#Nursing a Headache

[aheckinmess]

Stormy Salsa [Aizawa] (Fluff)

(One-shot 19/? in a collection of My Hero Academia one-shots posted regularly on Saturdays - and sometimes Sundays.)

Read on AO3.

Tags: Shouta Aizawa, Shota Aizawa, Pro Hero Eraserhead, Aizawa x OC, Eraserhead x OC, Original Female Character(s), Ichijiku Aoki, Aizawa is a Sweetheart, Aizawa is a Good Significant Other, A Rainy Evening, Also There's a Cat Involved, Dancing in the Living Room, Nursing a Headache, All the Little Intricacies of Everday Life

Word Count: 1,000 words

Summary: Ichijiku, feeling whimsical, pulls Shouta into a dance in the living room after nursing a headache.

Ichijiku (Tigress)

“Shouta, can you hand me the ice pack?” I groan, rubbing my temples. “This headache is killer.”

“Okay, Kitten, do you need the essential oils too?” He asks, rummaging in the freezer and wrapping it in a towel. The moment he sets it against my head, my muscles relax under the balm of the frigid relief it provides.

“That might help, yes.”

Some essential oils, the ice pack, and one nap later brings a clearer, less painful mind. The couch groans with me as I sit up to the sound of falling rain. Despite having just woken up, the gentle pitter patter against the roof lulls my eyes closed again until an orange blob nudges me awake.

“You feeling better, Kitten?” Shouta’s blurry visage draws closer until I put on my glasses. The orange blob turns out to be Cloud. 

“Is it raining?” I yawn, stretching high with a wince at the ache in my neck. Cloud nuzzles against my hand and purrs when I give him the affection he so desperately desires.

“It started up about half an hour ago.” He chuckles as he tucks my hair behind my ear. “You dozed pretty well. Do you feel better?”

I nod and heave a sigh as I lean into his hand.

“Did I snore?” I ask.

“Nothing loud, but yes. You whimpered a bit and I worried you were having a nightmare, but you settled quickly.” He kisses my forehead.

“Mmph, I don’t remember any dreams.”

“Good to know.” He combs his fingers through my hair. “Are you hungry?”

“I think I’m okay right now.” Another yawn and I make grabby hands at him. “Cuddles?”

He chuckles and instead of joining me on the couch like a normal person, he flops right on top of me. His heavy weight against me soothes the tired aches of everyday living as his brand of playfulness reminds me of life’s simple joys. I only hope I can provide him some of the same relief.

“Oof! Hey!” I laugh, tickling the back of his neck.

“Gah!” He scrunches his neck and wriggles back momentarily before his fingers find my sides in retribution.

I lose the tickle war the second he touches me. My body twists violently as a shriek tears past my lips. Wiggling fingers flutter up my sides like butterfly wings, causing my laughter to echo through the house while I suffer for the sake of allowing him his fun for now.

“Shouta Aizawa! You traitor!” I squawk, lurching up on the couch and leaping away. Unfortunately, his reflexes prove inhumanly quick and there’s no doubting the strength of his muscles as he keeps me in place. “Nooo, Shoutaaaa! Stooopp!” I whine.

“Why would I do that when I get to hear your sweet laughter?” He teases, getting my weak spot behind my knee. 

I cringe and try to squeeze myself off the couch as my body contorts involuntarily. I slump off the couch as intended, but Shouta slides off right after me, pinning me to the ground and continuing his tickle assault before he finally stops to kiss my forehead. While I catch my breath, he presses his forehead to mine and smiles at me.

“You know I love you, right?” He coos, stroking my cheek. 

“Yes, I know.” I huff, scrunching my nose at him before leaning into his hand. “I love you too. Why else would I let you tickle me?”

“I’m glad.” He says, before tickling my ear and the back of my neck and sending my back arching straight up. He moves just in time to keep my head from bumping his.  “You love me enough to put up with this?” He taunts.

“I’d rather you didn’t but yeeeaaahhhhahaahahahahaha!” I dissolve into laughter.

When he finally relents, it takes me a few minutes to compose myself. My sides cramp by the time I’m done, but I still wrap my arms around him for a tight hug when the giggles fade. 

“Shouta, will you dance with me?” 

“Dancing? In the living room?” He strokes my cheek. “I guess that can be arranged. What kind of dance?”

“Nothing fancy. Just a simple waltz or sway…so long as it’s with you.” 

He stands and takes my waist and hand, effortlessly twirling me around as I rest my head against his chest. His heartbeat coaxes me around the floor with him. Normally, dancing would make me feel self-conscious, but Shouta makes me feel safe enough to indulge. 

Only a few minutes into our dance, the sound of pouring rain echoes through the house much louder than moments ago. Distant thunder urges me to pull him towards the back patio, where we sway gently and watch the summer storm in companionable silence.

At least until I smirk up at him with a crazy idea.

“Come on,” I tug his hand and open the door, stepping out into the rain and immediately getting soaked. “Let’s dance out here!”

“What are you…” He watches me step out and blinks slowly. He crosses his arms and shakes his head. “We can’t do that here.” 

“Sure we can!” I lean my head back and twirl in circles. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“You’ll have to excuse me, I believe it’s still inside with the cats.” 

“Pretty pleeeaaase, Shouta-kun?” I look up at him with my most potent pair of kitten eyes.

He drops his arms to the side with a heavy groan. He pauses long enough that I think he’s going to dismiss me as insane and stay inside. But suddenly, he huffs and rushes out to scoop me in his arms and spin around with me cradled against him. I look up at him with a vibrant smile. 

“Hey, Shouta?”

“Hm?”

“You know I love you, right?” 

“...occasions like this sometimes bring it into question.” He winks, before setting me down and resuming our waltzing position. “But yes, I do.”

“Enough to dance with me in the rain?”

“Enough to dance with you in the rain.”

Want more Aizawa? Try: Movie Magic - The Tiger Tango

[drenched-in-sunlight]

somos livres como girassóis de Van Gogh

(we are free like Van Gogh’s sunflowers)

[raepliica]

serving merylwood again...🍽

[tinylongwing]

Vide Noir's dual narrative structure

All right, here it is, me making good on at least one of my meta threats. Lord Huron's album Vide Noir can be interpreted as an album with two parallel, contrasting narratives - that of the lead protagonist Buck Vernon, as well as that of Johnnie Redmayne.

Disclaimer: this is an interpretation I think is pretty sound and well-reasoned, but I make no claim to any of this being proven canon information.

---

For those unfamiliar or who need a reminder, the primary narrative is this: the year is 1967, and we start near the end of Buck's journey, as he awakens from being black-brained (Lost in Time and Space). Having just suffered an overdose on the drug vide noir, his memories are slow to return to him, but return they do - his fiancee, Leigh/Lee Green (from here on Leigh but both spellings have been used), left him without a word one night, and he decided to follow, heading west to Los Angeles from their home town of Detroit, Michigan. He's been struggling to find her, checking every bar in the city in case she was booked to sing at one as her move was the result of her chasing her dream of becoming a singer. He doesn't remember a lot about himself, really, after that overdose, but he remembers her, and his love for her makes him desperate to find her.

We're then taken back to the night he left to find her (Never Ever) and his journey is mostly linear from there - he meets a fortune teller, Lady Moonbeam, who tells him that pursuing Leigh will end in his ruin, but he refuses to accept her advice and pushes on (Ancient Names I & II). He laments that he's been some kind of fuckup, that maybe he chased Leigh away through his own behavior, but that he still loves her and begs for her to return (Wait By the River). At some point around here he also learns of the drug vide noir and contemplates using it himself for clues.

(Note that unlike in the movie, in the album, nothing suggests that Buck suffered from a murder attempt by Z'Oiseau's henchmen but that instead he may have overdosed himself in an attempt to find Lee. However, there's plenty of reason to suspect that the film is the canon interpretation here anyway and the henchmen kidnapping Buck just doesn't make for a song I guess.)

One way or another, he winds up black-brained, where some deep existential truths of the universe are revealed to him (Secret of Life - namely that everyone and everything dies in the end, and that a human life is brief, fleeting, and ultimately meaningless within the context of the universe as a whole). He somehow reawakens rather than dying (Back from the Edge) and, again, understands that nothing he does will ever matter, has never mattered*, but that *even though* he's suffered greatly already on this quest, he's still committed to trying to find Leigh, pitting himself against that careless universe (The Balancer's Eye).

So he keeps searching (When the Night is Over) until he finds a clue, or a helping hand of some sort, that leads him on the right path to his beloved Leigh (Moonbeam). We get one more reminder of the forces at work here - vide noir is some awful stuff, it nearly killed him, Leigh herself is hooked on it now, it shows you terrible truths and nightmares beyond human comprehension (Vide Noir) - and when all is said and done, as Buck thinks he's about to "rescue" Leigh from her fate and bring her back to his fantasy of a perfect happy life together, she rejects him. He came all this way through time and space, and she doesn't love him at all in the end (Emerald Star).

---

I consider this the primary narrative here because it makes use of all the songs on the album, it has a clear start and ending and a mostly linear structure, and the album basically serves as a soundtrack to Buck's fool's errand. The film agrees - every scene is centered around his journey, after all. But we have context from Lord Huron's other albums, as well as the lyrics and musical stylings of multiple songs on Vide Noir, that show us that Buck isn't necessarily the only narrator on this album. Strange Trails, of course, came out three years prior, and features songs by multiple fictional bands performing songs which serve as narration for a diverse cast of characters. Unlike on Strange Trails, where each track has a writer or band specifically named and assigned to it as well as a character narrative, Vide Noir does not give us such conclusive information, but we can still put clues together to understand at least some of who the in-universe performers might be on Vide Noir.

Most likely, multiple of these songs are by the Buck Vernon Band - this is pretty obvious. Buck's semi-autobiographical music is all over Strange Trails, usually referencing a girl he loves, sometimes referencing that the girl left him, often giving her different names, all starting with L (Fool For Love's "Lily", and "Louisa").

But the other band that we can easily identify as performers on Vide Noir are the Phantom Riders. For those who need an introduction, this is the band composed of four members of the World Enders gang, with Dale Redmayne at the helm as lead writer. They were seen previously on Strange Trails as well, with banger surf/rockabilly hits like Hurricane, Until the Night Turns, and The World Ender. As a storytelling tool, they are primarily brought in to tell us about the man-turned-undead horror entity known as The World Ender himself, and then otherwise mostly we get their songs about Dale's brother Johnnie Redmayne, who is introduced to us in Strange Trails as a fun-loving and presumably fairly young guy, a thrillseeker and hedonist, who lives for the moment as if the world could end any day. The Buck Vernon Band jumps in between some of these songs with an interjection to tell us that wait, Johnnie is dead, or was, but he got back up. In Dead Man's Hand, Buck speculates that Johnnie could have been murdered or may have killed himself, accidentally or intentionally, upon first seeing him. It's in Vide Noir that we actually learn more about the circumstances of Johnnie's death.

Before we get to that, let's first identify which Vide Noir songs are by the Phantom Riders. This isn't all that hard to do. Any song that references The World Ender is presumably theirs - that gives us Secret of Life right away ("I sit alone in the dark, and I try to remember the words you spoke when you summoned the Ender"). This is reinforced in the Alive From Whispering Pines webseries, episode 423 - Secret of Life, when played, shows a skeleton prop the band has jokingly referred to as Cobb Avery on their social media posts in the past, and after the song ends in this episode, the tune continues in a slowed and distorted fashion through a clip of a WBUB movie version of Dead Man's Hand showing Johnnie rising from the pavement when Buck is about to bury him.

Ancient Names Parts I and II are presumably written by the same band as a two-part song. In the Vide Noir film, the Phantom Riders are performing Part II in the underground club. Additionally, in Alive From Whispering Pines episode 426, after Tubbs Tarbell is done reminiscing about the band and their nihilism, Ancient Names Part II is the next song covered - and often in this series, the structure of the segments between songs are intentional and related to either the song they precede or the song they follow, so it's likely that the placement of the Phantom Riders' appearance followed by a track they're associated with is meant to help confirm them as the performers. In addition, Ancient Names Part I references a fortune teller, and we know from the film that the fortune teller in question, Lady Moonbeam, is associated with the World Enders and knows the Redmaynes.

The last track on Vide Noir that is most likely theirs is the title track, Vide Noir. We have two points of evidence for this - one lyrical ("Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys" which feels like a pretty direct reference to the World Enders' nighttime violence) and one musical - the main melody of Vide Noir is identical to that of Ancient Names (and Fortune Teller's Theme, actually). In Strange Trails, using the same melody for multiple songs was an easy way to tie Frankie Lou's songs together, and here we can see that it ties two Phantom Riders tracks together directly, indicating that not only are they both by the same band, but that Vide Noir is a followup to Ancient Names part I, in which our fortune teller did warn us things would go very, very wrong.

(And besides all of that, the Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir all tend to be similar in musical style - psychedelia-flavored garage rock with a heavy bass line, in contrast to other songs on the album.)

With those songs identified, we should also be aware of just how much Lord Huron seem to love their dual narratives. In Strange Trails, we have a really concrete example of this with The Night We Met. This song was in-universe written by Frankie Lou, presumably about her doomed relationship with Z'Oiseau and how much she wishes she had never met him to begin with (as she echoes in her dialogue in the Vide Noir film when speaking to Buck in her dressing room). However, the music video for this song shows not Frankie and Z'Oiseau, but instead Buck, driving west, while reflecting on his own failure to keep Leigh, wishing he could go back in time and fix things, and meanwhile kind of hallucinating her as he goes. In the album Long Lost, we get another dual narrative in I Lied, which is performed by Donny and Midge but is also sung by Leigh in Vide Noir, foreshadowing her breakup with and lack of love for Buck. There are certainly other dual narratives in both of those albums to be found as well - so what we should keep in mind here is that often, songs can be written and performed by a character or band in order to narrate for themselves or someone close to them, but that just as in our real-world movie soundtracks or our favorite character playlists on spotify, those songs can be applied to other characters in different (but somewhat similar) situations than the ones they were written for.

So! We have four Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir, all of which were presumably not written originally in-universe about Buck Vernon, because why would they be, Buck and the World Enders only briefly cross paths and at the very least we know that Ancient Names Part II was written well before he ever met them. Instead, it makes the most sense if like the bulk of the Phantom Riders songs, these tracks serve Johnnie's narration instead.

---

If that's the case, what does that give us? Winding around and through Buck's journey is this second storyline. Johnnie Redmayne, having used and enjoyed vide noir himself abundantly ("I had a vision tonight that the world was ending" as one probable example), decides it's time to get his hands on bulk quantities so as to get the Enders in on controlling the flow of the drug in LA rather than letting Z'Oiseau maintain a monopoly, thereby also increasing revenue for the members of the gang.

It's Moonbeam who warns him to knock it off first. We know, thanks to the film, that he'd spoken to her at some point about his plans to investigate the source of the drug at Tobey's arcade and try to get his hands on some to sell. Whatever his exact plan was, in Ancient Names Part 1, Moonbeam warns him that pursuing this is going to get him killed. Vide noir isn't just a drug, it's something extremely dangerous, tied to dangerous people, and he needs to get away from "her" (and note that frequently throughout music history, drugs have been personified as a "her" or an unnamed lover, whether for poetic reasons or to evade censorship that might come from talking directly about drug use - and Cursed, off Strange Trails, is one more in-universe example, where "her" refers both to Leigh Green and to drug use, specifically vide noir).

Immediately afterward, Ancient Names Part 2, in addition to serving as a very classic sort of World Enders nihilism anthem, can easily be interpreted as Johnnie saying "fuck that, I do what I want, you only live one life anyway and even if it kills me, I want to make my mark before I go out." Death is something hypothetical - sure, it'll get him some day, it gets everyone, and maybe Moonbeam is even right, but he isn't going to let her warning stop him.

On Strange Trails, Buck and Johnnie cross paths at Dead Man's Hand. On this album they only cross thematically, and the pivotal moment of intersection might be Secret of Life. This song may be the point at which Buck learns some forbidden secrets revealed by taking vide noir as discussed above, but its lyrics speak a lot more specifically to Johnnie's experience, implying some connection between him, vide noir, and the World Ender.

It may be that as we see with Buck in the film, perhaps Johnnie too has suffered the effects of being black-brained prior to taking it due to the time and space-bending effects of the drug (notice, for example, in Strange Trails we get Johnnie's story in a scrambled chronological order) and here he's confronted with the harsh truths of what those past visions of his possible future mean for him: he has been set on a path that is no longer avoidable due to his eventual future overdose. So perhaps it's at this point that he acknowledges that he is going to die sooner rather than later and that his life and death will not have meant anything to the greater cosmos, but this information, which was new to Buck, is not something Johnnie fears. Johnnie is hardly new to this point of view. He's seen past echoes of the knowledge imparted by vide noir throughout his life, both in his future visions of the end of the world (again see Until The Night Turns) and in the knowledge passed on through other World Enders, including their own motto ("The fair, the brave, the good must die", or in Secret of Life here, "The darkness comes for all of us").

(As an aside, there's still a lot to unravel with Secret of Life that I haven't touched on here. It's a fascinating song with some really mysterious lyrics. I've speculated at length in the LH discord about some additional interpretations this song could yield but won't veer off topic here.)

And yet despite what looks like a very certain and dire end, Johnnie maintains hope that perhaps he, too, will live past this. Because if Cobb Avery did, why can't he? This is part of the gang's core mythos - their founder is a dead man. He clawed his way back out of the grave for revenge, they thought it was just so fucking cool that he was unkillable that they had to join him, and together they dismantled the Winthrop Corporation, one murder at a time. When the police finally caught up to him, they lynched him - but the noose did nothing, for he was already dead, and now in the form of a skeleton, he called the gang to his side (see Strange Trails: The World Ender comic book). In the ensuing chaos, he flees, the gang heads west and relocates to east Los Angeles, and in the time contemporary with the events of Vide Noir, he is still present among them but this appears to be unknown to the public (Daily Trails prop, by Kim Berens, used in both Vide Noir and Alive From Whispering Pines where it was modified to Ten years later).

Whether The World Ender is readily visible to and known by most members of the gang at this point is unknown, but we know that those who were black-brained can see him (in the film, Buck sees him approaching, bumps into him, plunges into a hallucination of his own future, and when he comes too, the Ender is gone). Given the Secret of Life lyrics, it's reasonable to guess that Johnnie at least can see the World Ender just fine and one way or another, in speaking with him and in conjunction with consuming vide noir, has learned enough secret knowledge to make some kind of choice - and this is what later enables him, too, to drag his way back to the world of the living.

Fate catches up to Johnnie and as we learn in the film, his death was at the hands of Z'Oiseau's henchmen for trying to gain access to dealing in vide noir. Like Buck, he is black-brained - forced to swallow enough of the drug to kill him. And so the track Vide Noir opens with the Fortune Teller's Theme previously heard in Ancient Names Part 1, and that tune is woven through the track - Moonbeam's "I warned you, I told you so" to both of these fools who disregarded her advice. Although, again, the lyrics are clearly meant primarily to narrate for Johnnie - "Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys, getting high on a pure black void" sounds a lot more like what Johnnie gets up to than Buck. We are given a glimpse of his last words and final thoughts as life slips away and his consciousness is sent straight to the final edge of the cosmos.

---

So ultimately, this is what we're left with:

Vide Noir is an album that tells the story of Buck Vernon, whose fiancee has left him. His journey culminates in a near-brush with death, in finding Leigh, and in learning that she does not love him and that he's nothing, his life is worth nothing more than dust and that none of it mattered or will ever matter, that once he eventually dies he will vanish and be forgotten in time.

Vide Noir also tells the story of Johnnie Redmayne, who for once tries to do something that isn't just for his own hedonistic pleasure but that might actually help bring in money to support his friends and family, but he's too headstrong and impulsive to listen to the warnings he's given, and is killed in the attempt.

One lives who probably shouldn't have and comes out at rock bottom and now has to work out how to move on from here, and one dies a nihilist who should presumably just accept the inevitability of death, but has the knowledge and absolute stubborn determination to enable his eventual return, following in the footsteps of Cobb Avery.

And what happens to both of them afterward? Well, we don't know. Hopefully some day (SOON?? BEN PLEASE) we'll get the opportunity to find out!

[salsedinepicta]

Extremely tired but I had a ✨vision✨ inspired by ten years as a commuter and I just had to sketch it. He started snoring/drooling a little bit after 0.25 seconds but somehow Hawke still found it sooo endearing.

+ bonus / relatable aftermath

[hamable]

Hey I just finished Hilda season 3 and I am forever changed.

I joke that I could write a thesis about some media but I could really truly talk for hours about how fucking good Hilda is.

It’s core strength, which tears at my heart and soul so earnestly, is that it is not just a story about child adventurer, but equally a story about the MOTHER of a child adventurer and it’s just so beautiful. So impactful.

I think Johanna may be one of my favorite characters… ever. I think she is Absolutey Incredible.

Season three was just so amazing, the whole series is. I beg y’all to watch it because it’s so so good and deserves all the love it can get.

[lazybakerart]

buck's been poked by god->what if he kept his lightning scar->what if his lightning scar glowed

++extra under the cut++

[cubtales]

i forgot how dreadful parties can be ᐢ⩌⌯⩌ᐢ

[heartshattering]

/// health anxiety tw

when you know the best thing to do is "lay down in the dark with your eyes closed and wait for your meds to kick in" but you start getting paranoid because what if this time you just. die. (no it doesn't have to make sense)

[braisedhoney]

okay hear me out.

“i would die for you” but in a i would sacrifice my next quiet sunrise for you kind of way. in a i would easily trade my next glass of refreshingly crisp cold water for you kind of way. in a i would take the blanket from my shoulders on a humid but cold night and wrap it around you while you sleep instead kind of way. in a i would sacrifice the first moment i spent looking up at the night sky away from light pollution and give it to you instead kind of way.

“i would die for you not because my life has no value, but because to me, yours has so much value that it is worthy of that and more”. that kind of way.

idk if that’s my favorite character dynamic (i am a sucker for angst) but it’s up there. somewhere.

[oncominggstorm]

My aunt decided a good way to wish me a happy birthday would be to text me a picture of me & my dead dad from my 22nd birthday.

Like yay thanks, I totally wanted to be sad and missing my dad on my birthday. I definitely wasn't trying to do the "out of sight out of mind don't think about sad things" thing to get through it without crying or anything 👍 Definitely wasn't already struggling missing not getting a happy birthday text from him 👍👍

[psychoticwillgraham]

love my left forearm trying to go numb while i'm trying to write :))) (edit: left shoulder now too)

[justamedicalbat]

Finished my exams today, but I had to draw my therapy cat to lower my cortisol levels because they are through the roof.

[mimikusu]

I know I'm not vibing with the crowd here...

... but I have such a soft spot for someone who seeks loneliness when sick.

Thinking about a character, who's called in sick to stay home and in bed with a slight fever, maybe. However unfortunately, their advice is needed and so their colleague drops by to go over some papers and graphs.

The poor sick soul is hardly able to keep up, sneezing and sniffling their way through a lot of statistics, trying desperately to be helpful. Finally, the issue is solved. They huff a sigh, rubbing their tired eyes and with an apologetic smile, they ask their colleague to leave: "If you don't mind, I'm eager to get back to bed..."

[scrawlingskribbles]

wough....... TwT ...themTM~ <'33

[fictional-worlds-are-exquisite]

decided to treat myself last night and took one of those lactase tablets or whatever that's meant to help with lactose intolerance and then ate a three cheese pizza

i think it just brought my really bad lactose intolerance down to a normal level

i'm straight up not having a good time