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shiongenkai · 4 months ago

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Ghouls as Retail Workers Headcanon

If I have to work retail hell, so do they!!!! I kinda imagined they'd work at like. a retail chain. I dont know. Imagine a Walmart. If you don't have a Walmart where you live. Imagine what you would describe as Retail Hell.

This is an incredibly stupid post on how I think they'd survive working a retail job off campus. This certainly applies to on campus jobs too though. Please don't take any of this seriously.

Frostheim

If you ignore the fact that none of them (with the exception of like, Kaito? Maybe?) would ever need to work retail to begin with, you will discover that most of them do not have the constitution and social moxxy to survive in retail anyway.

Jin

I think we all need to be honest here. He'd be dogshit at it. He's the coworker who acts like the manager even if he's not, and he's terrible with customers and other employees. You could not rely on him to cover your shift, but you can always rely on him calling out and requiring you to come in on your day off. Absolute retail bastard. 1/10 but only because if a customer gives you shit, he'll defend you and take the heat for it. You win one, lose every other one.

Tohma

Out of everyone in Frostheim I think Tohma is the only one who could possibly win at retail. He's got it all. Perfect model employee. Literally the Company's Dream which means he's every employee's nightmare. But it's fine. He's dependable and never calls out, and he's good with the customers, even if his stocking is lacking. Born to cashier. Forced to be rich. Would be perfect but customers find him minorly off-putting. 9/10

Kaito

He would be good at it but you get the constant impression he's one bad customer away from a mental break. And it's sad. watching a shaking chihuahua tell someone you're out of stock of something and there's none in the back. And he'd probably hate it all too, and try to flirt with the women, and it'd just be best for everyone if he seeks other employment opportunities. Let it be known to everyone though that he was the best informed on trends and was best at figuring out what people wanted though. Solid 8/10

Luca

You want to root for him so bad, which is why it's so sad when he's fired. He's not bad at his job! He's diligent and does tasks perfectly. But he's terrible on the customer side, because he jumps to too many conclusions and gets into too many tiffs with shoplifters. He's also constantly asking for the manager and holding up lines and interfering with others. Nightmare. But he's so likeable.... but also he catches you taking 20 minutes instead of 15 for your break and he tells your manager on you so you do kinda resent him for that. 6/10

Vagastrom

Born to be freight forced to be freight. Leo is the exception. He's Vagastrom's pretty little princess who could do it if he wanted to but he doesn't want to. SOMEONE has to be the floor man in this house...

Alan

He would be banger at unloading freight and stocking shelves but the moment you ask him to talk to a customer or do register it's all over. He's basically that one coworker you Heard works there but you never see because he's always on truck and awake at like. 4 am. and not ever on the floor. And it's for the best really, because he'd be too awkward and silent and the energy of the store would become strange real quickly. One time he goes in on his day off to shop and a customer reports him to management for being a 'suspicious person' and he thinks about that every time he clocks in from then on. 6/10.

Leo

Hot Take but I think he'd be fine. Like I think he'd be good at it even. He would definitely one hundred percent quit, but while he's there he becomes the store favorite. Workers love him. Customers love him. Management loves him. The only people who don't love him are customers that annoyed him and the one bitch coworker everyone hates and that's because he's a demon to them in private and nobody believes them. He's so good at being dead inside levels of cheerful. 7/10 because after he quits you'll realize he's made you do like all of his work the entire time and that'd piss you off.

Sho

Okay. Okay. He'd be fine. But his constitution is that of a food service worker. And though food service workers are our brothers in arms our battles are different beasts and he would not understand the retail one. I still think he'd be solid, genuinely an average worker, but I don't think he'd last long at all. It's just Different. He can handle people being bitches but Stupid Bitches make his head hurt too much. Not worth it. He'll never go back again, and you will miss him despite his average-ness. The freight team mourns him every day. 5/10

Jabberwock

Despite statistics saying Jabberwock has an incredible retail worker value it should be known that Haru 'Freak of Nature' Sagara is an exception and should not be counted. It should also be noted that I would pay to put Ren and Towa in a Walmart and watch them do their jobs.

Haru

Haru Sagara was born in a shitty retail store and he will die in a shitty retail store and the store will die with him. And from his ashes another store will rise again. I cannot express enough how much this man exudes 'Made in the retail store clone lab' vibes. You would see him in the store and you would squint and think of a time where he didn't work and find none. He picks up all the extra shifts. He never calls out. He knows where everything is all the time. He's great with customers and great at upselling. He is perfect except for the fact that making everyone else look really bad in comparison. Because he's a freak of nature. Everyone would resent him a little (including managers and other employees) but he's too valuable to get rid of. There's a rumor he sleeps in the store. It may very well be true. 11/10 please get help.

Towa

Good news. He's a body that can be put on the schedule. Bad news. That's probably about all you can count on. I cannot express how bad he would be as a coworker. I do not envy the man who has to get him to do work he doesn't want to do at times he doesn't want to work. You could not count on him to do shit unless he likes you, and even then he is still prone to his own whims. Terrible with customers for the most part. By and large he's loved to bits but he's also.... Towa. Could you imagine encountering Towa at a store? Genuinely and truly? What would you do. What could you do? 2/10 because evening shifts are marginally better but not by much

Ren

Great news is that he's better than Towa. Terrible news is that he definitely wants to die the entire time and he makes sure everyone knows it. He would be okay on stocking and okay on register but he would never last long. He will miss the diner every day of his life and he'll quit suddenly and without notice. At the very least, he'd probably never call out. He may even pick up a shift or two, but it'll be unpleasant for most everyone involved. He'd probably find stocking fun but the moment someone comes to talk to him it's ruined. They'd ask him to do freight and he'd claim it's harassment. 4/10

Sinostra

A casino is not retail and these men will never in a million years survive the winter. I want to put them all on shift on Black Friday and watch as everything burns to the ground forever.

Taiga

I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me that he would not be fired literally immediately for no call no showing every single shift for like. a week and a half. You cannot get a hold of him. He shows up one time for a shift, does the shittiest job imaginable, and then is never seen again. He definitely shoplifted something but you don't know what. He ate someone's lunch in the break room. He is banned for life and nobody is sure how he got in in the first place. Absolutely the worst possible employee imaginable. It is a wonder he ever got hired in the first place. 0/10

Romeo

He does not pass the background check but if he did I think he'd be a great worker. I think he'd be really good at it even if he hated it. I think he'd be so scarily good at it he would become manager and everyone would quit because they hate him. Unfortunately I feel like he'd never stay long enough for that to happen, because he'd get so mad on his first day at all the customers and coworkers that he'd throw something at someone and be fired on the spot. And honestly it would probably have been deserved. But retail hell is unforgiving and Fico is not fit to survive. 8/10 I'd throw something too. I forgive him.

Ritsu

He's the worlds most average retail worker alive. Because on one hand he is worker's rights advocate king. But on the other hand he is so By The Letter Rules that if you take too long on your break or do something incorrectly as per the manual (but easier and better as per experience) he'll flip his shit on you. So everyone really wants to hate him but he calls the boss out the same way he calls everyone else out. So they can't hate him. But they can. So bad. He'd also never pick up your shifts unless you did something for him in return and it's annoying as all hell. He could never be fired bc he'd definitely sue the shit out of the company. But I can't imagine he'd ever quit either. He is retail hell and retail heaven. And for that. 5/10

Hotarubi

These poor, poor souls, who are not built for retail but are built like people who are forced to do it anyway. They could all survive. They could. But at what cost.

Subaru

Okay, he's fine. He's fine but he's so nervous all the time, and he's constantly asking for manager approval, and if he ever gets a promotion he'll be like let me ask the boss for approval (nervous smile) and everyone will be like YOU ARE THE BOSS... but it's okay. He's a good floor man and customers adore him. He cannot do register but they forgive him for that. Shifts exhaust him so bad he can't do anything else that day. But he'd probably come in if you need him. 9/10 please quit.

Haku

Haku is fascinating because he would both be The Best Ever and The Worst Ever. Unlike Ritsu who is a black hole of retail wherein nobody ever escapes, Haku is like a merciful assistant of divinity who does his job properly and quickly and without much outward complaint, but on breaks he's always insistent he can't do anything, and even though he'd help if you asked, he exudes an aura telling you not to ask. He's good. He'd want to quit pretty quickly though. He probably would quit pretty quickly! And it would be a tragic parting, but one you have all made peace with. 9/10 take subaru with you

Zenji

Ghosts are bad at retail. Hope this helps. ... Kidding. Mostly. Zenji would be a demon. He would be really good at the people portion of it, I guess, like chatting with customers and helping them find what they need. But he's loud, for one, and nosy, for two, and if you put him on register he'll get through 1 customer every 10 minutes because he needs to make everyone a song based on their products they're buying. So he's terrible. He's really so bad. But he's the moodmaker of the store and everyone is afraid that if you fire him every employee will drop dead from despair Immediately. So he lives on. Forever. 6/10

Obscuary

Obscuary is perhaps the funniest one to imagine in a retail store. I need you to sit and imagine what it would be like if you walked into Walmart or something and the workers you see are Ed, Rui, and Lyca. Think not as a fan of those characters. Think solely as a customer in this random retail store. Think about it for a long time.

Edward

I think he would last less time than Taiga, which is an achievement we should all celebrate. I don't know how he'd ever get hired, ever. At all. Even once. His background check would never pass. He would never get to the interview. He would never go to the store in general. All around a terrible idea, but if by some miracle he is hired, I cannot fathom what he would do. He was born to sit in the breakroom and eat everyone's snacks. He would not stock shelves well. He would not clean up the store. He would be the Worst cashier. If you put him on freight his old man bones would break and turn into dust and you would discover a brand new way to kill vampires that gothic romance novels will write about for centuries to come. Sorry old man. Your time has come. 0/10

Rui

He would be good at it but he personally would hate it so much you'd wonder if it was even worth it. Great with customers, great at checking things out quickly on register. He could probably do freight if you asked but he wouldn't prefer it. Only problem is that there's so many people and so many times where people will bump into him that he'll need like, a hazmat suit. And that's not part of the uniform. So he'd probably quit, or never get in the door to begin with, because it's so not worth it. Mass murder should be kept as inside thoughts as an employee, and he does not, in fact, want to live the dream. 8/10 in heart, 0/10 in reality

Lyca

Store pet....... Lyca would be fine. He's basically like, your youngest coworker who is really, really trying, and they're not good at their job, and they're super combative with customers, but they're so cute! So cute!! And most customers agree with that, even if they still leave complaints. He'd try his best with shelves and be bad. He'd try his best at register and be bad. He'd be good at freight for sure but he'd always insist on shifts during the day so he could get more human skills. And you can't fault him for trying. But you can fault him for being bad at the job and causing more problems than what it's worth. 4/10 if you put him on shift with Subaru

Mortkranken

We've done it. We've found the worst dorm to put in a retail environment imaginable. It is a good thing that they have a niche, because if their funding goes down, it will be a terrible, terrible day for Mortkranken. May your money never run out and may you always have advil on hand if it doesn't.

Yuri

This poor, poor man. He just can't do it. He just couldn't. More specifically, he wouldn't. It'd be a nightmare for him, constantly, forever. Sho could deal with stupid people to a certain degree, but the first time someone comes up to Yuri with a candle marked $4.99 and asks how much this candle is, Yuri will instantly pass away. He can't do it. He won't do it!! And that's fair, honestly. He'd be good at putting things where they belong. He'd be okay at cleaning up. He'd be bad on register and even worse on freight. Retail has introduced him into the field of lobotomies. 3/10

Jiro

Marginally better than Yuri because he would be good with helping with freight, but retail is unkind to people with chronic illness and he would not make it through his shifts most of the time. He is off-putting to customers and would not be allowed on the floor or register, and though the freight team would adore him, the bosses would like his output to be better. If Yuri can figure out a way to get him through his full shifts, they're golden. Until then, they are unemployed. 5/10 to retail, 10/10 to the truck team.

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flowercrowncrip · 2 months ago

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So how did two wheelchair users going to a cafe result in the police being called on a guy we’d never met?

I’d gone to the city to visit a friend and she invited me to a bougie new hot chocolate place that had opened. Both of us are wheelchair users – I use a big power chair and she uses a lightweight manual chair.

Getting in is a bit of a challenge because I misjudged the threshold going in and got stuck on my first attempt. So already people are staring, but that’s just part of life in a chair.

I figure out the ordering system and order a fancy drink (dark chocolate with cinnamon and cardamom) and my friend does the same. We are given tickets with numbers that will get called. So far so good.

Unfortunately it’s a bit tight for space and fairly busy. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to get my chair to the counter so my friend says she’ll get both drinks.

Her number gets called and she’s trying to get through the people which is taking time. They call the number again quite quickly. She’s trying to get the attention of the server to let her know she’s heard and on her way but it doesn’t look like the cafe worker has noticed.

The cafe worker then shouts the number again, in a way that comes across as very frustrated and honestly a bit rude given that it’s really not been very long. Even if my friend wasn’t disabled it would have been unnecessary. But maybe she’s having a bad day – retail work is stressful especially when busy and we have no idea what might have happened earlier in her shift.

An older man behind us who we’ve never met takes offence at this. He can see the trouble we’ve had getting through the shop and makes a comment about the server being rude and how there’s no need for her attitude. He’s sort of got a point, a more patient response would have been kinder, but it’s really not worth making a fuss over.

It would have been nice if the situation ended there, and I think it probably would have, except that the server then sees my friend coming over in her wheelchair and gets visibly embarrassed. I think she’s realised she might have made a bit of a social blunder. My friend thanks her for the drink and we continue waiting for my drink.

The man makes another comment along the lines of “see, there’s no need to be impatient… people these days need more manners” or something like that and we could see the server get more uncomfortable with the situation.

At this point all the conversations stop and the shop is silent. Everyone is staring at the man, the server and at me and my friend. I think a lot of people are trying to see what side me and my friend will take given we’re physically and metaphorically in the middle of all this.

The server is looking like she is struggling to cope with the embarrassment, and the man sees that he’s starting to get an audience and feels more justified in his outrage and keeps talking, he makes out that he’s just talking to his friend about it but his volume implies he wants everyone to hear.

At this point he’s definitely being a dick, but he’s not shouting or being aggressive as such. I think that if everyone ignores him, like my friend and I are trying our best to do, then it’ll settle down and we’ll all get on with our days.

The server has enough and suddenly crosses the shop to approach the man and immediately tells him to leave with no warning.

The man is shocked and says he’s just talking to his friend and he’s not leaving. The server says that in that case she’ll have to call the police. She pulls out her phone and goes to a staff area.

I do a lot of deescalation at work, and the first rule is to stay calm in situations like this. Neither the server or the man are calm, probably because she still feels embarrassed and uncomfortable and he feels self righteous and disrespected.

I think at this point everyone is a bit stunned. Absolutely everyone is staring at the man and also at my friend and me. I’m wishing the floor would swallow me up and am really hoping to get my drink so I can leave before the police arrive.

Yes, the server came across as impatient and rude, and the man initially said what I’m sure a lot of people were thinking, but he seemed fuelled by an audience and was quickly out of line himself.

I personally feel like if someone else had calmly said “please stop, the situation is under control and if this keeps going we’ll have to ask you to leave” then it wouldn’t have escalated as quickly.

Now Literally everyone now is staring. I think a lot of them are trying to judge whose side my friend and I are going to take, but we both feel like we didn’t ask for any of this and just want everyone to take a breather, and to get our drinks and leave.

A second member of staff goes over to the man and much more calmly explains that now he’s been asked to leave they would have no choice but to call the police if he refuses to leave. I wish she’d been handling this from the start and I got the impression she also felt that it had escalated a bit too quickly, and was trying to deescalate the situation while also knowing her colleague (manager?) was already on the phone.

The man initially refuses to leave again, but he’s clearly calmer and the person he was with seems to convince him it’s not worth it and I hear them leave.

We get my drink and leave. No one checks to make sure we’re okay despite the altercation literally happening about us and over our heads. We’re just glad to be gone before the police show up.

The hot chocolate was nice but really not worth the drama.

#honestly it was just a bit of a disaster from start to finish #if you’re going to make a scene on someone else’s behalf at least check that it’s what that person wants first #because at no point in this situation did anyone actually think about my friend or me and what would be best for us

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sannasruins · 7 months ago

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never enough

hitoshi shinso x reader

type: angst

warnings: abandonment/ghosting, disappointment, femmenine compliments but gn!reader

a/n: first post in 10 months, this is loosely based on a romance i had last year, it always sucks to be left behind, doesn't it?

word count: 2k

He left.

You weren’t enough for him, or maybe you were too much. You couldn’t help yourself though, it was adoration at first sight with his stark gaze and shockingly deep violet hair.

Maybe he never even liked you in the first place, because if he did, why would he do this?

It was a cold winter day when he approached you, frost creeped at the corner of windows, and small snowflakes drifted down from the dark grey sky. It was probably the coldest it had been that whole season.

Christmas was coming soon. In your college days that meant going out with friends and drinking parties, but now all your friends were dating or married, spending their day off with their loved one. Leaving you, a newly graduated office worker at a top 10 hero’s company, to come in on your day off so that you didn’t spend your night alone in a cold empty apartment.

That was where you first saw him, Hitoshi Shinso, in person at least. Of course you had heard of him, the brainwashing hero, the hero with a villain’s quirk.

You had seen him on TV, on newspapers, in magazines and on social media. Despite having only graduated 4 years prior and only recently advancing from sidekick to hero, he was rising through the hero ranks while being employed at another, bigger and more popular, hero’s company.

He had also come into the office on Christmas, though it wasn’t as sad when he did it, you thought to yourself, crime doesn’t stop for holidays. Your paperwork could have though.

Hitoshi noticed you when he walked into the small office space you occupied that you were occupying, making eye contact with you, before walking into the breakroom that was connected to the office. You felt heat rise from your shoulders, up your neck and into your cheeks, and you knew that your face must be brightly flushed.

But how could you have helped yourself, when those piercing purple eyes looked right into you, past what felt like every boarder you had up, past every lie you told yourself, and saw you. You felt exposed, and bare, in a way that not even nakedness could compare to.

You rationalized to yourself as you see his figure retreat into the breakroom, the door closing behind him, that it was just all in your mind, he had just glanced at you, that was all. You still couldn’t help but feel your heated face, sighing and putting your face in your hands for a moment before focusing back on your computer and work.

You heard the door to the breakroom open and close again, signaling that he had exited, but you decided to not look up, because your face had just started to cool down from the last time he looked at you with his pretty pretty face and his pretty pretty eyes.

So, you were surprised when something, a chip bag, was plopped down onto your desk Infront of you, with a small jump, you looked up at and saw that Hitoshi Shinsou had just placed a bag of chips from the vending machine in the breakroom on your desk.

“Its cold,” he murmured, and his voice was like velvet and melted chocolate to your ears, sweet and smooth and everything you ever needed. He leaned on the desk opposite you, “the heat isn’t on today, no one was supposed to come in.” he explained further.

You looked at him with a question on your face, it was cold in the office, that’s why you were wearing your coat and scarf still, but it didn’t explain why he had come over and why he had put a bag of chips on your desk.

“Eating helps keep you warm, replenishes your energy.” He answered your unasked question.

You nodded; your ears hot with a blush you thought he could for sure see all over your face.

“Thank you,” you grabbed the bag from in front of you and put it in one of your desk drawers, “I appreciate it Mister Hitoshi.”

He nodded at you, a small smile graced his lips, before he pushed himself off the desk, and left the room, leaving you in a face splitting smile the second you heard the door close behind him.

You squeezed your eyes shut and told yourself to breathe, to calm down, it couldn’t have meant that much, that it didn’t mean that much. And that just because he was so beautiful, heroic and it seemed kind to boot, that you couldn’t get a crush on him, he was just being a nice person, right?

It seemed like Hitoshi Shinsou wanted nothing more than to have you not be rational though.

After that Christmas day where he gifted you a bag of chips in a cold office, he began to be the places you were more often. Smiling at you as you passed each other in the hallway, asking you how your day was going.

It slowly became more, he soon started seeking you out at your desk, talking to you on his breaks when he wasn’t on patrol, it didn’t really matter if you were working, it wasn’t his company but he was still your superior, so he could do as he saw fit. That didn’t stop your coworkers from starting to whisper though.

Hitoshi Shinso would notice things on your desk, knick-nacks or books, and surprisingly to you, he was a fan of some of those things as well, and it felt almost like fate to you. Your similar hobbies, your taste in music, your taste in coffee, it was all so close to his, how could it not be meant to be?

It didn’t take long after his desk visits started for him to get your phone number, and the two of you would call, only on his schedule though, he was the busy hero who had to work odd hours, so it wasn’t surprising and quickly became normal for you to be awoken at 3 am from a call by him, asking to talk. It wasn’t his fault you were tired in the mornings and it started to affect your work, you didn’t mind if it meant you could spend time with him.

You finally one day, after getting home from the office, worked up the courage to ask him if he would like to hang out on his next night off, maybe to go out to the movies, to dinner, anything would be fine with you, as long as he was there. And to your pleasant surprise, he agreed, but then told you he had tonight off, and to give him your address, he would be there in 30 minutes.

You panicked, this amazingly beautiful man who you thought was so out of your league was coming over to your apartment? In 30 minutes? You weren’t ready, you looked frazzled and tried after a long day working, and your apartment was messy. How could you make both yourself and your apartment presentable in that little of time?

You texted him back, “okay, that sounds great! I live at XXX, apartment number XXX :).”

You rushed to pretty yourself up, putting on nicer clothes in comparison to the office clothes that he has only ever seen you in, and quickly tried to tidy your apartment.

You were shoving clothes and boxes into a closet when you heard the doorbell ring, and with one last push you got them in and quickly closed the door behind it before it could all come tumbling back out onto you. With a quick brush of your palms down your clothes to smooth out any wrinkles from your outfit, you went to the door excitedly.

There he was, the tall man with tired eyes, and he was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. His socks didn’t match. It didn’t look like he was planning on going out with you tonight, but that’s okay, it wasn’t a date, you had asked him to hang out, not to go on a date, so its fine.

You invited him in, he complimented you.

“You look pretty tonight.” His voice was like honey and salve, soothing away all your mental pains, “you look really nice outside of those florescent office lights.”

He smiled at you, a dimple in one of his cheeks, and his tired eyes crinkled at the edges. Your heart melted. How could a man this perfect ever exist?

The two of you played board games that night, him beating you badly at all of them, all the while, smiling at you and telling you that you were lucky you were so pretty. You didn’t mind him insulting your intelligence like you would have when most people do it, all it did was make you bush and look down, because you were happy, he called you pretty.

He left that night with a parting hug, you had told him to get home safe and he thanked you for having you, and then pulled you into a hug. You were so startled you almost didn’t hug him back, but you gave him a quick squeeze before seeing him out the door and closing it behind him.

You were obsessed, he was all you could think about, your friends got tired over how often you would text them about him but you didn’t care because you were so happy that his attention was yours, that he had set his sights on you.

He came over to your apartment a few more times, and the two of you even started watching a tv show together, he had recommended it and told you he wanted to watch it with you.

He sat on your couch, and when you sat further away than where he wanted, he pulled you to him, and put his arm around your shoulder.

He smelt like cigarettes and it made your nose scrunch but you tried to not let it bother you too much, he was perfect in literally every way, and he liked you, he liked you enough to call you, to flirt with you, to cuddle with you on your couch and watch a tv show together. You could deal with a little cigarette smell.

And you started to get hopeful, hopeful for something more, that maybe you could join your college friends and by next Christmas, not be spending it alone but be spending it with a rising hero, someone so amazing had made time for you, had noticed you, thought you were pretty, beautiful, desirable.

He kissed you good bye when he left that night, just a quick peck, but it had you on cloud nine for the entire next day.

As quickly as his attention came, it left.

At first you tried to tell yourself that he is a pro hero, that he is busy, that he doesn’t always have time to text you, to call you. But the spaces in between texts grew longer and longer, hours turned to days, and days to weeks.

You were watching him slip between your fingers and no matter what you said, no matter what invitations you made, or witty jokes you told, he simply was non-responsive.

You didn’t see him at work anymore either, besides occasionally seeing a glance of him in the first-floor entrance, he never came to your branch of the building anymore. Those glances hurt so bad, but you couldn’t help but look, he was still so perfect, and you don’t know what you did wrong, no matter how hard you wracked your brain for an answer.

Your friends told you he used you, or at least tried to. And the whispers at work didn’t stop for quite a while, poor you, not too long ago you were going around telling everyone about how much you like him and how sweet he is. How could you never notice that he didn’t talk about you the same way.

You weren’t enough, and you were too much.

He didn’t like you.

And he left.

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accidentally-in-fictional-love · 6 months ago

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📖🔧😢🩹🥰

I am literally binge reading all of your DD works and I just have to thank you for your absolutely incredible writing! 😭🙌

There are very few fics of Lonny out there, so is there anyway we could see how he’d react to seeing the person he’s had a crush on (reader) having witnessed what he did to Bud? Like I just want to hug him and tell him it’s okay and that it was an accident. Little baby didn’t mean to! 🥺

Forced Limitations - Lonny Crane/Reader

Warnings: No use of Y/N, gender-neutral reader, canon rewrite (the first half hour for now), lots of panic, canon violence, character death (Buddy 🥺), co-workers to friends to ride or dies, angst, hurt/comfort, mutual crushes, this one is heavy but if you've seen the movie you'll expect it.

Wordcount: 9486

Summary: Today was supposed to be such a normal day. You were even going to maybe talk to your crush this time if he didn't say anything first. So why were you now hiding in the basement of your work while you crush stared you down with a bloodied wrench in his shaking hand and fear in his eyes?

Notes: My first Lonny! Thank you so much for reading first of all 💗💗💗 it's because of you guys and your wonderful support for my writing that I'm enjoying these as much as I am! As requested this is an au of the movie down to the dialogue (forever grateful to mediarips with subs included hehe), get that lady outta here I hate her, but because I left this open-ended I might just have to write a part 2 if I can figure out a way for them to both escape 😏 For now I hope you like this, he really didn't mean to and this has been weighing on me since I saw the movie /)o(\

Today was just supposed to be another normal, boring day at work.

You didn't have much going on, nothing penciled into your calendar on your apartment wall, no reminders in your phone, in fact it was probably the most normal your day could get. You left on time, grabbed yourself a coffee and a box of donuts to share with everyone you worked next to, and of course didn't forget the separate Boston Creme just for the cute handyman who smiled at you whenever you caught him staring. You blushed already thinking about him, neither of you had really talked, but you knew he was a sweet guy just based on your minimal interactions with him outside of your donut drop off.

He wasn't very social, he stuck to his partner's side like glue for the most part, and Bud was also a good guy, extremely knowledgeable and able to solve any problem you guys brought to him before any of you could even figure out what was actually wrong, but sometimes you wished you could just have a conversation with Alonso by himself, get to know him a little better. You'd been trying for days now that you knew he preferred the Boston Creme, a popular donut in your group that tended to get snatched up fast from the random assortment you were always gifted.

You’d been getting the baker's dozen with his as the 13th was your attempted way to start something, but so far he'd just noticed that his donut was there and unsnatched, sent Bud over to grab it before anyone else did, and then wandered off to eat it somewhere he wouldn't make a mess for anyone to step on, like the cafeteria on the ground floor.

You wouldn't let that happen today you decided as you pulled into the line to get into work, security giving everyone a random check today for some reason to make sure they all worked there. That was odd, but you'd heard whispers that they were thinking of upping security around here anyway, something about attempted break-ins, so you just got your ID ready, popped the trunk when they asked, and kept on driving until you found a place to park. You gave a wave to Bud when you saw him head for the door, Alonso not with him as usual; he always came early before the rush, you could only guess the swarm of people made him uncomfortable, and you had to admit he had the right idea as everyone shuffled towards the door.

‘Weird about those men, isn’t it?’ you asked him as you flashed your IDs again to get inside, one card after the other to allow you entrance. ‘I mean, I get the extra security, but they looked like they were searching for something.’

‘Poor Lonny must’ve had a hard time with them, he’s always here as soon as the lights come on,’ Bud figured, the two of you walking through the lobby until he started to veer away towards the elevators. His place was in the basement, their own special break room down there while they monitored everything whenever something didn’t need to be looked at, and you pursed your lips with a glance down at the box in your arms before chasing after him.

‘Hey! Hey, uh, I was wondering if maybe you could… escourt me down to the break room today, maybe leave this for Alonso if he’s running late?’ you suggested nervously, no one other than those two usually going down there, but the other man just looked you over a moment but chuckling to himself like he’d just realized something.

‘Ha, imagine that; c’mon, gotta get you to your desk before Bossman notices you’re down there,’ he told you before leading the way, and as payment for his tour he grabbed his own donut first on the way down. ‘Never come down here without either of us, this place is a real maze with a ton of hazards, and also be sure to watch your head, you never know what’s gunna hit you until it’s too late,’ he warned as the elevator came to a stop, and you closed the lid of your coffee a little tighter before following him out.

‘You know I’ve never been down here before, not even when I started,’ you told him as you walked, your eyes taking in everything and nearly allowing you to bump your head just as he knew you would, his hand coming out to protect your forehead before you knocked it off a low-hanging series of pipes.

‘Don’t think many of the people upstairs have, it’s mostly just me and Lonny and the occasional fill-in whenever we call out, that’s not often though, Lonny’s a very hard worker, y’know.’ You were too busy ducking to notice the glance he gave you when he was done speaking, the place indeed a maze as he led you right to the middle where their solitary room to themselves was hidden; inside was a small kitchen against the left wall, a table with two chairs against the right wall, the others folded up nearby since they were unneeded, and four lockers tucked against the far right corner.

Only two of them had names, the company had only needed them once it became clear that they made a great team and rendered more help unnecessary, and Alonso was indeed in as he sat at the table and ate a bowl of cereal. He looked up when he heard Bud arrive, and he was in the middle of a hello and a wave when you walked into his view; instantly his eyes went wide and his cheeks flushed, and you watched as he turned away from you and tried to swallow the mouthful of cereal he was now choking on a little. You’d surprised him, that much was obvious, but it was blush that had you freezing as your own heated your face right up despite the chill of the room.

‘Well, now that I’m clocked in I’d better check out that problem from yesterday, y’know the one, way up on the 6th floor, you can handle things down here for a bit, right?’ Bud told Alonso as he quickly grabbed his orange uniform and started pulling it on, the other man fumbling his words and dropping his spoon when he received an encouraging rub to the back of his head that messed up his long hair.

‘Bud!’ he yelped as his desperate cry to not be left alone, and then it was just the two of you, very much alone while his cereal turned to mush. ‘Uh… hi,’ he said after a while, his hands hurriedly straightening his hair back down so he wouldn’t look a mess, and you could only murmur the same before you realized the burning in your palm was actually because of your coffee.

‘Shit, ow, can I set this down?’ you asked him quickly as you rushed for the table, and he nodded as he cleared a space for you, the rest of the table covered in old newspapers and magazines to read so they could pass the time on slow days. ‘Thanks, I uh, I wanted to make sure you got this, you know how the others are,’ you stuttered nervously, his chosen donut thankfully avoiding being crushed by your worried hands only because it was set safely on top of the large box.

‘Oh, thank you,’ he stuttered right back, this was the most he’d ever said to you since you’d started working there, Bud usually doing all the talking for him while he just listened. His eyes lit up when he saw that you’d gotten his favourite and it made your smile grow wide, your hands shaking a little less as he carefully peeled back the paper from the bag in order to save the chocolate on top. ‘I love these ones, growing up it was always the first picked by my siblings, so… I’m glad you keep bringing them to work, I always get here before that place opens,’ he shared with you before taking a bite, and you felt your heart skip a beat at the simple joy of tasting something delicious spread across his face.

‘I didn’t know you had siblings,’ you said as you took the remaining seat, your coffee reopened and your own donut chosen while you took a sip, and he looked at the door before sitting with you, your chairs so close together that your knees touched before he moved away. This was now the closest you’d ever been as well, and you realized you’d much rather risk being late in order to hear more than head upstairs and start working.

‘Four of them, I’m the youngest,’ he told you between bites, his cereal forgotten as he licked cream and chocolate off of his fingers a moment before going to the sink and washing his hands with a bit of embarrassment. ‘You- you’d think growing up in a family that big I’d be able to talk to people better, right?’

You took a bite of your own donut before shaking your head, and he seemed surprised by your answer as he sat back down again. ‘Family is different, sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers than your own flesh and blood,’ you thought aloud, and he listened intently in genuine interest. ‘But, you don’t have to be afraid of talking to me, I don’t bite…’ Your face lit up and you distracted yourself with more coffee at your choice of words, but he didn’t have the same problem as you as he tucked his hair behind his ear and really thought it over.

‘I- I’ve been trying to, actually,’ he muttered almost to himself, and you set your cup down to listen this time, ‘but every time I see you you’re always surrounded by people.’

You thought to yourself a moment before opening the box again and offering him a second donut, and Alonso looked between them and you before picking another and starting on it. ‘Well, guess I’ll have to stop by here every morning then, so we can talk,’ you offered, and he seemed genuinely happy about it as he flashed you a nervous but hopeful smile. You were smiling back when your phone went off, one of your cubiclemates was asking about her donuts, and you swore to yourself when you saw the time. ‘I’m late, I gotta run back up, but it was really nice talking to you, Alonso.’

‘Lonny,’ he said as he stood, and he towered over you as he handed you the box, ‘you can call me Lonny, everyone else does.’

‘Alright, then it was nice to officially meet you, Lonny.’ His smile was so infectious and wide that it made you wonder why it’d taken you so long to do this, and by the time you reached your floor you were practically twitterpated to no one’s surprise.

‘Finally talked to Tall, Cute, and Silent?’ your friend asked with a knowing smirk, and you made a face back at her as you presented everyone with the treats that were left. They devoured them like animals until only the crumbs were left as usual, and as you tossed out the box you found yourself already planning on maybe inviting him out for lunch today if he was interested. As such, you didn’t pay much attention to your work, just tapping out slowly over the keys while you took in no information, and when the speakers you didn’t even know were above you suddenly crackled to life it actually made you jump you were so distracted.

‘All employees, no matter what you’re doing, please stop and lend me your full attention,’ the announcement began, everyone around you having the same reaction of, ‘What’s going on?’ ‘There are currently 80 of you in the building. In eight hours, most of you will be dead.’

Your blood ran cold, this had to be some kind of joke, but when you looked around you saw that no one was laughing.

‘Your chance of survival increases by following my orders, and excelling at the tasks I place before you,’ the speaker continued, his voice surprisingly calm and almost a bit excited at what he was saying, and you started to feel sick at the thought that this was real, he was completely serious, and that was why security had been so tight when you’d arrived. ‘Your first task is simply this: Murder any two of your fellow employees within the next half hour.’

You spilled your coffee, the dark liquid spreading over your desk and onto the floor, but no one cared between those who were listening and those who’d already decided that this really had to be a joke.

‘How they are killed, or how they are chosen to be killed, is of no consequence. But if there are not two dead bodies in the building within 30 minutes, you will face repercussions.’

‘This isn’t real, right?’ you asked your friend, her face calm but you could see it in her eyes, that doubt that was taking hold of you. ‘I mean, they aren’t really asking us to kill each other, are they?’

‘It’s all bullshit, probably some test to weed out the bad employees, you know there’s a few on the 5th floor who could stand a good kick in the pants,’ she said dismissively, but when she waved her hand you didn’t miss the way it shook.

‘Still, I don’t like this, I’m gunna- I’m just gunna take a walk, see what the others are saying.’ You stood when the voice never returned, stepping through your coffee and leaving tracks of it after you as you headed for the elevator, the basement button staring at you as the urge to press it and see what Bud had to say about all this hit you like a truck; he was a smart guy, and Al- Lonny would be there too, if he wasn't afraid and didn’t believe it then that would be enough for you. You hit the lobby button instead and tried to breathe when the entire building shook, a series of rumbles making the cables shake just enough to scare you. Your hands splayed over the walls to brace yourself until it was over, and when you reached your destination you found not only a gathering already there, but also the cause of the quake.

The front doors as well as the windows were now covered up with what looked like a blast shield, something that was supposed to be for protection now trapping you all inside. Your panic rose even higher, the familiar faces of your co-workers now warped into confusion and worry, a few of them even attempting to break the walls down to get free but to no avail. You started to shake when the elevator beside you dinged, and the relief that washed over you when you saw Bud and then Lonny exit was so strong that it nearly knocked out your legs from under you.

You followed after them as they spoke with someone from one of the floors higher than yours, Mike; he was a nice guy, there was nothing bad you could say about him, but he was serious now as everyone gathered around to whisper, your hand hovering just over Lonny’s back as he concentrated and didn’t even notice you. ‘What d’you think, Mikey? What’s this all about?’ Bud asked him while they stared what was supposed to be the front doors down.

‘I don’t know. You think you got a way to get through it?’ Mike wondered, tensions rising as your superiors tried to take charge and calm everything down in the distance.

‘Blowtorch could do the job, but I don’t know how thick it is,’ Bud offered up, already calculating what needed to be done based on all his years on the job. ‘It could take a while.’

‘What if we try cutting through one of the walls first?’ Mike suggested, his eyes moving to the normal concrete instead. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to try and get through cement than get through whatever that is?’

Bud shook his head, repeating just the word no to himself with such certainty that it made you finally latch on, and Lonny jumped and turned to see you behind him. You looked up at him, unable to force a comforting smile when you saw his eyes, so he made one for you, his hand over your shoulders and rubbing your arm before he turned back to Bud, he’d have a plan. ‘This metal surrounds the entire building,’ he told them, the other man with you speaking up next.

‘So the whole building’s covered?’ he asked only for Bud to unfortunately confirm it, there was no knocking down a wall and escaping without getting through that metal first.

‘It’s worth a shot, though, right? The blowtorch?’ Mike confirmed before they could lose hope, Lonny glancing down at you and holding you a little tighter.

‘It’s worth a try,’ he agreed with a nod, and you weren’t sure if he was talking to Mike or to you when he said it. Bud then also noticed you were there when he went to pat Lonny on the back and smacked you instead, and he apologized before the two were walking away, your shoulders already hunching up without him there; you’d only just spoke that morning, which felt so long ago now, but you felt safe around him, if this was really happening then you could protect each other, and you went to follow when Bud noticed and held you back.

‘Easy now, just stay with the group, we’ll be back in a minute,’ he told you reassuringly, and you glanced over to Lonny before nodding and going to find your friends. Everyone had run to the lobby with the raising of the shield, and there was now no doubt between you all as you gathered in the corner and watched the others talk amongst themselves.

‘They’re gunna try and burn a hole through the door, see if we can get out that way,’ you whispered, not wanting to spread the plan in case it didn’t work, ‘they just went down to get the blowtorch, they’ll be right back.’

‘You gunna stick to your boytoy when he does?’ your friend joked so suddenly that you felt the need to reprimand her to for saying that first of all, but the second you looked at her you saw that she was just making jokes to hide the fact that she was fucking terrified. So you let it slide, your hand rubbing her shoulder just as Lonny had done to you.

‘I dunno, do you guys have any ideas?’ you asked them, each one shaking their heads.

‘I heard a few people went to the roof, we could try that,’ another suggested, but you didn’t like heights all that much to begin with, mixing that with the current situation might actually make you faint.

‘You can go, I’m gunna stay here, see how the door goes,’ you decided, and your small group split up just as your boss walked into the room along with the two men just below him; one of them was a real asshole, you didn’t bother with him, your focus on Mr. Norris as he spoke.

‘Hey, listen up, everybody, okay?’ he called out over the room, his voice echoing even louder thanks to the shield. ‘I’m Barry Norris, the COO here, for people who don’t know. Listen, I’m very aware that this is a very… hell, to say the least, a very strange situation here. But I don’t believe there’s any cause for panic, all right? We’re still trying to figure out exactly what the situation is, but I’m certain there’s a rational explanation. This is a government building. We think maybe somebody put precautions in place in case of a military event. Obviously these walls. Now, someone has clearly discovered this feature, and they’re having a little fun at our expense, okay? Whoever’s doing this, the object is to get all of you upset. So let’s not play into that, okay? Let’s just remain calm, chill out, and take a few minutes to figure out exactly what’s happening, okay? So, thank you. I’m gunna go work on that. And I'll circle back to you as soon as I can. Thanks, everybody.’

It made sense, it was a long speech but it did make sense, but there was a part of you that couldn’t forget the checkpoint this morning, how everyone had been searched so carefully… no, this felt planned, and when the elevator pinged you grabbed your friend and hurried right on over. There was no time to stop and chat, the men before you were on a mission, and you gave them space to work as they put on their protective gear and fired up the blowtorch.

You’d never seen one in real life, why would you ever need to before this? And the blue flame drew you in as Bud held it against the metal until an entire minute had passed. The two of you leaned in at the same time when they sat back and lifted their goggles to see what the damage was, Lonny using a cloth to wipe away the dark burns. You couldn’t hear what they were saying from there, but you knew it wasn't good when Lonny then touched it with his bare hand despite the heat of the flame. You held your friend a little tighter as Bud then did the same, this wasn't good, if not even a blowtorch could break through this stuff then what hope did you have of getting out even if this was just a cruel joke?

You let go of each other when you realized you were sweating, your comfy work shirt turning into something stifling at your closeness, and when you looked around and saw that everyone else was in a similar state you knew that this wasn't just nerves. ‘It’s too hot, they’re gunna suffocate us in here,’ your friend mumbled as she wiped off her forehead, the sweat starting to bead again the moment her hand moved away. ‘This is bullshit, why hasn’t anyone come for us yet? Screw this, I’m heading to the roof for some air, you coming?’

‘No, no you know I can’t go up that high,’ you said quickly before starting to head for Lonny, you needed to know what was happening before your anxiety started to take over again. She stopped you in your tracks, tried to pull you right back while they kept trying, her grip on you way too tight in this heat.

‘I think you need to get over that shit before you pass out down here, look around, look at everyone right now; it’s sweltering in here, I just saw Willy burn through three bottles of water by himself, so why don’t we grab a few, take the elevator, and get some fresh a-’

She never got to finish her sentence, the back of her neck exploding out and making her fall limp into your arms, the too tight grip she had on you now nonexistent as you stared down and screamed. Everyone turned towards you before it happened again, another person falling before someone shouted, ‘Somebody’s shooting!’ Everyone took cover from your attacker, your body frozen in fear until you felt more hands on you; Lonny grabbed you and pulled you over to the chairs where Bud was already ducking down, your friend falling from your arms and to the floor as you were forced to let go.

Pandemonium erupted all around you as you hit the floor hard, your back pressed to his chest and both him and Bud protecting you when you were still too numb to protect yourself. There were so many screams, no one knowing when they’d be shot next, but even when more people went down all you could do was stare at the lifeless eyes of the person you’d been working next to for the past 3 years. You felt cold despite the heat, Lonny’s panicked breathing right in your ear while you didn’t hold him back, and only when Mr. Norris, or Barry, now, there was no more chain of command after this, walked over to one of the bodies did everyone stop panicking long enough to feel confusion over his bravery at still standing.

‘What the hell?’ you heard Bud whisper above you when Mike ran over to join him, Barry’s voice loud enough for everyone to hear over the ringing silence.

‘That’s not a bullet wound.’

More of them gathered but the three of you stayed where you were, waiting to hear what was going on, but their voices were lower now, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Bud leaned away from you a little to listen, but the moment he did Lonny started to panic, and you felt a bit of life come back to you as you weakly held his arm to let him know you were still there. Instantly he looked down and held you tighter, you were his lifeline now that the bullets had stopped flying, and when you looked back up at him you saw the way everyone was touching the backs of their necks out of the corner of your eye.

All at once you felt your hand raise to your own, your knuckles brushing against his shirt as you felt the scar under your fingertips, and the fear replaced everything numb inside you until it was all you knew.

Mike realized something and ran, Bud watching him go before getting up and silently asking the two of you to follow; you did, your fear only spreading to Lonny as you held each other, but Bud remained calm as he opened up his toolbox and reached inside. He pulled out a hammer and large wrench, and the former was heavy when he handed it to you and tried to get Lonny to look at him. He said his name and made him only hold you harder, it was starting to hurt, but you’d rather feel that than the cold wood and steel under your palms.

‘Hey, stop. Don’t cry, okay?’ Bud told the man behind you, and you looked up to see that he was so afraid he was actually crying, his hands trembling as they bunched up your shirt. ‘Take this, and say goodbye, alright?’ He pressed the wrench into Lonny’s hand the moment he was able to get him to let go of you, and it looked even heavier than your hammer as he held it before you. ‘Let them go, and follow me, we’re gunna fix this and I need you to watch my back.’

‘But…’ He didn’t want to leave you, and you honestly didn’t want to leave either of them after losing your friend, and Bud leaned in closer and lowered his voice even more as he met your eyes.

‘Find a place to hide, we’ll find you within the hour, don’t come out before then, you hear me?’ he told you sternly yet carefully, they’d be sitting ducks in the basement if people started actually killing each other as commanded despite the maze, and your safety needed to come first while they worked without worry. So you nodded, Lonny nuzzling into the side of your head with a whimper that any other day would’ve made your heart flutter, but now it could only break as Bud helped him let go. You stepped aside and watched as Bud wrapped his hands behind Lonny’s neck, kept eye contact until he was calming again, and when he asked for something called a duke Lonny just nodded before pressing his forehead to his friend’s.

That’s what made them such a good team, you knew Lonny to be a good worker but it was thanks to Bud being there to keep him level that he was able to shine here, and you hated Belko for ever hiring the both of them along with yourself now now that you knew what they were doing to them. Not everyone who worked there was great, even you weren’t a saint, but Lonny was pure, and you regretted every single morning where you’d only looked but never approached when he met your eye and turned away.

Bud went to lead the way back to the elevator, and you knew as soon as the doors closed that you couldn’t stay up here, not alone with this uncertainty. You watched your co-workers, all of them strangers to you now, run after Mike when shouts came down the hall, but you didn’t follow after them; you needed to hide, just like Bud said, and even if they might be sitting ducks that didn’t mean you had to be in that maze. You hit the button and took the elevator down, making sure to take the long way around to the break room and go from there. You knew something like hiding under the table or cramming yourself into one of the empty lockers wasn't really feasible, but there were a ton of other hiding places nearby it, maybe if you even hid well enough you’d be able to hear them from a safe distance away and get their attention if anything happened.

You kept your head on a swivel as you walked, made sure you wouldn’t bump into them and make them send you elsewhere where anyone could find you, and you were just about to loop around when you noticed a door that brought you even further in. You opened it, a long hallway ahead of you, and you decided on it as you jogged down and found a closed off spot to duck between. It was tight, but you were successfully hidden from view, and it gave you a good vantage point of anyone who might come across you as you curled up and held your hammer close to your chest.

You’d gotten all of two seconds to strap in for the long haul when you heard the door open again, and you held your breath until you heard Lonny’s voice echo down the hallway: ‘They’re trying to freak us out by shutting down the air-co, man,’ he was telling Bud, and your moment of relief only slipped back into worry when it hit you that if anyone was bound to find you in here it’d be them if they stopped to look. ‘That’s their plan, right, Bud?’ A pause, Bud was silent as they walked, and that was only making him nervous again, you could hear it in his voice when he asked him for confirmation again. ‘Do you think it is, Bud? Do you think that’s their plan?’

‘I don’t know, Lonny,’ Bud said exasperatedly, he was letting his own panic show when he couldn’t give him a solid answer, and a pit landed hard in your stomach when they turned and stopped not 10 feet away from you. They started checking out the machine against the wall, which you soon realized was the air conditioning aka the thing that was currently not working and making everyone overheat in their own skins, of course you’d stop at the one place they needed to be, but it was fine. They were so distracted by it that you could continue hiding and then they wouldn’t have to worry about sending you out there again, so you remained silent and just listened while they tried to figure it out.

Bud turned on a light and confirmed that it wasn't working right at the source, every breath you took sounding like thunder in your ears when you realized that if he turned then he’d be able to see you, your focus too much on the barrels to your side to protect yourself from that angle. ‘How can you tell?’ Lonny asked as he stood by, Bud crouching down to take a closer look.

‘I can hear it, man,’ he said with a grunt of effort as he sat. ‘The pilot’s off. Everything.’

Lonny looked around to make sure no one else was down there with you, like they’d only just done it and were waiting to make sure they couldn’t turn it back on again. ‘Did they do it?’ he nearly stuttered as he turned back to him, Bud still focused entirely on the large machine in front of him.

‘I don’t know if they did it or not,’ he admitted as he started to flip switches and peek inside with his flashlight, nothing happening as a result, ‘but, we’re gunna fix it.’

‘They’re trying to break us down so that we start killing each other, Bud.’ Lonny’s voice was low but you still heard his words, he had the same train of thought as you, and you nearly stood up so you could at least stay with them a while until Bud spoke again.

‘You just need to relax, all right?’ he told him comfortingly, he wouldn’t let him worry about that just as much as you wouldn’t have if you’d stood up right now and went to him, and you decided you’d do just that when the speakers whined to life again.

‘I hope by now we’ve demonstrated that we aren’t blindly bluffing,’ the man on the other end told everyone, and you felt your legs lock up to the point of it being painful just at the sound of his voice. ‘This game’s a real one. Each of you are deep inside it. You can choose to follow our directives, or not. Either way, you’ll be giving us the results we’re looking for.’ You shut your eyes and shook your head, your hammer not nearly as comforting to you as Lonny’s arms had been earlier, you needed to stand, you needed to go to him- ‘You are mostly free to do as you please. However, you must not dismantle any more cameras. And you must not remove the tag from your body. Next time we will not provide a countdown as we did Mr. Milch.’

You started to pant at the thought of Mike being dead somewhere upstairs because he’d caught on to what was hiding beneath your scars, that must’ve been the cause of the yelling, you needed to get up-

‘If you break either of these rules, your life will abruptly end.’ You felt like stone as you helplessly watched Lonny start to cry, the threat of himself being next strong enough to make Bud stand and try to calm him again, but there was little he could do at this point. ‘There are currently 76 of you left in the building. The time is now 12:47PM. By 2:47PM, in two hours, we want 30 of you dead, through whatever means necessary.’ He started to panic harder, you could help, if you could just open your mouth and tell them you were there you could help- ‘If 30 of you are not dead, we will end 60 of your lives through our own methods. Begin.’

He was inconsolable, his hand on his head as he started to pace over the stranger’s words, and the only reason you weren’t currently doing the same was because as long as you knew the two before you were safe then you couldn’t give a fuck about the people upstairs killing each other anymore. You tried to move but your legs refused to listen, this was your moment to show him how you felt for him and help keep him safe, but every single part of you was buzzing, your head spinning as you repeated those words to yourself over and over instead; you couldn’t get out, you were all trapped inside while tensions rose, and if 30 people didn’t die in two hours then double that would be murdered instead, which made your chances of survival even slimmer.

If you didn’t help him and then find a way to keep him safe, while also finding it in yourself to kill to protect him, then you would both die, that was a certainty. He was a nobody compared to everyone upstairs, and even then their lives were all weighed the same, what chance did he have going up against someone who fought tooth and nail to get to where they were when he couldn’t even approach you for a donut?

‘L-Lonny…’ you gasped out, your voice lost under his sobs while Bud tried to console him again.

‘Hey, hey, Lonny, it’s gunna be okay…’ he was saying, but the moment he tried to hold him again he lashed out, the wrench given to him to cover Bud now wielded as a weapon to keep himself safe.

‘Get back off me!’ he screamed in his panic, Bud giving him his space as the desperation in his voice made your foot start to tingle as the numbness faded away. ‘Don’t look at me like that, man,’ he pleaded, Bud silent all the while, he wasn't about to upset him while he was panicking this hard. You wiggled your toes until you could move your ankle, your whole foot rolling and kickstarting the rest of you back into action, just a little longer now-

You let out a shriek when the fire alarm then went off, the sound startling you so hard that the numbness completely faded away from the pure shock to your system. This was good, you were moving again, but the sound was too much for Lonny, your smile of relief falling when you saw the way he was holding his ears. His panic attacks were so much more severe than yours, his anxiety loud and jumpy and raw while yours made you quiet and frozen, but you wouldn’t be still this time when he yelled out loud enough to block out the ringing.

‘What is that?’ he demanded as his pacing worsened, your legs slowly shifted underneath you while you started to rise.

‘Lonny, calm down, man! It’s just a fire alarm!’ Bud tried to tell him but it was of no use, his yelling over the noise was only aiding his own frustration, and your knees shook as you pushed yourself onto them, you were almost standing.

‘No, it’s not! They’re trying to make us kill each other,’ he sobbed desperately, the wrench waved around when he motioned towards Bud and himself.

‘Easy, cowboy,’ Bud kept trying, his eyes following Lonny as his pacing got even worse, and you moved yourself onto your feet at long last. ‘Chill out, man! Hey, come here-’

‘Get back!’

He swung on instinct, a defensive maneuver in his uncontrollable panic, and you felt yourself go numb again right as you got ready to stand; the sound of the impact was louder than the alarm, a sickening crack that made your stomach churn, and Bud crashed into the fence separating them from you as he reached for his head. He groaned as he tried to stand up straight, Lonny staring at him in a deathly calm fear as he silently mouthed his friend’s name.

‘Wait a second,’ Bud mumbled, his shoulder slumped and your mouth going dry when you couldn’t confirm where he was hit with his back to you like this. ‘What just happened? Hold on, uh… wait, wait. Something is happening.’ His voice started to grow soft as he slid down the fence, and when he fell you figured out you were crying when you blinked and felt a cascade of tears roll down your cheeks.

How did this happen? This morning everything was so normal, it was almost boring to you in its simplicity; you’d bought your crush a donut and actually spoke to him, you were planning on inviting him out to lunch even because you’d finally hit it off, how did that turn into this so fast? You couldn’t understand it at all, your attempts to console Lonny now too late as he fell to his knees and weakly crawled over to his friend to apologize. It fell on deaf ears though, even you could tell from behind when Bud stopped moving, the kind man who’d given you your hammer and helped make sure you were safe now gone as Lonny sobbed over him.

The alarm finally quieted as you both kneeled there, neither knowing what to do until he finally looked at Bud’s face, his eyes so sorrowful until you saw the way they looked to the right; he was staring directly at you, your hiding really hadn’t been good enough, and his sorrow turned back into terror when he saw the look on your face. Instantly he was on his feet and that forced you to move as well, he was panicking again because he knew you, you were his friend and you’d seen what he’d done, and now it was your words that went unheard as you held your hammer a little tighter and hurried out of your hiding place.

‘Stop!’ he ordered you, your shoulders hunching and more tears falling at the tone of his voice, so unlike the way he’d spoken to you about his family with smudges of chocolate decorating the corners of his mouth. ‘Bud, he fell down and he hit his head,’ he explained miserably, but you’d seen it all, you couldn’t pretend you didn’t.

‘It wasn't your fault, Lonny,’ you tried to say but he ignored you, moving like a caged animal on the other side of the fence as he stared you down, he needed you to believe him, you were his friend and he needed you to believe all of it.

‘He tried to grab me,’ he moaned next, the two of you inching closer and closer to the opening until he was reaching for you, assuming you were only there to run. You held up your arms and stayed where you were, his own hand pulling back the moment he touched you like he’d been burned but he didn’t retreat, the wrench still in his other hand as he waited for you to do something.

‘Lonny, Lonny, it’s okay, look, I know,’ you said quickly as you purposely let go of the hammer, his eyes watching it before you kicked it as hard as you could towards him as a sign of understanding. He glanced back at you before scrambling to pick it up, he had two weapons now, a hit from either one would be enough to make you reach the same fate as Bud, and when you finally got a glimpse of him you let out a gasp of misery. His head had been caved in, that’s what had happened, and Lonny waited for you to run again now that you’d seen what he’d done. You didn’t though, you wouldn’t, not when he needed you.

You made a show of getting back on your knees to tell him you wouldn’t run, your hands planted firmly on the cold cement to tell him you wouldn’t grab him, and he looked down at the hammer in his other hand before tossing it behind the machine to his left so it was completely out of reach. You nodded, agreeing with his decision, and he looked at his wrench next, his only weapon but still the thing he’d used to kill his friend, and he looked like he didn’t know what to do next.

‘It was an accident, it’s not your fault, I’m not afraid of you,’ you whispered to him, and he sniffed loudly before tossing the wrench to the ground. He fell to his knees and covered his face as he sobbed heavily, his cries echoing throughout the room along with his apologies to Bud for what he’d done. You waited until you couldn’t any longer, your numbness gone as you crawled over to him, and this time he didn’t bat you away when he peeked through his fingers and saw you coming. ‘I’ve been trying to talk to you for months,’ you told him, more tears spilling over the gaps and down his hands, ‘that’s why I keep bringing donuts to work, I’ve been waiting for you to come over so I could say hi to you; I wanted to do it sooner, but I’m a coward, that’s why I couldn’t be there for you earlier, I didn’t mean to watch I’m just a coward-’

He lowered his hands and wiped his nose with his sleeve, the tears still falling as he inched his way towards you. You were the one loudly crying now, if you’d just called out to him then this wouldn’t have happened, maybe you could’ve helped him, maybe if you’d just invited him to breakfast and skipped work entirely then you’d both be out there right now, and you didn’t realize you were saying it all out loud until he wrapped his arms around you. ‘He just grabbed me, I thought he was gunna hurt me,’ he whispered into your hair, and you finally held him back and sparked his desperation; he pulled you nearly onto his lap with a shuddering gasp, his hands clinging to you as you clung right back, the body of another dead friend staring up at you as all you could do was hold each other. ‘It was an accident, I’m not a bad person I’m not I’m not-’

‘I know, I know you’re not,’ you told him over and over until he was burying his face into your shoulder. You knew it must be hell up there but you couldn’t be bothered to care, all that mattered now was that you both got out of there together, you weren’t going to just sit by like a statue the next time his panic overtook him. ‘C’mere, let’s get out of here.’ You stood and took his hand so he’d do the same, and you cautiously headed back down the hallway with the wrench in hand again, neither of you stopping until he led you back to the break room and locked the door.

You were now technically locked into a room with a murderer, but you couldn’t see him like that, not him, not Lonny as he walked over to the sink and turned on the tap. He let it pool into his cupped hands before splashing it onto his face, he was covered with tears and sweat just like you were, and when he turned back to you all of the water ran down his chest and darkened his uniform. His bangs were soaked and dripping down his face, his eyes just barely showing through them, and you walked over to him and silently asked for permission to touch him.

He flinched at first, but eventually shut his eyes and let you while the wrench lay just within reach, and you were careful as you reached up and brushed his bangs to the side. You tucked them behind his ears and grabbed one of the towels for their dishes before wiping his face off next, just barely brushing the fabric against him so you wouldn’t upset him. It seemed to calm him even more, his shoulders relaxing and his body untensing just a little more with each gentle touch. When you were done you took his hand and got him to sit, it was still too warm in there, and you noticed the old fan tucked into the corner for those extra hot summer days. You made sure it still worked before turning it on, and he let out a sigh as the coolness hit him and allowed him a bit of a reprieve.

‘Here, your shirt’s all wet, it’ll help,’ you began as you reached for his uniform’s zipper, but his hand on your wrist got you to stop fast. ‘It’s okay, look, I’ll do the same, see?’ One-handed you undid your own buttons, your face flushing as you stripped off your very sweaty shirt and laid it over the back of your chair, your body instantly accepting the cold air and making you shiver in such a simple delight that it could’ve made you cry again. He looked you over quickly before doing the same, his blue shirt underneath hanging over his own chair while his coveralls bunched around his hips, his undershirt stained and damp from all the layers and the lack of AC. ‘We can rest here a moment, I don’t think any of them will come down here, so we can talk about what to do in the meantime.’

‘You think they’ll come for me?’ he asked nervously, already panicking over getting caught, but you shushed him softly and kept your hand hovering over his arm resting on the table between you just in case.

‘I don’t doubt everyone is in a similar state upstairs, no one will blame you for that, yours was an accident,’ you said truthfully, but he still looked nervously at the door all the same. ‘I need to find out what’s happening, we only have two hours, less now, and I don’t care if I… if I have to kill someone to do it, but I’ll make sure we get out of this, okay? And we can’t do that if we stay down here in the dark, leaving it up to them and chance might just seal our fate.’

‘If you go out there you’ll risk getting killed yourself, you know that, right?’ he said seriously as he leaned in, and his hand closed over yours and pushed it down onto his arm. ‘We can hide down here, I know all the tunnels, every twist and turn, I even know how to get into the vents; going back up there means that someone else’ll get hurt, that’s what they want.’

‘I know, that’s exactly what they want, and I doubt they’ll stop at 30,’ you muttered right on the edge of hopelessness, but his hand on yours made you suck in a deep breath and sit up straight. ‘But I didn’t spend the past 7 months of my life wanting to ask you out to get killed now, no fucking way.’

‘You… you wanted to ask me out?’ he questioned softly, his voice just barely above a whisper, almost like he was unsure he’d heard you correctly, and you nodded for just a second before he was leaning over the corner of the table and kissing you. Your eyes went wide as his hand held yours in place, the kiss chaste and a bit desperate but enough to make your heart pound all the same, and when he backed away his hair fell free and into his eyes again when his head dipped down to stare at you. ‘I’ve been… trying to get Bud to tell you for me since I first saw you, but he never would, he just kept saying I should do it myself.’ He looked away then, something sad after being so soft. ‘And now he can never…’

‘But you just did,’ you reminded him, your free hand reaching up to push aside his hair again, ‘and I can never forgive them for doing this to us.’

He nodded, his head was a bit clearer now even though he was still upset, the fan and the silence were certainly helping along with your words. ‘I’m still afraid, though…’ he whispered, and you shifted your chair closer to him so that you could pull him back into a hug. His skin was still warm as your chests pressed together, your hug instantly becoming something more intimate when you remembered that you were attempting to cool, but it only bonded you more when you felt his hand leave yours in order to place itself over your back.

‘I am, too, but if they want us to play a game together then I’ll fucking play until I can pay them back for our friends.’ You placed your forehead against his, your hand on his neck and feeling for his scar, and you shut your eyes tight when you felt the line stretching across his scalp, just as your own did. ‘I don’t know how yet, but we’re going to get out of here, and if this ends and I lose you…’

‘Then you’ll keep going, yeah? You said it yourself, we only just officially met this morning, I k- I hurt Bud, you shouldn’t have to give up just because of me,’ he whimpered lowly, another tremble making you open your eyes again, and you hushed him once more before wiping away the first tear that fell.

‘That’s why we need to both get out of here, so I can invite you to lunch and you can tell me everything we never talked about, don’t we?’ you insisted, and he nodded against you and placed his own hand on the back of your neck, the covered spaces starting to heat up again without the fan. ‘We can do this, you’re strong, and smart, and I’m a coward but I’ll help you in any way that I can, we don’t even need to join any of them, we just need to let them tear each other apart and up the count for us while we figure a way to get out, and… and if need be we can protect each other, I won’t let them get to you like that again.’

‘But what if they do? What if I get so upset that I hurt you this time?’ He didn’t want to even think about it, his breathing starting to quicken as he pictured you in Bud’s place, and you kissed him soft and slow until you were all he could feel.

‘Then I’ll know it’ll just be an accident, because you’re not a bad person, and, if I’m being honest, I think you might actually be better than most of the guys in this place,’ you said with a small laugh, and he thought about it a moment before laughing along with you, a small shred of relieved happiness in these hours of pain. ‘Come on, we need to see what they’re doing, do you think you could get us up to the security room so we could check the cameras?’

‘I think so, there’s a maintenance elevator that only Bud and I can use, it’s away from the others so they might think to use it last, they need a key to get it to run,’ he told you, said key stuck to the ring and line attached to his belt, and you nodded and kissed him again real quick.

‘That’s perfect, we can leave in a minute, you stay here and check for anything we can use to protect ourselves, I’m going to get my hammer back,’ you told him as you stood, but he didn’t let you leave at the thought of you seeing Bud again, or never coming back at all. ‘It’s okay, I won’t let anyone take you away from me,’ you promised him, and then he was letting you go and watching you hurry out. You didn’t get lost on the way back, the halls silent and telling you that no one else was around as you ended up at your destination without trouble.

There was Bud, still slumped where he’d fallen, and you closed your eyes for a moment of silence before kneeling down and closing his for him. You were just about to stand when you saw his own set of keys, and you unclipped them and attached them to your own belt loop before you heard a sound. You stilled, your eyes looking every which way for a sign of movement, but you saw nothing stand out in the maze. You narrowed your eyes and went back to getting your hammer, he’d really thrown it far to the point where you had to lay down and reach under the machine for it, and when you pulled back your hand it was covered in years worth of dust and webs.

You shivered and brushed it all off without a fuss, there were worse things to be afraid of down here now, and you hurried all the way back to Lonny with your own weapon in hand and a fire in your heart; you were going to get out of here, if you had to fight your way through this entire building to make sure no one hurt him again, then by god were you going to rain down hell on all who stood in your way, and when you returned to him and saw him standing there with his coveralls tied around his waist and his wrench in his hand you knew that he was ready to do the same for you.

#Ray's Readers #Ray's Requests #david dastmalchian #lonny crane #lonny crane x reader

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apopcornkernel · 9 months ago

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i dont know if there's even a ppop presence on tumblr but i do also want to promote ALAMAT, a 6-member idol boy group from the Philippines. Its members comprise of Taneo, Mo, Jao, Tomas, R-ji, and Alas. They debuted in 2021, and their creative direction centers on championing the Filipino identity and culture through their music.

sorry that ^ was a copypaste but it's a very useful and concise copypaste LOL but onto my own promo:

(note: also most of these videos have english subs!!)

(extra note bc this issue always pops up whenever locals encounter alamat: mo is always wearing black hairstyes bc he is blasian and not bc he is appropriating from black culture hdfjhdf)

youtube

KASMALA, the inverted Tagalog word for "strong" (malakas), is the MV that really did numbers on social media iirc. The video direction focused on the "human zoo" in the St. Louis' World Fair of 1904 (which included Filipinos specifically Igorots), and a general theme of anti-Filipino racism by white people (who are represented as ominous figures literally dressed in all white)

personal opinion: the music video is great but i personally think they have better songs, music-wise. and i'm going to give you an example of that by introducing you to my ALL-TIME FAVORITE ALAMAT SONG!!!

youtube

ILY ILY, a transliteration of "Ili-Ili Tulog Anay", incorporates the melody and lyrics of the Ilonggo lullaby it derives its title from. The MV and lyrics both work together to portray the experience of being an OFW/having an OFW parent. OFWs, or overseas Filipino workers, refer to Filipinos who go abroad in search of jobs that have better pay, so that they can remit money back to their families in the Philippines.

personal opinion: this is their best song THIS IS THEIR BEST SONG EVER OF ALL TIME and lyca gairanod is such a perfect singer for this. her ethereal crooning really gave me chills the first time i heard it UGH

youtube

DAYANG, the term for the wife of a Datu, is one of their most earworming songs ever. It's a gorgeous love song and what I would recommend to newbies if they want to get into alamat <3

personal opinion: The MV is kinda ass because it's just a super long extended ad for DITO PH (in terms of story and also bc they really missed out on doing a vid that drew more on culture esp bc dayang is a historical noble title and they used tausug words and designs for the graphics an the dance itself already incorporated pangasik dance which is also from the tausug people LIKEEE?? they've always promoted other cultures of the philippines i know they can do it but because of CAPITALISM--). But the song bangs so severely, as a pop enjoyer this is peak pop for me.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT DAGUNDONG

youtube

DAGUNDONG, a song basically recounting the colonial history of the Philippines from Spain to America, is just so fucking good you should watch/listen to it rn. There's EN subs don't worry you won't miss out on the context. This is colonial rage it's so satisfying I still remember where I was when they dropped this.

personal opinion: FOREVER OBSESSED WITH HOW THEY SAY "dahil puso mandirigma di papakutsa di papapugon" you guys have no idea how much i sing that line to myself sooo satisfying. Instant earworm this song i swear.

OK ONE LAST one last and i'm done. okay.

youtube

MAHARANI, a Sanskrit term for the wife of a Maharaja (translated as "great queen"), heavily features singkil, a Maranao dance which uses bamboo poles like tinikling does. The song also uses SEAsian instruments like kanun, gamelan, and gangsa. Also BINI's Jhoanna plays one of the main characters here!!!

personal opinion: this is their most pop-sounding song, which i think is slightly carried by the video i'm sorryyy. it's catchy though!! and i looove the part somewhere halfway where alas starts his verse, singing it in a more spoken-word way

___

okay 5 songs is. probably enough. this post is already kinda long shdfjskdff but yeah. pls check them out if you can hehe <3

also ppop idols are just really funny. there's no concept of an idol image so they just tweet shit. alamat jao gave out his genshin UID after a fan tweeted about having co-oped with him in genshin, and then after that he started answering questions with the hashtag "#canceljao" making a lot of magiliws (alamat fans) confused, and then he posted a classic iphone notes apology like this 😭

i'll do a bini version after this my girls deserve more international hype. they occupy a more girlcrush pop genre but they're just as chaotic as alamat if not even more 😭 there are entire THREADS on twitter of them just being hilarious jdhfkshgf i love them so much

thanks for reading <3

#alamat #phposting #long post #ppop #Youtube

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many-but-one · 11 months ago

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i dunno if you guys answer asks but what’s the best way to start… remembering? our social worker suggested hypnotherapy but i don’t know if that works well. we’re aware of the possibility of ramcoa trauma happening and have a few memories but we don’t know how to go about piecing things together

We do answer asks! We just forget we have an askbox sometimes. This one caught my attention in particular due to the mention of hypnotherapy and a possibility of RAMCOA trauma.

Obligatory “I’m not a therapist I’m just a random system on tumblr and you should make your own informed decisions on your own mental health.”

So if you suspect RAMCOA trauma in your history I would advise to be extremely careful and/or cautious about pursuing hypnotherapy. We have never done hypnotherapy and never will because hypnosis is a very common mode that programmers will use to create a dissociated state in a child. Hypnosis therefore is extremely triggering to us and if your system has parts who are programmed to run when hypnosis begins, it could cause a risk to your system’s stability.

As for tips on how to remember, all I will say is that you should probably consider the factors that make you unable to remember at this time.

Common reasons why amnesia can be strong/worsen for systems (side note: these are all personal experiences or experiences I’ve heard from other systems):

stress in daily life often causes amnesia barriers to strengthen or worsen

a lot of trauma has already recently come out. Especially in the case of HC-DID or C-DID where higher ups can often control amnesia levels to an extent, your gatekeepers will often increase amnesia levels if trauma has already recently slipped out to avoid even more slipping out

you are still having to consistently interact with someone who was involved in or complicit in your trauma. If you are living with your dad who you think is kind of a dick but not that bad and suddenly get memories that he tortured you, living with that person will become nearly impossible for your wellbeing. Gatekeepers will often keep stuff locked down when you are still having to be in contact with past abusers

you are not in a stable position to begin to receive trauma memories. People with CPTSD, a CDD, etc often report that they function fine enough when they are living in an abusive environment, but once they leave that environment and can truly relax, that’s when memories and flashbacks start hitting them and they become nearly nonfunctional despite being in a significantly calmer and safer environment. That’s your body and mind finally leaving fight or flight mode and when you truly get to relax for the first time it’s going to hit you like a truck.

Take it from a host that dug too much too soon and learned things way too fast: slow the fuck down. /meant gently. Your memories will surface in time. There is no rush to figure everything out. Trust me, the more you start learning the more you will probably be like “damn actually I don’t wanna know any more this is getting pretty bad” and by then your system will be like “WELL THAT’S TOO DAMN BAD.”

I had to get pulled from the host team for nearly a year because of how bad digging for memories fucked me up. Granted, I ended up taking up inner caretaking and inner deprogramming and now that our system is very nearly completely deprogrammed, my inner world job is less necessary so I can return to full time host business. There were several other factors that also led to me being unable to host again for so long, such as programmed parts constantly attacking and harming host team members (couldn’t handle that I am Fragile) and also having a harder time speaking in an American accent and masking my English one due to a series of splits that happened after we got divorced from our ex wife. I can mask my accent better now and my distress tolerance is much higher now due to having worked with programmed parts internally for so long, which makes me able to return to main host stuff and not get absolutely mentally destroyed anytime I experience a flashback or programmed response or an attack from a programmed part anymore.

If you have RAMCOA trauma, no matter if it was stuff from a single parent or a high control group, none of it will be fun to learn. It will be some of the most devastating, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing things you will ever experience, seeing flashbacks of your kid self being harmed in ways no human should be harmed, let alone an innocent kid. And I’m not saying you’re trying to learn for the fun of it, I’m assuming you want to learn for two reasons at least:

1) you’re in denial and need proof

2) you want to help your system heal

What I did to help myself through these two things were this:

When I experienced denial, such as when a part told me something or showed me something, I would just default to believing them no matter if I thought something like that could ever happen. My kid self deserves to have someone believe them. We were never believed as a kid, nobody paid attention, we were ignored. I’m never doing that to myself ever again. If the memory turns out to be a pseudomemory, or you realize maybe this didn’t really happen the way you thought, you’ll figure that out when you get there and that doesn’t mean you were faking it.

As for wanting to help my system heal, I learned I actually didn’t need to know as much info as I thought I needed to know to help my system heal. The extent of what I know now is a few visuals, that’s it. I have seen maybe about a dozen visual memories (not even in their entirety, often just 1 or 2 seconds of something) and the rest is just “this is what happened” as told to me by my parts. It’s like reading a horrible story, I’m incredibly detached from it. But the things I have seen have helped me learn to take my parts seriously when they tell me what happened. I catalogue their triggers, I learn what to avoid, I learn how to positively trigger out other parts who can help, I work on inner communication, etc. I don’t need to know all the details yet, that will come later. For now, I can teach my parts who haven’t seen the light of day for 15 years how to ground in the present and show them healthy coping skills. I can give them the comfort and love they always deserved. I don’t need to know what happened to do that. I can know it’s bad because they got triggered out when I looked in the mirror and they saw my red lipstick and freaked. I can know it’s bad because they internally look like a doll with no limbs or a young girl with no eyes and only a mouth full of teeth. I don’t need to see what made them that way/remember what made them that way to help them.

I hope my answer helped anon! Good luck!

-Dori 🌹(she/he/they)

#dori🌹#dorian🌹#answered asks #anon ask #did alters #did osdd #dissociative identity disorder #manybutone #hcdid #ramcoa #tw ramcoa #tw torture #did denial #coping skills #did amnesia

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goodieghosty · 2 months ago

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hey could you do arcane scar x collette relationship headcanons their the cutest scar deserves all the love

*gently hold* ily, thank you sm!!! I'm just going to dump my lore and hcs here in one post-

I hc that Scar has at least one biological child, the lil Chirean baby we see him with in the show.

We also just-see him with a lot of kids in general. There are a lot of orphans in Zaun. You cannot toss a single pebble without hitting at least three of them/hj

I'm hcing that the kids just kinda-gravitate towards him whenever the Firelights take them in. He gives 'chill older bro' vibes, I feel like he definitely freaked out once it hit him that he'd be soloing the parenting, and he feels like he's fcking up constantly-but he's doing just fine

HC-The other bio parent is likely deceased, or decided "nah, actually-your problem now" and dipped. Feel like he wouldn't talk about it unless the person was v close

Colette did not start out with the Firelights, she started out working for Madame Margot.

This lady-

It was a total coincidence when I initially designed Colette, but I'm now using their similarities for Lore Purposes, lol. That being said, they are not blood related.

(More Colette backstory below the cut, warning for mentions of drug use, alcoholism, and prostitution. Back to the Colette and Scar hcs)

Colette-loves kids. Used to watch the brothel workers' small children. Never imagined herself having any. She has a pet burmese python named Baby though. Which uh-funny story, Scar heard her say the name and he assumed she had like a really rambunctious toddler or something.

C: "Baby will not stop climbing the walls and opening the doors" S: "Probably time to start childproofing everything." C: "I'm worried she's going to figure out how to unlock things now.... She opened a window the other day, found feathers all over the place. Pretty sure she ate a bird." And now he's convinced her kid is Vastayan because he at least hopes the woman would be more concerned if her human toddler ate a bird.

He seems to be the last to know that Baby is a snake, so whenever she says something like "Ah, she's so cute when she yawns and her jaw unhinges so wide-" he is equal parts concerned and confused like "... is... is that normal???" Thinking that humans are fcking terrifying, or this is a Vastayan thing

S: "How big is Baby again?" C: "Oh not big at all, she's still pretty young. Like... seven feet, maybe?" S: ".... ex-fucking-scuse me??"

When he finally meets Baby, he is so relieved.

Colette did not want to learn how to ride a hoverboard. She likes being on the ground, thank you. Scar had to teach her. Yes, she almost accidentally sent it flying. Yes, it almost hit him in the face. Yes, this was immediately after she said something cocky. And yes, she did feel terrible, in between horrible giggle fits.

They annoy tf out of each other, your honor. It's their love language. That's how they flirt. She's shorter than him so he'll use her as an armrest. And she'll give him a light jab in the side acting all annoyed but "wait no-put your arm back ;A; ". Love nips aplenty

Lots of her physically leaning against him. Or just, staring. She likes physical touch. But only with a select few. She trusts him.

Scar likes to share his food with her, and loves having his hair played with. Makes him melt. Maybe his ears wiggle-but don't call attention to it, lol

Colette forces the man to take a damn nap after rough patrols. Totally not an excuse to hold his baby. They all like to cuddle together. Colette is practically wrapped around the man. He doesn't mind too much, especially when it's cold-but he yelps when she touches her ice-cold hands to his back like a fcking gremlin.

Colette is not good with social cues. Scar tends to be blunt and direct-unless he's around the kids, he's a bit of a softie around them.

Colette doesn't often understand sarcasm or when someone is joking or not. Scar picks up on it easy.

Imagine Entrapta from She-ra, but with snakes and other serpentine creatures, tbh

I love Scar sm, but before we found out what his name was, I was gonna just call him Rufio. From that one Peter Pan movie, idk why I just love the name

That's all for the relationship hcs(for now)

Madame Margot is one of the chembarons and owns all the brothels in Zaun-she runs the prostitution ring. We don't get a lot of info on her or her backstory, so I'm winging it. All we know is that she's v business minded and does not like anything that might impede her.

Margot is also older than she appears, the valves on her body are used to tighten her skin-ouch. But I'm saying she never gives a straight answer on her age. But she is at least 5-10 years older than Colette

Back on track-Colette's mother was the whole reason for Colette wanting to work with venomous snakes in the first place. Although she always had a strange affinity for them-it was witnessing her mother's death to an especially venomous snake bite at the ripe ol age of ten that solidified it.

Her family used to travel a lot for her father's archeological work, and her mother's own herptology research. But after her mother's death, her father moved them to Piltover to be closer to his side of the family. And so Colette could go to a good school

Her father's side of the family weren't particularly fond of him. And by extension, Colette. They offered little in the way of compassion after his wife's death.

Things steadily went downhill from there. Her father buried himself in work and other things to distract himself, neglecting her. She spent many dinners alone, soon finding companionship in her mother's snake specimens. To the point of her preferring snakes over people.

Instead of using his vast wealth to get some damn therapy, her father took to the bottle. And then chems. Eventually shimmer. And then-anything that would make him feel something. Which Eventually lead to the brothels. This was over years, mind you, while Colette is still attending school. Top marks, splendid GPA, gal is intelligent af.

Father stops working during this time, subsisting off of savings and whatnot. And then when that runs out-oh? What's this? The money they set aside for Colette's fancy tuition and other such needs? She wouldn't mind if he just skimmed some off the top. Just a little-oops

Colette is around 16/17ish when her school tells her "yeaaah so, your tuition is due? If you can't come up with the money, we'll have to boot you and kick you out of the dorms." And she is so confused, it should already be settled. Okay, time to visit dad-

She had no idea he'd gotten so bad, he was able to keep face for the most part. And she was always busy with school. So when she starts asking around, trying to find him, she's worried thinking he up and Died on her. Only to piece together that, no, he's an addict who apparently owes a Lot of people a Lot of money, and spends his time at a brothel, where he wastes more money he doesn't have

And when Colette does, eventually, find him at the one brothel Madame Margot happens to be attending to that day-Colette lets him have it. There are a lot of emotions. She's furious, upset, betrayed-she doesn't know how she's going to afford her own tuition now because "obviously I can't depend on you" and he's completely out of it, which just makes her more mad

Madame Margot, sniffing out some prime Emotional Vulnerability, comes along all "So, This is the daughter you were talking about?" I like to think she saw herself in Colette, probably being in similar circumstances. Betrayed by someone who was supposed to help her. And, well, people selling their kids in a place like Zaun is uh, unfortunately a thing. This likely isn't the first time someone has offered their daughter to her.

Now, whether her father was aware of it or not, remains to be seen. Man is high/drunk all the time.

Colette, ofc, scared af-but-oh? Madame Margot isn't actually forcing her into prostitution? Her father signed over his rights the second he was sober-ouch?

Madame Margot wanted someone she could mold into her replacement, should she ever need one. More flies with honey tactic. It's a little tedious, Colette just wants to study her snakes. But when she starts warming up to Margot, eventually seeing her as an older sister/ aunt figure(after several years ofc)she starts keeping Margot's books for her. Helping out. Never participating in any drug or illicit activity. She's just, there.

Madame Margot does force her to start training, it's just common sense to know how to fight and defend yourself in this line of work.

Colette's work with venom scratches at Margot's "how can I use this to make money" brain. But Colette explicitly says she "doesn't want to use her venoms to hurt people, period" and damn it, Margot would usually roll her eyes and do it anyways, but now she's attached and actually cares about the "brat"

Somehow, fcking Smeech, gets his hands on Colette's venom stash. He's got people he really wants to kill. And Margot likely told him offhandedly about Colette's "little hobby". He ends up using the venom to kill someone whose family has a good amount of political power-basically, if you sneezed on this person, jailed for the night.

It gets traced to Colette. She gets blamed for it. Stillwater it is. And she knows she only told Margot about her venoms, so she assumes it was her who screwed her over. And she is Livid. Just another person she grew close to betrayed her.

Colette has a whole plan on how she's going to get back at Margot. But she has to get in close again, ofc.

Margot is furious that someone framed Colette, she knows it had to be Smeech, but she can't risk accusing him without definitive proof. Ends up having to find some poor soul to pin it on instead just to get Colette out of Stillwater. Which takes longer than anticipated, because Smeech had his goons go and wreck all the evidence so Margot wouldn't have her proof.

When Colette does get out, she plays along with Margot-all while not believing her for a single second. She trains harder, glues herself to Margot's side.

All the while noting down everything she sees and hears. But she can't just start dismantling supply chains, she's one person, and it's be suspicious if she just so happened to be AFK. So... she goes to the Firelights.

It does take her a long time to gain their trust, but she eventually becomes their informant on the chembarons and shimmer distributors.

She "starts working" at one of the brothels, but her "clients" are Firelights, she's exchanging info. Code phrases and everything. She is so careful with this

Eventually, she'll be found out and joins the Firelights completely. Using her previous studies to act as a medic of sorts. Gal wanted to follow in her mom's footsteps, dealing with snakes, had to learn first-aid.

#oc x canon #oc #headcanon #scar arcane #scar #arcane league of legends #arcane

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lacepockets · 1 month ago

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Maybe I should actually talk about my experience learning to sing. I don't know if it'll help me get over my nervousness, but hey. I've barely even talked about this with my own husband, which I don't think is great. I imagine it just feels like I was leaving out something important.

My actual musical journey began with learning to play the piano when I was about 6 years old. Opa and Oma had just gotten me away from my abusive/neglectful mother after she had abducted me for about two years, and I think as a coping mechanism I took to listening to Opa's records of classical music. He was a music collector so he had almost every record (and 8-track) you could think of. Classical music was the most calming to me. The social worker I was seeing thus figured that learning to play the piano would be therapeutic for me, and I was excited that I could learn to make those beautiful sounds I heard on Opa's records. Piano is pretty easy for young children to start learning anyway.

Opa promptly signed me up for lessons at the Columbia Arts Academy in Columbia South Carolina and bought me my own piano.

I can't really remember the name of my piano teacher, I think it started with a C? She was a fairly young woman as far as I recall, and very gentle and encouraging. She apparently worked with a few kids who were coming from difficult situations, so she was always so kind. I wish my memory was better for this because I really liked my piano teacher a lot. 🙁

The first piece I "mastered" on piano was Für Elise, and to this day I think I could play that with my eyes closed. (Probably not really, but you know.)

I learned piano for a while, but eventually became enamored with acoustic guitar. Opa, encouraging as always, immediately also started me in guitar lessons at the same academy and bought me a guitar. My guitar teacher was a man who supposedly used to play in a band, but he didn't like to talk about himself much.

(As a side note, I really loved playing piano and guitar. For obvious reasons my piano could not come with me when I eventually moved in with my husband, but I deeply regret that I did not take my guitar. RIP guitar.)

I also took ballet for a bit, but I didn't stick with it super long because it was exhausting.

Eventually I learned about opera. I don't really remember what age I was but I believe the first opera I learned the story of, and thus became obsessed with because I am above all a lover of stories, was Bizet's Carmen. I was like, wow, something can have beautiful music and an interesting dramatic story! Amazing!

So, I told Opa I wanted to learn to sing. I already sang along with all my Disney casettes anyway, so clearly it was something I loved doing. I even occasionally put on little performances for Opa and Oma with my Giant 90s Casette Player/Recorder as my orchestra, and I made my own tapes with that same recorder by singing into some cheap children's microphone. I even recorded some songs in German so Oma could understand what I was singing.

My love of singing was intense enough that I took my silly performances very seriously. I dressed up as different characters, or sometimes just repurposed my ballet outfit, and had Opa and Oma sit and be my supposedly-rapt audience, complete with a clunky flashlight propped up on something to act as a spotlight. I made programmes on construction paper and illustrated them with Crayola supplies.

I kind of cringe thinking back on it, especially with how insistent I was that they watch and enjoy my performance. But I try to remind myself that it's actually very wholesome. I was a kid who was passionate about something, and I was lucky to have loving and supportive grandparents who believed in my talent.

Apparently deciding that he wasn't already wasting enough money on my passion-collecting, Opa signed me up for singing lessons too. Since I was still quite young, I didn't start with opera, but instead musical theater and pop (it is generally discouraged for someone to start singing opera before a certain age). I also joined my school choir.

I think I was around 11 when I finally switched to learning opera. I needed to have a different teacher for that, and that was when I was given to Nancy. I don't want to fully name-and-shame her, because she is now deceased, and that just feels disrespectful.

Nancy was a former opera singer, and from my recollection she was probably around 50-60, but I'm not 100% sure because your perception of someone's age when you're young is Weird. She performed at The Palmetto Opera for a number of years as a primadonna mezzo-soprano, but she had some sort of falling out that I don't recall the details of, left the opera house, and then struggled to get her career going again. She transitioned to teaching because, in her words, she "wanted to see someone succeed in a dying art".

At first she only seemed very stringent to me. She would coach me on something, then have me try singing, and harshly interrupt me and have me try again without correction from her. I often did not know what I was doing wrong until several tries later, when I was already starting to feel embarrassed. I was always a sensitive person (autism etc), so when I would get upset over this, she would say I need to grow a thicker skin, that she's only trying to help me get better, and that the "real world of opera" was much worse. I would be a failure if I couldn't steel myself and take her awfully-presented criticism.

I did get better. She did actually teach me how to sing and perform. But every time I was in her lessons I just felt like I was being pressured to be perfect. When I got a bit older I realized that she was living vicariously through me, and only allowing me to do things exactly how she wanted.

Nancy would yell things at me like "are you hearing yourself right now? Here, listen to this recording, do you think you sound good?" "Imagine getting on stage and singing like this. Your audience will think you're ruining their music." etc

When I struggled with finding my chest voice, Nancy took to almost punching me in the chest, yelling at me to open my diaphragm but not explaining what that meant or how to do it. And then I had a hard time taking proper breaths because, yknow, she just hit me, and she'd get mad about that too. When I finally did find my chest voice, rather than praising me or congratulating me or anything like that, she just said "well you definitely could not ever sing alto".

That was always baffling to me because, yeah duh. I have and always have had a high pitch. No crap I can't sing alto.

Once my singing got to a level she was seemingly pleased with, she started fully recording me. I don't know what she actually did with those recordings, she just apparently took them home with her and I never got to see them. She would tell me to sing full pieces and record it like this, and I started feeling like I was some sort of mouthpiece for her rather than her student. She eventually told me that my singing was good now, but it was doubtful that I would ever be able to make a career out of it.

I remember at one point Opa wanted to hear me sing again, like when I put on performances as a kid. I tried, I stood there and prepared to sing Ave Maria for him, but I started shaking and when my voice wouldn't come out I just cried.

Nancy had quite effectively ruined my confidence and dulled my passion for singing. When I was 18 or 19 I got braces, which made my mouth very painful and gave me a bit of a lisp for the time I had them… so I figured this was my opportunity to quit. I ghosted Nancy and never saw her again, and for a long time just did not talk about all this.

And thus ends that journey.

#personal #actual blogging

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pallasimp · 8 months ago

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🍇🍑🍒🍓 for Vera ~~

I have not been aware of any asks for like the past year so I'M CATCHING UP! SORRY!!

Vera is someone who places a lot of emphasis on interpersonal bonds in her life, so she's a very involved (sometimes over-attentive) friend! IG to be reductive you could say she's the mom friend of the group insofar as she's the ship doctor and literal adopted mom to one of the crewmembers, but I think she's more the social worker friend.

Maturity (esp emotional maturity), passion, and a good sense of humor. Admittedly, she also prefers people who are older and tends to go after authority figures. And lbr- being a little fucked in the head really does it for her too <3

Oooh yes, Vera has had many a kiss in her life. I happened to write this already IC for a session qotd, so here:

"Ah! What a very... personal question." She tut-tuts, but with a shrug and a smile she continues in good nature. "Well.. I was passing through Dilwych, probably in my early twenties? Yes, I must have been.... just twenty years old, actually. Well I happened to come to town during a period of, ahm, how you say- political fuckery? And there was this corpse in the seat of the Barony- and I do mean literally, he was rather well mummified actually, a saline-methanol solution I would guess-, and propped up on the throne of the court. Well that is what I heard, at least, by the time I was burying him he had been pulled off the seat so the whole propping-him-up thing perhaps was hearsay..." "Ah, anyways! The poor bishop's apprentice who was helping me bury the mummy-Baron was rather crippled with fear. It was a foggy night, wolves howling upon the moors, and we hadn't much more than a lantern between us... so I told them that I would steady their nerves with a kiss, if they liked. Mostly as a joke, but they said yes, and... well, I didn't think much before jumping into things, back then." "They were sweet... I wonder if they're fully ordained now. I can't even recall the order of that diocese... Pelor, maybe? In any case, they blushed too much to be much worried for the remainder of the night, so I think it worked. A first kiss well spent!" She leans back in her chair with a smug smile. ".... Now. How many of you thought I was going to say that I kissed the dead guy?"

She loves spring, petrichor, and now the scent of the ocean has come to be a comfort for her in Saltmarsh. Although she works with decay daily, specifically the smell of decaying fruit will make her gag.

Full List

#vera energy #thank you for asking!! sorry im a fool

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eatdearth · 2 years ago

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A Butter Tomorrow

Timing: Recent Location: The Bread Cemetery, Downtown Feat: @eatdearth & @thesilentmedium Warnings: N/A Summary: Jonas, a patient pastry person, meets Jasper, a rambling rock (p)rofessor (close enough). No one was bready for this wholesome encounter.

Jasper liked his bread. Not as much as he used to, but he has continued to frequent the Bread Cemetery even after he was over his “local businesses only” phase, so that has to account for something, right? There was a time in Jasper’s life where he would only eat food from the aforementioned “local businesses,” places that were considered cornerstones of the town, places like the Bread Cemetery or the Best Exotic Herbal Tea Shop or even the Driftwood Diner.

There’s some debate over that last one, but Jasper knew there was no debating the bear claws at the Cemetery. The Bread Cemetery, not an actual cemetery. Come to think of it, Jasper still has no idea why the place was called The Bread Cemetery. He should probably ask. Maybe after he gets his bear claws. If he remembers anything after munching on those delicious bear claws.

“Hey, man, I’ll have a bear claw, por flavor,” Jasper muttered out loud when it was his turn to make his order before noticing the sign on the counter that explained one of the workers was deaf. Was this the deaf guy? Jasper has been buying bread at the Cemetery for a long time but still hasn’t figured out which guy was the deaf guy. Or maybe he just keeps forgetting. “Oh, uhh, that one,” he pointed at the bear claws, still speaking, even though he believed the deaf guy might not have heard him. “Can. I. Have. That?”

Jasper might be much better at this if he had a deaf friend. Or any friends for that matter.

The Bread Cemetery was always busy in the morning but today seemed especially so, Jonas hadn’t even gotten a chance to get into a better change of clothes before the breakfast rush came in. His apron was tied around his waist and his black tank that normally was kept under a cardigan was now showing off more than he was usually comfortable with. He still had flour on his cheek from an unfortunate button press and his hair was slightly out of place, just enough to bother him. Normally Andy or Lil would be here to handle the customers but Andy was having her day off and Lil was out following leads, so Jonas was stuck being uncomfortable as he tried to get the customers out quickly.

The young man was a little frazzled and thankful the number of patrons seemed to be dying down when the last one stepped forward. Jonas recognized the man’s face, though he had never gotten his name. He smiled, always happy to see a regular returning. “Good morning.” He couldn’t help the little snort that came out when the man tried to talk to him.

“I um can read your lips sir, you can talk normally.” Jonas pulled the bear claw out and slipped it into a paper bag, rolling it closed and keeping it shut with a little tombstone sticker. “That will be four dollars please.” He set the pastry on the counter and couldn’t help stretching while he waited on the stranger to get out his card. “You uh come here a lot and I appreciate it. Do you work nearby?”

‘Oh’ and ‘fuck’ were the first two words that came to Jasper’s mind when the baker revealed a fact obvious to everyone but the geology professor. For all his accomplishments in academia, the last living member of the Langston family in town was not as gifted in social settings. He gave the other guy an apologetic smile as he stumbled to take his wallet out of his pocket. Jasper almost dropped the damned thing but managed to keep it in his clumsy hands at the last minute. “Don’t worry! I got it!”

As soon as those words left his lips, Jasper realized no one was probably worrying. It was just a wallet. If it fell to the floor, he could have just picked it up. No one was getting injured by a wallet dropping to the floor. At least not in their current situation, where they were inside a bakery getting bread for breakfast.

Embarrassed by no one else but himself, Jasper dropped his head, focusing on taking out those four dollars with keen attention, not wanting any more clumsy mistakes. The more attention he’d draw to himself, he’d learn over the years, thanks to his prankster students, the more he’d end up looking like a fool.

Fortunately for Jasper, he managed to pay the correct amount on his first try. “Thanks,” he muttered unnecessarily as he surrendered the bills to take the pastry. “Oh, I, uhm, I’m a professor at the university. I’m a huge fan! Of your bread, I mean. Old habits die hard… Favorite bakery! Kudos to the chef!” After throwing random words at the guy, he ended up with an awkward chuckle. What the hell was all that? Jasper didn’t even know.

Jonas reached out to catch the wallet but stopped when the other man got it himself. The stranger in front of him seemed to be very nervous, which wasn’t strange. Some people were just like that when outside of the home and Jonas did his best to look welcoming for the other man to try and make him feel less flustered. He gently took the bills from the other and quickly counted the change, putting it on the counter for the man to pick up. He figured it would be easier than trying to fumble with his wallet and the pastry as well as the change.

“A university professor? What do you teach?” Maybe talking about his profession would help him feel less awkward. Jonas always found he could go on talking about baking for hours if given the chance. Then again maybe his love for the activity was different. Teaching sounded like it was probably more stressful than just being in the back baking all day. If that was the only part of this job he had to worry about, Jonas would be stress free, though keeping the books in check was a little hard. He was already looking for accountants to go over the documents.

Having never planned to take over the family business, suddenly managing two was draining. It didn’t help that his brain was one to over think. Jonas was wanting to be prepared for any thing that might go wrong while waiting for his sister to find their parents, but that only led to more stress as he was finding out just how many ways a business could fail. Still trying was better than just letting it fail on its own. He couldn’t let June or Andy down and while the house may have been neglected, the bakery was still in tip top shape showing just how much his mother really adored it.

Jasper perked up when the angelic cashier asked him about his job. If there was one thing Jasper loved talking about, it was his job. His field, specifically. Something about stones and rocks just excited him. He wasn’t even sure himself why that was the case. Maybe because he found out he had an affinity for magic relating to the stones and the rocks? Maybe because of the mines? Yeah, probably not the mines.

“Oh, I teach geology,” Jasper started meekly but immediately became more confident. “Geoscience, earth science, it’s all the same study of this amazing planet we’re living in now, how it was formed, its composition, its structure, the myriad of processes acting on it.” You’d think that was the perfect opportunity to stop, but nope. He continued, “Did you know that it’s the primary, and I have to emphasize, primary EARTH, as in this planet, science? We also study the history of the planet Earth over the course of its billions of years of a lifetime.” He heaved a sigh to end his monologue, arms on his hips, impressed and in love with geology.

In his head, Jasper looked cool. But to the others waiting in line, to the random bread enthusiasts who had overheard him gawk about rocks, he probably looked like a complete idiot. When he was in high school, and he talked about rocks like that, he usually had his entire spiel ended by another kid laughing at him. Sometimes they’d throw a rock at him. Well, a stone, to be more precise, but there was that one time another kid threw an actual rock at him. As big as his fist. He got sent to the nurse that day, and eventually, home. When his uncle heard about it, he was pissed. Come to think about it, whatever happened to that rock-throwing kid? He’s never heard of him since then.

“Geoscience?” That was a hard word to read off the lips but Jonas was happy the other man seemed to perk up. Asking him about his job was apparently the right way to go as the man rambled about geology. He seemed proud of it, which only earned a genuine smile from Jonas. The smaller man always loved when people got excited over their passions, they way it seemed to make their face light up was always a joy to witness.

“That is very neat.” Jonas meant it. He may not know much on the subject but it did seem like something interesting to dive into if the other man’s reactions were anything to go by. “How long have you um been teaching?” He motioned for Jasper to scoot to the side so the other could keep talking, making sure he took his change while making room for the next customer. He did his best to keep his attention going between the two, it was a little hard when he needed to use his eyes to see what they were saying. Sometimes being deaf came with drawbacks, but he had been like this since he was born so he was used to navigating two people talking to him at once.

Jasper grinned sheepishly when he realized Jonas had said good things about his rambling. Well, his field at least. Usually people just stared at him, and occasionally walked away, whenever he finished his excited spiel about rocks and stones. No one gets it. No one gets him. His field and his brain was too big for everyone else to appreciate. That was his curse. His blessing. Or at least that’s what he told him whenever he starts feeling super low. “It is! So very neat!”

“Oh, not that long ago,” Jasper tried to downplay the amount of time he spent in the academe, learning everything he could, maximizing his potential and worth, to be able to get to where he was right then and there. He felt it would reveal how sad and empty and lonely his social life was, not to mention how despite all that time dedicated to his field of study, he was still barely at the level he wanted to be, the level of his mentors.

“You guys ever, uhh, get other customers from the University?” It was a pretty dumb question, all things considered, but Jasper was legit curious if Doctor Dolan, err Shiv visited this place. Or even Nancy.

“I am not sure. Not many people stop to chat with me when they order. I do not blame them, it can be awkward to talk to someone who is deaf for the first time.” Jonas was used to people not wanting to deal with talking to him. It could be a hassle if one didn’t know sign language and had to be constantly reminded to look directly at him while talking. Plus lip reading wasn’t perfect, there was always the chance he misunderstood what the other was trying to say. All this really did make him appreciate those who bothered to try though. He wouldn’t have such lovely friends if no one took the chance to talk to him.

“It is impressive though that you um have made a job for yourself teaching Geoscience.” Jonas was impressed by anyone with the patience to stand in front of a crowd of people answering questions all day. The baker himself was happy to answer questions but on a one to one basis. “I am glad you seem to enjoy it.” There was nothing better than a job you loved doing. Jonas learned that when he was finally away from Jacob and could enjoy how he worked. It took a long time for him to come around to the idea that his method was worthwhile.

Jacob had never been impressed with Jonas for doing things differently. His father had always been happy to remind him that it was strange and that he was a failure precisely because he couldn’t follow along with the normal procedures. But the boy couldn’t help it when his words came out sounding off. He had no idea what he sounded like to begin with and he knew that some of the things he said were still unintelligible despite his best effort to make them so.

“You’re deaf?” Jasper blurted out the words even before his brain could tell him not to, completely unaware that the guy he had been speaking to was deaf. Why would he be aware? Jasper pretty much spent most of the conversation talking about himself, his field of study. One time, a girl at a bar tried to make small talk with him, only for the geology professor to go into a monologue about the earth’s core that ended with Jasper only noticing the same girl had gone and went after he was done. The girl had left after his fourth sentence. He had managed to talk himself into complete obliviousness for twenty or so sentences. “I’m sorry, I didn’t— It’s just that— I didn’t find it awkward speaking with you.” Nice save. Decent save?

“Yeah, uhm,” Jasper had only then realized he was maybe holding up a line and the people behind him were maybe not enjoying his long-ass monologue as much as he had thought. To be fair, he forgot they were there, but the scowls on their faces pretty much confirmed his theory. Maybe it was time to go? He was going to keep coming back anyway. Humiliating encounter or not, the bread at this place was pretty freaking good. “Feel free to drop by whenever,” he fumbled for something decent to say as he offered the other guy a meek smile, almost apologetically, before moving out of the line to avoid getting attacked. He was mid-escape when he remembered he hadn’t even given the guy his name. “I’m Jasper, by the way. Jasper Langston.”

“Oh um I am sorry I thought you knew because of how you were speaking when you first came in. But I am glad you did not find our conversation awkward.” Jonas was a little amused by the other man and how quickly he seemed to forget anything not related to his line of work. Then again maybe Jonas had misinterpreted the man’s actions from when he came in. He wasn’t sure why someone would talk like that then unless they thought he was hard of hearing. Did the man forget about it because of how Jonas was able to keep up with the conversation? It wouldn’t be the first time someone didn’t realize because of that.

Jonas watched as the man shuffled about doing his best not to laugh as he seemed to finally realize where he was again. “I hope you enjoy your Bear Claw, if I am ever at the university I will make sure to stop by and u say hi.” He offered a little wave, pausing when the other man turned to offer his name, “It has been a joy to meet you Jasper, I am Jonas.” Despite the taller man’s awkwardness it really had been entertaining to meet him and have him ramble off about his job.

#wickedswriting #❖《 ⋯ ♖ feat. jonas ballard #❖《 ⋯ ♖ para ♜ ⋯ 》❖#《 ⋯ ❖ a butter tomorrow ❖ ⋯ 》#《 ⋯ season one ❖ canaries ⋯ 》

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callmeagardengnome · 2 months ago

Text

𓆩 bless me 𓆪 - chapter 12

w.c - 2.4k

pairings - demon!ateez ot8 x demon! fem! reader

genre - demon au, hint of royal au, possible yandere themes (?), romance, slow burn

synopsis: as hell's receptionist, you only wished to talk shit and stay out of trouble. yet, you happened to be the one that the two social clans in hell start fighting for.

c.w - dark themes (what did you expect), threats and a lil violent action vibez

not proofread!

previous / next

masterlist

The morning sun casted a warm, red glow over the outdoor training grounds - one that you didn’t even know existed. You sat on the ground against a rough stone wall as soldiers, in their dark uniforms, ran circuits around an ashy path, their breaths visible in the crisp morning air. You sighed heavily, letting your head fall back against the wall.

“Why does he always do this?” you muttered just loud enough for San to hear.

He stood not too far away from you, watching the troops. “Who?” he asked.

“The King,” you replied, visibly annoyed. “Why does he always assign me to a babysitter?”

San finally turned to look at you. “Maybe he doesn’t trust you,” he said with a slight shrug.

“Well- I mean.. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t trust me,” you scratched the back of your neck. “But does he really need someone watching me 24/7? It’s not like I’m going to run away.”

San gave a hum of agreement, his eyes shifting back to the soldiers. Silence settled between you, one that was filled by the sounds of heavy footsteps hitting the ground.

After a while, San spoke again. “Do you want me to talk to him about it?”

“No,” you said immediately, whipping your head around. “Are you insane?”

San shrugged, a small smirk on his face.

“You’re not even supposed to be talking to me,” you reminded him. “How do you think he’ll react if you tried to defend me?”

“Oh, he’ll probably try to kill me,” he replied simply. “But I don’t think that’s possible.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Are you that strong?”

“Of course,” he said, his smirk growing into something cocky.

“Stronger than Jongho?”

San’s smirk vanished instantly. “...Let’s not talk about him.”

You chuckled softly, turning your attention back to the training field as the troops finished their lap. San walked away, clapping his hands to get their attention and direct them to a new set of exercises.

Moments later, San returned to stand next to you. You were picking your nails when you glanced at him. “I forgot to ask- what’s going on with the whole ‘poisoning the crops’ plan?”

He tilted his head. “Yunho didn’t tell you?”

You let out a sigh, dropping your hands. “Just like you, he’s not allowed to talk to me.”

San’s brows lifted in surprise. “...Really?”

You nodded and you heard a soft, “Hm…” coming from him. He suddenly became silent, like he was piecing something together as he placed his finger on his chin.

Finally, he spoke up. “Yeah, we’re not actually poisoning the crops.”

You turned to face him, gesturing for him to explain.

“The ‘poison’ is just juice from the berries,” San continued, lowering his voice. “It makes demons sleepy for some reason. If the King watches Halas eat the crops, they’ll get sluggish and he’ll think it’s working.”

“Whoa,” your eyes widened. “How did you even figure that out?”

“Yeosang ate them- seven times, I think,” San said. “Apparently, they taste like shit.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Why would he eat them that many times..?”

“For fun,” San shrugged. “He didn’t realise the berries made him sleepy. He just thought he was tired.”

Before you could ask anything else, you heard footsteps approaching. Your heart dropped as you watched an Eternal worker walk into the training area, heading towards you.

This could only mean one thing.

“The King would like you in his office.”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖⊹₊ִ ࣪𖤐๋࣭ ⭑⊹₊ 𖥔.

This had to be the most awkward thing you’ve ever gone through.

Sitting in complete silence infront of the King was already uncomfortable enough, but add in the Duke - who you were 99.9% sure hated you, glaring daggers into your head every few minutes. It was unbearable.

Though the cherry on top had to be the task Hongjoong made you do: fill the glass jar on his desk with 1000 paper cranes.

At this point, he had to be messing with you. You’re Hell’s Receptionist - someone more than qualified to sift through files, papers or anything that didn’t involve folding origami for hours and hours on end.

You folded the crane, biting your tongue to keep you from groaning. You placed it into the jar, the crane falling on top of the rest of its friends.

“Need more paper?” Hongjoong’s voice broke the silence, mockingly gentle as he looked at you.

“Uh-”

Before you could finish, a fresh stack of perfectly cut square sheets landed on the table in front of you with a loud thud. Hongjoong gave you a sweet, polite and utterly fake smile before returning back to his work.

You mumbled a ‘thanks’ under your breath as frustration bubbled from within. You reached for another sheet. The next crane you folded came out sloppy, its edges slanted and wings uneven.

As you moved to drop it into the jar, a smack landed on your hand.

“Fold properly,” Seonghwa hissed, holding the file that he just hit you with.

You scoffed, unfolding the paper as you rolled your eyes. “Ass kisser,” you said, not bothering to lower your voice.

Seonghwa’s head snapped to you. “What did you jus-”

“-Not in my office.”

Hongjoong’s voice cut through the argument like a blade, silencing both you and Seonghwa.

Seonghwa grumbled something incoherent under his breath before pressing his lips silent in a thin line when he noticed that Hongjoong was looking at him.

The three of you eventually went back to your respective tasks - you folding origami as Hongjoong and Seonghwa reviewed files.

Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. Each crane became easier to fold and you found yourself in a cycle of folding paper.

Finally, Hongjoong reached for a pocket watch resting on the corner of his desk. He flipped it open, glancing at the time.

“How many have you folded?” he asked.

You paused, glancing at the jar before responding. “156.”

He nodded, his eyes shifting to Seonghwa. For a moment, the two of them exchanged a look, one that you knew said more than what was heard.

“Take your leave,” Hongjoong said at last.

You didn’t wait for him to repeat himself. You quickly got up, ignoring the two sets of eyes following you as you closed the door behind you.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖⊹₊ִ ࣪𖤐๋࣭ ⭑⊹₊ 𖥔.

“I don’t like Yunho,” Wooyoung said, throwing a punch.

The sound of punches and kicks filled the training hall as you sparred with Wooyoung. The two of you were quiet for most of it, but that changed when he suddenly spoke up.

You stumbled for a second, caught off guard. “..Where is this coming from?” you asked, stepping back to avoid the jabs that came a little too close for comfort.

Wooyoung scoffed, giving you a look. “He’s an Eternal.”

“So?” you ducked under his arm. “He’s helped us a lot.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” Wooyoung snapped.

Silence fell between the two of you as you focused on dodging and blocking his punches. For some reason, his movements were a lot more aggressive than usual.

You caught his wrist mid-swing, stopping him. “Why don’t you like Yunho?”

Wooyoung twisted his arm free, shaking his wrists before stepping back into the spar.

“He’s-“ he hesitated as he made eye contact with you for a brief moment. “He’s untrustworthy.”

You rolled your eyes. “I don’t know about you, but risking your life to help demons you don’t even like seems pretty trustworthy to me.”

“Then why would the King ban him from talking to you?” Wooyoung asked, dodging your punch.

You sighed, stepping back slightly. “San talked to you about that?”

“I’m just saying,” Wooyoung muttered, his voice quieter. “I don’t like him,” he said, glancing at you before adding, “Around you.”

You froze. “Wooyoung wha-“

At that second, Wooyoung managed to sweep your legs out from under you. The impact of the ground hitting your back knocked the air out of your lungs.

For a moment, neither of you moved. His hands rested on your wrists, holding you down firmly.

You’ve never seen him this closely before.

And he’d never seen you this closely either.

You were flushed from the spar, strands of hair sticking to your damp skin. You were breathless, your chest rising and falling as you tried to catch your breath. Even then, you looked effortlessly beautiful to Wooyoung.

The frustration in your eyes, your brows furrowing - the fact that your fists were clenched as you looked up at him from beneath with confusion and anger.

His heart skipped a beat.

When did he start to pay attention to things like that? Get it together, Wooyoung.

But he couldn’t. You were the prettiest demon he’s ever seen - and he knew that since the moment he met you.

It wasn’t only because of the way you looked, but because of the way you were. Wooyoung liked the banter, he liked it when you challenged him and kept him on his toes. It drove him insane, but not in a bad way. Quite the opposite.

You were perfect for him - and he was going to do anything to show that he was perfect for you.

“Cute..” the word slipped out, barely audible.

“…Huh?”

Wooyoung blinked. Realising what he said, his cheeks turned crimson. He cleared his throat awkwardly, finally letting go of your wrists and leaning back slightly.

“I mean- good,“ he scrambled for a response. “It’s getting late.”

“Right..” you muttered, brushing yourself off as you got up.

As you faced him, Wooyoung wasn’t looking at you anymore, he was busy fiddling with his sleeve, avoiding eye contact at all costs.

The heat of the moment was supposed to fade and yet, it lingered in the air, simmering between the two of you. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it - and it seemed like Wooyoung didn’t want to acknowledge it either.

“Get some rest, ‘____’,” he said, your name rolling off his tongue unusually soft.

He turned away quickly, walking away as you stood rooted in your place, a blend of unfamiliar feelings swirling in your chest.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖⊹₊ִ ࣪𖤐๋࣭ ⭑⊹₊ 𖥔.

The main kitchen was scarily quiet at night. You’ve never really been here before, but you’ve seen many Eternal workers weave in and out of the room. You glanced around cautiously, pulling your hood lower as you moved through the dark space.

Your hands worked quickly, grabbing what you could - 2 loaves of bread, some dried meat and a few apples. Wrapping them in a cloth, you tucked the bundle under your cloak. The thought of what would happen if either Hongjoong or Seonghwa caught you made your stomach flip, but you couldn’t let Mingi starve.

You slipped out through the back, following the route and tunnels Yunho took you through last night. The path was winding and dimly lit. At one point, a soldier passed by, making you press yourself against the cold stone wall, holding your breath until they were gone.

When you finally reached the chamber, you spotted Mingi’s figure slumped against the bars.

“Mingi,” you whispered. His eyes fluttered open, tired but widened when he saw you.

“‘____’,” he rasped, sitting up slightly.

You sat on the ground, pushing the bundle of food through the gate. “I brought food. Enough for you and hopefully, the others.”

A faint smile tugged at his lips as he took the food. “Why would you do this for me..” he muttered, his hands trembling with excitement as he unwrapped the bundle.

“I wanted to,” you replied, shifting on the floor just outside the gate.

As he began to eat, you started to tell him about your day. You told him about the ridiculous amount of paper cranes Hongjoong was making you fold, the most recent plan you had to potentially save the Halas and how your Hala friends were settling smoothly into the Palace.

Mingi listened closely, his eyes sparkling despite being completely exhausted. He didn’t interrupt, his gaze locked on you as you spoke. For a moment, you forgot about the gate separating you.

When you were done, Mingi spoke softly. “You’re an angel.”

A soft laugh escaped your lips as you shook your head. “Don’t insult me,” you said, the corner of your mouth twitching into a smirk. “I don’t want to be associated with them.”

He let out a breathy chuckle, the sound hoarse. “Still..” he paused, studying your face. “What you’re doing.. it’s more than any other demon has ever done for me.”

You didn’t even have time to process his words as you heard something - footsteps. Approaching. Getting louder and louder. Your heart sank, clutching the empty cloth in your hands.

It was the last demon you wanted to see.

Seonghwa stood in the tunnel, his eyes wide as they darted between you and Mingi.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

You instinctively shifted to shield Mingi. “What are you doing here?”

Seonghwa took a step closer, his eyes narrowing. “Walker.. tell me why Mingi is still alive.”

Your throat tightened. “I- I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Seonghwa hissed, his voice dripping with venom. “Why. Is. Mingi. Alive?”

Your breathing quickened as you felt Mingi shifting weakly behind you. “Did you really think we’d just.. get rid of him?”

Seonghwa’s face morphed into disgust. He crouched down, leveling himself with you.

“You’re a liar,” his voice dropped to a piercing whisper as he pulled out a switchblade. It shined in the dim light as he pressed it under your chin, forcing you to look at him. “How many lies have you told me, Walker?”

You opened your mouth to respond, but he cut you off, his grip of the blade tightening. “Better question- how many lies have you told the King?”

Behind you, Mingi tried to muster all the strength to rise. “Put the knife away, Duke,” he grimaced, his voice strained.

“What are you going to do?” Seonghwa snarled, silencing Mingi. “I’m not the animal in a cage.”

He turned his attention back to you. The blade dug into your skin, not quite enough to draw blood but enough to make you freeze in your spot. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he began. “I’m going to ask questions and you’re going to answer me truthfully.”

You swallowed the lump in your throat, your voice trembling. “What if I don’t?”

Seonghwa’s free hand grabbed your chin, his fingers pressing into your skin as he leaned in close. His lips brushed against your ear, his breath sending a shiver down your spine.

“If I find out that you’re still lying,” he whispered, scarily gentle. “I won’t hesitate to put a knife through that pretty little face of yours. I’m done with your bullshit.”

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