#an aged man remembers april

[llovelymoonn]

on april

barbara kingsolver demon copperhead \\ sara teasdale a november night \\ fatima aamer bilal i mother it, the absence of her ii. i was hard to bear from the very start (via @ivynightshade) \\ anne carson the glass essay (via @petaltexturedskies) \\ raymond p. fischer an aged man remembers april \\ cyrus cassells \\ anton chekhov love \\ t.s eliot the waste land \\ michelle o'sullivan the flower and the frozen sea: "bespoke"

kofi

[snackugaki]

i need to go crunchier

____

my tmnt au (where everyone made it past their 20s, splinter’s alive just old, venus is here, and they deserve some goddamn respite and shenanigans) 

tmnt au part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

tmnt au omake 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

lny visit 1 | 2

[arolesbianism]

I have obtained a new oc and in the process I've already signed myself up for needing to make at least 3 new ocs for his story which he now has despite me initially Intending for him to be a side character for a different side character to hang out with. My townhouse has over 200 characters on it.

[lestbian]

this day (march 16th) 21 years ago (2003), american activist rachel corrie was crushed to death by an israeli bulldozer while she protested the demolition of palestinian homes in rafah. she was 24. this april, she would have turned 45.

Sandra Jordan wrote in The Observer that because Corrie was American her death attracted more attention than the deaths of Palestinians under similar circumstances: "On the night of Corrie's death, nine Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, among them a four-year-old girl and a man aged 90. A total of 220 people have died in Rafah since the beginning of the intifada. Palestinians know the death of one American receives more attention than the killing of hundreds of Muslims." (Wikipedia)

while we honor corrie's sacrifice, we must remember what she fought for. you can read her emails from rafah about her experiences in palestine at the rachel corrie foundation for peace and justice, organized by her parents cindy and craig who continue her work.

donate to UNRWA donate to Help Gaza Children donate to PCRF buy e-sims for Gazans

ramadan kareem and may we see a free palestine in our lifetimes.

[lancestrollsgf]

# THE BETTER NORRIS ! F1 GRID X ADOPTED NORRIS! READER, SMAU

introduction master list request list

part one, part two, part three.

# WARNINGS : cussing, i know nothing about the parents of lando so everything is fictional. lowercase intended, spelling errors (english isn’t my first language). lando's actual siblings are not really mentioned in this since I don't know anything about them. reader hitchhikes. an excessive usage of emojis such as “🙄, 🤫, 😝, 😭,😊,😉”. reader is 17 in the story btw (the age isn’t really mentioned so i guess you can imagine it however you want)

# SUMMARY: the adventures of the formula one driver lando norris adopted sibling, y/n norris.

# AUTHORS NOTE : this is my first smau (that i’m posting). there’s no meaning behind this story i really just wanted to make it for fun. backstory for how reader (you) were adopted is not explained. reader is kinda of portrayed as bisexual, sorry only like three times. pretend lando is a soccer/football fan (and likes messi). some of these scenarios/comments actually happened to face claim.

# FACE CLAIM : marian guevara/theatomicbabe on instagram (i love her so much)

VOTE FOR FUTURE LOVE INTEREST (now closed)

— instagram !

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc and 529,289 others

thebetternorris visited jamaica once again, spent every moment with the children and made memorial memories that i will remember forever, thank you @junglenonprofit for making this event happen🤍🇯🇲

landonorris: very cool hair style in the last photo is that your new look?

-> thebetternorris: maybe it is. you should also try finding a new look instead of looking like a washed up mop you have on your head that you call curls

-> carlossainz55: ay no, she got you with that one 🤣

-> landonorris: I WAS LITERALLY BEING NICE. WHY DID YOU COME AFTER ME??

landonorris: since when did you go to jamaica???

-> thebetternorris: since two days ago, man keep up with the times 🙄🙄

maxverstappen1: y/n does your mom know you’re in jamaica??

-> thebetternorris: no.. don’t tell her, she doesn’t have instagram 🤫

-> ciscawauman: y/n norris.. you said you were with friends for this week?

-> thebetternorris: hi mama 😊😊 im with bsf/n. but im on my way home! (max emilian verstappen this is all your fault, im coming after you)

-> maxverstappen1: sorry y/n.. hi mrs.wauman!

-> ciscawauman: hello max 👋 y/n please don’t threaten someone through comments

username1: y/n’s interactions with the drivers will never fail to make me laugh

username2: i love you y/n!!!

username3: will forever appreciate how y/n is not pr trained. her posts and comments heal me

-> mclaren: that will change very soon, sadly.

-> thebetternorris: @.mclaren YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE

lewishamilton: good work, little norris, very proud of you, keep doing good in the world 🥰

-> thebetternorris: I LOVE U SIR LEWIS

-> lewishamilton: love you too

-> landonorris: lewis please ignore her

username4: y/n’s reply to lewis’ comment is so real

username5: the third picture is so cute 🥹

view all 5201 comments

april 21, 2024 (dates are for the post above ^^)

liked by landonorris, oscarpiastri, and 661,201 others

thebetternorris 🍸🪩🌃🍾

landonorris: who is that guy in the last photo?

-> thebetternorris: i have no clue, i js chose it because i looked good. i think he was trynna lure me into a cult?

-> landonorris: WHAT?? CALL ME RIGHT NOW

username4: you can always rely on y/n to never disappoints with her outfits 😫😫

oscarpiastri: how come you never invite me to party out with you?

-> thebetternorris: because you steal all the girls and guys too 😕😕 also you’re too old

-> oscarpiastri: i’m barely 23??? and thank you or sorry idk man, you confuse me

username6: y/n’s life is so entertaining

username7: i wanna be like y/n when i grow up

username8: my goal in life is to party like y/n does

view all 6229 comments

april 25, 2024

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc, girl3, and 786,929 others

thebetternorris no caption 🌞 👤: @.girl1 @.girl2 @.girl3 @.guy1

girl3: i had so much fun y/n see you soonnn

-> thebetternorris: me too! see you soon 😊😊

-> landonorris: y/n what is this???? what do you mean see you soon???? ANSWER MY CALLS Y/N

landonorris: who are those girls and guy on the last two photos???

-> charles_leclerc: leave your sister alone, as if you weren’t doing crazy stuff this week either 🤣

-> thebetternorris: @.landonorris they have names you know, you shouldn’t just call them “those girls”. i thought mama taught you better. 🤨🤨

-> landonorris: @thebetternorris sorry..?? but you didn’t answer the question.. also please @charles_leclerc don’t expose my doings of this week onto the internet

username9: you’re the loml in a another universe 😔

-> thebetternorris: why not this universe 😉

-> danielriccardo: damn little norris has more rizz than her brother 😭 @.landonorris

-> landonorris: why do i keep getting attacked 💔

username10: having the caption as “no caption” is having a caption

-> thebetternorris: 🤓🤓

username11: does y/n like girls cause that third photo is a bit suspicious LMAOO

-> username12: i think so, especially because of her response to oscar's comment on her previous post

view all 3620 comments

april 27, 2024

liked by landonorris, newyorkcityfc, and 887,292 others

thebetternorris thank you @.newyorkcityfc for inviting me to document the New York City fc vs charlotte game. visiting the new york city fc game made me want to try out soccer, turns out it might be time that i change career path 😝

landonorris: you’re in new york??? since when. and @.newyorkcityfc just invited you???

-> thebetternorris: since two days ago and is that an insult?

-> landonorris: who are you staying with?

-> thebetternorris: man stop asking so many questions 😕

charles_leclerc: weren’t you in jamaica like less than a week ago?

-> thebetternorris: weren’t you in china less than a week ago? why you judging where im traveling, i don’t judge you. you literally fly somewhere each week for your go karting 🙄

username13: y/n’s post are so unpredictable each time 😭 she was just helping children in jamaica and is now at a soccer game in nyc

-> thebetternorris: gotta keep y’all on your toes 🤫

-> username13: toes 🤤

-> thebetternorris: NAH GTFO LMAOOO

username14: y/n becoming a soccer player when??

username15: all of the norris siblings are so talented

view all 2928 comments

april 29, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 997,929 others

thebetternorris miami grand prix day 2 & day 3 🤙. found out some guy with the same last name as me won? idk but congrats @.landonorris

username16: dang her brother just won his first race and she doesn’t even make a post about him?

-> username17: for real, like everyone congratulated him right after but not even his own sister

-> username18: @.username17 well she is adopted 🤣

username19: it was so fun meeting you y/n!!!

-> thebetternorris: thank you pretty

username20: thank you for the water y/n 😊😊

-> thebetternorris: of courseee, had to give you that rich voss water 😉😉

-> landonorris: you gave a stranger water?? when?? you were with me the whole time???

-> thebetternorris: hey man you gotta start appreciating the people that support you, he was a worker ✊🏼

username21: hey i was the guy you were signing “way 2 sexy” with lolll

-> thebetternorris: AYY MY MANNN, i posted u on tiktok look at it 😉

jamescharles: omg i met you!! you’re gorgeous 🥰

-> thebetternorris: JAMESS HEYYY, i put you in my tiktok 🤙🤙

username22: omg you hugged me, remember i picked you up 😭

-> thebetternorris: I REMEMBER YOUU, that hug was great thanks man i needed that 🫵🏼 posted a full tiktok abt you

username23: your first outfit is so art teacher-coded

-> thebetternorris: is this a compliment or?? thank you though 😭

-> landonorris: @.username23 THATS WHAT I TOLD HER

landonorris: the number of people commenting that they met you is insane. @thebetternorris

-> thebetternorris: what can i say i'm js that guy 😼

view all 6282 comments

may 5, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 1,000,010 others

thebetternorris congrats to @.landonorris for winning your first grand prix, in america 🦅🇺🇸, i’m so so proud! turns out having an adopted sister isn't so bad for your racing career after all 😜. btw to everyone in the comments section getting their gears all tangled because I didn't congratulate him sooner, chill out. I was busy practicing my own racing skills. yk, just in case he needs some real competition 😴 sorry @.maxverstappen1. i’m so proud of you, i'm forever grateful that i got picked from the “bin” i was found according to you 18 years ago, and it resulted in me being your sister :) 👤: @.landonorris @.oscarpiastri

landonorris: thank you for the congratulations, but did you really have to use those photos of me?

-> thebetternorris: damn you got your congrats just be grateful man 🙄

oscarpiastri: so this is why lando was crying, btw thank you for using a good photo of me

-> thebetternorris: OSCAR ARE YOU SERIOUS. @.landonorris YOU CRIED?? LMFAOOO

-> landonorris: @.oscarpiastri YOU SNITCH.

maxverstappen1: thank goodness you’re not a f1 driver, you’d be some real competition. we need to try go karting together soon 👍🏼

-> thebetternorris: i know this is a joke but thank u max 😔 we should go karting soon so i can beat you at it 😈

-> username24: i would pay to see y/n kart against max

username25: i don't even know anything about f1 but this made me tear up

username26: y/n getting hate for not congratulating her brother is insane

username27: people getting mad about y/n not congratulating lando as if they know anything about them

username28: y/n was one of the first people to congratulate lando, yall are hating a literal kid for smth so little 💀

view all 4593 comments

may 7, 2024

liked by landonorris, leomessi, 1,102,920 others

thebetternorris pov that one unemployed friend on a tuesday (saturday). thank you @.mles for the invite and for letting me meet the goat @.leomessi 🩷🩷

joyboy: finally found someone that is everywhere like me

-> thebetternorris: paris fashion week next 😉?

-> landonorris: NO???

username29: IS THAT LIONEL MESSI??

-> thebetternorris: that’s literally oomf what are you talking abt 🙄

ueername30: y/n is literally everywhere but home

username31: y/n's smile 🥰🥰

carlossainz55: Real Madrid CF>>>

-> thebetternorris: carlos get outta here 😕😕

username32: te encantaría ser un hombre nunca lo vas a ser y eso es lo que te jode (you’d love to be a man and you’ll never be a man and that fucks with you)

-> thebetternorris: @.username32 me encanta ser mujerrr (i love being a womann)

-> username32: @thebetternorris pues lo disimulas fatal (well you hide it well)

-> thebetternorris: @.username32 que es ser mujer para ti? (what is being a woman to you?)

-> username33: SHE GOT YOU THERE 💀@.username32

landonorris: you meeting messi before me insane 😔

leomessi: gracias por tu apoyo 🩷 que chistoso la caption 🤣 (thank you for your support 🩷 how funny the caption is)

-> landonorris: oh you’re joking.

-> thebetternorris: @.leomessi 🩷🩷 (i’m so normal abt this..)

username33: i wanna be y/n's camera man

username34: who is taking these pictures of y/n

-> thebetternorris: for this game, some guy named jarvis took these photos idk but we're homies now

-> landonorris: WHO IS JARVIS???

view all 12920 comments

june 5, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 1,293,021 others

thebetternorris i look sunburnt, swear it's just the lights 👤: bustarhymes

bustarhymes: it was nice meeting you little norris

-> thebetternorris: it was great meeting you man, your music is great

danielriccardo: mate i think you need a new cameraman because most of these are blurry...

-> thebetternorris: my pictures look better than yours, you're letting your jealousy show

landonorris: nah bro how did you meet busta rhymes before me.

-> thebetternorris: because i'm better than you

username35: you dead ass look like han jisung omg

-> thebetternorris: thank you, idk who that is but i get that a lot 😭

username34: y/n looks so much like young miko it’s insane

charles_leclerc: you look scary in the first picture

-> thebetternorris: i saw your paparazzi picture from the beach, your shoulders look scarier, learn how to put on sunscreen 😬

username36: y/n’s style is so 🥰

view all 5934 comments

june 30, 2024

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc, and 1,304,393 others

thebetternorris back at the big apple 🍎🏙️

itsyoungmiko: hi twinn

-> thebetternorris: hey twin, we should meet up soon

lancestroll: how do you travel everywhere?

-> thebetternorris: walking and hitchhiking

-> lancestroll: hitchhiking? be safe norris

-> thebetternorris: yea hitchhiking. not all of us have private planes that our daddy pays for🙄(just joking, love u @lawerence_stroll pls give me money)

-> lancestroll: your brother literally flies private. please don't ask my dad for money 😭

lawerence_stroll: hello y/n, how much money do you need?

-> thebetternorris: HI MR.STROLL, thank you for the offer I was just joking, you're so nice. see you at the next gp 😊

username37: who is that on the last photo?

-> thebetternorris: THATS ME. LMFAOOO

username38: ain't no way you're in new york city rn, you were in florida a day ago.

-> thebetternorris: that's what hitchhiking is for, duh

-> username38: you dead ass hitchhiked a ride from florida to new york city. that's like 20 hours...

-> thebetternorris: “that’s like 20 hours…” ☝🏼🤓

username39: are you gonna go to the british gp?

-> thebetternorris: yes sadly 💔 lando is forcing me against my will 😕

oscarpiastri: don’t forget my keychain pls

-> thebetternorris: ofc man ill give it to you soon 🤙

zhouguanyu24: very cool pictures y/n and cool outfit

-> thebetternorris: HI ZHOUUU, i got you something for you and sweet corn 🥰 thank u for the compliment 😙

username40: future mom lore is gonna go insane

-> thebetternorris: 😈

landonorris: y/n are you ever not in the US. come back home..

-> thebetternorris: USA 🇺🇸🦅🦅

-> logansargeant: USA USA 🇺🇸🦅🦅

-> landonorris: @.logansargeant logan please don’t lure my sister into your cult that you americans have

-> logansargeant: @.landonorris we don’t have a cult in america 😭 well… don’t quote me on that 😔

-> username41: “you americans” is crazy 💀

view all 4402 comments

july 1, 2024

comment to be tagged in the next part 🤫🤫

[astrotruther]

Astro Observations

misc. (i)

⛔️ TW: mention of anorexia and drugging❗️

♡ Venus Square Mars may attract obsessive people. In particular, people who obsess over their looks or fetishize them in some way. Brooke Shields had a whole nation obsessed with her at the mere age of 12. Eugenia Cooney has infamously attracted hoards of anorexia fetishists with her content. People with this placement may have a higher risk of drastic weight loss or gain.

♡ Either I meet too many Capricorn Suns by coincidence or it's a rather common placement. One reasoning could be that April is an ideal month for marriage in many places, especially ones where it gets unbearably hot in June. Spring adds to April's allure. Traditional couples often conceive right after tying the knot, making the pregnancy due in Capricorn season.

♡ Lilith is associated with sexuality but people focus too much ONLY on that facet of it. Lilith is associated with many other things like power, revenge and how one becomes a social pariah.

♡ Planets at 0° may symbolize struggle. Lana Del Rey has Sun at 0°. The Sun represents our ego. She had many controversies in 2020 including the mesh mask and her Instagram rant undermining POC artists. Even after criticism, instead of apologizing, she remained defensive. I believe that planets at 0° provide a lot of room for growth if the individual is genuinely interested in self-improvement.

♡ Aries Moon (ruled by Mars) and Scorpio Moon (ruled by Pluto, traditionally by Mars) despite being similar are perceived quite differently by people. The sign of Aries gives child-like quality to the native. They come off as cute and their sarcastic remarks are perceived as good humor. E.g. Rihanna roasting Helena Bonham Carter's sense of fashion. Meanwhile, one eyeroll from a Scorpio Moon, and they may come off as hateful and jealous. My advice to Scorpio Moons who want to be in the public eye, please never put on the mean girl persona. Tap into your kind side, it'll be received in a positive way and you'll attract genuine support.

♡ Venus-Mars aspects symbolize beauty; the difference may lie in how people perceive it. Venus Trine Mars are often called cute. People with this aspect are well-liked and have a good reputation. These are the people who may never be cancelled due to the halo effect they have. No matter how massively popular they are, people won't be digging up dirt on them, which is also why very little is known about these people's personal lives. These people often become a household name due to that one iconic thing they did, even if they decide to adapt a lowkey presence afterwards. Let me emphasize this with an extensive list of examples:

✧ Nina Dobrev (The Vampire Diaries), Zayn, Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl), Adele, Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), Sabrina Carpenter, Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man), Kate Middleton, Mandy Moore (A Walk to Remember), Jackie Chan, Jenna Fischer (The Office), Ana de Armas, Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games), Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians), Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) and Alan Rickman (Harry Potter) have this aspect.

✧ Taeyang being the only member of former K-pop group BIGBANG who's had no controversies (also managed to keep his relationship hidden for a long time before revealing it with a wedding announcement), Khloé Kardashian being the least disliked Kardashian/Jenner sister, Cardi B admitting to drugging and robbing men, starring in Hustlers that glamorized it, hitting her career peak with WAP the very next year really drives the point home.

✧ I've also noticed this aspect in almost all Bollywood IT girls of their time: Priyanka Chopra, Aishwarya Rai, Anushka Sharma, Ayesha Takia, Dia Mirza, Divya Bharti, Parveen Babi - all loved by the general public despite the media scrutiny and misogyny that prevails within the industry.

Click daily to help Palestinians🍉🙏🏽: https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

[girlactionfigure]

It was a "small" act.

But, at the time, she didn’t realize she was making a life-changing, and life-saving decision, not only for her but for hundreds of Polish Jews during the Second World War, helping save them from Nazi execution.

Only when she died, on April 8, 2022, at the age of 107 did the rest of the world learn of her courage.

She was born Carmen Koppel in Vienna, daughter of Frieda and Emil Koppel. Her father, an opera-loving grain merchant, chose her name after Bizet’s Carmen,” according to The Guardian, “She studied languages at the University of Vienna, taking shorthand to help with her note-taking.”

She said “My mother had insisted that I learn something useful, so I learnt to type.”

“In 1936 she married Josef Weitmann, who owned a curtain-making business in Kraków, and the couple settled there and had a son, Sascha.

“After the German occupation of Poland in 1939, the administration wanted to re-establish Kraków as Krakau, a German city. As Jews, [she] and her husband were forced to live in the Kraków ghetto, established by the Nazis in 1940. Its inhabitants were allowed to leave and return only with special permits. Josef was killed while trying to escape; Sascha was smuggled to relatives in Hungary.”

According to the New York Times, “in late 1944, as a slave laborer in the administrative offices of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland, [she] typed an important version of the manifest of prisoners bound for [a] munitions factory in the area of the Czech Republic then known as the Sudetenland.”

“It was in those offices” that she also added her name and the names of two friends to the list, indicating her profession as “schreibkraft,” according to writer Alex Mindlin.

By typing that list, she almost certainly saved her own life, the lives of her friends, and many others, according to Mindlin.

That “list” “saved them from the gas chambers of Auschwitz, where most of the other Jews from Plaszow were deported,” according to The Teller Report.

Years later after the war, she would meet again the man who had made that list possible, the man who employed her.

She had a different last name by this time, but he still remembered her by her nickname. [She never liked the name “Carmen”, so close friends referred to her after a character in “La Bohème”.]

'It must have been around 1953,” she said. “I had gone to Vienna and I was walking along a street with an uncle. We were passing a coffee house where there was a group of people sitting. This large man ran across and hugged and started kissing me, saying: ‘Mimi, Mimi…’

“It was then that I realised that it was Schindler sitting with some of the Jews he had rescued.”

“The documents that [Mimi Reinhardt] worked on were made famous by Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel . . . and by the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie ["Schindler's List"], both of which detailed the extraordinary lengths to which [Oskar] Schindler went to save the lives of some 1,200 of his Jewish workers,” according to the Times.

Other sources cite the number of lives saved even higher. According to AFP (Agence France-Presse) and The Times of Israel, “The lists which Reinhardt compiled for [Schindler] helped save the lives of some 1,300 Jews at considerable risk to his own life.”

“Austrian-born Reinhardt (sometimes spelled “Reinhard), herself a Jew, was recruited by Schindler himself and worked for him until 1945.”

This is a new story for the Jon S. Randal Peace Page. The Peace Page focuses on past and present stories seldom told of lives forgotten, ignored, or dismissed. The stories are gathered from writers, journalists, and historians to share awareness and foster understanding, to bring people together. And, as such, the stories are never relegated to one single month - they are available all year in the Peace Page archives and on this page each week throughout the year. We encourage you to learn more about the individuals and events mentioned here and to support the writers, educators, and historians whose words we present. Thank you for being here and helping us share awareness.

~~~~~

Reinhardt, then known as Carmen Koppel, “survived the final liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in March 1943, when 2,000 Jews were slaughtered, because the Nazis deemed her language and secretarial skills useful,” according to The Guardian.

At the time, the Red Army was approaching Poland and workers in Plaszow were being sent west to death camps,” according to The New York Times.

Reinhardt was a “prisoner at a concentration camp near Krakow, Poland during WWII in 1944,” according to the World Jewish Congress, when Schindler recruited her for a job in the camp's administrative office.

“Schindler and his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, who had helped to motivate Schindler, prepared the 'list' of essential workers - all of them Jews - for relocation to his new factory,' according to writer Peter Beaumont.

As Schindler’s secretary, Reinhardt “drew up the lists of Jewish workers in the Polish city of Krakow to work in the factory of her German industrialist boss”, according to writer Caroline Frost.

“This was a highly risky enterprise but is estimated to have saved . . . [the] workers from deportation and almost certain death in Nazi concentration camps.”

Reinhardt also “added the names of friends and her own married names until Schindler's quota negotiated with the SS was fulfilled: "Weitmann, Carmen, January 15, 1915, typist" is number 279 on the list.

“The rescue almost went awry” according to The Teller Report.

“On the way to Brünnlitz in 1944, the train carrying Schindler’s workers was diverted to Auschwitz,” according to The Guardian. “Death seemed inevitable. But Schindler used his military intelligence contacts to stop the diversion, claiming that these workers were vital for his armaments factory.”

“They had to stay in Auschwitz for two weeks,” according to The Teller Report.

“Mimi Reinhardt later compared the time to Dante's ‘Inferno’.”

“At the war’s end, [Schindler’s] workers were liberated, and Mimi was reunited with Sascha.”

Reinhardt “settled for a time in Morocco and then New York, where she lived for 50 years,” according to The Guardian. “She kept in touch with other ‘Schindler Jews’ whose lives had been saved by escaping the Plaszów camp under Schindler’s protection, but did not speak publicly about her earlier life until she moved to Israel in 2007.”

In Israel, she joined “her only son, Sacha Weitman, who was then a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University,” according to The Times of Israel.

Schindler died in 1974, when he “was named by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as a member of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, an honour for non-Jews who tried to save Jews from Nazi extermination,’ according to Frost. “He is buried on the Mount of Olives just outside Jerusalem.”

The story of Reinhardt’s “small act” came to light when she was being interviewed by the Jewish Agency for Israel. (Note, “Reinhardt wasn’t directly portrayed in the Schindler’s List film,” according to News18.)

Reinhardt “expressed regret that Mr. Schindler, whom she adored, did not become a household name until after his death in 1974,” wrote Mindlin.

“He would have loved it, the attention,” she said.

She added in another interview, "I saw a man who was constantly risking his life for what he was doing. He was human. He must have had a heart of gold."

Reinhardt spent her last years at a nursing home north of Tel Aviv.

She is “mourned by her son and his family, as well as the thousands of people whose parents and grandparents she helped escape certain death,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

She has three granddaughters, nine great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

In the image attached, Sasha Weitman, son of Mimi Reinhardt, holds an old photograph of his mother in Herzliya, Israel, (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit).

Of her contribution to history and assisting Schindler in saving hundreds of her fellow Jews, Reinhardt said, “I was just typing the list.”

~ jsr

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page  

[sallowtheories]

What would happen if Sebastian became a professor?

This is a long one, but I just realized that if Sebastian somehow manages to follow in the footsteps of his parents and become a professor at Hogwarts, he could have taught Albus Dumbledore, Aberforth Dumbledore, Newt Scamander, Tom Riddle Jr, among many others.

Imagine it - the year is 1895, and a 20 year old Sebastian Sallow has just accepted the job as the professor of Magical Theory - a job one of his parents (I theorize), used to have before professor Fig. A position that would fit Sebastian, given the goals and values of knowledge his parents has passed on to him.

Sebastian would have been present in the Great Hall the evening Aberfoth Dumbledore would be sorted into Gryffindor, and would have taught him in his first year classes on the subject.

Some time before 1908, Sebastian would be teaching when Albus Dumbledore became a professor at Hogwarts. The same Albus Dumbledore that Sebastian watched getting sorted back in 1892, during Sebastian’s last year at Hogwarts. The same Albus Dumbledore, who his fellow classmates whispered about, wondering if he was any like his father. But now, at the age of 33, Sebastian would find himself in the Faculty Tower, having deep and interesting conversations with Albus about Magical Theory.

At times they would talk about their pasts. Sebastian would let a little slip about his family, and so would Albus, but they would never confide in each other more than that. They just knew about the other’s struggle, nothing more. Maybe there would be a friendship. A professional friendship, yet they would somehow always know a little more than they would like to say.

In 1908 Sebastian Sallow would be sitting at the teachers table, watching as Newt Scamander would get sorted into Hufflepuff, and Leta Lestrange into Slytherin.

In 1926, at the age of 51, Sebastian would have a knowing feeling that Albus had something to do with Newt going to America, and in 1927 his suspicions would be confirmed when members if the aura office showed up at Hogwarts, heading straight for Albus in his classroom.

In 1938, at the age of 63, Sebastian would watch with uneasiness as a certain Tom Riddle Jr gets sorted into Slytherin. He senses something familiar about the boy, but can’t quite place it. However, during their classes together, Sebastian would find himself impressed with the boy’s abilities, wondering if maybe he possessed the same abilities as a certain someone he knows… but soon Sebastian would learn that it wasn’t the case, but that the boy possessed a different ancient ability…

Many professors liked the young Riddle boy, and Sebastian too would find that the young boys charm had won him over. In some ways it was like look at himself at that age. Young, handsome, charming, with a way to bend the rules. Especially after both Sebastian and several other teachers had caught Mr. Riddle sneak around in the restricted section, and each time they would let him go with yet another warning. But that would change on day in 1942, not long before the summer that year.

During a day in April 1942, Tom Riddle would come to Sebastian in his office, asking kindly if he could have a word with him. It wasn’t uncommon for Tom to do so. He often enjoyed taking with his professors, and especially about quite advanced magic. Tom often found and interest in Sebastian’s research, so of course he allowed Tom into his office.

Tom proceeded to ask Sebastian if he knew anything about the name Marvolo. Sebastian asks him what it’s about, thinking of his best friend’s brother, remembering all the things Ominis had told him about the man. Some what mad, having two children of his own, and gambled and whored away all the money he had gotten after their parents death.

67 year old Sebastian asks the 16 year old Tom what it is about. Tom asks Sebastian if he knows about his… home. The orphanage. And to Sebastian he sounds sad, and for a moment Sebastian’s heart breaks for the poor boy. He almost doesn’t catch the look in Tom’s eyes, when he checks for Sebastian’s reaction.

“You see, professor, I just so badly want to know about my family, and it is the only name I can go off of. No year book says anythings about Riddles”.

“I understand, Mr. Riddle, I absolutely do. But I will have to ask you again. Where did you get the name Marvolo from?”

Something flashes in Tom’s eyes. Something dark, for just a small moment. Something Sebastian has seen before. Something he saw in his own eyes as a 15 year old, trying to figure out how that relic worked… But then Tom smiles, the flash in his eyes gone, as if it was never there.

“I’m sorry, sir. I should have told you, sir. It’s my middle name. As I told you, I am researching my family, trying to find some… answers. And there’s nothing about Riddles at Hogwarts, so the only other thing I have to go off of, is Marvolo. I suspect… I suspect it’s from my mother’s side”.

“Tom”, Sebastian started, not seeing the way the boy almost flinched at his name. “I don’t have much to tell you about Marvolo. I never really spoke to him, and he finished during my second year-“.

“But his sister graduated while you were in your third year”, Tom said, almost startling his professor, an intensity in his eyes. “And his brother was in the same year as you”.

“So you have already found what you’re looking for?”

“Sorry sir, that was inappropriate of me. I didn’t mean to pry, but I’m growing desperate in my search. What do you know about the Gaunts?”

And so Sebastian told young Tom about the Gaunts. Their history, their legend and their ancestry. However he know nothing about Marvolo’s whereabouts, and decided lying about Ominis would before the best, having a feeling it would be best to leave him out of the conversation. And then, moments later when young Tom left his office, Sebastian regretted immediately, writing to Ominis at the first moment he got.

Months later, Sebastian and Ominis would find themselves in Feldcroft, when an owl came with the Daily Prophet. Muggle murder - Morfin Gaunt had killed the Riddle family.

Ominis knew straight away. It wasn’t Morfin. His nephew may have been an overly inbred idiot, but it wasn’t him. But how would Ominis know anything about his nephew? He hadn’t even spoken to Marvolo in years. It wasn’t until that day he learned that his brother in fact was dead, and has been so for several years. But Ominis just knew. Tom Riddle was danger.

Upon Sebastian’s return to Hogwarts that September, he was surprised to find that Tom still had many questions about Magical Theory. More than ever before. More… specific. More… dark… than before. Subjects that Sebastian remembered he himself had read about in the restricted section. But the day Tom took it a step too far, and asked about inferi, Sebastian cut the conversation shot, obviously uncomfortable. Especially more uncomfortable when he saw the look in Tom’s eyes, reading him like a book. After that Sebastian avoided Tom like the plague, not caring if it was ethical or not. Talented or not, Sebastian could not handle such a questioning again, especially not about… those. Sebastian did not wish to remember those…

Tom may have asked Sebastian many questions about Magical Theory, bur there had always been specific professor that Tom had taken a strong liking to - professor Slughorn - head of Slytherin house. Strange man in Sebastian’s opinion. If he and the certain person in his life had been Slughorn’s students, they wouls have found themselves collected in these then a day. And of course, Tom Riddle had been collected by Slughorn, invited to his many parties. But never had Sebastian expected the day Slughorn would come to the Faculty Tower, an expression of distress on his face, along with a flinch whenever Riddles name was mentioned. At that point Sebastian was able to put two and two together. Riddle had asked Slughorn something worse. Much worse.

That June, a Ravenclaw student was found dead in one of the girls bathrooms, and Sebastian was not the least bit surprised that Albus already had his theories about who could have done it. Sebastian had one as well, but for the moment he didn’t say a word, not even to Dumbledore. Instead he wrote to Ominis, and Ominis agreed, writing personally to Amando Dippet, calling for him to close the school. And with the rumors of the school closing, whatever had attacked the Ravenclaw girl stayed abay. But Sebastian did not expect, was for Tom to suddenly march the half giant Rubeus Hagrid in front of the staff, telling them about the giant spider the student kept hidden, or as Tom put it - the monster that killed that Ravenclaw girl.

Given wizards and witches ability to age greater than muggles, a few things could happen. Sebastian could decide to retire before the age of 70, spending the rest of his life with whatever family and friends he still had left, or he could continue teaching, doing his research on the side, just like he had always done it. Just like professor Fig had done it. Just like his parents had done it.

In 1945 at the age of 70, Sebastian would have been at the school, when Tom Riddle asked Amando Dippet for a position at Hogwarts the moment he graduated, before he even ventured a foot outside the school. He would have noted the shaken look on Slughorn when he received that Tom was looking for a position at Hogwarts. But Dippet had declined Tom's offer, believing he was too young, telling him to come back in a few years if he still wanted a position.

In 1947, Sebastian and many others would have been watching with great intent, as the Sorting Hat took it's time with Minerva McGonagall, before finally sorting her into Gryffindor.

If Sebastian still found his age to be no trouble, and his job worth the time and energy, he would have been 81 in 1956 when his colleague, and now friend, Albus Dumbledore would take over the position of headmaster at Hogwarts.

In 1961, at the age of 86, Sebastian would not have been the least bit surprised to see the red heads of Arthur Weasley and Molly Prewett getting sorted into Gryffindor.

Should age still not be of matter, Sebastian would have been 90 when a Lucius Malfoy got sorted into Slytherin, just five years before the first wizarding war would break out.

But would Sebastian still be alive when Harry's parents would start at Hogwarts? We know that in the mid 1990's, the life average expectancy of a witch or wizard was 137 years and three months, so therefore it wouldn't be strange to believe that he would live so long, even if he was from around 1875. Amando Dippet was around 200 years old, when he took up the position of headmaster, and I still wonder how old Bathilda Bagshot was when she died.

So if we continue under the presumption that Sebastian would live to at least 137 and three months, then he would have been 96 in 1971 when Lily Evans, James Potter, Severus Snape, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew sat their feet in the Great Hall for the first time.

Sebastian would have been there, as the Whomping Willow got planted, and maybe, at least once, he would have been one of the teachers escorting a young Remus Lupin to the hidden passage.

Around the year 1975, around the age of 100, Sebastian would find Mr. Potter, Mr. Lupin, Mr. Black and Mr. Pettigrew standing outside of his office, whispering among each other, figuring out who should ask him.

"Ask professor Sallow about what?"

Watching the four Gryffindor boys scrumbling among themselves, their faces draining of color. Sebastian knew that look. He had seen it on his friends, and he was sure he had been wearing it several times throughout his life. It was the look of getting caught.

"We're sorry if we disturbed you, professor Sallow, but we have some questions about... well you see...", James Potter said, desperately searching for the words, that would make their professor less suspicious of them. "Sirius here really wants to be a map maker for the ministry, but he just have no idea how to do it, and he’s a little bit embarrassed about it. You know… not being able to make a magical map…", James said, ignoring the dead pan look Sirius was giving him, Remus and Peter holding back their chuckles.

Sebastian studied the boys in front of him, knowing fully well their tendency to sneak around Hogwarts. Four troublemakers they were, and Sebastian had had them at detention in his classroom several times. But there was no denying that he had once found himself in the same position as them, running around the school at night, getting up to no good with his friends. So of course the four trouble making Gryffindors wouldn't fool Sebastian. But what was the harm in letting them know the theory behind magical maps. What could go wrong?

Then, in the year 1981, when Sebastian found himself at the age of 106, news broke of the death of the Dark Lord, after he had hunted down the Potters in their house, and killed Lily and James Potter, leaving a one year old Harry Potter as the soul surviver. Both Sebastian and Albus (I have a theory about how and why Sebastian would know about it, other than being the professor of Magical Theory) would know the truth of Harry's survival - Lily. Lily's love saved Harry and got rid of the Dark Lord.

In 1982 Bill Weasley would start at Hogwarts, and Sebastian once again found himself smiling when he saw Leander and Garreth's red gens still running strong.

In 1984, Charlie Weasley would start at Hogwarts, along side who might be Sebastian's own great grandchild (I have theories/headcannons about how the MC from Hogwarts Legacy might be connected to the MC from Hogwarts Mystery, but that is for another day).

In 1987, Percy Weasley would start at Hogwarts, followed by the twins Fred and George in 1989, making Sebastian wonder where on earth Molly and Arthur found the energy. Although, he thought that they deserved a medal for trying to repopulate the wizarding world after the first wizarding war.

Sebastian would be 116 in 1991, when Harry Potter finally came to Hogwarts, along side yet another Weasley. This would have to be the last Weasley, right?

In 1992 Sebastian would have been proven wrong when yet another Weasley came to the school. However this year, Sebastian would once again find himself writing to Ominis in horror, at the rumors of the Chamber of Secrets having been opened once again. But Ominis was at a loss for words. He had no ideas, and he was worried. Very worried. And he was just as worried when he and Sebastian learned that it was the diary of Marvolo's grandchild that had opened the chamber.

In 1993, Sebastian would finally learn of the reason James and his friends came and asked him about maps, finding his newest colleague Remus Lupin once again asking him about maps. Could these kind of maps show people who were dead? And with that confusing question, Remus would finally show Sebastian the Marauders Map. For a moment fear would rush over his face. What rooms did this map show? But to his luck, neither the Undercroft, the Room of Requirement, nor the entrance into the Map Chamber - none of it. Relief fell over Sebastian, before he answered the question Remus had been asking - no, such a map would not show dead people.

In 1995, a 119 year old Sebastian would feel the first signs of age, as he and all the others awaited the champions’ return from the maze. But to alls horror, Harry Potter would return with the body of Cedric Diggory. And when Harry cried that the Dark Lord was back, Sebastian believed him, contacting Ominis as fast as possible.

When a new school year started in 1995, 120 year old Sebastian found himself seated at the same table as a toad stuffed into a pink dress. Horrible woman, who Sebastian time and time again would find in his classroom, keeping an eye on how he taught the first years in the basics of Magical Theory, taking plenty of notes when he taught the older students who had taken the more advanced class.

In the end of June 1996, Sebastian found himself at the receiving end of strange questions from Albus. One asking about Ominis' whereabouts, and another asking if the could join him for tea. Here Albus asked Ominis for permission to destroy some family heirlooms of his. Not any that he himself had gotten, but his brother. Ominis, having an idea of what it could be about, gave Dumbledore permission. Dumbledore then turned his attention to Sebastian, asking him a question he never thought imaginable - "how does one destroy a horcrux?"

"That", Sebastian answered, pointing towards the sword of Godric Gryffindor. "It is goblin metal, is it not? Taking on the powers of what makes it stronger. Mr. Potter used it to kill the basilisk".

"Remind me to thank the boy one day", Ominis muttered.

The September, Sebastian would return to Hogwarts, finding himself surprised at the return of Slughorn as potions master. Upon asking Albus about it, however, he got told a totally different thing. Different, but probably more important.

"Do not attempt to interfere. Neither you, Ominis or the one that hold ancient power. This is not your fight, and if it is to work, you will have to stay out of it. I thank you Sebastian, for all that you have done, both as a fellow student, a teacher and a friend. But I fear that soon, Hogwarts will not be safe place much longer".

"What would you want me to do, Albus?"

"I want you all to flee the country as soon as possible. Take Ominis and your friend and hide them. If Voldemort were to ever realize that he is not the last of his Salazar Slytherin's descendants, he will try to find them. And should he learn of the power of ancient magic, he will try to use it. He will look for it. And I fear he will be more successful than Ranrok".

At the end of the school year in 1997, Sebastian still found himself at Hogwarts. Though Sebastian may be 122 at this point, he would not be any less stubborn, or convinced that he knew of what to do. But that one evening when Dumbledore was seen, falling from the Astronomy Tower, that had just been illuminated by the familiar green glow of the killing curse, Sebastian understood. As the dark mark hung above the school, Sebastian understood. Once again, those dearest to him was in danger.

And so, like so many others that year, Sebastian packed this things. This would be the last year he taught at Hogwarts. But neither he or those nearest him wished to flee. Instead he stayed at his uncle's old home in Feldcroft, listening in, during what they could in an attempt to help the order.

When Death Eaters took over Hogwarts Valley, they gave the order all the information they could.

Maybe in the year 1998, after Harry Potter had done what needed to be done, you could find an elderly Sebastian Sallow and an elderly Ominis Gaunt, together with an elderly friend of ancient magic, among the many students, teachers, aurors and those who wished for a free world, fighting against the Death Eaters. Maybe they survived it, or maybe this was the battle that killed them.

If they did survive the Battle of Hogwarts, I highly doubt that Sebastian would go back to teaching. Not because he didn't want to, but his age. With the time he and his loved ones would have left in this world, than maybe it would be nice for his to take it slow for once, knowing that he and those closest to him had done their part in history, and now it was time for a well deserved break, hopefully with some good books, a butterbeer in hand, and the smell of the ocean.

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

I might make a fan fiction out of this.

[batmansymbol]

can't remember the last time i made a blog post on this blog. i really am becoming the hermit i always aspired to be.

looking for somewhere to put this particular exhaustion though and journaling makes me feel lonely and lately all interpersonal interactions leave me with the feeling of having transgressed in many secret ways unknown to me. so vent follows. although for the record someday when i am a true hermit i will have found inner peace, and i will no longer make posts like this, and i instead will be able to identify a cypress tree on sight.

for now, i've been having this feeling of kneeling in the surf with my mouth open and the ocean trying to force itself down my throat. i'm working four jobs to make ends meet. they are meeting, barely. my 16-year-old car broke down for the last time, and this week i bought a new one from a man at a dealership who lied to me over the phone about hidden fees as though $900 meant nothing. now i have new car payments every month but i no longer hear a steady drip behind me in the car when it rains, can't decide which of the two feelings of dread is more potent. i loved that leaking car into its grave. i often wish i had a soul-crushing 9-to-5 that paid me $75,000 every year like clockwork. i am spreading myself too thin socially. i love everybody in my life. sometimes i receive profound and beautiful reactions to my writing, and also with four clicks i can see criticism of my work online that makes me feel like i should never have been born. i struggle to weight these experiences in a reasonable way in my mind. i have not read a new book since sally rooney's intermezzo. i hate everything i write but luckily the hatred comes in cycles, counterbalanced by defiant love, like my relationship with my forehead. i have to believe everything i write is the one (the one that will financially or artistically save me). i have to tell myself the one doesn't exist so as not to get my hopes up. i have to remind myself my problems are atomically small compared to nearly everything. i have to remind myself of this because sometimes it's the only thing that makes me feel human again. i have dreams about friends i had in high school and the shitty jokes i made to them, how much more sensitive i could have been. in the dreams they hate me, or forgive me, or hit me. last april at age 28 i began to have back pain every single night from a degenerated spinal disc and now at age 30 i have anti-arthritis pills in my toiletries bag. it hurts to lean back in a chair, but i have all my limbs and my mind. i wonder every day why i'm not doing something differently. my inability to do anything meaningful disgusts me. i find meaning whenever i open the blinds. i have forgotten to switch my car insurance to my new vehicle, so after i press Post Now i will go to the website that will ask me for my password and to confirm i am myself.

[goliath-de-senfina-sango]

Danny Phantom and the Riordanverse

I have some thoughts about a Shared World kind of crossover between Danny Phantom and Percy Jackson & the Olympians. I haven’t done a full rewatch of DP in ages, nor have a read outside the core 5 PJO books, the HOO books, the Kane Chronicles, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, and about 2 and a half of the Trials of Apollo books, also been a while. Apologies for any inaccuracies but hey, fanon.

A Glitch In Time canonizes that the Infinite Realms and Material World were once one and the same, but a global war - waged by people who were naturally half ghost the way Danny and Vlad are - split the world in 2. All things regarding Pariah Dark, I’d say he was one of the major powers in this war.

Realms can range from a 10x10x10 room to entire islands with their own celestial bodies like Dora’s kingdom and its sun. Technically we don’t know if the Far Frozen even has an End Point. Doors can lead to alternate timelines; Desiree, Ghost Writer and Clockwork are all able to warp reality, time included, and the Observant Council perceive time in at least 2 dimensions.

In the Riordanverse it is revealed in the few books of the Trials of Apollo that I read and remember that mortal belief from even a relatively small cult can elevate a mortal man to immortal status a la monsters and Gods. Apollo even muses about the way the Gods don’t want to acknowledge how dependent on mortals remembering them they are.

All of this considered, if you want DP to exist in the Riodanverse and even keep the lore of both, then the Realms/Planes/Worlds of the Gods - of Hellas, Kemet, the Æsir and Vanir, the Heavenly Beauracracy, etcetera - are Realms connected to the Spirit World but managed to remain intersected with the Material World through the efforts of the Gods and the memories of Mortals.

The Duat could even be a layer of the Infinite Realms, frankly.

Danny states that his accident was a month ago as of Episode 1, Mystery Meat, which is set April 3rd, 2004. Based on the few concrete date indicators we get in Danny Phantom, the series takes place over 3 years. 4 if you count Claw of the Wild, but that means the trio stays Tiny all the way into Senior Year lol.

Prisoners of Love begins on May 18th, Fright Knight is a Halloween episode, and in Lucky in Love, they’re at a waterpark, which only open in May at the earliest. The Fright Before Christmas is obviously set before and during Christmas and then Reality Trip is set at the beginning of Summer 2006.

In Urban Jungle, Tucker remarks that it’s 90 degrees outside, which means it’s either late May or early June since I do believe they Are in school at that point and iirc global warming hadn’t made it 90 in the midwest early in 2006. Claw of the Wild is an odd camping episode featuring Danny’s class, and I forget in episode details so if this was during school time it had to be during the spring since, again, they live relatively close to the Great Lakes, so it’s gotta be during a naturally warm time. A Glitch In Time, therefore, is set in late spring or early summer of 2008.

Percy Jackson is 12 at the beginning of The Lightning Thief & 13 at the end Iirc since his birthday is August 12th. Either way, this is in 2005. Sea of Monsters and Titan’s Curse are both set during 2006; Battle of the Labyrinth is in 2007, and iirc The Last Olympian is set next year during 2008 and Percy is 16.

Thereby when the Heroes of Olympus books begin in 2008-2009, Danny is 18 and either a senior or highschool graduate. This is a hilarious point in time for Percy to meet Danny, actually, or any of our protagonist crew, if you want to maintain canon for both.

I know most people don’t, in fact, care to keep up DP canon nearly this rigidly, so some other fun thoughts.

In Reality Trip, Freakshow acquires the Reality Gauntlet, and begins the summer (as this begins on a last day of school event I’d say probably even on the Solstice) of 2006 with a reality warping bang. Once he gets the gems, Freakshow transforms the whole world into his circus, until Danny tricks him and gets the glove back, fixing reality to exactly how it was before the change, wiping his identity from the memories of everyone save Tuck, Sam, & Jazz, and then destroyed the Reality Gauntlet in a single shot.

This, I imagine, would grab the attention of The Gods. That’s if the Pariah Dark situation didn’t register to them, even. Considering Percy is 13 at the time and due to deal with the Sea of Monsters situation, the Kane siblings haven’t been recruited yet (I think) and Magnus is still just a homeless kid in Boston, I dunno if anyone from New Rome would be sent but the Gods of various pantheons may investigate directly or through minor gods/spirits.

The House of Life certainly wouldn’t approve of the Ghost Portals, Vlad, or possibly even Danny. Hell, Luke might actually be sent to recruit Danny or Vlad to the Titan’s cause now that I think about it.

With the fact that Danny, Vlad, and Dan were destroying other timelines while smashing into them from sheer speed through the Spirit World during A Glitch In Time, I’d say Danny is at least a 6D being (existing in at least 4 dimensions of space and 2 of time.) If that doesn’t count him as a God, idk what would. Also during Infinite Realms, Vlad and Danny time travel to both ancient Rome during an event in the colosseum and ancient China at a monetary. If these are the same universe as Danny’s, then he and Vlad should have a myth or two regarding one another, which would also put them on the watch list for Olympus and the Bureaucracy of Heaven.

But hey, what do you think? I’m open to talk about this and wanna hear other people’s thoughts and opinions.

[afreakingdork]

You Are My Sunshine, My Only Moonshine - Chapter 9

RotTMNT x Reader

I am constantly blown away by this chapter art by @yamin-yups

Rated: Teen and Up Audiences

Relationships: Michelangelo (TMNT)/Reader, Michelangelo (TMNT)/You, Donatello (TMNT)/Reader, Donatello (TMNT)/You

Warnings: POV Second Person, Gender Neutral Reader, Anxious Reader, Introverted Reader, Stuttering, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Romance, Love, Love Confessions, Falling In Love, Unrequited Love, Rejection, Aromantic Asexual Michelangelo (TMNT), Bisexual Donatello (TMNT), Pansexual Leonardo (TMNT), Lesbian Cassandra Jones | Foot Recruit, Demisexual April O'Neil (TMNT), Implied Cassandra Jones | Foot Recruit/April O'Neil/Sunita, Endgame Donatello (TMNT)/Reader, Romantic Love, Platonic Love, Panic Attacks, Sexuality Crisis, Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, Happy Ending, Fluff

Synopsis:  You’ve lost most of your life to anxiety and fear. Now, in your late 20s, you are desperate to reclaim it and during one such outing you encounter the sun personified. With his and his similarly celestially inspired family, will you finally reach your goal or will you lose yourself along the way?

This chapter contains reference to body dysmorphia. Remember that what you feel is completely valid, but we can sometimes see ourselves differently than we really are. Please keep yourselves safe.

Also available on Ao3

First 💛 Previous

“Maybe we take a break from going out into the packed public for once?” Mikey was upside-down, but compensated by holding his phone the opposite way. 

It put him right side up in the video chat, but the view was extra blurry. “Is that… okay?”

“I’m the one suggesting it!” Mikey stuck out his tongue, but his reflection seemed to confuse him on which way the appendage should go. “It’s been awhile. I haven’t been able to see you.”

“Yeah… well…” Though for you it would have been predictable, Mikey hadn’t felt the firsthand effects of your setbacks yet. 

Panic attacks always caused you to withdraw into yourself. 

You weren’t supposed to.

There were times when it was easy to keep going.

Others, such as now, left you homebound for as long as society allowed.

The push to normalcy now included your thoughtful friend.

“Do you know after my tremors went away, I spent months avoiding art because I was afraid of how it would look?” Mikey told you casually. 

You weren’t sure what he was talking about.

You tried to recall something about tremors, but came up short.

You wanted to ask more, but there was a more startling aspect than the content itself.

You couldn’t believe there was ever a period where Mikey avoided art as he had been nothing, but a loud proponent of all its merit.

“Why?”

“Because I knew my level and then… I didn’t. I knew I’d have to get back there. It was like riding a skateboard, but needing to take that time? For a second time. Chancing the bad result? It was like my healing was one thing and then by doing that it would show me just how much further I still needed to go. Like that dude with the cat and the box. I didn’t want to open it and find out. I couldn’t do it.”

“Isn’t the saying… something… about riding a bike?”

“We were skateboard tots!” Mikey rolled over and with it so did his camera, inverting the image.

You nodded lightly.

“I switched up crafts. Started new ones that weren’t so finger focused. Pour paints and candle work!” He made grabby hands at the lens as he fixed his phone angle.

“Something low key…” You hummed where you were sitting at the foot of your bed.

“Yeah, something quiet, calm, and… oh! Oh yeah!” There was another flip, but this one was out of excitement.

“D-don’t… bust through a wall…!”

Mikey appeared within a flurry of static. “Did you just make a Kool-Aid Man joke?”

“I make jokes!”

The wattage of his smile turned up to a blinding degree. “Well then I’ve got just the wall to bust through!”

-

“No.” Donnie glowered over his shoulder.

“Please!” Mikey bounced his plea with his head straight up to the ceiling of the garage you were currently in.

An oddity in the subway, but something you imagined had to exist based on logic, your eyes were openly roving around the tidy depot.

“Absolutely not.” Lifting out from under a hood and minding his head, Donnie craned an elbow to the engine block he was working on. “You know you’ve been banned.”

“One time!” Mikey groaned.

“No!” Donnie felt the need to rip off his leather work gloves to throw an unencumbered finger in Mikey’s face. “You were banned once after crashing eleven separate times!!”

“Eleven?!” You squeaked.

Mikey flipped back and forth between the two of you, obviously caught in who to address first. “My driving is fine!” He chose you and then flipped to Donnie. “I’ve changed!”

From the duffel that was slung around your body, you had already been clinging to the strap as it gave you something comforting to hold on to. With the new knowledge that you had almost been driven somewhere rural by someone with that kind of driving record, you now scooped up the entire sack to soothe yourself. 

“Forget that.” Donnie flicked his gaze to you. “You’d need a full crash suit to survive him.” He then folded his gloves into a pair and went to check his tool box.

You wilted further.

“We’re already packed!” Mikey rounded a new argument. “This is going to be our big, no-stress, relaxing getaway and you’re making it exactly not that!” 

“That’s unfortunate. The bus station isn’t far.” Donnie knelt down to get a wrench.

“And how’s that going to work!? We get dropped at some station and walk to the cabin!? You know it’s in the middle of nowhere!” Mikey stepped up to throw menace over his brother.

Donnie smelled it a mile away and lifted his head, pouring twice the malice. “Oh, you want to play?”

Mikey gulped and nodded his head once. “Let us borrow a car, the tank, a shell cycle, whatever! You’re being unfair!”

“Your planning is poor.” Donnie was slow to get on one knee. “You’re ill equipped.” To the other, he got a foot under him. “You’ve informed no one.” Rising to his towering height above his brother, he loomed. “You walk into my garage, where I am in the midst of my own personal and much needed zen in the form of refurbishing my newest baby and expect me to drop the keys of another into your hands knowing full well that you have destroyed more vehicles on more occasions than I can count on our joined mutant fingers and toes because you just so happened to suddenly decided that you needed to take a weekend trip with your friend of which whom you have a similar slapdash scheme going on with to go to our family’s cabin up north on a whim!?!”

Having watched Donnie not take a single breath, you backed up nearly the same distance that Mikey’s head had shrunk down into his shell.

“Y-yes?” Mikey peeped.

“No.” Donnie said the word firm and quiet, but punctuated it with a tap to Mikey’s plastron which caused the stiff turtle to fall over. “Now leave me to my work.”

Only a shell laying there, you leaned forward to look over Mikey without compromising your spot.

Donnie swung his wrench and moved over to a creeper with the intention to disappear under what looked like a turtle-themed moon buggy.

“You-” Your voice echoed in the garage and you tensed up.

Mikey’s head emerged from his shell to peek at you.

Donnie halted his motion, but didn’t turn.

“You… um… could… come with us?”

You watched Donnie’s lips wobble with disdain.

“N-Not a-as a d-driver! Y-you said…”

In a loud pop, all of Mikey’s limbs emerged. “That’s a great idea!!!”

In a smooth rotation, Donnie both turned and lifted his wrench with a threat.

Mikey crab walked several paces away.

“I’m disappointed.” Donnie sent a glare in your direction. “If your thought is even-” He caught a glimpse of his wrench. “-5/16ths as moronic as his then you are banned from the garage itself. Know that, would you still like to continue speaking?”

Gaze plummeting, your heart tried to escape and you screwed the whole of you shut to keep it inside.

Your entire body shook with the force of your nerves and you had to wait until your BPMs dropped to a manageable limit before you could manage speech. “You… said… m-much needed… so maybe… the trip would… well… be calming… for you too?”

There was a clink of metal hitting the ground.

Banned.

You were banned from the garage.

That was fine.

In theory, it wasn’t.

In theory, you were mortified.

Despite your best efforts, you had never been banned from anything.

Now you were.

A glaring dark spot on your permanent record.

Was Mikey a bad influence?

“You do say driving gets your mind off things…” Mikey said with a sudden supportive starkness.

You kept your gaze firmly rooted to the floor in shame.

“Also hold up!” In a slap of feet against concrete, Mikey righted himself. “You take a few of those things back, Don! I may have pushed the idea through, but it was not poorly planned or ill equipment or whatever you said! Y/N worked crazy hard on putting together everything in the short time frame I laid out!!”

You twitched.

“There’s maps, multiple trails marked, a calculated amount of water, with extra rations, flares… Like do you think this other bag is mine? Heck no! I’m not bringing anything! Both these bags are Y/N’s! They’re both stuffed with… stuff! Like-like!” You felt Mikey come over to you. “How you contacted the ranger’s station to tell them we’d be in the area? I’ve never even thought of that! We’ve never done that have we, Dee?”

Donnie continued his bout of silence that you didn’t dare look upon.

“What else…?” Mikey slapped his forehead. “I mean, come on! I can’t even remember it all!”

“I… got that satellite phone… you were pretty excited… about it.” You mumbled to the ground.

“With the backup batteries, Donald!” Mikey hummed a self-important sound. “The backup batteries!!”

The garage made it very clear that Donnie was walking over to you.

You bounced ever so slightly to garner the courage to meet his eye.

“Who did itinerary?” Donnie asked. 

“Me.” Mikey remarked casually.

“I assume food too?” Donnie’s voice was heavy with judgment. 

“Nope.” You could see a swoop as Mikey folded smug arms.

“That’s not quite…” You cleared your throat. “Mikey… shared his… favorite dishes that you… all make…when you… go.”

Donnie dipped into your eye line and you startled.

He’d bent at his waist and come down at a perfect angle.

You stared with warped lips.

“How long?” He narrowed his gaze.

“T-the trip?” Your gaze wobbled.

Mikey opened his mouth and Donnie threw out an arm that, by the sound, must have slapped the younger in the face.

“Yes.” Donnie kept his hand in place.

“Tonight… tomorrow… back Sunday?”

“Is that a question?” Donnie’s head tilted.

Mikey grunted, annoyed.

“No…” You got out, quiet.

“You agreed knowing full well you’d be alone with him?”

Slapped with a similar heat from the first time you’d realized that fact, you gave a tight nod.

‘We have separate rooms!’ Mikey mumbled through closed lips with surprising clarity.

“And that’s okay?” Donnie disappeared.

You chased him up to find he’d released Mikey and was waiting on him for an answer.

“It’s a no brainer.” Mikey nearly rolled his eyes. 

Donnie’s brow lowered, unsatisfied.

“Yes, it’s okay because it isn’t a thing.” Mikey huffed around his clarification.

“I suppose… I’ve been persuaded.” Donnie looked down thoughtfully and you watched him trace back to where he’d dropped his wrench.

Mikey jumped into the air with a sudden bout of energy and caught your hands to spin you.

“Y-y-yay!” You stutter, stalling on the rotation.

“Cabin, here we come, baby!” Mikey cheered. 

“I need my things!” Donnie barked. “And you.”

You jolted. “Y-yes?”

“You will send me triplicate copies of your plans.”

“S-sure…” You spastically patted yourself down for your phone.

“I refuse to engage with either of your antics.” Donnie’s own appeared in his hand. “I am no third wheel. I am coming because I will apparently have to deal with your whining otherwise and because I am not in the mood for the lecture from Nardo and Raphael when they return.”

“Have they texted yet?” Mikey peered over Donnie’s shoulder.

“No. Security detail means one must pay-” Donnie suddenly dropped and ducked through Mikey’s legs in one fluid movement. “-attention. This is why you weren’t requested.”

“And why didn’t they request you, hm?” Mikey pushed his lips into one corner of his mouth.

“Because…!” Donnie trailed off with widened eyes. “My talents lie elsewhere! Enough interruptions. I will drive and then you will leave me be! I am to have my zen! Is that understood?”

“Yeah, yeah, crystal.” Mikey finally did roll his eyes.

Donnie took a few steps away as you found your phone and held it unsure of how to send him the details.

“He’s totally going because he heard ‘yakiniku’ when you mentioned we were making my favorite foods.” Mikey walked over to you with a smirk.

You watched Donnie take an irritated pause before continuing on to get his things.  

-

The ride in the tank had passed with booming music and a tour from Mikey that you only visually participated in because you were terrified to move about the cabin. The younger seemed not to notice as he explained parts with stories more than function. Donnie alternatively, had shades on that further marred his calculated expression and he said nothing as the studious driver.

Leaving the city and entering scenic woodlands, you were soon left to admire the views until you eventually deviated off the road toward the cabin. Tracking it with the little local map you had found, you busied yourself in the comfortable way that most people disliked on road trips: silence in a cozy bubble all your making.

There didn’t have to be talk, that’s what road trip mixes were for.

You only made exceptions for car games. 

You liked that they had simple rules and there were little stakes to be had. 

You only wished cars were safer modes of transport.

There was also something to be said about environmental impact and the culture of automobiles in America, but other than that, you found them nice.

Pulling up to what you imagined was a quiescent place, Mikey could not be restrained a second longer.

Out of the tank in a flurry, you watched through the windshield as his form screamed straight up the cabin’s steps. “He doesn’t do great on car rides, huh?”

“Sitting still for too long? Michael?” Donnie rose from the captain’s chair.

You gave a small smile and gathered up the few things you’d taken inside with you. Your actual bags were stored in an outer compartment and Donnie waited for you as a safety net as you made the harrowing steps down the tank ladder and to the ground. Landing with little fault, you joined him in getting the luggage until Mikey tore back over to grab some of the load. He talked loudly of dust that had accumulated and Donnie griped at him that it was obvious they’d need to clean.

You fondly watched the two bicker and set-up became the next directive. Throwing back plastic sheets that coated furniture, Donnie had a multitude of inventions to clear the space quickly. You had to run to the windows to release the dust tornadoes formed. Making it out mostly unscathed, you then helped Mikey hang bug nets. With the late Spring weather warming the air, soon everything was prepped and Mikey did a little closing dance number, capping off the preparatory part of the trip.

“Swimming hole time!” Mikey cheered and then turned knowingly on Donnie. “Then BBQ and prompt lights out so I can make a lumberjack breakfast first thing!”

“We’re grinding beans… we roasted…” You offered softly. “Uh… Coffee… beans… that is…”

“Oh yeah, I forgot we took that class.” Mikey chuckled. “You almost fell into that sack!”

You squashed a noise of distress at the memory.

Understanding the schedule, Donnie dismissed himself with a turned foot and headed to one of the cabin’s many rooms. You were left to look about the quintessential log cabin where the huge living space and connected kitchen then butted up against a row of doors. They spoke of many rooms that traced the back of the cabin and then up a staircase to a second floor. From what you could see, there were about eight rooms in all. The entire cabin then had a wraparound porch that extended into the wilderness. It was land that both belonged to nature and not, but Mikey had been cagey about revealing property lines. 

“Welp!” Mikey folded his hands on his hips. “Your boy needs to get wet before he explodes.”

You gawked at him.

“Seriously!” He was looking out over the cabin with a vacant stare that held a sort of unhinged quality. “First the car, then stuck inside? This is not an inside trip. if I am not unleashed in the next, oh I don’t know… 2 minutes, I’m going to lose it!”

“Uh…!”

“You got those trail maps?” He turned, both looking through you and not at.

“Y-yes!”

“I color coded the one to the watering hole. Orange, obviously.” Mikey approached with a waggling brow ridge. “I saw you in the car, keeping perfect pace. It was awesome.”

“Just to s-stay b-busy!”

“Uh huh! Your smile said otherwise! You’ll meet me there then! Same way!” He patted your shoulder once with a whack before bolting out the door.

You stared after him now knowing why he’d chosen to travel in his swimsuit.

Looking down at your road trip ensemble, you still felt sure of your decision to take the few hour drive comfortably.

There was a noise of a door opening and Donatello emerged, changed into a casual outfit punctuated by purple swim trunks.

You stared at him and felt a little like a caught fawn.

Donnie took you in before his gaze dulled with understanding. “He ditched you.”

“I’m… going to meet him.”

“He always does this.” Donnie responded dismissively. “You should have seen him in time out as a tot.”

“Oh?”

“One minute in time out for him was comparative to thirty for the rest of us.” Walking around a large kitchen bar, Donnie studied the rations.

You took a few steps toward him for the sake of it.

“He’s so impatient.” Donnie murmured, poking several waters aside to find a carton of juice boxes that Mikey had insisted on. He quickly tossed the set into the fridge. “He’s not even an aquatic turtle.”

You sort of wished you had done more research past looking up pictures of their species.

“You’re losing daylight.” He emerged from the fridge. “Or are you not swimming?”

“I-I am…!” You squeezed a fist to your chest. “Are… you coming too?”

Donnie blinked slowly at you. “No, why?”

“Oh…” You shouldn’t have assumed. He’d already told you otherwise. “Sorry… your bottoms… I thought…”

“Board shorts.” He punctuated the words with an odd accent.

You gave an unsure nod.

“I’m glad their sign was translated.” He glanced down at himself.

“Sorry…” You murmured when he made no further movement and quickly left to avoid any awkwardness.

You weren’t sure what you expected.

It’s not like you wanted to exclude Donnie.

You knew that pain too well.

You also didn’t want to make him feel unwelcomed.

You were painfully aware of that too.

He hadn’t wanted to be a third wheel and you had made it a silent mission to keep that from happening.

Something else you’d experienced in the past, you’d been the unwilling chaperone on more than one occasion just to satisfy parent’s minds. The good one, in their minds, you had always been ditched and the feeling wasn’t one you cared for. Shoving past the bygone era, you were seen now and you tried to relish that.

The sun’s attention was a fickle thing, but you were getting more use to losing Mikey’s. Something you thought should scare you, instead you felt your friendship with Mikey was stronger than ever. You no longer feared losing him in the same intangible way and you weren’t sure if you should crop that up to Mikey’s feelings about you. Instead it felt as though you’d reached a better status quo where Mikey’s running off felt more like the sun moving on its predetermined rotation. It would eventually round back to you and in that way you expected Mikey’s claustrophobia even if you hadn’t known about it.

You picked a room at random and rummaged through the duffel that you placed on your bed. There was a woodsy smell that teetered on musty in a way that spoke of it being well lived in even if its occupants only came every so often. You had your own little stand up mirror, nightstand, dresser, and a closet though you doubted you’d use anything past the first. Pulling out a single slick piece of black fabric, you double checked the door was closed before changing.

The perfect swimsuit was one you hadn’t imagined you’d find. Not one for flashy things, you only wanted a muted cover that also happened to cover you. Water did unimaginable things to fabrics and you hated the way it clinged. You wanted something you could disappear in, that brought no unnecessary attention, and could be forgotten on your end. Finding it in a matter of minutes into shopping as opposed to the years it took when you were younger, the item had even been on sale.

Stepping into it and pulling it up, you shimmied into the fabric and turned for that same show stopping image you’d seen in the changing room.

What stared back was an image of allure.

No.

That was wrong.

That’s not what it had looked like.

It had covered you.

It hadn’t accentuated anything.

It was simple.

You squirmed, changing angles in hopes that it would get better, but each only revealed more.

What had changed?

You’d purchased it this week.

Were you hallucinating?

Was there something in the wooden walls?

Had the tank crashed and this was you playing out some morbid purgatory?

You pinched yourself.

A sting bit your forearm and you threw your gaze back at the mirror for the unwilling shapes it concocted.

This wasn’t right.

You wanted to swim.

There was no way you could.

Miserably turning away from your image, you rooted through your bag for a cover up. Finding one in some oversized t-shirt you’d brought for comfort, you held it and hated that this wasn’t the way you imagined it would be employed. You figured it’d be a back-up pajama top and not something to hide your shame away in. Clinging to the fabric, you hastily pulled it over your head with an imaginary clock ticking away because Mikey was waiting.

You were ruining everything.

Stumbling out into the living room, you found yourself alone.

Momentarily thrown, but shaking off how Donnie wasn’t a priority right now and the guilt that came with that, you went for your pile of maps. Finding the trail one with the orange lines, you gathered some shoes and careened down the porch.

Buzzing insects mocked your sloppy descent as you rotated the map to be on your course. Following it more than your way, you took the necessary inlet and folded its winds to a drawn T. Bushes and trees concealed you, but the splashing of what was beyond reached your ears faster than you’d hoped. A journey not long to its destination, you slowed as you came to the final bend. You could hear Mikey blabbing presumably to himself as he hooted before resounding sloushes followed. In your mind he jumped off some kind of ledge, you took a deep breath before making the final steps leading to the watering hole.

Somewhere quaint if you had the perspective for such a thing, a tree towered comfortably overtop a sizable pool. One mucked up from algae as the little stream feeding into it didn’t stir the water near enough, you watched roiling green as Mikey emerged with a flip of his wet hair.

“Y/N!” Mikey shouted happiness. “You made it! Come on in! The water’s fine!!” He swam backwards as if giving you room.

The guilt was staggering.

No, Mikey.

I won’t be swimming today.

My body looks like shit and I can’t stand it.

I’ll watch you though.

Have all the fun.

You deserve it.

Signing off your name, you slunk forward only to clip a sight of mixed purples.

Donnie craned his neck back to view you from beneath a large sun hat he’d put on. Sitting on a few rocks that made up the closest edge to you, his lids lowered in a way that said he was reading you like a book.

Hating how he did that, you squeezed the bulky hem of your shirt and walked up. “Uh… M-Mikey…?”

“A-yup!” He stopped splashing to hear you better.

“The… um… car ride… sort of took… more out of me than… I thought? Would it be alright if-!”

“You don’t have to swim.”

You blinked wide and over to him.

“If you don’t want to, don’t!” Mikey continued on. “Let’s compare: are you upset I’m swimming when you don’t want to?”

“O-of c-course not!”

“Then why should I care in the reverse?” He fell back and floated, eyes closed, on his shell.

That was right in a way.

Sweet in another.

You wished you’d put together the same reaction.

Inching closer, it felt like pouring water into an overtaxed bucket.

Another guilty drop in your damnation.

You’d seen your friend in a bad light.

Shirking all the more, you toed off your shoes and let your feet lay flat on one of the worn rocks. It put you near Donnie who’d become the moon on a sunny day’s backdrop. He shined upon the same stone and illuminated its age. The rocks were older and wiser than you’d ever be. They never worried about getting wet. They only knew how to exist, something you wished came as easily to you. Sitting down because you needed more of you to drink from the stone’s wisdom, you kept a lowered head to the water’s edge. It sloshed in a beckoning way and you imagined it too would feel good in a different way. 

You really had wanted to swim.

Imaging your tears would do little to fill up the pool while also overflowing it, you heard a tepid sigh beside you.

Eyes wide and shooting up across the pond, you then turned to where you’d sat down next to Donnie.

Someone who you mistakenly forgot about during your pity party.

How was that for a third wheel?

“It’s always something with you.” He spoke softly.

“Sure is.” You gave an awkward laugh.

“That’s…” He made a little concerned noise. “… I didn’t mean it in a cruel way.”

“You didn’t have to. It is.” You threw your legs off the rock and threatened to drown your toes in the water. “It’s a cruel fate. I’m…” You remembered yourself. “Sorry. Nothing. What are you doing here?”

“My species is aquatic.”

You snuck a glance. “You’re pretty dry then.”

“You are too.”

You frowned deeply and watched Mikey pick up a sun drunk grin as he spread his limbs out to float on. “I don’t know why I feel like this. Everything was fine before…”

“With what?”

“This…” You threw a hand over yourself. “Stupid ugly swimsuit.”

You could feel Donnie’s gaze linger.

“Just trust me.” You folded your legs against yourself.

 “I’m not sure I do.”

You squinted at the glistening water before looking at him.

“I barely know you.” He responded simply, waiting there.

“Oh.”

“Disappointed?”

“In what?” Your ugly side was leaking far beyond the reach of what your shirt could cover. “I didn’t think you trusted me. You may have been wrong about me being bad, but that wouldn’t make you less suspicious. So it’s not that. What’s left? The swimsuit sucks. It’s not like you wanna drool over it. I don’t want anyone too. I wanted to swim.”

Hearing your wish aloud, you pressed hard on your chest with your legs.

You could flatten out your entire form if only you were malleable.

“The water is opaque. I can alert Mikey and we’ll turn away so you can get in.”

You felt too far gone for solutions.

You weren’t worth the trouble.

Burying your chin into your knees, you stewed.

“You know how many times the others have made fun of my board shorts?”

You told yourself you didn’t care.

If that was the case then Donnie didn’t either. “Hundreds, though it might be my attitude when wearing them. I like the excuse. To have my day off and not worry about pleasantries. To not have to tailor myself to others. I can tell them to shove it. It’s my day off and how I look isn’t anyone’s damn business.”

Sounded like an odd hill to die on.

“Everyone should have those days.” Donnie craned his arms behind him and leaned back to soak up the rays he was in.

The tree overhead was clipping your light.

Donnie was free. 

Mikey was free. 

Head lifting a little, you pondered your friend.

He’d needed to get out and he did.

Now he was a vision, glowing amongst the pool.

In contrast there was you, wadded up and tossed away without even giving yourself the chance.

Another terrible reminder that this was the point.

This was what you were trying to avoid.

This was what you were trying to learn from.

Mikey didn’t even have to do anything to be himself.

He just was.

Instead of his usual bustle of light, he shined by matter of existence.

That was why you chased him. 

You wanted that. 

Staring at him until sun spots mucked up your vision, you turned the mass to Donnie.

Beside you in the same pose, he was more calculated.

He had to put on his wares.

His was an unseen struggle you hadn’t considered.

No one gleamed quite like Mikey.

That didn’t mean they didn’t shine in their own right.

Donnie’s darkened scales only threw prisms in a different way.

The cool moon’s glow.

Letting your legs fall, this time your feet drew to the allure of the water.

Just out of reach, you stared hard, making sure the pair would keep their eyes closed.

The both of them were still as if asleep, but you waited past whatever insect was chirping before you slowly tugged your hem out from under you. Emerging without more than the sound of rustling fabric, you rolled your shirt up around your waist. The next move was one harder to conceal, you threw a desperate glance at your friend.

Water rocked the resting Mikey like a babe and you wanted to feel that too.

You wanted to be nestled by the sun’s glow.

You wanted to feel weightless and have those burdens removed.

You yanked the shirt over your head and dropped it to your side.

Donnie stirred at the sound, but didn’t open his eyes.

“It’s… It’s okay… I’m not… okay… but I think I… I don’t want to care…”

He cracked a lid and stared skyward.

“It looked so different in the store.”

“How so?” He asked a whispy cloud.

“It looked… I don’t know… covering? Like it didn’t… show any bits. Like it… hid them away.”

He blinked slow and comfortable. “I’m a designer, you know.”

“What?”

“Genius Built Apparel. Where fashion meets function.”

You stared on.

Of course he was. 

He also built a tank and a legion of dusting robots. 

If this were any other family you’d think he was pulling your leg. 

You’d seen more than enough to believe. 

Most of your stare came from the cocky name. 

Though even that made sense. 

Donnie was a carefully constructed sphere. 

Who were you to take away his gloating? 

He tilted his head just enough to glimpse your face. “I’m serious. I’ve dissuaded Mikey from many a faux pas.”

You shook your head.

“May I?”

“What?” You switched to eyeing him.

“I can take a clinical eye. Examine stitching. Find your err.”

You bounced one of your legs.

You did want to know where it had all gone wrong.

You could theoretically fix it then.

Wash this all away in the water you so desperately wanted to get in.

“You won’t make it weird?”

“I don’t drool on the metaphorical clock; you were right about that, but I understand your concern. I have accosted you before.”

“Different kind of weird. That was mean weird. You were a jerk weird.”

Donnie chuffed and it rolled down his plastron.

You watched it fall into his lap before forcing your gaze back to his face in a rush. “Promise… Promise I can pull your hat down if you… do anything.”

“I won’t so a simple enough agreement. Sure.”

“Go… ahead…” You folded your arms to your sides, obviously nervous as you listened to his clothes move.

In a twist, he was examining you and he gave a faint hum.

Not wanting to see exactly how he saw you and growing miserable, you stared into the water.

You could throw yourself in and be done with it.

“Here.” He spoke.

You moved to the sound on instinct and found him pointing to your hip.

His eye was indeed one you imagined a tired scientist gave the samples he was cursed to study.

You immediately relaxed. “What?”

“This ruching here is meant to cover cellulite when the fabric gets wet. When dry it acts a similar concealment, but the way the strips are sewn are for the first purpose.”

“Oh…” You tilted your head to look.

“Thing is, it’s also leading lines.” He didn’t get any closer, but he mimed tracing the seams of the fabric that curled around your hip and beneath where you were sitting. “It’s meant to direct the gaze to certain assets.”

 You blew out an annoyed breath.

“Dressing room mirrors, where I imagine you first saw this, aren’t slapped on walls without thought. They're engineered with angles and lightning to make clothes look as flattering as possible.” He brought his eye to yours. “Where did you see yourself today?”

“There’s a… mirror in my room.”

Donnie’s lip twitched with distaste. “That floor length one?”

You nodded.

“Dad uses that one to feel tall.” He sneered openly. “It tilts up from below, the worst possible perspective.”

You blinked a few rapid times.

“It took the ruching and blew it up.”

“So it’s not… that bad?”

“It’s anything, it's tasteful!” He spoke with an irritation that said that should have been obvious. “It fits your body well. Does it have a certain allure? Yes, I’ve already spoken of assets, but it is not a piece that invites unnecessary solicitation.” 

“Assets, assets. What are you, an ass man?” You retorted automatically. 

“There is nothing quite like sinking your teeth into that soft, inviting flesh.” He took your response and held it between his teeth.

In a blink, you saw an imaginary Donatello around your hips pointing to the fabric and on contact with the thought your face exploded.

“I say generally speaking, of course.” He clicked his tongue as if scolding you and turned away toward the water.

Hot.

You were too hot.

Run.

Throwing yourself forward, you submerged as indelicately as possible into the water.

Sinking like a stone into the silence, your burning flesh was quickly soothed by a cold lap.

A sweet embrace, you kicked to the surface and emerged with a pathetic gasp.

Never graceful, you shook yourself free of clingy drops and spun back around to view the rocks.

Donnie was staring up at the sky again and you sort of hated him for it.

Swim.

You’d swim with Mikey.

Spinning around, the other turtle was not only longer floating, but you couldn’t locate him at all. Quickly worrying that you had toppled him in your dive, you swam forward. “Mikey?”

Quieting to listen, you didn’t hear anything past the faint roiling of the water against its container.

Thinking he must have dove, you looked down to find Donnie’s earlier comment to be a correct one. With the water murky to a fault and a new fear cropped up. You had no idea what was in the water and you immediately darted for the closest shore. Something several long feet from Donnie, it was a sort of marshy landing that rocks from below steeping up to meet. They were covered in a slime that clung to your feet and had you pausing until you heard an off-toned lap behind you.

You whirled around with wide eyes and found a sea monster waiting for you.

Something matted with algae, it groaned pathetically and you sucked in enough air until the balloon was full enough to scream.

“What!? Who?! Where?!” The creature splashed with Mikey’s voice.

He’d been captured by another mutant.

You turned to get out of the water with some intention of getting to the tank.

It had to have missiles or something.

Anything to help.

You’d take a bowling ball launcher at this point.

Catching grip with one foot, you hoisted up the other. The many rocks acted like a disjointed ladder and your entire torso emerged from the water before one of your feet slid. The moment it happened felt like you were falling out of time. In slow motion, you knew your face was one of surprise. You painted an open expression where the imminent terror that you were falling couldn’t catch up as neurons to save yourself from the action. 

Your mind knew, but your face didn’t know that you were going to crack your head open on the rocks you just slipped on.

“Y/N!”

“Y/N!”

Two voices.

Too far.

Something skewered your side as the first injury of many.

Hoping only to black out on that first step, you willed your possessions to your friends.

You didn’t bother hoping they would remember you. 

You only hoped that they could make some use out of your worldly imprint.

No matter how small it was. 

Water rushed to greet you and shoved you away. 

That wasn’t right. 

That was the wrong direction.

Water swayed like waves. 

The equal and opposite reaction wouldn’t come until you fell in. 

Why had it preemptively come for you?

Your arms dangled heavily from gravity and you forced your eyes from wherever they had gone.

The monster was right in front of you. 

Its face was one of Michelangelo.

Green sludge caught in his blackened locks and his worried expression peered out from between a small part. 

He had you by the waist and was holding you up in the air. “Are you okay!?”

You were a loose toy strung up.

Flopping down, lifeless, you were a doll that couldn’t close its eyes until it was laid down.

A second deafening splash came as you hung there.

Mikey’s lips were moving awfully fast.

“Did they hit their head?!” Donnie’s voice broke through.

“No! Above water the whole time! Donnie! They aren’t saying anything, I don’t-”

“Shock?” Donnie wondered, but he never came into frame.

Where was he?

Mikey jostled you as one might bounce a colicky baby.

It was pulling a string on your back and you hacked on contact. 

You wheezed, forcing air in where terror had torn it from you. 

You fought. 

Not Mikey exactly, but the situation. 

It strung your arms back. 

It shoved your torso forward. 

It threw your head skyward. 

You gasped, alive. 

You saw blue.

It was the sky.

You hadn’t died.

Mikey had saved you.

Finally.

You came down from your arching to translate your joy. 

Mikey’s face slid into your vision and he was the picture of a boiled red tomato dotted with summertime spots.

He was looking at you. 

He had ogled you. 

He was embarrassed. 

Your blood pressure plummeted twice as fast as it had when you thought you were about to die.

This was worse.

This time you heard yourself scream as you lashed out.

Water flew up as if to welcome you, to bring you where you were meant to be. 

Drowned. 

Returned you to that place where you weren’t an object to be viewed.

You were a person floating free.

Liquid carried life.

It supported it.

It didn’t have it.

Vertigo struck you as you moved within a blink. 

In a disorientated spiral, your lids fell heavy as your inner ear tried to correct the imbalance. 

There were no longer hands around your waist. 

Something clicked like an engine uselessly turning over. 

Weary, you realized you were standing in a safe spot in the water. 

You drew up the dreary blinds of your curtain and found a muscled arm thrown out protectively in front of you. 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!!!” Mikey cried, loud and desperate.

“What the hell was that then!?” Donnie’s voice rang close.

That firm limb tucked you further behind someone. 

You were being shielded.

A squabble happened in front of you, but you only looked down at the jade appendage acting as your guard rail.

You touched the arm and it felt familiar.

“Don-nie?” Your voice came out synthetic.

His was the body you were behind and his face appeared in a whip of his head. “Are you alright? Can you swim? I’ll move.”

“I’m not…?” You weren’t swimming.

You weren’t doing anything.

You were standing in the water. 

“What…?”

You looked past Donnie and glimpsed Mikey with a faint blush still stuck to his cheeks.

“Y-you…!” It felt accusatory on your lips.

“I’m sorry!!!” Mikey screeched.

“Turn around, dummy!” Donnie growled hot and was in motion.

You were soon ushered into a spin with an indelicate hand to your back and all but rushed over to the rock you had jumped off of.

You heard a splash of what you assumed was Mikey growing distant behind you. 

You hoped that would cool him off. 

“You ready?” Donnie’s voice appeared like it was newly there. 

“For what?” You were already used.

What was left?

Was it time to take out the recycling?

“I’m going to lift you up. Your shirt is right there.” Donnie instructed. 

“My shirt…” You were forlorn.

It was your back-up comfort item.

“Ready?” Donnie asked again.

The water rocked you and you barely bumped his firm plastron. 

You nodded dumbly.

Your hips were taken in what you read as a clinical way. 

You were barely bounced once, then twice, in a way that ballet dancers got momentum to lift their partners. 

Sure enough, you were lifted cleanly out of the water.

Only this time you felt well handled.

You weren’t swung around like a toddler holding up their favorite doll.

A child who cared for his toys put you on a shelf.

When your knees touched down, you drank in the life of the rock and scrambled for your shirt.

All the things that had just occurred crashed into you.

Shoving your head through the hole, you yanked the shirt down your body as you were already in motion. Forest floor digging into your bare feet, you didn’t need the map to retrace your steps. You followed the single, winding, prickly path and emerged out by the cabin only to fly inside it. A sanctuary amongst the unrelenting woods, you left a rotting drip trail as you entered your room. Your door clattered from where you had thrown it open and you ripped your duffel bag to shreds to get to its confines.

Pulling on layer after layer, you could see Mikey’s blush with each piece of clothing.

He’d looked at you.

You shoved your feet into a third pair of socks.

His gaze was amorous.

Into a thermal that was very much against the season, you ran out of clothes and stormed the dresser.

Sexual.

There were oversized men’s clothes that struck you as maybe being Raph’s and you thanked their huge size.

You put shirt after shirt on.

Mikey had said, point blank, that he wanted to see how far his feelings went.

Why were you so stupid?

You screamed.

Raw and uncut.

Tearing at your larynx, you ripped a few too many layers off as they impeded your melt down.

You needed space to breathe.

You needed to be swallowed whole.

Stumbling out to that accursed mirror, the shape you found there was a frumpy one.

Smiling a teary look at it, you watched it warp your face into one of dismay and you cried.

Where had you last felt okay?

It wasn’t here.

Moving around the room you searched for it.

That intangible something that would help.

Knocking everything over, you finally got a hold of a much too large pillow and hugged it to your body.

It was large and not at all as firm as you wanted.

You needed a hard wall.

You needed that unrelenting nature.

You weren’t something to be judged with heat.

You needed a cold light the sun couldn’t supply.

The wall knocked.

You spun around with your pillow defense to find the back of a head waiting there.

“I come as an emissary.” Donnie spoke slow and methodical.

“You can-!” It wasn’t Mikey.

Your pillow fell slack into one hand.

It wasn’t Mikey.

You let it drop with a thump to the floor.

It wasn’t Mikey.

“…come in.”

You took a wobbly step to spread out your clothed legs in hopes of keeping yourself upright.

Donnie didn’t move.

“You can… come in…” You repeated, not sure if you had gotten the first phrase out.

“No.”

“No…?” You took another step and saw how Donnie was clearly beyond the boundary of your open door.

With his back to you. 

Not impeding on you in any way. 

“This is your space.” He spoke it like a finality. 

You stared at the knot of his mask tails and tried to place what you felt.

“Being out here with us…” Donnie let the sentence hang before he lowered his gaze to the floor. “I want to… respect that much.”

“Why’d you say it like that?”

“I prefer the term ‘sanctum,’ but I couldn’t fit it in.”

“A sacred place…?”

The back of his head nodded. “My lab is supposed to be one.”

Sanctums weren’t places to be invaded.

If they were then they were violated.  

He understood.

Is that what you felt?

Camaraderie?

Even his mania in the beginning had been one you made sense of.

Was that why you hadn’t complained?

No, you were rewriting history from your current perspective.

It was also the only one you knew.

It was one where you envied one man. 

It was where you once feared another. 

Now their roles were reversed. 

You never had to explain your misery to Donnie.

You didn’t have to make him understand.

He was the moon.

You rushed towards him.

Donnie heard the footsteps and made it about half a turn before you reached him. “As… I was saying, I talked to Michael and come in his stead to-”

You collided with that unrelenting wall of plastron. Finding an odd hinge between the front of his shell and the back, you did your best to tuck into that space and weaseled under his arm. You felt it rise above you, out of your way and a rotation brought you more towards his front. There you felt him stop to take your over-clothed form in.

“I’m sorry!” You choked on tears, rooting the sound as deep against Donnie’s wet clothes as possible.

He let your misery hang for exactly one second. 

Then he surrounded you in a soft moon glow.

He pulled you toward his chest and you burrowed closer to him.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I completely overreacted. It was just too much… Too much attention… the way he looked. He said… I thought he wouldn’t… I didn’t want…!”

A hand pet through the layers of your back.

Even and careful.

No further connotation other than to soothe.

Squirming to get your arms out from where you were crushing them, you wiggled them free to embrace him.

You squeezed a sigh right out of him.

“I know.” He spoke into your damp head. “I know…”

You nodded and basked in the tide. Pulled by the moon’s orbit, the waves rolled in and out with a sway. A gentle rocking, you were cast a comfortable drift by it. This was the one you had longed for from the swimming hole. Here, you floated amongst sturdy shores. Held safe, the guiding white light poured around you. One that pushed back against the darkness, it shone on you. Lucky to be in its reach, it wasn’t the type you soaked up. It instead washed over you in a cleanse. Feeling lighter and a little stifled, you extracted yourself from moisture to moisture.

Everything around you from your leaking face to the clingy pond water was soaked and you frowned down Donnie’s body. Standing in a little pool mostly created by him, you wanted to stick your tongue out at it, but you feared the bacteria clearly clinging to your skin.

“The cabin is yours tonight.”

Before you could register the words, you felt him strengthen his resolve with a puff of his chest.

“I don’t want to hear complaints otherwise.”

You wanted to pout.

“I checked the systems when we were doing our preliminary cleaning. The water will be hot. Shower, bathe, do whatever you’d like. We’ll be staying outside.”

You gave a faint nod to the wet floor.

“We’ll grill and I’ll make you a plate. Preference?”

You shook your head. “I don’t… feel like eating…”

“Bland it is.”

Now you were pouting.

“Y/N.”

“Yeah?” Your head felt heavy.

“I still have a message from Mikey to deliver.”

“I really don’t want to hear it.” Irritation brought you to look at him.

Donnie took you in with a sort of smile. “You’ll want to.”

You dropped your features in a way that said you didn’t believe him.

“He said he’s not ready to talk as he’s having his own crisis, but he’ll let you know when he’s ready to apologize.” Donnie tilted his head, almost amused.

You blinked straight out of your bitterness to stare openly.

Donnie gave a single knowing nod.

“Enjoy your shower.” With one last sweep over you as if to check you were all still there, Donnie turned and headed for the door.

Watching him go, you saw the faint amber hue of sunset.

“It’ll all work out.” Donnie tossed just as he grabbed the knob to exit.

You turned and stormed straight to the bathroom. Drowning in clothes and scum, you locked the door tight and turned the shower knobs to their highest setting. Leaving the water to warm, you started removing your outermost shirt. As soon as it hit the ground you felt possessed. You tore off your clothes with each subsequent layer removed at a faster and faster pace. You needed to be freed. You needed that ridiculous protection off of you as soon as possible. All of it soiled, you stripped down bare and left your feet for last.

The moment they were naked and pressed to tile, you leapt into the old style tub. Instantly boiled by the too hot water, you let it scorch you with clenched teeth at first until the burn seared and you adjusted the dial for something reasonable. Still a lobster in a pot, you scrubbed your skin until you thought it might flake and then doused it in suds until you couldn’t see its color. A sea of white foam, the second scrounge came through, washing the detritus away.

Pickled in the process, you emerged and greedily took up every towel in the room. It meant toeing around the disgusting mound of clothes you’d left, but Donnie had said the cabin was yours. Until tomorrow when you’d clean the place up, you instead mourned how you hadn’t even brought your toothbrush in with you. Scowling at a fog coated mirror, you cracked the door and watched the steam leak out.

Chasing it with your ear, you didn’t hear anything, but there was a distinct lemon scent.

You followed the smell into the hall where you quickly placed it was cleaner. The floor had a sheen to it that spoke of a recent mopping. The clean line ending abruptly at your door said exactly who the culprit was. Donatello had snuck back in to clean and you were thankful for it. He’d left your sanctuary untouched and instead set a stool just outside the door. 

On it was a stack of comfortable looking clothes and a note.

‘Keep your room or upgrade. I recommend the one upstairs, second bedroom on the right.’

You folded the note along its lines and placed it back on the offered clothes. You then gathered the lot and took it with you along with a brave face as you entered your room. You barely looked up as you salvaged what you could from your duffel. Carrying the mostly limp sack, you then moved to follow your recommendation. It led you through the darkened cabin and up the winding wooden stairs where the door in question was closed. Knocking on it out of politeness, you found it empty and slipped inside. It was decorated similarly, but clearly different. Comfortable in its own sense, you went about your nightly routine as best you could and thanked the space for not having a mirror. Growing more weary by the second, you thought vaguely of meat as you instead pulled back the covers.

Sinking in and imagining charcoal lighting the men’s faces, you settled down into the welcoming embrace of bed.

You eventually got up and padded across a tiled floor.

Pulling out a single slick piece of black fabric, you double checked the door was closed before changing.

The perfect swimsuit was one you hadn’t imagined you’d find.

What luck, you thought, as you slipped it on.

Stepping into it, you shimmied into the fabric and turned for that show stopping image in the changing room.

It was perfect.

It covered you in all the right ways.

Finally, the piece you’d been looking for.

Smiling and striking pose after pose, you saw a hand wave above the curtain.

“Come in!” You called to it. 

Sanctum’s were only to be entered with permission. 

“Silly.” You looked over your pleasing image once more. “Is it still a violation if I request it?”

“I guess not.” Instead of drawing the curtain back, Donnie slipped through it.

Tucking himself a strong wall behind you, he looked into the mirror at you.

What looked back held no heat, only appreciation.

“Do you like it?” He checked with you without passing judgment himself.

“I do…” You smiled.

He gave one of his own, though subdued, and flicked his gaze down. “Look here.”

You lowered your gaze to find him kneeling behind you. With his head popped out around your hips, he was looking up at you in a way you liked quite a bit.

You felt powerful.

You were a light bright enough for him to want to project.

“This ruching here has leading lines.” He didn’t touch you, but his hands ghosted over you along the fabric’s pattern.

Your lips parted and your chest filled with heat.

A celestial body was meant to look on.

You were safe. 

“May I?” He asked you once again. 

You were glad and responded with a breathless, “Please.”

His mouth opened a dark orbital maw, a new moon, which then glinted into a teeth-filled waxing crescent headed in its trek to sink into your soft flesh.

You jolted the moment the teeth supposedly hit their mark. 

You stared into the dark abyss and saw drifting images of sharpened grins. 

You were dizzy.

A sheen of sweat to you, you tossed back a cover. 

The black hovel above you took shape as logs in the cabin ceiling. 

They lined up like thick thighs appearing from where board shorts had hiked up. 

Begging for a taste.

Awareness struck with a sharp inhale.

Fully awake and doused with dread from your dream, you voiced your despair with a whisper.

“Oh no…”

💛 NEXT 💛

I swear I handed this to my betas over a year ago... @tmntxthings and @thepinkpanther83

[lulublack90]

Prompt 24 - Modern AU

@wolfstarmicrofic April 23, word count 937

Sirius gripped his coffee as though it were a lifeline. It was the biggest, strongest coffee he could find, watered down with copious amounts of milk. He took little sips as he logged into his computer at work, brought up his list of tasks for the day and slowly began muddling his way through. 

He’d gone out last night with James, against his better judgement, not that it took much persuasion on James’s part. All he had to do was bat his hazels at him, and Sirius was putty in his hands. 

He’d been having a great time, downing drinks, shaking his arse to the vintage jukebox and then woken up in some fit lad’s bed, hence the massive coffee and the mind-numbing hangover. He’d crept quietly out of the little flat and stumbled his way down the harsh concrete steps that smelled like weed, piss and, for some bizarre reason, hairspray. Sirius had rushed home, hopped in the shower, changed his clothes and hurried to the coffee shop on the corner. He couldn’t even remember the man’s name. He put it out of his mind, reasoning that he’d never see him again anyway. 

It took an age for the little digital clock on his computer screen to blink to 12:00 and signal lunchtime. 

Feeling the need for greasy food, he went to pull out his mobile to order a McDonald’s when he realised he didn’t have it. He checked all his pockets and his bag. It wasn’t there. The panic had just set in that it had been stolen at the bar last night when his computer alerted him to a new email on his personal account. 

‘Hi, erm, I guess Sirius. Sorry, I didn’t get your name last night 😬.

So anyway, I have your phone. You must have left it here when you snuck out this morning. (You are not sneaky, by the way! Like an elephant in size nines!) But yeah, anytime you want to come by and get it is fine. I’ll be in all day. Crap, I hope you get this email, or I’ve just got myself a new phone. It’s actually a big upgrade to mine. On second thoughts, it’s mine now, mwahaha 😈!

Thanks 

Remus Lupin.’

Sirius stared at the words for a few minutes, taking them in, before picking up the work phone from his desk and phoning himself. 

“Hello?” A voice on the other end answered. “Hi, I’m not Sirius. He left his phone at mine last night.”

“Hi, Remus. It’s me. Sirius.” He added in case he hadn’t realised.

Well, I guessed when you used my name. I highly doubt anyone in your phone book knows who I am. Especially ginger toss pot number 1. There’s more than one ginger toss pot?” Remus snickered. 

“Wait, how do you know that, and how did you get my email address? Have you hacked into my phone?!” He felt outraged. How had he even gotten in, though? It was password-protected.

“Sirius, 6969 is not a strong password. Plus, I could see where you’d jabbed at the screen to unlock it. You really need to clean your phone.” Remus went on. 

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” He paused for a second, trying to rein in the snarkiness. “I don’t finish work until 5. Is it alright to come over after that?”

“Sure,” Remus answered. “I’ll be in.” 

“Great, thanks.” Sirius forced a smile on his face so Remus could hear his sincerity.

“Who’s Specky Dick Nuts?  Because they’ve been blowing up your phone all morning before I woke up and found it. They seem to have stopped now, though.”

“Oh, that’s my best mate James. Oh shit, if he’s gone quiet, he’s probably tracking my phone. Er, be prepared. He probably thinks I need rescuing.” There was a loud thudding on the other end of the line. 

“Er, I think your friend might be here,” Remus whispered into the phone. 

“Put me on speaker so I can talk to him.” He heard the faint click as he was put on speaker and the sound of Remus unlocking the four locks on his door. 

“Hi, you must be James,” Remus said. 

“Where is he?!” James’s voice was stern and full of concern. 

“James, mate. I’m fine. I’m at work. I just forgot to pick up my phone this morning. This is Remus, by the way. He kindly let me know he had it.” He prayed that was enough to call off the Potter inquisition. 

“Oh, cool. Hi, Remus.” 

“Hi, James.” 

“Sorry, I thought you were some lunatic. And you were keeping him prisoner.” 

“Oh, don’t worry. Happens all the time.” The phone line was filled with laughter, and Sirius had to hold his receiver away from his head.

“Hey, James, can you take my phone, seeing as you’re there?”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks, Remus.” He managed to say before James hung him up. He felt oddly dejected for some reason but brushed it off. 

When he came back from lunch, he found a new email, this time from Remus’s actual address.     

‘Can I take you out on a date?’ 

It said. Sirius felt a surge of joy and so replied.  

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Dinner? Movie? Massive shagathon?’ 

Sirius choked on his own spit at Remus’s reply. He coughed as he typed back.  

‘Jesus, Remus. Are you always so forward?’

‘What can I say? You made an impression 😉.’

‘Yeah, go on then.’

And that was how Sirius found himself for the second morning in a row in Remus Lupin’s bed. But this time, he didn’t sneak out.

[kathaynesart]

I remember when you first started Replica and I haven't been here in a hot minute!

May you please do a debrief of what it is, the characters and their relationships.

I want to be able to give my friend (who I finally dragged down into this TMNT rabbit hole) a good explanation of your wonderful comic!

(⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)

Aw thank you so much! Hm… I suppose a summary would be good to have on hand. For the uninitiated with no context, here is the basic elevator pitch:

The year is 2044 and the last remaining Resistance of Earth has just fallen to the alien invaders known as the Krang. In a last ditch effort to save the planet, Casey, a freedom fighter is sent back in time to undo the events that first led to the invasion. While he is ultimately successful in his mission, the state of his original fallen timeline remains unknown. The last of the freedom fighters, his family, perished to ensure his safe escape, leaving their world to the mercy of the Krang.

Which brings us to the ultimate question: when you already know the heroes are doomed to fail, what can be gained from being told their story?

For the rest below, I’m going to write with the assumption that the reader has some basic knowledge of the series and the film because I feel that this story is best enjoyed with proper context.

SUMMARY

Replica is a story meant to answer many of the questions the first 4 minutes of the movie left us wondering. It’s to explain the basic history of the bad future timeline and how it came to be. The plot focuses particularly on the later half of the apocalypse, all with the intention of leading up to the opening scene where the Krang wins and Casey Junior is sent back in time to fix the mistakes that Leo and his family could not.

It’s to answer questions like:

How did Leo get injured?

Why is Mikey so old looking?

What were these characters like in the future?

What happened to Raph, Donnie, and April?

Where is big bad Krang Prime in all this?

How did the Resistance finally lose to the Krang?

Did they plan to send Casey back in time in advance?

What happened to this world/time-branch after Casey Jr was sent into the past?

MAIN CHARACTERS

For the most part, the cast is comprised entirely of characters from the series. My goal is to keep this as canon as possible, so no new OC's... save for one (kind of).

Omega Bootyyyshaker 9000 is where this story starts and ultimately where it ends. He is a brain scan AI of Donatello, created to act as both a support system for the Resistance after the turtle’s untimely death and also a key component in a plan that will hopefully put a stop to the Krang should the Resistance fail. Omega is great because he adds some much needed levity to the story, acting a bit more like the aloof but silly teenage Donnie (a side affect of not having to experience the usual physical weariness that comes with being an organic, aging organism in an apocalypse). However, he also adds more weight by being the thing that is supposed to outlast all of them and act as the last line of defense for the remainder of the universe. He claims to merely be a "replica" of Donnie's mind, but whether he's just a digitized scan, his own AI person, or somehow connected to Donnie in a deeper way has yet to be seen.

Leonardo Hamato: the man, the myth, the legend. Casey Junior spins tales of how great his sensei was in the movie, but in this story we really get to see Leo go from his lowest point as a pawn for the government, crushed by the shame of his past actions, to his greatest height as the leader of the Resistance. He is going to fail a lot in this story... but ultimately his greatest success is overcoming his own inner demons and coming to terms with being the father figure he had never asked to be. He cares deeply for his family and Casey... but he thinks he'd be a horrible dad.

Michelangelo Hamato: the only other surviving turtle to see the end of the world. He is the emotional bedrock of the family and a stand in therapist when he's not being a silly little guy. His mystical powers are unparalleled, but in his attempts to regain his lost Ninpo he taps into something far deeper, leading them down a path that intertwines the destiny of their doomed future and a past that has yet to occur.

Casey Jones Jr: a sweet boy taken in by the Hamato family. He strives to become a great warrior like his mother (Cassandra) and his Sensei (Leo). We are going to watch him grow from child to teenager as he slowly takes on the roll of being a fighter in the resistance. Through it all he must walk an unsteady line that allows him to find the strength to weather the storm but retain a certain spark of hope that helps keep his family going.

April O'neil: Commander of the Resistance and another honorary Hamato family member. She is the voice of reason and most emotionally stable of the family. Even after dealing with so much loss, she keeps a stiff upper lip as well as cold and calculating mind that always puts the colony's wellbeing first and foremost.

Donatello Hamato (deceased): The story begins shortly after Donnie’s passing during an infiltration mission against the Krang. He was dead set on planting a probe behind enemy lines that would allow them to spy on the Krang’s movements. However it seems that he had a secret agenda in planting something that would work as a final doomsday weapon against the Krang. What that is exactly, we do not yet know. The man self-destructed in a last ditch effort to avoid being interrogated by the Krang as well as a final attack to injure Krang Prime.

Raphael Hamato (deceased): The eldest brother who sadly passed away many years ago in the fight against the Krang. A boisterous but considerate man whose death sapped a great deal of the fighting spirit out of his brothers. His absence is greatly felt, but he might not be as far gone as he seems.

Krang Prime (One): Our big bad of the story. He is the leader of the Krang that has latched onto this planet like a cancer, using up its resources and assimilating its population. However, unlike the hundreds of planets that have come before this one is particularly personal. He doesn't want to merely assimilate but utterly destroy the descendants that caused his imprisonment thousands of years ago. His current state is unknown after being last seen with Donatello at the time of the man's self-destruction.

NEED TO KNOW DETAILS

All Resistance fighters have tiny self destruct bombs in their brains so that the Krang can not probe their minds to find out the Liberty Colony's location. They go off automatically after Krang infestation reaches a certain percentage, but can also be set off via voice command.

Donnie's brain bomb was far more potent because of the amount of information he knew. He did not want to risk the Krang getting any part of his mind.

The Krang have been searching for the resistance in a frustrating game of cat and mouse which has only become more difficult now that the Resistance easily knows their every move by using Donnie's probe.

Central Park Colony: now destroyed, but was once the last massive human colony in North America, housing both the EPF (Earth Protection Force) and US Government. Racism was a huge problem as most yokai and mutants were either quarantined, tested on, or used as living weapons in the fight against the Krang. It has since been destroyed.

Liberty Colony (aka the Resistance): grew from the ashes of the Central Park Colony. It is comprised of the survivors and lead by Leonardo, April, and several others. It is much smaller and more militaristic, but treats yokai, humans, and mutants equally.

Artificial Intelligence (like Omega and Shelldon) are able to fend off the Krang assimilation that people and tech would normally succumb to. It is for this reason Omega is used as both a protector of the Liberty Colony and operator for a majority of the vehicles so that the tech can no longer be easily taken over by the Krang during attacks.

Leonardo and Michelangelo (as well as Donatello's) Ninpo have all been stripped from them by this point in the story. While Leo can not tap into his family connection at all, Mikey at least has regained the ability to use some of his mystic powers.

Mikey's mystic abilities however come at a price. Since he can not tap into his Ninpo and the fountain of energy from his ancestors, he is instead using his own life force to cast his spells. It is slowly draining him.

TIMELINE Can be viewed HERE

SOURCE MATERIAL The video that inspired this all can be viewed HERE

Hope this helps! Sorry it's a bit long, tried to break it up with images. At least there might be a few interesting bits of information other readers may not have noticed. I snuck in a few things that haven't been mentioned yet, hehe.

[staerplatinum]

Some of my favorite doodles from my headcanon/redesign concept sheets used as an excuse to list my headcanons about the main six (for an AU that I'm writing)! More under the cut!

Charlie Morningstar:

She's way more hot-headed than in canon, albeit still keeping her cheerful and gentle persona.

She loves food, and she's always hungry. I always loved the trope of protagonists (both male and female, like look at Goku himself, Usagi Tsukino or Minako Aino) and I think it could fit Charlie perfectly!

She loves planning (and this is already canon) and she has a lot of stationary gadgets. "Sure Alastor, you can borrow any pen! ... Not that one! :D" And takes good care of them.

Her birthday is February 29th. I thought that it wouldn't be strange if her birthday ended up being that day if she follows a demoniac calendar...

Vaggie:

It's canon that she likes everything to be clean and organized. I think she would help Niffty with the rooms and everything! They bond!

She and Angel Dust absolutely have BFFs vibes. Before Hazbin Hotel I remember they were meant to be a couple, but with the new canon they're still adorable as best friends and I love the dynamic more. They get into fights but it's never anything serious, they look like a big brother and a little sis, even though sometimes she definitely acts as a big sis to him. Angel sees Molly through her :(

As we know she doesn't really believe in herself, but she actually makes a very good leader!

In my fanfic, contrarily to the series, she was really fighting with burning hate towards the angels that cast her out. She holds a deep grudge and it's hard for her to come out of it. (I want Out for Love to be useful, it's my favorite song ç_ç)

Her name as a human was Agata Flores, she was born the 28th of June in 1993. If we still count 2014 as her death and if she was once a winner that then became sinner... my headcanon is that she died of a hate crime in March 25th 2014, aged 21.

Angel Dust:

He's not in drag 24/7. He really is feminine, but sometimes likes to try masculine outfits too. (which make Husk wonder "why am I staring??")

He's secretly a nerd. Or not so secretly. He owns video games, and especially likes RPGs and life sims.

He overanalyses everything. Well, almost everything but still. He actually likes reading, and this led him to analyse anything that comes into his eye. (Oh, I can't wait to write one of those scenes because I already had fun outlining it LMAOO)

He's probably Charlie's food buddy. Give them some food and they'll be happy (Valentino doesn't like this but get screwed Val, give him food too)

His name as a human was Anthony (canon) Cavallaro and had Neapolitan heritage. He's born in April 1st (and this is canon) 1912, he died of overdose (canon) in October 11th 1947, aged 35.

Alastor:

I loved his pilot persona more than the series', and most of the things are confirmed canon... but I do have some headcanons for him, too! (also yeah I don't think that will be my last radioapple drawing or doodle lol)

We know he either doesn't sleep or sleeps with his eyes open. Well, I imagine him that in the few rare occasions he actually sleeps, his radio works as a mental surveillance "camera". Also, he's a light sleeper and would definitely go "Do you fellows mind? I'm trying to sleep." like the old man he is.

I would like to explore Alastor's feelings for Charlie more, and how he sees her as a daughter. While we may not know if he was telling the truth, I think they both seeked each other as a fatherly and daughter figures in a way. Many in the fandom headcanon Alastor's father to have been shitty to him. If he truly sees Charlie as a daughter, it could be because he would like to be a better father than the one he had, and since he never had children, he grew affectionate to Charlie as such.

He knows how to handle alcohol well, but I like to think that when he's really drunk he doesn't even know what he's doing. Oh, you saw him playing with Angel's Nintendo Switch? He even brought it into his room to continue playing Animal Crossing by himself? He was totally wasted.

His name as a human was Alastor (which is apparently canon, but I wonder if it'll be retconned or not?) Boudreaux-Alexander. Boudreaux was his father's last name, Alexander was his mother's. He didn't like his mother taking her husband's last name and wanted to keep his mother's. He was born in March 7th 1901, and died in August 4th 1933, aged 32, after being shot by a hunter that confused him with a deer and was mauled by dogs afterwards. (Yikes, I'm so sorry)

Niffty:

She definitely has written lots of fanfics about her fellow hotel friends. Especially men. Yet, she loves Charlie and Vaggie too, so they're there as well.

We know both Niffty and Husk have deals with Alastor. She loves them both, I love to headcanon that when she feels lonely and can't sleep well or had nightmares, she either goes to Husk's or Alastor's room to sleep with them. They welcome her warmly ç_ç

Alastor and Husk most definitely know Niffty's story, which is why they care about her so much. She's childish for her age, but it could be tied to a past that only the two of them know very well.

Niffty knew Vox when they were alive. Now I know it could be a weird headcanon since Niffty is Japanese and Vox is American, but if Niffty's work brought her around the world it wouldn't be weird if they crossed paths. When Vox died Niffty was 19, she either saw him die in front of her eyes or something else happened.

As I mentioned in my concept sheets, she used to wear glasses when she was alive so she can't see really well without them after she died. Sometimes she borrows Alastor's monocle, and if we apply the headcanon that he's colorblind, without his monocle not only he can't see anything but can't even see colors LOL

Her name when she was alive was Sachiko Tanaka, born February 27th 1934. She died September 1st 1956, aged 22, there are popular headcanons about the way she died and yikes, if it's true she didn't have a good death either. Not at all.

Husk:

Maybe I'm overanalysing but what if the reason why he grew affectionate to Niffty was because he once had children? Or just one? Either he had a child and was with him but felt like he wasn't a good father or his ex-wife left him because of his gambling addiction and this made him feel guilty, not able to see his child ever again. (I feel bad just thinking about this but ç_ç)

Despite the fact he hates being on a leash and none other than Alastor's, he actually cares about him. If the two were friends when they were alive (including Mimzy), this could explain why he's still around Alastor even if reluctantly. (Sure he says he's forced, but in the pilot Alastor summoned him, so it's safe to assume either Alastor-Husk-Niffty were roommates before coming to the hotel and did their business without telling Alastor, or simply we need more explanations of Alastor's deals)

His name when he was alive was Ivan Goncharov, born January 29th 1900, and died in December 23rd 1967, aged 67. As I mentioned in my concept sheets, he was friends with Alastor and Mimzy when they were alive and he was the last one of them to die. He would often visit his friends' graves when he was still alive :(

[writingmochi]

cast: trainee!niki ✗ seatmate!fem.reader (ft. &team's taki (takayama riki), p1harmony's soul (haku shota), niziu's nina (makino nina), and xg's cocona (akiyama kokona))

synopsis: graduation is such a melancholic concept, happy to finally be able to escape school, but sad that people will separate to their own road. it is no different for riki. on his graduation day, he spends one last day with his seatmate of three years before he pursues his career across the sea

genre: melancholia, hurt/comfort, coming of age, slice of life, trainee au, high school au, fluff, angst

based on: music hindia's "besok mungkin kita sampai" (2019) (genre: indie pop)

word count: 13011 (13k)

warning(s): blood, some curse words, mention of bruises, pretty heavy life stuff even for a high school age

message to the moon: remember that this story is fiction and do be careful and read the warnings at the top. all the idols mentioned here are not what they are in real life. (y/f/n) = your full name!

i had to open up my japan 2020 trip memories to remember the whole atmosphere + adding a bit of my knowledge and experiences too. i have to post this in april since it is the right momentum for it and riki’s graduating class is THIS YEAR! i wanna thank @oiwxa for her insight into a japanese high school graduation and its rituals (especially since you rb the og riki as a regular hs student hc like that is very useful) and my friends who indulge in japanese culture for helping with additional insights :D this is also part of my milestone now closed collab "discover: 200" which you can check out! hope you enjoy!

masterlist

what does one think about when they hear the word “foam”?

a child will imagine a white porcelain bathtub, the one they are sitting in with most of their seated body underneath the water that fills from the bottom of the tub. bubbles made from the mix of the running water and the poured liquid soap to create a magical concoction of science. more and more fill the tub until it overflows and splashes outside, landing on the tiled floor. one can pick up childish giggles as the bubbles caress the skin before it pops, creating a ring of soap on the skin nearest to it. one could imagine their parent beside them following their giggles, helping wash them up after playing in a grassy park and falling on the dirt patch chasing a squirrel. but the child was having too much fun trying to make their hair stand up from their scalp to care about the suds that clean away the dust and soil.

a person who visits a beach will be reminded of the white foam that flows to the coast, pushed by the tides to escape the blue waters. froths created from the combination of nature’s rhythm on the breaking of seawater and dissolving salt or tiny planktons. one can walk to the edge where the land meets the sea and meet the foams by themselves, letting their leg submerged into the wet sand before the incoming wave tries to push you away with its natural force. the water tickles above the ankle as foam created from the physics of it before receding into the ocean along with more grains of sand. the image of it pairs with the familiar crunchy sound of the waves that instantly show up in the head and from the popping of the tiny bubbles.

for riki, it was both of them and one more.

his hand is full of white fluffy foam. the boy's eyes stare at it before turning to the mirror in front of him. he sees the visual of a makeshift white full beard made from the tiny bubbles on the surface of his skin, all of them spread out to the jaw, cheeks, and even around the top of his neck, making him look like a younger version of father christmas if he ever goes to meet the children in spring—a season too late for the tradition and years too old for him as he knew about the truth of his parents being the “mythical man” that gave him gifts by the bed. the boy opens the tap.

the water runs down and cleans his hands, letting the residue drain down the hole before he picks up the item that he’s been learning and still is learning to adapt to at his age. the shaving razor he had that is in the same color as his toothbrush.

the razor glints under the lights beside the mirror. his hand grips its handle, following the steps his father had taught him. the older man told his child that facial hair grows in different ways depending on where they’re located, and how he has to shave it the other way for the most efficient result.

“if it’s on the cheek, then you have to shave it diagonally downwards to the corner of the lips. if it’s above the upper lip, then you have to shave it outwards from beneath both nostrils.”

riki recollects the words accurately as he imagines the visual vividly. how he can see himself in the mirror as his father when the boy remembers he stood beside him, a razor in his own hands as he teaches his son how to shave the facial hair he might not want to own—right in front of the same mirror he stood across now.

shaving your own facial hair seems to be a rite of passage for a boy who is nearing the end of his puberty days. their growing plates are still growing as riki still remembers how he was slightly shorter than his father when he was taught his first lesson in shaving facial hair. now he is taller than his father, either from how many times he has to jump along with the moves of a choreography or run along with a rolling ball on a grassy field.

riki can definitely feel and see the difference. his lanky body now shows more prominent muscles from the physical activities he does, notably his bigger calves from moving on his feet so much. the baby fat on his face has burned enough that his bone structure sticks out as he notices the apples of his cheekbone protruding on his facial features. his voice also deepens as he can still remember how itchy it is, dropping step by step until he can perceive the vibration of his neck’s skin from the moving larynx; a voice that screams baritone or bass, even reaching vocal fry level if he wants to learn the technique.

all of that happens in the three years of high school. if middle school him could witness him now, he wouldn’t believe that that is what he’s going to look like. so many things happened in the past three years that month by month—even day by day—he can feel himself changing physically and mentally.

and today, his three-year journey in high school ends. his graduation day from being a high school student. also, his last day home before pursuing his dream in seoul, south korea.

riki has always been an active kid, but there are two constants throughout his activities in his 18 years on earth: soccer and dancing. one may look at both of them differently, but he has always found a resemblance between the two. the agility of dancing helps control the ball if it’s in his possession. the stamina training he had done to run from one side of the field to another helped him practice longer, thus making him learn the choreographies faster than the other kids.

his hopes and dreams are tied between the two of them. he even wants to continue it to his adult. many of the kids were always asked “what you’ll be when you grow up?” and their answers will be different years later. yet, riki’s stayed the same. always between the two of them.

but he has to choose one to pursue even further, to focus on even in the hardest times he might get in his life.

after seeing korean idols on stage performing in front of thousands of people, he chose to dance. he wants to be like them one day.

yet, that doesn’t mean he’ll let go of soccer that easily.

soccer is still there for riki as a hobby. but he decides to push his dream of being a soccer player behind to train more for his dancing: learning between the street dances and contemporary ones he is still lacking in, yet determined to improve on. it sacrificed him hours of rest time to nail each of the basics in each study, peaking his figure to one of an all-rounder dancer who learned multiple branches of the certain performing arts.

his fruit of labor comes at the right time and moment when he joins an open audition for a big label in south korea that is hosted near here. riki rubs his hand on his pants as he sees a tv playing in the waiting room of a live performance he watched with his own eyes. his figure between all the visible moving lightsticks that decorated the arena, resembling a starry night. they all gave their best to show their craft on stage where people had encouraged them so much to achieve their dreams until that level. it tugs little riki so hard on his heartstrings that he can’t think of his other activities that can bring him the same sense of joy and pride at the same time. soccer seems to be the nearest one but what if he falls out of love and wants to retire early? being a performer means he could also explore other avenues of performing arts if he wants to experiment. though there is a school for it, art is the outlet for human creativity. and each person has their own way of interpreting what they want.

the audition process was nerve-wracking for him; fear flew and crowded the room as riki saw the people he had to compete with. getting tunnel vision from his anxious self, all he could think about when seeing them was how better they were compared to himself. even the lone camera on a tripod makes him nervous as he knows the implications of the recordings being sent to the highest of the higher-ups who have the choice to make his life change forever. as the person before him steps aside, he takes their place and introduces himself like what he practiced. the words flowing out of his mouth smoothly before he let his mind back to when he was alone in the dance studio he called his second home: his actual home is the first and the school’s soccer field is his third.

the fluidity of his body lets him perform the routine he practiced countless times, a routine he trained with his dancing coach that highlights his greatest strengths in performing arts. riki feels how his eyes droop down, letting his movements and muscle memories do the work for him, something he allows as he has been practicing with the lights out.

“when you lose one of your senses, another sense grows to complement it,” his coach reminded him.

riki didn’t even break a sweat when he listened to the unfamiliar song. he just freestyle danced to the rhythm as best as he could to the song he used as a lesson. one has a faster bpm than the other, so he has to adapt with how many milliseconds he has to let his arm stay in the air. in his consciousness, he is confused as to why none of the judges stopped him like the other contestants. many of them were better but stopped earlier that they didn’t even reach the end of the choruses for songs, making his eyes tremble more behind his eyelids. yet, he continued until something stopped him. well, the music does as it fades away.

the process was rigorous when he had to sing and do body shots in another room—alone from the other contestants with people he assumes are higher in the recruitment process. when the papers of the contracts were placed in front of riki, he was halfway through his high school career. a contract to be a trainee in south korea, the place where the performers he saw reside. the headquarters of the leading asian pop culture in the world. riki has to be there to feel it himself.

he had his mom beside him as she read through the contract, a small smile on her face as she tried to understand the best of the contract with the formal and legal lingo that is used alongside the translator they hire for this and her family member who is a lawyer. he had already met up with the trainers before—the judges he auditioned to and more through video calls—and they agreed that riki has the potential to be something more.

he signed the paper that seals the next chapter of his life, agreeing to move to korea when high school ends.

riki returns to the mirror when his hand is unconsciously shaving the foamy area; following a set routine of the parts he has to shave and what section is next. that’s when he sees the thin foam turn pink. eyebrows raised, the sting comes too late as the soapy substance meets his open wound. he instantly flipped the tap open and cupped the water in his palms, brushing the soap substance away as fast as he could, gritting his teeth when he felt the cold liquid caressing his skin. blood flows along with the water as he smoothes the skin down, not recognizing any more slippery base substance when he gently dries his wet area. turning his face, he sees the long thin slit on his clean cheek, right under his cheekbone and going horizontal above the jawline, almost like a secondary of it. the razor he holds is placed under the running water when he sees the translucent crimson color flow down the drain hole.

placing the razor away, he opens the cabinet door for the first aid kit he had always picked up. being such an active kid doesn’t mean that he is immune to injuries. open or close wounded, he has scars of his injuries all around his body. the nasty scar on his right kneecap from when he tripped on himself while playing soccer on an asphalt road, bruises on his forearm from when he slammed himself too hard on the dance studio’s floor, and many more. he once feared that red color flowing on his skin layer, but seeing it so much and its purple-ish-blue companion, he throws that fear away and lets it sink into the ocean that is just a walking distance from his abode.

the first aid kit is filled with the most essential items riki uses to heal himself. his mom always told him to treat his injuries as soon as possible so no nasty virus or bacteria could infiltrate the atoms that encompass his functioning body and destroy it from the inside. and make him worse instead. he always thought the scars he got litter on his skin would disappear one day. time goes on as it denies his assumption. he learned this from biology class where the teacher mentions that the cell tissues of skin cannot get rid of scars because the injuries are being repaired by the same cells that create a scar. the cells in those areas are ever-healing; never going to stop healing because it has been injured before.

another scar to tell, i guess. he sighs as he dabs the wound with the red-brownish antiseptic on cotton all along the opening before he grabs the bandage and sticks it on the wound. pressing it down gently, the bandage nearly blends in with his skin color as it creates an abnormal diagonal patch on his somewhat clean yet acne-scar-filled skin. a minor bump rising because of the white pad on the sticky side. brushing his black hair away from its place that fallen on his forehead, he closes the distinct naruto-themed bag of his first aid kit and brings it to his room.

the navy graphic t-shirt he wore has droplets from the water but not of the blood from the small rectangle mirror sticking on his wall. on his bed lays the final piece of his gakuran as he picks up the suit jacket. riki pushes the golden buttons through the holes in an order, leaving the last button open right at the top so that he looks cooler—and so that he doesn’t get easily choked. his eyes scan his nearly clean room where items are still cluttered here and there. that is until he sees the large suitcase at the leg part of his bed. all the clothes and essentials he has packed to be used in korea are already in there. his flight is tomorrow morning; flying from haneda airport. the open duffel bag of his is still on his bed as he puts the naruto-themed first aid kit inside.

“riki!”

“yes?” his hand on his chest from the surprise calling of his name passing by the barrier of the wall.

“we have to go. we don’t want to be late.” his mom’s voice calls from outside the room. the boy lets the bag rest on the mattress before he picks up his trusty backpack and saunters to the door of his room and opens it, seeing his mom cleaning the dishes and dad slurping on a cup of ramen on the small dining table after leaning almost half of his body. both of them are in an outfit he isn’t used to seeing. only in times of graduations, weddings, or funerals.

“i made one for you.” riki followed his mom’s eyesight to the steaming cup of ramen across from his dad. “your sister has left for school earlier, but you don’t want to be late for your assembly.”

the boy’s long legs reach the seat where the cup of ramen is. its familiar smell enters riki’s senses as he picks up the folding plastic fork and scrumptiously enjoys the hot noodles. he felt the tangled noodle warming up his esophagus while his dad was pouring a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. as riki looked at his dad, he could see himself in him. his dad’s feline-like eyes—combined with his mom’s—make riki’s signature aggressive-looking eyes, like a leopard ready to pounce on its prey. his sisters are also like him but softer as how biology designs feminine features. but, all of them didn’t expect riki’s growth to spurt as he entered high school. he definitely thanked his genetics but also the nutritious homemade food mom made for him full of the omega-3 of fish and the glutinous yet small grains of cooked white rice.

the sunlight enters through the window of the dining and kitchen area where he sees a small garden that is full of little plants and flowers. the beam highlights the light brown of the wood from the last time his family renovated the house fully. small, quaint, yet architecturally smart; with hidden compartments for storage and changing furniture. he can describe his newly renovated home as one of the best things japanese architecture offers. his father learns so much about architectural innovation from watching renovation shows while his mom has the say in interior designing—picking the type of wood to use, placement of the furniture, and others. his new room became his favorite place in the world, with the floor-to-ceiling cabinet and wardrobe combo to put his childhood things he couldn’t bear to let go. though small, he’ll miss his room and the window that overlooks the small one-lane road filled with houses of neighbors he knows.

his nimble fingers expertly pick up the narutomaki along with the noodles from his seafood cup noodles with his chopsticks. the orange-reddish broth colors the inside of the cup as he stares at his phone, scrolling down the news of his favorite player transferring teams—a player exchange that costs millions of US dollars, a japanese player. the player was pretty new for his time, but riki can relate to him so much as the player enters such a big league at such a young age. in a way, riki lives his soccer player dreams vicariously through him. now, as he sees the familiar name transferring from playing in the Premier League to La Liga, his lips pursed as he can imagine the player playing in matches with the likes of many of the skilled players he idolizes in his life.

cupping the cup, he drinks the remaining broth as it warms his stomach, accidentally burping as his dad lets out a giggle in front of him. both of them wait for mom as she finishes up and walks to the shoe cabinet. riki picks up his beaten shoes—his favorite shoes since he bought them in his first year of high school. he remembers how his father agreed to pay him for the pair of shoes before realizing that it’s too big for his feet. yet now, his feet are grown to match their sizes, making them fit him perfectly. he uses those shoes all the time, especially for dancing and soccer. he wore the exact same pair of shoes when he auditioned. but now, he looked at its battered shape with seams ripping from the sole. nevertheless, he wore it to celebrate his and his shoes’ journey every day from when he went to school and the dance studio. riki rather see these shoes break because of his activities than never use them all because of their fragile state.

something he also has to let go like the life he has here to continue to live.

-

climbing up the last stair to the train platform, riki could see the coastline of the beach that is a five-minute walk from where he is. there’s a chugging sound of the moving train from the rails behind him going in the opposite direction of where he will go. behind the curtains of the three and more story high-rises, he can see the light yellow patch of the beach before gliding his eyes to a long grey platform of the small harbour. even with the distance, he can hear the sound of the crashing wave meeting the land. his eyes slowly relax as he stares at the neighborhood and city he calls home and the ocean in its background. the ultramarine spectrum healing his vision along with the lightly cloudy sky as specks of black dots are far at the edge of the horizon. the fishermen fishing for the catches to then be served in the most fresh condition possible in a large franchise sushi restaurant of a small mom-and-pop sashimi booth. the small taste of saltiness in the air because of how close he is to the source.

even with the small islands in his view, he still couldn’t believe that the body of water he was seeing was leading to the largest ocean on this blue rock. how the nearest landmass from japan is the united states with hawaii placed near the middle of the pacific. it always blew his mind whenever he realized how big the world is when he always saw the scaled-down version of it in a map app. he didn’t realize how big japan is when he realize that sapporo is near russia and the western and southern parts of okinawa is nearing taiwan or the phillipines. maybe, the vastness of the unknown world beside his city, the cities he visited, and the little buildings where people he knows do their activities is the one making him rub his palm on his pants so much.

the walk to the train station was short as he viewed people living their lives behind his parents’ footsteps on the clean sidewalk. entrances to office buildings opening one by one, the large signages of buildings that house pachinko machines stay idle as the mini convenience store below it shuts much of its fluorescent light after leaving it on for the night, and sparse numbers of motor vehicles running down the two-lane streets as bicycles are being dominated by workers. riki also found kids his age roaming the sidewalk to their nearest school. some of them wearing their uniforms just fine, while others were still shivering from the leftover winter wind—wearing puffy jackets to conceal them. he could recognize students from the neighboring schools just from the uniforms they were, some wore gakurans but others also used a more modern prep school uniform he has seen looking like the korean ones he found on the internet.

the sound of the distinct train station melody flies through the air as he watches the chugging commuter train on its way to the platform. his head stands out of the crowd as his height helps with easier detection when he identifies the small sliver of color that corresponds with the train line it is. from the outside, he catches a faded reflection of himself with a few people inside; people wearing masks to cover themselves from the flu because of pollen and the cold while others let their faces open as they can smell and inhale the clean spring air. the white LED lights illuminate the train car as he steps in—ducking his head cause he feels like he could slam into something hanging on the ceiling anytime. he turns to stare at himself from the glass’ reflection, how the corner of his mouth turn a bit downwards, which created a slightly intimidating frown. riki knows about what his friends call his resting bitch face, so he mostly gives a small thin smile after wetting his lips, which he did when he notices it on the reflection. his fingertips rubbing against each other to warm himself up before touching the backpack that is hanging by the straps to keep it safe in his arms.

the train is chugging down on the rail as the view outside moves with relativity. riki sees the familiar passing billboards he has seen time to time, changing its every advertisement from new ramen flavors to new animation movies to new j-pop album releases. yet the distinct enormous billboard hangs near a pedestrian crossing of a larger station that he always goes by. people walking about to their destination as the melody sounds every time the train stops at the station, spoken in both english and his native japanese. riki’s being is alert as the sound calls the name of the station near his school, eyes looking at the screen on top of the door as the train stops at another elevated station. the boy could sense how the train wobbled beneath him as he and the others stepped out of the cart. tapping his card at the gate, riki strides along the familiar pavements towards school.

approaching the building complex that has housed him for three years, riki sees the recognizable sailor uniform the girls wears—the same uniform hung outside of his room for his little sister to bring into her room—as he steps forward with every step. calls of names are spoken between one another as he walks closer, some are calling his name which he gives different greetings while others are gathered with each of their friends. in a cautious state of mind, his eyes scoured around to see the groups of parents crowding around their children; some stood up like skyscrapers compared to them. he sensed the bandage on his skin a bit heavier than before when he turned to face his dad, who was staring at him. mom is out of his sight as he watches his father’s hand caressing his injured cheek.

“from shaving…” riki replies after letting out a light hiss, widening his eyes so he wouldn’t turn away. his dad lets out a small giggle as he pats his cheek, making riki actually retreat and copying him with his own giggles. the smell of the distinct flowers and leaves crowds around him as the sakura petals fall down on the paved road of the school that is surrounded by cherry blossom trees. but different flower species are also showing up in the number of bouquets the graduating class has on their hands. the sakura pinks being the background contrast with the whites and yellows in the bouquets. that is when he found a single person who has purple flowers in their bouquet. lifting his head to see the owner’s, the corners of his lips rise just from identifying the familiar face.

you are clutching the ends of the bouquet your parents have surprised you with. your own backpack hangs on your shoulders as you hug your father, seeing a little red panda wearing a graduation cap on the top as your mother asks one of the parents to help capture the picture. posing in between your parents, you let out a wide smile as you hear the familiar clicking sound a few times before you drop from your tippy toes—something you always unconsciously do when taking a picture. you admire the way the white and purple flowers makes the bouquet looks grand yet still screams you—purple has always been and will be your primary color.

seeing the bouquet and the many students makes you wonder if your friends are here or not. you raise your head and chin up, curiously looking at the stream of students and parents gathering at the front of the gate and school buildings before the graduation ceremony begins. that’s when you see the familiar tall boy who was always sleeping on the table beside yours whenever both of you were in class.

“riki-chan.”

he can follow your mouth’s movement, grinning when he picks up even a small sample of your voice on the other side of where he is. your voice calls to him like a siren as he takes one step forward. that is when he felt a hand slapping his back as riki could already guess who it might be.

“shota! i almost choke.”

riki hears shota’s infamous giggle as he turns around, finding him with his eye smile as he wraps his arm behind the boy’s back, “come on, niki. don’t be so serious. we’re graduating today.”

“i know,” he replied. he wanted to return to your presence once again when he let his eyes squint and something flinch to grow on his lips. riki watches his father approaching him with his mother as he takes a peek at the yellow-flower-full bouquet she is holding, knowing that it will be for him as he sees his parents trying to conceal it—even though they failed by how flustered they are to see their son already has his eyes on them.

“ta-da!” his parents proclaimed as he saw the bouquet in close detail, seeing a few white petals scattering the bouquet as the yellow slowly became softer in his eyes. creating a more pastel yellow than the ones that shock his eyes with how bright the yellow is.

“thank you, mom and dad,” he replies as he carefully picks up the bouquet and cradles it in his arms. his father greets shota as he asks the boy questions on where his parents are while his mother finally notices the bandage on his cheek, hearing her clicking her tongue as she tries not to laugh at how clumsy her son was.

shota helped in taking photos for the family, even though his sister is there but it was so hard to reach her when she was already with her friends. he glances at the clock on top of his screen after seeing his chat with his younger sister when he realizes it’s almost time for the graduation ceremony. riki reminds his parents of where the parents will gather as he slowly places the bouquet under the care of his mother. waving and saying a “see you later”, he and shota go to the crowd where the graduating students are—dividing into each class crowd as he is letting the memories of the graduation ceremony replay in his mind from the rehearsals..

shota greeted most of the class students as riki stayed behind, letting the guy feel the fame once more as he couldn’t help but grin at seeing another boy in their usual circle of six—walking towards them with his own grin on his face.

“taki-chan.” riki calls for taki as he did their bro hug. his hand playfully ruffled his dyed locks as he commented, “you’ve already bleached your hair?”

“yes, let’s just say that it’s my graduation gift from my parents. i have to look stylish when i moved to germany for university. how about you, niki? why do you even have a bandage on your face?” taki playfully poked riki’s face as he turned his head, wanting to bite the finger like it was a clawing game for making him sense the reminder of the pain of the cut skin.

his circle of six has two rikis in them. so, to differentiate them, they use their first syllable from the last name as their new nickname during their high school: creating the unstoppable taki-niki duo. taki is also part of riki’s dance studio, but he’s doing it more as a hobby than a career like what riki is doing. shota, on the other hand, frequents the arcade during their high school times. in the nearest arcade from school, he has a high score in playing the arcade’s taiko no tatsujin; even having a pair of specialty gloves he said could help with the grip of the drumsticks. his love for rhythm gaming also shows in school when shota showed riki his device when he plays osu!—the game that successfully gets taki actually after he is numb to it by dancing to hip-hop and b-boying.

“there you guys are!”

the three boys all glanced to the side to find the three girls had completed their circle of six. kokona stands in the middle as he catches her pouting face with her hands on her waist; one part of her hair is already highlighted and even riki can notice she is wearing a slight faint of eyeliner on her eyes. beside her, he sees you with your wide eyes-small smile combo, and nina who is playing something on her phone.

kokona is the musician of the group—"a born-to-be musician" as she likes to call it—as riki has always found her making lyrics upon lyrics, from the most poem-like to outward disses as he knows she can beat him in a rap battle if he wants to. nina is the brains of the group. having mixed parents like shota makes her able to speak in four different languages, but she is also academically smart as she is always representing the school for a social science olympiad and she spearheaded the economics club in school. and, you. you are the artist of the group. every time riki meets you in class, you always have a manga on one side and your sketchbook on the other as you try to read and draw at the same time, making the characters in the manga you are reading on the sketchbook in your own art style.

riki is lucky to have his circle to be as creatively well-versed and supporting each other’s endeavors. they were the first ones to know that riki is now a trainee for a label in south korea. and they couldn’t have been more proud as shota even gifted him his old korean language 101 books for him to start his language learning early; even adding a few korean terms the boy learned from his mother as riki tried to familiarize himself with them.

his homeroom teacher, mister terada, reminds them to stand in line according to their last names instead of seatmates, making all six of you scattered as riki stands with a boy in front of him and a girl behind him. he could hear the coordinator’s voice slowly letting the classes in one by one into the hall where he has seen his parents are in—seating at the bleachers at the top that are lining around the open middle area. riki could sense his legs being numbed as he didn’t know how long he had to stand up when he felt your touch on his wrist as your line was beside his, holding him up as you let out a pout. when it’s his time to enter the hall, he basks in the large space to see the parents sitting in the bleachers surrounding the students. said students all sit at their assigned seats from the rehearsals as riki recalls his path when he'll be walking to the stage to get his diploma.

the assembly finally started and both the boy and girl beside him started to chuckle when he had to cover his mouth to let out a huge yawn. the tiredness of packing his stuff for his later flight last night got into him as he just wanted to be his class’ turn so he could get his diploma and maybe take a few minutes of a power nap. he could hear nina asking for him a few seats away, watching her discreetly pushing her hand out. he reached his own as he felt something on his curled palm. opening it up, he found a small wrapped mint candy that he recognized as a staple of nina's as their “awake pill”. the spicy mint taste makes his nerves alive and aware as he sees the first few classes already getting their diplomas. he had to remind himself of all the rehearsals he had done after the exam for the past two weeks—the correct place to stand while waiting in the line, the etiquette and who to shake hands with, and where you pose for your graduation photo.

riki graciously stands up and stretches his tired body from sitting too long as he walks to the path he had track with his eyes and is currently in the line awaiting his turn. he spots kokona already sitting down with her diploma and also shota who is walking to sit down on his seat. step by step as more and more names are being called, he is now one step away from the short flight of stairs to getting his diploma.

“nishimura riki.”

his name is called as he puts out a smile he has been learning while walking across the stage, bowing deep and shaking the hand of the principal before meeting mister terada who he gives another bow to before he receives the diploma with both of his hands. he turns towards the end of the stage and poses for the camera at the end before sitting down, looking up at the bleachers as he can catch his parents’ voices, cheering for him.

yet, for him. finally, it was time to get a nap as he awaited the last homeroom of his high school career.

-

thud.

thud.

thud.

that’s what riki picked up before he leaned down to grab his usual drink from the vending machine’s slot at the bottom. his backpack has been placed once again on his back after he met up with his parents when the assembly was done. he really had a pretty good nap before the boy beside him shook him to wake up when the ceremony comes to an end with the last hurrah from his juniors—seeing his younger sister too as riki chuckles when they both catch each other’s eyes. too many people were crowding the floor when the mc said it was over over, but he knew he will reunite with his friends once again after fulfilling the parchedness of his esophagus.

straightening his back, he felt the weight of the bouquet fall down and rested on the bottom of his bag alongside his diploma as he awaited for the final things to do here: cleaning up his shoe locker and one last meeting with the homeroom teacher about his career sheet. his parents had long gone home and he had already done the nearly complete family photo with his younger sister. riki glanced at the view behind him as he saw a few kids playing soccer in their 30-minute recess time—he could see himself in them as he either helped in attacking towards the goal or defending it against his friends. 30 minutes that seemed like a lifetime when he was there to feel it himself now appears so short as he sees it from an outsider’s perspective.

“boo!”

riki turns around in a whiplash, almost spilling his drink from the bottle before he pauses and calms himself to stare at you. your purple backpack sways alongside your own movement as you laughed—even making you nearly folded yourself to get a grip on your knees because he was too funny. your laughter dies down as flip your backpack around to put your diploma inside the main pocket.

“thought you’d be here,” you mumbled, pulling out your wallet from the bag as you approached the vending machine. the backpack hangs only on one shoulder as you plunge the coins in and press the button of the drink you want.

“you always get a drink when you’re sleepy.” you then added, making riki chuckle.

it’s a habit of his he had always overlooked but, somehow, you remember. once in class, he had been taking a huge nap during japanese history class as he let the thick textbook cover him. he had a very late practice session for a choreography because he hadn’t nailed each move—maybe because it was near the exam time or whatnot. yet, no one seems to wake him until the end of the period. lifting his head up groggily, he looks at his classmates who are eating or talking with each other. that shock coming from him made the thick book fall as he heard a snicker coming from one of the crowd. riki sheepishly smiled as he wanted to crouch down to grab the book when he finally noticed the light-colored soda on the edge between his and your desk. the brand is his favorite, yet he thought it might be yours. but with the way the bottle sits behind the line between yours and his desk, he knew that it must be for him as he unconsciously swallowed his saliva; picking up and cracking the bottle lid open as he sipped the soda before going to his usual hangout place with the rest of the six.

he picks up the familiar set of thuds as you lean down and grab your purchase—the same brand yet different flavors. he watches you as you playfully shake the bottle, seeing the foam forming from the chemical reaction as he remembers what you say: “i like the soda fizzy.” but it is also like you that you are not careful when you open the bottle, seeing the pastel-colored foam flowing out of the cracks and landed on the pavement before you instantly gulp nearly a third of the bottle.

you let out a huge aahhhhh as you felt the coldness of the soda trailing down into your stomach, looking behind the color-glazed bottle to catch riki with a small smile on his face, but no movement in his eyes, gazing at you—making blood flow towards your cheek.

“hello? riki-chan?” you waved your sticky soda-stained hands in front of riki’s face before he seemed to snap out of it. that’s when you finally notice the little bandage on his cheek, spread wide right underneath his eye and cheekbone.

“what happened?” you softly poke your finger against the bandage, making riki back off as he looks away, eyes moving so rapidly before he lets out a small smirk.

“pressed my shaving razor too hard. it bleeds, so… yeah. gotta have to be reminded of that whenever i see my graduation picture now,” he told you in such a nonchalant manner, making you let out your own chuckle.

“you look like those bad boys i’ve seen on high school animations… you just need your lollipop and done!” you tuck the closed soda bottle beneath your armpit right after you say that.

“aren’t i a bad boy, though?” he raised his eyebrows, mimicking those bad boys you described by poking the tip of his tongue towards the inside wall of his cheek—as if there is a lollipop there.

you scoffed, “you? nishimura riki? a bad boy? bah…”

laughter falls out of you because you can’t seem to see him in the bad boy role. sure, he being a former soccer player and a dancer makes him popular with other people. you remembered near valentine’s day this year that many girls—including your juniors—asked you about his favorite candy or chocolate brand and flavors so that they could give that to him. some even leave gifts to you so you can give them to them and you are obliged to give them because you don’t want to experience the wrath of a teenage girl; you know that feeling too much yourself. yet, riki seemed to be more nonchalant about that, dividing the chocolates into the rest of his circle and not really giving anything back on white day—except for giving you, nina, and koko-chan different popin’ cookin’ sets you recognize costs money.

maybe he is a bad boy after all because of that. but, to you, that is his charm. riki doesn’t seem to be someone who is trying to please what society asks of him. he should’ve felt proud to get so many gifts for valentine’s day, but he doesn’t, and he is not afraid to show it. he has this sense of agency in him to know of what he is seeking even at such a young age, and to him, it is dancing.

“we don’t want to be late.” you get a last glance at him when he nods his head, brushing his bangs away from his forehead as he leads the way toward the locker area.

riki views some students replacing their outside shoes with their indoor slippers as he had done the same, tucking in his battered-up shoes inside his locker as he had to remind himself to bring the slippers home instead of putting them in the locker. or maybe it can be a gift for the first-year junior who is going to be assigned his previous locker for their shoes. that’s for him to think more about because he still sense he has time to think about it—the day felt both fast and slow at the same time.

the hallways are as clean as ever as he and you climb up the flights of stairs toward your homeroom class. his eyes gaze at the ever-changing properties hanging on the wall, yet he can definitely remember what it looked like when he was first here.

the newly painted wall now has chips of paint fallen off to show the dried concrete. the bulletin board where each club is advertising their project changes with every new administration. some plants he had first seen as sprouts now grow into a beautiful shrub. with a few of the existing shrubs died because of various reasons. yet, the look of the hallway still is the same as he could pinpoint places he had touched before: he had leaned his body against those set of windows, he had taken a peek inside one of the classrooms as he awaited taki to come out of the class, and he had also sat down on the floor there with his circle to their bento boxes because their usual hangout place is being renovated.

riki reached the handle and slides the classroom door as he is greeted by some students already sitting there, hearing the same roar as you step inside behind him. his eyes landed on the seats where you and he had sat for the past year, empty and inviting to both of you as you gazed at your classmates with their own bouquets (if they have one) and definitely their own diplomas as you watched them still admiring it. your eyes gazed to see the rest of your circle already in the classroom as you placed your backpack to hang on the seat and immediately walks towards nina, asking if she has any wet tissue.

“what took you so long?” riki heard shota’s scolding from the seat in front of him as he placed his own backpack beside his desk.

“didn’t expect for all of you to be here already. so (y/n) and i took our time,” he answered so honestly, hearing taki’s snicker beside shota as he was eating a snack. riki sits on his chair as his hand reaches for the cupboard underneath the desk in front of him, tapping his palm against the surface to recognize if he has any leftover items he hasn’t brought home. that’s when he felt sheets of paper that were united by a paper clip. he pulled it out, seeing the dusty paper of what looked to be a musical notary for his music class exam.

he remembered it was a final group project for the music class, and he had to do it with all six of the circle. riki remembered all the music lessons he had learned from his brief training with the trainers as he helped the group create their own song. shota in the drums, taki on the bass, nina on the guitar, and you on the piano whilst kokona and riki sing along with koko who uses her lyricist prowess to make a song that is seemingly about friendship and farewells. if riki hasn’t been accepted by his south korea agency, he would definitely pitch the idea to all of you to create a band. maybe all of you can be the latest sensation japan will meet on those shibuya crossing’s digital billboards.

yet fate says otherwise.

riki’s nose itches as he dusted the paper as the specks of dust floated towards the ground, looking at the clear version of the notation and even his own scribbles as he remembered how kokona berated him for not being able to match her melody—"i’m a dancer, koko-chan. not a singer." “but you’re an idol trainee. surely, you can sing.”—before carefully tucking it into his bag as he pulled the bouquet out of the bottom and let the bag open because he just knew that his whole backpack would smell like it if he kept it close.

looking towards the surface of the desk, riki sees a shadow standing menacingly in front of his desk. the shadow slides the glico’s pocky box in his vision. his head shifts upwards as he sees nina holding two more boxes of different flavors, making him look to his side to detect both you and kokona already having your own pocky with your own differing flavors.

“my gift to you all because i know i won’t be able to see you much in america.” nina says after putting the rest of the boxes in front of taki and shota. he could hear the two boys coo and send her gratitude before grabbing the boxes and opening them to ravage them for themselves. riki finally took a closer glimpse of yours as he finally noticed how both of your boxes are green-colored.

“did she give us the same flavor?” he mumbled to himself, yet he mumbled outwardly, making you shift your head and face him.

“i think our flavors are similar, let me see.”

you gently grip the wrist he is holding the box with and bring it beside yours. riki examines how his box has a dark chocolate gradient on it while yours is fully green, trailing his eyes down to read the flavor name on the front of the box.

“see, yours says green tea while mine is rich matcha.” you say what you observed as he can’t help holding back a giggle as you seem to unconsciously play around with your lip after you say the word “matcha.”

though purple is your favorite color—matcha is your favorite flavor. you have always been seen with matcha-flavored everything if you are given a chance. matcha lattes whenever all six of you visit a cafe, matcha mochi whenever you buy mochis, or matcha roll cakes when the gang is trying to buy something inside family mart. it’s no surprise nina gives you that, but why did she give him a similar, lighter version of it?

whatever, let’s just eat-

the sliding door opens and behind it, the figure of the class’ homeroom teacher appears. everyone, including riki, is applauding him—slightly drops the box on the table as he didn’t get to rip it properly. mister terada slowly steps inside, a surprised face on his face as he slowly walks to stand by the table in the middle of the class. he is carrying a large box with both of his hands as the holler continues, which is followed by whistles before he places it down on the table. mister terada raises his hands and slowly pushes it down as the volume follows.

“settle down kids. this is our last homeroom meeting.” mister terada says as riki gazes at the open box, knowing that it’s probably the yearbook that he had shot the photos for in january. he remembered that day cause it was still cold as heck. many of his classmates brought their own properties for the shoot, yet riki only wears his gakuran with a loose button and his trusty shoes—the black and white soccer ball is being lent by the committee because he has and wants to represent soccer on some sort so that he won’t forget.

“today, i’ll be giving you your yearbooks and also recapitulate your career sheet to see how each has progressed. i’m sure by now you have picked to focus on one of the three choices you made from those you picked in your first year to pursue.” mister terada stated as he started to call each name in the student's list, starting with the class president.

the giving off of the yearbook is also followed with a mini consultation of each student's progress. yes, right in front of the class, which can lead to embarrassment if they can’t keep up. but so far, everything still goes according to their plan, some even find themselves straying from their primary focus to explore something new or getting caught in something that becomes their infatuation.

most of his friends that have come forward and got their yearbooks have spoken about the same thing that they have spoken about just between the six of you: kokona is going to music school, nina is going to america and studying macroeconomics, and shota is pursuing game development. then, it was time for his turn as he heard the calling of a certain nishimura riki.

“that’s our idol!” he picked up taki's shouted words as the rest of the class laughed. everyone knows just how much riki likes to dance. he had shown his skills numerous times in the school’s talent shows either alone or with taki as the riki duo that they are. so it isn’t also a surprise for his classmates to find out he had been accepted into a label in south korea that has been throughout his school—courtesy of taki, as he is the one that always spills it.

it even created a whole discussion on why riki picked a korean label instead of japanese one, but one thing is prevalent in the discussion: the korean idol industry will see his dancing skills as more valuable than in the japanese idol industry. it’s just the way those industries goes honestly. but riki also wants to appreciate the korean idols that inspired him to be who he is right now; especially with the existence of japanese people in the korean idol industry and how the numbers are still going up.

the class seems to unanimously sing yoasobi’s idol as riki playfully does the gesture in the viral dance challenge as he now stands in front of mister terada. bowing down to greet him, he picks up the yearbook with two hands as the teacher asks, “how is it with your idol training?”

“it’s going good. i’m actually already planning to move to seoul after graduation so i can train better and have a higher chance of debuting.” yet, riki didn’t mention he will actually move tonight.

“well, we can’t wait to see you on the world stage, riki-kun. i love how consistent you are with it and i sure hope that your consistency could also inspire the juniors to follow their dreams.”

“thank you, mister terada.” he bowed his head once again before returning to his desk as mister terada called for the name after his. he playfully opened the yearbook and skimmed it before landing on his class. his fingers flip the paper to finally open to the page where all six of his friends are—because they shoot their pictures together. riki’s photo is the one where he had all the gakuran buttons off from their respective slots and he is holding the soccer ball against his hips.

“look at that, a very bad boy of a manga.” he could hear his thoughts speaking to him in your voice as he wished you acknowledged that. he also moved to the superlative pages as he could remember his same-year peers and juniors him in the running. he didn’t expect to win most changed by his peers. maybe it is because he has his growth spurt as he could tell that he might even grow 10 centimeters whilst in high school. but also with how his voice changes because of puberty and how his style changes to accommodate his interests, including more exposed yet baggy clothing and the clip-on earrings he likes to wear.

“(l/n)(y/n).”

riki heard the scrapping from the chair beside him as he watched you standing up and walking towards the front of the class. though you haven’t fully spoken about what you wrote on your career sheet, being a mangaka is what everyone knows that you wanted to be. your illustrating prowess has always been shown in the festivals the school made yearly, whether it is when you helped with the class’ food market by creating brochures and banners or when you even opened an illustration service where you drew students and teachers alike for them to have. it seems that you’ve got your life in line alongside him. and that’s why it shocked him to listen to what you’ve answered to mister terada’s question.

“yes, my progression with my university application is great. i’ve been accepted as a student in the international relations major in kyoto.”

riki’s eyes enlarged because he can’t believe what he is hearing. he turns his head towards his friends who are also looking at each other in quick succession, all of them having confusion on their faces before returning to you who is smiling like you didn’t even feel the quake that shook your friends’ beliefs about you. as you walked to your chair and look around at each of your friend’s face, you give them a tight-lip smile. yet, all of them hesitate to ask you why you choose international relations instead of design or art school. they have to respect your choice just like any of their classmate's changes.

the revelation shocked riki the most as he thought that you had trusted him enough to tell him everything. he has been your seatmate for three freaking years and you have grown up together since the first year. he had always seen you drawing in sketchbooks you bring in class, even ignoring some lectures so you can focus on drawing and reading manga. sure, he can see you must picked studying social science for a reason but he thought that—maybe just like he is as you both are creatives—you just don’t want to do math and natural science like he is.

the number of students without the yearbook dwindles as every desk has one on top of it. mister terada stares at the group he can call his kids while mumbling, “i’m so proud of all of you. hopefully you can continue to grow and be impactful towards society-“

“wait, mister terada!” the class president shouts as she scrambles to get something underneath her desk to then watch her pick up a new bouquet. “this is our gift to you so you also have your own bouquet alongside us.”

riki remembered when the class treasurer suddenly asked him if he wanted to contribute to gifting a bouquet to mister terada during the class’ yearbook photoshoot. he gladly accepts it as mister terada is the nicest homeroom teacher he had throughout high school. some of his other homeroom teachers are unnecessarily harsh towards the students and even shamed for not following through with their career sheets—knowing that teenagers also can get stressed too in doing so. mister terada is the only teacher riki can comfortably consult about his choice of being an idol. at that time, he was contemplating if he should audition for one or just focus on becoming a professional dancer. yet, mister terada’s push also helps contribute to him filling in the audition form.

mister terada received the bouquet from the class president as he stared at it, his eyes glimmering before saying, “thank you so much. could we get a class photo with all of us?”

the students are standing up as they try to set their places. one of the student’s parents, who is watching the class outside from the hallway window, steps in to take the picture. riki stands beside you, taking a peek to see you already in your pose as he can’t help but put his hand on your shoulder. what’s wrong with friends of the opposite sex being touchy with each other anyway when he had seen all the different hugs and leaning against shoulders between the six of you?

as the click of the phone camera taking the picture rings and dissipates, it’s followed by a chorus of thank yous being thrown around as some students hug each other. he is busy too, as some of his classmates are trying to take a few last selfies with riki before he becomes famous—making the rest of the gang just snicker from the side.

“i’m going to miss you guys,” shota spoke as all six of you were huddled in the group hug. one last warm hug before all of you are going to your separate ways. riki also should go back home to rest up as he will go to haneda airport later but when the hug separates and all of you six are promising to catch up and communicate in your line group chat, he is trying to keep up pace with you who is tidying up your purple backpack.

“(y/n)-chan.”

“yeah?” you looked up from the backpack after zipping it up, wanting to grab your drink and the pocky that you know you’ll be eating on your way home. yet, with the way riki is looking at you; you know he is trying to let something out.

“do you wanna hang out on the rooftop? for old time's sake, as it is our last chance.”

you held down your smile, knowing that you also didn’t want today to end so early.

“yes. let me text the others in the group-“

“just,” his voice cuts yours, “just the two of us.”

you watched as his glittering eyes told you something, telling you to follow him as you could definitely feel that something was hanging that you had to speak about. and you knew it was about the changes in your plan for the future, especially as you confide with riki so much of your dream in creating your own manga series.

putting the straps on your shoulders, you point your chin towards the door and say, “ok.”

-

the breeze comes rushing in even if you stand behind riki’s figure, blowing your hair as his figure turns into a silhouette when meeting the afternoon sun. you step out onto the concrete ground as you glance at the half wall circling around the perimeter, seeing a few chipped-out paint coming off from said walls before you turn around to be greeted with the rooftop garden. the rooftop that you and your friends have always been on since your first year.

the rooftop is a somewhat famous destination per se, but only the people who are brave enough to trudge against the ever-changing weather could remain here even within the three terms. so that’s why only a handful of people can call this rooftop their hangout place—other than the back of the school or the cafeteria. you glance at the shorter half wall near the garden, the place you and the rest of the six usually hung out at; ate lunch at, doing homework at, and spending your free time at. you can even remember when you initiated the circle’s “logo” as you write your name in an arch, making the others write their own to create a full circle following the curve.

you’re going to miss this place when you’re in kyoto. you’re going to miss the friends that you meet here.

stepping in front of you as you follow, riki approaches the short half wall that is also acting as a multi-use bench, eyes taking a glimpse at the garden’s chlorophyll coming back after winter has frozen them up. insects that seemed to be brave enough to fly this high are visiting here, carrying the pollen for the plants to grow faster. you follow his movement as you sit beside him, gazing at the beautiful view behind the half wall of the sky as the sun is on the way to setting on the west horizon.

riki reaches for his pocky as the sound of the box ripping is heard beside you, making you take your own opened one as you finally rip the plastic packaging open that separates you from the delicious cream on a biscuit stick. yours were more green than riki’s—hence the “rich matcha” flavor nina gave you. silently, you both take a bite of the stick that you pull out. your taste buds are overwhelmed by the combination of the matcha-flavored cream with the matcha-flavored biscuit stick. you look between the front of where you’re sitting to peeking from the corner of your eyes as you see riki doing the same, making you hold back the chuckle before awkwardness comes to remind you quick, making you finish your whole biscuit as your hand reaches inside the aluminum bag for another one.

“you said you want to be a mangaka?”

the breath that you are holding is slowly dripping out, knowing that your intuition is right as to why he brought you here.

“i thought we were gonna fulfill our dreams together…” riki’s voice seemed so cold—even colder than the leftover winter wind in spring.

your facial muscles twitch, maybe it’s because of the sudden sensitivity your face felt the breeze or is the answer that you don’t wanna think about suddenly popping into your mind. yet, when you turn your head—forcing yourself to be brave—you find riki already staring at you. his piercing eyes making goosebumps rising on your skin as, even through his eyes, you can read what he is telling you. you’ve drawn and seen characters in those eyes, but feeling it in real life feels different. much more hurting. much more loathing.

you try to think of the words that you remember you discussed with your parents as you talk about the future, as they’ve reminded you of how dangerous that industry could be—"many animators are crunching their hours. we don’t want to see you like that."—and the fact that they knew, they knew you couldn’t be creative under pressure makes you rethink it. and here you are, trying to explain that to your number 1 supporter, just as you are to him in his dancer-now-future-idol career.

“i, i don’t know if it’s viable for me…” you started, glancing between the pocky box you’re holding and him as you let out a sigh.

“then choose something else other than an illustration, like, i don’t know, painting? graphic design? you like those, right?” you can hear the way riki’s throat is getting hoarse as he speaks, how he is gritting his teeth when saying those words before he takes another stick from his pocky box and takes a bite. the muffled crushing of the biscuit is much louder than when you both are eating it.

“i have to think about my future, riki. you do know i like history and geography and international relation calls to me the same time as a career as a mangaka.” you said in nearly the same tone, not wanting to hold back as you can’t believe just how one-sided he seemed to think of you. that you’re not more than just an art kid in his eyes. “just like how you pick between being a dancer and a soccer player.” you said the last sentence, voice getting lower until the sentence ends near mumbling. but you know riki’s listening.

this is now the correct time for you to pour why you hid your choice from him.

“don’t you know just how dangerous the animation scene in japan is? people are overworked to churn out season upon season nearly every year. being an independent mangaka is also hard when you have to fight against the big guns in the industry. though i’m good at drawing, i don’t know about my writing skills-“

“you’re writing skill is perfectly fine.” he cuts your tangent, pivoting his head back towards you, still not stopping you from continuing.

“okay, but people are suffering there and if i join that system, i know i’ll be suffering too.” you rub the bridge of your nose near the corners of both of your eyes, pressing down on it as you don’t want a single tear out. not right now when you are trying to defend your choice. you’re willing to let out different words just to try to make him understand.

“and if i’m going to school in international relations, that doesn’t mean that i’ll be giving up on drawing. maybe i could join an organization or event there that needs someone to illustrate stuff. maybe i could try doing freelance whilst also working part-time in some convenience stores near tourist spots in kyoto. that doesn’t mean i’m going to easily give up on that dream, it’s just i’m taking the longer way.”

riki held his breath as he heard your reasoning, the way the look of your eyes seemed to dwindle but also increased in sparkles as he couldn’t figure out what feelings you were trying to say. anger? sadness? satisfy?

but when he felt your hand reach to hold his, he knew that you now want him to, at least, believe in you.

“you don’t know just how frustratingly messed up my thoughts are when you said you are accepted to a korean label and to fulfill your dream as a k-pop star.” your thumb caressed his pinky finger, “because i know that it’s going to be hard for me or for anyone in our circle to reach your level of success this young and to talk to you in general because you’re either going to be in korea all the time or you’re going to be layers behind bodyguards when you’re not there.”

you gulp down your saliva, “i’m glad one of us is going to fulfill our dreams faster.”

the last sentence hits riki so much that he has his life’s perspective turn in some random of degrees. he had heard of his parents talking about his older sister who is now in university, about just how different her childhood dream is compared to what she pursued whilst growing up. the same goes for riki, who wanted to be a soccer player before becoming a professional dancer and now being an idol. you must be facing the same thing. he recall how you mentioned you wanted to be a chef during your childhood, how it changed to your love for drawing, before seeing yourself as a diplomat, yet that could definitely change given you have four years of university.

life is definitely much more mysterious than what riki has been accepting. people’s wants and needs change given the situation, from the farthest to the nearest. dedicated people are there but the environment and instinct seem to tell them to change paths. he definitely realizes more that one person doesn’t have a definite answer to what is their purpose in life. is it like him to perform on stage? is it like what he thought you’d do in making a best-selling manga? all of that is a possibility, but that is not definite.

now he knows that the purpose of life is to live. every change of heart is there for a reason that is at the same level as every dedication. that, in life, anyone can define themselves as plural, like his mother who is also a businesswoman, and his father who is also an engineer. like you, who may become a diplomat and an artist. or even maybe him, who can be an idol but likes to play soccer. he had felt that he was erasing one dream for the next. but actually, he is just changing priorities to the one he is focusing on. that is his idol career for him and the international relations major to you—because that dream is still there, now lying dormant.

“you can fulfill your mangaka dream too, (y/n).” your ears perked up at what he was saying. your hand rests and is idle on top of his as you can feel his hand underneath yours flipping unto the other side. “what you said is true. that you can still have drawing as a hobby to help relieve you from school stress, that you can make pocket money out of it. that the place is still there for you even if you change your destination to try something else. and i’m sorry for not realizing that.”

his fingers move to be in between yours before curling in, making you look down at them before at his face, “i don’t know when we will arrive at the place that we want to go. maybe never. maybe someday. maybe even tomorrow.”

riki let out a tremendous sigh.

“but i believe that you can still get there. i believe that you, me, and our friends will eventually reach there,” he spoke his mind, making him turn away his head because of how his hand is randomly holding onto yours.

before he turns his back, he felt your fingers also curling to meet his hand, locking both of your hands as the sky is turning from a blue to an orange, letting you know just how much time you have with him as he had told you, and only you, that he’ll be leaving tonight.

“thank you.” your sentence of appreciation is enough to lift a smile on his face as it reflects on yours.

the scribble on the half wall remains there as you hoped some school officials wash it or paint it some months after today. the sunbeams shining through the window to the hallway where students are finishing cleaning up their class so they can return home. the green grass on the field creating short shadows beneath them as the sun starts to sink. your hand remains in riki’s as you both step out from the school gate for the last time—seeing your juniors, giving you a sad look to see you for the last time, but also a cheeky look after finding your connected hands.

you and him stood in front of the gate as you faced each other. both of your houses are on separate ways as you slowly let go of his hand, letting out a shrug whilst also having a small pout on your face.

“so, this is a goodbye, then? i can’t even contact you anymore because you’re going to be busy,” you spoke out the truth—knowing that k-pop trainees aren’t also allowed to have their phones most of the time.

“more of like a see you later because i know that i’ll be giving you and the rest of us six tickets if i someday hold a concert here,” he replied, holding onto the strap of his backpack as you find his pocky box peeking out from when the water bottle is supposed to be placed—mirroring your own self.

riki’s eyes seemed to glimmer with something as he reached to the buttons of his gakuran, tracing his fingers on the thick gold button as he reached the second from the top, easily popping it off as he pushed it towards you. you looked down and up at his face, not wanting to show the shock on your face as you reached for the button, pinching it between your fingers before you placed it on your palm and instantly curled it up to keep it safe.

his body got knocked back as he felt the arms wrapping around him. his arms are in a pause before he naturally lets go, raising his hands to rest on your back as he tugs you in closer. his mouth beside your ear.

“promise me you’ll remember me,” he whispered, sending chills running down your spine.

“i promise and i hope you do the same,” you replied, sensing a single tear falling out of your eyes as you wiped it away with his uniform.

“of course, i do,” he spoke back. his body seemingly not wanting to let go of you as you pull yourself back, feeling him holding onto your upper arms as you let out a tight-lip smile.

“go on. you have a flight to catch,” you smirked and took a few steps back when you sensed his grip loosen. your curled hand with the button in the grip is resting by your heart while you see riki’s wide smile as he steps backward opposite to where you are going. flailing his arms as a wave of goodbye as you just want him to go back fast so you can finally shed the tears that are wetting your eyes.

you raise your own hand as you wave a goodbye when riki looks at your figure getting smaller and smaller with every step he takes backwards, wanting to run back to you to give you one last hug because he knows he’ll be missing you so much. he hopes that you’ll arrive at your dream tomorrow, but he will always give a word of encouragement to you in his mind even if he is training in the dance studio in seoul starting tomorrow.

he hopes you keep and take care of his second button, just like how you have supported and encouraged him to pursue his dream. and he is now more determined than ever to make you and everyone who knows him deep down proud as he closes this chapter of his life and opens up the next.

taglist: @raeyunshm @leilasmom @evidive @boba-beom @kwiwin @heesw1fe @aloverga @endzii23 @fluffyywoo @camipendragon @hiqhkey @wccycc @cha0thicpisces @y4wnjunz @yeehawnana @beansworldsstuff @kimipxl @blurryriki @amazzwon @reallysmolrenjun @stealanity @deobitifull @gandaengene @beomgyumineiro

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[abibliophobiaa]

Evermore - e.m x f!reader/ s.h x f!reader

summary: Eddie loved you, he still loves you, but he’s not the man he was before.

tags/warnings: Kas!Eddie/Vampire Eddie, angst, fluff, implied sexual content, character death, bittersweet ending, allusion to pregnancy (very brief, if you squint).

relationships: Eddie Munson x Afab!Reader, Steve Harrington x Afab!Reader.

song suggestions (in order): lovely by billie eilish; evermore by josh groban; beautiful boy (darling boy) by john lennon

Eddie…well, he remembers.

He remembers those before moments clearly.

Those times of togetherness. Of you and him side by side in his bedroom, hands tied together, whispering confessions of love. Of your words, spinning in his mind, as you whisper stories to him in the night, your fingers in his hair and his around your waist.

He can still see your face.

The way you smile at him, the faces you make when you’re hurt, happy, when you’re overwhelmed with pleasure. He can see them all. They’re clear as day still, as if they’re happening at present, an endless repeat in the back of his mind as he hunts—as he kills.

Because he’s no longer Eddie Munson.

No.

There's this otherness now. The mind he shares with this thing that resides in him. The monster. The creature that lurks in the shadows, that whispers of a deeper need, tells him to feed. The part of him that is enhanced, vision stronger, scent more refined, his hearing powerfully adept.

It’s the parts of him he’s most afraid of.

And yet he finds you that April evening, sitting before a little makeshift headstone in an open forest. You speak into the open air like you believe someone hears you, like someone’s listening.

He is, he supposes. He always is.

You’re sitting beside his Uncle Wayne, your head hung low, tears falling into decaying earth.

The world is full of rot now.

Hawkins is in four, and your heart is in two, and Eddie hides in the shadows because it’s best for the one.

He should be happy, he reminds himself, that the spirit of Henry, of Vecna, allows him these moments.

These moments of reprieve where his mind is his and he remembers all the things of his before—of a life that seems far away now.

A mere distant memory.

“I miss him.” Your words carry in the wind and curl around him, beckon him forth, but he never ventures further.

He’s not the man you knew.

Not anymore—never again.

*

His fingers long to touch you.

To reach out and grasp your hand as he watches from a distance when May burns bright.

You’re at the movies today with Dustin, Steve and Robin. You tip your head back in a laugh as they speak to you, but he knows it’s fake.

There’s a forced nature to the way you hold yourself. Your smile never quite reaches your eyes, the way you shift awkwardly on the spot, how you glance off into the distance.

You try and play it off as sincere, but Eddie knows.

You tell them you had fun, that you can’t wait for next time, that you’re happy you got to spend this time with them.

But when they’re gone, when you’ve returned to your home and creep up the stairs to your bedroom, Eddie sees through it all.

The way your forehead presses against your window, how you search into the distance in the way you used to when you were together. Longing, searching, begging for more.

You cry.

You cry so much lately and he wishes he could take that from you—this endless pain that sucks the life from you.

He misses you.

Gosh, he misses you so much.

But the shadows call, and he answers.

It’s safer this way.

*

You fell in love quickly, like many often do.

The first date was at the local diner, thighs slicked from nervousness and the summer heat against red vinyl, hearts all fluttery from excitement, his words a fumbled mess from his mouth because you were so pretty and he’d been wanting to ask you out for ages.

And with you there sitting across from him, all he could think was that, and he blurted out how pretty you are and his cheeks stained red because you bit your lip and averted your gaze and he assumed the whole thing was over.

But later that night it was all strawberry flavored kisses at your front doorstep, him nervous at first and you with this dangerous glint in your eye. He’d fall for it every time, and he told you as much, his forehead dropping down against yours to pull away and press a kiss to the tip of your nose.

He asked you, a little breathless, bitten with nervousness, “You wanna do this again sometime?”

And his heart felt like it had been punched in the best way when you’d crinkled your nose affectionately against his and whispered back, “Make out…or another date?”

“Both?” His stomach did that thing where it dropped out beneath him, but he’d thrown all caution to the wind at this point, because he liked you and you liked him and what a beautiful thing to know.

It was a summer love, Wayne had teased, as the weeks slipped on by in the lazy July heat. You spent nearly every day together, whether it was walking around town with ice cream cones in hand, hands stained vanilla and chocolate and rainbow colored sprinkles because you always talked for too long they started to melt, or in the back of his van at Lover’s Lake with a rolled joint shared between the two of you and nothing but time, hours spent in his bedroom where you talked until the moon grew high above the sky and a new day crept and you revealed all your thoughts and deepest secrets, a drive in movie with his friends from the band, where he’d introduced you as his girlfriend for the first time.

He immediately panicked, face hot and red, but you never corrected him. Instead, as the colors from the screen danced in the other boy’s eyes and they were distracted for a bit, you leaned over and kissed his cheek, and told him you accepted.

After that it was the kick start of his heart that first time he’d snuck through your bedroom window. Climbed up your trellis and nearly woke the neighbors as he careened into the room, leaves and other brush sticking out every which way from his hair. You’d giggled, all lyrical and bright, warning him he needed to be quiet. ‘Cause your parents were down the hall and you didn’t want to wake them, but you also really wanted to do this.

He wasn’t sure what to do, mentioned as much, just as you slipped your tank top from your shoulders and bared yourself to him. And he’d whispered a silent prayer, a curse under his breath, as he leaned forward and kissed you slowly, soundly, sweetly, walking you backward until you clambered across the bed and flopped down onto your back, staring up at him with a look in your eyes he’d never seen before.

But it was all for him, and relished in it as you whispered you loved him for the first time.

And what a beautiful thing, because no one had ever told him they loved him before. Not like that, not in the way one gives you a part of themselves, not as you handed your heart to him and he gave his right back.

Soon it was all pretty sighs and gasped moans against his mouth. It was hot flesh revealed as you helped rid himself of his clothes before he worked your shorts and underwear down your thighs, a hand curling around your kneecap as his hips settled against yours. It was a whimper and a plea of, “Need you, Eddie,” and a muffled cry as he pressed your head into his shoulder to stay quiet and slid inside inch by blessed inch for the first time.

And as he loved you in the night, closer than the two of you had ever been before, he promised himself it was forever.

Felt the first flicker of it deep within his chest as you shattered around him, babbling his name and telling him you loved him over and over and over again like a mantra.

Resigned himself to the fact you had all of him after he rolled off of you and opened his arms so you could crawl into them and fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.

Whispered it to you against the crown of your head, even though you slept soundly against him, and reminded you in the morning when you leaned up and kissed him and told him how happy you were to be with him, and watched your face as it lit up, because you felt the same.

*

You still wear the ring he gave you, back at the boathouse, back when you slept under a tarp and prayed someone would take away the burden of Chrissy’s death and the public scrutiny—the allegations that the man you loved was, in fact, a murderer, the threat of Vecna looming closer and closer every day.

He sees it one night as he stands in the trees outside your bedroom, the glint of silver on your ring finger.

He’d given it to you the night before Patrick’s death, said he wanted to marry you after all was said in done, said you were two kids who were probably too young to be thinking about marriage, but he knew it didn’t matter if it was now or years from now because the person he wanted at the end of it all would always be you.

You cried and nodded your head, and he laughed through his own tears and pushed the ring up onto your finger, one of his that had been small enough to fit. He pulled your hand up to his mouth to press a kiss there.

Forever then, you were going to be together forever.

In the end though, you only get a few days.

He breaks your heart and it breaks his because he promises you till he’s old and gray but only days later he watches you from below as you scream his name and sob for him to come back.

It breaks his heart as he cuts that rope dangling through your two worlds and your cries bleed into Dustin’s as he rushes from the trailer and gets on that damn bike.

It breaks his heart because you and Dustin somehow find him anyway at the end of it all, sobbing into his broken body as he pushes your hair from your face and tries to make you smile, even though he knows you’re splitting down the center.

It breaks his heart to watch your hands as they hover over the parts of him that are no longer whole and only bleed, because you want to keep him alive, want to keep your love alive. But there’s so much blood, there’s too much, and even he understands that he’s running out of time.

You’re telling him you love him over and over and over again and he asks you to tell him about your future. And you whisper against his bloody lips through salty tears that, “We’ll…we’ll have a little house with a l-little porch swing so we can sit and you can read to me every night. We’ll adopt a dog—our little O-Ozzy. And you’ll call me w-wife and I’ll call you husband, and maybe someday we’ll do something crazy like have a kid. One with…your hair and your eyes and your heart, because the world needs more of you. And when they’re all grown up, and they m-move out and have families of their own, you’ll still sit with me every night on that swing. You’ll tell me you l-love me and I’ll tell you I love you because…because there’s no reality I want without a forever with you in it.”

He smiles even though you whimper against him because he feels so happy and of all the things he’s done in life, all the adventures he’s gone on, all the choices that have led him here, you’re his favorite.

It makes it less scary, as his vision grows darker and darker and his life bleeds into the ground beneath him, knowing you’re the light to guide his path.

It does little to change the fact he’ll miss you forever when it finally grows dark.

You twist the ring now as you sit in your bedroom window, your knees pulled up to your chest. He sees the way your face crumples as you hold your hand close to your frame, just over your heart, and submit to your tears.

He hates himself, because in this new body he is cursed with a forever, and he’s cursed with a reality with no you in it.

And in the night, with nothing but your image just feet away from him and the moon to keep you both company, he cries, too.

*

Your first close call comes when the summer bleeds into fall.

Vecna finds a new vessel, his powers grow once more, and the Upside Down bleeds into Hawkins.

But there are those brave enough to fight back, and it comes as no surprise that you’re one of those people.

He watches from a distance, a shadow in the night, a guardian to keep you safe, because it’s the only way he can have you, even if it’s not in the way he wants.

You and the group you grew close with that last week of his life are in the streets of a now broken Hawkins, fighting off a monster that walks on all fours and has a mouth like a venus flytrap—a gaping maw of rows full of gore-slick teeth.

He knows its name. Demogorgon. He feeds off them, walks the same lands they do.

He is not part of the hive.

He’s special, that voice whispers to him sometimes, he’s a most remarkable creation. He’s a monster.

He feels the pull of that other world.

The voice calling his name as the demogorgon grows a little too close to you growls and leaps.

He screams in his mind and the monster’s head turns, turns toward him and in its momentary distraction you slide a knife into its head just before Steve whirls around with a nail studded bat and watches it bleed and die against the ground.

“What’s wrong?” He hears Steve ask you, catching your eyes staring directly in Eddie’s direction. “Are you hurt?”

Steve’s eyes scour your body for any injury, his hands coming to rest on your arms, but you’re fine.

Eddie made sure of it.

Robin turns as well to see what’s going on, Nancy using her shoulder for support, hand cupping a wound on her side.

But he’s hidden in the shroud of night.

That voice whispers his name again, and he knows he has to go back to the place where the sky is always red, but he lingers just a moment longer to hear you start to walk closer, your head tilting to the side, eyes straining to see.

“I just thought…” Your voice trails off in the wind. It’s been so long since he’s heard it, he’s almost forgotten what it sounds like. “Nevermind.”

*

You're hurt, and there are no beds in the hospital.

You’re hurt, attacked by a demogorgon, so it’s not like they can bring you there anyway. Too many questions, too many risks involved.

You’re hurt, and he watches from a distance as Steve and Nancy bind the wounds on your side with whatever scraps of fabric they have in their backpacks, snow beneath you blooming red like flower petals around you.

You’re hurt and he watches as Steve lifts your weak body from the ground, your eyes closed and limbs slack. He tries to not think about the way you already look gone from this side of earth, tries to picture your smiling face in his mind, because you’ll be okay.

You have to be.

You’re hurt and he follows from a distance as they take you back to Steve’s house, because his parents are gone and you’ll be able to rest up there. Eddie watches through the trees as Steve lays you down in his bed and murmurs with Robin and Nancy, his face furrowing in worry at the sight of you unconscious in his bed.

Eddie ignores the call of the Upside Down beckoning him back home.

Because all his mind can focus on is that you’re hurt, you’re hurt, you’re hurt.

He ignores the voice of Vecna and shoves him into the catacombs of his mind as he climbs into the tree outside Steve’s window and watches for days as you slip in and out of consciousness, towels on your forehead, as you fight off fevers. Steve, Robin and Nancy watch you in shifts, sitting at your side in vigil.

Sometimes the kids do, too, with their hand around your own and mouths moving as they talk to you, as they remind you of all the reasons why it’s too soon for you to go.

One afternoon, he hears Steve and Robin sitting outside on the lounge chairs set up around the patio, Steve’s head in his hands and Robin’s hand on his shoulder as she says, “There was nothing you could do. She knew what she was getting into.”

“But if she dies—if she dies…that’s two in less than a year. I can’t—I can’t lose them both.” If Eddie had a heart, he knows it would ache, because though their tentative friendship had been short, it had been meaningful.

He wishes he had more time to see what could have been.

“Eddie knew what he was doing, just like she did, too,” Robin reminds him. Her voice is low and she sounds broken. They both do. “You can’t carry around this guilt. It’s eating you alive. When did the doctor say they could get here?”

Steve’s breath is shaky as he says, “Tomorrow. They’re coming tomorrow. I just hope she makes it.”

It’s stupid.

Eddie knows it’s stupid, but under the cover of night, he slips out from the tree he’s hiding in and climbs up to Steve’s window. He climbs to where Steve has left it unlocked, always does to make it easy to slip out when his parents are home and the Party comes calling, and pushes in through the parted curtains.

His senses overwhelm him.

The smell of your sickness, the shallowness of your breath in and out of your weak lungs, the slow beat of your heart holding on beneath your ribcage.

There had been a time he’d fallen asleep to it, but now it only fills the cavity where his own organ used to beat with dread.

He reaches out to touch you, but you don’t feel like he remembers.

Your skin is slick and clammy, sweat clinging to the surface, body warm from your fever.

Your lips tremble in your fitful sleep, like you’re speaking, only no words come.

His fingers trail along your forehead, across the hair along your scalp, the curve of your ear.

His ears focus on your breath, the sound of your heart, and he tries to clear his mind of everything else.

Slips into that space he’s gone to only a few times before since becoming this thing he is now.

It’s dark there.

An endless sea of inky night that stretches endlessly on and he finds you there.

Feels the ground ripple near his feet as he walks over to where you sit on Steve’s bed.

In here, your body isn’t broken.

In here, there’s no sickness, no fever, no wounds staining through white bandages with your beautiful life.

Your head tilts up and his breath catches because you’re beautiful and it’s the closest he’s been to you in months.

And your face crumples as you look at him and jump off the bed, rushing over, hands pausing before touching him like you’re afraid you might hurt him—like you’re not sure he’s really there at all.

“Are you real right now? Am…”

“You’re not dead, sweetheart. I won’t let you go yet,” he tells you, bringing his arms around you to hold you close. His legs nearly buckle under the weight of the moment. You fold back into him as you always have, as if you’ve missed no time at all. He nearly chokes on a sob, feels you heave and crumble against him, noisy cries ripping from your throat. “I know, baby. I know.”

“You’re here.”

“I am,” he promises, cupping the back of your head.

“Am I dreaming?”

His chest cleaves in two as you look up at him, your eyes bloodshot, tears falling like glittering stars down your cheeks. His hands slide up to rest on either side of your face, thumbs brushing against your skin, mouth dropping kiss after kiss to your forehead.

“Something like it.”

“So you’re…”

“Yeah, still gone,” he tries to smile, but it makes your eyes water more, your hands shaking against his forearms as you reach up to touch him. “Unfortunately.”

“I love you,” you whisper the words and they sail in the wind in the world that lives in the in between.

“I love you, too,” he tells you. It hasn’t changed, and never will change. Time, space, and death will never erase that. “But I don’t have a lot of time. I need you to fight, okay? I need you to rest and heal. Think you can do that for me?”

“It hurts,” you say, and he knows you mean your mortal, wounded body.

“I know, I know it hurts. But there’s a doctor that’s going to come tomorrow and they’ll give you the medicine you need to kick that infection and patch you right up. I just need you to hold on till then. Think you can do that for me?”

His fingers trail down the side of your face, and somewhere in the vestiges of his mind he can feel your waking body relax, can feel your breathing deepen, your heartbeat strengthen.

“I want to go with you,” you tell him.

He shakes his head. “No. It’s not your time yet.”

Your head drops, and his stomach does along with it. “Will you come back?” Your words are a watery plea.

It's a sad sound that has his anguish exposed, raw anew.

“I’ll try, okay?” It’s the most he can offer you, and you nod slowly, sniffling on an inhale. “You’re going to live a long, long life, okay? I want you to do that for me.”

“I will, Eddie, I will,” you promise. You slide back into his arms, pressing your head against his chest, keeping him close.

“I can feel this place slipping from my mind,” he says, palm sliding up and down your back. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”

You dissolve like that, held safe and sound within his arms, there one moment and gone the next.

In waking, in the real world, when his eyes open and he’s back in Steve’s bedroom, he sees you there.

It’s then, blessedly and finally then, that you rest.

*

Before long, it’s Spring again.

The weather warms, but Eddie’s body never does. Dead things don’t have hearts that beat, they don’t have blood to circulate through their bodies. His chest rises and falls, sure, but that almost seems like an involuntary reflex of a life that feels more and more like a memory with every passing day.

You’re on Steve’s patio with the Harrington boy himself and Robin. You look more rested than he’s seen in a long while. He thinks to the night before, visiting you in your dreams, laughter in the air as he brought a vision back to your mind, one of the two of you sitting in a field back before the world grew dark, him with his head in your lap and your fingers in his hair, reading to him in an open field.

He hates leaving you at the end of it, hates it every time he has to go, and finds it grows harder and harder to do so every time.

But it’s not reality; he knows that.

He supposes eventually things will crash and burn, just as they always do; he just doesn’t expect it to happen so quickly.

One moment you’re sitting, laughing at something Robin has said, and the next he’s wincing as a twig snaps under his foot. The swear he lets out drives him to move, cursing his body for giving him supernatural hearing and smell, but not the speed he needs right now to outrun you.

Your feet pound in his ears, a thump that beats in tandem with your heart as you tear through Steve’s backyard and rush after him into the open street.

His insides tear in two the first time you call his name into the open air. It’s a cry, your voice shaking, tremulous like you can’t believe your sight.

He pushes faster, feet pumping beneath him, the echo of them a drumbeat. He needs to go. He needs to get far away. Run like hell, because you can’t see him.

Steve’s voice joins into the mix. A call of your name that sounds frantic in his ears. Steve cares for you. Eddie’s not blind to it; he’s grateful for it. Just like he’s grateful for it now, because your footsteps start to slow as Steve’s cries of your name grow louder.

“It’s Eddie,” you shout back, and Eddie rushes around a car and crouches down in your momentary distraction.

Catches sight of himself in a side door mirror, his reflection illuminated by the moon.

His eyes are dark and rimmed with shadow. Lines like little swirls beneath his bottom lashes, a telltale sign he needs to feed. And if he lifts his lip, like he does now, he sees those elongated canines.

He’s no longer human.

Hasn’t been for a while now.

You start to cry in your frustration. He hears your breath coming in rasping heaves, the way your voice breaks as Steve’s body collides with yours, how it wobbles as you tell him over and over again, “It’s Eddie, Steve.”

His eyes drift up to his face once more. The image looking back at him so unlike the boy you once knew.

Even if he would…even if he could, your Eddie is gone.

He’s gone, and he can never be again.

He can’t be what you need. He knows that for certain now.

Eddie crawls around the side of the car and catches the sight of Steve moving to curl his arms around your shoulders, forms illuminated in the street lamp, the way your face crumples against his chest as your cries grow hoarse. The pitiful way you whisper, “I saw him, Steve.”

But Steve’s honest.

He’s always been honest, and it shatters both you and Eddie when he says, “Eddie is gone. I’m so sorry, but he’s gone and I wish I could bring him back but I ca—”

His words break off at the end because you shove at him. Hands coming up to push Steve backward. He doesn’t flinch. Not as you shove him again and again and again as tears leak down your face.

Eddie wishes he could collect them all. Could ease the ache growing in your chest.

“Why would you say that?” Your voice is high and tight.

You shove at him again, body growing lax with your efforts. Feet wobbling, knees growing uneasy.

Steve remains firm, a strong tower, a shoulder to lean on in your time of need.

“I’m sorry, swee—”

“Don’t call me that. He called me that.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and holds his hands up in surrender.

“I hate you.” You shout it at him, and this time Steve does flinch.

You don’t mean it. Eddie knows you don’t. In a heart full of love such as yours, there’s never been room for it.

It breaks him even more.

Something on your face changes then. A flash of recognition flickers across your features. A slow, painful understanding sliding into place behind your eyes. Eddie wants to rush out, to hold you, to protect you from the utter despair that crashes over your form so suddenly. The way you practically fall into Steve and he’s there to catch you as you come crashing to the ground, howling with the anguish of what you start to sob into the man’s chest.

Of the reality you now understand. Maybe for the first time in the twelve months he’s been dead.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I know.”

“He’s gone.”

Steve cups the back of your head.

Eddie’s hand curls into a fist.

“He’s gone.”

Steve pulls you into his lap, rocks you as your cries grow louder.

Eddie closes his eyes.

“He’s gone. He’s never coming back, Steve.”

Eddie watches your heart break all over again.

And he makes his decision.

He knows what he has to do.

*

You’re there, sitting in the center of your bed as always, when Eddie comes to you in the world that lives in the in between again.

After your close encounter with death, he’s come to visit you multiple times. Always in your dreams, in that land that’s always so dark, and yet it’s peaceful there. He can make it anything he wants to be, a horrifying ‘positive’ to being linked to Vecna.

Some nights you simply talk, your warm hand in his cold one, laying on your bed.

Others, you play cards, put together a puzzle, sing along to music because he misses it so much—if only to pretend like anything about this is normal.

Eddie doesn’t have a heart, not anymore, but if he did…he knows it would be racing because of what he knows he has to do.

This night is different; this night changes everything.

Your head lifts and your smile blooms as he fills your vision, his skin pale and unmarked from the bites that killed him, and it should have been your first realization that he’s not what he once was from when he first began visiting you in your sleep.

The man who died, the man who had closed his eyes and who slipped away your arms is not the same one standing before you now.

It’s why what once was can never be again.

It pains him to admit it.

In another world, another life, he would be selfish.

But he can’t.

He can’t fathom the idea of you aging when he stays forever twenty-one, can’t imagine losing you to time at the end of your life. He can’t think about it because doing so would break him.

And he can’t look at the pain in your eyes any longer. The way you always look to the woods, always searching for him, seeking out the boy who no longer is.

You need to move on, to flourish, to grow beyond this.

Your body crashes into his, your voice muffled by the front of his shirt. He’s always wearing the same thing, somehow never dirty, rid of his blood. “I missed you,” you breathe into him, into the chilliness of his body.

You never comment on it. He sometimes thinks you pretend it’s not real to preserve yourself from the pain of the ‘what if.’

He pulls his head back just enough to look down at you, and your mouth dips south. “I need to talk to you.”

“Okay…” You trail off as he settles down on your bed, his legs straight as you fold yours beneath your body where you sit beside him.

His fingers reach into the spaces between yours and lace within them. His next words, he thinks if he wasn’t already dead, might kill him. “I can’t feel you, baby.”

You brush your thumb along the back of his hand, mouth a wobbly pout as you say, “What do you mean? I can feel you right now. You’re…you’re right here.” You hold your interlocked fingers together in front of his face, trying to smile.

He leans forward and brushes his mouth near the corner of your lips. “I can feel you…but it’s like I’m hollow. Like I'm empty. You notice how I’m always cold now?”

You sniffle noisily, nodding. “It’s cold here, though.”

He brings your head closer to his chest. He presses your ear where proof of his life used to lay inside. Now it’s only silent.

Empty.

So fucking empty.

“Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Don’t make me say it, sweetheart, please.” He chokes on a cry as your hand slides up beside where your cheek rests, your head pulling back enough to look up at him. “Do you get it now? Do you get why it can only be like this here…in your dreams, in our dreams?”

“Eddie…”

“So here’s what you’re going to do, okay? You’re going to live. You’re going to do it to the fullest. Do all the stupid shit we didn’t get to do together. Travel the world. Try all the food. You’re going to move on, okay? I need to know you’re gonna be fine—”

“Eddie, no” you say, swallowing the sob threatening to spill from your mouth. “Just stay here.”

“This—this isn’t real.” The chair imagined the night before disappears from sight. Dissolves into nothing. The books sitting on the floor near your bed, the ones you’ve been reading to him, follow suit. One by one, the image he conjured up slips away. Little particles of light sifting and shifting into nothingness. “I can’t be what I was to you before. That future we dreamed up? I can’t do that. I can’t give you that. Not in this body, not like this. And I can’t…I can’t watch you grow up, can’t watch you and all our friends...please, shit, please d—”

Your hand comes up to rest on his cheek, and he finds you crying silently before him.

“I want you to live for me,” he says, brushing his lips against yours. One of the last kisses you’ll share. “I need you to promise me that. I need you to do all the things I can’t. Take pictures, go on adventures, read all the books, find new hobbies. I need you to experience the world, fall in love with it, fall in love again.”

You’re kissing him and he’s holding you close. His hands fist in your shirt and cling to you, like you’ll drift into the wind, like if he lets go you’ll flutter away. And in a way, you will.

It’s goodbye.

It’s the end of who you both were, who you wanted to be, and no longer can.

You whisper over and over again into his lips that you love him, that you’ll never forget him, that you’ll live for him.

He smiles into your skin and nods his head, his hand coming to rest against your chest.

You’re alive and you're real, you’re his and you’re also not.

Part of you always will be.

“I’ll miss you. I’ll always miss you,” Eddie tells you, his face moving to press into the side of your neck. He feels the shudder of your breath as you take in his words, as you understand the seriousness of them. His finger taps your chest and he laughs, but it’s a broken sound. “I’ll be right here.”

You don’t talk for a while. You rest in the unspoken understanding that this is the last time you'll be together.

It’s the last time you’ll feel his arms around you, the last time he’ll hold you like he planned on doing for the rest of his life.

He presses a kiss to your brow and feels you hug him tighter still as you lay beside him on your bed, legs tangling with his own, your fingers in his hair.

You kiss endlessly. Constant presses of skin against skin.

A thousand, for all the days you’ll be without. You kiss until you’re breathless and in the waking world the sun starts to creep up the waiting sky.

“Live, sweetheart, live,” he says against your skin, feeling you warm, feeling your body start to fade in the circle of his embrace.

“I love you,” you whisper, eyes lingering on his face as particles of light burst and dance around you. Just a few moments now. “I’ll always love you. And I’ll do what you asked. I’ll live, Eddie. I’ll do it for you.”

“I love you, too.”

He smiles, and light bursts behind his eyes.

When he wakes, the sky is red, but all he sees is your face.

He finds peace in that.

*

Vecna’s gone now. Has been for a while.

The world heals and rests, and the Upside Down chooses Eddie. The world that once was, full of dark skies and death, is now teeming with life.

He’s tied to it now, just as he was before, but more so now.

There’s a small gap in worlds, left open, that he ventures out of every so often to remind him of the place that seems almost foreign now.

He’s on a path he’s traveled many times now.

Not in some years, but he’s familiar all the same. The winding roads that lead to your family home bring him to your front lawn. There are two cars out front, one a familiar BMW, and beside it sits a newer, bigger SUV.

The place looks different than when you were two kids in love. There are more flowers now, brighter blooms, and the smell of something sweet spills from the curtains blowing in the wind.

He hears the heartbeats within the home before the voices. Four all together. Two slower—he knows those are adults. There’s the rapid flutter of what he assumes to be a child, and the last is muffled and swift, unfamiliar to him even after all these years in his new body.

His head tilts up and he sees Steve Harrington’s familiar head of hair moving about a little boy’s room illuminated by a lamp. There are endless blocks strewn in a corner, little postcards from places all over the world plastered on the sky blue walls.

He’s nearly thirty two if Eddie remembers correctly, and wears a pair of thin wired glasses. He’s still disgustingly pretty in that way only Steve Harrington could be.

Steve’s voice is soft as he runs his fingers through the little one's hair. Brushes a kiss on his forehead from where he kneels beside a kiddy bed. “I told you, the Tooth Fairy is nice. Plus you’re four, little man, you don’t have to worry about it for a long time. And if you really don’t want the Tooth Fairy to come, I’ll tell them our house is off limits.”

“Are you sure?”

Steve nods, his chuckle carrying through the gently parted window. “Plus, Uncle Dustin and Aunt Suzie don’t know what they’re talking about anyway.”

“They don’t?” Those little eyes perk up, soft and round like his father’s.

“No, Jamie. Also, didn’t I tell you I’ll always keep you safe?” The little boy nods, and Steve’s finger slides down the gentle slope of his nose until it wrinkles and a boyish giggle reaches Eddie’s ears. “So you never have to worry, because I’ll always protect you. Always.”

“Daddy, can you sing me the song?” It’s then, as Steve nods and shifts to sit in the bed beside his son, Eddie sees the boy fully.

He’s got Steve’s eyes and his dark hair, but Eddie immediately knows the rest is all you.

He doesn’t even need to see you appear in the doorway to notice the clear resemblance. But his breath catches all the same. You’re just as he remembers you. Smiling and beautiful as ever, one hand on the doorway, the other on your hip.

He catches the rings on your left hand, and then higher up, around your neck against your heart where he remains forever now, the ring he gave you all those years ago.

You're thirty-one now, just like Steve, though you could never tell ten years has gone by from looking at you.

You’re that girl from the diner, the same girl he fell in love with so many years ago it feels like another lifetime.

“Jamie Edward, it’s past your bedtime, sweet boy,” you admonish, and Eddie’s throat swells with emotion, chest aching with fondness.

He glows inwardly, because what a gift you’ve unknowingly given him.

Jamie Edward.

“Uncle Dusty scared me,” the little boy whines as you join them and sit on the end of the bed.

Eddie watches your fingers reach across and twine with Steve’s, and he feels that ache in his chest for you start to subside. The part of him that always feared you’d live in the past forever, stuck in the memory of the boy you’d loved and lost.

Steve whispers, “Tooth Fairy.”

You only nod.

Jamie climbs further into his father’s arms, resting his head over his chest, looping an arm around his waist.

Steve rocks the boy slightly and sings. The sound that comes out is beautiful. Uniquely Steve. Quiet, a little raspy in tone, but Eddie feels a weightlessness creep into his soul as the words fall from his mouth and out that open window.

“Close your eyes, have no fear. The monster’s gone, he’s on the run, and your daddy’s here…”

Jamie’s head nuzzles against his father’s chest, and your ringed hand comes up to brush along your little one’s hair as your husband sings into open air.

“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…beautiful boy…”

Eddie turns on the heel and starts in the other direction, Steve’s voice following him along the way like a gentle caress.

A healing balm.

He walks down the path from whence he came, a new lightness to his steps.

There’s no bitterness, no sadness.

No, there’s only joy, because you’re happy and you’re alive and so full of it and that’s all he’s ever hoped for.

He kicks a rock down the road and hums to himself, glancing over his shoulder one last time to watch Steve kiss you on the forehead, his palm coming to rest lovingly against your slightly rounded midsection.

Steve moves away from you a second later to close the blinds and pauses. For a moment Eddie wonders if he can see him, hidden in the veil of his shadows. Steve squints and lingers, then shakes his head softly as though he thinks he’s seeing things, and shuts the light before he follows you out of Jamie’s bedroom.

Eddie smiles to himself.

He’s finally at rest.