#also sorry for weird spacing between a couple of sections

[perexcri]

you and i were fireworks that went off too soon - [byler week - day 4]

title from: fourth of july by fall out boy

dedicated to: the lake i lived next to in rural [STATE REDACTED] for 3/4 of my college years

It’s something that haunts him, of course.

It’s the colorful bursts of light he sees when he blinks too fast, the popping in his ears once the pressure builds up, a cool sluice of water against his ankles, and the slickness of forearms beneath his fingers. It comes to him in waves like the ones that lapped against the shore, cuts into the soles of his feet like the juts of limestone buried beneath the mud, invades his sinuses like the scent of dry, overgrown grass and burnt-orange pine needles blanketing the land.

Summer is usually the time of freedom, when the sun stays out far past when it should have gone to sleep and coaxes people out of their homes and into hazy, smoke-filled nights. The world is burning with color, the earth warm beneath his feet, and the hours trickle away in untamed drops of afternoon showers and the lingering blue wash of dusk. When he was younger, summer seemed the season of possibilities: for adventures, for discoveries, for reading new books and seeing new sights, for slipping from the cloak of shadows the rest of the year seemed draped in to finally embrace the warmth of life reignited in his chest.

Once, it had even felt like the possibility of something more.

Mike’s mouth drops into a scowl as he stares at the face of the lake. The book between his ribs and arm presses into his side just a little harder, his hands are shaking, and even after twelve years, he thought he’d be done with these pitiful twists of hope he feels every summer he returns here. He can make it down the main street of the town without worries, even if he does double-takes at every brunette he sees pass by in his car’s smudged windows, and he can make the winding trail down to the lakeside just fine. He can unlock his family’s summer home and breathe in its scent of musty sheets, stale coffee, and woodsmoke of vacations past. Hell, he can even toss his pile of books onto the kitchen table and listen to it groan under the strain of his literature Ph.D. program’s third year, a further reminder that time has passed and his life, for better or worse, has changed.

He’s always fine until he sees the ever-shifting face of the lake, how it mischievously gleams under both sun and moon. That’s when his heart convulses into these ugly, gut-mashing twists and his body gets forcibly wrenched back in time. 1999 dissolves around him like pixels on the screen of a video game being shut off, and suddenly, 1987 burns against his skin. His parents are in the lakehouse, there’s fireworks popping colors all across the sky, and the boy he’d seen around town the past few summers has his fingers tangled with Mike’s, and he’s tugging him towards the lake, his mouth flush with moonlight as he says, What’s the worst that can happen?

A lot, actually. Sometimes, you turn over a stone and discover something either wonderful or frightening, and it slips from your fingers before you have a chance to decide which one it is. Sometimes, the summer fades into the new school year, and there’s no way to contact the only person you’ve ever felt like this for, and when you come back the next year, he’s nowhere to be seen.

And now, he’s got nothing to show for it but the way his heart twists and turns inside the empty cavity of his chest, and the images that haunt the poetry he submits to the campus literary magazine: lakes frosted with moonlight, summer humidity pressing hot between chests and mouths, fingers curled into the damp fringes of hair, distant sparks of light that could be stars or fireflies, though the narrator is always too preoccupied to tell the difference.

He glowers at the lake and how it sucks all the light from the sun, steals its colors to shade water’s surface instead. The sky is growing dimly bruised with purples and magentas and oranges, the water burns scarlet from the light, and the navy cloth of night is quickly overtaking it all.

The book presses more forcefully into his side; it shakes. He’s twenty-eight, and he should be over this by now, but he can’t help that every time he sees the water, he thinks of how it tasted pressed between their mouths, or how slick it felt against the other boy’s skin, or the way they’d forcefully embraced after clambering back onto the shore, the other boy’s back crinkling into the reedy grasses of the shore, Mike sprawled on top of him, alternating between pressing his ear to the other boy’s warm chest to hear the racing pulse of his heart, or else tilting his head up to admire how the colors of light burst against the other boy’s skin and eyes. They rained on him in showers of colors Mike thinks couldn’t exist except for that summer, and how they shaded every single other moment they spent glued to each other’s sides after that. He’s twenty-eight, and he should be over this by now, but nothing beats the feeling of weightlessness that comes from falling, falling, falling down into love when you’re sixteen.

“This is stupid,” he mutters, which is something he tells himself a lot, but it’s mostly to remind himself that twelve years of a pitiful crush on a boy he knew for one summer are, in fact, a little ridiculous, and he’d been ridiculous to decide to do his summer research at his family’s old lakeside home. He’d been studying the Romantics the past three years, and for some reason, he thought this was his last chance at letting their wayward paths cross once more. At this point, it isn’t even about his own wish fulfillment–he simply needs peace, to press his fingers into the other person’s wrist and know he’s alive so they can say their goodbyes and part in peace.

The water laps against the shore, just a little closer to his battered sneakers.

“Stupid,” he repeats before forcefully tucking a chunk of his hair behind his ears, turning on his heels, and storming back to the comforting recesses of the lake house.

  Summer is the liquidity of time: he passes through the barriers of day and night, today and tomorrow with ease, sleeping at odd hours, poring over dusty volumes of poetry and diaries he’d checked out in haste from his university’s library. There’s more coffee than blood running through his veins, and when he goes outside, it’s only ever to drive into town to buy groceries or refill his car’s tank. He doesn’t look out the back windows at the lake, and he sure as hell doesn’t try to breathe in more of the musk of pine trees than he has to.

He’s safe, cocooned in his family’s old home, huddled under blankets against the frigid wash of AC he keeps steadily pumping through the vents. He hunches at the table, sprawls on the couch, curls up on the bed in languid fits of sleep, and the taste of undercooked pasta or frozen dinners becomes the all-too familiar fuel to his days of research, note-taking, and thesis writing.

When he does pull out his old weathered notebook of poetry, it’s only ever to scratch down a few lines in tired replication of the old greats: John Keats, Lord Byron, Pushkin. He used to go outside for hours and try to capture the endless summer delights in shoddy, amateur lyrics, but he knows better than to let his pens fall into those familiar strokes now, and he’s fine in the dusty corners and wilting walls inside, anyway.

All dependent variables are removed from the equation, and his summer becomes one of controlled focus: he will get this research done, and he will focus on the next stage of his life, and he will not, for any reason whatsoever, follow the pitiful tugs of his heart towards some vain hope that the other boy will remember, that he’ll show up again, that he’ll even want to come back to this lonely corner of the country on some vague inclination that Mike might be here, too.

  Except for one day in early July, when there’s a faint knock at the door that makes his head jerk up from the volume of Coleridge’s poetry he’s been mindlessly thumbing through. It’s as soft as a breeze off the face of the lake, and for a moment, he can almost convince himself he’d only misheard the breath of life around him.

Until there’s another, slightly louder, unmistakable staccato: knock knock knock.

He wrenches open the door and is met with hazel eyes he’d only ever had the courage to admire under the colors of fireworks, moonlight, and the last dying rays of summer sunsets. His hair’s been trimmed from the shaggy bangs he’d once worn, and it’s strange for it to be mid-summer and him to be clad in jeans and not shorts, a collared shirt and not a polo.

The volume of poetry slips out of Mike’s hand and falls, painfully, on the arch of his left foot.

“Is it really you?” he asks through a wince of pain.

Will grins, his face alight. “Yeah, it’s me.” There’s a beat, then, with a quirked eyebrow, he asks, “You remember?”

How could I not? Mike thinks, drinking in the matured features of the boy he only knew for a summer, now grown-up and full and alive.

Once more, summer becomes a time of possibility, and the love kept captive in Mike’s chest feels a little less small and derisive. He feels whole and electric, like he could dissolve into the brief flares of light and color of those fireworks from long ago.

For the first time in twelve years, the world seems blossoming, full of possibility, and when Mike reaches out, he’s greeted by that feeling of life beneath his fingers, a chance to know that this is real.

With a grin, he realizes that the possibilities are endless.

---

the lake in question:

[otherhearted-culture-is]

Hey hey! I'm kinda struggling to figure out my identity :,) can you help me?

I'm pretty sure I'm an alterhuman, I've always had a very strong connection to nature, especially animals. I think I'm animalhearted. As a kid, I absolutely adored dogs. I used to pretend to be one all the time. (My mom told me I once went three days straight insisting I wasn't a human 💀) like- that's gotta be a sign for something, right?

But you see, over time, I've kinda lost that like... Idk how to describe it. That connection? I still like dogs, just not as much. I don't pretend to be a dog anymore, and haven't in years. Without a pet dog, that connection just.. Faded

I've been doing quads for about half a year now, yk, just for fun. But as of like maybe 4 months ago I keep getting these weird like, idrk how to describe it. These like bursts of energy that feel almost like they're not me. I'm still in full control, but that's not coming from me. That probably doesn't make any sense, but yeah. I don't want to call them shifts cus I have absolutely no idea if that's what they are, and they're not super often.

I'm thinking I'm probably doghearted? But now I'm wondering if I'm a dog therian? Idk, I mean I like the dual souls thing, I feel like I have the soul of a dog along with my human one. But I'm having a hard time figuring out if I'm actually a therian or if it's just shifting disease, cus I haven't really experienced this my whole life, and it's only after doing research did I start questioning. I've never really had species dysphoria either. Idk, what do you think? It's probably just shifting disease right? How am I supposed to tell the difference between identifying with vs. as?

Thank you for reading <3

(Sorry this took a while to get to! If you already sorted this out on your own, feel free to ignore this answer.)

There's a few things to address here:

1. Some fluctuation in the intensity of a hearttype or kintype is normal. Though this is extreme fluctuation that also neatly coincides with outside factors, so that's probably not it, I feel it's still worth at least mentioning.

2. I hadn't heard of shifter's disease before I got this ask. It was difficult to find information on, but I did manage to find a definition and a couple of forum posts further detailing the phenomenon by asking around on Discord. I'm not a big fan of the name tbh. I know the comparison it's drawing, but it still feels like over-medicalizing it. But whatever, that's the existing name, so I'll use it. Anyway!

To check for this, I would suggest trying to keep your mind off both alterhumanity in general and your own potentially alterhuman experiences as much as possible for a while. Stop researching, don't spend time mulling over it, and step away from any alterhuman spaces you're active in. You should be able to deduce by whether or not your feelings persist through that whether or not it was shifter's disease.

3. Last but not least- how do you tell the difference between ID'ing with vs. ID'ing as? Ever a tricky one. Corv's otherhearted questioning quick guide has a section dedicated to exactly that question, so it will probably be helpful to you! (But yknow, probably wait about it.)

[llycaons]

ep39 (2/3): fucked up!!!!!

oof. this one is rough

like heartbreaking but also so so beautifully shot. the colors, the acting, the lighting, the underlying plot and emotional beats. like whew

:(

oh and HE's getting a kick out of it

he can't 😭

xy keeps this up just relentlessly. trying to make xxc feel as terrible as he can. fuck

:( not only his personal connections to sl being mocked, but also his very ideals and principles, things that uplifted him, his dreams for the world, his faith in people, his desire to to good. just so cruel

DUDE

LEAVE HIM ALONE!!!!

he literally keeps this up until the moment xxc slits his own throat and then he has the audacity to be SURPRISED???

like bitch you did this!

sorry to nitpick but why is a cut that opened his throat barely bleeding. why did he collapse if he hadn't actually lost any blood. I know he didn't hit his windpipe

im so sorry song jiyang but I did see your eyelids flicker here. we got a corpser

his little setup...

putting out food for xxc...as if he'd sit up and eat it? like I suppose grief makes you do weird things but um. this seems sxtreme

THIS SHOT. what the hell else was he going to do besides kiss him.

after this he starts screaming and destroying things and I can't even tell if that's supposed to indicate they were already together or they never made it over the hump of confessing. it seems a lot of the gay couples seem to be living in that nebulous in-between space. whether it's not confessed, not confessed but known, confessed but not acted on...I don't think any of those couples actually consummated

yeah like this man is not in his right mind perhaps?

oh as if that all wasn't bad enough, we get THIS gut-punch

xxc :(

nooo he doesn't deserve it xxc :(

but also this is so intimate, like on the BED? this is the strongest piece of evidence for them being together imo and it would put xxc's horrified grief in a more striking perspective. I kind of lean towards this reading because it really had the vibes and also because it's most tragic that way. which I don't usually gravitate towards but it has a kind of terrible elegance

in modern AUs/AUs where xxc lives, I've seen it where he becomes quite averse to sweets due to the trauma of this entire situation. probably has a shit ton of guilt about it, and shame over being deceived for so long. oof

anyway. DIE FUCKER

aw jingyi :(

at least she got a grave :(

lwj was so deep in thought he jumped a little to hear wwx say this. I like their scene here, very soft and comforting together. wwx tends to be very gentle with lwj

not one of lwj's best moments. even wwx, the one who came back from the dead, doesn't seem to follow what he means. even though, in the grand sceheme of things, yeah, they ARE fortunate. and it's not like their luck caused xxc and sl's tragedy. but it's maybe the wrong time

ending this section with wen ning, the perpetual observer. a-qing fulfilled that role this arc and now she's dead because she's served her purpose. but wen ning watched as wwx tore out his golden core, watched wwx and lwj this entire arc, he steps in later when his knowledge makes it impossible for him to stand by, and he observes here as wwx and lwj mirror the two cultivators who once had such lofty goals

[dayydreams-s]

can you please post some pics of fez’s house and analyse them because i honestly have no clue how it’s laid out😂

Alright i'm going to try my hardest to explain this 😅if you have any questions still feel free to message me!

Before we get started i want to let it be known that i could be slightly wrong about some of these things!!! i've just made a lot of attention to this and in my head it registers now we could get another clip soon that'll prove me completely wrong 😂

Some of these screenshots aren't the brightest so apologizes in advance also explaining things has never been my strong suit so again sorry if this doesn't make sense and again message me for more help if needed!!

let’s start by the front door and make our way up to where the main living is

they don’t show you how to 100% get from point a to b but i feel i have a pretty good understanding of how to so let’s get into it! in ep5 we see rue walk towards some stairs even though it’s too dark and you can’t really see them but heres those stair in daylight for reference

and than it cuts to her running into the hallway

i’ll be using this ss from 2x01 to help better explain this area instead

if you look at the area to the right that is the small hall which leads to the stairs aka how to get from the front door to the main living here’s another screenshot of an angle at the top of the stairs

now i don’t personally believe we’re missing anything big in the section between the stairs and main hall i think it goes you come in the front door walk up the stairs walk a small ‘hall’ until you make it to main hallway

we get a brief glimpse of this space on 2x01 we see ash come up the stairs pass an opening that i headcanon goes into the kitchen over by where the fridge is

and then a door that we can see in 2x05 and 2x01

now if your standing at the start of the hall staring down you’ll see so many fucking doors

all the way in the back we have grandmas room on the left bathroom straight back and fezco’s room across from hers on the right those are three confirmed rooms we know in the hall now we can see there’s a couple more doors in my head i just place one of them as ashtrays room and another as a linen closet

now let me explain all the cut outs/small stairs/walls separating the hall and main living! this is probably going to be the hardest part for ME to explain so bare with me please as you can see in the 3rd ss we have a set of small stairs behind baby fezco and i labeled them weird u-turn stairs because well they are basically lol if you were to go that way it would lead you to this area

now the area right before this entrance is where we see faye sitting 2x02 on those steps now this is where i was having a hard time placing just until a couple days ago but i cracked it lol they are also the stairs we see gma walk down in 2x01 when fez is trying to soothe baby ash and we see her walk away to her room in the background

im running out of the ability to add many more screenshots so bare with me here we get a slightly better view of what this looks like from the hall point of view as to how this all flows?

in maybe simple terms the house is technically like a rectangle the hall,living,dining,kitchen area all flows the same way the one difference is that the living area is slightly elevated which is we have the couple random tiny sets of stairs

i am hoping this helped even in the slightest i might reblog this and add to it with some details on the kitchen and try to possibly explain more but the limited photo thing screwed me over here a bit 😅

[nautilusopus]

The Number I

Chapter 51: She is Driving A Car In This One Whoa

Alright let's kick this pig.

A lot happened since this thing last updated! I got COVID, had surgery, there was a failed government coup, and most importantly, several major sequences of this fic have been written in advance, both to expedite update speed and allow for less shitty storytelling.

Also, apparently y'all were still reading this thing while I was gone? So there is roughly a metric fucktonne of fan content you guys produced for this fic! Which is fucking bonkers to me.

SO let's go down the line here:

@shinjikari drew some absolute fucking bangers, including a couple of high quality memes that have absolutely no business being this good. As well as this incredible rendering of the events of chapter 1, and this mood piece that got put up literally yesterday (they both have sound!!!). Cloud can absolutely feel dorcelessness.

There's a second vibes piece here from @fury-brand (who in addition to making incredible art was also absolutely instrumental in getting this chapter made, along with @terror-billie, @tofucasserole, and countless others.

EDIT 2: FUCK I FORGOT THE CAR RIDE I'M SORRY BEL

Very surreal drawing of Cloud and Zack by @dantes-funky-inferno, this is so fucking good and Jesus Christ I'm so sorry it took this long to get to it 'cause hot damn.

@yuquiitas drew SO FUCKING MANY holy shit bruh so I'm just gonna list them off here in brief or I'll run out of characters, please check them out because there is so much character in all of them.

This excellent comic that is 100% canon.

Doodle of Cloud and Vincent plus thrilling sequel.

Cloud and rat friend.

Not one, and not two, but three renditions of Cloud and Hojo.

Diary of a Guy Who Ate Four Dudes

A couple collections of doodles.

I lied here's more.

Missed a spot.

Some extremely choice cross sections of things that also 100% happened in the fic.

Weird dude in scrubs.

Cloud, Aeris, and Zack ngl I think this might be my favourite one lol

And last but not least, quality memes.

Denebola Leo also made me a meme thank you.

I am absolutely sure I forgot some, there really were that many. (If I did please let me know so I can add them here, I am honoured beyond belief y'all made these!!!) Same goes with betaing, and also this is gonna be a nightmare to also post on tumblr due to all the links so I'll get that done later lol.

And of course, as always, this chapter contains some depictions of graphic violence and gore.

Good to be back.

Cloud hallucinates. Voices sometimes, or music – it’s hard to tell. It’s just another consequence of Jenova’s encroaching presence in his DNA, and four years after Meteorfall everyone’s more or less adapted to it and other oddities associated with being not quite human. Mostly.

What begins as a chance encounter with something that isn’t Jenova soon leads to a fight for survival that can no longer be contained in the spaces between numbers, as Cloud tries to keep himself together and finally put his past behind him.

(We’re in the home stretch!)

[spookysanta]

The TA - two. (h.c., c.e.)

Summary: everything about this situation is...weird.

Pairings: Professor!Chris Evans x Black!Reader, student!Henry Cavill x Black!Reader

WARNINGS: none

here’s part two! she’s a bit lengthy, fyi. enjoy! :)

UNEDITED

After a couple of days, she’d gotten used to the formality that is Professor Chris Evans (and company). She’d gotten used to the emails that open with, “I hope this message finds you well”, even though it rarely did.

So thanks, Chris, for the well-wishes but no thank you.

The first day of Fall classes was stressful, to say the least. She woke up later than she intended for her 8 a.m. class, then she got lost on her trip from one lecture hall to another, and by the time she had to get to Franklin for Chris’ class, she was practically running across campus. She burst into the lecture hall two minutes before class was set to begin. Walking to the main podium where Chris stood preparing for that day’s lecture, she breathed out, “Sorry I’m late.”

He turned to her with a smirk. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Just a bit of a rough day is all.” She waved him off, completely ignoring the loud slam of the lecture hall’s doors. A figure emerged next to her holding a tray of coffees from The Bistro.

“Good morning!” Henry greeted, clearly having a better day than she was. He offered Chris a cup, then set the tray down on the desk that sat adjacent to the presenter’s podium, taking the other two and offering one to her. She thanked him quietly. “You ready?” he asked Chris.

Chris laughed. And for the first time, she laughed along with him. And seeing it firsthand, she could tell they had a good relationship by the way they interacted. She could tell that Chris genuinely enjoys Henry’s company as his TA, and not just for the things that he does to be helpful—they have a good thing. “Yeah, I’m ready—I’m excited. Thank you for the coffee, by the way.”

“No problem. It was on my way here.”

She felt out of place as they engaged in banter.

She looked around the steadily filling classroom and saw students from all walks of life; she’ll admit, that’s one of the only perks of college in her mind—there was always someone for everyone. There are all kinds of people from different races, religions, creeds—all gathering to pursue higher education. In that respect, she found college to be interesting. But in any other regard, she hated it.

Henry took note of her silence, “Are you excited, (Y/N)?”

She turned to him sharply, not having anticipated him addressing her so suddenly. She nodded curtly, “Yep.”

“You don’t sound like it.” Chris retorted as he set up his laptop to broadcast a slideshow on the projector screens that took up nearly all of the space on the wall behind them. “C’mon, this is going to be fun!”

She offered them a dry chuckle as she watched the screens illuminate with a bright white background and black lettering that read:

WELCOME TO CHEMISTRY 120, SECTION D346-0

PROFESSOR CHRIS EVANS, D. SC.

HENRY CAVILL AND (Y/N) (Y/L/N), GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE TAs

Yeah, that’s totally not intimidating. “Ooh,” Henry nudged her with his elbow, “look at that—you’re official.” He turned to her, pointing an index finger at the screens. “Listen, this is going to be no big deal.”

“You sound like him.” She pointed to Chris, who was hooking up a small microphone that he would connect to his shirt.

“Well I mean it. You’ll be fine. The most we’re going to have to do is pass out papers and introduce ourselves—easy peasy.”

She hummed in understanding. “Mhm.” She took a big gulp from her coffee cup, its liquid now only warm from Henry’s commute. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Henry shrugged, “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Good morning, class.” Chris spoke into the microphone, his voice projecting through the speakers in the room. The chatter among students died down quickly. “I’m Professor Evans and welcome to Chemistry 120, section D346-0.” She noticed that he was like her—he fidgeted, too. His hands were behind his back, but she could see him fiddling with the remote that was in them. One hand was wrapped around his opposite wrist, and his free hand twirled the remote between his fingers.

“I’d like for my TAs to introduce themselves. They’ll be helping you a lot this semester.”

He took a handheld microphone from behind the podium and turned it on, handing it to Henry. “I’m Henry, I’m a graduate TA studying microbiology.” He stated with a muted wave. “I’ve been working with Professor Evans for about four semesters now, so I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.” He handed the microphone to her, his thumb brushing hers when she took it. Their eyes met briefly.

“Hi, I’m (Y/N). I’m an undergraduate student studying bio. This is my first semester as a TA for this class so I’m very excited to work with all of you.” There. That was easy enough. Henry looked to her with a small smile.

“Alright,” Chris spoke up after she handed him the microphone to be put away, “so I’ll be quick with the introductory stuff—I know no-one wants to hear me drone on about safety procedures for the next ninety minutes.” He gestured to a stack of papers that sat on the desk. “Could you pass those out?” he asked Henry and (Y/N) politely.

Henry nodded, effortlessly picking up the large stack of papers. He approached her and instructed in a whisper, “Take half.” She grabbed a substantial stack of papers, making her way across half of the lecture hall and handing students a sheet of paper going by rows, mimicking the movements that Henry made. They both made it to the middle; there they stood on a walkway that connected to the path that led to the front of the room. He followed behind her back to the podium as they awaited their next tasks.

“So, what you just got are information forms. We’re going to read them, go over the most important stuff, then at the end, you’ll sign them, and they’ll be collected.” Chris cleared his throat, beginning to read from the page, only really emphasizing the important aspects of the course.

She took a page off the stack, reading as he spoke. 

COURSE POLICIES:

No food/drink/snacks in the lecture hall or lab (water in a clear container is allowed)

No electronics of any kind are allowed in the lab

Late work will not be accepted in any capacity

All paper assignments must be turned in at the end of each class to TAs

Online work must be submitted before deadline—pages will close after the assigned time

Attendance (especially on lab days) is mandatory

All absences are considered unexcused unless otherwise authorized with a note or confirmation e-mail

Now it’s all come full circle for her. She can clearly see why a lot of his previous students called him a hard ass. And majority of the policies he listed, she doesn’t even plan to uphold herself. So how could she expect three-hundred students—freshmen, at that—to comply?

The policies were reasonable, sure, but hard to enforce.

He made sure to emphasize the dress code, late work, and attendance policies; it was apparent that those were real issues among his classes over the years. “Additionally,” he continued after having spoken without stopping for twenty minutes, “this is the only introductory chemistry class I’m teaching this semester, which means everything you submit will be read and graded. There are no grades for completion or participation.”

She heard several students groan. She leaned to Henry, “Wait. He teaches other classes?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered back, “He also teaches upper-level biology and organic chemistry, and he taught a statistics class last year but I’m not sure if he still does.”

Damn. No wonder he was so organized.

And she found that interesting; that definitely explained why he would have her and Henry do a lot of the grading for this class’ assignments. He probably didn’t have time to breathe in between classes, let alone grade three-hundred lab reports.

By the end of his class that seemed never-ending, she was absolutely exhausted. She was having daydreams of her cozy bed when Henry approached her after he finished collecting signed forms from his side of the classroom. “You alright?” Henry asked.

She stifled a yawn, “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Good class today, guys. I’m really excited for this semester.” Chris gushed, visibly happy with their help.

“Me, too.” Replied Henry. “I think this batch will be better than last semester’s.”

“Ugh. Don’t even get me started on last semester’s class.” He shook his head as he began to gather papers and his laptop into his bag. “I’ve never wanted to rip my hair out more than I did last semester.”

Henry laughed. “Trust me, I know.”

The two assistants prepared themselves to leave. Before they said their “goodbyes”, Chris asked them to meet with him in his office (as there was another class filing in).

“So,” Chris closed the door to his office, muffling the bustle of the room outside that was quickly filling up with the literature class that started right after theirs. “I wanted to know what you’ll be doing this weekend.”

“Um…” (Y/N) was confused. “Why?”

“Because I want to get a head start on grading these papers and entering everyone’s information into the database.” He pulled the stack of forms from his bag and clamped them together with a binder clip. “So, if you and Henry are free this weekend, that’d really help me out.”

“I’m not busy,” Henry shrugged. “I keep my weekends open anyway.”

She wasn’t busy either, but the weekend to work? This couldn’t wait until later?

“I’ll be free this weekend.” She kept her voice cheery but really regretted not lying when she had the chance.

“Great.” He clapped his hands together. “We’ll plan for a time for you to come over and we’ll knock it out in an hour or two.” Come over?

“Come over where?” she asked.

“Oh! My house.” Chris clarified, “When Henry and I had a lot of papers to grade, he usually comes over to my place early in the morning, we grade papers, and we go about our day. That’s not an issue for you, is it?”

“No, not at all.” It was a bit odd, though. But she’ll be honest in saying that she found all of this…odd in one way or another.

“Cool.” Henry looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going, I don’t want to miss tonight’s game.”

Chris’ eyes widened in realization. “Dammit.” He swore, “I forgot there was a game on tonight.” He stood and grabbed his things, going around his desk to the door, and ushering us out of his office. He shut and locked the door behind them. They walked swiftly and quietly across the front of the classroom and out the door to converse in the hallway. “Alright, you guys. Have a great rest of your day, and don’t hesitate to call me if you need me.” He waved, then turned and left through the faculty doors.

Henry looked at her. “You ready?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” Together, they walked leisurely down the stairs and out of the lecture hall, through the hustle of the “afternoon class rush”.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked for what seemed like the thousandth time today. “You’re quiet.”

“Do you think…” she paused, wanting to pick the right words to say. “do you think it’s—I don’t know—odd that Chris wants us to meet at his house to grade papers?”

“What would make you think that?”

“I don’t know, it just seems weird to me.” Someone who was on their phone bumped into her causing her to drop the books she was carrying. “Shit.” She went to grab her book, but Henry picked it up for her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He opened the doors to the lecture hall, where they looked outside and saw that it was pouring. “Wow, it’s really comin’ down out there.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t bring an umbrella.” She groaned out loud. “Fuck my life.”

Henry laughed at her misery, “You need a ride?”

“Your car’s fixed?”

“Yeah.” He fumbled in his pocket for his car keys. “I took it to the shop after our meeting. Obviously I had to call a tow truck before I could get it to the mechanic’s, but I got it there eventually. It’s doing great now in case you were wondering—it almost runs perfectly.”

“I wasn’t.” she gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Thanks for the information, though.”

“Whatever.” He scoffed playfully. “You want a ride or not?”

She really shouldn’t. This guy, as holy as he is in the eye of the Almighty Chris, could be a monster. He could be a serial killer. He could be plotting to attack her—she’d lost count of how many news stories she’s read about kidnappings on college campuses—and who knows, she could be on his list.

But then again, it was pouring outside, and the walk back to her apartment was long. The air was getting cooler and combined with the darkness of the sky and the time of day, she’d end up with the flu by the end of the afternoon.

“Fine.”

He took his jacket from his shoulders and handed it to her. “Here.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Put it on.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You need it more than me, okay? So put the jacket on.” He commanded.

She didn’t like that he didn’t ask nicely, but she did it anyway. And she wouldn’t tell him out loud, but goodness, his jacket smelled good. Like every kind of good smell that someone would want on a man combined with the smell of men’s shampoo in the hood, she was in heaven. She tried not to let it show but she made sure to take deep inhales through her nose as they journeyed to his car.

They exited the lecture hall, running down the slippery cobblestone sidewalk like the rest of the students in their avoidance of getting wet from the impending storm. He guided her to his car, opening the door for her, then climbed in the driver’s seat. “Whew,” he breathed, buckling his seatbelt. “that was interesting.”

His car was quite nice. She’d expected it to be really junky and out of shape—because of the godforsaken breakdown—but it was surprisingly clean and smelled good, too. Not in a cologne way, but in a “detailed car” way.

“Yeah, it was.” She replied, also trying to catch her breath from running, “You have a nice car.”

“Thank you. I was trying to tell you that earlier, but you didn’t want to believe me.”

“No, I didn’t.” she laughed. “You proved me wrong.”

He revved the engine. “So, where to?”

“Brookwood Heights.”

“Shut up.” He all but exclaimed, his eyes widening to the size of Mars. “I live there!”

Oh, that’s great.

“Really? That’s so cool.”

“Yeah, that’s so funny!” he pulled out of the parking lot, turning onto the busy street. “What a small world.”

They managed to get to their apartment complex without issue. He helped her get all her belongings out of the car, then grabbed his and locked his car before they went inside, the cool air of the complex’s lobby almost smacking them in the face. They trudged to the elevator, entering the small box and leaning against the guardrails in exhaustion. She pressed the 3 on the keypad. “What floor?”

Not looking up from his phone, he mumbled, “3.”

Are you kidding me?

“That’s my floor.”

His head snapped up. “So, we’re floormates, huh?” he smirked.

“I guess so.”

The elevator dinged and they stepped out. It seemed like they were deliberately walking slowly down the hall so that they could see where the other person would drop off, but they just kept walking side-by-side until they got to the very end of the hall. She stopped in front of her door. “Well, this is me.”

He stood at the door across the hall from hers and pointed at the number, “This is me.”

So, they’re neighbors.

They’re co-workers…and now they’re neighbors.

Because of course, life can’t get any more cliché than it already is.

“See you around?” he called to her once he unlocked his front door.

“Yeah, see you around.” She waved with a small smile, opening her front door and stepping into her abode.

Damn, she missed her apartment today. She tossed her keys in the bowl by the door and took off her wet shoes. Then she set her bag on the adjacent counter. She shuffled off her jacket—

Wait.

This wasn’t her jacket. She didn’t wear a jacket today. It was Henry’s jacket.

She wanted to yell. She didn’t feel like being social anymore today. She decided to set the jacket on the coat rack by the front door; that way she’ll be able to bring it to him in the morning. She went to her bedroom and stripped from her wet clothes, going into the restroom and starting a shower.

Finally.

*

The following days were surprisingly good. She didn’t gripe and moan about the weather—it was rainy every morning that week—Henry rapped on her front door at the same time and offered to drive her to Franklin Hall. Some days, she accepted, and they even stopped at The Bistro if they had the time. Some days she didn’t, and those were the days where Henry seemed more on edge, only to visibly settle when he saw her enter the classroom or laboratory.

Today was Saturday; today was the day that she had to meet at Chris’ house to grade the lab reports from Tuesday and Thursday’s classes.

She wasn’t particularly excited about it.

She had to get up early because Chris wanted to get started at nine a.m., which was ungodly early for a Saturday—or any day, really.

Three knocks sounded sharply on her front door, “You ready?” Henry’s voice bellowed through the wood.

She rushed, opening the front door. “Almost.” She shuffled on a hoodie over her t-shirt, stepping aside. “Come in.”

He entered wordlessly and sat on the first chair he saw, which just so happened to have his jacket laying across the back. “So, I’m assuming this is yours now?”

She looked at the item he was holding. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “I meant to give that back. I’m sorry.”

He chuckled at her demeanor, “It’s fine. It’s bad out today, so I don’t mind if you need it.”

“I should be fine, thank you,” she forced her feet into a pair of sneakers, fighting to get her index finger from between the shoe’s fabric and the heel of her foot. “plus, I don’t want to hog your stuff.”

“You’re not hogging anything. If you need it, wear it.”

“But it’s yours.” She threw on her backpack, grabbing her keys, phone and wallet from the bowl by the front door. “Take it.”

“No.” he laid it back in its original position on the chair. “Give it back once the storm passes, okay? I’m just looking out for you.”

She rolled her eyes, but it made her smile anyway, “Fine. Thank you.” She opened the front door and practically shoving him out of her apartment and down the hall.

“You’re welcome.”

She’s not sure what’s happening. She’s started to like Henry’s company. Her goal when everything started was to remain polite and formal, and now…she thinks of him as a friend—which was not her plan.

They rode in a comfortable silence to Chris’ house. He could tell she was stressed. “Are you okay?”

“I guess.” Her shoulders shrugged, the fabric of her hoodie rubbing against her seatbelt. “I still think going to Chris’ house to grade papers is weird.”

“Nah,” he retorted, “it’s really casual. He makes a pot of coffee, and he even made me breakfast once. It doesn’t usually take long either—in and out.”

“So, I have nothing to be worried about?” she asked, their eyes meeting when he stopped at a red light. “This isn’t a setup for the two of you murder me, right?”

“If I wanted to murder you, I’ve had ample opportunities before today to do so.”

As if that’s reassuring.

“Thanks for sparing my life, I guess.” She muttered.

“Seriously, though. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. And if you get uncomfortable, I’ll say my apartment flooded and we’ll leave. Okay?”

She snorted, “Flooded?”

“Flooded. On fire. Intruder. My cat died. I’ll make something up.” He turned into a neighborhood of houses, pulling into a driveway behind a blue SUV, and shifting the car’s gear into “park”. “Say the word and we’ll leave, no questions asked.”

She nodded. She felt the slightest bit better about the situation. She didn’t really know if it was because he was so willing to drive her home, or if it was because he was so willing to drive her home just to keep her comfortable. Nonetheless, she appreciated it. “Okay.”

He reached behind him and pulled his shoulder bag from behind her seat. “And then, when we’re done, we can go to The Bistro and load up on cookies.”

“Their cookies are good…”

“Easily the best cookies I’ve had in a while. So, don’t do this because we’re required to, do this for the incentive of sugar.” He looked at her. “Lots and lots of sugar.”

They got out of his car with their bags and trudged up the driveway’s pavement, him following behind her to the front door. He emerged next to her and rang the doorbell.

Chris opened the door with a smile, “Hey.”

Not to mention, he wasn’t dressed like a professor at all. He was wearing grey sweatpants along with a cobalt blue zip-up jacket that was opened, showing off the white tank top he had on underneath.

And let’s not forget about the cross necklace—a minor addition, but still very important to the outfit.

“Good morning!” Henry cheered.

“Morning.” She greeted timidly.

Henry allowed her to step into the threshold of Chris’ home first. He entered, too, commenting, “Ooh. It smells good in here.”

“You caught me while I was making myself some pancakes—are you guys hungry?”

“I could eat.” Replied Henry as he plopped himself onto the couch in the front room, setting his bag on the coffee table before he sat down.

Chris looked to her, “Pancakes?” he asked simply with a point.

“Sure.” She shuffled off her backpack and sat next to Henry on the opposite end of the couch. “Let’s get this over with.” She muttered to herself. She unpacked her bag and set her laptop on the coffee table.

Not a few moments later, the two of them heard Chris shout from the kitchen, “Pancakes!”

Henry hopped up from his seat. He held out his hand in front of her, “C’mon.”

She took it and allowed him to pull her up…his hands were soft. Calloused at the knuckles, but soft, nonetheless. She almost hesitated to let go. But she did, regrettably. She followed him into the kitchen and took a plate from the stack on the counter next to the stove. Henry wasted no time in stacking his plate high with pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, drowning everything in sticky maple syrup.

She, however, was a bundle of nerves, so she didn’t grab much—only two pancakes and two strips of bacon for herself. Henry balanced his plate, a handful of silverware, and a cup of coffee in his muscular arms and walked carefully back to the living room.

“You sure that’s all you want?” Chris asked, pointing to her plate as he poured the hot coffee from the carafe and into a large mug. “There’s plenty to go around.”

She shook her head politely, “I think I’m good for now.” She took a mug from the counter and held it out to him. “Could you pour me some, please?”

“Of course.” He poured the coffee into her mug a bit more than halfway. He offered her milk from the refrigerator, and she took it, pouring into her mug leisurely. He watched her and said almost in a mumble, “So…how are you liking things?”

“What things?” she replied.

“The position. The class itself—hell, your classes. How are you getting on?”

“Good, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I like the job a lot, and working with you guys. My classes are hard this semester—I don’t know what it is, but for some reason, Calculus seems so much more difficult than I remember.”

“Who do you have for that class?” he took a long sip from his mug, leaning his back comfortably against the countertop. “Mackie?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “He assigns so much work, I can barely keep up. And his class is in Jackson Hall—on the other side of campus—so I basically have to run to his class in order to get there on time if Henry doesn’t drive me.”

“Henry drives you to class?”

Out of all she said, that’s what he clung to?

“Yeah, most days. Apparently, we’re neighbors in the same complex, and he has a class in Jackson at the same time as mine. I don’t have a car and he does, so it just made sense.”

Chris hummed. “Well, I’m good friends with Mackie; he and I were actually roommates in undergrad. So if you need me to, I can put in a word.”

“A word?” she repeated.

“Yeah. Your studies are important, but so is your job. So if you need to be excused from his class every now and again, or you need help catching up, I can help you.”

“Oh.” She pondered for a moment. She needed this job, yes, but not so much that she feels the need to fall behind on her schoolwork to keep Chris company. “Well, I think I’m fine for now, but thank you for the offer.”

“Sure. Anything to help.” He patted a hand on her shoulder, squeezing her flesh, then left the kitchen.

She sat back on the couch next to Henry and timidly ate her breakfast while he and Chris engaged in conversation about the upcoming events in the area.

We do shoulder rubs now? She asked in her brain. He seemed almost…flirty? And when I mentioned Henry driving me to class, he visibly almost tensed. What was that about?

“Yeah, I think it’s a great idea for the two of you to go.”

That’s when she started to pay attention. “Go to what?”

“There are student tutoring sessions in Hampton Hall for all undergraduate classes. Generally, I don’t make my students attend because there aren’t any undergraduate TAs in my class. But now, you’re here, so my class is on the roster.” Then, he muttered, “And Henry can take you.”

She nodded, taking her planner out of her bag. “When are they?”

“Thursdays at three. I’ve been told that they usually run about an hour, so it won’t take up all your afternoon. Then, you and Henry can do…whatever.”

Henry raised an eyebrow, eyes glancing to her, then back to Chris.

That was strange.

She didn’t question it. She was eager to finish grading her set of papers so that she could shove Henry out the door, get their cookies—that he suggested, and thus, will pay for—and head home to sleep the rest of her day away.

It took them a total of two hours to finish grading that week’s lab reports and put them into Chris’ online gradebook, and put the students’ information into a spreadsheet. After they cleared their trash and put their plates and silverware into the kitchen sink, she all but threw her belongings into her backpack. Henry put his bag over his shoulder, bushing a piece of hair behind his ear. “Well,” Henry began, taking his car keys from his front pocket and twirling the keychain around his index finger. “we should get going.”

“Sure. I don’t want to keep the two of you busy.” Chris replied as he ushered his two assistants to the front door, his tone not displaying any care for taking up the early part of their afternoon. “Have a great weekend, guys. See you Monday.”

They left and walked quietly side-by-side to Henry’s car. He backed out of the driveway and sped out of the neighborhood and down the street. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked her.

“I guess.”

“You guess?” he repeated, “What makes you unsure?”

She almost hesitated to mention it. But there was no logical way Henry didn’t pick up on Chris’ comments throughout their time there. “Chris was just acting weird, is all.”

“Define weird.”

“He kept saying things about you and me carpooling, and he even offered to excuse me from my Calc class with Mackie.” She suddenly found her fingers much more interesting to look at than the road in front of them. “And he touched my shoulder. He squeezed my shoulder, actually.”

“You think he was acting out of the ordinary…because he touched your shoulder?”

“No! Well, yes, but he seemed upset when I told him that you and I carpool, and that’s what caught me off guard.”

Henry shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t think it’s professional.”

“If he didn’t think it was professional, he would’ve said so, instead of making snide comments.”

He parked the car in front of The Bistro, then turned it off and turned to her. “Maybe he doesn’t like us hanging out.”

Hanging out? Is that what he called it?

The two of them got out of the car and walked into the cold coffee shop, standing in line behind the last patron. “I don’t know,” she said lowly so as to not disturb the other customers with their conversation. “I just think that it doesn’t make sense for him to be so…intrusive.”

He looked at her. “Do you want me to say something?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “If it’s not what I think it is, he may get offended.”

“I don’t think he will.” It was soon their turn to order. “Six chocolate chip cookies, please.” He pulled out his wallet and paid for their snacks in cash, then moved to the other side of the counter to pick them up. He handed them to her, “Here.”

“Thank you.”

The two sat at a table—a similar table to the one they first sat at together, but this one was by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He opened the parchment bag the cookies were in and handed her one. “I will say,” he started with his mouth full, “he seemed off today.”

“See? I knew it—”

“But that doesn’t mean he’s being gross, alright? Everyone has an off-day every now and then.”

The two sat in silence after that. He watched students and professors alike walk past The Bistro, some of them entering the café to enjoy pastries and coffee like they were. He began to bounce his leg on the ball of his foot; something, she noticed, that he couldn’t help but do when he was deep in thought. Either that, or sitting cross-legged and wiggling his foot back and forth.

He cannot sit still. Neither can she usually—but it’s apparent that since she’s met him, he made her feel more comfortable…safe, even. She doesn’t pick at her fingers nearly as much.

“Does he make you uncomfortable?” he asked her after a few moments of them silently people-watching. “Are you uncomfortable around him?”

“Not really.” She replied, not knowing exactly how she felt about Chris. She was intrigued by him, yes; she found him attractive, certainly; but she still didn’t know him. And because of that, she seemed to be more on edge when speaking to him. Henry wasn’t anything like that.

“A part of me just has a feeling that he’s coming onto me.”

He coughed, almost choking on his lemonade. “Like, romantically?”

“Yeah. That’s what it seems like.”

He hummed in response. He got up and threw away his trash and hers, offering a hand to help her stand. They soon left The Bistro. He opened the car door for her, then pulled out of the parking lot.

The atmosphere shifted. She knew that there was some form of attraction towards him from her, but was it reciprocated? She didn’t know, but judging by the way his eyebrows were persistent in their angry furrowing, there was something wrong with what she said at the restaurant.

They eventually got back to their complex. He didn’t say a word to her on their trek from the lot to their hallway. “G’night.” He said simply, unlocking his front door and shutting it behind him.

***

Tags (DM to be removed): @lady-x-red  @justtwhst  @lokisbitch27 @boundtomyfate​  @cyberdoshee  @liquorlaughslove @heroine-of-color

[oblxvion]

euphoric | eren jaeger (3)

-> pairing: eren jaeger x f!reader

-> wc: 3.3k

-> warnings: swearing, fluff kinda, angst

it had been a week since you’d last seen eren, and you had just finished your exams. you plopped down onto your bed, exhausted but yet relieved that you had finished the tests. you had spent a large portion of the past couple weeks prepping for this and you really hoped that you had gotten a good grade to bring the ones you currently had to a better mark. 

now that you were finally done, you had time to relax and focus on yourself. you had planned to spend time with friends to make up for some of the time that you had lost while drowning yourself in your studies. you picked up your phone, lazily scrolling through your socials and texts messages.

you and eren had been talking quite a lot since he had been at your house. the flirty texts back and fourth, it almost seemed too good. it felt unreal, the way that you and him seemed to suddenly jump into what was almost a relationship. you didn’t question it though, you were happy. although he had a reputation, it didn’t bother you because you knew how he felt for you and how you felt for him, you weren’t intimidated at all.

“y/n? earth to y/n!” sasha brought you out of your trance while waving her hand in your face. 

“oh, fuck, yeah sash, what’s up?” you smiled sheepishly, you had been spacing out a lot recently and it did not go unnoticed by her.

“you keep spacing out,” she chuckles as she opens the fridge, grabbing herself some strawberries. “something on your mind?” she knew you too well.

“oh, it’s nothing,” you laughed nervously as you scratched the back of your head. you had pretty much given yourself away and she gave you a look. “okay, fine. i was thinking about eren, and my situation with him.”

“what about it?” 

“well, it’s just that it feels too good to be true, you know? i just don’t want something to happen and then i get heartbroken once again.” you told her, placing your phone down and playing with your fingers in the process; it was a habit of yours.

“what are you worrying about? you’re not seeing anyone other than eren and i can assure you that he isn’t seeing anyone else either.” she responds with a mouth full of fruit which earned a laugh out of you. sasha is very protective of you, you knew that. and if eren did anything to mess with you or hurt your feelings, she would ruin him. 

“yeah, but he’s had history with girls and…” you trailed off, not knowing how to go about this. you didn’t know why it was hard to talk about because sasha was the one who had told you about his previous flings with other girls in the past. it shouldn’t bother you, but now talking with sasha about it, it made you feel weird.

“and?” she asks as she placed the food back into the fridge before coming down and sitting across from you at your shared table. sasha could sense that there was uneasiness going on and she didn’t want to push you. “why don’t you talk to him? you could maybe set boundaries or even establish your relationship together so you won’t have anything to worry about.”

“yeah,” sasha’s words were making you feel better, she always knew what to do. “i’ll text him and we can maybe meet somewhere to talk.” you felt a bit better, knowing that you’d soon confirm the relationship between the two of you. she smiled at you, and told you to text him so you could figure out plans. you thanked her and made your way to your room opening eren’s contact number and pressing his number.

it rang a few times before it went to voicemail. voicemail? maybe he’s busy? other thoughts began pouring into your head, but you immediately shut them down. you trusted eren, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. after the voicemail operator stopped talking, you left him a message.

“hey eren, you’re probably busy right now but i just wanted to see if you were available later today so we could talk. it’s nothing bad though, i also just miss you. get back to me when you can.” 

you shut off your phone, placing it beside you as you reached for your computer to watch some anime that you had missed while being so preoccupied with your studying. occasionally you would look over to your phone to see if he got back to you, but he hadn’t. 

you were about halfway done with watching the 3rd episode of your show when you heard your phone buzz. you reached for your phone embarrassingly fast to see the texts.

eren jaeger

hey i’m so sorry i just saw u called

i was napping but yeah we definitely can talk later

what time are u free

you chuckled quietly and felt somewhat relieved that he was at home. you quickly responded to him with ideas.

y/n

oh dw about it

i’m free whenever i don’t really have much to do 

eren jaeger

we can go to a cafe if u wanna and chat there

i need food anyways lol

y/n 

ok lol we can go to the cafe downtown if that works

1:30?

eren jaeger

ok baby

i’ll see u then :)

even though it was a small text interaction between the two of you, it left your heart fluttering. it was around 12:45 so you had time to change into something more presentable but still comfortable for your liking. you decided that you would go early because you had to go to the store and buy some more shampoo and conditioner because you had just used the last bit of it this morning. 

when you walked out of your room, sasha was watching tv while texting someone who you assumed to be niccolo. she had seen him a few times the past week and you thought what they had was adorable. she would go over those nights and he would have a full course meal already prepared for her. imagine being in a relationship with a chef, that would be amazing.

“hey sash?” you asked as you slipped on your shoes, placing your hand on the door handle while reaching for your car keys.

“hm?” she looked up from her phone, and put two and two together. “you’re gonna talk to him?”

“yeah, i’ll be back later. i need to grab some stuff from the store though, text me if you need anything, ‘kay?” you smiled at her as you walked through the door. you heard her yell okay and that she’d text you if she needed something later. you made your way down to the entrance of your apartment complex and got into your car. you felt a bit tense, but you knew you were overreacting and that everything would be fine. 

you played your playlist while you drove, it calmed you down a bit more and you parked in the parking lot of the supermarket which was a five minute walk away from the cafe that you and eren had agreed to meet at. it was around 1:00 and you wanted to make the trip to the store quickly, double checking your phone to see if there was anything that sasha wanted. she hadn’t texted, so you went inside and went to find your favorite hair products. you grabbed the two that you liked, and made your way towards the front of the store to check out before you bumped into someone.

“y/n?” you looked up and saw jean standing in front of you. 

“oh, hi!” you backed up to meet his eyes, feeling embarrassed that you had not been watching where you were going. “i’m so sorry, i wasn’t paying attention.”

“no worries, what’re you up to?” 

“oh nothing, i was just getting some stuff and i’m supposed to be meeting eren in a few.” you responded, eying the isles to see if there was anything else that you needed. 

“that’s nice,” he said with a smile. “are you guys together yet?” the word yet made you feel jittery, it meant that eren had talked about the possibility of a relationship with jean, someone who he always is butting heads with.

“actually, that’s what i was going to talk to him about…” you laughed sheepishly, trying not to seem to eager about it. “what’re you doing?” 

“i was just getting some shit for connie because he wants something good tonight. i swear, hanging around sasha has made him a food monster like her. it’s crazy.” you couldn’t help but giggle at his remark. connie and sasha’s friendship was truly funny.

“well, have fun with that! i have to go because i don’t want to be late but we should all hangout again! that was fun!” you replied as you looked at your phone to check the time, which you had 15 minutes so it was perfect.

“yeah, if i don’t have to third wheel again.” you felt your face heat up at the comment. “nah, i’m playing. have fun!” he waves goodbye as he makes his way to the food section of the store and you walked towards the register.

after you finished paying, you made your way back to your car and placed your bag in the passenger seat. you had enough time to walk over to the cafe, and plus, you felt like you needed some exercise. 

you had an idea of what you wanted to say to eren. it was just that you wanted to confirm your relationship and make it exclusive, and after hearing the comment jean made, you knew that he felt the same way about it. it wasn’t long before you arrived in front of the cafe and you went into the back to where the seats were. you made a order for your favorite baked treat and sat down at a two seated table while you waited for eren. you checked your phone, scrolling through tik tok and instagram when you felt two hands on your shoulders, causing you to jolt in surprise.

“hi baby,” he whispered into your ear before giving you a quick peck on the cheek.

“hi eren,” you laughed, placing your phone down onto the table.

“what’s up?” he asked as he made his way over to the seat in front of you. he was wearing a black crewneck with gray sweatpants and vans, hair in a messy bun as per usual.

“nothing, i just missed you. are you gonna get something to eat?” you asked, looking over to the register.

“i placed an order and then i came over to you, how’ve you been? i haven’t seen you for a bit.”

“i’ve been good, i’m really glad that my exams are over. i now have time to relax,” you smiled at him as you scooted your chair closer to the table. you had truly been overwhelmed with all the studying and now you felt relieved that you now had free time to do what you wanted. 

“and to spend some time with me, right?” he teased as he gave you a playful smile. the little things that he does pulled on your heartstrings.

“no.” he gasped, placing his hand over his chest. “of course, idiot.”

“good,” he chuckled. “you know you love me.”

“you knew that already!” you whined as you gave him a cheeky smile. you and eren both caught up with each others lives. he told you that armin and annie had gotten together, and how mikasa was starting to see jean but that she also wanted to pursue with school so she didn’t want many distractions. you told him about how sasha and niccolo had been spending a lot of time together and how you thought they were perfect for each other. your food was brought to you by one of the employees and you both thanked them as you began to eat.

“so, what’d you wanna talk about?” he asked as he took a bite into his muffin with his coffee in the other hand.

“i just wanted to know if we were exclusive and stuff…” you couldn’t finish your sentence before eren started to stifle a laugh.

“i thought it was obvious,” he swallowed his food before continuing to talk. “we’re exclusive, i’m not seeing or talking to anyone else besides you. no one else interests me besides you.”

“oh, i guess i’m just blind,” you felt relieved at him saying that, you were worried for no reason. “i was just nervous because sasha told me about historia and i-” 

“historia?” he interrupts you. “what’d she say?”

“just that you guys were fuck buddies in the past and that you’re over now and all that stuff,” you responded, trying to sound as nonchalant as you could. you didn’t want him to notice that it was a touchy subject. he knew that you had bad experiences with relationships in the past but you were never one to really be insecure of past relationships that your partner had.

“i see, we don’t really talk anymore, so you had nothing to worry about.”

“okay, go- ” before you could finish your sentence, you heard someones voice so you turned your head.

“eren?” 

a blonde girl with blue eyes, shorter than you stood between you and eren at the table. you felt your stomach twist as you put the pieces together. you weren’t sure if you had met her before or not, but she looked just like the girl that you were just speaking about.

“historia?” eren choked on his coffee, looking over to meet her eyes. you could tell that he was shocked and slightly uncomfortable. had she heard your conversation?

“oh my god, what a coincidence seeing you here! how have you been?” she smiled, maintaining eye contact with him before he looked back towards you.

“��m fine, how have you been?” it was obvious that he was only trying to be polite but for some reason, her voice annoyed the shit out of you.

“i’ve been good!” she looks over to you and gives you a look before smiling and bringing her hand out. “we should-”

“no.”

“okay, you must be y/n? i’ve heard so much about you!” her comment made you feel uncomfortable, where had she heard about you from? 

“uh, hi!” you smiled at her and shook her hand. you had to at least be nice even though you felt like there was something weird going on, it was clear that you and eren were on a date and she had come over to talk. “where’d you hear about me from?”

“eren talks about you all the time!” talks? didn’t he just say-

“we haven’t talked in months.” eren interrupts, annoyance seeping through his voice. 

“that doesn’t matter!” she looked back over to eren with a huge smile on her face, as if she was waiting for him to show her any sort of attention. “he would talk about how much he cared about you when we would hang out and-” 

“enough, historia.” eren said, giving her a stern look before he looked over to you. “we’re kinda busy right now.” you stayed silent, you didn’t know what to feel but you weren’t about to let historia have her way right now. although you didn’t know her too well, you didn’t like the way she was acting.

“but i was just coming over to say hi! i haven’t met her before, i was trying to be nice!” you lost it, she was clearly trying to get at something here. she seemed like a nice person but the impression she was giving you right now was not good.

“listen, historia.” eren looked at you, his face tense. he had no idea what you were about to say but he could tell that you were beginning to get pissed off. “eren and i are on a date right now, and as much as i appreciate meeting you and all, i wanna spend some time with him because i haven’t seen him in a while.” she stood there, dumbfounded as you continued to speak to her. “so maybe if we could talk and get to know each other another time, that’d be great!”

“oh, uh, yeah of course!” she said as she stepped away. “i guess i’ll catch you later then. bye eren, bye y/n!” she smiled as she walked away and every ounce in your body told you that it was the fakest smile you had ever seen. you watched her walk away before letting out a sigh. it definitely did not seem that she was in a relationship with that ymir girl because she was clearly trying to talk to eren more, but who were you to say?

you and eren both sat there in silence before anyone said anything.

“i’m so-” you began before eren interrupted you once again.

“don’t. she’s hella annoying. that’s why i cut her off.” eren said as he looked over at you. he could tell you were uncomfortable and wanted to leave. “hey are you okay?”

“i’m fine, eren.” you snapped, face softening after you realized how mean you sounded. “i’m sorry, she just really annoyed me right there.”

“no, i get it. is there anything i can do?” he asked as you began to stand up from your chair in which he did as well. you picked up your trash and brought it to the trashcan, trying to steady your heartbeat. you were a bit rude to her but she was being rude too, was she? “do you wanna go home?”

“yeah.” he nodded his head in response and reached his hand out for you to hold. you interlocked your fingers with his as you both walked out. you both walked in silence, thinking about the interaction that had just taken place. you felt bad. you were a bitch to her but she was being annoying so what were you supposed to do? “did you drive?”

“hm? oh, no i didn’t. i live pretty close so i can walk home.” 

“i drove, so if you want a ride i can give you one,” you looked up at him with a smile. eren’s presence calmed you down, and he noticed that too. 

“yeah, i’d like that.” eren leaned down and gave you a quick kiss on your head, squeezing your hand in the process. you continued to walk back to the supermarket to where your car was parked  and made your way into the vehicle. he opened the passenger side and saw the bag that you had gotten earlier.

“you can just put that bag in the back, it has my shampoo since you used almost all of it when you were over,” you teased as you started the car. he smirked before sitting down next to you and putting on his seatbelt.

“you know how to get to my apartment right?” you gave him a playful look before backing out of your parking spot. “just messing with you.”

eren’s place wasn’t that far so it took you a few minutes to get there. you pulled into a spot and waiting for him to get out of the car after exchanging a kiss and just as he was about to get out of the car before he stopped and looked over to you. 

“what’s up?” you smiled, he looked like a lost puppy.

“do you wanna stay over for a bit? we can chill and watch something…” he trailed off once he heard your laughter. 

“sure,” you smiled and got out of the car and came over to the side that he was on. you poked your finger into his chest playfully, “you’re so needy!”

“needy, yeah?” he pulled you into a hug with your face buried into his chest, the smell of his cologne fogging your brain. “let’s see who’s gonna be needy later.”

a/n: im so sorry that this took so long i’ve been super busy but i will def try to upload more consistently these upcoming weeks!! this hasn't been edited cuz im tired rn but i will look over it later tonight if there is anything.

© all content belongs to oblxvion 2021, do not repost or change.

[love-and-monsters]

Harpy Model

M harpy X GN human, 6,762 words.

This story is based on this post that I was tagged in by the lovely and talented @p-gretz. Thanks for the inspiration!

You fumbled with the camera equipment in your hands. The tripod kept trying to escape under your elbow, but shifting to secure it would mean losing the lens cap, and grabbing for that jeopardized the magnifier you had balanced against your collarbone. If people stopped dumping things on you at every given opportunity, you probably would have been alright, but being the lowest member on the totem pole meant your status was barely better than a self-propelled table.

The tripod slipped another inch down and you automatically grabbed at it. The sudden movement unbalanced the camera in the center of the pile. With a clatter of plastic, it slipped free, tumbling toward the ground.

A feathered hand snagged the camera strap, jerking it to a halt seconds before it struck the ground. “Need some help?” a slightly accented male voice asked.

“Thanks, but I got it,” you said. A total lie. You could not have had it less if you’d tried.

“Nonsense. At least let me take something so you can get better situated.” Before you could protest again, he had removed several of the objects, tucking them into his feathered arms.

Without the constant danger of dropping something if you so much as twitched, you were able to shift the pile in your arms into a better position. “Thank you. I’m sorry, I-”

You froze. It felt embarrassingly out of character for you to look at someone and freeze, but his face made something in your chest do backflips.

He was elegantly made up, with touches lengthening his lashes and emphasizing his cheekbones. His hair was pale and curling in little waves around his ears. Delicate feathers sprouted around his neck, trailing down toward his arms. They were pale white, with touches of pink. His tail was easily the most striking part of him. Long, green feathers made a train behind him that brushed the floor and gave him the impression of a trailing cloak. He stood delicately on bird-like talons, poised like a dancer.

Fortunately, your freeze only lasted a couple of seconds, and you disguised it by pretending to drop and recover one of your many items. “Sorry. I’m trying to go to studio, um. A12, so I’ll just be heading over there-”

The man laughed. It was more gentle than mocking, but you felt your stomach shrivel in embarrassment regardless. “Really? Then you’re heading in the wrong direction. I’m headed in the same direction. I can walk you there.”

“I wouldn’t want to bother you,” you said.

“It’s not a bother. You seem like you could use the help.” You blushed furiously, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He shifted the camera he’d taken from you into a more comfortable position in his arm. “Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before.”

“Yeah. I’m, um. The new intern, basically. You’ve been here for a while?”

“I work with a few different photography places as a model. But I’ve had a contract here for some time.” He flicked his tail casually. “If you need help, I can show you around a little bit when we’re done. This place can be a real maze until you get used to it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t impose on you like that. I mean, you’re probably really busy and I don’t want to take up any of your valuable time-”

The harpy laughed. “My time is hardly the most valuable time here. And, if we’re being really honest…” He leaned in close to your ear. His feathers tickled as he put a hand up to his mouth. “I don’t mind making some of the people around here wait. They’re all really stuck up.” He leaned back and dropped you a glittery wink before strolling on ahead. “Come with me! It’s this way.”

You hurried after him. He had a particularly flowing, graceful way of moving. It wasn’t hard to believe he was a model- even if you hadn’t met him in the studio, you would have guessed it. He moved like he was always on a catwalk.

The studio was particularly maze-like. There were multiple winding halls with several doors each. Only a few small signs gave any sign of where anything was, and casual racks of clothes strewn around the hallway blocked more than half of them. The harpy, however, strode through the halls with a practiced ease.

After several turns, you finally came across a door marked Studio A12. The harpy pushed the door open and paused to let you through before stepping in himself.

“Revali! You’re late!” An impatient-looking woman glared across the room at him. You froze automatically, but he just put down the equipment he’d been carrying on a nearby table and gave you a wink.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” he said. You turned away from him as your supervisor approached you.

“You’re late too,” he said.

“Sorry. I kind of got lost.”

“I know it’s your first week here, so I’m not going to scold you for this, but being on time is important here. At least for the photographers.” He cast a disparaging look at Revali who was chatting cheerfully with the stern-looking woman. “Models get more leeway.”

“He doesn’t seem so bad,” you said. “I thought a lot of models here were kind of stuck up.”

“He’s not stuck up,” your supervisor agreed. “He’s got the opposite problem. He doesn’t take anything seriously. One of those types who float through life on nothing but their good looks.”

The photoshoot started right after he spoke and you were immediately swept up in the business of it all. Your job was essentially doing whatever anyone needed of you, and they needed a lot. You spent most of the time scrambling around, fixing lights, grabbing accessories, fetching camera equipment, and being a general gopher. The photoshoot lasted only an hour and a half, but you were exhausted by the time it was over.

You sagged by the door, waiting for your next task to be assigned. Revali was having some sort of conversation with his manager that seemed to be verging on an argument, at least on her end. Revali looked as casual as ever.

His manager said something stabbing a finger in his face. He didn’t even flinch. He just lifted one of his shoulders in a slight shrug and, with a flick of his tail, strolled away.

“Ready for the tour?” he asked as he walked over to you. He had a particular way of walking, like he was constantly on a catwalk. It really was more of a strut than a casual walk.

“I already said you don’t have to. And, um, I don’t want to get you in trouble.” You made a subtle head motion toward his managers, who was alternating between looking at her phone screen and glaring at him.

Revali tossed his head. “She’s not my mother. She doesn’t control me. I do what I like. And right now, I’d like to take you on a tour of the studio. Why don’t you come with me?”

You glanced back at his manager. Revali shifted in front of you, blocking her from your sight. “All right,” you said. “But it can’t take too long. I’ve still got other responsibilities to take care of.”

Revali nodded and gestured for you to follow him out the door. “Like I said, this whole place is kind of a maze. I swear, they designed every section to look as similar as possible. But, you can figure out where all the studios are because it’s broken into sections. The stairwells are always marked with the sections. Even numbers are always to the right when you get off the stairwells and odd numbers to the left. Here, I’ll show you how to get to a couple of the bigger studios-”

Revali was right- the entire place seemed to have been designed like a weird, spiraling maze. You ended up needing to take notes on everything he told you. When you finally came to a stop, you were almost dizzy from all the turns you’d needed to make.

“Where are we?” you asked, looking around. “I haven’t been in this part of the building before.” It was almost indistinguishable from the other parts of the building, with eh same florescent lights and powder blue walls, but there were larger signs next to every door and they were spaced closer together.

“Yes, you probably haven’t needed to come down here yet.” Revali opened one of the doors and stepped inside. It was a small room with a large mirror taking up most of one wall, a couch, a minifridge, and a few racks of fancy-looking clothes. “They’re the model rooms. Those of us who have long-term contracts here get our own little spaces when we’re not working.” He strode across the room and sprawled on his couch.

You stood in the doorway. One of the models taking an interest in you and then inviting you back to his personal room? It was hard to keep your imagination from going places. “Hey, uh. I don’t want to be rude, but if you invited me back here for some, uh, fun, I’m not really into casual flings, so-”

Revali shrugged. “Whether or not we have sex is entirely up to you. I’ve had a couple flings in here. Honestly, they didn’t do much for me.”

If he had been attempting to make you more comfortable, it had backfired. Great. Now you didn’t want to sit down anywhere. You remained in the doorway. “Why did you bring me here, then?”

Revali shrugged. “You seemed overwhelmed,” he said. “And it’s much quieter down here.” There was a series of thumps and cursing on the other side of the wall. Revali glared at it. “Mostly, anyway.”

You plucked up your courage and settled on the couch next to him. He grinned. “Also, it’s lunch time and I like eating with other people. I make way too much food all the time.”

Revali grabbed a few Tupperware containers out of his minifridge and lay them out on the table next to you. Most of them appeared to be some sort of meat covered in a thick sauce. Revali was looking at you eagerly, so you took the fork he was offering and took a bite.

“Oh!” you said. “It’s good!”

“Yeah?” Revali said. “I cook when I’m stressed, so I always have more food than I need.” You took a few more bites, enjoying the richness and spiciness of the sauce over the umami of the meat. Revali leaned back, watching you eat with a strange amount of intensity.

“Um. Are you going to have some?” you asked, gesturing to the food. Revali made a face.

“Can’t. I have my own lunch here.” He pulled out an uninspired-looking salad with a few strips of grilled chicken on top.

“You make food, but then you don’t eat it?” you asked. Revali shrugged.

“The life of a model. I do need to keep in shape,” he said. “But I’m always cooking, so you can come over any time you want. I’ll give you a free lunch.”

“You could try at least one bite,” you said. You lifted a piece of meat on your fork and held it out to him. Revali lifted a brow. “Come on. You made all this. I’ll feel bad if I’m the only one who gets to eat it.”

Revali’s brow lifted a little higher. “Well, if you’ll feel bad, I suppose I have no choice but to spare your feelings.” You had intended for him to take the fork from you, but instead, he leaned forward and picked the chunk of meat off the fork with his teeth. He sprawled back and chewed, eyes closing. “Mm. It is good.”

You glanced around the room. It was slightly messy, with clothes and makeup strewn all over the place. Nothing was dirty, but it was a little cluttered. “How did you get into modeling, anyway?”

Revali opened his eyes and pushed himself more upright. “It was a few years ago. Just started doing a few local things, then I got scouted by my current agency. It’s not the most fun, really, but it’s pretty good money. Better than flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant, at least.” He shrugged. “Never finished college, so my job prospects are pretty limited.” He eyed you. “What about you?”

“I finished college a month or so ago. Studied photography. I’m hoping that this internship will lead to an actual job in the future, because right now I’m kind of living off my savings.” You gave a weak chuckle. “I kind of wanted to do my own photography thing, but, you know. Better to have a stable job.”

“Don’t I know it. I’d love to do some more interesting projects, but these ones pay well, which is what my manager likes.” Revali checked his phone and grimaced. “I’m going to have to head to my next shoot in a few minutes. You can hang out here if you like. Just put stuff back when you’re done with it.”

“I should probably be getting back now anyway,” you said, standing up. “Thank you for the lunch, though. You’re a good cook.”

“Thank you. Come back any time. Like I said, I’ve always got food. Actually, let me walk you back to the photo area. Just to make sure you get there all right.” Revali held the door open for you as you stepped into the hall.

“I’m not that hopeless,” you said, starting to head down the hallway. Revali snickered and you stopped. “What?”

“You sure?” he said. “Because, uh, you are going the complete wrong direction.”

“Oh,” you said. “I. Um. That’s embarrassing.”

“You’ll get used to it. Eventually. Here, I’ll show you the way.” Revali linked his arm through yours. “This all right?”

“Sure,” you said. “Thank you. Again.”

“No problem at all! Now, we should probably hurry, so I don’t get yelled at twice in one day. My manager would blow a blood vessel.” Revali headed off at a rapid trot, forcing you to jog to keep up.

Meeting him for lunch became a regular practice after that. He usually had something new and interesting for you to try, and he seemed to enjoy your company. Every day, you would slip out of work and head down to his dressing room for at least half an hour. A few times, you lost track of the time and had to sprint to make it back to your next shoot.

“They’re really putting you through the ringer, huh?” Revali said as you collapsed on his couch. He was wearing the sparkliest blue jacket you’d ever seen. Whether it was actually for a shoot or not was up in the air- Revali was the sort of person who would wear it out and about.

“It’s all right. I wish I was allowed to do more than just menial labor, though. I knew I was going to get the tasks people didn’t like when I started, but I wish I had more learning experiences. I feel like I’ve barely held a camera for something other than handing it to someone.”

Revali stretched his arms over his head, wings twitching. It was always interesting to watch the way they moved. They were a combination of wings and arms, with feathers sprouting all along his arms and the wing tip and hands separating at the wrists. Whenever he wore long sleeves, he needed to cut slits for the feathers and tied the ends closed around his wrists. They were usually tied closed with some sort of bangle, so he nearly always jingled when he moved his arms. “That’s a bummer. Have you been able to take any photos at all recently?”

“Nah. I’ve been too busy. When I get home from work, all I want to do is collapse. And I’ve been having trouble getting inspiration. I’ve been trying to get out more and do some shoots in nature, because it’s a lot nicer than the manufactured settings we have here, but I’ve been having trouble finding a model.”

Revali sat up straighter. “Having trouble finding a model, hm? Well, isn’t is just so fortunate that I happen to have some skills in that particular department?”

“Are you sure? I can’t really pay you much. That’s part of the reason I’ve been having trouble getting some models. When your job isn’t paying you anything, you can’t afford to hire someone for an afternoon. And I’m just not connected enough to find someone willing to do it for free.”

“I think we can help each other out,” Revali said. “I do actually need some new photos for my portfolio, and I think it would be nice to have a more natural setting. Let me use the photos and I’ll do it for free.”

“You’d be willing to do that? And you’re not too busy? I know you’ve kind of been running ragged for the past few days,” you said.

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Like I said, it gives us both something we want.” He whipped a phone out of his pocket and started tapping on the screen. “Let’s see. I’m free Saturday afternoon, if that works for you?” You nodded. “Wonderful. Text me your address, I’ll stop by and you can take me wherever you want.”

Your phone timer dinged and you jumped to your feet. “Oh, shoot, I need to get going. Um, I guess I’ll see you then? And thank you!”

“Don’t worry about it, cutie. Just go.” He waved a hand at you. “I’d hate to see you get yelled at on my behalf.”

You scrambled out the door, waving goodbye to him once more before heading down the hall.

Waiting for Saturday became the highlight of your week. You deliberated over the best location, eventually picking a slightly secluded, riverside area. Revali had agreed to bring some of his own outfits, which he had allowed you to approve. They were simpler than the outfits he usually wore to work, with more natural colors, but he still looked good in them.

You spent a lot of time fussing with your cameras on the day of the shoot. It would be terribly embarrassing for Revali to show up and see you unprepared.

The knock on your door was startling. You carefully placed your camera on your table and hurried to answer it.

Revali was leaning against the doorway. “Hello, darling. Ready to go?”

He was wearing some fancy-looking gold and silver makeup and he’d done something to plump up his tail. It was long and fancy typically, but he’d added long lines of beads and fluff to his tail, making it look even more striking than usual.

“Wow,” you said. You were suddenly overly conscious about how messy your hair was and the fact that you’d just kind of thrown on the first clothes you’d laid your eyes on in the morning. Would it be weird if you made an excuse to go change? “Uh. Do you want to come in for a minute? I just, uh, need to finish something up.”

Revali stepped into your house. “Nice place,” he said, glancing around. You snorted.

“Please. I’m renting a house in the middle of nowhere that has, like, three rooms. Uh, make yourself comfortable. I just need to, um. Grab a jacket.”

“It’s nicely decorated, though. You have a good aesthetic sense.” Most of the stuff you had was from second-hand stores, but it did all sort of go together in a sort of farmhouse-chic way.

You hurried into your room and swapped your old sweatshirt out for a nicer shirt and one of your nicer jackets. The pants were staying, they were good enough. You hurried back out into the kitchen. Revali was examining a few of the photos that adorned your walls.

“You take these?” he asked. They were mostly nature shots, images of animals or flowers up close or landscape shots of rolling fields or mountains.

“Yeah. Most of them were for class. I just hung up the best ones,” you said.

“They’re nice. I like them. Do you like taking picture of nature better? Than of people, I mean.”

“Um. I mean. They’re both nice, just in different ways. There’s something really meditative about taking pictures of nature. It’s peaceful. Working with people can be harder, but it’s also kind of rewarding? Like, taking photos for a wedding is really nice. You get to capture a really great moment in someone’s life and then, when they look back at it, you help them remember the good moments. I like being able to do that for people.”

Revali looked at you. His eyes were bright, assessing. “Why do you work for the studio? It’s not any of those things you said, peaceful or rewarding. It’s mostly just stressful.”

“It makes money,” you said as you headed for the door. “Why do you work for the agency?”

There was a pause, long enough for you to get in the car. “Because it makes good money,” Revali finally said. “And it also means I get my face out there. I like being well known, you know.”

“I can’t imagine wanting that. I like being behind the scenes way more.”

Revali settled back in the seat and watched the fields roll by. “Where are we headed?”

“Um, there’s this nice little riverside area in a stand of trees. I thought it might make for some pretty photos.” You glanced at him uncertainly. “I hope that’s okay with you. I know you said you’d be okay with a nature shoot, but hope you’re not going to be too upset with a little dirt. I’ll try to keep you out of it, but-”

Revali burst into peals of laughter. You twisted your head to stare at him before realizing that you should probably keep your eyes on the road. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t laugh! It just struck me as very funny, but you had no way of knowing, of course.” Revali wiped a stray tear away. “Do you know where I grew up?”

“No,” you said. He hadn’t told you, had he? Revali seemed unoffended. He ran a hand through his hair, which somehow still looked artfully tousled. You were temporarily distracted by the way little tufts curled loosely around his ears. Hurriedly, you turned your gaze back to the road.

“I grew up on a farm,” he said. He fluttered his feathers. “I’m a cockerel harpy- I’ve got my fancy show feathers, but I’m not exactly a bird of paradise. It’s a family thing. I grew up working in the dirt and mud, and whenever I go home, I’m expected to do it again.”

“I never would have guessed,” you said honestly. He had the soft looks of someone who had never worked hard labor, but when you looked him over again, you could see how his smooth muscles might have come from farm work. “Your family didn’t mind, then, you going to be a model?”

“You think I have some sob story about running away from my strict farm father to pursue my dreams of being in the spotlight?” Revali smirked at you. “No. My father was disappointed, I think. He did want me to carry on the tradition. But I’ve got two younger sister who are much more invested in the farm life, so he didn’t have any fears about passing everything on and both my parents are the ‘follow your dreams’ sort, so they probably would have let me go anyway. I’m not sure they understand what I see in modeling, but they support me nonetheless.”

It was a short drive to the little grove. You parked out of the way and gathered your camera equipment while Revali looked around the area. “It’s pretty,” he said, inspecting a spray of yellow flowers. “You have a good eye.”

“Thanks.” You carefully placed the tripod. “Okay, first things first. I want to get some full-body portraits first, then we can move on to the up-close stuff.”

Revali was easy to work with, easier than you would have guessed from the number of arguments he got into with his manager. He posed gracefully, responded to your every critique thoughtfully and carefully, and even put up with your artistic considerations with far more patience than you would have expected. Even when you spent several minutes forcing him to hold a pose while you got the angle just right, he didn’t complain.

About two hours after you had started, you called a break. Revali shrugged his artfully-held jacket back on and lounged against a tree. “Can I see some of the photos?” he asked.

You considered for a moment, then handed the camera over with the same care you would with a baby. Probably more, really. “Just don’t break anything, all right?”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Revali said. “I’ve only ever dropped two cameras. And one of them survived with only minimal damage!” You stared at him in wide-eyed horror. “I’m kidding! I’ll be very careful.”

He clicked through the camera’s photo roll. You sat nearby, leg jittering nervously. His expression was inscrutable.

“These are nice,” he said after a few moments. “I mean, they’re quite good. Better than a lot of the shoots I’ve been to recently. I like the shadow and light here.” He tapped at the photo on screen. You leaned over to see which one he was talking about. It was one of the close-ups, where Revali was staring up through the trees. The sunlight dappled leaf shadows across his face and picked up the flecks of gold in his dark eyes.

“It’s just a photo of your face,” you said, a little embarrassed by the praise. “I mean, it’s hard to make you look bad.”

“Oh, you’re being too modest. A poor picture can make anyone look bad and my lovely face can only do so much. You’re the one who set up the shot and was all clever with the lighting and whatnot.” Revali gave a little wave of his hand. “Honestly, it’s better than a few of my modeling pictures. And you’re much better at giving direction than most of the people at the studio. I swear, the number of times I just get told to look pouty at the camera is ridiculous. Or ridiculously esoteric shit. ‘Think about your best friend returning after a long time away’ my ass. Just tell me exactly what to do with my face and I’ll do it.” He stopped and gave you a slightly embarrassed look. “Not to make this about me, of course. But yes, you are quite good. It’s a shame you don’t get more projects.”

You shrugged. “I’d like to do more independent stuff. But I just don’t have any connections and I’ve been having a hard time getting gigs and, well, it’s just hard when you’re getting started.”

Revali tilted his head to one side. “Things will get better,” he said. You huffed out a sigh.

“I hope so. I’m gonna go crazy if I don’t get to do something interesting in my actual job soon.” You fiddled with a few of the camera settings again. “Ready?”

“Certainly.” The photoshoot commenced once more. Revali seemed to be putting his all into the shoot, which you appreciated. He probably could have slipped by with just posing halfheartedly, but he was really putting effort forward.

You spent longer on a photoshoot than you had expected. Revali was nice to work with, cracking little jokes at every opportunity and being patient with any technical mishaps. The sun had started to sink toward the horizon by the time you were done.

“Sorry that took so long,” you said. “I didn’t mean to take up your weekend.”

“I’m really fine.” Revali flicked his tail, combing his fingers through the long feathers. “You apologize a lot, don’t you?”

“I just don’t want to come across as rude,” you said. Revali laughed.

“That’s one thing you certainly don’t do,” he said. “I enjoyed myself.”

“Still,” you said as the pair of you headed back toward his car, “why don’t I buy you dinner? It’s the least I can do.”

Revali looked down at you. His dark eyes glittered with interest. “If you’re offering, then I’ll certainly take you up on it.”

It took some driving around, but you eventually settled on a small café fairly close to Revali’s townhouse. He selected some sort of salad and you picked out a sandwich. Revali was right, the place was quite good. “I’ve never been here before,” you said. “I guess I haven’t been eating out for lunch as much, though.”

“I’m pleased my cooking is so good to you,” Revali said. He picked at his salad, moving the leaves around more than he was eating them. A knot started to form in your stomach.

“Hey.” Revali looked up. Your tone must have been strange because his expression became serious. “Um. You don’t, um. Eat much.”

Revali lowered his fork. “Ah. I did notice you staring during meals, but I suppose I was trying to flatter myself, thinking it was entirely my good looks.”

You felt hot. “I’m sorry, I know it might be rude to bring it up. But I’m just a little worried. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“Hm,” Revali muttered. He put down his fork and shifted in his seat. His feathers rustled and ruffled. “I did have some trouble with eating well when I was younger. It never developed into a full-blown disorder, but I have always had a bit of an issue with maintaining my looks. I suppose my current representation isn’t helping with this issue.”

“Your manager?” you guessed. Revali gave a tight-lipped smile.

“Yes. I gained a pound the other week and got a bit of a lecture for it. Apparently, thin men are in right now. Harpies are usually fine boned and slender and all that, but I suppose it’s not quite enough for her.” A swell of anxiety crested behind his words.

You fiddled with a toothpick. “Can you get new representation?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t. She is the only available representative for the company I have a contract with right now. And even if I could switch, I don’t have any guarantee that the next manager would be any better. Extreme dieting is not exactly uncommon in the modeling industry.” He sighed, picking up his fork and poking at the salad a few times before spearing a large bite and shoving it into his mouth. “The contract actually expires in a couple weeks,” he said, swallowing the bite. “She’s not happy about it. She really wants me to sign on again, but I haven’t done it yet.”

“What’ll you do if you don’t sign on again? Try to go somewhere else?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been modeling for a few years now. I’m not sure what else to do. But I’ll admit, I don’t love the culture. It’s not great for my mental health, in all honesty. I just don’t know what else to do.”

He looked so despondent that you couldn’t help but reach across the table and take his hand. He stared at your fingers for a moment before lifting his gaze to yours. “I’m sure whatever you chose will be the right thing,” you said. “I think, if your modeling career is bad for your mental health, then you can quit. You’re more than just a pretty face, you know? You know more about photoshoots than you think you do. You’ve got a good sense for lighting and you’ve even got a better idea of colors than I do. And you’ve got a really great fashion sense. I think there’s a lot you could do.”

Revali blinked at you for a moment, then his face broke into a breathtaking smile. A blush stole across your face, blazing in your cheeks. He looked unbearably beautiful. It wasn’t just the features of his face, though they were all very good. It was the clear and genuine delight that the smile conveyed. “I don’t think I’ve had someone compliment me so sweetly in a long time! At least, not on something other than my looks.”

“Not to mention, you’re a kick-ass cook,” you added. Revali laughed and took a sip of his water. You weren’t sure, because he had quite a bit of makeup on, but you though you could see a hint of pink tinging his cheeks.

“If I’m looking for a less stressful job than modeling, I don’t think being a chef is a good choice. And I’m not quite good enough to be in the industry. But it is nice to have my skills complimented.” He took another sip. “But thank you. Being a model can make it so your looks are the most important part of your life. It’s good to be reminded they’re not the most important thing about me.”

You shrugged. “Hey, I’m not much in the looks department, so I’m pretty good at looking past that.”

“Now, now, don’t be modest. You’re quite cute yourself,” Revali said, dropping a glittery wink. You felt yourself flushing again.

After dinner, you returned home and bid Revali a farewell. You spent the evening examining the photos you’d taken. Most of them were quite good. At the very least, they would make good photos for your portfolio. You considered them for a few moments, then pulled up the bare bones of your website and started uploading the photos.

The next day, you joined Revali for lunch again. He was wearing more than his usual makeup, but even so, you could see the slight puffiness around his eyes. “Tired?” you asked.

“Ughh. My manager and I got into a fight last night, after I got home. Things were said.” He massaged his forehead. “Tell me something good, darling, I need it.”

“Um,” you said. “I set up my website last night? Or I started setting it up, at least.”

Revali focused fully on you. “Your website?”

“Yeah. Um, I hope you don’t mind, I put some of the pictures we took up there. I want to see if I can start freelancing, at least in my free time.” Revali perked up. The tired look slid off his face.

“I don’t mind. I’m used to having my pictures all over the place. So, you’ve decided to start doing your own thing, now?” He leaned toward you.

“At least a little bit. The hardest part will be getting clients. Once I build up a little bit of a base, I can start getting people by word of mouth and stuff. But it’s difficult now.”

“I’d expect so,” Revali said, but he appeared to only be half paying attention. His gaze had become a little unfocused, like he was thinking about something else. “You know what, my next shoot’s in a few minutes. You can hang out here if you want. I’ll see you later.”

You met for lunch a few times in the next couple of weeks. Revali’s mood seemed to have improved. He was much more cheerful and, to your great relief, he seemed to be eating more.

It was almost exactly two weeks after you’d had your photoshoot when Revali sought you out at work. “I was going to come by for lunch,” you said. “Is something wrong?”

Revali seized your hands. “No. Things are great! I just told my manager to fuck off!” He proclaimed it loudly enough that several people in the vicinity turned toward him. You ignored them.

“That is great! I’m so glad for you,” you said.

“That’s not everything,” Revali said. “I have a surprise for you.” His tail twitched and flicked with excitement. “Follow me!”

Revali tugged you through the building, down to his dressing room. “Okay. Remember how you were talking about having trouble getting clientele?”

“Yeah,” you said cautiously.

“Well, I’ve been a model for a while. Which means I have some connections and some favors.” Revali opened the door and tugged you inside. “So, I thought I’d call some in!”

The room did not look different. You looked cautiously at Revali. “Uh. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“This!” Revali snatched a stack of papers off a table and thrust them at you. You flipped through them. “It’s the information of people who want to have photoshoots! There’s a couple of weddings, one person wants a pet thing, a couple of people want you to take photos for cosplays- I told them all that you were really good and you’re easy to work with and a bunch of people were willing to give it a shot.”

“You got me gigs?” There was a note of incredulity in your voice. “Like, paying gigs?”

“Yes! I told you, I have some contacts and some favors. I pulled a few strings.” Revali fluttered his wings.

“Thank you,” you said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“All the information you need is there. You can contact them all for more information, but it should have the basics.” Revali sprawled across his couch. “I figured that if I was going out, I might as well use my connections for good.”

“Going out?” you said, perching on the couch next to him.

“Yeah.” Revali rubbed at the back of his neck. “I told my manager to fuck off, remember? There’s a solid chance I’ll get blackballed for it, and even if I don’t, I don’t think I want to do this modeling thing anymore. It hasn’t been great for my mental health. And I’d like to be seen as more than just a pretty face.”

“You have plans?” you asked.

“No. I’ve got some money saved up. I figure I can afford to coast for a little bit. And if it really gets bad, I’m sure my dad would be happy to have me back on the farm.” He laughed, but you caught the slight downturn of his mouth. You ran your finger along the edge of the paper stack.

“If you’re interested, these are a lot of jobs. I think I could use a little bit of help,” you said. Revali blinked at you. “I can’t pay much, but it’ll be a little bit of money and if I start getting really good, I can hire you on full time. You’ve already shown you’ve got an eye for this stuff.”

“Really?” Revali said. He stared at you disbelievingly. “You’re willing to do that for me?”

“It would help me as much as it would help you. I mean, you’ve already been a huge help and you’re not even working for me yet. I think we’d make a good team.”

Revali looked enormously delighted. “Oh, thank you! You’re incredible!” With no warning, he ducked forward, his hands came up to the sides of your face, and he pressed his mouth to yours.

Your brain short-circuited temporarily. There wasn’t a single coherent thought in your mind. Just a bunch of sensations. Mouth. On your mouth. Kissing. Revali was kissing you. Passionately. His hands were on your face. His feathers were tickling you. His breath was warm on your face.

He broke away from you before you could gain enough sense to kiss back. Revali grinned sheepishly. “Oh. That was sort of supposed to be the grand finale. We were supposed to go out for dinner first. I just got excited.”

You pulled your thoughts together. “You were going to ask me out?”

“I thought you deserved something for taking me out a while ago. And I’ve been thinking about asking you out for a while. But you looked so cute there and I was very grateful, and I just couldn’t help myself,” he said. “I hope you didn’t mind too much?”

“No,” you said. “I didn’t mind. At all.” Revali smiled. You were drawn to the curve of his mouth, the fullness of his upper lip. “But, maybe just to make sure, we should do it again?”

Revali’s smile got bigger. “You know, I was thinking that I’m not going to have this dressing room much longer. There are a lot of things we could do in here. Celebrate our moving on and all that.”

“Let’s start with kissing,” you said, “and we can see where it goes.”

Revali leaned closer to you. “Start with kissing. I can do that.”

[sisterspooky1013]

Damsels, Chapter Four: First Day

By SisterSpooky1013 / Read Previous chapters here

Rated E / Tagging @today-in-fic

Angel leads Scully out of Ricky’s office and back down the hall, pointing to various doors.

“Here are the customer bathrooms, we don’t use these. That’s the exit to the lobby, but we have our own door in the back. Through here is the floor.”

Angel makes no mention of the other, unmarked doors in the hall. She pushes the “Enter Here to be Dominated” door open and they walk into a large room with the floors and ceiling painted black. To the left, there's a long bar that covers nearly the entire wall with at least twenty stools butting up to it. Directly across from the bar on the right wall, there’s a small round stage with a gold pole erected in the center. A shallow counter, just wide enough to set a cup, runs along the entire perimeter of the stage with chairs neatly pushed in against it. A mental image of herself on the stage while men look on flashes in her mind and she shakes her head gently, forcing it away. Along the back wall are several small partitions; little rooms constructed out of dark red curtains that are currently pinned open to reveal a loveseat and table in each one. The rest of the room is filled with small black tables and chairs, and can probably seat upwards of 100 people. Angel leads Scully to the left, approaching the bar.

“Back here is the bar, obviously, and this is Queenie, our lead bartender. Queenie, this is Diane, Ricky just hired her,” Angel continues.

A tall Asian woman stands from behind the counter holding a case of Jack Daniels. She has wide, round eyes and a diamond-cut chin, her full lips painted dark red and her black hair tied into a high bun.

“Hey,” she replies, “is Diane your stage name? You’re getting soft, Angel,” she teases, casting Angel a flirtatious smile.

“Oh, no, we actually haven’t gotten that far yet,” Angel replies before turning to Scully, resting one elbow on the bar top. “So while you’re waitressing, you’ll talk to Queenie a lot. She can make any drink under the sun. Tip her out twenty percent of whatever you make.”

Scully nods and wishes she had something to write all this down. Between the new terminology and rules, she's already getting confused and is bound to make a mistake. Angel leads her to the other side of the room and climbs gingerly up onto the stage.

“This is the stage, duh, and this is the pole. We call him Paul, the pin to make it spin or stationary is down here,” she leans and points to a small pin at the base of the pole.

“Oh!” Scully exclaims, “I guess never realized the pole spins.”

“Common misconception,” Angel goes on, wrapping her knee and elbow around the pole and spinning a couple slow rotations as she speaks. “But that’s why you don’t want to put oil or anything slippery on your legs or arms. You need to be able to get a good grip, especially while the pole is spinning. We’ll talk more about that later, come up here.”

Scully baulks and looks around, but climbs onto a chair, then the drink rail before finally getting to the stage itself. The room looks even bigger from up here.

“So, just from a Bird's Eye view up here,” Angel continues, “those seats against the wall back there at the end of the bar we call the rock section. Dudes just grab a seat and order a soda and then nurse it all night. Never pay for dances, never come to the tip rail, nothin’. Just sit there like a damn rock. It can be a fun challenge when you’re waitressing to try to get them to buy more drinks, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

“Tip rail?” Scully asks, sensing that this will be something she has to do a lot.

“Right, these seats right here,” Angel points to the seats that are lined up along the perimeter of the stage, “are the tip rail. You have to sit here or be close to it in order to tip stage dances, hence the name. Something else you’ll hear is doing a mini-lap, which is just when you let a guy at the tip rail motorboat you or put his face in your ass or whatever. Usually you’d do that when they give you a really fat tip.”

“I thought Ricky said the men aren’t allowed to touch you?” Scully clarifies, subconsciously rounding her shoulders and crossing her arms protectively.

“Ah, important distinction. WE can touch THEM, but they can’t touch us. So like, I can rub my tits on a guy's face, but if he grabs them, he’s toast. There are some limits to that I’ll tell you about later, but you can’t give a good lap dance without touching so we definitely touch, it’s just always us who does it, not them.”

Scully is impressed by the degree to which Ricky seems to embrace the “women in control” model, but she’s curious to see whether it’s all talk.

“So that middle part with lots of small tables,” Angel is now pointing to the middle of the room, in front of the rock section, “that’s usually where the whales sit, like Mr. Keane. They’re too classy to sit at the rail but you can still see pretty good from there. And lastly, over there,” she now points to her right to the small curtained rooms, “those are the VIP rooms. We’ll talk more about those later too when we talk about the rules, but they’re basically where customers can take a girl for a private dance.”

Scully feels a pit in her stomach. No matter what rules they have in place, there is no way she can be safe behind a curtain with a man who is paying to access her body. Her distress is interrupted by music suddenly pouring from the speakers at an obscene volume, making them both jump. It cuts off as quickly as it started, and Angel turns to look at a small raised booth behind and to the right of the stage.

“What the fuck, Ben?!” she shouts, raising her arms in an angry gesture.

“Sorry, Angel, my bad!” A thin Asian man with a narrow face and a goatee waves down to them apologetically.

“That’s Ben, the DJ. He’s not usually so obnoxious,” Angel says to Scully, then turns and shouts up to Ben. “This is the new girl, Diane!”

“What the fuck kind of stage name is Diane?” He calls back down. “Also, hi, I’m Ben,” he adds, waving again. Scully smiles warmly and waves back.

“We haven’t picked her name yet!” Angel shouts back. “We really need to pick your name, girl, this is getting old fast,” she says to Scully.

“Um, this may be a strange question,” Scully starts, “but, is everyone who works here Asian?”

Angel looks off into space for a moment, lost in thought. “No, but everyone here right now is, huh?! That’s a weird coincidence. Anyway, Asian is a big group. Denny out front is Samoan, which is actually Pacific Islander. Queenie is Vietnamese, and Ben is Japanese. And Ricky is white as fuck,” she bursts into a fit of giggles at her own joke.

“And what about you?” Scully asks her.

Angel turns and starts to walk away from her, casting a coy glance over her shoulder. “I’m whoever you want me to be, Baby,” she says with a flirty lilt in her voice, before adding “come on, I’ll show you the back.”

“The back,” accessible by a door just behind the stage, is a long hallway with restrooms, a staff locker room, a break room with a kitchen, and a dressing room for the dancers.

“So, I’m gonna show you the dancer’s room now, just so you have an idea what you’re working towards, but just FYI that they really don’t let the waitresses come back here. After this I’d keep your ass out if you don’t want to get torn a new one,” Angel advises her.

The dancer’s room is modest in size with mirrored stations set up along two walls and a small bank of four more in the middle of the room. Each station is slightly different, but most have a makeup kit, hair products, and a box that locks with a code to store cash tips. Three of the stations sit empty. Along the back wall are four doors, and along the left wall is a double-height clothes rack full of straps, sequins, lace, and mesh of all colors. While the floor had smelled like cleaner on top of stale beer and sweat, the dancer’s room is sweet and perfumed with hints of vanilla and cinnamon.

“What’s through those doors?” Scully asks casually.

“The second one on the left will take you outside, that’s the one we can use to come and go without having to go by the customers,” Angel answers. “There’s another one of those at the end of the hall out there you can use while you’re waitressing. The door on the far right is a single stall bathroom. The other ones are storage or something, I don’t know. They’re locked.”

Scully gives no reaction to this information but makes a mental note of it for later. After they look at the general staff locker room and the kitchen, Angel plops down at a table near the fridge and Scully follows suit, taking the seat across from her.

“So, before we go grab lunch, let’s figure out your stage name so we can introduce you to people properly,” Angel begins. “There’s kind of a tradition here that your stage name starts with the same first letter as your real name. I don’t know why, and people will say it’s not a ‘rule’ per se, but if you don’t do it it will probably seem weird.”

“What’s your real name, if that’s okay to ask?” Scully inquires nervously. Not having real names will make this whole investigation a lot harder.

“Oh no, it’s fine. They aren’t a secret or anything, we just don’t like the customers to know our real names. My name is Ann. So Ann/Angel, both A’s. Queenie’s real name is Quyen. You can ask any of the girls and they’ll tell you their real name if you want. Except maybe Lexie, she’s a stuck up bitch. So I’ll just tell you now, her real name is Leanne.”

Scully laughs good-naturedly, though she has the passing thought that a lot of people may describe her as a stuck up bitch too.

“So, something that starts with a D, what suits your fancy?” Angel asks. Seeing the worried look on Scully’s face, she makes some suggestions. “You could go with a classic, like Diamond. Something a little more stereotypical like Destiny. Oh, what about Desiree, that’s really pretty, and it suits you.”

Scully considers it for a moment. Who she’d really like to be is Dana, on her way home from this insanity. Given that isn’t an available option, Desiree isn’t so bad.

“Yeah, I think I like that,” she says with a shy smile.

“Great, can I call you Desi?” Angel asks excitedly.

“Sure,” Scully responds, and then follows a very spirited Angel out into the afternoon sunlight in search of something to eat.

They end up at a little Mexican restaurant a short walk from the club. It’s the kind of hole in the wall place that only locals know exists, with tacky pink paint on the booths and dusty Cinco De Mayo flags criss-crossing the ceiling.

“So, Angel, how’d you end up working at Damsels?” Scully asks as she drags a tortilla chip through the watery salsa. She’s highly motivated to solve this case and get the hell out of here, so there’s no sense in wasting time.

“Oh, I just met Ricky through mutual friends and he told me about his club. I was a dancer at a total shithole before, so coming here was such a huge relief.” She stabs at the ice in her drink with a straw, breaking it up into smaller pieces.

“Are you working towards something else, or is there something else you’re hoping to do?” Scully asks next.

“I might ask you the same, Desi,” Angel returns with a slight cock of her head, and Scully realizes that was a rude question.

“Sorry, I guess I still have a lot to learn about the social nuances of this job.”

Angel shakes her head dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a question you get asked a lot as a dancer, as you’ll find out. Everyone thinks you’re just stopping here on the way to something better, something more legit. God forbid your life plan is to show your ass for cash, right? I mean, that is true for some of the girls; Tibet is getting her masters and Magenta has a day job as a therapist, but I honestly just like it.”

Scully is more careful with the wording on her next question. “What do you like about it?”

“Well,” Angel takes a bite of a chip and chews thoughtfully, “I grew up with really judgmental, uptight parents who basically made me feel like I was dirty and disgusting for existing, and for being female. I was always really ashamed of my body and when men looked at me, I thought I was doing something wrong to bring it on myself. After I moved out, my friend took me to a strip club and I was totally blown away by the confidence the women had with their bodies. Men were looking at them, but not like they were gross and sinful, just like they were…beautiful. And they looked so powerful up there commanding all that attention. And I just wanted to be up there like that, celebrating my body and deciding what happened with and to it. And here I am.”

Scully sits quietly, absorbing an answer that she wasn’t expecting to hear. She thinks about her own upbringing and the “good girls don’t” mentality that tainted her early sexual exploration. Even as a fully grown adult in consensual, committed relationships, she couldn’t shake the underlying guilt that she was worldly and sinful for desiring and having sex outside of marriage. It bleeds over into her relationship with Mulder, she knows. She can accept any physical attention he bestows upon her, and in fact wants it desperately, but for her to initiate it would mean…something. Something she isn’t ready to admit, even to herself.

Angel speaks again, interrupting her thought. “What about you, Desi, what brings you here? I showed you mine, you show me yours…or whatever.”

“Oh,” Scully says, scrambling to bring her cover story forward. “Um, I, uh, I got divorced recently, or I’m legally separated, anyway. I just got my own place after living with my husband for seven years and I haven’t really worked that whole time, I just supported his work. So, I don’t really have any marketable skills.”

Angel smiles. “Shoot, that ass is a marketable skill, girl! Those titties are hella marketable.”

Scully blushes, unused to anyone talking about her that way, and is surprised by how flattered she feels by such a crass compliment. Their server arrives and sets their plates down, and Angel’s demeanor shifts a bit as they dig into their meal.

“Okay, so down to the nitty gritty. Like I said, there are rules for us as dancers, and for waitresses too. Ricky mentioned his feelings about heroin and meth, right?”

“Yep, that will not be an issue,” Scully says confidently, spearing a bell pepper with her fork.

“Good, so also don’t get, like, super drunk or super high while on shift. A little to take the edge off is okay, but a drunk stripper is just pathetic. Like I said, the men can’t touch us, but it’s okay for us to touch them, EXCEPT we do NOT do extras at Damsels. No hand jobs, no blow jobs, and definitely no fucking, not even in VIP. Not in their car outside, not behind the dumpster, it’s a very hard and fast rule, no pun intended. Ricky will fire even his best girl in a heartbeat if he finds out she’s doing extras. Oh, and no kissing.”

Continue Reading on AO3

[tinisprout]

No Doubt in Us

Chapter Twelve - What I Want *written section below*

Fiance!Haknyeon x Fem!reader

Masterlist | Prev | Next

a/n: first time writting a make out scene so sorry if it sucks

Synopsis: Life is great, you have your dream job, you finally got your first big break, and you are now engaged to the love of your life. Happier than you’ve ever been, you live life one day at a time. Then one day a terrible accident happens leaving you in a coma. Where you finally awake, everything is not as you remember. Amnesia takes away 3 years of your memory, forgetting your beloved Fiance. Faced with a reality that seems unreal, as your mind is stuck in a past with uncomfortable memories, your future with him is uncertain.

Send me an ask if you want to be put on the taglist for this series

Taglist:@my-summer-night @deputyjuyeon @juhaktheoneforme @sunqnew @givememunjang

Word count: 2.9k+

Warnings: make out session, Hak gets blue balled :)

Things have been going pretty smoothly between you and Haknyeon since the date. You even had a small in-home date the week after, you were content but not satisfied. The romantic tension has been building up in the house, for you at least. You couldn’t tell what exactly Haknyeon was thinking or feeling. There were a collection of moments where something could have happened between the two of you, but Haknyeon always backed away first.

You figured he was just trying to be respectful towards your feelings, except you were feeling that you two should have at least kissed a long time ago. Your attraction towards Haknyeon grew each day, finding out more about him and his little oddities. You found out while going through your recent books how much Haknyeon influenced your writing, you could see it wasn’t a coincidence that the male lead in your sixth book was so similar to him. This only made you feel more drawn to him. The most you had done was hold hands, and that was on the first date, at this rate if you didn’t do or say something kissing would be about six months away.

You sighed as you were trying to work on your latest work, it would go smoothly till your mind drifted to Haknyeon. You get up from your desk seat stretching your body, you go grab your phone from the bed. You send a message to him asking when he is coming home. He responds quickly and you smile. After finding out he’ll be home soon you think about how to move things along.

Going back to your laptop you save the document you were working on, deciding that you did enough for today. You walk downstairs to the kitchen looking for what you can make for dinner. You realize out of all the times you cooked it never seemed to be enough for Haknyeon. When he cooked there was considerably more food compared to your meals, he never complained, but you could tell he was used to eating more than what you made. You decided to try making more food from now on.

Almost an hour has passed and the food is almost done. You just let it simmer. You cleaned up the mess you made while you waited, it was all short work now so you also set the table while you waited. Just in time, you hear the door unlocking and opening as you set the bowls down.

“I’m home!” Haknyeon calls out from the entranceway while taking off his shoes. You came to greet him, poking your head into the entranceway.

“Welcome back.” Haknyeon smiles at your greeting. “You’re just in time, I just finished making dinner, so I hope you’re hungry.”

“I always have room for food.” He follows you back to the kitchen, watching you turn off the burner.

“You can put your stuff away first, I’m still setting up.” Haknyeon just drops his duffle bag in the living room before coming back to you looking eager to help.

“I can help too.” Add that to the list of things you find attractive about him, always so helpful and caring.

“Okay, take these to the table then,” you hand him the rice bowls and he happily complies. Dinner starts as it normally does and you ask each other the usual question of how was your day. He compliments the food joyfully eating to his heart��s content, which makes you happy. There wasn’t much to say, but it was very natural for the two of you to fall into silence while eating, focusing on the food.

You finished eating before Haknyeon, but you still sat at the table letting the food settle a little. You were glad that you made more seeing how well he is eating everything.

“You are really cute, you know that?” You suddenly speak up and he freezes at your statement.

“...Thank you?” He was flattered but confused as to why you said that out of the blue.

“I just wanted you to know what I think.” He nods accepting your answer and continues to eat for a bit more trying to play it cool while having a freak out on the inside. When he finally sets his utensils down you speak once more. “Now that you’re done, there is something I want to talk to you about.”

“Is that what your texts were about?”

“Yes, but like I said it’s nothing bad, actually it should be pretty good for the both of us.” he gives you a curious look.

“I’m all ears.”

“So you know how we’ve been sleeping downstairs since that one time? Well, I’m kinda tired of sleeping on the floor.”

“I already told you, you didn’t have to stay with me. You can go back.”

“I know, I thought instead of going back by myself you could join me back.” You wait for his reaction which seemed delayed.

“...You mean you want to sleep in our bed, together,” Haknyeon says, putting emphasis on the last word.

“Yeah, I don’t see the problem. You have my full trust that you won’t try anything if I’m not ready.”

“I didn’t say it was a problem, just… are you sure? You’re not saying this because you feel bad or something?”

“Honestly I do feel a bit bad, but this is something that I want to do as well,” you place a hand over your heart showing your sincerity. Haknyeon is silent for a moment searching you for any hint of hesitation, but there is none.

“Okay then, thank you for trusting me.” You both smile at each other and start to clean up the table together. Very slowly, the two of you were making progress in your relationship. After the clean-up was done, Haknyeon went to properly put his duffle bag away and you went to do your evening ritual of watering the plants in your yard. Although it wasn’t much of a yard to speak of seeing how small the space was, it was still enough for you to have a variety of potted plants large and small.

You took your time caring for each plant and cleaning the fallen leaves and petals off the ground from the flowering tree that was in between yours and your neighbor’s house. You finally get to the hydrangea plant and see that there is a small odd-looking cluster, you realize that it's the bud and get excited. Looking around the hydrangea you see a few other buds, you crouch next to it, praising the plant and asking it to continue growing well. You were excited to see them bloom, you had asked Haknyeon before if you had grown these flowers before and he answered that you tried last year but they didn’t bloom at all. This made you more excited to see them, it wasn’t like you had never seen Hydrangea before, but it was different when you grow the plant yourself.

“Haknyeon?!” you call out to him hoping he can hear you through the small crack you left in the sliding door.

“Did you call me?” you hear his voice shout from in the house.

“Yeah. Can you come out here and look at this, please?”

“I’m coming.” He comes out soon after and slips on his outdoor slippers walking next to you, raising his eyebrows asking what’s up.

“Look, they have started to bud.” You beam a smile at him while pointing at one of the buds. He looks at it, noticing all the buds giving it a curious glance crouching next to you.

“I’ve never seen them as buds before…,” he smirks. “It looks a little weird.” you chuckle nodding in agreement.

“What color do you think they’ll be?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. I think blue would be a nice color though.”

“I hope it’s purple. Maybe it will have both colors.”

“Fingers crossed,” you say and the both of you cross your fingers. The wind blows a particularly strong breeze knocking off dozens of petals off the tree, annoyingly landing into your yard again making you sigh, which Haknyeon laughed at. You decided to look at the bigger picture, at least it made a beautiful scene like in those anime. “Well, at least it's pretty.” Your back faced the setting sun while streaks of light shone on Haknyeon's face painting him an alluring golden color.

Haknyeon's eyes that were focused on the tree switch to you realizing you are looking at him. His eyes squint a little at the sun, he notices a couple of petals had landed on your head.

“Very pretty.” He reaches out, plucking one of them off your head and gently brushing the other ones away. He showed you the petal in his hand, tittering. For a second you thought he was talking about you and then felt mortified to realize that wasn't the case. He blows the petal away oblivious to your current emotions.

“That… were you trying to be romantic?”

“Huh?” Haknyeon questions you but then realizes what you mean. “Oh, no. Sorry, I didn’t even realize. I meant the flower. Wait no, I’m not saying you aren’t pretty. The flower is pretty, but you are prettier.” You felt a little down at first knowing he meant nothing by it, but seeing him trying hard to appease you made you laugh out loud. Hearing you he groans and mutters, “What am I even saying?”

“You’re good, I understand,” you say while trying to stifle your laughter. Now it was Haknyeon’s turn to feel mortified.

“Haha, yes, very funny.” He dramatically rolls his eyes and then stands up. He offers you a hand up, which you take, standing up as well.

“Sorry sorry. You really are cute though….”

“I won’t be able to take much more if you keep complimenting me like that,” he grabs at his heart playing up the act.

“And what would you do?” You cross your arms, tilting your head in question.

“Hmm, probably die,” he clasps his hands together over his stomach acting like he’s dead. Then I would wait for my true love to kiss me back to life.” He peeks one eye open, smirking, looking for your reaction.

“Okay, prince charming. Back into the house with you,” you say, trying to hold back your smile. You wondered what you were going to do with yourself if he kept joking like that, you might actually lose it and just kiss him. Your answer to him would have been different if you knew at the moment he was seriously testing the water to see how you felt about kissing. Haknyeon thought he had a chance of a positive answer considering how flirty you were today, but he doesn’t take your answer to heart.

“Yes ma’am.” He told himself he would try again another day. As Haknyeon went back into the house, you continued your work in the yard.

***

The rest of the evening continued as per usual. Though the real trial to come for both of you was going to sleep. After you finished preparing for bed, while you were waiting in bed for Haknyeon you made a tweet wondering if moving to the bed would have been too sudden, still, you don’t regret your decision. You see that Haknyeon replied to the tweet and you smile since he was less than 15 feet away in the bathroom. He came out of the bathroom soon after and casually took up his old spot.

“Welcome back to the room,” you say, facing him. He turns his body to the side facing you.

“Good to be back,” there is a pause with nothing much else to say.

“Goodnight, Haknyeon.”

“Goodnight, y/n.” You turn your back to him pretending the reason was to get comfortable, but really you were nervous because of how close you were this time around. Before you could sleep at the edge of the blanket but now the edges hung off the side of the bed so there was less surface area to lay on. You try to calm your mind, It’s whatever. This isn’t the first time we slept together anyway.

Your mind drifts to earlier in the evening, when Haknyeon had mentioned kissing, That was my chance, wasn’t it. Stupid. You chastise yourself for unknowingly hindering yourself. I can fix this, I just have to make the first move. I don't think I can wait for Haknyeon… forgive me for being greedy.

“Haknyeon?” You say while turning back to face him again.

“Hmm?” He hums in response, eyes still closed.

“Can the heroine revive you?” his eyebrows knit together unsure of what you are trying to say and then opens his eyes to see your sincere ones staring into him.

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking for a while now that maybe we should move things along.... I don’t know about you but I’ve been feeling some romantic tension between us for a while now and I think I might go crazy if it stays like this, and nothing happens.” Or maybe I'm already crazy for even saying all this. “Can we kiss?” He finally realizes you were referring to what he said about needing a kiss to come back to life.

“Seriously?” To Haknyeon this proposal seemed out of the blue since he thought he was rejected earlier today.

“Very serious.”

“That’s what you want?”

“Mhm.” He lifts his body, propping himself up with his forearm and you scoot a little closer to him. He cups your cheek with his other hand caressing you for a while. Your heart pounds hard then you feel his breath tickle your face as he draws closer and you close your eyes thinking this is finally it. You feel his lips press against your cheek and open your eyes when it wasn’t what you expected.

You saw his warm gaze on you before you closed your eyes again as he went back in for another kiss on your other cheek and then another. You opened your eyes once more when he pulled away once more cheeks pink, apologizing.

“Sorry, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Haknyeon, I need you to trust me when I say, you aren’t taking advantage of me. I know what I want. You aren’t forcing me,” you say while you reposition yourself to sit up moving closer to him again, placing your hand behind his neck. “You can’t say ‘you can’t’ after teasing me with those kisses when you knew I wanted something like this. With those words, you lean into him and he closes his eyes this time, giving him a small experimental open mouth kiss.

His lips feel soft against yours and you find yourself wanting more of the softness. You pulled away and just as quickly kissed him again, you could feel this time his hand on your cheek moved to the back of your neck, pulling you closer. Slow and gentle, you feel how he was caring for you, this only riled you up, wanting more. Your fingers found their way to his silky locks, nails scratching his scalp. A groan came from Haknyeon’s throat in response but he didn’t pull away so you pushed further.

You traced his lips agonizingly slowly seeing how far he would let you go. His eyes flew open when he felt an acute pain on his lips. You both lock eyes as you lightly pull on his lower lip with your teeth, making him let out a small gasp. You pulled away unsure if you hurt him. He fully sat up and then leaned over you, grabbing your chin.

“Be careful. I’m the type that bites back harder.” His words sent shivers down your spine. This time he moves first, pulling your shoulders, bringing you back to him. True to his words he bites your lip and you jump letting out a whimper at the sensation. As if to quell your pain he runs his tongue along your bottom lip, instinctively you open your mouth to let him.

As his tongue pushed past your lips you could feel your body get increasingly hotter by the second, slow and gentle turned into feverish and greedy as his tongue dominated your mouth. Haknyeon had to constantly remind himself to not move his hands from your shoulders. It’s just a kiss, just a kiss, he tells himself. Your hands rested on his forearms, squeezing them as you whimpered into the kiss. I’m so fucked.

Haknyeon pulled you away and pushed you down on the bed firmly. You can hear each other’s labored breathing, trying to catch your breath. He lowered his head and kissed your lips once more, but just as quickly pulled away as if that is all he would allow himself.

“Haknyeon?”

“That should be enough, for now.” you nod your head in agreement. You weren’t sure what possessed you to lose yourself like that. It was taken farther than you thought it would be, but it wasn’t bad. Actually, you really enjoyed yourself, so much so that you felt sleepiness follow after the excitement.

“I’m a little tired now.”

“That’s okay. You can go to sleep.” you move into a comfortable position facing him this time.

“Can I hold your hand?” Haknyeon was in distress but aided your request. You closed your eyes peacefully with his hand in yours. Meanwhile, Haknyeon wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t think he would end up blue balled tonight. Would it settle itself before you fell asleep or would he suffer till you fell asleep so he could take care of himself in the bathroom?

Masterlist | Prev | Next

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #30 - The Cybertronian Judicial System is a Friggin’ Joke

Have I mentioned that I’m not a huge fan of court case stories? I think they’re pretty boring, on average, so the last couple of issues have been slightly dragging for me.

Anyway, back to Megatron’s trial. 

Our issue opens up with a full back shot of Ultra Magnus.

Artists take note, he really is built like a capital T.

As Magnus reads out Megatron’s statement retracting his “guilty” plea, we get some decent points as to why. See, telling a guy that you’ll stab him in the brain, so his trial can be over as quickly as possible, maybe isn’t such a hot idea. Megatron wasn’t a huge fan of that, or of how those memories they would’ve yanked outta him would have been used to fuel the Autobot propaganda machine. Why, you may ask?

Well, I don’t know if you knew this or not, but Megatron… doesn’t particularly care for the Autobots, nor the rhetoric they uphold.

I know, I was surprised too!

There’s also the fact that Optimus Prime is the judge on this whole thing. You know. Optimus Prime. Off and on leader of the Autobots, whenever it suits him. The guy who fucked off into space for a year after the war. The guy who threw a hissy fit when someone pointed out that he was compromised the last time they did something like this with Megatron. This guy:

Yeah, there might be a slight conflict of interests here. Remind me again why this had to be a military trial?

Anyway, enough of that, it’s time for a fight scene.

A swarm of Decepticons storm the arena, going after Megatron so they can help him escape. Magnus, though acting as Megatron’s defense, cannot abide by this disorder in the court.

Wild to think there’s a tiny little Pringles man with anxiety in there, isn’t it?

Optimus joins the fray, because there really are, just, so many guys to deal with here. A dude goes to collect Megatron, stating that they brought teleport packs for this little shindig. Megatron isn’t super jazzed about that though, not bothering to grab on before the dude gets shot to death. There’s a brief recess, I guess so the janitorial staff can deal with the mess of corpses littering the courtroom.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Rung’s building a model spaceship in Swerve’s, which is a very brave thing to be doing, seeing how sticky and gross bars can be. Brainstorm’s brought a flask to the bar, and proceeds to pour the contents into a funnel sticking out of his arm.

Our bartender for the evening- I’m assuming it’s evening, but I doubt the concept of time has any real weight in space- is Bluestreak. Bluestreak was stationed on Earth for a while, which is some Phase One stuff, and took a liking to human media while he was there. He’s the guy who handles movie night these days, seeing as Rewind’s too busy being dead to do it, and I doubt Chromedome has the emotional bandwidth to take over for his late spouse.

Bluestreak’s favorite movie is Zulu, a film glorifying the colonialism of the English over the native populace of an African kingdom. Make of that what you will.

Whirl wants to watch À Bout de Soufflé, or Breathless, as it was translated for the English-speaking world, which is a French New Wave film about a criminal who shoots a cop, hides from the police in a journalist’s home, who he seduces and likely impregnates. She eventually finds out what he did, reports him to the police, but then has a change of heart and lets him know what she’s done. He runs, but is shot, and dies in the street. The film is notable for its final scene, in which the following dialogue happens, between the dying criminal Michael, his lover Patricia, and an officer.

Of course, any poignancy would almost certainly be lost on the average comic book reader, and is also somewhat nullified by Whirl praising the film with internet lingo.

Then again, I suppose Whirl would be the type to dismantle any deeper reading of his interest in such a film, lest he be subjected to the horrifying ordeal of being known.

Over with Skids and Riptide, it’s revealed that Megatron’s been teaching classes on the Lost Light, specifically on the Knights of Cybertron. Riptide’s getting an education, because he’s been feeling pretty lost since the war ended- we’ll get to the potential whys of that later on. Swerve isn’t a fan of this community college thing that’s going on, stating that Megatron’s using it as a distraction, so he can devise plots most foul.

Back in the past, Autobot high command is having a talk about what Megatron’s demanding, and man is it a doozy— turns out, since the trial’s happening on Luna 2, the trial proceedings are subject to the laws of the moon. One of these moon laws is the right to request being judged by the Knights of Cybertron. Now, this is a problem, seeing as the Knights of Cybertron have been AWOL for the last several million years, but the law is the law, and you can’t just go ignoring it when someone’s pointed it out.

Bro, your SIC just suggested y’all pull the trial so you could slap it on Cybertron, thus negating any need to pay attention to the Knight law. That’s such a gross miscarrying of justice, it’s genuinely baffling. You’ve got bigger issues going on than flouting. My god, Optimus, you were a cop—

Oh wait, that’s right. Carry on, then.

Back on the Lost Light, First Aid’s checking to make sure that the coffin Rodimus they revealed last issue is true and proper dead. Now, this may seem like a given, but you’ve got to remember that Brainstorm was mostly dead for over a year and a half, and nobody fucking noticed, so it’s probably for the best that they’re checking.

First Aid’s been pretty withdrawn since Ambulon died, so this autopsy is really good for him, since it got him out of his room. Pretty fucked up that it would take a dead body to get him out and about. Has Rung checked in on his poor son of a gun, or has he been spending the last six months getting his professional rocks off psychoanalyzing a genocidal warlord?

Our coffin Rodimus died from having parts of his brain removed, and potentially died screaming.

Yes, that is a Furmanism, thank you peanut gallery, moving on—

Ratchet hands the phone over to Ultra Magnus, saying that a call has to be made, and it can’t be by him, because the callee is mighty upset with Ratchet at the moment.

Oh, I guess he’s fine after all. This must be where the sci-fi bullshit really starts kicking in for the series.

Because seeing your own dead body is likely very traumatic and awful, Rodimus is taking a while to string together his thoughts on the matter. Megatron doesn’t particularly care, because he’s not terribly sympathetic to this sort of thing, and the two get into a spat, where it’s revealed that they’re co-captaining the Lost Light.

Because things weren’t chaotic enough on this fucking ship. Need to mix in some peacocking between the McDonalds twunk and the man who killed half of Beijing.

Back in the past, Optimus Prime visited Megatron in prison to have a little chat. It’s not about that little rescue attempt, though the fact that those Decepticons may have been released from the Lost Light’s brig is certainly interesting. No, Optimus is here to sit way too close to his mortal nemesis on the floor of his room and talk about how Megatron is a sneaky bastard.

You remember the Hellraiser puzzle box from a couple issues back? Yeah, that was a communicube, one that was passed to Optimus to suggest that the trial be held on the moon, so the arena there would be able to hold all the people wronged by Megatron. This seems pretty damn convenient in hindsight, but Megatron swears that the legal loophole wasn’t his only intent when he sent the cube.

Because it’s all about you, isn’t it, Megatron? It’s all about how you’re perceived by future generations. Fuck the guys who had to actually deal with what your personal choices caused to happen.

Megatron wants to make amends with all those who were wronged by him. This doesn’t include being acquitted of his crimes, which, y’know, good- at least he’s being slightly realistic about how this is going to turn out for him.

What he wants to do is find Cyberutopia, so the Cybertronians have a replacement planet, since Cybertron kind of sucks now.

Oh, sorry, did I say realistic? I take it back.

In the present, Rodimus is still bummed out about being dead. Still, the day doesn’t stop just because it’s a bad one, and he calls in the experts.

CHROMEDOME YOU PROMISED TO STOP THIS SHIT

Yeah, no, Chromedome’s fallen off the wagon again, and does his thing on the coffin Rodimus. As he does, Megatron suddenly gets squeamish, Brainstorm pulls out his early early-warning device to lean on the fourth wall, and it’s revealed that the coffin that coffin Rodimus was in was built in the fashion of the Spectralist faith.

All Chromedome can suss out of coffin Rodimus’ memories is the really big important stuff, which includes the speech at Rivet’s Field inviting folks to come join the Knight Quest. Aww, that’s sweet.

With the analysis of the innermost energon complete, the results are in— the coffin Rodimus is a Rodimus. A real one, from the near future. Bummer.

I suppose denial is one of the seven stages of grief, isn’t it?

As everyone argues over whether or not Rodimus is going to die, Nightbeat brings up a good point— there aren’t any numbers carved into the coffin Rodimus’ hand. Rodimus is about to reveal some Ratchet-original wisdom, when things start getting really weird; whole sections of the Lost Light are disappearing.

Over at Swerve’s, Tailgate is regaling his peers with the story of his derring-do against Chief Justice Tyrest. Everyone is very impressed, and this includes our good buddy Getaway.

Jeez, think you’ve got enough antagonist shadows on this guy? It’s almost as if the art’s trying to tell us something about him.

Getaway lays it on real thick, saying that Tailgate could totally be the next Prime, with how courageous and awesome he is, all while completely ignoring Tailgate’s personal space and having a weirdly tiny hand. This seems to seriously bother Cyclonus, who is watching this shit go down from the doorway. Our purple space jet leaves once the drinks start being poured and conversation starts happening. God knows he hates talking about his insecurities.

Then the Pipes is Friggin’ Dead alarm goes off. But Pipes has been dead for a while now, so that must mean something else awful is happening.

Back during the trial, I guess because Optimus has a soft spot for Megatron, he allows him to join the Lost Light’s Knight Quest… even as he says that he could keep the guy locked up until Rodimus and pals find the Knights. However, there are rules to this, and one of the rules is that Megatron must publicly denounce the Decepticon cause.

It is a slow and painful experience for everyone involved, as he reads the statement he was given. It’s an immediate call to action- or rather, inaction.

Geez, think they could’ve made it any more obvious that this was being ghostwritten? I can’t wait to see how long it takes for “Megatron was blackmailed into saying this by the Autobots” to be a plotpoint.

Outside the prison, Ratchet and Rodimus are taking in the brand new Rod Pod, which is genuinely ridiculous in how large it is. Rodimus admits to having taken Atomizer’s list, though he knows that trying to use it to keep those who voted him off would be a pretty shitty thing to do.

Also, no one’s told him about Megatron coming along on the trip. As captain.

Or you could, I dunno, lock him up from the start. Or, if you want to give him a chance to prove himself, slap him into a bottom-rung role, like bilge cleaner, or sewage mucker, or whatever the equivalent would be on a spaceship full of giant gay robots. We don’t have to give the guy any power to hold him to scrutiny— any minimum wage worker will tell you that scrutiny comes far harsher for those who actually carry out orders than those who give them.

But what do I know? I’ve never fought in a several million year war, and I don’t plan to.

Getting back to the list, it seems as if Ratchet and Rodimus are on the same wavelength, in that both agree it’s only going to cause trouble and hurt feelings to keep the thing around. Rodimus destroys it with his usual flare, only to be blindsided by the fact that it was fake this entire time. How does Ratchet know this?

Because his name wasn’t on it.

...Man, that’s gotta sting. No wonder Rodimus was upset enough to not take his calls.

In the present, everyone’s in a panic, as they all bolt for the shuttle bay and start pouring into shuttles. The Lost Light is disintegrating around them, which is sort of a problem. Despite this nightmare scenario happening, Rodimus and Megatron still find the time to be assholes to each other. That’s dedication right there.

As the two bicker, multiple shuttles zip away from the rapidly disappearing ship, including the Rod Pod.

Man, now it really is the Lost Light.

[jiminieloved]

For the Osaka Vlive Skeptics :)

I highly recommend you watch the Vlive in real time as you read each section so you can see my observations for yourself. If you can’t do this, I will provide screenshots of the important moments. 

Link to Vlive

1. Context

Around 4:13, after goofing around a little bit and singing a song for the audience, Tae admits that he has no idea what he wants to do during this Vlive, and asks the audience for ideas. At 4:50, he reads a comment that says “Attack the next door”, and he says “I don’t even know [the members’] room numbers.”

Tae proceeds to look on his phone and locate room numbers (perhaps there was some sort of document or text that had all of the room numbers for the members). Then, he sends a text to Jungkook informing him he is coming and immediately heads to his room.

The timing for all of this is extremely fast. He doesn’t even wait a second between texting Jungkook and leaving the room, so it’s safe to assume that Jungkook didn’t text back confirming it was okay for him to come. It explains Jungkook’s lack of preparedness and haste when opening the door. He clearly hadn’t seen the text on his phone. But let’s back up. 

During the walk, it is clear that Tae goes to the room directly next to his own. He doesn’t pass a single set of doors on the way there. This will become important later.

2. Tae’s Entrance

At 6:14, Tae arrives at the door and music can be heard blasting from outside the room. The song playing is “Body Electric” by Lana del Rey. It’s... frankly... a sex playlist kind of song. If you don’t believe me, give it a listen. 

After Tae knocks a couple times (6:14), Jungkook yells (very annoyedly) asking who it is. You can clearly hear him quietly say “Jimin” at 6:26. Turn up your volume if you can’t hear it. 

It’s pretty undeniable that he says this, however if you don’t buy it... what would he be saying? He’s in the room alone, right? So who is he talking to? He’s clearly not talking to Tae, because he thought he had to yell to be heard over the blasting music, and he said “Jimin” in a regular speaking voice. 

So.... we’ve established that he said Jimin’s name and is likely speaking to someone in the room. (We haven’t proven that it’s Jimin in the room with him yet, but just wait.) 

So he’s... naked? Playing sex music? With someone likely in the room with him? Aight. Let’s continue. (Devil’s advocate: he was taking a shower? And he likes to say “Jimin” to calm himself down?)

As Tae talks to the audience, there’s more flustered exclamations and banging heard in the background. Why is Jungkook so freaked out? Taking a shower isn’t a crime! 

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge how amused Tae is by all of this. It almost seems like he was expecting this... That’s just speculation, though. 

Anyway, at 6:50, Jungkook finally opens the door (a full 35 seconds after Tae knocks) wearing a robe that is untied, and the music is still blasting. What took Jungkook so long? He had plenty of time to tie the robe before opening the door, but for some reason he didn’t. He clearly wasn’t using that time to pause the music. What was he doing? There’s many valid explanations for this. Let’s move on. 

So... Tae walks in the room, and the lights are off. Huh? That’s odd considering Jungkook was already in the room........... Maybe he was taking a nap? With music blasting, naked? 

So one look at Jungkook and one of our excuses for him is already invalid. He wasn’t taking a shower- his hair is dry. (But hey!! Maybe he was napping naked with music blasting!!)

Side note, the fact that Jungkook doesn’t know the song kind of confirms my suspicions that he was listening to some sort of pre-made playlist.... just throwing that out there.

Jungkook just seems very shaken up by this whole encounter... but why? If he truly was just napping naked, I find it unlikely that he would be so flustered. Food for thought. 

At 7:20, Tae gets distracted by the music, and Jungkook lowers the volume from where he’s standing, confirming to Tae that the speaker is bluetooth. Interestingly enough, he’s standing across the room. Which means his phone is in his hand/on the other side of the room, not on the little table with the speaker. We will come back to this. 

So... when Tae tells him he is on Vlive, Jungkook finally gives an alibi for these weird circumstances.....

He.... was eating bread?

Let’s go over this again. 

Music was blasting. Tae knocked on the door. Jungkook was very frantic, said “Jimin” in a lowered tone, told Tae he was naked, knocked items around a bunch while Tae was waiting, and then let Tae in to reveal the room is dark, music still blasting, and Jungkook had thrown a robe on without even tying it. But... he was just eating bread? 

I’m sorry, none of this adds up. He could’ve said he was taking a nap, and I would’ve bought it, but there’s no reason for him to have been so frantic if all he was doing was eating bread. And why the lights off? Why “Jimin!”? Why naked??????

You could maybe argue that he was just having ‘alone’ time, and this is why he was so frantic about being interrupted.

But... here’s where we will get into the evidence (beyond him saying Jimin’s name), on why I don’t believe he was alone in the room. 

3. Jungkook wasn’t alone

At 8 minutes, Jungkook goes to the nightstand to look at something while audibly chewing bread. Tae lays down on the bed, staring at the camera. The screen goes black (someone turned off a light?), a door clicks open, and you then here a startled voice... “Oh, you scared me.”  Neither of them were near a door. Neither of them flipped a light switch. 

(Above is Tae’s reaction to the lights being turned off/door opening.)

Tae reacts to the voice but quickly schools his features and doesn’t respond. 

This is clearly Jimin’s voice. It’s a high pitched voice, much higher pitched than JK’s or Tae’s. You can hear the clear difference in voice pitch and tone because Jungkook speaks directly after ‘Jimin’ does, and... it’s just not the same voice. But hey; if you don’t buy it just based off vocal tone, let’s reason through this.

Jungkook had already calmed down by this point. He had expressed earlier in the Vlive that Tae had startled him, but had since calmed down and was rolling with the punches. He was also very audibly in the middle of chewing. Not to mention, the sound is clearly coming from behind the camera, not in front, where Tae and Jungkook were. 

If you’re STILL not buying it, I will link a video that does a voice comparison of Jimin saying “You scared me” at a previous point in time. I think it will become pretty clear who spoke. 

(4:20 for voice comparison)

This is pretty strong evidence, but it’s not tangible proof, I’ll give you that. So let’s keep watching. 

Oh look, further evidence that Jungkook wasn’t naked to shower. 

Uhh... the grainy video quality would’ve made it impossible to tell, but thank you for giving us another clue, Jungkook. His makeup was smeared... very interesting. 

Now an observation...

 The bathroom light magically turned on/the bathroom door magically opened? Remember the sounds we just observed hearing? That neither Jungkook or Tae were responsible for? 

As a reminder, here’s what the hallway looked like when Tae walked in... (The door with light coming out is from the hallway, not the bathroom. The bathroom door is to the right of where Tae is standing. Closed.)

Another screenshot showing the bathroom light was clearly off when Tae first walked in. 

Jungkook did not at any point go into the hallway to open the bathroom door after letting Tae in. There’s no explanation for this unless someone else is in the room. 

They proceed to start with a karaoke song, but while the intro is playing, there seems to be something on JK’s mind. 

He’s looking toward the bed distractedly. Why?

11:13, in the midst of their karaoking, Jungkook pans the phone at the perfect angle to see a white phone in the corner of the room, on the same chair where Tae was earlier looking at the Bluetooth speaker. As I noted earlier, Jungkook’s phone was either in his hand or on the other side of the room. And Tae’s phone is in his hand. Meaning... there’s just a random phone sitting in the room?

And in case you were to argue Jungkook just stuck his phone there when he was off screen, I will offer the infallible evidence that it is Jimin’s phone and not Jungkook’s. Jungkook had a ‘Space grey’ iPhone at the time, while Jimin’s was white. It is just very clearly not his phone. 

Proof of this can be seen at 27:11 of this video

Moving on, another odd moment happens, though this could be nothing. It feels worth including in the scope of everything else. 

I don’t even know what Tae is trying to imply by saying “Jin is taking a bath now” but directly after he says this, Tae makes a ‘pervy’ face and looks toward the corner of the room, and Jungkook looks in the corner as well. As if there was someone standing there... 

Then, Tae goes on to text Jimin that he wants to visit. What the heck? 

In my opinion, Tae clearly knows that someone (Jimin) is in the room with them. So why text him? Maybe to cover up for the fact that Jimin spoke earlier in the Vlive? Maybe as a way of teasing Jungkook? 

Now, as Tae leaves the room, the bathroom door.... Is miraculously closed?

There’s absolutely no way either of them closed it, as they were both on camera the entire time between us seeing the door open and him walking to the hallway. The only explanation is the paranormal. Or even spookier..... Jimin. 

Now, this is a point that isn’t necessarily proof but certainly adds to the entire picture of the situation that just occured. As soon as Tae leaves, the door clicks shut. (14:04). If you had been paying attention, when Tae entered the room, the door didn’t completely shut the entire time he was in there. It was an unweighted door. It seems likely to me that as soon as Tae left, Jimin came out from the bathroom and shut the door. (As Jungkook was at the opposite end of the room and didn’t seem like he was in any rush to close the door.)

At 14:14, Tae looks over toward where he came from with an extremely worried look on his face. If you turn up your volume, you can hear some men having a calm conversation, and then Jimin’s distinctive high pitched voice yelling something in a scolding kind of tone. A door slams open/shut, and Tae tells his audience that he locked himself out and he has to leave. Koreans have translated what Jimin was yelling and it is included in some video analyses I have seen, however since I can’t confirm the accuracy of these translations I won’t include them. If you speak Korean and want to give unbiased translations to what is overheard in this scene, please reblog or send me an ask! I’d love to include it. 

He promptly ends the Vlive here. 

4. Conclusion

So now that we’ve gone through the chronology of this, let’s just look at everything at face value. 

We hear Jungkook say Jimin’s name. We hear Jimin’s voice. We see (likely) Jimin’s phone. The bathroom door opens and closes by itself, the bathroom light turns on by itself. Tae and Kook both clearly look at someone in the corner of the room shortly before Tae leaves. We hear Jimin’s distinctive angry voice after Tae leaves the room. All of this evidence in mind, I feel justified in saying that Jimin was likely in the room. 

Now let’s look back on the scene we walked in on, knowing Jimin was there... There was sexy music blasting, the lights were off, Jungkook was naked, had smeared makeup, and was VERY frantic that Tae came in. 

....

I think you get the point I’m trying to make here.

5. Counterpoints

Now to be fair, let’s get into a few common counterpoints I hear. 

a) The bed is still made

This is a valid argument. But I mean... to me it looks like the bed has definitely been sat on, at the very least. Just because the covers aren’t untucked does not mean that all of this other evidence is worthless. 

I don’t want to get graphic but there’s a lot that can be done naked in a dark room without messing up the blankets. All of this doesn’t even mean anything was “happening”, but it certainly is a scene that makes you pause and question.

b) Why would they hide being in the same room? They’re all bandmates and friends!

Uhh, okay, somewhat valid, but. Jungkook was naked. And he told us that. And the lights were off and there was music blasting. It would be VERY weird if he yelled “Hold on, I’m naked!!!” and then he let us in with an untied robe on and said “oh, by the way Jimin’s with me!”

Shan’s notes (I’m shan):

Anyway, in the process of making this I think I’ve only convinced myself even more that Jimin was in the room. I hope I’ve convinced some skeptics, but if you’re still not convinced, I hope you can at least see where we believers are coming from when we say it’s convincing! 

If you are intrigued and would like to see an AMAZING analysis of this with live edits for clarity of audio and visuals (and perhaps a few pieces of evidence I didn’t talk about) I will recommend you to watch the following video.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.

Buy me a coffee if you liked what I wrote. I take requests :)

[slytherinbarnes]

Sub Rosa [78]

vii. nevermind  

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x reader

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: language, blood, anxiety, fighting, violence, injuries.

Summary: Reeling from the loss of Clarke and your agreement to not exact revenge, you receive some welcome news.

a/n: HOW ARE WE HALFWAY DONE WITH S6 ALREADY!? the taglist for this series is open! I hope you enjoy, please let me know what you think!!!

previous chapter // season masterlist // series masterlist

You toss and turn all night, plagued by dreams and memories of Clarke. 

It’s not enough to be heartbroken while awake, you’re also heartbroken while asleep, unable to escape the loss of your twin. Most of the dreams are weird, a strange collection of memories gathered together and played in your mind. You dream of EMPing Raven and accidentally killing Maya in Mount Weather. You dream of Clarke leaving you and Bellamy in the fighting pits, watching Clarke mercy kill Finn, and landing on the ground for the first time, all of you watching Octavia be the first person back on Earth. You also dream of Monty and your father, and by the early dawn hours, it’s enough to drive you crazy.

You eventually give up on sleep and climb out of bed, leaving Bellamy’s sleeping form behind. As you get dressed for the day, you see Delilah’s dress draped over a chair, along with the bracelet she let you borrow, and you grab both of them and slip out of your room. As expected, both of her parents are downstairs in the tavern, preparing for the day, and only one other patron is in the room, a hooded figure tucked away in a corner, despite the early hour. Blythe Ann and Jae smile as they see you, motioning for you to come sit at the bar. “Can’t sleep?”

You shake your head and slide into the seat they motion towards, draping the dress across the seat beside it. “No, too busy being haunted by memories.”

Blythe Ann freezes, giving you a look of understanding, as Jae squeezes her shoulder in comfort. “I understand the feeling.”

“Speaking of,” you lift the dress onto the bar and set the bracelet on top of it. “These belong to Delilah, and I haven’t had the opportunity to give them back yet. I’m sorry.”

Blythe Ann shakes her head, pushing the dress back towards you. “You should keep it, Delilah would want you to.”

“I couldn't.”

“Please, we insist.”

You start to protest again, but Jae grabs the bracelet and reaches out for your hand. You give it to him, and he attaches the bracelet around your wrist, smiling as he does. You admire it, remembering the thought you had when you first put it on, a star for Clarke and one for Bellamy, and you fight back your rising tears as you look up at him. “Thank you.”

He just nods and grabs a basket of pastries, placing one on a plate in front of you while Blythe Ann pours you something to drink. You sit at the bar and eat your breakfast, enjoying the silence of the tavern as Delilah’s parents flit about, getting ready for the influx of customers. When you reach for your glass of juice, you accidentally knock it off the bar, sending it crashing to the ground below. You jump down and pick up the pieces, gathering them together as you frantically apologize to Jae, who is coming around the bar with a rag, ready to clean up your mess. “I’m so sorry, I didn't mean to.”

“No need to apologize, accidents happen.”

He smiles at you and you smile back, standing with the broken pieces of your glass in your hand. “What do you want me to do with this?”

“Here, I’ll take it.” Blythe Ann walks over, extending her hand out to you, and you drop the pieces into her hand. As one of them slides out of your palm, the jagged edge turns just enough to cut your palm, and you wince and mutter, “Shit.”

You peer down at the cut, watching as black blood starts to rise to the surface, and you feel a rush of panic as you remember the danger of anyone knowing the color of your blood. Even with your mom back in space, preparing to make Nightblood for the Primes, you’re not sure it's safe to have just anyone knowing your secret. You squeeze your hand closed, hiding the cut from view, just as Jae asks, “Did it cut you?”

“Just a little nick, nothing major.”

He reaches out for your hand, looking concerned. “Let me take a look.”

You shake your head, pulling your hand away, forcing out a casual laugh. “Really, I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.”

He shrugs, accepting your answer, handing you the rag instead. “In case you need it.”

“Thanks.”

He nods and walks off again, back to preparing for the day, and you rip off a strip of the rag and tie it around the cut. You look around, checking to see if anyone saw, but Blythe Ann and Jae are both still working, and the customer in the corner has their head bowed, seemingly unaware of any of their surroundings. You sigh and plop back in your seat, turning back to your breakfast again. It’s not long before you hear someone else coming down the stairs, and when you turn to look, your eyes land on your boyfriend, giving you a small smile as he approaches. He plops down beside you, in the chair unused by your new dress, thanking Jae as he brings Bellamy something to eat too. Once the couple turns back around and starts to work again, Bellamy reaches out and takes your hand, eyeing the torn strip of rag with concern. You look around, eyes a warning, shaking your head to let him know that you’re fine, but this is not the place to talk about it. He nods, before settling on a different topic instead. “Did you get any sleep?”

You nod, not wanting him to worry about you. “Yeah.”

You can tell that he doesn't believe you, but still he lets it go. “I saw Gaia in the hall. She said something is wrong with Madi.”

“What? What is it?” You turn to look at him in alarm, already preparing to stand up and go check on her, but he grabs you and stops you. 

“She’s okay, it’s nothing Gaia can’t handle. It’s Commander stuff. Apparently there’s a dark Commander, Sheidheda, and he’s vying for control. Madi banished Gaia last night, but she told me she’s going to stick around out of sight, in case we need her.”

“Great. Just what we need, a Dark Commander trying to take over my niece's head.”

Bellamy squeezes your hand, “She’s going to be okay, we’ll keep an eye on her. Gaia will too.”

You nod but say nothing else, picking at the last little bit of food on your plate. Bellamy watches you closely, his eyes never leaving you, and he whispers, “The first time I ever heard Clarke’s name, we were still on the Ark.”

You turned to him, intrigued, and he continues, “I had just heard about you actually, The Invisible Twin.” You cringe at the nickname, and he gives you an apologetic look before continuing, “But it worried me. One of the most Privileged families on the Ark discovered to have a second, illegal child, and still you were locked up. It made me worry about Octavia and what they’d do to her. Not enough to keep me from taking her to that stupid party, but still.”

You squeeze his hand, wishing you could carry his guilt for him. He squeezes back before he adds, “Anyways, I was a cadet in my first few days of training, and they used to send us to all the things they didn't want to do. We got a call that there was a fight near the Privileged section that needed to be broken up, so we rushed over there to break the scuffle up. Imagine our surprise when we pull a girl off of a boy, the boy’s nose gushing blood, a black eye already forming. When we question the girl on who she is, she tells us her name is Clarke Griffin. Of course, the second we heard her last name we knew who she was. Then we asked her what happened, and she said that the boy made a comment about her twin, and how she deserved to be floated for being born. So Clarke punched him and told him to apologize, and when he made another comment about how her whole family needed to be floated, she punched him again. It was the only incident report on her record, up until she got arrested with your father.”

You give Bellamy a sad smile, simultaneously happy that he shared this story with you, but sad that your sister is still gone. “You’ve never told me that before.”

“I didn’t really remember it until a few days ago.”

“Clarke has always been fiercely protective, it’s something I love about her.”

“Funny, I love the same thing about you.”

You smile a little. “Must be a twin thing.”

“Must be.”

But as the story sinks deeper, your brain processing it even further, you whisper, “It feels like I’ve given up on her.”

“You haven’t.”

“Bellamy, we’re just letting them walk free. We’re letting Josephine walk around in my twin's body, and we’re doing nothing about it.”

He shakes his head. “No, we are doing something about it. We’re honoring Clarke’s legacy and we’re surviving. We’re doing better, keeping the peace, and building a compound of our own so we can live, truly live, once and for all. Everything she did, she did for her people. For you. For Madi. Building this compound and ending the cycle of violence means that all of us don't just survive, we thrive.”

You catch the reference he makes to Clarke’s speech to Arkadia before Praimfaya, and you think of how desperately Clarke wanted everyone to live, not just survive. How she always encouraged love and friendship and the happy moments in between all the war and fighting and chaos. You look at Bellamy, knowing that he’s right. This is what Clarke would want, this is how you honor her. You nod, relenting with a sigh, “Okay, so when do we meet with Russell?”

-

You and Bellamy head to the palace to meet with Russell, Miller in tow. Everyone insists that you bring a third party, someone who wasn't locked up for figuring out the secret of Clarke’s death, so the two of you decide on Miller, despite the fact that he’s just as much of a hothead as you and Bellamy. 

Bellamy takes the lead at the meeting, knowing you can barely stand to look at Russell, let alone talk to him, and you stand by your boyfriend’s side, jotting down notes as you listen to Russell’s plans. As the meeting is nearing its end, Bellamy looks at Russell, summing everything up in one succinct sentence, “In exchange for ignoring that you murdered Clarke…”

He trails off when he hears the door open, and you all look towards it, watching as Josephine steps inside, her hair pulled back, Clarke’s clothes gone from her body. It's a shock to you to see her dressed the way she is, and you freeze as she comes to a stop behind Russell, eyeing all of you with curiosity. You hear Bellamy finish his earlier sentence, “You build us a compound.”

You feel Russell’s eyes shift to you, but your gaze never leaves your twin’s body, trying to convince your brain that it’s not hers anymore, someone else is inside at the controls. “What about the sister, mother, and child? Will they agree?”

Your brain registers his words and you flit your gaze over to him, annoyed by the words he used. “The sister will take care of our people.” 

Bellamy reaches out and squeezes your hand before he redirects the conversation, “How long will it take to build?”

Before Russell can answer, Josephine clears her throat, waiting for his attention. He holds up his finger, “Just a moment, sweetheart.”

Your gaze moves back to Josephine, watching her tap impatiently on her arm, waiting for your meeting to finish. But the longer you watch her, the quicker you realize that the tapping on her arm is rhythmic, repeating a small pattern. You flip a page in your small notebook, waiting for the pattern to start again, and then you furiously start to write.

●— 

●—●● 

●● 

●●●— 

● 

You almost laugh in shock when you realize it’s Morse Code, and you rack your brain trying to remember the translations from the brief moment in time that Clarke learned Morse Code in school, but you struggle to remember. You get pulled from your thoughts by Bellamy putting his hand on your shoulder, and you tug the notebook close to you, hiding it from everyone as you turn to look at him. “What?”

“Russell asked if we agree.”

You barely glance at the man as you answer, “Yeah, we’re agreed.”

“I'll order construction to begin.”

You turn and look between Bellamy and Miller, nodding towards the door, trying to hide your excitement. “Let's go.”

They nod and follow you out, the guards at the door closing them behind you, and you jog down the hall, putting distance between you and any spying eyes. Bellamy pulls you to a stop, sensing the shift in your energy, looking at you in confusion. “What’s going on?”

“Didn't Pike teach you Morse Code?”

Bellamy nods and Miller shrugs, “I slept through most of Earth skills.”

You shake your head at him, and focus your attention on your boyfriend. “I remember Clarke learning it too, but I can’t remember what each symbol means.”

Bellamy shakes his head, still not understanding, and you push the notebook towards him, getting excited. “Josephine was tapping out Morse code on her arm.”

He takes your pen and quickly translates, you and Miller looking over his shoulder as he does.

●— A

●—●● L

●● I

●●●— V

● E

You nearly cry with relief when you read the word, looking up at Bellamy with tears in your eyes. You can see the emotion written across his face, a mix of shock and happiness as he stares back at you, both of you overcome with emotion. Miller looks between the two of you, still not sure he understands. “What does it mean?”

You turn to him, your grin growing even wider. “It means Clarke's alive, and we're gonna get her back.”

-

next chapter

[nuclear-satan]

Final Space Season 3 Episode 1 Review **SPOILER WARNING!!**

...And Into The Fire we go!

I really have wanted to do a Final Space review for a while, so now - I'm going to do it, fuck it. Starting a couple episodes late, but after [insert shenanigans] I needed to let it cool off before getting back into it.

One last warning: THESE ARE NOT SPOILER FREE REVIEWS. DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE NOT SPOILED AND DO NOT WANT TO BE. THESE ARE GOING TO HAVE SOME SUMMARIZATION INVOLVED.

With the disclaimer out of the way, let's get into it.

So, first of all, I have to acknowledge that this cold open? Fucking toasty. The entire first five or six minutes of this episode is flat out amazing and some of the best that Final Space is. Really intense - I love the dramatic cold open to a space chase.

Also, however, brief, the Quinnary reunion was nice. Quinnary is a ship that I enjoy subjectively more than objectively, but considering it really hits now even if S1 had issues... I can look past it yo.

Invictus proves his power and intimidation incredibly well this episode, between the Gary Zombies and even this first incredibly terrifying matchup - even Mooncake, who in any other situation has been able to zap it away, couldn't touch it. Really setting the villain well.

Small thing I want to acknowledge because there was some discourse on it -- Sheryl saying "I'm his mother; where do you think he got it from?" Was really nice to me. Obviously not all is forgiven, nor should it be, but it's just a nice bit of character development.

Then, Ava gets Yeeted by Bolo and breaks.

I could have taken a better screencap probably, but I will not.

Anyways, considering the cast of characters was way too fucking big in S2, I'm not... particularly aggrieved by this, especially since I didn't really like AVA anyways, but it is pretty unfortunate that one of the only female characters just got the ax without basically any development other than the obligatory robot comphet stuff. Whatever, I think this is setting the stage for HUE AI, so I'll bite my tongue.

That said, the conversation that HUE and AVA had before she died? Sweet.

And then they're in Final Space. Goddamn, they really went the extra mile animating and illustrating this episode. Gotta acknowledge it.

Also, quick note: New OP is a banger.

...And this is when the review's going to start getting a bit more negative, because we jump straight into everyone's favorite trope: a time skip.

I. I really have issues with this timeskip. This episode was fucking ballistic in the pacing, and I really, really wish that I could have spent some more time within Final Space just trying to survive. I get it. It was a premiere, so you wanted to go all out, but... I really wish we could have savored it. There's just suddenly a timeskip! We don't get to see how they've been surviving. We don't get to see shit. Quinn just suddenly appears in a new outfit, and then we're off the races.

I dunno man, I really had issues with the pacing of this episode, and this is the backbone of it. It's okay to take a breather, even in your opening episode. You have to know when to take a breather. This episode sorely needed it, and it didn't get it.

Also, obligatory Danger Groins mention. Yeah, I know that's not what he says. It's what he says in my heart, tho.

From here, the Gary zombies show up, which are... admittedly intimidating.

They get attacked, and - okay, can we fucking mention the titan fights for a moment? No matter what happens this season, I'm here for this. This is Gurren Lagann levels of ridiculous, and I fucking love it. Smash that planet, yo.

lThey get separated, and Avocato and Gary have a bit unfitting but fucking hilarious moment that has to be acknowledged. This shit ain't straight, yo. There's no fucking way you tell me this shit is straight.

And... *sigh* I really have some goddamn issues with the next... I don't know, I wasn't watching, six minutes?

"There's no more grossout scenes," we were told. "Season 2 gross out is done. No more weird fetishes."

Okay.

Okay, sure.

I'm sparing you the images, because I don't want to post grossout on my blog, but... holy shit, Quatronostro's birth scene. First of all, which of the fuckers on the blog keeps putting their fetishes in this show? Clarence is gone, so you're making Mpreg Tribore (I realize Tribore is canonically genderfluid, but he's male presenting at the time of this birth... and at every time... I don't have faith in two cishet men to actually make good on that, sorry. I hope I'm wrong.) Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

The scene is gross, uncomfortable grossout. This isn't the 90s anymore!

Also, the other thing I have to acknowledge - that motherfucking robot. It's season 3 - haven't we moved past the screaming = funny leftover humor from Olan's YouTube days? Clearly fucking not.

Also, Ash did a really out of character thing this episode by shooting the robot. I... what is Ash's character, exactly? Ash is an inconsistent enigma. Someone define that poor girl's character, already.

After that... mess.... though, we do end up with a very solid ending. Bolo headbutts the planet, Quinn and Gary get swept up in the blast, and we end up with a very beautiful but quick scene of Gary and Quinn embracing one last time - it's very reminiscent of chapter 9, and I did thoroughly enjoy it.

iAlso, the shot of Mooncake saying "Gar" while looking for Gary, presuming he's dead? Oh, that just hurts.

And then we end with HUE saying, "We are alone, Gary." Honestly, genuinely was a little disappointed to find it wasn't just HUE and Gary. I thought this line was going to come later in the season, and it was just going to be HUE and Gary in a callback from season one. It wasn't, and I'm genuinely very disappointed as someone who's favorite dynamic in the entire show is S1 HUE and Gary. Of course, as a result, I'm not unbiased, and... well, I do stan Quinn too.

And goddamn, look at the Earth. She got fucked uuuuuup. I think I remember hearing next episode that there's only one survivor left, which I do NOT buy as a concept, but it's very cool to see a show that does not shy away from full apocalypse scale destruction of the earth. It like, never happens, so it's a nice subversion. Get fucked, earth.

Overall Thoughts:

This episode is the definition of a mixed bag. The beginning is fantastic and the ending is solid (even if personally disappointing), but the middle is genuinely kind of bad. The pacing is rough, there's season 2 tier grossout that I did NOT need to see, and that robot deserved a punt in the face.

The animation is fantastic though. Everyone point and stare at the animation.

I still think the good outweighed the bad, though - if only because of my personal attachment to the characters. I think this was a decent episode - probably on par with the other openers... actually, I don't know.

My disappointment with this episode was more than with the Toro Regatta, but that was more due to my own expectations and thus not fair to rank it that way. I don't know - all the first episodes of the seasons are meh at best, and this unfortunately due to the lackluster middle fit that mold as well.

If you asked me to give it a ranking, I'd probably say if we assume a 5 out of 10 is average, I'd give it a 6. Decent, fantastic when it's good, but the entire middle section really brought me out of it and because of that I can't give it anything more than that.

I've heard episodes two and three are good, though - excited to see the Ventrexian for myself after all the fuss, so let's see how it holds up!

I'm scared for Biskit tho.

[fizzingwizard]

Frantically playing catch up because I’m gone the rest of the weekend so here’s day 6 after all! Blatantly Takari. This one surprised me by how easy it was to write so it got a bit longer than the others. I’m sure there are many typos, please overlook. Also has two quotes, one in the text and one at the end, from my long-time favorite poet, Walt Whitman. BTW, I don’t really get everything that went down with Ordinemon, but I did my best to fit canon.

One month post-Bokura no Mirai, Takeru and Hikari go on a date and Hikari encounters something unexpected, which leads to a very overdue conversation with her brother.

Warning - there’s mention of the death of sick baby. It’s not huge but it matters to the story. I don’t want to shock anyone.

---

Tri week day 6 - Journeys - Death of a Comet

"How are you?" Takeru asked, watching her carefully.

Hikari only smiled and pretended not to notice. "I thought we'd known each other long enough to skip the niceties, Takeru-kun," she quipped. It was a far cry from her old playfulness, she knew, but she also knew he wasn't going to call her out for it it just yet.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Takeru rolled his eyes with an exaggerated, put-upon sigh. "I didn't realize relationship length was proportionate to amount of shits given."

"It is, at least when the last time we talked was an hour ago over text."

"Duly noted."

"Let's go?"

He nodded. He was wearing another hat she'd never seen before, a dark blue beret that looked about to tip off the side of his head with a light breeze. She wondered if he went out and bought a new hat each time before they went out together. Like how a girl shouldn't be caught in the same outfit twice. He probably did. That was Takashi Takeru, vain as fuck. But there was also something kind of adorable about it.

They'd "officially" been dating for a couple weeks, and Hikari wasn't sure yet how she felt about it. Of course, she'd agreed to it when he asked her. What else could she do? They'd been flirting and toying with each other off and on for years, in a childish way, but she couldn't pretend she didn't know full well what she was doing. She'd even sometimes daydreamed about what dating him would be like. Mostly she imagined it would be a lot of sitting in the bleachers at his basketball games.

She didn't consider Takeru the most mature of the boys in their year, but he wasn't as bad as some. Plus, they'd been through a lot together, so she knew what he was made of. And he really liked her. And she liked him. It seemed unavoidable. She'd said yes because she had no good reason for saying no.

It still felt a bit weird when he reached to hold her hand. Two weeks in, and they had yet to kiss. For the most part, it felt like nothing much had changed between them, except that Takeru no longer tried to hide his excitement when she was near. That was... flattering. And she had no qualms with taking it slow either.

They got on the Yurikamome train and stood together by a window, watching the Odaiba waterfront speed by as they traveled over the Rainbow Bridge. The sky was blue and cloudless. It was the kind of weather Tailmon loved, but Hikari had already talked to her about why she sometimes couldn't come along when she and Takeru went on an "outing." Tailmon had blinked lazily and said that was alright, and given her claws a long, purposeful lick. ”But if he ever hurts you, don't you dare hide it from me.”

Hikari promised, but thought the reverse scenario was far more likely.

Takeru had a more difficult time explaining it to Patamon, she'd heard. Supposedly, after Takeru had given his spiel about how growing up meant needing more time to oneself, Patamon had blurted out, "Are you going to kiss Hikari!? You've got to kiss her, Takeru!" loudly enough that some boys at school had overheard, and as a result everyone knew that they were an item before they'd even been out on a single date.

Such was life with Digimon.

"You know where it is, right?" Hikari asked as they got off the train.

"Yeah, I've come here with my mom for other exhibits," Takeru said, leading her out the exit and onto a busy street. "Mom's really into modern art. We've gone to see Kusama Yayoi's sculptures on Naoshima like four times. I'm pretty sure she goes whenever she breaks up with a boyfriend."

Hikari laughed. "Wait, really?"

"Well, she never introduces them to me, but I can tell when she's seeing someone. She touches up her roots more often."

The art exhibit they were going to see was some sort of interactive light show. Hikari had seen pictures online and thought it looked beautiful. Her father was of the opinion that they only ever put the best pictures on the website, and the rest of the exhibit was probably in some big, white-walled room that smelled like someone had microwaved fish for lunch. Her mom had been more enthusiastic, and added that, if the art did turn out to be a dud, it was as good an excuse as any to sneak off somewhere quiet with her Romeo and, you know, romance him.

Hikari was definitely not going to do that.

She'd timed things with care. Taichi had morning soccer practice until ten. After that he'd come home for lunch. The exhibit opened at eleven, but her concerns about there being a line fell on deaf ears, since Takeru claimed he knew this museum and it was never crowded. (Which didn't do much to mitigate her concerns about the exhibit being any good.) So the earliest she could convince him to catch the train was ten fifteen. So if she left right at ten and headed directly to the station, she ought to be able to miss her brother coming home completely.

It felt like fate was laughing in her face when she ran into him on her way out.

Her shock was mirrored on his face as they both stood in the doorway, staring at each other as if unable to understand why their biological sibling would be there, in their childhood home.

Taichi spoke first, if speech it could be called. "Uh," he said.

"Oniichan," she stammered back, "why - how - you got home fast."

"Yeah... Yamato was having band practice and he gave me a ride on the scooter," Taichi replied.

Hikari kept her mouth shut. Had Yamato orchestrated this? Was Takeru in on it? She knew it wasn't likely in either case, but her hackles were raised. "Oh," she said.

They continued to stand in the doorway. This was, Hikari reflected, the longest conversation they'd managed to keep going in almost a month.

"You... going somewhere?" Taichi asked after a while, tilting his head and looking up and down.

"Museum. With Takeru-kun."

"Oh. Well, have fun."

"Thanks."

As if suddenly realizing he was blocking the exit, Taichi stepped to the side, and Hikari barely restrained herself from running down the hall. The damage was done, though. The minute the elevator door closed, the tears started leaking down her face. Dammit. She'd been so careful.

She'd had to stop off at a nearby convenience store to hide in the restroom. She splashed her face and dabbed her eyes with her hand towel until they were less red, until the evidence of the havoc wreaked just by seeing her brother was hidden under a fresh layer of make-up. She never even wore make-up much before - after all, she was fourteen and blessed with good skin. Dating Takeru had been a convenient excuse to explain to her mom why she suddenly needed extra allowance for concealer, despite having no acne.

She wound up ten minutes late meeting Takeru and still, he could tell right away that something was wrong. She'd managed to deflect, but...

Hikari had never been any good at lying, even to herself. But she was surprised by her own cruelty, dating Takeru because she needed the distraction, an excuse to be anywhere but home. His feelings for her were genuine. She was a monster.

"Hikari-chan?" Takeru gave her a nudge that jolted her into the present. There was, indeed, no line to get in at the art show, and Takeru was trying to hand her a ticket. "Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

She nodded resolutely. "Yeah, of course."

"It's just, you're being kind of quiet."

"Well, sorry but I'm not a professional entertainer."

He didn't reply to that barb. Hikari felt even more miserable. If only Yamato's stupid motor scooter had broken down on the road...

They handed in their tickets and went through a pair of double doors, into a wide room lit by myriad streamers of blue and purple lights wafting on the air like strange, hypnotic jellyfish. No pictures were allowed, so Hikari kept her camera stowed, but she couldn't bring herself to regret it. Any pictures she tried to take while in such a stormy mood were bound to end up in the trash bin anyway.

They followed the path laid out through fiber-optic tallgrass in silence. Takeru was still gripping her hand, even though her own hung like a dead fish. The next section was a blacklight room with an even more obvious sci-fi vibe, bright cables painted brilliant colors in the impression of sea snakes creating circuitous archs on the walls and ceiling. The heat-sensor flooring lit under their feet as they walked.

Takeru leaned towards her, the blacklight setting his white T-shirt aglow. "This is like some disco-era alien planet," he joked, offering her the olive branch.

Well, she owed it to him not to let this date be a total disaster. "The room before reminded me of the tree in Avatar," she said.

"I bet the next one's gonna be something from Fifth Element."

"No way."

"Could be."

"Completely different aesthetic."

"It's gonna be that giant McDonald's sign made of stained glass. Wait and see."

It wasn't, of course. Takeru continued to insist they'd see the sign in the next room, and the next, until they reached the end of the exhibit, where he finally admitted defeat. At least room four had clearly been lifted from Finding Nemo, he said.

The final room was, in fact, an open space with white walls, but Hikari didn't notice any stomach-turning smells. A combination of 2- and 3D works of art were mounted around the room, and they took their time browsing, continuing to try to outwit each other with their increasingly outlandish, and even somewhat insulting, art critiques. It was a lovely show, Hikari thought. If she'd come to see it in a better frame of mind, she would be raving just now. But though she'd recovered her ability to match Takeru quip for quip, she still felt heavy with gloom. Geez, why did he want to date a rain cloud like her?

"Want to go for lunch?" Takeru asked as they took in the last piece of art, an abstract mosaic made of vibrant, blinking lights laid into a glass frame on a large tabletop. Hikari circled it slowly, watching lights ripple across the frame, stitching the full picture together bit by bit.

"Sure."

"There's a cafe my mom and I go to nearby. It does amazing pancakes."

"Sounds good," she said vaguely, her brow creasing in thought. She took a step back, gazing at the table from what she'd discovered was meant to be the foot, where you could see the picture in full if you craned your neck just so.

It wasn't abstract art. It was Ordinemon.

Her whole body stiffened.

"The orange marmalade pancakes are my favorite - you listening?" With a confused look, Takeru glanced from her unchanging expression to the table. His eyes went wide. "... Let's leave, Hikari-chan."

He gave her arm a tug. She didn't budge.

"Hikari-chan, there's no need to stay here. Come on."

"Why," she said. It came out in a harsh whisper, like a frozen wind. "Why would someone make art of... that."

Takeru didn't answer for a minute. "Because... they saw it," he said after a while. His grip on her arm tightened, as if expecting her to try to break away. "So they want to express what they saw."

"It's an abomination," she choked out. Humiliating tears welled up in her eyes.

Takeru seemed to hesitate. Then he stepped back, and his arms circled round her shoulders, locking her in a tight hug from behind. The warmth of his body flowed into her ice cold one, solid, real. Her mind flashed to another day, with a roiling sky black as night, when she'd come to in an unfamiliar bed with Takeru at her side and known, with a rush of deadly certainty, that she'd destroyed everything she ever cared about.

Her brother. Her beloved partner. Her friends.

By her own will.

She didn't know what she'd done. Or how. That almost made it worse, the not knowing. Her heart broke, watching her brother disappear in the earthquake. That was all. Her heart broke and she... stopped. And when she started again -

It was too late.

Tailmon had told her she didn't regret the fusion with Meicrackmon, that she'd been able to hold poor Meicoomon together, just a little longer. There was nothing for Hikari to regret, she said. Powers beyond her control. Yggrasil and Homeostasis felt they could wage their little war and pick their champions, and dispose of them when they felt like it. No sooner had she shaken off Homeostasis's hold over her that Ordinemon happened.

Hikari hated that once upon a time, she'd believed Homeostasis was a benevolent presence. That she'd willingly let her into her mind.

Now she didn't know what to believe.

Rage flared, hot as ice. Her whole world, none of it made sense anymore. She was adrift, she was unmoored, there was no safe harbor, not even in the brother who she loved like no one else. He could make a choice like that, to kill Meicoomon, to kill their friend's irreplaceable partner. The one person who deserved the most to be saved. And she'd helped, because that was what you did, on a team, at least, if you couldn't come up with a better plan yourself.

She realized she was shaking. Takeru only held her tighter, his nose buried in the crook of her neck.

"Hikari-chan," he said, and he sounded - terrified. "What if - what if it's not, though. What if it's not an abomination. What if..."

"How can you say that," she hissed frostily.

"I mean - I'm not saying it was good. I'm not saying I don't wish none of this had happened. But - I think - Ordinemon, she was created from despair, yours and Meicoomon's. She was used, and it tortured her. We freed her from that. She would have destroyed everything, even though it's not what she wanted, and she was in so much pain -"

"Stop!" Hikari yelled, pushing away from him. There was enough strength behind her need to get away and he was not expecting it, so he toppled to the floor while she raced out the exit. She kept running, hardly aware of dodging people on the sidewalk, and ran until she found herself in a small park with nothing but a two-seater swing set and metal slide. She sank into one of the swings and dropped her head in her arms. And cried.

Cried for Meiko, for Meicoomon. Cried for the future they would never have.

Cried for her brother, who had changed, and she understood why, but she still missed the way he used to be. Her guiding star.

Cried for herself, a lost comet streaking through an unfamiliar galaxy, wondering if she would vaporize shooting too close to an alien sun, or if she'd putter out slowly until she was nothing but lifeless, crumbling stone.

Her phone buzzed in her purse - Takeru, surely, trying to find her. On top of everything else, she'd ditched the boy she was stringing along, who cared about her, and who had tried so hard to let her know she wasn't alone. She didn't deserve Takeru. She would break up with him - she had to. He should be with someone stronger than her, who wasn't going to fall apart at the seams just from a silly piece of art at a museum gallery.

After a while the sobs let up enough that she could see without tears clouding her vision, and she figured she should at least let him know she was okay. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her messages.

12:35: Takaishi Takeru: i'm so sorry. i didn't mean to upset you.

12:35: Takaishi Takeru: where did you go? someone said you ran past the 7-11 but I have no idea where you went from there

12:37: Takaishi Takeru: please tell me where you are. If you don't want me to come, I won't. I can call someone if you want.

12:38: Takaishi Takeru: I just want to know you're okay

12:40: Takaishi Takeru: hikari-chan PLEASE respond

12:45: Takaishi Takeru: I asked at the 7-11 but they said they didn't see you. am walking around aimlessly now. no idea where to look.

12:48: Takaishi Takeru: hikari-chan if you don't reply soon I'm gonna have to call Taichi-san

12:52: Takaishi Takeru: wound up back at the train station, if you want to meet me here.

12:55: Takaishi Takeru: if you don't respond in five minutes I'm calling Taichi-san, I mean it.

12:58: Takaishi Takeru: I love you, by the way. think I always have. thought you might want to know

Fresh tears pricked her eyes. Leave it to Takeru. How could he pick now to spring that on her?

She should be happy. She wanted to be happy.

13:02: Me: I'm okay. I'm sorry. Go home. I'll talk to you soon.

Her finger hovered uncertainly over the keypad. She typed:

The real abomination is me.

Then she deleted it, and pressed Send.

---

Little though she wanted to go home, Hikari didn't have an excuse for staying out past dinner. She stayed in the little park until it started to get chilly. A couple times, the occasional grandma stopped to ask if she was alright, but she smiled and waved away their concerns. Finally, when twilight fell over the park in a gossamer curtain, she stood and stretched out the kinks in her back before heading back to the station. It felt like she'd been out much longer than a few hours. She thought briefly of asking a friend if she could spend the night, but didn't like the idea of needing to pretend to be peppy and cheerful.

On the ride back, she did a search on the artist who'd made the Ordinemon mosaic. Why, she had no idea. Some self-hating side that wanted her to hurt, she guessed.

The artist's name was Matsuyama Risa, a Tokyo-based sculptor, whose partnership with Fujii Fiber-optics had given birth to the displays they'd seen today. Hikari let her eyes skim the article, categorically uninterested in the number of lights used or how they were installed. What she wanted to know appeared like magic, tacked on at the very end of the article.

Art of Nippon Now: The last room in the showcase features a magical light-up mosaic of a subject that could be disconcerting for some viewers. What led you to recreate the monster that much of Tokyo watched terrorize the sky last month?

Matsuyama: I put that piece together in a feverish rush. Most of these installations took weeks to install, but I insisted on this one, even though it was such short notice. I had to have it. I heard that many people never saw more of her than her massive wings, but I happened to have a very clear view at the time. It made a huge impression on me.

ANN: You said her?

Matsuyama: It was a she. Or, perhaps it's better to say she might not have a gender,  but she deserves better than the pronouns we use for inanimate objects, things without personality.

ANN: Are you saying this monster was a person?

Matsuyama: I don't know if you heard her cries, but they were deafening. They reminded me of how my son wailed in the night when he was first born. We didn't know why he was so colicky. Nothing we did calmed him. I was so afraid that he wasn't getting enough sleep. It turned out he was very sick and we just didn't know. The illness was hidden. We spent many nights in the ICU, holding out hope that he would be alright. I remember thinking, if he wasn't, it would destroy our marriage.

ANN: That sounds like a terrible experience.

Matsuyama: When our son died, it was terrible, but it also came as a relief. At least we knew he was no longer suffering. I was depressed for months. I couldn't make any art. Every day I expected my husband to leave me. The first day I pulled myself together enough to sketch something, he said I should sketch our son sometime.

ANN: So your husband didn't leave?

Matsuyama: No. He stayed by my side. When I cried that he deserved a woman who could make him happy, who would give him healthy babies, he told me I was the strongest woman he knew, and that I'd given him the best son in the world.

ANN: Wow - would that we all meet men like that.

Matsuyama: And women. That's why, although the creature that appeared over Tokyo was very frightening to look at, when I heard her cries all I heard was suffering. I thought, that is a real creature, who wants her pain to be understood. She represents something. Perhaps she was sent to show us the harm we do when we choose not to act to help others. She shouldn't be forgotten.

ANN: So you memorialized her in this mosaic?

Matsuyama: Yes. It was the right moment, even though I had no time. I wanted to recreate her likeness using lights. I set her into a table, because I felt that putting her on a wall would be too imposing, and viewers would only remember the fear she engendered. Lying down, it would seem as if she were in a coffin, finally laid to rest. But she's lit from within, and it's the light of life, desperately clinging on till the final moment, the same as any being with a soul.

ANN: Did you ever complete the sketch of your late son?

Matsuyama: No. I never did. But I think I will soon. I want to lay him to rest in my heart.

ANN: It's interesting that when you say 'lay to rest,' you seem to mean we should remember them.

Matsuyama: Our memories make us who we are. The past is always with us. My son, that creature, they are both part of my journey, as an artist of course, but also as a person in the world. You could say my son is the light of the world and that creature is the darkness, but I hold both light and dark in me, just by existing and being human.

ANN: You added a quote to the piece that said something of that nature.

Matsuyama: Yes, from a Walt Whitman poem, 'Song of Myself.' The quote reads: "I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also."

ANN: Maybe Whitman never expected his poem to be used in this way.

Matsuyama: That's the nature of art. It is a journey in and of itself. It fluctuates and changes to nourish the times. I hope everyone who sees my art understands that they are on a journey as well, and everything they do creates the work of art called "the future."

ANN: Thank you for your time, Matsuyama-sensei.

---

Her brother was home, but her parents were not. The arrangement of shoes in the entryway said as much. Taichi was seated at the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of noodles and reading something. He looked up when the door opened and pushed his seat back.

"Hikari - you okay?" He peered at her, concerned. "Takeru didn't do something stupid, did he?"

So Takeru hadn't told her brother that she'd run off. Gratitude flooded through her. "No, of course not."

"Good." Taichi's hand rifled through his hair, the other planted on his hip, and he looked perplexed. "Then why do you look like you've been crying all day?"

Hikari walked inside and sank down on the couch. "Because I have been crying all day."

She could feel his hesitance as he wavered in the hall, trying to decide if he should press her for more. If that was still something he was allowed to do. She knew he would try. He wouldn't be Taichi if he didn't.

"You want to talk about it?" he asked, moving to sit on the arm of the couch, but he didn't relax, as if expecting her to tell him to leave her alone.

"No," she replied.

He nodded. "Okay." There was a pause. "You're sure Takeru didn't -"

"No, Oniichan."

"Okay, okay."

She sat there for a few minutes, staring blankly at the black TV screen. Soon Taichi slid off the arm into the seat beside her, allowing several inches of space between them. He didn't try to talk anymore. Didn't even get up to bring his bowl of noodles over, even though it was going to get cold.

Hikari tilted her head ever so slightly to peer at him. Dark circles ringed his eyes. She knew he hadn't been sleeping well. Something about his face looked more defined, less roundness to his jaw, starker cheekbones. Hadn't been eating much either, she guessed. It gave him an oddly grown up look. She would have to call him on losing weight from not taking care of himself, but that could wait for later. She was struck by how little he looked like their father. Everyone always said Hikari was the spitting image of her mom, so it seemed natural that Taichi should take after their dad, but though she searched she couldn't find many similarities. Taichi was just Taichi.

He gave a start when she leaned toward him and settled her head on his shoulder, but didn't say anything.

Hikari thought about many things.

How unbearable it was to feel helpless. How much she wanted everyone who cared about each other to be together, and for no one to suffer who didn't deserve it.  How deeply she loved her friends. How easy it was fall apart.

Maybe all that meant was her worldview had been too delicate to begin with. A painting on a porcelain vase wouldn't stand the test of time unless handled with the best of care. The real world was too chaotic, too disordered. She could wrap her dream in newspaper, cover it in packing peanuts, tape it into a box marked "Fragile," and it would still end up in shards. She would try to put it together again, but the pieces were sharp, and she kept cutting herself on them.

She still wanted it. So, so much.

"You stay that way. You can hate me if you want," her brother had told her. Trying to put everything on his own shoulders, as usual.

"I will probably never forgive you," she'd said, and wouldn't let him. "But that's why I'll fight with you."

"Oniichan," She slipped off his shoulder, buried her face in his chest. She didn't know how she could still have more tears, but they darkened her brother's shirt as her hands hugged him tight. "I'll always fight with you."

Surprised, he didn't move for a moment, but then his arms wrapped around her the same way they always had, ever since she was small. His grip was sure, but not out of naivety. Yes, he'd lost his innocence. It wasn't coming back. But what grew in his place, she realized, was his choice. And she got the feeling he'd already decided.

"That's good to know," he murmured softly, lashes brushing her cheek, and she thought they might be wet as well. "Because I'm never going to stop fighting for you."

They held each other for a long time.

---

The next day, Hikari showed up at Takeru's door with flowers and a box of chocolates. He made a funny face, looking her over.

"Flowers and chocolates? Shouldn't this be reversed?"

"Didn't know you were such a traditionalist," she joked. "But I'll eat these myself if they hurt your manly pride."

A hesitant grin spread over his face. "To hell with convention. Those are my chocolates, keep your paws off them."

It was silly, and cliche, but this was her life. She could be as silly and cliche as she wanted. She pulled his shoulders down and kissed him. It was light and quick, but he still looked flustered when they parted.

"My mom's home," he said with an unmistakable note of regret.

Hikari only nodded. "Figured. Video games and chocolates?"

The grin unfurled for real. "Yeah, that would be great."

Nothing had ended. She hadn't gotten over anything. But she felt, for the first time, that now she could accept it. It was a piece of who she was, and it would be a piece of who she became. But just who that person would be, she intended to decide for herself. Even if her path got buried under mountains of broken shards of glass, that was just a part of being Yagami Hikari.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)."

[rina-writes]

Read This

Summary: You, a long term friend of the twins, notice that Ethan has been acting strange.  After beating around the bush for a couple months, Grayson breaks down and tells you what’s going on. You decide to show Ethan something that you never intended for him to read...

A/N: When I started this side blog, I wanted to make it such that it would only feature my writing of who I am obsessed with at the time. I really wanted to comment Ethan’s battle with acne, but didn’t want to take away from the purpose of this blog. So, I put it in this short fic. I hope you all enjoy!

You could see the concern in Grayson’s face as you trudged toward Ethan’s room, your long cardigan flowing majestically behind you with the quick movement. Grayson lurched forward to grab your wrist and you looked at him with a frown.

“I don’t think you understand the state that E is in right now.” Grayson said, looking at the ground instead of meeting your eyes. “I know you’re a fan of tough love, but I don’t think this is the greatest time for it.”

“Grayson, I’m not an asshole.” You said, pulling your arm away from him.  “I’m not here to kick him when he’s down...I just want him to see something that I wish I had seen in my most insecure moments.”

Grayson seemed hesitant.  You couldn’t blame him.  The three of you were usually goofballs, pranking each other and roasting each other whenever you got the chance. It was weird for you to see Grayson so serious and using an inside voice.  It was weirder not seeing Ethan at his side. It felt like the world was topsy turvy enough with everything going on, to see your friend group shattered as well pushed you to want to do something about it. 

“I’m giving you 10 minutes.” Grayson said after some thought with a sigh.  “But, leave the door open.”

“Okay, mom!” You punched his arm, playfully. 

Grayson wagged a finger at you putting on his best scolding face before laughing softly.  He gestured for you to go up the stairs and you nodded, turning from him. 

The walk to Ethan’s room felt longer than usual.  You realized it was because you were a bit nervous and it caused you to drag your feet.  You took a deep breath and added some pep in your step.  This wasn’t the big bad wolf, this was one of your closest friends. If you went in with that mindset, this whole thing was for naught.

As you got closer to Ethan’s room, surprised to see the door already open.  You knocked on the door gently as you walked in.  You frowned seeing Ethan laying in bed, his head pressed against a pillow with his eyes glued to his phone.  He looked paler than you’ve ever seen him and his hazel eyes glossed over as though he was in his own dream world.

“Hey, it’s me.” You said, walking toward him. You tried to put a bit of normalcy in your voice. You hoped he didn’t hearing it quiver.

“Hey...” Ethan said, not enthusiasm in his voice.  He didn’t really move. His head was still pressed to the pillow, but he used his feet to clear a space on the bed for you to sit. 

“Oh wow the royal treatment.” You grinned. You walked over to him and he turned away slightly.

“Uh, I should let you know, my face is kind of a mess right now.” Ethan said, his words muffled slightly.

You sat on the edge of his bed and looked at him. You could barely see his face, but from what you could see, it didn’t look that bad.  If he didn’t bring it up, you probably wouldn’t have noticed. 

“Ethan, you’re talking to me.” You pointed at yourself.  “If I didn’t apologize for literally every hair disaster I had in the last four years, you shouldn’t apologize for this.”

“They weren’t THAT bad...” Ethan said, finally locking his phone, but still avoiding your eyes.

“Your mom and the other hair stylists staged an intervention because of my last dye job.” You leaned forward and narrowed your eyes. “They emptied the store and had chairs in a circle like freaking Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Ethan laughed softly, a sound you realized that you had missed from the moment you entered the room. 

“The chairs were such a nice touch.” Ethan joked doing the ‘chef’s kiss’ motion with his hands. “I wish I could take credit for it, but pretty sure it was someone at the salon.”

“My point is...”  You said, moving right along as you resisted the urge to touch your hair now just to check if it was okay. You smiled, “...we’re friends, Ethan. We don’t have to apologize for things like this...”

Ethan went silent.  You gulped worried that you went too far already. Now you understood why Grayson was acting they way he was downstairs.  You wondered how many times they argued and how many times they shut each other out over the past couple of months.  With them, there were two kinds of fighting. There was the fighting when they were both yelling and pushing each other.  That was the norm.  But, then there was the fighting where they both spoke in the quietest of voices. Where they didn’t make eye contact and only said a few words, usually sandwiched with swears. These were the arguments that worried you most because it usually meant one or both of them was hurting.

“I want to show you something.” You said, pulling out your phone from the front pocket of your jean shorts.

For the first time since you walked in, Ethan looked at you. This also meant that this was the first time you got a good look at him. He did look bad, but not because of his skin. His eyes looked so cold. It was like he was staring through you. You’ve seen him beam at complete strangers and now, he was staring at you like you were invisible. 

You controlled your reaction, not wanting him to misunderstand your surprise. You softened your face, but dared not smile. He would be able to see through a phony grin. You looked own at your phone and started to get ready to show him what you planned.

“Grayson doesn’t let me see Twitter.” He said, before glancing away. “If that’s what you’re going to do...”

“Well, thank goodness I’m showing you Tumblr then.” You said, still looking at your screen as you typed in your search.

“Here...” You handed it to him and Ethan took your phone.

“What is this?” He asked, squinting at the brightness of your screen. At the top was ‘ethan dolan’ which searched all the Ethan Dolan tags on Tumblr.

“It’s the top results for Ethan Dolan on Tumblr.” You said, resting your hands on your lap.  “I looked it up a long time ago to tease you guys.  As you can see there are a lot of edits and stuff, but there’s also fan fiction.”

“I’ve read this stuff.” Ethan said, handing it back to you. “Clearly, you don’t watch our videos.”

There was a hint of a smile as he teased you. With it, you saw a glimmer of the Ethan Dolan you were waiting to emerge.  Baby steps.

“Trust me.” You said pushing the phone back towards him. “This is nothing like you have ever read before.”

“You don’t even know which one I’m going to read.” Ethan rolled his eyes.

“Your fans are a lot more...eh, mature in their writing now.” You blushed softly. “Trust me.”

Ethan looked annoyed, but he decided to read one of them.  You watched uncomfortably as his face turned redder and redder. 

“Why am I spitting on her?” In the most deadpan voice, Ethan broke the silence and asked, looking at you.

“Oh my god!” You yelled, getting embarrassed. “I don’t know! I didn’t write it.”

“Do people think I’m that mean?” Ethan asked, looking back at the phone. “That I’d choke my girlfriend because she said that she was going to go ask Grayson to take care of her. Like OKAY, you do that...”

You snickered. As if Ethan would have such a chill reaction to something like that.

“Oh come on, E.” You rolled your eyes. “You’re not innocent...you know what fetishes are and that some people like being dominated.”

“Are you saying some people because you mean yourself?” Ethan quirked a brow, looking at you with a smug expression.

He was totally messing with you! You have been upset if you weren’t completely relieved

You narrowed your eyes, not giving away you position. “Anyway...now, I want you to go to the recent tab.”

You watched Ethan’s eyes search the screen and then his thumb move to the top of the screen to click on ‘Recent.’  He scrolled down more, his face turning more red.

“Well, that’s a very graphic description of my penis.” Ethan put your phone down and crossed his arms over his pillow, looking at you with a soft smile. “Did you come here to get laid?”

“Ugh, no!” You rolled your eyes.  “You’re missing the point...”

“You just had me read written porn about myself...I’m not sure anyone would get the point.” Ethan said, the smile on his lips getting wider as his eyes started to regain the playfulness you had grown to adore.

“What was the difference between the fics in the Top section and the Recent section?” You asked, trying to give him a hint.

“Oh, you’re so acquainted with them that you call them fics?” Ethan asked, leaning back. You could now see that he was shirtless, in long gray sweat shorts, his stomach and chest exposed as he laid back on his head board.

“Alright, that’s it.” You said, pretending to leave as you snatched your phone.

Ethan knew you were bluffing, but he was too nice to call you out on it.  “I’m sorry,” He gave you a little pout.  “Don’t go.”

“Answer the question...” You said, sitting back down and crossing your legs.

Ethan stuck his hand out to take your phone and you unlocked to hand it to him. He switched between the two tabs.

“Uh, the ones in the top are a lot dirtier, I guess?” He narrowed his eyes. “Not by much though.”

“Okay, what about the gifs and stuff?” You asked.  “Still seeing thirst comments?”

Ethan chuckled. “Yeah...about the same.”

“That’s kind of my point, E.” You took your phone and stared him down so he couldn’t look away.  “For your fans, you’re still so hot that they want you to choke them and make them beg for you. You’re still their soft boy that they want to spoon and pamper. You’re still their sweetheart that...in all honesty, was probably the first love for many of them. They haven’t noticed your pimples...E.”

Ethan opened his mouth to say something, but you put up a finger.  

“But they don’t know how bad it is.” You said in the deep, husky voice you use to imitate him along with your signature arm flex gestures.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “They really don’t. I mean look.” He pointed to his forehead.

“I’m going to lick it.” You said, lurching forward.

“HOLY --- Don’t you dare.” Ethan said, sticking out his foot to stop you.

You laughed, loudly and eventually, Ethan did as well.  

“Every time you say something like that’s I’m going to lick. Then you’ll have acne and my spit on you.” You stuck out your tongue.

“I’m going to have nightmares.” Ethan joked, smiling softly. 

You slapped his thigh and grinned. “Look, I’ve been kinda where you are.  With my skin, with my hair, with my weight...all of it.  I kept thinking I didn’t deserve to have fun until I looked perfect. All the while, the people around me didn’t even notice.  I bet you probably don’t even remember when I’m talking about...”

Ethan shook his head.  He turned his head to look out the window and then realization washed over his face.

Ethan paused for a moment. “I only remember that one day where you didn’t want to go to the beach and then someone told me it was because you didn’t want to go swimsuit shopping...I didn’t really get it at the time.  I was just upset because that was the first time we were going to hang out in months and it was the only time Gray and I were free.”

“That’s how I feel about this.” You smiled softly. “To me, Gray, your friends, your family, your FANS...” You pointed to your phone. “We don’t get why you don’t want to come to the beach.  We don’t give two hoots how you look in the swimsuit, we just miss you.”

“I can’t say I feel 100% better.” Ethan admitted. “But, I’m feeling a little less...shitty.”

“A little less shitty. I’ll take that.” You smiled, standing up. 

“I half expected to come in here and slap me across the face.” Ethan laughed softly.

“Good god, do both Dolan Twins think I’m an asshole?” You put your hands on your hips. 

“Oh Tin Man, you do have a heart...” Ethan joked. 

You grabbed one of his pillows and hit him with it.  He grabbed another and hit you back, your laughter filling the room.

“Wanna get something to eat? Or at least go downstairs?” You asked. “You know how Gray gets when he’s left out.”

You imitated Gray hunched over and pouting looking at Ethan from the corner of your eye.

“Yeah...” Ethan smiled, getting off the bed and standing up.  “Imma tell him you did that.”

“Heh, do it.” You scoffed. “I’m not afraid him...Just uh, let me start my car.” 

You reached in your pocket to pull out your keys and pretended to remote start you car by pointing it at the window.

He gave you a tight hug.  “Thanks, kiddo. You’re not half bad most of the time.”

“Yup.” You said, hugging him back lightly.  “I’m the best, I know.”

“So be honest....” Ethan asked  “...how many of those fics of me have you read?”

Your eyes widened slightly. “What? Grayson, are you calling me?!” You yelled speed walking toward the door.

“Gray! Y/N is lusting after.” Ethan yelled, following you out the door.  “She’s prying on your brother in his moment of weakness.”

Grayson smiled as he heard you two thundering down.  9 mins and 35 seconds...not bad at all.