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writeonwhiskey · 3 months

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the skz house: ch 19 (18+)

a/n: thank you @bahablastplz for editing! i appreciate you 🩵 and thank you, readers, or your patience.

[ read chapter 18 here ]

Chapter 19: Of Christmas & Chokers

Over the next few days, the comfortability between you and Chan deepens. Whether you’re in the room or out being tourists, you remain almost glued together—holding hands, sitting on his lap, hugging each other, kissing. Your conversations flow naturally and without tension. In an alternate universe, perhaps this would have been an ideal trip for a couple in love. As delusional as you may have become in believing this could be a new normal, you keep one foot grounded in reality. Well, maybe not the whole foot…but at least a pinky toe.

Your days are packed with several activities such as a nighttime ATV ride, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. You both have the time of your life letting loose. Speeding, swerving, screaming at the rush of it all. You’ve never seen Chan smile so much. He is different when he’s free of the responsibility of being Chapter President…he’s carefree. You tell yourself regardless of how this ends, you’ll be glad you at least got to see him like this.

You go to a local amusement park where Chan is determined to make you face your fear of rollercoasters. However, after the second ride leaves you nearly in tears, Chan puts that mission to rest.

You venture back out on the water on a jet ski. Chan lets you do most of the driving that day, but you soon realize it’s a set up. When you’re far out enough from the beach, his hands on your hips find their way between your legs. He kisses your neck and tells you to turn off the jet ski. He fucks you with his fingers until you come, whispering in your ear how hard his cock is and what he plans to do to you later.

One of the days while you and Chan are out, the hotel staff add holiday decorations around the room, including a small, 4ft tree in the corner near the balcony windows. It makes you squeal with glee upon seeing it. You assume it’s all the hotel’s doing. Lee Know wouldn’t have done something so nice. Would Chan? He doesn’t claim it, if he had put them up to it. It doesn’t matter, though, it makes you happy to see and feel more of the holiday spirit.

When Christmas Eve comes around, there’s a break in the itinerary since a lot of places are closed for the holiday. You wind up sleeping in quite late for your standards and when you finally open your eyes, Chan is wide awake in the bed next to you. He’s sitting up, back against the pillows, laptop in front of him and headphones covering his ears. He’s consumed by whatever he’s doing, but as soon as you turn to face him, his eyes shift from the screen to you.

“She has risen,” he jokes, moving one headphone away from his ear.

“I needed that,” you reply, stretching beneath the blankets. “How long have you been up?”

“A while,” he says with a shrug. “Just working on our chapter project.”

You smile inwardly. Typically, his response would have finished with ‘a while’, you would have had to dig and pry for any further information. He, for now at least, is freely providing you with further details.

“Chapter project?” you ask. You recall hearing him discuss it months ago, but never knew what it was.

“Just something we have to put together to memorialize the year,” he tells you. He turns the laptop so you can see the screen. You recognize the sight of a music program with tracks and layers but have no further understanding of it.

“Putting your minor to use?”

“Kind of. It doubles as my senior project for the minor, so that’s a plus.” He starts moving things around on the screen, opening a folder aptly titled ‘Chapter Project’. He clicks on a few files, opening them to show you as he speaks. “I want to incorporate songs I’ve worked on with different things from the other members—Hyunjin’s artwork for example.”

You know Chan is a good student. All of the members are, really, but you know some of them drag their feet and procrastinate until the last minute. You’ve caught Hyunjin, Changbin and Jeongin rushing to meet midnight deadlines more than once.

“Can I hear something?”

You sit up on the bed, back against the pillows like Chan. The blanket falls from your chest, exposing your breasts.

“Only if you put those things away,” he says, looking pointedly at your breasts, then up to your eyes, then back down again.

“What things?” you ask innocently, leaning back against the headboard and pushing your chest out even more.

Seizing the opportunity, Chan leans over and captures your nipple in his mouth. You let out a surprised scream as he bites down around it. You push him away, swatting his arm. You promptly pull the blanket up to cover them before holding out your hand for his headphones.

He hands them over with a smile, and you put them on. He shuffles a few things around on the screen before a video starts. You assume the graphics are of Felix’s design as it feels like something you’d see in a video game. A song accompanies the images and you’re surprised to hear Chan’s voice over a jovial sounding beat, followed by Seungmin, then Changbin. You didn’t know any of them could sing.

The video is only about a minute long but you feel dumbfounded when it’s over. You remove the headphones and pass them back to Chan.

“I like it,” you say with a smile. “It’s…surprisingly good.”

“You underestimating me?” he asks teasingly.

“My mistake,” you say sarcastically, placing a hand over your heart. “Is that a cover?”

“No, it’s an original song,” he tells you, turning the laptop back so it’s facing him. “Just waiting on Felix to finish rendering the rest of the graphics, then that one will be done.”

“You’re doing more?”

“A few more. It’ll be a mini-album.”

“Do I get a copy?”

“Hmmm…maybe. If you ask nicely.”

“Oh, never mind then,” you say nonchalantly.

Chan turns to look at you, biting his tongue between his teeth to keep from smiling as he nods.

“I’ll remember that.”

You slide down against the pillows, then turn on your side so you’re still facing him.

“I had no idea you guys could sing,” you tell him.

“Participating in choir was mandatory at our boarding school,” he shrugs. “We can hold a note.”

Chan is full of so many surprises. Most of them pleasant, these days. You want to uncover all there is to know about him, but you know you’ll never be given the time.

You cuddle up to him as he puts his headphones back on. You just lay there and watch him work, expertly navigating around the screen as he continues composing the song. You want to ask why he’s not majoring in music. You already know the answer to that, though. The choices for his future aren’t exactly his to make. His parents decided he would major in business, and sadly that’s all there is to it.

Your heart aches for him—you can see the work he put in to make something creative, the passion he has for it. And he can’t even pursue it.

It’s now 11:00pm and you and Chan have just returned to the hotel room. After dinner you both wanted to get out of the room for a bit and ended up at one of the only places open—the Magic City casino. The hours spent there are a bit of a blur. It was news to you that anyone playing at the tables or slot machines could get free drinks, so you both decided to indulge. Being so far from the hotel, though, Chan didn’t let either of you get too drunk.

As soon as you’re back to the room, Chan excuses himself to make a phone call and disappears out onto the balcony. You change into your pajamas—a pair of thin, loose fitting shorts and matching top—and return to the living room. You turn on the TV, stopping on the first channel you see playing a Christmas themed movie to entertain you while you wait for him to return. From all the food and drinks, you start to doze off until the sound of the heavy balcony door opening stirs you.

“Everything okay?” you ask when he comes back in.

“Mm,” is his reply, with a small nod of his head. “It’s Christmas day back home. I’m gonna get changed.”

You can only nod as well. His tone sounds a bit sad so you’re not sure what to say. Maybe he’s missing spending the holiday with his little brother and sister. And that makes you sad. It’s your fault he’s not with them.

Chan comes back into the living room clad in a plain black t-shirt and grey sweatpants. He sits down next to you and throws his arm around the back of the couch behind you.

All of your life you had never considered yourself to have a one-track mind but now? With Chan? Seeing him in those grey sweatpants puts one thing at the forefront of your mind, drowsiness and sadness pushed aside. You’ve got to get a hold of yourself.

“Should I open the bottle of wine the hotel left?” you suggest.

“Sure,” is his simple reply.

You stand and retrieve the bottle from the kitchen, along with two wine glasses. You pop the cork and fill both glasses before returning to Chan, handing him one.

“You sure everything’s alright? You seem a bit down…”

You don’t want the tension in the air to linger through the night and this trip has built your courage to address him this way.

“I’ll be fine,” he tells you with a soft smile. He clinks his glass against yours before downing his in one go. “You trying to stay up ‘til midnight for your present?”

You take a sip from your wine glass; happy he’s taking the initiative to change the subject to something lighter.

“I don’t see any presents under that tree,” you say, looking in the corner where the small tree is lit up.

“I haven’t put them there yet.”

“Them?”

As in multiple.

He nods.

“Oh no,” you say, a look of panic taking over your features.

You weren’t sure the two of you would even be exchanging gifts. Not only that, but you don’t feel like you truly know enough about him to get a well thought out present. And you love giving gifts. Hyunjin has a never-ending need for art supplies, so you immediately knew what to get him. You were completely puzzled when it came to Chan.

It was only after the staff added the tree that you thought it’d be nice for him to wake up with something under the tree. Being on vacation, though, you were in a bit of a predicament. All you really had convenient access to was the gift shop.

He must sense your apprehension.

“It’s okay if you didn’t get me anything,” he tries to appease you.

When the panicked look on your face turns into a frown, he takes the wine glass from your hand and places it next to his on the side table. He then pulls you into his lap so you’re straddling him and cups your face with both hands, stroking your cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.

“It’s fine,” he says in a sharper tone that makes you nod in acceptance.

“I would have never imagined I’d be spending Christmas Eve with you, let alone exchanging gifts,” you tell him, leaning your forehead against his. “From English classmates to this? Never in my wildest dreams.”

“That wasn’t our first class together,” he says matter-of-factly. He leans back against the couch and takes both of your hands in his, lacing his fingers through.

You furrow your brow at his statement. You wrack your brain for any other class you may have had with him but can’t come up with any.

“What? When?”

“Freshman year…Anthropology 101. In the lecture hall.”

You think back to freshman year and the classes you took. You did, in fact, take an Anthropology course. In a large lecture hall with something close to 100 other students, including your ex.

“I always sat in the back—you were always somewhere up front. Being a nerd, I guess,” he teases. You try to pull your intertwined hands from his to hit him, but he holds onto them tighter, bringing them to his chest. “You look cute when you’re focused, you know that?”

Your brain feels like mush. None of this is ringing a bell.

“Do you remember the presentation you did for extra credit? A family heirloom?”

Now that, you do remember.

“You were so nervous, but I swear it made you look even cuter. The way you talked about the heirloom…” he continues. “…your grandmother’s bracelet, I think it was…”

“Yes,” you say softly.

The bracelet your grandmother gave your mother, who then passed it on to you, and one day you’ll give it to your own child. It feels odd to hear Chan speak about it. Something so deeply personal to you. Granted, you did tell an entire class of strangers about it. But the fact that he remembers it, remembers you?

The fact that he’s known of you this long? Why hadn’t he mentioned it before?

“Why don’t I remember you being in that class?” you ask, struggling to process this new shared history and the words he’s just spilled about you simultaneously.

“It was freshman year…plenty of stuff going on and…your ex,” he shrugs.

He hits the nail on the head with that comment. That class is where you met him.

“You know, the first few weeks of the SKZ house before we bring anyone in?” Chan asks rhetorically, “I thought maybe I’d work up the nerve to talk to you while I could…but then he was there. Always sitting next to you. Even with the class we had this semester. I thought again, maybe it was a sign, you know? But he was waiting for you outside the door after the first class ended.”

You feel a pang of sadness, hearing that. Maybe in a different timeline if he had come talk to you, things would be different. You imagine getting to know a bright-eyed freshman Chan, eager and optimistic to take on the world. Maybe he would have opted out of having an assignee if it were possible, maybe he really could have been yours.

“I remember one of the last lectures you came in with your eyes all puffy,” he continues, disrupting that dangerous train of thought, “like you’d been crying. You didn’t sit anywhere near him that day. I always wondered what happened.”

You open your mouth to speak but close it immediately. What can you say to that? To any of this? Had he really paid such close attention to you? All this time?

“He used to treat you like shit, you know.”

At that remark, you set your lips in a firm line. You untangle your hands from his and cross your arms in front of your chest. It’s true, but hearing Chan say it hits too close to home.

“And you treated me any better?”

Chan takes in your closed off body language and a silence falls over you. Neither of you want this bubble you’re in to burst yet. Perhaps he’s regretting saying any of this at all.

“The day you showed up at our house…” he speaks up again after a while, “I felt sick to my stomach, y/n. Like the universe was playing some sick fucking joke on me.”

He places his hands on your thighs, squeezing and rubbing them.

“When it came time to choose assignees, I couldn’t let you end up with anyone else. I’ve never pulled rank like that before as the chapter president, but with you I had to…and I knew Hyunjin would be good for you, too.”

You shake your head in disbelief.

The day in the hot tub creeps back into your mind. When you told Chan that your time with Hyunjin had been great and he replied with ‘I know. I’m glad’. You didn’t fully understand it then. Now, it’s as if Chan knew the emotional rollercoaster he was going to send you on and wanted to make sure you had a harness. Hyunjin.

You let out a low breath and place your hands on top of your head, locking your fingers together. This is a lot to take in.

“So, your plan was to selfishly claim me and treat me like shit?” You ask after a moment.

“I wouldn’t call it a plan,” he says in a sad tone. “I knew that I was attracted to you and after our first few nights together I had to do something to keep boundaries in place.”

The conversation you shared on the beach clarified his drive for the spankings and edging. You understand his reasonings. You know that his sexual desires and fantasies with you are kept separate from his emotional connection to you. However, it’s confusing and frustrating to know he clearly felt something for you prior to you joining the SKZ House and still kept that brick wall firmly in place between you.

“So, you wanted to fuck me and still treat me like shit then?” You can’t help the bitter edge to your tone.

“I didn’t wanna get to close—clearly I’ve failed,” he admits. “It’s just always been in the back of my mind how long I’ve wanted you and now that I get to have you, there’s an expiration date.”

“What happens when we get back? You start treating me like that again?”

He averts his gaze from you.

“I don’t know how to—” he stops abruptly and shakes his head.

“Chan,” you say softly, reaching out to turn his head back to face you. “Please.”

“I don’t know how to be with you and be genuinely happy in this fucked up situation, y/n. I’m not gonna want it to end…but it has to.”

You sigh, resting your hands on his chest. As much as it hurts to admit, he’s right. You don’t like the thought of having to leave either of them. With Hyunjin, though, you know he will move on with ease which makes losing him slightly easier. Chan, on the other hand, after all the ground you’ve broken, the progress you’ve made…having to throw it all away will be hard. On both of you, you’re coming to realize.

But how else could you have gotten to know him? If you hadn’t shown up at the SKZ house, Chan would have once again had another assignee and not been able to interact with you anyways. Perhaps you both should at least be thankful for the time you’ve been given and enjoy it while you can.

“You can’t go back to being an asshole, Chan,” you tell him softly.

“I know.”

He grabs onto your hips and pulls you closer to him until you’re forced to lay against him. You rest your head on his shoulder as he wraps his arms around you, hugging you tightly. You stay like that for a while, the movie playing in the background but neither of you watching it. You want to remember this moment, how it feels to physically and mentally be this close to him.

An alarm suddenly goes off on his phone and Chan quickly silences it. He cups one hand around the back of your neck to guide your head up. His brown eyes bore into yours, still lingering in this shared moment. You hold his face in your hands, staring right back, not backing down. It’s not an intense stare…more like one of silent pleading and unspoken questions. You bring your face to his and place a chaste kiss on his lips.

“Wait here,” he says, kissing you once more before sliding you off his lap.

He disappears into the bedroom and when he comes back, heads straight for the Christmas tree. He places two wrapped boxes under it and you mentally kick yourself again. You hadn’t even wrapped his. Even so, you can’t hide the smile that takes over your face at the sight and the thought he must have put into this.

“Should I get yours?”

“So you did get me something?” he asks with a smirk.

“I did…but seeing that,” you say, pointing to the neatly wrapped presents under the tree, “I don’t even want to give it to you anymore.”

“It’s fine,” he says again. “I’ll wait until tomorrow. Come pick one.”

You stand from the couch and walk over to him and the tree. Both boxes are square in shape, one larger than the other. You deliberate for a moment before reaching for the larger one. You sit on the floor and pull it towards you, surprised by its weight. You look up at Chan and when he doesn’t move to join you, you pull on his hand until he sits.

“Did you wrap this yourself?”

“I asked the housekeeper to help me out with it,” he tells you.

“Resourceful.”

He taps his temple with his pointer finger.

You start ripping away the wrapping paper to reveal a white box beneath. You can’t hold back your smile as you pull the top part of the box off. You set it aside and pull out the tissue paper. When your eyes land on what’s inside, your mouth drops.

A folded, white lab coat with your last name embroidered across the breast area sits on top. You reach out and run a finger across the stitching. It feels surreal to see.

“I figured you’d need it when you go off to vet school.”

You look up at him, still smiling. You will definitely need it. Along with several other items you were already wondering how you would afford, without having to ask your parents for even more money. That’s part of the reason you ultimately decided to join the SKZ house and save the money they were sending you. At least the majority of it would go towards the next steps in your education.

“Thank you, Chan.”

It’s a thoughtful gift. And you feel the guilt of your shitty gift building.

“There’s more…” he nods towards the box.

And the guilt continues.

You lift the lab coat out of the box and gently set it outside the box. The next item is a set of black scrubs, your name embroidered on the shirt as well. You left them out of the box and sit them on top of the lab coat. When your eyes land on the item at the bottom of the box, your jaw drops again.

You reach inside the box and retrieve the stethoscope. This was one of the pricier items you hadn’t been looking forward to purchasing. You bring it closer to inspect, smiling widely. You immediately recognize it as one of the more expensive brands. It, too, is engraved with your name around it.

You feel your eyes begin to prickle and you blink furiously, not wanting to cry, but you can’t help it. It’s a thoughtful gift. One that you’ll get to take with you when the year is over. A reminder of Chan you get to keep with you forever.

You slowly raise your eyes to look at him, shaking your head softly.

“You don’t like it?” he asks, “Is it not the right kind? I wasn’t really sure…”

“It is—it is,” you say, your voice cracking. You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand and clear your throat. “It’s perfect. It’s all perfect, Chan. Thank you.”

“Wanna test it out?”

Your smile returns at that and you nod, placing the ear tubes in your ears and sliding closer to him. He pulls you onto his lap once again, putting your legs on either side of him, your butt resting on his folded legs.

You grab the bell end of the stethoscope with one hand and pull at the hem of his t-shirt with the other, lifting it up. You then place the diaphragm end to his chest and he instantly moves back, grabbing your wrist.

“That’s cold doc,” he says, voice muffled and rumbling through the ear piece.

“Sorry, I’m a rookie,” you reply sheepishly.

You bring the diaphragm end to your mouth and breathe on it to warm it up before placing it back over his heart. The digital reader immediately lights up, reading his heart rate. But you’re not focused on it. You’re looking directly into his eyes, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart. It’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard.

“Sounding healthy?” he asks.

You nod.

“Well, we should make sure the reading is accurate, too.”

He cups the back of your neck and pulls your face closer, bringing your lips to his. With his other hand, he holds your wrist and the stethoscope in place. You can hear his heartbeat quicken as you kiss. You grind your hips against his, causing the steady thumping in your ear to beat faster. You want to get lost in the sound of his body’s reaction to you.

He uses his hand on your back to assist your grinding, making sure you can also feel his body’s reaction to you.

Not wanting to jeopardize the safety of your present, you break the kiss and pull the ear tubes out. His hand drops from your wrist allowing you to turn and set the stethoscope neatly on top of the pile of the other presents behind you.

Before you can even turn back around, Chan is changing your position. He holds onto your back tightly as he lowers you down to the floor.

“I won’t write a negative review just yet—but you’ve got some learning to do, doc.”

You like to hear him call you that.

“I’m a fast learner,” you reply.

“Oh, I know,” he says with a wink.

He remains sitting in front of you, his legs still crossed, while you’re lying down. Your legs are draped over his thighs, feet on the ground on either side of him. He pushes your shirt up to expose your stomach and lightly runs his fingers in a zig-zag pattern all the way down until his hand is between your legs. The thin, pajama shorts you’re wearing are a loose fit and don’t do much to keep him out. Not that you’d want that.

He easily moves the fabric aside and his eyes snap to yours when he realizes you aren’t wearing any underwear.

“I only packed so many for the trip,” you laugh and shrug. “I can’t keep messing them up with you.”

He smirks and nods his agreement.

He slides his fingers up and down your slit, teasing your pussy until his fingers become saturated with your slick. He slowly inserts his ring and middle finger inside of you as he places his other palm on your lower stomach. You rock your hips against him in response. He curls his fingers, pressing against your inner walls each time he withdraws his hand, all the while applying steady pressure with his palm.

You can really feel his fingers rubbing against you, and you know he can too. His eyes are on his fingers pumping in and out of your pussy, then move up to your writhing body, then your face. A soft smile plays out on his lips as he watches your reaction. He adds his thumb on your clit into the mix and you let out a moan.

“Tell me what you want,” he coaxes.

You bite your lip between your teeth, arching your back. You’re too caught up in the sensations to formulate a response.

“You wanna come on my fingers?” he asks, slowing them down. “Or on my cock?”

You moan again.

“Both.”

“Greedy,” he says with a soft chuckle, still moving his fingers in and out at an achingly slow pace.

“Mmmm, yes. For you.”

Any part of him you can have.

He moves his fingers quicker, thumb still circling your clit. You sit up a little, placing your hands behind you to hold you up as you move your hips against his fingers.

He arches an eyebrow at this, a devilish smirk on his lips. He withdraws his fingers, and you protest with a whine and pout. He brings his fingers, coated in your slick, to your face and spreads it around your pouted lips. He watches closely as you lick your lips, then brings his hand to his mouth, sucking off the rest for himself.

The sight of him enjoying your taste always sends you off the rails. You grab a handful of his shirt and pull him to you until his lips are on yours. He seems a little startled, but he allows it. You kiss him, taste him, taste you.

Before you can have too much, he breaks the kiss but keeps his face against yours.

“I want you to open your other present now,” he says, lips brushing against yours as he speaks.

“Not in the morning?” you ask, catching your breath.

“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “I wanna see it on you now.”

He stretches to the side to retrieve the present and you wrap your arms around his waist to keep from falling back. He grabs it and returns to his upright position before handing it to you.

You take the present and rip the wrapping paper, much less delicately than you did the first. What could this be? He wants to see it on you? You’re excited to find out. You toss all bits of the paper behind you without a care until just the box is left. You lift the lid from the box and inside is what appears to be…a collar?

You look up to Chan with an arched brow and he just smiles widely, baring all his pearly white teeth. The part of the collar that rests on the back of the neck is black, with a belt buckle-like fastener. On the front is a thick, silver linked chain (much like the one he wears on his wrist) with a silver heart hanging from it. The heart itself has several tiny jewels spread evenly around it. The way they glitter in the light, you hope its cubic zirconia…but knowing how deep Chan’s pockets go, they might just be diamonds. You bring the heart closer for inspection and see the words 'Good Girl' engraved on it.

You’re not sure what to make of it. Both the cost, the phrase and the gift itself. He wants you to wear this? Like a dog?

He takes it out of the box and drapes it around your neck, moving your hair out of the way so he can fasten it in the back. You look up at him as he hooks a finger through the heart and tugs on it. Pulling, pulling, restricting until it’s taught against your throat.

Oh. Oh.

“This okay?” he asks.

You appreciate that he’s asking. You’re convinced you’d let him walk you through the street with it, so long as he asks first.

You close the distance between you, placing your lips on his to convey your consent. He tugs a little tighter on the collar as you kiss before releasing it fully.

In the next moment, your hands are on his shoulders, pushing on them until his back is now against the floor. He doesn’t resist at all.

You reposition yourself comfortably on top of him. You put your hands on his biceps, squeezing them tightly before sliding up his arms to his hands. You move them up above his head then lace your fingers between his, holding them in place as you kiss him. You grind your hips into his and he lets out a moan. You feel his hardening cock pressed between your legs. You grind against it more, sliding your clit along his length. Your kisses become quicker, sloppier, as you keep grinding on him.

He tries to move his hands, but you squeeze them tighter. He lets out a grunt and uses more force to break free—reminding you that he was allowing you to keep them there. He sits up and wraps one arm around you, pulling you close as he starts to stand up. You wrap your arms around his neck, legs around his waist. He walks you both back over to the couch.

He unhooks your legs and lowers you so you’re standing in front of him. He leans down and claims your lips again, but you want him undressed. You reach for the hem of his shirt and start pulling it up. You break the kiss to get it completely off his head and before he can kiss you again, you push him onto the couch.

You lift your shirt above your head and as you’re reaching back to unhook your bra, you give a pointed look to his sweatpants. He lifts his hips from the couch and pushes them down.

“Does it look good?” you ask, running your fingers along the collar as you kneel in front of him.

He licks his lips in anticipation, “Better than I imagined.”

You reach for his hand and bring it to the collar. He tugs on the heart again, tightening it around your neck. He wraps his other hand around the base of his cock and pulls you towards it. You drop your jaw and take him in your mouth.

He sucks in a breath, watching you lower your mouth on him. He releases the collar and leans back into the couch. You replace your hand with his at the base, stroking his dick as you bob your head up and down.

You alternate between stroking, sucking, taking it out and smacking it against your lips. He moans and groans, body jerking in response to your actions. You love seeing him like this.

You take him out of you mouth fully and continue stroking him, moving your mouth instead to take each of his balls in your mouth, in turn. You glance up to his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he lets out a deep breath.

“So,” you say, returning your attention to his cock, licking slowly around the tip. “You wanna come in my mouth or in my pussy?”

He looks down at you, only able to smile and shake his head at your use of his same words against him. He leans forward and grabs the heart of the collar once more, using it to pull you to him.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” he asks, kissing along your lips.

You giggle and nod playfully in response.

He leans back, pulling on the collar to bring you with him until you’re forced to stand again. His other hand slips between your legs and he rubs your pussy with his fingers.

“I wanna fill you up here.”

You moan against his lips, and he releases the collar. He lightly pushes against your chest, so you stand fully then motions to your shorts. You turn around, bend over and pull them down. You move to straighten yourself, but he lurches forward to stop you.

He puts a hand on your back to keep you bent over. In the next instant you feel his other hand collide with your ass and you let out a surprised yelp. He rubs the wounded area on the right and brings his mouth to the left cheek, placing a wet kiss to it. You feel his teeth dig into your skin, causing you to gasp. He smacks the right cheek again.

He shifts his mouth to the surely reddening cheek, placing another wet kiss there. It soothes the stinging a bit. He slaps the left check, his palm gripping your ass when it lands. He then immediately slides his fingers between your legs, slipping along your wet slit until they find your opening. He pushes his fingers inside, you don’t even know how many, but it makes you feel full.

“Mmmm,” you moan, pushing back against him.

“You’re dripping for me,” he says, lacing kisses along each cheek.

“Always,” you reply. And it’s the truth.

He takes his fingers out of you and places both hands on your waist, guiding you down to him. He positions himself at your opening and you roll your head back as he slowly lowers you on his cock. You remain still when he’s fully inserted, just basking in the feel of him inside you.

You make small movements with your hips first, moving forwards and backwards.

“Fuck,” he exhales, gripping your hips tighter.

You like the way he sounds when you’re pleasing him.

You plant your feet firmly on the ground, your hands on his knees. You start to move up and down, bouncing on him and drawing more delicious groans from him.

He uses his hands on your waist to lift you higher and bring you down even harder. You cup your breasts, pinching your nipples to add to the pleasure you’re feeling. You don’t know if you’ll ever get tired of his cock filling you up. Though, you won’t exactly have the opportunity to find out.

You try to push the thought aside, but you can feel it distracting you.

Chan notices as your rhythm becomes out of sync with his. He pulls you all the way down against him, then slides his hand up your stomach, between your breasts, all the way to your neck. He covers the collar with his hand and pulls you back against his chest. You keep circling your hips on him, not wanting to lose the momentum.

“You okay?” he asks softly in your ear.

“Yeah,” you reply, but it’s a lie. “I want to see you.”

He repositions both of you so you’re lying fully on the couch and he’s on top of you. He guides one of your knees up and hooks your leg over his shoulder as he enters you again.

“Like this?”

You offer a silent nod, sliding your hands up his bare, chiseled chest, locking your fingers together behind his neck.

He starts moving again and you feel him sliding in and out, and you find yourself unable to tear your gaze from his face. His eyes are locked on you too. This feels heavy, but neither of you comment on it. He turns his head to the side to place a kiss to the leg that’s slung over his shoulder, eyes never leaving yours.

Your hands leave his neck to roam through his hair, over his face, touching every part of him you can to commit to memory. You shift your mental focus to the way he feels, beneath your fingertips, his cock inside of you.

You want the Chan you’ve had for the past week for the rest of the time you have him. Open. Earnest. You try to convey this with your eyes as he continues thrusting in and out. He grabs your breast, squeezing it tightly and you part your lips and arch your back in response.

You don’t know if you’ll survive if he goes back to treating you like you don’t matter. You can’t let him do that to you. Can you?

“I know, I know,” he says in response to your unspoken qualms. He kisses your leg once more before releasing it to lay his body flat against yours. He wraps his arms around your head in a hug of sorts, as he continues his deep and steady strokes.

Chan isn’t fucking you tonight. He’s making love to you.

You slide one hand down to where the two of you are joined, finding your clit. He lifts slightly, allowing you more room to rub circles around it.

“Come on my cock, baby,” he commands.

You whimper at his words. Baby.

You rub your clit faster as he picks up the pace of his thrusts, still driving into you as deep as he can. He angles himself so that with each thrust his dick digs against your walls. It’s enough to drive you crazy. You’re whining, moaning, panting.

“Come for me,” he says again. “Come for me baby girl.”

Your hand on his chest goes for his throat. You squeeze your fingers around it and see his eyes darken, but he doesn’t stop you. He moves his hips faster, harder.

“Chan,” you pant, “please. Right there. Don’t stop.”

And he doesn’t.

He keeps the same pace, same angle, same motions until you’re arching your back and squeezing his neck, digging your nails into his delicate skin as you come around his cock. He grits his teeth, grunting and pounding into you furiously as he comes right after.

His movements slow as he finishes. You release his neck and wrap your arms around it instead. He lowers himself on top of you, all but smothering you with his weight but you don’t care. This is a happy way to die, if it comes to that.

You kiss along his collar bone as you both catch your breath. His cock keeps twitching inside of you and you clench the walls of your pussy around him each time it does. His body jerks each time you do it.

“Stop, stop,” he pleads, chuckling softly.

You chuckle in response.

That was different. In ways you hadn’t imagined possible with Chan. The two of you stay on the couch, wrapped up in each other for a while longer.

The following morning, you’re both woken up by a knock at the door. Chan, just as confused as you, climbs out of bed to answer it. You hear him talking to someone and he returns a few moments later.

“Another Minho surprise,” he tells you. “A couples massage.”

“That actually sounds amazing,” you murmur, pushing off the blankets.

You both go to the bathroom and brush your teeth. You put your hair up in a messy bun then go to the living room while Chan lets in the masseuses. There’s one male and one female. After setting up their massage tables in the open space between the couch and the TV, they leave for the hallway allowing you both some privacy to remove your clothing.

Chan watches you undress with a sly smile on his face, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. You stick your tongue out at him and throw your pajama shirt at his face, but he dodges it and catches it in his hand. He folds it neatly and sets it on the couch before removing his own shirt.

When you’re both settled on the tables, they re-enter.

“You’re with me, sir,” you hear Chan say and lift your head.

He’s motioning for the male masseuse to come to him.

“I need firmer hands,” he adds.

But you know that’s not it. No other man outside of the SKZ House is allowed to touch you in the way the masseuse will need to. You know it’s because of that. But it still makes you feel warm inside to think Chan personally doesn’t want anyone else touching you.

After the massage, you and Chan shower together then order a late brunch. He opens his present that you are now extremely embarrassed to give him. When he pulls out the pair of neon blue swim trunks with “Miami Vice” written on it, you hide your face, and he immediately laughs.

“These are loud,” he says. “I’ll wear them to the beach tomorrow.”

Next, he pulls out a refrigerator magnet with “Miami” written across it with palm trees surrounding it.

“To be fair,” you say, wanting to explain, “I had no clue what to get you. You’re not exactly an open book.”

“That is fair,” he agrees. He looks at you with a soft smile, as if he wishes things had been different. He kisses your forehead. “Thank you anyways.”

You spend your final two days mostly relaxing and staying close to the hotel. You spend time at the beach again, Chan in his neon blue swim trunks and looking fucking delectable in them.

Getting on the plane to go home, you’re hit with an overwhelming sense of sadness. Chan’s behavior hasn’t changed yet, and you’re praying that it doesn’t. That even though you both know how this has to end; he can find it within himself to not push you out again. You lean on him and hold his hand for most of the flight back.

Changbin picks you up from the airport and Chan rides up front while you sit in the back. He asks how the trip was and you both reply that it was good. He then addresses Chan in Korean and you’re left clueless in the back seat. But whatever is said, you can feel the weight of it from Chan’s reaction. He leans back in his seat, slouches, and runs his hand through his hair.

You try not to think much of it, but it must be important. They don’t typically speak Korean in front of any of the assignees unless it’s about something that, to be frank, is none of their business.

The car ride is over far too soon, and they still haven’t filled you in on what’s happening.

Once in the driveway, you notice a black car parked in front of the house with a Rolls Royce emblem on the front. You immediately furrow your brow, curiosity and anxiety spiking through the roof at this point.

Changbin exits the car first. You remain planted in the backseat, waiting for Chan to say or explain anything.

He lets out a low breath and leans back against the headrest, eyes closed.

“My dad’s here,” he announces.

Your eyes open wide, and even more confusion sets in. Is it an unexpected visit? Is he not happy to see his father?

“You don’t want him to be?” you ask slowly, carefully.

“Well, it’s never exactly a cause for celebration when any of our parents show up,” he says dryly. “Just…stay out of his way.”

Chan opens his door and you follow in suit.

Changbin has pulled the luggage from the trunk, he’s holding the handle to yours and Chan grabs his own. You move to walk past them both, but Chan grabs your arm to stop you.

You turn to face him, trying to read his expression but a mask is in place.

“Chan,” you say, placing a hand to his chest.

A glint, a flicker of something crosses over his eyes and you see your Chan for a split second.

He kisses your forehead.

“After us. And then straight upstairs, okay?” he says softly.

You nod your head and wait for them to walk to the door first.

As soon as you enter the house, you can feel the commanding presence of his father. Your eyes are drawn straight to him on the living room couch, looking all business in a tailored black suit, black hair slicked back.

“Appa.” Chan says.

“Hello,” you say politely with a small bow at the waist.

You know he told you to go straight upstairs, but it would feel rude to pass by without speaking to him.

His father spares half a glance at you before staring daggers at his son.

Changbin heads for the stairs with your suitcase and you follow him. You look back at Chan and offer as encouraging a smile as you can muster. Chan doesn’t turn to look at you. He walks towards his father like a man heading to the gallows and the sight of him like that punctures your already fragile heart.

[ read chapter 20 here ]

a/n: oof. thoughts? feelings? a lot to unpack here. thank you all again for your patience! and sorry the tags still aren't working :(

#stray kids fanfic #skz fanfic #stray kids fanfiction #stray kids #bang chan #bangchan fanfic #skz smut #the skz house #bang chan imagines #bang chan smut #stray kids smut #bang chan x reader #bang chan x you #bang chan x y/n

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3archangelsaints · 4 months

Note

you said you were bored so i hope this idea gets rid of that

there are not enough childhood best friend!simon fic’s out there and i’ve been desperate lately. i don’t have much of an idea so write whatever comes to mind if you choose this req.

Childhood bestfriends who met just before you went to secondary school, you went to an all girls school and he went to an all boys and yet you were always together, everyday after school, you'd be out late, avoiding your horrible home lives. He'd stay out late with you, when you'd had an argument that left you shaking and crying from anxiety and adrenaline. You never skipped school, your mum was strict about that and you'd preferred to not cause problems, Simon always said that to you, "Don't cause problems for yourself, yeah?" He holds you to him, kissing your temple. "You too, Si." You hug him, giggling as he lifts you up.

---

"Sit down." He huffs, pulling you onto the grass as the two of you study outside for GSCE mocks. Books and folders sprawled on the grass, and you stand up and start explaining the Weimar government to him for your GSCE history. He listens intently, he took the same GSCE's as you, except art, he wasn't good at that, he told you. He would stay up with you when you'd finish last minute art projects and when it came to portraits, you'd photograph Simon. He only allowed you to do it his eyes, the rest of his face covered by his hand. You loved studying, mainly because you were allowed to visit Simon's house, his dad begrudgingly allowing it. He didn't hit Simon when you were there. Simon didn't care though, his hands were always scabbed with broken skin from fighting with his dad, as he was about the same height as him, despite only being 16. You'd often fall asleep against Simon, his natural musk lulling you to sleep. You waited to open your results together. You ran to him when you saw him, jumping onto him, squealing with joy. He lifted you in air with ease. "Simon!" You squeal again. He puts you down, pressing his lips to your forehead. "Have you opened your results?" You shake your head, he can tell you're nervous, he takes it from you. "May I?" You nod. He opens it. Eyes scanning it. "So?" "So you're fuckin amazing and are so smart." He shows your results. You jump up with glee. He throws you in the air, before pretending to drop you just to hear you scream. "So fuckin' proud of you." "What'd you get?" You take it from him, he passed his core, everything he passed with average grades. Neither here nor there. "What're you gonna do?" "Butcher's apprentice." He says gruffly. You smile, nodding and hugging him. "You mean my butcher's apprentice." You tease. He nods, kissing your temple again. ---

He comes with you to see what 6th form you're going to, he drops you off the first day and does his best to be there for you whenever. He holds your hand and pressing kisses to your face as your freak out, chucking clothes from your wardrobe. "Simon!" You all but cry, trembling. "I don't know what to wear." You huff, he knows how you get social anxiety and he huffs before grabbing a black shirt you stole from him, and a pair of ripped loose jeans. "Here." He hands it to you, he grabs your brush whilst you get changed and brushes your hair gently, expertly starting from the ends. He grabs a scrunchie and ties your hair into a loose bun. ---

When you get your A-level results and find out that you got into your uni, you're ecstatic except you have to move cities and its so far from Simon. He cups your cheek and kisses you, "I'm joining the military." Your heart breaks, you didn't expect him to move with you, but not join the military. "You could die." Your voice trembles. ---

The goodbye is hard, you're babbling and crying as you see him leave for bootcamp, but when he visits you after, clearly bulkier, your heart aches for him. Once again you're in his embrace. His heartbeat against your ear. But just like that, he's gone again. And you move on, focus on yourself, you get your degree, then go for a master's in the states, before returning for your PhD in the UK. When you're leaving after a long day at university, walking to your car, you freak out when you see a bulky massive figure leaning against the hood. He calls out your name, in a deep voice. "Simon?" You ask, dropping to your knees. "I'm here Lovie." You sob. He gingerly picks you up, and just like that your Simon is in your arms again. Breathing. Alive. Living. "Don't leave me again." He nods. Kissing your cheek.

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unofficial-underfell · 6 months

Text

Hey guys, I've been thinking about making this post for a long time and I think its finally time I do so. After realizing that some of my last work was done over a year ago, I don't think I can really ignore it anymore. While I haven't quite thrown in the towel on this quite yet, it's pretty evident to me and I'm sure to everyone who still follows this blog that my fervor for the project has drastically decreased. And has been kind of dead for a while. The comic has not been a priority to me, or posting online much at all actually. I did some soul searching and found that I'd started relying on outside approval for my art instead of doing art for the sake of wanting to tell a story and express myself throughout my work. I have limited energy and depression and sometimes it feels like i get such little progress done even though it takes all of my energy. While I'm trying to go to the gym more and build better habits my energy levels and mood still have a lot to be desired, and I'd rather use the limited energy I have to work on something I'm more passionate about.

I've been trying to grow my skills and absorb more stories and I've moved around a lot and started to listen to what I really felt, and I found that a lot of the art I want to focus on deals with heavier and more mature topics. I do love this story, and all of the characters and I feel like I could make a really clever subversion of what is expected from an Underfell comic. But I feel like in these uncertain times with the world and with all of the stuff going on right now, I'd like to use my energy to work on stories that hit closer to the things that I feel are important. So that's why I've not been posting much.

I'm working on a book, and I've actually got quite a lot of progress done on it, but because of all the horror stories online about people stealing author's original works, I'm kind of holding off on publishing any chapters before I can copyright the first draft of the novel. So my online activity will still be pretty scarce for a bit, though I'll still post occasionally on my @cosmicpixel01 account. I'll try better to not be so radio silent though lol. Even if that means I'll post something boring about my dog or books I'm reading just so everyone knows I'm still alive.

I don't want to call it quits on the story. But I also feel like you guys have been kept waiting to see what happens for a really long time, and that makes me feel so guilty. I will try to finish up the pages I have in the works, and I'm probably going to switch to a different format that is some drawings, some writing to finish the story. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to finish it the way I intended for you guys, even with all of the support and kind words and even the fanart that I've kept in a folder on my desktop. I am letting a lot of you down, but I feel like the radio silence is probably more irresponsible than just going out and saying something. And I'm sorry I've kept you all waiting for a not-so-happy update on the blog.

I hope that some of you will continue to follow me for some of my other exploits and see whatever other things I have going on, but I understand that you all followed me for Undertale so I don't want you to feel any sort of guilt if you decide not to. I'm just happy you all supported me for so long.

I'll try to work on this blog again soon, and if anyone has any questions, my asks are open, though I'll probably keep the asks private. Until then I hope everyone stays safe out there. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

-Avery

#not pages #unofficial-underfell #this was so hard to write i dont want to be a quitter but I'm tired #avery speaks

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anundyingfidelity · 7 months

Text

I'M A RUIN — Soldier Boy/Ben (Part I)

Summary: After the events of the Seven Tower, you present Grace Mallory a new secret project you're working on already to develop a cure to Compound V. The only problem? You need Soldier Boy for that.

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x female reader.

Word count: 1,536.

Warnings for series: set after S3 (spoilers), some OOC!Ben, some depressed!Ben, angst, hurt/comfort, eventual smut, slow-burn, language, PTSD, reader has Compound V (she's no Vought supe tho), Soldier Boy being an usual asshole, reader is a fucking liar.

Notes: As soon as I saw him my feminism left my body immediately and my inner voice agreed that I'd let him take away my human rights with no question. He's an absolute idiot, would sleep with him 100%.

Heads up as English is not my native language sooo, yeah you know what follows. Lord pls give me inspo to finish this fic, amen.

☕ if you like my writing, support me with a ko-fi !

get yourself in the taglist!

GEN MASTERLIST! — SERIES MASTERLIST!

Part I: For The Common Good

Two months.

Two months ago Grace Mallory decided to put the former greatest supe into sleep. Somehow, you managed to get in her head, explaining your new project to her and finding a new use for Soldier Boy, who had enough rest for 40 years.

You knew what happened at the Seven Tower, how Soldier Boy and Butcher's team ended up there to finally kill Homelander. Grace tried doing some shit against Vought before, but she never managed to win. It wasn't different this time. What was better then, that to develop a cure for supes like you, who didn't ask for it? People who never used their powers in public, nor seeked fame and money.

As a doctor in Chemistry, you were developing a cure for Compound V with a secret team. Suitable for you, you were in the same CIA tower Colonel Mallory decided to encapsulate Soldier Boy to, initially, spend the rest of his days in. You had luck Grace gave green light to the project, even though your team was already working on it without her approval anyway. But it was so much better if she found out properly.

Making your way to the super secured wing where Soldier Boy was held out of his sleep, you gripped the folder in your hands. You were scanned thoroughly before going inside a cold space, where two different crystal windows and metal doors separated the place. The armed guard guided you to the first room to check first through the window. You sighed, seeing a man sitting down, hands cuffed to a harsh steel table, gaze lost. It was him.

"The keys," you requested the guard by your side.

"Doctor-"

"I said, keys. He doesn't need to be cuffed."

He complied to your order, clearly annoyed but with a straight face and you walked to the closed door.

"If something happens, I can take care of myself. Don't let anyone inside understand?" you said.

He gave a nod. With that, he let you inside the room, the doors closing behind your back.

The prisoner observed you carefully as soon as you entered. His gaze was tired, but he seemed ready to attack, and it was completely hard to ignore his rough stare on you as you made your way to your seat in front of him. Soldier Boy observed you, placing the folder on the surface, and you held his gaze, not flinching for a second. Until you decided to talk first.

"I am glad you're awake. My name is Y/N, I am a doctor at the facility. Just wanna know how you're doing today," you spoke in a calm and soft way, so he could see you were not a threat.

He saw you roaming through the pages of the file, which he recognized as a copy of his file, and you took a pen from your lab coat to make some anotations.

"Not a smart move to let a fucking doctor here," he said with a deep voice, lips forming a straight line. "What do you want?"

"I want to help you."

"Cut the bullshit."

"I want to talk. If you let me, I will uncuff you so we can have a chat, like civilized people. Just don't try to escape, you won't go too far."

He raised an eyebrow as you reached his wrists and carefully, you set him free from the metal grip.

"I know what happened with Butcher and his boys," you said, confident that he would not try anything else. "About Homelander and your relationship with him."

"What the fuck do you know?" Soldier Boy tensed visibly hearing the name of the bastard. Still, he remained on his seat. "Want some info? You can lick Grace's pussy for that."

"She is, actually, the one who approved me to be here right now," you answered, brushing off his vocabulary. You used to deal with assholes like him all the time.

He scoffed. "Why?"

"Ben," you called his real name softly. "You've been sleeping for four decades. You deserve a second chance, I am offering you that. In some sort of way."

"I'm not going to be part of that freakshow-"

"This has nothing to do with Vought," you cut his words, his tone rising and you knew perfectly why. "You just need to be here in the facility, awake, in a dignified place we will give you so you can learn everything you missed. We can give you therapy, a comfy room, anything you want that's legal, of course..."

His jaw clenched, feeling you would ask for something more. "In exchange of what?"

"I know it's hard, unfortunately you won't be able to get out, but you don't deserve to sleep forever again," you sighed. "I will pay you visits and follow your improvements because you're human, after all. That's all I ask from you," you gave him a smile for the first time.

For a few moments, he said nothing, as if making up his mind about it. "Alright, anything but coming back to that shit hole. I need reefer though."

"Lucky you, that's legal now. We can certainly make it happen."

He looked around the room as you let him go inside first. Not the fanciest, not the shittiest. It had the basics: a bed, a sofa, a TV, a closet, a bookshelf with different books, magazines and newspapers he wasn't sure would read any time, a separate door for a bathroom, enough privacy, and no windows though. It wasn't really a cell, but he did look and felt somehow like a hostage. Just a little less if he could say.

"This is what we have for now, I am all ears if you request something else to have in here," you began as he paced around and tested the bed, sitting down on the mattress.

Ben still wasn't convinced on why you offered this to him. Sceptic, he gave a good look at you, roaming his eyes at your standing figure in a fucking lab coat. Christ, he hated those. Too pretty for a doctor, but too dumb to be locked with a supe like him. He was so tired that he didn't try and hit on you like he normally would with any walking pussy that appeared in plain sight. He was too exhausted to even give a shit.

"Lemme think about it, doctor."

"Of course, take your time," you replied as he walked toward the bookshelf, scanning through the titles there were. He recognized only half of them.

"So, I will be imprisoned here instead of a fucking eggshell," Ben said, turning around to meet you. "Charming," he smirked, dragging the words out of his mouth. "Doing charity."

He watched your face drop as you shook your head. "It's not like that-"

"Then why keep me awake?" Ben insisted as he gave steps to get close to you. "I can't die, it's much easier to force my sleep in a capsule your boss made specially for me."

He stopped mere inches in front of you, your eyes never turned away from him. He thought you were fucking brave just by keeping his dark gaze.

"Ben, I told you I will be watching your progress. You can grow from all of this with our help-"

"What kind of doctor are you?"

"A psychiatrist. That's why I'm here."

Ben scoffed with a grin showing on his lips. He didn't believe in that kind of shit, but oh, well. What was he gonna do about it? He was tired of sleeping, Mallory captured him, and you were here, giving him a shelter for no cost, but his freedom. In his mind, that was temporary of course. With time, a plan would come. Right now, he just needed to keep up with the fucked up things of the modern world.

"I guess you would come and babysit me then," he said, going back to take a sit on the bed.

"Wouldn't use 'babysit you' but I will come to see you, that's for sure."

He nodded. Silence was his answer, so you continued.

"Just general rules. Our people will bring you three meals a day, if you're missing something that you need then just push the button by the door, there will be guards outside to assist you on that. Also, there are clothes your size on the closet and personal products so you can change and take a shower," he stayed silent again, just taking in your words. "If you don't need anything then I leave you to get comfortable," you said, about to leave.

"Wait. I do need something," he hesitated for a moment, but he continued anyway. "Don't use those lab coats when you come in."

Your eyes widened, he quickly realised you already knew why he was requesting that when you started to take off the coat, revealing your formal attire. You wrapped the coat on your arm and cleaned your throat.

"I totally understand, I will keep that in mind when I come tomorrow. And I will ask for your reefer too."

You flashed a final polite smile and left him to get settled. Ben breathed out. Fuck, he really needed a shower.

#soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #soldier boy x female reader #soldier boy imagine #soldier boy fanfiction #the boys amazon #the boys series #the boys tv #the boys fanfiction #jensen ackles fanfiction #jensen ackles

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your-local-uwu-artist · 22 days

Text

it was suggested I post this to the tags as well >:D

fuck it ima tag @transcendence-au as well because tbh I'm very proud of my silly little animation

some me being a nerd under the cut!

okay so this all started when I read the original post this was inspired by and though 'wouldn't it be silly to add some art to this 3 year old post?' but then I decided to animate it for funsies!

and gosh I sure do love animating!

So I got the base sketch and then got into the lineart animation for each component!

i don't have the sketches/wips saved at all sense this wasn't really a project and it took less than a day to complete. but here's a peak at the timeline

I animate entirely in my ususal drawing software: clip studio paint. It's just what's easiest for me.

all of these layers outside that folder are just the sparkles! after I finished I added some sparkles for fun! there's a lot of them because it involved a lot of copy and pasting sparkle layers

the bottom folders here are the wings body and facial expression! for everything like the wings arms and flags I was able to just copy paste, reverse, and then align the timing correctly in the timeline

one thing unique about this animation is that the lineart and colors are in separate layers! I tend to do line and colors on the same layer but this time I was using a brush that doesn't have the same lack of anti-aliasing and sense it's a small animation I wasn't as worried about keeping a minimum of layers like usual.

also the movement of the body is only 4 frames! and one one of those is just the hat shifting position

initially I wasn't going to have the second facial expression but when I got stuck on animating the flags I added the second facial expression while taking a break.

the arm animation is just 8 frames! honestly the only tricky part in this is the flags, everything else was pretty simple, which made it super fun to work on because I got both a challenge and mindless therapeutic drawing out of it.

NOW THE FLAGS there was 3 throw away attempts before I got it: you see the thing that made this tricky is finding the balance between believability and visual appeal. a big part of animation is creating the illusion of physics, this is the 'believability' part, I need these to look like flags that are moving and made of flat fabric, HOWEVER if I animate these one-to-one with realistic physics: it won't look good! I can't apply wind to the whole drawing because then the hair would have to react, and wind goes one way, and I wan't the flags to be pointing opposite directions. so without wind the flags would be laying down flat, but that won't look good at all! and furthermore realistic physics would have the flag not being all nice and front facing most of the time. so the trick here was figuring out how much physics to apply to make it look believable, while still making it look good.

one trick I did to help me animate the flags is I actually made a plan rectangle flag as a guide so that the general mass/volume of the flag would stay consistent, this is something i highly recommend when animating! like having a circle guide along a characters head to keep their height and proportions consistent.

after I finally found the balance with the flag lineart coloring wasn't too hard! sense I just had to follow the lines, and THANK GOODNESS the trans and aroace flag have the same number of stripes: saving me time!

and then it all comes together to make a satisfying perfectly looping bundle of cuteness >:DDD I feel like the tau fandom doesn't have as many artists with particularly cartoony/chibi art styles so I've gotta play my part in spreading the joy-whimsy-adorable-sillys >:D

anyway! hope you get to see a cool beetle today :D

#kyukyudraws #animation #alcor the dreambender #tau #transcendence au #the transcendence au #gravity falls

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darlingdarkly · 8 months

Text

New Year, New You Part 3

Johnny “Soap” MacTavish x f!reader

Personal Trainer AU

4.7k Words

CW: dubcon!, dark fic, dark content, obsessive behavior, dirty talk, explicit language, E rated, NSFW, smut, 18+, mature themes

Part 2, 4

The next day is what you can only describe as controlled chaos. The office is a whirlwind of papers, people and pieces of presentation sent to and fro across the building. Maureen in marketing needs approval from Mark in finance who’s busy balancing the budget for this year and the spreadsheets from last year. Sharon has been on the phone for Three. Whole. Hours. trying to make sure the prototypes will be ready before noon tomorrow.

Tom called in sick and Mrs. Magna told Nancy to tell him that if he doesn’t show up today to never show up again. Period. That was ensued by a thirty minute yelling match between Nancy and Tom that ended when you gently took the phone from Nancy’s white-knuckle grip and told Tom if he didn’t come in you’d personally shove your foot up his ass.

Tom was in the office fifteen minutes later, quarantined in the conference room with his laptop, a growing mountain of crumbled Kleenex and very, very, grumpy. The day dragged on and on and while people who had finished with their portion of the project headed home for the day you stayed, even after your piece of the pie was secure, because at the end of it all you knew it fell to Nancy to review and review and review the final product for any mistakes and you weren’t about to let her do it alone.

As you worked, you caught up with each other, not having time to really talk since the white elephant party over a week ago. “So how was break?” You asked as you filed away two early projection models in their appropriate folders. She sat cross legged in front of you, stapling documents together. “It was nice, mom came this year, and I thought it would be a lot more barbaric but it actually was very civil. I'm proud of them for working out their differences. The way it went down last year I was still cleaning fruit cake off my ceiling a month later, remember?”

You giggled together because you did remember. That was Nancy’s Christmas reunion debacle from the previous year. You hadn’t been there but you did drop by to help her clean up and have a little wine. A bottle and a half in you both were too drunk and giggly to climb the ladder and scrap the candied fruit and cake from the ceiling.

“What about you? Did you go see your parents?” You smiled and answered. “Yeah they’re doing good, they said to tell you hello by the way. My brother too.” And the side eye she gave you was hilarious and aggravated all in one. “What? He still asks about you.” She rolled her eyes and restacked the papers in her hands. “Well he can stop.” You laughed as she shook her head. “He’s still got a crush on me after all this time.”

“Yes! He’s obsessed! I don’t know why you won’t go for him, it’s not like you’re seeing anyone anyways.” She scoffed at you. “I am not dating your brother. Not after what he did.” You rolled your eyes playfully. “Nance, you can’t still be on that.” She looked offended. “After we both nearly drowned at the lake that summer. You remember, he practically pulled me under!”

You laughed remembering. “He was trying to save you!” She laughed with you and pushed on your arm. “Yeah well he sucked at it. We both nearly died.” You both were in fits of giggles at this point, papers nearly forgotten in the glow of your memories. “Besides, how do you know I’m not seeing anyone?”

Your eyebrows raised at this. “Ohhh, something to confess?” She looked up from her work, eyes sparkling. “You know the guy that moved in across the hall?” You did. You both had run into him one day coming back to her place for a drink after a Saturday outing together. “You mean Mr. Dark Eyes, the one who came over and fixed your window for you?”

She practically beamed. “That’s the one. He asked me out for drinks tomorrow night.” You waggled your eyebrows at her and she laughed and rolled her eyes. “It’s not like that. He’s just being nice.” It was your turn to give her an accusatory look. “It’s absolutely like that Nancy! He’s into you. I can see it! I think you should go for it, I’m glad for you, it’s time you got a little action.”

She picked up the stack she’d finished stapling and set it to the side, beginning another. “You and I both. I mean it’s not like you’ve been seeing anyone either.” You paused, thinking of Johnny. You wouldn’t call it seeing someone, but there was something between the two of you, it was momentary, your lapse in response but enough for her to notice and immediately catch on.

“Oh my god, wait. You have been seeing someone haven’t you?” You immediately refuse. “No.” “Bullshit.” “Seriously! It’s nothing.” And she wouldn’t stop until she’d pried it out of you so you began recounting your encounter at the gym, leaving nothing out.

“You’re fucking with me.” You shake your head. “No, I’m serious. Just like I told you.” She put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. “He legit did all that?” You nodded and she smiled. “I think you should go for it.” Your jaw dropped. “You’re serious?” She nodded. “Oh yeah, he’s totally into you. All that weird shit just means he’s obsessed. Is he hot?”

You immediately nodded. “Oh yeah, he’s strong and tan. He’s got this pretty white smile and dark hair. I knew he was a personal trainer the minute I saw him.” She hummed approval. “Definitely go for it.” You laughed nervously. “I don’t know, we'll see where it goes.”

The sun had long descended past the horizon, but you had it done. Two hundred and fifteen pages of statistics and sales projections that concluded the project. You both cleaned up the papers and put everything away. She turned to you when the elevator had stopped at the ground floor and the cold night air chilled you as the doors opened. “Wanna go out for a drink, I know I sure could use one.”

You shook your head. “I’m beat, I’m going home, eating and sliding into bed.” She nodded in understanding. “Don’t forget your homework.” She winked at you mischievously and giggled as you let out a frustrated groan. “I’m thinking about skipping it.” She shook her head. “Better not, with what you’ve told me so far it seems like there’d be consequences.” And she was right, who knew what kind of thing he’d cook up if you slacked out on it. You said your goodbyes and headed home.

You find yourself in front of your door, mentally exhausted. You slide the key in the lock and feel it give as you push the door open and walk into the cool interior of your home. Flipping the lights on you drop your purse and jacket on the couch and head for the kitchen. It’s been a long day and you hadn’t even had a chance to go grocery shopping this week but you’re pretty sure you at least had a couple of eggs left in the fridge.

If all you could manage was a few scrambled eggs before you did your homework and fell into bed then so be it. You’d eat better tomorrow. You open the door on the fridge and are immediately taken aback by what you see. It’s fully stocked. There’s a whole pack of water bottles on the bottom shelf of your fridge. The chiller drawer is packed with spinach, sweet peppers, broccoli and carrots. There’s deli meat and boneless skinless chicken breasts, a few types of cheese and a new gallon of milk. Individual packs of yogurt and gatorades in all different flavors.

You open the door on your freezer to find a few more frozen packs of chicken breasts, pounds of lean hamburger meat and sausage. Rushing to the cabinets you pull them open and find low carb tortilla wraps and bread, granola bars and some kind of chips called “Veggie Straws” that you’ve always seen on the shelf but never tried.

As you turn around you finally notice the bowl of fruit on your counter. How could you have overlooked it walking in? Bananas and apples and oranges, all ripe and fresh. You didn’t do this. Either you were losing your mind and key moments in your life we’re missing like puzzle pieces lost or someone had been in your house.

Your eyes widen, breath hitched. They could still be in the house. You turn around and survey the space around you, the dark comforting tone had a queer eerie feeling setting in around the edges. The corners and shadows leering with the unknown. Nothing looked out of place or was missing, but what kind of a person came into a home to stock the fridge and leave without taking anything?

You checked the doors, the windows, no broken locks or pried open hinges, no immediate signs of forced entry. Your shoulders stiffened when the realization hits you, it takes your overworked mind a moment to remember but there it was. Your gym bag, you were nearly certain you had closed it but it was open when you opened your locker to change. Johnny.

You grabbed your purse and pulled your phone out, flicking through your contacts and hovering over his name. You momentarily waver between calling him or the police. What were you going to say? Yes officer, my home has been broken into. Did they take anything? Well, no. The opposite really. What did they leave? Groceries. Lots of them, stocked my whole kitchen with fresh meats, veggies and fruit. Yeah, we’ll get right on catching the ever elusive grocery fairy, ma’am. Top priority, don't you worry.

You started the call and he answered on the second ring, tone light and cheery with enthusiasm. “Bonnie! How was work?” You skip the pleasantries. “Do you have something to tell me, Johnny?” And you don’t know why you expected him to take the matter seriously.

“Aye lass, I did think about ye all day, sometimes with mah cock in hand, how’d ye know?” His response momentarily scatters your thoughts to the wind but you take hold of them once more and push on. “What? No! Johnny, have you been in my house?” He laughs, actually laughs. “Oh that. Yeah, did you check the fridge?”

Your brow furrowed in frustration, of course he doesn’t see it as an intrusion instead of some kind of regular thing. “Johnny, how did you get into my house?” You sit down in a chair and what he says makes you bolt upright again. “Easy, hen. I just made a key.” You’re pacing now. “You made a key to my house! How?”

And he says it casually like he’s explaining how to tie a shoe or giving someone easy directions. “I went into yer bag, found yer keys, pressed it into a mold and had one made. Simple really.”

“You can’t do that Johnny.” He interrupts. “S’alright Bonnie, I’m yer personal trainer.” There it is again. That phrase, like it’s the simplest thing to understand in the world, normal even. He’d picked you out, told you he was going to train you, you didn’t exactly protest and now anything was fair game, including crossing every single kind of boundary you could have and making copies of the keys to your home so he can come and go as he pleases.

“Besides, yer fridge was empty. What were ye gonna have fer dinner?”

“None of your business. And what if I don’t know how to cook? Did you think about that Johnny?” And this seems to be the first real thing to give him pause. “Yer right, lass. I didn’t even think about that. I’m about five minutes away, I’ll be right over.” Your eyes widen in panic. “No Johnny! Don’t come over!”

“S’alright lass, it’s really no trouble. I’ll be right there.” The last thing you needed was him showing up at the door. “No! Johnny I’m serious, don’t.”

He’s quiet for a moment and it feels long, you almost expect a knock at the door, even though he couldn’t possibly be there that fast, unless of course he was lying about being five minutes away and was actually right outside the whole time, or even in the house still.

“Alright. I won’t come over on one condition.” You grab for it, ready to agree to anything that will keep him from showing up. “Yes, anything.”

“I want ye tae FaceTime me while ye do yer homework.” And you’re almost relieved with the simplicity of it, but there was an underlying unease that you couldn’t shake, what was he up to? You answer slowly when you can’t come up with a good reason to say no. “Ok, I’ll call you back.”

But before you can hang up he interjects. “No. Don’t hang up, talk to me.”

“Talk to you? About what Johnny?” You start to look around the kitchen for what you’re gonna have, if he’s making you talk to him the whole way through it then it’s better to get started now. “For starters, How yer day was.”

It starts slow, your relinquishing of the accounts of the day, but as time went on and you kept talking it all just came to the surface. The stress of the day, the brutal meticulousness of it, and he made it so easy, he was so attentive, listening and responding, asking questions and letting you vent it. He even laughed so hard when you told him about threatening Tom that you couldn’t help but laugh with him, bent over in front of the stove as you let the stress bleed out of you.

It felt good, right even, like something you'd been missing out on, a key component you hadn't realized you’d been without for so long. And you found a peculiar twinge of adoration for him in the bottom of your heart, like tea leaves spelling out your heart's true desires, whether you like what you read in them or not, there they were.

You sat down to eat and he told you about his day as you ate. It was much more appetizing than a plate of scrambled eggs, you had to admit. You nearly choke on a cherry tomato when he tells you he missed you. “It’s only been a day since you last saw me Johnny, you can’t miss me.” And is there longing in his voice, or just your tired mind playing tricks again? “Aye, but I did.”

There’s a momentary pause, a space of uninterrupted silence, pregnant with things unsaid. You finally break it. “Well, I’ve got dishes and then I’ll do my homework.” What he says next makes you smile, and you’re glad he’s not able to see it. “How will I know ye’ll call me back?”

“Don’t be stupid, I’ll call you. If not, you'll be pounding at my door, won’t you?” You can hear the smile in his response. “Better believe it, lass. Call me.” And he hangs up.

You quickly finish up your dishes, change into something comfortable, just a tank top and shorts, and prop your phone up. Pressing the call button on Johnny’s name in the contact list you see the screen go black as you wait for him to pick up. Your image is reflected back at you in a little square in the top right of the screen and you use the time to adjust your hair and pull the hem of your shorts down lower to cover more of your thighs.

His face pops into frame and he’s smiling ear to ear and you ignore the eruption of goosebumps on your arms when you see it. “Hi, lass” You back away from the screen and into the open space you’ve made in your living room to do your exercises. “Hi Johnny.”

“God yer beautiful.” And you feel your cheeks heating under his compliment. “Stop it, Johnny. Let’s crack on.” You see him sit back on his bed as he responds. “Alright lass. Start.” So you do, starting with the sit ups. You don’t have him there to hold your feet so you slide them under the couch to hold you steady as you do the exercise. He talks you through it, counting for you so you can focus on just your movements, keeping track of your pauses in between sets so they’re evenly spaced and consistent.

“Good lass, now yer toe touches.” You rise and face the camera, bending down with legs straight as your fingertips brush your toes. “Good, just like that.” And each line of praise is like a shot of vodka, a shock of ambrosia to your system, intoxicating. You know he’s looking down your shirt with each rep, but it’s a thrill you find exhilarating instead of embarrassing for once. Halfway through he has you turn around so he can make sure you’re not dipping at the knees.

You do the first one and he groans, quiet but you still catch it. You call over your shoulder and ask if he’s ok and he clears his throat, voice full of audible gravel even in his one word response. “Aye.” You finish and all that’s left is your lunges and stretches. You bend your knees and step into the first lunge, one leg at a time til you reach your goal of ten.

You’re finished and you turn to face the camera, you see he’s laid down on the bed, eyes intense and holding yours even from the small screen of the phone across the room. “Stretches now, lass.” He sounds out of breath and you wonder what you’d see if he flipped the view to his back camera.

You sit on the floor, legs V’d and begin to stretch them wider and wider. You curse your decision for shorts and blame it on being tired and not thinking it through. You know the crotch of your shorts is pulling taut against your pussy, barely covering your panties as you stretch further and further. You start to strain, little puffs of breath and groans escaping your lips as you widen your stretch. “Hold it, bonnie.” And you do just as he asks, holding it against the potent pain accumulating in your calves and inner thighs. “Just a little more, doing so good fer me.”

You hold it for another five seconds and he finally lets you release. You’re breathing heavily as you draw your legs back together and if you aren’t mistaken you think you can hear his labored breathing as well. “Johnny.” His voice is thick with strain. “Aye, lass.”

“What are you doing?” His smirk is devastatingly handsome as he speaks. “Nothing yet, lass.” You feel emboldened and press your luck, eyes connected with his as you command him. “Flip your camera Johnny.” His eyes hold yours raptly for a few seconds before he does as you ask and the shot flips to his chest and legs lying on his bed. He’s got a dark blue comforter and you can see in the frame a pull up bar and a few weights on a rack in the corner, just what you’d expect but the first thing to catch your eye is the raging bulge in his gray sweats and your breath hitches as his hand comes into view, wrapping around the base of the stretched fabric and adjusts it to better accommodate his length.

“See what ye do tae me, hen?” You do see, you can’t look away as his hand squeezes himself through the cloth cage. Your mind, overworked and fried is trying to get you to say something, anything, but the only thing that will compute is his name. “Johnny.”

“Get up and sit down on the couch, lass.” His voice holds a tone of gentle authority, you could probably protest but you’re tired and trying to swim against the current of what your body wants is a task you’re not up for at the moment, so you give in and let him command you.

You sit on the couch at first, eyes still glued to where he’s fisting his cock through his clothes. “Sit back, hen and spread your legs.” You do sit back but you don’t spread your legs, at first. “Come on, bonnie. Jus’ like we practiced.” So you do, not as wide as you would when stretching but enough to give him a view and the tingles of anticipation thrumming through you has you on edge, like you’re standing before a cliff and about to jump, there’s no going back from this.

He groans and you watch with keen eyes as he pulls his sweats down until he’s just in his boxers, the same dark blue shade as his bed spread. “Ye wanna see more, lass?” He’s tempting you and it’s working, you do wanna see more but it’ll come at a price. “Yes.” He wraps a fist around his cock and you shift uncomfortably as your panties dampen. “Take yer shorts off.”

You sit up and tug your shorts down your legs, feeling dirty but heightened as you do, like you’re liberating something inside yourself even you don’t quite understand. He hisses air through his teeth as he spots the wet patch quickly growing and soaking the gusset of your panties.

He pulls his boxers down and his cock springs up into view, finally free and it makes you bite your lip. He’s thick and has length to boot, a good seven inches of it guessing by the comparison of his hand up against it.

There’s a neatly trimmed patch of dark hair spreading out from the base and you can’t help but moan as he wraps his hand around it and begins to tug lazily. His voice is husky and deep when he speaks.

“So pretty, hen. Are you that wet all fer me?” And you’re beyond words so you just nod, eyes glued to the way he tugs on himself. He curses under his breath and your pussy aches from the lack of stimulation. You snake a hand down your chest, descending toward the pain, itching to relieve the tension. “That’s it, lass. Let me see ye touch yerself fer me.”

So you do, just overtop of the fabric, a roll of your fingertips overtop your clit, enough to make your head tip back and moan blissfully. “Good girl.” You look back up to see him working his shaft in earnest, firm grip and steady movements. You feel emboldened by his reactions and lean forward again to rid yourself of the cloth barrier. He stops and watches as your pussy comes into view for the first time.

“Steamin’ Jesus. Fucking gorgeous.” He resumes his movements as your fingers settle over top your bare clit and you start to rub tight little circles over it, just how you like. “Show me Bonnie, show me just how you like it.” The sexual tension between the two of you, the stress of the day all come to a head and you reach down to spread your wetness up and around your clit, moaning low and sultry as he watches you play with yourself.

You reach your other hand up and squeeze one of your breasts through your top and look back up into the screen. Watching him pick up the pace, making fast even strokes over the tip of his cock with each movement. The motion of his hands, the way his tip disappears into his fist and reappears with each pass is mesmerizing. You can feel the beginnings of an orgasm building and it just drives you on as you think about coming in front of him for the first time.

Your fingers pick up speed and your moans rise in pitch as he talks you through it. “Mmm such a bonnie little pussy. I wanna see ye come for me lass. Can ye do that fer me? Come nice and hard fer me?” You suck in a deep breath as you work your body into a frenzy, pinching a nipple between your fingers as you feel yourself nearing the edge.

You look up to see him vigorously stroking his cock. His breathing is heavy and loud through the speakers and you wonder if he’ll be loud when he comes. You’re close and even though he’s not even in the same room as you he can tell, spurring you on. “That’s it hen. Just like that. Do it. Cum fer me.”

It’s all it takes to send you spiraling. Your pussy clenching around nothing as you fall over the edge and succumb to the pleasure. You let out a long drawn out moan as you do, body tensing as you pant and writhe on the couch in full view.

You look up when he calls your name, watch as his strokes quicken and shorten and then all at once he’s coming undone, legs tensing and white hot cum shooting from the tip of his hard cock. It arcs through the air before landing in spattered lines across his thighs. The guttural yell that falls from his lips as he does is loud, just as you’d expected and you wish you could feel it, the rumble of his chest when it sounds.

You’re both breathing heavily and coming down when it hits you, the post nut clarity. You just had very raw, hardcore phone sex with a man who made a copy of the keys to your home, came over without you knowing while you were at work and invaded your personal space.

You’re ashamed and a little sickened by what you’ve just done. Quickly closing yourself off from view you snatch your panties and shorts from the ground and redress. “Fuck, lass. That was fucking amazing.” You’re already working on damage control in your mind, blocking out the experience, no matter how much you enjoyed it, it was wrong.

“No Johnny. It wasn’t.” You can see him switch the camera around and he’s way more relaxed now, smile a mile wide on his face. “Aye, it was. Cannae wait tae see ye, tomorrow.”

You don’t even know if you’ll show up now, how could you after that? It was just a mistake you told yourself, a tired slip up, absolutely a one time thing. You close your eyes and when you open them he’s looking at you and you swear you can his adoration for you swimming in them. “Go to sleep, lass. I wanna see ye tomorrow at 4:30.”

You say nothing and hang up. It’s very late before you fall asleep that night, debating whether or not the consequences of not showing up tomorrow are something you can afford to risk. If you don’t show up he could just pop into your house at any time. It’d be better to just show up and act like nothing happened, that was the key, just brush it under the rug and hope he’ll do the same.

You’re nervous about it all day at work, and you know Nancy knows something is wrong but you insist everything’s ok. You’re too ashamed to tell her about any of it and she relents and leaves you alone but she knows you’re lying. When four o’clock hits you’re out the door, won’t be able to stop this frenzied state of mind until you can clear things up with him and make things go back to normal.

The next day when you walk in the door and sign in he meets you at the desk and before you even have a chance to say anything he’s on you, lips crashing into yours in a passionate and very explicit kiss right in the lobby of the building surrounded by patrons and gawking onlookers.

He doesn’t even give you room to breathe let alone get a word in as his body presses up against yours and he grabs ahold of the back of your neck to keep you locked against him. When he pulls away you’re shell shocked and silent. As he pulls you against him and walks you further into the building you know things have taken an irrevocable turn.

#cod x reader #soap x reader #dark!johnny #dubcon #dark fic #cod mw2 #john soap mactavish #johnny soap mctavish x reader #cod #cod soap #twdubcon

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humming-fly · 2 years

Video

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[youtube link for HD viewing]

After nearly two years of on-again off-again work here it is, the animatic that's been stuck in my head ever since I first heard this song back in 2018!! Finishing this behemoth was my big goal for the year and that was even before I decided to fully illustrate it, but somehow here we are!

I honestly wasn't ever sure if I'd be able to make this a reality since the song is a mix of fast paced with slower portions and I didn't think static images would fit very well, but rather than give up on it I was super inspired by @siruoa‘s brilliant greedling artvid over here, and decided to give that style a shot myself with just the best results I could’ve hoped for!

Anyways thanks to all of ya’ll that have been so patient and encouraging since I dropped the sketch version last spring, I hope you all enjoy my love letter to FMA, Greed, and this this banging song as much as I do~

(Additional project details under the cut)

All art and animation was done within Clip Studio Paint EX over the course of 12 months. Overall this animation has 70 shots made up of 11 active animation folders, with the more complicated shots having up to 7 pieces moving at a time. I frankly lost track of the number of layers used, but it was well over 1200 when all was said and done h a

Music Used: Stronger by The Score

(and just in case you thought I was kidding about the 2018 thing lol)

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justivik · 2 months

Note

I DONT HAVE ANYTHING SPECIFIC JUST MORE YANDERE PHOTOGRAPHER PLEASE!!!

(except maybe no nsfw or smut for this one.. kinda skeeves me out hehe…)

SLEEPY.

; yandere! loser x fem! reader

Your head was resting on the desk in the large, warm room, your hair lay across the page of the science book. Your closed eyes and quiet breathing make him feel nervous, he never thought he could have you sleeping in his room without forcing you to do anything.

You both had to make a school project to get a good grade, you met at the black-haired boy's house to be able to advance in your project but the tiredness of homework, personal and family problems were gigantic for you. Without realizing it, you gradually fell asleep in the boy's book and stopped answering his questions.

“We are now three questions away and we can rest”

His eyes turned to look at you and his voice began to lower its tone, your chest went down and up quietly.

Quickly noticing this scenario he went for his camera so he could have this moment forever, he turned on his camera and took off the flash so as not to wake you up and disturb you.

Deep, intense breathing was present as he took a new picture at a new angle. He moved a strand of your hair so that your face could be seen and a faint nervous smile appeared on his face.

When he finished, he admired his photos and put them away in a folder. Weak but profound words came out of his mouth.

“You are so cute! I love to see you so helpless.”

He didn't know that you were conscious and that you had heard everything.

still don't have a name for yandere! loser 😭

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fixyourwritinghabits · 5 months

Note

Any tips for picking back up in the middle of a revision without having to start over? I wrote a book in 2019 and started a major revision in 2021. I printed the book and tore it apart with notes and switching timeline events/chapters around. Now I look at all the notes that are good advice and I would like to apply this progress to the story, but it's so overwhelming and jumbled up 😵‍💫

I've also recently picked up a back-burnered project I've been dreading, only to realize the notes I wrote solved 99% of the problems I had. The only thing holding me back was me, and it sounds like you're in the same boat.

Draft A New Outline - Having a way to track what changes you need to make is helpful, like using an Excel sheet (I know, but it does work) or color-coding changes. This will help so much, especially if you need to track big changes.

Go Through and Highlight What You Like - You may have to throw out whole chapters, but there's reasons you don't want to. Note what you really like - a turn of phrase, a character moment - and see if you can fit it in elsewhere. Always keep that cut folder or document to dig through later.

Set Micro Goals (And Keep Them!) - It's easier to dive into a new draft than to revise an old one. Chunk your goals in easy to accomplish ways. Instead of tackling a whole chapter a day, tackle a scene or a page. Instead of revising 800 words a day, narrow it down to 500 or 300. I make a big chart with my revision goals on it, and you're damn right I slap a cute Daiso sticker next to each goal accomplished. It really helps.

Work Backwards, Revise Forwards - If you have an all new ending with bigger and better stakes, figuring out how to get your plot there may require stepping back, chapter by chapter, to see what subplots you should add or scenes that need to be moved around.

However - and this is just what works for me - working toward a revised draft means starting the rewriting/revising process from Chapter One. That way I don't accidentally cover the same ground twice, and catch when I need to start a subplot sooner or rework descriptions I've used more than once.

Move Past The First 50 Pages - Don't get stuck at the beginning! It's so tempting to revise the first act to perfection, but you might need two or three more drafts to get to the real end of your story, and that might mean tossing all that hard work out. Keep going, and if you find yourself getting caught into fixing Chapter 3 when you're not sure Chapter 30 works, make a note and move on. Finishing your second draft is just as important as finishing your first.

Good luck and keep going!

#revising #revision #writing advice

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oleander-nin · 11 months

Text

Horrortober Day 30- Lonely(Yandere Rise Donnie x Reader)

A/N, not important: Another one I'll probably try to rewrite, although I'm not sure what more to add. Maybe emotion. Any criticism is welcome, constructive or not. This is supposed to be a gender neutral reader, so if I screwed up somewhere, please tell me.

-Ollie

CW: Anger, destroying things out of anger, hinted future bloodshed, kidnapping, dark themes, yan themes

Words: 775

Summary: You left, and it drives Donnie mad

Donnie shifts in his bed, his gut telling him something was wrong. He feels around his bed for you, his heart racing as his eyes open. You were gone. The spot you last were wasn’t even warm, the sheets that once covered you messed and strewn about. Donnie jolts up and moves from his bed, patting the blankets down in hopes to feel you buried under. Not finding you in the mess of sheets, he rushes from his room and moves around the lab, calling your name and searching every nook and cranny. His eyes land on the open lab door and his heart sinks, his hands shaking as he wakes up SHELLDON and sends him off to search for you as well.

It takes painstakingly long, but Donnie ends up searching the entire lair top to bottom three times. Not a single inch was unaccounted for, and more importantly, neither were you. Donnie sits in front of his computers in his lab, seething. You ran. He took such good care of you, and you ran. Donnie shoves the half-finished tracking collar off his desk, regretting not setting you up with the subcutaneous trackers he had for the rest of his family. He curses his want for you to be special, to make something just for you. He should’ve been more careful, shouldn’t have fallen for your lies and your words. You were too willing, and he shouldn’t have believed it was from mutual love.

Donnie pushes his chair from the desk and stands up, screaming out in anger. His heart was throbbing, fury bright in his eyes while shoves cabinets to the ground and listens to the clatter of his tools being thrown against walls. He stays away from his projects, not wanting to destroy his life's work in his fit of rage. His fists clench at his side as he stares down at the mess he made, his tools scattered and shelves emptied onto the floor. He stands there for a moment, just letting his anger roll through him in waves, not trying to calm it at all. You had betrayed him. You ran, despite promising him your heart.

Donnie turns back to his computers, righting the chair and settling into it as he frantically starts to look through everything he could to find you. He gains access to cameras around town, his eyes taking in screen for barely a second before flipping to the next, running your name through databases to see if you had tried to call or book anything in the hours you ran. He searches the files of all the local police stations, looking for any new visits or files that contain you.

Each station was an annoyance to look through, every file having its own access key he needed to break through. He reopens the cameras on his other monitor, glancing at them while he painstakingly searches through every single folder they had online. He clenches his hand as he stares at the dozens of drives he needed to get through, his heart pounding both from anger and the annoyance of needing to cover his tracks lest he get caught.

It takes him what feels like hours, but he finally gets to the last police within a walkable distance in the time you’ve been gone, his eyes flicking back and forth between the cameras open and the files he’s decoding. He pauses when he sees the door to the precinct open, his chair swiveling as he moves to face the screen better. Through the grainy cameras the police station held, he could make you out. You were barefoot and only wearing Donnie’s clothes, different ones than the pajamas he gave you to sleep in. The sweats and hoodie you stole were baggy, both made to his specifications and you didn’t have a shell to help them fit.

The sight of you walking up to the station desk makes him sick, the woman manning the station looking at you with pity as you shake before her. Donnie slowly stands up, moving through his wrecked lab with a quiet peacefulness. His eyes were focused, determination and anger mixing together to form a dangerous concoction. Donnie pulls on his battle-shell and mans his tech-bō, fully prepared to do anything to get you back. You were coming home, no matter how much blood he had to spill.

Donnie takes one last glance at the cameras, watching you being ushered off into the back of the station, his knuckles lightening in shade as he steams. You would regret leaving him, one way or another. And he would make sure you never could again.

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artsekey · 10 months

Note

Hi, very random question - would you have advice for naming and organizing files? I saw your reblog of how to turn off the Windows 11 internet search thing and had my eyes bug out at the amount of files you have. I struggle to keep things organized after like....twenty...

Sure thing! Before I got into 3D, I didn't pay much mind to my file names or where I saved things. After getting into 3D, where those things have an impact on your ability to work on your projects, I was forced to tighten up! 1. Folders are your friend. However you want to organize things is up to you; depending on what I'm working on, I group things by project or subject first. So, for example, on my computer I might have a folder titled "DND". Inside that folder, I have a sub-folder for each campaign, and inside that folder I have a sub-folder for things like maps & documents, and then another for character art with sub-folders divided by character. 2. Decide a naming convention for your stuff. This could be something like "projectShortName_pg#_MMDDYY", or "characterName_portrait_MMDDYY". Having an identifier that makes it clear it's different from other files with similar names is really helpful, and keeping it in the name itself (instead of relying on "last modified" can be a good move. 3. Keep it short, but keep it useful. This is something you might not want to implement-- I use it all the time because it's part of the 3D pipeline, but shortnames are big for knowing what files are "at a glance". Like instead of something like, "Legend of Zelda Link Fanart 112123", I'd go with something like "TLOZ_LFA_112123". This is most useful when the folder structures are in place; if you have a Legend_of_Zelda folder, TLOZ will likely click as "The Legend of Zelda". 4. Don't be afraid to clear it out. Every few months, I gather everything I'm finished with into a folder titled "DSKT_CLEAR_MMDDYY". All of my folders are moved into the core folder, that folder gets moved to my external(s), and I move on.

Doing this when you've never done it before is a hard habit to establish (again, I was only able to do it because it was required while I was in school and now that I'm teaching the same subject), and going back to organize old stuff can be really intimidating. For that reason, I'd suggest gathering everything you currently have, moving it into a "Folder_Holder" folder, and then trying to implement these tips in future file management.

Let me know if you have any questions!

#file management #data management #ask

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not-magdi · 1 year

Text

Media Intern - Pt.1

Summary: Getting accepted at her dream job at FC Barcelona and starting a new journey that can lead her god nows where.

Warnings: None

Words: 1.3

Part 2

Deciding to study Sports Management, Y/N stood before the decision on which University she should study. Not having a single idea where she wanted to go she just sent applications to the five most attractive looking universities. These being the Universidad de Barcelona, the LUNEX University in Luxembourg, and three more in France and Austria, and England.

After getting cancellations from three out of the five Universities she had to decide between Barcelona and England. After thinking for a long time she decided that she wanted to study in Barcelona, preferring the hot Spanish weather over the rainy English one.

This leads her to now, after finding an apartment near campus and packing all her things to move to Spain she now is in the middle of her second semester.

Starting to search for a roommate shortly into the first semester, after realizing that Barcelona is freaking expensive and paying for everything alone is impossible. Surprisingly just one hour after posting her offer online someone answered.

Carmen Sanchez, 19 years old studying International Marketing. After meeting up and clicking immediately they ended up as roommates.

Y/N was happy she was now not as alone anymore, having someone there when you come home has something comforting while living so far away from your home country.

Now in the middle of her second semester, Y/N's desk was full of piles of books and folders, needing to study for various exams and projects she has to hand in, in the next few weeks.

Finishing her last course of the day Y/N is about to head home as her professor stops her, "Y/N... wait a second, please." Turning around Y/N comes to a halt turning around to see her professor going up to her with a smile on his face.

"Hello, Professor what can I do for you?" asking him as he stops in front of her fishing a little folder out of his bag.

"Oh, nothing ... I just got this job offer from FC Barcelona, my cousin works there and sent me this. They are searching for an intern in their social media department. She sent it to me asking if one of my students would maybe be interested, and I thought of you."

Handing her the folder she opens it, seeing the details of the offer. She once told him that she searches for a job as affording school supplies is really expensive and her savings are slowly coming to an end.

"Thank you professor ... I will definitely look into it. " Y/N told him and put the folder into her bag trying not to freak out.

"Please do that ... I think something like this would really fit you and benefit your studies. That's all, I just wanted to give you the folder. Hope you have a nice evening ... bye Y/N" waving him goodbye, Y/N continued her way home, the offer from Barcelona the only thing on her mind.

Football has always been a passion of Y/N, starting to watch it with her dad every Sunday and loving it just as much as him.

Y/N always admired the reporters who got to travel around the world and getting to comment on the sport they love. Wanting to be just like them, Y/N worked her ass off to be able to study Sports Management and now getting this offer, Y/N was over the moon.

Opening the front door she searched for Carmen to tell her the news, "Carmen where are you ... you can never guess what Professor Cruz just gave me !" Running into their living room she spots Carmen on the couch with her laptop on her lap.

"What did he give you?", looking up from her laptop she chuckles at Y/N's excited behavior.

Jumping beside Carmen on the couch she pulls the folder out of her bag showing it to her. "Look ... it's a job offer from THE FUCKING FC BARCELONA!" Y/N tells Carmen squealing the last part.

"OMG really ... that's so cool. Please tell me you already sent something to them."

Y/N looks at her, "No ... he gave me that thing thirty minutes ago, should I have done it while walking home?" Raising an eyebrow at Carmen she continues. "I wanted to do it now but I have no clue what I should write them, I think 'Hey I'm Y/N, I love football I have no clue what I should do at your club, and would really like the job' won't bring me in"

"See this is why you have me ... you didnt even read the folder because if you would have read it, you would have seen that they gave you an exact list of what they want to know about you"

Giving her the paper, Carmen closes the project she has been working on her laptop and opens an empty Word document.

"They want my Instagram name too?" looking surprised Y/N looks at Carmen, "Why would they want that?"

"They want to see what you post and if you could damage the image of the Club ... we had that last week in one of my courses. That's something many companies now do, most of the time big and famous companies, like FC Barcelona. These days something like that is mandatory." Carmen tells her.

"Wow, that's kind of scary" speaks Y/N as she turns the page around.

"Yeah it kind of is ... but now let's go to work, let's start with your CV" Carmen takes the folder and looks at what the first thing on the list is. "They want to know what my work experience is ..."

It took them solid three hours and five Red Bulls but they're done. Before them now lays a complete CV with as many details as they could put into it, a Photo of Y/N, and a recommendation from Professor Cruz, ready to be sent.

"You ready?" Carmen looks at Y/N, who holds her trembling finger over the sent button.

"Y-yes ... I think so?", taking a deep breath she presses the send button and closes her eyes.

Your application was successfully sent.

"Omg ... I can't believe I just did that ... I think I need a beer", chuckling Carmen looks at her and adds, "Please bring me one too ... they have no choice but to accept you with that bomb CV we just wrote."

Laughing Y/N stands up and goes to the kitchen to grab them a beer, they sat on the couch cuddled together watching TV until they both fell asleep.

Y/N hasn't heard anything from them for several days, she slowly started to think she didn't get the job, so she tried to ignore it as best as possible, distracting herself with coursework and projects.

Currently walking home after having to do the shopping today Y/N felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. Pulling it out her mouth fell open, they replied they really replied! Wanting to open it together with Carmen she started to walk home as fast as she could but was too impatient in the end. Opening the Email in the hallway of her apartment building.

Dear Y/N Y/L/N,

We are happy to inform you that we choose you as our new Intern at th-

She got it, she really got the job!

Y/N read the mail over and over again, she started to believe it after the about sixteenth time. Running to her apartment as fast as she could, only tripping once she kicked the door open and shouting at Carmen.

"I got the job! Carmen, they said yes ... I'm going to work at THE FC BARCELONA!"

#pablo gavi oneshot #pablo gavi x reader #pablo gavi x y/n #pablo gavi x you #gavi x reader #pablo gavi icons #pablo gavi #gavi x you #fc barca #barca

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scarletsaphire · 19 days

Text

For his entire nine years of life, Danny has had incredible dreams. Featured in every one is a patch of stars, staying just in the corner of his vision, just out of reach. It is only after his first nightmare that the stars appear as what they truly are; a ghost, here to make a deal.

This is my Big Boy fic I've been planning for over a year. I hope you guys enjoy.

Danny had always dreamed of stars. It wasn't necessarily that he always dreamed of the stars, but they were always there. Sometimes he'd dream that he was a pirate, fighting glowing green sea creatures that came up from the bottom of the ocean, tentacles grappling on the sides of his pirate ship. Sometimes he would dream of a world made entirely of smudges of color, and he had to save it from the evil people who wanted to erase it all. Sometimes he would dream of exploring other planets, of the taste of space dust on his tongue and a ground that made him bounce like a trampoline. Danny dreamed a lot of things, but no matter what he dreamed about, the stars were always there, just out of reach. They were different then the ones that appeared in the sky; they seemed to flow and ripple like water, and they always seemed to move to the corner of his vision no matter how hard he tried to see them.

For a while, Danny tried to catch the stars. Every time he got close, he'd wake up. But his parents had taught him that Fentons don't give up, and Danny wouldn't be the one to break that streak. So he swore to himself, after what felt like the millionth time waking up in the dead of night, that he'd get to hold those stars someday, even if he needed to go to space to get them. He spent every night that summer trying to catch them, every night waking up disappointed and going through the next day so tired his mom brought him to the doctor's for a check up.

Danny didn't try and catch the stars the night before third grade. In between teaching Danny the correct way to weld, his dad had talked all about how he'd need all his energy to learn the new things that tomorrow would bring. His mom had stolen Danny away to show him the new and improved Fenton Folders she'd finished for him, designed to be able to hold not only the papers for his class, but any textbooks or other supplies he might need as well. They were bulky, and the combination of metal and mesh wasn't the prettiest, but Danny loved them; he'd helped her make them, after all. Jazz had told him while helping him pack that he needed to prepare himself.

"Third grade is where the real school starts," she said while trying to fit his pack of #2 pencils in the backpack without disrupting the spots she'd already put his other supplies. "I can help you prepare physically, because I'm the best big sister ever, but you've gotta make sure you're prepared mentally. It's a lot of responsibility."

"I don't know what that means," Danny admitted.

Jazz grinned at him, showing off the gap in her teeth. "Yeah, well you're gonna. That's something third grade will teach you."

Danny did not pout. He was nine now, which was basically double digits. He was above pouting. "Why don't you just tell me now?"

Jazz zipped up the backpack and left it on the hook next to the front door. "I can't do that, it's against the laws of third grade. Everyone has to go through a ritual at the start, to make sure they're fit to be a third grader."

Danny narrowed his eyes. "You're lying."

"Would I ever lie to you?"

"Yes."

Jazz stuck her tongue out at him, and Danny did it right back. "I'm surprised Mom and Dad didn't tell you about the third grade ritual. What else do you think they've been having us do those martial arts classes for?"

"Ghost fighting?" Danny said slowly.

"And who says the challenge isn't a ghost?" Jazz was smiling at him in the same way she had when she said she didn't hide his cookies on the top shelf.

"You're definitely lying."

Jazz shrugged and turned around towards the stairs. "Believe what you want. I just know that if I was you, I would listen to your big sister who’s already beaten the ghosts. You don't want to fight them by yourself, do you?" With that she went upstairs, leaving Danny by himself. Jazz was lying to him. She had to be. But...

Danny grabbed one of the half finished inventions laying on the end table in the living room and slipped it into the side pocket of his backpack. It was better safe than sorry.

That morning Danny woke well-rested, having slept better than he had all summer. He’d had a dream about constructing fish bowls out of clouds, wringing the water from them like you would a towel. It had been a good dream, even if the stars still hung in the corner of his vision, taunting him. It would have been a pleasant way to wake up, if the first thing he was aware of wasn't the bellowing of his name from the doorway.

"Danno!" Jack repeated at a volume that only made his ears ring a little bit. "Hurry up kiddo, you're gonna be late!"

Danny blinked the sleep out of his eyes as he tried to interpret the numbers on his clock. 7:10. "Dad, you were supposed to wake me up at 6:20!" Danny yelled, jumping out of his bed, blankets falling in a twisted knot to the floor. "The bus is going to be here in 10 minutes!"

"Sorry, son," Jack said. "You don't have to worry about the bus, your old man can drive you."

"No, I'm sure I can catch the bus."

---

Danny walked out of the GAV at precisely 7:24, with only his nine years of experience keeping him from vomiting. He'd missed the bus by thirty seconds at most.

"You've got this, kiddo! Face those challenges head on!" Jack called from the open window. "Love you, good luck!"

Danny waved back, and Jack drove away. His mention of challenges reminded him of Jazz's words yesterday. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to take the unfinished device with him to school; his mom had ended up grabbing it to work on, and with how late he'd woken up, he didn't have a chance to grab a new one. That was okay. Jazz was just kidding. Probably. He tightened his grip on his backpack straps and made his way into the school yard.

Danny's plan was to find Tucker. His parents hadn't let him hang out the past week. They'd said something about summer reading stuff that Tucker still hadn't done, and that he was grounded until he got it finished or school started back up. It was completely unfair, and it meant that the couple minutes before they had to go inside were crucial for catching up about all the exciting things that they had done since the last time they'd hung out. Unfortunately, the first person Danny found was not Tucker. It was Dash.

"Are your parents still adding weapons to that hunk of junk you call a car?" he called out from his spot on the stairs. Dash was mean and a bully, and he had been since kindergarten, but he wasn't persistent. Danny had learned early on that the best thing to do was ignore him and walk away, ideally into the sight of a teacher. Danny tried to do this now, but Dash got up and started to follow him. "What are you running away from? Gonna go hunt down some ghosts to talk to? It’s not like any of us want to."

Danny's grip tightened around the straps of his backpack. "Leave me alone Dash."

"What are you gonna do if I don't?" Dash spat. Danny's next step was halted by Dash's grip on his backpack, forcing him to stumble backwards to keep from falling. "Are you gonna tell your weirdo parents? You'd probably have to lie to get them to care."

Danny spun to face Dash, the force of his twist breaking the taller boy’s grasp. Despite their height difference, Danny didn't back down.

"Stop it," he spat.

Dash sneered. "Oh, I'm so scared." He leaned down until Danny could smell his breath, warm and gross on his face. "Your whole family is a joke, and everyone knows it. You're no different."

There were a number of things that happened in those few seconds. The first was that Danny realized that, whether intentional or not, Jazz had been right about needing to fight a monster. He wouldn't tell her that, of course. She was already insufferable.

The second was that Danny's hand had let go of his backpack, clenched into a fist, and flew at Dash's jaw with all the speed and might Danny's nine year old body could muster.

The third thing, which was by far the worst, was the door to the school yard flying open only a few feet from where Dash and Danny stood. This meant that the teacher got front row seats to Dash's tooth flying out of his mouth.

"Daniel James Fenton!" she called, but her voice sounded distant under the rush of Danny's blood in his ears and Dash's blubbering. He only fully processed that his name had been said when he felt her grab his arm. "Just what do you think you are doing?"

Danny flushed red from embarrassment as he realized that the teacher's yelling had attracted the attention of the whole school yard. "He started it," he mumbled under his breath.

"I don't care who started it, young man, that's no excuse for violence!" she snapped. "I'm going to need to call your parents, do you understand that? In all my years of teaching, I've never had to call anyone about something like this so early in the school year." She moved towards the building, Danny dragging along behind her.

She stopped briefly near the door to point at a student Danny didn't recognize; a 5th grader, by the looks of it. "Would you be a dear and escort Dash to the nurse’s office?" The student nodded.

The teacher led Danny through the halls of the school to the main office. "You are going to sit right here," she said to Danny, leading him to one of the waiting chairs, "-and you aren't going to move a single muscle, do you understand? I'm going to talk to the principal, and then she is going to talk to you." Danny nodded, and the woman disappeared behind the adjacent door.

Danny would not cry. He wanted to, and his eyes burnt with hot, angry tears, but he did not cry. He was nine. That was almost double digits, and someone who is double digits doesn't cry. Danny focused on one spot on the worn, dirty, carpeted floors, trying to get the heat of his anger to burn a hole through it.

It didn't work. Danny cried quietly.

When the teacher walked back into the room, he wiped away his tears as quickly and discreetly as he could before getting out of his chair and following her into the principal's office. Danny had seen Principal Caulfield a couple of times before; she would give announcements in the cafeteria sometimes, and would lead fire drills. He'd never been called to her office before. He'd never wanted to.

She smiled at him warmly, a stark contrast to the teacher's steely gaze he could still feel burrowing into the back of his head like knives. "Hello, Daniel. I assume Mrs. Robertson explained why you're here." Danny nodded. "Mrs. Robertson explained what happened to me, but I want to hear it from your perspective. Can you do that for me?"

Danny shifted from foot to foot, not meeting Principal Caulfield's eyes. "She can leave, if that would make you more comfortable." Principal Caulfield nodded to her, and Mrs. Robertson took her leave.

"Dash was making fun of my family," Danny mumbled. "I tried to walk away, but he grabbed me and wouldn't let me go."

Principal Caulfield nodded. "So you decided to hit him?"

Danny nodded.

"Why don't you take a seat?" Slowly, Danny sat down in the chair opposite of hers. "We try very hard to teach our students that violence isn't the answer here, and it never is. You should've called for a teacher, or tried to settle the issue with words. Do you understand that?"

Danny nodded again.

"Now, I'm going to call your parents. I'm going to have a long discussion with, and you will be sent home early. I know that the first day of school has a lot of fun activities, and with your behavior today, I think a fair punishment is missing out on them. If this happens again, however, you will be in far more trouble. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes ma'am," Danny said. He focused on keeping his voice from wobbling.

"Good. Now, let me see here..." Principal Caulfield stood up and made her way over to her filing cabinet, rifling through one of the drawers and pulling out a folder with a label that read "D. J. Fenton." She flipped through it, traced her finger down one of the pages, and started dialing a number on the phone. Just as Danny had expected, it went to voicemail. A voicemail that was completely full.

Principal Caulfield frowned down at the phone. She looked through the file again, before looking up at Danny. "Are your parents busy right now?"

"My mom's down in the lab," he said. "If Dad's home by now, he's down there with her. If not, he's in the car."

Her face twisted in confusion, probably trying to figure out what Danny meant by lab, before it settled on an expression Danny had become very familiar with over the years. It was the mixed horror and understanding that most adults got when they realized that those two jumpsuit-wearing ghost hunting weirdos did in fact have children, and one of them was standing in front of them. Danny braced himself for the conversation that almost always followed, even as Principal Caulfield's expression faded into a professional veneer of kindness.

"I didn't realize that your parents had a laboratory in your house," she said. "What type of things do they do in the lab?"

"They build things, mostly," Danny said. That was a major simplification; even though Danny wasn't allowed to help with a lot of the things they did, he helped with enough to know a lot more than that they just 'built things.' More importantly, he knew that Principal Caulfield wasn't actually interested in hearing about his parents’ work, no matter how interesting it truly was. She was poking and prodding around the house to make sure Danny and Jazz were safe. He'd gone through it many times. It was never a pleasant conversation but it didn't normally bother Danny. "They don't let me or my sister into the lab unsupervised, they have all the proper PPE for both themselves and us, and anything they think will hurt us, or that they don't know whether it will or not is locked away where we can't get it," Danny recited.

Slowly, Principal Caulfield nodded. "It sounds like that's something you've practiced."

Danny shrugged. "I just get asked things like that a lot."

"Daniel." Her voice was hard. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Danny," she said, and her voice softer this time. She reached her hands out on her desk and folded them over each other. "You understand that that's not normal right? That you shouldn’t be in a house where your safety is questioned by everyone?"

That was also something he heard a lot. It wasn't like any of them were wrong. His parents weren't normal, and he knew that; what did it matter that everyone else knew that too? But Dash's words from before whirled in his head, mixing with Principal Caulfield's concern and the remaining whispers of the dozens of other people who'd said it. Danny bit his tongue to keep from either crying or shouting. He wasn't sure which was more likely.

It took a few seconds before he managed to get out the response he wanted. "I am safe."

Principal Caulfield sighed. "Do you have any other way to get in contact with your parents?" Danny shook his head, and she pursed her lips. "Ok. Do they let you walk home alone?" Danny nodded. "Since I'm not going to be able to get in contact with them, what we're going to do instead is you're going to walk home. Straight home, no detours. You’re going to give them a letter explaining the whole situation, and then they are going to call me back. If I don't get a call back from them by -" she glanced at the clock on the wall next to her "- by nine o'clock, you are going to be in a lot more trouble. Do you understand?" Danny nodded again.

The next few minutes passed in tense silence as Principal Caulfield wrote out the note for Danny's parents. Finally, she handed the paper over to Danny. "You're free to leave." Danny shoved the note into his backpack and stood up.

Just as he was about to walk out of the room, she spoke again. "Daniel?" He turned back to look at her. "Let's make sure this doesn't happen again, ok?"

All he could do was nod.

---

It was almost 8:30 by the time he walked through the front door, his face red and puffy from anger, tears, and the rising August heat. As he had guessed, the sounds of clinking metal echoed up from the lab. He threw his backpack on the couch, and crouched to untie his shoes. He needed to gather his bravery to face his parents. He'd gotten in trouble in school before; even Jazz had gotten in trouble a couple of times, and she was as goody two shoes as they got. It was just that most of the time when he got in trouble, it was for something that his parents were more lenient about; they didn't care about him missing homework assignments when he had spent most of the time with them in the lab. They didn't care about him not paying attention in class because neither of them could pay attention to much of anything not related to ghosts or science; they claimed it was a Fenton Family trait.

Danny knew that they would care about this.

He took a deep breath and started down the basement stairs. "Mom? Dad?" he called out as soon as he reached the bottom, peeking his head around the corner.

"Danny? Is it three o'clock already?" Maddie said, glancing over at him in confusion.

"I could've sworn that I only just got started!" Jack said, sitting upright from where he was hunched over his workbench.

"Time sure flies when we're working," Maddie replied with a laugh.

"Um..." Danny shuffled from one foot to the other. "It's not."

"What was that sweetie?" Maddie asked.

"It's not three yet. I got sent home from school early," Danny said. He started to explain everything, the words falling out of his mouth as he talked. When he finished explaining what Principal Caulfield had said to him, he pulled out the note and held it out to his parents. They'd both moved to stand next to Danny while he was talking.

Maddie took the paper and opened it to begin reading, while Jack lowered himself to one knee to get on Danny's level. "I'm disappointed in you, son. I thought we had raised you to know better than resorting to violence."

"Unless it’s against a ghost," Maddie added quietly as she continued to read.

"Unless it’s a ghost," Jack amended. "Then your old man can show you how to shoot the sorry spook right between the eyes!" Jack bounced to his feet, pointing his hands into finger guns, and imitating the sounds of shooting and explosions. That went on until Maddie finished reading the note.

"Jack dear, you've gotten distracted again," she said, folding the note back up and slipping it into her jumpsuit pocket before turning to Danny. "What your father is trying to say is that we're proud of you for trying to stick up for us, but you should know better than to start fights."

"I'm sorry…"

"You don't have to apologize to us," Maddie said. "You need to apologize to Dash. And that's what you're going to do, right now. You're going to go up to your room and write an apology note to him, and then you are going to go right to bed. No games, no TV, no books, no toys. I think that's a fair punishment, don't you honey?"

"Sounds right to me."

"But he started it!" Danny protested.

"I don't want to hear it, young man," Maddie chided. "We can be a lot meaner about this if you make us."

Danny bit his lip. "Fine."

"Good. Now, you go upstairs, and I'll give your principal a call."

Danny and Maddie made their way out of the basement together. She stopped at the phone to wave Danny along. "And I'll be coming up to check on you soon, so don't think you can sneak out of the punishment." Danny gave a curt nod in response, not stopping his trek upstairs.

Danny sat down at his desk in his bedroom, grabbing one of his new school notebooks. He and Jazz had talked their parents into buying a bunch of stickers, and the two of them had spent an entire afternoon customizing their new school notebooks. Danny had, of course, covered his in stars, rocket ships, planets, and astronauts.

Danny’s lungs and eyes burned with anger as he realized that the very first thing he was going to have to put in his new notebooks was an apology letter to Dash, of all people. But he didn't have any of his notebooks from last year, so he didn't have much of a choice.

He flipped to the first page and lifted his pencil to start writing. The first couple of words were dark and shaky. The pencil tip snapped from the force he used. Danny let his head fall to the desk, and groaned into his arms. "Why do I have to apologize?" he complained to himself, not lifting his head from the desk. "He doesn't deserve it. He's been nothing but mean for years."

The burning feeling in his throat got more intense. Hot tears ran down his eyes onto the notebook, smearing the few words he’d managed to write.

Danny turned over and glared at the door. His mom had said that she'd come and check on him, but he had grown up with her. There was the chance that she'd make good on her word, sure, but it was far more likely that something would call her back to the lab and she'd forget all about Danny, at least until Jazz got home.

Danny didn't want to risk the offhand chance of her coming up and catching him doing something she said not to, but that didn't mean he had to write the letter. Not yet, anyway. Danny pushed his chair back from the desk with a squeak, and made his way over to his bed, flopping onto the mattress. With his pillow muffling him, Danny let the tears flow freely.

---

Danny sat in class, the teacher at the front of the room droning on about something. He wasn't paying attention. How could he, when he could feel the weight of his classmates’ stares on his shoulders? Their whispers joined together in a cacophony of noise, getting louder and louder with every passing moment until Danny couldn't even hear himself think. The sound persisted even when he covered his ears with his hands, pushing against his head until it hurt. "Please, stop," he begged. Like a switch, everyone stopped whispering. Danny opened his eyes to see the teacher from the playground standing above his desk.

"What was that, Fenton?" she said, her voice dripping with venom.

"I just..." Danny looked around at his classmates, but he couldn't focus on any of them, not under the heat of the teacher's gaze. "I wanted them to stop talking."

"How dare you interrupt their conversation!" Spittle flew from her mouth, bright green, and splattered against Danny's desk where it sizzled, chewing through the wood. He flinched back. "Apologize. To all of them. And then it's straight to the principal with you!"

"But I didn't do anything!" Danny protested.

"And you're talking back? If you're ever allowed back in this school again, you can apologize then. But I think the principal might put a stop to that."

Danny tried to stand up, but his legs were glued to the chair. He strained against the force holding him down until his muscles burned, but no matter what he did, he couldn't move.

"What do you think you're doing, young man?" The teacher said, and she bared her glistening fangs at him. "You are about to be in a world of trouble!"

"What, are you too weak to get out of your chair, Fenturd?" Dash's voice overlapped the teacher’s. "Or is a ghost holding you down? We gonna have to call your crazy parents?"

They didn’t stop talking even as the rest of the class started again, an echoing cacophony of every horrible thing Danny had ever heard about him and his parents and his sister and his house and everything. All he could do was struggle against the chair even as his legs burned from the effort and his head pounded and his eyes leaked hot tears and-

Danny sat upright in his bed, gasping for air. His school clothes, which he had fallen asleep in, stuck to the skin, and the blanket he'd been sleeping on top of was soaked with cold sweat. He grabbed at his chest, trying to slow down the frantic beating of his heart.

"It was just a dream," he said to himself, still breathless. "It wasn't real."

Danny'd had nightmares before, but they'd always been full of fantastical beasts and monsters and ghosts. He’d never felt trapped; any time that he'd get too scared, he'd reach to the stars. Their ever-present shimmering would block out whatever terrors plagued his mind, and he'd wake up calm.

The stars weren’t there to save him this time, and that was almost scarier than the nightmare had been.

---

"Did you get the note finished like I asked?" Maddie asked over their Chinese takeout. (Surprisingly, Jack had tried to cook dinner. Emphasis on the tried. He claimed that the hot dogs started the fire in the kitchen, but they had been peaceful since the Great Toaster War, so Danny was pretty sure that Jack just burned the water he'd been boiling. And the stove he'd been boiling it on.)

"Mhm," Danny answered around his mouthful of pork fried rice. He hadn't even started the letter. Every time he did, the cutting words of his dream flooded his mind. It wasn't like she'd check it anyway.

"Good. Make sure to give it to him tomorrow when you go back to school," she said.

"I still can't believe you got into a fight!" Jazz said. "I didn't get into any fights when I was your age."

"You're only two years older than me," Danny grumbled, shoveling another bite into his mouth.

"And those two years make quite the difference, obviously," she replied. She twirled the noodle around her fork. "I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that-"

Danny cut her off before she could get started. "Can I be excused?"

Maddie and Jack shared a look before Maddie nodded. "Don’t forget you’re still grounded, mister!" Jack called out after him as Danny shoveled one last spoonful into his mouth and retreated to his room.

The day had passed slowly and painfully, with Danny spending a lot of time staring at his wall. He'd tried going down to the lab to help his parents, but they had made him go back upstairs to his room. It had taken an hour for them to remember to do so, in which they had told him all about the newest ecto-filtration system they were working on developing, but that hour hadn't done much to help with the other ten hours of extreme boredom. That, and the skin crawling grossness from the dream had yet to leave him.

Despite the fact that Danny had done less than nothing today, he was tired. He may have left the dinner table to avoid Jazz's rambling, but he probably would've done that anyway. In spite of the sun still streaming through the window, he made his way through his bedtime routine, before laying down in his bed, this time in his comfortable pajamas.

Apparently, it didn't matter that Danny's exhaustion seemed to run bone deep; no matter how he twisted and turned, he couldn't get comfortable. Every time he thought he'd found a nice position, his hand, head, or legs would throb. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the teacher from his nightmare with the venom filled fangs, or the disappointed faces of his parents and Principal Caulfield.

Something told him that if he fell asleep, he would be met by similar dreams. No matter how tired he was, he didn't want to go through that again. He tried to keep his hands busy, and when he was too tired to move them with any more grace then a baby, he moved to keeping his mind occupied.

Despite how much he fought it, the soft ticking sound of his clock lulled him into an uneasy sleep.

—

Danny knew that he was dreaming because of the stars. The stars that had hovered at the edges of his vision in every dream but the last now covered everything, as if they were making up for lost time.

"Woah..." he whispered. He'd dreamed of standing in a field of stars before, but this felt...different. Before, there’d always been that one patch that stood out from the rest, his constant companion, a spot inconsistent with the rest of them. It had always felt more real, more physical, then the rest of them. This time, that patch made up everything around him.

He dropped to his knees to touch one, an exceptionally bright star that pulsed with the beating of his heart. He cupped it in his hands, pulling it out from the inky blackness that surrounded it. It stayed where he held it, with most of the darkness dripping off like water, only a thin strand keeping it connected to the rest of the starscape. It wasn't warm like he'd expected; in fact, it was cold. So cold that it almost hurt to hold it, but he didn't put it down. He'd been dreaming of this moment, literally, for his entire life.

He stared down at the glowing ball, enraptured by its flickering lights, before he realized that it was… wrong. He knew stars; he had begged his parents to bring him to the space museum so often over the summer the people working there knew him by name. Stars were not just balls of light, they were balls of fire that moved and changed. Whatever he held in his hand was nothing but pure light, perfectly frozen, completely unchanging.

He let the not-star fall from his hands, slipping back into its place in the inky void.

"Is it not living up to your expectations, little dreamer?" Danny whirled around to try and find the voice, but it seemed to come from everywhere, echoing endlessly. The sound traveled in ripples across the not-quite liquid floor, and the echoes only started to fade when the ripples did.

"Who are you?" Danny asked, continuing to scan his surroundings unsuccessfully. "Where are you?"

"You may call me Nocturne," the voice said. "And you already know the answer to the last question."

"I do?" Danny asked, confused. He spun around in a circle slowly.

"You do. We're in a dream."

"This doesn't feel like my dreams..." Danny said.

"That's because it isn't one of your dreams," Nocturne said. The surrounding darkness coalesced into one being, the starry cloak extending endlessly into the rest of the surroundings. One cluster of stars became a horned mask, with sunken eyes that seemed to be staring straight through Danny. "It's one of mine. I've brought you here to make a deal."

Nearly every alarm bell Danny had started ringing at once. Despite this, he did not feel scared, just wrong. Something was wrong. He tried to figure out what, but failed. Nocturne was still staring at him expectantly. He had to answer, even if he couldn’t figure it out. “My parents say I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

Nocturne's laughter rang out through the dream, even though his mask remained perfectly stationary, his eyes never leaving Danny. "Dearest Daniel, I am many things, but I am no stranger." He moved closer to Danny. Or, Danny moved closer to him, the ground beneath his feet folding over itself as if the world was being moved around him.. "You've known me for many, many years now."

"I don't..." Danny started to say, but he cut himself off with a hard swallow. He did know Nocturne, even if he didn't understand how. "What are you?" Danny asked instead.

"I am a ghost," Nocturne said, and Danny’s alarm bells worsened as a cold dread settled on his shoulders. Maybe he was in danger. "You don't need to be afraid, little dreamer. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it a very long time ago."

For some reason, that didn't make Danny any less afraid.

He tried to stumble backwards, only to find that the cold liquid of the pool had hardened around his ankles, locking him in place. "What do you want with me?" Danny said, and his voice was barely over a whisper.

Nocturne tilted his head to the side. "I think a better question is how can we help each other? As I said before, I am offering you a deal. All I want from you for now is to listen." Nocturne laughed again. "I suppose in this case your question ended up just as good as any other." He held his hand out to Danny. "Now, shall we?"

Danny struggled to tear his gaze away from Nocturne's piercing eyes, but he managed to. The ghost's hands were barely visible, blending in almost perfectly to the inky blackness surrounding them, but Danny could still make out the vague outline of claws connected to a hand nearly the size of his face. He knew he should say no; he'd spent his whole life listening to his parents talk about ghosts. They were heartless creatures, a sad mixture of energy and ectoplasm and nothing more. They were more dangerous than anything Danny could ever dream up, had the ability to kill him with nothing more than a thought, and may do something even worse with only a little bit more. He should not take Nocturne's hand.

He tried to move again, but his foot was still stuck in the pool, the cold liquid clinging to him like tar. It didn't look like Danny had much of a choice. Hesitantly, Danny reached out and took hold of one of Nocturne's claws, touching as little of him as he could. Nocturne's expression did not change, but Danny could still feel the satisfaction rolling off of him in waves.

Danny could not remember blinking, but he must have, because one second they were in the star-studded abyss, and the next they were standing at the rear end of Danny's classroom. Danny looked around, confused, and his confusion only grew when he saw himself sitting in the middle seat. His doppelganger was hunched in on himself, visibly uncomfortable.

"You recognize this scene, do you not?" Nocturne asked.

Slowly, Danny nodded. "My nightmare. From earlier today."

"Very good. Tell me, what do you think of it?"

"Um, I don't like it?" Danny answered.

"And why is that?"

Danny shrugged. "I mean, no one likes nightmares."

"Yes, but you've had plenty of nightmares before. Why was this one different?"

Danny bit his lip and took a shot in the dark. "It reminded me of my bad day?"

"Excellent, little dreamer," Nocturne said, his voice laced with pride. "The bad things that have happened, or the bad things that might. Everyone gets them, at some point or another. And yet, for a very long time, yours were special. You were never truly afraid of the things that might happen, but created new things to be afraid of. Isn't that right?"

Danny gave a small nod. It felt like the answer Nocturne was looking for.

"Tell me," Nocturne continued. "Do you want to have more dreams like this one? Do you want for them to be built on the ugly truth of your reality?"

This time, Danny shook his head.

"I didn't think you would," Nocturne said. "Which is why I am offering you an escape from it. I can make it so that you never have these dreams, or any like it, ever again. All you need to do is help me in turn."

Danny narrowed his eyes. He may not have been the smartest Fenton, but he wasn't an idiot. And he had grown up with an older sister. "How would I be helping you?" he asked. "Cause my parents have talked a lot about fairy stories, and they say it’s really bad to make a deal with a fairy, and that fairies are just ghosts that have been mislabeled."

"The details are somewhat complex."

Danny crossed his arms. "Well, I'm not making any deal unless I know what it’s about."

The stars in Nocturne's cloak twinkled brighter. "There is an issue within my home, the Infinite Realms, that requires someone special like you to fix. It is, of course, more complicated than that, but that is the important part."

"And what would I need to do to fix it?" Danny asked.

"It is my understanding that you would simply need to be present," Nocturne replied. "As for the how, that comes back to your side of the offer. Instead of having dreams like this," Nocturne swept his hand across the room. "...you would instead spend your dreaming nights in the Realms. In the morning, you would wake up in your bed as if nothing had happened."

"It won't be any kind of sleeping forever thing, right?" Danny asked.

"It could be if you would like," Nocturne said. "Unless you request it, however, no. It would last just as long as any of your other dreams."

"So you want me to agree to let you take me into the world of ghosts, every night, instead of having the occasional bad dream?" Danny asked slowly. "That doesn't seem very fair to me."

"It would not be the occasional bad dream," Nocturne said. "Dreams are my realm. I know them very, very well. And your dreams have been... tainted. It does not matter whether you take this deal or not, you will never return to the dreams you had for so long. I am simply offering you an alternative to this mundanity."

"Why should I trust you?" Danny asked.

"You shouldn't," Nocturne answered easily. "But you don't need to trust me to agree to the deal."

"And if I don't agree to it?"

"Then you will wake up with no memory of ever seeing me, and go back to a life where you can't escape the horrors of the real world even in the comfort of sleep."

Danny took a deep breath through his nose, and looked around the room. He couldn't hear anything that was happening, but his memory worked to fill in the gaps. The teacher was nearly frothing at the mouth with her green, acidic spit, the other kids in the class were either whispering or laughing at him, and the dream Danny was sitting at his desk. His face was a patchy red, tears streaming down his face. He remembered how helpless he had felt sitting there, and he couldn't imagine feeling like that for who knows how long.

Danny turned back to Nocturne, whose gaze had never once strayed from him. "Okay." His voice didn't shake, despite how nervous he felt. "I agree."

"Wonderful." Nocturne reached his hand out to Danny. This time Danny didn't hesitate to take it, and then the world shifted around him.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #dp nocturne #danny phantom fandom #danny phantom fanfiction #starry eyed dreamer

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slavghoul · 1 year

Text

Interview from Upset Magazine 6/2023

Words: Steven Loftin

Like an apparition manifesting within a dense fog, it was through radio static that Swedish rockers Ghost were formed. In the kindergarten he attended as a young boy, Tobias Forge found himself enamoured with the music crackling through the little toy speakers. From this point forward, he began picking apart the notes and melodies - his journey toward the lore and canon coming into focus as he sat, trying to figure out how this black magic could be summoned.

While it would be many years before he would don his garb as Papa Emeritus, the essence of what his future would sound like was being set through his exposure to a wide variety of music. If any proof were needed, just look to the impressive list of covers Ghost have put their ghastly mark upon, including 2016's 'Popestar' EP, which included the band's takes on Echo & The Bunnymen ('Nocturnal Me') and Simian Mobile Disco ('I Believe').

Ghost's latest EP is another covers bonanza. A five-piece offering of Tobias's backstory, 'Phantomime' plays out like a Greatest Hits radio playlist - a fitting throwback to Tobias' first dalliances with music. Of course, when a group more aligned to the metal/hard rock community bust out covers, including Genesis and Tina Turner, eyebrows are raised. To this reaction, Tobias scoffs. "In 1991, Genesis was one of the biggest bands on the planet! That was a huge hit. In the mid-80s, when I had an older teenage brother who rented every VHS movie that came out, of course, we saw the fucking Thunderdome, and that was a huge hit, and it's still being played on Swedish radio. It's an evergreen; it's not an eclectic choice at all," he declares. "I grew up listening to Stranglers because my brother liked them. What else do we have, Iron Maiden - I mean, are you kidding? I'm a metalhead!"

Originally conceived during the sessions for their fifth album, last year's 'Impera', there were two folders on his computer's desktop: one named 'Impera', the other simply 'Covers'. As the ideas for 'Impera' grew, Tobias would enter his usual routine of working on a cover or two. "At any point, when you lose a little wind in writing your own things, it's quite nice to say, 'Today let's go in and work on the covers'; you can choose anything you want, you can work on absolutely anything you want. And you don't have to finish it, you don't have to release it, you don't have to do anything, but just continue working."

He likens it to the freedom of being a theatre owner who, instead of trying to pen the next greatest Broadway phenomenon, opts to have a go at something already timeless and perfected.

"Maybe you're like, 'Okay, so this fall we're just going to do a reinterpretation of Hamlet instead, that's going to be fine, and that keeps everyone working, and that keeps a project moving along! And I find a similar thing with working on covers. So as I was writing "Impera', the covers folder was also growing exponentially and at a point. I had this idea that was going to be a full-length album."

With COVID restrictions meaning the original producer for 'Impera' was stuck in the US, Tobias had to source a replacement. It would be Klas Åhlund who stepped up to the plate. But, on one condition. "He was pretty upfront. He was like. Yeah, I only want to make the record; I don't want to work on covers," Tobias remembers "Fine, fine, fine, that's fine." he shrugs. "So, after the 'Impera' recording was done, I felt as if making a completely different, whole record again: I didn't have time for that. I didn't have the energy for that. But once I trimmed down the number of songs to only these five to make a very rocky record, it loosened up the screws a little bit for me in terms of like, "Okay, so now I know what the EP is going to be - it's going to be a full, full-throttle rock one."

Ditching some rumoured softer covers, including U2, Misfits, and Motörhead. 'Phantomime is instead a delectable slice of Ghost doing what Ghost do best: creating theatrically big rock. It's Tobias's mark upon some bonafide classics, including Iron Maiden's 'Phantom of the Opera' which feels as befitting to Ghost as it does seeing Papa Emeritus kick the bucket ready for his next iteration. While the focus was on creating this small dose of Tobias's musical DNA, it also served another purpose; to simply be "not very complicated." The project began with the mindset of "we can make this recording loosely - quick but stress-free - as opposed to making a record which is your hard fifth record that needs to live up to certain standards. So it was just a very inspired, very simple recording, actually."

After the complexities of 'Impera' which wound up requiring two studios simultaneously running in parallel "to be able to work efficiently" - Ghost was morphing into a taxing experience for the band leader, "It was just a bigger thing [and] way more stressful."

Deciding to strip that covers folder down to the five tracks, by all accounts, 'Phantomime was a measured and reserved effort. "It ended up being me, an engineer, and an occasional musician coming in and doing something. It was so much looser, so much more mentally Feng Shui," he smiles, relief glowing in his voice. "And I think that that reflected a little bit on the two different records. They're meant to be related - they are definitely related - they were made roughly in the same time, but they're completely different things."

'Phantomime' plays out like a ghoulish social commentary. Starting with a searing rendition of Televison's 'See No Evil, the journey traverses the scourge of Televangelism (Genesis' Jesus He Knows Me') with a delightfully-fitting NSFW video, the instant gratification humans require to feel (The Stranglers' Hanging Around"); the pull back into cruel reality (Phantom Of The Opera"), and the resulting undying hope from a degraded society (Tina Turner's 'We Don't Need Another Hero"). Each offering is bolstered with Ghost's dramatic, theatric rock licks and Tobias's powerhouse vocals.

With 'Phantomime' in the bag and the European leg of the 'Impera' tour imminent (Tobias is currently holed up in preparation), the idea of reflecting on how he came to go from a young boy listening to the static sounds of pop hits on the radio to orchestrating not only a feverishly adored band and its lore but finding the capacity to embrace his inner music nerd, couldn't be more timely. Tobias's relationship with music has always been one of intrigue. He's a pop songwriter with the ambition and ideas of a stadium rock band, which, in essence, explains perfectly why Ghost can sit in a unique, exponentially growing and expanding space.

"My earliest inclination of wanting to transform into something else was definitely Twisted Sister," he recalls. "You know, "I Want To Rock' and 'We're Not Going To Take It' - that was a huge record in 1984, and in 1984, I was three years old," he says. "My brother was 16, so everything that was going on pop-culturally amongst teenagers was happening in my home."

It was thanks to his brother that much of Tobias's relationship with music was formed. He's introduced him to various giants of the time, like tectonic plates being pushed around, impacting and shaping his musical landscape. Translating for young Tobias the attitude of punk at the time, as well as everything else that was 'in', he remembers, "When I was a kid, and he was supposed to babysit me, as a pacifier he would put me in front of [Sex Pistols mockumentary film] 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle"," he laughs. "And then when that was over, he would just switch to [X-rated cartoon] Fritz the Cat. And I loved that stuff, of course. That was as much [about] the expression and the attitude. Of course, I loved the songs, but it was also filtered or combined with big songs for me." Those big songs ("Men At Work 'Down Under'," he initially cites, "those sort of songs still have a unique place in my in my writing") would eventually entwine with his darker side that he'd explore as he grew older. "Whilst my whole adolescence was completely in the name of extreme metal, I always had a very soft spot for Top 40 rock and pop radio always," Tobias explains. "And I've listened to that all my life. So it's almost equal portions of Venom as it is anything. that was on the radio."

Also, witnessing shock and glam-rock bands explode intrigued Tobias. He became swept away in the idea that not only could you push a boundary to its absolute limits with convictions and over-the-top grandiosity, but you could do so with songs that quantifiably bop. But, as time has gone onto prove, it wasn't pop music that enamoured Tobias enough that he wanted to become a pop star. It's the mythology and mystery that has become his calling card.

Tobias remained an enigma under the disguise of an evolving form of the iconic Papa Emeritus (now in his fourth incarnation) until 2017, after a lawsuit from a previous iteration of his backing band's rotating cast, the Nameless Ghouls. Visual and video components to releases are often hoovered up by the fandom, stripped apart for meaning and potential. Instagram posts are referred to as a '[Message From The Clergy]" (a phrase later claimed for 2022's Best Of playlist), and lest it is forgotten, the Ghost 'Grucifix' - the prominent crucifix deconstructed into Tobias's gothic 'G' logo - which ties together the vision, religious imagery and satire that would become a core part of the Ghost experience.

His musical ambition and education colliding in the middle of his Venn diagram between dark metal and pop magic is thanks to the likes of the aforementioned Twisted Sister and W.A.S.P., as well as his teen years in the black metal community. "Their first record was also a huge impact in Swedish media," Tobias remembers. "There was this big sort of Satanic panic thing going on at the time in the fall of 1984. Where you had essentially all those things happening. You had Mötley Crüe 'Shout At The Devil', which came out a year earlier, and they were there because they toured with Iron Maiden in 1984, so there was a lot of focus on these shock-rock bands. I saw that as a kid, and I was immediately blown away - it was the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I think that that was the trigger that made me identify as that is how I want to express myself."

Decoding the songs he'd hear also became an integral part of that expression. "That was the only thing I did for years before I started writing my own songs." Recalling his time in kindergarten, they had a piano and guitar, which Tobias became infatuated with. Instead of playing with the other children, he would find himself enraptured, listening to the radio or flipping over whichever cassette happened to be loaded at the time. He would then imitate the sounds he was soaking up. "A lot of those early beginnings of how to learn and how I've learned how to understand music filters through everything I do now," he explains.

The early records he'd find himself trying to unpack included KISS 'Alive' and Pink Floyd's 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' - disparate matches, but undoubtedly Ghost fuel with hard rock melodies and psychedelic tendencies. "I had the first and the second Pink Floyd on a double LP that was called 'A Nice Pair'. And that's the shit that I sat and listened to and played guitar to," he says proudly. "That's weird music, that's really weird chord sequences and melodies that sort of went nowhere. And, that coloured me a lot in my vision of this is how you write a pop song. Of course, I knew more conventional writing as well. But I figured that this resonates with me, and I want to write more like that."

Tobias is the first to admit that the influence his musical exposure has had on him isn't the most straightforward. "For all the years that I was in bands, up until Ghost, basically when I was in bands not doing well, I got a lot of, I wouldn't say stick, but it was always like, 'You write weird songs, there's something weird about them, and it will never really become anything because it has that sort of weirdness to it".

As he grew, the songs he'd heard reflected this inherent strangeness he'd constructed. Before the days of mass formulaic pop factories, the music emanating from the radio abided by the strictest rule of needing to at least be approachable, but within these confines, artists of the 70s and 80s would push the envelope as far as they could. Citing Nik Kershaw's 'The Riddle' as one example, "Holy shit, if you would have taken that song and taken it to a chord structure masterclass amongst pop writers now who want to write songs for Miley Cyrus or The Weeknd or any of that sort of level they would say, no, no, no, no, that this will never work. It's too strange. It's too weird. You can't do that; it doesn't have the normal chord progression.

"There are a lot of songs from the 80s that are like that," he reckons, "compared to the now, more informative way of writing, the 80s was braver actually, and it worked well. And those songs are evergreens in a way that a lot of the top radio shit from seven years ago is forgotten, and that's the stuff that I grew up with when I started playing the guitar."

Having made that inner sanctum, he would enter kindergarten a reality, one where he can explore those recesses of his mind shaken by the musical earthquakes he experienced; now, he's matured and deeply entrenched in the reality. "Throughout the modern day of pop writing, I know a few professional pop songwriters, and we continue having these conversations because in pop," he says, "where some of them work prolifically on really high releases, they're like, it's strange how the business wants everything to be so informative. Everybody wants a weird song, but still, all the big songs are usually very, very formatted [and] very, very simple."

While unpacking the songs he'd heard back in the 80s offered Tobias a chance to comprehend what makes a good song, it, more importantly, helped him to set out doing it on his own. When digging into crafting a new Ghost number, Tobias explains that "each new song is a little bit like virgin territory with its own riddle to be solved, and is always a combination of the horror of maybe not solving the puzzle, with the thrill when you do. And it's never easy because each new song needs something new. And so you constantly need to feed your ability with knowledge about how other things are."

Breaking it down into a figurative example, he likens it to being like a detective. "I'm assuming that part of being a great detective is to constantly have an open mind, but also constantly learning about human behaviour and wha people do. If you just had 100 forensic classes, but you know nothing about people and how they live their lives, it's gonna be hard to solve crimes." The same rings true for writers who have to read to improve and further understand language, while comedians pull from real-life experiences - music is no different. Tobias's early days of stripping down songs to their basic parts and then rebuilding them have remained a constant endeavour. "But that's how you write songs as well; you go and absorb new things."

The covers process, as mentioned, is a release for Tobias. When things are stuck when trying to piece together a new chapter for the Ghost bible, a cover offers up a chance for something lighter. "Working on covers can be equally euphoric," he confirms, "because it's fun to understand a song whereas, on the other hand, it can be almost demoralising because you're like, I can't believe that this song is so much better than anything that I've written! And it's so much easier. It's so simple."

"I find myself overcomplicating things often, but you might not hear the complicated detour that I took to end up at the more understandable, straighter version that ended up being the actual recording," he continues. "That's a never-ending struggle because that's how it's supposed to be. It's not like you write the one song. I don't think I know anyone or know of anyone who's content with the idea of having written one huge song. And then you know, okay, that's nirvana for you. You don't write the one song the same way that if you're a comedian, it's not like, 'Oh, I just told the funniest joke. So now I'm done".

While Tobias is one for wanting to keep the ball rolling and on a constant endeavour to continue his musical evolution, he knows there's a limit. Every release of Ghost must have a purpose. Nodding to the 60s method of firing singles out on all fronts, eventually compiling them for a full-length release, Tobias acknowledges his relationship with his fans is based on a more long-term understanding. "That's not how we do things; we make an album, and off of that album, there are singles - it's a 70s/80s thinking. And I don't want to refrain from that - I don't want too many singles to be these autonomous little creatures."

But the world is different now. It's a Wild West where being in the masses' consciousness is key, so things may have to change for him. Admitting that right now, he knows he's post-release of Ghost's last canon entry, 'Impera', which arrived back in 2022, and while 'Phantomime' is a reasonable enough bridge, sooner or later, he's going to have to play the game of ensuring Ghost ramp up. Earlier this year, Ghost collaborated with Def Leppard's Joe Elliott on a re-release of 'Impera' cut 'Spillways' which, while a fantastic addition to their arsenal, adds to the same notion Tobias is fearful of. "I'm slowly preparing for making a new record that's going to come out in 2024, which is way too long for the current contemporary music climate; you need to be ever-present," the last phrase hanging in the air ominously.

That doesn't mean he has to lower his standards, however. No Ghost release will exist just for content's sake. Everything must have its place. He even reckons a 14-track album is "a lot of music", and he still sees an album as being "22 minutes of music per side" - true to form, currently, no standard issue of any Ghost album breaches 12 tracks. He's even ready to aim for the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles by swiftly lobbing a couple of spicy takes out. "Look, man, I don't even think that 'Exile on Main Street' is that good. Not even the fucking White album is that great - break it up! Both of those records would have been better if they were trimmed down to singular records."

That pop mind breaking through; Tobias is someone who knows that music is entertainment. Certainly, a medium which often leads to more bulky connotations, but it must entertain. It's why he doesn't pay any mind to those naysayers that yearn for Ghost to be more metal or to follow a different path. This is Tobias's game; we're just privy to the sermon. These days the floodgates are open and, when compared to previous decades, as Tobias remembers it, "you had to buy your own records. Whatever additional music you got, that wasn't maybe heard on the TV or the radio, when you took something from someone else, was usually a choice, so music styles could in some way be a little bit more insular back then just because you weren't subjected to as much." He mentions his beloved death metal as being a signifier of the changes happening. "Back in the day, when I was starting listening to extreme metal, that was completely embraced by a certain little subculture or group of mostly teenagers and 20-somethings. Whereas in the 2000s, when Vice started doing black metal reporting, all of a sudden you have indie personalities who were fans of Darkthrone, and so, obviously, what ended up that turned into this fusion, which was a positive and very natural thing."

This cultural shift is another reason Ghost's space is widening and its success growing. "Nowadays, people are a little bit more open," he admits. But, with this comes issues. "As time has progressed, metal and hard rock, as well as most genres that have been around for a while, [they've] gone from this youth culture to a conservative institution because so many of the fans are now aged." The passage of time waits for no one. But, more presciently for culture, it also means our understanding of what is 'good' and what should be where is moulded differently to when we were younger. "Unfortunately, that happens to most people regardless of who you were when you were 20," Tobias reckons, "or your ideals when you're like 40/50/60 years old. Your brain starts morphing into a slightly more conservative, slightly more nostalgic... You don't want things to change."

Tobias is the first to hold his hands up and admit the same has happened to him. He yearns for 1984 and even 1990-94. He would even be happy with 1987, back to those days with the crackling radio and a childlike spirit. "That would be so much cooler. I loved that way more than in this day and age. But I can't sit around and mope about that because it's not a problem that it's not 1987."

'Phantomime' is proof nostalgia can be a useful tool. It fuels with passion, and Ghost is Tobias's Neverland. "There's such a debate about what we are and why that is." Ghost are a band that, thanks to Tobias's musical education, transcend time. They exist on their own plain and with the evergreen, timeless sounds of yesteryear echoing around Tobias's head, long may Papa reign with his gloved melodic iron fist.

#the band ghost #tobias forge #interview #really good one 👍

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