goddamnit- how hard is it to bring us water?”

“they only offer sparkling,” todoroki says, gravely, then outpaces katsuki’s disgust by placing her hand over her glass, ice rising before she switches hands and melts it down. “tell me if the temperature’s off.”

intensely mollified and trying not to look it, katsuki sips it. “’s fine.”

“okay,” todoroki says, faintly pleased, and tilts her head to look down at her food. “i have no idea what any of this is.”

“moron,” katsuki snorts, except it comes out way fonder than it has any rights to, and from beneath the convenient curtain of hair todoroki’s smiling a little, so she hastily stabs a frog leg and gets to eating before anyone gets any ideas.

the actual meal goes okay-ish. most of the stuff todoroki ordered is extremely pretentious french cuisine, and todoroki secretly has the culinary adventurousness of a five year old, so it befalls katsuki to impatiently attempt every dish and pronounce it edible before todoroki will deign to brave it. she’s still trying to bully an unyielding todoroki into attempting the weird bird soup thing when there’s commotion nearby. it takes the both of them approximately three seconds to spring into work-mode; katsuki’s on her feet poised for a fight before she’s even consciously thought about it, scanning her peripherals, and she doesn’t even need to look to feel todoroki unconsciously covering her back, cool sting of air signalling her quirk at the ready.

the commotion turns out just to be some old dumbass choking, relaxing them both out of their stances as she falls back to let todoroki ahead. they’re both uber-qualified for first aid shit, but she’s self-aware enough to know even todoroki’s bland reassurances are usually preferred to her bedside manner. unfortunately, the whole entourage seems to be braindead, because they’re all crowding the old guy in a panic while he chokes, his wife in shrieking hysterics.

“oh, my god, he’s choking! he’s choking! sugar-plum, stay with me!”

“fuck me,” katsuki mutters, unethically thinking that she would personally prefer choking to being married to someone who calls her sugar-plum, but todoroki’s pushing ahead with implacable calm, so she trudges after her anyways.

“excuse me. excuse me. i need access to your husband.”

“who are you? don’t touch him! help! get this woman off my husband!” wailing hysteric yells, bosom heaving dramatically. katsuki is starting to suspect she poisoned him on purpose or some shit, because no way does anyone talk like that in real life.

“she’s a fucking qualified first aid provider, lady, shut up and let her through!”

thankfully, the woman seems on the verge of an outrage aneurysm, which drags her focus away from suffocating her choking husband to dramatically pointing at katsuki long enough for todoroki to duck past her and reach the guy as he turns purple.

“how dare you speak to me that way? who do you think you are?”

“ma,” chinless moron number one says, clearing his throat. “i think that’s one of those future pros from TV.”

“what?”

“you know, ma,” chinless moron number two adds, glancing nervously between them. “the one that explodes things. you know. from UA.”

katsuki takes great pleasure in watching recognition dawn in the old cow’s beady eyes, but in any event there’s a hacking noise and then the old man’s coughing out a bone into his plate as todoroki steps noiselessly back from the table.

“he’s fine now. enjoy your dinner.”

“god, that was gross,” katsuki says, as they ignore the woman’s sputtering and return to their seats. todoroki tilts her head.

“not really. if he’d thrown up it would have been.”

“not the choking guy,” katsuki scoffs, casting a glance back his way. “his wife. talk about theatrics.”

“she seemed more afraid of us than her husband dying.”

“for good reason,” katsuki mutters darkly, spreading out in her chair. “i hate civilians.”

“i don’t think she recognised us,” todoroki counters, pensive, and absent-mindedly takes a bite of the weird soup before she screws her face up like a betrayed kid. “oh. you didn’t say it was sweet.”

the look on her face thoroughly distracts katsuki from asking what other reason the pearl-clutcher could possibly have to be so terrified at the mere sight of them; instead, she chokes back a laugh, stifling a grin. “what are you, five?”

“i don’t think i like this,” todoroki says, mournful, which makes katsuki grin harder. she can’t help it- todoroki looking stupid is her kryptonite.

“then don’t pick a restaurant where you can’t read the menu, next time.”

todoroki’s midway to looking up, but for some reason her expression transforms instantaneously, which makes katsuki reflexively try to quash her amusement. todoroki always gets weird when she’s smiling.

“next time?”

motherfuck. obviously she didn’t mean next time like next time, she meant next time like- hypothetically, in the future, when todoroki’s on a lunch date with someone else. a lunch non-date. she’s just about stopped sputtering furiously long enough to try and express this sentiment when it occurs to her that todoroki seems- pleased, one eye soft sky-blue when katsuki accidentally meets it, and that draws her up short long enough that she ends up just muttering lamely to herself. fucking todoroki.

on the heels of this utter embarrassment, she downs the rest of her water, scowls in a neat 180 at everything in sight, and wonders for the first time in her life how the fuck extras get through dates. not that this is one.

it’s fine. they’re done eating, and no one’s died, and katsuki is no longer fifteen and thus mostly trusts her ego to lick its wounds and recover from the ordeal. even if they stick around for desert that’s only another half hour of this to endure. as long as todoroki doesn’t make any sudden moves they’ll be fine.

...the problem is, of course, that sudden moves are todoroki’s modus operandi. katsuki has not forgotten the bitch calling them friends on national television in the same breath that she was vociferously denying them being anything of the sort. in todoroki’s fucked up brain, they’re always ten steps ahead of whatever they actually are- considering katsuki’s come around to privately acknowledging she’d take a couple more stakes through the gut for the asshole, in todoroki’s world they're practically hitched.

platonically. platonically practically hitched. this is not a thing, goddamnit. no matter the weird looks aizawa’s been giving them, or utsushimi’s nefarious schemes, or the alarming cardiopulmonary condition katsuki’s been developing of late. she’s not some shitty yuri protagonist pining over the nearest female bishōnen in her vicinity.

admittedly if she was to pine over anyone it sure as fuck wouldn’t be some guy, but that’s besides the point, since pretty damn near every person on earth is just some guy by her standards, regardless of gender. the fact that todoroki is not one of said people is entirely irrelevant.

her internal irritation is so distracting that she misses the tremors nearby until entirely too late, by which point todoroki’s stupidly perfect brows raise an incremental fraction and she goes: ‘oh’.

when todoroki goes ‘oh’, some shit is about to go down.

katsuki turns slowly with an impending sense of doom, and sure enough, the sight that greets her is so nightmarish she seriously reconsiders whether the entire day has been just that.

“don’t freak out,” a giant building-sized deku booms, apologetically, as his hideous giant face stares at them. “it’s just a quirk thing.”

it’s probably a good thing katsuki has gone speechless with outrage, since it permits todoroki’s constantly composed ass to ask useful questions katsuki probably would have coated in a fair amount more threats and cursing.

“midoriya. i didn’t know you were in tokyo.”

“well, i wasn’t meant to be,” deku says/booms like a foghorn, as the restaurant clientele shrieks and stampedes behind them. his sheepish expression is even more punchable when magnified. “it’s a long story. it’s almost sorted out now, though. i just saw you guys from over at the NPA office and thought i’d come ask if you maybe wouldn’t mind lending a hand? i wouldn’t ask but there’s going to be a lot of cleanup and your quirks would be really helpful to-”

“we’ll do it as long as you shut the fuck up,” katsuki yells, to cut him off, massaging her temples. “the monologuing’s bad enough when you’re not about to burst my fucking eardrums, jackass.”

“oh, sorry! i’m trying to be very quiet but this body’s just hard to get used to- thank you so much for helping, i didn’t mean to come bother you on break...”

“it’s fine,” todoroki says, and then seems to realise that her monotone doesn’t reach midoriya’s giant-ass ears and clears her throat, raising her voice to a shout. “it’s fine. let me go deal with the bill and then we’ll go.”

“sorry?” midoriya whisper-shouts, craning his monstrous head closer to them, the sight of which will haunt katsuki for the rest of her life. “i can’t hear what you’re saying!”

“she said she’s going to go pay for our nice fucking lunch,” katsuki hollers, with no small sense of satisfaction, as deku winces and todoroki slinks off. “since you want to come crashing it like a dipshit.”

“sorry, kacchan!” deku begs off, flapping hand gestures creating enough wind to knock over a nearby umbrella stand. “i just thought it would be a lot of help if you came to oversee the fall-out- especially with the building damage-”

“we’re good,” todoroki announces, to katsuki, apparently having given up on matching her in decibels. she’s got that classic hero look on her face, already in work mode, but just when katsuki’s about to do the same and jump into action, the look wavers a little and she frowns vaguely awkwardly. “thanks for doing lunch.”

“huh?” katsuki stutters, thrown, and then scowls at nothing in particular, stalling. todoroki’s the one who paid, albeit indirectly- it’s typically weird of her to be all formal about it all of a sudden, leaving katsuki to attempt to wriggle them out of the awkwardness of the moment. “i didn’t do shit except show up and eat, weirdo.”

“it’s been abnormally hard to show up and eat in the circumstances,” todoroki replies, a little wryly, and more concerningly a little resigned sounding. which is just unnatural, because todoroki may have expanded her range of emotions considerably since first year but resignation is not on her usual roster, and there’s nothing to be resigned about unless she had some kind of vested interest in this whole fiasco playing out any better than it did.

which she didn’t, obviously. katsuki’s been through this. she chose the nearest possible venue and rocked up in jeans and a t-shirt, and- and why is the fact that todoroki never dresses so normally out of class only now occurring to her, again?

she’d said ‘i think this is the part where we do small talk’. the part of what?

“yeah, whatever,” katsuki says, automatically, as her brain plays catch-up, which is the excuse she will forever stick to for what leaves her mouth next. “should have known you’d be a lousy date.”

todoroki goes ‘what?’ at the same moment deku does, ten times louder and more bug-eyed, which reminds katsuki that 1) deku is still there, 2) deku is still as big as his martyr complex, and 3) deku is the fucking worst, and allowing him to trap her into friendship is somehow responsible for this, she’s sure of it.

“can we go handle this fucking mess or what?” katsuki snaps, instead of screaming or breaking deku’s very large nose or maybe self-immolating in abject humiliation, hands erupting into explosions as she jumps onto the balcony railing. maybe if she throws herself headfirst into the debris she’ll concuss herself and turn amnesiac.

“um,” deku is saying, when she turns a withering glare his way. “um, yes! yes! yeah! let’s go do that!”

so she jumps skywards, explosions blasting her high into the air, and very scrupulously does not look towards the sounds of slick ice forming just behind her until todoroki skates into her peripheral vision, hair waving flag-like behind her. ahead there’s a building with a crater clean through it where deku must have erupted from, though when she turns to comment she finds him a fair deal behind them, lumbering pace slowed further as he avoids stepping on anyone or anything along the streets. instead her eyes lock on todoroki’s where the latter is staring at her, face unreadable, and she bristles hard enough to disrupt trajectory, correcting course rapidly before she plummets into an office.

“what?”

“i’m a lousy date,” todoroki repeats, neutrally, over the wind. katsuki grits her teeth.

“and what about it?”

she’s bracing for a lot, but not the horrible, sickening eye-crinkle thing todoroki does, dark eye twinkling even as her expression stays carefully impassive. “you think you can do better, then?”

“hah?”

“next time,” todoroki intones, very precisely, and then dips ahead like a complete coward as katsuki goes a color never previously visible to the human eye, sifting through about fifteen emotions before she decides to stick to outrage.

“what the hell? you suck at asking people out, icyhot!”

“you don’t have to say yes.”

“what, you think i can’t do better than this mess? you’re on, asshole.”

“i look forward to it,” todoroki says, gravely, and then there’s a collapsed building to handle and shit to do and if anyone wants to ask why katsuki is so especially gleeful in blowing shit up they wisely keep their mouths shut. she just likes the job, all right.

(for the record, it’s still not a date until katsuki says it is.)

#qui repond #qui ecrit #anon #prompts #tdbk #todobaku #fem todobaku #fem todo #fem baku

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loquaciousquark · 5 years ago

Note

Hi! I think I remember you posting about "making" your own computer? I'm sorry to bother you with something like this, but was it difficult? Would you say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it? Thanks!

Heck yeah!!! Oh man!! Gosh guys can I talk to you about building computers and how EVERYONE willing to do some basic googling is almost certainly capable of this I promise?

Welcome to:

Okay okay okay so let me spin you a li’l yarn: I was in optometry school in 2010-2011ish and I had been living up to now on prebuilts, mostly laptops, but DA2 was recently out and gosh darn it I wanted something I could play a proper game on. A friend of mine had a 10yo daughter who wanted to build a computer herself, and he told me if I’d buy the parts, he’d walk both of us through how to do it (what really happened was the 10yo built my first computer and I watched and brought drinks, so–no, I wouldn’t say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it!).

The physical requirements are some basic manual dexterity & arm strength (you gotta be able to manipulate some tiny things and put some pressure on some connections) and you will most likely need to lift up to 15 pounds, although you can limit that if you go for smaller components. The ability to bend forward and twist and reach will also probably be necessary, although some careful planning can also likely mitigate that.

I think I have pictures of the actual build process somewhere, but regardless, it resulted in this bad boy that served me well for about nine years. I was shocked to see how easy it was to put together, honestly; if you can follow a Lego assembly book, you can put a computer together. With tools like PCPartPicker that have built-in compatibility checks to make sure all your pieces fit, it’s a piece of cake to put together a parts list that you can feel really good about. You just pick whether you want your motherboard to come with fancy lights or not (hint: rgb is unironically cool & i’ll fight anyone who says otherwise).

In the end, you’ll need a set of basic components. You’ll need:

A case to put all the pieces in

A motherboard, the circuit board of the computer that connects everything, basically the heart of the computer

A CPU, the brain of the computer that determines processing power, or basically how fast it can do math and direct traffic

a CPU cooling system, which can be either mechanical fans or liquid cooling, gotta keep that baby chill; may or may not come packaged with the CPU depending on what you get

A graphics card (aka GPU), the thing that makes video games look pretty (and what will probably be the single most expensive item in the build depending on how good you go)

RAM, a short-term memory processing component that comes in different amounts (4gb, 8gb, 16gb, 32gb, 64gb if you’re a madman) depending on how fast you need your short-term memory to work. Good RAM allows you to do things like open a bunch of Chrome tabs at once, run Photoshop at the same time you’re listening to youtube videos, or process the demand of loading up a host of enemies in Mass Effect. Most everyone these days can get by just fine with 16gb of RAM, which is what I have.

a hard drive (or the new, faster, more expensive version, a solid state drive) which functions as your long-term storage bins. This is where you save documents, images, and install your programs. These come in tons of sizes–the larger your files are, the more storage space you’ll want. I always put at least a terabyte of storage in my builds.

a power supply unit or PSU, which gives the electrical juice for everything to run

a monitor (the more hertz, the smoother the video will be - you’ll want either 60hz or 144hz depending on how much your number of frames-per-second matter to you)

a keyboard and mouse

speakers or headphones or both!

Optional addons:

RGB lighting for everything :O

an optical drive (aka something to put DVDs, Blurays, or other physical CD disks into)

fancy liquid cooling pipes

additional case fans; most cases come with adequate fans, but if you are using the computer in a room with poor ventilation or you find that certain components are running hot, you can install additional fans

coincidentally you can also get fans with RGB lighting too

cable extenders when you are going for a specific color scheme

So it can definitely all look overwhelming at first, but when you start to look at how everything is laid out, you’ll notice some trends. Look at these motherboards, for example.

These are just four random motherboards I pulled off Newegg, a commonly used computer parts purchasing site. Sure, the colors are a bit different, but the layout between them…is all basically the same! Here, I’ll draw it out.

In just about every modern motherboard you buy, this will be the rough layout. Everything else is window dressing–what kind of GPU you get, what kind of CPU you get, whether your RAM lights up cool colors or not. Your motherboard will ALWAYS include a map that has extensive descriptions of what each connection does.

Much, much, much more under the jump!

Most of these you won’t even need!

There are always some compatibility things to consider–as I mentioned, PCPartPicker can help you figure out a lot of these–but the biggest one to care about is the CPU. There are two major companies that make CPUs, AMD and Intel. They both have pros and cons on the chips they make, but right now, AMD makes a family of CPUs called Ryzen that both outperform and are cheaper than Intel’s current leading brands, the i7 and i9 lines. Intel was king of the hill for a long time, though, and their CPUs are still really good quality, so some people still go with them over the cheaper alternatives for now. (There are some reports of black screens with the new Ryzen lines, but as I’ve never owned one, I can’t personally speak to how common that is.)

Regardless, once you pick which family of CPUs you want to go with, AMD or Intel, you just have to pick an Intel-friendly or AMD-friendly motherboard. This is always specified in the description of the motherboard. I own the Asus z370 motherboard, so here’s what it says in the description for CPU:

Anyway, once you’ve picked all your parts and had everything shipped to you, it’s literally just a plug-n-play, step by step until everything’s plugged in. Your motherboard manual will also include recommended order of installations, too, and often how to install them.

It helps to remember that the manufacturers of all these parts understand that they are expensive, and they really DON’T want to make them hard to install! Broken or difficult pieces during installation means that the customer is upset, and upset customers ask for refunds and lose brand loyalty.

It also helps to understand that a lot of these connections are based on certain standards–I didn’t realize until I was rebuilding my current machine that these holes set for screws really do work with just about everything you get, as long as it’s the same generation, because motherboard manufactures WANT you to have the flexibility to go any attachment brand you like and still be able to use their board to mount them.

So, you pick your case and open it up, and you put the motherboard down on top of all the little screw holes until they match, and then you screw all the screws down firmly.

Old rig, partially disassembled:

New, in approximately same state:

(One of the reasons I went with this larger white case than a smaller, slim case like my old one, is because this nicer case has what’s called “cable management;” that means there’s a built-in back area behind the motherboard where all my cables can be jammed without messing up the “aesthetic” of the glass window. My first build obviously did not have that, as seen in that first picture at the top of this post, so I had to just jam my cables wherever I could fit them so that the sides would close, haha.)

Anyway, you can see that the motherboard is just screwed in where it should be, and my CPU is already installed where it should be. I haven’t mounted the cooler for it yet because I needed to clean off the old thermal paste and install new thermal paste before doing so. My two sticks of RAM are also mounted in the top right in the motherboard’s recommended configuration & locations for two sticks (vs. one, vs. four).

Then, with the cooler in place, it looked like this:

So the cooler I have is liquid cooling in a closed system (the thick black tubes running right to left) which is attached to a fan that mounts in place of the white fan on the left from the previous picture. It was as simple as unscrewing the old fan and putting the new one in its place. I think I even used the same screws. The fan is powered by that thin cable running along the top of the case that plugs into a little socket on the motherboard labeled “CPU Fan.” It was as simple as just finding the right plug; it doesn’t even have directionality, just a three-pin socket, so it doesn’t even matter which way you plug.

Already it’s looking like a proper computer! And because this case has cable management, I took a picture of what it currently looked like from the backside.

This case is cool because it has a neat set of connectors mounted on the back of this little hideaway to connect the case fans. I could have run the white fan cables through to the front of the motherboard for them to get power/marching orders, but it was cleaner aesthetically to attach them here in the back. Nothing wrong with connecting them on the front, though–that’s what I did in my original build!

You also might have noticed I’ve mounted the PSU in that white case by now as well. It’s the large black and red box in the bottom corner, seen best from behind. The white case comes with what’s called a PSU shroud, which just means there’s a fancy white cover over it to keep the ~aesthetic~ when viewed from the front side.

The next step is to mount the graphics card!

There’s instructions in your manual as to exactly how these mount, but it really and truly is just removing the dust cover brackets where you need to, and then a delicate plug & play, pushing that big guy in until you hear the click! (Click good, snap bad. Haha. I’ve changed out these cards several dozen times and never broken one, though!)

You can also see the ugly red-tipped cables plugged into the GPU and the motherboard, both on the right side. These come from the Power Supply Unit (they are all permanently connected in most brands, and look basically like a squid’s tentacles–once you have your items mounted onto the motherboard, you just look for the connector from the PSU with the right number of pins and plug it in!)

This guy is the worst. He is fat and hard to maneuver and always requires SO MUCH FORCE to click into this delicate bendy board and your heart will ALWAYS be in your throat as your fingers shake from how hard you’re having to push to sink it, and it will ALWAYS eventually go in but you’ll hate every second of the doing. I hate you, 24-pin EATX. I hate you so much.)

The next thing I did was mount my optical drive (because yes, I still own one), my hard drive, and my solid state drive.

The hard drive and SSD both serve the same purpose (long-term data storage), but the SSD is much faster and uses newer technology. It’s also more expensive for the amount of storage you get, so I have a 256gb SSD that holds my operating system, my heavily-used programs like Firefox and Photoshop & Premiere, and one or two video games I play the most that I would like to load as fast as possible. This is the drive that can allow me to restart my whole system in less than five seconds.

The hard drive is 1.75 terabytes and holds everything else: fics, pictures, videos, music, other games, etc.They mount onto the racks with pre-drilled screws. The optical drive just slides into the socket snugly until it hits the back of the rack.

All of these use a standard connector called a SATA cable which runs between the back of the drive to a SATA socket on the motherboard. Most motherboards come with at LEAST six or seven of these connector slots, and some come with more. They look like this:

and are pretty universal. Any kind of extra storage or drive you want to add to your computer will probably connect with a SATA cable. I think my motherboard, my SSD & HD, and my case purchases all came with a pack of loose SATA cables of different lengths to be used for whatever I wanted.

The rack each drive is mounted to came installed with the case and pre-drilled with screw holes (and provided screws) for attaching either the HD or SSD in every slot. Because this case is all about aesthetic, it also comes with two vertical SSD mounts on the back of the case if you wanted to remove the right-side rack altogether, but as I mentioned, I have the optical drive, so I couldn’t go with that option.

So now we have all the major pieces mounted! The last set of connections are a collection of small fiddly pieces that all plug in roughly the same area and do things like light up the case’s LED, provide that startup beep, connect the USB sockets on the case’s front to power, etc. This is by far the section that takes me the longest because I guarantee I will ALWAYS plug at least two into the wrong socket and not have a beep, or my audio won’t work or something until I go back and reconnect them.

The next thing was to plug in my monitors and…see what happened when we hit the power button! (Monitor connections just plug directly into your graphics card in the back of the case.) And here’s what happened!

youtube

So it turned out when I was connecting my SSD (which has my OS on it), I was pushing on the little connector while sitting on the back side of the case. I thought I had the thing in the socket, but what I’d actually done was jam the connector just under the lip of the motherboard (that is, not connected to anything at all, just hanging in open space). Once I realized, though, it was an easy fix!

The last thing I wanted to do to complete the clean white look I wanted was to replace those UGHLY red PSU cables with what are called “cable extenders.” I bought some white ones on Amazon; because most PSUs’ cables are permanently attached at the box, you plug your cable extenders into the other end and then feed them through the case, so that’s the only portion visible. The ugly PSU cables are still there at the other end of the white cables, just hidden in the cable management area behind the motherboard.

I spent some time fixing up the cables to curve exactly how I wanted them to, then picked my LED RGB colors and closed up the open side with the glass wall. All that was left was to plug in my mouse/keyboard/speakers/headphones/mic/webcam, etc., and we were done!

Ta-daaaa!

The first build I did, the one in the blue & black case, took us about two days due to some unexpected problems. First, we were trying to salvage an old CPU from my HP prebuilt to save a little money. Unfortunately, they used basically no thermal paste to connect it to its fan, and when we were trying to get the fan off, it actually tore the CPU out of its socket and bent a bunch of its pins. I ended up going to Best Buy or something and getting a replacement off the shelf.

The other issue I had was that I foolishly didn’t back up my files, and lost a bunch of them in the rebuild (including my Hawke’s original run through the DA2 game :( :( :( ) Always back up your files before ever going in and messing with your case!

Over the years I replaced a bunch of components in it, which is why it lasted me so long, but the transfer into the new case only took me about three hours, and that was with a bunch of breaks throughout. I probably could have done it faster if I hadn’t wanted to savor it, haha. The cable management for the backless desk took a lot longer, though! (…and a LOT of zip ties.)

I do set my new build on a small glass stand (again, from Amazon) because Hamlet’s pretty sheddy and I wanted to keep airflow as good as possible. I’m limited on how many case fans I can install since I have the optical drive rack taking up a lot of space on the right, but I could install new fans on top if I wanted. My temperatures are great, though (I monitor with CoreTemp & GPUTemp, as well as my motherboard’s built-in temp monitoring software), so I don’t need to unless I decide I need more RGB.

Anything I might want to add, I run through PCPartPicker to make sure it’ll fit what I already have. For example, my parts list looks like this (full view and complete parts list available at this link):

ANYWAY.

If you are patient, if you can fit small Lego-like pieces in labeled sockets, and you are a decent googler, you can build your own PC. It’s really, really hard to do serious damage to components nowadays, even if you plug something in wrong. There’s a bunch of resources, though, and I’d recommend the following places to start:

newegg.com - parts for sale, getcher parts here

pcpartpicker.com - put your list of components together, and it’ll flag any compatibility issues or known problems

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/ - great starting point for new builders, tons of advice and how-to’s for every step of the process, and a decently responsive community to help troubleshoot any issues you might have

And I obviously love doing this kind of thing, so if there’s anything I can help with, I’m more than happy to try! Just let me know, and I hope this was helpful!

#anonymous #quark replies #quark's pc tag #long post for ts #very long post for ts #lots o videos and pictures for ts #a quest for fps

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wontshutup · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 2: Time

Intro Chapter 1

So, Chapter 2 is here! I finally managed to sit down to write it. I’ve been going through a lot of changes around me so it might not be the best...Also, I think it might be going kind of slow. Well, hope you like it.

-Milo

Notes: reader is gender neutral(if by any chance I mispronounced the pronouns, let me now), it is written in your POV and Five’s.

Warnings: I think none, but let me know if anything might be triggering. bad writing maybe.

He wasn’t expecting that.

He didn’t really know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a teenager about to burst into tears from a feat of laughter. He was very confused, baffled by their reaction, what was it they found so funny? His patience was running thin and was doubting himself, he started to wonder if this was a good idea, maybe he got confused, maybe it wasn’t them. A cold feeling rose upon his ears and neck, partly from embarrassment, partly from deception.

The youngster wiped a tear away and recomposed themselves, hands tightly clenching at their stomach for what Five believed was tummy pain from what just happened, he was waisting valuable time in this mockery. He started his step towars Klaus who was waiting for their orders in a nearby table.

“Wait! Aaaah I-I´m, phew let me” He turned towards them again, hands tucked inside his pockets as to hide his fidgeting. They let out a soft laugh, one that Five hoped was last, and recomposed, a smirk painted upon their features. “Aaah,Sit down old man, should I still address you like that?”

Five’s relief overtook his exasperation, it was them. Finally allowing himself a little more confidence of what to do next.

He took the seat across them and looked at them. They were leaned on the table, elbow on top supporting their face, they looked at him expectantly, and that’s when he realized, he didn’t really know what to say, he didn’t have a right way to start.

He went through his mind, trying to carefully form his next sentence, eyebrows furrowing in concentration. He opened his mouth, closed it quickly, to which they raised their brows, encouraging him to speak. The silence becoming uncomfortably long.

“We-” he started, only to be cut off by someone.

“You got yourself some company” the voice of the barista interrupted him just when he had made up his mind to speak.

He felt as the blood started to rise to his ears, resisting the yell at the guy.

“Yes this is an ex-collea-classmate! of mine,” they said catching themselves mid sentence. “I believe you have something for me?” they continued as if Five wasn’t even there.

“Sure thing, here, your pie and bitter black coffee,” he said with an emphasis in bitter

“make that two” Five spat out quickly, a hint of arrogance in his voice. He was clearly bothered by the sudden interruption and in dire need of coffee as the strong scent of his companion’s flooded his senses, making him the more aware of the situation.

“Please” added the teenager with an embarrassed look to which the young man nodded, eyeing Five quickly before going back to the counter. “You were saying?” they asked as they took a spoonful of the pie before them.

I need your help That was the first thing he thought, the only thing he thought, but he had to be reasonable, that was no way to approach them at the moment.

“How have you been?” he asked instead, out of compromise. It had been a fair amount of time since he had seen them, but being honest, he wasn’t interested in cordialities.

He looked at Y/N who looked at him with narrowed eyes, he knew they didn’t buy the clearly fake interest in them. A smug smirk painting across their face, as if mocking them.

“I’ve been fine, thanks, but why don’t you get to the point already?”

********************************************************************************************

You couldn’t help it, it was just funny, unsettling, but funny.

“Does it have to do with the” you snorted “shrinkage?” you asked making circles in the air motioning to point out all of his young figure.

He narrowed his gaze at you, clearly annoyed, you couldn’t really blame him for it though, not after braeaking into a laughing fit after confessing who he was, on another hand, it was payback for making you go through such an uncomfortable expirience. It was enought to go through the daily torments of your mind and the always alert mindset you brought yourself to keep at all times.

“It’s just, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re small” you took a sip out of your drink carelessly, enjoying the mix of the beverage as it went through you mouth with the amusement the situation brought to you, your eyes never leaving his face. His jaw clenched, clear sign that whatever had happened to him was not something he liked. Being honest, you weren’t being fair about the situation yourself but you decided to ignore the feeling.

“Yes, I have noticed” He said with a harsh tone. Appart from the down ageing he seemed to have some other matters going on, you decided to cut the banter.

“Now don’t get mad, what was it that you wanted to tell me?” you considered you had said enough to bother him, instead offering him a now nicer expression, encouraging him to speak.

You had gone through a lot of unpleasant situations throughout your life and knew that Five had many of his own, he had shared a couple of matters related to him with you and having de-aging being remarked to him wasn’t going to be of any help, god knows under which circumsmtances that happened and what he’s going through now.

His eyes moved as if reading invisble lines on your face, he was clearly thinking about what to say to you next

“Well, I-” after finally seeming to find the words he got interrupted once again.

“Oh Fivee!” Said a main in his 30s, he had medium lenght hair and big green eyes, somewhat of a cheaper version of what Jesus was meant to look like.

“Not now Klaus” Five said to him exasperated.

“Oh sorry little guy” he then looked at you “Hey! Aren’t you going to introduce us? I’m Klaus” he said, extending a hand with a big HELLO tattooed on it. You knew who Klaus was. Back at work The Umbrella academy was a common thing for your coworkers to talk about, they were all the rage in the 2000s department, however when ending up living in this time there was no trace of what The Umbrella Academy was instead, something called The Sparrow Academy had taken their place, but that was all you knew about them. He too seemed oddly familiar in actual timeline imagery, that exact image of him you had seen a lot of times while trying to avoid one of Destiny’s Children from giving you another pamphlet.

“Nice to meet you” you shaked his hand in return.

“So, should we leave?” he waved a paper bag in front of Five’s face.

“Actually Klaus, I’d like to stay” he nodded towards you.

“Oh, sure, I see, a little privacy” he nudged him in the shoulder. “About your coffee..”

“I already ordered one” Five told him in a way that seemed as if he was telling him to leave.

“Alright then, it was a pleasure to meet you..?” he fished for your name.

“Y/N” you smiled back.

“Beautiful name!, well it was a pleasure, hope he doesn’t bore you too much” and with that he left.

You returned your eyes to Five, he pinched the bridge of his nose, he looked tired, more than that, exhausted. Then a cup of coffee was laid cautiously in front of him, the smell stronger than your cup’s due to the new heat his drink emitted.

“Thank you” Five said under his breath to Ethan. He took the cup in his hands and took it to his lips, he was letting the pleasant smell engulf him for a moment.

“I need your help” he met your eyes, sincerity accompanying his words, like a plea.

And at that moment you pulled yourself back to what was actually happening for a second.

He needed your help, what for? The last thing you knew he was dealing with wasn’t precisely friendly business and even worse, he hadn’t meddled with the kindest of people to be honest. Last news you had about him was that he had blown up the Comission or something of sorts, that sure angered the people in power. You knew that even if he wasn’t bad he was a dangerous man with worse enemies, and being envolved wasn’t any good.

“I know you might have your doubts about me, but listen” he must have noticed the doubt on your features, now he had your attention. “I need you to trust me” his eyes held yours firmly, insisting.

You evaluated for a second. For a long time you did everything to stay out of trouble, getting away from everything related with The Commission...

“What is it exactly?” you decided to give him a chance.

He sighed in relief, whatever it was, it was clearly important to him.

“My family needs your help” he said regaining a bit of the confidence you knew in him, lightening the air between you. His family, that was something you could work with.

“Oh so now it’s your family and not you?” you went back to mocking him, to which he puffed out some tension, giving you a smug look.

“You’re insufferable kid” he grinned before taking another sip of his coffee, his eyes giving you a silent Thank you.

“Don’t” you warned him, taking a sip of your coffee, furrowing your brows “Aand now it’s cold”

#five hargreeves x reader #five x reader #tua x reader #tua imagines #the umbrella academy #five hargreeves imagine

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angelsfalling16 · 5 years ago

Text

Fools in Love

Read on ao3

Summary: Baz is opening up a bookstore, and his newest employee is a face from the past. He hopes that he and Simon can work together without their past getting in the way.

Word Count: 4562

A/N: I've had quite a bit of fun writing my fics for the @cotarot, and I am happy to be able to share this fic with you all now. My card was The Fool, and I decided to play with a few of the aspects of the upright part of this card that I found on this website. I focused mainly on Baz and new adventures, a new job, trying new things, and being ready for a fun relationship while also being careful not to miss out on true love.

Thank you @caitybuglove23 for reading over this for me and giving me inspiration for the ending. Your help has been as indispensable as Penny's help was to Baz in this fic.

***

Baz turns in a circle, taking in his surroundings, and he feels good about it. He is so close to getting what he has been working towards for so long. His bookshop is almost ready to open.

The shelves are finally stocked, the coffee shop is almost ready, and the shop is just as he imagined it when he drew out some of the designs. There were a few times over the past few months that he doubted that he would actually get this done, but he finally did it.

The bookshop opens in a week, on the following Saturday, and Baz feels like he might actually be ready.

There isn’t much left to do. He has worked his ass off, and it finally paid off. He deserves a break. He has done all he can do today.

Looking down at his t-shirt and shorts, Baz frowns. He wouldn’t usually deign to wear something so casual in public, but he has ruined many a nice outfit while trying to get this place cleaned up and making it safe for people to enter.

This place was a disaster when Baz found it. The windows were boarded up and covered in layer upon layer of graffiti. The floorboards were covered in a lay of dust so thick that he immediately threw out his shoes after the first time he walked through the place, and there was trash and rodent droppings everywhere.

He wanted to turn and run in the opposite direction when he saw the place, but there weren’t a lot of other options. A run-down shop that needing fixing up was better than nothing. And it was cheaper, so he was able to refuse the money his father offered him and get a loan. He wanted to be as dependent with this project as possible, even if that meant going for the long-abandoned and probably-haunted building that no one else wanted.

Now, as he looks at what this place became, he is happy about the decisions that he made.

Baz turns back around in time to see Dev emerge from the coffee shop section of the store, looking just as worn out as Baz feels. He has put in countless hours helping me get this place set up. Niall, too. Baz isn’t sure he could have done this without them.

“Hey, Baz,” Dev says as he walks closer. “Let’s get out of here. There isn’t much more that we can do. Let’s go celebrate.”

“Celebrate what? We aren’t even open yet.”

“But you will be in a week.”

“I don’t want to celebrate prematurely. Do you have any idea how many things could go wrong before then? If we have another break in, we might not be able to open.

It has actually been a few weeks since the last time someone broke into the store, but Baz knows that it could happen again. He has imagined every bad thing that could happen before next Saturday that would cause them not to be able to open, and it keeps him up most nights.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Dev says. “You’ve said it all everyday for weeks. Celebrating might be the wrong idea, but you definitely need to get out. Drink, let loose a bit. The stress is going to kill you if you don’t slow down every once in a while.”

Baz sighs. Dev has a point, but what he doesn’t know is that Baz has been out every night this week.

Away from his father and his constant watch over him, Baz has branched out in more than one area of his life. He finds it freeing to be able to walk into a bar or a club and pull some random guy, barely even bothering to learn his name before their hands are roaming each other’s bodies, and Baz is letting the guy pleasure him into forgetting everything that is going on.

Baz is done trying to make a deeper connection with people or get anyone to care about him. It was time for him to start something new on his own, so that’s what he’s doing. Getting attached to people is a mistake, which is why he doesn’t do it. They only even end up disappointing you, but if you just spend one night with a guy, it is exponentially harder for them to do that.

Baz never called back last night’s fling, and he doesn’t plan to. He deletes their number before telling Dev that he’ll go drinking. They lock up for the night and head to a bar on the opposite side of town where Niall will be waiting for them.

They stop by Baz’s place so that he can change into something nicer, and he pulls his hair down from its bun, allowing it to fall down around his face. There’s no use messing with it any more than that if some guy is just going to wreck it within the hour.

***

An hour and several drinks later, Baz finds himself getting lost in the mass of people out on the dance floor. This is one of few times that he just lets go and allows himself to just enjoy the moment. The stress of running his own business and the memories of countless arguments with his father wash away, and the only thing he’s thinking about is the beat of the music and which guy he’d most like to take home tonight.

Baz dances for a while, and when he opens his eyes at one point to take in the people around him, he finds himself staring into too familiar blue eyes.

Simon Snow is standing just a few feet away, and he’s looking at Baz.

As soon as they make eye contact, Simon turns and disappears into the ground. Baz briefly considers going after him to make sure that he wasn’t imagining things, but he stops himself. He isn’t going to allow himself to get messed up with Simon again. He’s past that.

Getting drunk and dancing with strangers has practically become habit with Baz, but this is something new. It throws him off. After that bit of shock, he loses the beat, and it no longer feels like he’s just dancing with strangers.

At least, that’s what he tells himself. It is definitely not because any old feelings have been dredged up just by seeing a guy from his past.

Baz hasn’t seen Simon since high school. Things weren’t always easy between them, but during their senior year of high school, Baz had begun to think that things were getting easier, that we were becoming something close to friends.

There was even a moment when Baz thought…but then Simon just ghosted him.

He wouldn’t return any of Baz’s texts. He avoided him in the hall and during lunch, and he moved seats in all of their classes so that he wouldn’t have to be anywhere near Baz.

Baz tried to talk to him once about what happened, cornering him in the parking lot one day after school, but Simon wouldn’t talk to him. Baz wanted to hit something. He wanted to yell at Simon. He wanted to demand that they sit down and talk about what happened, but Simon refused to say a word.

He just set his jaw and stared at a spot off to the side until Baz got tired of talking with no response and finally walked away.

He hasn’t tried to talk to Simon since that day. He thought he had left town after graduation. He was either woefully misinformed, or Simon is back in town.

Either way, it doesn’t spell good things for Baz. It never does.

After Simon disappears, walking away without saying a word, Baz tries to find his groove again, but it proves to be impossible.

This guy’s eyes are the wrong shade of blue. That guys clothes are too nice. And that one’s hair is all wrong.

Now, everywhere that Baz looks, he sees people who aren’t Simon, and no matter how good they might be in bed, it doesn’t seem worth going home with them. They all pale in comparison to the only guy Baz has ever been in love with.

Finally, after another half hour passes, Baz decides to give up and just go home. He pulls out his phone and calls a cab as he exits the bar because he doesn’t think he can face Dev and Niall after this. They will immediately sense that something is up, and the way that Baz feels is so ridiculous that he doesn’t want to have to talk to them about it, so he shoots them a quick text telling them that he’s headed home and thanking them for a night out.

Then, he spends the night trying to forget about Simon but unable to.

He barely sleeps and is in a terrible mood the next morning. It’s a good thing that he doesn’t plan to go into the store until that afternoon, after he has gotten some much needed coffee in him.

After breakfast, Baz receives some news that lifts his mood a bit. One of the people that has been an integral part of getting this shop off the round thinks that she has found him a new hire, and he knows better than to doubt Penelope Bunce.

Baz didn’t realize that it would be so difficult to find people to work for him. He’s a week away from opening, and he still doesn’t have enough employees.

There have been more than a few times when he has begun to wonder if his father was right, even now when he’s so close.

But no. He can’t think like that.

He can’t let his father bring him down, not when he is so close to finally opening his own business.

He has to prove his father wrong, show him that this was the right decision and that he did not make a mistake when he decided to venture out on his own.

He sends Penelope a text, telling her to have the applicant be at the shop at one that afternoon for an interview.

He figures that if the applicant is serious about wanting to work there, he will make the time to be there, even if it is on such short notice.

***

Baz is going to kill Penelope.

He should have known better than to trust Simon’s best friend from school, but her help has been indispensable. But maybe he should have been suspicious when she didn’t give him the applicant's name. He didn’t think he had any reason to be suspicious, though. He didn’t think that she would send Simon Snow to his doorstep.

Baz sees Simon through the door, standing there and waiting for Baz to let him in, and Baz almost turns around and hides in the back. Almost. But he isn’t that childish, so he walks over and opens the door.

Fortunately, Simon seems to be just as surprised to see him there, so maybe Penelope was keeping the truth from the both of them.

“Sorry,” Simon says. “I think I’m in the wrong place.

Baz twists his mouth into a sneer and pushes a hand through his hair. “No, I don’t think you are.”

“Oh. It’s just that Penny – my friend – said that this place was hiring. I didn’t realize that you worked here.”

It’s interesting that it seems like Penny didn’t say anything to Simon about this. Baz just has one question: why did she send Simon here?

“I don’t work here,” Baz says.

“Oh.”

“I own it.” Baz has to admit that he enjoys the look on Simon’s face when he says it.

“Oh. I guess I should just go then.” He starts to turn away, but Baz stops him.

“Wait. I can’t have you getting me into trouble for not giving you a fair interview.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

Baz makes a noncommittal sound in response, not really believing him. “Come on in, and we’ll talk.”

He leads Simon to a seating area at the back of the shop and quietly looks over his resume and application. They’re both crumpled from being stuffed in his pocket, but at least he thought to bring them with him. (Probably also Penny’s doing.)

Baz wants to turn Simon away, but he hasn’t received any other applications as of yet. No one wants to work at an independent bookstore, especially one such as Baz’s. Dev agreed to be a temporary barista, but Baz needs to hire other people if he wants to be able to open on Saturday.

Baz silently stares at Simon’s references and such for a long time before he finally looks up at Simon again.

He thinks about it for another long moment before he says, “Do you know what this place is?”

“A bookstore?”

“Yes and no. It is a safe space for everyone, but especially those of the LGBTQ+ community. There are not a lot of places where we can go and be open and feel welcome, so I set out to create such a place. I want anyone to be able to walk in here and feel like they have a place where they belong. Whether they have a label or choose not to use on. Whether they are out or in the closet or questioning. I want them to be able to come in here and find answers to those questions and to meet others like them and not feel so alone.”

Baz pauses for a moment to make sure that Simon is still listening before he continues. “Yes, this is a bookstore, but it is so much more than that. There is a café, but there is also this comfortable area where people can sit and read books that they may be worried about their parents seeing them with. Now, I know you may be thinking that it won’t be profitable, but I don’t care about the money. I care about making everyone feel safe and welcome.”

“Actually, I was thinking that that is amazing.”

It’s not quite the response that Baz was expecting. He didn’t know what Simon would say, but he didn’t think that it would be that he liked this place.

Simon turns his head to look around the store, and Baz looks with him, wondering what it looks like through his eyes.

At first glance, it may seem like an ordinary bookstore, but if you look carefully at all of the details, various section titles can be seen above different shelves that hold books on different LGBTQ+ resources, and there are all different kinds of pride flags hanging on the wall.

There are a lot of non-fiction books that Baz is hoping will be informational to those who need them, but there is a large fiction section as well. There are books whose authors and/or main characters are part of the LGBTQ+ community. Even the names of the drinks in the café have a theme to them. Then, there’s the seating area where we are currently at. It is situated at the back of the store, out of view from the front windows so that people can hopefully have a sense of privacy while they read. Baz wanted everything to be perfect.

Simon turns back to him, and he seems to be whispering to himself as he says, “It truly is amazing.”

That is when Baz makes up his mind about him.

“So, when can you start working?”

“What?” Simon asks, obviously surprised. “You only asked the one question, and I got it wrong.”

“It was your response to what I said afterward that I was looking for. Your resume isn’t too shabby either. Is there any way that you can start tomorrow? There is still a lot to do before we open, and I would like you to familiarize yourself with the place.”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Simon says, seeming a little confused, but that quickly turns into excitement as Baz talks with him about some things about the store he’ll need to know before he starts working.

Ten minutes later, they’re shaking hands, and Simon is on his way.

Baz is feeling a little better now that he has someone to work the sales floor with him. A couple of part-time people will need to be hired as well, but this seems like a good first step.

Baz can’t wait until they open.

***

It is finally opening day, and things are going better than expected. Baz had only hoped for a dozen or so people to come for the opening, but there have been groups of people moving in and out all day.

It started pouring down rain just before noon, and that helped drive people into his shop who were looking to get out of the rain, but people also seem to be genuinely interested in what the place has to offer.

They have made way more sales than Baz expected them to. He thought that people would simply come in, look around to see what the place was about, and then leave, maybe buying a coffee if they felt so inclined.

But it has been so much more than that.

Baz has been walking around helping people find things on the topics they are interested in and recommending some of his personal favorite books and discussing things with people who had any questions he thought he might be able to answer.

Niall came in to help Dev out in the café, and Baz has heard a lot of whispering about how cute they are. It’s just too bad that they are happily engaged to each other.

Things between Baz and Simon have been a little awkward this past week, but they work surprisingly well together.

Simon is hardworking and has gone above and beyond to help Baz, staying late into the evenings to get things set up and read to go. Baz has been there with him every second of it, and he hasn’t been able to think about anyone but him in days.

As Baz walks around the store, helping customers, he can’t help but watch Simon out of the corner of his eye. He bounces between the cash register and talking animatedly to customers, and he seems to really enjoy being here.

Baz has to admit that he is actually glad that Penny sent him his way. (Although, a warning still would have been nice.)

The rain clears late in the afternoon, about an hour before closing time, and a rainbow can be seen from inside the store. It’s beautiful, and Baz is delighted in how well the store has done on its first day, but by the time they lock up for the day, he only has eyes for Simon.

Baz and Simon quietly clean up the store together, straightening shelves and putting away a few stray books that are lying around, and just as Simon is about to leave for the night, Baz gets up the nerve to ask him if he would like to go for drinks.

“Are you busy tonight?”

“I was just going to head home.”

“Dev, Niall, and I were going to head out to a bar to celebrate a successful first day. You can come along if you would like.”

Simon’s smile is hesitant, but he says, “Yeah, that, um, sounds nice.”

“Cool. Ask Penny if she would like to come along, too. She was highly instrumental in getting this place open and advertising it to people.”

“She was?” Simon asks, raising both brows.

Baz nods. “Yes.”

Penny handled the creation of the shop’s website and the social media aspects, getting this place noticed and advertising the grand opening so that hopefully people will show up to it.

She helped find artists to commission for the artwork that lines the walls in between and above the bookshelves. She also helped design the pride buttons that will sit in a little bowl at the front and the merchandise that is going to be sold over by the coffee area. Baz could not have accomplished any of this without her.

He and Simon head out together, Dev and Niall following closely behind, and even though Baz is a little nervous about being around Simon outside of work, he’s a little excited, too.

***

They all gather to celebrate in the same bar as last week, and after one drink, Baz decides that he has had enough to drink. He’s worried about what stupid things he might do or say with Simon right there, sitting at the table with their mix of friends. Especially when all he can think about is pulling Simon into a dark corner and kissing him senseless.

To avoid what would be an immensely stupid act, Baz gets up and goes out to the dance floor, letting the music take him in. He closes his eyes as he dances to song after song, not caring about any of the people who surround him. He is ready to let go for the night.

After a while, Baz feels a shift in the pace around him. He isn’t quite sure what it is until he opens his eyes and finds Simon standing directly in front of him, and he finds himself once again surprised to be staring into the eyes of Simon Snow.

Simon has this strange expression on his face as he starts to dance with Baz, attempting to move to the music with him. He makes a big show of his movements, but he is actually quite terrible at it. He can’t even keep to the beat.

After a couple of long minutes of simply watching him, Baz places his hands on Simon’s hips and begins to guide his movements.

It doesn’t quite fix Simon’s dancing, but it does help it, and they begin moving together, drifting closer and closer together until they are practically pressed up against each other.

Baz startles at the first touch of Simon’s lips to his skin, but then he leans into it. Simon’s lips graze along Baz’s jaw, and Baz wonders if he should protest since they are in public, but it feels too good. Baz is lost in his touch.

Simon’s lips start to move, and Baz knows exactly what he plans to do. Their lips are just a breath apart when Baz places his hands on Simon’s chest to stop him. “Not here.”

Simon looks at him with a confused smile, and Baz squeezes his hand.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Simon nods, and they make their way out to Baz’s car. Neither of them has drunk much, but Baz feels a weird, electric energy coursing through him.

“Not here either,” he repeats once they’re in his car and Simon starts to lean towards him.

Baz starts the car and puts it in drive. He pulls out of the parking lot and starts towards his place, no idea what he’s going to do when they get there. Is he really taking Simon all the way to his apartment so that they can share one kiss and forget about it again?

He really shouldn’t be kissing his employees, but it’s Simon. Simon isn’t just some employee. He’s the love of Baz’s life.

And Baz cannot let this turn out like last time. He wants to have more. He needs to know that Simon wants more, or he can’t do this.

Just as he is about to reach the turn for his place, Baz turns the opposite direction and heads away from it.

There is a park nearby where they can sit and talk.

Simon looks confused as Baz parks, but he doesn’t say anything as Baz gets out of the car and moves towards the park entrance. He just follows after him.

Baz doesn’t want to have this conversation while they’re cooped up in his car. Luckily, there are only a few people at the park this late, especially since it rained all day, so they can have some privacy.

Baz leads them over to the swings, flipping the seat over to the drier side before sitting down. Simon tilts his head at him, frowning slightly.

“What are you doing?”

“Swinging. I think we should talk before we… Before this goes any further. And it’s a nice night, so come swing with me.”

“Alright.”

Simon takes the swing beside him, and Baz pushes off the ground, moving back and forth slowly so that he can still talk to Simon as he swings.

“What did you want to talk about exactly?”

“The kiss.”

“What kiss?”

Baz grinds his teeth together and squeezes his eyes shut, reminding himself that getting angry isn’t going to help anything.

“Oh,” Simon says before Baz can respond. “That kiss.”

“Yes. That kiss.”

“Do we really need to talk about that? It was so long ago.”

“We do because I still don’t understand what happened or why you quit talking to me.”

Simon groans and pushes off the ground forcefully. He swings for a minute before he finally responds.

“You know what happened. I kissed, you hated it, and we stopped being friends.”

“I—. What? I didn’t hate it. And we didn’t ‘stop being friends.’ You quit talking to me, and I had no idea why.”

“Because I was afraid that we would go back to the constant arguing and that you would use that kiss against me. And I didn’t want to—. Wait. You didn’t hate it.”

Baz sighs, staring at the ground as he lets his swinging slow until his feet are dragging on the ground.

“Of course, not. I had been wanting to kiss you for a long time, and when that finally happened, you disappeared. You quit talking to me, and I didn’t know what to think except that you thought it was a mistake.”

“It wasn’t a mistake.” He speaks quietly, and Baz barely hears him.

“What?”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” he repeats, louder this time. He turns to meet Baz’s eyes as he continues. “I liked kissing you, and I wanted to do it again. But I thought you didn’t like it.��

“Why didn’t you just talk to me?”

“I was afraid of getting hurt. And I now realize that I hurt you by doing that, so I’m sorry.”

Baz stares at him quietly for a long time. He isn’t sure what to say to that, but maybe he doesn’t have to say anything.

Sliding off the swing, Baz moves to stand in front of Simon. He holds his hands out and pulls Simon to his feet.

He searches Simon’s eyes for any sign that this could end badly, but he isn’t sure. All he knows is that he wants to take the chance. He wants to kiss Simon and go from there.

So, he does.

He leans forwards and kisses Simon carefully, pulling him into his arms and holding him tightly.

Simon kisses him back eagerly, jutting his jaw forward and making Baz’s knees weak as he deepens the kiss.

This kiss feels right. It feels like it’s full of hope and the possibility of something new.

The clouds part overhead, letting the moon shine down on them as they kiss there without a care in the world for a long time, and Baz thinks that all in all, today has been a pretty good day.

#snowbaz #snowbaz fic #simon snow #baz pitch #carry on tarot #the fool #fools in love #my writing #oof babe #i'm sorry for that terrible line about your help being indispensable #i'm tired and words are hard

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brokenmimir · 5 years ago

Text

The Curse of the Golden Hoard

White Rose Week 2020, Day 5: Curse

In Vale, success breeds misfortune as readily as failure.

(Sequel to The Ruby Eye of the Serpent King)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24718948 https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13615480/1/The-Curse-of-the-Golden-Hoard

Weiss rolled her eyes as Yang threw the door open, the solid oak banging against the interior wall loudly, drawing the attention of all of Beacon. Normally she would've been angry at the brute attracting the potential ire of as many dangerous people as routinely visited the small tavern, but in that moment she was too elated to care.

Still, appearances had to maintained, even if her heart wasn't in it. “Yang…”

“Sorry, ice queen,” Yang sang. “Guess I forgot my own strength. How 'bout I make it up to everyone with a round of drinks on me!”

“Yeah!” the room cheered, and Peter Port smiled behind his thick mustache as he began preparing drinks for the relaxing crowd, who were all discretely tucking away the weapons they had prepared against the forceful entry.

Yang strutted over to their usual table, throwing the heavy sack she'd been carrying down on it, making it clink suggestively for those with an ear for gold. Blake did the same, and then Ruby as well, until all three looked at her expectantly. Finally, with a long suffering sigh, Weiss heaved her own sack onto the table, privately enjoying the sound of their new fortune.

“We're going to be robbed the moment we step out of here,” Weiss complained as she sat down, an unrepentant Ruby hopping onto her lap with a grin. Weiss grunted a little at the weight, as for as petite as she looked, the barbarian girl was all densely packed muscle, built lean and wiry for maximum speed and agility.

“Like anyone can take us,” Yang snorted. “I don't know about anyone else, but I'm feeling good tonight!”

Blake grabbed their drinks, a glass of mead for Ruby and red wine for Weiss, and soon all four clinked their glasses together. “To friends and family!” Ruby cried.

“To a job well done,” Blake added.

“To having fun,” Weiss put in.

“To being filthy stinkin' rich!” Yang crowed, and all four downed their drinks. “Hey Port, another round on us!"

“There's no way we're going to make it back in safety after this,” Weiss said. “And you'd better not dip into our haul to pay for all of this; we haven't even divvied it up yet.”

“Ugh, you are such a killjoy,” Yang groaned. “Come on, live a little! When are we ever gonna get this much again. And it wasn't even illegal!”

“Well, not very illegal, anyway,” Blake drawled. “I'm sure we broke some laws. You can barely breathe in Vale with pissing off some magistrate.”

Weiss hummed thoughtfully. “The tower was probably owned by someone, for all that it's been abandoned since the Grimm attack centuries ago. Furthermore, we are supposed to declare any salvage for tax purposes. So on at least two levels we broke the law.”

“Ugh, Vale sucks,” Yang groaned, before taking a swig of her ale. “Of course, I can't party like this back home. Even if I brought back this good've a haul somehow the elders would've just taken it to 'spend on the village' and I'd be expected to go right back out there.

“So not that different,” Weiss chuckled. “Except here, everyone's so corrupt that no one is going to report you for not following the law. It's just a matter of if you can keep your ill gotten gains.”

Hours later, drunk with success and alcohol, the four girls staggered out of Beacon and onto the filthy streets of Vale. Not even stepping over a mugged corpse could get Ruby down that evening. Nothing could distract her from how right everything felt.

When she'd first arrived in Vale five months before she'd been an outsider, a barbarian unable to understand or accept anything about the city she'd been warned about her entire life. The first person she'd made a real connection to, Weiss, hadn't really simplified things, as the beautiful woman had represented everything her people had looked down upon about the city folk.

But somehow, after those few short months, full of combat, wealth, deprivation, magic, fear, and joy, they had bonded more strongly than she ever thought she could with an outsider. She spent more time with Weiss than she did her own sister, despite both of them being in the same city. And somehow, she wouldn't change a thing.

“Hey, which way should we go?” Yang asked, as she casually slugged an opportunistic moron in the jaw. His head snapped around, teeth flying, before he collapsed bonelessly onto the ancient cobblestones.

After pausing to rob the thieves of the few coppers they had, Blake pointed down the street. “Ruby's place is closer.”

“It's my flat,” Weiss grumbled. “I'm the one who signed the contract for it."

“Ruby's sounds good,” Yang agreed. “Come on sis, let's go crash you're place and split some loot.”

Weiss grumbled a little, but Ruby could tell that it was mostly for appearances, and even that stopped when she moved close enough to rest her head on the other woman's shoulder. Weiss actually blushed a little, which Ruby found more than a little funny. Weiss had no shame at all about nudity or sex, but honest, public affection made her quite embarrassed.

Once Yang and Blake had dealt with the criminals who had seen or heard about their largesse and its probably cause at Beacon, they made good progress, soon arriving at Weiss's apartment building. Unlike the cheap flophouses and rundown hovels that populated most of the poorer part of town, it was a newly renovated building, one only two blocks from the nicer living spaces that surrounded the Great Market. Obviously the owner either expected for merchants to be bold enough to make the journey through the crime ridden streets in exchange for cheaper rent, or they thought that the market district would soon grow to encompass the building. Either way, it was far nicer than it had any right to be, and had been available for a price that they could (barely) afford.

Once Weiss had the door unlocked they entered the main living area, and without a word all four began to dump their sacks out in the center of the floor. Coins and small gems made up the bulk of the haul, but a variety of statuettes, jewelry, and idols joined the growing pile. It was an impressive display of wealth, and for all that gold had relatively little allure for her, even she felt herself caught up in the moment, drooling over enough wealth to buy her village.

“Weiss,” Yang said distantly.

“Yes?”

“Remind me to team up with you more often,” Yang sighed joyfully.

Weiss smirked, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder smugly. “Of course. A little bit of research, and enough muscle to make it through some Grimm infested ruins, and we have more money than we know what to do with.”

“Little bit of research?” Ruby asked. “Weiss, you've done nothing but plan this thing for weeks now. I was actually getting a bit worried.”

“Why would you be worried?” Blake asked. “A good score always requires careful planning.”

“'Cause I've never seen Weiss fret over this kinda thing before,” Ruby said. “Usually Weiss doesn't worry about money at all. It was more than a little odd.”

“This was a lot of money,” Blake said, patting her sack.

“Not as much as the snake guy had,” Ruby pointed out.

“No,” Weiss grunted, before smirking. “But this is gold in my home. There's a big difference.”

“Hell yeah, there is,” Yang crowed, scooping up a handful of gold coins and tossing them in the air. “We're rich!”

It was far too late at night when they finally finished splitting the money, and with the help of a few bottles of wine that Weiss had gleefully shared, Blake and Yang were in no condition to walk home, so she graciously let them sleep on her floor near the fireplace for the night. With their own fortune secured in sacks, Weiss and Ruby retreated to their bedroom, where, after a brief moment of thought, she dumped the sacks on the center of the bed.

“What are you doing?” Ruby asked with a giggle.

“Just a fantasy of mine,” Weiss said, removing Ruby's cloak and letting it fall to the floor. With deft, well practiced fingers she swiftly stripped Ruby completely naked, taking a moment to admire her strong, lean form. As she always did she leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to the scar she'd received fending off an assassin to save her life, before straightening up and shoving the barbarian back onto the bed.

“Hey! Ack!” Ruby complained. “That's cold.”

“If that's another ice queen joke,” Weiss grumbled as she straddled her lover.

“No, I mean, it's like, really cold,” Ruby said. “And kinda hard. And a little pointy.”

Weiss giggled like a child as she hovered over Ruby, sliding a hand through the gold and gems covering her bed. “Ah, come on. I've always wanted to make love in a pile of gold, and this is my chance. You're not going to say no, are you?”

Ruby just smiled up at her. “How much wine have you had to drink, anyway?”

She giggled again. “Way too much.”

Instead of replying Ruby pulled her down, and the two began to kiss, quickly growing heated as hands wandered. Eventually Ruby started trying to pull at Weiss's clothing, and she pulled back, standing from the bed.

“What?” Ruby panted.

“Just stay there,” Weiss said, before slowly, sensually beginning to remove her own clothing. She'd seen many, many dances put on to entertain crowds and rile up guests for more personal services, and while she'd never felt a need to put on such a show for a lover, she put every bit of her grace into it, the slight stumbles her drunkenness caused interfering very little with the display. Ruby's silver eyes were wide open, and Weiss grinned like the cat who caught the canary as she finally stripped the last item away, letting the silken undergarment drift to the ground.

She straddled Ruby again, but before she continued she spotted a piece of treasure sitting beside her lover. It was the appropriate size and shape, and with a wicked grin she picked it up, before leaning down and kissing Ruby again.

“Ack! Cold!”

Ruby wasn't sure what woke her up. Normally after so much mead and intimacy with Weiss she'd sleep the whole night through, but something pulled at her consciousness. It was a cold feeling, and at first she mentally blamed the treasure pile that Weiss had insisted they sleep on like they were legendary dragons. It wasn't quite that, however. The cold was deeper, in her heart, and she found herself shivering despite the blankets and warm body next to her.

Opening her eyes, she couldn't really see anything. It was dark, even darker than it should've been, as normally some dim light made it through the windows even deep in the heart of the night. She swallowed thickly, knowing on some level that something was wrong, although she couldn't put her finger on what. The same deep, primal sense that warned her when a dangerous beast was lurking about in the wilderness told her something was very, very wrong.

“Weiss, Weiss, wake up,” she whispered, still slowly turning her head from one side to the other as she tried to make out something in the pitch blackness. “Weiss.”

“Ughhhh,” Weiss groaned, shifting slightly closer and tossing a leg over her hip. “Again? You're starting to wear even me out.”

“Weiss, something's wrong,” Ruby whispered.

“Yeah, you're not asleep,” Weiss mumbled. “I promise, I'll do whatever you want… in the morning. Just need a… a little more sleep.”

“That's not… ugh,” Ruby groaned as Weiss fell back asleep. With a sigh she pushed her lover away, standing up stiffly and stumbling from the bed, coins and other valuables falling to the floor in a cascade of invisible gold. The sound seemed strangely dampened, however, as the heavy metal should've been louder falling more than a foot onto the wooden floor.

“I am never going to sleep on money again,” Ruby whimpered, rubbing her back and wincing when she dislodged a coin that had managed to embed itself into her flesh. No, she definitely wasn't doing that again, no matter how excited her weird fantasy had made Weiss.

It was hard finding her clothing in total darkness, especially since she'd been a bit distracted by Weiss while she'd stripped her. Once she finally had something on she reclaimed her battle scythe and carefully opened the door to the rest of the apartment, not wanting to risk walking in on her sister and Blake having their own celebration.

Instead, it was pitch black as well, but she could hear muffled snoring coming from the center of the room. “Blake? Yang?”

They didn't respond, even when she called again, and with her heart pounding in her throat she stumbled through the room, heading to where Weiss kept a candle for dark nights. Usually they navigated just fine by starlight, but sometimes her lover wanted to read in the evening, and she had to have something for that.

Normally finding the candle in the dark wouldn't have been difficult, but it felt like she was somehow being watched, like danger was all around her, ready to pounce. The longer she spent in that dark, quiet room, the more she felt vulnerable, like she was being hunted by an unknown predator. With unsteady hands she finally grasped the fine beeswax candle, a gift from herself to replace the stinky, smokey tallow Weiss had been using, and she pulled flint and steel from her pouch.

It was only as she tried to strike the tinder that she realized how badly her hands were shaking. She actually paused in her work in surprise, not quite able to believe it. It felt like it had been years since she'd had such a strong, useless reaction to fear, and yet here she was, shaking like a child on her first hunt. For the first time she was almost glad that it was dark, since it meant that no one could see her weakness.

After taking several long, deep breaths to gather herself Ruby finally regained her control, striking the flint and steel to produce strangely dull sparks. It took several tries, but finally the tinder took, and then the wick thereafter, lighting the candle.

It did almost nothing for the darkness. The large candle should've provided enough light to easily make out the room, but instead it seemed to be little more than a single point in the middle of a deep, dark blackness. She couldn't even see the walls of the room, and it was far from being so large as to make that reasonable.

Something was very, very wrong.

Ruby quickly, methodically searched the apartment. It wasn't very large, but with her light the way it was she had to take her time looking everywhere. Everything was as it should be, with no signs of intruders or anything else strange, other than the muffling of all sound and dampening of all light.

Yang and Blake were still asleep, which she supposed was strange in its own right. Yang was a heavy sleeper, but normally it was impossible to do anything without waking Blake up. Even a shift in the pattern of your breathing would cause her cat ears to twitch warily, but Ruby was able to crouch over her, burning candle in hand, without it disturbing her dreams.

With nothing wrong inside of the apartment, Ruby decided to check one last thing before waking up the others. Opening the door, she crept outside, looking about warily, before heading down to the street. While they were usually dark at night, with most honest citizens (for some meaning of the term) carrying lanterns if they had some business at that late of an hour, the stars and distant buildings usually gave enough illumination for her trained eyes to navigate the streets.

Instead Ruby looked around, frowning at the excessive dimness, before deciding to walk a bit to see where the dimming effect began and ended. She had only begun to walk when she spotted a body lying against the side of the building. She almost moved on, her time in Vale having conditioned her to ignore peopleliving or dead lying in the street, something that had been difficult to get used to after growing up in insular, tightly knit Patch. Without Weiss or Blake around to scold her for it, she decided to check on the person.

They were a woman of more than twice her years, with a face made up with powders and creams to seem younger, if poorly,something severely undermined by black streaks under her eyes. She was dressed in very little clothing, and from what Ruby could guess, were she younger and more attractive, the Weiss she had first met upon arriving in Vale would probably have paid for her services.

She also shouldn't have been passed out in the streets, without any sign of injury or intoxication causing her collapse. Ruby checked her pulse, and was relieved to find it, although it seemed slow, sluggish. She tried to shake her awake, but she didn't react at all, and it was then that she noticed something else odd. The black streaks, which she had assumed had come from tears mixing with kohl, were slimy and thick, and her eyes widened when she realized that their was a black streak on the wall behind her as well. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but if she had to guess, she'd say that the black ooze ran straight up the wall towards her window.

Ruby's fear sharpened, no longer seeming quite so baseless. She might've been able to dismiss her instincts crying out that something was wrong, or even somehow assumed that the muffling of sound and light were only in her head. But this was far more suspicious, and the only thing that kept her from running up the stairs was the burning candle in her hands, and how difficult it had been for her to light it in the first place.

As she hurried back towards the door she noticed two more bodies, this time a pair of laborers, tall and strong, collapsed near the street corner. While the woman may have been taking a break in the alley before continuing her walk or job, they were obviously taken by surprise, simply collapsing on the spot without a word. It was enough to make her speed up her step, using the arm holding her scythe to shield her candle as best as she could from the wind of her movement.

When she reached her door she paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, leaning her deployed battle scythe against her shoulder so that she could carefully open the door without setting down her candle. It creaked open, and the gloom within was somehow even thicker, more impenetrable than before. The candle barely seemed to do anything, but she could somehow see something moving in the dark.

“Yang? Blake? Weiss?”

There was no response, but she heard something shifting in the room. Jaw tightening, she stepped inside, carefully shutting the door before her, before raising her scythe, choking up her grip to provide control one handed. It was a poor way to fight, but without better lighting she had no choice.

She slowly made her way across the room, eyes darting about, her heart jumping every time she saw something move, but every time it was simply her eyes playing tricks on her. Every figure was a piece of furniture, every attacker was naught but a shadow shadow, every monster an illusion when examined properly in the dim light.

When she reached her sister she nudged her with a toe. “Yang. Yang… Yang!”

She didn't move, didn't react. Finally, Ruby looked down, only to gasp at what she saw. Trailing down her face were the same thick, slimy black trails, as something apparently poured from her eyes, before being drawn across the room in the direction of the bedroom. One final glance at Blake to verify the same thing, and she was moving towards the bedroom door, keeping one eye on the slime trail while looking around for danger.

She didn't even bother opening the door, simply kicking it open, the loud slam a barely audible thud. Looming over the bed, over Weiss, was the most hideous creature she had ever seen.

It was thin, with long, spindly limbs, the feet coming to a single, sharp point, while the arms ended in three long, slender claws. The rest of the body was like a human shadow, angular and distorted, but recognizable in form, with bony plates scattered here and there, notably a skull and ribs. The face was vaguely human in shape under the bone, with burning red coals for eyes, and a gaping, fang filled maw.

Without hesitating she lunged forward, swinging her scythe in a broad, desperate stroke, hitting nothing but air. Unfortunately, the fast motion made the candle gutter out to almost nothing, and she was reduced to standing perfectly still, knowing there was a monster in the dark, unable to do a thing to stop it. She tried to listen, tried to feel the motion of the air, or see something in the dim ember of candle light, but it was like being wrapped in a blanket of night. All was still, silent, and shadowed.

After far too long the candle finally stopped sputtering, and Ruby turned about looking for the monster once more. It was when she had turned halfway around that she saw it, the thing having moved behind her, ready to attack once more. She swung her scythe again, trying her best to shield the candle with her body, but once again the tiny light failed, and she could do nothing but stand still, desperately hoping to find it before it could attack her again.

Then she felt the claws dig into her back. She reacted instantly to the sneak attack, diving forward into a roll that ended with her swinging her scythe, and this time, finally, she made contact. The monster broke its silence with a loud, terrible screech, which tore through her, scraping her bones for marrow and hollowing out her heart, leaving nothing but ice and fear behind.

This time she could hear it moving, the dullness slightly receded, and she didn't even hesitate, dropping the now completely snuffed candle on the ground as she spun in place, swinging her scythe right towards where she was sure the monster was. She made contact once again, and this blow sheared through something, and a moment later she heard something thump onto the floor, before the shrieking renewed.

Unfortunately her next swing missed, and her follow up hit the wall, so she paused, holding her scythe in both hands, trying to slow her breathing as she listened for the monster once again. She almost lashed out when she heard another sound, only to pause as she recognized Weiss's voice, even if she couldn't hold onto the words passing through her ears and mind. She shuddered, the motion agitating the cut on her back, and then the room was finally illuminated.

Weiss, nude and beautiful as ever, crouched on the bed, her sword in hand covered in a pale, spectral blue flame. She looked weak, her hand trembling, unable to fully stand as she held the weapon as high as she could through her enervation, trying to provide the best light she could. Ruby could see the lines of black slime down her own face, as whatever had happened to the others has been done to her as well.

Then Ruby turned, reacting almost before she sensed it, swinging her scythe once more at the monster. It was looming behind her once more, its left hand missing from her earlier attack, and, finally able to see, Ruby aimed her swing directly towards its neck. The scythe cut through, and the head bounced away, breaking down into the same black ooze before turning into the oily, smokey fog of a dead Grimm, its body slowly following.

“Weiss!” Ruby shouted, lowering her scythe and turning to her lover. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah,” she rasped, raising a shaking hand to her face, rubbing away the slime with a look of disgust. “What the hell was that?”

Weiss had never felt so completely drained in her life. Not after performing all night magical rituals with Cinder and the others, not after the frantic, desperate sword training lessons her sister gave her before she left to become a mercenary, not even after the wild, week long benders that dragged her to half the houses of ill repute in the city trying to forget everything. It was as though every bit of energy had been ripped from her body, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its place.

She'd used what little energy she had left to cleanse and bind Ruby's injury, the process wearing her out so badly that her lover had been forced to dress her, as she could do little more than slowly shift her limbs by the time the process was complete. Ruby had, much to her protestations, actually carried her into the main room, where she set her on a large chair and lit several candles.

Blake and Yang stirred sluggishly, Blake finally sitting up and blinking dazedly around the room. She didn't even seem to the notice the slime on her face, her nearly vacant expression only gaining a little focus when she saw them. “Weiss… Ruby. What happened?”

“Grimm,” Ruby answered. “I've never seen anything like it.”

Blake blink a couple of times, before starting to stand only to collapse when her legs wouldn't support her weight. She blinked down at them, an expression of betrayal on her face, before looking back up at Ruby for answers.

“I don't know,” Ruby said. “Weiss's the same, and I think it wasn't just us. There were some people in the street the same way.”

Weiss gathered her strength for a moment, before speaking, her voice small and weak. “The Grimm must've gained strength by taking ours. Given enough time we'd be dead, and it probably would've expanded the area effected. This whole block probably would've died before anyone noticed if Ruby hadn't stopped it.”

“How come you weren't effected?” Blake demanded.

“I dunno,” Ruby said. “I just… woke up. When this whole thing started. Dunno know why.”

Weiss sighed, leaning back into her seat as Blake and Ruby talked. She was too tired to really maintain a conversation, but she hadn't wanted to lapse into silence while Ruby was obviously upset. She smiled slightly, glad for the diversion, as she let herself mentally drift.

She had managed to fall asleep again, only to awaken when the smell of cooking bacon filled the air. They rarely made their own food, with Weiss knowing nothing about how to do so, and Ruby being limited to roasting fresh game over a campfire, but Yang had somehow picked up some real cooking skills, and when she came back to herself it was to the sight of the exhausted blonde hunched over the fireplace, slowly poking at crisping bacon in a pan, bread sitting on the stone nearby to heat.

“You're awake!” Ruby said.

“Mmm,” she hummed. “Did anything happen?”

“Uh… good news or bad news?” Ruby asked, moving to sit beside her on the seat.

Weiss narrowed her eyes. “How bad?”

“Uh… we're all alive, so it could be worse news,” Ruby hedged.

Weiss frowned. “So, very bad news.”

“Kinda,” Ruby agreed with a wince.

Weiss groaned in dismay. “How about good news… then breakfast… then bad news.”

Yang chuckled. “Gotta recharge before the bad?”

“Well, the good news is we're all alive,” Ruby said brightly. “The Grimm's gone, and the longer they've been up the better they've been feeling.”

“Yeah, you really need to put some meat on those bones, Weiss,” Yang taunted. “You're the only one who fell back asleep.”

Weiss glowered at her, not even breaking her expression when the other woman handed her a plate of food. “I also helped Ruby deal with the Grimm, while you two slept right through it.”

“Details,” Yang dismissed.

As annoying as the woman was, she prepared a filling meal. The fresh, hot bread was slathered with honey and fruit preserves, and the bacon was crispy, just the way she liked it. After crunching on a piece she groaned ecstatically. “Alright… you get to live.”

“How kind of you,” Blake drawled, although Weiss noticed she hadn't even looked up from her own breakfast.

Once they were all finished, Weiss leaned back against Ruby, a smile on her face as she finally felt a bit more human. “Okay, so what's the bad news.”

“Um… maybe it's better if you see for yourself.”

“See for myself?”

“Yeah… why don't you check our room.”

It was another typical night at Beacon, with Weiss nursing her red wine while Ruby sipped at her mead. Blake and Yang had gone elsewhere for the evening, probably driven off by Weiss's smoldering temper. Even most of a day after finding out the truth, her lover still wasn't over it.

“I can't believe it was all trash,” Weiss grumbled again.

Ruby chuckled. “Well, you know… easy come, easy go.”

Weiss glared at her, before sighing and slumping against the table. “But there was so much!”

The golden treasures they'd taken from the abandoned tower had turned out to be anything but valuable. With the Grimm cursing it dead, the treasure had turned out to be nothing but corroded scraps, rusty iron, and broken clay and pewter bits. Weiss hadn't been able to determine whether the fake treasure and associated Grimm had been an intentional trap placed by the tower's former owner, or if it had been something put together by the Grimm seeking gullible treasure hunters to prey upon, but either way they had been left with nothing.

“What's really bothering you?” Ruby asked.

“What do you mean?” Weiss asked, her back tensing slightly.

“Weiss, you're the one who taught me what 'easy come easy goes' means,” Ruby pointed out. “Usually you're the first one to shrug that kinda stuff off. So why're you so upset now?”

Weiss was quiet for a long time, before finally sighing. “You know our apartment?”

“Uh huh,” Ruby hummed. “What about it?”

“Before… before we moved in together… before we got together, I didn't have anything beyond what I could carry,” Weiss said. “Just a belt pouch of money, the clothes on my back, and my ancestral sword. Otherwise, I would fight or steal to fill my pouch, and then find someone's bed to sleep in for the night. It's been… years since I've had a room that required a lease. I haven't… I haven't had a home since I left Schnee Manor.”

“What's wrong with that?” Ruby asked.

“Everything,” Weiss sighed. “And nothing. I guess… I was used to a lifestyle once, where I had roots, and books, and fancy candles, and staff cooking me meals, and a warmed bed ready for me at night. All with a steady roof over my head and no risk of losing it all. Well, no risk until I chose to throw it away. Then I had nothing to lose, but that meant I had nothing at all. I was rudderless, alone in crowds, with nothing to depend on, and nothing depending on me.

“But now… I don't want that anymore. I want a life with you. With a home, and a bed, and the security not to need to run when things go wrong. Money… money had no value to me when my family had so much of it, and no value to me when I needed no more than I could take in a day. But now… now I don't want to risk losing this… this life we're building.”

“I had no idea,” Ruby said, taking her hand. “This has been really bothering you, hasn't it?”

“It should bother you, too,” Weiss said. “Vale chews up and spits people out. That was fine when I didn't care what happened to me tomorrow, but I don't want that anymore. I want… I want a tomorrow, not just a today. And a tomorrow requires more than odd jobs and petty crimes.”

“Then we'll find more.”

“It's not that simple,” Weiss said.

Ruby grinned at her. “It's only not simple if you make it not simple. Besides, even if something does go wrong, I know how to live in the forest with nothing at all. We'll figure out how to get by, I promise.”

“Dolt,” Weiss said, rolling her eyes.

“Hey, who's worrying about silly stuff here,” Ruby said. “You know, you should share this stuff with me. We're in this together, you know? You don't have to worry alone.”

“I- huh,” Weiss said, leaning back in her seat. “I suppose you're right.”

“Of course I am,” Ruby said with a grin. “Now, how 'bout I get us another round of drinks, and then we can figure out what we can do next, since I guess we have to pay money to that landlord guy every month.”

“Sure,” Weiss said with a smile. “Together.”

#white rose week #white rose #ruby rose #weiss schnee #rwby #fanfic

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anxiously-going · 5 years ago

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I've seen this post about reparenting oneself and how it includes stuff like buying stuffed animals and whatnot the person never got as a kid cause their parents refused to.

And I have this thought building in my head that Jim and Len decide that buying something fun and ridiculous for themselves is as good a place as any to start in this whole recovering from abuse deal.

Something comes up or maybe they just decide to, but somehow they end up going shopping on their own.

Jim comes back with a color book and some crayons.

Len comes back with some rock candy.

And while they're discussing what they bought they each pull out a second bag going "oh yeah, I found this for you!"

Len hands Jim a water color set.

Jim hands Len a necklace with a little sun charm on it.

With a somewhat sad laugh they realize they really didn't do what they were supposed to, splurge a little on only themselves. Instead they both bought the cheaper thing for themselves saving something nicer for the other. Maybe the thought even passes through their minds, wondering if they're worse off than they realized.

But they try not to dwell, try to appreciate what the other has done and not wonder how messed up they really are that even having agreed to do so, they couldn't be bother to spend more than 3 bucks on themselves, but didn't think twice about dropping twice that much on each other.

#leonard mccoy #jim kirk #headcanons #half baked ideas #probably not entirely coherent but there ya go

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marshmallow-phd · 6 years ago

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Innocent Intentions

Part of The Untamed - EXO Wolf Universe

Genre: Supernatural, Wolf Au

Pairing: Tao x Reader

Summary: There was one thing you couldn’t stand in all your years at college: playboys. And the campus was riddled with them. So when Tao - a player with a particularly well-known reputation - inserts himself into your life, you come up with a plan to get rid of him, whether he makes your heart race or not. But the more he’s the around, the more you just might find there’s a hidden layer underneath all the rumors, including a secret you never could have guessed….

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I Final

The earlier excitement of your date with Tao was now heavily weighed down by your encounter with Wyatt.

Your friend had some very valid points concerning Kendall. Would she really get that upset that you were basically seeing Tao now? It felt like the cliché devil and angel were sitting on your shoulders, tugging you back and forth, making you dizzy. The angel simply kept reminding you that Kendall was your best friend and she’d been there for you long before Tao ever came around.

On the other hand, the devil gave a very valid argument about how it was only one date between them and just this past weekend Kendall had mentioned she was talking to someone new. Besides, you were allowed to find someone to be with yourself, weren’t you? Was it a little selfish that you wanted it to be Tao? Yes. But wasn’t everyone allotted a little bit of selfness?

By the time your last class came to an end, you’d made up your mind. You were going on that date with Tao. You owed it to yourself to give it a chance. And you didn’t want to witness Tao’s disappointment if you turned him down after how excited he was this morning.

You really shouldn’t have been surprised to see Tao leaning up against the wall opposite of your classroom when you exited. This was a much better sight than Wyatt had been earlier in the day. However, while one was your friend and knew your schedule….

“Are you stalking me now?” you asked teasingly.

“It’s actually fairly easy to find out a student’s schedule here,” Tao smirked, throwing an arm around your shoulders as the two of you walked down the hall. “A school should really protect its students’ privacy better than that.”

You rolled your eyes. “So, you went to Jace in the front office again?” If that boy kept giving out your information, you were going to have to put the fear of god in him. Or at least, beg him to stop.

Tao shook his head. “Nah, I just asked around. Figured someone might know you. Turns out, I found a kid that was supposed to be your class, but he ran late so he skipped it all together and was hanging out in the lobby. Very convenient for me.”

“Oh, yes, very convenient,” you said dryly. No longer able to fully walk properly with the extra weight, you gently removed Tao’s arm from your shoulders. That earned a pout from the supposed bad boy, but he simply slipped his hands into his pockets, respecting your personal space. “So,” you turned to him with a wide smile, “where are we going?”

That mischievous gleam that you knew all too well to fear was back in his eye. “It’s a surprise.”

You groaned. You hated surprises.

“Don’t be like,” Tao whined as he stepped in front of you to block your way. “I’ve been planning this out all weekend.”

Shaking your head, you commented, “You’re like an attention-starved puppy, you know that?”

Tao shifted uncomfortably before clearing his throat, turning on his heels and telling you to follow him as he hiked across the courtyard. Was he sensitive to dog comments because of his reputation? That would make sense, you guess. Wyatt even called him a dog on that night of Kendall’s date.

A sense of excitement surged up your heart as Tao opened the passenger side door to his convertible for you. Taking your bag off your shoulder, you slid onto the leather seat, a smile unable to be contained. Tao took your bag from you and put it in the trunk of his car before hopping behind the wheel, once again opting to ignore the door. He really needed to stop doing that or you might have a heart attack one day. Smooth moves like that didn’t usually get to you, but Tao, as always, was the exception.

You were given absolutely no hints of your destination, just letting the wind kiss your face as Tao drove through the city.

At one point, while you were staring out at the side, watching the building pass by, he reached over and grabbed your hand, wrapping his fingers around your own as they rested on your lap. A furious heat exploded on your cheeks. You chewed on the inside of your bottom lip to discretely hold back the face-splitting grin your lips were currently fighting to reveal. While your face remained facing away from Tao so you couldn’t see his expression (which was probably much calmer and more collected than your own), you glanced down at your intertwined hands out of the corner of your eye at an interval of maybe thirty seconds or so.

His skin was warm – inhumanely so. For a moment, you worried that your palm would start to sweat from the temperature, but you refused to let go. It felt too nice, this innocent proximity, this comfortable silence. It didn’t feel like a first date, even with the jitters in your stomach. The boy next to you felt too familiar for you to be overly nervous about how this would go. You didn’t really know Tao, not like how you’d like to, but this relaxed state you were always in with him around was nice and different.

All too soon, Tao pulled into a parking lot, letting go of your hand to safely park the car and turn off the engine. Taking at your destination, you gulped.

The restaurant Tao had brought you to wasn’t the average first-date type place. Twinkling lights hung on the aesthetically faded red brick walls even though the sun was still very much present in the sky. From what you could see of the patrons that were seated on the large patio area, this was a place where you dressed up and expected to pay a hefty price per dish. While you weren’t dressed in sweatpants, you were still in your school day clothes of jeans and a comfortable shirt.

You were so focused on staring at the building you hadn’t realized that Tao had gotten out of the car and was now holding your door open.

“What are we doing here?” you asked shyly as he helped you out of the car. Tao at least was dressed a little more high end with his tight black jeans and designer jacket that was probably meant to be casual.

“This place looks expensive. Maybe we should go to a café or something,” you suggested nervously. There was no way there’d even be a table open given the amount of cars currently in the lot. If luck was on your side, that’d be the case waiting for you inside.

“Just trust me,” was Tao’s reply. Your nerves were in high gear as he led you to the front entrance, his hand back in yours. A smart, fiendish part of you was relishing in this scenario, as much as you hated to admit it to yourself. Tao had taken Kendall to a bar. Albeit, definitely one of the nicer bars in town, but you were being treated to a fancy five-star dinner in the pricey art of town. Perhaps more proof that you really were different to him?

“Mr. Huang!” The hostess greeted as soon as you stepped through the door, ignoring the others waiting around the lobby for seats to become free. “We have your usual table ready for you, just as you requested.”

Usual table? Not that special, apparently.

Your smile dimmed a little as the hostess showed you through the restaurant until reaching a rounded booth in a secluded corner away from the others. Sliding in, you kept a little distance from Tao, your eyes scanning every part of the room that didn’t put him in your view. Too easily that doubt crept up on you, making you wonder all over again if he was truly serious when it came to you. He’d given you more than enough evidence and yet here you were, poking at the sore spot, making it worse.

As if he knew exactly what was on your mind, he scooted closer to you, taking your hand as he gave you a small, crooked smile. “I haven’t brought any other girls here before.”

You pursed your lips. How did he guess that right away? “The hostess seemed to know you fairly well.” It was a bit sad that you’d become that girl who needed reassurance and explanations, but it was hard given that Tao constantly looked like he just walked off a runway in New York.

“I come here with my brothers,” he told you. “I like the food and the quiet atmosphere. When I was younger, I’d come with my parents.”

You frowned. “You’ve lived here your whole life?” Granted, this wasn’t a tiny city by any means, but you’d think you would have seen him at some point.

Tao shook his head. “No. My family moved around a lot. But we passed through the city several times a year. Never failed to have at least one meal here.”

“Are your parents rich or something?” You meant it as a joke given the status of this place, but Tao nodded seriously. Well that certainly explained the car and clothes.

Tao didn’t seem phased by your hanging jaw. “It’s not mansions and private jets, but my father was always a good businessman. Our family stays comfortable.”

Comfortable. Exactly what rich people say. Their level of “comfort” is pretty high up there. You pushed all negative thoughts aside, mostly because they were hard to maintain with Tao’s fingers intertwined with your own.

The waiter came by, placing the menus down in front of you along with fresh glasses of ice water. You untangled your hand from Tao’s in order to figure out how bad this check was going to be.

Browsing over the offerings, you could almost feel the sweat forming on your forehead. Rich or not, these prices were ridiculous. How could such a small steak cost that much money? When the waiter came back, you opted for one of the cheaper appetizers, lying to a frowning Tao that you weren’t that hungry. In fact, your appetite had greatly subsided after reading over the menu, so it was only a partial lie.

“So,” Tao smiled at you the waiter walked away, “tell me about your family.”

Caught a little off guard, you nearly choked on the sip of water you’d just taken in. When you finally had your coughing fit under control, you gave Tao a death glare. He’d been giggling at you the whole time rather than actually helping you or being concerned like a gentleman.

There wasn’t much to tell about your family. Both of your parents worked which allowed you to live in a nice home with nice things, but it was nothing overtly grand or impressive. Your parents always taught you to give back and lend a helping hand, which was how you ended up both in the math lab and the children’s home.

Tao finally explained to you how he came into volunteering at the children’s home. His “brothers” (he also explained that the ones he lived with weren’t related to him by blood, just simply close enough to use that label) weren’t the ones who made him go. He was getting a bit too close to the wrong crowd, so they encouraged him to try spending his time elsewhere. There was a signup sheet at his high school. He’d always liked kids so he gave it a try. After that first time, he went back every day before he went traveling.

“But you said that you didn’t grow up here?” you pointed out, very confused.

“I didn’t for the most part. But when I was in high school, I settled down with Junmyeon and the others… for a little more stability,” he clarified.

“And your parents were okay with that?” You couldn’t imagine your parents ever allowing you to just live with someone else who was only in college when you were in high school.

Tao nodded. “Things are a bit… different with my family. They knew I belonged here. Right now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

You were sure that he just meant here in general, in the city, but the look in his eyes implied maybe he meant it a little deeper and that made your face heat up.

Dinner turned into a several-hours-long affair, the two of you mostly ignoring the food sitting on the table, only picking at it occasionally. There was hardly ever a quiet moment, conversation flowing easily inside that booth.

“Mr. Huang?”

The waiter shyly interrupted Tao’s story about one of his brother – Luhan – starting a fire in the kitchen while cooking and then blaming it on someone named Kris. “Yes?”

“We’re still about an hour out from closing, but I thought I should let you know how late it was getting. Would you like the check now?”

Tao nodded and the waiter handed over the black leather folder. Before he could walk away, however, Tao already had a credit card out and slipped into the slot ready to be run. The waiter was back in no time with the receipt and after leaving a generous tip, Tao led you out of the restaurant.

“Wow,” you sighed once you were in the car. “I didn’t realize we’d been here that long.” It was pitch black, only the waning moon gave light to the sky above. The twinkling lights on the side of the restaurant were fully visible now, giving the night a romantic glow.

“Do you want to go home?” Tao asked hesitantly.

Looking at him with a smile, you shook your head. “No, not really.”

“Good.” He threw the car into reverse and left the parking lot, taking you to who knows where.

Tao took your hand again as he drove, this time lacing his fingers through yours for a better grip. At one point, he lifted your hands together, shifting them so the outside of your hand faced him and placed his lips against your skin, kissing it softly. Your heart went into a frenzy. The only time you’d ever actually seen someone do that was in the movies or in a drama. Boys didn’t do things like that in real life.

He didn’t look at you as he lowered your hands, simply letting them rest back down on the middle console as he kept his eyes on the road. Occasionally he’d run his thumb across your knuckles, but you really wanted him to do the kiss thing again. If this was how you were acting now, you dreaded on how out of control your nervous system would be when he kissed you for real.

When? You nearly scoffed out loud. Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?

For the second time tonight, Tao took you by complete surprise. You figured whatever he had planned next involved something just as fancy and mature, but when he came to a deserted park and playground, you were confused all over again.

Tao just laughed at your furrowed brow, motioning with his head, “Come on.” He took off from the car, leaving you behind and bewildered.

You followed him with complete trust. What could be so scary about a park at night?

Meeting him on the playground, he was already in one of the swings, swaying blissfully. He patted his lap. “Sit down.”

That made you laugh. “Are you serious?” He nodded. You shrugged, going with it since you couldn’t resist anyway. When you were settled in, he wrapped his arms around your waist and began gently swinging back and forth, his feet not leaving the sand pit underneath.

“This is quite the date,” you whispered. You meant it in a good way. It was different and sweet, not like the awkward ones you’d been on the past. Granted, those were a long time ago and it was possible that it was Tao himself that was making all the difference. The two of you were spending actual time together, getting to know one another and listening.

“I wanted to make it special for you,” he admitted softly in your ear. You didn’t know how to respond besides grinning to yourself.

For several minutes, the two of you sat there in silence, just taking in the moonlight and each other’s presence. Out of nowhere, Tao lifted you up, replacing you in the swing where he was sitting only a second ago.

“What-”

“Stay here,” Tao ordered before running back to his car. When he came back, he had a pair of Bluetooth headphones in his hands that he put over your ears. “I made you something,” he somewhat explained as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “The quality isn’t the best. We used Chanyeol’s homemade studio.”

You frowned. Did he really-

The music started in your ears before you could asked out loud what he meant. It was a soft, piano based melody that came through the speakers; a ballad. The notes, as they pieced together, felt like an original soundtrack that – if you were a character in a movie – would play as you walked down the sidewalk, slowly, at a pace no normal person would go, but everything would be peaceful. A small smile would tug at your lips while you took in the scenery, maybe stopping at a park or a pier to watch the sun set on the horizon.

A small tear formed in the corner of your eye as the last measure faded out. When it finally fell, Tao reached out and wiped it away.

“Did you like it?” he asked eagerly. You nodded enthusiastically, unable to form the words to express how much you loved the instrumental song.

Your answer made him smile so brightly he looked like a little kid. Straightening up from his crouched position, he started to lean forward, his face inching closer to yours. In your own seat, you shifted closer to him as well, wanting to meet him halfway.

A bright light interrupted the moment, both of you squinting towards its source.

“Hey, kids, what are you doing here?” A cop asked as he approached, his flashlight on and raised to his eye level. Oops.

“Just hanging out,” you replied, standing up from your seat and removing the headphones. “Is something wrong?”

“The park closed at ten so I just making sure you guys are alright,” he said.

Oh, crap. You never thought about that. Was it really that late?

“I’m so sorry, officer,” Tao apologized quickly.

“Just head on home,” the officer suggested nicely.

You nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Grabbing your hand, Tao pulled you back to the car, chuckling. Back behind the wheel, he sighed. “I guess that was ruined, huh?”

He was probably talking about the second almost-kiss, but you disagreed overall. Even with that ending, this night was perfect. And there would always be another chance for a kiss.

“No,” you shook your head. “I had fun tonight. Thank you.”

“Well, I guess that means we can do this again tomorrow?”

“Uh,” you cringed. “I can’t tomorrow. I’m working at the shelter. But I’m free Friday?”

Tao turned to you, his face shining like it was midday. “Friday, then.”

If tonight was any indicator for how the end of the week would go, you couldn’t wait. If someone out there had mercy on you, this week would fly by at record speed.

#exo #exo wolf au #exo wolf!au #exo werewolf au #exo werewolf!au #tao x reader #huang zitao #z.tao #tao #exo fanfiction #exo fanfic #exo series #exo supernatural au #Innocent Intentions #untamed wolf universe

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years ago

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(ESSAY) In Defence of Sleaze: On Baxter Dury’s Miami by Sarah Fletcher

In this timely essay, Sarah Fletcher riffs on what sleaziness means, especially in the murky expanse of quarantine. Taking musician Baxter Dury as a case study and musing on themes of charm, permission, bodily consciousness and the everyday, Fletcher explores the weird and pleasurable contradictions of reclaiming the sleazy vibe.

> In the past weeks, I have felt hygienic but never clean. Everyday objects now carry hidden vectors of threat, and I’m conscious of how many unseen things are touching my skin. Wifi. Electricity. Radiowaves. Other people’s breath, maybe. 3G. 4G. Various smells. This is obviously ridiculous (and scientifically unsound), but this thought has also made me restless and caused me to feel I am marching into the future with the resistance of a body trudging through water. My mind’s been repeating and re-appropriating Frances Leviston’s poem ‘Incubus’, about sexual assault, as a mantra for the quarantine age: “A crime requires a perpetrator/To put in the dock, to accuse or defend,/To finish the plot, but there’s nobody here./…They’ve learned to walk through walls.”.

> Music has been one of the nicest things. It’s able to tune and untune time from slow to fast and back again. It’s also become an organising facet for my day: I play a song to get out of bed. I play a song while I take my state mandated walk with my dog. I listen to music while I cook. One morning, my calendar notified me of a concert I’d bought tickets for: March 25th, Baxter Dury, O2 Forum Kentish Town. I spent that night inside. Baxter Dury probably did too.

> Baxter Dury’s a singer and, to get it out of the way, the son of Ian Dury of Blockhead fame. His single ‘Miami’ first got my attention, with its synths that are so sweet they almost hurt your teeth, fumbling and hypnotic bass-line, and music video where pot-bellied Baxter is bathed in pink light and caresses one of the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, the type of caress that really makes you think about fingerprints. It’s ‘chorus’ is the cocky-ominous brag of ‘I’m Miami’. The song is one of the sleaziest things I’ve heard, which made me fall in love with it. I listened to his newly released album ‘The Night Chancers’, and it was exactly as I’d hoped: the sort of music that, like electricity and wifi, made its presence on my skin uncomfortably aware. The album makes me want to take a hot shower (in a good way). Sleazy.

> I’ll be honest here. I relate to the overt, bleeding-heart ridiculousness of sleaze. I have been a confidante of sleazesters and a lover of sleazesters; I have probably made myself so embarrassing and wonderful in equal measure as to have possibly been one of the few sleazy women existing in the world for a night or two. I should quickly emphasise here what fascinates me is a benign sleaziness. Of course, sleaziness can also be a veil by which men can be excused for behaviour that genuinely makes women uncomfortable or is even straight up harmful. All too familiar is the avuncular party-goer who is simply dismissed with: oh, that’s just [NAME]. We all know he’s a bit ‘like that’.

> The sleaziness I like — and that embodied in Baxter Dury’s music — is that which is unable to afford “the nice stuff” but will dish out for a downgraded parody of “the nice stuff”, no matter how ridiculous. Off brand liqueurs when beer would probably be nicer, and even cheaper. ‘Sleazy’ reminds me of the year I drank Martini Asti to feel fancy. Even worse, it was absolutely delicious. Anything that is “decadence on discount” has the scope to be sleazy. A lot of sleazy things were straightforwardly high-end until the masses got their hands on them, and they become tinged with dirtied sexual suggestion. Strawberries and cream. Satin sheets. Having a mirror as a wall. To be sleazy is to reclaim the spoiled hand-me-downs of the decadent shits who don’t even have the good sense to enjoy them properly in the first place. This is different than simply being cheap: sleaziness is the way that you enjoy things, and you carry that with you, no matter how much dough you have. Dutch still lives are windows into sleazy pasts with their strong cheeses, dead fish and ominous flies. It’s splashing out, and splashing over, always in a town near you.

> Sleazy is charming, but you wouldn’t want to take a photograph with it. In fact, you want to probably check there is absolutely no documentation that you met at all, despite the fact you laughed the hardest you have in years. It has a levity and swagger that seedy leaves at the door. It’s probably harder to be sleazy if you’re conventionally attractive. If you can wink, though, you’re already halfway there. Sleazy is always slipping between the slim margin of ‘tacky’ and ‘camp’. Camp is playful and aware of its artifice; to recognise camp when you see it is to be part of an inside joke. Tacky is embarrassing and unintentional, but tender in its earnestness. Tacky, at the end of the night, doesn't want to get so drunk it won’t be able to charm you to the hotel room. These humours muddy and melt in sleaze: bad puns. The pick-up line. Even a badly timed dad joke can fall victim.

> I asked twitter to name some sleazy things and got a gorgeous cornucopia of artefacts. Chest hair. Hot tub people. Overexposed photography. Cocaine. Hot tubs in private residences. Tia Maria. Dating younger women. Pomeranians. Miami.

> Purple is a sleazy colour. Even more so knowing it used to denote royalty. Libertarians are sleazy: so much shiny permissiveness with absolutely no sense.

> The joy of listening to Baxter Dury is, of course, that it can make a few minutes of my life sordid, and I can control when and how I return back to my current, hygienic-but-not-clean world. Sleazy is good for a night, a holiday, or a four minute song… but to start at sleaziness is to doom yourself. More than even evil, Oliver!’s Fagan’s sleaziness makes him laughable and ineffective. The sleazy man is already drunk by the time the women arrive at the bar. To end at sleaziness is to accept defeat into a pantomime, all normal routes of life exhausted. Sleaziness is uncomfortable to sit with for too long, because we worry it’s the stock cube from which all desires and overtures diffuse. If you could distill all your love, all your true sexual energy, your charisma into a single thing… what if the real meat of it was a man with a gold chain buried in his chest air, extravagantly smoking Benson & Hedges and holding a heart-shaped box of chocolate?

> I recommend you listen to Baxter Dury’s ‘The Night Chancers’ with a glass of day-old red wine in silk pyjamas at an uncomfortably early time, like 5:30 PM.

Text: Sarah Fletcher

Image: Pieter Claesz, Still Life with Herring, Wine and Bread, (Holland, 1596/1597-1660), 1647, Paintings, Oil on wood.

Published: 28/4/20

#essay #essays #sleazy #Sarah Fletcher #Baxter Dury #purple #music #quarantine

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romanticheartbreakprince · 6 years ago

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Though I am bruised, face of contusions, know I'll keep moving.

You didn’t ask for this, but you’re getting it.

and uh– I’m supposed to include “this long ass piece of work is inspired by the beautiful, talented @theobligatedklutz who is so incredible and amazing“

even though it’s part of your ask. but alright.

I present the continuation of this angsty post, written by me, just now.

But the line you presented above really spoke to me with this scenario so I decided to write it.

——————————————–

Leslie stood in front of the kitchen sink, ferociously trying to scrub away a pesky stain left on one of her nicer plates. She grumbled to herself, it seemed like nobody ever listened to her. This would’ve been easily avoided if people could just learn to use the cheaper plates. That’s what they’re there for after all. She shuddered as she imagined her mother repeating that phrase word for word when she was a child. Is this what her life had become?

She was pulled from her thoughts as the oven shouted at her, signaling that it was warm enough to use. She swiftly put her cookies into the oven and closed the door with a smile. They should be done just in time for Cyrus to come home with his best friend. When Cyrus left this morning, he chatted enthusiastically about costume day with TJ Kippen and she couldn’t wait to hear about how it went. She knew the boys were close, and she couldn’t have been happier that Cyrus had finally made another new friend. It had seemed like forever since her son had been friends with anyone but Buffy or Andi.

As she returned to her dishes, she thought about how they had spent a lot of time together in the past few months, and whether she wanted to admit it to her son or not, she could sense something a little more going on between them, and words could not describe how happy it made her. If there’s one thing a parent wants in life, it’s for their child to be happy, and it wasn’t hard to see how happy Cyrus was around TJ. He may have not mentioned anything to her specifically, but a mother always knows. Just the thought of Cyrus’ smile whenever he was with TJ and the way his face would light up made caused her to smile. It was weird how much watching your own child be happy could in turn just momentarily remove all the negative things in your life and make you happy, even just for a moment.

She was torn from her thoughts again once she heard the front door swing shut. She checked the clock on the oven. Cyrus was home earlier than usual, and it was awfully quiet for having company.

“Hey hon, did you just get in?” She yelled through the kitchen.

“Yeah.” Came his reply, a touch of sadness littered his voice as he got closer to the kitchen.

She turned around to greet her son, expecting to see an excited smile and twinkling eyes. She froze at the sight of red-rimmed eyes and quivering lips, a chill running down her spine. The plate she had no idea she had even been holding fell from her grasp and shattered against the hardwood floors.

“Cyrus what’s-”

“I wish Bubbe Rose was still here.” Cyrus mumbled softly, poorly rubbed off grey paint stuck to the corner of his brow.

She opened her mouth wanting to say something, but even after all these years of being a professional therapist she couldn’t find the words she wanted. All these years of helping talk other people through all of these problems and she didn’t even know what to say to her own son. She just stood there helplessly as she felt tears beginning to form in the corner of her eyes. What had happened? He had been so excited about their costume, and there was definitely no mention of grey face paint. And where was TJ? There were too many questions that began to circulate through her head that she didn’t even notice that Cyrus had excused himself and ran upstairs to his room.

Taking a moment to recompose herself, she leaned against the counter, resting the palms of her hands against her temples. After a moment she swiftly snapped back into the present. This was no time for dawdling or worrying about herself, Cyrus needed her whether he wanted the help or not.

She made her way up to his room, making sure to knock before slowly opening his door. She found him curled up on his bed, facing the wall. She felt her heart sink at the sight of her son looking so miserable. It had been such a long time since she had seen him like this. Not even the passing of Bubbe Rose had made him this miserable. She quietly made her way over to his bed, sitting down on its edge. She breathed in the uncomfortable silence as she wondered what she should say, or if she should even say anything at all. Her eyes blindly darted around the room as she tried to find something that would be delicate enough to bring up without making the pain of it all worse. She finally had settled on something and opened her mouth to speak, but Cyrus beat her to it.

“I don’t get it mom.” his voice was so quiet. She wouldn’t have heard him in any other room, but the silence in there had been so apparent it was hard to think about, or notice anything else.

She had a gut feeling that TJ didn’t follow through with his end of the bargain and Cyrus had been left as just, well, ‘salt’. It would explain why Cyrus had come home alone, his face covered in grey paint. It would explain the tears as one of his best friends bailed on him and the trust wouldn’t be easy to replace. This brought up so many more questions, but she settled with the first step, comfort.

“Whatever happened Cyrus, I’m sure it happened for a good reason.” She sighed, taking a moment to place a hand on her son’s leg. “I can’t speak for him, but TJ wouldn’t abandon you for no reason. He cares about you too much to do something like that.”

She felt the bed shift as Cyrus sat up. “Wait, how do you know about that?” He asked in complete shock.

A small grin grew on her face. “I may be your mother, but I’m also a therapist Cyrus. You should know this better than anyone. I can read people, pick up on pieces of things I had nothing to do with.” She shifted her position on the bed so that she was now facing him, sitting fully on his bed, legs crossed. “You talked so passionately about the costume that it wasn’t that hard to figure out something went wrong when you came home alone, and with face paint.”

Cyrus’ gaze slowly fell to his lap, nodding slowly. “You got it.”

She reached her hand up and placed it on his shoulder, giving it a reassuring rub. “Would you like to talk about it? No pressure by any means, but it might make you feel better.”

She watched as he opened his mouth but slowly closed it before any words came out.

“It’s okay, Cyrus. I’ll be here if you ever want to talk about it. It doesn’t have to be right now. Or ever even, if that would make you feel better.”

“No, I want to talk about it. I just- where do I even start?” He paused again, opening and closing his mouth as if looking for the right words to say.

She smiled at him, giving his arm a quick squeeze, making sure he knew he could take all the time he needed.

“I just- I showed up to school and he wasn’t even in costume. Then I learned that last minute he decided to do a costume with Kira and he couldn’t even bother to warn me? It’s like my feelings don’t even matter to him. I feel like I don’t even matter to him.”

She winced as she listened to his voice breaking as he talked. This clearly had meant a lot to Cyrus and it sure must have taken a lot more from TJ to just decide last minute to do a costume with- wait a minute.

“Kira? Isn’t that the girl who nearly ruined Buffy’s basketball team?”

“That’s the one.” He said unenthusiastically.

“And TJ did a costume with her?”

“Yeah.”

“Instead of you?”

“Alright mom, I get it, TJ hates me. Please don’t keep reminding me every five seconds.” He groaned.

“Cyrus Goodman. TJ does not hate you.” She began sternly with her brows furrowed.” I can’t quite explain why he chose to forfeit your costume but I promise you, that he must have had a good reasoning. I know this may not be easy but if you give him a chance and hear him out, I promise things will slowly start to get better.”

“What do you know mom? You didn’t see how happy she looked.” He rolled his eyes at her.

“I don’t care about her Cyrus, what about TJ. How did he look?”

“Well he…”

She watched as realization washed over his face. She started smiling to herself as she assumed Cyrus started to revisit everything he had missed from his previous situation.

“He looked miserable. I don’t know if i’ve ever seen him look so sad before.”

“So now will you still tell me that TJ hates you?” She asked.

“No…”

“Good. Now listen to me again Cyrus.” She took a moment to place her hands firmly on his shoulders. Their eyes met and she knew this was going to go straight into his heart. It had to. “TJ does not hate you. In fact it’s quite the opposite. I know a lot about you Cyrus, I’m your mother, I have to. Some of these are things that you don’t think I know, but I do. There are things about your friends that I know, that you are unaware of. But please, believe me when I tell you that TJ does not hate you, I promise you that much. Whenever you’re able to forgive him, just hear him out, okay?”

“Okay” he nodded, his voice barely audible.

“Good” she smiled, pulling him into a hug.

“Uh, mom?” He pulled away from her, confusion on his face. “Is something burning?

“Ah, my cookies!” She shrieked, leaping up from his bed and sprinting out of his room. Before she had fully left his room, she could hear the faintest bit of laughter escaping from her son’s lips. So as she ran down the steps she smiled to herself. She had done enough to make him feel a little bit better, and it wasn’t much, but it was a start. And hearing his laughter again, that’s all she could’ve asked for.

#tgmt ask #theobligatedklutz #Cyrus goodman #leslie goodman #Andi Mack #tyrus #tyrus fanfic #Only mentions of TJ #but it includes support from his wonderful mother.#and it has a happy-ish? ending #because I can't write sad endings.

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antagonistchanremade · 5 years ago

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unless something goes wrong, i’m gonna be getting a package today containing:

a new set of earbuds (my earbuds died a few days ago after i used them for about five months; hopefully this next set will last longer since they’re the set that amazon most recommends when you look up “earbuds” and they’re by a brand i actually recognize, Panasonic)

three Transformers:

WFC Siege Brunt

WFC Siege Six-Gun

WFC Siege Sideswipe

“WFC Siege” is the name of the toyline these guys are under. Sideswipe is just a fairly normal figure, but then Brunt and Six-Gun are something special that WFC Siege started. And Siege has a lot of weird quirky gimmicks like “Battle Damage” detailing, but these guys are something really cool.

Weaponizers.

What makes the Weaponizers so special is that in addition from transforming from robot to vehicle, they’re also basically made of guns. As in, you can take them apart and their pieces can be used as weapons by other Transformers. And you can also rearrange those pieces together. And the other Transformers in this line are absolutely fucking covered in places to put weapons. And due to the combination thing, some of these weapons can be attached to multiple weapon ports.

I’ve seen people use Weaponizers to basically combine all of the WFC Siege toys into single monstrosities.

I got Sideswipe partially because I’ve never had a Sideswipe toy before and his toys are generally pretty good and popular and cool, and also partially because... well, the only WFC Siege toy I already have is Galaxy Optimus Prime, the one @helpfool got me for my birthday, and he’s a weird one and I’m not sure if he’ll play as well with the Weaponizers as Sideswipe will... and even if he does, having a more normal WFC Siege dude around will probably be nice anyways.

I was honestly expecting Sideswipe and Brunt to show up tomorrow, but apparently both orders got shipped together.

There’s a Transformers reviewer I like, Thew Adams, who once recommended in a video that if you’re gonna be messing around in WFC Siege at all, you should pick up two copies of a guy named Cog. Cog is a Weaponizer. Now, I don’t know for sure, but I think Thew only recommended that you get two Cogs because he was the only Weaponizer at the time; the main meat of his recommendation was that you get two Weaponizers. And honestly? I think Brute and Six-Gun are more interesting than Cog (Cog transforms into an “armored truck” that really doesn’t actually look like anything, while Brute turns into a tank that actually looks like a tank and Six-Gun turns into a jet that actually looks like a jet, and they have nicer colors, and...), and Brute is the same price as Cog and Six-Gun is about five dollars cheaper than both of them (being about $15 as opposed to about $20).

So, all in all, this order came out to around $60 ($20 for Brute, $19 for Sideswipe (it’s wild that an actual legacy character is cheaper than a walking accessory), $15 for Six-Gun, and $9 for the earbuds). Most of the price came from the about $50 I had in Amazon gift card balance; the remaining ~$10 came from my credit union account.

Now, conventional wisdom would be that it’s a bit reckless to spend that much money at once when I so rarely have actual access to money... but the thing is, if I wait too long to spend my money, I’ll end up blowing it all on junk food I don’t even need. Transformers, though? Collecting those is a hobby of mine. The only time I’ve ever bought a Transformer and come to regret the purchase is when I bought Prime Sky-Lynx, because Prime Sky-Lynx blows (which is why it surprises me so much that it’s apparently a really well-regarded toy??? like most of the collector types think it’s an excellently designed toy which baffles me). And I’ve bought a lot of Transformers. It’s probably the thing I’ve spent the third most money on in my life, after video games and junk food. I’ve been actively collecting since 2008, and while most of my collection comes from Christmas and birthday presents, a decent chunk of it has come from my own wallet.

So yeah. I don’t wanna spend my money too fast, since I never know what I’ll end up wanting, but I also don’t wanna take too long either or else it’ll all be gone before I even know it. Which is why I’ll occasionally let myself make impulse purchases for things like three Transformers and the Master Chief Collection.

#speaking of that i'm gonna go play halo now

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princeandreis · 6 years ago

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coffee grounds (part 4/?)

word count: 912

warnings: a little angst :/

part 1 part 2 part 3

It was humiliating to think that, after staying away to try to get rid of your feelings, you’d come back only to find out that Race was dating his coworker. Now you were really staying away for good. You’d managed to convince him you were fine, but your heart couldn’t handle being around him as long as he was dating Beth. You hated to give up your easygoing friendship with Race, but pining after him would just be too hard. You were really just protecting yourself by staying away. So… it was time to get over him. For good.

Days passed, but it felt like time was molasses. You wandered aimlessly around town during your free time, looking for a new coffee haunt. A few places were decent, but nothing special, and certainly nothing like the shop where…

No, you said to yourself. I can’t afford to think about stuff like that. It won’t help.

Eventually you settled for a teeny-tiny local chain — Common Grounds — for your coffee needs. It didn’t have as much of an environment as your old place, but the drinks were much cheaper, and the baristas were courteous and detached. No danger of getting caught up with any of them.

One day, after deciding to stick with Common Grounds, you recognized that one of the other regulars had taken notice of you. It happened while you were perched on a couch, doing some school work on your laptop, drink steaming on the table beside you. You happened to glance up for a moment, and met eyes with a young man. You turned your attention back to your screen, thinking nothing of it. A few moments later, you reflexively looked up again to see him still watching you. Again, you averted your gaze and tried to ignore him. But against your will, your eyes shifted toward him once more, and this time, he smiled. You returned the smile, which seemed to encourage him a little; he stood up from his chair and moved toward you, although a tad apprehensively.

Standing in front of you, he scratched the back of his neck, looked away, and grinned sheepishly.

“Hi,” he said. “I’ve never done this before, and I feel like a jerk, but I’ve seen you around here before and I thought I should introduce myself.”

“Hi,” you answered. “I’m [Y/N].”

“Gavin. It’s, uh, nice to meet you.” You offered him your hand and he shook it. His hand was warm. “Can I sit down?”

You motioned to him the spot next to you on the couch and set your laptop aside.

“So what brings you to Common Grounds?” Gavin asked, smiling. “I haven’t seen you around much til recently.”

Oof. Not something you really wanted to talk about. “I just… didn’t like coffee until now.”

He laughed. “Really?”

“Really. What can I say? I’m a late bloomer.” Gavin laughed again, more easily this time. His laugh was nice.

“What about you?” you asked. “How’d you end up here?”

It turned out that he’d begun coming to Common Grounds for much the same reason that you had: he was a student at the same university as you, and he liked having a quiet public place to work. He also told you that he was a third-year communications major, and that he wanted to do advertising or paralegal work when he got out of school.

As you listened to Gavin talk, you took your first good long look at him. He had dark eyes that sparkled with mirth, and he had a slight but well-groomed stubble on his chin and cheeks. He was wearing a tan winter trench coat, and the collar was turned down on one side. Several times he ran his fingers through his hair absentmindedly, making it stand on end — but in an endearing sort of way. You also noticed that his eyes crinkled when he smiled, giving the impression that he was delighted by everything.

“...Right?” Gavin was saying, clearly expecting you to laugh. You did so automatically, but you hadn’t been listening to him. Dark eyes were nice, but blue eyes were… nicer.

Gavin began to ask you questions about yourself: what your major was, where you were from, how many pets you had, what your family was like, and, it seemed, anything else that came into his head. You answered his questions, observing that he listened attentively to what you had to say. Maybe being forthright was better than just being friendly.

After a half hour or so of chatting, you finally stood up. “I gotta go,” you told Gavin.

“Okay, that’s cool. I should probably get going, too,” he answered, checking his watch and running a hand through his hair bashfully.

“It was nice getting to know you.”

“You, too.”

There was a pause.

Gavin seemed to remember something and laughed a little to himself. “Oh, this is, uh, probably a little forward, but I’d like to see you again sometime, if… that’s okay with you.”

Why not?

“Sure, I’d like that, too,” you said evenly.

“So… tomorrow? Here?”

“You know where I’ll be.”

Another pause. Gavin didn’t quite seem like he wanted to leave yet. He looked like he was about to say something, but before he did, you said, “Nice to meet you, Gavin,” gave him a smile, and left the coffeehouse.

There was nothing wrong with trying something new. After all, what (or who) was stopping you now?

taglist: @i-got-personality @we-dont-sell-papes @savory-n-sweet @kingofsantafe @livinchancey @sam-roll @broadwayandbookblog @agentmalfoy24601 @thatshiscigar @heytheywascoronas @ginervacade @fallinglegen19 @gayfortoast @viennaleia @newsies-stop-theworld @jordmac @blytheandherbrain @thalia-prior-of-ravenclaw @imslightlyconfused @bennie-badeend @books-netflix-and-pizza @infinity-fandom-trash @bencookisagod

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orange-plum · 6 years ago

Text

Things I Noticed While in Japan

Vending machines everywhere, that don’t just offer shit choices like water and soda. Coffee, flavored waters, “gatorade”, soda, etc. Wish we had these in America.

EVERYTHING’S CLEAN. I saw 3 - count them - 3 pieces of trash in Tokyo. There aren’t even garbage cans around but every city is by FAR cleaner than any city in the world everywhere else I’ve been.

All the playgrounds look like places kids go to die??? Very uninviting. Sorry Japan, your playgrounds aren’t that good

Everyone’s nicer? Everyone is literally so polite and helpful??? Coming back to America was hard because just being in the SFO airport I was bombarded with rude a-holes :/

Public restrooms are clean and have counters to put your purses. I miss that, I want that. (I got off the plane in America and had to pee and the first five stalls had piss and shit in them. Ugh)

Japan’s public restrooms also have cool ways of showing someone is using a stall (some had signs fall out of the doors with a big check mark or an X)

Their stalls also go all the way to the ground. Please America get with this

You’ll have a significant historical monument with regular society buildings. For example, by our Tokyo house we had a big shrine type thing for where the leader of the Shinsengumi was beheaded. Literally 30 feet away was a 24 hour McDonalds. So bizarre

Public transportation is better and cleaner

You don’t need to read of speak Japanese to go to Japan. (My sister and I knew how to speak/understand/read basics) The trains and signs all usually come with English. In Tokyo, the train will say it in Japanese then English for your stops and what to do. Very easy.

Japanese Dennys looks like a fancy restaurant with piano music playing.

If you have your boobs out (hey its a heatwave and super hot) they’ll let you know about it. My friends and I had some issues with this where they stare, laugh, talk with their friends and point at you, try to take pictures, holler, etc. Ngl Japanese guys made me more uncomfortable about a v-neck shirt than any American man has ever made me. 0/10

Cups of water they offer at restaurants? 0/10. Very small and they fill them halfway up. About two gulps of water per tiny cup. It was.... miserable in the heatwave. I would bring water bottles in my backpack to fill up my cup at my table. Sometimes I would order a cola or ginger ale just so I knew they’d give me a bigger cup and I wouldn’t go thirsty through my meal.

I don’t like that there aren’t paper towels in the bathroom but I managed. I just wiped them on my shirt or tried to get them to air dry real fast.

7/11 food is better than grocery store food. We ate there p much every day. Vegetables, noodles, onigiri, liquor, ice cream, etc. Even stews and stuff they heat up for you at the counter. I can’t go into an American 7/11 anymore.

The kids are so cute and polite???

Lot’s of activities that are just like $3 here, $5 here. In America, if you go to a museum, aquarium, zoo, etc it’s $20+ Most of the stuff we did there cost a couple bucks. It was great.

Foods cheaper there???

I saw 1 homeless person the entire time there in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima. I’ve never been to a huge city and seen virtually no homeless people.

I love Japan, but after 3 weeks of getting stared at, I’m glad to be home and not get anxious over how many people go out of their way to stare at me

Never felt unsafe. I wouldn’t walk down my street in the dark (and I live in a relatively nice neighborhood). I could in Japan. Never felt scared or threatened. It was nice not being afraid for once??

Japan’s clean, polite, and functions immaculately. I want to live there.

#world #personal #i seriously would like to live there for a year or so #i miss it a lot #by far the best country ngl

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mysticsparklewings · 5 years ago

Photo

Nightlights in the Deep

At last, I can finally show you guys what's been with the tree fever in my last couple of posts (Terrarium Nova and WIP Wednesday: Oops all Trees)

So the art supply company Arteza madea post on their Instagram a few days ago where they announced a contest to make art featuring trees and post it on Instagram with all the appropriate tags, open until September 26th (with prizes of course) and I thought it would be fun, especially since one of their suggestions was to design a tree.

And I also decided to add a little extra challenge to myself to stick primarily to the Arteza supplies that I have, since it's their contest. That meant I had their watercolors, colored pencils, and woodless watercolor pencils to pick from and play with. Although I did end up using quite a bit of gel pen (Sakura gelly rolls and a little of my white Uni-ball Signo) to get the bright pops of color I just couldn't get with the other supplies. The gel pens felt fairer to supplement with since I usually accent pretty much all my work with gel pen in some form or another.

Naturally, after I gave myself a few minutes to ponder how to stand out among a crowd of trees but also fit right in, my imagination ran wild with my own fictional tree species.

I pretty immediately landed on the idea of an underwater/deep-sea/bottom-of-the-ocean tree and also something with bioluminescence (things that naturally glow in the dark) and from there I starting searching for various tree and water-themed things on Pinterest to flesh out my ideas. From that, I very quickly arrived at the idea of a winding, twisting trunk like you might find on a bonsai tree. And while originally I really liked the idea of having wispy drooping petals and/or leaves like Wisteria or willow trees, after a few tests that didn't turn out as nicely as I wanted (as seen on the WIP Wednesday mentioned above) I decided maybe it would be best to go without this time around.

So the final concept I've ended up with for my trees here goes roughly as follows, although I'm no botanist or marine biologist so there's a good chance a lot of this doesn't check out scientifically:

The Nightlight tree, named for its bioluminescent fruits--called "moon fruits" for their whiteish glow, pale bluish color, and spherical shape--is a species of aquatic tree that is found growing anchored to rock formations and cave systems in the greatest depths of the ocean. As these trees exist in oceanic depths with minimal or no sunlight, they perform chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis to make their own food until they reach maturity and can produce their own artificial light as a food supplement. Nightlight trees root systems can reinforce and stabilize the rock formations they anchor to in order to grow, which provides a more sound home and environment for the species of fish that will eat the "moon fruits," attracted by their bright glow, produced by the tree and aid in the tree's reproduction. Because of this, nightlight trees may grow in clustered groups or may grow so closely together that multiple trees twist and wind around each other, which can put strain on the trees' root systems and may cause development problems and may cause the younger of the trees to die. The bark of mature nightlight trees may also have a faint glow where the tree is thickest, as the bark is stretched more thinly around the nutrient carry "veins" found within the trunk of the tree, where the chemical process that causes the tree's fruit to glow begins. Nightlight trees attract and feed a variety of deep sea creatures and other bottom-dwelling vegetation, many of which feature bright flourescent colors or bioluminescent traits and may camoflodge with the moon fruits or the few brightly colored flower-like leaves that the moon fruits emerge from four times a year, peak season typically being in the spring. This provides these other species with a largely safe place to settle and reproduce while the tree is at its most forthgiving. Moon Fruits once detached from the tree will retain their glowing properties for approximately 7-10 days. Fruits that in that time find themselves on or around suitable growing conditions may then begin to take root and grow. Fruits that are not in suitable growing conditions within the time frame will then begin to decay and detoriate. Certain deviations or subspecies of nightlight trees may also be found in the depths of brackish or freshwater, but the most common sigular variety is the "White Light" variety found in oceanic saltwater.

Excuse me if that's a little all-over-the-place for a faux "knowledgable source about trees" article, but I think I managed to get the bulk of my ideas for how these trees work in there.

For a while, I also had the idea that if one of the trees ever did grow tall enough to reach the water with plenty of sunlight and/or poke out of the water that the exposed parts of the tree would die and/or become sicker with more sunlight exposure, so you'd have this really tall tree that's dead at the top but as you follow it down becomes progressively healthier until you reach the bottom and find this beautiful natural undersea garden with all these neon plants and animals it's supporting in its ecosystem. And while I do still like that idea, I don't think it's terribly realistic and I definitely couldn't fit all that would entail into this one artwork.

That said, I think you can probably see my reasoning for a lot of the artistic decisions I made here, so hopefully, I won't have to stop every five seconds to explain how the tree works while I go through what my artistic process was.

After some sketching to think through my ideas of the tree structure and possible fruit/foliage things and the practice/failed attempt pieces, I decided my best bet for the pseudo-vision I had in my head would be to make lines from the sketches I'd done as a base (as in my practice pieces where I attempted to free-hand everything things really got away from me pretty easily), and so I lifted the lines for the two trees, the caves, and some of the ground/sand from my sketches and transferred them to a piece of Canson XL watercolor paper, since I knew I wanted to work primarily with the Arteza watercolors and maybe (at the time but this ended up not being the case) the woodless watercolor pencils too.

And if I may, I'd like to take a moment here to say that while on some levels I do understand why some more versed in watercolor than I absolutely loathe the Canson XL watercolor paper, to me, it much like the premise of cheaper watercolors is not strictly terrible--it's a matter of what you're used to and what you learn to work with. If you can learn to work with what you've got, and that's what you get used to, then to a point it the quality almost doesn't matter. This paper does work differently from the more expensive/nicer watercolor papers I've tried, but it's so much more accessible that I have more of it, so I use it more, and by now I've learned a lot about how to work with it to get the results I want, so I'm less likely to encounter some of the problems other people seem to have with it. It all just depends on you, your taste, and how you work.

But enough of my paper mini-rant. Back to the artwork:

I knew from my practice pieces that part of the mistakes I kept making was not laying down layers further in the background first so that I wouldn't have to attempt to paint around/right up to them later, as well as layering up more would help me better achieve the darker, moodier undersea look I was aiming for. So after taking a picture of my lines and very quickly and sloppily doing a color mockup in one of the few drawing apps that still work with a Gen 4 iPad to figure out which paint colors to squirt onto a palette, I went in with an all-over layer of a darker blue for the background first, and I layered that up 2 or 3 more times to get it to a darker intensity.

It's still a little bit brighter than I was originally hoping for, but it still came out pretty nicely. Though I couldn't tell you how much of the ocean-ish texture is just textural properties of the particular paint color and how much of it was how I laid down the paint between all the strokes I did to even out the coverage and the additional layers.

After that was dry, I made a faux-pas (in that I would have to paint around them a little later) and moved on the stars of the show; the trees themselves.

The trees were probably the slowest and most methodical part of this piece. I very carefully went in and would do lines and then blend them out slightly when possible, trying to use the transparent nature of watercolors to my advantage. This was a slower process, especially as I would work my way up the trees and get to smaller branches (especially with the smaller tree) and had to switch to a smaller brush just to make sure I was staying within my lines. But I and my dark, moody purple did eventually get through it, and even with only the trees the background painted, I was really pleased with how they turned out.

Then I moved on to my little rock-cave things and the ground. The caves started out as a lighter ultramarine color, but it looked kinda weird so I did even up going back and adding a couple of additional layers and shading to try and add more depth, as well as I tried to stick with a dark blue only for the insides of the caves, but they ended up really seeming to need the addition of some black. The end result is a little too close in value between the trees, the caves, and the caves' insides, but there wasn't really a better way to remedy that beyond starting over, and after everything I'd been through to get to this point, I did not want to do that. So it stays as is.

The ground was actually relatively simple. Since I already had a blue background and I had decided a greenish color would be the best route to go, I just layered some yellow paint in the areas I wanted to look more like sand/ground and did the same kind of semi-blending as I did on the cave rocks and trees. And it worked just as well when I added the sand/ground moving towards the back that I hadn't pre-drawn in.

Now, I was trying to hold off doing the little moon fruits (which at this point were just bioluminescent orbs to me, I did all the naming after I finished the piece so I would know exactly what I was trying to name) until I had all the painting done, since the plan was to do them with the colored pencils, and I just kinda wanted to be able to say I was done and put all the painting stuff away before I moved on to that. That's how I usually work with my mixed media projects; I prefer to have a plan and get the majority of one medium or section done before moving on to something else. (Usually to have more desk space available but it also helps me keep things organized.)

And it was at this point that I realized my plans didn't look very under-water-ish. It kinda just looked like a moody dry-land landscape painting. Which is fine, but that's not what I wanted/was going for.

To remedy this, I started by adding some seaweed/kelp like plants to the ground. Which still looked largely just like funny grass or weeds.

It was at this point that I deviated from the actual artwork and moved back to my watercolor sketchbook to do some toying around. The main thing I did was practice trying to make coral or coral-like plants since I figured that might help with the whole ocean thing. And on the page where I ended up doing a lot of the practicing, I actually ended up taking a little extra time, later on, to make into kind of a bonus art piece, which I'll be posting by itself at some point in the future.

But I also practiced making bubbles and some other details we'll get to in a moment.

I tried doing the coral a few different ways but ultimately went with the way I see coral in my mind when I think of the word; this rounded cartoony kinda thing, even though that's not what real coral usually looks like. (I looked up pictures during the process out of curiosity) I don't know where this very specific imagery got implanted into my brain other than maybe Spongebob, but that still doesn't seem quite right, so I don't know.

And I have to say that the Neon Pink Arteza watercolor continues to be a favorite of mine, while we're here. It held up over the dark colors and compared to the gel pens infinitely better than I thought it would. Arteza, if you see this by chance, this is my plea--please make more neon watercolors if you can make them as good as this pink one!

*Ahem* Anyway...

After all that, I did step back from the watercolor and come in with the colored pencils. I didn't think I was almost done, but at the moment I didn't have much else in mind for the watercolors and figured it would be best to move to the pencils and then I could come back to the watercolors if I felt like I needed to.

I'm not sure if the Arteza colored pencils just don't like watercolor paper or something, but I had kind of a hard time applying the pencils and getting them to pop the way I wanted to, particularly in areas that had thinner paint coverage. This was the most notable in the bare ocean areas where I was trying to do the moon fruits, as the pencils worked a little better when I hit those darker patches of blue, and they liked working over the truck bark a lot better. To be fair, I know some of this is because most colored pencils have a hard time going over darker colors, as even my Prismacolor and Polychromos can have a hard time over my toned gray paper sometimes, but it still seemed like these were falling more flatly on that front than I had anticipated.

Either way, by this point it was late and I was exhausted, so I finished up what I wanted to do with the pencils--finally coloring the moon fruits, adding some additional texture to the sand, caves/rocks, coral, and trees--and decided to leave it until morning.

As I was cleaning up for the night, I was looking at that bonus art piece/practice page I talked about earlier, and I noticed a spot where the paint had done a kind of texture thing again (this time definitely more from how I applied it and less from the paint itself) and the shape, combined with me thinking of things I could do to continue to play up the "ocean" imagery and make my seascape look more lived in, made me think of sting or manta rays. More specifically that one would look really good in that spot, and about the time I completed that thought was when it dawned on me the key component I had been missing the whole time:

It's an ocean life scene. Where's the life part?? Do you know what lives in the ocean? FISH!

And I still couldn't tell why that just hadn't occurred to me until then.

So I went to bed knowing exactly what I was going to be looking up and practicing the next day to add to and hopefully complete my tree painting.

The next day, after many minutes spent prowling Pinterest for marine life silhouettes and having added a few rays to my practice piece, (and some nonspecific fish to the other couple of failed attempts since the practice-piece-turned-art was getting a bit crowded) I was off and added a manta ray, a small school of fish, and two other fishes just hanging out. Then I couldn't help myself and added a smaller ray in the leftover space that was just kind of begging for a little something more behind the other ray.

And I could have very well stopped there, but it was bothering me in the fresh daylight just how much the colored pencils had seemingly sunk back into the artwork. My bubbles I added the night before were so hard to notice! And the moon fruits...they just weren't popping at all the way I wanted them to.

I tried not to; I really did. I wanted to stick to just using the Arteza supplies that I had and maybe some white gel pen. But I had to do something to get the color to pop more, and the alternative was to pull out the white and neons from my Prismacolor pencils and between the two options, pulling out my Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight pens, as I said earlier, felt less like I was deviating from the challenge. And for all I know, the Prismacolor pencils might not have popped as much as I wanted either, even if they popped more than the Arteza pencils. So gel pens it was!

I used my white Uni-ball Signo for the actual moon fruits themselves, and the gelly rolls for their little leaf-petals and some extra dots/texture on the coral. I also used the white gelly roll to add some additional "glow" to the tree bark and to revive the poor bubbles that had gotten so lost before. And then I went back later at different points to add the two moon fruits that fell, partly to fill in space and partly because it just made more sense to my brain to have at least some that weren't still on the trees.

Also, I'm not sure how well it reads, but I did go back and try to add more of a proper "glow" effect to the moon fruits with the white colored pencil, but I feel like I lost a lot of the minimal pigment I was getting by the time I used a blending stump to soften the edges.

It's funny to me; this was one of those pieces where I spent so much time with it and meticulously going over the details that at first I actually wasn't sure it was finished. It's one of those where I had to step back and let it settle in that I had seen my vision through to the end before I could properly "accept" it.

And you know, for as many challenges as I had with trying to invent my own tree species and the problem-solving I had to do throughout the process, I am really proud and happy with how the final piece turned out.

It's different; it's out of my comfort zone because I don't do landscape type things, and it challenged my creativity in a different way. And I feel like I was able to achieve what I set out to do with the piece.

And thanks to my hesitance to dive right into the final piece without testing, I also got a bonus art piece out of it, so yay two birds with one stone?

This may have started out as just another contest entry, but in the end, I'm really glad for the mini art journey this piece took me on, and even if I don't win anything in the giveaway (which realistically I probably won't), I'm happy just to have made the artwork. And that's kinda the most important thing, right?

Now, I have some commission work to do, but I also have a certain supply that's been sitting on my desk all week just begging to be used, and some other pieces in the works, so stayed tuned for that and that bonus art piece I keep talking about that came out of this piece.

____

Where to find me & my artwork:

#artfortrees #arteza #trees #underwater #ocean #sea #marine life

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