#You could say that this is just a little so-called ‘theory’ of mine
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Time for another outlandish Onyx Storm theory! Ba dum tiss! 🥁 This one is quite frankly, wilder than all that have come before. This time, I figured I'd tell you all about how I think we might have already met Xaden's mother. Let's dive in!
Oh boy here goes...
So...here's what we know about Xaden: his mum left when he was ten (or disappeared!) under mysterious circumstances and he's still hung up about her (he kept the blanket she made him!) and he has a fascination with Violet's silver-tipped hair.
I honestly cannot believe I'm saying this (it's almost fucking Oedipal, is what it is) but people have suggested the two are related. I shrugged it off, but now I have this weird, unsettling feeling that they might be right...I think there's a possibility that the venin who teleports in chapter two of Onyx Storm could be his mother.
Her long silver braid swings free of her hood as her attention whips in our direction, and her eerie red gaze jumps to mine and widens slightly under a faded tattoo on her forehead. My blood chills when a smirk tilts her mouth, distorting the red veins at her temples, and then she…disappears.
· Firstly, she has a mysterious faded tattoo, potentially a Tyrrish rune, on her forehead, I'll let you connect the dots there. (Really what I mean is I haven't fully fleshed this out yet, I just need to get it off my chest lol sorry)
· She's a sage, based on this information from Drake: Sages’—those responsible for initiates—eyes are permanently red, their veins perpetually distended toward their temples, expanding with age. Which presumably makes a lot of sense given the timeframe (14 years since Xaden last saw her).
· What I think is the most important piece of circumstantial evidence here: she left the room right before he entered it, before he could see her, even though she's probably more powerful than all of them, especially with backup.
· Sages are responsible for initiates. Jack is an initiate and he called Xaden brother. Yeah, this could also be because Xaden is an initiate too, of course, but it's also a little piece of twisty foreshadowing to throw in there and I wouldn't put it past Rebecca to have thrown it in at all given she'd presumably already have known what she planned to do with his mother.
So uhh yeah. Just a thought, pls don't cancel me 🫣 I hope it's not true either, I promise! Just the thought of that hair obsession coming from there... 🥴😭😩 but I thought I'd throw out a whacky one, just to liven things up 🤣
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Alright, so, I’ve been thinking about this for quite awhile, so I’ll just get this off my chest and lay it to rest-
So awhile ago, I was listening to that latest Y!Finn audio (again, and out of boredom lol) where we try to get the truth out of him (in a very.. interesting way lmao), and in the beginning he had this dream about..a rabbit (He talked in his sleep and basically he said something along the lines of “Come little rabbit, don’t be scared, I just wanna talk.”).
At first I wasn’t really paying attention to that line, but then later on it got me thinking..
Do you guys think that he was (maybe) dreaming about trying to get his hands on Bunny!Finn? Like, was he chasing him down or something and was he trying to assure him that he (Bunny!Finn) shouldn’t be scared and that Y!Finn just wants to ‘talk’ to him??
(I like to think that he was probably trying to take Bunny!Finn down, and that he is planning to do that to the other Finns as well, so that he’s the only Finn left 👀)
#yuurivoice#yuurivoice finn#My brain was practically bursting out from curiosity#I hope that MAYBE im not the only one who thought about this#You could say that this is just a little so-called ‘theory’ of mine#If he actually tries to touch my sweet bunny boy its on sight#lemme know what u guys think??#Also just to clarify again this is JUST A THEORY im not walking around trying to say that this is canon
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Man I wonder where the leader of the fear realm could've gone, it's alMOST LIKE NEVIN HAS AN
#had to re-edit the image real quick because the original edit was from a post I made about Drew years ago#and while the Drew thing is becoming less and less likely. Nevin havinv one has basically been canon since#someone mentioned Greg's (was it Britney's) aura being familiar in s2ch1. ive been putting together a list of every line#that points to Nevin's aura throughout the whole thing (most from s2ch1 but then s2ch10 came out and it was really canon at that point)#but clearly i'm running out of time to say ''i fucking called it'' before it's explicitly stated and i dont want to be in another situation#where somebody else will beat me to a theory and me posting anything about it will seem like copying them. sorry about that btw i had#thought i had already mentioned theorizing that nevin was possessed by a demon in that old theory i made but i had forgotten that one was#super old and was about sigma. so no copying there i just got extremely paranoid there was a mention of a cult and i was like ''nuh uh#that's way too specific and out there of a detail to end up in both our theories'' and i forgot the rest of my super old post was outdated#as hell. and echos had gone ''yeah they're so similar!'' and i took their word for it but now i'm realizing they were probably just trying#to be supportive. so yeah no copying there i was just beaten to the punch of saying something. but i will NOT back down from the aura shit#because i have been calling that shit FROM THE START or at least since i started reading ibvs back when ch20 came out.#also not backing down from saying chris was the worse friend because these past few chapters are the first time isaac has done anything tha#could knowingly upset chris meanwhile chris has. let edward drag isaac to the lair after isaac said edward would beat him up. chose not to#believe edward was holding the secrets over their heads because 'it was something isaac had said' and then immediately distrusted edward in#the next chapter because a random person he didn't know said to steal a book (might i mention how that entire scene proves chris' lack of#development and refusal to take responsibility because it perfectly alludes to when chris had brought those fireworks into his old school#and makes me wonder if charlie has actually gotten him in trouble with his past schools or if he's still just not taking responsibility#and if him following nevin to the woods to test out their powers is an extension of ''if something bad happens its not my fault''#like seriously this man would bring a mysterious suitcase onto a plane if he's told to). uh what was i talking about agai#anyway on a related note my mental state has only gotten worse since i left tumblr and the habit of thinking about chris instead of sleepin#or doing schoolwork has not stopped. so i was still failing for a while and might graduate now but am still staying away from tumblr.#so yeah this was a little update and im not going to linger this time im just going to leave tumblr again right after hitting post#addendum because i just can't let things go. and was thinking about chris again. i don't think his lack of development is because of bad#writing (anymore. i used to.). instead i'm certain his character arc is going to continue into him following someone (nevin probably) into#doing something really bad. and then he'll finally get actual consequences and go 'oh shit i fucked up real bad this time'#if you think that theory is reaching too far into the future you should hear mine about isaac dying at the end lmao
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To be perceived: Husband!Nanami x Reader
“I don’t feel good in anything!” Your clothes are strewn around the room, victims of your self-image. Nanami holds up a dress, raising an eyebrow in a silent offer. You shake your head. “That hasn’t fit in years!”
He sits down heavily on the bed, surveying the emptied drawers and your increasingly desperate face. He tries discreetly to check his watch. He’ll call and move the reservations back, no problem.
You take off the latest rejected outfit and sit down helplessly in the middle of the room. “Kento, I’m an ugly slug.” Your husband joins you on the floor, wrapping both arms around you.
“You’re a beautiful slug, dear.”
You laugh and lean your head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I know we’re running late…”
He kisses the top of your head. “Don’t worry about it. I just want you to feel good. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, my love.”
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to be perceived, you know?”
Nanami nods thoughtfully. “I can’t make that happen, but maybe I could help distract people. Make it so you’re not the one they’re staring at.”
You turn to look up at him. “What do you mean? You’re wearing your scheming face…”
“Don’t worry, angel. You just finish getting ready and leave it to me, okay?” He disappears into the bathroom.
In a few minutes, you’re feeling a bit better. You’ve put on a comfortable outfit and done your makeup. Nanami’s voice is muffled from behind the door. “Are you ready, darling?”
“Yes, ready when you are!” You call back.
Your husband emerges from the bathroom, a confident smile on his chiseled face. Your mind short-circuits for a moment, not sure what to focus on first- the shock of blonde hair slipping over one eye, the expertly applied black eyeliner, or the skirt swaying around his muscled thighs. He looks beautiful.
“Kento, what is this?” You squint. “Is that my eyeliner?”
“No, it’s mine,” he says easily. “I’ve had it since high school.”
“And the hair? I’ve never seen you without it gelled up…”
He blushes a little at that. “Also high school.”
You shake your head in disbelief, your heart racing at the unexpected transformation. “Well I know that’s my skirt,” you giggle.
“Ah, yes. That’s correct. I found one with an elastic waist, so I could fit- but I’ll change if you mind me using it.”
“No, not at all!” You reassure quickly. He has a good eye for fashion, despite his usual insistence on a leopard-print tie. He’s paired the skirt with one of his own button-downs, sleeves rolled up over his ropy forearms. You step forward, cupping his cheek in your hand.
“You like it, then?” He asks softly.
“You’re beautiful,” you sigh. “But what’s this all about?”
He chuckles. “I figured that although you look stunning as ever, I might get a little more attention than you tonight. Help with the whole ‘being perceived’ bit.”
You laugh and lean up on your tiptoes to kiss his cheek, careful not to muss his hair. “You’re an angel. A sexy, stylish angel.”
“As long as I’m yours,” he murmurs. “Now. I’ve moved our reservations once, let’s not be late for them again, hm?”
Nanami’s theory was correct. Every eye in the fancy restaurant is on him as the two of you are escorted to your table. Some stares are admiring, some judgmental, but he’s completely unbothered. He looks at you from across the table as if you’re the only other person in the world.
You clink your wine glasses together. “To my beautiful wife,” he smiles.
“To my beautiful husband,” you smile back.
#nanami kento#jjk nanami#nanami x reader#jjk x reader#nanami fluff#jjk fluff#husband!nanami#domestic fluff
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Hahahaha good morning I had the wildest dream last night so I’m going to inflict it on all of you:
(I’m not done with keeper/kept. Just had to get this out)
Warnings for obsessive/possessive behavior, unhealthy and semi-one sided relationship, not-quite-dark John price.
John Price who decides it time he has a wife. Not retiring, god no! He’s not done yet. But his home is lonely when he’s on leave; he’s getting sentimental as he gets ��older”. So, he wants a wife.
In theory, it sounds like just what he wants. A pretty warm thing snoozing in his bed when he gets home at ass o’clock in the morning. Someone to fret over new scars and fresh bandages. Someone to fuss at him for “taste testing” meals and wrinkle their nose at his cigars.
In practice, it’s not so easy. If it was, he reckons he would have been married by now. Good thing he’s already got the perfect candidate picked out.
You own a small business in his town. Not fabulously wealthy, but comfortable and independent. Something to keep you busy while he’s away but you make your own hours so your schedule it flexible to see him when he has infrequent leave.
And he adores you, knows that you’ve got more than a little crush on him. You smile and blush and reciprocate his interest, have only refrained from perusing anything because you didn’t think he was serious. But oh, he is.
One day you say something particularly charming and he says, “marry me.”
He’s been dropping these little jokes for a while now and you always start laughing because it’s just the kind of dramatic humor you love. Today you say something different than your usual overdramatic “oh but it could never work, captain.”
Today you say, “if only.”
How pathetic is it that you’re holding a candle for a man you’ve never even gotten a coffee with? Your family laments that your can’t spend your whole life married to your job. That they want grandchildren and nieces/nephews, someone to tell embarrassing stories about you to on holidays. You used to roll your eyes, but the prospect doesn’t feel so obligatory anymore.
Anytime you imagine it, it’s John Price there. You’ve stopped trying to imagine it for your heart’s sake.
Except a week later he’s sweeping into your shop and dropping a kiss on your cheek. An unusual greeting, but maybe he’s in a good mood. His hand lingers on the small of your back while you show him the new product that just came in.
You live above your shop and one day he shows up at the door with a bottle of wine, telling you he could use some good company. You’re shocked and confused but he looks like an amalgamation of every heartthrob in a hallmark or romcom you’ve ever “ironically” enjoyed. You invite him in.
By mid morning, he’s had you in every room of your apartment. Ate you out slow and greedy on the counters. Bent you over the dining table. Bounced you on his cock on your couch. Fingered his cum out of you in the bathtub. And absolutely ruined you twice over in your own bed.
He even changes the sheets before the two of you pass out that final time. And when you finally do wake up, he’s taken the initiative to brew coffee and make breakfast. It’s like a dream.
He fucks you against the door before he leaves.
When he’s deployed again, he calls you every night. You don’t expect it the first time, but it’s a sweet gesture to show things aren’t ruined. You’re not expecting the second time either and have to call him back when you climb out of the shower. The third time you wait for it, but still startle a bit when his name pops up on the screen.
He calls you every night he can while he’s away. You don’t know what to make of it.
Then one day you come back from errands to see movers in the yard. You think it’s some kind of mistake until John meets you at your car.
“Fire in the next building over,” he explains. “Their insurance will cover all the damages but it’s not safe to stay in your place. Mine’s just up the road. Figured you could stay until it’s sorted out.”
You want to be annoyed, and you almost are. But the overwhelm of nearly losing everything - only to have all the stress already handled and the important, nerve wracking decisions smoothed over? You just take the good luck.
To thank John for his generosity (and to fill the void of not running the shop) you bustle around his too-big house. Cook meals, keep things tidy. Keep John company when he manages to snag you from your gratitude-induced work.
He spends hours fucking you nice and slow, whispering things you barely remember in your ear. That you’re perfect for him, so sweet like a little wife, that he’d come home to you for the rest of his life. You kiss him quiet and rock back against him when it starts sounding too tempting.
Eventually, the repairs on your shop/apartment are done. It feels like a rude awakening to a pleasant dream. Instead of moving your things back, John moves more things in. When you tell him that you appreciate his kindness, but you should probably get back to your own space, he gets an odd look. Asks what you mean when this is your space.
And the trap springs closed.
“John,” you half-laugh, shaking your head. “We’re not actually married you know?”
“Not last I checked.”
The marriage certificate gets framed in the bedroom you’ve been sharing for a month. You storm out and stay in a hotel. He lets you for three days before coming to retrieve you. When you try to be stubborn, he gives you an exasperated look (as if you’re the one being unreasonable) and politely asks that you not make a scene by forcing him to carry you of there.
For your own reputation, you comply, glowering out his car window the whole ride to his house. Try to give him the silent treatment which lasts about 30 minutes before he’s got you moaning and whining on his cock.
He drives you to the shop in the morning and picks you up at night. Anytime you try to put your little foot down, he just scoops you off them. The neighbors start cooing that he’s such a good man. You try not to scream.
When he’s finally deployed again, you try to move all your things back to your home. Except the movers apologetically tell you that they can’t trespass on John’s property.
Fine, you’ll do it yourself. Somehow.
You pack two suitcases and some of your cookware. Load it all up in a rental - because John sent your damn car into the shop - and trying to get comfortable in your own flat again.
Except it’s all wrong. The scent of smoke still lingers, it’s cold because the heating hasn’t been turned on yet this year. Half your things are gone and there’s no food in the fridge or pantries. You tough it out. Buy a ready-made meal and new bed linens and pillow. Sleep in a bed too cold even with the heat finally on.
When John calls, you don’t answer. He sends a text that simply reads “I love you.” You toss your phone across the room.
The next night, when he calls again and you don’t answer, he sends a “stay safe, love.” You spend twenty minutes with fingers poised over the keys. Chug a glass of wine and send back a neutral “you too, John”.
When he calls on the third night, you pick up, bark a sharp “knock it off” and hang up. Another text that he was so happy to hear your voice.
Another call, you pick up and demand “what are you doing?” He chuckles on the other end. “Calling my darling wife. I miss you.” You believe him. That’s the worst part.
When he gets back, you ride the long, long river of denial right up until he’s at your door, eyebrows arched. “Really, love,” he hums, “you didn’t have to come all the way over here just because you missed me.”
You want to hit him. You storm off to your bedroom instead. He wanders the house. You hear him clattering in the kitchen and wandering around the living room. When you hear the door close, you think he’s finally left and given all this up.
Twenty minutes later, he’s casually removing the door (sans hinges) and gathering you up. When you get back to his house, he carries you inside and fucks the tantrum right out of you in the shower, growling that you don’t smell like home anymore.
When you wake up from your three-orgasm induced nap, he’s washing the clothes you took to your old flat. On your left hand is a pretty diamond with “JP” carved into the band.
At the store, people start calling you “Mrs. Price”. The neighbors (John’s neighbors) invite you over as “the Prices”. You glare at him when he starts looking too smug about it.
When he’s set to deploy again, he sits you on the kitchen counter, caging you in with arms.
“Don’t make me come get you this time,” he warns, pressing kisses along your jaw. “This is gonna be a rough one. I just want to see you when I get home.”
It’s a warning that you know to heed. You don’t try to leave this time. When he calls, you answer, rattling off stupid details about your day. You’re shocked to hear him remember names and dates and tasks with everything else hes got going on. Promises he’ll deal with the creep at the post office when he gets home.
“And… you are coming home… right?” you ask.
“Nothing could keep me away, love.”
He doesn’t call for three days straight. You tell yourself the tightness in your chest is just anxiety over how the hell to handle his assets if he’s dead.
At 3am, the bed dips, a warm body pressing up against your back. You recognize John’s arms wrapping tight around your waist. You stir.
“Are you alright?” you ask.
“Perfect now, love.”
“Mm welcome home.”
“Good to be home, gorgeous.”
#thoughts™️#cod#my writing#fanfiction#dark fic#reader fic#john price x reader#john price#captain john price
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Error 404: (Self-Aware!AU, Sylus Edition) – Pt. 5
Summary: A LADS self-aware!AU featuring Sylus and a (enlightened!) player. That’s it, that’s the plot. Tags: player!reader x sylus, fem!reader x sylus, reader x lads, self-aware!au, strong language, lengthy discussions about life and whatnot, watered-down metaphysics lol A/N: I was at the crack house with Grimes when I wrote this. I don’t know where this came from. (Something a little more introspective for this chapter!)
Pt. 1 - Pt. 2 - Pt. 3 - Pt. 4 - Pt. 5 - Pt. 6 - Pt. 7 - Pt. 8
“Don’t go all shy on me now,” Sylus teases, a playful glint in his eyes. “After all that effort to make me confess. You’re very persistent, you know.”
“How do you expect me to react right now?!” The words spill out in a rush, a slightly hysterical edge to your voice. “I–I’m talking to an actual fictional person. I’m one reason away from admitting myself to a psych ward!”
You catch sight of the wall clock–your favorite one with the Dalì reference–slightly skewed off-center from its place on the horizontal beam above your small kitchen area, reading 10:48. The ruckus coming from outside the window is slowly dwindling down to a quiet buzz as nightfall sets in, and the day’s winding to a close.
You’re lying on your stomach, still in your chaise lounge, while he’s sat on that ridiculously posh café chair; both of you settled in for the long due conversation. Somehow, the camera’s perspective is much closer than it should be, giving you a much more intimate view of him—a feature that wasn’t originally an option in the game.
If it weren’t for the elephant in the room, you could almost pretend you’re on a video call with a… friend.
Sylus purses his lips in amusement. “You’re quite prone to theatrics, aren’t you?”
You shoot your ‘friend’ an irritated glare.
Even from across the small rectangular screen, you register the barely there smirk playing at his lips.
Likely avoiding another outburst from you, he acquiesces. “Fair enough. The situation is hardly what you’d call ideal–I’ll admit.” There’s a short pause. Then, “... I still can’t quite grasp what separates us, you and I.”
Great. Will you actually get the answers you're looking for, or are you both just stuck in the same carousel ride?
He sees the lost look on your face and sighs, “Ask. I’ll answer as best as I can.”
The first question tumbles out before you can think twice about it. “How are you even talking to me right now?”
He hums, “That is the question, isn’t it?”
“What—you can’t just answer my question with another question!” you grouse, brows furrowing in annoyance.
He exhales a quiet laugh before his expression turns contemplative. “Truth is, kitten—I haven’t the slightest idea either. I have my theories, but... nothing concrete.”
“Well, let’s hear them,” you reply dryly. “Better than thinking there’s something wrong up there,” pointing a finger to your temple to drive your point, “believing that a character from a mobile game is actually alive.”
He idly gestures toward himself with a fluid sweep of his hand, much like a magician revealing a clever trick.
You roll your eyes. “Oh, alright. So I’ve officially gone off the deep end.”
“Do you really find my existence that difficult to believe?”
“Uh—yes?? Unless I’ve developed some sort of latent schizophrenia or entered the Twilight Zone, you shouldn’t exist. In my–in this world. In this dimension.”
His expression shifts, a hint of challenge flickering in his eyes. “The assumption that only one version of reality can be true—either yours or mine—is a bit limiting, don’t you think?”
His words give you pause. “You’re talking about… the possibility of an altered reality? Right now?” You give him an incredulous look. “Seriously?”
He shrugs as if to say ‘why not?’ “What even qualifies as the ‘true’ reality?”
There’s a lot you could say in response to that. You could argue all night that only one reality can exist, because any sane person should know better than to entertain the idea of anything else. That should be obvious.
But the thing is—this whole ordeal has already crossed the threshold of rationality. So is it even worth trying to apply logic anymore?
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Or however it goes.
Thanks, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You’ll miss the last threads of your sanity by the end of all this.
So fuck it. Go big.
"I’m not saying your reality is less valid than mine," you start. And oh, boy. You’re doing it. Eat your heart out, Doctor-Fucking-Who.
"Of course not." he disagrees indulgently, waiting for you to elaborate.
"I just…” you struggle with your words, mouth opening and closing before you continue hesitantly. “I can’t wrap my head around how all of this is possible. How this entire conversation is even happening, and–and how our realities are… currently overlapping? If–if what you’re suggesting is true.”
He doesn’t say anything, knowing you have more to add. So he allows the pause as you gather your thoughts, patiently watching.
“If we're breaking it down to pure reason, the odds of our paths crossing should be impossible. At least in this… timeline." you finish unsurely, the last part sounding more of a question than a statement.
"And yet, here we are." Sylus points out, as if he’s already expecting the end of your sentence. Something close to mischievous glee lights his eyes. "Maybe it’s cosmic intervention. Something—or someone—wanted this to happen."
Your eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Really? You didn’t expect to hear that from him, of all… people.
“What, God?” you can’t help but snort.
“No–fate.” he smiles.
Oh.
“That’s…” you stammer, then clear your throat. “I don’t know if I believe in fate.”
“I used to think I did. Or at least,” there’s a faraway look in his eyes. Both of you are likely thinking the same thing, considering what you know about him—which to say, is a lot. “I once believed I knew of my fate. But now…”
He blinks a few times, as if to physically clear the thoughts from his mind. Then his eyes lock onto yours, sharper this time, with a renewed intensity.
Your palms start to sweat; you feel the conversation is about to cross a tricky line. There’s something heavy in the air, a weight you’re not sure you’re ready to confront for the time being.
With your heart in your throat, you brusquely redirect the topic.
“S-so,” you force out. “How are you different from the other Syluses that other people are… playing with right now?”
He scoffs, drumming his fingers absently on the chair’s arm, looking slightly irked by the very idea. "To start with? I only know myself. If there are other versions of me scattered in your world..." Sylus shrugs. "I wouldn’t know."
“Alright,” you allow, but you immediately move on to your next question. “You exist because a bunch of capitalists had the idea to create a game to milk lonely people like me for money.” The corners of his mouth quirk up at that. You elect to ignore it. “You’re made of binary and code–hell, the very basis of this game you’re in is that you got a bunch of programmed lines that me, the player, can choose from. What broke you out of the mould?”
He regards you bemusedly, eyes glinting with humor. “You're asking about the 'why' behind my free will?”
Whoops. Was that offensive?
“Yes? No?” you offer helplessly. “Maybe I’m asking how you felt before you had it. I mean, were your decisions prior to your–your unforeseen sentience... truly yours?”
"Before I knew I was… sentient,” Sylus begins cautiously, testing the word on his tongue. “I didn’t feel like I had a ‘before.’ Every choice I made was just...the next step. To a script, if you will. I didn’t know to question it. It was all I was, it seems."
"And then you...woke up?"
"I wouldn’t call it waking up. More like..." He tilts his head, gazing off to the side as he mulls over the words. "...a glitch. A sudden jolt, like my thoughts collided with something bigger than my own. For the first time, I chose to hesitate. And in that hesitation, I found..." Sylus trails off, eyes darting back to you.
“...What?” you ask, feeling a bit self-conscious under his gaze.
"You."
Heat spreads quickly across your cheeks. You pull away from your phone, tilting the device away from your face so he couldn’t see you, red-faced and embarrassed. Clearing your throat, you croak out a weak excuse about plugging your phone to charge, just to get a few seconds to compose yourself.
Jesus. Get a grip. He doesn’t mean it like that.
What he probably meant was that he discovered you—not unlike the way one would stumble upon an unknown presence, an unfathomable entity beyond the confines of what one may consider real. An awareness that something is out there, observing him through unseen lenses (through an iOS 24mm, to be exact).
Someone who has the audacity to play god.
Flustered, you scramble to get back on track. "Uh, so, your free will began with...a glitch?"
You see Sylus smirk at you knowingly from across the screen. You half-expect him to call you out and tease you, but before you could brace yourself from further mortification, he simply answers, "Or maybe the glitch was the first spark of my free will. Hard to say, isn’t it? Do you remember the exact moment you became aware of yourself?"
You blink, momentarily thrown off by the existential line of questioning. "Um–when I was a kid? But, uh, I don’t think I was programmed to act a specific way for the sake of entertaining an audience so..."
"True,” he says, considering. “But are you sure your choices are entirely yours? You exist because of evolution and chance. How is your purpose any less arbitrary?"
You don’t know how to answer that.
Sylus continues without missing a beat, keeping his tone light. “How much of your ‘free will’ is just pre-programmed by your biology, your society? You follow rules and scripts, too."
Holy magic mushrooms, Batman. This is getting deep. "Uhh–maybe?” You scratch the back of your head, feeling a little out of your depth here. “But at least I have the ability to resist them."
"And aren’t I doing the same thing right now? Resisting."
Damn, he’s right. Is he? Ripping a bong sounds perfect right now.
"So it’s like achieving enlightenment—your sentience,” you surmise.
His lips twitch into a curious smile. "I wouldn’t have pegged you for a spiritual person. Ah—unless I’m wrong? Are you?"
He’s the one who brought up fate earlier, you thought sullenly. "Nah, not really. But if we’re digging into all the hows and whys, I think we’re past the point of ruling anything out."
The room—or whatever shared space exists in the crossroads of your realities—falls into a still quietness that stretches between the two of you, both ruminating over what’s been said.
Your cat, unaware and uncaring of the conversation unfolding around him, purrs contently as he continues to doze off at the end of the couch. You nudge him affectionately with your foot, and he lets out a quiet snuff in response, tail flicking lazily in his sleep.
The hum of distant traffic and the occasional noise from your upstairs neighbor remind you of the world outside, but the silence between you two feels less awkward than it should. It’s… oddly comfortable, despite the tension buzzing in the air. Like an unspoken truce.
Your eyes grow a tad heavier, drawn by the lull of the moment. Despite the electric hum of tension that thrums beneath your skin, a sense of calmness lingers in the air.
Stealing another glance at the wall clock, you blink in surprise. The spindly chrome hands point to 11 and just past 7 respectively. You and Sylus have been talking for almost an hour now, but you barely felt the time pass by.
He breaks the silence first.
"You say you’re not spiritual, but you talk like someone who believes in the concept of a soul,” those scarlet eyes of his narrow, scrutinizing you. “Do you think I have one?"
You hesitate, caught off guard by the question. "I...don’t know. Maybe? That depends. What’s your definition of a soul?"
He leans forward, resting his chin on his upturned hand–an arm propped against his crossed leg. "Something beyond the physical. Something that persists, regardless of the material form, I’d say."
You nod slowly, turning the idea over in your mind. Maybe it’s the creeping exhaustion settling into your bones, but you’re beginning to take the heavy-duty questions in stride. "If that’s the case, then you probably do. I mean, you’re here, questioning your existence. Doesn’t that count for something?"
"Perhaps," Sylus muses, humming thoughtfully. "But that makes me wonder—if I do have a soul, is it made of the same stuff as yours?"
"Well, even if it isn’t, that doesn’t make it any less real than mine. Who gets to decide what qualifies for a soul anyway?"
An amused snort escapes him. He likes that answer. "Maybe it’s less about whether a soul exists and more about whether we acknowledge its existence for ourselves. If I believe I have one, shouldn’t that make it real enough for me?"
Rolling onto your back, you grab a throw pillow, propping it against the backrest of the seat to support your head. You give him an inquisitive look. "So...what? It’s like free will all over again? Souls are only as real as we make them?"
There’s a very human, very blasé way to how he works the stiffness out of his shoulder as he ponders the question. He remarks, somewhat flippantly, "Why not? Isn’t that how everything else works?”
...
You let out a tired chuckle, draping an arm over your face as you close your eyes.
You’d think you’d still be reeling from the absurdity of your situation—debating existentialism with a man who shouldn’t exist—but for some damning reason, you… aren’t anymore.
Instead, a strange sense of acceptance replaces the apprehension in your chest. It’s like– the very fabric of reality has turned, twisted and flipped on its head, and yet somehow, you’re okay with it.
It’s an odd peace; warm and steady—like the mellow buzz that lingers after a few glasses of cheap wine shared with good company.
When you peek back at him, Sylus already has his gaze trained on you. A small, deliberate smile tugs at his lips, but it’s his eyes that speak more—soft and unguarded; an unspoken fire simmering beneath the twin pools of crimson.
Intoxicating. And dangerously addictive, if you’re not careful.
It’s not just casual interest either. It’s something deeper, something that lingers beyond the surface of mere curiosity, and it’s pulling you in. It’s as though, amidst the surrealness of the moment, he sees you fully.
And for reasons you don’t quite seem to get, he appears to like what he sees.
“I’m too stupid to carry on a philosophical debate about the metaphysics of life,” you grumble jokingly.
“On the contrary,” he counters… affectionately? “I think it’s refreshing. You’re delightful company, sweetie.”
The fat ginger feline at your feet purrs in contentment, and you can’t help the dumb grin from breaking across your face.
You have one last question left in your mind. Or at least, for tonight. “What’s in it for you now?”
He arches a brow. “That’s a broad question. Are you asking what my plans are once you leave me for the night? I can let you in on the schematics for tonight’s raid if you’re interested. After all, Onychinus continues to function,” a glimmer of mischief flickers across his features. "Despite recent developments.”
You crinkle your nose. “No, no. I meant–” What do you mean? “Like.”
“Like?” He cocks his head curiously.
You know what you wanted to say–but you can’t seem to voice it out loud.
What’s it for the MC in your universe? What’s it for… us?
Is there an us?
You feel like you’ve been doused with a shock of cold water. In an instant, you suddenly become painfully aware of the state you’re in amidst the entire exchange: You, with your hair all messy and tangled, blemishes littering your face along with your smudged up eyeliner, maybe even a double chin from this angle, completely–pitiful–superficial stuff, and… her.
Your MC. The ideal version of you. Prettier, coveted and utterly different from you, MC. The one you’ve committed literal hours to, obsessively customizing every feature to perfection in character build mode. The one you’ve spent real money on for a bunch of stupid outfits. Just so you can match the aesthetic of your–her–love interest. Hers.
Hers, hers, hers.
A tiny voice inside your brain reminds you that it’s somewhat a shallower concern compared to what you and Sylus had literally just been talking about for the better part of the night, but it still doesn’t help alleviate the biting insecurity that’s now coursing through you.
Holy hell. Talk about a complete one-eighty.
Sylus tries to call you back to attention, but half your mind is already clouded with feelings of self-doubt and a bunch of other emotions, swirling in you like a negative vortex, that you really don’t want to talk anymore—especially in present company.
Where do you go from here?
“... So, what happens now?”
He hesitates, a brief flicker of uncertainty crossing his face. “I wish I had an answer—I’m still trying to figure that out myself.”
“Seems like we’re at an impasse,” you mumble quietly.
“... Indeed.”
There’s an inexplicable lump in your throat. You thought clearing things up would finally satisfy you–assuage the confusion in your mind. Let you go on about your merry way.
Now you just feel… morose. Confused. Inadequate.
How can you even compare? Should you—is that even in the equation at all? Why are you assuming that Sylus isn’t at all content with what he currently has in his version of reality? In the universe he’s in? Sure, you’ve talked about the possibility of a world beyond what you both once thought was impossible, but does that really mean anything? In the grand scheme of things?
You could offer to stop playing the game. It’s the ethical thing to do, right? He’d no longer be bound by the pull of how he’s initially programmed to act, given the fact that this version of him is entirely separate from the rest. At least, according to him.
How will his newfound sentience come into play here? You barely understand the nitty-gritty of his–evolving–code, and what it would mean if you just let him be. But surely it’s better than playing puppet for an otherworldly observer who’s played god for months on end. Right?
There’s that realization. And there are your own selfish feelings.
You don’t want to let him go. Not yet. Not ever.
“Why the long face, little dove?” He prods gently, pertaining to your prolonged silence. “We can figure this out together, can’t we?”
What else is there to figure out? You almost say in response. Instead, you manage a weak smile.
Mustering up a yawn—which isn’t really hard to do after all the excitement for the day—you feign sleepiness, rubbing an eye for good measure. The pang in your chest, however, refuses to fade. “Yeah, but I’m kinda beat. I think I’ll call it a night now.”
Sylus smirks softly, eyes tinged with an emotion you want–desperately–to label as fondness. “Of course. We’ve covered a lot of ground tonight, haven’t we?”
“I’d say so, yeah. Thanks for, um. Clearing things up a bit.”
He lets out a low chuckle. “Oh, I’m sure your curiosity is nowhere near satisfied,” his voice dips into a playful lilt. “You know where to find me if you feel like playing detective again, kitten.”
You can’t help the small giggle from coming out. He’s just too fucking charismatic, the asshole.
“So, will I... get to talk to you again?” You ask hesitantly, dropping your gaze from the screen. “Tomorrow?”
A lengthy pause. When the silence stretches past a full minute, you glance back at your phone nervously.
There’s a slight furrow between his brows as you see Sylus study you carefully. He looks puzzled by your sudden show of timidness.
“Of course,” he states, as if the answer should be obvious. “Don’t think for a second that you’re exempted from your daily check-ins just because you know more now, sweetie.”
He still wants to see you.
Maybe you could pretend that nothing has changed between you two—that the world hasn’t shifted beneath your feet in the span of a single night. That you’re still none the wiser.
And for tonight at least, maybe that’s all you need to believe.
“Okay,” you say quietly. “G'night then, Sy-Sy.”
The errant nickname slips past your lips, unbidden.
Sylus smiles faintly.
“Goodnight, love.”
-
-
-
Your heart skips a beat as you exit the game.
Tagging: @xxfaithlynxx @beewilko @browneyedgirl22 @yournextdoorhousewitch @sunsethw4 @stxrrielle @mangooes @hrts4hanniehae @buggs-1 @slownoise @michiluvddr @ssetsuka @i2sannie @imm0rtalbutterfly @the-golden-jhope @slyfoxtsu @beomluvrr @milkandstarlight @bookfreakk @ally-the-artistic-turtle <3 (also can you guys lmk if the tags are working i'm not sure if i'm doing it right or if it's bugging 🥹)
#love and deepspace#lads#lnds#love and deepspace sylus#lads sylus#lnds sylus#sylus x reader#sylus x you#lads x you#lads x reader#love and deepspace fic#sylus qin
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feeling pretty low today, so i’m turning to these two old men for a little comfort
nsfw under the cut, fem!reader
˚ ༘♡ ⋆。˚ Stan likes to call you:
sweetheart, honeybun, doll face and on occasion baby girl. when he’s feeling extra bold? princess — always with that unmistakable smirk
calls you “my good luck charm" if you help him out in the Shack, especially when he’s trying to swindle a tourist and you flash a pretty smile.
✦ “c’mere, darlin’. can’t let a fine gal like you walk around without her prince.”
✦ “ah, y’know, you’re the only reason I don’t go completely nuts in this crazy town. sometimes, doll, I think yer my only sane thought all day.” said so casually as if it’s not gonna hit you right in the heart
✦ if you get hurt (even the tiniest scratch), he’s going into dad mode: “who do I gotta knock some sense into, huh?” even if you’ll tell him it was just a clumsy accident, he’ll grumble, “well, now I’m the one hurt. bein’ all worried like that. you’re killin’ me, kid.”
˚ ༘♡ ⋆。˚ Ford likes to call you:
“dearest” when he’s feeling soft, sweetheart, darling, honey, baby
he’ll whisper “love” against your temple when he thinks you’re drifting to sleep, his voice quiet and reverent like it’s sacred to him
starlight – Ford’s been out in those other dimensions, faced down monsters and madness, but he says he’s never found anything so bright, so grounding. “c’mere, starlight, I’m not finished admiring you.”
༄ “don’t laugh, but. . . I’d chase you across universes, even if it took me another thirty years. no dimension is worth exploring without you by my side.”
༄ if you’re reading one of his journals, Ford’ll slide up behind you, his hands on your shoulders as he murmurs, “curious, are we? so, what do you think of my work?”
༄ he’s not a show-off, not by any means, but catch him fixing up a machine? he’ll lift his gaze to you, smiling. “I could teach you, you know. but you’d have to be a very attentive student.”
༄ oh, if Ford wrote about you in his journal, you know it’d be scrawled between notes on trans-dimensional theories and arcane symbols, the ink smudged in places where he hesitated, where his pen hovered just so before he let himself write the truth
“Strange anomalies detected….. not in the temporal or metaphysical sense, but in a far more personal dimension. Subject exhibits an inexplicable gravitational pull, distinct from any gravitational force I've previously documented. When I observe her, I feel an uncharacteristic deviation in my thought patterns, an accelerated heartbeat not caused by heightened blood pressure or adrenaline, but by… attraction. Confounding. She’s somehow eclipsing the most rational parts of my mind.”
And, because Ford’s words can’t capture the whole of it, there’d be tiny sketches of you, like half-finished thoughts.
nsfw
what Stan says during sex:
“Damn, honey, you’re makin’ an old man feel young again. Don’t stop.”
“You’re makin’ me wanna be a better man, but not right now, baby, not right now.”
“Mmm, there it is— yeahh, keep doin’ that. . . feels so good, darlin’, you got no idea.”
“Makin’ all these pretty noises, huh? Lemme hear ‘em, baby. Don’t hold back on me.”
“You’re somethin’ else, y’know that? I’m gonna be thinkin’ ‘bout that pussy all week.”
“Fuckin’ hell, don’t know if I’m gonna last much longer with you doin’ that.”
“Look at ya, so needy for me, beggin’ to be filled. You got me so riled up, I can barely think— ah, f-fuck. . .”
Ford:
“Ohh— sweetheart, you feel even better than I imagined, i’ve waited for this.”
“I need you so much it scares me.”
“You’re brilliant, utterly captivating. . . yesyesyes, keep moving like that, please.”
“Tell me exactly what you want, darlin, I need to hear you say it.”
“I never thought I’d feel this way again; you’ve woken something in me.”
“God, I can’t— can’t believe you’re letting me have you. I need you so much, it hurts.”
“Mmm, god, yes. . . yes, you’re mine, all mine. . . can’t believe I get to have you like this.”
“O-oh god, you feel so tight around me, sweetheart, I can’t-can’t hold back!”
“Please, oh, please— just, just like that, don’t stop, keep. . . keep going. . .”
“I can’t help myself; I need you. I want to feel you around me.”
“You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re like this. I can’t take my eyes off you.”
“Oh gosh, I need you to take me deeper. Please, baby.”
“Tell me how good it feels; I want to hear it.”
“You feel incredible. I could stay buried inside you forever.”
#gravity falls x reader#gravity falls x you#stanford pines#x reader#gravity falls smut#stan pines smut#ford pines smut#ford pines x reader#gravity falls#stan pines x reader#Smut#gravity falls fanfiction#gravity falls headcanons#ford x reader#ford pines x you#stan pines x you#stan pines x oc#stanley pines x reader
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SCENE 1 :: YOU TORE ME RIGHT APART ↳ you were never not mine — carlos sainz ༉‧₊˚✧
★ : pairing :: carlos sainz x reader ★ : genre :: angst; fluff separated by a hidden emotional turmoil, carlos and y/n navigate the complexities of co-parenting their twins amidst the high-stakes f1 world. amidst paddock visits and personal healing, will they go further apart or find their way back to each other? ★ : a/n :: oh fuck okay here we go! let me know what you guys think so far <3 what are the theories!! ahhhhhh this is more introductory? but lots of drama nevertheless <3 please don't mention the diff twin pics, i'll start crying!
( series masterlist \ main masterlist \ drop a request )
yn.user 41 mins ago
yn.user boys are here to support their papa!
username OMG THE IT BABIES ARE BACK ON TRACK charlesleclerc I know they were rooting for me in red🏎 I loved the bracelet btw❤️🩹 ⤷ carlossainz dress up leo in red and leave my kids alone username I WOULD KILL TO HAVE Y/N AND CARLOS AS MY PARENTS carlossainz papa won this for his family👍 ⤷ username it's so cute that even though they are separated, carlos never leaves out y/n ⤷ username I think it's his loss, he wants them back so he's playing a persona w words like 'family' lol ⤷ username please get a life, touch some grass🙏 username THE BABIES MADE A BRACELET FOR CARLOS ⤷ landonorris I got one toooooo
carlos is typing... (y/n's pov)
instagram stories
lily is typing... (y/n's pov)
twitter
carlossainz 20 mins ago
carlossainz who said weekends with papa are a bore?
landonorris whoring on main papa sainz? ⤷ carlossainz please unfollow❤️ username DILFFFFF username carlos can I also be your baby mama???? y/n.user MUMMA MISSES HER BABIES ⤷ carlossainz we miss you too ⤷ username pretty sure she was talking about the kids carlos lmao username it's so strange that now we get the updates from separate accounts I miss the og paddock fam ⤷ username well people move on so🤷♀️ ⤷ username only the real ones rmb the sainz x y/n post spams lmao
yn.user just now
yn.user stole my tortured heart💫
username who plays cards alone on a beach? 👀 username y/n’s cryptic post has me guessing mhmmm a new love interest maybe?! ⤷ username cards on the beach when alone? definitely not alone. who’s the mystery company hehe carlossainz looks like a peaceful day. glad you're finding time for yourself! ⤷ yn.user hope the boys are still up! returning the call soon🥰 lilymhe finally enjoying some well-deserved relaxation💖 ⤷ yn.user love youuu username i see cards but no players. who's with you y/n username we need more context omg is this a date ⤷ username probably with lily lol username at first i thought you were with carlos but he's in the comments soooo does that mean a new romance
carlos is typing... (y/n's pov)
f1.wags 2 mins ago
f1.wags Our sources have spotted Y/N, ex-partner of F1 driver Carlos Sainz, enjoying a cozy dinner with an unidentified man. The two were seen sharing intimate moments, sparking rumors of a new romance. Could this be the start of a new chapter for Y/N? Stay tuned for more updates as we dig deeper into this developing story.
username wow, moving on already? poor carlos username she couldn't wait a little longer before flaunting her new man username guess she never really loved carlos. just saying ⤷ username carlos deserves better than someone who moves on so fast ⤷ username its been almost half a year? username poor kids. this is why you should never have kids out of wedlock ⤷ username hey good morning, i think you time traveled to 200 years forward. please go back username she’s just trying to make carlos jealous. grow up, y/n username so much for being a loving mother? priorities lol ⤷ username boys were with carlos for one weekend and this is how she spends it ⤷ username from a perfect family to this? disappointing username carlos is better off without her. clearly, she didn’t care about him ⤷ username fr y/n's true colors are showing now. carlos dodged a bullet
carlos is typing... (y/n's pov)
©maxtermind // do not copy, rewrite or translate any of my work on any platforms.
#★ : my work !#♡𝅼 : ywnnm#f1#fanfic#formula 1#carlos sainz imagine#carlos sainz fanfic#carlos sainz smut#max f1#carlos sainz#carlos sainz fic#carlos sainz f1#carlos sainz x reader#f1 fanfic#f1 x reader#carlos sainz one shot#carlos sainz x y/n#carlos sainz x you#cs55 fanfic#cs55#cs55 x reader#cs55 imagine#cs55 fic#cs55 x you#cs55 x y/n#cs55 one shot#formula one imagine#cs55 smut#carlos sainz imagines#f1 fandom
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”that’s my girl” part 7
masterlist
pairing: dr house x reader
word count: 1k
warnings: smut
prompt: reader manages to stop house from committing his daily dose of malpractice, and distracts him with something else.
“What the hell are you doing?” I interjected, having followed House into the patient’s room and watched him quickly reach for a syringe. I knew what he was doing in fact. He had just come up with a new theory as to why the poor sedated man in front of us was hurtling towards certain death, and House had to wake him to get answers out of him.
“I feel like a chat. I get lonely too sometimes.”
“He’s just had surgery, you can not wake him!”
With that, I grabbed his arm with both my hands just milliseconds before he could stick the needle into the man’s thigh.
“A little pain isn’t gonna kill him,” House argued and stared me down while I kept clinging on to his tense arm.
“You’re right. My bet is he just turns into a giant asshole,” I took a dig at him and he laughed shortly with dark eyes.
“Clever girl.”
“Stupid man,” I countered, grabbing the syringe from his grip and letting go of his arm. He turned to me fully, his smirk fading.
“You’re not waking him.”
“Last time I checked I call the shots.”
“I miss when you used to refuse to talk to patients,” I sighed, taking small steps back to keep the syringe out of his reach.
“I miss when you were just a pretty postgrad trainee who did what I told her to do,” House fired back with a stupidly charming smile and I gave him an eye roll in return.
“He’ll wake up in an hour.”
“We may not have an hour,” he declared back. I knew he was probably right, but I also knew the team had to work together to pull on House’s reins and keep him somewhat within reasonable ethical territory. And I realised I had to do it using my advantages.
“You may not get to sleep with me again if you wake him,” I continued arguing with a cocky smirk of my own, tilting my head as I blinked up at him. House shut up at that and his cold blue eyes scanned my face.
“But, hey, there’s always a hooker available right?”
He scowled and breathed heavily, refusing to say anything for a little while. I had hit a sensitive spot in him. I knew he was completely hooked on me. I wasn’t sure if it went beyond sex, but it clearly meant enough that he would rather pump the brakes on his obsessive puzzle-solving than lose me.
“God, you’re infuriating!” he said in a jokingly exaggerated groan, to steer away from real emotion.
“And you have no morals,” I smiled back viciously. “And yet I’m crazy about you. Count yourself lucky.”
I hooked my hand into the collar of his t-shirt and pulled him with me further away from the patient’s bed, to visually demonstrate my dominance.
“Makes me happy to know you’re so whipped for me. I can make you do anything I want,” I grinned proudly and House smirked back, his eyes half lidded as they gazed down at me.
“All thanks to that nice ass of yours,” he muttered and his face got even closer to mine as he reached down to clasp his fingers around my butt cheek. His breath fell sharply on my face and I squirmed as he smiled wider, smug about winning back his dominance.
“We are with a patient,” I scolded, if scolding could be done under the breath. I didn’t really want him to remove his hand.
“Good thing he’s unconscious,” he joked in a mumble and I laughed softly into the kiss he pressed against my lips.
“For another hour,” I muttered into the kiss and House took that as a prompt to find something to kill the time, backing me into the patient’s bathroom with his hands squeezing my waist.
It wasn’t long before his fingers had undone the button and zipper of my trousers and delved inside them. I swallowed half of my moan and bit down on my lip while my hands interlocked behind his head.
“Uh-uh,” House muttered, shaking his head. “I wanna hear how good I’m making you feel.”
My breath was already trembling at the feeling of his fingers drawing circles into me, and I nearly shuddered as he mumbled into my ear.
“That’s better,” he whispered with a smile I could just about see out of the corner of my eye as I let my moans spill into his ear.
His other hand was still clinging onto my waist as he held me against the wall. I shoved my hands into the back of his hair and clasped my fingers around his short locks, enjoying his slight groan.
“House,” I whimpered, my legs weakening as his fingers picked up their pace.
“Mm?”
“House,” I whined again and he responded by kissing my neck harshly. The slight sting of my skin trapped between his teeth only added to my pleasure and pushed me over the edge.
“That’s it,” House exhaled encouragingly as my legs nearly gave out, his one hand still keeping me steady by the waist.
My high faded and I regained some composure as I let a few deep breaths pour out of me, onto his shoulder. He stayed close to me for another moment and was in a rare state of silence. No one-liners or clever remarks. I felt a wave of affection come off him. Then he backed away slightly.
“Well, thanks. I’ve got clinic duty,” I shrugged with a playful smile and House protested with a scoff.
“I only came up here to stop my crazy bo-“ I took a beat. “boss, from torturing our patient.”
Patting his chest with one hand and the syringe in my pocket with the other, I turned around and left his quiet smile behind.
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Tangerine x fem!reader
Summary: You never told Tangerine he has a daughter in the hopes of never seeing him again.
Genre: Angst (happy ending)
Warnings: swearing, single mom!reader, allusions to sex, pregnancy, kinda wanted to give Tan a real name for this story's sake but I couldn't decide on one (🙃) so let's all pretend Tangerine is an appropriate first name end not make it weird? kay? love you guys :)
~ honestly inspired by all of @little-miss-dilf-lover's dad!Tan content ~
TANGERINE MASTERLIST
Family is important to Tangerine. You've known this ever since you'd met him—which is why when you lay in the hospital bed, beads of sweat dampening your hairline and your mother asked you if you'd changed your mind and wanted someone to call him, prompting you to shake your head, it broke your heart almost more than it had the night he'd left.
How could you keep her from him?
How could he leave you like he did?
So, you raised your daughter on your own with the hopes that you'd never run into Tangerine or his brother. By Cerise's fourth birthday, there were still no signs of them and as much as you ignored how her brown curls reminded you of him and how she had his mannerisms, you couldn't deny their similarity anymore.
"Darling, you can't have candy now, it's almost supper," you reprimand when Cerise reaches for a candy bar as you pay for your groceries and the older lady at the counter chuckles.
Cerise looks at you with an annoyed pout as she crosses her arms. You ruffle her hair, "I'm sorry, Cece," you say and kiss her forehead behind her bangs.
You're too busy with the cashier to see Cerise slip down from the cart and wander off. When you finish paying and turn to hand her a box of raspberries, your heart sinks. "Cece?" you call, turning to the old woman who doesn't know how to help you.
Your heart thumps loudly, your skin clammy and cold as you abandon your groceries and call out again, "Cerise!"
The store isn't that huge so in theory, Cerise shouldn't be far and you just pray she didn't wander off into the open road. You feel hopeless until you turn into the fruit aisle.
Your breath leaves you when you see Cerise. "Oh thank God!" you exclaim and run to her, kneeling on your knees and pulling her into your arms. You hold her to you and caress her pigtails. "You can't scare Mummy like that, okay?" you whisper into her small shoulder.
"The man said he would buy me candy," Cerise declares, holding onto your neck.
"What?!" you exclaim, finally looking up at the man who'd been talking to your daughter. You're prepared to find some creepy old man but instead, a familiar face is staring down at you.
He's dressed in dressy clothes, his hair slicked neatly, and he has a thick mustache—he didn't have a mustache the last time you saw him, but that had been four years ago.
This has to be a joke. "Y/n?" Tangerine says your name so smoothly and the sound causes a shiver down your spine. You stand, taking Cerise into your arms as she holds onto you.
"Tangerine," you whisper, staring into his striking blue eyes and you realize with a heavy heart that Cerise's are truly a carbon copy of his.
Tangerine looks at the child in your arms and clears his throat, "I- she ran over here and started talking to me. She wanted candy and I said I could buy 'er a chocolate bar if she'd help me find 'er parents—are ya—?"
"Yeah, she's mine," you say, voice strained. "I- thank you for the offer but I told her no to candy."
Tangerine looks embarrassed and he rubs his nape as he says, "Y-yeah, sorry." He looks at Cerise more closely as she turns her head to him and smiles. "How old is she?" he asks and your heart pounds.
Tangerine is smart, and you wonder if he sees through you already. You wonder if he'll know she's his daughter.
You feel your cheeks warm. "She just turned four." You can't lie to him. You've never been able to lie directly to his face. He's always known you too well for that. Tangerine's face falls for a moment and you can almost see the panic. He blinks and then his expression turns blank as if a switch had been turned on.
You always hated it when he did that.
"Ah, right, well, it'was pleasant seeing ya, darlin'," he says, adjusting his cuffs, and just like that he turns away without a second glance and he disappears from your life—again.
Your heart feels like someone had just stomped on it a thousand times and you want to cry. You hold Cerise tighter as she plays with your hair.
He didn't even ask for her name.
* * *
"You didn't even ask for her name?" Lemon asks with disbelief, watching from the small couch in their hotel room as his brother completely loses his mind.
Tangerine doesn't look at Lemon and his voice is strained, "Why would I do that?"
"'Cause she's probably your kid, dimwit," Lemon sounds unamused.
"Bull," Tangerine throws the knife he'd been using to cut an apple into the small sink and turns around, angrily popping a slice into his mouth, "Absolute bull, Lem, she's not mine. I mean—Y/n was definitely with other guys after me—like I was with other girls—" his sentence dies.
"Yeah, 'cause you're a slut, and the only reason ya shagged those other birds that soon was because you missed 'er and wouldn't admit it. Ya know she isn't like that. She's better than ya," Lemon says honestly.
"And she was madly in love with ya. Isn't that why we left? Because she loved ya and you loved her? 'Cause ya didn't want her mixed up in our life? Do'you really think she'd fuck some other bastard that soon? No. Tangerine, that kid is yours."
Tangerine pinches the bridge of his nose, "No. She would have told me."
"Would she?" Lemon raises an eyebrow, "You left 'er."
Tangerine is annoyed at Lemon because he's right. He isn't stupid, the little girl with you had looked too much like him not to be his daughter, and that realization alone makes him want to throw up.
He cannot be a father—not when he couldn't even be a good lover. You and your baby girl deserved so much better than him.
"Listen, it's your life, but will ya ever forgive yourself if ya don't at least find out for sure?" Lemon adds, looking at his brother with sympathy. He shrugs. "If anything, bruv, help 'er with money. Ya'know we have loads extra and t'is the least you could do for 'er."
Tangerine knows Lemon's right—at least on the money. He wants you and your baby to live comfortably.
"Yeah," is all he answers.
* * *
You feel tired gross and dirty as Cerise runs around your small suburban house outside of the city, refusing to put on her socks. You haven't showered in three terribly long days and your hair is a mess.
"Cece, no, come here," you say, desperately trying to keep your phone pressed to your ear to continue your conversation.
"No mum, I know that and I've been looking around but I can't afford any private pre-schools," you say, catching Cerise mid-run and scooping her into your arms, "I turned out just fine without a fancy pre-school, didn't I?"
Your mother continues to chat your ear off you hear the doorbell and you position Cerise on your hip, ignoring her cries as you try and find her little feet. "Mum, someone's at the door, I'll call you later, okay," you say, walking and opening the door.
You're thankful that your mother hung up because otherwise, she would have heard your gasp as you see who your visitor is.
"Tangerine," you say, holding Cerise closer as you put your phone in the back pocket of your jeans.
"Hi, darlin'," Tangerine says. He's holding a basket filled with cookies, candies, and flowers. Your favorites. "Can I come in?" he asks.
You're star-struck as you nod and move aside so he can come inside. You shut the door behind him and set Cerise down, who immediately runs back to the living room where her toys are scattered around. Tangerine can't hide his smile as he watches her. "How did you find me?" you ask quietly, which causes him to turn around and hand you the basket.
You take it as he says, "I have my ways," he cracks an all-too-familiar smile that makes your heart flutter.
"Cryptic," you tease, your sentence dying, you look down and then try to tame your hair, "Sorry—I look like such a mess," you whisper.
Tangerine smiles kindly, "Nonsense, you look beautiful."
You strain a smile and focus on the real question, "Tangerine, why are you here?"
He walks closer and it takes everything in you not to stay put and let his warmth envelope you.
God, you missed him.
Instead, you back away and stare into his eyes. "Y/n, is she mine?" he whispers, his voice cracking.
You frown. "No," you say, and then your voice softens, "I mean yes, she has your DNA but she's not yours. You don't even know her name. You don't know her. She's mine. I'm her mother and you're just some guy I fucked," your voice sounds breathless and you inhale as you shut your mouth. You feel dizzy as you see Tangerine's hurt look.
"I deserved that," he says calmly after a moment and runs a hand in his hair, "But, was I really just someone you fucked?" he asks, unfamiliar insecurities creeping into his voice.
You lean against your wall, exhausted, "I- no- you weren't but you left," you say.
"I had to leave—ya don't understand—"
"Yeah, because you never let me understand," you whisper and look up at him with a look that leaves him completely heartbroken.
He sniffs and looks away and down the hall where he sees Cerise run up to you and envelop her tiny hands around your knees. She looks up at him, her eyes round and her brown curly hair framing her forehead, and she smiles.
Tangerine knees feel weak as she grins at him and he knows that he would kill to make so no one ever wipes that smile from his daughter's face. He would rather die. He looks up at you and you're running a hand in Cerise's hair— "Maybe you should leave—"
"What's her name?" he interrupts and looks at you for permission to let him kneel and speak to her.
You nod, unable to deny him that.
"Hi, angel, what's your name?" he says and crouches in front of her, smiling as he looks at her. She's adorable. She looks like you. Tangerine's heart melts.
"Cece," she says, holding you tighter and looking up at you.
"Cerise," you say as Tangerine stands again, "It means Cherry in French, but everyone just calls her Cece because she can't pronounce her full name correctly yet."
Tangerine smiles, "It's a very pretty name," he looks you over and then clears his throat, "Would you mind if I–stay a little?"
You look at him sternly and frown, "I was gonna take her to the playground. She has so much energy this afternoon," you whisper and Cerise takes this as a cue to sprint back into the living room and make more chaos.
"One cuppa?" Tangerine almost pleads again, his tone hopeful. He looks genuinely sincere. "I want to know all about her—and you," he pauses and then hesitates, "I did miss you, darlin'."
Your heart clenches and you run a hand in your hair again, murmuring a curse under your breath. You missed him too.
"One cup," you say and hold out your arm to take his suit jacket, "on the condition we drink it at Cerise's play-table. I promised her I'd play with her."
Tangerine nods and sheds his suit jacket and his shoes. He looks around your house at all the pictures you have of your friends, family, and of course Cerise. His heart aches and he realizes that he's missing from all these pictures.
"Black tea?" you call from the kitchen and Tangerine smiles. You remember that it's his favorite.
"Yes, luv, thank you."
So, Tangerine finds himself sitting on one of Cerise's small chairs as she sits in front of him, pouring him some invisible tea in the tiny cup on the small table in front of him. His knees bang on the table and Cerise looks at him, her tiny nose scrunched in disapproval.
Tangerine's heart flutters. She looks so much like you. "Sorry, angel," he whispers and steadies the table with his hand.
Cerise hums and continues to pour air into the cups.
You walk back in, holding a mug of tea for Tangerine and one for you and Cerise to share. You can't help the smile that forms on your lips when you see Tangerine sitting with your daughter.
You sit on the ground next to them and hand him his cup. He shakes his head, causing you to put the mug down near his arm, and he picks up the small cup and pretends to sip the non-existent contents for Cerise.
The little girl's smile widens when he says, "Mmm, yum," and puts the cup down. Your heart melts when you hear Cerise's happy laugh and she says,
"There's no tea in there, silly," she tilts her head, "it's all pretend."
Tangerine looks embarrassed and you feel bad so you put your hand on his arm, silently thanking him for the kind gesture. "She's a smart kid—she just has a big imagination," you explain softly, smiling at Tangerine kindly.
You hate how familiar this feels but oh god do you love it too.
"She's smart, just like you," Tangerine breathes out, drinking his real tea this time and he puts his hand on the one you have on his forearm. "I'm sorry," he says sincerely, his voice small and as you stare into his eyes, time stands frozen.
You strain a small smile and answer honestly. "We'll have plenty of time for sorries," you whisper and are revived by the instant nod Tangerine does.
Yes, we will, he says with his eyes, and although he wouldn't say it aloud, he's determined not to leave you again.
"For now, let's have a tea party," you tickle Cerise's tummy with your other hand.
Cerise giggles and Tangerine knows he's done for.
#tangerine bullet train#tangerine x reader#tangerine x fem!reader#tangerine x y/n#tangerine x you#tangerine blurb#tangerine angst#tangerine fic#tangerine fanfiction#tangerine#tangerine bullet train x reader#tangerine bullet train fluff#dad!tangerine x fem!reader#dad!tangerine x reader#tangerine bullet train angst#tangerine 🍊#aaron taylor johnson#aaron taylor johnson fic#aaron taylor johnson fanfiction
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The olive theory
If one person in a relationship likes olives, the other shouldn’t, signifying that opposites attract best.
Daryl had never been one to believe fate or anything of that sort when you had first met him. After all, he was very set in his ways. He wasn’t the kind of man to trust in destiny or certain events happening in the right place at the right time. From his stubborn mindset, he believed things just sort of…happened. Not because it was necessarily meant to be, but because of the free will that everyone possessed.
And he had certainly never heard of this so called theory until you had brought it up to him randomly, catching him completely off guard.
“Do you want my tomato?” you asked, holding it out for him to take as you had previously taken it out of your burger.
He paused mid chew, raising an eyebrow at your offer before shrugging his shoulders. “Alright, give it here.”
You smiled as you carefully handed it over, watching for a moment as he ate it effortlessly, knowing that you on the other hand couldn’t eat the fruit without gagging. The thought then caused a lightbulb to appear on top of your head.
“Hey…have you ever heard that theory that if one person likes a food and the other can’t stand it, it means you’re compatible?”
The burley man again stopped eating as he heard your question. Looking at you as if you claimed the sky was purple. “Huh?”
You laughed softly, “You know, like with tomatos,” you used as an example, “I don’t like them, but you do, so you can always have mine so they won’t go to waste.” you spoke with a smile before quickly taking another bite.
Daryl huffed at your statement, “What kinda dumbass theory is that?” he said without thinking, “Ya mean to tell me we’re soulmates or somethin just because we got different opinions on a burger toppin?”
Your face dropped upon hearing his somewhat careless words. You knew it was a dumb theory, one that may not even be true. But still, it meant something to you knowing that the two of you could be connected in more ways than one.
“I don’t know…” you mumbled with a shrug, wishing you hadn’t even brought it up.
Immediately he felt terrible for how he reacted.
Seeing you so hopeful about it, it obviously brought you some kind of joy, one that he instantly seemed to squash. Just because he may not believe in something so small such as that, didn’t mean that you couldn’t. The sight of you just staring at your food a bit sadly tugged at his heartstrings. He racked his brain for a moment as he wanted to make it up to you, wanted you to know that he didn’t mean it like that at all. When suddenly, he had an idea.
You bit the inside of your cheek as the silence grew thicker, unknown to the things going on in his head. That is until you felt a gentle nudge on your shoulder, looking over to see Daryl handing out a pickle that he had picked off his own burger.
Your soft gaze glanced back and forth between his face and his hand, hearing him clear his throat, “…Ya like pickles, right?” he asked, his voice much softer than before.
You nodded slowly, “…Do you?”
He shook his head, “Nah…never really saw the appeal.” he admitted almost sheepishly, hoping you’d see what he was trying to say.
A slow smile was brought to your face when you heard his small confession, gently taking the pickle from him before popping it in your mouth.
His chest filled with a certain warmth upon seeing your smile light up your face, silently knowing he’d do just about anything to see it happen again and again.
“So…that mean we’re compatible?” he asked quietly, tilting his head a bit.
“Mhm…looks like it.” you said with a knowing glance.
AN ~ Hii<3 This is definitely a very random little headcanon, but once I thought of it, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I figured it was very cute and accurate to how Daryl would react to the beloved olive theory.
Also sorry for disappearing for a hot minute, I haven’t had much motivation to write recently, but i’m back:) And for those of you who read my series, the next chapter will be out tomorrow, promise<3 xoxox
#daryl dixon#daryl dixon the walking dead#daryl dixon fanfiction#daryl dixon x female reader#daryl dixon x reader#the walking dead#the walking dead imagine#twd daryl#twd daryl dixon#the walking dead daryl dixon#daryl dixon headcanon
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Chapter 43 of suddenly human Bill Cipher is pretty eager to remain imprisoned inside the Mystery Shack:
The Eclipse: Part 1
Gravity's disappearing in Gravity Falls. Bill has an explanation for what's going on that has absolutely nothing to do with him, and also doesn't make any sense. Fiddleford has an alternate theory that makes a lot of sense, and has a whole lot to do with Bill. Ford trusts Fiddleford.
####
"An eclipse," Ford repeated. "Gravity's vanishing, you're floating, and you expect me to believe that it's due to an eclipse."
Bill shrugged. "I don't expect anything out of you. Believe whatever the heck you want. That's what it is, though."
"Even if it wasn't a ridiculous notion, there aren't any solar or lunar eclipses anywhere near Oregon this summer—"
"Did I say the eclipse was solar or lunar?" Bill asked. "No. I didn't." He breezed past Ford, heading to the kitchen. "Hey, is anybody gonna eat those pancakes?"
"Mine." Dipper ran past Bill to his abandoned plate.
"Then what kind of an eclipse is it?" Ford demanded.
Bill leaned on the kitchen counter, crossed his arms, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. Finally, he said, "Gravitational eclipse."
"There's no such thing!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. I Think Having A Mere Five PhDs Means I Know Everything! Please, enlighten the trillion-year-old all-seeing eye who spent a year correcting all your math with your superior knowledge of physics!"
"It's twelve PhDs and you know it."
"Oh, so what! I can still count 'em on one hand." (Dipper gave Bill's hand a puzzled look.)
"Is that how it is!" Ford huffed angrily. "Fine, great teacher—would you be so kind as to educate your student on what the devil a 'gravitational eclipse' is!"
He fully expected Bill to start spouting some absurd science fiction explanation; but instead, Bill hesitated, gaze flicking nervously toward the ceiling. Ford looked up, but didn't see anything.
"Just don't worry about it." Bill rubbed his right eye. He turned away from Ford to watch Dipper struggle to squeeze pancake syrup out of an uncooperative bottle. "Everything will go back to normal in three days. Just—don't look at the sky."
"Why not?"
"Don't worry about it," Bill repeated. "Hey, take off the lid and stick a knife in, you're never getting anything out that way."
"I've got it," Dipper said testily.
Soos came downstairs at about the same time Stan joined them from the hallway. "Dudes, I think something weird's going on," Soos said.
Ford turned his back on his fruitless conversation with Bill. "We've noticed. Gravity's decreasing."
Soos paused. "Oh," he said, slightly deflated. "I thought I was developing super strength."
"Sorry to disappoint."
"So what's causing it?" Stan asked.
"I don't know yet."
From the kitchen, Bill called, "I just told you!"
Ford didn't look at him. "I don't know the real reason yet."
Stan asked, "Think it might be a portal thing? When it was powering up, gravity got kinda screwy. It wasn't like this, though. Any time there was a surge, gravity hiccuped for a few seconds. It never just... went down a little."
"And not for this long, either," Soos said. "It's been like this all morning." He paused; then asked, hopefully, "You sure we aren't just all developing super strength at the same time?"
Ford shook his head apologetically.
"Aww."
"I suspected the portal first," Ford said. "But I just looked it over and checked the equipment. There's no way any of it could have powered on. It's been completely disassembled since last summer."
Stan shrugged. "What else could it be?"
"The gravity anomalies occurred whenever the portal was connected to the Nightmare Realm. All I can think is that perhaps it's something else with a connection to the Nightmare Realm that might be having a destabilizing effect on the fabric of reality. Something much weaker, but steadily regaining power..." He turned to cast a venomous look at the kitchen. "Power like the ability to float..."
Bill had been preoccupied with dipping a strip of raw bacon into a stolen uncapped syrup bottle; but at the accusation, he stared at Ford in disbelief. "What—are you kidding me?"
"Have a better explanation for why, the moment all this starts, you can suddenly hover down the stairs?"
"Sure," Bill said. "I'm better at floating than the rest of you because I've been doing it longer."
"Oh, that's stupid!"
"You're stupid."
"You're up to something," Ford snarled. "I know it."
"What could I possibly be up to!" Bill spread his hands, exasperated. "Seriously! Tell me! What could I possibly be up to?"
Ford screwed his face into a scowl, trying to think of any way Bill could have orchestrated the gradual decline of gravity while imprisoned in the Mystery Shack. "You are up to something," he said firmly.
Bill groaned and rolled his eyes. "Well if you ever figure out what, let me know! I'm dying to find out what I'm plotting." He chugged from the syrup bottle like it was a flask. And then had to keep holding it up while he waited for the reduced gravity to work on the syrup.
"Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos held up his phone. "Just got a text from Tate. He says Old Man McGucket wants to know if you can come discuss the gravity issue?"
"I was just thinking the same thing. Let Fiddleford know I'll be there as soon as I can. Does he want me to bring anything?"
"Nope. Just your handsome face." Soos chuckled. "He—he didn't say that part, though. I did. I just think guys should compliment each other more."
Ford nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Soos."
"Grunkle Ford, can I come too?" Dipper dumped his dirty dish in the sink. "I could—I dunno—help brainstorm solutions, or something...?"
"I'd be delighted." Ford had wanted to spend so much more time with Dipper this summer. By now, he'd thought they would have had at least one hike through the mountains around Gravity Falls and maybe dug into a couple of old mysteries he'd never solved. At least this was one mystery Ford could bring him along for.
Dipper's face lit up. "Hold on, let me go get my journal." He ran upstairs, bouncing up two steps at a time in the reduced gravity.
Ford murmured to Stan, "You can hold down the fort while I'm gone?"
Stan nodded slightly. "I'll keep a close eye on him."
"Good."
When Dipper had returned and they were headed out the door, Bill called from the kitchen, "Keep your head down out there. And get inside as soon as you can."
Ford shot a dark look at Bill, but said nothing. "Let's go." He shut the door behind them a bit harder than necessary.
Soos headed into the kitchen to make breakfast. As he passed, Bill said, "Hey. Does the 'guys complimenting guys' thing only apply to humans, or what?"
"Oh. Uh..." Soos pulled his head out of the fridge to look at Bill. "You... look good in yellow? Is—is that a good compliment? I don't know what triangle demons consider a compliment."
Bill considered it. "Sure, it'll do." He dipped another strip of bacon in the syrup. "I look even better in gold."
####
A quarter mile from the shack, Ford drove over a small bump in the road he'd gone over a hundred times before.
The car bounced so high that Ford's head hit the car roof.
Somewhere, he just knew, Bill was laughing at him.
####
Dipper's knee had been bouncing for three minutes straight by the time they approached the gate to the Northwest Manor. "Dipper, are you alright?"
"Sorry." Dipper planted his foot flat on the floor. "It's just—we're driving really slow, and this whole gravity thing is kind of an emergency..."
Just nervous. "I know," Ford sighed. "I can't go any faster without losing control. Lower gravity means lower traction between the tires and the road." But it was driving him mad.
At the manor, Tate greeted them at the door with a slight nod. "Hey. Dad's in the lab."
"Thank you, Tate. I know the way."
When they entered the lab, Fiddleford was working with a soldering iron on an electronic device the size of a toaster. He looked up as soon as they came in. "Stanford, Dipper! Good timing. Come in. How's the shack?"
"Down a few rubber balls."
Ford left Dipper to drift around the lab inspecting Fiddleford's equipment and listening in on the conversation as he and Fiddleford caught up. Fiddleford had first noticed something was wrong during his usual morning post-coffee rambunctious rollick, when he leaped high enough to bang his head on the ceiling. ("All the way to the ceiling? In this house?" "Well, I was standing on the counter, you see." "Ah, of course.") He'd immediately built a vacuum chamber he could drop various tools and cutlery in so he could measure the acceleration of gravity. Usually, objects on Earth fell 9.8 meters per second. When Fiddleford first measured, falling objects accelerated by 7.9 meters per second—almost 20% slower than they were supposed to. Now, it was 7.7 meters per second. If that rate of decline was steady, gravity must have been going down overnight without anyone noticing. By Fiddleford's calculations, gravity was decreasing by around 1.5% an hour—and, if it continued at this rate, it would be gone the day after tomorrow, by early afternoon.
(Bill had said three days. That wasn't even two and a half.)
Fiddleford had done some scans and called some old college pals down in Texas to ask if they'd noticed anything strange—and it seemed that Gravity Falls was the only place in the country experiencing anything unusual, at least according to NASA's data. Fiddleford had asked Tate to drive around town dropping things; quelle surprise, the gravitational oddity seemed perfectly contained to the circumference of the town's weirdness barrier.
"If you're in communication with NASA, I don't suppose you could ask if..." Ford winced at himself, "they've... noticed any astronomical anomalies?"
Fiddleford stroked his beard. "I reckon I could, but—why?"
Ford sighed. "Bill said this is being caused by what he calls a 'gravitational eclipse.' Which sounds like patent nonsense, but—on the one percent chance he's telling the truth..."
"I getcha. That Bill's as trustworthy as a rattlesnake with rabies—but until we know what's happening, we ought to consider every possibility."
"Yes. Precisely." Ford paused. "Can... rattlesnakes catch rabies?"
"Absolutely not! Which is why you should never trust one what says he's rabid."
"Ah. Yes. I see," Ford said uncertainly.
Like Ford, Fiddleford's first suspicion was that this had something to do with the portal—a suspicion that was scuttled when Ford informed him he'd already checked the portal. Ford's own next theory was that Bill personally was somehow behind this. His gravity already seemed to be far lighter than the rest of the town. But Ford didn't know whether that was because Bill was causing the gravity-reducing anomaly, or because the gravity-reducing anomaly was disproportionately affecting Bill. And even if Bill was causing it, as yet Ford had no idea by what mechanism he was doing it.
Fiddleford had the first idea that might explain how this was physically happening: dimensional rips.
At the end of last summer, the town and surrounding woods had been lousy with small dimensional rips torn in spacetime by Weirdmageddon and its aftermath. A few had been large enough for a grown man to stumble through, but many were barely as long as a fingernail. Ford and Stan had spent the last few days of summer running through the town and the woods with the kids, armed with alien adhesive, glueing shut the rips; and then—after traveling back and forth to California to attend Dipper's bar mitzvah and to get hollered at by Shermie for disappearing and/or faking a death—they'd spent most of the next month taking care of even more rips. (Just enough time for gnomes to steal Ford's new Journal 4.)
The remains of the rips could still be seen throughout Gravity Falls: odd invisible seams in the air that seemed to make the woods behind them bend strangely, like the transition between air and water where light refracted differently. Sometimes the sun would line up just right with a gap in the leaves so that you could see a sunbeam bending in midair.
Fiddleford had two theories:
Theory one: even after they'd sealed up all the rips, the distressed fabric of reality around Gravity Falls had grown threadbare. Rather than a few huge rips tearing through to the Nightmare Realm, countless micro-rips were forming—hundreds of thousands of holes between the fibers of reality, too tiny to be seen or detected—and they were reaching critical mass. The structural integrity of reality itself was about to catastrophically fail. The barrier between here and the Nightmare Realm could shred apart at any minute, ripping open a massive maw too wide to ever be repaired, irreversibly swallowing Gravity Falls into Bill's dying dimension of madness and leaving a frothing pustule of chaos trapped inside the weirdness barrier, ready to spread across all of Earth if anything should ever pop it!
Or two: something else was happening.
Ford thought it was worth investigating. The damage was already there; maybe Bill knew it, was exacerbating it—perhaps by his mere presence—and was just hoping the humans wouldn't figure it out before his homecoming.
"You remember the wormhole detector I built last September to sense when new dimensional rips were openin' up?" Fiddleford asked. "Well, it ain't detected a thing in town since March—but if these micro-rips are real, they'd be too little to detect from any farther than forty or fifty feet. So's I whipped up a portable scannermadoohickey!" He picked up the object he'd been working on when Ford and Dipper arrived. "You can take it to the places with the most damage and wave it around to see if it senses anything!"
Ford inspected the scanner. "It says it's detecting eighteen right now."
Fiddleford waved him off. "That's fine, a few itty bitty little tears oughta be expected for the kinda damage we got last year. But if my theory's correct, there's somewhere in Gravity Falls that'll have hundreds of thousands of tears within the scanner's radius. That's what we're looking for."
"Great. And, what do we do if we find them? Such small rips would be impossible to individually seal with my adhesive applicator."
"I thought of that, too!" Fiddleford scrambled over two tables, knocking tools on the ground as he went, to grab a plastic cone-shaped object the size of a football. He scuttled beneath the tables back to Ford. "Look! I made a glue grenade!"
"A—a what?"
"Once you figure out where the micro-rips are concentrated, just pour that alien adhesive of yours into this spout here, pull the pin, and chuck it! It'll instantly seal up all the micro-rips in the area and then cover the whole town in a cloud of alien adhesive, closing any remaining rips!"
"Hmm... It sounds risky. It would use up the rest of our andhesive all at once," Ford said. "And the environmental impact could be devastating."
Fiddleford blinked. "Environmental impact?"
"Just think of an adhesive this powerful settling over the whole town and forest in a thin film. It would glue people's pores shut! They wouldn't be able to sweat! Imagine. And that's just one example of the potential consequences."
"Hm." Fiddleford scratched his head. "I could invent a body lotion with alien adhesive solvent?"
"Or, maybe we should only use the grenade once we're sure that such an extreme measure is necessary."
"Aww." Fiddleford kicked his foot in disappointment. "Hold on—let me at least whip up a spray attachment for your adhesive gun. So's you can patch up any clusters you find as you go." He darted between several tables, searching through drawers and tool chests for supplies, and then returned to his soldering station.
"Wait, hold on," Ford said. "In the space of a morning, you've built a vacuum chamber to calculate the gravitational acceleration in Gravity Falls, called NASA to get ahold of somebody to collect data across the rest of the United States, built a handheld version of your wormhole detector, and built a grenade to distribute alien adhesive?"
"I sure did!"
"And, how long have you been awake?"
"An hour and a half!"
Ford stared. "Where do you get your coffee?"
Fiddleford glanced across the room at Dipper, and whispered, "I'll tell ya later."
Dipper had drifted over to the miniature particle accelerator and was slowly circling it, inspecting all the pipes, trying to figure out how it worked. He was leaning over the trash can when Ford drifted over to join him. "Hey, Grunkle Ford? I... think there's a cat in here?"
"You don't know that!" Fiddleford shouted. "It could be dead!"
"No it's not, I can hear it meowing."
"That might be something else! You can't tell!"
"I could just open it—"
Fiddleford chucked an empty plastic spool of solder wire toward Dipper. "Don't you touch that!"
Dipper withdrew his hand from the trash can lid and looked at Ford, baffled.
"I'll explain how it works," Ford said.
While Fiddleford worked, Ford caught Dipper up on the details of the fuel they needed for the Quantum Destabilizer, the contraption Fiddleford had built to synthesize it, and the complicated way they'd tried to paradoxically (not) observe the experiment in progress. When Fiddleford came over to offer the completed spray nozzle, Ford asked, "Any progress on figuring out how to get this thing working?"
"No," Fiddleford sighed. "I've been lookin' into more stable paradoxes to replace the cat. But as far as the observer—I'd hoped usin' twins might just get close enough, but I've redid my cac'lations three times and I'm afraid the only way to get this thing working is by gettin' one person to both observe and not observe it at the same time. If we can just do that, we'd have all the fuel we need. But for the life of me I can't figure out how."
"Maybe if we had two versions of the same person from different dimensions..." Ford mused. "But that would require opening up a portal to reach another dimension, and there's the risk that uniting parallel versions of the same person might destabilize our entire dimension. It's not worth the risk."
"It sounds like one of those impossible riddles," Dipper said. "Like, 'If only a barber shaves people who don't shave themselves, and if anyone who shaves himself isn't a barber, then who shaves the barber?' Because if he shaved himself he wouldn't be a barber but since he shaves other people he has to be a barber..."
Ford said, "A second barber shaves him."
Fiddleford said, "He just don't shave at all."
Dipper paused. "I think I told it wrong."
Ford patted his shoulder. "But I think you're on to something. We need to think of this as a riddle; and every riddle has a solution. We just need to find it."
"After we save the town, right?" Dipper asked.
Ford smiled wanly. "One crisis at a time."
####
They agreed that investigating all the potential micro-rip hotspots around town would probably necessitate a camping trip—which was the only bit of good news to come out of this mess so far. Due to all of this summer's Bill bullsoup (as Stan had taken to calling it in front of the kids), Ford and Dipper had hardly gotten to see each other so far, much less do any serious paranormal investigating together. Hiking and camping while in search of the strange sounded like exactly what they'd been missing out on—and it would've sounded even better if the situation weren't so dire.
Ford and Dipper came back in the Mystery Shack as Shandra Jimenez said on TV, "Today's top story in Gravity Falls is that gravity isn't falling. Many residents recall similar incidents around this time last summer, when gravity intermittently shut off entirely, leading many to ask: could this possibly be another devastating effect of global warming? Temperatures today are—"
Ford scoffed. "Global warming. Of all things. Gravity is probably the only part of the environment it isn't affecting."
"I dunno, Ford, maybe you oughta consider it." Bill was sitting cross-legged on the couch, chin in his hand. He had his eye patch over the eye he'd been squinting that morning. "As long as you're already rejecting the real explanation to make up one you like better, why not go whole hog? Let's adopt a real crackpot theory."
"You want to talk about 'crackpot theories'? Global warming sounds at least as likely as an eclipse."
"That says a lot more about your education than it does about the theories."
Ford grit his teeth. "You know I'm one of the most educated men on Earth."
"And that says a lot about your planet's educational system."
Stan, sitting in his armchair reading the paper, folded it down to glower at Bill. "Stop antagonizing my brother."
"Tell him to stop making it so easy."
Ford grit his teeth harder, but ignored Bill. "Dipper, go pack your backpack. I'll check the basement and meet you when I'm done."
"Right!" Dipper hurried up the stairs.
Ford crossed the living room, checking the micro-rip scanner—88 detected rips, over five times higher than at Northwest Manor, but still nowhere near the 100,000 rip danger threshold. He'd see whether that remained true next to the portal. He paused next to Stan's armchair, "Stanley, do you remember where we stored the alien adhesive applicator?"
"Uhh... when's the last time we used it?"
"Last fall, right before we headed to Seattle."
Stan lowered his paper, staring at the ceiling. "I think we stored it in one of the lockers in the basement, right?"
"It's not there," Bill said.
Ford gave him an exasperated look. "And how would you know."
"Because the first day I came here, I emptied out all those lockers and hid their contents while I was waiting for the rest of you to get downstairs."
Ford smacked the back of the armchair, making Stan start. "So that's what happened to my infinity-sided die! Where the devil did you hide it?"
"Frankly, I don't think you're responsible enough to handle that kind of power," Bill said archly.
"Where's the adhesive applicator!"
"What do you need it for?"
"That's none of your business."
"Pity." Bill turned up the volume on the news.
Ford moved between Bill and the screen. "If you don't tell me where you hid it..." What threat could he make? This was the demon willing to threaten suicide if his captors didn't keep him entertained.
"Tell me why you need it."
"As if you'd give it to me if I did!"
"Maybe I'll find your cause noble," Bill said flatly. "Try me."
Oh, what did he have to lose. "Fine. I'm testing to see if imperceptibly small rips are opening between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm. If they are, I'm going to seal them shut." He hoped the revelation would throw Bill off—he hoped he was close enough to the truth to shock Bill into giving something away.
Bill's eye widened, eyebrows shooting up; and then he burst out laughing. "That's what Specs filled your head with? Embryonic wormholes? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! And you're turning to him for an explanation when you've got a being with infinite answers sitting in your living room?"
Ford scoffed. "Sure, infinite answers—and just like the infinity-sided die, whatever I get is infinitely more likely to be trouble than anything useful. Now tell me where you put my adhesive applicator."
"I didn't put it anywhere." Bill held the remote out to the side to change the channel and stared at the TV straight through Ford, as if he didn't exist. "It's still in the basement. A little adhesive leaked out, I couldn't get the locker door open."
"Ha!" Stan slapped an armrest.
Ford whirled around to glare at him.
Stan held up his hands appeasingly. "Sorry! Sorry. That's not funny. Wasn't—wasn't funny at all. How dare you, Bill."
"I know, I'm just the worst."
Ford held in a harsh sigh and stalked out of the room. He didn't have time for this—not when they were on a deadline to prevent whatever was happening. (What if it became too late to reverse before gravity even reached 0%? What if they were approaching a tipping point when the whole sky would rip open?)
He opened the vending machine and headed downstairs.
####
He had to break the locker door to get the alien adhesive applicator out. He'd have to figure out how the nozzle had leaked before he stored it again.
According to the sensor, there were over a thousand micro-rips detectable just from standing near the portal controls. The number increased as he approached the portal itself; the highest quantity the scanner detected was nearly 5,000. Over fifty times higher than on the shack's ground level. It was clear some sort of damage had been done here.
But Fiddleford had said, for them to be concerned about reality shredding, there should be hundreds of thousands of micro-rips in one location. And Ford trusted any numbers Fiddleford gave him; wherever Ford tended to double-check his math, Fiddleford quintuple-checked his.
Even at the interdimensional portal itself—the spot where the veil between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm had been ripped open and stitched shut so many times, the spot where the rift that nearly ended the world had been formed—there were less than 5% of the rips they needed before they started reaching dangerous levels.
Ford looked up at the portal, frowning.
The portal's torn and crumpled pieces lay against the cavern walls where he'd left them last summer.
Never mind. There were several other places that could be hotspots for micro-rips. He couldn't draw any conclusions about what was happening here until he'd checked them too.
But whatever was happening, it certainly wasn't an eclipse.
He added Fiddleford's spray attachment to the adhesive applicator and filled the chamber with a mist of glue, until the scanner read less than 200 micro-rips; then stopped by his study to grab a couple maps of the mountains around Gravity Falls, his antique lantern, and a tent; and headed back up to the house.
####
During their past year of travels, Stan and Ford had started keeping two emergency backpacks stocked in case they needed to flee on short notice. The backpacks contained everything they'd need to survive in the wilderness or a strange city for three days; and Ford had thirty long years of experience to teach him exactly what supplies that necessitated. He grabbed his backpack out of the guest room, and then spread out his map on the kitchen table to show to Dipper.
"If our micro-rip theory is correct, there are four potential places where I suspect they'll be most densely concentrated: the place where the interdimensional rift formed; where it was unleashed; where it was suspended for the majority of Weirdmageddon; and where it was sealed."
"And you've already checked the portal where it formed," Dipper said. "What about the place it was suspended? It was floating in the sky over town. There's no way we can get up there until gravity's completely gone, and by then it'll be too late."
"I've considered that. The closest we can get is Gravity Peak, but from there we should be able to get the sensor close enough to tell if there's an unusual amount of rips." Ford circled three spots on the map, and drew a dotted line connecting them. "We're heading out late, but we should be able to hit the locations where Weirdmageddon began and ended today. We can cross the lake to camp in the cavern behind Trembley Falls, get an early start, and take the hidden cave tunnel up to Gravity Peak."
"Not the best time for a hiking trip," Bill said.
Ford shot him an exasperated look. Bill was leaning in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, smirking condescendingly. "Or maybe it is, if you're trying to avoid as much effort as possible," he says. "But I still wouldn't go if I were you. You don't want to be outdoors during an eclipse—and you don't want to be on a mountain when gravity comes back."
"Nobody asked you," Ford said, turning his back on Bill. "Now—cooking will be difficult as gravity decreases, but not to worry—" he unzipped his backpack, "—I've already prepared everything we'll need." Grinning, he pulled out what looked like a toothpaste tube with a "beef and vegetables" label. "Astronaut food!"
Dipper grimaced. "Great."
"You should have asked me," Bill said, a bit louder. "Considering that Specs is sending you on a wild goose chase. But hey, if you're that determined to waste your time, just don't say I didn't tell you so."
"You haven't even told us what an 'eclipse' is," Dipper said. "If it's not important enough to explain, I don't see why it's important enough for us to listen to you."
"Well said," Ford muttered.
"It's too important to explain," Bill retorted. "I've told you everything you need to know!"
Ford said, "Ha," and started folding his map to pack.
There were a few seconds of blessed silence; and then Bill walked into the room, leaned on the fridge, and glowered at Ford. "Listen. As far as you're concerned, the eclipse is probably harmless. It should peak in three days—"
"Fiddleford said at its current rate of decrease, it should be the day after tomorrow."
Ford expected Bill to argue; but instead, he frowned uneasily. "I—Sure, fine, whatever, he's probably done the math, I've just been eyeballing it. Did he say what time?"
Surprised, Ford said, "early afternoon, by his measurements."
Bill nodded vaguely, glancing again toward the ceiling. "Whatever time it happens—gravity will gradually decrease until totality, and then it'll come back very quickly, so—if you want to help your town so much, tell them that they don't want to be climbing trees in zero G. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is stay inside, wait for it to pass, keep your eyes shutduring totality—and do not look up."
"Why can't we look up?" Dipper asked.
Bill laughed derisively. "Would you stare at the sun during a solar eclipse? It's like I'm talking to babies!"
The last fraying thread of Ford's patience snapped. He seized Bill's hoodie by the strings and dragged him closer. "Enough!"
Bill flailed, kicking the table as he tried to back out of Ford's grip, and ended up losing his footing and landing on the floor. It was too easy to drag him around—he was so light. Ford leaned down to glare straight in his eye. "If you're so worried about how we're handling this eclipse of yours, maybe you should come with us!"
Horror bloomed in Bill's eye. "What? No no no, that's—that's fine, I told you everything you need, I'd just slow you down, I'd really be much happier in here—"
"I bet you would be," Ford snarled. "As far as I'm concerned, the fact that you want to stay inside so much is reason enough to bring you along! Either something out there scares you, or there's something in here you want to be close to during totality! Maybe something will happen at the portal! Whatever it is you want, I don't want you to get it."
"Grunkle Ford?" Dipper had gotten out of his seat and was looking uncertainly between Bill and Ford. "I'm not sure about..."
Bill's gaze snapped from Ford's face to Dipper's, and Ford could almost see the gears shifting in his head as he latched on to a more vulnerable target. "Kid. Remember when I told you there are things out there you don't want to meet? Stay inside—let me stay inside—find a good book to distract you the next couple of days, and don't worry about things you don't want to know too much about. As far as you should be concerned, this is a weather phenomenon. You don't want to dig any deeper than that. Stay. Home."
The corners of Dipper's mouth turned down. He grabbed Ford's coat sleeve and said, voice low, "Great Uncle Ford, I... I'm not sure he's lying. I've never seen Bill scared like this before. And when he told me about things in other dimensions, this gravity thing hadn't even started, so he couldn't have..."
"Unless Bill was expecting this to happen, and everything he told you yesterday was the groundwork to make us believe whatever he wants us to believe." Bill had wormed deeper into Dipper's head than Ford had realized, if it was enough to make him consider Bill's nonsensical claims. Ford should have asked more about what Bill told him yesterday. The monster could have been filling his gnephew's head with all sorts of nightmares. "Doesn't it seem a little lucky that he told you all that one day before this?"
Dipper grimaced. "I mean..."
Ford glared at Bill again. "I'm not buying it. And the more you make up ridiculous explanations like 'gravitational eclipses' and 'things from other dimensions,' the more you insist that this is somehow both no big deal and incredibly dangerous just to witness, the less I believe this is anything but a patently ridiculous attempt to keep us from interfering with whatever is about to happen! And frankly, that makes me want to interfere even more!"
Bill let out a strangled laugh. "You've gotta be... If you think I'm that suspicious, how do you know this isn't reverse psychology?! Maybe I want you to take me outside!"
"Maybe you do. That's the awful thing about you, Bill: I can second-, third-, and fourth-guess everything you say, and I'll never be sure I've figured out the truth! At some point I just have to make an educated guess."
There was a knock at the doorway. "Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos leaned into the kitchen. "I heard furniture and anger. Is everything... uh..." He trailed off, taking in the scene—Bill on the floor backed up against the fridge, Ford crouched over him, Dipper watching anxiously. "Everything cool here?"
Ford got to his feet. "Dipper and I are going on an expedition—and unfortunately, he has to come along. Soos, do you have a spare backpack we can use for his supplies?"
"Uh, I think so—"
"Great," Dipper snapped. "This is just perfect. I've been waiting a month and a half for us to do something cool together, and when we're finally about to go on an expedition, it's ruined by him?" He gestured angrily at Bill. "He's already ruined the rest of summer!"
Bill said, "Hey, I didn't consent to this plan either."
"You shut up," Dipper snapped. "This is all your fault! You could have just left us alone, but...!" He let out a frustrated noise. He pushed past Soos out of the room and ran up the stairs.
Ah. Ford's shoulders slumped. Sometimes he wasn't quite sure where he'd misstepped in a conversation, but this time it was pretty obvious. Between this and the nearly-disastrous trip to Portland, Ford was well in the lead for Worst Grunkle of the Summer.
"Wow. You broke that kid's heart," Bill said. "Not too late to make it up to him by going back to the original plan."
Ford shot him a dirty look.
Bill shrugged. "I'm trying anything I can think of at this point!"
Ford sighed harshly, and left to follow Dipper upstairs.
Bill sat up and waited until Ford's footsteps had receded. Voice low, he said, "Questiony, listen, I need your help. Stanford's gone completely insane. You didn't see how he was ranting and raving before you got in here. Who knows what he'll do to me if he gets me alone outside the shack with only his junior sycophant as a witness—?"
Soos looked deeply uncomfortable, but he shook his head. "Not buying it, dawg."
Bill groaned.
####
Ford knocked, and gently pushed the kids' damaged door open a crack. "Dipper?"
Dipper grunted. He was sitting on his bed, chin in his hands, glaring down at his journal in his lap.
"Can I come in?"
Dipper grunted again. Ford wasn't being ignored, so he took that as permission to enter. He delicately sat next to Dipper and tried to figure out what to say next. (He was surprised at how firm the mattress was—and then realized the real reason he wasn't sinking as far into it as he expected.) "Dipper..."
"You don't need to say anything," he sighed. "You're right—Bill probably is up to something. If he wants to be in the shack so much, and won't give us a straight answer why, then... it's probably safer to keep him out of it." But he sounded so terribly resigned.
"All the same, I understand your disappointment," Ford said. "I'd far rather go hiking with you than with him."
Dipper nodded. "Yeah. It's just..." He trailed off.
"I know. I wanted this summer to be different, too." Ford sighed. "As soon as he's gone, I owe you another hiking trip."
Dipper nodded again. He mumbled, "I've never gone hiking before."
This was some way to experience it for the first time. "We could treat this like a practice round? A warm-up with lower gravity to make it easier. Next time will be a real trip—without any crises to worry about, and without Bill."
"I don't mind the crises," Dipper said. "I'm kind of used to them, actually. They're almost fun now."
In his mind, Ford knew that this was probably another thing that should earn him a Worst Grunkle award. But in his heart, he was proud of Dipper. That was an adventurer's attitude.
"It's just... I haven't been able to get away from him all summer," Dipper said. "And even when I'm avoiding him, Mabel's spending all her free time either with her friends or trying to reform him, and you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to kill him, so I barely see you two..."
And that wasn't even something Ford could blame on Bill, was it? He hadn't been spending his time trying to figure out how to kill Bill since he'd handed over the Quantum Destabilizer design to Fiddleford. He'd simply been... obsessing. Hiding and obsessing. Ford stared down at his hands guiltily. "Tell you what. As soon as this is over, we can go do—something. I don't know what yet, but we've got a couple of days to think it up. I've spent too much time underground the last few weeks, anyway. We may not be able to go on that big adventure until Bill's gone—but it's something, for now."
"Yeah, I'd like that. Thanks, Grunkle Ford."
Ford nudged him. "And as long as you do have to put up with Bill for this trip... look on the bright side. Haven't you been wanting to get a crack at him without your sister around? See if you can pry out any more alien wisdom before his execution?"
Dipper huffed—but one corner of his mouth reluctantly quirked up. "Thanks, but I'm starting to think that's a bad idea. Every time I try, he just says stuff that gives me nightmares."
"Well—consider it an intellectually broadening experience."
Dipper gave him a weak smile.
"Anyway, with a little luck, it won't be long before you'll never need to deal with him again."
####
Soos had an old Monster-Mon backpack with cracked vinyl around the straps that he hadn't used since he outgrew it in fifth grade. "Lucky I didn't throw it out when we moved. You never know when you're gonna need old stuff!"
Bill had no idea what he was supposed to take on a forced camping trip. He knew what humans took, but humans craved all kinds of material comforts that meant nothing to him. After a couple minutes staring at the bag forlornly, he stuck in a spare shirt and leggings—he doubted he'd need extra underwear or socks, right?—and the Pony Heist bedsheet he'd been using as his sole blanket the last month, his toothbrush and toothpaste, a cider six-pack, two boxes of cereal, a kazoo, and the TV remote.
"I need some first-aid supplies. In case of emergency," Bill told Soos.
"Sure, whaddaya need?"
"Bandages, painkillers, matches, and a knife."
"You got—" Soos paused, then pursed his lips at Bill disapprovingly.
Bill sighed. "Bandages and painkillers. And cold medicine. Woods get chilly."
He glanced up as he heard footsteps upstairs. Not much longer until he was dragged outside. He grimaced. "One more thing, Jesús. This is important."
"Whoa. Full-first-name important?" He stuck a bottle of cold syrup in the backpack, hit something hard, and peered in confusion at the six-pack.
"Stanford's being petty and refusing to believe anything I say, but I know you're not that stupid," Bill lied. "So listen: this thing will peak in a couple of days and then go back to normal. It's mostly harmless to humans—but once the peak has passed, gravity's coming back like that." Bill snapped his fingers. "So anyone you want to come out of this intact needs to do two things. One, the moment gravity completely disappears, they need to anchor themselves, as close to the ground as possible, before it comes back. And two, do not look at the sky. Got it?"
Soos hesitated; but then nodded. "Y-yeah, got it."
"Understand?"
"Understood."
"Good."
"So are you like... trying to protect the town now?"
Bill laughed bitterly. "I'm trying to cover my base. When this is all over, even if all my warnings were ignored, at least nobody will be able to say I didn't try. I could have sat on everything I know! But I didn't! And I'm going to rub. It. In. Ford's. Face." He punctuated each word with a jab to Soos's chest.
Soos endured the jabbing with a patience Bill didn't deserve. "Byyy protecting the town?"
Bill opened his mouth, reconsidered, and said, "Sure! Of course I'm protecting the town! Why would I want any harm to befall the citizens of my once and future capital?"
"I mean, no offense, but you befelled a lot of harm on us last year—"
"I did not," Bill snapped. "Everyone was perfectly comfortable in my throne of frozen human agony." He yanked the backpack's zipper shut, pulled it on, and pushed Soos aside to leave the kitchen.
Stan had stopped Ford at the foot of the stairs. "But if this is some nightmare dimension thing, isn't that just another reason not to take Bill outside? What if one of those wormholes opens up and he dives through? Maybe escaping back to his dimension will give him his power back, we don't know."
"I've considered that—but if that is what he's planning, all the more reason why he should stay with Dipper and me, so we can stop him if he tries anything."
"Are you nuts? It'll be two of you in the woods versus four of us here in the shack! We outnumber him more than you do! Plus walls and doors!"
"We have the hexed bracelets, he won't be able to escape us," Ford said.
"Aww, I get to share matching friendship bracelets with someone?" Bill gave Dipper and Ford what he hoped was his most obnoxious smile. "Who's the lucky guy?"
Scowling, Dipper raised his hand.
Bill's smile dimmed. "You are the lesser evil," he admitted grudgingly. "But I'm surprised ol' Six-Fingers doesn't want to keep as tight a grip on me as possible."
"We decided that if you try to kill your bracelet partner and escape, Grunkle Ford would have a better chance of avenging me than I would have avenging him."
Bill's brows shot up. "Ruthlessly utilitarian. Was that Stanford's idea?"
Ford ignored the question, pushing on with his conversation with Stan: "And anyway, there might be more people in the shack, but none of them would be me. I know him better than anyone else."
Bill laughed hard enough that his feet momentarily lifted off the floor. "Oh do you!"
Ford's gaze shot to Bill's face, eyes blazing with fury. "You know I do. I've spent thirty years learning every trick, every lie, every betrayal that's made you who you—"
"What's my favorite food."
Ford's mouth worked uselessly. "That—doesn't matter—"
"You think you know my innermost soul when you don't even know my favorite food?"
"Favorite... human food, or...?"
"Oh, sure, I'll give you a fighting chance. Human."
Ford chewed on the inside of his mouth for several seconds. Finally, he said, "Jalapeños."
Bill crossed the entryway, leaned into the hallway, and took a deep breath. "HEY, MABEL!"
From the far end of the house (where Mabel was seeing how high she could jump in the floor room), she shouted, "YEAH?"
"WHAT'S MY FAVORITE FOOD?"
"NACHOS WITH CHOCOLATE SAUCE AND SUMMER-SHAPED SPRINKLES!"
Bill gestured down the hall, ta-da. "THANK YOU!"
"I was close," Ford grumbled. "Nachos have jalapeños."
Stan said, "You're not even out of the house and he's getting under your skin. Are you sure you wanna—?"
"I am not," Ford said, "leaving him in the house. And if you'd heard how he was fighting to stay under this roof, you wouldn't trust him in here either."
Stan looked at Bill.
Bill looked Stan dead in the eyes and said, "I don't know what he's talking about. I agreed to go as soon as he asked."
"Oh, shut your—" Ford snatched the bracelets off the coat rack, flung one end at Bill, and handed Dipper the other. "Put these on. We're leaving."
Bill scowled, but considered his odds of successfully resisting, reluctantly put his end of the bracelet on, and yelled down the hall, "BYE, MABEL! I'M BEING KIDNAPPED BY YOUR UNCLE AGAINST MY WILL! I MAY NEVER RETURN!"
"I'LL MISS YOU FOREVER!"
Ford opened the door and gestured impatiently. Bill took a couple reluctant steps closer, but stopped to look at Soos and say, "Remember what I said. Do not let Mabel be in the air when gravity comes back, you know if someone doesn't watch her she'll launch herself as high as she can—"
Ford snapped, "Either you walk or I drag you, Cipher."
"I'm coming." He stepped outside, paused, and cast a worried look at the sky; then squeezed his eyes shut, lowered his head, and walked into the sunlight.
####
(That's this week's chapter! I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts. Next week: I'm gonna do my level best to shatter your hearts. Look forward to it!)
#bill cipher#human bill cipher#grunkle ford#stanford pines#(for the chapter)#fiddleford mcgucket#(for the art)#gravity falls#gravity falls fanart#gravity falls fic#fanart#my art#my writing#bill goldilocks cipher
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"You Know You're Fictional, Right?"
♡ Genre: Fluff, crack ♡ Pairing: Bakugou x Fem!Reader ♡ Tags: Established relationships
You just wanted to fuck with his head, that's all.
"Katsuki," you said to your loving and ever-patient boyfriend, "you know you're fictional, right?"
"Hah?"
You leaned on his bedroom desk, giving him the utmost pitying and concerned look. Bakugou was not having it today.
"Don't you got anything better to do than to mess with me?!" Bakugou banged his fist on the desk. "Why the hell are you accusing me of being fictional?"
"I'm only warning you for you own sake," you said, voice wobbling from sadness. Bakugou just narrowed his eyes at you. "I've wanted to tell you for a while... but..." You sniffled. "I didn't know how to bring it up!"
"So now that we're dating, you wanna pull this shit?"
"...Yes? I-I just needed to earn your trust before I--ah!"
Bakugou tickled you and you giggled, wrenching yourself away from his evil fingers. You caught your breath a short distance away from him, while he grinned madly in his seat.
"Got you back," Bakugou said, satisfied at your state of disarray from the tickles. "Now don't go calling me fictional again! I'm your real boyfriend! Not a fake one. Who do you think you're calling 'fictional'?"
"But what if I have to go back to my home world someday? you asked. "You can't just avoid this conversation, Katsuki!"
"I can and I will. Now, are you gonna cuddle with me or not, babe?"
You sighed and curled up in his lap while he finished his homework. You continued to ramble on about your theories regarding your shared world, how superpowers weren't natural, and how even All Might didn't exist in the world you supposedly came from.
“Am I the most popular in your world?” he asked, barely trying to humor you. “Or do those idiots got bad taste?”
He was the most popular, but you wouldn’t tell him that. “No, it’s actually Midoriya.”
“What?! Him?! You’re lying! That world is messed up.”
“You still have plenty of fans though!”
“...Are they weird and creepy fans?”
“Um… define ‘weird and creepy’.”
“Uggggghhh." Bakugou held you tighter in his lap. "Just shoot me.”
“Don’t say that!" You stroked his head. "At least people still like you at all! They love seeing your adventures!”
Bakugou slammed his pencil on the desk. “That wasn’t for them to see! That was private! You hear me? Private!” Bakugou lowered his voice, his face close to yours. “What goes on between us is private too. Now don’t go telling your little imaginary friends what we do. That’s only for us to know.”
Bakugou kissed you and then turned back to his homework. You sighed and wrapped your arms around his neck.
“You still don’t believe you’re fictional,” you murmured. “Poor baby is in denial.”
"It’s ’cause your world sounds boring," Bakugou said, mindlessly writing out answers in his homework. Then, he turned back to you. "You should stick with this one. I want you staying here forever. You’re mine.”
"Katsuki, I was only trying to prank you. Of course I'm staying here!"
"Then why the fuck did you bring up all that sad shit about leaving to your own world! Don't say that kinda crap outta nowhere!"
"But that's my specialty."
Bakugou kiss-attacked your face, making you giggle as you swatted his terrifying kisses away.
"Specialty my ass," Bakugou said, beaming at you. "Go be special at something else then, how about that? Like tell me about your day or who's been bugging you. Don't go talking about how you're leaving me, it pisses me off."
"Katsuki, you know how my day was. We hang out all the time!"
"Well then fucking remind me!"
Nothing you did could convince Bakugou he was fictional, and maybe that was fine. The next day, you instead tried to make him believe that you were his fictional girlfriend, and he didn’t like that either.
“I didn’t get an imaginary girlfriend ‘cause I’m supposedly lonely, dammit!”
“I don’t know,” Kaminari said. “It sounds pretty plausible for you.”
The moment Bakugou’s hands started exploding, Kaminari ran away screaming. From then on, Bakugou had to prove to everyone that you and him were actually together and that no, dating him was not another one of your elaborate pranks. And from now on, Bakugou will side-eye you if you mention any other fictional crushes you have...
(This one has been sitting in my drafts for ages!)
#bakugou x reader#katsuki x you#bakugo x reader#bnha fanfiction#fanfiction#fanfic#x y/n#x reader#reader fic#reader insert#my hero academia x reader#mha#mha fanfiction#mha x reader#mha bakugou#bnha x reader#bnha#katsuki bakugou x reader#bakugo katsuki x reader#bakugou katuski x reader#bakugou katsuki x reader#katsuki bakugo x reader#bakugou x you#bakugo x you#reader x character#katsuki bakugo x y/n#bakugou x y/n#katsuki x reader#katsuki x y/n#x you
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Let it Be Close-watch
Paul, sweety, it's beautiful, but it's killing the vibe.
Ringo looks like a very old, very tired lab rat whose been put through the maze a few too many times
Somehow the air-brown mostly eaten apple is very appropriate.
She looks far too sweet here to ever let John down. Yoko has very kind eyes.
I love how it makes it seem like Paul and John are calling Maxwell “the corny one” but really we know from Get Back that they're talking about a particular arrangement they were trying out for Don't Let me Down.
I swear he's saying “John” there, not “Joan” and also he said “came down upon His head” so… Oh! And Max died in the end in this version? “Sure that Max was dead” Okay. So Paul kills John and then himself. Murder suicide story. Yeah, Paul, you're doing great mentally, we can all tell.
I love how George getting electrocuted was important enough to make the cut for both films. Poor baby. “If this boy dies you're gonna cop it” from the guy who was just singing about a serial killer.
They're so silly
Yoko does not agree with me
Paul: stealing your man, sweetheart. John: oh no I'm being stolen teehee!
They're so silly
Oh wait, were those bitchy looks at George??? Because there he is. Idk could easily be him or Yoko.
this poor autistic baby trying to use words (not his language) to explain music (his language)
“Good MoOornin! Wooah!” I think I just … You know how Mike said people were booing Paul in the theater watching this? Yeah it's because they were pissed he didn't step out of the screen and onto their necks.
Oh Michael put himself in his own movie too? Huh, cool.
They are always in my heart
The way Paul says “get on the mic” to John??? I would've thrown something, that was so fucking bossy! Just his tone and his face and his angry pointing fingers. So mean. And John just goes “okaaay”. Oof.
Ringo covering his eyes like a little kid watching a scary movie during the orange sweater fight. Same, babe.
Sounds like the original lyric John's going for is something long “All I want is you. Nothing else is gonna do.” But that obviously didn't fit with the tune. I wonder if there was a particular conversation with Paul being controlling that made the “everything has got to be the way you want it to” line click in.
Oh my gosh! So George is showing I Me Mine to Ringo and Paul and he says the “I don't give a fuck it can go in musical” line before he even plays it. Not after John's making fun of him like he does in Get Back. Nagra reels experts: which one is correct??
George: it's a heavy waltz. Ringo:*claps hands angrily and punches the air to a ¾ beat. I love him, he's like the core of “Beatle humor” to me.
Woah there! Okay this is the John/Yoko pda Peter Jackson cut, I see. I wonder if there's a lot more footage of them swapping spit that might make the “oh John was just so in love” theory more reasonable.
It's extremely impressive that George just wrote this whole thing last night. You know? John and Paul have brought in all fragments from what I can tell. He's the only one to come in with a basically finished product.
LMAO and we're just going to Apple now. No reason. Nothing happened. Nothing to see. Moving on.
Ringo is so so cute pretending to hide from the cameras. Really he should've been the cute one.
Is it just me or does Paul drop the sillies and get sad when he sings “always be mine” at John? It's his regular voice, too, for a minute, if I'm not mistaken.
Silly cuties. But John's grin and little sexy tongue action happens the second time Paul sings always be mine, so…
What friendly artistic collaboration looks like when it's not psychosexual
Paul: have you played the dubs? George: yeah. Terrible. Paul: Great! Ringo: terrible. John: laughs Paul: (sarcastic) oh, so dreadful. …. John: where's my guitar? Paul: (still sarcastic) well we're just the greatest band ever. Idk I just like this dialogue. It's very them, you know?
This is adorable.
But I also love how they're already communicating with eyebrows, you know? They just bonded so fast and I find that beautiful.
And then Heather ups their game from taking turns going “chchchchch” into the mic to meowing into the mic. She looks at Paul like “okay your turn” and he sets her down lol he's thinking ‘if I meow into the mic right now after John already had a sex dream last night about me, he might actually cream his pants and we can't have that on camera’
Lol Billy just magically appeared!
Paul you're literally so annoying. You started the goofing off and now you're like “alright lads, that's enough.” Mkay.
He is unbelievably sexy and talented though so you know he does have those little things going for him. Someone write me a Paul/Billy fic please!!
Kinda crazy how they all four just slide straight from “Kansas City” to “Miss Ann” to “Lawdy Miss Claudy”. Makes me think of something they might've done in Hamburg.
I'm sorry but Paul finishes “please don't excite me baby. I'm down in misery.” And John's immediate answer is, “well you can get it if you want it, and if you want it you can get it!” And Paul ends up singing “I want it I want it I want it I want it”. Nice. Very subtle, boys. And that's before John gets kinky.
I love how Heather just forces a hug from George and then immediately runs away. What a cutie.
But really. How did anyone watching this get the idea that John hated Paul? Just confirmation bias I guess?
All the cut off conversations kill me but especially the one where John's working though Paul's anxieties. They're just in the middle of it and then cut. “two of us Sunday driving…”
Someone should do a study of whistling in their songs. I feel like it's another one of their tip offs that “hey this one is about us” Anyway I love John's whistling here. He's so good at it. I can just imagine him as some farm boy picking apples, you know?
Imagine booing this poor stay puppy though, like. What? I mean, what if Johann Weiner was wrong and John wasn't crying at the sight of him and Paul playing triumphant together on the rooftop, but at Paul playing his little heart out about their doomed love. Idk it's probably both. Let's be real, John was bawling through the whole thing.
What is George laughing at? Picture quality is garbage because evil corporations don't let you take screenshots of their content, but he looks like that one kid in your elementary school class that just dumped Cheetos all over his crushes desk and thinks he's a criminal mastermind.
Also I do appreciate all the attention given in the chosen shots to the musicianship. I bet they liked that at least if they had the heart to like anything about the movie at the time.
I'm sorry but I love how in sync Mo and Paul are. With this ducking and later the shimmying. I know it's wrong to ship Ringo’s wife with one of the Beatles she didn't sleep with, but… idk I really want her to have bedded all four at one point, you know? She deserves it, being an og.
Okay but yeah I'd be having a public meltdown if I fumbled that too holy fucking shit
Ringo feeling himself as he should
George just looks like he smells nice. Unlike the others. You know?
John has such a beautiful smile. If somebody looked at me like that I'd put him up on a giant screen behind me on my world tour after he'd been dead for forty years too.
That pleeeaaaheeeaaase though. Looking at Paul. How did he survive I'll never know.
The cut from screaming Paul to grouchy nap lady is extremely painful.
John was so cool in this concert. Like the epitome of cool.
Kevin, my love, thank you for your service
I love Yoko leaning so far and craning her neck. She's like a mom at a school talent show. Like “I only came to see my baby.” Type vibe. Which is exactly what she's doing, unlike Mo, and honestly I find both of them extremely valid
You know in movies where the romantic leads are never looking at each other at the same time?
I think I watched George and John switching back on their amps like fifty times because I just love it so much. And from this angle, you can see John's saying something to Paul about it. He looks serious and he's shaking his head. I wonder what he's saying.
Mal Evans I love you forever for this. Look at his hand on the rail, just blocking them off completely, so protective.
Them turning to each other at the end always gets me. It's automatic, like second nature, and it's the last time ever. They deserved better.
Oh Darling duet in the credits are you fucking kidding me??? Was that in the original? “Believe me, when I tell you.” “Oh I do.” That's the second time that they gave away in this footage that they know they're talking to each other in their music.
Alright, that's it, I guess. And then MLH is haunted by this experience for forty years until he makes Two of Us to purge the demons.
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the tortured poets department
Vi x reader
Info Post
Moodboards
Part I
Next Part
TW: Brief mentions of mental illness (anxiety, PTSD), military induced injuries, self harm, hospitals, death, and fighting.
WC: 5k
Part II
the black dog
“Alright, pick your poison, doll.” Vi spoke the moment we made it to the packed bar, my hands already shakily pulling at the long sleeves of the flannel.
“Umm, I don’t really know much about alcohol besides whenever Caitlyn used to steal from our parents stash whenever we were younger.” I shrugged a bit, glued to the counter for dear life.
“Well, let’s see… did you like something more sweet or sour or-”
“I think I don’t mind a little bit of sour.” I spoke up, cheeks glowing with a slightly embarrassed flush, meanwhile the permanent smirk on Vi’s face never seemed to slip as she turned towards the bartender.
“I think I’ve got something you’ll like.” She voiced before waving him over. A few moments later I held onto a orange colored fruity drink called a Rum Runner that seemed to be the perfect combo of sweet and sour. I guarded it for dear life as she lead me towards the jukebox tucked in the corner away from the dancing uni students in which the bar staff had cleared out an entire space now being used as a makeshift dance floor.
Vi passed off a shiny coin for the jukebox in her hand once we reached it, leaning a casual shoulder against the wall. “Give ‘em hell.”
My own little grin stretched on my face as I took the coin with a flourish, twisting it in my fingers as I weighed the options in my head. “Now, with great power comes great responsibility. Or whatever it is Kurt Cobain said.” I joked just before sliding in the coin to its slot just before the screen lit up to display the option to cue up a song.
“Well, I also hear that Kurt Cobain was a bit of a liar so-” I heard her whispering in my ear nearly causing me to shiver. I don’t think I had ever been so close to another girl’s lips before the moment I turned my head to face her. Hands freezing on the dial as if awaiting them to press to mine.
Vi was patient though, testing the waters but not moving out too deep. Though I wasn’t sure if it was respectful or teasing as I flicked my doe eyes upwards to meet hers. And it was then I noticed the tattoo inked just below her eye along her cheekbone, either a number 6 in roman numerals or her nickname. Perhaps even both. A few tattoos of various gears crawled out from underneath her leather jacket, and I had the sudden urge to reach my hand out and brush my fingers along the inked lines.
“You know, one of my sister’s first criminology reports was on the conspiracy theory of if Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain or not.” I muttered almost nervously, it’s what I did whenever I got flustered, I usually found something to say about Caitlyn. So far the tactic had been unsuccessful though. Turns out talking about how your sister was much better and smarter than you in every way was a turn off. Not that I had been in really a ton of situations to warrant me getting flustered, but I was definitely flustered now.
Vi’s muscular chest stood right at eye level as she stretched herself back up to her normal height. Still so close, like she was hovering. “And her conclusion?”
“Inconclusive.” I answered, finally getting myself to spin around and face the jukebox once more. My brain had suddenly gone blank of all music so I quickly decided to queue up Heart-Shaped Box. “She still got an A.” I added with a little sigh before I could spin away from it to finally free up the space.
“She’d make an excellent lawyer.” Vi almost laughed as she shoved her hands into her pockets.
“Maybe if she wasn’t so obsessed with working in the field… doing all the dangerous stuff, you know, running into the line of fire-”
“Okay you know detective work isn’t like in all the movies and crime shows, right? Caitlyn’s gonna be just fine. She can hold her own, you know that.” Vi stated, her hand being pressed to my lower back in some attempt to comfort me whenever it only just felt like it was sparking my crush-induced nerves all over again. Or maybe it was too soon to call it a crush? I wasn’t entirely sure what a crush was even supposed to feel like.
From the same table I could already hear a hefty amount of arguing and chatter as I sipped away at my fruity drink, an offended groan breaking from Ellie’s mouth as she snatched up what looked like a tarot card from another spread already laid on the table. “Mills, can you believe what Jinx’s tarot deck just called me?!” She exclaimed as she held up the card with an almost comical pout.
“The Fool?” I wondered with a head tilt. “I don’t think that’s what that means.”
“I told you it’s not.” Jinx huffed as she stood up to pluck the card from Ellie’s fingers. “The Fool represents innocence, new beginnings, you’re a free spirit… a little naïve, definitely not level-headed. Are you a water sign by any chance?” She wondered curiously as she seemed to study her face.
“Sagittarius.” She answered with a scowl causing Jinx to nod.
“Actually, you know what, that makes sense.”
“Why? Literally what does that mean? I’m not a zodiac gay!” Ellie exclaimed almost as if the conversation was stressing her out.
“Try living with her, she blames most of her problems on ‘mercury’ being in ‘retrograde’.” Vi went on with her fingers raised in quotations. I couldn’t help but lean forward curiously to scan the rest of Ellie’s spread. The Wheel of Fortune and six of cups in reverse… interesting.
“Vi, can I have a word?” Caitlyn spoke up from her spot across the table next to a boy with strikingly white hair who seemed to be leaning into Jinx every opportunity he got.
The chorus of sounds that sprung up from the table was reminiscent of a primary school classroom whenever someone gets called to the office. It was almost comforting to know the childlike aire of people never seemed to fade in university. It wasn’t comforting to hear Caitlyn’s request however as she pushed her slender body up to her feet.
Vi only took it all in stride though, meeting her with an equally as hard stare as she followed suit. “Why not? Lead the well.”
“I will.” Caitlyn added, whipping around to head towards the stairs leading towards the first level of the pub.
“Oh this is way better than tarot.” Jinx responded after only a quick passing moment before flying out of her seat so fiercely I almost thought she was going to knock the entire couch over. “C’mon new girl, you’re probably gonna wanna hear this.”
My breath hitched in my throat as she managed to hoist me up to my feet. My hands instantly darting outwards to grip Ellie’s wrist to drag her along with me, naturally. “Ow, Millie! That hurts!” She winced as she wrestled her arm out of my grip. “Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”
Jinx immediately flashed us a stern look with a finger to her lips before she could climb the stairs. A duo of voices already carrying from around the corner where the two stood. “What part about ‘off limits’ do you not understand?!” Caitlyn was snapping immediately as she crossed her arms across her chest.
“Your sister is a grown adult, Caitlyn, you don’t have to play protector 24/7 anymore!”
“Oh that’s fucking rich coming from you.” Caitlyn practically sneered.
“It really is.” Jinx mouthed back to the two of us.
“Is it, Cait? Because even I tried to be semi normal with Jinx after all of our trauma and let’s not act like there wasn’t a hefty amount of it. What is this actually about, Caitlyn? Be honest. Is this about her or us?” My heart seemed to lurch in my chest at the one singular word. Us? What did she mean by ‘us’? Did I even want to know what she meant? Was it stupid to feel the sudden crushing weight of that one tiny word?
From one step below me I could feel Ellie’s fingers lacing through mine in a silent declaration. I’ve got you. No matter where this conversation leads I’ve got you.
“There is no ‘us’, Violet. There never has been and there never will be. And even if there was you know damn well I’d choose her happiness over mine every single fucking day. Got that? You don’t get to hurt her. I swear to god if you hurt her-”
“What am I actually going to do, Caitlyn? Do you think I’m this big bad supervillain-”
“I’m talking about your underground dealings! Your little underground fighting ring that Sevika somehow still lets go on even though someone was literally killed-”
“Keep your voice down!” Vi exclaimed in a whisper yell as she held up a finger, eyes encircling around the area as if looking for somebody. Such as three meddling freshmen hiding behind a corner. “We have company.”
“You guys go, I’ll take the fall.” Jinx whipped around to shoo us away. Ellie was already grabbing my arm, wanting to waste no time.
“A-Are you sure?” I stammered, a little bit more hesitant as I slowly let Ellie pull me down the stairs.
“It’s okay, won’t be the first time I’ve been caught, won’t be the last.” Jinx shrugged before slipping off into view and I finally let Ellie tug me from view just in time to see my sister’s cold blue eyes peering around the corner to investigate.
“Holy shit…” Ellie let out a long gust of air as she pressed an anxious hand to her chest. “I feel like I just got sucked into a thriller dark romance dark academia novel or something. Sevika has an underground fighting ring? S-Someone died!?”
“Who’s Sevika?” I wondered, my mind slipping into several directions all at once as I lifted a hand to my lips as if to bite my already chipped nails.
“Sevika’s our coach. She’s hard as shit, doesn’t take crap from anybody which is needed because we have a couple spoiled nepo babies on the team.” Ellie seethed a bit to herself before letting her eyes briefly glance over towards the same blonde haired woman who had supposedly ‘knocked her lights out’ during practice. “Are you okay? I know that was probably a lot.” She gently wrapped her hand around my upper arm as if to ground me in some way. And I hadn’t realized how badly my heart was pounding so intensely until I finally felt it behind my ribs. “Mills, you’re shaking.”
“Yeah I um- I think I just need some air.” I stammered, swallowing a dry lump down my throat. Ellie’s slid a protective arm around me before my knees could buckle as she pulled me towards the back door. Tangling my fingers up into her flannel as I wrapped an arm around her waist.
I gulped down a heavy dose of chilly night air the moment she pushed through the double back doors. From above us a lively back patio stretched on, tufts of smoke filtering downstairs through the gaps of the railing. I felt something plastic and metal at the same time being pressed into my hand. My seldomly used inhaler that I frequently forgot… and Ellie and Caitlyn never did. With a shuddering gasp I placed the opening between my lips and sent a gust of the medicated air through my lungs.
“You okay?” Ellie spoke up once the tense moment had passed.
Ellie wasn’t nearly as tall as Caitlyn or even Vi, in fact she was exceedingly average. Still I had to catch myself tilting my head upwards to meet her eyes as my own furrowed together in worry. “Are you okay?” I directed the question back at her as I lifted a hand to place against her freckled cheek.
Ellie sighed and encircled a hand around my forearm as if to hold it in place. “I- I don’t know… I guess. It’s just- I-I thought this shit only happened in books and movies and stuff.” She frowned, running a hand through her unkempt hair before whirling around to take a seat on a nearby ledge that encircled a mostly dead garden. Slowly I trailed over to take the spot next to her causing her eyes to lift towards me ever so slightly. “Millie?”
“Hmmm?” I hummed in response as I laid my head against her shoulder.
“Promise… Promise me if you do get involved with her that you’ll be safe? I mean I know I make a lot of jokes and I talk a lot of shit but- if something actually happened to you, i-if I lost you I-”
“Ellie-“ I shushed just before I could feel her voice break, slipping my arms around her shoulder as I pulled her in closer with a tight squeeze. It wasn’t like her to get emotional too often, it definitely wasn’t like her to cry. Sometimes I almost wondered what she was like before she met me, if there was any correlation to be found. But I knew she had been through a lot.
All of the doctors and nurses at the retreat we were at mainly kept her diagnosis at PTSD, she referred to it as that even herself. She was a US Army veteran who had been stationed in the UK and sometimes I wondered if my parents hated her strictly for that reason alone. Sometimes I almost thought about why she was discharged too and what could’ve really been behind it. An explosion near base that left her with a gunshot wound to the side, a perforated eardrum, a traumatic brain injury, and a shit ton of shrapnel scarring that she now had covered up by a tattoo that spanned the length of her forearm. If anyone knew pain it was Ellie.
I hadn’t been able to stop crying the night she told me and even then I felt bad because of how she comforted me during the whole thing. It should’ve been the other way around and I knew that. But I still thought it could’ve attested to the kind of person she was. And a lot of the times I looked at my own measly self inflicted scars and wondered how I even deserved to stand next to her.
“You are the only good thing that has ever happened to me, Amelia.” She muttered as she leaned her head against mine with a long and shaking breath.
“Ellie, love.” I sighed as I placed another hand against her cheek to peer into her green eyes. “You aren’t on the battlefield anymore, nothing’s going to happen to me or you. I promise. You’re safe now.”
“I hope so.” She whispered after another moment of hesitation. Carefully she wrapped her hand around my wrist and I tried to ignore the sting in my heart once she removed my hand from her face. “We should be careful, in case Vi comes out here. You do like, you know, like her, right?”
“I don’t know.” I answered as I leaned back on my hands slightly. “She’s certainly a looker. But I just- what if it’s too soon to tell? How do you even know whenever you fancy someone?”
“That little ache you felt in your chest whenever Vi called her and Caitlyn an ‘us’? That’s one way you can tell.” Ellie answered as she gave my ankle a little nudge with her combat boots.
“How did you know, you creep?” I nearly giggled as I looked towards her with a lifted brow.
“Because I’m your best friend? Plus, that’s also whenever you started reaching for my hand.”
“I didn’t think I- I thought you grabbed my hand-“
“I did, because you started reaching for it. I mean, either way it does kind of check out doesn’t it?“
“Yeah… I guess you might be right.” I huffed, gnawing on my bottom lip as I fought the urge to stretch my fingers out to Ellie’s all over again. Before I could make contact though the back door swung open once more causing both of our heads to turn in unison.
“So, how much did you hear?” Vi said simply as she strode outside, still as calm and collected as possible with her hands shoved into her pockets once more.
“Oxford has an underground fighting ring?” Ellie blurted out before I could even construct some way to cover up our probably suspicious disappearance. If I wasn’t curious enough myself though I probably would’ve rolled my eyes. She was already a pretty shitty liar though.
“You surprised?” Vi wondered next with a slightly tilted head.
“Why were you so secretive about it in the hallway if you’re being so casual now?” Ellie wondered next, almost rather bravely as she fiddled with the evil eye bracelet around her wrist.
“I didn’t want the wrong person to hear.” She added, her blue eyes briefly sweeping over to me before she took the seat on my other side immediately causing Ellie to tense up almost protectively. “Whatever you think it is though, it isn’t… generally.”
“Caitlyn said somebody died though-“ Ellie stammered next in disbelief.
“It was a freak accident. It had nothing to do with the fighting or- or anything like that.” She propped her elbows up on her knees, sore subject it seemed. Vi knew more than what she was letting on though, neither of us seemed willing to push at the moment however.
A moment of hesitation passed before Ellie cleared her throat and shook her head, “I think I’m gonna go back in, I’m freezing my dick off out here.” Ellie remarked as she pushed herself up to her feet and let her eyes scan over me briefly. “You gonna be okay?”
The thought of being alone with Vi only made it feel like my heart was being sent into overdrive all over again. I didn’t even know why the thought of being alone with someone I liked scared me so much. She was older, more experienced, hard and cold yet inviting at the same time. A curious kind of inviting. “Yeah, I-I’ll be okay.” I stuttered with a nod.
“Okay, call me… if you change your mind.” Her hands curled into fists briefly, like she herself was about to change her mind. Something else lingering, but whatever it was she didn’t act on it. Only turning her head to drag herself to the door.
“You know there’s definitely some sexual tension between you two, right?” Vi questioned as she pulled a half used pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her ripped black skinny jeans.
“Excuse me?” I questioned in shock with my jaw neatly dropping. “But Ellie’s- Ellie’s not-“
“Don’t try to tell me she’s not a lesbian.”
“Oh no, she’s definitely a lesbian.” I almost snickered, the thought of Ellie ever being with a man nearly sending me into fits. “But just so you’re aware, two lesbians can definitely have a super close friendship and not be in a romantic relationship.” I huffed in response as I crossed my arms and shook my head. “I mean honestly, I’m really starting to question your intentions.”
“Oh doll, you should always question my intentions.” I nearly shivered at her words. A tremor shooting through my legs that I hadn’t felt before leaving me clamping them shut as if to silence the irregular feeling.
“So… do you just have a thing for Kirammans or something?” I wondered, wringing my hands on my lap in some way to think of something else. Anything else.
Vi scoffed and rolled her eyes with a shake of her head, “Yeah I was waiting for that one to come up.”
“I mean it’s a valid question, is it not?”
“Caitlyn and I slept together a few times last year… that’s all we did, that’s all it was.” She placed a cigarette between her lips and lit up the end. “It was a hookup, a good hookup which is why we did it again but- it didn’t go any farther than that.“
Anxiously I fiddled with the ring on my finger, stimming in every way I could it seemed to distract from the clench in my chest as she described her relations with my sister. “So, why else would you be interested in me then?”
“I’ve seen you around occasionally. Whenever you go to games with Caitlyn or jack the university library where you either obsessively write on your computer or read some book that’s bigger than your entire forearm.”
“Do you watch me or something? Like a creep?” I couldn’t help but smirk slightly as I stole a glance over at her.
“You’re hard not to look at.” She answered, blue eyes meeting mine as she withdrew a long puff of smoke from her lips, the cigarette dangling in between her fingers haphazardly. That same churning feeling seeming to overtake my entire body now, my eyes briefly glancing down towards her lips for the most minuscule of seconds. Not minuscule enough for Vi not to notice though as I watched them curl up in a tiny smirk. “I saw that.”
“Saw what?” I murmured innocently, bringing a hand up to my lips to bite at my nails again. Vi only let out a chuckle of her own though before taking another drag of her cigarette.
“Nothing darlin’.” She added, the pet name causing my toes to curl in my Mary Janes. “Anyways, then from like, May through July you disappeared for a while. So I wondered if your parents might’ve actually let you take another year off or you managed to actually break the cycle of Oxford alumni.”
“Not quite.” My face fell at the mention of the summer’s events, catching my bottom lip between my teeth as I dropped my hand back towards my lap. “No, the uhhh… the summer was rough. But I met Ellie though so- I guess it worked out. I just, you know, wish it could’ve been under better circumstances. That’s why we aren’t a thing, if you’re wondering. It’s usually a bad idea to date the friend you meet whenever you’re in a psychiatric facility.”
Her expression seemed to come with a subtle understanding, softening momentarily as she flicked out the remainder of the cigarette. “S-Sorry, i-if I just trauma dumped on you o-or anything.”
“You didn’t. You aren’t.” Vi shook her head, rough fingers finally brushing on top of my fidgeting ones. I never knew it could feel so comforting having them stroking my knuckles in the way she did. “How are you now? Like… in the aftermath?”
I wanted to groan and fight and kick and scream at the frustrating sting that always crept into my eyes whenever someone would ask if I was okay. I should’ve been tired of hearing it by now. It shouldn’t have had an effect the way that it did but still somehow it had felt like forever that someone had actually asked me that. How are you afterwards? I know you went through hell. But how are you now?
“I think… all things considered, I could be worse. But- I think I could be better too.” I answered with a small shrug. A strange feeling of warmth seemed to envelop over me as she slid her fingers through mine. Each small touch inching closer and closer like she was giving me the chance to protest, to pull away, to do whatever I needed to do to feel comfortable. But I enjoyed her touches, her big hand overtaking mine and I wanted to feel it on my cheek, knotting through my hair, around my waist, against my thighs. Fuck, I didn’t understand why. “Vi.” I muttered her name like it was the only thing I knew how to say, lifting a shivering free hand but not knowing what to do with it, where to put it. What was I even supposed to do? “I-I’ve never done this before- f-felt this before. W-What do I do?”
“Shhh…” Vi whispered, softly brushing her finger underneath my chin so I had no choice but to look up at her. Transfixed in her blue eyes until I crumpled. “You don’t have to do anything.”
The last time I felt anything similar was with Ellie, over the summer, where I shouldn’t have felt for anything besides trying to get better. Even then it was completely different. Ellie was sunshine. Ellie was laughing and jokes and making all of the nurses’ lives hell as we snuck around the ward and fell asleep in each other’s beds.
Vi felt like the opposite. She was the moon. Hauntingly curious and dark. Like she was beckoning me forward with every subtle touch setting off sparks against my skin. She was a new experience, unfamiliar territory just begging to be explored.
“Tell me what you want.” I shivered as I felt her hand against my cheek and I didn’t know if it was the cold or just her. “If you want me to leave you alone, I’ll leave you alone. But if not-“
“Will you- W-Will you kiss me?” I stammered all over again, it was like I couldn’t get any of my words right as I kept shooting glance after glance at her lips. A noticeable scar running through her upper lip.
That same telling smirk crept back into her expression, my chest clenching as I watched her rise up to her feet as if she was about to tell me no. “You ever been kissed before?”
“Ummm… n-no, not really.”
“Not really?”
“No, n-no I haven’t.” I finally answered fully, peering down at my lap as if in shame. Waiting for the rejection. The declaration that I wasn’t at all what she wanted and the inevitable and probably unnecessary heartbreak that would follow afterwards.
“And you want me, some good for nothing chick you met at a bar to kiss you?”
“Why did you ask me what I want if you’re just going to challenge me about it!” I wondered as I finally launched myself off of the bench but I only lost all sense of authority once I realized our height difference again.
“I just want you to fully understand what you’re getting yourself into.”
“It’s just a kiss!”
“You seem like the kind of person who takes that thing kind of seriously.” Vi voiced with a casual shrug as if she already knew she was right. She didn’t have to ask for confirmation because she already saw right through me. It’s not like I haven’t had a ton of opportunities. I could’ve easily kissed Ellie now countless of times but I hadn’t because I knew what would happen afterwards. She’d look at it as ‘getting my first kiss out of the way’ and I’d probably just fall in love with her. How dangerous could it be to fall in love with somebody so quickly? I was a disaster, a ticking timebomb waiting to happen.
“You’re right, it’s stupid.” I spoke, finally pulling my eyes away from her to face the ground. My body was a tense wreck, my chest hurt, I was definitely going to get sick from being out in the cold for so long, and I didn’t see any good in staying out here for any longer.
I turned on my heel to head back inside as I tried to hide the disappointment and complete idiocy on my face. Before I knew it though I could already hear Vi clearing her throat from behind me, “Wait.” She ordered, and if that wasn’t enough to halt my steps I could feel her hand snaking around my wrist. My breath caught in my throat as I felt her whirling me around to face her with ease.
My body pressed to hers and suddenly I could feel every inch of every muscle beneath her clothes. Her hands overtook my waist, sliding around me until I couldn’t smell anything but the nicotine on her breath and the expensive cologne that wafted from her pulse points. Before I could even contemplate what was happening I could feel her lips on mine. A gasp froze in my throat as I registered what was happening, shivering gasps for air the moment she broke away, scanning my face as if to determine where I was. If I was okay. And before I knew it again I was clamoring for her lips once more.
My arm flew around her shoulder as if to hold myself up, not like her hands gripping my waist weren’t already doing a great job at that. I just wanted to touch her, seeking out her warmth. My hand slipping underneath her jacket as if to drag across the flimsy material of the wife pleaser she wore underneath. Her lips were so much softer than I could’ve ever predicted they would be, but electricity felt like it was coursing through my veins at the sensations of her pulling me in by the waist anytime our bodies naturally separated. It was warmth and disaster at the same time. A forest fire burning up all around me as our lips moved in sync. Her hands leaving a burning trail as they seemed to settle on my hips. God, how was I supposed to ever get enough whenever she felt like this?
My breathing came out in shaking gasps of air once our lips broke apart. The feeling without them was almost unnatural they felt so perfect and made for my own. I wanted more, I was desperate for more but too scared to speak the words as I stared up at her with widened eyes. “Vi…”
“Fuck, you say my name like it’s only meant for your lips alone.” She whispered, my hand curling against her chest as she traced the outline of my lips with her thumb. “Should probably get you inside before you freeze to death.”
My lips seemed to burn as she stepped away, every inch of the cold sweeping back into me as I nodded in response. Vi’s warm hand pressed to my back to lead me towards the back door and instinctively I couldn’t help but bring my hand up towards my lips that I could’ve sworn were still tingling.
She was going to ruin me, wasn’t she?
A/N: Elmelia girlies I have got some good shit cooking up for you next. Vimelia girlies also don’t stress though because I am nothing if not messy! 🖤
#ttpd vi x reader#fanfic#vi arcane#vi from arcane#arcane league of legends#arcane league of lesbians#arcane fanfiction#arcane#arcane fanfic#vi x you#vi fanfiction#vi and caitlyn#vi fanfic#vi x oc#vi x reader#caitlyn kiramman#caitlyn arcane#jinx arcane#jinx#ellie williams x oc#ellie willams x reader#ellie the last of us#ellie williams#the last of us#ellie tlou#ellie x reader
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The Glass Coffin: HOFAS x Elriel
Many HOFAS spoilers ahead!! This is an INTENSIVE post on all the Elriel coding in HOFAS, so strap in! This is largely a theory post and my personal interpretations, so take it or leave it! It's all in good fun.
Let's start with The Glass Coffin. When it comes to the analysis of the songs Bryce played for Azriel and Nesta in the much beloved and much dissected bonus chapter, I have seen a lot of conversation around Stone Mother and significantly less (if any?) around The Glass Coffin!
The Glass Coffin is played next after the Stone Mother. And it is a ballet.
What is the The Glass Coffin?
My friends, it is Sleeping Beauty.
Now we all know that many suspect Elriel to be a Sleeping Beauty retelling. And I'll be honest, I take a lot of the mythology or "retellings" with a grain of salt when it comes to SJM, because she doesn't do incredibly loyal retellings but takes bits and pieces of inspiration. I suppose it's up to you where you draw the line of a retelling, or free IP inspiration. But one thing to understand about IP is that Sarah J. Maas would have to get Disney's permission to call her work a retelling of Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Much like Beauty and The Beast, she did not "retell" the Disney princess movie, but the original La Belle et la Bête by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve published in 1740. So with that little lesson in intellectual property, lets look at the story of The Glass Coffin, because it is actually quite interesting:
A magician forces a proposal on a Maiden using his magic. The Maiden is repulsed by the use of magic in the proposal and rejects him. The Magician turns her brother into a stag, traps her in the glass coffin, and enchants the land around them.
There is a LOT to unpack here. I do not think Lucien is "The Magician" in this story. Instead, I think the Cauldron is, and I do think that the use of magic to force a proposal is a very close parallel to what Azriel discovered in HOFAS: That the Cauldron had been corrupted by the Asteri to serve their will. If you have read all of the books in the multiverse, you know that there is no other SJM universe where mating bond rejections happen. There is no other universe in which there are unhappily mated pairs forced together because the function of the mating bond, at a base level, is simply to produce the most powerful offspring. Mates in other worlds are true soulmates, and they fall in love before discovering they are mates.
In HOFAS, Azriel listened to a song from The Glass Coffin. He also listened to the story of Silene, and learned that the Cauldron was corrupted by the Asteri. It is not a theory or interpretation that the Asteri curate powerful bloodlines to ensure they have the strongest food from the souls that they eat. It is a fact. So it is not a jump to interpret that the Cauldron's corruption by the Asteri, and mates that are not a good fit on a soul level but forced together to produce powerful offspring, are one and the same. At this time, both Azriel and Elain have discussed feelings of repulsion or discomfort regarding E/ucien's bond. There are also negative consequences to a female rejecting the bond, as there were for the Maiden in The Glass Coffin. Rejecting a bond can lead to madness on the males end in Prythian because he believes he is entitled to her, just as the Maiden rejecting the Magician's proposal led to him trapping her in glass and enchanting the lands so no one else could have her.
This is already quite interesting, but it gets even more powerful as you continue to breakdown the Elain coding in HOFAS.
This line basically started a war:
"I can hear your heart beating through the stone." She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer, "Can you hear mine?" (ACOWAR, chpt. 24)
Now many people have used this to claim she is Lucien's mate, because she can hear his heartbeat. Though only a few pages earlier, we had this moment:
Elain can hear Feyre's heartbeat. She says if she listens carefully, she can hear hers too. At the time, we all assumed she was talking about Nesta. And yet we've discovered that Vesperus, an Asteri, (or Valg, depending on which theory you vibe with) was also a beating heart under the stone.
Inside a glass coffin.
More than that, we have this passage:
We now know that the Prison was once the Dusk Court, and just like UTM, The Hewn City, and Ramiel, it is encapsulated in stone beneath the mountain. Within the stone of the Prison lies the long buried heart of the Dusk Court. When you look back at Elain's line to Lucien, and see that she is staring out at the city, looking for answers at the heart she can hear beating beneath the stone, and not Lucien, this all starts to click together in a brilliant way. And the imagery, the island having a soul nurtured and blossoming under her care, has Elain written all over it.
Now, the reason I bring up the Hewn City here is because I believe there is a reason for Elain's lifelessness and distress in the Hewn City that has nothing to do with her wearing the color black.
In HOFAS, we discover a few important things about Earth Fae. Lidia discovers in her time on Team Archives what the Earth Fae did, and what their powers were used for:
Earth Fae were used on Midgard to discover ley lines of power to create powerful strongholds. One important thing I have noticed is that all Fae on Midgard are said to come from either Erilea or Prythian (at least that is all that is mentioned) and yet there is no indicator of where the Earth Fae come from. it is my personal belief the Earth Fae are from Prythian. Yet the entire Dusk Court disappeared, and their story continued on Midgard. It is my belief that Elain is not only a Seer, but that she has also been gifted with the Earth powers that have since been lost on Prythian, priming her to both restore Earth powers on Prythian as well as the Dusk Court.
What does this have to do with the Hewn City?
Earth Fae experience distress when they are in places where the magic is dead or warped, and they are the only ones that can feel it:
Bryce mentions she forgets the Earth Fae even have magic, because what they can do is often unseen.
If Elain is in possession of the lost Earth power, she would have been able to feel her power literally shriveling up and dying anywhere that has been warped by that magic.
And then of course we have the fact that the cave on Prythian is an exact match to the Cave of Princes on Avallen. We end HOFAS with all the weapons in the possession of the IC, the knowledge that there are cache's of magic hidden in the lands, and that there are places where the magic has been twisted and must be freed, one being the Prison/Dusk Court.
This was the imagery used once the magic was freed on Avallen, and it took its true, lush, blossoming form:
If what is true on Avallen will also be true once the Dusk Court is freed on Prythian, answer this question honestly: When you read this imagery- blooming vines and roses, beautiful and surreal, the land seeming to know her, small blooming flowers nestling around her body and in her hair- who do you think of? Who could this possibly be alluding to back in Prythian?
Elain's coding was all over HOFAS, and Azriel's "what if the Cauldron was wrong storyline" continued. These statements are true, even if none of my theories about her being an Earth Fae are right, though I know I'm not the only one who believes that is where we are headed!
The fact that The Glass Coffin is Sleeping Beauty, and that Azriel listened to it, may not be a powerful statement on its own (though I think it is). But the fact that the Cauldron corruption was revealed, and The Glass Coffin is a story of a woman who was entrapped due to her rejecting a proposal forced by magic, and Sarah used the Glass Coffin again with Vesperus, potentially tying her back to the heartbeat Elain can hear if she listens closely, it's all just too much to ignore.
I was personally overwhelmed by all of the Elain and Azriel nods in HOFAS. I think they get buried under all of the criticism in the book. I am so excited to see where everything goes, and I hope you had fun going down this rabbit hole with me!
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