#Shitty world-building is probably the number one problem always | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

meruz · 4 years ago

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once again i am answering asks in a big compilation post. included is... gotham, patrick stump, tips about drawing backgrounds, tips about drawing in general, links to my faq, and infinity train

like.... the tv series? No... I’ve drawn dc comics fanart before, though. But it’s been years since I’ve been really into it. I like jumped ship like 10 years ago when the New 52 happened LOL.

AFJHDSLKGH I’m sorry I (probably) won’t do it again??

Actually full disclosure I have a truly cringe amount of p stump drawings/photo studies in my sketchbook right now LOL. He’s just fun to draw... hats, glasses, guitar, a good shape... but I don’t think I’ll rly post those until I can hide them in another big sketchbook pdf.. probably Jan 2022. Stay tuned........ (ominous)

(ominous preview)

These are all sort of related to backgrounds/painting so I grouped them together even though they’re pretty much entirely separate questions.... ANYWAYS

a) How is it working as a BG artist? Is it hard? What show are you drawing for?

I think you’re the first person to ever ask me about my job! Being a background artist is great. It’s definitely labor intensive but I think that could describe pretty much any art job (If something were rote or easy to automate, you wouldn’t hire an artist to do it) and I hesitate to say whether its harder or easier than any other role in the animation pipeline. Plus, so much of what truly makes a job difficult varies from one production to the next, schedule, working environment, co-workers etc. But I will say that I think while BGs are generally a lot of work on the upfront, I think they’re subject to less scrutiny/revisions than something like character/props/effects design and you don’t have to pitch them to a room like boards. So I guess it’s good if you don’t like to talk to people? LOL

A lot of my previous projects + the show I’ve worked on the longest aren’t public yet so I can’t talk about em (but I assure you if/when the news does break I won’t shut up about it). But I’m currently working on Archer Season 12 LOL. I’m like 90% sure I’m allowed to say that.

b) ~~~THANK YOU!! ~~~

c) What exactly do you like to draw most [in a background]?

@kaitomiury Lots of stuff! I really like to draw clutter! Because it’s a great opportunity for environmental storytelling and also you can be kind of messy with it because the sheer mass will supersede any details LOL.

I like to draw clouds... I like to draw grass but not trees lol,,, I like to draw anything that sells perspective really easily like tiled floors and ceilings, shelves, lamp posts on a street etc.

d) Do you have any tips on how to paint (observational)?

god there’s so much to say. painting is really a whole ass discipline like someone can paint their whole life and still discover new things about it. I guess if you’re really just starting out my best advice is that habit is more important than product. especially with traditional plein air painting, I find that the procedure of going outside and setting up your paints is almost harder than the actual painting. There’s a lot of artists who say “I want to do plein air sometime!!” and then never actually get around to doing it. A lot of people just end up working from google streetview or photos on their computer.

But going outside to paint is a really good challenge because it forces you to make and commit to lighting and composition decisions really quickly. And to work through your mistakes instead of against them via undo button.

My last tip is to check out James Gurney’s youtube channel because hes probably the best and most consistent resource on observational painting out there rn. There’s lots other artists doing the same thing (off the top of my head I know a lot of the Warrior Painters group has people regularly posting plein air stuff and lightbox expo had a Jesse Schmidt lecture abt it last year) but Gurney’s probably the most prolific poster and one of the best at explaining the more technical stuff - his books are great too.

e) Do you have tips for drawing cleanly on heavypaint?

@marigoldfool UMM LOL I LIKE ONLY USE THE FILL TOOL so maybe use the fill tool? Fill and rectangle are good for edge control as opposed to the rest of the heavy paint tools which can get sort of muddles. And also I use a stylus so maybe if you’re using your finger, find a stylus that works with your device instead. That’s all I’ve got, frankly I don’t think my drawings are particularly clean lol.

f) Tips on improving backgrounds/scenes making them more dynamic practicing etc?

Ive given some tips about backgrounds/scenes before so I’m not gonna re-tread those but here’s another thing that might be helpful...

I think a good way to approach backgrounds is to think of the specific story or even mood you want to convey with the background first. Thinking “I just need to put something behind this character” is going to lead you to drawing like... a green screen tourist photo backdrop. But if you think “I need this bg to make the characters feel small” or “I need this bg to make the world feel colorful” then it gives you requirements and cues to work off of.

If I know a character needs to feel overwhelmed and small, then I know I need to create environment elements that will cage them in and corner them. If a character needs to feel triumphant/on top of the world then I know I need to let the environment open up around them. etc. If I know my focal point/ where I want to draw attention, I can build the background around that.

Also, backgrounds like figure compositions will have focal points of their own and you can draw attention to it/ the relationship the characters have with the bg element via scale or directionality or color, any number of cues. I think of it almost as a second/third character in a scene.

Not every composition is gonna have something so obvious like this but it helps me to think about these because then the characters feel connected and integrated with the environment.

Some more general art questions

a) Do you have any process/tips to start drawing character/bodies/heads?

I tried to kind of draw something to answer this but honestly this is difficult for me to answer because I don’t think I’m that great at drawing characters LOL. Ok, I think I have two tips.

1) flip your canvas often. A lot about what makes human bodies look correct and believable is symmetry and balance. Even if someone has asymmetrical features, the body will often pull and push in a way to counterbalance it. we often have inherent biases to one side or another like dominant hands dominant eyes etc. you know how right-handed artists will often favor drawing characters facing 45 degrees facing (the artist’s) left? that’s part of it. so viewing your drawing flipped even just to evaluate it helps compensate for that bias and makes you more aware of balance.

2) draw the whole figure often. I feel like a lot of beginner artists (myself included for a long time) defer to just drawing headshots or busts because it’s easier, you dont have to think about posing limbs etc. But drawing a full body allows you to better gauge proportion, perspective, body language, everything that makes a character look believable and grounded.

Like if you (me) have that issue where you draw the head too big and then have to resize it to fit the proportions of the rest of the body, it’s probably because you (I) drew the head first and are treating the body as an afterthought/attachment. Sketching out the whole figure first or even just quick drawing guides for it will help you think of it more holistically. I learned this figure drawing in charcoal at art school LOL.

oh. third mini tip - try to draw people from life often! its the best study. if you can get into a figure drawing/nude drawing class EVEN BETTER and if you have a local college/art space/museum that hosts those for free TREASURE IT AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT, that’s a huge boon that a lot of artists (me again) wish they had. though if youre not so lucky and youre sitting in a park trying to creeper draw people and they keep moving.. don’t let that stop you! that’s good practice because it’s forcing you to work fast to get the important stuff down LOL. its a challenge!

b) I’ve been pretty out of energy and have had no inspiration to draw but I have the desire to. Any advice?

Dude, take a walk or something.... Or a nap? Low energy is going to effect everything else so you gotta hit that problem at its source.

If you’re looking for inspiration though, I’d recommend stuff like watching a movie, reading a book, playing video games etc. Fill up your idea bank with content and then give yourself time/space to gestate it into new concepts. Sometimes looking at other art works but sometimes it can work against you because it’s too close.

Also something that helps me is remembering that art doesn’t always have to be groundbreaking... like it’s okay to make something shitty and stupid that you don’t post online and only show to your friend. That’s all part of the process imo. If you want to hit a home run you gotta warm up first, right? Sports.

I should probably compile everytime i give tips on stuff like this but that’s getting dangerously close to being a social media artist who makes stupid boiled down art tutorials for clout which is the last thing i want to be... the thing I want to stress is that art is a whole visual language and there are widely agreed upon rules and customs but they exist in large part to be broken. Like there's an infinite number of ways to reach an infinite number of solutions and that’s actually what makes it really cool and personal for both the artist and the viewer. So when you make work you like or you find someone else’s work you like, take a step back and ask yourself what about it speaks for you, what about it works for you, what makes it effective, how to recreate that effect and how to break that effect completely, etc. And have a good time with it or else what’s the point.

for the first 2, I direct you to my FAQ

For the last one, I don’t actually believe I’ve ever addressed artwork as insp for stories/rp but I’ll say here and now yeah go ahead! As long as you’re not making profit or taking credit for my work then I’m normally ok with it. Especially anything thats private and purely recreational, that’s generally 100% green light go. I only ask that if you post it anywhere public that you please credit me.

(and I reserve the right to ask you to take it down if I see it and don’t approve of it’s use but I think that case is pretty rare.)

a) @lemuelzero101 Thank you!!! I haven’t played Life is Strange but actually that series’ vis dev artist Edouard Caplain is one of my bigger art inspirations lately so that’s a really high compliment lol. And yeah I hope we get 5-8 too...!

b) Thank you for sticking around! I’ve been thinking about Digimon and Infinity Train in tandem lately, actually. They’re a little similar? Enter a dangerous alternate world and have wacky adventures with monsters/inanimate objects that have weird powers... there’s like weird engineers and mechanisms behind the scenes... also frontier literally starts with them getting on a train. Anyways if anyone else followed me for digimon... maybe you’d like Infinity Train? LOL

c) @king-wens-king I’M GLAD MY ART JUST HAS PINOY VIBES LOL I hope you are having a good day too :^)

a, b, c, d) yessss my Watch Infinity Train agenda is working....

e) aw thank you!! i think you should watch infinity train :)

#ask #trying this new thing where i tag people in the body of the post instead

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years ago

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"I have some problems with [Luke] as a character)" was mentioned in your Reylo response post. Very interested in what your thoughts are on Luke! 👀

Do you want me to get murdered?! Well, if I didn’t get lynched for calling Sirius Black a Stephen King villain I can surely do no worse here.

Let’s do this.

Caveat that, as usual, I am wearing a heretic hat and expect no one to agree with what I’m saying.

Luke Skywalker, much like Harry Potter, is not the character the authors and vast majority of the audience seem to think he is. Luke is seen as the true coming of the Jedi, the light side of the Force incarnate, and someone so innately good he was able to redeem his father, restore peace to the galaxy, and restore the Jedi Order.

I disagree with all of this.

I think this is what Luke thinks he did but the truth is far sadder and, well, in general worse.

First, let’s start off with Luke’s hero’s journey throughout the saga.

Luke starts your ordinary guy, he’s not bad by any means, but he’s not particularly good either. He lives in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, part of a relatively well off family, and set to inherit the world’s most boring business: moisture farming. He has dreams of going out, seeing the world, and becoming a great pilot.

Important to remember but what most people gloss over: Luke starts if not pro-empire then neutral towards it. Luke wants to attend flight school, given his desire for glory and adventure, he probably wants to join the empire’s military. He might not like Storm Troopers all that much but the fire of revolution doesn’t burn in his heart the way it does Leia’s.

Now, personally, I like this about Luke. It makes sense to me. Given where and how Luke grows up, given all he’s ever known, I think this makes perfect sense for his viewpoint. He might get hassled by stormtroopers now and then but the empire really doesn’t interfere with his life except in a) propaganda b) offering an escape from his dull existence. What would someone like Luke know about the Rebel Alliance?

The movie however... sort of goes out of its way not to acknowledge this, and this is where I start having problems with Luke. Luke gets Leia’s message about Obi-Wan Kenobi, sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life, and gets to embark on this amazing adventure. The story sort of takes it for granted that he then agrees with old hermit, Obi-Wan, that the empire is evil. This is helped because Luke does too.

In other words, Luke’s opinions are very shallow and lack any introspection. Finding himself in the company of Jedi, smugglers, and hot rebel princesses, Luke suddenly goes, “Ah, yeah, I hate the empire!” We never really see him change his mind by reflecting over what the Death Star means/the destruction of Alderaan, the death of his relatives, or his meeting with Darth Vader. Luke seems to be won over... Honestly, it feels like it’s because the Rebel Alliance let him fly a plane before the Empire did.

Then he blows up the Death Star, is a galactic hero/enemy number one of the empire, and he’s full on board resistance man and the next Jedi.

Which brings us to point number two, Luke legitimately thinks he’s a Jedi.

Obi-Wan gives him half a word of advice for maybe half of a day, watching Luke swing a sword around and get shot at by a robot. Yoda trains Luke in a swamp for, generously, maybe a week or so before Luke ditches him (against his advice even) to go save his friends. Luke has 0 training (beat out only by Rey, who wasn’t trained at all). More, he lives in a world where everything he knows of the Jedi is colored by Palpatine’s propaganda and old legends. The Jedi temples have been ransacked and presumably next to nothing of the Jedi culture remains, I can imagine Palpatine as being nothing but thorough in his elimination of the Jedi religion. The Jedi survived in Obi-Wan, Yoda, and in some sense Anakin Skywalker.

They do not survive in Luke. Luke puts on some quasi-Jedi robes, slashes his sword around a few times to save Leia from Jabba, and he says, “Now I am a Jedi!” Luke is that kid, LARPing, yelling “firebolt, firebolt, firebolt!” Only, that is, if the LARPing consisted of him representing a massacred culture thinking he’s it’s sole legitimate heir. So... Luke is playing Cowboy and Indians, and he’s the Indian.

In my opinion, Vader wasn’t so much redeemed as he always had a very high priority in finding his son and keeping him alive. The obvious way to do this would be to take Luke as an apprentice and, eventually, murder Palpatine. Well, that didn’t pan out, and eventually Anakin chooses murder-suicide to save his son’s life. It’s very touching, I’m not knocking the moment, but I do think a lot of that was Anakin vice the inherent goodness of Luke.

Anyways, Luke and pals save the day, they start a new republic and then they learn life is complicated. The new republic fails within decades, worse, it’s feeble and likely torn apart by civil war, strife, and constant infighting. It is utterly powerless, to the point where the First Order easily rises to replace the Empire and take over its vast resources (with Palpatine building a secret sith army on the side no less). That Leia rather than lead an army through the new republic in the sequels is leading her own private resistance army is very telling.

Fitting in with this, Luke starts a Jedi Academy. The prequels, and yes go ahead and slander them all you like but they’re better than many admit, taught us a few things but one of them is that it is hard to be a Jedi. To walk the path of a Jedi is to open yourself up to great temptation to use the dark side, and the dark side isn’t just some strange quirk or sense of duality, it is the equivalent of selling your soul. It is an unnatural action that leads to unnatural abilities.

You get a bunch of Force Sensitive kids in a room: you better know what you’re doing.

Luke doesn’t. He collects a handful of the remaining Jedi artifacts that Palpatine somehow didn’t destroy, opens up his Jedi School (even teaching his nephew), and within maybe five years the place is burned to the ground, his students murdered by his nephew, and his nephew runs off to join a Sith Lord who appeared out of nowhere (Luke not realizing that this was just immortal cockroach Palpatine).

Luke then becomes a grumpy old man who just can’t deal, sits on a rock drinking blue milk, and whines that for how shitty of a teach he was that Obi-Wan guy was worse for messing up with his father. Which, frankly, is very in character for Luke.

Luke has never really failed in his life, or at least, never had to recognize his own failure. So, when he does, he a) doesn’t realize what went wrong b) blames everyone but himself c) sits on a rock and waits to die.

So yeah, that’s Luke for you.

A whiney, shallow, stupid, somewhat narcissistic, hero. I... don’t dislike the concept of his character, played more straight I’d love his character, but I dislike that people talk about him like he’s the most noble creature to ever grace the planet and has this inherent understanding of a murdered people that the murdered people themselves never had.

(All the Jedi were doing it wrong! Luke made the real Jedi Order! Is something I see a lot and... well... say what you will about their philosophies, but this kid who was not a part of that culture “doing it better”... That’s real problematic folks, real problematic.)

#ask #anon #star wars #anti luke skywalker

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sylenth-l · 4 months ago

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Oh sure, the baby!! I'll use this as a chance to sum up some thoughts that I came up with while thinking about him and how they work with Timur 👀

Yes, I think Colovance is a surprisingly normal, decent person; and honestly that's quite an achievement if you remember that he lives in the Dark Age. It has chewed, broken and traumatized both physically and mentally quite a number of people, and it's not like he hasn't seen or experienced some shit himself. Looking at him it's hard to imagine that, but also it's like. His thing. His mental resilience and the amount of patience and compassion are pretty impressive, and I think that's what Timur cherishes about him as well. He's like a living proof at his side that the world doesn't need to be a shitty weird place - it can also be nice, peaceful, normal. Even with all those awful things happening right now, they don't need to last forever - and when they will come to an end, they won't leave only ashes behind. To him, Colovance is the embodiment of home as that safe, warm place where somebody is always waiting for you and is worried about you. Like a reminder of what they are even fighting for. A lighthouse in the middle of a sea is a very simple building, yet you need it desperately in a storm.

I think Colovance is that type of extremely disciplined energetic people, who manage their time really well and have no problem following the plan they made for themselves. That's how he manages to get everywhere and do everything in time, keeping track of both his and Lord Timur's schedules (because discipline and Timur live in some parallel worlds, it seems, and he just keeps jumping chaotically between different tasks). Except for some things Colovance is purposefully slacking off, when he can… Like combat training 💀 He's very clear-headed and well-behaved, and even though at times it may seem he overworries for nothing and sticks to the rules too much, that's also what makes him extremely reliable and trustworthy. My guess here is that Colovance is just really good in separating things and drawing borders - like, he admires Lord Timur endlessly and his wild lateral thinking fascinates him, but he won't hesitate to ground and hold him back when things are going too far or start spiraling out of anyone's control. Or like that I think he enjoys reading fiction a lot (especially fantasy novels probably asdklfhdsak) - but doesn't like spending time daydreaming and keeps his feet firmly on the ground, so to speak.

He likes to keep everything (and everyone) around himself in order, but being pretty gentle and chill by the nature, he can't really be too strict or pushy about it. He would clean up Timur's workshop, Timur will turn it into an absolute mess the next day (and will be very surprised how did that even happen and why he can't find anything anymore, it was so neat and clean just a moment ago and he hasn't even done anything yet???), and Colovance will just sigh, scold him a bit and clean everything up again. And again. And again. And that is a neverending circle 😂

Another important thing - Colovance's dislike for fighting and conflicts leads to both his strongest and weakest traits. On one hand, it makes him really good at diplomacy, quite immune to stress and being able to keep a cool head and see a solution or a compromise in a situation anyone else would've long given up. On the other hand, he'd often rather give in and back up than step into a direct confrontation. That of course doesn't involve life/death situations, protecting the people and other serious stuff like that; this is out of question, of course. But when it's about him alone or something not that important - he'd rather leave it be than try to stand his ground and get into a fight. That and clearly setting his boundaries is something he really needs to learn (I think Timur hopes spending time with Osiris will help him with that lololol).

Oh, and I think he likes to spend as much time in the village as possible, just talking to people, helping them with something or even just playing with kids! I think Colovance is extremely curious and social and just loves learning all the fresh news and listening to people's stories, especially when it comes first-hand. Which of course leads to him often acquiring quite a bit of useful information and pretty much knowing everything about everyone.

So yup, imo there's nothing too exciting or fancy about him, but that's what I like him for! He's the "I guess I'm the only normal person here >>" guy, you really need that to balance some other, perhaps way too striking personalities in this house 👀💙

Headcannon time! I just love hearing your thoughts and insights on these characters you’ve brought so much life to so dealer’s choice! Anything for anyone, what’s been rolling around or popped up by surprise maybe while you’re working one one of your projects recently that’s dug in and taken root? Or maybe you’ve found yourself specifically referencing in your art - the, ‘it must be this way’ sort of detail? Drag us in I wanna hear it you tell the best stories ❤️

Aaah thank you! ; w ; 💙 I'm afraid the dealer is braindead tho and can't choose anything alksdhfkasdhf

I'm... Really bad at these things, I have too much and none at all thoughts at the same time about everyone and everything 😭 I'm always happy to talk about my blorbos, but maybe pick a more specific theme or characters?.. I don't know what or who to write about off the top of my head, I'm very sorry...

#ask #destiny #little colovance 🥺

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scriptstructure · 3 years ago

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part 1 I have multiple alien planets, but the things is I want to to be similiar in earth as in 200 countries, 5000 ethnic groups, 6500 languages, varied climate/terrain/politics. Part of the story is still on earth and obviously as a whole, 99.9999% of stuff on earth isn't even getting used, but we know there is more and sometimes there are little hints. That is stuff we know from real life and generally doesn't need explanation. Example, a character says "We borrowed this from the Russians."

Part 2 Regardless of what is really important, what we know and doesn't need explanation is a lot because we figure readers generally understand--or they can google. Hell, there could even be lots of subtle culture references as well. Anyway, depending on the reader's knowledge, it can enhance the reader's understanding in various and subtle ways. But when I do things similiar in alien planets, it makes no sense and requires extra explanation to fill the details. So, basically useless.

Part 3 Thus it seems I'm unable to fully give the type of experience as when using earth as pretty much everything needs to be important to the story. Unless there's another way to do this so I can make my alien planets seem so much more than what's actually focused on without the needless exposition? It feels like at best I could try to mention a few things but it could never feel as vast as earth does. Perhaps maybe I just need numbers?

Reminder that if your question doesn’t fit in a single ask box, you should use /SUBMIT instead.

I have had a few questions in the past which are very similar to this one, [HERE] is about how to introduce invented elements of secondary worlds (stuff that doesn't exist in the real world but has been made up for the story), [HERE] is about how and why we might include extra details about the places that a character is visiting, [HERE] deals with establishing what a 'normal' day in an invented setting is like, and [HERE] is about ways of thinking about worldbuilding, and how much you need to know vs how much the characters know.

So it is a fairly common shortcut, in scifi writing, and scifi film writing in particular, to portray alien planets as kind of 'one thing' settings. Here is the desert planet, and there is the dessert planet, and over there is the Evil planet, and there's the cute jungle teddy bear planet moon. This can be useful if you're making a film or story where you just want the different worlds to work as shorthand for certain ideas 'shitty home world', 'the seat of democracy', 'the swamp where Yoda lives' etc.

But it is very simplistic, and obviously looking at Earth, as you've said, there's a vast array of different climates, cultures, people, languages etc. We do tend to simplify the way that we portray Earth in film and stories, as well--think about, say, Australia being largely signified by the Opera House/ Harbour Bridge, and the Outback™, or the UK being Big Ben and the houses of parliament, or the USA being a vast stretch of corn fields between New York and Hollywood.

So how do we effectively give the sense of a world being bigger than the particular spot that we happen to find ourselves in?

First off, you need to have background information about the world that you're building. If you know what the major cities are, what the main continents are, if your alien world has countries, or if it has a singular centralised system of government--or is it divided into city states? or is it divided into time zones? or is it divided into... etc

Think about how your characters conceptualise their world, and their place in it. Do they think about the world, with all its variety, as a single vibrant whole? Or do they think of 'us on this continent, and them over on that continent'?

How does trade work on this world? Do they have extensive trade networks among the various cities/ countries/ regions? Or do they rely on off-world suppliers for various things?

What kind of cultural exchange is common among these different areas, and what are the cultural touchstones that your characters might be familiar with, or interact with on a daily basis?

As with the examples I gave in the first linked post above, it is less about providing the readers with an exact view of how the politics and interactions of the various places function, and more about demonstrating what that means in practice for the characters.

Say there's a certain kind of fruit that is PROTAGONIST's mother's favourite, and she spends all day searching the hypermarket for one to surprise her mother with for her birthday, but turns out there's none of that fruit available because it's all from OTHER REGION, and there's a war on, or a volcano has erupted and interrupted trade, or the shuttle crews are on strike and so the fruit can no longer be transported down from the moon.

If your protag's favourite pop group is from a polar region and only produces music six months out of the year, because the other six months they have to work with their community to produce supplies for the long dark winter, that tells us something about the way that polar community is organised, and how it interacts with the rest of the world.

What else can we think about when constructing alien planets/ secondary worlds?

It can be difficult to think 'outside the box' of the culture that we're immersed in. It's very easy to slip into thinking that we're doing things the 'correct' way, and if someone else somewhere else does stuff different, that's weird, wrong, or sinister. Often it can be just a different way of doing things that gives the solution that the person is after.

I think it can be very helpful to read books about ancient history, especially stuff about societies that no longer exist, because a lot of the assumptions that we make about the way the world currently works are less useful when we look at ancient history. There are some extremely varied ways of approaching society and culture and a whole lot of stuff which isn't immediately obvious, but which we can understand by looking at the vast differences between ancient societies.

Well written history books can really help you get the sense of how societies form, and how culture develops, and some of the forces involved in cross cultural relations. Also, there are some great examples from the ancient world, of, for example, the various different Ancient Greek societies, and how each of them thought of themselves as 'doing culture the best', of their neighbouring hellenistic states of 'doing culture not quite as well' and of everyone who didn't speak greek properly as barbaric outsiders.

At the moment I'm reading Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors by Adrian Goldsworthy, and I think one of the things that has struck me as super interesting is the difference between how the Greeks vs the Persians organised their societies, and the way that they thought about and approached warfare.

So what are the basic questions we're working with?

-What is the protagonist/ focalising character's relationship to the world? Were they born on-world? Are they adult settlers? Are they traders passing through? Has the character travelled to other places on the world, or have they mostly stayed in their home city/ area?

-How do the protag/ focalising characters think of the other places in the world that they are not currently visiting? (ie, I am in Sydney, Australia, what do I think of Boston, USA, or Paris, France? Big cities with a Reputation, I probably know something about. Small towns or cities I may or may not be familiar with, depending on my life experience or interests)

-How do the material goods which are needed for daily life pass around the world? Are certain goods only available from certain areas? Are there Events happening which may disrupt supply routes? Are there cultural elements which may cause friction in trade?

-What kinds of cultural export or exchange happen on this world? Is there a particular city which is well known for its entertainment production? (Hollywood, California--movies, New York City--the print publishing industry) Does this mean that portrayals of the rest of the world are skewed by the perspectives of that place? (Remember, Australia is just a bridge, an opera house, and red dirt!)

There's always going to be a gap between what your characters know, or are aware of, and what is 'actually' happening in the world of your story, but as long as you have the information decided, and can write the world consistently and with sensory and suggestive details, the reader can and will pick up the puzzle pieces and fit them together.

It's a complex problem, but it's one that can produce interesting complex settings.

I hope this helps!

#writing #worldbuilding #world building

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michals · 4 years ago

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(Ok this was supposed to be like, a couple of paragraphs but it turned into a freaking essay, so it’s under the cut haha)

On Klaus, Luther and addiction

So this is something I personally find to have a lot of great thematic potential for these two characters. The idea of Luther falling into the same trap that Klaus has for both similar and different reasons and Klaus dealing with Luther’s addictions while facing his own is such a great thru line for both of them. The show’s set them up with the building blocks for this plot point and it would be so easy for it to come into play this season, especially this season actually.

Luther’s build up to addiction is subtle but I think they’ve planted the seeds enough to make it into something. Him falling apart in The Day That Was and his first reaction is to turn to alcohol and drugs is pretty significant considering it’s obvious that he’s probably been very ‘straight edge’ his whole life, probably never having even drank before then. And he tells Klaus straight out that he wishes he was like him, that he didn’t care and that he could just ignore all his own feelings like he thinks Klaus does. (I’ll get into how the family deals with Klaus’s addiction in a minute.) He goes out and does things under the influence he would never have done while sober, things that end up being self destructive (ie having sex that he seemed to really not want). But even then he’s gotten the idea that if he’s drinking/on something then he’s not thinking about all his shitty feelings.

Season two really sets it up because it’s not just one event but several. In the first ep at the bar he has a drink very casually, like he’s been doing it for years and not just because his life fell apart in the past how many months. The flask when he goes to Vanya’s is really telling firstly because he has a flask on him at all times at this point, that he uses it to get his courage up to go in the barn, and that he does it even when he’s driving. But it’s the nitrous scene that really cements it for me, again simply because he went from being basically a teetotaler to jumping at the first offer of heavy drugs. And he says he should’ve done this a long time ago. If I may get a little personal I know how easy it is to fall into this, the idea of ‘hey alcohol (or drugs) makes me feel better or at least I don’t think/care as much so why wouldn’t I do it?’. It’s such an easy slope to fall down and on the surface Luther has plenty of reasons to want to.

Now, Klaus: there’s plenty already been said about Klaus’s relationship with drugs and alcohol so I won’t get too wordy. Klaus is defined to us right away as a junkie and addict. Someone who uses substances to avoid dealing specifically with his powers and also his shitty upbringing. He plays very fast and loose with his own sobriety and even his mortality. Basically: he uses drugs to avoid thinking or feeling bad, or at least worse but he’s far, far past the point of entry into full blown dependence.

The scene between him and Luther in season 1 is a personal favorite just because it manages to deal with and establish a number of thematic ideas and the potential for how Luther and Klaus’s relationship can go from there. Luther, like the rest of the family, doesn’t understand Klaus’s addiction partially because they’ve all been estranged for 13 years and partially because Klaus doesn’t take it seriously and puts forth a very flippant persona, hell he doesn’t take anything that seriously. The world’s ending, they don’t have the time or inclination to humor Klaus’s story of chocolate pudding. Luther clearly misunderstands his addiction because yes, Klaus comes across as kind of happy and okay with himself but that’s because of the drugs. To Luther who’s been locked up with their asshole of a father Klaus seems to actually have a life of his own.

But Klaus doesn’t try too hard to walk that opinion back and here’s something I find important that tends to get left out when people point out that the family doesn’t take Klaus’s problems seriously: Klaus doesn’t talk about it or try and deal with it. Klaus really really doesn’t like dealing with things if he thinks he can avoid them. His powers, his childhood, Reginald, Ben, his cult – if he can run away from it or make a joke about it instead that’s what he’ll do. The one thing he ever really shows much initiative with is Dave. He’s self centered and I mean that in the most basic way – everything comes down to what he wants to do and he actually keeps his feelings close to the vest for the most part. Basically he doesn’t want to give the others an ‘in’ point to really address it (bonus they all heaps of problems of their own). And when he does get into it just the barest amount with Luther Luther’s high as fuck.

(Just to touch on Ben he kind of doesn’t count because firstly he can’t talk to anyone else and secondly he and Klaus have such a strained relationship especially regarding Klaus’s drug use that even if anyone else could hear him he probably wouldn’t be that supportive.)

So, actually getting into the whole season 3 thing: the siblings are about to face off with a whole lot of daddy and family issues in this time line and everyone’s got huge potential for emotional and mental shakedowns, but I think Luther’s gonna have the worst time of it. Don’t think I’m going to get into that BS of comparing traumas and saying anyone’s more ‘worthy’ of sympathy than any of the others, I’m saying specifically because it’s to do with Reginald not only rejecting him yet again and outright replacing him but that it’s not even ‘his’ Reginald so does that mean all the shit he put Luther through doesn’t count? I just see it as catalyst for a real breakdown for him.

Not to say this won’t mess with Klaus but Klaus hated Reginald long ago and has accepted that the guy was a douchebag and had no real love for his children, so personally I see his drug use as dealing with Reggie’s abuse but more so to deal with his powers. So yes, this’ll absolutely fuck with him but Luther’s the primo target here.

So what if we see Luther leaning even harder into drinking or even heavier things? Now he really has an excuse to because where’s he supposed to go from here? What’s he meant to do? He’s not the leader anymore, his family doesn’t always treat his trauma seriously (Klaus parallels there) nevermind he doesn’t even like to address it himself, he has no idea who he’s supposed to be and the one person who he thought actually cared about him not only doesn’t but never did and now he’ll never get back what he saw as his purpose in life. The whole Ben being alive thing is just icing on the cake. If he spirals in s3 it would make perfect sense because of all this and all the set up for it.

Klaus spiraled too at the end of s2 again becoming the fatalistic junkie he used to be, he’s gonna run from his problems again but it’s not just his powers this time. So he’s off the wagon but what if he notices Luther is too?

I can definitely see Luther trying to hide it from the others. He’s already given away too much of his weaknesses, he doesn’t want them to see their ‘leader’ continue to fall and I don’t think he’d want them to know he’s still that affected by Reginald. They want him to have dealt with it, like he seems to have at least a little in s2, if he’s completely fallen apart because of his dad again then that just makes him look pathetic. So he keeps his flask and finds excuses to get away with stumbling or slurring his words. But Klaus notices, because Klaus knows the signs.

In that scene in s1 Klaus very obviously doesn’t like seeing Luther like that or using drugs as an escape like he does. He’s self aware enough to know that this isn’t any way to live but is too pessimistic when it comes to himself. But, again, he tends to be pretty self centered. This is not a bad thing, this is a great character trait and it makes Klaus interesting. He does not know how to relate to his siblings on the whole, doesn’t know how to talk about his own traumas and addictions, so when he does hear them out it’s usually because he had was focusing on his own shit first. For instance: when he has the heart to heart with Allison in her kitchen he’s only there in the first place because he was falling apart because of Dave.

Luther having a problem will have to be something Klaus purposefully chooses to deal with because he’s worried about one of this siblings. And for obvious reasons Klaus is the perfect one to help him with it. He doesn’t want to see Luther like that but he doesn’t really have a leg to stand on if he wants him to stop. Hell, if Klaus won’t stop why should Luther? Klaus can’t use ‘do what I say not as I do’, partially because Luther has proven to have some self destructive/self harming tendencies and again, if it makes him feel okay or at least steady then why would he stop?

But Klaus stopping means that he’s going to have to confront his quite literal demons when it comes to his powers (I could go off on how much I don’t love that he was somehow sober for 3 years in the 60’s no problem but it didn’t seem to affect his powers at all but that’s another post). The number one thing he’s been running from his whole life, something the show hasn’t actually done a whole lot with. We knows he hates it, we knows he’s tortured by it, but we’ve seen no evidence that he’s ever really confronted it. He was traumatized by Reggie who did everything wrong so he went the opposite route.

But what if he has to stay sober for Luther’s sake? Even if he doesn’t want to help, even if he just enables it or joins him at first eventually he’d have to come the realization that he doesn’t like this, that he wouldn’t wish this kind of problem on someone he cares about. So he’s going to have to turn inward, he’s going to have to face up to both his addiction and his powers, maybe even finally try to tame and use his powers. And at some point he’d have to talk to Luther about it and stop hiding behind his glib façade.

So in the end we’d get to see Luther falling apart trying to deal with everything that he still very much needs to deal with and his subconscious tendency for self destruction, Klaus confronting his addictions, his own feelings and relationship to his siblings, and his powers and hell, maybe then we’ll actually get him using his powers to his/the group’s benefit.

#tua meta #klaus hargreeves #luther hargreeves

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quidfree · 4 years ago

Note

prompt: tdbk in a post-apocalyptic setting (HEHEH)

self-servicing AND a helping hand to a friend in need, we love a good strat

this got incredibly out of hand but i hope you enjoy!!

it’s been two months and five days since he last saw someone that katsuki lays eyes on him. two months and five days, and yes, he is fucking keeping score, why wouldn’t he be?

two months and five days is long. two months and five days is long enough that he’s taken up the habit of muttering to himself to fill the air, because dead silence makes him paranoid, always expecting sudden interruption, and he chooses to ignore the fact that muttering to himself is a quirk he might have picked up elsewhere. jesus. if deku, scrawny and asthmatic and perennially, psychotically self-sacrificing, is somehow still alive, he thinks he might be glad to see him again, just out of sheer disbelief.

there’s other people he’d be glad to see. perfect timing, for the zombie apocalypse to erupt right when he’d been on a summer internship in tokyo. to think the old crone had been bitching about it before he’d left- don’t get mugged on the underground, all that shit. like he was some hare-brained tourist. like people didn’t expect him to mug them. whatever. he thinks his parents are safer, out in a smaller city, than anyone has been in tokyo, tells himself it’s not blind hope that makes him explain the radio silence away. it’s statistics, and the geography of the outbreak, and the memory of his mother beating a would-be pickpocket over the head with her shoe until he passed out.

six months ago he’d first walked into his cramped rental flat in tokyo, barely the space to unroll his mat. six days later the pandemic had begun. slowly, first, confusingly, two weeks of shadowing jeanist to court and back while the news got increasingly weirder, and then by the third things took a turn for the fucked, and his parents were calling frantically telling him to come home stat, but by then it was too late. tokyo’s the new york of japan- in sci-fi movies it’s always struck first. the city was on lockdown before he could so much as book a flight out.

that was five months ago. by four and a half his phone carrier service had gone dead.

he doesn’t like to linger on anything, but he especially doesn’t like to linger on what happened between the start and the middle of it, the slow descent from incomprehending disbelief into hell on earth. he doesn’t throw the term around- not one for flowery prose. for the first while there’d been something almost rewarding to it, the whole survival strategy, him and the interns and lawyers at jeanist’s office taking scope of their resources and planning their ways out. now it’s been two months and five days since he’s run into anyone alive, he fails to see the bright side.

the media called them the infected, or the walkers, or some other dumb shit, but everyone knows they’re zombies. it’s some kind of chemical weapon- americans, if you ask him- that’s mutated them, but they’re zombies by anyone’s definition. lumbering, decaying, dead, very keen on extending the invitation. the first time he’d seen one up close- whatever. he’d killed it. he’s killed so many by now he’s lost count, and that’s not an exaggeration. these days he’s not so big on those.

the office had been overrun, in the end. some of the other interns, panicking. bitten. dead. jeanist had held them off while katsuki dragged hysterical staffers out of the window, and the last he’s seen of the man he was catching his unflappable gaze as the doors burst open and jeanist slammed the window shut.

they’d scattered. maybe he would have stayed on, tried the group thing out of a sense of responsibility alone, but there were too many subgroups for him to rotate around. he’d split off, eventually, cut his losses. sometimes he catches someone he recognises walking the streets, wonders when and how and what. he’s still never seen jeanist. he thinks probably he offed himself.

if it ever comes to it that’s what he’s doing. he has a gun ready for it. one bullet. in the apartment he’d stayed in for a while, some forensic doctor’s place, he’d studied the angle that worked best. straight through the temples, angled down.

then there had been that thing with the league. he doesn’t want to think about that, but he does, constantly, because that’s how he knows. two months and five days. the last person he spoke to was that fucking girl.

like zombies weren’t enough- criminals who fancy themselves cultists roam the streets in packs. it’s like every shitty blockbuster movie he’s never bothered to see packed into one.

two months. five days. there’s no way of communicating with the outside world. after he’d shaken off the league he’d had jack shit on him- lost his bag in the initial fight, and his apartment was a lost cause. in the end he’d made his way back to the firm, but that had been a literal dead end too. he’d managed to retrieve, of all things, his phone, skirting the streets around the firm, probably dropped in their original escape. it’s functionally useless but he’s managed to charge it once or twice, stare at old photos and texts that fail to send. he has nothing else of his own except the clothes he’d worn that last day with jeanist.

he’s remade his belongings, obviously. he’s competent, as it turns out, in apocalypses. somehow it doesn’t surprise him. he works out a routine. when he’d first found a hole to burrow himself in post-league he’d spent days just picking up patterns- when, who, from where, how. once he was entirely sure he’d gotten it down to a science he’d risked it back out, mapping the area out incrementally, one rotation at a time. two months and five days in he has it down to an art instead.

he moved regularly for the first month post-league, avoiding anywhere that seemed inhabited by zombies and people alike. can’t trust anyone, and besides it’s way too much of a liability having other people around to get themselves bitten. he can look after himself, but he’s not signing up for charity work. by the second month he’d found his current address, the top floor of a mid-rise apartment complex in meguro city. apartment complexes are risky, but this one’s door locks are still functional, and once he’d cleared out the ground floor and made the rounds to check for stragglers he’d wagered it about as secure as it could get. the stairs are a bitch, but the zombies don’t like them either, preferring to straggle in lobbies, and for another thing the height is convenient. the roof’s close by for a way out, and it gives him a good view of the surroundings.

the apartment itself is nothing special. residential. he picked the cleanest one, which also meant the one half-moved out in a hurry. he pretends like he thinks the owners got out but he spotted a suitcase with their name abandoned in the elevator. the guy was a teacher at the university. the woman was in sales. it’s decent for a tokyo flat, two bedrooms, a bathroom, good kitchen, nice living area. the fridge had been full of expired goods, but the shelves had some cans in them- soup, rice, beans. pots and pans. he’s been working through the floors of the place one room at a time taking inventory, lugging the useful shit back up. nothing beyond the strictly practical- he takes food, medecine, clothes, someone’s watch once, binoculars. he’s not making a home for himself, just stocking up. he sleeps with his bag on his back, the essentials locked and loaded. the gun was an apartment find too.

his biggest problem is transport. he recognised this early on, because so could anyone with half a brain. tokyo’s teeming with public transports overrun by the undead, cars abandoned on the streets, but the actual streets are packed day in and day out. whatever movie said zombies hate the sun was full of shit, because as far as he can tell the only time they actually react to the weather is when it rains. all night and day they’re shuffling in tireless motions around the city, gaining numbers. there’s a rhythm to it, sure- they’re more sluggish at night- but it’s an incessant flow. he can’t drive a car, has found no convenient manual stored nearby, and google went and croaked on him when the electricity did, so there’s no way he can just take advantage of a lull and jump in. by the time he’s figured out how to get any given vehicle to start he’ll be surrounded. even if he could find a way in, there’s no way out- driving through streets packed with zombies is a doomed exercise, especially given that half of the cars in the city are busted or low on fuel.

his current plan involves boats. he’s not sure if zombies can swim yet, but they don’t like the rain so he’s betting no, and even if they do they’d fare no better than a human at climbing a boat from the waters below it. if he can make it to tokyo bay somehow- at least off the coast there’ll be room to manoeuvre. but he needs to figure out the basics of ship-operating first, and also to relocate his supplies nearer to the bay somehow. if he ends up on the open seas he’ll need the food to last him the journey.

so he’s been doing this. rounds, collecting shit. taking inventory. scoping the streets out. he spends the nights planning, the early mornings reading. there’s no power in the building. it’s freezing. six months since his internship, winter rolling in. if he gets to tokyo bay the waters will be frigid, but the sea doesn’t freeze over.

his biggest concern at the moment is hypothermia, if he’s being honest. he’s collected every fucking duvet in the building, it feels like, but there’s only so much he can bury himself under. he’d be warmer if he didn’t insist on bathing in melted snow, but he went so long without washing in autumn that he fucking refuses to waste the opportunity. he smells like some ridiculous apple berry blast bullshit because he’s cycling through shampoos, but sometimes he thinks he’s only sane when he’s brushing his teeth in the mornings so he’s not about to let up on the hygiene.

three and a half months ago he was meant to be back at school. he has no idea what’s happened to his classmates. most of them were home for the summer. he thinks yaoyorozu was abroad. lucky her. kirishima was the last he heard from, all suppressed terror, and even now it makes him feel sick to think about it, because he knows full well the asshole was scared for him. sometimes he thinks about what it would have been like facing this shit as a group, but he never dwells on it. he’s better off alone.

he’s cold. he’s tired. he needs to get to the nearest library, because no one in the building has shit about boats. he doesn’t want to leave the building yet, but he needs a book. can’t go into this shit blind, not without knowing what he’ll need once he gets there. and besides he needs to stay sharp on the streets- get back into the swing of it, literally. one month since he moved in and he’s barely seen a zombie in the rotting flesh. the doors have been holding up, and he’s far up enough that none of the regulars outside can smell him, decide to unionize and break the door down.

he’s had an assortment of weapons, since the start of this. most effective was the gun, also a heavy chair once. his trusty hockey stick had snapped on his way into the building, a month ago, leaving him to fend the last three tenants off with goldfish bowls and doors to the neck. he’s found a sturdy baseball bat since that he’s claimed as new weapon of choice, though never used. he takes this, when he goes. the bat, the backpack that never leaves his back, the longest coat he can find in his collection. not the heaviest, despite the biting cold, because that restrains movement, but the longest, to minimize contact. hat and gloves for the same reason. balaklava just for the cold.

the apartment is empty as he winds his way down, footsteps loud, and it’s dusk- just late enough that the zombies are slower, though not late enough that it really makes a difference. it’s be too dark if it were; he’s trying to save flashlights for real emergencies.

the setagaya library is the only actual library near him, as the maps inform him, but too far to risk. in the address book he finds a local bookshop three blocks away, and it’s there that he heads, already cold to the bone as he grits his teeth and locks the complex door assiduously behind him. there are zombies just across the street beginning to moan in his direction. he ignores them, breaking into a jog.

maybe because their blood doesn’t flow to their brains, maybe because their muscles are deteriorating: zombies aren’t incredibly fast or incredibly intelligent. what they are is resilient, and single-minded. but outrun them and outsmart them he can, and so he does- runs the paths he’s memorized, sticks to corners and shadows and scales ladders and crosses rooftops and just about manages to get to the street in question without even having to swing his bat.

once he gets there, though, he gets swinging. the bookshop is in an unfortunate position, and there’s an entire group parked in front of it. he lets them spot him first, so they break off in his direction, then climbs onto the overturned truck they’ve shifted to and springs back down into the doorframe of the bookshop, kicking the door in before they can register his itinerary. he slams it shut just before a greying hand scratches at it in outrage, heart pounding a steady tattoo, then glances around rapidly. no sign of life, but that means nothing.

there is, then, an unmistakable jingling sound from the very back corner of the room, behind rows and rows of antique-looking books. keys, or metal on metal. movement.

company, katsuki thinks, between anticipation and trepidation. his bat sits comfortably in his hands as he raises it.

jingling, closer, and he moves in on instinct, breathing feeling loud as he brushes past the anthropology section. he can just about see around the corner when a sudden sixth sense makes him whip around, bat swinging down heavily, and just in the nick of time- wood connects with metal, hard, knocking him back a pace as his teeth snap together from the impact, but he’s swinging again in self-defense just as there’s a sharp intake of breath and his brain catches up- red, white, painfully familiar. the bat makes an aborted spasm.

“bakugou,” shouto todoroki says, in disbelieving tones, crowbar lowered but not dropped. katsuki gapes.

“am i fucking hallucinating?”

the crowbar lowers further.

it is him, unmistakably. maybe with someone else he would have hesitated longer, but todoroki's hard not to single out. his red-white hair is tousled, long behind his ears like he's absently tucked it and forgotten about it, and he's grimy, smells sour and dusty, but it's him. katsuki's own hands stay gripped around the bat, their gazes playing some odd symmetrical game as they catalogue each other for the same exact thing- looking for bite-marks. todoroki's less covered than katsuki is, but there's blood on him, old, dried. too old for recent bites, anyways. inconclusive.

"what are you doing in-" todoroki starts, maybe having concluded that there's no way to assess his status with the layers he has on, but then his frown twists. "oh. your internship?"

which answers katsuki's own question, sort of, because now that he thinks of it enji was on that high-profile murder case in the high court. still- still, his brain is stuck on the incongruity of it, shouto todoroki in the apparently living flesh, and it's been two months and five days. he just keeps staring.

"i came for a book," is what leaves his lips, eventually, rough, and his voice sounds hoarse with disuse. it jars him into action, moving past todoroki on auto-pilot, because somehow he can't quite register his presence, doesn't know where to begin. he wasn't factoring this into his day.

it's dark inside, books hard to discern, so he gets his flashlight out, hits it against a shelf so it alights. there's a section on travel near the back. nautical travels of the eastern seas. useless. a map book of the japanese seas- maybe. he mechanically slides it into his bag. his fingers feel rigid. he's still cold. what the fuck is shouto todoroki doing holed up in a bookstore? where is his father? how long has he been here? what is he doing, alive, talking, walking, in the apocalypse, ambling into katsuki's routine with a crowbar in hand?

he can't see or hear him at all. now he's back here he can tell the ringing was rigged up- tiny trap-wires set around the store, what looks like fishing wire with bells attached. smart. of course it is. he's losing his mind. where has the bastard gone? is he even here? it's fucking freezing in the bookstore. where does he sleep? he hadn't looked starving. actually he hadn't looked anything- just blank as usual, barring the surprise. fuck! he's been staring at the same book for a good thirty seconds without registering the title.

beginner's guide to boating. miraculous. he nearly breaks todoroki's kneecaps when he sees his legs appear silently next to him.

"fuck! don't sneak up on me, you asshole!"

"boats," todoroki says. "that's your plan?"

it makes him flare hot with something like rage, because he doesn't fucking want input on it, doesn't want to be told odds, and it has him on his feet, slamming todoroki back into the opposite bookshelf within seconds.

"mind your own damn business!"

todoroki seems mildly startled at best, shifting a little so a book isn't digging into his neck, and for a moment katsuki is distracted by the scalding warmth of him under his arm. he doesn't know when he last came into contact with a living body. it's disorienting. he thinks probably it was the senior partner who fell down the stairs, minutes before the zombies swarmed the lobby, pulse skittering frantically with fear.

he drops todoroki, steps back. two months five days. maybe he's gone a little crazy.

whatever! whatever. he's fully functioning, he has his book, he's leaving. he's going to be off-schedule at this rate, times gone muddy with distraction. even without touching him he feels like there's residue warmth on his palm, making the rest of him shiver by contrast. if the zombies could have just gotten properly active in summer...

he's halfway to the door when he remembers- again- todoroki is actually there, watching him inscrutably from the bookshelf, swaying a little on his feet. despite himself he turns to stare back. he doesn't know what to- this wasn't in the plan, he doesn't know. he's going anyways.

it's because he's staring-cum-glaring at todoroki that he sees his eyes widen, and then he's leaping forwards on instinct as the window in the door shatters, decaying arm bursting through as loud moaning suddenly fills the dead silence.

"shit!"

"it's because there's two of us," todoroki reasons, in a tone like he's annoyed with himself for not realising this, which would make katsuki feel marginally better about his own stupid lack of thought if he wasn't so pissed. he'd counted on the zombies losing interest on his presence once he was out of sight, but the smell of two live humans in close proximity would obviously keep some of them near.

"is there another way out of this place?"

"back entrance, but it leads into a dead-end alley," todoroki retorts, suddenly functioning, eyeing the creaking door as thumping intensifies from the other side. "there's a way to scale onto the drain-pipe above but it wasn't made to take two people's weight."

"shit," katsuki curses, feelingly. "where's the drain-pipe lead?"

"roof. i don't know if either of us could scale it fast enough for the other to follow before they get there."

katsuki looks at him, crouched calmly stacking something or other into a loose duffel bag, rusty crowbar by his feet, then looks back to the groaning door. his gut tightens with a sort of pissed off fatalism.

"how long 'd it take you to get to the roof? five minutes?"

"i could do it in three, maybe less," todoroki estimates. "it's slower with the frost."

three minutes. katsuki hoists the bat higher, takes a step then two back from the door.

"fine. go. i'll follow."

"bakugou-"

"it's the most logical fucking plan of action," katsuki snaps, eyes still on the door, adrenaline spiking. "if you get up there before i get outside i can make it to the drainpipe before anyone nabs me. i can hold them off for three fucking minutes. and you're the one who knows the way up. you go."

"i know," todoroki says, which makes katsuki glance back at him, finds his face set with nothing but fixed determination. "i was going to say to give me your bag. it'll make it easier to climb."

there's something about this that makes katsuki's head briefly thud with something like a pounding headache, lungs gone tight, but he refocuses, blinks away the dizzy spell. the last fucking thing he wants is to give the bag away, but unless the plan goes as hoped he's dead anyways, so there's no point in arguing.

he shrugs his backpack off, slides the gun out, shoves it into his back pocket. todoroki fastens the straps around his shoulders without comment, then turns and runs, not wasting any time. it makes something in him-

the door breaks in.

there's five of them at least, the ones from before. the first one goes down with a direct hit to the head, skull caving in with a crunching sound, but he has to retreat immediately, make them spread out of their pack formation as he zig-zags back through the rows of books. they're slower than humans but not slow, breaking into a fast paced shuffle after him; he turns a sharp corner, doubles back as fast as he can to catch a second one from behind. crack, snap. the one in front lunges back before he can swing again, sending him running back; he jumps onto the seller's counter, dodging an arm, then brings the bat down full-force onto the zombie's neck. three. there's another one nearing the broken door, the other two circling back to the front at the commotion. he jumps over the counter, ducking under an arm, knocks into the nearest bookshelf with all of his weight, sending it sprawling towards the door, books flying and frame landing awkwardly across the doorframe. it doesn't block entry, but it befuddles the would-be incomers.

there's an arm grabbing his shoulder; he dodges a gaping mouth, bat spinning to hit at the rotting jaw, once, twice, bones splintering decisively on the second hit, but the last straggler is on him and the others are crawling in through the door. he runs, down to the back of the store, nearly trips over todoroki's traps himself as he goes, miraculously jumps clean of them as his pursuers stumble. it gives him the seconds to jump up to the back portion of the shop, grab a nearby chair and throw it at the advancing huddle, knocking them back a step, then turn sharply into a row, sprinting down to the back of the room where the emergency exit sign hangs half-broken. it's closed, likely behind todoroki, but he slams through it before any of the zombies near, staggers at the sharp gust of cold air that hits once he's out. the sun is nearly set, casting a red haze over the alley, and there's a pack of six zombies right beneath the glinting drainpipe, still trailing after todoroki's scent, moaning around the corner signalling backup. fuck.

there's a loud scraping from above, then todoroki's head appears over the edge of the roof, something grey and unwieldy in his hands; a satellite dish comes falling down, catching speed as it goes. it hits the pack dead-centre, crushing two of the zombies into pieces on impact, others reeling backwards in confusion, and he doesn't have the time to question his odds four-on-one. he runs in while they're still dazed, beats one into the wall, head splattering, turns and swings into the second as it zeroes in on him, head collapsing inward and drenching him in blood. the other two are too close to hit; he twists, jumps back, curses, eyes the alley entry where others have scented blood. fucking- no, two on one, god, he's not dying two on one, not after the bullshit he's been through. he kicks heavily into the one's chest, just missing the hand trying to nab his ankle, which sends it knocking into the other, and like that they're just aligned enough that he yells and slams the bat through the first one's head, in three rapid blows, hitting the one behind it on the third as bits of skull go flying. it's not enough to take it out; he hits again, manic, and it gets him on the second go. then he's scrambling to the drain pipe, mindful of the others closing in, shoves his bat down the back of his shirt and under his waistband before he throws himself at the drainpipe.

"brace against the wall," todoroki calls, almost in the moment he does so, hands slip-sliding on the damp pipe as his boots hit concrete; there are arms nearing, outstretched, but he bunches his stomach and drags himself up, feet first then arms, side of his arm scraping heavily against the wall as he moves almost horizontally upwards, fingers clenched around metal. the fucking gloves are no help; he pauses, braced and shaking with tension, to rip his gloves off with his teeth, one hand then the next, dropping to the floor below as his bare palms hit the freezing metal.

he's so cold it hurts, but he's halfway up the wall. methodically he moves. one foot. other foot. one hand. other hand. stomach muscles, straining, arms pulling. up a fraction. then another. then another.

"wait," todoroki says, closer than he feels, and he glances up for the first time, finds him an arm and a half's length away. "you'll slide at the top."

"then what the fuck do you suggest i do?" katsuki bites, half a yell, too strained to scream. todoroki leans, heavy, arms outstretched.

"do one more. then take my hand."

katsuki wishes he could spit on him. todoroki's expression has gone tight like he knows what he's thinking, like he's not sure katsuki won't let himself fall all the way down rather than put himself into the uncalloused hands of shouto todoroki.

the pipe creaks. katsuki moves up, ignores the way his blood boils, eyes the outstretched hands. he can hear todoroki breathing, hot against the cold air.

"drop me and i'll turn you."

he braces. one hand leaves the pipe, and for a godawful moment he's grasping at nothing. their hands connect, rearrange themselves; todoroki has a death-like grip on his wrist. his foot slides. the second hand is thrown rather than extended, and todoroki's eyes flash alarmingly as their fingers brush and miss, but he doesn't fall, hangs there by an arm for a heartbeat, jolt like he's dislocated his shoulder before his boot catches something and he shoves upwards, todoroki grabbing hold of his hand and yanking full-body at him.

katsuki falls over the top of the roof in disjointed movements, the both of them half-hitting each other as momentum carries them down, lands with an elbow in todoroki's stomach and a hit of tile to the jaw.

his head spins; he shoves up immediately, falls back down when his arms protest, adrenaline pounding hysterically. his limbs are shaking with belated exertion. todoroki is still holding his wrists, punishingly tight, his breaths heavy nearby. his body is still hot beneath him.

he scrabbles backwards, onto his knees, todoroki dropping his hands and dragging himself up to his elbows. for a moment they stare at each other, panting loudly.

he wants to yell at him but the words don't come. two months, five days. it's not even todoroki's fault, really. he was living there unperturbed. there's a flush of exertion over his cheeks now, and maybe he's just gone crazy what with the constant thinking about unbeating hearts but he feels a little obsessively interested in the visible flow of blood beneath his skin, wants him pink all over if that'll prove him living a minute longer.

he shakes himself, exhales in a burst.

"are you all right?" todoroki asks, and up close katsuki realises his voice is hoarser too. in the shop he'd been too dumbstruck to register it, but it's there beneath his normal cadence, a scratchy undertone. he hasn't spoken in a while either. something about it-

all right, he'd asked. unbitten, he means. katsuki shakes his head.

"we need to get going."

he hadn't meant the 'we', but he thinks at some point when todoroki's fingers dug into his arm hard enough to pierce flesh the message had gotten under his skin too. they're not fucking splitting up now. of course they're not. this isn't model un or a baseball match; it doesn't matter that the guy drives him insane. and this is todoroki, too- excruciatingly hyper-competent at every challenge life throws at him. if there's anyone less likely to rely on katsuki for the next however-long until one of them is forced to shoot the other, he hasn't met them.

"where?"

"my place. 's not far. how d'you get down from here?"

"the next building over has a fire-escape."

"fine. let's go then."

todoroki hands him back his backpack. he hits his bat against the wall to shake some bits of bone and flesh off, eyes unfocused on the task. he thinks desensitisation is the word. it's maybe the third or fourth time he's fought them off without registering anything about them once. usually he gets stuck on some detail or other, schoolgirl shirt or smile wrinkles. freckles. proof of life. there's that movie he watched once with kirishima and the rest of them, some kind of sci-fic thing, and at the end when the monsters come the dad shoots his whole family dead to spare them. turns out it's the military instead, come to rescue them. kirishima had cried.

questions pile up in his throat. he forces them down.

they jump from the rooftop to the next with relative ease, the gap narrow, his foot just catching on the edge before he rights himself. the fire escape is solid where the drain pipe wasn't. he wonders how in the fuck todoroki ended up here, in some old bookstore.

he's gotten good at scaling shit. he thinks in another life he'd have made a top-grade gymnast, or a superhero. when he'd broken out of the league's hold he'd made a spiderman worthy leap onto a clothes-line.

they make it back to the apartment as the sun vanishes, late, and because they're late his perfect scheduling is off, leaves them facing a pack of easily a dozen zombies swarming around the doors. there's another way in through the side, but it requires forcing a door open that he doesn't have keys for, and that means an entry-risk.

"i'll clear a way to the door," he says, hoisting his bat higher. "you keep them off my back."

todoroki follows his gaze, nods.

they advance in the dark, close together, and it's bizarre having someone breathing down his neck after so long, makes him on edge, expecting a bite that never comes. when the first zombie starts turning their way he breaks into a run, brings the bat down fast and heavy so it connects with a sick thud, flashlight clicking to life where he holds it between his teeth. it blinds one zombie long enough that he gets it too, and then it's chaos, flashlight swinging drunkenly as he batters this way and that, fighting off the clawing arms with irate kicks and loud swearing. if there's one thing he fucking loathes about the apocalypse it's how touchy-feely everyone is, all endlessly grasping hands and drooling maws straining for a piece of him. it makes his skin crawl, which makes him see red, which makes him go through fights like this, all furious movement, too keyed up to feel afraid. he never goes into a fight expecting to lose.

behind him, around him, wet crunching and moans track todoroki closing the pack; in off-beat synchronisation they move their way through the group, dropping bodies as they go. he's by the door before he knows it, light catching the heavy glass, switches the bat to one hand as he drags out the keys. the first time he'd gotten in the door had been open; his luckiest find since was the functioning key, sealing him out of harm's way. he's efficient with it, no fumbling, has it in and open in the time todoroki exhales sort of shortly as their backs connect. bakugou yanks the key out in the same movement he grabs blindly at todoroki's collar with his bat-holding hand, hooking a finger to swing him through the door and diving after him to slam the door shut on a wrist, bone snapping and the hand falling limply to the floor as they put their weight on the door for as long as it takes him to lock it again.

todoroki's crowbar is sopping red, guts in his hair; he casts a look around, doesn't even ask if katsuki thinks the door will hold, if katsuki has thought of their scent luring zombies in. most people would have.

he has, obviously. thought of it. that's why he lives on the top floor. the scent doesn't linger. doesn't matter if there's two of them up there. the door holds for as long as the stragglers press up against it, but as soon as they're out of sight the zombies will drift again.

they make their way up the stairs. he's warmer now, purely from the exercise. heat rises. another reason he lives at the top. doesn't feel like it when he's freezing his ass off at night, but he knows his science.

they make it to the top floor in silence, and he pushes his door open (unlocked, this one, because by the point anyone reaches him up here he'll be long gone), goes for the camping lamp on the floor, trudges along with it in hand. remembers his houseguest.

"kitchen's there. there's a bathroom. two rooms. living room. no power or running water but i have some water in the bathtub if you want to wash."

"it's nice," todoroki says, and the worst thing is he sounds like he means it, almost politely. it makes katsuki stop dead to look at him, struck again by how unreal it all feels, but it almost feels reassuringly normal, staring at todoroki in disbelief. in the bad lighting he looks otherworldly, even despite the filth and zombie gunk he's covered in, all half-lit and angelic like something out of a hazy dream.

"i can't fucking believe it's actually you, half 'n half."

it escapes him unthinkingly, but it's true, and besides that it has the unforeseen consequence of making todoroki's composure fracture, shoulders rising and falling on a mute laugh, exhausted wryness in the tilt of his head. for a split second his gaze is dizzyingly and uncharacteristically frank, almost intimate.

"the feeling is mutual."

if the moment stretches he might do something wholly deranged; he rolls his aching shoulder, gestures to the bathroom.

"you go first. you reek."

todoroki says his thanks to his back as he retreats.

he returns to routine. strips, despite how fucking cold he is, wraps his shoulder tight enough that it hurts, rubs alcohol onto the more worrying cuts and scrapes. drags some bedding to the second room, then drags himself to the kitchen, shivering, mentally redoing his maths, then pulling out his notebook to jot down the edited stock. pauses, hesitates. in the margin under the date he writes: found half 'n half. it's not a diary, but he feels like he should make note.

todoroki appears silently in the doorframe, wrapped in a towel and scrubbed red, and there's something reassuring about how clean he looks, balanced out by how disturbing it is to see him so casually bare. he's barely glanced up at him that he drops the towel.

"the fuck-"

todoroki just turns in a neat 360, then wraps himself back up. katsuki snaps his jaw shut, ears burning but head clear. no bites. right. the previous times- whatever. reluctantly he stands and turns. when todoroki eyes his boxers he glares.

"you don't think you would have noticed if i got bitten on the dick today?"

he's not entirely sure todoroki won't fight him on it, but he concedes after a moment's assessing stare, shifts from foot to foot.

"you can have some of my shit to wear," katsuki says, pointing to the wardrobe he's requisitioned. "some of it's too big. should fit."

todoroki just nods, follows suit.

he wonders, as he scrubs himself down with a bucketful of water, teeth chattering and bath-tub still half full, if todoroki was always so goddamn quiet or if he's traumatised or some shit. the guy was always the annoying silent type, but he doesn't remember him this monosyllabic. habit, probably. what does he know.

he dresses, layers up, shoves his dirty clothes with todoroki's in the basket. when it fills he'll dunk the whole lot into a tub of his used water, but until there's that many dirty clothes he leaves them out.

todoroki is sat on the couch wrapped in blankets and wearing someone's dad's heavy knitwear, illuminated by (of all things) a gas lamp that katsuki had found but never managed to light. so the asshole has matches.

"you hungry?" katsuki asks, really only to make him speak. todoroki nods, counter-productively, but he's talking next.

"don't waste your food on me."

"shut up, asshole," katsuki mutters, on instinct, fatigue setting into him. jesus. the martyrs he's surrounded with. "you can make the next grocery run."

todoroki only looks at him longly, but he follows him into the kitchen, eats the cold soup without complaint. he likes cold food, katsuki thinks, then stops at the thought. he has no idea how he knows it. it feels like a memory from a different life. he likes cold food. like that matters.

it's not very late, though it's pitch black out. he goes to bed early these days to make the most of the sunlight. he's not sure what to do with todoroki, though rationally that's not his concern.

he can't find it in himself to ask the obvious questions. it's partly because he doesn't want to hear the answers and partly because he doesn't want to have to give his own. it's not like they were fucking bosom buddies before this all went down- he's past hating the guy, despite how unbearable he finds him, would call them something adjacent to friends under duress, but it's not like they make a point of hanging out outside of class. and todoroki's a terrible conversationalist, always.

even so. two months, five days. he wants to talk, if only for the pleasure of getting to call him a superior bastard, if only to know that he's still the same confounding weirdo whose face he wears. it's not even the words, really- he wants to hear a pulse beat near him, to catch alert eyes on his, to watch his chest rise and fall. alive.

he can't believe the asshole stripped naked like that. pale flesh all over, but not that diseased grey tint, just regular winter cold, like the inside of a peach. bruises and scratches littering his limbs. nasty half-healed scar like someone had tried to gut him with a knife.

his lips are peeling when he licks them. he found vaseline in someone's drawer but he uses it sparingly. whenever he goes outside his lips crack to the point of blood. against the glow of the stove he can see only half of his new flatmate where he sits surveying his newly clean crowbar.

"what's in the duffel?"

he'd have bristled more at the invasion, pragmatic though it is, but todoroki only shifts obligingly to raise it to his lap.

"medical kit- bandages, aspirin, tweezers, needle and thread. three water bottles. instant noodles. biscuits. matchbox. a city map. a change of shoes. a space blanket. my wallet. wire. rope. an alarm clock. a mechanic's manual." he pauses, feels around, drags out a glass bottle. "this."

it's vodka, of all the things. katsuki half wants to laugh.

"you drink now?"

"kept me warm," todoroki shrugs. which is, maybe, all there is to it. maybe not.

"i'll run you through inventory in the morning," katsuki says, if reluctantly. best todoroki knows what they have on hand, despite how little he feels like letting him into his notebook. it's not like he's deku, writing down his little feelings all over it, but it feels revealing anyways, for todoroki to know what he's been tracking.

there's nothing else for them to talk about without heading into dangerous territory. todoroki packs his things back into the bag, careful, and katsuki is sick of his own weird emotional breakdown, doesn't know where this sudden needy cloying bullshit is even coming from.

two months five days, his brain says, chipper, and then offers to rewind the days preceding that. he hisses through his teeth before he remembers he has company.

"i'm going to bed. 's fuck all to do without wasting light. stay high up if you want to go exploring."

todoroki has gone back to muteness, because he only nods as katsuki glowers at nothing in particular and makes his way back to his room, unhappy at the sight of his diminished bedding. it's not like he's actually able to use the whole apartment's bedding anyways- too unwieldy, too heavy, whatever- but the three duvets and two quilts had been working well enough to insulate him against the chill, and with two sacrificed he's resigned to a night of tossing and turning.

fuck his life. he thinks maybe the reason he's been having these fits of weirdness across the days is just fatigue. between the nightmares and the cold and the actual zombie break-ins over the past six months he doesn't think he's managed a single night's good sleep beyond the times he's blacked out. he feels untethered, at times both more and less emotional than he's used to being.

no surprise that having a real life human being around- and one that he knows at that- is making him almost ill with conflicting urges. part of him wants to lock todoroki out in a cold sweat and never lay eyes on him again. part of him wants to cut him open and grab at his beating heart just to confirm he's not alone. the rest of him lies there wondering what the fuck is wrong with his brain.

he lies there for maybe an hour trying to get to sleep, but his mind has kicked into overdrive in the way that it does every goddamn night nowadays, replaying scenes he didn't even notice in the moment. one of the zombies by the bookstore had barely reached his shoulder. when he'd washed his bat there had been bits of an eye clinging to the base.

he's too busy being cold and annoyed and possibly hysterical to notice the soft footfall until it's close, jerking up on instinct to brandish his bat, but he can tell by the moonlight filtering in slivers through his blinds that it's todoroki, if the lack of shuffling hadn't given it away.

"what the hell is wrong with you?"

"i didn't mean to startle you," todoroki says. monotone, but in an off way, almost dreamy, like he's asleep. it makes katsuki's skin prickle with foreboding; he stares at the little he can see of his face, alert now.

"then what do you want?"

"you sound cold," todoroki says. still in the doorframe, unmoving. he wishes there was more light.

"it's the middle of winter, jackass, of course i'm cold. can you fuck off?"

"my father is dead," todoroki says, completely unprompted, voice not changing in timbre in the slightest, and it makes katsuki's heart jump before he sits fully upright, trying harder to make his face out.

enji todoroki, gone. he guesses he'd known that on some level, for todoroki to be roaming around like a ghost, but it doesn't compute. jesus. maybe todoroki's actually fucking lost it since. he imagines two months and five days tracking back to losing his father, feels that gut-punch of paralysis in his stomach.

he's so caught on processing it that he doesn't even register todoroki is climbing into the bed before he's halfway under the sheets.

"what the fuck are you doing?" his voice half-breaks on it, rising in sheer disbelief as he jerks violently back, because seriously- there's insane and there's insane, and he's starting to suspect todoroki is so out of it he'd snap his neck in his sleep.

todoroki has the audacity to shush him, distracted, and it takes katsuki actually grabbing him hard by the shoulder, braced to hit at the slightest flicker of intent, to stop him in his tracks.

"hey, asshole, i'm talking to you! are you out of your goddamn mind?"

where he's stopped now todoroki's one eye catches the moonlight, big and dark and eerie. he blinks slowly like he's coming out of a trance.

"oh, i-" he pauses. his pulse is sluggish under katsuki's hands, skin fire-hot. feverish, maybe. shit. feverish, very possibly. he'd had no layers in that shitty bookshop. "sorry."

he says it like he's not sure he means it. katsuki doesn't let up with his grip.

"how long you been sick, icyhot?"

"sick," todoroki repeats, processing it. his gaze sharpens. "days. i think maybe- what day is it?"

"wednesday. thirteenth."

"six days, then," todoroki says, quiet. their gazes catch, more consciously now. "i'm fine. the adrenaline helped."

"sit still," katsuki warns, and then pulls up quickly, shrugs his backpack off, digs out the medical kit. he has a decent stock of medicine in the apartment, enough that he only hesitates a beat before pulling out the advil bottle, unscrewing the cap to fill it. he knows the dosage by heart. "drink."

he nearly drops the whole bottle when todoroki just obediently sticks his mouth to the rim of the cap instead of taking it himself, hot breath fanning over his fingers as he drinks. it makes his own pulse go skittering with discomfort when he fills it a second time, brandishes it back. the cap is sticky and wet when he screws it back on; todoroki is still half-sitting where he told him to when he's done his bag up and slid it back onto his back.

"why'd you tell me about your dad just then?" katsuki asks, despite himself, if only to fill the silence.

"did i?" todoroki asks, on an exhale, visible eye swivelling to him. "i don't know. i was thinking about the cold, i think. he wasn't cold in the end."

he resists the urge to check his temperature. probably it got worse once he tried to go to sleep, all the residue adrenaline gone. it can't have been peaking all day, or they'd have never made it out in the first place. and it's not from a bite. just a fever. he's medicated. he'll sleep it off.

"i'm not crazy," todoroki informs him, suddenly cool, not so hazy. "just sick. i could hear you tossing and turning. that's why i came."

"why're you in my bed?" katsuki shoots back, on the edge of combative, not really. maybe he's a little relieved. he's a lot pissed off, even though he knows todoroki probably genuinely didn't realise what a state he was in the last week, might have actually been trying to make sense of his fluctuating mood himself. no shit he'd been so weird when they first ran into each other.

"i'm not sure," todoroki admits. "it seemed important at the time."

this makes him want to laugh, though he doesn't. the cracked-open raw part of him that still smarts loudly whenever he thinks of jeanist thinks he missed him somehow.

"glad we solved that mystery. get out now."

todoroki makes to move, stops when they're facing each other, blue eye white-pale on his. "actually i remember now, i think."

"i swear to god, half 'n half..."

"you're cold," todoroki repeats, factual, then back to floaty. "and i couldn't hear..."

he doesn't expect him to do what he does, which is why he doesn't stop him when he puts a too-hot palm directly over his heart, doesn't even pull back when he pushes, knocking him onto the bed.

"todoroki-"

"it's fine," todoroki says, scratchy, sweat-warm. he slides onto his own side in a heavy, graceless motion. face to face, half an arm between them, palm stuck to his chest. "it's fine."

it's the scratchiness that wins him over, or maybe the fever flush of him. todoroki may be fucked in the head but he's not, which is why he knows full well he's being insane by not shoving him out. it's just that on some extremely uncomfortable and deranged level he gets it, because he's been tracking his pulse like a shark since they first ran into each other. there's something less insane beneath it too, pragmatic acknowledgment that it is actually a great deal warmer when there's body heat to share, but he knows full well he'd have toughed it out, six months ago, sent him back to bed and spent the night half-awake in spiteful resignation.

it's six months later, though, and somewhere along the line he's been rewired wrong. he thinks it's not unlikely that he's just this desperate for a full night's sleep.

it doesn't really matter why, though. he lets him stay. in the morning if todoroki is back to himself he'll see right through whatever he says, and on balance he doesn't fucking care.

he's so fucking tired. two months and five days, six months and three. the last time someone touched him for more than a second without trying to kill him it was a crying intern, this bespectacled guy whose name he'd never bothered to learn choking on his own blood as he clutched katsuki's wrist for comfort. before that he thinks it was his mother, exchanging their usual routine of brusque ruffling before he got on the train. he hasn't cried since the start of this, but he feels like crying now, hot throbbing behind his eyes. he sucks in a breath, forces it down. time and place. he's said it like a mantra since the start, like there's ever going to be one.

todoroki is fast asleep, but his hand's still there. his fingers have curled into the wool.

two months and five days, he thinks again, remembering other hands, clutching his face, pinning his arms. that's changed now, he realises. still marks the date, but not the last time he's spoken to someone.

ten minutes, thirty seconds. he reaches to pull the covers higher over todoroki's shoulders, feels his stomach constrict when his hand brushes medicine-sticky lips in passing.

maybe todoroki can sail. that's a rich kid thing to do. he'll have to ask in the morning.

he falls asleep within fifteen minutes, forty seconds of todoroki, and doesn't wake until the sun rises.

#qui ecrit #deandra #tdbk #qui repond #prompts #bnha #mha #lashawn beyond is living rn #todobaku #apocalypse au

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rhysismydaddy · 4 years ago

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After Midnight pt. 1 (Feysand)

Synopsis: After a tumultuous, heartbreaking relationship, Feyre Archeron turns to online dating for a break from normalcy. Or rather, to Velaris Nighttime Ventures, the most exclusive, high-dollar escort system around. She needs to ease back in to intimacy, so this seems like the perfect idea. But what happens when her escort turns out to be someone she can’t get out of her head? Someone who seems to understand and appreciate everything about her?

My many disclaimers: Stole a line in here from The Hating Game. And one from ACOTAR obviously. And the story line is loosely based off of The Kiss Quotient. Basically, I’m a fraud.

__________________________________________________________

~Feyre~

If I told any of my friends I’m about to hire a hooker, they’d laugh themselves silly.

And, to be honest, the idea is a little ridiculous to me, too.

I’ve never had a problem getting a date in my life. Brownish blondeish hair, blue-gray eyes, and an athletic build give me slightly above average looks. A lucrative job makes me financially sound and independent. A lifetime with two sisters gave me a sense of humor.

I’ve dated prom kings, nerds, and everything in between. I’m completely normal.

Or at least I used to be.

After everything that happened last year, I don’t know if that’s true anymore.

My therapist tells me constantly it’s okay that my last relationship changed me. And the multiple degrees on her pretty green wall tell me she knows what she’s talking about and that she’s completely correct.

Even if... even if it doesn’t feel okay.

Even if I can hardly stand looking in a mirror or being hugged or someone giving me a compliment.

Even if I haven’t felt like myself in so long, I don’t even know if I’d recognize it if i did.

Because while I used to love putting makeup on, choosing a dress, and going out, the thought now fills me with so much dread it makes me nauseous.

What if I just make the same mistake as last time?

My sister's told me my whole life to guard my heart, but I always laughed it off and said she was being cynical. And what do I have to prove it? Trust issues and a standing appointment Dr. Motley.

Men don’t deserve my trust. At least not right now.

But... it’s time to move on in the physical sense.

And since running the risk of taking home the wrong man scares me shitless, I’ll start with someone who can’t reject me, can’t make me feel worthless.

Someone who won’t develop feelings for me or get attached and demanding. Someone... who won’t mind giving me control.

A hooker.

Or escort, like the Velaris Nighttime Ventures website says as I scroll through pages and pages of profiles.

Gods, this is more stressful than my first gallery opening.

All the profiles include is a picture, probably-fake name, height, an age, and a simple sentence about them.

It feels creepily similar to online shopping. And there are so, so many options. How the heck am I going to choose one?

Scrolling down further, my eyes roam over men of every skin tone, age, and height. I don’t have any real preference, but decide I need to have a few ground rules, otherwise this will take forever.

Age? I’m twenty-seven and don’t have an interest in being a cougar, so I set the range from twenty-eight to thirty-five.

Height? At 5′6, I’m not exactly tall, but I’ve always found men who were more attractive, so I shrug and put the minimum at six feet.

Pressing enter, I watch the website sort, then look at the number of men left. Thirty. Not bad.

Scrolling through slowly, I realize it’s kind of like a yearbook for an all male college or something.

A college full of really sexy men.

I pause on a few, but something about them make her keep going. I want the complete opposite of my ex, so any with features like him get eliminated.

Eventually, I get to the last row, feeling a little dejected.

But then I see him.

His eyes seemed to pierce through the screen, and once I see him, I can’t look away. Without another thought, I click on the profile.

The name under the picture reads Rhysand. No last name, probably for privacy purposes. He’s a few years older than me. And tall--6′3 tall. But that isn’t what draws me closer. It’s the sentence he’d written.

To the stars that listened -- and the dreams that are answered.

My fingers ignore the rational part of my brain and click the button to book an appointment, and before I know it, I’m looking at a confirmation page.

For tonight at midnight.

Oh gods.

~Rhysand~

After working at the bar for a few hours, I head back to my shitty apartment to get ready for tonight’s appointment.

Someone has booked me for an “evening of adventure and pleasure” as the confirmation email tells me.

Wonderful.

All I know is her name: Feyre. It doesn’t sound like an old-lady name, so there’s that.

Those are the worst. It feels like fucking someone’s grandmother. Not that I’d know, exactly. And I mean sure, most of my clients are older. But there’s older, and then there’s old. Fine line between the two, let me tell you.

Most of the people who hire me are in their forties, trapped in miserable marriages, and desperate for a decent lay. They’re also filthy rich, because I’m not cheap in the slightest.

It’s why I’d agreed to this shit in the first place.

Yeah, I have to psych myself up and sleep with a random lady, but the pay is killer. And the more money I make, the quicker I can stop.

So I shower and go through my pre-appointment routine, trying not to think about what’s become of my life.

There weren’t any special requests on the appointment, but the meet was set for a swanky hotel downtown, so I put on a dark suit and white dress shirt. My hair doesn’t need much work, so I leave, figuring I’ll get there early.

The drive over’s quick, and soon I’m walking inside and sitting at the bar. She has my picture, but I don’t have a clue what she looks like, so she’ll have to come find me.

After a few minutes, someone settles next to me, and I turn around with an expectant smile.

But when I see who it is, I stop. And hating myself more than I thought possible, I tell the woman, “Sorry, I’m waiting for someone.”

Which really fucking sucks, because she’s beautiful as hell.

Smooth skin, dark blonde hair, blue eyes, and kiss-me lips kind of beautiful.

She gives me a strange look, then says words I’d never expect from someone like her. “I’m Feyre. I’m the... client.”

The way she cringes on the word tells me it’s her first time doing something like this, and the thought makes me a little too happy.

I know I should say something to comfort her, but all I can think is... she’s definitely no grandma.

~Feyre~

He keeps staring at me for a few more moments, then smiles and says, “Sorry. You’re not what I was expecting.”

I nod, then realize I have no idea what to say. Or do. Fuck, this is weird. “Do you want a drink?”

Rhysand shakes his head, then says, “Feel free, though.”

That’s the first good idea I’ve heard all day. After ordering from the bartender, I turn to the man next to me and smile sheepishly. “I don’t really know how this works. It’s my first time with... this.”

“I figured.” He’s turned toward me, one arm braced on the bar. “You can have your drink, and we’ll go upstairs when you’re ready.”

A nervous laugh ebbs out of me, and I blush. “Okay.”

Gods, am I really going through with this?

I mean sure, he’s hotter than all hell, but he’s a prostitute.

Would you rather invite a random man home with you? the bitch that lives in my brain asks with a knowing smile.

I ignore her as a drink’s set in front of me, finding it helps a little. The man next to me just watches, face a mixture of confusion and amusement.

Somehow, the photo didn’t do him justice. He’s ridiculously attractive, with dark hair, almost violet eyes, and tan skin. There’s a hint of stubble on his strong jaw, surrounding the sensual mouth that’s currently smirking at me.

I’m definitely attracted to him, but this is still weird.

“So, why are you doing this?” he asks as I drink. “If you don’t mind.”

I’m sure as hell not telling him the truth, so I say, "I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”

Rhysand smiles, and it only makes him more attractive. “Fair point.”

Then he looks me up and down, raises his dark brows, and asks, “Ready?”

Not in the fucking slightest. “Sure.”

By the time we reach the elevator, I’m practically shaking. Telling myself that I can do this--that it’s what I want, for gods sake--doesn’t really help. But I don’t say a word as we glide up, then walk to the room I’ve rented for tonight.

When we get inside, I avoid looking at the bed as I turn to him.

Rhysand smoothly takes off his suit jacket, then leans against the wall and crosses his ankles. “You seem nervous.”

He certainly doesn’t. Every move he makes is smooth and easy, like he’s so comfortable in his body he doesn’t ever get nervous or self-conscious.

Must be nice.

“I do?” It’s a deflection, and we both know it.

“You’re shaking like a wet dog.” My nose wrinkles at the analogy, and he grins. “A very cute wet dog.”

I told myself I’d be alright, but now that I’m alone with him, I realize I’ve told absolutely no one where I am tonight. And if things go wrong... I start pacing. “I’m, uh... it’s just... nothing. Let’s do this thing.”

I should write sonnets.

His lips twitch, but he doesn’t say a word as he walks to sit on the edge of the bed. Feeling like the biggest idiot in the world, I sit next to him.

“Why don’t we just take things slow?”

Thank the gods. I nod.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, using manners I definitely hadn’t expected but much appreciate.

I nod again, trying to keep my hands from shaking.

Rhysand raises a hand, but I swallow and push down the flare of panic as he cups my jaw and tilts my face to his. Then he leans in--keeping his word and going very slowly--and I brace myself as his lips brush against mine.

My body doesn’t exactly know how to feel when they touch. On the one hand, a very handsome man is kissing me. On the other... a man is kissing me.

I ignore the second thought and kiss him back.

His lips are silky soft against mine, slowly urging them open, and then his tongue is in my mouth, caressing mine. Everything’s slow and sensual and practiced.

And even though it’s a picture-perfect moment, it feels like that scene in the movie where the dumb blonde goes down the dark hallway while the entire theater screams at her to run.

Oh gods oh gods oh gods.

My brain’s playing me a repeat of the last year on fast forward, and I press my eyes closed to try and block it out.

I’m fine.

Rhysand leans into me, and then I’m on my back with him hovering above me, still kissing me. His surprisingly muscled frame is heavy against me, pressing me down into the soft sheets, and his elbows are by my head.

Nothing’s wrong.

Everything’s wrong.

I take a quick moment to remind myself that if this had happened a year ago, I’d probably have wrapped myself around him and let him do whatever he wanted.

But the past twelve months weren’t just a bad dream. And the band-aid protecting the stupid, naive girl I used to be from the harsh realities of the world has been ripped off and torn to bits.

And suddenly, I can’t breathe.

His head snaps up immediately, and violet eyes gaze down at me, full of concern. A weak hand comes up to press against his chest, and he sits up immediately. “Feyre? Are you okay?”

I shake my head and practically roll off the bed onto the floor. It’s completely undignified, but I don’t care. My lungs are on fire, my throat tight with the tears I’m barely holding back.

I have to get away from him; I have to get some space.

My back hits the wall, and I curl into myself, pressing my forehead against my knees.

Breathe, Feyre, breathe.

The silence in the room is broken only by my gasps, and I focus on the sound, letting it remind me that I’m here, that I made it out.

I don’t let myself think about the other person in the room. It’s just me, and I’m fine. I made it out.

There’s scratchy carpet under my legs, a wall behind my back, and more than enough air in the room.

Eventually, my brain catches up with the obvious, allowing oxygen to fill my chest. I’m gulping down breath after breath until my heart rate finally starts slowing down, and it’s only when my head stops feeling fuzzy do I open my eyes.

Rhysand sits on the bed, beautiful eyes wide, watching me.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. Gods, he’s probably uncomfortable beyond belief. “I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s not your fault,” I say, cutting him off and shaking my head. I know I should get off the floor, but my legs feel like jello, and I don’t want to crawl around again. “I, um...”

The words to explain the panic don’t come easy, but he stays silent, giving me time.

And because I’m a coward who still can’t admit what happened to me, I repeat the words my therapist suggested I try.

“I have problems with intimacy.” It’s hardly a whisper, but I know he hears it. “And, um... I thought it would be easier with someone like you.” I flinch at my own words and try to make it sound less offensive. “I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay, Feyre. I understand.”

Tears burn the edges of my eyes, but I force them down and steady my voice. “You can go. There’s money on the desk.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not leaving you like this. Unless I’m the reason.”

“No, it’s not you,” I assure him. “You’re great. I just have a hard time relaxing with- I mean around-”

“Men,” he finishes quietly.

And even though I didn’t tell him, he looks like he can read the words off my face. Rhysand doesn’t say another word, but his eyes are understanding and calm.

He extends a hand, the silent invitation clear, and for some reason, it makes me smile as I slowly get to my feet, using the wall to support me.

Walking over, he takes my hand in is, and I notice how rough his palms are. Before I can wonder what he does to get such big callouses, he takes my other hand and places them on his shoulders.

“You’re in control. There are no expectations with me.” The words wash over me, settling in, and my heart slows down a bit. “If you want to kiss and call it a night, we can. It’s up to you.”

For some reason, hearing that he doesn’t care helps. It’s the reason why I chose this, I guess. I’m the client, and I’m in control.

Finally feeling calm, I slowly run my hands over his shoulders, down his arms. He’s heavily muscled, but it’s smooth and lean, not bulky. From a physical life, not from hours spent in a gym.

I can see the faint lines of tattoos beneath the shirt, but I don’t move to unbutton it.

His eyes stay on me, and I meet them as my hands drift to his face. The stubble I’d noticed earlier is rough against my fingers as I trace his jaw, then the strong slope of his eyebrows.

It’s been a year since I touched a man. Longer since I did so this... leisurely.

My hands find their way into his dark hair, and I smile at how soft it is. His head tilts back a little and his eyes drift close. I don’t know if he’s putting on a show or actually enjoying this, but he seems calm at least.

And I think... I think this could work.

Working on my intimacy issues with him could help fix me, maybe even get me ready for a real relationship.

So I lean in slowly and press my mouth to his.

Like he said, I’m in control. While earlier had felt like being kissed, this feels like kissing. I move my mouth slowly over his, tracing the curve of his lower lip softly.

He really is a beautiful man.

And patient, too. He’s extremely patient while I take my time learning the shape of his mouth, then the angle of his jaw. He stays still, eyes closed, letting me explore.

I slowly drift back to his mouth, and when he eases his lips open, I meet his tongue with mine. It’s slow and light and just enough to make me want more.

My breath comes shorter, but it isn’t in panic.

Taking his hands from the bed beside him, I place them on my hips. His fingers flex, but they stay exactly where I put them, even as I wrap my arms around his neck and press a little closer to him.

We’re still just kissing, but I feel it in my entire body, all the way to my toes.

I pull back and take a deep breath, not knowing how to put what I want into words without embarrassing myself. Bright violet eyes meet mine as Rhysand runs his tongue across his lower lip. “Just say it.”

How can he read my face so well after just an hour of knowing me?

“Lean back,” I say, my face warm with a blush. “But don’t turn us over. I can’t... I feel trapped.”

Rhysand just nods, gripping my hips tighter, then lays down with me on top of him. My chest is against his, my legs resting in between his. It’s the closest I’ve been to someone in a long time, and I wait for the panic to set in, but none comes.

“You okay?”

A small part of me wishes he wouldn’t be so damn understanding and nice. It’s making me feel so incredibly stupid, even as it warms my heart.

I nod, then put my head down against his chest. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Why?”

Looking back up, I meet his eyes hesitantly. “You’re probably so weirded out by me. Paying you just to come make out like teenagers.”

He smiles, and it makes some of the nerves untangle. “Silly woman. I could kiss you all night. You have the most delicious mouth.” He leans in and kisses me, as if to prove it, then makes a deep humming sound.

“That’s absurd,” I mutter, even though I feel a lot less anxious now.

Rhysand shakes his head, then says, “You taste like fucking candy.” His arms loosely wrap around my waist. “Tilt your head to the side and I’ll prove it.”

I do, and his mouth meets my neck, slowly but in a way that makes it feel like I’m being devoured. Tingles shoot down my body as he sweeps my hair off my neck to get better access, and a soft moan escapes me as he sucks on the spot between my shoulder and neck.

He pulls away enough to say, “You have a really sexy moan, too.”

My face goes scarlet, and he grins up at me, then we’re kissing again. Gods, the man can kiss. He’s letting me control everything, but it’s obvious he’s good at what he does.

Even though I’m almost delirious with lust--something I haven’t felt in a long, long time--I know this is enough for tonight. I’ve already had one panic attack, and I don’t want to push myself too hard.

So I pull back and tell him, “You can go. I don’t think... this is good for tonight, I think.”

“I feel like you’re not getting your money’s worth if I leave now,” he says, and if I could’ve sworn I hear a hint of sadness in his tone.

I shrug, not telling him the money for tonight was nothing to worry about. Instead, I just slide off him and stand up, straightening my shirt. “It’s was more than okay. Seriously. Thank you for being so understanding.”

Rhysand rises fluidly and grabs his jacket, then turns to me. Before he can speak, I say, “I actually wanted to talk to you about another appointment.”

After an awkward pause, he says quietly, “I don’t really do... repeats.”

“Oh.” There’s no way to hide the disappointment in my voice.

I’d thought that I’d be able to work with him slowly. Build on what we did tonight. The thought of having to find a different man and explain why I’m so emotionally stunted... shit.

What if I freak out again, in front of someone new?

Gods, no wonder he doesn’t want to come back. He’s already had to deal with an hour of my trauma. Who would ever sign up to do it again? I’m damaged goods.

“It’s not you, I promise. I’ve just had a few clients get sort of... attached. So I made a policy to not meet with women more than once.” He sounds nice and apologetic, and it grates my nerves a little.

Rejection is rejection no matter how you look at it.

And no matter how fucked up I am, I don’t need anyone’s pity.

But, like a big girl, I smile and nod. “I get it. It’s fine. I’ll find someone else. Your money is on the table.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Find someone else? What do you mean?”

My eyebrows fly up at how shocked he sounds. He just saw firsthand how not okay I am, and he’s surprised?

“I mean that I’ll find someone else. I have intimacy issues, and I need to work on them. I understand completely that you’re uncomfortable with that, and I’ll find someone who isn’t.”

There’s a flicker in his jaw. “And you’re planning on using the website for this someone?”

“It’s really none of your concern.”

“Feyre, there are some not so great people on there. You shouldn’t use-”

My patience snaps. “You have absolutely no right to lecture me. You don’t want the job, I will find someone else, since it’s such a goddamn burden. Now thank you very much for tonight, but you’re community service is done. You can go.”

There are too many emotions on his face to process them all, but I definitely register shock.

“I promise it isn’t about you, okay? You’re great. Hell, I’d want to sleep with you even if I wasn’t getting paid. But I have a policy, and-”

“Like I said, I understand. You can go now.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t use the site to find another guy.”

There’s something about the command in his voice that grabs every last thread I’m hanging by and rips them free. I march over to him and jab a finger into his chest. “Do not tell me what to do. Ever.”

Rhysand eyes narrow, but it isn’t in anger. It’s like he’s looking at a puzzle, and he just figured out the piece he’d thought would fit won’t. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

I remove the finger-gun from his chest, but he doesn’t make any move to leave. Instead, he catches me completely off guard by saying, “I’ll do four more appointments.”

Rolling my eyes comes a little to easy. “Don’t do me any favors. I’m not your goddamn charity case.”

“No, because if you were, you’d probably be a little grateful.” Whatever retort I had planned dies in my throat. “But it’s not pity. I don’t want you getting hurt by some other guy from the site.”

There’s enough genuine concern in his voice for me to believe him. And the last thing I want is to put myself in danger.

But I still ask if he’s serious, because to be honest, it sounds perfect.

If I can fix myself in six appointments.

That’s a pretty big if.

“Yes, seriously. But I’m going to charge you more, and we can only meet here.”

I shrug because I sure as hell wasn’t about to invite him to my place. And unless he’s planning on charging enough to buy a house, it should be fine. “Okay.”

He glances at me, then down at himself, like he’s suddenly aware he’s still standing here. “Okay.”

And just like that, I’ve hired a hooker.

____________________________________________________

Part 2 is here because I have no self-control. Let me know in the comments/my box if you want to be tagged :)

@trinitybailey2003 @zukos-simp @cursebreaker29 @sjmships @starrynightsbooks @lovemollywho @januarystears @perseusannabeth @a-bit-of-a-cactus @elriel4life @girl-who-reads-the-books @aelinfeyreeleven945tbln @rowanisahunk @superspiritfestival @studyliketate @over300books @justgiu12 @maastrash @aesthetics-11 @bamchickawowow @b00kworm @sleeping-and-books @musicmaam @savemesoon8 @hizqueen4life @maybekindasortaace

#feysand #feyre archeron #feyre #rhysand #feyre x rhys #rhys #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acotar fanfiction #a court of mist and fury #a court of thorns and roses #a court of wings and ruin #a court of frost and starlight

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tanadrin · 4 years ago

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I suppose because politics is what means I have no future of any kind left, so it's hard to be silly about it. And I seem to have landed myself in a sector of social media filled with people who are very smug about how smart and nihilistic they are, and I hate all of you with the hatred that only a miserable, powerless person can feel.

I don’t buy it. Unless you are quite literally scheduled to be executed at dawn, “no future of any kind left” because of politics is catastrophizing. People in very dire circumstances the world over often manage to build some kind of life for themselves; it may not be the life they want, and the suffering they endure because of the circumstances they are limited by should not be dismissed, but to say that someone in such adverse conditions has no future is to infantalize them and deny them the agency they do have to shape their life to some extent.

And this is an insight I’ve found important when dealing with depression in myself: even if one’s catastrophizing is not irrational (say, you’re a queer person stuck in an extremely homophobic environment, at minimum for the next 5-10 years), that does not mean it is useful. To put it another way: circumstance might justifiably make you angry and sad and frustrated. That may be rational. Deciding, in the face of that anger and sadness and frustration, to surrender to it is not rational.

So--assuming that you are not a political dissident due to be executed, nor suffering from a terminal illness which somehow for political reasons cannot be cured (if either of these things are true, you have my sincere condolences)--I have to say, this ask reeks of someone who’s depressed. If you are depressed, you will always be able to come up with reasons why happiness is unattainable for you, due to circumstances entirely out of your control. This is not a crazy thing to think, because if you are depressed and not treating that depression, most if not all the things you try to do will not solve your unhappiness because they are usually orthogonal to what is making you unhappy. Your very ability to accurately imagine future happy states and what might bring them about is suppressed by depression; for instance, you might, if you are depressed and you know it, rationally understand that exercise often helps with your depression, but be unable to motivate yourself to exercise because the intuitive link between if I do X I will feel better is broken by an internal forecasting system that refuses to spit out predictions other than “nothing I do will help with anything.”

A depressed state is not a psychotic break--it doesn’t cause you to lose touch with reality--but I think depressed people would sometimes benefit from treating it like one, because it does subvert your ability to accurately model the world, and therefore you can’t trust your own ability to reason or intuit about certain topics. I have both experienced this from the inside, and seen it from the outside: friends whose depression causes them to believe they are unlovable, and thus that nobody loves them, even when told (and shown) repeatedly that they are very much loved, and very important to the people around them.

In fact, you remind me of this post: depressed and anxious people who notice politics is depressing and anxiety-inducing, and that depressing and anxiety-inducing problems confront the world and society, and therefore conclude that their depression and anxiety are a rational and reasonable response to the world. But that doesn’t follow at all! A lot of responses to a depressing and anxiety-inducing environment are more useful that shutting down and withdrawing, or letting yourself be paralyzed; and even if there are negative external factors in the world affecting your life, if you have nothing in your life that is a sufficient source of joy to offset these things at least somewhat, then you have problems sufficiently severe that I don’t think your depression or anxiety can be laid at the feet of the world at large alone; more likely, you’re dealing with shitty personal circumstances, and these are far more likely to be tractable to your individual capacities than, like, all of climate change. And if you do have some sources of joy in your life, you can cultivate those further.

To put it another way: humans are very bad at reasoning about things on large scales or over large timelines. One reason we’re slow to solve problems like climate change is that we tend to be pretty blasé about remote and impersonal problems, which is actually often useful as well--because it means we’re capable of adjusting our hedonic barometer to create joy even in catastrophic circumstances. If you are constantly worried about big issues like climate change or the Trump presidency to the point where you can never do that, then the conclusion you should draw isn’t that you’re a uniquely rational human being with a uniquely accurate worldview, it’s that your brain is broken and you should not trust your intuitition.

Emotional states are not rational models of the world. They are tools our brain uses to motivate certain kinds of action. They probably have their origin in our social evolution, but this means they are extremely untrustworthy when it comes to complex, large-scale, philosophical, or impersonal issues, because these are not scenarios our brains evolved to handle before the advent of high-population, highly-stratified societies.

Now, I realize it’s hard to convince someone they are depressed and/or should seek treatment by rational argument (lord knows I’ve tried in the past!), because after all, if we were being perfectly rational, we would not feel depressed. We wouldn’t feel anything; again, emotions are contingent tools, not highly rationalized responses to the world! So I won’t belabor this point any longer. Instead, now I’m going to get annoyed with you.

Because here’s the other thing depressed people do--and I have done myself. They see people who are not depressed, whose hedonic barometers are functioning normally, and capable of experiencing joy even in arguably (or inarguably!) shitty circumstances, and they get mad at them. How dare you be capable of laughing at a joke, or sharing a meme, or having a nice day, when everything is so bad!

This is a common response, not only from depression, but also I think from grief, or fear, or trauma, or lots of other things. But it’s bullshit. I’m sorry, but you don’t get to demand that everyone feel your suffering as acutely as they feel their own. You don’t get to demand that just because you’re a pessimistic ball of frustration and anger that everyone else be, too. You get to--and ought to--demand that people treat you with empathy and respect, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get to make jokes about topics you find depressing as hell. Yes, even topics that personally affect you, and may not personally affect them (though, of course, a lot of times people assume the person making the joke isn’t personally affected by the topic, when in reality they are and the joke is a way of relieving stress and coping with frustration).

That calvin and hobbes meme I reblogged is an extremely generic political compass meme; the only relevance it has to the world today, I suppose, is acknowledging that, like, politics is a thing that exists. If you’re upset by that--how dare people laugh at politics, the source of all my problems--you’re being a dick.

And this leads my to my final point, which is this: while we are all of us owed compassion, we also owe others compassion. And people caught up in their own anxiety and depression and anger often don’t see the way their emotional states impose costs on the people around them. They often treat the people around them badly--worse, at any rate, than they normally would--and react defensively if this is pointed out to them.

I’ve done this. I have friends who have done this. I get it. It doesn’t make someone a horrible person! It doesn’t meant they deserve to feel the way they do. But it does create the second half of a twofold moral obligation. You see, I believe that the, call it “utilitarian selfishness” view, is essentially correct: if all humans are of similar moral worth (they are), and you can only help one person (often true), and that person is yourself, it is no less moral to help yourself than it is to help someone else. This is usually framed as a grant of permission: “you are allowed to be selfish sometimes.” But it’s also an obligation: “you should not be a dick--even to yourself.” You have a positive obligation to care about your own suffering! And you have a positive obligation to try to reduce the costs your suffering--your bad mood, your depression, your anxiety--imposes on the people around you.

Because I’m not a smug nihilist. I actually believe, with embarrassing intensity, in a large number of abstract principles. And while I believe circumstance or injustice can conspire to make people feel miserable and powerless, and I have the utmost sympathy for you feeling that way, no one is so omnipotent as to be able to truly excise our power to do something with our life that is rewarding to us, no matter how modest. Your subjective feeling of misery is not license to be a dick to people, or to misrepresent them or their motivations. And if reading my tumblr (or anyone else’s) makes you miserable, you have a positive moral obligation to stop, because you’re being a dick to yourself, which is no more justifiable than being a dick to me. And being a dick to me because you don’t like my Tumblr, because you’re miserable and I’m not, is pants-on-head stupid.

I, too, have been so convinced of my misery and powerlessness, and so utterly convinced of my inability to make improvements in my life, that I have yielded utterly to the feeling of myself as a despised, helpless, wretched thing. You can spend years in that state. A lifetime, even. I suppose it relieves you from the burden of having to try, which is a tiny shred of comfort when the climb up the hill seems so steep. But I have found that in the long run it brings no other relief; there’s no regression to the mean, just an endless prolongation of misery. It required some courage, and not a little determination, to try to climb out of that pit. Sometimes you struggle. Sometimes you fall back in. Sometimes it’s easier to believe there’s nothing beyond that place of unhappiness. But there is, and you can get there, and the choice of whether or not to reach it lies only with you.

#if you are in fact due to be executed ignore this #and you have my deepest condolences #but in that case how did you get on tumblr???#Anonymous

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retrievablememories · 4 years ago

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how’s this? | johnny (m)

title: how’s this? pairing: johnny x reader genre: non!idol au, smut request: “Can you please write a smut scenario with Johnny where Y/N and him are best friends and he comes in her apartment unannounced to find Y/N in lingerie in the mirror. Unbothered she asks him what he thinks.” word count: 3.6k warnings: kinda-but-not-really voyeurism?, oral sex (69), dirty talk, a lil angst? a/n: the title is from the hyuna song, although the song itself doesn’t really relate. i don’t feel as confident about this fic compared to my others tbh, but... 🤕

Johnny is your best friend. There’s little you don’t know about each other, few things you haven’t done together—well, at least on a platonic level. You might’ve kissed each other once or twice, when you were younger and still trying to figure out the opposite gender, but little more than that has happened between you.

You’re endlessly grateful that he can be someone so reliable, someone who guards all of your secrets and bad moments like they were his own and knows you inside and out.

His place in your life earned him the honorary perk of getting a key to your apartment when you first moved in, so he could drop by whenever he needed to, or whenever you felt like having him. He’s used it on more than one occasion, but he tries not to encroach upon your space too often, knowing you like time to yourself, too.

You are Johnny’s best friend. He values your friendship among some of his closest relationships, and there’s rarely a day when you don’t cross his mind. He appreciates your humor, your personality, and your support of even his wildest endeavors, fueled by the idea of you two always being there for each other.

For Johnny, your closeness makes it a little harder for him to come to grips with the fact that he likes you much, much more than friends are supposed to. He’s not quite sure when the scales tipped this way, unable to pinpoint a specific moment in time when the lines blurred, but part of him hopes that this is the one thing he can keep from you. He’s convinced that you see him practically like a brother and nothing more, and although there have been many times when he wanted to confess, he’d rather not jeopardize your relationship over his feelings.

Even if that means he has to spend many of his nights fucking his hand and pretending its you, or writing new songs and realizing all the lyrics are about you.

It’s hard not to think about you this way—and it’s especially difficult whenever he, Jaehyun, and Mark debut a new song at the cafe where they do regular performances. You’re always at the front, watching him and his bandmates with admiration and cheering them on with your other friends. For just a few hours, he can allow himself to believe that your smile is only for him.

Your apartment key comes in handy on one miserable day when Johnny is locked out of his place and it’s pouring down rain. Of course this happens the one time he forgets to check the forecast and leaves without an umbrella.

Your apartment is the closest to where he lives, close enough to walk to—run, in this weather—so he heads there without a second thought. After dealing with shitty customers at work and now this, he’s not in the mood to talk with his prickly landlord about his key; that will have to wait until tomorrow. He holds his bag over his head as he makes his way to your place, wondering if he should text you first. His phone is liable to get drowned as soon as he pulls it out, though, so he reasons that he has enough time before you get home from work to let you know he’s come by.

He’s relieved when he reaches your apartment building a few minutes later, soggy and cold, and he spends a few moments wringing himself out as best as he can before heading up the stairs.

Johnny takes the stairs two at a time until he reaches your floor, and soon enough he’s standing in front of your door. He slips his key into the lock and walks in, a pleasant shiver going down his spine from the warmth of your apartment.

He’s surprised when he hears music coming from your room. It’s loud enough that you likely can’t hear him, because you usually would’ve appeared at the sound of the door opening if you weren’t already in the front room.

Maybe he isn’t thinking entirely straight today—the earlier events did do a number on his composure. Any other time he would’ve made himself known before walking into your bedroom, but he makes a beeline for the door after dropping his things to the floor. You’ll probably fuss at him for the mess later, but he’ll make it up to you somehow.

Johnny pops into the doorway, already feeling less stressed out by the idea of seeing you. “Whassup bestie—” He’s stopped in his tracks by the sight of you standing in your full length mirror.

You’re wearing a black lingerie set, one with more lace than he knows what to do with. Something warm settles in his stomach as his eyes drink in your body, exploring every line and curve in a way that he hasn’t quite allowed himself to before. He’s seen you in bathing suits before, but in this entirely new context, something about the way the material hugs your body makes his blood rush south.

You quickly notice him standing there, though you don’t react with shock or even annoyance like he expected.

You and Johnny stare at each other for a few long seconds. He grips the doorknob as if he means to close the door, or maybe he just needs something to keep himself upright. His mouth hangs half-open from the words he meant to stay that promptly died on his lips. You smile coolly, finally breaking the tension, and his cock twitches at the sight of you grinning at him like that while wearing your pretty lingerie.

In hindsight, he’s surprised this situation hasn’t happened sooner.

“What do you think?” you ask, speaking a little louder to be heard over the music. You turn back to the mirror to give yourself another once-over. “It’s new. I bought it not too long ago, but this is my first time trying it on.”

“I…” Johnny knows the tips of his ears and his face must be red by now. “It looks great on you, really, um...really sexy.”

You smirk. “Good to know.” You turn away from him to shut off the speaker, and even with the music still on, you can hear his sharp intake of breath when his gaze falls to your ass. With the music now off, you casually walk over to where he stands. By now, you’ve given him a full show, and he has just enough shame left to pretend like he wasn’t staring.

“You’re soaking wet,” you say, furrowing your eyebrows at the state of his clothes and hair. You peel Johnny’s jacket apart to expose more of his shirt, which sticks to him and outlines his abs as clear as day. “You should take a shower before you get sick or something.”

Johnny is a little bewildered at the unaffected way you speak to him after being walked in on while wearing nothing but a few scraps of fabric. “I-it’s not like I brought any other clothes,” he says, willing himself to look in your eyes and not at your breasts as he speaks.

“Then I’ll put these in the dryer and you can wear them again later,” you say it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “But seriously, get undressed…” You trace your finger against the collar of his shirt, and that one motion has his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tries to swallow. “...you’re dripping all over my floor.”

Johnny can only nod at your instruction. Light flirting is nothing new for either of you, but this situation feels charged in a way he hasn’t experienced with you before. He dares to wonder if you could maybe feel something for him too; and does that mean he failed at hiding his own feelings like he thought he could? His mind grows a little hazy at the idea of this going somewhere further, though he isn’t sure if he should hope for that much yet.

“Seriously, go, Johnny. You look like a drenched cat.” You push him gently in the direction of your bathroom, and he finally trudges down the hall with his head spinning.

Johnny leans his head against the tile wall of the shower, enveloped by the citrusy smell of your body wash. He turns the knob a little closer to the cold setting and closes his eyes, letting the water rush across his body. He’ll warm himself up under the hot water later, but right now he needs to take care of the problem throbbing between his legs. He can’t quite bring himself to masturbate in your bathroom with you only feet away in the apartment, so he settles for the classic cold shower until he can regain his thoughts.

Sighing, he pushes his fingers through his hair and thinks back to all the times he could’ve admitted his feelings but didn’t. “...Shit. I’m an idiot.”

Johnny walks back into your room with a towel around his waist. You’re leisurely lying on the bed scrolling through your phone, still wearing your two-piece set. He has a good view of your ass in this position, and he groans inwardly as he feels his dick trying to come back to life. Maybe he should’ve jerked off in the shower after all. You sit up when you hear him step into the room, throwing your phone on the bed beside you.

“You good?”

“I’m fine,” he says, though he doesn’t feel like it. His clothes aren’t done drying yet, and he didn’t think far enough ahead to consider that he’d be wandering around in nothing but a towel until then, but it’s too late to change that. He sits on the edge of the bed. “Look...are you...up to something?”

“Up to what, Jonathan?” You like calling him this when you want to tease him a little, though it takes much more than that to ever truly upset him. He isn’t quite sure how to frame his question now that he’s said it. Wearing that lingerie probably isn’t the best answer, because you’d been doing that before he ever entered your apartment. But the fact that you haven’t put anything else on yet has the wheels in his mind turning.

“Like, do you…are you...” He wiggles his eyebrows and glances over your body, trying to play it off like he’s joking, but you aren’t buying whatever he’s trying to sell. The usual finesse he has when flirting has vacated the premises.

“I know you’re not losing it over some underwear, Johnny.” You say this, but your eyes signal that you already know how he feels about it. “It’s not that different from our trips to the beach.”

“Come on. The beach is way different from this, Y/N.”

“Then tell me what’s different.”

“The difference is that I want to fuck you.” It slips out before he can really think it through, but it’s too late to snatch the words back now. He worries if he’s toed too far across the line. “Um, I mean—if you want? I don’t want to make shit weird—”

You crowd in behind Johnny, pressing your breasts against his back and resting your chin on his shoulder. You know you’ve got a better handle on the situation than him right now, but you also hope he doesn’t notice the slight tremble in your body. He seems stuck between wanting to lean into you further and stay stock-still. “Is that your big secret, Johnny Suh? You want to fuck me? You should’ve just said so. It’s not weird.”

You haven’t reacted in any of the ways he thought you would tonight, and it makes him think maybe he’s fallen off on being able to read you. Before he can respond, your lips are on his. He’s almost surprised with himself at how immediately he responds to your kiss, prying your lips apart so he can slide his tongue into your mouth. He lets some of his self control slip, his cock swelling under his towel as he tastes the inside of your mouth and grips your chin.

You make light work of Johnny’s towel, slipping it away from his body and gripping his half-hard dick in your hand. He groans into your mouth when you do this, and his first reaction is to push up into the circle of your first, wanting that friction on his skin. Your hand and his hips move in sync as you pump his shaft and he seeks more of your touch, moaning at the way your fingers spread his precum over his dick.

You break the kiss to move from behind him, settle at his side, and push against his chest. Realizing you want him to lie down, he does so, his reddish hair fanning out across your comforter. He almost shoots right back up when you lean down with his cock in your hand and draw your tongue across the tip of it, lapping up the beads of precum threatening to drip down. “Fuck, Y/N…” Your tongue passes his slit over and over again and he has to grip your thigh to ground himself, wanting nothing more than to make you deepthroat him until he comes in your mouth.

Your ass is facing him in this position, and no sooner than the idea comes in his head does he grasp your hips and maneuver you until you’re hovering above his face. You make a noise around his dick, letting him slip from your mouth before asking, “What are you doing?”

“...Returning the favor. Have you never 69’d before?”

“N-no, but…” Your thoughts trail away when he pulls your lacy panties to the side and exposes your pussy to the warm air of your room. You try to brace yourself for the sensation of his tongue on you, but instead he strokes his fingers across your outer lips, spreading you open for him. You stop your movements on his dick in response, your face burning with heat. “T-this is so—are you just gonna stare at it all night!?”

“Lower your hips more,” he says, and you do so, and you moan out loud at the first swipe of his tongue against your pussy, slow and wet. You take his shaft in your mouth again, reaching to fondle his balls as he circles his tongue over your clit.

Johnny slowly rocks his hips up, letting you find a good rhythm as you suck his dick. You are wet and warm and perfect on his tongue, and he presses your body closer so he can taste more of what you have to offer. He quickly adds his middle and index finger into the mix, searching the depths of your pussy, his cock twitching in your mouth whenever you whine or push your hips into his face just right.

It becomes a little harder to focus on pleasuring you as he nears his end, with your lips around his shaft so tight and wet and your hands squeezing him in a firm grip. “I’m gonna come,” he mumbles against your thigh, his mouth slick with your essence. That motivates you to keep working him over until his stomach tenses and his cum spurts across your tongue, thick ropes of it painting your mouth white. Some of it drips onto your hands, and you lick this up, too.

Johnny trembles and groans from the aftershocks of his orgasm, but he pulls your hips closer and continues eating you out and pushing his fingers into you until you shout and grind against his mouth, trying to ride the wave of ecstasy without tipping over. Even after you’ve already come, he sucks your clit so fiercely that you have to pinch his thigh and beg him to let up. He only lets you go after he’s pulled another gush of wetness out of you.

You assume Johnny would be in need of a break, but instead he slides you off of him and hurriedly pulls your panties down, his dick still stiff. He runs a hand across your chest and up to your neck, admiring the way the lingerie looks against your skin before undoing your bra. He wraps his lips around your nipple, teasing it into a hard peak.

“You’re still hard,” you say, though it’s more of a statement than a question, and you’re not really sure whether you’re talking to him or yourself.

“You make me this way.” He cups your other breast and lightly pinches your nipple as he says this, and for the first time tonight you feel truly flustered at how he looks at you as he makes that claim. “Do you have any condoms?”

“...The nightstand.” You watch as he rolls over to find a condom and tears it open, sliding the rubber onto his dick. He settles himself between your legs, his tip bumping into your entrance and making you sigh at the pleasure running through you.

“Are you ready?” he asks, grasping your hip with one hand and his length with the other. You nod, and he carefully sinks himself into your heat, a moan falling from his lips at how incredible you feel around him. How many times has he imagined this? The fantasies never quite measure up to the real thing.

A dozen emotions run through him—satisfaction at finally being inside you, a sense of affection that he’s trying not to think too deeply about, and genuine amazement at how you can look so pretty under him, shining with sweat and stuffed with his dick. For a split second he wonders if you two should really be doing this, about what your friendship will look like on the other side of this, but he decides not to dwell on it further when you grip his ass and push him deeper into you. “You’re really greedy,” he says half-jokingly as he pulls out and thrusts back into you.

“Then fill me up so I won’t be, Johnny.” You hold his face and close the distance between your mouths.

The room is thick with the sounds of each other’s moans and the slap of skin against skin. Johnny’s mouth hardly leaves your body, his tongue sliding across your neck and collarbones and back down to your breasts again. You hold onto him tightly as you match his thrusts, your bodies moving together at an even pace.

He grinds his hips into you so he can watch and feel you shudder as he does so, captivated at how he can get your body to react to him. He dips his head so he can kiss you again, like there aren’t enough kisses in the world for him to be truly satisfied, and you let him fuck you with his mouth and his dick as you draw your nails across his back.

Each time he circles his hips it stimulates your clit and brings you closer to orgasm, and he adds his fingers to the mix to speed along your release, wanting to experience you gushing and tightening around him. He is so intoxicated from the reality of what’s happening that the connection between his mind and mouth is becoming fuzzier, and he’s almost afraid of what he’ll say if he takes his lips away from you now.

Johnny’s pleasuring so many different parts of your body that it makes you unable to hold on any longer, and you come with your toes curling and back arching, fucking yourself onto his length with the last remnants of energy you have. You eventually slump against the bed, still reeling as he keeps stroking into you in search of his own end.

It comes soon after when you pull him by the nape of his neck and nibble and suck your way up to his ear, tugging on his piercing and whispering about how you want him to come for you. His pace becomes more erratic as he digs into you and feels his balls drawing up with his impending orgasm.

“I love...l-love your pussy,” he gasps into your neck. He is dangerously close to spilling his real emotions, but he cleans it up at the last second, unsure if this is just a platonic fuck to you or if you’d want more. He doesn’t want to ruin what you have by trying to find out, and the electricity traveling up his spine is rendering him too distracted to think over it anyway.

You continue clinging to him as Johnny bucks into you and empties his load into the condom, and you coax along his climax by squeezing your walls around him. He eventually pulls away after regaining his strength, panting and oversensitive from your actions.

“You like me,” is the first thing you say.

There’s no point in denying it now, and he can only sigh and scratch his head. “...Yeah. Actually, I’ve kinda liked you for years, so I think it’s safe to say it counts as ‘love’ now.”

You sit up, and Johnny distracts himself with tying the condom off and throwing it away, too nervous to sit still for your reaction. “But, I understand if you don’t feel the same way, I mean we’ve just been friends this whole time anyway, we can just—”

You bring your hands to Johnny’s face and cup his cheeks. “Sometimes you are really oblivious…” You lean closer to place a chaste kiss on his lips. “How could I not love you? You’re the most important person in my life.”

He pauses as if he doesn’t have a clue what you just said, then his eyes widen. You laugh at his comical expression. “You’re sure? Like, this wasn’t just a pity fuck because you felt sorry for me or something—”

“Never that.” And then you kiss him again, your lips lingering together for longer this time as his body relaxes into yours.

#johnny smut #nct 127 smut #nct smut #ambw smut #nct 127 scenarios #nct 127 imagines #ambw scenarios #ambw fic #ambw imagines #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct fic #nct johnny

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emmy-writes-sometimes · 5 years ago

Text

Emergency

You’re a stunt performer and make a wrong step. When your ex, Sebastian, is your emergency contact still, will you take the opportunity to get back together?

“You sure you got this, Y/n?” Your director asked as they checked the last of the wires for your stunt. You were the unlucky stunt double who had been asked to come in and do a scene where you were literally hanging off the side of a building. You were supposed to kick out a plexiglass window, swing into the building, and do a flip. It seemed easy enough. And it wasn’t like it was even the most dangerous stunt you’d ever done. It was just tight quarters, and it was giving you heart palpitations.

“Got it, chief,” you respond, trying to sound confident even though you were pretty sure you were about to die. It was nothing like a stunt you’d done where you fell out of a helicopter, but this one had a potential of leaving you alive after breaking all of your bones. “If I don’t do it now, I never will.”

“Alright. That’s our girl. We’ll get set up and start rolling.” You anchored your foot on the building’s fake steel frame, refusing to look directly down. There was a stunt mattress below you, so that wasn’t a problem. There was nothing on the other side except cameras to watch you break every bone in your body. But you could do this. You were calm. You could do this, you told yourself. Easy as pie. And you could feel that your wires were tight, especially around your waist.

You listened to the scuffling behind you as the shot was set up, moving your foot slightly to get the angle they asked for. You put your foot on the red tape and waited. And waited. And then they called action. You kicked in the window, hearing and feeling it shatter below your feet, but upon swinging in, you made a critical error. Your feet hit the bottom of the window, sliding off of their marks, and your ribs collided with the metal frame. But your body was so close to sideways that it kept on flying, and the last thing you felt was a cracking in your rib, a similar cracking in the forearm you placed in front of you, and a searing pain in your head.

Well, shit, you thought. I broke every bone in my body. At the ripe age of twenty-three, you were going to die.

Sebastian thanked the barista as he grabbed his third cup of coffee for the day, about to go put a splash of cream in the blacker-than-black coffee. Just as he reached the table, though, his phone started vibrating in his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number, but it was a New York area code. He always answered his phone, and this time was no different. He raised the phone to his ear and listened.

“Hello?” He said.

“Hi, is this Sebastian Stan?” A woman’s voice asked.

“Yeah, this is he, what can I do for you?” He responded.

“You’re the emergency contact for Y/f/n Y/l/n, correct?” Sebastian froze at the sound of your name. It had been only a month since you’d broken up. For a dumb reason, too – because of the media. Not because of either of you, but because the media just couldn’t stop and Sebastian refused to do that to you and to your career. You would both be lying if you said you weren’t completely in love with each other. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t cry about it every so often, or every time you had something to say you had to bite back the urge to call him and tell him. He regretted ever breaking up with you, but he knew the opportunity to apologize was long gone. Or was it?

“Yeah, I guess I probably am,” he started. Then he realized – emergency contact. His heart skipped a beat. “Wait, why, is she okay?”

“She will be,” the woman said. “I’m sorry. I’m a nurse at St. George’s in Manhattan, she was just brought in a few minutes ago. Apparently there was an accident involving a window.”

“Oh, my God. Is she okay?”

“It wasn’t fatal. She just broke a few ribs, fractured her forearm, and got a nasty concussion. We were wondering if you could come in and be with her and fill out some information for us.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can be there in twenty minutes.” So the opportunity for him to apologize hadn’t gone out the window. He probably would have to apologize for jumping in on the situation, but your parents were across the country. The reason he was your emergency contact in the first place was because he was the first person you trusted to take care of you if something happened. And as terrible as the situation was, Sebastian didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. He put the lid back on his coffee, hung up the phone, and walked outside to get the first taxi he saw. You probably would need the coffee more than he did.

“What’s the diagnosis?” You looked at the nurse as she walked into your room with an iPad full of information. She just smiled at you.

“Not great, but not terrible,” she responded. “You fractured your forearm. You broke four ribs, it looks like you cracked a couple more, and you’re lucky you didn’t crack your head open.”

“Great. So, do you guys do, like, a shuttle back to my apartment or something?” The nurse laughed.

“No, we called your emergency contact. He’s on his way now.” You froze. The only emergency contact you could even think of was Sebastian. Your parents were literally across the country and your dad was at work because you’d talked to him earlier. There was no way it could be anyone but the ex you wished more than anything wasn’t your ex.

It had been an amicable split, and that was the worst part. There wasn’t a fight that ended it, or a big secret that came out, or cheating. It was just that the world felt like they owned Sebastian and therefore you, and he didn’t want to put that on you. It was admirable on his part, but you’d be lying if it didn’t break your heart. He was the best relationship you’d ever had, easily. You could have seen yourself with him for good, and you had seen it that way. But the media had just gotten so bad that you could barely be seen together. You wanted to keep trying, because maybe it would die down, but Sebastian had been through it before. He knew. And he knew that the only way to let you have the success you deserved was to let you go. But you had never told him how much you didn’t want that. Maybe now was your chance. Or maybe he just wouldn’t say a word.

“Yeah, he’s kind of an ex,” you explained.

“I can call him and tell him you healed if you want,” she offered. You shook your head.

“It’s not even his fault, that’s the worst part.” The nurse smiled.

“Well, I’ll go ahead and get the release papers for you so you can get out of here quickly. Press the button on the side of the bed if you need something.” You nodded and watched her leave. You turned your head to see your backpack with your phone inside of it, and part of you considered texting Sebastian you were sorry that he had to come down here in the middle of the day because you didn’t know how to properly do your job. But you weren’t even alone long enough to reach for it. The pain in your arm and your ribs had subsided, fading into a feeling of fuzziness, but your head was throbbing so much that you could barely look to your side. You could barely see as Sebastian walked in.

“Y/n,” he said as he walked in the door. He was always gorgeous, but even now he was breathtaking. His eyes were wide and full of concern. He was sporting a hiatus beard and slightly longer hair than usual, and he was wearing that Rutgers hoodie that you used to steal all the time. He looked like the giant teddy bear of a man you were completely and utterly in love with.

“You don’t have to tell me this is stupid, because I know it is,” you responded dryly. Humor. That was a great way to cope with what was currently going on. It was also your only defense mechanism, and Sebastian saw right through it. He smiled that perfect smile.

“They said you fell out of a window?” He asked. “Listen, I know I broke your heart, but I’m not worth suicide.” That brought a sick smile to your face.

“As if I’d kill myself over you,” you rolled your eyes. “This was obviously a ploy to get your attention.” He walked closer to you, his eyes serious.

“Seriously, though. What happened?”

“I was doing a stunt and I was supposed to kick a window, but I didn’t do it right. I literally thought I was going to die.” He chuckled. “I’m not that bad at my job, I promise. And I’m really sorry they made you come down here, I didn’t even think I’d ever need an emergency contact.”

“Yeah, but you’re admitting you need me. It’s fueling my ego so please, keep going.” You could tell he was only half playing when his smile faded. He walked closer to you until you scooted over in the bed, letting him sit on the side. You wanted to grab him and hug him, but you had one working arm and it had an IV running through it. “I’ve been thinking about calling you.”

“I saw a really cute dog the other day and it took everything in me not to call you,” you admitted. You looked down, feeling your face go red. “I miss you, Seb. A lot.”

“I miss you too. A whole lot. And I’ve been thinking every single day about calling to apologize, but every time I thought about it, I thought it was too late, so I would just wait, and…”

“Apologize for what?”

“For fucking breaking your heart. And mine. It was a shitty thing to do, and if I hadn’t then I could’ve been there today.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me falling out of a stunt window.”

“No, but I could’ve been there to pick you back up. I’m sorry, kid. I was so worried about the rest of the world and how they were worried about your job and the age difference that I didn’t worry about you when I should have.” Sebastian’s hand went to your arm with the IV in it, grabbing onto your hand. “And I think it would be completely pathetic to ask to have you back, but here I am doing it.”

“Yes.” You didn’t hesitate. You didn’t need to hesitate because there was no doubt in your mind that you should say yes. Sebastian looked up at you, a little confused. “Yes. I want you back too. And I’m sorry it took this to get you here, but…”

“I’m sorry, baby.” He gripped onto your hand tightly and you tried to squeeze it, but you were on too many pain medications to be able to tell if you did or not. “I love you. And I’m not gonna let some stupid Daily Mail article change that because it’s dumb.” You sniffled.

“I love you too.” Sebastian leaned forward and pressed a kiss to your forehead, then your lips. You’d missed him so much. You’d missed how he smelled, how soft his lips were, how he’d always kiss the same spot on your forehead. Just as he gave you a smile, the nurse appeared again with papers in hand.

“Alright, these are the release forms. Basically, if you’re going home on your own, you sign for yourself, if you’re going with someone else just write them down instead.”

“Thank you,” Sebastian said to her. She handed him a pen and the clipboard and left the room again.

“My insurance and stuff are in my wallet,” you told him.

“I think I still remember most of it. And, besides, you’re coming home with me anyway.”

“Seb, you don’t have to…”

“I want to take care of my girlfriend after she fell out of a window.”

“It was a plexiglass window.”

“I know. But it was still a window. You’re still my girlfriend. Or you are now. Just let me baby you for a couple weeks, okay? I missed you.” You smiled.

“Thanks. And only if I can borrow that hoodie back.”

“Just don’t tell the photographers that I think followed me from the coffee shop.” You scoffed.

“I promise I won’t tell the media sharks. And they’ve probably figured it out on their own anyway. I’m sure the studio is going to issue some kind of statement and then people will track it to me and then figure out that I’m going with you.”

“Yeah, probably. I don’t care, though. You’re mine. Fractured body and all.” Sebastian leaned in and kissed your forehead again, a smile coming over his face as he went back to signing papers.

A/N: I hope you like it!

#sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan fluff #sebastian stan imagine

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laurelnose · 4 years ago

Note

Different anon but please I would love a lecture about baby and adolescent drowner care

From an ethical perspective, can I domesticate them?

the main ethical issue with normal people keeping drowners in the witcherverse, I think, is that most people would either cull juveniles post-metamorphosis (workable... I guess... but this just feels like a really shitty thing to do) or they’d eventually release the adult drowners somewhere, creating a problem for their neighbors. highly unlikely that anyone in the witcherverse would be responsibly containing the adult drowners they raised! and of course the space required for large aquatic animals and the responsibilities of keeping an animal that can absolutely kill you or people around you.

...and also like, there’s the type of personality attracted in the real world to monster fishkeeping and venomous snakes. definitely not true of all monsterkeepers or people with hot snakes, but the people keeping redtail catfish in home aquaria and free-handling their hots in public? these guys (and it’s usually guys, lmao) are the types to be raising drowners. just a little bit more money than sense, a desire to seem badass (and masculine) to others, an attraction to the feeling of control stemming from keeping a dangerous animal, often more interested in the aesthetic of something than the reality, a fundamental lack of care or responsibility for the wellbeing of their animal... these guys are just assholes! they might not always have done anything wildly unethical yet but their vibes are simply the worst.

...that’s the lecture Geralt would have ready for 99% of people trying to raise drowners. or, well, he'd probably just have a bunch of extremely cutting remarks to make before getting rid of all their drowners, lmao.

but say we’re very responsible people, you and I, and we’re gonna be the one percent of drowner keepers. what can we do with drowners?

from a practical perspective, you might be able to tame one, but you couldn’t domesticate them; domestication is an intensive multi-generational process that results in an animal genetically distinct from the origin species, and drowners most likely have long enough generation times that you just wouldn’t have time within your lifespan*. unless you were like, a mage inexplicably willing to spend a century or two on the project (relatable).

* I’m aware that the silver fox experiment lasted only about 40 years, but whether or not Belyayev’s foxes are fully domesticated is somewhat controversial, and drowners are WAY more aggressive than foxes, so I suspect there would be additional complications along the way that would increase the number of required generations.

ethically... well, two big questions are whether it’s ethical to keep an undomesticated drowner, and what you plan to do with your domestic drowners. if you can’t ethically keep an undomesticated drowner, your plan is dead in the water. no way to get from point A to point B. for the question of what you plan to do with your domestics: you should always approach intensive breeding projects purposefully. if you’re breeding dogs, you should be thinking about what you want to produce—maybe dogs that better fit a breed standard, or which are sweeter pets, or better workers, or healthier in some way—and your intentions should be ethical as well (i.e. creating extremely flat-faced cats is purposeful, but unethical because it causes problems for the cats). and you should have plans to provide for the animals you produce; you don’t get to just dump your drowners off somewhere when you’re done! that’s the bare minimum of ethical qualifications you should meet for your drowner project; some people of course will say that one should consider whether any domestication is ethical but I don’t particularly want to get into that because that argument is huge and messy lmao.

to ethically keep an adult drowner doesn’t seem difficult, if you have resources; their living requirements don’t seem very complex or particular, as they like everything from sewers to coastlines and have very generalist carnivorous diets. you basically just need to be able to maintain a large enough water source for them and have some way to protect everyone who has to interact with them. we’ll say we’re a filthy rich mage, and since drowners aren’t that dangerous if you’re prepared, we’ll just buy a tract of land with a nice body of water, fence it off, build the facilities to separate drowners into breeding pairs, provide our employees with drowner pheromones and armor, and start selecting desirable drowners.

so...what counts as a desirable drowner? I mean, I think adult drowners are charming, but very few people share my aesthetic tastes, so you’re probably not going to break into the pet market. Possibly they could be used like cormorants to fish, though there are certainly more efficient ways to fish. maybe you want to breed trainable drowners to sell to moated castles as guard animals? or maybe their aquatic nature would make them useful as search-and-rescue or retrieval animals. i think there are some possibilities here!

...as a mage in the witcher world we also have the genetic and magical knowhow to create significant physical mutations, so we could probably create a neotenic drowner that, like an axolotl, never leaves the larval stage. permanent squishfriend. domestication is unnecessary then as you can just put them in tanks and keep your fingers out of the way. just saying.

whatever you want to do with your drowners, you start by picking the most amenable drowners out of every generation and breeding those until you get a set that doesn’t want to kill people on sight, and then work on selecting drowners that can perform to your desired specifications. I think it would be possible if one had enough time to devote to it—drowners are a social species, only found in groups and known to react strongly when they see other drowners dying, implying they have an amount of intelligence and cooperative ability that can be taken advantage of and selected for over generations!

as for drowner care, the tadpoles can be treated like ordinary tadpoles—clean water, regular feeding, and be careful not to disturb the mucus on their skin. unfortunately, squishing must occur infrequently and very gently with clean, damp hands. what you do with a juvenile is dependent on whether you’re domesticating or not. if not, you should provide it access to land and continue maintaining a minimal amount of contact to let it get on with its natural drowner business. if domesticating, post-metamorphosis is when you’d want to start evaluating the juvenile’s temperament and probably start socializing and training, introducing them to as many new experiences as possible to create an adult that isn’t reactive or fearful. wear heavy gloves, probably. be sure that your juveniles have access to other drowners, as drowners are prey species for many other monsters and being isolated is a source of stress for them!

(honestly you could also try training a fully wild drowner too (see the training work zookeepers do to make sure their wild animals can easily be given medical treatment and as enrichment), you’d just always be at more risk because of the aggression.)

and voila, you have a drowner project that probably won’t get a witcher sicced on you. no guarantees about witchers who just happen to be in the area poking their nose into other business and end up smack-dab in the middle of your drowner sanctuary where they put a major spanner in your works. certain unnamed white-haired individuals are just Like That.

#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101 #i’m so delighted by how much y’all are indulging my drowner favoritism #drowners #asks #anonymous

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outerbonks · 4 years ago

Text

the best 5 months - jj maybank

hi! this is my first time writing for JJ so please be nice! hope you like it! Please let me know what you think!!

pairing: JJ Maybank x reader, platonic John B, Pope, Kie,Sarah x reader in there too

Summary: you find out you’re getting moved away from the OBX and JJ realizes how much you mean to him. (that’s a bad summary oops)

word count: +7k

warning(S): fluffy angst, swearing, smoking

(gif isn’t mine!)

Living on The Cut hadn't been so bad, in fact you loved it there. There was just so much there to love, that was until you found out that your days on, not only The Cut, but the entire island were numbered.

Your father had gotten an incredible job offer on the mainland, out of state, that there was absolutely no way he could refuse.

Being a single father was hard on him, you knew that, you always tried your best to be the best daughter possible in an attempt to make his life easier. He worked really hard to keep your two person household afloat and you appreciate it immensely.

However, your appreciation was now overshadowed by anger. Anger that he was moving you away from everything and everyone you'd ever known.

"This is going to be good for us, Y/n!" Your father shouted, following you out of your tiny house into the cold night time air.

Snapping your body around to face him, jaw clenched and with your eyebrows furrowed you shouted back at him, "No, this is going to be good for you!"

You ignored his calls as you stormed off down the streets of the shitty neighborhood that you knew like the back of your hand.

With no clue of where you were heading you simply allowed your feet to carry you until you were met with the familiar sight of your favorite spot on the island: John B's chateau.

John B met you way back when you were both in the third grade, it had taken you a while to warm up to each other but you stood with each other through thick and thin. He was your family and looking at the run-down brown cabin in front of you, you couldn't help the tears that slid down your cheeks as you realized just how much you'd be leaving behind when you moved.

It wasn't just John B you didn't want to leave, no, he was only ¼ of the reason. Leaving the pogues was never something that was ever going to be in the cards for you, yet it looked like leaving them was something you were going to be forced to do in the next few months. But how could you?

Each of them meant the absolute world to you. There was Kiara, your best girlfriend since she joined your little group. She is one of the sweetest, kindest and most badass girls you'd ever met in your life, she was loyal to a fault and never shyed away from sharing her opinion. You knew that there wasn't any chance you'd meet anyone like her on the mainland, girls from the OBX were a whole different breed in the best way imaginable.

Then there's Pope, he's the brains of your little gang. He never failed to make you giggle with his weird facts and badly timed jokes and when he wanted to, he could give a really great hug. He has so much going for him and not that you'd ever tell him but he definitely inspired you to try harder.

Last but definitely not least, we have JJ. Where to even start? You met him a few days after you became friends with John B, so sometime in third grade. JJ was the kind of person that could charm his way out of hell if he needed to, he was fun to be around and he was hands down your best friend in the entire world.

You found yourself at John B's door with a red nose and puffy eyes, goosebumps covered your arms and your frame shook ever so slightly, not that you had noticed.

It had slipped your mind entirely that the group had planned to meet up tonight, originally you told them you couldn't go as your dad had something to tell you but yet there you were anyway.

You didn't bother knocking when you walked in, John B never had a problem with you letting yourself in and as you walked in, sniffling and hiccuping, the group paused their movie night to look at you, worry filling all of them when they took in your state.

"What happened?" Kie was the first to ask, her question sounding urgent as she got up and stood in front of you, grabbing your forearms.

"You're freezing." She stated to which JJ immediately pulled his sweatshirt off and made his way to you, "Here." He helped pull the hoodie over your head and then led you gently to sit on the pull out couch everyone had been sitting on before you arrived.

"C'mere…" John B muttered with furrowed eyebrows, stretching his arm out and pulling you in to rest against his side.

"I'm gonna make you some tea ok?" Pope stated, scurrying to the kitchen while the others shared looks of confusion as you continued to cry into John B's shoulder, only stopping when Pope returned with a hot cup of tea a few minutes later.

After taking the warm cup from Pope you pulled away from John B and sat up, cradling the cup in both hands in an attempt to warm them up.

"Can you tell us what happened?" Pope asked gently, afraid to upset you again, you weren't one to completely break down often and if he was being honest with himself you were usually the one who handled group breakdowns and when you were the one breaking down he had absolutely no clue what to do.

"Yeah tell us who made you cry so I can punch them in the throat." JJ chimed in from beside you, his hand was rubbing your back soothingly despite his somewhat threatening words.

Sniffling again you looked around at the people you loved so much, your family, Kie kneeling down on the floor beside you with a comforting hand on your knee, Pope sitting in front of you on John B's coffee table and John B and JJ sat either side of you.

Shaking your head, you swallowed the lump in your throat and decided to look down into the liquid of your steaming cup when you delivered the news.

"My dad got offered a job on the mainland." Was all you muttered, before looking up from your cup and answering the silent question that you could feel floating around the air, "And he's taking it."

The tension in the air was suffocating and the group had become silent.

"So you're moving?" Kie was the first to break the shocked silence, asking the question that none of your friends were ready to hear the answer to, her voice cracking as the words left her mouth.

Looking at her with teary eyes you choked out a pathetic "Yep." Before you began to breakdown again, John B wasted no time in pulling you back into him, this time holding you tighter, afraid you'd disappear.

"Nah fuck that!" JJ exclaimed, panic swirling in his eyes at the image of you leaving and possibly never coming back.

The blond boy stood up from his place on the couch and began pacing the living room, "You can't leave! You're a pogue, you can't just… you can't just leave us."

Separating yourself from John B, you made your way over to JJ and grabbed his hands, forcing him to halt his movements. When his blue eyes met yours he shook his head softly, sadly.

"You can't go." He almost whimpered and you tried your best not to sob when you noticed the water building in his eyes.

With a heavy sigh you pulled him close to you, your arms wrapping around his shoulders tightly as his came around your torso keeping you as close as physically possible.

Before long the rest of the pogues joined in on the group hug, Kie crying almost as much as you and the boys hugging you with all their might that you thought you might pass out.

After a while you were all snuggled together on John B's pull out couch, JJ was sitting behind you his chin resting on your shoulder with his arms around your middle, the blond had pulled you between his legs the second you sat back down which to be fair was common practice, he was needier than he let on but you never minded.

"When are you leaving?" John B broke the silence this time and you shrugged gently, careful not to displace JJ.

Sinking against the boy behind you you let out a scoff, "I don't even know, man. All he told me was he was moving us to the mainland and then I flipped out and came here."

John B nodded in understanding as he watched you play anxiously with the rings on JJ's fingers and he shuddered at the thought of dealing with a JJ who didn't have you to help calm him down when he went apeshit.

"He's probably worried…" You spoke quietly, worry in your tone as you continued to fidget with the metal around your blonde best friend's fingers. He got as much comfort out of it as you did if he was being perfectly honest, ever since you'd both turned 14 you'd picked up the habit of messing around with your own rings until one day your favourite silver band fell off your finger and got lost to the marsh, after that JJ always offered you his ring clad hands to distract yourself with since most of his rings were, in his words, “stolen anyway”. Plus, he liked it when you played with his fingers, it calmed him down.

"I should go back." Feeling a nod against your shoulder, JJ gave you a squeeze before releasing you from his grip, "Can I drop you back?" Nodding in agreement you detangled yourself from your friends, giving each of them a hug before you left.

"Try not to worry too much, kid" John B spoke into your hair while he hugged you tightly, pecking your forehead before sending you off with JJ.

The pair of you rode home on JJ's bike, it didn't take long to get to your house from the chateau on the bike and you were met by your father who had been waiting patiently for your return.

JJ dismounted the bike along with you, walking towards your father with a less than satisfied look on his face.

Your father always loved JJ and John B, ever since the first time they'd ever come over to play when you were all kids. He had a soft spot for JJ considering he used to work with the boy's father, although they spent more time squaring up to each other than they did actually working together. Your father hated Luke Maybank but loved JJ Maybank.

Which is why he couldn't meet the blonde's eyes when he walked you to the porch steps.

JJ cleared his throat, shifting his weight from foot to foot before he asked what had been gnawing at him the entire ride to your house.

"So, uh… when do you start?" He asked referring to your dad's new job somewhere a thousand miles away.

"As soon as my contract here ends in November." A gasp left your lips as you gaped at the words that left his mouth.

"November? That's only five months from now! What about Christmas?" You fretted, voice desperate, almost pleading for him to see how messed up it was to be leaving the OBX right before Christmas.

You had already made plans with the pogues to all spend Christmas Eve at John B's this year and then he and JJ would come and spend Christmas day with you at your house.

The thought of leaving John B right before his first Christmas without his father brought tears to your eyes again and when JJ took your hand in an attempt to comfort you dread shot up your spine at the thought of leaving him alone with his father on Christmas.

"I'm sorry, but you know we're barely getting by. The sooner we go, the better." Your father spoke softly, watching carefully how you gravitated to the blond beside you, who immediately wrapped his arm around your shoulder.

The older man sighed for what felt like the millionth time that night, looking at his daughter and her best friend broke his heart, these people got you, they understood you and you were so happily integrated into the pogue community, you'd never fit in as well as you did here on the mainland- you and your father both knew it.

He was dreading ripping you away from everything and everyone you loved so much but he couldn't turn up the opportunity presented to him, the pay was miles better and maybe on the mainland you yourself would find yourself with more possibilities for your future. He wanted what was best for the both of you.

"Why can't she just move in with John B?" JJ questioned with a fake optimism lacing his voice as he gave your father a crooked grin.

Letting out a laugh your dad only shook his head, not bothering to answer the question.

"Look, five months is a long time, just make the most of it while you can and I promise from now till November I'll overlook all of your little adventures." He told the both of you, taking into consideration the amount of times you'd stumbled home drunk in the middle of the night with one of your friends in tow.

JJ's grin turned genuine at your father's words, the boy leaned down to you slightly, his blue eyes glinting with mischief as he brought his lips close to your ear, "Get ready for the best five months of your life."

And that's what you did. From that moment you were absolutely determined to make the most of the time you had left with your friends and your island.

5 MONTHS LEFT - JUNE

The morning after talking with your dad, JJ was waiting at your door at the crack of dawn ready to bring you to the rest of the pogues for a day out on the boat.

Sure enough the day was spent laughing, drinking and getting high with your friends on John B's boat, although it was hard to ignore the drastic change in atmosphere now that the knowledge of you moving was out in the air.

It was when the day started nearing to a close that you noticed things started to take an unusual turn.

JJ had been smoking like a chimney the entire day, way more than usual. He'd barely left your side the entire time either and he'd shoved his hands into yours several times claiming that, "you looked anxious."

But by the end of the day his mood had done a 180° from clingy to cranky and none of you knew what the fuck was going on. He had gone from showering you in attention to refusing to talk to you within the space of an hour, you wouldn't lie you definitely preferred the attention.

Everything became clear when he scoffed at a joke that Pope made about you drinking the boneyard dry at the next kegger. You all turned to face him with questioning expressions, "If she's even still here for it." He'd muttered bitterly, not sparing any of you even a glance.

"The party is in three days JJ, she's going to be there." Kie told him, annoyed that he'd brought down the mood.

JJ gave her an irritated look before going back to ignoring you all, John B gave you a pleading look causing you to sigh and let out an exhausted, "I've got it." Before moving seats so you could be beside the pouty blond.

He refused to look at you as you placed your chin on his shoulder and stared up at his face expectantly, hand finding his so you could mess with his fingers and hopefully chill him out a bit.

You kept your chin on his shoulder until he eventually turned his face to look at you, "What's up, buttercup?"

His fingers fidgeted with yours while he shook his head staring off into the water of the marsh.

"Well my best friend is leaving me so sorry if I seem like I'm in a crappy mood." He spit out bitterly, not daring to look at you.

"J…" You sighed, "You know if I had any choice I wouldn't be leaving you." You told him gently, intertwining your hand with his.

JJ scoffed again, "You're still gonna be gone come November so why does it matter." JJ had abandonment issues, he knew that, the pogues knew that, you knew that. It hurt you to know that you were the one bringing that anxiety up in him, especially since you'd promised him that you'd never under any circumstances walk out on him.

Turning his chin towards you with your free hand he stepped down slightly at the hard look you were giving him, "No, J. You know it's not like that. I might not physically be here but I'm never going to stop being your best friend. You got that?"

Sighing, JJ let his head fall to rest against yours, his forehead pressing to the crown of your head where he placed a small peck before muttering a weak, "Sorry."

"It's ok, now come on you promised me the best five months of my life." You smiled and so did he. The rest of the group stared at you in amazement, pulling JJ out of a mood was a skill only few possessed and as if he was reading everyone's mind Pope spoke.

"I have to say, I really have no clue how we're going to deal with this once Y/ns gone."

4 MONTHS LEFT - JULY

July in Outer Banks was hot this year and your preferred method of keeping cool was of course; surfing.

On this particular day it had just been you and JJ, the others working their summer jobs so they couldn't join.

You'd surfed for a few hours before the tide had calmed down and left the pair of you just floating gently as you sat up on your boards.

"Do you think the guys are gonna be as hot as me in Oklahoma, or wherever the hell it is you're going?" JJ asked light-heartedly, bumping your leg with his under the water.

You threw your head back as you laughed, not noticing the way his eyes sparkled when he looked at you, "First off, I'm going to California not Oklahoma and to answer your question, I dunno I've heard they've got some hotties up there."

There definitely wasn't going to be anyone like JJ.

He groaned giving you a hurt look and pressed his hand against his heart, "Damn, woman. There goes my self confidence."

Shaking your head you nudged his board away from you, "Of course I'm joking, there's absolutely nobody in the whole entire universe who could possibly be hotter than you." You declared over-dramatically, exaggerating almost every word you said, basking in the sound of his laughter.

"That's more like it." He replied, splashing you slightly before clearing his throat.

"Do you still have that old Polaroid your dad got you?" He inquired, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

Furrowing your eyebrows together in thought, you shrugged, "Yeah… I think it's in the attic somewhere, why?"

Nodding with determination the sun kissed boy splashed you again and then began to paddle his board towards the shore, "That's it, come on."

"Where are we going?" You called out, paddling behind him while he turned his head to look at you from over his shoulder, smiling the cheekiest grin you'd ever seen, his dimple showing and his eyes gleaming.

"To dig out that camera so you can have tiny little pictures of me to take with you when you go."

You couldn't help but laugh at him as you followed your favourite boy to the shore.

3 MONTHS LEFT - AUGUST

"Guys!" Kie shouted excitedly running into John B's living room where you, JJ and John B were sitting watching shitty daytime tv, bored out of your minds.

Pope trailed in behind Kie with a bright smile on his face as the pair of them stood in front of the TV blocking it from your views.

"Come on, Kie! You're blocking Storage Hunters." John B groaned.

"Doesn't matter cause guess what we're doing today!" She squealed looking between the three of you, waiting for a guess.

"Not watching Storage Hunters." You grumbled under your breath, JJ snorted and bumped his fist against yours, "Nice one."

"No guys! Come on! Just guess!" The excitement in her tone caused you to smile and humor her, "Umm, I don't know? Are we going surfing?"

"Kind of a lame guess." JJ teased from beside you before leaning forward on the couch, "Are we going to rob somewhere?" He offered up as his guess, getting an annoyed look from Kie and Pope and a jab in the ribs from you.

"Hey…" he whined quietly, jutting his lower lip out at you cutely when you stuck your tongue out at him.

"You're both wrong! John B any idea?" Kie informed you and JJ who were playfully glaring at each other before looking at John B expectantly.

The boy in question let out a disgruntled noise, throwing his hands up in defeat, "I got nothin'."

"You guys all suck at guessing." Pope chimed in from beside Kie with a grin on his face to match her's.

You flipped him off and looked at Kie, "Alright babe, tell us what we’re dong today."

"There's an end of summer fair happening in Chapel Hill and we're going!" Kie explained excitedly and you all smiled.

"Sounds like a plan." John B confirmed, chewing his lip nervously before adding, "Can I invite Sarah?"

Kie groaned but couldn't hide her smile, "Fine but no macking on each other in front of us."

Laughing you leaned in close to JJ, "JB and Sarah sitting in a tree…" you whispered in a singsong tune while JJ laughed and continued the song while you made kissy faces at John B from across the couch.

"Shut up you two." He groaned while throwing a pillow at you.

"Hurry up and get ready the ferry leaves in an hour."

The group had all reconnected at the dock in time for the ferry after you all separated to get ready for your day trip to Chapel Hill.

"Oh thank God you're here!" JJ exclaimed dramatically, pulling you into a tight hug.

"JB and Sarah have been all over each other for the past ten minutes and I just saw Pope and Kie kiss!" The blonde explained with annoyance lacing his voice as he his his face in the crook of your neck.

"Awh, were you feeling left out?" You asked mockingly, still hugging him back with all your strength.

You let out a surprised yelp when you felt your feet lift off the ground as JJ spun you around.

"They wish! I was just bored waiting for your slow ass to show up." He teased you, placing you back on the ground while you giggled, pushing his chest away and giving him a playful, "Fuck off." Before you both made your way onto the ferry, JJ's arm staying wrapped around your shoulder for the duration of the boat ride.

When you arrived at the fair you allowed your excitement to take over, immediately whipping out the Polaroid that JJ had helped you dig up last month and you'd been using it to its full potential since.

"Oh get me in!" Kie squealed, posing in front of the white mini Polaroid.

"Sarah you get in too!" You called over to the girl you'd only become friends with since she started dated John B but she'd grown on you pretty quickly.

"You too." JJ declared, taking the camera from your hands and pushing you towards the two girls.

The three of you posed together, smiling brightly as JJ snapped the picture.

After a few more photos in front of the carousel you all decided to split up, John B and Sarah went to ride the rides, Pope and Kie went to play the games and yourself and JJ both really wanted some cotton candy.

The pair of you were sat on a bench enjoying your cotton candy and admiring the string lights that decorated the entire area.

"Remember when your dad brought us out here when we were like nine?" JJ asked, staring at you with a soft smile as you nodded.

"I remember. You won one of those beany babies." You reminisced with a laugh, shaking your head at the memory.

JJ let of an excited gasp, "Fuck you're right! Damn I forgot about that thing." He started off into the crowd dreamily and you giggled at his facial expression.

"I'm gonna miss all this." You sighed out, looking around and letting the nostalgia take over as you leaned your head on JJ's shoulder.

"Me too. I mean, I'm still gonna have it all… but I'm gonna miss having it with you." He confessed, resting his head on top of yours.

"You'll still have John B. And Kie. And Pope. And Sarah now too." You tried to comfort, listing off your friends but only making yourself sad as the list went on.

"Come on, Y/n. We both know it's not the same. It's different with you." He explained sadly, nuzzling his nose into your hair slightly.

Sighing you wrapped your arms around your best friend, you knew what he meant when he said it was different with you. Well you didn't completely understand what it meant but you did because he was different to you too. It felt kind of bad to say but you had a strong feeling that JJ would be the one that you missed the most when you left.

"Yeah, I know." You muttered sadly.

Sighing heavily, JJ pulled you into him and kissed the top of your head.

"Fuck it, I'm just gonna say it." He pulled away from you slightly and his blue eyes met yours and he shook his head in what looked like disbelief before the words fell from his mouth.

"I'm going to miss you so fucking much." He told you, lips tilting downward before he pulled his lower lip between his teeth.

Nodding at him with an understanding expression you absentmindedly grabbed his hand and began twisting his rings gently.

"I bet I'll miss you more." You told him half-heartedly, a sad smile making its way onto your face.

"No, Y/n, I'm serious. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do without you." He admitted and you lost all resolve, moving from your spot beside him to plopping yourself right down onto his lap, nothing you hadn't done before.

"I know, J. I don't wanna go without you either." You told him, before perking up and giving him a cheeky smile.

"Hey, maybe I could sneak you in my suitcase!" You half joked, but their was an air of seriousness in your voice to go with your suggestion.

JJ threw his head back, securing his arm tightly around your waist while he laughed and nodded his head.

"Seems legit."

2 MONTHS LEFT - SEPTEMBER

Summer came and went and before any of you knew it, it was midway through September.

On a Friday night after school the whole group were chilling together at John B's, as usual.

Kie and Pope were snuggled up on the armchair in the corner of the room while John B and Sarah occupied the pull out couch.

Yourself and JJ were sat on the wooden floor mindlessly watching the movie that played on the screen like wide eyed children while the other four macked on each other.

JJ's head was resting on your lap and your fingers were running through his hair before he turned his head to look up at you and presented the joint he'd been rolling while your attention was on the TV.

"Wanna share?" He whispered so the others didn't hear and want a hit.

Nodding your head you both got up and made your way out to the hammocks as non conspicuously as possible and luckily for both of you none of them seemed to notice.

"God seeing them all all over each other is starting to gross me out." JJ complained, taking a hit of the blunt before passing it to you, the pair of you sitting beside each other on the swinging hammock.

Shrugging you took a hit, exhaling the smoke before adding to the conversation, "I think they're cute."

"You're not the one who's about to be stuck with them." He muttered, shoving your shoulder playfully and taking the joint back.

"Yeah, yeah. You're just jealous because nobody is macking on you." You said, laughing at the offended face he made at your statement.

"If I wanted someone all up in my shit I'd have someone all up in my shit, ok? I'm a catch." He told you, his cocky attitude bringing a small smile to your face as you leaned closer to him with the same smile and narrowed eyes.

"Oh is that so?" You challenged, quirking an eyebrow at him as he blew smoke into your face.

"Yep." Snatching the joint from his ring clad fingers you took a drag before prepaying the favor and blowing the smoke back at him.

"Alright, if you're such a catch why are you out here smoking with me and not out macking on some touron?" To be honest, you didn't know why you were asking, you loved smoking with him and the thought of him leaving to go prove his point (which he'd been known to do in the past) made your heart drop. But you guessed you were feeling ballsy.

The blond looked at you thoughtfully, weighing his options up of whether he should tell you the truth or just make up some bullshit.

Taking the last drag of the joint he let it soak in before exhaling and meeting your eyes, "You wanna know the truth?"

Immediately you nodded your head, waiting for him to go on.

"I'm out here smoking with you because you're the girl that I want to be macking on. But not just to like to fuck around with or whatever, I-" JJ let out a heavy sigh before finishing, "I love you. Like a lot. Like a fuck ton."

You couldn't stop the giggle that left your throat as he rambled, your palm found his cheek as you rested it there gently, he couldn't take his eyes off the smile on your face.

"You're being for real?" You asked, just to make sure and he nodded, still filled with nerves, "Deadly serious."

If it was even possible your smile widened and you brought your forehead to rest against his as his arms snaked around your waist.

"I love you a fuck ton too." You confessed, giggling as he let out a sigh of relief, muttering "Thank fuck." Under his breath.

Without even thinking about it, his lips were on yours and your hands were in his hair, the kiss was everything you hoped it would be and when his lips moved against yours you couldn't help but smile.

The fact that it was about to be entirely harder to leave was at the very back of your mind.

The others had been excited about you and JJ finally acknowledging your feelings for each other but now that the whole group was paired off, nobody really knew how to act.

1 MONTH LEFT - OCTOBER

You were helping Kie at The Wreck when John B and JJ walked in, John B looking exhausted and JJ looking pissed.

You sighed knowing you'd have to handle whatever it was that was happening when John B walked up to where you were standing and grumbled, "Please talk to your boyfriend."

Accepting the task, you walked over to your best friend/boyfriend and sat in the seat next to him with a small pout of concern on your lips, "What's up, buttercup?"

"Nothing." He responded glumly and you tilted your head to the side, "Doesn't seem like nothing."

JJ scoffed, staring into the distance, "Doesn't matter."

"If it doesn't matter why are you so upset?" You asked softly and his eyes met yours briefly before focusing on the floor.

"Just forget it." He told you, his voice sounded more irritated that time and you decided you wouldn't press any further as Kie and John B joined you at the table, shooting you a questioning look to which you just gave them a shrug looking at JJ with concern.

Kie's father brought you all something to eat and you all took into account the fact JJ had barely touched anything, which was an obvious red flag since that kid was always hungry.

"You not hungry?" You inquired, bumping his shoulder with yours gently, he didn't answer you, only shook his head.

Sighing you took his hand in yours but flinched when he pulled it from your grasp, quickly standing from his chair and stormed towards the exist of the restaurant as you all watched with confused faces.

You couldn't lie, that had hurt a little. He'd never once pulled his hand away from you, let alone done it so aggressively.

Clicking your tongue, you mentally prepared yourself for a mentally draining conversation as you followed your usually zen boyfriend onto the beach.

"JJ! What the hell?" You called out to him, jogging to catch up.

He didn't look at you, "Leave me alone, Y/n."

"Not until you tell me what's wrong." You managed to grab his arm to get him to stop his fast paced walking and look at you.

"You wouldn't get it." He told you angrily and you couldn't stop your eyes from rolling.

"Well maybe I'd get it if your told me what it is." You countered growing tired of the argument already.

JJ let out a sarcastic laugh and ran his hands through his hair before looking at the ocean with his lips pursed, "What's the point? You're just going to leave in three weeks anyway so why tell you anything anymore?" He yelled at you and it finally all clicked together in your mind, he was upset with you.

Gaping at him in disbelief you furrowed your brows trying to wrap your head around it.

"So, what? You're just going to pretend I'm already gone?" You asked, your own voice rising in volume as the words came out angrily.

JJ shrugged his shoulders and crossed his arms across his chest, "Might as well." He stated bitterly and you threw your hands up with exhaustion, he had managed to strike a chord despite not saying much at all.

"And that's how you feel?" You asked, giving him a chance to change his attitude before you got petty and called your father to tell him to reconsider the early start date he'd been offered.

Not letting up JJ nodded in confirmation, "That's how I feel."

Laughing in disbelief you turned away from him and began walking, "Fine! That's fine, JJ. If you want me gone I'll go."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He called out from behind you, grabbing your arm and spinning you around to face him, a nervous look on his face.

"Dad got offered an early referral, asked me what I thought and I straight up told him no but if my best friend wants to pretend like I don't exist I'm going to tell him to reevaluate that offer!" You told him angrily, tears filling your eyes when your repeated that he was already pretending you were gone.

Panic took over his face, similar to the night he'd first found out you were moving, "What do you mean early referral? How early?" He asked frantically.

Sniffling you wiped your eyes, "Next week."

To which the broken boy in front of you quickly grabbed your hand in his and let out a hurried, "No!"

You didn't say anything, you waited for him to figure out what he wanted to let out.

"Don't go early. I'm sorry, okay? I was trying to come to terms with the idea of you leaving but now that we're together I can't think about it without putting myself in a mood." He explained, squeezing your hand before going on, not breaking eye contact.

"I'm not ready to lose you, alright?" He told you, his words genuine and his voice raw.

You wrapped your arms around his shoulders and pulled him into you, kissing him softly and using one hand to wipe away the few tears he'd let slip.

"You're not losing me." You tried to reassure him but your voice didn't do much to convince either of you.

The boy in your arms just held you tightly, he didn't want you anymore upset than he had already made you so he didn't say anything more.

You both knew that at the end of next month everything you'd built in the last two would most likely crumble to nothing.

0 MONTHS LEFT - NOVEMBER

It had been the fastest five months of your life, and true to JJ's word, they were the best five months of your life. You just wished they hadn't gone by so quickly.

It was your last day on the OBX and your heart was breaking at the thought of actually having to leave, sure, you knew this day was coming but you wished it wasn't real. You really didn't want to go.

The time was 8am when you and your dad finished packing up your childhood house, which was now just an empty shell.

The pouges were all waiting for you at John B's to say goodbye, your dad insisted on taking an early ferry out but agreed to let you spend a few hours with your friends until it was time to leave, promising to pick you up from the chateau to ensure that you'd actually be on the boat.

You arrived at your favourite little shake at 8:30am, not wasting any time before bursting into tears at the sight of your friends all gathered around a tacky banner with the words "bon voyage" written across it.

The goodbyes were emotional and nobody had a dry eye, not even Pope.

"Okay guys, I'm sorry but I'm about to get mushy on you." You informed them before taking a deep breath and trying to compose yourself from your spot on the couch and JJ gave your arm a comforting squeeze.

"You guys are my best friends, and I'm really sorry that I have to go." You told them, tears slipping from your eyes again as your voice began to waver.

"John B. You're my oldest friend and the closest thing I've ever had to a brother and I fucking love you so much." You told him trying not to lose it completely when you noticed him tearing up, "Love you, kid."

"Sarah." You turned to the newest addition to the group next, "I know we haven't known each other that long but you've been so great to me and I think you're wonderful. So I love you and please take care of JB okay?" Sarah nodded quietly and wiped tears off her face before crawling over to where you sat on the couch and hugging you tightly.

"I'm gonna miss you." She mummered into your stomach and you pecked her head before she made her way back to John B who was now silently crying.

"Pope." You smiled at him as he rested his head on Kie's shoulder as she cried her eyes out.

"You're hands down the funniest guy I know and I know for a fact that you're going to absolutely kill those college interviews this year, I'm so proud of you, I love you and you deserve all the good things." You told him, voice cracking up at the end when you noticed him tearing up, he nodded his head and saluted you, "You know I love you." He told you, sniffling heavily.

"Alright I'm gonna need to be hugging you for this one." You cried, standing up and making grabby hands towards Kie who basically threw herself into your arms, sobbing into your shoulder.

"I don't even know what to say to you." You cried, your chest felt so heavy as you felt her tears hitting your shoulders, "me neither." Kie replied.

"I just love you so much ok?" You told her, lower lip quivering and she nodded profusely, the same look on her face as she managed to choke out an, "I love you too."

"Take care of these idiots." You told her, an airy laugh leaving your mouth as you sent her to sit back down with Pope.

"JJ." You said and the boy swallowed thickly, he didn't want to say goodbye but he knew it was time.

"Come outside with me for a bit?" You asked gently, he nodded his head and followed you out to the hammocks.

The two of you sat there in silence for a few minutes, before the blond boy cleared his throat and handed you a little box, "Going away present." Was all he said as he shoved the box into your hand.

Curiously, you opened the makeshift box and smiled at the sight of one of JJ's rings.

"For when you get anxious." He told you, his voice threatening to crack at any moment.

"I love it, J. Thank you." You said sincerely, placing your lips against his.

His hand was quick to find your waist as he moved his lips against yours, "Don't wanna say goodbye." He murmured against your lips once you parted ever so slightly.

"Me neither. But I think we have to." You said quietly, noticing your dad's car pulling up to the drive way.

Sighing JJ pulled you in for one last kiss before taking a minute to study your face, committing it to his memory.

"I love you." He told you, running his thumb over your cheek.

"I love you too." Letting out a heavy sigh you stood up from the hammock and helped him up too.

Walking hand in hand with JJ to John B's porch steps, where all your friends were now waiting, you all shared one last group hug before you needed to leave.

Looking at JJ with a sad smile, you pecked his lips for the final time, letting them linger for a moment too long before letting out a small, "Bye…"

JJ nodded at you sadly as he watched you get into the car, "Bye, Y/n." He whispered, trying not to cry as the car drove further and further away until he couldn't see you anymore.

#jj maybank #jj mayback x reader #outer banks x reader #jj outer banks #jj x reader #jj #obx #outerbanks

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floralguccistyles · 4 years ago

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Long time no post! Things in my life have been crazy, from health problems with both myself and family members, to the deaths of both my grandpa and my cat, and work/school has been insane. I hope y’all forgive me and I hope this makes up for it. Let me know what you think!

wildflower :: chapter three

...and brings you flowers

Considering my morning started with having to deal with a customer whose key card didn’t work to get into their room, I could assume today was going to be a rough day.

Things only continued to spiral downhill when I had finished getting the key card situation handled only to walk into the kitchen and find the coffee machine was broken. One of the chefs jokingly told me to make myself a cup of tea, but I think he got a little scared when my lower lip jutted out and started wobbling in frustration. I wasn’t going to cry, but that didn’t mean the tears wouldn’t stubbornly well up behind my eyes.

If that wasn’t enough, on my break I had stubbed my toe on the corner coming around from checking up on one of the rooms. I had sworn very, very loudly in front of a family of four with two kids under twelve and the parents had glared at me. I hoped they had the decency to see that I was having a bad day and wouldn’t tell my supervisor.

All I wanted to do was curl up in bed with a good book, a rom-com playing in the background, and maybe some soup.

My day was only made worse when I saw Violet walking through the lobby doors as I was leaving.

“Great,” I muttered under my breath, letting out a huff of irritated breath. She had her book bag thrown over her shoulder, holding onto the strap on her shoulder so tightly it was a wonder it didn’t break. “What’re you doing here?” I asked in a whisper, not wanting my boss to hear me talking to anyone the way I was talking to Violet. Unfortunately, my boss Clara was an only child and wouldn’t understand the sister love-hate bond Violet and I had.

“Nice to see you too.” Violet looked frustratingly put together, as she always did. She had definitely sucked up the good looks that had obviously skipped the poor middle child (me). Her long hair was curled delicately and though she didn’t wear much makeup, she had never needed it. She had eyelashes models would kill for. “I was wondering if we could go get coffee or something.”

“Coffee? We don’t do coffee.”

“Christ, Rose, is it really that much of an inconvenience to hang out with your sister?” she asked incredulously, rolling her eyes at my reluctance. “I thought we could talk, hang out, get some coffee out of it. It’s not the end of the world.”

I had obviously done something to piss off whatever higher being existed because the icing on the cake to my terrible day was dealing with Violet’s snark. To simply stop her from complaining (because she was world-class at it), I sighed. “Fine. But you’re buying.”

“You’re the one with the full-time job!”

“Do you want to get coffee or not?”

“I’m regretting my choice now,” Violet said simply, but gestured towards the door of the building. She had an old car Niall had actually helped her find when she had started college, so we piled into it. I didn’t know what coffee place she was taking us to, but I decided I didn’t care. I hadn’t had any coffee this morning, and I was in desperate need. Plus, if Violet had a hundred dollars to make on the bet with Lily and Niall, she had enough money to buy me a four dollar cup of coffee.

She pulled into a little coffee house that was close to the campus Niall worked at. I wondered briefly if he frequented it when he worked. When we walked in, the smell of coffee beans hit my nose and gave me a small reprieve from the terrible day. “What do you want? Their caramel stuff is really good.”

“Whatever you get is fine.” Though Violet had questionable taste in most things, her taste in coffee was impeccable. She nodded and walked to the bar to order while I found us a place to sit, close to the window in case I needed to zone out and have something pretty to look at if Violet got too annoying. When she returned, she set my coffee in front of me and took a seat, her chair scraping loudly against the floor and making the both of us wince. I took a small sip of the coffee (something caramel, as she had suggested) and instantly felt ten times better. “This is the only good thing to happen to me all day.”

Violet rolled her eyes, mumbled something about me being overdramatic underneath her breath. “Lily thinks I need to apologize.”

“I think so too.”

“I don’t.”

I gestured to the coffee shop. “Then what’s the point of this?”

“You bit my head off when I was trying to explain last time. I was hoping you’d sit and actually have a civil conversation with me about things.” When I didn’t respond, just gestured for her to continue, she did. “I didn’t get you the psychologist’s number because I think you’re pathetic or that you can’t handle shit. I got it for you because no woman should ever be propositioned for sex and it’s absolutely disgusting that the prick tried to do some sort of quid-pro-quo and got nothing more than a slap on the wrist. And if I’m feeling that, as a third party, I can’t imagine how you’re feeling about it. So I got you her number in case you wanted to talk.”

“But you didn’t ask me beforehand. You went behind my back.”

“Because that’s what people do when they care about you, Rose!” Violet exclaimed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Christ, if I thought it would be this much work, I would have just saved myself the trouble. I just think it’s shitty he’s getting away with it, so I thought maybe you’d want to talk to someone. It’s not a problem that you can’t sleep without someone there, but don’t you think you need to analyze why? Especially because you never had a problem with it before. And you’re still paying too much money for rent in a flat you don’t even live in anymore.”

There was no point in arguing with her because she, frustratingly, wasn’t wrong. It was shitty that Kent was getting away with it and I probably was stupid for paying money for an apartment I wasn’t staying in. But I had gotten that trademark Fairbrough stubbornness, and I wanted to handle things my own way, as I had always done in my life.

“I appreciate it and can understand where you were coming from.” The words felt like lead on my tongue because I was a prideful person. “But I honestly don’t think I need to talk to someone. If I do think I need help, you’ll be the first person I’ll call.”

“We both know that’s a lie. You’d sooner call Lily or Niall before you’d call me,” she replied in a snarky voice, taking a sip of her latte and staring out the window.

I didn’t bother correcting her.

“Look,” she said after a couple of moments, all of which were spent sipping at our drinks and not talking to one another, “will you just take the card? You don’t have to do anything with it, but it’ll make me feel better if you just take it.”

“Fine. But only because you bought me coffee.”

When I returned home to Lily’s flat, the psychologist’s number in my bag, I toed off my shoes and flung myself onto the couch. I wouldn’t nap because then sleeping tonight would be even more difficult, but I did just close my eyes and rest there for several moments while the bad day crashed over me. Distantly, I heard the sound of Lily’s front door swinging open and groaned out to her, letting her know I was on the couch.

“Rosebud, you okay?”

I turned my body around at Niall’s voice, nodding my head slightly. “Hi, Niall. Where’s Lily?”

“One of her clients called. They’ve got to meet her at the prison.” He moved my feet, sliding his body underneath before he deposited them back on his lap.

“I had the worst day,” I answered his question a little late, sighing out as he gave me sympathetic eyes. “I think I might meet with my landlord next week. My lease is up next month and...I mean, I’m basically living here. I just don’t know if I want to let it go yet. It was the first apartment I rented on my own. And I don’t know if Lily wants me around forever…”

“Lily will let you stay with her as long as you need, you know that.” He reached forward and started massaging my calf, causing me to close my eyes sleepily underneath his touch. “Why was your day bad?”

“People at work. Then the coffee machine was broken. Then Violet came in.”

He laughed, but it was faraway. I was slipping into unconsciousness, and I knew if Niall didn’t stop massaging my leg, I was going to drift off. “You’ve got to stop,” I told him, pulling one of my legs away to poke him with my toe.

His hands hesitantly left my other leg. “Why? Uncomfortable?”

“Too comfortable,” I corrected, shaking my head. “I don’t want to nap and have a shitty night of sleep tonight.

“Just nap, Rosebud. You look like you need it. Do you work tomorrow?”

I shook my head, because thankfully I had tomorrow off.

“Then, c’mon.” He moved my feet again and stood up, holding out a hand for me to take. I groggily grabbed it in my own, allowing him to pull me to my feet and lead me to my room. I flopped myself onto my bed and smiled as he tucked me in, patting down the blankets so they would stay put. It was only when I was underneath my covers that I realized how much the day had taken out of me. Any morning without coffee always exhausted me, but meeting with Violet had just done me in.

“How was your day?” I asked sleepily, reaching out and lacing our fingers together. He squeezed my fingers. “Are you feeling a little better from the sexual assault situation?”

He sighed. “I’m never going to feel good about it, Rosebud. The fact that any of my athletes could do that to someone...it tore me up inside.”

I decided Niall needed a nap almost as much as I did. I patted the spot next to me, inviting him to rest with me on the other side of my bed. He sent me a small smile, pushing off his shoes from his feet and lowering himself onto my bed, over the covers since he didn’t get nearly as cold as I did.

“Rest with me,” I requested softly. “We could both use the sleep.”

He stared at me for a few seconds. “You’re one of a kind, Rosebud.”

I smiled, snuggling closer to him. His arm came around to rest on my waist, pulling me closer to him until my skin was pressed against his skin.

We must have only napped for an hour or so, but I woke up before Niall did. He was knocked out onto my lavender pillow, a tiny bit of drool sneaking out of his open mouth. At least he didn’t snore as much as I apparently did. His entire body was curled, crunched up like even in sleep, his tension wouldn’t leave him. I realized when I stretched that our legs were slightly tangled together, his hand still on my waist. My skin was warm where his fingers touched.

Niall was truly, unfairly attractive. Now that I could look at him without the awkwardness of him realizing I was staring, I could easily admit that to myself. I had always known Niall was a handsome guy, but he was always unattainable. He was Lily’s. I had no business thinking he was attractive.

But his brown hair was fluffed on the right side where it pressed against my pillow, and he had an adorable sleeping face and I admitted to myself right then and there that Niall Horan was beautiful. The fact that he basically belonged to Lily didn’t change that, and it probably never would.

“Stop staring at me,” he said softly, his lips curling up at the corners.

I jumped, not expecting his voice since I still believed he was in the middle of sleeping. “Jesus, don’t scare me like that. How’d you know I was staring?”

“I felt in my soul that there was a pair of beautiful big brown eyes on me, and look at that,” he said, opening his own beautiful big eyes and grinning, “I was right.”

“You’re full of shit, is what you are.” But I found myself leaning back down on my bed and quietly taking in the silence with him. Silence was never uncomfortable with Niall like it was with other people. “Thanks for napping with me.”

“Hopefully it made your bad day a little better.”

“It did.”

My phone buzzed on the nightstand and I sleepily reached for it, reading the text from Lily.

Getting dinner with Carmen. We’ve both had a shitty day and have to discuss some things about the case. Feel free to use anything in the fridge for dinner tonight!

“Want to go get some food?” I asked Niall, showing him the text from Lily.

“Sure. I can go pick up some Nando’s, if you want.”

I groaned, leaning my head into his shoulder. “You are my knight in shining armor. The wind beneath my wings. An angel among us mere mortals.”

“You’re more dramatic than usual today. The chicken pita like usual?” He stood from the bed, readjusting his shirt that had been slightly wrinkled in our nap. As he ran his hands through his hair, I found myself distracted by his forearms, which were showcased by the rolled-up sleeves he was sporting. I’d never really noticed Niall’s arms before, but they were as gorgeous as the rest of him.

Had I mentioned how unfairly beautiful he was?

“Yes, please. I think I have some soda and ice cream. I can make us some floats?”

“You’ve got root beer?”

I wrinkled my nose. “I think so?”

He laughed at my uncertainty, leaning down and pressing a quick kiss to the top of my head. “Alright. I’ll call in and go grab it really quick. See you in about thirty.”

“Thanks, Niall!”

“Anything for my Rosebud.”

I took the time he was gone to tidy up around the apartment a little. I wasn’t a messy person by any means, but with my bad day, I had left a little trail of Rose-messes on the couch and in the foyer, where I had deposited my shoes without a care in the world. The last thing I wanted was for Lily to come home and see my mess and decide she didn’t want me living with her. It was bad enough I still hadn’t found the necklace she had given me. Niall had scoured his place trying to find it, so I wondered if I had drunkenly taken it off at the bar that night with Niamh and Pat. Leaving her apartment a mess just felt like another strike against me.

Niall returned about forty minutes later, ringing the doorbell because his hands were full of food. He grinned as I opened the door, reaching out his arm to hand me the food in the Nando’s bags. It was only after I had the food in my arms that I realized he was carrying another bag.

“What’d you get?” I asked, kicking the door shut with my foot as soon as he walked into the apartment. I set the food on the counter and got my phone out. “How much do I owe you? I can Venmo.”

“Put your fucking phone away,” he said, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “I got you something.”

His hand dipped into the bag at his side and pulled out something green and leafy. It looked like flowers, but I couldn’t see any blooms. However, when he handed them to me, I could suddenly see the tiny little buds at the end of some of the stems. “Rose buds for my Rosebud!” he exclaimed happily. “I know you were having a bad day, so I thought—oof!”

His breath left his body when I crashed into him, hugging him around the waist so tightly I thought I might pop him like a balloon. I was embarrassed to feel tears well up in my eyes at the sweet gesture, but the truth was, he had already made my day ten times better just by hanging around. And no boy had ever bought me flowers before.

“Don’t cry,” he said when he pulled away, giving me a smile and wiping underneath my eye with his thumb. “They were supposed to make you smile.”

“You’re just…” I trailed off, unable to find the words to perfectly describe the boy in front of me. “You are everything,” I decided, pulling him back into my arms, content to just hold him there for a little longer.

He chuckled, his breath stirring the hairs on my head. I felt him squeeze my shoulders, reminding me that this was real and he was here. “Not everything,” he argued softly, “just someone who cares about you.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

I nodded towards Niamh, who was currently freezing her ass off outside of my apartment. We had met up with my landlord to discuss me not living there when my lease was up. However, every time I thought about giving up my own little apartment, the first big purchase I had made as a working adult...it filled me with dread.

“You know you’re welcome to stay with me for free, Rose,” Lily added. She had found out Niamh planned to accompany me and had invited herself. It wasn’t a problem, since Niamh and Lily got along fairly well, but after Lily’s recent schemes with Violet to get me in to see a counselor, I was a little wary of going through with this while Lily was here. Mostly, I didn’t want her to see me burst into tears and then turn around and make a plan with Violet to kidnap me and take me to the therapist. “You don’t have to give up your place.”

But I did. I hated staying there at night, because I felt an uncomfortable crawling on my skin, like Kent was watching me somewhere. It was irrational of me to feel that way, but it didn’t stop the fear when I was alone at night. “It’s a waste of money,” I replied, and wondered if Lily and Niamh could hear the reluctance in my voice. “Giving it up is smart.”

“You want to at least go inside and start packing some things up?” Niamh asked. I could hear her teeth chattering. It wasn’t particularly cold outside, but Niamh always ran a little chillier than the average person.

I probably should. While most of my stuff was at Lily’s now, it would still be nice to go in and see what things I still had in my apartment. The pretty jewelry holder my grandmother had given me was there, along with some shoes that I didn’t wear everyday. The orange lamp my mom had given me for my college dorm was sitting on my nightstand, with the cute little pink mosaics on it that I loved. But seeing that stuff would make me sad, especially because I didn’t want to give up that little space yet.

Just because something was smart and right didn’t mean it was easy.

“No, I’m fine. Let’s just go to lunch.”

They shared a look with each other, but luckily didn’t push. Niamh because she wasn’t that kind of person, and Lily because she still felt bad about the whole Violet thing.

Niall and Pat were meeting us for lunch, effectively making me the fifth wheel. However, if it meant I got my money, Niall could join us for every meal he wanted to; Pat was fun to have around. Niamh called an Uber to the little deli she often frequented when she was done with work and when the driver pulled up to the restaurant, Niall and Pat were already sitting outside.

“Morning ladies,” Pat said happily, pulling out the chair next to him for Niamh to sit. She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. Niall had two open seats on either side of him, so I slid into one. “We already ordered your food.”

“You know my order?” I asked Pat, raising my brow.

“No, but Niall does.”

I gave Niall a surprised look. Sure, he knew my Nando’s order because he usually picked it up for Lily and I, but I assumed he had only committed Lily’s order for the deli to memory. “Thanks, Ni. Did you get your usual roast beef?”

“You know me well,” he said, smiling. “I also got you some orange juice.”

Orange juice was my comfort drink. I liked having it when I was sad or nostalgic. When I gave him another surprised look, he shrugged.

“I know seeing your flat probably made you upset, so I figured you’d want some orange juice.”

Smiling softly, I reached over to give him a one-armed hug. I caught the tail end of a look that Niamh and Pat gave one another, their eyebrows furrowed as if they were trying to figure something out. They did this often; I joked that they were so in-tune with one another that they were of one mind. Before I could ask them what their looks meant, however, the server was setting down our drinks and food. Niall had been correct in my favorite sandwich, a turkey with Swiss cheese and extra oil and vinegar. He had also switched out my fries (or as he called them “chips” and playfully rolled his eyes when I said it wrong) for sweet potato fries, which were another weakness.

“Thanks, Ni,” Lily said when her own food arrived. She gave him a small peck on the cheek and I swore I saw dollar signs flash before my eyes.

There was something else, though. Something ugly that clawed at the front of my chest. I didn’t know what it was, but I’d never felt that way before, especially around Lily and Niall. I took a bite of my sandwich to distract me from it.

“How was the flat?” Niall asked.

I tried not to flinch at the thought of it, but a sour expression must have taken over my face. “It’s fine.”

“Sorry, Rosebud. I know you’re sad about leaving it.”

It was stupid to be getting so worked up over nothing but brick and wood, but I had put my all into making that little apartment feel like home. The canvas art that I had purchased at a little family-owned gallery hung perfectly above the tiny little fire place. Lily’s apartment didn’t have a fireplace for me to hang them over. Then there was the macrame plant holder that I had bought on Etsy that made me smile whenever I woke up to it because the sun from my window was always shining on it when my alarm went off.

It was the first place that had been all mine. I didn’t mind sharing things with Lily, and I didn’t even mind sharing places with Violet. But that apartment had been Rose Fairbrough’s and no one else’s.

It felt like I was losing a part of myself.

Niamh seemed to notice the expression on my face and quickly changed the subject, prattling on about something else to keep the group occupied. I shot her a grateful smile. Freshman-year-me sure got lucky with Niamh as a roommate, and twenty-four-year-old-me was lucky that Niamh still wanted to be my friend. And through Niamh, I had met Pat, who never made me feel like a third-wheel when we all hung out. Though Niall and Lily were my people, Lily was my sister and Niall had been Lily’s best friend first. Niamh and Pat were, like my apartment, my own friends that I had made myself.

“I promised Violet I’d take her home from school and go shopping with her,” Lily said, looking at her phone after we had all finished eating. Her eyes caught mine. “I’m assuming you don’t want to come.”

I think I would rather have thrown myself off a bridge, but I didn’t tell Lily that. “I actually went to coffee with Violet earlier this week, so I’ve filled my quota.”

I felt better about denying this outing with them when Lily’s eyes lit up. “You guys got coffee this week? That’s wonderful!”

“It was fine. No big deal.” I had gotten free coffee out of it and Violet had only talked about the therapist for the first five minutes, so the trip actually hadn’t been as terrible as I had expected.

“That’s a huge deal,” Lily said, smiling widely. “We’ll have to do another sister night soon.”

Niall covered his laugh with a cough when he caught the look on my face.

Lily said her goodbyes, kissing both mine and Niall’s cheeks before she was off. Niamh and Pat only stayed a couple more minutes before they followed behind Lily. That left Niall and I at the table by ourselves, finishing up our lunches.

“What’s on your agenda for the rest of the day?” he asked, giving me a charming smile. He collected our trash and deposited them into the bin, and I strangely watched his legs move as he did so.

“Just hanging at the house. You?”

“Meeting with one of my athletes. He’s got an idea for eco-friendly sport equipment and he wants to run it by me.”

My eyebrows raised. “Wow. That’s incredible.”

“Yeah, I’m excited to hear about it. You need a ride home?”

I nodded and he led me to his car, a modest Toyota that he had bought as soon as he got the job at the college. When I slid into the passenger seat, I noticed something hanging from his rearview mirror.

“Hey! You found it!” I said excitedly, leaning forward and touching the tiny butterfly charm.

“Oh yeah, I did. I put it up there this morning to remind me to give it back to you. I like having it there. Makes me feel like you’re watching out for me when I’m driving.” He gently removed it from his rearview and handed it to me with a smile.

“Thanks. Help me put it on?” I unhooked the clasp and wrapped the two sides around my neck. His fingers on my skin made me shiver, but I filed the reaction away for a time where I could dissect it later.

He didn’t pull his hands away for several moments. I felt his breath on the back of my neck as one of his fingers softly poked at a spot on my flesh. “Hey,” he said softly, “you have a birthmark here. It’s shaped like a tree.”

“You’ve never noticed?” I asked, trying my best to clear my throat. My voice sounded suddenly throaty, like I had something caught in it.

He chuckled, pulling away enough to have me feeling like I could breathe again. “I think I learn something new about you every time I see you, Rosebud. It’s impossible to know all of you.” I felt the car engine rumble as he started the car and pulled away from the curb.

“You know me better than most people do.”

“Yeah?” he asked, reaching out and tapping my knee. I found myself smiling at the gesture. It was so...Niall.

“Yeah.”

And it was true. Niall knew me better than nearly everyone in my life, except Lily. The fact that he knew me better than Violet and my parents was something I held dear to my heart. It was just impossible to not unveil your soul to Niall. He was open and honest and caring. The world needed more people like him.

Too quickly, we were pulling up to the apartment. I wasn’t quite ready to leave, but I knew he had the meeting with his athlete and probably had to get going. “Thanks for finding my necklace.”

“Of course, Rosebud. I know how much it means to you.”

I thought about what he said, about feeling like I was with him when he was driving. Without another second to think about it, I unhooked the rose necklace I had worn to lunch today in my other necklace’s absence. “Here,” I said softly, leaning forward and wrapping it around his rearview mirror. “So I’ll always be with you when you’re driving.”

His finger gently touched the charm, and a slow smile spread across his face. “A rose to help me think of my Rosebud?”

“Always.”

He chuckled, and in a move that surprised me, pulled me over towards him so he could press a kiss to my forehead. “One problem, Rose. I’m always thinking about you. A necklace doesn’t change that.”

#wildflower #wf #niall horan fanfiction #niall horan au #1dff

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