#fourteen is such a weird and vulnerable age

[heroes-fading]

running like water I am SCREAMING MY LUNGS OUT

I am sleep deprived and I am crying over the “that’s what dads do for their daughters”

“he’s not my dad” to her running into the room yelling about her dad needing to be okay pipeline??? thanks I’m in PAIN

IM SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT

me and my own personal daddy issues I have channeled into fic, I'm so glad it resonated with you!!!!!

[madqueenalanna]

i just read sharp objects and i want to talk about it but like where to even START

in the back of my mind i am percolating a comparison between gillian flynn and vc andrews, which might not make sense to anyone but me. the generational trauma, the behind-closed-doors horror, the power in sexuality. vc andrews wrote about the unique, indescribable rage experienced by teenage girls exploring their bodies and sexuality in a deeply patriarchal society; gillian flynn writes about women in their 30s, those abused and angry girls all grown up and dangerous. both an exploration of a facet of women's inner lives that feels very difficult to explain and which is rarely explored in other media

anyway wow the generational trauma. joya abused adora, who became a teen mother and abused all three of her daughters. when amma was born, camille was about the same age that adora was when camille was born, and there's this weird sister-child-friend-enemy dynamic camille has with amma. none of them ever learned how to love each other, or themselves. camille turned her anger inward and destroyed her body; adora poisoned marian her whole life and finally killed her; amma mutilated the bodies of her classmates for her dollhouse. what the fuck is even going ON with these people

i still need to read dark places but between gone girl and sharp objects, i am fascinated by gillian flynn's take on these adult women's sexuality. amy does not seem to enjoy sex much at all except for the power it gives her over men; she thinks derisively about nick's desire, desi's, the appeal of girls like andie; she (and camille) talks about sex in kind of a clinical, detached way, the smell, the stickiness, this very open and raw but entirely un-sexy way. camille blames herself for being gang-raped at fourteen while drunk, but locks her various traumas so deep that even thinking about the event sounds like she's talking about someone else (and to willis, she is). sex is power and control, it's about using other people by letting them use you. it's gross. it's intimate. as someone with some... issues around sex, myself, i could see why it would rub people the wrong way but i found it oddly refreshing, in the way i find gallows humor to be funny

gillian flynn said in an ama that she wrote sharp objects as an exploration of female generational violence, a subject considerably less explored than male cyclical violence (no one is writing the all-woman atreus house, for example). her protagonists are ruthless, crass, secretive, kind of cold, unflinching in the face of monstrosity. amy notices that nick's hands still smell like andie after a hookup and thinks "she must have one rank pussy"; camille carves the word "clit" on herself and only later changes it to "cAt". vulnerability might exist for them, but it's buried so far down that even first-person narration can barely touch it

i feel like it's rare to see female protagonists like these that aren't given much justification or redemption and that aren't... i don't know, given masculine traits? like how in movies, women only know about cars bc they have five brothers, and they prove they're "cool" by having lots of sex, drinking heavily, always being "game" i mean god i'm so sick of it all. run cool_girl_monologue.exe. the violence that women do to each other and themselves can be horrific on its own. i don't think you could gender-swap these stories and change nothing else, they're about WOMEN

anyway gone girl was already one of my favorite books and sharp objects was unreal good, i need to watch the miniseries and read dark places

[innytoes]

So @hawkguyhasstarbucks prompted me 27+Carrie/Flynn for the A/B/O prompts and this went way angsty. Special thanks to the Rulie Canoe Crew for answering my very weird hypotheticals aboutTaylor Swift.

Being the daughter of Trevor Wilson, it felt like Carrie had to work twice as hard to get acknowledged for her own talents. Being an Omega on top of that, and sometimes it felt like she was climbing a mountain through an avalanche while other people looked down at her from their heated gondola ski lifts and told her maybe she just wasn’t cut out for it.

But she was making headway. She finally found a label that actually spoke to her, the leader of the group, and not Kayla, the only Alpha, when they had in person meetings. That didn’t want to play up the ‘sweet demure helpless Omega’ angle, but instead kept it about what Carrie wrote her songs about: strong, powerful women who could be whatever they wanted to be.

Even if what they wanted to be was pink and sparkly, because femininity wasn’t something to look down on.

Of course, with all that work and the extra fame and being Trevor Wilson’s Daughter, that didn’t leave much room for finding a heat partner. If she picked someone up at the clubs, she was painted as a whore. If she went on the apps, it would be all over the internet. Kayla had offered, and while she loved Kayla, she loved her like a sister, not a heat partner.

The other two Omegas in the group both had long-term partners, and Heather, who was a Beta, had offered to set her up with some of her Alpha friends from her D&D group, but Carrie didn’t want a pity date. She could handle things on her own. She did, sometimes.

And sometimes, when she could tell it was going to be a really bad one, she called a Heat Agency. Because sometimes, being Trevor Wilson’s Daughter had its perks, and when Taylor Swift had taken one look at fourteen-year-old Carrie at one of Dad’s ridiculous parties, she’d slipped her a card for a heat agency and told her not to trust just any Alpha.

The heat agency had been very discrete and very accommodating. Hell, the nice lady on the phone had even talked her through her first heat at fifteen, after Dad smelled one whiff of pheromones and booked it to the helicopter, shouting something about a week long meditation retreat. They hadn’t even sent a person that time, but a box with everything she’d needed had been magically delivered to her doorstep within an hour, along with a cooler full of food and drinks.

The box had been cute and pink and she still had it, though these days it was used to store her nail polish.

After Carrie broke up with Nick her senior year (who she thankfully had been able to trust, because deep down Nick was just a golden retriever), she’d used the service a few times. By then they’d had an app, and she could click on her basic preferences, and then scroll through profiles with little blurbs and reviews (anonymous, of course, all from vetted users). She’d never had a bad experience, and everyone the agency had sent had been professional, discrete, and very good to her.  

So when she knew her heat was going to be bad, she opened the app. The pre-heat syndrome had been so bad she’d actually sent all the Candis apology chocolates for being such bitch during their last dance rehearsal. She flicked through the little questionnaire, filling in her preferences. Age, sex, secondary sex. The app already knew how long her heats averaged and only showed her people available for that time.

She finally picked someone who could be there in two hours, which gave Carrie enough time to take a shower, put on some comfortable sweats, and nest a little, letting down her walls. It was always hard for her to allow herself to be vulnerable, but the nesting did help with that. It made her feel more secure.

So she got out her favourite blankets, making her bed cozy and pink and perfect, changing her mood lighting to a soft pink as well. She was pretty satisfied when the doorbell rang. Just in time, because she could feel her cheeks starting to flush, her unsexy but incredibly comfortable panties (the ones with little lolly pops on them) starting to dampen.

Only when she opened the door with a smile, it wasn’t a beautiful woman there to take care of her, it was Flynn Taylor.

Or more accurately, it was a beautiful woman sent to take care of her (she was holding up her Heat Agency ID and was carrying a cooler with all Carrie’s favourite heat snacks), but that beautiful woman was Flynn Taylor.

Her high school nemesis.

“Carrie,” she said, startled.

“Flynn,” she said, feeling faint, and embarrassed, and flustered. Immediately, she pulled her walls back up. “There must have been some kind of mistake.”

“Don’t think so, Princess,” Flynn said. “I got this address, and you know the Agency doesn’t mess up. I should have known, who else in the world would ask for chocolate covered Doritos?”

Flynn had been there, that time her dad had ordered a chocolate fountain on a whim for one of their sleepovers with Julie, and they spent the evening dunking all kinds of things under the spray.

“Are you going to let me in and put this stuff in the fridge?” Flynn asked, and she couldn’t, could she? After the way Carrie had treated her? The thought of allowing herself to be vulnerable with someone who would want revenge on her for any number of reasons just didn’t sit right, even though she knew everyone at the Agency had signed an NDA.

“Only if it will make you leave faster,” she said, and then winced. She sounded just like her fifteen-year-old self.

Flynn just rolled her eyes at her, and when she walked by Carrie to put away the snacks and drinks, she almost whimpered. Flynn smelled so good.

“I can call the Agency and have them send an emergency replacement,” Flynn said as she Tetris’ed food and drinks into Carrie’s fridge, finding a bowl in her cupboards and plopping the chocolate Doritos in them, and pushing them over. “Willie drives like a maniac, he could pick someone else up and have them here in forty-five minutes.”

But Carrie didn’t want anyone else, she realised, munching on her favourite heat snack, watching Flynn be all cool and competent. Still, she knew what she had to do, and was about to agree, but what came out of her mouth instead was: “I’m sorry I was such a bitch in high school.”

Flynn stopped, looking over her shoulder. Whatever she saw in Carrie’s face, it softened her posture considerably. “Ditto. Teen girls can be vicious,” she agreed. “We probably all had stuff going on back then.”

Which was the nicest spin anyone had ever put on why her relationship with Flynn and Julie fell apart so rapidly after Rose got sick. Between Carrie’s heartbreak at losing what was basically the only female role model in her life, her jealousy at the way Julie was treated like glass, while her own grief at her dead mom and absent dad was always something that had generally been shrugged off as ‘you never even knew her and your daddy’s rich, get over it’. The way Carrie learned to lash out and project this mean girl persona, while Julie put her pain into her music, once she finally started singing again, allowed herself to be vulnerable, and how that was just fuel to the fire of Carrie’s jealousy and rage when it got her everything, a record deal and an album before she even finished high school…

When she looked up from her trip down memory lane – heats always made her spacey, she hated it – the Doritos were gone and Flynn was standing in front of her. “Have you picked someone else in the app yet?” she asked.

She was so close, and she smelled so good, and Carrie just wanted to cry, to keen, to have someone treat her like glass, like she was precious, just once…

“Please don’t go,” she said, hiding her face in Flynn’s shoulder, inhaling the smell of Alpha, of safety, or memories of sleepovers and hiding under the covers together after they all thought they were mature enough to watch IT despite Mr Molina warning them it was a bad idea, of the life she could have had if she hadn’t been so singularly focussed on making it, on being the best.

“Are you sure?” Flynn asked, even as her hand came up to cradle the back of Carrie’s head, fingers soft and gentle in her head.

“Please, I’m sorry, please…” Carrie blinked away the tears, because she hated this part as well, the emotions, the vulnerability.

“Okay,” Flynn said, a hint of Alpha steel in her voice that made Carrie’s knees go all weak. “I forgive you, Carrie. We were both assholes in high school. Let’s get you more comfortable, okay?”

“You’ll take care of me?” she asked, hopeful and pitiful and she hated this, she hated it…

Except when Flynn smiled and wiped her tears away, something inside her just melted, and everything went hazy when Flynn promised: “I’ll take care of you.”

[leam1983]

Pre-Crimbo

The call centre goons are starting to fall off, Christmas vacation plans are falling into place in the order of three to four weeks a pop, and it looks like those of us in the core teams will maybe get a little over a week off. I mean, yay for job stability and whatnot, but I was still kind of naïvely hoping that I'll eventually be called somewhere between two caseloads and be told something along the lines of "Yeah, work's run dry for the season. You're on the clock 'till about the nineteenth and then it's off to the week after New Year's".

Walter gave me a smirk. "It's okay, though - you'll still have us."

Twenty minutes later, we were in the thick of it on the couch, knowing Sarah wouldn't be back for another two hours. "It's just harsh, sometimes," I admitted. "Some weeks sort of breeze on by, others you really trudge through. Lotta toxic clients, lots of little bullshit moments with the higher-ups..."

Walt's kissing me and responds between liplocks. "I got just the thing," he says, flashing his delightfully crooked ivories at me.

To put it simply, Walt and I sort of clash against our respective gay friends. I've already spoken about how I don't get certain trends and especially on how I don't see the appeal of openly debasing sex as something you pursue just for the sake of getting a dopamine dose. We're exclusive in our throuple, and it sort of strikes our acquaintances as being weird. Not that we care all that much. In any case, Walter rides our own wavelength expertly and knows exactly what I like.

I like an admission of my vulnerability, an acknowledgement of my anxieties, and an understanding that before picking myself up by my own bootstraps and acting like an adult, I tend to need and want moments of relative weakness. He calls me boy or son, brings me in close and, all the while doing everything you'd expect out of intercourse, says I'm stronger than I look, so much nicer than I think I am. This doesn't show up consistently, but when Walt knows I've had a few rough ones, he knows exactly how to turn our fifteen to twenty minutes together with tangled limbs feel like a prolonged hug.

He knows that in these moments, I'm not looking to be entirely approached like an adult, and understands that he's effectively speaking to the anxious fourteen year-old who never really grew up, somewhere inside.

Someone else would find it kinky, but I'm of the mind that being called a "brave young man" or even just addressed as someone who's worthy of affection, is the biggest turn-on ever.

We crest and relax, and he slightly pushes me away, so our gazes can comfortably meet. "The tragedy of adulthood," he says, "is that most of us feel like we're never allowed to be weak or afraid, past a certain age. Every time we do this, Grem, is a gift to me. You spend days and weeks acting capable, and then come to me for a while, saying hold me. I can't do this on my own. You've made me feel safe enough to do it to you, too."

I melt back into him, something that's loving and irrational leaving my mouth as I rest my chin on his shoulder. "You're my lover and the father I could've had," I say. Walt responds with a grunted Aww that's gushing with love and rests his hand on the back of my head, enticing me to give him more of my own weight.

"I've got you, kiddo," he says, sotto voce. "I've got you."

[timemachineyeah]

We need educational reform.

And specifically, we need education to trend toward the more individualized and self-driven. Where people pursue things at their own pace and in their own way.

This means getting rid of a lot of the arbitrary ways we segregate education right now. We segregate subjects from each other, teachers and resources from each other, and sort student by age instead of by ability and interest.

Re-organizing our education based on relative individual needs is a must. This is a goal we should be actively working toward, and it will make both education and society better.

I know next to no one who will disagree with this.

So now I’m gonna tell a bunch of those people a thing that will inevitably be a result of such changes, because I feel like from some of their attitudes that they haven’t really thought about it.

When you congregate students by interest and ability instead of age, more kids with age gaps will get into relationships.

And while these relationships, like all relationships, will have the potential to be toxic, they will not inherently be so.

Two classmates or club members who see each other every day and work together and eat together are on a relatively level playing field, and can date in a healthy way even if one is 14 and the other is 17 or even (gasp) 18.

I say this from experience. Because my education was a bit different from the norm. So there was a lot of intermingling between ages. And you’d hang out with someone every day for two months before you found out they were fourteen or eighteen and you’d go “WHAT??” and then immediately get over it. And people dated each other. We all basically took turns dating each other! And there were age gaps and it didn’t even occur to us that it was weird because, here’s the thing, it wasn’t. It wasn’t weird. It was so incredibly normal, and remarkably healthy. I actually ache with fondness thinking about it. We were friends. We were kids. We were all in the same relative place in our lives and we didn’t have institutional power over each other. We didn’t exist in those dynamics. We were just kids having fun and learning about romance and exploring in a safe way. Yes, even the seniors and the freshman together.

I realize this can sound like apologism, but I would never defend a predator. There is no excuse for abuse, for grooming, for targeting kids.

It’s just that high school kids consensually dating other high school kids and maybe making out with them isn’t predation. And I started college at 16! And you know what also wasn’t predation? Flirting with my 19-20yo classmates who also still lived with their parents and had no income and were taking the same classes I was. It also wasn’t predation when they flirted with me, especially because they had no damn way of knowing I was 16 unless it came up in conversation, which? It virtually never did.

Listen. I know adolescence is fraught. And people in that period are very vulnerable. And I also know, firsthand, that there are people out there who want exploit what they see as innocence and naïveté. Exert their power over someone they see as less than, someone who might not know how or when to say no or how to protect themselves. Or that they have a community to rely on. And it’s evil. And it’s inexcusable.

And having those examples of safe, healthy, silly dramatic adolescent drama to look at to see what was normal when you weren’t isolated, when you were all friends, when people weren’t possessive or controlling, was actually protection against that.

(Yeah. You fucking heard me. Not only was being a 16yo who flirted with and kissed and dated a 20yo or two and then a 17yo who flirted with a 15yo and all of that not abusive - that community I was in was protective against attempted abuse. They’d be the first to pull me out of a situation if I was uncomfortable, and I’d do the same for them.)

But if you believe, like I do, that we need to improve education to meet people where they are instead of force them into lock-step with their same-age peers, then you’ve already acknowledged that people can meet the same milestones at different ages, which means that people who have a small age gap can have about the same level of experience and the same goals and the same relative power.

And if you acknowledge that, then you have to admit that preventing grooming, predation, and abuse is more difficult and involved than just making a list of rules about who is or isn’t allowed to fancy each other or it’s “abuse”. You have to actually build community and safety nets and resources and check in with each other and give people a veritable buffet of meaningful relationships and reliable people so they aren’t as susceptible to isolation and disempowerment. But that’s complicated and hard and it’s so much easier to just say “if I just make sure no one with more than a two year age gap ever makes out in the drama club dressing rooms I have Stopped the Pedophiles!” but you haven’t actually. And what’s more, by segregating the kids by age so much, you may actually be contributing to the isolation and inexperience that will make a kid unable to recognize what is or isn’t normal for those interactions, and also more likely to put those older than them on the kinds of pedestals that enable that kind of grooming.

If you hang around a bunch of kids of a bunch of ages, you know an 18yo is just another idiot like you and there’s nothing special there. If you segregate them and call them a whole other species, then wow! Senpai noticed me! And Senpai says I’m so mature for my age! Wow!

What I’m saying is, if you really want to prevent child grooming and weird toxic power imbalanced relationships, you actually need more normalized interactions between people of different ages, not less.

Also it would massively improve our education system. So there’s also that.

[deiitaelric]

Split up - Part 12

PART 11 HERE

(little reminder that this mess of story is self indulgent af so sorry not sorry if you find this update a little occ, I really wanted to read this so I wrote it lmao)

___

“Hey”

“Wha- Hm. Do-do you need something?” Izuku struggled with his own tongue, trying to mask his surprise upon seeing the 14yo boy in front of his door.

“I just… Sorry, I guess” Blurted the blonde in front of him.

“What? For what?” Izuku was beyond confused.

“Being an asshole with you for years?” Katsuki raised a brow, looking at him with low patience. That confused Izuku more, who only opened his mouth to let out a little “Oh, that...”. They shared a weird silence for a few moments and Izuku could tell Kacchan was struggling and not enjoying the uncomfortable atmosphere, so he tried to make it easier for both of them.

“You don’t have to do that. Kacchan already did. The Kacchan my age, I mean”

“I supposed. But being here and all this shit…” Kacchan seemed confused as well, something Izuku wasn’t able to see in his eyes before. For the first time, Izuku thought about how all this might be impacting the younger boy. If himself was confused and feeling too much, he couldn’t imagine just how much of that this young boy might be feeling. He felt bad about not having done anything for him, even if the boy wouldn't want Izuku to do anything for him.

“It’s okay. I understand it’s overwhelming. Thanks for coming here to say it to me. I appreciate it so, so much”

The teen huffed annoyed and hid his hand inside his pockets. He remained silent for a few moments, looking somewhere down the corridor. “Is it true?” Katsuki asked. When Izuku didn’t respond, looking at him with a crooked head, Katsuki clicked his tongue and looked at him with an exasperated expression. “Did you obtain the quirk when you were fourteen?”

“Oh, that. Yeah” Izuku nodded his head. “And in fact, you were the only one who knew that information for a long time. Well, the other Kacchan, you know” Izuku started fidgeting with his shirt. “I-I obtained it from someone else”

The silence they shared was full of emotions, full of unsaid words; neither knew how to feel or what to say. Until Katsuki murmured “Why?”

“Why what?” Izuku was still fidgeting with his shirt.

Katsuki stretched the silence some more until he finally asked, looking intensely at Izuku’s eyes. “Why? Why couldn’t you just stay quirkless and live a normal life?”

Izuku’s eyes widened, not believing what he just heard. “What!? Kacchan, it was always my dream to be a hero, you know it!!”

“I know! I fucking know! But you don’t have even a little bit of self-preservation. You are gonna get yourself killed!” The blonde had an expression Izuku was sure he was one of the few people who had ever seen it.

He looked... vulnerable.

Izuku opened his mouth, then furrowed his brows and closed it. His eyes widened slowly in realization. “Is that what you always tried to make me quit my dream?”

“Yeah!” Said the blonde, like stating the obvious.

“...I didn’t know it”

And Kacchan seemed startled by that. “The other one didn’t tell you...”

“No, I- I had no idea” Izuku shook his head, his face dropping to a pensive expression.

At that moment the kid slid beside Izuku, looking up at Katsuki, who ignored him completely. "You are not Big Katsuki, you are the middle schooler, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer and asked. “Are you worried about him? You don't need to, I'm right here" 

"What the fuck? Who said I'm worried, brat!" The teen scowled at the kid.

"You are, I can tell!” The kid looked up at Izuku and repeated. "He is. I told you he loves you, this one and the other two as well. I always will!"

Both Izuku and Katsuki stopped dead at that, eyes widening and faces starting to blush. The silence felt tense as their eyes collided. Izuku yelped and tried to fix the situation, face completely red out of embarrassment at that point.

“Do-don’t mind him. He doesn't know what he’s saying” Izuku shook his hands in front of him, scared of the reaction of that Kacchan. He had enough drama that day. “We were talking earlier about how Kacchan and I are friends again and-”

Katsuki interrupted him, looking annoyed but not sounding too harsh. "So you two are friends now huh?" 

"Um, yeah" Izuku nodded his head effusively, still trying to prevent an explosive reaction from the teen. But Katsuki kept talking, his face changing to a more pensive expression.

"And what? You ask each other about your days and talk about your feelings and shit?" 

"Yeah? Well, kinda, yeah" Izuku started to relax, letting his hands fall down to his sides.

"But you two are only friends, right?" The blonde raised a brow at him.

"What do you mean? We are still rivals, in some way, if that's what you are asking for" Izuku crooked his head trying to get where the boy was trying to get.

"Okay" A brief pause before a light smirk danced in the blonde’s lips. "You know what? Fuck it" Katsuki reached a hand forward and catched Izuku’s shirt to pull him towards his face, making their lips collide in the middle. After a few seconds, Katsuki pulled Izuku off a little and whispered at him. “That bastard spilled too much at me to handle at once and didn’t even break a sweat. I’m just returning the favor” He then let go of the other and turned around in time for Izuku to not be able to see his face. “Just so you know, I always wanted to do that”

___

Part 13

[followthebluebell]

What's your opinion on oriental cats? Both long hair and short hair? They're my dream cat, but if they have very serious health issues I'll just adopt only shelter kitties. I was planning on saving up for one when I live on my own, I have two shelter kitties of my own already :) would it be bad to get one from a breeder?

They’re a delight! c:  I was lucky enough to work with fourteen of them a few years back, and I loved every single one.  They’re one of my favorite breeds, because I love a sleek-looking talky animal.  They’re not an inherently unethical breed, like the Scottish fold, but they do have some health problems you should be aware before you get the noodle cat of your dreams.

PKD (polycystic kidney disease) is the biggest issue.  It causes pockets of fluids (cysts) to form inside the kidneys.  These cysts are present from birth and grow and multiply as the cat ages.  They don’t usually cause problems until around 7 years old, at which point they often overwhelm good kidney tissue and begin causing organ failure.  It’s a very difficult disease to predict: there could just be one cyst or thirty.   You won’t even know they’re there for a long time.

Oriental shorthairs and longhairs are BOTH genetically prone to PKD.  Thankfully, there’s now a genetic test, so a good breeder should do everything they can to ensure that their cats are free of the problematic genes.  They should also be willing to prove it to you, by allowing you to examine the test results yourself.

Dental disease is another big one.  OSH/LH’s both are vulnerable to weird dental problems, primarily FORLS (Feline Odontoclastic resorptive lesions).  It’s a particularly baffling problem, where the cat’s immune system basically decides that the teeth and gums are The Enemy and Must Be Destroyed.  The only treatment is removing the teeth entirely.

There’s no genetic test for this one; you have to talk to the breeder about it and hope they’re honest about their lineage’s health. 

Hepatic amyloidosis is the last Big One I can think of.  This is when an abnormally folded protein (amyloid) begins to build up in the liver (or any organ, tbh, but let’s focus on the liver because it’s the Big One).  These misfolded proteins replace good, working cells, and can lead to organ failure.   It usually develops between 1-5 years old.

There’s no genetic test available for it yet either.  The relatively early onset of the disease (most breeders begin breeding their cats at 2 years old), means most breeders have a pretty good idea of whether or not their lines are affected.  The earlier a disease starts, the sooner they can go ‘oh, shit, no, I gotta pull those lines right now’. 

[mojoflower]

WHY is fanfiction not the appropriate venue for your political or social battle?

We can all agree, I posit, that there are changes that need to be made in the world (racism, for example;  patriarchal inequalities;  rape culture;  capitalism;  plug in your personal cause here).

We can all ALSO agree, I think, that the way culture, media, etc. portray things influences a consumer on an unconscious level.

We can agree that, in real life, certain things are clearly bad:  abuse of others, non-consensual sex, systemic inequality, I can go on….

So.  Let me feel my way through this.  I, personally, feel like fanfiction (specifically on AO3, since that’s where I encounter it) is NOT an appropriate battleground for enforcing cultural change by:

Leaving comments about how someone’s work is (in your, the commenter’s, opinion) wrong, damaging, unfair, insensitive, etc.

Telling the writer they should change this or that.

Telling the writer they must add or delete tags.

Broadcasting your opinion of the writer’s egregiousness outside AO3 (twitter, for example, or here on tumblr).

Organizing a campaign of harassment against the author if they don’t change to suit your personal requirements.

First of all:

 Be the change you want to see.

Fanfiction, unlike any other media out there, is INDIVIDUAL.  It is one work, from one single person – voluntary and unpaid.  You yourself are one single person.  You can have as much influence as this writer.  Write the works you want to read, instead of demanding that the writer change to suit you.  This is how romance novels changed from non-con, non-condom-wearing, shudderingly unequal stories in the 70s and 80s to where they are now, for example.  New people started writing stories, and eventually established authors started changing, too (or dwindled away).

Remember that you know nothing about the author.

You don’t know their culture, their skin color, their age, their gender.  You don’t know their socioeconomic status or how much free time they have.  You don’t know their current mental or physical conditions.  You don’t know any of the things going on in their life.  AND.  You are not entitled to know these things.  When you lash out at an author for not doing research, for not editing, for… anything at all… you cannot assume that they’re not fourteen, not suicidal, not a native speaker, not disabled such that writing a single paragraph is a tremendous effort.  You don’t know they’re not in an abusive situation, or economic peril.  You do not have the right to tell them to change.  Whether you are asking them to change text, tone, tagging, ships, plot, you name it.  Anything.

Dead Dove:  Do Not Eat.

Don’t like, don’t read.  These are simple concepts, and the tagging system on AO3 helps you to avoid many triggers.  Simple common sense, once you're into a story that’s raising your hackles, will warn you away from the rest.  If you say, ‘no, this person can’t write that, it’s contributing to pain in the Real World’ then you are functioning as a censor.  I mean, at its most basic level, a censor is someone who strikes out passages in books or other media because it’s… immoral/bad/etc.  The problem is that morality is incredibly tailored to the group you’re in, and also incredibly fluid, shifting over time.  So… why do YOU get to be the censor and not the author?  What makes YOU the final word?  Seriously, think about it.

Fanfiction writers are the most vulnerable group you could target.

Which makes them easy prey, and possibly makes them the juiciest and most satisfying targets.  Address your anger to Hollywood or Simon & Schuster or Congress – and your voice will doubtless get lost in the shuffle.  Address it to an author on AO3 and you can deliver your blow personally, one on one, and witness the damage.  There is no professional buffer between your resentment and their reaction.

Who are fanfiction writers?  Overwhelmingly women, overwhelmingly queer, often very young and inexperienced.  Wow.  What a rewarding group to start slapping around.  You wouldn't be the only one to think so.  Seriously.  Aim your anger at someone who is STRONGER than you.  Not someone who is (likely) weaker than you.  You’re kicking a kitten, while a lion lounges behind you.

Censoring someone’s thoughts is bad.

People should be allowed to THINK.  And they can think whatever they want.  Whether and where and how it should be expressed is another matter.  AO3 is a safe place for whatever weird-ass thoughts you have.  It is expressly written into their mission statement.  AO3 was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED so that authors could have a place for their dead dove fics.

So.  Why is [your pet cause] okay on AO3 and not on a script in Hollywood?

AO3 requires membership before you can post anything, so it’s arguably private.  AO3 provides tools for readers to avoid works they might find triggering.  AO3 profits no one.  Follow the money, and there are your true culprits.  Not a housewife from Hoebokken.

Fanfiction writers make no money.  When they write, they are not lawmakers, filmmakers, teachers or preachers.  This is not their job.  They do not have a responsibility to the community, because they are vested with no power and no paycheck.  Please move your battlefield to one of these other venues.  Your fight will be harder, but it will also do a lot more good than traumatizing some naive  kid away from writing forever.

Fanfiction comprises an individual’s personal thoughts and personal works, written for their own enjoyment, shared only through AO3 to (presumably) like-minded readers.  Fanfics are a person’s fantasies and daydreams.  They might be an author’s therapeutic exercise.  Or someone trying to explore something new, whether it be cultures, ideas, sexualities or kinks.  Humans need a place where they can be wrong and make mistakes.  Think about that, I implore you.  If you are constantly pointing out someone’s errors, you may eventually either silence them forever, or instill in them permanent resentment.  This does not further your cause.

You have your personal cause.

I’ve seen a lot of them.  Incest is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Pedophilia is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Abusive relationships are bad, you’re not allowed to write about them.  Racism is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Genderswap is transphobic, you’re not allowed to write about it.  A/B/O romanticizes damaging gender inequalities.  There are many.  If every single one of you got to stamp out your personal crusade, then fic would be scant on the ground and many people wouldn’t try to create anymore.  It’s stifling to creativity and terrifying to an author that they might slip up and be called out.  No one, as far as I know, likes to think of their fanfiction as something that will be turned in for a grade.

Your standards are your own.

What are the precise parameters of an abusive relationship?  Transphobia?  Racism?  Pedophilia?  Fetishism?  Where does dub-con become non-con?  No one is the mouthpiece for the whole world.  You are only the mouthpiece for yourself.

If you think to yourself that it’s not okay to tell someone they can’t write about, say, a gay relationship, but it IS okay to tell them they can’t write about a certain ship or dynamic (for Reasons), then maybe you should step back and check yourself and your entitlement to someone else’s endeavor.

In conclusion:

I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist in fanfiction.  Or creepy sexual abuse, or glorification of harmful dynamics.  It certainly does.  I’m not trying to play semantics with you.

But when you see these things, when they bother you... back right out.

That’s it.  Just back out, ignore it and find a different fic.  (Or better yet, write your own!)  Shower the fics you approve of with love and comments about why you think they’re great.  Give them kudos and bookmarks and shout-outs on your blog.  Eventually, if your opinion is popular, authors who thought otherwise will realize that readership is looking for something different.  They’ll change or they won’t, but the body of work will change over time, and THAT is what you’re looking to accomplish.  Not to stamp out fanfiction altogether.

[princessofprocrastination]

A Creep? (Sapnap)

MASTERLIST 

pairing : sapnap x reader 

summary : in the world of flashing cameras and big stages, love lives don’t exist, and there’s no such thing as personal space. 

a/n : a sapnap story for y’all, muah. also, thank you so so much for 175 followers, holy crap.

-

your backstory is quite simple. a texan girl who had a dream of singing, but was limited since the main genre of your state was country. 

you appreciated the genre, but you have never been interested in making country music, the song choices never fit your voice. you didn’t even think you had a texan accent, at least that was what people told you. 

your parents have always been super supportive of what you do, constantly posting your covers on youtube, hoping that people out there enjoy to listen to you as much as they did. 

your dad had been the one to encourage you to do busking. he says it’ll be a great opportunity for you to learn what it’s like to sing in front of people, and a chance for you to get rid of your stage fright. 

so you did that. you started busking when you were about fourteen and stopped when you turned sixteen.

no, you didn’t stop because you were quitting, or that you were tired of it. instead, you were really lucky, and got recognised pretty early on your busking days. 

your dad decided that it was best to move to the US, where it’s closer to the record company that you were tied to. hence, that was what you all did. 

well, that was what you and your dad did. your mum decided to stay in houston to take care of your younger sibling. she felt that it was best they all stayed. 

that didn’t mean you guys were distancing from each other. instead, it felt like you were closer, calling everyday, making sure she knew what you and your dad were up to, and making sure that they were okay back in texas. 

you would consider yourself extremely lucky, for getting to experience what it’s like to be in the industry from young, for being able to produce music really quickly, for being able to attract people so quickly, those who liked your music. 

in your prime age of eighteen, you decided it was best to move back and forth from texas and california, from where you live. since things are going smoothly and you weren’t really needed in the US all the time, you thought it was best to move to texas again for the time being. 

you could say your music career was going pretty well. you found a loyal fanbase who enjoyed listening to your music as much as you enjoyed producing them. you were glad to have listened to your dad from such an early age. 

you were happy doing what you’re doing. but you were losing things to write about. 

being young, you didn’t have experiences in anything. sure, you excelled in school well and continued to attend online courses but you never really had friends, you never had a love life. 

a lot of people would say you’re too young, that it shouldn’t irk you this much, not being in a relationship but you thought the opposite. 

granted, you are happy with the close relationship you and your family have but you wanted to know what it would be like to be loved by someone else, to feel what it’s like to be held. 

you craved it. you’ve heard all about it, the pain, or the happiness it comes with. but you wanted to experience it for yourself.

so your dad and you move back to houston to your old house, not letting go of the house in california since you knew you’d come back once in a while. 

something that you hated telling people was what you did for a living. most traditional families would think that music can never bring food to the table, but times have change and music have changed a lot of people’s lives. 

another thing you hated explaining was why people took photos of you everywhere. with certain popularity, in comes curiousity. people want to know what you’re up to. 

and as weird as that sounds, you needed to get used to it. even though it was obvious that paparazzi’s jobs are basically an invasion of privacy. 

although you thought you could never be important enough for someone to document every step you take, paparazzi’s thought differently. but you understood it to a certain extent. it was their job, after all. 

as much as your job is important, so is theirs. 

sometimes it does get annoying though. you could be just in a grocery store, shopping for ingredients alone and there would be a swarm of paparazzi’s waiting outside to catch you and ask some questions. 

and everyday, a different question arrives. 

you never held back in telling them what they wanted answers to, you never had to hide anything. so what was the point of hiding. they never asked anything of importance, anyway. 

although the number of paparazzi’s lessened as you moved back to houston, the numbers weren’t small enough for you not to get overwhelmed. 

it really shocked you the extent they would go to write something vaguely interesting in an article. you didn’t even know how they knew you were moving back, but you never questioned it. 

as long as they don’t invade your privacy at home, all is good. 

about a couple months ago, you decide that your house was getting too boring and cramped with the cries of your little sister to really write anything good for your new album, so you found yourself sitting in a starbucks about less than an hour away from your house. 

you thought it was best to find somewhere further away from where you lived just in case someone spots you. you hoped for the opposite, though. 

you found yourself sitting in a secluded spot at the side, next to a window, facing the parking spots. you knew you’d stay for a while, so you tried to find a spot where people wouldn’t really see you. 

of course, with the way starbucks is set up, everyone can see everyone and but you can’t complain. the place had good drinks and pastry, and had pretty good wifi in case you needed to use your laptop at some point. 

you texted your manager from time to time, earphones in both your ears, listening to the newest sza single. this was the best time to finally catch up on some new music you missed out on. 

often times than not, you’d be typing away in your computer, stopping to grab your iced drink in your right hand to sip it, putting it down after a couple seconds. 

but you hated not knowing your surroundings, it has been what your mum taught you since young, to never be vulnerable, especially in public. with that lesson etched in your brain, you’d look up and around the cafe to see the changed of people once in a while. 

about an hour or two after you seated, you noticed a man walking in, wearing a simple, t-shirt and jeans outfit, carrying a backpack seating on the spot opposite you, but more on your left. 

he sat facing you so you quickly knew what he looked like the moment he sat down. 

for some reason, he caught you eye. 

he was fairly tall, taller than you at least, but wasn’t above six foot, not that it mattered. his hair was long, noticeably not been cut for a while, and had a short stubble, which suited his face so well. 

upon others, he seemed like the normal looking texan, white male. but to you, he was attractive. everything with him seemed to fit so well. he looked about your age, though you’re terrible at telling ages. 

you looked older than eighteen sometimes, yourself. you blamed it on the identity crisis you once had in california when you turned seventeen. 

you watched him silently as he stood up to the counter to order something. you snapped out of your thoughts, thinking if you got caught, he’d surely call you a creep. 

it had been pretty quiet actually. a couple came up to you when you walked in, asking for a photo but that was it. 

it seemed like it was going to be a relaxed writing day for you. 

your eyes glanced once more to the texan male as he settled down, typing away on his laptop. perhaps he’s writing an essay for school. maybe he’s still in college. 

but who were you judging, you, who was seated typing away probably looked like a college student, too. well, you are, just that you didn’t attend physical school. not that you were doing school work at that point, anyways. 

that day had been reserved for writing. and it seemed like you’d be coming to this starbucks more often.

no, it’s not to check on that man, obviously. 

even i can sense the sarcasm in my own tone. what the hell is wrong with me? i see one attractive male around me and i don’t know how to act? that’s so unlike me. 

you sat at the same spot for another three hours, eventually getting another drink when your first one ran out. you felt relaxed, thinking about your life, about what you wanted your new song to sound like. 

you and your producer texted back and forth, sending each other files of different guitar and piano notes you both liked to be into your song. 

you were so focused that you hadn’t looked up for a while. so you did that, you glanced up to check your surroundings, to see what had changed from the past couple hours.

looks like that guy is still there. it’s been so long. must’ve been a long essay. 

your eyes looked back on your laptop, clicking on a short snippet of a music file to listen to on your earphones that haven’t left your ears for about four hours. 

you listened to the file, eyes glued to your notepad in your laptop, trying to decipher if the beat went along with your lyrics. you picked up your cold drink with your right hand, putting it up to your lips as your eyes never moved from your laptop. 

while you gulped a couple sips, you decide to look out the window.

your heart skipped a couple beats as you surprised yourself, seeing a row of people with cameras flashing and recording you in your seat. 

damn, has it been that long since i looked up from my laptop? 

you slowly put down your iced drink, pulling your long sleeved sweater to cover your hands, covering your face for a couple seconds to calm yourself down before you looked up again. 

you were pretty acquaintanced with some of them outside, so they offered you a big smile, some of them laughing at the shock on your face when you spotted them. 

you were embarrassed, to say the least. people here weren’t used to you and didn’t know who you were, aside from the few who asked for your autograph from earlier. you didn’t want to make them uncomfortable. 

with your covered hands, you waved at them but told them to go home, mouthing the words to them, hoping they caught on with what you were trying to tell them. 

you made a ‘shoo’ motion with your hands, signaling them to leave, that you didn’t want the company today.

since they all couldn’t hear you anyways, they soon left one by one, thinking they got enough footage of you for the day, to save their films for another day. 

you knew that you couldn’t go to that starbucks as often as you wanted anymore, you didn’t want the same paparazzi’s to swarm the whole cafe.

so you didn’t end up coming back to the same starbucks location for a while. specifically, for about three weeks. 

for the time being, you went to several small cafe’s, where no one knew you, aside from strangers who called themselves your supporters who spotted you drinking your coffee. 

you were sad when you had to leave the starbucks that day. you knew that if he were to indeed come the next day, the same time, you wouldn’t be able to see him for a long time. 

you weren’t even sure if you’ll see him again after that. houston is huge, after all. 

when you walked into the same starbucks from three weeks ago, the barista greeted you, practically shouting your name out, telling you how much he misses you, since you came only once before this. 

you went to him first, ordered a drink and spoke to him for a couple minutes before telling him that you needed to start writing things before you lose your motivation. 

you sat in a different seat this time, a little scared of sitting next to the window. 

you found yourself sitting in a further in spot, furthest away from the door and windows, unlike last time. hopefully this time, no one can spot you from outside. 

but you were sure that the paparazzi’s were tired of waiting on your never arrival there that they’ve probably given up. 

there was a reason you came again, though. and you’re sure you made it obvious. you just wanted to see him again. 

-

SAPNAP POV 

there was not a day i don’t stop by that starbucks. but that was the first time i had ever seen you in there. you seemed to like your own space, away from people. 

it sure did look like you were so focused in getting your essay done. you barely looked up from your laptop.

i just couldn’t look away from where you seated. you just looked so beautiful, but so mysterious. being since i’ve never seen you before. but for some reason, i felt like i’ve seen you somewhere. i just didn’t know where. 

but it shocked me even more when i saw the sea of people waiting outside, pointing huge cameras on you. 

when i first spotted a couple people standing outside, i assumed that some celebrity was going to walk in soon, or that they were already sitting, just in some sort of disguise, or that i didn’t know who they were. 

i didn’t really care, and continued typing in my laptop, wanting to quickly finish work before i could relax and finish drinking my cup of coffee sitting right in front of me. 

but then i started noticing that they kept on getting closer to the window that you were seated next to. so i stopped what i was doing, and curiously looked, as some of the customers in there stared as well. 

i did see someone coming up to you, talking, but i assumed that you knew them. maybe they were your family and they came to say hi before needing to urgently go. 

but i can see that i was wrong. 

every single camera was pointed your way. there was like ten people standing outside of the cafe, some cameras flashing, others recording you. 

you hadn’t noticed yet at that point, still very much focused in whatever you were doing on your laptop. 

you finally picked up your drink, eyes finally leaving your work to look around you. you almost choked on your drink, seeing the cameras. 

you put your drink down, pulling your sleeves to cover your hands and covered your face with them, clearly caught off guard and embarrassed. 

you smiled at them, waving a little before politely telling them to leave, that you had to finish doing something, as you pointed to your laptop to them. 

you seemed to know them. you didn’t really look uncomfortable, but more of cautious of what people in the cafe would think of the commotion. 

soon, they left anyways, seeing as there was nothing they could really document from you sitting inside, and they couldn’t really ask any questions. 

about an hour later, you left, the barista greeting you, saying that he hoped to see you again soon.

now i’m more intrigued. who could you be? 

how did so many people know you? 

soon after her, i got into my car and drove home, exhausted from doing school work all day. the coffee helped for a couple hours and now clearly wearing off. 

george and dream texted me, telling me to join their discord call, saying that george was streaming and they wanted to talk about some weird shit. 

well, there goes my extra sleep for the day. 

soon, he ended his stream and the three of us were left talking about how our days went. 

“dude, mine was so confusing.” i stated last, after hearing what dream had to say about patches shitting everywhere on his carpet due to diarrhoea. 

“what do you mean?” dream asked me. 

“there was this girl, she came in before me into the same starbucks i go really often, right?” i stopped to make sure they were listening. they hummed to let me know they were.

“ten paparazzi’s swarmed the starbucks. they just pointed their cameras at her while she sat on a table at the side.” i said. 

“she was so shocked to see them at first, but she quickly told them to leave. she looked not comfortable with the stares after that she had to leave like an hour later. i don’t even know if she finished her work.” i finished. 

“wait really? what did she look like?” george asked. 

“my age, hair pretty long. she looked shorter than me and she was wearing flared jeans with a graphic tee.” i described her the best that i could.

“wait. you said starbucks in houston, right?” dream cut in. 

“yeah, why?” i asked, hoping for some answers. 

“i just saw the photos. i know her. she’s a singer, moved back to texas from california recently.” dream told me. 

“she’s like extremely known dude, how did you not know?” george said after dream told me who she was.

“i don’t know artists besides 21 savage, i’m sorry.” they laughed.

dream sent in her instagram in discord for me to see. 

i searched her name on instagram and scrolled through her photos and highlights, switching to youtube to listen to her music after that. 

i quickly clicked follow, wanting to be updated whenever she posted. i didn’t care if we met in real life anymore, i’m just intrigued at this point.

but it’s not like she’ll see my username following her. she has people following her everyday, she must not check it, right?

you had over a hunder million followers on instagram. i’m just shocked i hadn’t heard of her. maybe that’s where she was familiar.

i came back to the same place the following da, the week after. i came everyday and couldn’t find you anywhere. 

well, not that i could blame you, you were swarmed the first time you came, anyways. 

i saw the paparazzi’s waiting every single day, hoping to get a glimpse of you to ask questions but soon gave up and ended up not returning after a week seeing as you stopped coming. 

but you didn’t stop coming. you ended up coming three weeks after your first time. 

the barista practically jumped on the spot and screamed your name, i was sure everyone in the cafe knew you came in after that. 

you didn’t check the entirety of your surroundings so i was sure didn’t know who was seating where. i wasn’t even sure if you knew me, or remembered me from last time. did you even notice me?

this time, instead of sitting next to the window, she sat on the table to my right, we were both facing the direction of the barista. you sat where you could rest on the wall like i did, so we were basically in the same position, just next to each other. 

you settled into your seat, putting your drink down, turning on your laptop and got ready a little notebook that you had from inside your bag. 

while you sipped on your drink, you looked around to finally see what was around you. my eyes and yours locked at the same time, being i didn’t look away from my stare from when you came in. 

you smiled at me, acknowledging me. i gave her a smile back before turning back to my laptop to make myself busy. 

you had your hair different today. last time, it was down, and showed your natural looking hair but this time you had it pulled up into a ponytail. i guess you meant business today. 

i don’t know if that means you didn’t want people talking to you, or. 

oh, you put on your earphones. i guess you didn’t want to be disturbed, then. 

i kept staring at every part of you. okay, that sounded wrong and makes me sound like a pervert. 

you looked perfect. every single ring you wore on your fingers fit perfectly. your hair pulled back gave me the chance to see your side profile. your outfit casual, straight jeans with a sweatshirt on. 

god, you are beautiful. 

-

you felt his stares. he stared for a good couple minutes before he went back to his laptop to finish whatever he came here for. 

so he did remember me from last time. or he just noticed me today. or did he know who i was? 

“god i hope he’s not one of those creeps.” you thought. finally i find a guy attractive and he’s a creep? i hope not.

at some point in the couple of hours you’ve seated there, you had to take out your earphones to focus even more on writing something, instead of getting distracted with listening to something. 

you really wanted to come out with a new album in a couple months, and to do that, you needed to write something. urgently. 

you sipped your drink from time to time. you even had to facetime your producer for a while to ask on his take for the path you’re going with your new songs. 

he was really supportive and heard what you wanted and didn’t dump all his opinion and tried to call it a day. that was what you liked about him. he seemed to always take your thoughts into consideration.

playing with the rings on your finger, you looked up to look around to think of a word that seems to be at the back of your head, just you couldn’t seem to put your finger on it. 

there was no paparazzi’s today, thankfully. you were able to just keep your thoughts at bay and not have to be worried about the swarm of people waiting for you to answer their questions. 

you glanced at the man seated next to you just for him to notice your stare and look up from his work and matched your gaze. 

you hadn’t expected him to notice so you gave him a small, shy smile. to which he gave you back one. 

“do you mind if i, uh. sit with you?” he asked, pointing at the seat next to you. 

your heart jumped. holy crap this was happening. 

“i don’t mind, here.” you moved to your left to give him space to slide in next to you. he took that seat, moving his stuff from his table to yours, now laptops next to each other, your elbows touching. 

-

you two laughed at a dumb joke he said. 

to you, his name was nick but had apparently been sapnap to his online friends and fans. 

you were amazed at what he did as a hobby. sure, your job was a close second, but not close enough. you found it fascinating and promised him that you would check his channel out someday. 

that, to which he told you that he was embarrassed now and regretted telling you about what he does in his spare time. but you told him that he had nothing to worry about and that nothing could creep you out. 

you two spent a while talking to each other, even getting each other’s numbers at some point and promised to come here more often to meet other and do work together more often. 

“i actually had noticed you from the first time you came. it’s hard not to when there was a sea of people outside for you a couple hours later.” he told you. you covered your face with your hands, embarrassed that his first impression of you was that crazy. 

“i noticed you from the moment you walked in a few weeks ago too, i was a little sad when i had to leave.” you told him. 

“but please, no more speaking about the swarm of men waiting outside to talk to me. i am still as embarrassed to this day.” you started another sentence. 

“it was shocking, but i think i needed the experience, you know?” he laughed. 

you two sat there, next to each other until the sun sets, till the there was no sign of the sun at all, till the moon was high in the sky. 

you two didn’t realise how long you’ve sat there until his parents called him, asking where he was. and when your dad texted you. 

you two promised each other to come again the next day to meet and do work. actually do work this time, not just talk. although you both knew that you two would end up talking instead. 

with the promise to text you when he reaches home, he left the place and got in his car to drive home. 

that was nice. well, now you had something to write. 

with a smile etched on your face, you stayed in the cafe for about another two hours writing about the happiness you felt in your heart until you decide to leave. 

oh and yeah, he definitely texted you when he reached home. and fulfilled his promise to meet you again the next day, and the next, and more after that. 

you never ran out of ideas of things to write after that. it seemed that you had finally found someone who you could share new experiences with. 

and even after years of dating, he still teases you about writing multiple songs about him even before you started dating. 

god, he’s adorable. 

well, you could say that he wasn’t a creep after all.

[moonlit-mizukage]

Chapter fourteen: I can explain Mina 

Summary: U.A.’s third year student y/l/n Y/n, has had a crush for a long time on Todoroki Shouto. One day she decides to write an anonymous love letter, sticks it under his door. She confessed her love and asked him to meet under the Cherry tree Saturday at 4pm. She prepared with her friends for this moment, but what happens when someone else takes credit for the letter? (All characters aged up to third year!)

TW Swearing, angst 

Taglist Open!! Dm or send an ask to be added!

AN: Another Angsty Chapter everyone!

After the fight texts: 

THE NEXT DAY

Kiri POV 

Sometimes we really can't explain why we do the things we do, but sometimes, we do these things for selfish reasons. My selfish reason was for my heart. Hopefully one day she can understand why I did what I did. Honestly, right now, I'm not even sure I fully understand what made me say what I did yesterday and do what I did today.  Maybe I have become just as bad as the one she hates, or maybe one day, somehow, she will thank me for this. Right now she just stands in front of me. I can see her breaking inside from the lies I told her. Holding her so close in my arms just felt right, it's what I deserve. I pulled back a little swing, her tears stream down her face, lifting her chin as I moved in closer. 

"I've always loved you." Today didn't start like this. Not even close, if you told me this morning this is how my day would end I would have never believed you. 

This morning...

When I went outside, I saw Mina and y/n talking. I didn’t want them to see me so I stayed back enough to hear what they were saying. 

“Hey baby, are you doing okay today?” She asked as they met up outside of the dorm building. 

“Hi Mina, I’m fine I guess. I still don’t understand what really happened and why he had to say those things. Maybe it’s just best to give him space.”

“Can I ask what happened for him to say that?” 

“He was asking about my love for Todo and then asked about hypothetically if someone I knew liked me, what would I do.” 

“Did he say who?” Mina asked her. 

“He used himself as the person. It was weird honestly.” 

“So what do you plan on doing about it?” 

“Honestly, I will just leave it for now, I think I just want to deal with this Ochaco situation.” Y/n said back to Mina. 

“Do you have any ideas on what to do about it?”

“Honestly, last night I went to my room after the kiri incident and wrote this up.” y/n handed Mina a letter from her bag. 

“Is this another letter?” Mina asked.  

“Yeah but this one has everything written down on it. I even quoted the last letter and made a point of saying like talk to Ochaco about what was in the original letter. I left my name and number this time too.” 

“Are you giving it to him in person?” 

“I don’t trust Ochaco, so I’m going to put it in his locker.” 

“Makes sense, I wouldn’t trust getting too close to him with her around.”

Arriving at school, She shoved the letter through the openings of Todoroki’s locker. I waited for Y/n and Mina to be out of site. I walked up to Todoroki’s locker. I turned my quirk on my hand and smashed his lock. I grabbed the letter from the inside of it and walked off holding it in my hand as I walked away.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The end of the day came fast as I crept over behind the lockers by Y/n and Mina again. 

“Hey y/n! Did you hear anything from Todo yet?” 

“No, I saw him in his locker earlier but I didn’t hear anything from him yet. He also already left, holding hands with ” 

“This seems kinda suspicious. Let me be an inspector gadget this time. Just go rest baby, okay?”

“Okay, I will see you later Mina.” 

Back at the dorms I noticed Y/n go right up to her room. I followed close behind. After a fews minutes of just standing outside her, I decided to knock on it. 

“What do you want Kiri?” She said, eyes red from obvious crying. 

“I came to check on you. I kinda acted like a dick yesterday, can I come in?” 

“Sure.” She moved over and closed the door when I walked in. 

“Are you crying because of me?” 

“Kinda… you were right…” 

“What do you mean?” I asked her. 

“Well you did say he didn’t know I existed. You were not wrong honestly.” She let out a small chuckle with a smile you could see the pain behind. 

“What happened?”

“I wrote him another letter, explaining what happened. I gave it to him this morning and I still haven’t gotten a reply.” 

“Y/n, I’m so sorry.” I pulled her into my arms. 

“I am pathetic Kiri. You were right.” She cried harder into my chest. This is how we got here now, her crying into my chest. I pulled back a little swing, her tears stream down her face, lifting her chin as I moved in closer. 

“I don’t think that y/n.” I stated, “I’ve always loved you.” I said as I pulled her lips up to mine, soon beginning to move in sync. I wasn't sure if I was imagining this feeling, but if this was reality I don't want to stop living in this moment. I moved my hand from her chin to place it on the base of her neck only deepening the passion we were sharing. I opened my eyes a little just to check once again this was reality and not just another sleep induced illusion.  

"Y/N WHAT THE FUCK!" She pushed me away seeing Mina standing in the doorway now. 

“Mina!” She said

“I can explain Mina.” 

“Save it kiri. I told you that it wasn't smart to make a move and then you do when she's vulnerable? That's not something I would expect from you!” She shouted at me. 

“I don’t know what to say anymore Mina! You have known that I have felt this way since first year! I didn’t mean to catch feelings!” 

“GET OUT!” Mina and I quickly looked over towards y/n who now looked furious. 

“What…” 

“You knew this whole time Mina, and you never said anything about him to me… How do I even know you actually wanted to help me?” 

“I tried to, I got your letter back..” 

“Please, I just want to be alone right now.” She said opening her down. The two of us took the hint and left her to be by herself...

_______________________________________________________________

Previous | Masterlist | Next

An: I may start posting random chapters as I have so much time still before class starts up again.

Taglist:  @videogameboiwhowins​ @too-many-fandoms666 @angelofdarkness1020 @bakuinred​ @yoonbbyboy​ @iamagalaxy @softesyoongi @tsumuuumiyaaaa @kyomihann @iwavibes @thatweirdfox22 @missmultifangirl @lilithknight1111 @letmebreathepls @ohmygodronnie2020 @noahmanz @smolbbygorl @mikeys-thighs @elephantloser

[omniswords]

chronicles of a parisian dumbass 19

i’m sorry i’ve been MIA ; ; i’ve been up to my ears in streaming and also returning to work in-person. either way, i hope you enjoy this update of chronicles. better late than never right?

strap in 💙💖

If Luka could get at his phone, he wouldn’t know what to type. maybe a vague, oh, fuck. Maybe some long thread about how cryptic conversation starters only ever scared him and ended both of his relationships—only to follow up with silence in the face of a couple of likes, or a reply from a sort-of-stranger that would debilitate him, remind him of his own vulnerability, more than it would reassure him. Hell, maybe even a message to Bubbles about how he was right all along that he’d need the luck. Or how Bubbles was right about how he really was in for it the moment he stepped into the bakery.

It’s just that, with the way Marinette Dupain-Cheng is looking at him on her balcony—all sad, scared softness—he gets the feeling that he’s not meant to repeat whatever she tells him.

Luka steels himself, loosens his death grip on the neck of the guitar, and releases a breath he doesn’t want to hold onto anymore. “Yeah,” he says. “Anything.” It comes out choked from how tight his vocal cords are. The way they get sometimes when he plugs in the microphone and hits RECORD.

She pats the floor in front of her and mumbles something about being on equal ground, and he slides down to meet her, guitar in tow. She looks like she wants to touch it, feel now real it is. Or how real he is. As though that moment with his card wasn’t enough.

“It’s about your sister,” she says, her gaze darting away in shame. “And Adrien. Sort of.”

“Okay,” he says. It’s slow, and uncertain, but he hopes it tells her he’s all ears.

Marinette looks at her lap and draws herself up and in. Like she’s wanted to tell him this for a long time. Like she’s only just found the words for it. “We were pretty close,” she says. “In grade school. Not as close as… Rose, yeah, Rose. But we were in the same class for a couple years. I helped her with some class picture stuff, she listened to me yammer on about Adrien after he joined our class… even helped me come up with some ideas on how to… confess to him? Win him over? I don’t know.” She rubs the back of her neck. “Actually, I think all my girl friends did that.”

Luka nods slowly, thinks of the school photos in the album Juleka bought from the thrift shop, tries to match faces in his head. He thinks he sees pigtails. Or maybe a bun. He could be wrong. “So,” he says, “you had it pretty bad for him, huh.”

“I dunno if I had it bad. Like I said, puppy love. I mean, I thought we were soulmates—God, I even named our kids—and I couldn’t even get out a sentence in front of him. I didn’t even like him at first. Plus, we were like, fourteen. I didn’t know any better.”

He shrugs. “Just cause you were fourteen doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.” He thinks he catches a blush stealing across Marinette’s face then, but maybe it’s just a trick of the lights. “So… what changed?”

“With Juleka? Or Adrien?”

“Both, I guess.”

Marinette turns her head away. “It’s dumb.”

Luka shrugs again, smiling faintly. “So?”

She starts to pick at her nails, like her hands are just looking for something to do. Without thinking, he gives the spinner ring on his index finger a flick to get her attention, then slides it off and hands it to her. She looks at it with questions in her eyes, then slips it on. It barely fits her index finger, and it wobbles when she gives it a curious flick of her own. It seems to get the job done, at least. “He lent me his umbrella,” she mumbles, final but sheepish. Then she follows up, before his brow can so much as furrow, “He was friends with an old bully of mine—Mrs. Bourgeois’s daughter, actually—and I caught him doing something with some gum on my chair. And I… misjudged him. “Another flick. “He was trying to make it up to me. And he said… he didn’t have any friends. He hadn’t even been to school.”

He lets out a hollow laugh. “Rich kids, huh?” And then, at the first sign of her discomfort, “Sorry, I—”

“No,” she says. “It’s okay, I was just thinking…” She presses her thumb into the curve and the aged grooves of the ring more than she actually spins it. Like she cares about losing it more than she cares about comforting herself. “I think everything around me told me that… that was how I was supposed to feel. Unwavering love. Now it’s been years, and I think… I think I just wanted to be that friend for him. I just wanted to be what he was looking for.”

Luka lifts his gaze from the ring to her face. “Who says that’s not love?” He doesn’t know where the words come from. They just feel like the right ones to say.

Marinette freezes, blinking at her hands. She doesn’t say anything; the only sound is the whine of his ring as the metal scrapes together with another flick.

When the silence goes on a bit too long for either of their liking, Luka clears his throat uncertainly. “So, um…”

She speaks so he doesn’t have to. “Juleka,” she murmurs. “Right, um…” It’s hard to tell who’s more uncomfortable between the two of them. Who's really supposed to say what next. “Well, I mean… you can sort of imagine that I wasn’t the only one who wanted to… y’know. Be with Adrien.”

Luka doesn’t have to imagine, but he nods anyway.

“Not”— Marinette hedges—“not that Juleka was competition or anything. I mean, duh. Just… there was this other girl—there were other girls, and…”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” he urges. “If it still hurts.”

She closes her eyes. Hard, and just for a moment. “Please let me tell you this.”

Her voice wavers. That’s all the cue Luka needs to stay quiet. To let her say everything, or nothing, at her pace.

“Her name was Lila,” she says. “She was a new girl. From Italy. Everyone liked her, except… she lied. Like, compulsively. About connections she had, places she’d been, charity work she did. And she did it because she wanted everyone to like her. She was just telling people what they wanted to hear because the attention made her feel important. She thrived on it.” She gets to her feet. “Sorry, I can’t sit still when I get all… agitated. You know?”

Luka gestures vaguely at the balcony space. “That makes two of us.”

Marinette takes that as her cue to start pacing and turning on her heels, only pausing every so often to stare up at the night sky. “I was jealous,” she admits. “I was also our class representative. And I might’ve… used that to my advantage.”

Maybe he shouldn’t say Hell yeah out loud, but he’s definitely thinking it.

“I kept tabs on people’s schedules, you know?” she says. “So we could work on important events and class projects and stuff. There was one we were planning for Adrien, to celebrate that he’d been in school with us for a year and all. And it just so happened that…” she shrugs, feigning apology. “All the days that worked conflicted with all her charity work.”

Luka whistles, half-impressed. “This the part where you tell me she decided to make your life a living hell like some high school drama villain?”

Marinette’s face falls. “Yeah,” she says, and her voice cracks, and he wishes he weren’t right. “But all she did was exactly what I did. Convinced… everybody… that every little thing I did was proof that I wasn’t a real friend. That I couldn't commit to anything because I committed to everything. And especially with how I avoided her… didn’t trust her, treated her cruelly. she turned everyone against me, a little at a time. Even Alya.” She shifts her weight. “Even Juleka.”

Luka’s heart sinks. He almost wants to reach for her hands when she paces toward him. Almost wants to kick himself for asking, “And… then what?”

She lingers at the balcony railing, perhaps preferring to tell the night sky the rest. “She got me expelled.”

Luka tenses.

Marinette doesn’t notice. “I’d been telling myself for months that I deserved it. Eventually I just… believed it. Let it happen. Never talked to my classmates again.” She shrugs. “I cried a lot. Transferred schools. Threw myself into… everything. Because if Lila said that was what I was doing—just over-committing—I might as well own it. And because if I was constantly doing something, then I couldn’t stop to think about all the bad things I deserved. And I couldn’t be paranoid about being judged for every little thing I did.”

“What…” He’s trying, with every fiber in him, to keep his heart from breaking for her. To keep himself from blurting out how well he knows the feeling. “What about Alya? And Adrien, and, uh… Mrs. Bourgeois’s kid?”

Marinette turns to face him, leaning back against the railing, and something in her face—no, everything—changes. There’s a tiredness in her eyes, a twitch in her hands. Lines in her face that shouldn’t be there for decades. As though she’s just lived them all over again. “I didn’t talk to Alya for over a year. I couldn’t be friends with her. I couldn’t even talk to her.” Her gaze lowers. “It was really hard on Nino.”

“Nino?”

“Our friend. well. My friend. Her boyfriend. He’s the one I’ve been helping for that summer project.” She folds her arms tight. “He apologized first. If it weren’t for him, Alya and I still wouldn’t be talking. And Chloé, well… Mrs. Bourgeois’s recommendation letter had nothing to do with her. I entered some contests with my portfolio and won a couple of them.” She flicks her gaze back. “I did run into Chloé once. In New York. I guess she decided to live with her mom for a while. She kind of took the ‘enemy of my enemy is my ally’ approach. Which was… weird. But tolerable.”

Luka searches her face, even at a distance, and settles on the end of the deck chair again. “What about Adrien?”

The pause that follows is heavy. He can’t tell who feels the weight of it more; he just hopes it’s equal. Marinette scrunches up her lips, braces herself on the railing, and all those decades come back. “Well,” she murmurs. “I guess you don’t really realize what you have until it’s gone, huh.”

He sobers. “He felt guilty.”

“I guess we all did.” She scuffs her heel. “I guess we all do.”

Luka waits. There must be more she wants to say.

There is. She even starts pacing again. “My guidance counselor used to tell me that all that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. It was supposed to be comforting.”

He raises an eyebrow. “It doesn’t sound very comforting.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” she says, “He reminded me they were still good people, and good people could do bad things, and even if they were still good, it was okay for me to not want those people in my life anymore. I dunno.” She rocks on her feet. “Maybe someone told Adrien the same thing and he couldn’t stand doing nothing anymore.”

“Did you want him?” he asks. “In your life? Do you still?”

She heaves a laugh like it’s hard to do. “Would you think it was messed up if I said yes?”

“No, of course not.”

“He could see it,” she says. “What Lila was doing. That was why he felt so bad. That was why he convinced her to clear my name. Turns out he knows how to use things to his advantage, too.”

Luka softens and runs his fingers over the body of his guitar. “He must love you a lot,” he says, “if he was willing to do all that for you.”

At first, Marinette doesn’t say anything, only grips the railing tighter. He can see it, how her knuckles go white, as though there’s something she’s trying to forget. Then she murmurs, “She tried to talk to me. Juleka did. To… apologize… I ghosted her. I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. For a while, I didn’t want to deal with anything anymore. I don’t want you to think it didn’t hurt me, because it did. It did hurt.”

Luka’s stomach turns. He puts his guitar down. “That’s why you’ve been so nice to me, huh…” There’s a lump in his throat that he tries to swallow; he only partly succeeds. “You felt guilty about avoiding her and just… wanted to make it up to her.”

Something flashes across Marinette’s face. Horror, maybe. Or shame. “No, I—that’s not what I—”

“I’m not upset.” He’s not. He’s staring at the floor with a pit in his stomach and a shake in his limbs, and his knee is starting to throb again in protest, but he’s not upset. “Really. I get it. If that’s what you needed for your own closure, then…”

A ragged breath and a sniffle cut him off, and he’s barely able to lift his gaze before Marinette kneels in front of him, placing his ring in his palm and closing his fingers around it. He can’t revel in the touch—won’t let himself—because her hands are cold. Trembling. “Don’t go,” she whispers, squeezing his hand tight, and when he looks up there are tears staining her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t even be asking this of you, just… please, don’t go.”

Luka learned, a long time ago, to look for the things unsaid. when I can’t make it really meant I’m trying to avoid you. when you’re certainly different really meant God, you are a level of fucked-up I can’t put into words. When we need to talk really meant it's over.

He hears, “Please don’t go,” and he thinks he finds, I want you in my life. Don’t you want me in yours?

Or, maybe, I need you.

Or maybe it’s as simple, as desperate, as, Not you, too.

He’s known Juleka, and maybe even himself, long enough to know what that sounds like in other people.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Hey, I’m not going.”

Marinette freezes, still staring at their hands. “Why? You have every reason to.”

“Because I’m not.”

“You’ve known me for like, two months, as what? A baker’s daughter? Overly nice customer service? Someone who just gave you kindness out of some dumb high school guilt?”

“I’m not going,” Luka says again.

“You should.” Marinette rubs her eyes dry. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.” He coaxes his hand open, slides the ring back onto her finger. “Isn’t that enough?”

Marinette studies the ring, giving it a cautious flick. As though touching it might break it altogether. “It’s too big.”

“Then I’ll trade you.” Luka takes the ring back, digs around in his pocket, and fishes out a couple of guitar picks. “Here. Take one.”

One of them has a picture of Jagged Stone’s face. The other has a Kitty Section logo, crudely painted on with some of Juleka’s old nail polish. Marinette takes the first one almost instantly with another sniffle, examining it from all sides. “He’s… my favorite.”

“Yeah.” Luka smiles, not minding that she can’t see it, and thinks of the album cover. “Mine, too.”

She runs her thumb over the faces and edges, blinking away whatever tears threaten to stick around. “Why?” she asks again.

“To prove it.” He tilts his head. “To prove I’m not going.”

She turns the pick this way and that, but doesn’t put it away just yet. Instead, her eyes drift toward his guitar and the amp, and then up to him. “Hey,” she says. “Do you think you could do me a favor?”

“I know,” he tells her. “I won’t tell Jules about any of this. And I won’t make you talk to her if you don’t want to.” And I’ll stay. I swear to God I’ll stay.

“Not that.” Marinette presses her lips together, still sitting on her knees. Still holding on to the pick for dear life. “Can you play it again?”

“What, the song from your playlist?”

“Me.” She looks away, her cheeks flushed and blotchy. “Can you play me. Again.”

Luka’s heart picks up, so loud he can barely hear anything else. Even her. “Yeah,” he says, setting his guitar in his lap, “Yeah, I think I got it this time.”

i guess it’s eleven now.

[triysn]

more adjl headcanons

because i can

and also, this one is sorta long so proceed at your own risk i'm sorry

I have been reading a LOT about dogs and their ridiculous instinct and I should really be studying BUT

Jake is human, obviously, but he is also, half the time, a Very Large Firebreathing Predator in a way no human being has ever been on the food chain before and he has the Instincts for this

I know I’m toeing the werewolf line here but go with it (I know absolutely nothing about reptiles, forgive me)

Glares at every single (normal) dog they come across in an involuntary pissing contest until Jake establishes dominance over the other. Most dogs are immediately cowed by Jake because they have +10 perception and can sense this is not a normal human they’re dealing with but a very big predator with pointy teeth, but there’s the occasional puppy dumb-ass who will bark and growl at the Weird Thing coming near their human

Fu doesn’t count because he’s pretty much a human stuffed in a dog’s body but which animal isn’t a little wigged out by dragons sometimes they’re literally peak predators they can fly they can swim they can walk they can BREATHE FIRE which is pretty much the ultimate survival mechanism because everything is weak to fire they have deadly claws and armour

Jake’s dad wanted to keep a dog when they were a lot younger but obviously this would expose them because you can’t just expect two, different, highly territorial predator animals to coexist so eventually they convinced him it was too much work and that Fu was pretty much the family dog.

Dragons are pretty much not scared of any animal a normal human being would be rightly terrified of like—wolves, bears, lions, snakes, eagles, anything that’s big and has claws. the only exception would probably be aquatic animals because, unless there’re aquatic dragons, dragons aren’t the natural predator of anything in there. This makes Jake great company on wilderness camping/hiking trips because seriously, what sort of predator is going to attack you when you have the bigger, scarier predator right there with you? Also, family shenanigans where Jake is fighting off various wild animals when his dad’s back is turned.

“Gee whillikers, Jake-arooni, look at the size of these paw prints, must have been a huge bear coming through here last night. Good thing it wasn’t hungry!” *Jake, who woke up at 4am to the sound of this bear going through the remains of their campfire and trying to eat their mess tins, poked his head out his tent and growled at it, causing it to tuck tail and run* “haha, yeah dad… good thing…”

Can’t bring Jake or Haley to the zoo. when Jake was 7, Susan Long, blissfully ignorant mother of her first dragon child, signed off on that permission slip and Chaos ensued. Bringing a young dragon who doesn’t even know he’s a dragon into what’s essentially a compendium of fancy cages of various prey animals? Haha. Long story short, a very confused slightly suspicious elementary school teacher approached her saying that her son allegedly growled at some of the animals (very convincingly and scaring a few of his classmates), causing said animals to run. More concerningly, one of said animals was a tiger. Also, all of the animals at the petting zoo refused to let themselves be petted by him, and one especially terrified rabbit went into shock.

Lesson learnt, no more zoos. At least, not with teachers watching.

Sometimes, when Jake is in dragon form and looking down at his friends or various humans, his vision narrows to the tiny shockwaves of their movements, invisible hooks pulling his line of sight towards their exposed, vulnerable bellies or necks, and he can smell them for miles, more if he’s downwind of them. And the niggling, expanding primal instinct finally making itself known to the human part of his brain wants to hunt, wants to chase any moving animal down and eat.

It’s a very terrifying instinct for a fourteen year old to be having and he’s read YA novels, thank you very much, so he’s “no thanks” and goes to ask gramps. But it’s all just “perfectly normal” for a dragon his age and all he needs to do is “gain mastery” over his instincts.

He can move frighteningly fast and be extremely accurate when he wants to, even in a human body. He’s the kid who can shoot a fly out the air with a rubber band or pull some weird shit in pe. Probably banned by his family from participating too heavily in sports or joining sports ccas because that would be cheating.

TLDR dragons are predators and should probably be treated as such

[sazzafraz]

whatever its free

almost all of that doc is unsalvageable as in its just my notes to self which are. uh. not a narrative

She picks her coffee up and shifts the plate aside. The paper underneath is dirt smudged and barely legible. Sakura takes a sip of her coffee and contemplates what it would like to be truly surprised by the shape of the new world. 

The paper is old, she would have been fourteen when she saw it last, and it has not aged particularly gracefully. Underneath the official Konoha header is the tight scrawl of the jounin commander and the messy script of her shishou’s hand. Underneath that is Sakura’s own handwriting. The strokes are timid and rushed, like a little girl being scolded for stealing her mother’s lipstick. Sakura wasn’t quite a child when she signed her name to the bottom of the page but she wasn’t far enough away from ribbons and cupcakes to truly understand. 

I, Haruno Sakura ID: 012601, shinobi of Konohagakure and citizen of Hi no Kuni under our Daimyo, the 23rd of his title, do solemnly swear to never reveal the details of mission 123-575-889b. I understand that in signing this oath I agree to-

Well, a lot of things. Underneath all that, in a neat box that Sakura has never once seen filled out, is a small red stamp that says Redacted.      

And to think it was going to be such a nice day. 

so the thesis of this was going to be the thin line of sakura’s duty and morality as well as what kunoichi are in terms of ‘shadow work’ (the non pagan kind) and like. the set up was after ‘history has its eye’ which i WISH i’d finished because its conceit is necessary to most of the extended ntfs universe but, here: 

danzo is taken to trial by a jury of his peers in Oto and Konoha, considering the length and breadth of his crimes Uzumaki Karin is called in to way judgement as part of a good will diplomatic gesture. concurrently tsunade is trying to keep konoha steady while wave after wave of black ops missions are being redacted and the whole shinobi world is being forced into an awkward position by the sharp difference in values between it and the civilian populace. in the past uzumaki mito deals with becoming the wife of a very famous, very powerful man who can and does skirt the necessary politicking of ninja bullshit, accidentally setting precedents that would echo forward to danzo’s trial. along with managing her brother in law, who is absolutely NOT perfecting a jutsu that raises the dead and harvesting organs to sell on the black market in between creating humane policy, and her husbands ex, who just committed treason and is slamming bijuu into each other like its a game of paddywack and is also sometimes right? infuriating

we follow these three storylines until on the second day of his trial, after it becomes clear that the cultural differences are too wide to safely gap (the shinobi look like they want to go easy on them, the civilians are setting a precedent that will be real hard to roll back) Danzo stands up and is like ‘i have the’ wisteria papers’ of most of the people in this room hmu if u want ur secrets exposed’ and everyone just loses it

hennyways our bodies possessed, the sakura fic, was about one of these redacted missions that takes place when sakura is about 14, new to her apprenticeship and a target for assassination by danzo, tsunade plays a game of keep away sending sakura on a dangerous mission in T&I which involves her learning how to do ‘honeypot’ work. she and her instructors, a multi time failure of the jounin exams and a clan member with opaque interests, journey to what will eventually become kuebiko hospital. long story short, tsunade plays a sharp hand, danzo is nearly assassinated and sakura becomes a queenpiece in espionage, her poor disposition for it aside

and the meta story was going to be me thinking about then-11 years in this fandom and all the good work and the poor about sex in the time of shinobi. i’m not gonna name names but important here: consent. i am the most boring person on earth about this but how consent both narratively and meta-narratively has been reconstructed heavily in the last nine years or so. i started reading naruto fanfic in 2005. no one warned for anything. maybe explicit content and seme/uke nonsense but apart from that? no. and while i’m not going to get on a soapbox about this, because it doesn’t matter much, a bulk of naruto fic was written before a03, which means a bulk of its trends were too. back to consent, the concept of duty to village and a shinobi way already blurs consent. did kakashi actually consent to receiving his sharingan for example, that's a life long body alteration. can you truly consent to die and kill for your country blah blah. where this intersects with sexual consent is......wide ranging. i remember how often ‘sex training’ was part of harem fics and teacher/student dynamics and while i practice a YMMV mindset i found the inclusion as a natural outcome of being a shinobi really weird? sex work is not easy. full contact sex work is not easy. you can’t exactly train for it and while there’s certainly the idea of geisha (gross western ideas) the place that they take up culturally is not synonymous with sex. the kind of sex work exemplified in these fics again, would not be something you would want a career soldier for, too many tics and nics. and i don’t really believe the market for it is going to be so large that a dedicated team makes sense. especially when a normal sex worker would probably do fine? so this weird combination being stuck together as a realistic outcome is just baffling.

so i put sakura in it. proud sakura, who wouldn’t bend to anyone. virgin sakura, who cared about her body in a way that a kunoichi shouldn’t. and finally emotionally hurt sakura having lost her whole team to outside forces in the position of having to learn intimacy and sabotage as a form of violence. it was never going to be detailed but the point was to draw lines about the body and what it does. the female body specifically. and the problem immediately became that like, she would have to be vulnerable to do it. it became an examination of what women where willing to ask other women to endure. what sakura had to construct to be able to do it. i’ve pretty much maintained my position that of team 7 sakura is the only one whose actually good at her job. i realise now that this sounds darker than it would have been. i can’t say it was all like, current day ideas of consensual but no one would have said shit in 2008.        

tldr: sex workers as information gatherers is mildly realistic, shinobi as sex workers just generally? not so much.  

[joemerl]

OC-Tober 2021, Day 5: "Throne"

OC/WIP: Tristan and friends from "Old Fantasy Novel Series That I Haven't Gotten Around to Renaming Yet"

Strap in, because I'm about to bare the stupidity of my teenage years.

So, around age fourteen, I started working on a series of fantasy novels. (Heck, I even wrote them out! Then tried to rewrite them, rework them, etc.) It was about a kid named Tristan, who lives with an abusive foster family and knows nothing of his birth parents. He's sucked into a magical world that's currently in a state of civil war, ever since the king's evil brother killed him, his wife and infant son. The weird magical medallion that Tristan has always had turns out to be a magical relic of this royal family, and will occasionally do Deus Ex Machina things, even though nobody except the true King of Fantasy Land should be able to use it. He also discovers and is able to use the royal family's magical sword, which is also supposed to be unusable to anyone but the true king.

Now...hold on, you're not gonna believe it...it turns out that Tristan is actually that infant prince who everyone thought was dead! Yeah, I know! Who could have seen that coming? Obviously nobody, until it was dramatically revealed at the end of the sixth book. I did plant some subtle clues though, like Tristan looking exactly like the dead king's portrait.

You can perhaps understand why, upon reaching adulthood, I decided to pursue other projects and put this one on indefinite hiatus.

But these characters still live rent-free in my brain, and every so often I think of how I might revive this into something not only readable, but maybe even decent and not the most obvious trash heap of clichés ever. So here's a brief summary of Tristan and his group of companions and vague ideas of what they'd be like in the revised version.

MAIN CHARACTERS

Tristan: The old Tristan was your "vaguely geeky and unpopular, mostly generic kid" sort of character; since he was supposed to eventually become a king, I did try to make him a good leader of his little group, mostly in the sense of being the diplomatic one when they fought. In the new version I want to both up his geekiness but also his charm, so we see that he's really popular at school and has a lot of friends.

One change that I think could be interesting is that Tristan also came to our world when he was a toddler rather than an infant; as such, he actually remembers the murder of his birth family, if only in vague and terrifying terms. Nobody knows his origin, but he's been in therapy long enough to believe that the "monsters" he remembers were surely ho-hum human murderers distorted by trauma, and anything that sounds like a castle or magic are also probably imaginary. He really, really would prefer to believe that, but the plot isn't going to let him.

When he finally winds up in Fantasy World The Name of Which I Need to Change, he is decidedly not going to want to take the throne. Whether or not he does anyway is undecided at this point.

Erasmus: Tristan's foster/adoptive brother (biological cousin in the old version), of approximately the same age. Timid and shy, he's both very close to Tristan and maybe a bit resentful at how much more outgoing and popular he is. There's a bit of irony there: Tristan comes off as happy and well-adjusted to most people, but "Raz" knows that Tristan also has a mysterious, traumatic past, which also means that Tristan can be at least a little vulnerable around him.

I think he's an albino, for reasons that relate the old version but I don't even want to get into right now. And hey, disability rep.

E(d)ric: In the new version he's probably, like...a football player or something? He's supposed to be a big guy and the best "normal" fighter. He's reserved and grouchy but extremely loyal to people he cares about. Reading this over, I feel like I need something to make him more interesting.

Cynthia: Hmm...in the old version she was a witch, but since I'm reimagining all of the main characters as being from our world, I'm not sure how that would carry over. Maybe she gains/has magic in the fantasy world for some reason? She's tough, sarcastic and smart. Erasmus has a crush on her. I swear she wasn't the only female character in the old version, but apparently she was the only one important enough for me to list here.

Pythian the magical snake, Bast(et?) the cat, That Baby Hippogriff Whose Name I Don't Even Remember: There were way too many team pets in the old version.

OTHERS

The Guide: Merlin knockoff. Actually, I think in my earliest draft he was Merlin, somehow, and I don't even know how fourteen-year-old me justified that. He may have been the one who sent Tristan to our world, but then stayed in Fantasy World to help fight the villains. Maybe he's more involved here? Hmm.

Jay: He was Tristan's younger foster brother in the old version (so his and Erasmus' here?), who witnessed him getting sucked into Fantasy World and wanted to figure out what the frick happened to him. I think that concept is interesting, but I'm not sure where it goes, exactly.

Connor: E(d)ric's younger brother. Looking back, pretty much everything I had planned for him in the old version was stupid or would work better for other characters. Not sure what to do with you, Connor. Maybe he's Jay's friend.

[oh-for-fic-sake]

Phsychokinesis

You meet the League and butt heads with Clark.

Masterlist

Warnings: Swearing, Angst, Panic attacks

Phsychokinesis 

You sat in the back of the batmobile for what felt like hours lost in your own thoughts, you regreted this already, why rock the boat now? you were fine, you were learning how to do this on your own, you didn't need anyone they'd get in the way Or hurt! Then they'd hate you, hunt you down, you wouldn't get away! Either that or they'd see you for the monster you was and just leave you somwhere this was a stupid idea, a silly childish hope of a fairytale ending of a home ,acceptance the hope of finding people who will understand, they wont, no one understands they can't. You panicked your breathing shallow, out! you had to get out slowly you looked around looking for the hinge that held the door infront of you closed it had flipped up like a trunk but in your panicked state you wouldnt be able to concentrate enough to send out your ripple instead you had to touch it you fumbled with the harness style seat belt cursing when your fingers couldn't grip finally useing your power the split the mechanism down the seam it must have sent a warning to him in the front as you heard his voice a few seconds later.

"Kid? Calm down Whats the matter?-" 

"NO! Let me out stop, I've changed my mind I can do it on my own!" You cried out leaning forward blindly running your hands over the top of the door sliding your palms hurried wanting to find the weak spot to tear at sniffling as tears began falling blurring your vision 'stupid your so stupid!' You thought repeating over and over scrabbling over the top you couldnt find it! He continued talking low and calm trying to ease you out of your panic attack.

"Hey kid its okay your scared its natural to be scared okay? But I promise whatever your think is going to happen isn't, none of us are going to let anything happen to you, just take some deep breaths for me in......then out.....again for me in ...... and out....." you closed your eyes doing as he said kneeling on the floor shivering from the aftermath of your break down as you felt the vehicle stop. You slumped resting your head on the door in front of you and spoke in a quiet voice

"I can't do it again" You held your breath when you got no reply had he listened? 

"Do what again?" You stayed silent he wouldn't have it and asked again in a different way

"What are you afraid of? Tell me so I can help, we just want to help"

"....I'm better off alone.." and there it was your words were loud and clear Bruce read between the lines the truth behind your fear and panic,abandonment, a kid who lost her parents and has been passed here there and everywhere thrown from home to home until finally you run away deciding you dont need anyone else he sighed.

"We wont leave you, not now your here weather you belive it or not the second you stepped into this car you were one of us and the others are eager to meet you" 

"And when I hurt one of you? It will happen it always does its why they get rid of me." You venom in your voice made his blood go cold, you sounded like one of the many nut jobs he put away behind bars, the ones that wanted to watch the city burn with everyone in it ,all he could do was hope he wasn't to late.

"The only one you could hurt is me and if I'm not mistaken we have been over that already and you said so yourself you caught it, was I angry? Did I shout and attack you? Or call for back up? I could have but did I?"

 You looked down fidgeting with your fingers a little feeling small he almost sounded like a parent and not in that hyped up I'm right and your wrong way you were used to it was more like trying to get you to understand him something you hadnt heard in a long time.

"Well? I expect an answer young lady"

"No, you didn't do none of those things"

"Right and you know why? It was an accident and accidents happen, besides one of us will always be there to watch out for you,everyone in this place is faster then you physically we are all stronger than you there is no need to worry, now lets go meet the team, We are already here." You sniffed a little wiping at your eyes.

"I suppose....I'm scared" He chuckled at that you sounded so tiny and vulnerable 

"No their not scary at all come on" you waited a few breaths then the door opened and he was in front of you he sighed quickly lifting you out palcing a comforting hand on your shoulder. You looked around this place was huge with various different vehicles air land and sea all in matte black spanning the length of the huge space.

"Holy shit..." he hummed in agreement 

"Immpressive huh?" You looked around some you recgonized from news footage in gotham.

"Yeah you have a lot of.....weird  things here" he shrugged just happy that your little break down had passed, he knew the others were watching through the security eager to meet you, but he wanted to make sure you were okay. He cleared his throat nodding to the elevator that would take you up into the main tower.

"This way we can go and meet the team then get you settled in for the night" you blinked at him

"What?" He crossed his arms standing tall

"Well it is nearly eleven pm and your only what fourteen? you shouldnt be up this time, what about school?"

"Im sixteen and I don't go to school I do online...when I can be bothered" he sighed walking to the elevator you trailed behind him as he sent it moving up.

"Fine, either way you can stay here tonight, there is a room ready for you" you nodded a little apprehensive finally the doors opened revealing a huge room with a large round table the others sat around it smileing at you batman pushed you forward when he saw you freeze a little the small nudge sent you walking forward into the room. Wonder woman was the first to approach you with a smile

"Hello Im Diana its nice to meet you we're glad you decided to come" she was beautiful ,polite and looked kind, you almost forgot how powerfull she was just by speakjng to her

"H-hi Im y/n its....nice to meet you too" you said quietly scanning the room still nervous looking for escapes just incase, the window, thick glass but doable not sure how far the free fall would be- your thoughts were interrupted by a gruff voice

"I wouldn't we're pretty high" you snapped your gaze up to Aquaman he was....unerving to say the least, he gave of a chill and slightly playfull attitude.

"What?" He smirked nodding to the window

"Your checking for escape I could see it in your eyes, hell sometimes I want to throw myself out the window to escape this lot but were pretty high, I mean wonder boy over there would catch you no doubt but still waste of a window dont ya think?" You smiled a little blushing tangling your hands in your hoodie.

"Itd be fixed before I was a quarter of the way down, its just a habit.Sorry" He smiled waving it off

"Nah your fine its smart you want a back up plan I'm Arthur by the way." You nodded still lookkng around everyone noted you didn't drift to far from Bruce which in a way was good he become a sort of saftey net it seemed. They all new what happened on the way here and downstairs. You were holding up well considering how terrified you were. They all drifted to the table taking their seats, when you didn't follow Bruce came up behind you taking your bag walking to the huge round glase table you followed behind him.

"Jesus what do you have in here? Thats way to heavy for you to be lugging around" he complaind as he set it down lettingnyou take a seat next to him.

"Books,clothes, my phone ,headphones and purse I take everything with me when I leave the homes, its easyier that way don't have to go hunting for it later" you shrugged everyone in the room frowned. It was Clark who began speaking

"So thats everything you own?" You nodded a little scared of him if you were honest you were scared of all of them.

"Pretty much, when it comes to foster homes in Gotham their not the best to put it bluntly us kids are money makers, the state pays them to take me in, when your younger theres more to it they put you somewhere nice with good poeple that care, you know try to make you a model citizen all that crap but teens no we get the shit ones given a bed and told to get on with it we are lost causes by this point just waiting to age out and be fucked off, I haven't been to my foster home in three weeks they haven't tried to get in touch or anything they dont care, occasionally they file a missing persons report and police find you and take you back but thats only cos of the inspections if I aint there when the do a spot check the money stops and they can be stricken off the register loose about $400 a month, but I prefer being out on my own" He frowned crossing his arms infront of his chest taking a deep breath leaning back, you fidgited a little under his intense gaze leaning to Bruce he didn't look happy at all and you weren't sure what you'd done but you felt like you'd irritated him, you cast a glance to Batman who was giving you a similar look making you gulp.

"So where have you been sleeping then for these three weeks?" you snapped your head back to the Man of steel.

".......with freinds and stuff....." he raised an eyebrow he didn't need to hear your pulse change to know you were lying it was clear from the way you spoke quiet and high but he would leave it for now.

"Well from now on you will be home by eight at the latest" you blinked you were expecting an argument or some dismissive 'oh it can't be that bad' but not a curfew... honestly you wasn't sure what to make of it and that made you angry, you wasn't used to people caring for you, your first instinct is to scare them away.

"err what? not being funny but I'm here to get my freaky power under control not to get a fucking life coach, had one he quit...like not just me he quit completely something about having the devil inside or something...Not sure if that was aimed at me tho...Probably...He was old as shit" you shut up when he tilted his head leaning back it was a very...Parental gesture you swear your dad did the same thing when he was alive.

"Well that was before I learned of your situation and the fact that your living on the streets at the moment." you growled at him any fear replaced with anger and a little panic he knew... he definitely knew you were lying the air rippled around you coming to life.

"Are you deaf? I've been staying with friends.... Not that its any of your fucking business" 

"Friends from your online classes you never do? now I don't see that somehow" you shook glaring at him 

"Fuck you!" he stood up not taking notice of the way your eyes glowed you panicked normally that was enough to make them back off he wasn't, standing you faltered not sure what to do you wanted to scare him off, make him back down but you didn't want to hurt him, you freaked out a little as he continued coming around towards you swearing trying to pull back your power not wanting to attack him but in the state you were in it was hard you couldn't grasp it you winced hearing the crackling of the floor beneath you fighting it as it tried to rise up toward him.

"Calm down. I know your lying I can hear it in your pulse now I know for a fact that you've been on the streets and I'm guessing its more because your frightened of hurting them rather than all this teenage 'better of alone' bravado your trying to play it off as. And as for having a life coach Instead of that you'll be getting a family"

"Shut up!" you were really panicking now he had managed to figure you out break past your walls quick and you wanted him to stop.

"...I know your a good kid and have had a rough ride having to grow up to soon now its time to be a kid again. So from now on you will have a safe place to stay each night sometimes that will be here other times it will be with one of us" he kept coming slowly towards you, you stepped back only everyone watch tense but not out of fear or trepidation just ready to dodge what ever you might do.

"I'm not going to be a fucking charity case- this was a bad idea Im leaving" you made to grab your bag  but it wasnt by you chair anymore you swore 

"Your not leaving and your not going to be a charity casenow calm yourself down" 

"What you can't force me to stay here!" You backed off now sending out your power feelkng for your bag wanting to get out of here fast, this was a stupid thing to do, trust people? You cant trust anyone.

"I will if I think thats whats best for you,you can't hurt me... You can't hurt any of us and that is probably scaring you isn't it? its been a long time since you wasn't the strongest person in the room, since you were able to be yourself with out having to have absolute control of every thought and movement... I know because I've been there myself when I was growing up and the shock and fear I had fighting Zod and Batman it was frightening realizing that I could be hurt, its terrifying having something you don't understand or control and you think no one will understand, thats the same for each of us at some point we realized we are not like everyone else and we were alone wanting help someone to turn to thats why we are going to help you, so you can have some form of normality" you gave him a side glance shaking he understood? you thought he must of had it worse you couldn't imagine having to deal with his abilities. 

"Normal? Thats not an option for me, people can't even touch me" you cried out as he sped towards you tuggeding you forward to him making you jump everything happed so fast you couldn't catch it you closed your eyes tight shaking like a leaf knowing that you'd just attacked him unintentionally probably killed him you whined waiting for the inevitable attacks from the others instead the hug tightened he chuckled 

"Look its okay"slowly you opened your eyes looking down the small spikes had snapped as they touched him instead of impaling him you gasped stepping back.

"They didn't?" he smiled shaking his head.

"No they cant...I told you, you cant hurt us" you smiled a little sniffling as tears escaped you felt silly but happy relieved you might be able stay here... you could be here with them with out worrying about loosing control they can handle it.

"I-I dont have to run?" he smiled pulling you back against him

"No you dont have to run...I'm sorry I had to make you attack me it was the only way to make you see you can't hurt me and its the same with Victor, Arthur and Diana Barry is to fast and Bruce well he will think of somthing he usually does, here you can be yourself and relax a little be a kid again and yes that means rules and curfews" you smiled nervously as he retreated a little he was sad you hadnt returned the hug he could tell you were touch straved and you probably didn't even know it.

"I-I cant stay what about the social workers-"

"Hey what did he just say? you be the kid we will deal with all that." it was Diana who had interrupted as supes made his way back to his seat faster then you could register pulling back looking at the floor correcting it as you sat back down.

".... was a dick move tho supes"

"Clark call me Clark, no need for our other names here we're family" you nodded a little it sounded strange when he said it. 

"and I would appreciate it if you watched your mouth its not lady like" you snorted 

"The only lady like thing on me is my v-jay" you deadpanned Arthur roared up at that as Clark rolled his eyes next to introduce themselves was a man who didn't look much older than you.

"Hi I'm Barry, its great to have someone not old here now, they look fun but they are all boring" you laughed at to chorus of grunts and scoffs.

"Well I can't promise I'll be much fun.." he shook his head

"Seriously? I cant wait to see you in action properly, its one thing to see it on screen but honestly, I wanna see you do the glass thing how does that work anyway? Like how do you do what you do?" You leaned back into your chair.

"Err its kind of weird.... its like ripples?" he tilted his head

"Ripples?" You nodded nervous knowing everyone was listening.

"Yeah o-or waves, Im always sending them out  and I can feel everything they feel.... so sitting here I can feel the wall over there.....its close so I can make better sense of it and have better control I can move it like clay.... then to fix the things I break I just zip them up....I can show you if you like? and its okay?"you looked around the room everyone nodded a gruff

"Just be careful" came from behind you, within seconds your eyes glowed bright and the huge table shattered into hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces across everyone they stayed still holding there breath.

"did you hit it? To make it do that?" Arthur asked wanting to understand how it works.

"No I pulled it from all sides ,It feels like pulling apart a huge jigsaw when I do that.....tugging I can stretch it two but that makes it weaker I just make it thinner and larger when I do that.....then I just think of the pieces edges being a zipper that fits back together. Its ends up being so tiny you can't see it" You did as you said pressing them together slowly but surly the table mended itself creating three thirds then used the floor to push them up until it mended from the center out becoming crystal clear glass again.

"OH GOD THAT WAS SO COOL! Can you fix my phone screen its been annoying me for weeks?" You nodded as he produce the phone and you quicky fixed it for him he stared at it in awe running his fingner over wheee the cracks were

"Thats so cool...And usefull"

"Phsychokinesis" you turned slowly to the final man.....cyborg 

"Phsychowhatsit?" He chuckled at you

"Thats your gift its called phsychokinesis like telekinesis but instead of moving things without touching them you can manipulate physical things, their forms, but my geuss is for some reason you can pinpoint actual molecules instead of clumps of them together" you tilted your head at him you it had a proper name.

"Yeah thats right I can't make things float, only move and change em and I can't do it on anything living no plants or animals." He nodded 

"Im victor, the one who found you, I've seen you do some incredible things.....Are you aware of everything that you do or does a lot of things just happen?" You shrugged

"Most just happen, the table I did but.....when people make me jump I try to attack them" you cast a guilty glance at batman behind you he waved you off.

"I dont mean to and if I trip or fall the ground softens ,if i fall really high it rises to catch me...water to I can't go onnthe diving board it gets weird...I don't do any of that either just happens....but I catch them most of the time before things go to bad"

"Self preservation, you said you send out these....Ripples all the time? You cant pull them back?"

"No I tried once it really hurt it was like....It felt like someong ripping my skin off, of burning my nerves i passed out in under a mineut....my fault tho" Arthur sat up leaning over the table

"Whats your fault?" You smiled sadly

"I- after I killed my parents I put it away it was an accident but it was me who did it.....Stopped useing it completly I'd suppressed it then about a year ago.... yeah I had to use it to save my freinds on a school trip... I tried to sheild them protect them, but the oil tanker was huge! I couldnt hold it for long and as much as I wanted to I just couldnt push it back to the water and......my gift it was much stronger then I remembered it hurt.....couldn't hold it... since then I can't put it back" 

"So you've always had it? Then surpressed it for years and then it blew up and now you can't control it?  I think it reacts to protect you, when you fall you don't want to hit the ground and be hurt so it moves to accommodate you instead your power is trying to protect you." 

"That....makes a lot of sense.... shit word tho my names gonna be fucking lame...." Barry laughed.

"eh we can thing of somthing.... well I can they all added man and woman to something" you giggled a little Diana got up smileing at you

"Y/n its late we should probably get you to bed" you blinked at her then got up slowly. Everyone said their good nights as you left the room looking around wearly

"Dont worry, nothing will happen here" she said moving closer slowly hooking an arm across your shoulder you tensed but it only flicked across the floor, like a stepping into a puddle of sand then levled again you relaxed again.

"See? Like Clark said we are family here so just think of us as your aunt and uncles we will protect you...now this is your room you can decorate it soon and there is a small ensuite to, all of us have rooms here homes away from home and soon you will probably be coming with us to our other homes aswell but for now you will stay here training for a while while we sort out the legal side of things. Im across the hall Clark is next door and Bruce two doors down"

"Bruce?" She rolled her eyes a little snorting

"Batman, he always finds a way to hide his own name paranoid bat" you sighed frowning

"ho-how are you going to sort out the social worker thing? I know you said not to worry but I wont be able to sleep..." she smiled patting your shoulder sitting on the bed with you.

"Adoption and as much as I would love to adopt you from what just happend I'm pretty sure Clark isn't going to let anyone else do it"

"Sounds like you knew my situation befor I got here, you can't just adopt me tho thats like a lot of home checks and and you have to pay a lot of money thats not fair-"

"We did know...Bruce has adopted his fair share already and will be pulling a few strings for us tho as I said I'm pretty sure Clark has decided already you need a more quiet stable home, as lovely as Bruces children are they are boisterous and human which can put you on edge which isn't what we want. Clark has one kryptonian son who is older than you and would be well equipped to help you over come any hiccups.Now just relax, go have a shower brush your teeth and get some sleep?" you looked at her wide eyed adopted...By Superman....and having a brother who you also cant hurt.

"Im not tired-" she tilted her head raising a brow at you

"You need sleep your a growing girl, I expect you in bed in half an hour I will know if your not and if your not I'm sending in Clark" you nodded in a way it was nice having someone who cared.

"Good night I will see you in the morning" she said closing the door. You looked across the room it was nice a large twin bed, your bag had been placed on it somehow, a desk tv on the wall built in wardrobe and a door in the corner what you assumed lead to the ensuite. after a few moments you got up using the shower and brushing your teeth before changing and crawling into bed, tonight was strange but it was nice to have somewhere safe to sleep and you was happy you couldnt hurt superman. you fell into a deep sleep fairly easily to warn out not to vaguly aware of someone pokeing their head in the room to check on you.

[magniloquent-raven]

43, and 83?

ty for the prompts!! 

posted on ao3

i’m taking commissions for HfBLM now y’all, if you like this fic and have $5 to spare pls consider donating & hitting me up with a prompt. my info is here

--

Steve is pretending to watch TV when the phone rings. He’s not even sure what show he threw on, just couldn’t stand the quiet any longer. His weekends used to be a lot more eventful. Lively. There was a time when he’d have had something to fill the silence, but now...

He graduated high school eight days ago. The only thing he has to look forward to now is Dustin getting back from camp in a couple weeks, and in the meantime, he’s working at the mall. Scooping ice-cream in the dumbest hat on the fucking planet.

And he got another lecture on responsibility yesterday. His father’s idea of a graduation present, apparently.

Life isn’t great right now.

So, when the phone interrupts his pity party, he assumes the worst. Which, given Hawkins’ track-record, is pretty bad. Apocalyptic bad.

Or it could just be his dad, tipsy in a hotel room in Indianapolis and thinking up new reasons why Steve is a disappointment.

He’s not sure which one he hopes it is.

“Harrington, residence,” he says when he picks up, in case it is his father.

The silence from the other end stretches long enough that Steve almost hangs up, then, “Heey,” a voice slurs. A familiar voice. “That you, Stevie?”

“Hargrove?”

“Ugh,” a staticky scoff crackles through the line, “Don’t call me that.”

“Are you drunk?” He ignores the way Billy rankles at his own last name. Doesn’t have time to unpack Billy Hargrove’s many issues, and honestly, the fact that the guy is calling him out of the blue drunk off his ass is the more pressing issue. “And how did you get my phone number?”

“Phonebook, genius.”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. Ignores the weird little thrill he gets at the idea of Billy going through the trouble of looking up his number. “What the hell, man.”

He should hang up. Billy can’t possibly have any good reason to be calling, and engaging with…whatever this is, probably won’t end well for Steve. However, Steve is very bored. And Hargrove is at the very least…entertaining. In his way. 

If Steve were a little more honest with himself, he might use other adjectives, but he’s not thinking about that.

“Steeevie…” Billy sing-songs through the phone, “Pretty boy, what’re you doing right now?”

“Regretting answering the phone.”

Billy cackles, “No, really.”

“I’m really regretting answering the phone.”

“C’mooon.”

See, the thing is… Billy’s...whatever his deal is, fixation or whatever, really doesn’t bother Steve as much as it should. 

Sometimes it’s shitty, yeah. On his bad days, when Billy says exactly the wrong thing, just to get a rise out of him. But it’s also…not all terrible. Maybe Steve’s ten kinds of fucked up for thinking it, but it’s flattering. Because it isn’t just crass comments and getting overly physical during basketball practice, it’s calling Steve pretty, and glancing over after he does a trick shot, like he wants to make sure Steve saw him. And heavy, unflinching eye-contact that makes Steve hot all over.

So, maybe Steve’s got a bit of a…problem. And maybe he’s thinking about it a little.

About Billy being the only person over the age of fourteen who regularly pays attention to him, and why that even matters. And how much he didn’t mean it when he said he regretted picking up at all.

It’s a rabbit hole he’s kind of terrified to go down, but his brain keeps trying to push him in anyway.

“Steeeevve.”

He sighs. “What do you want, Billy?”

Billy’s quiet for a beat, like he’s actually thinking about it, then hums, low and amused, and says, “More than you could handle, baby.”

Steve chokes on his tongue. Falls down the rabbit hole.

Because what’s that supposed to mean?

“Are you—” Steve stutters, stops, heart racing. Billy’s messing with him. That’s what he does. It doesn't mean anything. Steve kind of hates how much he wants it to mean something. Wants Billy here crooning baby in his ear without the phone between them. “What if your parents are listening in, you can’t just say shit like that.” 

Oh the irony. After all the times girls have said almost that exact thing to him, here he is... The implications thrill him a little.

But then there’s a bark of laughter, bitter and humourless. “You worried about me?” Steve frowns at the sudden shift in Billy’s tone. “M’not at home right now, princess, don’t get your panties in a bunch.”

 “Where are you then?” It slips out before he can think better of it. It’s none of his business where Billy is, and Billy doesn’t take well to people nosing around in his life. Not that it’s an especially personal question. Still, he’s seen Billy bite people’s heads off for less. 

But all he says is, “Dunno.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Steve squawks. Billy is somewhere, drunk and probably alone, in Hawkins. Monster infested, suspicious death capital of Indiana, motherfucking Hawkins. And either he’s so drunk he’s got no sense of direction, or he just hasn’t been here long enough to know his ass from Melvald’s General. Or some horrible combo of the two. None of those options are good. 

“Just…describe what you see.” The line is silent for a while. Steve grips the phone harder. “Billy,” he snaps, not caring that he’s letting his anxiety bleed into his voice.

“Jesus, alright,” Billy mutters, “Trees. More fuckin’ trees. Y’know, this town really is a shithole. Nothin’ around but mud and—”

“Focus, asshole.”

“So bossy. There’s some big-ass chain-link fence. Seems weird, ‘cause it’s the middle of nowh—"

“Oh god, you’re out by Mirkwood,” Steve realizes, horrified.

“…I’ll be sure to watch out for elves then.” He can almost hear Billy’s eyeroll.

“Would you stop being—wait, you understood the reference?” Steve blinks. Processes. Tries not to find it too endearing that Billy Hargrove is, underneath the leather and hairspray, a nerd, apparently. 

Now is really not the time. So he files the information away for later. He’s not sure what he’s gonna do with it later, but it feels important for some reason. 

“Never mind, just—Stay there. I’m coming to get you.” Mirkwood isn’t far, it would only take him a couple minutes to drive there. And Steve knows exactly where the payphone on that street is, which helps.

Steve half-expects a fight. Expects Billy to protest, claim he doesn’t need help or whatever, but what he gets is a quiet, “I…okay.”

“I’ll be right there,” Steve says firmly. He’s not sure Billy needs the reassurance, but he gives it anyway.

He’s shaking a little, he realizes, as he pulls on his jacket and grabs his keys. It’s ridiculous, probably, to be so freaked out, and he chides himself internally for being so easily spooked. The gate is closed, the lab is shut down, there should be nothing in those woods scarier than Billy himself. But shouldn’t be didn’t stop Will Byers from getting taken in the first place. None of that shit should have been, but it happened anyway. Billy may be more formidable than some shrimpy twelve-year-old but he’s also drunk, and has no idea what could be out there.

Steve pushes the speed limit a little.

~~

Billy is sitting in the dirt on the side of the road, knees pulled to his chest, back against the payphone booth. The dirty fluorescent behind him lights up his honey-coloured curls like the world's saddest halo.

The knot of anxiety in Steve’s chest loosens a little.

He puts the Beemer in park. Now that he knows Billy’s okay, he realizes he didn’t really think this all the way through. Because…what now?

Billy hasn’t moved, so Steve goes to him, approaches cautiously, with his hands in his pockets to stop him from fidgeting too much. “Billy?”

“Hey.” The greeting is subdued.

“You okay, man?”

He sniffs, doesn’t look at Steve. Rubs the back of his hand under his nose. “No.” There’s something clutched in his other hand, Steve realizes, but he can’t make out what it is because Billy is curled around it, blocking the light.

“Do…you want to, uh, talk about it?” Steve cringes his way through the question. He’s really, really out of his depth here, not a goddamn buoy in sight.

There’s no response. The silence stretches on for an awkward moment before Billy pushes himself to his feet, swaying a little. Steve’s almost afraid he’s going to fall over but he just shuffles forward, uncharacteristically hesitant, and extends a hand towards Steve when he gets close enough.

With a bouquet of wildflowers clutched in his fist.

Only half of them have bloomed, their little purple petals unfurled. The stems look a little prickly, dotted with green buds and jagged leaves, and half-crushed in Billy’s hand, the green turned dark and pulpy in spots.

Steve is pretty sure if his heart tried to beat any faster it would actually explode. He’s genuinely at a loss for words, left gaping at Billy trying not to wheeze like he’s just run a marathon.

“Picked these for you,” Billy mutters. He’s staring at a patch of dirt near Steve’s shoe with the intensity of someone trying very hard not to look at anything else.

There’s air escaping Steve’s lungs, but he can’t seem to make it into sound. He stares, unmoving, for long enough that Billy starts fidgeting, lowering his hand. The motion spurs Steve to action, heart in his mouth he reaches out and grabs Billy’s wrist. Billy stills under his fingers, and Steve slides his palm down the back of his hand. He’s warm. Knuckles scarred and rough.

“…Why?” Steve’s voice is reverently quiet. He’s almost afraid to scare Billy off, say the wrong thing and make him retreat behind the walls he’s always hiding behind.

Billy shrugs. Then finally looks Steve in the eye. He’s cautious, tension in his shoulders, but there’s a vulnerability in his expression that Steve’s never seen before. It’s breathtaking. Literally. Steve stops breathing for a second. 

“Why’re you here?” Billy asks. Demands. There’s no edge to it, just a quiet desperation that breaks Steve’s heart. He wonders why Billy is here. What brought him to the edge of town, drunk and alone.

“I…” His fingers tighten around Billy’s hand. Lies destroyed him and Nancy. All the things she kept from him that tore her up inside, all the times he wanted to pretend everything was okay. Lies are making his parents miserable. Always acting like their marriage isn’t hanging by a thread and a shared bank account. He and Billy don’t have a relationship to destroy, but—“I was worried about you.”

The words terrify him now that they’re out there. Saying he and Billy don’t have a relationship is an understatement. They’re barely even civil on a good day. Billy’s probably just bored out of his mind in small-town Indiana and fucking with Steve is as good an outlet as any, and Steve’s the dumb motherfucker who went and caught feelings for someone just for paying attention to him, oh god—

Steve pulls his hand away, cheeks burning, while the world starts shrinking around him, narrowing down to him and his sweaty palms. He’s had panic attacks before, but if he has one now he might actually fucking die.

“My dad took my keys,” Billy says, cutting through Steve���s internal tirade.

He blinks. “What?”

Billy’s fidgeting again. “Turned eighteen a couple months ago. Told myself I was gonna wait ‘til graduation. Finish school, y’know? Been saving up, and fuckin’ dreaming about this for years, but then…” He stops, grits his teeth. Steve waits for him to continue with bated breath.

“I was gonna get out. Didn’t want anything holding me back. But then my dad took my fucking keys and I—I wasn’t even mad that he stopped me,” Billy’s voice breaks, catches in his throat, “I wanted someone to stop me. Didn’t want it to be him, but it was never gonna be you. Because you. You don’t—” he stutters to a halt and squeezes his eyes shut.

And…that’s a lot to process. It’s a lot. But Steve had some practice taking things in stride, so he focuses on what’s important for now.

“Hey,” he says softly, and touches his fingertips to the inside of Billy’s wrist. Billy jolts, his eyes open and he looks at Steve warily, but he doesn’t pull away. “Can I take you home?”

Poor word choice. Billy recoils, curls in on himself.

“My house! I meant to my house,” Steve amends. The way Billy instantly relaxes worries Steve. This whole situation worries Steve. “There’s, uh, no one else there, so. I mean, oh-- I just want to get you sobered up, and—and once you’re—I’m just gonna stop talking. Let’s. Let’s just go.”

He turns and heads to the car so he doesn’t embarrass himself any more.

The drive back to Loch Nora is quiet, the radio plays something soft that Steve can barely hear and neither of them speak. The silence gets deafening when he cuts the engine. 

Billy Hargrove sitting in his parents’ pristine kitchen, jean jacket askew, earring flashing in the low light, while Steve makes him a cup of coffee, is…surreal. Made strange by just how mundane it is. How domestic. 

And keeping his hands busy doesn’t stop his mind from wandering. Or doing fucking wind sprints. So many new places to go, so little time.

Billy is sitting on the island in the middle of the room, watching. And it feels like the little pile of mangled flowers next to him is staring too.

“So, uh, you can sleep here. If you want. There’s a spare room,” Steve says as he hands a mug over. Their fingers brush and he tries not to fixate on it. Or think about where else Billy could sleep. 

No, fuck it, he’s thinking about it. Billy in his bed. Billy’s hands on him. How he looked after basketball practice, sweaty and shirtless, muscles taut, blue eyes burning through Steve. The showers afterwards. Wanting to know what Billy tastes like. 

The thoughts aren’t new, but letting them play out is. It’s equal parts terrifying and thrilling.

“What are you doing, Harrington?” Billy asks quietly.

Steve blinks. Thinking about you naked, doesn’t seem like an appropriate answer so he flounders, mouth opening and closing as he tries to think of anything other than tanned skin and golden curls. “...Nothing?” 

Smooth. Real smooth. 

He mentally kicks himself. Closes his eyes briefly and tries to get his shit together.

Billy’s got a thumbnail between his teeth, his gaze fixed on Steve, intent. There’s a question in his eyes. Uncertainty in his posture. “I mean...why are you--” He stops, lets out a frustrated sigh, and puts his coffee down. “What do you get out of this? I--I picked flowers for you, man. Half expected you to try and kick my ass again but now you’re, what, being charitable, or something?” 

Steve makes several big decisions in a short amount of time. He takes a step forward, inches away from standing between Billy’s knees. “I like it when you’re nice to me. When you look at me like I matter. I’m not being charitable, I’m just…” 

Making a fool of myself, probably.

But Billy’s got that vulnerable look again, mouth soft and eyes wide. He’s beautiful like this. He’s always been annoyingly gorgeous, all stormy eyes and sharp teeth, alluring like only a dangerous thing can be, but this… looking at him like this makes Steve ache.

“When have I ever been nice to you?” Billy half-laughs, it’s weak and watery. 

Steve grins, watches Billy track the motion. “You have your moments.” He steps forward again. It’d be so easy to put his hands on Billy’s thighs from here, standing between them. He wants to. So badly his fingers twitch. 

“...Steve?”

He inhales, slow, steadying. And exhales. Waiting isn’t going to make this any easier to say, but he can’t help taking a moment to collect himself. To panic. And think of all the ways it could go wrong. 

“Can I touch you?”

A sharp intake of breath is the only response he gets at first. Billy’s eyes go wide, and Steve can practically see the gears turning in his head. The whiskey haze seems to have mostly faded by now, his guard goes up faster than it would have otherwise. 

So, Steve waits. 

Slowly, hesitantly, Billy nods. 

He gives Billy the opportunity to change his mind, to pull away, moves carefully and deliberate so it’s clear what he’s doing. 

Before he even makes contact Billy’s eyes darken, and his hands shoot up to grab ahold of Steve’s wrists, but instead of pushing him off he tugs Steve closer. Suddenly they’re pressed together, Billy’s legs around his waist, clutching Steve’s hands to his chest.

“If you’re gonna do it, then do it, Harrington,” Billy growls, and Steve feels it as much as he hears it.

Which is...definitely something Steve didn’t know he would be into, yet there’s an undeniable flash of heat in his belly and he suppresses a shiver. He curls his fingers into the soft material of Billy’s shirt, feels the hard muscle beneath. 

Billy closes his eyes, and lets out a shaky breath.

They stay like that for a few seconds. Billy’s grip on Steve’s wrists slackens, but stays, thumbs tracing circles in Steve’s skin while he feels Billy’s heartbeat beneath his hands. His pulse is racing.

Steve leans forward, buries his face in the crook of Billy’s neck. He’s trapped their hands between them, put his elbows at a slightly awkward angle, but doesn’t care enough to move, not when he’s breathing in Billy’s scent. The faint chlorine smell clinging to the golden curls tickling his forehead, cologne and cigarette smoke on his clothes, and under it all something indescribably Billy, sharp and musky, oddly comforting.

“I like you,” Steve murmurs. It’s easier to talk like this. When he doesn’t have to make eye-contact. He can just talk, without worrying about anything else. What to do with his hands, where to look, what his face is doing while he speaks. What Billy might be thinking. “The flowers were nice. No one’s ever done something like that for me. And if I’d known you wanted me to stop you from leaving, I would have. I would’ve.” 

Billy wriggles his hands out from between them, and puts a hand on Steve’s cheek to guide his face upwards, until he’s looking into Billy’s eyes. His gaze is searching, roaming Steve’s face looking for answers. “I don’t know what I did to make you think that you…” he pauses, furrows his brow. “I wanted you the second I saw you, but… I don’t deserve you.”

He doesn’t let go though. Leaves his hand where it is, his thighs still warming Steve’s sides. 

Steve shrugs. “But you have me.”

It’s unclear which of them leans in first. Steve’s not too concerned with the technicalities anyways, not when he’s got Billy’s tongue in his mouth. He kisses like a man starved. No holding back, no hesitation. Steve is overwhelmed in the best way possible, weak in the knees and holding on for dear life. 

When they finally come up for air Steve’s fingers are tangled in Billy’s hair (he’s not sure when that happened), and he’s half-hard in his jeans. Billy is too, he can feel it pressed against his stomach. 

It takes a lot of self-control to keep from grinding against him, finding out what Billy looks like when he comes, what kind of noises he can coax out of him.

Because as much as he wants all of that, and more, he’s still barely comfortable admitting that. He’s scared of what all this means. Of the fact that he made some pretty big declarations and meant every word of it. Now it’s out there, and he doesn’t know where to go from here.

However, what comes out of his mouth is a breathless, “Come to bed with me?” and it takes his brain a second to realize exactly how that sounded. When he does, he panics. Pulls back as far as he can without actually stepping out of Billy’s embrace. “I mean-- shit-- I meant that but, not-- not like that-- I--”

Billy silences Steve by putting a finger to his lips. There’s an amused glint in his eye, a half-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I got you, pretty boy. No worries.”

Getting ready for bed together is...an experience. Steve tripping over himself trying to act normal and Billy completely unable to keep a straight face. Steve’s pretty sure he’s never seen Billy smile this much. It’s got him feeling weirdly proud of himself. Giddy, like a kid passing notes to his crush, with a heart full of bubbles and his stomach in knots. 

Actually laying in bed, side by side, is incredibly awkward for a long few seconds, before Steve rolls over and throws an arm across Billy’s chest. He shuffles closer, letting Billy tuck his arm under him, around his waist. 

He doesn’t want to sleep. Not yet. So, he says the first thing that comes to mind. “You’ve read The Hobbit?”

Billy laughs, startled. “I mean...yeah. Why?”

Steve grins against Billy’s shoulder. “No reason. Tell me what else you’ve read.”

They lay like that for a while, talking quietly until they’re too tired to keep their eyes open. Steve drifts off first, listening to Billy talk, content in a way he hasn’t been in a long time.