#also not everything is on there yet but the nostalgia is keeping me invested | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kieraelieson · 3 years ago

Text

No Rest for the Deathworlders

Logan had always loved the stars.

Still did, though his love had been dampened by the way in which he was currently seeing them.

He watched out the window, or rather, screen, but it was made to show the outside of the ship, and thinking of it as a window was oddly comforting. A bit of something close to home.

A lump grew in his throat at the thought of home, pressing against the collar. He forced himself back to a neutral, tugging the collar away from the front of his throat as far as it would go. A brief flicker of anger replaced the nostalgia. Anger at the collar, at his own inability to remove it, at the monsters that had forced it onto him, at his own complacency now that it was on.

He didn’t have it as bad as some other humans did, he was well aware. All the collar did was teleport him to the location of the person holding the remote. Granted, it was unpleasant and incredibly disorienting, but nothing like the near-torture he’d heard was the more common method of keeping humans captive.

The captain of the ship was smart in choosing Logan, as far as the welfare of the ship went.

“You’re invested in your own survival,” He’d said through the translators. “If the ship goes down, you’ll go with it. If you sabotage the ship and try to escape on a pod, I can get you back to me immediately, and you’ll meet the same fate as you intended for us. It’s in your best interests to cooperate and to bond with the crew.”

Well, Logan could agree that it was in his best interests to cooperate. But no one could make him get attached to anyone. And no one could stop him from making little problems.

Like ignoring the insistent, “Human, where are you? Human!” that was coming from his communicator.

The window dissolved in front of him, and Logan felt abruptly as if he were on the world’s worst rollercoaster for several seconds. It took him a minute to register the angry captain now in front of him. He was yelling something, but not through the communicator, so Logan couldn’t understand what. And he was far too dizzy and almost nauseous to pay attention even if it was understandable.

He shook his head slowly from side to side and up and down once, hoping to clear the vertigo somewhat.

“You must come when called!” The communicator translated. “Or at least answer!”

Logan stubbornly remained silent, the dizziness gradually clearing.

For an alien that looked more like a slime monster than anything with a real face, the captain still managed to look extremely displeased. Not that Logan cared.

“There are ------ trailing our ship,” the captain said, one of his words not translating properly. “We need to go faster or we’ll get boarded.”

Ok, maybe Logan did care.

“Humans are supposed to be good at making ships go faster, fix it.”

Logan frowned. “I’ve been here three days,” he said into the communicator. “I hardly know how anything in the ship works, much less how to improve any of its functions!”

“I’ve studied humans, I know better than that, fix it.” The captain said shortly.

Logan opened his mouth to protest, but the room around him dissolved, the horrible spinning sensation back. His legs gave out and he dropped onto the floor in a different place.

He swallowed hard, his stomach threatening to upend itself.

“And they call you deathworlders,” someone scoffed. “A transporter has you on your knees.”

Beyond his sick feelings, and the anger at being mocked, he caught onto that plural reference. Was there another human on the ship?

In addition, there were apparently multiple remotes to the teleporter around his throat, which ruined his plan of trying to steal or fight the captain for the one.

He slowly sat up, his head still spinning. He hoped that his body would eventually grow accustomed to the teleportation and the dizziness would stop being so awful.

There was a chittering sound beside him that the translator didn’t attempt to process. He turned to see an alien that would likely be very tall if it wasn’t on all fours. It was very thin, with long arms and legs, which ended in smooth nubs, without hands or feet. The front two, which Logan thought of as arms, though the alien probably would have a different name for them, seemed to be perforated along the last six inches. As Logan watched, one of them was extended towards him slowly, and something softer could be seen on the inside. It was able to be extruded through the holes, and was likely the way in which the alien could grasp things.

He backed away from the limb before it could touch him, and the alien also backed away a step, making a low woody sounding whistle, like air blown over a jug. It’s head looked rather moth-like, with antenna that curled and straightened, and large eyes.

The alien seemed sentient, though Logan was confused that the translator wasn’t picking up on its speech.

Until he saw a very familiar collar, only around their waist. They were also captive then. And possibly, though it disappointed his hopes of meeting another human, they were the other deathworlder, also affected poorly by the teleportation.

The strange attempted touch then, could have potentially been intended as comfort or aid.

“You’ve been sitting long enough, get this ship to move faster,” the other alien in the room grumbled.

Logan glared. “How am I even supposed to do that?” He snapped. “I don’t have training or experience, I don’t know what half this stuff is and I can’t read your labels!”

“You can either fix it now, or we can teleport you between here and the captain until you do.” The alien's tone was disgusting and wet, and Logan was glad he could focus on the robot sound of the translator as his stomach lurched again.

He could try.

If nothing else, he might learn some new things and be able to convince them that he really wasn’t able to just do things he’d never tried before.

The room was smaller than he would’ve expected, presuming he was in a kind of engine room. Around the edges of the room were a number of bins, holding substances ranging from powders to liquids.

In the center of the room was a glass tube that went from floor to ceiling, and seemed to be filled with a glowing crystal stalagmite. From the top of the tube dripped some kind of liquid, and at the bottom it flowed out in small pipes, glowing the same as the crystal and possibly converted into fuel.

He could assume that with all of the powders and liquids that there was a chemical reaction causing the substance to obtain the glowing quality and become fuel. But what that was, and how to know what was safe to change about it, he had no idea.

“Well?” The alien, whom he now assumed to be what served as the ship’s engineer, asked.

He was making so many assumptions, and still was barely anywhere. They could all be wrong.

“Explain to me how it works,” Logan said. “Then I’ll try to ‘fix’ it.”

The alien made an unpleasant sound that the translator interpreted as a sigh. “This is a ——-, the liquid is a mixture of ——, ——, ——-, and ——, but it could be made with any of the ——— family instead of the ———, or you could replace the ———- with ——— for better efficiency at different energy levels. We also have several forms of ———-, which ought to make more potent fuel for higher speeds, but every time we’ve tried the ———- smokes and explodes and there’s residue in the tubing for several rotations which puts us at a standstill.”

Logan grimaced. He had a very small idea of what was being said based on gestures, but he’d much prefer to have names and details. It seemed this was a very large and dangerous version of chemistry experiments, with no textbook, and his only advice coming from someone who hadn’t studied.

Well, there was the other ‘deathworlder’ in the room. He could only hope they knew something about any of this. Though the difficulty in communication might make that knowledge impossible to access.

He turned towards them anyway. “Can you understand me at all?”

They made another low whistling sound, followed by chittering. One arm waved, with… could he call them fingers? gesturing towards Logan.

He hoped desperately that he could consider that to be a yes.

“What would you do in—“

The engineer’s communicator interrupted him. “We thought we’d have a few more rotations but they’re closing in, has the human done anything yet?”

“No,” the engineer said. “It’s just staring at everything.”

“Well get it to hurry!”

The other ‘deathworlder’ made a long series of noises, pointing at one bin in particular and then at a place where it seemed the not-yet-fuel liquid was.

It was a foolish thing. A very foolish thing. But Logan took a scoop from the bin and dumped the powder into the liquid.

It bubbled and fizzed on contact, sending up thick clouds of a dark blue smoke.

An alarm blared.

The ship lurched, knocking them all to the ground.

And then the new ingredient actually hit the crystal, and there was a loud, high pitched ringing.

Logan covered his ears and shut his eyes, feeling like a weight was pressing him to the floor.

Everything was spinning, and loud, and then it was loud in a very different, but no less painful way.

“Protect me!” The captain shrieked.

There was a pained, screeching scream.

Logan was shoved, but he was barely aware of which direction, let alone what he was supposed to do about any of it.

Something grabbed onto his shoulders, and he flailed, hitting and kicking indiscriminately. Something burned on his side, and he kicked into something much more solid, sending a throbbing pain up his leg.

Everything was noise and pain and lights and movement and he didn’t understand any of it!

Logan struck out blindly at anything that came near him.

He thought he’d backed into a wall, but something must’ve been behind him, and it hit him hard over the head. He dropped to the floor, tears swimming in his eyes and blurring everything even further.

Everything dissolved around him and he was falling, spinning, dropping, tossed.

He was grateful more than anything when unconsciousness took him.

•^*^••

He woke slowly, feeling hazy and heavy. It was quiet, and not too bright, nothing was touching him. So he didn’t bother to open his eyes, just laying still.

He wasn’t dead at least.

Probably the pirates had attacked. Definitely he’d ruined the ship he’d been on.

The question was, was being with pirates any better than living on a ruined ship with aliens that considered him to be some kind of hyper-intelligent slave?

Or perhaps the question was, where was he now?

He forced his eyes open.

He was in a relatively large, empty room. The floor and walls seemed bare, though patched, not all of a single material.

He pushed himself up. There was a loud skittering noise away from him, and he yelped, flinging himself away clumsily.

He turned, and saw the other deathworlder, front legs shaking and making a rattling noise. He wasn’t sure if it was a fear response, a method of communication, or even some kind of threat display.

“It’s alright,” he said quietly, backing up a little farther.

The other alien didn’t try to come close again, so he figured it was mostly likely not interested in threatening him. There wasn’t an echo of his words in an alien language though, and he patted his shoulder to discover that the translator had been taken. His hand went to his throat, disappointed to find that they’d left the collar.

It was still there on the other alien also. They were both still prisoners then, wherever they were.

Looking around, it seemed that they were in an empty cargo space, rather than a proper holding cell, so there was a slightly greater possibility of escape.

There was that low whistling sound again. Logan was certain it was meant as a form of communication.

He tried whistling back, as low as he was capable of.

The alien chittered and shook its legs again, but Logan couldn’t tell even if it was a positive or negative reaction.

“I… don’t know how to talk with you,” he said, keeping his tone low and calm. He sat in a comfortable, loose position, hoping to get across the calm in his tone and posture. “But I’d like to try. I’m not sure what anything you’re doing means, and it’s possible you’re in the same situation. I’m hoping that you have more knowledge of humans than I do of your kind, and that you’ll be able to make better inferences than I’m currently capable of.”

The alien cocked its head to the side, watching him as he spoke. It took a tentative step forward on its spindly legs, and then propped itself on three, holding the fourth out to him.

Logan eyed the appendage. The softer inside substance was filling the holes, making it appear to have small bumps, rather than holes. He held out a hand to it, but didn’t try to touch.

The alien bumped the end of its leg into Logan’s palm.

That seemed… good? Perhaps this was a greeting similar to a handshake?

Logan very gently grasped the end of the appendage, the softer inside substance feeling cool to the touch, and almost like a stiff putty, whereas the harder outer shell felt very smooth and rigid, similar to metal, but light.

The alien retracted their arm, and then looked between their arm and his hand. The inner substance reformed, pressing out from several holes into a clear attempt at fingers. It seemed to be fully controlled by the alien, and moveable, albeit much more slowly than Logan could move his own fingers.

“That’s very impressive,” Logan said.

The alien chittered back at him.

Perhaps they could get somewhere through a kind of charades.

•^*^••

“I think that’s all we can carry,” Roman said, looking over the wreckage.

“We can hold more, we aren’t full yet,” Remus protested, still sad that some of the ship’s inhabitants had taken the escape pods. Aside from the power crystal, which was far too unstable to take, they were the best value on the little ship.

“The whole 3rd cargo bay is empty for the two deathworlders, we’re full.” Roman insisted.

“Oh. Forgot about them. Well, if we can hold ‘em, they might be enough to make it worth it.”

“If we can refill,” Roman grumbled. “I was expecting usable power from this ship.”

It had really been a not-very-great raid. They’d lost Aide, and Bill, and Rahgezis, and hadn’t even gotten much of anything good out of it.

And the deathworlders were far too grumpy to join the crew. If they’d had enough room they would’ve separated them, but he just took away the translators and hoped they weren’t already pack-bonded, and wouldn’t become so. Two single deathworlders were bad enough, two together? Their ship would be a wreck from the inside out.

They needed to give them a rotation or two to calm down, try and have a talk, and then drop them off at the nearest Embassy and get away before bad things happened.

Maybe the Embassy would even pay them for handing over deathworlders. Or maybe they’d arrest them for being pirates.

But without Rahgezis, Remus didn’t want to attempt anything on the black market with such a high demand as deathworlders.

And the teleportation bands should make it a little easier on them. They were super old, and no one in their right mind would use them, except as a practical joke, or a way of keeping enemies too off balance to attack. The ones on the two of them had been fused closed, rather than the usual buckle, so he felt more safe trying to hold the deathworlders than he would otherwise.

They’d only found one remote, but Inshes was already working on making a second.

“I’m going to see if the Scraascik is on any registries,” Roman said. “And I’ll check for the Human, but that’s less likely.”

Remus nodded. “I’ll handle getting us moving again. If they’re awake, maybe you could see about dropping some food into the cargo bay.”

“Yeah, I’ll try.” Roman sighed.

Remus set a claw on Roman’s back. Roman grumbled, leaning into Remus’s side, and then went off to do his research.

It’d been a hard day for both of them.

•^*^••

They’d managed to exchange names… sort of. The alien’s name was two notes, whistled lower than Logan was capable of, and likewise there was no way of the alien being able to pronounce the word Logan.

But the alien made a deep, almost resonant sound, that was as close as it seemed they could get to anything involving vocal cords. And that was their version of Logan.

Logan considered the two note sound, and came up with a slightly similar-sounding name. Virgil.

Neither of their names for each other were really very similar to their actual names, but they were able to understand each other, and that was what mattered.

As it turned out, Virgil was stronger than he was at pushing things, or hitting, but they couldn’t pull with any strength.

Logan was focusing his attention on the door, and had been so far unsuccessful in prying it open. It was solidly locked, and the lock seemed to only be on the other side of the door. Which likely meant that this room was detachable from the rest of the ship, in case of emergency or danger.

“Virgil.” Logan said, and Virgil turned to look at him from the patch on the wall they’d been inspecting.

Logan hit the door with his palm, his arm straight, in an imitation of the way he’d seen Virgil hit some of the patches, trying to break them. “Hit here.” He pointed at Virgil, and then at a spot where he suspected the lock was.

Virgil made a chittering sound and shambled over.

Logan again mimicked the strike, and then pointed at Virgil.

Virgil got into position. They were able to balance on three legs and rock their whole body weight forward to strike that small point their arm hit with all their strength and weight together.

They tried three times, but the door held firm.

Logan was impressed that they did not seem hurt by the attempt. Their exoskeleton must be very strong indeed. Which was possibly a part of why they were considered a deathworlder.

Logan wondered what their home planet was like.

The door suddenly opened, an alien clearly holding up one of the remotes to the teleporters.

Virgil backed away, turning and running to the other end of the room.

The alien spoke into a small microphone, which translated. “I brought food. Don’t come near me.”

The alien’s body looked almost bear-like, but with longer legs, clearly bipedal. They were only about half the size of a bear though. The fur also was shorter and sparser, and a very reddish kind of brown. The hands looked more useful than a bear’s paws as well. The head though was very unlike a bear’s. Logan didn’t know what to compare it to.

The alien was wearing clothes, which Logan had learned was entirely optional to most aliens, in bright reds and goldish yellows.

Perhaps this meant that this particular alien was more… Logan hesitated to say civilized. He scarcely knew anything about aliens, and could hardly make such judgements about them. Still, he believed he had a bit more chance reasoning with this one.

“Let us out of here,” he said, grateful that the translator picked it up and interpreted it.

“No.”

“We will leave you alone, we will not harm the ship. Let us go,” Logan said calmly but firmly.

The alien again said no, pushing in a tray of what could be food into the room with their foot, already starting to close the door.

“Wait!” Logan said, stepping forward.

The alien jumped, and pushed the button on the remote.

It didn’t seem to affect Logan, but instead Virgil was teleported close to the door. Virgil stumbled, falling against the wall and letting out what could only be described as a scream.

The alien who had delivered food looked even more scared now, and quickly shut the door. Logan pushed through his shock and alarm to try to open the door before it could be locked, but he was too late.

Virgil slumped to the ground, scream fading to a whistling wheeze.

As bad as the teleportation felt to him, Logan was scared that Virgil was being injured by it. Perhaps on the inside, where they were softer. Or perhaps it put too much strain on their rigid exoskeleton.

Was there anything he could do? He didn’t have any idea about what Virgil could need for medical care, and he didn’t want an attempt at comfort to be construed as an attack, especially while Virgil was vulnerable.

He knelt close to Virgil, a bit farther than an arm's length.

“Virgil?”

Virgil’s eyes opened, and from this close Logan could see the differentiation between pupil and iris. Virgil’s eyes were moving back and forth, like Logan had seen before in children who’d been spun in circles. He was likely still extremely disoriented then.

Virgil lifted one arm and waved it around slowly. It knocked into Logan’s shoulder lightly, and Virgil kept tapping it against his shoulders and head. Logan allowed it without complaint, guessing that it was grounding to Virgil, being able to verify that Logan was in one place and not moving, not spinning.

Virgil gradually steadied, taking their arm back.

Logan wished he had a way to ask ‘are you ok?’, but he didn’t. The best he had was, “Virgil?”

The whistle-clack he got in return seemed more positive than negative, though he had no way of accurately judging alien tones.

“Logan.”

Logan nodded, as it seemed the correct response.

Virgil pointed towards the nearly-forgotten tray, and Logan went to get it. Virgil struggled to their feet, looking something like a very large baby deer first trying to stand. If Logan had to guess, Virgil’s kind didn’t frequently sit or lie down.

The tray had a number of small round roll-like things that Logan was now accustomed to seeing. They were similar to banana bread in texture, but the taste was salty and rather bitter. When he’d asked, he’d been told that they were the standard in rations as they kept for a long time, and held an array of nutrients that was sufficient for the basic needs of a majority of species.

He suspected that he would require some greens or fruit if he continued eating these primarily, but he hadn’t seen any anywhere, only these.

Virgil stood over him and leaned down as much as they seemed easily capable of, which still left their head several feet above the ground. Logan was just wondering if they would need assistance to eat when a very long tongue, or perhaps proboscis, unrolled from their mouth and curled around one of the rolls, pulling it up into their mouth.

“What do you eat natively?” Logan wondered aloud. “And do you need water?”

There was a pitcher of water and two small cups. Logan poured one cup full and held it out to Virgil.

Virgil seemed to still be chewing, however, and incapable of drinking while doing so. Or perhaps they didn’t require water. Though, now that Logan was watching, he didn’t believe they were chewing at all. Certainly there was no jaw movement. They could be massaging the food with their tongue, and have particularly effective saliva perhaps.

Logan started eating a roll, setting Virgil’s cup down and filling the other for himself.

A minute later Virgil’s tongue unrolled again and drained the cup, seemingly effective as a massive straw.

“You really are fascinating,” Logan said softly. “Were we not in such a situation I would love to learn more about you.”

Virgil responded with a series of clicks and whistles.

“As it is though, we probably ought to attempt an escape. They haven’t tried to get anything from us, which makes me think they intend on trafficking us further. Most likely they don’t have the power to force us into work like the last ship did, so I think, despite the danger, that this will be our best chance. Of course, the danger is greater for you, the teleportation seems to hurt you much more than it does me.” Logan thought for a while. “I think our best bet would be to try forcing our way out the door the next time it opens. Perhaps one of us could knock the remote away. It is enlightening to know that the remote only works on one of us at a time.”

Logan sighed. “Of course we don’t know when or if they’ll enter again. It’s possible we’ll be held here until we reach wherever we’re going.”

Virgil made a low, soft whistle.

Logan laid on his back. “I can’t even properly ask you for your partnership. It’s infuriating to not be able to succeed at anything I attempt. There’s such a wealth of knowledge that is necessary, and I have no idea of any of it. Nor a way of learning, save through painful experience. I can’t become complacent, I have to effect change, but I never know when my efforts will be simply overturned.”

Virgil nudged his arm with their own.

Logan turned to look at them. Virgil chittered at him, bobbing up and down on their legs.

“What is it?”

“Logan.” Virgil said, still bobbing up and down.

Logan sat up. “I don’t understand.”

Virgil tapped his legs with their arm. “Logan.”

Logan stood up. “Is this what you want? Oh. If you don’t lay down to sleep, you must’ve been concerned when I did. I’ll have to sleep sometime though, and surely you’ve been exposed to aliens that lay down to sleep.”

But rather than relaxing, as Logan would assume Virgil would do if they were concerned, Virgil stepped closer, almost over Logan. Their antenna tilted towards him.

“Oh I see, this would be how you would confirm that I’m healthy, by feeling with your antenna, yes?” Logan remained still, unsurprised when there was a soft touch on his head.

But he was not at all expecting the sudden mental image of himself tackling the alien who’d delivered the food. It was so vivid it was as if he was already doing it, seeing the door open, tackling the alien, smashing the remote, and running forward to climb onto Virgil’s back as Virgil ran them both through the hallway.

Logan jerked back, falling on his butt. “What was that?! You have telepathy??”

Virgil made a movement that could be best described as a shrug.

Logan stood up again, reaching his hand out, battling his speed from excitement in an attempt not to scare Virgil. “Can we do it again?”

Virgil brushed his hand with their antenna, and the same scene flashed before his mind’s eye.

“Yes, yes I’ll do that! Can you understand my answer?”

Virgil made a whistle that Logan was almost certain was affirmative.

Logan paced back and forth excitedly, thinking out loud. “So you can communicate with me even if I can’t communicate with you well. And you very much want my partnership in escaping. We have a plan now. And a form of communication. Virgil, this is amazing!”

Virgil made an almost trilling noise.

•^*^••

“No, it hurt the Scraascik,” Roman said, already changing the ship’s course. “We can’t hold them safely, we have to get to the Embassy.”

“We didn’t even ask them to join us yet!” Remus protested.

“Would you join a strange crew after they hurt you?” Roman retorted, sending a message to the engine room to increase speed.

“Well what about the other one?”

“Remus. It won’t work.” Roman glared at him. “I don’t want to take chances with deathworlders.”

Remus sighed. “Fine. But let me try talking to them before we get there.”

Roman’s face went hard. “You have until we arrive,” he finally conceded.

Remus hurried down to the cargo bay.

He burst the door open, and it slammed shut behind him. Both deathworlders jolted, staring at him.

He then realized that he’d entirely forgotten the remote and the duplicate, and also that he was locked in a room with two deathworlders.

Well, there was a reason people joked he was addicted to adrenaline.

“Hello!” He said, waving. “I’m wondering if you’ll join my crew.”

The human moved first, standing up to a height decently taller than Remus was. And the Scraascik was even larger.

Perhaps he really was in serious danger.

“We just want to leave,” the human said, sounding rather threatening.

Probably telling them about the plan to hand them over to the Embassy then wasn’t a good idea until he was sure that he wasn’t in attack distance anymore. “You can, leave with us. Join our crew and you can adventure with us, raid ships, explore planets!”

“We want to leave alone,” the human said firmly.

“We? So… you bonded then? I guess that rumor is true, deathworlders all really do bond super fast.”

The human bared its teeth at him. “I will not be bonding to your crew based on your desires. I will not remain here, I want to leave. We want to leave.”

The Scraascik agreed in some of the most heavily accented Common Remus had ever heard. No wonder the translators hadn’t picked up any of his yelling when they’d boarded the ship. He’d probably need a translator to touch his antenna, but good luck getting a Scraascik to let anything touch their antenna.

“So you won’t even consider it?” Remus asked, not yet daunted.

“You’ve essentially kidnapped us, and both can and have hurt us! Why would I consider it?”

Yikes, the human sounded angry.

“Well we didn’t mean to hurt you, really, it’s not meant to be that bad. And we only kidnapped you from other kidnappers, and also I can’t hurt you cause I forgot the remote.”

The two deathworlders looked at each other, and Remus knew he really had gone and shoved his whole fist in his mouth. The human shifted position to a much more threatening crouch, as if it was going to pounce on him.

Remus held his arms out, claws at the ready. He might not have a hope of winning against deathworlders, but he could certainly make himself a pain of a target.

“I know I’m a pirate, but this was supposed to be just a talk,” Remus said, wondering if he’d be able to hit the communicator in time and if rescue was possible. Violent deathworlders in an enclosed space was not something he wanted his crew walking into, even for a rescue.

“It’s not much of a talk when we don’t have a say,” the human said, looking more and more threatening every second.

Iaoth , he wanted this human on his crew.

“Of course you have a say!” Remus said. “Name it, what position do you want, what pay, days off, I’ll give you whatever room in the ship you want as your quarters.”

“I fundamentally disagree with joining people that would knowingly traffic other people,” the human growled.

And then it leapt forward.

Remus yelped, swiping at the human and hitting the communicator with his other hand. “Roman!”

He was tackled to the ground, and the Scraascik pinned one arm while the human sat on his middle and held his other arm down.

“Remus?!” Roman’s voice came through the communicator.

“Let us go,” the human growled. “Once we’re out we’ll let them go.”

There was a tremor to the floor that Remus recognized. Roman must have been overloading the engine, they’d arrived and were docking.

“Is Remus ok?” Roman asked, sounding terrified.

“I’m fine, just a little stuck,” Remus said, trying to not sound scared so Roman wouldn’t get even more worried. “Laying under a deathworlder~ not quite as fun as I always imagined.”

Roman made a sound somewhere between a sob and laugh. “I’m coming to let you out. Don’t hurt him. Please.”

Remus was honestly a bit surprised that he was only pinned. The human was leaking blood from its shoulder and across its chest where Remus’s swipe had connected, but it hadn’t retaliated.

“Hurry,” the human said coldly.

The communicator turned off, and Remus had a strong suspicion Roman was calling the Embassy to have guards outside the ship when the cargo hold was opened.

“You sure you don’t want to join us?” Remus asked. “I know it won’t look like it from your end, but we don’t traffic, we take from ships we attack, but we’d either let them join us or take them to the authorities, we don’t just continue the traffic. And we could use people like you, you could help us take down so many more ships.”

The Scraascik leaned harder on his arm, and Remus grimaced.

“What would the authorities do?” The human asked.

“Uhhhh… well with the Scraascik, probably drop him back on his own planet, or with a Scraascik colony. Your planet though is still restricted, so they’d probably keep you until it’s opened.”

The human’s face contorted into something that did not look good for Remus.

“We’re on our way there, aren’t we?”

Remus wasn’t sure he dared lie, not when he was pinned to the ground with two very angry-seeming deathworlders over him. “Yeah.”

The human hit the communicator. “Listen.”

“I’m listening,” Roman said warily.

“Don’t open the cargo hold,” the human ordered. “You’re a pirate ship. You have smaller ships for scavenging, yes?”

“…yes.”

“Give us one.”

There was a long pause from Roman.

“Put food and fuel and translators in it,” the human said firmly. “We’re taking this one with us until we’re safely inside.”

This was probably wrecking Roman’s plans. There would be authorities involved and now no deathworlders to give them.

“Alright,” Roman said.

•^*^••

The door to the cargo hold was opened. Logan had the bear-alien in a tight hold, and Virgil was above them, looking like they were ready to strike out at anything that got within range.

They managed to walk along the halls until they reached the smaller ship. Logan had no idea how he was going to fly it, but it was the biggest chance by far that he’d had yet.

He shoved the bear alien away and slammed the door shut.

Virgil went immediately to the pilot’s seat, and Logan was amazed to see that there were places in the ceiling that fit their antenna. Soon there was a fast and loud humming, and the tiny ship lurched into motion.

•^*^••

Patton was being sent, since they didn’t really believe that there could be a Human and a Scraascik on the cobbled-together ship that had docked. So it was just him and Janus.

Janus wrapped his long tail around the back of Patton’s neck for balance as Patton walked back and forth, waiting for the ship to open its cargo bay.

It sure was taking a long time. They’d seemed so rushed when they called, but now they just wouldn’t open.

And then there was an engine powering up.

A teeny little scavenging ship took off from the bigger one, flying off. Patton scanned it, alarmed to see that there was indeed a Scraascik and a Human signature on board.

“Hey! Hey wait!”

He pulled out his radio, quickly setting it to the bigger ship’s frequency. “Let me in and go after them! We can’t let a Human go flying around unattended!”

“If they don’t let us in fast, go take the SC Meteor,” Janus said.

Patton wasn’t too surprised when the ship started undocking without answering him.

“We’ll get them!” He yelled, running for the Meteor.

#Forgot I meant to post this on tumblr and never did 😅#my own work #sanders sides #logan sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #patton sanders #humans are space orcs

354 notes · View notes

peony-pearl · 2 years ago

Text

I really wish I could go back and experience Avatar with fresh eyes. But I’m also glad I was exposed to it when it first aired.

I vaguely remember some advertising for it’s premiere and, at the time, I know I was in deep with my Kingdom Hearts hyperfixation. The first Avatar episode I saw was the day after prom in my Junior year when a girl in the friend group I was in turned on a rerun in April or May 2005. For some reason my mind is convinced the episode was Cave of Two Lovers, but it hadn’t aired yet. I’m not surprised I can’t remember the episode because at the time I was eyeballs deep in heavy OCD symptoms and kind of in the early stages of a huge mental breakdown haha. I’d had visible OCD symptoms for years but had no idea I had it; then barely a month later I was hospitalized and diagnosed because of my intrusive thoughts and ruminations. It kinda sucked lmao.

Over the next couple of years I was exposed to Avatar mostly because of my Uncle. He adored the series. He was an avid cartoon fan who loved art and comics and drawing and had the bones of one of his own comics but became ill and passed away before he could finish it. I appreciated Avatar for what it was, but didn’t really have the heart to get invested. There was a point that I did make an oc and drew some art and wrote a bit but it lasted like maybe 2 weeks tops. 2005-late 2007 was a minefield period of time that was mixed with me trying to reconfigure my whole personality (right around the time I turned 18 so THAT was good timing) and trying to enjoy the things I loved before my breakdown. I was desperate to be who I was before everything happened.

However, I did keep up with the series after moving to another state and the third season began airing. I remember watching Day of Black Sun and then the finale. I just kept up with it out of interest. Then years went by and I finally started moving forward. I found new interests that helped me become creative again, all while making the painful realization that my mental health was a permanent thing after believing I had ‘conquered’ my OCD. I also unknowingly had ADHD, which I was finally diagnosed with this year, which exacerbates my OCD and intrusive thoughts and ruminating.

Years went by, I went through college, I’ve had so many different jobs, I paid off my student loans late 2020 and then in 2021 my mental health got so bad again I finally sought out therapy for the first time in ten years. I started taking medicine for depression and mood swings. Almost all I was doing was working. I lived with my parents, which wasn’t a bad thing; but the strict schedule and my night shift meant I had little chances of doing much, and I gained weight from stress eating for dopamine.

Then almost a year ago I moved out for the first time; hence my DBZ hyperfixation. I wanted some nostalgia, and I’d had a 2 year period where that series was my bread and butter in 2002-2004. However, I moved again earlier this year, and at first it was all about adjustment; but I was beginning to realize I just didn’t do anything. I still have that issue. But in trying to wonder what it was exactly that I wanted or didn’t want, I started to realize if I’m going to live, I may as well start seeking out things to do.

I was tired of just existing, so I finally set up violin lessons, and I’ve been attending them weekly (save missing one here or there) since April. I’ve learned what I have the power to do, even if I often lack the motivation and drive. I’m becoming more and more content, even if there are the off-times when things are iffy.

I was absolutely not expecting my re-introduction to Avatar to be a gifset of Iroh threatening Zhao in the Spirit Oasis; a scene I was unfamiliar with. I think I had watched the series on Netflix some years ago, but again, I’ve lacked the commitment to it. The punch of that scene with a character I had associated with benevolence after being lukewarm towards the series intrigued me, and I fell down the rabbit hole lol

And I’ve realized that, after getting older, the show is actually a lot more meaningful; and after stumbling upon a gifset of Iroh’s quote ‘Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not’; that hit me. That was exactly what I’d started trying to live by over the past couple of months. Zuko’s strive to figure out who he wants to be hits home too, as I often struggle, even at 34, with what I want or who I want to be. (granted, I need to find a new therapist but that’s another story lmao)

After seeing all this merch pop up and be like ‘oh yeah Avatar that’s a good show’ and being disconnected, I now adore it. I know the bones of it but I’m still learning all of the smaller details and worldbuilding and lore. I’m a newbie but at the same time I know what it is and watched the premieres of The Awakening, The Day of Black Sun, and Sozin’s Comet.

I’ve always appreciated the series for it’s creativity and how it avoided talking down to it’s audience (yeah it had kid moments but it was a Nickelodeon show). And even as an adult so many messages ring true. I definitely put it on the same page as Gargoyles (because 1. I’m biased and 2. both are intricately woven stories that treat it’s audience as adults; I wish Gargoyles had gotten the same closure Avatar did, but for what it is it’s still an amazing show and I’ll always adore it and I’m so glad a show like Avatar did get it’s story completed for the most part)

And yet it’s Iroh’s line ‘whatever you do to that spirit, I’ll unleash on you tenfold’ is the one that kind of brings tears to my eyes; because it rings of conviction and fortitude to do the right thing, and is what brought me back to a little piece of fandom that, even if I already know all of the twists and turns and spoilers, was there for me to pick back up on when I needed it and to help me continue to move forward.

#atla #this is sentimental and cheesy but #at times I wish I could go back to truly feel all of those huge moments in the show #and yet #sometimes I know that if I wasn't already familiar with it it would take me FOREVER to watch it #because I'm horrible at getting into new things #so I am grateful for my familiarity with it #back when it premiered #I watched Crossroads of Destiny without seeing the whole series leading up to that moment so yeah #I missed out on that crucial emotional moment #but ah well #it's still very well written and doesn't miss the mark

5 notes · View notes

water-your-plance · 2 years ago

Text

MLB vent lol

I know this may come off as me hating the show, but I do love it, and love watching it, I just wanted to get some of the aggravating things off my chest and get opinions from fellow watchers. You all seem very sweet by the way, I’m glad that MLB has such a nice community!

I literally started watching Miraculous when I was 10. I’m almost 17 and it’s still going? I know I’ll watch every season they put out because of the nostalgia and the investment I have in the series, and I’ll still enjoy it, but like there hasn’t been a canon reveal yet in 7 years??

the show portrays Marinette as a bad person one moment, but then the next she’s a hero? She’s gone through so much, and has to deal with everything, but all her development is erased or sidetracked for the sake of plot points!? Like Marinette said she couldn’t be a hero without chat, but in Kuro neko tried to replace him until she realized she missed chat and the show didn’t really address the severity of the whole situation.

I feel like Marinette gets over hated a lot because of the weird or out of character actions Marinette/Ladybug does, but the show (except for that one episode, S4 E3) fails to show how much responsibility and stress is carried by this 15–16 year-old girl. I mean for like the first 4-ish seasons Marinette could be borderline stalkerish which was used as a joke, but that still left a bad impression of her character for some people even though she’s developed since then. I love Adrien, but the show kinda treats him like a Mary sue while in the same vein making Marinette seem like a bad person/erasing her development for a “funny” scene or drama (like Marinette confessing to Adrien’s statue, honestly wtf was that??).

Only now in SEASON 5 (like 106 episodes into the show) of MLB does Adrien even consider he likes Marinette as more than a friend, and this didn’t really happen alongside Adrien’s development like I had hoped it would. His realization/reveal of his feelings kinda came out of nowhere, like he was always friendly towards Marinette and the show always put them in romantic situations, but Adrien never really thought of anything between them as romantic. But then out of nowhere Adrien decides that he’s going to try to kiss Marinette (I know it’s a greeting but the show never brings it up unless they’re using it for romance or tension). I know it’s nitpicky, but the show could have portrayed it as Adrien pondering their interactions and thinking about their relationship, and gradually seeing her in a different light throughout some of the seasons, but instead it just popped up and was shown as a sudden realization/surge of feelings.

Also, another thing is that animation keeps getting less unique, and is sometimes just low effort. I know that animating is hard, but MLB keeps dropping the better animators/studios in favor of cheaper ones. Season one has some of the best movement/expression animation in all of MLB, Season 2 lost some of the good expressions/smooth movement but has better backgrounds and lighting. From then onward the later season haven’t really improved on the animation style, and have frequent errors in character designs and animation.

I still love the show, but I feel like they’re sacrificing characters and plots for the sake of being dramatic and theatrical.

#miraculous marinette #mlb #miraculous ladybug #miraculous adrien #chat noir #rant #sorry for the rant #im not mentally stable #mentally ill

4 notes · View notes

glitterge1pen · 3 years ago

Text

Strawberry Juice Kissing And GirlsGoGames Nostalgia

Keigo Takami x reader, sfw, fluff, word count 1,373

tw; a lil bit of alcohol , this one is also more feminine than my other writing but I still use neutral pronouns

It’s early. Your friends were going to come over for brunch later. You had invited Keigo but he would already be working, when he said he could come over earlier you agreed. You woke up early, a gentle buzz of excitement in all of your movements, making you feel less groggy.

You get ready as best you can. When the knock at the door arrives you’re still half in your pajamas but answer the door anyway. Keigo doesn’t have any semblance of morning on him. He looks as he always does, put together and composed. Even as he tosses his jacket over the side of your couch and gives you a tray of pastries the motions of him seem thoughtful.

“Did you make these?”

You ask as you place them on the kitchen table. Keigo follows you into the kitchen, opening up the windows in the room before hoisting himself up on the counter.

“Hell no, got them from a shop on the way here”

You’re in the cabinets next to him reaching for two glasses.

“Orange juice?”

You ask, already in the fridge bringing the juice and champagne out. You grab the fruit salad you had tossed together the night before, your main contribution to the brunch besides hosting and drinks. You place the bowl of fruit on the table before going back to the counter to make the drinks.

“Yes!”

Keigo says as he watches you pour the liquid into the glass. You make yourself a mimosa but skip the alcohol in Keigo’s drink. He actively frowns at this.

“Hm, no champagne for me?”

“Don't you have to work later?”

“Yeah, but one drink? I’ll be fine”

Keigo grabs two pastries and you the drinks. Once at the table Keigo crosses one leg under himself, and puts his other knee up to his face where he nibbles at his pastry. This is when he notices your laptop on the table, you had been working the night before and left it out on the table. He swipes his fingers on his pants to rid his hands of the gathered crumbs, then grabs at your laptop.

You watch curiously not sure what he’s doing. You groan a bit as he opens up his email. You drag the laptop away from him, mouth half full as you tell him to stop it.

“You’re not on the clock yet, relax”

“I’m always on the clock”

“Yeah, sure”

You say with a smile and a sugar coated mouth that you've collected from the pastry.

“What do you suggest then?”

“If you want to relax?”

You’re puzzled and in thought for a moment before you get an idea. Your fingers gliding over the keyboard. When the screen loads Keigo looks, surprised, startled almost.

“I saw this at the library once”

“What?”

“I snuck out once, and went to the library, and these younger girls were on this exact website at those big old library computers”

Keigo takes an impressive gulp of his drink, and without taking his eyes off the screen pours himself some more. He had an almost unreadable look about him, but you can see some sort of longing in the inquiring way he was glancing at the screen. You put the laptop between the two of you.

“Chose one,”

“What?”

His eyes are wide as he considers you.

“These are great for relaxing, I promise”

You say taking another sip of mimosa. Keigo is hesitant but he does start clicking around on the bright pink page.

"Look this one has wings,"

He says clicking onto one of the fairy dress up games. You resist the urge to giggle or call him cute. He seems overly invested in the little fairy picture on the screen. You debate which color her wings should be. He says that obviously the wings should be red, you counter with the iridescent wings. Keigo drags on each item of clothing to test them out on the fairy. Same with the hair.

You look away for one moment, checking your phone, a notification having gone off. When you look back up at the screen you choke a bit on the tangy juice in your mouth. Keigo has changed the hair, the skin tone, and even the eye color of the fairy on the screen to resemble you. He's still asking you about what clothes he should put on the fake doll, not acknowledging the quick changes he has made. So you decide to ignore it too. Telling him which items look best and what shoes he definitely should not put on.

"I still think it should have the red wings, that way we could match"

"We?"

You question.

"Yes, we, that literally looks just like you, did you not notice?"

He asks in a way that tells you he knew exactly what he was doing. He takes a strawberry from the bowl, you notice that it's the fifth strawberry he's had and scold him, telling him to eat the other fruit as well.

"I like strawberries,"

Is all he says as he eats another one. You also pop one of the fruits into your mouth. It's cold and refreshing and just below too sweet. Keigo finishes off his mimosa and only pours champagne into his glass when he refills it.

"You should eat more, if you're gonna be drinking"

You tell him, a playful warning.

"I only want strawberries"

He says reaching into the bowl. But he stops, pulls the fruit bowl closer to him. No strawberries. He looks to you and you have the last one in your fingers.

"That strawberry should have been mine, you probably have more in the fridge, me I have to go the whole rest of the day without one"

You nod like you are taking in Keigo's proposal, pretend contemplating it. You didn't want to tell him that there were more strawberries in the fridge. Instead you decide to be a bit bold. You put half of the strawberry in your mouth. Keeping it in place with the front of your teeth, putting your head in your palm, teasing Keigo with the last strawberry.

The strawberry in your lips, Keigo places his mouth on the other half you have offered to him. He bites the red fruit, pocketing it in his cheeks, his lips chasing after yours. The cold sweet juice of the berry coating your lips and the corner of your mouth. It’s a clumsy kiss, his lips just barely catching the bow of your own.

When you move back to your place at the table, away from him, you take the back of your hand to rid your face of the sticky fruit juice before it settled.

“Huh? That bad? You gotta wipe the kiss away?”

He’s teasing you, his voice close to your ear, flushed breath dancing over your skin.

“You're such a baby, I just don't like strawberry juice on my face”

He inspects your face, you scrutinize him, knowing he has a scheme to play out. You can tell because of the specific shine that glistens around his irises, the taut way his mouth is, like he’s so fierce in trying to hide his smile, like you possibly couldn’t know what he was up to.

“What? You don't have anything on your face? Nothing I could see, here,”

He leans into you again, like he’s going to brush at your face with a napkin or his hand. Then his tongue is on the spot right above your lips.

“God, Keigo!”

You say, pulling away from him with a laugh, leaning back in your chair a bit.

“What? I couldn't see anything, couldn't taste anything, actually that's a lie, you did taste like strawberries,”

“Hm, wonder if it has anything to do with the strawberries we’ve been eating”

“Doubt it, you probably ate a strawberry flower and it grew inside you”

“Isn't that watermelon?”

You ask him, adjusting yourself to get a better grab at the laptop, wanting to play more silly online dress up before he had to leave. He shakes his head, like this was irrefutable.

“No, you have flowers inside you and you'll die with strawberries growing out of you”

“Keigo, I’m taking the champagne from you”

༓･*˚⁺‧͙·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾

A/N: I AM OBSESSED WITH FRUIT AND FRUIT IMAGERY IT IS IN EVERYTHING I WRITE RN LIKE EVEN JUST HINTS OR MENTIONS OF FUCKING FRUIT SO SORRY FOR THIS also shout to dee-lite for the title, just changed apple to strawberry. Ugh the strawberry. Such a complicated relationship I have with the strawberry. Listened to Heartbreaker by Mariah Carey the entire time I was writing this.

#hawks #hawks x reader #hawks fluff #bnha #mha #Keigo Takami x reader #keigo x reader #keigo takami #bnha x reader #strawberies

66 notes · View notes

revolversandlace · 2 years ago

Photo

Blemished Silk | Chapter Six - It’s A Big Old Place

Arthur Morgan x f!OC

Mature Rating - 2.3k Words

Chapter Tags: Angst, Canon Universe, Slow Burn, f!OC POV

Summary: Amelia travels to see her Uncle Josiah, only to discover some terrible news.

Boston, February 1899

By the time Amelia had coordinated her affairs and arrived in Boston, it was the middle of February. Contacting her uncle went to the expected lengthy pains that it always did. She loved him dearly, but the man was chimeric, to say the very least.

She stepped off the train into South Station, a fresh construct that the ever-growing city was in desperate need of. It was finished not even two months before - creating a streaming bustle of people. With the foresight of how the world around her was changing, the trains screamed with a harrowing whistle whilst smoke and steam mingled as one.

Outside of professional meetings, she rarely presented herself in the expected ways of her class. Amelia usually opted for a simple shirtwaist and walking skirt on most days, treasuring her comfort in the confines of the estate. However, regardless of how informal her rendezvous with her uncle was to be, she found the rare occasion to don one of her finer investments.

In a matching fan skirt of burgundy and a beaver lined jacket, Amelia also paraded her muff hand warmer made from marten and a hat that stood tall with both feathers of black ostrich and marabou.

All of it was futile in the hope of keeping the northern chill out however. Regardless of the fur that was wrapped tight around her, she was not as successful as she hoped for. When the harsh Atlantic gale from the docks blew through the wide halls of the station, her bones shivered whilst she tensed her shoulders.

As Amelia stepped through the steam of the great metal beast behind her, she felt as though she was that stupid little child that she had been so many years ago. In a desperate attempt to forsake the winds, she tried her best to politely push through the rabble of doddering folks in matching refinery.

The never-ending terrazzo marble floor caused an endless echo of the expected clip-clop of heels and the thwack of walking canes across the grand structure. Yet, all the same, this was a new building, something she had not seen or experienced before.

Boston, for all its familiarities, seemed to be an ever-evolving town. A place where the old were cherished, but advancements in society were never frowned upon. Something that Amelia could utterly appreciate.

Exiting the station, with a few unscrupulous addle pates barging past her for one reason or another, she stepped into the all-familiar streets. The smell, the markets, the people, everything brought back a crashing sense of nostalgia whilst she pursued forward in a bid to block out the involuntary memories. She was here to meet Josiah, that was all.

Pulling the letter from her jacket with her hare lined gloves, she examined the notice.

Past the glass factory. Meet me at 22.

She scoffed to herself, as it was hardly as tight-lipped as he intended. Amelia felt an odd twist at the bottom of her stomach. Something was just not quite right. She continued to pace, without paying too much attention to the note she had just read. After all, a woman, regardless of her station, alone and dazed reading a note, would certainly only invite trouble.

Her skirts clipped around her boots, while the harsh port wind uncombed the soft curls that framed her face.

Across the port way, when she approached the door of the address she had been given, she was not quite sure what to expect, as her uncle was known for his dubious habitats. Yet this in itself was far more unbecoming. A shrewd mining hut with broken hinges and mouldy windows. Almost doubting herself, she was unsure if this was even the correct establishment.

She knocked twice, firm and filled with purposefulness. Nothing.

Amelia knocked again, growing impatient. Forced into business by the man and he didn’t even have the curtsey of answering the door.

Again and again, she knocked. Filled with more ferocity than the last, she rasped her knuckled until the cold dull ache hit them.

Finally, the door pulled away, with her uncle standing uncharacteristically dishevelled. His un-ironed shirt loosely hanging from him and his usual slick black hair crumpled in a tousle on top of his head.

‘Oh, my dear!’ he belched, with a distinct smell of something or other on his breath. ‘Do... do come in.’

Moving to the side, he gestured more clumsily than usual, but Amelia paid no mind. If he was not in the mood to give her sense, she would feed him coffee until he was well and good enough.

‘Please,’ Josiah slurred, ushering her to what she supposed was the parlour, ‘I’m so sorry, my sweet dear, my little caneton.’

Attempting to not roll her eyes and scoff, she ignored the endearment.

‘It’s been,’ her uncle began, almost falling onto the chaise longue behind him and very nearly toppling off of the back, ‘it’s been... a strenuous day.’

‘Very well,’ Amelia sighed, ‘I would have liked to speak with you under more controlled circumstances,’ she remarked, looking at him with a slight disregard.

How could he do this? She thought to herself, slightly betrayed and utterly caught off guard.

‘Well? Out with it then.’ She snapped, perhaps a little harsher than she intended.

He gazed up; eyes unfocused as he rummaged in his pocket.

‘Uncle, for the love of God, what on earth has happened?’ Growing more and more frustrated with his self-inflicted misery, Amelia took off her gloves and pulled the silver cigarette case from her pocket.

‘Oh, Amelia,’ Josiah remarked, putting his head in his hands whilst shaking his head rather dramatically. ‘I made a terrible business...’ he paused, trying to suppress another belch, ‘decision.’

Amelia pursed her lips, raising her eyebrow at the older man. Perhaps she was being a little too irritable. The man was only drunk after all.

She held her tongue and allowed him to continue.

‘An investment of mine went horribly, horribly wrong. People have died, my dear Amelia. Innocent people.’

His hands dropped from his face, revealing watery pockets all over it.

She was stunned. What in the world was he on about? Her Uncle, of all people, involved in such crimes?

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Uncle.’ Amelia managed to let out, her voice soft and low.

‘Some... associates of mine, they were to carry out a job of theirs, but...’

Amelia furrowed her eyebrows. This all sounded quite criminal. She had always known her uncle would dance with the interpretations of the law, but not something like this. This didn’t sound right at all.

She looked away, unable to meet the anguish in his eyes. She cast her gaze into her cigarette, lighting it and hoping that all that he said was some drunken rambling from a man too far into his whiskey.

Attempting to find some excuse, some distraction, she peered around the room, taking puff after puff, whilst her uncle led out the odd sniffle or two.

‘I think some coffee is order, don’t you, Uncle?’

With all the composure she could muster, she stood and waltzed over to the side cabinets. A kitchen would have been too much of a generous word as the cramped confines only held the very basics. She dreaded to think why Josiah was here or even how he came across the property. However, she figured perhaps it was best to ask that another time.

Throwing the end of her cigarette in an empty tin - which already housed plenty of ends - she rummaged around as best she could to find the coffee. With little hope of finding a percolator, she filled an old saucepan and placed it on the singular gas unit.

When she finally found the coffee and poured it into the saucepan, something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.

At first, it was the newspaper, discarded and strewn on the floor, but then she saw the cutout on the table. Curiosity got the better of her and the room filled with the scent of coffee grounds.

OUTLAW GANG WANTED OVER HEIST

The headline read. She picked it up tentatively, not wanting to read it, but couldn’t bear to ignore it.

Pinkertons Increase Search

A gang of criminals, believe to be the outlaw Dutch van der Linde escaped with approximately $150,000 after a bloody gunfight with Pinkerton agents in Blackwater yesterday. The bank was moving the money out by boats after a string of stagecoach robberies in the area. The authorities believe that the men must have stashed the money in Blackwater before fleeing and the town has been put on high alert.

She put it down, afraid to read anymore. Her stomach recoiled as her eyes glazed over, unable to understand. Was her uncle involved in this? Why did he have it cut out? Was it a trophy?

Amelia stood there for what felt like hours, trying to think of the words, the questions, and any answer that could be given that would make this make sense.

‘I didn’t know it was to be a heist, not like that anyway,’ her uncle said after some time as Amelia stood there frozen.

‘I...’ he began, and Amelia willed herself to turn to face him. It couldn’t be, surely? Her Uncle Josiah, who saved her from her beastly parents, who brought her dolls and books, who gave her everything, was involved in such deplorable behaviour?

‘Tell me, Uncle. Tell me the truth about all this!’ She was mad, so very mad. Hurt and betrayed, everything in her body told her to scream and kick and curse his soul to damnation. Amelia was not a woman to tolerate petty theft, let alone something quite like this.

He told her. From beginning to end, how he was unaware of what his investment quite was. How he knew it wasn’t strictly legal and according to his sources, the owners certainly didn’t deserve the money, but at least nothing that was too questionable. He thought it was a movement similar to theirs, people trying to do their best to syphon the wealth from the greedy, the corrupt, into the pockets of the downtrodden who were cast away by society.

Not once did Amelia interrupt, and by the time she poured their coffees, they sat there in silence.

‘It seems like an easy oversight,' was all she could muster.

‘Perhaps.’

‘How could you have not known they were Outlaws?’ the mirth had left her voice as she wrapped her hands around the coffee, the only relief in this barren place.

‘Half of our employees are Outlaws, Amelia.’

‘Former,’ she muttered under her breath correcting him, rather childishly if she was being frank with herself.

Her uncle looked at her with an exhausted sorrowfulness she rarely saw from him. A part of her thought it served him right, being so hasty to make ‘ethical’ money, as he would put it. The coffee was rancid, so much so she only managed a mouthful and feared that even a cigarette wouldn’t cleanse her of its bitterness.

‘Well, I assume you read my letter in full? About the state of the finances?’ Desperate to change the conversation topic to anything other than this nonsense.

He gave a wave of his hand, not quite as enthusiastic as his usual self.

‘I did, my dear. Knowing you, I have high hopes that you have many a trick up your sleeves...’

At least, he was growing soberer, Amelia thought to herself.

‘I have, however, gone to the liberty of securing you both a short term and long-term solution.’

She couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows in doubt. God, she thought to herself, this best be legal.

‘Do not worry!’ he fished into his pocket for another cigarette. ‘It is some racing horses coming into their own. An acquaintance of mine has recently fallen quite ill and his poor wife is selling off his acquisitions. With all the rage of racing horses against one another these days, it will give a nice minor bump up in those woes of yours.’

She pursed her lips, both sceptical of the origin and cynical and her uncles’ prospects all in the same thought.

However, when she took a moment to herself, she was not really in a position to throw away any rope that could pull her from the growing current. After all, her pride and morals were one thing, but she had her people to look after. Not just them, but their families, too. Was reasonable doubt such a bad thing? The odd turning of the other cheek? Or was her uncle making her complicit in another “bad investment”?

‘Very well,’ she sighed, standing to leave. ‘I trust you will make the appropriate arrangements?’

He smiled with a soft curve to his moustache, his eyes drooping ever so slightly from the reign of his sobering intoxication. Opening his arms to her, she couldn’t help but already begin to forgive him. Returning to his embrace, Amelia pulled on her gloves and adjusted her hat.

‘The horses should be with you in a month or two, I assure you.’ Guiding her to the door, Amelia hoped that at the very least, he had the good sense to get some sleep and leave the hovel he had found himself in.

‘Amelia, my dear, please,’ he took her hand as she stepped through the threshold, ‘nothing like this will happen again, I promise you.’

No matter how much she wanted to stay mad at him, she simply could not. With a gentle smile, she placed a tender kiss on his cheek and squeezed his hand in return.

‘Of course, Uncle. I know you would not.’ Whether that was to reassure herself or him, she could not say at that very moment. She left without further comment and proceeded back to South Station, feeling much more exhausted than she thought she would.

#arthur morgan x original female character #rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 fanfic #red dead redemption 2 fanfic #fanfic #arthur morgan x oc #amelia edwards #blemished silk

2 notes · View notes

chalkrevelations · 3 years ago

Text

Huh.

Well, this is not the next episode reaction you were expecting, but a while back, in the middle of the night, while I was ready to cry from working on a pharmacology paper, out of nowhere, Youtube threw up Street Dance of China S3 Ep1 at me. And yeah. I am, admittedly, f’kn weak for a dance show. (There are enough SYTYCD episode reax on my old Livejournal that I feel there’s no point denying this.)

So – no, actually, wait. FIRST of all, I do NOT believe the “towel vote” we ended up being given for the opening routines from the four captains. That was the most blatant bit of bullshit chicanery I’ve seen in my LIFE, and I say this as a person with a ton of SYTYCD episode reax on my old Livejournal, and I also say this not because Wang Yibo ended up last (well, not entirely), but because I saw Wallace Chung’s routine. As someone closer in age to him than to the other three captains, I have to give him props for trying, but come on, man. The critique that Yibo got from random contestants – if the subtitles are to be believed, so I realize this needs a grain of salt - basically boiled down to “it was too good for the stage lighting.” :hands: Also, I saw your face at the reveal, Wallace, and you were as shocked as I was. No way you got more towels/votes than Wang Yibo. Not unless there’s some super wild undercurrent of nostalgia propping you up, which, I guess could happen, because literally all I know about pop culture in China, current or otherwise, is filtered through Tumblr and Youtube, both notoriously suspect, but … anyway. There’s got to be a TON of behind-the-scenes manipulation going on for Yibo to be rock-bottom with last pick of teams but then also to end up with THAT pool of possibles. Are you kidding me with this?

ANYWAY, what I wanted to say is that I actually really like Wang Yibo here, and it’s not just because he’s the only captain I have even a sliver of familiarity with, and it’s not just because Lan Wangji was banging Wei Wuxian. I do realize all of this is influenced by whatever edit they’ve decided to give a particular captain or contestant, but I’m impressed with the way Yibo immediately starts team building by getting his group into a warmup, getting them dancing together, getting them dancing with him before they have to worry about dancing for him. (I mean, come on, Jackson Wang. The way to get people to stop being nervous is not to say “Stop being nervous! It will make you fuck up!”) The way Yibo immediately recognized and responded to his group’s concerns about that one dude copying someone else’s routine probably also bought him a lot of return investment. He’s dressed to work it, in his sweats and his flannel (what IS that fake-leather TAC vest and random leg holster-looking thing, Jackson Wang?). He’s convincing me he really loves to dance, he can’t hold still while he watches the contestants, he’s wandering over into other captains’ turf when it sounds like there’s a dancer performing who he might like to see, he’s being the best Yibo he can be, and I’m grooving along, wind in my hair, totally down for this ride. He’s also adorable at the beginning when all the other captains are like, my goal for this season is to slaughter the competition and dance on their graves! And he’s like, well, I’d like to … make some friends? And learn some new stuff? I don’t know if the perpetual Humble Student schtick is natural or persona, or whether it’s general or specific to dancing, but it’s working for you, my dude. This is also made better (read: ironic), by the fact that it’s immediately before the towel reveal, when he flips over to utter disbelief and gets all sulky for a while over the “fact” that his dance routine got the least votes.

Also, OH WAIT. This is where that clip of Yibo dancing with his crew ALL OVER HIM came from that I saw floating around a few months ago, isn’t it? You’re telling me those guys had never danced together before and had like, three minutes to throw together that routine? I’m even more impressed than before. Meanwhile, the towels symbolize courage and challenge, Mr. Emcee? OK, fine, cheesy reality show blah blah whatever. Can we get to the dancing now?

I’m going to put the rest of this behind a cut, because it got super long, because it turns out, when you watch in 5-minute increments, it takes two and a half weeks to get through a single episode, but you actually can see and have opinions on all 5,328 contestants, plus every single one of the captains’ battles. Meanwhile, I’m trying to convince myself this is not going to be another series of episode reactions, but 1) I do have the benefit of not having a ton of hometown media giving me a next-day play-by-play, so even though this is six months old, everything’s a surprise; 2) I am, admittedly, f’kn weak for a dance show; and 3) it’s easy to watch in 5-minute increments between researching drug interactions in hypothetical hypertensive patients with stable ischemic heart disease, erectile dysfunction, and seasonal allergies. So, I guess we’ll see. It’ll be slow going, though, because I don’t ever have two and half hours to sit down and watch an ep cover-to-cover – if it happens, it will likely keep happening in 5-minute increments. Meanwhile, there is a metric shit-ton of nattering below the cut, so caveat lector. No, seriously, I kept adding to this little by little until it became a monster. Hashtag long post (remorseful).

OK, I am generally out of my depth here, as this is not at all my area of dance not-really-expertise, but some reactions:

Team Wang Yibo: I can see why he didn’t want to choose between Colin and Dian Men – Colin might have been a touch better technically and a better showman, but Dian Men didn’t seem to have a single wasted move – but, also, my dude. Yibo. You maybe should look a little bit less stunned and overwhelmed by the mere presence of Colin, it’s giving me ideas about your taste in men. Continuing with the powerhouses, I probably shouldn’t even attempt to critique Klash, but I did feel like he was a bit stiff in some of his footwork; that final V kick, though, shit, that’s what having that kind of upper-body strength is for. Bouboo … I mean, excellent flexibility and control, of course, but mainly I’m just terribly amused that Yibo got last pick of teams but somehow ended up with the guy who’s literal world champion, and who’s just as useful for getting into the other captains’ heads – without even trying – as he is for his talent. And then there’s a montage of Yibo giving out towel after towel after towel, and my dude, you cannot keep up this pace. There are still too many dancers to see, and you don’t have that many towels. AAANNNND Towel Battle #1 (See Footnote 1).

Team Jackson Wang: I do like Gai Gai, although that may be influenced by the fact she’s working in the twilight area between hip-hop and contemporary that I have more familiarity with - but also, I suspect she’s pretty good in her genre. I thought Xiao Jie was inconsistent and didn’t stick the landing on his initial attempt, so I have to give you that hesitation, Jackson, even though you’ve somehow ended up the villain in my inner narrative for this show, for no particular reason I can yet discern. Maybe it’s that you’re the direct competition for Yibo’s team in the towel battles. Good enough. Anyway, Xiao Jie definitely stepped up his game for the battle with Bingo, so I can kind of see why both of them got a towel, but we’re not even halfway through this, and most of y’all are giving away towels like you have an endless supply. Yang Kai is a fucking menace with fantastic musicality, and I’m just gonna say it and take the fallout - I think he gave a better performance first time out of the gate than any of Yibo’s powerhouses did. Whatever power Klash has got, whatever skill Bouboo has got, Yang Kai feels more explosive and engaging, at least in these initial showings. He’s going to be one to beat, I’d hug him too, if he was on my team and was going to help me WIN. Yibo’s probably lucky that happened during his little stroll over to check out the competition, so that he can see they’re definitely competitive and be prepared for it. Also, Jackson, I have to admit - that face you made when Chao really kicked in? That was the same face I made, because wt actual f, you have a literal secret weapon – secret because he CAME FROM NOWHERE and NO ONE EVEN KNOWS him, how is that even possible, how did he get that good – fluid, creative, controlled, incredible musicality - without anyone having any idea who he even is? And then there’s a montage of Jackson just giving out towel after towel after towel, and my dude, you need to slow down. You can’t just be like, “THEY LOVE DANCE WITH ALL OF THEIR WHOLE HEARTS!!!!1111!!!!11!” I get it, but everyone there loves dance with all of their whole hearts, and there are not enough towels to send all of them on to the next round. ANNNND, Towel Battle #1 (See Footnote 1).

Team Lay Zhang: lol at how diplomatic you’re being, Lay Zhang – your team’s fierce roar startled you, OK. At this point, I suspect you’re the street most likely to have a knife fight break out before this is all over. I do like Alex, I think he’s got a lot of interesting, super-clean details in his moves, and he’s engaging - I cannot BELIEVE you made him battle that dude whose moves were so mushy, Lay Zhang, it leaves me doubting your ability to judge this thing. At first I thought maybe you were just looking for an excuse because you wanted to see Alex freestyle, but then you actually said something about both dancers being equal, and my estimation of you plummeted, and also sadly, my sound dropped out for the actual battle, including the part where the clearly inferior dancer fell over and then accidentally POPPED ALEX ONE IN THE EYE, and I TOLD YOU SO. I do agree it’s a good idea to make dancers in the same genre do some battling, so you can kind of plan out your towels and put together a team with broad strengths, instead of giving out towels like you’re making it rain for the first 20 contestants, and then you have 1,375 more people to get through, with 3 towels left, as EVERYONE ELSE seems to be doing, so it’s nice that at least one of you guys is thinking – if not actually acting - strategically. That was clearly not even a contest, though, GIVE ALEX HIS TOWEL and send him to the next round. Xiao Bao is hilarious, with his concern that his team captain, who’s into krump, which is “beating,” isn’t going to appreciate his waacking, which is “slapping.” I also don’t know a whole lot about waacking, so thanks for the primer, Xiao Bao, and don’t worry, your performance is just as engaging for those of us who don’t know what we’re watching as you are generally. You deserve that towel for your ability to interact with and engage your audience, alone. Lingo is a good solid performance, although he’s got his team captain strategizing edited over some of it, and here’s the thing: we are 1:56:00 into this, at this point, with another half hour to go, and all of you are starting to disappear into the sea of dancers who are very good at what you do, but at generally the same level? Anyway, Lingo, I approve of your ability to interact with your audience (read: your captain) to ensure engagement, too, so keep that up. Annnd, we actually haven’t seen that much of you guys, but it’s time for Towel Battle #2 (See Footnote 2).

Team Wallace Chung: I’m glad Su Lian Ya insisted on performing, I thought she started off slow but warmed up, and that ending was creepily fantastic and had me spontaneously grinning at the screen in delight. Then we lose sight of this group for a really long time, actually. We go back to find Wallace putting through a couple of urban dancers who we barely see, but who apparently claim to have some choreography experience, and he really likes that. TI shows up, and they’re solid, but honestly, not as good in this performance as they were in some of the stock footage the show threw up to introduce them, but Wallace remains super-excited about the idea of choreography and sends at least choreographer Zhang Jiang Peng through to the next round. And then, we really haven’t seen that much of you guys, either, which maybe doesn’t bode well, but it’s time for Towel Battle #2 (See Footnote 2).

FOOTNOTE 1, aka TOWEL BATTLE ONE, Team Yibo vs. Team Jackson, 3V3 freestyle: First of all, I have to say, I love Yibo - Mr. I Just Wanna Make Some Friends And Have Some Fun - being all, “I have three crappy white towels I’m stuck with for coming in last place that I can’t use to send dancers to the next round and that I DO NOT DESERVE, and I am getting BACK the colorful towels that ARE RIGHTFULLY MINE. I am coming for whoever is in my way.” Team Yibo is Bouboo, Klash, Dian Men, and OK, given what we’ve seen so far, that’s the safe choice, but honestly, I think we’re just taking some things for granted right now, and I’m not sure they actually have given the best performances so far. Yeah, I said it. Team Jackson is Yang Kai, Chao, and Xiao Jie, and … ok, on that last one, I think you probably could have substituted Bingo, but all right. Yang Kai is a definite yes. Chao will be great if he can stay out of his own head and not psych himself out, but given what we’ve seen so far, he’s an obvious pick. First round, Yang Kai vs. Klash, and Yang Kai is still a fucking menace, with super lines. Klash definitely stepped up his game for the battle, and I can’t get over the upper body strength he’s got, to get that kind of airy bounce in his moves, but to be honest, I can’t even be mad the first round went to Yang Kai and Team Jackson. Second round, Yang Kai is still … y’all, the beautiful lines from this guy in his poses, I can’t get over them, but I think he doesn’t have the stamina, his footwork is getting sloppy. Bouboo also steps up his game for an actual battle, his fluidity and control is amazing, and yeah, round to Team Yibo. Round three, Xiao Jie gives it a decent effort, but the polish isn’t there; meanwhile Bouboo is still in champion mode, and I was kind of surprised this was a split vote and went to another round. Xiao Jie absolutely surprised me, coming back stronger on his second try, although I suppose a more familiar genre helped, but Bouboo continues in champion mode. Round four, Chao looks like he’s going to throw up right before he steps out there, and then as soon as the music starts, it’s like, he doesn’t even think. The music just moves him. I feel like his dance vocabulary is more limited than Bouboo’s, though, and Bouboo’s flow is amazing at this point, so I feel like the judges just want to drag this out and see more dancing when we go to one more round. Strong effort all around, but yeah, round four and two towels to Team Yibo. I can’t really complain about that. I do feel like Yibo’s powerhouses have been holding back until now, though, and I’m not sure how I feel about THAT.

FOOTNOTE 2, aka TOWEL BATTLE TWO, Team Zhang vs. Team Wallace, 3V3 w/ captain: lol, Team Zhang really wants someone to pick the Sailor Moon song because they know Xiao Bao and his waacking will tear it up. Anyway, Team Zhang includes Lingo and Xiao Bao, who does not get his Sailor Moon song and continues to be hilarious in his disbelief about being chosen to participate in this battle, when he’s not looking almost as sick as Chao from Team Jackson before HIS performance. Team Wallace includes Su Lian Ya – and honestly, despite how I’m getting ready to bag on him for the entire rest of this battle recap, I like that Wallace put one of his female dancers up there for the battle - and some dude named Ba that they haven’t given us any footage of, up ‘til now, at least that I can remember and who I … don’t even know has been formally given a towel and sent on to the next round, yet? Oh wait, he must have, because there’s talk in the pause for choreography about somehow using the towels during the battle. Wallace relies on Su Lian Ya and Zhang Jiang Peng to choose Ba, and then Ba ends up choreographing a lot of the performance, at least from the edit we see. I continue to feel you may be in over your head, Wallace. This feeling … is not assuaged by your performance in the first round, which is fine, but not really up to the level of almost anyone whose name I’ve bolded so far in this entire recap. Also, using the towels was a cute idea, but it doesn’t translate well, and Team Wallace has a lot of wasted time throwing the towels around instead of actually. You know. Dancing. Lingo gets a credible solo during Team Zhang’s performance, and even though Xiao Bao is clearly lost during a good bit of his backup dancer duties, he manages not to throw up, which – given this team’s general skill level – should be enough to give them the first round, EXCEPT SOMEHOW Team Wallace gets the point from the judges, who then try to justify this inexplicable decision by saying Team Wallace had better interaction, I guess because of the hot mess with throwing the towels around, but adding that Team Zhang was more scattered, which what? More scattered than the hot mess with the towels? I’m not buying this. I can’t tell if they’re propping up Wallace or fucking with Lay Zhang’s head, but I’m having bad acid flashbacks to the many and varied ways dance show judges will try to gaslight you, telling you that things you just saw with your very own eyes did not actually happen when it’s right there! On camera! Visible, despite whatever edit bs you’re pulling! ANYWAY, they’re definitely managing to fuck with not only Lay Zhang’s head, but Xiao Bao’s, and Xiao Bao still doesn’t seem to have his choreography down, but they manage to pull it together enough to take the second round, which to be honest is kind of a muddled mess on everyone’s part. The only one who really stands out to me on this go’round is Su Lian Ya, but OK, Team Zhang might have had it slightly more together as a unit. And then, yeah, OK, I think they were fucking with Lay Zhang’s head, because we then find out that, holy shit, the song the show powers-that-be chose for the tie-breaking third round is that gd Sailor Moon song, and we can all see the writing on the wall. Poor Team Wallace is no match for Xiao Bao, who frankly, carries this entire round on his shoulders without breaking a sweat and barely needs any backup dancers to do it. There’s some ridiculously dramatic reveal of scoring, with the judges dragging out their decisions like this was any actual contest - I’m beginning to suspect that some of them grew up with Wallace Chung posters on their bedroom walls - but finally, round and towel to Team Zhang.

Cut to a little bit of Next Time On, and wow, the first two-and-a-half-hour episode is over, and we aren’t finished with the initial round yet. It’s gonna be Christmas before I make it halfway through this season.

#street dance of china #sdoc episode reax #should i put yibo in the tags for this?#sure #i guess #wang yibo #anyone else?

35 notes · View notes

pricemarshfield · 3 years ago

Text

for candia

Written for Day 1 of @acocweek: Fluff + Theobald. Read on AO3 here.

Theobald, as always, is the first awake.

Things are different than they used to be, of course. He wakes up with a marauder curled into his side murmuring violent nothings in her sleep and a licorice snake biting his hand affectionately, rather than alone. The guards are made up of a mix of Tartguard and North-Gumbian Knights and Saccharina's collection of nobodies that Theo has yet to corral into training. Saccharina lets him sit at her side during every meeting--encourages it, actually, wonders aloud about round tables and councils and more democratic processes of enacting law in front of visiting dignitaries who stare at her staff with wonderment and fear.

There's also still a tangible air of mourning around the place, too. One of the Tartguard started wailing when he saw Princess for the first time, and they'll be repairing the damage to the castle for years.

But what a job to supervise all of this!

"Limey," Theo says with a nod to his new second-in-command, who salutes. "What news do we have for the day?"

"Nothing much, sir," says Limey. "Her Majesty the Queen Saccharina continues to insist we don't need to salute her, but we've maintained proper etiquette anyway."

"Fantastic," Theo says. "Continue on."

"There is one thing," Limey says, and his tone is more confused than nervous, so he doesn't reach for the battle pop. "All of the left shoes in the barracks disappeared overnight."

"...what?"

"All of the left shoes in the barracks disappeared overnight, sir," Limey says. "No one saw anything, and while that's not an especially expensive thing to replace, it is worrying that someone was able to slip past our defenses."

Ordinarily, Theo would be incredibly worried about someone who could sneak into the barracks and out without being spotted, especially carrying what must have been dozens of shoes. But he hears a familiar snort from somewhere above him. When he looks up, no one's there, but that's to be expected. She's good.

"I'll retrieve those shoes posthaste, Limey," Theobald says. "Tell the men not to worry."

"They're not, mostly," Limey says, but Theo's already wandered off, holding his arm out so Princess can keep an eye out, too. She doesn't seem to be especially invested, snoozing on his arm and hissing when he tries to lower it.

"Ruby," Theo calls. "I know you're nearby. Come on."

No response, no sound of footsteps, no flickering shadows. This'll take the big guns.

---

"Ruby did what?" Saccharina says, lounging on her throne, and bursts into a fit of giggles.

"My Queen," Theo says, a familiar headache already forming behind his eyes. "This is serious."

"Sure, yeah," Saccharina says. "All the left shoes in the barracks? Even Jon Bon's? Oh, that's gross. Wait, is everyone just hopping around? Also, just call me Saccharina."

"My Queen Saccharina," he says, and she frowns at him, fiddling with a small magical trinket she'd found somewhere in the castle. "The morale of the men is important. We were able to take the castle without heavy losses, but not without losses entirely."

"Hm." The Queen stands up, shakes her head when he automatically moves to kneel. "She is the Imperial Princess now, and I don't think pranks are gonna hurt morale. Tell whoever's in charge of it that I authorize new shoes to be bought. I've got this whole treasury now, anyway, what else would I do with it?"

Theo takes a deep breath. "I think--" Saccharina waits, raising a brow at Theo's pause. He doesn't normally get this far. "I think that Ruby should probably apologize. And return the shoes."

Saccharina's mischievous smile looks a lot like her sister's. "Sure. And you can tell her that if you can find her."

There's a sudden laugh from behind him, and when Theo swings his head around, he sees only the back of the throne room.

He sighs. In for a long day, apparently.

---

The Imperial Princess Ruby of House Rocks doesn't have tutors here. She's on vacation, officially and in practice. Well-deserved after the war, of course, even if Theo doesn't understand the appeal of a week or month or two without structure. He'd have thought, after everything, that pranks were beneath her, that perhaps she'd even take an active role in governance!

Instead, Ruby seems to have decided Saccharina's challenge for Theo to find her cannot go unmet.

He hasn't seen her all day, even though the Bulb is high in the sky, but the impact of her actions is everywhere. Frosting along the floors that he slipped on, causing a Tartguard pile-up. Little bursts of sparks set to trigger when he opens doors and windows that startle him enough that Princess bites him. The worst offender is when he turns down a hallway only to see piles and piles of shoes, because when he gets back, they're all gone. The other Knights of North-Gumbia, to their credit, are completely understanding.

"The princesses were always fond of japes, weren't they, sir?" Limey asks. Princess hisses and curls around his neck in what he thinks is an affectionate gesture.

"They were," Theo says. Once, he'd woken up, sat up, and stretched only to get a tray of whipped cream directly to the face. Jet and Ruby hadn't been half as good at stealthing away as Ruby is now, but it'd taken him long enough to wipe it off his face that he'd only seen Jet glance back and snort with laughter.

Nothing had happened. Caramelinda had been visiting House Meringue for a family wedding and Amethar had found it hysterical. They had apologized in their own way, after--no escape attempts for an entire fortnight.

He shakes himself of his nostalgia with the help of Princess biting his ear, and as he gently untangles her from his helmet, he says, "Right. Well, keep the search up. She can't hide from us forever."

---

Two days, six hours, and roughly thirty minutes after he makes that statement, he's not so sure. No one's admitted to seeing Ruby, though Saccharina's eyes had sparkled with mirth and kept glancing up to a corner behind him as if daring him to break court etiquette and check. He's checked the secret passages he knows, he's enlisted the help of the marauders (Swifty had only threatened to stab him once during the conversation, so he thinks they're genuinely looking), he's used every spell he knows and considered looking up new ones.

New pranks pop up around the castle, of course. A few meeps let loose in the hallways, frightening a visiting dignitary. Flooding one of the kitchens with cola. Cushions that make it sound like you're farting on every chair except the throne.

"Ruby seems to be sparing you from her onslaught," Theo says to the Queen, watching as Annabelle Cheddar stares at herself in one of the room's mirrors, hair turned a bright Candian purple.

"Yeah," Saccharina says with a wide smile. "She is! It's really cool! I've never had anyone comfortable enough around me who cared me enough to do pranks without me being the target!"

Theo, not knowing how to respond to that, is incredibly thankful for the sixth prank of the day: an explosion of scraps of paper that covers every inch of the room. The paper seems to be mostly made up of old letters from the other nations. They're important, and them being destroyed is terrible, and they will have words about it later, but he can't bring himself to mind too much right now.

Because with all the paper everywhere, he sees the little breeze she makes in her escape, and the direction she runs in after.

---

If he chases after her now, he'll lose her, and who knows if he'll ever get another lucky break like that again. So he waits. Endures waking up covered in Fructeran vino, deals with diplomats' outrage at not being greeted by the Imperial Princess herself, keeps checking secret passages in entirely different parts of the castle just to throw her off the trail. He doesn't say anything to anyone about it, because he's not especially good at deception.

The final prank: a veritable army of chocolate frogs released while Saccharina holds court. It explains why she's been holding back laughter the entire time, but that's a problem for later. For now, he sprints across the room, vaulting over one of the Tartguard, and heads in the direction he'd seen her run before.

There's a few secret passageways this way, but he's checked those. When he reaches a dead end, he looks around, thinks--casts knock on the wall. Sure enough, it pushes open, and on the other side is Ruby Rocks, mouth open in shock.

"Ruby!" Theo calls.

"Damn it," she says. "How'd you even--it doesn't matter."

"You have many things to apologize for, your Imperial Highness," Theo says, walking over to try and pick her up and carry her back to the throne room. She could escape, probably, but it's at least a start.

"That's not true!" Ruby says. "I've been helping a ton of people."

"What, people who needed specifically left shoes? Annabelle secretly asked you to dye her hair purple?" Ruby snorts. "See! Come on, Princess."

"No, seriously," Ruby says. "Look, I did this because it's funny, but it's bringing the mood up around here! Morale!"

Theo blinks at her. "What? Stealing people's things? Ruining their day?"

"Pranks," Ruby says with a nod. "Look. Pay attention to the way people are acting and talking about all of it. I'll be back here in a few hours if you still wanna try and get me grounded."

"Your sister's not going to ground you," Theo says, and Ruby grins up at him.

It's definitely a trick. He's fallen for similar tricks before. He shouldn't this time.

"If you're not back here," Theo says, and Ruby laughs, half-tackles him in a hug, runs past him, and jumps out a window. He doesn't hear a thud or yelp of pain, so he assumes it's probably fine.

He hadn't even thought to check outside, had he? Hopefully, she'll keep her word and he won't have to. Not much else to do now that she's already escaped.

---

When he walks back to the throne room, Saccharina's holding a chocolate frog with a look of fascination and disgust, Primsy's already got one in a box that she's attempting to feed sugar-grass, and Liam is visibly holding himself back from target practice, hands twitching towards his crossbow.

"I must say," he overhears one of the Tartguard say as he takes his place by Saccharina's left side. (Gooey's at the right, still. Had very, very easily won that argument.) "While these pranks are quite improper, you can't deny they're incredibly humorous!"

"Good sir!" says another Tartguard, and one of the marauders behind him rolls her eyes, but has a smile on her face too. "I have to say, I agree. It was nice to have a bit of liveliness around here!"

One of the Fructeran diplomats is upset, but soothed easily after his partner reminds him that he can tell this story before the Imperial Court, always so focused on adventures. The Dairy Islanders seem more excited to avoid courtly talk than anything. One Meatlander is holding a chocolate frog with a look that can only be described as adoring, even as it shits in his hand.

All-in-all, the atmosphere of the room is rather...jovial. Not at all like the quiet mournfulness of the first week of their reign. There's still the holes in some of the walls from their siege, and there's still the palpable loss of the chancellor and the princess, but people seem happy. People are laughing.

When he goes back to the secret passageway--opened apparently by twisting a statue of Sapphria so that she's facing the window--Ruby's there, shifting on her feet.

"You do have to return the shoes," Theo says, and Ruby's shoulders slump. "But--"

"Yes!" Ruby says. "I knew you'd get it. Well, I hoped you'd get it. Gooey's mellowed you out."

"I--that's--we're not talking about Gooey," Theo blusters. "The shoes need to go back."

Ruby snorts. "I did that so we'd get new shoes. Dad told me all about trench foot."

"What?" Theo says. "That's not even a little bit of an appropriate topic for conversation. Especially at court. If you'd just go to your lessons--"

"I don't even have lessons here," Ruby says, and he's so distracted by responding to that with an emphatic 'you should' that he doesn't notice the tray of whipped cream until it's already in his face.

"Bye, Theo!" Ruby calls, already dashing away from him.

He sighs. "Bye, Ruby."

#acocweek #theobald gumbar #ruby rocks #a crown of candy #dimension 20 #my fics

15 notes · View notes

wolf-and-bard · 3 years ago

Text

@winter-fir: Sofia, my darling, this was written as a birthday present and with you in mind. Thank you for being such a delightful, funny, mad scientist genius friend, I love you. I wanted to give you some Arnaghad/Erland fluff and it didn’t turn out fluffy at all, it’s a rambly mess and I’m sorry. It did turn into a continuation and a prompt fill, I hope you don’t mind. 😂 I also hope you ate a lot of cake today ❤

Steal My Heart Again

Prompt: Isolation

Relationships: Arnaghad/Erland of Larvik

Rating: E

Content Warnings: apocalypse-appropriate sentiments (aka hopelessness), explicit sexual content, swear words, minor character death (past)

Summary: This is a sequel to Drown With Me If You Can. Erland and Arnaghad have made it to the safety of Kaer Seren’s cellars and have to face life during the apocalypse. They cope in different ways. In which: Erland wallows some more and Arnaghad wants cuddles.

Word Count: ~3k

AO3 Link I @witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

In the latter years of the 1130s, a conflict between the Northern Realms of Redania, Kaedwen, and Kovir and Poviss sprouted up in which Kovir and Poviss petitioned to gain sovereignty.

Erland pauses to ponder his next words and in that pause, becomes aware of something stirring.

Witchers usually sniff and listen before something breeches their line of sight, but with his beloved bear, it’s even more intense. Erland can hear the giant’s footsteps pound in tune with his own heart as soon as Arnaghad rises from his meditative perch at least four rooms down the hallway. Erland can smell the endorphins that chase each other through Arnaghad’s bloodstream as soon as he calls out for Erland, still far away. They have a different scent for every person and witcher picking up on them.

For Erland, Arnaghad’s contentedness smells like toasted white bread and strawberry jam. Conversely, Arnaghad is reminded of the concoction of oils and herbs he treats his old bearskin with so that it retains its texture whenever Erland smiles. Everything about Arnaghad is intense, as is the emotional knot Erland carries tucked between his lungs, the one that is made up of strings of the past and present that have become inevitably entangled. There is no easy emotion here and so Erland shoves them all aside in favour of putting down his next lines.

It came to pass that, under the supervision of the Hierarch of Novigrad, then Walter Beda, the rulers of the three countries met to negotiate the agreement. King Radovid III of Redania and King Benda of Kaedwen sailed on the Redanian flagship Alata to Lan Exeter where Gedovius Troyden, then Earl and later King of Kovir, met them, accompanied by his wife Gemma. Thus, the First Treaty of Lan Exeter was forged, and Kovir and Poviss gained the right to call themselves a kingdom.

Erland blows on the ink and the smell intensifies so much that his mouth waters. He glances to the side to see the bear appear in the hallway.

“There you are,” Arnaghad rumbles when he arrives at Erland’s small chamber which used to be a storage for barrels in need of repair. He shoulders through the narrow doorway without knocks or ceremony, and his bare feet slap against the stone, warmed by an underground pool of water which is suffused by heat from the earth’s core. With the White Frost raging outside the keep of Kaer Seren - in whose basement they currently reside in - even that heat will fade and freeze, but it has not been touched yet. They have not been touched yet, they made it to the safety of this hidden hearth and it nearly cost them their lives. “What are you doing, birdie?”

“Writing,” Erland says absent-mindedly and growls when Arnaghad’s hulking form blots out the light of half the torches as he approaches the makeshift desk. It’s a splintered plank of wood propped up on two empty barrels, a third one – overturned – functioning as the chair. The rest of the room is bare save for the rusted grates in which the torches reside and a wicker basket full of half-rotten corks. The griffins used to collect them to fashion floormats for the baths with. The griffins that now lay buried under rubble, only a story or two above Erland’s and Arnaghad’s heads. He tries not to think about that as he writes, writes, writes.

“Why, thank you dearest beloved, I had not figured that out for myself.”

Erland shrugs and bends further over his page. He is halfway through his account and he has to keep going while the words still come easily and his hand hasn’t cramped up. It tends to do that a lot these days, whether from writing, shovelling endless masses of snow or from stroking Arnaghad’s oversized cock. The first one is a need to preserve what might otherwise get lost, the second a necessity so their one exit from Kaer Seren doesn’t get blocked completely. The third activity is all pleasure and indulgence and re-learning the body of a man he thought lost to him for so long.

Arnaghad, the obnoxious idiot, steps closer and squints over Erland’s shoulder which truly sucks up the rest of the flickering illumination. His burly hand comes to rest on Erland’s head – now freshly shaven into his preferred undercut again with his hair woven into complex patterns Arnaghad yet remembers from his home – and his chin presses against Erland’s temple.

“’Kovir’s Independence and the First Treaty of Lan Exeter’,” Arnaghad reads out loud from the top of the page. “The fuck does this have to do with you? Are you trying to write a world history?”

“You forget where we are,” Erland murmurs and finishes his sentence, placing a small asterisk with a number ten atop the last word for yet another footnote.

“I haven’t.” Arnaghad plucks the feather from Erland’s hand and rises a little, takes the bent fingers into his own and strokes along them to straighten them out, one by one. Erland sighs and sags against the bear, letting fatigue wash over him, wash away his ambition for the day. “You forget where you are. Who you are and who you are with.”

“I might have,” he admits sheepishly and closes his eyes, listens to the faint gurgle of Arnaghad’s stomach. It’s a simple, well-crafted lie. Erland never forgets and how could he?

“I understood the journal,” Arnaghad says. “Well, I wasn’t willing to give my life for it as you were, but I understood why you wrote it. The ice might melt, the beasts might return and for that, whoever is to inhabit this world may need the information you captured. But this is unfathomable.”

“Of course, it would be to you.”

“What is that supposed to mean? Are you calling me stupid?”

“No,” Erland says and melts as Arnaghad’s hands let go of his to gently massage his shoulders. It’s only when the static pain slowly ebbs away that Erland realizes just how long he’s been sitting hunched over his notes. Each word an investment with so little parchment leftover.

“Then what? Why are you doing this?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Erland sighs and ducks out of his lover’s grip to get up and pop his joints. Avoiding Arnaghad’s gaze, Erland extinguishes the torches with a flurry of precise Aards and makes to leave the room.

The bear wouldn’t understand in a million years why Erland writes the chronicle, would probably call it a waste of energy and resources. There is utility in writing a bestiary, there is only sentiment in writing a history. And perhaps a flicker of hope that whatever civilization rises from the rubble of the Ice Age will not repeat their forebearer’s mistakes. Except no. Erland may be an idealist at heart, but not enough that this hope has a chance of threading through the fabric of his motivation.

His motivation is woven in entirely selfish materials. It’s distraction, it’s occupation, it’s indulging in self-pity and nostalgia, melancholy and pride. It’s to keep himself from spiralling into depression and forgetfulness, to keep his brain from deterioration. Between fucking and eating and sleeping, Erland needs mental stimulation more than exercise.

Arnaghad, on the other hand, spends his hours in meditation and weapon-less drills, doing push-ups by the hundreds, handstands by the hours, pull-ups by the thousands. His massive body, in spite of the lethargy and sluggishness his form might suggest, needs constant movement. To prevent muscle atrophy and to keep himself alert and strong for whatever they have to face.

For now, what they have to face is endless isolation. Just the two of them, a slowly but steadily dwindling supply of dried meats and herbs, pickled vegetables and fruit, and barrels upon barrels of ale. Most of them brewed with the recipe Keldar perfected over decades of teaching young griffins to hold their alcohol alongside their swords.

Keldar.

Erland tries not to think of the old griffin master, especially tries not to think about how they found his body, a frozen statue before the crumpled gates of Kaer Seren, half-buried in snow by the time that Arnaghad and Erland fought their way to the keep. He’d survived the avalanche, had stayed at the school, and Erland had abandoned him. Him too.

Dear old Keldar, dutiful to his last moments. It was what every griffin would have done, every one except for Erland it seemed.

“Birdie,” Arnaghad says, tapping the side of Erland’s skull where his griffin tattoo decorates his shaved skin. They walk side by side, down the endless winding corridors of Kaer Seren’s basement system towards the centre where the heat is the most intense. It’s also where they set up their meagre bedroll, a heap of old linens with Erland’s quilt and Arnaghad’s bearskin on top. “You’re getting lost in your thoughts again.”

“What were you saying?” Erland asks and pushes open the door to their bedroom. Slap, slap, go Arnaghad’s feet as he enters while Erland’s follows after him. He wears both their socks, still more prone to the cold even down here.

“Nothing,” Arnaghad says. He stops in the middle of their room – all grey brick cast in flame from the torches Erland managed to keep perpetually burning. It’s a trick he perfected back when the signs where first developed where he can attach the power of a sign to an object. So, he tethered an Igni to each of the torches, and he did not tell Arnaghad that this constantly pulls on his own energy. The bear would worry and call that too a waste of resources. But Erland would rather be tired by firelight than wide-awake in perpetual darkness, calculating in his head the days that remain to them. “Come here, you look fatigued.”

Erland catches Arnaghad’s steady gaze, darkened by his heavy brow and chiselled face, a small smile tugging on his oh so stoic lips. His hair is neatly bound at the base of his skull, two ceremonial mini-braids framing his cheeks to either side. He wears naught but a simple set of beige linen clothes these days, linens that tug and pull at his bulging muscles. He’s more than a brick wall, he’s as unmoving as the very ground they stand on. Arnaghad cannot be taken apart with brute force, it takes more subtler means of attack to undo him. Erland knows them all intimately and perhaps that is exactly why Arnaghad opens his arms to him then. Erland sighs. He has the rest of Radovid III’s reign to chronicle and his stomach is still on fast-mode. The only reason he came here in the first place was… to… Erland sneezes and the torches flicker. He knows when he’s defeated.

“I am tired,” he admits and crosses the distance between them. If ever there is such a space, unbridgeable at times, invisible at others, it is because Erland put it there. Not intentionally and not always happily, but if things went Arnaghad’s way, they would be close always. The man that envelops Erland in a tight hug has a constant hunger for touch and affection, and Erland has trouble having that piece slide into the greater mosaic he has constructed of his lover over the past centuries.

‘You’re getting old and sappy,’ Erland said to him once, three orgasms into the night and Arnaghad still insisted on holding him close. ‘Sappy and cuddly. I do not recognize you.’

‘Nor I myself,’ Arnaghad replied. If they were other people they might have attributed it to love, how it had overcome everything, how, here at the end of all things, it was them against the apocalypse. How they needed to hold onto each other for there was nothing else to hold onto. But Erland is an idealist, not a romantic, and Arnaghad a pragmatist, not an intellectual, and so that was where the conversation died then.

“You should rest more,” Arnaghad says.

“What a waste of time,” Erland replies and rises to the tips of his toes, uses Arnaghad’s bull neck for purchase to pull himself up. They’re barely eye to eye, but that doesn’t matter when he can finally tilt his head and kiss the tiny frown from Arnaghad’s face. It’s a matter of last resort as well as personal pleasure. Erland is in no mood to argue about his newfound hobby and he does want. Wants so much, so deeply it aches to the core of his bones. They’re still working through their differences – and that, he suspects, will take longer than any written history might – but with each day, Erland can allow himself a little more. He can allow himself to slot their lips together and push his tongue deeply into Arnaghad’s mouth, can allow himself to melt into his bear’s arms and let his rumbling groan rattle his skeleton. Erland smiles at the zealous manner in which Arnaghad’s whole body responds to the kiss. His hands, splayed across Erland’s shoulder blades, tighten, his cock stirs when Erland licks and sucks and adds a moan of his own, his shoulders rise. He’s so passionate, has so much to give, something that Erland has trouble keeping up with.

If half of this witcher had been the one leading the bear school, where could it have climbed to? What could it have accomplished if the abysses between its members hadn’t been quite so gaping? Erland tries not to wonder, tries not to rewrite the course of time in endless thought spirals, but it’s so hard. It’s another reason why he has to focus on the actual past. Because if he doesn’t remind himself that it is set in stone, if he doesn’t capture it with his own words, he starts to trail down the paths of forgotten ‘what ifs’, of unforgettable ‘what ifs’, of the ‘what ifs’ that are neither forgotten nor unforgettable, that are too daring to even consider. Erland loses himself in thought and it is then perhaps a blessing that he can lose himself in Arnaghad’s embrace instead.

“Do you think we could have dinner tonight?” Arnaghad asks after they part, even though he knows the answer. It’s worrying, a true sign that not even Arnaghad has an endless reservoir of energy. His hunger is much more vicious than Erland’s and it’s getting harder and harder for him to wait the intervals they settled on in order to stretch the food as long as they can. Usually, he doesn’t ask. Usually, his voice doesn’t sound so small. Fuck. It’s heart-breaking.

“Not yet, big bear, I’m sorry,” Erland sighs and noses along Arnaghad’s jaw, then sinks back down to his feet and presses his face into the crook of his neck. Wraps his arms around Arnaghad’s middle. Is proud when he doesn’t do the mental math right then and there. No, he won’t torment himself and he won’t succumb to the slight growl Arnaghad gives. Whether it’s from his throat or his stomach doesn’t really matter. The sound pierces Erland’s armour, but it doesn’t shatter. He’s still strong. Can still be strong. “Do you want me to distract you?”

“Ah, birdie, didn’t we just talk about how you’re tired?”

“I’d make a joke about being hungry myself,” Erland mutters, then licks over Arnaghad’s pulse point insistently. “But last I checked, your sense of humour is still as barren as the Korath desert.”

Arnaghad chuckles and the motion slightly shakes Erland where he rests against the bear’s chest. He lets his hand slide down to gingerly palm across Arnaghad’s half-hard cock and it rises to the touch, firms up. He closes his eyes and sucks on his own bottom lip. So easy to please.

“Says the man who thinks fun is a torture device,” Arnaghad retorts on a sigh and as such, it lacks an edge. Erland deftly plucks at the fastenings of the linen trousers and slips his hand into them. Arnaghad’s flesh is hot and solid, too big to wrap his fingers around.

“Alas,” Erland murmurs against the skin of Arnaghad’s neck, cranes his own to nibble on the bear’s jawbone, tracing it with his tongue. “My hand is tried from writing all morning.”

“All day more like,” Arnaghad grumbles.

“Even worse. It’s of no use now.” And with that, he gently guides Arnaghad to the corner where their makeshift bed is, bids him to sit down and takes his own place in Arnaghad’s lap with his belly pressed to the warm floor. Propped up on his elbows, Erland peers up at Arnaghad. From this low, the man seems taller than a mountain, his eyes far away, half-lidded and hazy and Erland smiles. He is tired, yes, so very tired, and that means he is sloppy. Sloppy as he descends over the head of Arnaghad’s massive cock which tastes salty and musky and he laps it all up he goes with lazy drags of his tongue. His lips are loose and his hands looser as they fondle Arnaghad’s cock at the base, toy with his balls.

Before long, spit leaks out of the corners of his mouth and runs down Arnaghad’s length and the low moans of the bear thunder through the hall, echo off the walls, loud enough to raise the dead, Erland thinks sometimes. He wishes he could revive his brothers and sons by cock-sucking alone, but the world has never been that simple. And it won’t ever be now. But if he can give Arnaghad pleasure and himself something to get distracted by then that should be enough.

Erland gets drunk on Arnaghad’s cock, chokes on it as he ruts into the floor without shame. They come within seconds of each other and Erland drinks up what he can, lets the rest spill over Arnaghad’s lap, then cleans that with his tongue too. After, he falls asleep there, curled into a ball in Arnaghad’s lap and it is enough. For now.

#witcher #tw3 #witcher rarepair summer bingo #jo does wrsb #arnaghad x erland #erland/arnaghad #isolation #sequel #my writing #cw oral sex #cw hopelessness #cw swear words #arnaghad #erland of larvik #minor character death

16 notes · View notes

thevoilinauttheory · 3 years ago

Text

The Great Eight

[ In lieu of the Rising event ending tomorrow - and myself, just now finishing it - I had some words I wanted to get out.

I get this type of nostalgia - it hurts, it physically hurts my chest; I feel sick to my stomach, and I just want to cry. I’ve asked others if they ever feel this way, but I’ve never gotten a yes to it.

The Rising always gives me this feeling. It’s be eight years since I first picked up XIV. Eight whole years. That’s a slap to the face, it’s been so long and it feels so short. I wish I could give people the same experiences and feeling I had for this game - the pain and happiness this nostalgia brings me. When I say this game means so much to me, it’s not an exaggeration. This game changed my life - I wish to share it a little bit with you. I touched on some of it in the past, but here I’m laying it all out. ]

[ I first started playing in 2013, when a friend recommended the game to me shortly after the game’s rerelease. They were ecstatic to have another player join them, and I owe them a lot for the experiences they gave me. My very first character was Raramlah Ramlah - she was a paladin, because that’s what I mained in WoW. I realized shortly that a tank probably wasn’t the best way to go, but also that my computer at the time couldn’t handle playing it, due to the graphics.

I gave it another shot in 2014, that’s when I made Danny Harold. He was the first character I ever got to level 50. I absolutely loved the game, when I wasn’t sitting idly for my friends to come online as I had with Raramlah; when I picked it up of my own accord. I remember I was in the hospital when I first picked it back up, when I first made him and leveled him through Gridania. But I was still going intermittedly between it and WoW. I missed the first Rising due to ignorance.

2015 comes around, and I’m in a stressful place. I just started a new job, and I’m finally able to live on my own with little issues from my disabilites. However, my apartment complex didn’t have internet, and so I’d take my laptop to Starbucks and sit there until they closed playing WoW instead. I wanted to spend what little time I had on the internet with the friends I already had grown close to. Year 2 went on without me. But it still wasn’t all bad. Near the end of 2015, Maximiloix Voilinaut was created - and when I started up my XIV tumblr account under “ishgardianscholar”. See, I had made it to Heavensward on Danny when I found out that someone I had met through a friend was starting up a new character for the purpose of RP. I thought to myself “I want an Ishgardian character” - and rolled a new one. It was a new adventure, a clean slate, with a couple of friends I knew from WoW to join me.

Here comes 2016... and WoW had let me down. My disabilites came back full force, and I was left bed bound and reliant on partial disability from my workplace while waiting for SSDI to start kicking into effect. My roommates did little to help take care of the house we were renting, lied to me about their incomes, and forced me to use what little money I was getting to pay for everything myself. I’m short a total of 2000$ because of it. But. But. That was the best year of my fucking life. It ruined me, that year ruined my life, but it was the happiest I had ever been. Lothaire Voilinaut was first conceived and Maximiloix became my pride and joy as a character, I found the class I wanted to keep playing - I made friends, so many of them! So, so many of them! And I loved them, and I still do! I miss them terribly. If I could relive one year of my life... it would be that year. What I would give just to feel that way again - because I had never felt it since. I didn’t realize until Year 3′s Rising came around, how nostalgic just the few short times and experiences were to me. Because I was met with two things... the first song that truly captured me in Final Fantasy games (Prelude), and the first song I ever heard in the game itself (A New Hope). I cried there. Music has always hit me so hard, and I never realized just how much this game meant to me until then. This was how I knew I would stay - that XIV had my heart for good.

2017, during the release of Stormblood, I went homeless. I had wanted so badly to see my first expansion release - and only witnessed second hand “Raubahn EX”. My friends moved on without me, and I was left alone again to start playing. But I told myself already. XIV had my heart, there was no reason to go back to WoW. So I didn’t. I didn’t, and I don’t regret it. This is when I truly started playing Lothaire fully - and when I met my spouse, he became my main. I made it to Year 4, and cried just as much.

2018 - with the loss of friends, did I find new ones. It wasn’t the best time of my life, but I wouldn’t trade the memories for a thing. Year 5 came and went faster than I could blink, but that was it. I heard the music, I remembered my first Rising, I remembered all the times I had before. And I cried.

2019 started off rough. I moved across the country and had a hard time finding a place to live. I got it down, started a new job... and made it to the release of Shadowbringers. I had grown so much since I first started - and the expansion release was everything I wanted it to be, regardless of the issues that came with it (though I’ve been told that it was a far smoother release than the others). I was so excited... and I was not let down. XIV upheld its standards and presented to me a game worthy of pushing onto my friends no matter how annoyed they got with me about it (looking at you @rose-color-boy). Everything about it was a pure masterpiece, people think I’m exaggerating. But this game had done so much for me, that finally, now, I got to witness something I always wanted to. Sure, I didn’t have many friends to start the expansion with... but the story captivated me immediately. Year 6... and I cried.

2020. There wasn’t much to say about it, I was stuck inside all year and I hit a bad patch during the end of it, but... Year 7. It hit me like a truck. It gave me goosebumps, it gave me laughs, and ultimately, it gave me tears. I actually sobbed, this time. Remembering everything I gone through hurt me so badly, the nostalgia was coming in hard. But I knew, in the end, this game would always be here for me. This game had wormed its way into my heart accidentally, and yet I feel like I couldn’t live without it.

This year. Perhaps it didn’t hit me as hard - I still cried. This game means so much to me. So, so much. It hurts, it really and physically hurts how much it means to me. This game made everything in my stressful life so much easier, littered the pain with good memories. I can recall bad places I was in, and associate it with something good that happened to me in the game. 2020 - I got knee surgery... but 5.3 had just released and holy shit. My spouse got a little annoyed at me that the only thing I was listening to was the theme of that last battle (To the Edge). It helped me get through it, the pain and the misery I felt from not being able to walk. 2019 - Work was driving my depression in deep, and I didn’t want to live and continue the pain I was feeling... but I got to the end of 5.0 and only wanted more. I wanted to know what happened next. I still remember that one cutscene, how they got me attached to a minor character so quickly and ripped her away just as fast; and the first dungeon? Experiencing the Trust System, and going through this intense battle on a grand scale with the help of the friends they kept on the sidelines for so long. 2018 - My life was monotonous and I had three other people living with me in my one-bedroom apartment. One of my roommate’s ex’s was now stalking him around my apartment, and work was becoming physically taxing on my legs. But I remember how much fun I had doing maps - and the release of the Tsukuyomi fight? That whole scene there? Oh, wow, it was so bittersweet. The fight was beautiful, the music was haunting, everything about it. Not to mention the ending solo-instances and Ghymlit? The Burn? Omega? The Four Lords? As much as I disliked them (due to my computer issues), even Rabanastre was memorable. 2017 - I was homeless, forced to work a job my body couldn’t handle. I met my spouse, though. I became heavily invested with my tumblr account, doing a full re-write of it all. While I wasn’t much of a fan of the expansion itself, there were some places that really opened my eyes. Azim Steppes? So beautiful - and gotta hand Y’shtola the award for sickest burn. Then I heard my favorite piece of music, and the most nostalgic for me when it comes to SB, Skalla’s theme (Far From Home).

Lastly, I know this has been long. But I thank everyone around me for being so supportive and kind - I may not be in a good place, but know that every good thing that happens will be associated to this moment. I’ll look back on Year 8 and go “my security was compromised, and my anxiety ran high, but there were these people here who supported me on tumblr, that kept my blog running strong”. I will remember my roleplays, I will remember the music and scenery - even now, I’m getting nostalgic about Shadowbringers, and Endwalker hasn’t even come out yet! So thank you. Here’s to year number 8 - 8 whole years of XIV being in my life. It may not have been that long for many of you, some of you, this might be your first year; hell! Some of you, it’s been longer! But know that this community has helped me so much, and I can’t wait to continue being a part of it. Here’s to the eventual tears Year 9 will bring me! ]

#ooc #ffxiv #the rising #sorry for the long post #but there were so many feelings i had to get out before i wrote my prompt #tl;dr #i love you all and thank you for making my experiences with this game the best thing to ever happen to me #thank you for making this game mean so much to me

16 notes · View notes

stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland · 4 years ago

Text

Unreleased songs - ɟ

Hi, babies 👋🏼. Long time no see 😂 As I said I would, ta-daah!

So, honeys, today’s topic is about unreleased songs as the title of the post suggests, but that’s not what you think. Let me explain. For years I’ve been investigating the world of celebrities, the world of Hollywood, and the more time passes, the more things I’m able to discover, even if ‘slowly’ because I work. As I mentioned in the ‘Award shows’ post, thanks to the time I still have for a while because I’m on vacation for a few more days, I finally had time to find out some information about ‘who?’, ‘how?’, and ‘why?’ we’re getting blessed with so many unreleased songs. I haven’t found an answer to everything yet, but I’m working on it. For now, I’ll tell you what I know and my theories. If any of you know anything more, please, PLEASE DM me: @fa-by.

Let’s go in order. ‘Who?’:

I think that like me, many of you have always wondered ‘Who’s leaking all these songs? Is it a hacker? Is it the artist’s management? Is it the artist themself?’. The answer to these questions is unfortunately still only what I think. For me, it’s the artist’s label. Labels are usually the ones that own the master recording copyrights. [If you want to know more about the subject, I wrote a post about it: ‘How the music world works’. If you’re interested, Mari did this very cool thing for me. All you have to do is click on the #f anon on her blog to see all my posts (I know I sounded like a grandma, but I said it’s cool because I didn’t know it could be done. I’m pretty good with tech in general, but I’m still pretty new to the Tumblr world, okay? Don’t make fun of me 🤓🤣)]

As I also explained in that post, a recording agreement states that the label becomes the owner of all the master recordings recorded by the artist during the period of the agreement. And yes, this also includes unreleased recordings. And that’s why I’m very convinced that it’s the label. Labels are at the tip of the pyramid, and they are the ones who make every decision about their artists. Managements, agents, publicists, etc., only execute directives. So I think they’re the ones leaking those songs through their own IT departments.

It also depends on the cases and why, but sometimes instead, they even paid someone outside, hackers or ordinary people, to do it. The same methods they used to ‘hack’ and spread even false personal data and information about their artists. The reasons vary of course. They may have leaked a song because their artist hadn’t released something in a while and to keep fans engaged. They may have done it to see the fans’ response to that genre of song and if they’ve vibed with it to be able to choose the kind of direction for their artist to take for the new album and next single. They may have done so with a song they knew they were going to officially release just to get more attention on the song itself (example: ‘Love Incredible’ and ‘First Man’). They may have done it simply for publicity and to get people talking about their artist. Really, they may have done so for all sorts of reasons.

This, however, happened mostly in the past. Now, based on what I’ve discovered, I’ve realized that there’s also another reason why they do it. And this reason, leads us to the next question: ‘How?’

I’ve already anticipated how they did in the past and sometimes still do. By using their IT departments or by paying someone outside to do it for them. But I haven’t yet explained how they do it now, which leads to my discovery.

*Little story for you first*🙃 (#donthateme)

I was simply scrolling to see what new music was released and if there was any interesting news. The typical “I was minding my own business when”, you know? Well, that’s how I came across ‘Party Animal’.

I can literally picture you saying to me: “But, Faby, Party Animal is an old song!”. Yes, it is. Party Animal is a 2017 song sung by Charly Black & Luis Fonsi. But did you know that a remix with Camila on it should have been released and that it got scrapped?? 🤯🤯🤯🤯 That’s what I came across! In the snippet to be more precise. I knew the remix existed [I also talked about it in one of my last posts to reply to an Anon], but I’d never listened to its snippet, so imagine my surprise when I found it in front of me out of nowhere! And they even created a mashup between her snippet and the original song to see how the remix would’ve turned out to be. I’m gonna put a piece of the mashup with Camila’s snippet at the end of the post for you to listen to.

Party Animal brought me to the snippets of ‘It’s Only Natural’ ft. Skrillex, the original demo of ‘Sangria Wine’ which together with Pharrell, was initially also supposed to have J Balvin and Young Thug on it, ‘Pretending’ by Lauren, and many others that I didn’t yet know existed, including those I knew about and that I listened to again, like for example the first version of ‘Havana’, that is the first real original demo with Starrah, or ‘Who Can I Run To’ by 5H, or ‘If It Ain’t Me’ by Dua Lipa ft. Normani (leaked unreleased song, recorded for Dua’s Future Nostalgia album), etc., etc.

What happened then? Thanks to those snippets and to the re-listening of all the ones I already knew, I resumed investigating as I’d already started doing this summer, and I finally discovered this:

*end of the little story*

There are sites. Hackers sites that sell these songs. Yes, you read that correctly. SELL. These sites sell unreleased and exclusive music from any artist. From top A singers to less famous and unknown singers. Anyone can register and anyone can buy the songs. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, if you’re lucky enough to have A LOT of money to throw around, then those sites are for you. These sites are not cheap. Some of them charge you money even when you just register.

Do you want examples to better understand? Okay, let’s talk about our Camren.

Remember when I submitted the post with Lauren’s ‘Inside’ studio version on December 17th? Remember how many of you felt guilty to listen to it even though you were happy to do it and even though I told you that Lauren herself said it wouldn’t be on the album? Well, do you wanna know the real reason we got this leaked? Because a Camila fan BOUGHT it from one of those websites and released it as a ‘Christmas gift’ for all of us!

Do you know how on July 21 we had ‘Curious’, ‘Cleopatra’, and ‘Unforgettable’? How on August 22 we had ‘Just Like You’ ft. Jack Ü? How on September 3 we had ‘Come When I Call’ ft. Pharrell Williams, ‘Taxi’, and ‘Eyes on You’? And how the next day, the 4th, we had ‘Terrified’? The only reason we’ve been blessed with all of these unreleased songs by Camila, is because people BOUGHT them from those sites exactly as it happened with Inside!

We’re about to be fed with a lot more, guys. You see, this is another thing I discovered. These websites [I only know of four at the moment, and honestly? It was pretty easy to find them, so it won’t be a problem for you either. But please, please, please guys, don’t ask me to tell you the sites here publicly because I won’t. I don’t want any problems.], these hackers, sometimes release snippets for free to spark buyer interest. These snippets then end up on the internet, and that’s how we ‘mere mortals’ also learn about the existence and titles of songs discarded from albums. But most of the time, even the snippets have to be bought because they’re about highly desired songs. This happens because, for example, maybe an artist has mentioned them in an interview and therefore fans want them.

I’ll give you a practical example. Remember when Camila talked about The Boy? We obviously all freaked out because not only was it a song written by Ed Sheeran that she rewrote almost completely, but mostly because we WANTED and WANT to hear it. Same thing that happened with God Is a Woman. So what did the hackers do? They put the snippets up for sale because they were both very requested songs. Once the snippets were sold and spread well, they put the songs up for sale in full. And do you wanna know how much The Boy is on sale? $3,000 on one unreleased selling site, and $3,500 on another one [Prices I read from the comments of some accounts that are registered on those sites]. I wasn’t kidding when I said they aren’t cheap… Although there are songs that cost less, such as ‘Thinkin Bout One’ (song discarded from the album ‘Camila’) which is currently on sale for $300. Still waaay too much and pretty over the top for my ass.

If you happen to see snippets of Camren’s unreleased songs or 5H’s around, it’s only thanks and because these websites are selling them. Unfortunately, there’s no possibility of having them in full unless someone pays for them first.

And all this leads us to the last question: ‘Why?’

Why? Very simple answer: for money. As I said I explained in my ‘How the music world works’ post [and I’m truly sorry to bring this up again, but it really makes sense with what I’m saying and if you don’t understand what I’m talking about now, then I suggest you go read that first and then come back here], labels buy some songs for the album from authors and ghostwriters, and invest on the artist by giving them an advance to make that album. This advance is mainly reserved to pay for the recording of the album, and this means paying for the recording costs, which includes the payment of A LOT of other things that I explained there. What interests us in this case, is that the recording costs also include all those songs that were later discarded from an album.

The labels paid to have the artist do those songs, and since they weren’t released, they didn’t make any money off those songs. Neither the labels nor the artists who recorded them. Or rather, the labels have certainly regained the money invested to make them thanks to the recoupment of the recording costs. Either immediately, or in any case later thanks to cross-collateralization. But the artist? They just lost money, and they both earned no royalties or licenses precisely because those songs were never released.

So what did they come up with to make money on those songs too? They put them up for sale. Theory’s time: In my opinion, labels use hackers because they know how not to be tracked. Think about it.

I’ll give you an example. If you were to create a site, would you know how to protect it? Would you know what data is coming in and out of your website? Would you know which functions are constantly running and which are not? Would you know which programs transmit data externally and which ones don’t? Would you know which programs are suspicious? Would you know to create alternative algorithms, security plugins, and serious firewalls that prevent unauthorized access? I could go on all day, but if your answer is no, then I guess you get my point.

They use external hackers. People outside their IT departments in such a way as not to create any kind of connection between them. They use them as they would use publishers, distributors, and collection agencies with an officially released song all at once. It’s a give-and-take. The hackers take the necessary security measures and create the sites, the labels pass the unreleased songs to them, and the hackers put them up for sale. Once sold, the hackers get their share and the labels get the biggest percentage. It’s actually brilliant if you think about it.

Now let’s move on to the last small part of this post.

Do the artists know that their unreleased songs are for sale? I think they really do. And I’ll tell you more. I think they have deals with their own label to get their share of sales as well. I believe that they’re also themselves (with label approval of course) who choose which one to put up for sale and which one to keep to use in the future, whether it’s for an album or simply to take and use part of the lyrics from that song for a new one.

And then, think about it for a moment. Do you really believe that if someone else had ‘stolen’ them and put them up for sale, the labels wouldn’t have noticed? That they wouldn’t immediately have shut down their sites and take action since it’s not a single song? And I’m also talking about legal measures that they would have taken together with the authors of those songs since they, the labels, are the owners of the master recording copyrights, and the authors are the owners of the composition copyrights. Come on, my friends. Do you have any idea how powerful major labels are? But anyway.

Do I think we have a problem? Do I think all of this could lead to problems for the girls for their future sales? Nope. I honestly think this is just more publicity for them. I think thanks to these songs, people/fans can even more and really see how talented they are, especially in lyrics. Lauren for example, who still hasn’t graced us with her album. These songs are like appetizers while waiting for the main course: LJ1.

And now I’m really done 😄 I remind you that all these unreleased songs for sale are scraps of their albums, scraps of remixes and collaborations, and scraps in general, so they’re not really harming them by selling them. Don’t let yourself get unnecessary heart attacks, please🤣

If you have any questions, as usual, all you have to do is ask. I send you lots of love with virtual hugs 🤗 Stay safe. Stay patient. Be kind to yourself and others. I love you, babies. As usual, always with love, F ❤️

As promised, this is the mashup piece with Camila’s snippet:

Still here, hi 👋🏼😊 aaand super bonus for you just because I love you. I know this is gonna literally make you scream, jump, cry, and I mean, it will literally get you out of your minds exactly as it did to me. I present to you a demo of No Way (my second favorite 5H song) ONLY SUNG BY CAMREN!!!!!! It’s only 42 seconds, and the only difference is actually Camila who sings also Normani’s part before hers, but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, it’s heavenly 😻😍 Thank me later and for now, just enjoy, my children, just enjoy:

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

___

Party Animal

youtube

I have the post the audio apart from this so you can hear it too

#submission #f anon #self reblog after this

57 notes · View notes

vivifrage · 3 years ago

Note

top 5 fanfics, perhaps?

Oh man. I'll try to go for the ones I keep thinking back to... Major nostalgia trip for Jaxx time, be prepared for the odd fandoms I was in Back In The Day. For a lil' bonus I'll go for different fandoms for all of them.

1. The Earth Diary of Toby Hamee - Animorphs. Longfic for my favorite tertiary character? And gives her internal conflict? That treats the Hork-Bajir as an actual culture and doesn't reduce them to "vegetarians who aren't terribly bright?" Incredible. Love it. I stored a copy of it somewhere on my computer when I heard FFN was getting in trouble.

2. Sugati - District 9. Already we can see a trend of "oooh, nonhumans." This fic really hit the spot for me back in the day, nice and pretty chill with a touch of conflict and interesting tech, and the author's DeviantArt had cool illustrations. Also I love the grandpa character and the doctor. Delightful. When I'm really aching for a comfort read, it's there.

3. The Spirit of Redemption - Mass Effect. The funny thing is, looking back, I pick so much of it apart. It's written well enough, it's got quite the sprawl and somehow manages to juggle a huge ensemble cast, but it's... iffy if you're not willing to be complacent with some stuff. I could grumble about how the asari are handled, or the one (1) bisexual character who's like, the entirety of the queer rep in a 3 million word series, or how dismissive the characters are of things like civilians or therapy. Or even weird little things like "awfully convenient for the human woman to magically lose all hair except what's on her head." But the truth is, I pored over this beast in high school. I got invested. And sometimes I still think of some of the characters. Enjoy them, even! I don't know if I can call it a favorite. But top 5 for staying in my head and being there to lose myself in when I was younger even as I got increasingly uncomfortable with a lot of what it took for granted.

4. Tales From The White Palace - Hollow Knight. Another big similarity between the fics I'm picking is, as I mentioned above, stuff I get lost in. Tales does a fantastic job fleshing out a world to dive right into and get invested in. Like Sugati, it's a comfort read, and I'll go back and grab whatever chapter(s) have the right vibe I need. Truly the mac and cheese bar of HK fanfic.

5. Ghosts of the Federation - FTL: Faster Than Light. Oh god this fic kills me. In the very good but very painful way. There's so much of it where I had to like, sit there and process what was going on. The author is merciless, I warn you. Merciless! And yet I shoved my face right into the cereal bowl of suffering and my cornflake-studded visage is writ with no regrets. While everything else here ranges from pretty fluffy to hurt/comfort with some more angst moments, GotF is a meat grinder for your soul, without making you feel cheated for your investment in the characters and world.

8 notes · View notes

soundofseventeen · 5 years ago

Text

Kiss Me Slowly (Yoon Jeonghan)

Happy birthday @babiesanshine!! Gina, I hope you know we love you very much here and we’re so lucky to call you a friend!!(Thanks to your miscs, I was able to piece together your birthday and I had time to put this together!) Enjoy your day, my love bc it’s all for you!

Inspo

Word count: 2558

Jeonghan at your front door at a quarter past two in the morning rarely meant good news. Well it’s not like it meant bad news either; it was more of you losing sleep because he showed up at an unreasonable hour and left at an even unreasonable hour. But he was an idol with a schedule more hectic than yours, so you were always happy to see him even if it meant getting looks from your nosy neighbors who thought you were lonely just as he was leaving at the crack of the following morning. However, the only thing wrong at the moment besides you needing to be up in a few hours, was the fact that it was pouring outside and he was soaked to the bone.

“Are you even aware of the weather...or the time?” you scolded him when you found a clean towel to dry himself off.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I feel sorry for everyone who’s out there.” He chuckled, not really caring that he outed himself.

You rolled your eyes. “How was the game show?” you asked, leading him into the kitchen. You opened the fridge and pulled out a beer, which he declined.

“It was fun, but long. And I didn’t feel like staying home yet. So here I am.” He smiled brightly as if he didn’t have any other responsibility except being there with you.

“Don’t you have dance practice tomorrow?” Or later today? You were too tired to make the correction.

“I’ll have you know that- yes.”

“Okay. Go shower.”

“What?”

“Go. Shower.” You took out the remains of your dinner leftovers, and proceeded to heat them up. Jeonghan was still drying his hair and somehow the fluorescents of the kitchen light accentuated his features, making him look angelic. And it’s not that you didn’t like it, but you hated how the makeup artists whitewashed his skin tone and made him look like something he wasn’t. And this Jeonghan scared you sometimes. Sometimes it felt like if you touched him, he’d disappear. The raindrops that he managed to miss slid down his face, exposing the slivers of the real Jeonghan underneath.

“If you get sick, I won’t visit you until you’re better and you know I’ll leave my doors locked.” Which was true. The germaphobe in you rarely let you do anything when your friends were sick.

“I know,” he chuckled. “Do you have clothes for me?”

“I’ll throw them into my dryer so they’re warm. And I’m reheating some food so you’re gonna eat and you’re staying here so don’t even bother arguing.”

He left once you promised to leave some dry towels in your room as well and you went about your business, seeing that it’d be a couple of hours until sleep could grace you with her presence again. You rummaged through your cupboard and cabinets until you found what you were looking for. You took out a small pot and filled it with water, placing it on the stove next to dinner and proceeded to look for some of Jeonghan’s clothes that you swore he left sometime during his last visit, which proved to be challenging.

You had met Jeonghan sometime in his predebut days when you had already established a secure future for yourself but it had amazed you that he rarely spent nights with you when you became friends, only staying when it was too late or too ugly outside. (He had enough common sense to know when to leave but he was human and forgot from time to time.)

Either way you invested in a pull out couch in your living room which you fixed up for him once you found old pj's and threw them into the dryer along with another towel. (You would’ve given him the spare bedroom but you turned that into your personal library and office room.) And once you heard the water shut off, you ran to the dryer and took out everything and placed them in your bedroom. No way you were gonna walk in on him when he wasn’t decent.

“Han?” you knocked on the bathroom door gently, “I’m leaving your towel hanging on the knob and you can get dressed in my room. The food’s almost ready too.”

His muffled, “Thank you,” sounded and you walked back to the kitchen in time to see the food hot enough to consume.

You lowered the temperature of the near boiling water so it wouldn’t be ready so quickly. You opened another cupboard and removed a plate before opening the curtain to enjoy the view. Living in the heart of Seoul city wasn’t as bad as you expected it to be. Much like the streets of Los Angeles, it remained busy day in and day out, and if it wasn’t for the mostly soundproof room, you never would’ve considered moving here, but it had become your home rather quickly. The fourteenth floor had the perfect view of everything you loved. Your favorite part of the whole place was the skyline you often ogled, even on a rainy night like now. It seemed cold enough that the condensation fogged up the glass and you shivered when your fingertips touched the window to wipe it away.

You sighed deeply, not sure why nostalgia was hitting you at the moment. It could’ve been the late night or the warmth of the room, but you missed something. A tap on your shoulder brought you back to reality and you remembered that you had a guest and you turned off the stove off.

“Do I get to know what you’re thinking?” Jeonghan asked as softly as the night as you served him a plate.

“I want a tattoo of this skyline.” Which was true. It had been crossing your mind lately to get it somewhere on your body. You wondered why no one ever considered turning it into the eighth wonder of the world. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

You turned around to find him running a towel through his hair, and not a hint of makeup on him. This was your favorite Jeonghan; the one with tan skin kissed under the sun and purple bags under his eyes from not getting enough sleep (well, you didn’t like either but that wasn’t what you meant) with a little bit of acne on his cheek from whenever he had eaten too many peanuts and all the moles and freckles that made him Jeonghan. This was what made him look more human and when you felt better about calling him your friend. You felt more comfortable around him when he wasn’t Seventeen’s angel. But that was the price of having him in your life.

“Then get it,” he shrugged. “I was thinking about getting an eyebrow piercing.” He sat at the table as you came with two plates since you figured he wouldn’t eat if you didn’t.

“Are you really?”

“Nah, that’s not my thing, but Joshua was thinking about a new piercing soon. If you two want, you can set up an appointment soon and then I can tag along.”

You nodded, thinking about it. “We’ll see when we all have time. Do you want something to drink?”

He shook his head. “What time do you have to be at work?” He raised his chopsticks and tasted the noodles, slurping them eagerly when his taste buds agreed with the flavor.

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’ll sleep a lot anymore.” You smiled a little as he inhaled his dinner, not sure how someone could eat so happily.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I should’ve gone straight home, huh?”

It was your turn to shake your head. “No. I always tell you that my house is open to you no matter when.” Also true. You weren’t ungrateful that he wanted to spend time with you instead of going straight to bed like a normal human being, but you couldn’t deny that a head’s up would’ve been nice. “Thank you for coming. It’s always good to see you.”

“I like coming. It always feels like home.” It stayed quiet while you finished your meals, occasionally looking at each other and smiling. “If you’re tired, you can go to sleep. I can clean up,” he offered.

“I’ll be fine. I can always use a sick day if I want to. You should sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” he protested.

You scooted your chair back, a knowing smile on your lips as you stood up to clear the plates. “Figures. I made you some tea to help you.” You brought back a mug. “Here. It’s still hot so be careful.” As predicted, even with his shower, Jeonghan’s hands were cold as you handed him the mug and you accidentally brushed fingers. “Are you cold? I can turn on the heater.”

“I’m fine,” he smiled as he stood up and decided to go to his comfy pull out bed. “Do you have an extra charger I can borrow?”

You couldn’t help but feel how domestic everything felt which once again you blamed on the late night. He was especially close for comfort and if you reached behind you, you could find his hand and hold it, hold him. But you shook the thought off really quickly. Yoon Jeonghan was a friend, nothing more. You invited him into your room and he sat on your bed patiently while you searched.

Meanwhile, Jeonghan curiously eyed a scrapbook that you left out on the bed and he opened it, revealing bits and pieces of who you were and what crossed your mind. He traced the designs of the washi tape you used, memorizing your handwriting and marveling at how colorful your mind was. He frowned a little when he came across the words in your primary language, frustrated that he couldn’t decipher them.

He didn’t realize how much or rather how little he knew about your home life before you moved here. All he knew was that you moved to escape memories, and Jeonghan didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t tell if the people you were posing with were with friends, family or even fans, but they must’ve been important if you did this.

“Those were the days,” you told him quietly, twirling the charger in your hands. “Sometimes I remember home wasn’t such a bad place.” You pointed to the faces, giving them a name and who they were to you. You turned the pages carefully, revealing everything about your past life, torn between being honest and keeping him on a need to know basis. “You know, when I got engaged, it seemed like I could finally be someone my family could be proud of and I thought I’d be happy.”

“E-Engaged?” He wasn’t sure if he heard you clearly. He frowned, not understanding. “You never told me you were married.” You were so young to begin with; he couldn’t imagine you feeling old enough to go through something so...life changing.

You wanted to scoff, but you held it in. “I wasn’t. He...uh, ran off the day of the wedding.” It was a blow to your ego and to your heart. “He was the one who proposed and made sure we had everything to go.” You took a deep breath. “When I got a hold of him, he was just leaving the airport in Taiwan. That was the last time I ever heard from him.”

“But you...you seem so...and you’re just so...how? Why?”

“I guess I’ll never know,” you said a little too bitterly. “I was so angry, so embarrassed, so hurt. Everywhere I turned, I heard the whispers and felt the pity. God, it was too much. And one day, I just packed my shit and left and didn’t tell anyone.”

At that he chuckled a little, his hand tentatively reaching for your hair and touching it carefully. “It must’ve been a shock when they turned on the TV or went on Facebook one day and saw you onstage, huh?”

“At first, I wanted him to remember me, make sure he never forgot who he did this to,” you admitted. “And then, I just stopped caring. Doing this now, it’s only for me.” You stayed quiet, refusing to not tell him that once you met him and saw him (and his friends) trying to achieve his dreams, you forgot about your vengeance...even if you were successful with it. “I’m petty sometimes, I guess.”

“I think I would’ve done the same thing.” Jeonghan stopped talking after that, letting your words absorb into his brain and wrap themselves around his head. In a way, it made sense why you were so private about everything. He hoped that you made peace with the past and were looking for much better things and looking around the room, he could see a little of that. “Is-is your window open?” He asked when he was sure he could hear the rain falling outside. “No wonder it was cold in here!”

“It helps me fall asleep!” You threw one of your pillows at him and opened the curtain to let some of the moonlight seep through. “But if you get sick, I’m sorry.”

“You’re bringing me chicken soup if I do! Man, the boys are gonna kill me if I so much as let out a cough.”

“You’ll be fine,” you assured him. “Just leave Seventeen’s leaders to me.”

Jeonghan picked up his phone from the bed, pressing the power button to check the time. “I guess I should head off to bed. Thanks again for letting me stay the night. I’ll text Joshua.” He got off the bed slowly, thanking you again and silently left the room, shutting the door behind him.

The sadness came out the moment you were alone, but you didn’t do much about it. When the sun would come up in the next few hours, you’d be back to your normal self of living the idol life and belting out the lyrics of your latest single. Tonight though, you curled up under the blankets, hugging your favorite pillow as you tried not to think about anything.

Before you could succumb to the sleep, there was a faint knock on your door. “Yeah?” When he didn’t answer, you sighed and got out of bed to open it. There he stood rubbing his eyes sleepily and you opened the door fully. “What happened Jeonghan?” The moonlight seemed to be the only thing illuminating your place, making him seem ethereal and dreamlike. You couldn’t stop the way your hand went up to cup his cheek. He didn’t disappear like you thought he would, and you were grateful because you didn’t want to be alone.

He sighed at the contact but didn’t say anything, enjoying the moment. He wasn’t sure what this would mean for you in the future but right now, he didn’t want to think about it. His eyes fluttered shut and he leaned in to kiss you. He hoped you wouldn’t run away and shut the door on him, just like he hoped that this was scary for you as it was for him.

He held his breath as you leaned closer. He could taste your lips, enjoying the way your thumb caressed his cheek, overall finding comfort in you.

And then you kissed him slowly.

276 notes · View notes