#WE DIE OF HAPPINESS EVERY TIME SOMEONE DRAWS ART OF OUR SILLIES!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

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For mermay: #30, wreckage with Danbrey in either SFW or NSFW? Thank you so much!

Here you go! I went with SFW. Dani’s design is based on a Golden Shiner, Aubrey’s on a red-tailed shark.

“Dr. Harris Bonkers? Where are you, you sneaky sea bunny?” Aubrey circles the rocks, sets her hands on her hips and flicks her tail with a frown; for a creature with small fins, that bunny can be incredibly evasive.

“We only have an hour to practice, silly bunny. If you don’t come out, I won’t be able to use you in the show.”

When her pet/assistant doesn’t emerge, she sighs and swims off to her super secret test stage. Then she smacks straight into someone and shrieks in surprise.

“GAHoh, oh my god you scared me.”

“That, that makes two of us” the mermaid she collided with stares at her, golden eyes wide with alarm.

“I’m sorry, this place is always abandoned.” She gestures to the sunken ship, one that’s been here since her grandparents were children.

“I, um, I kind of figured. That’s why I holed up here.” In the filtered sunlight, her tail glitters pale gold. A treasure at the heart of the wreck.

“Are you new in town? I feel like I would’ve remembered seeing you before.” She smiles, hoping it comes across as smooth but not too smooth because she does not want to freak out the cute mer floating in front of her.

“Yeah. I can’t afford any of the spots in town.” She sighs, giving Aubrey the distinct sense this is not a new situation for her.

“You could come live with me! Not like, with me with me, but I live in the Lodge in town and I know there are rooms open. It’s super cheap.”

(If it wasn't, Aubrey would give her the “cute mers with freckles” discount).

“Um, okay, sure. Let me get my stuff.”

“Sweet! Wait, uh, it might take a few more minutes, I have to find my sea bunny.” She swims into the wreck after the other mermaid, poking her head into her pets’ preferred hiding places.

“Is this him?” The mer holds up two woven seaweed bags. On top of one of them is Dr. Harris Bonkers, so white he almost glows in the darkened hull.

“It is! Come here you naughty nudibranch.” She scoops the bunny into her palms, then sets him on her shoulder.

“He’s cute” The mermaid pets his side, “what’s his name?”

“Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD. That last part is a human school thing, but he worked hard for it.”

“Nice to meet you doctor. I’m Dani.” She smiles at Aubrey, the expression as beautiful as moonlight on dark water, “what about you?”

“Aubrey.”

“Nice to meet you too.” She gives the bunny a final pet and swims out of the ship. Aubrey hurries to catch up to her so they can travel side by side.

“So, um, what do you use the wreck for?”

“Magic practice!” Aubrey sweeps her hand through the water, leaving a rainbow of light in it’s wake, “it’s not, like, super secret or anything, but there’ve been a few, um, mishaps that mean it’s better if I practice away from town.”

“Mishaps?” Dani shoots her an amused smile.

“I once made a huge chunk of reef disappear. It took a whole day to get it back. And there was the time some seaweed floated past while I was practicing and turned into a sea serpent. Relatedly, sometimes a sea serpent follows me around and calls me mom.”

Dani laughs and Aubrey suddenly has so many stars in her eyes you could use them for navigation.

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“I mean, it really isn’t. Those are the only big fuck ups, but I’ve decided I’d rather be safe than sorry. I’d hate for someone to get hurt because of me. Um, what about you? Just come to Kepler for a change of scene?”

“Sort of. I’m an open ocean mer by birth but it gets lonely, and sometimes your own kind will chase you off of nice places to call your own. So I decided I’d come here and try to make a home.”

“The Lodge is a good place for it. I, um, I ended up in Kepler after my mom died and my dad and I drifted apart. Mama gave me a place to stay and kept an eye on me; I bet she’ll do the same for you.”

It’s a bet she wins every time. Mama welcomes Dani in with a smile, tells Barclay to make a big dinner to celebrate a new resident, and shows her to her room. Aubrey stays by her side, chatting as she unpacks her bags. Her belongings are sparse, practical, and the only flashy item is a comb with a pearl handle.

They talk until Dani is yawning and Aubrey keeps bumping into walls because she’s too tired to fight the current every freaking second. Aubrey says goodnight, tells Dani to come find her if she needs anything. Dani promises she will, brushing their tails together before closing the door.

As she swims to her room, Aubrey’s thoughts swirl like a school of sardines. Dani’s room is so bare. Dani deserves a room overflowing with beautiful art and sea glass jewelry and vases of sea flowers.

It’s lucky, then, that Aubrey knows just the mers to help her out.

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

“Oh wow” Dani holds the strands of blue and white glass up to the windows, “Aubrey, this is beautiful”

“Glad you like it” she feels like the red in her tail deepens whenever Dani smiles at her like this, “Ned owed me a favor, and I thought some sea glass curtains might make the room more, um, homey.”

Dani swims to her, rubbing their cheeks together, “You’re the best.”

“Heheee, um, I mean, I’m super glad you like it!”

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

“Did you draw this?” Dani turns in a slow circle, searching for the perfect spot to hang the picture Aubrey brought her.

“Nope. Indrid did. He was selling some of his stuff this weekend, and I remember you saying you thought Atlantis was one of the prettiest places you’d ever seen. So I, um, I figured you’d like one of his pictures of it. You know he’s actually from there. Like, he’s one of the citizens who sunk with the city.”

“That’s wild. Wait, doesn’t that make him super old?”

“Yeah. Duck doesn’t seem to mind though, and he tries hard to keep up with the times. He mostly succeeds. Mostly.” She snickers, remembering the time Indrid tried to say he thought Duck was handsome and it came out as “looks like a million red-hot lobster claws.”

“C’mon” Dani hooks their tails across each other, ushering her across the room and causing her to completely forget what she was saying, “help me decide where to put this.”

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

“I wasn’t able to wrap these, but they’re totally a present for you.” Aubrey holds out the two pots of starweeds, “Duck said they’re a great way to garden in a small space. I know you’re helping with the big garden out back, but I kinda figured you wanted some in your room too.”

Dani takes the pots, not bothering to keep their hands from touching, “Thank you, firefins, they’re lovely.” She sets them on the windowsill, picks up her comb on the way back, voice much softer when she asks, “would you brush my hair before we go down to dinner?”

“Sure!” She loves brushing Dani's hair; if it’s the only time she ever makes the other mer sigh happily, the only time those golden tresses cascade down her fingertips, she’ll die happy.

As she carefully guides the brush through Dani murmurs, “my mom gave me that. She said it’s been in our family for generations. Apparently an ancestor was given it by a human lover.”

“Dang” Aubrey’s amazed anything this beautiful wasn’t just swallowed up by the open water, “I’m glad they hung onto it; it really is gorgeous.”

“I um, I, I want you to have it.” Dani turns to look at her just as Aubrey pulls back.

“Dani, that’s so sweet, but I can’t take this from you. It’s you connection to your family. To your mom.”

“Oh.” The mermaid takes the comb when she holds it out, “okay. Let’s, um, let’s just go meet the others.”

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

“...been like that for the last two days. I know you spent a bunch of time in the open ocean, so I wanna know everything there is to know about what dating is like for mers out. I’ve got to show Dani just how much I care about her.”

“I see” Ned rests back in his chair, watching Aubrey as she swims back and forth in agitation, “I shall do my best, my friend. Let me think...gift giving is common, but that’s the case for all but deep sea merfolk. Painting your scales...no, that was southern mers in general. Aha!” Ned snaps his fingers, “because open ocean mers are nomadic, giving them things for building a home is a sign of commitment and romantic interest. If the feeling is mutual, one might also offer a precious item as a token of affection.”

“Precious item? Like a family heirloom? Hypothetically?”

“Yes, I’d imagine that would fit the bill nicely.”

“Aw beans! Thanks Ned, gotta go, talk later byeeeee.”

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

“Dani!” Aubrey rounds a patch of sea grass.

The other mer looks up from where she’s collecting urchins, “Aubrey? Is everything okay?”

“No! Or maybe yes. Dani are you, were you trying to tell me you wanted me to be your girlfriend?”

“Yes, but I’m starting to think that wasn’t as obvious as I thought it was.”

“Nope!” Aubrey launches herself forward, gathering Dani in her arms. The other mermaid laughs, rolling them over to lay in the soft grass.

“I’m sorry” Dani kisses her cheek, “I thought I was being obvious.”

“I mean, I guess you were, we just had a communication breakdown. I just...I can’t believe you’d give me your most treasured possession.”

Dani leans down, kissing her until her lips are buzzing with delight and their tails are wrapped tight around each other, “Sweetheart, the only treasure I need is right here.”

#danbrey #aubrey little/dani #taz amnesty #mermay #mermay fills

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clean-bands-dirty-stories · 4 years

Text

The Best Things ~ J.V. (part 11)

A/n: Don’t mind me, updating a series no one cares about lol. I’ve been toeing the line of what he’s like in other fanficiton and fans’ minds, but with this one I may just cover a side of Jerome y’all might really believe is out of character. I don’t care though. I’m having fun exploring a character and I’m having fun.

Word Count: 5400+

MASTERLIST

There was something different about waking up in the morning to Jerome still being asleep next to you. Or at least that's how Harley felt. Especially because this never happened, and considering what had happened last night. Maybe that was it. The night before was the main thing on Harley's mind as he slowly woke up, his head immediately filling with the memory as if denying him even a second dog bliss from it.

If he was being honest, it made him both terrified and exhilarated. They'd never had sex like that before. Slow and tender and soft. Words of praise had poured from Jerome's mouth nonstop, and it had sent Harley's body in a different way. Rather than fireworks, it was more like lava under rocks. Searing heat that crept through Harley's veins like it was trying to sneak. It made Harley feel infinitely close to Jerome. Made him feel tethered to Jerome. He'd never felt anything like that before, and from Jerome's reactions neither had he. It also gave both men a new fear. Or, a deeper rooted hold on a fear that already existed at the very least.

What if this ended?

What if neither man felt this ever again?

What if they'd unveiling something in themselves last night... and now, in the day time, the other didn't like it?

It was then that Jerome turned, facing Harley, where he'd had his back turned before. "I'm sorry about your friend." His voice was quiet, and Jerome wouldn't look at him.

Harley was surprised by that. He scooted closer, resting his forehead on Jerome's chest. The red head pulled the other man's body closer, tucking Harley against Jerome's own frame. He held onto him, protecting him from the world for a second. It was empowering when Harley leaned into it immediately, reaching his hands so he fisted Jerome's shirt so hard his knuckles turn white.

Jerome had never been comforting before. Safe. He'd never had someone take refuge in him before. It was intoxicating. It made him feel strong and unbreakable. It was more of a high than he'd ever felt before. Maybe just as good as when he put his little shows on and watched people panic and squirm. Harley finding safety in this moment was on par with all the moments other people had found danger in Jerome.

I guess when all you get is the same thing all your life, even if it's good, something new can have a strong effect on a man. Jerome had always been fear personified. He'd been a walking weapon of death and destruction, and somehow in that chaos Harley found himself making a home. It made Jerome feel incredible. Maybe he wasn't as bad as everyone thought.

"Can I see those drawings you did last night?" Harley leaned back so they were looking at each other. Jerome had an odd expression on his face. Not the one Bruce and Jeremiah wore when they looked at each other, but a very close approximation. It made Harley's heart pick up.

"Sure." He slid out of bed to pad to the living room, snagging his drawing pad and returning with it. He sat in bed this time, extending the drawing pad so Jerome could grab it.

The red head say up as well, taking the pad from Harley and beginning to slowly look through it. He took longer than Harley though he had the attention span for, drinking in the different angles and shadows of his own face. He seemed to be scanning it. At one point he reached up and touched his face, his eyebrows coming together. "What are you thinking, J?"

Jerome looked up, a look of concern and confusion on his face. "Is this really how you see me?"

It was Harley's turn to be confused. "What are you talking about?"

He seemed to struggle to explain a few seconds before weakly offering, "I'm beautiful." He immediately scowled. "You make me look... good looking." A deeper scowl. "I mean, I know I'm sexy don't get me wrong, but the way you draw me looks... looks..."

"Pretty?" Harley offered.

"Yes," Jerome groaned, like it hurt him.

Harley bit his lip for a second, thinking. "To me, you were always a work of art. Even before I drew you." He looked at the bed, fingers fiddling with the blanket. "You used to come to my mind all the time when you were dead. I thought of you constantly. Went to therapy over it because they thought it was a side effect of trauma." He snorted, shaking his head. "Turns out I was just infatuated with you." He looked back at Jerome then. "You came to me in dreams when I finally learned how to control my thoughts when awake. Even before we met that day, in person, I was obsessed with you. I used to draw you all the time. I told myself that it was to deal with the trauma of my parents dying, my fixation on death and murderers. People that were considered psychotic and dangerous. And maybe it was, in part. Maybe it began that way. But ever since the first second I saw you, you became this beacon of hope. Hope that in some world, with someone, I could be free from expectation and restrictions. That I could be wild and have fun and be GAY and not have to worry about what other people thought. You stood for the happiness I've been denied since the first day time I ever found anyone attractive." He paused. "Helped that you were incredibly attractive." Jerome giggled at that and Harley's smile widened. "You're so silly." Jerome scooted closer, kissing Harley so deeply he lost all of his breath. He leaned away after too short a time though, tilting his head. "Let's do something fun today."

"Like what?" Harley asked. He was getting good at keeping track with Jerome's zipping thought train.

Considering, Jerome grew quiet. "I want to take you on a date. Something nice." Harley deflated. "It's not smart to go out right now. We're trying to convince Bruce and the police that you're dead. If you're seen it'll all be over."

Jerome pouted. "Let me take you somewhere."

A long sigh came from Harley. "Do you want to die?" Jerome shook his head no. "Do you want to get caught and sent to Arkham?" Another silent no. "Then what the hell do you suppose we do that won't require any people, when we're in the middle of a huge city?"

Quiet groans and Jerome was flopping back on the bed, making Harley smile fondly. "I can't stay here forever, Harley! It's BORING. You get to go out all the time and check in on our dear brothers. Why don't I get to?"

"Because you'd be found out," Harley reminded patiently. "And entrapped. Or killed. Or entrapped and then killed."

There was a pause where Jerome was quiet. "You must go to Jeremiah's again and get me new information." Harley nodded, moving to get off the bed so he could get ready to head out. Jerome was suddenly moving though, pinning him before he could leave all the way. "But before you do that, I would like you to leave me with something to think about. Something to make this day a little more worth it." He licked his lips. "Entertain me, Harley." His eyes darkened and Harley shivered.

"Yes sir." - "Hey Harley!" Jeremiah greeted brightly. Harley chuckled at the boy. How was he twins with Jerome? That lightness and energy came so easily to this man, where Jerome struggled to even accept the idea of adorableness, let alone embody it constantly. But this wasn't the time to think about Jerome. "How did your date with the boy wonder go?" Jeremiah was bouncing on his toes. It was genuinely adorable. "He kissed me."

Harley launched to his feet. "What?" He was grinning, hands outstretched as if deciding on whether to grab him or pump into the air victoriously.

"Yeah!" Jeremiah squeaked.

"That's awesome!" Harley gushed. "Tell me everything! Wait- where's Ecco?"

"I already told her," Jeremiah dismissed, waving his hand through the air. "She picked me up afterward and I filled her ears with it all the way home.

Harley giggled, his nose scrunching in amusement. "I bet she loved that." Jeremiah blushed and Harley winked, nudging his friend playfully. "Okay well now it's my turn. Every detail Jeremiah, I'm serious."

And the red head eagerly delivered. The two boys talked for hours, going from the date and all that happened right into Harley waltzing around the room dramatically planning the wedding and the house and family that would follow. "You'll definitely need at least one dog. You both seem like cat people, but I bet your ass that you two raise a kid willing to rough house with a dog. It's got to be huge then. Like so big toddlers can ride on its back, and whenever it wants to go anywhere it'll just drag you along even if you want to go somewhere else."

At this point Jeremiah had covered his face, laying his hands on the counter and his head in the palms of his hands. "Please stop," he groaned, but both boys knew he had to hide his expression or risk showing off the radiant smile he'd hinted at earlier.

"Fine fine fine," Harley sighed, finally sitting back down. He chuckled, sitting back in the chair. He was lounging, legs spread and arms over the back of his seat. He looked comfortable. It was so different than the Wayne boy that had been seen on TV for years. The one Bruce talked about even. Harley really wasn't Y/n. He was... too much like Jerome to ever be that boy again. "What's with the frown?" Harley asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jeremiah debated on whether he should share his thoughts, but Harley leaned forward, showing that he knew Jeremiah was thinking something and that he wouldn't let it drop. Having gotten to the point where Harley could always pry information out of Jeremiah, the redhead didn't even bother fighting him. "I was thinking about how much you remind me of Jerome." Harley hesitated and Jeremiah rushed to add, "Not in a bad way. But your confidence and ease. Your very presence is so much bigger than it used to be. I didn't know you back then, but Bruce has mentioned how you guys used to be. Mostly because he obsesses over the worry that Jerome is still alive so it comes up often, because I always listen. Once he mentions Jerome, then we talk about how things were in my childhood and then it goes to how his childhood used to be and then you come up." He looked away, obviously self conscious about the way Harley's eyes were drilling into him.

"Do you lie to him?"

That caught Jeremiah off guard. "What?" He looked back with an expression like a deer in the headlights, or a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

"Jerome talked to me a lot." Harley watched his words carefully, being sure not to reveal that Jerome STILL talked to him just as much. "And that day in the tunnels, when Jerome tried to kidnap you. He said you lied about your guys' past."

Jeremiah was quiet for a long time. "I don't lie to him." He paused again and Harley waited for him to continue. When Jeremiah realized Harley wasn't going to let it go, he continued. "I don't tell him what I used to tell our mom. I'm... ashamed. You were right when you said I contributed a lot to how Jerome turned out. But, you have to understand Harley he terrified me. He never threatened me per say, but I was the one who always found the bodies of the animals he mutilated. I was the one he talked about to his fantasies about other people. He... He used to say he was joking, and he never did anything until our mom, from what I know, but he was curious and he didn't have the same empathy as everyone else did. For animals at least."

Harley sighed. "He loved me." Jeremiah looked up sharply. "He told me so. And- and you know what, I believed him." Harley swallowed. "Did I ever tell you how we found out where you were?" Jeremiah hesitated before shaking his head. "Would you like to know?" There was a darkness in Harley's voice. One that made Jeremiah want to shy away. But, he was curious too. It was one of the fatal flaws him and Jerome had in common. So, even though he wanted to run, he nodded instead. "We went to your Uncle Zack's."

Immediately Jeremiah cringed. "Oh god."

"So you know what that man is capable of then," Harley eased, even though his expression had not changed at all. It was the same forced calm that Jerome had perfected. The similarity between Harley and Jeremiah's lost brother in that moment made anxiety twist in the redhead's chest. "You know, if I hadn't been there..." He shook his head. "He heated soup to boiling. He wanted to pour it into Jerome's mouth. Thank god I was there to stop that one. What would it have bee like, being a child against grown adults. No where to run, no one to turn to, and no mercy in sight. No reprieve. If I was Jerome, I probably would have killed that bitch you called your mother too."

Harley expected Jeremiah to snap at him, but he didn't. It made the air get even more thick with dark tension. It set into reality not only what Harley had said, but what Jeremiah wouldn't. That he would have too. "I think I'm going to go work on my prototypes." Harley didn't say anything, so Jeremiah left him alone in the quiet.

There was a part of Harley that felt bad for ruining the mood after they'd both been flying so high earlier, but there was also a part of him that didn't care. So he stood up and left through the maze, standing outside to get some air. To breathe after the stifling pressure inside. He hesitated too long, though. If he had just left right then and headed back to Jerome and forgotten about the conversation for the rest of the day, he would have made it out of there with plenty of time. But he didn't. He hesitated and and he breathed and he closed his eyes and felt the sun on his skin.

That was what gave Bruce the time he needed to pull up to Jeremiah's front door just to see Harley standing there. The boy tripped as he got out of the car, his eyes wide and lips parted. "Y/n?"

Harley jerked at the name, flinching away from it. It eyes slammed open, his gaze hard and angry. After the conversation he'd just had with Jeremiah, he was not in the right place to face his brother. Yet, here they both were. "Mr. Wayne," Harley greeted bitterly.

Bruce looked like Harley had slapped him. "Where have you been?" He shook his head. "Where's Jerome?" He then remembered where they were and looked between Harley and the door that lead to the maze where Bruce's boyfriend was. "Why are you here?"

The chaotic barrage of questions made Harley relax. He had the control in this situation. "I'm here because Jeremiah lets be stay here, when I want to. I check in sometimes and talk to him." Any other answer would get him in trouble, and he didn't feel like setting off his brother so he stayed with the truth, ignoring the other two questions.

The Wayne boy stepped forward, settling on angry between the emotions he'd been battling before. "You're friends with Jeremiah?"

"Sort of," Harley shrugged. "And by the way, it's Harley."

Hands curled into fists and Harley found himself slipping into a sort of distant amusement. His stance solidified, arms relaxing and fingers twitching at his sides. Bruce got hit with the same thought Jeremiah had been before. Harley looked a lot like Jerome in that moment, but more sane. In control. He didn't have that same unhinged factor, which left him far more unpredictable. Harley had the air of someone who would kill everyone in the room and then get away with it. Not for chaos' sake, but because he simply didn't care. Seeing sanity int he face of someone so cold and distant and confident sent a chill down Bruce's spine. What had happened to the brother who radiated sunshine and painted the most odd paintings with even weirder origin stories? The brother that couldn't handle even a little confrontation, let alone stand empty handed and still look dangerous? "I guess it is." Bruce's voice was soft and broken. His anger had fallen away, exchanging for a heart break that made Harley shift away from it like it burned him.

The door behind Harley opened. "Wait wait wait!" The voice belonged to Jeremiah, who was scrambling between the brothers as if trying to stop a fight. Maybe it would have eventually turned into that, but as of now all that was happening was Bruce was staring a Harley, looking for answers, and Harley was looking anywhere except at his brother as he refused to give them.

"You know," Harley mused. "I seem to be ruining the mood a lot today. You two love birds spend time together and I'll keep my distance so that my unhappiness won't affect you. How does that sound?"

Jeremiah launched forward, catching Harley's shoulder. "Please," he begged softly. "Don't go."

"Do you want him to leave instead, because I can promise it won't be pretty if we're both here," Harley spat viciously. Jeremiah recognized a deeper level to the boy though. A hurt that was curling into his face. There was more than just anger driving him to run now. There was fear, and pain. Jeremiah had seen that look on Jerome's face far too many times to let Harley go now.

Jeremiah looked at Bruce. "Listen," he sighed heavily. "You're both important to me. I have three friends, and one of them is more of a body guard who's paid to hang around, and another is... more than a friend, if I'm lucky." Bruce couldn't help how his face softened. Jeremiah cleared his throat. "I need as many people in my life as I can get, because I already basically have no one. You guys are brothers, for goodness sake. Don't let life tear you apart like I let happen for me and Jerome." This he directed at Harley. The words seemed to confuse Bruce, but he stayed quiet despite that.

Harley on the other hand looked ready to go. "He doesn't want me here."

"I didn't say that," Bruce rushed before he could rein his self control.

Jeremiah perked up. "You're the one person that can actually reassure Bruce that Jerome is dead."

Ah, how wrong he was. Harley could not honestly reassure Bruce that Jerome was dead. He could, however, convince Bruce that Jerome was dead- and he was also the only person who could. No matter how much of Harley Bruce saw, every time the Wayne heir looked at the man who used to be his best friend, he would always see Y/n. Y/n, who had never once been capable of hiding his emotions or even considering telling a lie, let alone delivering one convincingly. Y/n, who had always valued honesty - especially when it came to family. Who valued trust over power. Who had been abused and pushed around and broken and destroyed, replaced by someone who used lies to get what he wanted like one uses hammers to drive in nails. Harley would lie without hesitation or regret, and Bruce would believe him because Y/n wouldn't lie, and even if he did, Bruce would be able to tell.

"I killed him myself," Harley reassured, looking Bruce in the eye without hesitation.

Bruce formed an expression that spoke of disbelief and doubt, but Harley could see through that into the desperation in Bruce's eyes. "You killed him?"

Harley sighed. "I do that now."

Obviously Bruce didn't like that, but he seemed to accept it at least. "Why?"

This part was easy. "Because he hurt you." Harley shrugged, kicking the dirt under his foot. "He had no reason to involve you. He just did. He didn't even consult me, and he didn't because he knew that if he had I would have said no. We had a deal- no touching you. He might be my partner, but you're my brother and that's more important. No one hurts you. I made that clear since the beginning." He swallowed. That wasn't totally true. In fact, that day he had encouraged Jerome to mess Bruce up a little. Even kill him. But there had been a hesitance to hurt Bruce since the first day even if it had faded over time. Because the truth was, above even Bruce and Alfred, Jerome was the most important person to Harley now. "He was jealous because I cared more about you. He's kind of an attention whore." That was true. Not that Jerome was jealous, but that he was a slut for attention. The more time Harley spent with him, the more obvious it became. Harley didn't mind in the least though.

Bruce seemed to take a moment to consider this and choose his next words before he spoke again. "He sounds obsessive."

Jeremiah scoffed. "If I had to describe Jerome in one words," he mumbled.

"When I was caught with Jerome at the fair, I only ended up there because the first thing Jerome thought about when he came back from the dead was that the last thing he'd thought about when he was alive was that he'd wanted to kill me." Harley scoffed. "He took his wanting to kill me through death with him. If that doesn't spell obsessed, I don't know what does." That was another truth, but yet again Harley didn't mind. He liked to think of being on Jerome's mind, haunting him as the red head had haunted Harley. He liked the thought that not even death could do them part. Or however that line went, whatever.

There was a sort of melting slouch of Bruce's shoulders. He'd given in. Harley had succeeded. "We're not just going to be brothers again. Neither of us are the same."

"The last time I saw you my boyfriend was trying to kill you, and before that I was convinced you'd been brainwashed by some cult, so yeah we have some catching up to do."

Bruce looked at Jeremiah who perked up. "Wonderful! Dinner, anyone?"

"Actually," Harley edged. "I think we both have a lot to think about. Maybe rushing it all tonight wouldn't be the best idea." For the first time in a long time, Bruce nodded in agreement with Harley. In fact, it had probably been the first time Bruce had agreed with Harley since he had stopped being Y/n Wayne.

"Fine," Jeremiah sighed. "But I expect you two to have a dinner together within the next week. I won't let you just avoid it."

Harley sighed and nodded, turning away from the other two boys and heading toward his car. "Use protection!" Harley called, smirking when he heard the boys behind him groan in unison. Before they could curse him though, he slipped into his car and closed the door, cutting off any attempts of communication. He turned his car on and drove away, letting his smile melt away when he was positive he was out of view. His hands tightened on the wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white. His jaw locked, beginning to hurt after a few seconds it was cemented so. Not wanting to get pulled over when he was in a car that wasn't technically in his name - he'd gotten it a long time ago when he still worked with Penguin - and was, more importantly, a wanted criminal. Focusing on safe driving only got him to the front door though. He slammed it closed, standing in his doorway glaring at the floor.

And then he snapped.

A scream ripped out of him as he reached for the closest things light enough to pick up and began throwing them across the room. Some - a vase, a few dishes that hadn't been taking to the kitchen yet, a table decoration - shattered, while most of it landed safely after crashing into more things - books slamming into chairs, pillows knocking things off the wall, a shoe hitting the edge of a full length mirror hard enough that it tilted, so on. Altogether, he was creating a lot of noise, destruction, and chaos.

Jerome ran into the scene, looking rather startled. Harley wasn't the angry type. He had never been, except the rare times Penguin had been able to unlock long since buried trauma that he wasn't dealing with. Oswald had taught him to both control AND channel his emotions, so that they could be expressed but also make you look more terrifying rather than show as weaknesses and wear you away to nothing. No one had seen this side of Harley except him yet, and Jerome wasn't quite sure how to handle it. In fact, it reminded him a little of... his mom.

When Harley finally stopped, he turned away from Jerome, curling his fingers around his short hair very tightly, tugging as he planted his forehead against the wall furthest from Jerome. The redhead paused before slowly making his way over. "Harley?" His voice was soft. The anger in his boyfriend had unlocked a fear in him that he hadn't felt like this since he was a child. He was scared of Harley losing it again, both because he didn't want to have this feeling get worse, and also because if Harley was upset enough to melt down like this, he might get destructive with himself rather than loose objects.

Or worse, Harley might get destructive with Jerome.

"I'm sorry," Harley croaked. He took a deep breath, finally dropping his hands and leaning away from the wall before turning to Jerome. This was closer to the Harley Jerome knew. A little exhausted from his heavy emotions, but otherwise solid and in control. "I'm sorry J." His voice was stronger now. More fluid and solid. He saw Jerome's expression and slowly approached. Jerome didn't move away. When Harley touched him, Jerome didn't flinch even though his pulse skipped a beat. Not something totally new with Harley, except that this wasn't a good spike. The emotion he felt was new when it came to Harley. "I'm sorry," Harley said again, pulling Jerome to him until their foreheads touched. "Did I upset you?"

Jerome's brain had short circuited a bit. After being free of his mom for years, he'd grown a solid defense against things that reminded him of her. But Harley had waited until he was past all of Jerome's walls and defenses. Until he had become Jerome's home and safety embodied. Seeing such anger now threw Jerome for a loop. How would he leave Harley now if things got bad like it used to be with his mom? I had taken Jerome eighteen years to kill his mother and get away from her, and she had been... terrible. How would he do the same to Harley, who had claimed all of the most important parts of Harley and become essential to Jerome's insanity. Harley was the one who calmed him after nightmares, and defused a situation that set off something that triggered backlash from Jerome's past. Harley was the one who saved him from his uncle and his brother and his past. How would he get rid of someone like that?

"You looked... like her." The words were soft.

Harley froze. "Jerome-"

Jerome turned away and left. He said some joke but didn't hear it, too busy trying to think about how to backtrack and defend himself again from these emotions with Harley's help. "Never mind," he breathily dismissed, waving his hand in the air.

Harley wasn't having it though. He caught the hand, forcing Jerome to stop and face him. His face was serious, but his eyes were soft. "I would never hurt you, do you understand?I might what I said that day I pulled you from that ledge, Jerome Valeska. You lead, I will follow. I love you and I will do anything you ask of me. You don't have to be afraid of me. Even if i get angry and break shit, you are still safe with me."

"You're so dramatic," Jerome sighed, looping his arm over Harley's shoulders. His body had relaxed though. Even if he did a fantastic job of brushing things off and playing like nothing effected him, Harley's words had brought him a sense of peace he would never admit he needed. "I mean, anything? You won't even let me leave or kill our brothers."

Harley blew air out of his nose upon remembering Bruce. "If that's what you really want."

"Really?" Jerome faced him, surprised. Harley had been so adamant about doing neither for the last several weeks. Why change his mind now? Unlike Harley, Jerome was not a good people reader. Not for details, at least. He could tell when someone was scared of him, or when they were intrigued or interested or disgusted. He couldn't read Harley's micro signs though.

Harley rolled his eyes. "Ran into Bruce on my way back today." His lips curled but this time it didn't make Jerome nervous. He couldn't even think why Harley would remind him of his mother. Jerome broke things when he was angry too. Harley hadn't even know Jerome's mom. He was getting side tracked, but Harley spoke again, pulling his thoughts back as Harley's voice always did. "Jeremiah wants us to make amends and catch up. Wants us to spend dinner together. Ugh."

"My brother trying to make the world perfect for him?" Jerome joked. "Never."

Harley chuckled softly. No matter his state, Jerome could always make him laugh. "Yeah. I just- Bruce stills wants me to be that weak little scared boy I used to be. I'm better now. Happier and stronger. Maybe that scares him because I didn't succeed the way he wanted me to, but that doesn't change the fact that I can fight for myself now. I don't just settle and lie down and take shit. If he had it his way, along with everyone in this stupid city, I would sit in a chair in the corner of every room and sit in Bruce's shadow, there to talk to him when he needs company but otherwise be ignored and be okay with that. Alone, by myself, maybe with a girl who I can have kids with." He shuddered and Jerome followed with a scowl. Neither liked the idea of that, "Even worse, I'd be working for my younger brother. Working at Wayne incorporated, or as some sort of side kick as he stop bad guys or whatever." He grunted in disgust. "As if they even know what bad is."

Jerome pulled Harley toward the couch and next to him. When they were both seated, Jerome continued to tug on Harley until the boy curled into the redhead's side. All cuddled up, both seemed to feel a lot better with the words of a future that made both of them sick still ringing in their ears. "You know, if we're going back to being gay and doing crime and all that fun stuff, it might not hurt to be around your brother."

Harley sat up, eyebrows pulled together. "Why him? He's just a cop wannabe."

"He's friends with Gordon though, isn't he? Can you imagine how much power you had at your fingertips when everyone thought you were good and harmless and not even a wisp of a threat? Now you're none of those things, and the only person who knows your true potential is Mr. Penguin." He shrugged, his smile growing. "I've seen you do it before. Heard stories about your escapades with the Little Man, and you've told me before how valuable sneaking is. Never something I did because I never could have pulled it off, but you..." He pointed at Harley, getting excited now. "Why isn't Bruce following you around, or questioning you, or taking you to the police in an attempt to find me?"

Tracing the pattern of the couch, Harley tried not to smirk. "I told him what he wanted to hear."

The smirk that Harley was repressing shone on Jerome's face like light from the sun. Brilliant and bright. He hopped up onto the couch into a crouch, his fingers dancing in the air like he was constructing an orchestra. "What a clever boy. Deserves a reward..."

Now Harley grinned. "What did you have in mind?"

#jerome valeska #cameron monaghan #gotham #male reader #jerome valeska imagine #jerome valeska x reader #jerome valeska x male reader #cameron monaghan imagine #cameron monaghan x reader #cameron monaghan x male reader #gotham x reader #gotham imagine #gotham x male reader #joker imagine #joker x reader #joker x male reader

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komatsunana · 4 years

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My Reincarnation Isekai Villainess Rec List

So. I’ve gone and found myself in Isekai/Reincarnation/Villainess hell. For those who don’t know Isekai is a genre in which character(s) are transported to a different world. Initially you might be thinking “oh, she’s gonna share a both a series like Sword Art Online.” Oh no. You have underestimated the amount of taste I have. By which I mean I have none but that SOA is a taste I’m not here for.

Now a very specific sub-genre of that is the reincarnation one, particularly in which a character is reborn as a character from one of their favorite books or games from their previous, modern life. An even more specific sub-genre of that one is in which the MC is reborn as a villainess from that book or game, thus creating a bit of a challenge as villainesses usually are destined to die in the source material.

So! Here are my favorites, many of which are all 3 but some combine one or two of the above tropes. It’s my list so I do what I want. And most of my faves have a shojo genre tag, or at least a romance tag, because that’s where all the good stuff is:

Survive as the Hero’s Wife by Nokki

Canaria is reincarnated as the villainess of a popular cliche novel. Based on the novel, she is destined to be executed but can she prevent this from happening before it’s too late?

Why *I* like it: So this one was the one that really got me into the villainess reincarnation isekai genre! And it remains the top of my list. The huge draw for me in this one is that I actually really like the main couple! Like not even just lukewarm, I really like it! I’d read fic for it, if that existed. A lot of the villainess genre tend to portray the original heroine as vapid, unworthy of their status of heroine, or the actual villainess but in this case Gracie just turns out to be just an amazing strong woman who doesn’t actually need a man. (In fact I ship the three together full stop tbh lol). In fact, it’s a subplot that Gracie realizes (because of MC’s words) that if she wants to inherit her father’s title even though the law says a woman cannot... That she just should strive to change the law rather than be a tool with no use outside of marriage. And not to spoil anything, but she will definitely do just that.

And since I’m mainly finishing the rough draft of this list out of absolute RAGE at being made fun of for being into this genre.... A compilation of the main love interest, Cesar, because he’s absolutely beautiful. Look at those eyes! He’s such a great example of the sullen, dark love interest because he’s not those things when he’s with his wife, the MC!!! He’s so soft for her. And the whole point is that the love interest shows a different side to their lover right??

And like the great thing is Canaria, the MC, totally doesn’t notice for the longest time. She read the novel in her previous life so she’s *convinced* that one day Cesar will fall for the novel’s original leading woman, and she makes plans accordingly throughout their early days of their marriage. She completely hadn’t thought about the fact that since she’s not being a villainess this time around and not abusing him and everyone around her, and makes friends with Cesar... Like of course the course of events change. It utterly baffles Cesar when his wife keeps bringing up divorce because he’s so completely in love with her and you just gotta eat that shit up with a spoon because it’s so good and perfect drama but also funny.

There’s even a Halloween chapter where everyone wears costumes and basically I believe I was pandered to specifically.

Tbh, the arc going atm is sorta losing my interest but that’s because there’s political intrigue and I’m like just here for the romance lmao. So someone looking for substance and not just fluff might be more pleased than I. But it’s still on-going so. It’s just all in all a fun and great introduction to the genre imo.

I Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags by Hidaka Nami (Art) and Yamaguchi Satoru (Story)

Eight-year-old Katarina Claes is the only daughter of a duke, living her life peacefully and without incident until she hits her head on a rock... and then remembers that she is not actually the duke's daughter. She used to be an otaku who died on her way to school after spending the entire previous night playing Fortune Lover, her favorite otome game. After noticing that her current surroundings seem oddly familiar, she is shocked to discover that she has been reincarnated into the world of Fortune Lover as the villainess.

The villainess in the game usually winds up dead or exiled, so Katarina decides to use her knowledge of the game and its routes to avoid any bad situations. But is it even possible for the villainess to reach a good ending?

Why *I* like it: Ok ok ok, lol. So this one is probably one of the most well-known of the villainess reincarnation isekai genre atm! Particularly because of the anime currently running. And for good reason... the MC is so brilliantly stupid in the best of ways. While she plots on how to escape her fate of being killed or exiled by learning to sword fight and how to garden, she’s more or less seduced every capture target in this dating game... AND all the female rivals to boot AND heroine. The thing is that she is completely unaware and continues training for the day she is inevitably killed or exiled, as per the game’s original ending.

It’s just a silly, fun series and all the women’s feelings for her are taken about as seriously as all the guys’... Which isn’t much because absolutely no one really has a chance of getting this woman to understand they are all madly in love with her. Not a series to take seriously which is part of it’s charm, but it retains a lot of heart especially when it comes to the MC Katarina (affectionally called Bakarina by fandom) remembering her friend and family from her past life.

This series also has a manga spin-off about what if she’d been reincarnated while already in high school and bullying the heroine instead of a child... So basically she’s in hard mode, and yet she still succeeds in getting even more people into her little harem she has for herself.

Whether you chose to watch the anime or the manga (or the LN, which I haven’t got to) you can’t go wrong.

It Seems Like I Got Reincarnated Into The World of a Yandere Otome Game by Hanaki, Momiji (Story) and Setsuri (Art)

As a precocious child, Lycoris suffers from a strange sense of deja vu. On the day her father told her about her fiancé, she realizes that her fiancé was a character from an otome game she once played in a previous life.

“I am the heroine’s rival from the game?

And in the bad ending, I get stabbed to death?

What a joke.”

A story in which the protagonist is determined to avoid a yandere situation.

Why *I* like it: Hear me out! I know what you’re thinking... Yanderes??? But here’s the thing... Just by the MC being kind and getting 2 of the “yandere” characters out of abusive environments, they no longer end up as yanderes as they grow up. They aren’t those tropes any more! While the characters remain protective, they aren’t possessive and are happy to see MC branch out, if a little lonely. And the yandere that remain aren’t treated as hot, but annoying. So like sorry to disappoint if you think yanderes are hot but this isn’t the series for you.

Additionally, unlike other series of this trope, the MC is pretty quick to realize she just needs to trust her lover, that he will not turn on her and kill her as he did in the game nor will he fall for the heroine instead of her. It’s somewhat refreshing, as a huge part of the trope is the MC typically doesn’t realize until it’s spelled out that by not acting as a villain.... the rest of the characters don’t want to harm them... And might even have fallen in love with them.

Another fun aspect is how MC doesn’t remember things immediately, but only remembers things from her past life (and of how the game went) until it comes up. Additionally, she wonders some interesting things that aren’t even mentioned in other series like... What if she’s destined to be exactly like the game character? Will she be forced to be exactly like her? It’s a fun exploration of some common reincarnation isekai villainess tropes if you have experience with the genre!

Ascendance of a Bookworm by Shiina You (Art) and Kazuki Miya (Story)

A book-loving student and soon to be librarian ends up crushed to death by the pile of books during an earthquakes and wakes up as a five year old girl named Main in another world where books are scarce only available to the elite. Main, retaining her memories of her past life, decides to create and print her own books so she can read again.

Why *I* like it: So here is we depart from solely the villainess sub-genre (but only briefly!) Because there is another sub-genre of reincarnation isekai and that’s in which the MC uses the things they learned on our planet earth to re-invent things like shampoo and the printing press. And no other isekai does it better than Ascendance of a Bookworm imo. Main’s love for books leads her to recreating things she took for granted on Earth and starts selling them from a young age... Which might just end up saving her life as she ends up having a terminal disease that ordinarily she’d only be able to survive by being a slave to a noble... But by selling her products she has a chance to save herself!!! And the products she creates are available to commoners, not just the nobles who of course make it impossible for the poor to have nice things.

Additionally, a majority of this trope centers around nobles and royalty (and all the best ones are historical settings)... The fun thing about this one is that it actually centers around a povert stricken family. It’s a good break from the noble hierarchy within most isekai.

Finally, this series is the one that hits most closely to my feelings if I were to be reincarnated in another world... Which is to cry at the realization that I will never finish any of the on-going books and manga I had going on. That’s absolute hell, I don’t know how any of these MCs deal!! ;_;

btw there is an anime and manga both. Also LN but tbh almost all of these have LN.

Isekai Omotenashi Gohan by Shinobumaru (Story) and Medamayaki (Art)

Akane, an ordinary office lady, gets summoned to a different world along with her younger sister and pet dog. There, she ends up treating rare guests one after another with hospitality through meals!! Can she satisfy the citizens of a different world with home cooking...?!

Why *I* like it: Continuing our brief deviation from the villainess trope, Isekai Omotenashi Gohan is my favorite example of another subgenre of isekai - one without reincarnation - but one in which a “hero” is transmigrated to another world to save it... The problem? Oppsie, 2 people were taken. Sometimes in this sub-genre there is a question who the true savior is but in Isekai Omotenashi Gohan’s case they figure that out pretty quickly. They quickly figure out the MC’s younger sister is the savior. At first the older sister (Akane) is set aside as unimportant... But her sister only wants to eat the food her sister makes and it quickly becomes obvious that Akane’s role is important.

Akane makes lots of allies and friends by sharing the food from Japan and of course has a very subtle romance going on with her guard. But honestly I just enjoy this series as a person that likes food manga, like that’s it lmao, so much so that don’t be surprised when I make a best food manga list and yeah sorry Food Wars won’t be on it.

But fr, even if you don’t love the food manga genre try it!! It’s a sweet series and mixes domestic with fantasy in a great way. Plus only a few series are complete, with the rest being on-going, so if you want a complete and finished series try this one!

The Duke's Fiancee, Why She Had to Go to the Duke by Milcha (Story) and Golae (Art)

When Park Eunha dies in modern-day Korea, she awakens in the body of Raeliana McMillan, the eldest daughter of a nouveaux riche baron. However, this is no ordinary world; it's the exact same one as a novel she once read. Beloved by her family, it would seem as though she is in a fairy tale. But Raeliana is far from the main character—she is a mere plot device, whose murder at the hands of her fiancé instigates the entire story.

Raeliana has no intention to accept her fate quietly. She sets her eyes on someone in a position of great power—the vieux riche male protagonist Duke Noah Volstaire Wynknight—aiming to completely change the original story. Using her knowledge of future events, Raeliana offers information to Noah on the condition that he acts as her fake fiancé, but the Duke's two-faced nature throws a wrench in her plans!

Why *I* like it: This one is a fun one!! It really plays with different concepts that don’t often get explored in reincarnation isekai like where did the original consciousness of the character the MC became go??? Because MC only remembers her life on earth and is otherwise treated as though she has amnesia.... But is it amnesia? Is she another person entirely?

Also the humor is... great. Listen I refuse to give the best joke in the series just to make you read it but... the series is worth it just for this running joke.

Of course the romance is good too. The dude is kinda an asshole but she gives as good as he dishes out and it quickly becomes flirting anyway. I don’t want to say too much and give any thing away... but s’good!

Who Made Me a Princess? by Plutus (Story) and Spoon (Art)

The beautiful Athanasia was killed at the hands of her own biological father, Claude de Alger Obelia, the cold-blooded emperor! It’s just a silly bedtime story… until one woman wakes up to suddenly find she’s become that unfortunate princess! She needs a plan to survive her doomed fate, and time is running out. Will she go with Plan A, live as quietly as possible without being noticed by the infamous emperor? Plan B, collect enough money to escape the palace? Or will she be stuck with Plan C, sweet-talking her way into her father’s good graces?!

Why *I* like it: Ok, big sigh. How do I explain the pull ‘Who Made Me A Princess?’ has on me? Now a lot of the pull for many people is how cute the budding father daughter relationship the MC (Athy) has with her dad. But like, her dad is the worst and I want to fight him. On the other hand, most of the fandom hates Jeanette, the MC’s sister who has done literally nothing wrong except make everyone around her miserable but it’s not her fault ok, and I’ll fight the entire fandom in her honor. So it pains me to rec this series knowing that more than likely anyone who picks up this series because of me might have Wrong Opinions and I invite you to tell me just so I can shake my head about another wrong person existing in this world.

Never the less, this series is very cute! All the other series I have recced had the MC remember their past life at early childhood at the earliest, if not as a teenager. Athy? She has the misfortune to remember as a *baby* and it’s exactly as hellish as it sounds for an adult to be stuck growing up as a baby and suffer through the absolute embarrassment of having people feed and wipe her ass.

The MC was an orphan in her previous life and the book that she wakes up in is a shitty book even by her standards but then she really only skimmed it it sounds like that’s what interests me. As Athy makes changes to the original events of the novel and depth is added to the world, I start to wonder if the added depth was in the original novel or if the world had to add its own depth to stand as an actual lived in world?

Additionally, since I made the cover image Athy and her dad you might as well see her with her 2 love interests (and Jeanette!). People need to know who to ship, I get it.

Also I need a moment to appreciate, up close, the beauty of Athy’s eyes. So gorgeous.

Living as the Tyrant’s Older Sister by Aperta (Story) and Chyobab (Art)

When I opened my eyes, I was inside a fantasy novel world! The beauty I see in front of the mirror is the future tyrant’s older sister, Alicia! She’s not even a protagonist or an antagonist, but a character that doesn’t appear much and gets beheaded by the (upcoming) tyrant little brother. My life is all about escaping that fate from the novel. In the end, I seduced the male lead’s merchant friend who also doesn’t appear much and was about to leave the country with him. How-e-ver. The face of the man who spent the night with me was extraordinary, and was the male lead himself!

Why *I* like it: ……………...keke. Ok so this one is one I like just for the laughs. The love interest is an arrogant asshole, but see… The important detail the summary leaves out is that the MC’s… cousin (?) wrote the book that she woke up in! Moreover she’s the one that told her cousin to change the MC of her novel and make him good at everything and also make him a freak in the sack. Like who is really at fault here??? Lmao. Especially when she goes out intending to seduce a character she remembers being rich from the novel and accidentally bags the MC from the novel, aka the dude who kills her and her brother in the original novel.

In seriousness though, it really is funny. The facial expressions of the MC is just… chefs kiss. She’s got a pretty face but then she makes all these goof ass faces and I love it. If you need any more reason to at least give it a go, just know that at one point the male lead comes to check on her, expecting to find her crying and instead…. Walks in just as she screams FUCK at the top of her lungs and then begins a tirade of very creative curses including "Bitch oompa loompa ass bitch" which how can you not love her? Anyway the face the male lead makes after that has me maintaining that’s the moment he fell in love with her lmao.. but this is not Confirmed so it’s not a spoiler!!

EDIT: as of August 2020, I’ve since dropped this series. It remains on the list since I’d still rec it to people looking for a laugh.

Seduce the Villain’s Father by bia and dalseul

Upon opening my eyes after a bus accident, I found myself in the fantasy world of a webnovel I enjoyed reading... the only catch is, I reincarnated 20 years before the novel begins! Reborn as Princess Yerenica of the small Lebovny kingdom, I'm determined to change the future in order to prevent the series of unfortunate events that will soon occur!

Why *I* like it: How many times have you yourself had a suuuuuper side character be your favorite in a series and be depressed to see them done dirty? Well MC has a chance to fix that, to save a character that basically one appeared in prologue and basically prevent the birth of the villain character that later kills his own father… by seducing his dad, before he can marry the villainess!!

Yerenica is just adorable in her attempts to thwart the original novel. And like, I have to give her lots of respect for seeing the villainess character and having herself a good moment where she had to consider seducing her instead lmao. She knows when to let well enough alone though so she immediately boards back on the dad train, much to his chagrin because she keeps calling him father……………….. Even though he’s like…. Not a dad yet.

The characters are still relatively early on in their romance, but I have high hopes for it yet!

Edit: As of August 2020, I’ve dropped this series. It remains on this list because I think it’s a cute series and I think anyone who feels really strongly about the main couple will enjoy it.

Death Is the Only Ending For The Villainess by Gwon Gyeoeul and SUOL

Penelope Eckart reincarnated as the adopted daughter of Duke Eckart and the villainess of a reverse harem dating sim. The problem is, she entered the game at its hardest difficulty, and no matter what she does, death awaits her at every ending! Before the "real daughter" of Duke Eckart appears, she must choose one of the male leads and reach a happy ending in order to survive. But the two brothers always pick a fight with her over every little thing, as well as a crazy crown prince, whose routes all lead to death. There's even a magician who's enamoured with the female lead, and a loyal slave knight! But somehow, the favourability meters of the male leads increase the more she crosses the line with them!

Why *I* like it: So this one is another relatively new one added to my list, but it’s shot high up rather quickly!! The other otome game isekai’s that I have on my list are just like the real world, but the interesting thing about this one, is that it also retains otome game mechanics such as she can see the love interests love meter and also she can chose to use the video game script choices to reply to the characters, in the hopes of raising their love meter. This adds challenge, since she knows that if she gets any of the dudes to -10 she’ll be killed even as she sort of wonders if she truly would die or wake back up in reality.

What’s interesting also is that while she is the villainess character in the game… It ends up that the character was actually abused for years and that her title as a villain is unfair and that the game can be played as the villainess as even a player as a ‘hard’ mode compared to the heroine character. It’s up to her to turn things around and it’s actually a fun take on the villainess genre. I’m really looking forward to how things proceed even as my fears about which dude she’ll end up with continue to increase.

Finally, another layer I enjoy is that the MC lead a similar life in her previous life. She’d only just escape her own abusive family before she’d ended up here and MC just desperately wants to escape once again… using any means necessary.

The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass by SanSobe (story) and Ant Studio (art)

With the marriage of her prostitute mother to the Count, Aria’s status in society skyrocketed immediately. After leading a life of luxury, Aria unfairly meets death because of her sister Mielle’s schemes. And right before she dies, she sees an hourglass fall as if it were a fantasy. And just like that, she was miraculously brought back to the past.

“I want to become a very elegant person, just like my sister, Mielle.”

In order to face the villainess, she must become an even more wicked villainess. This was the new path Aria chose to take revenge on Mielle who murdered both her and her mother.

Why *I* like it: If you thought that this list might be in descending order, guess again! This one is one of my favorites. Now this one lacks isekai, but is a reincarnation of a villainess!! Rather the MC was an absolute horrible person in her past life, but finds out at the last minute that her ~pure~ sister had been leading her by nose into acting like a brat just seconds before she is executed. Now that she has a second chance, she’ll be a proper villainess and turn the tables on her sister.

In her last life, Aria never bothered educating herself so now that she’s a teenager again she actually has to learn things again (it’s not just like she gets to act like she’s a genius and good at everything) but she works hard at maintaining a sweet image and making everyone love her, even as she snickers behind their backs, all the while subtly setting her sister up for failure.

This is a proper revenge story, I’m promised by those who read the LN!! Revenge stories about women are rare to come back, especially one that doesn’t make revenge look like a total evil thing lol. What can I say, I have my interests. Anyway, it’s super cathartic to watch Aria slowly unfold her masterplan to foil her sister’s plans and take everything that her sister had cherished in her previous life. And all that not to mention the certain powers that Aria later discovers she has at her disposal... :3c

Beware of the Villainess by Bbongdda Mask (story) and Pureunkanna (art)

I became the villainess of a novel! Do I hate it? No! I find it rather nice. A duke’s daughter equals a jobless rich person. How can I miss out on a chance like this?! This is the best chance to just enjoy life. I should throw out the main plot and just live life how I want to! Not long after waking up as the villainess, I witnessed my fiancé, the crown prince and the novel’s male lead, cheating. I saw him embrace a lady other than I and he was smiling so bright. I was brought to tears… Just kidding, I didn’t cry! My tears are worth too much to be wasted on that garbage. Instead of tears, I yelled out, “Your highness, are you trash?”

Why *I* like it: Listen there are 2 ways to react to waking up as a villain of a series you once read… Either you turn the tables and become a good guy OR you can embrace it! The world the novel is based on has the basic premise of the pure and good heroine winning the affection of 4 bratty, horrible men. MC is the fiance of one of them and says fuck that. She also has some thoughts that none of these dudes deserve the heroine of the novel but this one is still pretty early on so the jury still out on if she’s going to save this poor girl from her fate of ending up with any of these absolute assholes.

This one is along the veins of the previously mentioned Living As the Tyrant’s Older Sister, in that the pull for this series is even less of the romance and more about the comedy aspect… Also MC’s facial expressions are…. Choice. Just so good. Enough with pretty girls making pretty faces!! We need more girls being ugly. It’s what we deserve. Yell at cheaters!!!!!! Tell them to fuck off!! Yes please.

Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter by Reia (Story), Umemiya Suki (Art)

Although she had reincarnated as the daughter of a Duke's house, by the time she regained her memories, the Ending was already here.

"After he cancels my engagement, the story would have me confined to a church. Where can I find my happy ending?"

Why *I* like it: I never read or watched Wolf and Spice but I imagine this is isekai Wolf and Spice… Well it’s got a lot about the economy at least lmao. That’s literally the only thing I know about Wolf and Spice. Anyway!! The twist in this one is that the MC remembers her past life just as she’s about to be exiled, the end of the original game. What the series focuses on is her life afterwards, as she scrambles to grab at any semblance of a good life… And she does so pretty quickly!

Her past life comes in handy as she sets to work managing a dukedom and fixes the economy!! Moreover, even though it pains my heart whenever two women are pitted against each other… It does a great job of putting into question the original heroine’s pure shtick as she spends extravagantly on dresses and would rather just donate to the poor one day, instead of Iris the MC who sets to work on fixing the economy and creating jobs for the poor and putting money into bettering their lives in the long run, rather than throwing money at them and running. Also, she’s grabbed the attraction of a mysterious man who takes a job helping her even though he is a prince aka the brother of her ex-fiance who he is fighting for the crown for.

And that’s it!! My list for now!! Tbh by next month there’ll likely be even more faves as I continue to add more and more series to my read list lol. Because this isn’t even a fraction of all the reincarnation isekai series I’m into, just the best for certain reasons.

BTW, if you’re like... wow this list sure is straight then true unfortunately. I’m waiting for the day “I Favor The Villainess” gets adapted somehow. Also there are several isekai in which a straight girl reincarnates into a yaoi novel but I haven’t found a true gem among them yet.

#isekai #i scream #long post #recs #this post was sponsored by pure spite #but frankly yes i know i didn't have to go this far #but this is just who i am... which is too much

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hottestthingalive · 4 years

Text

Bluebells (1)

Chapter 1: Seeds

AO3 Link here.

Chapter 2 here, finally!

Notes: So, to those of you who saw this post about my WIPs which mentioned this having background Roceit and Intruality in later chapters of this story?

...I accidentally became way too invested in the idea of Virgil making fun of Patton’s new boyfriend being called Prince. So you get that now.

The name of the chapters comes from an interesting fact I learned about bluebell flowers while researching this story: they take at least five years to grow from a seed into a bulb, which they have to be before they flower. The first chapter takes place six or seven years before the events of the main story, so I found it very appropriate. This story should only be three or four chapters long, but who knows -- I have lots of ideas for these boys.

Plot: Logan encounters a strange boy in the woods. His name is Anxiety, and he's hiding in the flowers.

Relationships: budding romance analogical, hinted dukeceit, royality in later chapters, remile in later chapters, platonic DRLAMP

Tw: Cursing, faeries, mention of death, mention of kidnapping, dead parents. (If I missed anything, let me know!)

---

He didn’t understand, and it bothered him to no end.

Logan first saw the human in May, when the sun stayed long and the moon appeared less. The flowers had started to bloom, the trees green and vibrant, with alternating days of hot sun or torrents of rain.

The faerie quite liked May. He preferred winter, of course, being Unseelie, but some nights in the spring he could look up at the sky and see every single star, and stars fascinated him to no end. Besides, there was no one telling him to do his job in the warm months (for there was no snow or cold, blustery winds in the time of the Seelie), and without the pestering to summon winter he could be alone. Logan enjoyed his solitude.

That is, he had, until the human child had stumbled into a flowered field in the small section of the forest the Unseelie had managed to mark off for himself.

The boy (or at least Logan guessed he was a boy; he had never been good with human age or gender. Fey just were, and though Logan had known he was male early on, many didn’t care about such things. It was such a human concept, after all) was carrying a black book in one hand, a knapsack slung over one shoulder. He sat down in the field, and suddenly he was gone, hidden in the bluebells.

The fey squinted, trying to see the strange mortal in the flowers, but the boy had achieved almost perfect camouflage.

Logan had never seen him before, not in the forest. Humans rarely dared tread in the woods, for fear of its elven inhabitants. This one was an anomaly, and it was positively fascinating. Especially one so young -- he appeared to be less than Logan’s own age, making him maybe seven or eight.

This went on for some time. The strange male would appear in the field, plop down among the bluebells, and stay there for some time, while Logan watched from the branches of the trees. When he finally left, Logan would check the place where he sat, searching for a sign as to how this mortal could hide so thoroughly.

It was on the seventh appearance of the sun that he found something strange: a piece of white parchment, with a sketch of the forest. The detail was quite good for the hand of a child, Logan had to admit, but it wasn’t the quality of the drawing that bothered him. It was the face in one of the trees, undoubtedly his own, with a line of scribbled human glyphs scrawled beside it. They took but a second to translate.

Just come say hi.

How had the mortal seen him? It was undoubtedly dangerous, Logan’s instincts told him. Best to abandon the area, warn his court, and allow the Seelie to deal with the small human intruding in the fey woods. Nevermind that the spring and summer fey were notoriously thoughtless, and might kidnap the child. Nevermind that they would likely forget that humans did not live as long as fey, despite (in their early years, at least) growing at the same rate. Nevermind that, eventually, after often forgetting to provide food or care for their pet human, they would throw him out for aging, or keep him till he died.

No, Logan was to disregard all of that.

The next day, Logan found himself creeping through the field, inching his way towards the bluebell patch. The faerie found his pride in his magic: he was quite good at it, and so he expertly used the flora to mask his presence. There was no possible way he could be noticed.

“Hi,” the boy said, looking up and straight into Logan’s eyes. The human’s own irises were green, a deeper green than he would normally expect from a mortal, the color of grass and oak leaves. “Finally! I thought you would never talk to me.”

Well. That wasn’t right.

“How did you spot me?” he demanded, dumbfounded. He found himself adjusting his black shirt subconsciously, in a state of mild shock.

“It’s a secret,” the child grinned. “What’s your name?”

How rude, Logan thought.

I shall never speak to him again, the rational part of his brain decided. He probably has magic, and is a danger to me and all others of my kind.

But he’s fascinating, said the uncontrollable, irrational, annoying part of his brain that was always championing silly matters like friendship and personal interests over actually doing his duty, which would logically be to report this at once. And I do occasionally get lonely…

“You may call me Logic,” he heard, realizing a second late that the words had come from his own mouth. “Which is an alias, of course, but it is the only name you shall get.” Logan had gone by the name for years, choosing it just as every other child did, in this world where true names had power.

“I figured,” the mortal smiled, with his green eyes crinkled and the absence of one of his front teeth distinct. “I’m Anxiety.”

“Why choose ‘Anxiety’?” Logan asks, years later. He receives that same smile, although the adult tooth has long since grown in.

“Why’d you choose Logic?” the male in front of him asks in turn, and Logan responds by blinking.

“I don’t believe I know,” he replies.

“Exactly,” his compatriot shrugs. “It just felt right.”

“Are you a witch?” he queried weeks later, sitting cross-legged besides Anxiety and holding a book in his hands.

“A witch?” Anxiety repeated, looking up from his sketchbook.

“Bluebells are sometimes called harebells, especially in Scotland,” he said, “because witches are supposed to turn into rabbits to hide in the flowers. It is almost impossible to spot you without knowing if you are here; maybe you’re a witch.”

“Last I checked, I can’t turn into a rabbit,” the boy laughed. “Maybe I summoned you, though, by ringing the bluebells.”

“They are not literal bells, Anxiety.”

“My dad used to tell me that if you rang bluebells, faeries would come,” he shrugged. “But if a human hears a bluebell ring, that means someone dear to them will die.”

“You humans have such morbid myths,” he told his mortal companion, looking at the flowers. “A bluebell cannot make a sound, anyways, so if one hears something it would be purely coincidental.”

“It’s fun to think about though,” said the human beside him, and Logan looked over at Anxiety, who was sprawled on the grass, staring at the clouds in the blue sky. “Hey, that one looks like a cat eating pasta out of a bucket.”

He looked at the cloud in question, and had to admit it did appear so, as odd the image was. “Why do you humans engage in these flights of fantasy?” Logan asked, despite himself.

“Coping mechanism, probably,” he replied, with the air of a child that, despite their age, knows enough about the world to call themself Anxiety. “Don’t you?”

“The Seelie, perhaps,” Logan sniffed, “but my court is far more realistic in our views than those sparkly fools.”

“Fair enough,” laughed the mortal.

Logan soon found himself spending the spring and summer with the boy called Anxiety, sitting in the field. Anxiety brought him books written by humans when Logan got bored of fey texts, and in turn, the faerie deigned to ‘show off’ a bit, demonstrating his magic one day by summoning shadows and a storm. He couldn’t deny the fact that he had been quite happy to see Anxiety wasn’t scared at all, instead laughing as the rain fell around them and Logan scrambled to save their things because “We must save the books, Anxiety!” Once everything was stashed in a hollow tree, however, he managed to get a good look at the boy he had started to think of as a friend, and a laugh was shocked out of him. Anxiety’s bangs were plastered to his face, covering his eyes.

“You look as though a mop has adhered itself to your skull,” Logan informed him, unable to hide his smile.

“What’s that weird thing you’re doing with your face? Are you okay?�� Anxiety asked, sarcasm negated by his own grin. Logan rolled his eyes. He knew he did not smile often, but still -- those levels of cheek were unwarranted.

He learned Anxiety was ten, older than he would have guessed, and only a month younger than Logan himself. That he loved poetry and sewing and art but didn’t think he was really good at any of them, and would be mocked for these interests. That his parents had died when he was quite young, and he now lived with his elderly grandmother, who let him run off anywhere as long as he was in his bed the next morning. She had homeschooled him for his early years, and would only send him to an official establishment next fall, which told Logan why Anxiety wasn’t with his fellow human children in their brick school during the spring. It also explained why he’d been allowed to enter the fey woods at all, what with the healthy fear the locals had developed of the place.

In turn, ‘Logic’ had revealed his love for the stars, (which led to Anxiety sneaking out one night to stargaze with him in the bluebell field), how he’d kept a lizard as a pet one summer, but released it at the end because a cold-blooded creature likely wouldn’t survive the winter months, and how he reported directly to the Unseelie ruler, because all fey had a job, young or old. “It’s just the way it is,” he explained. “I have responsibilities to my court, as do all fey children.”

“Bit like child labour, though,” Anxiety pointed out.

“For humans, maybe,” he conceded, “but we mentally develop much faster.”

“But you live longer, so shouldn’t you get to embrace your childhood before your infinite adulthood?” reasoned the other, watching the ladybug that was clinging to his sleeve.

“Not infinite,” Logan replied, and Anxiety raised his head in interest. “We live a very long time, to be sure, but all fey die eventually. When we run out of magic, we age and perish.”

His friend considered that -- and Logan considered the human boy his friend, now. That notion had snuck up on him, it seemed, surreptitiously changing his label of ‘acquaintance’ to one of friendship.

He didn’t really mind.

Fall came in colored leaves and bursts of chilly wind, of flowers wilting and apples ripening in the trees. Logan attended the passing of the seasons, or the transfer of control, from the Seelie Court to that of the Unseelie at the equinox. It was in the deepest part of the forest, the part that joined the realm of the fey to the human world.

Logan wasn’t entirely happy about their regained dominion. He should have been, he knew: logic dictated it! With winter, his powers increased, and he gained structure and work he loved. Why would he not be glad?

Well, remarked the treacherous little voice in his head, we can’t spend time with Anxiety in the winter, now can we?

It was true, he mused as the crown of the fey on the podium shed its vibrant flowers and its green leaves turned red, orange, yellow, and brown. He’d be very busy, for one. Talyn, leader of the Unseelie, had promised him greater responsibility this year. And besides…

The woods were dangerous enough when the Seelie ruled. But Logan’s court had a tendency to be vicious, and they did not attempt to hide their darkness like their flowery counterparts.

Were Anxiety to be discovered in faerie woods in winter…

He didn’t want to think about it.

“Logic!” called a familiar voice, and he turned to see two identical faces waving to him.

“Prince, Duke,” he nodded. “I trust you are well?”

“Oh, Lolo, don’t be so formal with us,” Prince grinned, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “We’re friends, after all!”

“Or are we making you nervous?” smirked Duke. “No, something else is! You’ve got a secret, don’tcha?”

Logan’s lips thinned. He’d forgotten how alarmingly perceptive the Unseelie half of the brothers could be.

Prince and Duke were oddities among the fey, the children of parents from both courts. Prince was Seelie, Duke Unseelie, but they had remained close even when the courts did their best to seperate them. Now, they had achieved a sort of notoriety. Joan, leader of the Seelie court, was said to be molding Prince for his own role, and Talyn had already offered for the Duke to study under them. He had rejected the offer, saying that he didn’t want the vulnerability of fey leadership, and a faerie called Deceit had been selected instead.

Secretly, Logan suspected Duke’s reservations had less to do with every faerie in both courts knowing his true name (which was a requirement for Talyn and Joan, just as it had been for all fey leaders before them) and more to do with the restrictions being trained by Talyn would put on him. He loved his chaos, after all.

“I don’t see what my personal affairs have to do with you,” he said, rather coldly. “No offense meant, of course.”

“Oh, Logic, you break our hearts!” Prince cried dramatically, clutching his chest. “How could you say such things to your bestest and oldest friends?”

“Advice’s by far the best of my friends.”

“Oldest friends!” Duke countered.

“I have known Deceit for far longer than either of you.”

Duke colored at the name (could he be any more obvious with his little crush?) and Prince exclaimed, “Friends!”

“...Dubious,” Logan said, turning back towards the proceedings.

“C’mon, Logie, we both know you’re bored out of your mind having to watch this mind-numbing shit,” Duke told him, grinning. He was missing three teeth. Fey aren’t supposed to lose teeth, the tiny part of his mind that hadn’t given up yet pointed out. “Let’s leave, and then you can tell us all about your little secret.”

“I will not be telling you anything,” he sighed.

But he ought to. He knew that. It was why he had been avoiding Advice lately, who had gotten a little too good at reading people after beginning his job as a healer. It was why after the meeting Logan threw himself into his work, so as not to cause any issues, any reasons for his court to keep an eye on him. It was why he began following Anxiety when the human boy left the forest each day, making sure he couldn’t be taken on his way home.

Winter came and Logan began to change, as the power of his people’s season grew within him. His features, already pronounced, became sharper, hair longer (more wild, Anxiety said, as he attempted to braid the dark locks), ears, nails, and teeth more pointed. He changed his clothes for winter, of course, wearing a night-blue cloak lined with rabbit fur over his usual dark attire, and grudgingly trading bare feet for boots. Anxiety laughed at him a fair bit, for that (“What’s your problem with shoes?” he had cackled, as Logan sulked besides him) but after he had to switch his sweatshirts for a heavy black parka, the human joined the fey in petulant anger.

One day, Anxiety asked why fey changed appearances in the winter, gingerly examining Logan’s sharp nails, which bore an uncanny resemblance to claws. Logan replied that they didn’t -- they changed for summer, or Unseelie did at least. His winter form was his true one; the one the human had first encountered was a disguise of sorts, a way to blend in among the Seelie, a defensive relic from when the two breeds of faerie were at war.

He was afraid, then, looking at Anxiety, that he would flee. Unseelie were always the evil fey in human stories, not the playful tricksters but the monsters in the dark, and this human seemed to know every story, reciting them from memory to Logan as they lay in the field, watching clouds in the sky.

But Anxiety simply hummed quietly, looking up into Logan’s eyes. “Those don’t change,” he said, motioning to them. “Must be pretty easy for the Seelie to recognize, huh?”

“Why would my eyes be easy to recognize?” he asked, blinking.

“They’re beautiful,” the human shrugged, far too casual, and returned to his study of Logan’s nails. “Hey, maybe I could paint your nails. My friend Morality’s been teaching me how.”

(And if the tips of the faerie’s pointed ears turned red, his cheeks dusted with a similar colour, Anxiety was kind enough not to mention it.)

He knew it was dangerous, still meeting the human, but Logan still found himself entering the clearing each day, even though the bluebells had all wilted by August and the other flowers followed quickly, even as the grass turned brown. Sometimes, Logan told himself that it was because he wanted to learn from Anxiety, or because he wanted to interact with someone his age, or because he was simply ingrained in his habits. Always a new excuse. Nevermind that the information the human could teach him was nothing compared to his own vast reservoirs of knowledge, that Deceit, Prince, Advice and Duke were all his own age, and two were even of Logan’s court, that he was a faerie, and the fey did not do routines, as creatures of the wild.

The truth was, he found a certain amount of joy in meeting with someone who seemed to understand Logan’s reluctance to conform to the standards of his court, who was kind and laughed easily and shared stories and secrets and songs without any cost. The truth was that he was just a bit selfish.

Logan’s selfishness would come back to bite him.

It was fall on the cusp of winter when it happened, a crisp afternoon in early November, and a Wednesday. This meant that Anxiety could only come later in the day, and carted along a backpack holding papers and books and math. As far as Logan could tell, math was a game with numbers with many nuanced rules, that he rather liked and Anxiety hated.

To make sure that the human managed to reach the clearing safely, Logan had begun to meet him on the path that was Anxiety’s way through the forest, using his magic to mask the two of them from the Unseelie patrolling the woods. Anxiety found it funny (he didn’t seem to quite understand the true danger the forest posed him) but a bit irritating, so Logan grudgingly met him halfway down the path instead of at the line of trees that seperated the forest and the town.

So he sat in the woods, that Wednesday, high up in the branches, and waited, lost in thought. It had been several months since they’d met in the beginning of May, spending time together almost every day. He had expected the human to have run away in fear by now, to have stopped coming into the forest, to have been scared off by the magic or the changing of shapes or simply by the power Logan held. But the aptly named Anxiety (he was scared of so many things, of sharks and snakes and clowns and drowning and dying and blood) wasn’t afraid of Logan at all, it seemed.

It was nice, not being feared -- even among his own people, he was treated with a healthy amount of caution. Faeries did not trust. They found security in favors, in debts, and even family, like Prince and Duke, eyed each other with suspicion. But the human boy believed so easily, never asking for a favor or a name, giving and never asking for anything in return. It did not match with what Logan knew, of humans or of fey.

...Anxiety was late.

He held out for two minutes longer, before he finally stood and darted through the branches, feet finding footholds that should not have held them, moving through the air and ignoring the fact that occasionally he never touched the branches at all. Such was being a faerie.

Later, he would think back on the moment and thank the forest he had been so lucky. If he had waited a minute longer, had decided to run along the ground instead of in the trees, if he had listened to Anxiety when he rolled his eyes the day before and said “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me,” when Logan had told him to be careful…

Logan found his human (sometime in the past months, the human boy had become his. When, he didn’t know, but it had happened so easily, Anxiety sliding into his life with his drawings and poetry and laughter and settling in like he had always belonged. If he believed in things like that, Logan would think it was fate.) standing frozen in the dirt path, eyes glazed and unfocused, books spread around him and backpack lying in the dirt. Unseelie had swarmed him, two of them examining the human in their midst as one -- Deceit, Logan realized in shock -- worked his magic to keep him in a docile trance.

“Why did he come here?” another faerie asked, one Logan vaguely recognized. From his recollection, he was named Raven. The third he had never met, and seemed a fair bit older than the other two and Logan himself -- Deceit, Raven, and Logan were all young fey, Raven the oldest at maybe fourteen and Deceit almost the same age as Logan himself. This faerie, however, despite appearing to be in their early twenties, had an air of age, and he would guess the mystery individual to be in their hundreds.

“It doesn’t matter,” the older Unseelie smiled, a grin appearing on their face. “It’s just a human boy. Kill it or take it.”

“He -- He’s our age, Lady Belladonna,” protested Deceit, his brow furrowing. “A child. Shouldn’t we just send him away?”

“Oh, not he,” the apparently female faerie snarled, reaching out to grip Anxiety’s blank face in dark nails. “Humans… humans are beasts. And they call us creatures of the dark! It has no more rights than an animal, age or not. Maturity has never affected the ways of the fey.”

“But Lady--” Raven protested, looking as disturbed as Deceit, but he never got the chance to finish his sentence. Logan had heard enough.

Lady Belladonna, whoever she was, had been correct. Maturity had very little to do with fey; age meant time, and a faerie scorned time, even physically. So Logan, young as he was at barely eleven winters (Logan had turned eleven just a few days ago -- Anxiety had given him some of the mechanical pencils he had liked, as well as a decorated case. He had said it was a ‘birthday gift’.), had power, power enough to reach out to the minds of the three fey and push them into sleep.

He’d always been good at manipulating the brain -- better than even Deceit or Advice.

The three Unseelie crumpled to the ground, eyes shutting even as they tried to resist, pushing back against his influence. The clearing soon quieted, silent but for the sound of quiet breathing and the wind in the trees.

Logan knew he had succeeded when Anxiety blinked and the haze over his eyes disappeared, Deceit’s control gone. The human gasped, stumbling backwards, and at that moment Logan finally emerged from the branches to pick up the backpack and the books, nodding in greeting.

“Logic?” Anxiety asked, sounding small, staring at the fey slumped around him. “What -- what happened? Are they…”

“Merely sleeping,” he replied, motioning to the rise and fall of Raven’s chest. “They will be alright.” His face hardens. “They deserved worse. What do you remember?”

“All of it, I think. They surprised me, and that one that looks like a snake did something -- I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t scream.” He hesitated, staring at the female faerie. “She wanted to kill me?”

“Or take you to our realm,” Logan said, straightening, Anxiety’s backpack in one hand and his books in the other. “Here. I need to make sure they don’t remember this encounter.”

The human took his belongings, watching as Logan crouched by the sleeping fey, touching his fingers to their temples. It took only a few seconds to alter their memories, to make them believe their enchanted sleep to be the result of a backfired spell by the Lady. (He takes special pleasure in placing the blame on her.)

He altered first the memories of Raven, then Belladonna, and then he reached for Deceit.

A yellow-gloved hand reached up to grasp Logan’s wrist.

“Logic!” Anxiety exclaimed, a fearful squeak, rushing forwards, but Deceit spoke before he could aid him.

“Thank you,” the young Unseelie whispered, eyes forcing themselves open.

“What?” Logan asked, unable to keep the shock from his voice. Deceit was one of the few faeries that could lie without repercussions, but the thanks seemed genuine. Whether he had become far better at lying than Logan had thought, or…

“She would have murdered him,” Deceit laughed, a harsh sound. “Probably would have made me do it, a test for Talyn’s protégé. I definitely would have been able to casually murder a kid my age.” Sarcasm practically dripped from his words, before his tone softened. “So, thank you, Logic.”

“You released Anxiety from the spell, didn’t you?” he realized, blinking down at the barely-conscious faerie. “You’re going to get yourself killed, Deceit.”

“Wipe my memories,” he shrugged. “I’ll be fine. But be careful, okay? Belladonna isn’t alone in her views. There’s fey from both courts that are now advocating for violence against humans. Your boyfriend will need to be cautious.”

“He’s not my -- we aren’t -- we are far too young to be courting!” Logan protested, knowing full well his face was as bright as a rose, ears burning. Anxiety was in much the same state, although Deceit simply rolled his eyes.

“Of course you are,” the faerie sighed. “Just… keep an eye out, Logic. This forest has gotten dangerous, as of late.”

His eyes fluttered shut. A few seconds later, his breathing evened. Logan was rather impressed -- Deceit’d held out against the spell for far longer than he would have expected anyone to be able to. Luckily, the strange resistance didn’t carry over when he moved to alter his memories, and soon he stood to face Anxiety.

“It… It would be understandable if you decided to terminate our friendship,” he finally muttered, unable to meet the human’s green eyes. “You have now seen the truth of my people. We are vicious, and killers, and-”

“And you rescued me,” said Anxiety, voice startlingly calm. “And that other faerie -- Deceit, right? -- he didn’t want to hurt me either. I don’t think you’re vicious, or a killer.”

“Anxiety, you’ll be in danger if you continue visiting me. You could lose your life!” Logan exclaimed, motioning to the fallen faeries around him for emphasis, because the stupid human didn’t understand, didn’t get that he might die or worse!

“That was always going to be true, dummy. We’re in a faerie forest. I’m a human,” Anxiety deadpanned. “C’mon.”

They walked through the woods to the clearing in silence, Logan working his magic to render them invisible to prying eyes, Anxiety staring at the dirt under his sneakers. The forest was still, for once.

The two arrived in their typical spot, standing near where they knew the bluebells would grow again in spring, hearing dead grass crinkle underneath their feet. The human set down his belongings, and hesitated, suddenly still.

“Are you alright?” Logan asked, glancing over. Anxiety was staring at the ground again, arms wrapped around himself in a sort of makeshift hug, bangs covering his eyes.

“I… You saved my life, Logic,” the other said, voice choked, and there were glistening tears streaming down his pale cheeks. “I would have died.”

Logan had never been good at feelings. He’d be the first to admit so -- they were Prince or Advice’s department. Still, he found himself moving forwards, pulling Anxiety into a hug, ignoring the tears wetting his cloak as he did his best to replicate what he’d seen Advice do for distressed fey.

“I don’t want to die,” he heard, whispered into his shoulder. “I don’t want to die, L.”

“I won’t let you,” promised Logan, and heard from his own mouth, before he could even think about saying it, “I’ll protect your life with mine, if it comes to that.”

Anxiety let out a laugh at that, his grip tightening. “Well, that’s not very fair. You’re not allowed to die either, okay? I’ll protect you too.”

Logan had a response on the tip of his tongue (“You’re a human, how would you preserve my lifespan in any way?”) but a searing pain through his left eye interrupted him, and nothing more than a gasp of agony escaped the faerie. They seperated, Anxiety clutching the right side of his face.

The feeling disappeared as quickly as it had manifested, and Logan immediately looked up, searching for their attacker, and instead found the human’s previously green eyes.

The right one was a bright, shining purple.

Anxiety’s mouth was open wide. “Logic, your eye--” he began, before reaching into his bag and fumbling for his communicator square. (Phone, he called it. Logan did not quite understand, but avoided touching it anyways -- it appeared to be made of metal, and he would not risk contact with iron.) He turned it on, before switching to a screen that reflected both of their faces.

Logan had only ever looked at his reflection to ensure his presentability. He knew his eyes were different from those of humans, of course; Anxiety’s had circles of green around a black center, set on a white background, but Logan did not have those divisions. Color spread across the whole surface, lacking in whites, pupil, and iris. “Your eyes look like the night sky,” Anxiety had told him once, and he supposed the human was correct -- normally, they were a dark purplish blue color, with pinpricks of pale light across the surface. Still, he hadn’t understood why Anxiety had seemed so fascinated. (“Is it accurate?” the human had questioned. “Is the placement of the stars right?” Logan had eventually flushed red as the other tried to find constellations in his eyes, Anxiety had noticed and retreated, and that had been the end of that. He’d never brought it up again.)

But now his left eye was crossed with a pattern of greenish blue, like the aurora borealis in the Unseelie realm that his parents had taken him to see when he was very small, vibrant against the indigo background.

“What happened?” Anxiety asked, staring at himself on the screen of the phone, reaching up as if to touch the purple ring, ensuring it was truly there. “How -- why -- what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Logan said slowly, staring at his newly heterochromatic eyes.

Perhaps this is the price of befriending and saving a human, he thought to himself, meeting Anxiety’s panicked eyes with his own. Perhaps it is a curse, or a punishment from the gods. A physical marking of my shame, of forgetting to take a name, a favor, a price, as is my nature.

“It’s okay,” Anxiety said, reaching out to take Logan’s hand and squeezing it gently. “It’s okay, L. We’ll figure it out. Besides, it looks cool as heck, right?”

“...That it does,” he nodded after a beat, returning the gesture, a wan smile stretching his lips despite the situation.

“Let’s… Let’s not worry about it for now,” suggested the human. “We’ve got better things to do, right?”

“Definitely. We had best get started on that math homework.”

Anxiety let out a laugh at that. “Ew. How about we just cloudwatch for now?”

They sat in the empty field, where their flowers would grow again come spring, and watched white fluff form in the blue sky through mismatched eyes. He glanced over at Anxiety, who smiled and reached out with his hand. The faerie took it.

If this new coloring is a curse, it’s worth it, decided Logan, flashing a smile at his boy of the bluebells before returning his gaze to the sky.

At first, the change took getting used to. Fey whispered Logan had made a deal with the forest, had become vain and done it cosmetically, had been cursed. Humans said much the same about Anxiety. As time passed, however, and the colors didn’t change, those inside and outside the forest learned to accept the change. No one questioned it anymore, and eventually the two learned to forget the day in the clearing, to pass it off as a spell gone wrong in Logan’s case and an eye injury in Anxiety’s.

Neither of them found an explanation for it either, but it soon became apparent they didn’t need to. They had each other.

That was what mattered.

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softjeon · 6 years

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Cinnamon and fairy dust | Final

• Pairing: elf!Jungkook x Taehyung • Genre: Fluff (with a little bit of angst) | elf!AU ( → Gifset Trailer) • Words: 5,6k | Co-Writer: Cat @cassiavioletblue • Disclaimer: mentioning of violence / smut

↳ There are no things such as fairy tales, magical reindeers that could fly, fairies and Christmas elves - at least Taehyung believed so. But everything was about to change, when Jungkook offered him shelter from a snowstorm and a sweet, hot cocoa, wondering about the boy who hated Christmas so much. Nothing that a bit of fairy dust couldn’t fix, right?

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It almost felt like Yoongi was back to zero with Jungkook. He was staying every night with the younger, to make sure he was okay. That he wasn’t going crazy, because of the pain and that someone was there to hold him each time it would get too much. Jungkook was working all day, then crying at night until he fell asleep in Yoongi’s arms.

The fairy was soothing over Jungkook’s hair softly, just like he was used to it by now. He was the one protecting him. And he had failed, thinking that Taehyung was different maybe. It made no sense to him. Absolutely no fucking sense. It hadn’t seemed like Tae had been playing with the younger. He had always been so careful, so gentle. There were a few other fairies flying around, who were bringing Jungkook some fairy dust. Their eyes worried, when they saw how sad Jungkook was and how much energy it cost him to hold himself up. One was flying right over to them, sitting itself onto the elf’s shoulder. She was cocking her little head and looking upwards to Jungkook’s face. “Why are you so sad, Jungkook?”

The elf sighed deeply, trying to put on a smile. “You wouldn’t understand, little one. Or... maybe you would but... I really don't want to talk about this right now.” He shrugged his shoulder apologetically, almost making her tumble off in the process. “Sorry.” His smile turned sheepish but more real. Still his eyes remained sad. he couldn't remember the last time that he had been actually happy.

“Why wouldn’t I understand, Jungkookie?” She asked, walking up his shoulder, when the younger sat up a little and held out his palm for her to sit on. It was nicer to talk like this. “Is it because Taehyung hadn’t been around the past weeks? We miss you two. You haven’t been visiting us for so long…,” She pursed her lips a little, seeing the hurt in Jungkook’s eyes, “Is he gone?” Looking at Yoongi, who was looking stiff as a board, when she had said the human’s name, she turned back to Jungkook. “He will come back, right? He loves you and he promised to bring sweets from the city!” She said with a hopeful smile and hid a giggle behind her hand, “I like the human.”

“Yeah, I like him too.” Jungkook tried not to ruin her mood. “I don’t know when he will come back. Or if he will do that at all. He doesn’t like this town and I’m sure he will be happy in the city. So, there’s nothing really that he would need to come back for. Humans aren’t like us, little one. They don’t love eternally. He might fall in love with someone else the next day or the next week and then he will have forgotten about me. I know how they are, I... I knew before. But still... I fell for him.” He sighed deeply. “I’m a silly person, am I not? For knowing my chances and then doing it anyway. Just because of hope. Sometimes I think the stories are true. That the last thing in pandora’s box, the worst and most cruel evil ... was hope. Because it makes you do stupid things like follow your heart even though you should know better.”

She shook her head in disbelief, looking at Jungkook closely, “What makes you think that he left you? That he will fall in love with someone else? Did he say that?” The fairy took her long hair to the side, letting her little fingers rake through it, while she was looking at the elf with big eyes, “I only saw love in his eyes, Jungkook. So why would he leave you and tell us that he wants to come back…you know when he was building our new home with us…he told us how he wanted to make one for you, too. He’s not just any human, Jungkook.” She got up and put her hands on her waist, “You aren’t happy here, too right? You had only accepted it here because it was safe.”

“Because it was safe and because you found homes here! I won’t ever leave you behind! You’re my family. I would miss you way too much to ever be happy without you. And the city isn’t a place for you. Neither is it for me. I need greens and flowers and plants to be healthy and happy too. So, no matter where we are together Tae and I, one of us would always be unhappy. That’s not how it should be right? And of course, I don’t trust him to come back. If he had planned to come back then he would have told me sooner that he was leaving, don’t you think? If he cared about my heart, he wouldn’t have broken it so easily.”

“But this isn’t about us but about you!” The fairy said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, “If he cared…would he have baked all night for you? When he’s actually a terrible baker? Never told anyone your secret? Made sure you were safe at all times? Bring you to bed when your exhaustion took over? Made sure we had a new home, while you could still do your job,” She sighed, “He made one mistake of not telling you right away and you blame that he doesn’t love you because of that? That seems pretty unfair to me, Jungkookie. Maybe Tae was scared, too? Tell me that he didn’t give you anything that made sure you would know that he would come back. When he left…what exactly did he say, hm?”

Jungkook shook his head harshly, almost shaking the fairy right off of him. “Just stop it! I don’t want to remember! Yoongi told me he would leave, and he did. I should have listened to Yoongi before. I can’t turn back time but I’m going to listen to him now. That’s the least I can do.”

The fairy looked at Yoongi accusingly, turning towards him, while she was biting her lip anxiously. “But even you said Tae was different,” She was talking to Yoongi quietly, before looking at Jungkook again. Flying over to the elf, she caressed Jungkook’s cheek.

“I am sorry, Jungkookie…but I won’t let you die because of a broken heart and if you’re not doing anything, then I will!” She said with determinacy and flew away from Jungkook a little, “Because I don’t think Tae would have left you like this.”

Yoongi huffed indignantly. “Well, that was before I knew that the human had sex with him.” The comment was hushed and bitter and he hoped that Jungkook hadn’t heard.

His heart ached for Kookie every time he thought of it of how casually Taehyung must have sent the elf into damnation. Humans didn’t care. They didn’t know a thing about values and loyalty and trust. They were selfish little creatures, thinking that the universe revolves around them because they were the ‘evolved’ race who could built 3D Printers and their own robotic devices. But in the end, they were still animalistic creatures, driven by instinct and want and their deepest desires that stemmed from rudimentary patterns that their cell matter had learned to react to thousands of years ago.

But that wasn’t the way Taehyung was, at least that’s what the fairy thought. This couldn’t be it. She was flying up a little, staring accusingly at Yoongi before her gaze went soft when she was looking back at Jungkook again. If Jungkook wouldn’t do anything, then she would. She had heard of elves dying of a broken heart before, she couldn’t let that happen to him. Looking around, she was worrying her bottom lip, trying to find anything that could help her to make this right. To make Jungkook see that going after what his heart longed for would be the right choice. Then she found it. Tae’s little box. The one he had prepared and gifted to him before Christmas. A sudden beeping sound made her fly right up to it. “I knew it!” She said, lifted the heavy lid and looked at the drawings and what seemed to be a mobile phone. With a little kick of her foot, she send the box flying down the cupboard and right onto the floor, making the drawings fly everywhere and the phone tumble right in front of Jungkook.

“Hey!” Jungkook jumped to his feet when there were papers and stuff flying everywhere “What was that for? Don’t be stupid now, throwing a tantrum won’t really make me believe you any more than...” He stopped when he saw what exactly the fairy had thrown off the shelf and his face contorted into a painful expression. “Why... why would you do that? Stop messing with me, please, I’m struggling enough...” Another uncomfortably high signal of the phone made Jungkook clasp his palm over his ears. “What’s this?”

The fairy didn’t care about what Jungkook said right now, instead she was flying to push one end of the accumulator into a socket, before she pushed the thin end into the phone. Flying up, she landed with one foot on the little symbol that would start up the phone again and keep it from making these uncomfortable noises. “This…is what Tae gave you right? How you can keep in contact with him? That’s what he told you, right?” She said a little out of breath and added quietly, “I knew he wouldn’t leave you like this.” It didn’t take long until it lit up and was vibrating repeatedly to show all the unanswered calls and messages. Typing away with her little feet, she started the last message on Jungkook’s answering machine and suddenly Taehyung’s voice was echoing through the room, sounding broken and tired.

“Hey…ehm…okay, I guess I get it…you don’t want to talk to me anymore,” Taehyung’s voice said, “I’m probably pathetic for still calling you, even though I know you’re ignoring my messages and my calls. I just…I found a new apartment. It’s a bit outside of the city. It’s quite nice. Yeah…I still work at the art gallery though and it’s crazy how many people come by. You’re probably working a lot, too.” There’s was an awkward silence and you could hear Taehyung taking a deep breath, “Why aren’t you answering me, Jungkook? Did I do something wrong? Please…I miss you,” Then the message broke off and the little fairy clasped her hands over her mouth, looking at Jungkook with wide eyes.

Jungkook froze when he heard Taehyung's voice. He wanted to shut his eyes and shield his ears from it but at the same time he ached for every word that Tae spoke. his soft voice, the images it evoked. How could you dread and love something at the same time? He didn’t really get what Taehyung was talking about - just that he had found himself an apartment. But why was he telling him that? Of course, he would find an apartment sooner or later. Did he want Jungkook to be happy for him now? Was he supposed to say, ‘Congrats for getting a home so far away from me?”

The fairy looked at Jungkook and then back at the phone. With another push of her feet, she opened the tons of short messages and pictures Taehyung had send Jungkook, each of them getting more desperate the longer the elf hadn’t been answering Tae, before she turned the device towards the elf. “Look,” She said quietly, “Do you still think he wanted to leave you?”

...

Taehyung finally stepped out of the museum, looking up at the dark, grey sky, while he brought his jacket a little closer around his body. He breathed out a sigh. Another dreadfully long day was finally over. He was bone weary from the long day, but the brisk, cold night air invigorated him for the walk home. Unless the weather was terrible, Taehyung always walked to the bus station after work, finding the quiet time a way to unwind from the day’s events. Or the one’s from the past weeks.

Jungkook still hadn’t answered any of his calls or messages and Taehyung had given up on it. Biting his lip, he turned to cross the street, his head hanging low. It was obvious that Jungkook didn’t want anything to do with him anymore, but no matter what Taehyung tried, he couldn’t figure out a reason why. Didn’t he love him enough? Was it all a game in the end? He wasn’t even sure if it would be useful if he tried to visit Jungkook. Maybe try and talk to him in person? It couldn’t all been a lie, right? Raking his hand through his hair, Taehyung breathed in the cold air. He rolled his shoulders back, looking up at the night sky, when he waited for the bus to arrive. Tae had to sell his car for the new apartment. It was way bigger and apartments so close by the forest and still being close enough to the city were always quite expensive. After a fifty minute drive, he stepped out of the vehicle again and walked ahead. Was he really that dumb to buy an apartment, risking his own safety and insurance to risk being with the one he loved? That apparently didn’t want anything to do with him? Taehyung chuckled low, when a sudden smell of cinnamon filled his nostril pleasurably. Only seconds after he whined quietly. He loved the smell. Oh, how much he did.

Looking up at the sign of the bakery, he furrowed his brows, taking a step aside when some people came out of the shop. He hadn’t seen this bakery around. It must have been new. The smell so inviting that he couldn’t help but step in. Maybe he could find something that at least soothed the pain in his heart a little bit. Even if the memories it evoked only made it worse in the end.

Taehyung stepped inside, letting the warmth soak into his body and the smell embrace him. He smiled faintly. Everything about this screamed Jungkook. Keeping his head low, he walked up to the counter to look at the few things that were still there, since it was getting late and the shop would probably close soon. There were still a few people around and Taehyung waited patiently, looking outside the window, while he was somewhere else with his thoughts. Only when he heard the voice of the baker, asking him what Taehyung wanted, he pointed at some cinnamon buns. “Two of these, plea-,” His voice suddenly broke off, when not only he registered the voice as something familiar but also the pair of eyes that were staring right back at him. Jungkook’s name was barely a whisper on Taehyung’s lips.

Jungkook was nervous. Working in a bakery together with so many people was totally different from being on his own all the time. It had its benefits but also some downsides. Like that he was supposed to wear some kind of white cap to cover his hair but it would have uncovered his ears, so he had been in a really awful situation - luckily it was nothing a little fairy magic couldn’t fix. Suddenly the owner was way more open to his suggestion of not wearing a cap and instead just taking care of it himself. He had been a little nervous how his colleagues would react to him being the only exception but when they noticed that he was uncomfortable talking about it and that he wasn't a rebellious person in general they let it slide. All in all, it was better than Jungkook had feared.

It had been surprisingly easy to get a job in the city. Jungkook had thought that he would be completely overwhelmed with having to come up with a backstory and maybe fake some papers and he was hating the thought of having to lie so much just to get work - but one of the bakers, the one he was working for now had just asked him why he would give up his own bakery to work for someone else.

“For love,” Jungkook had answered, honest and a little bit sad because he started to miss the trees already. The baker however had smiled knowingly and then asked if he had time for a little practical test.

Jungkook had nodded and then made what the other had asked, told him his favorite muffin recipe, create something of flaky pastry and then watch over the last baking sheet full of cake pops and cookies that was still in the oven. When Jungkook was done the man asked him to come back tomorrow morning - to start working. Jungkook had been immensely happy - until he remembered that he would be sleeping on a bench in the park tonight again. But he wanted to surprise Tae. Only when he had a job and could take care of himself only then would he ask him if he could maybe stay with him in his apartment. The truth was he was also a little worried how Tae would react to hear that he hadn’t answered his calls because he’s had the phone on silent, hadn’t known how to handle it and had been too ashamed to phone him when the little fairy had made him notice all the unanswered messages and calls.

Apparently, life wanted to give him a nudge in the right direction though because before he had even finished his first week there he was, standing in front of him as if it was the most natural thing for him to do, going into bakeries and staring longingly at their sweets. With his heart pounding and with a smile so big it almost hurt his cheeks he asked him if he could help him with anything.

Taehyung stumbled back a step, so he could look at Jungkook more thoroughly. Then he shook his head, blinking his eyes a few times to see if his mind wasn’t starting to play tricks on him. “Jungkook?” He asked carefully. Taehyung couldn’t feel his hands shaking, his heart beating into overdrive. “What…what are you,” He choked up the words, feeling utterly confused and stunned, “doing here?”

Taehyung looked at him as if he had seen a ghost and Jungkook started to get fidgety from nerves, so he started wiping the countertop. “I’m... mostly I’m making dough and pastry, but I also prepare bread and rolls,” He answered to buy himself a little time. Of course, he knew that Tae hadn’t meant what specifically he made in the bakery but rather how he got here. In his head it had sounded perfectly okay but now that he was about to say it ‘I followed you into the city because you own my heart and I love you and I miss you way too much to stay away from you’ sounded horribly cheesy.

“No, yes, I mean…I see that,” Taehyung said looking at Jungkook with furrowed brows. “But…what are you doing here…,” He bit his lip hard, casting his eyes down before he spoke again, “Why didn’t you…answer me? Don’t play with me, please.” The last words were barely a whisper, his heart aching badly. Taehyung had longed for Jungkook for so long now and only got ignored. He wasn’t sure what had happened or why he was here now and if Jungkook was playing some games with him. Tae had given up so much and Jungkook would have never known. Quickly Taehyung wiped away a tear that fell onto his cheek, before he gathered himself again, coughing a little awkwardly.

His detailed and very thorough explanation that he had prepared that would not make him look like a total doofus that had no idea about technic was cut drastically short when he saw that Tae was hurting. He didn’t want to be the cause of that for one second longer.

“I didn’t know that I had to unmute the phone you gave me so I thought you weren’t calling and instead of looking at it nonetheless just to be sure I was pouting and ignoring it because... because I thought you wouldn’t come back for me,” He spluttered, a little too fast and a little too loud and a little too nervous for it to come off as casual.

“But I told you…many times that I will,” Taehyung said and shook his head, “What did I do to make you feel like I didn’t love you?” He stared at the younger, his chest heaving heavily with every breath he took. “I said I would come back…why didn’t you believe me?”

“Because... you left me in the first place. And it hurt so much that I got scared,” He answered truthfully. His colleagues started noticing that he was talking to the same “customer” without selling anything, so he grabbed a bag and pretended to get it ready for whatever Tae wanted to buy.

“But it’s not like I had much of a choice, Jungkook,” Taehyung sighed, “But that didn’t mean that I would have wanted to leave you. I wanted to stay with you nonetheless.” Looking down at his feet, Taehyung shrugged his shoulders, speaking quietly, “I wanted to take you with me. I bought a new apartment…it’s like a studio one, with a big conservatory and…I even build little houses.” Taehyung couldn’t hide the sadness and pain, still not understanding why Jungkook was here in the first place. He took the bag with the cinnamon buns from Jungkook and paid him. “I wanted it to be perfect for you,” Taehyung said quietly, before the next customer was already pushing him aside and he stumbled a little.

To him it was the act that counted and no matter what Tae would have preferred or wanted or liked to do he had still left. “But I am here now,” He answered him, sad about the fact that Tae let his hurt pride keep him from moving forward. He wasn't going anywhere though. He was working her now and when Tae was ready then he could come back, and they could talk.

“Yeah,” Taehyung looked at Jungkook with a faint smile, “You are…I’m happy that you are.” He finally said and gulped down the heavy lump that made it so hard for him to speak. He had missed Jungkook so much. It took all off his strength not to jump over the counter and kiss the elf, but Taehyung was still taken back. “I really am,” He nodded, not sure if he should get going or stay. He was just so confused about everything right now, “So, what now?“ Taehyung looked at the younger with hopeful eyes.

Jungkook gave the customer a smile, trying not to show that his attention was way more on Tae than on business right now. He was too immersed in trying to balance both his job and his heart to be shy, so he quickly asked Tae to meet him after work before the next customer in line could tell him what he wanted to get.

“Meet me after work, ok? I’ll get off at 8 pm so if you want you can pick me up? And we can talk? About us? Or the apartment? Or...” He got interrupted by the next customer who hurriedly ordered some pastries and cake roll and Jungkook quickly apologized for talking before giving Tae an apologetic look and giving him a silent nod and goodbye.

Taehyung nodded, getting out of the store with a stumble. He didn’t make it very far though, while he just walked around the block a little and then sat down on a bench that was right across of the bakery, waiting, while he anxiously bit his lip. His mind going crazy with all the possibilities, what it could mean for them, if Jungkook still loved him just like he still loved the other. Nervously, he took a bite from the cinnamon bun he had bought and sighed from the delicious taste. It was heaven, just like he remembered every baked good from Jungkook, only these were missing some fairy dust.

Jungkook pushed himself to his limits to be extra quick with cleaning up and preparing everything for the next day so that he could get out absolutely punctual and on time. He didn’t want to leave Tae waiting and risk that the other would maybe leave because he thought Jungkook wouldn’t be coming. But his worries were unfounded because he saw Tae sitting on a bench from afar and he didn’t look like he was about to go.

Deep in his thoughts, Taehyung giggled to himself, thinking about the fairies and wondering how they were doing, he didn’t realize it when Jungkook was standing in front of him. He jumped up, feeling awfully nervous and pointed towards the bench. With a nervous stutter he said, “You…we can just…we can sit here maybe?” He cringed at himself, rubbing his neck awkwardly, before Taehyung looked at Jungkook sheepishly.

Jungkook did as he was told, sitting shyly besides the human and swaying his legs back and forth to get rid of the tension in his body. He kept his eyes firmly downwards, not really sure what he should say and afraid of what Tae might tell him. So, none of them said anything for a while until the silence stretched uncomfortably.

Taehyung broke the silence first, “For how long have you been here, now?” He turned a little to the younger, his arm comfortably resting on the bench, seemingly relaxed when everything inside of him screamed.

“About a week I think. It was a bit hasty with coming here and applying for a job and trying to make sure that ...” He broke off, not wanting to mention Yoongi or how he had need to find a place with some greens for the fairy. Yoongi needed nature like Jungkook needed air. Or Tae.

“A week? Why didn’t you say something before?” Taehyung asked with wide eyes, not believing that he had been missing the younger so much and that he was so close the whole time. “Where do you live at the moment, Jungkookie? Do you have a safe place to be?” He asked right away. Tae needed to know Jungkook was safe, where he couldn’t possibly be exposed. The risk of working in a bakery with other people was a lot already. Tae didn’t want to even think about it. “And Yoongi is he with you? Are you guys somewhere safe?”

“Because I didn’t want to force you to let me stay with you and care for me. I wanted to find a job and provide for myself so that you wouldn’t take me back because you felt obliged to but because you want to.” It was the same reason he still hadn’t told Tae about him owning his heart. Besides the fact that it would probably feel strange to a non-fae-creature to grasp the concept. It was the literal realization of that ‘till death do us part” promise that humans gave during their wedding ceremony. “Yes, Yoongi’s with me. Not right now but in the city. Yeah, we’re safe.” Or safe-ish. They might sleep on a park bench, but they weren’t in immediate danger.

Taehyung chuckled low. Of course, he wanted to. Jungkook had been the one thing on his mind. The only reason he had given up so much already, so that the elf could stay with him. He looked at Jungkook with a faint smile.

“I always wanted to,” Taehyung almost whispered, gazing back at the elf with a soft expression. His heart beating loudly. He reached out his hand for Jungkook to take, before Taehyung stood up, “Let me show you something, please. Do you trust me?”

Jungkook nodded quickly, willing to take every kind of risk if it meant he had a chance at mending their relationship. He held onto Tae’s hand tightly, maybe a bit too tightly, but he didn’t want to let go or give Tae’s hand a chance to slip out of his grip by accident. He would take what he could get of intimacy.

Taehyung was leading the way, trying to hide how nervous he was looking back at Jungkook with a smile only to be focused on the street again. They were walking a little until they finally came by a house that looked like an old warehouse that was transformed into an apartment complex, right outside of the city. Around the complex you could see a beautiful lawn, studded with shrubs and adorned with flower-beds of different sizes and shapes, while if you walked around it you could even see a little pond with a weeping willow shading it which would be looking even more beautiful in the spring time but now that it was still winter, it all looked a bit bare. But you couldn’t see that, yet from the front. Taehyung opened the door, not letting go of Jungkook’s hand once and lead him upstairs to his apartment. Turning the key in the lock, Taehyung turned to Jungkook once more. “This…it was supposed to be for you,” Taehyung said, his voice almost not audible, “And the little ones.” He swung the door open and stepped inside, letting Jungkook in.

Taehyung’s apartment was a wide-open loft. One side of it was styled with only natural colored furniture, the kitchen open, while a little spiral staircase lead upstairs to the bedroom. The other side was looking like a conservatory, filled with the choicest plants and flowers, giving out a view over the back garden of the apartment complex. He had worked weeks on it, trying to make it as perfect as he could for Jungkook and the fairies.

Jungkook looked around with wide eyes and an open mouth, following Tae on autopilot as he was so immersed in the beauty that was Tae’s apartment. He wondered if Tae knew that the fairies loved willows (because you could play hide and seek between the branches, tie the flexible branches into beautiful braids and also make fairy nests out of them easily) or if it was a coincidence.

Taehyung was hanging his jacket on the wardrobe, before he got over to Jungkook. It took him awhile to find his voice again. “I…I sold my car and took a bit from my saving account…and thought that, we could…that,” Taehyung sighed deeply, before he quickly pointed at the little teapot in one corner of the conservatory. “I even got Yoongi a bigger one this time, so if he…wants to stay inside he can always come, look…” Tae pointed at the little window in one corner, “The guy who made this looked at me a little strangely when I asked him do to a little window in a window, so the fairies can sneak in and out whenever they want to and just unlock the little hook there.” Tae got right next to Jungkook to push him along a little with his hand on his back, as the younger seemed pretty much frozen. He pointed outside the glass window, “It’s not the biggest garden, but there are a lot of greens and stuff and you see that? I build a few houses, so that… I don’t know…every fairy is welcome. I don’t even know if they would have wanted to come but…maybe they want to see it as a summer house or something and visit us then, you know?” Taehyung was talking fast, feeling super anxious and nervous about what Jungkook would think of this all.

Taehyung had put so much thought in it. There was no way he was making this up on the spot. And Yoongi would absolutely love the teapot, Jungkook could almost see his eyes light up and how he would curl up inside like a content cat, demanding to be left alone so he could take a nap in it and test how perfect it is. Without realizing he teared up, so touched by Taehyung's way of taking care of him and his family. Only when the salty drops rolled down his cheek did he notice, wiping them away as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, hiding them as well as his blush before Tae could see.

“Is…is it too much?” Taehyung asked worriedly, noticing the silence and little soft sobs coming from the younger. “I just…” Taking a deep breath, Tae couldn’t stop but blurt out everything he felt for the younger. “I love you, okay? I don’t know what you did to me…but if it would be for you I’d even listen to only ‘Last Christmas’ for the rest of my life. I promised you something safe and I said I would come back to you,” He made Jungkook turn towards him, hooking a finger under his chin, “I never wanted to leave you, because somehow in a weird way…I belong to you and you…belong to me, right? So, if you want to stay…and if…” He choked a bit on his own words, “If I am still someone you want to be with, then please…stay with me. I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

Jungkook didn’t have the words to tell Taehyung yes but he surely knew how else to show him that it wasn’t too much, that it was absolutely perfect, that this was what he wanted and that for Jungkook it wasn’t something he needed to think over. He knew that this was it, this was what people were searching for when they tried to fill the void within them. Taehyung filled his in just the right places. So, he wrapped his arms around Tae’s neck, right in the older’s personal space and kissed him with as much passion as he had within his aching heart.

A/N: Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you liked our little christmas story :)) We already have so many new stories prepared. We can’t wait to show it to you soon! Thank you guys for reading and loving the cute fairies as much as we did!

Subscribed: @jeonsdear @lissachan504 @taesangels @it-is-dana @bngtnsnyndn-ily @taeofcups @p-ixelite @jungkpop @dajosaf @bluekyuprincess ↳ If you want to be tagged in new updates you can now sign up in my subscription list for being tagged in my works here

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lim-lifeinmotion · 6 years

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A story about a boy just a little bit broken

I would like to tell you a story About a boy that is broken Not by much Only just a little bit if at all You see this boy was a happy child He did normal happy child things He’d play and sing and dance Even if not very good but oh how this boy liked to play In the mud, mud pies, mud soup He liked the mud he did Stuck in the mud, mud scrub, mud bath mud, mud, mud, mud, mud He was an odd little child, Liked playing with barbie dolls, ken dolls He had no preference really And eating snails He enjoyed spending time with his friends Although mum made this difficult sometimes You see mum didnt always agree with the other mums Im sorry you cannot see them anymore But that is okay because he had plenty of other friends to play with But none were like them He felt sad and lonely Where are all my friends? This boy also loved to fish! What a thing it was Spending time with dad who he never really saw One weekend away this little boy had a new friend Of who’m he’d like to play! A new friend he thought “I’m so happy” Mummy and daddy should we play? Allright said the little boy He knew nothing better Down his pants went I dont understand why? Touches his pee pee Nobody can touch that? But a new friend is a new friend “This is our little secret”? Okay So everynow and then They’d play mummy and daddy She was a lot older He was only 3 he didn’t know any better He did not want her to touch his pee pee Or lick his private parts But a new friend is a new friend Will everyone be angry? So as the years went by mummy and daddy wouldn’t stop fighting To count the days when they were happy? He was young but even he could count as high as 10? It’s all your fault we fight they said Time and time again If it weren’t for you kinds we wouldn’t have these problems “I don’t want to be the problem”? How do I not be the problem? Be a better boy, listen a little more, Maybe if i stay home I can show mummy I‘m a good boy I dont want you to go away This little boy found a new friend! Hip hip horaay He was so happy and excited A reason to wake up every day But this boy could never stay over Not for a whole night What if mummy was gone when I get home? Please take me home, I want to go home now. Once more mummy disagrees with the other mummy, I am sorry you cannot see them any more I’m sorry I’m not supposed to talk to you I have to listen to what mummy says Now they wont stop fighting, And we’re moving in with my aunty I liked her dog and her pool and her piano A few years we were happy, no more yelling at last But as this boy got older He saw his sister being yelled at Please stop fighting I don’t like to see you all cry When she was 15 she had had enough He didn’t want her to go but knew mummy would be happier if she did So she did We were happy again Daddy came home but the fighting continued Only with my other sister now It wasn’t long before she moved out A few years into highschool You see everyone in this family Was in the top of their clases They were not dumb or stupid They weere in fact extremely smart Nerissa was good at english,

drawing, she was also a very nice singer Tyla was good at netball and maths, she was so popular and so was nissy Ryan was good at maths and art and really enjoyed running and sports, He wasn’t the storngest but he could run and never look back But now everyone had moved out And I was again all alone The boy had no friends Although everypne knew who he was At school he’d walk and chat Bounce between groups making them smile and laugh You’re so funny ryan So many friends now! But on the weekends it was playstation and games Nobody wanted to hang out with him Out of uniform he really didnt belong And the yelling started again His entire life he did not think it would ever be him? But im such a good boy mummy I try my best every day Until one day It was time to leave You see out of nowhere he met a boy A boy he fell in love with Someone that liked him, thought was funny and kind It’s all he’d ever wanted The boys became close They shared their first kiss Their first everything What a time to be young, to be alive He would get bullied By the younger students Because the older ones knew his sisters Everybody loved them But they no longer went to school They both left way too young They were so smart and so popular I dont understand why? But this boy didn’t care The silly words people would say He was happy and in love He finally had a friend He started living with this boy, His family were like his own No fighting no yelling A safe and peaceful home for two years they lived together until they grew apart When you’re young you are curious There is so much to live for to see and to do He began to see the darkness again His home was gone again He had no friends The words now had power He tried but he let them in Fag they would say Push and shove him they would do In class he cried At home he died He began to wonder about death How beautiful it would be So he took the knife and made his first cut An addicion he would soon regret At first they were small On the wrist because thats were people did it right? But too many eyes saw You cannot wear an armband all year So he took the knife and took to his thigh So much more flesh to cut I can go deeper and harder now than before This boy truly wanted to die Bloody sheets Vodka bottles He stopped going to classes But did all his work He didnt want to be a drop out But he didnt want to go to school So in a bottle of chi he’d mix A bottle before, during and after school Nobody suspected a thing, He never wore uniform anyways He was never rude or inpolite The opposite in fact He had to be a good boy He had a job which he quit Becausee he drank and cut and cried Nothing could stop it A part of him had died So he decided he needed money Skipped a few weeks rent Was told they needed to talk So up he went and left He didnt mean to hurt them He didnt want to be a burden They found the bottles and the bloodied mess He didn’t want to make them angry So back he went “home” To the yelling and screaming The rules oh the rules Do not exist From here things fall apart and there is no more rhymes That little happy child, he was dead now, he died a long time ago and all that was left was darkness, sadness, an anti depressant shell He spent his days drinking and taking drugs and cutting himself. Nothing made sense, the only clear thing in his existance was the fact that he no longer wanted to be in this world and he made it clear that he was just waiting to die. I missed a lot out of this story, a lot of good things happened, he was so loved but honestly those memories are all but faded and bleak lost somewhere in the dpeth of the lonliness he had felt his entire lfe, the sadness, the emptiness that filled him. He was annorexic and coudln’t eat, he saw his weight go from 64 down to 48 where it would stay for some time. He met a lot of amazing guys but none felt right, none gave him that feeling that young cute boy did and no matter how hard he tried all he ended up leaving was a wake of destruction and hurt wherever he went. I could count 10 different people he ended up destroying, 2 earned the label. He never intended to hurt them, he really tried, he just wanted to feel loved, to feel something, anything at all. But never could. He sold his body for sex at the age of 17, he needed money to continue drinking and living because partying to forget was all he knew. What a messed up life this poor child had, no wonder he’s a god damn mess until the other day he knew anything bad that could have happened had happened to him, the other day when he remembered he was molested. He’s been raped by his best friend, molested when he was a child, sold for sex, beaten, thrown to the ground, abandoned on the side of the road by his parents. literally kicked out of the car at 3 or 4 years old and I just remember him standing behind the car screaming and crying, begging to let him back in. He been cheated on, drugged, ruphied, overdosed and died. He’s tried to kill himself on more occasions than I can count of both hands and both feet. He’s put himself in hospital but never once has he intentionally tried to hurt someone, Never has he ever laid another finger on another human being that he hasn’t blacked out and done in a fit of rage, childhood trauma is funny like that. I am not a bad person and I know this to be true but I feel like there is little more that life could throw at me, little more that I can have done to me because I have seen it all, been through it all and I am so angry at the world for this. For so long I see eyes that reflect the soul, I know how to play this game, I managed to trick myself into believing I was happy in order to stop myself from killing myself, you can sure as hell bet I will trick you too. When you look into my eyes and you see that pure innocent smile, that cheeky grin, the light sparking as it fills you with that infections glow. Sure some of the time it is genuine but for the most part I am just so sad and there is no way I want to put that onto anybody else, ssssssssso I will fool you into believing I am happy and so damn peaceful but my actions reflect someone so broken, so detroyed, someone that has next to no love or respect for themselves because how can I? After everything? Im working so fucking hard to make this work, to re learn the things I had stripped away from me, pice by piece, like tiny cracks forming on the glass I was constantly trying to fix and mend but like so many cracks I couldn’t keep up with the speed at which they were forming and shaterring. I became so very good at fixing them but now I am left with a broken soul, A shattered mind, a scarred body, left trying to yet again mend the pieces but she is so very tired, a life without a brake and I am ready to put the brakes on before I break because breaking is all I know how to do, breaking is what I do best but I just need a brake because it will break me otherwise. I know I am such a powerful person, I am so god damn resiliant yet still so fucking loving regardless of all this shit. I wonder sometimes how the fuck I am still here, kicking, working, moving forward trying to make a better life for myself, because with all this on a page and missing quite a lot, that is too much for one 24 years of “life”, That is too much for anyone to endure. I havent even mentioned my sisters life, how they both tried to kill themselves, “Home” was that bad that they would rather have died than exist. My youngest sisters boyfriend killed himself when she was 16 or so, she wanted to follow, had a note and the noose all ready. How much shit can life throw at somebody before it really is just starting to take the piss, I feel my life is just one big fucking joke because no way can this be real, no way can this be the reason I was put on this earth for. If there was a god why would he look at a 3 year old and smile telling him he was going to be sexually assaulted time and time again, beaten and abused for the rest of his 25 years in the world. How fucking dare you. How fucking dare you. This may seem like I am asking for pity but that I do not want, I don’t need your sympathy because it makes no god damn difference o me, It doesnt change the chemicals in my brain, it doesn’t give me a reason to get up in the morning or give me comfort in bed at night. I want you to know how fucking cruel this life has been and why I am so god damn fuking messed up in the deepest and darkest way possible. “Why” is the big question of endless possibilities but this is one of those reasons, one of the many possibilies, the endless ways my life could have gone and destiny looked at me and chose this path for me. Fuck you, Just fuck you and your bullshit lenses about flowers and fairies, I grew up with the monsters under my bed, the headless horseman was my ride through hell and back, Samara was my pen pall and nobody was there for me in the end to protect me, I can’t even protect me, I can’t say no to people so I just close my eyes, pretend to be enjoying it and let it happen. Fuck you Unedited rant because fuck reading this to edit its way too fucking much

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arielle0808 · 7 years

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Songs of the Shore

Here comes Chapter 3 of my merman Zen fic :) You can also read this on AO3.

I really hope you’re liking this story.

Thank you for reading <3

My feet ached the next morning. Maybe the shoes weren’t as comfortable as I thought first and my feet realised that moment. I went downstairs still in my pyjamas, because I have no shame and strawberries are adorable, attracted by the smell of pancakes.

“Good morning,” I greeted Manuel Blake, the artist, who was making pancakes.

“Good morning, little flower,” he smiled.

“You cooking?” I asked, eager to eat all the pancakes that were to be done in that room.

“I’m making art,” he said, showing me he had made drawings on the pancakes with the help of marmalade, chocolate and cream.

“Can I eat those?”

He laughed.

“Just give me a second so that I can take a picture of them,” he asked me.

I looked at them once more. The truth was that they looked incredibly beautiful.

“Whath az you going tho painth thoday?” I asked him, finally eating art.

“I want to go to a little village near here,” he answered. “Jumin is coming too. Would you like to come?”

I thought about the merman and decided I’d rather stay.

“Good morning,” Jumin Han appeared in the kitchen with Elizabeth 3rd in his arms.

“Good morning,” I had finished my pancakes, so I tidied my plate, even though Manuel Blake and Jumin Han insisted that someone else could do that, and went to my room to put on my bikini and a loose t-shirt I love using to go to the beach.

I rushed to the cave after saying goodbye to my friends and found there the merman, singing once again. I listened to him. It was a language I didn’t know, but the music made me feel calm and almost sleepy. He stopped singing when he saw me.

“Good morning, princess.”

“Hi there,” I replied.

“Did you like my singing?” he asked.

“Very much.”

I was not ready to see that smile. It almost hurt. Oh, my, was he really so glad that I had liked it?

“I can also sing something from the human world if you want to. I know a couple of songs.”

“Go ahead,” I told him, and he proceeded.

I met him every day at the same spot. I was the first one to wake up at that home even though the walk to the cave left me exhausted, but I just couldn’t wait to see him. I had to make the best of the time I had left with him, which was not much taking into account that possibly he couldn’t follow me home.

“Hey, Yuuki,” he called me. “Come here.” He opened his arms for me, and even though I’m not a person found of hugging random people, I cuddled next to him. “Do you want to see something cool?”

“Of course.”

“Come with me,” he asked me and I complied because I’m a thoughtless girl.

But it was amazing. He started to drag me by the hand deeper down the ocean and I started to panic. What was he doing? Didn’t he know I couldn’t breathe? I tried to go up, but he looked at me and caressed my cheek before putting his lips on mine gently. I widened my eyes in surprise and he made me open my mouth, breathing into it. Oh, yeah, oxygen, thank you. He took me near the riffs and I hadn’t seen anything so beautiful in my life. Anytime I ran out of air, he did the same thing, my racing heart always making me embarrassed. He smirked. Maybe he could hear my heartbeats.

I went out to the surface of the water after a while and he came with me.

“Did you like it?” he asked me.

“I did, but you scared me at first,” I frowned.

He laughed.

“Well, but it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

“I guess so,” I replied.

I looked at him. He was so embarrassingly close to me, I felt my face heat up. More so as I found myself staring at his lips.

“Let’s go back to the shore,” I asked him, and he took me there.

I sat on the sand, still confused about the torrent of sensations I felt when Zen kissed me. Well, it was not a kiss, so I shouldn’t call it that way. Oxygenated me? Yah, sounds better. He was looking at me with an amused expression as I thought about all this. I frowned.

“I’m leaving in two days,” I suddenly said, as if it were the perfect moment to come up with the news.

He widened his eyes in surprise and became pale(r).

“Where?” he asked.

“Home.”

“Where’s your home?”

I was starting to freak out with his freaking out.

“In the city.”

“There’s not a beach near that, is it?” I shook my head. “Fuck, Yuuki.”

“Are you mad?”

He looked at me for a while before answering.

“I’m not mad at you,” he sighed. “Why can’t you stay?”

“Because I have a life out there,” I frowned.

“Don’t you prefer staying here? With me?”

“I don��t,” okay. That was too honest. He startled and began to move away. “Wait, Zen, I didn’t mean that. I mean, I meant it, but not that way. Let me explain.”

“It’s okay,” he said, giving me a soar look.

“No really, let me explain. You see? Out there I’ve started a degree and I have a dream, and...”

And he swam away.

“Damn Zen!!” I exclaimed, getting into the water and trying to swim to get to him.

He was too fast and I’m not really sportive, so soon enough I was gasping for breath at the surface and trying at least not to die and to figure out how to go back to the shore without drowning. Fortunately, Zen had heard me following him and took me back to the shore.

“I want to become an art critic,” I pouted. “Please, don’t get mad at me.”

“Yuuki, I really like you.”

Wow. Ok, I wasn’t expecting that.

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Really?” he asked.

I blushed and brought my hand to my lips involuntarily. He took it and kissed my lips softly and lovingly, and I returned the kiss, embracing his neck as we deepen it.

“I think you like me too,” he smiled.

I thought for a while.

“You’re probably right.”

“You know, that kind of things annoy me, but I like that about you too.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You are not conscious of what you say half of the time and you end up screwing up.”

“Oh, you have nooooo idea,” I said, letting myself fall back on the sand and taking my arm to cover my eyes.

He chuckled.

“Ask me to go with you and I’ll do it,” he suddenly told me, making me look back at him, a determined look in his eyes.

“I would love that,” I replied. “But how would you do that?”

“You know, there’s the witch of the sea. She lives nearby and maybe she knows of a way of making me become a human.”

“A witch?” I asked, unsure. “And you know her?”

“I do,” he replied.

“I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

“I...” he thought for a while. “I don’t know.”

“We could think of some other thing. We have until tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he agreed.

“I need to go now,” I said, willing to get home and look for a ‘how to turn your mermaid into a human’ tutorial on internet or something. “See you tomorrow,” I stood up.

“Yuuki,” he called me and made a move for me to kneel before him. I complied. He put his hand behind my head and lowered it until our lips touched, kissing. “I can’t wait to see you.”

I blushed.

“Yah, bye.”

“Bye.”

I got home hoping I would really find something. Manuel Blake and Jumin Han were still out at the village, so I had the entire house for myself. I cooked something and ate it while reading about mermaids on the internet.

“You don’t know where my Elly is, do you?”

“Who’s Elly?” I replied. “OH, HOLLY SHIT WHO ARE YOU?!” I exclaimed when I realised I was supposed to be alone at the house.

I turned and saw a red-haired stranger with weird glasses and hoodie standing behind me.

“I’m god 707!” he exclaimed. “Nice to meet you.”

A god? Well, I had just acquainted a merman. I could believe anything by then.

“Hi, I’m human Yuuki. Nice to meet you, too.”

We shook hands and he sat next to me.

“Now, about Elly. Have you seen my precious fur-ball?”

“Oh, you mean Elizabeth 3rd, Jumin Han’s cat.”

“The same.”

“Dunno.”

He clicked his tongue in disappointment.

“Let’s do something,” he said. “You let me look for her and don’t tell Jumin I was here and I help you with your merman.”

I thought for a while.

“How can you help me?” I asked.

He took a flower out of his pocket.

“See this? It can grant you a wish if you ask for it properly,” he said.

Flowers that grant wishes. Okay, I was going to get crazy.

“What do I have to do?”

“You hold it in your hand, ask for the wish and eat it while it shines. As simple as that.”

Cool. It sounded easy for real, and I’m quiet an expert at eating.

“And why don’t you use it to find Elizabeth 3rd?” silly me asked him.

“It only grants a pure and innocent wish.”

“What did you say you wanted to do to the cat again?” I narrowed my eyes in suspicion.

We heard the front door opening and Jumin Han and Manuel Blake entering the building.

“Ooops, I have to go!” god 707 said. “You can keep this,” he said, giving me the flower.

“Thank you.”

And thus, he went out through the garden. I looked at the flower, hesitating. Should I really trust that stranger?

I went to the beach the next day as promised with the flower, and there was Zen, already waiting for me. He greeted me cheerfully.

“Did you find something?” I asked him.

“I didn’t, but I’m happy to see you, princess,” he winked.

“A stranger gave me this telling me it grants wishes if you eat it when it shines,” okay, maybe it was not the best explanation, but Zen understood it after a while.

“I should eat it since I’m the one who is going to become a human.”

“But I’m the one who’s making you become a human,” I pointed out.

“I don’t mind. I just want to be with you.” The flower shone, still in my hand and I looked at Zen, surprised. “I think I have to eat it,” he said.

“I-I think so too,” I replied, giving it to him. He took it in his mouth and widened his eyes in surprise, becoming pale. “Are you alright?” I asked him.

He started to shiver and I took him in my arms, scared and regretting my decision. His tail and gills started to shine, the latter disappearing and the former being divided in two beautiful and strong legs and a big...

“Oh, God, cover that,” I blushed, taking off my t-shirt and putting it on his crotch.

He took a big breath and looked at my flustered face when he felt recovered.

“Don’t you like it?” he grinned.

“I may like it a bit too much,” I replied.

“Will you teach me how to move properly?”

I stopped working properly as my t-shirt fell and he started kissing me. I moaned in his mouth as he kissed me and caressed my whole body, and I started to take off my bikini. He looked at me, blushing.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“You were the one who started it!” I replied, panting, and embracing him again and kissing him.

I was glad he hadn’t been raised in a society in which women are seen as fragile beings and sex is a taboo, for most probably it would have cost me pains to get him to make love to me at that isolated spot on the beach.

He placed his face between my legs and showed me how skilled his tongue was, making me see stars. We couldn’t take things further on seen I hadn’t got any protection there, but I returned the favour.

I took him to Jumin Han’s house, all naked, and fortunately the building was empty, so I left him in my room and bought some clothes for him at a shop nearby, though I was reluctant to let him go when I saw him on my bed. I also bought some condoms. Hoho.

I went back home and he tried on the clothes, which were a big loose, but better than nothing. I was going to ask him to take them off again, when I heard the main door. I prayed all gods in the Olympus for Jumin Han not to get mad at me for letting a stranger into his house. He was a bit surprised at first, but I made up a story and he gave him leave to stay and come to the city with us tomorrow when he saw I was holding his hand and the way he looked at me.

#mystic messenger #mysme fic #zen #hyun ryu #zen hyun ryu #zen x oc #merman zen #mermaid au #mysme au #fluff #humour #first kiss

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lanadelreyfiles-blog · 7 years

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A Conversation With Lana Del Rey. On the eve of her fourth album, the pagan pop star sounds more content than ever. How did she get there? Interview by Alex Frank for Pitchfork. Famous artists are notoriously late, but when I arrive about 20 minutes early for an interview at Lana Del Rey’s Santa Monica studio, she is ready for me, offering a handshake and a smile. It is the week before her new album, ‘Lust For Life’, will be released, but she seems unhurried and relaxed; when I ask if she’s been busy in the leadup to such a big day, she says “no” with a laugh, as if she knows she probably should be. She is not dressed like the glammed-up mystic you see in music videos and photographs: her hair, long and brown, is tied functionally behind her neck, and she is in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, with cream canvas sneakers and white ankle socks on her feet. Right away, she invites me through a side door into the inner sanctum where her brooding songs are created. For Lana acolytes, this is a mythic place. She has recorded here since 2012’s ‘Born To Die’, her major label debut. It is a beautiful room filled with sun coming in from a skylight and two windows, the opposite of the average dank music studio. It looks a bit like how you’d expect Lana Del Rey’s workplace to look: vaguely and warmly retro, with dark wood cabinets and a mid-century-looking painting with interlacing geometric shapes hanging on the back wall. In the center of the room is a scratched-up leather club chair with a Tammy Wynette album cover facing it. (“I always have Tammy there,” she says of the country singer best known for her ode to everlasting devotion, “Stand by Your Man.”) This chair, and not the actual booth in the front of the room, is where Lana sits to record her vocals. “I get red light fever in the booth,” she says. She likes that the studio is by the beach, where she’ll sometimes go to listen to mixes of songs on her iPhone. The studio is owned and operated by Rick Nowels, her longtime producer. He has come down today to listen to the album with us, a pair of sunglasses firmly on his face. Nowels has more than 20 years on Lana, who is 32, and he inhabits something of an uncle role, making the songwriter a bit bashful when he sweetly refers to a ballad called “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” as a “masterpiece” for its lyrical message about the importance of finding ways to have fun, even in the Trump era. Gearing up to record what would become ‘Born To Die’, Lana had met with a number of producers who all tried to tell her what she should or should not sound like, with some encouraging her to ditch the breathy vocal style that would become her signature. When she finally met Nowels, he didn’t want to change a thing. “I went through a hundred and eleven producers just to find someone who says ‘yes’ all the time,” she says. “Everyone is so obsessed with saying ‘no’—they break you down to build you up.” Lana is a studio junkie—’Lust For Life’ is her fourth album in about five years. She says a day that she works is better than a day that she doesn’t. Nowels tells me that even though the new album isn’t out yet, she’s already making new music. “If I get a great melody in my head, I know it’s a gift,” she says. As we sit down to listen to ‘Lust For Life’, she is clearly at home: Like a good host, she offers me her comfy leather singing chair and instead curls up on a blue velvet couch nearby. She has a familial rapport with not just Nowels, but engineers Dean Reid and Kieron Menzies, who she credits again and again for making her work better, and the four of them ruminate on mastering, making jokes about Lana’s perfectionism when it comes to the final cuts of her songs. The album, like all of her work, is fastidiously and emphatically Lana in its sound and atmosphere: a haze of lazy pacing and flowery melodies, conjuring a foreboding backdrop for lyrics about summer and antique celebrity icons and dangerous, dissatisfying relationships. Front and center in the mix is her voice, which has a crooner’s tone and an especially wide range, from deep and low to high and sharp. Most pop stars rely on reinvention to retain relevance, but her output is remarkably consistent. She says her main criteria is whether or not a song sounds like it will transport listeners to somewhere else in their minds. On each album, the skeleton remains more or less the same while she infuses her work with stylistic elements from different genres, from rap to rock to jazz. ‘Lust For Life’ draws from folk and hip-hop, two genres that she says she loves because they both privilege real storytelling. The new record is a departure in key ways, though. In the past, Lana has become famous for themes that are, at times, hopeless: toxic romance, violence, drug use, despair, aging, death. This isn’t to say every song she has ever recorded is a downer, or that she hasn’t displayed a knowing sense of humor about her reputation. But her relentless obsession with the dark arts is a reason why her fans love her with an almost religious fervor; she’s had issues with people breaking into her house. “They want to talk,” she says chillingly. Her menacing themes have also led to resistance at certain moments from larger audiences who, perhaps trained to think of pop music as a tool of empowerment and empathy, just can’t face her nihilism. While ‘Lust For Life’ certainly has its share of grim moments, it is not as much of an avalanche of gloom, and perhaps offers signposts to a happier future. At times, Lana even approaches uncomplicated joy, like on first single ‘Love.’ The album also contains some of her first songs that deal with a universe larger than the tangled intensity of one-on-one relationships—there are tracks intended to be balms and battle cries for trying times, which, like many Americans, she found herself fretting over constantly during the 2016 election campaign. And for the first time on any Lana album, she’s also opening the door to a number of guest vocalists: A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, the Weeknd, Stevie Nicks, and Sean Ono Lennon on a Beatles-referencing song called ‘Tomorrow Never Came.’ “I FaceTimed with Yoko, and she said it was her most favorite thing Sean’s ever done,” Lana says.

After listening to the album, Lana and I peel off to a small office on the other side of the studio for our interview. Before we begin, she pulls out her iPhone to record the conversation along with me, a defensive move she’s taken up after years of feeling manipulated and harangued by the media. When answering questions, she is at turns thoughtful and strident, seriously considering topics like her attempts at a brighter life and how Trump has affected her love of Americana, and also entirely unafraid to bat away questions she finds boring or irrelevant. At one point, she laughs so hard at a silly sidebar in our conversation that she has a coughing fit and has to take a break. She says she binge watches ‘The Bachelor,’ and that while all of her friends now call her Lana—not Elizabeth Grant, her birth name—her parents are the two people who do not. She is wry about the new song ‘Groupie Love,’ in which she writes herself not as the star but in the role of a worshipful devotee: “Old habits die hard—I still love a rock star.” When I ask her if she is bothered by TMZ dating rumors, which have recently speculated about her relationship with rapper G-Eazy, she gives an unexpectedly goading answer: “They’re usually true. Maybe where there’s smoke there’s fire.” Which is to say: She’s kinda regular, not the hardened artist we’ve heard in her songs, but someone, it would seem, who likes to hang out and chat about life and music. Talking about good times brings up memories of rough ones, and when the conversation veers towards rocky terrain, she reveals an artist-and a person-at a pivotal moment. — A few years ago you were singing lyrics like “I have nothing much to live for,” and now you’re smiling on the cover of ‘Lust For Life.’ How’d you get to a happier place? Lana Del Rey: I made personal commitments. — Commitments to what? LDR: Well, they’re personal. [laughs] I had some people in my life that made me a worse person. I was not sure if I could step out of that box of familiarity, which was having a lot of people around me who had a lot of problems and feeling like that was home base. Because it’s all I know. I spent my whole life reasoning with crazy people. I felt like everyone deserved a chance, but they don’t. Sometimes you just have to step away without saying anything. — Your past albums often presented a claustrophobic universe made up of just you and one other person, but all of a sudden it’s like you’ve got your eyes wide open and you’re looking at the world around you. Developmentally, I was in the same place for a very long time, and then it just took me longer than most people to be able to be more out there. Being more naturally shy, it’s taken stretching on my part to just continue to integrate into the local community, global community, to grow as a person. Also, getting really famous doesn’t help you grow with the community. It’s important to have your own life. It’s hard with how accessible things are. Hacking? E-mail is just a no for me. I do a lot to make sure I don’t feel trapped. — Your fans are famously obsessive. Do they ever cross the line? They fucking have. Someone stole both my cars. All the scary shit. I’ve had people in my house for sure, and I didn’t know they were there while I was there. I fucking called the police. I locked the door. Obviously, that’s the one in one-hundred-thousand people who’s crazy. But I [had a hard time sleeping] for a minute. — Fame can be isolating, but you are making a real effort to not let it be. It’s going to be isolating. Period. Unless you stretch past it. But it takes so much footwork. Getting over the uncomfortability of being the one person in the room who everyone recognizes. The last few years, I’m out all the time: clubs, bars, shows. For years I was more quietly in the mix, always through the back door, do not tell anyone I’m coming. And now I’ve relaxed into it where I’ll just show up. I don’t need a special ticket. I’ll just go sit wherever. It feels a little more like I’m myself again. — If you’re happier these days, what do you think when you hear an old lyric from an old record, like, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss,” from ‘Ultraviolence’? I don’t like it. I don’t. I don’t sing it. I sing ‘Ultraviolence’ but I don’t sing that line anymore. Having someone be aggressive in a relationship was the only relationship I knew. I’m not going to say that that [lyric] was 100 percent true, but I do feel comfortable saying what I was used to was a difficult, tumultuous relationship, and it wasn’t because of me. It didn’t come from my end. — Now you want to present a different face to the world on ‘Lust For Life’? No. I don’t care. I would just say I am different. And even being a little bit different makes me not want to sing that line. To me, it just was what it was. I deal with what’s in my lyric—you’re not dealing with it. I was annoyed when people would ask me about that lyric. Like, who are you? — Do you think you romanticize danger in your music? No. I don’t like it. It’s just the only thing [I’ve known]. So I’m trying to do a new thing. I never wrote better when I had a lot of turmoil going on. ‘Born To Die’ was already done before any of the shit hit the fan. When things are good, the music is better. I’m trying to change from the way I thought things were gonna be to what I feel like they could be, which is maybe just brighter. — But, even with some new perspectives, ‘Lust For Life’ is still very melancholy at moments. If you make sad music, which you’ve done for so long, does it necessarily mean you’re sad? Yeah. I think for most people, regardless of what they say, it’s probably a direct reflection of their inner world. With my first record, I didn’t feel upset. I felt very excited, and then I felt a little more confused. — After the release of ‘Born To Die,’ you faced a lot of criticism, partly around the issue of whether you were or were not authentic. Do you think of yourself as authentic? Of course. I’m always being myself. They don’t know what authentic is. If you think of all the music that came out until 2013, it was super straight and shiny. If that’s authentic to you, this is going to look like the opposite. I think that shit is stylized. Just because I do my hair big does not mean I’m a product. If anything, I’m doing my own hair, stuffing my own fucking stuffing in there if I have a beehive. Music was in a super weird place when I became known, and I didn’t really like any of it. — Did you ever feel like the criticism had a misogynistic bent? No. Women hated me. I know why. It’s because there were things I was saying that either they just couldn’t connect to or were maybe worried that, if they were in the same situation, it would put them in a vulnerable place. — You weren’t singing empowering things. No, I wasn’t. That wasn’t my angle. I didn’t really have an angle—that’s the thing. — Have you noticed that all songs on the radio are bummers now? That Lil Uzi Vert lyric—“All my friends are dead”—sounds almost like a Lana lyric. There’s been a major sonic shift culturally. I think I had a lot to do with that. I do. I hear a lot of music that sounds like those early records. It would be weird to say that it didn’t. I remember seven years ago I was trying to get a record deal, and people were like, “Are you kidding? These tunes? There’s zero market for this.” There was just such a long time where people had to fit into that pop box. — With all the flak you’ve received over the years, particularly after ‘Born To Die,’ some people would have thrown in the towel. But you doubled down and made an even more fucked up, almost hyper-Lana record with ‘Ultraviolence.’ I so double downed. [The early criticism] made me question myself- I didn’t know if it was always going to be that way. You can’t put out records if 90 percent of the reviews in places like the Times are going to be negative. That would be crazy. It would have made sense to step all the way back, but I was like, Let me put out three more records and see if I can just stand in the eye of the storm. Not shift too much. Let me just take some of the [production] off so you can hear things a little bit better; I thought people were maybe getting distracted. I did the same thing with ‘Honeymoon.’ Everyone around here heard it and was like, “It’s a cool record, but you know it’s not going to be on the radio, right?” And I was like, “Yeah. I told [record executive] Jimmy [Iovine] when I signed, ‘If you want to sign me, this is all it’s ever going to be.’” I was just so committed to making music because I believe in what I do. All I had to do was not quit. — So that ‘Ultraviolence’ woman who is so swept up in turmoil- is she still there on ‘Lust For Life’? We’ll see. That’s been my experience up until now, but, like, I’m trying. — Some of the sparer, really heartfelt songs on ‘Lust For Life’ reminded me of the ‘Ultraviolence’ song ‘Black Beauty.’ That’s a sad song. In that song—[sings] I keep my lips red like cherries in the spring/Darling, you can’t let everything seem so dark blue—that’s a girl who is still seeing the blue sky and a putting on a pop of color just for herself. But this [other] person—it was all black for them. And my world became inky with those overtones. [At this, Lana begins to cry, and we pause for a moment.] — What made you cry just now? In that moment, when I said “pop of color,” I was connected to that feeling of only being able to see a portion of the world in color. And when you feel that way, you can feel trapped. — Are you seeing the world in color now? [sighs] I don’t really know how to describe my perspective at the moment. — But you’re trying, and that’s what ‘Lust For Life’ is about? It’s not. I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t know what it is. — Is the album a way of saying that you at least want to be happy? No. It’s just that something is happening. — What makes you happy? I’m really simple. I love nature. I like hikes. Being by the water- I don’t always get in. I love the elements. Playing an outdoor festival. Love that feeling. — What bums you out? Feeling like going backwards. — Is there a storyline to the album? Yeah. — What’s the story? You have to figure it out. — Just a few years ago you were saying you didn’t care about feminism, and now you are writing protest songs and meditations on war and peace. Because things have shifted culturally. It’s more appropriate now than under the Obama administration, where at least everyone I knew felt safe. It was a good time. We were on the up-and-up. Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly. What if they take away Planned Parenthood? What if we can’t get birth control? Now, when people ask me those questions, I feel a little differently. The reason why I asked Stevie Nicks to be on the record is because she changes when her environment changes, and I’m like that as well. In ‘When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,’ I wrote, “Boys, don’t make too much noise/Don’t try to be funny/Other people may not be understanding.” Like, Can you tone down your over-boisterous rhetoric that isn’t working? ‘God Bless America - And All the Beautiful Women in It’ is a little shoutout to the women and anyone else who doesn’t always feel safe walking down the street late at night. That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote, “Even when I’m alone I’m not lonely/I feel your arms around me.” It’s not always how I feel when I’m walking down the street, but sometimes in my music I try to write about a place that I’m going to get to. — Do you feel unsafe? I feel less safe than I did when Obama was president. When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent towards women. I saw it right away in L.A. Walking down the street, people would just say things to you that I had never heard. When people asked me the feminist question before, I was like, “I’m not really experiencing personal discrimination as a woman. I feel like I’m doing well. I headline shows just like the Weeknd does. I got tons of women in my life, love women, support women.” I just felt like, Why don’t we talk about the music first? I can tell you that what I have done for women is tell my own story, and that’s all anyone can do. — Is it harder to be romantic about America when Trump is the nation’s biggest celebrity? It’s certainly uncomfortable. I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos. I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing ‘Born To Die.’ It’s not going to happen. I’d rather have static. It’s a transitional period, and I’m super aware of that. I think it would be inappropriate to be in France with an American flag. It would feel weird to me now- it didn’t feel weird in 2013. All the guys in the studio—we didn’t know we were going to start walking in every day and talking about what was going on. We hadn’t ever done that before, but everyday during the election, you’d wake up and some new horrible thing was happening. Korea, with missiles suddenly being pointed at the western coast. With ‘When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,’ I was posing a real question to myself: Could this be the end of an era? The fall of Rome? — Nostalgia can be really corny when it’s not done well, and you’re all about nostalgia. How do you try to get it right? I know I walk the line sometimes. [laughs] I saw comments that people said about my little ‘Coachella - Woodstock in my Mind’ song. I write that title and I’m like, OK, I know I went there. But I think it’s amazing. It’s on the nose. It’s so on the nose. But sometimes things just are what they are. I’m at Coachella for three days, and North Korea is pointing a missile at us, and I’m watching Father John Misty with my best friend, who’s his wife—that’s all I’m literally saying. It’s just like, Yeah, I’m a hipster. I know it. Got it. — You mentioned working with Stevie Nicks on this album, what was it like recording with her? She came in straight off a plane from her last show of like 60 cities, which I was actually supposed to open for. She had asked me, and I was like, “Oh my god.” But I couldn’t because I don’t want to do a 60-show tour. She flew through the door. Blond highlights, rose gold glasses, gold-tipped nails, rose gold lipstick, gold chains, gold rings, black on black on black. Very stylish. And meanwhile, I looked like a housewife of 15—flannel on flannel, because it was a cold night. And I was like, Why did I not dress up for Stevie Nicks? At the end of the track, she sings, then I sing, then she sings. I was kinda embarrassed. I was like, “I sound so little compared to you.” And she was like, “That’s good, you’re my little echo.” And I was like, Stevie called me her little echo. It’s a stupid little thing, but she was very nurturing in that way, and not belittling of the fact that I had a more breathy voice. Which I wasn’t even aware of until I was shoulder-to-shoulder on a track with someone with less air in their voice. I felt a little more exposed in that moment. But she was like, “That’s you. You just be you.” — Speaking of musical icons, can you tell me about performing at Kim and Kanye’s wedding party? It was a surprise for Kim. I hadn’t met her. I sang ‘Young And Beautiful,’ ‘Summertime Sadness,’ ‘Blue Jeans.’ Kanye requested ‘Young And Beautiful.’ The girls—the Kardashians—were so nice. There was only one front row, just them, right there. They were living for it. They started playing Kanye and Jay-Z records for the rest of the thing and it rained and everyone was just up dancing in the rain. I stayed for like 40 minutes and then I left. — People have made a big deal about that necklace you are selling that seems to have a coke spoon. Is it a coke spoon? Yeah. It’s funny. I have a flask and a lighter as well. I don’t do coke. — You’ve said in the past that you weren’t drinking either, and yet it turns up in your music. Do you drink now? No comment. — You sing about drugs and alcohol a lot. Not on this record. I well used to do a lot of drugs, but I actively don’t now. — What kind of drugs did you do? No comment. [laughs] But I think the coke spoon is kinda funny. I’m just like, Whatever. I don’t think it’s going to make anyone do coke. — Are you conscious of when you walk right up to a taboo in your work? Not really. That’s the one thing I don’t have my finger on. I am there, but there are times I don’t really know it. There’s certain stuff that I think is kinda dope that I know other people might be like, Okayyyyy. — Like singing about death? That’s real life though. Super real life. — You got a lot of shit for saying “I wish I was dead” to a journalist a few years ago. Fuck that guy, though. I didn’t think he would print it and make it the headline. I was having a really tough time. I had been on the road for a year. I was really struggling. I was just stupid, I was like, “I fucking want to die.” Maybe I meant it. I don’t really know. — Which of your albums is the most autobiographical? All of them. The last record- I listen to a song like ‘Terrence Loves You,’ and I just really feel for myself at the time. The person I’m singing about—[sings] You are what you are/I don’t matter to anyone—did I really just say I don’t matter to anyone? That’s fucking crazy. — Did you feel that way? I guess so. I sang it. — What makes you feel proud? My records. I love my records. I love them. I’m proud of the way I’ve put parts of my story into songs in ways that only I understand. In terms of my gauge of what’s good, it’s really just what I think. I have an internal framework that is the only thing I measure it by. My own opinion is really important to me. It starts and stops there.

#Lana Del Rey #Pitchfork #Alex Frank #Interview #Lust For Life #2017 #July 2017

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A Conversation With Lana Del Rey

On the eve of her fourth album, the pagan pop star sounds more content than ever. How did she get there?

Famous artists are notoriously late, but when I arrive about 20 minutes early for an interview at Lana Del Rey’s Santa Monica studio, she is ready for me, offering a handshake and a smile. It is the week before her new album, Lust for Life, will be released, but she seems unhurried and relaxed; when I ask if she’s been busy in the leadup to such a big day, she says “no” with a laugh, as if she knows she probably should be. She is not dressed like the glammed-up mystic you see in music videos and photographs: her hair, long and brown, is tied functionally behind her neck, and she is in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, with cream canvas sneakers and white ankle socks on her feet. Right away, she invites me through a side door into the inner sanctum where her brooding songs are created.

For Lana acolytes, this is a mythic place. She has recorded here since 2012’s Born to Die, her major label debut. It is a beautiful room filled with sun coming in from a skylight and two windows, the opposite of the average dank music studio. It looks a bit like how you’d expect Lana Del Rey’s workplace to look: vaguely and warmly retro, with dark wood cabinets and a mid-century-looking painting with interlacing geometric shapes hanging on the back wall. In the center of the room is a scratched-up leather club chair with a Tammy Wynette album cover facing it. (“I always have Tammy there,” she says of the country singer best known for her ode to everlasting devotion, “Stand by Your Man.”) This chair, and not the actual booth in the front of the room, is where Lana sits to record her vocals. “I get red light fever in the booth,” she says. She likes that the studio is by the beach, where she’ll sometimes go to listen to mixes of songs on her iPhone.

The studio is owned and operated by Rick Nowels, her longtime producer. He has come down today to listen to the album with us, a pair of sunglasses firmly on his face. Nowels has more than 20 years on Lana, who is 32, and he inhabits something of an uncle role, making the songwriter a bit bashful when he sweetly refers to a ballad called “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” as a “masterpiece” for its lyrical message about the importance of finding ways to have fun, even in the Trump era. Gearing up to record what would become Born to Die, Lana had met with a number of producers who all tried to tell her what she should or should not sound like, with some encouraging her to ditch the breathy vocal style that would become her signature. When she finally met Nowels, he didn’t want to change a thing. “I went through a hundred and eleven producers just to find someone who says ‘yes’ all the time,” she says. “Everyone is so obsessed with saying ‘no’—they break you down to build you up.”

Lana is a studio junkie—Lust for Life is her fourth album in about five years. She says a day that she works is better than a day that she doesn’t. Nowels tells me that even though the new album isn’t out yet, she’s already making new music. “If I get a great melody in my head, I know it’s a gift,” she says. As we sit down to listen to Lust for Life, she is clearly at home: Like a good host, she offers me her comfy leather singing chair and instead curls up on a blue velvet couch nearby. She has a familial rapport with not just Nowels, but engineers Dean Reid and Kieron Menzies, who she credits again and again for making her work better, and the four of them ruminate on mastering, making jokes about Lana’s perfectionism when it comes to the final cuts of her songs.

The album, like all of her work, is fastidiously and emphatically Lana in its sound and atmosphere: a haze of lazy pacing and flowery melodies, conjuring a foreboding backdrop for lyrics about summer and antique celebrity icons and dangerous, dissatisfying relationships. Front and center in the mix is her voice, which has a crooner’s tone and an especially wide range, from deep and low to high and sharp. Most pop stars rely on reinvention to retain relevance, but her output is remarkably consistent. She says her main criteria is whether or not a song sounds like it will transport listeners to somewhere else in their minds. On each album, the skeleton remains more or less the same while she infuses her work with stylistic elements from different genres, from rap to rock to jazz. Lust for Life draws from folk and hip-hop, two genres that she says she loves because they both privilege real storytelling.

The new record is a departure in key ways, though. In the past, Lana has become famous for themes that are, at times, hopeless: toxic romance, violence, drug use, despair, aging, death. This isn’t to say every song she has ever recorded is a downer, or that she hasn’t displayed a knowing sense of humor about her reputation. But her relentless obsession with the dark arts is a reason why her fans love her with an almost religious fervor; she’s had issues with people breaking into her house. “They want to talk,” she says chillingly. Her menacing themes have also led to resistance at certain moments from larger audiences who, perhaps trained to think of pop music as a tool of empowerment and empathy, just can’t face her nihilism.

While Lust for Life certainly has its share of grim moments, it is not as much of an avalanche of gloom, and perhaps offers signposts to a happier future. At times, Lana even approaches uncomplicated joy, like on first single “Love.” The album also contains some of her first songs that deal with a universe larger than the tangled intensity of one-on-one relationships—there are tracks intended to be balms and battle cries for trying times, which, like many Americans, she found herself fretting over constantly during the 2016 election campaign. And for the first time on any Lana album, she’s also opening the door to a number of guest vocalists: A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, the Weeknd, Stevie Nicks, and Sean Ono Lennon on a Beatles-referencing song called “Tomorrow Never Came.” “I FaceTimed with Yoko, and she said it was her most favorite thing Sean’s ever done,” Lana says.

Which is to say: She’s kinda regular, not the hardened artist we’ve heard in her songs, but someone, it would seem, who likes to hang out and chat about life and music. Talking about good times brings up memories of rough ones, and when the conversation veers towards rocky terrain, she reveals an artist—and a person—at a pivotal moment.

Pitchfork: A few years ago you were singing lyrics like “I have nothing much to live for,” and now you’re smiling on the cover of Lust for Life. How’d you get to a happier place?

Lana Del Rey: I made personal commitments.

Commitments to what?

Well, they’re personal. [laughs] I had some people in my life that made me a worse person. I was not sure if I could step out of that box of familiarity, which was having a lot of people around me who had a lot of problems and feeling like that was home base. Because it’s all I know. I spent my whole life reasoning with crazy people. I felt like everyone deserved a chance, but they don’t. Sometimes you just have to step away without saying anything.

Your past albums often presented a claustrophobic universe made up of just you and one other person, but all of a sudden it’s like you’ve got your eyes wide open and you’re looking at the world around you.

Developmentally, I was in the same place for a very long time, and then it just took me longer than most people to be able to be more out there. Being more naturally shy, it’s taken stretching on my part to just continue to integrate into the local community, global community, to grow as a person. Also, getting really famous doesn’t help you grow with the community. It’s important to have your own life. It’s hard with how accessible things are. Hacking? Email is just a no for me. I do a lot to make sure I don’t feel trapped.

Your fans are famously obsessive. Do they ever cross the line?

They fucking have. Someone stole both my cars. All the scary shit. I’ve had people in my house for sure, and I didn’t know they were there while I was there. I fucking called the police. I locked the door. Obviously, that’s the one in one-hundred-thousand people who’s crazy. But I [had a hard time sleeping] for a minute.

Fame can be isolating, but you are making a real effort to not let it be.

It’s going to be isolating. Period. Unless you stretch past it. But it takes so much footwork. Getting over the uncomfortability of being the one person in the room who everyone recognizes. The last few years, I’m out all the time: clubs, bars, shows. For years I was more quietly in the mix, always through the back door, do not tell anyone I’m coming. And now I’ve relaxed into it where I’ll just show up. I don’t need a special ticket. I’ll just go sit wherever. It feels a little more like I’m myself again.

If you’re happier these days, what do you think when you hear an old lyric from an old record, like, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss,” from “Ultraviolence”?

I don’t like it. I don’t. I don’t sing it. I sing “Ultraviolence” but I don’t sing that line anymore. Having someone be aggressive in a relationship was the only relationship I knew. I’m not going to say that that [lyric] was 100 percent true, but I do feel comfortable saying what I was used to was a difficult, tumultuous relationship, and it wasn’t because of me. It didn’t come from my end.

Now you want to present a different face to the world on Lust for Life?

No. I don’t care. I would just say I am different. And even being a little bit different makes me not want to sing that line. To me, it just was what it was. I deal with what’s in my lyric—you’re not dealing with it. I was annoyed when people would ask me about that lyric. Like, who are you?

Do you think you romanticize danger in your music?

No. I don’t like it. It’s just the only thing [I’ve known]. So I’m trying to do a new thing. I never wrote better when I had a lot of turmoil going on. Born to Die was already done before any of the shit hit the fan. When things are good, the music is better. I’m trying to change from the way I thought things were gonna be to what I feel like they could be, which is maybe just brighter.

But, even with some new perspectives, Lust for Life is still very melancholy at moments. If you make sad music, which you’ve done for so long, does it necessarily mean you’re sad?

Yeah. I think for most people, regardless of what they say, it’s probably a direct reflection of their inner world. With my first record, I didn’t feel upset. I felt very excited, and then I felt a little more confused.

After the release of Born to Die, you faced a lot of criticism, partly around the issue of whether you were or were not authentic. Do you think of yourself as authentic?

Of course. I’m always being myself. They don’t know what authentic is. If you think of all the music that came out until 2013, it was super straight and shiny. If that’s authentic to you, this is going to look like the opposite. I think that shit is stylized. Just because I do my hair big does not mean I’m a product. If anything, I’m doing my own hair, stuffing my own fucking stuffing in there if I have a beehive. Music was in a super weird place when I became known, and I didn’t really like any of it.

Did you ever feel like the criticism had a misogynistic bent?

No. Women hated me. I know why. It’s because there were things I was saying that either they just couldn’t connect to or were maybe worried that, if they were in the same situation, it would put them in a vulnerable place.

You weren’t singing empowering things.

No, I wasn’t. That wasn’t my angle. I didn’t really have an angle—that’s the thing.

Have you noticed that all songs on the radio are bummers now? That Lil Uzi Vert lyric—“All my friends are dead”—sounds almost like a Lana lyric.

There’s been a major sonic shift culturally. I think I had a lot to do with that. I do. I hear a lot of music that sounds like those early records. It would be weird to say that it didn’t. I remember seven years ago I was trying to get a record deal, and people were like, “Are you kidding? These tunes? There’s zero market for this.” There was just such a long time where people had to fit into that pop box.

With all the flak you’ve received over the years, particularly after Born to Die, some people would have thrown in the towel. But you doubled down and made an even more fucked up, almost hyper-Lana record with Ultraviolence.

I so double downed. [The early criticism] made me question myself—I didn’t know if it was always going to be that way. You can’t put out records if 90 percent of the reviews in places like the Times are going to be negative. That would be crazy. It would have made sense to step all the way back, but I was like, Let me put out three more records and see if I can just stand in the eye of the storm. Not shift too much. Let me just take some of the [production] off so you can hear things a little bit better; I thought people were maybe getting distracted. I did the same thing with Honeymoon. Everyone around here heard it and was like, “It’s a cool record, but you know it’s not going to be on the radio, right?” And I was like, “Yeah. I told [record executive] Jimmy [Iovine] when I signed, ‘If you want to sign me, this is all it’s ever going to be.’” I was just so committed to making music because I believe in what I do. All I had to do was not quit.

So that Ultraviolence woman who is so swept up in turmoil—is she still there on Lust for Life?

We’ll see. That’s been my experience up until now, but, like, I’m trying.

Some of the sparer, really heartfelt songs on Lust for Life reminded me of the Ultraviolence song “Black Beauty.”

That’s a sad song. In that song—[sings] I keep my lips red like cherries in the spring/Darling, you can’t let everything seem so dark blue—that’s a girl who is still seeing the blue sky and a putting on a pop of color just for herself. But this [other] person—it was all black for them. And my world became inky with those overtones. [At this, Lana begins to cry, and we pause for a moment.]

What made you cry just now?

In that moment, when I said “pop of color,” I was connected to that feeling of only being able to see a portion of the world in color. And when you feel that way, you can feel trapped.

Are you seeing the world in color now?

[sighs] I don’t really know how to describe my perspective at the moment.

But you’re trying, and that’s what Lust for Life is about?

It’s not. I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t know what it is.

Is the album a way of saying that you at least want to be happy?

No. It’s just that something is happening.

What makes you happy?

I’m really simple. I love nature. I like hikes. Being by the water—I don’t always get in. I love the elements. Playing an outdoor festival. Love that feeling.

What bums you out?

Feeling like going backwards.

Is there a storyline to the album?

Yeah.

What’s the story?

You have to figure it out.

Just a few years ago you were saying you didn’t care about feminism, and now you are writing protest songs and meditations on war and peace.

Because things have shifted culturally. It’s more appropriate now than under the Obama administration, where at least everyone I knew felt safe. It was a good time. We were on the up-and-up.

Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly. What if they take away Planned Parenthood? What if we can’t get birth control? Now, when people ask me those questions, I feel a little differently. The reason why I asked Stevie Nicks to be on the record is because she changes when her environment changes, and I’m like that as well.

In “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,” I wrote, “Boys, don’t make too much noise/Don’t try to be funny/Other people may not be understanding.” Like, Can you tone down your over-boisterous rhetoric that isn’t working? “God Bless America - And All the Beautiful Women in It” is a little shoutout to the women and anyone else who doesn’t always feel safe walking down the street late at night. That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote, “Even when I’m alone I’m not lonely/I feel your arms around me.” It’s not always how I feel when I’m walking down the street, but sometimes in my music I try to write about a place that I’m going to get to.

Do you feel unsafe?

I feel less safe than I did when Obama was president. When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent towards women. I saw it right away in L.A. Walking down the street, people would just say things to you that I had never heard.

When people asked me the feminist question before, I was like, “I’m not really experiencing personal discrimination as a woman. I feel like I’m doing well. I headline shows just like the Weeknd does. I got tons of women in my life, love women, support women.” I just felt like, Why don’t we talk about the music first? I can tell you that what I have done for women is tell my own story, and that’s all anyone can do.

Is it harder to be romantic about America when Trump is the nation’s biggest celebrity?

It’s certainly uncomfortable. I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos. I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing “Born to Die.” It’s not going to happen. I’d rather have static. It’s a transitional period, and I’m super aware of that. I think it would be inappropriate to be in France with an American flag. It would feel weird to me now—it didn’t feel weird in 2013.

All the guys in the studio—we didn’t know we were going to start walking in every day and talking about what was going on. We hadn’t ever done that before, but everyday during the election, you’d wake up and some new horrible thing was happening. Korea, with missiles suddenly being pointed at the western coast. With “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,” I was posing a real question to myself: Could this be the end of an era? The fall of Rome?

Nostalgia can be really corny when it’s not done well, and you’re all about nostalgia. How do you try to get it right?

I know I walk the line sometimes. [laughs] I saw comments that people said about my little “Coachella - Woodstock in my Mind” song. I write that title and I’m like, OK, I know I went there. But I think it’s amazing. It’s on the nose. It’s so on the nose. But sometimes things just are what they are. I’m at Coachella for three days, and North Korea is pointing a missile at us, and I’m watching Father John Misty with my best friend, who’s his wife—that’s all I’m literally saying. It’s just like, Yeah, I’m a hipster. I know it. Got it.

You mentioned working with Stevie Nicks on this album, what was it like recording with her?

She came in straight off a plane from her last show of like 60 cities, which I was actually supposed to open for. She had asked me, and I was like, “Oh my god.” But I couldn’t because I don’t want to do a 60-show tour.

She flew through the door. Blond highlights, rose gold glasses, gold-tipped nails, rose gold lipstick, gold chains, gold rings, black on black on black. Very stylish. And meanwhile, I looked like a housewife of 15—flannel on flannel, because it was a cold night. And I was like, Why did I not dress up for Stevie Nicks?

At the end of the track, she sings, then I sing, then she sings. I was kinda embarrassed. I was like, “I sound so little compared to you.” And she was like, “That’s good, you’re my little echo.” And I was like, Stevie called me her little echo. It’s a stupid little thing, but she was very nurturing in that way, and not belittling of the fact that I had a more breathy voice. Which I wasn’t even aware of until I was shoulder-to-shoulder on a track with someone with less air in their voice. I felt a little more exposed in that moment. But she was like, “That’s you. You just be you.”

Speaking of musical icons, can you tell me about performing at Kim and Kanye’s wedding party?

It was a surprise for Kim. I hadn’t met her. I sang “Young and Beautiful,” “Summertime Sadness,” “Blue Jeans.” Kanye requested “Young and Beautiful.” The girls—the Kardashians—were so nice. There was only one front row, just them, right there. They were living for it. They started playing Kanye and Jay-Z records for the rest of the thing and it rained and everyone was just up dancing in the rain. I stayed for like 40 minutes and then I left.

People have made a big deal about that necklace you are selling that seems to have a coke spoon. Is it a coke spoon?

Yeah. It’s funny. I have a flask and a lighter as well. I don’t do coke.

You’ve said in the past that you weren’t drinking either, and yet it turns up in your music. Do you drink now?

No comment.

You sing about drugs and alcohol a lot.

Not on this record. I well used to do a lot of drugs, but I actively don’t now.

What kind of drugs did you do?

No comment. [laughs] But I think the coke spoon is kinda funny. I’m just like, Whatever. I don’t think it’s going to make anyone do coke.

Are you conscious of when you walk right up to a taboo in your work?

Not really. That’s the one thing I don’t have my finger on. I am there, but there are times I don’t really know it. There’s certain stuff that I think is kinda dope that I know other people might be like, Okayyyyy.

Like singing about death?

That’s real life though. Super real life.

You got a lot of shit for saying “I wish I was dead” to a journalist a few years ago.

Fuck that guy, though. I didn’t think he would print it and make it the headline. I was having a really tough time. I had been on the road for a year. I was really struggling. I was just stupid, I was like, “I fucking want to die.” Maybe I meant it. I don’t really know.

Which of your albums is the most autobiographical?

All of them. The last record—I listen to a song like “Terrence Loves You,” and I just really feel for myself at the time. The person I’m singing about—[sings] You are what you are/I don’t matter to anyone—did I really just say I don’t matter to anyone? That’s fucking crazy.

Did you feel that way?

I guess so. I sang it.

What makes you feel proud?

My records. I love my records. I love them. I’m proud of the way I’ve put parts of my story into songs in ways that only I understand. In terms of my gauge of what’s good, it’s really just what I think. I have an internal framework that is the only thing I measure it by. My own opinion is really important to me. It starts and stops there.

http://pitchfork.com/features/interview/life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness-a-conversation-with-lana-del-rey/

#lana del rey #interview

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lynns-art-blog · 8 years

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Can you tell us a bit of your art journey? (ex. how you learned to do certain skills or got an artist block for a couple of years)

I suppose i could tell ya, yeah. Though I warn ya, it’s not all that interestin. =u=

I think I’ve always had a fancy or art. I’ve always loved creatin things, and I’ve always been curious about the world around me. But for a while I didn’t really do much with it. Call it laziness, or lack of direction, but I just never thought much on it.

Till I met a beautiful artist in school. I don’t really know why, but she was just so... Amazin to me. And she was a pretty talented artist as well. When I saw that, I got this silly idea in my head that, if she saw me drawin as well, then maybe we could connect on somethin, and become friends. Course, that never happened, but it started somethin in me.

Even after I had moved away I started to draw more and more. But I was never all that good. Heh, you should’ve seen the crud I drew. Triangle chins. Triangle chins EVERYWHERE. But still, I kept goin, eager to show someone, anyone my work.

That was, until, people stopped seemin interested. Heck, one of my parents stopped lookin at my darwins all together, sayin “they all look the same”. After that, I just sorta gave up for a few years. I just didn’t have the spirit to continue. I had no support for it, so why bother, right?

It wasn’t until my second year of highschool that I tried to pick up art again. At the time, I was hangin out with the first real friends I had had in, about, ten years. Well, one day one of them introduced a new kid to our group. A kind dude by the name of Ben, who also happened to be a pretty fantastic artist. I dunno why, but I guess I felt sorta jealous of his skill, so I tried to do everythin I could to match him/impress him. I found books in the school library on how to draw in a manga/anime style, and I slowly tried my best to catch up to him. But that didn’t really work out. Still, we managed to become good friends in the end, and still talk from time to time to this day.

After highschool I manged to get my first job, and start makin money. and with my first paycheck I bought myself a dinky little tablet. My first ever drawin tablet. I was so happy, because I was sure that it’d help me. Ben had warned me that it wouldn’t instantly make my art better, and he was right. But it did help in one regard: I was no longer afraid of messin up. I mean, with a tablet, I could get rid of a mistake much easier than on paper, and try again. And so I tried, and I tried.

It was around this time that I join the MLP community, and at this point I was really eager to do somethin new. I hadn’t gotten very good at drawin humans(feet, hands, faces, and bodies were a nightmare to me[still are in many ways]), so I wanted to try somethin I thought would be easier. And sure enough, I started to develop my own style. I got helpful critique from people in the community, and soon I was makin things that I wanted.

But after a while, my love for ponies sorta started to die out. I was never TRULY in the fandom, and I never managed to make anythin that stood out to the other artists in the community, so I started to feel that fire go out.

After that, and durin one of the heaviest depressions I had gone through in years, I found the Undertale fandom. And with it, so many wonderful and amazin artists. They lit a fire back under me, and my inspiration came soarin back.

But here’s the difference. The part of this that makes all of the difference. Out of all of these points in time, Undertale and the community gave me somethin that none of the others really had.

When I started, I started because I wanted to impress a girl. When I tried again, it was to gain respect/beat someone else. and when I tried yet again with ponies, I did it for recognition and for a chance to make a livin.

But with Undertale, I had finally, after so many years, decided to do somethin for myself for a change. For once, I wasn’t tryin to show anyone. For once I wasn’t drawin for others. I was drawin for myself. I was drawin because it made me happy, because I wanted to get a story out of my head, and onto paper.

I had tried, for so many years, to do art for all of the wrong reasons, but for the first time in my life, I started doin it for all of the right. ones And since then I’ve seen myself improve so much. It’s why I’ve stated before that I’ve improve more in a few short months than I had in YEARS of drawin before. It was because I had finally said enough, and that I was gunna draw for me.

So, uh, yeah, if anyone gets anythin out of this ramble, I hope it’s that if you want to be an artist, if you want to go out into the world and create, you should create those things for yourself first. If you go out with the intent to get somethin from it in return, you’ll most likely end up in failure. I know from experience. So, go out and draw, paint, cook, play. Do whatever it is that makes you happy, but do it because YOU want to. Do it because you want to make yourself happy. And if you do that, I can assure you, you’ll make others happy as well, and you’ll get better and better with every passin day. ^u^Anywho, I hope this is a good enough response, yo. I’ve madea few mistakes in my time, but we all learn from em, and they help us grow. =u=

#I'm gunna stop there before I go on nother tangent #Many I feel like an old lady #ramblin on and on about useless things #heh =u=#Anonymous

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mommymadnez · 6 years

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Ladies and gentlemen… I may have gone missing for awhile… However I am alive. There were times I did not think I was going to remain that way but I am still here. Was I losing my mind? Maybe just a little. Even had a couple surgeries. Which you would think would have allowed me the downtime to write but I think I was scared to put myself out there since I was going through a lot. In the midst of all that was going on my computer was becoming ancient, like 2009 ancient. Don’t get me wrong, my Mac is incredible but trying to type a small paragraph was taking an eternity. And sure, I could do it from my phone, a lot of my blogs start in my notes app. But sometimes I just like the feel of really typing, ya know? And it helps keep you sharp.

Plus I’m good at it. And I think sometimes my mind and my fingertips create an orchestra of thoughts, sounds, and rhythm all on their own. So now I sound crazy so let’s just say it’s therapeutic. So when my computer started getting wonky and my life got crazier, taking care of me and doing what I needed or wanted to do for myself kind of stopped mattering. So the blog, my photography, art, just about all my creative outlets took a back seat. BUT NOW…. My tools are working and I am thrilled with them. So now I have no excuses. (aside from working and raising 3 kids)

Usually my blogs are about my kids and my parenting struggles and breakthroughs but I think today its gonna be about me. We lose ourself in parenting, being a spouse, working, and all the other hats we are required to wear, I swear. I worry so much about putting all of everyone else’s needs before my own that I have truly lost sight of myself and who I am and what I NEED. But I think as moms we are all guilty of this from time to time. The thing that really has hit a nerve with me is that I was someone before I was a wife and mother. I know I may not have been the greatest version of myself but my needs came first back then. I wasn’t defined by who my children are and who I married. I was just me. Wild, spastic, living out in space some where, me. Unapologetically me.

Back in the day going out with my friends, we would pretty much have fun no matter where we went or what we did because we were all so wild and full of life and hope. I may have leaned a little on the annoying, loud and wild side. So it blows my mind to think back on all those teenage and early 20 days and then look now to my lack of socialization with the outside world and my anxiety riddled life as of late. Do not get me wrong, working from home is AHHH-mazing and I wouldn’t change it for the world. But whether I work with people in a virtual office or a physical one I do not believe it is the cure for bringing the old vibrant me back. So I definitely would not change that aspect of my life. Especially since I already struggle being a “people person.” Dealing with the public everyday in physical form would probably have me ripping my hair out. Plus you can’t really put people on hold in real life.

I always viewed my self as very plain Jane-ish. So a lot of what I felt I lacked physically I would try to make up for by being comedic relief… Or, someone who could take you for a ride in my Blue Beast making you forget all your problems by jammin to some gangster rap cruising through town… maybe we’d head a half hour outta town if we were feeling rebellious. Probably just ended up at Walmart since we we minors. But hey, we got to go off the grid. We didn’t have cell phones to constantly keep us connected to everyone we know. Our parents couldn’t pull us up on the GPS. It felt free. Life felt full of joy and hope for the future. Even the bad days didn’t last very long because we were young. Our minds and hearts (and our skin) could bounce back a whole lot faster. I love my life as a mother do not get me wrong but every once in awhile I miss those carefree days. I miss only worrying about keeping myself alive.

I took care of me, numero uno. My future, my goals those were all things that mattered so much and were suppose to shape who I was to become as a grown adult. It was about what would make me find my happiness. My hopes and dreams of my young adult days did not pan out quite as expected. I had an idea of what my life would look like and I never imagined it would turn out the way it did. It is more than I ever could have imagined a life to be. I didn’t know unconditional love until I had children. And as painful as that love can be sometimes I would never give up experiencing this current life.

You learn to embrace those changes you didn’t see coming. That broken road that led you in a path you couldn’t in your wildest dreams have imagined. You accept those changes knowing that God had a purpose and a hand in all of this.

I see now I was not meant to be the Audrey Hepburn look alike I wanted to be. Guess I just don’t have the legs… I would never be as tall or thin or fancy! But that’s the life I thought I wanted. Ah! Breakfast at Tiffanys. I wanted a life in the big city. Fast, crazy times, studio apartments, cocktail parties, fancy dresses. And I wouldn’t have dared to own a yard. I can not mow worth a crap… So I got married! Ha!!! That’s just jokes, I married him because I can’t open pickle jars by myself. 2Liters can be tricky too! 😉

ANYWAYS! those of you who know me know I am by no means a successful artist living a fancy lifestyle. I moved back to my small home town. I’m a mom of three wild children who works at home and rarely gets dressed. My getting dressed requires my “goin out” yoga pants. They usually pair nicely with a sweater boots combo… But don’t let the nice looking sweater fool you. All my sweaters have some form of stains living on them somewhere. Probably throw up. So yeah definitely envisioned a different lifestyle.

So we embrace these new chapters in life. This chapter involves a whole lot more balance and a whole lot more people to feed, clothe and keep alive. When I truly think about it though, those old days of only keeping me alive were so long ago that the memories have really began to fade. My brain really only has room for so many memories at a time. I am getting more and more aware of my age and my sanity as my mind has slowly started slipping away.

I do see little pieces of the fun crazy me I use to be begin to creep out from time to time when I play with my kids. When I do things that are silly and out of character for mama they look at me strangely at first but then burst out laughing and just look at me again like, who is this woman? And what has she done with our mean mother? I have come to the realization that, this family, these people I live with, who know so much about me now, know absolutely nothing about who I was prior to their existence. I mean they know the 2019 me so well they like to mimic my laugh… and the way I brush my teeth and my hair… or the way I wrap a towel around my head! “I’m mama! Look at me!” That’s what they say when they are making fun of me. Which is usually a lot.

I try to teach them a little about who I am through music I loved. I find time to play my favorites for them. In the car, or the tub, I don’t force it, I just let them listen and absorb.

So of course my heart melted the other day as we listened to Fleetwood Mac and my daughter asked me to send her the song! She is 100% my complete mini clone… SUPER SENSITIVE! She loves to sing, dance, use her imagination and draw. She is just all around happy and in love with life and the entire world around her. She reminds me a great deal of the old me. The one I seem to have lost. The other day I watched her as she slept and couldn’t stop thinking of how I want her to always stay carefree, creative and in love with life. I don’t want the weight of the world, the stress of families and relationships, others expectations, finances, or work to steal her joy. I always remind her of how beautiful, smart and funny she is and to never believe anyone if they tell her different. I truly believe she will be okay because she is fierce and I know that she will never let anyone or anything kill that spark and the joy within her.

So that brings me full circle to how do I find my lost joy? It sure wasn’t in that last jar of peanut butter I smashed. Yes of course, I find joy that I’m live, living and breathing right now. I also embrace the joy I find in my family and lifes other random little miracles. But is there a way to bring back a carefree spirit after years of isolation, anxiety, depression and stressors? Or the candy dishes of medications that did a number on me. They were suppose to either make me happy or make me want to die. Boy that seems like a great kind of drug/illness to take such a gamble on, right? Not like we are talking about pills for, uhm, the gout. Legit Mental health medications, prrrretttty much all of them have the possibility to cause suicidal ideations. Imagine those people who are already at their breaking point finally reaching out to a doctor for help; “Suicidal? Ah yes! Try this… It may make you feel better but your body might start to get tremors, you may have blurred vision and don’t forget the risk of erectile dysfunction. Oh, and you’ll also gain 50 pounds……… or it could make you want to kill yourself… even more… The kicker is, ya never know! You must give this drug 6-8 weeks for it to take affect. So here ya go! Have fun! May want to warn your family. Here take this pamphlet with 175 side effects to look out for” Oh boy… we will not journey down this road because that is more of a novel than a blog post.

With that being said, feel free to let me know if anyone wants to hear some crazy stories about my journey into the world of mental health in America. I got plenty. Boy I can tell ya we are missing the mark as a society when addressing mental health. There I go again, I must digress… This was not the point of the blog post. It’s actually suppose to be more like, “Hey hi! I’m going try to be back and write and take pictures on a regular basis, but, ya know… I got ADHD and tend to get easily distracted.”

So for those of you who actually read this super dope awesome long post, what do you do for yourself that brings you joy? Parenting and family aside, I want to know what you do for you?

I use to run and do yoga but I recently had a couple surgeries that didn’t go as greatly as anticipated so those stress releasing activities are currently on hold. I am going to try to get back into my writing and photography. Maybe the guitar some more. I have done some drawings recently and it felt really good. So I feel like I’m kinda headed in the right direction. I have hope that I am still buried deep inside of me in this shell of a former version of myself just waiting to come out and feel confident, joyful, and just be me again. I want my kids to know I was someone before I was “mama.” and I want to feel like that someone again. I need to learn more balance and how to put my oxygen mask on first because lately I’m struggling to breath and I think everyone else may be struggling because of it.

I put on a zip up hoodie the other day that was my absolute favorite in high school. It brought back some great memories, and side note, made me pretty freakin excited it fit me just as good, if not better, than it did before. It makes me pretty nervous putting all this out there after being MIA for so long. I feel like it sounds like a pity party like “woah is me… I don’t act all fun and crazy and hyper anymore and I have no energy and I have been known to… on occasion… yell… I feel old and crotchety, blah get off my lawn!”

At the same time I needed to start somewhere and why just dip my toe in? Midaswell just type out what is on my mind. Hopefully this helps anyone else out there struggling with some of the same thoughts I’ve had lately. I want my kids to realize I’m more than just good at the way I can cut a peanut butter sandwich. Theres more behind the weary worn down personality you have known the past few years. Now let’s go find her!

Hello World It’s me, again… Ladies and gentlemen... I may have gone missing for awhile... However I am alive. There were times I did not think I was going to remain that way but I am still here.

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namonakirei · 6 years

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Children who die at a young age are given a very special role in the afterlife: they become Invisible Friends, assigned to other children who need them back in the living realm. One Invisible Friend is just about to be reassigned from their first ever assignment.

"It'll be ok...." I brush her hair, sighing a bit, "It'll be okay, Sara."

She's crying into her pillow, in the dead of night. It breaks my heart to see Sarah like that... sadly, it's gotten more common lately. And at the worst time...

She sobs once more, but softly, and I smile at her a little, "Hey Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaara?" I poke her, "Sara, Sara, Sara, Sara!"

"Wh-What?!" She asks, finally lifting her head off the pillow. I give her my silliest grin, and stick out my tongue,

"Bet 'cha can't do what I doooooo!" I start tickling her. She yelps, then starts giggling slowly,

"S-s-stooooop! Eeeee! Hahaha, I can't... Eee! I can't tickle you!" She giggles, trying to wrest my arms away. After a while, she does manage to push me away through force of will, but now her tears are contrasting with a smile. I motion to wipe her tears, and she follws with her thumb. I sigh a little, sitting next to her on the bed. "...Thanks..." She smiles at me. "I don't know what I'd do without you..." She sighs, laying back down on the bed. That one really tugs at my heartsrings so hard I think I might die again.

See, I died when I was eight. And when you're a little spirit, they have you come back to help other kids. They see us the way they want us to be, more or less, and they can hear us and feel us around. Sara's my first friend, and she's turning twelve. She's really big now! I met her when she was three, and she babbled about random stuff all day, it was hard to keep up! Now she's all grown up, drawing things and taking pictures. She's gotten super good at it, too! But... she's almost a teenager. And that means I have to go. I don't want to leave Sara alone... overall not after all the bad stuff that's happened to her... but it's how it works. When she turns thirteen, she won't be able to see me anymore, and I'll get tasked with helping someone else. Whether I want to or not.

It sucks. I want to keep helping Sara... I want to see her grown up, and happy... I don't wanna' leave my friend yet. She's my best friend...

"Sara... do you remember when we met?" I ask quietly. She beams,

"Yeah! Well, sorta'. I was super little..." She sighs, "What was I doing?"

"You were crawling under a tree." I grin. "You told your parents there was treasure there, 'cause you'd seen something shiny. But it was just a candy wrapper..."

"Yeah! The real treasure was you!" She giggles a bit. That's our little story. She had just grabbed at the shiny and seen it was a candy wrapper, and she was starting to cry, when I popped in and blew a raspberry at her, yelling 'surprise!'. She calls me her treasure because of that, sometimes. She sits up, grabbing her pillow and putting it in her lap, "Remember Maria?" She grins at me. I laugh. I remember Maria. She was a jerk, and we sure gave her a spook.

Sara used to get bullied when she was little because her mom cleaned houses back then. Maria was the meanest jerk bothering her around. But she didn't bug Sara anymore after the class went on that one field trip. We hid in the bushes, 'cause Sara is stealthy, and the other kids were all scared from the spooky stories the guide guy was telling about werewolves and stuff. Maria said she bet Sara was hiding 'cause she was such a coward, but when she stepped in front of our bush, I told Sara and she grabbed her by the ankle. Maria shrieked super loud and ran and climbed up the guide, screeching about the mean wolf out to get her. Sara couldn't even get out of the bush, she was laughing so hard! And since then she was Sneaky Sara to her class.

"Of course I remember Maria! Sneaky Sara to the rescue." I laugh, "You sure showed her who the coward was."

She grins proudly, then looks more... like... melancholic. "...That was fun... going out used to be so much fun..." She sighs. Sara has trouble going outside now. She just stays inside, drawing and taking snaps from her bedroom window. When she's with me, I can get her out to play, but sometimes she won't set a foot out of the house. It's been worrying me a lot, though I get what happened scares her a ton.

"I know... but... but it can be fun again, Sara." I think real hard until I stumble into something that might work, "Hey! Hey Sara! Go draw outside!" I beam, "You can draw cool stuff! You keep saying how your trees suck! So go outside and draw a tree! Go under the tree and draw it! Get on top of it and draw it! That's gonna' be great!"

Sara looks hesitant, bringing her knees to her chest and putting the pillow over them, "...you think?" She asks, voice a little muffled.

"Yeah! I think!" I beam. "You're gonna' be the best drawer ever, Sara!" I hug her. She giggles a bit,

"It's artist, silly!" She says, "A drawer is where you put your stuff. An artist is a person who does art."

I pout. I knew that! But I made her laugh... that's the important bit! I grin and ruffle her curly black hair. "...so... are you volunteering again this weekend?"

"Yeah! I wanna' do that every week." Sara nods firmly. "I like helping out there." I smile. I'm so proud of Sara! She volunteers at her grandma's church's soup kitchen. She just does dishes and stuff for now, and chats with people, but she loves to help. She gets so happy when she makes people smile. ...I'm going to miss that smile so much.

Sara frowns at me, "...Hey Mi?" She pokes my face lightly, and I turn to look at her, "...are you ok? You look super... super sad sometimes, lately." She says, quietly. I flinch.

"I..." I look away, "I... I gotta' go, Sara, go to sleep..." I turn away, and I'm about to leave when I hear a sniffle.

"...Did... did I do something wrong?" Sara sniffs, "Am.. am I boring you? I-I'm sorry I said you were silly! That was mean of me! But please don't go... I-I'm sorry I was mean..."

She looks like she's going to cry again. I flinch again... I'm messing it all up! That's wrong!

"Sara... no, I'm sorry Sara! You didn't do anything!" I say. "I... I just..."

We both sit quietly on the bed for a bit, until she prods gently, "What's wrong, Mi?"

"...you're gonna' be thirteen in a couple months..." I mumble. Sara frowns, looking at me for a long while. It feels like forever.

"...Oh..." She says quietly. "...oh." She buries her face in the pillow again. I knew she'd get it. Sara's smart, and she knows lots of stuff that start or end when you are a teen. Her grandma's taught her a lot about that stuff.

We're quiet for even longer, but when she lifts her face, Sara's determined, "...can you visit sometimes? Even if I can't see you?"

"Yeah!" I smile a bit, "...I... I'll have to help someone else... but... I'll always visit" I hug her as hard as I can, and she hugs me back.

"You better! I-I'll become the best artist! And I'll draw outside! And... and... and..." She looks at me, "I'll draw you! I'll draw you, before you go! You-you gotta' pose for me, ok, Mi?"

I nod, grinning a bit, "Yeah! O-okay! I'd... I'd really like that, Sara..." I smile, tears streaming down my face now. I sob a bit, and hug her, "...I don't wanna' go..." I whisper to her. "You're my best friend... the first... person I've helped..."

"...Mi..." Sara hugs me back. It takes willpower to hug one of us, and I can tell she's focusing completely just on giving me a squeeze. "You're my best friend too... b-but I'll be ok! I h-have mom and dad, and my new friends at school, a-and I have grandma, and God's going to help, too! I'll be... I'll be ok..." She sobs quietly. We both do.

We're really sad. But we both know it'll get better... and knowing Sara's so determined to be ok helps me too.

When I have to go, it's night time. Sara was born at like 3 a.m., so she turns thirteen at 3 a.m. too.

I was told it's not usual that us Invisible Friends stay for so long, but that it's a bit more usual with your first kid. We usually leave when they're like, eleven, or twelve, because that's when they stop wanting us around. But... Sara's special. She loves me, and I love her, 'cause we're best friends. I want to stay here forever... but I can't. I know Sara's going to be ok though. She's super strong! And she's been working so hard lately. She's been going into the brush to draw, and she's been getting better. She's been going out more with her friends at school and made a couple in the neighbourhood.

She tried to stay up with me until I had to go, but she conked out sometime past midnight. It's ok though. I ruffle her hair one last time and give her a last hug. I take a deep breath, and get up. I take a good look at Sara one last time, and then I go.

Atop her desk, there's a picture of two kids. One has black, curly hair, a wide smile, and a mint-colored T-shirt and grey cargo shorts. The other has strawy hair, and freckles, and wears a striped blue shirt and shorts. I'll always be smiling at Sara from there. And that's enough. @writing-prompt-s

#story #writing #nros #writing-prompt-s #text post #long post

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rileywrites-parker · 7 years

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A very long, drawn out way of saying thank you.

I debated posting this. I’ve made a promise to myself to be more true. I’m tired of acting. This is going to seem silly to some of you, but it’s the truth.

My name is Riley.

I’ve spent a majority of my life feeling lost. Even surrounded by a family who loves me, I’ve felt completely alone, isolated, and misunderstood. I struggle to put my thoughts and feelings into words that my loved ones will understand; that anyone will understand. Why do I feel the way that I do about the world? About myself? Why am I only ever temporarily happy? Fleeting moments of joy, but always coming to an abrupt end; sometimes so quickly, into such a deep, dark, and toxic despair, the emotional whiplash leaving me exhausted. Always so exhausted; more than physically, but deeply, my soul itself drained.

As a teenager, I absolutely hated myself. There was nothing that I could do that was enough to make me love myself or my appearance. It didn’t matter what anyone had to say. People always have something to say. I was bullied because I was a little different, looked a little different, but no more so than anyone else. (Doesn’t everyone look a little different? Aren’t we supposed to?) Kids can be mean. I don’t think that anyone escapes childhood without a little verbal nastiness from their peers; so I’m not going to blame children. I was a child myself. In many ways, I’m still a child; always will be, I think. I don’t blame them anymore than I blame my grandfather for molesting me. Or for the men who harassed me. They were sick, too. Do these things affect me? Of course. Of course. But I think, maybe, my brain has always been a little sick. Or maybe I was predisposed to illness? Is it intelligence? Or lack of? Maybe all of these things.

“You’re beautiful, I don’t understand why you don’t see that.” “You have a beautiful body, what are you so worried about?” “You’re so intelligent.” “I wish I were as creative as you.” “You’re so talented.” If I had understood why, then perhaps I wouldn’t have done what I did to myself. I remember the first time that I purged, and how ashamed I was of myself; how can anyone be so petty, pathetic, so vain? There are people with ACTUAL problems, and look at you; hugging a toilet, fingers down your throat, wasting food, wasting good tissue; that burn can’t be good. Oh, but it was. That burn took away the other in my brain, and for the rest of that day, in this sick, twisted nonsensical way, I felt a little better about myself; now I have control over this; a button, a switch that I can flip at any time to make this dark thing cower, for just a little. That turned into six years of binging, purging, starving myself, constantly exercising, not sleeping, crying, feeling horrible; but it was about controlling that dark thing, right? (I see now that on that day, I gave IT control.)

Art has always been the constant. Creative expression always helped me work through whatever this was. Drawing, writing, piddling around on a keyboard or a guitar; something to distract myself long enough to get out from under that dark thing. I’ll show you that I’m worth something; I can make things, beautiful things with these fingers. You can ruin things with them too.

I remember the first time a song really touched me on a level so deeply that it literally knocked the purging right out of me. When I tell people, I feel ridiculous. “I listened to a song on repeat, and suddenly I didn’t need to purge or starve myself anymore.” What?

‘No, you can’t keep letting it get you down, and you can’t keep dragging that dead weight around. Cause if your mind don’t move, then your knees don’t bend. When the morning comes: let it go, this too shall pass.’ Just some letters thrown together to form a few simple words, but they were the right ones. I’m not telling you that my eating disorder was cured, just like that; the thoughts didn’t go away, they STILL haven’t, but it gave me the strength necessary to control my urge to purge. No more self-harm. At least, not physically. (But then, isn’t it ALL physical?)

It’s almost comical, really, to think that almost as soon as I defeated that particular bit of nastiness, that demon, if you will, I became aware of a much larger, much more draining gaggle of demons. I spent so much time worrying about what other people thought of what I looked like, (as if I could have helped that AT ALL; as if that should even be an issue for ANYONE,) what others thought of how I acted and what I thought, that I had completely neglected my internal self, and what I wanted, who I wanted to be. I found myself already married. I had already given up the one thing that I had always turned to; I had been accepted into a renowned art school, but turned that down for the sake of ‘practicality,’ and partially because, unsurprisingly, I let the opinions of others control my own thoughts. The death of that dream hurt so badly, but more because I let it happen without fighting for it. Complacency can be a killer. I didn’t pick up a pencil for two years.

The world itself is incredibly disheartening. The people in it, the truly bad ones, make it so hard to have faith in anyone, in anything; to trust. Why should I ever make myself vulnerable to anyone? Keep to yourself, kid. Don’t let anyone in, and no one can hurt you the way they hurt others. But that hurts too. What is the point, if not to connect? What is the point of this if there is only ugliness all over the world. Selfishness, waste, violence, ignorance, and hurt; so much fucking hurt. Everywhere. Children, men, women, animals, the planet itself. Constantly bombarded with images and stories of pain.

Not only that, but to be a young adult in this society (you know, the one we created for ourselves,) is almost impossible. Finish high school, go to college, get married, buy a house, have 2.5 kids, retire, and die. Get up, get dressed, go to work, go to bed, sleep; maybe, and repeat. It’s impossible to make enough money to complete this checklist, and even if you do, it feels so fucking hollow. I’m alive, but I’m not living. Empty. Heavy. I’m not alive. This isn’t what I wanted for myself. How can this be what anyone wants for themselves? Why can’t I spend my whole day outside with the trees instead of looking at them through a dirty window? When do I get some space? When does anyone? Why is no one else screaming these things? This isn’t right. Who am I? This world isn’t right. It’s sick. What do I want? I’m sick. What do I do? What do I say, and to who? I can’t even tell anyone what this is, because we’re selfish by nature. It’s only natural, right? What is right?

“How are you?” “Good, and you?” “Good.” Keep to yourself, and no one can hurt you. But that’s not true. You’re hurting yourself, kid.

I wrote this big long, drawn out piece of cerebral vomit to tell you that I am once again being saved by music. My brother shared a song with me not too long ago that sucker punched me right in the brain; because amidst all of the stupid pop songs about how great it is to be alive, this one was true; and it was on the radio. ‘I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink, but now I’m insecure, and I care what people think. My name’s Blurryface and I care what you think.’ ‘Out of student loans and tree house homes, we all would take the ladder/latter.’ ‘Used to dream of outer space, but now they’re laughing in our face saying: wake up you need to make money.’ Holy shit, someone gets it. Someone understands. This is on the radio? More letters turned to simple words, but, fuck, did they hit me.

Immediately I went home and looked for more. I was not disappointed. Never have I listened to an artist and loved every single song, every word, for every meaning. It was literally as if I was listening to that part of my brain that runs on repeat. All of those letters turned into words, into poetry, into art, into feeling and emotion. Understanding. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t run to these guys and spill everything, to have a conversation, because we were already conversing. Excuse the pun, but that burn in my brain, that deep ache that had ached for so fucking long, had been washed with water; soothed, calmed. I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’m not the only who sees. With every word, every line the relief grew; a heaviness that I hadn’t even taken the time to acknowledge began to lift from my soul. What is life really, but to connect? Words have so much power.

Let me just say, I’ve never wanted to kill myself. I’ve been in a horrible place within myself, so many times, and in so many different ways. I’ve thought of death. I’ve thought about what the world would be like here without me (I always came to the conclusion that while it might not make a difference to the world, it most definitely would to the people who love me.) Maybe I’m too big a coward; or maybe the things that I do recognize in life as beautiful are too valuable, too dear, too in need of cherishing, but I do understand depression, anxiety, and self-hate.

Twenty One Pilots has re-awoken that creative part of me that I had given up on. Made me aware of how much my intentional creative constipation was actually hurting me. It feels so good to just do something constructive with my brain. I’m drawing and writing again. I was writing poetry while at work today. Instead of the usual less than positive soundtrack, constructive thoughts filled the time. I’ve even gotten into playing the drums. (Can I just say that literally beating your brain into submission while creating something; especially something that physically alters the air around you and produces such a variety of complex sounds is exhilarating.)

Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have saved my light. Thank you. I can’t say that I won’t ever get the chance to thank you in person, but here, now, I am nudging your consciousness with my own. I respect you. I see you. Thank you.

‘I know where you stand, silent, in the trees. I want to know you, I want to see, I want to say: hello.’

#cerebral vomit #twenty one pilots #twenty øne piløts #trees #addict with a pen #kitchen sink #depression #anxiety #eating disorder #adulting #tyler joseph #josh dun #this too shall pass #learning to be true #understanding #thank you #skeleton clique #inspiration #shouting into the void

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