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prouvaireafterdark · 4 years ago

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Appetite

Here’s my Malex Secret Santa gift for @djchika, who asked for some domestic Malex with one of them teaching the other how to cook! I hope you like it, Deej!

Also on AO3!

***

“Hey, Alex?”

“Yeah?” Alex asks without looking up. He’d moved his laptop to the kitchen table at Michael’s request, but he still has a little work to finish before he’s free for the evening.

“Can you grab me the cumin from the spice cabinet?” Michael asks, and when Alex tears his gaze away from the screen, he sees Michael staring back, head turned over his shoulder to look at him as he stirs a pot of something on the stove that smells absolutely delicious.

“Sure, one sec,” he says, typing the last few lines of code as quick as he can.

When he’s done, he shuts his laptop and sets it to the side before straightening up and heading to the spice cabinet. He digs around a little, shifting bottles here and there to try to find what Michael needs, but he comes up empty.

“Bottom left, behind the paprika,” Michael supplies helpfully after a minute of Alex’s fruitless shuffling.

Alex looks over and sure enough, there, behind the paprika, right where Michael said it would be, is the cumin. He isn’t sure when exactly it was that Michael made the transition from feeling like he wasn’t welcome to stay the night to being intimately familiar with the inside of his spice cabinet, but the fact that he feels so at home in Alex’s space makes affection bloom warm in Alex’s chest as he plucks the bottle off the shelf.

“Thanks,” Michael smiles when he hands him the bottle, and Alex is helpless against the impulse to lean in and kiss him.

Michael welcomes the kiss without hesitation, humming softly against his mouth as he turns to face him more directly, the bottle of cumin still gripped between his fingers. Alex smiles, a little smug that he’s able to steal Michael’s attention so easily even when he’s in the middle of something.

It’s not until he feels the tip of Michael’s tongue flick against his bottom lip that Alex pulls back, not so eager to be the reason Michael burns whatever he’s cooking when they inevitably drive each other to distraction.

“Any time,” Alex says when he’s managed to put a few inches of space between them.

Michael blinks at him, his brain taking a moment to come back online, before he huffs a laugh, shaking his head.

“Tease,” Michael accuses lightly, and Alex rolls his eyes affectionately even as he steps behind him and wraps his arms around his waist.

“I don’t think I’ve earned that title,” Alex tells him in a low voice, lips barely an inch from the shell of Michael’s ear. “Not yet, anyway.”

Michael groans softly at the thought and Alex can’t help but chuckle and press a fleeting kiss to his cheek.

“Are you done with work?” Michael asks, leaning back against his chest a little in a way that makes Alex feel warm and protective. He knows it’s impractical, but he could hold Michael like this all day.

“Mhmm,” Alex hums. When Michael doesn’t say anything else, Alex hooks his chin over his shoulder and watches as he adds some cumin to the ground beef browning in the pot, not bothering to measure it. “What are you making?”

“Chili,” Michael answers, stirring the meat to incorporate all the spices. “You want to try some?”

Alex’s stomach growls audibly at the question, making them both laugh.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Michael says, and after a moment of more stirring to make sure the beef is all browned, Michael reaches into the cutlery drawer to his left and takes out a clean spoon without looking. He dips it into the pot, scoops out some seasoned ground beef, and feeds it to Alex over his shoulder.

Alex can’t suppress the pleased sound he makes when he tastes it. The beef is delicious—savory and a little salty with a strong kick of spice that lingers on his tongue.

“What do you think?” Michael asks, twisting in his arms to try to see his reaction.

“It’s really good,” Alex tells him, and he doesn’t need to see Michael’s face to know he’s warming under his praise, but it’s always nice to watch it happen anyway. If Michael isn’t careful, Alex will need to kiss him again.

“How’s the spice?” Michael asks. “I could add some more jalapeños before I add the rest of the ingredients if you want.”

“No, the spice is perfect,” Alex insists.

Michael beams at him before he turns back to the pot. With one parting peck to the back of Michael’s head, Alex steps away and gives him some space to work, leaning casually against the side of the fridge while he watches Michael push the spices toward the back of the counter and start assembling the remaining ingredients.

“How’d you get so good at this anyway?” Alex wonders as Michael squeezes in some tomato paste, once again without needing to measure it.

“What?” Michael asks, eyes on the pot while he mixes it in.

“Cooking,” Alex explains. “You’re so confident you’re not even following a recipe.”

“Yeah, I am,” Michael says, and Alex hasn’t seen a piece of paper or anything lying around with instructions on it, so Michael must have just memorized it, which is… not surprising for Michael as much as it is crazy for Alex to imagine doing himself. “I’m just… being creative in my interpretation of it.”

“So…” Alex starts, cocking his head, “you looked at the ingredients and now you’re winging it?”

“A bit, yeah,” Michael admits.

“Damn,” Alex says with the gravity that deserves.

“It’s really not that impressive,” Michael insists.

“Improvising a dish you read the ingredients for one time isn’t impressive?” Alex asks incredulously.

Michael is silent a moment while he thinks about it.

“I don’t know, I guess I’m just used to it,” Michael says at last. “I didn’t exactly have a recipe book growing up, so I’d just do the best I could with what I could get my hands on, which didn’t always turn out so good.”

“Yeah?” Alex asks, curious to hear more.

“Mhmm. Learned the hard way not to use ketchup as a replacement for tomato sauce.”

“Oh my god,” Alex says, pulling a face at the thought of pouring a squirt of Heinz over some pasta.

“Yeah,” Michael laughs. “Not my finest moment.”

“Did you cook a lot when you were younger?” Alex asks, surprised he’s never heard about any of this before. In high school and that summer that followed it, he and Michael would usually meet up either in the afternoon when Alex had to be home by dinner, or far later when Alex could sneak out in the middle of the night, so food wasn’t really something they’d shared or talked about a lot.

“Depends where I was,” Michael answers. “The addicts never had any food to cook and the Fundamentalists were big on ‘family dinners,’ but cooking was ‘women’s work’ so I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. When I was on my own though, I bought what was on sale or, well—” Michael cuts himself off, shifting his eyes in Alex’s direction before he sighs and says, “Let’s just say I had to get creative with my ingredients for a while in more ways than one.”

“You don’t have to talk in euphemisms, Michael,” Alex tells him kindly, reaching out for his hand. “I know you did what you had to do to survive. I’m glad you did,” he says, and he means it. He might have been judgmental about Michael’s criminal history at first, but they’re a long way from that disastrous evening at the Drive-In.

Michael tangles their fingers together and squeezes once, his smile a little brittle.

“Anyway, yeah,” Michael continues, “once I got access to a fire pit I was actually able to teach myself how to cook.”

“Wait, seriously?” Alex asks, eyebrows lifting in sudden surprise. “The fire pit?”

Now it’s Michael’s turn to look confused.

“Alex, I’ve made you dinner on the fire pit like a hundred times,” Michael says.

“No, I know, it’s just—“ Alex pauses, searching for the words. “I guess I never thought that that was how you learned how to cook.”

“Well, Sanders let me use his kitchen sometimes too,” Michael says.

“Right,” Alex nods. Michael’s mentioned before that Sanders is the reason why his omelets are nearly as good as Arturo’s. “So after cooking like that for so long, winging it is easy?”

“I guess, yeah,” Michael shrugs. “And, really, at the end of the day, cooking’s just chemistry—except things don’t generally explode as much when you mess up.”

“Mm, I don’t know about that,” Alex disagrees. “You should’ve seen me try to make brownies when I was a kid.”

“That bad?” Michael cringes.

“Oh yeah,” Alex answers. He’ll never forget that icy chill that ran down his spine when he’d seen what he’d done to the inside of the oven. If it wasn’t for Greg’s help cleaning everything up before their father got home, Alex probably would have been torn to pieces.

“Well, if you were making brownies, that’s baking. Cooking’s much more forgiving than baking,” Michael says. He gives Alex an assessing look before he says, “Come here, I’ll show you.”

Alex hesitantly closes the short distance between them, helped along by Michael tugging him by the hem of his shirt.

Michael must catch the reticence on his face because a second later he says, “Oh come on, you got this. I’ll talk you through it.”

“If you say so,” Alex sighs. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, you can start by opening the cans of crushed tomatoes and kidney beans,” Michael says.

Alex laughs. “Okay, I think I can manage that.”

In the time it takes Michael to run to the fridge to grab a bottle of beer and an opened container of beef broth leftover from the stroganoff he’d made the other day, Alex is already done.

“Do I add all of it?” Alex asks, holding the can of beans over the pot.

“Not those yet,” Michael says. “They need to be drained and rinsed. Do you know where the colander is?”

That Alex does know—he may be culinarily challenged, but he’s got his shit together enough to know how to boil water and follow the directions on a box of Kraft like every other red-blooded American.

He fishes it out from the cabinet under the counter in front of him and takes it to the sink along with the can of beans.

“So I just toss them in the colander and rinse them?” Alex double-checks.

“Yup!” Michael answers, upending the bottle of beer over the pot for a few counts before taking a long drink. “Bring ‘em over when you’re done.”

Alex rinses the beans thoroughly and shakes them over the sink to get rid of the excess water before carrying the colander back over to where Michael is standing by the stove. There’s a cutting board set up with a knife and two green bell peppers when he gets there. The can of crushed tomatoes he opened is already empty, so Michael must have tossed that in too while he was waiting.

“Do you want to dice the peppers?” Michael asks.

“Um,” Alex says, looking at them suspiciously. “Sure?”

“Here, I’ll do one and you can do the other,” Michael says, stepping in front of Alex to get at the cutting board. “Just watch what I do.”

Alex stands at his side and watches intently.

“You’ll want to start by cutting the stems and the bottoms off,” Michael tells him as he slices them off one of the peppers. “Then you should slice it down the middle and remove the seeds and this white stuff inside.” Michael runs his knife along the inner flesh of the pepper, cutting away the white until there’s nothing but green. “And now we can dice it.”

Michael cuts the pepper into strips and then pushes them together horizontally so he can dice them with another swift pass of his knife, leaving the pepper in uniform squares.

“Okay, now it’s your turn,” Michael says, moving aside so Alex can take his place.

Alex picks up the knife and follows Michael’s instructions. He thinks he’ll be able to manage it okay, as long as he doesn’t let Michael’s gentle encouragement in his ear distract him too much—He knows his way around a knife after all, albeit in very different circumstances.

He’s doing fine until he gets to the actual dicing part. His fingers can’t seem to keep a steady enough grip on the pepper strips to make the kind of uniform cuts that Michael had been able to execute.

“Hang on,” Michael murmurs, and a moment later Alex feels him warm and solid against his back.

Alex swallows as Michael’s palms travel down the length of his forearms, not stopping until he covers Alex’s hands with his own. He feels caged in like this, pressed up against the counter a little, Michael’s breath fanning over the back of his neck, and suddenly Alex’s thoughts are very far away from the chili he’s supposed to be helping Michael make.

“You want to let the knife do the work here,” Michael tells him, grabbing Alex’s attention once again. “It’s sharp, it’ll slice through it much easier if you don’t add so much pressure.” He guides Alex’s hand as he slices through a row of peppers, the motion much smoother now. “See? Much easier that way. Now try it on your own.”

Michael drops his hands to rest on Alex’s hips as he watches over his shoulder. Alex tries not to be distracted by the way his fingers are edging up under the hem of his shirt, the way Michael’s low hum of approval when he passes the knife over the peppers again makes his heart beat faster.

He thinks he has it handled until Michael drawls in his ear, “Perfect. Just like that, Alex. Nice, even strokes,” and Alex nearly chops his own finger off.

“Michael,” he says sharply, head spinning a little.

“Hm?” the bastard hums lazily, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“Are you fucking with me?” Alex asks, and he can feel Michael’s chest rumble with laughter against his back.

“Not yet,” Michael says, nuzzling into the side of his head a little to press a kiss over his pounding pulse, and Alex has to let go of the knife before he really does hurt himself.

He can feel Michael smile against his neck when he takes a deep, calming breath, bracing his hands on the counter.

“Go wash your hands,” Alex tells him, needing a minute to clear his head, “and then tell me how to finish this.”

“Yes, sir,” Michael says, and then the hands on his hips and the warmth at his back are gone.

Once he hears the sink running, Alex makes short work of the peppers and adds them to the pot.

Michael comes back a short moment later and stirs the diced peppers into the pot with one hand as he fiddles with the burner knob with the other. Alex leaves him to it while he washes his own hands.

“Perfect,” Michael comments when he’s satisfied. “Now it just needs to simmer for an hour.”

Alex doesn’t waste any time stepping back into Michael’s space, not even bothering to dry his hands on the dish towel Michael left by the sink. If Michael is upset about the water soaking into the thin fabric of his t-shirt where Alex grips his waist, he doesn’t say so. Instead, his hands slide up Alex’s shoulders, one of them finding a home in the short hair at the back of his neck.

“A whole hour, huh?” Alex asks, eyes drifting down toward Michael’s mouth.

“Mhmm,” Michael hums slowly, a coy smile spreading over his lips.

“That’s a lot of time,” Alex muses. “What do you think we should do with it?”

Michael’s grip on Alex’s hair tightens just a little. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

Michael manages to set the timer on the stove before Alex drags him back to his bedroom.

It’s a good thing, too. By the time the alarm goes off, they’ve worked up quite the appetite.

#malexsanta2020 #malexsanta #malex #malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #my fic

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arhvste · 4 years ago

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KUROO TETSURO - 3:37AM

summary - you and kuroo play hide and seek in the early hours of morning after the hot nights of mid august prevent you both from falling asleep - fluff

this was actually a prompt written by @emma_ichihara on tiktok that i absolutely needed to write about after i saw it so thank u for that queen <3

warnings - none

The heat in your bedroom was unbearable. Then again, you couldn’t say you didn’t expect it to be as mid august is always going to be a pain to sleep through.

You tossed about in your sheets flailing your arms and legs about trying to get some sort of breeze across your limbs only to flop down in frustration. Grabbing your phone from the side of your bed you checked the time. 2:27AM.

Your eyes squinted at the brightness of the screen and you put your phone back down only to hear it vibrate on the surface as soon as you let go of the device. Assuming it was going to be a random notification from one of your apps you almost decided to ignore it but something told you to check regardless.

Your eyes once again squinting as they adjusted to the luminous light emitting from your phone contrasting against the darkness of your room. Your heart fluttered as you read through the notification.

2:28AM - tetsoup : i know ur up right now

You unlocked your phone as you typed out your reply. A conversation flowing between the two of you.

2:28AM - thot chan : okay u got me sue me for not being able to handle the heat

2:29AM - tetsoup : would’ve thought after being around me so much you’d be able to handle the hot ;)

2:29AM - thot chan : ur a chemistry nerd u aren't hot

2:29AM - tetsoup : fail ur next chemistry exam for all i care dont ask me for help :(

2:30AM - thot chan : you wound me captain

2:30AM - thot chan : and what are u doing up right now?

2:31AM - tetsoup : same as u genius, this heat is making my body perspire more than what i’d like

2:31AM - thot chan : lmao that means u finna be smelly. go take a cold shower u farm animal

2:31AM - tetsoup : at 2am? i don't think so u imbecile, i have a better solution though

2:32AM - thot chan : and that is?

You stared at your phone expecting a reply quickly but after 5 minutes it never came.

‘Idiot must’ve fallen asleep’

You hummed as you set your phone back down and allowed your head to hit back against the soft pillows on your bed. The heat was still bothering you so it didn’t look like you were going to be getting much sleep, regardless you still tried by closing your eyes and trying to force your brain into drifting off into a peaceful slumber.

Not even 4 minutes into your attempt at forced sleep you heard your phone vibrate softly against the wood of your bedside table. Snatching it up towards your face you stared at the notification in disbelief.

2:43AM - tetsoup : im outside ur house hurry up the bugs are eating me alive

This boy.

Swinging your legs off the hurricane of sheets, pillows and your comforter, you dragged yourself over to the window to peek through your blinds. There stood your tall boyfriend with a big hoodie and sweatpants on, signature bedhead with his hands in his pockets patiently waiting for your arrival.

You smiled slightly. He really had your whole heart and you couldn’t deny that even if you tried.

Grabbing one of his hoodies you had ‘borrowed’ you threw on your shoes and quietly made your way to the front door carefully not wanting to disturb your parents and have them question your activities.

“Finally, my body was about to start decomposing from all the bugs attacking me from just standing here.”

“Sounds like a you problem.”

Kuroo pulled your smaller frame into his significantly larger one as you inhaled the scent of his hoodie. He buried his head into the crook of your neck as he gave it a soft kiss before looking back down at you.

“Come on let's go.”

You hummed in curiosity but allowed the boy to take your smaller hand into his larger calloused one and lead the way to the unknown destination.

It wasn’t rare for you and Kuroo to meet up during the night. Sure you spent a lot of time together most days but there was something about being the only ones out in such public places that made you both feel as if you were the only ones in the world. This feeling never got old to the pair of you as everytime the two of you met up in the earliest hours of morning you would find yourselves falling in love all over again with each other. These hours were the ones you held close to your evergrowing heart.

After 5 minutes of walking through the peaceful streets in your neighbourhood, Kuroo led you to the playground the two of you and Kenma would find yourselves occupied most days after school back when you were all younger. The place was such a public and overlooked one, but you all still cherished the memories created there and would sometimes find yourselves reminiscing on those times whenever you’d come back.

You let go of your boyfriend’s hand as you climbed onto the climbing structure which years ago would’ve proven to be more of a challenge for you to reach the top too. The platform a lot smaller than it used to be, you grabbed the railing and allowed a gentle breeze to run through the locks of your hair.

Kuroo looked up at you, adoration twinkling in his eyes. To him you were everything. He had known you ever since he first moved into the neighbourhood with his dad and grandparents. He used to find talking to others a struggle and found Kenma particularly hard to communicate with. You however, took the opportunity to get both boys to open up more to each other right by the reigns and within your first 6 months of being acquainted with each other, you had managed to get both boys comfortable enough to call you and each other a friend in confidence. For that, Kuroo was eternally grateful and even more so when you accepted his romantic feelings towards you 3 years ago.

“Let’s play hide and seek, you know, like we used to.”

You turned smiling to the beheaded captain. He gave you his signature smirk and turned around.

“You’ve got 30 seconds, be prepared to lose immediately.”

You laughed as he began to count up to 30, crouching behind a slide that you thought covered yourself from his view. It actually took Kuroo 54 seconds to find you and you turned the childish game into a small competition between the two of you, tallying up who could find the other the fastest each time.

It got to your 13th round and this time you were hiding inside the slide. Kuroo had yet to find you and it had been 8 minutes already. This confused you slightly as the usually perceptive boy would’ve found you by now. You climbed out of the slide and onto the platform as you glanced around your surroundings seeing no signs of him.

You raised your eyebrow as you knew the boy surely must be messing with you. He would never actually abandon you especially without letting you know.

Cupping your hands to both sides of your mouth you let yourself lean towards the railing of the climbing structure.

“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo!”

You called out while continuing to scan the area in your view.

What you weren’t expecting was for strong arms to find their way around your waist as you felt someone's hot breath against the skin on your neck.

“I’m right here, my beautiful Juliet.”

You gasped as Kuroo kissed your neck before spinning you around to look at you directly. One of his hands supporting your back and the other moving a piece of loose hair away from your face, he stared into your eyes which twinkled under the stars. You smiled widely at him as he admired your gorgeous face.

He allowed his hand to trail down your neck until he moved his fingers to weave through your hair delicately. Moving his head down, he softly kissed your lips as you melted into his touch. Your hands moved to his broad shoulders as he deepened the kiss making you sigh in satisfaction. You hummed as he drew small circles on your back with his long fingers let your own hands move towards his untamable hair and rake through it resulting in a hum of approval from him.

You both pulled away as you studied each other's expressions. In that moment Kuroo had fallen for you even deeper if that was possible. Every fibre in his being adored you and it took so much self control to not just tackle you off the structure and cuddle you forever. You were his soulmate he was sure of that. The idea of love had never crossed Kuroo’s mind until middle school when you had both grown up a little bit more. He was focused on volleyball and keeping up his grades but you were always at the back of his mind driving him crazy to the point where he felt he had no other choice than to explore these foreign feelings for you. He would argue that by confessing to you, he had made the best decision in his life. You brought nothing but pure light into his life he was convinced you were some sort of guardian angel. You couldn’t be real. You were a living goddess and there were times when he’d feel like you were too good to be true.

The feelings were mutual on your side too. Kuroo Tetsuro had been a challenge for you to get to open up but when he did he didnt hold back on subconsciously taking your heart and occupying your thoughts on the daily. The two of you held such a deep and indescribable love for each other sometimes you felt like it was too hard to contain.

Brought back to reality by your hand caressing his cheek Kuroo turned to you and smiled so genuinely.

“Y/N, I am so so in love with you.”

“I know Tetsu. I love you too. So much.”

You pecked his cheek as he guided you off the climbing structure and onto the soft grass surrounding the playground.

You both laid there in a comfortable silence as you allowed the sounds of distant cars passing through the busy city of tokyo, and the soft sounds of crickets chirping as you cuddled up to Kuroo’s chest.

He wrapped his muscular arms around you and pulled you close to him whispering “I love you” over and over again quietly enough for only you to hear.

The early morning had reached 3AM and you both knew you’d have to make your way back to your homes soon but right now nothing else mattered.

The only thing on your minds was the fact you were both stupidly in love with each other and you would continue to allow yourselves to fall in love over and over again as you stared at the stars whispering small professions of love to one another for the remaining time you spent outside.

Kuroo Tetsuro, a perceptive boy who hadn’t considered love until you came into his life, had never felt such raw emotion in his life and it was these early hour moments which he would hold close to his heart for the rest of his life which he had planned to go through with you by his side.

#kuroo tetsurou #haikyuu!!#haikyuu #oneshot #kuroo x reader #fanfic #x reader

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ramblings-of-a-mad-cat · 4 years ago

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Do you have any HCs for Merula?

So. So many. Long post ahead. Very long post. With many thoughts. Many, many thoughts about the best witch at Hogwarts. Proceed with caution.

Let’s start with her childhood. Her early childhood. Her parents were probably akin to the Malfoys. They taught her bad life lessons, but I do not believe they were abusive. I think they genuinely loved her. I also notice how callous she is about Voldemort - being one of the few characters to actually speak his name, at all of eleven years old. My belief is that Merula’s parents were involved less because they cared about blood supremacy and more because they were attracted to the power and freedoms they thought they could have as Death Eaters. To practice dark magic, to be feared and respected by the community.

Merula seems to have absorbed all of that in full. She seems to view the world as a division between the strong and the weak, not the good and the evil. Law of the jungle, kill or be killed. The Death Eater ideology. Merula may spout Pure-blood bigotry, but I guarantee you she doesn’t actually give a damn about blood status. It’s just an easy short-cut to dominate people in social situations, which is something she clings to. Because she’s weak, and she knows it. But she’s been taught to respect power and to embody it. Merula is trying to fake it until she makes it. I also think she doesn’t have any respect for Voldemort at all, thinks of him as a failure - he was supposedly killed by a baby, after all.

But Merula is also highly insecure about her own talents, even if she always defaults to overselling them. After her parents went to Azkaban, she must have been spiraling. Looking for something or someone to latch onto. A purpose. Her aunt is supposedly watching her but that clearly isn’t the case. She cuts her own hair. She dresses herself - half her clothes don’t fit and she wears more make-up than some of the seventh years. Merula may not have known it, but I think all she wanted was to be loved, and she wasn’t get that from her aunt, or anyone. So she defaulted. Defaulted to trying to gain power. And oh look, what’s that in the Daily Prophet? This Jacob character, and his quest to open the Cursed Vaults? This was her opportunity. Her chance to prove herself. Unlike Jacob and Voldemort, those pathetic failures, Merula could make a name for herself. She will be the best witch at Hogwarts. If she has to cram that down everyone’s throats, she will be.

There was only one problem. Jacob had a sibling. From jump, they had the advantage over her, not that she would ever admit it. Merula must have calculated that Jacob’s Sibling would know more about the Vaults than her. For all she knew, Jacob left them a road map. Not only that, on her first day of trying to assert herself against Rowan, Jacob’s Sibling interrupted and was not scared of her, at all. They had already won over Rowan, and they did not hesitate to tell Snape what Merula was doing. I believe from the moment, Merula feared them, envied them, and though she would never admit it to herself, admired them. It only got worse when they escaped the Devil’s Snare, and stood up to her while she was bullying the one person who her intimidation scheme had actually worked on, Ben Copper.

Lots of people hate Merula for the Devil’s Snare scheme, but what did we expect? She was raised by two Death Eaters, and she’s seen them kill Aurors before. Of course her Plan A was to kill Jacob’s Sibling. Of course she wanted to ruin Jacob’s reputation. She’s trying to emulate her mother, I bet you anything. I bet you anything that she’s wearing her mother’s makeup. Perhaps even her old clothes. That being said, I also think Merula has very conflicted feelings about her mother. Because her parents failed - they were taken to Azkaban. I’m willing to bet that Merula hasn’t spoken to them since. But she wants to. She keeps trying to write them letters, and crosses everything out. Maybe she’s waiting for them to send a letter first. Hoping that they will, even if she won’t admit it. Feeling hurt that they haven’t. There’s always visitation, but who’s going to take her on a trip to Azkaban? Are children even allowed to visit there? Even if they are, she has no one to take her. Speaking of that, let’s talk about Dementors.

What does Merula hear when Dementors are nearby? Actually, we could talk about all of her magical signatures. My head-canon for her wand is Holly and Dragon Heartstring. Yes, I do think she has the same wand wood as Harry James Potter. It tends to lean to people who are “impetuous” and prone to anger. I think Merula’s Boggart would likely be something to do with Jacob’s Sibling, at least in the early days. They were the one standing in the way of her goals. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they were involved with her Erised vision as well, perhaps something to do with them and her parents. Post Portrait Vault, we know what Merula’s Boggart would be. And we know what she would hear when Dementors are close. But prior to the Portrait Vault? She definitely hears the arrest of her parents, and the trial...she was, after all, present for it. Come to think of it...what if she was there as a witness? Not willingly, of course. Too young to understand what was going on, bullied into giving testimony about that auror that her parents killed...Merula’s Worst Memory, perhaps? Well, at least until the Portrait Vault, anyway.

Tulip Karasu. Oh my, Tulip Karasu. She, like Merula’s parents, is one of a few people who would ultimately challenge her worldview. Merula loves her parents and misses them, despite their “failure” embodying everything that she tries to reject. Along comes Tulip - someone brilliant. A loner like Merula. They’re two shady little oddballs and they gravitate to each other. The admiration is mutual, and unlike with Jacob’s Sibling, Merula doesn’t feel as much reluctance to enjoy Tulip’s company. But she still doesn’t let all her walls down. She won’t admit Tulip is her friend, even if they’ve become best mates. I think both of these two characters changed each other, a bit. That a little of Tulip rubbed off on Merula, and vice-versa. When the betrayal happened, like so many other traumatic events in Merula’s life, it set her back. She regressed. Bonds make a person weak. People, associates, are only good for one thing - using them to further your own ends. This is what Merula learned. This is what Tulip unfortunately taught her. That being said, I don’t think it meant nothing to her when Tulip become friends with MC. Followed by Barnaby. This is where her envy of Jacob’s Sibling would probably reach a boiling point. Where she (almost justifiably) might feel as though they were taking everything from her. However horrible Merula might have behaved, no one wants to hear they are terrible in all of the ways their rival is great.

While all of this is happening, I think Merula continued to try and flex. To prove herself. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried out for Quidditch every year to honor her parents, and either didn’t make the team outright, or was disqualified for trying to sabotage other participants. All the while, she continues to show-boat and flex. I bet her favorite Quidditch team is the Falmouth Falcons, who are famous for being violent and playing dirty. (Look them up, they’re exactly her kind of people.) Speaking of that, ever wonder what her relationship was like with Felix? Or Snape? We know that Felix defends her and calls MC a bully if you trick him for the Common Room break-in during Year 2. Anyone with half a brain knows that’s not what’s happening, and I’m sure Felix does too. He knows what Merula gets up to. But he lies and defends her, however much she might drive him crazy, because she is still his charge. Because Slytherins take care of their own. I’d imagine the same thing is true with Snape. He cannot stand Merula, but he will still try to look out for her or clean up her messes when he can, because she’s one of the snakes. Remember when he said “I genuinely wish you weren’t lying.” He doesn’t want to punish Merula. Not like he does MC. Merula is clearly the obnoxious little sister of Slytherin house.

Along comes Year 4. Along comes Patricia Rakepick. Strap in everybody, it’s time to get to heart of Merula’s problems. Mainly her mommy issues. Because Rakepick is, or at least appears to be, everything that Merula wishes she could be. This is someone she can emulate, like she did her mother. Someone she can idolize without any of that confused anger that she has toward MC - who, at the same time, she is growing fond of, whether she admits it to herself or not. Rakepick essentially represents everything that her parents used to be, and could have been, had they not “failed.” Merula herself draws the comparison. This isn’t lost on Rakepick, and she makes use of it. There’s no way that Rakepick’s comparison to the Curse-Breaking apprentice team of Year 5 being like a “family” wasn’t done for Merula’s benefit. Merula hears that, and she feels accepted. She feels loved. Like she’s part of a family again. It’s dysfunctional and weird, but that’s all she knows. She doesn’t just want to emulate Rakepick and learn to be powerful like her...she wants to earn Rakepick’s approval, to make her proud. To “win” the love of a mother figure. I believe Tulip’s suspicion, Tulip’s ability to see what was really going on, unfortunately only pushed Merula further away from her and closer to her new “family.”

Speaking of pushing people away, it’s about time we talked about Ismelda Murk. About the friendship that was formed out of mutual convenience, rather than actual chemistry. By the end of Year 3, these two loners don’t have anyone else. But they don’t click the way that Merula did with Tulip. Ismelda doesn’t have the talents or the passion that Merula admired in Tulip, and Ismelda has far less patience for Merula’s show-boating. But they were all each other had, at least at first. Then Merula completely dropped Ismelda in favor of her new “family” because she was feeling emotional fulfillment and didn’t “need” Ismelda anymore. Most of this would be unconscious, but that would be the motivator. Considering that Ismelda started hanging out with Beatrice in Year 6, and Merula is rarely involved, I think it’s safe to say the two of them never recovered from that distance.

Meanwhile, Merula is having the time of her life with her new family. With her annoying but mostly harmless older brother Bill. With her long-time rival turned sort-of friend now acting as a sibling figure. A sibling figure...who she has romantic tension with. (Hey, I did say that it was dysfunctional. That’s almost certainly on purpose.) And then there’s her amazing, badass new mom. Everything is shaping up for Merula. She’s going to be the Best Witch at Hogwarts, the greatest Curse-Breaker the world has ever known. All she has to do is emulate. Try to be just like the amazing Patricia Rakepick. Our poor child truly believed all this. Then the Portrait Vault happened. Look, we need to face that however fun the dynamic might have been, however “cool” mentor-Rakepick was...it was never a truly good thing. It wouldn’t be, even if she wasn’t a villain. Rakepick was never cut out to look after children, beyond grooming them into being lawless explorers like her. And honestly? She was completely open about that. But that’s just what Merula wanted. It’s what she thought she needed. She wouldn’t gravitate to someone like Flitwick, or McGonagall. No, she’d want someone like her parents. Someone powerful, who doesn’t play by the rules. Someone cool. Like Rakepick, or Jacob. (We’ll get to that.)

So imagine how much it completely shattered her world when Rakepick did what she did. The Cruciatus Curse is one thing. It’s unspeakable. But I guarantee you the real damage was done with Rakepick’s words. “Merula thinks she’s my favorite? Is she anyone’s?” I promise you those words cut through Merula like a knife - because there was a lot of truth to them. Every time that MC or one of their peers told Merula how horrible she was. Every time someone chose MC over her. All of that insecurity upended with just a few simple words. But it’s so much worse than that. This is worse than Tulip’s betrayal, not just on the scale, not just because it happened a second time...but because this is a mother figure, something Merula desperately wanted and needed. For the second time in her life, she’s losing that...and being made to feel responsible for it. After all, shouldn’t she have “known better” than to let her walls down? Didn’t she know better than to show weakness? Vulnerability? Rakepick is reinforcing all the wrong lessons with this betrayal. She is setting Merula back countless steps. Anyone would regress after this and Merula was in such a fragile state of development. She was making baby steps to being a better person. But then all of good that came out of this weird family unit was washed away. Merula had the rug pulled out from under her once again, and there’s nothing she hates and fears more than being in that position.

Why do you think she becomes so desperate to have revenge when all is said and done? What else does Merula have at this point? What else can she latch onto, what else can she default to? Just like when she lost her parents, and was spiraling...she needed something. A purpose. So she wouldn’t go mad. So she wouldn’t have to properly confront all of his trauma. Make no mistake, Merula is not in touch with how she’s really feeling right now. She’s displacing it, putting it in a box and sticking with what she knows. Anger. Domination. Power. These are the only ways that she knows how to navigate the world. If you can’t do that, you fail, and it’s your own fault. That’s what she believes, and after what Rakepick put her through, why wouldn’t she? Merula doesn’t want revenge. She feels like she needs it. Rakepick “defeated” her, and that sits in her heart, tied to the betrayal. She thinks if she can kill Rakepick, she can put all this behind her. But of course she can’t, of course that’s not how it works. Even if Merula was powerful enough to finish off Rakepick, and even if she wasn’t investigated for it, it wouldn’t make her happy. She would just feel empty. And I think she knows that too, on some level. But she can’t admit it to herself. She’s regressed, and the lack of self-awareness is almost heart-breaking. She’s latched onto Jacob in the same way that she did Rakepick. Rejected any affection with Jacob’s Sibling as well, probably because she associates them with Rakepick, emotionally. That positive bond was part of the whole “apprentice” team, that Rakepick founded. What’s more, she’s learned her lesson about being vulnerable with people. What if the next person to betray Merula, is MC? After what happened, how does she know that they won’t be? Better not to risk it.

You might notice two phrases that I’ve been using a lot. “She would never admit it to herself.” and “She defaulted to-” Because that’s kind of Merula’s whole deal. She has a pathological aversion to looking vulnerable, which she’s unable to reconcile with the reality that we can’t always avoid that. She’s in denial. She also associates cruelty with strength. She associates empathy and kindness with being “weak.” This is why she tries so hard to be a bully. She’s trying to be dominant. It’s what she defaults to, as I’ve said. But she’s only human. Let’s be honest, she’s not cold-hearted or emotionless. She isn’t sadistic. She ‘s a wounded child, who has shown time and again that she has feelings - she definitely felt something for characters like Tulip, Rakepick, and MC. But to admit that is to admit vulnerability. To apologize for anything she’s done, however sorry she might actually be, to admit she’s wrong -about anything - is to admit vulnerability Merula just can’t do that. Everything she’s ever learned...from her parents. From Tulip. From Rakepick.

#Merula Snyde #HPHM Analysis #Tulip Karasu #Patricia Rakepick #HPHM Jacob's Sibling #Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery #HPHM Headcanons #HPHM Merula

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butterbeeryuta · 5 years ago

Text

You

Inspired by Netflix original series, 'You.'

yuta x reader | stalker!yuta au | smut, thriller | 6.0 k

warning: mention of drugs, profanity, death, stalker behaviour, sex scene

Note: Sometimes, you have to do what is right. It may not be right for you, or anyone else, but hey, ethics is a tough area of study. In the end, we all have our own personal morals anyway. It’s called egoism. Believe me, I’m doing this for you. Just hang on, we’ll meet, and you will be mine.

Ah, I was waiting for you. Three twenty-four p.m. every Wednesday and Friday. For the rest of the days, you either have work at the clothing store as a sales clerk and English assistance, or at the café if their pancakes are on sale. But, today is Friday. You walked in the library rather silently if I have to say. I’ve been observing you since last year when you entered this university from a TA’s perspective. Today, you were wearing a button-up shirt tucked into your jeans, so it can be assumed that you take a business related course—maybe economics, or business studies. But, I know you don’t. You’re in your second year of university taking biochemistry hoping to be a pharmacist to help your adopted older brother, Lucas, recover from his drug addiction. You have a really caring and supportive father who will do anything for his children, and that is because he does not know about your brother’s condition. He thinks that your brother is doing fantastic studying marine biology abroad in Australia, when he is actually living with you and your roommate in Seoul still figuring who the hell he is. As per your mother, nobody knows I guess. Nobody really knows, and neither do you. But, let’s pretend I do not know that for now.

Your eyes were looking for where to sit. You looked unsure if you should sit next to Kim Eunseo, the third year student in the acting department known for vomiting on her boyfriend, or the empty spot in front of me, the teacher assistant for chemical thermodynamics. Or maybe, you want to sit beside Na Jaemin, the heartthrob freshman of Hanyang University. The boy was perfect; pretty face, honey-like voice, and takes media studies and journalism under a 50% scholarship. But, I am better. I am better for you, and not that heartthrob, and neither is your ‘small’ crush on Dong fucking Sicheng who also happens to like you. Your eyes scanned over the empty seats, and for whatever god or spirit that was listening to me, you seemed to walk over to my space. Good job, you’re taking the initiative to come near me. It’s good progress my dear.

‘Hi, Yuta right? Is it alright if I can use the socket in front of you for my iPad?’ So that was the reason. Maybe next time you will willingly sit near me because of me, and not for that device of yours. And it’s been almost two years my love, how are you still so unsure about my name?

‘Yeah, of course, here let me plug it in for you… y/n right?’ That’s good Yuta, do the same thing your loved one does. You smiled brightly in return, nodding your head in approval. You should smile more my dear, it looks wonderful on you. So much more wonderful than the sorrowful and heavy eyes you have whenever you come home when having to deal with that gigantic brother of yours from both family and school stress. But trust me, all of this pain and pressure will all be lifted once you fall into my arms. I will keep you safe and loved. Your hand reached out of your bag for the charger, the white wire coiling against your smooth skin. My dear, the things you do so innocently can mean something else for people like me. Imagine your vulnerable and frail little body tied up against the bed with a white rope, it will look so good against your skin. For a person so intelligent academically, I wonder why you have a crush on a man who just so happens to like you back. He’s such as ass acting all cute and innocent when in reality he just wants you to teach him and give your notes just so that he can pass Biology 101. Your hand, or I guess the charger, made its way to mine, our skin touching for a brief second. Our first time holding hands.

‘Thank you so much. And just for the record, I do know that your name is Yuta. You’re the TA for chemical thermodynamics. And also because that was the class I got highest in’ you added, smiling shyly as you look at your iPad, probably a digital copy of your polymer chemistry textbook. Of course you got the highest in that subject. Yes you are intelligent, highly intelligent if I have to say, but a 97% as an average may slightly be an exaggeration in comparison to your original average of a 83%.

‘Ah yes of course. 97% in chemical thermodynamics, how can I ever forget you.�� I added with a smile.

‘Surprisingly yeah. I genuinely thought material chemistry was my best, but now I guess it’s thermodynamics.’ You added. You’re not lying. Material chemistry was, and still is your best. You’re doing great in all subjects love, so you do not need to worry about that. It’s just your fucked up brother, and your insufferable crush.

‘Well you did amazingly well on your test. With a brain like yours, you would be wanted to come join the seminars for your thesis paper you’ll write in the next 2 years.’ You only smiled in return, your go-to-move when you just want to start working on your stuff. I saw that happen way too many times. For example, two years ago on the 7th of December at the café, the waiter asked for your phone number, but you only smiled and rejected in response. Last year on April 30th when you were on your trip to Jeju island with your friends, Yeeun and Sooyoung, you wanted to stay in your hotel room because you were tired, so you smiled to the girls and rejected their offer to go to beach. And what did you do instead while your friends were swimming and tanning? You masturbated while watching lesbian porn on that exact same iPad you are studying from. With that note, I let you work on whatever you had to do, while I should be checking the current materials in the lab for the lab experiment for the freshmen students. God I hate being a TA.

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It has been exactly three hours and seventeen minutes since you came, working hard on your notes as you listen to piano versions of kpop songs. You’re honestly so cute sometimes, it’s really hard to control myself and devour you. But that time shall come naturally to us one day. If not, I will ensure it will happen.

‘Hey, can I ask something?’ Are you talking to me? I looked up at the love of my life. Your eyes looking at me, very clear to me that you want something.

‘Yeah, what is it?’ Well that sounded quite rude.

‘I know that you’re a Chemistry graduate student, and as mentioned earlier, you work as a teacher assistant. I was wondering if there is a job open at the university? I do work at the clothing store, but I sorta need more income since I have to move apartments. Anyway, um, is there a job open?’ You asked. More jobs to move? What the fuck, is your roommate kicking you out? Your voice sounded so… desperate, needy, broken. You were broken.

‘Well I doubt it you can be a TA, but I’ll see if I can get you the lab technician position, or maybe the university’s official peer tutor. I’ll see what I can do.’ And there is that beautiful smile again. Obviously I will have to actually ask the professors and administrators, but they know your reputation and capabilities love. They talk about how you’re ready to go to graduate school in an instant, and how you’ll be a great asset in the research department. I promise you, your life will be perfect the moment those two men stop dragging you, especially Lucas.

‘Thank you so, so, so, much Yuta. Here, let me give you my contact for easier access…’ Good job my dear, good job.

Wine is disgusting. The amount of tannin present is so overwhelming, leaving an unpleasant taste in your mouth. I don’t know why you like it love, but here I am in a restaurant that serves multiple different types of wine. Red, white, mulled, rose—all of which I know you will greatly enjoy. I want to question why you drink this, but I know. It’s all you ever post on that nonsensical Instagram page of yours. Wine. Wine. Wine. Sometimes there’s a splash of red, or clear bubbles coming from time to time. You’re a mess, a drunken mess. Which is why I am here; I will fix everything for you. Knowing that you texted your group chat entitled as ‘vagina power’ twenty-three minutes ago that you were on the way to the restaurant, you should walk through that door in three, two, on—

‘Excuse me, is Mr. Nakamoto Yuta here?’ Your voice asked the waitress. Technology never fails, I can assure you that. There you were in your clothes from class today. You had medicinal chemistry, human physiology, organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, then ended the day with Korean—you must be exhausted my love. While you were apologising being late as you made your way to the table, all I could notice were your dark under eyes, the dullness in your eyes, and the slight oiliness on your scalp. You are overworked and internally dead. Despite my one year and a bit of research on you, what I could never answer was why you are working so damn hard and not letting one in to help you. Yes, I know that it is your goal to be this highly skilled pharmacist to help your brother, but you yourself knows that even without the excessive revising, you will still make it. Back in senior high school a guy named Kim Yugyeom asked you out, and you said no. You also said no to Park Jimin, Kim Jungwoo, Bang Chan, and even your first ever crush in Grade 11—Yoo Jeongyeon. She made you think girls were for you, but you still said no even if you two fucked in the laboratory because you didn’t ‘finish’ your experiment. Why do you always say no?

‘… thank you so much.’ You were still talking?

‘No problem at all. So, how’s university?’ Keep the conversation going Yuta, keep it going.

‘Well, it is challenging and heavy, but I guess I am doing fine. But now that I get the lab technician job, it will hopefully get better’ you say much more cheerfully, contrasting the tiredness and paleness of your face. You’re an unheard ghost.

‘Well that is how university is. But to congratulate you for your new job, we must make a toast!’ You raised your glass, and so do I, and we clinked. My, how can you not love this person. The moment I see you, all I want to do is hug you, protect you, and love you. If I can make you mine, treat you as my own, I will be the happiest man on the earth.

‘So how did you become a TA?’ You asked as you sipped your alcoholic beverage; your plush lips pressing so tightly against the rim of the glass cup and—Yuta, stop it.

‘Well, I took Chemistry only for my undergrad, and a bit of IT and languages. Then the professor, Professor Seo, asked me to be his teacher assistant initially for organic chemistry. But, I hated that subject and I ended up negotiating to change my position after a month. Then I got the chemical thermodynamics TA job. It’s honestly the exact same job, but I just prefer this topic.’ This is most likely that only truth that I have told you, and you were still listening to me for every word. A true listener with a bright mind, yet not bright enough to realise I have been watching you for more than one year.

‘Well, I think that is great. But let’s move away from academics, I just had five classes straight and I will honestly evaporate into thin air if I hear the c-word again.’ You say as you slightly chuckle. Alright then, what should we talk about? The reason to why you’re leaving your apartment? Your reason to deny people’s offer when they ask you out on a date? Why you overwork yourself to death to a point where you’re affecting yourself physically? Tell me, I need to know.

‘So you wanted to leave your current apartment right? Why’s that?’ You froze for a while. Eyebrows furrowed, eyes moving to the side. Almost unsure if you should respond to my question. You do have a point though, this is by far our first oral conversation, you barely know me.

‘I can’t afford my current apartment anymore since I kind of forced my brother to be moved to the hospital. So I need to save up more money to pay for hospital bills and the cheaper apartment.’ You quietly replied, your eyes still avoiding mine.

‘Oh no, what happened to your brother?’

‘He’s sick. Mentally ill.’ Well, at least you’re not lying to me. Though you could have said that your brother was kicked out of the University of Adelaide for failing all his classes, then he moved back to Seoul with you all high and reliant on that white powdery poison. It has been two years, and he was barely improving, and you had to move him to a hospital. Why didn’t you tell your father who loves the both of you unconditionally? It was because for that exact reason—he loves the two of you unconditionally. You knew for a fact that once your father finds out that your brother is a drug addict mess, Lucas is cut from the family, and you just could not let that happen. You two grew up together, and he used to take care of you a lot when you were in high school. He helped you drive around places, or libraries per se, and he also bought you snacks and all. He seemed to be very happy and caring back then, and you do not know what happened to him the moment he touched down in Australia.

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I hope he gets better soon.’

‘Thank you, I hope he does too.’ The conversation is dying Yuta, quick, think of something.

‘So when are you planning to move?’

‘Oh um, maybe sometime in February or end of January. I will be getting my apartment keys in the next two weeks, so yeah, around those times.’ I better clean up my schedule during that time then.

‘Hey if you need help in moving, just let me know. I will be willing to help.’ Your eyes finally looked up to meet mine, slightly bigger than usual as the corner of your lips were about to rise. You were about to reject my offer.

‘I-I think it’s fine, I’ll be able to manage on my own—‘

‘No, no, I insist. You’re going through quite a bit, the least I can do is help you move in your stuff.’ You nodded instead, bringing your lips to a tight line. You’re considering my offer aren’t you?

‘Alright, I’ll let you know when I’m moving.’ You say as you comb your hair backwards with your fingers. I cannot wait to make you mine.

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It��s been about two months since we had our first proper conversation, and we have not stopped since.

‘You know, Ikea is the greatest thing that has ever came into existence.’ You say, carrying the big wooden compartment for your bed. Which will eventually be our bed, but I can wait.

‘Hmm, I remembered a few days ago you said ice cream was the greatest invention in human history.’ And it is arguably true. It’s comfort food, and keeps you happy from the amount of sugar stored in which makes your brain beg for more. It’s addicting yet unhealthy, but you cannot stop yourself. You crave it when you’re happy, sad, angry, stressed, tired— it’s designed for you to be beg, and beg, and be—

‘Ice cream is a great invention, I do not deny that. We should get ice cream afterwards once we’re done building this bed.’ You smiled at me, again. That beautiful and bright smile of yours can melt anyone my dear, you better be careful before you flash it to anyone else. ‘Anyway, we should go back to building this thing, I want to sleep tonight’ you added, moving your legs again to attach the next piece of the bed frame. Maybe I misread you a bit, you seem to work hard in everything. Not only in academics, but you’ve been doing your best in the lab, academically, ensuring your brother feels safe at the hospital, and even in making a goddamn bed frame for yourself. It is almost as if you barely take any breaks, and yet you do not seem to mind. Maybe you just enjoy to work hard.

‘Ice cream later is it then. Are you the type to eat those weird flavours like into mint chocolate or strawberry cheesecake, or some shit like that?’ Of course I knew what you liked. A few months ago, October the 12th to be exact, you went for ice cream with your lab partner, Sana, and you had chocolate only. You claimed yourself to be an avid chocolate lover. I honestly do not blame you for that.

‘I don’t think they’re weird or anything, but I just prefer to have plain chocolate. I just like chocolate in general. How about you?’

‘I’m more of a matcha type of guy.’ Another honest thing that came out of my mouth. You chuckled in response, nodding your head up and down just by a little. You want to say something don’t you? ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Oh, it’s nothing too bad. It’s just very Japanese of you,’ you answered, trying to snap yourself out of a giggly state. Cute. After our small chat, we eventually set up the wooden frame, and placed the mattress on top along with placing of the beige bedsheet. I can’t believe this will be the exact same bed where we’ll have our first everything, including our children. We will have two beautiful daughters: Saya and Emiko. They will be four years apart, and both girls will be at least bilingual. They will also love and cherish the both of us. With our combined intelligence, our girls will conquer the industries, wrapping the entire world in their little, delicate fingers. We will be a perfect family of four, and this bed, the one we have just made together, will be with us until the end. Just before my mind could go somewhere else, your tired body dropped on the newly made bed, feeling the softness and the warmth provided by the material.

‘I know you’re tired too Yuta, you should lay down too,’ you say with your eyes closed, both your hands interlocking with one another just above your abdomen. From what I know, you only do this when you are really tired, thinking of all sort of different scenarios. Since you asked me to anyway, I laid down beside your exhausted body, embracing the same warmth the bed is providing. ‘You know, I’ve never really had anyone over at my place since I’m so busy and all, but I’m glad you came and helped me move’ you softly say, your eyes finally open as your orbs look directly up at the plain ceiling.

‘It’s not a problem really, you do seem tired during lessons so I figured helping you a bit can hopefully ease whatever you’re going through.’ You grinned at what I said, as if you somewhat agree. I do hope it’s true my dear. You had it tough with your brother, but I will assure you that you will become the pharmacist you deserve to be.

‘You did, Yuta. You did.’ The bed slightly shifted, only to see you on your side as you look at me, and here I am looking back at you. Without hesitation, your lips pressed against mine, something I did not expect at all. Since when were you like this? Have I misread you all this time? You rejected so many different guys and one girl, yet now you are acting to brave and different in contrast to my observations and research over the past years. Although multiple questions came across my head, this does not mean I have to stop whatever you just began.

Your warm hand made its way to my left cheek, rubbing the cheek back and forth with your thumb, almost the same gesture when you caress your loved ones. Grabbing your left leg, I pulled over my body, allowing you to sit on top of me, our bodies so close to being connected, to being united. The kiss did not break at all, in fact, it deepened. You surprisingly took the initiative to tap the velvety muscle on my bottom lip, so needy to enter the hot cavern. Maybe this is your way to ensure that you can trust me, and that somebody can love you forever. Maybe this is a process of yours to know that you will be taken care of for eternity. I deserve to be with you my love, you are everything to me, and I know I will be your everything. Your tongue eventually slipped through my lips; both our wet muscles meeting each others, exploring each others caverns for the first time. My arms were holding you tightly against my body, keeping your fragile body on top of mine—I do not want to let you go. But, how do I know that you really want this? Despite the fact that I do not want this to end, I had to pull away, just to be sure. Our mouths slowly separated with the presence of a string of wetness proving the intense session we just had. Your forehead fell against mine, your eyes clouded with lust as you pant heavily against me.

‘Do you still want to do this?’ I have to know.

‘Y-yes, please make me feel good’ you whispered against me. Fuck.

*Disclaimer: sex scene will begin from here. This will be a female x male smut scene, so if this is something you do not want to read, please scroll down until you see another disclaimer similar to this. Please keep in mind that I will write a male x male scene, so please do not feel too disappointed. I am sorry that I was not able to write it on the same day as the publication. Thank you.

Our lips reconnected again, only this time, the feeling was much more intense. I poured in all of my frustration of waiting, and the amount of love and lust I have for you my love. I flipped us over, finally seeing your sensitive and fragile body below me. You are a sight to see my dear, but only for me. I have seen the way your body trembles as your delicate fingers enter in and out of you; your legs shake uncontrollably, your free hand unconsciously slips inside your hot mouth trying to keep yourself quiet, and your beautiful face contorts in pure pleasure. I want you to do the exact same, but I want you to be louder, and I want to be the one pleasuring you. The moment our tongues touched again, I took the initiative to envelop your velvety muscle with my lips, tasting you completely, leaving you as a moaning mess under me. So you like this. I continued to do so as your hips slightly rocks back and forth, your covered sex rubbing against me. Leaving your mouth, I peppered kisses down your addictive skin, taking in the honey-like scent you had. Soft whimpers escaped your throat, clearly enjoying the amount of care and love you were receiving. You deserve this. My hands slipped under your shirt, feeling the soft and supple skin until I met your clothed breasts. Massaging the flesh against my hands, your fingers crawled up behind my neck, slowly making its way to my hair, pulling the roots so gently. My dear, you are indeed irresistible.

‘Yuta t-touch me please,’ you beg, moving your hips even rougher than before, almost as if you are trying to reach for your orgasm by yourself. I chuckled at your submissive manner, knowing exactly what to do to make you come.

‘You want to come my princess? Do you want your pretty pussy to come over my tongue? You’d like that won’t you as you beg nonstop.’ I read that on your diary, you wanted someone to go down on you and make you orgasm uncontrollably, and you want to repeat the process until you beg them to stop. My dear, you are one dirty little girl. You only whimpered in response, nodding your head vigorously. Although it would have been ideal to get a response from you, I know for a fact that the last time you got laid was five months ago with your colleague at the clothing store, Lee Minho. I hope that he is forgotten. Pulling your shirt up, I kissed down from your supple skin until I met the top of your black sweats. I slowly pulled at the strings as my eyes looked up to meet yours. There you were with your glossy and lust-filled eyes as your bite your finger, anticipating what would happen to you. Your chest was heaving up and down as I pulled at your pants, only to reveal you in your sheer white bra and panties. What a fucking sight. Pulling your legs apart, a visible wet patch was displayed, showing a clear outline of your pink lips begging to be destroyed.

‘I haven’t even touched your greedy little hole and yet you are so wet princess.’ Before you could even say anything, my tongue made contact with the soaked cloth, tasting the sweet essence as a moan of relief escaped your throat. Continuing to lick up and down against your clothed sex, your fingers made it to the roots of my hair as your slowly rock your core against my face. Your moans slowly turned louder and louder, and all I can say is, I was definitely going to implode. Allowing you to take control of me, your legs started to tremble on either side of my head as the tip of my tongue was on your covered clitoris. To further intensify the feeling, I pulled your barely existing panties to the side, sucking on your clit, tasting you properly, eating you out like a starved man.

‘Fuck!’ You screamed, legs shaking vigorously as your fingers left my hair for your lips. Without letting you rest, I grabbed both of your legs, pushing my tongue into your dripping entrance, pathetically clenching around it. What a fucking whore. Moans and sounds of me eating your core filled the room, and whoever is living beside you is surely going to know you as a slut. ‘Y-yuta shit I’m coming again,’ you moaned, your head thrown back against the pillow underneath you. Pulling the warm velvet out of your sticky cavern, I slipped in two fingers, moving in and out of you as I watch you in pure euphoria. Just like that, your legs closed and shook, screaming for the second time tonight. Taking out the fingers, I slowly made my way up to your fucked out body, only to see your lips red from the biting, as well as your teary eyes from your orgasms. I pushed the fingers through your lips, and like the good girl you are, you immediately sucked in my fingers, leaving me to imagine all the things you can do with that sweet little mouth of yours.

‘Fuck me please, god I need you in me’ you say breathing heavily, as if trying to understand how you were coping with two orgasms in one go. You said you needed me. Kissing you one more time, I finally unzipped my pants, releasing the solid member that sprung against my lower abdomen. As I removed my sweater, your eyes were staring at the red tip whereas your licked your bottom lip.

‘I’m going to enter alright,’ I whispered beside your ear, peppering feather-like kisses on your face. You froze a bit in place, though I was not exactly sure why. You did not seem to say anything, but it may be because you are finally being with the man who truly deserves you. Placing myself on your dripping hole, I looked at you one last time before anything else goes wrong, or if I miscalculated everything.

‘Just put it in Yuta, I’m on birth control, no need to worry’ you impatiently said, waiting to be filled and feel immense pleasure. Taking in your words, I slowly pushed myself in you, trying my best not to hurt you or bring you to any sort of pain. But my god, were you tight. Your velvet-like walls enclosed around my hard cock, almost impossible for me to go further in. You gasped loudly, pulling yourself closer to me as you held your hands behind my neck, feeling every once of me. ‘Oh my fucking god, I’m so full.’

I pushed myself further with one of my hands on your lower abdomen to keep you stable. ‘Shit you’re so tight, stop me if I go to harsh on—‘

‘Just fuck me Yuta, I don’t want to go gentle, please just do it.’ What?

*Disclaimer: smut scene has ended.

‘Y/n how else will I make love to you if you want to go rough on our first time?’ I asked, trying my best not to lose my temper. Why on earth do you want to go rough? Isn’t that why the reason you rejected all of those guys so that you can finally be with the one that truly deserves you, and can protect you from anything? Your eyes only grew wide at what I said, slowly pushing yourself off me.

‘Make love? Yuta, we’ve only started talking for like two months, what do you mean make love?’ You asked, successfully pushing yourself off of me, slowly pulling the blanket to cover yourself. Why are you acting like this?

‘You kissed me on your newly made bed, what else was I suppose to thi—‘

‘I was only asking for a quick fuck, not a whole love-making session Yuta. I think you should go home and rethink what you just said, I don’t think you’re in your right mind right now.’ How can you say that? I have loved you since you entered the class with, asking thought provoking questions to the professor. I have loved you since you were at the lab, working on your experiment until eight in the evening. I have loved you since you helped that customer in your shop many months ago, trying your best to communicate with the old woman in her mother tongue. You were always so patient, hard-working, and submissive— how can I not love you?

‘No! I do mean it, I do love you. How can I not? You always work so hard and made sure that you and your brother, and your academics were both in good condition. You are my dream, how can I not love you?’

‘Yuta, you’re saying the most insane shit. Please leave. What happens between me and my brother and my studies only should be limited to me, and not you’ you answered, not believing any word I said.

‘I am being normal, you’re just too busy and stubborn to believe anything I am saying! I have taken so much good care of you. I helped you get a job, I paid for all the meals and snacks we had together, I helped make your fucking bed, and you repay me by being your fuck buddy?’ You were infuriating. You were not like this when I watched you on a daily basis.

‘Well I’m sorry if you thought that I was trying to make you as my boyfriend or something, but I do not have time for that Yuta. I am truly sorry if that is what you thought, and if you do not want to see me anymore, I completely understand that—‘

‘No! You rejected Kim Yugyeom, Park Jimin, Kim Jungwoo, Bang Chan, Yoo Jeongyeon, and you do not let anyone else to love you. Is it because you’re too busy taking care of your drug addict of a brother?’ Your eyes grew wider than it already was, your mouth left agape unsure of how to react. Shit.

‘H-how do you know all of t-these things?’ Your voice was shaking, the fear on your face clearly visibly.

‘That’s not m-my point. What I am trying to say is—‘

‘Yuta, have you been stalking me?’ Yes, I have.

‘What? No, I wasn’t. You’re dodging my question again.’ Shit, Yuta. Think, think, think.

‘Then how do you know about my brother?’ You asked, fear and shock still evident on that beautiful face of yours. I made my way to her, gently cupping your face in my hand.

‘I h-heard about it from s-somewhere—‘

‘Get your hands off me! Tell me how you know all about this!’ You shouted, ripping my hands off of you. Without thinking, my hand came in contact with your skin. Loudly.

I slapped you.

A bright red mark was left on your face, eyes filled with tears, unsure if it was from the pain, or from our argument.

‘Shit, no, I didn’t mean that. Fuck, okay, y/n, let’s talk about this like adults’ I said, trying my best to diverge her thoughts away from what just happened. But I know that it will not work, you are one of the smartest people to exist, and you do not let yourself down easily like that.

‘Get the fuck out Yuta. You’re insane.’ Why are you not listening to me? I grabbed your body, leaving you to scream for help, pleading to be freed away from me— but I am not letting that happen. You are mine. I tightly wrapped my hand against your throat to make you shut up, making sure that you listen and concentrate on every word that I will say to you. You need to be disciplined love, especially if we will be together.

‘I need to know why you’re acting like this otherwise we will not be a happy couple. You are my everything, and I should be yours. I made you enter a world of euphoria with my mouth alone just a few moments ago, and you rejecting my love and pushing me away will not work. I have loved you the moment my eyes laid on you, and I need you to love me back’ I explained, watching your face slowly lose colour as your screams died down, but I do not care. You need to listen to my every word and acknowledge it. ‘You will be my partner for the rest of your life, and so will I. We will have two beautiful daughters, and you will also be able to help Lucas medically without letting your father know. But before we can do any of that, you need to be disciplined and I am here for that. Do you understand me?’

No response.

‘I said do you understand me.’

Still no response.

Your face was pale, eyes were closed, body cold. You were lifeless. Y/n, we were supposed to be together forever. We were supposed to have children, have you become a pharmacist, we were supposed to be in love together. Holding your lifeless body in my arms, I rocked your bare body back and forth— you’re not dead my love, you’re just resting. Yes, you’re resting.

‘Y-you’re not dead. I was just teaching you a lesson, but you seemed to become tired. It’s okay, we’ll do it another time. I love you so so much, I will never hurt you my love. Never.’ A dark laugh left my throat as tears rolled down my face. I finally had you in my arms, finally.

a/n: WEEEEEE i wrote that???? okay umm while i’ll be too busy screaming at myself for writing THAT scene, i hope everyone enjoyed it despite the fact that mcfucking yuta was a creep, but yeAhhhH. i am honestly quite paranoid after finishing ‘you’ cause i keep thinking that someone is in the house, but not really, but yeah... the show was good though. let me know if you also watched it cause i would really like to talk about it with you. and also, HAPPY NEW YEAR! i hope ya’ll had a fun time celebrating it.

明けましておめでとうございます！今年もよろしくお願いします。今まで英語だけで話を作ったので、今年日本語でやってみたいと思います。

祝你新年快乐！万事如意也心想事成❤️

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neeterloveschenford · 3 years ago

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RNM 3x01

Howdy partners! It's finally happened. Roswell New Mexico has come back from the war! Last night was super exciting. I agree with everyone that said it was like a brand new pilot episode. I have slowly but surely gotten more excited over the last year, ever since she who should not be named got the boot. And it looks like things can only go up from here.

If you're new to my blog, I try to do a review of each episode just giving my opinions and speculating on what's to come. It's a long read because I really dived into almost every aspect this time, so I'll put the rest under the cut.

So without further ado, let's dive right in!!!

Mopey Max is mopey.

I know he was reverting back to his old way of doing things in not telling Michael and Isobel about dying, but I have to believe that he did it to have good memories for himself as well as for his siblings. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being generous, but I’m willing to give him a little grace this season. It’s a new beginning, so maybe we’ll get some growth from him this season.

Not gonna lie, Heath is a hottie. I can see what Liz sees in him. He’s kinda like if Max and Kyle had a baby. I hate her boss though.

Love the pod squad hanging out together. They were very funny and very much like real siblings when they were in the mindscape. And Isobel digging on Michael about Alex was so good! Also, how has no one noticed that Max is shooting up acetone like heroine.?

I’m gonna surprise some folks, but I ain’t mad about Delmanes. I think Greg has chemistry with everyone and they established that Maria and Alex are still in contact (I’ll get to that in a minute.) So I don’t think he’s going to have a problem with them. Frankly, I think they are going to sweep the thing we all hate under the rug and never bring it up again. And I am a-okay with that! Y’all, I want to love Maria so badly! She was my absolute favorite character from the OG and if they have to forget about questionable things that we all know were a product of CAM self inserting, then I am ok with it. Besides, she’s cute and he’s cute and they can just be cute together. I also don’t think she was dragging Michael when they were talking. She made a comment about Michael’s bad boy demeanor. Something that he has been cultivating for over a decade now. And her saying that some things aren’t meant to be…… I mean are we going to argue that point or something? I could have told her that last season.

Also, I want to try some of Bert’s mead.

Kyliz!!! I love their friendship so much! Few people challenge Liz the way Kyle does. He treats her with so much respect, but doesn’t hesitate to call her out when she’s being stubborn. Go Team Liz!!!!!

Michael Guerin stopping to fix his hair before he welcomes Alex Manes back just about broke me y’all.😭😭😭😭😭😭 My sweet son! I love him so much!! And I am so proud of him. I think the old Michael would have walked right up and made some sarcastic comment. But this Michael is respecting Alex’s choices and being a real friend. I am truly sad we didn’t get any one-on-one Malex content, but I know that this is just setting us up for an amazing journey for our boys.

It was also gut-wrenching to see Alex stepping off that bus and being confronted with Jesse’s statue. But it was nice to see him smile when Forrest came to meet him. I am nowhere near a Forlex shipper, but it was good to see Alex happy for once. And Michael’s face when he saw them.😭😭😭😭😭😭My baby boy. I just want to hug him so badly!!

Kyle trying to help everyone was so wonderful to see. He’s the best person on that show. If only folks would listen to him!!! But I am intrigued by this vision.

Damn Tyler Blackburn is ripped! Good lord son. You are killing me!

So here’s where we come back to Maria. It’s kind of a throwaway line, but Alex checks his phone and says it’s his brother and Maria making sure he got in ok. (Followed by that super cringy did you get in ok line from Forrest.) (No wonder they weren’t exclusive after a year!) This shows me that Alex still considers Maria to be his best friend. There’s no flinch. No negative reaction. He just starts returning texts before Forrest starts revealing that he’s in Deep Sky.

Wyatt Long is such a douche.

HAHAHAHA!!!! Forrest is nothing more than a low-level henchman! I love it! And I can’t blame him for falling for Alex. Who could? But let me tell ya bud, keeping secrets like that is no way to ingratiate yourself to one Alex Manes. You could see the wheels turning in Alex’s head. How much does Deep Sky know? Is Michael in danger? What lengths will he have to go to to protect him? I’m finding Deep Sky to be quite fascinating.

Max’s brain manifesting Liz when her song comes on the radio was so sad. He loves her so much, but is just so bad at being a good partner. You know he just wants to see her one last time before he dies. And once again, bravo to everyone’s hero Dr. Kyle. He’s tired of Max keeping this a secret. I just love them together. They hate, yet respect each other. It makes for a very interesting dynamic.

I’m like Liz and Heath. They had fun shenanigans! I enjoy shenanigans. And of course she would leak their patent to keep it from becoming a wrinkle cream. Like a boss!

“It’s a cactus! There’s a flower on that testicle!” Wyatt, you are an idiot. But why would anyone think that tacking Linda on the end of Rosa would be all that they need to do to integrate Rosa back into society. She looks the same! At least give her a new hairdo. And Wyatt was right on the money when he pointed out she writes on her shoes just like she did before. They really shouldn’t have given up on the makeover from last year. She definitely needs a new style.

Michael’s speech about being happy the last year was so good. He was so happy to have his family back. So was Isobel. They are totally right to be angry with Max. He always makes the decisions and never asks them. Their heartbreak hearing that Max’s body was rejecting the heart just made me want to cry.

I also didn’t hate Michael’s interaction with Maria. It’s rough having to be friendly with an ex. But they did care very much for each other. It makes perfect sense that he would want to let her know about Max to keep her from trying to force more visions. And she would of course want to comfort him when he tells her. He’s losing his brother. I would react the same way if that were happening to any of my exes. Because that’s how normal people react. And there was nothing even remotely romantic about that scene. Her teasing him about Alex didn’t bother me because it was just an awkward attempt to get back to their previous banter-filled friendship. Will they ever get there? Who knows. (Well, I’m sure Chris does.)

KYBEL!!!!!!! I had forgotten how much I shipped them in s1. I am all for them getting together. I have had a big suspension that smelling rain was an indication of a cosmic connection. It’s been confirmed so far with Liz and Alex. And Kyle did say that Max smelled like rain last season. He just needs to get some alone time with Isobel when she doesn’t have on the undoubtedly expensive perfume that she wears. I just know he’s the one for her.

Max listening to Liz’s tape was so sad and beautiful.

Kylex! (Has anyone else noticed that all of the really great scenes featured Kyle?) He’s so great at being the voice of reason. And I love that they are friends. If anyone other than Michael can convince Alex to not join Deep Sky, it’s Kyle.

So here’s my theory on Wyatt. Of course he’s going to forget that he’s a racist piece of crap after being injected with Byterical(?). I think Rosa’s going to try to help him be a better person and maybe come to terms with Kate’s death. But I don’t think it’ll end well. They’ve already talked about how the mayor’s racist son is going to factor into things this season. I think he’s going to end up trying to re-corrupt Wyatt. Either he will succeed or Wyatt will end up sacrificing himself to save Rosa. It’s not ideal, but as long as there isn’t any kind of romance there, I can endure. (Also, that was Maria’s necklace not Rosa’s, dumbass Wyatt.)

I don’t trust Max’s one night stand. I know in the sneek peaks she’s shown to be a reporter, but I think she’s more than just that. Maybe it’s because I remember how horrible a character she played on Teen Wolf, but I just don’t trust her. She’s after something besides a story.

Sorry, Forrest. You messed up and let’s be honest. You never could compare to Michael. Alex’s reaction was so bittersweet. He trusted him. But he knows what he has to do now to protect the people he truly loves. And that’s exactly what he’s going to do. So buh-bye Forrest. It’s been real.

I think that the alien mask guys that attack Maria are going to be part of some kind of racist gang.

I’m veering away from thinking it’s Michael that’s going to die. Alex was pissed, not distraught.

Why does Jones look like he’s a bad yogi? The shirt and the rings? Aren’t you supposed to be naed in the pod? Did Michael and Isobel put those clothes on him? Howdy partner indeed!

So that’s my take this time around. It’s been a hell of a wait for this episode. But all in all I think it delivered!. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season. I think we’re going to have a blast this year! Till next time1 my lovelies!!!!

#rosewell new mexico #s3ep1 #it's only my opinion

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aoifeanamadan · 4 years ago

Text

After School Special

Fandom: Minecraft YouTube rpf (mcyt)

Word count: 6488

Relationship: DreamNotFound (DreamxGeorgeNotFound)

Summary:

Montague versus Capulet, Taylor versus Katy, Dream versus George.

It was one of those fueds, the kind you barely even had to acknowledge. The sky is blue, we breathe air, Dream hated George.

Needless to say, neither of them were over the moon when they found out they had to spend two months working together in weekend detention.

Support this work on AO3 :)

Chapter Four: Hat Trick

Dream didn’t think texting George was meant to be this exciting. He didn’t think texting any of his friends was meant to be exciting point-blank . Not in the way texting George was. Every time his phone buzzed he was rushing to grab it, always on guard, always waiting. He had spent years calling his friends stupid for the way their faces lit up reading their phones. Now he was worse than all of them. But, it was different. This was George. And texting George was fun.

Dream was certain now that he was definitely funny. And he was smart, in the hard kind of way. He was unpredictable. Dream never knew what was coming. And he was nice to talk to. Every message sent, every message received, Dream felt them growing closer.

So, yeah, maybe his eyes were constantly scouring his phone screen. But he had a good reason. He was talking to George.

George, who said he didn’t normally talk to be people through the phone. He called it a handicapped form of communication, just as George-like as ever. Dream had forgotten to make fun of him for it, mind too busy with ‘ He doesn’t normally talk to people over the phone. He talks to you over the phone’. It meant he was special.

George (2:20 am)

i dont want to annoy you lol

Dream (2:20 am)

if you sending me memes at fuck o clock in the morning was annoying me i wouldn’t have kept sending them back

George didn’t read the message for a full minute. Staring at the tiny symbol, showing his message was unopened, Dream couldn’t bring himself to feel pathetic. In the back of his mind he thought he should, but the rest of him was buzzing. Every cell was humming with a new kind of want. He wanted to know what George thought, hear how he felt. It was overwhelming. There was no room left for shame.

George (2:23 am)

i dont want to keep you up

Dont you have that match tomorrow

Dream did. It was against ‘ Saint Joseph’s Preparatory Institute ’ a private school just half an hour away from Dream and George’s school. The kids there were spoiled in ways Dream found difficult to understand, summer homes in Italy and money thrown away on nights out in the city. The person Dream thought Geoge had been just two weeks ago was nothing compared to the Saint Joseph boys. It was as if all of them wanted to play God, a family of clashing entitled titans, a Grecian mess.

Dream was certain if anyone on his team brushed against one of their arms they’d be on the floor, crying for the referee. It was the first match of the season, only a challenge, but he had been preparing his boys for almost three weeks to make sure they didn’t give away any fouls. Even if it didn’t affect their standing in the league it would affect team morale. It was important. He wanted to win, just like he always did.

But, that night, Dream couldn’t have cared less. The match, less than 24 hours away, was pushed to the back of his brain. His entire frontal lobe was taken up with George’s words, glaring brightly up at him from his screen, awaiting Dream’s reply.

Dream (2:24 am)

ur coming right?

Dream hit send, he always did. He was a full-send person down to the bone. For him, it was easy. He did everything with complete confidence, full fucking send. He couldn't imagine it any other way, not when everyone was hanging off his every word. Shame was foreign to him.

But, the second he hit the arrow on that message, something foreign happened. His stomach knotted itself, his heart sped up. His eyes glued themselves to the screen, trapping him in the silence of his bedroom, waiting for any kind of reply. Dream didn’t understand why he cared so much about a stupid message.

No matter how hard he tried to tell himself to calm down, it didn’t work. His mind couldn’t be reasoned with. Logic was out the window, replaced with the thought of George standing on the sidelines while Dream scored a winning goal. His heart was in palpitations for an agonising 40 seconds. George’s message was the first morsel of food in a year to Dream’s hungry eyes.

George (2:24 am)

do you want me to

Dream was typing a response before he could think. He didn’t need to think.

Dream (2:24 am)

yes

It wasn’t until he sent it that he realised how it could be read. Desperate. It was overwhelming, this new way of thinking. Dream had never considered how other people might read his texts. His mind never had the time to consider how he was perceived, always racing away from him. This new thing, it was dwelling. Dream hadn’t dwelled before.

George (2:25 am)

okay

ill go then

everyone knows i love to spend my saturday evenings outside in the cold

Dream didn’t mean to grin the way that he did when he read the reply. He didn’t even notice the smile snaking its way onto his. He had never smiled at someone's texts before.

George (2:26 am)

what time

Dream didn’t mean to lie. But he did accidentally tell George to be there an hour early so they had more time, away from the pressure of his role as captain. By accident . He felt justified in his deceit, his new constant urge to make George his friend was enough to allow it. He wanted to be around him, talking and laughing, bickering and disagreeing and teasing. He wanted all of it, the before and after of the years of resentment. The new growing fondness that Dream was trying his best to ignore.

Above all, he wanted to be liked by George. He wanted the reassurance of his approval.

If George, who had hated him for years, who had been on the receiving end of his cold stares and scoffs, could like him then it would be sure. Dream could be certain that he was a good person.

They kept texting until George sent his death sentence, in the form of a digital message.

George (2:31 am)

go to sleep

And that was that. George’s status switched to inactive and Dream was left staring at the tiny dot where his green light used to be, the Daisy to his Gatsby.

Dream (2:31 am)

george

georgie

Dream forced himself to turn off his phone, it felt as if he was cutting off a hand. Giving up the hope of hearing anything more from George that night and accepting the isolation. But he could do it, almost happily, comforted by the knowledge he would see George the next day.

He recentered his weight and let his head sink into his pillow. It smelled old. Not bad, but old. Dream couldn’t stop himself from smiling, sad and gentle. He held his phone to his chest and squeezed. The metal didn’t move but his fingers ached with the force.

In the back of his mind, Dream realised it was dangerous. This smiling, this thing burrowing itself into his heart. But he couldn’t stop himself. He let himself imagine a world where he knew George fully, recognised every part of him as George. A jigsaw in the shape of a man where Dream knew the place of each part as if it were the back of his hand. It was a different kind of friendship than what Dream had known. He wanted to understand him, to uncover all the secrets he was holding so close to his chest. It felt as if knowing George was inevitable. And he wanted George to do the same to him, to see all of him and like it. To prove he could be known in full and still seen as himself, still Dream. Still human.

Dream didn’t feel himself falling asleep but he didn’t wake up until 3 in the afternoon, his phone still lying over his heart.

Sapnap collected him before George, so he had time to explain his misleading statement before George got in the truck clueless at half four in the afternoon, three hours before the match started.

George understood what had happened once they arrived at the empty pitch. Dream was thankful he had briefed Sapnap before their arrival, because without Sapnap there he was convinced he would have ended up in a morgue.

Once George had accepted and made peace with the situation, that is to say 95 minutes and multiple very stern telling offs later, Dream and Sapnap decided the only natural thing to do was warm up an hour early.

With a ball from Sapnap’s truck, they started to pass gently to each other. George only managed to claim he couldn’t play for 10 minutes before Dream and Sapnap convinced him to join in.

Dream had been sure George was exaggerating his incompatibility with the sport. Fundamentally, it was just kicking a ball. But Dream was very wrong. Dream tried to tip him the ball, a gentle touch, but somehow George still fumbled it. He managed to stand on the ball three times before kicking it past Sapnap.

They spend half an hour trying to explain the basics of soccer to an increasingly annoyed George, who thanked God when the real team started to trickle in. It meant he was released from the seventh circle of hell - soccer drills

Dream went through the motions of his pre-match routine; the warm-up and laughter and tieing of boots. The coach, their chemistry teacher, arrived ten minutes before the match started. Dream gave a particularly rousing speech and then suddenly they were in the tunnel, waiting for the referee to call them onto the field.

Normally, the time in the tunnel made any other time spent on the field feel tiny, irrelevant. It was a place that didn’t obey the laws of time. Four seconds in the tunnel made a month on the field feel like maybe ten minutes.

That day, Dream had spent three hours on the field before the match. Normally, the tunnel would have made that feel like a millisecond. A blip.

But, Dream could recall the hours spent easily. He barely had to think before George yelling at him and Sapnap rushed to mind. George trying to score a goal from the penalty line, with no goalie, and somehow hitting the crossbar . George’s sigh of relief when he saw one of the players approaching to relieve him of his place in the drill. It was all cased in amber in Dream’s brain. It was proof that he had prepared for this match. There was a time before it and there would be a time after.

Standing on the tunnel, waiting to be called out to play the first match of the year, Dream was calm.

Before he could think too deeply, Sapnap turned to Dream. His eyes were almost pleading. He grabbed ream by the shoulders and tried to look deep into his soul.

“Promise me that you won't start any fights this time.” Dream couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped him. He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. He never started fights, but he replied anyway to put Sapnap at ease.

“I promise I won’t start any fights.” Sapnap breathed a sigh of relief, ever the drama queen.

“Thank you.” Sapnap turned to head to the team huddle, everyone waiting for Dream’s final good luck. Before Sapnap could walk away Dream grinned, lopsided and hyper.

“I will finish them though.”

Dream was walking out before Sapnap could protest, the team behind him. Dream didn’t want to prolong their wait any longer. They knew what he was going to say, and he knew they didn't need to hear it. The atmosphere changed the second the crowd could see them

Oakland had walked out stiff and straight-backed. Proper as always. Beside them, Dream and his team’s causal jogs and crowd-pleasing waves were even more charming. Dream allowed himself a moment to revel in the cheers before locking his eyes on the ball.

Once he adjusted to the floodlights, Dream’s eyes raked over the crowds until they locked on George, leaning on the low fence. He shot him his lopsided grin and waved. He was charm personified. The crowd’s heads swivelled in search of the recipient, but no one looked at George smiling as he rolled his eyes.

Once the whistle was blown, the team came alive. The state champions ran circles around Oakwood. Dream was two-thirds of the way to his aspired hat trick by half time, with the total score at 4 - nil. Their team worked seamlessly together, everyone exactly where they needed to be. It was like watching a well-oiled machine, or embroidery at super speed.

Dream and Sapnap were shining through, their natural chemistry turned to telepathy on the soccer field. It was as if the ball was a piece of metal and they were the magnets. It stuck to them, gravitated to their feet.

By the second half, Oakwood were angry. It showed in their game. They started to slip up, losing easy balls. Their footwork got sloppy. But they also got more aggressive. Somehow, the referee was turning a blind eye to every misplaced kick and accidental shove in the back. But, Dream had trained everyone for this. They stayed calm, took their deep deep breaths and played fair.

Oakwood did not take the same approach. The more time they spent on the field, the rougher they played. Dream had cycled through six of the ten substitutes by the time the second half rolled around. He was convinced the referee had optional cataracts.

With twenty minutes left, Dream’s team were 3 goals up - the only three goals of the match. But, Dream was still a goal away from his hat trick, and he was getting tired.

The rest of the team was playing defence, just like Dream had told them to do during training. He had said it would be stupid to go for glory in this situation, three goals up and approaching the end of the match. It would be plain dumb.

Dream knew all this, thought about it even. He knew it was right, but he saw an Oakland striker, who he was not supposed to be marking, running up the field. He didn’t have the ball, it was on the opposite end of the pitch, but Dream could see it in his mind’s eye. Two easy, unlikely passes and it would be at the striker’s open feet.

There were other boys closer to him, it would’ve made more sense for them to run to mark him. It would have been easy. But Dream couldn’t stop thinking of the one goal he needed for a hat trick.

Aching feet and heaving lungs Dream ran towards him. The striker saw him coming from a mile off.

His leg connected with Dream’s, and suddenly Dream was on the floor clutching his shin.

At first, there was no feeling. Then, just as suddenly as the air had left Dream’s lungs when he hit the floor, there was intense pain.

Dream looked down at his leg, curled up on the floor. He couldn’t hear the referee’s whistle blowing. But he could see the blood.

Before he could make a scene, he was pushing himself up unto his feet. The Oakwood striker didn’t offer him a hand up.

Dream was sent off to the sidelines, limping with an arm around Sapnap’s shoulder. Someone’s mother was a nurse. She assured him it was just a surface wound. Dream saw his parents in the stand, he hadn’t noticed them before. He would’ve waved weakly, or shot them a thumbs up, but he couldn’t focus on them. His mind was racing through anger and pain and anger again.

From the bench, Dream nodded to Sapnap to take the penalty. It wasn’t a question.

He had to sit the final fifteen minutes out, screaming from the bench. The only benefit was George’s spot in the crowd behind him was right behind the bench. He was sitting with his friends, making sarcastic comments about Oakwood. It was nice to listen to, distracting.

With Oakwood playing a man down, the team won 4 - 0.

After the obligatory post-win speech, Dream enjoyed a long warm shower in the changing rooms. It was a scarce rarity for him, only his third long shower in the changing block in four years.

After, Dream was alone in the dressing room, all aching muscles and sore lungs. He was sitting on the bench, legs shaking with the exhaustion of it all. His hair was wet and his shoulders were slumped. There was a low humming echoing off the concrete walls. Dream barely noticed it. He had screwed his eyes tightly shut and had his head hanging between his shoulders. He was waiting there until it was firmly ten minutes since anyone had left, just like he always did. And he was humming, which he did not always do.

It was coming from the base of his throat. The tune of ‘Call Me Maybe’ was raspy, hidden under his breath. But it was there, soft and delicate. The rise and fall, the soft lilts. It made the cold of air of the changing room warmer, familiar. He didn’t think about it, didn’t imagine he would be heard. He just sat there, hair dripping and voice humming. It was tender and charged, too patient.

Hey, I just met you,

And this is crazy,

“Well done, you. You did great” George’s voice came from the doorway, distant and delicate. It shattered Dream’s bubble of gentle calm.

Dream’s brain froze. It caught him off guard, disarmed him. The softness of George’s tone. Too genuine. Before he could unfreeze his mind to think about it, George was talking again.

“Except when you fell. That was embarrassing.”

Dream lifted his head from the wall and cracked open his eyes. George was smiling softly at him. It made Dream feel as if he was bending back his ribs one by one to get a closer look at his panting heart. He couldn’t quite bring himself to stand.

“Brave words Mr Speed Chess.” This was easy, this was Dream and George. Sharp banter and too intense bickering. It was easier than the alternative, the thing Dream wanted once the sun went down. The symbiotic vulnerability.

Dream realised just how tired he really was, listening to his own fragile voice. He was sure George had to have noticed it too. He was sure his smile was too soft, his words too tender to be teasing.

He didn’t know what it was, this new wall he was building. This refusal to let George see him vulnerable. Dream tried to rationalise, call to mind the years of hatred and distrust. It didn’t work, he was met with the hours he and George had spent laughing, the simple rhythm they had so quickly fallen into. George’s quiet jokes, Dream’s beaming grin. There was no reason for this guard Dream was invoking. Yet still, he couldn’t stop it. The hand always hovering over his mouth, ready to slap it closed.

Sapnap was coming in behind George before Dream could leave himself exposed.

“I swear to God, whenever I see you two together it’s like I get to watch a chihuahua provoke a wolfhound." Sapnap was next to George in the doorway, grinning. Dream smiled back, heaving himself up off the bench. Dream wasn’t sure if he was meant to be the chihuahua or wolfhound.

“Fuck off, Sapnap.” He muttered it at the same time as George, shouldering his way past them towards Sapnap’s truck.

“You two are the closest thing I have to a real-life soap opera!” Sapnap was calling out as he followed behind. Despite his best efforts, Dream smiled.

Once the three of them were in the truck, they could really talk. Sapnap and Dream were trying to convince George to come to a party at one of the player’s houses in place of their normal bickering. It was only right to celebrate the win, but George was insisting he couldn’t go.

Dream and Sapnap had matching that’s bullshit looks on their faces,

Through a mix of begging and empty threats, they managed to get George to agree to come inside, just to congratulate the team.

He stuck to his word, entering, finding the team all together in the front room and saying a single ‘Great Game’. Then, he turned on his heel and made his way to the front door with his head down. Sapnap and Dream rushed after him.

By the time they caught up, his hand was on the doorknob. But, before he pulled it, he was turning his head to the space on his left. Dream and Sapnap were still standing in the doorway to his right.

“Bad?” Bad’s face lit up as he abandoned his conversation to turn towards George.

“George!” He ran to hug a laughing George.

“Since when were you the partying type?”

“Since when were you?”

Dream and Sapnap couldn’t believe they had forgotten to tell him Bad would be there.

Twenty minutes in, George was on his fifth shot. Dream and Sapnap looked like Christmas had come early. Bad looked like a concerned father spotting his child in the boxing ring with Muhammad Ali.

“George, oh my God! What are you doing?” George was drinking straight from the vodka bottle while Sapnap and George watched.

George kept drinking from the bottle until Bad took it off him.

“It’s been a boring week. I'm about to fix that.” Dream had never seen George like this.

George’s grin was devilish, the kind that would have made Dream’s heart flutter and stomach drop if he was a girl. But he was not a girl. And so he thought nothing of George’s gleaming teeth and impish eyes. Nothing.

One thing Dream realised, an hour into the party, was that George was just as clumsy with his mouth when he was drunk as his limbs when he was sober.

Dream was standing in one of the doorways to the kitchen, talking to a girl. She was nice. She liked swimming and pc gaming, not worlds away from Dream. He figured they could be friends. She left to dance with her friends and Dream left to get himself another drink. George was standing next to the spirits.

“She’s not good for you. She was a dick to my friends last year. Hell, even I would be better for you and you hate me”

He hated the way George made his breath stop with stupid comments like that. Dream gritted his teeth.

“Don’t hate you anymore, Georgie.” His shoulders were stiffer than he wanted them to be.

George grinned back at him and drawled.

“For now, Dreamer.”

That fucking grin, sprawling between his aristocratic cheekbones. And that fucking nickname. He hated the way it made his stomach flip, acrobatic routines in the pit of his stomach. Dreamer, Dreamer, Dreamer . A mantra.

“Are you drunk, George?”

George opened his mouth, ready to deny it, but the cogs of his brain snapped his mouth closed before he could get the words out.

“You know what? Nevermind, you’ll know I’m lying to you anyway.”

Dream didn’t know what it was, the resignation in George’s voice, the gentle familiarity. It made him mad. He made it make him mad, because the alternative was wobbly knees and blushing cheeks. And George didn't have the power to do that to him.

George grabbed his arm, slender fingers gripping strong.

“Come on, let’s dance.” He started to pull him towards the front room, where the speakers were.

“Wait, George, wait,” Dream pulled George back to him gently. He was still clinging to his arm. Dream shrugged him off as softly as he could. His touch felt like hot coals, the way it made Dream’s skin burn. He couldn’t handle it.

“Why?” Dream didn’t like the disappointment painted all over George, stitched on his face and laced through his muscles. He couldn’t hide his emotions the way he normally did. Not here, not drunk and tired looking as if he wanted to beg Dream to dance. Dream had to explain.

“I can’t dance.” George’s face didn’t change.

“Yeah, why?” He was looking up at him expectantly, which had not been the plan.

“What do you- I’m bad at it. I can’t dance.” Dream gestured to his long legs and stretched arms. George’s face lit up, a lightbulb moment. Dream realised, George had thought he couldn’t dance because of his injured shin. He cursed himself internally for not being more dramatic.

“You don’t have to be good at something to do it, Dream. Dancing at parties is fun. It’s like exercise, but for your brain.” George pointed to his two temples with both hands, grinning. Not the plan.

“It’s very literally exercise for your body.” Dream didn’t realise there was a smile on his face.

“Fine, it’s exercise for your soul. Now, come on. Dance with me.”

Dream managed to down a shot while he was dragged out by George, it felt like fire down his raw throat. Before he could say no, George was pulling him to the speakers. Dream didn’t dance, he had never known how to. His limbs were too jerky, arms too awkward. And bad dancing didn’t fit the Dream image , not cool and nonchalant enough.

But George was looking up at him with a messy grin and the speakers were thumping and the bodies around him were thrumming. He tried to justify it to himself, the lights were low, no one would see him, but Dream couldn’t have said no in a million years. Not to George, not there, not then.

It was easy to tell the song was on its outro as Dream and George stumbled in. Dream laughed easily at his accidental win.

“Oh no! There goes that idea. Come on, let’s find Sapnap and Bad.” He went to tug George out, but George tugged him back. It caught Dream off balance, making him stumble after George to keep from falling.

George rolled his eyes, slinking his way to the boy with the aux cord and dragging Dream with him.

“Hey, Toby, what’s up?” George talked to the boy, who he was apparently friendly with. Dream knew he went to their school, but he didn’t know the boy. If George hadn’t just said his name, he would’ve had no idea. He stood awkwardly behind George, unsure whether or not he should introduce himself. He was too caught up in the unfamiliar awkwardness to listen to what they were saying. Before he knew it, George was smiling Toby a thanks and dragging him back into the crowd.

“What was that about?” Dream had to bend down to whis[er into George’s ear. George didn’t reply. He didn’t need to.

The iconic opening of Carly Rae Jepsen's ‘Call Me Maybe’ started to play. Dream couldn’t stop the barking laugh he let out. George smiled so widely Dream was sure his cheeks would rip open.

Dream wasn’t sure if it was the shots, or the crowds or the boy standing open and soft before him, but he felt the hardened rock around his muscles and tendons melt away. He couldn’t dance, but he could sway next to George while Carly Rae Jepsen sang one of her masterpieces.

George was his only salvation from the heaving, living heat of the crowd. His flushed face and ruined hair were all Dream could see. He tried his casual swaying, but George’s energy called for more.

Dream couldn’t help but sing along.

I threw a wish in a well,

I looked at you as it fell.

George was not a great dancer, really he just flailed and hopped. He yelled to the beat and flung his arms about him. Dream had to apologise on his behalf to a girl he had accidentally whacked. She didn’t acknowledge it.

Dream realised, no one there cared. Everyone just wanted to dance. Dream looked to George, laughing and jumping to the mirage of singing violins. It was all so intense, Dream couldn’t resist it.

His thudding, thumping body didn’t quite match George’s plasmic flow. His muses thrashed with the musical pulses, throat raw from the singing. No matter how loud he was, everyone around him was louder.

It felt like indulgence, sweeping slowly over his skin and through his veins. He had to choose to let himself enjoy it.

His dancing was horrible, but George loved it. Dream felt like it was a newfound candour, this allowance. He was bad, he was having fun. There was no contradiction. He could do both.

Where you think you’re going, baby?

Dream’s thudding stomps didn’t match George’s rough edged-grace, but he was there. And he was dancing. It felt like a win. It felt human, more human than Dream had felt in days. In those three minutes, he wasn’t the Dream. He was just another person.

He felt like one cell in the body of a giant, doing the same as everyone around him, but for the first time he liked it. He was doing the same as George, who was jumping offbeat.

But here’s my number, so call me maybe?

Dream’s panting chest felt like it was holding corporal freedom inside it. He thought his heart was about to beat it’s way out of his cell wall chest and soar away.

Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad.

I missed you so, so bad.

Dream couldn’t believe he had ever thought George was restrained and standoffish.

The George Dream had thought he had known for years, detached and reserved, quiet and reclusive; Dream watched in his mind as he died and was replaced with this new man. This new George had an unrelenting mind and thrashing heart. It fit perfectly with Dream’s aching body and delicate soul. There, sweating next to George as he sang his throat raw, Dream was sure George had to be his missing part. His final puzzle piece. If there was an empty cave in Dream he would stretch and chip away at it until it was the perfect size for George to settle in.

As the song ended, Dream tried to sort out his jumbled thoughts. His brain felt like a smoothie. Before he could take an internal inventory, Sapnap was beside him. It was easy to guide a panting Dream and George away from the dance floor and down a quiet hall, muttering about ‘totally unlike you, both of you’.

Dream couldn’t process the moving. He shut his eyes to keep it out, only opening his eyes for sporadic flashes of the house. He knew they were going down a hall together, but it all blended into one.

Sapnap got more and more excited the closer they got to the end of the hall. When he finally opened the last door, he was practically hopping.

Dream’s muddied brain recognised it as some kind of game’s room, like the basement in Sapnap’s old house. There was an easily ignored pool table, and on the pool table was an open bottle.

George got to the bottle first. He offered it to Dream and Sapnap before drinking from it. He coughed and spluttered as it went down.

“Gin.” His grimace was enough to deter them all.

Sapnap found a VR headset, the kind none of them had at home. They had to arm wrestle for it. Sapnap won, through methods involving plain cheating if you asked Dream. He had kicked Dream’s blooded shin ‘accidentally ’ mid-wrestle and refused a rematch. George hadn’t wanted to get involved.

Sapnap got to play on the VR first.

George was a nice drunk to be around. He wasn’t loud or annoying or excitable. He was just George, but less guarded. He thought out loud about the universe and the human condition and why goldfish were called goldfish when they were orange. Dream sat cross-legged in front of him while he spoke, slow and heavy. His brain felt cloudy, but in a nice way. A buffer between Dream and George, and everything else.

George liked to do things wrong. The more he talked about random things, the clearer it became. He ate pasta at breakfast time. He sat on chairs backwards and sideways and even upside down, laying his back on the seat and letting the blood rush to his head. He used his conditioner before his shampoo.

Dream tried to tell him, tried to enlighten him that he was living wrong.

“Well, I��m doing perfectly fine.”

Dream didn’t know how George managed to slip this gentle tenderness into everything he did. He swapped from sitting cross-legged to lying down, sprawling like a starfish. Dream did the same. He could feel their fingers brushing against each other.

Sapnap was immersed in his own digital world, but Dream was sure they were feeling the same thing, total separation from reality It was as if he and George had escaped time. They just lay there on the dirty carpet together, fingertips barely brushing.

“Ow!” The serenity didn’t last long. Sapnap had walked into a wall.

George laughed aloud. “That's going to hurt in the morning.”

Sapnap held up his middle finger, in the wrong direction. The headset was still on.

“It hurts now, idiot.” Dream grinned between them. He wasn’t used to their friendship.

“Well, at least you did your best!” Dream tried to give his positive input from his position on the floor. Sapnap shuddered.

“God, I hope not.” He went into the game again.

Dream turned his body back to the ceiling, but it wasn’t the same. The bubble was popped and he couldn’t stitch it back together.

Instead, he sat up to face George again so they could talk.

Ten minutes later, Sapnap was still alive and thriving in the game, while Dream and George were falling back into the natural rhythm of their conversations.

“Why did you think I hated you?” George’s voice was a rock skimmed on the pond of quiet. Dream was laying back on the couch, eyes again locked on the ceiling. It made it easier, not having to look at George on the other end of the couch. Their feet were tangled together. George was being gentle with Dream’s recovering shin. Dream didn’t think about it before replying.

“Didn’t you?” He didn’t see the gentle shake of George’s head.

“No. If anything, you hated me.” His voice bounced from the ceiling to Dream’s ears. Dream sat up to face him, ceiling tainted.

“No I didn’t. No, I don’t.” It was Dream’s turn now to shake his head. He wanted to lean forward and tell George a hundred times. He didn’t, he doesn’t.

“Okay, Dream.” George hadn’t sat up, still staring at the white ceiling.

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Dream looked at George, George looked up. Dream couldn’t handle the quiet, the noncommitment in George’s voice. He needed to fix it. He spoke into the silence.

“You just, you stopped talking to me. Like, overnight. So, I just thought you hated me.” Dream couldn’t keep looking at him. He tilted his head back, closed his eyes. He wished he hadn’t had that vodka. It was shoving cotton in his mouth and down his throat. There was morphine in his lips, he couldn’t get his words out.

“Yeah. I was anxious. I wasn’t talking to anyone.” George’s gaze was deadset, not on Dream.

“Well, you ignored me. I thought you hated me.” Dream tried to justify himself to George, to rationalise his behaviour at nine years old. George just hummed.

“So all of that, the years of dirty looks and rolling eyes, it was because I hurt your feelings by being too quiet?” George finally looked at him. Dream couldn’t believe he had ever wanted him to. His eyes were cold stone.

“Don’t say it like that.” Dream wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. His voice sounded small. Sapnap still had the headset on, he couldn’t hear them. He wasn’t coming to save him.

“Well, how would you say it, Dream?” George was still staring at him. Dream wanted to sew his eyes shut.

“I-” He looked away, but found himself looking back in George’s eyes before speaking again. “You weren’t just quiet . You ignored me.” It was all too quiet.

“You were too busy for me Dream. I wanted to be your friend, for years. Don’t try and spin this as if I dropped you. You couldn’t deal with me being quiet, with me going through a hard time. You needed my attention, you wanted it, 24/7. You were selfish.”

Dream couldn’t speak. He felt like someone was sucking the air slowly from his lungs and then the last traces of oxygen from his blood. George stood up and it was the final kick.

Sapnap must have sensed the movement, because just then he took off the headset.

“I think I saw some of my friends in another room. I’m going to go and say hi.”

“Hey, we’re your friends.” Dream had no idea how Sapnap knew to make his voice so soft at that moment. He had always had a sixth sense for those things.

“Yeah.” Dream managed to choke the word out.

“Come on Dream. Sometimes I think if you saw me bleeding out on your kitchen floor, you’d act like you hadn’t seen me.” George smiled tightly to Sapnap and left.

Dream let him go. He hated the tightness in his chest, the bitter taste in his mouth. He made himself feel angry in a way he knew he didn’t deserve to be. For the first time in his life, he knew George was right about what had happened. A lot of it had been his fault.

#mcyt #mcyt fic #dnf #dreamnotfound #dreamsmp #dream/george #dreamxgeorge #psa i actually dont ship them i just like creative writing and heat waves made me obsessed with their characters #dream #georgenotfound

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cy-fi-theansweris42 · 5 years ago

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Alright everyone, buckle up for a 2012 Mikey appreciation post because gosh darn it canon did not do him justice, so it’s time for some of my rambling.

The main topic of this post: MIKEY IS NOT DUMB! HE’S NOT STUPID, STOP TELLING HIM HE IS!!!

Now it’s time to provide you all with Canon Proof: -The antivenom in Parasitica. Mikey was able to follow Donnie’s instructions on how to make the antivenom. Small bit of evidence but still important, it was just a quick set of instructions when they were both under pressure, and he still followed them well enough to make the antivenom and save them all. -The cure in The Creeping Doom. Donnie was losing his intelligence and nobody else knew what to do and none of them thought “well let’s at least see if there’s anything in his lab that can help” except for Mikey, who went straight for “well if I got him in this mess then I’ll get him out of it” and then he straight up makes a cure. -The chemical to make more retromutagen in Battle for New York. We all know Donnie could make retromutagen, but the process took him (if I’m remembering correctly) 10 canisters of mutagen to make one thing of retromutagen. Definitely not an effective process, but it’s what he was able to come up with. Then Mikey made a chemical that with just one drop could turn an entire canister of mutagen into retromutagen, which was a huge boost to the process and saved them lots of time. (Yes, he couldn’t name the chemicals he used but I’ll get into that in a moment) -Saving Donnie in The Fourfold Trap. Donnie was hooked up to that awful machine that kept electrocuting him every time he made a mistake, and one mistake according to him could fry him. Then Mikey comes in and manages to successfully unhook Donnie from the machine without getting shocked again (he did get shocked himself, but sometimes it be like that). -Also, as he mentions in The Fourfold Trap while saving Donnie, he has “like 50 puzzle apps on his t-phone” and while he could be exaggerating the number you don’t just have a bunch of puzzle apps on your phone unless you like them and you’re good at solving them so you’re looking for a new challenge. -Finally, let us not forget that in Dimension X, Mikey is the genius.

Now that I’ve provided you with all this evidence proving that Mikey is not dumb, let me give you a theory about what he is.

Mikey is a visual learner. Don’t believe me, here’s some more Canon Proof: -Once again, the antivenom in Parasitica. Donnie shows him how to make it and bam, the cure is made. -In Invasion of the Squirrelanoids when they introduce the Squirrelanoids Mikey was using his knowledge from a comic book with a similar situation to help them beat the Squirrelanoids and, guess what, comic books are highly visual. -In New Friend, Old Enemy, Mikey was able to learn Chris Bradford’s special kata, show it and teach it to his brothers well enough that Splinter was able to recognize it, and then use Bradford’s kata against him in the same episode. -The puzzle apps mentioned in The Fourfold Trap most likely have bright colors and fun visuals which is why he likes those so much and has a whole bunch of them. -Mikey mentions that he has a photographic memory in The Creeping Doom (he says the wrong word but hey, words can be hard and knowing how a word looks visually and saying it out loud are two very different things) -Also, and I’m mostly throwing this in here because I think it adds to the idea of Mikey being highly visually based, but in Journey to the Center of Mikey’s Mind, we see his imagination and it’s very brightly colored. Same as in In Dreams when we see Mikey’s dreams and it’s tons of bright colors everywhere. (I could probably go on a whole other rant about just like Mikey being a visual learner and how bright colors in puzzle apps and cartoons and the visuals in comics help hold his attention, but I’ll spare all of you that for now, lol)

Also, and this is more speculation which is why it’s not going in the Canon Proof section, but I’m betting that the reason why Mikey is able to make some of those cures, able to get Donnie out of the electrocution helmet in The Fourfold Trap is because he knows more than he thinks he does from years of watching Donnie and his experiments. We know he hangs out in Donnie’s lab a lot, likes knowing what Donnie is up to. I’m betting, with Mikey being such a highly visual learner, that he’s picked up more than any of them realize that way. And that’s why he couldn’t name the chemicals he used to make the retromutagen-chemical in Battle for New York because he never learned their names, just what they looked like and what they should do because he watched Donnie use them. If Donnie had asked Mikey to show him, it would have been a whole other story.

I’m betting that if they played to Mikey’s strengths, found visuals and encouraged any interesting in learning some of these things, he could learn so much and at the very least, be an amazing lab assistant and sounding board for Donnie, and help him out when an experiment isn’t going the way it should be. Give him those comics that teach you while you read and videos with colorful drawings to hold his attention and he’ll learn incredibly quickly.

(Also, and this part is more headcanon than anything, but with Mikey’s love of cooking and his knack for chemicals, he could be a really good chemist. Cooking is just chemistry you can, for the most part, safely eat so that’s how he can get into it. And a friend showed me this book that has the elements with a cute art style and he’d love the art style, it would help hold his attention. Then later on he’d doodle the characters together and next thing you know what looks like just random doodles of these characters is actually complicated chemical formulas and once Donnie realizes this and gets Mikey working with him on chemistry stuff (because encourage your little brother Donnie, gosh darn it) then Mikey will give him these really nice drawings with the characters and once Donnie looks at it and thinks about what the characters are, he’ll realize the drawings are experiments they did together because Mikey operates and thinks in visuals and that’s the best way for him to communicate gosh darn it).

In summary, Mikey is not stupid, despite what his brothers say...all the time. (Seriously canon, there’s a difference between teasing and taking it too far and you definitely took it too far). He’s a goof ball that learns best with lots of visuals to hold his attention and with Donnie just absorbing information in a way he can’t and everyone telling him he’s dumb, then there’s no point in trying to learn, right? (Seriously, I’m going to fight someone. He’s not dumb but they always say he is but his brain’s just wired differently and someone give him visuals and tell him he’s not dumb gosh darn it).

Alright. Rant over.....for now.

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 2012 #Michelangelo #Mikey #Mikey is not dumb!#He just learns differently and is a goof and I'll fight people on this #I'll probably rant about this more at some point #Someone do 2012 Mikey some justice please #He's a good bean that could learn a lot if you let him

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hessirius · 6 years ago

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Talented Eyes

(Peter Parker x reader)

Summary: Reader challenges Peter to beat her at her own talent, though it's a very unusual one.

Warnings: None

~~~~~~~~

"I have to admit, Ned nailed that drawing of Mr. Winston," he let a few chuckles loose.

"Yeah! The way he drew his ears!," you burst out laughing, Peter following behind. Your heart singing at Peter's laugh, making ypu gradually stop laughing and blush. After Peter recovers from that round of hyena laughs, you continue your journey to his apartment.

You look at the park to your right, smiling at all the memories it held from your and Peter's childhood. You and Peter have come a long way, knowing each other from kindergarten, when he stopped your whines by placing stickers on your face. Ever since then, you were inseparable. Growing up together, defending each other from bullies, helping Peter go through Ben's death, finding out he was Spider-Man and even remained friends when he admitted he puts mayo, ketchup and mustard on his hot dogs.

You reach the apartment block and open the door for Peter, meeting his bright smile.

"Go on Parker, ladies first," you slyly smirked.

His smile slipped right off his face and was quickly replaced by his glare.

"Rude," he went in and hit the button for the elevator. Stepping in, you pressed number 8 and stood patiently.

"Did you finish your english essay? I know you were struggling to finish it."

"No I couldn't, I'm stuck on the ending," he looked defeated. You hated when that happened, the pools of caramel that were his eyes dulled when he was upset, losing the shine you loved so much. You placed your hand on his bicep reassuringly.

"I'll help you finish it, I'm done with mine," you gave him a smile as you tried to ignore the warmth seeping through his orange sweatshirt onto your hand, making you blush.

He whipped his head back up quickly and looked at you, glimmer back in his eyes. "Thank you! Though I'll accept your help if I get to help you with your chemistry homework."

"Heck yeah!" you shot your arm up in triumph. Peter laughed at you before exiting the elevator, you hot on his heels. You got in the apartment after jamming the key repeatedly into the lock. You weren't surprised to find May missing, seeing as it was her working hours.

You went into Peter's bedroom and tossed your backpack across the room, making it land at the feet of the bedside table.

"You prep the books and papers and I'll get the snacks," you headed out to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of popcorn and two packs of gummy bears. You returned to the room and tossed Peter the bag of popcorn and a pack of gummy bears. He was laying on the bed with the books laid out in front of him, leaving no space for you. You sat on his desk chair and turned to face Peter.

"Okay Pete, lets do this."

~~~~~~~~

An hour and a half later, a bag of popcorn and two packs of gummy bears, you were both done with the essay and had one more question left for the chem homework to be officially done.

"Done with erasing the rough work and done with the homework!" he threw the eraser down and looked up at you with a proud smile, only to notice there were tears streaming down your face.

"Wha-What happened y/n? What's wrong?" he put his hands on your face, making you look him in the eye.

"Nothing Pete I'm okay I promise," you smiled, turning your head away so he doesn't notice the blush littering your cheeks.

"Y/n you're crying, clearly it's not nothing. You don't have to hide it from me, I'll help you. Just tell me. Please," he begged with those big stupid brown eyes of his, making you practically melt into the flooring.

"I.. just wanted to see if I could still fake cry," you mumbled quietly.

"You what?"

"I said I just wanted to see if I can still fake cry. In 3rd grade I was really good at it remember? So I just wanted to see if I could still do it."

"You were fake cryi- You scared me y/n!" he breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Well it turns out I'm still as talented!" you put your hands on your hips, smiling with pride.

"Fake crying isn't a talent."

"Yes it is."

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is."

"No it isn't."

"Whatever. You're just jealous that you can't do it."

"Yes I can."

"Oh really?" you raised a brow.

"Yeah I can, I can do it even better than you!" Oh he went too far.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Show me!"

A look of panic flashed through his eyes but was quickly replaced by a stern look. He turned to the mirror hung up on the wall across from his bed and stared for a good amount of time, consisting of awkward silence and tension filled with expectations. Until, he turned around, eyes gleaming with unshed tears.

"HA! In your face!" he smiled wickedly.

"Huh. Didn't know you had it in you Parker."

"I'm serious about my challanges L/n."

Then right there, a tear fell down, and the waterfalls started.

"Pete are you crying for real now?" you panicked.

"No! I can't control them they're just falling."

You quickly grabbed multiple tissues from the box on the desk. You wiped across his face, clutching his chin with your other hand. After drying it the best you could, you looked at each other and burst into hysterical laughter. This seemed like a common occurrence between you and Peter. You both fell to the floor. You stopped laughing before Peter and you took the chance to admire him.

His face was stretched into a wide laugh and tears were escaping his eyes, good tears this time. You realised you had tears down your face too and your hair was a mess. By this time, Peter had finished laughing and was staring at you. The tears down your face and clinging to your eyelashes made you shine, your hair disheveled and your body adorning his sweater, you were glowing in his eyes. He wondered how even when you were crying, you remained gorgeous as you always were. Accidentally, he blurted out his thoughts.

"How is it that you look beautiful even when you're crying?"

You whipped your head up so fast, you were surprised you didn't pull a muscle.

"Uh. I didn't mean to- I meant that uh-."

He couldn't finish the sentence before you smashed your lips on his, holding his face and pulling it to yours. You quickly realised what you had done and pulled away, your brain screaming at you for doing that, and your heart was too busy in a frenzy to do anything.

Peter on the other side was frozen in shock. He had no idea what just happened. His eyes wide and mouth gaping open, while his hands were stuck in motion mid-air. His mind caught up with him though his heart couldn't. He pulled you back to him before he lost the courage to.

The kiss was long-awaited for. Peter dreamt of this countless times, but you beat his expectations so hard. Your lips were velvet, moving gently and slowly against his, savouring the moment like him. You tasted like gummy bears and he practically melted into you. He didn't want to pull away, but he had to talk to you. He placed his forehead on yours, eyes still closed and resisting the strong urge to go back in for more.

"I uh, I like you." his brain was in overdrive, along with his heart at that moment. His life seemingly depending on your response.

"Yeah I um. I guessed so. I like you too by the way."

His eyes flew wide open and met your stare, lips in the biggest smile causing the sides of his eyes to crinkle. He slowly closed his eyes and moved forwa-

"I'M HOME," came May's voice from the living room.

You both jumped apart so far and quick, bumping your head into each other's. She came to the door and looked at the both of you with a smile, which then turned into a look of confusion. You were both on the floor with swollen lips, tears down your faces and your foreheads were red.

"I'm not even going to ask."

That was random! I used the prompt "How is that you look attractive when you're crying?" i hope you like it! Let me know! Thanks for all the feedback lately!

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themosleyreview · 5 years ago

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The Mosley Review: IT: Chapter 2

First and foremost, I have not read the book that the film is based upon, but I am a fan of the story. The most difficult thing to do is a sequel to a fantastic film and especially in the horror genre. IT: Chapter 1 was by far one of my favorite horror films to come out in a long time and one of the best re-imaginings of Stephen King's classic tale. It was truly terrifying, bloody, unrelenting and beautiful. It stayed consistent in tone throughout and never compromised. Loving the first chapter, I knew the challenge that Chapter 2 had in front of it was gonna be tough, but I had faith in the filmmaker's vision. The fact that the exact same tone storywise and visually was preserved was amazing. This chapter showcases the same level of brutality, but also takes it to the next level in some truly graphic moments that were astounding. The challenge was to not have a disconnect between the children and adult versions of the characters and I'm happy to say there was no disconnect. I cared as much as I did when they were kids and even more as adults.

The original cast from Chapter 1 return in a number of fun and interesting ways as we dive deeper into their time apart. Jaeden Martell was still outstanding and charismatic as Bill. Sophia Lillis still charms the screen as Beverly and she definitely has a bright career ahead of her. Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben was still the sweetheart and brains of The Losers' Club. Wyatt Oleff gets a lot more to do as Stan and I enjoyed his ark. Chosen Jacobs gets a bit more time to develop a big part of Mike's childhood. Jack Dylan Grazer is once amazing as Eddie and he almost steals the parts of the film that are focused on the kids. Finn Wolfhard as Richie steals the scenes right out from everyone with his outstanding comedic timing and dramatic range. All of them were superb once again and the chemistry has never been stronger. Nicholas Hamilton returns as Henry Bowers and it was great to see the follow up story on his psychotic break.

The adult cast was chosen perfectly across the board and some of them actually look like they younger versions all grown up. James McAvoy is always amazing and as Bill, it was great seeing him lead the team and even more enduring once his stuttering and memories of his trauma surfaces again. Jessica Chastain was always a perfect choice for Beverly and she really retains the same charm as her younger counterpart. Andy Bean was great as Stan and he reacted exactly as I thought he would once he was called back to Derry. Isaiah Mustafa was perfect as Mike and I loved his persistence and genuine care for his childhood friends. Jay Ryan was awesome as Ben and he retained the same heart you came to love from the beginning. James Ransone was perfect as Eddie and I loved every bit of scenes as he comes to grip with his fears as a hypochondriac. Bill Hader was absolute perfection as he steals the film as Richie and his comedic chops are on point. His comradery with Eddie is even more fully realized as they reconnect after all those years. Teach Grant delivers a disturbing performance as Henry Bowers and he creeped me out at times. Now the best and most consistently sinister performance goes to the outstanding Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Although the character is a murderous creature, it still is a clown. There some genuinely funny moments, but they’re quickly followed up by some absolutely bone chilling scenes. We fully get to see Pennywise's brutality and monstrous form fully realized and some of the other forms he takes terrified me to my core. He was fantastic and he is the new gold standard on how to maintain a since fear and uncertainty whilst on screen.

The score was fantastic once again by composer Benjamin Wallfisch and he did an amazing job with nailing the scariest moments with some unnerving sounds and chilling childlike flutters. Visually the film is as beautiful as the first film and the cinematography was something to behold. The visual effects were excellent and the de-aging of the kids was impressive since they've all grown up since the first chapter. Director Andy Muschietti has delivered an even more terrifying film and excellent close to this story with such ease. There are some films that are close to 3 hours long and you feel it, but I was so engaged throughout that the pacing was fast enough to not notice. I rarely get nightmares from horror films, but this one messed with my dreams. I loved this film and I highly recommend it to everyone if you haven't seen it yet.

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imhereforbvcky · 6 years ago

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Make Me Believe - Part 2

Sophomore Year: A Lesson in Flirting Too Far

Masterlist - Series Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 3

Summary: College AU - Bucky continues to pretend you’re his girlfriend at the oddest times, pushing the limits of your friendship. (Tropes abound! college AND fake dating au. I’m a mess.)

Warnings: Drinking and silliness

Word Count: 1970

Author’s Note: Oh my god this is so late in getting an update. Wow! I was very stuck with it for a while but I’m moving on it now! Thank you for being patient with me. Hopefully I don’t ruin it.

“You’re fidgeting again,” you complained, lifting your eyes to Bucky in a sharp glare.

Beneath your legs, his feet bounced, jostling you and your textbook with them. He sat on your couch facing the TV as he played some first person shooter video game of war and aliens. You sat sideways, your legs draped over his with your book on your lap and your notes in hand, a pen between your teeth.

“I’m bored,” he grumbled, dropping the controller unceremoniously beside him. “I can’t beat this damn Infinity War game.”

“I warned you that I need to study today,” you let your eyes drift back to your notes, swapping a pen for a highlighter. “I have an Organic Chemistry exam on Monday.”

Bucky had known this when he came over; but hadn’t cared. You routinely spent hours doing next to nothing together. Sometimes it was relaxing or fun; sometimes it was like this.

Over the last year you’d developed an odd sort of friendship that you couldn’t quite define. Your roommate often teased you by referring to him as your boyfriend. You knew he wasn’t that. But still he chose to sit with you curled up on the couch when he could be playing beach volleyball with his friends. And you chose to smile at his constant interruptions rather than go to the library with your study group.

“You need a break, it’s been hours,” he squeezed your shin.

“Yes, Bucky. That’s how studying works. Time and concentration.”

“I’ve got an idea.”

You eyed him warily, protesting as he snatched your books from your lap and snapped them shut.

“Bucky,” you whined as he reached for the stack of board games beside the TV. “I definitely don’t have time for a game. I really have to study.” The precariously balanced tower nearly toppled as he jerked a game free.

“This is studying,” he smirked. A crooked grin lit up his face; the one you still hadn’t figured out how to deny even now, a year and a half after he’d stolen your place in line at the coffee shop.

You sighed, defenseless while he cleared your papers and books away from the coffee table. Relenting, you closed your laptop and set it on the ground, too.

He unfolded the Scrabble board and shook the letters in the bag. “Alright, if you spell an Organic Chem word, you get a double word score. If you spell it and define it, you get a triple.”

“This isn’t going to be easy,” you laughed. “They’re not exactly short words.”

He only shrugged. “It’ll be a challenge. Help you remember.”

“Help me remember words I already know!”

“Unless I know them,” he smirked, a mischievous glint in his eye as he moved to make the first play. 6 tiles. Ketone.

You rolled your eyes. It was a good start. It would be a better start if Bucky knew anything about chemistry. But he was a mechanical engineer; he hadn’t touched a chemistry book in years other than to shove yours out of his way.

Your eyes locked on his grimacing face as he concentrated, searching for a definition. The smug grin on yours was too frustrating for him to cede defeat. Bucky always loved that smile when you were playing beer pong together, taunting someone else. But turned on him, it was an uncomfortable mix of infuriating and enticing.

“Time’s up!” you smacked the table after 30 seconds. “Do I get to steal?”

“Fine,” he grumbled climbing back to his feet and heading to the kitchen, “But if you get it wrong, you take a drink.”

“And who’s going to fact-check me? You?” you scoffed. “You didn’t know it in the first place.”

He returned with a bottle of cheap tequila and two shot glasses. “I’m trusting you to be honorable. This is your grade on the line. We’re studying.”

“With tequila and board games?” you snorted.

“Y’know what? You’re taking one with me for questioning my methods,” he snapped, pouring each glass slightly over half full.

With a laugh and the soft clatter of glass and sloshing liquor the game began.

An hour and a half later, the game had progressed down to the last handful of tiles. Bucky had held his own, but you suspected he was peeking at your textbook. There was no way in hell he remembered that much of a field of study that wasn’t his own.

You’d answered way more definitions, and stolen his. In total, you probably had spelled more on-topic words, but he saw the board better. He played to win and laid pricey tiles on triple letters with double words like helix which you argued - unsuccessfully - was more biology than chemistry.

His damn engineering brain just had better spatial reasoning and he kept up despite your stronger subject knowledge.

Now, with only the tiles on your trays left to play, every turn was critical. Bucky chewed the inside of his cheek as he eyed the board. You watched him carefully. Taking in the sharp angle of his cheekbone as he thought, the concentrated pull of his lips. You knew that look. He had a word, and he had a place to play it.

You on the other hand, were totally screwed. You had nothing. Four mediocre letters including a freaking Y. A seven-point bomb waiting for Bucky to end the game and explode in your face. If you didn’t play it this turn he’d end the game and you’d lose. You could see it in his face.

You had nothing unless... you could convince him that compounds in nomenclature counted. Which they should, damn it. If you had to memorize all those prefixes, you should get something for them. Such as the sweet taste of victory over Bucky Barnes.

Biting your lip, and looking up at him with a grin and a dark shine in your eyes, you began placing tiles.

He caught the look and laughed. “What are you up to,” there was a playful trepidation in his voice as he watched you. His eyes were locked on your face, on that grin, on the laughter in your eyes, not on the word.

“Ethyl!” you shouted and sat back against the couch. You crossed your arms over your chest and lifted your chin in triumph. “Double word, for being on topic, that’s twenty-two points, and the game, I do believe.”

“Hold on,” he argued, “That is not a word! That’s a couple of prefixes mashed together.”

“What do you think words are?” you scoffed, pouring his loser’s drink. He immediately pushed it back to you.

“No, no. That’s an abbreviation, practically an acronym. Those don’t count.”

“That is not the same!” you snapped, leaning over the table, the heat rising as your competitive nature took hold. You knew it had been a risky move but now you were invested. Commitment won board games as much as skill. “Stop being a Scrabble-baby and accept defeat.”

“I haven’t been defeated!” he laughed, leaning forward to meet your intensity. “And don’t call me a Scrabble-baby, when it’s you being a Scrabble-brat! Trying to steam-roll your way to a false victory.” He rolled his eyes with a broad smug smile as he spoke. “You haven’t even defined it!”

“I don’t have to!” you scoffed, “I win with just the double points.”

“Okay, this was supposed to be a fun way to study,” he laughed again, which really set your blood on fire. How could such a soft sound be so distracting? You knew you were being irrational, getting way too worked up. But he’d been plying you with alcohol and feeding your competitive spirit in a way only Bucky could. “Tell me the definition and I’ll give you the win.”

You glared at him for a moment. That wasn’t what you were expecting and you knew the answer, you did. But just now, it was the furthest thing from your mind and you couldn’t call it back. You sat staring, grappling and nothing came of it. It was so rudimentary, so obvious but you had absolutely nothing.

“Oh my god,” he chuckled, “You can’t remember.”

“I’m going to murder you,” you laughed. “And then when I never get my degree, and disappoint my family and never become a doctor, it’ll be because I’m in prison for manslaughter.”

“Only manslaughter?” he laughed.

“Yes! Because it’ll be understandable. No jury will convict me of actual murder. You’re too annoying.”

“What’s going on here?” Natasha asked, as she came out of her room. Fighting with a knee-high boot, she plopped down on the couch beside where you sat on the floor pouting.

“Y/N’s about to lose,” Bucky grinned, eyes glittering blue heat. His gaze never left your face as you shook your head. That stare started something knotting in your stomach and burning hot in your veins, whether from competitive irritation or something more, you couldn’t say.

“Bucky’s being a Scrabble-bitch,” you frowned with great exaggeration.

“A what?” he laughed. That rich, full laugh that always set you off too as he threw his head back. “Okay, we’re done. You have been studying all day and it’s turned you into a cute but very wound up little demoness.”

Natasha looked down at you, quirking an eyebrow. You rolled your eyes at her. You could practically read her mind; hear her snappy remarks in your own head about your not-boyfriend describing you as “cute” and sitting with you all day to help you study.

“Well I’m going to Tony’s tonight, if you want to go out,” she said over her shoulder as she rose from the couch and grabbed her keys.

“Yes we do!” Bucky volunteered before you managed to get a word out. “This one needs to blow off some steam,” he explained, nodding toward your slouching form, still slouched on the floor leaning against the sofa.

You’d already picked up your textbook again. With a sharp roll of your eyes you made absolutely no move to get up. “This one just wasted 2 hours playing games and needs to study.”

“That was studying!” he argued. Before you could protest again, he hooked his arms under yours and dragged you abruptly to your feet. You swallowed hard as you stumbled into him, your hands steadying yourself on his chest as his dropped to your waist to steady you.

For a moment his gaze darted across your face, lingering on your lips where a soft surprised gasp had escaped as you looked up at him.

The moment passed as quickly as it had come on when he turned you out of his hold and toward your hallway. “We’re going. Get dressed.”

If you had a snappy retort locked away at some point, it was gone now. It had dissolved in the few moments Bucky had held onto you, and withered to dust in the way he’d looked at you. It may have been brief but you knew Bucky, you cared too much about him to miss it. So you made your way to your room in a daze, thinking, always overthinking.

Meanwhile a few steps away, Bucky sighed, pushing a hand through his hair, doing the same.

Natasha stared at him with narrowed eyes and a raised eyebrow.

“What?” he barked.

“You two are playing with fire.”

He rolled his eyes and sat back on the couch as she slipped out the door for the party.

Bucky knew how to pick up girls, and he knew how to make friends. He had no idea how to make his friend into his girl. So instead he shook his head, trying to rid himself of the feeling as he reached down for the shot of tequila you’d refused to take. Maybe the sting of alcohol would wash away this frustration too.

Next Chapter >>

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky fluff #college au #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfic #make me believe 2 #mmb 2 #fake dating au

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travllingbunny · 6 years ago

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The 100 rewatch: episodes 3x03-3x05

I’ve finished the rewatch of season 3, but being way behind with these rewatch posts due to being too busy with actual work, I’ve decided to cover the rest of season 3 with big posts covering multiple episodes, rather than a post for each individual episode. My initial idea was to cover 3x03-3x10 in one post – and would be convenient because a lot of the storylines and issues discussed spill over from one episode to another, and I thought it would also be fitting to cover the worst part of the season in one post (and it says a lot that the “worst part of the season” is half of it). But it got too long, so I decided to split them into two posts.

Not that all these episodes are bad, some are pretty good, some are average, some are on the bad side, but while all of them have at least something worthwhile in them, none of them is free of at least some of the BS – a bunch of plot holes, inconsistent storytelling where it seems like the show can’t decide what it’s trying to do with certain storylines, the tone deaf way the show handled such things as racial or LGBT issues…

I’ve tried to go into the rewatch with an open mind and try to watch the show in the Watsonian way, as much as possible, and try to purge my mind of the bad but popular fandom takes, behind the scenes stuff , fandom crap that has been going on to this day and that I know was even worse at the time… but it’s hard to stop going Doylist and wondering “what were they trying to do with this?”, “are we supposed to like/approve of this? Or should I stop asking these questions, because It doesn’t matter”, “to what extent is show itself to blame for the bad fandom interpretations and how much did they create the mess that the fandom turned into with their terrible handling of so many issues?”, :who thought this storyline was a good idea? Did the writers really never hear about the Bury Your Gays trope?”.. “is this storyline really , really racist, or was it just written by a bunch of people who never spent 5 minutes in any fandom and were not thinking about how this is going to be received and that it’s going to encourage racism in the fandom?” “Did people making this scene/storyline realize that this is rape, or not, and what the heck were they trying to do here?” and so on.

I’ll do my best to not rant much about any of these things, just so it wouldn’t overshadow everything else. And sometimes I’m genuinely not sure if, say, the interpretations that drive me nuts – like trying to demonize the show’s protagonists, people from Ark, as “colonizers” (which is so stupid that I can almost feel a few of my brain cells exploding every time I type it) – are just fan things? It’s really hard to figure it out sometimes, because season 3 feels so schizophrenic, like there are two or three completely different stories being told and clashing. There’s a really good story somewhere out there, maybe, and all of this could have been good if done better… And there were some things I appreciated the first time and some I liked better on rewatch. Even putting aside the problematic stuff, there are plenty of plot points that just plain don’t make any sense.

I wanted to get all of that out first, so I don’t have to go too much into it in the episode reviews.

Spoilers up to the end of season 5 and maybe the season 6 trailer. I have seen the leaked first two episodes of season 6, but will not be spoiling anything from these episodes.

3x03 Ye Who Enter Here

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here…” The 100 really loves its references to Dante’s Inferno!

This episode is one of those I find really hard to rate. It has really beautiful cinematography and music, it’s very intense and has complex relationships, drama and twists, and I liked it much better the first time I watched it. But it seems much worse in the context of the entire show, now that I know where some of these storylines go, what happens in the rest of the season and the show, which makes me think “if the writers knew they were going to do that thing later, why did they do this?” Is this the problem with this episode, future episodes, or both?

One of the things that confuse me in the “what were they trying to do with this” is the way the relationship between Clarke and Lexa is portrayed. Their dynamic here is very dark, complicated and interesting. But knowing that they are going to have a romantic relationship in just 5 episodes, which is regarded as the show’s great romance by many, and that the cast and crew have done a lot to promote it that way – why would you write that dynamic this way? The characters have chemistry and a bond, but after the betrayal in 2x15 and the way it triggered events that emotionally damaged Clarke so much, I was wondering how the show was going to make a romance in season 3 convincing (since I had always been spoiled on CL and Lexa’s death). In general, however, it would have been possible to do a really good storyline about making amends and forgiveness, which I would have loved. But did it have to happen by one character having the other kidnapped (even if you may argue that Lexa, the character, didn’t have other options at that point, it’s a writing choice to play the Abduction as Romance trope straight – since this dynamic doesn’t get overturned at any point, Clarke eventually agrees to do what Lexa wants her to do and things progress from there), keeping her imprisoned for a week while she refuses to see her, and then, instead of apologizing for her betrayal, giving a speech about how she must forgive her because she’s also done bad things? I found all of Lexa’s lines in that scene infuriating, especially when she brought up what Clarke did in Mount Weather to try to argue that Clarke would have done the same and that there was nothing wrong with her decision. People, this is not how you should try to get someone’s forgiveness.

On the plus side, Clarke isn’t taking any of that BS and cuts it all down, pointing out such facts as that Clarke was left with no choice and it was exactly because of Lexa’s decision. But seeing how Clarke’s thinking changed over the course of the show, I can’t help but think that Clarke started believing on some level that she really was a bad guy due to Mount Weather, and that everyone else was also just doing things “ for their people” (which a bunch of people keep telling her this season to justify their own crappy actions by throwing MW in her face), so if everyone was a bad guy, morality didn’t matter anymore.

Roan, who’s unhappy with Lexa for not lifting his banishment yet, tries to use Clarke’s anger and pain to make her kill Lexa, giving her a knife and telling her to take her revenge. Clarke realizes that he is trying to use her for his political ends, since his mother, Queen Nia, is Lexa’s rival, and observes that Nia is, as far as she’s heard, even worse than Lexa. Roan claims it’s just because she’s been getting Lexa’s biased POV. Except in this case, it’s true, Nia is worse, as she’ll show in this episode.

Clarke actually decides to try to kill Lexa (which is a really desperate move – she must have realized that she’d be dead soon, too, if she killed the Commander, but it shows in what bad state she was), before realizing that she can’t go through with it. Lexa, on her part, wasn’t trying to defend herself – which she could have easily done, as Clarke didn’t exactly make a smart play to kill her from the ambush, it was more about Clarke’s anger and Lexa waiting to see if Clarke would really try to do that. She was probably more concerned about Clarke wanting to do it than worried about her succeeding. And in that moment, Lexa does finally say she’s sorry – that she never wanted to damage Clarke like that. It’s, however, not a full apology, because she doesn’t say she’s sorry for what she did, just that she didn’t intend that consequence. And this is the last time they’ll discuss their history – they’ll never talk about Mount Weather or Tondc during Lexa’s life. Clarke will get a real apology from Lexa for betraying her at MW only years after her death, from Flame!Lexa through Madi, in 5x12. We find out in that episode that she really did regret her decision – it was the biggest regret in her life. So why can’t she tell Clarke that now? I think it’s because she feels the need to constantly be in control, and she doesn’t allow herself to question her decisions. Nevertheless, Lexa’s semi-apology and the sadness she shows instead of her earlier smugness seems to get to Clarke and makes her cry.

And when she finally allows Clarke to go home, Clarke agrees to go along with Lexa’s suggestion to bow to her publicly and help her make the Sky people her 13th clan. As Clarke later explains to her mother, when she meets with her and Kane in Polis, she believes that to be the best way to save the Arkers – or the only way: either we become the 13th clan, or we get killed. (Join or die. Sounds very similar to what they know to be the fate of the 13th station before the other 12 joined to form the Ark.) Bleak view, but probably close to the truth – and it shows Clarke starting t get back to her old self a bit and think rationally about how to solve political problems.

A bit before that, there was the infamous scene of Lexa pushing the Azgeda ambassador from the tower, in front of other ambassadors, after he challenged her authority. I now notice that she did it immediately after he called her weak, so I think she did it as a demonstration of strength, to convince others that she isn’t to be messed with. For Grounder leaders, especially the Commanders, nothing seems more important than the appearance of strength – because if your rivals start thinking you’re weak, you may lose your position and your life. Everything is calculated to demonstrate power and authority – the outfits, the war paint, the throne, the speeches… There’s a certain duality about Lexa, as if she’s two people – there are times in private she seems vulnerable and warm, which may be closer to what she would be like if she were not a Commander (and she seems to be more like that when she’s in the Flame – as in season 3 finale or when she ‘talks’ to Clarke through Madi in S5), but whenever she feels the need to be the Commander, she goes back to the cold, ruthless, authoritarian persona. She wants to make amends to Clarke and get back her trust/win her love, but she is only able to do that on her own terms.

And here we first meet Titus, her Flamekeeper/mentor, and getting to know him and see their relationship explains a lot about who shaped her most with his teachings. The relationship between Commanders and Flamekeepers is quite interesting, but I have more to say about that in relation to future episodes. Titus already shows he’s worried and unhappy about Clarke’s potential influence on Lexa.

Later that night, when Clarke does publicly bow in her Grounder-style Wanheda costume, and Kane gets branded as the representative of the Sky people, Clarke tells Abby that she needs to stay to make sure Lexa keeps her promise to protect the Arkers. This creates or continues a very lopsided power dynamic, where Clarke agrees to stay in Polis, far away from her people, surrounded by people who are wary of her, where she has no friends except Lexa, devotes her energies on trying to convince Lexa to do or not do things, and depends on Lexa to help decide the fate of her people.

So, people seem to disagree on what the main or all of Clarke’s motives were for staying in Polis, instead of coming back to Arkadia, after you-know-what hit the fan and Mount Weather blew up. I would point to what Clarke herself said, having to make sure Lexa keeps her promise, since Clarke was aware she was the only one of the Sky people with that kind of clout with Lexa. Some people argue that Clarke also just wanted to hang out with Lexa in Polis because she was into her, or even already in love with her. Now, Clarke had, no doubt, some complicated feelings for Lexa, but IMO, it’s very hard to make a case for her being in love with her, in the usual sense of that word, at this point, seeing how she didn’t trust Lexa yet, told her she had no honor, was seriously considering murdering her at one point, told her “if you betray me again..”, and generally didn’t look happy with her. Besides, it’s been demonstrated before (especially with Finn’s death) that Clarke doesn’t make huge political decisions just based on who she has romantic feelings for. But I do think, after seeing the following episodes, that there was another reason Clarke stayed – because just political reasons don’t explain her reluctance to go back to Arkadia, and neither do feelings for Lexa, since, at this point, she should have been still been able to go back to Arkadia to talk to her people, explain things to them, do something for better communication between Polis and Arkadia, and then she could go back to Polis to stay there for more time. And the first time she does go back to Arkadia, in 3x05, she was unsure how she even felt about it and if she still considered it home, after how much she had changed. I think, she was still running away, just like she did in the season 2 finale, because she still wasn’t able to face the past and look them into the eye, those people that she did so much for, committing a couple of mass murders to save them. It was convenient to stay away while doing something to help them. Which also explains her inability to talk to Bellamy and tell him anything other than “I’m sorry” when he asked her to come back.

And that’s a problem in itself: Clarke thinking that she can act as a representative of Arkadia, and make decisions about their future, in spite of the fact that she hasn’t been there for months or spoken to anyone other than Kane and Abby. Kane and Abby’s authority to make these decisions is also pretty questionable, seeing that 1) neither of them is an elected Chancellor (Kane admits that, noting that he and Abby have been handing the Chancellor title to each other back and forth, which they also do here – basically it’s You’re awesome and should be our leader! No, it should be you, you’re awesomer!), 2) they haven’t consulted with anyone, 3) as we see in the following episode, they did a terrible job of explaining this decision to anyone back home.

According to what Kane tells Abby at one point, they were also supposed to negotiate a bunch of issues, such as trade routes, Lincoln’s kill order, Clarke’s return… Clarke decides to stay, we later learn that Lexa had revoked Lincoln’s kill order, but it seems that nothing else has been resolved before the meeting got interrupted, or at least we never learn about it – things like trade routes that would allow Arkadia to be self-sustaining. If Kane had gotten some concessions, he could have done a better job of convincing people that joining the Coalition was a good move.

After the ceremony, Lexa surprises Clarke by bowing to her in private and taking a vow to treat her people as hers and do what’s best for them. The scene looks very romantic – this is generally the case with the Polis setting, with candles and all, and you can see it as a kind of deliberately invoking betrothals or marriage proposals. But it happens only after Clarke had already publicly bowed to Lexa as the Commander, in the name of her people. And since Lexa’s vow takes place in private, it means nothing to anyone other than her and Clarke – especially since no one else even knows about it (and won’t know, since Clarke is not even going back to Arkadia to try to persuade people about this course of action).. A public vow might have done something to convince the people in Arkadia, but it never happened, whether it was because Lexa didn’t want risk looking “weak” in the eyes of other Grounder leaders, or for whatever other reason.

Meanwhile in Arkadia, we see the last harmonious and happy scene between the Blake siblings, just before a character from season 2 returns… oh look, it’s Echo! Whose name we only now learn. She pretends to be helpful, warning Bellamy about a plot by the Ice Nation to attack the summit in Polis, and she tells him exactly what he wanted to hear – that some Grounders, including her, felt bad about the betrayal at Mount Weather – to manipulate him into helping the actual Ice Nation scheme to blow up Mount Weather, with a bunch of Arkers who had just moved in there. But that’s the twist that comes later. First, Bellamy convinces Pike to trust Echo, based on his history with her – that they saved each other’s lives in MW, and they go to Polis to save everyone, only to learn that they were duped and that a bunch of people just died because of it. Raven and Sinclair are the only ones who survived, while Gina was killed by the Ice Nation assassin while trying to stop him.

Gina’s death was something that already pissed me off the first time I watched this. Not because I was attached to her – that was impossible, since she was so underdeveloped that she was barely a character. But that’s exactly why – they introduced this female character that was completely underdeveloped and gave Bellamy Time Jump off-screen Girlfriend (No 1), just to fridge her in episode 3. Was this even necessary? Bellamy would have still felt terrible that his mistake got so many people killed, people he felt responsible for. And while I’m sure he cared about Gina, the show didn’t even try to pretend that he was super in love with her: here he didn’t even ask about her when he heard that MW blew up, or seem to register the fact that she was dead, instead focusing on asking Clarke to come back. (Raven!ALIE also commented on that in 3x11 saying “Too bad you were never that devoted to Gina”.) At least – and that was a big relief in the next episodes – they didn’t try to make it look like the cliché “They killed my girlfriend, so I want reveeeenge!” It was more that Bellamy felt guilty and concerned about making the same mistake again, which made him reluctant to trust Grounders again.

And this is one of these times when I have to wonder “why did the writers decide to do this?” Did they already know they would put Bellamy in a relationship with Echo a couple of seasons later? Did they actually plan to do it since season 2? Or did they just decide “Oh yeah, this would be a great idea” at some point? In any case, I’m scratching my head. I know that The 100 writers love to build relationships from messed up and antagonistic beginnings, and they love the Enemies to Lovers trope, but this is not how you do that. That’s about people from different sides learning to see each other’s point of view, not about two people from different sides meeting and apparently finding understanding, just for one of them to horribly betray the other, use his trust to kill his girlfriend and a bunch of other innocent people, trigger the worst part of his life, try to kill his family and friends and finally become Time Jump Off-screen Girlfriend No 2. It almost seems like the writers think that betrayal, murder of loved ones etc. is not something to overcome, but a good or decent enough set-up for a romance in itself, because the forgiveness/redemption part and actual development of the relationship may happen completely off-screen. Now B/E may be a relationship that the writers don’t care much about and never really give much narrative weight to (just as they never did to Bellamy/Gina – but that was never going to be so grating to the viewers as those two did not have that kind of bad history), and that they clearly don’t intend for viewers to get all that invested in, but it’s still a part of the story, so why so badly written?

The ending is the big villain reveal – Echo reports to her master, Queen Nia, who’s pretty much your classic Evil Queen figure, and they are revealed to be working with no other but Emerson – which makes sense, because who else would have had the codes to blow up Mount Weather? We don’t find out how that alliance started – whether he approached them, or they caught him and he proposed them a deal – but for Emerson, it may be about revenge, since he thinks for some reason he has a right to it. But it’s really interesting that we see that the Ice Nation leaders, and “just following orders” Echo, who was literally kept in a cage in Mount Weather and got super close to getting strung up, drained and killed, have no problem working with the one of the guiltiest Mountain Man, or all people, a guy who participated and orchestrated in all sorts of crimes against Grounders. I guess the “Blood must have blood” motto falls by the wayside in favor of political expediency. It’s pretty funny that such a big deal was made out of the Grounders supposedly having a problem with Arkers moving into Mount Weather because of their bad history with the place, and the Ice Nation ambassador even smugly said “You shouldn’t have moved into MW” at the summit… well, yes, they shouldn’t have – but not because Ice Nation leaders gave a damn about their history with the Mountain Men, but because they probably didn’t want Arkers to get too powerful, and they also knew how to blow up Mount Weather! And we find out that it’s all a part of a scheme to wrestle power from Lexa and assassinate her. Which goes nowhere since Nia dies in the next episode. But let’s just note that this mass murder, which was about blowing up a bunch of innocent civilians, wasn’t committed because anyone didn’t have a choice nor because anyone believed they needed to do it to protect their people. It was all about getting more power. Something to keep in mind when people try to make comparisons between various characters’ actions.

Timeline: The episode starts a week after 3x02. As most episodes, it seems to last about a day.

Body count:

Ice Nation ambassador, thrown from the tower by Lexa

Two guards in Arkadia, presumably killed by the Ice Nation

Two guards on the way to Polis, shot by Bellamy

the Ice Nation assassin, killed by Raven to save Sinclair

49 Arkers killed by the Ice Nation assassin at Queen Nia’s orders, including Gina, who was directly killed by the assassin, and 48 more, including 35 from the Farm Station , who died in the explosion. (That means that only about 30 people from the Farm Station are still alive, out of the 180-190 who landed on Earth.)

Rating: 6.5/10

3x04 Watch the Thrones

I’ve always considered this one of the worst, possibly the worst episode of the entire show (it just narrowly avoided that in this rewatch – I’ve rated it as second worst) and this is where season 3 really starts going wrong. This is mostly due to just how bad the Polis storyline is. I roll my eyes and feel embarrassed watching it, so I’ll just sum it up in a few bullet points:

This is so why I watch TV for, half an episode full of trash 1980s fantasy aesthetics and people with fake tans and pseudo-medieval garb, and Game of Thrones-type Strong Female Characters. *sigh*The show’s obsession with pretty white girls waving swords around and fighting as the ultimate expression of female empowerment became really blatant around season 3.

Nia and Ontari (who is first introduced here) are completely one-dimensional and uninteresting villains. Their motives, as we know it, are just that Nia really loves power, and Ontari loves power and is crazy. At least Nia dies and the show gets to focus on her more interesting son Roan, but Ontari is going to get worse.

This plot is centered around a fight between Lexa and Roan, which is supposed to be great, but it’s actually terribly choreographed and hard to take seriously. They’re both spinning around for no reason and waving their spears around for show, as I it’s all just for entertainment – and at no point does it remotely look like a death match.

Lexa was way more interesting in season 2, as a morally ambiguous leader/politician that we almost never saw physically fighting, before the show started celebrating her as the greatest most badass fighter. Having a character win a fight and giving them cool superhero beauty shots during/right after the fight is generally a cheap way to try to make the audience like/root for/adore a character. (It also here works in-universe, since Clarke first starts giving Lexa heart eyes while watching her fight Roan and kill Nia.)

The shift in Clarke’s and Lexa’s relationship is too sudden and early to feel convincing. It’s been a day since Clarke was calling Lexa someone without honor and seriously considering killing her for revenge, and now they’re already super friendly since the start of the episode, and Clarke has apparently fully forgiven her by the end of the episode. Even though all that Lexa has done so far is get Clarke to agree to her plan to make Skaikru the 13th clan, and kill Queen Nia – which works for the benefit of Clarke’s political goals (since Nia engineered a terrorist attack and killed a lot of Arkers and is generally likes killing Arkers), but was also Lexa getting rid of her political rival and solving her own problem.

In her conversation with Clarke after the fight, Lexa explains the actions of Ice Nation saying they were just doing what was good for their people, and Clarke doesn’t disagree. This is the beginning of show’s tendency to equalize every action through this kind of moral relativism BS (they repeat the “doing for their people” thing ad nauseam throughout season 3, and it continues later), as if, say, defending yourself and your people from being horrifically killed is the same thing as blowing up a bunch of civilians as a part of a scheme to get more power. Now, it’s good to have moral complexity, like trying to understand every

However, the other half of the episode, which takes part in Arkadia and starts the Chancellor Pike storyline, is way more interesting and complex. Unfortunately, the Polis storyline also manages to make this storyline much worse. Like I said, season 3 often feels like it’s contradicting and clashing itself, and here there are two conflicting stories one that’s very complex and morally grey and interesting and pretty good – and then there’s another, which is pretty bad (and full of unintentionally racist and anti-democracy messages) that the fandom read into it, where Sky people are the bad guys, Pike is the evilest villain ever with no redeeming qualities, Bellamy is a villain or a misguided stupid guy, Lexa is the hero of the story who could single-handedly save everyone and install peace, and Clarke is her love interest/sidekick. But while the show seems to have been telling the former story, the way it framed some things was playing into the latter one and giving it life: since the Polis storyline frames Lexa killing Nia as something we should cheer for as the solution to every problem (and Clarke’s responses are giving us clues how we’re to react), we’re immediately alerted that Pike is bad news and a fly in the ointment.

But as far as can see, everyone in this episode makes some really terrible decisions, which all make sense to them from their specific worldview and/or emotional state at the time:

Lexa decides to send an army to protect Arkadia. And I’m watching the scene and going: shouldn’t you first talk to the people of Arkadia/their representatives about that, or at least inform them well beforehand? (Or maybe she did but Kane was terrible at doing his job.) With the history you have with these people, you really shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t trust you. And no, Clarke does not count as their representative. But maybe Lexa thinks about it the way Grounders seem to – if the leader, official or symbolic (Kane or Clarke) decide something, everyone else will follow? Not realizing that this isn’t how ti works.

It’s harder to understand why Clarke doesn’t seem to understand that. It’s like she’s entered a bubble where she really thinks that all problems can be solved by her and Lexa as the ‘leaders’ of their people, or she thinks Kane and Abby can solve anything back home. Much as I love Clarke, she should have realized she couldn’t play that role, since she hadn’t been to Arkadia even once in 3 and a half months and has no idea what’s going on there. If this were full capacity Clarke, she’d have negotiated the heck out of this alliance, gotten some really good concessions for Sky people, then gone back to Arkadia and given speeches and convinced people why it’s a good idea to join simply by listing the benefits and explaining how bad it would be for people to stay out of the alliance.

Pike is someone spent almost four months in the woods as a leader of a group of guerrilla fighters, after the Ice Nation kill about 2/3 of people from the Farm Station, so he thinks that he thinks Arkers are under constant threat from the Grounders and that taking up weapons and killing everyone that seems like a threat is the only way to defend his people. He doesn’t think about the fact that this kind of policy is not likely to lead to anything but constant war and destruction and loss of life, but he is convinced that his is the only approach that is realistic, that war has been going on from the start and will never stop, so it’s “kill or be killed”. I’ve seen people accuse him of “manipulating” Bellamy and using Bellamy’s emotional state after his losses – but what does that mean? Pike also lost a lot, he had opted to trust Echo’s intel because Bellamy argued she was trustworthy, and 36 more of his people from the Farm Station were killed as a result. You can say a lot about him, but not that he doesn’t honestly believe in what he’s saying –, he’s a very “what you see is what you get” kind of guy, who’s motivated by the desire to protect his people, but his inflexibility, inability to see another POV or question himself will lead him to very dark places. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

(I don’t know why most of the fandom treats this character as if he was a one-dimensional villain like Nia or Ontari, when he’s actually one of the antagonists who are very morally grey. I certainly don’t know why people say that the show supposedly didn’t explain his motives, or even Bellamy’s motives, when both are really easy to understand, and they’re actually spelled out several times throughout the season, starting with this episode. I’ve seen many fans say that his flashbacks from 3x13 should have happened much earlier, to make him a more sympathetic early on before making him an antagonist. Now this may be a good point, because people react much differently to things that are shown rather than told, and the fact we get told the backstory of the Farm Station people but don’t see it on screen is certainly a factor, though I think it’s mostly because everything happens so fast and we’ve already been signaled who and what we’re supposed to be rooting for, with how the Polis story was framed. I certainly can’t accuse the show of trying to make him one-dimensional- and if anything, the show went a bit overboard with the whole ‘everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing for their people” theme.

Kane is at the other end of the spectrum from Pike with his earnest desire to make peace and build bridges with other groups of people. But in some ways, the reality he lives in in his head seems as skewed as Pike’s. Now, I do really like Kane, he’s in my top 10 characters, but he’s always had a naïve, moralizing streak – he says things that are perfectly reasonable (why can’t we hold a trial for Finn and the Grounders recognize the ruling? Why can’t the Mountain Men let us donate bone marrow? Why can’t be all live in peace?), but he doesn’t seem to understand that he’s in a post-apocalyptic world, surrounded by people who distrust and hate each other, not among a bunch of diplomats or college kids from before apocalypse , chatting over multiculturalism. His main problem is – he really can’t read his audience, and he’s terrible at selling his point of view to the masses, because he doesn’t even understand their issues. Hey. Kane, how about explaining to people why it’s good for them to become the 13th clan and accept the authority of the Commander who had, up to that point, been at best a dubious and occasionally treacherous ally to them, or why they should trust her army to protect them rather than attack them? People in Arkadia don’t have the benefit of watching the show and seeing the superhero shots or knowing that the Commander is positioned as the main character’s new love interest, so we should trust her promises… and they also haven’t seen any promises, as none of them were public. How about asking for some public assurances and vows, instead of just getting a brand? Unlike the Grounders, the Arkers do know pre-apocalypse history, and people getting branded doesn’t have nice associations. (No surprise at all that Pike destroyed him in the public opinion there.) How about not telling people that they’re just “collateral damage” in the war between Ice Nation and Trikru, because that’s terrible and only likely to get people angry and scared. How about announcing beforehand the fact that a Grounder army is going to come to camp right outside Arkadia, to protect them from potential further attacks by the Ice Nation? Instead, someone saw an army outside when they were already there and everyone freaked out, because OF COURSE PEOPLE WOULD FREAK OUT THAT THERE’S SUDDENLY AN ARMY RIGHT OUTSIDE THEIR DOOR! Armies feel like a threat, even if they are supposed to have a peacemaking or protective mission – especially since they could get other orders any moment, as far as anyone knows. And finally, just how dumb is it to hold an election right after a huge terrorist attack/mass murder, while everyone is reeling from the tragedy?

Abby is not even a political entity this season, she pretty much just agrees with Kane and doesn’t do anything political. To be fair, she soon gets to be involved in a different storyline – the City of Light.

Bellamy’s arc in season 3 proved, on my first watch, to be a nice surprise, since I had been warned that he supposedly undergoes “character assassination”, which I didn’t find to be the case at all. I had also been scared, after seeing 3x03, that the show was going to do that cliché fridging story where he finds out his girlfriend is dead and then he’s all about revenge (ugh), so I was really relieved it wasn’t portrayed like that. It’s about Bellamy feeling guilty because a lot of innocent people he felt responsible for (including Gina) died because of his mistake - which was to trust Echo, a Grounder he believed he could trust because they had saved each other's lives. So, he stopped trusting the part of himself that was ready to trust and expect good from people, Grounders specifically, after two betrayals that really stung, and started believing that war and “kill before they kill you” was the right way to go, and that this was the best way to protect his people.

Like Clarke, Bellamy had already been damaged by what they did in Mount Weather in the season 2 finale, even though he didn’t show it as obviously as she did, but instead kept it inside while do his duty and have a normal life for 3 months, but the pain and anger was already simmering (and we saw it explode in the scene with Clarke in the next episode). But one thing I’m sure he didn’t feel about Mount Weather is that it was a mistake – he was tormented by how awful it was that they killed children and people like Maya, but he knew there was no other choice. But the second Mount Weather tragedy, the one from 3x03, made him distrust himself and his own leadership decisions, so, like Clarke, he let someone else lead – in his case, Pike.

And Pike works really well as Bellamy’s Shadow character – he is similar to mid-to-late season 1 Bellamy, taken to extreme – he seems like what, perhaps, Bellamy may have become over time without more pacifying influences and experiences. But, unlike Pike, Bellamy questions himself all the time, agonizes over every bad decision and every person he killed that he may not have had to, and as a result of that, he has a much greater ability to grow as a person. Season 3 is crucial for Bellamy’s overall arc as this is where he has to make the choice between two different paths, and Pike and Kane, as his alternative father figures, are embodiments of those two different paths. (Which doesn’t mean that Bellamy becomes just like Kane – I hate it when people claim that season 5 Bellamy was the new Kane. Wrong.)

But while the overall beats of the story work for me, in execution it has some serious problems. One is that the scenes that show Arkers’ prejudices towards Grounders are some of the most on-the-nose, cliché stuff out there (this is a problem throughout this arc), and, what particularly annoyed me, this storyline turns Lincoln into little more than plot device to show said prejudice and create tension between Pike, Bellamy and Octavia. Ricky Whittle even looks bored throughout season 3, and I can’t blame him, with the tiny amount of lines and even less focus that his character got.

Here, they show this through another new character, Gilmer, a Farm Station guy who aggravates the tensions and throws a stone at Lincoln just because he hates all Grounders (he continues to act this way in the following episodes, too). At this point, his action is condemned, which shows how much things will escalate even by the next episode, when this kind of behavior becomes pretty much accepted in Arkadia. Pike tries to somewhat defend Gilmer by pointing out that he lost his son in the Mount Weather explosion, but that doesn’t change much in Gilmer’s overall portrayal as the typical minor bigoted a-hole character. His prejudice goes further than anyone else’s – at this point, Pike tries to stop the crowd from turning against Lincoln, and argues that the threats are outside the camp, and that people shouldn’t start accusing people in the camp. (He’s going to change that opinion big time in a few episodes.) But he and Hannah already become unhappy with Lincoln when he opposes Pike’s policy and plans to kill Lexa’s army – Hannah even sarcastically says “so much for the good Grounder”. Still, I gotta be fair to the show – it’s not like every so-called villain in this story was a POC, they did make the character who is the most bigoted a white guy. Even if a big part of the fandom treated not just Pike, but even Bellamy (the main target of hatred for some fans for… reasons) as if he was just like that Gilmer dude, which led to some lovely examples of fans indulging in real life racism against real people, under the excuse they were so upset by fictional “racism” against fictional Grounders… (I really tried to rant less about the fandom, I swear.)

This is where Pike suggests his plan to kill the Grounder army, explaining that all they need is 10 people with semi-automatic guns… Really? That doesn’t seem like a feasible plan to me. But more about that in comments on 3x05.

Another character introduction: The vigil for the Arker victims of the Mount Weather attack is when we first meet Bryan, Miller’s boyfriend.

Lexa’s mentee/preferred heir, little Aden, is also introduced, and we first hear about the Nightblood, but we still hadn’t learned at that point how exactly one becomes the Commander (killing a bunch of other kids), so this relationship used to seem far less creepy than it does now.

Jasper and Monty were the best part of the episode. An intense, emotional confrontation between old friends, two people who deeply love each other, but who cannot fully understand each other because they react to trauma in such different ways. Jasper cannot understand how Monty can endure everything that has happened to him and that he has done, and soldier on – but that doesn’t mean that Monty doesn’t have strong feelings about all of it. And Monty, on his part, eventually gets angry and has enough of Jasper’s complaints and accusations, and doesn’t know how to deal with his best friend’s mental state. Jasper is developing the dark, nihilistic view of the human race that he will express in his letter, and he quotes Maya’s line “None of us is innocent” (which actually quite changes its meaning).

Finn gets a lot of mentions in season 3, including this episode, where Jasper talks about him and unintentionally ends up spilling his ashes, which he intended to give to Raven.

Timeline: probably not long after 3x03, since there is a vigil for the dead. So maybe a day after, or a couple of day after? Which should mean it has been about 10 days since the beginning of the season.

Body count:

Queen Nia, killed by Lexa with a spear throw from a distance

Rating: 3.5/10

3x05 Hakeldama

I liked this episode more during my first binge. Probably because it was right after and before episodes that I liked far less, so it looked better in comparison, and it has one of the best scenes in the entire show – the Bellamy/Clarke argument, plus a really amazing closing scene with Raven. But other than that, I’m not sure if it’s quite as good as I initially thought. I’m still rating it high, but I thought I would give it a 9/10. Some of the other stuff was pretty good or decent (Clarke/Lexa scenes, Murphy/Emori, the City of Light stuff) but there’s also some more on-the-nose, mediocre writing of the Arkadia plot that we’ve already seen in 3x04 – Lincoln used as a plot device to show that prejudice towards Grounders, moments that seem like the writers may be going for dubious political parallels that they really didn’t think through (let’s have some talk about “internment” of sick Grounders, a loaded real life word – even though the Arkers are the refugees in this story who have been constantly attacked by the majority population since they landed, so anyone trying to make that parallel is getting it all ass-backwards… and also isn’t it cool that one of our main antagonists in this story is an East Asian woman, played by a Japanese actress. Because why not go for a full deck, we already have Pike and Bellamy, so it’s ironic or something? I don’t know what they were going for here. OK, Gilmer is still there, I’ll give you that.) And the plot is built on one of the biggest plot holes in the show, the 100’s version of GoT’s 20 Good Men:

How exactly do 10 people with guns manage to kill 300 Grounder warrior without even getting injured? Were the Grounders knocked out on horse tranquilizers? I’ve had people try to convince me that this makes sense, but they’ve failed. None of the Grounders woke up in time to warn the others, yell, shoot an arrow at them, throw a spear, attack them? It’s 300 people, they aren’t going to be sleeping on a heap, that’s quite an area you have to walk around and shoot each one of them. It’s not like Pike’s group was positioned somewhere above and shooting people with snipers. How does any of it work? I suspect that’s exactly why it’s off-screen – I can’t even imagine how they would ever make that work on –screen. Sure, guns are powerful weapons, sometimes it seems like the writers of The 100 believe that they have downright magical abilities.

Before my first binge of season 3, I was terrified of what awful things Bellamy does this season, since I’ve heard so much ranting about what terrible things he does and how he shouldn’t be forgiven, or people complaining that he was “character assassinated” etc. So when I finally saw season 3, I was relieved: “That’s it?” I mean, of course participating in the killing of 300 people, who weren’t guilty of the specific thing Pike was suspecting them of (planning to attack Arkadia) is a very bad thing, but this is a show that has 2-3 mass murders per season, and where people have done much worse, like killed helpless civilians, killed children… Just two episodes before this, we saw the Ice Nation blow up a bunch of civilians just as a part of a scheme to take power over the coalition. But it’s killing of armed soldiers, who seemed like a legitimate threat, that the fandom has decided is the Worst Thing Ever that anyone has done on the show? Really? Surprise attacks at dawn, trying to catch the enemy (or the perceived ‘enemy’) unaware, aren’t a rare thing in war, Trikru tried to do exactly that to 80 Delinquents in season 1. And the show makes sure to emphasize that Bellamy didn’t lose his moral code, because he was the one who argued against killing the wounded, but couldn’t outvote the other 9 people in the group, including the Chancellor. He only managed to get them to spare Indra.

Bellamy is obviously very bothered by the killing, and he voices his misgivings to Pike: “We went too far”. But this arc tends to have Bellamy being unsure about what they are doing, trying to convince Pike to back down on some of the more extreme actions, and usually failing at it and going more or less along with his decisions. He clearly has a problem with how sick Grounders are treated, and tries to interfere when Gilmer the resident a-hole attacks Lincoln and to stop the fight, but only ends up getting punched by Lincoln, and it all ends up with Pike arresting Lincoln after Lincoln gives Gilmer a beating, even though Gilmer was the first to attack. But when Kane or Octavia confront him, he defends his support of Pike and Pike’s decisions. And things is, they both do have legitimate reasons to distrust the coalition. I don’t know why people say the show didn’t let Bellamy explain his POV – he did, and he makes a good point when he tells Kane that his “Azgeda bad, Trikru good” simplification isn’t quite right, because “Trikru killed 37 of my friends before you even touched the ground”.

I’ve seen people say that Bellamy telling Octavia to stop playing a Grounder is inconsistent with what he told her in 3x03, that he was OK with her choices. But it is not – the reason he tells her this now is because he sees what the current atmosphere in Arkadia is like and how anti-Grounder it has become, so he is worried about her safety.

The scenes between Clarke and Lexa were more in tune with Lexa’s characterization from season 2, and their dynamic was portrayed in more similar to the way it was treated as it was in S2 or in 3x03, and far less romanticized than in 3x04 or in 3x06-3x07. At the beginning of the episode, they are riding towards Arkadia and smiling and congratulating each other on ‘solving’ the problem, by virtue of Lexa killing Nia: “We bring them peace”. Clarke says she isn’t sure that Arkadia is her home anymore, since she’s changed so much since she was last in Camp Jaha. How much of that is Lexa’s influence and how much is Clarke’s discomfort with facing her friends after Mount Weather? But the moment that Lexa hears about the killing of her army, she goes back into the mode of the Commander from S2, who wants to call the leaders of all clans, go to war and kill all Arkers. When Clarke tries to argue against it, and suggests to go to Arkadia to talk to Bellamy and try to fix things, Lexa reminds her of the current power dynamics between them, ordering her not to go. Clarke is shocked: “So I’m a prisoner now?” and Lexa coldly replies “Yes”. She relents in the end, after Clarke pleads, and lets her go to Arkadia, but she warns her “You’ve been living with the enemy. If it were me, I would kill you on the spot”. Does she really believe that? It doesn’t fit with the fact that she let her go back to Arkadia in 3x07 and didn’t try to argue that. Or is she just saying that to try to dissuade Clarke from going?

Indra tells Lexa they would have to start using guns if they are to beat Sky people. She’s changed her views on the use of guns, and she’ll use them in the season 3 finale.

I like that Octavia, who explained the situation in Polis, called out Clarke on the fact that she doesn’t have a clue about what’s happening in Arkadia because she hasn’t been there.

The 4+ minute scene between Clarke and Bellamy is certainly the most memorable thing about this episode, and one of the best scenes in the show. It’s incredibly raw and emotional, one of those rare moments where characters simply let it all out without a filter, and the acting is amazing. They have only seen each other twice since Mount Weather – they were desperate to save each other in 3x02, then they had just one brief conversation and a lot of misunderstanding in 3x03, and now Clarke comes in and starts talking about business, telling Bellamy that she needs him to prevent the war. And this makes Bellamy go ballistic and let it all explode, pour all the pain and rage inside. It doesn’t really matter if his accusations against Clarke are fair or not – he wouldn’t make them in other circumstances anyway, but what this is all about is really the fact that she left, and he didn’t understand why, and now she’s come back, acts as if they have nothing personal to discuss, and nothing about their painful history: Mount Weather, Tondc (when Clarke let people die and put Octavia in danger, which Bellamy has a right to be angry about – even though she did it mostly to protect him, which he may not be fully aware of) - the things Clarke has been trying to put behind her, unsuccessfully. In Polis, she adopted Lexa’s way of dealing with things – avoid bringing up the past, not talk any of it through, just look ahead and try to solve things as they happen. She’s just put a Band-Aid over her wounds, but they are too deep and can’t heal that way, and now Bellamy has ripped it off, and Clarke is left vulnerable, facing up to the pain she’s been running away from. His accusations must have stung, but his anger and the realization how much pain he has been in over Mount Weather, and how much she’s hurt him by leaving and not being there for him, probably stung even more. I never blamed Clarke for leaving – people have the right to deal with their own trauma the way they decide, and at the time, Clarke was a mess, did not see any other way to function except running away and isolating herself, and probably thought she would be a burden if she stayed. But Bellamy, who doesn’t have Clarke’s tendency to isolate himself when he’s in pain, never understood why she couldn’t accept his emotional support and let him help her the way she helped him in season 1, And her leaving left him without the person he really could help him go through his own trauma (Kane couldn’t do that, even though Bellamy obviously talked to him about his feelings over Mount Weather, Octavia and Bellamy don’t have that kind of relationship, and he didn’t seem able to be that emotionally open with Gina). Clarke never realized this, because she thought he was strong enough to take care of the Delinquents in her absence, and didn’t realize that he needed her.

They are both crying, Clarke says she’s sorry, and then his raw confrontation turns into an incredibly intimate moment when Bellamy approaches Clarke, takes her hand in his and they both go on to caress each other’s wrists, gazing into each other’s eyes. Clarke is surprised and smiles through her tears – this is only the second time Bellamy has made such a gesture of intimacy (after stroking her hair in 3x02, but that time, she had no time to react). But the look in Bellamy’s eyes is darker and you can see that he still feels angry and doesn’t trust her. And then the infamous moment happens, as the music turns from soft and romantic to dramatic, and he handcuffs her and walks out. I don’t know at which point he decided to handcuff her, but I’m sure the moment between them was genuine –it’s not like he needed to go that far just to manipulate her, and it really doesn’t seem likely. But I think he was thinking that he shouldn’t allow feelings to prevent him from what he thought he should do, arrest Clarke, which he imagined to be the right way to protect her, as he later tells her while taking her to Pike. But I don’t like people doing things against someone’s will, even if it’s with the idea “I’m doing this to protect you, because I know what’s best for you”. I didn’t approve when Bellamy was overprotective of Octavia that way, I don’t like what he does here, and I didn’t like it when Clarke had him kidnapped and chained in the bunker in season 4 to save him, either. Also, I think Bellamy was wrong to assume Clarke would be safe in Arkadia –while Pike wouldn’t shoot her as Lexa said, I’m sure he would have arrested Clarke. And then there would have been no one to go and convince Lexa not to start a war. So she did well when she used the opportunity, while Bellamy was distracted, by Octavia, to electrocute him and run away.

It’s kind of to see Clarke reduced to someone who can only get anything done by going around and pleading with people and trying to change their opinion, going from Lexa, who tells her she’s her prisoner, to Bellamy, who handcuffs her and tries to arrest her, and then back to pleading with Lexa. But if she failed to convince Bellamy, she does a really good job of persuading Lexa to change her policy and decide not to start killing her people. She does it by telling her that she can choose what kind of a leader she wants to be, and urging her to be a new, different one, who will stop the cycle of violence.

Lexa changing her mind and deciding to accept Clarke’s suggestion and declare that “blood must not have blood” is a huge turning point, but there’s a lot of moral greyness in this moment, because the fact is still that she plans to enforce her new, peaceful policy as a tyrant (I’m not bashing her here – that’s a fact, it’s what all Commanders have been. Their society doesn’t exactly do democracy). When Indra tells her that her people wouldn’t accept that, particularly Titus, Lexa replies angrily that they are all her subjects and must do as she tells them to.

This episode has some fun Memori scenes. They run a scheme together to rob the passers-by. Even though their relationship has developed pretty fast, the same as most romances in the show, it works because it’s not written in the cliché CW romance way. They may be in love, but that doesn’t mean they quite trust each other. The main reason for strife, however, is Emori’s association with ALIE and the City of Light, which Murphy doesn’t want anything to do with. She wants to go find her brother, but he doesn’t want to go with her and be sucked into any of the COL stuff, and he doesn’t really trust her to come back for him or prioritize him: “When people leave, they don’t come back” -“I did” -“Not for me, I just happened to be there”. (There’s even a slight parallel here with the Bellamy/Clarke argument.)

A minor thing I found funny – one of the Grounders says “Stealing in Commander’s woods is punishable by death”, which sounds a lot like the old English laws about hunting in King’s woods, which we know well from medieval stories like Robin Hood.

The COL storyline gets major development – Jaha returns to the camp, bringing ALIE with him, and starts preaching about the City of Light and explaining the chip will help people by taking away their pain. It fits with the overall episode as consequences of pain and trauma are one of the main themes. He talks about how pain damages our ability to function and our relationships with loved ones, friends and family – which is something we certainly see throughout the season - but he neglects to mention that the chip also takes away memories of loved ones and anything that is important to you.

Raven, the first one who confronts Jaha, is the one ALIE wants to get to her side. Raven’s intelligence and talents probably remind ALIE of Becca, and she sees Raven as the key to gaining more followers. Raven is also a character who has suffered so much both physically and emotionally and who is struggling with physical pain and disability, so it makes sense that this storyline revolves around her so much. The ending scene of Raven taking the chip and meeting ALIE is incredibly well done, thanks in large part to one of the best uses a song in the show - “Thousand Eyes” by Of Monsters and Men.

Timeline: 24 hours after the last episode, which would make this 11-12 days since the start of the season by my count

Body count:

Around 300 Trikru warriors;

Otan (Emori’s brother), killed by Gilmer in a very stupid skirmish, because Gilmer hates Grounders, in case you haven’t realized that yet. (But Otan is still “alive” in the City of Light.).

While this certainly didn’t happen during 3x05, Abby asking Jaha what happened to the people who left with him on the road trip in season 2 (“You left with 12 people!”) may suggest that the six people who decided to go back to the camp instead of continuing the trip died on the way and never came back?

Rating 8.5/10

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