#for anyone who's new i work in higher ed and it's finals time

[piratefalls]

the next 19 days are going to test me and if i get to christmas eve without some sort of menty b then i might just have to rethink my stance on the existence of god

[updownlately]

make me yours my love (cause you’re nobody to me, yet somebody to me)

| alessia russo x reader | fluff (tooth-rotting fluff) | 4.5k | a/n: heard a song from another language, got obsessed with it, translated it to english, and wrote a fic. ended up losing the plot half way through and bs-ed the rest over the course of a week. anyways, i hate it, here you go.

~~~

You had never thought you’d leave North America. It was where you grew up. Where you’d had your best and worst times. It was home.

And when you had moved to Seattle from Vancouver to join the OL Reign, you thought that playing in the NWSL would be your greatest achievement, never expecting anything outrageous to occur, never daring to entertain the idea that you would ever venture any farther away from home. Thus, you clearly didn’t account for your hard work to actually pay off and for you to attract the attention of European clubs with the likes of Manchester City, Aston Villa, or Manchester United.

Even with your hesitance on leaving the continent, you had accepted United's offer almost as soon as it had come through, only waiting to double check with Sue and Megan on what their thoughts were. Of course the two women you saw as parental figures had freaked out on your behalf. They didn’t need to say it verbally but with the way they supported you as you virtually signed the contract and got ready to move showed you how incredibly proud they were of you for not only continuing to rise to a higher level in your career, but for pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

But when the offer to extend your single year contract into a three year came, however, it wasn’t Sue, Megan, or anyone else back home who played a role in your decision. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly as some of the training staff would say, it was your United teammates that unknowingly convinced you to stay.

In the single year you had spent with them, they had welcomed you with open arms, taking you in as one of their own. 

Zelem and Mary had become your unofficial team moms, making sure you never got into too much trouble whilst Tooney, Millie, Leah, and the other girls had practically become your sisters. And of course, you had Alessia. Sweet, clumsy, back heel queen Alessia had become one of your closest friends in the new city, her being one of the only few people your introverted self had felt fully comfortable around.

You never understood why or how you were able to so quickly feel so relaxed around the tall girl, you typically being quite shy and reserved with new people, but you definitely weren’t complaining.

Moving countries, much less continents, was never easy, but with Alessia beside you since day one, it had never been too difficult.

Since the day that you had awkwardly waved hi to the United girls and attended your first official WSL practice, Alessia hadn’t left your side once. In fact, within the first few weeks of you being in England, the rest of the girls had established that wherever Alessia was, you were and vice versa, one rarely being found without the other.

Through the homesickness, loneliness, anxiety, and at one point, even depression, she had been there next to you. Be it picking you up and dropping you off from practice, bringing over home cooked meals, or tours around the city, she’d been your rock as you struggled but finally adjusted to being alone again. 

And when city tours turned into trying new restaurants together and her dropping off home cooked meals led to bi-weekly movie nights with Alessia’s heavenly dinners or take out, you both never acknowledged how much you cared for each other. Really though, you didn’t have to. A blind person could feel the love that you both radiated for each other.

It was spoken through the way Alessia had become less clumsy over the months, with you now there to catch her. To pull her aside before she could crash into a defensive training dummy. To ensure that her laces were tied and she was aware every time the ground was raised or there was a kerb to watch out for.

Alessia told you she cared when she’d hold you tightly against her chest, after every hard game, practice, or just day. The height difference between your 5’3'' and her 5’9'' was near comical but neither of you minded. If anything, in your opinion, it just made the hugs better since you could bury your face in her neck and block out the world for a few minutes. If Alessia minded, she surely didn’t say a word to you. You didn’t know it but if Alessia was completely honest to herself, she truly loved when you’d hug her. She absolutely adored the way you’d hide your face as you’d hug her, you standing on your tiptoes to comfortably rest your head in the crook of her neck, letting only her see you break, trusting her so easily, warming her heart each time.

You’d whisper the depths of your care when you’d let her lean on you during your movie nights, carding your fingers through her hair when you knew she was on the brink of sleep. In the way you’d slowly manoeuvre both yourself and her into a more comfortable position, her often ending up curled up on top of you, not that you minded at all, welcoming her warmth. How you’d ignore the inevitable stiff neck you would always wake up with since you’d always watch movies in the living room. In your eyes, the pain was always going to be worth seeing the blonde hugging you tightly whilst she slept on your chest.

The star striker would whisper her care ever so softly, staying on call with you during the nights where you missed Seattle a bit too much. When she’d bring you your favourite coffee the next morning, knowing that you’d be tired from your mind running the night before. When she’d drive you to practise, putting on your favourite playlists for the fatigue ridden ride, without you so much as having to ask, her knowing you almost as well as she knew herself.

You both had eventually become so close that even Tooney joked that she should move out and retire from being Alessia's best friend now that you were here for the title. You had simply laughed in response, knowing that at the end of the day, at the end of the month, at the end of the season, even though she was just your teammate at United, she was also simply your favourite person in Manchester (and possibly England, and maybe, just maybe, even in the whole world).

You weren’t someone to really believe in love, having had to witness almost every romantic relationship around you crash and burn, save for Binoe (bless them). So when Alessia clumsily toppled into your life, you didn’t expect that she’d make a home in the cracks of your broken heart. You didn’t expect for her to line the streets of your heart with cosy buildings of every delightful colour known to mankind. You didn’t expect for your heart to flutter like a butterfly each time she was near, the euphoria of having her close nearly causing your feet to grow wings, placing you on cloud nine.

She had your heart and you had no idea when she had taken or how she had taken it, but she had. The way her eyes would crinkle as she laughed had wrapped its threads around your soul. The way she’d have to lean down to hug most of her teammates, you included, and she’d never complain, doing so without being asked, restored your faith in the world. The way her smile would rival the warmth and brightness of the morning sun on your worst days had you smiling softly by yourself as you couldn’t help but stare at her, the only star that you would gladly let damage your eyesight.

While to everyone else she was just your teammate and friend, to you she was so much more. She wasn’t yours but she was something to you, somebody to you, and you hoped to god that you’d never lose her.

It’s funny looking back at when you first realised you were in love with the blonde. It had taken you almost half a year to register that you wanted more than a friendly relationship with her. You remember the exact moment so vividly, having replayed it over and over again in your mind as you lay on your bed, gently begging whatever higher deity existed to make your dreams a reality.

You both, as well as the rest of the team, had just finished a gruelling late training session and Alessia had somehow managed to convince you to let her come around so both of you could make pasta from scratch. You were unbearably tired, not having slept well the night before and the request to postpone the plan was on the tip of your tongue. However, you had made the mistake of looking up from your training bag and right into the bright blue eyes of the taller girl just as you were about to say no, and instead, you (embarrassingly easily, might you add) were persuaded to do nothing but hum in agreement to Alessia’s request.

So once she had picked up the necessary ingredients whilst you waited, trying and failing to nap in the car, and you both had made it to your flat, she had begun flitting around your kitchen, already at home in your house.

You were sitting on the counter, banned from helping due to your tiredness, contentedly watching the partially-Italian woman as she stirred the pasta sauce she had made, that the thought of this scene being ever-present for the rest of your life had briefly crossed your mind. However, you had waved it off at that time, blaming the exhaustion in your bones for your delusional feelings. It had worked and you had forgotten about your yearning for a few seconds, until Alessia had switched the stove off, turned to you, and had taken in your drowsy appearance.

Wordlessly, she had bridged the gap of a few feet between you and gently pulled you towards the edge of the island, pushing apart your legs and bringing her arms to gently wrap around your midsection. It was as she slotted herself perfectly in the space she had created, nudging your head to rest comfortably in the crook of her neck, that you inhaled a deep sigh and let yourself relax, sinking into the hug. As your mind finally began to slow down, the circles Alessia was rubbing on your back calming you quickly, the whole situation hit you.

Here you were, in the arms of your best friend, after she had just finished cooking you dinner, and was holding you so gently, reading you like a book, providing you with the comfort you needed to finally rest. If you didn’t know any better, you would say that Alessia was currently peak girlfriend material - hell even possibly wifey material. Tired and relaxed, this time when the thought of being the only one who Alessia would treat so perfectly like this for the rest of her life came across your heart, you let it warm you, indulging in the loveliness of being cared for.

You had known then, that the blonde irrevocably had your heart, and you were helpless to do anything about it. You were nothing but putty in her hands, your fate lying in hers.

From that point on, you had made it your goal to love Alessia the best you could, regardless of whether she loved you back or not.

As days and months went on, you two got even closer, if that was even possible. If you had thought that both of you were close before, the present put the past to incredulous shame. Your morning routine now definitively consisted of picking up Alessia before morning training and other team events and driving the proud ‘passenger princess’, as you liked to call her, to grab breakfast and head to practice, Tooney joining you two once in a blue moon. Bi-weekly movie nights had become weekly occurrences, and her dropping off home cooked meals turned into you both cooking together in your tiny kitchen most nights.

Telling Alessia you had extended your contract had been one of your favourite moments of the postseason. With her due to play for United another two years too (totally not a deciding factor in your renewal at all), the idea of her getting to spend the remainder of her contract playing not only with Tooney, Mary, and many of the other close friends she’d made, but with you as well excited her unfathomably. The blonde hadn’t stopped smiling for a week straight, and you had a feeling that if she had gone even a single day longer than she had, her face would’ve frozen with her blinding smile stuck permanently.

You knew then, you were a goner for her, for that smile, for the comfort she gave you, her hugs that healed you. You knew you’d give her all of you without taking anything in return, and you couldn’t find it in yourself to care either. You’d give her the world if she asked, all it would take for you to do so is her saying the words, no qualms on your end. You knew that be it as a friend or a lover, you wanted to be the cause of her smiles, her laughs at everything stupid, and the reason her eyes would sparkle with joy. You knew that you wanted her, you just didn’t know she wanted you too.

So caught up in your own head, in your own yearning for the taller girl, you never noticed the longing stares or the blush that would coat her cheeks each time you were near. You never questioned why she’d hug you significantly longer than anyone else, even Tooney or her own mother. You completely, almost idiotically obliviously missed the way she’d go out of her way to make you comfortable, how she had made it her priority as much as you had made it to ensure that her smile would stay.

The two of you danced around each other for months without knowing, two threads dangling from the sky, tangling so effortlessly, yet making no move to separate. You two were bound together unknowingly, without a title, without it being something, without a label. You both were each other's nobody’s, the “no-one special”, yet both of you were silently craving to be each other’s somebody. All you needed really was for the other to make you theirs, the pair of you too scared to accidentally overstep and risk losing the other completely.

At the end, it only took the two of you just over a year and a half before the two of you made any move towards dating. 

It was a chilly mid February day. You had gotten injured that morning, hurting your ankle quite severely and Alessia had so graciously offered to crash with you for a few nights to help you out. You had once again, familiarly, found yourself situated by your island, slumped on the counter, painkillers from the hospital coursing you through your veins, as Alessia cooked for you.

While the sight had become more common to you over the past handful of months, it never got old. The way she’d (for once) gracefully move around, opening your cabinets and rummaging through your pantry and fridge with familiarity and ease, in her element, swaying gently to yours and hers shared playlist you had playing on your speaker. The way her hair was tied back yet a few strands always seemed to spill through, framing her face perfectly. How the heat from the stoves had her cheeks tinted, ever so slightly strawberry red. How absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous she looked bathed in the soft golden lighting of your house, a house that turned into a home whenever she was there.

This time, instead of shying away from watching her as you usually would, you let yourself indulge, eyes tracing the way her arms would flex as she chopped the necessary ingredients, as she used the bench scraper to toss everything into the sizzling pan. You admired the way your old oversized hoodie fit her absolutely perfectly, your last name sitting prettily on her back, as if that sweatshirt was meant to be hers.

You’d been so caught up in your unabashed staring that you didn’t realise Alessia had turned to face you, ladle in hand, the other on her hip, a single eyebrow raised in amusement.

“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” she teased.

“Definitely did. Something about dinner and it being ready?” You jested, hoping that your obvious guess was at least somewhat close.

“You’re lucky you’re attractive, and half a decent defender…otherwise I wouldn’t be cooking for you y’know.” The way Alessia smirked as your cheeks heated up told you that the striker knew exactly what she was doing, winking at you before laughing and turning around. “Anyways, like I was saying, the doc said you’re probably going to feel really drowsy once the meds wear off, though the pain should definitely be gone. I’m thinking once dinner’s done, we can just go crash in your room, put on a movie or something so I don’t have to carry you around when you knock out? I’m clumsy enough on my own, I don’t need to be holding another person to test it,” she continued.

“Good with me. Plus, at least you’re self-aware enough to know that you are a walking Bambi. It’s honestly a miracle that you aren’t constantly wrapped in bubble wrap at this point.”

“Okay just for that comment, I’m picking the movie and I’m not giving you my hoodie.”

“That’s not fair, I’m drugged up right now. If anything, that’s abuse. You’re torturing a helpless individual,” you mumble as you lay your head on the cool surface of the island.

“Definitely torturing you by cooking you supper and not giving you my hoodie… and as I let you rest since you’re injured and doped up, right?” You could only groan in response to her logic, pouting at not being able to come up with a response.

As Alessia continued to move around your kitchen, finishing up on dinner and plating the food, you went back to observing her. You studied the way she tried the stir fry, taking a bite before scrunching her face adorably and adding more ingredients to fix whatever she thought was lacking. You watched her as she finally decided everything was ready, as she sweetly plated food for you first, handing it to you, before doing so for herself. You smiled, fascinated with the way her body moved as grabbed waters for the both of you, entranced by the ease in her movement. 

You were distracted throughout the whole dinner, mumbling responses, missing questions. You blamed it on the medications and fatigue when the forward beside you asked if you were okay, but in actuality your mind couldn’t help but constantly wander to imagining what it would be like if this was your life. If dinners with Alessia could be your future. If movie nights in your bed, you in her hoodie could be a regular occurrence. You knew you’d thought it before, the ideas were nothing new to you, but you had never craved it this bad before, never wanted it more than right now. 

You’d been so lost in your thoughts you hadn’t noticed Alessia grabbing your dishes or her own, nor her loading the dishwasher. It was only when she had stepped in front of you that you snapped out of your reverie. 

“You sure you’re okay? You seem really out of it…you know I’ve got you right?”

When you fail to meet her eyes immediately, she cradles your face in her hands, one on either side of your jaw, gently tilting your head back to meet her eyes. Her worried eyes scan your face and then the rest of your body, trying to pinpoint something, anything that could have been the cause of your dip in mood.

“Seriously, what’s going on? You were fine just a little while ago. Is it your ankle? Is the pain back? The doctor said the medication would wear off around midnight but if it’s wearing off right now we can call the hospi-”

Shaking your head amusedly at her worried rambling, you cut her off before she forgot how to breathe. “Less I’m fine.”

“Bull. You haven’t said more than 5 words ever since I asked about watching a movie. Oh my gosh, is this about how I said I’m picking the movie? ‘Cause if so, you can totally pick, I swear. I was just teasing. And… and of course you can have my hoodie too. I promise I was just joking. I didn’t mean t-”

“Alessia,” you stated firmly, a slight frown returning to your face when it was her who now couldn’t look at you.

Sensing her anxiety, you reach out for the blonde, hands finding home on her hips, squeezing gently, just enough to get her to finally stop scanning your body for injuries and instead look at you.

“I’m fine, I promise. Just been thinking, that’s all.”

“About? What’s got you so distracted? If it’s the injury, we both know you’ll be back in no time. I don’t mind sticking around to help around while you’re recovering. I’d be happy to help you know? I don’t mind. Plus-”

“Less, it’s not the injury. I don’t care about the recovery. I’ve already accepted that I won’t be playing for a few weeks. Stop worrying, okay? It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal, yeah right…” she scoffs, her hands moving to your shoulders. “Are you actually not going to tell me what’s going on? What’s bothering you? Was it something I did? Is that why you’re not telling me? If I messed up I’ll fix it okay? I'd rather fix it than lose you. Please. Please tell me what’s going on so I can fix it.”

It was in the next few moments that you contemplated whether it would be worth it. Whether potentially destroying your friendship with the blonde that you’ve been in love with since you met her over a year and half ago would be worth the risk of telling her and outing yourself. You considered pretending everything was fine, to make up some excuse using your newly acquired injury or something about the fans and the pressure, but you couldn’t. You couldn’t lie to her. You couldn’t be dishonest. Not when you looked up and saw the care and concern etched in her face, wrinkles scattered across, creases from distress that you had caused.

You figured that if anything, if, no when, when she told you she didn’t feel the same, you could take the next few weeks you had off for healing and rehab to get over her. It wouldn’t be so bad right? You could take those three weeks to heal your ankle and your heart, and then you could go back to being Alessia’s best friend again.

“Hey, I promise I won’t judge alright? Whatever it is, it’s safe with me, I swear on football,” came the gentle voice from the girl towering above you.

You waited a second before looking up, taking a deep sigh in, revelling in the peace before the chaos that you knew was going to come after. Looking in her eyes, you audibly swallowed, before closing your own.

“I’m in love with you. Have been for ages now, and it’s killing me. It’s killing me to see you in my kitchen, at my house, making it a home. It’s killing me to have you cuddle into me when I know I can’t pull you closer at every chance. It’s physically breaking me when I can’t walk up to you in my kitchen and kiss you to thank you for cooking for me, for taking care of me. It’s hurting me when I know that there’s probably going to come a day where you find someone else and I’m left here with your ghost. It terrifies me that I’m nobody to you but you’re somebody to me.” Your voice cracks in the last sentence and you pray to whatever God existed that she couldn’t hear your heart quietly cracking too.

When a minute passes in complete silence, and then another, you dare to open your eyes. Taking a shaky breath in, you don’t know what to make of the sight in front of you. There, Alessia stands, in all her glory, your hands still on her hips, her head tilted back, eyes glazed over, on the verge of tears.

Your heart’s breaking further with each second that passes and you mentally prepare yourself for the rejection that’s incoming.

“Please say something. Please…”

A beat passes. Then two, before Alessia finally looks back down at you, a lone tear falling from her eyes, one that she quickly wipes away, a smile on her face. “Took you long enough to catch up.”

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. The possibility of your dreams becoming a reality never seemed plausible to you. “Less, don't play. Please,” you beg.

“You were never nobody to me idiot. You weren’t ever nothing to me. You’ve been somebody to me since I met you y’know? You’ve had my heart since you walked onto the training pitch, looking like a lost kid.” 

“Honest?” You asked, just to make sure you weren’t hearing things, that she actually liked you back, that you weren’t dreaming. When Alessia nodded in return, you couldn’t help but smile, your grin stretching from ear to ear.

Wiping the few tears that had made their way down your face, you moved your hands to wrap around the other girl, pulling her close to you, hugging her tightly. You tucked your head into the chest, her arms wrapping around your neck, your beaming smile hidden in the cloth of her sweatshirt. 

“Let me make you mine? Go on a date with me?” The blonde quietly asked, kissing the top of your head.

This time, it was your turn to nod. You did so energetically, practically vibrating with happiness, twin grins adorning both yours and Alessia’s face. 

You couldn’t ever fathom the idea of leaving Canada as a child, yet now, all grown up, on your own, you’d never been more glad you had left. That you had allowed yourself the opportunity to find a new home, one that you found here, in the arms of Alessia Russo.

You’d spent months thinking you weren’t anybody to her, and now? Now you knew you were somebody to her. That you weren’t alone this whole time. That she wanted to make you hers all along.

[kakita-shisumo]

In which I sound off for much too long about PF2 (and why I like it better than D&D 5E)

So, let me begin with a disclaimer here. I don’t hate 5E and I deeply despise edition warring. I like 5E, I enjoy playing it, and more, I think it’s an incredibly well-designed game, given what its design mandates were. This probably goes without saying but I wanted it on the record. While I will be comparing PF2 to D&D 5E in what follows and I’ve pretty much already spoiled the ending by the post title (that is, PF2 is going to come out ahead in these comparisons most of the time), I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about my position or intention. My opinions do not constitute an attack on anybody. For that matter, things I might list as weaknesses in 5E or strengths of PF2 might be the exact opposite for other people, depending on what they want from their RPG experience.

As I said before, 5E is an exceedingly well-designed game that does an exceptional job of meeting its design goals. It just so happens that those design goals aren’t quite to my taste.

# A Brief History of the d20 RPG Universe #

I’m going to indulge myself in a little history for a second; some of it might even be relevant later, but for the most part, I just want to cover a little ground about how we got here. By the time the late ‘90s rolled around TSR and its flagship product, Dungeons and Dragons, were in trouble. D&D was well over two decades old by that point and showing its age. New ideas about what RPGs could and even should be had taken over the industry; TSR had finally lost its spot as best-selling RPG publisher to comparative upstart White Wolf and their World of Darkness games; the company even declared bankruptcy in 1997. Times were grim.

That, however, was when another comparative newcomer, Wizards of the Coast, popped up and bought TSR outright. Flush with MtG and Pokemon cash, they were excited to try to revitalize the D&D brand and began development on a new edition of D&D: third edition, releasing in August 2000.

Third edition was an almost literal revolution in D&D’s design, throwing a lot of “sacred cows” out and streamlining everywhere: getting rid of THAC0 and standardizing three kinds of base attack bonus progressions instead; cutting down to three, much more intuitive kinds of saving throws and standardizing them into two kinds of progression; integrating skills and feats into the core rules; creating the concept of prestige classes and expanding the core class selection. And of course, just making it so rolls were standardized as well, using a d20 for basically everything and making it so higher numbers are basically always better.

At the same time, WotC also developed the concept of the Open Gaming License (OGL), based on Open Source coding philosophies. The idea was that the core rules elements of the game could be offered with a free, open license to allow third-parties develop more content for the game than WotC would have the resources to do on their own. That would encourage more sales of the base game and other materials WotC released as well, creating a virtuous cycle of development and growing the industry for everyone.

Well, long story short (too late!), it worked like fucking gangbusters. 3E was explosive. It sold beyond anyone’s expectations, and the OGL fostered a massive cottage industry of third-party developers throwing out adventures, rules material, and even entire new game lines on the backs of the d20 system. A couple years later, 3.5 edition released, updating and streamlining further, and it was even more of a success than 3rd ed was.

At this point, we need turn for a moment to a small magazine publishing company called Paizo Publishing, staffed almost exclusively by former WotC writers and developers who had formed their own company to publish Dungeon and Dragon, the two officially-licensed monthly magazines (remember those?) for D&D. Dungeon focused on rules content, deep dives into new sourcebooks, etc., while Dragon was basically a monthly adventure drop. Both sold well and Paizo was a reasonably profitable company. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

Except. In 1999, WotC themselves were bought by board game heavyweight Hasbro, who wanted all that sweet, sweet Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon money. D&D was a tiny part of WotC at the time and the brand was moribund, so Hasbro’s execs hadn’t really cared if the weirdos in the RPG division wanted to mess around with Open Source licensing. It wasn’t like D&D was actually making money anyway… until it was. A lot of money. And suddenly Hasbro saw “their” money walking out the door to other publishers. So in 2007, WotC announced D&D 4th Ed, and unlike 3rd, it would not be released under an open license. Instead, it would be released under a much more restrictive, much more isolationist Gaming System License, which, among other things, prevented any licensee from publishing under the OGL and the GSL at the same time. They also canceled the licenses for Dungeon and Dragon, leaving Paizo Publishing without anything to, well, publish.

At first, Paizo opted to just pivot to adventure publishing under the OGL. Dungeon Magazine had found great success with a series of adventures over several issues that took PCs from 1st all the way to 20th level, something they were calling “Adventure Paths,” so Paizo said, “Well, we can just start publishing those! We’re good at it, the market’s there, it will be great!” And then, roughly four months after Paizo debuted its “Pathfinder Adventure Paths” line, WotC announced 4th Ed and the switch to the GSL. Paizo suddenly had a problem.

4th Ed wasn’t as big a change from 3rd Ed as 3rd Ed had been from AD&D, but it was still a major change, and a lot of 3rd Ed fans were decidedly unimpressed. Paizo’s own developers weren’t too keen on it either. So they made a fateful decision: they were going to use the OGL to essentially rewrite and update D&D 3.5 into an RPG line they owned: the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. It was unprecedented. It was a huge freaking gamble. And it paid off more than anybody ever expected. Within two years Paizo was the second-largest RPG publisher in the industry, only behind WotC itself, and for one quarter late in 4E’s life, even managed to outsell D&D, however briefly. Ten years of gangbuster sales and rules releases followed, including 6 different monster books and something over 30 base classes when it was all said and done. It was good stuff and I played it loyally the whole time.

Eventually, though, time moves on and things have to change. The first thing that changed was 4E was replaced by D&D 5E in 2014, which was deliberately designed to walk back many of the changes in 4E that were so poorly received, keep a few of the better ones that weren’t, and in general make the game much more accessible to new players. It was a phenomenal success, buoyed by a resurgence of D&D in pop culture generally (Stranger Things and Critical Role both having large parts to play), and its dominance in the RPG arena hasn’t been meaningfully challenged since. It also returned to the use of the OGL, and a second boom of third-party publishers appeared and thrived for most of a decade.

The second thing was that PF1 was, itself, showing its age. RPGs have a pretty typical life cycle of editions and Pathfinder was reaching the end of one. It wasn’t much of a surprise, then, when, in 2018, Paizo announced Pathfinder 2nd Ed, which released in 2019 and will serve as the focus of the remainder of this post (yes, it’s taken me 1300 words to actually start doing the thing the post is supposed to be about, sue me).

There’s a coda to all of this in the form of the OGL debacle but I don’t intend to rehash any of it here - it was just like six months ago, come on - beyond what it specifically means for the future of PF2. That will come back up at the very end.

# Pathfinder 2E Basics #

So what, exactly, makes PF2 different from what has come before? There are, in my opinion, four fundamental answers to that question.

First: Unified math and proficiency progression. This piece is likely the part most familiar to 5E players, because 5E proficiency and PF2 proficiency both serve the same purpose, which is to tighten up the math of the game and make it so broken accumulations of bonuses aren’t really a thing. In contrast to 5E’s very limited proficiency, though, which just runs from +2 to +6 over the entire 20 levels of the game, Pathfinder’s scales from +0 to +28. Proficiency isn’t a binary yes/no, the way it is in 5E. PF2’s proficiency comes in five varieties: Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, and Legendary. Your proficiency bonus is either +0 (Untrained) or your level + 2(Trained), +4 (Expert), +6 (Master) or +8 (Legendary). So if you were level five and Expert at something, your proficiency bonus would be level (5) plus Expert bonus (4) = +9.

Proficiency applies to everything in PF2, really - even more than 5E, if you can believe it, because it also goes into your Armor Class calculation. You can be Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, or Legendary in various types of armor (or unarmored defense, especially relevant for many casters and monks), and your AC is calculated by your proficiency bonus + your Dex modifier + the armor’s own AC bonus, so AC scales just as attack rolls do. Once you get a handle on PF2 proficiency, you’ve grasped 95% of how any game statistic is calculated, including attacks, saves, skill checks, and AC.

Second: Three-Action Economy. Previous editions of D&D, including 5E, have used a “tiered” action system in combat, like 5E’s division between actions, moves, and bonus actions. PF2 has largely done away with that. At the start of your turn, you get three actions and a reaction, period (barring haste or slow or similar temporary effects). It takes one action to do one basic thing. “Attack” is an action. “Move your speed” is an action. “Ready a weapon” is an action. Searching for a hidden enemy is an action. Taking a guarded step is an action. Etc. The point being, you can do any of those as often as you have the actions for them. You can move three times, attack three times, move twice and attack once, whatever. Yes, this does mean you can attack three times in one turn at 1st level if you really want to (though there are reasons why you might not want to).

Some special abilities and most spells take more than one action to accomplish, so it’s not completely one-to-one, but it’s extremely easy to grasp and quite flexible at the same time. It’s probably my favorite of the innovations PF2 brought to the table.

Third: Deep Character Customization. So here’s where I am going to legitimately complain just a bit about 5E. I struggle with how little mechanical control I, as a player, have over how my character advances in 5E.

Consider an example. It’s common in a lot of 5E games to begin play at 3rd level, since you have a subclass by then, as well as a decent amount of hit points and access to 2nd level spells if you’re a caster. Let’s say you’re playing a fighter in a campaign that begins at 3rd level and is expected to run to 11th. That’s 8+ levels of play, a decent-length campaign by just about anyone’s standards. During that entire stretch of play, which would be a year or more depending on how often your group meets, your fighter will make exactly two (2) meaningful mechanical choices as part of their level-up process: the two points at 4th and 8th levels where you can boost a couple stats or get a feat. That’s it. Everything else is on rails, decided for you the moment you picked your subclass.

Contrast that with PF2. In that same level range, you would get to select: 4 class feats, 4 skill feats, two ancestry feats, two general feats, and four skill increases. At every level, a PF2 player gets to choose at least two things, in addition to whatever automatic bonuses they get from their class. These allow me to tailor my build quite tightly to whatever my idea for my character is and give me cool new things to play with every time I level up. This is true across character classes, casters and martials alike.

PF2 also handles multiclassing and the space that used to be occupied by prestige classes with its “pile o’ feats” approach. You can spend class feats from class A to get some features of class B, but it’s impossible for a multiclass build to just “steal” everything that makes a single class cool. A wizard/fighter will never be as good a fighter as a regular fighter is, and a fighter/wizard will never be the wizard’s match with magic.

Fourth: Four Degrees of Success. 5E applies its nat 20, nat 1, critical hits, etc. rules in a very haphazard fashion. PF2 standardizes this as well, in a way that makes your actual skill with whatever you’re doing matter for how well you do it. Any check in PF2 can produce one of four results: a critical success, a regular success, a regular failure, or a critical failure. In order to get a critical success on a roll, you have to exceed your target DC by 10 or more; in order to get a critical failure, you have to roll 10 or more less than the DC. Where do nat 20s and nat 1s come in? They respectively increase or decrease the level of success you rolled by one step. In practice, it works out a lot like you’re used to with a 5E game, but, for instance, if you have a +30 modifier and are rolling against a DC 18, rolling a nat 1 nets you a total of 31, exceeding the DC by more than 10 and earning you a critical success, which is then reduced to just a normal success by the fact of it being a nat 1. Conversely, rolling against a DC 40 with a +9 modifier can never succeed, because even a nat 20 only earns a 29, more than 10 below the DC and normally a crit failure, only increased to a regular failure by the nat 20.

Now, not every roll will make use of critical successes and critical failures. Attack rolls, for instance, don’t make any inherent distinction between failure and critical failure. (Though there are special abilities that do - try not to critically fail a melee attack against a swashbuckler. The results may be painful.) Skill rolls, however, often do, as do many spells with saving throws. Most spells that allow saves are only completely resisted if the target rolls a critical success. Even on a regular success, there is usually some effect, even on non-damaging rolls. That means that casters very rarely waste their turn on spells that get resisted and accomplish nothing at all. It also doubles the effect of any mechanical bonuses or penalties to a roll, because now there are two spots on a die per +1 or -1 that affect the outcome; a +1 might not only convert a failure to a success but might also convert a success to a crit success, or a crit fail to a regular fail.

# What About Everything Else? #

There is a lot more to it, of course. As a GM I find PF2 incredibly easy to run, even at the highest levels of game play, as compared to other d20 systems. The challenge level calculations work, meaning you can have a solo boss without having to resort to special boss monster rules to provide good challenges. I find the shift from “races” to “ancestries” much less problematic. PF2 has rules for how to handle non-combat time in the dungeon in ways that standardize common rules problems like “Well, you didn’t say you were looking for traps!” Everything using one proficiency calculation lets the game do weird things like having skill checks that target saves, or saves that target skill-based DCs. Inter-class balance, with some very specific exceptions, is beautifully tailored. Perception, always the uber-skill, isn’t a skill at all anymore: everyone is at least Trained in it, and every class reaches at least Expert in it by early double-digit levels. Opportunity Attacks (PF2 still uses the 3rd Ed “Attack of Opportunity” - but will soon be switching over to "Reactive Strike") isn’t an inherent ability of every character and monster, encouraging mobility during combats, and skill actions in combat can lower ACs, saves, attacks, and more, so there are more things to do for more kinds of characters. And so on.

Experiencing all of that is easiest just by playing the game, of course, but suffice it to say PF2 has a lot of QoL improvements for players and GMs alike in addition to the bigger, core-level mechanical differences.

# The OGL Thing #

Last thing, then. In the wake of the OGL shit in January, Paizo announced that it would no longer be releasing Pathfinder material under the OGL, opting instead to work with an intellectual property law firm to develop the Open RPG Creative (ORC) License that would do what the OGL could no longer be trusted to do: remain perpetually free and untouchable for anyone who wanted to publish under it. The ORC isn’t limited specifically to Paizo or to Pathfinder 2E or even to d20 games; any company can release any ruleset under it and allow third-party companies to develop and publish content for it.

Shifting away from the OGL, though, required making some changes to scrub out legacy material. A lot of the basic work was done when they shifted to 2E, but there are still a lot of concepts, terminologies, and potentially infringing ideas seeded throughout the system. These had to go.

Since this meant having to rewrite a lot of their core rules anyway, Paizo opted to not fight destiny and announced “Pathfinder 2nd Edition Remastered” in April. This is a kind of “2.25” edition, with a lot of small changes around the edges and a couple of larger ones to incorporate what they’ve learned since the game first launched four years ago. A couple classes are getting major updates, a ton of spells are either getting renamed or swapped out for non-OGL equivalents, and a couple big things: no more alignment and no more schools of magic.

The first book of the Remaster, Player Core 1, comes out in November, along with the GM Core. Next spring will see Monster Core and next summer will give us Player Core 2. That will complete the Remaster books; everything else is, according to Paizo, going to be compatible enough it won’t need but a few minor tweaks that can be handled via errata. So if you’re thinking about getting into PF2, I’d give serious thought to waiting until November at least, and maybe next summer if you want the whole Remastered package.

And that’s it. That’s my essay on PF2 and what I think makes it cool. The floor is open for questions and I am both very grateful and deeply apologetic to anyone who made it this far.

[kineticallyanywhere]

Tell us more about Doodler Normal Kinetic i beg of you

First thing to note: Doodler Boss Normal would not survive contact with Canon Normal

Cause the thing with this version of Normal, I think, is that the situation to create it is so specific; and in a way that I've never thought about before, for a narrative? I'm sure it exists somewhere, because what story framework doesn't already exist somewhere but like.

this version of Normal only happens in a world where all 4 anchors are broken with violence and not a single other person is questioning that decision by the end. (which I don't think is going to happen! for the record!) in this world, Normal presents himself as a last bastion of empathy, but where in any other story that would look like a shining knight with their Chosen One sword and shield and righteous strength, in this story it looks like a kid ready to turn into an eldritch monster because the eldritch monster is the only other creature he can find that makes any sense to him. a character who, written in words, is a paragon hero who's virtues refuse to crumble. but because of the Ao3 CSS skin of the world he's in, he gets all the style and flair and trappings of a villain.

(which, again, I don't have reason at the time of this writing to think that this situation would happen; that there isn't going to be at least one other person on Normal's side. It's all but impossible to predict any of these kids and I think they all have good hearts, even Scary. Link right now is an unsettled weather vane in a storm, Taylor for all his swagger doesn't seem on the side of brutality, and then like... Hermie???)

that said! In a world where sometimes you can't decide if you want to sit in your disappointment or scream at the top of your lungs, there's falling back on your new frienemy-of-the-family monster bro

(anyone with a writing bug and time, feel free to use any, all, or none of these ^^)

for thoughts on where this AU would end up, anyone can obviously take it anywhere but I know the version I would make would have a happy ending (I am allergic to writing tragedies, sue me). I guess it would be a story where finally snapping and letting out some Oak Anger and not apologizing (because while it's not okay to be cruel it is okay to be angry) is what gets characters to come to terms with each other and better understand each other and meet each other in the middle and even come to terms with themselves and what version of expressing themselves makes them happy and comfortable and best able to love themselves and the people around them.

all of that admittedly wrapped in a gift box with the catharsis of a character saying "I'm not okay with how you're treating me" in a very badass fashion, as we all wish to do one day.

also for those of us who would die for Scary but also want to take her by the shoulders and shake vigorously there's the Rule of 3s for swiping the Goth Crown from Scary a THIRD TIME

all of her put-on apathy and tiredness and lashing out but from a genuine place, simultaneously forcing her in front of a mirror and asking her to reach back for the part of herself that started the day of the debate "bright eye-ed and bushy tailed" so that she could even stand a chance at getting through to Normal??? The ways to talk about Scary skyrocket even higher. to be clear, I don't want this as a form of stealing Scary's narrative, I want it as a way of taking Scary's narrative and hitting the NOS. give her just about everything she wants, for everyone to agree with her and listen to her and think she's right and enforce the belief that she has any power over what's going on and then see if she even likes it. See if she likes herself and see how far she's willing to take the identity of goth punk seeker of darkness. ask her where the line is. show her the road she she's taking and ask her where the line is. canon parallels and connections between normal and scary are a whole other post I can have and will drive to work in the morning writing the meta in my head, the way Normal is a previous version of Scary cranked up to 11 and the way Scary makes herself into a person that Normal has every right to be but isn't becausehe'shumanandflawedbutsogoodatheartandnevergivesuponothersnotevenherandAUGH

[mwildeboyii]

Lemme present my own Riddler Boy... [I usually write him in Portuguese on a Facebook RP btw]

My Ed is constructed by personal headcanons and interactive scenes. His back story wrote by me based on multimedia. So let me talk about the arcs.

The Ballad Of Edward Nashton

The Prince of the Puzzles: this chapter is about the classic story of puzzle competition, but on my version Ed wasn't a good student, actually Eddie had problems at school, doesn't seems he had any interest or at least that he was mentally present. But someday Teacher Nordine (who doesn't even knows Eddie's name properly) threatened him with participation or death "or you join the schools game or we will call your parents blablabla" so he did and discovered something that he was really good: games and competitions. Ed found there attention, but also rivals who doesn't liked that the boy was winning most of the logical and board games.

Materialising Thoughts: here Ed became a teenager, now he is a brilliant student and he learned to treat school as his safe place. He hates come back home and his anger became higher everyday. In this chapter Ed will struggle with lots of intrusive thoughts, some unhealthy behaviour and finally he will free himself of his dad and mother and he also run away of Gotham tho. It's a chapter with lots o fiscal violence and mental issues, some self regulation tactics and self harm too. Also we have some gender questions and a best friend x first love (and yes, happens to be the same person, a girl!).

"Are you incapable to keep you mouth shut?": After runaway, Ed found a job in a highway Amusment Park. Now he doesn't speak, he doesn't have a name, but his good ideas for gambling shines. Yes this is a side quest chapter where Ed is in a long term nonverbal, he became a golden goose of the park, but things will go wrong and Ed will take his money and runaway again. (if the working class produces everything everything belongs to it -q)

Thy name is E.Nigma: Now our riddler boy will spend his next year's solving his identity. Forging himself since the birth. New back story with echoes on his own, and a dead parents in his back. With fake documents, illegal money (well washed, thank you very much), Ed is planning his own rebirth in Gotham City.

Year One

Once Upon a Time in Gotham: Edward Nygma is a Gotha U student and a consulting forensic scientist (he is a Sherlock Holmes itself). No he doesn't work officially for GCPD, but very frequently he is hired to solve some issues for the PD (whe they does not hire Ed, he just entered without permission because he want, and this annoys alot some cops). At the University, Ed have problems with grades because he wants to study everything, so is a great mess. He also start dating Antonie, the theatre guy and conveniently became part of the company for a while, until the broke up moment. Yeah, he is living his best life, the one he planned for himself. A little bit of taxes crimes, misterys to solve, an academic life and a very very sweet boyfriend, who wait the right time... Nothing can destroy this strawberry life, right? (Oh and here we are presented to Nina/Echo, Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy) and Dinah L. Lance (Black Canary). [Pammys and Nina are Ed's bffs based on the rp dynamics between me and my Pammys🥺 who date Dinah btw].

"Seriously, Nygma. You need help.": Lack ofstimulus make him vexing... But the thing is, everything goes wrong when Ed saw his mother with another man and two kids. Twins... Now he is much more obsessed with work and please and seeking attention. He is freaking out for real, but he cant tell anyone why is that. So 3 times Ed will listen that he needs help: first time in the University from his advisor, then he will listen from Antonie during a fight that precedes the break and finally, from Bullock who is pissed with a nerd doing much more than he and also shooting riddles all the time. Well he do find help before a terrible crise wich dump him in a psychiatric hosp for a night where he will meet Doctor Albert Marin, his new PSYCHIATRIST.

The Golden Heart Episode: During this one, Ed will have to solve a strange crime, a dead body mummified with a plastic heart full of pee. The mystery will be solved in a week or something, but Ed and the detective Bullock will struggle with this for a month and so. Also, Ed is seeing Doctor Marin biweekly and taking some psycomeds... He already figured that the doc is playing him as a lab rat, still Edward feels someway motivated to keep going. I risk to say that Edward is attracted, specially because of the attention and the curiosity of the Doctor towards him. (We also have one of my favorite parts, it's a Towel Day when Ed is in his apartment with Nina listening the old audio series of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, drinking his own version of Pangalact Dynamite when Bullock and Dinah Lance appears to discusses the Golden Heart case).

What is black, white and red all over?: Oswald Cobblepot bleeding the hell out of him? Yeah, roommates era adapted by me.

How the Riddler got his name: Robberies as spectacles, trophies and whatever else. Yep there's a connection between The Golden Heart Case and th Penguin and the lack of stimulus? Is a chapter where Ed broke the egg once again. The meds are messing up with him, he needs attention and blablabla, so The Riddler in his very very green suit. Of course: Query and Echo, a bit o kink stuffs and BDSM clubs and hmm kidnapping. Batman appears here but I never find a Batman role player who wished to rp with me. (mostly because of my communist queer subtext tbh). [[ OH AND ONE OF MY FAVOURITE MOMENTS HERE THO! Edward first time in Iceberg Cassino, very very Art Deco Themed and Oswald is such a 20's diva mommy here!

Home Sweet Asylum

Adaptation and Transference: First month in Arkham and Ed will be jumped between the doctors and therapist. He is adapting his routine and mapping the whole place, figuring every patient and being a solvers to every problem but his own. Is during this chapter that we will be presented for Harleen Quinn, she is already locked and she also force a friendship with Ed until he just accept her in his life. The chapter ends with Ed bonding with Harls and also finding a psychiatrist who wants to take his case.

Doctor Fear and The Arkham Break: Well, aren't you happy that you found a psychiatrist, Edward? NO! HE IS POISON ME, WHY ARE YOU WRITING THIS SHIT? Ha... So Jonathan Crane also using Ed as a lab rat, but now is worse because Ed is being under fear toxin without know and... oh dear... THIS IS BAD. But we have some good moments here like when Harleen decides to made clandestine therapy with Edward. We also had a Arkham break out wich one Edward and Harleen doesn't participate (Edward because he is in a horrible state of mind, dealing with fear and chemical dependency and believing that maybe he belongs in Arkham. Harley bc she is trying a Conditional.) The chapter ends with an Oswald visit and the date of Edward judgement.

The Copycat: Riddler copycat will bump on the city and Ed will help the PD to solve the crimes and claim back his identity... I mean he is almost reformed, not Riddler anymore Ahm... No, not a bit. Crime solved, Harleen released and... Why Jonathan is not Ed's psychiatrist anymore?

Good Conduct: Ed struggling with the lack of toxin in his blood, no Harleen anymore and also needing to improve his body and mind health. Dark times for our dear Eddie boy, but he is trying and in the end... Well his fight wasn't really a need because The Penguin had played for his dear boy being realised.

To be continued...? (I have 3 more arcs, a malewife one with mayoral era, a Arkham city conflict with hints of Riddler Factory and a properly Riddler factory with a Reality Show where he bonds with Poison Ivy and torture billionaires in a island with poisoned conundrums 🥺)

(@arabriddler template.

¹ Not the best English, but I was having fun writing this blog so... I AM NOT SORRY, my psychiatrist said that I do can commit mistakes, it's okay.

² If anyone would like, I am open to RP with whatever character but Poison Ivy and Lucy Quinzel. I'd really like to have a Batman, Oswald pr Jonathan. Would be funny.

³ if anything, my rp profile is: Ed Nygma :3

That's all folks

[savagesneversleepnyc]

THE EL WAY?!

DAVE was one of the GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS, an elite squad who could ski and shoot guns and get buck should they deploy. No human may have lived of any higher caliber of fortitude in SANDY’s eyes.

A gun toting right wing REAGAN ERA believer, who like him believed in the value of teaching troubled kids. They held court at the far end of HAZEN and would build many stupendous things of metal, wood, clay and vellum. The room seemed boundless with its collage of NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE adverts blown like graffiti upon the white cinder block walls. The film STYLE WARS played on PBS one evening in the 80’s. He was like a child attempting to frame the infamy of real and tough folk he came up with. The reason the soldiers came back from WARS and were alienated.. They felt already discarded and would be forgotten completely if not for profound effort to define a flawed cause and life. As generations spilled over like a champagne cascade of the toxic slurry of society fed to the VETS and the rest of US.

The poisonous reasoning mechanism that made HUNTS POINT, BROWNSVILLE and OZONE PARK places of conflagration. Like desperate creatures under feet trying to run from the stomping of loud heels or thunderous pounds on the door as the tenement burns….

DAVE was from COLORADO and BARRE… We watched LIVING ON A PRAYER debut on MTV vs THE BEASTIE BOYS. (I don’t think anyone wins a popularity contest.. )

We also would watch a spritely young upstart charge his team back to back to the SUPER BOWL atop HIDEAWAY ACHES at the DEAD END of the CUL DE SAC,.

As they all whipped up a frenzy not once but twice, I saw this young man fall upon his ambition and sword as a titan not yet bold enough to clutch the crown… SOME TIME LATER, when his face was facing mine we smiled as he turned and jumped in some forgettable car.. ED McCAFFREY towered to the sky as I popped into the VENATION glass veiled BROWN PALACE lobby…, I’d soil myself in TOIL and TREACHERY and a very real and perilous game of cat and mouse I would play there…

BUT no place of haves and FECES could my eyes perceive when old boy took the championship 3 times in a campaign repeated by PAYTON and other who’s balls are cast of cold rolled GRID IRON… we RIOT’d in the streets and VIC got on the cover of the ROCKY for looting.., the corny cellphone store people who payed him played him KNOW MIND, and chuckled at the awkward, kindly giant from PROVO looked like he was actually working while digging for records online…

The FIRST LOSS is the most real. Do we ever win instantly at anything?

We cannot crawl before being prone. Like a tad pole from the creek to frog legs on lilly pads in spring. The legs are not formed in utero but in motion toward failure and finality.. But time and space is kind to keep off too many pigeons, rats and wombats, so they proliferate and marry PIGS who sing so great…

To rise is to fall as

the LION and the BALL

the SHARK and the FISH

the MOUTH to the NIPPLE

the YANG to the YIN

As THE EL WAY

WE SAY IS A PUNCH IN THE FACE

FOLLOWED BY A SAVAGE GRIN

FOR THE WIN.

John Elway is probably a dude a great many people volley BIG OPIONS on and I only say that he LOST, HE WON, HE is a man who I shook hands with once and I think that is probably GOOD LUCK.

PEOPLE of huge tasks are often of huge asks from the world. The action hero’s and athletes who are shown to be quite human and flawed are not the fault of the people and legacy that surround them.

WE forget too quick to be kind in remembering our on own faults and cracks that we allow ILL intent into our SAFEs to TRESPASS and erect STATUES OF LIBERTY to pass…

5:18am HOD SANDY DESK 8.2.24.00004

[ldss-interactive]

At Alter’s End: A CYOA Novel

Overview:

Trentworth, Maine. A town of ten thousand southeast of Ellsworth and North of Bayside. Its only bragging point since its conception in 1867 was being a shoreline city and cheaper than any of the other big tourist towns. Nothing ever happened here, besides the occasional drowning or fishing trip accident, until the killings started. They lasted five years in total and 48 people were lost to the killer’s sick desires. Robert Hall terrorized this small town, slipping under the radar by focusing on those considered “undesirable”; sex workers, orphans, drug addicts, and the like. Now ten years later, ten years after the killer has been put behind bars, murders have begun again. A copycat killer has come to Trentworth. And they seem to be targeting the ones left behind, still trying to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives…

You take the role of a highschool senior; your parents having died in a home fire shortly before the killer was put behind bars and now under the care of your workaholic aunt. Make allies of your classmates or attempt to go it alone, clear your parents’ name from their believed involvement with the killer or fight to put the past behind you, deal with the skeletons in your closet and mind or bury them deeper... Oh, and make sure your history project is turned in on time. With two young siblings depending on you and a whole host of problems a highschool student should never have to deal with, can you survive this nightmare made real?

Trigger Warnings: This game will go into very heavy topics including the following; murder, death, various mental health issues (such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety), abandonment, gambling, various types of drug addiction, self harm mentions (not happening to the MC or shown in graphic detail), suicide, sex work, child abuse (mental, emotional, and physical), and dangerous situations. This is a murder mystery/thriller, it is NOT intended for audiences below 18.

Hello! Thank you for showing interest in At Alter’s End. This is a Choose Your Own Adventure style novel in the Thriller and Murder Mystery genres. It would also fit nicely in the Drama genre as well, but Drama is not the focus. This will be a rather lengthy project, with fifteen chapters plus a prologue and epilogue planned.

You take on the role of a senior at Trentworth High. Join an after-school activity, take care of your younger siblings, prepare for finals, get a part time job, find a date to homecoming, and survive your worst nightmare come to life. The copycat killer is targeting the students of your school and no one is safe. With the police dragging their feet, no help coming any time soon from any higher up law enforcement, and the locals refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a copycat killer, it’s up to you and your classmates to find the person responsible...before it’s too late.

- You can play as female, male, nonbinary, or trans!

- You can be straight, gay, or bisexual!

- A highly customizable MC including hair color, eye color, skin color, hair length, height, and personality and interests!

- The ability to choose which mental illness the MC suffers from due to the trauma of their past from the following:

Anxiety, Depression, or PTSD.

- The MC is deaf in their right ear ear due to the way in which their parents died; this is not something that can be changed.

- Choose from 7 different official after-school activities! Trentworth Volunteers, Up and Coming Artists, National Debate Society, National Honors Society, Co-Ed Varsity Basketball, Creative Writing, and Trentworth Gardeners!

- Bond with your classmates, explore your town, and help raise your younger siblings!

- Rescue your parents’ bakery from corporate clutches or let it go!

- Find the killer, stop the murders, and put a stop to the rumors that have plagued your every step for 10 years!

Vanya: Oldest adoptive twin sibling to MC’s adoptive siblings, 6 years younger than MC. Strong-headed, intelligent, and always getting into trouble. She looks after her brother and MC in the ways she can.

Ajay: Youngest adoptive twin sibling to MC’s adoptive sibling, 6 years younger than MC. Nearly completely blind since birth, he enjoys painting and other artistic endeavors. Obedient yet opinionated.

Aunt Emma: The workaholic aunt that takes custody of MC and their younger siblings after the death of their parents. Well meaning but absent most of the time on business trips or at the office.

Kwan Hall: An adoptive relative to Robert Hall; aloof, intelligent, and completely ostracized by Trentworth as a whole. When the killings start again the town’s attention is immediately turned on Kwan. He’s the first to begin investigating the killings when the police prove their incompetence. He is of Korean descent, standing at 5’6” with dark hair and dark eyes. His most notable feature is the long scar that stretches from his forehead’s hairline, down his left temple, and ends just below his jawline and the constant disinterest on his face. He is asexual in that he doesn’t experience sexual attraction at all. He is also bisexual.

Alessia D’Agostina: Trentworth High’s school president. She’s clawed her way tooth and nail up to earn the respect of both the school faculty and her fellow classmates; she’s strong-willed, dependable, and always looks at things through a logical lens. When she sees her classmates dying, she takes it upon herself to try and stop this once and for all. With dark skin, deep brown eyes, long braided hair, and standing at 5’8” her confidence and sense of self always make sure she stands out from the crowd. Alessia is bisexual.

Georgiy Kuzmin: Twin brother to Anastasiya Kuzmin; he is, in the kindest way possible, not the brightest bulb in the box. Yet he always means well and is more than willing to offer a helping hand. As the co-captain of the basketball team, captain of the baseball team, and the star of the swim team, Georgiy is one of the most popular and well beloved students at Trentworth High. When he realizes his friends are in danger, he willingly throws himself into the investigation to do all he can to help. With fair skin, dirty blond hair, bubbly green eyes, and standing at 6’1” he cuts an approachable figure to anyone who knows him. Georgiy is gay.

Anastasiya Kuzmin: Twin sister to Georgiy Kuzmin: she and her brother are alike in so many ways apart from just appearance. Anastasiya, who goes by Ana more often than not, is head of the Co-Ed Varsity Basketball team, the Girls’ softball team, and the Tennis team. Just as popular and loved as her brother, Ana may not be the smartest but she makes up for it with passion and dedication. Like her brother, she has fairer skin, dirty blond hair, and bright green eyes. Also like her brother, she felt she couldn’t just sit around while her friends were put in danger and agreed to join the investigation. Ana is gay and demiromantic, meaning she only gains feelings for someone after having a strong relationship with them.

Lillian Triano: A quiet, withdrawn girl who mainly keeps to herself. Due to the fact that Trentworth High demands for every senior to be apart of an elective, she is mainly seen in afterschool reading club run by Ms. Habeeb. She’s MC’s closest friend, having been one of the only people who didn’t believe the rumors that MC’s parents were assisting Robert Hall in his murders. She has an olive complexion, brown eyes, a heavy dose of freckles, and stands at 5’1”. Lillian is gay.

Jasmine Abernathy: Jasmine is Trentworth High’s self proclaimed “Best news source!” After the school newspaper was disbanded, Jasmine took it upon herself to keep freedom of the press alive. She’s fierce in her pursuit of the truth and never one to back down from a fight, though her rash attitude can get her into some sticky situations on occasion. With vibrant red hair, dark brown eyes, and standing at 5’3” she puts the term “fire” in Fire Signs. (She’s an Aries in astrology!) When the copycat killings began, it was no surprise when she took the case head on. Jasmine is bisexual.

Asa San Nicholas: Asa is the oldest of a set of triplets; they’re the type to march to the beat of their own drum, often not listening to what anyone has to say about themselves or their interests. Asa is a firm believer in the paranormal and it isn’t uncommon to find them indulging in their interest in various ways. “The spirits are distrubed. These deaths aren’t meant to happen.” Asa’s reason for getting involved seems to tie directly back to their “connection” with the spirits of the town. Asa has black hair, most often tied in a ponytail, hazel eyes, and an olive skin tone. At 6’4” they tower over most everyone...something they seem to enjoy a great deal. Asa doesn’t see gender and is interested in people regardless of how they present.

Leo San Nicholas: The middle of the triplets. They are genderfluid, okay with any pronouns. Leo is, for lack of a better word, eccentric. A bit of an adrenaline junkie, you can often find them cliff diving or giving their siblings heart attacks by playing russian roulette with a chocolate gun. To them, it isn’t fun if there isn’t a little danger involved; naturally, an investigation into a serial killer scratches that itch quite nicely. Their black hair is clipped short, multiple piercings visible on each ear, and their heterochromatic hazel and green eyes are often stated to stare through a person. Although Leo is genderfluid, they are only interested in people who present as female.

The demo is upcoming! When it is available I will make a post announcing it! I will also update this post with the link! This game is written in choicescript; the demo will be published on Dashingdon and the final game will be published for free on itch.io. I am open for questions regarding this game/novel and once the demo is published I will also be publishing a link to my Ko-fi! Until then, please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions!

[iwa1zumis]

“i love you and i like you”: passion and burnout in Haikyuu!! 

tw: discussions of self harm, anxiety, burnout and breakdowns. 

spoilers for the whole manga!! 

okay this is probably gnna be jflkafjdklfj all over the place, but i’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between loving and liking something, and how haikyuu emphasises the importance of both those feelings being present when pursuing a passion. 

a quick look at google (and i KNOW my college professors are cringing away in horror victor frankenstein-style @ my use of google definitions but jflajfsdk bear with me!!) demonstrates how often the concepts of love and like are conflated, with love her being framed as a sort of deeper or more intense like: “to like or enjoy very much” to be specific. but personally i’ve always thought there’s something a bit misleading about that kind of definition, since its absolutely possible to love something or someone without necessarily liking them. to take a personal example: i love debate. i debated through middle and high school, made captain of the debate team, and was constantly travelling to and fro for different tournaments. even before i started to debate formally i’d jump at the chance to do mini-debates in class, argue with and rebut parents and friends over meals and causal conversation.... you get the idea. i loved debate, and still love it dearly, but i honestly don’t think i particularly liked it much. tournaments would always fill me with the most INSANE kind of stress, i’d barely eat or sleep in the days leading up to a meet, and i’ve had more muffled bathroom breakdowns in between rebuttals than i can count. after my final year of high school, i decided against joining the debate at university. i knew that if i were to retain ANY love for the activity going into the future, i had to force myself to take a break. 

so what does this solipsistic tangent have to do with haikyuu, you ask? well i have no doubt that a vast majority of the players in the series love volleyball. they’re dedicated and passionate about it. they hunger for the chance to be put on the court. but do they like to play? 

1. oikawa: “i forgot that volleyball can be fun” 

ofc i wouldn’t be an oikawa stan worth my salt if i didn’t start this off with the (grand) king himself!! imo one of the reasons why oikawa is such a popular and well-loved character is his constant determination to keep moving forward and playing, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable opponents and adversities (”never forget my worthless pride”, anyone?). inevitably, all the hard work and practise he put into his craft has left him with a very carefully constructed, put together playstyle-- he’s the kind of player who knows how to bring the best out of each and every teammate on the court because of the amount of time he spends observing them and playing with them. it’s an outlook and playstyle best encapsulated in his now iconic line during the second karasuno v seijoh match: 

“Talent is something you make bloom, instinct is something you polish!” 

in my opinion the word “polish” it super significant here-- it explicitly singles out the years and years of hard work that set a foundation for his talent and instinct to shine. 

but what happens when they don’t shine? there’s no denying that oikawa is an incredibly skilled and intuitive player (something that hinata’s acknowledgment of him as the “great king” to kageyama’s “king” immediately sets out) but oikawa himself is acutely aware of the fact that he can never quite measure up to his long-time rival ushijima or his immensely talented protege kageyama. oikawa’s self described strategy to deal with opponents is to: 

“Hit it until it breaks” 

but what happens when hitting something again and again with your carefully honed, “polished” skills yields no results? imo there’s a very clear binary mentality drawn here-- either you hit it and it breaks, asserting your superiority; or you hit it and it doesn’t break, enforcing your inferiority. with each perceived loss against ushijima and kageyama, oikawa’s internalized logic holds his own weakness up to his own face, shaking his faith in himself as a player. if you’ll pardon the on-the-nose-metaphor: the whole “hitting it till it breaks” strategy is a two-way street, and oikawa has been hitting himself, metaphorically speaking, for a very long time. i have no doubt that he loved volleyball, passionately, through middle and high school. but with his inferiority complex growing in the face of constantly refuted results, i think he slowly began to like it less and less. 

so how does oikawa get his groove back? to answer that, we’ll have to turn to the post-timeskip chapters, particularly the two chapters that deal with oikawa and hinata’s unexpected meeting in Rio (372 and 373 for anyone curious!). while reminiscing with hinata over dinner, oikawa finally reveals the event that made him want to play volleyball (as a setter, to be exact)-- as a child, he watched veteran setter jose blanco step into a game and

“... inconspicuously help[ed] the ace get his bearings again... and then simply left the court.” 

oikawa’s reaction to blanco’s playstyle might just be one of my favourite panels in the chapter for how it conveys so much with such little space: 

the stammer of “i-i--”, which suggests a sense of resolve and determination forming in real time, finally coalesces into the determined declaration of “i wanna be a setter too!” what i took from this is that oikawa’s admiration for-- and liking of-- blanco expresses itself in the agency with which he makes his choice, in this case, actively deciding to be a setter so that he can support players on the court like blanco did. the liking that oikawa has here is therefore inherently linked to the agency and freedom he feels here-- freedom to choose his position, and how he wants his volleyball career to develop. 

this recollection of his childhood memories, and the subsequent game of beach volleyball that oikawa and hinata play afterwards, essentially push oikawa back into the mental and physical space of a child or beginner, as the manga demonstrates with panels of oikawa being forced to ditch his usual carefully developed, polished playstyle to learn the ropes of beach volleyball: 

ultimately concluding with the beautiful panel transition of oikawa, as a child AND adult, celebrating after a successful play: 

“It reminds me that-- I forgot that-- volleyball is fun.”

in a different country, playing a familiar game by slightly different rules and led back into the mentality and freedom of a novice after years of careful development, oikawa rediscovers his liking for the game. 

2. kageyama: “when you get strong, someone stronger will rise to meet you” 

moving on to the king of the court himself!! i’d argue that kageyama’s childhood memories and experiences of volleyball function almost oppositely to oikawa’s-- while oikawa has to re-access the sensation of being a beginner again to like the game along with loving it, kageyama’s process of coming to like and love volleyball come from moving away from his early experiences and into a new phase of playing-- specifically, his partnership with hinata. 

one of kageyama’s defining features is his individualism-- he’s both skilled and solitary enough to prefer to, as he puts it, “play every single position on the court”. notably, he wants to become a setter because: 

“[it’s] the one that touches the ball the most.”

in fact, i’d argue that kageyama’s “king of the court” attitude that he was known for in middle school is an extension of this individualistic mindset: he holds himself to extremely high standards, and expects his team-mates (as extensions of himself) to meet those very same standards. the similarities between his internal monologue and his commands to kindaichi in these two panels, for example, are strikingly, visibly similar: 

there’s that near-identical intonation of “move faster, jump higher!” that implies that the way he treats his teammates is just an extension of how he treats himself-- a deeply self-critical, miserable way, as it turns out. it’s telling that for the first few chapters of a manga in which characters’ eyes literally light up when they’re happy, passionate or excited, kageyama’s eyes are drawn as pitch black, even while he’s playing. 

imo the reason why hinata’s appearance, and their later partnership, is so significant for kageyama’s personal development is because he can’t treat hinata like an extension of himself. hinata challenges him and his preconcieved notions of the sport at every turn: first with his lightning-fast reflexes and raw intuition, and then with his determination to hit kageyama’s toss no matter what. in fact, the first time that kageyama’s eyes light up in the manga is, you guessed it, when he and hinata first pull off a successful “freak quick”: 

during the post-timeskip chapters we’re introduced to kageyama’s backstory in much greater detail: the way in which his grandfather fostered his passion for volleyball and the timing with which his grandfather’s illness and later death left kageyama increasingly alienated, thus further enforcing his individualist mentality. but what the chapter also gave us was an explicit confirmation of a theme that had been built up from the very beginning of the story, when kageyama’s grandfather tells him: 

“when you get really strong, i promise someone stronger will rise to meet you”

i’ve seen translations of the line that use both “meet” and “challenge”, and personally i’d have to say that i prefer “challenge” for what it implies-- even before hinata got strong enough to actually meet kageyama halfway he challenged him to move away from his pre-established mindset of doing everything himself, and into one where he actually comes to enjoy-- and like-- volleyball. 

3. hirugami: “maybe you’ve just had your fill”

hirugami’s case is kind of a strange one-- unlike oikawa and kageyama he’s not a major character, and his relationship with volleyball only gets a single backstory chapter as opposed to a series-long arc. but i personally ADORE his mini-arc for the things it has to say about burnout, passion and moving on. 

hirugami is introduced as the youngest member of a volleyball family-- his parents, older brother and older sister all play the sport. when explaining how he began to play himself, hirugami says: 

“... naturally, i started to play too. because i was good at it, and it was fun.” 

imo there are a lot of really interesting things to pick apart with this phrasing: the “naturally” implies a foregone conclusion but also a degree of passivity, like he himself recognises that he was swept up in his family’s influence. the “it was fun” coming AFTER “because i was good for it” also implies a degree of correlation, as though if he didn’t have the aptitude, he wouldn’t enjoy the game (a mindset markedly different to both oikawa and kageyama). as hirugami gets older, this correlation of being good ----> having fun ----> being able to play begins to reverse, and therefore manifest in increasingly self destructive ways: 

the main impetus for hirugami has now become not wanting to lose, which therefore requires a degree of heightened practise and self discipline in order to achieve. notably, having fun has been reduced to an afterthought, a state that might be achieved if he wins. 

the correlation of “winning” and “being good” is a slipperly slope to go down, though, something that becomes especially apparent after hirugami’s team lose a game. the frustration of being unable to reach his goal of winning manifests itself as not being “good enough”-- acting on this, hirugami seeks to punish himself for “messing up”: 

the close up panel of hirugami’s “confession” after hoshiumi confronts him hits particularly hard because it taps into a feeling that i’m sure almost all of us have felt at one point or another-- the realisation that something you once both loved AND liked is now only bringing you misery: 

ironically, it’s actually this acknowledgement of “not really liking volleyball that much” that acts as a catalyst for hirugami’s recovery from burnout. hoshiumi’s acknowledgement of, and reply to, hirugami’s state is seemingly simple but deeply freeing: 

and honestly, why not just quit? there’s nothing tethering hirugami to volleyball, certainly nothing as serious as life or death. personally my favourite part of this panel is hoshiumi’s description of volleyball as food from which hoshiumi has “eaten his fill”-- a lovely metaphor that re-contextualizes what could be seen as “time wasted” into something productive and indeed nourishing. 

when we check up on hirugami post time-skip, we find out that he has indeed quit playing volleyball in favour of going to veterinary school, but he’s seen watching the game between the jackals and adlers on his phone with an eager, fond smile on his face, implying that it was the act of moving away from the table (so to speak) after eating his fill that let him still hold on to a love and passion for the game, even though he is now interacting with it as a spectator instead of a player. and indeed that might just be why i love hirugami’s arc so much-- with it, haikyuu tells us that sometimes passion’s don’t need to be re-ignited in the same way. while oikawa and kageyama rediscover their love for, and liking of, the game through a return to childhood and the arrival of a new partner respectively, hirugami’s journey away from burnout comes from recognizing that he can step away from the volleyball court, and that the love and like will still remain. 

[random-imagines-blog]

Perfect {Christian Bale x Reader Oneshot}

Requested by: Anonymous Wordcount: 1838 Summary: Christian proves time and time again how much he loves you. Song: Perfect by Ed Sheeran

Although you had been married for five years now, Christian kept finding ways to surprise you. He never stopped trying to woo you, although he had put both the engagement and wedding rings upon your finger. When you got home from filming, after a good four months abroad, you had expected to see him sitting on the couch, anticipating your arrival, but that wasn’t what you got. What you had come home to was candlelight from different parts of the house, rose petals strewn down the hallway, and a note upon the table where you often set your keys, hand written with your name on it. You picked it up and read it outloud in a whisper.

‘Y/N,

Darling, I’ve had the last four months to think about what I was going to do when you finally came back home to me. You know me, I couldn’t just sit around and wait, I had to think up something. Do something. A balloon and a banner wouldn’t have been enough, so I had to use my imagination. I came up with a thousand different things, and made a hundred different plans but this is the one that I settled on. This is what you inspired me to do. So follow the path, and meet me where I’m waiting for you.

Yours forever,

Christian.’

You pressed the piece of paper up to your face, and could smell his cologne. He must have been wearing it when he wrote this. And he had used his best handwriting too, not the scribbles that he usually did when he was jotting down notes or taking a message. You set the paper back down carefully, for you wanted to save this note. You kept every love note that he had ever written for you, even the first one that he had slipped under the door of your dressing room after you first met and had a connection on a film that you worked on together. You had a metal, fireproof box of them in your closet. It was worth the investment. You didn’t want anything to happen to them, and planned to show them to your children one day to prove that your husband, their father, was a romantic. Okay, maybe not all of them. There were a few that were for your eyes only.

You took off your shoes and left your luggage by the door, following the rose petals in your bare feet. The carpet felt soft and familiar after spending so long in your trailer, which was not nearly as nice as this house. You blew out the candles as you went on, noticing that there wasn’t much wax dripping so he must have lit them right before you came in. Still - you didn’t want to cause a fire for the sake of romance.

The petals lead you to the French doors which opened up to the backyard. The doors were open, a breeze coming through, ruffling at the tied-off curtains. Outside, strung up amongst the patio and the backyard, were paper lanterns. They were usually only used for parties and entertaining, but there didn’t appear to be anyone else out there but Christian.

When he saw you, he lifted his phone and pressed a button. A song started to come through the speakers. You recognized it from the radio, but you couldn’t claim to know it well. It was sweet, and it was warm, very much like the air out here tonight. You even noticed that he had put on the candles which acted as mosquito repellant, which you were very thankful for in these hot and muggy months. You walked down the stairs to the grass below, raising an eyebrow at him as the blades tickled at your toes.

“What’s all this?” You asked.

“A little welcome home,” He said, taking your hand giving you a spin. You giggled, and finished it by spinning right into his chest. Now you were understanding the meaning of the music, because he began to sway with you. You rested your head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. You didn’t realize how much you had missed the little things. The feeling of his hand against yours. The way that he dressed up for tonight, wearing a button up and nice trousers, just to see you. You were flattered, and honored as always.

The song seemed to know exactly how you were feeling. The lyrics were describing what was happening, right around you, and it made your heart shoot higher. God, you loved this man.

“I missed you,” He said softly into your ear. His breath tickled against your skin, and it sent a shiver up your spine. You smiled against him, your eyes drooping closed to fully take in the moment.

“I missed you too,” You admitted, humming contently. “But you didn’t have to go through all of this. I would have been happy with the banner and the balloons.”

“I know,” Christian chuckled, kissing the top of your head. “And that’s why I knew I had to do this. Because you’re deserving of so much more than a banner and some balloons.”

“You did bring balloons though right? You know I love those things,” You joked. Everything was absolutely perfect so far. A homecoming that you didn’t think that you deserved, but one that you sorely needed. He always went above and beyond for you - so you knew that you had to start planning what you were going to do for his next homecoming. He was always working on some project or other, so he was bound to be leaving your side soon. But now wasn’t the time to think about such negative things.

As the song came to an end, Christian’s lips finally met yours in a kiss that more than made up for being gone for so long. You pressed yourself against his body, trying to make it last longer, but he pulled away much too soon. You pouted at him, wondering what was going on.

“This wasn’t it,” He said, squeezing your hand. He lead you through the grass, over towards the pool house. There was a light breeze over the clear water, which looked enticing enough to jump in now. Perhaps before the night was over. You did get some sleep on the plane, and were feeling pretty well rested. A little skinny dipping adventure sounded like the perfect way to end the night.

The lights were on inside of the little structure. You never actually spent that much time in it, using it as storage, so you were eagerly looking forward to seeing what was in there which Christian thought so important. He opened the door for you, and when you stepped inside, you saw that everything had changed. There weren’t any boxes piled up or pool toys or Christian’s tools anymore. All of that stuff had been unpacked, put away and then buried behind a fresh coat of paint and new floors.

Not only that, but a table and two chairs were set inside, and the smell of your favorite dish came wafting over as you stepped inside. By now your cheeks were starting to hurt from having to support your smile for so long. “How did you know I was starving?” You chuckled, stepping further inside to see the candlelight had spread from the house to the poolhouse as well. Long, tall candles were on the table, sitting on either side of a vase with a couple of your favorite flowers, freshly picked.

“I know you,” Christian said with a grin. You slapped his arm playfully, but he didn’t stay by your side long to take the abuse. He moved past you to the chair, pulling it out for you, the part of the perfect gentleman. You took the seat, feeling like a pile of honey from how sweet he was being to you. “And I know you hate airplane food.” He added on, taking his own seat.

“Very true,” You admitted. The man really did know you better than anyone. You really didn’t think that you would ever love another human being this much, but he blew your expectations of romance right out of the water. “So, you redid the pool house,” You noted, cutting into your food.

“I thought it was about time,” Christian said, looking away from you for the first time of the night to take in his own handiwork. “I was thinking about adding more to it - making it like a playhouse.”

“A playhouse?” You asked, putting your fork down in surprise. “For who?”

“No one we know ... yet,” He said, a coy expression on his face. You knew exactly what he had meant though - you’d had these conversations before. Before you even got engaged, you wanted to be on the same page about having children one day. You wanted to share everything with him. Not just your heart, your career or your house - but the experience of parenthood as well. Thinking about a couple of little Christian’s running around, with big sweet versions of his eyes - it was almost too cute to bare. But the time had never seemed right, not with the fame and your constant projects. But he hadn’t taken on a job in six months, you realized. It made you wonder if he was serious about settling down for a while.

“Do you really mean that?” You asked, your own schedule wide open. Now was actually the perfect time if you were going to try for kids. You were financial steady, the house was paid off, you didn’t have to rush off for work anytime soon. And Christian could be there for you throughout all of it.

“What better time than now?” Christian asked, continuing to eat like he hadn’t just dropped that bombshell on you. You picked your fork back up and continued to eat, imagining throughout what could be done with this place. You’d need many more shelves for the plethora of toys that your children were going to have.

“Could you be any more perfect?” You asked, sliding your foot up his thigh as a little tease of what was to come later.

“Is that a challenge?” Christian asked, raising an eyebrow at you from across the table. “What if I told you that I planned to also clean the dishes tonight, and be the one that picks up all of the rose petals. You don’t even have to lift a finger.”

“Then I’d say yes, you can be more perfect,” You said, giggling. You hadn’t even thought about how annoying it could be to pick up each individual rose petal.

No matter how much you felt like you didn’t deserve all this, he had a way of making you feel perfect in return.

[vancafreader]

Fine Art Comics of Canada: Sixties to Seventies - Heart of London, Snore & More by Robert Dayton

Part One: The Heart Of London

There was a time where artists were making vast ripples away from Toronto and other outsized hubs. London, Ontario was such a place, all eyes were on it in the late 60’s and not Toronto. The Heart Of London comic book from 1968 was actually an exhibition catalog, an overview of the art that was happening there at the time. Organised by The National Gallery of Canada, this exhibition traveled from London to Toronto, Kingston, Edmonton, Victoria, Charlottetown and, of course, The National Gallery H.Q. itself in Ottawa.

This catalog/comic book consisted of fumetti, comics done using photos for the images. Fumetti was most prominently used in the 60’s by Harvey Kurtzman in Help and Playboy, prolifically in numerous Mexican comic book melodramas, and in Italian comics featuring the masked master criminal Satanik. Heart Of London’s particular fumetti is further stylized by heavily contrasted processing causing colours so bright that they make everything heightened artifice, buzzing as if emanating from a higher plane of being.

Cover of the Heart Of London catalogue

The Heart of London logo in Pepto-Bismol pink is rendered somewhere between Archie and underground comix titles. Above it, The Comics Code of Authority symbol -a comic book mainstay of the day implying that the work is of safe moral quality- has been altered to “National Gallery of Canada”, the institution that made this comic book and exhibition happen. The cover features what appears to be London public workers, perhaps? These men in yellow hard hats casually stand in front of a store with a Coca-Cola logo also coloured Pepto-Bismol pink, Pop Art style, at the city’s main intersection in what very well may be the heart of London.

The comic opens with a quote placed above a looming Brutalist parking lot, huddling various small businesses below it. This quote contains the phrase “heart of London” but it is rather self-deprecatingly not about London, Ontario but London, England in World War One. Sharing a name with London, England has often made this Ontario city the butt of many a joke, ie. “I live in London… (long pause) Ontario” with its population being just over 200,000 in 1968. Named in 1793 by Lord Simcoe, Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant-Governor known for starting the abolition of slavery, he was also fervently British, his vision for Canada was for it to be like England which he looooved, desperately (but stiffly) wanting this particular London to become Ontario’s capital. Alas, Toronto was chosen instead. Related, always related to everything: the term “cosmic consciousness”, the higher state of consciousness, was coined in London in 1872 by Richard Bucke, a psychiatrist and head of The Asylum For The Insane, after he received a blinding vision, illuminating him. Besides being active in asylum reform, Bucke was heavily involved in the arts -the vision occurred after an evening spent reading Romantic poetry as well as poems by Walt Whitman, who he later befriended. Yes, London, Ontario is an eccentric place.

The artists involved in the Heart Of London show were part of what was known as “London Regionalism”, a loose-knit movement of artists who were adamant about residing in London, away from Toronto or New York. Artist Greg Curnoe helped establish some of the very first artist-run centres there. He was an early member and huge proponent of CARFAC, a Canadian organisation that fights for artists to get paid and paid fairly for their work. CARFAC was founded in London by Heart Of London artists Jack Chambers and Tony Urquhart -along with Kim Ondaatje.

Besides Curnoe, Chambers, and Urquhart, the eleven artists in Heart Of London included John Boyle, Bev Kelly, Murray Favro, Ron Martin, David Rabinowitch, Royden Rabinowitch, Walter Redinger, and Ed Zelenak. They are all profiled in fumetti form talking about their practice through speech balloons and captions, along with quick biographical details. Many of these artists were known for their inventiveness, they were influenced by a variety of subject matter -including comic art- without falsely delineating these influences into false boxes of high or low art. They didn’t just make work in the visual art field either. Along with a Hart Of London work-on-paper, Chambers made an experimental film with the same name in 1970. This film intensely shows brutal shots of an abattoir in Spain interspersed with London scenes; it has been described by Stan Brakhage as “one of the greatest films ever made.”  Both Curnoe’s Heart Of London painting from 1967 and Jack Chambers’ 1968 work-on-paper Hart Of London are in the show.

Noted curator and historian Judith Rodger told me that Curnoe’s Heart Of London piece depicts The Forks Of the Thames downtown, “arguably the heart of London” near many of the artists’ studios with Greg’s studio as the main hub or heart of it all. As for the idea of a comic book catalog, it was a mystery until Rodger guided me to Katie Cholette’s PhD thesis Memory and Mythmaking: the role of autobiography in the works of Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe which states that it was the idea of William Bragg, assistant to the director of The National Gallery’s extension services. Cholette’s paper quotes Bragg from the Sept 29, 1968 New York Times’ Arts Notes column, “…The idea was to make a kind of scrapbook, to talk as a group, not individuals. Their work is kind of echoed by the comics—it’s really their bag […] Everyone likes to read comics once in a while, anyway.” Due to its uniqueness, the catalog garnered a lot of press for the show. Beverley Lambert (Bev Kelly in the show) says, “I think we all thought it was pretty neat and it was funny. It got people’s attention.”

When I talked to artist John Boyle about this comic book catalog, he said right away, “It’s too bad that Greg Curnoe isn’t with us anymore, because he was really interested in comic books. And he always did comic book or comic-like drawings from the time he was a little kid.” In the book Greg Curnoe Life And Work, author Judith Rodger’s description of his 1963 painting Myself Walking North In the Tweed Coat could be ascribed to many of his works. “The flat, vivid colours; schematic outlines; and text all come from his love of the comic book.” As well as the inclusion of the name of the newspaper strip Mary Worth in the piece. Another colourful painting casually inserts Dick Tracy into the frame as a representative of one of his interests. Curnoe’s series of cut-out collages were often shaped into cartoony and anthropomorphic forms.

Curated by Pierre Théberge at The National Gallery, Boyle readily notes, “Both Curnoe and Chambers talked up all the other artists who were around in London, and ended up persuading Théberge to have a group show to get a sense of the whole London art scene.”

The comic book itself doesn’t give William Bragg’s name at all, nada. The designer is credited: Roger Duhamel, FRSC, Queen’s Printer and Controller of Stationery, a federal government official, as well as the design firm: Eccleston + Glossop International. All of the photos, however, were done by the late Don Vincent, of whom Boyle says, “He was a friend of ours, of all of us. And a really terrific photographer. And he documented the whole London scene as it unfolded taking photographs all the time of everybody in this show and just of London, his whole life was photography.” Vincent’s work also appeared in 20 Cent Magazine, a delightfully scrappy local art magazine started in the mid-60’s with many of the people in the show, including Boyle and Curnoe, contributing writings and drawings. 20 Cent Magazine sold for 25 cents, ha! Vincent also photographed The Nihilist Spasm Band who are regarded as the first noise-rock band; this amazing, mind-blowing, intense and milk-spurtingly funny act was founded by the late Greg Curnoe, with Boyle and Favro (playing unique guitars that he builds himself) as still very active members over fifty years later. They are unique cultural ambassadors bringing such songs as “No Canada” to the world, having performed in Japan and in Vancouver at The Western Front with poet George Bowering guesting on guitar, and have had a documentary made about them by the late noise artist Zev Asher.

In one of Heart Of London’s comic book panels about Boyle an early issue of the four color MAD sneaks its way in. I asked him if he read MAD, “Yeah. Although that is from the designer. I read MAD, although not madly.”

A very young Boyle states in one of his panels, “The day I can truly defile myself in public, I will have accomplished everything, and I will no longer have a need to paint.” Reflecting today he says, “I still think that actually, and I think I may have succeeded. Because I do still have the need to paint. But I don’t have the need to show it anymore, or to get applause or approval from anyone. And I don’t know how that arose in me. But I kind of had a fair amount of attention and approval and acceptance and shows in fancy places and meeting important people and pleasing art administrators. And I kind of reached the conclusion that most of them aren’t worth pleasing and their opinion was not as good or not as important as the opinions of other people that I happen to know. And I thought they made a lot of mistakes and people that they chose to support. And also, their approval was very fickle. They were very fickle about it because as soon as fashions would change, their eyes were directed elsewhere and the people they thought were geniuses today were no longer geniuses tomorrow. I did kind of lose my enthusiasm for the art world, but not for painting. So, I was mistaken.”

The final pages of this catalog feature a few reproductions of pieces from the show itself, including Bev Kelly’s window paintings which, with its window panels, adapt quite easily to the comic book form, comparable to an ornate and mysterious painted comic page. The layout, however, was a bit fast and loose with one of her works being printed sideways. In her fumetti section she says, “These windows aren’t ‘real’ windows, they are still paintings. They don’t have sashes and you can’t see through them. A real window is to look through, these are to look at.” Painted on canvas, the window pieces used lumber to make the frames of the paintings, carved to look like the ribbed mouldings of window frames.

Bev Kelly was the sole woman in the show and when I asked her about this she said, “I’m very happy that they didn’t concentrate on this issue that I was the only woman. I didn’t want to be known as an artist because I was a woman.” Having recently moved to London from Saskatchewan with her husband, they were warmly welcomed by Curnoe and she would go see The Nihilist Spasm Band play every week at The York Hotel. Her first solo show was at The 20/20 Gallery in London.

She spent the first two years of her life in Biggar, Saskatchewan where the signs read, “New York Is Big, But This Is Biggar.” Being in London changed her notions of places like New York being the absolute cultural mecca. Beverley says, “There was a really vibrant cultural community there. You know what a regionalist Greg was. He really believed, as a lot of writers do, that you should write about what you know, or you should do your art about what you know, including where you live and so on. And, of course, when I started on the windows that was right out where I was living. The first ones were of my house and then I walked around and took pictures of various houses that I thought looked interesting. When I got a studio in London above one of the businesses downtown I used some of the windows there as inspiration for my works. And then when I went back to Saskatchewan, I was very into that, looking around at what is there where you live. I even got a grant to travel around small-town Saskatchewan and look at the local -in air quotes- ‘folk art’ or untrained artists, let’s say, just painting odd things on their house or their property or whatever. So, I went and I did interviews, took pictures of them, and I imagine I must have produced some kind of a report on it because I probably had to for my grant. So that led me into being more observant and looking more at where it’s from and what is around you and that you don’t have to go to some huge, big place to find art.”

Bev Kelly was her married name and she returned to using her original name, Beverley Lambert in the 1970’s. Lambert did a series of three large lithographs for International Women’s Year in 1975 on women’s issues dealing with real news stories that happened on the prairies. Many of these prints were donated to many women’s centres across the country. She has also worked in clay doing an entire main street based on the fictional Saskatchewan town in the humour book Sarah Binks by Paul Hiebert. Beverley Lambert currently resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland where she makes art and is active as a conservator.

Flip the comic over and it is the same but in either French or English depending on where you first started reading!

Boyle comments, “Last night, my wife and I were looking at the Heart of London catalog. She was amazed that this was a National Gallery touring show with a lot of artists who became major artists in the country. And it looked like they were trying to spend as little money as possible by making this skinny little comic book-like thing on newsprint and I think there’s a large measure of truth in that. Because, again, I remember when Greg Curnoe had a big one-man exhibition retrospective at The National Gallery and the catalogue that they did for him was kind of a minimal thing. It was like a paperback book with one colour reproduction and a number of inferior black and white reproductions and basically a list of artworks in the show. And in the same year, The National Gallery did a big one-man exhibition of Donald Judd, the American sculptor, and his catalogue was a huge coffee table book that weighed about 15 pounds and was three inches thick and loaded with colour from beginning to end. And that just, I think, represented a specifically Canadian problem.” When I mention this to Hairy Who member Art Green he responds, “Well, of course, because they’re trying to impress their betters in New York, so you get a job at The Whitney or The Museum of Modern Art. Canada has been an incubator for museum directors since forever.”

Hairy Who catalog page by Art Green, courtesy of the artist

This style of catalog for Heart Of London corresponds nicely with The Hairy Who, another such grouping of artists around that time who were part of “The Chicago Imagists.” Their three Chicago art shows starting in the mid-60’s were accompanied by comic books that also doubled as exhibition catalogs. The Hairy Who weren’t very aware of the underground comics scene then just barely getting started, they chose this method out of creative necessity, printing a glossy catalog was cost prohibitive. Green explains, “And the printing was expensive and not very good. And we didn’t want to have a show that was called ‘Six Recent Graduates’ or something unexciting like that. And so, we realised we all liked comics and we all knew how to do colour stripping because we’d taken silk-screening courses, we figured out we could do it. And it was cheap.”

Delineating further, The Hairy Who made playful art inspired by a wide range of neat stuff. The London artists were well aware of The Hairy Who. In fact, The Hairy Who were even going to show in London at The 20/20 Gallery. Boyle notes, “20/20 was kind of a precursor to the art in the so-called artist run centres, most of which aren’t run by artists anymore. But anyway, it was one of the first and it was all sponsored by local people in London. And I don’t think it lasted longer than a couple of years, but it was a terrific gallery while it lasted.” Many of the artists in The Heart Of London show were active in 20/20, which lasted from 1966 to 1971. Greg Curnoe discussed the show with Hairy Who artist Karl Wirsum, who in a letter to Art Green wrote, “Well, if they go ahead and publish a comic book, that would be all right.” Green notes, “He may have thought that the 20/20 Gallery was more well-funded than it probably was. But it was on, we all agreed to do it. We were looking forward to it.” Green himself left Chicago for Canada in 1969. The 1968 Democratic Convention had transpired and as Green puts it, “Everybody was angry at everybody.” He was dissatisfied with his teaching job there as well, so when offered a job at NASCAD, the art school in Halifax, he leaped at it.

Alas, the show didn’t happen. In a letter to Art Green, Curnoe writes, “We had to cancel The Hairy Who show and a lot of us were disappointed.” Boyle notes, “I suspect that it got caught up in the death throes of the gallery. And they would have had to cancel whatever exhibitions they had coming up.”

Green notes that both London and Chicago are far enough away from the more major centres that artists can, “…be free to go their own way because there’s not much at stake partly and nobody’s paying attention. And I remember the first time I had been in London, we were driving on our honeymoon to Halifax where I got the job. And I thought, ‘I’m gonna stop here and get a Canada Dry.’ I’m driving down what’s the main street that runs north south and pulled into a corner store. And I said, ‘Do you have Canada Dry?’ ‘No, but we got America Dry.’  I have never before or since seen a bottle of America Dry. I bought it and it wasn’t as good as Canada Dry. And, and that’s not a dream. I mean, I have never seen it ever again. But that made me say, ‘Wow, this is a weird place.’”

While Green was teaching at NASCAD, Curnoe came for what Green calls, “One of his annual excoriations, if that’s a word, he would rip them up one side down the other in public, for being a Canadian art school with no Canadians teaching, hardly any, and all yanks -and it was true! And so anyway, they would invite him and it was almost like a ritual. He would be in the public, there’d be 400 students there and Greg would just rip the place apart. I had known Greg, I heard about the show and so on, and we got along fine. And afterwards he’d come up to me and say, ‘Well, how did I do?’ ‘Greg, you’re doing great, but you do realise I’m a yank’, but I agreed with him 100%.” Both Curnoe and Green commiserated on how Canadian art was neglected at the school. “If he had been in Chicago, Greg would have been a member of The Hairy Who or maybe started it. But he was more political, he had to be, and Chicago, the politics were so acidic that you wouldn’t have wanted to be to be involved in it, unless you went in full immersion. And we were decidedly unpolitical. Although we all agreed on the politics of it. We were a collective in the sense that we wanted people to collect us.” On this, Art Green is a tad glib, having made art responding to and criticizing Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Both Art and Greg would visit with each other in various Canadian cities: Halifax, Vancouver, Toronto. “Nobody appreciated Greg in Toronto, they went out of their way to un-appreciate him. And luckily, they did put a put up a pretty nice retrospective after he was safely gone.”

Of London, Green notes, “I think that for a period of time. I don’t know how long it was maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, maybe a few months? Maybe a few years. London, Ontario was most interesting art scene and literary scene in the whole world.”

The propensity for great art still ran in the water there, the stream flowed, there was a continuum and a recognizing of that history. London has some great galleries including Forest City Gallery, founded by Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe, where The Nihilist Spasm Band plays every Monday night.

In 2013 The London Museum held the group show L.O. Today with artists Jason Mclean, Marc Bell, Jamie Q, Billy Bert Young, Amy Lockhart, Peter Thompson, and James Kirkpatrick. Many of these artists are a part of the Canadian Psychedooolic art comic movement that began in the 1990’s, captured and collected in the book Nog A Dod, edited by former Londoner Marc Bell and released by Conundrum/PictureBox. Much of the work in Nog A Dod occurred in Vancouver with a couple of these London artists relocating there, immersing easily, doing a lot of collaborative drawing and art books with other Vancouver based artists. Yes, ‘Canadian Psychedooolic’ was named after the fact by Bell, but we weren’t thinking of ourselves as a movement or a group at the time. Yet all of these art books had an unfettered comic wildness, funny, and expansively playful. And Nog A Dod got out there, impacting and influencing a lot of artists the world over. Furthering the connective tissue, in 2003, The Western Front in Vancouver put on an art show featuring ‘documents and ephemera’ from musical acts The Nihilist Spasm Band, The All Star Schnauzer Band (a somewhat fake band as mail art project involving Bell, Mclean, and Thompson) and July Fourth Toilet, a Vancouver based group that often involves many Nog A Dod and Nog A Dod related artists, including yours truly occasionally wearing outlandish semi-functional semi-nude costumes specially designed by Jason Mclean. The show was curated by Jonathan Middleton, who is now Executive Director at Art Metropole, a Toronto based artist-run centre dealing primarily in artists’ publications.

Getting back to Greg Curnoe. Released in two parts in 1970, The Great Canadian Sonnet contained numerous images by Curnoe. Described as a “Beaver Little Book”, the format was modeled after the popular Big Little Books, distant cousins to comic books so named for being small, square and thick. Big Little Books were marketed to children and featured popular comic, cartoon, radio and film characters of the day in text-based stories with illustrations on every other page. Some Big Little Books had flip-it cartoons in the top corner so one could make the character move. With its second volume The Great Canadian Sonnet does this as well, stating “See ‘em move – just flip the pages” on the cover and, sure enough, in the corner a spot rolls up a hill-like abstract shape transforming into a medley of human faces.

Written by poet David McFadden, Curnoe riffed off lines in his text creating a great many detailed pen-and-ink drawings for the book with titles that included “Proud Possessor Of Meaningful Pain”, “One that will be Truly Loved by the Prime Minister”, and “The Empty Universe” which featured a drawing of a tin of apple juice and a packet of bird seed -the book’s drawings contained many such absurdist pairings. The Great Canadian Sonnet was published by Coach House Press who were -and still are- known for releasing all manner of experimental works including poetry, prose and beyond. Both volumes together weigh in at over 400 pages, with every other page being a drawing by Curnoe.

Many thanks to Jason Mclean, Marc Bell, and Judith Rodger for their immense help with this piece.

Thanks as well to Art Green for use of his respective artworks.

Part Two: Scraptures, Snore and More coming tomorrow, Friday, August 20!

Robert Dayton

www.robertdayton.com

www.patreon.com/CanadianGlam

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale Reviews: Miraculous World: New York

(The following review contains spoilers, and if you would like to not be spoiled, I would recommend watching the episode before reading)

(I had to pause a LOT to get through this special)

-Oh s*** Cosmo bug and Astro Noir. That is so cool.

-Okay maybe its my audio, but their voices seem a bit deeper. No big, just something I noticed.

-Okay the yellow flower was cute. Good on you kitty.

- Also, side note. This is very nice animation. Very crisp.

- Marinette is moving on... kinda. Well, she is trying. Its not easy getting over someone you have a thing for. I guess that means Miracle Queen did happen and I will need to suck it up. But.... I am not moving on yet either.

- The puppet show was perfection. And honestly on par with what you would expect from middle school projects. (I almost thought it was the adults showing them and was like WTF)

-BACK THE F***. Madame Bustier is PREGNANT! PREGNANT?! I am so lost? What is the story!? Who is the father! Is she married? Is it artificial insemination! Is it the principal?

-Adrien so moved by Marinette’s outburst of Friendship. Marinette ‘Just a friend’ Dupain-Cheng is going the Tia Gardner method of friendship. Lol

-Marinette ready to fight and Gabriel just like ‘Yea sure whatever’ (Gabriel’s smile murders puppies)

- Kagami trying to cheer adrien up. If you love adrigami, get that juice. (That looked like a kiss kiss, but the angle seemed off, so I am not counting it that way.)

- Kitty Clicker is wonderful. This entire scene is gold.

-  Gorrilla doesnt like planes, poor baby

- Plagg, you are a devious little s***. I love you so much. As a writer, his dialogue on how to convince adrien is so devilish its amazing. Using technicalities to tempt adrien.

-Lukanette shippers get your juice... even if it was still tainted a bit by Adrien inclusion. You still get a kiss.

- Okay, can we appreciate that Adrien is also having the same amount of trouble as Marinette moving on, but also include Guilt into the equation? I love this because you KNOW Chat noir is going to get an ear full later.

-Marinette has totally moved on from Adrien.... Oh my poor sweet little girl. You havent. You havent even a little. This ride is litterally the reverse of Startrain and its amazing. Alya is NOT helping. Also, give the person that drew Marinette’s Daydreams a f***ing raise. They earned it

-Marinette pulling herself OUT of the situation. Now adrien is slightly bummed out. Well i am sure that this is the last awkward experience with Adrien she will have. It isnt like the two of them will get lost in NY together... thats whats gonna happen isnt it?

-Marinette walking past all the couples sleeping together. JULROSE GET YOUR JUICE!!!

-Ah yes, nothing like watching the sunset with your good friend. Yes, you good pal, Adrien. Who is Just a friend. Wow, the realization that Marinette used the word friend in this movie more times then Adrien did in the entire series so far. (Or at the very least close)

- Adrien, STOP! Marinette is trying to move on from you! Stop making it so damn difficult for her. (I am not serious, i am eating this s*** up like Sushi)

-Nino confirms he loves Adrien. ADRINO COME GET YOUR JUICE! But yea, I feel alya and Nino’s pain. So they are going to help them both.

-Adrienette hugs. Yes, good.

-And thank goodness for Techno Pirate! Saving everyone from awkwardness by trying to bring down a plane... thats heading for NY...

-OH SWEET! BATMAN RIP OFF AND Captain Marvel rip off! And their sidekicks, Robin rip off and... Medusa girl? Okay Neat.

-Jokes aside, Majestia and Night Owl are boss as hell.

-Wow, I know that Ladybug and Chat noir got powerups now. But these United Heroes make their powers look so bland in comparison.

-Get rekt France!

-ADRIEN! DONT USE YOUR PHONE ON AN AIRPLANE! Well, unless he is using the in flight wifi, then he good.

-How come New York has a f*** ton of superheroes in this universe? America really gets all the cool stuff regardless of what fictional universe your in.

- Why are the superheroes so keen on watching over Marinette’s class? Do they know? Do they know Marinette and Adrien are there? Or is it like they just want to prevent an international incident. PLEASE LET IT BE THE LATER.

- I have only had Aeon for 15 seconds and I would violently murder anyone who harms her.

-Oh my Sabrina! GET YOURSELF AN AMERICAN BOY! ... And Chloé is going to ruin the fun. Oof tough break roomies.

-The entire class! I cant even! Not even a second after the door closes they out to party on the roof!

-Aeon, “See? They are made for eachother!”

- Damn, now that’s some guitar playing! Plus Her design is boss as heck. America really just has better versions of EVERYTHING.

-American boy basically snuck in to see Sabrina! GET IT GIRL!

-HOTDOG SUPERHERO! WITH MAGIC HOTDOGS!!!!!! BEST NEW YORK EVER!

-Nino and Alya be tag teaming this!

-Wow Zag, you stuffing me full of Adrinette goodness. Gorilla is a beautiful sunflower.

- Marinette and Adrien havent been in the US 24 hours and they already have two shippers of them. Also, what do doors have against them?

-Jess is Shipping it too hard. “Lets put them in danger!”

-Jess is having way too much fun with this.

-Hawkmoth akumatizing an actual Super villain. FINALLY!

- “Wouldn’t you rather have an Atomic Bomb?” I love Techno pirate.

-”Super Heroes should never use their powers for personal gain.”  Hmmm I wonder how this will back fire on everyone involved.

-”OH S*** HE STOLE THEIR CANNONS! BOOM GOES THE CANNONS!”

-Okay, I take back what I said, these heroes need some Miraculous asap.

- Ladybug is 100% justified in being angry with Chat Noir. It is his fault.

-AEON!!!! NO!!!!!!! Okay, guess i have to kill that techno pirate, and Chat noir

-MAJESTIA IS F***ING PISSED! WRECK HIM MAJESTIA!

- Seems they really hammering it in that Chat noir f***ed up. They right though, but at least Ladybug isnt angry enough to agree that Chat noir should give up his miraculous to some rando. FLEEING FROM THE LAW!

-So lucky charm can only fix damage due to specific villains. It cant fix things when the villain is gone or they are out of range. I always knew it had limitations, but damn. Chat noir REALLY screwed the pooch on this one.

-Adrien no! Oh s***! He cant just... I mean.... He can but...

__________

-Gabriel stole the Eagle! The Kwami of Freedom. The irony is so delicious here.

- So night Owl and Sparrow are both chick with Masculine superhero appearances. Thats actually pretty damn smart, great way to keep people off their identity.

-Welp, i am depressed. Adrien doesnt have Plagg.

-EVEN THE PRESIDENT IS A SUPER HERO! AMAZING!

- So an akumatized person can USE A MIRACULOUS WHILE AKUMATIZED! WHAT THE F*** THATS AWESOME. Also why didnt catalyst do that?

-Gabriel actually getting adrien out of there while before s*** hits the fan. That is actually kind of a decent parenting move. Granted he is going to cause it, but appreciate it.

-Marinette the bike thief is back! And she is an international criminal!

- She tried so hard. Welp I am glad that Marinette is clearly over... actually no. This trip made that clear.

-Liberation, Wow. That is the most American power I have ever seen. I LOVE IT.

- Okay, so I never thought i would say this. maybe there is such a thing as too much freedom? Or at least Freedom that lets you impede on Other people’s freedoms.

- I know what Zag is up to, and it is working. I want a tv series Of Jess and Aeon. They are wonderful.

-So Majestia can casually move the moon. Yea, thats amazing and terrifying! I love her.

-Quantum masking! So there is a glamor effect! I knew it! So Aeon knows who ladybug and Chat noir are.

-DID I F***ING MENTION I WOULD MURDER FOR AEON!

-aeon will never see Tikki or plagg. Thats so sad.

-At least Adrien learned an important lesson.

-Cute LADYNOIR REUNION

-The was clever, using the keychain

- Eagle jess is epic.

-and Majestia can catch missles. Considering she can move the moon. Not surprising.

-OH DAMN, Night owl and Sparrow are LEGACY HEROES! Thats like the Phantom, Or like Jojo.

-That was sweet of Marinette and the class.

-Oh so the guardian of those miraculous came back to claim it.

-But now sounds like the set up for a new series.

____________________________________________________________________

Overall, I did greatly enjoy this movie. Though there were times i wanted to know more, and times I wanted to know less. I know this takes place sometime during season 4, but the exact time is vague. It did tell a really cool story. It felt like a three episode saga combined into one. It was kind of interesting. And damn the drama was higher.

I give it a 7.5/10.

I would rate it up there with my favorite ML episodes.

[ichika27]

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun s2 ep15

This is late. A lot of stuff happened irl that made me forget lol.

Also, Amatsuki recently released the MV for “Kokoro Showtime” (the ED song for this series)!

The show goes back a couple of minutes before the magic beasts appeared...

The boys of Team Baram plus Ronove are enjoying picking new outfits. As they took their time, Agares felt something strange going on.

He was able to pinpoint which areas the beasts are gonna show up and also talk about how the warmth he’s feeling in those areas reminds him of eggs being heated.

The show explains his bloodline ability: My Area. They're able to manipulate the state of any surface area in their surroundings. Agares has somewhat guessed a bit of what's happening although not why it's happening and so before the magic beasts even appeared, he had already created a small safe space for them that saved them from the explosion.

I like how they’re now showing his full face more. He’s so cute!

The magic beasts had appeared!

This dragon is the beast at the area Team Baram is at. The guys decided to call their friends elsewhere in the park but they couldn’t.

This rat is at the area where Team Opera is.

And of course, this one is close to where Team Kalego is.

Their group is gonna get most of the screentime this episode!

Sensei is finally having fun! He decides that this is the perfect opportunity for training. He is a teacher after all and his best interest is the growth of his very, very scared students! It's then explained by the narrator that the kids are in their first year learning the basics and haven't learned any attack magic yet.

Sensei stops the kids from running away. After all, they’re here to have fun, right?

Camui tells them of how annoyed the bull is. This reveals their bloodline ability of Friendliness meaning they could translate any language and is able to converse with any living beings. Not only could actually understand the magic beast, he could talk to it, too!

Goemon shows off his ability as well! This one, as noted by Jazz, is their only offensive ability in the group since everyone else's is non-combat. But they could be used...

I was not able to get screenshots so I’d just summarize the event that follows:

Lied takes away one pair of the bull’s eyes with his Controller ability giving it a blind spot. Camui then gets it's attention by speaking to it, and they end it with Jazz using raffire combined by Goemon's whirlwind cut. A combo attack from the boys!

Unfortunately, it didn't work and it just made the beast mad at them. Kalego-sensei refused to help them and would only give a vague advice.

Meanwhile, the Six Fingers have finally gone to break out Kiriwo-senpai in prison while the other convicts are starting to cause trouble alongside them elsewhere in the area. The staff are panicking cause of the trouble above with the magic beast on the amusement park above and the intruders and riot on the prison below.

Some of the convicts are worried though as the higher the floor at the prison, the stronger the guards. The strongest is at the top - the Deputy Warden, Handshake Triton. Even if they were able to get past the other floors, they might not even be able to leave entirely cause of the strongest person in the prison.

It seems though, that the smallest member of the Six Fingers - Hugh - could easily defeat Triton himself. Triton’s ability, Handshake, could let him crush anyone but it doesn’t work on the Six Finger member who easily beats him.

The Team Kalego boys are in a pinch and they decided to rely on Jazz to be their leader as he's the highest ranking among them. He refuses of course cause what can he do? They end up bagging him and calling him 'aniki' when he said no as they don’t want to lead (as it’s the most dangerous role).

Being called “Aniki’ brought back memories of his own biological older brother bullying him. He always thought that if he was the older brother, he'd be nice to his own younger siblings if he had any.

lol the boys are so cute with their sparkles and all. I feel bad for Jazz cause the guys are just doing this to keep themselves at a safer distance from danger haha.

The boys' acting like that is making Jazz happy and is bringing out the big bro instincts in him. As he tries to think of a way to deal with their current dilemma, Kalego-sensei finally decides to give a better hint to them. He points out the thing on Jazz’s neck and Jazz thinks that maybe they have a chance.

Elsewhere, amidst the destruction, something is brewing inside Iruma. He sees the now destroyed park and remembers how fun and peaceful it was earlier. He then finds out from the other visitors talking around them that this may all have been a planned attack. A kid nearby screams for help to save his friends trapped in a rubble and gets ignored by apathetic demons around who only cares about what could happen to them (as they are demons and demons prioritize their own desires). Iruma looks around and hears the child crying. He decides to ask a staff member for help but he gets told to forget it and just evacuate like everyone else.

Iruma then realizes the feelings he’s had for a long time but wasn't able to to say: he's sick of it. He's not happy about this at all. Iruma seems pissed and he’s not gonna stand there doing nothing.

I know I never posts these but I just wanna show you guys today's Interval. Asmodeus sends Eiko the picture of Iruma cosplaying as a monster which Eiko then uses as her wallpaper. Eiko is lucky to be friends with another Iruma-sama fan!

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This entire season is showcasing the other characters in the series particularly the students of the Abnormal Class and in this arc, also Ameri and possibly Ronove plus the chaperones. They’re in groups and would all probably have to fight side-by--side to defeat the monsters near the areas they’re in. And also the Six Fingers. They’ve already shown the abilities of the rest of Team Kalego (as Jazz and Lied’s abilities have already been explained in the Royal One Arc). From the next episode preview, it seems we’d be seeing Team Opera fight.

I want to talk about my feelings regarding that scene with Jazz and his group later in this episode. Jazz’s flashback showed his own older brother being a bully - stealing from him, trespassing and trashing Jazz’s room, etc. - and yet instead of wishing for revenge and stuff, his thoughts were “I’d be nice if I were an older brother.”. He wants younger siblings not to continue the cycle of bullying but to be an older brother his own isn’t to him. And this doesn’t even seem to stem from wanting to show off like “See, I’m nice unlike you” or anything like that, he looks like he really just wants younger siblings to dote on. I mean he’s happy the other guys look up to him and are calling him “Aniki” (brother).

I just want to point that out cause in the same episode we’re shown how other demons wouldn’t care if someone is in need of help with the explanation that they’re demons and it’s in their nature. It’s so strange to me how somewhat contradicting this is. Also fascinating. But then again, Jazz is in the Abnormal Class. Maybe they’re the exception?

I’m excited for the next episode. From the previews, it seems that for Team Opera, the ones fighting is Opera themselves and Ameri who are both combatants. Unlike the boys of Team Kalego, they’d probably know what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean I don’t like watching inexperienced fighters in combat cause it was actually really fun to see how resourceful they were when using their abilities.

Til next week then!

[eddieeatsass]

On the Edge of an Avalanche

Summary: Graduation was upon them and Eddie Kaspbrak was eager to leave Derry behind. His one last hurrah would be the senior ski trip, earning him an escape from his mother and the looming stress of college admissions. It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation, until he got slated to look after resident pain-in-everyone’s-ass, Richie Tozier. Pairing: Richie Tozier/Eddie Kaspbrak Rating: E Chapter: 3/5 Read Chapter 2 Here  /  Read on AO3

The next morning felt like a slow-motion scene unravelling before him. Eddie had spent most of the night replaying the events that him and Richie had engaged in, dissecting it for all he could and trying to figure out what it all meant. He hadn’t fallen asleep until the birds were waking up, singing a morning song that rang more like a lullaby to Eddie’s tired ears.

  The first time he woke he felt a warmth pressing up against his back, arms curling around his torso, and smelled sickly-sweet cinnamon that was unfamiliar but undeniably soothing. He fell back asleep not long after.

  The second time Eddie woke he felt rustling beside him, a gentle press to his cheek, and just barely heard something whispered. He never opened his eyes, sleep already pulling him back in.

  The final time he woke that morning was very different from the others; a booming voice announcing an arrival had shaken him out of slumber and almost out of bed.

    “JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE SHIT-” Eddie clutched his blankets in a death grip, holding them up higher as if they could shield him from the onslaught.

  “Wakey wakey Eds and bakey!”

  Eddie groaned internally, already upset at his body for having such a visceral reaction to the sound of Richie’s voice even while it was so tired, and Richie was so loud. Did he have any self respect?

  Eddie peered out from behind his sheets, eyes meeting a ruffled bed head and an early morning smile.

  Okay, maybe Eddie didn’t need self respect when Richie looked that good.

  “I brought breakfast.” Richie stated, holding the plates up as a peace offering.

  Eddie didn’t even have to think before he scooted over, making room for Richie and patting the open spot.

  Richie hobbled over, handing one of the over-stacked plates to Eddie and plopping himself down with a small “oof”.

  Choosing to avoid the elephant in the room for a while longer, Eddie speared what he assumed to be an egg with his fork. He couldn’t be certain, as Richie had coated everything on both plates with a healthy serving of hollandaise sauce.

  “How’s the ankle?” Eddie asked tentatively.

  “’s fine.” Richie said through a mouthful of food. His cheeks were puffed out like a chipmunk, but rather than being off-putting, it was annoyingly charming.

  “You really shouldn’t be walking on it.” Eddie mentioned.

  “I’ve had worse.” Richie shrugged, as if that was supposed to be comforting to Eddie.

  “Where did you get the food?” Eddie asked, changing the subject once again to avoid the hovering topic. It was well past breakfast time, and Eddie knew the buffets were never open past 9am.

  “I snuck into the kitchen.” Richie shrugged, as if that were a totally normal thing to do.

  “What- Richie! You could have gotten in trouble!”

  “But I didn’t.” Richie smirked triumphantly.

  “Anyone could have caught you! And you could have been sent home, or worse, the staff could have called the police! I mean it is technically stealing, and trespassing, and could probably be charged as breaking and entering, and-”

  Eddie was cut off by a fork full of food being shoveled into his open mouth. A fork that wasn’t his fork. A fork that had been in someone else’s mouth, that should have grossed him out, that should have sounded off the alarm in his head. But instead, the fork sat in his mouth as nothing more than a slight inconvenience; not a trigger for his neuroses or a reason to grab his mouthwash, just a fork. What kind of spell did this boy have over him!?

  “Now chew.” Richie ordered, pulling his fork out and leaving the food to sit inside Eddie’s mouth. He did as he was told, chewing a few times and swallowing the food that, in any other case, would have disgusted him.

  “There. Now, do you hear any sirens outside?”

  “No, but-”

  “Is your body getting ready to violently regurgitate everything?”

  “No-”

  “Then just enjoy the food, spaghetti man.”

  Richie said it like it was so easy… And maybe it was. Eddie could be a bit rebellious, couldn’t he? Richie had gone out of his way to get them breakfast, no matter how irresponsible it had been, and Eddie had done nothing but complain. He hadn’t even thanked Richie. Besides, how was it any different from when Eddie snuck into the school’s kitchen to get Stan his special lunch?

  The difference, Eddie realized with his heart skipping a beat, was that Eddie didn’t care much about his own wellbeing. The wellbeing of Richie, however, was a completely new ballgame, and Eddie suddenly found himself at bat.

  “Sorry, it’s hard for me to keep my anxiety in check sometimes.” Eddie admitted, poking around his plate and eating a few more bites. Admittedly, the food was really good.

  “Hey, no need to apologize, I get it.” Richie assured, shooting Eddie a smile that melted him to the core. “Just know that I’d never put you in any real danger.” Richie added with an honesty that watered something warm and vibrant in Eddie’s chest.

  And somehow, Eddie knew that was true. Richie might be reckless at times, but he wasn’t stupid, and he protected those he cared about.

  Eddie wondered if he was in that category now.

    Before Eddie could dwell on it any longer, there was a knock at their door followed by Mr. Daniels’ voice giving them a half hour before they head out. It seemed that while Eddie had been busy sleeping in, the bus had been repaired and returned to their motel.

    As they filed into the vehicle, Eddie noticed that the teachers had switched buses for the day. Mr. Daniels made no mention of the seating arrangements (to which there had been more changes than just Richie and Stanley). This, of course, resulted in absolute mayhem as everyone that had been assigned to different seats now reverted to their original spots. As a result, the bus soon returned back to its chaos.

  Eddie glanced over at Richie, his fingers twitching as he held himself back from reaching out and clutching Richie’s arm to keep him close. Of course, Eddie wouldn’t mind sitting with Stan again, but he’d grown attached to Richie, and even though he felt like they were treading unfamiliar waters now thanks to last night’s unspoken tryst, he still wanted to be close to him.

    The bus hadn’t started moving yet, so kids were still flying from row to row, taking advantage of their newfound freedom thanks to Mr. Daniels more lax approach at chaperoning. Eddie bit at his fingernail as he watched Richie out of the corner of his eye, too afraid to speak but just as afraid to take his gaze off him.

  Richie, on the other hand, seemed completely unaware as he happily tapped away at something on his phone. His shoulders were hunched forward in poor posture and he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, now wrinkled from sleeping in them, but he was still the picture of beauty as far as Eddie was concerned.

  Eddie got caught staring as Richie’s head turned without warning, but it was only met with a smile and an endeared laugh.

  “Is it cool if I switch with Stanley for a bit? Bill’s been harping on me for not texting him back all night, that clingy son of a bitch.” Richie held up his phone as evidence, even though the screen was black and gave Eddie no hint as to the topic of their conversation.

  He hoped in equal parts that it was and wasn’t about him.

  “Yeah, whatever.” Eddie tried to feign indifference but overshot and ended up sounding rude. He winced at his own tone of voice and swallowed back the urge to apologize immediately.

  “Uhh, okay.” Richie seemed confused, but his face stayed open and inviting despite the quirk in his brow. Liquid lapis eyes training on Eddie for a beat longer than necessary before he was hopping up and heading down the isle.

    As soon as Richie was gone, Eddie let his head fall against the frostbitten window with a thunk, his eyes closing instinctively as he retreated inside his brain.

  He was exhausted, both physically from lack of sleep, and emotionally from all these new unfamiliar emotions. It’s not that Eddie had never had crushes before; there was Steven from summer camp, Harry who worked at the bookstore, and Isaac who’d been their mechanic for six years, and had taken Eddie under his wing after his father died.

  However, of all the infatuations Eddie had had, Richie was the first one that actually made sense. Steven had been too far away, and straight. Harry had been too busy, and straight. Isaac had been too old, and straight. But Richie… well, he lived in the same city, wasn’t bogged down by work, and was the same age as Eddie… and was… possibly not straight?

  Eddie felt the seat dip beside him, but refused to open his eyes. Call it a protest of the outside world for being too confusing, he’d open his eyes again when someone had the answers for him.

  “Hey.”

  Okay, well maybe Stan would have the answers.

  Eddie grumbled his greeting, pulling his body away from the window only to let it slump the other way, right into Stanley’s shoulder. He wavered a bit at the sudden impact but righted himself quickly, supporting Eddie’s weight easily.

  “So, are you the reason Richie’s walking with a limp today?”

  “WHAT?” Eddie’s head shot up, his brain working in overdrive to try and wipe his slate clean, erase any sign of culpability. Did Stan know what they’d done? Did everyone know what they’d done? Oh my god, Richie told someone and now everyone was going to know that they-

  “I mean, I just assumed Richie crossed the line at some point and you had to deliver some swift Kaspbrak karate moves to shut him up.” Stan held his hand up in fists and, with delayed relief, Eddie realized Stan was making a joke.

  Eddie let his head fall back into the cushiness of Stan’s shoulder, his body somehow even more drained than it had been thirty seconds ago. Eddie wasn’t fully certain how he planned on getting through today.

  “He was actually really respectful.” Eddie responded. He didn’t realize it was so out of character until Stan fell quiet, followed by a prodding question.

  “Are you okay?”

  There it was, the question Eddie couldn’t even answer for himself. Was he okay? He didn’t feel okay, but nothing had actually gone wrong, right? In fact, if anything, things had gone in Eddie’s favor. So why did he feel this heavy weight in his chest, baring down on his lungs and slowly squeezing the air out of him?

    When Eddie had returned from the bathroom the previous night, steeled to have the inevitable conversation that came after dry humping a guy you’ve been familiar with for no more than a day, he’d found Richie fast asleep.

  Not knowing what else to do, Eddie has simply crawled into bed beside him.

  But those hours laying awake had left him with too many thoughts, the most prodding being his fear that he’d been used as a prop for Richie’s experimentation. Did he even like guys? He’d never mentioned it, never seemed to show any interest past a couple of jokes. But that was all they were, right? Maybe the jokes had been the first signs Eddie should have noticed, subtle hints Richie was dropping to insinuate that Eddie would be the perfect contender for a round of ‘am I gay or just horny?’. Eddie had practically opened himself up to it after coming out to him.

  His pessimism may have been clouded by past experiences, but after what Eddie had been through, it was no wonder he jumped to conclusions. The only experiences Eddie had to speak for were secret rendezvous with nervous classmates that inevitably ended with Eddie being ignored the next day. It was a pattern, and Eddie was the invariable. He was the small, quiet twink that every questioning athlete and nerd alike seemed to peg as an easy target for their sexual experimentation.

  It wasn’t all bad; it was how Eddie got his first kiss, his first hand job, and so on and so forth. It had, however, left him feeling skeptical of anyone who showed even the barest of interest in him, writing it off as nothing more than curiosity.

  The thought of that being the case with Richie left Eddie’s stomach souring. He’d never gotten attached like this before. Quite honestly, he felt like he was standing on the edge of an avalanche, just waiting for Richie to speak and cause it all to collapse above them.

    “What do you think about people experimenting with… New things.” Eddie braved forward.

  “Uh, I mean that’s a pretty vague question.” Stan pointed out.

  “Okay… say you’ve only ever eaten hamburgers your whole life, right? Through and through you’re a hamburger guy. Until one day you see a hotdog and think, well, maybe I’ll try that today. What if you try it and you don’t like it? Are you just going to throw it away? How is that fair, to just use the hotdog and then discard it like it’s nothing?”

  Eddie hadn’t realized that his voice had become fast-paced and high-pitched until he noticed the look on Stan’s face. Clear confusion was evident in the way he gazed at Eddie with his brows knit in the middle and his mouth slightly agape. Eddie immediately wanted to disappear.

  “Nevermind, it’s stupid.”

  “No! No, sorry, I just…” Stan took a breath and sat up straighter, angling his body towards Eddie. “Okay well, experimenting with new… foods doesn’t always end up in distaste, right? Lots of people end up discovering some of their favorite… foods through exploration.”

  Hearing the metaphor come out of Stan’s mouth made Eddie realize how nonsensical it was. God, he was about two seconds sway from digging himself a hole and hibernating until springtime.

  “But if you’re worried about someone… Not enjoying the hot dog, just talk to them about it. Maybe they didn’t realize how their actions might hurt the… hot dog…”

  Eddie and Stan stared at one another for a long pause until Stan cracked a smile, and it radiated so much warmth and comfort that Eddie couldn’t help but smile back. Soon they were falling into giggles, easing themselves into full-blown laughter at the absurdity of the conversation.

  Stan had to have figured it out by now, but Eddie was thankful that he didn’t push him past what he was ready to talk about. Stan was a quality friend, and Eddie had never appreciated his presence in his life more than he did right now.

  “Thanks Stan.” Eddie said honestly, bumping shoulders with him as the last of his chitters died out.

  “Anytime.”

  “You might want to consider the possibility that this isn’t their first time eating a hot dog though.”

  “What?” Eddie blurted.

  “I just mean, you’re assuming they’ve never had a hot dog before, right? Maybe they tend to lean more towards hamburgers but that doesn’t mean they’ve never been intrigued by hot dogs before. Maybe they just needed to find the right hot dog…”

  Eddie’s face heated up as Stan continued to talk.

  “All I’m saying is if it was truly just some reckless experimentation, they’d probably wait until college like the rest of us.”

  Eddie’s head hurt, the metaphor finally losing its last small thread of sense.

  “Right… wait until college to… eat a hot dog…” Eddie repeated slowly.

  Stan opened his mouth to reply, but the voice that rang out wasn’t his.

  “Who’s got hot dogs?”

  Eddie just about jumped out of his skin, his eyes darting up to connect with Richie’s. Eddie felt like he had just been caught talking about him, which he sort of had, but Richie was none the wiser and, hopefully, neither was Stan. The only one floundering was Eddie, but boy was he in the deep end.

  “NOTHING. NO ONE.” Eddie exclaimed much too loudly for the situation.

  Both Stan and Richie stared back at Eddie, equally puzzled expressions on both their faces. He felt like there was a single ping pong ball bouncing around in his head at light speed, desperately trying to find an appropriate response to save himself. Thankfully, Stan was always one step ahead of him.

  “We were just talking about how Eddie’s mom makes the best hot dogs.”

  Eddie’s nose instinctively scrunched up at the mention of his mom during a metaphor about his sex life, but he quickly schooled his features and nodded along.

  “Mmm, I’m gonna have to fight you on that until I’ve tasted them for myself. Otherwise, the best hotdogs in Derry are undoubtedly the ones from Kelso’s Diner.”

  Eddie short circuited at the insinuation that Richie would indeed one day be trying Eddie’s mom’s cooking. Meaning he foresaw them continuing to be friends past this trip. Meaning, and this made Eddie’s head spin, Richie didn’t seem to have the intention of dropping Eddie the minute he got what he wanted.

  What exactly did he want?

    “So, Stan the man, if you don’t mind, I’m going to kick you back into the strong arms of Bill Denbrough and reclaim my rightful seat here.” Eddie couldn’t help but notice the way Stan’s face flushed just a shade darker. Was there something there that Eddie didn’t know about?

  He didn’t have time to ponder Stan’s reaction to the mention of Bill Denbrough or his strong arms. Stan shot a quick ‘talk to you later’ Eddie’s way and was retreating to his seat as Richie settled into his.

  Eddie’s head was swirling as his senses reacted to Richie’s proximity. He forced himself to speak through the rush of endorphins, even though all his body wanted to do was curl into Richie’s side.

  “What did Bill want to talk to you about?”

  “Relationship drama.” Richie answered, shrugging it off. “There’s always something with that boy.” The way Richie spoke wasn’t annoyed or exhausted, but rather amused by his friend and his ongoing antics.

  “I’m glad you were able to help him.” Eddie responded genuinely.

  “Yeah, me too.” Richie’s smile felt intimate, as if it were just for Eddie, even though they were talking about someone else entirely.

  Eddie began to smile back but was overcome by a yawn, his face distorting as his jaw dropped on its own, too motivated by exhaustion to wait for the queue from his brain.

  “Didn’t get much sleep last night?” Richie pondered.

  “Uhm, yeah, I guess not.” Eddie answered sheepishly, hoping Richie didn’t connect his insomnia to their late-night encounter.

  “Bummer, I slept better than I have in months. You’re a good cuddler.” Richie’s comment was dropped so casually that Eddie almost didn’t catch it, but his ears were awake enough to tinge a bright rose in response.

  “Well, anyways, Mr. Daniels said we have about an hour until we get to the resort so…” Richie tapped his shoulder invitingly, and even though Eddie had been in the exact same position mere minutes ago with Stanley, it felt vastly different when the shoulder was attached to Richie.

  “T-thanks.” Eddie stuttered, dipping his head low into the crook of Richie’s shoulder fast enough that he hopefully didn’t notice how much redder Eddie got.

  He was sure his heart was beating too fast for him to possibly fall asleep, but the closeness to Richie rejuvenated him in another way. He let his eyes slip closed as he slowly relaxed into the comforting presence beside him.

    “-ddie, hey, Eds.”

  “Mmmm ‘s not my name.”

  “Fine. Edward Kaspbrak, king of slumber and bearer of drool, it’s time to wake up.”

  Eddie’s surroundings slowly came into consciousness as he was pulled back into awareness. The first thing he noticed was that he was in a very different orientation than when he’d last been cognizant. The second thing he noticed, and much more dreadful, was that his cheek was indeed covered in drool.

  He brought a hand to his face and wiped away the moisture as quickly as he could, riding himself of any evidence Richie might be able to use against him.

  Who, speaking of, was currently underneath him in a way he very much hadn’t been before.

  At some point, Eddie had ended up with his head in Richie’s lap. Richie’s hand was in Eddie’s hair at the nape of his neck, gently playing with the strands as if it was an absent habit he did all the time. The act was so domestic it made Eddie want to burst into tears; whether they were sad or happy tears, he wasn’t sure.

  He sat up slowly, careful not to have the blood rush to his head too quickly. The last thing he needed was to pass out in front of Richie. Who knows what kind of intimate position he’d wake up in the next time.

  “We’re here, everybody’s already outside.” Richie offered as explanation for Eddie’s disrupted sleep.

  “What? Why did you wait to wake me?” Eddie asked with only a tinge of annoyance. Luckily, Richie seemed to be charmed by it.

  “You’re cute when you sleep, let a man indulge.”

  Before Eddie could form a response, Richie was already standing up. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and made his way towards the front of the bus, leaving Eddie to fumble to catch up.

    When Eddie stepped off the bus, the first thing he noticed was how white everything was. It was to be expected, of course; it’s kind of hard to ski without snow. But it was such a stark difference from where they’d been just an hour ago. The difference a small distance could make was staggering; this didn’t even feel like it belonged in the same universe.

  The view was gorgeous with its tall log cabins, ski lifts moving like carousels, and snow-covered evergreens on every surface. Eddie was half tempted to throw himself down in the snow and make a snow angel.

  But the cold nipping at his nose was a reminder that before he could indulge in any snow activities, he had to actually get equipped for the snow.

  To their left, Mr. Daniels and Eric were unloading everyone’s bags from the storage compartment beneath the bus. Eddie could already spot his small suitcase, a bright pink flamingo covered hand-me-down from his mom, sitting in the snow.

  While they waited, Richie’s friends sauntered over, Stan happily alongside them.

  “I can’t wait to hit the slopes.” Bill greeted them as he bobbed up and down eagerly, his enthusiasm contagious.

  “I’m just excited for the hot chocolate.” Beverly countered, as she wrapped her sweater a little tighter around herself. All their winter coats were stuffed in their suitcases, the cold air taking advantage of their thin jackets and exposed skin.

  “Here Beverly.” Ben had shrugged off his sweater and was offering it to Beverly with a shy little quirk of his lips, but Beverly regarded it for only a moment before shaking her head. She took the sweater and threw it back over Ben’s shoulders before crowding her way into his space and snuggling right up against his chest.

  “Body heat works better.” She teased lowly.

  Richie let out a long, slow whistle, summing up what everyone was thinking; Beverly was sly as hell and Ben was gleefully in way over his head.

  The exchange made Eddie crave Richie’s warmth, yearn to be back in that motel bed, blissfully unaware of how intimate they were being in their sleep.

  There was no more being blissfully unaware, not with how Eddie’s heart beat to a different rhythm every time Richie’s arm would brush up against his.

    “Alright, everyone grab your bags and follow me.” Mr. Daniels announced, finally closing the now empty compartment of the bus.

  The seven of them sauntered over to the pile of suitcases and duffel bags, searching out their own among the many.

  Even though Eddie had already spotted his suitcase, he pretended to search for it for a while longer until Richie found his. Only then did he grab the bright pink monstrosity by the handle and begin lugging it up the hill, Richie wordlessly in tow behind him.

  They managed to reach the top of the hill without Richie stumbling too much, but as soon as Mrs. Harrow came into view there was no hiding Richie’s injury anymore.

  With hawk eyes homing in, Mrs. Harrow walked over to Richie with a displeased expression.

  “What happened here, Richard?”

  She sounded almost exasperated, and it made Eddie want to step in and defend him.

  “Oh, you know, just my bum leg. It acts up every now and then, ever since that terrible kite flying accident…” Richie looked off into the distance as if remembering a tragedy of great proportions.

  Mrs. Harrow rolled her eyes. Eddie’s anger flared once again.

  “Well, we can’t send you home now, so you’ll just have to spend the trip indoors. Absolutely no reckless activity, you got that Tozier?”

  “Aye aye, captain!”

  Mrs. Harrow didn’t acknowledge his response, simply turned her back towards them and began her search for the next student in need of scolding.

  As soon as she was out of ear shot, Eddie began fuming.

  “What the hell, why does Mrs. Harrow have it out for you? Can’t she see you’re hurt? Is she even capable of sympathy?”

  When Eddie looked over to Richie, he saw something soft and sweet in his expression, a contrast to Eddie’s bubbling temper. “You care about me.” Richie mused with a smirk.

  “W-what- no I don’t- I mean I do but- not like- shut up.” Eddie grabbed his suitcase once again and began walking away.

  “You can deny it all you want, Kaspbrak. I see right through you!”

  Eddie flipped Richie off over his shoulder as he disappeared through giant mahogany double doors.

    Their rooms were small, a single bed meant to be shared between the two classmates who signed up to room together. Normally on school trips, the school tried to cram as many students into one room as possible, but they must have known from prior visits to the lodge that these rooms just couldn’t hold more than two at a time.

  However, despite the small quarters, they were undeniably beautiful. Every surface seemed to be made from the same rich darkened wood, and every accent was bronzed. One wall was taken up by giant windows that overlooked the mountain below them, able to be hidden behind heavy curtains that took Eddie’s full force to pull closed.

  Eddie and Stan didn’t spend much time in their room, stopping only briefly to drop off their luggage and get bundled up in preparation for the slopes. Eddie was practically buzzing at the opportunity to teach himself something completely foreign; it’d been a long time since a new sport had been in his reach, and he was planning on taking full advantage of the absence of Sonia.

  “Are you almost ready?” Eddie bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for Stan by the door, one hand already on the knob in anticipation.

  “Yes, for god sake Eddie, I just need to find my gloves.”

  Eddie’s eyes glazed over as he thought about the adrenaline rush he’d longed for. He still played tons of sports but there was something about learning a new one that left Eddie especially excited. He didn’t care much for the competitiveness of sports, and while he didn’t mind the sportsmanship of it all, it wasn’t why Eddie was motivated to get involved. Quite simply put, Eddie just wanted to play. He wanted to live out the experiences he missed out on, that pure rush that came from scraping your knees while playing soccer or face planting while diving for the volleyball. It may seem uninteresting to those who had already lived it out in childhood, but to Eddie it was nothing short of euphoric.

  “Here they are!” Stan exclaimed, holding his pair of gloves above his head as he tucked everything else back inside his suitcase.

  “Good, now come on, let’s goooooo.”

  Eddie was already out the door before Stan could answer, but he knew he was following by the distinct sound of swishing snow pants.

    They made their way down to the lobby, eagerly chatting about how fun their afternoon was going to be, when they ran straight into a brick wall of a body.

  “Fucking move, queers.” Henry ground out, placing a flat hand on Eddie’s face and pushing him aside with ease.

  “Henry, don’t you have anything better to do than project your internalized homophobia onto others.” Stan replied flatly.

  “What the fuck did you say to me?” Henry hissed, flipping his attention to Stan with a new temper flaring.

  “Stan…” Eddie warned, reaching for Stan’s hand to pull him away from the rising confrontation.

  Stan seemed to pale as he realized his comment wasn’t going to be shrugged off. He tried to keep himself composed but Eddie knew his tells well enough to notice the change.

  Henry’s gaze flicked down to where Eddie was trying to join hands with Stan, and a wicked grin soured his face.

  “Oh, I see…” Henry began, stalking closer to the pair and causing them to stumble back. They didn’t fear Henry like they used to, but he still held some power in those eyes that had never fully ceased to make them tremble.

  “You two fucking fairies together now? I should have seen it coming, pansies aren’t potted too far from one another. So, tell me, who made the first move, huh?”

  Eddie’s throat was thick with fear, his eyes unable to move from where Henry’s gaze pinned them.

  “Wait don’t tell me… It was you, wasn’t it, Uris? Eddie here is too limp wristed to do anything, just a little girl in sheep’s clothing. But then again, I guess if the rumors are true, you’re not completely useless. At least you give good head.”

  Eddie’s face burned as he held back the tears that threatened to give him away. He was fine, Henry’s words were hollow. Eddie had already heard every gay slur Henry had in his vocabulary.

  “Too bad you’re not pretty enough to turn any of them into faggo-”

  Eddie’s fist moved before his brain did, lining up perfectly with Henry’s jaw and landing the punch exactly where it would hurt most. Stan flinched beside him as the sickening crack rang out in the empty hallway, followed by a wail that made snow drop from the treetops outside. Eddie didn’t move, refused to let himself back down even as the tears broke free and streamed down his face.

  “KASPBRAK.”

  Eddie jumped, whipping around in horror as Mrs. Harrow’s voice broke through his resolve.

  “WHAT THE HELL.”

  Eddie stared in shock. He’d never done anything worthy of breaking a teacher’s ‘no cursing’ rule before, though he’d seen many teachers reach their point of profanity with other students before. It sort of felt similar to when you see a teacher outside of school and are reminded that they don’t just exist inside the bubble you’ve put them in. Well, the bubble had popped, and Mrs. Harrow was now stalking towards him with a new air that absolutely paralyzed him. He wasn’t sure how to respond, so he didn’t. He just continued staring back at her, watching as she passed him and rushed over to Henry, taking his face in her hand and angling his head to assess the damage. Luckily, there was no visible injury past some reddening (though the same wouldn’t be true once the bruising began to set in).

  “Eddie.” Mrs. Harrow sighed. She released Henry’s face and brought the hand up to her own, pinching the skin between her eyes as if she was fighting back a cresting headache.

  She probably was.

  “I’m sorry Mrs. Harrow, I didn’t-”

  Eddie was interrupted with a single finger, held up intimidatingly as Mrs. Harrow continued to try and gather her patience.

  “No skiing.”

  “What!?”

  “What about that needs clarification, Edward?”

  “But I didn’t do anything!”

  “I watched you punch Mr. Bowers across the face.”

  “Well, yeah, but-”

  “No. Skiing.”

  Eddie fidgeted in place as he desperately grasped at straws in his head that could possibly get him out of this situation. Maybe if he could get Mrs. Harrow alone and just explain to her what Henry was saying-

  With an exasperated sigh, Mrs. Harrow placed a hand on Henry’s shoulder and began leading him back down the hallway from which she’d appeared.

  “Come on Henry, we’ll get you some ice.”

  Eddie couldn’t move, he’d become cemented to the floor at some point during his meltdown.

    “Eddie?” Stan’s soft voice penetrated the space between them, but it sounded distant. Anger bubbled up inside Eddie, anger that he wasn’t at all certain how to process.

  “Hey, Eddie, I’m so sorry. You know none of what Bowers said was true, right?”

  Like a kettle blowing its whistle, Eddie’s top popped.

  “OF COURSE IT’S TRUE.”

  Eddie whipped around to face Stan, his cheeks red hot as he filled with steam.

  “I’M GAY, STANLEY. DON’T YOU KNOW? I’M A FUCKING FRUIT CAKE. AND NOT EVEN A GOOD FRUIT CAKE, I’M ONE OF THOSE CHRISTMAS FRUIT CAKES THAT EVERYONE JUST PUTS IN THEIR FREEZER AND FORGETS ABOUT UNTIL SUMMER. THEN THEY THROW ME OUT, BECAUSE NO ONE EVEN LIKES FRUIT CAKE STANLEY.”

  “Hotdogs like fruitcakes.”

  Eddie sputtered; his mind unable to connect the pieces while he was burning red hot.

  “WHAT?”

  He could probably stop yelling, but if Eddie let himself think too long about how he just came out to his best friend, he might melt the rest of the way into the ground and become nothing more than carpeting.

  “Hotdogs. I hear they go well with fruitcakes.” Stan repeated calmly.

  Eddie felt like he was going to combust.

  “What are you-”

  “Richie is your hotdog, right?”

  At the mention of Richie, Eddie’s anger began to simmer down, exhaustion pulling at his muscles. All he could do was nod.

  “Look, Eddie, if it wasn’t obvious enough already, I don’t care that you’re gay. I’m a Jewish boy scout whose nerd repertoire is more extensive than that of most comic book writers, what space do I have to judge.”

  Eddie’s heart rate was settling down, the reassurance from his friend a comforting constant. This was Stanley, he’d never cared what ‘secrets’ Eddie had kept from him before, and this was no different. Well, this was a little different from the time he stole Stan’s pudding cup and then confessed an hour later out of guilt. But even then, Stan had been nothing but understanding.

  “Yeah, he’s the hot dog.” Eddie’s voice was beginning to level out as well, the heat of the moment passing on.

  “Richie isn’t like all those other hot dogs. He’s sure of himself in a way I’ve never met anyone else to be. The way his friends speak about him leaves no doubt in my mind that he has himself figured out; at least enough not to hurt you. He’s one of the good guys, Eddie.”

  “One of the good hotdogs.” Eddie corrected.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna have to drop that now that we’re being transparent with each other. I don’t like having to think about Richie’s… hotdog every time we tiptoe around your metaphor.”

  Eddie’s cheeks blushed a furious shade of fuchsia as his mind also began to wander towards Richie’s hotdog.

  “Richie’s stuck indoors for the next few days too, right?” Stan prompted.

  “Yeah, Mrs. Harrow was pretty clear about that.” Eddie scowled at the memory. “So, you guys are stuck in lockdown together; seems like the perfect romance scenario to me.”

  The more Eddie thought about it, the more things seemed to fall into place. Eddie had been excited about skiing, but what he was more excited about was this budding energy between him and Richie. Mrs. Harrow had unknowingly set up the perfect circumstance for them to spend as much time together as possible, and if Eddie could muster up the courage, he just might try to take advantage of it.

    Stan and Eddie had parted hours ago, but Eddie was just now beginning to rouse back into existence.

  After the fight with Henry, Eddie’s lack of sleep from the night before finally caught up with him. The nap on the bus had been helpful, but not enough to regenerate all the energy he’d lost to his anxiety the past 24 hours. As soon as he’d returned to his room he hadn’t been able to fight it anymore. He’d barely gotten his shoes off before collapsing into the inviting plush bedding and zonking out for three hours.

  Lucky for Eddie, three hours didn’t put him back that much. It was dinner time, but Eddie knew most of the students were prepared to stay on the slopes until the late hours of the night (or at least until teacher enforced curfew).

  Eddie was overheating, having fallen asleep with his winter coat and snow pants on. He was surprised he hadn’t died in his sleep from a layer induced fever. Could that even happen? Well, Eddie wasn’t keen on finding out today. He promptly stripped off the stifling clothing and did the same with his undergarments. While the suffocating layers may not have killed him, they had certainly left him covered in sweat.

  Eddie trailed into the bathroom, catching a glimpse of his naked form in the mirror and stopping. He turned fully towards his reflection, squinting as if sizing himself up.

  He wasn’t very buff, but he was nicely filled out from years of dabbling in sports. He definitely still had a thinner body, his waist dipping in elegantly before flaring back out into hips that, quite honestly, were pretty generous for a man. Eddie didn’t love his body, but who did? Everyone had issues to point out if they took a magnifying glass to themselves, but overall, Eddie was pleased with his appearance.

  He hoped that Richie would be too, if they ever ended up there.

  Eddie turned to the side, assessing his profile. He wondered what it would look like if Richie was slotted in behind him, arms wrapped tight around Eddie’s thin waist to hold him close. The height difference alone would cause Eddie to look small in comparison; Richie was an absolute tree. The thought shouldn’t have made Eddie feel as hot as it did, but he soon found himself heating up again.

  Eddie leaned over the sink, resting his elbows on the edge so he could lean in close to his figure. His cock brushed up against the cold wood surface of the counter and he gasped in surprise, looking down to find it peering up at him in intrigue.

  Eddie’s wonderings about Richie must have gotten him a little more worked up than he’d anticipated.

  Glancing back up at himself in the mirror, Eddie let one hand trail down to the spot between his legs. He grasped himself as he pictured Richie behind him, staring back at him through their reflections with that enticing grin.

  ‘What, Eds. Don’t think I’ll fuck you right here in the bathroom?’

  Eddie moaned quietly to himself, picturing just how he’d respond to Richie’s teasing.

  ‘I bet you won’t, Tozier. Too afraid of someone walking in on us. You’re all talk but no game.’

  Eddie would dangle the challenge in front of Richie knowing full well that he wouldn’t back down. He’d take Eddie’s hips and thrust himself inside without hesitation, just one single move would be all it took for Richie to fill him up.

  Eddie’s wrist cramped from the awkward angle he held it at, but he refused to move from his spot bent over the sink, too caught up in the fantasy.

  He replayed the moans he’d committed to memory the night before, those sinful sounds that Richie seemed to let slip out like he didn’t know they were poisonous darts striking right through Eddie’s skin.

  ‘Richie…’ Eddie moaned, the sound echoing in the empty bathroom.

  ‘Eddie…’ He could hear Richie say, pounding into him at a relentless pace that would leave bruises on Eddie’s skin from where he slammed into the countertop.

  And then Eddie was releasing into his fist, cum pooling over and dripping into the sink. His body shook with shock and his toes curled, eyes squeezing shut as he milked the last bit out of himself before going completely slack.

  He was grateful that counter was there to hold him up, because if not he would have probably fallen to the floor.

  It took a moment for Eddie to finally open his eyes again, but when he did, he was surprised at how disappointed he was that Richie wasn’t actually there. He knew he’d gotten lost in his mind, but it didn’t ease his despondency.

  Eddie stepped into the shower, committing himself to not think about Richie at least until he returned squeaky clean.

    It didn’t work.

  Eddie had thought about Richie the entire shower.

  Eddie tried to let his worry be soothed by Stan’s words, though it continued to flare at the least opportune times. Eddie accepted that he probably wouldn’t be completely placated until he had Richie do it himself, hopefully through tender hands and soothing touches.

  Eddie redressed himself, this time forgoing the heavy layers in favor of a warm wool sweater and comfortable sweatpants. He didn’t bother styling his hair, too set on hunting down Richie to care whether his locks were combed to the left or to the right.

  He quickly pocketed his cellphone and room key, setting off in search of the only other student in the building.

    Eddie didn’t know Richie’s room number, so he took a gamble and wandered into the lobby. There was a pool table in the center of the room, looking lonely as those around it chose to read a book by the fireplace or chat quietly by the windows. There weren’t many people to speak of, so it was easy to quickly spot that familiar face that made Eddie’s heart skip.

  Richie was laying across one of the couches, arms flung across his chest in protest. He was grumbling lowly to the man sitting a seat away, which Eddie recognized as their bus driver.

  “And so, in walks the other prisoner.” Eric drawled as he noticed Eddie, an easy smile on his face.

  Richie’s head popped up quickly, his curls bouncing as they tried to keep up with the swift change in position. Once Richie saw Eddie, the rest of his body followed enthusiastically as he jumped up from his seat.

  “EDDIE!” Richie cheered loudly, before quickly clearing his throat and lowering his voice to a more lobby-appropriate volume. “What are you doing here?”

  “Uhh, I sort of…” Eddie chanced a glance over Richie’s shoulder, noting that Eric wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. “punched Henry Bowers.” He mumbled lowly.

  “YOU WHAT!?”

  “SHHHHH!” Eddie grabbed Richie by the arm and pulled him back down to the couch, looking around them anxiously to see if Richie had drawn any eyes. “It’s not a big deal, okay?” Eddie added once he was sure no one was listening in.

  “Uhm, I’d say punching the guy who’s made everyone’s life a living hell for the past four years counts as a big deal.” Richie challenged.

  Eddie sighed, letting himself lean back into the leather couch as he chewed on his bottom lip. Richie wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t not a big deal, but Eddie wasn’t the violent type. He hadn’t meant to do what he’d done; he’d just snapped. He didn’t regret it, but he didn’t want to dwell on it either, especially since dwelling on it meant remembering all that lead up to it.

  “Can we talk about something else please?” Eddie asked, his voice small and begging.

  Richie was clearly itching for more details, but he still dropped the subject as he copied Eddie’s position sinking into the couch.

  “So, what are you doing here?” Eddie asked, grateful that Richie had respected his request.

  “Eric’s on babysitting duty.” Richie nodded over to Eric who sent them a thumbs up without looking away from his phone. “Mrs. Harrow doesn’t trust me to stay inside.”

  “I mean, to be fair, neither do I.” Eddie mused, a smirk playing on his face.

  Richie bumped his shoulder into Eddie’s, feigning offence even as laughter spilled from his chest.

  “Fine, but at least leave me with something to do, you know? I’m not a convict, I’m injured!” Richie lifted his leg and pointed to his ankle as if to prove his point.

  “As the convict here, I take offense to that.” Eddie teased.

  “Well, Eddie, how do you feel about reformation?” Eric asked. As Eddie regarded him, he saw that Eric had pocketed his phone and was now leaning towards them in engagement.

  Eddie narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Depends on what sort of reformation.”

  “Why don’t you take over guard duty?” Eric offered, nodding towards Richie. “Personally, I’d have let Richie stay in his room anyway, but I was given my orders. If you make sure he doesn’t leave, then at least the two of you can spend your evening watching TV or something. Just don’t let anyone see you outside your rooms, I don’t want to get in trouble for abandoning post. Mrs. Harrow is scary when she’s mad.”

  Eric mimicked a shiver running down his spine before shaking it off, smiling at the two of them warmly.

  “Eric, as per usual, you are the BEST.” Richie cheered.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Richie and Eddie wasted no time before scrambling to their feet and jetting out of the lobby. They didn’t discuss whose room they were going to, but once Richie pressed his floor number on the elevator keypad it was unspoken.

  Eddie was going to be alone in a room with Richie. Unsupervised. For hours.

  Eddie was going to shit his pants.

[random-mha-thoughts]

Mama’s Boy/Lover’s Boy (Bakugou x Reader)

Pairing: Bakugou x Fem!Reader

Genre: Fluff

Inspo: “Down for You” by Cosmo’s Midnight/Ruel

Summary: Bakugou hates being dragged to fancy parties for many reasons, but only one thing makes it all worth it.

Word Count: 2,322

Tags:  @yuki-osaki​ @liviitehe​ @iamsoftsodonttoucheume-blog​ @bunnythepipsqueak​

a/n:  I absolutely adore this picture, ngl that was the whole inspo for this.

It's not fair that a whole Katsuki exists while I'm bleeding out and my hormones are out of whack.  I'M A LOYAL SHOUTO HO, STAY IN YOUR LANE KATSUKI!  DON'T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MY INSTABILITY LIKE THIS!

When I was at the last few paragraphs, I realized I would've loved to let Baku lose his shit and almost crash the entire thing like in Murphy's Law (man I loved writing that), but that wouldn't be good.  We love a good chaotic fluff monster.

This turned out a lot longer than I thought it would, but I really like how it turned out!  Definitely more fluff than I expected, but who's mad at that?  I'm bleeding out of my uterus and my mom and dad got me feverish and sick and I definitely needed this, so I KNOW you Baku stans are gushing at this too.  Thanks to @rubyred-imagines​ for one of the story beats here!

Spice might be incoming in the next day or two ;3  Not sure which character yet, but it's gonna happen!

"Babe, your face."

"What about it?!"

"Stop looking like you want to kill everyone."

"But I do!"

"I know you do, but don't look it."

Katsuki walks into the grand hall, muscular arm linked through his dazzling girlfriend's slender one.  He really doesn't want to be here; he hates these high-class, uptight gatherings, he hates this constricting tuxedo he has to wear, he hates how he barely knows anyone here, and he especially hates that he could've been on a date with her alone instead of being surrounded by these suffocating faces.

His lovely girlfriend announced this unfortunate outing a few weeks ago right before Katsuki was going to suggest the idea of having a date night, since they haven't had any quality alone time together in a while.  Her eyes lit up when she reported that she RSVP-ed for both of them to attend her company's fancy dinner.  And his plans were crushed like that.  He wanted to grumble and refuse, but she'd yell right back at him anyway, being the stubborn person she is.

She reminds him of his mother.

"You're just like my mom," Katsuki rolls his eyes.  "She used to drag me to her company dinners all the time, too."

"We won't stay for long, I promise," she pats his arm with her perfectly manicured fingernails.

"She used to say that too, and then we'd be out for hours," he mumbles to himself.

The girl looks up at him sweetly.  "And you'll be a good boyfriend and stay here with me the whole time, right?"

The blond growls low in his throat.  "I don't even belong here, you were invited, not me."

"Katsuki, you're my guest, of course you belong here."  She leans up to whisper in his ear, "Besides, you're more handsome than any of the guys here, show them all up."

That makes Katsuki smirk.  "Damn right I am, babe."

The couple find their table after an irritating amount of time.  Every few steps, some other pretentious stranger from his girlfriend's company sweeps over to exchange empty kisses and the same empty conversation.  Katsuki thinks it's some kind of script everyone practiced from, no one deviating from the script or else the entire simulation might fall apart.  Actually, he would like to say something inappropriate just to relish their horrified or disgusted faces, but he for the sake of his precious girlfriend, he keeps his mouth shut, teeth grit, and smile plastered each time he's introduced to a new face.

"Do you really know everyone here, babe?" Katsuki mutters in her ear as they finally approach the table.

"Not everyone," she hums in response, "I don't know most of the employees from the other two companies here, but I know the higher-ups through my boss."

He briefly remembers her saying this dinner was for a big merger deal between these three companies.  His girlfriend works tirelessly for her boss, usually taking on more than she can handle and coming home late most nights.  She'd been promoted from just being a regular company worker to being in a near-the-top position right under the main board managers.  He admires her dedication, but he's always worried about her health and energy level.  He may be a Pro Hero, but she's the real superhuman in the relationship.

Katsuki does the gentlemanly thing of pulling the chair out for his lady and pushing her back in before settling in his seat next to her, purposely shifting closer to her than the person on his other side.

"What manners your boyfriend has," one of the older ladies at the table coos at the couple.

"Thank you, I'm very grateful to have him," the girl smiles politely in response.

Katsuki's heart melts at the pride dripping from her voice as she compliments him.  "And I'm very lucky to have her."  It felt like the right thing to say as he squeezes her hand under the table and briefly glances into her eyes.

The two don't tear away from each other until someone else approaches his girlfriend and she stands to greet him briefly.  Katsuki surveys him in case he would do something ballsy to his girlfriend.

She turns and places a hand on Katsuki's shoulder.  "This is my boyfriend, Katsuki Bakugou."

Hell yeah, I am, you better not pull anything, dumbass.  He stands and shakes the other man's hand, polite but stiff.

"Nice to meet you.  Your girlfriend is honestly a powerhouse, she's amazing," the man gushes.

"Yes, I'm aware," the blond replies tersely.  He's on guard because he doesn't get a good vibe from this man.

Sure enough, he goes on a little too animatedly about how much his girlfriend does for the company and the rest of the company.  It comes off to Katsuki as fake and kiss-ass.  Nonetheless, his girlfriend accepts all the compliments like the graceful goddess she is.  He realizes this boy is one of his girlfriend's juniors as they descend into a conversation surrounding work and future projects.

After dismissing him, another group of his girlfriend's underlings rushes over with compliments and "Oh my gosh, senpai!  You look amazing!" and the like.  Each time, she would accept the praise, introduce him, before launching into more work-related subject matter that Katsuki learned to tune out eventually.

Honestly, he's annoyed at how everyone here is overwhelmingly toxic.  All the subordinates or peers are kiss-ups and her superiors are pretentious stick-up-their-asses that look down on his girlfriend.  He can't stand that his lover is surrounded by this atmosphere all day.  They don't know the genuine type of person she is, other than that she's kind and easy to walk all over.  No one seems like they care enough to carry genuine conversation, and he'd rather not tune into that energy.

Instead, Katsuki directs his attention to his lovely girlfriend.  Staring at her face, he recalls how painstakingly long it took for her to paint her face with makeup to look this flawless.  He's sure she would've had a mental breakdown while doing her eyes, especially putting on her eyeliner.  She was chanting to herself cutely to get them even, almost coaxing her shaky hands in front of the mirror to perform some kind of magic.  If he had done the wrong thing and hurried her or teased her habits, she would've unleashed all her anger on him.  He's learned that the hard way.  In the end, she was able to achieve this masterpiece on her face without making herself look like a completely different person, highlighting her natural beauty.

Scanning downward to her dress, he remembers fondly going shopping with her last weekend.  Her hair was in a topknot as she fumbled through the racks for a dress to wear.  She had dragged him along because she trusted his opinion on fashion choices.  While he would've liked for her to choose a scarlet red gown, Katsuki knew she'd look infinitely better in the sapphire blue number she's wearing now.  The skinny straps holding the dress up leads down to a not-too-plunging neckline that suits her shoulders, collarbone, and chest perfectly.  The dress cinches in at the waist to emphasize the figure he knows she has before falling straight down from her hips, and the mid-thigh slit on one side is subtly sexy without having her risk overexposure.  Finishing the entire outfit is a classic pair of nude pumps, a dainty gold necklace, matching dangling earrings, and a clutch matching her shoes.  Her hair is curled in waves cascading down her back with some stands hanging over one shoulder.

Katsuki can't help but smile unconsciously.  He can't wait to someday place the finishing touch she deserves: a simple but elegant ring on her left hand.

After all the formalities, the two finally sit down and start eating the dinner courses that have started gracing their place settings.

"I know you wanted to go out for date night today," his girlfriend begins gently, "But we can imagine this is a fancy restaurant with just us two, and everything else is just a backdrop."

"Shouldn't you be paying attention to what's going on?" Katsuki quirks an eyebrow.

She waves her hand and takes a refined sip of her wine.  "I've already heard them practice this speech too many times."

The devilish blond smirks and slinks closer to her.  "That's not something a good employee would do, is it?"

"I'm not working right now," she smoothly responds back, replicating his energy.

The organizer of the dinner finally takes the stage and starts his speech.  Katsuki keeps his gaze on his beautiful girlfriend, admiring her delicately picking and eating at her plate.  She's so precious to him, he doesn't care if he's making heart eyes and everyone can see.

When the speech finishes, his girlfriend's glass also empties and she indicates that she's going to get another.  It leaves him on edge, he hates being alone with all these strangers even for a few minutes.  He doesn't want to tell you this, but if one of these people try to small talk him without you here, he might actually break something.

"So, Bakugou, what do you do?" the same lady from earlier chirps at him.

He whips his head up.  For fuck's sake.  "I'm a...public safety worker of sorts."  He tries so hard to sound polite for his girlfriend's sake.  He also can't resist scanning the room for her as a safety reflex.  With all the shady people around, he doesn't trust that something bad won't happen.  And he also wants your comfort in these uncomfortable situations, but he'll never admit that either.

"Oh, I see."  The old lady seems satisfied with his tone, barely noticing his fidgeting as she launches into a whole story about her grandson wanting to do something like that, and all the tangents related to that.

Katsuki is relieved that he doesn't have to talk for the rest of the time, just nodding along  and humming to prove he's passively listening.  He finally spots his angel a few tables away, groaning internally that she was stopped by someone, keeping her from coming back to him.  It seems they were having a deep conversation at first, but suddenly the man cracks a smile and a joke that makes her cover her mouth in respectful laughter.

Katsuki's annoyance is cut through at her wholehearted display of emotions.  The entire night, he's been complaining about how much he hates everyone here, but it's only now he realizes how relaxed she looks in the entire situation.  She's completely in her element; he'd get easily drained by all the suffocating small talk, but her?  She thrives off this, she gains energy from it.  Although she comes home late, overworked and tired, she still faces every day with a smile on her face.  She makes it look so easy to talk to people, striking up and following conversations with everyone in the most endearing and poised way possible.

Katsuki smiles to himself, warmth washing over him.  Yes, just like his mom, but it makes his girlfriend all the more stunning and admirable in his eyes.

His girlfriend finally returns to the table, her recently-acquired glass already half empty.  "What did I miss?" she asks, buzzing with both energy and alcohol.

Katsuki leans his head on his palm.  "Nothing much."  He's still basking in the glow of his wonderful girlfriend, casually sipping his own wine absently.

She turns towards the clearing in the center of the room and takes his free hand.  "Let's go dance, babe!"

Any other time, Katsuki would have sternly declined, but he can't resist her today.  Without a single complaint, he rises and lets her drag him by their entwined hands to the dance floor.  Guiding his large hand around her waist as her one hand plants to his shoulder, she raises their joined hands and starts swaying them to the classic orchestral ensemble's upbeat performance.

The man doesn't know if it's the overwhelming feeling of pride he recently uncovered, or the way their bodies press together gently as he inhales her floral perfume, but he can't find the words to describe everything he wants to say. He settles on simply smiling warmly down at her as he whispers, "You're amazing, you know that?"

His girlfriend's cheeks flush and she erupts into giggles.  "What's with the sudden compliment?"

He shakes his head.  "I just realized it, that's all.  Just like my mom."

"You sure are a Mama's boy, aren't you?"

He scoffs at the idea.  "I love the old hag, but I'll never tell her that.  Besides, I'd say I'm whipped for a different woman in my life."  He brushes hair behind her ear, her earring glinting against the light, and places a kiss on her perfect temple.  "You look stunning tonight."

His girlfriend's eyes close in half-lidded affection.  "I'm sorry this isn't the perfect date night you wanted."

The blond leans his forehead on her's, slowing their pace to allow time to pass much more leisurely around them.  "I get to dance with you, I think that's a definite win."

"I guess so."

Katsuki comes to realize that he can be forced to come to all of these events.  All that matters is his enchanting lover and her smile.  When the night is over, he can't wait to let her take her heels off and carry her bridal style to their car as everyone watches in envy and awe.  He'd let her recline and rest her weary feet, telling her stories of his adventures of night outings with his mom to lull her to sleep in his passenger seat.  And then he'd carry her sleeping figure up to their bedroom and wake her gently so she can clean herself up and change into her cute pajamas, just so they can cuddle in each other's warmth until they fall asleep.

Maybe he's not a Mama's boy anymore.  More like he's a Lover's boy.

[adhdeancas]

Sunset Sound: Honey Bee

Chapter 17 is available to read on AO3 too :) 

trigger warning: panic attack/anxiety attack

Dawn has not quite hit when Dean is suddenly blinded by a light. “Son of a- what the fuck?” They’re awake before they can notice, blind fear running in their veins. Dean scrambles for his keys, stomps Baby into drive, and they’re 0 to 80 in seconds. 

The spotlight hits him straight in the corneas again and he swerves and almost runs into a fence lining the road. Cas jumps back into the front seat, tugs the wheel over and they crash through the barbed wire. “Cas, what the hell?”

“We need away from the road!!” Cas explains, holding a hand up to try to fend off the horrible glare. The spotlight fades as they hit forest, Dean swearing left and right as he guides Baby through tight swaths of tree trunks. They abandon her once it gets too much and make a run for it. The spotlight can’t keep up; it pans across trying to find Dean’s plaid in the overgrowth or Cas’s trench coat, but Cas grabs Dean and throws them both into a bush before it can. Dean spits out a leaf and glares at him. “You’re welcome.” Cas mutters back, except it’s breathless, because for some reason beyond the physical exertion, Cas can’t breathe. It’s then that he realizes he’d left the walkie talkie, their only connection to their friends, in the backseat of the car.

He takes in big gulps of air but it doesn’t seem to matter, or maybe those gulps of air do too much, because it feels like his head is floating. He squeezes his eyes shut and just holds onto Dean; he needs to know that he’s still there but the panic in his skull finds the image of him too much.

“Cas?” Dean whispers, and it sounds far off. “Cas.” Cas can feel Dean’s grip on his arms, pulling at his coat sleeves like he’s trying to reel him back in. “You okay? What’s going on?”

Cas shakes his head then nods. “I’m fine, I just- am having trouble-” he takes another gulp of air because he keeps running out, and his confusion mounts. Is this what running normally feels like, to humans? Is it usually so uncomfortable and debilitating? Perhaps his vessel is just woefully - as Dean would say - flabby. Out of shape. 

“Breathing?” Dean gathers from Cas’s exaggerated gasps. The fear in his own chest calms down a little bit now he knows what’s happening. “Cas, it’s alright, look at me,” He puts a hand on his cheek, trying to convince Cas to open his eyes. “Cas, trust me,”

Cas finally does, of course. He takes a breath in and opens his eyes, and it’s a mixture of stunning adrenaline and comfort that goes through his body when he realizes he and Dean are sitting almost on top of each other within the poking branches of the bush. Dean pushes a stick out of his way so Cas can see his eyes clearly. “What’s happening?”

“You’re having a panic attack, doofus,” Dean smiles at him with his best bedside manner. “It’s fine, happens to me all the time. Just-” He grabs hold of Cas’s hand and raises it so Cas can see. “Up means breathe in, down means breathe out.”

“But what if-” Cas throws a glance up, focused completely on the wrath of heaven that could descend upon them at any moment. 

“Since when are we scared of a couple dicks with wings? We’ll be fine. C’mon, have I ever let you down?”

Confidence leaks back into Cas at the reassurance, and a glint reaches his eyes as he says, “Well…”

Dean mimes out a sarcastic laugh and holds their hands up again. “Alright, asshole, breathe,” He lifts their hands slowly, Cas’s breath growing past what he’s comfortable with, then lets them down even slower. Over and over again until it’s all Cas is thinking about, and he knows his heartbeat has stopped hammering so fast against his ribs. It’s still there, the panic still bothers him, but it’s manageable, which he guesses is what Dean is going for. He nods at Dean in thanks.

“I’m okay. We can go.” Dean ignores him to do three more breaths, which Cas grudgingly follows. Then he highers himself into a crouch, still holding Cas’s hand.

Dean pulls him back onto the run and they sprint until they see a cabin in the distance. They make eye contact and agree; they can take whoever owns the cabin, if they need to. It’s Cas who pounds on the door and Dean who peeks in the window, which means he only looks after the owner answers the door and Cas has grabbed him by the throat. 

“Corbett?” 

Cas lets him go almost immediately, but the poor boy’s eyes stay wide. “Uh-D- Dean?” Dean steps up and puts a hand on Cas’s arm, pulling him back to try and make Corbett a little less on edge. It works a little bit; the nervous man withdraws slightly and rubs at his neck. “Dean… Winchester, right?” 

“Yeah,” Dean nods encouragingly and steps in front to ease his way in the cabin. Cas has a hand on his back trying to push him in faster, still aware of heaven’s spotlights looking out for them. “Been a while, buddy. Mind if we-?” He pats Corbett on the shoulder as he just stands there and stutters and Cas and Dean both get to work drawing warding on the walls. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Sigils, to keep the angels off your back,” Dean explains quickly, glancing at the guy’s bewildered expression. “Dude, what are you wearing?” 

Corbett looks down, offended, and puts his hands on his hips. “A robe- I didn’t expect visitors!” The robe is baby blue and it stops above his knees, and Dean raises an eyebrow at it. “Hey!” He throws his hands up. “Listen, I’ll change and all, but what are you doing here? And who is he?” 

“Cas. He’s- well, you can trust him.” 

“...why do I need to trust anyone?” Corbett says suspiciously. He walks over to his bedroom and reemerges wearing actual clothes, not comforted by Dean’s silence. “Do you guys want something to drink- water, coffee?” His politeness takes over by instinct, and he gestures his guests to his table. “Please tell me what’s going on.” 

“Coffee would be great.” Corbett looks over at Cas and he nods the same. “Uh, we got angels on our trail.” 

“And that’s… a bad thing?” 

“I’m not on their good list.” Now it’s Corbett’s turn to raise an eyebrow from the coffee maker. Dean smiles awkwardly. To this poor guy, being on an angel’s shitlist probably isn’t a ringing character endorsement. 

“It’s a long story; promise we’ll tell you some other time. But, uh, you mind if we lay low here for a while?”

Corbett shrugs, not sure he has much of a choice, but he plops down coffees in front of the three of them anyway. “Looks like we have some time then. But, um, Dean… how’s Ed?” The kid looks at Dean hopefully, flashing some puppy-dog eyes that even Sam would be jealous of. Dean looks at Cas for help, but of course Cas has no freaking clue what Dean’s conflicted about. He looks back at him without a care in the fucking world beyond burning his tongue on his coffee.

“He’s good. I mean, not- he’s- he was sad- he mourned you and all, if that’s what you’re asking.” The tips of Dean’s ears turn red and he changes the subject before he can shove his foot in his mouth. Last time Corbett talked to Ed, Ed was pretending to be in love with him. The key word being pretending. “Anyway, so, hate to break it to you but heaven sucks.” 

Cas steps in then, helps soften the blow and explains with more eloquence than Dean could. Corbett takes the news surprisingly well, something about always figuring God was a dick (yeah, growing up gay in the Midwest will do that to you), although the fact that Cas was/is an angel threw him for a loop. 

“So you don’t have, like, wings or anything?”

“I did. I do.” Cas frowns down at the table. After losing all but all of his grace, his wings are but a mangled decoration for him now. Especially being in heaven, not being able to fly around stings, it feels like he is moving in slow motion sometimes. Dean’s hand appears over the table and taps his, his fingers soft and consoling. He pulls back slowly and Cas wishes he would keep touching him. “I can’t fly now, not without my powers.” 

“That sucks.” 

“Yeah.” Cas smiles up at Corbett. The simple openness of this man is making Cas instantly fond of him. It’s a refreshing change of pace from hunters and ethereal creatures’ secretive nature. “It was worth it, though. I’m alive.” 

“... you’re in heaven.” 

Dean snorts, and Cas nods, amused. “I’m not here… naturally. Given the ability, I believe I would be able to traverse back to the mortal realm and live as… well, as a human.” He looks up and meets Dean’s eyes, who looks shaken by the information. 

Cas could go back and live on Earth as just a regular old human, and Dean… Dean’s dead. Dean’s dead at 41 and that’s that. The thought makes his heart sink like a rock in his chest. 

“Well,” Dean stands up and slaps a hand on the table, breaking the quiet of the cabin. “We should probably get going.”

“Wait.” Corbett stands too and grabs Dean’s arm, an action far more forward than he’s used to. “Dean, you gotta… please, tell me. What aren’t you telling me about Ed?” 

Dean sighs, looking around the cabin for a possible exit. His eyes land on a stupid framed photo of Corbett and Ed, taken like a selfie before front-facing cameras existed. His stomach twists in a knot. How is he supposed to ruin this guy’s happiness? He thinks Ed is gonna show up someday and they’re gonna be happy and together and gay in a dumb little gay paradise.

“Please. Dean, the truth.” 

The knot in his stomach twists further and Dean winces. He’s gotta tell him. Better that than the guy getting his heart ripped out when Ed finally shows up and doesn’t want him. He swallows and looks up at Cas, who’s frowning at him in confusion. Dean looks away. Better to look at Corbett. “Uh, listen, Corbett… Ed… he’s not in love with you.” 

Corbett blinks. “Wha- no, he- he said-” 

“Yeah, he lied,” Dean sighs and sits back down heavily. “Sorry dude, but…” He shakes his head. Corbett shakes his right back.

“No, he said he loved me.” 

“I know what he said!” It bursts out of Dean before he can stop it, louder than he meant. He pauses and clears his throat, and the whole cabin is silent. 

Cas puts a hand on Corbett’s shoulder. “I’m sure he meant what he said, in a way.” he says, talking out of his ass. He has no way of knowing what the situation was, but Corbett talks about this Ed man like they were close, friends, pals. 

Corbett keeps his eyes fixed on Dean. Dean sighs and turns his head, looking at the young man again. “Listen, I’m sorry,” But he can’t get another word out before Corbett starts crying. He puts his head in his hands and sobs, and Dean and Cas look at each other helplessly. Cas pats his shoulder, but he shrugs it off. Finally Dean heaves himself up and squats down next to Corbett. He tugs on his hands gently, pulling them away from his face, and Cas imagines this is how Dean dealt with it when Sam cried as a child. “Corbett, man… Ed loved you, just not… listen.” He stops and Cas can practically hear the ‘shit’ in his head as he searches for the right words. “Ed loved you enough to tell you he loved you, just so you’d be able to move on. To save you.” his voice is steadier now, quiet and firm. Cas stills, just listening. “And maybe he doesn’t want to come up here and shack up and watch Desperate Housewives, but,”

Cas watches Dean’s train of thought trail away as he catches his eye. He holds his gaze, and Dean looks heartbroken. He looks insecure. He looks like he did that night in the barn, when Cas recognized his self-loathing without a second thought. Now, the expression causes Cas physical pain, and he wants to reach out and soothe him. Instead, he just stares as Dean continues talking without taking his eyes off him. 

“I mean, he probably still wants to, y’know, have a beer or something. And that’s shitty, it’s-  disappointing as fuck but… you gotta respect that.” He clears his throat and finally looks down. “Everything’s shitty right now.”

“Everything’s shitty.” Corbett agrees, sniffing. He was too lost in his own misery to notice the considerable tension in the room. Cas can’t get the image of Dean’s face out of his head, his words playing like a broken tape-deck over and over.

The rest of the goodbyes are said through a haze of Cas’s thoughts screaming at him, and it isn’t until they get back to the car, fuzzy small talk half-remembered, that Cas gets up the courage to say something. Still, he waits minutes into the car ride, because he doesn’t want to seem like he has been waiting to get into the car. The logic makes no sense but it controls him, and it makes his voice quaver when he finally says, “Dean?” 

“Yeah,” Dean smacks his lips and glances at him once, fingers tapping the wheel to the beat of the radio. 

“Why did you want me?” 

Dean furrows his eyebrows and looks at Cas like he doesn’t understand the question. “Why did I…?”

“Why did you bring me- to go with you to the Garden.” Cas clarifies. Helpfully. Almost confidently, if he’s being generous with himself. 

Dean gives him an incredulous glance. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t have my powers, Dean. There are angels you could have brought with you that are far more powerful. Or, if you wanted to attract less attention, there are plenty of hunters who could slip under the radar, who are more skilled in combat.” Cas tries not to let his self-doubt seep into the words. He’s not sure if it works, because Dean shifts uncomfortably in his seat. 

“I dunno, because I didn’t want to bring those other guys,” he says defensively.

“Dean,” Cas pushes, insistent. His heart is speeding up in his chest and he feels like he might explode if he keeps going, but he has to. His momentum is already started, and the look in Dean’s eyes as he’d talked to Corbett is giving him strength. 

“What!” Dean sounds annoyed now, but it’s just more defense. He’s starting to feel like he’s being cornered into doing something terrible, like telling the truth.

“Dean.”

“Because I like you?” 

It’s even and it’s uncertain and it’s vulnerable. Dean is scared as hell, but then he looks at Cas and he gets terrified. A flicker of hurt passes across Cas’s face, and it’s so severe even Dean can’t miss it. 

Cas feels like a child. He feels like he’s being spoken to like a child. He had expected… but that was too much. Instead of simplicity and vulnerability, he heard patronization. “You don’t need to do that Dean.”

“Do what? I do like you, man. We’re- friends. Didn’t think I needed to spell that out for you.” Dean laughs nervously, completely un-fucking-aware of what is going on right now. 

Cas looks at his lap. “Claire has explained to me what ‘friendzone’ means, and I assure you, it’s unnecessary. It always has been.” Feeling is excruciating.

Dean sputters. He had not expected the word “friendzone” to come out of Cas’s mouth like… ever. “I don’t- I haven’t-”

“You’ve called me your brother multiple times.” Humiliation burns across Cas’s face. 

“No, no, I don’t mean it like- I’m not trying to friendzone you��” Dean laughs, a little crazed that he’s actually in this conversation. More that he’s about to- “I just- I want you around…  because I like having you around. I want you around because I like seeing you and I like your grumpy little jokes and I like your dumb info dumps about plants and I like watching movies with you you’re only watching to humor my dumb ass…” Dean trails off, the little bit of pink in his cheeks matching Cas’s. “Listen, Cas, you’re not like a brother to me. I mean, I love my brothers, but I don’t love them like that.” He swallows, looking at the road in front of them. It stretches quiet and unremarkable, like it has no idea the progress being made in this old hunk of well-shaped metal. “Like this.”

He keeps facing straight ahead, fingers tapping out of beat against the wheel now. Cas is dumbstruck. The car is filled with the heaviness of it. It’s finally out there. Dean loves him. Cas looks over at Dean, and lights throw his face into half shadow, and he looks beautiful. Cas reaches out and grabs his hand off the wheel and holds it in his own. Dean keeps driving. One handed.

tag list: 

@dochunterwitch  @justonecitizenoftheearth @gnbrules @purpe @castiel-is-a-cat @alienapparatus @damian-janus-pendragon

[thewildomega]

Second Chance Ch.14

A/N: Ya’ll can’t tell me this man isn’t a hunk! Props for the awesome fanart goes to @insect_candy on twitter. I found it on pintrest. As always if the artist sees this and wants me to remove it just send em a message and I’ll take it down asap. I do think it’s really good though. Especially the eyes. If anyone gets a chance go check out their page. Link is in the name. Hope everyone likes this update. How much longer should this story go on? Is it still interesting and enjoyable to read?

Sitting quietly in your chair beside Ed you listened as they all spoke, Ed telling his sons what had happened when he had arrived in your world. You couldn't help but blush when he talked so fondly of you, telling his sons how you had helped him, taken care of him. 

"Then it would seem we are in your debt Y/n. Thank you for helping our pops." Izo spoke to the woman who had remained quiet throughout dinner.

 Looking to the man you shook your head. "Oh no, it's okay really it was no problem I..."

"It's okay Y/n you don't have to lie to us, we know how much of a handful the old man can be." Marco said making his brothers laugh. 

"Agreed, I think we should congratulate her on not killing him in his sleep." Vista grinned. 

"I am not that bad." He grumbled when he saw them all laughing. Looking beside him he even saw his lass giggling lightly at his son's teasing of him. All in all though he couldn't be mad, it was nice having some of his family all together again, even more so now that Y/n was here with him. Chewing a bite of his food he watched and listened as they went about asking Y/n about her world. Already his son's were starting to warm up to her and the sight made him smile softly. 

........................

After supper you and Zella had moved to clean up while the men all talked and caught up. It made your heart warm to see Ed happy with his sons. Once everything was all tidy Zella had told you she was calling it a night. She had been very sleepy the past few days and while you wanted to ask her if she was okay you also didn't want to seem nosey. Drying all the dishes and putting them away you looked over everything and sighed. Walking out of the kitchen and into the living room you saw no one here as well, you could hear their voices from outside though and guessed they were all out there. Not wanting to intrude on their family time you looked down to your hand which you had successfully kept hidden the whole night. Walking to the guest bathroom you closed the door and finally unwrapped the dishcloth from it. Looking down at the bloody cut you winced. It wasn't that long, only half of your palm length, going from the middle of your palm to the space between your thumb and forefinger. It was decently deep though, especially the skin between your fingers. Setting the bloody dishrag in the sink you turned on the hot water and filled the sink so you could let it soak. Turning on the shower you pulled off your clothes, trying your best not to get any blood on them as well. Stepping into the shower you rinsed your hand, grabbing the soap you started washing, biting your lip and whimpering when it felt like you had poured salt into your wound. Washing your hair was annoying as well but you made it work. Quickly shaving and then getting out you grabbed a towel and started drying off.

Opening the closet door you moved to grab your clothes from the basket but when you looked down to the floor where they had bene you saw nothing there. "What... where..." you said out loud. Knitting your brows you looked all in the closet but didn't find anything but the spare towels and washing machine. Where the hell were your clothes? You had just did laundry the other day so you knew they weren't dirty. So where the hell... Ed. Closing the door you wrapped the towel tightly around you, thankful they were made for his size. Running your fingers through your hair when you also noticed your hairbrush not in the drawer or any of your other items he had bought you you sighed. Opening the door you peeked out to see no one in the house. Licking your lips you walked towards his bedroom which was the only other place you could think your things would be. Glancing around the room you tried to locate your basket. Seeing it on the dresser you moved over to it but saw it empty. "Where in the hell..."

"Darlin' are you back..." 

Freezing when you heard his voice you looked up to the door to see him standing in the doorway, looking at you. Snapping your eyes down you felt your face, ears and neck catch fire. 

"...here." he finished. Seeing her standing by the dresser in nothing but a towel he closed his mouth when he realized it was still open. The white towel that she had wrapped around her ended at her knees. While it revealed nothing but her lower legs, shoulders and arms he felt his manhood twitch all the same. She was naked, the only thing on her being a towel. 

God you were so embarrassed. You both had only slept in the same bed for one night and now here you were just walking around his bedroom in nothing but a damn towel. What the hell would he think of you? "C..clothes?" you asked in a whisper. 

She wouldn't look up at him but he could see the tips of her ears sticking out of her wet hair and noticed the blush on them immediately. "Right." Walking over to the dresser he opened the drawers where he had put her clothes in with his. Grabbing the black lace panties that she had on when they came here he clenched his teeth when his imagination decided to take over. 'NO'. Shutting the drawer he moved down to the next and grabbed one of his shirts that she was keen on wearing for a nightgown. Black lace panties and his shirt. God his pants were already tightening at the thought. Taking a deep breath he went to hand them over to her. "Here ya go lass." he said, his voice deeper than usual. 

Keeping your eyes down some you went to take your clothes when he suddenly grabbed your wrist. 

"What's that?" 

Remembering your cut palm you looked up to him and shook your head some, "Nothing." 

Refusing to let go of her wrist he turned her hand up and knit his brows when he saw the deep cut on her palm. "Sure does look like something to me darling. What happened?"

"I just nicked it when I was washing dishes earlier." you told him. 

Humming he frowned. "This is more than a little nick lass. Why didn't you say something about, did Zella see it, she could have said something to Marco." 

"No she didn't see it, it happened before..."

"Before when?" he asked and then shook his head and looked to her eyes, "Before supper? You did this before supper and you didn't say anything?" he asked in a disapproving voice. Now that he thought back he did think it was strange she had been keeping her hand under the table in her lap. 

Sighing you took your clothes and moved towards his bathroom to dress. "It's fine Ed." 

Walking behind her he crossed his arms over his chest. "Until it gets infected." 

"It's not going to get infected, I cleaned it." you told him, pushing the door closed so you could dress. 

Standing just outside of the door he waited for her to dress which only took a moment. Once the door opened and she went to step out he moved forward, scooping her up and sitting her down on the bathroom counter. "That's what everyone says. Trust me I have seen my fare share of injuries, little cuts that no one thought nothing of until it turns septic and then has to be chopped off." 

Listening to his lecture you watched as he moved to grab something from under the vanity. Seeing him set a first aid kit on the counter next to you, you looked up to him. Placing your hand in his when he held it out for you. "How did you get those scars from your pictures, the ones on your chest?"

Beginning to clean the cut with alcohol he saw her fingers twitch but not snatch away. "Different battles. One from my old Captain, Rocks. Got one from fighting Roger and another from an old crewmate, Shikki." grabbing the roll of bandages and tape he applied a bit of cream to it to both help with pain and quick healing. "What about you, any scars on that pretty body?" 

Blushing again you saw him noticed this time and heard him chuckle lightly. "That gunshot one..." you started but heard him grunt. 

"Don't like the story of that one." he growled under his breath. 

"I do, that's the night I got to come here with you." 

Seeing her smiling softly at him he sighed. "While that may be true, it still should have never happened." taping down the bandage he lifted her up again to take her to their bed, cutting off the light to both the bathroom and bedroom on the way. Sitting on the bed he rested against the headboard with his feet stretched out and her straddling his lap. "Anymore?" he asked, knowing if he wanted her to relax he needed to keep her talking. There wasn't any light but that of the candle on the side table but he could still tell she was blushing. 

Humming you tried to focus on the question he asked and not the fact you were currently straddling the lap of the man you loved. "Um well there's the one where Smoke bit me."

Looking down to her leg where she was looking he tilted his head at the faint scar on her thigh. Licking his lips he moved his thumb under the hem of his shirt and pushed it higher up her left leg, feeling heat pool to his pelvis at the feel of her soft skin. Seeing the bite there he huffed. "He got you good didn't he?" It wasn't a nasty scar but he could tell by each individual mark that the wolf had sunk his teeth in deep. 

"Yea." you sighed. 

Stroking her thigh with his thumb he glanced over the rest of her skin, looking for any other scars. "That it?"

"n..No. I have a 'W' on my right hip from where Keith branded me." you told him, having to steady yourself, the feel of his warm hands on your thighs making that tingling come back. 

"He branded you?" he asked in a deep voice, a frown on his face as he lifted his eyes to hers. 

"He didn't do it intentionally. He was making that new sign at Mel's bar for his dad and kept messing around. The letters that you use to burn the wood, he kept poking the 'M' towards me asking if it was hot. He wasn't trying to actually touch me with it but Trish came in and bumped into me and well yea." Seeing his brows knit together you took a deep breath, "It was definitely hot. Burnt straight through my shirt and everything. Keith felt horrible for it, he bought me dinner for the next week." 

Looking down to her hip he thought for a moment before asking, "Can I see?"

Swallowing hard you felt your heart beat a little faster as you lifted the bottom of the shirt up enough to show him the 'W' over your left hip bone. 

Forcing his eyes to focus on her hip and not the part of her covered by black lace that he wanted so desperately to look at he indeed saw the 'W' scar on her skin. He didn't like the idea of her being hurt like that and furrowed his brows. Rubbing his hand up her thigh and hip he held her with his hand over her side, feeling the material of her panties under the bottom part of his palm. Genty tracing the mark with his thumb he swallowed hard when his eyes dropped to the apex of her thighs for a fraction of a second. Instantly he knew that was a bad idea when he felt his cock come to life. Fuck he could make out the silhouette of her womanhood through the weblike pattern. Raising his knees some and spreading his legs so it wouldn't become too obvious he was aroused he held her steady as she slipped forward. Catching sight of the scar on her chest when his shirt moved some he furrowed his brows. Keeping his one hand under th ebottom of the shirt on her hip he raised his other one to touch the circular scar. It wasn't too bad since Marco had healed her with ihs power but it would probably stay there for the remainder of her life. To him it would be a constant reminder of how she had saved him, while noble he couldn't get the image of her lifeless body out of his head. Even now it made his heart clench painfully. 

Seeing his brows and lips turn into a firm line as he looked to the scar on your chest you gently took hold of his hand that was stroking the area. Looking into his warm yellow eyes as when they lifted to yours you watched his face relax. 

"Why did you run after that man lass? You knew he had a gun, knew that he wouldn't care if you got hurt." he asked her and saw her eyes shoot down. 

"He took all the money that was in the safe, that was everything Mel had..." you shrugged.

"Money isn't that important darling." 

"Mel is sick, he's dying. I know money isn't the most important thing in life but when they were barely making it as it was that money could have meant life or death for him when it was paying for his medicine. After everything that family did for me I couldn't just sit there and let that asshole take everything from them like that."

Hearing this he sighed softly, stroking her hip with his thumb. He fell more and more in love with her everyday. "How the hell did this old pirate get lucky enough to have an angel like you as his soulmate?" he spoke in a low voice. 

"Soulmate?" 

Just realizing what he had said he blinked and felt his mouth go dry. "Ah... well yes..." Clearing his throat he tried to think of a way to explain their destined love to her. "You see lass here in this world soulmates are a thing... a ah... a natural connection. Not everyone has them but some get lucky enough. It's when two people are destined to be with each other and they have this... well this pull and..." Seeing her smile grow and her teeth bit down on her lip some he stopped, feeling a blush over his cheeks and neck. 

"It's okay Ed, Zella explained them to me last week." seeing him furrow his brows as he looked down to you, you grinned nervously. "I wasn't sure you felt the same way and I didn't want to lose you so I never said anything."

She had been afraid he wouldn't love her back. She felt their connection as well? The knowledge made him smile. Still he could tell she was a bit nervous. "So you knew what they were and still you let me suffer through that horrible explanation like an idiot." 

Seeing him cut his eyes at you playfully, a smile still present on his lips you tilted your head. "It was fun to watch you be the nervous wreak for a change." you admitted with a small shrug.

Growling he grinned as he quickly wrapped his arm around her and flipped her to the bed, holding himself up above her while her hands held onto his back and shoulder. Gazing down at her sparkling eyes he felt that swelling in his heart and sighed softly. "Never thought I'd experience that whole feeling that comes with having a soulmate. My entire life I've always felt like there was something missing. Ever since I was a kid the only thing I've ever wanted was a family. I gathered many sons and daughters over the years, children of the sea that I called my own but it wasn't enough. There was still some part of me that was missing and I could never find that lost piece. When I died in Marrieford I accepted that it would be a mystery that would never be solved. But to my surprise my story wasn't over. I was found by the very person I had spent my whole life trying to find. I knew from the first time I saw you that you were the one, that you were meant to be mine. I don't know which higher power was looking out for me but I thank them for finally allowing our paths to cross." His heart was hammering so hard against his ribcage he was sure it would soon burst from his chest. "Lass you make me feel complete, I will love you forever. Long after the seas dry up and the stars fade in the sky." He was so nervous he thought he might have another heart attack. Staring into her eyes he licked his dry lips. "I promise to care for you. You will be the only woman I ever love. I'll provide for ya and you'll never want for anything..."

"Ed.." 

"Darling I don't have a ring to give ya, not yet at least but I..." Taking a deep breath he swallowed hard. "I'll get you one, anyone you want. I can't wait till then, not a moment longer, I have to ask you now. Will ya marry me lass?"

Four months, three weeks and six days. That's how long it had been since you had found him on the shore of the lake. It wasn't that long really but you felt like you had known him your whole life. Even from the beginning he had always felt like this old friend who had just shown back up from out of nowhere. Somewhere along those few months you had fell head over heels for him but you had said nothing. So afraid that he would soon toss you aside like everyone else had you had distanced yourself as much as possible even when it made your heart ache terribly. He was patient with you, he listened. He made you laugh and cry and he was right about feeling whole because not once in your life had you ever been so happy than you were when you were with him. Almost five months, most would probably say that that wasn't long enough to know a person to marry them but to you, that was all the time you needed. 

Looking up into those warm yellow eyes you smiled, your eyes tearing up a bit. "Yes."

As soon as the word was out of her mouth he felt his face break into what had to be the biggest smile of his life. Without a moment's hesitation he lowered his body to hers, finally claiming her lips. Just as he suspected her lips were soft and smooth. A light sigh left his nose at being able to finally kiss her. Thankfully this time Marco wasn't here to interpret either. There was this strong pulling in his chest that turned into a comfortable warmth as he allowed his body to lower just above hers, still careful not to crush her. She had tensed the tiniest amount when their lips first met but quickly she had relaxed. 

He was kissing you. You were getting your first kiss and it was so incredible. God his lips were so warm and only a bit rougher than your own. You could feel the slight scruff on his upper lip but it didn't bother you. Then there was the heat of his huge body laying over yours and that strange tugging that had turned into a comforting warmth. You could die happy right here and now. The hand holding your hip was gently messaging you while the one wrapped under your head made you feel secure and safe. When the need for air became desperate and he pulled away some you looked up into his soft eyes, his hair falling around the both of your faces making the moment even more intimate. 

"...so what'd she say?"

"Yes of course!" 

"I told you she would." 

"Way to go Pops."

Hearing voices from outside of the window you peeked around his massive arm to look out of the window, you couldn't see anything because of the drawn curtains but when Ed let out a deep growl you knew someone was there. 

Letting go of her hip he grabbed one of the pillows and threw it towards the window his sons were standing by. "If you four don't get the hell out of here I'll toss you all to the sea!"

"He does realize we are on land right?"

"Is that a challenge?!"

Giggling through it all you quickly wrapped your arms around his neck when he went to move. 

Being pulled back down by his little woman he didn't get to say a word before her lips pushed their way back to his. "Overgrown children." he grumbled around her lips and heard her giggle lightly. Continuing to hold himself up with one arm he moved his free hand over to the table to pinch out the wick. Maybe if the room was dark his sons would get the hint to leave them alone. 

..................................

"So what is it for?" Izo asked.

Seeing the three men looking to your phone you tilted your head, "Um well in my world people use them to call one another, like the den den's here. You can also use it to read books on, there's a calculator, a flashlight, a camera..." Showing them each feature you saw their brows raise when you turned on the flashlight. Taking a picture of the three of them you turned it around to show them and saw Vista smile. "Really there is a whole bunch of stuff on it. I can't make calls on it anymore since I'm here but I can still read some books on it and listen to music."

"Music?" Jozu asked. 

Humming you nodded and brought up your music list. Tapping on a song you saw them all look to it in amazement when the song started playing. 

"You'll soon be hearing the chime Close to midnight If I could turn back the time I'd make all right

How could it end like this? There's a sting in the way you kiss me Something within your eyes Said it could be the last time Fore it's over!

Just wanna be Wanna bewitch you in the moonlight Just wanna be I wanna bewitch you all night..."

"I want one of those." Vista said. 

Giggling you held it out for him to take. "Here ya'll knock yourself out. I have to go pick up some stuff from town for supper anyway. Just don't hit anything that says delete okay." When they all nodded but kept their eyes on the phone you smiled again and stood. 

Walking from around the house he looked to see Izo, Vista and Jozu all sitting on the ground playing with his soon to be wife's phone. Wife, the thought of being able to call her that made his chest swell with pride. Hearing the music playing from her phone he chuckled at the smile on his sons faces. Looking down at them with his arms crossed over his chest he chuckled. "So I see y/n has shown you her phone." 

"This thing is amazing. Look at all the books she has.."

"There is over three hundred songs on it as well." Izo added. 

"Yea she loves reading and music." he grinned.

"Marco said she likes cooking too." Jozu spoke.

"I bet Thatch would have liked her." Vista grinned.

"Ace too." 

Sighing his grin turned bittersweet, he would have loved for her to meet the both of his fallen sons. He knew for a fact they both would have loved her. Looking to them all again he raised his brows, "Do any of you happen to know where it is my lass has run off to?"

"Yea, she said she had to go into town to get stuff for supper." 

"Let us borrow her phone while she was gone." 

Humming he nodded, "Don't break it." 

"Yea, yea." 

Huffing out he started towards town. Looking all over for her he didn't find her anywhere and when he finally asked around they said she had already left a little while ago. Knitting his brows he stood in though, if she had already left then he would have met her on the way back home but he hadn't. So where was she? Deciding to let his heart lead the way he started walking out of town and towards the entrance to the town. If she was going to get groceries then why would she need to come out here? Going up the hill and towards the ruins of the old town he had grew up in he looked across to the edge of the cliff where his and Ace's grave was. He had been to it a few times to talk to his son but he found it strange looking at his own headstone. A part of him wondered if there was anything buried there? Marco had told him that they had buried him, hell even that red head had helped but if he was here now was that body now gone or was this a whole new one? As tempted as he was to dig it up he figured he was better off not knowing. 

Getting closer to the top he saw her h/c hair blowing in the breeze and knit his brows, what was she doing up here? Going to call out to her he stopped when he saw someone standing by her, the two of them looking to be speaking. Realizing who it was he clenched his teeth and marched a little faster towards them. As soon as he was close enough he saw Garps eyes shoot to him, his brows raising. Moving y/n behind him he stared down at the man, "What the hell are you doing here Garp?"

"What am I doing here, what the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be dead damnit! And why are you young again?!" Garp yelled. "Wait a minute, am I dead? Did I die and for some godforsaken reason end up in the same place as you? If I did die how come I'm still old?"

"You're going to be dead if you don't get off my damn island!" 

"Go to hell Newgate, I'm here to see Ace..."

"NO! You don't get to pay your respects to my son..."

"He was my damn grandson before he was one of your sons!"

"Don't act like you care so much about him now, you let him die!"

"Ace made his choice, he became a pirate and then he joined up with you! I warned him but he wouldn't listen!" The marine yelled, his face turning red and his veins sticking out in his forehead. 

"What a load of crap! That boy had a target on his back before he was even born! For being Roger's son, something he couldn't even control. Yea he became a pirate and he was a damn good one. Much like that other grandson of yours, that strawhat brat. Are you gonna sit back and watch him die too?!"

"Don't you bring Luffy into this!" Garp growled, his voice dropping even more.

Clenching his fists he sensed his sons coming up behind him. "Take Y/n back home." he spoke in a deep voice, never ceasing his intense stare down with Garp. 

Having stayed behind him the whole time you felt your heart hammering as Ed and the man you had just met who you had heard Ed call Garp argued. You had never seen him so angry looking other than the time he had saved you from that man. There seemed to be this intense aroura coming off both men and it made you nervous. Hearing Marco and the others come up behind you and then Ed tell them to take you back home you furrowed your brows. Tightening your grip on his arm that had been holding you behind his bulk frame you swallowed hard and looked up to the back to his head. "Ed..."

Seeing Garp's eyes glance to the woman behind him he felt his lip lift into a snarl. Giving her hip a small squeeze he rose his chin, "Jozu." he called, knowing the man was bigger than her. 

Being pulled away from him by Jozu no doubt you tried holding onto his arm but he let your hands slip away. Watching as Izo moved to grab the bags left by his father's feet you looked between the two men. "N..."

"It's best to stay out of it Y/n." Marco told her, taking hold of her other hand while Jozu held her arm to pull her back towards the safety of their father's home. 

Getting past the waterfall you heard a loud slam and then a smack, the ground shaking a bit and making you gasp. "B...but will he be okay?" you asked trying to stop and look back towards the man you loved. Yes the other man was smaller but you still didn't want your Ed to get hurt. 

Laughing along with the rest of his brothers Vista pat her arm, "Oh don't you worry about pops Y/n. He didn't get the title of strongest man in the world for nothing."

"Yea and pops never backs down from a fight." Jozu huffed.

Blinking you looked to Vista with wide eyes. "Strongest man in the world?" surely he had to be exaggerating. Seeing them all nod proudly though you could only open and close your mouth, turning your head back to see a cloud of dust flying up here and there, the loud noises still echoing from where you had left. Just who and the hell were you going to marry? You knew Edward but maybe it was time to learn who Whitebeard was.