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thelittleboyfromloveactually · 3 years ago

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Record Store (pt 2)

Thomas Brodie Sangster x reader

Word count: 1989

Part 1

I hope y’all like this mini series! I am having fun writing it, enjoy!

“Hey Y/N!” Jane yelled

Jane was another one of your best friends. You had known her since high school but you became close when you found out you would be attending the same college. Jane is studying to be a pediatric oncologist, at least for now. You were walking across campus from your previous class headed to Anesthesiology. Jane was joining you in this class. You hadn’t really told anyone about you and Thomas because you weren’t sure if he wanted you. And who says there is anything going on, you haven’t even been on a date yet. You could go on this date and then decide he isn’t for you. So you didn’t want to make a big deal about it.

“Hey Jane! Are you ready to die of boredom?” Anesthesiology was not your strong suit nor your main interest. And if you were being honest it was very boring, but it was a requirement.

“Yup i have had so much coffee i think it's going to be impossible to fall asleep this time” she said practically bouncing up and down

You laughed “great!”

“You wanna hang out tonight there is going to be a party, or we could just chill, get some homework done” she asked

Great , now you had to explain why you couldn't hang out. “Um actually i am busy, sorry” you said

“That's fine, what are you doing?” she asked looking at you

“Um work”

“No your not”

“No im not” you both laughed, you sucked at lying “i have a date actually”

“Oh really? Who's the lucky guy?” she asked teasingly

“I met him at Royal Records, he asked Felix where i worked, he came to the cafe and asked for my number. He is taking me to dinner tonight” you said, trying to avoid saying his name

“Cool, who is he though?” she asked

“Um his name is thomas” you said

“Nice! Well you will have to introduce me, and make sure to ask if he has any friends” she said, winking at you and giggling. Oh I'm sure he has friends, you thought, famous ones. “Where is he taking you?”

“Chiltern Firehouse” you responded

“Wow, he must be rich, that's a really nice restaurant, i've never been” she rambled

You laughed nervously, before now you never thought through if you two did become a thing, how hard it would be. He is famous and probably rich, not that you cared you just figured that the public would. You shook the bad thought out of your head and walked into class taking your seat.

After your 4 classes, you went home, or to your dorm. Your roommate, Cleo, was sitting on the couch eating from a bag of chips. You greeted her and went straight to your room. You looked at the time it was 4:13 pm, you had about 2 hours before you were supposed to meet him. Your reservation was at 7:00 but Thomas had texted saying that you could go for a walk beforehand. You showered, did your hair and put on make -up. You ended up picking a champagne colored silk dress that just before your knees. You grabbed your purse and your jacket and headed out the door. Thoms had offered many times to pick you up, but because of the dorms you thought it would be too complicated. You told him you would meet him outside of your dorm building, and then he would pick you up. As you walked out the door of the building you felt a brush of cold breeze hit your face, you smiled. Then a black car pulled up and Thomas stepped out of it.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, love” he said with a smile, he took your hand and opened the passenger side car door for you.

“Thank you kind sir” you said jokingly

“Of Course my lady” he shut the door and headed onto the other side, he sat down and you were off. You loved London at night, all the lights and the people. You smiled as you looked around, you didn't know it but Thomas kept glancing over at you and admiring your beauty.

THOMAS’ POV

She looked absolutely gorgeous. It has been a while since I have been on a date so I hope she likes it. I couldn't help but admire her features as she looked so longingly at the city. She looked at me and smiled, I looked back on the road and smiled too.

“How long have you been acting?” she asked sweetly

I was genuinely surprised that she didn't know, most girls that I go on a date with know more about me than I do myself, “almost my entire life, how long have you been wanting to be a doctor?” i asked

“Since highschool. I have been exposed to a lot of medical stuff my entire life. My dad was a surgeon. And I just want to help people” she said fidgeting with her hands

“Oh nice! Would you like to play some music?” i asked handing her my phone

“I would love to” a few seconds later back in black came on and she started mumbling the lyrics. I smiled, she was adorable. Throughout the song her words became more clear and I was able to hear her voice. It was beautiful. She even made the roughness of the song sound smooth and angelic. I kept looking over at her, I couldn't help it.

About 5 minutes later I pulled into the valet parking lot. I walked to the other side, opening her door and helping her out. We walked across the street to the park that was lit by some street lights. We had about 30 minutes to kill before our reservation.

“So Y/N, tell me a little bit about yourself,” I asked her. I was honestly intrigued by her. I wanted to know everything.

“Um well what do you want to know?” she asked as we walked along

“Anything really” i responded, still looking at her

“Well as you know i am a med student at cambridge, i went there for college too, i actually graduated top of my class.” she said proudly

“Wow, that's awesome! You're pretty smart huh?”

“Ya i guess you could say that, how about you? Why did you decide to become an actor?” she asked

I looked ahead “well my parents where theater actors, i also didn't always like school so acting became a sort of escape”

“That's sweet, why didn't you like school?” she pushed, my hand was swaying net to her as we walked, our fingers brushing occasionally

“I guess I just struggled with reading especially” I gave in. I put my hand into hers slowly, her hands were cold. She looked at me and I smiled, she smiled back. The conversation continued, and we kept walking until it was time to go inside.

NORMAL POV

They escorted us to our table and we sat down. It was a very nice restaurant. There was classical music playing in the background, you could hear the sound of forks against plates and wine glasses clinking together.

“Bonjour! How can I help you today?” the waiter asked, you could hear the french accent in his voice, you decided that you would try to have a conversation.

“Bonjour, je pense que nous allons juste prendre un verre pour le moment” you told him that you were just going to order some drinks for the moment. The waiter smiled, you looked at Thomas, his mouth was opened in surprise. You giggled

“Great, what can i get for you, we have a very nice champagne that just came in if you would like?” the waiter suggested

“That sounds great, is uh that ok with you?” thomas asked

“Yup” you nodded

“Ok we will take two glasses of that please, thank you, oh and some waters” thomas said

“Of course i'll be right back” the waiter left

“Sooo,” Thomas started, “you speak french huh?”

“That's really cool, i took french in highschool but im afraid its all left me now” he said leaning closer to you

“Shame, we would have secret conversations” you said giggling

Thomas loved to laugh, it sounded so happy.

A few minutes later the waiter came back with your drinks. You both ordered your food which was brought out shortly after. The food was very fancy, and very good. After you finished Thomas paid and escorted you back outside.

“Would you like to go get some ice cream?” he asked putting his hand in the small of your back

You nodded “that sounds amazing”

The two of you walked down the street hand and hand. You both were adorably nervous. Both you and Thomas had red cheeks. The ice cream shop was adorable.

“Hi, what can I get for you today?” the girl at the counter asked

You looked at Thomas, asking permission to order, he nodded encouragingly.

“Hi! May i please have the lavender honeycomb please” you said politely

“Yes, and for you sir?” she asked

“I'll have the same” thomas said taking out his wallet

You smiled at him

The girl handed you your ice cream and the two of you left. You licked your ice cream cone happily.

“How is it?” asked thomas

“Amazing! Thank you so much” you said

“Anytime, this had been really fun” he said his eyes scanning over your face

“Yes it has” you said smiling at him

“Oh um you've uh, you have some-” he tried to show you where on your face the ice cream was but you couldn't seem to find it

“Did I get it?” you asked laughing

He laughed “uh no, here um, may i?”

You nodded, his thumb brushed under your lower lip, revoking the ice cream. You felt the butterflies return.

“There” he said

You blushed smiling, “thanks”

“Your very welcome” he said smiling back at you

You finished your ice cream and walked back over to the car. The car ride back to your dorm was filled with laughs and singing. You could seem to stop smiling, and neither could thomas. By the time you got to your dorm it was late, but you didn't want to get out of the car. Thomas opened the door for you and helped you out. He walked you to the door of the building

“I had an amazing time tonight” he said

“Me too, we should do this again” you said

“Yes, yes we should” it was quiet, he moved a piece of stray hair behind your ear

“I never told you how beautiful your voice was” he said looking into your eyes

You blushed “thank you”

“Ya” was all he said before his lips were on yours. His lips were soft and moved perfectly with yours. His hands move to your hips, pulling you closer to him. You noses brush against each other. Your heart began to race. The two of you pulled away, both in need of air.

He stared into your eyes, and pecke you lips one last time

“good night Y/N” he said in a whisper, he still had a tight hold on you

“Good night” you said

He looked down and let go fo you, he turned to walk away, but he didnt he didn't even make it 3 steps before he was turning around and coming back to you

“Maybe just one more kiss” he said, bridging your lips to meet him again. You smiled into the kiss. This boy would be the end of you. Then, too soon it was over, he broke apart and smiled

“Bye” he said with a slight laugh

You giggled “bye”

He walked away looking back at you, before getting into the car. You waved him off. Then when he was out of sight, you squealed. Maybe there was hope for you two yet.

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scarlettaagni · 4 years ago

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Tough Meat

It was a simple Hunt, really.

The beings on NV-39W don't stay above the surface. It's too hot. So they stay in caves. As a result, they have lost their sight, which originally consisted of the visible light spectrum, like humans. In exchange for their sight, they have a renowned sense of smell, and an arsenal of natural weapons to match their territorial attitude. Pale, soft, turgid skin but with incredibly calloused limbs and claws that can pierce the hardest stone. Spines tinged with a mild toxin they themselves were immune to, but would inspire a searing pain in any trespassers unfortunate enough to get too close. The spines face one way, but can be flexed to face the opposite direction should they get stuck in a tunnel, which they use to navigate and expand the edges of their society beneath NV-39W’s surface. Nearly mindless like a Serpent, but social enough among their own race to make them quite an intelligent threat to behold.

They are called The Unseen.

Yautja vision naturally isn't restricted to the visible light spectrum, and not even the dark can hide prey from their all-seeing thermal sight. Unlike Serpents, the Unseen still have body heat.

It was a simple Hunt. Up until it wasn't.

Cave-ins were anticipated. They happen all the time, even if there were no intruders who don’t intimately know the tunnel system as the Unseen do. A cave-in is nothing but an inconvenience to them. Sometimes, one may collapse along with the rubble and perish, but it’s an environmental hazard. They’ve been down in this system for hundreds of thousands of years. If a tunnel were to collapse, they could simply repave their way through the dead-end, or make a shortcut.

Yautja had no such luxury.

They merely know the hazards, and persist. If they really needed to, they could claw their way out of a dead-end... certainly?

As luck would have it, there was an Odd Crest on this Hunt. With two marks on the family face before him, Bhu’ja-Lulij, or “Mad Ghost” as he was known, was a competent warrior and a behemoth of a man, who could scrub the shame from the Odd Crest legacy. He rested his axe upon his shoulder and grinned like a ghoul to his compatriots.

As fate would have it, there was another particular Yautja on this Hunt. Not an Odd Crest, but as with every other dispatched member sent to NV-39W, a member of the same clan. His name was all but lost to time. Permanently etched into the physical and digital records of history, and yet all but vanished from the mouths of the clan. No one cared after a certain point. But his name was Tieri. Don’t ever forget it. The meaning is unimportant. Speak only of his true name, which was Tieri.

He was Mad Ghost’s Hunt-brother, and they may as well have been childhood friends or even blood brothers. But the same could be said for anyone else in the group and Mad Ghost. What was special about Tieri?

Tieri fell down.

There was a cliff in a topmost chamber of the Unseen’s colony. A cave-in was anticipated.

And so, Tieri fell down. And Mad Ghost with him. A Hunt-brother, ever by his side.

Maskless Tieri stared at the light that peeked ever so slightly from the rubble that formed their new ceiling. Mad Ghost lay on his side as if in bed, his mask also torn from his head.

Their equipment was scattered within the rubble, damaged or lost. Both men had smashed their heads into debris as they fell, severing the wires keeping their masks attached to their respirators and dislodging them altogether. It would take excavation they couldn’t spare to retrieve them. And wouldn’t you know it, their one path to mercy was smashed to pieces. No quick suicide for them.

Mad Ghost rolled over and awoke to the same sight Tieri beheld, the select spots of light that shone through their cone-shaped prison of rubble. Weakened from the fall, Mad Ghost turned to look at Tieri, who was still staring above. Their luminescent blood was scattered around, particularly by their mouths and heads. If the light above were to disappear, the only thing visible would be their bodies and the glow of their own blood.

The Odd Crest noticed Tieri had debris laying on his chest, spattered with his blood. Mad Ghost fought through the pain to sit up, stand on his two feet, and summon the strength to remove the stalactite. He gingerly picked his Hunt-brother up and laid him back down beside the debris he was laying on. Tieri listlessly stared off to the side.

The wounds were deep. Luckily, out of their equipment left, both still had their medicomps secured to their thighs. Mad Ghost pondered his state. Sure, he was injured, but Tieri was far worse. It wasn’t just a bruise. His chest was alight with blood past the broken skin, and the sweet noxious smell of Yautja gore permeated the small space they had.

Mad Ghost prepared the burner and crushed the very debris that had crushed Tieri into the dish. He poured the cauterization fluid in and the stark black of their surroundings flared a bright blue, which quickly died out. As he scraped the resultant gel from the dish, he realized how wide the wound was. A bullet wound could be sealed shut easily, but this...

He tried his best. It couldn’t be stapled shut. It couldn’t be cauterized shut. He merely caked the caustic gel where he could spot oozing blood. Tieri made no sound, though even the most seasoned warriors still bellowed with pain when burning their wounds shut.

If they could be taken to an infirmary and soon, certainly they can fix this.

Certainly, their hunting group is out there, clawing away to rescue them. Though, the situation they had just escaped by falling down was precarious, so the clan may have chosen to evacuate. If so, then they may regroup in the next couple of days.

“All will be fine,” Mad Ghost reasoned. “Tieri has some days to spare. Don’t you, Tieri?”

Tieri said nothing. In fact, he was silent for the following days in the hole.

And he said nothing for the following weeks as well.

“Tieri...” The ailing Hunt-brother said. “You’ll never heal well if you don’t rest.”

Mad Ghost ran his hand down Tieri’s face, closing his eyes for him. The Odd Crest held Tieri’s cold hand within his own, eyes wide to keep his vision from obscuring.

He subsisted himself, at first, on what grubs wormed their way through the cracks in the debris. He opened Tieri’s weary eyes to show him. He offered them to Tieri, who did not bite. Mad Ghost reluctantly made no waste of what little they were given, so he selfishly ate them all. The Unseen survived this way, as well.

But eventually, the grubs stopped working their way through the rubble to the trapped Yautja. Less and less appeared each day that passed, Tieri partaking in none of it.

The stalactite was a stalagmite. Mad Ghost was alone before he even woke up.

And each day, it seemed less likely that the clan would be coming back for him. Given the intrusion, the Unseen seem to have abandoned the chamber, so no honorable death in battle was to be waited for with bated breath.

No hope. No company. No food.

Once Mad Ghost stopped playing pretend, he had to accept the next step of reality. And it did not agree with the Code of Honor. It was him, or Tieri. And Tieri already fell down. He spoke to the gods.

“Don’t make me,” he prayed. “Please, don’t force me to.”

But none spoke back. Tieri continued to fester, and the stench of his burnt, sweet flesh clouded the area. His saccharine blood did not cease its glow. The star that circled the planet would disappear, and with it, the light that rained from above. And only Tieri’s light shone through the endless black until it came back.

Humans were “soft meat”. Serpents were “hard meat”. But no one dared speak of “tough meat”. To partake of “tough meat” was to desecrate the corpse of your brethren. An immutable act of dishonor.

The Odd Crest must pick his poison. To die a dishonorable, pathetic death, wasting away alongside his deceased Hunt-brother. Or he can help himself to the 800 pounds of tough meat lying across him.

Honor is rigid, unforgiving in most of its ways. There was no way to escape this place with any honor intact. If this is so, then was it worth it, to try and live?

As Mad Ghost restlessly pondered, he fought starvation through sheer willpower, using the time as he made his decision to use what medical supplies he hadn’t spent on Tieri’s body on his own wounds.

He fasted as long as he could, until he started noticing he couldn’t stand without the entire space seeming to tilt violently to one side, the impact of his suddenly unconscious body rocking the already precariously structured space that so graciously withstood all this time.

Tieri’s lifeless eyes gazed in some vague direction, no longer at the light.

Tieri was gone. He fell down. This wasn’t Tieri anymore. This was a corpse that was named Tieri. Rather, the eyes that remained a part of the body formerly known as Tieri stared endlessly into the darkness.

The Black Hunter had taken Tieri. He hadn’t taken Mad Ghost. Clearly, he was meant to live, for if he was to die here, wouldn’t the Black Hunter have taken them both all at once? Perhaps, he thought, this was a sign. There was a reason why he was left alive next to the body of his comrade. Tieri sacrificed himself for his Hunt-brother. He let Death take him in his place. Fate was to have Mad Ghost partake in tough meat.

“Oh... Tieri...” the Ghost crooned. “Would you want me to...?”

The body naturally did not respond.

“Would you ever forgive me...? Is this... your intention? Is it... Cetanu’s?”

The Ghost raged as every inch of his body ached and screamed as the room turned incessantly.

What had he done to deserve this? Were Death and Tieri laughing and scorning him from behind the veil? He already suffered. The death of Tieri was enough. Was this a punishment of both he and his fallen Hunt-brother? Everyone hated him. The clan, the Unseen, Fate, Death, Tieri- all of them. Undoubtedly, a preemptive punishment for what he must do now.

The Ghost was alive, because Death refuses to claim him. Certainly. Out of spite, he must stay alive. He has no choice. Cetanu won’t take the Mad Ghost.

The Odd Crest picked his poison.

“Forgive... please, forgive me. Forgive me for what I am about to do. Tieri, please forgive me. Payas, forgive me. Payas… Tieri… forgive... please...”

He dug his face into the outside of Tieri’s thigh and bit down as hard as he could. The body was cold, and yet, after so long, the inside was still lukewarm. Room temperature blood seeped slowly out the broken skin. He pulled away and tore off the skin, along with chunks of muscle clutched in his jaws.

Mad Ghost chewed as well as he could, and swallowed despite the lump present in his throat as he turned to meet the burning stare of Tieri.

“Don’t stare.”

“Stop staring at me.”

“Don't point your eyes my way.”

“Don't look.”

“Don’t look at me in that way.”

He traced his hands down Tieri’s face and closed his eyelids one last time.

“Rest now and forever.”

He continued to pick at the thigh, eating less like a starving man and more like a simple beast with its kill. Calmly, orderly.

Mad Ghost sat, with the leg perched onto his lap, a glowing hole larger than his own hand bitten into it. The femur was visible. He had bitten all the way to the bone. He’d finally eaten something for the first time in several weeks.

Immediately, he threw himself away from the corpse as if struck upside the head and writhed on the floor like a pest. It was if his body rejected this act of immutable dishonor, and in an attempt to undo it, purged all the tough meat out of his system. His first meal was no more, and it had only been an hour. Mad Ghost had just wasted among the best parts to eat of another creature.

Perhaps he could stop now, with this second chance. When he is rescued, he could cover up the bite.

…

But if he stopped now, he might not live long enough to see his rescue.

Mad Ghost gave himself another hour to collect himself, and attempted to feed again. He limited himself to something smaller, and ate only a sliver of Tieri’s calf. Two times, it almost went back up the way it came, and it succeeded on the third.

Betrayed by his own body, though knowing it had every good reason to refuse, Mad Ghost pulled at his hair, abusing himself in any possible way, and screamed to the ceiling above, no light to hear him shout. His fist found itself buried deep into his belly, and he coughed up warm gore. Whether this was more of Tieri or his own blood, he couldn’t tell as he collapsed examining the sickeningly sweet mess in his hand.

He won’t survive like this. If he can just keep enough tough meat down long enough, even if it is ultimately purged, it will be enough to get on by. Until when? He wasn’t sure, and especially not about whether he could last that long.

Over the following days, the Ghost became more resistant to his gag reflex, much to his physical and emotional upset.

Leave enough for them to bury. Leave his face intact. If you must be cruel, be selective. Ravage the meaty parts. There is no meat on the face; allow him the barest privilege of a recognizable face.

When night fell, and starlight disappeared, Tieri kept the hovel lit.

Light of life. Light went dark. Light was sweet. Light was inside Tieri… Light was in the meat... tough meat. Break the skin and let the light out. Hot light... warm meat... cold hands. Tieri was cold. Tieri was warm. Tieri was all over the place...

It was unclear if the clan was ever coming back. Maybe one day, they will return to the site of their Unseen Hunt catastrophe and uncover two skeletons within the rubble, and they will never learn the dark truth. If Mad Ghost were to die here, next to his beloved Hunt-brother, that is all he could wish for next.

The cauterized scabbing Mad Ghost strove so hard to create was eventually picked away as he sought to get at what organs were left inside the chest cavity. Once more again, Tieri’s heart was aglow.

Eventually, Tieri’s leg separated from the rest of his body. So sick and delirious, Mad Ghost couldn’t tell whether he had torn it off on purpose, or if Tieri had decayed so much, that his hip joint simply gave out.

Free to get at the livor mortis kept so cruelly away from his reach, he dug in. As he did, the world, its darkness, and its light disappeared, replaced by only Tieri and his light.

Then suddenly, everything flooded back. An enormous crash echoed through the caverns. A bright light Mad Ghost had not seen in months exposed his malnourished flesh to the outside world. By instinct, he froze, then pulled his face from the leg and turned to face the light.

Within his distorted vision, several Hunters stood, masked, but drew back at Mad Ghost’s gaze.

With tough meat tumbling out of his throat, the Odd Crest was at a loss for words. He hadn’t spoken for weeks, and suddenly, all rational thought disappeared.

All he did was make a guttural choking noise, luminescent dead blood smeared all over his face, then the walls were further torn down by more Hunters. Sharing looks among one another, all within a second, they rushed into the space. Dropping the leg, Mad Ghost gibbered as he threw himself back beside Tieri, who appeared to be screaming to the heavens with his head reared back, jaw unfurled, chest hollow.

Surrounded, overwhelmed, words failing him, weakened from months of malnutrition, his detainment was quick, and as his perception blurred, he continued to struggle and shriek.

Mad Ghost was out of the rubble. Now, he was out of the caverns altogether and in the blazing daylight of NV-39W. Now, he was on the cold metal floor of a Yautja ship, feeling hot in the face as he felt his mandible snap from the blows dealt by his captors.

Stripped of all armor, he was strapped to a cold table.

As cold metal pierced its way through his flesh and deep into his neck, he found the words he most needed to say.

“I didn’t kill him...” Mad Ghost whispered. “He was already dead. I didn’t kill him...! I didn’t kill him!”

As his consciousness dissipated, his pleas slurred and quieted. Silent masks with judging looks only stared on.

“Don’tlookatmeinthat... way... I had to...”

The Hunters in the room turned their attention to something outside the door, out of his increasingly shrinking field of vision. A few left. Some remained to stare at Mad Ghost.

“Icouldn’tkeephimdown... I left enough of him to bury...”

The words escaped from his weak body so gently, he could no longer tell if he was saying them aloud or just thinking them was requiring all the strength he could muster. Completely spent, he let go of his breath.

“Tieri fell down.”

#nerd stuff #my art #scarletta scribbles #OCs #predator #Mad Ghost #Odd Crests #//cannibalism #//gore #//death #Tieri

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sxvxrxssnape · 4 years ago

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minerva mcgonagall’s personal mission to make severus love christmas part 5

aka snolidays/snapemas day 11 and 12 (hot chocolate, baking) // pre-PS/the years between. minerva and severus friendship // content warning: panic attack and mentions of lily potter. i feel like this should be considered a snapetober entry oops. word count: 4287 @blog4snape

The night ended with more hot chocolate as the five stood together and watched a choreography of lights move above the pond, creating elves loading a sack full of gifts onto the outline of a waiting sleigh, watched it become glowing reindeer pulling it off the ground, rising in height and getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared and the light show began again.

It felt like magic and he refused to believe none was involved.

He fell asleep fully clothed that night, contentment and milk chocolate running through his veins as he begrudgingly made another mark on the imaginary scorecard.

Minerva was definitely winning.

Saturday was spent finishing the potions for the infirmary, bottling and stoppering the dozens of phials, and methodically scrubbing the cauldrons clean as he read from a book hovering above the wash basin, the pages turning with a flick of his head.

He dropped the potions off at the hospital wing, secretly pleased that Poppy was far too busy with a floo call to a student’s parents to bother giving him more than a thankful nod and a wave of her hand. He didn’t mind their conversations, but when three students were laid up sick on starched cots, Severus preferred to be as far away from the infestation as possible.

He spent the night reading, a cup of tea in hand, the soft glow of candlelight nearby to illuminate the words of one of the books he had picked up from Diagon Alley.

Sunday morning found him sprawled out on the couch in his living quarters, fully dressed once again, with the candles snuffed and the book astray, the teacup still nestled between a cushion and his thigh.

He spent the day holed up in his office with a correcting quill, the stack of essays he kept putting off, and no less than four packets of crisps. It was dinnertime by the time he finished reading all the scrolls of parchment, his fingers cramping and eyes bleary. He had the beginning of a headache forming, but the grading was nearly caught up on.

The remainder were short-answer questions, at least.

He wasn’t sure he could sit through another stack of eighteen inch essays for at least another month.

Perhaps two.

The crisps had made him nauseous, so rather than attending dinner in the Great Hall, he flooed into the staff lounge and helped himself to his precious french press that had been left behind. As the coffee grounds soaked, he glanced around the room and took in the stockings.

There were some new additions.

There were his and Minerva’s - white, cable-knitted with fur trim, bearing their names embroidered in black thread - but also a bright blue with Filius’ initials, a pastel-pink made from crushed velvet with Pomona’s name spelled out in tiny yellow flowers, a black with silver snowflakes bearing Aurora’s family crest, and a neon orange war crime that could only belong to the headmaster.

All of them had candy canes peeking out.

There was a tree in the corner now - a tall, proud-looking noble fir - looking like an oversized houseplant when it was devoid of lights and decorations. He finished making his coffee and sat down at the round table, eyeing it carefully.

The rest of the castle was still surprisingly devoid of holiday decorations, but if this tree had already arrived, it was only a matter of time before the rest of it started creeping in. Soon enough, the place would look like a tinsel factory had exploded inside of it and the number of trees within the castle walls would put the Forbidden Forest to shame.

He scowled at the thought.

Later, he realized he had spoken too soon.

Monday morning brought a fresh shower of snowflakes, a drop in temperature, and about thirty-six douglas firs into the Great Hall. These were already decked out with lights, ribbon, and colorful baubles. Some of the trees had clearly chosen sides, cheerily standing tall with the weight of red and gold ornaments, while others were laden with green and silver, blue and bronze, or gold and black.

Garland clung to the old brick, neatly tied with red ribbon and perfect pinecones, spaced out above the portraits and high, arched windows.

He didn’t want to think about the rest of the castle.

There was white chocolate peppermint tea waiting for him at the staff table, so he conceded that not everything that morning was absolutely terrible.

Tuesday was a bad potions day.

Not for him as a brewer, of course, but as a professor.

By the time both his classes ended, eight different cauldrons had either melted, exploded, or absolutely disintegrated without a trace. He lost a full jar of moonstones because one student had decided to bring the entire fucking container to her table rather than count them out beforehand like he had advised, and it had taken all his self-control to stop himself from breaking down right in front of the class of sixth years.

He had collected those moonstones himself, wandering the Forbidden Forest all fucking night, with only a lantern to light the way. They were supposed to last him at least another two months before he would need to venture out again - and the last time he had gone out, he’d nearly sprained his ankle on an upturned root and gotten a tree branch to the fucking face.

Tuesday evening found him four drinks in, asking the house elves to please bring him some hot, salty chips from a local shop, and when the darling little elf returned with the newspaper cone, he babbled stupidly for two solid minutes from gratitude alone.

Wednesday was a headache, a blur of back-to-back classes, a lot of frustrated yelling at completely inept students, a full pot of that wonderful white chocolate peppermint tea, and a sudden decision to not assign any more homework for the rest of the year.

Not because the awful little slimeballs deserved a break, but because he did.

The elves made mushroom and wild rice soup for dinner, alongside everything else they always made, and Severus took more comfort than usual in the hot meal.

Wednesday night was his turn to patrol the castle, so he stayed up half the night wandering the empty corridors. He pulled his cloak tighter around himself as he entered the Astronomy Tower, groaning as he realized Aurora was still there, carefully packing away her supplies post-lesson.

“Oh, don’t act like you aren’t glad to see me.”

“Believe me when I say I’m not.” Severus returned, stepping to the edge and looking over the grounds. Most of it was cloaked by shadows, but the silver light from the moon was still enough to softly make out the silhouettes of the greenhouses and Hagrid’s little hut. “What, no comment on how I’m out past my bedtime?”

Aurora laughed, putting a bronze telescope back into its case and fiddling with the straps. “Not this time, no.” She glanced up at him and warned: “But don’t you ever make me miss out on family dinner again or you will regret it.”

Thursday morning he slept in.

He barely had enough time to pull on his teaching robes and run fingers through his hair before he had to hightail it to his classroom, frazzled and out of breath. He hadn’t had time to prepare the chalkboard the day before, and was quickly writing out the recipe in his messy scrawl, when the seventh years started filtering in.

“Alright, you’re going to need number three pewter cauldrons today,” he called out over his shoulder, finishing the last line of script. “Fill them with two liters of room temperature water and put your burners on low. Today we’re going to be brewing a more complex -”

“Professor?”

He scowled at the interruption. “What is it, Mr. Greenwood.”

“I think your robe might be inside out.”

He blinked and tried not to let his face flush with embarrassment. “Thank you, now as I was saying -” he continued awkwardly, shrugging out of his robe and flipping the sleeves inside out.

“Your shirt buttons are fucked up too.”

“Language!” he scolded, swallowing down the sharp coil of emotion building at the back of his throat. “And do not speak to me like that.”

“Hey, you’re the one walking in here, unprepared, with your clothes all fucked.” Greenwood muttered. “Just what were you up to before class, sir?” he grinned, his comment eliciting a few chuckles.

“Detention, Greenwood.”

“Now, wait a second!” the boy faltered.

“Do you wish to make it two?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave as he raised an eyebrow in questioning contempt. “Because we can surely arrange that.”

“No, sir.”

“Good.”

He finished the lesson on autopilot, quickly fixing the buttons on his shirt in the supply closet, fingers shaking nervously as he muttered angrily to himself. He shrugged back into his robes, double-checking they weren’t inside out again, and downed a calming draught on a whim - the shiny light blue bottle catching his eye from its place on the shelf - before returning to his desk.

He made sure to scowl at each of them in turn and surprisingly enough, not another student made an unwarranted comment about his appearance, his teaching, or even each other. It kept him from reaching for another calming draught when he felt its effects lifting.

Friday found him having a panic attack.

Then again, if no one opened the door to the broom closet he had squandered in, if no one came face-to-face with his crouched down, fingers tangled in his hair, not-quite-yet-out-of-breath, full body trembling self, could anyone really prove he was having an anxiety attack?

He’d barely made it through his second class and had dismissed the second years twenty minutes early, sans homework - and oh, Merlin, they were going to think he'd gone soft - before attempting to return to his personal quarters.

It didn’t quite work out as planned.

His knees had felt shaky and he’d felt as if something were gripping at his throat, pressing down on his lungs, and he had to sit down and ground himself before he had a full-on breakdown in the middle of the corridor. He’d found himself stumbling, as he hid behind the closest doorway, the tidal wave of unchecked emotions too much.

His resolve was breaking.

He tried to focus on his Occlumency shields, tried to push back the unfiltered pain and fear he refused to think about - could not think about - because if he did, he was afraid he would never be able to function again. He was afraid he would break.

The dam was already broken though and now, now the rest of it felt inevitable.

Now he was simply gasping for breath, tears welling in his eyes that he refused to let fall, sitting on the floor of a dusty broom closet, bathed in the dull yellow light that flared whenever it sensed movement, like some sort of spotlight - a beacon honing in on him, existing solely to put his downfall on display.

Far too many thoughts were flitting around his head, crashing into each other and making it difficult to tell them apart, to pinpoint just what had been the trigger, the reason behind his weakness - because surely, that’s what this was right now: weakness.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor and he tried his best to muffle his ragged gasps, hand curled into a fist and pressed into his mouth, teeth sinking into the pale flesh, threatening to break through from the force he was using, so desperate he was to not make a sound.

It didn’t work.

The footsteps paused, their owner faltering.

Voices were speaking from the other side, hushed and mumbled, and with another stroke of panic, Severus realized they belonged to more than one. Students, most likely, and he curled tighter into himself, vehemently wishing for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

“Are you okay?” a hesitant voice traveled through the aged wood.

He didn’t answer, but he figured his breaths were answer enough.

“Are you having a panic attack?” a different voice called out, sounding just as unsure as the first. “It sounds like you’re really struggling.”

“Do you need help?”

“They probably can’t answer, dummy.” a third voice spoke up, but this one wasn’t addressing him. They were all familiar, but his brain wasn’t letting him process anything to fruition. “Hey, if you can hear us knock on the door.”

He considered ignoring them, but in the end he knocked.

“Good!” the first voice praised. “Alright, knock if we were right about the panic attack.”

Again, he knocked.

“Do you want help?” the second student asked. “I’ve helped my share of students through these.” He suddenly recognized Casper Jenkin’s voice, one of his seventh year Slytherin prefects.

He groaned; as if this situation could get any worse.

“I’m gonna take that as a no.” Oliver Greenwood’s voice muttered, so apparently yes, it could get worse. He was stumbled upon by his own snakes - and his disrespecting seventh years, at that.

“Do you want us to get someone?” Allison Bone, the original speaker, questioned. “Madam Pomfrey or your Head of House? If you’re all the way down here, you’re probably a Slytherin, huh?”

He choked out a laugh at that.

“Laughing!” Bone approved. “Laughing is good! That means you’re getting control of your breathing. The worst part of it is over now.”

“I’m going to open the door, okay?” Jenkin told him, and the doorknob started turning. “It’s probably pretty cramped in there - definitely won’t help.”

“Don’t!” he let out, just as the door opened and he found himself blinking up at his snakes, the three of them blinking down at him, equally dumbfounded, and he wanted to scream at whatever joke of a higher being had shifted the cards enough to lead him here.

“Oh!”

“Professor Snape?!”

He lifted a shaky hand to his face, brushing back disheveled locks of hair. “Get out.” he whispered, low and angry, not caring about the semantics that it technically didn’t apply.

“Are you sure you don’t need -” Bone started, then faltered at the growing expression on his face. “Right, we’re leaving.”

Greenwood eyed him a second longer than his companions, but rather than the teasing glint he usually held whenever addressing him in class, he wore something softer. “Sorry.” he mouthed, genuine concern flickering for a brief moment before he also left.

He put his head in his hands and started laughing, softly at first, but when it became an ugly sob, he fought to regain his composure, nails digging into his scalp.

He managed a deep breath, wiped his face on the sleeve of his robe, and hurried to his personal quarters. He was moving on autopilot now, slipping out of his teaching robes and into a jumper, grabbing a bit of floo powder and calling out a quiet, “may I come through?” when the flames turned a brilliant green.

He stepped into Minerva’s quarters, bypassing her concerned look and collapsed onto the old couch, pointedly ignoring her as he stared at the vaulted ceiling.

“Severus?”

“Panic attack.” he mumbled.

He remained silent after that, listening to the rustling of parchment and paper, the soft scribbling of a quill nib making its way across the page. For a few minutes, that was the only sound, until suddenly Minerva stood up and opened up the floo. Hushed voices followed, then silence, and he finally sat up when he heard the distinct pop of a house elf apparating into the room.

Dorset, one of the school elves most identifiable by his height, was balancing a tray on one hand and a heavy-looking box on the other. He placed both on the kitchen table, nodded at the two, and apparated away.

“What’s this?” Severus asked, his voice gravelly and tired, as he stood up and approached the table.

The box was filled with an assortment of items - butter, eggs, icing sugar, flour, and the like. He could see a bag full of dirigible plums sitting right on top and he smiled despite himself. The tray was holding two ceramic mugs, their contents hidden by the mountain of whipped cream and cinnamon they were topped with.

“Sit down with me.” Minerva said simply, picking up the tray and bringing it to the couch. She sat down at one end, placing the cups on the coffee table, and waited. When he sat down, facing her, she handed him a warm mug. “I asked for hot chocolate.” she told him, eyeing him carefully. “Specifically the gingerbread one we had last week.”

“I liked that one.” Severus mumbled, staring down at his cup.

“I know.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, sipping on their hot chocolate, and Severus could feel his anxiety slowly ebb away as it was replaced by warm comfort.

“You look awful.” she finally spoke up.

He smiled ruefully, but it felt more like a grimace. “I appreciate the honesty.”

“Have you noticed, how every time you experience feelings of distress, someone always tends to interrupt before we can talk?” she asked, watching him. “I think we’ve been putting it off long enough, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“We never got to talk about Yaxley.”

“We didn’t need to.”

“We also never finished our conversation about how you ask for my company whenever you venture out of the castle.”

Severus gripped his mug tightly. “You said enough.”

“You still flinch when people touch you.”

“Can you blame me?”

Minerva paused, studying him in a way that left him feeling exposed. “They’re all connected.”

He kept silent.

Her next words were unexpected. “What about Lily?”

“What about her?” he growled out, anger taking hold and manifesting into shaking hands. He swallowed down the bile he could feel rising, the taste of milk and chocolate suddenly acrid on his tongue.

“You never talk about her.”

“That’s because I don’t have anything to say about her!” Severus finally yelled, nearly dropping his mug. He set it on the coffee table and balled his hands into fists, refusing to break eye contact with the professor before him. “Lily died four years ago, but she stopped being my friend long before that! Do you want to talk about the guilt I carry, knowing it was my fault she died? Because no amount of talking, nothing I do will ever be enough to make up for the fact that I killed my best friend! And I hate myself for that, but Merlin, do I hate her too.”

“Do you?”

“Yes!” he burst out, the words he could never dare himself to say aloud now slipping off his tongue without trouble. “She was my best friend and then she sided with them, with him, after what he did to me! And that’s when I knew she was never really my friend! She saw what he - what he did,” he was starting to gasp for air again, “and she still, she - he -”

He focused on steadying his breathing, arms wrapped around his torso.

“I don’t.” Severus finally amended, in such a soft voice he wasn’t sure it even carried. “I want to hate her so much - and I am so angry at her, angrier than I’ve ever been at anyone - but I don’t hate her. I can’t. Maybe I wasn’t her friend, in the end, but I know she was mine. I lost so many people in the war, but she’s the one who hurts the most, so no, I don’t want to talk about Lily.”

Minerva hummed. “You sort of already did.”

He scowled.

“Drink your hot chocolate before it gets cold.”

Some of his anger fizzled out as he finished the drink. When they were done, Minerva stood up and started pulling out the contents of the box, lining them up on the counter. He joined her, watching as she leafed through a cookbook he hadn’t noticed.

“We’re going to do some holiday baking now.”

“Are we?”

“If you’re not going to talk to me about what led to all this,” she gestured in his general direction, “then we’re going to bake some things for the staff party tomorrow.”

He nodded, sighing. “Where do you want me?”

They spent a few minutes in stilted silence, as he washed the bag of dirigible plums and cooked them down into a sauce, stirring in ground cardamom and honey. Meanwhile, Minerva whisked double cream and cornstarch with vanilla sugar and salt, the pot resting over low flames. He added the plum sauce and smiled as it came together and turned into the warm orange color he remembered.

“What next?” he inquired, after the thickened mix had been poured into a mold and tucked away in the cold cupboard.

“Biscuits?”

The sugar dough came together easily enough, pale yellow and perfectly smooth, and as they sprinkled flour over the table to roll it out, Severus started fiddling with the holiday cutters.

“I can hear you thinking.” Minerva spoke up a few minutes later, dusting her hands off on a clean towel. She reached for a tree-shaped cutter and started pressing it into the dough. “Are you ready to talk now?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Sure you don’t.”

They finished cutting out all their shapes, moved their biscuits into the oven, and cleaned off the kitchen table. Minerva was opening small jars of sprinkles while Severus whisked together icing sugar and egg whites. He focused on dividing the royal icing into small bowls, adding droplets of colored dye and stirring carefully as if they were a temperamental potion, when he finally broached the earlier subject: “They are all connected.”

“Pardon?”

He didn’t look up, merely repeated himself. “They’re all connected.”

Minerva pulled the baking tray out of the oven and cast a cooling charm before bringing the perfectly baked biscuits to the table. Severus picked one up and absentmindedly broke it into pieces. He shared it with Min and picked up another biscuit, carefully dipping this one into the bowl of red icing and shaking off the excess.

He reached for the star sprinkles. “I try not to think about any of it.”

“You’ll have to, eventually.”

He thought about the broom closet. “I know.”

Minerva dipped a star biscuit into the bowl of yellow icing and handed it over to Severus, who immediately covered it with three different colors of sprinkles. They worked in tandem for a few minutes, dipping and sprinkling all their biscuits, and eventually a spoon was introduced to their project and Severus found himself drizzling thin stripes across some of them.

“I’m giving this one a Dreadful.” Minerva decided, picking up what was supposed to be an ornament, originally dipped in white icing, but then covered with uneven globs of blue.

“Fair enough.” Severus shrugged, levitating the dirty dishes and moving them to the wash basin, spelling the water on. He picked up a candy cane-shape that had been rolled in yellow and violet sprinkles and then drizzled with green. “This one, however, is deserving of a Troll.”

Minerva spelled the dishes to wash themselves and then raised an eyebrow at him. “Severus, you decorated that one.”

“I’m aware.”

The yule log cake was a little more time consuming to make. He sat down at the table and watched Minerva separate eggs and whisk the whites with sugar until it foamed.

“It would be faster if you spelled the whisk.” Severus offered.

“We tried that once.” Minerva laughed, not slowing down. “It worked great at first, but all of a sudden, the whisk was flinging meringue all over the room.”

“How delightful.”

Meringue was light and shiny and the brightest white he could imagine. Min filled a piping bag with the foam and showed him how to pipe little mushroom tops on the baking paper. When he took the bag from her, he was surprised to find it bore no weight.

“Do you not know how to hold a piping bag?”

“Evidently not.” he grumbled, looking at his hand and the fluff of meringue that had spilled out of the bag and over his hand.

“You’re supposed to hold the end closed, you numpty.”

“Numpty?” Severus muttered under his breath.

“Elphinstone always did the same thing.” Minerva shook her head, fixing the bag and finishing the job. “No matter how many times I corrected him, that man couldn’t hold it right. Always went off about how he’s the ministry liaison for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Min, I don’t need piping meringue mushrooms in my skill set.” She took in a shaky breath and set down the bag. “See? Perfect.”

“Min-”

“Don’t just stand there, Severus.” she scolded, thrusting the cookbook in his hands. “Get to work measuring the dry ingredients. You can make the cake while I make the frostings.”

He started sifting flour and cocoa powder. “It’s okay to miss him, you know.”

“Of course I know that.” she humphed, putting the tray in the oven and spelling the dishes clean. She unwrapped a stick of butter and stared at him. “Do you know that?”

“Minerva, I only met your husband twice.” he deadpanned.

She flicked a bit of icing sugar at him. “Don’t be smart with me. I’m not the one repressing all my emotions and pretending they don’t exist until I can’t stave off the impending panic attack and end up crashing in my colleague's quarters because of it.”

“Fine, you win this one.” he muttered. “You are the pinnacle of mental health, professor.”

“Excellent.” Minerva grinned, but her smile seemed a little bitter. “Does this mean you’re going to talk to me now?”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Numpty.” she repeated.

---- a/n: i was in the mood for angst tm also the ending feels a little rushed but it is 3am rip. im not gonna finish this series by christmas but my goal is new years. time exists in a vacuum anyway and is not real. ps. let me know what you think pls!! it gives me all the seratonin

#snapedom #pro snape #snapemas #snoliday2020 #severus snape #professor snape #snapecember #holiday writing challenge

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warlock-enthusiast · 4 years ago

Text

Thud

The lovely @ocular-intercourse bought me some ko-fi and asked for a Baldur’s Gate 3 ficlet :D I hope you’ll like this! And thank you!! <3

Rating: G

Summary: Gales snores. No one is happy

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Thud.

Ugh. Gale rolled around and opened his eyes. Where did this blasted noise come from? With combat fresh in his mind and bones, he’d hoped for a restful night, but the sun wasn’t even up yet and someone clearly didn’t care.

“What is happening.” He reached for his water flask and took a big gulp. He longed for something stronger, a nice, tart tea perhaps and tried to discern the source of thudding, while fighting a beginning headache.

Shadowheart caught his gaze and pointed towards some trees. “She’s in a mood.”

Gale turned around.

Ah, Lae'zel used her sword to hit a tree. Again and again, composing a cacophony of grunts and metal clashing against wood. Splinters flew everywhere, probably killing a lot of squirrels. Still, he’d to admire her form and training. Everywhere stroke hit its mark, every movement spoke of her strength and agility. Lae'zel also used a looted sword rather than her own weapon, saving the sharpness of her preferred blade.

But it also explained the sounds and why his sleep had been so painfully cut short and why his nerves felt a bit frail. Training seemed important, especially with a tadpole edged into your squishy brain, but at this time of the day? Waking up the entire camp?

Their resident cleric continued to braid her hair and already looked bored with their conversation. “You’ve been snoring. A lot.”

“I do not snore.”

Astarion dropped his meditation and shook his head. “Like a creature from the depth of hells, my dear. It shook the earth and skies, woke some ancient monsters and…”

“I get the picture.” Gale rubbed his neck and felt an unusual flush of shame creeping to his cheeks. He avoided Astarion’s stare and stretched his back to hide his reddening face.

To further embarrass him (seemed to be one of these mornings), Wyll entered the camp, freshly cleaned and far too handsome in the early morning light. “Maybe use a cone of silence tonight, yes? We need to be fully rested and relaxed and I don’t want to discuss the size of our noses with Lae'zel again.”

Gale sighed. “I’ll try.” “Thank you. No we’ll just eat and forget about it.” Wyll smiled and shuffled through their food stocks. “And make something nice and tasty for Lae'zel.”

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #gale #lae'zel #astarion #no spoilers #just dumb fluff #headcanons

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foxy-exy · 5 years ago

Note

Kandrew: Andrew stealing Kevin’s jackets?

Sorry it took so long to get to this! been havin a Bad Time but writin bout some of My Boys does admittedly help when I make myself get into it (also I might just reblog with a couple additions to this later because you said jacketS plural so ;) wanna make that happen)

at long last we find a new kandrew universe,,, one yet closer to canon,, yet neil is still mysteriously absent bc my brain can’t comprehend andrew not being into neil if he is actually around lol

(also, feel free to add some au requests in with ur prompts if u so wish,,, got another prompt waitin for me that I’ll try to get to soon too!)

Kevin’s left hand aches as he slams another ball into the corner of the court, rebounding once, twice, three times before it hits its intended target: a hideously neon orange cone that skids halfway across the court in the wake of the ball.

He straightens and blinks away perspiration, pulling the front of his shirt up to swipe at his face. It’s late, and dark in the stadium. He doesn’t think he has much of an audience as he shakes out his hand and pulls another ball from the bucket at his feet. As he repeats the drill down the line of cones, he only feels a slight buzz of satisfaction — accomplishments had never been for gloating over, they were to be analyzed and streamlined further — and doesn’t miss once until he’s lining up his last shot and the echo of a slow clap throws him off.

He jolts and the ball shoots past the cone, half an inch away. Kevin curses and spins to Andrew, who is leaned against the now open court door, an eyebrow raised in sarcastic acclaim.

“Great job, Kevin. Shame you never actually use that hand in games.”

“Fuck off.”

Andrew smiles humorlessly as he folds his arms. “I’m tired. We’re going.”

“Clean up, then.” Kevin feels hot and sweaty and the kind of angrily ashamed that Andrew seems to know just how to needle out of him, and he needs a fucking shower. He shoves his racquet into Andrew’s chest as he brushes by, and turns in surprise when Andrew actually takes it — almost stops entirely in his beeline for the locker rooms when Andrew slings the racquet over his shoulders and actually heads into the court for the mess Kevin left of the corner.

Andrew cuts a bulkier figure than usual, Kevin absently thinks as he backs towards the door (maybe a bit closer to a snail’s pace than he’d like to admit). The bomber jacket he wears is too big on him, sleeves rolled up a little and hem landing mid-thigh. It looks strangely familiar, though.

He doesn’t connect the dots til he’s out of the shower and pulling on his clean clothes — sleep sweats and a T-shirt and —

And his coat’s missing.

Kevin stares into his empty locker but all he can see is Andrew, wearing his jacket. Swimming in it.

He turns around when Andrew enters the locker room, hands buried in the pockets of the pilfered coat.

“That’s mine,” Kevin says.

“Shame,” Andrew says again. “I’m wearing it.”

Kevin doesn’t know what to say anymore. He just kind of awkwardly shuts his locker. His eyes don’t seem to be listening to his brain, which is insisting that looking away from Andrew wearing his clothes is very important. But instead he’s stuck looking at the way the collar frames Andrew’s jaw, the brown leather stretching across his shoulders.

He locks up in silence, Andrew waiting at the exterior door looking as bored as ever, apparently entirely unmoved even as Kevin feels like a live wire.

They’re walking back to the car when he finally manages, “You barely even wear anything but black.”

Except the buttery, light brown looks good on him.

“It’s too fucking cold in the stadium after hours,” Andrew says, casually, and ducks into the car.

They don’t say anything on the ride back.

Andrew keeps the jacket.

(Feel free to send me more prompts! I’m a multishipper also so 😘)

#kandrew #andrew minyard #kevin day #the foxhole court #all for the game #aftg #tfc #aftg fanfic #tfc fanfic #all for the game fanfic #the foxhole court fanfic #fanfic #anonymous #kay answers #kay fanfic #kaystuff #ficlet

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milfisolde · 4 years ago

Text

under read more bc i put too much effort into my ocs and there is A Lot. tw for violent stuff

this will be updated every time i think of something for him!

deviantart link

Rollick

“The Ravenous” ? idk I suck at titles

no accessories

Size reference

why does he have anime hair if hes a fish? because he’s my oc and i say so

I MADE ICONS FOR THE LOCATIONS AND CLASS AND OTHER CHAMPIONS’ ABILITIES AND TUMBLR WONT’T LET ME ADD THEM WITHOUT FUCKING THE WHOLE POST UP

Short crappy bio

A young shark-like Vastaya. Born in Ionia, west of the island Sudaro. He was captured as a child by Bilgewater pirates after straying too close to the surface and being found. Was then put to work on the Slaughter Docks, and trained to hunt in the traditional Serpent Isles manner: “launching themselves at their targets to secure tow-hooks with their bare hands, and beginning to butcher the creatures while they yet lived.”.

I need to update myself on League lore, but I would like him 2 be acquaintances with Nami and Fizz. Also, Rollick would have heard stories about Pyke and would find him really cool. Ideally, he would have Johnny Yong Bosch as his voice actor because I love how he voiced Kung Jin in Mortal Kombat X, but I don’t know how he’d do with a pirate accent lmao.

Kit

Would be classed as a Fighter with the sub-class Diver. At least I think he would.

His kit is basically just a mash-up of multiple champions with extra ingredients. Riot do it themselves, so I'm allowed to, too. Pirate lingo used for most of his abilities and voice lines b/c I'm not creative for naming things.

Passive "Blow the Man Down." : A mash-up of Rengar and Darius' but more complicated. Auto-attacking 3 times in a row, or using abilities, gives his unused abilities 3 different tiers of empowerment. (Like, if you auto-attack 3 times, use W, then Q, his E will have tier 3 empowerment.). Tiers 2 and 3 gives the target bleed when hit by abilities, applying "Blood in the Water." Applying the bleed multiple times makes it stack, tier 2 stacks like two stacks of tier 1 bleed, tier 3 stacks like two stacks of tier 2 bleed. How many times can it stack? Idk. 5? 7? 10?? ok probably not 10 that would be stupid.

2nd passive "Clipper." : Rollick moves faster in the river; this move speed scales with his normal move speed.

Q "Feed the Fish." : Tier 1 is a swipe in an AOE cone with his claws. Tier 2 is a small lunge in a targeted direction with two swipes, one with each hand. Tier 3 is a longer distance lunge with a bite. If tier 3 lands on a moving target (examples: scuttlecrab when it dashes, Ezreal using his E), it will follow the target like Warwick Q/Evelynn E. The bite will also heal him for a small amount.

W "Hook, Line, Sinker." : is like Rengar's Bola Strike with a wider but shorter range for tiers 1 and 2, but he leaps in the targeted direction at tier 3 and if he hits something, covers it with his net and stays on top of them for a short amount of time. Tier 2 spins the target around from they way Rollick throws his net and will turn the opposite direction of the way the target was originally standing. If you're facing Rollick and the tier 2 net hits you, your back is now turned to Rollick.

E "Chase." : Warwick Blood Hunt but either less or more annoying. Cooldown is shorter in duration, but so is its active. The passive part of it only shows paths to champions affected with a bleed, burn or poison DOT effect. (Includes: Rollick's "Blood in the Water", Darius' "Hemorrhage", Brand's "Blaze", Gangplank's "Trial by Fire", Lillia's "Dream Dust", Cassiopeia's "Noxious Poison" and "Debilitating Poison", Twitch's "Deadly Venom", Teemo's "Toxic Shot" and "Noxious Trap", Singed's "Poison Trail", the "Scorch" rune, "Ignite" summoner spell, "Challenging Smite" summoner spell, "Azakana Gaze" from Demonic Embrace, and "Torment" from Liandry's Anguish.

R "Cleave 'Em to the Brisket!" : Similar to Skarner's "Impale". Rollick takes the hooked blade he has on his belt and lunges at the target, stabbing into the enemy champion's chest with his chest to their back, and drags them away. "Cleave 'Em to the Brisket!" can only be used on a champion that has their back turned towards Rollick. It applies a tier 3 "Blood in the Water." upon use. It can yank champions out of Displacement Immunity, but doesn't suppress the target champion entirely, they are still able to use dash and blink abilities, use Thresh's "Dark Passage", recast "Death Sentence" , and use most movement summoner spells ( Flash, Hexflash, Mark/Dash), but if they do, half of their current HP is taken away from the hooked knife being dragged/yanked out of them. If you are 30% HP and you use one of the movement abilities mentioned, you will leave with 15% HP and two stacks of tier 3 bleed. For 5 seconds after using his ult, Rollick uses his knife to attack, gaining increased auto-attack range and his autos apply a tier 1 bleed stack per hit. The enhanced auto-attacks drag his targets towards him because of the hook part in his knife getting caught on them.

Animation ideas

(I used google to find every gif/picture, save for the “dance” one. they have tumblr links bc when writing this tumblr shit itself when i wanted to save it as a draft and i kept it open in a different tab and copy/pasted everything. im sorry some of the gifs are weird aslkfjdjf)

Walking animation is him using his arms and tail to "crawl". imagine the gif has a tail instead of legs

Running animation is the same concept, just with much more effort put into making himself move faster. Moving in the river looks more like he’s swimming rather than crawling. Slowed animation is him dragging himself slowly with his head facing the ground, putting weight on his elbows instead of using his arms completely. Like an army crawl but in pain.

Idle animation is him crossing his arms and resting on his elbows, then looking around and inspecting his claws.

If left in idle animation for more than 15 seconds, he drops down completely and puts his head in his arms and dozes off. Moving after the sleep idle will have him shake his head awake when starting to move.

Death animation is him trying to crawl, being unable to, then collapsing on his side and flopping onto his back.

Taunt animation is him straightening himself then lashing out with his hands and baring his teeth before "biting" the air in the direction he’s standing, voice lines coming out before the bite part.

Joke animation is him chasing his own tail? Maybe he gets tangled in his net after doing it for a second and just struggles there until the animation is interrupted.

Dance is uh. He straightens up and does knife tricks. He doesn’t have legs, doesn’t have a staff like Nami, and just wouldn’t dance like Cassiopeia.

I made the gif using footage from here.

His laugh animation would be him laughing and flopping onto his back, then turning back onto his stomach. All but one of his laughs would be loud and hearty, the one that isn’t would sound like Kung Jin’s laugh.

Voice line ideas

First encounters:

Bilgewater/Bilgewater themed champion:

"Ahoy!" "Ahoy, bucko!" "Ahoy, scallywag."

Multiple champions simultaneously/champions who have a visible partner/partners with them (examples: Kindred, Sejuani, Lulu with Pix, Elise with her Spiderlings, Azir with his Sand Soldiers):

"Ahoy, me hearties."

Pyke:

"Pyke?! I’ve heard stories of you! Though… You’re smaller than I had imagined..." "Hey there, old salt! " "Ahoy, seadog! "

Nami:

"Good to see a friendly face! Shame it’s on the wrong side." "Oh! Little lass! Have you found your stone yet? "

Fizz:

"Little trickster! Where’s your big friend? "

Illaoi:

“Test? Gonna get myself an A-plus-plus! …That’s the good grade, right?

Taunts:

Any champion:

"Scurvy dog! " "AAARRRRGGGGHHHH! "

Bird/bird themed/winged champion:

"Polly want a cracker? "

Tahm Kench:

“The only creature with an appetite bigger than mine” “You put me to shame with that maw of yours! You could fit me in it!”

Abilities/eliminations:

Tier 3 "Feed the Fish.":

(after used on champion wearing armour/with tough skin)

"Ouch… I think I broke a tooth. Good thing I got more. "

(after used on champion with fur/feathers/long hair)

" (violent spitting-out-fluff noises) Blegh! "

Tier 1 and 2 "Hook, Line, Sinker. ":

"Catch! " "Avast, ye! "

Tier 2 "Hook, Line, Sinker. " after turning someone around:

"Bring a spring upon ‘er! " "Broadside! "

Using "Chase. " with a DOT’d champion in range:

"Chum in the water…" " (deep inhale, then a rumbling growl) "

Using "Chase. " with affected champion visible:

"Lookin’ a bit squiffy there…" " (laughter) Yesss… "

Eliminate champion:

"Take a caulk. "

Eliminate champion while using "Cleave ‘Em to the Brisket!" or the enhanced auto-attacks after:

"Hah, keelhauled! " “Taste me steel n’ may the devil take ye!”

“PENTAKILL!”:

"Dead men tell no tales…"

Respawn:

"What a flogging…" "Alright, I’ve fed the fish… Now it’s their turn. "

Pings:

(Danger!):

"Heave to! " "Avast ye! "

(Assist me!):

"All hand hoy! " "All hands on deck! "

(Assist me!) followed up by (On my way!), or vice versa:

"Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! "

(Area is warded.):

"They’ve got a lookout. "

(Target champion):

"Thar she blows! " "Sail, ho! " "Savvy? " "Hang ‘em from the Yardarm! "

Miscellaneous:

Allied champion drinks potion or gets healed by another ally when Rollick has missing HP:

"Splice the mainbrace! Please?"

Alone with low HP, no potions or actives available, or sells all items:

"Looks like I’m marooned…"

Healed by ally:

"Feeling shipshape!" "Much obliged." "I’m in your debt." "Thank you!" "Thanks!"

Receives shutdown gold:

"Ha-ha! Plundered! " “Bounty taken.”

Flashing away from enemy:

"Blimey! " "Gah!” "Sink me! " " (girly shriek) "

#league of legends #league of legends oc #lol oc #vastaya #vastayan oc #my art #it took me like a week to think of all of this #and write it down/draw it/ collect/make gifs #miki.txt

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fredheads · 4 years ago

Text

WIP WEDNESDAY (special birthday edition)

i flopped hard and did not write a thing for @fredsythes birthday not a special fic and not even a chapter of my own debauchery that i was gonna pass off as a present real quick so in order to make it up here is an extra long wip wednesday for clown au ft. some real gay ass shit ❤️ 🧡 💛 💙 💜 💚🥰pls enjoy

Harry Clayton came jogging up to them then, no longer wearing the blue uniform of the Church School band. He had replaced his trombone in the Neibolt School music room, and had changed into blue jeans and a cream-coloured shirt. A canvas bag flapped against his shoulder. FP noted, almost unthinkingly, how pronounced the muscles in his legs and arms were. Harry was built more solidly than any of them, even Hal and Fred, who were the biggest and tallest, respectively.

“Hey,” said Harry abruptly, his eyes sliding over Hiram and FP before landing on Fred. “I saw him,” Harry confided, lowering his voice. “The clown. As we were going up Main Street Hill I saw him passing out balloons to kids.

“It was the same one you talked about. He had a silver suit with orange buttons. And orange hair. And he was smiling, but… there was something wrong about him. He was facing away when I saw him, but as soon as I recognized him he looked at me. And something about him… it scared me. And the paint on his mouth was dripping. It looked like blood.”

“I told you!” Hiram suddenly shrieked. He threw his ice cream on the ground and covered his face with his hands. “I told you! It’s here!”

‘Let’s go,” said Fred quickly. His mouth had hardened into a thin line, and his jaw was taut. He touched FP’s shoulder abruptly, and a warmth flared from the place where his fingers pressed. Fred steered them towards the road. “We should f-find the others. Have you g-got the s-s-slides, Harry?”

“Yeah.” Harry patted his bag. “My dad’s got a lot of stuff about Riverdale. It goes back a long time.”

“Why’s your dad care so much?” FP asked. His own ice cream had melted down to a stump of cone, and he threw it on the ground as they walked.

“He thinks it’s interesting. He told me once it was because he wasn’t born here. It’s like he came in in the middle of a movie and-”

“He w-wants to see the s-start,” Fred said, and Harry smiled at him.

“Exactly.”

They found Hal, Mary, and Alice together at the fence bordering the tilt-a-whirl. Mary had been marching with the Boy Scouts, and was wearing her neckerchief and neatly pressed uniform. Alice was eating a stick of spun pink cotton candy and laughing at something one of the others had said. FP gauged by the exhilarated and terrified look on Hal’s face that they might have spent the morning together. The bigger boy was blushing so badly that FP expected smoke to start spiraling out of his ears.

“W-We’re g-going to my h-house,” Fred explained. “H-Harry’s going to s-show us the puh-pictures.”

The smiles disappeared from their faces, replaced by the serious looks of small adults. They walked in a solemn pack through the crowded streets and away from the festival, pushing their bikes by the handlebars. Fred’s house stood vacant and quiet, though music and fanfare from downtown floated very faintly over the tops of the neighbourhood trees. A tattered row of pinwheels turned doggedly in his neighbour’s garden. Fred pulled up the garage door and began setting up the projector while the others pulled up boxes and stools to use as chairs.

FP stared at a photo tacked above Artie Andrews’ workbench. It was a ragged snapshot of the Andrews family on vacation. Oscar was there, sandwiched between his mother and father with a hand in each of theirs. And Fred was standing at his father’s shoulder, his head leaning against Artie’s arm, beaming at the camera. He looked very young and very happy.

FP had a fantasy sometimes of telling Mr. and Mrs. Andrews off for the way they treated Fred. In this fantasy he was usually over at the Andrews house, maybe eating dinner or sitting with Fred at the kitchen island. The air was thick and painful, and Fred was trying to talk to his parents, and they were ignoring him. FP could see the tears welling up in Fred’s eyes, and his jaw was clenched like he was trying his hardest to be brave, but he was hurting. FP saw him hurting and it made him lose his cool a bit.

In this daydream he jumped up and laid into both of them, really blew up and gave them the business. Fred looked embarrassed, a little, but grateful too. He looked at FP with stars in his eyes, like no one had ever done something like that for him before. FP indulged himself in this vision the way he did his dreams of becoming a rock star or a stand up comic in his adult life - it had the same mythical, incandescent quality as those daydreams, though this particular one recurred with frightening severity.

“You’d better start treating your son right,” he told Mr. and Mrs. Andrews. In this fantasy he also had a strong, gravelly tough-guy voice, like he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. He was suave. He meant business. “Do you hear me? Oscar’s gone, but Fred’s not. Fred’s still here. And your son is the smartest, strongest person I’ve ever met, and you don’t even know it.”

His arm would go around Fred, then, wrapping around his broad back and holding him tight. Fred’s parents looked shamed, but FP wasn’t done. No, they’d know when he was done. He was just getting started. “This whole time you’ve been ignoring him he’s been braver than you’ve ever been in your life,” FP told them, and his voice rang out across the dining room clear as a bell.

Sometimes Artie started to give him some trouble, but FP stopped him cold every time.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” he would say to Artie Andrews, cracking his knuckles. “I don’t wanna hurt you, but I swear to God, I will. If you make him cry again, I swear to God you’ll regret it.” (He savoured these particular words like spun sugar in his mouth, reciting them sometimes in the veil between dreaming and waking like an actor rehearsing for his opening scene.)

Fred would pull on his sleeve, but FP wouldn’t be calmed. He was a loose cannon. “I’m not crying,” Fred would say sometimes, wiping his eyes and trying to be brave, and that would make FP hold him tighter.

Artie always apologized. They both did. “Don’t say sorry to me, you say sorry to him,” FP would order, and Fred would turn to him with those wide, adoring eyes in which FP could see reflected all the stars in the universe, and a tear would tremble on the rim of his lower lashes.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Fred would say when they were alone. He wouldn’t stutter either - FP would have fixed that one up too.

“Sure I did, kid,” FP said. “You’re my best friend, aren’t you?”

And Fred would smile at him, a smile that was brave and hopeful and then he would

(NO! NO NO NO!)

(yes yes he would KISS-)

kiss FP on the cheek, only here the dream would be so bright and wonderful that FP would come to in a start, would throw it off blushing with his tongue drier than sawdust and his stomach cramping madly, the dream and reality overlapping in lovely translucent strips so that flashes of it were still visible - Fred’s hand on his wrist, Fred’s hot dry lips on his cheek, and then he would leave it entirely with superhuman effort and go back to the start like rewinding a tape, sitting at the kitchen table, telling Fred’s parents that they’d better wise up.

He got as far as telling Artie off the second time around when he looked up suddenly and realized he was the only one still standing in the middle of the garage. Mary was sitting on a folding chair to his right, asking him what the hell he was doing. FP dropped quickly onto a nearby crate and shook the dream out of his head.

“Just thinking me thinks,” he said glibly, crossing one ankle on top of his knee and bouncing it, and Mary shook her head slightly and turned away.

Fred pulled down the garage door, sealing out the light. In the moment before FP’s eyes adjusted to the pitch black, he had a horrible thought. Suppose something reached out of the dark and grabbed his neck, or a set of teeth fastened in his leg? Suppose the clown was behind them all now? Then the projector flashed on, illuminating a square of flat garage wall, and the breath came back to his body.

“Some of these pictures go back hundreds of years, my dad said,” Harry explained. He was feeding slides into Artie Andrews’ projector, his broad shoulders silhouetted very handsomely in the blue light. “When you all were talking about the clown, I realized I’d seen something like it before. And after I saw it today, I’m sure I recognized him.”

“You recognized him?” Alice asked, sounding horrified.

“Look.”

The slide clicked into place, throwing an outline of a photo on the garage wall. The projection was a scan of a black-and-white ink sketch, showing a clown entertaining a group of children. The children were smiling, but the clown was not. Its mouth drooped down in a sorrowful frown, its eyes gloomy black pits. There was an awful aura about the antique photo, as though the black and white lines radiated malice.

PENNYWISE THE CLOWN read old-timey writing across the bottom.

“What’s the date on this?” Hal asked.

“My dad says this one is from the early seventeen hundreds. Back when Riverdale was just a beaver trapping camp.”

This phenomenal news rocketed FP into action. “Still is! Am I right, boys?” FP shoved Hiram hard with his elbow and threw a hand up for a high five. Hiram looked at him blankly. Fred frowned. Mary shook her head at him until FP put his hand back down.

#it au #wip wednesday #fred andrews #fp jones #parentdale

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gideongrace · 5 years ago

Note

#31!! “You’ve got something on your lip, here let me.”

Ahhhh, this one is so cute!!! Also, I am in a canon-type mood, tonight, apparently.

///

Steve is utterly, utterly hopeless, he knows this. And Billy is an ass. And fucking with him.

And he doesn't fucking care.

Because Billy coming in and asking to sample every single flavor of ice cream that they've got at this Hell they call Scoops Ahoy and hemming and hawing about it for five solid minutes and then not buying anything is sometimes all he's got to look forward to.

It's sometimes what he dreams about.

Okay, he dreams about it a lot, actually. Like an alarming amount of his nights are spent dreaming about that idiot.

Especially on the days Billy comes directly from the pool with his tight red shorts on and that stupid whistle still around his neck and his even more stupid (or more accurately, stupidly gorgeous) arms on display.

Like today.

When Steve's hair has been flat for the past hour and Robin is holding up the sign that all but says "Steve Harrington is a big loser" that she's added two new marks to today and not under the win column, either.

Billy stops in front of the counter and licks his lower lip like he's been looking forward to this all day. Probably not for the same reasons Steve has, but then Steve is pathetic and call this strike three, whatever, Steve's over it.

"Hmmm…" Billy says. "I think I'd like to try the Cherry today, Captain Steve."

Except for that Steve's not over it. At all. He might never be over it. Ever.

"Alright," Steve says real slow. He gets up off the back counter even slower. He might be hopeless but that doesn't mean he's got no pride. He leans against the plastic of the front counter and slides the door open at a glacial pace, glaring at Billy the entire time.

"Oh," Billy says, grin shark big and just as feral, "I think you're forgetting something." He reaches up and over the ice cream freezer to flick Steve's hat. "Say it."

Strike four.

Steve says it.

And he hates himself.

And he wants to spit in the cherry ice cream but with the way Billy won't stop staring at him there's no way to do that and get away with it. He's tempted to do it anyway. He's tempted to say, "Fuck you, Hargrove," but then Robin would pop out of the back just to ask him why and that would really just cause more problems than it solved.

So he rolls his eyes hard enough he feels it in the back of his neck, scoops out the tiniest portion of cherry he can manage into a cup he crushes half to death before handing it over.

Billy dips his spoon into it and takes out half, like he's gonna savor this, fucking bastard, and moans as he dips the tiny little plastic spoon into his mouth.

It's the dirtiest clean thing Steve's ever seen in his life. It's obscene. He's glad there aren't any children present.

Billy's eyes widen as he takes the spoon out and somehow that's worse. Like Steve is never going to not be thinking of Billy making that face worse. Like Steve already knows he's doomed to get himself off tonight thinking of Billy making that face worse.

And then...

"There's…" Steve says. He presses himself into counter. Pretends he doesn't. "You have…" He waves a hand at Billy's bottom lip. There's a tiny spot of pink cherry ice cream on Billy's full, perfect lower lip. It takes more willpower than Steve thought he possessed for him not to reach out and wipe the offending spot away.

It takes more willpower to not just dive over the counter, knock Billy to the floor and lick it off then lick into his mouth like he's a goddamn ice cream cone. Steve wants to. He's starving. He wants, wants, wants -

"Right here?" Billy says. He swallows heavily enough that his Adam's apple bobs and Steve can think of nothing but licking at Billy's neck, sucking a bruise right in the center, right where it could never be hidden, not that anyone could ever know he'd been the one to do it.

"Y-yeah." Steve averts his eyes as Billy's hand rises to his lips and wipes. For the first time since this all started, he finds himself wishing Billy would just pick something and leave because if he has to take much more of this he might just spontaneously combust.

"You know," Billy says, that sharp grin evident in his words so much that Steve doesn't need to look at him to know that it's there. Steve looks anyway and instantly regrets it as his brain floods itself with images of Billy looking up at him with that sharp grin wrapped around his dick.

"I think I'll take the cherry tonight," Billy says and thank god for small mercies because Steve is so not making it home before he has to deal with himself, dear god, he's not sure how he's going to even make it to the bathroom or how he's going to keep Robin from noticing at this rate.

Somehow, his voice comes out of his mouth sounding completely unaffected as he says, "Sure."

He scoops the ice cream into a cone, takes Billy's money and that's the end of it.

Or at least it is until he walks out of the mall an hour later, the tar of the parking lot still hot under his cheap sneakers and smelling of ice cream and shame that he sees Billy standing in front of his car, the remains of his ice cream cone still gripped in his fist.

"Harrington," Billy says as soon as he's close enough. Like this is a thing they do. Like they know each other. Or…

Something.

Steve says nothing. He's too tired and it's too late and he doesn't care.

He doesn't care except…

Then Billy tips the cone up to his mouth and drinks down the contents at the bottom of it and it has to be gross, he bought it over an hour ago, it has to be hot and nasty and Billy has to have…

Totally been waiting out here for him for over an hour in this stinking summer heat with melted ice cream and a plan.

Billy bites into the cone like it's the greatest thing he's ever tasted, bite by excruciating bite until it's all gone and there's this tiny patch of chery ice cream making its' way down Billy's chin and -

Steve glances quickly around the parking lot. It's late, it's dark and there aren't any other cars left in the parking lot other than Steve and Billy's.

"Fuck it," Steve says. In a second he's on Billy, pushing him against the car and licking that ice cream off his chin and licking up to his lips and kissing him and he tastes like cherries. He tastes goddamn delicious.

#did you see what i did there #cherry #wink wink #i'm such a nerd #lol #gideonwrites #prompt fill #stranger things #canon but gayer #harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove

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abbyelises · 5 years ago

Photo

the last time my friend and i went to the renaissance festival, we spent the entire time designing our renaissance sonas! i sketched it out back in december (lol) but didnt get around to finishing it until a couple days ago

(if you cant read my handwriting)

right: la reine claude (born 1498) was the main inspiration, but i threw some francis I era court gown in there too. i changed the colors to blue (although blue was not seen as a particularly royal color because by then, it wasnt very expensive to make blue gowns) because its my fave color, but gave the dress a lessened cone shape and added some gold trimming to made the dress more upperclass. finally, the ornamentation and belt is golden and mostly metal and jewels.

left: biggest inspiration is german ““““middleclass”““““ fashion during the 1520s. corsets weren’t quite where we remember and think of them by then; corsets really became the “swooning machines” (think elizabeth swan in pirates of the caribbean) later. the corsets worn here could still be worn outside of the dress, but weren’t nearly as slimming and in some images i found in my research, they look a bit like modern vests. finally, dresses during this era were long as hell, and women often had to gather the front of their gowns into big balls just to walk around.

ALSO i know the hair is historically inaccurate, but i just couldnt handle drawing hannah and i with *that* so its a little more hollywood-renaissance hair but please don’t shame me

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thecompostpile · 4 years ago

Text

Ice Cream Essay 5- Fuck Cops Eat Ice Cream

It was just something a friend told me in passing. They had worked at an ice cream shop one summer just a way to make a little money to buy weed and gas. Working with ice cream, from what I’ve heard, isn’t a very glamorous job but I imagine there are worse summer jobs. That will be a conversation for another time. This story goes to a time we were just hanging out smoking and shooting the shit. He told me a story of why his day had been crummy.

“I made this cop an ice cream cone and he just walked out with it. Didn’t pay, didn’t tip nothing.”

“Wait no way”

“Yeah it was so fuckong weird. He didn’t even ask if it was free he just walked out with it.”

That was probably the better part of a decade ago and I don’t think about this story a lot. At the time it was important to me though. I was in the middle of getting a political science degree from a liberal arts college in upstate Connecticut and it was being broken down in front of me why cops were bad. Here was another small but perfect example of why cops scared the ever living shit out of me. Cops have no shame. If they want ice cream they literally just take the ice cream and walk out. And what are you supposed to do? Call the cops.

The police force in this country is completely unchecked. It’s disgusting. A mad dog so insane with hate and rabies it doesn’t remember cuddling with anyone on the couch it only wants to bite anyone that comes near it right in the leg. This is the case for as long as I have been politically conscious but it has been happening much longer than that. I was in college when Freddy Gray happened, I had been in a jail cell around the same time police murdered Sandra Bland. I argued in my class about how Eric Garner being choked out on the street was unconstitutional with a conservative freshmen who I would bullshit with. His argument still sticks in my brain.

“He was murdered for selling cigarettes on the side of the street.”

“Well it is illegal.”

That’s what the other side of this thinks. He was a smart kid in a sense that he understood things and could speak elegantly. BUT how fucking stupid do you need to be to say that. Is it even stupidity or is it just pure cold hearted hatred. The man was choked out on the side of the street. I’ve wandered off here though. I am trying to keep the ever consistent theme of fuck cops and fuck every bootlicking chump that likes cops.

Let’s bring this back to ice cream. So this pig just thought it was okay to walk into an ice cream shop, one that he was supposed to both “serve and protect”. Let’s say he ordered a hot fudge sundae with some nuts, whip cream, a cherry. He’s a fat cop obviously with a stupid 90s tv dad walrus mustache. He’s a slob so some of the hot fudge dribbles onto his chin while he takes the first bite. Then on his heels he just turns and slides out whistling while he doesn’t hold the door for a lady with a stroller.

A cop in my town starts off at 59,000 dollars a year so he certainly has the money to pay for this ice cream. But you know maybe he comes in a lot right, he has something worked out with the dipshit owner who licks boots as much as he licks ice cream. To not even tip for your free ice cream though is so fucked up.

Note: tip at least a buck for your ice cream people. More if you can.

It was free, you paid nothing for it. At the very least acknowledge the labor that went into it. Cops aren’t workers though. They are the state mandated protection of only rich white people and stolen property. We absolutely need to abolish the entire police force. There is no other option; it is rotten to its core.

Now let us just quickly think of what would happen if that police officer was in the store and a black man did the same thing, walked out with ice cream for free. There is a highly likely chance the black man would be shot. Black men have been shot for much less in this country. At the very least the man could be arrested, placed in jail and lose his right to vote once out. What makes this cop special that he is allowed to break the law.

There is a system behind it too. The Frank Capra ideals of an old timey america. The 50s when you had the milk dropped off, took a date for an egg cream at the drugstore, hot rods and segregated schools. Cracking a joke with your high school buddy who was one of the cops in town but never did much but twirl his baton around and whistle. Then if something surprising would happen his eyes would pop out of his head. You know the America everyone loved. Jimmy Stewart is there laughing it up with someone he hasn’t seen in a while. You only feel that way because you aren’t Emmit Till though.

There is this patriotic ideals behind loving these dumb moron cops. It could come from wearing it like a badge of honor that you are not considered a criminal to them. That is an optimistic outlook though when the real answer is more than likely just racism.

How else could a man just grab an ice cream and pretend it was free to him. Think of the other things this person must be able to do with his god complex given to him because of a badge. How any stupid fucking bully is able to go to school for six minutes, promise to beat up and harass black people and other people of color to keep a billion dollar free labor industrial prison system going, can just put on a ugly light blue button up shirt and some shinny badges that mean nothing and now they think they can do anything they want.

Some stupid asshole was just farting up his police car by himself and laughing is bored enough to harass a black women with a tail light out. When she is tired and sick of his obvious bullshit that she has been aware of her entire life, he is too dumb to realize that his wife is mad because he forgot to flush his turd down the toilet. Then when he doesn’t like her response he can arrest her. What scares me about police videos is how powerless it looks. There is no arguing with these gooey cupcake batter mother fuckers. They do whatever they want. They walk in order ice cream and walk out without paying for it.

This becomes even more terrifying when you see they are killing people on the streets. They are killing children on the streets. They are tear gassing protestors. Shooting rubber bullets at journalists. That same cop who stole ice cream, is fine using his badge and light blue shirt to walk out with free ice cream, breaking the own rules set by capitalism he was set to enforce. Obviously he has on reason for breaking other rules set up by capitalism. He has no rules he will do whatever he wants. Kill, beat and humiliate anyone he wants. Take whatever he wants and walk out a free man, ice cream in hand, hot fudge on his chin.

#ice cream #acab #cops #fuck cops #ice cream essays

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theawkwardterrier · 5 years ago

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things left behind and the things that are ahead, ch. 31

AO3 link here

The winter Emma turns thirteen, her childhood roundness starts turning into curves (rounded curves, but still), her clothes draping around her in new ways. She’d known that these sorts of changes were meant to be coming - Mom is always very straightforward - but to actually experience them is a different matter.

She manages to conceal things for the most part under some of the heavy sweaters that Nana Barnes had once made for Rosie. She pulls them out of the boxes in the basement where Dad stores the old, outgrown items of clothing that he can’t seem to make himself donate, and adds them to her own wardrobe. The sleeves come only just to her wrists (she’s already taller than Rosie now, and it’s a good thing her sister has long arms), which looks weird, and Mom asks about them because Maryland winters aren’t really cold enough for Nana’s thick Brooklyn wool. But wrapping them around herself feels better, easier, than to try to figure out something else.

Except Emma loves spring, and on the first really warm day, she can’t help but put on her favorite dress from last year, yellow with flowers and a pleated skirt, even though it’s tight in strange places. She wears a sweater over it when Dad drives her to school, keeps holding her books against herself and avoids stopping to talk to her friends in the hallways, and she can’t tell if the tradeoff was worth it.

Mom and Dad don’t say anything at dinner, but there is a glance traded between them in the overlap of Drea’s story about her science teacher and Nate asking if they can go to the library tomorrow because his friend Arnold told him about a book about a mother mouse who goes on adventures that’s apparently very good. The other two don’t seem to notice the way Mom tilts her head from her side of the table and Dad nods from his, but Emma sees.

(That would never have happened when Rosie was still there, because their biggest sister would have seen the way Emma kept picking at her plate, and suddenly everyone would have been focused on a very involved recounting of everything that was happening with the drama club that week. And then later, Rosie would have come into Emma’s room to sit on her bed and explain everything, even how they were going to fix it, and would have made her laugh too. But Rose is 500 miles away, having a great time at college, and so there’s no one to get their parents to look away from Emma.)

That night, she’s in the kitchen baking with Dad. It’s a ritual with them, at least twice a week. He used to make a cake or cookies in the afternoons when Emma was little, but she joined him one day and never looked back, not even tonight.

Tonight they’re making cupcakes, vanilla with pink frosting on top that they’re shaping like spring flowers with their new piping bag set, just like they’d planned. It’s so normal that Emma forgets about that traded glance, stops thinking about how the apron she’s always used doesn’t slip on quite the right way anymore.

Dad waits until she’s finished frosting one of the cupcakes and set it down before he taps the top of her arm for attention.

“Mom - she’s not working on Saturday,” he says, his signing taking on a hesitant quality that she associates with topics much more awkward than her mother’s weekend plans. “If you want to go shopping with her - you might find some new spring dresses. I think you might be a little old for me to pick out your clothes.”

She doesn’t know how to thank him for not making her ask, for not making it strange or shameful. “You got me all of my favorite stuff,” she offers shyly, and gives him a hug around the waist.

Mom does take her shopping over the weekend (on Sunday in the end; Mom sometimes has to work even when it wasn’t planned) and they find things that actually fit, that make her feel like herself again, even if herself is still changing.

“Come to the yard,” Mom says once they’ve put the bags away in Emma’s room. Emma sighs, the movement involving chest and shoulders and puffed out cheeks. She knows what that means. Their house in New Jersey had a high fence to discourage neighborly prying, and when they’d moved to Maryland, they had a big yard far away from other houses: useful when the children had each taken their turn learning to throw a punch.

"You never know when you'll need something like that," Dad says. They all know that part of it has to do with Mom's work, and part of it comes from the way Dad grew up, but Emma’s never run into either, really.

Mom starts with a bit of a refresher. Making a fist with the thumb on the outside and wrist straight still comes naturally although Em has never really liked the idea of actually punching anyone. But then they move onto other things, moves with her legs and something about using her own weight and leverage to flip a big stuffed model over her shoulder, what to do if someone tries to hurt you when you’re sitting instead of standing. They’ve never done anything like that before. Nate watches from the back window, confused, but when Drea sees what’s happening, she only makes her slim shoulders even smaller and walks away.

"Why are we doing this?" Emma asks when she is finally sweaty enough to have earned a break. She watches carefully for the tiny tics of a lie, nearly impossible to spot on Mom's face, as she takes a drink.

"It's a good skill for a growing girl to have," Mom says, and that her face is entirely truthful just makes Emma feel more out of sorts as she goes in to look through the cookbooks for something that she can bake tonight to make herself feel better.

At dinner, Dad tells a story about a time when he and Uncle Bucky had to fight four bigger boys. It’s funny, the way he shows Uncle Bucky looking down at him because Dad was littler then, the way he shows everyone squinting at each other like a standoff. But he catches Emma’s eye when he talks about pulling hair or kicking up between the knees if necessary, and she knows that he’s trying to train her in another way.

(The next time they go to bake, there’s a new apron folded on the counter, her name embroidered across the top. When she puts it on, it fits perfectly.)

Mom and Dad are being weird, she writes to Rosie. They keep talking about how to fight if I need to.

Mom and Dad are just being Mom and Dad, Rosie writes back. The rest of the family does phone calls every week or two, but since Rose moved into her dorm in September she’s said that she loves getting Emma’s letters. Emma likes writing them, likes seeing her thoughts organized on paper, and likes getting Rose’s back, the Massachusetts postmark on the replies and the little creases that represent how far its traveled to her. They know the kinds of things that can happen in the world, so sometimes they can be a little protective.

That hasn’t been Emma’s experience with her parents. She’s been trusted to use the oven by herself for years, and no one checks to see that she’s reading “appropriate” books, the way her friend Rachel Clarke’s mother does. When she’d had strict Mr. Farrell in fifth grade, Mom had told her sternly not to let him intimidate her and Dad had helped with her reports and packed the best snacks in her lunch bag, but neither of them had stormed into the principal’s office and gotten him fired. But things have been different for Rosie, and not just because she’s older, so Emma assumes that in this she’s gotten it wrong somehow.

The day after school lets out, she and Drea walk into town to get ice cream. It’s so hot out that their cones are melting as soon as they start back home, and keeping control of the dripping takes attention and agility. It’s too hard to hold a conversation, but Emma notices when Drea jumps and glares over her shoulder at the car speeding around the corner.

“Did it get too close?” she pesters, her hands sticky but finally empty as they approach the house. “I would have noticed if they drove so close.”

“No,” Drea says slowly, finally answering, though her fingers drift slowly shut and linger on the word for a strangely long time. “They didn’t get too close. They just—They were shouting at us.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Sometimes,” Drea tells her, a peculiar look on her face, “a girl walking - that’s enough.” Seeing the confusion on Emma’s face, Drea wraps an arm around her sister. “We’re okay. The wrong ones - that’s them. We should be able to walk down the street looking however we want.”

Emma looks down at her peachy pink blouse and the striped skirt that matches it. She had bought them only a few months ago. The buttons running up the center of the skirt had seemed a cute touch, fun. She hadn’t even really considered them when she left the house that morning, but now they seem awkward, a mistake.

She starts to have an inkling of why Mom keeps taking her to the backyard even though she still refuses to put in much effort there. Maybe next time she’ll try to be different.

The following Saturday, Emma wakes up to a sweet-smelling breeze blowing through her open window and knows that today will be a gardening day. A few hours later, they are all outside.

(Not Rosie - she was invited to go on a trip with one of her new friends and now she won’t be back until almost August.)

Over by the new flowers they are planting, Dad playfully adjusts the sun hat Mom is wearing, even though it would make more sense for her to do it herself - she has on her gardening gloves as usual, but Dad always sticks his hands directly into the earth and already has dirt under his fingernails and in the creases of his palms. As they both kneel at the edge of the flowerbed, he puts his fingers to Mom’s cheek as he kisses her and it leaves little streaks against the cream of her skin. He brushes it away with the edge of his wrist and says something that makes Mom laugh.

She knows that Drea, checking for bugs at the other end of the bed from Emma, is saying something. Nate, who already finished the small bed he was working on, has gone to get his pad and drawing pencils. He sits with his mouth open slightly and tongue poking out, listening to their sister. When he sees Emma look up at them, he raises an eyebrow to ask if she wants him to interpret, even goes to put his pencil down, but she shakes her head and runs her finger over a soft leaf. She doesn’t need chatter right now, just the blue sky and the warm sun, her family around her, her hands busily working on a task they already know exactly how to do.

Later, after they have finished with the flowers in front and then the vegetable garden in back, when they have made sure the peach trees are thinned enough and then cleared or collected the June drop fruit (Dad will try to ripen them up and use the best of them to make jam and cobbler in the next few days; she has an idea about adding raspberries to their usual cobbler recipe that she thinks he’ll like), once Nate has convinced Dad to make a little peach syrup to try with lemonade and they have decided that they’ll try again with the more flavorful crop later in the summer, after Emma has had a bath, put her capri pants with their muddy, grass-stained knees into the laundry room, eaten dinner in her cotton pajamas with the still-warm breeze playing against the kitchen curtains...later, she asks Dad to come read with her.

He doesn’t chide that she’s too old for it, a teenager now, doesn’t remind her that they slowly dropped off with such routines years ago. Instead, he picks up his book and swings a hand toward her: “Come on.” Though she can’t catch the title as she makes her way upstairs, his book is pretty, with brightly colored trees on the front; it’s been a while since she saw Dad not reading notes or textbooks or something for a class assignment and she realizes that this is summer vacation for him too.

She hasn’t actually been read aloud to since probably third or fourth grade, when the chapter books she was picking made it harder and harder for her dad to sign the stories to her; she kept peeking over his shoulder, eager to know what happened next, her eyes racing over the words faster than he could convey. For the next few years they compromised instead, each reading their own book together in the evenings, until that eventually stopped too.

Curling up beneath his arm is still so familiar, even if it’s not routine anymore. She opens Up a Road Slowly and starts to read, but she has barely even finished a chapter before her blinks are pressing long, the book drooping over her chest. Vaguely, she feels Dad kiss her hair as he picks the book up from her chest. She knows that in the morning she will find it bookmarked at her page, resting on top of the copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, that Tina Lasko gave her for her birthday because all the girls in school were talking about it, but that Emma stopped reading (the beginning was okay, but then she heard what was going to come later and put it down).

Just before she falls asleep, she thinks that she would like to live in this day forever, never grow up, just have this day and this day and this day...

A few nights later, she sets the table fresh from her bath, her curls still long and darkened down her back, dampening her nightgown. They were out in the garden again today, just doing a brief check of things, before she and Nate rode their bikes into town to go to the library - she hasn’t finished her book yet, but Nate wanted company and she was bored enough to agree. Mom’s just come home and they will eat soon and it has been another wonderful day.

She isn’t sure how it starts, really. Dad sets the platter of meatloaf on the table - his is better than most, not mushy and with vegetables and a sauce that isn’t just ketchup; Emma would rather have chicken if he’s asked her, but Dad likes to make it for Drea sometimes, special - and before he turns to get the potatoes, he asks if she is going to try out for the basketball team this year. Eighth graders are allowed to be on the team at her school, even if it’s pretty rare for them to make it.

And even though the answer could easily be yes (she’s not really tall, but her aim is good and she and Drea are pretty well neck and neck for wins at H-O-R-S-E) somehow she finds herself getting worked up over just that question. Before she knows it, even as something inside her says that this doesn’t make sense, that she should calm down, she has slammed down the knives she is holding so she can use both hands. And ignoring his gentle responses, looking away from the steadiness she has always loved, she tells her father that he never stops pushing her, he and Mom are so bossy, they never just let her be, why can’t she just enjoy her summer, why is he always asking questions, he doesn’t understand, she hates him.

She closes her bedroom door hard, then opens it again to give it a real slam that she can feel even through the thick wood of the frame and floor. Face down in her pillow, she screams, the feeling grating and growling its way up her throat, then cries for a while even though she doesn’t understand why.

Later, she sits up against the wall, her pillow hugged against her chest. She has her book open in her lap, but she has barely turned a page.

The light flips off and then on again, off and on, then twice more. She knows it’s Nate - he’s the only one who flicks the outside switch for her room four times instead of three to let her know he’s there - but she doesn’t move or make a sound. He pokes his head in anyway. Seeing her on the bed, not crying anymore, he comes in and sits at the foot.

“We ate, but Dad says there’s a plate for you. You can get something from the fridge, maybe.”

He says it exactly like normal, as if she hadn’t just exploded downstairs, as if she wasn’t just awful to her father.

“Is he mad?” she asks, and even the angry face she puts on for the sign is tentative. “Does he hate me?”

Nate shakes his head. “Rosie slammed a lot more doors than you. Dad loves her. He loves you.”

When she goes downstairs, Dad is washing the dinner dishes. She sits at the table looking down at her plate and he gives her a little smile over his shoulder before he turns back to the soapy water. It makes her want to cry again, but instead she stands up and goes to tap him on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she signs, the circling on her chest reminding her of the times he rubbed her back to help her sleep or when she had a cough or as she cried because someone had made her feel bad. Now, the tears do come, filling her eyes. “I was mean to you. I hurt you.”

Dad wraps his arms around her, his chin atop her head. His hands are wet against her back, against her bare arms as he gently moves her away so he can speak.

“It’s hard - I know,” he says. “Kindness is hard work sometimes,” and his understanding, the way he doesn’t reassure that she has not hurt him, just makes her want to keep ahold of herself so she never does it again, even though she knows that he would forgive her then too.

Mrs. Walker calls asking if Rosie is back to babysit the next afternoon. She used to watch Brian and Sandra every few weeks when she was in high school. When Drea tells her no, Rose won’t finish her trip for another few weeks, Drea gets offered the job instead, and when she says that she has plans, Mrs. Walker suggests Emma.

As she gets her book and a sweater so Mom can drive her over, she asks Drea, “Are they desperate?” She’s feeling as if she must have been desperate in order to agree to do this in the first place. She was only looking for something new to break the monotony of the days because her school friends don’t live in town and she had turned down the offer of day camp or the school’s summer program. Plus, she was eager for the forty cents an hour that she had been offered. (She knows that Rose would sometimes hold out for up to seventy-five, and she charged a dollar after midnight , but that’s Rose.)

Drea, leaning against the doorframe, shrugs. She isn’t busy, she just didn’t want to go. “Husband on a business trip - she wants a break, time alone.”

That’s obvious once Emma has waved to Mom and knocked on the door. Mrs. Walker opens it right away, her handbag already over her elbow. She has a little notebook out and tears off the top page, handing it to Emma and waiting - foot just this side of tapping, but still - for her to read it.

Brian is apparently staying with his grandparents in Delaware which leaves her only watching Sandra, who is just a toddler and meant to go to bed by half past six anyway. That’s a relief: Brian is seven and bossy, and one reason Rose is such a popular choice for the Walkers is that she’s bossier. Sandra is content to dabble her feet in the inflatable pool for a while before coming inside to play while Emma warms up the pasta bake that Mrs. Walker left in the refrigerator. Getting Sandra for bed makes her feel simultaneously brilliant (no one had to tell her to save bath time for after dinner - she’d figured that out all on her own even before she saw all that drippy red sauce and Sandra’s preference to eat with her hands) and entirely foolish (apparently babies do not stay still when you’re trying to put a diaper on them - even when there are pins involved!).

It’s still light out when she sits down to read in the big armchair facing the street. The drapes are open and when she looks up every so often, she can see parents getting home from work, then families taking walks and visiting neighbors, kids running and biking in the street, narrow columns of barbecue smoke that she can nearly smell. She gets up to check on Sandra every ten or fifteen minutes though she seems to be sleeping fairly deeply just like Mrs. Walker had said she would, the room dark and warm.

When she comes downstairs again after peeking into the baby’s room, Emma notices a car coming slowly down the street. It’s a white Ford Mustang, fairly new looking. (Mom was always having them play different “spot the car” games when they were driving to Maine or Brooklyn, finding certain license plates or keeping track of which car had been on the highway with them for the longest amount of time; they got really good last summer.) The driver waits for the kids to run to the sides of the street, then keeps driving.

Five minutes later, Emma looks up from her book to see that the car is back again, circling the block in that same slow manner.

She checks the clock. Mrs. Walker was supposed to be going for a hair appointment and then to a movie with a friend. She told Emma that she wouldn’t be out later than 8:30. It’s quarter to now.

Her book is pretty good, and she’s getting close to the end, but she finds herself losing focus, glancing up as the car circles another time. The bugs are coming out and the sun is going down. Lots of people are inside now. The driver doesn't have to wait to drive along. None of the neighbors brush their curtains aside to watch the next slow slide down the street, the way the passenger side window rolls down and Emma thinks she can see someone leaning over the seat, staring toward her, though the inside of the car is so dark and she can't tell for sure.

She goes to check on Sandra, and even though nothing is amiss there, she finds herself sitting against the crib, the slats propping her back up. She tries to think through a plan.

She doesn't want to leave Sandra, doesn't want to wake her to go over to a neighbor's house to ask them to call. They don't seem worried, and besides, she can call herself. When they moved to town, Mom had taken Emma to the police station and introduced her to the officers. She remembered being in an office, tall men all around, watching her from very high, and a few women with big hair.

"In case of emergency," Mom had told them, as if she was able to give them orders, which apparently she was, "Emma knows the number of the station and, if possible, will tap out her name in Morse code against the receiver rather than a simple SOS to help you identify her." They had practiced it at home - a short tap, four long taps, a short, one last long - and even once with the agreement of the local emergency workers. A firetruck had come to their house and the firefighters had waved at them. Nate had drawn a picture of it that hung on the fridge for months.

She could call them now. A policeman would be here in only a few minutes; they would be able to find where she was using the phone line, and the Walkers lived much closer to the center of town than her family did. But what if it is only someone from nearby out for a drive in the warm summer air? Does she want to call the police for that?

A real babysitter would know these sorts of things. A real grownup would know when the right time was. Emma just wants to ask her parents, wants them to take care of it all.

Downstairs again, she sets her jaw and finds the phone, stretching the cord so it sits on the table beside her chair just in case. Then she goes to find a pad of paper and when the car returns, she writes down everything she can see about it: the make and color, her estimation of the year, the license plate number, the sort of scratch on one door. She lists how many times it has driven by already and approximately when. She thinks it is what her mother would do.

And then another car pulls up beside the strange one, this one her own familiar station wagon, drives around and parks in the Walker’s driveway. Mom steps out and goes over to where the car is still meandering, bends her head toward the driver's window and speaks for a moment.

The car drives away. When Mom comes up the path to wait for the last few minutes before Mrs. Walker returns, Emma opens the door and steps out to hug her tightly.

"Why was the car waiting around?" she asks as they walk up their own driveway. Mrs. Walker had come back smiling and paid Emma an extra ten cents.

Mom answers, "The driver wanted to find Oakdale Drive, but was confused and lost on Oak Way. I gave directions." In the moonlight, she peers over at Emma and stops her with a hand to her wrist. She brushes Emma's hair back from her face with gentle fingers. "I know you must have been scared," she says. "But you noticed and made good choices. You were smart, careful to protect yourself and the baby." She runs a finger over where Emma’s torn off list sticks out from the top of her book.

When she has trouble sleeping that night, imagining eyes looking out at her from within darkened cars, she thinks of Mom's words and tries to remember that she is brave.

On the Fourth of July, it doesn’t get dark until late. There’s plenty of time to go for the party at the Deaf club in D.C. and still be able to find a spot to watch the fireworks.

Emma watches Dad out of the corner of her eye. There are kids at her school whose hearing parents never come to these sorts of events, who won't even drop them off, so she knows that she should be grateful that her whole family is here. Drea and Nate stand in a group of kids they’ve met before, Mom over in the corner with Eric Blanchard's father who is the chapter president, and Dad signs with some other parents. No matter what she tries to tell herself, she feels a little embarrassed watching him. The other parents are Deaf, and even though Dad's pretty good at ASL, he's not exactly a native speaker.

At least he's not trying to make everyone watch the slides from their trip to the Grand Canyon last summer again. (People did seem pretty interested when he had brought them a few months ago, but still.)

Her focus is broken by a wave in front of her. She brings her eyes back to Albie Duncan, who is grinning at her so that she can see the chip in his canine tooth.

"Question," Albie starts, and she tilts her head to allow it, even as his grin turns nervous. "Want to go on a date with me?"

She considers. Albie's a year older than she is, but sweet and he does good impressions of the teachers. She's never really thought about him being handsome, but she guesses that his hair is good, thick brown and swooping up in the front, and she does like his smile.

"Okay," she nods. "My parents - I'll check with them. Where do you want to go?"

Albie lives a couple of towns over, but finally they agree to get ice cream at a place in the middle. Emma hopes they'll be able to find it without too much trouble.

When she looks away from Albie, she finds Dad still standing with his group but looking at her. The smile he gives her is one she has never seen before, sort of sighing and twisted at one corner, even as his eyes look the same as they always have.

Drea drives home from the fireworks with Mom in the front guiding her. Nate falls asleep pretty quickly, curled up against Dad in the backseat.

Emma, on Dad's other side, watches out the window for a while as the other towns nearby celebrate Independence Day too. Before long, her head drops against his shoulder.

He angles his hands toward her, and as they pass beneath the streetlights, she can just make out what he is saying.

"Don't grow up too fast, okay?"

She closes her eyes and gives a little nod into his shirt. She plans on growing up at exactly the right speed.

More chapters here

#Steggy #Steggy fic #things left behind fic #Steve Rogers #Peggy Carter #the Carter crew #I think I'm going to be off next week - ya girl needs a break #especially after this week's outing (aka Too Much Too Mediocre)

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desdemonafictional · 5 years ago

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Chicken Soup, Approximately

a zadr fic

rated G for everyone

On Ao3

The moment that everything went wrong was when Dib climbed into that giant robot.

At the time, Zim was sitting in a pile of fairly comfortable trash on the street side, temporarily vanquished. For a second there he’d assumed that the day was over, so he’d just been biding his time, waiting for his PAK recovery sequence to rearrange his tissues into their correct positions. The giant robot had been slumped, powered down after its defeat, with Dib at its heels poking around in the wiring to satisfy his curiosity. And then some neighborhood mud monkey had leaned over their fence and shouted at Dib, “Hey, boy!”

Dib looked up.

The mud monkey, slumping over the fence and waving some kind of recreation beverage, said, “You got your--your damn robot all over my lawn! Lookit Marge’s petunias, they’re, uh, flat! You done smashed ‘em! You big headed little hooligan!”

Dib looked down, at some sort of foliage flattened underneath his boots as well as Zim’s giant robot. They’d started fighting at one end of Zim’s neighborhood and ended up on the other side, and they had taken out a fair amount of lawns with the big metal feet in the struggle as Dib tried to uncouple the power cells from the inside. The neighbor on the other side was missing a chunk of roof tile.

“Oh,” he said, “sorry? It wasn’t really my fault, but sorry anyhow.”

“You better get your car off my lawn boy!” the human said, jabbing his bottle at the robot.

“Okay, okay,” Dib said, “I will, jeeze. Give me a second, I’m trying to figure out where the power lifting mechanism connects to the joint--”

The human neighbor squinted one of his bulging eyes. “I know you,” he said, “you’re Membrane’s wacky little nutjob kid. Hey, hey, how did that worm taste? I saw you hack it up on the tv.”

Dib flipped up his collar, covering his neck. “I wasn’t--I had been poisoned, I didn’t eat it because I wanted to.”

“I saws you,” the human insisted, rattling his mostly empty bottle. “I saws you eat that worm good. You a bug eater, boy?”

Dib turned to Zim, making helpless gestures at the human on the fence. “Tell him,” Dib said, “tell him you poisoned me!”

Zim gave the situation a shrewd once-over. While he was still immensely proud of himself for poisoning the Dib Human with that swamp worm, as he was of everything he did, he was also wary of agreeing to anything the Dib asked him in front of other people. “Zim has no recollection of this,” he said, kicking his feet against the trash bag.

“Zim!” Dib shouted. “It was just last week! You put the worm in my milkshake straw! You called me on the phone while I was on my dad’s show just to tell me about it! I had to induce vomiting or I would have died!”

“Are you sure?” Zim said, inspecting his gloves for damage. “This dirt monkey says you’re a bug eater. Maybe you just like eating bugs.”

“I do not like eating bugs!”

The human at the fence took a swig of his beverage. “You throw up bugs on purpose, boy? That’s some sick, that’s, man, that’s some crazy stuff.”

“Because it was poisonous!” Dib shouted.

“Hey Marge!” the human shouted, waving back at his house, “Marge, come laugh at the crazy bug eating boy!”

A distant voice shouted, “From the TV?”

Dib buried his nails in his scalp. “I’m not crazy! It was a rational--”

The neighbor human’s mate appeared at the fence, hair stacked precariously with curlers. She pointed one of her claws at Dib, opened up her jaw, and erupted into caws of corvid laughter.

“Would you listen--”

A small child appeared at the fence as well, also pointing its finger at Dib and spewing laughter. More neighbors began to surface, curious about the epicenter of the amusement, and quickly joined in the ridicule. Public shaming was an activity that never failed to bring a group of earthlings together.

Zim watched with interest as Dib twitched visibly, in the middle of the garden, his whole body spasming. And then, rather than shouting and stamping and making a speech as he usually did when large groups of humans began to ridicule him publically, Dib simply turned on his heel and walked back to the robot. He scaled the robot’s leg with a series of deft pulls, climbed into the dark cockpit, and then--quite matter of factly--punched the big red activate button.

The arm cannons blazed to life.

“Who’s laughing now!” Dib howled, throwing his whole weight against the steering levers. The mecha rattled and roared, one enormous step heavy enough to rattle Zim’s teeth in his mouth. Black smoke poured off the auxiliary engines. Dib scream-cackled, his eyes huge and wild, as the mecha bore down clumsy and utterly unstoppable. He wrenched a knob and a hail of fire exploded the concrete all around them, chunks of it sailing up into the air as time seemed to slow down, and Zim-–in the middle of the smoke and shrapnel and wailing humans-–just stood there.

Watching.

He watched Dib, up there in that 20 ton deathbot, losing his Irk-forsaken mind, and Zim’s insides gave a horrible, perfect heave. It was like he was going to be sick, only, if he puked now there would just be little cartoon hearts all across his boots.

Wow, he thought. Look at the Dib Monkey go.

–

That wasn’t the first time that Dib had taken the invader’s breath away; it was only the first time he noticed it. There had been other moments, forgotten now—an aerial battle where their ships had been locked into a mirrored freefall, cockpit dome pressed to cockpit dome—an impromptu team-up, as Dib threw himself out the window of a building rigged to explode below him—a field trip in the park where Dib had casually handed Zim an ice cream cone, barely noticing what he had done in the midst of monologuing—

Zim’s attention was not entirely on the task of mixing radioactive isotopes into concrete solution. He turned the mixer with half a mind on the day before, turning over the memory of Dib’s nervous breakdown backlit against the yellow sky, the light glinting off the mecha around him—it was the most focused he had been on anything in a very long time, although he didn’t take any note of that change in himself. He was preoccupied with others.

Scowling, Zim thumped himself on the side of his head. “Be silent, brain meats,” he muttered, thumping himself harder. “Obey Zim.”

Across the laboratory, perched on a biohazard canister, GIR giggled and imitated him. “This is funnnn,” he said, clanking with each tap.

“It must be my brain meats,” Zim muttered. “Blasted wetware. Obey your master!”

“Maybe it’s your cute lil backpack!”

“Impossible,” Zim said. “My PAK is a state of the art piece of advanced computational brilliance. It is flawless! The error must be organic.”

GIR oooo’ed at nothing in particular. Zim gave up on his work and tossed the mixer into the vat, stalking across the lab as the isotopes quickly swallowed the mixer whole. He pulled his goggles from his head and threw them over his shoulder. The memory of Dib, sunlit and gloriously mad in his tons of deadly metal, had been troubling Zim for hours now, distracting him from even the simplest of his nefarious doings. It was like a tumor. A tumor obstructing the beautiful correct function of his intelligence interface. And if it was a tumor, well then, Zim would just have to remove it forcibly.

“GIR,” he shouted, “prep the medical lab for surgery!”

As the tiny robot went screaming ahead of him, Zim stripped off his hazmat gloves and grabbed a box of medical ones from a passing shelf. As he stepped into the irritatingly bright medical lab, the computer chimed in with, “REMINDER! Invader Zim is four solar orbits overdue for medical evaluation!”

“Ignore,” Zim said.

“REMINDER! Invader Zim is four solar orbits overdue for—”

“Ignore!” Zim shrieked. “Ignore all!”

“Acknowledged,” the computer muttered.

Zim took an uneasy seat on the edge of the operation table and pulled one of several extendable arms from the ceiling apparatus. He unfolded the square at the end and lined its edges up with his forehead, flipping down a series of lenses until the magnification on the video feed was sufficient for his purposes.

“Engage hard light scalpel,” he ordered. Heat immediately flared to life against his skin. “Incision area one by four by four.”

In a sizzle and pop, the surgical droid severed a square of skull and plucked it from the opened site. Zim squinted at the image projected across the wall in front of him.

“What have you hidden, Dib?” he said to himself, guiding the video probe deeper into his frontal cortex. There was a strange feeling as it passed into him, a fuzziness across his tongue and a static hum in his belly, but the pain receptors were neatly turned off by the PAK interface. After a minute or two of poking around in his own insides, Zim started losing patience.

“Where is it?” he snarled, poking hard enough at his brain matter that his left arm gave a spasm and knocked a spanner off the side table. “Computer! Scan for irregularities!”

“Beep,” the computer said. “Boop.”

Zim crossed his arms and tapped his heel impatiently while the program did an exhaustive malware scan. Finally, the monitor flashed in large letters: HORMONES.

“Hooooormones?” Zim read, “You mean the Dib introduced foreign chemicals into my Zim Veins?”

The screen flashed snow and then returned with the words corrected to: IRKEN HORMONES

“Computer!” Zim snapped, “Explain this!”

The computer hummed. “You appear be exhibiting primitive BONDING HORMONES, resulting in ATTRACTION and HAPPINESS.”

“The Dib did this?” Zim said. “How dare he make Zim happy against his will!”

“Uh,” the computer said.

GIR spit out a mouth full of broken syringes. “Sounds like Looove.”

“Preposterous,” Zim said. “Zim is a hardened combat veteran, not to mention an elite invader! It’s just some kind of… slow acting poison. Kinda thing. Computer, initiate blood draining protocols!”

“No toxins have been detected in the blood of Invader Zim.”

“Well drain it anyway!” Zim shouted. “I want it out of me! Right now!”

“The hormones are being produced by several of your key glands,” the computer said, sounding a little reproachful. “The source is too complex to be removed with traditional surgical procedures.”

Zim sighed and dug a scalpel out of his supplies. “Zim must do everything around here,” he said, examining the joint of his arm where he knew there to be at least one major hormone producing gland. There was also a major artery but, eh, he’d cross that bridge when he burned it.

“The source of the hormone production starter enzyme is located in the organic brain,” the computer continued. “Even if you removed the glands, once they regenerated, the enzyme would only order production to resume.”

“Curses!” Zim said. He lobbed the scalpel across the room, where it stuck in a secondary monitor with an electric fizzle and a puff of smoke. After a moment, he smoothed a hand over his uniform and righted himself.

“No matter,” he said. “I will simply have to hack my fleshware.”

He stalked over to the monitor and pulled down a keyboard from the suspended apparatus.

“I have researched this ‘love’,” Zim said, making quote-y marks with his claws, “before. I recognize the symptoms. If I have contracted this 'emotion’ then the Dib has certainly infected me with his primitive disease in order to take me out of the game. How cunning. Not!”

Zim swung back around to the keyboard, inputting a search for “rmoance” which he belatedly, after cursing at the error404 screen for a few moments, corrected to “romance”.

“Foolish worm baby,” he muttered, “for I am Zim! Master of all research and HOLY QUIZNACK what is that?”

GIR toddled up behind him and took a look at the screen. “Pogo stick,” he said. “Weeeee-hoo, lookit em go.”

Zim had already smashed the escape key. “Okay,” he said, “never mind that. I don’t need to research romance specifically, I can just research earth diseases. COMPUTER, search the 'inter webs’ for information on curing this disGUSTING affliction.”

The computer buzzed with static for a moment, and then popped open a neatly formatted Gadzooks Answers page across the screen

The computer announced, “Mommy blogger 92 says to feed a fever, starve a cold.”

“Hmm. HMMMM.” Zim peeled back one glove and pressed it against his forehead. “But I am neither hot nor cold! Useless!”

GIR piped up, “Try thinkin about smoochies!”

“Ugh,” Zim said. “No way. There will be no swapping of the spit for this invader. The Dib would have to beg me, beg me on his weak little human knees, crawl through the mud on his hands and knees and then PERHAPS in my beneficent glory I would allow him to kiss… the mighty boots of… Zim…” He paused. A terrible expression passed over his face.

“GIR!” he shouted, “Get the thermometer!”

Two minutes later Zim threw the thermometer across the room, splattering mercury over the far wall.

“FINE!” he shouted. “Fine! The illness is a fever! How does one feed a fever?”

GIR listed a number of items, most of which were not edible. When he got as far as soap, Zim let out a heavy groan and threw himself into the spinning chair.

“Sources say,” the computer interrupted, “chicken noodle soup will DESTROY YOUR FEVER.”

“But it’s…. all meaty… and full of water,” Zim said, barely holding in a gag. He tapped his claws on the arm rest for a moment, considering. “Noodles seem harmless enough,” he decided at last. He levered himself up from the chair and marched off towards the elevator, hands clasped behind his back.

“Come along GIR,” he called, “I’m sure we have some extra soda around here somewhere….”

–

When Zim took his seat for homeroom the next morning, Dib was already at the blackboard trying to explain something to a blank-faced and uninterested audience. He was covered in white dust, practically vibrating in place, and jabbing a piece of chalk at a rudimentary graph of some footprint. He paused in mid jab as Zim walked into the room.

“…What on earth are you holding?” he said.

Zim looked down at his bowl of soup. Then he looked up at Dib. “None of your beeswax, Dibberton.”

“That’s… not my name,” Dib said.

“Hey,” a kid in the front row said, “lay off him, Dibberton.”

“That’s not my–ugh.” Dib turned back to Zim, who had neatly perched himself in a seat toward the back. “That looks like noodles in grape juice.”

Zim shoved a tangy purple noodle into his mouth. “That’s because it is, Dibberton.”

Haha! From the look on the monkey’s face, Zim has thwarted him indeed! The flavor of sucess is sweet! And also, a little carbonated.

#zadr

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