#The binder on the right half in the back has some of the cards in it!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

danieyells · 1 year ago

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. . .I could've sworn I did Ritsu's already. Apparently not. Yuri's one of my favorites and he's the one I chose in the beginning so I'm saving his for when I'm a little better rested(I have Monday off because of another doctor's appointment, so that's the lastest i'll post it)

RITSU IS SO. . .I LOVE HIM. I'll rag on him a lot because he's so tunnel visioned and just like. . .repressed. And he needs to touch grass(figuratively) but also. . .when you've been set from childhood to work and care only for your work and only know your work. . .it's understandable that he is the way he is. . . .

The way he changes as his affinity goes up is very repressed too. . .but you can still see the change at the end a little. He's a very stagnant character. . .but still interesting to look into the mannerisms of.

Hello: (the first time the game is opened after that character is set as home screen NPC. Only happens once per day, unless the character is switched out and back.)

"Any self-respecting inspector would stay comfortably ahead of schedule—I suggest you get into the habit. Let's go—there's no time to waste."

dude this is the 'you've logged in for the first time today' dialogue why are you assuming that i must be late! rude.

You've Got Mail: (whenever there's something in the inbox, usually Arena rewards)

"Did you check that notification yet? We could have a request from a client, so please do so right away."

Default: (requires no affinity, has no time constraints)

"I have been assigned to Sinostra, so I will not allow them to stand trial, no matter how villainous their actions. That is the Shinjo family policy."

"I shall ensure the Gala is held this year, and that Sinostra will wear the Laurel Crown. I have never made a promise I couldn't keep."

boy i can't wait for that to fall through--he, respectfully, needs the humbling.

"I've read the Compendium of Laws countless times since I was a child. Memorizing its contents is a rite of passage for the eldest son of the Shinjo family."

and somehow it ended up an artifact he can use as a weapon? I really wanna know what it does tbh.

"What business do you have with me? Please keep in mind that I charge 5500 yen per half hour for consultations, tax inclusive."

(roughly $35USD, although it's faster to just think of it as $55--) WE ARE BUSINESS PARTNERS. WHAT ARE YOU CHARGING A MFER FOR.

"As long as I have a notebook, my business cards, a binder, paper, and my voice recorder, I can handle the initial stages of any case."

i need my binder every day too ritsu.

Affinity 1: (between 5am and 11am)

"{PC}. Are you aware of the responsibility your position as inspector entails? I suggest you tidy your appearance and wipe that vacant look from your face."

they do not need to be aesthetically in order to be inspector. as long as they're paying attention it may even be better to look vacant. lure them into a false sense of security. also it's easier to pay attention if you're comfortable, in my experience. . . .

Affinity 2: (between 11am and 4pm)

"You've lost your notebook? Just a moment. ...At 9:04 AM, it was inside the photocopier. Yes, I do have that information recorded."

Affinity 3: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"Have you seen Taiga Hoshibami? Strange... According to my behavioral model, he should be in the casino at this time..."

Affinity 4: (between 8pm and 5am)

"At the end of each day, I compile information about every person I encountered in my notebook. It always proves useful eventually."

yandere adjacent behavior, except it's for everyone and not just one person lolol

Affinity 5: (between 8pm and 5am)

"The vice-captain has asked me to organize some documents. Let's start by making copies of everything in case the originals become lost or damaged."

Romeo has a line that references this as well!

Affinity 6: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"I always have my business cards on hand. It should go without saying—any lawyer who fails to gain their client's trust during the first meeting is not worth their salt."

Affinity 7: (between 11am and 4pm)

"A post-meal coffee must be drunk black. Unnecessary additives only interfere with the natural flavor."

Affinity 8: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"Until the age of three, I spent my days visiting the greatest sights the world has to offer with my mother, as from four my studies would prevent me from doing so."

is that child abuse? i think that's child abuse. you learn the source of ritsu's problems very early on in his affinity--he has had zero normal social interaction opportunities and no childhood. From birth until he stopped being a toddler he was just flying around the world looking at beautiful things, no stability in his location or world aside from the presence of his mother, and then he went home and probably basically got locked away to study law the moment he could sort of read. His whole existence was molding him to work. . .Subaru is similar, even down to what age they were forced to start preparing to work at. But Subaru is at least better adjusted, probably because acting awarded him better opportunities to try and think about how other people think.

Affinity 9: (between 8pm and 5am)

"According to my behavioral model, there is a 29% chance that Taiga Hoshibami is currently at the baccarat table."

Affinity 10: (between 10pm and midnight)

"I review the day's coursework for two hours then prepare for the next day's classes for three— no more, and no less. Six more minutes of silence, please."

WHERE DO THE RECORDINGS COME IN TO THIS. This mans somehow has 40 hour days. Maybe his artifact slows down time or something lol

Affinity 11: (between 5am and 11am)

"Good morning, {PC}. We have a meeting at 3 PM today, so please adjust your plans accordingly."

Affinity 12: (between 11am and 4pm)

"Darkwick Rulebook Article 183: "For the protection of anomalies, unnecessary running indoors is prohibited." This rule has been in place for over one hundred years."

wait how old is this school? how old is the Institute???

Affinity 13: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"All right. We need to organize our notes from today's investigation, so let's relocate to the diner. Our usual booth, of course."

Affinity 14: (between 5am and 11am)

"The content of our classes may be novel, but I topped the year in the scholastic ability test—they are nothing I can't handle."

so among the first years' scholastic ability tests, Ritsu was 1st, Leo was 2nd, Sho was 5th. Considering there are only four new first year ghouls then that must include the general students too. I wonder where Ren placed? Probably not very high. But still, Ritsu is a genius. . .or at least very very good at memorizing information. Lots of book smarts, minimal other smarts.

Affinity 15: (between 5am and 11am)

"As your business partner, I request that you improve your conduct. Please refrain from consenting to any further uncompensated labor."

Affinity 16: (between 11am and 4pm)

"Our Anomalous Law classes are truly fascinating. There is a long history well worth learning about— though of course, I have already mastered the basics."

Affinity 17: (between 10pm and midnight)

"I cannot afford to be complacent, even before bedtime. It's vital that I check the day's notes again to ensure nothing has been missed."

Affinity 18: (between 8pm and 5am)

"I set time aside in the evening to watch opera performances online. It allows me to get my thoughts in order, and provides a change of pace."

when??? what time??? because he has to review all of the audio recordings and notes from the whole day--what time does he have to do anything in???

Affinity 19: (between 10pm and midnight)

"I just finished checking my recordings from today. You sighed a total of four times— is something troubling you?"

i love the vibe of this. rather than silently nothing your sighing and potential exhaustion or scolding you for not caring for yourself, he expresses concern towards you. also, it's so soft yandere. like he already records everything you say and do, to confront you over it on top of that he shamelessly defends his recording and notetaking. . .if not for that he recorded everyone it would really be so yandere lolol. instead it's just his odd and overbearing way of showing he's beginning to care.

Affinity 20: (between 5am and 11am)

"You struggle to get up in the morning? I can contact you each day at a set time if you like, but I'll have to think about how much to charge..."

affinity 20 and my guy still wants to charge for his time. . .we're gonna have to teach him to have A Singular Normal Social Connection aren't we. and we're probably gonna fail.

Affinity 21: (between 11am and 4pm)

"You wish to have lunch with me? All right. We are business partners, so I will accompany you free of charge."

wait maybe i spoke too soon.

Affinity 22: (between 4pm and 8pm)

"This is for you, {PC}— it's the takeout coffee I often purchase. Your performance will decline if your mind isn't sharp."

his increased attachment is shown in the bare minimum of understanding normal human social interaction and caring for you by sharing his things and his time without charge. In trying to make you the best you(from his perspective) that you can be. Because that's what his parents did for him--so surely that's the best expression of love he has, aside from obsessive study and understanding.

Affinity 23: (between 8pm and 5am)

"I feel we made solid progress toward the reinstatement of the Gala today. Let's reconvene again tomorrow and continue working together to realize our goal."

Affinity 24: (between 10pm and midnight)

"Could I ask you to accompany me a little longer, {PC}? I realize it's outside of business hours, but...I would appreciate it if you could make a special exception."

He wants to spend time with you. And he's realizing he can just ask that. But he's so entrenched in legal and business mannerisms he doesn't know how to say "i want to be around you for longer". You're his business partner. It's bad form to request your attention outside of work, it has no value towards your goals and business efforts, but. . .that he's making a sort of formal appeal for your attention outside of work is as far as he can get in terms of expressing his affection right now.

Affinity 25(max): (no time constraints)

"It seems we make better business partners than I would have expected. I look forward to a long and prosperous relationship with you."

kind of comical that his max affinity line is still so formal after a more friendly 'please spend time with me late at night' 24th. . .but also, he wants you to be his business partner for longer. i think that counts towards something! It's a reason to stay with you! Maybe over the course of your business partnership he'll learn how to express deeper feelings. . .he's going to need an heir, after all--

Spring: (March-May) (between 5am and 11am)

"There has been a noticeable increase in reports of suspicious activity of late. More incidents means more business. Be prepared."

(between 11am and 4pm)

"You have a petal in your hair. A little more to the right. No, not there. Just let me remove it. Hold still."

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"Indeed, the cherry blossoms are in bloom. Incidentally, Japan's oldest cherry blossom tree can be found in Yamanashi Prefecture and is estimated to be 2000 years old."

ritsu would probably kill at historical trivia night.

(between 8pm and 5am)

"I had tempura at the cafeteria today. It didn't come close to the tempura I would eat with my father at the historic soba restaurant we used to frequent though."

Summer: (June-August) (between 5am and 11am)

"This one is for my face, and this is for my body. I have six handkerchiefs with me— enough for morning, noon, and night. I cannot let my opponents see me sweat."

why's this giving me ace attorney prosecutor energy. . . . .

(between 11am and 4pm)

"I witnessed a half-naked man running around in this vicinity. Did you see him? He is risking a charge of indecent exposure."

but we saw Kaito in his underwear and you said that meant he wasn't at risk of indecent exposure. . . . . . . .

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"The warmer it gets, the more of a racket people make. Honestly, how were these people raised?"

to relax and have fun during the summer break. . .you should give it a try.

(between 8pm and 5am)

"You want to go and watch the fireworks? A rather childish request, but all right. So? Where would one go to view them?"

FIREWORKS DATE FIREWORKS DATE just don't touch him without getting his consent first that could be counted as sexual harassment and he'll Get Your Ass.

Autumn: (September-November) (between 5am and 11am)

"The weather is much more pleasant for going out on professional errands now. A first-rate lawyer keeps their boots on the ground. Now then, let's get going."

(between 11am and 4pm)

"I object to the cultural assumption that fall is the season of the arts. The arts should be enjoyed throughout the year, regardless of the season."

you and yuri would get along well i think. until you realize the guy is a medical malpractice suit waiting to happen. then you'd criticize him and he would take that so poorly.

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"Once I've perused the relevant documents in the library, I plan on doing some reading. Please excuse me."

(between 8pm and 5am)

"The nights may grow longer in the fall, but daylight hours should not affect the time you rise and retire. I'll see you tomorrow."

Winter: (December-February) (between 5am and 11am)

"I have detected a change in how Taiga Hoshibami divides his time since the weather has taken a cold turn. It has created quite a quandary for me..."

yeah he doesn't like getting out of bed when it's cold. he also eats a lot more, like a bear about to hibernate. shockingly behavior patterns tend to change with the seasons.

(between 11am and 4pm)

"I've never experienced snowfall heavy enough to obstruct my movement, but I'd like to deepen my knowledge of the phenomenon for future reference."

to frostheim then! i'm sure that place is just awful for movement in winter.

(between 4pm and 8pm)

"I'm heading to the diner to fulfill a request from Ren Shiranami. Perhaps I shall enjoy a warm bowl of soup while I'm there."

. . .I wonder if this is an Obey Me!Raphael situation where he has no grasp of that the food is not good. . . .

(between 8pm and 5am)

"People say that hard work is the key to success, but it only took me a year to master German—as was the case with Italian and French."

His birthday: (January 13th)

"Indeed, today is my birthday. I've always celebrated this day by enjoying my mother's cooking, but from this year I am striving for a more self-reliant existence."

MAMA'S BOY MAMA'S BOY tbf up until he was 3 his mother was probably his only social connection and then he was locked away studying so. . .his mom is probably the only one he has like. . .personal feelings and attachment for. you'll be a tradwife too :) but also that he's trying to be more self-reliant at darkwick. . .that really does explain that he's like. not used to any sort of social interaction or doing things he hasn't been told to do by his parents. maybe in his time at darkwick he'll realize how good it feels to just. . .be a person. dedicate time to fun and relaxation. realize that work isn't everything. or maybe he'll be so judgemental towards the lifestyles of others he'll retreat even further into his current habits.

Your birthday:

"Happy birthday. A year older, a year wiser. I have high hopes for your performance in the coming year."

New Years: (January 1st)

"Happy New Year. Let's devote these next 365 days—or 8760 hours—to finding fitting solutions to the challenges that come our way."

what if it's a leap year. can we take the extra day off?

Valentine's Day: (February 14th)

"Thank you for the chocolates. Are you gifting them to me out of social obligation, or is this an expression of affection? Your answer will influence what you receive in return."

(for the uninitiated, that is very much a thing in Japan where on valentine's day a girl give some men in her life--like coworkers--obligation chocolates, which are generally not as nice and most likely store bought, although this practice is losing ground. friends get friendship chocolate and you give people you're actually attracted to or in a relationship more extravagant, expensive, or homemade chocolates to express your true feelings or a desire to be in a relationship with them. Ritsu is essentially asking 'is this because we're coworkers or are you asking me out' because White Day is the day for return gifts in response to given valentine's day gifts, and in the case of chocolates given to someone you wanna go out with they can act as a response to that proposal. presumably if you're asking him out he wants to give you chocolate to agree to get with you, since he's bothering to ask. . . .

White Day: (March 14th)

"White Day has its roots in Japan, having been invented by a certain historic confectionery shop. With that knowledge, please accept this."

'here's some trivia. and some chocolates. we are now in a relationship. should this be as fruitful as our business partnership, we can discuss marriage plans within the year.'

April Fool's Day: (April 1st)

"The spreading of false rumors is subject to strict punishment under Article 233 of the Penal Code. Do you still intend to continue this ruse?"

NO FUN ALLOWED.

Halloween: (October 31st)

"Coercing another party to choose between a "trick" or a "treat" could amount to intimidation. Engage in such festivities at your own risk."

NO FUN ALLOWED PART TWO: ILLEGAL BOOGALOO.

Christmas: (December 25th)

"Religious freedom is guaranteed by Article 20 of the Constitution. If this is a day that you wish to celebrate, then I will accept that."

he can't make you work on religious holidays you need off!!

Idle: (about 20 seconds without interacting with the game) (below 13 affinity)

"Five seconds have elapsed. Yes, that is how long you've kept me waiting."

(13 affinity and above)

"How long do you intend to keep me waiting? As always, I am on a tight schedule today. Please hurry up."

Absent: (logging in for the first time in 2 or more days?)

"I've been expecting you, {PC}. You weren't planning on breaking your promise to me, were you?"

SUCH A HARD-WORKING, SOCIALLY INEPT LAD. But Ritsu's a lot of fun, I give him a lot of shit and i desperately need him to touch some grass and get a reality check and learn about how others live and maybe experiment. . .but like i love him for being such a little shit. he's so. . .ignorant to the rest of the world and how other people are. . .i love seeing him try and dissect other people's behavior and intentions and coming to the conclusion that they must want the same things as him because he just. . .has no grasp of interests and intentions that aren't his own. . . . It makes me facepalm but also makes me laugh 8'D good boy. quality boy.

#ritsu shinjo #tokyo debunker #tokyo debunker spoilers #datamining cw #danie yells at tokyo debunker #danie yells answers #danie yells with anons

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twinkletwirl · 8 months ago

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A little something different...

I thought I'd talk about this electronic toy I imported from Korea, the WishCat WishPad! It's super cute, but... somewhat scammy!?

Based on the WishCat Korean animated series by the same studio that brought TeeniePing, the WishPad has a 2.8 inch touch screen and comes with a stylus (that can be separated in half as the feather part has a sensor), a strap, one card, card portfolio pages, activity pages, and a binder than can hold all the pages as well as the device itself.

I find that the home button on my device keeps getting stuck, and I noticed that there is some extra acrylic that jams it, so must be a manufacturer error with just mine.

The device has 20 games, the ability unlock Wish Cats to care for, a shop so you can renovate your room, and some pointless profiles for human characters from the animated series. Here is what I think of it!

Pros:

Audio - It has cute music and a lot of spoken dialogue, including cute cat meow sounds. The speaker isn't the best quality of course, but I am very pleased with all the audio.

Graphics - The animations aren't very smooth, but the sprites themselves are super cute and in the mini-games there is usually a lot of detail on screen. The device sometimes even displays the full-on 3D artworks as the characters appear in the show.

Exterior design - The design of this device is intricate and dazzling! Every detail, including the little cat ears and paws, is gorgeous!

Variety of games - 20 games is a lot, and they're of varying difficulty and styles. Many of them are really basic but I still find myself failing to win sometimes even as an adult. A few are like "move the character to avoid or collect objects", but there's a Bejeweled-style game, dress-up games, a tennis game, a very simplified rhythm game, etc.

Battery level on display - The device takes four AAA batteries and there is a meter with 4 bars in the upper right of the screen sometimes, so you know how much power is left. Oddly while I was playing, the meter went down to 3 bars but later back up to 4 bars haha.

Decent touch screen - I've had touch screen toys where the touch sensors were literally divided into only 4 areas... Thankfully, this is more like a normal touch screen even if there's a slight delay to respond. You can even move your cats around on the main room screen, which I find nice because you can choose precisely where you want each cat to sit!

Cons:

This device is almost useless unless you buy separate figures. You do NOT earn ANY points for playing a game UNLESS you have scanned a card from a separately purchased figure, after which the corresponding game's "Star mode" will be unlocked. This means you CANNOT buy any wallpaper or furniture for your room unless you buy additional figures. You better hope the figure you bought corresponds to a game that isn't too hard to win, and that you're okay with playing the same game tons of times for points. Additionally, you cannot care for any cats beside Iemeow, or read ANY profiles for any of the cats, unless you buy these extra figures. I understand the former so that scanning the cards will have more incentive, but the latter bothers me because the boring human profiles are readily available. Thankfully I bought 5 Wish Cat figures as well, but the fact that an entire feature (buying furniture and customizing your room) is paywalled feels scammy to me.

Even if you do buy figures, you have to grind - You earn 20 points for winning a game that you have scanned a card for. How much is the cheapest customization item? 1000 points. The most expensive is 20,000 points. Three of the games have a "Special mode" where you can win 300 points instead of 20. For each of these three games, you need to scan 5-7 unique and specific cards to get Special Mode. I find this quite predatory considering the toy is for young children and the figures with the cards cost $10 or so each. Despite me buying 5 figures, they aren't the right ones for any of the exact lists, so no Special modes for me!

You cannot pet the cats! - I was almost devastated to discover this! Despite the touch screen, if you touch the cat while in care mode, nothing happens. Instead, you can choose petting under one of the options and WATCH a hand pet the cat... I saw this petting animation in marketing and assumed you could pet the cat manually, so I am a bit disappointed!

The card it comes with doesn't really do anything - It's a card of Iemeow (the default cat on the device), but it does NOT unlock Iemeow's profile or Star mode for her game. It just plays the Wish Cat music theme and a simple looping animation of all the Wish Cats. That is still cute and nice, but I had thought it would at least unlock her profile... You still need to buy the separate Iemeow figure for all that.

Neutral aspects:

The stylus has a sensor, but... - In care mode, you can choose to feed, bathe, or play with your cat and to activate the option you selected, you have to touch the base of the plastic feather to the emerald above the screen. This is cool, but if you lose the stylus or even just the removable feather bit, you won't be able to care for the cats at all.

You can get extra foods and toys, but... - They are single use. And to get a new food or toy, your Wish Cat has to have a full meter, and their meter will empty after you exchange it for the new item. So, you deplete your Wish Cat's meter entirely in exchange for an item that will increase the meter by 2 bars once... It's a little odd. But the extra toy animations are cute, at least.

Sorry for the long post. I know I complained a lot, but I just wanted to express my thoughts on this toy! It was very expensive but I do not regret buying it; it is very cute and I like electronic toys that have a lot of games. I just hope the figures show up on AliExpress at some point so I can get more (International shipping from Korea destroyed my bank account lol).

#wishcat #wish cat #toy collector #korean animation #cute

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moongreenlight · 1 year ago

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U already KNOW what time it is baybee!!!! WIP WEDNESDAY!

Been riding the Gaz high and this has been in the works recently (I wrote 2k words yesterday) so here's this!

Director!Gaz x Actress!Reader

Summary: It’s the mid-1970’s and you’ve recently made the unshocking discovery that it’s difficult to find good work acting. Lucky you stumble on the wrong opportunity at the right time!

You’re not dumb enough to fall for the advertisements in the papers looking for actors in ‘up and coming independent films.’ Not anymore.

After being burned so many times by ‘pay to audition’ schemes and sleazy directors only looking to collect videotapes of girls doing porno auditions, you gave up on that front.

But what’s the stipulation on extenuating circumstances? Like when you’re working at a bar a few blocks away from the community theater and a man comes up and sits at the counter all by himself.

He’s gorgeous and a sweet talker. Seems intent on chatting with you even though you really should be polishing glassware. And once he’s finally caught you in his snare, he drops a bomb that up until this point you’d only ever heard stories about.

He says he’s a small-time director and he saw you in the last production the theatre put on. He laughs and makes a lighthearted self-deprecating joke about being “one of those wankers in the paper” to which you wrinkle your nose and give him a weary smile.

But, Jesus, if he can’t make a bad thing good. He’s got all the makings of a politician the way he’s able to talk circles around you until you agree to show up to an audition for his latest project. ‘Trouble in paradise’ or something to that tune.

He tips you twenty pounds and his business card on a coke he barely touches. Uses your pen to write your audition time on the back of the card.

Wednesday at 11a. x

He doesn’t give back the pen.

Your roommates do no good talking you out of it. Hushing your half-arsed arguments about scams and serial killers and all kinds of things. It ends with the four of you in a pile on the couch, wine-drunk and giggling yourselves into hysterics.

So two days later you go. Forcing your roommates to promise no less than five times that if you’re not heard from in an hour that they’ll send in the authorities.

You find your way to the address on the card that now looks tired in comparison to when you first got it. The edges are fussy and dog-eared from your worrying with it and passing it around to prove its legitimacy.

It doesn’t look like any studio or office you’ve seen. Far from. And that should have been the final nail in the coffin. Should have been the reason you turned tail and went back home. But something pulled you up the worn steps of the house. That same something, now cowering a bit at the looming possibility, brought you to rap your knuckles sharply on the part of the door with a few different layers of paint chipped away to expose the cheap metal underneath.

You’re left standing on the stoop for a few moments too long with no answer. And just as you were about to come to your senses and return home with some sliver of your dignity still intact; the door swung inward and exposed the same man from the bar - Kyle - with his horrible, beautiful, toothy smile.

“Thought you were going to stand me up. Wouldn’t have known what to do with myself.”

You catch yourself thinking it’s a shame that he’s directing and not starring in movies. His devastating good-looks and all. Must be a terrible read.

There’s a card table set up in the living room. Two folding chairs behind it that look flimsy at best. Three thick packets that have been three-hole punched on the side, but held together by a binder clip in the top center.

The rest of the furniture is pushed up against the wall. A hodge-podge of mismatched chairs and a sofa that very well could have been your grandmothers and a few banged-up side tables.

He offers water. Offers to take your purse. You decline both. Opt to stand a bit stiffly on the faded rug in the center of the room with your bag tucked snugly under your arm.

Maybe you should make a run for it. Maybe you were stupid to come at all. He’s a total stranger for Christ sake.

Before you can will your feet to move, there’s s bang from behind you. A screen door slamming shut and rattling on its hinges. It startles you almost a foot into the air.

“Nervous?”

Kyle is cool as ever, sliding into one of the chairs, waggling his eyebrows at you. It whines under his weight and you’re suddenly very aware of just how bulky he is. Doesn’t look it on passing glance, but when all you’ve got to look at is the way his shirt fits it becomes glaringly obvious.

“Easily startled.”

You correct, trying to decide whether or not it’s passé to turn over your shoulder to find the source of the heavy footsteps behind you.

He hums and grabs one of the packets, taking off the clip and leafing through it. Pulling out a few odd pages and setting them on the table.

The footsteps reveal their maker when he rounds the corner into the room and shuffles behind the table. If you thought Kyle was big, this man is properly a behemoth. A bit taller, broader in the shoulders, a layer of fat packed on over his muscles. He looks to be older by a few years. He gets crows feet when he nods and smiles at you before taking his seat.

The chair looks as though it would be happier pulling its own legs out from underneath itself.

“Cap’.”

Kyle doesn’t look up from his papers when he addresses the man.

You get no formal introduction to ‘Cap’ though he doesn’t seem to be truly involved in the audition process. He barely glances up from his packet. Content to nurse a fresh cigar and lean further back in the chair than you think should be plausible.

You read from the stack of pulled-out papers with sloppily highlighted lines and try not to shy away from meeting Kyle’s watchful eye.

The audition goes normally, all things considered. You’re instructed to read three different scenes. Without the time to read the blurb on the project, you draw the conclusion that “Trouble in Paradise” is some sort of short suspense film centered around a woman living, shockingly, in paradise.

The writing isn’t first-rate, but you suppose that’s to be expected. You have a hard time piecing together how the scenes flow, but that’s not your largest concern.

“Lovely. Really, darl’.”

Kyle stands when he talks. Commands the attention even of such a small audience. Takes up space in the room like he’s owed it.

You smile, feeling a bit more at-ease now that things seem to be wrapping up.

“N’ how do you look in a bathing suit?”

The question takes you entirely off-guard. It makes your jaw fall far enough open that you’re left looking like a fish out of water.

“I- sorry?”

Kyle’s face doesn’t change. Fantastic at keeping up appearances. He’s still casting that warm smile over you. The focus of it makes you feel like you’re sunbathing.

“Bathing suit, love. How d’you look?”

Disappointment drops like a stone in your belly. Heavy and fast. It’s another scam. Of course it is.

“Oh. I don’t- I don’t do dirty movies.”

It must be palpable on your face even more than it is in your voice.

‘Cap’ glances up at Kyle when he ashes his cigar. The smell is nauseating. He seems to be chewing on a smile. Kyle meets his eye for only a moment, amusement painfully evident on his face.

“You’ve just read the pool scene. Hardly anything dirty about costuming.”

#gaz x calling reader 'darl' you will always be famous #moongreenlight #moongreenlightwrites #sephspeaks #cod mw2 #call of duty #cod x reader #141 headcanons #drabble #gaz x reader #gaz call of duty #gaz cod #gaz mw2 #kyle gaz garrick #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick #wip wednesday

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total-drama-takes-takes-2 · 2 years ago

Text

celebrity manhunt

Inside a small studio, a large desk wraps around two seats, an orange striped background and TV monitor decorating the set behind them. In one seat, a tight-faced, full-lipped gentleman with stark black hair holds a bouquet of cue cards. Next to him, a tight-faced redhead in a blue dress is holding a clearly empty mug.

“It’s a beautiful night here in Toronto, perfect temperature for the TV event of the season- that’s right, everyone- it’s time for the Gemmy’s!”

The gentleman fixes his bowtie. “We’re reporting live, just a block away from the action- it’s your faves, Josh-”

“And Blaineley!” the ginger cuts in. “Welcome to a very special episode of Celebrity Manhunt! Tonight is the night, folks- it’s time for gossip, cheer, and chatter about this year’s nominees!”

“Who will be taking home the gold? Stay tuned to find out!”

“Josh, that was my line,” Blaineley hisses. He rolls his eyes.

“In only half an hour, our field reporters will be walking the red carpet with this season’s celebrity stars- until then, let’s catch up with the juiciest gossip from the past year,” Josh grins. “With a special focus on our personal faves, and the audience choice’s- the Total Takes Island cast!”

“Those teens braved it all on the newly-resurfaced Wawanakwa island, competing in death-defying challenges and looking fly while doing it!” Blaineley squeals. “Just to come back for another season of screams, screams, and crazy teens on the set of Total Takes Action!”

“Those are some brave contract holders, especially after watching what happened to the other casts,” John winks. “And like our blasts from the past, these teens have scored a nomination in the category for Best Reality Ensemble.”

“Let’s cross our fingers for them this time, Josh,” Blaineley chuckles. Her smile seems forced. “But before then, let’s catch our audience up to speed with everything that’s happened since Total Takes Action closed its doors- or should I say, gates?”

"Sure thing, Blain- from breakups to makeups to arrest records and more, our stars have had a lot going on for them!" Josh grins. "O has been living the high life back home, but not before starting an advocacy group for those who were negatively affected by the psychiatric healthcare system. Peter was spotted giving a promise ring to his girlfriend, Lois- still going strong! And Kitty's been banned from at least eight national parks in the United States so far,"

"Speaking of spectacles, let’s talk about Alistair’s award-winning performance as Disco Horatio in the viral Broadway musical 70’s Hamlet, a pop-infused retelling of the classic play,”

“Alistair’s performance was so good that he even found himself a brand new fanbase of Hamlet-crazed fangirls- some of which have been taking things a little too far,”

An image of Alistair’s character in a Miku binder fixes itself on screen. It's been autographed.

“Yikes- but hey, if he's owning it, then more power to him! Next up, we're talking about the pop sensation band that’s been on everyone’s minds- that’s right, guys, we’re talking the Takes Three trio!”

Blaineley grins as a sequence of images of McLovin, Sha-Mod, and Joner starts overlaying the screen. “Our Total Takes faves shocked the world when they released their first album, Boi Tearz, to widespread critical acclaim,”

“The rap-swing-darkwave fusion has been called “surprisingly tolerable” by critics, leading the Takes Three to their own claim to fame outside of reality TV. Make sure to stay tuned, because we'll have them right here after the break!”

---

The Celebrity Manhunt logo flashes across screen and then fades as the studio comes into focus. McLovin, Sha-Mod, and Joner are all sitting beside each other at the end of the table, wearing matching outfits.

"Takes Three- you've been called international pop sensations by at least six Twitter users. How do you respond?"

"We're just grateful for our fans," Joner says, shrugging. "Making music for the world to enjoy is a rite of passage where I'm from."

Blaineley blinks. "The Midwest?"

"Yeah, it's been crazy. We've been signing all kinds of notepads!" Sha-Mod nods. "Big ones, little ones, ones shaped like circles..."

"I didn't even know you could make circle paper," McLovin shakes his head. "Our tour has been world-changing."

"Eye-opening," Sha-Mod agrees. "And to thank you for inviting us on the show, we wrote a song for you. Ready, guys?"

All three reach under their chairs and pull out three sets of bongos. They look between each other.

"I though I was bringing the bongos," McLovin says.

"No, you were bringing the synthesizer. I was bringing the bongos!" Joner responds.

"I thought you were taking the triangle!"

Blaineley and Josh look at each other, then back to the trio.

“So, boys, how has skyrocketing to commercial and financial success affected your bonds on a scale from “a lot” to “IMPOSSIBLE to ignore!”?” Blaineley asks, grinning widely. The three stop bickering and immediately turn to her.

“You know, we’re actually closer than ever,” McLovin states, matter-of-factly. “Our music is a really hands-on creative process.”

“Yeah, can’t have rap-swing-darkwave without the swing!” Sha-Mod smiles, setting down the bongos. "Or the rap- or the darkwave!"

Joner nods. “It's been chill. Our new album-”

“BORING!” Blaineley shouts, pulling a lever behind her. The floor under the three musicians disappears and they scream as they disappear. "All I heard there was "blah blah blah" let's get to the real juicy gossip, shall we? It looks like it’s finally splitsville for Patjulia.”

Josh chuckles. “Oh, yes, after months of vicious dating, our sources indicate that those villains-to-be have finally called it quits- and publicly, at that. Our undercover reporters came across this juicy little tidbit. Roll the tape!”

---

The monitor fizzles to life and focuses on the inside of a restaurant that looks like a tornado went through it. A chair flies across the screen and the camera whirls around to one side of the room, where Julia is screaming and throwing furniture.

“I should’ve NEVER even TALKED to you!”

The camera pans around to the other side of the room, where Patrick throws a handful of spaghetti back. “You should be HONORED I gave you the time of the day!”

“Your hair looks like a dead rat got glued to your head!”

“That’s rich, coming from a fake blonde!”

“IT’S NOT FAKE! We are so over!”

“You’re not breaking up with me! I’m breaking up with you!”

Julia throws a table and it sends Patrick flying across the room and straight out the back wall, creating a him-shaped hole in the plaster. He screams one final "YAHHH OH HOO HOOEY!!" as he goes flying.

---

“Yikes,” Josh chuckles. “That’s gonna leave a mark!”

“Where’s Scruffy during all this, you may ask? Well, they’re busy interning for Sierra of Reality, Weekly!” Blaineley announces.

An image of Scruffy wearing a pair of sunglasses and an earpiece, walking beside a woman with dark brown hair in her 30s flashes across the screen.

"What an upgrade from Total Takes, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh absolutely- especially after Wawanakwagate,"

Blaineley nods. "But, speaking of relationships- Bonsar- to date or not to date?”

Josh grins. “That IS the question! The two best friends were seen holding hands downtown, sending fans WILD! In a recent press statement, Caesar did little to calm the masses,”

---

The monitor changes scenes to a press conference. Standing before a crowd of reporters and microphones, Caesar adjusts his bow tie and clears his throat while Bonnie is sitting on the stage, playing on their Switch.

“I just want to restate that Bonnie and I are under no obligation to explain anything to the press,”

A reporter waves his hand. “So are you dating or not?”

Caesar smacks his forehead.

---

"Looks like trouble in paradise to me, Blain!"

"You said it, Josh! You know who's been sailing on smooth seas lately, though? Maxchela!"

"OMG, totally! Fans are still swooning over Max and Michela after they were named Reality couple of the year by Reality, Weekly,"

“Unfortunately, we here at Celebrity Manhunt were unable to reach the two for comment. Luckily, our star reporter under the pseudonym “Noco”, was able to get the inside scoop!” Blaineley smiles.

The camera pans over to Noco, who’s half-shadowed to protect his identity. He clears his throat. “I just want to say, first of all, that my findings have reliable and true evidence behind them,”

He stands and pulls a poster down behind him- revealing a screen covered in images of Max and Julia with strings between them. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that Maxchela was staged,”

The light above him suddenly flickers on. He sighs.

“OOOKAY THEN!” Blaineley says, redirecting the camera back over to her. “More on that later! In the meantime, we have a very special guest joining us today- one you Canadian viewers at home might recognize right away as the household name of the month!"

Josh grins. “When Chris McLean’s arrest became an international media sensation, sparking thousands of internet “memes” after his mugshot went viral, there was one name to take the claim to fame,”

“Toronto Environmental Coalition’s own leader, Albert, led an independent investigation of Wawanakwa after former contestant Scary came forward with a case- but it was him who found evidence of illegal radioactive materials on the island,” Blaineley continues, images of the investigation flashing across the screen. "The case brought international attention to the Coalition, and to Albert himself."

“The scandal broke the Wawanakwa mystery wide open. Here with us today is Canada's sweetheart, Albert,”

The camera zooms out and reveals a third person at the table. Albert- a teenage boy with dark brown hair, wearing a gray windbreaker- adjusts his lav mic and then smiles awkwardly.

“So, Albert- since your case went viral, you’ve been called a top-notch advocate, a genius, even a national hero. How does it feel to be getting all this attention?”

He thinks for a moment. “Um… well, I suppose at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the coalition, and the attention has drawn in a lot of donations!”

“Yeah, whatever,” Blaineley chuckles. “You’re the star of an international scandal- you’re a hero! How does it feel?”

“Uh… fine. I guess. What I’d really prefer talking about is the monthly agenda for the TEC, we’re planning on hosting a protest at a meat processing plant in-”

Josh clears his throat. “Our sources indicate that you and Scary were an item at one point. Is this true?”

Albert goes pale. “I- um, no comment, thank you,” he then leans in to whisper. “I thought we were going to be talking about the coalition.”

“On this show? No chance!” Blaineley shouts, startling him and sending him flying backwards. “Celebrity Manhunt is about the drama, drama, drama!”

Albert cringes. “Is there anything else we can talk about, then?”

"We can talk about the juicy, juicy drama happening on the red carpet right now," Blaineley chuckles. "Looks like the first of the cast has arrived to the Poultry Pals sponsored Gemmy's!"

Albert holds up a finger. "Um- what was that last part? The sponsor?"

Josh leans in, his palm against his face. He whispers. "Since ratings have gone down, award shows have corporate sponsors now. Turns out the meat industry is bananas for awards!"

"That's- that's the business I'm supposed to be protesting," Albert stands. "I have to go!"

He runs out of the room, and Blaineley rolls her eyes. "Guess we know why Chris McLean was acquitted and found innocent, huh?"

Josh chuckles. "That we do, Blain. That we do. But let's talk about these red carpet looks, cause honey these contestants are serving!"

---

The red carpet outside the Gemmy's is surrounded by shouting fans and photographers. O waves as he walks inside the building, followed shortly by Alistair, then McLovin, both so preoccupied with waving to the crowd that they crash into each other.

Another limo pulls up on the scene and Peter steps out with a short ginger. She shows off her promise ring to the paparazzi and giggles.

Peter and Alistair fistbump as they reach the door.

"Aw, how sweet. Friends forever!" Blaineley's voice overlays the scene.

"It's nice to see those teens getting along," Josh adds. "Ope- and there's Scary, just released from the lead prison she was stuck in from radioactivity!"

Scary arrives next, her hair dyed a warm honey brown. She makes a show of coughing and wheezing as he exits his limo in a wheelchair, then rolls up the carpet.

"My, my, aren't they looking just proper?" Blaineley tsks. "I love that shade of brown on her!"

A photographer gets too close with his camera and Scary stands, beating him over the head with her wheelchair, before sitting back down in it and rolling indoors.

"What a stellar start to the most anticipated award season EV-AR!" Josh squeals. "Let's check in with Noco on the field."

---

“Reporting live from… wherever I am,” Noco says, squinting. He’s holding a microphone and looking around, slightly annoyed. The cast looks relatively tame, most just merrily chatting with each other. “Here's, uh, I don't know. Austin or whatever. Hey, Austin, you and Kelly get back together?"

"No, baby, I've been single and free! To hell with monogamy!" Austin shouts, flipping on a pair on sunglasses, tearing off his shirt and running off screaming.

Noco stares into the camera. “Now can I do my Maxulia bit?”

“Um. No,” Blaineley says, still in the studio. “What is UP with these drama-less hacks?! Someone get Ass and Courtney here, pronto!”

Noco rolls his eyes and walks down the carpet, approaching Courtney, who’s catching up with Bonnie. “Comment?” Noco asks.

“Hm?” Courtney turns, then blinks. “Um, comment on what?”

“Ass,”

“Ugh. None, thank you!”

“I heard that!” Ass shouts from across the carpet. Courtney rolls their eyes.

Staci and Mal walk down the carpet next to each other, arguing about welding. Noco sighs. “Now can I-”

“NO!” Blaineley and Josh yell in unison.

Michela, walking alongside Max, stops suddenly and puts her hands on her hips. “Does this venue feel a little empty to anyone else?”

The camera zooms out- the group is on a carpet, but there's no reporters, no photographers, no fans to be seen.

“No, I see what you mean. I was thinking there’d be more… I don’t know, people,” Max says, then sighs.

“Did we get the right address?” Scruffy asks. “I mean, we’re all here, so we got sent the same e-vite, right?”

Mal pulls out her phone and reads intently. “Yep. This is the place,”

Another limo pulls up and Julia and Patrick stumble out, shouting at each other and having a slap-fight.

Joner and Sha-Mod look between each other. "Hey," the latter says. "Did we lose McLovin?"

Kelly walks up to the two and puts their hand right above their eyes, shielding their vision from the fluorescent lighting. "I don't see him,"

"Who else are we missing?" Michela asks. But before anyone can do a head count, a voice rings out from the distance.

"WAIT! WAIT! DON'T GO IN YET!" it shouts. The crowd turns in the direction it's coming from and Albert runs up, then collapses on the carpet, wheezing. "Don't go in..." he coughs. "Protest..."

"What's this supposed to be?" Ass asks, putting their hands on their hips.

Albert takes a moment to compose himself, then stands. He dusts off his windbreaker and pants, then pulls a small card out of his pocket. It reads "TEC Charter: LEADER".

"My name is Albert, and I am condemning this award show on behalf of the Toronto Environmental Coalition!"

"What award show, Einstein?" Ass snaps. "There's nothing out here!"

Albert looks around. Nothing but crickets. "Oh,"

Bonnie sighs and walks past him, approaching the doors of the supposed venue. “Let me guess-” they open one and the entire front of the building collapses. "Yep. Thought as much,"

“It’s CARDBOARD?!” Caesar shouts. “My hair took FOUR HOURS to do!”

“This has got to be some kind of Chris thing,” Staci says, crossing her arms. “Maybe it’s a scavenger hunt.”

“Oh, no, no way. I am not playing these little games again,” Ass says. “I’m going home.”

“Hey, everyone, we're still missing people,” Kelly says.

Austin pops out of nowhere. “Yeah, baby, where’s the rest of the party at?”

Courtney does a quick headcount, then thinks for a moment. "I don't see O, Scary, Kitty, McLovin, Alistair, or Peter,"

"Kitty's in an Australian prison," Patrick says nonchalantly. Everyone turns to him. "What?"

"Never mind that. We need to figure out what's going on," Michela says, hands on her hips again.

Mal chuckles from across the carpet. "Guys, you should see this,"

The crowd hesitantly approaches her, peering over her shoulder to see a live broadcast of the Gemmy's on her phone.

"And the award for Best Reality Ensemble goes to... the teens of Total Takes!" the announcer shouts.

Peter, O, McLovin, and Alistair look nervously around their seats, as if trying to catch a glimpse of where everyone else disappeared to.

"Oh, crap," Julia sighs. "We got sent the wrong damn address."

"Are you guys watching the Gemmy's?" a voice from ahead pipes up. The crowd diverts their attention from Mal's phone to see a scrawny boy standing on the street in front of them, drinking a slurpee loudly. "Cause it's a total hack. It's rigged by the woke police."

"Who are you?" Ass asks, crossing their arms.

"I'm Phillip, but you can call me Alejandro," he says confidently. "I was just out training, to fight SJWs. You know how it is."

He does a few karate punches. No one seems very impressed.

"Do you know where the Gemmy's are?" Courtney chimes in.

"Oh, yeah. They're way across town. They're wrapping up soon, anyway, you shouldn't bother with them. Everything comes to an end, after all,"

"Ooookay," Michela says. Max rolls his eyes.

"Do you guys ever think about how red slurpees make your mouth look like you've been drinking blood... heh... just me, then... I have a twisted mind,"

"Am I dead?" Ass turns to Courtney. "Did I die and go to hell?"

"Enough whining. I'm going home," Bonnie snaps.

"NOT so fast!" A voice shouts. The sound of a helicopter hanging overhead makes everyone jump and turn skywards. Chris McLean pilots the aircraft, making a smooth landing in front of the teens (but not before sending Phillip and Austin flying in the wind).

The disgraced host steps out of his helicopter, grinning. "You teens have a contract to uphold!"

"What is going on?" Caesar demands. "This wasn't in my contract!"

"Oh, right. You're "exempt" because of your "lawsuit"," Chris air quotes, rolling his eyes. "Bonnie, on the other hand..."

Caesar pales. Bonnie chimes in. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about a brand-spanking-new season of Total Takes- that's right- we're doing TOTAL TAKES: WORLD TOUR!"

No one makes any noise besides Scruffy, who squeals in delight.

"Thank you. Glad to see someone's excited,"

"Okay, let me get this straight," Julia starts. "You lie to us about the Gemmy's location, drag us to the middle of nowhere in Toronto, make us hang out with these freaks-" she gestures to Albert and Phillip. "And Now you're saying we have to do ANOTHER SEASON?"

"Man, you guys need better lawyers," Chris chuckles. "You have a long, long few weeks coming for ya."

The teens look between each other nervously.

"And not only you- as your contract dictates, any and all at the time of casting are required to join- that means you," Chris points to Albert. "And you," he points to Phillip, plastered against a nearby wall.

"You cannot be serious," Ass says. "I want to talk to your lawyers!"

"No can do, buddy. This is set in stone. See you all soon!"

He chuckles as he gets back into his helicopter and starts off, leaving the cast abandoned. They look at each other one last time before the screen fades to black.

#total takes action #total takes world tour #tta #ttwt #celebrity manhunt

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smolcinnamonchipmunk · 2 years ago

Text

I realized I forgot to say how my first experience with a club went. I know not everyone will care, but I know at least two people that straight up asked me to let them know how it went, so here goes

First off, I almost didn't go because the day before I was like "I only have three dresses, and all of them are too fancy/lacy, and I want to at least TRY to be feminine". Now, nothing wrong with not being feminine. I'm literally an AFAB NB that does not like my hips, but I try to make do. But, sometimes, once in a blue moon, I wanna try to be feminine. Like, maybe once a year level frequency, so it had to be RIGHT

I go to an actual dress place first, but everything was too fancy, so I fell back on my classic: Hot Topic. Unfortunately, it was particularly busy that day and I didn't bring my headphones, and there were too many choices and options, and I quickly became overwhelmed and had stunted text messages with my friend for the hour and a half I was inside because the connection sucked so much. But, she promised that we could go shopping the next day together and I felt instantly better and got the fuck out of dodge after buying one shirt I really liked

We went shopping the next day and I got two pairs of pants and a skirt that was just slightly too small at the waist but we could make it work with some safety pins. I still took my binder and one of the pants in case I felt uncomfortable being in a skirt/being feminine. Anyways, this is the outfit I settled on sans the fishnets

I was super nervous on the way because my friend has a much larger friend group than I do, so I didn't know anyone else really well and I knew it was obviously going to be really crowded and loud so I tried to pregame a bit beforehand. Man, when I tell you the amount of relief that washed over me when I found out it was a gay bar, woof

Anyways, it was me, my friend, and five of her friends (Four gay and one straight who was there for vibes like me), and it was decent. I feel like I need something to do, and even though I knew clubs was just drinks and music for the most part, I was still kind of... bored? Idk, lmao. Still kind of fun, just feel like I need things to do with my hands at least

The newest guy in the group, and also the tallest, kept fucking buying shots for everyone, and there was a point where we raced to the counter to buy shots for each other, AND I WON, but my card declined because apparently I go out so little that my bank was like "This bitch is at the club? I don't fucking buy it. Lock it down boys!"

I ended up having half a bottle of soju and a glass of plum wine for pregame, four/five pickle shots (they were SO good, I had to resist the urge to keep going back), a lemon drop, some blue raspberry shot, pink lemonade shot, and a watermelon shot, and I STILL wasn't drunk >:(

Something about the loud music and atmosphere made it so it didn't affect me until I got home (I introduced the tall guy to my cats and showed guy my bookshelf of dragon books while my friend and I talked)

I tried dancing by mimicking one of the guys who was FEELING himself (like, draped across the other three when we went outside for fresh air), and he kept dropping into low squats REALLY EFFECIENTLY so I was trying to follow along and my legs were sore for three days afterwards

OH! and there was a person in a dinosaur button up shirt that I rushed up to and asked them where they got it from, and they said they stole it from their sister, but told me where to find their sister because she was there, and turns out its from Shein :/

I WILL get a dinosaur button up though, just not that one

#cinntalks

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fushigujiro · 4 years ago

Text

𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐆𝐄!𝐓𝐑 𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐒

note — just little head-canons if the boys and you when in college times! just fluff so don’t worry!

characters— mikey, draken, baji, akkun, kakucho, chifuyu

pt. 1 pt. 2

college!mikey who comes to your dorm immediately when his classes are over so he can cuddle with you. baby is so tired of everything he just wants to knock out with his favourite person (you) he comes in with the key you had gave to him, and makes his way to your room where he find you doing work. he drops his stuff my your bed and flops right on you and right to sleep! damn baby.

college!baji loves studying with you. when he doesn’t understand a piece of work, he immediately asks you and you teach to him so well enough for him to understand that he doesn’t need help for the rest of the session! you both do flash cards on each-other and listen to your playlist, sharing your earphones with him. let me tell you though, the second someone he knows teases him about being a nerd and what not— you done lost him💀. he’s already up and running after them. you have to sigh and continue your work without his aggressive ass.

college!kakucho will cook in the evening times when you come home from a hard day. he knows that your classes isn’t hard— it’s actually your favourite. it’s just the students in there makes it hard for you to concentrate and do your work. no matter what you tell the teacher and no matter how many times that said teacher tells them to cut it out they still act like they are in middle school. being the sweet boy he is, he take initiative and makes his baby happy by cooking your favourite meals! a sweetheart indeed.

college!akkun who will draw little doodles and hearts on your arms and legs when you are dead asleep. you came home from school, took a shower and came right back to your boyfriend who just laid there on your bed, and flopped right on him just falling asleep in a snap. he takes advantage of that time to draw on you because you sleep deep when tired. he is literally like a little child, tongue sticking out and everything, just concentrating on drawing you and him inside of a heart☹️. when you wake up, oh he’s suddenly a statue now.

college!ken sending you notes in the class you are in together. that’s one of the reasons why he loves to sit beside you because, 1; he loves bothering you. 2, he loves bothering the hell out you and 3, he loves you…and loves bothering you. though he has his days where he is a softy and takes out his little sticky note pad and writes all the stuff he loves about you and sneaks then inside your bag, binder, and notebook. when class is finished and you both go to the dorms, you open your stuff and here comes yellow, green, pink and blue sticky notes flooding and filling almost half of the bed. you get so soft when he’s soft for you….if you tell him about the times he did that in-front of his friends—he’s walking away, no question.

college!hakkai who plays with your fingers when he’s in his own world. hakkai enjoys spending his day with you and lunch as well. there is most days where he is conversating with everyone in the friend group, being his usual self and there are some days where he’s just in his head— NOT OVER THINKING! no no no, just in his little world, day dreaming and when he’s in the middle of that he always finds your unoccupied hand and plays with your fingers while staring at them. you don’t mind it at all actually you find it cute to be honest😭. he’s fine don’t worry he’s just thinking about stuff that involves you and him in the future most of the time.

college!chifuyu loves slow dancing in the kitchen on a weekend at 5:30AM. he had woken up because he didn’t feel you in his arms. he looked to see you not on the bed at all so he makes a trip downstairs where he now hears the fridge opening and closing and shuffling noises. he makes it to the kitchen to find you making a snack and you had noticed him, smiling and waving excitedly at him. he comes to you with a smile and hugs you from the behind, swaying you left to right. he turns you around, puts your hands on your waist and starts moving slowly to an imaginary beat. the only light is from the fridge light and the sun rise. it was so peaceful and loving you could cry. you both take in the moment knowing you will be together until days last.

#tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers x reader #tokyo revengers fluff #mikey sano #mikey x reader #kakucho hitto #kakucho x reader #baji keisuke x reader #baji keisuke #atsushi sendo #akkun x reader #ken ryuuguji x reader #draken x reader #ken ryuguji #draken #hakkai x reader #hakkai shiba #— %megatypes🎐….

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atravisphilepsclicker · 4 years ago

Note

Can I get comfort from sal? So trans male reader keeps his binder on to long to the point of bruises and pain? You can chose headcanons or a one shot it’s up to you •3•

Summary: Sal comes home from his supermarket job to see you were in your shared bedroom in your shared apartment and asks how long you kept your binder on after you answer him he tries to help you with the pain.

----------------------------

Word Count:1654

Pronouns: he/him

Gender: trans male

Warning: mentions of dysphoria, bruising, back pain and small injury

Modern AU

You both are in high school and Sal has a part-time job at the town Walmart.

Y/N = your name

----------------------------

3rd Person POV

Sal stood in front of the apartment door with the card key in his left hand and was texting the group gc ( with him, todd, larry, ashily, maple and chug ). He turned off his phone and slid the key into the card lock and a small light turned red to green showing that it was unlocked.

Walking into the apartment Sal was met with silence. It didn’t worry him but he wondered where you were when he came home from work you usually were sitting on the couch doing something to pass the time as you waited for him but you weren’t there to give him his usual greeting of “ Hey, Sal, “ or “ Hey, blue! “

Sal then locked the door, took off his shoes, and put them on the boot rack on the door’s left side. Sal stood upright and walked into the living room and that’s when he heard it, “ Oh you’re home, Welcome back! “ Sal heard you greet him from the bedroom. The bedroom door was half open leaving him being able to see you laying on the bed in the room. Sal walked over to the door and opened it and leaned on the door frame.

He looked at you, you were so handsome laying there your legs laying straight on the bed as you scrolled on your phone. You had a tired look on your face and you bet your ass your amazing boyfriend Sal noticed and frowned, furrowing his brow. “ So how was your day today? You look tired. “ Sal asked with a slightly worried tone. You look at him with a small smile and turn off your phone, putting it on the nightstand beside your side of the bed.

“ It was fine I haven’t had a lot of sleep since I was trying to finish the dam book assignment T/N gave us. I did ask todd to help me after I finished pulling out my hair a little. So it’s done now and I won’t have to return to hell for a few days till our next assignment. But other than that I’ve had a fine day. “ You told the blue-haired male that was now on sitting on the bed beside you legs crossed with one hand holding his face listening to you.

You looked at him and asked, “ So how was your day at work? I guess the boss gave you overtime at the store again? “ You asked since he came home 2 hours later than his work schedule had said. “ Yeah, sorry! I tried to get off earlier but she just gave me so many things to do! “ He said annoyed. You leaned on one side wincing at the bit of pain moving gave you and Sal noticed. Sal was not a genius but when he saw you do that it didn’t take long for him to remember the last time a few months ago you didn’t take off your binder for longer than it intended. “ Hey, love how long have you had your binder on? “ He asked with tones of worry in his voice. You saw his eyes through the mask, they looked worried for you, the love of his life.

You sigh and close your eyes not wanting to see his reaction, “ 12 hours. “ You say quietly, almost in a mumble. “ Take it off. “ Sal told you with a stern pained voice. You were hesitant not wanting to have terrible dysphoria again, I mean that the entire reason you have had that on for so long and you both knew it. It took a little time to think but you finally surrendered. “ Fine…” You said with an upset sigh. You sat up quickly sending a jolt of pain down your spine making you lay back down and groan in pain. Sal quickly moved over to you and held your arm with one hand. “ Do you need me to help get up? It must be really painful to move. “ Sal asked rubbing circles on your arm. You make a pained smile, “ That would be really nice of you blue, thank you. “

Sal moved, straightening his back. “ Okay, first let’s sit you up just tell me when you’re ready to move and ill put my hand behind your back and push you up slowly. “ Sal told you. You waited for a minute for the pain to die down a little and told him you were ready. Sal slid his hand under the lower side of your back knowing your upper back must be in so much pain right at the moment.“ K, one...two...three! “ Sal started to move you up slowly and steadily.

Once you sat up Sal helped you lean your back on the backboard of your bed. After that Sal got off the bed and stood beside you. “ You alright? “ He asked squatting down to lead his head in your lap. “ Yeah, I’m fine just in a little bit of pain but no worries! “ You answer as you twirl a few of Sal’s soft blue locks in your fingers. “ Well...if you’re sure you’ll be fine then do you think we could try to stand you up and get that binder off of you? “ He asked in a caring tone. “ Yeah, we could try but I think I might fall over if I do. “ You cucked. SaL then stood up and held both of your arms. “ You know you don’t need to hold me like this right? “ You say as you steadily move up wincing at the pain your binder gave you to move. “ I know I just want to make sure you’re safe and won’t get hurt more than you already are. “ He started concentrating on getting you to stand up. Once you finally stood up he started getting your shirt off as you looked away embarrassed and disgusted. “ Why are you okay seeing my disgusting body? “ You aked as Sal threw your shirt on the bad behind you both. He looked bad at you and put his hand on your face and started rubbing small shapes with his thumb, “ Because I love you, and your handsome body, love. You are anything but disgusting! You're my handsome attractive boyfriend and that's what you'll always be to me, even if you hate how you look ill help you show that you're beautiful! And hey, we can always start saving up for surgery to get them removed if you really want. I’ll do anything to make you happy and I want you to know that but for now, we just need to get that binder off of you. “ He told you. You started to tear up as he started taking it off of you and finally broke down as he also put that down with the discarded shirt. “ Thank you. I love you! “ You cried on her shoulder.

“ Shhhh it’s okay….how about I give you a nice massage to relieve some of the pain? “ Sal asked calming you down slightly. You sniffed a bit and then looked at him with tear stains down your face. “ Yeah, that would be nice….” You said as you lay down in the middle of the bed. Sal sat down beside you and rolled up his sleeves. He first put his hands on your shoulders, thankfully they were warm and he started messaging the notes out. It felt good and you gave a big sigh. He then moved to where your bruises and cuts are from the binder. His hands became softer on your skin and he was careful to relieve some of the pain not give you some more. You felt a wave of relief when the pain died down you didn't even notice when Sal stopped till he said something to you. “ I'm going to get some ointment to put on the bruises! “ He told you walking out of your bedroom.

You stare at the wall in front of you as you listen to his movement, him opening the bathroom door then him opening the cupboard and moving some things around till he found the ointment. You looked over at the door as Sal walked in medicine in hand. He sat back down beside you were still laying on your stomach. “ This is going to be cold on your skin. “ He said opening the medicine and putting some on his finger. He put some on a large bruise and yeah, he was right, it's fucking cold. You wince at the cold feeling on your skin but you soon get used to the feeling as Sal rubbed it in more.

Soon enough he was done and you were tired mentally and physically. You look at your wonderful boyfriend beside you scrolling on his phone. “ You think we can cuddle? “ You ask looking at him with i tired and pained face. “ He turned off his phone and looked at you with beautiful and caring eyes. “ Sure, love! Let me just take off my mask. “ He told you unclipping the clips under his hair. You didn't even really notice he still had it on but was happy he's still comfortable taking it off around you. After setting his mask down on the nightstand he layed his back on the backboard and moved his arms out waiting for you to come in his arms. You crawled over to Sal and went into his comforting arms. You both stayed there in the quiet only sounds of small movement and breathing in air. Soon enough your eyes started getting droopy and you started letting out cute yawns. You hear Sal chuckle and you say a quick shut up before your eyes closed for good and you fell fast asleep going into an amazing and magical dream.

Now you both were together and that wouldn't change ever even if either of you struggles with things or life throws things at you you'll always be there for each other, from now and forever.

----------------------------

Pictures

Sal Fisher- https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/496873771387590071/

----------------------------

Sorry if this was terrible! I honestly loved writing this but was having some trouble getting my ideas down on the computer so it might seem quite bad, but hopefully, this helps even a little and have a great day/afternoon/night and remember to stay hydrated!

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arrowflier · 4 years ago

Note

Lovely Arrow, a random plot bunny appeared and I just know you could do it justice: what if Franny has some friends over at Mickey and Ian's place when she's older and one of them is new to the group and wants to learn a little more about her uncles? And Franny starts waxing poetic about how they're made for each other and complement each other so well and both Ian and Mickey overhear and it makes them tear up a little. Just a thought 😋🥰

Evie, thank you! I've decided that Franny's friends love her uncles almost as much as she does, so that's kind of where this went.

---

“Why are we here again?” Tiffany asks as they crowd onto the stoop of the little southside worker’s cottage. Franny doesn’t bother to answer as she knocks on the door, but one of the other girls takes pity.

“It’s her Uncle’s house,” Susan says. “Jesus, Tiff, pay attention.”

Well, not too much pity. There was a reason she’d never been invited before, after all.

“Yikes, Suze,” Tiffany mutters with a frown. “I just meant why weren’t we at her actual house.”

“Because my actual house is loud as shit,” Franny finally chimes in, not even looking back. “My mom gets lonely so we live with like three other families, it’s a nightmare for schoolwork.”

“You’d have known that if you paid any attention,” Susan adds, and they all ignore Tiffany’s pout.

It doesn’t last long anyway, because the door creaks open not a moment later.

“Hey Fran,” Ian says from the other side. His hair is longer than usual right now, and looks windswept—or like someone had been carding hands through it all morning. His shirt was tight-fitting and a little too short, like it didn’t belong to him, and the socks on his feet didn’t match.

“Hey Uncle Ian,” Franny greets, then gestures to her friends. “It still cool if we take over the living room for a bit? This group paper is a beast.”

“Of course,” Ian agrees with a wide smile. “Anything to help my favorite niece.” He opens the door wider to let them in.

“Nice to see you all again,” he says as they start to file inside. “John, Rachel,” he greets them individually. “Susan, that new haircut is fantastic, I told you it would be.”

“Thanks, Mr. Gallagher,” Susan says with a grin, tucking a loose curl behind her ear.

Ian grimaces at her, playfully.

"Ian, please," he begs. "I've never met a Mr. Gallagher I didn't want to punch."

Susan giggles, and moves inside.

“I don’t think I’ve met you,” Ian says with a thoughtful frown when it's Tiffany's turn, and Franny jumps in with an introduction.

“Uncle Ian, this is Tiff,” she says. “She got put with us for the project.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ian says, and holds out a hand.

Tiffany takes it, and when Ian lets go, her hand just hovers there.

“Make yourselves at home,” Ian says as he closes the door behind them. “I’ll be in the other room if you need anything, but—

“Try not to need anything,” they all chorus, with the exception of Tiffany.

“Good kids,” Ian laughs, and then he’s gone, disappearing through the archway that leads through to the rest of the house.

They settle quickly. John and Rachel take the love seat, as they’re always wont to do, sitting just a little too close. Rachel giggles as their knees brush, and Franny rolls her eyes at John’s blush.

She takes her own usual spot next to Susan on the floor, notebooks spread out across the ottoman, and startles when Tiffany suddenly appears on her other side.

“Dude,” Tiffany hisses, poking Franny in the shoulder. “Your uncle is so hot.”

Franny frowns, staring down at the wrinkle Tiffany left on her sleeve.

“Yeah,” she says idly as she smooths it. “So I’ve heard.”

“I mean I mean I always thought red hair looked weird--no offence," she tacks on hastily, "but it really works for him."

Franny focuses on arranging her things to avoid smacking Tiffany in the face.

"Does he have a girlfriend?” Tiffany asks, biting her lip. She toys with the ends of her over-crimped hair, bright nail polish flashing between blonde strands.

“No,” Franny answers, and doesn’t give Tiffany any time to think about that before adding, “he has a husband.”

Tiffany pouts, shimmery pink lips sticking out comically. Franny exchanges a look with Susan, who mimics the expression in a way that has Franny trying to swallow her laughter.

“So not fair,” Tiffany whines beside them, crossing her arms. “Why are all the cute ones taken?”

“Hey!” John protests from across the room, but they all ignore him except for Rachel, who hits him with her three-ring binder.

“Mickey would probably kill you for looking at him,” Susan chimes in, “so you should probably keep your eyes to yourself anyway.”

“Yeah,” Rachel agrees, even as she rubs John’s arm in apology. “He’s been to jail, you know.”

“Ew,” Tiffany says, wrinkling her nose. “There’s no way he deserves someone like Ian, then.”

Franny grips her pencil too tightly. Susan sends her a warning look, but she ignores it.

“Actually,” she says casually, hiding her irritation, “they’re perfect for each other.”

Tiffany‘s brow wrinkles.

“No way,” she disagrees. “You Uncle seems so sweet, he deserves someone nice at least.”

Franny’s pencil snaps.

“Shit, she’s done it now,” John mutters.

“Uncle Mickey is nice,” Franny grits out between clenched teeth. “He’s a hell of a lot nicer than you, actually.”

“Franny—” Rachel tries to interrupt, but Susan cuts in over her.

“She’s not wrong,” Susan says. “You’re in the man’s home, Tiff, have a little tact.”

“Besides,” John speaks up, “Mickey is great. He helped me with my math homework last week.”

“Come on!” Tiffany cries. “There’s no way some ex-con should be married to that hunk out there.”

“Ian’s an ex-con too, though,” Susan says. “Right, Fran?”

Franny smiles.

“That’s right,” she confirms gleefully. “They were in jail together, actually.”

Tiffany pales.

“No way,” she mumbles, but they aren’t done.

“Yeah, it’s the most romantic story!” Rachel all but squeals. “Mickey wasn’t even in the country, but he heard Ian needed him and he came right back!”

“They’d been together for like, years already,” John contributes. “High school sweethearts or something like that.”

Rachel latches onto him at that, and he flushes again.

“And they take such good care of each other,” Susan adds. “Last time I was here Ian wasn’t feeling too good, and Mickey made us all be quiet so he could sleep. Then I helped him make some soup, ‘cause he isn’t good at that stuff.”

Tiffany is biting her lip again, staring at them each in turn.

“But Ian seems so—”

“In love with his husband?” Franny cuts her off dryly. “Sounds right to me.”

The others all agree, but Franny isn’t done.

“My Uncles have the best relationship I’ve ever seen,” Franny continues, “and I was a little kid for most of it. So if you think they’re gonna care what some random kid their niece hangs out with thinks about their marriage…” she trails off.

Tiffany’s eyes are downcast.

“Didn’t mean anything by it,” she mutters, then looks up through her eyelashes. “Sorry.”

Silence, broken by Franny’s tired sigh.

“It’s okay, I guess,” she says. Then she hands Tiffany her notebook. “Here, you can write the introduction.”

——-

Behind a half-closed door down the hall, Mickey stands quietly, eyes wide. He startles when the door creaks open an extra inch, Ian slipping inside.

Ian’s eyes are soft when they fall on his face, and Mickey blinks hurriedly to hide the wetness in his own.

“You heard all that, I take it?” Ian whispers, and Mickey nods.

“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “Kind of hard not to, those kids are fucking banshees.”

Ian laughs, soft and quiet.

“Banshees that love you,” he says, stepping closer. “As they should,” he adds when Mickey lets him wrap strong arms around him.

“Sounds like one of ‘em loves you more,” Mickey mumbles into Ian’s chest, and it shakes as Ian huffs.

“She’ll learn,” he says, holding Mickey tighter. “They all do eventually.”

“That I’m the better husband?” Mickey jokes, even as he rubs his face into the fabric of his own shirt over Ian’s broad chest.

“That we’re best together,” Ian corrects, and Mickey smiles.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, pressing a kiss to Ian’s sternum.

“Yeah, we really are.”

#hope this counts!#I couldn't let go of the idea that teenage girls everywhere would find their story ridiculously romantic #and defend it to the death lol #daily speedwrite #gallavich #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich #franny gallagher #fanfic

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writingquestionsanswered · 4 years ago

Note

Hello, a bit of a different ask but I'm struggling with my organisation. I have lots of scenes/one-shot/prompt ideas hanging around everywhere (notebooks, phone, pc). Do you have any tips or organisation methods? I know people use Scrivener, but I can't pay for the subscription. I've tried Notion, but I heard it isn't private? It doesn't even have to be a digital program, honestly. I'm at a loss, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Organizing Story Ideas

Here are my tips for how to organize ideas for different stories...

Choose Your Storage Method

There are lots of different ways you can store ideas, but it may take trying a few before you find one that really works for you. Ultimately, you're looking for something that will let you place the ideas into different categories and potentially sub-categories. Here are some suggestions:

Writing Programs/Apps - There are several beloved writing programs and apps that offer the ability to categorize ideas. Scrivener is certainly one of them, and for the record, it's not subscription-based. As of 8/21 it's a one-time fee of $49. Minor updates are free, but very occasionally there will be a major update that requires a small upgrade fee. Pros: It's easy to type ideas and move things around. Cons: You could lose your ideas if you don't back them up.

Computer File Folders - This is the main method I personally use. In my writing folder on my laptop, I have a folder labeled "plot bunnies" that contains sub-folders for different kinds of ideas. Here's what it looks like:

I don't have sub-folders for sub-categories, but you certainly could if you wanted to. I put each idea into its own notepad file, then save it into the appropriate folder. Pros: It's easy and super organized. I know exactly where to find a certain idea when I need it. Plus, it's easy to add new ideas when I have them. Also, when I'm struggling with an WIP, it's easy to look through other ideas to see if I can incorporate them into the WIP. Cons: You could lose all your ideas if something happens to your laptop, so it's a good idea to have them backed up and make sure you update back ups often.

Notebooks - This is the method I used to use, and TBH it would be a good back up for either of the above methods. I also keep a notebook by my bed for writing down dreams and middle-of-the-night ideas, and I try to transfer them into the appropriate plot bunnies folder every now and then. Look for a multi-subject notebook. If you need sub-categories, you can buy stick-on file tabs to sub-divide. With this method, it's best to let every idea have its own page or half-page. You might also look for one that has built-in pockets where you can quickly store ideas written on post-its, scrap paper, etc. Just make sure to transfer them to their own sections eventually! Pros: Notebooks are inexpensive, easy to store, and easy to grab when you're writing. Cons: If you lose it, you lose your ideas, so this method warrants a back-up method as well.

Three-Ring Binder - This is a variation on the notebook method but one that works especially well if you need a lot of categories and sub-categories. Not only can you use tabbed dividers to create sections, you can use stick-on tabs to create sub-categories as needed. You can also add folders and pockets, or anything else you need. Pros: Binders are relatively inexpensive and come in a variety of sizes. You can fill them with whatever kind of paper works best for noting your ideas. Cons: They're more expensive than notebooks, not as easy to store, and generally work best if you have a lot of empty space on a table or desk so you can work in them. Once again, a backup method is recommended.

Index Cards/Organizer - This method would be especially good if you have a ton of ideas, need a ton of categories, and need lots of sub-categories. Ideally, each idea would go on its own card. Pros: there are a variety of index card storage methods available. You can color code different categories. You can use tabbed index card dividers for categories or make your own using stick-on tabs. Cons: Ideas take longer to find in categories with lots of cards. You need to purchase cards and container. Also need a backup method.

Kanban Board/Binder - Kanban boards are dry erase boards (or bulletin boards) that are divided into sections, each one being its own category. Tasks (or in this case, ideas) are written down on an index card or post-it note, and stuck to (or tacked to) the board in its proper category. You can also use punched, laminated cardstock to create a Kanban Binder. Here's the one I use for writing tasks. I did mine using an old Happy Planner using old Happy Planner covers (since they're already laminated,) but you could also use a three-ring binder.

Looking at the image in the bottom right, each category consists of two laminated pages facing each other. So, this could be "novel ideas" and the columns (sub-categories) are genres like mystery, romance, fantasy, etc. Or, the category could be "fantasy" and the columns could be poems, short stories, novellas, and novels. Whatever works for you! You can Google Kanban boards to see what the board version looks like. Pros: Quick reference, easy to add ideas and remove them when they've been done. Also, it's a versatile/flexible method. Cons: You may need to buy a board or binder and post-it notes/index cards. Also needs a backup method.

Figure Out Your Categories/Sub-Categories

Once you have your method chosen and set up, you'll need to think about how you want to categorize everything and what categories/sub-categories you need. You may even want to do this before you settle on a method. Genres and sub-genres would be one method, writing formats (poetry, fan-fiction, short story, etc.) is another option. You might even choose to categorize by publishing method/intention or how much you like the ideas.

Gather, Sort, and Re-Home

Now it's time to grab your phone, notebooks, and laptop/desktop, gather up all those disparate ideas, sort them into their categories and sub-categories, and put them into their new home!

Choose a Backup Method

Whether you designate a thumb drive and back up your laptop plot bunny folder every week, buy a spiral notebook to jot down new ideas before they go into the primary storage, or take occasional photos of your Kanban board/binder, you definitely want to make sure you have your backup method chosen and use it often. That way, if something happens to the main method, you don't lose all those ideas.

Keep an eye on the comments in case there are more ideas!

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sqoiler · 5 years ago

Text

On the Thursday of the last week of kindergarten, the DVD that Miss Martinez was going to play turns out to be scratched beyond recognition, and so she gets out construction paper, scissors, markers, and glitter glue.

“Father’s Day isn’t for a few more weeks,” she says. “But why don’t we make some cards, just like we did for Mother’s Day, okay?”

The kids all get to work, reaching for the pile of brightly-colored paper. Stephanie Brown, who will be turning six in August, is the last one to get up. She shifts through the leftover colors--black, a pukey shade of green, blue, white. She picks up the black one and takes it back to her desk. She does not want to make a stupid card for her stupid dad. The other kids at her table are enthusiastically chattering about their dads’ favorite colors and jobs and drawing crayon drawings onto the paper. The girl next to her is cutting a snowflake out with safety scissors.

Steph picks up a white crayon and stares at her blank card. Across the room, Dexter raises his hand.

“What if we don’t have a dad?” he asks. Steph remembers from Mother’s Day that Dexter has two moms.

“Make a card for someone else,” Miss Martinez suggests. “Your grandfather, maybe. Or a neighbor, or a hero.”

A hero?

Steph looks at the black card before her, and her white crayon. She smiles.

And she makes a Father’s Day card for Batman.

-----

On the Monday of the last week of first grade, Mrs. Arnold, the art teacher, sits down her class and passes out white paper.

“Father’s Day cards,” she explains. Stephanie Brown, seven in August, considers making her own father a card. She didn’t get him anything last year but he didn’t seem to notice, and she’s not really that mad at him this year. But he didn’t seem to notice, and when Steph thinks about it, she thinks Robin probably doesn’t make Batman a card. Steph could make another card for her own dad at home, and make one for Batman at school.

Mind made up, she reaches for black markers and gets to work.

-----

On the Tuesday of the last week of second grade, Stephanie Brown, almost eight years old, sits down in art class and carefully draws a black blob with pointy ears, and a red and green and yellow stick figure, next to it, and she tries to remember what Nightwing looks like, and when she can’t remember she just draws Robin again but bigger.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, she writes in red marker, and she closes the card.

------

On the Wednesday of the last week of third grade, Mrs. Arnold passes out watercolors in art class with pieces of thick paper, and tells them to make presents for their dads. Stephanie Brown, nearly nine, hasn’t seen her dad in almost four months, and she uses up almost all the black water colors at her table painting a picture of Batman.

------

On the last week of fourth grade, nobody sits down their class to have them make Father’s Day cards.

On the Thursday before Father’s Day, Crystal passes Stephanie Brown, age almost-ten, a card bought from the store and tells her that they’ll mail it to Blackgate the next morning. Happy Father’s Day, the card says. You’re the best dad ever! the card says.

Steph stares at it for a long time.

Then she tears out a piece of notebook paper and folds it in half, taking the rainbow gel pens she got in December and picking up the pink one. She squints at it and sees that it’s nearly run out, so she picks up the purple one instead.

When she’s done drawing Batman and Batgirl and Robin and Nightwing, she decides she likes purple, and she folds the notebook paper inside the card her mother gave her, and she doesn’t mail anything to Blackgate the next day.

-----

On the last day of fifth grade, Mr. Robinson turns on The Great Mouse Detective and sets out a stack of colored paper and scissors. He tells the class they can do whatever they want during the movie and even sets up chips and cookies, then he sits in the back of the classroom and maybe falls asleep. Stephanie Brown, ten-going-on-eleven, wants something to do with her hands, so she takes a black piece of paper and cuts out a batsymbol. She learned how to draw them by sticking her head out her window at night and looking at the sky, and she’s proud of her newfound skill. When she’s done cutting it out, she’s not really sure what to do besides maybe tape it to her shirt, but her dad’s been out for a week now and she thinks he’d be mad if he saw that.

Instead, she folds it in half and writes HAPPY FATHERS DAY across the middle using white-out. Skye, the girl who sits next to her, leans over and asks what she’s doing, and Steph pauses. She’s...she’s not really sure why she keeps making these. To prove a point, maybe. She’s not really sure what point, though.

“Do you think Batman ever gets cards?” she asks in a whisper.

“Yes,” Skye says. “Probably every day.”

“Oh,” Steph says. “Well, I probably won’t send it then.”

“Okay,” Skye says, and then she downs half of her dixie cup of orange juice and turns back to the movie. Steph puts purple glitter glue on her batsymbol.

------

On the first week of April, Stephanie Brown, age seventeen, pulls a plastic bin out from under her desk. There’s a cardboard box beside her, and two other cardboard boxes on her empty mattress, full and taped shut. There’s a full duffel bag of clothes next to her, and her posters from her walls have been taken down and rolled up. All she has to do is finish going through her desk, and then she’s done. The rest of her things will be sold or something, she’s not sure.

She pries off the lid of the bin before her and takes out old school binders and ragged notebooks, paper folders falling apart and ancient art projects. She lifts out a collage she probably made in seventh grade and tries to decipher the meaning behind it. There is a cutout of red heels from Kohls on top of a blue betta fish.

Steph decides it will go in the trash pile and sets it aside, lifting out a yellow plastic folder. She opens it, curious, and lifts out a black paper batsymbol. She gasps when she opens it.

Her Father’s Day cards!

Of course, she had never sent them, so she has all--she counts quickly--six of them. She looks them over, laughing at her kindergarten misspellings and looking at the evolution of her drawing ability fondly. This is--she totally forgot about this. Steph closes the folder reverently and puts it on top of her duffel bag. There’s no way she can get rid of this--especially with the purple cape still in the hidden part of her closet. Especially not with where she’s packing up to move to.

----

On the third Sunday in June, Stephanie Brown, age eighteen-in-August, takes up her yellow plastic folder from where she hid it under her new mattress, and she leaves her room, tucking it under her arm. She gets like four steps down the hall before another door opens, and already an accusing voice says, “What’s that?”

Steph whirls around.

“None of your business,” she says. Tim makes a face at her and she makes the same one back, because she is very mature. To prove her maturity, she slides down the banister on her way to the kitchen.

Dick and Cass are in there, doing the dishes. Steph watches them for a second and then says, “Why do you have dishes at this hour?” ‘This hour’, upon checking, turns out to be almost noon, but nobody wakes up early in this house.

“Breakfast for Alfred,” Cass says.

“You can do that?” Steph asks, thinking that Alfred would get offended if someone tried to cook for him.

“You can today,” Dick says, shrugging, and Steph frowns, realizes that they ganged together to make breakfast on Father’s Day for Alfred and didn’t invite her.

It was probably an accident, she reasons, but then she remembers Tim and turns to face him.

“Why didn’t you make breakfast for Alfred?”

“I was sleeping,” he says.

“He’s impossible to wake up so we called it a lost cause,” Dick says. “We have extra pancakes, though, help yourself.”

Steph is still a little affronted, but she knows that she’s the newest person in the house and she’s only staying here until her mom’s done with rehab and whatever, so they probably didn’t think she’d want to be included, even though Alfred is everyone’s grandpa, even Babs’s. She goes to pick up a pair of pancakes and bites into one, deciding syrup can wait, and she leaves before they can rope her into conversation. Besides, she’s a little scared they’ll start referring to whatever plans they have with Bruce, and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to react.

She heads to Bruce’s study and pushes open the door, glad to find him in there. She thinks if she had to search for him she’d probably lose her nerve and chicken out. Bruce glances up for like half a second and then looks back at the computer, and she takes a deep breath and steps inside fully.

Now or never, she thinks, and so she marches right up to him and slams the yellow folder on the desk.

“What’s this?” Bruce says, and Steph isn’t really sure how to explain, so she says, “It’s, uh, I found it when I was packing my stuff, and it’s...it’s from a while ago, but I thought you might, um…”

She trails off as he picks up the folder and opens it, raising an eyebrow at the contents from inside. She kinda wants to look at his face, but also totally doesn’t want to do that, so instead she looks at the desk, and opens her dumb mouth back up. “They always used to have us do Father’s Day cards at school or whatever and I never wanted to make one for Arthur so I made those instead ‘cause...well I don’t really remember why but whatever I thought you might want to see them.”

“Stephanie,” Bruce says, and she shuts up and bites her lip, looking up at him. “You...made these?”

“Yeah,” she says. He looks back down at the cards in his hands, all spread out--even the one that was intended for Arthur that Steph never sent. He touches the one from kindergarten. “Um. You can keep them.”

Bruce stands up. Steph isn’t really sure at all what he’s thinking, but he steps away from his chair and wraps his arms around her, holds her tight.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“Happy Father’s Day,” she says, and when he squeezes her she closes her eyes, exhales, and squeezes him back.

(based on this post x) (ao3 here x)

#(posts fathers day fic in december)#stephanie brown #bruce wayne #brotp: slap #my writing #long post

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starshine583 · 4 years ago

Text

New Girl on the Block (23)

(Welp, y’all, this is it. This is the last, pre-written chapter that I have written. From here on out we’re gonna have to rely strictly on my writing consistency and... I’m so sorry for that lol Because CLEARLY, if we’re on the last pre-written chapter, after having posted, like, three over the last month, we know that this isn’t gonna be good. BUT! I do have THIS chapter to give you! So please enjoy! And don’t forget to check out the mini series connected to this called Journal Entries!)

Ch.1 / Ch.22 / Ch.24 (ao3)

Chapter 23: How the Cards Fall

Marinette stared in horror at her former classmates, violently kicking herself for being so reckless. How could she forget that this was one of Alya and Nino’s favorite food carts too? She used to eat there with them all the time! She should have known better than to pick this place! Actually, she shouldn’t have picked anywhere to eat at all! Going to a place she used to enjoy meant going to a place where she used to hang out with her old friends, which meant eventually running into them, which meant- well - this! Oh, how could she be so stupid?

Maybe it won’t be so bad, she reasoned with herself before she could start hyperventilating. Maybe they’ll just roll their eyes and leave instead of making a scene.

But Alya was never one to back down from a (accidental) challenge. As soon as she realized her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, a scowl etched itself onto her lips, and she started stomping in Marinette’s direction.

“It is you!” The red-head scoffed. “Oh, when I get my hands on you-”

Marinette flinched back, officially throwing breathing out the window. She looked at her current classmates and wondered what they would do if she ran, what they would think. Would they follow her or would they stay and talk with Alya? What if they started asking questions that Marinette couldn’t answer? What if Alya answered the questions before she could? Would they believe her? Was she going to have to find a new school again? What if Lila’s lies followed her there too? What if she never escaped Lila’s claims?

Suddenly, not breathing turned into breathing too fast, but before she could spiral further than gasping, a shadow passed over her.

It was Allan and Claude, coming to stand in front of her as a defense.

“Hey, woah!” Claude said, holding up his hands in a calming gesture. “Why don’t you back off a bit and tell us what’s got you so upset?”

A hand touched her shoulder lightly, and Marinette’s gaze snapped to Felix, who was now standing next to her. He met her eyes with a subtle raise of the eyebrows, and she knew what it meant.

“Are you alright?”

Marinette drew in a deep breath to steady herself and nodded, even though her insides felt like they were turning outwards at this point. Felix must have seen through her fib because his hand stayed on her shoulder as he looked back at Alya. His eyebrows were furrowed, which could be from his concern, but Marinette also knew curiosity when she saw it. He wants to know who these people are, and why they’re angry with her. And after everything she’s told him about her old school, he might be able to figure it out.

Alya briefly paused at the boys’ blockade, before raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms.

“So is this who you’re hiding behind now?” She asked, unimpressed. “Are these the new people you’ve managed to dupe?”

Marinette tensed, and Felix’s grip tightened on her shoulder. Whether that was a sign of support or his disgruntlement, she wasn’t sure.

“Are we supposed to know what that means?” Allegra, who had also come to stand next to Marinette, drawled.

“No.” Alya said. “Not yet, anyway. This one likes to wait until you’re in pretty deep before springing her trap.”

Marinette bit her lip, indignation rising in her chest. She didn’t deserve this. She hasn’t done anything wrong!

“Alya, that’s enough-” She tried to say, but Alya cut her off.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” The red-head snapped. “You don’t get to have a say anymore, not unless you’re willing to admit what you’ve done, what you really are.”

“Alya, come on.” Nino, who finally decided to join the conversation, coaxed. “L-Let’s just go. It’s not worth fighting over.”

Marinette might have been grateful had he not backed down right after when Alya shot him a glare.

“I’m going to assume you guys are her new classmates and friends.” Alya continued. “So let me tell you, as a former classmate and best friend, that this girl,” she pointed her finger accusingly at Marinette, “is a fraud.”

“That’s not true!” Marinette couldn’t help shouting.

Alya ignored her. “She makes herself look sweet and innocent by making you croissants or cookies and bringing you handmade gifts, but it’s all an act. All she really wants is the attention that the gifts bring, and when she doesn’t get it, she goes ballistic. I used to think she was the best thing in the world until a foreign exchange student came along and became more popular. Then she started stealing that person’s homework and ripping it up, or throwing her textbooks in the trash, or even tripping her down flights of stairs. One time we even caught her stealing personal items!”

“I didn’t do any of that!” Marinette insisted, more so to her friends than to Alya. “I told you she framed me!”

Alya scoffed. “You can’t even deny it anymore! Lila has all of the rude texts you’ve sent her, there were multiple witnesses to the tattered homework that was on your desk- myself included -and we all saw her take her family heirloom out of your locker.”

“That wasn’t a family heirloom! She literally bought that in a store two months before and then put it in my locker to frame me!”

Alya rolled her eyes and turned back to Claude and Allan. “Obviously, she’s going to make up whatever excuse she can to keep you from listening to me, but I advise you to dump her now while you can. She’ll make your life a living nightmare if she thinks you’re better than her somehow, though at this point,” Alya shot Marinette another scalding glare, “we all are.”

Tears burned in the corner of Marinette’s eyes, but before she could further argue her innocence, Claude spoke up.

“Ok, so what proof do you have of this?”

It was something she’d expected Felix to ask, honestly, and it left her staring at the brunette in shock. He was.. asking questions. The right questions. He wasn’t taking Alya’s words as gospel the way everyone else at Dupont had done with Lila’s words.

Alya frowned. “I already told you-”

“No, I don’t care about what you’ve said.” Claude interrupted. “You’re a stranger I just met, and Marinette is a good friend that I’ve known for a wonderful month and a half. I’m going to need more than your word.”

Alya narrowed her eyes at him, debating.

“Alright, fine. I’ll bring Lila here as a first hand account. She has the texts saved on her phone. As for the homework and such, those have already been replaced and done away with, but I do have the class president binder where several important forms are missing from Marinette burning them instead of giving them to Lila after leaving.”

Marinette had to bite her tongue to avoid laughing despite herself. Lila said that she burned some of the class papers? What would make her lie about something like that? Was it to get out of the work? Oh, boy, was that going to come back to bite her. She probably had to resign all of the ‘missing’ paperwork! Oh, this is the greatest thing Marinette’s ever heard. Hopefully, she said she lost a lot.

“Do you have the burnt papers?” Allan asked.

“No, of course not-”

“So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Allegra said, her voice edging on annoyance, “we’re supposed to believe the account of a foreign exchange student, who we also don’t know, and who, apparently, brought out the worst in Marinette by herself even though no one had ever done so before, and the only actual proof you have, other than that girl’s word, is a series of texts that can easily be altered and a binder with some missing pages that ‘Lila’ could have misplaced or even burned herself. Is that correct?”

Alya scoffed. “You’re making it sound ridiculous.”

“No, I’m repeating what you’ve said to us, which is ridiculous.”

“She’s done other things too!” Alya insisted. “Just the other day she met up with one of my other friends and tried to persuade them into her clutches again, even though she had already transferred schools. Look-”

Alya pulled out her phone, and for once, Marinette looked on with interest as well. Lila making up a lie like that meant someone had to be going against her now, right? So who was it? Did someone mention Marinette’s name in an argument, and now Lila’s latching onto that as an advantage?

After a minute of searching, Alya flipped her phone around for them to see her screen, and the picture displayed on it made Marinette’s stomach drop.

“Woah, is that Adrien Agreste?”

The group, aside from Felix, leaned forward to see the picture better, but Marinette found herself leaning back, the blood draining from her features. That was a picture of her and Adrien at the café last Friday, but- but how did- when could they have possibly-

“Where did you get that?” She blurted out before she could stop herself.

Alya fixed her with a smug grin. “Look familiar? Lila took this while you and Adrien were having lunch last week. I’d been wondering why he was asking her so many questions about her stories, but now it all makes sense. You’ve been secretly coaxing him to your side again, and poor Adrien couldn’t resist. Even when I called him about the picture, he said he just wanted to be your friend again. I guess he always did see the best in everyone, though.”

Marinette felt sick to her stomach. How long was Lila with them in that café and Marinette didn’t even know it? How much did she overhear as Marinette blabbered on and on to Adrien about her current life? Did she know about Marinette attending Rosemary? Did she tell Alya about her attending Rosemary? How many people did she send that picture to?

She clutched for Felix’s hand on her shoulder, suddenly not trusting herself to stand, and he quickly put his other hand on top of hers. The comfort of his touch was appreciated, but not enough.

A burst of laughter cut into Marinette’s panic, and she turned to Claude who was all but rolling on the grass. He clutched his sides as he howled and even went as far as to wipe tears from his eyes.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute..” the brunette wheezed. “So you’re telling me, that Adrien Agreste, the fashion icon and heart throb of Paris, was in your class, but Marinette only started acting out after the foreign exchange student showed up? No offense to you, Mari, but I’m pretty sure a rich, young model would have been way more popular. How come she didn’t sabotage him?”

Alya faltered for a moment, not quite expecting the question and certainly not the laughter. “W-Well- I mean- she did have a major crush on him. Maybe she didn’t care that he was more popular than her because she liked him so much.”

Marinette felt her cheeks heat up out of embarrassment, but thankfully, no one touched on that subject. Instead, Allegra hummed and said, “Okay, fine. Assuming that’s true, what made Lila so popular?”

“Plenty of things.” Alya stated matter-of-factly. “She’s helped Prince Ali organize several charities, made petitions to save endangered animal preserves, is best friends with Ladybug-”

Marinette didn’t resist her eye roll.

“-and even saved Jagged stone’s kitten!”

Marinette glanced at Claude, who immediately deadpanned a “what”. She knew that if anyone was going to pick up the last line, it would be him.

“Jagged Stone never owned a kitten.” Claude said. “He’s allergic.”

“It was before he knew he was allergic.”

“He’s still never owned a kitten!” Claude exclaimed with a flail of his arms. “He’s only ever owned a crocodile! That’s been said in multiple interviews!”

“But-”

“And if we want to bring up charities, Prince Ali doesn’t organize any charities. He only donates to them.” Allegra pointed out.

“I-”

“And petitions to protect endangered animal preserves?” Allan echoed. “Those don’t need protection. They are set in stone by law.”

“I’m sure-”

“Look, you’ve clearly been given false information.” Claude said, crossing his arms, “and because you were dumb enough to believe the real attention-seeker, you’ve lost an amazing friend. Now I suggest you leave us alone before I report you to the authorities for harassment.”

Alya’s face twisted with rage. “Harrass- you know what? Whatever. I’ve done my part. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when she starts ruining your life out of jealousy.”

Marinette caught a glimpse of Claude clenching his fists, and Allan put a hand on the brunette’s shoulder to steady him.

“We won’t. Have a nice day.”

Alya huffed and stormed off, dragging Nino with her. He glanced over his shoulder to give Marinette an apologetic look, but she didn’t meet his gaze. Instead she crossed her arms over her chest and blew out a sigh. That.. could have gone worse.. she supposed.

“Marinette.”

Marinette’s fingers dug into her skin, and she hesitantly looked up at Felix. His hand had loosened on her shoulder, and he was staring at her with an unreadable expression. What was he thinking right now? Was he angry? Disappointed? Confused about why she didn’t tell him about her lunch date with Adrien? She wished he would give her a clue of some kind.

“Are you alright?” He asked softly. “You’re shaking.”

Marinette blinked, pulling her hands away from her body. She was shaking? How did she not notice?

“Oh, and you look so pale!” Allegra cried, wrapping her arms around Marinette’s shoulders. “Should we take you home?”

Marinette grabbed Allegra’s arm and forced a small smile as she shook her head. “No, no, I’m.. I..”

She wanted to say that she was fine, that they could continue having lunch as usual, but a lump in her throat made it hard to get the words out. Next thing she knew, tears were spilling down her cheeks, and she was putting her hand over her mouth to choke down a sob.

All this time.. All this time she’d been keeping her past a secret from them, scared that they might take Lila’s side like everyone else, yet here they were, holding her close and offering her hushed condolences. They were giving her the very support she’d been afraid of losing, and now she was ashamed that she’d ever been afraid at all.

“I’m so sorry!” She nearly sobbed.

Allegra pulled her closer. “No, don’t say that! There’s nothing you need to be apologizing for!”

Claude and Allan rushed to wrap their arms around her as well, and Felix slid his hand down to rub her back. This, of course, only made her cry harder, because they were being so gentle with her, so kind. How could she have ever doubted them?

“Why don’t we go back to the house?” Claude suggested gently. “Mom and Dad won’t be back yet so we can give you a minute to recover.”

“And Felix makes the best honeysuckle tea.” Allegra adds. “It’ll cure any pain those idiots caused.”

Marinette sniffed and gave a little nod. People were starting to stare at them anyway, and at this point, she’d lost her appetite.

“Thank you.”

“Of course, whatever you need.” Allegra said as she led Marinette back to the car.

Marinette took the handkerchief Felix offered her and dried some of her tears, then gave him a small, grateful smile. He hadn’t spoken much during the altercation, but the way he quietly hovered around her and held her hand when she needed it said enough, especially since she knew he didn’t appreciate being touched.

It’s funny. Whenever she used to think about them finding out about Lila- because, surely, it would have to happen eventually -she always assumed she would feel anxious or paranoid afterwards. “What if they didn’t believe her? What if they constantly doubted her actions now? What if she constantly doubted their actions? Would they ever be able to trust each other fully again?” But as she got into the limo and sat down, and everyone crowded around her to show their love and support over the awful things Lila had said, all Marinette felt was safe.

~~~~~~

Felix leaned his back against the peppered countertop and crossed his arms, his finger tapping against his bicep with impatience. The iron tea kettle sat on the stove next to him, slowly heating and steeping the honeysuckle tea that he’d been requested to make. Usually, it took no time at all for the kettle to whistle, but today, it felt like he’d been standing there for an eternity.

He glanced at the digital clock on the microwave to see how long he’d been waiting, and the numbers 12:45 blinked across it.

12:45pm.. That meant he’d been in the kitchen for about..

Two minutes.

Felix sighed and ran a hand through his hair, his gaze sliding to the kitchen doorway. Marinette was sitting in the living room with the others just outside of it, with her and Allegra on one three-cushioned-couch, and Claude and Allan on the other one across from them. She seemed to be having a decent time, chatting and laughing with everyone, but that didn’t ease Felix’s mind any, not after what he saw in the park.

He’ll admit to being curious when the fight first started. Rosemary is known for its hair-pulling, arm-biting brawls, but they’re also known to remain dignified despite them. For example, the brawls are almost always private, which is why, when someone called out to Marinette in such a harsh and open manner, Felix couldn’t help being intrigued.

When he saw how Marinette reacted, however, his stance on the situation dramatically changed.

In the month and a half that he’s known her, Marinette has faced down high-class celebrities, an overwhelming amount of clothing requests from Claude, and an actual akuma, and not once has Felix seen her so much as flinch. Not until today, that is, when that red-head somehow shook her to her core. Just the sight of her sent Marinette into hysterics, crying, shaking, her face becoming white as a sheet- he’s quite certain she almost hyperventilated at some point too. This strong girl that he’d grown to admire, that he was starting to believe could face anything unscathed, had crumbled to pieces in mere seconds, and it honestly frightened him. He wasn’t sure what to do or how to help. So he simply grabbed her shoulder, hoping she would understand what he was trying to say- that he was there for her, and was she alright?

She understood him, thankfully, and her shoulders started to loosen a bit under his gaze.

But then that red-head started talking.

She spat out the most ridiculous accusations Felix had ever heard, accusations stating that Marinette was a liar and a fake, that she only ever did things for attention. Even if the part about wanting attention was true- which it wasn’t -why would it matter? She does incredible things simply because people ask her to. Why shouldn’t she get any attention for it?

As annoying as the last claim was, though, it wasn’t nearly as infuriating as the rest of the things that girl said. She told them she was Marinette’s former best friend, yet she cast the ravenette aside at the drop of a hat simply because an exchange student with a rusted silver tongue told her to do so. Honestly, who would be dumb enough to believe that some foreign student was best friends with one of the Parisian superheroes? Or that a highschooler actually got to organize charity events? The most she would be able to do at her age was greet people as they walked inside.

Felix wasn’t even going to think about the Jagged Stone claim, since Claude already made it quite clear that that was another lie, but really, who goes into a new school spreading the most impossibly grand lies they can? More importantly, how did those lies manage to stick? Was everyone at Dupont a complete moron?

No.. No, that wasn’t it. No one was that stupid, surely. They all probably wanted to believe Lila. That’s why they pounced on Marinette the way they did. They were looking for an excuse to go after her the entire time.

Felix clenched his fist and turned to the kettle again, watching the steam rise from the spout. It’s no wonder she became so worried when saw Adrien Agreste at Rosemary. After her crush on him and the lies, Felix wouldn’t want to see his former classmates either.

...Speaking of Agreste, what was that picture about? Felix doubted Marinette was trying to ‘persuade him to her side’ as that red-head had said, but her reaction to it was extremely strong nonetheless. Why were they in a café together? It sounded like she met up with him only last week, but she’d told Felix a couple weeks ago that she didn’t want to see him. Why would she put herself through that? And why did she grip his hand so hard when she saw the picture?

The shrill whistle of the tea kettle broke into his thoughts, and Felix jumped to move it off of the burner. Once it was set aside properly, he turned the stove off and began setting out the mugs to fill them. They weren’t as delicate or pristine as the tea sets his father owned, but they would do nicely for the time being. Besides, if Marinette had a one-of-a-kind glass teacup, she might fret about breaking it instead of enjoying the tea.

Felix filled the mugs and put them on a tray, along with some sugars, milk, and honey, then picked up the tray to bring it into the living room. A round of delighted cheers filled the room as he entered, and Claude eagerly bounced up from the couch to grab his mug. Felix moved the tray out of his reach, though, not wanting to offset the balance and spill everything.

“Sorry it took so long.” Felix said as he set the tray on the table. “The tea is fresh so I brought in ice cubes to cool it off if you want them. If not, make sure to blow on it before drinking or you’ll burn your tongue.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know the drill.” Claude remarked as he reached for his mug again.

Felix rolled his eyes. “That was for Marinette’s benefit, not yours.”

“I’m sure Mari knows how to drink hot tea.” Claude retorted.

“But I appreciate the advice anyway.” Marinette spoke up with a smile.

Felix glanced at her as he handed her a pink mug, trying not to look at the puffed up red spots under her eyes. Her tears had long since disappeared, but the remnants of them still remained, including the trails on her cheeks that the tears had run down.

“You’re going to love this, Marinette.” Allegra chirped, thankfully taking the girl’s focus. “This tea literally tastes like honey. I doubt you’ll even need any sugar!”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna.” Claude smirked, already shoveling a spoonful of sugar into his tea. “Unsweet tea was never my style.”

“I swear you are gonna die from diabetes one day.” Allan muttered while taking a sip of his tea.

“And it will totally be worth it.” Claude replied.

Marinette and the others laughed, which helped Felix relax a tad as he sat next to Allan. If Marinette was laughing again, maybe that meant she was feeling better.

The ravenette’s lips hovered over the mug for a solid minute as she blew on the pale, celadon liquid, and when she finally decided to take a drink, Felix found himself staring. Did she like it? Was it too strong? Should he go make something else for her?

“Oh, this is amazing!” Marinette gasped, her eyes lighting up.

Felix smiled, relieved. “I’m glad you think so. I like to add a few drops of honey and a sprinkle of sugar every now and then because it brings out the flavor, but that’s just a personal preference.”

“The tea is incredible already, but I’ll try your style anyway.” She said, reaching for the sugar. Claude pushed it towards her, while Allegra gave her the honey, and once Marinette dumped the extra ingredients into her mug, she took a spoon from a tray to stir them.

She took another sip of the tea, and this time, she sank into the couch with a contented sigh.

“Wow. That is so good, especially with how warm it is! I feel like I’ve just been wrapped up in the most comfortable blanket ever.”

The trio shared a laugh, and Marinette sat up with another giggle herself, but to Felix’s disappointment, the smiles didn’t last.

Marinette set her mug on her lap and let out a sigh, a bashful smile replacing her giddy one. She kept her gaze on her cup as she said, “So, I guess… I should explain myself?”

The group exchanged glances, and Allegra frowned.

“What’s there to explain?” Allan was the first to ask.

Marinette looked up. “Well- Y-You know.. The reasons why Alya was so angry with me. How everything happened at my old school.”

“Again, what’s there to explain?” Claude said. “It’s obvious what happened. This ‘Lila’ person spread rumors about you around the school, and for some reason, your classmates were dumb enough to believe it. End of story.”

For once, Felix agreed with him.

“.. Not quite.” Marinette admitted, causing Felix to furrow his eyebrows. How much more to the story could there possibly be? Don’t tell him it got worse.

“I’d like to tell my side of the story, if you guys don’t mind.”

Allegra offered her a reassuring smile. “Of course not, but you don’t have to tell us anything if you don’t want to.”

“Yeah.” Allan agreed. “Your word is all we need.”

A grateful smile caught the corners of Marinette’s lips. “Thank you, but I want to do this. I’ll feel a lot better once you guys know the full truth.”

“Then we’re all ears.” Felix said, sincerely.

Marinette’s smile widened slightly as she glanced at him, but her expression fell serious again when she began her story.

“It started almost two years ago. The September before last, a girl named Lila joined our school- er -my old school, Dupont. She came in telling all of these different stories about meeting celebrities and arranging charity events or music concerts and being ‘best friends’ with Ladybug.”

The sheer disgust in her voice when she mentioned being best friends with Ladybug made Felix smirk, but he let her continue.

“With stories as crazy as that, I couldn’t believe that my fr- uh.. That my classmates were actually believing her. In one day, she had them following her around like dogs and carrying her stuff because she claimed to have hurt her wrist in an accident. I forget which excuse she used, but it ticked me off to no end. So I tried to tell everyone that she was lying.”

“It.. didn’t end well, unfortunately. She turned into an akuma and went on a rampage, and after Ladybug and Chat Noir fixed everything, she only gained more sympathy from everybody. That’s when the stories about me started.”

“Every time I tried to expose her, she would make up some elaborate lie that made me the bad guy, and everyone swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. I tried to tell the teachers about what was happening, and some of them helped keep us separated during class time. But other than that, I was kind of just.. left to handle it by myself.”

Felix held back a scoff. Typical. Teachers never bothered entering student squabbles if they thought it wasn’t law-suit worthy.

“Of course, since the teachers weren’t doing anything, the lies only got worse, and soon, Lila started lying about me unprovoked. She would say I stole her things or ripped up her homework or tripped her down the stairs. I almost got expelled over it twice.”

“Wait, seriously?” Claude said before Felix could actually scoff. “So you told the teacher that this ‘Lila’ was spreading lies around the school, but they still tried to expel you over the things she said?”

Marinette nodded. “They would have to if she hadn’t come back and made up some lies about having been mistaken. I’m still not sure why she did that.”

Felix shook his head, absolutely incredulous to what he was hearing. It appeared the students weren’t the only morons in that school. How has it stayed funded for this long?

“Maybe it was a power play.” Allan muttered with a frown. “She sounds like the type of person who would do that.”

Marinette shrugged. “Yeah, I guess she is.”

“Didn’t anyone believe you?” Allegra asked.

A wince overcame the ravenette’s features, and Felix reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say about that question.

“Yes, someone did,” Marinette admitted, “but he wasn’t very helpful, to be honest. Actually, he tried to get me to stop going against Lila in case she got akumatized again. His reasoning was that her lies would eventually be found out on their own, but.. as you know.. They never were.”

Claude scoffed and put a hand to his chest, seeming to be offended by the very notion. “Are you for real? He just wanted you to let it go?”

“Did he even say anything while you were in the process of being expelled?” Allan asked.

Marinette’s face said plenty, but she answered aloud anyway. “No, not that I know of. He never liked getting in the middle of confrontations.”

Now it was Felix’s turn to scoff. He tipped his drink up to his lips, downing half the mug to avoid interrupting her story further. Felix scoffed, taking a sip of his tea to avoid interrupting her story further. Did no one want to stand up for Marinette? Did no one in that forsaken school have any sense of loyalty or gratitude? That dumb redhead at the park even admitted that Marinette had done numerous things for them as favors. How can they look at themselves in the mirror each morning when they treat people so horribly?

“So what happened after you almost got expelled?” Allegra prompted.

“Well, if you’re asking me what changed, then nothing, really.” Marinette replied. “Lila continued to lie, and I continued to take the fall for it, except now people were actually doing things to me. Before, they only talked about me behind my back or glared at me from the front, but after another one of Lila’s crying fits, they started ripping up my homework, stealing my things. I guess they thought they were playing the act of karma when they did it.”

“And I assume that guy who believed you stayed quiet the whole time?” Claude asked bitterly.

Marinette shrugged. “Basically. He tried to speak up on my behalf a few times, but he was always shut down too fast for it to matter.”

“Eventually, it got so bad that everyone started tripping me too, or running into me on purpose in the hallway. The last straw was when someone tripped down the front steps of the school, and I almost stumbled into a passing car. I was lucky I didn’t get hit.”

Felix’s grip tightened on his cup, and he thanked whatever was watching over her that day while simultaneously cursing the idiots she’d been forced to interact with. Did they even realize what they were doing? Or did they simply not care about almost murdering another classmate?

“Oh my gosh.” Allegra gasped, putting a hand to her mouth.

“That’s insane.” Allan said.

“Were they even sorry?!” Claude demanded, outraged. “Did they even look ashamed when you almost got hit?”

Marinette took another drink of her tea and shook her head. “No. My Maman tried to talk to the school about it, but since nothing actually happened besides me getting pushed, they could only offer her detention slips or suspension.”

She paused to look up at Felix, surprising him.

“That’s why I decided to transfer to Rosemary.” She said, and in that moment, it felt as though everything she had ever told him clicked into place. The reason the akuma attacks all seemed minor to her, why she never mentioned her old school, her becoming pale when Agreste first came around to Rosemary- it all made sense now, like he’d taken a million separate puzzle pieces and connected them to form a single picture.

Felix thought he would be pleased, that he would feel triumphant upon solving this brain teaser known as Marinette, but he didn’t feel pleased at all. Instead he felt.. Sympathy. And fury. This girl was not some puzzle for him to mess around with. She was a person, a friend, his friend, and to hear her be treated in such a way made his blood boil.

“We’re glad you did.” Allegra commented.

“Yeah, you’re clearly much better off here.” Claude agreed. “Those jerks don’t know what they lost.”

“So you guys aren’t.. Ya know.. mad at me or anything?”

“Mad at you?” Allan frowned. “Why would we be mad at you?”

“Well,” Marinette thumbed her mug for a moment, “I did kind of keep this a secret from all of you on purpose. I just didn’t want to drag my old problems to my new school. That and.. I didn’t want to risk you not believing me.. I’m sorry I didn’t have more faith in you guys.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.” Allegra said. “You went through something terrible. We don’t blame you for not wanting to bring it up again.”

“Besides, you transferred schools to escape from the rumors, right?” It only makes sense that you wouldn’t tell us about them when you got here.” Allan pointed out.

Felix nodded in agreement, and Marinette let out a sigh of relief.

“That’s good to hear. Thanks for hearing me out.”

“Of course.” Claude smiled. “You’re our friend, Marinette. A few dumb rumors would never drive us away. If it did, we wouldn’t even be friends with each other by now.”

Marinette gave him a curious look. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, we’ve all been lied about at some point.” The brunette stated nonchalantly. “I mean, we go to Rosemary, a school filled to the brim with rich, talented, and extremely spoiled kids who have nothing better to do than gossip about each other. I get accused of cheating at least once a semester. Allegra had rumors about her bribing the dance teacher when she was chosen for a leading role one year, and Felix has been rumored to actually not be rich at all.”

Felix rolled his eyes, but an incredulous laugh left Marinette’s lips.

“What?”

Allan snorted. “Oh, that one was pretty funny. Some people still think he actually lives in the school.”

“Seriously? Why?”

“Cause he wouldn’t invite people over to his house.” Allegra said with a wry smile. “And he practically wears the same outfit everyday.

Marinette hummed, looking Felix up and down. “They make a good point.. Felix, is there something you’d like to confess to?”

Felix gave a playful scoff, and the group laughed at his reaction.

“See?” Claude asked. “Your rumors were definitely worse than ours, but we’re not inexperienced. People will always try to bring you down in the lamest way possible.”

Marinette chuckled. “Yeah.. I guess they will. Thanks, guys.”

“Anytime.” Allegra smiled, pulling Marinette into a small hug.

“We’re always here for you.” Allan added sincerely.

Marinette smiled as well. “I know.”

“And if any of those jerks come around you again, you just let us know,” Claude said, punching his fist into his palm, “especially if it’s that guy who tried to tell you to ‘ignore’ Lila.”

A nervous laugh came from Marinette, and she reached up to mess with her pigtails as she said, “I appreciate that.”

Felix, satisfied with how the conversation ended, tilted his cup up to his lips, only to realize it was empty. He pulled his cup down and scanned the table, noting that Allegra and Claude’s cups were empty as well.

“Why don’t I get us some more tea?” He offered, moving to grab the tray.

“Oh!” Marinette perked up, quickly downing the rest of her tea in one gulp. “I’ll come too.”

Felix blinked. “Uh.. that’s not necessary. I can carry it all in one sitting. If you’d rather sit-”

“No, it’s alright.” She said, standing up to take Claude’s cup from him. “I want to stretch my legs anyway.”

The trio exchanged glances again, but Felix was too busy eyeing Marinette to notice. ‘Stretch her legs’? She’s only been sitting for- what? Thirty minutes? Forty-five? How restless could her legs be?

“We’ll wait in here.” Allegra remarked, referring to herself and the other boys.

Felix nodded and picked up the tray, not bothering to argue with Marinette. If she wanted to walk with him into the kitchen, she certainly had the right to do so. And who knows? Maybe she wanted a moment to herself and didn’t know how to tell them.

They strode into the kitchen together, and Felix set the tray on the counter while Marinette handed him her mugs.

“Thank you for helping me. You know you didn’t need to.” He said as he refilled the mugs.

“I know,” Marinette said, leaning against the counter while she waited, “but I actually wanted to speak with you privately, so this works for me.”

Felix raised a questioning eyebrow at her. She wanted to speak with him privately?

“What did you need?”

Marinette glanced up at him, then seemed to think better of it as her gaze flicked back down to the ground. “I wanted to apologize to you too.. You remember last week when you asked me if something was wrong and I told you I didn’t want to talk about it? Well, the reason I was upset was because Adrien came to the bakery that day and begged me to speak with him. I didn’t really feel comfortable with it, but I felt guilty not giving him a second chance when he seemed so sorry about how he’d acted with Lila. So I agreed to have lunch with him after the Valentine’s Day party, which was where I ran off to while you guys were cleaning up. I guess Lila took a picture of us there, and I didn’t realize it..”

Felix frowned. Her reasons for visiting Agreste again were troubling to hear, but..

“Why do you need to apologize to me?”

Marinette’s gaze snapped to his again, her eyes wide with surprise. “Because I didn’t tell you. I knew after everything you’d heard about him that you wouldn’t want me going to see him, but instead of hearing your opinion, I just didn’t say anything. I should have talked to you about it. Maybe then Lila wouldn’t have found me and taken the picture..”

Felix stared at her for a moment, astounded by her logic. She thought she had to ask him before going to see Adrien? Sure, Felix would have advised against it immediately, but that didn’t mean she had to ask his permission.

“Marinette, you don’t owe me anything.” He told her. “Your life is your life. If you want to go have lunch with Adrien Agreste, that’s your decision. And while I would have advised against it, I still would have supported your decision nonetheless. I am your friend, not your boss or guardian. Do you understand?”

Marinette nodded, a grateful smile crossing her lips. He was happy to see it.

“More importantly, you don’t owe Agreste anything either. Just because he finally wisened up to his mistakes doesn’t mean you have to give him a second chance, especially if you don’t feel comfortable doing so.”

Felix paused, thinking over what he’d just said.

“Although, I am curious.. What did he apologize for? He wasn’t one of the people who assaulted you, was he?”

“Oh, no, no.” Marinette hastily answered. “He, uhm.. He was actually the one who didn’t believe Lila.”

Felix tensed, using all of his self-discipline to avoid screaming ‘Are you kidding me?!’. Because really, out of all the people that had to convince Marinette to let Lila go, why did it have to be him? Actually, now that he thought about it, of course it was him! Who else would Marinette have been willing to listen to? Who else would have had the gall, the audacity, to act as though enabling a spoiled brat was some noble sacrifice? Wow, that guy just managed to keep climbing up the ranks on Felix’s ‘most hated’ list, didn’t he?

“I see.” Felix managed to mumble. “Are you going to tell the others?”

Marinette bit her lip, which was most likely a ‘no’.

“Not yet-” bingo “-I don’t want him getting a bad reputation. He did apologize, after all.”

Felix drew in a deep breath, letting the frustration towards that answer melt out of him. This was Marinette’s decision. She has trusted him with it, and he is going to respect it, no matter how much he hates it. That’s why he simply heaved a heavy sigh and put a hand on her shoulder as he said, “Marinette, you are truly too kind for this world.”

A blush bloomed across her cheeks, and she let out a small laugh. “O-Oh.. thanks.”

Felix turned back to the tray and picked it up, offering her a polite smile as he did. He didn’t agree with her method of handling things, but he did trust her to know what she was doing. Marinette was Marinette, after all, and she was much more capable than he was in most areas. If she thought this was the best way to go, he wouldn’t dispute it.

“So,” he began as he gestured for her to start moving towards the living room, “if I just put sugar in Claude’s mug instead of tea, do you think he would know the difference?”

Marinette snorted. “Oh~, that’s a tough one. Maybe we should test it to find out.”

“Alright, but you have to give him the cup. If I do, he’ll assume I’ve poisoned it.”

Marinette giggled and walked into the living room, and Felix followed behind her with a smile. He knew he couldn’t march up to the Agreste mansion and rip Adrien apart like he preferred- he probably couldn’t get any revenge on him whatsoever -but Felix would be darned if he just let this go the way Marinette wanted him to. Actions such as this needed to be punished, not forgiven and forgotten because of some half-hearted apology. If she wanted to toss the whole ordeal over her shoulder, that was fine, but Felix was going to hold a grudge against Dupont that was strong enough for the both of them.

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(Devotion: Alright guys! We’ve talked about the message of God’s wonderful salvation- which you should totally go back and read if you haven’t accepted Christ as your savior. It’s extremely important. -we’ve talked about how the Bible says people will react to the word of God, which has been proven to be true time and again; We have talked about Hell and why it exists; and in the last message, we talked about God’s compassion and faithfulness to His people. The last devotion wasn’t exactly in line with the others as far as the salvation theme, but today’s devotion will be! We’re going to talk about Jesus Christ and what exactly He went through on the cross to become the perfect sacrifice for our sins. This one’s probably going to be a bit long, and it is going to be gruesome. So what I’m going to do is bolden the main points of what He went through, then I’m going to describe them in detail. That way, people who can’t stomach gore or painful descriptions can still see a semblance of what He did, and people who can stomach it will get to understand the full extent of which Jesus loves us. Alright? Everyone got it? Great! Let’s get going then!

We start in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus comes here only a few hours or less before He is arrested to be tried for crucifixion. He knows He is about to be arrested; He knows that this is the only way to save us from our sins, but that doesn’t stop Him from crying out to God and begging Him for a last way out. He says, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”, and the Bible says that He was under so much stress during this prayer, He actually began sweating drops of blood. Blood! More so, the Bible also tells us that Jesus had to have an actual angel fly down and keep His heart from rupturing, lest He die prematurely. That means that Jesus was so stressed He almost died before He could even be crucified! Jesus was scared! He was terrified of going through with what God was asking of Him, and wouldn’t we all be! Nobody likes pain, and Jesus was about to go through one of the greatest pains we could ever face. Not only that, there were going to be a few other add-ons to the physical pain He was about to receive.

See, Jesus is supposed to be the perfect lamb, the perfect sacrifice to atone for all of our sins, but to do that, Jesus not only needs to be punished for the sins we have committed, He also has to become the thing He’s being punished for. You cannot punish something that is innocent. It would be unjust. Jesus is aware of this, and that’s another reason He’s as stressed as He is in this moment of prayer. Although Jesus is manifested in human form at the moment, He is still very much God and part of the Holy Trinity, and as such, He still hates sin with a burning passion. He is disgusted by the very thought of it, the very idea. So imagine His dismay when He figures out that He has to become sin! That it has to be woven and meshed into His entire being! That would be like, for me, looking at all of the disgusting food water that’s in the sink before doing dishes and having to bathe myself in it without soap. (even bathing in it with soap would be bad, but you know) And for you guys! Think of the most disgusting thing on earth and then imagine being drench in it! Having it smeared on your skin and shoved in your mouth and caked all over your body- That’s what becoming our sin was going to be like for Jesus, and He hated every bit of it!...

But He loved us. So He went on with it anyway, the pain of crucifixion and the atrocity of becoming all of the sins of the world at once.

As soon as He was done with prayer, Judas- one of the former twelve disciples -betrayed Jesus and handed Him over to the chief priests as well as a crowd of people and soldiers. Jesus went willingly with them and did not fight. In fact, when Peter- another one of the twelve -leapt forward to protect Him by cutting off one of the High Priest’s ears, Jesus actually rebuked him and proceeded to put the High Priest’s ear back on his head. He was healing one of the very people who were about to kill Him! And the disciples were so confused and so panicked by this mob and Jesus’ “strange” behavior, that they all fled. Every single one of them. (This was done to fulfill scripture, so we shouldn’t judge them too harshly, but it is extremely sad for Jesus’ case.)

So the High Priests take Jesus away to Caiaphas, another High priest, and they put Him on trial. The High Priests and Elders tried to put false witnesses up on the stand, but none of their stories were adding up. They couldn’t share the same details that the other was, and almost no two stories were the same. Therefore, the High Priests got frustrated and started taunting Jesus directly, saying, “Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee?” But Jesus refused to say anything. He just sat there, silent. This angered the High Priest, so he finally just yelled at Him- or at least, I imagine he yelled -and said, “I adjure thee by the name of the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.” And here, we have one of the instances that Jesus openly admits, plain and blunt, that He is the Christ. He tells the High Priest that He is the Son of God, and that after this, He will be sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of Heaven.

The High Priest rents his clothes (which means to tear them. It used to be a sign of grieving) and says that Jesus has committed blasphemy, and unfortunately, the rest of the council agree and sentence Him to death. This is where the beginning of the crucifixion process begins. They still had to get a governor’s approval for the death sentence, but that didn’t stop them from taking Jesus and blindfolding Him and beating him while He was blindfolded. They would laugh and spit in His face during this and taunt Him, saying “Prophesy unto us, though Christ, who is he that smote thee?” It was an incredibly humiliating experience for our Lord to go through, but it was about to get much much worse.

The next morning, they take Jesus to Pontius Pilate, a governor, and demand that Jesus be crucified. Pilate, I would assume, reviews the case, because we see him ask Jesus if He is the King of the Jews a few verses later. Jesus simply answers with a “thou sayest” then refuses to speak again for the rest of the time. Despite that, though, Pilate knew the people were only delivering Jesus there because they were jealous of Him. So he gave the angry mob a choice: “Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?”

so understand this choice, it is important to know that there was a certain feast going on at that time, and at the feast, Pontius likes to release a prisoner of the people’s choice. Barabbas was a current prisoner, known for being a murderer and a thief, and I’m sure Pilate was hoping that by presenting a very unjust man compared to Jesus for release, the people would concede and choose Jesus to release. That’s not what happened, though. The people were so angry and so swayed by the High Priest’s influence that they decided to let the thief and murderer loose, as opposed to a completely innocent man. Pontius Pilate is flabbergasted and asks them, “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?”

The response was.. unanimous.

“Let him be crucified.”

“Why? What evil hath he done?” Pilate persisted, but the people only cried out louder for Jesus to be crucified. So Pilate, seeing that he couldn’t change their minds, washed his hands in a bowl of water and said, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.”

Thus, Jesus was sent off to be Scourged, the first part of the crucifixion process. Scourging is a devious, calculated type of torture that uses a cat of nine tails to rip the flesh off of its victims. A cat of nine tails is basically a leather handle that has nine different whips attached to the same end, and on the end of those whips were hooks created from shattered glass or twisted metal or any other kind of sharp thing you can think of. The romans would throw the whip across their victim’s skin, and the jagged pieces laced into the whip would latch onto the skin. Then, the Romans would yank across the whip, causing the jagged pieces to tear through the flesh. The pain that would come from that is excruciating, and during this scourging, Jesus was stripped of his garments and whipped with a cat of nine tails thirty nine times. To put that in perspective, it takes 40 times of being whipped with that thing to be killed. This means that Jesus was whipped to the point of near death. His skin is in tatters. There is blood all over his skin. His teeth have probably cracked from having to grit them so much, and Jesus is in pain. He’s in so much pain already.

But it’s not over yet.

The next thing the Romans decide to do is place a purple garment around him, and weave a crowd of thorns together. These aren’t just regular thorns, either. These thorns are about two inches long and pointed, and by the time the Romans got a thick circle of thorns together, I’d imagine you could hardly hold it in your hands without getting hurt. They took those thorns and pushed all 70 or so of them into Jesus’ skull. THEN they grabbed a rod and beat the thorns into His head!! The thorns punctured Jesus’ head so deeply, that the thorns actually touched his skull, curved from hitting it, then poked back out of His skin somewhere else. The way the Romans put this crown on His head, Jesus physically couldn’t take it off. And after all of that, the Romans bowed down in front of Jesus and mocked Him again, saying, “Hail! King of the Jews!” and beat Him with their bare hands, even though they had already whipped Him to the point of near death.

Pilate took Jesus to the Jews and again begged them to reconsider and let Jesus go, but the Jews refused to do so. They screamed for Jesus’ death all the more, so Pilate reluctantly gave it to them. This leads us to the beginning of the end, when they make Jesus carry His own cross. Part of the crucifixion was having the crucified carry their own cross to Golgotha, or Skull. It was kind of like an extra burden and humiliation attempt, and it worked well. Think of it like a murderer being forced to make his own death shot and give it to the nurses who were going to insert it in him. Jesus had to walk through the city, or at least on some sort of road, where crowds of people were lined up on both sides, all of them cheering for His death, and He had to do this while He could barely stand up straight. The Bible tells us that, because of His injuries, Jesus actually didn’t get to carry His cross all the way to Golgotha. He collapsed somewhere along the way, and a man named Simon had to help Him carry it the rest of the way, but sadly, they did get it there.

Once Jesus and the cross were on the mount, the Romans laid the cross down, laid Jesus on the cross, and used these huge nails to nail Jesus’ hands and feet to the cross. This was done through careful puncture wounds between the wrist bones and foot bones. It kept Jesus in place, while aggravating his nerves to make his feet and hands go crazy with pain. The Romans then raised the cross up for all to see, and for the next six hours Jesus hung on that cross. Something to note about this is that Jesus’ cross was not smooth. It had splinters and jagged edges all over the place, and the way the nails were pierced into His feet and hands caused Him caused His lungs to push heavily on His diaphragm. Because of this, breathing became a bit of a problem. His lungs could take in air, but He couldn’t breathe out. To do that, He would have to pull up on the nails in His wrists and push up on the nails in His feet and exhale. Pushing up, though, would cause Him to push His scraped, slashed, and bruised back against the splinters or possibly even into them. And let me remind you: He hung on that cross for six hours. Six. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would do a lot of breathing in six hours.

And yet, despite all of that pain and suffering, the worst was still yet to come.

Jesus said seven different phrases while on the cross. Seven times He pulled Himself up on the cross, enduring extreme forms of agony, to speak with us. Would you like to know the first thing He said?

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Jesus asked God to have mercy on us and forgive us. We’ve rejected Him and cursed His name time and time again, we’ve insisted on turning to Him with malice and hatred, and now we’ve put Him through some of the worst, most excruciating pain imaginable.. But He asked God to forgive us anyway. This, Jesus’ incredible love and mercy and grace towards us, is the baseline of Christianity. His love is what keeps this world turning on its very axis, and it’s why we have no qualms shouting His name to the rooftops. His name deserves to be shouted and praised after all of the things He went through just to allow us to be with Him and talk with Him.

The second phrase He said was to a thief who was hanging on the cross with Him. In the Bible, we are told that Jesus wasn’t the only one being crucified that night. Two thieves were also being crucified along with Him, and they were placed on the mount to His left and to His right. The thief on the right was spitting on Him and mocking Him as well, but the thief on the left rebuked the first thief, saying, “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.” And the second thief turned to Jesus and added, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”

This is when Jesus speaks the second time, as He, I imagine, turns to the thief as best He can to reply, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” This conversation right here is a wonderful example of salvation and how simple it truly is. This thief was dying. He’d lived a bad life full of mischief and wickedness, and he had no way of making that right. But because he believed that Jesus was the Son of God, he was still able to go to Heaven. Salvation isn’t about works or what we can try to give back to Christ (although, we should try to give back to Christ as much as we can after being saved), it’s about the free gift that Jesus gave us. Heaven and Salvation is a gift. All we have to do is accept it.

The third phrase Jesus says is to John, one of the disciples, and Mary, Jesus’ mother. The Bible says that Jesus sees them before He speaks, so I imagine they are near the cross and weeping. Again, He drags Himself up on the splintered cross, draws in a pain-staking breath, and utters, “Women, behold thy son!” to Mary, and to John He says, “Behold thy mother!”. So He was making sure that His mother was going to be taken care of before He passed away.

Around this time, as Jesus was hanging on the cross, the earth fell into total darkness. I’m talking the sky was black. And as soon as this happened, Jesus cried out into the sky, saying his fourth comment on the cross.

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” or “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

This.. is where we see the second add-on that made Jesus so terribly stressed during His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. He is taking on the sins of the world. One can only imagine how many sins that would be, and in this moment, Jesus is taking every single one of them and forcing them into a single person, a single place to look upon. There was so much sin in Jesus at the very hour, that God had to do what He’s never done before in history and turn His back on a human being.

There are times when God’s grace leaves us, when His mercy runs out and we are instead faced with His judgement, but despite that judgement, God is still present in our lives and in the world around us. No matter how alone we’ve felt in the world, God has always been there next to us without us knowing. But not here. Here, God is actively turning His back on Jesus. He is completely forsaking Jesus because of the amount of sin that has poured into Jesus’ heart and soul as part of the sacrifice. That absence of God is something we are never going to know (unless you don’t get saved and go to hell, I suppose) but I can only imagine how empty it must be. How crushingly lonely it must feel, to know that now, Jesus truly is all alone in this world. The very God, the other part of Himself, that He’s been with since the beginning is now just.. Gone. That, I believe, was the worst part of this entire crucifixion for Jesus. He can face the physical pain; He can face the disgustingness of sin; He can face the humiliation of being God but also being mocked and treated like a life form lower than dirt because He knew He wasn’t facing any of that alone. He knew God was right by His side.

But now He wasn’t.

And Jesus was still there on the cross.

We see in the Bible that the darkness lasted for a full three hours, meaning Jesus has to go at least three more hours without God’s presence and comfort and light. In these last few hours, though, Jesus says three more phrases. His fifth phrase is, “I thirst.”

Another part of the Roman crucifixion costume was to get a sponge and soak it in vinegar mixed with gall. The combination created an extremely bitter taste that would supposedly distract the crucified from their pain every now and then, if only for a moment. So when Jesus said, “I thirst”, the Romans quickly got a sponge or even a cup ready and gave Him a sip of it. After He drank the cup, Jesus cried with a loud voice and said His final two phrases. Now in Luke and John, the last phrase that Jesus says is different when compared to each other, but the phrases are both so unique that I believe Jesus said both of them, one right after the other, and John and Luke simply wrote down different halves. So I’m going to write the last two phrases together.

“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. It is finished.”

After this phrase, Jesus gives up the ghost, or in other words, allowed Himself to die. This is another crucial point of Christianity because it shows Jesus’ power over life and death itself. He isn’t killed by blood loss or exhaustion or by a heart attack or anything like that. He simply dies because He wanted to at that moment. I think that’s kind of comforting actually. A God as powerful and loving as Jesus, who can control His own life and death as well as everyone else’s and was willing to give up His own life for us when we didn’t deserve it or even ask, is a God I most definitely want to serve.

Unfortunately, though, death was not quite the end of Jesus’ sacrifice. Not many people know this (or, at least, I didn’t know it for a long while), but after Jesus’ death, He went to hell for three straight days. Yes, you read that correctly. Actual Hell. If He’s going to take our punishment, He needs to take all of it, right? So don’t think God is just dishing out the punishments, but not taking any for Himself. He doesn’t need any, because He is a holy and perfect God, but He took some anyway so we didn’t have to, because He is also loving and merciful.

Hell was, thankfully, the last step of the sacrifice. After that, Jesus completed the ritual of becoming our free ticket to salvation by raising Himself from the dead! Have you ever heard of anyone who could raise themselves? I haven’t! And on top of that, the Bible says that Jesus’ resurrection was so powerful, that several other people around him were raised from the dead too! Just because He raised himself! Isn’t that crazy?

This is why rejecting Christ is such a big deal to God, and why people who claim there are other ways to Heaven are extremely blasphemous, because if there were any other possible way to Heaven, do you honestly think that God would have sent His only, begotten Son to die on the cross for us? Do you think God wanted to come down to suffer through all of this pain just to say “yeah, actually, you can also get in this other way”? No, of course not. Rejecting Christ’s sacrifice and salvation is basically telling Him that all of that pain and suffering didn’t matter, the same as spitting on Him like the other Jews as He hung on the cross.

He’s made the pathway to Heaven unbelievably simple. All we have to do is admit that we’re sinners, admit that we need saving from our sins, and accept Jesus Christ to be our savior by believing that He was the Son of God and that He died on the cross for us. If I was sure about anything in life, it is this. God is real. Heaven is real. Hell is real. Jesus is real, and He, along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, is calling to you now. He is giving you another chance to accept Him as your savior before it’s too late. This could possibly even be your last chance. So please don’t put it off.

I love you guys very much and really really appreciate the people who have continued reading this. I’ll be praying for all of you to receive what I’ve told you, and for those who already have, I’ll be praying for you to keep growing in the Lord. Stay strong in the faith my friends! Keep telling the world about Jesus! He’s always right beside us! <3

Also, Here’s a link for a youtube video about Jesus’ death from a medical point of view. It’s a bit more detailed than I was, so please go watch it as well! https://youtu.be/0B3kgiLxybYOn that note, here’s a link I found recently that gives a bunch of videos and written materials from the author of “Cold Case Christianity”. He was someone who used to be an atheist until he started studying the four gospels with his skill of eye-witness-account-scrutiny. After studying the Bible for a few months, He realized that the Bible is, in fact, telling the truth, and ever since then he’s been racing to let the rest of the world know. Please check him out! www.coldcasechristianity.com/resources)

Tag List: @sasstrashforlike5fandoms @artbyknigit @athena452 @nickristus-dreamer @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @arsaem @abrx2002 @neakco @pawsitivelymiraculous @too0bsessedformyowngood @nathleigh @lusicing @officiallydarkgeek @all-mights-asscheeks @tbehartoo @woe-is-me0 @raeuberprinzessin @lazuli-11 @miss-chaos27 @trippingovermyfeet @sadpotatoondrugs @ladybug-182 @jaggedheart11 @marinahrasauce @i-need-blog-ideas @thewheezingbubbledragon @crazylittlemunchkin @unabashedbookworm @moonystars14 @sunflowers-and-mooncakes @2confused-2doanything @magnificentcrapposts @moonnette @nickristus-dreamer @vixen-uchiha @casual-darkness @luxmorningstarr @jjmjjktth @kaithehero @itsme1598 @theymakeupfairies @xjaccyx @miraculous-ninja @miraculouspenta @swiftie-miraculer13 @justafanwarrior @all-mights-asscheeks @ira-sairain @lookatthestars1 @dahjokester @blissful-passing @solangelo252 @canivialemonsquints07 @derbygracie @pleaseignorejustheretoread

#felinette #Marinette #Felix Culpa #Miraculous Ladybug #Quantic Kids #Rosemary AU #New Girl on the Block

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ambivalentmarvel · 4 years ago

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happy birthday amy @thinkingisadangerouspastime!!!! i’m a day late, but i love you!! thank you for all your fic snippets, fielding my ramblings, and sending me ffwf asks even though i’m not always good at responding to them asdfasdf. enjoy some domestic sambucky (+ aj and cass) being annoying and also in love at the grocery store.

sweeter than us

“For the last time, why do we need the app when I have perfectly good coupons right here?” Sam asks in a grocery store aisle, holding up his binder clip stuffed with deals cut out of the newspaper.

“Babe, quick question.”

“Shoot,” Sam challenges, his eyebrows raised in a way that should be inquisitive but is mostly just irritated. Vaguely. Bucky is nothing if not talented at pushing Sam’s buttons, particularly when they’ve both chosen something to argue about for the hell of it, so he’s gotten familiar with the look.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the old man here?”

Sam glares. AJ and Cass stand off to the side, debating what color the frosting on the cake should be. Sam is still holding out the binder clip between them, and with the way his fingers clench it, Bucky wouldn’t be surprised if he manages to turn it into a weapon or, at the very least, a projectile; he’s seen people do more with less. “You, James Buchanan Barnes, are a major pain in the ass.”

“I’m your pain in the ass. Also, the app can price match.”

A vein in Sam’s temple throbs dangerously. Bucky, frankly, doesn’t understand why his reliance on modern technology is such an inconvenience for him. If everyone in the 21st century carries around tiny computers, shouldn’t they use them? Sam is sucking in a breath and Bucky is preparing to continue his defense of his grocery shopping app when AJ speaks up: “Uncle Sam, we’re getting stuff for chocolate cake, right?”

Sam shoots Bucky a look to say this isn’t over, but he turns to face his nephew. “Hell yeah we are.”

Cass frowns. “Mom says you’re not supposed to cuss around us.”

“Your mom is also getting a chocolate cake when everyone knows vanilla is the better flavor,” Sam points out. “Besides,” he winks, which makes both AJ and Cass grin conspiratorially, “are you guys gonna’ tell her?”

“Hell no!” they chorus, and Sam’s vein is doing that thing again.

“Now, wait a second—”

Bucky lets him chew them out. They’re up early getting ingredients for a cake and breakfast in bed for Sarah, seeing as it’s her birthday, and while he suspected bringing AJ and Cass along might not help their productivity any, it is endearing to see his boyfriend around them.

Bucky eyes their cart. Going to the grocery store with a big family—and somehow, Bucky has one of those now—inevitably means, as Bucky has learned, picking up things you didn’t plan on getting. They’re not doing too bad this time around, but lunch meat, goldfish, cantaloupe, chicken nuggets, and ice cream, among other things, are definitely not the ingredients they came for.

“—just because I say something doesn’t mean you get to say it!”

“Why not?” AJ grouses. “That’s not fair.”

“I’m an adult. You two are not.”

“But—”

“And I’m Captain America. Comes with special privileges.”

Bucky’s pleased he tuned in just in time to hear Sam pull the superhero card on his nephews. The boys glance at him, maybe to see if he’ll jump ship and side with them to irk Sam, but he prioritizes staying in Sarah’s good graces over bothering his boyfriend. Bucky shrugs. “I don’t know what you guys want me to say—I’m a super-soldier. The two of us get shared benefits.”

“Shared benefits,” Cass mocks under his breath, distorting the words into a higher pitch. Bucky chooses to let that one go, as does Sam.

“Do we have everything we need yet?” Sam asks, effectively distracting the boys. “We were down to more cocoa powder, oil, and powdered sugar for the icing, right?”

“And sprinkles!” Cass interjects while AJ skitters to the back of their group.

Sam shakes his head. “We already have sprinkles at the house, bud.”

Cass ignores him, going to a shelf, standing on his tip-toes, and reaching for an admittedly oversized container. “But these are yellow. And sparkly. And yellow is Mom’s favorite color!”

He makes a good point. However, Bucky can see that Sam isn’t convinced, and he has to be the boys’ uncle’s cool boyfriend somehow. He leans in, pecking Sam on the lips. “Come on, babe, it’ll be a good touch. And they’re sparkly,” he reiterates.

Sam turns to look Bucky in the eye, his expression equal parts exasperated and fond. “You’re a menace, you know that?”

Bucky holds up his hands placatingly. “I live to serve. You should too, Captain Ameri—”

Sam tugs him in for a kiss by his collar to cut him off, and Bucky’s vaguely aware, through the haze of appreciating that a) he has a boyfriend b) he loves his boyfriend so fucking much and c) the cake is, honestly, going to look fun with the sprinkles, of AJ and Cass gagging in the background.

“Gross!” AJ complains. “Grooooss!”

Sam pulls away from the tragically brief kiss rolling his eyes. “That wasn’t even that long,” he points out as he tucks an arm around Bucky’s back. “If you guys want a gross kiss—”

“No!” the boys shout together, and though Bucky and Sam keep grinning and accidentally-on-purpose bumping into each other as they grab the last few things they need, they keep the PDA to a minimum, as their audience has so clearly requested.

It’s not until they’re up to the register that Bucky clocks that his jacket pocket feels suspiciously light, and when he glances around, he finds AJ at the end of the checkout taking deliberately bad selfies on his phone. His mouth drops open because how did a ten-year-old get the drop on him, a seasoned assassin? Sam starts using the contents of his stupid, outdated binder clip. “He got you while you were convincing me about the sprinkles,” he smirks.

Bucky tosses a half-hearted glare toward AJ, but in terms of revenge, it’s nice that he has a lovely, if annoyingly smug, boyfriend to capitalize on. Distracting Sam from scanning the cantaloupe—which he’s getting a discount on, the asshole—Bucky leans in for one more kiss, and while AJ loudly protests, Bucky thinks Sarah’s birthday is off to a pretty great start.

#sam wilson #bucky barnes #sambucky #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #the falcon #the winter soldier #thank u ali for the idea bc. head empty no thoughts whenever i need to think up a fluff prompt.#ILY AMY I'M SORRY I'M LATE #PLS ENJOY IDIOTS BEING IDIOTS #ambivalentmarvel #thinkingisadangerouspastime #starkravinghazelnoots

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scrapyardboyfriends · 4 years ago

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Here’s that fic I mentioned that I started. The one where Sarah escaped the fire and ended up in hospital with trauma based amnesia and then shows up in January 2015 as Robert and Chrissie’s wedding planner right in the middle of affair era. Someone read the beginning and make me finish it at some point. Haha. I did have it mostly planned out. I just got lazy.

-----------

It’s Monday morning and Robert’s in the office, tapping his pen against the desk. He’s the first one in, hoping that shows his initiative. Tap, tap, tap turns into Aaron, Aaron, Aaron in his mind. Aaron’s all he can ever think about these days. And right now, Aaron’s mad with him, which grates on him, makes him itch for another touch, another taste that he can’t have until he gets Aaron to change his opinion of him again. He’d managed before, at Andy’s wedding. He can get him on side again. Aaron’s a challenge but he’s a people person. He can do this. And it’s not like Lachlan isn’t perfectly alright again, home from the hospital and back to being a pain and stressing Chrissie out.

Tap, tap, tap. He should be calling a client back about a shoot they want to book next month but his mind can only focus on Aaron, Aaron, Aaron.

He pulls out his phone and the taps become a text. ‘Kiss and make up?’ He writes, chuckling to himself.

It’s Aaron’s birthday today, he knows. Vic had mentioned something the other day and he’d filed away the information in his head. He hopes Aaron doesn’t have big plans. Besides, what better present than Robert shagging him senseless? He doesn’t add that to the message, just smiles and hits send. Now he has to wait.

The papers on his desk flutter as Chrissie blows into the room, wedding binder clutched in her arms. He doesn’t even think she sees him there as she starts rummaging through every stack of papers she can get her hands on, lines of frustration growing deeper on her forehead.

“Have you seen the sample that the printer sent over for the order of service?” She asks. So she did see him. He takes too long to respond, so she stops her whirlwind and stares at him. “Robert?”

He makes a show of looking around his desk before shaking his head. “No,” he tells her. “Wasn’t that the whole point of hiring a new wedding planner in the first place? So they can keep all of this stuff straight?”

She huffs at him, looking irritated, which feels like her default with him at this point. He really should do something about that, so he gets up and starts helping her look for the sample which seems to please her.

She’d fired their first wedding planner, Leyla, after the suit measuring incident. Chrissie just didn’t feel comfortable having her work so closely with her husband to be. It was ironic then that that incident had given him the motivation to seek out Aaron in the first place. He didn’t think much more on that, shifting papers around for a distraction. After that, Chrissie had taken over the wedding planning herself, which was worse, because it meant she checked in with him on everything. He knew more about floral arrangements and place cards and the food allergies of her friends than he ever wanted or needed to know. Still, it had been going alright and Aaron had often given him a much needed reprieve. Then Lachlan had gone and decided to end up in the hospital full of drugs, which was somehow his fault by all accounts and it had all become too much for her. Seating charts and dresses and first dance songs, none of it had been important when poor little Lucky had gotten himself into a mess. Still, there was a wedding to plan because despite being furious with him, he’d managed to make amends enough that she still wanted to marry him and he needed to make sure it stayed that way. All he’d worked for depended on it.

He’d suggested hiring Leyla back but she wouldn’t hear of it, especially not since Katie had been in her ear again. Instead, she’d hired someone from Hotten and he’d encouraged it. Anything that got him out of being on hand for every decision. Except maybe cake tasting, he thinks he could do that.

“I still have to show her what I’ve done so far,” Chrissie tells him, looking around frantically. “She’s coming here in half and hour. I need that sample.”

“Then we’ll find it,” he placates her as his phone buzzes in his pocket.

He pulls it out to see ‘A’ pop up on his screen. It makes him smile. He can’t help it but he quickly forces the corners of his mouth down before Chrissie sees.

‘You think that’s all it’s going to take?’ reads the reply when he opens it.

His fingers are tapping out a response before his brain can even tell him not to, ‘oh I think you know I can do so much more than that.’

His body is singing with nerves as he waits for a reply.

“I expect you to be here when she arrives,” Chrissie says pointedly once she’s noticed he’s stopped going through the motions of looking for the sample.

Robert sighs. He really hadn’t planned on sticking around for her meeting, hadn’t even remembered it was happening until right now. “I uh-“ he stalls, trying to think of an excuse.

His phone buzzes in his hand again. ‘Fine. Barn in an hour. But ur not off the hook yet,’ he reads, picturing Aaron typing with that frown of his that’s not a frown.

“I’ve got a meeting,” he tells Chrissie. “I can’t.” The amount of meetings he’s lied about in the last month are getting a bit out of hand but what can he do?

“Surely this is more important,” she sounds cross with him. “Can’t Dad go?”

Lawrence can definitely not take this meeting for him. Still, he needs to keep on her good side or they won’t need this wedding planner at all. Abandoning the search, he sidles up to her, takes her hands in his and flashes that charming smile he’s perfected so well. “This is important,” he tells her, “you know it is. And I promise, I’ll make the next one and you can fill me in on every detail when I get back.” He can’t think of anything more tedious.

She purses her lips in a pout, making them look so kissable so he leans in and captures them with his. It takes her a second or two of defiance before she’s kissing him back, wrapping her hands around his waist. He loves Chrissie, he reminds himself. For a second, he thinks maybe Aaron can wait. No one is around. He could just push all of the papers off of his desk and...he moves his lips across her cheek and down into her neck, reaching out toward the desk with his hand when he opens his eyes and sees it, the sample, tucked under a file folder that he swears he looked under before.

“Here it is,” he says, pulling back. “Your print sample!”

Chrissie’s eyes light up. “Perfect!” She accepts it greedily and shoves it into her binder. “You don’t have to go right now do you? To this meeting?”

No, he thinks, licking his lips as he moves closer again, ready for more but she pushes him off.

“Robert!” She scolds him with a laugh. “She’ll be here soon, the wedding planner. You can at least meet her before you go.”

He sighs, disappointed at being denied. Sex, he’s always been good at that part. It’s the rest of making a relationship work that he’s sometimes rubbish at. “Yes, I’ll meet her,” he says quickly as another text comes through for him.

‘Well?’ Aaron asks him and he pictures him looking annoyed, glaring at the phone, a crease in his forehead between his eyebrows, but biting at his lip which always makes Robert weak for him.

“Briefly,” he tells Chrissie, giving her a hug so he can text behind her back. ‘I’ll be there,’ he tells Aaron. To Chrissie, he says, “I really can’t be late to this meeting.”

—-

By the time the wedding planner is due to arrive he’s pacing, back and forth across the living room floor much to Chrissie’s annoyance. He can’t help it though. He knows how stroppy Aaron gets when he’s late. Although, part of him enjoys the grumpiness, the part of Aaron that doesn’t just fall at his feet, that makes him work for it. He must be mad.

There’s a knock on the door and he’s hot on Chrissie’s heels as she goes to answer it, phone in his hand and ready to text Aaron and say he’s on his way. He’s already trying to think up an excuse if he’s late. Something that’s not ‘I had to meet with our wedding planner’. Nothing kills the mood more than reminding Aaron that he’s not the only one in his life.

The door swings open and Robert looks up, his phone slipping from suddenly sweaty hands and crashing to the floor. He’s sure his screen’s cracked but that doesn’t matter, his eyes are locked on the ghost in the doorway.

There’s concern in her eyes as she looks at him, concern he recognizes, remembers, has wished for, for years. It can’t be though. She’s older, but she would be. Her hair’s different, more modern, a bob with a bit of grey in it. Grey like she means for it to be there, like she’s proud of it. There’s still some of her old color too, though he’s sure it’s not real anymore. He doesn’t know if she’s real either. There’s crows feet around her eyes, that are still watching him curiously. Those are new. And then she smiles at him, maybe at Chrissie, but that smile is one he’s longed to see again, filled with the warmth of a home he’s been away from for too long.

All so familiar but what makes him certain, what makes him blurt out the word as she introduces herself, Vicky Roberts, the wedding planner, is what he sees under the scarf around her neck. It’s there for warmth, he knows, the scarf. It is January in Yorkshire after all. Underneath though, creeping along her skin up toward her jaw is the puckered skin of a scar, a burn. On the hand she extends toward Chrissie there’s another, reaching back under the sleeve of her jumper and coat.

“Mum?” The word feels heavy on his tongue and it lands like lead in the room as both women turn to gawp at him.

—-

“Robert!” Chrissie’s voice is sharp, half with surprise and half scolding him like a child for making a scene. She scoops up his phone and if he had any of his wits about him at the moment he’d be glad for the cracked screen. “What are you-?” She starts but then whispers, “Don’t be rude.”

He feels insane but it’s her, he’s so sure of it. Still, it can’t be. She’s been dead for so long. Surely he’s just seeing things.

It’s the woman in the doorway herself who makes it feel like he’s not completely lost it. “You-you know me?” She asks, her voice small and tentative.

“Well of course not,” Chrissie decides for the both of them. “Robert, darling, are you alright?”

She thinks he’s gone mad. Maybe he has but his mum is standing there in front of him, looking desperate for him to speak again.

“You’re my-“ It feels ridiculous for him to even say it again. “I think-“ he amends, “I think you’re my mum.”

—-

She’s sitting in their living room now, his mum, Sarah, Vicky Roberts, and she can’t stop staring at him and he can’t stop looking at her. Chrissie’s moving around their little bubble, bringing them tea, asking how she likes it.

“One sugar and a dash of milk,” Robert answers for her, the phrase coming back to him.

“How did you-?” his mum questions through a smile. Chrissie’s waiting, not believing him. “He’s exactly right,” she confirms.

He watches her sip at her tea and he feels like he’s gone back in time. She doesn’t remember the past though she’d told him. Amnesia from trauma from the fire she was in. She didn’t know anymore than that. Just that she’d been found on the side of the road just outside Hotten with no idea how she’d gotten there. A head wound and burns across her body had left her in a coma for months and when she’d come out of it her mind was blank and she’d been scrabbling around for some kind of familiarity ever since.

“It was a barn fire,” Robert tells her, twitching at the words as they still bring him pain. He wants to tell her everything, spew out his entire life story and hers all at once, but he doesn’t want to overwhelm her, doesn’t want to ruin this before it really begins. It feels like at any moment she could just blink out of existence and he’ll wake up somewhere, drunk and maudlin about what he could have had. What else could this be but a dream?

She’s listening intently, hanging onto his every word. He’s a link to a past she thought lost forever. “I don’t remember,” she says, her frustration clear and then, “Sarah Sugden.” She’s said it a few times now, trying see how it feels.

“You must remember something,” he says. “Where did Vicky Roberts come from?” He’s trying desperately to get her to grasp onto something too. What kind of cruel twist of fate to give him his mum back but without any of her left?

“I had to choose a name for myself and those just seemed right somehow,” she tells him. “And you’re...Robert.” She says the name with a thoughtful look and a slight grin on her face, happy that she held onto something.

He smiles back at her, beaming at the knowledge that some part of him stayed with her. “You have a daughter, my sister. Her name is Victoria,” he explains further, his voice shaking with nerves.

“A daughter,” she smiles again, working over the concept in her head. There’s sadness there too, he thinks. Sadness that she can’t remember, sadness that she’s missed out perhaps. He feels the same.

“And...An-Andy,” he trips over his brother’s name, the two syllables stinging his tongue as he thinks about having to tell her it was Andy who started the fire. He can do that himself, Robert decides. Andy owes that to her, to him.

Chrissie sits down next to him and he realizes he’d almost forgotten she was even here. She takes his hand in hers and squeezes, trying to be a comfort to him but he just feels suffocated all of a sudden. Next to her, in this house. Since he’d been back they’d been things to show off but now he feels almost embarrassed, even if his mum didn’t remember. He wonders what she makes of him, if she’s happy that he’s her son. He was always a disappointment to Jack, but never to her. He hopes that holds true now, deep down.

—-

An hour later and he’s sitting beside her on the sofa, flipping through the faded, sticky pages of an old photo album, one she had put together once. It’s surreal sitting next to her, leaning over her shoulder and pointing out memories that she doesn’t have. Chrissie sits opposite them, trying get a look at the photos. He realizes he’s never even shown this to her. Trying to get ahead, it wasn’t the best idea to show off his more humble roots.

“That’s Ollie,” Robert points at the owl in his arms. “I helped nurse him back to health and then I got so attached I didn’t want to set him free again,” he laughs, remembering.

His mum smiles again but nothing connects.

“And that’s you holding Victoria just after she was born,” he says, running his finger over the plastic page and the photo underneath.

“It’s so strange,” she stares at the picture, “seeing yourself doing things you don’t remember doing with people you feel like you’ve never met.” She pauses and does what he did, running her hand over the page before looking over at him. “Sorry,” she tells him. “These are all your memories and I can’t share them the way you want me to.”

Robert wants to hug her, tell her to take her time. Even if none of it comes back, she’s still here and alive and he’ll take that right now. He restrains himself though, not sure what she would make of him lunging at her. “Don’t be sorry,” he rushes to say instead. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not,” she sighs in frustration. “All I’ve wanted for fourteen years is to fill this hole in my brain.” She flips to the next page and stops, staring at a photo of her and Jack. Pointing at him, she turns to him again.

“That’s Dad,” he says, feeling uncomfortable when he thinks about what happened between them, what led her to be in that barn in the first place.

She stares a moment longer, lines on her forehead deepening as she concentrates on the face of the man she married once. “Jack,” she pulls the name out of thin air and Robert gasps, never so happy to hear his father’s name.

“You-you remember?” he blurts out.

She seems surprised herself, sitting up, eyebrows raised. Her mouth opens again, forming the name silently. “I screamed it,” she says, sinking back into the sofa again, closing her eyes around a memory. “I can feel it, the heat closing in, strangling my voice but I screamed his name.” Her body shudders and she reaches up to kneed her forehead between two fingers.

Again he wants to hug her, wrap her up in his arms and protect her the way he couldn’t back then. He settles on the squeeze of her shoulder, just to let her know that someone is here for her. Her eyes flutter open, startled and he’s afraid he’s made a mistake but then she settles again and leans into his touch. He feels his heart swell in his chest.

“When I hired you, Robert, I did expect you to actually do some work,” Lawrence’s smug voice shatters the moment as he sweeps into the room, an intruder.

“Dad!” Chrissie scolds him and shoots Robert an apologetic look as she flies up off of the chair and leads Lawrence back out again.

A moment and a few whispered words later and he’s poking his head back in, wide eyed yet mistrustful. Robert’s only hated him more when he was faking that heart attack and interrupting his speech at the cemetery. It takes all his self control not to go off on him as he pops back out again.

“My soon to be father in law who hates me,” he says by way of explanation.

“Oh Robert, I’m sure he doesn’t hate you,” his mum tells him and he melts. She sounds so like how she used to and he wants to drown himself in that feeling.

She seems to feel it too, some connection between them and she looks bewildered by it. He can’t imagine how she must be feeling about all of this. An hour or so ago she was Vicky Roberts, a woman with a blank past and now she finds out she has all of this family she’d forgotten. Her fingers press into her forehead again, right between her eyes, making small circles there and he squeezes her shoulder again, the only thing he can think to do.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Bringing her hand back down to the page of the album, she shakes off whatever had come over her. “I’ll be fine,” she assures him, still staring at the photo. When she turns back to him she asks, “Jack...your dad, is-”

Robert swallows hard, doesn’t know if she remembers that they weren’t exactly together at the time. He doesn’t know how much this is going to hurt but he can’t lie to her. “He...died a few years ago,” he tells her.

“Oh,” she sighs, and there seems not to be sadness so much as frustration at a potential connection lost. “And Victoria and...uh...Andy?”

That doesn’t hurt as much to answer. “They’re both still in the village,” he says. “Vic works at the pub. She’s a chef. And Andy...he’s a farmer. Like Dad.”

She looks at him carefully, like she’s studying him. “You didn’t want to be a farmer.” It’s not a question.

His heart is in his throat. “You remember?” he nearly begs for the answer.

“It’s all so hazy,” she says, massaging her forehead again. “Like putting together a puzzle in the dark without all of the pieces. This, this is more than I’ve ever remembered before though. Being here, with you, seeing all of these pictures, it’s helping. I-I don’t-I don’t want the memories to stop.”

Robert smiles at her, his eyes tearing up. He never cries, not anymore, but having her here means more to him than anything else ever could. “I don’t either,” he agrees. “I can take you to the village, to the pub. Vic has a shift today. Maybe it’ll help.”

“I’d like that very much,” she says, her smile matching his along with the glistening tears in her eyes.

Chrissie appears in the doorway again, looking like a bit of a spare part and hating it. “Well that’s Dad sorted. Can I get anyone anything else?”

Robert stands, helping his mum up from the sofa and grabbing her coat from where it was laid over the back. “I was going to take her to the pub actually.”

“Oh right, of course,” Chrissie spits out quickly.

Reluctantly, Robert leaves his mum’s side and rounds the coffee table and the chairs and takes Chrissie’s arms in his. “You don’t mind do you? Only-”

“Of course I don’t mind,” she tells him. “Robert this is your mum. If I could have my mum back-”

“I know,” he whispers and kisses her cheek. “And thank you.”

His mum is by his side again, reaching out towards Chrissie, a hand on her arm above his own. “I’m so sorry. I came here with a job to do and I’ve-well we’ve gotten a bit side-tracked haven’t we?”

“Don’t be silly,” Chrissie assures her, a warm smile on her face. “This is more important.”

“And so is my son’s wedding,” she beams back and Robert feels his heart beat just a bit faster at hearing her call him her son. “We will reschedule. I promise.”

Chrissie nods, tears in her eyes as well as she takes in the moment, mother and son reunited, before shooing them towards the door. With a returned kiss on his cheek, she hands him his coat and wishes him luck.

—-

“I can’t believe it,” Vic just keeps saying over and over again, clutching her blue chef’s hat in tight, shaking hands. “I can’t actually- can I hug you?”

She doesn’t even let her answer before she’s flinging arms around their mum, burying her tear stained face into the folds of her jumper and scarf. For a moment Sarah freezes, unsure, but then something kicks in and she’s wrapping his little sister up in a warm embrace. Jealousy washes over him for a second before he pushes it down, feeling the acute absence of her arms around him. He wishes he had asked for a hug.

“Let her breathe Victoria,” Diane warns her off with a good natured laugh when the hug lasts a bit too long.

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologizes as she backs off, straightening Sarah’s scarf for her. “I just-“

“Can’t believe it?” Sarah finishes for her. “Neither can I. Certainly not what I expected when I took this job.”

“Job?” Vic asks. He didn’t really get a chance to explain the whole thing yet.

“She’s our new wedding planner,” Robert tells her. “If we haven’t scared her off.” He adds the last bit in, in some desperate need to gauge the situation all of a sudden.

“Oh that’s perfect, Rob!” Vic’s eyes light up. “Hey does that mean you’re actually going to give me the cake job then? Cause I’ve got ideas-“

“Vic!” He rolls his eyes. She’s been at him for a month now asking about it.

“I’d love to hear about them,” Sarah tells her, both in wedding planner and mum mode at the same time. “And of course you haven’t scared me off.”

There’s quiet voices behind them at the door that cease the moment they spot Sarah. Robert turns to see Andy there and the relaxed, warmth he’d been feeling immediately runs cold and his body stiffens. Katie’s on his arm, looking frosty. She still hasn’t forgiven him for the rings and ruining the wedding and normally when he’s reminded of it, he feels mostly smug about even if he wishes he hadn’t done it. Anything to wind her up. Now, he just feels ashamed, standing next to his mum. She’d probably have been furious along with the rest of them if she’d been here.

She could have been here, he thinks, looking at Andy. His brother might not have killed her in the end but he took her from him all the same. All the hatred he had for him back then comes bubbling back to the surface, all compressed and forced into a single withering stare. Andy has the decency to look guilty when he looks at Sarah but he hardly even bothers to glance his way, which only makes Robert all the more furious.

All these years, he could have had his mum. When Andy and Jack were united against him, he could have had her on his side. He might have done better in school, on his exams, if he’d had her there to encourage him, rather than just his dad’s disappointment hanging over him. He might not have ended up on that road near Wilson’s field, playing chicken and ready to kill his brother. He might never have been sent away, from his home, his family. So many what ifs swirl around in his head, making him dizzy.

“Hi,” he barely hears Andy say sheepishly even though he’s right in front of him.

“And you’re Andy,” she replies kindly but her expression looks a bit blank and it makes Robert a bit smug to know he has more of a connection with her than him.

“It’s so-I can’t believe-I-“ Andy stutters as he studies her. Robert sees the exact moment he notices the burn scars on her neck because his face goes white as a sheet and he blurts out an, “I’m so sorry.”

There’s tears in his eyes now and Robert’s too although his burn with hatred. Sarah looks taken aback by the display of emotion. She doesn’t have a clue and despite his anger, Robert doesn’t want to be the one to explain it to her. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to.

“I did it,” Andy blurts again, Katie hanging on his arm, trying to calm him down. The early pub goers are staring now, no one else is really there who knows the tale though.

“Did what?” Sarah asks, her face contorted in her confusion. The creases in her forehead deepen more as she tries to work out something she feels like she should remember. This isn’t one of those memories she should have though.

“I’m sorry,” Andy sobs and now Vic’s crying and Diane’s coming around the bar to comfort him and Robert just wants to roll his eyes. Andy’s trying to admit he almost burned his mum alive and they’re still falling all over themselves to be there for him. And what does he ever get? Nothing.

“Oh Andy,” Diane tries to soothe him.

Vic chimes in with an “Andy no.”

Robert doesn’t understand why his sister isn’t more upset with Andy for taking her mum away like he is. It only angers him more, his hands balled into fists at his sides, fingernails digging into his palms.

“I-I-I did it, I started the fire,” he finally gets out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean-“

“You didn’t mean it?” Sarah’s tone is harsh and Robert feels vindicated for a moment.

“I didn’t know anyone was in there,” he tries to explain frantically. “It was-it was for the insurance. It was stupid, I know, but the farm was failing and I wanted to help Dad and-“

Sarah backs up against the bar, using it to support her weight as she sags against it. It’s too much for her, Robert can see that, trying to process it all. Andy takes a step forward, still sobbing out apology after apology but Robert puts himself between them, a stern look on his face, hoping Andy gets the message.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Andy sighs. “I’m so sorry. Please believe that.”

He pulls free of Vic’s and Diane’s and Katie’s grasps and hurries out of the pub amongst the whispers of the punters. Before she runs after him, Katie shoots him a dagger filled glare that promises him death if he makes this worse. He only shrugs at her. Let Andy feel bad for what he did. He should.

Turning back to his mum, he helps her up onto one of the bar stools and Chas who’s joined them, briefed on the situation by Diane, gets her a glass of water. She’s got her eyes closed again and he wonders if she’s reliving the fire. Abandoning some of his earlier restraint, he pulls her into a one armed embrace and she lays her head on his shoulder. He couldn’t save her back then, but he can be here for her now.

—-

“Here you are,” Marlon says brightly, as he sets out their food in front of them. He doesn’t go though, just stands there with his hands on his hips, staring. “I just, wow,” he gasps. “Oh! You probably don’t remember me!”

“No,” she replies politely, but again, Robert can see the frustration simmering underneath. “I take it I should.”

“Marlon,” he introduces himself, “Marlon Dingle. We used to work together once! Like mother like daughter I guess, but well-“

“Marlon,” Robert cuts off his rambling before he sits down and recounts their whole history. There’ll be time for that later if she wants.

“Oh, right, sorry. I’ll just let you get on,” the gangly chef apologizes and heads back to the kitchen.

Sarah hangs her head as he goes, looking a bit defeated, a bit angry at herself. Over her head, Robert shares a worried look with Vic, both of them out of their depth with this. Fingertips pinch at her forehead again, like if she massages it enough, all of her memories will come back to her. He wishes that were the case.

“I should remember,” Sarah chastises herself, staring blankly at her meal. Robert hates seeing her like this, empty. He wants to see the quick witted fire back in her he remembers from his youth. “And I should...I should go after...after-”

“Andy?” Vic provides the name for her with a gentle smile. “Katie’s with him. She’ll sort him.”

“Katie,” she says the name to herself like she’s trying to hold onto it.

“His wife,” Vic fills in the blank. “It just, it took him a long time to get over what he’d done. Seeing you, it’s just brought it all back up.” She pauses, eyes full of sympathy, letting Sarah process the information and Robert keeps his mouth shut, or tries to, managing to only let out a quiet grunt of derision for his brother. “It really was an accident though.”

An accident that changed everything, Robert curses Andy to himself as he pushes his food around his plate. He’s not hungry even though it’s lunchtime now. He should just be enjoying having his mum back but instead he can’t stop his mind from working on overdrive. There’s others in the pub now too, gawking at them. Zak and Lisa are there and Paddy and they’ve got matching bewildered looks on their faces, mouths hanging open and closing so as to not draw attention. Robert sees them though, sees another familiar face wander into the bar as well. He’d forgotten about Aaron, about their barn meeting, his useless phone still smashed up back at Home Farm. Catching his eye, Aaron fixes him with an irritated glare and one of his frowns, this one saying ‘I don’t care about you’. Robert feels his heart sink at that but even as it does, he can feel shame prickling up his spine as he sits next to his mum. He tries to focus on her, on the conversation she’s having with Vic beside him.

“-out of the barn?” he catches Vic saying.

“I’ve tried so hard to piece it together over the years,” Sarah tells her, “but I’ve blocked so much out. I barely even remembered the fire beyond the feeling of burning before today.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Victoria cringe at the words and an apologetic expression wash over his mum’s face. But with his divided attention, he’s still watching Aaron at the bar, greeting Zak and Lisa, having an awkward exchange with Paddy who gives him some kind of envelope. A card. His birthday, Robert remembers suddenly, remembers all the plans he had for Aaron that morning.

“Sorry love,” he hears Chas tell him, nodding in the direction of their table, “You’ve been a bit upstaged today,”

Aaron shrugs and follows her gaze and they lock eyes again briefly but he doesn’t linger on him long before moving onto Sarah. “Who is that then?”

“Sarah Sugden back from the dead apparently,” Chas says it so flippantly, barely scratching the surface on what a monumental moment this is for him. “I never knew her but it’s knocked Vic and Diane for six.” Robert doesn’t miss that she leaves him out.

Aaron doesn’t ignore him though, eyes flitting back to his, widening in disbelief and Robert can only nod to confirm it’s real. For a moment, he’s caught, transfixed in Aaron’s gaze, lost in the concern for him he sees there, and then suddenly he’s back to spiraling, the what ifs assaulting his brain again.

Beside him, Sarah notices a picture hanging on the wall. “Is that Jack?” he hears her ask.

Vic’s on hand with an answer, “Yes! You remember Dad?” Her excitement pours out of her but it does nothing to penetrate the constant barrage of thoughts swimming around in his head.

What if Andy had never lit that match? What if his mum had come home that night?

“Only bits and pieces,” Sarah tells Vic.

He hears Vic’s sigh of disappointment humming underneath more questions.

What if his mum and dad had worked things out? What if she had moved back in?

At the bar the Dingles are talking, Paddy stuttering through a story about Sarah to Chas, Chas mostly ignoring him and focusing on Aaron, asking him if he wants a birthday pint.

What if they had become a proper family again?

“-on the wall?” Sarah asks and he missed the first half. “Did he own this place?”

“Oh,” Vic goes quiet for a moment in time for another question as Aaron ignores Chas’s question about the pint to keep focusing on him.

What if his mum had been there that that summer? When Tom had been helping on the farm?

“He uh-” Vic pauses again and he can see her looking at him for help but he has none to offer.

“It’s alright Victoria,” Sarah tells her, gives her hand a squeeze, her other hand still massaging her forehead. “I want to know as much as possible. Good or bad.”

What if she had found him in his room-

“After,” Vic starts, “after you-well he married Diane.” He sees her point to the woman in question, serving another punter behind the bar. “She put his picture up after he...after he died. To honor his memory.”

-when he kissed- Aaron’s name flashes in his mind before he corrects himself - Tom?

“He was with her before,” he hears Sarah say. “Wasn’t he?”

“I don’t-” Vic stops, unsure of herself.

What if he had told her about Tom in the first place? That he liked him? What if-

“Are you okay?” Vic asks.

It’s too much, he thinks.

“It’s too much,” Sarah says his words out loud, making him swing his head back towards his mum, angry at himself for getting distracted.

She’s got her head in her hands, her face gone pale and she’s shaking ever so slightly.

“Mum!” he shouts over his own thoughts, his voice too loud. He startles her and she turns toward him looking rattled, panicked.

“Mum,” Vic echoes him, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, being a damn sight more useful than him at the moment. “Let’s get you to the back room. You can have a lie down.” She gets her up and looks toward the bar. “Diane?”

“Of course, pet,” Diane tells her, moving Dingles out of the way so she can let them through easier.

Robert abandons their lunches, trailing after them in a daze still himself. It was all too much, the thoughts swirling around in his head, all the pieces of memories flooding back into hers. Maybe the pub hadn’t been such a good idea but she’d wanted to come. She’d wanted more, he tells himself to assuage the guilt. On his way through, he brushes by Aaron, exchanging another glance, Aaron’s eyes full of worry, not for his mum but for him. Their arms brush, shoulder to fingertips and he can’t help but wish it lasted longer before he’s following Vic and his mum and Diane into the back, watching his little sister pull it together to settle Sarah down on the sofa. Diane’s getting her a glass of water and he’s just standing there like a spare part. He should be doing something, offering to call her doctor, something practical. That’s how he usually operates but all he can do is stare, thinking.

After another moment, frozen, Aaron comes through, Chas on his heels, offering help if needed. Robert can’t help thinking that Aaron should be furious with him for missing their barn meeting, should be telling him he’s blown it, that he should pull his investment from their non existent business or something, but instead, he’s just standing there, wanting to help in any way he can. And Robert wants him to.

What if she had known that he liked-what if she’d been alright with it?

“I need some air,” he says suddenly, the words barely a whisper.

“Robert!” he hears Vic shout after him but he doesn’t stop, needs to get out of there for just a minute or two.

---

He’s found himself a spot on the picnic benches, head resting in his hands, body shivering because like an idiot, he’d gone out without a coat on. It doesn’t matter though; he can’t go back in yet. Not until he clears his mind. He shouldn’t be thinking like this. He has her here now and he should be in there helping her. Chrissie should be with him but he’d left her behind and Aaron-

The bench dips underneath his thighs as extra weight is added to it, a pair of black jeans appearing next to his blue ones. Reluctantly, he looks up to find Aaron watching him. His cheeks are flushed from the cold and his gelled hair is being blown free from its hold by the wind, but his eyes are kind and Robert knows he doesn’t deserve them.

“What was all that about then?” Aaron asks him. “They’re all worried.”

“Doubtful,” Robert defaults.

“Your mum is,” Aaron says softly and yeah, maybe just maybe that’s true. He’d forgotten what that was like. “Guess now I know why you stood me up.”

There’s that frown that’s not a frown again and it both settles something in him and flips it on its head all over again. “I didn’t-I meant-” he’s stuttering like Paddy now. “I was coming and then Chrissie-she wanted me to meet the wedding planner.”

“Wedding planner?”

“My mum was the wedding planner,” he explains.

Aaron laughs, covers it quickly, but laughs all the same and yeah, if he wasn’t all twisted up inside, it probably would be funny. He can’t laugh though so instead he watches the little puffs of breath from Aaron’s laugh dance in the cold air in front of his lips before they disappear.

“Wow,” Aaron sighs, shaking his head, before he turns more serious. “What ya doing out here then, eh? I know how much she means to you.”

He does know, Robert thinks. He’s the only one that listened to him when he was upset about Lawrence ruining his speech at her memorial and they barely even knew each other then. Aaron’s always ready to listen, just like now.

“I just-” Only he doesn’t know quite what to say. “Andy was here.”

“Oh?”

“You know what he did,” Robert says. “He told her. I didn’t think he’d have the balls but he told her.”

“Shit,” Aaron assesses the gravity of the situation succinctly.

“And all I could think was what if-” he stops himself. He can’t tell Aaron all of this. There has to be some shortened version, something he can say to make it all make sense. “I could be-if he-never mind.”

Flustered, he pushes himself up from the table and stalks off, hands tucked into his armpits for warmth, getting further and further away from where he should be. His mum is here, she’s here and she’s struggling and he’s running around the village like an idiot because-he can’t finish that thought.

---

Aaron finds him on the bridge, leaning over the railing, half wishing the river was deeper so he could just jump in and let it carry him away for a while. Quietly, gently, Aaron takes the place beside him, mirroring his pose, elbows up on the railing, a small gap between their bodies that Robert dares himself to close. He doesn’t and neither does Aaron. They just stand there in silence for a while, watching the cold water below.

Eventually, Aaron speaks. “I use to play a game with myself,” he says softly. “What if my mum had never left me as a kid? What if she had taken me with her when she went? What if I’d grown up surrounded by my mad family instead of isolated with my dad?”

The word ‘isolated’ strikes him as odd but Aaron rarely talks this much so he listens.

“Would my life have been different?” he continues. “Would it have been better? Would I have been better? Less of the screwed up mess that I am?”

“You’re not,” Robert can’t help himself but say.

Aaron huffs. “Yeah well you don’t know me that well, but you’ve seen-” he pauses, curls in on himself a bit, “my scars.”

Robert thinks back to that night in that - gay bar - what he’d said before he stormed out. He hadn’t regretted it enough then but he does now, seeing the way Aaron looks when he says the words. It was just, being in that place, it put him on edge. That wasn’t him, no matter what box Aaron wanted to put him in. That was one time Aaron wasn’t listening, not properly, not about Andy and the ring. He didn’t get it but maybe now-

“What if Andy hadn’t started that fire?” Robert says. “Maybe he didn’t kill her but I lost her all the same. What if I hadn’t? She always-she always understood me you know?” “Suppose someone had to,” Aaron quips, knocking shoulders with him to lighten the seriousness of the mood. He’s grateful, despite being teased.

“My dad never did,” he admits. “Everything changed when I lost her. My relationship with Andy, Dad. I set out on this path trying to prove- what do you do when you feel like you could have been a whole different person with a whole different life if you’d just-”

“You accept the way things are,” Aaron tells him plainly. “I’ve got my mum back in my life now and we’re in a good place. You could have the same.”

“I’ve missed her,” he blurts out. “So much.”

“I know,” Aaron says, a hand patting his shoulder and pulling him towards him. “Come here.”

A hug. They haven’t done this before and it shows, Aaron’s arms awkwardly wrapping around him, one over his shoulder and one under his arm. They don’t fit at first. Aaron’s on his toes and Robert’s just standing there, too stunned to make an effort. And then, warm, Aaron’s warm and his fingers are clutching at the back of his jumper, bunching up the fabric and tugging him in and finally, Robert allows himself to let go. He buries his face into the folds of Aaron’s worn purple hoodie, hands stretching across his back and meeting in the middle as they press closer to one another. They’ve seen each other without clothes but this is the most naked he’s ever felt with him. It’s too much and not enough all at the same time.

What if his mum had known back then he’d liked Tom? What if she’d known he’d liked boys as well as girls? What if she’d accepted him? What if this could be-no-no-Aaron told him to accept the way things are. He’s with Chrissie. He loves her. They’re getting married. His mum showed up as his wedding planner. She’s there at the pub, back in his life after all this time and he’s here, wasting his time on some fling, something that’s not even real. He can’t do this.

“I can’t,” he sputters, pushing Aaron away.

He tries to ignore it, but he can’t miss the hurt on Aaron’s face. It’s better this way though, to break it off now before either of them get in too deep. And yet-he lies to himself like he has before. He’s got Chrissie and that’s enough. It’s time to go.

“Sorry,” he manages at least before he’s taking off across the bridge and back towards the Woolpack.

“Robert!” Aaron’s call follows him for a time but he just pushes onward, trying not to listen.

#robron #fan fic #unfinished wip that someone should make me finish at some point cause i'm the worst at finishing things

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