#OTHERWISE I WOULD NEED TO THROW MYSELF OFF A FIFTEEN STORY BUILDING | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

Note

Until proven otherwise, my headcanon is that both Ironwood and Watts survived and are going to team up again out of necessity lmao.

HI, ANON. So let me tell you about how this simple, silly sentence sent me down a 4k writing rabbit hole. “Lol I’m going to write a little parody about that” I thought to myself and then somehow? It got serious?? I honestly don’t know what this fic is, but I’m chucking it at everyone anyway.

Also, I changed the whole “Atlas and Mantle are immediately submerged in water” plot point because it’s my coping mechanism and I get to choose the canon we ignore.

***

Once upon a time there were two villains having a Very Bad Day.

The first, Arthur Watts, had survived an explosion, being buried under rubble, and the threat of a ten-story drop only to find himself suffocating amidst a magically produced fire. A horrible way to go, all things considered. Painful, of course, but more importantly, no self-respecting man should die with soot on his clothes.

Or leave behind a charred corpse.

In fact, Watts had just begun to acknowledge the full indignity of his death when the momentum he'd felt — just there on the periphery of his awareness — suddenly ceased, Atlas crashing into Mantle and throwing him with a squawk in the process. His head took a nasty hit against one of the desks, the smoky gray of the room growing darker, and by the time Watts had come to, the fire had been replaced by water.

Ice-cold water, lapping up to his knees.

"Well," he said, lifting a sodden boot. "I suppose this is an improvement."

***

Elsewhere, James Ironwood — former General of the now sinking Kingdom of Atlas — was lying facedown on the stone of the outer vault, contemplating his choices. Upon reflection, no, he didn't regret what he'd done, but it would have been nice if things had turned out...any way other than this.

"Fuck," he said to the empty hall, enjoying the reverberation. He deserved that much at least.

In time, Ironwood was able to pick himself up off the floor, supported as much by the fact that he'd been knocked out by his own blast as his shaky, barely-there aura. Up the elevator running on emergency dust reserves, through the corridors that groaned ominously under damaged supports. Ironwood headed towards the military headquarters purely out of habit and as he did the sound of water grew stronger, almost like waves, until there was an inch of it across the floor, more trickling in from the staircase. Ironwood had been watching his boots splash with each step, almost mesmerized, and didn't look up until another pair unexpectedly entered his view.

Watts froze in the act of wringing out his pantleg, eyes wide. His expression, the water, how the hallway tilted downward at a slight angle... it all felt like something out of a dream. Ironwood just watched as Watts watched him, until his eyes traveled to the gun clipped on his belt. Ironwood hadn't even realized he'd picked it up.

"Here to kill me, James?" Watts said.

"No." He knew it was true as soon as he'd said it. The mere thought of starting another fight right now was... exhausting. "Do you intend to kill me?"

"Oh really. Does it look as if I'm in a position to fight you? Do use your head for once. I have no weapon, no aura — damn fire ate it all up — I feel as if I've swallowed a hot coal, I am wet — "

Ironwood turned partway through the ramble, meandering back up the way he'd come. He'd passed through two checkpoints before realizing that Watts was not only still talking, but following him.

"What do you want?" he asked, more to shut the man up than out of real curiosity. If Watts was capable of reading the difference between the two, he didn't show it.

"Cinder."

"Cinder?"

"I don't make a habit of allowing people to try and murder me without consequence, James!"

"She's gone."

"Yes, thank you for that stunning bit of info! There's no possible way I could have realized that for myself. What's gotten into you? They left us, fool. Salem, Cinder, Neo, Emerald, even your so-called allies... they all deserve the worst that we can grant them. Though right now, I'd settle for wringing that idiot Pietro's neck. Ten years I gave to that research and he rendered it obsolete with a single report, all because he wanted to play father to some stupid hunk of metal. I never would have gone to Salem if — " Watts cut off, hands balled into fists.

Ironwood just blinked dazedly, coming to a halt. He searched his uniform, the scroll he'd stashed there miraculously whole. Dimly, he registered that he should be feeling some sort of emotion right now.

"I can do that," he murmured.

"What?"

But Ironwood was already keying in the code, the desire to complete a task, any task, taking hold. Watts looked on, mouth twisted in a deprecating sneer.

"I already took out communications, in case you failed to notice."

"But not the trackers I had installed in my top scientists." Ironwood held up the screen where a small, red dot was blinking. "Pietro's still here. Looks like he's out near the mine with a second aura signature. If you want to...?" He wasn't going to finish that sentence.

"I see," Watts said in a tone that heavily implied he didn't. "And you'd just give me this information out of the evilness of your heart?"

Ironwood considered that. "I killed a man yesterday, tried to kill two others, and was ready to bomb all of Mantle to keep the rest of my Kingdom safe. I don't care what you do with the man who betrayed me."

"...fair enough."

Except after five steps Ironwood realized that Watts wasn't following him. He was looking down at his arms, still as a hunted hare.

"You put trackers in all your scientists?" he asked.

"A requirement I implemented after you went missing."

"Ah! Ingenious. Lead the way then."

***

The way led to the tundra, an environment that neither of them were prepared for. Watts was wet from the waist down and Ironwood had long ago learned that snow and metal didn't mix. Neither had the aura for the kind of storm that was raging either. Luckily, the panic of Salem's invasion had left plenty of vehicles to purloin and soon they were speeding East with the heat on, the faint beeping on Ironwood's scroll growing stronger.

He'd felt the impact of his city crashing down and the two of them had clamored out of Atlas' husk, dropping into rubble and cracking ice. Still, the true destruction wasn't evident until they were moving away from it. Through the rearview mirror, Ironwood could see pillars of smoke from fires that the water hadn't yet smothered, dark shadows that could only be grimm, and Atlas itself, plunged halfway into Mantle. It wasn't noticeable from this distance, but all of it was sinking.

"I was lucky," Ironwood said, his voice hollow. His eyes flicked back to the expanse of snow ahead of them. "If Atlas had tipped the other way, the vault would have flooded. I'd have drowned."

Watts snorted. "I'm lucky. That damned water put out Cinder's fire. I'd have burned."

Neither felt particularly lucky and for fifteen more minutes, neither was keen to discuss it.

***

Once upon a time, two heroes were having a Very Bad Day.

"You've got to be shitting me."

Maria paused in the act of bandaging Pietro's leg, mechanical eyes narrowing at the two figures that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Watts sucked in a breath at the duo. Ironwood gave a small, awkward wave.

Then he nodded his head at the scene: one old, exhausted woman and a paraplegic currently bleeding into his chair. "So... going to kill him?"

Watts ground his teeth. "Well now that just feels like a fool's errand. Look at him. He's pathetic!"

Pietro was slumped at an uncomfortable angle, sporting a gash in his leg and an impressive display of bruises across his face. Maria, in contrast, seemed to have only lost her hair tie.

"Pathetic?" she spat. "Your lackey did this!"

"Who?"

"Angry girl with the creepy arm."

"Ah, it all comes back to Cinder." Watts pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes, thank you for recognizing that I was her superior, but no, I didn't send her to kill the likes of you. Must have done it on her own, the little idiot. Don't believe me? I was in jail at the time, if I recall correctly. Isn't that right, James?"

"You were helping me hack Penny."

Maria let out a skin-crawling cackle. "Why do you think the girl was here? She blew a hole in the bottom of Amity! Penny tried to hold us up, but..." she swallowed, still pressing against Pietro's leg, but turned warily towards them. "You hacked her? You did that? What precisely do you think happens when a man who never learned to apply aura as a shield crash-lands in this hunk of junk!"

"I expect most men in that position perish," Watts said smoothly. "The fool is lucky to be alive, but he won't be for much longer if you keep trying to staunch the wound with your soiled gloves. Move aside."

"Get away from me!"

"Oh, put your stick down, you old bat. I'm trying to help."

"Why?" Ironwood hadn't realized he'd spoken until Watts was glaring daggers his way.

"So I can kill him later myself!"

Still surreal. Still dream-like in its absurdity. Ironwood listened to the bickering between Watts and... Mary? Maria? He wasn't even sure. He wandered away, content to gaze out through one of the windows at his Kingdom. Or what was left of it. He idly massaged his left arm, trying to rid himself of a pain that wasn't there, and when the howl of a grimm reached them across the snow, he shivered.

His unlikely companions screamed at each other loud enough to reverberate through the whole building. There were the sounds of two bodies trading blows, but only for a moment. Pietro, voice groggy and high-pitched with terror, demanded to know where his daughter was.

"She's dead," Ironwood said. He didn't turn to see their expressions, didn't need to. "Winter she... she defeated me as the Winter Maiden. That can only mean one thing."

"One thing to you, perhaps." Ironwood did turn then, watching stoically as Pietro tried to right himself in his chair, Watts cursing as the leg continued to bleed. "Where is she? I want to see my little girl. I can heal her, fix her — " he broke off, doubling over with a cough that splattered more blood into his hands.

"Maybe you could have," Watts said, a cruel satisfaction in his voice. "If her little friends hadn't made her human."

Some of the pieces fell into place then. His Lamp, long missing, had apparently wound up in Neo's hands, then Salem's, before it was finally used by Cinder. Watts described — with immense pleasure — the plan the group had concocted and the wish they'd asked of Ambrosius. He'd been a bit preoccupied with bomb duty to learn the details, but he knew that Cinder lived and Ironwood, it seemed, knew that Penny had perished. What a tragedy. Do you know how to bring back the non-mechanical, Doctor?

Ironwood honestly thought the old woman was about to kill him, murderous intent put on hold only because Pietro collapsed then, curling in on himself as sobs wracked his frame. The only words that escaped the mess of tears were "Penny" and then "Maria," one hand reaching out blindly for comfort. Pietro found it, the two holding onto each other as Watts sat at their feet, grinning up at the display.

Ironwood thought only, So that is her name.

The other, crucial bit of info was that everyone was gone. Dead or evacuated, it didn't matter. As far as any of them knew, they were the last four in Atlas, with Salem on her way to destroy whatever kingdom next took her fancy. It was over. They'd lost. And despite the horror of it, the realization was oddly freeing too.

When Maria asked in a tone edging on hysteria what precisely they were going to do — because it seemed this was a "we" situation now — Ironwood suspected she meant in the short term. What were they going to do about their wounds? The grimm? Finding and reaching the others? But those were foolish concerns, the thinking of someone who'd never had a kingdom's life in their hands. Ironwood knew there was only one answer here, the same one he'd had from the start.

"You can do whatever you like," he said. The metal of Amity sparkled against the rising sun, leaving splotches of color behind his eyes. "I will defend Atlas."

Maria's mouth dropped open and Watts stared. Even Pietro ceased his crying long enough to suck in a breath.

"Defend it from what?" he asked.

Ironwood shrugged. "The grimm. Salem. I don't know. I don't care. To quote a former friend, I have never wavered in defending the Kingdom of Atlas against its enemies and I don't intend to start now. This is my city and I won't leave it."

"It's sinking!" Watts cried, overlapping with Maria's, "We need to help" and though so much softer, quieter, more innocent than the spittle Watts was scattering across the floor... that single word sank its teeth into Ironwood. The woman may as well have stabbed him.

"Help?" he said. "Help? I tried to help! Everything that I have done in the last two days — the last two years — my life! — has been to help not just Atlas, but everyone I feasible could. Don't talk to me about help when you and Ms. Rose did everything you could to stop me. I had planned to help the world and you all lied. You betrayed. You set your weapons against me and kept me from saving what parts of my Kingdom I could. Tell me again: what precisely did you do to help?"

He'd crossed the distance, one hand on his holstered gun and the other leaning against Pietro's chair, using it to leverage himself down into Maria's space. Ironwood didn't need to see her eyes to know the emotion they held.

"I," she spit, "didn't try to bomb a city."

And just like that the fight in him was gone. It had barely existed in the first place. Ironwood straightened, swaying slightly on the balls of his feet. "No. You didn't. So it's as I said, go help if you want. If you can." His gaze slid to Watts. "You were one of her men. That says it all." Pietro. "You helped them reveal Salem to the world. Will she have time to destroy the other kingdoms before the grimm do it first?" Maria. "And I don't know you, but you don't earn a prize like that without seeing combat." Ironwood lifted his metal finger, tapping it against Maria's goggles. She flinched away. "Can you honestly say you haven't made mistakes?"

"You and I are nothing alike!"

"I didn't say we were."

Ironwood turned and walked away, as steady as he could manage as the world grew a little darker, despite the sunrise. Behind him Watts' voice rang out like a shot.

"So that's it then? The captain goes down with his ship? You idiot!"

He paused. "Not quite. It turns out I'm not the only idiot around these parts. Ms. Rose left the vault open." One last turn to savor their shocked expressions. "That's where I'm going. There are still plenty of airships if you'd like to leave, but just remember: they abandoned you too."

Perhaps he should have been surprised that by the time his boots hit the snow, three more footsteps were sounding behind him. Frankly, in fourteen hours time Ironwood would barely remember their conversation, let alone everything that came after it. One of them drove back to the sinking city. Someone tested the ice before they cautiously crossed it. Someone else dispatched the stray grimm foolish enough to get in their way. Ironwood saw and heard none of it. He walked with the determination of a wind-up toy, wobbling now that he'd reached the end of his string. Cool blues, a shining gold, and then beautiful, miraculous grass. Ironwood ignored the murmurs of amazement behind him, dropping directly to his knees.

When his palms hit the ground, only one was capable of feeling how soft it was.

I need to update my arm, he thought, even as he curled into a ball and passed out.

***

When he woke they were already running out of time.

For the first two days Ironwood barely spoke to the others and thus he never quite figured out why they'd stayed. Had it been hopelessness? Spite? The all consuming thought that there was nowhere else to go? That Atlas, for all its rubble and slowly rising water, wasn't any different from what the rest of Remnant would look like soon?

Why not here then?

Especially when the vault, filled with wildflowers and an endless sun, made for such an enticing retreat.

"Soil's farmable," Maria said, running some of it through her fingers. It was a statement of fact, nothing more, and the three of them stubbornly ignored the implications of it.

"There's — " Pietro coughed, self-consciously clearing his throat. "There's plenty to salvage. Machinery to pull water from the humidity in here. First aid supplies. We could section off an area for our wa — "

Watts seethed. "If you finish that thought I will — "

"What?" Maria arched a brow. "Kill him? Like you've been saying for the last day?"

Day? Ironwood blinked. How long had he been out?

"I will!"

"Like you'd be able to. Just try it, beanpole."

They argued, and they threatened, but none raised their hands to one another again, and when they finally dispersed across the kingdom to collect what they could, none of the acknowledged what it was for.

Ironwood waded through the remnants of his home and didn't think about building another. Because the idea alone was absurd.

"Don't let the door slam shut," he'd said when they’d first left, nodding to the stone slab that had appeared after Penny had first arrived. Ironwood watched the three exchange glances, unsure if he was joking.

Fuck if he knew.

***

Those four days — or five, if Ironwood counted the one he'd lost — were conducted in a strange state of frenzy. None of them were in a position to be working on such a project, but when had the world ever cared for their needs? Pietro stayed behind in the vault, cataloguing what they'd found and making lists for what was still needed. His chair, while dynamic, wasn't meant for the sort of terrain Atlas had become and his wound was still healing.

He also seemed to appreciate the privacy, frequently mourning his daughter with an honesty that made them all uncomfortable.

Maria went off to do the Gods only knew what, disappearing for hours at a time, then coming back wet, cold, and carrying little. Though she always had information. Which parts of the city were too grimm invested to traverse, which were now completely underwater, which were too unstable as Atlas tilted like a ship, disappearing beneath the waves. It gave them all focus and, surprisingly, something like hope. Whatever else she carried was usually small, such as the seeds filched from the bio laboratories.

"Couldn't take them all," she said, critically surveying the land, "what with so many of the labels getting lost in the crash. Don't want to eat something your lot has experimented on."

"You should. If we're lucky you'll mutate into someone bearable." Watts, taking stock of the clothing they'd gathered, didn't seem to realize that Maria was flipping him off.

He went on a deep dives (sometimes literally) for salvageable tech, most of it of a practical nature, but other pieces... not. Nothing had shifted Ironwood's world view quiet like day two, walking in on Watts looming over Pietro, assuming there was another fight brewing... only to overhear them exchanging theories, the conversation filled with as many insults as legitimate claims. Still, the seeds of camaraderie were there, and were perhaps easier to grow than originally thought. After all, Watts had once been one of them and Pietro, for all his heroics, had once entered Ironwood's office with a manic gleam in his eye, rambling about giving an aura to a machine. Defense technology at its finest!

What was it Glynda had said? Ah yes, agreeing with young Ms. Nikos about how "wrong" it all was. But desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

They'd had that discussion, of course. Soon after Ironwood awoke, talk of Amity began again, this time about whether it was possible to send another message. With enough time and effort, not to mention luck... a short one, perhaps, and only sent to an individual scroll. But what was the point? Who would they call? When no one could — or would — answer that question, the idea was dropped.

In the days since, Ironwood had fantasized about messaging Glynda. One of the few who'd ever been a true friend, perhaps the only one left alive who might care that he was still among the living... if Ms. Rose's message hadn't killed that too. Not that it mattered. Even if Amity wasn't a hunk of metal gathering ice, Ironwood hadn't a clue what he might say to her.

Dear Glynda,

Thank you. Sorry. Good luck.

Sincerely,

General James Ironwood

P.S. If things had ended differently, I would have asked for a second dance.

How ridiculous.

So he walked the broken streets of Mantle and climbed the streets of Atlas, more and more of it disappearing every day. Their hoard grew though, born of not just military property, but personal belongings as well. It wasn't as if anyone was coming to claim them. Unless more magic was at work, both cities would be miles beneath the ice before anyone crossed the border again. Still, Ironwood would always pause before packing away what he found in the hastily abandoned houses. Bedding. Utensils. The literal shirt off someone's back. He'd changed into jeans and a thick sweater the second day, taken from a collection of civilian clothes he'd placed into a locker years ago and promptly forgot about. The uniform felt... obsolete now, no matter that his goals remained the same.

He'd encountered Maria on one of those trips, admiring a basket of yarn in some nameless Atlesian's living room. Her shoulders had tensed at his approach, but she just snorted at the sight of him.

"You knit?" he asked, unsure of what else to say.

"No."

"Crochet?"

"No."

Ironwood didn't know any other crafts that involved yarn. "Then why are you taking it?"

Maria hummed. "Just a thought. That I might, someday, try to learn." She shook a book she’d pulled from the basket: Knitting For Beginners.

A stray thought indeed. The thing they still didn't talk about. The closest they got was on the fifth night when an explosion sounded outside, massive enough to unsteady them even deep within the vault. By the time all four of them had made it out and onto one of the roofs, the sky had turned a sickly yellow, followed by black tendrils that raced, turning, back and around on each other until everything went dark. The only light came from what little electricity they had running on generators and a red aura, pulsing from the West.

From Vacuo.

Realistically, it might have meant that they'd won. It wasn't as if Ironwood had any idea what the death of an immortal witch looked like. But the night wore on and they had no idea because that unnatural, starless black never receded. In time, Pietro wandered off and returned with two bottles he'd pilfered from somewhere, cracking the tops off on the side of his chair and passing them around.

They still didn't say it aloud, though the sky and the alcohol said enough already. Ironwood kept his eyes on the watch his mother gave him, hours ticking by until sunrise was long overdue. Atlas felt even colder now and that red, seeming to inch closer, sent a different kind of chill down his spine. The grimm that still prowled below had taken off hours ago, summoned by some unheard call.

Ironwood downed the dregs of his bottle and threw it into the city.

"Come on," he said. Ordered maybe, or asked. He wasn't sure he knew the difference anymore.

Blankets. Glasses. As many non-perishables as they could find. Generators. Tool kits. The building blocks of renewable energy. Clothing. Decorations. Wood to build small, individual dwellings.

Watts hoarded laptops and a small mountain of batteries, never showing them what he was working on, intensely protective.

Maria grew obsessed with entertainment, snagging every book, game, and video until there was a veritable library piled on the grass. She kept muttering about deserving a real retirement.

Pietro built a shrine to Penny, a simple stone monument to the left of the doorway. He tended to organize their supplies there, occasionally reaching out a hand to brush the code he'd inscribed with a laser. Whatever meaning it held, Ironwood couldn't read it within the ones and zeros.

And he... he found a cat. His last day, picking his way across dwindling islands until his eyes found the small, electrical fire just out of the water's reach. The cat had wedged herself into the rubble above it, trying desperately to keep warm.

She was as black as the sky above them and Ironwood was sure, when he reached out, that she'd run, terrified of his prosthetic hands. They certainly weren't any warmer, but she weakly crawled into them nonetheless. Ironwood held her securely against his left side, where his heart and flesh were, and thought with an absurd, internal laugh that he'd at least saved one.

There was so much left to do still, but their time was gone. That evening, eating what little they had the stomach for, water began to pour from the vault's elevator. First a trickle, then a deluge, until there was a sizable waterfall to admire. Ironwood sat on the steps with his unnamed cat on his shoulder, watching inevitability creep towards him.

He could still lie though.

"There's still time," he said, addressing the three behind him. "If you head up the elevator shaft and down the west hall, you can still break the surface. Find one of the remaining airships. Fly away."

Watts scowled, avoiding his gaze. He remained leaning against the doorway though.

Maria and Pietro exchanged glances.

"I'd carry you," Ironwood offered to Pietro. They both knew it would be a death sentence with their combined deadweight, but he'd do it anyway.

"No," he said softly. "I did all I could already."

Maria. She was harder to read with those goggles, but it wasn't peace on her face. Guilt, more likely, but that had never stopped any of them before.

"It's damn cold out here," she muttered and marched back to the grass. Pietro followed her, Watts trailing not far behind. He turned back though.

"You coming?"

Ironwood didn't answer and eventually Watts left, heading into the meadow that stretched until you lost sight of where you'd been — and then reappeared there. A tiny pocket dimension, born of a magic now lost to this world. Ironwood figured that a bit of water and ice couldn't break it.

Probably.

He watched the flood cover the floor of the vault, then lap upwards, one stair at a time. There was a part of him, a part unimaginably tired, that thought he might just sit there. Keep rooted until the water was so high it was too late to do anything. That would be easy. Fitting, even. Shouldn't he go with his kingdom?

But then the cat — his cat — dug nails into his shoulder and Watts said something that made Maria screech. Ironwood sighed.

There were still things to protect, simple as that had become.

He turned his back on Remnant, now encased in an eternal night, and walked to the three who remained, cowering in an eternal day.

Ironwood allowed them one last choice and when they all nodded, he kicked the vault door shut.

#tw suicidal thoughts #rwby #fic things #rwby fic #Ironwood #Watts #Maria #Pietro #idk what this IS #post-apocalyptic RWBY I guess #with a side of questionable people not talking to each other #Anonymous

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inkslingersworld · 4 years ago

Text

Zusammen: Part I

The setting sun illuminated the city of Paris with a warm orange glow, and although the rest of Adrien’s friends had gone home already, Kagami had made the proposition that the two of them should take a walk along the Seine before night fell. Adrien felt inclined to agree, seeing as he had canceled several of their previous dates for superhero reasons, and even though he’d since told Kagami of his identity as Chat Noir and she’d acted as though the date cancellations didn’t bother her, Adrien could see beneath the happy facial expression she put on to find the disappointment.

It was only fair to partially make it up to Kagami by taking a walk with her - besides, the weather was fantastic. There weren’t many people out. They’d stopped by a little cafe they enjoyed going to and purchased coffees for themselves. The atmosphere was near-perfect.

Kagami didn’t say anything until they approached the Eiffel Tower.

“Adrien?”

He turned his head towards hers. “Yeah?”

She opened her mouth, but then closed it again. “Never mind.”

“What is it?” Adrien asked.

“I don’t want to intrude upon your privacy,” said Kagami flatly.

“Kagami, anything you want to ask me, I’ll tell you the answer.”

Kagami stared into his eyes and sighed. “What happened to your mother?”

This was not what Adrien had expected. It was now his turn to sigh.

“I wish I could tell you,” he said, “but the truth is, I don’t know myself.”

“She just disappeared?” asked Kagami.

Adrien sighed again. “Not exactly.”

He stopped walking. Kagami stopped as well, gazing at him with a concerned expression. Adrien looked back gravely.

“What I’m about to tell you, I haven’t told anyone,” he said solemnly. “Not Nino, not Marinette, not any of my friends. I’m not ready for them to know yet, so you don’t repeat this to anyone, okay?”

Kagami nodded. Adrien sighed a third time.

“I was at a photoshoot with Nathalie. Father said he couldn’t make it, said he had some important business to attend to. After we’d wrapped up, we returned to see police cars outside my house. Someone had tried to assassinate my father.”

Kagami let out a small gasp.

“He was fine,” Adrien continued, starting to walk again, with Kagami joining him. “He’d knocked out the would-be assassinator and took his gun, tied him up so he couldn’t escape.”

“Who was it?” Kagami asked fearfully.

“A mentally disturbed fan of his,” said Adrien. “I never did learn his name, but Father had apparently had experience with him in the past. The fan started getting paranoid, said my father was stealing his designs. Anyways, according to my father, the fan opened fire on the house. Father told Mother to run, and so she ran.”

After ten seconds of silence, Kagami said, “That’s all you ever found out?”

Adrien nodded. “She never came home.”

A few more seconds passed.

“I’m so sorry,” said Kagami. “I really am. Nobody ever found out about the assassination attempt?”

“Nope,” said Adrien, sniffing. “It was gonna be on the news, but Father made a few deals to keep it from going public. Said that someone trying to shoot him was bad publicity. All anybody ever found out was that my mother had vanished off the face of the Earth.”

“Did you ever, like, hate the shooter?” Kagami asked softly.

“Strangely enough, no,” said Adrien contemplatively. “I felt sorry for him, actually. I mean, yeah, I did kinda loath him, cause he was indirectly responsible for my mother’s disappearance, but you should’ve seen the guy. Most pitiful person I’ve ever seen. At his criminal trial, he actually asked to be put on death row.”

“He what?”

“I know, right?” Adrien said. “In the end, he received a fifteen year prison sentence.”

They walked in silence for a while, letting Adrien’s tale soak in. After a couple minutes, Kagami spoke.

“Would you like to hear about my father?”

“Sorry?”

“My father,” repeated Kagami. “You told me about your mom, so I should tell you about my dad.”

Adrien had a bad feeling that the story of Kagami’s father would be a sad one indeed, but got the impression that Kagami wanted to tell him. So, he voiced that.

“Do you want to tell me?”

Kagami took a deep breath. “It might be nice to get it off of my chest, but I wouldn’t want to burden you with the story if you’re not willing.”

“I wouldn’t be burdened,” said Adrien quickly. “In fact, I was curious as to why I’ve only seen your mother.”

“I used to live with my father,” Kagami said sorrowfully. “He was a painter. When I was four years old, he took me to an art museum in Sapporo, which was where we lived in Japan. I remember my feelings of awe at the sight of such beautiful artwork, and I asked him whether we could go there every day. We did not end up going there daily, but the two of us would head there every Tuesday, because they’d have a guest speaker there on that day of the week.”

They were crossing the Pont Marie now. The sun was only a half-circle in the distance.

“When I was nine,” Kagami went on, “he experienced his first psychotic break. He was convinced that he was on a boat that was sinking, and he was admitted to a psychiatric institution the following day. The doctors told my mother that my father possessed a previously unknown psychological disorder, and that he may need to stay at the institution permanently.”

“Is he still there?” Adrien asked worriedly.

Kagami shook her head. “No, um, he stayed at the institution for another five years. My mother and I visited him regularly. Most of the time, he didn’t recognize us and mistook us for someone else. Sometimes he didn’t see us at all. His last night at the institution, he recognized me. He let me ride piggyback on his shoulders, like he used to. While we were walking, he said to me, ‘Gami, look at those sculptures! Aren’t they exquisite?’”

Kagami let out a shaky breath. “There were no sculptures.”

“Then what happened?” asked Adrien.

A single tear slid down Kagami’s cheek. “Our visit ended, we went home, and the next morning, he hung himself with his own clothes.”

“Oh my god,” Adrien said, horrified. “I’m so sorry.”

Kagami wiped her face. “The last words he said to me were, ‘Tomorrow’s Tuesday. I hear they’re going to have a very prolific photographer at the museum. Won’t that be fun?’”

More tears spilled out of Kagami’s eyes, and she hugged Adrien at the same time he hugged her. They stood there for what felt like days.

When they finally parted, Adrien asked, “Is that why you moved to Paris?”

Kagami nodded.

“How did you survive something like that?”

Kagami gave him a watery smile. “I met you.”

Adrien could almost hear his heart go ping. He smiled back and placed his lips on hers.

“I’m never going to leave you,” he whispered into her mouth.

It was nighttime now. The stars were unusually bright in the sky as Adrien and Kagami made their way through the streets of Paris. They were nearing the Louvre when Kagami pointed to their right.

“Look!”

Adrien turned. She was pointing at the Pont des Arts.

“Do you want to go that way?” he asked her.

Kagami nodded.

As they crossed the bridge, Kagami said, “Did you know couples used to attach padlocks with their initials carved into them on this bridge?”

“That does sound familiar, yeah,” said Adrien. “Wouldn’t they throw the key into the Seine?”

“Yep,” said Kagami. “Too bad all those locks posed a safety hazard due to extra weight on the bridge and the city prevented other people from doing it. Otherwise, I would’ve brought one with me.”

Adrien stopped walking. “Hang on.”

Without warning, he trotted off in the opposite direction.

“Adrien?” called Kagami. “What are you doing?”

“Just hang on a sec!” Adrien called back.

Kagami saw a flash of green light. Another flash came about five seconds later, and she saw Adrien come running back.

“What was that?” Kagami asked.

Adrien only smiled. “I’ll tell you in the morning. It’s late now. Let’s go home.”

===========

Long after Adrien and Kagami had returned to their respective dwellings, just as the sun was preparing to rise after a good night’s sleep, a woman decided to walk across the Pont des Arts. She was used to getting up early in the morning and enjoyed picking up any litter night owls had left behind. However, when she got to the bridge, she didn’t see any litter. She saw something quite different.

Someone had carved something into the bridge’s wood. The letters weren’t particularly large, but passersby would have a hard time not seeing them.

A+K.

The woman frowned. She wondered who those two were.

An Adrigami piece for the end of monday. Hope you enjoyed it! (For those who don’t know, “zusammen” is German for “together”.

Hi again! I’ve decided to build on this for my own AU!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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leonawriter · 4 years ago

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My Personal Takes on Stormbringer:

Without a full and accurate translation to go through in one sitting, it’s still hard to get a handle on things properly. That said, thank you to everyone who’s working on it.

Now.

(please note all quotes are my memory of translations I have read, and are not verbatim.)

-Asagiri, please, you do not need to make so many coding analogies with regards to Chuuya and Verlaine. They don’t work.

-It often feels - not just in this book but also in 55 Minutes, where there are tight restrictions on a time travel ability - that Asagiri limits abilities based on how scientifically accurate they are. However, this doesn’t make sense! why should it! Literature should be an expression of freedom. There should be rules - the same way the Page has rules - but in the sense of Magic A is Magic A. You make up the rules and then you don’t break them in future. Why have Kunikida able to create something with a mass heavier than a piece of paper out of a page of his notebook, but then say you can’t do [x/y/z] because it’s scientifically unviable?

-I have no issue with how skk treat each other. they are chaos teens. let them be. like... this is the beginning of their actual trust. they’re also in the mafia, and in a dark time in their lives. it’s fine. (it isn’t, but at the same time, it kinda is.)

-I feel like Chuuya taking things from other people and making that thing “his” fits him as a character? he had nothing before, so when you have nothing, all you have is what people give you. If someone gives him a bike, then that bike is his now. He has to learn to look after it, love it, and respect it, and he’ll remember that friend by it. Same goes for pretty much anything else. Also, it’s a show of how well Chuuya adapts to things, and what things he chooses to pick up.

-The hat. I do not like how the hat was treated. Making it into the key that helps Chuuya be able to activate Corruption cheapens the meaning and weight of having been given the hat as a memento of the first person who told him to live as a human being. Why not have the hat be a reminder of his humanity in a purely sentimental way? I’m going to ignore anything canon about this and just say it’s sentimental. Which, like, it could have been a safety blanket type thing, not pseudo-science.

-The coding in Chuuya’s body is a bit... of a reach? How do you put that in there? I don’t get it. Just say that there’s a possibility he might die if he uses Corruption, or that he’ll never become “Chuuya” again. That he’d lose himself utterly. The log history can be either on a chip (insert Dazai making “lost dog, if found return to the mafia” jokes here) or on something else that could easily be destroyed during the course of the story (or not).

-Dazai living in the shipping container reads to me like an extreme version of “I do not want to be found I do not want to be helped I am worthless trash and what’s the point in having an actual home if I plan on dying any day anyway.” Verlaine asks what drove him there, and Dazai says “you” and tbh that offers up so many questions (like, was the shipping container thing recent, was it temporary, or what). There’s the possibility that Dazai doesn’t always live there, because otherwise he’d suffer from hypothermia and get pneumonia in the winter! But above all, Mori had nothing to do with this. He was probably terrified to go too close in case he got killed. Stop saying Dazai lives here because “poor baby was abused :(” that sure was not it.

-Dazai goes all this way - plotting for ages, since before the beginning of the book, having been number one on Verlaine’s hit list, just to get the truth about Chuuya’s humanity and to preserve it - because “I want to see Chuuya suffer as a human being” is him saying he doesn’t want to see Chuuya become like him, or inhuman, because that’s not Chuuya. (dude, there ain’t a straight explanation for this...)

-following on from the previous, Dazai refusing to just let things be the moment he realises that it’d mean double suiciding with Chuuya. I personally see that as a shippy moment because Dazai had already given up on Chuuya being alive (if I read the translation right) and in that case, dying would just be letting go. But Mori says “yeah but I don’t think he’s dead yet?” and that, along with the “double suicide” thing, makes Dazai go “absolutely NOT.”

OK a related thing - as far as I remember, when IRL Dazai attempted double suicide, right up until his actual death it would result in either a failure or... his partner dying and him surviving. The cold potential of this happening in BSD if Dazai had just given up reminded me of that.

-Regardless of my thoughts on how it was handled, Stormbringer reinforced my previous ideas about how Chuuya basically IS Arahabaki. It also suggests that Arahabaki was more of a sentient ability than a true “god” but... that’s fine. For me, all I cared about was that all those “Arahabaki is an evil being that is constantly trying to take over Chuuya and Corruption is Arahabaki being let out” takes are not true. It’s... basically Chuuya taking the lid off his power. I joked at one point that Corruption is Chuuya going “I’m so pissed off I’m gonna kick the door open and throw away the key” and Dazai going “go for it babe, I got your key.”

-Rimbaud and Verlaine are... very complicated characters? They’re not easy to get a handle on. I sometimes find myself liking them and sometimes find myself disliking them, and that’s something that’ll be easier when I have a full translation available - and one of Fifteen. Rimbaud was held back by seeing Chuuya, at first, as nothing more than an empty vessel to Arahabaki’s power, while Verlaine was so taken over by grief without understanding how to handle that, that he became a monster up until the end of the story. Neither of them were good people. That said, their relationship to each other? It’s very complicated and reminds me of their IRL selves to a point but without the skeevy nature and without it going so far, so kudos to that.

-Adam. Knowing his creator was a ten year old girl makes so much sense when you look at the things he says and does. He doesn’t get so much. He’s very logical, but doesn’t understand that a game of billiards isn't as much of an icebreaker as he thinks it should be. Surprised by bubble gum. Games like “strange things humans do” are very much like the word games kids play in the car.

-Verlaine being the fifth executive was something I did not predict at all, whatsoever, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Like... how did he get to that point. Only so much can be said in a few paragraphs (it seems) of “this is [x] number of years in the future where Chuuya’s an executive now.”

The last we see of him, he’s overcome by grief, hatless, and he seems to have only just realised how much he wished he could return what Rimbaud gave to him. (Ironically, by being able to grieve like that, it shows that he is capable of what he thinks he can’t do - same as Dazai.)

But how does he become an executive? Do they come to him slowly at first, and they gradually build up trust? Does he stay in contact with Chuuya? Do they see each other properly as brothers now, or not? I can’t help but feel that as it’s a long time - six years, in fact - between Stormbringer and canon, some bond of trust must have been built. The mafia protects Verlaine from the authorities and from the outside world just the same as Kouyou says that she wants to do for Kyouka, and the same as they’re there for Chuuya, too. So. A Verlaine who trains the mafia’s best assassins not because he’s forced into it, but because he feels the same loneliness as Chuuya, and finds that it helps? A Verlaine who learns slowly that he can care about more people than just Rimbaud and Chuuya? Holy shit yes please. A Verlaine who is loyal and protective and who you should be glad is in a (probably) gilded prison of the mafia’s basement, because otherwise he would actually do so many things to those who would harm his family.

Let’s just say - if I think of Arahabaki as a guardian or protector god who is just plain destructive because it can’t help that, then Chuuya and Verlaine looking and acting in similar ways because they share that same “parent” in a sense, makes sense. They are no longer just Arahabaki, they’re “Chuuya” and “Verlaine” - but they also share traits such as “Papa Wolf” and “lonely” and “violent,” among others.

-At least twice, pre-Soukoku Dazai and Chuuya refer to how they’re constantly thinking of each other. No, they don’t mean in positive ways, but they’re chaos teens and it’s still strong emotion. Chuuya mentions how he’s thought of at least 190 ways to punish Dazai for the things that he does (which also implies how their relationship is equal, and Dazai doesn’t call all the shots, and doesn’t get away with everything scot-free), and Dazai says that Verlaine can’t possibly win against him, because Dazai “spends all of his time, waking and sleeping, thinking of ways to annoy and harass Chuuya,” (quote not perfect.)

We also have Chuuya having Dazai appear to him first in his hallucinations, which I see as Chuuya’s inner Dazai-voice saying all the worst things, and ironically not actually saying or meaning things that would get across what real Dazai would want him to feel; in other words, that’s Chuuya’s view of him, or his mind searching for the one person he’d believe it to realistically come from.

As well, Dazai saying “there’s no way Chuuya could be an artificially constructed personality, because no one could create a personality that I [hate/that annoys me] so much.” Which, like... sure... you tell yourself that, kid...

Basically, they’re all the kinds of things that teenagers who don’t really get how strong feelings like these work yet, who are still figuring themselves (and their orientations, probably) out, would say if they don’t even like that other person that much, but they’re still attracted to them. A strong “why does it have to be THEM?” haha. And yet, as others have pointed out, Chuuya seems more on the oblivious side than Dazai, since as said, Dazai goes to all this effort and seems fond (but only when Chuuya’s not looking, dumbass) but Chuuya just... doesn’t get it.

A shorter summary of my thoughts and feelings?

Chuuya suffers, but is ultimately happier for it no matter whether he’s one of the clones or whether he’s the original (it’s arguable either way, and I don’t mind either way) as he’s still Chuuya. His bond with the mafia is also stronger than so many people think it is. They’re literally his adopted family. Even if he chose to leave, he’d still see them as family. I can’t see him leaving. He’s just... they’re family... don’t tear them apart...

The skk is strong, no matter what people say, because this is the start and it’s the end of their first year in the mafia and it’s not supposed to be a healthy time, for fuck’s sake. They’re both all sorts of messed up. They’re allowed to be. This is a time when that’s kinda the point of the book. But yeah, the trust and the bond is real.

Verlaine. I am now fascinated by Verlaine. I was so sure before the spoilers and translations came out that I’d hate him. I no longer do. He confuses me but I NEED TO KNOW MORE.

#bsd #Stormbringer spoilers #bsd spoilers #all opinions are the OP's #you don't have to agree but they are mine #facts are just facts tho #and this got long whoops #may add more if I remember more later

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haikyall · 4 years ago

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time signature

AO3

ayoo~ this is for sonderdaisies in instagram and discord! Here’s your prompt in my entry for @bnhagiftexchange WC: 4.7K

Pairings: Hawks & Miruko (Keigo Takami & Rumi Usagiyama) AU/Prompt: Musician AU,

Summary: Music brings people together, even if you see each other at work... and live across the street from one another

Three hours. It has been three hours since Rumi has started looking for her portfolio. That portfolio had the pieces she wanted to present to her leader when they start rehearsal tomorrow. That portfolio could bring her career to new heights. That portfolio could get her a promotion. The portfolio is missing.

Her house is already a mess because of trying to flip it upside down just to look for that flimsy clear book. She hates the fact that she is forgetful and things like this happen on the daily basis.

Maybe it’s under the bed— you already checked the bed— how about one more ti— you checked it five times already. Inside the couch? You can’t rip open your couch, Rumi. I can watch me. Okay, where are you going to get a new one? Fuck where is it? I swear I won’t be able to practice tonight without those.

She knows it’s not at the rehearsal studio, she remembers putting it in her envelope… where is her envelope? Rumi suddenly has the motivation to look for something else. Did I leave it at the studio?!?!

Her frustration gets the better of her and she starts to aggressively look for the clear envelope. She gets more annoyed as more time passes and she hasn’t found the thing yet. Her annoyed self got more pissed to know the fact that it was ten in the night. She annoyingly grunts and then she hears it…

Soft piano playing. It was Clair de Lune, Haydn. It was calming, soothing. The volume was soft enough to be heard by neighbors whose houses are just across the street but not loud enough to be causing any disruption. It was like the house the sound was coming from was a huge music box.

Whoever was playing the piano, was very good. The emotions were displayed perfectly and mixing some of their own. You would know if you’re emotional in playing by simply catching the attention of the unsuspecting audience. Rumi notices how the pianist speeds up by half a second and after a while of playing they would realize the speed and calm down. That’s not how you play the song.

The song calmed Rumi down. She listened to it for quite a while, settling on the couch while thinking if she did leave her life’s work at her office. Her brain goes haywire thinking if she even labeled her stuff. She scolds herself for being so damn irresponsible, this wouldn’t be happening because of it.

Her eyelids start to droop the more she listens to the goddamn classical piano player. Times like these are when she wants to throw something to the other house to shut the people up there but this time she has absolutely no reason and energy for that.

Rumi blacks out.

Rumi Usagiyama is late and it was a difference of five minutes… five minutes led to thirty because of her extensive care for her silver hair that reaches the curves of her hips. That same thirty minutes led to an hour because of searching “how to cook pancakes” on Google and ultimately failing, leading her to just settle with cold pizza on her fridge. An hour flew to an hour and forty-five minutes as she was looking for her sheet music which led her to have a massive breakdown because she was missing pages and had to print everything again, and then she realizes that she’s running five minutes late which lead to a total of an hour and fifteen minutes late with ten minutes tardy time.

If it weren’t for that fucking pianist and their fucking Haydn I wouldn’t be so late and slept on the couch.

She frantically runs to her rehearsal room where everyone involved in the project we're talking, tuning their instruments, eating, resting, or a combination of a few. It was like this every morning, you enter a room of people you’ll work with for a few months to play for a musical, and then when the project ends you act like you didn’t know each other’s life story and how they came around with their instrument.

It was always so noisy.

The tan girl sighs as she expects another classic sermon from her superiors saying that “she should be more responsible” or that “if you loved music, maybe be more punctual”.

Well, I happen to love pancakes too so shove your fucking violin bows up your asses. We don’t even play the same fucking instruments.

Rumi sighs as she smiles and bows apologetically to her superiors. Her superiors shake their head and leave her little space in the wide rehearsal room and rolling her eyes, she sits down, reviewing her sheet music as a way of prepping herself.

“Chill down, baby bird, you look like you were gonna pounce on them if they didn’t walk away,” Rumi sighs in relief at recognizing who’s voice now was towering over. The voice laced with concern but 90% consisted of cockiness. She looks up and sees a blond, and stout Keigo Takami with an amused eyebrow raised.

Rumi sends a scowl onto Keigo’s way, “Hahaha, very funny Kei,” Keigo chuckles as he squats to Rumi’s level as she attempts to focus on her work.

“I am quite the crowd-pleaser myself if you didn’t notice,” The blond dude says in reply and it takes for the tan girl to process what in tarnation her colleague just let out.

Rumi peels her eyes off her sheet music one more time, and shakes her head, “No, why would I— why are you even here?” She asks annoyingly to the smirking Keigo who was also looking at her sheet music.

The blond man stands up, “Just wanted to remind you we have rehearsal in five, baby bird— oh, you guys have a similar sheet music to the stringed instruments,”

The silver-haired grumbles as she realizes that Keigo was doing her a favor, she completely forgot about the rehearsal, “Thanks, Kei, I’ll keep it in mind” Keigo turns around but seems to have forgotten to say something and turns back to Rumi who is now doing air-drumming movements, aligning her hands on the imaginary lyre, playing the piece with the correct notes in her head.

“Also, uhh you left some of your sheet music here” Keigo hands her a portfolio with her name at the front and where all of her missing sheet music pages were located. Rumi mentally slaps herself in the face to scold herself for forgetting such an important thing in her life let alone make Keigo return it.

Rumi grabs the portfolio “I was wondering where that went… thank you, sorry about that,” She apologizes and Keigo finally turns around gives her a thumbs up. She remembers a part of her conversation and yells back.

“AND JUST SO YOU KNOW, PIANOS ARE BOTH STRINGED AND PERCUSSION SO DON’T DISCRIMINATE SHIT, BABY CARROT,”

Keigo smiles to himself, finally, a decent reply. The thumbs-up he was showing just now flips and turns into a middle finger as he walks back to his little space of the rehearsal room.

Rumi smiles at the non-verbal reply and shakes her head. He seems to know how to cheer things up huh? She examines the smooth texture of her clear portfolio, once again scolding herself, clutching the plastic material in anger.

So… I had a mental breakdown, and wasted my time for fUCKING NOTHING?!?!?!

___________________

Keigo packs up the last of the things he needs to take his leave from the rehearsal studio. He slings his backpack over his shoulder and starts to stride away out of the building.

The blond man stands in line waiting for the subway to arrive, as he does an old lady in a kimono outfit comes up behind him.

“You have grown, young bird”

Keigo is stunned, is this lady talking to the right guy? The pianist looks in both directions, checking to see if she is talking to the right person. The lady giggles as she sees that Keigo points to himself to be even more sure that it was him.

“Do I know you?” Keigo asks

The old lady smiles, “No, but I’ve seen you grow on this exact hallway, I’m proud of what you’ve done” She then proceeds to point at the place where Keigo used to play songs as people walked by, grateful for any change they drop him with. Keigo remembers this in an instant and scratches the back of his head in embarrassment.

“O-oh, th-thank you, ma’am” He bows toward the elderly and she starts to enter the train,

“Enjoy your trip home,”

Keigo smiles, “You too ma’am” He then enters the train as well.

__________________

Keigo then arrives home to hear xylophones to be the sound that greets him. He’s aware that one of his neighbors plays the xylophone. Keigo is sure it's not anyone from work as the xylophone pieces were never the pieces they would play at work. He assumes that they would practice the workpieces given that the performance is just a week away from now. The xylophone pieces were just popular songs. He sometimes hums along to the songs his neighbor chose. It was like Keigo’s evening couldn’t be complete without at least hearing one note of the xylophone, it served as his lullaby into the night.

Keigo doesn’t complain about the noise. It’s not noise, it was one of the most beautiful harmonies one could ever hear. He would trade the world to hear it again.

“Not in the mood today, huh?” He says to himself as he hears that the xylophone notes were just being played at random, not a single beat or harmony was being made. It was like they were being played out of frustration like a person was venting their anger or whatever they were feeling onto the instrument. He decides to not join them for tonight and sighs at the fact that he won’t be practicing the piano.

Keigo wanders how his neighbor is even still playing, he swore that the amount of frustration they’re letting out onto the instrument seems enough to break the sticks used to make the sound of it. He’s impressed that the xylophone itself is still in one piece to be exact.

Keigo never had the energy or time to know who exactly was his neighbor due to his work and his dedication to it. His neighbor may have thought otherwise and never introduced themselves when they first moved in. He didn’t mind, he respected their privacy plus, it would be extremely awkward if he introduces himself now and not five months ago.

He listens to how frustrated his neighbor seems to be. He chuckles at times when he hears the same key is being played like they were annoyed by the sound of it and tries to fix it by repeatedly playing the note.

Even if the xylophone isn’t exactly playing any song right now, he still believes that it’s still harmony in some way, it invokes emotion… well... his emotions, it was like the instrument was talking to him, ranting on how crappy their day was, a broken music box. He found the thought both funny and intriguing. Sometimes, he wants to know what’s got the lyre player in such a sour mood like this.

As Keigo listens to the horrific music. He searches up piano music sheets as more xylophone playing was starting to give him a headache. “Your Name, huh? Is this what you wanted to learn, baby bird?” He asks himself, remembering one of the pieces that were in Rumi’s portfolio. Keigo simply couldn’t help it, the clear book was thick, and he’s a curious man.

The music then stops, Keigo looks at the time; 10:00 pm. Ah, they should stop now. He notices that whenever it was ten sharp, the music stops, even if it was in the middle of a song. It was their bedtime, Keigo then decides to also call it a night and starts to close all the lights and prepare for bed.

___________________

Rumi barges into the rehearsal room, she sighs in relief to see that no one was there yet. She woke up early today, she didn’t get to practice any songs last night and it pissed her off. She was so busy scolding herself with forgetting the portfolio of her pieces that she had forgotten the more important matter, practicing the exact songs in her portfolio.

She didn’t want to be a burden to the other lyre players since it was evident who knew how to play the lyre if they practiced their pieces before going to work and it would be hella embarrassing if Rumi didn’t have any songs to present her lyre group with.

It was a tradition that the lyre group makes lyre versions of popular songs, everyone in the building loves it. The sounds resembled that of a music box, melodic, lullaby-like, gentle, and peaceful, just with six other xylophones playing.

She then grabs a music sheet stand and shoves her portfolio on it, and she starts playing in an instant. She takes notes of the pauses and how the song escalates. Maybe the group will choose her songs, the songs she’s been choosing have been very difficult, those kinds of songs kind of gives an appealing view to their leader.

Rumi chose quite a popular song, it was “Sparkle” from the movie Your Name. She chose it mainly because she cried at the ending more than she would like to admit. She skips the repetitive piano intro and starts straight at the D#. It was quite a simple piece, she was hoping that the leader would somehow make it more complicated. The leader would always encourage them to bring him something more simple to make it grander to play since he can turn it more difficult the more they play together.

The silver-haired girl has been tapping on the same notes over and over again but seems to slowly lose count on how many times she should be playing a specific note. “Five D#… wait no… wasn’t it four?”

She plays the notes again to confirms her suspicion and she starts to anger herself at how much she confused herself over the starting line of the notes she’s playing. “If it weren’t for me and my forgetful ass and forgot the fucking portfolio, I wouldn’t be here right now cram practicing,” she grumbles to herself as she lashes her anger on the flipping of pages on her portfolio.

She starts to get impatient with herself since she keeps on making the same mistake on the same note. For some reason, she isn’t keeping track of how many times her glockenspiel on the metal plates “GODDAMMIT ALREADY” She screams out in frustration, flinging her stick towards the other side of the room.

The stick barely misses the incoming blond male that enters the room. His eyes follow the direction of the stick as it hits the wall, taking precautions to not get hit by another stick. He notices that the stick is not a usual drum stick but is more similar to a lyre stick… Rumi. “Woah there, take a chill pill, Rumi,” Keigo says as he enters the room.

“Keigo… hi,” Rumi breathes in and composes herself and Keigo finds this a perfect time to piss her off even more

“Hello baby‘I'm pissed and I throw my stick in anger but luckily I'm alone’bird” Keigo teases while making air quotes as he says the nickname with his index and middle fingers. Rumi rolls her eyes. She paces across the room to pick up her poor glockenspiel as the other person in the room settles his place on the piano

“Well not anymore,” She grumbles and Keigo simply chuckles.

“What you practicing?”

“Just for some presentation,” Rumi shrugs off the question and focuses to prepare to start playing.

“Can I listen?” Keigo says in pure curiosity and Rumi’s answer went out faster before she even thought of saying it.

“NO!”

“And why not?” Keigo asks, raising an eyebrow at the sudden response.

“BECAUSE I HAVENT….” Rumi answers a bit too fast again and shuts herself up and tries to concentrate again on the piece.

“You haven’t what Rumi? I’m not a fortune teller over here and even if you do say no, I’m still going to listen,” Keigo points out and Rumi huffs in frustration at the man’s persistence. She hated at the fact that Keigo is right. He’s assigned to the same orchestra as her so he can’t possibly leave the room, and it’s not like he can’t listen to it even if he wanted to.

“Ihaven’tpracticedityet” Rumi says in a quick and silent voice. Keigo was impressed she managed to speak in a volume that's still too quiet even if they were the only two people in the room

“Sorry what? You were too soft” Keigo says, genuinely and for spite. Rumi inhales deeply, calming herself down before reiterating what she just said, in a slower and louder manner.

“I haven’t practiced yet,”

Keigo scoffs, that’s what she’s so worried about? He looks at her dead in the eye. “I’ll help you then,”

“What’s the piece?” Keigo asks, stretching his fingers as preparation to start playing.

“Sparkle, from—” Rumi calmly says

“—Your Name”

“Your Name,” They both say simultaneously. An awkward silence fills the room and they both freeze at the realization that they said something at the same time.

“Do you play the intro?” Keigo asks and Rumi shakes her head.

“No, it hurts the ears if I play it on the lyre” She explains and Keigo nods.

He then shrugs his shoulders and faces the piano, “I’ll play it then,”

“Whenever you’re ready then,”

Keigo’s hands lay on the white and black pieces, awaiting the right signal to himself to start playing. He calms his senses and takes a sharp inhale of breath. His fingers then start to wander and dance on the piano and the first notes are finally played.

Rumi waits for the repetitive beginning to finally come to an end and joins Keigo in the next measure. The piano and the sound of the lyre start to compliment each other, Rumi is impressed that she can play better with the guidance of a piano… Or maybe it’s Kei— NOPE IT'STHE PIANO.

The flow of the music was so enchanting, the music was attracting the people who weren’t assigned to the studio. The piece itself was already hard to play on the piano alone, concentration only became harder for both as they hear people crowding the entrance of the room. The pressure was killing the pair in the most silent yet obvious manner.

Don’t fuck up, Rumi. Don’t you dare fuck it up now? It’s going to be so fucking embarrassing for Keigo if you dare mess it up. Oh my fucking god, too fast, too fast, too fAST—

It was obvious that the piece was escalating for some reason and Rumi was panicking at the pace they were going for many reasons. One, the tan girl hasn’t memorized the piece, meaning she has to look at both the piece and her xylophone. She’s starting to wonder why on earth she’s speeding up.

Was she not following the time signature? Maybe she didn’t time the rests right. Shit, did she forget to play a note again? Rumi looks at Keigo and everything starts to fall into place. Keigo is panicking.

Keigo’s eyes were so focused on playing the piece it was like he was solely playing the piano on his own. His fingers are going too fast, it wasn’t obvious to the audience but he was a least two beats advanced. He’s forgetting what piece even was in the first place. His eyes are too wide. Keigo is going too fast.

“Keigo!” Rumi screams out. Keigo hears it and he turns around and he finally sees it. Rumi isn’t looking at him but he can see her struggle, the way her eyes are flipping from the notes to the actual instrument was her way of panicking and telling Keigo to slow it down, any faster and she’s going to have to make a mistake on the way of trying to keep up.

“Sorry,” Keigo mouths out and he tries to mellow down the speed but it ends up being too fast for Rumi’s speed again. Rumi hasn’t seen Keigo’s response Rumi feels like her arm is about to fall off. She’s just pulling through the fact that the song is about to end… Okay maybe choosing the six-minute version of the song was a bad idea.

The song finally ends and they get applause from the people who were watching them. The pair never really processed how many people were watching. It looked like only a few caught on to the fact that they were a bit too fast and the fact they ended a bit early because of it.

Keigo and Rumi share a hug and Rumi hit’s Keigo’s nape in the process. “That was pretty stupid of you, Keigo,”

“Sorry about that,”

Keigo and Rumi turn to the crowd and simply bows in gratitude.

“What is going on in here?” The head of the lyre group comes in, the crowd quiets down their noise. It shows on their face that they have no idea why there is a crowd and why Rumi and Keigo are bowing as it turns out the head of the lyre group has just arrived in the building and hasn’t watched the entire scene play out.

“Ah, Keigo was helping me practice,” Rumi explains with a bright smile, satisfied she even finished the song. The leader raises an eyebrow as Keigo bows in front of them, a way of greeting.

“Is that so?”

“She couldn’t get the timing right,” Keigo explains, why he is helping her in the first place.

The leader crosses their hands on their chest, “It sounds to me, you also couldn’t get the timing right, Keigo,” They say with a menacing voice.

“He got nervous, chill out,” Rumi defends.

“A musician that can’t play at the right time signature shouldn’t be playing in the first place,” The leader says, smirking. They’ve pissed off Keigo, it was obvious by the way he was looking down, fist clenched. He’s holding in every urge to bite back at the way the leader was taunting the pair.

“Is that your way of telling Rumi her song choice sucked?” Keigo quietly asks.

“Excuse me?”

“You weren’t here for the performance, more likely you came by the end of it, I can see it in your face,” Keigo points out the bewilderedness of the guy the moment they came in. He can tell that they haven’t calmed down from the shock of the people and the ending of the song.

“That’s not what I—“

“I wasn’t finished,” Keigo says, Rumi is freaking out. She’s trying to calm Keigo down by gripping his arm and silent whispers, scolding his name but Keigo persists and continues, “Now, if you’re going to tell me and Rumi that the piece she chose doesn’t suit your style, then maybe you shouldn’t be a leader because of that selfish thought, 3/4 of your lyre group are already here and they are looking at you with pretty nasty looks,” Keigo reminds the leader as he points to some people in the crowd and the leader sees their members looking at him menacingly or not even looking at them.

“Anyways, if you don’t like the help of other people from your same orchestra, maybe you should take a chill pill,” Keigo says, packing up his stuff and leaving.

“Keigo— wait!” Rumi says, gathering her stuff as well and following shortly, completely ignoring her leader.

“Where are you going?” She says after chasing up to the blond man.

“Home,”

“Let me come with you,”

“but—“ Keigo tries to retort, seeing that the silver-haired girl still has work and has to present the piece they were practicing in the first place yet that same girl cuts him off,

“It’s the least I could do after everything you said, dumbass,”

“Fine,” Keigo sighs continues on his journey with Rumi.

___________________

They both wait for the subway train to arrive, and as they do so, a new but familiar voice enters their conversation, “Hello there, young bird,”

Rumi is shocked to hear an old voice from behind her so she turns around. Keigo already knew the voice so his calm stature doesn’t change, “Hello,” Keigo says, bowing in respect.

“Where are you going?” The old lady asks.

“Home, people at work like to be asses today,”

“I get that, you have a pretty guest too,” The old lady points at Rumi who has a tint of blush on her cheeks after being called pretty.

“Hi, I’m Rumi Usagiyama,” She says, bowing as well

“Hello there, little bunny, ah… well I have to be going, have a wonderful day you two,” The elderly woman says, looking at her watch and departing.

“Take care!” Keigo says as he watches her depart from them. He notices the soft gaze of Rumi as she watches the elder woman disappear, “… you like being called pretty~” He says, teasing the smaller human.

“N-NO I DO NOT,” Rumi says, eyes wide, color creeping up her cheeks, and hits Keigo’s shoulder on instinct.

“Hey, what was that for?” Keigo says a hand goes to the injured area. Not all that injured but still painful.

Rumi rolls her eyes, “You are annoying,”

“You like it when I’m annoyin— okAY OKAY I’LL STOP,” Keigo tries to bite back but Rumi is already a step ahead and pinches and twists Keigo’s ear. The train finally arrives and the two finally calm down and board the train.

___________________

They are finally walking to what Keigo calls his home. As they walk through, Rumi notices how this path seems familiar. Too familiar. It’s like she knows it because she’s been here every day. That’s exactly what it was.

Is he going to make a left there? But I also live there. Then straight ahead for two intersections then another left. wAIT A SECOND—

“You live here?” Rumi asks and the question catches Keigo off guard. Of course, he lives here, where else was this girl expecting?

“Yeah… is there a problem?”Keigo slowly answers. Rumi’s brain is doing the most before short-circuiting again, everything seems to fall into place.

“Did you just so happen to hear instruments playing from your other neighbors?” Rumi asks an oddly specific question “Cause ya know, you’re not the only one who can play an instrument.” She explains and Keigo nods.

“Yeah, just yesterday this neighbor of mine must’ve been pissed~ they were making the most random of notes I swear, poor xylophone just wanted some rest,” He chuckles and Rumi nods. Did this asshat just say xylophone? yeSTERDAY?!

“ARE YOU THE ONE WHO PLAYED CLAIR DE LUNE THE OTHER DAY?!” Rumi again asks a specific question and Keigo answer it absent-mindedly.

“Yes, how did you—“

“WE’RE NEIGHBORS YOU FUCKHEAD,” Rumi freaks out and Keigo doesn’t seem to be on the same page as her.

“… what?”

“The xylophone playing yesterday wAS ME,” Rumi explains that she was the mastermind of the horrific music and Keigo slowly starts to understand.

“YOU?!?!” Keigo points at a laughing Rumi. “WHY WERE YOU PISSED?!”

“CAUSE I LEFT THIS GODDAMN PORTFOLIO AND THE LEADER GOT PISSED AT ME FOR IT,” Rumi explains while waving the envelope she was looking for one and a half days ago.

“BUT I RETURNED IT TO YOU” Keigo tries to make sense of the situation

“EXACTLY WHY I WAS PISSED,” Rumi says as Keigo shakes his head, everything finally clicks into place and they both have calmed down, “Thank you, for a while ago,” Rumi silently says, remembering how they even found out the new information in the first place. She sees her house and yet they turn the opposite way.

“Hmm? Oh, no problem, was getting sick and tired of them treating you like shit anyway,” Keigo simply says as they finally arrive at his home, Rumi feels weirded out at the fact that she isn’t at her house but the house right in front of it.“Care for coffee, neighbor?”

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mrs-i-have-too-many-biases · 5 years ago

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Bang Chan// Sun and Moon (-light)// Chapter three

Summary: Sun and Moon, different from another, but both unmissable in the world. The sun is warm, it provides daylight. It represents life, strength and growth. The moon, the brightest and largest object in our night sky. It makes the earth more livable and represents admiration, change, mystery and feelings. The sun is untouchable and unreachable, but what if his ,independent, sun(-shine) becomes his world? Tropes: Enemies to Lovers Season: Spring Pairing: Bang Chan X Reader AU: | Delinquent!Female Reader | Vice President!Bang Chan | School!AU | Non!Idol AU | Genre: Fluff/ Angst Word Count: 7,5K Warnings: Themes of bullying, Themes of Abuse, swearing, insults, Requested: Yes (Reference) A/n: For the sake of the fiction, Chan is a twat in the story, but only for imagines purposes only. We all know better than that.

Y/n huffed impatiently as she waited for Chan to arrive finally. She laid her head on the table as the morning sun shined on her face through the windows. He had told her that he would’ve been a little later due to his training sessions, which obviously came with being the star athlete of the school.

She was munching away at the table she and Chan kept claiming every session. She had secretly sneaked some food into the library. The librarian, who knew Y/n by now quite well, let her however, without letting anyone else know of course. Y/n would’ve stayed at the 24-hour library to take a nap, away from home before she was close with Changbin. The librarian, better known as Adelaide. She was an elder lady who was very modernised. She had tattoos of her own that she would love to talk about with Y/n. She would often act like a grandmother to Y/n, something and someone Y/n never had. This was she got to experience that a little.

When Y/n heard a gasp she knew Chan had arrived, the smell of chlorine that filled her senses also giving it away. “Y/n! You can’t eat in the library!” Chan whisper yelled as he was about to snatch it away from her. “I can.” Y/n smirked as she kept on eating whilst looking Chan deadly in the eyes. “Don’t worry, Adelaide doesn’t care, when it comes to me at least.” “Why did she gave up on you already?” Chan joked, making Y/n roll her eyes.

“I came here to study, I also waited for you for an hour and I brought you snacks. So, instead of being a little twat, sit down and let’s do this. I could’ve been done already.” She sighed slightly in annoyance. “Alright, alright. But still I think it’s a little odd to eat here.” Chan mutters, yet still taking the pack of snacks form Y/n’s hands. “Adelaide will be find with it, unless it’s a complete dinner, that she doesn’t appreciate.”

After an hour, Y/n still couldn’t understand the exercise they had been discussing. “How can you still not get it! We’ve been over this already for the umpteenth time!” Chan cried out tiredly. He ran his hands through his now fuzzy hair. He looked like a madman and he blamed Y/n for it, because that what she did, she drove him mad. Especially right now.

“C’mon Y/n, we have class in ten minutes.” “You expect me to get this magically in the next ten minutes, even though we just spent an hour on this one thing.” “Alright, let’s continue this after school then. Because we have a test in a few days and you need to get a good grade.” Chan yawned. “Fine.” Y/n sighed as well as she started to pack up her stuff.

“When are you free?” Chan asked her. Y/n looked at him surprised whilst raising an eyebrow. “I thought I was the one who needed to adjust to your schedule?” She smirked turning his words against him, making him cringe in process. “Y/n I-“ “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me a date and a place.” “Tonight, your house-“ “Uh, rather not my house-“ “Then why did you-“ “Let’s just meet up here again, so that people will restrain me from ending myself, because this shit is getting on my nerves.” She said before walking out to her class.

Chan sighed to himself as the stupid words repeated themselves through his head. He regretted snarling those words to her the other day, but he tried to shake them off as he as well made his way to his class.

“I’m telling you Binnie, this next tattoo will be amazing! I already drew new designs for you!” Y/n said happily as she was on the phone with her best friend. Y/n was set outside once again, on the usual spot. The sun was warm and she was scribbling away in her notebook. “If you could actually tattoo than I would be fighting for my job right now, even Hyunjin talked about teaching you the ways of tattooing.” Bin chuckles. “I mean, I am an amazing artist, you should be quaking.” She laughed brightly.

What Y/n didn’t know was that Chan had been watching her, like a little creep. Well, not really, but he had been staring at her ever since she took place at the table outside. Chan saw how bright she was and how the sunlight complimented her skin. He felt his heart jump a little when he saw he smile again. He suddenly was overwhelmed with his feelings, especially when his friends dropped another joke of him having a crush on her. “No, I’m just wondering how she can lazy around when she should worry about her life.” Chan shot back. The words weren’t aimed towards him, but they stung into his chest.

Why did something inside tell him that he was ‘too good’ for her, that she was ‘below him’ and that he shouldn’t fall for someone like her. He started to argue with himself that he wouldn’t fall for her, but when he looked up to Y/n’s figure once again and saw her smile, his jumping heart tried to prove him otherwise.

In the meantime Y/n was still on the phone with Changbin. “Hey, Binnie, I was wondering if you wanted to hang out later? You could be my knight and safe me from my tutoring sessions.” “I mean you could go and use your new knowledge on your tutor-“ “I’m going to stop you right there for the sake of my sanity.” She groans as her friend laughed at his dirty joke. “No, but I guess I can be your rescuer and hang out with you.” Changbin said before he was cut off by her gasping. “I’m sorry Binnie! I forgot that he wanted to study some more in our free time.” She could hear her best friend pout through the phone. “Why do you play with my feelings like that? My producer buddy’s also gone, so you’re telling me that you’re leaving me behind to hang out all night with Hyunjin?” He cried out dramatically. “You would be working anyway. I’ll send you the drawings I made so you can redesign them.” “Fine, fine. But you owe me a complete date. Which means activities, you pay for dinner thank you for offering and cuddles, because I need your attention.” He muttered cutely. “Fine fine, except we’re probably splitting the bill, oh how smart of you Binnie!” She joked, using his tactics against him.

She heard him huff once again before they exchanged their goodbyes and hung up the phone.

Hours passed and Y/n was back at it again with Chan. She magically got her to understand the exercise, they had trouble with before, within fifteen minutes.

“Thank God, because I was going to lose my last braincells due to your stupidity.” Chan joked before getting a notebook thrown to his head.

The two decided after having some banter and studying the session for the next morning in advance, so they could sleep in before school for once after a long time.

It would be nine o’clock when the two started to lose motivation and focus. “Someone’s hungry.” She joked when she heard Chan’s stomach grumble. “No shit, we’ve been in here for hours and your crisps aren’t that filling you know.” “You twat, be glad I brought you some food or I would’ve left you here to starve.” Chan chuckled at her grumpy state and shook his head in amusement.

“Alright Gym Rat, let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving as well.”

“Gym rat?” He asked while laughing, taken aback by the sudden nickname. “Yeah, you’re buff as fuck. Now pack up so we can go and eat, or else I’m leaving you here.” Chan was shocked by her words as she stood up and left to wait outside for him.

He was surprised that she noticed and almost complimented his body, but he just told himself that she must’ve assumed what his body looked like through others’ whispers. Or did she actually watch his competitions? So many questions, yet so little answers.

“So, where do you want to go.” Expecting a name of a restaurant being spilled from Y/n’s lips, Chan was yet again to be surprised. “There’s a convenience store not far from here, let’s go there.” Chan was used to girls picking out expensive restaurants whenever they were with him, expecting him to pay since they knew he was too nice and rather wealthy.

When they walked into the store, it wasn’t very crowded. Y/n told him that she liked to come here since people usually liked to go to convenience stores near the river. This store was particularly cute and aesthetically pleasing, it would be a great place for Instagram photos, yet no one seemed to know of it, since it was hidden behind the tall and modern buildings of Seoul.

Y/n would grab a basket and throw many kinds of food in. Two packs of instant noodles, two fried chicken breasts, some 떡볶이 (‘Tteokkbokki’: Spicy rice cakes) that the two of them could share and lastly some beverages. She surprised him even more when she paid for all of it. She went to prepare the food as Chan went to look for a spot and to keep an eye on all their stuff.

He looked around and took the scenery in. It was quite pleasing to the eye and he had to admit that he almost never came into a convenience store. He usually got all his food from at home. Or there would be someone who would get the food for him and his family. He was quite spoiled, but he was aware of it, so it wasn’t that bad, right?

Within ten minutes Chan had devoured the food and was left with only the delicious aftertaste on his tongue and a filled belly. He sat back in his chair as he munched on the rice cakes as he watched Y/n eat elegantly. Compared to Chan, she actually looked like she was enjoying the food, doing little dances after each bite or sip from her drink. He thought it was cute and smiled a little to himself.

The nice lady who owned the store came up to the two and smiled kindly as she gave them ‘service’, which basically mean they get free food ‘on the house’. “It’s nice to see you again Y/n.” She added before walking off again. Chan stared at her, making Y/n burst out in laughter. “I basically live here.” She explained playfully, but shortly before eating again. “It seems like you live everywhere else but at home.” Chan joked, making Y/n stop for a split second to process the comment. She knew he was right, but she didn’t wanted to admit it. So she just forced out a chuckle before eating again, this time avoiding his gaze.

Chan felt the air thickening as soon as the joke slipped out and he felt and physically saw that she got uncomfortable. He felt a pang in his chest, which was guilt that spread through his veins. Y/n noticed Chan tensing up as well. She contemplated if she wanted to tell him about her home situation, but she didn’t. She didn’t tell Changbin until they had known each other for months. Yes, she knew Chan for ages, but did she though? They never spend time together until these past weeks and those meet ups were forced.

She didn’t notice Chan standing up, but jumped in shock when he suddenly sat back down. He held two ice creams in his hand and handed one to her. It was his turn to jump in shock when he heard Y/n gasp and squeal in excitement as she took the ice cream from his hands. She stared at it for a good ten seconds with big sparkly eyes before ripping the paper off it and eating it.

“You must really love ice cream.” Chan laughed in disbelief at her sudden change of behaviour, which relieved him. “This is my absolute favourite ice cream.” She said in between licks. “Really?” “Yes! I thought they stopped selling these, because I haven’t seen them in ages! Thank you, by the way.” She said in a whisper. “Shouldn’t I be thanking you? You literally paid for everything.” “I mean, you’re the one helping me out. Even though I know you don’t really want to and this is all forced onto you, it’s really the least I could do. I would love to treat you in a real restaurant, but I simply don’t have the money for that.” She admitted in embarrassment. She really wanted to show her gratitude, but if only she had a little more money. The money she made at Tattoo Parlour.

“No, no! It’s okay, really. Please don’t feel bad. I really enjoyed the food. It was honestly one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. It’s simply but very tasty.” Chan assured her quickly. “Oh please-“ “No, really! I mean, noodles, everyone loves them. Caviar, please.” Chan scoffed making her smile. “Thanks.”

There was a short period of silence as the two avoided each other’s gazes. “Chan?” “Yes?” “Do you find me intimidating?” She suddenly asks. “Why are you asking?” “Why are you avoiding answering my ask?” She smirked slightly, but then soon sighed, because she was already aware of the answer that was about to come out of his mouth, which was ‘yes’.

“Am I actually that intimidating?” “Well, you usually show up in bruises, cuts and other types of wounds. You wear black all the time, you don’t really interact with people and you’re quite mysterious.” “Well, seems like I did caught your eye.” She joked, but she had no idea how hard Chan’s heart was pounding.

“I don’t feel like I’m intimidating though. I’m just, I don’t know, protecting myself.” She admitted as she rested her head on her hand, whilst looking at the guy in front of her. “Protecting yourself from what?” Chan asks, genuinely worried. “I don’t know, people, I guess. It’s the way I look, dress, apparently behave and have behaved in the past that makes people think certain things of you. People assume I’m a bad kid, because I have scars and wounds all over my body, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve beaten up a random kid.” She huffed in slight frustration.

“What are the bruises from then?” Chan asked carefully. “I kickbox and practice Taekwondo in my free time. I don’t really like using harnesses or gloves for kickboxing.” Which wasn’t half of a lie. “That honestly explains quite a lot.” Chan mutters as he felt guilty for prejudicing her. “It’s one of the simple reasons why teacher don’t like me, my appearance I mean. And the shit I did in my pass apparently is permanently burned into their mind, since it’s in my ‘permanent record’. I guess I can’t change their view and thoughts on me.” “Yes, you can and you will with the upcoming test. You’re going to show them that you got this, which you actually do. You understand almost everything perfectly. At some exercises you didn’t even needed me.” Chan encourages, softening Y/n’s heart for him.

Only Changbin, plus his parents, have been encouraging towards her for the past years. It was nice to have someone else to add to that list.

“I just wish some people took some courage or something to get to know me, you know? I really am not that bad, or well I at least hope I’m not.” She sighs and Chan pitied her.

“Then I would like to get to know you, or at least better.” Chan’s words surprised himself as they had the same effect on Y/n. “What-“ “Let’s get to know each other, in the mean time I can change your mind that I’m not a snobby rich kid.” “I never-“ “I know, but that’s what most people think of me when they hear my name: rich, athletic and probably handsome.” He joked smugly as she scoffed out a laughter. “No one says that pretty boy.” “Yet here you are!” He laughed along.

“Well, if you want to get to know me better, then meet me at third period at the ‘Stray Café, tomorrow.” She leaned forward to set the seriousness in her tone, as he gulped loudly at her sudden confidence that she gained out of nowhere. “I have class third period.” He mutters. “If you really want to get to know me, then I’ll see you tomorrow third period Channie.” She winked before standing up to leave.

Chan didn’t know what messed him up more. The fact that she asked him to skip tomorrow, her confidence, the wink or the nickname he used to be annoyed at.

He turned around to see her looking at him one last time, sending him a smile and yet another wink, before stepping out the store.

She sighed whilst shaking her head in amusement, she wanted to see how true Chan was to his words.

The next morning, after the both of them had their test first period, Y/n went straight to the café to clear her mind. The cup of tea in her hand spread warmth from her fingertips to the rest of her body as she enjoyed the spring scenery that was laid in front of her eyes behind the other side of the window.

Third period almost began and she wasn’t anticipating that Chan would actually show up to the café. But to her surprise she heard the bell indicated that a customer had walked into the store, in reflex she turned her head to see what was going on to see a familiar figure walking in.

Chan had changed out of his ‘school’ clothes and wore a leather jacket, a sweater and ripped jeans. Y/n was speechless to see him like that, being used to see him in plane shirts and black hoodies. She kept staring at him as he sat down in front of her, not bothering to exchange the greeting Chan just said to her.

“Earth to Y/n-“ Chan had waved his hand in front of her face, making her snap out of her trance before she cut him off. “You’re actually here?” She stuttered in utter shock. “Yes, I meant what I said. So let’s get to know each other.” He smiled brightly. When she did this trick with Changbin, he showed up as well and she was overjoyed, because she felt like he really wanted to give her a shot at getting to know each other. Yet, all she could feel right now was worrisome.

“Are you sure you want to be here? What about your reputation? You will get thrown off as vice president and I will get the blame-“ “Don’t worry. That’s my responsibility. Besides, you said you wanted to talk, so let’s talk.” He smirked at her flustered state.

“How was your day?” Chan asks, trying to make the girl across him make herself feel at ease with him. But she was still too in shock of his presence and only manages to squeak out a ‘hngg’, making Chan laugh. “So the test went bad?” “No, I aced that- thanks to you though.” She giggled, slowly feeling more comfortable around him. Usually, skipping wasn’t that big of a deal for her, but skipping with her vice president, hit her a little different.

The two would be chatting away, Chan told Y/n about his childhood in Australia and how he used to fly back and fort a lot to keep in touch with his friends and family. He told her about his dog, Berry, who he loved very much. He ranted about a crazy story where he and his dog would go on adventures as young kids, they would go swimming together in a lake near by his house in Australia and play together.

“…I sure do miss it there. It’s a lot warmer over there.” He chuckled. “I bet, but I think that the summers here in Korea are more pleasant.” “They definitely are, here I’m not worried that my eyebrows will scorch any second.” He joked, making her burst out in laughter, picturing an eyebrow-less Chan in her mind.

Their banter was interrupted by a young-looking waitress who Y/n had noticed staring at them. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but wonder if you were that famous swimmer? Chan was his name?” She asked whilst twirling her hair around her finger, causing Y/n to force her throw up back down her throat. “N-no, I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.” Chan tried to convince her, but she was still suspicious about him.

“We should go.” Y/n whispers, they set down a generous amount of money on the table before they left the café. Y/n looked down her arm as Chan dragged her around town, to wherever he was going. His hand had a secure grasp on her wrist.

‘I thought I was the one who asked him to come here, if only people could see him dragging me around like this, they would lose their minds.’ Y/n thought to herself and snickered slightly.

“Okay, so what would you like to do?” Chan asks. “What, you’re not going back to school?” She asked him, thinking he would return for fourth period. “Well, are you?” “No, but-“ “Then let’s go!” Chan cheered.

“What are places you love to go to?” Chan asks her as they sat in the park together, playing twenty-one questions.

“I love going to the park, so props to you, you chose a great spot as well. But I think one of my favourite places to be at all times would be at the beach in Busan.” “Really?” Chan asks. “I used to live there. We also owned this small beach house at the end of the beach where it was pretty much abandoned. My mother used to take me there all the time.” “She doesn’t do it anymore?” Chan asks her without thinking too much of it.” “No, she passed away about two years ago.” Y/n whispers sadly whilst looking down at her feet, resting her head on her knees, that were pressed to her chest in process as well.

Chan felt like an idiot for asking her such dumb questions lately and started to apologise rapidly. “It’s okay, you couldn’t have known.” She assured him with a soft smile, making his heart do weird things in his chest.

“I hate to do this right now, but I have an meeting in thirty minutes which I really need to attend as vice president.” Chan mutters convicted. “That’s fine, I can go back with you to school. I’ll hang out at misses Yu’s music room, since my classes are over anyway.” Y/n offers as she got up. “What do you mean?” “My classes ended after third period.” Y/n smirked. “You’re saying that-“ “I only skipped one period, yes. Yes I did.” She giggled before she started to walk ahead.

When the two had sneaked back into the school, Y/n had disappeared to the empty music room and Chan made his way to his meeting. “Chan! Where’ve you been? We’ve been looking all over for you!” Jisung pants as he came towards him running with Felix on his side. “I wasn’t feeling too well, so I went away for a bit.” Chan lied. “Without saying anything?” Felix asked in confusion. “Yeah, sorry about that but I really didn’t feel too good, I went to the hospital.” Chan added to the lie. “Was it that bad?” Chan would only hum in respond this time. “What did the doctor say?” Jisung asks. “That I was overworked-“ “Doesn’t surprise me.” Jisung laughed, but in the meantime, Felix was a little suspicious of his friend.

“Dumpling!” Changbin exclaimed happily when Y/n walked through the door of his apartment. He tackled her in a hug and the both ended up falling to the ground. “Well hello to you too Binnie.” She giggled whilst hugging him back.

The two would talk about their day, Y/n didn’t wanted Changbin to know about her little skipping-date with Chan just yet, because she wanted to see first from Chan’s side how committed her was to getting to know her. And besides that, she knew her best friend would become whiny and jealous whenever she talked about someone other than him.

“I have some good news!” Changbin chirped as the two fell down on the big sofa in the living area. “What is it?” She asked with big eye of expectation whilst drinking her tea. “My cousin is getting married!” “Your cousin from Japan?” She asked him excitedly and started to squeal happily when her best friend nodded in responds.

The two had bet since his cousin started to date this beautiful Japanese woman, who he was too scared of confessing his love to. The two would watch and listen to the whole journey as if it was a tv soap, feeling very involved into the journey as they heard his mother talk to her sister on the phone about Changbin’s cousin. And now finally after years of him going after this girl, and dating her for two years, they finally are getting married.

“When is the wedding?” Y/n asks with still ecstatic and glister to be found in her eyes, whilst Changbin’s dropped. “It’s in two weeks.” Changbin states, making Y/n sit back in shock. “Wow, he got that wedding arranged fast.” “He’s rich and he couldn’t wait to be married to the love of his life, those things can make a lot happen.” Changbin chuckled, still in disbelief of his cousin’s actions. “Well, when are you leaving to Japan?” She asks him, not feeling the tension surrounding them. “That’s the thing, because my cousin is rich and because he hasn’t seen us, and the rest of the family in a long time, he had invited us over to stay there for a month in Japan-“ “A month!” Y/n exclaimed. “I know, it’s a long time.” “When are you leaving?” She asked carefully, thinking that she could maybe book a cheap hotel to stay away from home, but she might need to safe up for it. “In two days.” He whispers, making Y/n’s world turn upside down.

She could feel herself panic a little. She had no money to stay somewhere else. Changbin wouldn’t be there by her side to comfort her, he wouldn’t be there to take care of her and he was used to his presents after two years of being best friends together, she didn’t know how to miss him.

“I know what you’re thinking and don’t worry. First take a deep breath, I don’t want you hyperventilating.” He chuckled slightly as he scooted a little closer to bring her into his muscular arms.

“I talked to my parents and they also didn’t wanted you to be back ‘home’, so we decided to let you stay here. We’ll give you a spare key and since you know the area and the passcode to the apartment it would be fine-“ “I can’t do that, that’s too much.” “Y/n, please take the offer. I would feel horrible at the fact that we couldn’t have let you stay here where it is safe. I don’t want you to be hurt, okay? This way I can sleep soundly when I’m away from you.” Changbin explained as he brushed his hand through Y/n’s hair. “I-“ “When you’re coming here, take a different route to it every day. Just to be safe. We both know what your father is capable of. If you have to be ‘home’, only do it in the morning. When you leave that place it would be in daylight and I feel like people do less fucked up thing when people could actually see them happening.” Changbin sighed as he hugged her a little tighter.

“Thank you, Binnie.” She softly sobbed into his shoulder, feeling very grateful and blessed to have such a great friend like him in her life. It gave her the feeling that life was worth living for just a little bit, because people like Changbin restored her faith in humanity inside of her.

Later that afternoon the two went out for dinner, that the both argued to pay for, which Changbin shot the ‘with what money’ whenever she stated to pay for all of it. He would, as usual, burst into laughter and receive a pouty sulk from his best friend, who then would take a sad bite of the pizza.

The pair would laugh and have a great time together. They would talk about new tattoo projects, music lyrics and melody inspiration ideas. “I swear! Crunch up some old leaves this fall and make a remix of it! It could become a hit!” She said in a serious tone, but Changbin could only laugh at her wild and creative ideas. “I don’t know where you get them from, but I surely do love them.” He said as he tried to catch his breath after his fit of laughter.

Later they would walk back to Changbin’s apartment, chatting and laughing away as usual, until Changbin received a phone call from someone named ‘Yongbokkie’. Y/n had never heard of him, but shrugged if off since it was none of her business anyway.

“…no I’m already out. Yeah, I’m with someone already. Maybe next time I’m around. I’ll be gone for a while since we’re going to Japan. I’ll see you then when I’m back. Bye!” She heard her best friend say before hung up and made the device disappear into his pocket.

“Do you have to be somewhere?” She asked him. “Nope, you have all my attention.” He grinned before entering the apartment complex to play some video games in is room.

“Binnie?” Y/n later that evening asked. “Yes?” He responds, whilst his eyes are still glued on the game they were playing together, or well he was at least. Y/n died in the first ten minutes.

“Do you feel like I keep you away from others?” The sadness in her tone got his attention and deliberately let his character die, so he could talk with his best friend. “Where is that question suddenly coming from?” He asked her, now facing her. “I don’t know, you always make time for me. It makes me wonder if you think that I’m clingy or something. That I keep you busy or away from other people who you want to hang out with.” “Let me tell you something. That’s not true at all. I want to be around you. You’re my best friend! I love being around you. You haven’t heard this from me, but I think I am a little whipped for you.” He whispered with a smug smile, making her burst out in laughter.

“I love being around you too.” She mutters whilst hugging him tiredly. “Good, because now. Stop sucking at this game and let’s kick someone’s ass!”

Days passed by quicker than Y/n wanted them to.

Right now she was at the airport to send her best friend off to Japan. They had been clinging onto each other like koalas, making his parents and his sister chuckle at their cuteness.

Y/n wanted to be around him as much as she could, before she had to survive a whole month without Changbin, in Changbin’s apartment. How crazy is that?

“I’m going to miss you.” She sighed sadly as she hugged him, it almost being time for him to board his plane. “I’m just a sea away. You can call me whenever. Especially since Hyunjin is probably going to hire temporary staff. You need to keep me updated on those, there’s always some kind of tea to spill when it comes to those.” Changbin laughed to lift the mood.

As they hugged their goodbyes for the last time, Changbin would disappear with his family in the crowd and Y/n would make her way back to the apartment, riding a cab home.

When she walked in, she felt weird of not having some kind of living presence in her best friend’s place she was so used to. Y/n decided to clean up a little before she made herself at home. She was going to live there for a month after all. She still couldn’t thank his parents, and Changbin himself of course, for entrusting her to stay at their home.

Two and a half hours later she received a videocall from Changbin, to tell that they had arrived safely. “I was sat next to this older man and he smelled so bad. I wanted to throw myself out of the plane.” Changbin whined, making his best friend laugh. “Are you laughing at my agony?” He asked ‘hurt’. “Always.” She joked, making him gasp dramatically.

“What are you doing later?” “I have another tutoring session.” Y/n sighed. “Well shit, that guy really has you busy every day, huh?” “Tell me about it.” “And besides that? Or don’t you know yet?” Changbin asked. “Probably, playing around on your keyboard, but that’s it. I cleaned up a little already.” “You know we already did that earlier, right?” “I know, but I usually am already a mess so I got to clean that shit up.” She joked making Changbin burst out in laughter.

“I got to go for now. I will call you later tonight, okay?” “That’s fine. Have fun there! By the way, say hi to your cousin for me!” “Will do! Bye Dumpling!” “Bye Binnie!”

To say that Y/n was bored out of her mind without Changbin was an understatement. She could die from boresome right now. She wondered how she used to survive without Changbin in her life. She missed his stupid dad jokes and his teasing insults.

She played around on his keyboard for a while, but failed to be motivated at it, so she decided to clean up the little mess Changbin had left behind on his desk.

There were papers laying everywhere and she thought it would be nice of her to organise them for when he comes back. Most of them being music sheets and lyrics scrabbles randomly on multiple papers, were probably needed and used in the future.

“’Wow’?” Y/n muttered to herself as she came across a paper with lyrics written on it. She chuckled to herself at the text and quickly put it away before she lost more braincells to the madness she called Changbin’s mess that turned out to be a lot more work than she anticipated it to be.

It did help her to pass time though. Before she knew it, she was back at it again in the library, waiting for Chan to arrive. When he did, he smelled like chlorine again, indicating that he just came back from the pool. “Sorry, I’m late again.” He mutters tiredly. “It’s okay, did you had to dodge your little fans again?” She joked, he only shot her a fake smile before diving into the books with her.

The two were both tired and the motivation was faint. Y/n was throwing little paper balls to his head to amuse herself. When he sighed and went to play the game along with her, they started to laugh together and forget about their tutoring session. As they played, they tried to catch each other’s crumbled papers in the air and Y/n had to keep in mind that her arms were badly bruised and that her hoodie, which was actually Changbin’s, had to stay in place.

Chan had a feeling that he knew the hoodie, as Y/n fumbled with the fabric.

‘It’s from a store smartass, multiple people could have bought it.’ He said to himself, before brushing the subject of his mind.

In the end, the two got hungry again during their tutoring session and decided to skip it for today and go out to eat again at the convenience store. This time, Chan was the one to grab a basket and told Y/n to pick out a spot. This time she went outside, since it was nice and warm and she wanted to watch the sunset.

When Chan returned with a tray full of food, the two started to eat. Whilst doing so, Y/n had noticed the change in Chan’s behaviour.

‘Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.’

It started Monday at school. The two would cross each other in the hallways smiling, waving and even greeting each other whenever they saw the other. Chan had noticed as well that Y/n seemed to have gotten less into trouble. Which he honestly was glad about, he was tired of scolding her.

Little did Chan know it was because Y/n didn’t had to face her father all day and got to stay at Changbin’s luxurious apartment.

The teachers were praising Chan for his ‘accomplishments’ on toning her down and how he was such a great helper. Y/n seemed to be slowly passing her classes thanks to him. Which he of course was glad about, but he wasn’t listening at all when the adults were talking to him. He was trying to figure out with himself how he could spend extra time with her. He had to admit to himself that he liked being around her. She was very easy going and nice to talk to. She also has a lovely appearance to look at, so Chan wasn’t complaining about his tutoring sessions, anymore.

It was now Wednesday and Chan had sneaked out of his classroom, claiming he had to be somewhere, before he made his way to Y/n’s classroom, which was packed. When he stepped into the room, all eyes were on his. Including Y/n’s, who looked at him confused. “Can I steal Y/n for a moment?” Chan asked the teacher politely, which was an older woman who was smitten for Chan to be honest. And she of course let him. “What’s up?” Y/n asks him when she stood with him alone in the hallways. “Can we meet up after my swim session?” Chan asks, which got her bamboozled.

Was that why he picked her out of class? Couldn’t he had texted her- no he couldn’t they hadn’t exchanged numbers yet, somehow.

“Yeah sure.” She said unsure of his weirdly behaviour. She had her hand rested on the doorknob, the door slightly open as Chan said: “I’ll see you later then.” A slight smirk laid on his lips before he walked off again.

Little did the two know that the whole class heard Chan say that he will see her later. Everyone started to suspect the relationship between the two, which wasn’t in existent, except a platonic one. Sooyun, who was also in Y/n’s current class was fuming with anger.

‘Why would her Channie see her later?’

She didn’t think that they would become that close, since she heard the ‘rumour’, which eventually turned out to be the truth, that Chan was tutoring Y/n in her free time. She felt jealous that Chan made more time for that ‘tramp’ instead of her.

‘That’s why he hasn’t come for dinner.’ Sooyun mutters to herself before she huffs once again and started to glare at Y/n, whilst thinking of a plan to win her man back. When the school bell rang, she got it.

She walked up to the teacher with big eyes and a pout on her lips. “Miss, I’m having a lot of trouble with these past chapters lately…”

Y/n fumbled with her fingers as she made her way to the school’s public pool. The smell of chlorine filled her senses, making her eyes water a little as she entered the pool area. There were multiple people swimming swiftly, racing against each other.

She could spot Chan almost immediately. His shoulders were broader than the other’s and his skin was the palest out of all of them. She decided to watch them as they finished edge near her feet. Chan took his goggles off and looked up to her with a bright smile. “You came!” Chan chirped before pushing himself up on the edge of the pool. Her eyes couldn’t help but wander off his figure. His muscular figure caught a lot of eyes, they always said. And now Y/n knew why. His toned chest and abs were almost in her face, making it hard for her not to look down at just shamelessly stare at them.

Chan knew what he was doing and what kind of affect it, usually, had on people, most of them being girls. Y/n played it cool and acted unbothered, which surprised Chan. Most people would flirt a little or at least be flustered, yet here she was, acting like it was nothing to her.

“You wanted to talk about something?” She asks.

He was yet again surprised by her reaction. He started to stutter like he did many times before at her confidence. Felix oversaw the whole thing. He saw how his friend got flustered and started to act like a fool. When Chan had walked away from Y/n, Felix asked him what that was all about.

“I’m hanging out with her.” Was all that Chan would say to his friend before quickly hopping into the showers.

“You suck!” Y/n yelled in victory as she smashed Chan’s ass at the game, they were playing in the Internet café where they were sat. “You’re so good at this what the hell.” Chan exclaimed in shock, whilst Y/n proudly flipped her hair off her shoulder, making Chan laugh along. “My bestie taught would be proud.” “Did she teach you?” “Yes, he taught me well.” She giggled when Chan’s face stiffened in embarrassment. “Sorry I assumed-“ “It’s okay. Do you dare to go for another round?” “Oh! Watch me!” Chan said confident before picking up the controller again.

“Oh stop sulking.” Y/n teases as Chan paid for their food. “I can’t believe you beat me. I’m usually a pro when I play with my friends.” Chan whined. “Well, that just means they suck more at the game than you already do.” She giggled whilst sticking her tongue playfully out to him.

The two would sit across each other in silence for a while as they ate their ice cream.

“You know, I don’t know about you, but this kind of felt like a date to me. And I know that it probably isn’t, I just wanted to say that it does feel like one, or at least I think so.” Y/n chuckled. “You think so? Or you know so?” “What?” “If this feels like a date or not?” Chan explained. “Oh, I think so. I honestly have never been on a date before.” She admitted softly in embarrassment.

“Really?” Chan asked genuinely surprised. Y/n only shook her head in responds to confirm her own statement. “Well, then I will take the responsibly to take you out on an official date. Just as friends though, but I will give you the ‘real’ experience.” Chan’s mouth spoke for him before his brain could process it. He felt his heart speed up and his hands sweat.

“I beg your pardon?” “Let me take you out, so you can have the actual experience. What do you have to lose?” Chan grinned as he looked at the flustered girl in front of him. “Alight, but under one condition.” “Which is?” “No kissing.” “Fine by me.” Chan winked whilst still grinning.

The night ended happy and Y/n made her way home with a grin stuck on her face. She walked an extra long route so she could enjoy the fresh air and the lingering feeling of happiness a little longer, but that soon was to be spoiled when a heavy familiar voice boomed through the streets and called out her name.

She sighed and grasped herself to get ready for what was coming next. Which she sadly knew all too well.

Gif Isn’t mine.

196 notes · View notes

melon-kiss · 5 years ago

Text

Screaming, Pt 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Link to the part on AO3

____________________________

I hear voices over the black fog of my unconsciousness but I can’t be sure they’re real. I think it’s the doctors. They try to revive me. I hear that I have a stable pulse and I breathe. Good. Or whatever.

When I open my eyes, I’m sweaty and frightened. My T-shirt is so wet it changed its colour to dark grey. My hair is sticking to my face. My eyeballs go from one side to another in an utter madness. I notice it’s already dark outside. Doctor Mike lights up a small lamp on my nightstand. I think he suspects me of being scared of darkness. I’ve never been. Now he’s right. He says comforting things, like: “You’re safe now” or “I can see you’ve been tortured”. But “torture” doesn’t even cover it. I’ve been through a vivisection. Sherlock gutted me out and now I know for sure he did it on purpose.

I fight insomnia for very long hours. When I manage to fall asleep, I hardly find any rest in it.

I toss and turn endlessly. It never gets better. The bed sheet is too hot or too cold. The dreams I have are horrifying. All the memories I’ve kept safely tamed resurface and haunt me. Suffocate me with their weight. They’re my burden now.

They burn me out. They wreak havoc. I feel every cell in my body ache as I remember the pain of all the words unsaid, all the moments not lived. I see the bright blue eyes, always looking through. I hear the voice. It lies to me. Does it, though? It says: I... I love you. And again, quieter: I love you. It hurts because I’m sure it’s insincere. It couldn’t be any other way. He’ll never love me like I want to be loved. He can’t give me safety and protection. He can’t support me. He can’t be with me. He can’t be with me. He can’t be with me.

I scream. The hot air rips my lungs into shreds. My voice is hoarse and piercing at the same time, it echoes in the entire building. I scream as though being cut in two; a primal shriek finds its way out of me. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane - otherwise the pain would be unbearable. I want to be dead. I scream so loud the night staff comes to my room every fifteen minutes to wake me and assure me I’m safe but it doesn’t take long for the circle to go around again. They finally give up and inject something into my arm. The dangerous mix of fear and pain is numb now. It doesn’t vanish; it’s covered with a warm fluff of the meds. It’s there. He’ll never love me the way I want to be loved.

My eyes are stuck on one point on the ceiling. I want to scream but I can’t.

* * *

The cold late-autumn air lashes my face when I place my foot outside the door. I wrap the scarf tighter around my neck. It’s difficult to keep yourself warm when there’s not much of the fat tissue in your body.

My therapist says it’ll get better. I don’t know. I don’t think he tries to lie to me. I choose to believe him. He also says that I’ll never fully recover. My psyche is broken beyond repair. LSD killed me and didn’t do it at all. All I can do is to try to make the best of it. “Regaining your memory was the most important part,” he said once. “And you’ve succeeded in it.” I think he hopes that there’s a chance for me to get back to my old self in that. I’ve lived with my missing memories for over six months and today is the first day I feel good enough to leave the house. I’m going to face death. Many deaths.

I walk down the London streets and the air soaks up in my lungs. It’s cold but in a pleasant way. The hot air gets out of me with carbon dioxide. I breathe in the chill oxygenium with my eyes closed. I relish the moment. I never know when my brain will snap and turn everything into endless sadness. I don’t have fury attacks anymore but instead, I wake up in the middle of every night, screaming. The scream eventually turns into cry. I curl up in my bed and wait for the pain to let go. It never really does but its level decreases to the point I’m able to live with.

Being yourself. What does it even mean? Whatever I do, I’m me. I’m me when I walk down the London streets, heading to work. I’m me when I jump out of my bed and choke someone. I’m me when I throw up because my body cannot contain the anxiety caused by my fugue. I’m me when I scream my head off in the middle of a night. I’m me when I kiss someone I love. I’m me when I cry because I couldn’t be more broken. I’ve learned to simply accept whatever comes to me. This is who I am. A mess. Fixing me is a job for a lifetime.

I’ve been missing the lab. I throw myself into work because it helps me soothe the suffering. The relief is temporary but whatever works, right? I love the sound of the glasses clinking against each other. I love how my brain focuses entirely on bringing out my scientific knowledge and it almost resembles the mind I used to have. These are the moments when I know the old Molly Hooper is still there. She didn’t die because she always wins.

It’s almost dark outside when I turn off the lights. I take a short look around to make sure I’ve cleaned everything up. I push the door open and fix the handbag on my shoulder. I walk out into the corridor, pale-y lightened with the cold hospital lamps. I raise my head up and freeze.

He freezes as well. He’s changed; weaker, sadder. His blue eyes widen and I can see his breathing stops. His mouth are open in an utter shock. He’s speechless but doesn’t look away. He swallows with difficulty.

“Molly.”

The soft whisper fills out the space of the corridor. I begin to get dizzy and my heart rate quickens rapidly. I take a small step back and cling to the door behind me. I’m close to hyperventilate. He makes a move towards me but I start visibly shivering in response.

“Molly...”

He’s filled with guilt which adds a fair weight to his movements. His eyes, usually cold and focused on looking through his mind palace, are mild, even glossy. His eyebrows frown in worry. I’m sure he pities me. I don’t need his pity. I slide down the door and sit on the floor with my legs pulled to my chest. I see his coat getting closer with a corner of my eye. My body trembles strongly. I let out the tears.

“Leave me alone,” I whisper.

He stands in place for a while and walks off eventually. When he’s no longer in the range of my eyesight, I curl up on the floor and cry. He can’t be with me.

* * *

I’m slightly cheerful on my days off. The winter is pretty ugly this year; it doesn’t look like the ones I remember. No fluffy snow and colourful lights. But maybe I’ve just gotten too old to see them? I think it’s sad. We become adults and forget all the beauty we’ve had as children. We forget that the key to happiness is not only in winning the jackpot but also in seeing the little things and enjoying them. In finding a four-leaf clover and thinking: “Today I’m going to be lucky”. In hearing your mum is going to make your favourite biscuits because she loves you so much she could do anything to see a smile on your face. I sound like The Little Prince, don’t I? When your brain tries to find its way back to sanity, you happen to have a lot thoughts. Trust me.

I deliberately step into every grey, muddy-snowy-watery puddle and smile. My shoes will get soaked up for a while but I enjoy this childish activity until I can. I just hope my groceries won’t slip out of my shopping bag to fall into one of these snowy monsters. I think about the small but pleasant stuff: like ordering a pizza and watching a film. My brain loves turning into tapioca. Well, it doesn’t, I do. I also bought brownies and can’t wait to stuff my stomach with them after the pizza box is empty. For a moment I think of the poor person who would have to go through my stomach content if I killed myself tonight, and then shake it off. I don’t want to die but I don’t have much of a will to live as well. I’ve learned not to joke about suicide around other people, though. It turns out death is a difficult matter for normal human beings. I wouldn’t know, I’ve always been very practical about it. It doesn’t scare me that much. Well, maybe a little because I’ve never been through this. They say I have but I don’t remember a shred from this moment. I’ve regained a memory of being strongly hit in a head in my house but then... it’s all darkness. The next thing was the hospital ceiling and the conversation The Three Horsemen of Madness had in my room.

I’ve loved watching trash telly (and not only this) because it keeps my sadness and insanity at bay. I’m well aware of that. My therapist didn’t have to tell me this but he did it anyway. He even asked if I wanted to do anything about it. I didn’t but he says (because the matter obviously wasn’t dropped) it would work out for the best because a broken heart cannot be mended by watching stories about other hearts being healed. I thought he was supposed to help me keep my post-LSD psyche under control but it seems I couldn’t have been more wrong. When I look back at the memories I’ve retrieved, I can’t help but think... maybe this craziness has always been with me? The way I sewed my happiness with his skin, desperately, utterly, unconditionally, obsessively... Omnipresent but invisible. Courageous - with a rabbit heart. The smallest spark of hope I’ve ever seen kept me by his side. Maybe LSD only sped up what was inevitable: a nervous breakdown. Although I wasn’t really weak. My heart just popped, heavy from all the sorrow it has carried for five years.

Now, after being completely broken, I’m learning to live in a world without him. I don’t blame him - after all, it was me who asked him to leave me alone. I thought he would fight for me but I’m glad he didn’t. My insanity would feed on the scraps he would throw me, reliving the annealed wounds with a red-hot steel. He doesn’t come to Bart’s or maybe he does but he’s good at avoiding people. And sometimes, when everything seems fine and I’m home alone (which is always), I fill out the silence with singing. I choose the saddest songs I know and sing. I bet my neighbours have had to call an ambulance to save their bleeding ears at least once but I’m a psycho. I can do whatever I want because I don’t care.

I’ve recently watched Eclipse and I sing a song from its soundtrack under my nose when I unlock the door. The door clicks and I enter my completely dark house. I don’t turn on the lights and enjoy the fact that it’s already dim outside but it’s too early for the street lights to turn on and shine into my kitchen. I stand in the entrance room and soak in the emptiness. It fills me out and seeps into my bones. This is where my body find its way to the state of default. I put my shopping bag away on the floor and untangle my winter shoes. After that I move the groceries into the kitchen, almost tiptoeing, as though afraid of waking someone up.

I take off my coat and scarf, putting them down on the kitchen counter. I start unloading my shopping bag, thinking about the pizza I’m going to order. I’ve gained some weight, maybe a little too much but that’s all right. I couldn’t care less about my body. If I had to worry about my appearance as well, I would definitely kill myself.

“My love has concrete feet, my love’s an iron ball, wrapped around your ankles, over the waterfall...”

“If I didn’t know better, I would think it was on purpose.”

A glass bottle of a carrot juice slips out of my palm as I jump in a complete horror. My socks soak in the sticky liquid but I can barely seem bothered by this. I turn on the heel and look at the utter darkness in my living room. The same moment the street lights turn on and a beam of weak light falls on his face as well. I feel my body trembling. I want to back out but there is no escape - he could catch me any time. Not that he would but the fear takes over my mind.

“You... you broke into my house?” I ask, panting. A panic attack is around the corner.

“I entered your house without your knowledge,” he replies, utterly steady. “There’s a difference-“

“What are you doing here?” I put on a tough act but we both know it’s a ruse. I don’t care. I don’t want him to break me again. I might never recover.

“I came to see you.”

I scoff.

“You could do it the normal way.”

“Would you meet me, then?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

I’m pressed against the refrigerator and I feel a pain in my back as the metallic door resists to my spinal bones. He makes three steps forward. He takes off his gloves and shoves them into his coat pockets. He takes if off as well, with no rush, and throws it away on my couch. Without unlocking our eyes, he approaches me. I’m sure I’ll tip over the refrigerator in a second because he’s so close there can’t be more than a foot between us. He stops. My head is dizzy and I feel like throwing up but then he squats and begins to collect the shreds of glass bottle from the floor. I’m sweaty but relieved. The tension leaves my body and I exhale loudly.

It catches his attention. He looks up at me.

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

I scoff again.

“It doesn’t matter.”

I turn around to face the kitchen counter and find paper towels but they’re on the opposite side. I glare down and see that the juice is everywhere but my socks are completely soaked up, so it wouldn’t be smart of me to walk off to the bathroom for a mop. Besides, I could step into the cracks and that was not the point of his help.

He finishes and throws the glass away. He remembers very well where my bin is. After that, he wordlessly goes to my bedroom and comes back with a pair of dry socks. I can see that he spread a bit of the juice on the floor but his gesture successfully disables my frustration. He sticks out his arms towards me. I hesitate. What is he planning to do? I slowly reach out to his arms but he slides them under my armpits and lifts me up over the juice, placing me on my small kitchen island. Then he disappears in the bathroom and comes back with the mop. He wipes out the floor. Not a word slips out of his lips.

I slowly take off my wet socks, watching his every move. I put the dirty socks away next to me and reach out for the paper towel. I dry my feet out while Sherlock cleans up my kitchen floor. Even my old self would say that only a lunatic would find it possible. Cheers to all of us, crazies. I put away the used paper towel as well and put on my new socks. I start to swing my legs a little bit as Sherlock finishes the cleanup. He walks off to the bathroom to rinse off the mop for the last time and comes back to me. I can’t look away somehow.

“Thank you,” I say in a hoarse voice. I clear my throat.

“I’m sorry,” he replies. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, nor be an intruder.”

I shrug.

“It was just a carrot juice. I’ll drink more water, then.”

My legs swing more and more intensively. I know what it means and so does he, so I force myself to stop because a smirk crawls up on his face. I feel my cheeks burning up and I instantly regret tangling my hair into a pony tail. This is probably the most normal thing that happened to me in about nine months.

He places his hand next to my left thigh and leans on. I feel his perfume and something in me shivers. My heart rate goes wild but I cannot force myself to look away. He puts his palm really gently on my right cheek and his face is so close I can see every pore on his skin. I give in and let out a quiet exhale. I close my eyes and my body is fulfilled with warmth as his lips lock with mine. He moves a little to stand fully in front of me and takes my face in both of his hands. His lips open more and more eagerly as he doesn’t see any objection on my side. My legs clench around his waist, I throw my arms around his neck. I pull him closer but it’s difficult to say whether I’m motivated by the kiss or the simple need of a hug.

I feel awaken. My body’s warm, pulsing with every beat my heart does. For the first time in many months I feel alive and I relish this moment because I know that in a minute, everything will end.

And it does.

I push him away a little too hard. He has to take a step back to prevent a fall. The passionate fire turns into anger.

“Don’t do it.”

I feel a twinge in my chest seeing pain in his eyes. He looks as if I just crushed his last hope. His blue eyes are tired, miss their old spark. I hate myself for pushing him away and feeling the way I feel.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because it doesn’t make sense,” I hiss through my teeth.

“What doesn’t?”

“Us.”

He winces and shifts nervously.

“What?”

I clench my palm into a fist and press it against my forehead, leaned forward. A forgotten suffering comes back to me. I’ve buried it so deep inside I was certain it was gone but it’s been waiting for me. A battle I didn’t want to fight starts right here and right now. And I, again, want to be dead and dead only. I close my eyes so tightly it almost hurts as does every cell in my body.

“We don’t make sense,” I utter after anticipating a less painful moment.

He starts breathing quicker. He’s as lost as he’s never been before. I imagine that’s how he looked like calling me to save me. Helpless in the face of the truth.

“How could you have fallen in love with me, then? ” he asks, hopelessness taking over him. “Despite all the pain I’ve caused you, all the things I’ve said...”

“I suppose love is a kind of madness,” I say, my unseeing eyes focused on one irrelevant point.

“Your love is illogical, since I’ve always been an utter cock.”

“Not always,” I reply, smirking weakly. “But we don’t love for the logical reasons. We love despite all the illogical ones.”

We fall silent. I enjoy my most sane moment for several minutes. It can disappear anytime.

“I love you.”

I raise my head up. It feels like my heart skips a beat.

His eyes gaze at me with pain I’ve never seen on his face. He almost pants, his arms are unfolded. He’s like a living target. He’s just showed me where to shoot and I stretch my bow, aiming for his chest.

“But you cannot give me the love I want,” I reply, my voice stifled. I finally sigh in exasperation. “We’re far two different. It would be a disaster of a relationship. Can you imagine yourself cleaning our flat every Saturday, planning our wedding, putting our children to sleep? Because this is want I want. But it would only hurt us more.”

“I can change,” he says.

I scoff.

“And that’s the point,” I respond. “I don’t want you to change. I love you the way you are. I love every part of you. But you cannot love me. You couldn’t have loved me before and you can’t do it now.”

“I think I’ve loved you long before,” he says in a weak voice.

I am... sorry. Forgive me.

You can see me.

You do count.

I’ve always trusted you.

Thank you.

The one person who mattered the most.

I hope you’ll be very happy, Molly Hooper.

You look well.

I’m worried about you, Molly.

I love you.

I gaze at him almost breathless. I blink and make myself utter a response:

“I love you, too,” I whisper. My eyes fill with tears. “But you cannot make me happy... Sherlock.”

His name tastes sweet in my mouth. I’ve missed saying it. Now I glance at his lips and think about the moments we shared a few minutes ago and back then in the hospital. I could share them with him forever. I would never get bored of him. But there would be times when he would forget about my presence in our flat, when he wouldn’t listen to me, chasing a lead. When he would be lost and I couldn’t find him.

And now... me with my mood swings and moments of insanity striking when the least expected. With my broken mind. Unfixable. Fucked up.

He suffers and this time, I’m the one to blame. I’ve broken the unbreakable man.

“I’ve turned you into something you’ve always hated,” I say. “You’re weak, you’re an easy target. You’re emotional and vulnerable.”

“As I’ve always been,” he replies. “You’re my strength.”

I wince.

“Strength? Sherlock-“

“You’re my strength because you’ve helped me understand myself better than anyone. I’ve never had to pretend with you. And... and back then in Sherrinford, when I realised how much pain I’ve caused you... no one ever has made me realise so much of me with so little words as you have. You are the reflection of my sensitivity. With you, I’m no longer myself.”

He begins to slowly get closer.

“But... But this is my point!” I protest. “It’s not a good thing becau-“

“It is a good thing because... what does it really mean - being myself?” He stops at less than a foot from me and scoffs. “I am myself in every minute of my life. I won’t miss my old self, though. I was a completely blind moron, who couldn’t appreciate people around him. And you’ve managed to look behind this curtain and see the man I am now. You’ve taught me to be who I am now.”

He smiles, lifting only one corner of his lips but he knows. I try to back out and escape his look but I feel that I don’t want to. My body is slowly giving in. It is so warm. It feels so good. I love him so much.

“But the old Molly may be no longer there. I’m a mess now,” I mumble, trying to avoid his gaze.

He cups my face in his palms again and places our foreheads together. I can’t resist. I don’t want to resist. I lose control over my head and I’m not even worried. A pleasant wave of chemicals floods my body and they’re better than any of the antipsychotics I’ve taken in the past nine months. I’m still a mess. I know that Sherlock will regret his decision one day when a switch in my brain goes off and I’ll stand at a rooftop (flashbacks will kill him, though). But I’m tired of trying to be normal.

“So am I. When I found out that Eurus had attacked you... I was both furious and hurt. I was torn. I still feel guilty over the fact that I couldn’t have prevented this and that she could have killed you. I was ready to bring hell on Earth. Maybe you’re a mess... but you’re also somehow a piece of puzzle that’s missing from my messy life.”

I feel the warmth of his breath on my face, the softness of his hands on my cheeks. His curls tickle my eyelids. I so weak.

“Oh, come on,” he whispers, “just give in already.”

I giggle and lose myself completely. I want to scream... but everything I do speaks louder than words.

#sherlolly #fanfiction #sherlock x molly #molly x sherlock #sherlock holmes #molly hooper #screaming

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tessatechaitea · 5 years ago

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Darkstars #6

Art directors were suffering from some weird brain parasite in the early 90s.

In the 90s, the way you could tell the difference between men and women in comic books was that men's faces had full of lines to express tension and rage and determination while women's faces were smooth blank canvasses to express their beauty and their lack of a nose. No wonder I hardly date in the 90s. A woman would start flirting with me and I'd think, "Ugh! She's got too much nose!" People think 90s comic art was all about lots of pouches and big guns. But it was just as equally about lines all over men's faces, gritting teeth, clenched fists, adult women who look no more than fifteen, and characters that had one weird eye because drawing symmetrical eyes is hard. The issue begins with Darkstar and Homeless Mo flying off to help Flint stop the space sex slave traders. Homeless Mo can tell something's bothering Darkstar because he has even more lines on his face than normal. Homeless Mo says, "You look way more like a male character than usual. Is something bothering you?" And Darkstar is all, "Let me tell you the story of the day everything went wrong and I lost my innocence about the job and I became a cynical bastard who flaunts the rules because the rules can't save anybody!" Darkstar's origin is that his planet was destroyed by a race raiding it for resources. He was one of the few survivors and was approached by a Darkstar to join the force. He did because what else was left for him? Also maybe he could help some other poor planet. When he finally got his chance to help out, he screwed up and everybody on the planet under his protection died. So now he's bitter and angry and guilt-ridden. But he's still got a job to do so he's going to stop pitying himself and do it. Plus he'll probably need to beat whomever he suspects of doing anything wrong and maybe kill them because playing by the rules just didn't cut it for the people on Jenuwyne.

Zack Morris could be jerking off into Steve Urkel's mouth while the Spice Girls girl powered each other's buttholes and it would be less 90s than this page of art. Not?

Hawkman and Hawkwoman stumbled upon the space sex slave traders when they tried to kidnap a friend of theirs. Apparently she and Carla White are the only two women worth missing on a massive rocket ship filled to the brim with kidnapped women. Also, did Hawkman lose Superman's number? He could have just called him to stop the ship and then...oh wait. Never mind. I forgot Superman is dead. Loser. Oh man. I'm so sexist. I mean, oh woman. I'm so sexist. I assumed only women were being taken as space sex slaves but there are male humans in shackles aboard the ship too. That seems weird because why kidnap men when you could just tell them, "Hey, you want to have tons of sex with strange and exotic space women?" And then before they heard you mumble "and space men too," they'd have already been shouting, "Yee-haw! I'mma gonna get my dick space wet! Whoopee!" If that reaction doesn't ring true as a universal way of pre-celebrating the coming loss of your virginity, forget I even said it.

Somebody needs explain Earth slang to Colos and also the term "Phrasing!"

Hawkman slips into a hatch on the slaver ship before it closes. Weird to still be closing hatches in the middle of a space launch but since I don't work for NASA or Space X, I can't say if that's all that improbable. I'm sure it's totally fine. Darkstar and his sidekick follow close behind Hawkman but since the hatch is closed, they have to smash through it. That also doesn't interfere with the launch. I'm glad I know nothing about the incredible frictional forces and heat build up produced by launching a large metal ship out of Earth's atmosphere or I might now be stroking my chin and shaking my head while mumbling, "Oh, come on!" Also it's a fucking comic book so who cares? As long as some people get masered and Hawkwoman shows more ass and cleavage, the audience is going to come back for more.

Hawkman is crying because another man saved his life. On Thanagar, that means you're now Hawkwoman.

That last caption may have sounded like a sexist joke but it was commentary about the hyper-masculinity of Hawkman. He probably also said, "No homo," after being saved and then punched holes in five different walls. Meanwhile, Hawkwoman and Detective Jamón-Face continue fighting the space sex slavers on Earth.

Here's half of what the audience is clamoring for.

Even Hawkwoman must be tired of Hawkman's toxic masculinity or else why would she call him half-cocked? What an insult! Darkstar Flint and Hawkwoman stop Pappas and his alien crew. Flint takes off to leave the clean-up to Hawkwoman and the cops. But before he leaves, he shoots his maser at people so the audience can get the other half of what they want out of this book. Is "Darkstars" an anagram of "tits and masers"? Close though, right?

This was the most practiced pose in 90s super hero comics.

What were we fucking smoking in the 90s?! I only say "we" metaphorically; I fucking hated this style of art even back then. There's a reason I don't own Wild C.A.T.S. #1 or any of the other debut Image books. I didn't even pick them up for investment purposes! Don't think I didn't buy my share of crap though! I kept buying The New Titans well past issue #100; it's just that I didn't buy crap simply because everybody was raving about the new kinetic art style by a bunch of young up and coming artists who probably had high school year book quotes like "Why would I study anatomy?" and "Thigh legs are as thick as torsos, right?" I just discovered, six issues in, that Homeless Mo's name is Douglas. How did I get it so wrong?! That's the most rhetorical of rhetorical questions. I could go back through the issues to see why I thought his name was Mo but that feels like work. Also, I probably just forgot his name and made up Homeless Mo subsequently fooling myself into believing that was his real name.

What the fuck?! Darkstar just called him Douglas in the previous panel!

Well, I guess that solves the mystery. His name must be Mo Douglas and he's homeless. Grandmaster comic book reader? As Darkstar and Mo and Hawkman break into the slave pen, Carla White rallies the other prisoners to pick up the fallen guards weapons and fight back. They respond by throwing their fists in the air and yelling, "Yeah! We can fight too!" But things don't work out too well for them because they aren't established characters.

If I ever wind up in a battle for my life and I'm killed, please do not chastise me for giving up.

With the help of Carla White, Darkstar, Mo, and Hawkman take control of the slave ship and turn it back towards Earth. Darkstar stares at Carla and begins calculating how much gold he brought with him to see if his budget can afford another deputy. Although judging by the next issue's cover, Carla will just be taking over Detective Flint's job. Darkstars #6 Rating: B. Was this the type of guest appearances that go us comic book readers so fucking excited back in the day?! Hawkman and Hawkwoman could have been any character at all based on the level of interaction they had with the other characters. I guess all we comic book fans need to be happy is somebody in our favorite character's costume and we'll dish out the cover price of books we'd otherwise not read. On one hand, I think it's poor form for DC to use Hawkman and Hawkwoman so shallowly just to get fans to buy this book. But on the other hand, I hate Hawkman so fuck his fans.

#Darkstars #Michael Jan Friedman #Scott Hanna #Travis Charest #Hawkman #Hawkwoman #DC Comics #DC

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365daysofsasuhina · 5 years ago

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[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Three Hundred Thirteen: Bright Lights ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina, vulgarity ] [ Verse: Oil and Blood ] [ AO3 Link ]

Another night...another bout of insomnia.

Giving up on keeping her eyes closed, Hinata instead lets them open to stare up at the ceiling. The last time this happened, she found a man half-dead in an alleyway, and subsequently almost got herself killed the other day when his rival gang snatched her up.

...it’s a long story.

She’s now on her third day off work. Her doctor contact managed to get her a full week with a cover story of being under treatment for something highly contagious. Her boss, not wanting anyone else to get sick and vanish, handed over the (unpaid) set of days off without question once the doc signed a note.

Which is good, because Hinata really hasn’t felt like going into work.

She’s had Uchiha casually stalking her apartment building, discouraged from leaving it unless absolutely necessary. And beyond Sasuke taking her to get groceries two days ago (the man she saved and who accidentally started this whole fiasco), she hasn’t left the building, much less her apartment.

As dragging as work can be, she never realized until now how boring it is to be stuck at home. She’s bounced between bingeing shows and movies to playing games to browsing social media...to even just people watching from her window. Something she normally detests, given her own distaste of being observed. Well...by people, anyway. It’s unavoidable otherwise, what with security being as high as it is in Japan anymore.

But now here she is, three nights in and she’s finally reached a point where even sleep can’t do anything for her. So, now what to do. She doesn’t feel like watching or playing anything…

...she almost feels like going for a walk.

Of course, there’s no avoiding how odd that seems, given that it was this exact scenario over two weeks ago that got her into this mess in the first place: being unable to sleep, going for a walk under the bright lights of the nightlife city, and stumbling across a mod-stripped Sasuke in the gutter.

Does she dare do so again? Or will she risk running into some other mess that will get her life all the more interrupted?

...but then again...how much worse can it get, really?

Sighing, she chews her tongue in thought. If she does want to go for a walk...she’ll have to do so with an escort to make sure no snooping Senju snatches her off the sidewalk like last time she was out and about.

But her next question is who exactly is on duty...Sasuke’s the only one she’s talked to. The rest she’s had no real reason to see given her reclusion in her apartment. Anyone else...she’s not sure if she should ask to leave. They might just get annoyed, and she’s not really eager to push her luck anymore than she has. Sasuke made it pretty clear she’s not likely to have the gang’s support for too long. She might have saved Sasuke’s life...but one favor was likely already paid off when they in turn got her out of Tobirama’s clutches.

At least, in most minds.

Sasuke’s convinced he still owes her, given that it was his involvement in the first place that got her taken. His father seeing it the same way, however...hasn’t been going well.

And she’s still not sure what she’d rather have. While certainly not eager to be tug-of-warred between Uchiha and Senju, Hinata would rather just...not have to deal with either. She did her good deed, she got Sasuke out of trouble.

So why is she suddenly the one in distress?

Deciding to try her luck, she accesses Sasuke’s contact information in her communicator mod. It awaits input for a long moment befores she simply asks, Are you on duty this evening?

There’s a minute of silence.

Yeah. Why?

She can’t help a small sigh of relief. ...I can’t sleep. Sorta want to go for a walk.

You mean even considering what happened last time?

Her lips purse in a pout. Well I won’t be going alone this time, will I?

...she can almost hear his vexed sigh. ...guess you’ve got a point. All right, fine. You get fifteen minutes. Then back to bed, missy.

Hinata deadpans. Missy? What is she, sixteen? Ugh… Getting out of bed, she throws on random clothes and makes her way down to the main floor, feeling almost odd after a few days not seeing it.

And as expected, Sasuke waits near the entrance, leaned and relaxed.

At least he’s not smoking this time...eugh.

“Anything in particular keeping you awake?”

She gives him a glance. “You mean b-besides being caught in a turf war I have n-no real part in on account of doing something nice? Wondering if I’m going to lose my job or my apartment or whatever else? Nothing much, I guess.”

He just snorts. “Never would have taken you for the sassy type.”

“Even I have limits to my patience.”

“Clock’s ticking. Let’s see if we can tucker you out enough to sleep.”

Falling into step with him, Hinata asks, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Aren’t you...tired?”

“What, you think I’m not used to pulling all nighters?” Sasuke glances up, taking in the sights of the city’s neon lights. “I don’t really have much of a set sleep schedule. I just take it when I can.”

“That bad, huh?”

“My line of work isn’t exactly a nine to five. It’s whenever, wherever, however. All according to when my old man needs me to do something.”

Hinata gives a hum at that. And then a thought strikes her. “What...were you doing the night I found you? If...you don’t m-mind my asking.”

Shoulders shrug, indicating indifference. “Actually had the night off. Had been to a bar, was stumbling around...and they got the jump on me. Three Senju, all under direct orders of Tobirama. He’s wanted me dead for a looong time. Well...he wants us all dead, ideally. But as my dad’s more active son, I’m a pretty big target.”

Her brows furrow. “...active…?”

“My brother’s got some health issues. Mostly taken care of by mods, but...he’s still gotta be careful. So he’s more of an organizer, behind-the-scenes sorta guy rather than a runner-gunner like me. There’s only one reason he showed up to help bust you and the doc out. And a hint: it wasn’t you.”

“...oh…”

“Do I get to ask a counter question?”

“I guess there’s n-nothing else to do while we walk.”

“Why’d your dad cut you off?”

To her own surprise, the question doesn’t sour her mood. Maybe she’s too tired. “...my father is one of the biggest mod manufacturers in the east. Mostly medical ones rather than cosmetic. They help a lot of people, save a lot of lives...but are unethically expensive. When I got old enough to realize just what he was doing, I f-found my courage and confronted him about it. He ridiculed me, told me I didn’t understand, and...disinherited me. My sister is who will get everything when my father dies...partially split with my cousin, who is one of the main engineers behind the tech. But he’s not a child of my father, s-so...he’ll get less despite doing far more.”

Sasuke seems to mull that over for a moment. “...full offense, but...your dad’s a right prick.”

Hinata can’t help a snort. “...yeah. Yeah, he is.”

“And now you work in an insurance company who does pretty much the same thing, just from a different angle: extorts people for the mods they need.”

“...yeah.”

“Does that feel a bit...hypocritical to you, given what you tried to stand up for with your dad?”

“...in a way. But you also know I don’t do everything by the book. Whenever I can - when the case is bad enough - I refer them to Suigin-san and her ‘charitable’ work. I’ve never been caught.”

“How’d you meet her, anyway?”

“As a patient, believe it or not.” There’s a moment of hesitation, and then Hinata lifts a hand to her chest. “...I have an implant in my heart. I’ve had it since I was twelve. My cousin Neji, he…” She sighs. “...he and I had a very...s-strained relationship when young. His father, my father’s twin, was equal parts of the company, and...died when we were small. For the longest time, e-everyone suspected my father had him killed, to gain complete control. Obviously...that earned hatred from my cousin. And as my father’s heir...I was the target he could go after. He’s always been a genius, and...developed a subcutaneous mod that acts as a taser. He never told anyone, and experimented with it on himself. When he perfected it...he attacked me with it w-when we were preteens. I’d always been a little frail, and...the voltage stopped my heart.”

Sasuke’s eyes go wide. “Oh, shit…”

A somber nod. “...when I came to, I was in a clinic nearby the private school we were attending, where he attacked me. And it was Suigin-san who saved me. She implanted the device that keeps my heart stable, and...we’ve been connected ever since. So, once I got my job, I was talking to her about my f-frustrations, and...she admitted to her under-the-table work. And that’s...how that all got s-started.”

“...well I’ll be damned. How, uh...how do you guys get along now? You and your cousin?”

“After the...falling out, he approached me. Told me my father had blackmailed him to work for the company...saying he’d not press charges for attacking me if he agreed to use his genius for the tech. Of course, he had no choice...but once he realized what I stood for, and that I let it all go for my m-morals...he finally apologized. I couldn’t blame him for hating me...what I stood for. But we’re decent friends, now. We don’t talk much for fear of my father getting angry and s-sabotaging Neji somehow, though.”

“...and I thought my family had problems.”

Hinata can’t help a soft laugh. “Well...it could be worse. Anymore I’m just...getting by. Not really sure what else to d-do with myself. I help who I can with Suigin-san’s assistance, but...it’s drops in the bucket, y’know?”

“Yeah...well…” Sasuke gives her a glance. “...the offer still stands to go after him as my debt. Maybe I could do something about all that, huh?”

“...maybe. Right now, though...I’m too tired to think about it.”

“Tired enough to sleep?”

“Mm...I hope so.”

The pair then start angling back toward the proper building. Once there, Sasuke seems to...hesitate under the lights.

“...sorry if I, uh...pressed too hard.”

“No, not at all. I didn’t say a-anything I didn’t want to. Besides, it...sort of felt nice to get that off my chest. Maybe I really will sleep now.”

“...I hope so. I’ll be off in the morning to rest, but...I’ll keep you updated. Something tells me my dad’ll have made up his mind about things. We’ll see.”

“All right. Goodnight, Sasuke-san.”

“Night.”

Dredging back up to her room, Hinata collapses into bed. And by some grace, it takes her only moments to fall asleep.

.oOo.

(This is a sequel to days 250, 254, 269, 300, 303, and 309!) Aaand more cyberpunk AU. And a bit more detailed background on our two MCs...well, more so Hinata than Sasuke, but we'll get there. You think she'd be more wary of walking around at night, but...well, I guess she feels a bit safer given who she's with ;3 Also for anyone curious (which I doubt but whatever lol), this actually subtly mirrors the "canon" plot of how Hinata and Ryū meet, Ryū being one of the medics that helps save Hinata after her fight against Neji in the chūnin exams! Just a wee lil tidbit I threw in, lol Buuut anyway, I am...EXHAUSTED so I'm gonna go crash! Thanks so much for reading~

#sasuhina #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #vulgarity //#oil and blood [ au ]#365daysofsasuhina

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ariadnelives · 6 years ago

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Chapter 1 -- The Train Robbery

[Welcome to the first chapter of Ariadne Lives! If you’re new to the series or you’ve just fallen a little behind, go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3]

Prologue - The Cult

“Rejoice!” the young girl in white robes shouted to a silent crowd from an ornate red and gold podium. Families, bored teenagers, and a few homeless people looking for a warm seat and some complimentary snacks had filed into a small banquet hall. Everybody had seen the pamphlets recently. Thousands had been handed out by the red-robed acolytes standing in a line behind the girl with the knowledge that if even one percent of the people who'd seen them decided to follow up, they'd have a substantial audience.

The young girl continued her sermon. “I have come to bring salvation to the Martian people! For too long we've lived in poverty, strife, and squalor! My entire life, I believed we were simply being suppressed and subjugated by the jackboot of the Homeworld Empire, but now I know that's not true! That was never the case! It's been precisely four years since we made our alliance with the Homeworld, and we're still suffering! Many of you in the audience tonight are struggling to feed your children, feed yourselves, just to stay alive, and why? This isn't a problem on Earth!”

Shouts of “hear, hear!” and “yeah!” rang out from the assembled audience.

“On Earth, all of the children are cared for. On Earth, everyone has enough to eat and a place to sleep. On Earth, no one ever has to suffer as we Martians have suffered!”

The crowd cheered again and many of them raised their drinks, although the symbolic gesture was somewhat undercut by the fact that everyone was drinking iced tea out of plastic cups.

“And who's to blame for this inequality?” she asked.

Of course, the real answer was “the rich.” Mars had been carefully cultivated over hundreds of years so that each bio-dome would be able to support the population of a mid-sized Earth city. There should be enough resources that a household could have as many as ten people, and all of them would have a room of their own, three substantial meals a day, and enough water both for all of their drinking, bathing, and cleaning needs.

However, unfortunately, one of the many things imported from Earth in the migration to Mars was greed.

There had been the pioneers, mostly scientists and laborers who had agreed to establish the new societies on Mars in exchange for a place in that society. Then, there had been the Wagoners.

In Martian slang, a Wagoner was an incredibly rich person who had “jumped on the bandwagon,” or simply waited until all the heavy lifting had been done, and then had used their fabulous wealth to buy a large plot of land and set up a lavish mansion in a Martian bio-dome to prove how hip and cutting-edge they were. The people who could afford to do this tended to become even richer, since their mansions were built on what was supposed to be farmland for cultivating and growing crops. This drove down the food supply and made the demand skyrocket, and who was left to meet that demand? The people who were already rich enough to have products imported from off-world. With their profits, they'd buy up more of the farmland and convert it into commercial developments where they could sell their imported goods until everyone in the bio-dome was totally dependent on them for food. Since they held all the wealth, anyone who wanted to buy their supplies would have to work for them to get it.

This was all irrelevant on Earth, where food replicators, universal housing, healthcare, and education had almost completely eradicated poverty. Of course, they could have given these resources to the Martian governments and allowed them to do the same for their people, but centuries of animosity and war generally take more than four years and an ceasefire treaty to overcome.

This was the real answer to “who's to blame for this inequality.” It was not, however, the answer the young girl gave.

“We suffer for one reason and one reason alone! The wickedness in our own backyards! Our forefathers claimed this land, they worked hard to turn it from a lifeless hellscape into a verdant paradise, and what do we give them in return? Laziness! Irreverence! A lack of regard for what makes a Martian!”

A few people in the audience seemed slightly confused, but there were a few people saying “amen” as well.

“We suffer because we have not devoted ourselves to the betterment of our home! I've devoted myself to helping each and every one of you. I've made it my duty to feed the homeless, take in the orphaned, and strike at the powerful taking advantage of the disenfranchised. Some have called my followers 'angels,' and I appreciate the comparison, but we are just doing our Godly duty. We've been put on Mars for a reason. We honor the Red God and we do his bidding every day. This is why we and we alone have found prosperity!”

A few people in the crowd moved to leave, but were gently encouraged to stay by the red-robed acolytes. Others seemed genuinely intrigued.

“So,” the young girl continued, “if you're pure of soul, if you want to do good by your Martian brothers and sisters, then join us, and through the Red God we will lead our planet to prosperity!!”

There was some genuine applause from the audience.

“Now, if we may, I'd like our acolytes, my angels, to lead us in a short prayer.”

The acolytes raised their hands in unison, palms facing the young girl, to reveal they each had the image of a spider drawn on their hands in a paint made from Mars' red clay.

“All hail our prophet. May the Red God bless his people and the one true vessel of his voice. Blessings be upon our planet and upon our savior. Hail Ariadne.”

***

“This footage was taken earlier today by NewMo News 7's own investigative reporter Solomon Cho,” a news reporter who was almost too attractive to be remarkable read out from a small television screen, pushing the still frame of the young girl into the corner of the display, “and appears to show a young girl identifying herself as local folk hero Ariadne recruiting members to a new cult. We lost contact with Cho shortly after receiving the footage, and he has not been heard from since. Whether this figure is the real Ariadne or simply an opportunist attempting to capitalize on the folk legend is unclear, but one thing we can—”

The television screen fractured as it was hit with an unopened soda can, freezing the image of the cult leader behind the cracks.

“That TV was an antique,” Pilar sighed, slinking down into the beanbag chair she was sitting on.

Her wife, the real Ariadne had knocked her own chair over out of rage when she stood to throw the can at the screen. “I want her dead, Spacebreather,” Ariadne growled, glaring at the image of the pale young girl with bleached hair who grinned as she was venerated by her followers. “Do you hear me?”

“I do,” Pilar sighed. She was usually the hothead in their relationship, but after a few years, she'd learned to keep a cool temper on the rare occasion Ariadne was the one to fly off the handle.

“Mátala,” Ariadne hissed, “I want her head.”

“Anything you say, querida,” Pilar said, “but for now, we've got work to do.”

Chapter 1-- The Train Robbery

***

“It's just, I've worked hard to build this identity for myself as Ariadne, you know?” Ariadne said into the radio in her pressurized helmet.

“I know,” Pilar said, floating behind her. They approached the freighter with a team of their stealthiest crew members, known around the ship as “the Whiptails,” though right now only Pilar could hear what Ariadne was saying.

“I mean, we're supposed to be like the old stories about outlaws who stick up for the little guys! Robin Hood never asked for anything in return!”

“Robin Hood also wasn't a real—I can't have this debate with you again right now.”

Pilar and Ariadne placed a small triangular device on the airlock of the freighter, and a moment later, the door hissed open. The Whiptails circled around towards the thrusters on the back of the freighter as Ariadne and Pilar slipped quietly through the hatch and sealed it back up behind them.

“Do you get what I'm saying, though? We worked for years to build up all that good will, and some fifteen-year-old white girl with too much time on her hands just steals it to feed her own ego?” Ariadne ranted on as the ship jerked to a halt.

“Good, the Whiptails are done with the thrusters,” Pilar mumbled, placing the triangular device on the inner seal of the airlock. “And do you really think she's the brains behind this operation?”

Ariadne shrugged. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, how many fifteen-year-olds do you know who can successfully create and lead a cult by themselves?”

They moved through the corridor, slipped into the back of the passenger hold as quietly as possible, and concealed themselves behind a row of seats.

“How many fifteen-year-olds do you know who can successfully create and run a piracy ring?” Ariadne whispered.

“Fair point,” Pilar whispered back. “You ready?”

Ariadne nodded. “Yeah. Te amo, azúcar.”

“Te amo, mi tesora.”

They both drew their pistols and stood up.

“ALL RIGHT, NOBODY MOVE!” Ariadne shouted, startling just about all of the passengers in the freighter. “BE COOL, THIS IS A ROBBERY. OUR OPERATIVES HAVE DISABLED THE THRUSTERS, SO THIS SHIP ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL WE GET WHAT WE WANT.”

“WE DON'T NEED ANYBODY TO GET HURT,” Pilar added. “BUT DON'T TEST US. IF ANYONE TRIES ANYTHING, THEY'LL BE DEAD BEFORE THEY HIT THE GROUND. DON'T EVEN SAY A WORD. ¿ESTÁ CLARO?”

Of course, this was a bluff. Both women knew it was sometimes necessary to shed blood, but the authorities were much more likely to prioritize murderers over thieves, so the crew had been trained not to kill when knocking someone unconscious would get the job done. Their pistols were actually devices called soul-stealers, which sent out a psychic pulse triggering the part of the human brain that makes a person fall asleep. Bystanders would think they were dead, but by the time they roused, Ariadne's Angels would be long gone.

“We want you to know why you've been targeted,” Ariadne announced. “The fall of the Homeworld Empire has triggered a new wave of wagoners—that's you folks—coming from Earth trying to make a quick buck off the 'untapped market' on Mars. You want to put a Shop-n-Go Grocery or a Carmine's Caffeination Station or a LazLabs TechStop on every corner, because you can afford to undercut the prices of Martian vendors.”

Pilar continued the speech they'd rehearsed six times the day before. “We Martians have to grow the food we sell, craft the clothes in our stores ourselves, make our tech durable because we don't have the resources to simply replace it when it breaks. The companies you run have replicators; your sales are pure profit. We have actual expenses for our businesses.”

Ariadne picked up the speech again. “See, the Martian people don't want you on their planet. That's why they've blocked your attempts to teleport to the surface. So you corporate fatcats all get together, load everything you need to set up shop onto a big freighter, and figure you'll just fly right to the surface and move into the city like a bunch of hermit crabs!”

“You dummies shouldn't have all gotten onto one freighter, is what she's saying,” Pilar said, “because now we only have to make one trip to steal all your shit.”

“So, fast as you like, get into the escape pods,” Ariadne ordered. “You'll be heading back to Earth, and we'll be taking this freighter with us. Please leave your wallets, purses, and any jewelry or accessories so expensive that you need insurance for it on your seat before you leave.”

“Form an orderly line and nobody needs to get shot,” Pilar called back to the passenger hold. “Whiptails, show our guests to their ride.”

Six girls, all in their mid-teens and holding guns like Pilar and Ariadne's, emerged from the shadows, causing several of the terrified business executives to jump in their seats. All three dozen execs had guns shoved in their backs, and filed towards the escape pods.

Once they were all in a pod, Ariadne turned to the oldest of the Whiptails, a Chinese girl with a gelled pompadour who'd earned the name “Sweettalk” because her incredible charisma allowed her to charm just about anyone. “Is the crew taken care of?”

“Yeah Cap,” Sweettalk replied. “Two pilots, a chef, and a bartender. They volunteered to be tied up so they don't get fired for cooperating with us. Smart group. They're in the pods. I took down their addresses. They'll be receiving an anonymous monetary gift taken from the profits of today's job.”

“You rock my socks, sugar.” Ariadne smiled. “Oh! I almost forgot! Is there an intercom that lets us talk to the people in the pods?”

Pilar rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Yeah, why?” Sweettalk asked, gesturing at a small microphone next to the hatch.

“She's going to tell them that—”

Ariadne interrupted her by shouting directly into the microphone. “TELL PEOPLE IT WAS ARIADNE'S ANGELS WHO ROBBED YOU!”

“Strange thing to do in a robbery,” Sweettalk muttered.

“Let her have it,” Pilar sighed and muttered back.

“THE REAL ARIADNE. NOT THAT FAKER FROM THE NEWS,” Ariadne shouted into the mic.

“Oh,” one of the younger Whiptails, a 13-year-old black girl named Taryn, said to Sweettalk. “I was hoping she wouldn't hear about that until after the mission.”

“You and me both,” Sweettalk replied. “I'm willing to bet that's why the TV in the lounge is broken.”

“That TV was an antique,” Taryn sighed. Another of the Whiptails, a quiet girl named Ghostrunner whose face was so regularly obscured by her black hoodie that most of the crew didn’t actually know what she looked like, laughed quietly at this.

The escape pods began to detach from the ship and drift back towards Earth.

Ariadne kept yelling, “YOU TELL THEM THAT GIRL IS AN IMPOSTOR, DO YOU HEAR ME?”

“I'm sure Ariadne and Fastwing can fix it up good as new,” Pilar said flatly. “Oh, for Christ's—Ariadne. They're gone. They left. They’re way out of range. They can't hear you anymore.”

“Ugh,” said Ariadne, “I guess you're right. Come on, let's take this ugly freighter home. This is a big score. Maybe finding something useful in the cargo hold will help me shake this lousy mood.”

“Like a new TV?” Sweettalk muttered. Taryn laughed.

“Please don't instigate,” Pilar sighed again. Ariadne was perhaps the one person she knew who was more stubborn than her, and she would undoubtedly be the one tasked with improving Ariadne's bad mood.

“Bring us back to the station, Spacebreather,” Ariadne snapped. “Sweettalk, Taryn, I want you to scour this ship, find me whatever snack foods have the words 'cheese' or 'blast' anywhere on the package, and bring them to me for the ride home.”

#core story

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incoherentbabblings · 6 years ago

Text

Unspoken Promises

Sitting on the car roof waiting for Zatanna to show up, Stephanie became acutely aware of how their leaving home must have looked to the rest of the family, and makes her think about what want from the future, especially after everything had come crashing down in the aftermath of Brother Eye and the Batman of Tomorrow. Tim for once isn’t thinking too deep about it.

2,500 words on Tim and Steph cuddles from YJ #5. AO3 Link here!

So for all my doubt about Bendis (He also liked my tweet I sent him thanking him for making TimSteph so cute so like… that gave me a whump of validation right there) I was so over the moon with his interpretation of Tim and Stephanie’s relationship that it actually got me to write fanfiction for the first time in about a decade (ooft). I am following in the grand DC tradition of what is continuity in that I am writing as if the Bat’s History is all in tact, but YJ and Teen Titans is just what had been established in the New 52. How does that work? It doesn’t but never mind that I wanted to write mush

Anyway here is Tim I look at my girlfriend as if she hung the stars at night Drake and Stephanie We have 100% ran away from home which means we are 100% eloping which means yes I will marry you no you don’t even have to ask Brown.

There are like…so many references to past and current stories and dialogue in this, as well as my previous babblings on their relationship.

Anyway, enjoy!!!

He had a habit, she’d noticed, ever since they’d been together, of holding her face. His fingers had always been cold, but dry, and his palm fit neatly along her jawline. He was always soft with her, and she wouldn’t dare have it otherwise. When she isn’t talking, and he isn’t smiling and humming indulgently at her wittering on, he seemed to be nothing more than quite content to just hold and stare at her. Like the sun is infused in her hair. Like her and her alone is immune to the anti-life equation, like she is life’s meaning. Like she is so precious that she might be gone the next morning.

Because that did happen once, when she was left to die without him. Does Tim hate me? She had asked Batman. No. Bruce had replied. He adores you. Always has.

Only now with them lying on the bonnet of Tim’s red car, his stare so openly reverent, Stephanie found herself trusting Bruce’s statement to the dying girl with a broken body (and heart).

He’d been taken from her too, violently and so suddenly that she had found herself talking to a clay program of his, so starved for his face and hungry for his advice… Then again Stephanie had heard from other sources that he’d considered throwing what he’d thought was her corpse into a Lazarus Pit, so maybe they were both reliant on the other to act as a guide.

Those Batmen she’d seen, first the one from a future where she was either dead or under what seemed like permanent house arrest (it wasn’t clear), and then one made of corrupt dreams and corrupt computer programs… They were ones she’d silently promised herself that she would reel in within Tim whenever they reared their ugly, twisted heads. She’d remind him, remind them why they wanted to help people. The two of them didn’t know any other way, not anymore.

How stubborn they were that they scraped their way back to each other.

Stephanie soon grew shy being gazed at by Tim and leaned forward. One hand tightened in his sweater, whilst the other cupped the back of his head. He quickly got the idea and leaned forward, their lips touching briefly for a moment before she readjusted her position, straddling one his legs to get a firm pressure between her own.

Tim’s smile turned cheeky then, and he began to push up into a sitting position. Stephanie gave a slight grunt, and forced him back down, hand slipping down his top to grip at his hip. She kissed him deeply.

A bird took off near the car, disturbing some fallen leaves on the ground. It was still warm enough at sunset to not have to wear a coat, and both of them had opted for oversized sweaters, Steph in her customary purple, Tim in his usual green. They had been travelling for a few weeks now, enough for the new school year to have started, and yet here they both were, several states down, in DC, nowhere near Ivy University in New England. The thought made Stephanie giggle.

“Now you have to admit it!” She exclaimed, thumping her head down to rest on Tim’s chest, listening to his heart beat. Solid. Warm.

Tim meanwhile was looking awfully smug, one arm cradling her shoulders, pressing their already entangled bodies closer, the other arm thrown up behind his head. His eyes were shut, and he was smirking.

“I don’t have to admit anything.”

“Admit it!”

“I was raised by Batman, Stephanie,” – and right on que her eyes rolled up to her skull. Batman Batman Batman – “I am a stubborn master.”

“Admit we ran from home!”

That got him to open his eyes and stare at her once more. He was indulging her again, she knew, and she let him do so.

“A Batgirl and a Robin told everybody we were going off to college and then we drove the other way.”

“Because we’re in the middle of an investigation into the –”

She interrupted him, whispering the phrase “Nobody knows where we are!” conspiratorially, as if they weren’t sitting outside one of the most heavily monitored buildings in the county. But sure, they were definitely back in New England, studying at one of the country’s most prestigious universities.

Not that they didn’t leave with the purest intentions, this investigation into timelines and universes… However neither had the foggiest clue where to start. Tim had recalled Dick and Bruce talking of Wally, the idea that something or someone been messing with time or memories. To avoid Bruce catching wind of what they were up to, they had asked Black Canary, and Dinah had suggested magic, which had led them to Zatanna.

Tim knew Bruce knew they weren’t at college. He just didn’t want Bruce to know why. This trip was partially for him and Steph to be alone. Properly. Without Bruce and his weird secrets and mind games. Without the pressure of fighting crime each night with all its mental and physical traumas.

Without Cassandra bursting through their window with takeout after a night of training, catching Steph in her nightshirt and Tim with his pyjama bottoms halfway up his legs.

It had been going well, as well as could be expected of two seventeen-year olds going on a targetless road trip. Tim had enough money to his name to keep them going for more than enough time, and Stephanie didn’t want for much regardless.

Still, this trip had a purpose, and they both hoped that speaking with Zatanna would orient them in the right direction.

“I’m just saying,” Stephanie continued, now grinning back at Tim’s softening smile “The only thing missing is the circus for us to join.”

It was almost funny how their conversations always came back to their future together. They were still so young but they always spoke of what their lives would be, could be, five, ten, fifteen years down the line.

Not that the circus was a serious suggestion, but it made her point all the same. They had split off from the family back home, deliberately gaining some distance. They’d not spoken to Bruce since he’d waved them off, hearing that they’d get the official wedding invite ‘any day now’ (any day now had been going on for weeks at this point, both were afraid to enquire for an update). They’d not heard from Dick in even more time (something was going on with the Titans, on and off the field, but Tim hadn’t chased it). Damian and Jason were enigmas as usual to them (coming and going as they pleased). They’d get the odd photo and message sent from Cass and Duke and Barbara, the three of them seemed to be forming a little huddle, but for the most part, it was radio silence. Maybe Bruce had encouraged it for once. Leave them alone. Let them be teenagers. They can figure it out if they want to do the superhero gig on their own.

Or maybe that was too forgiving of an assumption of Bruce.

The other day Stephanie had been filming Tim being a dweeb, and she had muttered about making their (hypothetical) children watch this so they could be assured that their (hypothetical) father was never once cool ever. Tim had just laughed and argued that she was just as bad as he, she was only better at covering it up. He didn’t flush at the mention of children, and he didn’t call out at her statement at all. It was a quiet assumption between them, the idea of children (plural. Both had been so lonely growing up they couldn’t bear the thought of repeating their parents’ mistakes). An unspoken promise never confirmed aloud.

Seventeen years old and they were already thinking of when they’d be thirty five. Maybe one near (actual?) death experience each made them grip to that future tightly. They would have it all. They would help people until there was no longer a need for them to do so anymore, upon which they could bow out, ready to drop the double-faced world they occupied.

It had been temporary for Tim, initially. He didn’t so much as want to be Robin as he was at the only one who could be Robin.

It had been temporary for Stephanie, initially. She couldn’t let her father go on hurting people, and she was at first the only one who knew what weird, over the top schemes he’d managed to cobble together.

It was supposed to be temporary, for both of them.

I can make it all work. I can make a system that can sustain itself… After all that, I can take care of myself. Take care of us. I promise.

And yet that promise he’d made aloud, mere hours before everything had blown up in their faces – literally – had been a rude awakening that their line of work didn’t allow easy early retirements, not truly.

That was okay though, not today didn’t mean not ever, or at least, that’s what they had both told themselves at night sleeping in assorted cheap hotels. The receptionists had always given them funny looks, no doubt Tim and Stephanie probably did look like young eloping teenagers. Tim had surprised Stephanie in his reaction to their expressions, putting his foot down when affirming yes we want a double bed no not twin singles. When checking out in the morning Tim defiantly left the bed an unmade mess, as if they were a pair of rabbits who couldn’t get enough of each other, as if trying to earn that slightly disapproving look from across the counter.

She thought maybe he was tired of people giving their opinion on the two of them being together.

And ultimately, that is what they were wasn’t it? Teenage sweethearts running away from home.

And to the circus, if that’s what it came down to.

Stephanie’s buzzing phone and Zatanna’s arrival had brought an end to the feeling of joviality. Stephanie’s thoughts were being torn in two directions. She couldn’t stand the thought of her father running around doing as he pleased, and she had a sudden sharp stab of fear for her mother, but she had just reaffirmed that she was staying with Tim come hell or high water. Tim made the decision for her. He knew she wouldn’t be focused going forward unless she chased down her father, so gave the both of them a three day deadline.

“You’ll be focused and I’ll have a start.” He stated. He was dressed in his uniform, looking somehow both dashing and fragile at once. What he thought he knew had been shaken again, except for the blonde girl standing in front of him. The one who was looking at him with a slightly befuddled but still endeared smile.

“I love you Tim Drake.” She said, ignoring for a moment where they were and what he was dressed as.

There was a beat of silence. Enough to make Stephanie uncomfortable. He had usually always been the first to declare it to her. Now that she had uttered it first, he seemed at a loss on how to respond. She decided to prompt him, trying not to sound too desperate when she asked:

“Did you hear –?”

“I’m madly in love with you, Steph.” He blurted out. His smile widened until he looked overjoyed. “I was just about to tell you that. I was going to tell you I was so happy you were in my repressed memories, too, because I didn’t want – ”

A life without you was how he was going to finish his declaration before she threw herself at him, smacking a kiss on his lips, and Tim saw his world go pink for a moment.

He had been relieved that she’d been in those memories. She had to have been. She was the only one, for so long, who knew him as both Robin and Tim. The Teen Titans had asked and asked but he’d always been so reluctant to cave in, whilst part of his fear of leaving the title of Robin would mean losing Bruce and Dick and Barbara, for what possible reason could Tim Drake have to associate with them? It was different now, he was Bruce’s adopted son, so their connection could not be severed regardless of him wearing a mask or not, and he had opened up to his friends, slowly but surely.

She was still the person he wanted to be with him every step of the way. She’s never cared what title he’d held, she’d cared more about the way he held her. This was his chance though. She had always been stuck on the fringes of their generation, not having many close friends outside of Gotham. If his friends and family could become hers… he just wanted her with him every step of the way. It was selfish of him he knew, but she deserved a better family than the one she’d been born into, and he had the opportunity to give it to her.

She was gripping the front of his uniform tightly, and he was holding her shoulders. Leaning forward, he put their foreheads together with a gentle thunk. Still smiling, he reminded her of the three day deadline.

“Two days.” She pushed.

“Promise?” He looked at her, and she smiled guiltily. How many broken promises had they made to each other? How many had they kept? How many had remained unspoken, for fear of them never coming true?

“I can’t.” Stephanie exhaled unsteadily, her eyes tearing up.

He didn’t sound disappointed when he responded, “I know.” He understood. Better than anyone he understood the danger of promises and oaths.

For a brief moment she longed for them to forget responsibilities and be utterly selfish. Run away to the circus like she’s joked. Confirm every suspicious look those receptionists had given them for the past four weeks. Leave behind broken families who didn’t know what good communication meant between the lot of them and start a newer better family in its place. It was a whim that would remain in her head, but she answered the question she would sit and wait for over the next twenty years if need be out loud, as both a promise to Tim and to herself.

“…But I do.”

Tim didn’t say anything more in response, but looked up at her, his forehead still pressed to hers, and breathed a laugh. He knew what she’d meant when she’s said I do, of course he figured it out, but he also knew to let it remain out of context. Another unspoken promise.

They’d be fine. More than fine. He would find his friends and he would take care of them. They’d scraped their way back to each other for a reason. He couldn’t let her, or Conner or Cassie or Bart or any of the others, slide by any longer.

Another unspoken promise.

#dc #timsteph #tim drake #stephanie brown #this is super self-indulgent so please indulge me...#my fic tag

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brattywriters-anonymous · 6 years ago

Text

I’m Never Wrong

Erik x Reader story

Warnings: This story is really long. I’m warning you now. Smut, SoftErik! RedeemedErik!

32 days before Christmas

I gotten in from work pretty late tonight. Working on all of these damn briefs and defenses so I can be case free for the Holidays. Erik hates when I bring work home so I always either don't or I hide it and work in the office when he's out or sleep. Tonight, I chose not to bring it home. The slave ship that is Lawman & Sholtz Associates got fifteen hours out of me today. It's almost 11 PM and I just want a glass of wine in my bed. I walk into a dark foyer and an even darker living room. Erik is usually in there playing Fortnite or Battlegrounds, cursing out little nine year olds on live. This is the quietest my house has ever been since we moved in six months ago! It's truly been an adjustment living with N'jadaka Stevens-Udaku. He is the noisiest, nosiest, grumpiest roommate I've ever had!

That's including my law school roommate, Phoebe. She never liked having company over, same as Erik. She was hella territorial over food that we both bought, same as Erik! They both even have a mean snoring problem. I'm pretty sure if I could find the damn girl and let them meet, they would hit it off they're so much alike!"

Babe?! You home?!" I yell out, silence. I dropped my briefcase, coat, and keys on the floor so I can lose my uncomfortable ass heels. "I know he better be home tonight! He knows it's our.." "Baby! I'm back here! Bring yo ass, woman!" I quickly shimmy out of my pencil skirt and blazer down the hallway. I just know I'm in for a long night tonight. It's our three year anniversary. It's also been two years since I almost lost his dumb ass, tryna chase a throne with nothing but rage and oppression on his heart.

"Hey bae, I'm ba--" FAP! A sharp slap landed on his right cheek, he couldn't even react to it before he felt a jab connect to his left one. "You got some fucking nerve coming back here! Six months N'jadaka!? You said you would be back in a week or two! How the fuck did that turn into six--fucking--months!?" My last three words turned into three more punches. He grabbed my wrists with one hand and used his other hand to push me against the back of the door. "Look baby, I'm sorry. I went to Wakanda and shit went left, okay? I beat my cousin in ritual combat, I thought I killed him. I was about to send the vibranium weapons out to our wardogs and come back to you. Then, he returned. All hell broke loose and.. I died." My eyes grew wide before I could open my mouth to scream he let go of my hands, "Dont! Hear me out, Y/N. I died. T'challa stabbed me in my chest--" He lifted up his shirt to show me the mostly healed wound. "--I told my cousin if he was gonna lock me up, just let me die. Bury me in the ocean. I guess he chose not to lock me up and he saved me. When I came to, he told me that he bought the old apartment building my father and I lived in and made it an outreach resource center, that it would be the first of many.. That he needs my help in running. Even though it's a small step in the direction of progress, it's a step. I gave Cha my word, I'll help him. But I had to come here and explain myself to the love of my life." I shook my head in disbelief. In disbelief of the entire story! How do you die and come back? Can vibranium do that? Wait. "I'm your what-now?" He smirked and kissed my neck gently, "You're the love of my life. I love you, Y/N." I've never heard this man tell me he loved me before today. He's always tip toed around saying it. Even before he left for six months, his last words to me was, 'I care for you so much baby. Swear I'm coming back for you. On my parents. You coming back home with me.' His stubby finger swiped across my cheek wiping the single tear that fell from it, "I'm sorry. I love you." He embraced me as I cried in his arms, "I love you, Erik."

I get to the doorway to be met by pink candles trailing to our master bath and rose pedals spread throughout the layout of our room. Who's cleaning this up? I approached the door frame to see my fine ass man in nothing but a towel, accompanied with two flutes full of champagne. "What is this?" "This is for you, gorgeous." He hands me a glass and I gladly take a sip, I been waiting all day for this. Bollinger Brut Rose, my favorite. I moaned at the bubbles hitting my nose with that sweet aroma. It's what I imagine what heaven must be like. "I been waiting on you to get this bath started. I didn't want the water getting cold so.." He starts filling up the tub as I tell him about my day with these colonizers stressing me out, I thanked him for the lunch and edible arrangement that he sent me. "You ate it all, didn't you?" I raised my eyebrows at his question and throw back the rest of my champagne, "Mhm. You know I love chocolate covered strawberries!" He beams at my response, "Good thing I got two dozen and kept the other one here!" He pulls out a dozen of the delectable fruit on ice. "God, I love you. Have I told you that?" He shrugs, "A time or two." I laugh and jump up, "The bath!"

We settle in the bathtub with our refilled glasses and strawberries on hand, then he grabs something else. It's pretty dim in the bathroom so I really can't make out what it is. "Any more surprises, lover boy?" I tilt my head backwards to see his boyish grin as he nods and holds out a ball. "I went to lush." I gasp and squeal "You hate that place baby!" "I know! I wanted to make tonight special for you. I know I ain't always the best. I'm not the happiest camper in the woods all the time, but you put up with that shit. You always make sure I'm as happy as I can be. So I'm tryna make tonight as special as possible for you. For us." I turn myself around to face him and give him a long, passionate kiss. This is single-handedly the best anniversary ever. Especially considering the first was the worst, the second was when he finally came back from Wakanda and that one wasn't any better. He's really making up for that. He breaks our contact, "Damn baby, you gon make me drop it!" "What did you get?" He pondered on the question, "Uh, I told the lady it's our anniversary and you love the place, I told her what smells you didn't like and she gave me this..She said its a..sex bomb I think." I shake my head, "Oh, so you tryna really get it poppin' tonight, huh?" "Hell yeah, Y/N. You thought you was getting away with what you did this morning?" I look up to the ceiling in deep thought, "I'm sorry, I do not recall." He nudges me, "Oh, so you don't remember how I woke you up, told you you were moaning in your sleep--" He drops the bath bomb in front of us..as it starts to fizz and the Jasmine aroma releases, he starts caressing my outer thigh, continuing, "--and that I could help you out with that. You let me get you out your pjs, and just as I was about to eat you like my last meal--" He stops to kiss my shoulder, I let out a whine, "Your alarm went off for work and you pushed me off you." He takes a strawberry and devours it whole, sucking all the juice out directly in my ear, making sure I could hear it. Then without moving, he whispers, "You don't remember that baby?" I bite my lip and my eyes darted back at the sex bomb, it's still fizzing. Turning the water to a beautiful lavender hue. "It's coming back to me.." He feels me closing my thighs together, then he places one hand between them, prying them back open. "Nah gorgeous, we not doing that tonight. I already called your job after you left. You not even getting out of bed tomorrow unless you coming in here, let alone going to work. I called out for you." His finger grazed past my clit as he said it, distracting me, I let out a muffled moan. "Damn..this bath is working. Otherwise I'd be curs--ooh!" Erik takes his other hand to wrap it around my neck and firmly press against that spot that makes me wet every single time, "You not cursing me out, you gon thank me tomorrow for how I'm about to tear you up tonight. You ready for it, Y/N?" I nod, words are completely out of the question while he's giving me this euphoric feeling. He huffs, "Imma let you slide this time gorgeous, but you know when I ask you something, I wanna hear an answer." He releases his hold, "Right?" "Yes sir."

"Good. Good. Now, back to these." He feeds me a strawberry, "So, remember our first date?" I burst out into laughter, "How it was about to be our only date, yes!" "Aye! I told you I was late because--" "Yeah, yeah. Because you robbed a museum and you almost got arrested but the cops lost your tail. I thought you were bullshitting." "I wasn't though. I had to make some bread to take you out." I sank deeper into the warm water, "You lucky you're a charismatic SOB, I had all intentions of not giving you a second date." "Look at us now. Living together, you partner at your firm. I'm running the Wakandan outreach center. We living our dreams." He gave me my glass and held his up to mine, "To three years, and a million more." Our glasses clink and I threw my second glass straight back. "Oh so you tryna get it poppin' tonight, huh gorgeous?" I roll my eyes, "Since I'm off tomorrow, hell yeah."

We get out of the bathtub and we're practically all over each other. Lush outdid themselves with that bomb. We barely got ourselves dry with the one towel we had between us as we stumbled onto our California King. I straddle him as his hands find their placement around my hips. I hungrily kiss him, occasionally licking his soft bottom lip and pulling it in with mine. He lets out the most beautiful moan I've ever heard in his deep tone. I swear, I can't get any wetter than what I am now. I kiss his outer jaw then whisper close to his ear, "Happy anniversary, baby." I trail kisses back down his jaw, to his neck. He hands move from my hips, through my scalp, running his fingers through my hair as he felt a slightly sharp pain of my bite. He cooed as I left two nice sized hickeys where he likes to be kissed the most. I make my way back up to his lips as I'm grinding into him, he's standing at full attention at this point. He starts mirroring my movements while his fingers are still entangled in my hair. He breaks our kiss and whispers, "So beautiful." I whisper back, "I love you."

As he opened his mouth to return the sentiment, I grabbed his hard member and dragged it across my dripping slit. His mouth hangs open when I drop down onto it. I bottom myself out as I rock back and forth on him, I just hear 'Ah' over and over as I go each way. I occasionally roll my hips around as he hisses and grabs my hair with full force. My lips go back to his ear, "You like that baby?" I can tell he's biting his lip because I hear a muffled moan come out as I roll my hips around again, "I love it." I kiss his lobe as I groan at his hips crashing into mine. I place more distance between our lower halves, moving up and down on his glistening member. As his head continuously grazes my g-spot, my tone rises. He removes his hands from my hair and return them back onto my hips as he crashes into me harder, making sure to keep the same pace. "Right there, Y/N?" I groan through my answer, "Yes! Right there!" The harder he crashes back into me, the more incoherent my moaning becomes until my voice goes into a falsetto and my first orgasm flows out onto the both of us.

"Ride it out baby, keep going." I'm shaking as my body is trying to give out but his words give me the strength to hold myself up to keep bouncing on him. At this point I'm only hearing the smacking of our skin as we collide and his voice saying my name over and over again, motivating me to keep going. I feel my thighs quivering as he continues hitting my spot, All I could let out was a group of yeses, one higher than the other until my second orgasm surprises me and leaves my entire body quaking. He holds himself right on my g-spot as my walls contract against him, my fluids splashing down my inner thigh onto his pelvis. "Shit, Y/N. Hold up." He digs his hands into my hips and rolls himself on top of me. Once my orgasm finishes washing over me, he starts digging me out like he's on a mission to do it again. He takes his turn to lean into my ear, "You wanna cum again baby?" I yelp as he bottoms me out, holding it there, "Yes!" He pushes himself further up, "Yes, s-ir!" As he almost completely pushes himself out, his hands snake back around my neck and squeezes tight. I become displaced again, the only sense I clearly have left is hearing and I hear myself struggling to groan loudly, splashing, and him yelling my name again. He eases up around my neck and I come back to. I look down and our lower halves are drenched, Erik is looking at me with his eyes halfway shut as he confesses,

"Baby, I love you so much! You feel so.." I felt my walls involuntarily close around him as I shiver, "Ahh..damn you feel so good." I pull him down to me. Now, we're face to face. He slows his pace all the way down, but the intensity is still present. We're kissing each other through our coos and moans, we both feel my third orgasm creeping up on me. "I love you Erik." I look him in his dark eyes as mine release tears of joy, he wipes one side of my face as he kisses me, slowly pushing in and out of me, "I love you too, Y/N. You're everything--I could ever ask for. I can't be without you. Ever." Erik kisses me again. I open my eyes and I see his fingers fiddling with a ring. I gasp and cover my mouth as more tears are coming down my face, "Marry me. I'm asking you to make me happier than I've ever been. I'm asking you to go through life's ups and downs with me, as one. Marry me, Y/N."

I hold my left hand out, "Yes N'jadaka. Yes!" He places the ring on my finger and I tightly embrace him. He quickly reminds me what we were doing before he asked me to be his wife, pushing himself deeper than he's ever been. I gasp as my nails embed themselves into his muscular back. He pulls back out of me then back to that same spot. I hear a squishing sound that makes me jerk back, he presses back on it making me scream, "N'Jadaka!" he moans in my neck, "Say it again." "N'jada-- ohh!" He drills into me again and again back in that same spot as my orgasm unfolds right then and there. I spill out, more than I ever have before, splashing the sheets, myself, and him. The more he keeps pressing that spot, the more I cum. He huffs out as he lets himself go. We're both shaking and holding onto one another. As he's shooting into me, I'm shooting out on him. He collapses on top of me as we drifted off for the rest of the night.

Six days before Christmas "That's everything?" Erik zips up the third suitcase of mine as I'm looking around my room mentally checking off everything that's in my bag. "Yup. That's it." "You plan on leaving me?" I look in his direction, puzzled. "What?" He stretches his arms out over the three large suitcases I have verses the one duffle bag he has. "You literally packed for three people." "No I didn't. Ass. I have two suitcases of clothes, we're gonna be there for two weeks! The third one is for my shoes and toiletries." He shook his head, "This is about to be expensive as fuck." He's right about that. We're going to Toronto this year for Christmas and New Years. My parents moved there about three years ago after my youngest brother moved out. We've never been there so I don't know what to expect weather wise. "You got your passport Erik? We don't have time to turn around if you forget it." He holds two blue booklets up, "I got yours and mine, now lets go." -- WELCOME TO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

I hear over the intercom, my eyes are squinting at the bright lights. Erik and I are hand in hand as we navigate through the busy airport looking for baggage claim. We finally find it and with that we find my parents with a big sign reading, "The Stevens" I cover my face in embarrassment. My mother squeals "Y/N! My baby!" She grabs me up and hugs me really tight, rocking me left and right. "How was your flight?" "A nightmare, ma. Seven hours of the same toddler screaming, people coughing in my personal space..I'm tired. Can we go to the house now?" She nods, "Okay baby. Hello Son! How are you?" He hugs my mom, "I'm good Raina, I was tryna keep her comfortable for the entire flight." "You know how fickle Y/N is about packed flights." "She hates it." They say in unison. "Aye! Enough ragging on my daughter. We both hate crowds in cramped spaces! I'm glad you made it out here to see us, lovebug." My daddy kissed me on the cheek and gave Erik a firm handshake, "It's nice to finally meet my son-in-law to be." "Likewise Mr. Y/L/N." "Call me Wallace, or dad." They both smiled at the informality.

-- We settled into my parent's house quite nicely, and damn is this house nice. Five bedrooms, Seven bathrooms. A Spacious back yard, a minibar in the living room, the kitchen with white appliances and white marble counter tops, the island in the center. They even have a wine cellar for their vast collection of wines! This is truly their dream house. I'm so happy for them. As a retired physician and banker, they really made their dreams come true as empty nesters. Suddenly, I felt a lump in my throat, like I couldn't swallow my saliva. I shook my head and forcefully swallowed. Not thinking much of it, I head to the kitchen where I bump into my brother, Jordan.

"Hey bighead! Wassup?" I nudge him, "Shit, tryna get some water if you'd move!" He steps aside, "My bad. Daaayym! That must cost a grip!" Jordan grabs my left hand, "Nice. Where's my bro anyway?" I point upward, "Upstairs sleeping, we're hella jet lagged. Where's my sister?" Jordan married Daisa last year, she's expecting their first child in February. "She's in the office, talking to dad about plans for our nursery. You know he's hella excited to be a pop pop." I giggle at the name, "Why don't grandparents ever wanna be called grandpa and grandma?" He shrugs, "I don't know.." "Because we're not old." My mom slides in the kitchen from the wine cellar. She slaps Jordan's hand, "You better get a coaster for that cup! Wash it when you finished, too!" "Okay ma! I'm going to check on Daisa anyway!"

I sit on the island as I gulp down my bottled water. "Have ya'll thought about any plans for the wedding yet, baby?" mom sips some of her Cabernet. I shake my head, "Nah, we've just been so.." "Engulfed into each other that you haven't thought about it?" We laugh at the same time, "What can I say? I really love him, ma." "I know you do, baby. You've been glowing since he asked.." She takes a sip, then continues, "Speaking of glow, you know I dreamed about fishes the other night." My eyes instantly rolled at her phrase, my mom being from Florida, she always has these superstitions. The fish dreams are always on point though. She dreamed about fishes last year, Jordan and Daisa found out they were pregnant. Three years before that she dreamed of fishes, my oldest brother Stephan got his fiancee Joyce pregnant. I shake my head at her, "Maybe Daisa is having the baby early." "Girl, she's carrying too small, that baby is just fine in there until February, maybe even March. Erik has been sleep since you guys got here four hours ago. Jet lag, my ass." I then thought about how my older brothers were before they knew their women were pregnant. The Y/L/N tradition always stood, the woman may have some symptoms, but the men always carried the sleepiness and the over eating. It never failed. My dad gained a total of fifty pounds thanks to the three of us.

Last week

Erik had been staying late at work all week, Friday is finally here and I decided to take a half day and cook his favorite. Fried chicken, brown rice, gravy, collards, and cornbread. He finally got home as the collards finished boiling down. "Hey babe, whatchu in here cooking?" "My baby's favorite!" I sniffed the aromas from the foyer "Y/N, you want something don't you?" I shook my head as I fed him some greens and kissed his olive oil ridden lips, "I just wanna take care of you tonight. I know you been working late this week, So wash up and get ready for dinner." He pulled me in for another kiss as he smacked my ass, "What about dessert?" I giggled, "Nigga. You get dessert every night. Tonight ain't no different." He stretched his arm out and pulled it back to him, "Yes!"

I look at him dumbfounded as he devours his meal like he just got home from prison. Erik is eating everything at once, smacking obnoxiously and moaning. "Is it good?" He nodded as he continued smashing his plate.

SNAP SNAP! "Y/F/N, Y/M/N! Are you here?!" I blink out of my flashback and swallowed hard, "Uh..yeah. Yeah. I'm here. Uh, I'll be back." I run upstairs to our room and closed the door. Almost out of breath, I drink the rest of the water in the bottle and pull my phone out. I immediately pull up my period tracker app..

Day 38, you are six days late (Pregnant?)

Oh, No. I start pacing around the room. Erik and I never talked about kids. He's awesome with the kids at the outreach center, but those are school aged kids. I've never seen him with a baby, baby. I'm still out of breath, I look over to Erik, his eyes are fluttering..shit, he's about to wake up.

DING DONG!

I hear Stephan's annoying ass scream out, "Food's here!"

-- Silence falls around the dinning room table, nothing but forks hitting plates can be heard, with an occasional sip here and there. I look to my left to see Erik smashing his plate once again, which is putting me off of my food. "Son, have you eaten today? You okay?" My dad asks as he passes Erik the box of takeout. "Blink twice if Y/N is not feeding you!" Stephan jokes as Jordan laughs with him. Erik finally slows down, "Oh, nah. I haven't eaten since breakfast. We had a long flight. I guess I'm really hungry." He looks to his right, lightly headbutting me, I return a nervous grin. "So, I dreamed of fishes the other night!" The entire table groans out except for mom and Erik. Stephan objects, "Man look, it's not us! Joyce is on that ICU thing!" She quickly interjects, "It's an IUD, stupid. I'm not pregnant, Raina. We might revisit the conversation in a year or so, but there's no fishes this way." Joyce holds up her wine glass and throws it back, confirming. I gulp down my sweet tea, which is tasting quite nasty, but I had to get this food down one way or another. My dad looks over at Jordan, Daisa yells out, "It's only one in here! She's not coming until February!" "Maybe March!" My mom interrupts, then winks at me.

Like clockwork, the entire table looks at me and Erik. Erik is still looking confused at the entire conversation, "What's dreaming of fishes about?" "Bro, it means swimmers been swimming! Soldiers been marching!" Stephan throws out the ridiculous figures of speech. Erik looks around the table again then his light bulb turned on, "Ohhhh!" He laughs and goes back to eating, "Nah. If Y/N was pregnant, I would know. Ain't that right, baby?" I laugh with him, "Yeah! Mhm." Everyone shrugs it off and my dad changes the subject to Canadian football. I scoot my chair back and dismiss myself to the upstairs bathroom. That tea really threw my entire meal off, I feel myself heave as I'm climbing the stairs, I shake my head trying to shake off the feeling. Then I heave harder, feeling my dinner come up. I run to the bathroom and made it just in the nick of time to reach the toilet.

"Y/N! You okay, baby?" My mom's voice echos through the east wing of the second floor, I'm still throwing up..not able to answer. She leans against the doorway of the bathroom and smiles at me from the mirror, "I'm never wrong." I wipe my mouth and flush the toilet.

Three Days before Christmas

The past three days have been torture. I still hadn't bought a test to confirm or deny mom's allegations. I'm scared to know for sure. Even though I'm sure I am, especially since I throw up every night after dinner, and my mom meets me at the bathroom door with sparkling water like clockwork. Saying the same thing, "I'm never wrong." I cringe just thinking of the way she says it. So arrogantly, like she knew all along it was me. Even before I thought it was me!

I slept in this morning, I woke up around half past noon and went straight to the kitchen. The men of the house cooked a continental breakfast that blessed the entire house with it's great aroma. I was the last significant other to get up for breakfast, so as tradition stood, I had to set the table. "I'll help you sis." Daisa waddles over to the drawer where the silverware was as I went in the pantry to grab the tablecloth.

I fan the cloth out over the table and Daisa follows, laying down the forks and spoons in front of each chair. "You ready for my niece to get here?" She sighed deeply, "YES! Ready is an understatement!" I giggle as I grab the glasses from the china cabinet. "Girl, If I could have her now, I would! She keeps kicking me in my damn ribs like she hates me!" I shake my head as I felt a sharp cramp on my side, I paused as I hold myself where the pain is, "It is you, isn't it?" I look up at her and shrug, "I don't know." She smiles at me, "There's nothing to be scared of, Y/N. That man in there loves you. He's been gawking about you all morning! 'Y/N just made partner at her firm! Y/N is a better cook than me! Y/N, Y/N, Y/N.' His world revolves around you. You two will make great parents." Somewhere in the middle of her saying all of that, I start crying. She shushed me as she pulled me into her, "It's okay love. Whenever you ready to find out, we'll go to the store, okay?" I nod as I wipe away my tears.

-- Christmas Eve

"Alright guys, We're going on our last minute Christmas shopping spree! We'll be back--" "Whenever we get done spending your caaaash!" Joyce interrupts my mom as we all laugh out the door. We spend our car ride to Eaton Centre singing along to all the nineties girl group hits. Mom finally finds a parking space and we arrive in the crowded mall. Mom pulls out the directory, "Let's see here, I have to go to the J. Crew to get Wallace his sweater." Joyce joins in, "I have to get SJ his iPad Mini at the Apple store." Daisa links her arm into mine, "I'm done with all my shopping, so I'll just go where Y/N goes." Mom hands me the directory, "I guess I can get Erik this watch he's been talking about from Top Shop." "Alright ladies, We'll meet at the food court at four for lunch!" We all go in opposite directions to our destinations.

"You know, there's a pharmacy in here too?" Daisa says as she's looking through each display window we pass. "Oh, really?" She nods, "There's no time like Christmas Eve to know, Y/N." I sigh and throw my arms up, "You're right. Let's get this watch first." We finally reach TopShop and the store is almost packed wall to wall. We pry through the crowd to the accessory section where I find his Rosefield black and gold watch with a black snake skin-like material band. N'jadaka loves black and gold. I love the way it looks on him. He looks so regal, as he should, since he's Prince of Wakanda and all. Daisa and I waited in the checkout line for almost an hour, but I got the watch, She asked them for a large gift bag, I was about to object before she put her hand up, "I got this. Don't worry about it." "Excuse me!" I stop a girl who looked like she was a local, "I'm sorry, I'm visiting from out of town, do you know where the Pharmacy is?" She nods and says, "Go down this way, down the stairs, make a right, It'll be past the Victoria's Secret." "Thank you so much. Happy Holidays!" She returns the sentiment as Daisa and I walk past her to our new destination.

Daisa and I come to the conclusion to buy three ClearBlue tests since they were the easiest results to read. It was fifteen minutes until four so we buy the tests and make a beeline for the food court. We pass the Starbucks where we find Joyce at the front of the line, she grabs her caramel macchiato, "Do y'all know there's a different word for sneakers here? The barista kept saying, 'Nice runners' I'm like, 'I'm not running nowhere!'" Daisa and I look at each other and bust out in laughter. Mom finds all of us with mad bags in her hands, "What are we eating?"

-- We finally get home around six, the boys are yelling in the living room, we all look at each other and say in unison, "They're drunk!" I hid Erik's present in our room and put the pregnancy tests in our bathroom drawer. I hadn't taken them yet, I was waiting on my mom and Daisa, but her words rang in my head 'no time like Christmas Eve to find out..' I grab one test from the drawer and urinate on the stick. I place the top back on it and put it back in the drawer. I go back down in the living room where my family sat around the TV watching football. My fiancee watching with his lips tucked, dimples poking out, and an egg nog sitting in between his legs. His eyes meet mine and he sets his cup aside, patting in the space for me to sit. I lay against him as everyone else is heckling. His lips connect to my scalp, "I'm tired babe, I think I'm gonna go down early." He rubs my arm, "Okay baby, I'll be up in a while." I nod then get up and look in Daisa's direction, she winks at me tells Jordan she has to use the bathroom and we both go upstairs.

We get to the second floor, "I took one." "What did it say?" I shrug. "I took it and put it in the drawer." My mom nudges us, "Well, go find out!" The few steps to our bedroom feels like a thousand, I peer down to my hands, they're shaking and sweating. Daisa holds my left hand, my mom holds my right, "No matter what the test says, You'll be alright. You're loved, not just by Erik, but by all of us. You're good." My mom flips the light switch in the bathroom. I open the drawer with the used test in it, I grab it and squint my eyes at the results

Pregnant ☺(7-8)

I drop the test, as it hit the tile my mom picks it up and smiles, "I'm never wrong."

Christmas Day

Babe.. Babe..Y/N. Wake up! My eyes flutter at N'jadaka's voice, "Hm?" "Merry Christmas, baby." He holds out a box. I rub my eyes and sit up, "What is it?" His lips collide with mine, "Open it." I claw at the top part of the box, "What is it?" He helps me, it's his father's chain. "I thought, I'd give the person that means the most to me, the thing that means the most to me." He pulls out the chain and places it around my neck, "The ring, is made of vibranium. It's totally impenetrable." I pull him to me, "I love you. I love you so much." He kisses my forehead, "I love you too, Y/N." "Y/N! Erik! Time to open Gifts!" My mom calls us from downstairs.

We watch as SJ opens up his gifts from all of us, He got all of the clothes, toys, and games his little heart desired. As he was distracted by his new Audi toy car, the adults opened their gifts. Stephan got Joyce and upgrade to her engagement ring. Joyce got him season tickets to the New York Giants games. They only agreed to give each other one gift since they splurged on SJ. Mom got dad private chef lessons from the sous chef of Gordon Ramsey's restaurant, a few sweaters and ties, and a trip to Dubai for next Christmas. My dad got mom two new charms for her Pandora bracelet, an iPhone XS and a Caribbean cruise for the end of summer. Jordan and Daisa agreed to open their gifts when they got back home, they figured traveling with the gifts would be a hassle at customs.

Daisa waddles out of the living room when Erik hands the rest of us black and purple envelopes. I open mine and it reads:

"You are invited to the union of N'jadaka "Erik" Stevens-Udaku and Y/F/N Y/M/N Y/L/N in matrimony at the Royal Palace of Wakanda on the eighth of June in the year of Two Thousand and Nineteen... Erik.."

"Baby. I know you said we would plan a wedding, I've been planning it for months. T'Challa and Shuri helped, I got your parents blessing last summer over the phone." "So that's why you welcomed him with open arms?" My parents held each other on the arm of the couch, "Mhm." "Now, all I need is you, your dress, and your answer. Will you marry me, in Wakanda this summer?"

Daisa waddles back in the living room with the large TopShop bag and a box. "Open your gifts." He stares up at me, puzzled. "What's your answer?" "My answer is, open your gifts." He opened the box first, it had his watch in it, which had a note at the bottom. As long as time exists, you'll have me. Love, Y/N. Erik looks at me as he takes the tissue paper out of the bag, he sees another note, "you'll also have me.." He digs through more tissue paper to find all three tests at the bottom of the bag along with a onesie that says, "Arriving August 2019" Erik stands up with his mouth agape, "You're pregnant?" I nod, "I am. So we may have to reset a date after August." He pulls my arm until I crash into him. I look up into his tear filled eyes, I've only seen him cry like this the first time he told me he loved me. I wipe his tears away and kiss him over and over again until his lips break out into the largest grin, "Y/N, I love you." "I love you more, N'jadaka." Everyone crowded around us in cheers as my mom admits again, "I'm never wrong."

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apparitionism · 6 years ago

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Helicobacter 14

The bering and wells tag got a little sleepy after Christmas, didn’t it? I can’t say this chapter is any sort of wake-up call, but ideally it’ll give you a laugh or two. Previously on Helicobacter, Myka was working on an idea. She told Helena about it in the wee small hours of the morning... sadly, over the phone. But they’ll be in the same physical space in this part, so who can say what will happen? Well, one thing that definitely will is that you’ll notice I haven’t cut and woven this part into a fully cohesive set piece. Everything was taking too long, so I decided to hone the little bits I had, take the hit, and move on. Also, in a break from previous practice, I’m not going to link to the other parts of this story here, because I’m having a problem with some posts not showing up in searches/tags. Probably due to all of that racy content I post. (Tumblr flagged me. Oh, the hilarity.) But there are thirteen parts previous to this one, and they should be easily findable on my tumblr. Which is not, for the record, home to content that is sensitive.

Helicobacter 14

That morning in her office, wishing she had not begun the day’s coffee consumption in the middle of the night, Helena found herself once again fatigued—yet the lack of sleep also rendered her energized, strung out on anticipation. She also found herself once again staring at those model trees, so valiant despite their small size. So valiant they had been, since the very beginning, and Helena envied them their ability to remain oblivious to the disaster that had befallen the model neighborhood they for so short a time called home.

Of course, the “plan” did not necessarily have to be the full catastrophe she was envisioning, for in the end, she and Myka could always swear that the (fictional) email-driven misunderstanding would remain that. No one in a position of power knew what had really happened. No one knew that anyone had said anything like “I love you” on the telephone in the middle of the night.

When she worked up her nerve, she asked Steve, “Do you and Liam have plans for Saturday night?” If he said yes, she could at least keep this... quiet. Somewhat quiet. A bit quiet.

Unfortunately, Steve said no.

“Would you like to participate in a disaster?” Helena asked next. “A theatrical disaster.”

“Is that supposed to make me want to say yes or no?”

“I have no idea. However, it might be better for me to have allies, simply as a check on my worst impulses where a certain someone is concerned. I find myself agreeing to things... so perhaps you can pull me back from that ledge.”

“The fact that we’re talking about plans for Saturday night that involve a certain someone suggests to me that you’ve already agreed to something,” he said, but he was smiling rather than observably attempting to control his breathing.

“That, I regret to admit, is true.”

“Have you jumped off a ledge?”

“Not literally.”

“But only because she hasn’t asked you to.” Still smiling.

“I regret to admit as well that that is the only reason. It might solve some problems if she did ask and I did do it. In the literal sense.”

He said, with a beleaguered air, “I guess we’d better come, if only to tie a rope around your middle.”

“You are the best assistant the world will ever know.”

“I try. Then again, so do you.”

“Not enough.” She looked at the model-piece. “We need to build more libraries.”

“That sounds like a ledge, or stepping off of one.”

“What does Liam like most?” she countered.

“Other than me? You’ll laugh.” In response to this, Helena again heard herself make the question-noise, which now would always remind her of Myka having recognized it. How that woman wormed her way into everything... Steve answered the now-Myka-reminiscent noise by saying, “Gardening.”

And Helena did laugh, as predicted. She’d expected the answer to be professional, such as “the law,” or perhaps something fitting Liam’s extraordinarily handsome looks, such as “Armani suits.” Then again, Myka was every bit as beautiful as Liam was handsome, and Myka loved books... Helena said, “Wouldn’t you build many, many greenhouses if you could? Because you could?”

“They’re pretty objectively good, right? Like libraries. Maybe we do need to build more of them.”

“I am not opposed. Find a project, or projects, and we’ll bid.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” she told him, with feeling.

“You’re not just saying that because I’m bringing rope on Saturday?”

“Everything is connected, my darling Steve.”

He chuckled. “With rope?”

“If necessary.”

“What is this really about?” he asked.

“I’ll let Myka tell you—it will please her enormously to go into detail.” Saying “Myka” aloud pleased Helena herself enormously. So rare a pleasure, lately. “Also I don’t understand any of the duplicitous particulars well enough to explain them to you. Sadly, I don’t have Greek, so I can’t read the epic poem in the original... plus, I haven’t slept.”

“I can tell... please don’t tell me why not.”

“Would that it were that.” She sighed. “My darling Steve. Am I ever going to feel in control again?”

“Have you ever? Really?”

“Comparatively.” She had certainly at some point not experienced this career-off-a-cliff need to agree with every objectively ridiculous proposal of an irresistible, book-loving city planner...

“Do you want to? Feel that way again, I mean?”

“Yes?” Because she ought to want to.

“So cancel the Saturday plans.”

“I can’t.”

“Then no. You won’t ever.”

“Hence the need for the rope,” Helena agreed.

“I think I’m going to have to learn how to actually do roping. Maybe not the tricks with the spinning, but enough to throw the loop around you.”

“I suspect your doing that would be met with great enthusiasm from a particular spectator.” So easy to picture the enthusiasm—the delight—on Myka’s face if she witnessed such a performance, but Helena tried to return to pessimism. “Not that I expect any of this to work out.”

“You know the real reason Liam and I’ll both be into this Saturday thing?” Helena shook her head, and Steve went on, “What always happens is that we’re at his place or my place, and we don’t have the energy to come up with any ideas about what to do, so we stay in. And then he complains that we never go anywhere.”

“So it’s because this comes prepackaged as an idea of what to do?”

“For him, that’s my bet. But for me, it’s because after he complains, he smiles at me. And I give thanks that I get to witness it. Myka’s got a pretty decent smile... I think you should have the opportunity to give that kind of thanks.”

From anyone else, such words might have cloyed. From Steve, they calmed. “The best person the world will ever know,” Helena said, with certainty.

To which Steve replied an impish, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

“I will concede that you may have peers. Six-fifteen.”

“I have six hundred and fifteen peers?”

“Myka wants you there at six-fifteen.” Her name, out loud, again...

“Do you really think this is going to be a disaster?”

“That question is, at this point, moot. I tried, but I have met my match.”

“In more ways than one, I guess,” Steve said, but he continued to smile.

That gave Helena leave to answer, “You guess correctly.”

****

At six in the evening on Saturday, Helena stood in her customary spot outside Myka’s door, her customary flowers in hand, second-guessing her decision to bring one extra-large bouquet rather than two this time. But then her thinking and deciding didn’t matter at all, for Myka opened the door and was there, a physical presence not in a City Hall elevator.

Myka didn’t let Helena hand her the flowers, didn’t even get them out of the way; she pulled Helena close and kissed her as if they were alone. A fussy part of Helena wanted to protect the poor bouquet, but that part was outvoted by every other part, bodily and otherwise, all of which were celebrating standing once again in this space, enveloped once again in these arms, being kissed—she kissed soft, Myka did. Belying the body-crush, her mouth was careful, solicitous.

Helena eventually regarded the no-longer-impressive bouquet with a bit of disappointment. “Much as I enjoyed that, you might have let me set these down first.”

“You’re going to have so many more chances to give me flowers, and I’ll give them to you all the time too, and floriculture will flourish around the world thanks to us.”

“‘Floriculture will flourish’? Are you drunk?”

“Not yet, you beautiful... hm. I was going to call you a cheapskate again, but those flowers look like they might have been expensive before somebody made a mess of them.” She raised her voice. “Mom! Helena brought you some pricey smashed flowers!”

Helena said to Jeannie, who wore an extremely smug (and, Helena had to admit, extremely justified) smirk as she approached, “In the interest of accuracy, Helena brought you and your daughter some flowers, which your daughter caused to be smashed. Cost notwithstanding.”

“I saw you participating,” Jeannie said. Helena supposed she could hardly have missed it.

Then came another familiar voice—from the hallway, for Myka had neglected to close the door, Helena heard Abigail say, “That is an interesting euphemism for what they were doing.”

Myka shook a fist at her. “You weren’t supposed to get here before six-fifteen!”

Abigail, unmoved, said, “Like I didn’t know the reason for that.”

Apparently everyone had known the reason for that, and they had all wanted to see the six o’clock show: Rick and Varsha appeared behind Abigail, and Steve and Liam did too, making for a traffic jam not only of bodies but of introductions. Abigail enthused to Steve, of Liam, “He doesn’t disappoint!”

Liam said, “I’m... pleased?”

“I thought he was overselling your looks,” Abigail told Liam. “What with being in swoony love,” she added, and Steve blushed.

Myka said, into Helena’s ear, “Speaking of swoony love, it isn’t possible to oversell you. There aren’t enough words,” and when Helena tried to shush her, Myka kissed the ear she’d just whispered into.

Varsha, upon being introduced to Abigail, said, “Overjoyed to meet you. I was honestly beginning to think none of them knew any actual people.”

Abigail nodded. “It’s just me. Let’s do lunch or something. But only if you aren’t planning to, one, bid on a city contract, and two, fall in love with me, because there’s only so much of this kind of drama I feel like I can handle.”

“I can promise the first one,” Varsha said. “The second, that’s up to fate.”

Rick said, “Wait, what? Are you joking?”

“No,” Varsha said, in such a way as to make Helena wonder whether she ever joked.

To Rick, Abigail said, “You might need to class up your personal plating, Myka’s ex. I’m pretty charming.”

“Also not wallpaper,” Varsha added.

Myka said, “Confirm. She is not wallpaper. Can additionally confirm the charming point.”

“Should I be the one who’s concerned?” Helena asked. “You two are together most all day every day.”

Myka kissed her.

“Thank you for the reassurance,” Helena said.

“I didn’t do it to reassure you,” said Myka, and after smiling at Helena’s raised “then why” eyebrow, she said, “because I can,” and that was even better than reassurance.

Rick said to Myka, “You and I never got this far.”

“This far,” Myka repeated. “This far?”

“Rehearsal dinner.”

Myka squinted at him. “I really like that we can joke about this,” she said.

“Still too soon?”

Now Myka swatted him, her palm against his head. “In perpetuity, you ding-dong.”

Ding-dong? Helena began laughing at how ridiculous such an utterance sounded, certainly from Myka’s mouth, and when Myka looked at her quizzically, she could offer only, “I’ve never heard anyone say that.”

Rick said, “You should’ve hung out with us in—what was it, fourth grade? Some entire school year, it was everybody calling everybody a ding-dong.”

This made Varsha bark a laugh as well. She said, “Oh my god, it’s worse yet also better when you say it.”

To Helena, Myka said, ‘I want to hear you laugh like that in perpetuity. And you are not a ding-dong”—which set Helena off again, and Myka said, “Well, maybe you are,” but she softened it with a sweet nuzzle into Helena’s hair.

In fact throughout the entire evening, Helena found Myka to be physically demonstrative to an extent that was... new. Every time Myka neared Helena, her right arm extended toward Helena’s waist, her hips, eventually settling onto the concavity just where fixed ribs gave way to floating, there on the right side—there, or resting, higher but just as happy, in the middle of Helena’s back. These placements of her hand: Helena found them correct. Feeling the fit, the lock into place. Like sides of the bed.

All this prompted Helena to ask Myka, at a later point when, for a moment, they did not seem to be the center of anyone’s attention, “How much had you been holding back?”

“What do you mean?”

“Before. In contrast with all this contact now, tonight,” Helena said.

“I told you I was going to kiss you and kiss you and kiss you.” And Myka proceeded to do that.

“I did think that was hyperbole. I’m not complaining, but you didn’t do this before.”

“Well, before. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. You were doing me a favor with the engagement. Several favors.”

“I thought I was.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable now? I can stop.”

“Can you?” But Helena was teasing. “I haven’t seen you stop yourself from doing much of anything you want to do. Certainly not anything related to this evening.”

Myka shrugged. “I’m really committed to working toward certain goals.”

Helena regarded the relaxation of Myka’s posture, the playful smile on her lips, the glow of her gaze... and she was struck by, but couldn’t bear, the possibility of Myka being deprived of all this, of having to once again become the pale picture of irritated overwork she had been before. And this was no pretense of happiness, as Myka had said she’d been putting on as part of her project; rather, this was the real thing: Myka happy, not holding back. Yet had they spent enough time together for Helena to be sure that that was so? “Is this how you are, with me?” Helena asked. “Is this how we are?”

“I wouldn’t be bothering otherwise.”

Helena didn’t doubt it. “I’m sorry I haven’t worked as hard as you have. Toward those goals.”

“You can make it up to me later. Long game, you beautiful cheapskate.”

“The bill will come due?” Helena asked, pretend-rueful.

“I certainly hope so.”

“I do too. But can you promise me that we will never have to engage in a performance this ridiculous again?”

Myka put on a show of considering, then said a simple “No.”

****

Scenes from a Rehearsal Dinner

Helena pulls Abigail aside to say, because she has not had a chance to say it, “I thought we weren’t doing this. I thought we were actively keeping her safe. No possibility of public shaming. I did try very hard to—”

“Except for the glasses incident.”

“That was a mistake, one that I, if no one else, made a sincere attempt not to compound. Why are you helping her in this? Why are you not physically preventing me from helping her?”

“Didn’t she tell you her theory?” Abigail asks.

“Oh god, what now.”

“They’d never public-shame her over this, if they find out what she’s really been doing—and if she somehow gets in trouble for any part of it, they will definitely find out, because she’s planning to tell them the entire story, her idea being that it’s too insane.”

“That’s...” Helena begins, but she realizes she has nowhere sensical to go. “Well, that’s....”

Abigail nods. “Right? Because who’s going to call the org chart into a room and say ‘Here’s what you can’t ever do: put on a play about having your cancer recur so as to persuade your boss that you’ve fallen back in love with your ex-fiancé who it turns out is really a contractor who, if you can’t have her, you’ll waste away and die, but you would still like to keep your job, please and thank you.’”

“When you put it that way, I have no idea how anyone could follow it.”

“Exactly. In Myka’s own extremely special way, she’s brilliant... and as far as I can tell, the cancer—and you—really made her drill down on that.”

“Rick does say this isn’t how she behaved in the past,” Helena concedes. “But I’m beginning to think her newly revealed talents are being wasted in her chosen field.”

“Someday she’ll rule the world. And then, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I bet we’ll all be buckling our seat belts and hanging on for dear life. And enjoying it. I mean, look at you: you’re enjoying it right now.”

“‘Enjoying’ may be a shade too positive. In any case, you seem to have a part in the play too.”

“Point taken.” Abigail snickers. “I told her to buy grapefruit, and she asked me why. Never got around to breakfast after that glasses incident?”

“I did not punch her in the face.”

“You’ve said.”

“But I may yet punch you.”

Abigail waves off this concern. “I’m helping. Also, I’m not wearing glasses. So punching me wouldn’t get you going at all.”

Several pizzas arrive. Myka asks Helena, “Did you know there’s such a thing as lobster pizza?”

Before Helena can answer, Rick says, “Why wouldn’t there be? Can’t you slap anything on a pizza crust?”

Abigail says, thoughtfully, “Then again, Myka’s ex, you may be my kind of chef.”

Varsha warns, “Mind yourself, not-wallpaper. I don’t want to have to cancel lunch.” She eyes the pizza boxes. “I also don’t want to have to engage in any avoidance behaviors.”

“No allergens,” Myka tells her. To Helena, she says, “Which means your dreams are safe, too.” Myka then busies herself handing out what she calls “the scenario”—several stapled-together pages of which Helena is as terrified as she ever has been of creatures that are large and have claws. She reads the first line: “First, there was a fountain.” She wishes she weren’t driving; she needs several stiff drinks.

Myka says, “Okay, nobody’s got lines as such because I didn’t have time to learn all the medical terminology, and also I’m not sold on anybody’s ability to get it down by Monday.”

“I love improv,” Liam says as he receives his pages.

“So do I!” Jeannie tells him, and they make exclamatory faces at each other.

Liam continues, “Ooh, can I be one of the doctors?”

Jeannie, for her part, sighs. “I suppose I’m relegated to being the mother.”

“Relegated?” Myka demands. “Mom!”

Helena mutters, “How could this go wrong.”

“You’re such a pessimist,” Myka says.

“Why does that make you smile?”

Jeannie, for the moment embracing her relegation to the role of mother, says to Helena an indulgent, “Everything about you makes her smile.”

\Myka beckons to Helena. “Come with me,” she says, leading her down the hallway, in the direction of the bedroom... raising Helena’s hopes for a brief, scandalized moment... but their destination is instead a different room, this one an office (with air a bit chilly at the moment but not stale; Myka must in fact spend time here) featuring a computer with a large monitor. “Dad’s actually really going to call in this time,” Myka says, “and if I’m trying to hold my phone screen steady he gets seasick. So this works better.”

And indeed, after not much time, there appears a slightly choppy video image of a some-days-bewhiskered older man sitting in the stern of a rowboat. He wears a fishing hat of an incongruous bright red. Whatever technology is enabling the call seems to be his only companion in the boat, yet he regards it as if it has appropriated the entire armrest between them on an airplane.

Myka begins, “Hi, Dad. Any luck?”

“Fishing is not a matter of luck,” her father says; this must be a customary exchange. “It’s skill.”

“Any skill?”

He answers a solemn, “Only on the part of the fish.”

Myka pulls Helena into view of the computer’s camera. She keeps her arm around Helena’s waist as she says, “Dad, this is Helena. Helena, this is my dad, Warren Bering.”

“Helena.” He nods. “Myka’s explained.”

“Has she?” Helena asks. “Fully?”

“How should I know?” he asks in turn, and Helena has to concede that this is a reasonable question.

“I’ll go grab Mom,” Myka announces.

“Wait—” Helena calls, but she is gone. And there Helena still is, expected to speak cogently to Myka’s father. Having recently thought about the time she spent in his daughter’s bedroom. She coughs and says, “I’m pleased to... semi-meet you.”

Myka’s father, who does not seem, based on this first semi-meeting, to be someone given to sentiment, nevertheless offers Helena a kind, if gruff, lifeline. “Semi-same. You want to go fishing?” he asks.

“Do you mean right now?”

He shrugs. “Get on a plane.”

“You have no idea how appealing that sounds.”

“Oh, I have some idea,” he says.

“And yet your wife and daughter would, I suspect, exact revenge on me if I failed to participate.”

“Get used to the feeling. Or leave the family.”

“These are my choices?”

“From where I sit.”

“You’re in a boat,” Helena observes.

“Well, or spend a lot of time fishing.”

“I don’t know how to fish.”

“Guess you’d better participate, then.”

“Or leave the family?”

“Myka hates how red her face gets when she cries,” he says. Factually. As he might state Myka’s age, or her eye color.

“You’re saying that the ‘leave the family’ option is off the table,” Helena tries.

“I’m saying that Myka hates how red her face gets when she cries.”

“You are a member of an overall very strange family.”

He leans against the back of the boat; the change in posture makes him far less forbidding. “I heard your brother married some lady because she wrecked his car,” he says, with a little conjurer’s wave of his right hand.

“Touché,” Helena says.

Helena finds herself standing next to Rick. They are both watching and listening to Myka, who with great animation is detailing for Steve and Liam—and Abigail, but Helena knows that she already knows—the motivations of the characters in “the scenario”: “This is preposterous,” Helena says. “Does anyone honestly expect me to believe that this inclination—this readiness—to deceive is a new development in Myka’s character? It seems far too well-honed.”

Rick says, “She was always really really smart—especially in a get-things-done way—but I swear to you, if I’d known she was likely to turn into somebody like this, I probably wouldn’t have gone out with her in the first place.” He pauses to scratch his blond head. “Or maybe I wouldn’t ever have let her get away? I’m really not sure.”

“Well. Too late,” she tells him, and he bows that blond head in recognition.

He then says, “I need more food,” and wanders off, presumably to find some, mumbling words that sound like “lobster” and “pizza” and “I wish.”

Steve is telling Abigail, “I like your idea about not rerunning what happened before too exactly.” Myka has given her credit, in the written scenario, for this innovation. “I bet Helena likes it too—no blood on her this time.”

Abigail says, “We’re getting fake stuff that doesn’t stain. But also, history doesn’t literally repeat. Or it shouldn’t.”

“It can’t,” Myka says. “Same river twice.”

Abigail comes back with, “Or, better, first time as tragedy, second time as farce.”

“Whatever you say, Marx,” Myka tells her.

Helena mutters, “More like the Marx Brothers in this case.”

“In this case,” Abigail says, “which time is tragedy and which is farce? Genuine question for Myka. I mean the blood situation seems to support Marx’s version, but...”

“No times as tragedy,” Myka says firmly. “First time as TV hospital drama, second time as romantic comedy.”

“Not farce? Really?” Helena asks.

“Not unless the pies start flying,” Myka assures her.

Liam says, “I think that’s technically slapstick.”

Steve laughs and gives Liam a peck on the cheek. “I love you.”

“None of it oversold,” pronounces Abigail.

“You know, you’re right,” Helena says, for Myka chooses that moment to catch her eye and smile. And Helena gives thanks.

“I’m so happy,” Myka says to Helena, as if she’s been trying not to say it but can’t hold it in. Helena welcomes the words both as themselves, and as confirmation that her impression about pretense—or rather, its lack—had been correct.

“Are you?” She doesn’t need to ask the question, but Myka seems to be multiplying her joy by speaking it aloud.

“I am. About all of it. This”—a kiss—“and also that everybody knows everything now.”

Helena feels compelled to state, “Not everybody. Not yet.”

“I just said I’m happy. Quit raining on my parade.”

“It is quite a parade. And yet Rick seems to be sleeping through it.” She points at Rick, who is on the sofa, head back, eyes closed, mouth open.

“Hey, mister!” Myka says at him, and his eyes snap open. “Nap on your own time.”

“This is my own time,” Rick objects. But he says to Abigail, who happens to be beside him at that moment. “I think I did fall asleep during part of the briefing. Are they engaged in this version?”

“Not yet. The email proxy, remember?”

“Right. Sorry. I’m just tired. Long shifts. I’ll read the cheat sheet later.” He pulls a decorative pillow to him, clasps his arms around it, and closes his eyes again. Embroidered on the pillow is a fine-featured monkey, attired to assist an organ-grinder. If Rick were wearing a fez, their kinship would be unmistakable. As it is, Helena is left to wonder why Myka has a decorative pillow that depicts a fez-wearing monkey, why she herself has never noticed that fact before, and how Myka manages not only to say things Helena does not expect but also to decorate in that way too.

Helena feels a tap on her shoulder; she turns to see Jeannie. “Mm?” Helena asks. (She imagines both Charles and Myka laughing at her for it.)

Jeannie sighs, with great ostentation. Then she points at Helena and says, “Words about destiny.”

“Mm,” Helena now says. “Myka told you. That much of it?” Everybody knows a far greater portion of everything than I was aware, she thinks.

“My daughter is a lovely person.”

“I... know?”

“But she is a talker.”

“Also known,” Helena says.

“And yet not with everyone. In fact with very few. It’s a sign.”

“Suspected, yet not entirely known. Very much appreciated, however.”

“Destiny,” Jeannie maintains.

“I don’t disagree. Also very much appreciated.”

Myka, carrying two full wine glasses, clearly in transit, bends her head to kiss Helena’s cheek. She says, “Told you it sounded more upbeat than fate,” kisses her once more, then moves on.

“Thank you,” Helena says to Jeannie.

“For?”

The entirety of this gift. “The unanticipated.”

Rick and Varsha are the last to leave, save Helena herself. She suspects Abigail and Steve and Liam, who departed together, are staging some sort of private afterparty of their own.

Jeannie hugs Rick. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d find a nice young lady?” she says.

“I don’t prefer to be thought of as nice,” Varsha informs her. She evades a hug, as if to prove her point.

“You’ve been perfectly nice to me,” Jeannie says, though with a tinge of thwarted-hug disappointment. “I asked if you’d mind if I ate the last piece of the pizza that had the artichoke hearts, and you said ‘not at all,’ even though we both liked that one best.”

“I did say that,” Varsha allows, but with a hostile witness’s displeasure that this overzealous prosecutor is using her past statements against her.

“So you’re nice under certain circumstances,” the prosecutor continues, and Myka nudges Helena and murmurs what’s a circumstance. “Are you nice to Rick?”

Rick hurries to say, “It’s all good, Mrs. B.”

Jeannie crosses her arms. “I didn’t ask you, mister.”

Helena doesn’t bother to hold back a laugh. “And just like that, you turn into Myka.”

“I’m her mother.”

Myka, for her part, doesn’t bother to hold back a snort: “Don’t even try acting like you’re proud of that, Mom. Somebody named you was complaining about being relegated.”

“In the play.”

“Also, you’re the one who got upset about not being called in to get all relegated the first time.”

“That was real.”

“Would you be happier if this were too? I could always knock back a shot or two of H. pylori.”

Helena says, “Do. Not. Tempt. Fate.” Myka gives her a comical stare, and Helena sighs and amends, “Destiny.” To Jeannie, she notes, “But I am not saying words about it.”

Varsha says, “Fate or no, I would be very interested in the case if she did knock back those shots.”

“I’m not sure what reading that gets on the ‘nice’ meter,” Jeannie says.

“Throws its calibration off completely,” Rick says. “It never works again.”

“I do like you,” Varsha tells him.

Jeannie says she will busy herself “collecting pizza boxes,” a euphemism for “ignoring the two infatuated women saying goodnight in the magic foyer.”

Myka’s conspiratorial whisper to Helena: “I’d ask you to stay, but my mother’s here.”

“Sneak out,” Helena whispers back.

“Who sneaks out of their own apartment?” Myka says this as part of a smile against Helena’s neck.

“You make me so strangely happy.”

A chuckle. “I’ll leave her a note. Still think it should say ‘be right back’? How fast are you feeling?”

“Happy,” Helena reaffirms. “But strangely so,” she adds, as well as, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t find a part for Charles in the play? Otherwise he’d be at my house, and what would we do then?”

“It’s like you never heard of this amazing invention called a hotel room. They’re incredibly romantic, plus you get clean towels every day if you don’t care about the environment.”

“You make it sound like a very judgmental place.”

“Or you can hang up the ‘do not disturb’ sign and save the environment.”

“I don’t think that’s technically what that sign is for.”

“You’re not very into mixed-use design, are you? Which is weird for an urban architect. But I’m not worried; I’ll meet Charles eventually. And in the meantime, he’s not here.”

“He is not.” And in any case Helena would throw him out into the street if it meant she could be alone with Myka...

“Don’t tell him I said this—because I want him to like me—but: good.”

****

When Helena opened her door to Myka this time, she did not need to ask “why are you here,” and she did not need to wish that Myka would push her way in: after only a breath of standing and looking, Helena pulled her, because she wanted to get Myka to the bedroom as fast as she could, not because either of them needed to be fast, but to make sure that she was there, where Helena had feared she would never be, before anything happened to prevent it.

“If this doesn’t work,” Helena said, as Myka smiled at her haste, “and I don’t see how it could, so I should say when this doesn’t work...”

“Then it’s your turn to dream something up. I know you can.” Myka stopped moving, which drew Helena to a halt too. “You will, won’t you?”

Myka’s voice held not doubt, not exactly, but somewhere within that light won’t you Helena felt a vibration, a reed disturbed by a breath of unease. “We’ll move to Maine and refuse to fish for lobsters,” she said, because she would dream something up. Something, anything—because nothing was more important than this. How could she have thought otherwise?

“From a fountain that doesn’t exist. Don’t forget that part.”

She would dream something up. She took Myka’s hand, kissed it, and began to lead her once again. “I will never, ever forget that part.”

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Helicobacter #AU week #part 14 #sorry about not linking to the other parts #but being flagged really shook me #plus the fact that ‘Santa’ (my second holiday story) didn’t show up in searches or tags #was I already on some watch list?#but while some characters in what I write do engage in adult behaviors #I wouldn't be embarrassed to show any of it to my mother #or to anybody else #(well maybe a little embarrassed)#(but I'm always a little embarrassed)#(if you aren't at least a little embarrassed then in my opinion you haven't put enough of yourself into the work)

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inopinion · 7 years ago

Note

Writing prompt: "would you give everything up, if it would save him?" "No."

Another prompt given to me pre-War Storm. Forgive the late delivery.

See Part 1 here…

@lilyharvord, @mareshmallow, @redqueenfandom, @anyone-anything-canbetrayanyone, @tiberias-vii, @runexandra, @mom2reesie, @scarletguardsource, @adraxsteia, @redqueenfandom, @wrenskonos, @Maria-habs, @cordelnight, @naercxy, @morebooks-pls, @lamemathpuns, @booksmusicmoviesandmore, @thespacebetweenthestars, @book-fandoms-rule-the-world, @juggyandbetty, @redqueen214, @giihmonzane13…

Remember, War Storm Spoilers are involved…

And reblog to share with a friend.

Paranoia isn’t an unfamiliar partner after what I’d been through, but I am certain it’s not just my damaged psyche nor the influence of the alcohol. People are watching us. Strangers that I don’t know crane their necks and track us off the dance floor. Each step becomes a stomp that defies their judgement–real or imaginary.

So close to him, I can’t imagine allowing enough space to do anything but test the strength of the thread holding his buttons. Cal is like no other lover I’ve ever had because there is.. was.. I guess is actual love between us. Has been, will be, forever. Some part of me belongs to him even if that part got left behind on a battlefield. Perhaps he carries it with him like I carry his earring. I’m eager to see if I can find it, the search will be fun enough of a reward.

Except, Farley looks at me like she looks at Clara when she’s headed for a collision with gravity. But I know she’ll let me fall and scrape my knees and cry just the same. Only Clara gets a cuddle and set back on her feet. Farley won’t patch the holes I tear into myself. We’ve been through too much together for me not to respect what that look means: slow down.

Just outside the door I stall. He slows to match. I swing my head around. He takes note of our surroundings. We stop entirely.

Cal is agitated, glaring at a gaping serving girl. He exudes enough warmth that I don’t think I’d need a coat even though it’s snowing. He tugs me, resigned to the gossips. But It doesn’t feel right leaving with him, not like it did before I saw Farley’s face.

“Door’s there. Or I guess we could find some place here to talk.” He waves around us. I swallow. There is no place in the palace without ears. “Second thoughts?” he asks, bitterness coating his tone as he internalizes my hesitation.

He drops my hand and runs his fingers through the curls on his head. It sticks up in weird ways showing exactly how long the top has gotten. I have a third thought, then a fourth, but that’s mostly the alcohol.

“Hey, I want to talk. We should talk. How often are we in the same place, right?” I cringe at his wince. I’m an expert at throwing salt in his wounds. “I just don’t think now is a good time. I mean, I have had more wine than I should. We deserve clear heads, right?”

He swallows, agrees because there’s no other option being given then we hastily make plans. He is scheduled in most of the same sessions as Farley. Almost an entire week completely booked from nine to six. Dinners with various councils and factions take up his nights. I can hear the unspoken conclusion: this is the only time he isn’t already booked.

“But you have to eat lunch, right?” I ask before he can suggest otherwise.

“Provided.”

“But it’s not scheduled. I mean, it isn’t for Farley. Can you get away for lunch? I know a cafe that makes nice sandwiches.”

“Okay, lunch, I guess. I get out of session at eleven-thirty, rejoin at one-fifteen. So, at best, ninety-minutes.”

“Plenty of time,” I respond.

Cal’s face falls. He looks as if he can’t breath, a feeling I know so well that I hurt for him. But I can’t quite fathom why he’s stricken when he never answered my last letter.

“If you’re not ready, that’s okay. It’s okay.” He doesn’t sound like he’s talking to me but to himself, assuring himself.

His chin snaps up in a court-trained posture. He’s let his emotions drip down his sleeves and he makes an effort to recover.

“I meant to start talking. I didn’t mean… I don’t know Cal. Don’t look at me like that.” I can’t help but snap at his neutral mask.

The muscle in his jaw flexes. His eyes are steady and controlled, his temperature moderated, and his voice even when he says, “Where is this cafe?”

Cal gives me whiplash when he squeezes my hand gently and pulls his lip up on one side. Regardless of how much time it is, or what gets said, or what he thinks I’ll say when we get there, we have a date. No, not a date. A meeting. It’s just a meeting, we’ll talk, catch up, trade war stories like other soldiers. We’ll see where he is and where I am. And it’s a fucking date, and I can’t help the surge of excitement.

I walk away, back to Farley who’s critiquing dancers on the floor with another Red General. I’m too caught up in how quickly my word choice crushed Cal to remember her name. One hand, he still likes me, obviously. On the other, he didn’t exactly strike me as emotionally stable. Then again, I almost broke down before dinner just from seeing him, so who am I to talk?

“Oh, you’re still here. Lovely, let’s leave,” Farley muses, flashing teeth.

“Leave? There’s still wine isn’t there?” I smirk as I snag another glass.

I don’t see Cal reenter the ballroom nor can I stop looking for him. I don’t even finish the glass. I hold it just to make Farley wait, which she does with expressive sighs and head rolls. Clara kept her up the night before, too excited about visiting grandma to sleep. But if I wasn’t a pain in Farley’s side, would she still think of me as a sister?

Wriggling out of ballgowns, even those so delicately tailored to my requests, is still a relief second only to a hot bath. Farley’s tub is not luxurious. It barely holds enough water to consider it a soak and my knees stick out if I want my shoulders in, but still, I fill it with water, bubbles and –for good measure– I drop Clara’s mersive and her battleship from eye height just to see them splash.

Between evasive maneuvers and using a bubble-cloud as a fog-storm, my mind veers off of elementary battle tactics and towards the more dangerous realm of silver princes. Ex-princes. Generals. Men.

Cal got upset so quickly I wonder if he expected to sweep me off the dance floor and back into his life. I very nearly left with him. I could have let him carry me out the door and to where ever he has a bed if only for a few more minutes of his warmth. But that was always our problem, too much chemistry and not enough math. We never added things up, not until the very end, and then we were both surprised when we couldn’t quite make it work. Bad analogy, I was never that great with math.

More like we’re two pieces so closely shaped that if you squinted, we fit together perfectly. But eyes wide open, at least when we last parted, there were gaps. We didn’t fit. I couldn’t keep squinting and neither could he.

Maybe I’ve managed to fill-in the right parts of me, and maybe he’s made himself into a new shape, too. That’s what I hoped time would give us. Walking away last night, seeking a clearer head, I don’t think I could have done that before. Surging with pride, I sink the mersive to strike the battleship from below.

“Don’t sleep all day,” Farley tosses something at me, it lands with a thud. She’s out the door before I can roll over.

Bundled together with a rubber-band are brochures, pamphlets, and adds from a newspaper all about jobs. Red retraining programs touting the achievement of a true education and a trade all in one. The Guard’s military brochure is a three page tri-fold with the benefits listed in bold, red letters on a white background. The Montfort pamphlets are similar but green and lack a navy. More describe the training to join the tech sectors in the old tech towns. I let them fall on the floor and flop back over.

It’s not that I don’t want a job, or that I don’t have one. I just don’t have one that pays money with any regularity. I can smell my mom’s complaining on the bold gesture. When we first got to our small town west of Ascendant, I helped Gisa set up her shop, read documents, kept the ledgers, took down orders. But Gisa learned to read and write and then there was little for me around the shop. Besides, my mom deserved the easy job of helping my sister. I haven’t held a steady job since. I’m unreliable. I’m flighty. I’m sensitive to sounds, fast movement, aggressive tones. At least Farley had the sense to offer me service positions, when I tell mom where I got the brochures, she’s gonna let Farley have it.

With a small pinch of joy, I fall back asleep imagining Farley’s face as my mother lectures her on getting me out of trouble and not into it.

The sun is high and the light is beautiful through the translucent drapes over the windows. They alternate purple and blue and cream creating shadows and casting color on the plain walls. I haven’t woken so rested in a long time, at least a month. My stomach growls.

I am hungry.

The sun is up, high in the sky.

Flying from the couch to the kitchen I squint through sleepy eyes at the clock and panic. There’s no time. I yank on pants, a mostly clean shirt and stuff my feet into boots. I squirt some tooth paste into my mouth and rinse with water. I am leaving five minutes later than I should. I run and it feels so good to be heading somewhere, to have the adrenaline, to chase that high all the way up the hill and down the other.

At the bottom of the hill, work crews struggle. Water pulses out of the storm drain onto the street. On the edges, it freezes into ice and builds up in layers as the waves come faster than the nymph can redirect. The silver isn’t very powerful and can do little more than redirect the water. The entire street is blocked.

I race up the hill to the road at the top and rush down half a block to the alley and then back down the hill. The detour forces me to loop around the building that holds the cafe. The clock on the bank across the street says it’s almost noon. I am nearly thirty minutes late, fifteen if he didn’t leave the council until eleven-thirty.

Through the door, I pause to watch. I want to see him without him knowing that I’m watching. I want to read him, how he is without me. How he is when he’s on his own and not a general or a lord of a high house. He looks stoically at the server behind the counter. His coat floats up as his arm pushes into it and pulls it on, preparing to leave. When the server looks away, he glances back at the table in the corner. Cal turns back, eyebrows drawn together, mouth looking pained. A few coins come out of his hand and fall in the tip jar. A bag is pushed across to him, his lunch to-go. I time it so that I walk through just as he turns to head out so I can clearly see his face.

He is appropriately disconcerted that his path is blocked, then his entire face lightens as he flushes. Blood rushes his cheekbones, he blushes into a pallor and a coy smile. Cal’s caught not knowing what to say, lips moving, tongue still. His eyes are so soft and kind and then concerned.

“Thought you might have gotten lost,” he lies.

“Nope. Just late.” I step forward.

For every two steps, he backs up one, leading me towards the table in the corner. He slips his jacket off and sets it on the chair, his back to the wall. I peel off my coat and drape it over the chair.

“I’ll just order, be right back.”

I order a sandwich, a cup of coffee, and an apple. Cal isn’t fast enough to look away when I glance over, but the fact that he tries confirms where his eyes were wondering. It’s nice to know he still appreciates me in that way. I hope we’re ready to consider something a little more. As weak as I am when it comes to him, I try to swear my self to a resolution: slow, steady, and not just for the sizzle.

“I over slept.”

“Ah, the troubles of the victors.” He teases, I think.

I don’t laugh, stuffing my mouth with a bite of food instead.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Not if you’re going to talk with your mouth full.”

The disgust on his face is real. That makes me laugh for real. I cover my mouth with my hand, somewhere between me and Mareena in my manners. He unwraps his sandwich.

“So?” I ask.

“So… how’s your family? Do they like Montfort?”

If he’s asked Farley then he should know, but it’s an easy enough topic to break the ice. He keeps me talking. He asks about everyone: mom, dad, Gisa, Bree, Tramie –no one is left out.

“And finally, Kilorn. What’s that fucker up to?”

There is no other way I would want someone to refer to Kilorn. For all he is, he is at his very heart a pain in the ass. An amazing, wonderfully loyal and insufferable friend. He has managed to endear himself not just to me and my family but to Farley, and Cameron, and even, apparently to Cal.

“Couldn’t keep him away from the water. He’s in the Nortan Navy. We get letters sometimes, mostly he’s bored. Sometimes he’s in trouble. But he’s always got a good group of people around him.”

“What ship?”

“The Cardinal.”

“I’ll keep tabs.” He holds my gaze and I know that even now, Cal will help keep Kilorn safe in what ever way he can, for me.

“Thanks.” I catch myself dry mouthed and tired lips. My coffee is cooling and my sandwich is only missing a few bites while his is all gone. I’ve talked so long. “What about you?”

“Well, you know. I’ve got fewer to look after, I guess it makes things dull.” He pushes quickly past the pain but I see it all the same. “I just keep my soldiers fit, ready, mind our posts.”

“You haven’t picked up a hobby?”

“I have, actually. I am becoming an expert at budgeting.” He smiles broadly, proud and cheerful in acknowledging his new position.

“Damn, did you have to cut back on the armor?” His eyes flick past me, again.

He’s been looking over my shoulder, at the door every few minutes. I turn and look. The door swings shut and a patron greets another at a table.

“You waiting for someone else?” I ask, turning back.

“No. I am here completely for you.” His eyes flick again and I hear the door shut again.

“Why you watching the door?”

“Nothing. Just a habit.”

He crushes the paper from his sandwich between his fists. I can still read him well and there’s shame in his posture. I glance behind me again, the suspicion that I’m sitting square in a trap flashes through me and the lightning comes to my fingertips.

“Easy, Mare.”

“You’re making me nervous. Why are you watching the door?”

“I’m… checking for assassins,” he barely mumbles. When the door opens again, I watch him fight his insticts then finally give in with a glance over my shoulder.

“Assassins? You’re not the King, Cal.”

“Yeah, well, some people forget. And the last time, I almost didn’t make it.”

Silence. Stillness. Processing is slow when someone you love is uncomfortable and embarrassed and admitting their weaknesses when they want you to think they’re strong. It made Kilorn shake under our house in the Stilts, and Maven dare me from his bathtub, and Cameron open up to me as we circled the Piedmont base. I want him to tell me more, trust me with what he finds shameful. So I wait and let him come to his words.

“The girl, the one the papers got a photo of me–”

“Kissing?”

“Yeah. She got me alone, um… and then she stabbed me.” Something about how his hands drop into his lap is defensive not casual, an indication of where. I wince with him. “I almost bled to death.”

“Who found you?” The idea that he had a couple suitors never crossed my mind before. But who else would come to find him in his bedroom?

“I didn’t let her get away without injury and she didn’t make it very far before the alarm was raised. Thank my colors, I had my bracelets on.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I sip my coffee and avoid looking directly at him. He’s ghostly pale he’s blushing from his collarbones to the tips of his ears. Some levity seems to be needed, I reach out and touch his hand. He looks up, shocked I’d touch him. “Most importantly, did they take care of that… um… curve?”

“Shut up. It is not curved.” he retracts, losing his breath in laughs.

“Well, I mean maybe not now. I wouldn’t blame you for taking advantage of the situation. I mean, making some improvements.”

“Surprised you didn’t say bigger.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not about the size. It’s how you use it.”

“And how was I at using it?” his knee brushes mine under the table and his lip pulls up goofy and flirting.

“You got better,” I begrudgingly admit after some contemplation.

“I’d happily remind you by how much.”

“I might just…” I stop myself. His lips slam shut. He straightens and clears his throat. I can’t finish what I’m saying.

“Sorry.” He looks at his watch and then back at the door. It’s time for him to return to sessions, discussions, strategies. “Time is up.”

“This was nice,” I admit. My hand is still on his on the table.

Warm fingers slide over mine until he’s gently massaging my palm. “I liked it.”

“Enough to say the past is forgiven?” I ask.

“You never needed forgiveness from me.”

“Didn’t I?” I hold his eyes steady, not letting him look away. For the first time since we sat down, I’m being completely serious. I need to know what might follow us forward.

“What for?” He asks.

“Just one question, one honest question. If you could go back and do it all over again, if you could just flip me that coin and walk away? And I never fall into that arena, would you go back?” I can’t bring myself to use the words, but I need to know if he will live his life regretting meeting me because, in the end, and actually at the beginning, I took his brother.

Cal pulls back, leans against the chair. “Julian says it’s the curse on the survivors to spend our time trying to remake our regrets.”

It’s a non-answer that might as well be a yes. I start to stand, tears prickling. Laughing with him, hearing him sigh, and joke reminds me of too many things I want to keep. But I don’t want to be a reminder of all that he lost. Why he lost everything.

“Mare, I have a lot of regrets. But you’re not one of them. Elara would have ruined him no matter the path. Maybe I could have had a few more years, or a few months, but she would have taken him in the end. Jon only knows, but I tend to think this might have been the best I could have hoped for, at least the way it happened, I didn’t go through it alone.”

“So, where does that leave us?”

He stands and pulls on his jacket. He takes in a deep breath and lets it out. “How about same time tomorrow?”

And the next day and the next. We have one week of sessions and meetings before he’s back on a plane to Norta. And it’s exactly the slow pace I need, that we need, to see exactly where we’ve grown and what we’ve left behind. Maybe at the end, we’ll find that we finally fit. Or maybe it answers the question differently, with less pain, fewer choices to rehash that never asking in the first place.

Reblogs appreciated.

#Anonymous #War Storm Spoilers #Red queen Fanfiction #marecal #my writing #fanfiction #mare barrow #cal calore #war storm #red queen

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iliketowrite1996 · 7 years ago

Text

College Days

Okay- I have never written a story like this before, so I did my best! I hope it is good- I want to experiment with different writing types.

Mentions of unrequited love, breaking up, and friendship troubles. second guessing and nervousness. Freshman Year

You are strolling down the sidewalk on our university’s campus, head bopping to the song that is playing that is playing through your headphones.

You are three days into your freshman year, and you already love this place. Your roommate is nice, your dorm is close to a majority of your classes, and you’ve already gotten a head start on next week’s homework. You are relaxing in the moment, relishing the feeling of accomplishment.

Until a dark cloud zooms in and ruins what was an otherwise fantastic day.

Someone bumps into you, spilling your iced coffee down your pristine white shirt.

‘’Cold, cold, cold!,’’ you squeal, watching as the brown liquid soaks into the white fabric.

‘’Miss, I am so sorry. Here, let me help!’’

‘’No, no, that is okay,’’ you sigh, but take the napkins that the strangers offer you.

You suddenly feel a jacket over your shoulders, and you look up to see the young man that gave it to you.

Calling him handsome would be an understatement. His skin is glowing beautifully in the sun, his teeth are beautiful, his eyes are beautiful.

This boy is fine.

‘’My apologies, miss. I did not see where I am going. I can have your shirt cleaned for you if would like.’’

‘’No, no, that’s fine! I got this at the thrift store. I spill on myself all of the time, I have become practically immune to it.’’

You realize that you are wearing his jacket, and attempt to slide it off to give it back to him before he stops you.

‘’Please, take it. It looks good on you Besides, I am about to ask you for a favor: could you please tell me where room Hawthorne Hall 341 is?’’

‘’Do you have English-W 131 with Professor Jenkins? Because that is where I am going.’’

‘’Great!,’’ he says a bit too enthusiastically, ‘’I mean, would you mind if I walked with you?’’

‘’No, not at all. Let’s go.’’

The walk is long, and is, unfortunately filled with silence.

Not the comfortable kind.

The awkward kind.

The kind that has you counting how many steps it takes to get to your destination.

55.

You enter the lecture hall, which can’t seat more than seventy-five people. One of the huge perks of going to a smaller university is that you get more one-on-one time with your professor. And if you're going to graduate in four-five years, you need all the help you can get.

‘’Would you mind if I sat next to you,’’ the young man questions, although the class is nearly empty since you still have fifteen minutes.

‘’No, I don’t mind,’’ you say as you climb to the highest level of seating.

‘’Thank you kindly. My name is T’Challa, by the way. T’Challa Udaku. I know that we did not get to do formal introductions earlier.’’

‘’No we did not. I am Y/N Y/L/N, the girl who is currently wearing your coffee. It smells like vanilla. What a waste.’’

‘’Well, I would not say that it was a waste. I do believe I have made a new friend.’’

From that moment, you knew you were going to enjoy your college experience.

Sophomore Year

You and T'Challa became close after that day. You studied together every Wednesday, did your homework together, and had dinner together once a week. He was your partner for group assignments, he was the one who accompanied you to events where you would have felt awkward going alone.

Well, him and the girl he had initially introduced as his sister- Okoye.

Which is how, after a summer spent apart were the only way to keep in touch was through video chats and messaging.

‘’So why can’t you come see me,’’ you’d pouted when he first video chated you.

‘’You know why, Y/N,’’ he’d laugh.

T’Challa had waited until the very last minute to reveal to you that he was the whole prince of a whole country. He’d wanted to make sure that this was genuine friendship. And when he realized that it was, he’d told you the truth. And you promised not to tell anyone. It was easy, too. For one, you kept your friend group small. There was you, T’Challa, Alyssa, and Anthony. For another thing, T’Challa’s name was known to the world, but not his face. King T’Chaka had taken every precaution to ensure that his son’s privacy could be protected for as long as possible, or until he was ready.

Judging from how well you took the news- after you questioned him for two hours- he figured that’d be soon. And it was. He’d let the story slip, even giving an interview for the journalism club. Still, he kept his friend group small, with just the people he knew liked him for him.

Now, you’re sitting in Anthony’s dorm with T’Challa, Anthony and Alyssa, watching a movie. T’Challa’s back is against your wall as you lounge next to him, feet in his lap. Okoye is on the floor, still under the guise of being T’Challa’s sister. Alyssa is sitting in T’Challa’s chair that is pulled away from his desk, and Anthony is on the floor in front of her as she braids his hair.

Alyssa and Anthony have a very unique friendship, similar to your and T’Challa’s. They’re best friends, but everyone always thinks there is more to it, trying to put them in the ‘’Will They or Won’t They’’ plot line.

You and T’Challa never fell into that. Was there attraction on your part? Of curse. The boy is still fine, and he is definitely growing into himself. He is a good man, and he’s showing that each and every day.

And you know he’s attracted to you, too. You still remember the way he looked at you in your floor length, emerald green dress at the Freshmen Formal earlier this year in May. He’d been your unofficial date, seeing as you , him, Alyssa and Anthony all went in a group. You just spent most of your time dancing with T’Challa, especially since he was graceful during the slow dances.

Right now, he’s currently rubbing your ankles, as you’ve been on your feet all day.

‘’You have got to get some more comfortable shoes. You know you are going to be on your feet all day as a teacher.’’

‘’It’s only one day a week. This is just my internship. I can handle it,’’ you sigh, relaxing into his touch again.

‘’You may cause permanent foot problems, beautiful.’’

It’s not the first time that he’s called you that. But he calls Alyssa that as well. You’re a very tight knit group.

And you’re not jealous when he calls her that.

No, you’re not.

‘’Can you two either shut up or make out,’’ Alyssa asks, ‘’I can’t hear the movie.’’

Okoye, as graceful as she is, chokes on her water, stifling her laughter by burying her face in her arm.

Okoye is always teasing T’Challa about the nature of your relationship with each other, but he doesn’t see it as hostile. Besides, you know it’s coming from a place of love- she does not want T’Challa to get his heart broken with… whatever it is you two have going on here, and you understand.

‘’I mean, Y/N does have nice lips, but I am rather busy rubbing her feet because she doesn’t listen and wears heels to her internship.’’

‘’And T’Challa’s lips are dry,’’ you quip, and he looks at you in faux hurt.

‘’Please. They are never chapped.’’

‘’I’m looking at them right now, boo.’’

‘’For the love of… just date already,’’ Anthony jokes, using the line T’Challa had used on him and Alyssa just weeks prior.

It’s not that you haven’t entertained the thought of dating T’Challa. Who wouldn't’? He’s sweet, he’s smart, he is involved. He is currently treasure of the Black Student Union, he volunteers at the homeless shelter, he is always on the Dean’s List.

‘’It’s getting late. Maybe Y/N and I should be getting back to our dorm. We can always finish the movie tomorrow. Besides- it’s boring,’’ Alyssa shrugs, never one to hesitate and hold back what she is thinking.

‘’I will walk with you. Okoye, I trust that you are heading back to your apartment?’’

‘’I am,’’ Okoye says, knowing that this means T’Challa is relieving her of her duties for the time being, ‘’I shall see you all soon. Good night.’’

You say your goodbye’s, and T’Challa escorts you and Alyssa to your dorm.

She stays on the first floor of the building, and you on the second in your single bedroom dorm. So after T’Challa and you say goodnight to her, he walks you to yours.

‘’I hope that it did not make you feel uncomfortable,’’ he tells you as you stop outside of your door, fishing your keys out of your pocket.

‘’No, no, you did not. I understand- I know that we’re just friends. People just like to joke, tough, Why, does it make you uncomfortable?’’

‘’No, no, not at all. To be attached to a woman who is so beautiful and smart? How could that be a bad thing, Y/N?’’

‘’Stop,’’ you laugh, staring at him, ‘’You don’t have to say stuff like that. I am already your friend.’’

‘’I only speak he truth,’’ he stuffs his hands into his pockets, ‘’You know I'm attracted to you.’’

‘’And I to you, T’Challa.’’

‘’So , the real question, I guess is this: ‘Are we going to do something about it?.’’

That throws you, because that question can carry so many different meanings. And you don’t know what it means to him, but you know what it means to you. You want to be more than friends, and yet you don’t. You want something complex and something simple. But relationships are never ever simple.

So, essentially, what you hear when he asks that question is: ‘’Is it worth giving this a shot, no matter the outcome?’’

‘’Come here,’’ you take his hand, guiding him into your dorm room, where he sits on the couch pressed against your wall.

‘’T’Challa,’’ you sigh, sitting down in your desk chair and facing him, ‘’You know I care about you. But you are one of my best friends, and I’d hate to lose you.’’

‘’You would not lose me, Y/N. You know that I would not treat you any differently if we tried to see where this led and it did not work out.’’

‘’I know. I’m worried that you’d see me differently, or that I’d see you differently. I don’t want to lose this friendship,’’ you stress, and he nods.

‘’Alright. I would not want to try to convince you of something that you don't want. Are we going to be okay?’’

‘’We are,’’ you promise, giving him a hug when he stands, ‘’I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast?’’

‘’I would not miss it,’’ T’Challa grins genuinely, ‘’I will see you at the diner at ten.’’

He presses a kiss to your forehead, and for a brief moment you wish he’d press one to your lips.

And you almost take the initiative and kiss him when he pulls away, staring into your y/e/c eyes with his deep, brown ones.

But you don’t. Instead, you let him out, demanding that he messages you when he gets back to his dorm.

And you try not to wonder if you made the right choice.

The next day, you meet T’Challa at your favorite diner. You go there every Saturday morning to catch up, decompress from the week, and to get some homework done together. T’Challa is a Political Science major and you’re an Education major, but it works. He lets you practice lessons on him, you proofread his papers, and he has even asked if you’d ever consider working abroad.

‘’I would. Maybe you, Alyssa, Anthony and I can study abroad senior year,’’ you say as you take another sip of your orange juice, ‘’It’d be fun.’’

Before he can answer, Tessa Atkins, a girl from your and T’Challa’s English class last year, glides over.

‘’Hey, T’Challa.’’

‘’Hello, Y.N,’’ she says to you, but without the same flirtatious tone she’d use don T’Challa. It wasn’t mean, just different.

You’d definitely noticed her attraction to T’Challa last year. It was there before she found out that he is a prince, but you’d be lying if you said that you didn’t feel just a tinge of jealousy.

Just a tinge.

‘’I’ll call you later to discuss our plans. Bye, y'all,’’ she sashays away, and you turn to T’Challa in confusion.

‘’Plans? What plans?’’

‘’Oh, she asked me to accompany her to the movie night on campus,’’ T’Challa explains.

‘’You’re going on a date?’’

‘’If you would like to call it that,’’ he shrugs, ‘’I Haven't dated a lot. You know this. Nakia was my first and last girlfriend before I moved here. I am not so sure that this is a date. I think that we are just hanging out.’’

‘’The way you hang out with me,’’ you ask, stressing the last word in effort to convert what you are really trying to ask.

He looks up at you then, seeing the meaning of your questions in your eyes, ‘’No. It is different.’’

And he changes the subject, so you leave it at that.

But it stays burning in your mind for the rest of the day.

It’s three months later that they start dating, and you’ve never been more grateful for Christmas/Holiday/Winter break in your life/. You retreat back home, spend your time with friends from home and working to raise extra money for the next semester. The calls between you and T’Challa are becoming less frequent, and you know that you have no right to be feeling the way that you do.

You’re the one that told him that it wouldn’t work, and you still believe that.

It doesn’t stop you from wishing that you’d just taken the change.

And yet it does.

And you’re confused.

You’re happy for him, but also hurt, and you're still trying to figure out how that can be.

‘’Y/N, are you okay?,’’ your coworker, Justin, asks.

‘’I am,’’ you insist, clearing a table, ‘’I’m fine.’’

‘’You’ve been acting like this for the whole day. You literally just put the napkin holder in the bin,’’ he tells you, and you sigh, moving to the next table after placing the metal napkin holder back on the table.

‘’I just have a lot on my mind,’’ you shrug, and you wish he’d let it go.

He does not.

‘’Well, maybe you and I can hang out tonight. Go to dinner. It always helps to talk about your feelings.’’

You tell him you’ll think about it.

Mull it over for the rest of your shift.

Agree.

Three weeks later, you’re heading back to school with a boyfriend.

Conversations between you and T’Challa pick up on conversations, and things are back to how they used to be.

Sort of.

You don’t spend much time together, but you have dinner together every Wednesday and do homework together on Thursday’s.

Justin takes the train to see you every weekend, and you double date with T’Challa and Tessa. It’s nice, though, because you and T’Challa are still friends, he’s happy, and you’re happy.

You’re content.

You hope things can stay this nice.

Junior Year

And they do. You’re in love and it is nice and amazing and strange and wonderful and terrifying.

It’s a whirlwind of emotions that you don’t really want to end.

But it does, when he visits you for the last time to break up with you in person, saying that he feels like you two aren’t clicking anymore.

That your heart isn’t in it anymore.

And he’s right.

Because it isn’t.

Which is how you find yourself at T’Challa’s apartment, thirty minutes away from campus. It’s the October of your junior year of college, and tomorrow would’ve been your ten month anniversary with Justin.

Now, you’re lying across T’Challa’s bed with him as you both listen to a playlist of your favorite songs, reflecting back on heart breaks.

‘’This really hurts,’’ you laugh sadly, sniffling as T’Challa brings a hand up to rub your shoulder comfortingly, your head on his own shoulder, ‘’It sucks.’’

‘’I know,’’ he sighs, ‘’Breakups are never easy. But fear not. We have a long weekend due to fall break. We can sit here and listen to music and watch movies.’’

You laugh then, genuinely, and long and loud. He laughs, too, and it’s nice just to not feel the weight of everything else for a little while.

It’s three weeks later that you are taking T’Challa ice skating for the first time, laughing as he falls to the ice.

‘’Are you alright?’’

‘’I am. You may laugh now, Y/N, but you will not when I am the Black Panther. I will have grace and agility,’’ he smirks, leaning on you for support as you help him to stand.

‘’For someone who’s never skated before, you are doing fairly well.’’

It’s a nice way to calm down, enjoying Thanksgiving break since neither of you went back home. Instead, you had a turkey dinner with him yesterday, and he made you the same pastries that his mother, Ramonda, often makes for him when he is home for the summer.

‘’You look beautiful under these fluorescent lights,’’ he tells you, and you burst out laughing as he takes your hand again, letting him guide you around the rink.

‘’Thank you. I’m still going to laugh at you if you fall.’’

And fall he does.

Right on top of you.

Talk about awkward.

‘’I’m sorry,’’ he apologized, bracing himself against the ice to roll off of you, ‘’Maybe we should take a break? We can get something warm to drink?’’

‘’Yeah, that sounds nice.’’

Even though you kind of wanted that moment to last a little bit longer.

You find yourself rushing into T’Challa’s apartment, soaked from the freezing cold, November rain.

‘’You can get undressed in the bathroom. I will get you a shirt to borrow, then take our stuff downstairs to get them dried.’’

‘’Thank you, T’Challa,’’ you slip into his bathroom, pulling off your soaking wet clothes.

Sure enough, he leaves a pair of his pajamas for you outside of the bathroom door, which you slip into.

He takes your clothes downstairs before returning with a pizza, ‘’I ran next door to that pizzeria. Got your favorite. I will take care of dinner tonight.’’

‘’Such a gentleman,’’ you smile, taking some glasses down and preparing for dinner.

And falling even more in love with this man.

‘’Are you going to be alright,’’ T’Challa asks, referring the scene you’d witnessed earlier.

It was Tessa arriving at the skating rink with her new boyfriend on her arm.

That new boyfriend?

None other than Justin.

Because that’s salt in your wound.

You’d been okay, but you wanted to leave. He still hasn't talked to you since the break up, and you didn’t really feel up to conversing with him at the moment.

Unfortunately, the bus to T’Challa’s apartment would not be arriving for another hour, so you two walked. Then, it started to rain. Hard. Hence why you are now spending the night at T’Challa’s apartment.

‘’I am. I mean, it hurt a little bit at first, but I’m over it now. I’m fine,;; you shrug, laying your head on T’Challa’s shoulder, ‘’You?’’

‘’I am. What Tessa and I had may be over, but I’ve still got you. So I would say that I am the real winner in the situation.’’

There’s silence then as you both chew on the pizza, listening to the rain and thunder outside.

He places a kiss to your forehead, like he always does, but this time when he pulls away, you pull him back in.

Your eyes ask for permission, and he nods, as if he can read his mind.

You're learning in further and further until…

You hear the door opening, and you find yourself both wishing Okoye would have stayed out longer and silently thanking her before you ruined your friendship with T’Challa.

This was one of those moments that got away from you.

And you spend the rest of your night what would have happened if all of the events of the day had happened just a few seconds sooner.

The rest of the semester is pretty uneventful. You study together, he gets good grades, you get good grades. You hang out with Anthony and Alyssa, and he promises to call you over Christmas break. He does, you make plans to hang out as soon as you’re back on campus.

When you do meet up again, you have a two hour catch up session. He tells you all about Shuri and her latest antics, about his mother and dad. You talk to him about your family and things happening back home. He also asks you to the school’s winter fundraiser dance as friends, and you accept.

‘’You look incredible,’’ T’Challa tells you, admiring you in your black, floor length, long sleeved dress.

‘’What, this old thing,,’’ you joke, attempting to stop your heart from beating as fast as it is.

Because T’Challa looks amazing in his tux as he takes you back to your door, hand in yours,

As friends.

That’s all you are.

You constantly have to remind yourself of that.

The hall is pretty empty, with most people out on a lovely, January, Saturday night.

‘’Hey… can we talk for a moment?’’

He turns to you, nodding, and letting you lead him into your single bed dorm.

And that’s where it happens. There’s no epic moment, no birds, no music, no rain. You can hear the old school music your neighbors are playing, and you can hear the couple next on the other side of you loudly playing Monopoly.

But you don’t care. Because you’re in the middle of the dorm room, with T’Challa’s lips on yours, his hands on your waist as he pulls you closer to his body.

‘’I thought you wanted to talk,’’ he breathes out before bringing his lips back to yours.

‘’Later, We’ll talk later,’’ you sigh, then pull him back into the kiss.

And the moment is perfect.

It’s wonderful.

It’s hot and romantic and long awaited and you’re not sure why you were so hesitant to give this a chance.

Because his lips are made for yours and you’re sure.

‘’Wait, what does this mean,’’ T’Challa asks breathing heavily as he rests his forehead against yours, ‘’Are we together now?’’

In a way, you feel like you always have been. He’s always been there for you, and you for him. Timing was never right, and you were never opened to this idea until now.

Because he’s your best friend when your worlds apart, he’s your best friend when you're right next to each other, and he’d continue to be your best friend even if this didn’t work out.

So the real question is this: Are you ready to dive in?

Senior Year

Time changes.

People change.

Minds change.

Like the seasons, most things are not permanent. Unlike the seasons, people don’t always work how you expect them to.

Which is why it’s a surprise to you in the May of your junior year when Justin returns, asking you to get back together.

What’s not a surprise is when T’Challa is approached my Tessa, who makes the same request in the August of your senior year.

It's no surprise that this leads to both you and T’Challa screaming at each other, crying, voices breaking and resolves shaking.

It’s not a surprise that you don’t speak to him for quite a while, and he doesn't speak to you, until Okoye lets you both know that you are being difficult and need to talk.

It is a surprise when you’re laughing with him again, and it’s just like old times. You wipe the It’s not a surprise that you can feel graduation fast approaching, and neither of you have decided what to do about the situation.

It’s not a surprise that life happens, and that you and T’Challa don’t really talk about the situation until it’s almost too late.

You weigh all of the reasons that it could work- you’re good together, you like each other, you’re attracted, you really care about each other.

You weigh all of the reasons that it could not work- he’ll be moving back to Wakanda, Tessa and Justin are still people you have strong feelings for, timing has never been right for you too, it seems like it won’t work.

So, with a month left until graduation, you make your choice.

And you both try not to second guess where it leaves you too.

Graduation Day

You're walking the stone path one last time, relishing in all of the memories that you made on this campus. Some good, some bad. It’s where you where when T’Challa got news that his parents could make it to graduation. It’s where you found out that you got hired for that teaching job. It’s where you found your heart. It’s where you broke it. It’s where you had so many firsts and lasts.

‘’Babe,’’ your boyfriend pipes up, ‘’Graduation is beginning in thirty minutes. We need to line up.’’

‘’Coming, honey,’’ you sigh, taking his hand and letting him lead you back to the arena.

‘’I must go take my spot. But I will see you as soon as this is over,’’ he presses a kiss to your lips, ‘’I love you.’’

‘’I love you, too.’’

You are not sure what the future holds.

You don’t even know what tomorrow holds.

All you know is that you have the love of your life, T’Challa Udaku by your side, so you will take things as they come. And he’s got you.

And you’re so thankful for the day that he spilled coffee on you.

And for the day that you decided to take a chance and dive in.

DISCLAIMER- I own none of the Marvel Characters or any fictional worlds- they belong to their rightful and respectful owners.

#black panther imagine #black panther #black panther x you #t'challa udaku #t'challa x reader #t'challa x you #t'challa #tchalla x reader #reader insert #reader #imagines

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lacquerware · 6 years ago

Text

Mega Man should stop presenting its flaws as indispensable features

When I was fifteen, I learned to play the song Malagueña on the piano. It was a laborious project; the culmination of nine years of piano lessons under the tutelage of Mrs. Diane Miller, and the main event for her upcoming student showcase.

This arrangement of the piece was a seven-pager, and somewhere around page four was a problem phrase I kept playing wrong, a rapid two-handed run up the keyboard with tricky fingering. I got to a point where I could play flawlessly up to that phrase, only to flub the phrase every time. Each time I flubbed it, my teacher would stop me and send me back to page 2. “You have to perfect that phrase,” she would say, “so try it again, but first play the preceding two pages, so it’s no longer fresh in your mind by the time you get to it again.” Alas, this would result in more flubs, and after three flubs in a row she would send me back to the beginning of the entire piece. “You’re still not getting it,” she’d say. “So I think we should run through the stuff you’ve already mastered one more time.” I would glance at her, trying to read her intent, and she would stare back at me, bug-eyed and malevolent.

The above story is false,because Mrs. Miller was a kind, intelligent, and non-insane person. Like all people of that description, she understood that you don’t work out a problem area by indiscriminately repeating ALL PRACTICE. When you get one problem wrong on a math quiz, you don’t review the entire textbook. You don’t work on your free throws by drilling layups and then also free throws. You can’t learn to poach an egg by toasting English fucking muffins all day. To suggest otherwise is an act of hostility.

Mega Manhas always carried this hostility. The game dishes out its challenges in neat little screen-sized units, but penalizes your failures with gratuitous setbacks, often requiring you to replay entire stages from the beginning. This makes learning inordinately tedious. You have to retread every yard for every yard gained.

I guess this is a relic of the arcade age, when games were designed with the express intent of punishing players—unless they paid up. Indeed, most of Mega Man’s NES contemporaries inherited this same feature in the form of finite lives and scarce checkpoints, but it never made much sense on home consoles. You could argue that it prolonged the lifespan of each game, but that only held true for the masochists who continued to tolerate this torturous system rather than reallocate all that wasted time to more fruitful pursuits like, I dunno, learning to play piano or poach an egg.

I’ve always liked Mega Man, but it was already starting to feel like a tired concept as early as Mega Man IV. I was about eight years old by then, and starting to catch on that they were running out of boss motifs. Pharaoh Man felt like a red flag.

Mega Man has since proliferated into a multi-faceted franchise spanning more than 120 titles and three decades (and for the record, I’ve played through almost all of them), but it’s never really dispensed with its ancient baggage. Mega Man X brought new visual flare while diversifying the core action; Mega Man Zero imbued the series canon with new consequence and cool factor; Mega Man ZX fused the classic gameplay with the Metroidvania template; but all of these spin-offs continued to punish, punish, punish, to gatekeep their content from the series’ own consumers to no certain end.

When Capcom revealed Mega Man 9, I was momentarily taken with the nostalgia of it, but quickly lost interest when I realized that Capcom had no intent of evolving the series’ concepts, even in basic quality-of-life ways. Lives and weapon energy were still pointlessly commodified, checkpoints sadistically scarce. They’d even removed what few innovations the series had seen to date, such as the slide and the charge shot. Nor did the roster of Robot Masters appear any more inspired than the cast of rejects that had turned me off five installments prior. Capcom had had seventeen years to think about it and all they’d come up with were lame analogs of pastbosses, like Tornado Man and Magma Man. It’s like they thought they hadto retread the same shit beat for beat or people would get confused. Even their ace, Splash Woman, was just another in a long line of water-themed bosses.

Mega Man 10 as a follow-up was downright depressing. Strike Man, Pump Man, and Chill Man are what you get when you realize yesterday was the deadline and all you’ve got is a pen and a cocktail napkin. I can’t fathom that a bunch of game designers sat around brainstorming ideas for Mega Man fucking 10 and someone was like, “Hmm, what about an ice-themed boss.”

Now we have Mega Man 11, the long-awaited, belligerently-demanded revival of the MM franchise after some eight years of dormancy. After playing the demo, I find myself wondering why. Why are we here? Why is Mega Man 11 Capcom’s answer after saying no to Mega Man for eight years? It’s the SAME.

Yes, it looks and sounds nicer and there’re a couple new mechanics—which are themselves comically uninspired takes on the ancient tropes of bullet time* and Devil Trigger—but I’m mystified at how unchanged the formula still is after eight years of seemingly adamant dismissal of the entire franchise, let alone the thirty-one years they could’ve been critically examining it. Do they realize that other developers have been building on this genre since the eighties?

*Weird side note: The tutorial for Mega Man’s new “Speed Gear” ability explains that the gear makes you “move so fast that everything else seems slow,” but in practice Mega Man moves just as slowly as everything else. So it’s not Mega Man who’s moving fast, it’s. . . the player?

Punishment as “Difficulty”

In the Block Man (lol) stage of the demo, there’s a section where you have to jump and slide through elaborate platforms as they scroll toward you, an insta-kill grinding device nipping at your heels all the while. The third platform has very peculiar collision detection, such that your head bonks against the empty space you’re supposed to jump through, seemingly rendering the challenge impossible. This is several screens into the stage but still prior to the first checkpoint (on Normal mode), so every time this platform killed me, I had to start the entire stage over. After about fifteen tries, I discovered that the collision doesn’t trigger if you’re holding left as you make the jump—an illogical thing to do unless you’ve died so many times you’ve run out of other ideas. By the time I cracked this idiosyncrasy, I’d already spent close to an hour replaying the preceding screens over and over for no reason. Why is this still a thing? This is punishment, not difficulty. It contributes to the challenge only in that it makes the experience less fun, “challenging” your resolve to continue playing. Think of all the origami you could be learning. All the old ladies you could be helping cross streets.

The Mega Man games are quite clever in the way they parse out the platforming and shooting in little bite-sized units. Each screen is essentially an action puzzle for you to solve. It would be so logical for each screen break to be a checkpoint, because each screen break isa checkpoint—the start of the next challenge. Games like Super Meat Boy do this, meting (meating?) out their challenges in bite-sized, infinitely repeatable increments. Nobody accuses Super Meat Boy of being too easy because it doesn’t make you repeat the shit you’ve already completed when you fail at the current task. If you wantthat kind of punishment, no one’s stopping you from resetting the game.

Mega Man 11 adds a “Casual” mode which increases the number of checkpoints, but it’s still annoying to me that the more punishing model is treated as the norm while the more logical distribution of checkpoints is treated as a concession. Soulsplayers will tell me to “git gud,” but that’s why I led with the piano analogy. I got damn good at Malagueña, and I still had time left over to do my homework and play video games.

Special Weapons

Using your Special Weapons in Mega Man games is like spending the money you might need to pay rent on stuff you could be getting for free through your well-connected friend Dave. The trial-and-error pairing of the right weapon and the right boss is such an integral part of Mega Man’s progression that any other use of anyspecial weapon becomes a high-risk gamble—unless, of course, you just Google the answers.

I understand the need to impose limits on the more powerful weapons, but games have figured out countless better ways to do this in the thirty-one years since Mega Man 1. Cool-down times. Cool-down meters. Recovery proportional to damage inflicted. Recovery proportional to damage received. Recovery by way of skillful attack, à laMetal Gear Rising. Enemy fire absorption à la Alien Soldier and Radiant Silvergun. Ranger X on the Sega Genesis had solar-powered special weapons; why not steal that idea for this game’s allegedly solar-powered protagonist?

Instead, even in its eleventh installment in two-thousand-goddamn-eighteen, Mega Man still employs an RNG-based item drop system. Replenishing your meter is as simple and menial as finding an enemy spawn point and brainlessly standing and shooting until an enemy happens to drop the energy you need. Don’t forget to cycle over to the gun you want to replenish, or else the battery is wasted, as if Mega Man just eats it by mistake.*

*Later games in the series introduced the Energy Balancer, a purchasable item which automatically refills the weapon that needs refilling even if you don’t have it selected. Why is that a thing you have to buy? Why put a fundamental improvement to the game behind a paywall, virtual or otherwise?

Meanwhile, MM11still employs the same bizarre meter continuity between deaths as past installments. Each death means repeating sections of the stage without reacquiring any previously spent meter, effectively creating a difficulty vortex—the harder this game is, the harder it gets. There was a ruthlessly capitalistic logic to this in the arcade days,but the Mega Man series has never been coin-operated (with a few obscure exceptions). It hasnevermade sense that, often, the best strategy is to voluntarily leap to your death over and over to force a Game Over, just to restart with a full weapon meter as an alternative to the tedium of refilling it manually or facing the boss without it. What is the explanation for this meter continuity in the first place? Are we supposed to think Mega Man is repeatedly exploding and materializing but he can’t materialize a few extra shots from his bubble gun while he’s at it? There’s a multi-faceted idiocy to this whole system.

Rush

Capcom ought to take a long, hard look at Rush, Mega Man’s transforming robot dog companion. It’s hard to believe the same guy who invented a fully autonomous solar-powered robot boy couldn’t design a dog-shaped spring that runs on renewable energy. Special weapons are one thing, but why does Rush have an exhaustible meter? He’s a fucking spring. It makes no sense as a narrative detail nor as an element of game design. What exactly are the designers trying to limit? Your ability to spam high jumps? The logistics of the Rush Coil already do that; you have to set him up like a lawn ornament and he peaces out after a single bound. He’s unspammable, even with a full bar. To begin with, there are rarely that many useful opportunities to use the Rush Coil within a single stage, and energy power-ups are infinite as long as you’re willing to endure the chore of finding them, so it’s not as though the game is challenging you to budget your resources—it’s just discouraging you from searching for those meaningful jump opportunities in the first place. It’s driving you to Google.

Bosses

The Robot Masters have always received special star treatment in the Mega Man games but rarely been very interesting as boss fights. You know the deal: dodge the dizzying hail of projectiles in an empty square room while desperately scrambling to land enough hits with the weakness weapon before you die. Considering all the fanfare these bosses get (mug shot, intro screen, and now reveal trailers), most of them feel kind of interchangeable. Most of them have nearly identical silhouettes and shoot functionally redundant projectiles in superficially different shapes. Every gun is a Lucky Charms marshmallow.

The boss fights actually do seem a little more interesting in Mega Man 11—Block Man in particular stands out with his mid-fight transformation into a hulking colossus. I’d hoped to see more of this in future Mega Mans—fights that evolve and really set each Robot Master apart as a distinct embodiment of its corresponding motif—so maybe they’re onto something this time. Still, it’s a little ridiculous that this game has yet another fire boss, electricity boss, cold boss, and bomb boss. Why are we still here?

Before the mob comes for me, I want to stress that there’s always been lots to love about Mega Man, and I’m glad Capcom is investing in the IP again. I just hope this is the start of a long-term effort to reevaluate and improve the series, not another short-sighted extension of a tired status quo.

#mega man 11 #mm11 #capcom #games #video games #videogames #gaming #reflections #demo #games writing #criticism #rant

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